#actually we just needed more of them period
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jadedbirch · 3 days ago
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Gather around, my young friends and fellow dinosaurs, let me tell you about some BULLSHIT no one ever tells you about. I'm talking about menopause and perimenopause. Now, menopause has a very stringent medical definition. You have to not have had a period for exactly 12 months and a day to be considered in menopause. All the bullshit before that day once you start going through The Change is considered perimenopause. Here's some bullshit you might experience that people actually talk about when you're in perimenopause:
- shorter time between periods
- irregular periods
- hot flashes and/or cold flashes
- fucked up sleep
- OMG NIGHT SWEATS
- Vagina as dry as the Sahara desert
- lighter periods and/or endless bleeding like it's The Flood but it's in your pants
- lack of interest in Adult Fun Times
This time of joy can last anywhere from a couple of years to a god damn decade and there's no medical way right now to predict it.
Here's some of the REAL bullshit they don't tell you about but your dinosaur aunt is here to let you know:
- You can start perimenopause in your 30s, don't listen to idiot doctors who tell you you're "too young" because they don't know your body like you do.
- Perimenopause will make you HELLA DUMB. Seriously, I'm talking Bigly broken brain. Brain fog? Check. Short term memory? Wave goodbye to it. Ability to make words form out of thoughts? Yeah, good luck to you.
- Perimenopause can cause horrible fatigue because in addition to losing estrogen, you're also losing testosterone. Oh and that also leads to muscle wasting, cool cool.
- Things might suddenly hurt more because estrogen is known to be neuroprotective.
- If you're super lucky like I am, and like to collect rare illnesses, you might even get Burning Mouth Syndrome 💀
- And meanwhile, while you're going through this bullshit, you'll be getting gaslit by doctors who are operating based on 30 year old debunked data about how HRT causes breast cancer (not really) and that they shouldn't put you on it until you're in actual menopause. (Data shows starting HRT early can potentially prevent Alzheimer's in later years.)
- There are entire online clinics right now (I use Midi Health) focused on providing care for peri and menopausal patients and they will happily prescribe you HRT even if your regular PCP or OBGYN do not (if you meet the criteria). I've been pretty impressed with how holistically they view the patient. For full disclosure, I learned about them from my integrative health doctor and they do not accept Medicare (yet).
I'm 46 years old right now and I've been symptomatic for perimenopause for the last 8 years, although it's gotten the most dramatic in the past 2 years or so, which I hope means I'm almost done, holy hell. Yeah I was on the early side, but if it can happen to me, it can happen to you, so it's never too early to think about these things. And I hope to at least spare some of you the mind-fuckery I've been through because no one told me about most of this stuff, including my own mother who just DOESN'T REMEMBER what happened to her and now I completely understand why. And because I also have a connective tissue disease, I used to just dismiss my pain and fatigue as being caused by that illness rather than the loss of hormones.
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Anyways, this is why we need Elders in our lives, so they can do Grandma Story Hour like I just did and validate you when the entire medical field tries to gaslight you. I hope you've found some or all of this educational/useful. Please share with your friends because we really do NOT talk about this stuff enough. (Ewwww Moon Blood!)
Stay well, and don't let the bastards grind you down!
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biancadoes1 · 2 days ago
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I am so hyped for Luke! I love sci-fi thrillers and I have a good feeling this is only the beginning of his new projects. That being said I find it REALLY strange how much attention the fandom gives adjacent social media but then flat out ignores VERY interesting Luke and Nicola activities. Like Luke liking that guiness merch post despite NOT following the account but Nicola was tagged in the comments by her friend Jack; she didn’t even like the post if I’m correct or at least hadn’t at the time Luke liked it 🥹. Then we have Luke reposting Netflix insta of Colin meme but the one RIGHT before Wordle In Two (a direct Nicola reference from her Emmys night) and despite he wasn’t tagged in it either. The October 3rd Mean Girls Polin meme which was something Lukola used to do together on twitter. The BRB at the airport and then Nicola posting being on a plane shortly after when BOTH Nicola and Luke have not posted about traveling while at the airport itself. That one I feel like was HUGE and feels way more than a bit coincidental. The “people really want me to marry Luke” TIME magazine article. Oh and I’m sorry almost FORGOT the part where Nicola was announced for an audiobook about two Costars leads who characters are together in a period drama and then end up falling IN LOVE in real life! Like all of these things when you look at them are pointing in a certain direction of Lukola being together but somehow there’s just more weight put on other things that aren’t from Luke and Nicola? Not to also mention Nicola making an effort to scrub her tags associating her and JD as romantic partners. Yeah I mean we’re all speculating of course but just seems so weird to me that any Lukola positive signs get swept under the rug but the tiniest adjacent post is analyzed with a microscope lol. That being said I love your blog and appreciate you highlighting the actual people involved in the Lukola ship; Luke and Nicola lol.
Literally any thing pertaining to Luke and Nicola either together or separate is just tossed out the window the moment certain people show they're online.
It's mad annoying. It needs to stop.
Also, thank you anon for your kind words. I truly appreciate it 😊
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kathlare · 3 days ago
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sunsets & sparks
Lando Norris x Amelie Dayman
Summary: In the vibrant setting of Ibiza, Amelie and Lando escape the routine for a week of sunshine, laughter, and nightlife. Amidst a sea of music and lights, their chemistry remains undeniable, as they balance carefree revelry with the deep connection they share. The chapter captures their playful moments, heartfelt exchanges, and Lando’s unwavering care for Amelie, especially as the evening takes a tipsy turn.
Wordcount: 2.1 k
Warnings: fluff, smau, kinda suggestive content
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August 4th, 2024 - Ibiza, Spain
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liked by paddockprincess, callumdayman, and others
f1gossipdaily: Lando Norris and Amelie Dayman were spotted living it up in Ibiza with friends, looking extra close and VERY touchy-feely! 😏👀 Some partygoers even said Amelie looked a little tipsy, but honestly, who can blame her with Lando looking like that? 😜👑
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f1stan69: Lando playing chauffeur tonight, huh? 😂 → drsdiva: @f1stan69 Bro, he’s got no choice when queenie’s tipsy 💅
paddockprincess: Amelie drunk in Ibiza? ICONIC behavior. 🍹✨
amelie4pres: drunk AND touchy? Oh, the ‘shipper agenda is THRIVING today. 👏🔥
drunkgpqueen: Someone get Lando a medal for being the ultimate drunk girlfriend wrangler. 🏅 → brakebias69: @drunkgpqueen Nah, he loves it. Boy’s whipped. 😏
f1lover44: Not Amelie out there living my dream with my man 😩💔
sunshine_lando: Can’t lie, I’d be touchy too if I had that. 🤷‍♀️ → mclovinit: @sunshine_lando SAME, girl. No shame in the game.
gridgirlzz: Lando out here looking like he won more than just trophies this year. 😏🏆 → f1fangirl87: @gridgirlzz Honestly, Amelie IS the trophy. Period. 👏
ameliebae: Touchy? Drunk? ICON. She’s just living her best WAG life. 🍹💃 → landofan12: @ameliebae Honestly, let her slay.
paddocktalks: Lando’s PR team sweating while Amelie’s out here unbothered. 🤣💅
f1spicytea: Lando def on babysitting duty but also LOVING it 🥴💕 → ibizagossip24: @f1spicytea Babysitting or just marking his territory? 👀
turnonequeen: Ibiza Lando hits different…
f1gossipqueen: Lando’s got his hands FULL. 😏 → f1fanatic69: @f1gossipqueen Literally. Boy is gripping for his life! 😂
landogirlies: Is it bad that I’m jealous of BOTH of them? 😭 → wagwannabe69: @landogirlies Nope. Same boat, babe. 🛶
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The moment their plane touched down in Ibiza, the excitement was palpable. After a cozy weekend back in Monaco, where they’d curled up in bed, binge-watching old movies and sipping wine, Amelie and Lando were ready for a different kind of atmosphere. The Ibiza sun was already scorching as they stepped off the plane, but there was a sense of exhilaration in the air.
The group piled into a series of cars and headed straight to their Airbnb—a massive villa with panoramic views of the sparkling Mediterranean. It had everything they needed: an infinity pool, an outdoor terrace, and more space than they could ever in this two days. The villa was made for moments like these.
Lando and Amelie, as always, gravitated toward each other. Their flirtations had become second nature, and this trip wasn’t going to be any different. As everyone got settled in and the sun started to set, the group got ready to head out for the night. The clubbing scene in Ibiza was legendary, and tonight, they planned to hit one of the most exclusive spots.
Amelie stood in front of the mirror in their room, running her fingers through her hair. Lando leaned against the doorframe, eyes wandering over her in that familiar way that made her heart skip a beat.
—You look stunning, babe,— he said, his voice low, sending a thrill through her.
—Of course I do,— she replied with a wink. —Now, if you could just stop staring at me, I might actually be able to finish getting ready.—
Lando smirked, pushing off from the door. —Never gonna happen, love. You’re too damn hot for me to look away.—
She chuckled, rolling her eyes. —Alright, alright, let’s go before you turn me into a blushing mess.—
Their friends were already in the main living area, ready to head out. The group made their way to one of Ibiza’s iconic nightclubs, where the bass pounded in the air and the lights flashed in sync with the rhythm. As they entered, the energy was infectious, and Amelie and Lando wasted no time hitting the dance floor.
Their chemistry was undeniable, as always. With every song that played, they got closer, the flirtation growing heavier, their touches more intimate. Lando’s hands found their way to her waist, his fingers lightly grazing the skin of her lower back. Amelie responded in kind, her hands trailing over his shoulders, drawing him closer as they swayed to the beat.
Max, Pietra, and the rest of their friends exchanged knowing glances, the teasing familiar and comfortable now. —Is it possible to get through one night without these two getting all touchy-feely?— Max joked, grinning.
—Not a chance,— Keegan added, laughing as he took a swig of his drink.
As the night wore on, the drinks flowed freely, and the group’s energy only intensified. Amelie, always a little more carefree when she had a few drinks in her, was no exception. She and Lando danced and laughed, their bodies moving together in sync, completely lost in the music and each other. Her giggles filled the air as Lando leaned in close, whispering something in her ear that made her laugh even harder.
Amelie’s laughter was infectious, her tipsy energy making her even more playful. Lando couldn’t help but grin at her antics, her eyes sparkling with mischief. He loved when she was like this—free-spirited, carefree, and radiating happiness. It made her even more irresistible.
—God, you’re so cute when you’re drunk,— he murmured, his lips brushing against her ear.
—Shut up,— she teased back, her words slightly slurred. —I’m just… having fun. I deserve this, right?—
He chuckled, pulling her even closer. —Of course you do. You deserve the world, Ames.—
They continued to dance, the crowd moving around them, but it felt like it was just the two of them. The bass thumped in the background, but Lando’s focus was entirely on her—her laughter, her touch, the way she fit perfectly against him. But as the night wore on, Amelie’s steps started to get wobbly. She wasn’t as steady on her feet anymore, and Lando noticed it immediately.
—Whoa, hey, hey— he said, his hands finding her arms to steady her. —You okay?—
Amelie blinked up at him, her expression a mixture of confusion and giggles. —I’m fine… just a little dizzy. Maybe a lot dizzy, actually. But I’m still standing!—
Lando smirked, helping her stand upright as he wrapped an arm around her waist. —I think it’s time we get you back to the villa before you end up face-first on the dance floor.—
—Fine, fine, I’m ready to go anyway. I want to see my boyfriend in private, not surrounded by all these people,— she slurred, giving him a playful shove.
Lando laughed, knowing she wasn’t exactly making sense but loving her more for it. —Alright, love, let’s get you out of here.—
The group had already noticed that things were getting a little too wild for Amelie. Max and Pietra exchanged amused glances, while Alex and Rozzi seemed to share an unspoken agreement to stay back and let the couple do their thing.
