#The Breakout: part six

[glamourscat]

FLOWERS? ISAGI YOICHI X READER

the bastard münchen vs pxg match HAS FINALLY ENDED. A lil (late Valentine’s) childhood bestie! x Isagi fic because I love him so much

Pathetic.

That’s how Isagi felt; truly and utterly pathetically in love.

It was foolish of him, really, falling for his childhood best friend. The one person who knew him better than anyone else, the one constant in his life. And yet, he had fallen anyway.

He had known you since before you could even string proper sentences together, back when the biggest problem in your tiny world was who got to play with the fluffy teddy bear. He had been there for every phase of your life, just as you had been for his.

The bad haircuts, the breakouts, the braces. The cringe stylistic choices that made you both groan whenever old pictures resurfaced. The triumphs and failures, the reckless dreams and harsh realities. Every best and worst moment you had been by each other’s side.

And because of that, maybe he should have realized sooner.

Your parents, his parents, had always teased. “You two will end up together eventually.” A statement so casual, so inevitable in their wise eyes. Maybe that was why he held back for so long. Maybe it was out of sheer defiance, or maybe it was the terrifying truth that you already saw him. Every flaw, every insecurity, every crack in his carefully built walls.

And yet, you still chose to stay.

To love someone who truly sees you, all of you, and still stays by your side? That scared the shit out of him.

But Blue Lock is over now. He felt like he had aged thirty years in that soccer prison, but it had been worth it. Because now, he was here. Walking freely through the streets with the weight of his dream in his hands. He was part of Japan’s World Cup team.

And you, his best friend, his everything, would be by his side, not just as his anchor but also as the team’s manager.

Isagi exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair as he stared at the selection of flowers before him.

He had faced some of the greatest strikers in the world. Outwitted geniuses on the field. Fought, struggled, won.

And yet, confessing to you on Valentine’s Day? Felt like the biggest challenge he had to yet face.

“Roses are too much, right?” he mumbled under his breath, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he stared at the bouquets like they were an opposing team’s defensive lineup. Puzzle pieces hardly connecting in his brain. “I mean… yeah, they literally scream romance, but isn’t that kind of obvious? Too predictable? Shit.”

The old lady behind the counter glanced at him, unimpressed. She had seen countless lovesick fools in this exact position before, hell, today alone and Isagi fell right into that category.

Tulips? Too plain. Sunflowers? You might think he was calling you bright and cheerful, which—yeah, fair, but what if you took it as a joke? Lilies? What do lilies even mean?!

“You need help?” the florist finally asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” he admitted immediately. “I mean—yes? No. I’m just trying to figure out what flowers match a card that I, uh, may or may not have rewritten six times… as a valentines gift. Which turned out fine! I think. Maybe. Hopefully.”

The florist hummed, giving him a long, knowing look before glancing at the selection in front of her. “Alright, what kind of message are we going for here? Romantic? Sweet? ‘I’ve been in love with you since childhood and only just realized it because I’m a dumbass’?”

Isagi choked. “Why would you say it like that?!”

She gave him the flattest stare of his life. “Because that’s exactly what’s happening.”

He groaned, running a hand down his face. “Okay, yeah, fair point.”

The florist smirked before plucking a bouquet from the display. “Here. Go with these. A mix of daisies, lavender and forget-me-nots. It says you care, but you’re not coming on too strong. Subtle romance, but meaningful. Perfect for an idiot in denial.”

He took the bouquet, staring at it like it held the secrets of the universe. “Huh. Yeah. This… this actually works. How did you—”

“Experience, kid. Now go before you start overthinking again.”

Isagi nodded, clutching the flowers like they were the winning ball in a match. Alright. Flowers? Check. Card? Done—well, kind of. Cake? As good as it was gonna get.

Now, he just had to actually go back home and give them to you.

…Oh, shit.

This was really happening.

This might actually kill him.

He is pretty sure his heart is beating faster than the last goal he scored while playing for bastard münchen. He feels like throwing up. Was this normal? Probably not. But despite everything he wants you to know. He needs you to know that at the end of the day, pathetic or not, Isagi Yoichi is in love with you. And it was damn time he did something about it.

But for his luck, as he walked out of the flower shop, he almost crashed into someone.

“I am so—“ before he could even get the words out his soul almost came out of his body.

YOU. Out of everyone, you. In front of him. With a bouquet of flowers too. Wait, FLOWERS? Who— you…. Did— who gave you those?

“Yoichi” you say, words coming out slightly higher pitched than intended, trying to act normal, but you’re pretty sure the panicked expression you were trying to fight off with a smile came off more as you were constipated, more than anything else.

“Y/n” he says, seemingly unaware of your mental state, thankfully? Or maybe you should be worried that he was so oblivious to it.

“ Are you g—“

“Who— gave you those?” He said so quickly, not even allowing you to finish your sentence.

Your eyes fall to the flowers in your arms, if your cheeks weren’t red before, you’re pretty sure they are now.

“Who gave you those?” you say, nodding to the flowers he had in his arms. Trying to change the subject.

“I asked first.”

“I asked second”

A moment of silence before you two burst out laughing from the strange moment.

“Alright— alright. On the count of three? Together?” You says amused

One. Two. Three.

“I got them from you” you two say in unison.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

That’s what his brain was screaming. He probably looked like an absolute moron, standing there with a confused expression and jaw open as he looked at you. Huh? Him? YOU GOT FLOWERS FOR HIM— AKCKEPWLCNGIVVIFNRNWPW.

“You— eh?”

That was it. That was all his brain could come up with. World-class striker, future ace of Japan, but the second you said you got flowers for him? Immediate system failure.

You smiled, shy but warm, the edges of your expression softening in that way that was playful yet so beautiful. It made his heart feel like it was about to spontaneously combust. “Yeah, you—is that so weird?”

Yes. No. Maybe. His brain was still rebooting.

“You—you got me flowers?” he repeated, as if the words might make more sense if he said them out loud.

“I mean, yeah,” you said, shifting your weight from foot to foot. The bouquet in your arms crinkled as you fidgeted with the wrapping. “It’s Valentine’s Day, isn’t it? I figured i had to be clear because you’re so dense sometimes.”

“I’m not dense!” he argued immediately.

You raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“Okay, fine. Maybe a little dense,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, drowning out the rest of the world. “But—wait, why did you…?”

The words hung heavy in the air. Why did you get me flowers?

You took a shaky breath. “Because I like you, idiot.”

“I—wait—what?” He blinked, gripping his bouquet tighter like it might hold him upright. “Like… like-like?”

“Damn… and you say you aren’t dense” a small snort left your lips. “Yes, like-like!” you huffed, but your voice trembled a little. “I’ve… kinda liked you for a while. And I figured—if I didn’t say anything today, I’d probably chicken out forever and cry myself to sleep for the next month. Maybe two.”

“You like me,” he repeated dumbly, trying to wrap his head around it.

You tilted your head, exasperated. “Yoichi, please tell me those flowers are for me or am I about to die of embarrassment right now?”

“What? NO—I mean, yes! Yes, I like you too!” The words practically exploded out of him, way louder than he meant to. “I’ve liked you since—God, I don’t even know when. Probably since that stupid teddy bear fight when we were kids.. And—” Lord, he is rambling now. “And I have made you a card. A beautiful one, I think you will like it. And a cake. Though I burnt it the first time. Maybe the second time too. But, fuck yes, I like you too”

For a second, neither of you said anything. You just stood there, two idiots clutching flowers, blushing like middle schoolers with their first crushes.

Finally, you exhaled, shaking your head as you tried not to laugh. “Wow. We’re really bad at this.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt. “But, like… at least we’re bad at it together?”

You rolled your eyes, but the teasing smile tugging at your lips was impossible to hide. “Together, huh?”

“I mean… if you want that. If you want me.” He said, trying not to look more giddy than he already is.

“I wouldn’t be standing here holding flowers and trying to not burst into flames after a confession that I definitely did not rehearse in my head twenty times for you if I didn’t, genius.”

In a rush of courage, Isagi moved closer and wrapped his arms around you, bouquets squished in between your guys’ chests. You smelled like warmth and home.

“Can I—uh,” he pulled back just enough to meet your gaze, “can I kiss you?”

“Yoichi, if you don’t kiss me after all that, I’ll start overthinking and we know—.”

He doesn’t need anything else. His smile shushed you, as his lips finally met yours in a kiss that was a bit messy, yet soft and sweet. You tasted like that tea you like so much. A mix of honey, flowers and sugar that makes him greedy for more. Despite being in the middle of the sidewalk and in retrospect, he will for sure be embarrassed about the pda later.

But that’s a problem for later. Because the realisation that fuck yes, he is finally kissing you, settles in. And for the first time that day, but perhaps in his entire life, his brain went completely and blissfully quiet.

© GLAMOURSCAT (all rights reserved. do not share, modify, translate and re-upload my work outside of tumblr)

[omgfangirlland]

The Shadows That Nurture 27

To the 🔱 anon I SAW YOUR ASK I'M WORKING ON IT I PROMISEEEE (I like the idea very much, thank you for putting it into my head)

My mother(and family doctor) has decided she wants to make me go see multiple doctors for various reasons- so that's why I've been late, and will be late for a bit. Nothing life-threatening, but it's been a lot of testing and running from here to there and I'll cry if I have to take another blood test🥹 Ch 28 may get another draft before it gets published, it's quite short but we'll see ig 🫠

Masterlist || First || previous<< Chapter 27 >>next

“The Jokerized Fries are the only good thing that came from the fu- ugh…” Your eyes met Oliver’s doe orbs. “… clown…” Jason snorted, kicking your shin under the table. “Nice save.” You just kicked his shin right back, which started an under-the-table fight. “Kids, please stop it.” Nolan grumbled as he fed the toddler.

The man was stuck at the kiddie table with you, Jason, and Mark. Nolan would say it’s because he wanted to give Debbie and April a break from Oliver, but really, he was excommunicated as soon as the Sirens showed up. “Take care of your kids, actually take care of them.” Were Ivy’s words before Harley and Selina nudged Debbie and April to the closest table.

“Why was he given so many chances anyway? Why not lock him and throw away the key?” Jason’s muscles tensed at Mark’s question- the clown was still a sensitive subject. Your eyes met Jason’s before you turned to your other brother. “I wish it were that simple. But the prison gets a breakout at least once a month, no matter how much the security raises, it's really out of anybody's hands. Batman was there when The Joker, well, became The Joker. Bats thought he was the original Red Hood, so when the clown was cornered against a railing, it broke and he fell into a vat of chemical solutions.”

Jason continued where you left off. “B has been feeling guilty about it since. He won’t say so, but the way he just let the clown get away with shit when he’d otherwise be more strict had guilt written all over it.” The crime lord huffed. “Batman likes to think he’s logical. That he’s a good detective because he doesn’t let emotions sway him, but he’s only lying to himself. He is all emotions. And most of the time, he doesn’t know when to act on those emotions, so he deludes himself into thinking that it’s the logical part of his brain speaking.”

“It’s why he fucked up with me, and it’s why he puts on the Brucie persona with you.” Jason looked at you. “Everybody likes Brucie. It’s a fact. So, you must like Brucie too, even though you know that’s not him. He’s impulsive about it, thinking that just because he’s sweet now, what he did, or didn’t do, will be forgotten.”

“That’s- surprisingly sound of you, Jay.” You raised an eyebrow. “Thanks, I’m going to therapy.” He smiled, and Mark looked back at you. “Maybe you should try it.” Your head slowly turned to the young man. “I’ll go. If you go for the trauma Nolan gave you.” The named man looked at his son, eyes remorseful and ashamed. Mark looked back at his meal. “These fries are really good-“

��₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Wayne Enterprise was losing stockholders, he should have put out a statement. Or whatever Lucius said. Bruce wasn’t really listening, he wasn’t really doing much of anything since you actually punched him. Dick would call it depression, and maybe he was, but he was also planning… What he wasn’t sure of. Whatever he came up with ended up being erratic, theoretical, fantasies of finally getting you back, and fixing what he nurtured into destruction.

It was delusion, and some part of him knew. He wasn’t completely crazy… not yet. But that was a part he was deliberately burying. After all, there must be a way- you were still his kid, you wanted his attention. The six to seven years old version of you did, at least. At that time, you had found a camera that the chubby-cheeked version of you had used to film childish recreations of fairy tales, he couldn’t even tell if they were your favorites, or if those were just the ones you had similar enough clothes for. Ileana Simziana, Alice in Wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood.

All because you wanted him to see what your mom did, because he missed those, and he liked going to Dick’s school recitals. They were terrible, stuttering and fumbling with the change of clothes was most of the play- and yet, at the end of it all, you were all smiles and hopeful eyes. And then it stopped, picking up again about two years later, not with videos, but photos.

He tried to rack his brain for any information on this, trying to find a memory of you shyly approaching him to show these. He couldn’t find any. Bruce didn’t know what hurt more, the possibility that you gave up on even trying or that you did try, and he simply didn’t care enough to remember it. Either way, something made you stop from even touching the camera.

The photo right after the last video wasn’t done by you, it was actually of you. Of you specifically on Harvey’s shoulders, both sides of his dual-toned hair braided, and you putting sparkly hair clips in a random pattern as both faces of the man seemed to smile unbothered. Most photos were similar, you and a rogue doing something he should have done with you- The Penguin and you having tea parties, Killer Croc looking dead as he napped with you on top of his chest, Harley doing your nails as her hyenas tried to eat your forgotten sandwich, Selina smushing your face as she pressed a kiss to your cheek, face riddled with her lip marks even Music Meister seemed to have had time for you, the photo being of you two doing some sort of karaoke to some musical.

And yet the first photo of you, looking straight at the camera for once, all he saw was… saddening. You were giving a strained smile, eyes full of confusion about why whoever was behind the camera would want a photo of you. You weren’t used to those who you deemed family wanting photos of you, that was clear the more he carried on. Bruce remembers taking photos of Dick. Of Jason and Tim, of everyone. Alfred was the same. Every time he could, he would take a photo of the kids' achievements. There were no photos of you taken by either one, and you weren’t in any family group photos. Not theirs anyway. The rogues seemed to have taken more than enough of them.

It all angered him, the guilt only fueled the emotion. His fear of pulling you into the vigilante life, of suffocating you, his want to lock you away like a precious stone, was what threw you right into heroism, and not only that, it also tricked his mind into thinking that whatever drops of attention he gave were enough. You didn’t need your anger redirected, you didn’t crave to be the next Robin, you just wanted a dad. And he couldn’t give you that because he fooled himself that you didn’t need a father when you just lost a mother.

But you needed that. You always talked about your mom, you missed her, you wanted him to act like a dad, to be there for you, to console and love you, but all he saw was himself, and when he lost his parents, all he wanted was to be alone. You weren’t him. You weren’t like him. You needed support and affection, and he didn’t see it. “But Nolan Grayson did,” something hissed at the back of his head.

Bruce’s hands clenched as his blank stare was replaced by a deep frown. The rogues saw it. Nolan Grayson saw it. Nolan fucking Grayson. The man who beat the shit out of his son, ran away and had a whole another kid with a bug alien. You deemed him a better father. That hurt more than your punch.

He got up from his office chair, his direction set in his mind like it was the only answer, the family library. He hasn’t been near it in quite a while, his paranoia and guilt were playing tricks on his mind, he was sure of it.

The family portraits in there, since you left, had felt like they’ve been staring at him, following his every move. Books kept falling at his feet, furniture kept moving and hitting him, making him trip- all, he was sure, was his subconscious fumbling the distance in space from things due to stress and a pushed sense that one of his birds was missing.

Bruce folded the round carpet that was in the middle of the room, revealing a demon trap etched into the ground. He stepped into the middle of it, and as he bent down, his lip couldn’t help but twitch. You two were more similar than either of you thought. His nails caught onto a loose plank, and lifting it up moved several others.

His hand grabbed book after book. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he was sure these books will have the answer he’s looking for. The answer he wants.

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The Sirens insisted on having some girl time, and when Roy showed up with Lian, it was set in stone. So, they pulled you, Debbie, April, and the unsuspecting girl to your room, insisting on doing some self-care and pampering, which ended up with you braiding Lian’s hair while Selina braids yours. Pamela, April, and your mom were doing an avocado mask, and Harley was happily humming as she painted Lian’s nails. “Isn’t this too many colors?” Harley laughed at the teen's question as she switched to the sixth bottle of nail polish. “There ain’t ever too many colors, honey.”

“Art would argue with that.” You huffed, tying the final French braid. “I don’t know,” Debbie muses, “Mark’s costume is… something.” Selina giggled at that. “The robin costumes are worse.” And she was immediately followed by an agreement from Harley and a snort from you.

Lian looked at the women all giggling at the pantless robin specifically, the girl smiling softly and leaning into your touch as you gently ran a hand across her back. This was nice. She loved when her dad did her hair, and with time, he has gotten better, but she wanted that with her mom. She knows Jade loves her, in her own way- and many would say that’s her only redeemable quality, not willing to give her the grace they give others- but her priorities lie somewhere else.

“Are you really not dating Deathstroke and Luthor?” Lian couldn’t help but ask for confirmation, relaxing completely when you smiled at her. “I’m not dating them, they’re just doing me a favor because Jason and I thought it’ll make the bats go crazy- which it did.”  Your smile grew into a prideful smirk, remembering the stories of Dick completely breaking down. “You say that, but you should see the way those two look at you when you’re not paying attention.” Debbie teased.

“Oh, so, every time?” Ivy couldn’t help but join. “Hey now- I pay attention-“ Selina raises an eyebrow as she quickly cuts in. “You almost walked into a pole because you saw a cat in a handbag.” Your mouth closed, argument dying in your throat as your cheeks flushed with heat. “Dad’s a real nice guy.” At Lian’s offhand comment, you turned your attention back on her, your finger gently pinching at her cheek. “I’m sure he is a great guy who doesn’t need his stellar daughter to wingman for him.”

“I said he’s a nice guy… he’s kind of hopeless when it comes to romance.” The teen’s comment got a laugh out of the older women. “Aren’t they all?” Harley jests. “Our sorceress is kind of hopeless to it too, isn’t she?” April spoke up, teasing smile on her lips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about-“ You sniff. “She’s right, gals, we’re starting to bully her-“ Selina purred. “Oh, by the way, my beloved kit, how is your crush on Wonder Woman going?” Your hand went over your heart as your mouth dropped open. “Just because I have one poster- this is Nolan all over… Lian- back me up here-“

“You’re right, you’re right-“ The teen pats your thigh. “Oh- I always wanted to know more about your relationship with Giganta.” Your other hand went over your heart as Lian just fluttered her eyelashes up at you, the other women starting to snicker. “Traitors… I’m surrounded by traitors.”

A knock at the door made everyone look at it, and when it opened, Two-Face got a mixed reaction of confusion and annoyance. “Switch time, come on, paternal figure and kid time.” He waved his hand for you to follow.

“Switch time? Y’all made a schedule?” You ask while getting up. “Yeah… we’ve learned to be buddies and share and all of that.” Harley rolled her eyes as she finished Lian’s nails. “Don’t worry, we’ll still be here when you get back.” Pamela reassured, redirecting Debbie worried look to the alien plant, asking what it eats.

You took the chance to follow Harvey, hooking your arm with his. He smiled as he led you downstairs to where Nolan and Mark were dressed in their nice suits, and even Oliver had his own little tux on while strapped to your dad’s chest. “Aww, look at my little man all prim and proper. So you're taking us to a nice place?” You cooed as the little guy grabbed at your fingers, nuzzling into your hand.

“Yes. And then we’ll visit Waylon and Bundy since they can’t come.” His eyebrow raised at the green light that engulfed your body and changed the pajamas to a long black dress, one similar to what he’d seen Morticia Addams wear in the many movies you were once obsessed with. “Cobblepot is waiting for us there.”

