#also when I find a tick I literally tell her “tick”

[nefja]

I guess understanding dog language, having a good relationship, giving her choices and then accepting when she says No.

It's the same way when I ask her if she wants to jump up on something high which she needs my help for (she likes going on high up places).

I ask her, she either checks it out immediately and then chooses if she wants to or not OR she doesn't even check it out.

With the bit where she "tells me No" during the back scratches she obviously didn't talk but reached her head around the second I went down her back.

We were in the forest today and now Nefja scratched and nibbled a bit so I asked "you got a tick?" which is a known phrase for her by now and she either decides "Yes, I need help" or "No, thanks I'm good" by either coming to me or staying put.

She decided to come to me, I asked her to lie down on her side and screened her sides and belly. Found nothing, told her she's good to go and she got some back scratches.

During that I wandered a bit further back and she told me "nope, that's not the spot" so I returned to her shoulder area. Tested again and got told "nope" again.

And I did find a tick on her left side of the shoulders.

[whathorselegs]

I think one of my favourite character journeys in BSD has to be Kunikida learning to be better with kids because you'd expect it to be a fun wholesome character arc. Only, it ends up being heart breaking as it's immediately turned against Kunikida.

Despite the 'Dad status' that the fandom has given Kunikida, he was actually terrible with kids towards the start of the manga.

Take how he treated Atsushi in the first chapter. (Yes, Atsushi is not a little kid, but he was a starving and vulnerable orphan when they met.) When Kunikida and Dazai mention the 'man-eating tiger' Atsushi immediately freaks out and tries to run away.

What does Kunikida do? He grabs Atsushi, slams him to the floor and then threatens to break his arm for information.

It's Dazai of all people who has to reign Kunikida in reminding him "The boss himself warned you that the gathering of intelligence needn't be an interrogation". Dazai was the sweet talker and Kunikida was threat, even to a terrified, starving orphan.

Later with Kyouka, he's not much better. He attempts to intimidate her into giving the agency information. Whilst Atsushi now fulfils the role of the gentle approach. She's a mafia assassin after all, even if he knows she had no choice in it, Kunikida treats her as a threat before he treats her as a child.

Even with Aya, the interaction that gave Kunikida his 'dad status', he started off badly. But, it is here we start to see Kunikida trying to be better, trying to take a softer approach, even if he's clumsy with it.

When he realizes Aya was just handed a bomb, he snatches it from her and gets rid of it. That can't be helped it was a literal ticking time bomb, he then phones the authorities to deal with it. He was planning to leave, it's only because he caught sight of Aya sitting alone did he approach her. It wasn't his first instinct.

If he hadn't seen her in that moment, he might not have gone looking for her at all.

He asks her if she's alright and then she shocks him by wanting to hunt down the culprit. He rightfully tries to dissuade her, but again, he's not good with kids, he's blunt and argumentative with her.

Obviously, that's not going to convince a kid with a hero complex to not chase the bad guy.

However, his turning point, in my opinion, is when he realizes he has to choose between Aya and the people on the train. Now, he had already set off the stun grenade and is putting all his faith in Yosano finding them. He trusts her so he knows they are most likely going to be okay.

But Aya doesn't know that and he can't explain it all in the time they have. He sees a child who thinks she's about to die and is trying to be brave about it. And Kunikida comforts her. He needs her to know that she's not alone, that she's not going to suffer, that he is with her and he hugs her.

There was no need for him to step into that explosion with Aya except to comfort her. He chose to do that. Above his own life, he chose her needs.

And that's where this journey starts to get heartbreaking, because Kunikida hadn't always been like this. He was obviously always going to try and protect children, his ideals state as much, but he also didn't believe himself to be a hero. He doesn't see himself as someone capable or even worthy of that role.

So he built up a barrier around himself that made him harsher and more callous. He called it a professional detachment. He had to, it was to protect himself, to keep his sanity in those moment when they couldn't save everyone. Now it's breaking down and he's showing more and more how much he cares.

And it's immediately used against him.

The very scenario that got him to open up is placed in front of him again. A child with a bomb around their throat. Only this time Yosano isn't there, and this time Fyodor is orchestrating it.

And Kunikida does everything right. He tells Atsushi to leave and carry on the mission so he can stay and help the child. He gets on the child's level, makes himself small and none threatening. He reassures the child in gentle voice that everything will be okay.

And then, it's the line "How about a magic trick?" that really gets me, because he's trying so hard to present himself as someone trustworthy. And a magic trick is exactly what he pulled off with Aya, but it's what goes wrong here.

Because Fyodor planned it this time. He didn't just target children to get at Kunikida, he made a twisted mockery of what happened to Aya. Except she doesn't live this time and Kunikida can't bring this child any comfort or safety because Kunikida is the threat. This child dies alone and afraid because Kunikida was there, just like Fyodor planned.

Fyodor saw Kunikida bare his heart once and immediately reached in his chest and crushed it.

[honeyedmiller]

A Burning Desire part seven

firefighter!joel x f!reader

series masterlist | main masterlist

rating: explicit. 18+, minors do not interact.

warnings: mentions of pregnancy, extreme vulnerability, brief mentions of emotional abuse and manipulation in a past relationship, mentions of infidelity in a past relationship, shit ton of fluff, smut (nipple play, teensy bit of dirty talk, semi-public?? firetruck fucking!!! unprotected piv, ass play, ass slapping, brief choking, spitting, cum eating), reader’s brothers and tommy are little shits as always, no use of y/n.

word count: 7.1k

a/n: i’ve been feeling a little feral lately which resulted in the smut. apologies🧍‍♀️and yes that third picture is the 911 lonestar firehouse LMAO it was perfect for this okay 😭 anyway i hope y’all enjoy <3

synopsis: a drunken joel asks you to take your relationship with him to the next level.

A week had passed since Joel’s birthday party, and you’re now alone in a house that’s usually bustling with people. 

Sarah had gone off for the weekend to spend the night at a friend’s house while Joel went out with Tommy, your brothers, and Josh. You were curled up on the couch reading an invigorating romance novel. The quietness was accompanied by the ticking clock above the mantle and the soft scrape of paper rubbing against paper as you turned the page of your book. 

You find yourself so immersed in the book that when your phone rings, it nearly startles you half to death. You pick it up to see Emily FaceTiming you, and you dog-ear the page you’re on before setting the book down and sliding the answer button. 

“Hey Emi,” you smile at her as you bring your knees to your chest. 

“Hey sis. How are you?” 

“I’m good. Just reading a book and drinking some wine,” you say, lifting your glass up for her to see. She grins and holds up her water bottle, making you laugh. 

“You got the house to yourself?” She asks. You nod, chewing on your bottom lip. 

“Sarah is at a friend’s and, you know, Joel is out with the boys.” 

“The boys,” she snorts. “I can’t believe they all actually formed a little friend group and are going out.” 

“Tell me about it. I’ll take this over Andy and Cole chewing Joel’s head off any day, though.” 

“Seriously. Remember how long it took them to stop torturing Josh?” 

You think back to when your brothers would give Josh shit a lot when Emily first brought him around, but he stuck it out because he’s so head over heels for Emi… as he should be. Good man. 

“God, yeah. I also remember mom yelling at them both, saying something like ‘this is why you’re both single’,” you laugh at the memory, taking a sip of your wine. 

“I remember that, too. But I’m glad Josh stuck around,” she has a soft smile on her face before she twists her lips to the side. 

“Okay, so, I have something to tell you. But you can’t tell anybody. Well, you can tell Joel if you want,” she sighs, and you furrow your brows. 

“Is everything okay? What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing’s wrong. In fact, everything is perfect. You know how I told mom like a week ago at Joel’s birthday party that Josh and I didn’t use… anything on our honeymoon?” 

You nod, recalling the moment in Joel’s kitchen. Then you go completely still as your heart drops to your ass. 

“Emi, oh my god, is—are you—holy fuck,” your brain is scrambled right now, eyes going wide as you stare at the screen. 

She tears up and lets out a happy sob that sounds like a laugh, holding up a pregnancy test that so clearly has the word pregnant across the tiny screen. 

Your hand flies over your mouth and tears sting your eyes. 

“Oh my god!” 

“I know, crazy isn’t it?” She laughs, happy tears streaming down her glowing cheeks. 

“When did you find out?” You ask. 

“Literally like thirty minutes ago. You’re the first person I’ve told,” she pauses. “Let Josh think he was the first, though. This is what he gets when he leaves his wife at home to go out and drink with his brothers and new friends,” she jokes, and you laugh with her. 

You hold up your right hand, seriousness in your tone. “Scouts honor.” 

“Thank you,” she says, sniffling before wiping her tears away once more. 

“I’m so happy for you, Emi. I know how much you want to be a mother.” 

“I love you, my dear sister,” she beams at you, and you can’t help but return the same radiant smile. 

“I love you too.” 

“Sorry to cut the conversation short, but Josh just texted and said he’s coming home in a few and I want to be prepared and all that,” she waves her hand around, and you can’t help but huff a laugh. 

“No worries. I’m so excited for you. I love you and I’ll talk to you soon, yeah?” 

She nods and blows you a kiss through the screen, saying bye before she hangs up. 

You can’t wipe the grin off your face or the warm feeling in your chest at her news. You try to go back to reading your book, but your mind can’t stop from wandering to your sister. 

Your thoughts are torn from your mind just a few short minutes later as you hear the front door handle jiggle, opening up to a completely happy and very drunk Joel.  

“There’s my beautiful lady,” he says, stumbling a tiny bit in the entryway. You laugh and stand up to help him, giving Tommy a wave as you see him watching Joel from his truck to make sure he gets in the house okay. He gives you a wave and a smile before peeling off, and you close the door. 

You steady Joel and help him walk over to the couch with you, settling him before you sit down next to him. 

“I gather your night went well,” you giggle, and he turns to smile at you. 

“Your brothers are two of the funniest damn guys. Josh too. This bromance is coming along just nicely.” 

You can’t help but laugh at his words, leaning forward to plant your lips on his cheek. 

“Oh, speaking of Josh,” you start, taking Joel’s hand into yours before rubbing your thumb across his knuckles. “Emily called me a few minutes before you came home. She told me some wonderful news and said I can share it with you.” 

Joel’s gaze meets yours as his eyebrows shoot up. “What is it?” 

“They’re having a baby. Emily is pregnant.” 

“Oh wow, that is great news. You think they’ll announce it to everyone soon?” He asks, bringing your hand up to his lips to kiss your knuckles. 

“I’m sure they will soon.” 

It’s quiet for a couple of minutes before you switch positions on the couch and lay down, Joel following suit as he begins to tuck himself between your legs. You’re situating yourself before you look up at him with a small smile, his gaze already intensely on you. 

“We should have kids,” Joel says, a smug, sappy smile on his face. His words halt your movements as you eye him wearily. 

You quirk your brow at him and tilt your head. “Oh?” 

“Don’t ya think they’d be so cute?” He gushes, and Drunk Joel truly is a sight to behold. He’s all soft and cuddly. Practically a human teddy bear. 

“Just think about it,” he laughs, “They’d have your beautiful eyes and your smile and your laugh and—” 

You put a hand on his chest to stop his words, and he looks at you with so much love in his eyes you think you might burst. 

“Slow your roll, cowboy. How about we discuss this when whiskey isn’t in the equation.” 

He pouts at you and you have to stifle a laugh. He looks so fucking cute. Your heart blooms at the fact that he wants that type of future with you, and it cracks through the remaining pieces of the walls you’ve put up. 

He sighs and lays down on you, nestling his broad body between your thighs and clings to you like a koala. You kiss his temple and run your fingers through his hair, feeling so content and in love that it makes you nearly choke up with tears. 

He presses gentle kisses to the skin of your chest as he buries his face there, sighing in content. 

“Well if we’re holding off on the discussion of kids, then maybe we can start a few steps before that one,” he says, and his words barely make sense as he half-mumbles into your chest. You catch it anyway.

“And what would the first step be?” 

He lifts his head up to meet your gaze, eyeing you knowingly before giving you a soft but sure smile. 

“Move in with me.” 

-

“That’s the last of it.” You wipe your brow and exhale an exhausted breath, admiring the pile of boxes that overtook Joel’s living room—well, your living room now, too. It was only two months ago that Joel had drunkenly asked you to move in with him, and when morning time came, you had to make sure he was sure. 

He’d reassured you easily that he meant what he said and would love it if you moved in with him and Sarah. Sarah had been on board with it all along, wanting you to stay permanently after the few weeks you’d spent there taking care of Joel and helping with her. 

You had some things to figure out with your lease to your apartment, seeing as it wasn’t up until January, but your landlord was a godsend and the sweetest woman, letting you break the contract two months early with your full deposit back. 

Joel wraps his arms around you with a prideful grin, kissing your sweaty forehead. You grimace at that, but you’ve come to find out early on in your relationship that this man isn’t easily disgusted by much of anything, really. 

You gaze at the tower of boxes and it tugs at your heart strings. Just a couple of months ago, you were crushed by the prospect of having to go back to your apartment when Joel was fully healed, but it turns out he didn’t want you to leave, either. He’d come to your place on nights Sarah was with friends and would spend time with you there after you’d left his house and he got cleared for light duty at work. 

Turns out he’s just as clingy to you as you are to him. That’s not to say you both don’t mind spending time apart from each other, but you’d much prefer to be wrapped up in each other or simply enjoying each other’s company. 

You’ve already established that allowing yourself to get attached to someone scared the hell out of you, and Joel had sensed it, too. You finally opened up to him one night and laid all of your cards out on the table for him. Confessed that your ex had been emotionally abusive toward you, manipulating you and gaslighting you into thinking you were fucking nuts for wanting to feel something with him and be loved the way you knew you deserved to be, and that you were too much for wanting the bare fucking minimum. That he made you feel like you didn’t matter. That he made you feel unworthy of true love after you finally put the finishing pieces of the puzzle together, seeing the bigger picture, and coming to the conclusion that he was a fucking prick who didn’t deserve you or what you had to offer. The final cherry on top of this monstrosity was catching him fucking his coworker in his bed. 

You told Joel, with tears in your eyes, that your heart was completely his and it had taken you a while to get over the hurdles and constant battles in your mind. You told him he’s the one who crumbled all of those walls completely. He’s the one that made you believe in love again, no matter how much it terrified you. You confessed that he was it for you. He’d ruined every single other man for you, ever. 

With glossy eyes of his own, he pulled you in tight and held you for what seemed like hours, kissing your temple repeatedly until you completely melted into him. He’d made you a promise that night he’d do his absolute damndest to protect your heart and take care of it, and if he ever saw your ex, he’d beat the shit out of him. You’d never seen Joel so furious, but with the look he had in his eyes, you could tell he really wasn’t joking. 

It’s only been a few months, but you feel like you’ve come a long way—mentally, physically, with Joel, your family, and your dearest friend Maria. Without them, you don’t think you would’ve had the strength to overcome your worst fears that involved love. It took you a while to finally love yourself again after you ended it with Christian,  and even longer to allow someone else to love you the way your heart desperately desired. 

You couldn’t have been more grateful that the person to give you that is this handsome, strong, loving man that stands proudly beside you. Someone who’s unabashed about showing you off. Proud to love you out loud. Isn’t afraid of giving you a big, playful smooch in public and doesn’t hide you from his coworkers or his family or any of his friends. 

You’re irrevocably in love with Joel Miller, and you’re damn proud of it. This man has saved you—literally and figuratively. 

“I honestly thought you’d have more stuff than this,” Joel says with a teasing undertone. You snort a laugh and roll your eyes, looking at him with amusement. 

“My apartment wasn’t that big, Miller.” You pat his chest and move toward the boxes, luckily thinking ahead and separating everything into which room they belonged in. You lift the first one up that’s labeled bedroom in big bold letters, heading toward the stairs. Joel follows suit and picks up another one labeled bathroom, following you up the steps. 

You set the box down on the floor and open the drawers that Joel had cleared out for you. You smile at the thought of him being nice enough to clear out some of his space for you. He’d told you it gave him the perfect opportunity to clean up around the house and get rid of stuff he didn’t need or use anyway. He donated most of the stuff he got rid of, saying someone else would get much better use out of the various items. 

Joel sets his box down in the master bathroom, setting it on your side of the sink. Your side. Your lips curl up at that, and Joel comes behind you before nearly tackling you onto the bed. You yelp out in surprise, a breathy laugh escaping you as he straddles you and looks down at you from above. 

Your hands land on his torso, coercing him down with a mischievous smile and a curl of your finger, silently telling him ‘come here’. He licks his lips and leans down, elbows on either side of your head. 

“Fancy meetin’ you here, darlin’.” His Southern charm is something you’ll never tire of, especially if it’s regarded in a playful mood. 

“Don’t you know it’s rude to keep a lady waiting?” You quirk a brow at him and grin, fisting the front of his shirt to tug him down so you’re nose-to-nose. 

“You’re right, pretty lady. Severely rude. How long until everyone gets here…?” He trails off, kissing the line of your jaw before nibbling at your chin. Your eyes glance at your watch-clad wrist as you lift it up in your line of sight. 

“About forty minutes or so,” you breathe out in a sigh. Joel hums against your neck now, licking your pulse point before nipping your skin slightly. You arch your body up into his, neediness rolling off of every limb as you lick your lips in anticipation. 

“Enough time for me to show you how not rude I am,” he murmurs. You laugh at that, threading your fingers through his thick locks. 

“I think this lady would very much indeed like a proper demonstration.” 

Joel’s eyes turn dark and he nearly growls, tugging your tank top up and over your head before unzipping your sports bra. Your breasts bounce as they become free, and Joel chuckles deeply at the way your nipples tighten and become erect with such little teasing and some cold air. 