As they walked out of the club, Lando guided Amelie through the crowd, his arm securely around her. The cool night air hit her face, and she sighed, the sound almost content.
Lando helped Amelie into the car, her tipsy giggles making the drive back to the villa feel like an adventure of its own. Her hand found his, and she gave it a lazy squeeze, her head lolling to the side as she rested it on the window.
—God, I’m so drunk,— she admitted with a small laugh, her voice soft. —This is what happens when you get me to dance. I forget how to walk.—
Lando chuckled, gently running his thumb over her knuckles. —You’re adorable when you’re like this. You really have no filter, huh?—
Amelie gave a goofy grin. —Nope, no filter. Who needs one when I’ve got the world’s best boyfriend to make everything better?— She leaned in closer, pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek. —I love you so much, Lando.—
His heart skipped, a warmth spreading through him at the sincerity in her voice. —I love you too, Ames. You know that. No one makes me smile like you do.—
When they finally made it back to the villa, Lando helped Amelie out of the car, his arm around her waist as she leaned on him a little more than usual. Her steps were unsteady, and though she was laughing, there was a certain softness to the way she moved.
As they entered the villa, the cool air from the infinity pool brushed against their skin, the faint sound of waves lapping at the shore in the distance. The house was quiet, everyone else were still at the club, leaving Lando and Amelie with a rare moment of calm.
Inside the villa, Amelie stumbled a little as Lando guided her through the door, her tipsy giggles echoing through the hallway. The space was dimly lit, the soft glow of the lights adding to the calm atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the wild energy of the night.
—You good?— he asked, his voice laced with a hint of concern, though he couldn’t hide the affection in his tone.
—Yeah, I’m good,— she mumbled, her eyes glassy but full of love. She leaned in a little too close, pressing her lips to his neck in a soft, lingering kiss. —You’re so handsome, you know that?—
Lando chuckled, shifting a little under the warmth of her touch. —I think you’ve had enough of that drink, love. Maybe time to call it a night?—
Amelie swayed slightly, her hand finding his chest, as if steadying herself. She looked at him with a playful smile, a mischievous gleam in her eyes despite the alcohol.
—What if I don’t want to call it a night?— she teased, her fingers tracing the neckline of his shirt, sending a shiver down his spine.
Lando gently took her hands, guiding them away from his chest. —Ames, you’re drunk. I’m not doing anything until you’re sober. Come on, let’s get you settled in. You need water, not more flirting. You’re making it hard for me to resist you right now.—
Her smile faltered slightly, her lips pouting as she let out a small, playful whine. —But I want you, Lando. I really do. Don’t you want me?—
His heart thudded in his chest at the sincerity behind her words, but he knew she wasn’t in her right mind. Gently, he cupped her face, tilting her head up to look at him.
—Babe, I want you all the time, but I want you to be sober and clear-headed when that happens. Not like this.—
Amelie let out a soft, frustrated sigh, her fingers trailing down his arm, almost like she couldn’t help herself. —You’re so good to me. So damn good to me, Lando.— She paused, her face softening, eyes fluttering closed for a moment before opening again. —I just love you so much.—
Lando’s heart melted at her words. He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. —I love you more than you’ll ever know, Ames. And I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe with me, always.—
Amelie leaned into him, her head resting against his chest as she let out a contented sigh. Despite the drunken haze, there was a calmness about her that made him feel like the luckiest guy in the world.
They stood there for a moment, the quiet of the villa wrapping around them like a comforting blanket. Lando brushed a strand of hair from her face, smiling down at her as she slowly started to calm down, her breath evening out.
He leaned down, his lips brushing against her forehead in a tender kiss. —You're alright, Ames. I’ve got you, love. Just breathe, okay?—
She nodded slightly, the tipsy haze still lingering in her eyes, but there was something deeper there, something more grounded. She shifted in his arms, tilting her head up to meet his gaze.
Amelie’s heart fluttered at his words. She pressed a kiss to his chest before resting her head back on him. —God, I’m so lucky to have you.—
Lando gently lifted her chin so she was looking at him again. He smiled warmly, his eyes full of affection. —And I’m the lucky one, Ames. Don’t ever forget that.—
She smiled back, her eyes starting to close as the alcohol finally started to take its toll. As much as she wanted to stay awake, the warmth of his embrace was just too comforting.
—Promise me we’ll never stop doing this... just being us...— she whispered, already drifting off.
Lando’s heart swelled at her words. He pressed another soft kiss to her forehead. —I promise, love. We’re in this forever.—
As Amelie fell asleep in his arms, her breathing soft and steady, Lando sat on the edge of the couch, her head resting against him. He watched her for a moment, his mind full of love and appreciation. No matter how chaotic the world around them could get, moments like this—quiet, intimate, and full of love—were everything he ever wanted. And with her, he had it all.
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liked by thisisrozzi, alexandrasaintmleux, and others
ameliedayman: comment if u own a mega yacht
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landonorris: FIRST
landonorris: MEEE, I own a mega yacht... → ameliedayman: @landonorris Oh baby, I know you have one 😘
landonorris: Only thing bigger than my yacht is how much I’m obsessed with you 😏🔥
fan_88: Are you two ever not together? 😅
pietrapilao: Damn, those vacation vibes are NEXT LEVEL 😩 → ameliedayman: @pietrapilao Only the best for us, babe!
thisisrozzi: Stop making the rest of us look bad. How’s this even possible? 😩 → ameliedayman: @thisisrozzi GIRL LOOK AT YOU!!!
f1_wag69: Hotter than the sun. Literally. 😎🔥
fan_707: Okay, this is cute... but can we talk about how hot she looks? 🔥💯
alexandrasaintmleux: That beach glow is everything 😍 → ameliedayman: @alexandrasaintmleux love and miss you my girl!!
f1_wags_4ever: I see a lot of tension in these photos... 👀
f1fansupporter: I guess Lando is just a beach boy now. 😏
minniemills: @landonorris bro, can you fight? → landonorris: @minniemills YES I CAN
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tsartistry · 1 day ago
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So there is a character in Niobe Fic that I have not really mentioned at all, and I don't think any of you care, but I care and I wanna talk about Elmer. I think he's neat. I will be honest upfront, this is me indulging in one of my favorite friendship tropes:
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Small Precocious Child and the Big Beefy Bodyguards who will protect them at all costs.
More than anything, Niobe needs to make sure no demigods get anywhere near Lester, so she hires monsters as security around her home/business. After all, monsters can smell demigods from miles away. She pays them handsomely, and includes very delicious and filling meals as part of their compensation so they won't be compelled to wander away and hunt for food.
Periodically throughout the Riordanverse we get glimpses of the monsters having an entire underground society (Monster Donut, the serpent on the train in TON, etc.) It seems like the majority of them want nothing to do with Demigod Bullshit and just want to live normal lives. So I think Niobe had no shortage of Monster Applicants wanting a Normal(ish) Job that pays Actual Wages instead of whatever Kronos was paying them (if he was paying them at all.)
Elmer is a Manticore that Niobe hired to be Lester's personal bodyguard. He has one job: If he smells any demigods, get Lester out of there.
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Of course, Elmer has no means of sniffing out any other kinds of special children. So when Lester starts hanging out with Carter and Sadie, Elmer is just like "Well, the kid does look pretty lonely. He should have some normal human friends. As a treat."
Lester, being a mortal who doesn't remember anything about Greco-Roman myths being real, doesn't see Elmer for what he is. Which makes things very awkward for Sadie, who can see his true form almost immediately.
But Elmer seems pretty fond of Lester, and pretty chill in general so... maybe he's not dangerous? But there's definitely something WEIRD about Lester's life that she wants to figure out.
(and for those just joining us, Lester has a service dog because the process Niobe used to erase his memories gave him literal brain damage, so now he has a seizure alert dog)
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maoam · 2 days ago
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Just a reminder but the infamous "kishi is japanese so he can't know or write about homosexuality" sasuke stan we all know isn't white, so it's pointless to blame white people (I have seen this in the tags) about the mentality that homosexuality is some capitalist post-modern western disease or whatever some people call it. I think it's also avoiding responsibility.
This notion is actually pretty common in some places, I have seen couple documentaries where muslim men say the west is degenerate because of feminism and homosexuality lol. When that Netflix Alexander the Great flick came out and it had *gasp* gayness in it, I saw black and arab men on twitter commenting stuff like "lol white men have always been f*ggots". When two male lions were spotted having gay sex in Kenya, a Kenyan official insisted they needed to be separated and insisted that they must had been seeing western gay men having sex and "learned" from them. 💀
I know it's tempting to consider one's own race to be clean from bigotry but it's not the reality at all lol. Homosexuality has always been a controversial topic everywhere, sometimes illegal and even during times when it was legal it was very much preferred that they also get married and have kids, and often times it was only okay when one was young, or in very specific circumstances. A lot of these "x place was super gay friendly back then" articles are also misinformed, and naturally they only focus on male homosexuality because no one cared about lesbians, women were expected to give birth and take care of kids even in those supposedly super gay friendly places, period.
I'd say it's pretty obvious the main reasons homosexuality has been seen as a threat are (there are probably more):
Gay sex can't be used for breeding
Men see sex as something degrading they do to women, and thus the idea of a man doing this to another man is repulsive (or funny, even a lot of openminded men find gay "funny" and you can think to yourself why)
Women who don't have sex with, date or marry men are threat to patriarchy
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mac-ann-cheese · 2 days ago
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Again with fur coats
I'm sorry for irregular posting, I've been snowed under with my uni work lately ( Ó⁠╭⁠╮⁠Ò )
Nevertheless I'm always grateful for your support!!!!! ( ⁠^⁠ω⁠^)
Under the cut lots of thoughts on current manga arc (I've got no one to talk about it,...)
I like to imagine that in gangsta au they still use flip phones. But it got me thinking about how that universe works,... Are there any transnational corporations? Is history in general the same just with criminal elements?? Like there should be some sort of grand gang bang I and II if the United Districts organization exists (the analogy to the UN, of course). And the Big five is just the security council.
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Moreover, in the same strip, the fall of the USSR is brought up as the permanent members of UD discuss whatever they should keep or kick out newly formed Russia (or district 7. It's cute that they call each other after the first number of the nation's phone code. One thing bothers me with this fact. What were the districts called before the invention of telephones? Countries received permanent telephone codes only in the mid-20th century. Or in terms of au the actual number of the district isn't connected with phones and just a number?? Another bit of useless info: Kazakhstan also uses +7; will they be [I doubt that they would make an appearance in au, but let me DREAM!!!] also a part of the whole district 7 like NA bros with district 1???). Buttttt I was talking from the perspective of our history being pulled over on the lore of gangstatalia, cause we don't have those events described in canon, which IS interesting!!!!!
Also, the sputnik was mentioned, which means the whole cold war (or at least the space race period) had happened... Um. Do districts own nuclear weapons? It's just a theory. a MANGA theory!
Considering in that the characters aren't probably immortal anymore (well, I can make that conclusion only from the panel with young Alfred literally saying, "oh so you're the representative of the 86th district? I'm the new representative of the 1!", it means... that there was someone before him ruling the district.............), the timeline of parallel events shortens.
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Therefore, the events are closely packed together; there aren't gaps of decades between them, but more likely a couple of years.
How does this world work? Judging from the map, the districts are on a Pangaea-like continent. Or are they districts of some bigger country...?
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Is there a ruler over all districts? Who is it then? Flying mint bunny? Tony? GRANPA RO-
Was there always the gangster's paradise in the regions, or was the government more authoritarian before??????? WHY IS CRIME THE NORM? Why did they decide to regulate everything with the help of playing cards?