“We’re going to The Lounge?” Harvey smiled at Mark’s hidden excitement. “No. It’s not a place for babies, maybe we’ll go before you lot have to return.” Mark’s shoulders slumped as he fought a pout. “I’m still mad I can’t come-“ Jason whined, not even trying to hide his pout as Roy snickered. “If you come, the bats will for sure show up. Without you there, we get a fifty-fifty chance they won’t- no I won’t flip a coin for it, have a nice day, we’ll be back late.”

Jason’s frown deepened as he watched Two-Face usher the Graysons to the door. “Please don’t go after them. Do you really want to be blamed if Bruce does show up?” Roy nudged his friend, smiling as Jason groaned out a no.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Your laugh filled the otherwise empty restaurant as John Constantine shimmied himself and a chair between you and Nolan, despite having enough space anywhere else at the table. “Can’t believe I wasn’t invited-“ The blond man was cut by Mark’s snort, immediately followed by Nolan’s voice. “You’re more of a drunk uncle who only shows up when he wants something. Cecil has more of a right to your seat.” John just gave the man a look before turning his head back to you. “So- when you get home, there’s a gift waiting for you- no, not a hell hound, I’m not getting you a hell hound- it’s grimoires and other magic books, you’ll enjoy them.”

“And it was a must for you to interrupt our outing-“ John quickly interrupts Oswald, ignoring your whining about how you deserve a hellhound. “Nah, Bruce is about to show up any moment now- want to see the shit show for myself.” As the man stole Harvey’s whiskey, the doors opened, and in walked the bat himself.

“Can’t I take a break-“ You whined, your hand immediately covering your face as your elbows rested on the table. “Bruce-“ Harvey got up from his chair as both his faces showed the displeasure of seeing the bat brought. “I'm not looking for a fight-“ Bruce raised his hands in a surrendering manner before his eyes drifted back to you. “I do just want to talk.” You took the whiskey glass from John and downed it.

Oliver looked between you and Bruce as you slammed the glass down. His eyes remained on the older man’s tired face. Bruce, sensing eyes on him, turns his attention from your whining form to the toddler sitting in his highchair. As the man gives the kid a small smile, Oliver isn’t having any of it, his little face scrunching up as he points at Bruce. “Ugly.”

It takes a while for everyone to process what Oliver called the bat, but when it registers in everyone’s brain, the reactions are immediate. Bruce’s shoulders slump with defeat as you, John, and Mark completely lose it, laughing like hyenas. “Well-“ Whatever little jab Nolan wanted to give was interrupted when Oliver grabbed at his mustache. “Dada ugly too.”

The laughter only got louder. John went down, clutching his stomach while slamming his fist into the ground- you weren’t far behind, the only thing keeping you upwards was Mark shaking you as he laughed soundlessly, his face turning red. “Are you two done?” Nolan’s grumble was met with nonsensical babble, neither of his kids being able to form comprehensible sentences.

Bruce, deciding it’s a good enough time to get a distracted you to listen, gently taps your back, resulting in your hand in his as he gently pulls you away from the table. The men wanted to stop him, but knowing his history of digging his own hole, they let him take you away for a bit. “The mustache is quite ugly.” The Penguin mutters, and as Harvey hides his laugh with a cough, John lets out a sound similar to a dying cat.

You were stumbling, hitting Bruce’s arm with no real bite while your laughter left you lightheaded. “Oh, sweet Gelos-“ You sniffed, hand wiping away tears as you finally let go of the man to rest against a wall, body still shaking with giggles. And Bruce just smiled, the exhaustion fading away the more you mumbled and the more your shoulders shook with cackles and shaky breaths. He just wishes it didn’t take this long to hear you so happy. That you were laughing at something he said.

“I have so many explanations of why I did what I did.” His voice made you take in a sharp breath, any amusement dying down faster than Constantine can smoke a pack of cigarettes. “But that’s not an apology, and it doesn’t matter what I wanted to accomplish when all I did was hurt you.”  Bruce moved closer, and you pressed your back into the wall. “… I am sorry-“

“I don’t believe you.” Your tone was even, face blank, and shoulders tense. “You weren’t sorry back then, you're only sorry now, because the public and JL members found out and it started affecting you.” Bruce didn’t expect this to be easy, to be forgiven on the spot- this isn’t a Disney movie where the toxic grandmother is forgiven with a hug. “I know… And I understand why you’d believe that. But I won’t give up. Whether or not you like it, you’re still my daughter.”

“I may as well have been an orphan. The only good thing you’ve ever done was give me access to your money.” Despite the jab and you walking away, Bruce took this as a small win- after all, he didn’t get punched or cake smashed. Small steps, he was a patient man.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

“-and I definitely wanted to punch him again.” You finished telling Waylon what happened at dinner, your eyes drifting to Bundy, who has been frozen since Oliver decided he wanted the zombie to hold him and cuddle. “You should have,” Two-Face growled. “Have to agree. I don’t like the courage he and his birds are getting.” Nolan grumbled, his arms crossed. “He hasn’t been this sloppy since Jason died.” Waylon’s tail tapped the ground as he spoke, lost in thought.

 John couldn’t agree more, the bug the man tried to plant was the most obvious thing. Too obvious. John frowned as he got up from the old armchair, walking past Mark, who was busy reading a The Walking Dead comic, straight to you. “Sorry, love.” He mumbled as he moved behind you, ignoring the conversation going on, while his hands went for your hair.

His eyes carefully moved down your strands of hair as he muttered spells, down the back of your neck, and stopping where your shoulders started. Two fingers went from the left to the right shoulder, his eyebrows furrowing while his eyes watched the tracking sigil disappear.  Seems like he’ll have to talk to the bat himself.

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[eclipseberrycake]

Poly! MoonBerryCake x Reader Pt. 6.5

AN: Okay i was in the middle of writing a/the clean browser history request when this came in (Idk if it's posted yet or not, depends how i feel lol) and immediately dropped everything to laugh and scribble a few ideas. I did finish the CBH request before starting this but the entire time I was giggling. AND Part 7 will be in the works at some point, but I'm working on some other requests before that <3

I wasn't gonna post this tonight but I hit 50 followers so let's celebrate:)

I haven't posted rules yet, which is coming, I'm just formatting it lol, but I'm comfortable with most things! I originally am a smut writer and so not very much can make me uneasy. That being said, for this blog I will not write any smut to stay respectful to Qwuel's wishes :) But things like this? I think are hilarious and absolutely on the table.

That trend is so funny to. For those who don't know, it's basically one person holding the camera, looking completely fine saying "Us after pound town" and then panning over to their partner, who looks, for lack of a better term, absolutely wrecked. There are a few DW takes on it on tiktok and I like every single one of them. :)

-> Part One

-> Part Two

-> Part Three

-> Part Four

-> Part Five

-> Part Six

Warning: More mature themes, nothing explicit but more mature nonetheless, talks and references to sex/ sexual activity but again, nothing explicit.

☁ Okay, okay, so this can go two ways here.

☁ The Broke take: Astro and Sprout split the roles of the more 'Dom' party.

☁ Both are mains, who are statistically stronger, faster, more evolved than the commons- like you and Cosmo. So it makes sense that they take the more upfront and steady role.

☁ Even on runs in previous parts, I've kind of played with that a bit. Both are settled individuals who have been practically trained to be in front of the camera and spotlight- no matter how much they hate it.

☁ I don't think that changes much after the breakout, honestly. I think after they've returned to their own forms and have had time to become reacquainted with not only themselves, but everyone else, they still hold that aura of main.

☁ Because there is a way about the mains that just...exonerates their status even if they don't mean for it too. It's in their designs and how they walk, and talk, bolstered from their times with their handlers.

☁ So it makes sense that within their relationship, they kind of take that responsibility as well.

☁ I find with Sprout especially as he's protective to a fault this is true? Like I've talked before about how you all stress him out, but it's because he cares so much it practically chokes him.

☁ While he does love good fun and being a menace in his own way- we'll get into that later- he also wants what's best for you all. So he's making sure you're eating and drinking water, taking care of yourself no matter what.

☁ Especially after the pudding cup fiasco. He keeps such an eye on the pudding inventory in the building after that, those who weren't there start worrying for him.

☁ Astro is similar in the sense that he wants the best for you all, but he goes about it in a different way. He's a very quiet individual outside of the private times he shares with you all, so he has to be sneaky about it. He has a reputation or so he's told.

☁ Bro is shadow the hedgehog coded /hj

☁ He shows his love in softer, quieter gestures. Like when he checked your forehead during the Blu incident? It was all he could think to do in that moment without freaking out. He does the smaller gestures because he's always so close to the precipice of panic when it comes to any of yours health. Bro is not chill, will never be chill, never wants to be chill.

☁ He and Shelly are BFFS, and as I said in her thing, she gets frantic when her partner gets hurt. Guess where she got that from. She got it from Baby Astro, crying for the handlers every time she so much as skinned a knee.

☁ He got more discreet about it as he grew up, but it never truly went away.

☁ So now that I've gotten that all out of the way, :)

☁ They are just as generous as lovers as they are as just like...beings.

☁ When it comes to you and Cosmo, nothing is off limits. Nothing is too much to ask for. You guys so much as breath and it has a hint of a thought of want for anything (Except pudding.) and it's yours.

☁ They probably have moods where, like the meme above, you and Cosmo need them to pick up your slack because asking you to do anything other than lay there is too much.

☁ Again, these two have different ways of showing aftercare.

☁ Astro's is soft, gentle massages and damp clothes being held by his star shards so you can reach them when you're ready. He's whispering and cooing all sorts of praises about how well you did for him and carrying you and Cosmo literally everywhere necessary.

☁ I don't know when I made carrying you guys Astro's thing, but it is now.

☁ Anyway, he's never very far from either of you and practically demands you two stick close to each other if nothing else so he can keep a close eye on both of you. If one of you absolutely demands to move somewhere and he's pinned by the other while Sprout is getting snacks or something, he's using his star shards as helping hands.

☁ He's always mindful of your own routines as well. For example, Cosmo puts a lot of care into his tail, which evidently gets ruffled and scuffed during the tussle against the bed, so he goes out of his way to learn how to properly care for it and making sure the process is as comfortable for Cosmo as possible.

☁ If you have a certain lotion or ointment you prefer, he always keeps it nearby so he can help you regardless if you can do it yourself or not.

☁ Whenever you or Cosmo try to do it yourselves, he's swatting your hands and doing it himself anyway, shooting you a stern look if you continue to whine about it. If you continue trying to do it, he isn't against using his extra hands to pin your own to the bed as he goes about caring for you.

☁ If you and Cosmo think there's no way he can catch you both, man oh man do I have some news for you. Because he can and he will. He's got an extra pair of hands and those star shards of his? He's got incredible control over them and literally makes a fool out of whoever thought they could outrun them.

☁ C'mon, you can barely stand and you think you're outrunning those bad boys?

☁ For all Astro jokes about Sprout being the Warden, he actually plays the part much better. By the time Sprout returns, you both are cleaned and subdued with Astro looking like the cat that caught the canary.

☁ Speaking of Sprout, he knows Astro has you both beat even with one set of hands tied behind his back. So once he's sure you and Cosmo are both okay and contingent enough you don't immediately whine when he's out of reach, he's showing his love in the way we already knows he does.

☁ He's getting you and Cosmo your favorite after care treats and water, along with things for himself and Astro, before returning, taking some of the burden off of Astro.

☁ He's the tallest out of all of you, so he too can also carry you quite easily. If by some miracle, one of you stubbornly gets out of Astro's reach, he's right there, picking you up like you weigh nothing. To him? You probably don't.

☁ He's a cheeky little asshole though, poking yours and Cosmo's cheek as you sip on water with that cocky little smirk, making you shove him away with a hand in his face. His go to move when that happens is to grab the hand and use it to pull the rest of you into his lap, nuzzling into your head with a laugh. You just didn't understand how cute you were to him, did you?

☁ Sidebar: I said they had moods, but with Sprout? Practically a given with him. With his stamina, he's got energy for days and knows it, which is why he takes a good portion of the aftercare that requires moving past what Astro can reach with the star shards.

☁ Rest assured though, neither Sprout nor Astro so much as think about moving until you and Cosmo are both soothed enough to handle the lack of personal attention.

☁ They have their favorite ways to end sessions too.

☁ Astro loves watching movies and cuddling in a big pile of kisses and limbs and laughter. It's literally his favorite thing in the world. He admittedly needs the contact for a little longer than Sprout does, loving the constant connection that comes with the bliss. You and Cosmo are quick to fall asleep during that too and he knows you're having good dreams since you're so close to him, so that's also an added bonus.

☁ Sprout can go either way. He likes the movies and cuddle pile, more so if you and Cosmo fall asleep. Not only are you two getting the rest you deserve, but it gives him the opportunity to turn his attention to Astro, smothering the celestial in all the love and adoration he can handle. But-

☁ He also enjoys doing any sort of group activity afterwards if you and Cosmo feel up to it. He's more than willing to hoist one of you on his back and trot into the kitchen, with Astro carrying the other one behind him, going on and on about what he could make or what they want to feel better.

☁ Food is literally such a big love language to him and he tries to show it at every possible opportunity.

☁ Bonus points if you and Cosmo are sitting there, licking your wounds as you groan to each other over all the things that are sore. He doesn't like that your in any sort of pain, obviously, but it makes him laugh at how big of babies you could actually be.

☁ Less bonus points if someone comes in and asks what attacked you two. Sprout can't stop his cackles fast enough as Astro chokes on his spit. It's just too funny watching you two scramble to answer that, turning a bright cherry red as you shoot them both glares. He's sure Cosmo absolutely combusts at the question, making him laugh even harder.

☁ Now, that was the broke take.

☁ The WOKE take: You and Cosmo top their bottom asses like it's no problem.

☁ You and Cosmo are both commons, which while not as strong as the mains, I'd like to argue are much tougher. In game they get an additional hit point, so I like to think if you're a common, you can take a punch or two and still get back up.

☁ This is carried over to the rest of your life of course. You and Cosmo are less likely to whine over injuries like minor burns or papercuts, you probably regularly playfully rough house with Cosmo because the other two whine about it. Hell, even by being a distractor alone, you're fast and don't take anyone's shit.

☁ Because everyone is so quick to blame the distractor if they get hit, you very quickly learned to become assertive and lay out a plan so if they deviate, it's their fault. You've grown accustomed to the other toons whining and snapping at you, especially in the beginning when getting research without Rodger seemed like a hopeless endeavor.

☁ So you have experience with toons fighting you on your every decision and quickly laying down the law.

☁ As for Cosmo, he's a healer.

☁ ...I don't know if y'all main healers, but I do (Alongside Astro) and lemme tell ya. People are mean to healers. He's constantly getting into fights with the other toons if he doesn't heal them well enough or if they simply have a scratch and are begging for a full heal. He had to learn to hold his own fast, much in the same way you did.

☁ Not to mention heals. The reason he drops everything once a heal is called is because before you and the others got experienced and learned how to properly hide and do runs, he had to fight the others for heals. Rodger and him had gotten physical more than a few times as the magnifying glass tries grabbing the med-kit for him and Toodles while Cosmo needed it to heal you along with everyone else.

☁ So while he's sorry for stressing Sprout out when he does it, he admittedly isn't looking to really break that habit for worst case scenarios.

☁ That being said, again, Cosmo is tough. He isn't a soft pastry who's gonna crack at the first sight of conflict. He's used to shutting attitude down as it comes, and he's used to grey walling when arguing gets him nowhere.

☁ Sidebar 2: Cosmo would be such a good gentle parent bro. He doesn't confuse it with dismissive parenting and I just- UGH.

☁ Anyway, suffice to say that you and Cosmo both know how to be a dominant voice no matter where you are. Or who you're dealing with.

☁ One of the notes I've had scribbling for this entire time since I got this message was, and I quote:

☁ "Sprout's a brat. I'm actually his scarf so I know."

☁ And I stand by past me. She was right.

☁ Sprout is the biggest brat. I've said it before in the Healer! Reader one (I think), but he like...refuses to get healed. He'll fight Cosmo and Ginger on it. This, again, carries into whatever he does. He's stubborn and willing to play dirty to get what he wants.

☁ Only child syndrome or something. His handler only had one toon to handle, so it makes sense that he got used to having all the attention on him. He lowkey expects the same in a relationship. He wants you three to be as obsessed with him as he is with you, and while you are, he probably doesn't think that way sometimes.

☁ He thinks because he's taller he can get away with whatever he wants. He pushes and prods when you aren't giving him what he wants and probably thinks he can change your mind. Which is where that assertiveness from early comes in.

☁ Eeny meeny miney- Let's start with Cosmo. Cosmo is quick to just...not interact when Sprout gets into one of his moods. While normally he's all over you guys and your every whim, there is a kind of switch that flicks when the mood strikes Sprout that changes the interaction.

☁ I can't explain it but like, you know when your partner is being a brat for the sake of being a brat or when they genuinely want your attention. Like you know. And Cosmo? He knows.

☁ So when Sprout is being a bit of twat, he doesn't engage, does not interact, barely gives him a glance before returning to what he was doing.

☁ Like, he's not outwardly strong, but he's got enough muscle that when Sprout tries to throw himself onto Cosmo's back, as if to prove a point, Cosmo can hold the weight while also continuing to ice cookies. It's kind of funny actually.

☁ Of course, Sprout does do well with this and when he realizes he's not getting what he wants from Cosmo, he throws his equivalent of a fit. He cries and whines about "You don't love me anymore" and "I've been replaced by cookies."

☁ Cosmo has to really pry on his patience for that one.

☁ As for you, you deal with Sprout however you deem fit. If it's the same way as Cosmo, he's literally like a ticking time bomb, just waiting to blow up in your face. In which case, you and Cosmo have a great night ahead of you! If you chose a different, more punitive approach...it's still a great night ngl.

☁ Astro is like...the polar opposite. He needs to please and is so good at it too. He does have a hiccup in the sense that sometimes he gets too lost in the need to just be near one of you. While Cosmo's dealing with Sprout, Astro is probably with you, quite literally crawling in between whatever you're doing and you, perching himself in your lap to get your attention.

☁ He's like a cat. Worse. Blu isn't even as bad as he is.

☁Also? He bites. When he's not getting the attention he wants, Astro bites. Then acts like he didn't do anything.

☁ So deal with them as you please. They like it, trust, I'm actually Sprout's scarf.

☁ Afterwards, they are shells of the toons the were.

☁ They are such babies.

☁ They need constant attention and will complain if they don't get it- one much, much louder than the other.

☁ While you're trying to get damps cloths ready and towels and Astro's favorite lotion, you have star shards yanking at you, trying to pull you back the entire time even with Cosmo still right there.

☁ If Cosmo is grabbing water and snacks, he can still hear Sprout yelling at him from your room, literally just making noise for the sake of making noise even if Cosmo can hear the strain on his throat.

☁ By the time everything is cleaned and water and snacks are within arms reach, you and Cosmo are pinned. No choice about it. Maybe if you're lucky you'll have time to put on a movie or something, but if not, man sucks to be you.

☁ They need the constant touch. It admittedly comes from a fear of abandonment especially while they're so vulnerable.

☁I haven't gone into detail about my own headcanons about their handlers and I'm kind of split on it in all honesty. I think their handlers definitely cared for them deeply, but they were still humans and humans are flawed individuals especially when it comes to things like money. We know the founders were bad people, but I think their handlers were genuinely good people who were just told bad things. Which influenced how they cared for the toons.

☁ But that's another discussion for another day.

☁ Not to be that person, but everyone can tell when those two took it lying down, so to say. because even the next day you and Cosmo are always seen with at least one of them following you.

☁ Maybe you and Vee are discussing the aspects of bringing her game show back, but she can barely focus, too busy laughing at the sight of Sprout slumped over you, arms locked around you as he burrows into your shoulder. He hasn't moved since you sat down, immediately falling into you, and Vee is sure he's got no plans on moving or letting you move either.

