#as i mentioned in a previous post i've been missing the times when the group was still as active as how young people would be

[thelivingsin]

it's normal to be disappointed when you learn that your dreams are already dead. but just like a phoenix, our death will lead us to our own rebirth; and like a supernova, some deaths are beautiful.

[spiderlandry]

Secrets Kept — Ethan Landry

in which you have a secret, and it’s not what ethan thinks.

Pairing: Ethan Landry x Spider-Woman!Reader (she/her pronouns used)

Warnings: minor gunshot wound, kind of escalates quickly?, mention of reader having no family (other than aunt may), slight angst, fluff, no ghostface (previous movies can still be canon i think), somewhat dialogue-heavy, mentions of Across the Spider-Verse events

Word Count: ~9k

Author’s Note: hey everyone, i do wanna apologize for promising to come back and then just. not. so im sorry for that! i have had some health/life troubles recently and long story short i won’t be releasing anymore fics after this. (i am not dying, dont worry, my energy just isnt the same). i also realized i just do not feel as passionate about writing as i used to. thank you for sticking with me, and i will keep all my fics up. for unfinished series i’ve written, anyone is free to write continuations if you wish. thank u so much again for making me feel so welcome here!!! feel free to talk to me in my inbox as i’ll be checking in periodically. and if there’s any interest, i’m willing to post unedited wips.

i guess i've come full circle because this fic was the reason i created this blog. it was unfinished so i never did post it, but i finally got some energy to do it! so enjoy (hopefully)

-

New York had been your home for a long time. All your life, actually. But sometimes, the rowdy, noisy city was suffocating.

However, swinging through the city, air resisting against your skin as you picked up speed—lifted the weight off your shoulders.

You changed in a secluded alley on the outskirts of the busyness in the big apple, not risking any neighbours seeing you go into the window of your apartment. The subway was crowded as it is all hours of the day, though you didn’t mind too much.

Closing the door behind you, you dropped your bag on the couch and looked for your roommate. “Quinn?” Your voice travelled throughout the place, bringing your roommate to her feet and outside her room.

“Hey, d’you just get back?” She smiled, leaning against the end of the hallway. “How was patrol?”

You sighed, opening the zipper of your backpack to pull out the bagel you got for her. “Yeah, it was alright. Nothing exciting.” you threw it to her, and she almost dropped it. “Got you a bagel. Thanks for covering for me.”

She scoffed in mock offence, “What did I say about throwing things? I don’t have your spider sensor, or whatever. But this is appreciated.” She took a bite, and you laughed at her remark about the spider-sense.

“Noted, sorry again.” You returned her grin. You knew she loved being in on the secret. She took joy in knowing the real identity of the masked vigilante, often covering for you around your friends when you had to leave very suddenly during movie nights and hangouts. But above all, she was a concerned friend. Always. Patched you up when you came home late at night, warned you when you were about to make a bad decision, told you to be careful before you left.

You often told yourself not to get too close. Making connections as a vigilante wasn’t ideal. Anybody who knew your identity was in danger at all times, and it didn’t help that you had a huge crush on her brother. You never uttered a word to her, but you could sense her observing you when you hung out with the friend group—not in a spidey-sense way, though, you could just feel it, even without the supernatural sense.

“Anything interesting happen while I was gone?” You asked, flopping down on the couch and turning on the tv, avoiding the news channels.

“Ethan missed you. It was kinda gross, actually. Wouldn’t stop asking where you were.” She grabbed a drink from the kitchen, disappearing from view.

You furrowed your brows, “You know I never believe you whenever you say anything about Ethan, right? Especially concerning me.”

“Not my problem, spidey. I never lie.”

“I could give you ten examples,” you chuckled.

“I never lie to you. Obviously I lie to everybody else.” She came back from the kitchen with a look.

“Is it because I’m special?”

“Obviously.”

You weren’t the nervous type. Maybe it was after you were bitten by the spider, you never really knew, but one of the main reasons Ethan may not have realized you have any semblance of feelings for him was because you acted normal around him like you did everybody else. Your schedules were different, so you rarely hung out with him for school reasons, meaning the only times he spent time with you was during group hangouts.

Including now. At his and Chad’s tiny off campus apartment.

He watched you play chess with Anika, Chad watching from the sidelines during a blitz game. Speed chess. He knew how to play chess. Maybe he should play with you, a thought grazed his mind.

As if his sister could read him, she appeared beside him and nudged him closer to the scene. “You should play.”

He looked at her with shock, “No, I’ll lose. I don’t wanna embarrass myself.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Since when has that stopped you? You never back down from a chess match, remember?” He did remember, years ago when his father taught him after Richie left for college. “It’s because you like her, isn’t it?”

He huffed. To try and prove her wrong, he went over to the coffee table and watched as you lost to Anika—maybe he has a chance.

It was his turn, now. He replaced Anika on the seat facing you, rearranging the chess pieces. “Pretty boy wants to play!” Chad exclaimed.

“Chad.” Ethan said in an almost warning tone. “What did I say about the nickname?”

You reset the chess clock. He looked at you—you were smirking—which was a mistake, because he didn’t realize you started his clock.

“Shit,” he moved a piece, fumbling. You grinned at him, and he realized he’ll do anything to see it again.

You didn’t lose your confidence, moving chess pieces to counteract his own moves.

During the middle game was when it dawned on him he was fucked.

It became clear to him you likely knew how to psych him out—just by smiling at him.

Little did he know, you smiled at him because his thinking face was adorable. But on his side, you were smiling every time he glanced at you. He had no other choice but to believe you were doing it to make him blunder, because he couldn’t make you usually smile like that, could he?

Quinn watched her brother fumble around you. Her plan worked. At least for tonight.

You ended up winning the game with ten seconds left on your clock and three on his.

You high-fived Chad, much to Ethan’s dismay, but you offered a handshake to his direction which he gladly accepted to feel your warm palm in his. Worth it.

He was mustering up to ask for a rematch when your phone buzzed on the counter, which Quinn reached to get before anyone could in case it was something spider related. And thank god she did, because it was. She gave you a nod, reading the notification about something happening downtown. You cringed internally, knowing the burden of covering for you would fall on your friend’s shoulders again. She packed your things and handed you the backpack, whispering ‘be safe’ as you take it from her, so nobody else would hear.

With a closing of the door behind you, a conversation in the room began, thanks to a suspecting Mindy.

“Why does she leave sometimes?” The woman looked to the strawberry blonde for an answer, suspecting that she knew more than she let on. “She never tells us.” They all settled on the couch as Chad flicked through streaming services for a movie and Ethan cleaned up the chessboard. He didn’t wanna seem to interested, but he was definitely actively listening for Quinn’s answer.

“Her aunt calls her sometimes to run some errands,” Quinn prayed they wouldn’t pry. She saw this coming because you’d been dealing with more calls recently and patrolling more often. There really was no other excuse for the spontaneous leaving. It was easier to cover if you were already not there—you’d be studying, grocery shopping, napping, or literally anything else.

“Aunt May?” Ethan piped up. You mentioned her once, saying you needed to get eggs for her.

“Yeah, Aunt May.”

“She never talks about her family.” Said Anika.

Quinn didn’t want to say anything else. “She’s just private, I think.”

“You know more about her than us, though.”

“Because I’m her roommate.”

Mindy’s eyes squint toward her. Tilting her head, she pursed her lips. “I think you’re lying.”

“Why would I be?”

“She’s left before, at like, one AM. Why would her aunt call her at that time?”

Quinn shrugged, feeling a little bit of panic setting in. “Who knows?”

“Is she hiding something?”

“No.” The word was so quick and curt, and that was when she knew she fucked up.

“You’re definitely lying.”

Everyone else, watching the interaction turning from teasing to tense, Sam stepped in. “Guys,” she interrupted. “If Y/N wants to tell us something, she would. I’m sure she has her reasons.”

Mindy had been suspicious for a long time. Not out of malice, she liked to think she had a naturally curious personality. She’d kept an eye on you every time you left, half because she wanted to know, but also because she was worried. Had you not been friends for long enough that you couldn’t tell them why you left or was sometimes missing?

Ethan thought similar.

It got weirder when he saw a glimpse of your name on Quinn’s phone, a call from you that she answered. She went to the kitchen to answer it. Mindy saw it too.

Ethan wasn’t proud of it, but he followed, to stay right behind the threshold of the kitchen and the cold tiled floor, listening to the conversation.