And lastly. The electric collars. How? How did the idea even cross Alfred's mind? If I'm not mistaken he is, well, not the creater, but the person who suggested wearing them. "Let's fry our brains to crispy nuggets!!!" Haha. Fun.
And others in the big five agreed to it. Like that isn't totally bucknutty. Not at all. Electric chairs would be much better...
Oof my head hurts just thinking of it
Maybe I'm not the first one to ask these kinds of questions, but still. I need answers.
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rafyki · 1 day ago
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Episode 11 really showed Jack's growth
Okay, I know what you're gonna say: "but he lashed out at Joke! He threw him away again! He got so angry!". And like- yes he lashed out, yes he didn't stop to think, yes he got extremely angry. But that literally happened in the first ten minutes of the episode, alright? There's more than a hour after that, so please let's focus on everything else that happened too, and the fact that Jack acting like that literally only lasts for a short while (as I already said, everything happens extremely fast in this episode, if you really think about it he only stays made for less than a day, which is a perfectly valid period of time to need to sort through complicated feelings - hell, it's an incredibly short time, Jack got over himself extremely quickly).
Anyway, lemme go in order, because I'm not just talking about his relationship with Joke here, but about everything else too.
There are two main things about Jack's character arc (well, more than two, but I wanna focus on these ones now): first, his tendency to hold grudges and be hard on forgiveness and, second, the fact that he never stands up to power and powerful people in an active way (I'll explain better what I mean later).
As for the first, I made a whole other post about it, so I'm not gonna repeat everything again, but let's see how in this episode he got to the end of his growth in this aspect.
He's extremely mad at the start of the episode (rightfully so), so much that he goes on a rampage (we love to see it, tbh), even though he should know that it wouldn't end well.
When he wakes up, he's still mad - of course he is, he didn't have time to think and process everything yet, given that he was beaten unconscious until now. He gets mad at Grandma when she mentions Joke, and then he lashes out at Save and Hope. It's understandable.
But then? Then it only takes Hope saying this for him to calm down and put things into perspective
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I think it's important to point out that here it's only been maybe a few hours since the hospital scene. And here, Jack finally has time to think.
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This it when he finally stops and thinks and realizes that he was wrong, that he didn't have any right to be mad at Save or Hope (or, well, he does, but how should also be able to understand their positions, because he's been there too), because they're all in the same situation in the end; and he realizes that Joke only did what he did for him. This is the moment when he finally has time to think and realize he was wrong (both about Save and about Joke), realize that he doesn't want to lose Joke, that he misses him.
Let's not forget that the start of Jack's character growth was to learn to forgive. And here, he shows that he's finally able to do this.
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He works together with Save and Hope, he trusts them. Why didn't he call Joke to join them then? Well, I think he probably wanted things to calm down first so that after that he would have the time to actually talk to Joke. He didn't have the time to do that in the end, and that's the tragic thing.
But we know that's what he planned to do, because that's exaclty what he says.
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Anyway, let's move on or this will become way too long lmao
It's not only in terms of learning to forgive that Jack grew. It's also in the way he finally decides to actively act to oppose Boss.
I mean, Jack was caught in Boss' web of power since he was young, and he's had to deal with the fact that he couldn't escape it, couldn't defeat it, for years. And so, he always submitted to Boss, in a way.
Yes, when he was a debt collector he went against him, in secret (and sacrificing himself and his own money), until Boss found out and Jack had to bow his head againt before him. When Gradma was in the hospital, he let himself in Boss' grasp again and even when Joke and Grandma slapped some sense into him his way to oppose Boss was to simply tell him he didn't want to marry Rose anymore, but was still willing to work for him; now, we know that that only worked because Joke had stolen the ring. What would have happened if Joke hadn't done that? Boss would have refused, of course, and Jack would have had bowed his head again.
Until now, Jack's actions were often passive, a result of him having no choice. Even when he played the ladder game against Lompran, that wasn't a real choice.
Not now, though. In this episode, Jack finally realizes that he can't keep doing it, that he needs to fight back for real. And this is the first time that Jack realizes that he can't always do the morally correct thing if he wants to defeat people like Boss.
Jack has always had really solid morals, and he's always lived by the fact that he needs to be better - better than the corrupted people in power who use them and look down on them. And that means he can't accept theft as a valid way to fix things, even if it would be justifiable and it would make things easier. But he can't do that, because that would mean that he's just as bad as them. Poor people are always expected to do the right thing.
Until now. Because now Jack has finally realized that he can't play it fair against people like them, he understood how that world works, and he realized that he needs to play following their game's rules.
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He's learned the power game's rules and he's ready to play.
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And that's what he does. He's able to take advantage of Lompran's greed and use it for his own ends, and he's not afraid of risking his own or Save's life - because he knows at this point that they can't play it safe anymore.
He played the game but he also kept his morals, because he still didn't do it for himself; he played their game but he's still better than them
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Jack has mostly been a passive force until now, but in this episode he's finally the active force - he's the one with the plan, the one who takes the lead. (Joke, on the other had, has always been the active force of the show, and in this episode he's the passive one, but I'll make another post about this another day)
And I think this will be obvious in next episode too, when he'll (finally!) get a gun and do everything that's needed to save Joke and everyone else from Boss.
And he finally understood that the world isn't black and white and that sometime you need to do something "bad" to fight back, both for youself and for others. And that that doesn't mean you're a bad person.
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infiniteglitterfall · 2 days ago
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Okay, EVERYONE, listen.
This feels like roughly the one hundredth time that I've seen someone on this earth complain about the antisemitism on Wikipedia. And I need us all to understand just one thing:
WE ARE WIKIPEDIA!!!!!!!!
Every single one of us has just as much power to edit that freaking page and put in the information from the Holocaust Encyclopedia as whoever fucked it up did.
You don't even need to make a Wikipedia account.
(But it's easier to keep track of what you change, and discuss changes with people, if you do.)
You can add anything you can back up with a citation.
(You can, in fact, also add things you CAN'T back up with a citation. As I'm sure we've all noticed. And I might as well point out here that you can ALSO add things you can't back up, and put in citations that DO NOT BACK UP WHAT YOU SAID.
You shouldn't. And hopefully, people like me will notice and change it. But you CAN.
My point here is actually that when you're doing research about something important and complicated, you should always click through to see what the source cited really says.
Because frequently, someone will be wrong about either what they're writing, or whether their source backs it up. This happens in academic papers too. Critical thinking is hard.)
You write whatever you want. You type the period. Then you type in your citation.
Under the cut, I'll show you how. It's really easy. Or you can use Wikipedia's guide!
It even lets you preview your changes before you finish, so you know if you're making a mess.
And there's a place where you can briefly explain why you're editing it. Like "adding details about Nazi connections," or "correcting punctuation."
And yes. Not all of us can edit every article on Wikipedia; "controversial" topics are frequently locked so that only "extended-confirmed" editors can change them. (Which just means "people who are logged in and have made at least 500 edits.")
But you can join in the discussions on those articles.
And on Wikipedia, "they're too Zionist!" is not an acceptable argument.
Sometimes people "watch" an article to get notified when it changes. (You can do this too!)
Sometimes they do that so they can revert the exact kind of change you're there to make.
But they have to put in a reason for reverting it. Which means you can also change it back, argue them out of it, or make changes to make it work. (example under the cut!)
The way you add a citation/reference looks like html gibberish salad. But it basically goes:
put in a tag that says "ref," so it automatically gets added to the list of references cited at the bottom of the Wikipedia page;
put in "cite" and what you're citing, like a book, a video, a website, a journal. Getting the type right doesn't really seem to be a big deal. In this case, you want to put "web."
And then there are a fuckton of different things you can add, which get separated by pipes. Pipes are that long vertical line that's probably above your enter key: |
You need the URL. That's... kind of all you need.
pro tip: going back in to add more details to the citation later counts as more edits!
Even though you only NEEEEED the URL, it's really good to add other details like the title of the page (if there is one), the publisher (Holocaust Encyclopedia), the day you looked at it (because websites can change over time), and it's especially nice to go dig up an archived version of the site and the date of the archive. Because links break.
oh yeah and my favorite thing to add: a quote from your source, so that people don't have to click through to verify what it says! this can be a great way to add more information that seems too long for the Wikipedia article.
So, broken up with lots of space for easier reading, it looks like this. We'll pretend we're doing one on Heinrich Himmler, because I have no idea who anon was looking at:
<ref> {{cite web | url = https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/heinrich-himmler | access-date = November 19, 2024}} </ref>
That's a very short "I just found this url, today" version. Here's a more thorough citation:
<ref>{{cite web | url = https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/heinrich-himmler | access-date = November 19, 2024 | publisher = Holocaust Encyclopedia | title = Heinrich Himmler | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20241008214021/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/heinrich-himmler | archive-date = October 8, 2024 | quote = As Reichsführer SS, Himmler received authority directly from Hitler to carry out ideological policies that the laws of the state might not permit. This ideologically rooted “Führer authority” enabled authorization of indefinite incarceration and mass murder.}}</ref>
I bet someone out there even knows of a website where you can paste in the url you're citing, and get all that code automatically generated for you.
Oh - here's my example of getting into a silly debate about something that should be cut and dried, and changing shit to make it work!
I came across the page for GUPS, the General Union of Palestinian Students. It made the ludicrous statement that the group OFFICIALLY started in the 1950s, but had been around since the 1920s.
I was like: ok, there's no place that says this other than their cited source, a now-gone website for the San Francisco State University chapter of GUPS. There were no universities in Palestine in the 1920s. This is clearly not true.
I took that part out. Someone REVERTED IT, and told me that all I'd proven was that it wasn't logical, not that the citation was wrong!
We argued back and forth a bit. I ended up finding a fuckton of Arabic-language sources with more information, and showing that none of them talked about it starting in the 1920s. This person said, "no, that source says it started in the 1950s, and evolved from this other group that started in the same Egyptian university, which had started in the 1920s! It never said that it had started in PALESTINE in the '20s!"
I haven't even dealt with that one yet lmao. Normally, I would probably just demand a source that showed the original group had started in the 1920s, and then maybe change it to like "it evolved from this other non-palestinian student group that started in 192X."
But the thing is... while I was doing all this digging, I found soooo much information about how GUPS was connected to the PLO. How it had become a part of the PLO when the PLO was an active terrorist organization. All kinds of crap.
And you can fucking bet that all of it is going into the article.
This thing is going to end up being a detailed piece about every terrible thing GUPS and the PLO have ever done.
It's going to be beautiful. And nobody will ever be able to argue that any of it is incorrect. It will go from "this is a normal club that goes sooo far back, it's considered the first Palestinian group ever" to "this is a normal terrorist club that was rooted in the movement to terrorize Jews, like in the 30s when X happened, like in the late 30s when Y happened, like this series of PLO massacres in this decade, like--"
went to wikipedia to fact check somethings about a guy from ww2 era history and it had been edited beyond belief to erase this person's connections with nazi germany. the second google result is the holocaust encyclopedia page all about his horrible crimes in the nazi regime. but on wikipeida, his description is vague and mild and barely mentions it. it's so worrying. I hate it. what happens when gen z only reads wikipedia pages and denounces any sources that are "too zionist" like a holocaust museum's encyclopedia? thank g-d for jewish historians, what would we do without them, but i'm so so scared that our history is going to be rewritten because no one will listen to us on our own history.
.
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dreamsofbroflovski · 2 days ago
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Gunslinger!Kyle Broflovski x Reader - lovin' what your lovin' does to me
Also available on ao3!
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Summary: You and your partner, Kyle Broflovski, are both gunslingers, roaming the United States on horseback looking for fights to pick and bounties to collect. But when the promise of a better life becomes clearer on your horizon, can you really go for it, change everything you know and take roots for the first time in your life? You find out in the best way possible.