☁ Or maybe it's Shelly, cooing at Astro, who's hiding in Cosmo's back, as the cake roll copies his recipes into his personal recipe book, laughing as star shards swat at her.

☁ Either way, they cling. They're velco babies at heart.

☁ But either way I think it's safe to say, either party, no matter which way it goes whether it be Fruitcake taking over or you and Astro or Astro and Cosmo or you and Sprout, it's safe to say the next day is a no-run day.

☁ Just in case :D

[lmaowhatt]

it takes time series masterlist

pairing: model/actor!rafe cameron x actress/singer!female reader

| main masterlist |

heads up: uploads may be delayed! im not only focusing on this series but im focusing on other one shots that will be posted on my main masterlist linked above!

summary: actress y/n I/n has recently skyrocketed into stardom after her breakout film 'castaways' alongside sarah cameron, kevin hart, chris evans and chris hemsworth. weeks after the movies premiere, she drops her debut single, further cementing her place in the spotlight. as millions of people around the world begin to notice and idolize her, struggling with her own demons, she catches the attention of rafe cameron, among others. however, not everything goes as smooth as they both would've hoped. and they soon figure out.. it takes time.

started: 12 - 14 - 2024

finished: TBD

status: in progress!

extras:

mood boards - twitter profiles

parts:

intro - one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine - ten

[apollabarnes]

part one // part two // part three // part four // part five // part six // part seven // part eight // part nine // part ten

evan makes a face when athena calls tommy cool and there's got to be a story behind that. tommy wants to ask, bites back the impulse. he's not allowed to do that anymore.

"what do you, uh, talk about at these dinners?" evan's chewing at his bottom lip and his knee is bouncing.

lucy looks over at tommy, clearly dying to know as well.

saying that they don't talk about him would be a lie. saying that they do is… not quite accurate either. tommy doesn't know what answer would make evan feel better. he's not really sure which answer evan is hoping to get.

well, he's probably hoping tommy hasn't told athena about their sex life. he sends a silent apology evan's way. tommy's glad athena's not the type to let them derail the job for a relationship postmortem.

"buck, is this really what you want to talk about right now?" athena asks. tommy winces. that's the voice she uses just before she makes tommy regret his entire life, generally by telling him something he's been successfully ignoring for years. he's rethinking her stance on letting them hash it out in the middle of an emergency. neither of them can leave right now.

"this can't be as bad as what we're dealing with right now, so…"

tommy flinches. he really should have asked athena a few more questions before flying over here.

evan whistles, long and low. "it is that bad?"

"i actually don't know what we're dealing with right now, so…" tommy shrugs and trails off. it could be worse. it could be better.

"it is not as bad as a supercharged viral breakout," athena interjects.

"yeah, it's not that bad," tommy agrees.

lucy turns her laugh into a cough before anyone other than tommy can notice.

"how bad? scale of grease fire to devastating crush injury," evan asks, leaning forward again.

"buck," athena says despairingly.

"it's better than lightning!" evan argues.

"that's not better, evan," tommy says quickly.

"answer the question, tommy."

he takes a deep breath. "for you? grease fire. for me? getting shrapnel cleaned out."

"ouch," lucy winces in sympathy.

"hey, you — athena—"

"buck, i know you're not about to say that i made tommy do anything he didn't want to do. look at him."

evan closes his mouth, sitting back and crossing his arms over his chest. "so you're best friends now."

"he bought me a travel mug. it's ugly as hell."

"what is going on here?" evan throws his hands up, clearly baffled. tommy hates that he wants to keep teasing him. "and you just show up with a helicopter when she calls."

tommy shrugs one shoulder. "she called."

it's evan's turn to flinch. "wait, does that — if i'd —"

"yes," lucy and athena say immediately.

"yes," tommy echoes, a beat behind them. obviously. is evan surprised? when has he ever not showed up when evan asked? "okay, uh, this is. worse than the shrapnel. not — you, i just didn't think there would be an audience."

"only way out is through," athena says sagely. "could be worse. this could be an open channel."

tommy hiccups out a laugh, shaking his head. "we're two minutes out. what do you need us to do when we land?"

"don't let anyone come in after us," athena's jaw tightens and she stares straight ahead. "roz and allen have everything ready on the ground."

"we can handle that," tommy looks down, calculates, "the walkway?" he asks lucy.

"tight but doable."

tommy can feel evan fighting back the urge to say it. he's surprised by his own laughter when its athena's voice saying "that's what she said" over the headsets. lucy looks delighted.

tommy makes it work. roz and allen, whoever they are, work on getting athena into a suit.

"evan."

evan looks over at him, eyebrow arcing up.

"come back safe and i'll tell you all of it. even the lightning."

"don't get arrested," evan demands.

tommy's not sure who reaches out first. he breathes in against evan's neck, slipping his hand into evan's pocket. "give em hell, evan."

evan bounds away for his own suit.

"so," lucy drawls, once evan's cleared the walkway. "what happens when they ask us to move this?"

"i lost the keys," tommy says blithely, "dropped them somewhere."

[nullmaidens]

WIP: drink your fill

18+ || ezekyle abaddon x reader || step-mother/son fauxcest. pre-heresy, set-up to adultery, guilty masturbation (kinda), pregnancy as body horror.

THIS IS A WIP!! the final product will have explicit content and abaddon with lactophilia. please bear this in mind!!

he’s a boob guy who wants to be his mother’s favourite just as much as he wants to be his father’s, and i can see him getting rather jealous of a new arrival that takes up too much of her time for his liking.

Hell exists, and the Imperial Truth should be damned to it. Hell exists, and Ezekyle knows, because he’s been enduring it for months.

It comes to the Vengeful Spirit after a long gestation, growing in a dark, dank place, left alone too long to get rid of. It buries its way inside, making itself a home out of nothing, siphoning their hard-won supplies without permission and, to add insult to injury, without reproach. They’d reinforced the ship against it — a new door here, an insulated wall there, increasingly strict safety protocols, and locks. More locks than he had ever seen, one on every compartment, every cupboard, even in the most distant recesses of the menial decks, as if the Warmaster was expecting a break-in.

What he was really readying them for, however, was the breakout.

The Legion Mother had screamed for hours, and he thought could hear it clearly despite your being in the infirmary and himself being locked away in the training cages. It was haunting, and Ezekyle wanted nothing to do with it. He could almost feel the heavy thuds of the Warmaster’s footsteps pacing up and down the corridor outside the room you’d been placed in, nearly hear Tarik’s lighthearted voice try to comfort him, or Luc’s stern assertions try to ease his mind. She’ll be fine, he’d say, she is strong. It’s why you chose her, and it’s why we love her.

The cages were empty when he arrived, everyone else preoccupied, duties cut short and shifts left unfinished when the news had broken that you had finally gone under the knife. His knuckles are bloody from being beaten against battle servitors, six— no, seven— of them in pieces at his feet. Huge, hulking, once-human things torn apart, split at the seams, their bodies broken almost beyond repair, and while he knew the Martians would fix them, they’d never quite operate the same. That thought stung. Your body, too, had changed, under occupation. You became gaunt, stretched out, both thin and bulging, the mortal human body utterly weak and incapable of handling the burden of such a parasite.

You’d wasted away in front of them and they had done nothing. The nausea that left you starving almost to the point of emaciation was blamed on warp sickness, initially, but the Luna Wolves weren’t stupid enough to be so easily deceived. The preternatural beauty and fullness that came in the weeks that followed was merely a reflection in him of the Warmaster’s love for you, one that disguised the way your skin warped around the growth. To his great shame, Ezekyle took himself in hand for the first time in decades when you looked like that. You even smelled different, lingering in the air around him for hours after you’d retired to his father’s chambers, the sickly sweet scent of you clinging to him even beneath a blisteringly hot shower. The water scalded his back as he’d stood hunched over, braced against the tiled wall in front of him, and he cursed when he thought of how much more lustrous your hair had become, and how your clothes had started to stretch across your belly, and how the already perfect swell of your chest was—

He made himself spend another fifteen minutes scrubbing his guilt from where it dripped down the grouting.

When the more slender parts of your body grew gaunt again, when you were tired, and slow, and it seemed that he alone could see it in your eyes that you were putting on a brave face for them, Ezekyle had gone to your bedside and asked you why you had wasted so much time in waiting to take it out.

“I don’t know,” was your answer, and you had squeezed his hand. He saw red just thinking about the way the oximeter dug into your finger, the plastic cold against his skin, and the dullness in your eyes, once so full of life. He punched the servitor in front of him hard, its inner and outer machinations stuttering at the impact before whirring back to life. “It will happen when it happens. The chirurgeons and the apothecaries know what they are doing.” You’d brought his hand up to your lips, then. They were cracked and dry, devoid of their usual softness, but they had still been so gentle against his knuckle when you tried to comfort him.

When an illness takes root, it ought to be cured. When a tumour grows, removed. The surgery should fix you. It would make you better, and happier, and things would be just as they were before. Now again, harder, that same fist pummelled into its gut until he felt bone break, lubricants spilling onto the mat, each strike a wish that the ache would dull and fade into the oblivion from whence it came. This was a momentous occasion, one he’d regret missing, but the thought of smelling the stench of your blood from the other side of a closed door was nauseating. He should be there, with his brothers. With his father who he knows needs him now possibly more than ever, to share in his strife and his delight.

And yet, after a painstakingly long half-cycle spent drenched in sweat, Ezekyle punches straight through the servitor’s skull and bellows in frustration when roars of joy fill every deck of the ship. Lady Lupercal is alive. The Warmaster has another son.

“Must he parade it around?” he asked under his breath as the Mournival stood by, watching from a stage as the Primarch showed the swaddled cloth in his arms to each company, one at a time. It was a miracle it hadn’t started that insufferable wailing again at the sound of ceramite sabatons thumping against plasteel flooring, each and every Luna Wolf in his immaculately cleaned armour, and only Horus going without. He was determined to maintain skin to skin contact with the thing they’d torn from the Legion Mother, as if that would make all the difference, and have it recognise him as its father all the quicker. Ezekyle bristled at the thought, though it wasn’t a new one. In the days since the arrival, the Warmaster had doted on it, and something dark and strange and sad had coiled up in his heart whenever he saw the way he held it close to his chest.

The Legion Mother had barely been able to walk when the men were called up to the debarkation deck, and he’d played the role of the dutiful, anxious son in the absence of any other volunteers. You clung to his arm, shivering from the effort of standing, but you smiled anyway. It was pained, and it was like only he could tell. “He is your father’s pride,” you whispered back, your eyes fixed not on your husband, but on the bundle in his care. “He thinks it’ll be good for all of you to know him, and I agree. He’s just another brother to care for, Ezekyle. Smaller, perhaps, than what you’re used to,” a weak laugh rattled through you, and he could almost feel the way your fingers tightened around the thick plate of his gauntlet, “but a brother all the same.”

thank u for making it this far <3 hopefully i ACTUALLY FINISH THIS

divider by @strangergraphics !!

[ireadwithmyears]

🥳 Congratulations to your 300 follower milestone event!

I would be happy if you would like to write something with Kix or Hunter in a romantic relationship. 😊

I stopped taking the birth controll pill 2 years ago and within a very short time I gained weight and my skincondition was going bad, even though I didn't change any of my habits. My hormones are going crazy. 😮‍💨 Things are slowly getting better. Lost weight, skincondition better, but not as good as before. It annoys and unsettles me. I need someone to show me that I'm still beautiful and doesn't love me because of my appearance.

Feel free whether you prefer this is just SFW 💕 or maybe ends up being a bit spicy 🌶

Thank you for this event and being part of this fandom. I like your works so much, thank you for sharing them with us. 🫶🏻

Beautiful Right Now

Pairing: Hunter/Fem Reader 

Word count: 3.2 K 

For my Follower event (Still open: closes February 27)

Tags/warnings: 18+ Content (minors DNI), smut, oral (f receiving), fingering, light body worship, doing it in front of a mirror, insecure reader, reader is plus sized, reader is also implied to be struggling with hormonal acne and skin changes

Summary: When you’re not the biggest fan of what you see when you look at yourself in the mirror, Hunter is there to remind you that you’re beautiful, right now and always.

Authors note: thank you so much for sending in this request. I really hope it brings you a smile or some joy. Can’t believe this is my first time writing for Hunter. He’s one of my favorites, but I also have this thing with my favourites where I convince myself that I’m not going to do them justice so I just don’t even try. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that.

“Stop doing that.”

Picking at your skin is bad. You know this. You have had it drilled into your head about a dozen different ways as soon as the habit started to arise, and yet...

You still can’t help but hope the annoyingly large spot of acne that’s blossomed just beneath your bottom lip will turn into soft, unblemished skin if you keep picking away at it long enough.

“You’re bleeding,” Hunter sighs, successfully pulling your hand away from your face.

Well...the fantasy you have of soft and unblemished skin, yet again, has been foiled. 

He reaches into his pocket, producing a sheet of small Band-Aids that he’s gotten into the habit of carrying, gingerly smoothing one over the spot on your chin. They used to be for Omega, to cover up the small cuts and scrapes that small, excitable children always seem to be in the habit of acquiring. It makes you feel a bit silly knowing that now he mainly keeps them around because of your stupid, and yet every time so irresistibly tempting, urge to pick at your skin until it’s raw. 

You watch him through the reflection of the mirror that you gaze into, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth, restraining himself from lecturing you about bacteria and infection...again

He knows it won’t work, you think, and that almost is enough to pull your lips upward into a knowing smirk, before you catch sight of yourself once more and your expression quickly falters. 

“There,” he says, satisfied as he steps away. “All better.”

You vaguely nod your head, not really paying attention. There you stand, in a dress that should be pretty, that your friends had assured you you looked pretty in, but now?

Now it only hugs too tightly to every single one of your curves. They are much more pronounced, you think, scrutinizing your stomach and hips with a critical expression, than they were two years ago.

It’s not fair, you think, and you stifle the instinctive and childish urge to throw up your hands or stomp one of your feet, because this is better, or at least, it should be. You haven’t been dealing with nearly as many breakouts as you had six months ago, and your curves, though still defined, had substantially evened out.

You still hated it though, and as your eyes sweep over your figure, the dress with its design of pretty flowers on it, the leg slip that you had initially thought was sexy, and the Band-Aid that now sticks out like a sore thumb on your chin, you really can’t help the way that your shoulders begin to curl inward, your hands subconsciously sliding up the material, feeling along the curve of your stomach, unable to pull your eyes away from your reflection, your expression one of resignation and reluctant acceptance.

“Here.” Hunter is at your side once more, moving around behind you as he wraps a shawl around your shoulders, fingertips delicate as he does the button at the front. “This harvest festival promises to be a warm one. But once the sun sets on Pabu, especially this time of year, a chill is quick to settle once night falls.”

“I wouldn’t want to miss the fireworks,” you say quietly, trying to summon your prior excitement for this event, because really this was your first harvest fest, and you were looking forward to all these new experiences that you would get to share with Hunter and the rest of his family.  Besides, Wrecker was heavily involved in planning, and his enthusiasm for creating the perfect fireworks display for the festivities was abundant.

Hunter is quiet. His eyes, when yours flick up to peer at his reflection over your shoulder, are searching, the concerned furrow between his eyebrows seeming to deepen as if raising them any further will somehow give him the answer to what he’s looking for as he continues to fix you with an intent stare.

His eyes trail over your form, and a soft, almost inaudible “mm” of understanding escapes his lips as he spies your hands, still interlaced protectively and stiffly held against your stomach. He steps forward until you can feel his warmth as he stands behind you, his back lightly pressing against your chest, fingers gentle but insistent as he lightly holds your chin.

“You know you look beautiful,” he says, his brown eyes wide with that same captivating mix of enchantment and longing you had glimpsed within them when the two of you first had gotten together all that time ago. “You know that, right?”

When all that gets from you is a noncommittal shrug, his frown deepens, and you can feel the soft exhale of his breath against your neck as he reaches around you, arms settling around your waist, his head dropping to rest against your shoulder. His hands, rough but warm, press against where yours are still interlaced in front of your stomach, and you can’t help but lean back against him, a low, contented noise rumbling within his chest in response.

“You know,” he says, his voice quiet, his breath whispering against your ear. “Ever since me and my brothers settled down on Pabu, we’ve all, uh, how should I put it, gained some extra padding?”

He glances down at himself, offering you a small, rueful grin, before you watch his face transform into something...vulnerable, almost fragile in its appearance, and for once he doesn’t attempt to hide it. He doesn’t reach up to distractedly fiddle with his hair or duck his face against the crook of your neck to disguise his true feelings. He just stands there letting you see it, unguarded and unmasked. This simple, open display of trust makes something inside you soften, turning your hands over to squeeze his.

“Sometimes, I think about how we would have been shamed in front of a whole squadron of clones by our trainers if they could see how we’ve lost our perfect soldier physique,” he says, and something about the tone of that statement causes you to frown, turning to face him as he holds you.

“What?” you ask, your eyes widening as your hands brush along his chest and his stomach, biting your lip in consternation. “But you look healthy, Hunter. You’re…you’re beautiful.”

“And don’t I know it,” he says with a boyish grin, giving you a playful tap on the nose as he dramatically flutters his eyelashes, causing you to giggle. “But this isn’t about me, mesh’la. This is about you.”

He turns you back around to look at yourself in the mirror, his hands brushing along your sides, moving downward until they settle at your hips, the touch both familiar and appreciative.

“My point is, you’re not the only one who’s changed in terms of your appearance, and you’re not the only one who has moments of doubt whenever you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. But...” He runs a hand through his hair, quiet for a moment before continuing. “I wish you could show yourself the same amount of grace that you so easily show me.”

A pang shoots through you at that, and you glance down for a moment, eyes yet again settling on the material of your dress and the way it clings to your skin, accentuating all the parts of your body that you worry shouldn’t be highlighted.

“But don’t you…” You look up, meeting his gaze, momentarily hesitating, not wanting to speak the long-festering insecurity into existence by saying it out loud. “Don’t you wish I looked more like the way I did before...”

You trail off, but the unspoken thought lingers like an unwanted and bitter taste in your mouth. Before changes in your medication‘s started messing with your hormones, before your skin had turned into what felt like a breeding ground for acne and breakouts, before your figure had begun to round and fill out, losing the much-coveted thin frame everyone seems to strive for.

“I think,” Hunter says slowly, and suddenly his hands are beneath the fabric of your dress, pushing it up until your hips and your stomach are exposed to him, caught in the reflection of the mirror. 

His hands are on you, slow, purposeful caresses. Fingernails raking up your thigh, following the path of a stretch mark you had grown particularly insecure about. But the drag of his nails against your skin feels both delicious and sinful, and you shiver, goosebumps rising along your arms as he slowly caresses over the curve of your stomach, eyes intently focused on yours through the reflection of the glass.

“I think that you’re beautiful right now,” he states, and it’s then that you grow keenly aware of how firmly he’s pressed himself against your back. “And I think it’s high time that you see yourself the way that I do.”

One of his hands slides downward, cupping you over the material of your panties. The slow drag of his palm over your clothed sex is maddening and you squirm, eagerly pressing your hips up against his hand in an effort to gain more friction. He watches you carry on like this for a moment, letting you work yourself up as much as the little he’s giving you will allow. But then, as you turn affronted, pleading eyes to look up at him, more than ready to shamelessly beg for more, he stops you, fingers catching on your chin and guiding your eyes back towards the direction of the mirror.

“Keep looking at yourself, or I stop,” he says, and fuck! That brisk, no nonsense sergeant tone shoots straight to your core, your thighs squeezing together despite his hand still cupping you in between your legs. Judging by the smirk that appears when you catch a glimpse of his face, he notices.