“So fuckin’ pretty. I love these tits, baby.” 

He leans down and sucks a nipple into his mouth, swirling his warm tongue around it before tugging on it with his lips. He scrapes his teeth over the sensitive bud and you gasp, hands landing on Joel’s chest as you fist his shirt once more. 

Wetness easily pools in your panties as he continues his ministrations, giving the other nipple as much attention as the previous. He eventually licks down your sternum, nipping his way down your torso before grabbing leggings by the waistband and yanking them down. 

“Joel, I’m all sweaty,” you whine, not particularly keen on him going down on you when you feel… musty. 

“Since when have I given a shit about that, baby? You know I’d eat this pretty pussy for breakfast lunch and dinner, given the chance. Now hush up n’ let me eat you like you deserve.” 

And he’s about to dive right in when the doorbell rings. You whine in frustration, rubbing your brow impatiently. 

“Guess we don’t have forty minutes,” you bite, and he has to roll his lips into his mouth to refrain from laughing. You roll your eyes at him and gently push him off of you, standing from the bed to adjust your clothes. You make your way out of the bedroom, and Joel can’t help but land a hefty smack to your ass. 

You swivel your head to look back at him and give him an unconvincing scowl. He’s sporting an amused expression in return. “Hands off, Miller.” 

“Uh uh. We’re in our house now, sugar. Not a chance.” 

He wraps his arms around your waist as you both pad over to the front door, opening it to see your brothers standing there. 

“Hey look, it’s Dumb and Dumber,” you muse, and you scrunch your nose with a laugh as Andy rolls his eyes. Cole flips you off with a saccharine smile plastered to his lips as you step to the side to let them in. 

“Just to let you know, Miller, you’re insane for asking our baby sister to move in with you. Woman’s a goddamn menace,” Andrew starts, setting the six pack he brought onto the kitchen counter. 

“That’s rich considering you and Dumber over here decided to harass him about treating me right the day before Emi’s wedding.” 

Joel’s lip twitches up at the corner, and your gaze meets his as you both share an amused look. He wraps his arm around your shoulders, kissing your temple as he turns back to your brothers. 

“She’s my menace. I love it. I love everything about her,” he says, giving you a chaste kiss as you beam at him. 

“Eugh. Get a room,” Andrew says while he scrunches his face up in mock disgust. 

You point at him in an accusatory fashion. “‘Y’know, Andy, you won’t be talking so much shit one of these days when the woman of your dreams swoops in and knocks you on your ass.” 

“Jeez, who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?” Cole asks, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Both of you did. Cockblockers.” You brush past them to get a bottle opener for the beers, tossing it to Joel when you find it. 

“Dude, come on!” 

“Fucks sake.” 

Your brothers groan in unison as they pick up exactly what you were putting down. 

A flush of deep red creeps up Joel’s neck and face as he opens beers and doesn’t meet either Andrew or Cole’s gazes. 

“When’s the rest of the Brady Bunch supposed to get here?” You ask, pulling a water bottle out of the fridge for yourself. You uncap it and take a long sip, eyeing your brothers over the frosted plastic. 

“Probably twenty minutes or so. We were already in the neighborhood so we thought we’d swing by early.” 

You nod and shift your gaze back to the boxes. Your family was nice enough to volunteer to help you unpack and get things all organized, along with Tommy and Maria. 

A few hours later and the once-full boxes are broken down and flattened, piling high in the living room. The rest of the stuff you need to unpack is stuff for the bedroom, but you decide to take care of it a little later.

You can’t stop thanking everybody as the day goes on, and in truth, it warms your heart that you have so many people in your corner. 

“I’m happy for you, sweetheart,” your mom says as she nudges you with her hip. 

“Thanks mama.” You give her a side hug and lean in to her just as Joel catches your eye and winks at you. 

Your mom huffs a laugh beside you, looking at you with a knowing smirk. “That man really is your soulmate, baby girl. I’m so glad you’ve found someone who loves you the way he does.” 

“You know, I told him about everything that Christian had put me through. That man looked me in the eyes and told me he’d do everything in his power to protect my heart. I completely opened up my heart to him, mom. That’s something I haven’t done in such a long time because I was so fucking scared of me being hurt again being the outcome.” You finish putting away some baking tools in a kitchen drawer before you sigh and shake your head. 

“It was so clear to me, especially after his accident. I can’t fathom losing him.” You start to choke up on your words as your eyes get watery. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, trying to regain your composure. 

“Oh, honey,” your mom coos, wrapping her arm around you while rubbing your arm lovingly. “I know that time was super difficult for you and you had your reasons as to why you didn’t want to talk about it. It killed me seeing you going through such a tough time. If I could’ve taken your heartache away in a beat I would’ve.” 

Hot tears are fully rolling down your cheeks now and you sniffle, giving her a sad smile. “I love you, mom. Thank you for sticking by my side even during the ugliest of it all. I never meant to push you or dad away. Just know that Joel treats me so well and I don’t have to second-guess things with him. I know it’s only been a few months and it may seem like things are moving fast, but I’ve never had stronger feelings than this for someone. He’s it for me, mom.” 

“I’m so proud of you for opening your heart up again, sweetheart. You deserve this happiness and love. I can’t wait for the day I get to see you up at the altar with him, and, you know, follow in Emi’s footsteps in having a baby.” She gives you a wink and a kiss on the cheek before wiping a tear from your face before rejoining everyone in the living room. 

And it’s at this moment that you feel your heart grow fuller, completely surrounded by love—and, for the first time in years—full contentment and certainty. 

-

The quietness of the usually noisy home the following day was almost unsettling. It’s something that you know will take time to get used to, but luckily you have your Bluetooth speaker and your favorites playlist to keep you company. 

You make a checklist of everything you need to do today, and you’re determined to get it done before Joel and Sarah come home. The first thing on the list is to put away the last of your stuff and tidy up the house, which you get done in a couple of hours. It’s around eleven when you finish, so you decide to freshen up for the day and shower before heading downstairs to see what groceries they have in the fridge to make dinner. 

As soon as you open the fridge, you spot Joel’s forgotten lunch bag. You roll your lips into your mouth before checking your watch again, figuring he’d probably eat lunch soon. You decide to pay him a visit at the firehouse to drop off his lunch and get all of the flattened boxes that lay in the living room to a recycling facility. 

You load up the cardboard in your car and grab Joel’s lunch, starting the twenty minute drive to the firehouse. When you get there, you notice one of the trucks missing from the apparatus bay. Other than that, everything else is in place and the firehouse is completely quiet, except for some faint clinking noises coming from the second level. 

Your mind reels for a second, remembering the first time you walked through these doors. It had only been a few months back, but it seems like a lifetime ago. You truly couldn’t fathom how far you’ve come not only personally, but in your relationship with Joel as well. 

You remember being so uncertain about all of this. Nervous to take the next step. Push yourself to trust Joel and see where the leap of shattered faith would take you. You never in a million years thought it’d land you here, but you were beyond indebted to the universe that it did. 

You climb the stairs to the second floor and see Joel standing with his back to you, washing dishes. You take this time to eye him head-to-toe, admiring his strong build and tall stature as the muscles in his biceps and forearms flexed while he scrubbed away what looked like egg scraps off of a plate. His uniform is fitted to his figure like a glove with the navy blue Austin Fire Department t-shirt tucked into his crisp navy blue slacks with black steel-toed boots to finish off the look. His brown curls are neatly combed, and you just know he’s sporting that one Clark Kent curl in the front that drives you absolutely nuts. 

The dull ache in your core resurfaces from yesterday before you were so rudely interrupted from getting your pussy eaten like it was Joel’s last fucking meal. You nearly moan at the thought and shake your head with a brief sigh before you bite your lip. 

You let out a low whistle and giggle. “Looking good, Miller,” you say, stepping closer to him now. Joel swivels his head to look over his shoulder and his gaze meets yours with surprise written all over his expression. 

“Hey baby,” he says, finishing rinsing off the last of the dishes before turning off the tap and wiping his hands. He makes his way over to you with a grin, planting a sweet kiss on your lips before wrapping his arms around your waist securely. “This is a real nice surprise. Watcha doin’ here?” 

You hold up his lunch bag with a smirk. “Someone was in a rush this morning,” you tease. He chuckles and takes his lunch bag from your hand. 

“Guess I was. Didn’t even realize it. Woke up later than I intended to, but leavin’ you behind in bed is just so damn hard.” He kisses your forehead and you sigh in contentment. 

“Tell me about it. The bed gets so damn cold without my own personal furnace right beside me.” You giggle as he tosses his head back with a hearty laugh, and you admire the crow’s feet around his eyes as they crinkle. Everything about this man is just so damn beautiful. 

He fixates his gaze on you once more before sliding his free hand down to your ass to give it a love tap. 

“Thank you for bringin’ this to me. Probably woulda just stole Tommy’s lunch if I didn’t have one.” 

You huff a laugh before you finally look around, noticing that there’s nobody else in the vicinity. 

“Is it just you here?” You ask, and he lets go of you so he can put his lunch bag in the fridge. 

He nods. “Mhm. Everyone’s on a call. Left a couple ‘a minutes before you came here.” 

“Oh,” you grimace. “I’m sorry you’re not out with them,” you say sympathetically. 

“Ain’t a worry, baby. Gives me the chance to tidy the place up and rest my bones. Just glad ‘m not drivin’ you crazy at home anymore.” 

“You didn’t drive me crazy,” you laugh. “I’m already there.” 

“Funny.” 

“I know,” you gleam at him before scrunching your nose, heading toward the steps. 

“Leavin’ already?” He falls in step behind you and follows you down the steps. 

“Don’t wanna bug you too much while you’re at work.” 

He scoffs and shakes his head before stopping you next to the firetruck. “Woman, when you gonna learn that you never bug me?” He’s got a teasing glint in his eyes and you raise an eyebrow at him. 

“Guess you’ll just have to teach me that lesson over…” Your eyes trail down to his lips and the corner of your mouth tugs up in the slightest. “And over.” 

He moves toward you so your back is flush against the sleek red engine, caging you in as he places both hands next to your head on either side. He’s got that look in his eyes that drives you wild, and the dull ache isn’t so dull anymore. It’s a full-fledged throbbing that has your breath picking up in the slightest as you look at him staring back at you with a fire in his eyes. 

“I don’t have a single problem doin’ that, darlin’.” 

You swallow harshly as his eyes flit behind you for a brief second before they settle back on your face. 

“You ever been inside a firetruck?” He asks, cocking his head to the side. He moves closer to you so his body is nearly flush to yours, give or take two or three centimeters. 

Your mouth goes dry and the words you want to say seem to die on your tongue. You opt for shaking your head no. Joel smirks at that, reaching up to pull open the back door to the firetruck. He nods his head upward, and you immediately get what he’s hinting at. 

“After you, baby.” 

You slowly turn around and climb into the back of the truck, looking around in pure curiosity. There’s two captain’s chairs right next to each other, and Joel takes a seat on the one closest to the open door before he shuts it. The sound makes you jump and you look down at him as he tugs on your hand. He spreads his legs wide and the slacks he’s wearing hug his thighs deliciously. Your mouth nearly waters at how fucking good he looks in his element. He pats one of his thighs and you sit down on it, looking around a bit more before he gently grabs your chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing you to look at him. 

“This is actually really cool,” you say, eyes finally settling on his face once again. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just staring at you with a lustful look in his eyes. You can practically read his mind from a mile away.

“Joel, no, we’re at your job and—”

His lips on your jaw distract you and you suck in a sharp breath as he licks at your pulse point on your neck. You know this is so wrong on so many levels, but you can’t seem to get yourself to stop and think about the consequences. 

“They’re on a call,” he mumbles into your neck. “‘S gonna take ‘em awhile.” 

He grabs your hips and swings your other leg over the other side of his lap so you’re straddling him. You can’t deny the slick heat between your legs and the prospect of doing something insanely inappropriate in a firetruck. This was never on your Bingo Card of Life, but when the opportunity arises, you take it. 

“We never got to finish what we started yesterday,” Joel states matter-of-factly before his warm hand plunges into the front of your leggings. He raises a brow up at you when he realizes you’re going commando today. His middle finger slides through your slit easily, and you moan at the contact as you loll your head to the side. You grip onto his shoulders and lean down, crashing your lips to his in such fervor that it nearly knocks the wind out of you. 

He circles your clit skillfully with the tip of his finger, and you can’t help but grind yourself onto his hand. He’s swallowing every whimper that bubbles up in your throat as you move your hips back and forth, and his free hand grabs your ass before giving it a smack. 

“A little rough today, are we?” Your voice is breathy and you let out a small laugh, slowing down your grinding motions. 

“Is it too much?” He asks, and you nearly want to melt into a damn puddle at how considerate he is being so concerned like this. You grin down at him and smooth out the worry line in his brow, bending down to give him a lengthy kiss. You peck his lips a couple of times before sliding your hands down his chest, feeling his strong heartbeat beneath your fingertips. 

“Not at all. I like it rough.” You smirk at him as you feel his cock straining against his slacks at your words. A low growl rumbles deep in his chest before he closes his eyes for a beat. They snap open again and this time, you’re met with a darkened gaze that’s full of lust and determination. 

“Yeah? How rough?” His hand slides out of your leggings and he swipes the tip of his middle finger across your bottom lip, coating it in your arousal. He coaxes your jaw open to slip his finger into your mouth, and you suck his finger willingly. You taste yourself then before you shoot him with a dead serious stare. 

“Ruin me.” 

He stills at your words for a beat as he sucks in a sharp breath. He grabs the back of your head and crashes his lips to yours, hands now roaming wildly before he’s frantically sliding down your leggings. You’re trying as quickly as possible to blindly unbuckle his belt and unbutton his slacks, and you slide his clothing down his thighs before he presses the head of his cock against your folds. 

Before you can even think to sink down onto him, he grabs you and forces you to face downward toward the seats so you’re ass up and completely exposed to him this way. 

“Such a perfect fuckin’ ass too, baby.” He grabs both of your arms and holds them behind your back, wrapping one hand around both your wrists to keep you steady. You whimper as he slides his cock through your folds once again before he suddenly slams into you. 

Your mouth goes agape and your eyes roll to the back of your skull as the air in your lungs dissipates. You clench hard around him and you feel your mind completely slipping away as you see stars. 

Joel presses his free hand down on your lower back and soothes you lovingly. “Breathe, baby, breathe,” he says through clenched teeth, and you can tell this is a lot for him, too. 

“Move, Joel,” you choke out, sucking in a big breath of air. He does as you say, moving his hips at a brutal pace so he’s pistoning in and out of you. 

You have to concentrate on breathing because it’s damn near impossible. The sound of skin slapping on skin reverberates inside of the firetruck, and your mind was absolutely reeling at how you two were doing something this scandalous. 

You feel Joel’s free hand rub your ass for a brief second before he lands a harsh smack on it, and you cry out in both pain and pleasure as your skin stings from the contact. 

“You like that?” He asks, somehow pounding into you even harder. Your limbs are like noodles at this point and your mind is so foggy. You try to answer him again but nothing comes out. 

“Answer me, sweet girl. You like when I’m rough with you?” 

You whine before you finally find your words again. “Fuck! Yes!”

He lands another harsh smack against your ass and you moan loudly before sucking in a breath when you feel his thumb circle your other hole, and he spits on it. 

“J-Joel—”

“One of these days I’ll fuck you here, too.” His husky voice is full of promise as he slips his thumb into your  asshole, and all you can do is nod as you feel so full like this. 

“Yesyeyes oh, god—”

“He ain’t here right now, baby. Just me.” Joel darkly chuckles as he releases your wrists and uses that hand to slither between your legs, furiously and skillfully rubbing at your swollen, aching clit. 

You brace your arms on the seats below you as you try to hold yourself up, but your legs are shaking uncontrollably. Joel takes his thumb out of you before sliding his hand around your body to hold you up against his body as his relentless pace begins to get sloppy. 

He brings his hand up to your throat and wraps around it, yanking your head back against his shoulder as he looks down at you with a chillingly carnal stare. He almost doesn’t even look like the sweet man you’re in love with, but a darker version that’s consumed his being. 

Seeing this side of him makes you even more hot and bothered and your body easily succumbs to his ministrations, so reactive to his touch and words. 

He uses his thumb from the hand on the throat to tug at your chin, coaxing your jaw open as a wicked grin curls onto his lips before he spits into your mouth. 

The heat that was once a low simmer in your belly is now a fire roaring throughout the veins in your body, igniting you and consuming you as a whole. You swallow before he leans down to kiss you hungrily, and that’s what does it for you. 

You surge over the edge, orgasm crashing over you like waves on a shore. Joel swallows all of your cries and pleads against his lips, groaning at how you’re pulsing around him as you ride through your undoing. He squeezes the sides of your neck as he comes undone, arm moving down to wrap around your waist as his whole body stills. 

You feel his hot spend fill you up with each last harsh thrust he gives you before he stills completely. He kisses your shoulder lovingly before pulling out, groaning into your sweater as he does so. You feel his spend leak down the apex of your thighs, and Joel collects some on his finger as he swipes it through your folds. 

You shiver at his overstimulating touch, looking back at him as he smirks and brings his finger toward your mouth. You eagerly open it for him, moaning around his finger as you get a taste of the both of you. 

“You know, for someone who’s such a sweetheart, you really are a lil’ freaky. Just how I like it,” Joel says with a chest-rumbling laugh. You roll your eyes at him before he kisses your temple and helps you pull up your leggings before he tucks himself back into his boxers and fixes his uniform to look somewhat presentable again, opening the door to get out. 