Warnings: Wild West AU, Explicit Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Cunnilingus, Vaginal Fingering, Mating Press, Breeding, Impregnation, Mentions of Pregnancy, Period-Typical Sexism
A/N: There it is. My however-many-thousand-words-long tribute to one of my favourite gingers.
Fun fact, I'm actually as childfree as they go. Got a whole list in my brain of reasons why I really shouldn't have kids. However, if a certain ginger jew from Jersey knocked at my door asking me to be the mother of his babies, I'd just ask "how many?" and get right to fucking work on that.
If some parts of it sound weird, I really did write this instead of sleeping because I wanted it up ASAP and it's crazy.
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“Look alive, my dear. We’ve arrived.”
I was jolted out of my thoughts by the gentle voice of my partner.
It was nearing the middle of summer and I was really feeling the dog days. The sun showed me no mercy as it tried to set ablaze what little skin I had showing to the world, which was basically just my unprotected arms. I had been on horseback since dawn without even mentioning a break, and hadn’t exactly considered that the weather at 4am, before sunrise, might’ve been slightly different from what I was currently experiencing now that the sun was at its peak in the sky.
I guess the only salvation when it came to my foolishness was that I wasn’t alone in it. As I turned to the man at my side, matching my horse’s slow speed on his own mount, I saw him wipe some sweat off of his face with the green bandana he kept tied to his neck - being tortured by the heat even more than me, inside of his heavy leather coat.
My partner. My lover, Kyle Broflovski. Notorious gun-for-hire, same as I. We had met many years ago, when he and I were both just seventeen - but life had already taken its toll on the both of us, leaving nothing except two jaded young adults with very little to lose. By then we were already gunslingers, I was here and there committing petty thefts while he worked as a watchman for some merchant in the region. I took his side in a saloon fight that turned into a huge shootout - not proud to say a huge part of its escalation was his fault, but well, at least we won - and the thrill of going through a life-or-death situation together might’ve created a bond between us right at that moment, because from then on we rarely left each other’s side.
We started out merely as colleagues, but feelings quickly grew, and how wouldn’t they? He was handsome, intelligent, kind, honorable and great in bed. Everything a woman would want, if she ignored the ‘outlaw’ part, which I wouldn’t and didn’t even want to. Now, eight or nine years later, we still roamed this godforsaken country together - making money by offering protection services to basically anyone who needed bodyguards or an extra pair of shooters defending their property, and also by tracking wanted criminals and delivering their filthy bodies to the law enforcers looking for them; sometimes living, sometimes dead. Sometimes it felt like he kind of preferred it as the latter.
But as he looked back at me and I allowed myself to get lost in his shining eyes and jovial smile, it dawned on me that, at least for now, that was gone. We were on vacation, so to speak. For the last couple of weeks we had been on the road almost non-stop, all so that we could make it to our destination as quickly as possible. 
Today’s leg of the trip had been rather quiet, save for the occasional snorting of one of our horses, but I liked it that way. After so many years with Kyle, I had come to enjoy even those moments of silence: we talked so much every single day, but even when we didn’t say anything I still felt comfort in just being by his side.
Plus, it had been the first time in a while that we managed to just not have to say anything. For the last year or so, we hadn’t been running by ourselves, instead making use of the connection and safety of a small group with other outlaws. Life with them was decent - we didn’t exactly love each other or keep any type of code, but we’d help wherever we could to make sure everyone’s lives were running smoothly. But it was very clear that my true loyalty was only to Kyle, and his to me. 
So, when about nine months in he started to become visibly bothered and complain more, unhappy about having to set up shelter right next to people he didn’t exactly trust, we started planning our exit. We were used to it just being the two of us anyway, so there were no worries, we just had to plan the exit in a way that wouldn’t create a fuss. The opportunity came in the best way possible - a few weeks after our first talk of leaving, Kyle picked up at the post office a letter from his best friend, Stan Marsh, inviting us to go to his farm just one or two states away for a few days' stay. We left camp at night, after everyone was already asleep, and set out on this trip to meet up with the people we were most likely to actually consider family.
Kyle and Stan had known each other since before even being born, one could say. Randy Marsh and Gerald Broflovski were very close friends as children, though they followed very different paths in life: while my partner’s father took to the books and became a lawyer, the Marsh patriarch bought a plot of land not too far from the small mountain town where they lived and built a small but sturdy farm, which expanded over the years and made decent money. It was called Tegridy - apparently, it was supposed to be “Integrity”, a word Mr. Broflovski taught Mr. Marsh, but the latter didn’t really know how to write it; and, by the time he finally learned, it was already too late and the whole region already knew it by the wrong name, so it stuck.
And that’s how Kyle and Stan grew up: kept close as can be from the very start. Mr. Broflovski would take his family to the farmstead whenever he found a little free time and the boys spent their afternoons playing in the open fields, fishing in the stream nearby and helping Mr. Marsh with tasks around the farm once they became old enough. They saw each other turn from dim-witted boys to respectable young men, and the world seemed infinite for them, bright-eyed adolescents who could experience all the great things life had to offer without shouldering any of its burdens.
Unfortunately, just a few weeks before Kyle turned sixteen, his whole family was taken from him in a violent gang attack, caught in an ambush on the wagon they were riding while coming back from a trip, stripped of every valuable they had on hand and then shot dead. My partner wasn���t present at the time of the crime, so he was spared - something that he struggled with the guilt of for many years, and that was his primary motivation for becoming a vigilante: going after criminals just like those who wronged his family, to take them to justice and, more importantly, making sure their sentences were served. 
When Kyle showed up at Stan’s doorstep for what would be his last conversation as a man without blood in his hands, it took a lot of arguing and convincing from Kyle for his friend to not immediately pack his bags, saddle up and ride alongside him. Stan eventually relented, settled for receiving Kyle’s letters and some rare visits, took over the farm and married a lovely young woman named Wendy Testaburger.
A lovely young woman who, turns out, hated Kyle and I’s guts fiercely. She came from a well-off household and left a comfortable life to be with Stan, so I guess having a pair of shabby gunslingers as the closest friends of her new family didn’t sit right with how she was raised. It also didn’t help that, every time we were around, Stan would drop everything he was doing and stick to us like a tick to a dog’s fur, asking Kyle non-stop about everything we were up to and making us fill him in on every single chase and shootout and bounty delivered, without leaving any stone unturned. His interest in the life was very noticeable, even if he tried to deny it during the multiple arguments we heard him have with Wendy when they thought we were sleeping. The new Mrs. Marsh was absolutely terrified that our constant presence would have a bigger impact on him the longer we stayed, and that someday our wicked ways would win Stan over and he’d ride off into the sunset with us and make her a widow - or, worse in her mind, a divorcée.
Her worries only waned after a particularly long stretch of time we spent at their place. Kyle had gotten badly injured in a shootout against one of our bounties - and, although my quick thinking managed to stabilize the situation to where he was no longer in danger, we still needed to lay low for a while as he healed, and sleeping on the dirt in tents moving from place to place was not it. So I found ourselves a wagon and showed up unannounced to the Marsh residence with Kyle and all of our belongings loaded on it. 
My guess is seeing the dangers of the job in real time and how precarious our day-to-day life really was had been a wake-up call to Stan, since after that his begging for me and Kyle to retell our epic stories had diminished considerably. With this, Wendy was finally able to rest assured that she’d keep her husband, and she was willing to get to know us better and have actual positive interactions. At least something good came out of that whole mess - to this day, Kyle’s left shoulder didn’t work as good as it used to, and he still felt this overwhelming pain at random times.
That is all to say the four of us had a very strong bond forged through years of experiences together, delights and torments shared - a bond that would never waiver even when Kyle and I were on the other side of the country cleaning up the trash and delivering bounties around the most different jurisdictions. So, when we received that letter with Stan and Wendy scolding us because we hadn’t seen them since before the lady got pregnant with their fourth and urging us to come back to Colorado for she was now on the last leg of that pregnancy, we figured it was the least we could do to pack our stuff and ride to Tegridy Farm to spend a few weeks with the Marsh family, helping wherever they needed to make sure that these last couple of days, or the few right after childbirth, would go as smoothly as possible.
It had been about two or three weeks that we had been on the road now and we were finally at our destination. To my side, the very familiar farm spanned across the land, its decent area determined by some flimsy wooden fences in need of fixing. The structures and inside the boundaries of the fence for the most part didn’t match its state of neglect; the cultivation fields with the seasonal crops were well-kempt, the stables and barn had a regular repair schedule, and the main house - the crown jewel of the property - stood elegant in the middle of it all, always clean and pristine courtesy of Wendy’s presence. The only other thing that might’ve seemed neglected in the farm was but a shadow behind the main building - the old house where Stan had lived during his childhood, which hadn’t been inhabited since his mother died, but that he also didn’t seem to have the courage or time to take down completely. 
As we crossed the wooden gateways and made our way inside the farm, the first member of the Marsh family to notice our arrival was actually their elderly chubby dog, Sparky. Stan originally bought him as a puppy to train so he would protect the animals and the land from intruders, but he quickly realized that this dog was a huge wimp and just wanted to play all day, promptly fleeing whenever he sensed danger. However, everyone had already taken a liking to the tiny fellow by then, so he became Wendy and Stan’s personal companion, sleeping inside of the main house and growing up alongside the kids as their pet. When he saw the outlines of us on top of our mounts riding towards the building, he started barking happily and ran as fast as his legs could take him, making a turn when he got to our horses and matching their pace alongside Kyle’s.
His barking must’ve alerted the other members of the household, since not long after he started, we noticed Stan getting up off his chair on the porch. “And look who’s finally here!” He announced as he walked towards us with open arms and, not long after, we saw Wendy’s smiling face appear in one of the second-story windows, her hand waving excitedly out of it as we approached in our steeds.
“Oh, come on, we didn’t take that long.” Though he had essentially just been scolded, Kyle had a glowing smile on his face. Just this moment made almost all the tiring parts of travel worth it, to see how glad my partner would get to see his brother after so long and realize that nothing had changed. To have those moments of his youth back, even if for just a short stay.
“Almost a whole year, Kyle!” Stan retorted, slapping the side of his friend’s arm with his raised hand. “Wait a little more and you might as well have come for the kid’s wedding by then.”
Our mounts slowed to a stop as we reached the front porch, and we heard the thundering noise of several footsteps bolting down the stairs inside. Before we could even dismount, the smiling faces of Stan’s two eldest children - a boy and a girl - ran towards our horses, shouting excitedly and asking questions too quickly and with too high-pitched voices for me to even begin answering them.
“Easy now, children.” A much more soft and pleasant voice managed to be picked up by my ears among the ruckus, and my eyes darted towards the door immediately. Wendy Marsh stood by the doorway, her current youngest child - just shy of two years, if I had my math right - hiding behind her legs. My best friend had one of her hands resting on top of her belly, bump visible even under the loose-fitting maternity dress she wore, and I felt the guilt strike at me on sight; It had been too long since we last saw these two, she had gone through all those changes to her body and mind across multiple months, while I was off somewhere shooting people. I felt like an awful friend.
And then she did something that reminded me exactly how she was more than capable of handling this situation by herself. “YOU DARNED LITTLE RASCALS! SHUT UP THIS INSTANT AND LET YOUR AUNT AND UNCLE SPEAK!” This bellowing, infuriated version of Wendy’s voice had the kids fixing their postures and closing their mouths in an instant, not even daring to breathe loudly anymore, and they gave us one last glance before sprinting back quickly inside the house. The toddler followed suit, waddling after its siblings as fast as its tiny legs could carry it.