“Hunter,” you plead, and because he’s never one to truly deny you of anything, his smirk widens, and before you can say anything else, he’s pushing your panties to the side. You only have a second to react to the cool air hitting the sensitive flesh before his fingers, slow and practiced, are dragging through your folds, circling around your clit.

“Look at you,” he breathes, his voice little more than a low rasp against your ear as he mouths at your neck. “So pretty and wet for me.”

You whine, because one of his fingers has parted your lower lips, teasing and circling around your entrance but never truly giving you the satisfaction of pushing inside. His free arm holds your hips in place, preventing you from moving and he smirks, stroking two fingers against your clit once more, coating it in your arousal before pulling away entirely, leaving you shaky and wanting.

“Mm,” the soft, pleased groan falls from his lips at about the same time you let out a dissatisfied whimper, your petulant glare quickly turning into eyes filled with longing as you watch him taking his fingers between his lips, his own eyes closing as he savers the taste of you.

You barely have time to blink before you’re pushed back onto the bed behind you, your legs dangling off the edge as Hunter props pillows beneath your head and shoulders to keep you elevated enough to see yourself within the mirror. And boy, don’t you look like a sight.

Hair loose and scattered as it falls around you, your dress bunched up around your chest. Faded breakouts, the traces of acne scarring are scattered about your shoulders, and to top it all off, the Band-Aid sticks out like a sore thumb on your chin when you dare to glance up at your face. You quickly avert them once more, only to find that your eyes have glued onto Hunter like a magnet—captivated and unable to look away.

He quickly discards your panties and lets them land with a soft thump against the floor, dropping to his knees between your parted thighs. He stares up at you, his eyes darkened, guiding one of your ankles to drape over his broad shoulder, lips brushing a soft kiss against the curb of your knee.

“Aren’t we going to be late?” you ask breathlessly, suddenly aware of the rush of activity, the sound drifting up through your still open downstairs window. “W-We should...”

His lips on yours silences the last of your protest, the warm, familiar weight of his toned chest lightly pressing you back down against the pillows. He pulls away, lightly tracing the outline of your lips with his thumb, his eyes soft.

“Don’t worry about it, mesh’la. That’s fine with me.”

He takes his time to kiss his way back down your body, having long since memorized each and every spot that makes you tick. His hands, meanwhile, are just as preoccupied. Slipping beneath the material of your dress, lightly rolling a nipple between thumb and forefinger. He gives it the slightest pinch and you squeak, the soft sound of his chuckle rumbling against your skin as he takes his time lavishing your stomach with attention, soft kisses with the occasional scrape of teeth. 

It feels good, you decide, despite this part of your body usually only being reserved for deep-rooted insecurity and discomfort, as your head tips back and you watch yourself shiver. It feels so, so good, and when his knees hit the floor once more, you think, finally, finally he’ll give you what you’ve actually been wanting.

To your disappointment, he doesn’t. 

“Look at you,” he whispers, his bandana knocked askew, loose pieces of long, dark hair falling to frame his face as he gazes up at you, eyes alight with that hunger he gets whenever he’s settled between your legs like this. Usually, this look is accompanied by eager, rough hands holding your thighs apart, his mouth no less demanding of every drop of your pleasure when he lowers it to taste you.

Tonight though, it’s different. 

Soft, delicate kisses go up each of your thighs accompanied by the less gentle, but still equally reverent drag of his fingernails. He slowly parts your labia, blowing a gentle stream of air against your clit just to watch you jolt. His tongue drags a torturous path from your entrance all the way up to your clit before immediately retreating, repeating the motion until you think you might go mad.

You’re panting, hips lifting and squirming in an effort to have him closer. 

“Hunter,” you get out through gritted teeth and he smirks. 

“Keep watching yourself,” is all he says in response as he slowly presses a finger against your entrance, feeling the slight resistance as he pushes it inside. 

You groan, and all you can do is comply, tilting your head back and watching as a flush slowly blossoms along your skin, your eyes silently pleading back at you in your reflection as he takes his time working you open.

“Gods, you’re beautiful,” he breathes, offering one soft, seductive kiss to your aching clit, the gasp falling from your lips an automatic response. “Say it,” he says, his voice a rough command, as he slowly coaxes a second finger to join the first, lightly curling them inside you. “Say it back to me, mesh’la, and I’ll give you everything you want.”

“Hunter, I, fuck,” your words are cut off by a soft yelp as the flat of his tongue lightly strokes, just grazing over your clit. Your hips tilt, chasing the touch even as he pulls away.

After a rather undignified sound falls from your lips, your head tips back and you find yourself once more in the glass of the mirror. You see your flushed, eager, and trembling reflection with all of its prior imperfections but also every single nerve alight with desire, want, and need coalescing and casting you in a soft glow as you lie atop the pillows. 

You think, just for a second, that you could begin to understand what it is to look at you, and see yourself the way that Hunter has always seen you, regardless of how much you’ve changed. 

“I, I’m beautiful,” you say, your voice wavering and tremulous.

“That’s right, pretty girl,” Hunter croons, his voice husky and warm with approval. “So fuckin’ beautiful.”

And then he stops holding back as he eagerly buries his face between your thighs, his lips and tongue against your pussy working with the skilled familiarity of someone who knows how to get you exactly where you’ve been craving to go.

He steadily continues to thrust his fingers, working in tandem with the light swirls and caresses of his tongue, letting out a low, satisfied groan when he gently takes you between his lips and begins to suck.

“Hunter...Hunter, Hunter,” seems to be the only thing you have the ability to say, trying to summon more, but failing miserably because the curl of his fingers so easily presses against that spot inside you, his mouth warm and wet and so, so good that you can’t help but reach down to tangle your fingers in his hair, weaving them through long, dark strands to press him closer against you.

Not that he seems to mind in the slightest. In fact, looking down at his face, his eyes are closed with contentment, savoring the intimacy, even as he ruthlessly brings you to the edge of release. 

You don’t know how he does it, but somehow he just knows the exact moment before you get there, when you’re precariously teetering on a narrow precipice and all it takes is his eyes to open, holding eye contact with you and the firm, steady pressure of his tongue drawing circles against your clit for you to be sent hurtling, quick as a flash, right over the edge of the cliff.

Your hips lift off the bed and you arch into him, fingers none too gently twisting in his hair as you shudder, a high-pitched, gasped noise of pleasure falling from your lips as you come. 

Hunter watches, his own expression both dazed and pleased, his eyes heavy-lidded as he works you through your orgasm, feeling as your walls lightly flutter around his fingers, his own soft hum of approval escaping him in response to your evident pleasure.

Only once you’ve completely relaxed, your body softening against the pillows does he retreat, crawling back up the bed and leaning over you, lightly caging you in. He drops his forehead to gently press against yours, feeling the rise and fall of your chest, the intermingled breathing that brushes against his parted lips. He tucks a strand of hair away from your face, and in his mind, shaking and flushed with exhilaration as you are right now, you’ve never looked more tempting.

“I, I think we’re going to be more than a little bit late,” you say, your voice a breathless laugh.

You don’t make a move to get up, and Hunter grins, his eyes darkened as they hold onto yours.

“Like I said,  mesh’la,” he breathes, and you can feel the clothed outline of him, his hard cock pressing against you as he gives his hips a slow, suggestive roll.

He lowers his head, pressing his lips against yours and you gasp, shuddering with newfound excitement and desire when you catch the taste of your own arousal still present and lingering on his parted lips. He grinds against you once more, slow and wanting and letting you feel his desire, his need for you as he whispers, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear.

“That’s completely fine with me.”

•Thank you to @freesia-writes and @snotbuggle for these absolutely delicious dividers 🤤

•If you enjoyed this work, kindly consider dropping a reblog and/or comment. They are all very appreciated

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

My Jason Todd Rec List and Character Manifesto! (Version 3.0! Edited and updated first on 28/01/2024 and then again on 23/09/2024)

This is a fuckin mess my ghouls, but I got categories and I got opinions and who can stop me from typing em out? Certainly not @lazaruspiss who is the reason this thing got made!

The format is gonna be:

title and page numbers (No #s if I'm recommending the whole title IMPORTANT UPDATE: Each title will be a direct link to a free digital copy! Make sure you have a good adblocker and enjoy!) picture Summary and general notes My estimate of how unhinged he is in this portrayal What his morals are like; note this isn't about whether he's a protagonist or antagonist

Since cream rises to the top, let us start with:

The Creme de la Creme

The best of the best. The most fun, the most compelling, the most interesting looks into his character.

Seeing Red aka Green Arrow (2001) #69 - #72

This one really does have it all. Jason runs rings around both Batman and Green Arrow at the same time, all the while going after a goal neither of them ever truly figures out in large part because this story wasn't afraid to let Bruce be either wrong or lying about Jason's motives. It also wonderfully leverages the ways in which the Bats and the Arrows are really good foils for each other. I think I'm going to be turning over the ways these interactions went down for a long ass time. I've been really wanting to go page by page for a comparison between the way Jason treats Mia in this and the way Jason treats Tim in the Titans Tower showdown. Bottom line for this one: It's just so good!

Jason's sanity level: Six out of Ten hinges affixed. He's got a solid grip on things, is reasonably level headed, only problem is he might have completely forgotten how to interact with other human beings outside of combat. Love him for that.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Sympathetic Villain. Decidedly willing to mow down some "brain donors", and his goals are pretty morally grey, but he clearly still has a strong code of ethics.

Task Force Z

This whole comic one big love letter to Jason Todd. The author, Matthew Rosenberg, very deliberately takes time to showcase all the strengths and flaws of his character that make him so beloved. He's competent, he's mistrustful, he's determined, he's heroic and yet poses as the villain, he's human yet badass, and he holds his ground against the rest of the Bats while still clearly loving them. If I was ranking these comics purely by plot and pacing this would not be in creme de la creme territory, but it's a fantastic synopsis of what Jason is all about and if I could only give someone a single series in order to let them understand who Jason is (and I couldn't give them Under the Red Hood), I'd give them this.

Jason's sanity level: Eight out of Ten hinges affixed. He's pretty level headed, but at the same time he very clearly is way too casual about violence to be full hinges affixed - the PTSD is very apparent in him.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Antihero. His motives are understandable and firmly rooted in doing the right thing, but at the same time he is very willing to be ruthless and to kill when he feels it's the right decision. Balanced!

Pay as You Go aka Outsiders #44 - #46

Jason's role in this story is fairly small, but it's a wonderful bit of characterization for him. The way he approaches Nightwing to offer his help and the way Nightwing accepts that offer are fascinating and very deserving of your time!

Also there's gay sex and a prison breakout, like, what more could you want? Actually I suppose you could also want (what I'm pretty sure is) Roy's first time meeting Jason as the Red Hood and some really cute scenes of him and Lian, and guess what this story has got that too!

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Antihero. He's deliberately choosing to play the villain, but he's very willing to work with the Heroes and is going out of his way to exonerate an innocent man.

Batman (1940) #408 - #411 Jason's debut featuring Ma Gunn's School and his first ever outing as Robin fighting Two-Face

Just LOOK at this PRECIOUS BOY! I wanna pinch him on his cheeks and give him a handful of these bad boys

Jason has a ton of personality to him right out the gate. The first story has Ma Gunn as the villain and she's a lot of fun. The second story in here with Two-Face is also enlightening with regards to Jason's early personality, even if it's not quite as fun.

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Hero.

Under the Red Hood would be next if it wasn't already filed under ->

Foundational Texts

This is the shit that defines Jason as a character. Much is mutable in any given comic, but somehow, someway, all depictions of Jason are impacted and informed by these three stories. Enough has been said about all of them that I'm gonna keep it brief.

Red Hood: The Lost Days

(You may have heard a lot about Talia's role in this one: I would encourage you to read my analysis of her in this story and do your best to see her perspective in all this, she's a heck of a lot less villainous than people keep saying she is)

Jason's sanity level: Eight out of Ten hinges affixed.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Antihero. He kills some incredibly nasty people, while also doing some genuinely heroic shit. The only places where his morals deteriorate are in the presence of Batman and the Joker.

Under the Red Hood

Jason's sanity level: Four out of Ten hinges affixed. Remember how his morals deteriorated in the face of Batman and the Joker? Yeah, that's mostly because he's way, way too personally invested to think straight about them. He's strategic as fuck, but this is not a stable man's strategy for dealing with his issues.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Sympathetic Villain. He is a revenant, a vengeful juggernaut, and breaks an awful lot of eggs making this brilliant disaster of an omelette.

Batman (1940) #426 - #429 A Death in the Family

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Hero.

Joker becoming an ambassador to Iran plotlines count: One too many.

Solid Storylines

These ain't the vaulted heights, but not everything has to be the Sistine Chapel. They're solid, and if you're wanting more Jason I do certainly recommend them.

Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer and Countdown to Infinite Crisis (special note here: Countdown to Infinite Crisis must be read backwards, meaning you start with Issue #51 and then read down to Issue #1 and Countdown Presents isn't in chronological order and just... oh boy this storyline is a mess, but much of it is also quite good)

Jason is in what I like to call his Purposeless Depression Era during this. It's after his plans in Under the Red Hood fail and he's really just got no place to go, no place to be. He's keenly aware that on a cosmic level, he truly does not belong in this world anymore. He's supposed to be dead. There's something I find quite neat about this team up, with Donna Troy and Kyle Raynor and Bob, it's out of the ordinary for Jason, it's not bat related, and the ways he fits and doesn't fit with the other characters are just neat.

I especially recommend Gotham by Gaslight. The plot will be a lil hard to follow if you haven't read the others, but by the end of it Jason hopes to return to Steampunk Gotham instead of his own Gotham where he doesn't think he belongs, and the moments of him hoping to literally leave his universe behind are both sweet and sorrowful.

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed. He's just sad and lonely.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Hero. Even if only Donna is willing to tentatively try to see him that way.

Robin (1993) #177 and two pages of #182 and the front half of #183

Despite how much Jason is known for it, I think this is the only time we see him trying to run organized crime outside of Under the Red Hood (and uh debatably Battle for the Cowl). Short lil string of appearances, but critical for understanding how he's seen by Tim during this era if you care about that. Also I think this combined with Outsiders #44 - #46 (further down this list) it really cemented my understanding of Jason being strangely honest and forthright.

I think a major way other Bats fail to comprehend him is that they expect him to manipulate through lying, which just isn't his style. He doesn't lie about his motives; he doesn't obfuscate his tactics; he doesn't hide how he's feeling. Hell, he doesn't even try to lie his way out of prison! I could not tell you why this series of interactions gave me this impression but it is why I have such faith that when Jason says something, he probably just means it, even when characters like Dick or Tim assume otherwise.

Pity this was the lead up to Battle for the Cowl.

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed. He's even attempting to pick himself up out of his Purposeless Depression Era slump at the start.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Antihero.

Nightwing (1996) #118 - #122 aka Brothers in Blood aka the One Where Jason Gets Tentacles

COWARDS and KNAVES will tell you "the tentacles are so icky and everyone is so OOC" or whatever but again they are KNAVES and COWARDS because bitch this shit is GREAT

Jason: Wow! My bestest big brother killed someone who deserved it, so now I (the person he's rejecting only because I kill people who deserved it) have a real chance at being his family again!! :D Hooray! :) Dickie-Bird why don't you look happy to see me? :) Dickie-Bird I went out of my way to get us matching outfits and stalked your work and killed people in your name so it's nice and easy to make room for me in your life! :) :) :)

Dick:

Jason's sanity level: Two out of Ten hinges affixed. My mans is off his rocker and I adore him like this. Frankly, the entire storyline is unhinged, and it only feels appropriate that Jason is similarly bonkers in yonkers.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Villain. You can sympathize with him, and he is still trying to carry out justice, but I have to call it for straight villain when he's threatening to bomb a building full of innocent people.

Batman and Robin (2009) #23 - #25

I don't have much to say about this one. It's good. The above page is pretty much the highlight.

Wait actually I do have something to say and it is that I would like to lick Jason's abs, pls & thx, because the other highlight is that Winick clearly believes in redeeming Jason's value as a villain through sex appeal and it is working lmao

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed. Certifiably sane, he's passed all his psych exams!

Jason's moral compass bearing: Villain. He threatens to bomb a train station full of innocent people. While he does do that in service of freeing himself and Scarlet, thus making it not completely self centered, I still gotta put him firmly in Villain.

Nightwing (2016) 2021 Annual

In high contrast to the previous two in which Jason acts as a villain to Dick, this one has them working together and the tentative peace and cautious trust they've got going is interesting to me. Very reminiscent of his appearance in Outsiders!

Jason's sanity level: Nine out of Ten hinges affixed. He's quite chill, but there's just this little edge to him that says his relationship to violence is a little too casual a little too deep to really be fully hinged.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Edgy Hero.

Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing

With Jason's return to being an antagonist after a long stint in the Hero bin comes his return to being really fucking dangerous and whip smart! My boy quotes serious philosophy that gives him a real point to make against non lethal vigilantes and cops! I also think the part where he lets himself be arrested just... it says so much and all of it is wonderfully interesting and feels fitting for his character. He's kept deeply human, and just all of this portrayal gels together really well.

Originally I had this up in Creme De La Creme because really, even though Jason isn't the star of the show, and even with Gotham War having, er, Minorly Derailed Jason's role in things, and one or two inevitable scenes where ya just have to accept that he's not as trigger happy as he should be because DC is married to the Joker - even though all of that is true, this is still a phenomenal rendition of Jason. However, with all of those annoyances and with Task Force Z being written by the same author, I decided to put it down here and leave TFZ in it's place. Basically it's got an arguably better story-line than TFZ, but contains less Jason.

Also I like that he's friends with my favorite, Stephanie Brown :3 and he and Rose's chemistry is nice. On top of all that? It's a fun comic. Like, I generally hate the Joker, but I found myself enjoying watching the Joker do his Joker things in this one.

Jason's sanity level: Nine out of Ten hinges affixed. Level headed, calm, careful, really the only reason this isn't a 10/10 is cause he's obsessively focused, which like, honestly is pretty reasonable I think.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Clearly Justified Antihero. I almost put down Hero on this one, but ultimately he is just far enough over the line with how he treats the less threatening of the rogues like Killer Moth.

Your Mileage May Vary

These stories I can't recommend without major caveats or warnings, but I still think are worth mentioning.

Gotham War (It's such a mangled mess that I'm just gonna link a reading guide. The same website that all the others are on will get you to all the titles this guide lists)

So, the main problem here is that Gotham War spans five different titles and had three different authors whose renditions of Jason do not feel cohesive or even coherent. The funny thing is though, each rendition has real merits, and while it doesn't go far enough in condemning Bruce's horrifying treatment of Jason for many people's tastes, I have to point out that it's one of the only comics to condemn an instance of Bruce mistreating Jason at all. The fact that the other Robins come to his defense is a HUGE thing! The bar may be in Hell, but it did clear the bar!

Due to how disjointed it is, I'm going to very loosely separate Jason out into two versions of himself. Think of these not as hard lines, but more a spectrum he slides across depending on what author has him that issue.

Jason Primus combines the ideas in Jason's Under the Red Hood speech about controlling crime rather than trying to stomp it out with his more Heroic modern interpretation. He's a chill, funny, smart guy whose protectiveness over the mooks is really charming.

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed. Jason's moral compass bearing: Hero.

Jason Secundus is much more violent, not used to working with other people, and paranoid and antsy in a way that causes him to take it out on people who really don't deserve it. This is a compelling take on him, though I like him closer to Jason Primus. His trauma has clearly shaped him a lot, both for better and for worse.

Jason's sanity level: Seven out of Ten hinges affixed. Jason's moral compass bering: Anti-Hero, most of this focuses on him antagonizing two former Joker goons which kinda doesn't work well cause they're mostly scarecrow goons actually and also at one point he hurts them in a way that borderline just seems like stress relief. It's nothing worse than what we see Batman himself doing countless times, but it's still jarring because we've been made to strongly sympathize with the goon in question.