“You’re one to talk, Miller,” you say, grabbing his hand as he helps you hop down out of the firetruck. 

“I’m an angel. Completely innocent. No idea what you’re insinuatin’, pretty lady.” He wiggles his eyebrows as you roll your eyes at him once more before laughing. 

“Sure, and I’ve got telekinesis.” 

He opens his mouth to retort, but is cut off by the sound of the other fire engine beginning to back up into the empty spot of the bay. 

Everyone starts to unload one-by-one, waving hi to you as they see you and Joel standing there. You’re hoping to god you don’t have a ‘we-just-fucked-in-the-back-of-the-firetruck’ look slapped across your forehead. Luckily, nobody seems to notice, and if they do, they don’t say anything. 

Until Tommy rounds the corner of the smaller truck. He looks at you both and pauses, taking in your appearances. Your face burns and you know if you look down at the ground it’ll give you both away, but anything is better than being under the younger Miller’s scrutinizing stare. 

Everyone’s gone upstairs at this point except for you three, and the sudden howl of laughter Tommy lets out makes you jump. He’s bent over with his hands clutching his knees, face and neck turning red with how hard he’s laughing. He’s got tears in his eyes that he wipes away with a knuckle, and it’s a couple of minutes before he finally calms down and catches his breath again. 

He straightens out and looks between the two of you again, lips wobbling as if he’s trying to hold back more laughter. 

“Oh for fucks sake, out with it.” Joel rolls his eyes at his brother as he wraps his arm around your shoulders, pulling you back so you stumble into his solid body. 

“You two are unbelievable. You’re not that slick and you know, you both have guilty written across your foreheads. I know what you did, you nasties.” 

“Might I remind you about that time I caught you and Maria—”

“Hey hey hey, this ain’t about me and my girl, this is about you two.” Tommy chuckles as he holds his hands up in surrender. 

“Don’t y’all get enough time at home?” Tommy teases, and you bury your face into Joel’s chest with a groan. 

“Shut up Tommy,” you say. 

“No actually, because you’re always there,” Joel retorts, which causes Tommy to laugh again. 

“Oh please, like that’s stopped y’all before.” 

“Not another word about it, brother,” Joel warns, and Tommy smirks at him. 

“Fine. But ya might wanna take care of that stain on your pants.” 

Joel’s eyes snap down to his slacks the same time yours do, but you don’t see anything.

Fucking Tommy. 

“Bastard,” Joel mumbles. 

You decide to get in on the teasing. You pat Joel’s chest and sigh, shaking your head. “Guess that means no more sex for us, cowboy.” 

You give him a loving kiss on the cheek before you pry yourself out of Joel’s grip and turn to walk out of the firehouse, fighting your giggles as you leave a dumbfounded Joel who calls out ‘you’re not serious, are you?’, and a, yet again, doubled over Tommy with tears in his eyes from laughing so hard behind you. 

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[bunkoos-mole-enthusiast]

Weekly Jungkook Fanfic Recs

Some fine JK fics for your reading pleasure. 🔞 Please show your appreciation to all the wonderful authors:)

Golden Cufflinks: You’ve never given much thought to finding your true mate, firmly believing it’s something that will happen when it happens. But, when you do find him—thanks to a pair of golden cufflinks—it very well could ruin everything. They say not all’s fair in love and war; you just hadn’t expected your best friend’s wedding to be the battleground. https://colormepurplex2.tumblr.com/post/766335488954138624/golden-cufflinks-jjk Confined: Y/n didn't think testing out a new sex toy would cause so much havoc but no worries, her next-door neighbor Jungkook doesn't mind lending her a bit of assistance. https://www.tumblr.com/cravetive/742183386711539712/%F0%9D%97%96%F0%9D%97%A2%F0%9D%97%A1%F0%9D%97%99%F0%9D%97%9C%F0%9D%97%A1%F0%9D%97%98%F0%9D%97%97 Show Me Something: He was your first kiss years ago, only to become your first heartbreak the next day. Your life would have been much easier if only you would forget about him and move on, instead of having to see him almost every day because your best friend had fallen in love with his best friend. When your pal had suggested having a road trip for the final days of summer break before going back to campus, you said yes for a reprieve. Too bad she forgot to tell you about the two extra passengers tagging along. One of which is the boy that still has a tight hold of your heart without either of you even knowing it. https://archiveofourown.org/works/30396546 Slow Dancing: When your countdown appeared on your wrist right on the morning of your eighteenth birthday, you had thought that perhaps the universe was on your side, especially since the final seconds were already ticking so soon. You just never expected to have your first meeting with your soulmate to be the day when you had to let him go. But hope was not lost when you still found love without the bond, and Jungkook showed you that it was possible to find happiness beyond the system that was written for you. Except that the universe doesn’t seem to have enough of its game, when your past sacrifice comes back hitting you straight in the face, just when you had believed that you had written off the perfect ending to your bittersweet tale. https://archiveofourown.org/works/39615618 Call Me Mistress: "It has certainly been quite the party," you began, taking a stroll around the table to give his friends time to ogle you. "But I'm here for someone else on his special day.” The end of the riding crop snapped suggestively against your open palm and you felt excitement bloom around the large table. “Now, let me see if I can find out which of you is the birthday boy..." A long-term client hires the Mistress to help celebrate his best friend’s birthday. The festivities lead to new business. https://dark-muse-iris.tumblr.com/post/164844332231/call-me-mistress-ramen-m-part-1

Sillage: Soulmate!AU where soulmates are drawn to one another by the infliction of physical touch, whether it be pain or pleasure. But it is only initiated once the two people somewhat interact. https://www.tumblr.com/deerguk/144529213896/s-i-l-l-a-g-e-pt-one The Pink Pill: This pill is essentially a drug that enhances your libido to the max and you’ll quite literally never experience arousal like you do when you’ve taken this pill. Thankfully, in each universe, there’s a man that’s ready to help you explore and reach your peak of sexual euphoria. https://www.tumblr.com/dollfaceksj/723667191148462080/the-pink-pill-jjk-version-m-3-days Reminder: Whenever he flies back into town, your doorbell is the first he rings. When he has to fly out again, your bed is the last he lies in. However, you’re not stupid. You know your ex-boyfriend, that also happens to be an up-and-coming professional boxer, Jeon Jungkook, doesn’t come to you only. Unfortunately, you have no right to be jealous, not when you’re the one that ended the relationship. https://www.tumblr.com/dollfaceksj/721591770571554816/reminder-jjk-m-masterlist Stay: “Jungkook,” His name was merely a sigh flying out of your lungs and through your parted lips. “If we do this - if we go down this road - how do we go back?” https://eoieopda.tumblr.com/post/703940957854449664/stay-jjk

Losers: I get lonely when you're not here, and this darkness appears, leaving me stranded. https://www.tumblr.com/eternalguk/744420253674668032/losers-jjk-m

[jester-lover]

Hello! Can I please request Azul, Riddle, and Jade with a reader who talks a lot and doesn’t stop talking until someone tells her that she’s talking a lot?

This is literally just me as a person. Extroverts assemble😞

Talkative

Feat. Azul, Riddle and Jade

Cws/ bullying, teasing, fem! Reader, mostly fluff

Azul

Azul is often in the same boat as you (no pun intended), as he is also a very hardworking and driven young man. The ideas the two of you share with one another are really interesting and helpful.

Even if you are just rambling on as he finishes up his paperwork, Azul will always insist you keep going until you feel like you’re done talking. If you cut a sentence halfway through because you’re worried he might get annoyed, don’t be. He loves the sound of your voice.

He’s the type to get really ticked off when people bully or demean you for talking too much, because he has his own history with bullying and also because he genuinely likes hearing you speak.

He always remembers things you mention you want in your ramblings and notes them down for future occasions. If you mention not liking someone for any reason, he’ll keep note of that too…

Azul will encourage you to actualize some of the plans and ideas you bring up to him, keeping you motivated with his everlasting pride towards you.

Riddle

Despite being kind of quiet and stern, Riddle would fare well with a talkative girlfriend. You would balance out his angry nature with your extroverted one.

He loves listening to you talk about anything and everything over a warm cup of tea, the warmth surrounding the two of you as he intently observes your expressions changing as you describe certain aspects of your day.

If he hears even a snide remark coming from someone about your talkative nature, he collars them. No hesitation.

Riddle invites you to every single unbirthday party because you can engage in actual worthwhile conversation and also because he loves watching your social butterfly nature in action as you converse with everyone.

Jade

Jade can often be quiet, but he is probably one of the best and most thoughtful listeners in all of NRC. He usually uses this skill to gather dirt on people, but with you, it's different.

As a guy who's only been on land for a fraction of his life, Jade openly enjoys learning more about the world through your spiels.

He also loves drama; he wants all the tea if you’re into gossip. Trust me, he can trade info if it’s something juicy about someone he doesn’t like. You two sit down every once in a while and just chit-chat like moms over brunch.

If anyone has a problem with you talking a lot or, heaven forbid, calls you annoying, they’re gonna find a looming shadow menacing them until they apologize….

[muchtooold2]

I’ve recently discovered the part of the internet deeply devoted to defending Mystra in BG3 and I get she’s a long standing lore character but it feels like we played a wildly different game.

And I just know in my heart of hearts that if Mystra were male and Gale were female I wouldn’t have to keep reading some variation of “well it’s fine she did nothing to stabilize a ticking time bomb in the chest that would have wiped out an entire city because it needs to feed on the weave despite no real evidence this actually hurts her at all” or “actually it’s Gale’s fault he tried to return what he thought was part of her to her because he was an grown adult who should have known better despite the fact she did not tell him and he did not know it would have hurt her and is horrified to learn this in act 3.” Like, this isn’t me woobifying him. I love Gale and know he can be self-absorbed, his ego is big, and if left unchecked his personality leads him to become the literal God of Ambition. But he’s not like a power hungry schemer. His ambition and desire for knowledge (things Mystra likes!) got the better of him and since he is also insecure he decided to try to do an ambitious thing and prove himself to a goddess. He knows and admits that’s on him! But he (and players) are still allowed to be mad at the fact he’s kicked to the curb to maybe blow up a city to learn a lesson Mystra does not bother explaining until she’s literally forced to because he did not kill himself on her command. And people are allowed to find their relationship wildly inappropriate and toxic and abusive because based on the game you play, it is.

I don’t think it’s bonkers to say that in this situation, Mystra—a literal goddess who met Gale when he was probably somewhere between 17-22 years old—was wrong to have a relationship with him, that it was a toxic and abusive one and that is on her as the entity with more power in every way, that she was petty for letting him languish for a year and being willing to potentially let him kill a whole city while he was trying not to die by eating magic shoes, and that telling him to kill himself is a dick move. And people are like “well according to DnD lore she’s just protecting herself and she was only resurrected after he was a teen” are doubly annoying because bg3 doesn’t give a shit about the canon timeline considering Durge would be like…10 if they cared.

And I know it sucks if you like love Mystra in DnD lore and this doesn’t align with her or whatever but bg3’s themes of “hurt people hurt people” and “power over others is something easily abused if you’re careless” also applies to Mystra. With the sort of exception of Selûne, the game also feels pretty clear on the idea that gods Do Not and Cannot Care About You. The game you play is showing a toxic relationship (and I will say she is not as bad as some people say she is, like she is a goddess operating with some blue-orange morality) and if the genders were flipped we would not be having this discourse.

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

I love being a wild card in this fandom.  

What I love about Sauron/Mairon x Galadriel is that their dynamic isn’t some basic Light vs. Dark nonsense. Because this is Tolkien, not some Hollywood digested cr*p, as the professor says himself:

Some reviewers have called the whole thing simple-minded, just a plain fight between Good and Evil, with all the good just good, and the bad just bad. Pardonable, perhaps (though at least Boromir has been overlooked) in people in a hurry, and with only a fragment to read, and, of course, without the earlier written but unpublished Elvish histories. But the Elves are not wholly good or in the right. Not so much because they had flirted with Sauron; as because with or without his assistance they were 'embalmers'. They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle-earth because they had become fond of it (and perhaps because they there had the advantages of a superior caste), and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce, even largely a desert, where they could be 'artists' – and they were overburdened with sadness and nostalgic regret. Tolkien, Letter 154

This is what I've been telling you guys. The Elves are not hopeless victims of Sauron, nor are they the "heroes" of the story. Tolkien lore is complex, it's not "pure Good vs. pure Evil" like the "lorebros" or the Peter Jackson fanboys claim. Stop believing their nonsense, they don't know what they are talking about. The battle of “good vs. evil”, in Tolkien legendarium, ultimately, happens within each character.

When they first met, Mairon and Galadriel both turned their backs on literal heaven (Valinor) because of their pride: Galadriel wanted the glory of seeking and destroying Sauron for herself; Mairon couldn’t bring himself to face judgement from the Valar. Mairon was the repentant sinner, while Galadriel was on her way to become one.

Galadriel is a literal ticking bomb, ready to explode and turn Dark at any moment, in "Rings of Power". Mairon was drawn to the darkness within her, and not to her “light” (this is another way he self-deceives himself). Her “light” (= Two Trees of Valinor) is merely aesthetic. She doesn’t have that light, and that’s why she’ll use Nenya, and her Mirror and her Phial to harvest purest Light, and become the “Lady of Light”.

In “Rings of Power” there is a clue that Mairon might be blood bound to Morgoth, and, so, he’s always unconsciously seeking his former master, and that’s why he wanted to serve Galadriel. Because he's a Maia, he was created to be a servant to a Vala. The deal, wasn't her becoming his servant, but the other way around.

And we are talking about Sauron, here: his whole character arc is not one of redemption, so he the interest he believes he has on "Light" is not real, it's one of his self-deceptions. And for Sauron to never stop grouping Galadriel’s mind, thousands of years into the future, when he’s already officially the “shadow of Morgoth” it’s because he recognizes her potential for darkness, not her light.  

This doesn’t mean that he’s unredeemable, mind you. Tolkien’s work is infused with Christian doctrine (mainly Catholicism), and in this religion one can always find redemption and forgiveness if one actually repents for their sins, and makes amends for them (which will be Galadriel's case). And this is also present in Tolkien lore: no character is unredeemable on his world. But in the legendarium, after refusing to stand trial before the Valar, Sauron never truly repents, and becomes the "a reincarnation of Evil" aka Morgoth come again.

And there is Sauron. In the Silmarillion and Tales of the First Age Sauron was a being of Valinor perverted to the service of the Enemy and becoming his chief captain and servant. He repents in fear when the First Enemy is utterly defeated, but in the end does not do as was commanded, return to the judgement of the gods. He lingers in Middle-earth [Halbrand]. Very slowly, beginning with fair motives: the reorganising and rehabilitation of the ruin of Middle-earth, neglected by the gods', he becomes a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power – and so consumed ever more fiercely with hate (especially of gods and Elves). All through the twilight of the Second Age the Shadow is growing in the East of Middle-earth, spreading its sway more and more over Men – who multiply as the Elves begin to fade. Tolkien Letter 131

Sauron was of course not 'evil' in origin. He was a 'spirit' corrupted by the Prime Dark Lord (the Prime sub-creative Rebel) Morgoth. He was given an opportunity of repentance, when Morgoth was overcome, but could not face the humiliation of recantation, and suing for pardon; and so his temporary turn to good and 'benevolence' ended in a greater relapse, until he became the main representative of Evil of later ages. But at the beginning of the Second Age he was still beautiful to look at, or could still assume a beautiful visible shape – and was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all 'reformers' who want to hurry up with 'reconstruction' and 'reorganization' are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up. The particular branch of the High-Elves concerned, the Noldor or Loremasters, were always on the side of 'science and technology', as we should call it: they wanted to have the knowledge that Sauron genuinely had, and those of Eregion refused the warnings of Gil-galad and Elrond. Tolkien Letter 153

Halbrand was repentant Mairon. Annatar is Mairon falling back into evil.

Galadriel is not yet the “repentant sinner” Tolkien described her to be, in his legendarium, either. In Season 2, she doesn’t own up to her actions, and is still making excuses for them: “I was deceived”; “Sauron used me”; “Under his harp I was played to a melody not of my choosing”, bla bla bla.

She’s still in self-denial about her actions in Season 1: she’s the one who tempted Mairon with promises of power and, pretty much directly, caused him to choose deception over redemption, and condemned Middle-earth to Sauron’s tyranny (this is also somewhat compatible to what Tolkien wrote, because in the lore the Elves are also to blame).

And I’m almost certain she’ll have to f*ck up even harder in order to have a “eye opening” moment. Because one can’t really be a “penitent” (using Tolkien’s words) unless one takes ownership of one's actions, and makes the conscious decision to atone for them. 

[tightjeansjavi]

chamomile

A/N: I was making myself a cup of tea earlier this evening and the idea blossomed from there 🥺

for @morallyinept Valentine’s Day masterlist 💗

~word count: 1.3k~

Summary: it’s Valentine’s Day and Dieter Bravo is alone and missing you

Pairing | Dieter Bravo x f!reader

Warnings: mature, fluff, angst, language,implicit smut, one mention of dieter giving himself a handjob, mentions of alcohol and ouid, fwb’s, pining, assumed one-sided feelings, two idiots in love without realizing it, typical dieter behavior, reader has no physical descriptions, readers nickname is petal, +18 minors dni!

On the long, lonely nights where Dieter Bravo is away from you, his solace, his person, he always finds himself struggling to sleep. An hour here, and an hour there, but it can never compare to the deep, dreamy, snooze he gets when you’re laying next to him, tangled up in his legs, under his sheets.