The audio from your end was inaudible, but Quinn’s responses were: “Yeah?” … “How bad is it?” … “No, I’ll be there.” … “Who cares if they get suspicious? You’re more important.”

He heard the call end and rushed back to his seat, to Quinn’s obliviousness. She grabbed her things.

“I’m tired, guys.” She announced to the group, Tara pausing the movie. “I’m gonna go home.”

“Oh,” Sam replied. “Well, be careful. Do you have your pepper spray?”

“Yes, Sam.” Quinn almost rolled her eyes at Sam’s protectiveness, but she knew it was out of real worry.

After his sister left, Ethan began the conversation this time. “I think Mindy’s right.”

Everyone turned to him.

“Quinn was talking to Y/N.”

Tara sat up. “You followed her to eavesdrop?”

Ethan shrugged, feeling scolded.

“Not cool, dude.”

“What did she say?” Sam asked curiously, now hooked. If Ethan mentioned it, it must have been important.

“Like…” A pause, “Q asked ‘how bad is it?’ then said she’ll be there. And then, like, who cares if they get suspicious.”

“They’re definitely hiding something,” Mindy stated. “But why?”

“My sister never hides anything from me. She always overshares, and I always hated it. But now she’s not. It’s probably not…good.”

“Are we sure we should talk about this?” Anika piped up next to Mindy. “Maybe it’s a problem with their apartment—a leak, or something.”

“But…” Chad spoke, “what about the suspicious part? And why would Quinn lie?”

At the same time, at your and Quinn’s apartment, you bled out on a towel placed on the couch from a gash across your stomach. You winced as your friend applied the bandage.

“Didn’t I tell you to be safe? What happened? You had a good streak going there for a while.”

“Quinn, please.”

“Also, not to alarm you, but they’re getting really suspicious. Mindy asked why you leave all the time.”

“Shit, she’s never asked that.” Your head fell against the end of the couch in defeat. “Maybe I should start distancing myself.”

Quinn’s head snapped up. “You’re not serious.”

“Dead serious.”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?” You looked at her.

“It’s a really bad idea.”

“I’m trying to keep people safe. Keep you safe. Keep everyone else in the group safe.”

“What about Ethan?”

“Including him.”

“No—“ She scoffs, “I mean, you’d…break his heart.”

You had to stop yourself from laughing. “Quinn,”

“I’m serious.” And she actually was. She might have thought her brother was a nerdy asshole. But he was her brother. “And everyone would wonder where you are. You can’t avoid them forever.”

Sitting atop a random apartment building Monday morning, your sight helped you catch a glimpse of Ethan walking amongst a crowd of New Yorkers, bumping into people with a hand on the backpack strap on his shoulder. It had been a week since you talked to Quinn about possibly leaving the group.

After that, you stopped answering messages from them, much to her dismay. She still saw you at the apartment, looking at you with silent eyes hoping you’d realize your mistake and come around again. She knew you would.

Having everybody’s schedules memorized helped you avoid them—but Anika having the same major as you was your downfall. You skipped a class yesterday, and she texted the groupchat asking where you were.

Maybe it was creepy, but keeping an eye on your friends calmed you down. You wanted to be the one to make sure they were safe without having them try to do the same thing—this was why you never wanted to get close.

Unbeknownst to you, the group had a bet going.

Mindy thought you and Quinn were dating. Ethan thought something was up in your family life, maybe Aunt May was sick. Chad thought you were in a secret fight club (secretly worried). Anika was on board with Mindy’s theory. Sam refused to answer, and Tara was also silent.

Quinn came to your room that night. “Everybody’s worried about you.”

You looked at her with begging eyes. “I know, Quinn.” You sighed in defeat. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Either you tell them or not. Your choice. But you can’t avoid it forever. Everyone’s been giving you space, but they’re still thinking you’ll come around.”

You stared at her, them looked away, at anything else.

“One more thing—“ she said before she left, “don’t patrol tonight.”

“Why not?”

“I’m gonna be over at Isaac’s place. If you get hurt, I won’t be there. He thinks I’m cheating on him whenever I bail.”

You would never ask her to give up a part of her life for you, she knew you would agree. But she also knew you would never miss patrol.

“Fine, I won’t.”

She left knowing you would.

You should have listened. God, you should have listened.

Your wound from a few days ago had already healed thanks to your abilities, but another power you had was how many times you got injured in a short amount of time. Especially in the same spot. This time it was a real stab wound on your side, not just a gash a centimetre deep.

You couldn’t let yourself bleed out on the alley to be found dead and your friends to find out your identity through a news announcement that Spider-Woman was dead. You were about to swing back to your apartment—

Shit.

You didn’t have your civilian clothes. The window on the fire escape was locked. Your door was locked. Nobody was home. Idiot!

One choice. You forced your feelings down, hoping this was for the best.

Ethan and Chad’s were the closest.

With your heart pounding in your ears, holding it together and covering your wound, you knocked on the glass.

Chad came out of the hallway to furious sounding knocking on the window, thinking maybe a madman managed to climb up the fire escape and was trying to break in.

He certainly wasn’t expecting the masked vigilante of New York City to be the one on the other side of the glass. And she looked to be bleeding.

You were thankful it was Chad who answered and not Ethan. He coincidentally had Econ tonight, so that was actually a plus.

Chad opened the window. “Holy shit!”

“Look—“ You were breathing rapidly, unable to keep it together. “I’m sorry about this—“ You tried to change your voice hoping your friend wouldn’t recognize it.

“I’m gonna carry you now, okay?” He put an arm behind your back and another under your knees, trying to avoid touching the wound. “What the fuck?” You heard him whisper as he set you down on the couch.

He rushed to the bathroom for the med kit. “You’re lucky I have this,” He set it down on the floor, rummaging through it. “I play college football, I mainly have it for sprains. I never used the suture kit, but hey, first time for everything, right?” He rambled. Just as Chad does when he was nervous, also evident in the tremble of his voice.

“I heal pretty quickly, I just need stitches to stop it from bleeding.”

“Thank God. I don’t know how to operate on organs. What if you have internal bleeding?”

“Won’t matter. I’ll heal. I’d never let you touch my organs.” You joked.

“Glad to know Spider-Woman’s funny.”

You were careful not to call him by name on instinct. “What should I call you?”

“Your saviour.” He got the tools ready, “Kidding. I’m Chad.”

“‘Kay, Chad. Need me to walk you through it?”

“Yes—yes, that would be good, actually. You have medical experience?”

“If you call getting injured experience, yes.”

“This is gonna be a long night.”

Tara did not believe her boyfriend.

She was at his apartment, sitting on his bed, and he was pacing and rambling about Spider-Woman coming to this very place last night and asked the vigilante to save her. She stared at him crazy.

“Babe, you have to believe me!” He jumped up excitedly, he couldn’t keep it in.

“You didn’t get any proof?”

“She was bleeding! I stitched her up! Not really a great time to ask for an autograph or a picture.”

She smiled at him endearingly. “I wanna believe you, so, so bad.”

He came closer to her, “Please do.”

“She just happened to come here when Ethan was away?”

“Yes.”

She laughed, falling back on the bed.

“Please, babe!”

With good timing, a knock on the door took them away from the moment.

Tara went to get it, Chad on her tail.

And surprise.

It was Spider-Woman at the door.

You never intended on showing up, but the guilt consumed you and your feet brought you to a bakery and you’d purchased a dozen cupcakes before you knew it. You wanted to leave them at his door, but not trusting his neighbours, you decided to hand them over.

He wasn’t alone. You should have expected Tara. It was afternoon, and Ethan had a class early morning (why he picked it that early, you’ll never get.)

Tara’s eyes widened at the sight, immediately turning back to her boyfriend stopping him in his tracks. “Is this a prank?” She pointed a finger up at him.

Him not knowing who’s at the door, “What? Who’s at the door?” He walked past her and was equally shocked.

You lowered your voice again. “Uh,” you cleared your throat, “thanks for saving me last night.” You handed over the box of cupcakes.

“Are you joking?” Tara went to lift your mask, but you backed away. “Who are you?”

“Not a prank, promise!” You exclaimed. “This is…actually…me. Just wanted to say thanks. If not for him, I would have bled out.”

“Prove it.”

“Prove what?”

“You’re her.”

At that, you shot a web to the ceiling.

“Shit,”

“I wasn’t lying, babe.” You heard Chad whisper to her. And directed at you, “Glad I could help, spider. Come back anytime!” Tara playfully slapped him on the shoulder as you walked away.

“I’ll keep that in mind!”