Batman: Three Jokers <- I read it while typing this up (the first version of this lol), so I got a lotta thoughts

Guh, this one is just fucking sad

So, I don't mind a story being blunt with its message as long as the message actually holds up. Unfortunately, this three parter's attempt at the cycle of violence lesson is... bad. Real bad.

Jason in it is neat! This is a good Jason portrayal somehow despite literally everything about the way this comic frames him! The narrative expects us to believe he is a danger to society on the cusp of becoming another Joker, because he *checks notes* shot the Joker dead, shot at a Joker loyal guy, and roughly interrogated an injured child abuser. At no point does he show signs of wanting to hurt innocent people. At no point does he show signs of doing any hurting without premeditation or a need to defend himself. I'm baffled by this.

My kingdom for a fucking CRUMB of nuance, I swear, smh...

I hear a lot of people hate his one sided romance towards Barbara. This is understandable as it squanders the opportunity to have a female character not be stuck as the narrative sponge for man emotions. I like it from the perspective of a Jason fan, and give condolences for the Barbara fans. It's not healthy, and good fucking job on the janitor sweeping away his letter to her so poor Babs doesn't have to deal with that shit, but I do like Jason's desperation to be loved by someone, anyone, who might show him compassion.

Jason's sanity level: Six out of Ten hinges affixed. He's sad, he's lonely, he needs some PTSD specific therapy, he's a bit creepy about his crush on Barbara, but quite frankly he has it together a lot more than the narrative would like us to believe. The way the other characters treat him like he's some kind of monster just waiting to snap and start maiming people indiscriminately makes me really uncomfortable.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Antihero. Quite frankly I'm tempted to say Hero out of spite.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #1 - #43

There are three transcendental character moments in this run that I think make it worth reading even if not all of it's your cup of tea. On the other hand though there are some big issues that could very easily be deal breakers. Oh and anything after #43 is a wasteland and #43 is included purely for the implication that being transgender made a woman immortal.

The narrative structure is really heavily dependent on rule of emotional impact/cool/allegorical usefulness. Many events will not make any fucking sense based on petty things like basic logic or the laws of physics, but they do work just fine in the area of what makes the story more fun or the emotional beats hit harder. Stronger than average suspension of disbelief is necessary for the reward of getting a lot of stuff that's, like, just really fuckin cool.

The romantic side plot with Artemis is... odd. Either the author, Scott Lobdell, intended to write Jason as a desperate loser trying to date his uninterested lesbian friend who he co-parents with, or he accidentally wrote a romance so awkward and comp-het that I cannot wrap my head around reading it as reciprocated. This works for me because I have a lot of fun reading Jason as a desperate loser who's not even actually in love with her, he just is desperate to cling to the closest thing he's ever gotten to a nuclear family and in denial about being either aro/ace or gay.

Now, lets explore a lil bit of the whole Jason is a loser angle, cause it's not the whole story, there are many points in which Jason gets to be a badass motherfucker, but he is much, much less of the hypercompetant, highly determined, murderous threat he used to be. Almost none of the newer renditions of Jason are. This Jason in particular though is very soft and cuddly, and fits the archetype of man trying to be the edgy bad boy but who secretly just wants a hug and a warm glass of milk.

If I were to describe my personal Jason in a few sentences I would say that he is someone who loves himself viciously. He feels he has been wronged and is willing to burn down the world to rectify that. He will hold your ass at gunpoint and demand the hugs and warm glasses of milk that he fucking well deserves!

This Jason is about as far away from that as you can possibly get. I still like him though, and I do not count him as being a different character, because when you start with emotional logic that goes like this:

It wasn't my fault + I deserve better = I get to burn the world down in order to get better

It becomes extremely difficult to ever stop burning the world without also deciding "It was my fault" or "I don't deserve better". Jason is meant to have changed a lot, and this is a plausible evolution of the Jason I prefer.

Finally, the handling of Bizarro, a mentally disabled character, is a sensitive enough topic that your mileage will vary, even if I can't think of a bad thing to say about it. Jason and Artemis are really pretty good about treating him with respect, giving him help where he needs it and autonomy where he's capable of taking it. They raise him, but don't control him, and he is literally like three days old when they find him so this isn't infantilization. It takes the framing of Lenny from of Mice and Men and Flowers for Algernon and rejects them in a way that I am satisfied with. You'll just have to read it for yourself to see if you're satisfied as well.

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed. I kinda wish he was more unhinged.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Hero. He even saves a puppy and gives them pats.

Knight Terrors: Robin

Have you ever been in the mood for a syrupy sweet hurt/comfort fanfiction in which Jason and Tim were magically forced to talk about how much they like each other in order to overcome their own insecurities? Do you wish that existed as a lavishly illustrated two issue comic?

If you answered yes to those two questions then congratulations! It does exist; this is it; go have fun!

If you think that sounds like ham fisted garbage turning what should be several long arcs of serious reconciliation and deeply meaningful character moments into two issue fan service schlock then condolences! I wish you all the best in denial, as all comic fans sail that river sooner or later and I shall join you upon it someday.

What category do I fall into? Well I think this is definitely ham fisted, but I won't kick a boar out of bed as long as they ain't a bore, and this little ditty is certainly entertaining.

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed.

Jason't moral compass bearing: Hero.

Batman and Robin Eternal

This is a decent portrayal of Jason in his modern, much friendlier, and much more bat family integrated rendition. He has some fun moments in it, and I like his staby bracers.

I don't like this comic. It commits the most dire of writing sins: Being boring. I think about Jason every second of every minute of every day; if your comic that majorly features a good portrayal of him cannot hold my attention, then something has gone very wrong. Hopefully one of you will like it more than I do.

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Hero.

Suicide Squad: Get Joker! (Content warning for suicide, skip to the hot take if this'll get to ya - also spoiler warning cuz I can't discuss this properly without discussing the ending)

A three issue miniseries in which Jason is inducted into the Suicide Squad on a mission to kill the Joker. He's highly competent as a team leader, grounded, intelligent, and uses measured violence in a way that is satisfyingly tactical. The squad they threw together honestly has some pretty neat chemistry as a whole, and the characters were appropriately messy and quite likable.

This isn't higher on the list because it thinks it earned it's ambiguous ending, and frankly, it's wrong about that. Ambiguous endings live and die by the question they make the audience sit with - It has to be worth losing out on the emotional payoff of a solid ending.

The question of "If you left Jason in a room with the Joker and a gun with one bullet, would he shoot the Joker or himself?" is a really shitty question. Like, did the authors not realize that just on a logistical level, Jason could leave the room and find a second bullet after shooting the Joker? Like, seriously, even if we accept the premise that Joker's speech got to Jason, there are no reasons for him not to choose the "both" option. The only way I can imagine this working is if the Joker is actually the fucking Purple Man from Jessica Jones using mind control.

So we exchanged the validation of literally all our protagonists' struggles/sacrifices paying off for... the vague implication that Jason unforgivably betrayed his teammates, himself, and the entire world because he was so eager to die that he couldn't wait ten fucking minutes. If I loved the Joker I might feel differently about it, but as is, I felt insulted.

This would have been Solid Storylines or maybe even Creme de la Creme if not for that implication. It's not boring though! The rest of it up to the end is honestly pretty damn good, if a bit convoluted, and much of the ending's sour taste can be assuaged by getting out a sheet of paper and doodling Jason opening Joker's head with a handgun and then going out for icecream with the team.

Jason's sanity level: Ten out of Ten hinges affixed. He's a sad, sad lad tho.

Jason's Moral Compass Bearing: Anti-Hero, forced to be much more violent than he wants to be.

A Hot Take

I bet you thought the tentacles were the hot take! HAH! MuahahaahhHAHAHAH - Prepare now, puny mortals, to witness me defend Pill Helmet Jason AND his fashion choices!

No, I am not talking about Winick's redo late in the game, we've already been over that one. I mean I will defend Grant Morrison's flop era, three foot head gear wearin, goofy ass, unwashed ass, "how to build ur brand" reading maniac

It's time to talk about Batman and Robin (2009) #1 - #6

The interpretation of one scene makes or breaks this Jason:

If you believe he is being insincere and manipulating her into putting all her emotional eggs in the basket of his crusade, ignoring her wellbeing in favor of his 'brand', then this is probably the worst mischaracterization of Jason ever written.

If you believe he is being sincere, genuinely comforting her in the only way that he's got to deal with his own trauma, giving her real affection and not pushing her to take either option with the mask because he trusts her to make that decision for herself, then this gets Jason very right.

No matter what Morrison might have intended, I choose to believe it's the latter. This is terrible advice to give a trauma victim, but it makes perfect sense for Jason to believe that about his own trauma, and thus to pass that maladaptive view along.

He doesn't try to assure her that the mask can come off safely or that he'll get her a doctor because he really can't promise her either of those things. It would be cruel to her to pretend that he's got a solution. Jason can't undo the damage that was done to her any more than he can force a dead Bruce to kill the Joker.

Instead he offers her purpose, and reassurance that she's gonna look badass if she never does take it off, and protects her when she's in trouble.

You can claim this is just him acting out his chosen Hero role, but like, WHY would he have chosen to method act that role 24/7 if he wasn't trying to BE a Hero who protects people like Scarlet? There's nothing in it for Jason to fake this.

I also think if he was being written out of character as a manipulator we would have seen him use a romantic or sexual angle which he absolutely doesn't do.

Dickie, you are such a funny Batman, they never shoulda brought Bruce back tbh.

Instead, he seems to be taking a more parental role, in a near perfect reflection of how Bruce took him in when he was a kid. Just he's doing it his way, meaning that whenever Scarlet goes further with the violence than Jason seems to want to, he backs her up instead of chastising her.

Speaking of violence and morals, Let the Punishment Fit the Crime is a coherent moral position to take, even if you (understandably) disagree with it, or disagree with what punishments fit which crimes. It's basically the same moral position as every other version of Jason there's ever been! Like, is he even killing more people than he used to in stories like Under the Red Hood? No, I don't think he is. In fact, I would argue that Morrison's Jason is significantly less violent than Winnick's overall!

The branding thing is weird, lil annoying too after a while, but ultimately it still makes sense. And brings me around to my promised defense of his fashion choices.

First of all the symbolic importance of the fact that he wears white cannot be overstated in my mind. Will I elaborate? No, this post is way too long already lmao! Second off, it's supposed to be silly. I believe the silliness was a conscious, calculated choice, and the right one to make.

Jason doesn't believe that fear works, he's not trying for pure intimidation, and he knows that he's going to have to appeal to people in his bid to be seen as a Hero. Making himself seem big but non-threatening, a bright patch in the night, makes real sense.

Take a look at this view of Jason from Scarlet's POV when he comes to rescue her from the cops after she kills her dad:

He's got a smoking gun in his hand and he just shot two cops dead, yet we're hard fuckin pressed to find him intimidating aren't we?? Cornball dialogue, and the silliest fuckin hat in the universe, because he's not meant to be from this era, he's emulating the Golden and Silver age comics and all their goofiness. He's trying to be the older, happier, sillier batman that used to exist (at least in his head), while doing what he believes is right and necessary.

The costume makes sense dammit!

Also it just doesn't look bad, I can't provide an argument for this, it's just true!!

Also also every one of these fuckers should be wearing a helmet too, this is basic brain safety, if you're gonna go around antagonizing fuckers with guns you need to make your head at least nominally bulletproof, it's that simple!!!

Also also also the fact that he had red hair in this is oft maligned, but it gives Jason an in universe avenue to express a grievance with a super important part of the way Bruce treats him in his post-crisis time as Robin - Bruce was using him as an emotional replacement for Dick.

Morrison may not have liked Jason, but he demanded that every single iota of Batman lore be treated as important canon and that means that he also treats all of Jason's history as important canon too.

Now... do I recommend you read this? (This section was rewritten on January 28th, 2024)

Yes, with significant caveats. There's a reason I chunked this in with YMMV.

First is the Batman typical ableism of just really fucked depictions of mental illness. I normally wouldn't warn for this because everyone knows most of the rogues and will be aware of what they bring to the table, but Professor Pyg is obscure enough I wouldn't expect people to know, and the way he's written just... hurts. Like there's just something about him that is painful to read as someone that's got several schizophrenic friends who are near and dear to my heart. I would hesitate to recommend it to any of them the same way I'd hesitate to recommend Silence of the Lambs to most other trans people.

Secondly this comic is Extremely Gay (a definite positive!) however it is Extremely Gay in a way that kinda requires some onboarding and analysis to properly parse and that is actually why this post was edited:

The first time I read this comic, my impression was that it was vitriolically homophobic. Considering that at the time I had heard many things about Grant Morrison, and none of them good, I went with my gut. I put here that while I would defend Jason's characterization, I couldn't in good faith recommend something so bigoted, detailed what felt bigoted, and went on with my day.

Then a while later I saw a post that I suspect was talking about this one saying something along the lines of "How the hell could you call Grant Morrison, who gave us so many of our most iconic gay characters, homophobic? The racism and such I can understand but homophobic? No."

To which my initial response was a resounding: Wha??? Like, genuinely how was I supposed to read this and not get homophobia out of it?? But I went and looked Morrison up and yeah sure enough the guy's queer so I dug deeper and mulled it over until I figured out what the fuck I was missing. So, this section is a correction and an apology about that earlier homophobia claim. Sorry about that.

The styling of this queerness are highly akin to that of the John Waters movie Pink Flamingos which I'll let Matt Baume explain better than I ever could. This guy right here is pretty much the perfect example, Hell, he's even literally named The Flamingo.

Essentially it's queerness is all aggressive, unapologetic, and designed to be provocatively shocking, which can be jarring if you're not ready to flow with it. Also he likely had to arrange a lot of things to get around censorship, same as Judd Winick did. For instance the fact that Dick spoke the same circus lingo as the troupe of Very Queer Freakshow Workers who destroy the police precinct was meant to imply that Dick is Very Queer too. Pretty sure he would've said that in a far less convoluted way if he could've.

So, with the bulk of my initial reservations about this comic disproven... I have no choice but to straight up recommend it to anyone who thinks they can jive with this vibe of storytelling!

Jason's sanity level: One out of Ten hinges affixed. Obsessive, not taking care of himself, possessed of some really maladaptive trauma coping frameworks, completely unhinged. My condolences to his mental health, but I do love to see it.

Jason's moral compass bearing: Antihero. It's weird because this is undeniably a much darker comic, and Jason certainly feels darker, but in terms of what he actually does, and what the other characters do, his violence is honestly very tame.

So, cards on the table, here is the core of who Jason is to me:

He's got clear moral motives and a drive to help as well as harm, though violence and harm are the main ways in which he tries to improve the world.

When confronted he does not back down; he does not let himself be overshadowed or silenced. He is confident in his decisions and every bit of push back is already accounted for in his head.

Everything he does is premeditated. He is not impulsive. His plans may sometimes be unhinged but they are methodically planned.

He is painfully sincere, the way fire is painfully hot.

He desperately desires love and connection, but it will take many years of constant rejection and fighting before he is willing to accept any kind of compromise to his ethics for the sake of civility.

Under all the hurt and combativeness, he's a pretty goofy guy! He's got a sense of fun and likes to be flamboyant and silly when he can!

He's a villain, a hero, a protagonist, an antagonist, and everything between the extremes. He exists as a powerful counter-thesis to Batman, and as such DC can't ever fully answer the question of what to do with him. He exists in this waffling limbo state as his morals are debated, stretched, refuted, turned on their head. I think that makes him a wonderfully fascinating character to love.

I hope you enjoyed this and, like, go have fun reading comics!

[bcacstuff]

One of the US reviews for TCND:

These days, Sam Heughan is a fan-favorite presence on the small screen, but he wouldn't have garnered mainstream awareness if it hadn't been for his breakout role in the hit television adaptation of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander book series. Over the last decade, Heughan's performance as a swoony Scottish hero and self-professed wife guy on the Starz series has propelled him to certified heartthrob status — but with Outlander finally set to conclude with its eighth and final season at a date yet to be determined, it's no wonder Heughan has been taking other projects, perhaps in an effort to step out from the long shadow that Jamie Fraser still casts.

On paper, The Couple Next Door, Starz's six-part psychological thriller based on the Dutch series Nieuwe Buren, has a lot going for it, as messy relationship dynamics play out against the idyllic backdrop of suburbia — and at first, the show gives every indication that it's ramping up to an erotic, twisted climax. But despite best attempts from Heughan, along with his main co-stars Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark), Jessica de Gouw (Arrow), and Alfred Enoch (How To Get Away With Murder), the series frustratingly pivots away from its most intriguing elements in favor of weaker B-plots, ultimately resulting in a hectic finale that relies too heavily on outdated, regressive tropes to drive its biggest conflicts.

What Is 'The Couple Next Door' About?

Primary school teacher Evie Greenwood (Tomlinson) and her partner, journalist Pete Thomas (Enoch), are looking for a fresh start in more ways than one. Moving to a small suburb in Leeds feels like the right next move for the young couple, especially once they run into their next-door neighbors, PC Danny Whitwell (Heughan) and his wife, yoga instructor Becka (de Gouw), while attempting to lug their belongings into the new house. Evie is drawn to the beautiful young couple from the start for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being her attraction to Danny. However, as someone who grew up in a very conservative, religious household, Evie's eyes are soon opened to her neighbors' more non-traditional lifestyle.

As the four spend more and more time together, Becka and Danny disclose the fact that they're non-monogamous, even if they make a point of always "playing" together with other couples. As Evie starts to entertain the idea of experimentation, Pete's reservations about opening up their relationship lead to rising tensions. Yet their drama isn't the only one that plays out within this seemingly sleepy community. As a somewhat lowly traffic cop with little authority and mounting bills to pay, Danny begins to accept late-night jobs that don't exactly fall on the legal side of things — right around the time that Pete starts digging into local corruption for his latest exposé. As for Becka, she's built a successful social media presence, but she's also attracted a creepy real-life stalker in the process, one who isn't willing to go away without throwing a wrench into her picture-perfect existence.

Over the first half of its eight episodes (all of which were provided for review), The Couple Next Door has a lot of promise, especially when it focuses on the evolving and tangled relationships between its main foursome. Yet the series is also majorly underserved by its pacing, as it spends a significant amount of time devoted to building up that tension and then ultimately fails at offering a more nuanced depiction of attraction and obsession given the sheer number of other characters and storylines that have to be juggled. The problem is that none of these secondary threads are even remotely as interesting as the main one; every scene spared for Becka's stalker, or Danny's off-the-books job, or any side character for that matter, feels like a missed opportunity to return to the emotional rollercoaster playing out between the two leading couples. Cutting at least one of these B-plots may also have resulted in a better lead-up to the finale, which climaxes in a way that feels extreme, even for these four.

Some characters are afforded better treatment — in many instances, de Gouw's Becka feels like one of the only mature adults in the room — but others seem to regress in increasingly drastic ways purely for the sake of drama. Unfortunately, The Couple Next Door joins recent films like Nightbitch and Babygirl in giving one of its female characters a backstory steeped in extreme, cult-like religion that feels perplexing at best and reductive at worst in justifying sexual exploration. Evie's ignorance about polyamory could've been filtered through a simpler, more straightforward premise of a woman embracing her innermost desires, and the blurred lines that result when she finds herself falling for the one person she shouldn't. But Tomlinson's character is done the biggest disservice over the course of the season; as Evie's fixation on Danny intensifies, she becomes even more of a caricature, with her later scenes devolving into stereotypical '80s erotic thriller territory — and not in a way that can be considered complimentary. The show's men don't fare any better; while he does have excellent chemistry with both Tomlinson and de Gouw in the scenes that call for it, Heughan is given very little to do other than handsomely brood. Meanwhile, Enoch, in welcome contrast, initially gets to play a more level-headed and less alpha presence, but, like Evie, Pete's characterization annoyingly falls prey to jealousy and rage.