He knows deep down he’s got it bad for you. So bad, he can hardly think straight on most days. Dieter, you missed your cue, again.

He groans, pinching the bridge of his nose and shakes his shoulders to relieve any pent up stress he’s feeling and to get back on track.

Did you even read the fucking script, Bravo?

He scoffs, jaw ticking under the harsh studio lights that buzz in his ear like a swarm of angry bees. Course I did. He lies through his teeth.

How could he even think about reading his lines when he spent hours of his night staring down his phone as he deeply contemplated the pros and cons of calling you up.

If I tell her how I feel, it makes everything fucking weird.

Or you get to live out your very own rom-com!

Or she never wants to speak to me again

Or she also confesses her deep, profound love for you.

Or..she doesn’t feel the same way and breaks my fucking heart into a million tiny pieces!

Or your dreams come true, Dieter.

-

You met Dieter Bravo through a friend of a friend at one of the movie star’s infamous parties. Dieter was drunk, a bit of a stumbling mess, but when his warm, and slightly clammy palm wrapped around your own, you knew you were donefore. And how was it possible for a scruffy man such as himself to have the kindest, softest, warmest brown eyes you ever had the pleasure of gazing into?

No, you were not in love with Dieter Bravo. He was just your friend..with the occasional benefits. Nothing more, nothing less.

When Dieter finds himself alone in his too big of a house for another night, he packs a bowl, and then another, and another. He takes a relaxing bath, alone with nothing but the comfort of his own fist wrapped around his cock. His lashes flutter shut, plush lips parting as he sinks further into the chamomile scented bubbles.

You told him once that chamomile should help him sleep better. He sent his assistant out the next day to buy chamomile tea, and literally any and all the chamomile scented products that she could find.

You took a bath together once, and he vividly remembers dragging his nose across the base of your neck, inhaling the sweet aroma while you nearly dozed off in his saccharine grip. Muscles relaxed, limbs pliant under the soapy water.

But you weren’t here. You were thousands of miles away on a girls trip with some of your single friends. It was the trip that finally made it out of the group chat, and it happened to fall on the week of Valentine’s Day.

Wait, that’s today, right? Shit. How pathetic. He thinks to himself, stroking his cock faster, creating ripples in the sudsy water.

Yeah, so fucking pathetic. Alone on fucking Valentine’s Day, and higher than a goddamn kite.

He doesn’t come, and while that in itself should be frustrating, he accepts his fate of misery while the temperature of the water becomes too cold to bear and he’s forced to retreat.

He packs another bowl, yanks his leftover Taco Bell from the fridge and eats it cold, like the feeling of his heart.

His king sized bed feels even larger than usual, and he chuffs a laugh, taking another bite of his half eaten crunch wrap supreme.

That’s because I’m fucking alone on Valentine’s Day.

He knows he’s not really alone. But on a day that is all about love, he sure as hell doesn’t feel the love.

He misses the way you would roll over mid sleep and drape your arm across his bare stomach. Your fingers would play with the dark, soft hair that led down to his happy trail while you drooled into the crook of his neck, soft snores escaping past your parted lips. He found it endearing. You were like a koala, and he was the tree branch of your choosing.

He so badly wanted to be your tree branch right now.

Was that lame? Probably. But Dieter could give less of a shit about any of that. He missed you, and the feeling ate away at him, carving a hole in his chest and yanking his heart right out.

He didn’t mind that you would accidentally kick him off the side of the bed, or steal all the covers. He loved it when you would talk in your sleep, babbling about pure nonsense that somehow to his ears made perfect sense.

Okay, so he missed you…a lot. He wasn’t the only person to miss someone this much. Hell, maybe even his neighbor was going through the same feelings and emotions as he was.

Love. Yeah, that’s what he was feeling. He was in love with you, and you had no fucking idea how he truly felt.

He tossed and turned, fluffed down his pillows, scrolled on his phone, watching his favorite saved tik toks, and he even tried listening to the soothing sounds of a thunderstorm through a podcast on Spotify. None of it was working. He couldn’t sleep, and you were to blame.

That’s how Dieter Bravo found himself in his kitchen, fully exposed sans some fluffy slippers on his feet that had seen better days. He dug through his pantry till he found the familiar box of chamomile tea. He let out a sigh of relief and tore open the silver foil with his teeth.

His phone screen read 2:30a.m as the kettle on the stove whistled loudly in his eardrums.

The familiar scent of chamomile coated his senses in a warmth that could only be described as you as he let the tea bag steep in his favorite chipped mug.

His knuckles drummed along the countertop nervously as he stared down his phone once more. He let out a huff, bringing one hand to scratch at the patches in his scraggly beard.

As steam billowed from the mug next to him, he finally picked up his phone and dialed your number.

He chewed on the tip of his thumbnail, eyes dancing nervously as the dial tone rang, and rang. He was ready to hang up and toss his phone in the garbage disposal when you finally answered.

His heart skipped a beat and his weed-hazed mind couldn’t keep up with the rate that words were flowing past his lips.

“Petal? Hey, happy Valentine’s Day. Well—er, happy belated Valentine’s Day? ‘Suppose it’s already over. Uh—hope I’m not bothering you, I just couldn’t sleep, so I’m in my kitchen having a cup of chamomile tea, like you suggested. Fuck, I’m rambling, aren’t I? I smoked a few too many bowls so my brain is a bit scrambled. Anyway, I miss you, baby. I’m so lonely, and I wish you were here.”

His stoned rambling continued on as you listened silently, holding your phone close to your ear and swatting at your friend's arm when they asked who was on the phone. The club music was booming at the same rate that your heart was pounding in your chest.

“Hi, Dee. I miss you too. I've been thinking...when I get back, can we grab dinner sometime?" You warmly suggest.

His pupils are blown wide like two shiny marbles illuminated under the soft glow of the moonlight trickling in through his tall kitchen windows.

“Fuck yes. I’d fucking love to grab dinner with you sometime, Petal.” He rasps softly through the receiver.

banners made by the lovely @saradika 💗

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[meguemii]

Throwing Rocks at Your Window.

Synopsis- in which you and your boyfriend satoru gojo and you have a silly argument but you have to go home quickly before saying goodbye to him and you end up getting your phone taken away for a week. Satoru shows up at your window because you haven’t been responding to his texts and calls.

Warnings- A very small cut in your forehead, nothing crazy. FLUFF AND SILLY CRY BABY GOJO.

word count- 1.8k

navigation station🚉.

gojo satoru’s playlist🎧. (kinda angsty LOL)

Emi’s notes- you guys know i literally never proofread my works. this is such an american romcom LOL.

You had been hanging out with everyone on a friday afternoon after school grabbing food and doing some shopping. It was pretty hot for a spring day and you had been talking with Shoko and Haibara about a show you guys watch. The other two were teasing Nanami about stupid stuff. After stuffing your face for 10 minutes and laughing you ass off, your throat started to get dry. Asking your oh so sweet and loving boyfriend to grab you a drink so you could keep talking with your friends. “Get it yourself you rat” he replied in a sassy tone because of course you HAD to date a sassy man. “Satoru Gojo, i’m literally be parched don’t be a jerk!” you retorted as crossed your arms with a ‘hmph’ “Yes Satoru, go get the love and light of your life a soda” Suguru mocked him. Nanami also chimed in telling Gojonto be a gentleman.Gojo rolled his eyes telling nanami to shut up and once again told you to get it yourself “stop being a lazy mole rat and get yourself a drink” he stuck his tongue out at you like a child and you rolled your eyes. “Screw you Satoru” you said slumping in your chair. “I can get you something to drink” Haibara offered and you turned him down with a smile saying it was okay.

Checking your phone as it buzzed notifying you that you had gotten a text. ‘Get your butt home!’ from your mother. “Oh here we go.” you huffed as you collected your things saying your goodbyes and that you had to go, quickly scurrying off to get home and see what your mom was mad at you for.

“Where’s she going?” Gojo asked as he watched you leave. “She’s pissed and said she didn’t want to be near you” Shoko chuckled evilly as she stirred the pot, out of love of course. Any chance to scare Gojo she would take in a heartbeat. He started to feel bad about it and texted you an apology quickly after.

You arrived home to find your parents at the kitchen table seeing a pack of smokes and a lighter laying on the table, mumbling a small “shit” under your breathe. “Y/N M/N L/N, Care to explain?” Your mother asked with a ticked off look on her face. Trying to find a million excuses in a matter of milliseconds, “They’re Ieri’s, she left them here the other day when she spent the night. I swear.” Crossing your heart hoping she’d believe your lie, as well as to try and prove your false innocence. “Grounded. Hand me your phone.” your father said flatly. “But I told you they weren’t mine!”you protested just as any teenager in trouble would. “Even if they are Ieri’s why would you let her leave them here?” your mother asked as she pinched the bridge of her nose in disappointment. “She was literally supposed to sleepover this weekend and said she’d grab them then!” another excuse, you were on a roll! “Give them back on monday. I never want to see another cigarette in this home unless it’s your father’s.” you grumbled in anger handing over your phone and retreating to your room. “I’m calling Ieri and tellingnl her your sleepover is canceled! You’re not going anywhere for a week!” you heard your mother shout from the kitchen. “Whatever!” you shouted back.

Great. Now you’d be bored all weekend without any human interaction besides speaking to your parents. Maybe you’d catch up on your actual schoolwork since you couldn’t train.

Entertaining yourself with music from your ipod, and reading all weekend. You couldn’t help but snort to yourself recalling friday afternoon and that stupid argument you had with Satoru, you wondered if he missed you or if he wondered where you’ve been all weekend as it was a sunday night.

Little did you know that he was panicked and distraught all weekend thinking you were ignoring him because you were actually mad. You guys had ‘fought’ and then you ran off and started ignoring his text messages and calls all going straight to voicemail. “C’mon Y/N pick up” he whined as he dragged out the ‘p’. “Hi this is Y/N! Can’t talk right now! Leave a message but only if it’s worth listening to!” That was literally the only thing he’s heard you say all weekend. A prerecorded message, he even called your house phone and your dad picked up saying to leave her alone which really scared him. Did you tell your parents you hated him?

He quicking dialled Suguru’s number, waiting forever for him to pick up. A groggy voice picked up the phone “Satoru it’s 11:45pm on a sunday night. what could you possibly need?” He said while yawning making it clear that he had been woken up. “Have you heard from

Y/N?” he frantically asked. “No? We never text or call, I don’t even think I have her number saved. Is that all you need? Because if so I am going back to sleep. Do not disturb my slumber again.” Satoru scoffed at Suguru’s attitude. “Okay for starters don’t be rude. Secondly she hasn’t been answering me at all this weekend and I called her home phone and her dad told me to leave her alone!” He whined, god he was such a baby. “She hates you man. Maybe you should have gotten her that drink.” he teased his crybaby friend. “Dude I’m being serious. What if she hates me and wants to break up? What do I do?” He cried out clearly scared his girlfriend *does* hate him. “I don’t know man, maybe she wants you to apologize in person. Girl’s like that romantic shit.” Gojo threw himself backwards into his bed as he sighed in frustration with himself. How could he be so stupid? All she wanted was a drink and he couldn’t even get that for her? what a joke. he thought to himself and thanked Suguru saying that was a good idea and saying a quick goodnight before hanging up and getting ready to leave.

It was around midnight and you were so close to falling asleep, to the point your music would cut out as you drifted only to snap back awake and started hearing it again and something else, sounded like something got knocked over in your room. Freaking out and sitting up while reaching to turn your lamp on, you heard it again. Something was hitting your window. Was it a curse?? Was there a curse outside of your house? You groaned in annoyance as you got up, tossing your ipod and headphones somewhere and scuffled over to check your window while pretty much tripping over your feet to see what was outside, pulling your curtains. Without actually checked you whipped your window open and yelled “are you serious right n-“ SMACK. A rock flew straight at your face and collided with your forehead. Stumbling backwards and rubbing your poor forehead, positive you had the indent of a rock there. An “Oh shit!” could be heard from outside. Of course It was your idiot boyfriend throwing rocks at your window.

Marching right back to where you were previously standing at your window. “Are you kidding me right now?!” Looking down to see the white haired teen looking up sheepishly at you. Staring down in disbelief, had he really walked to your house in the middle of the night to throw rocks at your face? “Can we talk?” he shouted up you, his face full of concern. “I wanted to apologize!” You laughed at him “You wanted to show up at my house in the middle of the night to throw a rock at my face only so you could say sorry?” you joked with him. You weren’t mad, more so amused.

“What? No! I wanted to apologize for making you hate me! I don’t want you to dump me! I should have gotten you a soda the other day, and I clearly upset you because you’re mad at me!” You paused and tried to stifle your laughter. He did this because he thought you were actually mad at him about that? ‘He’s such a poor soul’ you thought to yourself. He looked like he rushed over here, his hair was disheveled, his shoes were unlaced and he was wearing weird halloween pyjama pants. What a sight to see, if you had your phone, you’d take a photo.

“I don’t hate you and I don’t want to break up!— hold on let me come down and explain!” Quickly and quietly creeping through the halls of your home to get outside, passing your parents room you closed their door quietly. Throwing on your shoes and running outside to greet the boy, you were immediately met with a bear hug as he buried his head into the crook of your neck thanking you for not breaking up with him. You smiled and patted the back of his head while giggling. This was so funny to you.

He finally pulled away as you playfully smiled at him. “I got grounded and my parents took away my phone, that’s why I haven’t been answering you.” His mouth immediately falling into the shape of an ‘O’. “And I left because I got a text from my mom telling me to come home.” you finished your story, wasn’t a very long one but it cleared up the misunderstanding. “How long are you grounded for?” he asked, hoping you’d say only for the weekend. “A week” you sighed and hung your head low in a dramatic shame. Satoru groaned in annoyance and flicked your head. “Moron. Try not to get in trouble anymore.”

And that was that, the two of you talked as you sat in the front yard just talking and staring up at the stars. Satoru explained how he had been worried all weekend and what mental torture he had been going through. It was probably around 2am now and you had said your good nights and that you’d see each other in a few hours. “I love you Satoru.” You said as you hugged him goodnight, he kissed your forehead and said goodnight as well, adding a ‘rat’ at the end teasing you, and you stuck your tongue out watching him as he walked away waving bye to you. Smiling to yourself as you walked back into your house. Kicking your shoes off and quietly creeping back to your room, unaware your parent’s door was now open. Opening your own door to see your mother sitting on your bed with her arms crossed. “Make that 3 weeks.” you groaned and through your head back.

Bonus!

You walked into school late as you had gotten no sleep as you had gotten a lecture from your mom about sneaking out especially when you were already in trouble. The bags under your eyes looked like a literal black hole. You opened the classroom door being greeted by Yaga with a “you’re late L/N. Go sit down.” shuffling over to your seat and leaning over to Satoru’s desk you whispered “make that 3 weeks” which resulted in him standing up and frantically yelling about how that’s not fair.

WOWOWOW— WHO KNEW I WAS ACTUALLY BACK TO POSTING MORE THAN ONCE A MONTH AGAIN?!!?! me when i have time on my hands🧍‍♀️

Silly gojo, what a meanie. (¬_¬) we stan him either way. I always hope my fics are good, i haven’t written anything for gojo in a long time and i crave silly blue eyes man constantly. lmk if you wanna see more of him >w<

reblogs and comments are vv appreciated ٩( 'ω' )و

much love, emi!🩷

tags- feel free to ask to be added ! :3

@kasumitenbaz

[nesta-apologist]

ACOSF would have been bad from Feyre's perspective

If ACOSF had been from Feyre's perspective it would have been really difficult to read (and not really because of Nesta - that situation would just be a contributing factor)

Rhysand is being incredibly pissy and Feyre doesn't know why for a majority of the book. He's just generally grumpy and more protective over her. Yeah she's accepted that pregnancy would be that way ... but even the IC + Nesta thinks it's too much until they find out why, exactly, Rhys is being so difficult

The pregnancy complications, which Rhys isn't sharing with her. Meaning he's holding it all in, and she can't even help, let alone know about her own fate. It's a lose-lose situation for both Feyre and Rhys that he decided not to tell her. Moving on.

Rhys' way of making up with her after arguments is basically never admitting she's right or finding common ground, it's usually just sex and other physical favors. Don't get me wrong, Feyre does seem happy with it, but Rhys isn't actually solving the problems with this, he's just making Feyre less mad at him. Just a big ol' red flag for me

Rhys and Nesta also clash anytime they see each other. I don't need to elaborate on how stressful that is to Feyre, it's so obvious

Above point x2 because Mor and Amren hate Nesta so much

Feyre's concerned about Nesta's recovery. She likely couldn't be as involved as she might have been if it weren't for the pregnancy, but even then she and Nesta are pretty consistently at each other's throats. There was just no room to work on their relationship here. The whole intervention thing was a last resort for Feyre, as she'd wanted to give Nesta time to process, and it didn't seem like she was that convinced this idea would work (it was Rhysand's idea, Feyre just agreed to it under pressure). Especially after Elain went to visit just to get into an argument with Nesta. Yes, Cassian might have been reporting back that she was making progress but even he was definitely still on edge the whole time. Not to mention that everyone (unfairly) treats Nesta like a ticking time bomb. I just imagine this stress was a relatively consistent weight on her shoulders

When Nesta finally fucking tells her about her pregnancy complications, she has to gracefully deal with the emotional fall-out of both realizing that everyone lied to her and that everyone is blaming Nesta for this problem. She literally encourages Cassian to get Nesta out of there just so Rhys can't get to her? Horrible

Feyre is also still pregnant! and the struggles of pregnancy aren't going anywhere just because she's in a near-constant argue/make-up cycle with Rhys

So in conclusion, Feyre was not having an incredibly happy time just because she didn't know about the inevitable birth complications. I can't imagine the whole of ACOSF wasn't incredibly draining for her in the background. It's a wonder to me she holds herself as gracefully as she does this whole time.