You still hadn’t told Quinn about what happened last night. That was because you hadn’t seen her anywhere. She must have slept in at her boyfriend(?)’s place.

As you got home, your phone buzzed.

Bruno Mars Security Team

Chad

everyone !!!!!!!! please come over tonight !!!!!!! i have to tell you all something !!!!!!! im spiderwomans best friend now

Tara

well…

Sam

???

Quinn

Oh god

Ethan

What lol

Then, a personal message notification from Quinn.

Quinn

Wtf happened while I was gone you have to tell me

You

I HAD NO CHOICE

Quinn

Please actually come over to Chad’s. We all miss you even tho its only a few days like we’re all worried

You

i will

Chad had never been happier to see you. “You’re here! And you’re early!” He opened his arms for a hug, which you took. “I missed you!” You’d always been a little sister to him, despite being a few months apart, it mattered to him.

“Sorry I’ve been MIA,” You sighed, pulling away. “Just—dealing with stuff,” you cleared your throat.

Just then, Tara appeared and ran into your arms. You squeezed her tight, knowing she gave the best kinds of hugs. Her arms wrapped around your neck, head resting against your shoulder, fitting like a puzzle piece. “Talk to us anytime, okay?”

You nodded, ending the hug and closing the door behind you.

“What’s this about Spider-Woman?” You inquired, grabbing a drink from the fridge.

“I have to wait until everyone gets here, you guys are gonna freak! And Tara is here to back me up.”

“Is that all I’m here for?” Tara teased.

“No, honey, you know it’s also because we’re using your Netflix login.”

You laughed at their antics as she flicked him on the forehead lightly.

Ethan happened to catch you right at that moment as he came out of the bathroom.

He was silent, but shot you a smile nonetheless, which you mirrored. He really did not know what to say. A feeling bubbled up inside him and he knew he wanted to talk to you alone.

You took your place at the very end of the couch, checking something on your phone as you waited for the others to get here. Unbeknownst to you, though, Ethan was looking at you trying to decide whether it was the right time to talk. Chad and Tara were whispering to themselves, betting on if he would actually say anything.

After a few seconds, your senses told you somebody was staring. Not in a dangerous way, or even remotely alarming, but you could still feel it. So you turned your head upward and saw the curly haired boy a standing awkwardly a few feet from you.

“What’re you doing?” You smirked, though not really in a smug way. It was more amusement than anything.

“Uh—nothing, I just—“ He wandered closer, sitting a few centimetres away from you. “I—we, the group, want you to know that we’re always here if you need anything. You can talk to us, alright? You don’t—just don’t deal with it alone.” He shrugged, “That’s it.”

Your face softened at his confession. Only if you could tell them without compromising their safety. “Thanks. I’ll…keep you posted.”

Ethan didn’t know what to do now that the conversation was seemingly over.

He was about to stand up until the door swung open, Quinn coming in along with Mindy and Anika who were carrying a few boxes of pizza.

“We’re here! And we brought food!” Mindy’s voice echoed throughout the apartment.

You were going to greet them but Anika beat you to it, seeing you on the couch and running over to hug you.

Mindy did the same, relieved to see you okay.

Quinn had a knowing smile on her face.

After the room settled down, Chad began to finally tell the story.

Needless to say, nobody believed him.

By the end of the night, long past midnight, you were getting ready to leave when Ethan asked you something.

“Are you going with Quinn?”

Mindy and Anika were waiting at the door, they both got a ride from your roommate since Mindy’s car broke down a few days ago.

“No, uhm—I think I’m gonna walk home. It’s only a few blocks.”

Quinn, upon hearing you, chimed in. “Really? You sure you don’t want to?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” You shared a look with her that only the two of you knew. You turned to Ethan, “Why?”

“Can I walk you?”

You were surprised, to say the least. “Really?”

“So you’re safe.”

Preparing to protest, you felt Quinn’s hand on your arm. “Let him.”

So you did.

The walk home was brisk. The streets were empty, the street lamps illuminating your synchronized steps with Ethan.

With him, silence was never awkward. It was just…quiet.

It was no secret that you were perceptive, especially to your friends. Quinn knew why, but the others thought it was just you, not something caused by the spider bite. Your senses were especially heightened around Ethan.

You would never mention it, but you knew his heartbeat sped up when he got close to you. You only caught it a few times on accident trying to listen for something else, but you’d never actually do it on purpose.

Lately it seemed he was spending more time with you since the night you came back (which was three weeks ago at this point). One, he would message you on Discord asking if you wanted to do a study call—you never failed to say yes (making Ethan giddy). Two, he began to ask you things about your life during those calls when you would both take a break from studying. Like he wanted to know more about you.

Three, you began to spend time together outside the group.

Quinn was excited for you the first time you told her that you were going to see Ethan and only him. Of course, you told her not to read into it, but when has she ever listened?

Things were going fairly well. Especially with New York as a whole, nothing too major had happened (no supervillains, thank god), only a few robberies and cats stuck in a tree.

You were sitting atop a building when a tingling sensation in the back of your neck alerted you to something. Then, as you honed your hearing, you heard glass breaking a block away.

Swinging never got old.

As you reached your destination, a small bodega being robbed, you spotted him. Ethan.

Your heart began to pound in your ears, watching from the outside as the robber trained the gun on his hostages inside the bodega, one of them being Ethan.

It was like muscle memory. Go in, threaten the robber, and if it escalated, you fought him.

“I’m going to get rid of you, Spider-Woman!” The man in the mask hissed at you, his pistol trained right at your heart. This part didn’t scare you anymore, but Ethan being here—did. “If you come any closer…” He stepped away, instead pointing the gun at some old lady, who looked scared shitless. “I’ll shoot her!” He noticed you weren’t fazed at threats against you, so he targeted the next best thing: civilians.

“Easy, there, cowboy. Why don’t you point that gun at me? I thought you wanted to get rid of me.” You tilted your head, gauging the severity of the situation.

In your peripheral vision, Ethan stepped in front of the lady, trying to usher her to the side.

God, he was an idiot—but you’d be lying if you said that didn’t warm your heart.

The robber didn’t notice because he was still staring at you, watching for any sudden movements you’d make.

It happened in three seconds.

One, you shot the web to the gun, trying to pull it back to you.

Two, the gun went off—a slip of his finger caused by your web. Before you saw who it hit, the man came at you.

Three, you took him down, knocking him out.

It was the next second that you decided your life wouldn’t be the same.

You heard a hiss, a gasp from onlookers, and you took away the magazine of the gun before your head snapped up to where the hiss came from.

Ethan.

Red was the first thing you saw. It was on that yellow cardigan he wore when it was chilly—You rushed to his side, seeing the red come from his arm. He was backed up, leaning against the wall.

He was wide-eyed, face scrunched up in pain. “Shit,” He put pressure on his wound. “It hurt less than I thought it would.”

If only he could see how the tears lined your eyes under the mask.

“We need—“ You tried to keep your voice steady— “We need to get you to a hospital.”

“I’m fine,” He hissed again as you pressed harder on his arm. “It’s just a graze.” He saw your concern.

“No—It could’ve—it could’ve hit something vital—“ Despite your knowledge that it likely didn’t, your head was spinning and rational thought weren’t exactly on the table.

The sirens reached your ears before anyone else’s.

You took a deep breath. Your head cleared.

“The ambulance is gonna get here soon, uh—“ You cleared your throat. “Don’t move, okay?” You nodded to him, and left.

Okay, you didn’t actually leave. You stayed on a rooftop across the street, a few buildings over, seeing that he was okay as he got checked out by the paramedics.

That was when you actually left. For good this time.

The timing was almost perfect—the next day, an old friend came to see you.

You weren’t expecting anybody, hanging out in an abandoned building you found in the outskirts of Brooklyn when you were a teenager.

But a black hole opened up right next to you. Maybe not a black hole, but the closest thing to it.

That was when you saw Miguel O’Hara.

Quinn had no idea that, when she woke up that morning, it would be the week she spilled your secret to the friend group.

This is how it went down.

Last evening, she told you to be careful before you left for patrol. You never came back in the morning. She didn’t see any evidence of you being there, like your shoes haphazardly thrown across the floor near the front door, or your backpack on the couch. This had happened once before and she found out you were at your Aunt May’s house—so she just sent you a text and went on with her day.

It was also the day Ethan called her and told her that he was shot. Then he texted the groupchat about what happened and they all (including Quinn) rushed over to his and Chad’s apartment to see in person that he was actually okay. A bit of a freaky situation that Ethan was caught up in that, but everyone calmed down eventually. But when Ethan told the story, Quinn hoped your disappearance had nothing to do with his getting hurt. She also noticed that he was bummed about you not being there.