In many ways, this show would have been better off solely revolving around these objectively attractive people and the palpable tension that stems from them debating whether they should all sleep together — and to a point, The Couple Next Door delivers on that front. But the season quickly becomes derailed by way of less intriguing subplots, disappointing character regression, and poor pacing that struggles to build to a satisfying finale. It'd be one thing if there was a promise for more at the end of it all, but with the show having already been renewed for a Season 2 featuring a completely new cast, there's no opportunity for this version of The Couple Next Door to continue. Given how it all wraps up, though, maybe that's for the best.

The Couple Next Door premieres January 17 on Starz.

[jbaileyfansite]

Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer's Interview with The Hollywood Reporter (2023)

“Johnny B! Johnny B!” Matt Bomer exclaims as he logs in to Zoom to join his Fellow Travelers co-star, Jonathan Bailey, to do press for their critically acclaimed Showtime limited series.

“Hey, Matty Mo,” Bailey replies. 

The actors spent about six months filming the eight-episode series — so, of course, they’ve established a playful bond. On this particular day, they’ve even given each other nicknames.  

“I don’t think I’ve ever called Matt ‘Matty Mo’ in my life,” a smiling Bailey says.

“I love Matty Mo,” Bomer replies. “Listen, I love Matty Mo. I appreciate it.”

Bomer and Bailey built a brotherhood and onscreen chemistry for the historical romantic drama about two male political staffers who fall in love at the height of the Lavender Scare, a time when homosexuals were banned from holding positions in the federal government. The series — based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same name — follows their intense affair into the ’80s, also visiting Vietnam War protests and the AIDS crisis.

Zoom, it turns out, is where the actors first met, reading lines together to see if there was magic. And there was.

Since debuting in late October, Fellow Travelers has had an overwhelming response from viewers — some connecting directly with Bomer’s Hawkins Fuller, a veteran and State Department official who carefully hides his homosexuality, or with Bailey’s Tim Laughlin, an eager and naive congressional staffer who falls hard for Hawk. Others have identified with some of the supporting cast, including Allison Williams in the role of Hawk’s wife, Lucy Smith, and breakout stars Jelani Alladin as reporter Marcus Hooks and Noah J. Ricketts as drag performer Frankie Hines, whose gay Black love story is one of the show’s many highlights. 

“It’s so nice to be able to have discourse with people who are responding to the show. That’s been really refreshing and enlightening,” says Bomer, who is also an executive producer on the series.

Bailey, best known for Bridgerton and his theater work, says he was drawn to the show because “it felt new and it hadn’t been done in this way — in an elevated, eight-hour, rich aesthetic with gay actors.

“The queer experience is so different for so many people,” he adds, “but the one thing that unites the queer experience is these moments in history.”

In an interview with THR, Bomer and Bailey talk about prepping for their roles and being gay while playing gay, while also breaking down those milk and toe-sucking scenes.

What has it been like to have people connect emotionally to the series?

MATT BOMER: I won’t name names or anything, but I’ve known people over the years who’ve made similar choices that Hawk made in order to survive. Not governmentally — I mean in a society that certainly didn’t want to see them succeed. But for me, the most refreshing thing has been the young people who are really engaged in the show and knew nothing about the Lavender Scare, and are speaking to the show and the characters, but also, aspects of our history that they were unaware of that the show has — I don’t want to say taught them about, because it’s not a teaching tool — but they’ve learned about through the show.

JONATHAN BAILEY: When people respond in that way and you hear their personal stories, it’s amazing that people feel that they want to share that. It’s the most grounding thing to tell a story and investigate a time or a period or a movement, that hopefully leaves an imprint on people, and/or catalyzes them to tell people and talk about their own stuff. That’s the dream, really.

Jonathan, it’s so heartbreaking to watch Tim hurting in various scenes. What were you pulling from to give such a strong emotional performance? 

BAILEY: Thirty-five years on this earth. (Laughs.) Drawing it from the ground. Naturally, it’s totally parts of me and parts of people that I know, experiences that you think of. Tim’s character arc is so huge, and [I wanted] to capture his youth in those early moments and then expand into what breaks such a pure, optimistic, passionate soul and all the different ways in which that could show itself. There were moments on set that you couldn’t help but be incredibly moved by. 

We found ourselves filming by coincidence on World Aids Day. It is really not hard to feel the importance, but also just the grief is palpable in the stories. And there is a lineage — you inherit this in your community. It just felt like an opportunity to learn as much as I possibly could, generally, about the queer experience. We are surrounded by amazing gay men, as well. And then, of course, I’ve lived my life trying to understand the gay experience, so it wasn’t a shallow pool to [pull from].There’s a well there.

Matt, your character is so cutthroat, but obviously there’s sympathy for him, as well. What was it like playing Hawk?

BOMER: Hawk does what he has to do to survive. He has his empathy and his allegiances, but anything that calls his survival into question, there are immediate and severe boundaries. But then enters Tim, who is so guileless and so full of love and all the things that Hawk wishes he could be at his core, or maybe once was before certain aspects of his life changed that or his point of view about that. You’re always looking for a shadow in your character, and it was so refreshing — he obviously has a public persona, a veneer that he presents to the world in order to maneuver in it, but he really leads with a lot of the more shadowy aspects of a typical character. It’s the love and the more open and vulnerable aspects that are his shadow in many ways. That was an interesting flip for me to get to sink my teeth into. 

It’s profound to have two gay actors playing two gay characters on a TV show. Did you ever think something like this could exist?

BOMER: Honestly, no. My mind has been blown so many times over the past 20 years. I’m just so grateful that the gatekeepers gave us this opportunity. I was doubtful, almost up to the 25th hour on this, that they were really going to put the money and the opportunity into this series that they did. And I’m just so grateful that people who are in the position of calling the shots gave us the chance to tell the story — and the way we needed to.

BAILEY: It’s the Tims of the industry, who are searching for more, who are deconstructing, who are questioning. Because they’re all a similar peer group — [series creator] Ron [Nyswaner] knows Dante [Di Loreto, executive producer of Glee and P-Valley], who’s at Fremantle [which produced the show], and they’ve worked together for years. This isn’t something that just got commissioned overnight, because there’s a wave of progress. The people who are really doing it, as well as the actors, are the people in positions of power who have worked their way up with these questions.

And it’s funny, the one thing I have thought over the years is — I’ve just looked at gay characters, they’re such rich, brilliant, oppressed, complicated, joyous characters to play, so of course people want to play them. And this is a brilliant example of: What better way to do a character study of two polar-opposite gay characters than have gay people play them? But that’s what I felt growing up. I just thought, “Of course people want to play those parts,” which is great. It’s just, what happens if, just for a moment, gay people play them?

And I do think that everyone can play everything, and that’s what we should be headed toward. But I do think there’s a balance that needs, and needed, addressing. And there are a lot of people whose questioning and hard work have created a world in which this can fly.

BOMER: I agree with you wholeheartedly. And it is the Tims of the industry or maybe some Hawks, too, hoping for retribution.

BAILEY: That’s true. We stand on the shoulders of all the Hawks, as well. 

BOMER: (Laughs.)

BAILEY: [The Hawks] did all the work at MGM, yes. (Laughs.)

Jonathan, your character drinking milk in the series got a lot of attention. 

BAILEY: It was a brilliant way of showing such naiveté, and immediately you know that this is a character who’s completely outside the world Hawk inhabits, and he sees the world completely differently. He’s so open. It’s so interesting, isn’t it? Because, it’s funny that Tim leads with his heart and his openness and his childlike wonder, and his shadows are his compulsive nature of constantly needing something that he can’t fill. There’s a moment in episode six — they’re in Frankie’s flat, and I was like, “He’s got to be drinking milk.”

BOMER: There was a power shift in episode eight, too.

BAILEY: Exactly. The milk was on the call sheet. It’s a character in its own right. And also the milk’s character arc is more dramatic than everyone else. Give it a spinoff, I say. (Laughs.)

There was also that toe-sucking scene. Jonathan, did you get the script and it said “suck toe”? 

BOMER: Just “suck toe.” (Laughs.)

BAILEY: It was very, very precisely written down — it was as precise as it needed to be. I saw that as an incredible way to dissect power. I got it when I read it, and I wasn’t intimidated by it. I was just like, “If in the first episode that’s what we are doing, it’s going to be worth five months moving to Toronto, and it’s going to be a series that I would want to watch.” Because not only is it incredibly complicated, not only is it really hot, it’s also something that masks as being provocative, but actually it’s really psychologically impactful and the people who get it get it.

BOMER: I think all those scenes were a really external representation of what was going on with these characters internally, emotionally. And for me, it was really refreshing to see the gay love scenes brought to light in a really unflinching way.

BAILEY: The shock and overwhelm and the tantalizing chemical combustion that happens seeing it — it’s a greater sensory experience because that’s exactly what it meant for Tim in that moment. It captures exactly what’s going on for Hawk and Tim, hopefully, allowing the viewer to experience a bodily reaction to it in the same way, whatever that may be. 

Source

[jgroffdaily]

The New Yorker Interview

Jonathan Groff Rolls Merrily Back

The actor reflects on his journey in reverse: from his latest Tony nomination to his arrival in New York, waiting tables and dreaming of Broadway.

By Michael Schulman, Photograph by Thea Traff

June 2, 2024

Excerpts:

One of the problems with “Merrily” is its protagonist, Franklin Shepard, whom we first meet as a slick, philandering forty-year-old Hollywood producer. It takes two acts to arrive at the charismatic musician he once was, with a lot of mistakes in between. Putting effect before cause gives each scene a painful irony—but how do you get an audience to care about a guy who’s off-putting for so long? “Merrily” is back on Broadway, in a production directed by Maria Friedman, and it’s finally a hit. One big reason is its Frank, played by Jonathan Groff, whose natural warmth shines through even in the character’s older, sleazier incarnation. When this revival opened Off Broadway, in 2022, The New Yorker’s Helen Shaw wrote, “Groff’s silky tenor and angelic face elevate a part that can sometimes be contemptible—for the first time, I could see Frank as both the dreamer who believes in greatness and the glib charmer who believes every lie he tells.”

Groff, thirty-nine, is now nominated for a Tony Award, alongside Friedman and his co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez. He was previously nominated in 2016, for “Hamilton,” in the scene-stealing part of King George III, and in 2007, for the indie-rock musical “Spring Awakening,” as the rebellious schoolboy Melchior Gabor—his breakout role, opposite Lea Michele. Groff had come to New York three years earlier, as a stagestruck, closeted nineteen-year-old from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he grew up among Mennonites and was obsessed with the original cast recording of “Annie Get Your Gun.” “Merrily,” with its themes of aging, idealism, and the vicissitudes of show business, has had Groff thinking about his own path toward stardom. “Doing this show on Broadway at this time, moving to New York twenty years ago, I’ve now lived the time frame of the show,” he told me recently.

We were talking at a bakery north of Washington Square Park. Groff had glided in on a bicycle. As we spoke, he frequently welled up with tears—he’s a crier—but regained his composure by focussing on a pair of googly eyes affixed to the wall behind me. For our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, I had an experiment in mind.

Let’s start with the extremely recent past. Three days ago, you went to the Met Gala. How was your night?

The big headline for me was Lea Michele was pregnant, and I sat next to her at the table, holding her giant train thing while she peed. She took it off, and I was holding that and her purse. I saw Zac Posen, who was at our table, help Kim Kardashian up the little tiny stairs, and I said to him, “Wow, that was such a sweet moment of the gay helping the diva.” I was relating to him, like with me and Lea. It’s a zoo of famous people. I was going to go to the after-parties, but my body was just, like, “No.” I hit a wall from the shows and the epicness of the week, with the Tony nominations. So I was home by eleven-forty-five, and in bed by midnight.

The Broadway production of “Merrily” opened last fall. You told Jimmy Fallon that Meryl Streep came to your dressing room, where you have a bar named BARbra, and she took a video of you and sent it to Barbra Streisand. Who else has been there?

The first thing that comes to me is sitting in BARbra in October or November, drinking whiskey with Sutton Foster. I came to New York as a teen-ager and saw her six times in “Thoroughly Modern Millie”—now she’s in BARbra, dropping in for, like, an hour and a half after the show, and it’s so full circle. Who else? Patti LuPone was there—another big one for me. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Martin McDonagh. Glenn Close sent back a bottle of champagne to be chilled in BARbra, which we drank together.

This show, like every Sondheim show, is very dense. Over the course of three hundred-plus performances, are there certain moments that have suddenly hit you a different way, or that you realize have a double meaning?

Double, triple, quadruple, infinity. I’m still having revelations, which really makes me believe that it’s a true work of art. Maria [Friedman] talks about how, with Sondheim’s writing, he “leaves space,” which is why it’s always new. He always needed to work with a collaborator, and she talked about the actor being an essential collaborator. She said the lyric he wrote in “Sunday in the Park with George”—“Anything you do, / let it come from you, / then it will be new”—is Sondheim’s directive to the actor.

The Tuesday after the Tony nominations, I got to the theatre, screamed with Lindsay [Mendez], screamed with Dan [Radcliffe]. [He chokes up.] Then I was singing “Growing Up”—“So old friends, don’t you see we can have it all?”—which has meant so many different things to me in the run of the show. At yesterday’s matinée, Dan and I were sitting on the roof singing “Our Time”: “Up to us, pal, to show ’em.” We’ve done it a million times. We look at each other, and Dan just fucking loses it crying. He had to look away from me. We talked about it afterward, like, “What the fuck was that?” I don’t know. Something just happened.

When you started the show, in 2022, at New York Theatre Workshop, were there kinks in your performance that you’ve since figured out?

I remember feeling shocked at being disliked for so long in the first half of the first act. It was very clear from the energy of the audience that they loved Mary in the opening scene—immediately, they’re on her side. I’m out here as a gay guy, playing this straight, two-timing Hollywood producer who’s cheating on his wife. I’m already having to feel confident in a way that I don’t in my everyday life, this sort of swagger. And the audience hates me. I remember feeling scared and self-conscious. Maria, in that preview process, really helped with that, because she talked about the value of when it’s real, and you’re not playing ugly just to be ugly. The one line that I really struggled with was “I’m just acting like it all matters so people can’t see how much I hate my life and how much I wish the whole goddam thing was over.” That is a really confronting thing to say.

People might say that this is one of the fundamental flaws of “Merrily We Roll Along”—that you’re confronted with this cynical, smarmy Frank in the first act, and you don’t really understand him until the show’s over. I can imagine going into this not knowing if that’s a solvable problem, because it hadn’t been for decades.

Well, Maria wanted us to find the truth. She really believed that these characters weren’t archetypes, that there’s humanity in the writing from beginning to end. I found it after that first week or two of previews, not being so afraid. The line that made me want to do the show was “I’ve made only one mistake in my life, but I’ve made it over and over and over. That was saying yes when I meant no.” I’ve done that a lot in my life, and there was something that felt like the closeted version of myself. George Furth and Stephen Sondheim—I can only imagine being gay at the time that they were gay. Even though Frank is straight, there’s so much repression that feels very familiar to me.

Except that you felt it at the beginning of your life and not the middle, as Frank does.

Yes and no. I still feel it. I’m still trying every day not to go back. I’m obviously out of the closet, so that’s a huge relief, but I’m always going to be reckoning with the Republican upbringing that I had. I’m always negotiating whatever homophobia I’ve got. It’s all in there, still. What we see as ugliness in the top of the show, to stand and say, “I want to fucking kill myself, I hate my life,” and not overdramatize it but try to find it in the most pure, truthful place—it’s still, every night, a meditation to go there.

Let’s wind back. In 2021, you played Agent Smith in “The Matrix Resurrections.” Any good stories about Keanu Reeves?

Getting to play Agent Smith really unlocked rage inside of me that I didn’t know was there. That’s helped me so much with “Merrily,” particularly in the first act. Learning the kung fu was, like, months of fight training. They called me the Savage, because I was so into it. We were shooting a big fight sequence with Keanu, and, after the first few takes, I remember Lana [Wachowski] at the monitor, like, “Jonathan, come over here. Who is that?” I was, like, “I don’t know.” And she was, like, “And what is that?” I said, “Gay rage?”

I’d never shot a gun before. I shot Keanu and thought I had peed my pants, because I had this hot feeling. You know when you pee yourself and it’s warm? It lasted about ten minutes and then it went away. I sat next to Keanu and said, “Keanu, I just had extreme heat from my groin for, like, ten minutes.” And he was, like, “You opened up your root chakra.”

You turned thirty that year [Hamilton]? How was that?

I remember it vividly. We were at the Public Theatre. There was a fire in the East Village, and the show was cancelled that night. I got a cupcake at the deli around the corner from my apartment, on Sixteenth Street, and ate it by myself. I can be a bit of a loner, so that was a happy birthday for me.

(On Looking being cancelled)

But, in 2015, Michael Lombardo was our executive at HBO, and I was crying into my salad at some restaurant in West Hollywood, trying to convince him to keep the show going, right before getting on the plane to come do “Hamilton” Off Broadway.

I loved Raúl Castillo, who played your love interest Richie on the show. I interviewed him around then, and he told me that, since he’s straight, you all had to teach him some of the mechanics of what gay people do.

Oh, yeah! God, I love him so much. I officiated his wedding in July.

Let’s go back to 2013, when “Frozen” came out. You voiced the iceman Kristoff and the reindeer Sven. How did that film change your life?

It’s funny—I remember recording some of “Frozen” in San Francisco. I would be teaching Raúl, like, how to lick my asshole while jerking me off—not teaching him, but sharing the ins and outs of gay intimacy—and then going into the recording studio on a Saturday and being Kristoff and Sven in a Disney movie.

When they showed me “Let It Go” for the first time, I was, like, Oh, my God, this will help millions of people come out of the closet. This is the gayest thing I’ve seen in my life! That was the thing about “Frozen”: I don’t think anyone who worked on it thought it was going to be a juggernaut. It’s so weird to think of this now, but when it came out it felt quite alternative, because there was no villain, really, and the love was between two women. Now there are, like, tissues with Elsa on it.

Now we’re moving backward to “Spring Awakening.” By the time it moved to Broadway, in 2006, you were the twenty-one-year-old lead of the coolest musical in town. What was your actual life like?

I was so not cool. The show was cool, and the music was cool. I had people dropping me off joints at the theatre. And I remember fully understanding the stark difference between who I was playing onstage and who I was in real life, which was an extreme theatre nerd who wanted to be in the ensemble of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and never would have imagined playing Melchior. It’s his gravitas. And trying to tap into that side of myself, which was a side I’d never experienced before.

Tell me about your audition.

I went to the open call and knew who Michael Mayer was, because he had directed “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” But it was “Spring Awakening” and I was, like, There’s a beating scene? This is so intense! They called me in for Melchior, then had me sing “Hey Jude” in a falsetto, and Michael was, like, “That was your falsetto?” And I laughed at him sort of making fun of me. Tom Hulce, who was our producer, told me years later that he moved my head shot from the “No” pile into the “Yes” pile because I had laughed at Michael in the audition, and he thought, This kid has the ability to let Michael roll off his back. We should bring him back in the next month or two.

It was, like, ten people up for Melchior. They brought me in first, because they thought they would just see me and cut me. But I had worked so hard on the audition material. I remember calling my dad the night before the final callback and saying to him, “I know I can’t be this character all the way yet, but I—”[He tears up again.] I really got to get my shit together! Why does this keep happening to me?

Because we’ve gone on an emotional journey.

I guess so, in reverse! Fuck me. [Pauses.] I knew that I had it inside, if they would just give me the chance. That’s all I was trying to say, but I guess I can’t stop crying while I’m saying it.