I'm sure I'm even missing some stuff because I read the book about a month ago. Feel free to correct me if I misremembered something, but

Everyone talks about how Rhys kind of started to seem like a villain in ACOSF. Peopl say it's just because it's Nesta's POV, but just look at his actions, well-meaning or not (I'm not saying he's good or bad (not here at least) but it's pretty clear he's not being all that helpful here).

ACOSF would have been full of emotional turmoil no matter who's POV it was

[pholla-jm]

I Look Like You!

IMAGINE: I LOOK LIKE YOU! ~ ZORO X READER GENRE: FLUFF/CRACK WARNINGS: NONE NOTE: THIS IS DEFINITELY INSPIRED BY BOB'S BURGERS. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a boring day on the ship, and you had a lot of time to kill. It would be at least a few more days until the Thousand Sunny reached another island. 

Your favorite past time lately is to annoy your boyfriend, Zoro.

You had planned this out for quite some time and you knew that Zoro would not be amused by your actions. But you definitely would be. 

So, you got some temporary green hair dye and miraculously found some fake swords that looked like Zoro's. It wasn't that hard to find clothes like his either. 

So you died your hair green like his. Even did your make up so you could almost look like him as well. You even did the scar to match his. After changing your clothes and tying the bandana onto your right arm, you placed the swords onto your side. 

When walking around the ship, it didn't take long for you to get noticed. Especially by your energetic and childish Captain. 

"Woah, Zoro! You got shorter." Luffy shouts at you. 

You really couldn't tell if he was serious about knowing it was you or not. But he always fed into your antics, which you enjoyed. 

Zoro, who was napping on the side of deck, opened his eye upon hearing his name. A bit confused as to why Luffy would be saying that he's shorter. It didn't take long for his sight to rest upon you. 

He immediately stood up and made his way over to you. 

"(y/n) what are you doing?" He demands from you. "Who's (y/n)?" You respond and it takes everything in you not to burst out laughing at his facial expression. 

"Woah! There's two of you!" Luffy shouts in amazement.  Robin, who heard the commotion looks over to see what was going on. Nami, who was sitting next to her just sighed and shook her head.  

"I already can't tell whose who." Luffy continues causing you to smile and Zoro to grunt in annoyance. 

"Take that stuff off." Zoro says. "Robin, get in here and come settle this." You call Robin over.  Robin deciding it would be quite fun to entertain this, walks over. 

"Awe, it's a travel size Zoro." Robin teases as she walks over to the small group.  "Robin, you're encouraging this." Zoro shoots a quick glare over to Robin, which does nothing. 

Usopp who was walking by decide to join in on the commotion as well. 

"Oh, wow. This is confusing. There's two Zoro's." Usopp says. "No, it's not confusing." 

"You guys are my crewmates and I secretly all love you. But you're all terrible... all terrible."  "I don't say that!" Zoro shouts. 

"Mm, well that's all you say."  "I literally heard you say that the other day."  "All the time."  The small group around you agrees, just frustrating Zoro even more. 

Both you and Zoro groan and run a hand down a face at the same time.  This just causes some more laughter around you.

"(y/n)."  "Zoro."  "Enough."  "Enough."

The both of you go back and forth, while the rest of the group just looked back and forth between you. Not only did you look like him, but you also copied all his body movements and mannerism that he does.

"Alright, I'm not doing this." Zoro says. "Yes, you are." "No-" "Ugh." Both of you groan at the same time. 

It was like you memorized his responses and knew what he was going to react.

Luffy laughs the loudest. "This is great! I now have two Zoro's!" 

"No you don't!" Zoro shouts, an angry tick mark on his forehead.

"Wow. (y/n)'s really good." Robin comments as she watches you copy all of his movements.  "No, (y/n)'s not good at this Robin."  "Yeah, Robin. He's not good. He's not good Robin."  "Wow, (y/n)'s good."  "(y/n)!"  "What Zoro?!" "Ugh!" "Robin! Settle this." You shout, trying to sound as angry as him. But it was getting harder and harder to keep your laughter in. 

Especially since Luffy and Usopp were on the ground laughing while holding their stomachs. 

"(Y/n) stop!"  "Zoro!" You just shout back at him.

"That's it, I'm leaving!"  "I'm leaving!" You also say walking to where the sake was kept at. 

"Awe, they're so cute." Robin comments with a giggle as she watched the both of you bicker over the sake. 

Zoro's hand grabbed onto the bottle of sake that was currently in your hand. "(y/n), let go. This is my sake."  "No, it's my sake."  "(Y/n), I swear if you don't-" "What? What are you going to do??" You mock him, which quite surprises him a bit.

You took this as a chance to snatch the bottle away from him. His shock was quickly replaced with more shock as he watched you stick your tongue out at him. 

"Oh, you're definitely going to regret this later." "Whatever you say swordsman." 

[freakenomenon]

soo.... Anya x Ellen.

ill be honest i wasn't a fan at firs( THUNDEROUS COMMOTION )

HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY. HEY. NO. LISTEN.

im literally a lesbian and i love both characters, but i just wasn't the biggest fan of. the basis of the ship? shipping two characters simply because they're both in sexually exploitative/abusive situations is. i can't be the only one who thinks thats exceptionally odd. im not dogging on anyone,,, just saying.

also not to be some pearl clutching puritan but the age gap. also. worried me a lot. cause i cant decipher if im shipping two consenting adults with a. what id like to call "parental ( in terms of marriage ( like 30 - 40/50 ?? ) , not daughter and mother )" age gap. or... or if im shipping someone pushing fifty ( Ellen ) and someone barely 20 ( Anya ) which is. RETCHES. GAGS.

but with some reassurance from a friend and such, i was able to convince myself it was the latter. so now that i've separated it from its ,, troubling origins. i must say i do quite like it. ive thought about it extensively and. holy shit these two definitely would not be good for each other without some kind of. counseling.

i dont consider anya and ellen to be similar personality wise at all. aside from anyas kind of implied temper not really. which of course, isn't necessary for a relationship. BUT. i also think that. if ellen was ON the tulpar in any case. she would find the psych evals to be. incredibly invasive, despite truly being surface level from what i can gather.

its also incredibly worth while to note that, while both of them are incredibly capable, intelligent, and have genuine passion for what they do. only…. one of them has actually been able to succeed in their field. when. the other. failed. 8-7 times. this brutal concoction of someone at the top of the ladder while the other one keeps falling as they cant help but look down. is. kind of. the cause for jimmys obsession with curly. WAIT WAIT. let me finish. its also because jimmy is a complete loser who can't help but leech off of others, shift the blame, and constantly convince himself he is the victim. and curly is too willing to let himself and others be affected by this behavior without second thought.

BUT. you can't tell me that in the event of her surviving the crash, the anya that has practically been kicked down by life relentlessly, when seeing someone who literally has IT ALL ( without looking at background context ) and seemingly treats others with an unchecked arrogance. wouldn't get. a little ticked? maybe just a LITTLE miffed? a tad SUSPICIOUS? when the woman in question just, greets her with open arms one day.

ellen would probably be overjoyed to let someone in a similarly lonely situation into her life, maybe almost coming off as creepy or overbearing. coming off pitying anya rather than just, trying to get her to stay. but then again, shed never open up about why shes so scared of being left alone without an extreme amount of prying. shes terrified of vulnerability. or showing emotion at all for that matter. it'd be like a constant push and pull. idk,, they could be grossly infatuated with each other <3

and again, im not saying they'd reach jimcurl levels of radioactive. and obviously i dont think anya is as obsessive or mentally ill as jimmy, and i don't think that ellen is as much of a useless fucking pushover as curly, in fact its the exact opposite. but i think with the right ( or I guess in this case,, wrong ) amount of emotional turmoil,,, it could get there,, am i reading way too much into a crossover ship thats kind of mid based on why people made it a ship in the first place? yes! do I care ? yes. a lot actually. it makes me feel weird and im not i promise please please

but whatever ,, anya x ellen but its evil and fucked up ,, heh ,, just a look into my sick and twisted mind.

[wings-of-ink]

I'm trying to make my own IF story, if it's ok to ask how'd you come up with the ideas? Or how'd you build off it to make a whole (beautiful and amazing) story?

I've had a few ideas but get caught up in trying to make everything in one section fit, and then I feel like I'm getting no where

if you have any tips Id love to hear (your game has become one of my favorites in the 24 hours it took to play ♥️)

Hello Nony! I am so glad you enjoy GC, and am happy to answer that question as best I can. I'm free-styling here, so this will be a bit long.

For me, most ideas just sort of spring up, but they aren't full ideas when they do. GC started from a thought about a cursed MC. That was it. I just dwelt on it and sort of answered questions about it - where did the curse come from, etc... It grew a lot from there as I tried to answer questions about it. The nature of those details gave me my fantasy setting, which I grew as well. I just started small and found a place for each layer that I needed to add to the structure. This can take quite a while depending on what you're cooking up. GC had months and months of building and background before I ever started writing the actual story.

In this poll, the IF idea I had for "Shivers" was literally inspired by my brother-in-law. He actually has that nervous tick, and he jokes about it, and we tease him (good-naturedly). He says that his future gravesite must be under a parking lot or a sidewalk because people keep walking on it, lol. It just made my imagination spin.

The "gritty drama" idea from this same poll stemmed from one of my OCs. I just made a setting for her and then thought of the type of world she lives in and what I could do with it.

Other ideas I have had came from thinking of a cool "scene" while listening to music. Music is a great medium for me to help me think about my characters especially. Just listen to your favorite tunes and let your brain go wild.

It just sort of also depends on how you think. There's nothing that says an idea just needs to come to you, you can set out to find one.

I would recommend focusing on themes and genres that you enjoy reading as well. I am a long-time fan of fantasy, I have written several fantasy stories in the past, and it just feels comfortable for me. You are more inclined to think of story ideas in the niches that you love the most.

One thing I would highly recommend for IF's especially is that you make sure the MC is the center/focus of your story. Some IFs can feel like the MC is a secondary character, and the story is really about the ROs. They can still be great stories, but your reader is often looking for a personal experience in addition to the story and romances.

And just an aside that I think is important, since in the IF communities you see themes repeated, especially popular ones. Do not worry about if your story is completely unique. As long as you do not pluck ideas and words directly from others, it's okay. In the literary and entertainment world, truly unique ideas are very rare if not non-existent, but your version of it has not been told before. You also don't need an earth-shattering idea to make it interesting.

I hope this helps you a bit. If you have more questions or comments about any of this, feel free to send in another ask. If you tell me more about your personal process and experience, maybe I can think of other things that would help if you like. ^_^

[firefly--bright]

witness marks.

jean kirstein x reader, modern au

summary ; witness marks are usually used for antique clocks, to tell the functioning of the insides so it would be easier for them to be repaired, usually indicated by little scratches or wear-and-tear, and it's clockwork how you love jean. its a choice against your will, but neither of you would have it any other way.

warnings ; reader likes the rain (again), mild depictions of an accident

a/n ; the story for this Actually Happened when I was small btw :') also marco number one grammar police and pushes his glasses up his nose and used to unironically say "I'm actually.." in high school. also the title for this was because of that one scene in haunting of the hill house (new favourite show I love it so much by GOD don't get me to talk about it I won't shut up) uh anyway enjoy!

taglist ; @holding-infinity-and-a-book , @mrsnobodynobody , @hopeless-anti-romantic , @jeanscremebrulee , @berrijam , @happxme , @cherrypieyourface , @imgayandshesanime , @moonmalice , @kivernova , @potaho3frog , @xakilicious , @katestrophes - taglist is open!

✿ masterlist is in pinned post ! ✿ enter my taglist ✿ song recs for this fic (don't mind the name of the playlist pls) ✿

✿

Its raining again.

For the sixth time this week, it’s raining. Perpetual, gloomy shadows with unsparing clouds in the sky, its raining. From your view, the window is littered with usually bright leaves sparkling, almost ironically, under the water that showers them. They dance as happily as you’d want them to, the breeze waving them without synchrony but togetherness still. Whatever thoughts you might’ve had come to a slow stop, and despite being in the common, affectionate company of your friends, you look at the window, reminding yourself to not close it at night even if it may be hazardous.

You don’t care. The starless night could be forgiven under the heaviness of the clouds that disrupted it.

Connie calls your name. “your turn!” he says, slinking an arm around your shoulders. You’re reminded where you are, suddenly, and heat fills up your usually cold body despite the shivers that line your shoulders. Playing a game of two truths and a lie after lazing around all weekend, the Monday afternoon was decided, almost like every other day. Your friends would come over to you and sasha’s shared apartment, and whatever sweets you’d had the time to bake would be hidden in the back corners of the pantry before sasha would wake. She’d ask you what that smell was, and you would shrug, and she would complain about her mouth watering and how it would distract her in class, but you withheld the information well. After your classes; boring and long-drawn and so drowsy, your friends would be back in your apartment before you, seemingly having never left. Connie would be in the middle of “helping” sasha, if you could even call it that, find the treats you had concealed. Marco would be reprimanding them with a soft smile, his back turned to them while making coffee for everyone, and jean would be sorting through the menu of an inexpensive take-out place, asking questions of preferences that would all go ignored.

It was easy. Simple, predictable clockwork that filled up your weeks. Every Monday evenings, despite literally rain or shine, the same scene would greet you, and just like clockwork, your body would chime in the acknowledgment of this routine. with years and years of working with the same gears and metal and pangs and hurts of your unfamiliar body – the Monday evening bell of your being sounds out as you enter the apartment because you know the exact events, the exact tick-tick-tick, and enjoy it all the more. Every week. Every Monday.

And you’d enter, your hands filled with treats from the gas station on your way home, and you’d smile after knowing, for sure, that this is what you would call home. Without so much thinking about any other place to go to, not your childhood walls with demeaning darkness and not your first dorm with its drawn curtains and coldness, none of those. None of the places could call out to you with their monsters and gleaming teeth while you were here.

And then jean would turn to you, like clockwork that’s forgotten that it rings out every hour, every Monday at six p.m., he’d get up and say, “finally!” and take the bags from your hands, peck your mouth before anyone could see and groan for you to get a room. And just like the same clockwork with the same inner workings, you tell him what you think everyone would like to eat. sasha would like the ham and cheese- yes, you know this because she’s been craving intensely savoury things this week – and connie, just to piss her off but also because you’ve learnt how he’s made it a point to force himself to like it, would have the Hawaiian one. And then marco says he’d be okay with anything, and you know that this means he’d love for there to be olives and bell peppers. So that’s what you go with.

And just like clockwork, the same routine plays itself, over and over again, excited to commit something new as if it’s forgotten that it had been doing the same since it was made – you’re courageously but cautiously near him, peering into the same screen as him as he scrolls.

“oh, garlic bread,” you remark, whispering. Jean doesn’t spare you a glance while still scrolling, nodding to your scarce voice. You can see his eyelashes fluttering as you watch him closely, not getting sick of the view even if you had been spun around blindly, dizzily. And then jean puts the phone up to his ear and rattles off the order. At the end, after everyone is done and you’ve moved away from him to rummage through the pantry in search for the goodies you had hidden, jean tells them to add an order of garlic bread with cheese with the sudden ten-fold of affection laced in his tone in your remembrance, that the person on the other line would’ve questioned if it hadn’t been their job not to.

And then, Monday evening at seven p.m., the five of you sit on the floor of your cramped living room, around the old, second-hand coffee table with enough stains for it to never be sold again, with boxes of pizza and some song playing in the background that none of you really knew the name of and didn’t care enough to ask, the music getting lost under the ongoing conversation. Today, this Monday at seven twelve p.m, it seemed to be a game of two truths and a lie that your mind had been immersed into before it had started to rain.

You clear your throat, shifting in your seat, taking another garlic bread in your hand, jean’s eyes trailing the predictable, comforting movements of your eyes as you spoke. “this isn’t fair, you guys know me already-“

“that’s the point!” sasha exclaims.

“is it, really?” jean argues with a roll of his eyes. Connies arms shake your shoulders when you try to take another bite. Marco tells him to not accidentally choke you, but connie’s voice is loud enough to drown him out, “just make shit up!”

“yeah, but its so obvious.” A pause in his movements allows you to think. Think. Think about how all the decisions you’ve made have led you here. the warmth that held you now fully grasps your frame, making you smile widely, swallowing the piece of bread. “okay, so,”

Its obvious. Clockwork, how all of your friends lean in close as if kids around a bonfire. Jean’s eyes – not as if they’d ever left you – now unabashedly stare at you expectantly, sasha leaning in closer while taking a bite, connie’s arm pressed up against yours and marco leaning on the table directly opposite you. “I had a hamster that I accidentally killed that my mom screamed at me for-“ the obvious lie. Jean’s eyebrows lift, a small smile playing at his lips at your attempt. “-I would lie to everyone and tell them I was born out of my country-“ jean nods. “- I slipped off of a bike that my brother was riding and didn’t let go.” Jean tilts his head. This story, he hadn’t heard.

Theres a beat of silence, again, and sasha hums in consideration. Connie immediately has an answer “the second one is the lie!”

Marco scoots closer to the table, “no, wait, that would mean that the first one is the truth.”

“oh my god, you killed a hamster?”