It was the second day she got worried. No sign of you. Nothing on the news about Spider-Woman, either.

Bruno Mars Security Team GC

Quinn

Anybody heard from Y/N?

Chad

aren’t you her roommate

Quinn

Hasn’t been home since Saturday.

Ethan

She hasnt answered any of my texts

Chad

okay now i’m worried

tara? mindy? anika? sam?

Mindy

nope. anika says no too

Sam

Not me or Tara. I’ll try calling her

She didn’t answer

Ethan

Quinn do u know where she’d go? maybe to a family member?

Quinn

I dont know her aunt mays address

Chad

let’s wait a day to see if she turns up. if not then we’ll get together to brainstorm

You weren’t there the next day, so everyone gathered at yours and Quinn’s apartment to see what could’ve happened to you.

They all stood around the kitchen island.

“Has everybody called her?” Chad said, arms crossed. “Texting her and everything?”

Everyone nodded.

“Quinn,” Tara began. “Have you checked her room?”

She looked down, almost ashamed. “I did, actually. Nothing.”

“Do you think we should…check again? Maybe we’ll find something.”

“I’m good at snooping, if you need.” Anika added.

Quinn’s eyes slightly widened, “No!” Calming down, “I mean—no. She doesn’t like other people going through her stuff. I can because I’m her roommate—not you guys.” At times of stress, this was the best she could come up with.

“Okay…” Mindy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “How about an address to Aunt May’s place? Do you think we could find that somewhere?”

The realization dawned upon her—no way of getting to you. “No. But she would’ve told me if she was going there.”

“Look, Quinn.” Mindy sighed, “Can you just—be honest with us?”

The ginger nodded.

“What was the last thing she said to you?”

“I—she was going out to buy something.”

Ethan’s nostrils flared—he knew when his sister was lying. Why was she so adamant to hide your whereabouts, even if it meant you were in danger? He sighed.

“I’ve—“ Everyone’s heads snapped to Ethan at his interruption. “I’ve had enough of it, Quinn. What the fuck are you two hiding? Seriously.”

Safe to say there was nobody in that kitchen who wasn’t surprised at his sudden outburst. He didn’t care, though.

“You always fucking lie, Quinn. I can tell. Why don’t you think I can tell? She goes missing, and you’re still keeping a secret!”

Chad put a hand on his shoulder, “Dude.”

The boy took a deep breath, reminding himself where he was. “Sorry. For shouting, I mean. But you can’t just—ask us to look for her when we all know damn well that you know something we don’t.”

At that moment, she had two choices. She thought for a long moment before she couldn’t find a rational explanation as to why she shouldn’t tell them that you’re Spider-Woman—you could be dead by now.

She walked away, hearing Mindy say “Are you fucking serious?” right behind her.

They didn’t have to wait for long, because Quinn came back from your room with something in her hand. They examined the object as she threw it onto the counter.

It was a mask—Spider-Woman’s mask.

“Holy shit,” Sam was the first to say.

“Wanna know the secret?” Quinn crossed her arms. “There’s your fucking secret.” She directed it at Ethan, whose mouth was slightly open.

She took a deep breath, a similar trait to her brothers to calm herself down. “The night she left, she told me she was going on patrol. When she didn’t come back the next morning I thought she was fine. Now it’s the third day, nothing from her. Look—I might’ve—like, fucked up. I don’t know.”

“How?” Asked Mindy.

“I should’ve told you sooner.”

It was clear to them that Quinn must have had this weight on her shoulders for so long.

“I have��so many questions.” Said Chad. “So when…Spider-Woman came to my apartment, that was Y/N?” He grabbed the mask, analyzing it with his hands.

“Why do you think she came to yours? She knows you have that stupid med bag with the unused suture kit.”

“Is that why she always left?”

“Mhm.” She nodded. “I thought—things were getting better. She was getting close to us again, stopped patrolling some nights because of my brother’s stupid discord calls.”

Ethan was breathless. “What?”

“Look—point is: she didn’t want to put anybody in danger. If I didn’t find out by accident, she never would have told me. She just…cares about you guys too much. She thinks if you know she’s Spider-Woman, you’d be in danger.”

When Ethan came face to face with Spider-Woman in the bodega, it was you. That was your concern, practically radiating off of you in waves. He knew you seemed familiar, somehow. But everybody knew Spider-Woman. He knew you differently. You saved his life.

Everybody was taken aback by the news. But Sam, ever the leader, began. “She’s been protecting us this whole time. All of us. It’s time we have to do the same for her.”

“How?”

“We find her. In any way possible, even if it means we have to track down her entire family, go back to her high school friends, anything we can think of, okay?”

There was no doubt in anyone else’s mind that they were all on board with the plan.

“Let’s do it.”

ONE WEEK LATER

It was the first night in a week that Ethan got proper sleep. The exhaustion finally caught up to his body after countless sleepless nights spent poring over clues on how to find you. He’d been making progress on the Oscorp lead when the last thing he remembered was slumping over at his desk.

Which was why it was weird when he opened his eyes, he saw the ceiling. He was laying down in the comfort of his own bed. Maybe he actually went to bed and didn’t realize it. The sunlight peeking through the curtains was probably a sign to get up, get back on the investigation.

That was until he sat up and saw a figure at his desk, standing over some of the files he sorted.

It took him a second to see it was you. Was he dreaming?

“You’re finally up.” He heard the voice come from you, and saw your mouth move, and as he processed your sweet voice and the teasing lilt to it, he almost fell off his bed jumping out to rush over to you.

He almost knocked you over as his (surprisingly) muscular arms wrapped around you in a quick second, you returning the hug with a smile he could feel on his neck. He was almost speechless. Almost.

Slightly pulling away, he got a good look at you, unharmed, grinning at him with the power of a million suns. He kept his arms around your waist, keeping you close as if he was afraid you’d disappear once more. Nonetheless, he mirrored your expression as he felt your breath on his face and your arms looping around his neck, running your hands through his soft curls.

“You’re…here. You’re actually here.”

Your soft hand came to rest against his chest, feeling his heartbeat along with hearing it.

“I’m sorry I left.”

The boy shook his head, “What matters is you came back. You always did.”

“I always will, Ethan.”

YESTERDAY

It was early morning and the feeling of defeat was strong in the room. Everyone was there at your and Quinn’s apartment all with one goal: to find you. They’d started this search almost a week ago with a determination in their eyes akin to a fight for survival, mainly because it kind of was. But as the days went on and the meetings at the house got longer to discuss other possibilities surrounding the circumstances of your disappearance, the metre to measure the disappointment was getting higher.

They all sat at the couch, flipping through the news channels, all talking about how Spider-Woman hasn’t been seen in over a week. It was an alarming wake up call for the city, because crime rates had gone up significantly without the friendly neighbourhood spider watching over the residents of the city that never sleeps.

The news anchors all echoed a similar message. Where is Spider-Woman? Many have theorized that this may be the end of an era—

Sam clicked the red button on the remote, the screen turning to black. “We can’t give up.”

“I didn’t wanna have to, but—“ Tara sighed, “We said if we can’t come up with anything, we’d get the police involved.”

Chad slumped right next to her. “What are we supposed to tell them? Hey, our friend’s been missing for a week and we’re just now reporting it. And FYI, she’s the vigilante who does your job for you.”

“Not like that.”

“But we can’t tell them she’s her, right? If they find her, she’d be arrested.”

“If they find her alive, that is.” Mindy added grimly, looking at the ground.

“Dude, come on.” Her brother tapped her arm.

“I’m just saying.”

“Quinn, Ethan.” Tara refocused the conversation, “Your guys’ dad is a cop, right?”

They looked at each other before nodding.

“Can you talk to him? You don’t have to tell him anything just—find out if anything happened lately, okay? Anything new.”

Anika added, “We’re not even on the week mark. It’s tomorrow. How about we focus on our leads today, then meet again tomorrow. If there’s really nothing, we’ll go to the police, okay?”

“That sounds good.” Ethan agreed.

“Alright,” Sam exhaled. “Dismissed.”

Everyone was sleepless that night. There was the obvious tell of the bags under everyone’s eyes growing bigger, not to mention the slouching and the less than ideal attention span they had lately.

Quinn’s eyes were wide open in the dark of room, wondering and hoping you weren’t dead in some back alley somewhere.