In 2005, you made your Broadway début, as an understudy in “In My Life.” Now, this was the weirdest musical I’ve ever seen. As I recall, there were dancing skeletons in a song about how everyone has a skeleton in their closet, a giant lemon that came from the sky at the end, and a girl on a scooter who turns out to be a ghost. And it was written by the guy who wrote “You Light Up My Life,” who then came to a dark end.

And his son!

Yes, his son killed his girlfriend. What the hell was going on with that show? Did you ever go on?

I went on for the ensemble members. I was so excited! I was in my first Broadway show, at the Music Box Theatre, walking in where it says “Stage Door.” And you couldn’t give away tickets to see the show. People were coming to laugh at the show from the audience.

Like “Springtime for Hitler”?

Exactly. And the cast had to do the show, even though people were laughing at them, which is devastating for the actors. But we formed a little family. It’s the plight of the actor. You’re just out there, like Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.” I was twenty years old, so I was lit.

Had you been waiting tables?

Yeah. The whole year before that, I was at the Chelsea Grill, in Hell’s Kitchen. The day I got to New York—October 21, 2004—I moved to Fifty-first Street and Ninth Avenue, before it was super gay, and I walked down Ninth and got a job waiting tables. A week later, I waited on Tom Viola, who runs the charity Broadway Cares, and became a bucket collector. I’d watch the second act of shows and then collect the money at the end. I went to hundreds of auditions, trying to get my Equity card. That, to me, was “Opening Doors,” from “Merrily”—that moment of sheer will and ambition and ignorance.

We’ve now reached our finale, which is 2004. Can you tell me about the decision to move to New York?

My mom was a gym teacher and my dad is a horse trainer, and they didn’t really understand anything about the performing world. But my dad grew up on a dairy farm, and he was supposed to take over and become a Mennonite preacher, which is what my grandfather was. My dad didn’t like cows—he liked horse racing, so he sort of rebelled and did his own thing. My mom always says that nurse, secretary, or teacher were the options for women in a small town at that time, but her passion was sports, so she ended up being a coach.

So they understood the power of fanning the flame of passion. When I was a kid and into acting, they drove me to play practice. They drove me to community theatre. My senior year of high school, my mom drove me to New York to audition for this bus-and-truck tour of “The Sound of Music.” I got that tour, and deferred my admission to Carnegie Mellon. I made ten thousand dollars after a year on the road, and I learned so much from getting to act every day. I wanted to take my ten thousand and move to New York, and my parents were super supportive: “If you feel like you need to go to college, you can always go to college. But take a gamble and move to the city.” I’d worked at this theatre in Lancaster called the Fulton Opera House, where I’d met this girl who wanted to move to New York, so she became my roommate.

To me, “Merrily We Roll Along” is about how difficult it is to stay in touch with the person you were as adulthood knocks you sideways and forward. When you think about nineteen-year-old Jonathan coming to New York, do you feel like you’re the same person? What’s changed?

[He bursts into tears.] I can’t tell why I cry! When we were about to start rehearsal for “Merrily,” I would listen to “Our Time,” and I couldn’t sing it without crying. And, when I think about that version of myself—I think it’s because that person who brings you here does diminish. Maybe it’s the grief for that person. The whole reason that I’m here now is because of that person, but that person no longer exists.

But that person is still in there, somewhere. That voice is so quiet now, but it’s still driving my choices. You have to make choices. You get older, that pure inspiration dies, but it doesn’t have to go all the way away. I think that’s the whole point of the show, why it goes backward. Maria says that Sondheim put all of his regret into it, so that we could have less regret for ourselves. And perhaps the reason it ends with these people, with these versions of ourselves that we remember when we see it, is that it’s an invitation to remember and honor that person.

Why does that make me cry? Is it grief? Is it joy? I don’t know, but I’m so grateful for that purity and that optimism. The first month that I was here, feeling so lost and confused, I pulled the Bible that my Mennonite grandmother gave me off the bookshelf. She gave me that Bible before I left town. I was alone in the apartment thinking, What the fuck am I doing in New York? Or not even “what the fuck”—I didn’t swear until “Spring Awakening,” and when I would sing “Totally Fucked” I would get beet red. And I remember putting the Bible down and thinking, This is not the answer. This is not making me feel good. And then running to Central Park and standing in front of the Bethesda Fountain. I was nineteen, and I was, like, This feels better—but, like, What? Who am I? What am I doing here? I know I want to act, but I’m so scared. And gay. But it was something—some voice, some passion, some inspiration. Some something brought me here.

[elwenyere]

I WANNA HEAR YOUR UNPOPULAR ANDOR OPINIONS

OH THIS IS SUCH A GOOD AND HARD ONE!!!

I have plenty of thoughts on Andor that I suspect are fairly widely held within the fandom and maybe not so much outside the fandom (like the belief that the "slowness" of the first three episodes is a feature and not a bug).

But I think maybe one take I have that might be more divisive is that - while I understand why some fans who read the novelization of Rogue One are disappointed in the changes to Cassian's backstory - I don't actually think that what Andor gives us negates the line in RO where Cassian says he's "been in this fight since he was six years old." In fact, I'm really drawn to a possible reading of that scene that Andor makes available, which is that what we see in that moment is a Rebellion-era Cassian re-narrating his life after the development of a revolutionary consciousness. While he doesn't yet understand his experiences as part of "the Rebellion's fight" at the start of Andor, after the events of season one (esp. Nemik's manifesto and the Narkina breakout and the Rix Road uprising) and what we'll see in season two, he eventually comes to see what happened on Kenari as his conscription into a fight against imperialism and fascism.

And in many ways I think that story (of someone who has to learn that they were engaged in political struggle before they recognized it) is a more suggestive model for thinking about what it takes to build resistance movements than the story of someone who could sign up to join an already-formed militant group.

[joelmillerlover123]

The Weight We Carry - Part One

Where The Grass Meets

Description : You meet two new strangers. Are they to be trusted?

Warnings/AN : F!Reader, mentions of illness and disability, descriptions of breakout day, mentions of death by starvation, post!outbreak, is the reader smart? Idk. 

Word count : almost 2k

Let me know if you like it!

  The grass crunches under your boots with each step. The only sounds you hear now are your own breathing and your feet hitting the ground. Your hair has grown long and you’ve started to detest it, but you can’t cut it. Not yet. You're reminded of why when the wind hits your face and you feel the bite of cold just beginning to sting your cheeks. 

  You remember winter before. Before all of this. Christmas trees. Presents. Baking with your sister.

  But none of that matters anymore. And now you need to find food. 

  Your sister got “sick” a while ago. Well, you don’t know if she’s sick or just simply exhausted. You are the oldest, you were always tougher, thicker skin, more maternal towards her. You took care of each other. But if you would want one of you to get sick, it would be her. 

  She wouldn’t be able to take care of both of you. Not with you incapacitated. 

  You guess that was your sick way of rationalizing what is happening. Why she can’t do anything for herself now.Because it’s your responsibility. It’s always been. 

  Breakout day, all those years ago, you and your sister were driving. You had just about gotten a mile from your house when the radio cut and gave the emergency announcement. You look over at Mary, your sister and see the color just about drain from her face. 

“What’s going on?” Mary looked around outside the car’s windows, frantically searching for something, anything out of the ordinary. 

“I don’t know,” You said with every ounce of calm you could muster. You turned the car around and headed back to the house. 

  Luckily, your dad was a true southern man and was an absolute hoarder of all things guns. Ammo, rifles, revolvers, pistols, even a few almost automatic weapons were fully at your disposal. So, you and your family had barricaded yourselves in your house. 

  You stayed like that for a couple months. Then, there wasn’t any more food. You still remember the look on your mom’s face when she realized she was dying of starvation. 

  You cried yourself to sleep every night for weeks after she died. You had begged your dad to go outside to find something. He just shook his head. Too scared of the government or the ‘rebels,’ as he called them, to actually go outside. 

  You counted down the days until he died, too. 

  Then it was just you and Mary. 

  She was only a year or so younger than you. Not much. When your dad died, you felt a giant weight lift off your shoulders. Now it’s time to do what needed to be done from the beginning; go outside. 

  That was almost twenty years ago. Gosh, twenty. You must be… what? Thirty-six or so, now? Hm. Weird how when you pictured thirty-six when you were younger it sure didn’t look like this. 

  You start making your way back to the little house you and Mary found a couple seasons ago. You’re both from the south, where there’s just about two seasons: hot and cold. Somehow, in all y’all’s walking, you made it somewhere with four whole seasons. Made it easier to track the years that passed. 

“Anything good?” Mary asks as the door creaks open, sitting on a chair and waiting patiently on your arrival. 

“Yeah,” You drop the rabbit from your trap on the table, “Dinner for a few days.” 

  Mary cracks a smile. 

“Thanks,” You can see the tears start forming in her eyes and before she can fully get too emotional you walk away from her, carrying the rabbit. 

  It wasn’t easy being sick. You could see that. You don’t know what happened or why it was happening but you didn’t care. She’s all you have. Of course you’re going to take care of her. And it really helps with how grateful she is. 

  You skinned and cleaned the rabbit, tossing the gross stuff off for the birds. You watch your hands meticulously work at the carcass, remembering what you’d watched your dad do all those years. He never taught you to do this. But you’re a great visual learner. 

  Dinner was silent that night. Mary blamed it on exhaustion. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” You ask again, setting her down in her bed. 

“Yeah,” She nods and adjusts herself, “Just tired.” 

  You linger a bit longer, watching her carefully, looking for something that you can fix. 

“You do enough for me,” She rolls over, “Go to sleep.” 

  You reluctantly walk away and crawl into your own bed. You toss and turn for what feels like hours and then get up and go check on her again. 

  You do that for the rest of the night. 

  The sun rises with a slow creep up and over your window sill. You’ve been wide awake the entire night. You go in and check on Mary again and take a breath when you see her chest rising and falling. You get your favorite revolver and head out the front door, closing it quietly. 

  Luckily, with how smart you are and how scared your sister is, you haven’t used all of the ammo your dad left. But, you’ve used some. 

  Sometimes, when you do actually sleep, you dream about them. About the infected. About their lives before all of this. Who they were. Who they could’ve been. You wake up and shrug it off as sleep-induced psychosis, making stuff up. But that tiny, whimsical piece of you always says that it’s them communicating with you. That they’re always with you. And they aren’t angry. 

  You shake your head and focus. You’re trying to check your traps again. You set a new one yesterday but it doesn’t hurt to check them as often as possible. Especially with winter coming up. 

  Snap. 

  You spin around in the direction of the sound. Staying as silent as you can. The screech of an infected knocks your nervous system into fight or flight and luckily, you stay to fight. 

  You stay put, scanning the direction of the sound until suddenly, a gunshot rings through in the direction. 

  Now, your blood truly runs cold. 

  You’ve run into your fair share of people post-apocalypse. 9 times out of 10, they aren’t here to make friends. 

  Mary. 

  You don’t even care anymore if these people hear you. You take off running in the direction of your little house, praying no signs of life are visible from the outside. 

  You burst through the door to find an empty living room so you storm into Mary’s room and there she is, still fast asleep. 

  You breathe. Hard. Almost out of control. You feel your lungs start to move without you. You feel the room start to spin and your legs begin to fall from under you. 

  Mary. Mary could’ve died. Been killed. Or worse. Those people. They’re still out there. 

  Your lungs are still uncontrollably pumping for air and you hear your mouth gasping. 

  No. No. No. Not now. Not when there’s- there’s people. 

  Mary wakes up and looks at you, eyes foggy with sleep. She sees your pale face and wide eyes and faces you in the bed, using all her might to sit up. You see her mouth open and the worry on her face but her voice is a distant whisper. You can’t make out anything she’s saying. She’s not helping. 

  You throw up your hands to stop her and walk out of the room, feeling the tears start to spill. You need to breathe. 

  You use all of your manual will power and strength to slow your breathing. Your legs start feeling normal again and the room starts to slowly stop spinning. 

  You close your eyes and focus on one sense at a time. 

  Touch the table. 

  Smell the wood. 

  Hear the wind. 

  Taste the baking soda toothpaste from this morning. 

  See… you open your eyes… your makeshift kitchen. 

  Your breathing feels normal. And everything’s calmer now. 

  You walk into Mary’s room. 

“Sorry,” You say. 

“What was it this time?” She asks, sleep still coloring her features. 

  The people. 

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” You turn from her and turn back, “Please don’t try to go anywhere.” 

  She tries to protest but you’ve already left. 

  You make your way, much more quietly, back to where you were. 

  You find one of your traps and sure enough, these people are looking at it, assessing it. 

“Well,” The girl says, a little too loud, “Are we just gonna stare at it or are we gonna do something?” 

“I don’t know,” The man replies, hand on his hip as he eyes the trap, “It’s well set, so it could be old.” 

“Nuh-uh,” The girl points to the rope, a fresh, red stain on it where the rabbit was caught, “It’s been reset.” 

  The man huffs out of his nose and crosses his arms. 

“Well, if we keep going this way, we run the risk of running into whoever set this but if we go back…” He trails off. Clearly it’s a mutual understanding there’s no going back. 

“I say we just run the risk,” She girls shrugs, “Who's to say this person isn’t a kind hearted individual looking for friends?” She kind of laughs to herself and looks at him. 

  He hesitates and turns from her towards the direction of the house. 

“You stay near me,” He looks at her, and his tone dips, “Understand?” 

“Yes, Joel, yes,” She says with a sigh, “I get it.”

  What to do? You could just confront them. You have a gun. So do they. Hm. Think. Think. You could just let them keep walking. But they seem nice and clearly where they’re going is important. In a flash of impulsivity, maybe it was the adrenaline from running or the adrenaline from seeing a man for the first time in… who knows how long, you step out into their line of vision. You hold up a gun towards them as they freeze, the man stepping in front of the girl and holding up a gun towards you. 

“Look,” You say, breathing, “I’m not trying to hurt you but,” You trail off, mustering up your confidence, “You know, I don’t know y’all, don’t know what you could try.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t know you either,” The man says, his voice deepening and growing louder, trying to intimidate you.

“It’s my trap,” You say, lowering your gun slightly, “They’re all over this place and if you aren’t careful…” You don’t finish your sentence. 

  He doesn’t lower his gun and just kind of stares at you. 

“Y’all seem perfectly nice,” You interrupt the silence, “I, um, I have a house, just this way,” You point in the direction of your house sheepishly, lowering your gun completely, “And food.” 

  You see the girl’s ears perk up at the mention of food, her breathing slowing. 

  The man looks back at the girl and the girl nods, and he eventually lowers his gun, too. 

“I won’t hesitate to kill you,” He says gruffly, moving in your direction. 

  You smile, knowing you won’t hesitate to kill him either. 

“I have a sister,” You say, “She’s uh… at the house,” You figured they’d catch on when you would help her walk to and from. 

  The girl walks ahead of the man, closer to you and tells you her name. Ellie. And Joel.

[eclipseberrycake]

Poly! MoonBerryCake x Reader Pt.11

AN: The WEEK I have had omg. I was in the hospital then my partner was in the hospital and now I'm exhausted and the mental illness is coming back an bro I just wanna write about my funky lil guys.,

Part One -> Part Two -> Part Three -> Part Four -> Part Five -> Part Six -> Part Six 1/2 -> Part Seven -> Part Eight -> Part Nine -> Part Nine 1/2 -> Part Ten

Warnings: Mentions of past abuse, canonical references to harmful treatment of the other toons, mentions of smoking but no actual smoking, approximately two dirty jokes (Who makes them may surprise you)

☁ The air is cool tonight. It chills his cheek as he leans on the balcony, the once chilled stone of the railing warm under his arms as a reminder of how long he's been out there.

☁ He wants to go back. He can hear your soft breaths and Cosmo's grumbles as he rolls back and forth a few times, but something in his gut curdles at the thought, crawling up his stomach and threatening to choke him.

☁ How can he go back to the group, to you, knowing what he knows now. It runs rampant in his brain he's sure he's almost dislodged his leaves by the number of times he's pulled at them.

☁ Him and Astro have since made it a habit of going through the old records of Gardenview, as it's both nostalgic and bittersweet, reading through the memories of things previously lost to him. Seeing the video of him and Cosmo baking, or the screenplays written for adventures between the four of you, or even just the letters the Toon Handlers had written concerning them all make his chest ache. Just the thought the four of you had previously been close before all of this is both a solemn thought and a warm comfort.

☁ He wonders what could've been prior to the breakout. What could've come from...well, all of it, really. There's a sinking feeling that nags in the back of his head at the thought, knowing if things had continued the way they were, there was a good chance he never would've gotten the chance to be with you and Cosmo.

☁ Him and Astro had the benefit of consistently being in each other's company, but since going through the old records, he's come to the disheartening realization that it was because of the breakout he was gifted with the opportunity to get to know the other commons, you especially. He knew Cosmo previously, even if his Handler attempted to minimize the contact between the two, but he truly didn't know you beyond the cute delivery toon and the minimal scripts that had you and him interacting for no more than a few minutes.

☁ While the ichor breakout was an awful thing, and he would never wish it to happen again, a part of him is grateful. It granted him a freedom he didn't know he was starving for.

☁ That being said, freedom doesn't come without it's cons. He's gotten on Rodger's case before for investigating areas he has no right to do, but those are mostly far more personal matters rather the general history behind Gardenview. Unfortunately for him and Astro, this lack of restriction has led to a few startling discoveries over the treatment of the toons that weren't mains.

☁ Recently, the Christmas toons had started making their own appearances on floors, so in the pursuit of getting Dandy research, you had also made it a personal mission to get them back too. So far, you had successfully gotten Ginger and Coal back, with Rudie evading you at every turn and the Bobette research slow going. They, Ginger and Coal, were stand-offish to begin with and while he didn't understand it, he gave them their space and left them to Cosmo and Pebble.

☁ After reading what happened to them after the Christmas season, however, he understood and worked with Astro to get Ginger's room an assortment of nightlights as to minimize the reminder of the old closets they used to remain locked in. Additionally, Shrimpo and Finn had been able to carve out a sizable doggy door in the wall beside the door for Coal to come and go as she pleased. Rudie's future room and Bobette's as well were both being fitted with similar things as well and- to his chagrin, as he looks back to check on you all- your room will need one too as he watched Coal's tail thump quietly, Pebble by her side and Blu on top of her.

☁ He blames Blu in all honesty. The lovable little shit had a way of making everyone love her, despite the circumstances of her appearance.

☁ Which was another thing entirely and the source of his current bout of restlessness. He groans lowly, rolling his shoulders back. His fingers itch for a smoke, but he promised himself he'd quite. It started when he was younger as a rebellious act against Sam, taking one from their packs and hacking at it until he got the hang over it. His own way of previously taking back his freedom. However, with it now freely granted, it wasn't needed and he, for the most part, quit it easily. It was mostly just a stress response at this point.

☁ He'd consider himself stressed at this point though. The most recent set of files had been...off. They'd been reluctant to open the file, as it was sealed with wax and stamped with all sorts of red warnings- very unlike the other files they'd gone through previously. They'd opened it anyway, reading through various employment records for an individual neither he nor Astro have heard of before.

☁ It was going on and on about an individual named Ciara, her start date of employment, her pay rate, her credentials and especially her role in Gardenview. It was written in black, bolded lettering, all caps to ensure there was no confusion. He can see it now, every time he blinks, flashing behind his eyelids as a reminder. "Ciara [Redacted]: TOON HANDLER"

☁ The only problem is he couldn't even begin to remember any other main besides the five of them, Dandy and Bobette. A part of him thought she was Bobette's Handler, but the employment date didn't line up with the holiday season. Astro had tried to hypothesis that she could've been a temporary replacement for one of the other handlers, but Sprout has a feeling he knows better. In fact, he's sure the room behind him, where the rest of you are fast asleep, was hers. It was the only one without a placard.