You shrug, a smile spreading your lips. Jean leaned back, having already figured it out. “so you slipped off a bike?” he baits.

You take it unknowingly. “yeah. We were kids-“ with the way you’re describing it, jean thinks, he’s already won. Nobody would decorate a lie like this, and his heart beats into his ears as you continue, his eyes impossibly catch all of your movements. They’re ungraceful, clumsy, there are crumbs of crusty bread on the corner of your mouth and your hair has frizzed up a bit with the weather and jean cant help but to think about you the way he always has. Everything you do is inexplicably you, without any room for anything else – like clockwork. The same excitement that has always been there unknowingly chimes itself in his heart, but it doesn’t feel precise and calculated because it’s always been there, all the ups and downs of your voice have been cultivated through the years of living and jean hates how even that small fact makes him want to spend the rest of his life with your cultivated mannerisms.

“- and he had just learned how to ride a bike without training wheels-“

“wait he’s bigger than you?”

“elder,” marco corrects. Jean groans. Sasha calls him a grammar police. Connie sounds the alarms with his mouth. You continue, the smile on your face unaffected at the intrusion. “yep. He’s elder to me. Five years. Yeah, so, we were at my cousin’s place, right, and he had this old-ass rusty bike and my brother told me to get onto the passenger seat – which, by the way, wasn’t a passenger seat, it was like the end of the cycle where you can pinch your bag onto it and stuff.”

“oh, the rat trap!” connie says. You nod. “yes. Exactly. I was like, five, and I sat on it with my front facing his back-“ you held up your now free hands in front of each other, the palm of your right hand facing the back of your left one. Jean’s heart swells with adoring eyes watching, uncalculating, unaware. “- and obviously, it was uncomfortable. And my brother was laughing and driving really fast, and I was laughing too, and all my cousins were there. Which is six of us. And they were all watching us, him, driving, and then-“ jean thinks he’s in love with you. “-I fucking slip.” You drop the bomb with a laugh that sounds more like a hiccup. Jeans heart flutters, finally able to catch its breath after running after one, trying to catch yours.

“slip?” marco inquires, sasha squeaks, connie gasps. Jean breathes in, you say “yeah, and I was so stupid- “ he breathes out as you continue, his head tilting, listening, controlling, choosing to listen to you. “-because I didn’t let go of the.. mouse trap thingie, and so-“ sasha gasps now, too, “-I was gripping the back of the cycle, and my chest was like, being drilled into by the back wheel. And my brain shuts off and I don’t let go for some fucking reason, and my brother cant hear me because of the wind, and my cousin has to run into him, essentially, to stop him.”

Sashas mouth falls open and marco looks at you wide-eyed, connie grasping his own chest as if the accident had happened to him. Jean mutters, “so that’s one truth.” And all hell breaks loose. Well, almost. Connie crawls towards you, sasha jumps into a million questions and marco turns to jean.

Its like a secret he knows. Leaning in, he says, “youre not being subtle, y’know.”

Jean’s face turns red. “I don’t know what you-“

Marco rolls his eyes with a cheeky smile, “sure. You cant lie for shit,” he says, turning back to you three. Youre telling connie in vivid detail about the injury you took, the smile never leaving your face, and marco calls out to you.

“what happened after?” he asks. you shrug, “I don’t know. I don’t think he got in trouble for it though, it wasn’t his fault. But also because he’s my mom’s favourite.” You say, leaning forward and snatching the last garlic bread, splitting it in a messy half. The lack of a plate under your hands creates more mess on your sweatshirt, but you don’t care. Not when it’s like this, with everyone around you, and you think about how, despite all the truths and stories that you haven’t said out loud but have indignantly shaped you with stubborn hands – all of them led to this. no amount of crumbs or stains would deter you from the affection that blooms in your chest, as sasha and connie judge if the story you just spelled out was a lie or not. Jean argues, adamantly, that it couldn’t have been a lie with your elaborations – that’s the reason he uses. Not because he knows that the first one is obviously false, no, its only because he knows how you get when you’re telling a true story. He knows the exact differences between your demeanour. If it’s a professional setting or if its one of those casual days that jean brings you ice cream and you have no choice but to spill the contents of your life into his mind, unknowing of how it takes root in jeans head, the remnants of it growing into his heart. He knows the difference between how you’d deliver a fact or something your passionate about or the easy lies that you tell as an excuse of your absence because the truth is heavier than you’d like it to be – the difference between the truth and the lie is that the truth wouldn’t make you shudder as much as a lie would.

The truth of being in love with you however, made jean shudder. He was raised on honesty. You were raised on the veils, on the deceit of adults, seeking out the honesty rather than wanting to shy away from him. Jean wanted the opposite. He wanted his feelings to be a lie just so he could look at you, your face, your eyes, and deny all feelings he held towards you.

But he still held them with force. With choice. With deliberation.

You glance back at the window. Marco got up, towering over everyone as he declared, almost comically, pointing at you. “the first one’s a lie.”

Your brows raise up with challenge. You look around, waiting for anyone to argue. You concede with your hands lifted and your head bowed. “you got me.”

Connie scoffed. “I was right.”

“you were literally the furthest away from winning,” jean says. The other, uneaten half of your garlic bread lies still in your fingers, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. Connie rolls his eyes. “you’re afraid of me. Whatever, my turn!”

“im not afraid of you!”

“I once ate ink-“ connie continues. You turn to jean, finding the opportune moment striking as his eyes trail yours, then reach down to your hand that offers him the other half of your bread. You whisper – god, you’re leaning so close, and jean doesn’t glance at you because in truth he didn’t know what would happen if he did, “thanks for the bread.” You tell him and he hears the gentle warmth in your tone. He grasps it from you. it’s a secret. It’s a choice. Its deliberation. Its clockwork.

You turn back. So does jean. He’s scooted close to you now, and marco has to stop himself from rolling his eyes as he sees what transpired before him.

An obvious lie – it wasn’t raining. There weren’t the clouds you so adored lining up the sky, reprimanding humanity for having forgotten their beauty. And then there’s a less obvious but more present truth – you love jean as naturally as clockwork, the rain pelts harder and you observe two raindrops racing each other, your eyes focusing back to the reflection of yourself in the game, pointing out to connie’s obvious lies.

And the other truth – there’s certainty in jean’s voice as he calls connie out on his bullshit, and then he looks at you and he’s swimming in the force of loving you and even if he’s safe inside, he feels rain on him as he sits with the fact that your warmth isn’t going anywhere and that it’s a choice. Deliberation. Its force.

It’s clockwork. He wouldn’t change it for anything.

[evanhereonearth]

Banal Nadas

I wrote this literally years ago, but it actually became canon, so beware spoilers for Veilguard. (I feel powerful, lmao.)

Ilaana Lavellan meets a spirit in the Fade in a moment of anguish--a spirit with a lesson to help her save her beloved.

***

“It was not supposed to happen this way,” the spirit breathes, and it sounds so like him that I am rooted to this patch of the Fade.

“His words,” I say softly, looking around as if I will see his eyes upon me, as I so often have.

“Yes,” the spirit says. “You are here now, and it has happened this way.”

“This is also correct.”

I am in a vast forest, the Brecilian Forest, I think, though I have never seen it in life.

“To find interesting parts of the Fade, one must be interesting.”

“Also his words.” I look at the spirit curiously. It hovers between two enormous ironbarks, titans in their presence, the two trees so close they should never have grown to such size.

The metaphor sinks in a moment too late. I wince.

“Ar lath, ma vhenan.”

Curiosity will quickly become annoyance. I move onward, trying to hold tight to my purpose tonight. I’m running out of time. I’m running out of time.

“Var lath vir suledin!” The spirit is anguished, as I was anguished when I said the words.

I stop. “My words. Why?”

“In another world.” Something of this spirit clearly relates to me and Solas so strongly it seems to want to regurgitate much of our most painful conversations.

“I’ll bite,” I tell it. “Why not this one?”

“You are asking better questions,” the spirit says.

It turns away, in a different direction than I planned to go, but I have made friends with Acceptance, Compassion, Wisdom, Hope. I have even soothed Despair into Resolve. Apathy into Purpose. I am a Dreamer, now, in full. If I am not so skilled as Solas, well. Empires and nations rose and fell while he learnt what I have tried to cobble together in a handful of years with a ticking clock ready to explode the world. Demons come to me to find themselves. Sometimes they try to kill me. Usually I reach for them, and they change. Sometimes they change me, bit by bit.

If this spirit wants me to follow, I will follow.

It moves down a path between trees, and it gains form as I watch, but it holds nothing for long. It looks like him for a moment, then it looks like me. I see him as I saw him in Redcliffe, in Haven, in the ruins, over the broken fragments of his orb. I see myself with my vallaslin, without it. I see myself and Cullen, eyes full of love, under an arch at Halamshiral with Mother Giselle there to marry us. I am wearing a white dress, such a human dress, such a human thing, but with my long-gone vallaslin clear on my face. I am dressed as a sentinel, a Sha-Brytol, a Keeper, a scout. I am resplendent in robes of gold and silver, my hair sparkling with diamonds like stars. He stands proud, Fen’Harel, a rebel god who loves me. My freckles are gone. My freckles are darker, my skin tanned and weathered by the sun. Scars cut through my face. I am missing part of an ear. Solas is scarred with red lyrium that clouds his eyes.

I want to ask, but not yet.

Instead, I simply follow.

The trees give way to the Arbor Wilds, miles and miles away. I know this place. This is where I met Mythal.

“You should not have given your orb to Corypheus, Dread Wolf.”

The spirit looks like her for a moment, and then she is him, as I last saw him before the Qunari plot. He must have traveled by eluvian from Skyhold immediately after we vanquished Corypheus.

He is a broken man, for a moment. He still wears the jawbone I now carry around my neck.

“I wish it could, vhenan.”

This spirit seems to want to speak with our words, so I will let it. With a thought I am crosslegged in the grass, my fingers feeling the blades. They are so green here, as green as they are in life. The Black City is beyond, over the tree line, waiting.

“Tell me you don’t love me!”

“I cannot do that, vhenan.”

I thought I was somewhat prepared, armoured. But that—

Solas stands in front of me in Crestwood, his hands twitching between looking as though he wants to simultaneously crush me to him and fend me off. He is frightened, flighty, two things Solas seldom is.

The spirit reflects that moment, showing me again the precise moment my heart broke, when Solas decided to be Fen’Harel and not tell me himself.

“You do not have to destroy this world! I will prove it to you!”

My voice, thrown by the spirit, echoes through this bower.

“I will treasure the chance to be wrong once again,” it says sadly.

“Foolish wolf,” I mutter myself.

“There is a place where you can build, grow.”

I am growing weary of whatever games this spirit is playing. I relive these words in my mind every day, every grain of sand that ticks through the hourglass counting down to the moment I will have to face…I have no words for what Solas is to me. Some days I trace the lines of magic that remain in my severed arm, feeling out for the Anchor. Those days I hear him ask if it has changed me, my…spirit, as he hesitated to say with the sun setting behind me on my Skyhold balcony.

What if it did? What if the Anchor is the only reason I love him?

“You are you, old blood older than old. Like calls to like even without a cord to bind them.”

The spirit has resumed its state of formlessness, floated closer while I sat in my pool of constant grief.

“Very well,” I tell it. “Why have you brought me here?”

“Banal nadas,” it says, hovering directly in front of my face like a challenge. It is not Solas’s voice I hear, but mine, gentle. I have never said those words, not like that.

“Banal nadas!” The spirit bellows it at me with my own voice again.

My skin tingles like I am in the waking world in a place where the Veil is thin. I have never felt such a thing whilst walking the Fade, not as such.

“I want to help him,” I tell the spirit fiercely. “Our people have suffered enough.”

“Who are your people, Ilaana?”

“That is the question, is it not?” This time it is I who bring Solas’s words to life, another sentence from a Crestwood heartbreak under the watchful gaze of Ghilan’nain. My lips quirk with a cynical smile. “Solas is my people. Cullen is my people. Cassandra and Cole are my people. My friends on this side of the Veil are my people. You, as well. Dorian, my beloved friend. Varric. The Iron Bull. Sera and Vivienne and Thom. Krem and Maryden, Dalish and Grim. Svarah Sun-Hair and Skywatcher. They are my people, spirit. All of them. Abelas is my people. Mythal is my people. Clan Lavellan is my people. Briala. Charter. Samson. Leliana and Neria and Merrill and Hawke. Alistair is my people. The Wardens I exiled are my people. The templars I condemned are my people. Ser Barris. Belle. Gaspard. Mihris. That bloody piece of self-loathing nugshit Michel is my people. Felix and Alexius. Gatt and the Viddisala. Elera and Dagna and Valta and her titan friend. Rage and Despair and Pride and Wisdom and Acceptance and Justice and Vengeance. They are all my people. All.”

I am angry now, angry enough that I feel the energies blazing off me like a pyre. If Solas is walking the Fade just now, he will certainly see me, feel me. We never have had to try hard to find one another here, and I am screaming in an echoing hall loud enough to wake Elgar’nan himself. That stupid prideful Evanuris who likely started all of this, he is my people too, for all he’d scrape me off the bottom of his gilded fucking boot.

“Do you hear me? Do you hear me, Dread Wolf? Dirth ma, harellan, vhen’an’ara—ane emma!” I yell the words into the Arbor Wilds, at the Black City, at any spirit who will listen. “You are all my people, and I am trying to save your foolish, thoughtless chunks of Fade-stuff and meat from yourselves!”

The spirit in front of me looks suddenly pleased.

“An answer a long time in coming, Inquisitor,” the spirit says, almost preening.

“Who are you?” I ask it bluntly. “I am tired of trying to help those who are determined to cut off their own feet because they don’t like the shape of their toenails.”

“Vivid, as always.”

“I asked you a question.”

“You asked a good question. I brought you here to hear, to listen, to scream. Has it helped?”

“A bit,” I admit. I feel lighter. Apparently my quiet footsteps through the Fade were possible because I’ve been bottling up every part of me for so long.

“Good,” says the spirit. “You asked my name, and I will give it. But first, you need to understand the most important thing I have said to you.”

“Which is?”

“Banal nadas,” the spirit says again.

“That one isn’t leaving my memory any time soon,” I say. “Your name, if you please.”

“You carry a heavy weight, as you have for so long, Ilaana. Your name, Ilaana. In the place of sacrifice. How much have you sacrificed?”

“Enough,” I say. My arm twinges. That is the least of it. I am no less than I was for a foot or so of missing flesh. The words I said to Ameridan. It takes everything from you.

“You look ahead with purpose, and you look ahead with grief, because the weight pressing upon your shoulders does not let you breathe.” The spirit looks like me, now. My face, without my vallaslin, with my freckles, the new scar on my nose from some Qunari Sten or another. My dimple. “You cannot see a way out.”

We are back in the forest, a different forest, and the trees are oppressive. They crowd around us, leaning over my shoulder, draping their leaves over my neck. I can almost feel their breath.

“You are telling me everything I already know.”

“You may remember the words, but you need to know, truly know. Eolasas, da’len.”

It changes to Solas’s face in Redcliffe, his eyes pulsing with red lyrium. Its voice repeats his words.

“You would think that such understanding would prevent me from making such terrible mistakes. You would be wrong.”

Anger flares again. I am surprised that this place has not been swarmed with spirits. The trees could very well be rage demons, every one.

“I couldn’t stop him,” I tell the spirit, and with those words, my anger cracks in half. In its core is only sorrow. “He left. He left again. He left again, and he called me vhenan.”

��Yes,” the spirit says. “He has done these things. Over and over, he has done these things. He is as trapped as you are. But the trap is of your own making. Time is no flat circle, da’len. You are thinking in too few dimensions.”

I sit in silence for a time, feeling at the edges of my hurt. I long for Cole’s comforting presence. He is somewhere in the Fade. I suspect he is with Solas. He told me he had to go where he was most needed. Or perhaps Cole is simply with the other spirits, sharing himself with them, preparing them. Where he is most needed. That would be a very Cole thing to do.

Everything that has happened has happened. I could not stop it.

“Banal nadas,” the spirit says again, insistently. “You make a tragic mistake, Inquisitor. Ilaana, da’len, da’lath’in. You must listen. You must see. What are all of these voices, save one?”

The one the spirit is speaking of must be my own, yelling its words. The rest are—

“Memories,” I say flatly. “Reminders of my own failures. I should have told him in Crestwood that I knew—”

“He would have fled. Likely, anyway. Banal nadas,” the spirit says, this time almost as if a joke. “Your instinct held your tongue because you knew him to be afraid. You yourself were afraid, thought you could keep him near a while longer, that it would give you time you had no way of knowing was running out.”

“Yes,” I say. “And then he was gone.”

The weight of the jawbone against my chest is usually a comfort, even in the Fade. Not now, not really.

“What is a memory?” The spirit asks me this as if it is speaking to a very dense rock instead of a person.

“A fragment of perception rooted in a moment in time that has passed,” I say.

“Time that has—” the spirit leads.

“Passed.” I stop, looking at it. It looks like me again, hopeful. It looks like I looked when he asked me to dance at Halamshiral, that horrible night, that wonderful night, that night that gutted me from the inside and built me anew all at once.

The night I learned my lover's true names.

“Before the band stops playing, vhenan, dance with me.”

His hand outstretched to me, his smile full of love. Moments before, the easy pressure of his hand against my shoulder, a comfort, knowing I needed his touch more than anything else.

“The past,” I say slowly. “Banal nadas.”

“Yes,” the spirit says, and the trees pull back from their crowding, letting through a burst  of air, cool air, memory of a spring breeze. “You carry the weight of it, and you let it lead you, but you are letting it press you into the ground, da’len. You are like him. Like calls to like. His past weighs him as well, and it will crush you both, the past, if you let it.”