A sound in the living room broke her out of a dazed stupor. It wasn’t too loud, but not subtle, either.

On edge, her hand shot to grab the bat right next to her bed, a gift you’d given her for self defense purposes. She was careful not to make any sound, clearly unlike this moron who was breaking into her house on the middle of the night with heavy steps.

The fridge was open, the door hiding the figure of the person behind it.

She was ready to swing—

You. The figure closed the fridge door and it was you in your suit.

Maybe it was the lack of food that caused you not to notice her presence immediately, but you heard the clacks of the wooden bat hitting the floors before you clocked your roommate fully embracing you in a bear hug.

“Quinn!” You chuckled, returning the embrace. “Missed you too.”

She pulled away abruptly after a second, a stern look on her face but a layer of worry in her eyes. “Where the hell have you been?” She grabbed your shoulders and pushed back a little, looking over your entire body, checking for injuries—but you were clean. Not even a scratch. “Shit, you’re okay.”

“I—“

She hugged you again.

That was when you realized why she reacted like this. “How long have I been gone?”

She looked at you like you were crazy. “You’ve been gone a whole week.”

“Shit. I didn’t leave a note, did I?”

The guilt on your face was apparent, but it was nothing compared to the stress everyone had gone through while you were away.

“You didn’t. All of us have been looking for you—“ Something dawned on her. “I…had to tell them.”

You didn’t react the way she expected. She expected you’d be upset—angry, even, but not this. Not you being the one to hug her this time, taking a deep breath.

During the embrace, you spoke, your voice vibrating on her shoulder as your head rested against it.

“It was so stressful, out there. I have so many things to say. But I’m so tired—I wanna explain everything later.” You sighed, “How’s Ethan?”

“He’s okay. I’ll drive you to his place tomorrow, okay?”

Mindy, Chad, Tara, Anika, and Sam all woke up in their respective apartments to a text message in the group chat.

Quinn

Can we all meet at Chad’s place today? In a few minutes. Urgent!!!

After the conversation yesterday, they all expected the worst. Maybe Quinn had gotten information from her cop dad that Spider-Woman was found dead—they were all thiniing it. Ethan, however, having been up until late, was still sound asleep, phone on silent mode.

They met at the front door of the apartment building (of course, except for Chad, who was in his bedroom staring at the text in worry), Sam looking among the group to reassure them. “Guys,” She sighed. “Maybe if’s not bad news.”

Mindy turned to her. “Really?” She sounded exhausted, almost ready to give up.

“If Quinn had really bad news, she would’ve called us. Probably, right?” Tara backed her sister up.

“Let’s just…go in. She’s probably not even here yet.”

Just then, the sound of a car approaching quickly caught their attention—Quinn’s car.

Tara was at the end of the group, giving her the advantage of seeing first who was in the passenger seat of the car, getting out.

“Y/N!” She yelled.

The rest of them turned, almost running to the middle of the street as you closed the car door, leaving Quinn to find parking. You ran to the sidewalk, running into Tara’s arms.

You could feel the warmth radiating from the group as they welcomed you back with open arms, feeling guilty that you must have made them worry for them to react like this. Knowing some of their history with the murders in Woodsboro, it must’ve been terrifying for them to think they could’ve lost another friend.

It wasn’t long until you felt the missing piece, a hole amongst them that resembled a shape in your heart: Ethan.

“Where’s Ethan?” You tried not to show panic, but it was likely obvious due to Anika immediately reassuring you.

“He’s okay! He’s fine—he’s just sleeping.”

You sighed, relief taking over. “He doesn’t usually sleep in this late.”

“He was up late last night, he said he got a good lead on you. He��” She contemplated for a moment, not wanting to worry you. “He took it pretty hard when you dropped off.”

Tara almost slapped her arm. “Yeah,” she looked to you, watching carefully for any signs of panic. “He was worried. Probably more than any of us. But you can wake him up.”

“Do you…Can you tell us what happened? Where were you?” Mindy was reluctant to ask in case it was difficult for you.

But you were happy to tell them—you figured you owed them that much after having them think you were dead for a week. “I’ll tell you inside, come on.”

Pizza and drinks were being passed around, everyone was here, and you chose to sit right beside Ethan. He couldn’t stop looking at you. You could feel it.

As you animatedly told the story of meeting other people who also had spider powers, had similar stories, Ethan then began to wonder what would be next. Would you stay? What if you wanted to go back there, be with people who really, truly understand you?

By the end of the night, the group was preparing for the sleepover. But you could tell something was troubling Ethan. You studied him from the couch while the crew was gathering pillows, and he caught your eye and said, “Wanna go to the rooftop?”

You tilted your head on instinct, confused.

“You know…good air.” He shrugged.

“Sure.”

The walk up was silent. Maybe more than silent, if that were even possible.

As he opened the door to the rooftop, you made eye contact for half a second. And in that half second, Ethan decided he won’t lose you. In that half second, you looked away, then looked up again—and he gently grabbed your wrist, pulling you close enough that you felt his breath on mingling with yours, so close that you thought he was going to kiss you. But he began to speak.

“Can I—”

And you kissed him.

It was a small one, but when you tilted your head to lean in closer and tangled your hands behind his neck—Christ.

You pulled away abruptly and he wondered if he had done something wrong. At the same time he said “Holy shit,” you asked, “Wait, that’s what you were going to ask, right?”

Once his brain recovered, he finally nodded, “Yeah. You beat me to it.”

After a pause, he began again. “Does this mean you won’t leave?”

“Leave? Who said that?”

“Well, I just thought—”

“You’re an idiot, Ethan Landry. Come here.”

Additional Author’s Note: I apologize that Ethan and Reader do not have as many moments in this. Thank you for understanding. Again, if there’s enough interest, here’s a list of fic titles I’d be able to post wips of (keep in mind these are unfinished, you’re allowed to write continuations but my one wish before leaving this site is that my work is not fed into any kind of AI and that includes character ai):

blackout (2k)

dialogue (2k ish)

the dress (900)

rain (1k)

story beats for murder party part 2 (3.2k, jot notes)

reflections (2k)

the bear au (500 ish)

thief (800)

like a fool, im thinking of you (500)

avatar:

hard to love (2k, lo’ak)

sorry for any mistakes i didnt catch during editing !

[scarletlizzard]

OH MY GOSH, AHHHHH!!! 500 FOLLOWERS!!! IM SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!!

I love the list you posted btw. I picked two because I thought they went well together ☺️

72 and 45:

Wanda: "Oh my god, are you okay?"

R: "Yeah I'm fine, I've been stabbed before."

Wanda: "I'm going to fucking kill them."

72 & 45

104 Dilogue Prompts

Pairing: wanda x reader (don't think pronouns are mentioned)