With the coast now clear, Kyle quickly slid off of his horse, in a swift movement that only comes with years of doing that multiple times a day. I stayed on top of mine, however, and right after dismounting Kyle made his way to the side of my steed, raising his arms towards me. I turned my whole body to his side and let Kyle take hold of my waist, lifting me off the saddle and putting me on the ground with ease. I was more than perfectly capable of getting out on my own, I had as much experience with this as he did - but this was something he fancied doing, he wanted to be a gentleman whenever he could and there weren’t many opportunities in our daily life for him to fill that role, so he loved to have that little moment and I learned to appreciate it. Plus, he’d get fussy if I didn’t let him do it, so I humored him every single time.
“C’mon, Wends, no need for that,” I turned to her as my boots hit the dirt, “Stan’s right, it’s been so long. They’re kids, they’re just happy to see us.”
“Well, but they’re not giving you a hug before I do!” And she didn’t have to wait any longer, wrapping her arms tightly around me as soon as Kyle let go of my waist and moved his body out of the way. I hugged her back carefully, trying not to put any pressure on her belly, something that she didn’t seem a lick concerned about but kind of worried me a little bit. I heard my partner’s boots kicking the pebbles beneath its soles as he power walked towards Stan to give him a hug as well - although in their case it was more of a side hug, slapping the palm of their hands against the other’s backs amidst laughter. The type of salute men usually shared, not as tender as the displays of friendship between us women, but just as heartfelt. 
After a minute or two like this, Wendy let go of me and gave me one last warm smile before going over to Kyle and giving him a quick hug, and I took the opportunity to do the same to Stan. Even if we weren’t as close as him and Kyle, he was still like family to me. We didn’t linger on the greeting, though; My best friend could get quite possessive when other women were near her man, even if it was just me, and I wasn’t gonna make that lady angry if I could avoid it. 
I swiftly took my spot next to Kyle again, and Wendy did the same near Stan.  “You’re looking gorgeous, Wends,” I stated with a smile. “Really glowing!”
“(Y/N)’s right. Baby number four, too! Stan, you must be proud!” Kyle stretched his arm out and placed his hand on Stan’s shoulder, shaking him teasingly. Stan just laughed and shoved his friend’s hand away from him, but when he straightened his stance again, his chest seemed a little more out than usual and his chin a little more high up. With his pride visible like this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a rooster, or a peacock with its feathers all spread out.
“Thank you so much, you two. You’re really sweet,” Wendy wrapped her arms around her husband, hugging him from the side, face as happy as could possibly be - but then those smiles turned into a pout. “But don’t think being sweet is going to redeem you! You’ve barely written to us these months! We’ve been worried sick!” 
“Good thing we’re here now to tell you all about what we didn’t write,” Kyle said as he walked back near our steeds. ”Just let me hitch the horses somewhere out of the sun. I won’t be long.”
“No need.” Before we could take action, Stan quickly put two fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly, catching the attention of a nearby farmhand passing through, who stopped in his tracks and beelined to us. It was a young man, couldn’t be older than eighteen, with tanned skin from the hours under the sun, strong arms and a serious expression. “Oi, Milton. Take these horses here, lead them to the stables with the others and give them some water. Ah, and make sure they’re fed, they’ve been hours on the road.”
Milton gave a quick nod and took our horses by the reins, leading them slowly towards a big building to the left of the house. We followed him with our eyes for a couple of seconds, in silence. “Well, anyway, let’s take this conversation inside as well,” Wendy suggested, gesturing with her arm towards the house, her expression softening. “I’m sure y’all don’t want to wait out in this sun any more than the horses did.”
And she was damn right. We excused ourselves in and went through the doorway, sighing in relief as we found ourselves in the shade at last. “No issues on the travel, I assume?” She asked with a smile as Kyle took his hat off and put it in the hanger next to Stan’s.
“Just a tiny quarrel with the sheriff last town back, nothin’ major.” It had actually been a little bit more than that, but we didn’t want to worry our friends. The sheriff, an extremely unpleasant fellow who spent more of his time harassing the local ‘working girls’ than actually doing his job, seemed to have a real problem when people who actually wanted to stop crime came along. So, when we showed up to the town with a local thief tied up on the back of Kyle’s horse - captured in an extremely convenient encounter nearby - the so-called law enforcer decided we were ‘trying to come for his position’ and threw the tantrum of a lifetime looking for any reason to have us arrested. Luckily no guns were drawn, we left as quickly as we arrived, but the stress of the whole situation still stuck to us for a couple miles after that.
“Fuuuuck, I hate that feller. Please tell me you beat his ass.” Though Stan apparently had tried to make his dislike of the sheriff known only to Kyle, he did so in a rather loud tone, which made us all turn to him. “Short fat motherfucker loves to pull on my dick whenever I’m in town for anything. Pisses Wendy off, too. Damn failed abortion is what he is.”
“Language, Stanley!” Wendy chided, glaring at him. We heard a couple of giggles, quickly suppressed, and I turned my face upwards - on the second floor, leaning on the balustrade near the staircase, the children gathered, looking down at us and listening in on our conversation.
Kyle and I could only bend over ourselves laughing as the heavily pregnant Wendy chased upstairs, going after her much faster children to try and give them a thorough scolding as they yelled out their brand new vocabulary, while Stan made sure to quickly leave the scene so as to make it harder for himself to be next.
Oh to live this life on the daily.
༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚𓆩♡𓆪༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚
The rest of the afternoon went by without any issues. Kyle and I managed to take our first proper bath in days, which was extremely appreciated, and then our attention was almost immediately snatched by the Marsh children. My guess was they didn’t get many visitors on the farm, at least not many that were interested in hearing what small kids have to say, so now that they had people to talk to they were sure to teach us all the new things they had learned and play lots of different games with uncle and auntie.
With evening approaching, Wendy prepared some roast beef with mashed potatoes and fried red tomatoes with garlic, along with a whole apple pie for dessert - under the pretext that since guests were over they had the obligation of making more food to be sure we wouldn’t starve, and maybe spend a little more on the process. She knew Kyle and I would be fine with whatever she prepared, her cooking was so good she could probably boil tree bark on her stove and make it the best meal we ever had, so I knew the sizeable dinner was more a satisfaction of her pregnant whims. We all ate until we almost couldn’t fit in our pants anymore, and after the couple put their kids to bed, Stan brought out a nicer wine and we chatted our more mature matters well into the night. 
After a while, Stan and Kyle decided to go out for a smoke and a night walk around the property, leaving me and Wendy to clean up the dinner mess so that we could ‘talk about our feminine issues’, whatever that meant. So we picked up the dirty tableware and took everything to the kitchen, where she had previously set up two buckets - one with warm water and soap, one with clean water - for the dishes.
After we set everything on the counter and she tried taking another step going for the filled buckets, I immediately put my body in front of her, blocking her next steps. “No no no, little mama!”, I declared, putting both my hands on Wendy’s shoulders and pushing her slowly towards the smaller table in the kitchen, which they used for breakfast. “You’ve already done too much today and been on your feet all this time. Now it’s my turn.”
She tried huffing, stomping her foot and going around me, but my grip on her shoulders was strong enough that she couldn’t, so she bitterly relented and took a seat on one of the flimsy brown chairs near the table. “I’m pregnant, not disabled”, I heard her snort behind my back as I finally let go of her and turned towards the pile of dirty dishes.
“I know, I know,” was my reply while I picked up the first dirty plate and dunked it into the soapy water. “But you made this whole dinner for us and it was delicious, Wends. Lemme do this for you, will ya?”
“You helped with the fried tomatoes,” she retorted.
“Sure, but I’m not the one with a whole baby inside me.”
She giggled. “Not yet.”
My hand stopped in the air halfway through grabbing a dirty wine glass. “Come again?” I inquired as I turned to her with raised eyebrows.
“You tell me, (Y/N)! Ever since before I met you you’ve been running from place to place shooting people for money. Don’t you think it’s time you and Kyle settled down, bought a house somewhere? Maybe you two could even get married and finally stop living in sin.”
Her comment had me rolling my eyes, but I still let out a chuckle; the Marshs weren’t all that religious by any means, and Wendy was a particularly outspoken proponent of women’s right to choose how they wanted to live, so I knew she was just taking a jab. “You have no right to use that against me, miss,” I pointed a soapy wet index finger at her, “Not when I know all about what you and Stanley were up to before your daddy let you get hitched.” It was true and she knew it. After we finally became close friends, I was Wendy’s main confidant, and she’d told me all about her relationship to Stan prior to the marriage - tales in great detail about the different places where they met and spent the night together in secret when they were younger. They had lived basically a whole second relationship together away from prying eyes, and the only people who knew about it were within the same mile radius right now.
Hearing this, she smirked and lifted her left hand close to her face, so I could clearly see the back, and I knew then and there that she’d had the last laugh. “And it worked.” With her other hand, she pointed towards her left ring finger, and there was no pretending I hadn’t noticed the shiny golden wedding band she always kept polished to perfection.
Although we had been partnered all those years and were as close as two souls can be, legally Kyle and I weren’t married. We reckoned there was no need, we already spent every single moment together, putting ourselves in danger for each other during the day and sleeping in the same tent at night. Take away the expensive ceremony and we’re husband and wife. Plus, weddings were usually very religious affairs, and not only were we both very distant from that reality, there was also the tiny fact that we were well-known gunslingers (no matter how lawful we thought ourselves to be, killing someone, even a criminal, is still a cardinal sin) and I’m sure your usual religious leaders aren’t willing to officiate for people like that.
And then there was the matter of children. I had always wanted them, it was one of my plans for life, but I had pushed that aside the moment I picked up a gun for the first time. Kyle and I didn’t keep residence on the same spot for too long - we’d lived places, worked for people for a while, but nowhere that we could actually safely stay for years on end. Our normal life was that of setting camp everywhere, to avoid being tracked by any enemies we made along the way, having to move extremely quickly - and sometimes even that wouldn’t be enough and we’d have to face conflict head-on. We could never do that with a child in our arms, it would be a recipe for disaster. Besides, with my age, I just felt too old for them at this point; all the mothers my age had their kids way earlier and it felt weird to start now, like I wouldn’t have anything in common with them. That ship had sailed.
I knew all of that and I was alright with it. My love for Kyle didn’t need no overpriced dress or ring to be real, and we didn’t need kids to have a real family. Hell, so many couples go through that whole song and dance of getting married only to end up cheating and abusing each other beyond belief! If that’s what marriage is, then I don’t want any part of it, thank you very much. We were doing fine. 
So it was the little girl inside of me that felt that little stab of jealousy seeing Wendy’s shiny jewelry and huge belly - the little girl that did grow up flipping through wedding catalogs to see the pretty dresses, that spent her childhood thinking of the names she’d give for her future children and hearing stories about young ladies who met their Prince Charmings and lived their happily ever after, before life took its turns and made her into a killer. This little girl would’ve loved to have a house and kids, and would’ve taken Wendy’s offer in half a heartbeat, but she didn’t have the right to live anymore. 
So as it came, it went. I went back to the dishes, acting like this conversation hadn’t affected me any more than our other casual chats during the day. “Wendy, we can’t,” I said as I splashed a handful of forks inside of the now cold water, “We’re gunslingers, in case you forgot. We don’t have a house like you and Stan do. Ya think a child should grow up living like we do? That ain’t fair.”