“You make it sound like…” I trail off.

I’m being obtuse, now. Of course I’m being obtuse.

It is easier to believe I cannot prevent whatever happens. It is easier believing, accepting, resigning myself to fatalism. Whatever will be will be. I remember what Acceptance said to me so long ago, that it could see many paths for itself without becoming any one of them. I have forgotten that wisdom. I have let myself become the one thing I cannot bear because some part of me thinks it is easier than believing I could build it better instead.

“I am frightened,” I say. “He said he walks the din’an shiral. He chose for me, and I am furious at him. He said he could not do this to me, but he will do it to himself. He says he will, and he condemns me to accept it. But what he accepts, I do not have to.”

“Yes, da’len, continue.”

“I am afraid.” Afraid does not even come close to what I feel. I am half a breath from shaking to pieces.

“I know, da’len.” The spirit looks like Keeper Deshanna now. It sits in front of me wearing June’s vallaslin.

“I have said I will save him, that I will prove to him, but I haven’t believed it. I haven’t been able to believe it.”

“Your love for him is so deep that it reached me in the farthest depths of the Fade,” the spirit says softly. “You are on the shore watching a hundred-foot wave threaten to crush you, and you believe if you run, if you fight, if you try and do something, it will wash you away no matter what. It is easier for you to believe that what is past will dictate what is future.”

“Yes,” I say. “You are correct.”

“But that is not how anything works, da’len. It may seem it sometimes, but do you know what it took for him to see you at all? How many ages he lay sleeping in sorrow, walking paths with friends but seeing nothing of himself wherever he looked?”

I shake my head.

The grove around us is quiet, peaceful now. It is the grove in the Dales, the one where we once moved together with our magic, our mana, our staves. It is the grove where he gave me his glyph-chilled water and I wiped a droplet of it away from my cheek and he told me that he had yet to see my indomitable focus dominated.

I wonder if it has been as fascinating as he expected, watching me crumble under our combined pasts.

“A thousand thousand variables, a weave of time and circumstance more delicate than the Veil itself,” the spirit says. “You are real, and it changes everything, but it can’t. Do you not hear the contradiction in his own words?”

“Yes,” I say.

“You are real, da’len. You are real, and you change everything.”

His words, and the spirit’s. They mould to something in me that I have not felt in months. I have felt this future bearing down on me like the wave in the spirit’s metaphor, ready to crush the life out of me, out of my people—our people—and the person I love enough to save. I have waited for him enough. Atisha, Ilaana.

I breathe slowly, my mind clearing. His words, to me. In hindsight they feel both inevitable and deeply cracked, waiting to be moved in another direction.

“Yes,” I say, this time because it is the only right word to say. “Thank you. Thank you, hahren.”

“Nuvu lasa su ma enaste, da’len.”

“Why have you done this for me?” I ask. It still has not told me its name.

“You are not the only one who loves him,” the spirit says simply. “I would not watch him suffer more. I would not watch the weight he carries grow. And he is not the only one who loves you, da’len. I would be remiss if I did not try.”

“You are saying—”

“I am saying banal nadas.”

Yes. Yes.

Banal nadas.

Nothing is inevitable.

“Thank you,” I say again. “Ma melava halani.”

“Sathem lasa halani,” the spirit says. “And now you must go. You have a great deal of work to do.”

“Wait,” I say as the spirit rises, once again formless, shifting every time I blink. “You promised me your name.”

I wait for a moment, wondering if it will be Hope. Faith. Even Love, something as simple as that.

The spirit looks like him once more, and it reaches out to touch my cheek the way he so often has. It tugs his favourite curl.

“Possibility,” the spirit says.

I wake.

***

Lavellan: Banal nadas. Ar lath, ma vhenan.

[jq37]

Seeing you describe your opinion on Wish (the movie itself) as "def do have oh boy" just has me curious now. What is it?

OK, so I let this sit in my inbox for a while because I planned to see Wish and I figured that it would be more fair to wait until I had a full picture of what the movie was before I started talking about it and...yeahhhhhhh having seen it my opinion has not changed. It's just intensified. 

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW (lol, this got past 7k words)

And, fair warning, it's pretty critical so if you don't want to read something critical about this movie then this is your exit.

tl;dr: I think the movie Wish fails at basically everything it sets out to do and it's an absolutely awful 100th Anniversary movie for Disney. 

When I say it fails at everything, I mean EVERYTHING*. I'm going to break this into sections for organizational purposes. 

*The one thing I'll give it a slight pass on is the art style which I don't love but also wasn't like make or break for me. I would have preferred true 2D or a better implementation of the blended 2D/3D style, but if the movie was otherwise of the quality of something like Spiderverse or Puss in Boots, the animation wouldn't have bothered me. Like, I watched S1 of The Dragon Prince with no problem. I can forgive janky animation--and it wasn't even super janky. Just odd. What I can't forgive is literally everything else about the movie. 

Characters

How is this movie so full of characters and yet devoid of characters that matter? There are a million characters in this movie and basically only two of them matter: The King and Asha. But neither of them are compelling in any meaningful way.

There's a lot of to do about the last batch of Disney protags being very same-y in a quirky, all fluff and no substance way and I don't really buy into that. I don't think that Raps, Anna, Moana, and Mirabel are palate swapped carbon copies of each other. They have unique backgrounds and struggles and motivations. I feel like they're all quirky, sure. But they all also have an identity BEYOND being quirky. 

I do NOT get that with Asha. I don't feel like I have a good idea of what makes her tick at all. Like, she's kind. She wants her grandpa to get his wish. She wants to be the King's apprentice so she can help people. The queen (we'll get to her) exposits to us that she cares about people. But being kind isn't in itself an entire personality. The way Mulan is kind (defying the law to spare her father the ravages of war in his old age) isn't the same way as the way Cinderella is kind (making clothes for her mouse friends and protecting them from the cat). Asha just has a generalized want to help people, which is an admirable trait, but doesn't give us much to latch onto. It's so telling to me that in a movie called "Wish" our main character's wish is just, "To have more than just this" And yes, Disney princesses wanting "more" is literally their whole thing, but it's always more specific than that. Mirabel wants to prove herself to her family. Rapunzel wants to experience life beyond her tower. Even Snow White--the Disney princess with the flimsiest story--wants to find her true love. That's a concrete motivation! Asha doesn't feel real to me as a character. It feels like the thing that drives her is that the plot needs to happen and that's it. 

The other important character in the movie is King Magnifico who was supposed to be a return to form for Disney in introducing another classic villain but he just fails at that so hard. The idea that he could stand toe to toe with any of the OGs like Lady Tremaine or Scar or even the latest villains like Dr. Facillier or Mother Gothel is laughable. He just doesn't have any gravitas. And his characterization is so odd. You can tell that they were trying to give him a "reasonable man doing unreasonable things for a good reason” backstory (both because of some images in the film and some stuff in interviews I read) but then they just...don't actually give the backstory? Like, they imply that the backstory exists but I don't remember them going into it at all. Which like, he doesn't NEED a tragic backstory. He can just be doing what he's doing because he's evil. Ursula didn't need a reason to want to rule the seas. She's just a boss bitch and she wants power. I don't need to dissect that any further. BUT if you tell me there’s a reason your villain is doing something, I need to see that reason. I don't understand why they would include that in the movie, just to do nothing with it. 

Beyond that, he's written in such a weird way. Like, despite the "maybe he has a point" angle they seem to want to go with, he's very obviously a self-absorbed ruler--like he'll say things like, "Yeah, I am super handsome" to his wife--which immediately dumps him into the camp villain category. But he's doing the controlling things he does in the movie of his own accord to get people to stick to the status quo he set up. Fine. That's a fine thing for a camp villain to be doing. But then, at a certain point in the movie, he just uses a forbidden magic evil book (which he has for some reason) that just fills him with evil, green magic and makes him 100% unhinged all of a sudden. And that's just...boring? Like, anything interesting you might have been able to do before that point about power and control and how sometimes you make a wrong choice with good intentions is just gone at that point. It sucks because there were a lot of right answers here. You could just make him evil because he's evil. That works. You could have him be seriously convinced that what he's doing is right and be willing to do whatever he needs to do to keep things that way. That works. You could say that he started out trying to be morally upright and then slid into enjoying the praise and control just a bit too much--and I think maybe that's what they were going for. But it does not come across that way. He just seems like a dick to the point where you're kinda questioning how he's pulling any of this off. Asha asks him one question and he flies off the handle. How does everyone not know he's an asshole if it takes so little to fluster him?

So I don't like our main hero or villain. But there are still SO MANY CHARACTERS in this movie. 

You've got Asha's SEVEN FRIENDS. Yes, SEVEN. they're based off of the seven dwarves, which is cute enough but do you know what happens when you give the hero seven sidekick characters? None of them get developed at all and you have to treat them like a unit. Only two of them matter at all--Dahlia (her best friend and the one who actually does more than just make dumb jokes or, worse, nothing at all) and Simon (the one who betrays them--more on that later). There is no story reason for them to have shoved in this many sidekicks. Especially since she also has…

Her animal sidekick, Valentino. Who is a very cute goat until he gets sprinkled with stardust and boom. He can talk. Which immediately made me like him less. Flounder he aint. The whole joke with him is that he's a baby goat with a rich, deep, baritone voice. That's it. Almost every joke he makes is either about that or his butt. Boo. 

Then, there's the Queen--Queen Amaya--who is such a NOTHING character. There's no effort made to build up her relationship with the king so that her flipping on him later has an emotional impact. I have no idea what she cares about or desires. When she shows up, she's basically acting like the king's secretary, which is weird. I don't think that's what a queen does. There's a moment during a later song when she joins the "revolution" and it just has zero impact because again, it's like, I don't know who you are in any significant way! She seems nice, and I would love to live somewhere ruled by someone boring and benign, but that makes for an awful movie character. 

I almost wrote "lastly, there's the star" because I totally forgot about Asha's mom and grandpa. They're in this movie too but even though Asha's whole motivation at the start of the movie is getting her grandpa's wish granted, we never get a good idea of what their relationship is. They have like, one quick scene at the top which tells us nothing, then they're in a crowd scene later, then Asha has dinner with them later the same day and that's it. And, again, we get nothing significant. Compared to something like Mulan where you have a good idea of what Mulan's relationship is with every member of her family by the time the military order comes in or Encanto where between the musical number at the top and the first group scene, you get an entire picture, this is really weak. Again, so weak that I completely forgot that they were even in this movie. 

And NOW lastly, there's the star. Who is like, cute enough but he really makes me annoyed because I've seen the original concepts and they would have been so much more interesting! That's the case for the queen too, so I'll talk about both of them together here. 

I am sorry to inform you if you didn't already know but the queen was originally supposed to be evil too.

She was supposed to be a part of an evil power couple with Magnifico and how dope would that have been? We've never gotten that from Disney before. Imagine! Disney Villain Song Duet! A Hot couples costume for next Halloween! An actual relationship that's developed in this movie! But nope. They unflavor-blasted her into the paper thin, placeholder of a character we have in the movie. 

And the Star went through a couple of concepts. One, was the spirit of her dead grandpa, taking a younger form, which isn't my fave one but it at least would give her a relationship with this person who is supposedly an important person in her life, something we don't have in the movie right now. My favorite alternate concept is that originally, the Star was supposed to be her celestial love interest. And listen, anyone who's followed me for long enough knows that I am a big advocate for platonic relationships and FRONTING platonic relationships. I don't think that a story needs a romantic relationship to be compelling and I think forcing one in almost always makes it worse. But there is NO central relationship in this movie to carry it. Asha has too many friends for any one of them to make a serious impact so it's not a friendship story. Her mom and grandpa are nothing characters, so it's not a family story. She interacts with the star a lot, but that's basically just her talking to herself because the start doesn’t talk. So nothing is really there to latch onto. If they'd decided to go with the romance angle, it would have forced them to focus on at least ONE relationship and it would have been a nice way to throwback to classic Disney movies from the past. Much better than just sticking her with SEVEN WHOLE USELESS FRIENDS. Literally, all they provide is backup vocals in the fight song. Special Dishonorable Mention to Gabo. Man I hate that dude. 

So, to recap this section, Asha's personality is only sketched out in the loosest possible way, King Magnifico is entirely half-baked, and there are so many side characters that no one can form meaningful relationships with each other. And it's really a shame because (1) they very easily could have pared down the cast and (2) very recently Disney put out Encanto which handles a large cast beautifully. There are a ton of Madrigals but I can tell you what the deal of each and every one is. This could have been done well and they fumbled so hard. 

Concept

OK, so next up is the general plot and concept. This story takes place in the city of Rosas which is ruled by King Magnifco. It is supposedly a paradise, but much like a YA dystopian novel, it has a twist: When you turn 18, Magnifico takes your wish away from you and puts in in his wish room with the promise that it might be granted at one of the monthly wish granting ceremonies. Once your wish is taken from you, you are "unburdened" and you're "free" from having to pursue it. You don't even remember what it was. 

There's a kernel of something interesting there. A ruler making his subjects docile, placid zombies that won't challenge him by taking away their ambition? That's interesting. People willingly giving away a part of their heart to dull the pain of trying and failing? Interesting. Someone doing this with no ill intent, but rather genuinely thinking that this half-existence is better than the heartbreak of the alternative? Interesting!

But the actual implementation of this idea? Ughhhhhh. 

So first off, just logistically, Magnifico grants one wish a month more or less (Asha says once a month and in his villain song, he said he granted 14 wishes "last year"). So like, realistically, most of these people have to know their wishes will never be granted, right? Because of like...how math works? Asha acts like it's a big shock when she learns that most wishes won't be granted but like girl...math. 

Secondly, there are two moments that are meant to imply that having your wish taken away turns you into a shell of yourself. Asha's friend (who betrays her) Simon is said to be all sleepy and more boring since he turned 18 and had his wish taken. And then, later in the movie, we see two new residents have their wishes taken, and they look a little disturbed after it happens. But, here's the thing. NO ONE ELSE IN THE MOVIE ACTS LIKE THAT. Asha's mom and grandpa act like normal people. So do all the other characters. It’s not consistent enough to establish that this is what’s on the line. Does taking your wish away make you a robot or not?

And does everyone just have one wish? I know I could fill a full sheet of paper, front and back, with things that matter very dearly to me. If you took away my wish to write for TV someday, that would still leave my wishes to travel the world and get a comic book adaptation of one of my novels and a whole lot of other things! Does taking your main wish away make you lose your ability to form new wishes? Logistically, how does any of this work? And you can't just say, "It's a metaphor. Don't think too hard about it," because there's a scene where the citizens start asking these questions. Like, "What happens if we have a new wish than from when we initially made it?" As if having unnamed side characters ask the questions first will alleviate the need to answer them. It's not lamp shading at that point. You're just being lazy. 

Also, this is more a me thinking about the implications too hard than an actual plot problem but if he's taking the wishes at 18 I feel like a lot of peoples' greatest desire at that stage in their life is, "I want a romantic partner." And if the central conceit of this premise is that once your wish is taken, you stop wanting to pursue it then the city of Rosas is gonna have a population Collapse problem very soon. 

The characters--especially Asha--get so emotional about wishes. It's like they're giving a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic speech every time they talk about it (except MLP has MUCH better writing). It's bizarre to see Asha's mom get her wish back and be like, "Oh my wish. My precious wish!" when she doesn't act any differently than a normal person before or after she has it back (Sidenote: She says this and she's holding the wish ball but we never see what that wish is and that's maddening. Why do I know what the dream of every patron in the Snuggly Duckling is, but they didn't show that? Ridic.) It almost is like, being in contact with a wish ball is a quasi-religious experience that drives the characters’ actions (Asha and the King are both totally enraptured while singing together in the Wish Room), but because we, the audience, are very much not in contact with the wish balls, we're not getting ANY of that. 

Anyway, to recap this section: the central premise of how wishes work and how taking them affects people is not treated consistently or explained well, which makes the stakes feel very undefined and sloppy. 

Pacing

This has to be its own section, because it's the thing that baffled me most when I watched this movie. So, here's the setup. Asha is going to interview for the internship with the king. She wants to help people and she has the secondary motive of wanting to try and get her 100-year-old grandpa's wish granted because he's not getting any younger. 

Here is the entire sequence: Asha is led into the interview by Queen Amaya. Asha is awkward but makes a good enough first impression that Magnifico is moved to show her the wish room (for some reason). They sing a duet about the wishes where they’re both dazzled by the Wish balls. During the song, Asha finds her Grandpa's wish and after the song, she asks him to grant it. He looks at the wish and says while she has good intentions, it's too dangerous to grant--as are most wishes. She asks why not give them back then and he immediately flies off the handle and starts ranting about how HE decides which wishes get granted and what everyone deserves! 

Their first meeting and him showing his true colors happens in the SAME SCENE. It's like 7-10 minutes and they just RUSH through all of that. And it's like, why? Did they really need to get to that dumbass star song (we'll get to that) faster? 

I know that he isn't a twist villain so we don't need to keep the fact that he’s the bad guy under wraps. And, the way the story is structured, she needs to learn what he's doing before she can rebel against him. But it's not gonna be a big, impactful moment if you're rushing from beat to beat like this is an essay that's due in twenty minutes and you started five minutes ago. 