Tags: little violence, reader gets stabbed, mentions of a gun, fluff honestly

A/n: Thank you so much!! 🥹 and thank you for requesting! I love hearing from yall 💞

~~~

The mission was going great.

They didn't always, and the fact that Steve paired you up with Wanda was making it all the better. Your goal, get to the lower levels where the servers are located to retrieve the data needed. Wandas goal, get you there safely. You were an asset to the team for sure, with your smarts and spy skills, but sometimes the occasion called for a little magical touch. You couldn't have been more grateful this was an occasion.

The two of you were currently waiting on one of the upper levels of the building, waiting on Steve or Natashas signal to continue down.

You glimpse at Wanda again as she leans against the wall across from you. Her red locks flow past her shoulders, red suit hugging her curves as she twists a ring on her finger.

"I'm glad Steve paired us up, by the way," you say quietly with a smile on your face. Wanda doesn't miss the glint in your eye as she looks up to meet your gaze.

"Well, someone had to babysit, right?" She says playfully, a smirk on her lips. Your lips part as you gasp and stand straight from your previous leaning position.

"I-what-babysit?" The words spill out all together as you look at her in offense. "I'll have you know I am a decorated international spy. I may not be a-a black widow or have magic fingers, but I assure you I don't need a babysitter!" You huff as you step up to her, ego calming as she stands straight, looking down at you.

"Magic fingers?" Wanda chuckles, and your cheeks burn.

"You know what I meant," you mumble and cross your arms. She steps closer, now invading your personal space.

"Are you talking about my powers or the magic that had you in my bed screa-"

You put your hand over her mouth, stopping her from finishing her sentence. She lifts her hands in defense as you glare at her with a red face.

Before either of you can say another word, Natashas voice call over the comms.

"Head down, Wanda, be ready. They're waiting for you guys," she warns. The two of you look at each other with a nod, both of you attempting to be serious. You make your way lower, coming across a set of double doors.

"Ready?" Wanda asks, her fingers twitching as she forms red orbs of energy in her hands. You nod, pulling out your pistol in one hand and a small knife in the other.

Wanda sends a blast through the doors, opening them up and revealing a group of the enemies that had, in fact, been waiting. She's quick to send another few blasts, scattering them about the large room as the two of you begin to fight.

"Babysitter..." You mumble to yourself, shaking your head as you take down an agent. You look over at Wanda to see she's taken out half the group. Okay, so maybe it wasn't bad she was here. You, not so easily, fight with another and lose your pistol in the process. But as you land another punch, he falls to the ground.

"See that?" You breathe out as you look to Wanda, who gracefully fought the last three at the same time. "I can take care of myself!" You say with a huff and lean down to grab the fallen gun.

As you do, you feel yourself being grabbed from behind. An excruciatingly sharp pain resonates from the side of your abdomen and you let out a, "Fuck!" When the agent removes the blade they stuck in you. You raise your hand across your body, pointing the gun behind you.

The bullet only grazes them, and they run through the set of double doors as soon as Wanda turned her head in your direction.

"Oh my god, are you okay?" She asks with worried eyes. A shaky hand rests on your face as she watches blood spill through your shirt. Your hand covers the gash to apply pressure, a wince leaving your lips.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I've been stabbed before," you say with a casual tone, trying to act as if the wound throbbing with pain wasn't enough to take you to your knees.

Wandas eyes burn red, an anger behind her eyes you had never seen before.

"I'm going to fucking kill them," she spits out, malice behind her words. Before she can walk away your hand reaches out to grab her wrist, stopping her.

"Wanda... don't leave me," you say softly, your touch and now gentle tone enough to calm her down only a little. She takes a deep breath, her hands still shaking with anger, but nods.

"Alright, alright, come here," she sighs softly and kisses your cheek before letting you lean on her for support as you make your way down. "We'll get you out of here and then I'm going to fucking kill them."

You chuckle a little at her reaction, face heating again just like earlier. You could see it written on her face, the way her jaw was tensed and the fire burning behind her eyes, that she wasn't lying.

"Did you see those guys I took out?" You ask, trying to lighten her mood. Wanda can't help but smile at you, both of you knowing she had fully taken on the group of them.

"They looked pretty rough, detka.. not sure why Steve and Nat thought you needed help," She says knowingly.

When she did return, it was with crimson splattered across the front of her suit and a smile on her face. You didn't say a word, only giving her a kiss and letting her wrap her arms around you.

You nod in approval, letting her stop to pick you up and carry you the rest of the way. Not that you needed it, but you weren't going to deny being in the arms of Wanda, and she wasn't going to let another person lay their hands on you again. As soon as you were safe with Natasha, Wanda disappeared.

[miss-musings]

A TBB Mini-Meta: Crosshair's Two Sides

This is a quick observation combining some of my own previous thoughts and a few that @yavln4 and other folks have discussed.

While it's not quite to the level of Harvey Dent/Two-Face from the Batman franchise, Crosshair has two distinct sides to him. I mean that more so in a physical sense, but I think there's something to be said about the emotional aspect as well.

Crosshair's right side represents who he is as a soldier and sniper.

Everything that serves as a physical reminder of his time in the Grand Army of the Republic and/or Empire is on his right side: His tattoo, the burn scar on his head, and his shaking/missing hand.

Additionally, the inhibitor chip was embedded on the right side of Crosshair's and the other clones' heads.

His right eye is also the one he primarily uses to aim. His viewfinder is on the right side of his helmet, which has zoom and infrared capabilities, and when he looks through a scope, he does so with his right eye.

I'm sure you all know exactly what I'm talking about but here are a few visual reminders:

Now, his left side represents Crosshair as a person -- specifically, as a brother and dad.

It is the side of him that is completely unmarred: No scar, no tattoo, no missing hand. It's his "normal" side, so to speak.

In general, a person's left side is traditionally associated with the heart (ie, wedding rings, etc.).

Crosshair also keeps his sidearm on his left side, which makes sense because he normally has his rifle in his right hand. I only mention this because he uses his left hand to kill Nolan in 2.12 "The Outpost," which becomes a HUGE turning point for him.

Additionally, when he collapses after shooting Nolan, he falls unconscious with his left side facing upwards. As someone else pointed out (I'm not sure who, but if I find the post I'll add the source and link here), this suggests that Crosshair has been "reborn." He's rejected being a soldier and is instead becoming his own person again.

Also, as I've pointed out before, his left side tends to be associated with Omega and/or Hunter.

Of course, Crosshair uses his left hand to save Omega from Hemlock in the finale.

In several key scenes throughout the show, Omega and/or Hunter are on his left side. Examples include but aren't limited to:

Omega talking to Crosshair in the brig in 1.01 "Aftermath"

Omega talking to Crosshair while they're trapped in Nala Se's lab in 1.16 "Kamino Lost"

Omega finding him unconscious on Tantiss at the end of 2.16 "Plan 99"

The family meeting scene at Shep's in 3.05 "The Return"

Crosshair and Hunter reaching an understanding immediately after facing the Ice Wyrm in 3.05 "The Return"

Crosshair and Hunter talking to Ventress at the end of 3.09 "The Harbinger"

Crosshair and Hunter facing down Hemlock as he holds Omega captive in 3.15 "The Cavalry Has Arrived"

The group hug in 3.15 "The Cavalry Has Arrived"

BONUS: Hunter is also to Crosshair's immediate left when Echo joins CF99 in TCW 7.04

Essentially, in S1, Crosshair's "two sides" were in conflict with each other. Initially, it was because of the inhibitor chip. However, once he regains his free will, he doesn't want to give up the life of a solider/sniper.

As much as he loves his family, in 1.16 "Kamino Lost," he ultimately chooses his identity as a soldier versus his identity as a brother.

I think that's why, when he shoots Nolan and collapses in 2.12 "The Outpost," it's significant that it's his left hand and left side that's given importance. He's finally choosing to be his own person again. He's rejecting his identity as a soldier.

Unfortunately, that choice is short-lived, as he is imprisoned at Tantiss for half a year. There, he's subjected to Hemlock's "re-education" efforts and develops a tremor in his right hand.

But, even after escaping and reconciling with his brothers, he can't completely let go of his identity as a soldier and sniper. Unfortunately, his fight isn't over yet. The Empire is still after Omega, and as long as they are, Crosshair's family won't be safe.

So, he continues to fight -- to be a soldier -- but for his family's sake this time.

It's not until CX-2 cuts off his hand in 3.15 that, in a sense, he's freed of that identity. I mean, what good is a sniper without his shooting hand?

As @yavln4 summarized nicely on my "Was there a better way to handle Crosshair's hand tremors?" post:

IMO, his hand doesn't represent his PTSD - it represents his identity as a soldier. It's more important to him than family in s1 due to reconditioning- it wavers after he loses Mayday- and it's completely severed from him before he finally rescues Omega. He goes into that final conflict not as a soldier, but as a parent.

It's only once Hemlock and Tantiss are subsequently destroyed that he's finally free to be his own person. Now, he can focus on just being a brother and a dad, and not have to worry about being a soldier again.

Of course, he'll never be able to erase he who was and the choices he made. His right side still remains -- his tattoo, his scar, his missing hand. And that part of him will be useful if he ever chooses to fight again.

But, he can be reborn. He can choose another path, another life.

His right side represents who he once was, who he was created and born to be. His destiny and his purpose.

But, his left side represents who he is now, who he chose to be and how he wants to live. His future and his freedom.

Crosshair might've been "born" on his right side, but he chose to live on his left.

[crocheting-cupio]

"Do I Have A Crush?" Quizzes as an Aromantic

In a previous post I had mentioned that I love taking "do I have a crush?" quizzes as an Aromantic. What I didn't share in that post was all of my findings from taking basically every quiz on that topic I could find. This is gonna be a bit of a long one, but I hope it will be an enlightening one!