☁ He never doubted you ever. He knew this intricately, believed it to this day. No, his theory was that you didn't even know about it really, but too many things lined up for him to ignore it. It was little things that only meant something in hindsight.

☁ Things he never would've spotted previously coming back as he thinks all the way back to when he was first recovered. He remembers watching you outrun Twisted Pebble, managing to keep up in a way he knew the other common toons couldn't do when they were distracting. You had gotten hit during the retrieval run, but kept in front of him for the majority of time they needed to finish machines. Hell, he doesn't know how many times you've nearly sent him into cardiac arrest just by how...easily you're able to distract. It just comes naturally to you.

☁ Pebble, also, was right away practically attached to you at the shins, following you everywhere you went with a happy little tail wag. That originally is why Sprout figured Dandy hated you, but the further he thought about it, the more he thought there was a different reason. One he just didn't know yet.

☁ The biggest indicator literally slaps him in the face every morning. Blu's appearance, while was instigated by Dandy's interference, was still something he couldn't understand. Normal, common toons very rarely could interact with the magic within the tapes. There's only one he knows of, and that's Teagan. And even then, it's limited to influencing her own person. She cannot extend that magic to anything beyond herself. That is something exclusive to mains.

☁ They all use it to a degree, just not in the same way he does. The magic is everywhere, contrary to what most of the commons think, it's just strongest in the tapes, which is what he uses for his own ability. But the others call on it in different ways too. Vee uses the general area of tapes and where the magic is strongest to get a general sight on twisteds in the area. Shelly weaves it through into the machines to make them fill faster. Astro himself uses just a bit to rejuvenate someone's stamina. Hell, even Pebble uses the magic in the tapes to make himself appear like a larger target to twisteds after he barks. It's why they can't do it all the time, they need to let the energy stabilize. Recharge.

☁ Which is why he can't get over you doing it at all. Even with Dandy's interference, you shouldn't have been able to interfere with the magic unless you were....made with that ability.

☁ His eyes widen as he whips his head to look back into the room. Astro's not there, but Sprout can vaguely remember him telling him that he was going for a short walk. You and Cosmo are wrapped around each other, burrowing into the other in a heaping mass of legs, arms and tails.

☁ His eyes immediately dart to one of your hands. It's curled around Cosmo's shirt, flexing slightly before your fingers stretch out as you gently shift, the rest of your arm stretching out as well. There, in all their glory, are your paw pads. He moved off it too fast last time, but now it's all he can focus on. For all the times he's held your hand, felt you cup his cheeks, watched you do anything with your hands, not once did they stick out to him because they were something you aways had.

☁ Something you always had.

☁ Your hand curls back around Cosmo as he burrows into your neck, mindlessly hiking your leg further up where it's hooked around his side.

☁It wasn't momentary. It was all right there, in front of him, in front of them, and they'd all been blind to it. Even your twisted had shoved itself in his face, steps heavy and purposeful and audible. Your twisted even had an ability. While it wasn't a debuff like Shelly's or Astro's, or even incredibly fast (to a degree) like Pebbles, it was like his twisted. It could influence the environment. It charged and took away cover, took away any form of safety those who ran into it had.

☁ Falling against the railing, Sprout's eyes are stuck on you. If you were a main, what happened? Why were you practically wiped from the records, meant to remain a forgotten background character? Did it have to do with Dandy's distaste towards you? Did you have a passive ability that they just weren't aware of? Did you have any idea whatsoever?

☁ The door to the bedroom slowly opens, Astro slipping in before closing it just as silently as it was opened. He looks to the bed, nodding his head with every mental count he does before pausing. One of his hands physically points at both you and Cosmo, coming up empty for the third. Sprout smiles despite the current thoughts he's having, gently knocking on the balcony loud enough for the celestial to hear.

☁ He looks over at the noise, visibly relaxing before moving to join. He deters to the bed for a moment, bringing the blanket further up yours and Cosmo's shoulders before walking out to the balcony. Two of his hands reach for Sprout's cheeks, thumb running over the seeds. "You're cheeks are chilled. How long have you been out here?"

☁ Long enough." Sprout mutters, laying his forehead on Astro's. "I've been thinking."

☁ "About Ciara?" Astro questions, and feels Sprout nod. "I-...I think I know who's handler she was."

☁ Astro remains silent, but he knows the other is still listening. Lifting his head, he looks back into the room, watching over you and Cosmo once more. Cosmo's rolled onto his back, mouth open as his breaths turn into damn near snores. You're on his chest, drooling onto his shirt. Both of you look content and peaceful, Astro surely ensuring your dreams are just so as well.

☁ There's silence between them before Astro is humming softly, his tail giving a gentle sway. "I thought so too, honestly." He sighs. "Too many things add up for it to be otherwise, I'm afraid."

☁ "...Do we tell them?" They have no method of confirming this short of turning this entire place inside out, which they have neither the time, patience or energy to do so. But it makes that earlier feeling rot in his stomach further and the idea of not telling you makes him nearly lose his supper.

☁ "I think we can bring the possibility and our concerns up to them." Astro hums, ever so calm. He always is, levelheaded and soft, consistent with his needs and open with what he expects from them and himself. While they all try to remain open with communication there are times where Sprout is so lost in the need to care and protect you three he forgets to express his worries out loud, or Cosmo is so wrapped up in his own anxieties that he refuses to try and push them onto the rest of you; even you've been known to break down in your own frustrations every now and again, simmering in your own little nest of pouty huffs and scoffs under your breath. But never Astro. The celestial has always been straight with them, even if he's grinding his teeth or wringing his hands as he does.

☁ And there is nothing Sprout appreciates more, especially in instances like this where he himself can barely think straight, but is quickly reoriented by the other. "Do you remember?"

☁ Astro falls silent as he comes up with a response. Sprout knows he doesn't need to expand on the question, but enjoys watching the other's thought process anyway. "I...can't say that I don't." Astro says carefully. "I have memories of running scenes with them, but I can't pinpoint if I knew they were a main or not. Just that they were...there. They always were." His lips spread into a small content smile as he looked over to where you and Cosmo where still sleeping soundly.

☁ Upon further glance though, it didn't appear as sound as it once was as you were now the victim of Cosmo's grappling, huffing as he rolled to lay on top of you. Sprout knows from first hand experience that if you aren't prepared for Cosmo's dead weight, it's like a punch to the gut. He only semi-pities you.

☁ "C'mon, you need some sleep." Astro huffs, moving to shove Sprout forward into the bedroom. "And we need to possible save Y/N."

☁ Sprout gives a chuckle at this before conceding, crawling into one side of the bed as Astro crawls into the other, the latter taking on Cosmo, who immediately wraps himself around the celestial while Sprout is allowed to wrap himself around you.

☁ The feeling in his gut is somewhat satiated, more so when you eagerly burrow into his chest with a content little purr. It makes his chest ache in a way he's not too sure is positive or negative just yet, and instead chooses to hold onto you anyway. His hand blindly grabs for Astro's and squeezes it the second he cans. He hopes the presence is enough to sooth his dreams for the night.

☁ Morning comes faster than you expect, but you pay it no mind as your attention is kept rapt and forward. Your brows are furrowed as you play with your fingers, tilting your head when no immediate change happens. "Do you think he's dead?"

☁ "Don't you manifest that." Cosmo hisses from where he's trying to pull away from Astro. His butt waggles in the air, which does in fact catch your attention and makes you smirk as you watch it, as he uses his legs to try and pull back, but Astro's grip is ironclad; you would know.

☁ "It doesn't make sense." You huff, having half a mind to take a picture so it'll last as long as you need it too. Cosmo's tail unfurls for a second to give a harsh little whip before he groans. "You could help!"

☁ You ignore him, instead returning your attention to what caught it in the first place. "He's always awake first though."

☁ Cosmo gives one final pull, practically cheering as he tumbles free only to tumble right off the bed. Once more, you could've helped and caught him, as you're sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, but you only grin at him from his place on the floor. He shakes his head before shooting you a glare, using the bed to help himself up. "Thanks, my loving, and oh so caring partner who is supposed to love and help me in sickness and in health-"

☁ You shush him and his sarcastic tirade, forcing his chin to look at the duo on the bed. Astro immediately turns to lock onto Sprout, but the flicker in his tail tells you he's slowly waking up and probably listening to your bickering.

☁ "He's still asleep." You repeat, as if this is some big thing. Cosmo rolls his eyes with a scoff. "Astro is always-"

☁ "Not Astro."

☁ Cosmo looks over and as if it dawns on him for the first time, his eyes widen at the sight of Sprout. His leaves are messy with bed-head, but he's still sound asleep, shoulders rising steadily with every cute little breath.

☁ Cosmo's jaw drops and suddenly he's right next to you, watching Sprout as if he were another exhibit in the museum. "Is he dead?"

☁ "Oh, so when you do it, it's funny, but when I do it-"

☁ "It's still just as loud no matter which of you ding dongs do it." Astro huffs, startling you both. Cosmo slips back down to the floor with a thud and you nearly follow him, if not for Astro's tail whipping out to catch your hand. The celestial blinks awake, eyes darting to the two of you. "Are you both done?"

☁ "Sprout's still asleep!" You exclaim, as if this explains everything. Astro raises a brow, looking at the berry asleep on his chest, raising a brow as if to ask 'so?'.

☁ "He's never asleep this long!" You explain, gesturing wildly. "That's not our Sprout!"

☁ "I promise he's our Sprout." Astro easily reassures you both, watching Cosmo crawl back onto the bed, sitting far enough on the bed he wouldn't go tumbling for a third time.

☁ Sprout nose scrunches and he shifts and the three of you tense at the action. It's quiet enough you could hear a pin drop before Sprout is settling once more and you let out a sigh of relief

☁ "Not dead." You breath at last. "That's good, I was not looking forward to learning Ichor necromancy to bring him back if only to kill him myself."

☁ "I feel like this is a rare occasion. Like...Christmas." Cosmo adds, watching Sprout as well. "Or my birthday. Or maybe his birthday. Though, for future reference, if it was my birthday I would expect more. Maybe an early birthday gift." The diva shrugs, even if you shoot him a glare.

☁ "I have an inappropriate name to call you." You jokingly shove him before your perking up. "Hey! You know what this means?"

☁ "I don't think I want too." Astro huffs, furrowing the space between his brows.

☁ "Nothing bad!" You quickly reassure. "Or dirty." You add, shooting a look at Cosmo, who sticks his tongue out. "Kitchen's open." Is what you say at last, a devious grin spreading over your features.

☁ "Sprout'll kill you." Astro pipes in.

☁ "Uh, not if you take one for the team." You shoot back. "I'm not saying Gigi was in charge of inventory this time, but I am saying my record is 40 pudding cups and the chance at fifty bucks."

☁ "Fifty whole dollars. Wow- that's- Just woowww." Astro rolls his eyes sarcastically. "How did you know I've always wanted a sugar daddy?"

☁ Cosmo snickers even if you lean into the part, crossing your arms and puffing out your chest. "I'll get you the finest pops that I find on the ground, baby, don't you worry."

☁ This time Astro snickers, as if despite himself. "You're impossible."

☁ "Not yet, I'm not." You grin, moving to slide off the bed, but Pebble is right there, glaring up at you as if daring you to do so.

☁ Your jaw drops at this, once more foiled by this silly little creature who seems to have the ultimate vendetta against your kitchen escapades. Cosmo peers over your shoulder to see what make you pause before letting out a burst of giggles, only to clap a hand over his mouth before they have the chance to truly escape.

☁ "Remind me to give him a treat later." Your attention turns back to where Sprout is comfortable laying against Astro, letting the celestial play with his leaves, even if his eyes are locked on you. You have the audacity to give him a sheepish grin.

☁ "Heyyyy, youuu-" You begin, knowing you've been caught before you could even really truly leave.

☁ Sprout levels a look at you. "Well, now I know what you've been trying to do lately." He huffs before sitting up at last, rubbing his eyes before leaning back to press a kiss to Astro's lips. Cosmo eagerly crawls forward to be next, tail wagging behind him, and though you pout at being last, you accept your own good morning kiss.

☁ "Good, now Sprout's awake and we know he's not dead, about that early Birthday present-" Cosmo leans over, only for you to shove him by his face.

☁ "Actually," Sprout cuts in, looking back at Astro who nods. "We were hoping we could...talk?"

☁ You and Cosmo both settle, immediately sensing the shift and responding accordingly. You both sit side by side, watching Sprout with your full attention.

☁ He takes a breath, sitting forward as he plays with his fingers. "...What do you know of someone named Ciara?"

[lmaowhatt]

it takes time - five

summary: actress y/n I/n has recently skyrocketed into stardom after her breakout film 'castaways' alongside sarah cameron, kevin hart, chris evans and chris hemsworth. weeks after the movies premiere, she drops her debut single, further cementing her place in the spotlight. as millions of people around the world begin to notice and idolize her, struggling with her own demons, she catches the attention of rafe cameron, among others. however, not everything goes as smooth as they both would've hoped. and they soon figure out.. it takes time.

main masterlist | series masterlist

four - five - six

hellraisermovie

liked by youruser, rafecameron, jbr and 827k others

hellraisermovie out now! thank you to everyone who contributed on this project including our amazing directors @/davidbruckner and @/jbr. and a big thank you to the amazing actors who brought our vision to life.

youruser YAY!

rafecameron im so hot.

➯ user hes so self aware

➯ user some would call it cocky

brandonflynn BOW BOW BOW

user they fadiddled?!?!

➯ user using common sense isnt a thing apparently

user SOMEBODY SEDATE ME

adamfaison WHOO.

user shes so 😍😍😍

➯ user RIGHT? like fuck rafe shes so 🤤

msjamieclayton thanks for this opportunity!

user that entire scene had me like 😧🫣🫨

➯ user real

rafecameron

liked by youruser, sarahcam and 1.0 million others

rafecameron hellraiser out now!

sarahcam ur so gross ew.

➯ rafecameron puhlease im obviously the better sibling🙄

➯ jbr i beg to differ

user seriously somebody sedate me

user i js know its rough

jbr why are you always bald

➯ rafecameron thats it, where are my clippers

popeh you're getting it tn

➯ cleopatty im right here.

➯ rafecameron so?

user raw, next question.

user guys.. i fear that 'i love you' maybe didnt sound scripted

➯ user she had a line after.. it was scripted 💀

user body so tea, both of them

➯ user seriously unfair 😔

user some ppl need to be put down😧

youruser

liked by rafecameron, sarahcam, jjmay and 928k others

youruser hellraiser, out now! hope you guys enjoy!

sarahcam YES HAWT MAMA marry me

➯ jbr i object.

➯ youruser overruled.

jjmay WOOHOO.

*liked by creator*

user dont sedate me just put me down.

kiekie yo.. forget my man i want YOU

➯ jjmay something tells me he would not approve nor be ok with this.. a hunch

➯ user hmm...

jbr love you!

cleopatty someone check my vitals

user the rafe likes are getting too frequent and i fw it.

popeh no cs this ate i fear.

➯ youruser you fear it ate? im appalled.

➯ popeh you can spell appalled? IM appalled.

your phone

almost two weeks into the new year and you were already navigating through the bustling airport in los angeles. you'd just returned from a brief trip to england, and while part of you was relieved to be back in your city, surrounded by your friends and the familiar chaos, another part of you couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to stay longer. you had initially planned for an extra week stay after your audition, but life had a way of pulling you back. dressed in a matching grey tracksuit with the hoodie pulled low over your head, you gripped your phone, pressing it to your ear as it rang, waiting for jj to pick up.

"you here yet?" the mans voice was heard from the other side of the phone. you nodded, fumbling around with something in your bag before you answered. "yeah, landed about a half hour ago," you spoke, weaving through the small crowds of people as you tried to venture toward the airport entrance. "im almost there just hang tight, a'ight?" you hummed, muttering a quiet goodbye before hanging up the phone.

you continued to weave through the tight airport crowds, muttering small apologies when you bumped your shoulder or elbow into someone else. as you rounded a corner into a different hall, you harshly bumped into a younger girl who looked to be around sixteen years old. "oh my- honey im so sorry. are you okay?" you quickly muttered out as you held her hand to pull her back up. however, she didnt seem phased in the slightest, her eyes widening once she realized who you were.

"holy shit. y- youre y/n, right?" she stumbled on her words, smiling even brighter as you nodded your head with a sheepish chuckle. "uhm, sorry. c-can i get a picture, please?" she asked you nervously, constantly glancing between you and her phone as she fumbled around with it. "yeah sure," you smiled, watching as she excitedly passed her phone to her mom who was stood a few feet away, mumbling something about taking a picture.

after taking around three to four pictures, you turned to her again. "you sure you okay?" with concern etched on your face, a small smile still managed to make its way onto your face as you watched her nod profusely. "y-yeah. im okay. uhm, thank you." she smiled at your before muttering a quick goodbye, ruhshing away to grab her phone back from her moms grip.

you smiled to yourself, gathering your things once more as you felt your phone vibrate from its place on your backpack. "yeah?" you pressed the phone up to your ear, supporting it with your shoulder as you continued your walk towards the entrance. "im here," jj called through the phone, "lucky for you, its too busy i think you can just come out normally." you let out a small sigh, nodding gratefully. "ill be right out," you stated before hanging up.

jjmay

liked by youruser, kiekie and 1.1 million others

jjmay mi vida

jbr im offended. the only pic im in and its blurred.

➯ jjmay blame @/youruser photography skills

➯ popeh im his fav. i look hot in mine

user HELLO?? hardlaunch???

➯ jjmay oops?

youruser jj?? inspirational?? like i didnt send you that pic?

kiekie would just like to say jj was no help in winning the pool game!

user everyone SHUT UP. jj posted! and he hardlaunched?? im done!

cleopatty boy knows two words in spanish and ran with it

sarahcam the shirley temples.. i wonder who made them..

➯ jjmay girl–

➯ youruser this one has a lil sass to it

➯ kiekie lets keep it

➯ jjmay im sorry, IT?

➯ jbr you get used to it, unfortunately.

user i love their friendship

user chat did anyone peep rage..

➯ user real like.. i didnt think they were close with him

➯ user rafe is literallly sarah's brother??

your phone

taglist: @xoxo-ada

psa: anyone else who wants to be added to the taglist, let me know!

a/n: so sorry for the very vey late upload but i slacked off 😔 its ok tho!!

[wrestlingisfake]

I guess there's some controversy about Swerve Strickland and Daniel Garcia, and how much they're getting paid on their new deals. (Nobody has even confirmed Garcia has re-signed, but we're already talking about his salary for some reason.)

This week's Wrestling Observer reports that multiple sources in WWE think the pay increase is "bad for the sport," because Tony Khan is paying more than "market value," based on what WWE thinks Strickland and Garcia are worth. Or to put it another way, AEW was willing to pay more than WWE wanted to pay, so that's wrong for some reason.

The "market value" thing is pretty silly, considering that a big part of AEW's business model is promoting the kinds of performers that WWE has often overlooked. Obviously with Vince McMahon out, WWE's priorities are shifting, but even so, they're never going to perfectly align with what AEW is looking for. I'm sure WWE has come around to realizing they shouldn't have cut Swerve six weeks into his main roster run. But even if they could get him right now, they wouldn't push him as the centerpiece of the promotion, headlining stadium shows, not when they already have Cody and Roman and Gunther. So in 2024 he's simply not worth as much to Stamford as he is to Jacksonville.

Garcia's situation is interesting, because I'd say he's the classic guy WWE wouldn't know what to do with if they had him. At his age, he'd probably be stuck in NXT for the next three years. In AEW, though, it feels like this is his breakout year, especially if they give him a win in the MJF program. So if Tony Khan is paying him above "market value," I suspect he's in line for a big big push. I'm sure WWE doesn't want all the other 25-year-olds on the market to see that, and wonder if they can get a piece of that action.