I heard the drag of her chair as she got up from it and moved towards me, but before I could turn to tell her to sit down again, she had already closed the distance between us with very quick steps. “You don’t have to live like you do.” She grabbed my right hand between hers and looked me in the eyes in a way that seemed almost like she was pleading. “We told you already. There’s the old house in the back you can take, it just needs some fixing up, Stan would be glad to do it. The kids love having you around, you can help care for them and if you have some we can help too, they can grow up together-”
“Wendy, we’re not gonna live on your farm!”, I interjected before she could go any further in her crazy rambles. Rambles that it wasn’t my first time hearing about - both in letters and in person, she’d sometimes go on about how we should create roots and start a family somewhere nice, while underlining how the farm had all this space and needed more workers and the kids could use a few more friends… “This is y’all’s house. We ain’t gonna impose on your life like that.” I wriggled my hand away from hers. ”And gunslingin’s our job, it’s all we know to do. We wouldn’t know how to live like you do. So just drop it, please.”
She patted her now free hand against her dress to dry it and didn’t seem to want to look at me anymore. “The beauty of being alive is that you can learn.” I heard her say meekly, which made me feel extremely bad that I had been so firm with her when she was so excited about her ideas - but I didn’t want to give her hope, or rather, give myself more hope by listening to her.
I reached to pick up another dirty dish from the pile, but my hand grabbed at nothing. While giving Wendy’s babbles my undivided attention, I had mechanically done all of the washing, now everything just needed to be dried and put away. But, as I stretched my arm out to grab a clean dish towel, it was her time to stop me in my tracks. “I’ll take it from here.” She declared as she reached for the rag before I could and snatched it out of my range. When she heard me gasp and scramble for a rebuttal, she added: “No buts, you must be tired, y’all were on the road all morning and then the kids were also a handful. You’re done for the night.”
“I ain’t going to bed anyway,” I noted, “If you want me to do nothing then I’ll stay here with you ‘till you’re done.”
“Don’t worry about me. It’ll be quick, I’ll dry this all off, and then I’ll go out to call the dog back inside anyway, might as well give the men a shout to come to bed too.” She shrugged as she picked up a wet plate.
I honestly wanted to argue a bit more and not leave her alone like that, but my aching back was very interested in what she suggested - I had spent my whole morning on the back of a horse and then the whole afternoon chasing after zippy children. I sighed in defeat and nodded, earning from her an earnest smile. “Very well then, but tomorrow everything’s on me. Don’t wanna see you up and about before noon, understood? Good night.”
I turned on my heels to leave, hearing her giggle behind me. “Sure thing, (Y/N).” I started walking out of the kitchen, but just then she uttered: “Just… Think about what I said, alright? Good night.”
I looked back over my shoulder to see if she was going to say or do anything else, but her back was already turned to me, as she stared at the window above the counter, watching over her property.
I suppose I ended up doing what she last told me to do in the end, because our little chat really stuck with me through the next minutes.
༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚𓆩♡𓆪༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚
Even after all the time I spent getting myself prepped for bed, Kyle still hadn’t returned by the time I was done with it. So I picked up a book from Wendy’s collection - reading was one of her main hobbies, growing up educated as she was, and she kept it up even after moving to the farm - and cozied up under the blanket of the guest room bed. I was happy to have something different to read this time; Kyle and I had a couple books with us, we liked to read whenever we had the free time, but it’s God awful having too many things when you’re always moving from place to place, so we kept our assortment to a minimum. Turns out it’s very easy to get annoyed at a book when it’s the only one you ever read, and those I had in my bag were starting to become a real eyesore.
This one I had in my hand I’d never seen before, but the cover was nice enough and the summary got me on its hook, so I was pretty intrigued. It was this fictional story about an outlaw who got diagnosed with a terminal disease and spent the rest of his life trying to atone for his sinful deeds, while also uncovering some truths about the people he was most close to. Without even realizing, even during the first paragraphs, I had grown attached to the main character - his sorrow as he looks back at what he managed to do with his life, when he remembers all the bad things he has done that brought him to his current situation, and the way he tries to change and make the lives of those he loves as easy as possible with the time he has left. 
It put me into deep thought rather fast. That character managed to change everything about his life, his core beliefs and priorities, when faced with the inevitability of death. He didn’t think he could, in his mind he was doomed to be nothing more than the sins he committed, and to pay for them when the time came for that - but, although he didn’t manage to live the happily ever after everyone wants out of life, he still managed to protect those he loved and leave an everlasting mark on the people around him.
‘The beauty of being alive is that you can learn,’ Wendy’s voice echoed in my mind again, teasing me with promises of a better life. Maybe it wasn’t too late for me and Kyle to change. We had something most others in our line of work didn’t have the luxury of - we had people willing to help us. But then again, did Kyle and I want to be helped? We had never considered such an option besides drunkenly debating those hypotheticals every once in a blue moon. It was possible that he didn’t even want something like this, and I’d rather bite my tongue out and never speak again than do so and lose him forever over it.
The sudden squeak of the ancient guest room door opening shoved me right out of the depths of my brain into the real world. Kyle was back from his long walk, whistling absentmindedly some random tune he probably picked up at a saloon. The rather acid stench that usually accompanied someone who had just smoked didn’t enter alongside him, and that I was glad for; He had obviously taken the time to air himself out and get all the smell out of his body before coming back in. I wondered if Stan had the same care towards his pregnant wife. “Sorry I took so long, Stan just wanted to show me the new horses and we ended up going for a ride on them.”
“No problem. I found myself something to do anyway.” I closed the book in my lap and lifted it briefly to show him the cover, before setting it on the nightstand, as far as I could from the candle that was also on top of it.
“You’ve gotta tell me what this one is about later.” He sat down on the narrow bench in front of the bed and began taking off his boots. “Did you and Wendy have fun together?”
“Sure thing, it was real nice”, I answered, “Lotsa great talking about our feminine issues and stuff. What about you, macho man?”
My voice carried a hint of sarcasm that he picked up on immediately. He turned his body slightly so he could look at me. “Sorry about that, I guess.” He rolled his eyes. “But you know you and Wendy don’t have the same kind of conversations Stan and I do. That’s what we meant.”
“I know, I know, I’m just playing with ya.” The reassurance that I wasn’t actually mad at him or his friend for the earlier comment made him relax a little. He turned his back to me again and started unbuttoning his shirt as I kept talking. “We really had a nice talk, her and I. It feels so good to be back here.”
“You don’t know how happy I am to hear that. Let’s make the most of the next days then.”
As he got up from the bench to remove his pants, I took the opportunity to take a good look at his body. Kyle had a very lean build, it was quite hard for him to gain weight and build those big muscles some other guys had, but he was by no means weak; doing stuff at camp, handling bandits to bring them to jail and the exercise it all took made him a very fit guy who could stand his ground even without a gun. He was also quite pale, at least for someone who spent almost all his time outside, and had plenty of freckles peppered all around his soft skin. I remembered Milton again, the farmhand Stan hired, and wondered if working on a farm every day under the sun would make Kyle look like that too - I hoped not, I loved my partner the way he was, didn’t want him to change a thing. But I knew it wouldn’t: After many summers together, the only thing I ever saw the sun do to Kyle was make him redder than a tomato all over, and his skin would usually start peeling a day or two later, which was why he preferred to wear long sleeved shirts even in the hotter months.  
There they were, the thoughts of being on the farm again. I blinked and focused my blurry eyes on Kyle again. He had stopped undressing. “Everything alright, honey?”, he inquired, looking at me with a frown.
“Ya, it’s nothin’. Just thinkin’ ‘bout how handsome my man is ‘s all.”, I was quick to answer. He shook his head with a smirk and, without answering, went back to taking off his undergarments.
When he was fully in the nude, he made his way towards the bed, not bothering to put on any sort of sleepwear. In that, he matched me - besides the bedding, there was nothing covering my body. This was normal for us: there was literally no part of our bodies that the other hadn’t seen, so why bother hiding anything? Besides, it made everything so much easier when we didn’t have to spend time ridding ourselves of all that fabric before making love. It had made for some embarrassing situations in the past, where we had to jump straight out of our beds, guns drawn, prepared for trouble; but, no matter how much we told ourselves that we really needed to stop being lazy and start wearing our pajamas, we’d still lay down the next night in our birthday suits, because there was no shame anyone else could make us feel that was more important than the feeling of his warm skin against mine.
“But you wanna know what’s funny?” Kyle commented as he pulled up the covers on the right side of the bed to lay down beside me, “Stan asked me again what I thought of the old house. Said this time we’re not getting away.”
Him bringing this up came as a shock - my eyes widened and I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. Was this man a seer or something? How come he knew to bring up exactly the thing that was eating at my mind the whole night?
I managed to keep my cool and let out a laugh that might’ve sounded a bit too loud for comfort. “Wendy did the same thing to me!”, I yelped, “The way they talk about this with us you’d think they were tryna sell us the farm.”
“They really want us to move in.” He let out a deep exhale as his head hit the feather pillow after a whole day with very little rest. “And he did say Wendy would talk to you and have you hooked on it. That by the end of the year you’d have ‘a bun in the oven’ and I’d finally know the joys of being a father.”
“I’m sure it was just the wine talking. You know Stan’s a major lightweight.” Again with my deflecting. The truth was I didn’t want to give away that Wendy’s suggestions were slowly building a nest in my heart, because I knew it couldn’t stay. Maybe joking around a bit with Kyle would remind me of the situation we were in, that this idyllic little house life we led was only temporary, and that we were bound to go back on the road after a few days, in search of more work. All I couldn’t do was make my current interest too overt, and I would forget about it just fine.
“Eh, I don’t know… He seemed pretty serious to me. Not like he does when he’s drunk, and I’d know that.” He turned on his side, facing me, and I could see the reflection of my candle’s flame dancing inside his olive eyes as he stared intently. Either he was really captivated by it, or he didn’t want to look at me for some reason, and that made me even more worried. He stayed like this for a couple of minutes, during which the room fell to almost complete silence, only broken by the crickets outside or the occasional cackling of the tiny flame. “And… What did you think?” Kyle finally asked, lifting his face toward me, studying my features just in case they gave a different answer than the one that would come from my mouth. “About what Wendy said, I mean.”
“Hey, now, what I thought doesn’t matter.” It was now my turn to look away and stare at the flame, wanting to just blow it out and dunk the room in darkness, all to not continue this conversation. “You know it’s just silly daydreams she has. They don’t get out as often as they used to, with the children and whatnot, so she stays inside and comes up with stuff like this.”
Kyle rapidly sat himself up in the bed and cupped my face in his hands, turning it so that we could finally be looking at each other. “You know your thoughts are the only ones that matter to me.” He stated firmly, gazing into my eyes with even more certainty than that which he had in his voice. “I don’t care about what Stan or Wendy want. But if you have something to say, you have my full attention, no matter what it is.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, bringing my right hand up and resting it on top of his. It was fine. I knew I couldn’t just lie to Kyle here, he’d figure me out. And, with all his brains, surely he could come up with a logical explanation for my troubles and help me see the most sensible path. “Look, I’m sure they mean well and it’s such a pretty idea”, I started, “I’d love to do that if our lives were different. But as it is it wouldn’t stick, honey. There’s no point in pretendin’.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
I expected all sorts of reactions from Kyle, but not this one. His hand withdrew from my face as he pulled his upper body slightly away from me, but still kept his stare fixed. Both his eyebrows were raised and his eyes were wide, and his mouth fell slightly open as he breathed through it. He looked like someone would if they heard something they didn’t want to, or received disappointing news; which wasn’t how he usually reacted to those situations - Kyle was the type to argue his point to the bitter end, so disagreements usually came with a lot more anger instead of sadness or anxiety. This time, he seemed hurt.
“Oh, honey… You know why.” I rested my hands on top of my chest, feeling my heart accelerate, and trying to ground myself before the shock became too much. “We can’t put a child in a world like ours. Would be torture.”
He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be a world like ours. We can live here, at least temporarily, and then we move somewhere else. Stan already gave us the go.”
“Kyle, you know we have targets on our backs!” I tried moving my body closer to his, like that might get the point across easier, my voice denouncing my increasing concern with his reaction. “All these people we sent to swing, their buddies always try to come after us. Stan and Wendy don’t deserve this. We can’t risk them.”