Being an aro and taking these quizzes is pretty interesting. Because I do get plushes, which for me share some qualities with crushes, but are a completely different experience as a whole. For lack of a better equivalent, I have used my plushes while taking these quizzes. This will become relevant later on.

Anyway, here are my findings:

1. The target demographic for these quizzes is teenage girls. Well, the majority of online quizzes are intended for teenage girls. But these ones are especially designed for teenage girls. It's often painfully obvious by the way they are written, the answers available, and the scenarios provided. About crushes specifically though, this makes sense. Most people have their first crush during their teenage years. So the next logical step is to be curious about these new feelings and take an online quiz to figure out what's going on. Why only girls, though? Hard to say. It could be because they assume boys generally feel more confident in their romantic interest and thus would have no need for such a thing. Worth noting it was very hard to find a TRULY gender inclusive quiz. There's tons of wlm and wlw, but almost nothing for mlw or mlm. And if you're nonbinary or your crush is nonbinary, good fucking luck. The vast majority of them rely on some sort of gender stereotype. So many of these are clearly written from the perspective that you are a cishet woman interested in a cishet man. In multiple quizzes I have actually found typos where instead of using they/them, they accidentally use he/him in one question, almost like it had been up for a few years, then someone edited it later and missed one. A freudian slip if I ever saw one.

2. Practically all of them assume you are currently attending high school I understand that this is the time when most people get their first crush... but there are people who only crush on celebrities and fictional characters until they are an adult. This is not an extremely uncommon occurrence. So as you can imagine, there are a lot of questions that ask about how you interact with this person at school. Usually the addition of "or at work" feels like an afterthought. Some quizzes I've come across don't even consider that an adult might be taking the quiz. Like the question just openly states that you are at school.

3. They frequently assume that your crush is NOT someone in your friend group. This is probably the most interesting one to me personally. Because I myself cannot get a plush on someone until I've known them as a friend for at least three months. And I know plenty of non-aro people that need to get to know someone as a friend before developing romantic feelings. It's just... such an oddly specific assumption, y'know? They don't even consider that maybe this person is already in your friend group (unless you are talking specifically "do I have a crush on my best friend" quizzes). They just doesn't consider that the way you feel about someone can change over time. It's love at first sight or you will never feel that way about that person, I guess. (I think this is more teenager shenanigans. Because "am I about to enter a relationship with an abusive guy" doesn't appear to be the concern. Just that both or either friend group might not approve...?)

4. They generally assume your crush is a stranger or someone you do not know very well. Related to the previous one, this one is kind of weird to me. I understand the concept of love at first sight, but these are "do I have a crush" quizzes, not "is this love at first sight" quizzes. Almost every quiz I took had a least one question that assumed you had fallen in love with someone you have never spoken to. And often for answers on other questions instead of including an "I'm on the fence for how I feel about this person" option in the answers, which would be pretty logical to include, they have an option that says "N/A because I don't actually know them." However, the "do I have a crush on my best friend" quizzes are an exception to this. Instead they often assume you are spending every single free moment of time you have with this person.

5. If you have a crush on your best friend, you have either terribly misinterpreted you feelings and theirs, or they will never feel the same way about you. Um, yeah... I guess some people just can't tell the difference between romantic attraction and just being really good friends. But an important note: I think in some cases there's definitely outside pressure saying that two people "should" be in a romantic relationship simply because they are close platonically. Making those people question how they feel. Hence the existence of these quizzes. I can definitely feel that pressure while taking them.

6. They assume that your friends are all a certain type of person and your relationship with them is very specific. So here's the common assumptions I found across most quizzes:

Your friends are the type of people that are very invested in the love lives of everyone in that friend group. (And also outside of your friend group...)

Your friends are the type of people that will tease you about your romantic interests instead of being supportive.

You talk frequently about your love interests, love life, or lack there of with your friends. (Before you say "What? Everyone does that!" Not everyone does that.)

You are the only person questioning your feelings, everyone else is certain you have a crush.

Thankfully a teenage friend has informed me that this is 100% a teenager behaviour that happens all the time. Although I have seen cases where women under the age of 25 can also do this. I would go into detail about each of those but I think how these are not good assumptions to make is pretty self explanatory. You don't know me, you don't know what my friends are like, stop saying your experiences are universal. I will say blindly trusting the quiz taker's friends is not as reliable of a choice as it sounds. Sometimes people will just call any fond feelings for someone, platonic or not, a crush. And they sometimes will insist that person has a crush even if they say that they do not have a crush and simply want to be friends. And after awhile it can get to your head and feel like the only opinion that matters.

7. They assume this person is someone who you know/you regularly see in real life. In every quiz I took they asked at least one question that I could not answer because the plush I was using for all of these is someone I only know online. Specifically, it was some variant of "how often do you stare at them?" I understand this is a defining part of having a crush for most people, but I was rarely even given the option to say that this person and I are not regularly in the same room. Okay, let's say a teen girl gets a crush on a boy on from another school during like a sports game. She cannot answer this particular question truthfully either because imagining how often you'd stare at someone you met once if you were regularly in the same room with accuracy is not easy.

8. They assume you have the biggest crush, as anything less could lead to negative results from the quiz. Because I do not experience the same feelings, sometimes answering these questions truthfully is very difficult because my options are usually like this:

Q. If your crush asked you to hang out, how would you react?

OMG YES YES YES!!!

Well, we hang out all the time (as friends) so this is just a normal Tuesday for us.

I haven't even introduced myself to this person so they literally cannot ask me to hang out.

I'd make an excuse to not go.

And none of this is even close to how I feel about my plush. Or even about my friends. I cannot answer this question with 100% honesty. Legitimately, I've felt like I've gotten "you don't have a crush" results for the simple reason that I am not head over heals for my plush. Often it was either "every thought in my mind is of them" or "they're alright, I guess." But you can see how only the first option, with the most intense feelings, suggests that you have a crush. The other three options are either completely neutral feelings or suggest dislike. And since that's what people are taking this quiz to figure out, almost everyone is going to pick the first option. It might as well be just "would you hang out with your crush if they asked you, yes or no?"

So these quizzes are built on the assumption that you do, in fact, have a crush. You just want those feelings validated.

"Okay that's great Snowy, but what results did you get from these quizzes as an aromantic?"

Well, I didn't write down exact numbers since there were so many quizzes I took over about an eight month period. Some of them I took multiple times months apart and got different results. But I'd say about 60% said I had a crush, or was likely to have a crush. And 40% said I did not, or it wasn't likely to be a crush.

The funny part?

When I took some of those I didn't have a plush on anyone at the time. I was just using how I felt platonically about a close friend as the "crush." And while this did sway the results, it was not by much. Turning it more into a 50/50 chance.

No plush, no sexual attraction, they are JUST my friend. And yet, the results screen tells me I am deeply in love with them about half of the time.

When I said they assume you do have a crush, I really meant it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finally, I have actually made my own "do I have a crush" quiz that hopefully avoids doing everything I just talked about. No assumptions about the person you may have feelings for, no assumptions about your friends, no assumptions about you, who you are, or why you are taking it in the first place.

It's password locked since I'd like to get results strictly from people who find this post on Tumblr (for now). So type in this word when prompted:

conformity

Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I spent a long time with all the research and writing so it means a lot to me. 💖

[honeysuckleharringtons]

just steve harrington being so selfless and not taking time for himself melting into a puddle if the reader or you or y/n (idk which one to put 💀) just asked him if he was okay a lot (I do that 24/7, this is purely self indulgent) and the many times he said yeah and the one time he said no :(

i was originally gonna do a full fic style blurb on this but words have been very hard for me lately so i'm just gonna do a text post about this! hope you don't mind 🫶🏻

warnings: reader is sorta implied to be fem!reader, allusions to steve being treated not so well by his parents as a kid, part of this does mention some upside down violence, tiny mention of food, no use of Y/N, lmk if i missed anything!

send me steve thoughts | ask box

I imagine the first time it happens is probably in gym class when you're younger.

You accidentally hit him right in his pretty lil face with a dodgeball ☹️

And Steve being Steve insists he's okay because "I get hit all the time in basketball and football. I've broken bones and nearly busted my teeth out. A lil dodgeball never hurt anyone."

But you can tell he's hurt.

Whether it's him that's hurt or his bruised ego, you can't really tell.

But some part of him was clearly hurt.

more under the cut!

The second time it happens is when you get paired together for a study group during senior year.