And it really makes you wonder, if Asha can blow the whole lid off this conspiracy within ten minutes of meeting this guy, why is this not happening more often? Between how obviously smarmy the King is, how paltry the wish granting system is, and how easily Asha was able to start asking questions and get him to blow his top (something that happens again later when the citizens start asking question–it literally drives him into his villain song) I don't believe that this wouldn't have happened earlier (Sidenote: Finding out that it HAD happened earlier and that Asha is the latest in a line of failed apprentices who questioned him? More interesting premise). 

So to recap: I have no idea why this movie is paced like this but it's not doing it any favors. 

Humor

Humor is very subjective so you can take this with a huge grain of salt but I think this is a deeply unfunny movie. 

The jokes fall into about three main categories:

(1) Quirky Humor: This is like Asha babbling and tripping over her words. The scene in the trailer where she's like, "Is my face drooping?" is a good example. It's not really a joke but it's clearly an attempt at humor that I don't think meets the mark. It's also in the songs with, for instance, the animals or the King saying slang that doesn't match how they talk or you'd expect them to talk at all and it just feels deeply incongruent, not funny. 

(2) Referential Humor: This is probably what bothered me the most because it was just so so very eye-roll inducing. And listen, I love a good reference. Enchanted is my favorite movie of all time. I don’t begrudge them for putting a few references in their 100th Anniversary movie. But ugh. There is a scene after the king's gone crazy where he's destroying wish bubbles for power and he's like, looking at the wishes and making a quip before he crushes them. And for the second one he goes, "Oh you want a nanny for your kids? Definitely  POPPING this one!" And he might as well have looked at the camera and said, "Get it? Get it?" and it took 6 months off my lifespan. (Sidenote: He he does a direct ref with the first two wish bubbles--Peter Pan and Mary Poppins–and then he just makes a general ref to the concept of true love with the last one and it's like, come on at least rule of threes this if you're gonna do it. Commit to your awful bit!)

(3) Kiddie Humor: This is where things get especially subjective because maybe a little kid would find this stuff really funny and they are a part of the target audience so that's valid. But it doesn't add much substance to the movie. This is like the goat being like, "I found a secret passage with my butt" or leading a chicken choir or singing the line, "So that's where all the balls of gas come from" while sticking his butt in the air--a lot of these have to do with the goat and his butt now that I think about it. 

I think I only laughed at one thing in the movie that was meant to be at least partially funny--when the Queen interrupts the fight song and everyone is like "Oh shit, we're busted!" before she starts singing along. 

So to recap: Sometimes a movie has a weak story but it's super funny and that makes up for it. This is not one of those movies.

Music

This is the one thing I already knew before I watched this movie: The music in this movie is bad. 

Like, fullstop, no qualifications bad. Not bad for a Disney movie. Not bad for this story. Just bad.

I was a little confused by the choice to pick a pop artist instead of someone who specializes in musical theater style music for this project, but a more pop-y musical doesn't automatically mean a worse musical. Sure, maybe it's a weird choice to pay homage to the past 100 years of Disney movies, but it could be good. I love Six the Musical.

But that's the problem. The songs aren't just unfitting. They're not just un-Disney. They're fully BAD. They feel so half-baked and God, I've never been so assaulted by slant rhymes in my life. Like, this bothers me to the point where I have to go through the entire tracklist. I can't just make a blanket statement, I have to show you what I mean:

1) Welcome to Rosas: This whole song sounds like someone listened to “Where you Are” from Moana (the "consider the coconut" song), “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast, and “The Family Madrigal” from Encanto and was like, "I could do that". And then they couldn't. It's not really catchy and it's pretty repetitive. Super forgettable. 

Worst Line: Honestly, this song is too boring to have a worst line. 

2) At All Costs: This is the duet that Asha and Magnifico sing. Before I saw the movie, I thought it was going to be Asha singing about a wish and Magnifico singing to his wife to set up the eventual rift between them but that was before I realized that this movie doesn't believe in relationship building. Some of the movie's worst musical sins are on display here. Turns of phrases that seem like they were written by AI and bizarre syntax. 

Like what does, "You pull me in, like some kind of wind" mean? That's not what wind does. Why would anyone ever say, "Felt this? No, I haven't" instead of "I haven't felt this?" That's so awkward. 

Worst Line: "Leave you here, I don't wanna. I wanna [promise as one does]." My feelings about this line could be a whole other essay, but I've been writing this for 2 hours already so I have to move on. 

3) This Wish: This is the big "I Want" song and it fails on several levels. It fails in comparison to all the songs it’s standing in the shadow of--like the last “I Want” song we got is, I believe, “Waiting on a Miracle” and man! How can you not feel for Mirabel after watching her go through everything she goes through at the start of the movie and it getting topped with her being excluded from the family portrait? You see all the build up (including the implied build up from before the movie started) and you see why it's all bubbled up to the point where she has no choice but to sing about it! With Asha, there isn't a whole lifetime of angst that's bubbling up to make her sing this song. Everything that's happened to her has happened over the hour of like eight hours tops. She meets the king, finds out about the king, realizes the whole system is bad, and then gets into an argument with her family who's drunk the Kool-Aid and doesn't wanna hear what she has to say (which makes no impact on us because we have no idea what their relationship is). That's it. It doesn't feel like the movie has earned the song.

And then with “Waiting for a Miracle” the music itself is plaintive and soaring. Like, I just paused writing to listen to it and I couldn't help but sing along and pour a little of my actual IRL "I Want" energy into it. It's a song that feels very real. “This Wish” isn't any of that. And it's not the actresses' fault! She's pouring her whole heart into it and she consistently does all movie. But the song is just, bland. Like I said, "I want to have more than this" is too weak a hook to hang your whole song on–especially when it’s the song that’s supposed to be the thesis of your whole movie.  

Worst Line: "So I look up at the stars to guide me/And throw caution to every warning sign." That's not a thing people say and also it doesn't mean anything. If anything, it sounds like she's saying that she's being extra cautious at the warning signs! You can't just throw words together haphazardly and expect them to retain their meaning!

4) I'm a Star: This is, imo, the worst song on the whole track. A friend of mine described it as sounding like a song from a preschool science show and that's exactly it, but there's more to it than that. 

First of all, a big part of the reason this song exists is to set up the fact that humans are made of stardust because that's a plot point in the climax. But there didn't need to be a song about that. That would be like if Frozen 2 had a song about how water has memory. But like, OK. If the song was a bop, it wouldn't matter that it was superfluous. Haus of Holbein in Six does NOT need to be there, but I enjoy it! I do NOT enjoy this song however. 

This is something I alluded to earlier, but this soundtrack in general and this song specifically sounds like it's trying to do LMM's schtick but poorly. And I know some people don't like his whole style of music (I personally like it) but love him or hate him, his style without his skill? Awful. The presentation of fun facts in the middle of a fun song makes me think of his "Look it Up" in “Shiny” or "That's true" in “A Winter's Ball”. And there's a part where a turtle (we'll get to the talking animals) sings "See we're all just little nebulae in a nursery/From supernovas now we've grown into our history/We're taking whys right out of mystery, closure/Now we're taking in all the star exposure" And it really sounds like someone doing their best to emulate Lin's flow in things like Mirabel's aside to Mariano in “The Family Madrigal” or any number of songs I could name from Hamilton. But it just falls so flat here. It sounds so preschool and cheesy. And not preschool in a fun way. Backyardigans would never. 

Also, this song is sung by a bunch of talking animals (the Star gives them the ability to talk) and I find them so obnoxious. They say stuff like, "Did we just blow your mind?" with the "boom" sound effect and I hate it. Maybe kids will like them, I dunno. I refuse to get into it further. 

Worst Line: This song completely misuses the word allegory, which I hate, and it rhymes it with "excitatory" which I hate more (and I am saying this as someone who has made peace with the fact that Schwartz rhymes "nasty" with "flabbergasty" in Disenchanted) but there is only one line in this song that can be considered the true worst line because it's my least favorite line in the whole movie. A dumbass, stoner-sounding deer named Bambi (boo) sings, "Ooh, I'm a star! Watch out world, here I are"

They rhyme the word star--not a hard word to rhyme at all--with HERE I ARE. 

I firmly believe someone should go to jail for that. 

5) This is The Thanks I Get?!: This is the much anticipated and extremely disappointing villain song. There's just no gravitas and it's not clever enough to be very fun. It's just kinda bopping along which is eh, kind of fun at best, but like everything else in this movie, doesn't leave an impact. A musical number doesn't have to be obviously sinister like “Be Prepared” or, the holy (unholy?) grail, “Hellfire”, to be impactful. “Mother Knows Best” is bright and filled with false cheer but it still works because we can see the manipulation that Gothel is doing and she spins Raps around in mental circles to keep her docile. This is just an egotistical rant--and not even in a fun, Gaston kind of way! (Sidenote: Gaston is a good example of a villain who is preening and pompous and kind fo campy, but who you see why he’s beloved AND he can be menacing when the scene calls for it). 

Also, it's so full of weird slang that Magnifico doesn't use at any other point in the movie. "Peep the name", "Ungrateful much", "Mmm, are you sure you're not the prob?" It's like he suddenly got possessed by Urban Dictionary. It's bizarre. 

It also comes weirdly late in the movie, which isn't a complaint, just an observation. 

Worst Line: I think "peep the name" is my least fave but, because I already said that, the opening lines of this song are, "I can't help it if mirrors love my face. It's genetics! Yeah, I got these genes from outer space" and that's such a weird thing to say. I got these genes from outer space? He wasn't even there for the star song so what the hell does he mean by that?

6) Knowing What I Know Now: I feel like this is the song that had the most potential. But for all its build, it never builds to anything. It starts and ends so abruptly (which is the case for multiple songs on this list). We don't really get to know any of the characters well except for Asha so them joining the revolution has no impact. The Queen turning on Magnifico really doesn't have much impact. 

(There's a line in this song where a character sings, "I was sweet but now I'm something else" which is so funny because we literally know nothing about her except that she surprises people when she's in a room which, lmao, me too. Fully forgot you were in this movie, girl). 

Worst Line: "The good in him, I've watched it melt". There's technically nothing wrong with this line but I hate it because melting with regard to emotion is never, "Oh, his goodness is melting". It just hits the ear so wrong. You can watch the good in him disappear or fade or vanish. Not melt. Hearts melt. 

There's also a reprise and a credits song but I have talked about the music for too long as is so to sum up, there is not a single song on this list that I will ever purposefully listen to for enjoyment ever again and there are a few lines that I feel calls for someone being forced to go to whatever the musical version of the Hague is to explain themselves. 

MISC

This is just a section for things that annoyed me that didn't fit anywhere else. 

There's a moment where Asha sees Star which is a star that has fallen to earth and is shaped like a star and she's not able to put together than he's a star until she looks up at a ball of yarn that's tangled in the trees and sees that the yarn is shaped like a star...which again, Star is ALSO shaped like a star! Baffling. 

Gabo at one point makes a comment to the effect of, "Wishing on a Star? Grow up Asha, this isn't a fairy tale." And it's like, dude shut up. Your king is a sorcerer. This movie isn't funny enough to pull off that kind of wink to the audience. 

The actual funniest part of the movie is when a talking mouse (not a thing that usually exists in this world) runs onto the Queen's shoulder during a big speech in front of a crowd and not only does no one notice, but she has no stronger reaction than if a messenger was telling her that her dinner was ready. And not in an underreaction for the purposes of a joke way. Like, in a they forgot to write in a reaction for her way. It's so unintentionally hilarious. 

They specifically set this in the real world–off the coast of the Iberan Peninsula–but I didn’t get any of that influence in any significant way here. It could have been any generic island town. Rosas sounds like a Spanish name and “Welcome to Rosas” there is some dancing that looks like traditional Spanish dancing. But on a whole, it feels pretty bland. When I think about studying abroad in Spain, one of the big things I think about are all the moments with food–patatas con bravas, pan con tomatae, paella, and so so much coffee. The only food I remember from this movie are the novelty cookies Dahlia is always baking. Which is wild to me because their last big musical was Encanto and you could feel the cultural influences in every scene and it was seamless. This wouldn’t even bother me if that hadn’t made a point to set it in a specific part of the real world and call it out. 

A lot of the dialogue is super expository in a way that both makes me think the writers think we’re stupid and that they realized at certain points that they forgot to establish things but instead of fixing the script they just shoved in a line. Like, to the first point, there’s a part where Magnifico crushes a wish and it’s very clear that he’s getting a high from it. But instead of letting the moment stand he’s like, “Oh yes. Who knew crushing wishes would feel so good? I must continue to crush wishes so I keep feeling this good feeling,” and it’s like…why did you need to say all of that? Old Power Rangers episodes have their villains monologue less than that!

This movie opens on a storybook–just like Snow White–and it has a voice over of Asha narrating the history of Rosas as the pages flip. Not a bad idea–until you push into the scene and realize she’s telling all of this to…her grandpa? Who is 100 years old and lived through all of this? What? Why not have that scene be a kid flashback and the story is being told to her? Or have her be doing the little kid thing of telling a story to an adult? Either way, that would help establish their relationship which is ostensibly very important to this movie. Or, wild thought, just have her be telling this story to kids! Like Mirabel explaining all the Madrigal gifts in Encanto! Like, if you’re gonna take cues from that movie, at least go all the way so your movie makes sense. 

It’s very unclear how Star’s magic works. It seems like he mostly just gives wildlife the ability to talk. I thought he was just granting wishes but he never does that to any of the humans. And I find it hard to believe that the wish of every animal (and mushroom)  in this movie is just to be able to talk.

Easy Fixes

And all of this is compounded by the fact that this isn’t just any random movie or even any random Disney movie. It’s the *100th ANNIVERSARY*. You only get one of those and this is what they wasted it on. My hopes were really high here! I was expecting a lot of love and care to be put into this one, but it just fell absolutely flat. It feels so rote, so by the numbers, so lacking in care. It feels like the shell of an outline of a movie that relies on the fact that we know what a movie of this sort should be and can fill in the blanks. 

And the worst part? The absolute worst part?

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A REALLY EASY MOVIE TO FIX. 

Like, I’m serious. If you watch this movie, you will be able to, off the cuff, name tons of things that would have solved problems without breaking a sweat. 

For instance, just cutting her friend group down from seven to two would have helped immensely. If she, Dahlia, and Simon have a Three Musketeers relationship, then when he betrays her to the king, it actually means something now! 

For a bigger but still obvious change, why not have Asha have an existing relationship with Magnifico? So then this story can be about her losing faith in this relationship she’s had for a long time after she’s seen behind the curtain and become jaded over time and not a 7 minute “Don’t Meet Your Heroes” speedrun.

And making it clear what taking a Wish from a person means–and following through with that portrayal all movie–would all be a game changer. Show that Magnifico’s magical wish granting still leaves the people hollow. Show that Asha is a vibrant, bright person amongst a sea of robotic adults. Show me some worldbuilding! 

Also, just hire a musical theater person to do the music. Seriously I can’t believe I have to say this? How is there not a single good song in this movie? There are DCOMs with more bangers than this. Almost every song in High School Musical is a bop. How are you getting outshone by High School Musical?

And these are just changes that preserve the bulk of the story as is. This movie could have been even better if they’d change the direction to go with some of their scrapped ideas!

This is just a movie that absolutely baffles me. I wouldn’t think it would be possible for a movie with this high of a profile to be this bad. You would think that even accidentally they’d have to get SOMETHING right. But they really don’t. I can’t recommend this movie, even for a fun-bad watch. It’s like eating unsalted saltines while you have dry mouth. Just watch a better movie. And here are three movies I think are more in the spirit of Disney’s 100th anniversary than Wish:

(1) The Princess and the Frog does literally everything that this movie is trying to do but better. You’ve got a movie that used a 2D style in the 3D era. You have integration of cultural elements–in this case New Orleans in the 20s. You have a classic princess story with the classic trappings: romance, villain, fairy godmother. You have a rocking villain song. Hell, you even have a wishing star motif! 

(2) Encanto is the latest Disney movie of the modern era to have that classic Disney magic, imo. It sidesteps a lot of the classic Disney tropes–no princess, no serious romance (Delores and Mariano end up together but it’s very much a side thing), no villain beyond generational trauma–but it still feels musical and magical and full of character and life. It shows that you can keep the big emotions that we expect from Disney even with more modern sensibilities. 

(3) Enchanted is my favorite movie of all time so I’m biased, but I still firmly believe that it stands as a better movie in general and tribute to Disney specifically than Wish. THIS is how you do an homage. The whole plot is a loving roast of all the quirks of classic Disney movies, but it’s also a sincere story that stands on its own. It has references to old movies, but they’re integrated very naturally. And it’s funny enough to get away with things like a character mid-musical number being like, “What the hell is happening? Why is everybody singing?” without it feeling like lazy, “Well that just happened” humor. And the music is so good! 

(A quick note on the music btw: Most of the songs in Enchanted are musical theater style songs but there’s one song near the end called “So Close” which is like a pop ballad. And it totally makes sense why they’d depart from the musical theater style in that moment in context but, even if it was jarring and totally unfitting for the movie, it’s still objectively a strong song. Out of context, it would be a great, sad, romantic song. And if the music in Wish was all like that–good but unfitting–this would confuse me less than it does.)

Anyway, I would shell out a LOT of money for a making of documentary for this movie in the style of the Frozen 2 one because as writer and a fan of a lot of Disney’s past stuff, it is completely beyond my comprehension who a team of accomplished people get together to create the 100th Anniversary project with their vast resources and produce this. It just doesn't feel like a movie with any serious care put into it. Which is separate from quality, btw. I don’t like the movie Raya very much but I think it’s obvious a lot of care went into it and I respect this. Wish feels like a movie that was made to fill some kind of contractual obligation and it makes me sad because I really wanted to like it.