“How? We’re in the middle of bumfuck nowhere!” There it was, the anger flaring his nerves. It always happened when something hit close to his heart, he felt the need to explain himself and make the people around him ‘see reason’ - I knew that behavior too well, though I wasn’t normally on the receiving end of it. But right now this wasn’t about logic or reason. These were his wishes. “We’ll disappear. I’ll change my name, you’ll change yours, we fake our deaths, these people don’t remember anything anymore after a couple of months anyway!”
Although I kept on nervously laughing, he was hitting all the right points, the points my own heart made when it wanted to feed on the delusions for a while longer. Kyle was very good at that - if he thought something was the better option, he’d twist both Heaven and Hell to make it make sense. “Oh yes? Well, say we go through with it, what do we know about ranch life?” I let out another nervous laugh. “Can you plant anything? Feed cattle?”
“Does that even matter?” In a quick movement, he climbed on top of me, knees at the side of my thighs as he straddled my legs, the blanket draping from his shoulders since he didn’t bother getting out from under it. We didn’t break eye contact for a single second. “You know I learn fast. If I-You want this, then we can figure it out!”
Clarity struck me like a bullet. Did he just say ‘I’? “Stan… Didn’t really talk to you about anything, did he?”
He shook his head again, less enthusiastically this time, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “Do you remember a couple months ago, after you and I left the gang, when we talked about life with a house and kids and what we’d do if we had that?” I nodded, before realizing that he couldn’t see the gesture anyway - but he took my silence as agreement and continued talking. “I sent Stan a letter soon after. At first it was just to vent, but then he replied with their suggestion and I thought… Well, we could at least try.” The end of his sentence brought with it a faint smile to his lips, and he opened his eyes again slowly.
For the first time in this conversation had my little fit of laughter been genuine. The three of them had put all this in motion right under my nose, based on one wishful conversation we had, which Kyle had taken to heart and made sure to come to fruition. “I thought you liked the hunt, though” I said, head tilting to the side. “Liked bringin’ people to justice an’ givin’ ‘em what they deserved, no?”
“I like that, but I love you.” He answered without missing a beat. Felt like he was plain waiting for it. “And besides, it’s not like we can’t be virtuous people and do what’s right even without spending all our lives chasing after criminals. Our honor comes from our hearts, not from the barrel of our guns.”
Good ol’ Kyle with his smooth way of talking. It was one of the many reasons I fell for him - though his day-to-day life was rough and he shot outlaws for a living, deep inside he was still a very caring man, someone intelligent who saw all the bad in the world and still chose to do good. “Where did you even learn to talk like that?” I chuckled. “You shoulda been a writer, not a shooter.”
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll get started on that now, since I’ll have more time.” Taking my hands in his, he kissed my knuckles lovingly. Then his thumb grazed my empty left ring finger, his touch, as soft as his rough hands would allow it, lingering for a couple of seconds. “After the wedding, that is.”
“Wait, you serious?” This night was getting so filled with surprises, I might just believe someone if they said Sparky was a human in disguise. “No need for that, my dear. I’m already yours.”
“But I want to do it.” His hands let go of mine and he moved his body closer to me, giving me a quick peck to the forehead. Then he suddenly grabbed the blanket and yanked it to the side, throwing it on the floor and leaving both our bodies completely exposed. “And we gotta do it quick, before you start to show.”
Before I could ask him what I’d start to show, he pulled me by the shoulders and smashed his lips against mine fiercely. My hands shot up to grab his curls, making him groan into my mouth and deepen the kiss - and there it was, the now faint taste of the cigar I hadn’t smelled previously, spicy and earthy, but it tasted like the sweetest thing on the planet just because of the sheer passion we shared right now.  
As I felt Kyle’s hand drift up from between us to knead at my breast, I broke the kiss with a gasp. “Wait, here?” I asked, surprised, though the corners of my mouth curved up, snitches of my excitement.
“Now.”, he declared, straightening his legs and propping himself up in his arms to give me space to slide down and lay beneath him, with my head now on the pillow and my legs spread. When I broke eye contact for just a second and finally looked down, I saw his dick was already almost fully hard - was the simple idea of getting me pregnant enough to make him like that?
“Can’t wait to see how you’re gonna explain this to them tomorrow” I said with a giggle as Kyle lowered his body, putting his weight on his elbows, and planting kisses all over my face. My subdued laughs quickly got replaced by soft hums as he started going down the side of my neck with his lips, while his hips started rocking against mine, his cock grinding against my body and the tip spreading some warm precum over my lower abdomen with each slow movement.
His answer, unlike most everything he ever said, was simple, direct, and left no leeway for questioning. “Well, it would do them some good to get used to it.” I felt my face burn like the damn candle as he said that, and my pussy starting to drip with wetness, the arousal soaking into the bedsheet. He stopped his kisses for a moment to put his mouth to my ear, and when he whispered his next declaration, it felt like it was going straight to my cunt: “Because I’m keeping you filled up now. Make you mine all the time and no one can do a damn thing about it.”
“Oh, you gonna change your mind when I’m all big and swollen…”, I drawled feebly. Disputing his claims was getting hard now since my brain was getting foggy with desire, but I still had to try, even if just to hear him singing praises to me some more.
I felt his left hand coursing through my body, stopping with his palm flat on my midriff, feeling almost cold with how hot I was getting all over. “Absolutely not,” He whispered again, “You’re gonna be even more fucking gorgeous when you’re carrying my child. I’ll make love to you every single night.”
My hand started to move down between our bodies, too, as I tried to reach for Kyle’s throbbing cock, wanting to make him feel good - if I couldn’t with pretty words like he did me, at least I knew I could do it with actions. But, when my fingers touched his leaking tip, he immediately took his hand off my belly and gripped my wrist, moving it back to the side of my body. As I looked at him with a puzzled expression on my face, he simply shook his head, gave me another peck to the mouth and started pushing himself down on the bed, only stopping when his face was level with my pussy and his palms were flat at the side of my hips.
Just by seeing him there, I could feel my walls clenching around nothing, almost like they begged on their own for his loving and experienced touch. Kyle was a damn great lover and from the very first day we laid together it was like he knew all the right ways to make me come undone, and he had no shame about anything he did to achieve it - most of all, he was eager to do it. By God did this man love to please me. If that was what was waiting for me every night from now on, I could very easily get used to everything else.
He started planting small kisses on the inside of both of my thighs as he pushed my legs slowly up, my knees now almost hitting my chest. His lips felt soft and endearing on my skin, but this was not where I wanted them - and he knew it, with the way he held my gaze the whole time as he did it, his eyes glittering with his teasing ways. Every few kisses, he’d break the sequence with a slight graze of his teeth on my skin, the softest of bites, but enough to make all the fine hairs in my thigh rise up in a pleasurable goosebump.
Just as I was getting tired of the wait and was contemplating pulling at his hair to bring him away from my leg, it was like he had read my mind again. He let go of my thighs and put his hands on my hips, not quite gripping them, but steadying them in place. I closed my eyes and sighed contentedly as he licked a stripe from my already very wet cunt to my clit, giving it a very quick kiss at the end, which made me wonder for a second if he was about to start teasing me again and how long for. But then all thoughts left my brain as soon as he started swirling his tongue over my clit, in a pattern I didn’t know or care about, making me squirm almost immediately and dig my nails into my palm.
His tongue slithered down, making its way to my entrance, and my hips started rolling against his mouth, trying to help his movements as he fucked me with it. He’d grunt every now and then as he did it, lost in the satisfaction he felt by pleasuring me, and sending the vibrations through my heat, making me even wetter. I could feel him staring at me from down there, too, despite my shut eyes; He always paid attention to every reaction of mine, licking and sucking all the right parts that he knew made me squirm.
Then he moved up with his mouth to focus on my clit again and my hands darted down to grab at his hair, my palms hurting at the spots where the little crescent shapes from my nails had formed. I felt one of his fingers circling my entrance, gathering my arousal before plunging fully deep inside, my walls almost sucking it in. Another one soon followed and he started pumping them in and out while curling them upwards, massaging my sweet spot perfectly, still never missing the pace of the swirls of his tongue on my hardened bud.
It became too much too quickly. The dam holding back the river of my climax broke after not much longer and my orgasm washed over me violently, every single muscle in my body tensing up and my thighs pressing strongly against the side of my lover’s head while my hips rocked against his mouth, chasing my pleasure to its bitter end. One of my hands darted up to cover my mouth immediately, muffling the loud cries I let out as it happened, my one and only moment of clarity during the whole release.
And even then Kyle didn’t stop his ministrations, his hand covered with my juices as his fingers kept pushing inside, making way through my tightly clenched walls. After I came down from my haze, however, the overstimulation started to become rather painful - only when I managed to collect enough strength to tug at the back of his hair rather fiercely to pull him away from my cunt did he stop, and even then I swore I could see for a brief moment a hint of disappointment in his eyes.
Kyle positioned his body between my legs again and took his time to run one last stripe along my slit with his fingers, the ones he used inside me, before bringing them to his mouth and licking them clean, with his eyes closed. He did this every time, not wanting to waste even a single drop of me. I was his favorite whiskey and, when it came to that, he was a damn alcoholic.
This time it was me putting my hands on Kyle’s shoulders and bringing him down for a kiss, running the tip of my tongue across his lips lightly, tasting my love in him. When we parted, gasping for air, I leisurely ran my hands over his upper body, caressing every inch of him they could reach - his cheeks, then down his neck, around his collarbone, his chest, until my left hand stopped at his shoulder, on top of his biggest and most visible scar.
Kyle had plenty of scars, these things came with our line of work, but this one was different. Not caused by a bullet or a knife, but rather by fire itself - a dynamite explosion that caught us by surprise during a shootout in this very state we were currently in. That fire almost took my lover’s life, dragged both of us into months of suffering and stress, and even years after it was extinguished we still carried with us not only the trauma, but a physical reminder of everything it claimed. 
The physical scar itself was a bit rough to the touch and full of small streaks and bumps all over. It spread all over his shoulder into the right side of his chest, his upper arm, and a bit over his back. Across the years, its color had faded from a gruesome brown to a slight reddish tint, but it still had a jarring contrast to Kyle’s pale skin. No part of it was delightful, if I’m being honest. Yet I’d kiss it every single night, caress it at every opportunity and massage it with expensive essential oils whenever those were available; because I’d take a whole life with that scar over even a single second of the alternative.
“You saved me, you know,” He murmured with a sigh.
“I know, because you say it all the time.” I chuckled. “But we ain’t gotta talk about that anymore, dear. You know I’d do it again.”
“Not that day. Well, yes that day, but also all the others before and after that.” He lowered his head closer to mine so that our noses and foreheads were touching, and his warm breath ghosted my lips, bringing the lustful haze back to my brain. At this point I didn’t know what I wanted to do more: Hear his voice forever as he whispered his praise and love towards me, or kiss him until I could feel all these words inside of my skin.
My partner took himself in his hands and started to slide the tip of his cock up and down between my folds, from my entrance to my clit, making my whole body twitch a little when he got to the still very sensitive bundle of nerves. “And you might just be about to save me again,” He continued, aligning himself with my entrance, “You’ll be the perfect wife and mother. My wife and the mother of my babies.”
Kyle pushed himself inside of me slowly, inch by inch, being extra careful as his big and thick cock stretched out my cunt. It didn’t hurt much, I was used to it after years of taking him regularly, but he still wanted to make sure I was comfortable every single time before continuing. 
Once I gave him a smile and a small nod, he started to push in and out slowly, letting me feel every single twitch of his cock inside me and every one of those veins I knew so well pressed against my walls in their entirety. He quickly built up momentum, however, and soon the room was filled with the squelching sounds of my wetness being pounded against, his hips striking my body and the bedframe hitting the house’s wooden walls perfectly synchronizing with it. After a while like this, without warning, he picked up both my legs and brought them over each of his shoulders, pushing my knees back against my chest, my toes touching his hair as they curled in pleasure.
Kyle was hitting my cervix with every strong thrust now, sending sharp and slightly painful stings that jolted through my lower abdomen with every smash of his soft head against that barrier. And yet, every time I felt those, I just wanted more and more; Having Kyle deep inside me in this position always managed to cover all the right spots inside of me, I just wanted to hold him, keep him there. And I knew he was feeling just as good as I was - the sounds coming from his throat were getting louder and louder as he shut his lips tighter to prevent them from turning into full brown growls, his fingertips whiter than ever since his grip on my hips was so fierce I was sure by tomorrow I’d have a few bruises there.
“K-Kyle… Aaaaah… Give… Me…” I whimpered between moans, stretching my arms towards him, nails scratching against his skin as I tried to grab his hips, keep them glued to mine forever.
“Lord… You want me even more, do you?” He responded with shaky breaths, and I immediately felt it when he picked up even more speed - a move made even easier by the amount of slick built up in and around my pussy -, jackhammering into my cunt and making me see stars both from pain and pleasure. 
At this point I should’ve known there was no point in even trying to hide our sinful sounds anymore, but I still felt like I needed to do it. I tried to pick up Kyle’s pillow from the side of my head and put it over my face to muffle my constant cries of satisfaction, but my partner immediately grabbed it from my hand and tossed it back in its place with a growl.
“No. Don’t hide it. I want to see it. The face you make… When you cum for me and I stuff you up to the brim.”
The scene he described burned into my brain almost immediately and I could think of nothing else. For him to fill me up, give me a baby, make us a family - it was all I wanted out of life now, and the mere thought of it was enough to have my muscles tensing and that familiar pressure on my lower abdomen to start building up again, threatening to snap. “Please, Kyle,” I whined, “Breed me. Give it all to me… I need it…”
“I know you do, darling...” He leaned closer to me to give me a kiss, the clash of our lips messy and awkward with our desperate need to touch each other and the fogginess in our brains, but we didn’t care. I just wanted to have him as close as possible. “I need it too… Cum for me, please. I want to feel you milking my dick to the last drop.”
He needed not ask further. For the second time that night I felt my whole body burst into electricity, my cunt spasming like crazy as I tried to give Kyle exactly what he asked of me, exactly what I felt like I was meant to do all along. My legs trashed all over near his shoulders and my back arched as I lost control of my body with the waves of pleasure that washed me over.
The tightness around his cock as my walls fluttered around him and my face contorting in absolute pleasure as I came were what finally did him in. Kyle threw his head back while he came undone inside me, grabbing my hips and pulling them towards him as he buried himself deep into my core, his manhood throbbing, painting my walls with his seed. The sensation was extremely new to me - I felt the warm spurts painting my walls, filling me up and leaving Kyle’s mark somewhere no other man could ever reach.
I wasn’t used to Kyle finishing inside of me. Considering the everlasting battle between our higher than average libidos and our fear of having children, the closest compromise for that was having him do it on my breasts, belly, mouth, face, even ass if he was feeling wild enough. On the rare occasions where he did cum inside, I couldn’t even enjoy it - my brain would immediately be flooded with stress and worry, shutting down any other sensation, and I’d spend the next month or so losing sleep waiting for my next period so I could finally be at peace again.
But here there was none of that. I could relax and ride out this high with him. I let him have his moment, heaving my exhaustion away quietly as I admired the red flush on his pale skin and the sheen of his sweat under the candlelight, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he panted like his lungs weren’t big enough for the amount of air he needed to live. When he finally opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was me, I felt wrapped up in his love all over again.
When his breathing started to steady, I figured he’d get himself off of me and take his place by my side on the bed. Instead, he just laid his whole body on top of mine, somehow being careful enough to not crush me under his weight as he collapsed.
“Kyle?” I gave him some quick taps to the shoulder with my fingers after a minute or two like this in silence, when I’d started to worry that he might just fall asleep. “C’mon, dear, you gotta scoot over if you wanna sleep.”
“Hmph… Sorry…” He groaned, with a sluggishness that made clear he was indeed just a few sheeps counted away from deep slumber. “Wanted to make sure to keep it all in. Don’t wanna waste…”
Even though he clearly didn’t want to, he slowly moved away from me and rolled to his side of the bed. When his dick withdrew from me, I suddenly felt a bit empty and wondered briefly if I couldn’t have tried to sleep like that or at least stay a little longer.
“Sorry, my dear,” I planted a kiss to the side of his head, “But you know, if you don’t get me pregnant tonight, we have plenty of time now.”
I sat back on the bed briefly to blow the candle out on the nightstand, plunging our room into almost complete darkness. As soon as I laid my head back on my pillow, Kyle brought his arm over my body and pulled me closer to him, nuzzling my hair.
“We have plenty of time now,” He whispered, with more energy in his voice this time.
And we definitely did.
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Dividers by @cafekitsune
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ptieuca · 2 months ago
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3x03 / 3x20
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langernameohnebedeutung · 16 days ago
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#I also think american exceptionalism and their bizarre cultural one-way street isolation plays a role#i think it's different if you actually see other countries as equals and see that they have female leaders and realise that it's#not going downhill it's not solving everything it's business as usual and it's just another boring fucking politician#and this makes the gender of the candidate LESS (not saying no) issue people obsess about or feel a need to discuss#(e.g. people laying into the appearance of female politicians? certainly misogyny. making jokes about cooking and shoes? definitely too#but I feel like that was more a 'gotta insult these fucking politicians' and gender being one of the targets when people want to do that)#but if you're the US and giant parts of the populace think they're the specialmost extra complicatedest country in this our planetworld#the fact that it works for so many other countries takes a much lower priority#because 'yeah sure a woman can govern a....'checks notes' Fineland and United Kingdom of England or Germanland'#but the US of freedom? we got a red button and what if she's on her period!!?! We are a REAL country!!'#not to mention how deeply entrenched the idea of the US as being CONSTANTLY under attack is and the president as the PROTECTOR#and that protector needs to be daddy of course#i also think the different attitude to leaders plays a role#because a part of misogyny is how much people love to HATE women - to sink their teeth into them and demonise them for every flaw#so any country that has some kind of weird worship of their leaders or sees them as some heroes or extra-class of person*#in my opinion might have a harder time to elect a woman because the moment a woman becomes a candidate#you just have to find the right flaw to go on and on about to make the population absolutely hate her or question her competency#meanwhile the general slack we cut men means they can do whatever but somehow still be compatible with that concept of leadership#(*not just the US ....though a lot of other countries with similar attitudes to their leaders are not standing out as democracies tbh)
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hood-ex · 4 months ago
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There are less than 600 works in The New Teen Titans category. This has to be rectified *Jack Skellington voice* immediately!
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swagging-back-to · 5 months ago
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worst trope is found family separating as soon as the antagonist is dealt with.
#yes this is about voltron and it's also about guardians of the galaxy#what james gunn did to gamora in GOTG3 is criminal#i understand why they did it but to end with her GOING BACK TO THE RAVAGERS?#fail end.#seriously#and it doesnt even make sense bc ofc the high evolutionary isnt going to be the last problem they would deal with#in just a few years they encountered 5 people trying to destroy the universe and who were incredibly difficult foes#youre finna tell me there will never be a situation like that for the rest of their lives?#gtfo#and mantis' end was dumb too not even sorry#i can tolerate drax and nebula's ends.#but everyone else?#stupid#even peter's ending was fucking moronic. bro can pop in on the weekends he doesnt need to be a live in nurse for his grandpa#it's just such a major letdown and sucks everytime a director/author decides to split up the found family permanently#at least with voltron you can rationalize it by saying 'oh they never really wouldve hung out with eachother if they werent forced to for#voltron and werent forced to fight a war together.' and i can see it bc none of them DO hang out together before voltron#they barely even hang out AFTER they become voltron#keith and shiro hang out bc of the adoption/fostering/mentoring thing. lance and hunk MIGHT hang out bc they were already teammates#it's important to note that we never really see hunk and lance being bffs. theyre just friendly to eachother.#this becomes even more apparent once hunk and pidge actually become friends. it's very obvious hunk was just being friendly to lance.#just friendly.#(take this with a grain of salt bc ive only watched the whole series one time. i refuse to acknowledge anything after se 2.)#so yeah it does make more sense theyd all go their own ways but not even the small friend groups stay together at the end!#pidge and hunk are in completely different galaxies from eachother. same with keith and shiro#lance is isolated from all of them bc post se 3 writing team genuinely hated him and failed him as a character.#but GOTG3? they CHOSE to band together time and time again. they CHOSE to be a team. they CHOSE to be family#for every single one of them to say 'nah fuck that i want to be on my own bc uhhh reasons!' is a lame ending.#period.#gotg3
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kylewalker-peters · 1 month ago
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why are people still being insane about a non-english person managing the england team has everyone lost their minds? it's always "an english manager should get the job" and never "i can name a specific english manager that has proven themselves at a top level and would be highly likely to help this team win a trophy"
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hiis-theme · 9 months ago
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somewhere out there is an alternate timeline where toby was correct and people actually did hate spamton. could you imagine that. i have to imagine we wouldn't have gotten the spamton sweepstakes in that case which is crazy to think about given how much lore that gave us-
#puppy rambles#deltarune#spamton#my favorite part of the spamton sweepstakes is the part of the q&a where spamton implied he and jevil are divorced#are all the secret bosses in a polycule you think. we need to add to this deranged relationship#diversity win! all the people who were driven insane by being told their world is just a game are in a polyamorous relationship <3#i like to think gaster made a discord for all of them. just like ''hey. sorry for telling you your world's fake. here's a discord. good by'#i don't even care about the secret bosses super much but they still amuse me greatly. even if there's only two of them rn-#spamton is so hilarious. idk why everyone is so obsessed with him but it makes him even funnier to me#also his text in brackets is fun to write. it's also hard to write but you can do so much with it#since it's taken from various places on the internet you can just reference memes#... i mean the one problem is that it'd probably have to be memes from the time period deltarune's in#so like. early 2000's or 2010's#but the valentines don't regard that and reference more recent memes so who knows really#maybe deltarune's actually meant to be in modern times. i mean you could fully convince me#that noelle just likes old internet-style websites and stuff dfskljfdsdfjksfkjlsfkj-#(i mean some of the meme references are up to interpretation)#(but the two definite ones are the war thunder forums leaking military documents and also the hotel mario intro)#(and at the very least the former is a newer thing)#(there's also seemingly references to the ''let me in'' meme and the foam shower images from the april fool's newsletter last year)#(idk where the fuck else ''insulating foam'' would be taken from-)#i hope spamton just randomly contributes to conversations sometimes if you have the dealmaker equipped#i logically doubt it but it'd be extremely hilarious#i'm now imagining equipping the dealmaker to noelle. who was not there for either spamton encounter#''um. kris why's there a voice in my head telling me to be a big shot?'' ''don't worry about it''#alternatively if you just get the dealmaker from the hole in castle town cuz you have another file with it#... can you do that in chapter 2 files. if so then can you technically have the dealmaker while not having met spamton-#''player why is there a voice in my head telling me to be a big shot'' ''don't worry about it''#''i'm sparing you from having an existential crisis later-''
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itspileofgoodthings · 10 months ago
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so I think I might show north and south to whichever of my seniors want to watch it once a week during my prep period and I cleared it with an administrator and he said it was fine but I’m feeling suddenly very bad about this impulse
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