Steve struggles with a lot of subjects, but math is probably his worst.

And it's not like he doesn't want to get better, his parents just never sat down at the table and helped him with anything growing up, and when his nannies told his dad about his report cards, it didn't end very well ☹️

But math is the one he's always had the hardest time with.

So when the two of you get paired to study for the calculus final, you can almost immediately tell he's struggling to understand the questions on the example sheet.

At one point, he just kinda places his head in his hands and groans into his palms.

And you're just kinda like, "Hey, you okay?"

And again, Steve is never one to admit defeat.

"I'll be fine. Can you just help me with question four?"

Surprisingly though, after just a few nights of studying together, you become sort of reluctant allies.

He surprisingly excelled in human biology, which you did not. So, the two of you helped each other where you could.

And then it happened a third time, during the summer after you'd graduated.

Steve had had a rather unsuccessful time trying to flirt with the ladies that often came into Scoops Ahoy.

This day had been no different.

He'd really tried his hardest to get the beautiful ginger in front of you to go with him to the movies on Friday.

But she and her friends just moved along, double-scoop ice cream cones in hand, back to their shopping.

"You good?" you asked, nearly on the verge of laughing, as you stepped up to the counter.

"Oh, yeah, sure," he answered sarcastically. "Just a little bruise to my ego. That was definitely the first time any lady has turned down this beautiful face."

Part of you, though, was hurting. Hurting that, even though you were right in front of him, he'd never bothered to look at you that way.

The fourth time it happened, you really started to question everything you thought you knew about Steve.

Somehow, despite being back in town for a total of two days, you'd gotten roped into something to do with some evil dude named Vecna.

And for once, after everything you'd learned since arriving back in Hawkins for spring break, Steve was the one asking if you were okay.

Also for once, one of you was answering the question truthfully.

However, in the week that followed after, even in the midst of alternate dimensions and weird mutations of bats, you'd learned that Steve might have been causing his previous lady problems on purpose.

And when you saw the painful expression he sported as Nancy Wheeler was reunited with her boyfriend, your own heart shattered all over again.

Still, if there was one thing you were, it was a good friend to Steve.

So, you pulled him aside and asked those three little words.

Steve simply ran a hand through his disheveled hair with a slow nod.

But you could tell he was nearly at the point of breaking.

And the time when he finally answered truthfully, he really did break.

You'd drove with him to the hospital to check up on Max Mayfield, who somehow he'd became friends with despite the age difference.

The room was dead silent, other than the annoying buzzing coming from the lights.

You finally gave him a good once-over as he sat at Max's bedside—his messy hair, his pale face with newly acquired purple spots under his eyes, a small cut under his lip.

And for the first time since you'd known Steve, you watched as tears formed in his eyes.

You were quick to rush over to the other side of the bed, your hand splaying across his back and rubbing soft, small circles against his frame.

"Steve, I know this is a silly question to ask, because we both know the real answer, but seriously, are you okay?"

He knew he couldn't hide. Not any longer. So, he simply let the walls come down, croaking out a small, "No," through his flood of tears.

After crying into your shoulder and allowing himself to finally let go of everything he'd been holding in for all those years, he just simply held you.

Finally, after explaining everything—from the reason why he never told you about the Upside Down, to why he'd used Nancy and all those girls as a distraction from the person he really wanted—he just grabbed your face and kissed you. A sweet and tender kiss, not a desperate or lustful kiss, but a longing one—one he'd waited much too long to give you.

And somehow, even in the midst of all the bad stuff, even in the midst of Steve finally breaking, the two of you could finally find a way to maybe, just maybe, be okay for once. ❤️‍🩹

-> taglist: @dungeons-are-too-cold @ducky-died-inside @awkotaco24 @liberhoe @princesseddie @aftermidnightwriting @manuosorioh @esoltis280

[godisasimp]

Let's talk about Honkai Impact 3rd for a bit, yeah ?

I need to let go of it, scream into the void, because I can't stay polite about it, I started being rude in community servers about it.

Greetings,

I am a +960 days long player of the game Honkai Impact 3rd, I started during the Theater of Domination story arc and more precisely, during the Phantom of the Theater patch and the release of the valkyrie Stygian NYX.

But more importantly, I am a very so very tired player that also happens to be frustrated and angry at the treatment, or mistreatement, of a game I once held so dear to my heart.

I discovered Honkai Impact 3rd half a year after Genshin Impact's launch through an ad playing the Befall cutscene and immediately fell in love with the character I would later discover is called "Herrscher of the Void".

I don't remember most of my early days, but one of the things I do remember is getting my first S-rank valkyrie... The one who made me discover that game : Herrscher of the Void.

And ever since then I've been playing daily rarely missing a day, let alone more than that. I was eager to progress and eager to get new valkyries.

But unfortunately things changed.

The hill that keeps going down.

It all started with the release of Elysian Realm chapter story arc, a side story about Mei's time in World Serpent, at least it seemed so. It was a cute, Visual Novel styled story about a group of heroes from the previous era, an era mentioned in Mangas and the story that was shrouded in mysteries ; a cool side story to finally show us how the previous era was, to accompany the new game mode.

The gamemode was, and still is, very fun to play, with a lot of unique builds and play styles, it was a refreshing experience to not get burned out of Abyss and Memorial Arena, it kept improving overtime adding more and more characters ; the only major negative thing I could say about it was when mihoyo "fixed" the Mobius Signets who, very early on, allowed players an infinitely increasing buffs and made reaching the integer limit (aka going in the negatives) doable and easy, and also allowed anyone to clear the floors regardless of gear and level.

The story bits we're cute and gave life to the otherwise empty lobby, as you could randomly trigger conversation between characters and it really felt like you were walking in on a conversation that had started while you weren't here.

The Mobius plotline was wonderfully done, it wasn't a secret that she was evil, she was upfront about it and while she mash have tried to look cute in front of Mei at first, she never kept the act for long merely using it as a way of annoying her. The subplot of all of that was Elysia, the character that spoke and helped the most often, she was hiding her past and acting as the underlying mystery one may not notice at first.

A mystery who's resolutions unfortunately started Honkai Impact 3rd's worst, and still ongoing, era.

I've already said my fair share of thoughts about Elysium Everlasting, but for the sake of the post, I shall once again repeat my thoughts.

Following in Kolosten footsteps (and maybe through the influence of Genshin Impact), not good ones, Elysium Everlasting was "open world", as "open world" as Honkai Impact 3rd could get, this was not a welcomed choice by most of the fanbase, as a mobile game Honkai Impact 3rd has always told it's story through a Visual Novel style of story telling with minimal amount of walking around for the players, the stages being mainly used to fight enemies and bosses in ; the only other "open worlds" were in the same named category, all fully optional and merely just mihoyo testing the concept. Elysium Everlasting was the 2nd main story "open world" and my experience with is was beyond terrible, at the time I was using a pre-made low end computer that could barely handle Elysium Everlasting's scene, I experienced lags, textures not loading at all, freezes and crashes all throughout my playthrough of the chapter, something that worsen with Moon Arc, this experience made me frustrated already but the writing didn't make it worth it.

Elysium Everlasting's story was the worst one mihoyo ever wrote, it was a complete 180° from Elysian Realm, the new characters introduced did not get the luxury of the bits and pieces of randomly triggered conversations to expend their characters and unfortunately felt flatter than the first half. And they also suffered from the poor writing of the part, but at least they had no previously established character that got ruined and destroyed, same couldn't be said about the previously introduced characters, and the one who suffered most from it : was Elysia.

- Elysia : From beloved to beloathed

I've talked a lot about this character but I shall detail my history and experience with her one last time.

I have in my head created two distinct versions of Elysia : Elysian Realm and Elysium Everlasting. Simply because her character is so different between the two halves it is almost like we have two Elysias.

I will talk about ER!Elysia first because she is the one I like ; in the first half of the arc Elysia was presented as a very friendly character, borderline too friendly, and suffocating and pushing boundaries to the extreme for her own sake, a character that claimed to just be a normal girl... And she was just that, a girl that was happy, sad and angry, a girl that had insecurities about her group and the distance between her and the others, a character that lied to get her way and stole just for her amusement, she was normal, she had flaws and character, characters around her felt all sorts of ways towards her. That was who is she was, a normal girl with a past she wouldn't talk about.

And I very much liked that character, coupled with a design I really liked and she quickly became a favorite of mine in the chapter.

But then she went through what could only describe as a character assassination when Elysium Everlasting began.

Elysia who was a character who was allowed to have flaws was stripped of them, who was allowed to feel things beyond happiness was stripped of that, she was stripped of everything until all that was left is a flawless, perfect and unhatable "character". She became a character not allowed to feel even an ounce of sadness, even while walking to her own execution and death, a character no one was allowed to dislike her, all characters that previously called her a "traitor" and showed dislike towards suddenly flipped on their head praising her. Including Mei who was weary and not so attached to her.

The Flamechasers became what can only be discribed as an Elysia worshipping cult, who's only purpose was to sing praises to Elysia and nothing else.

With my small talk about Elysia done, let's go back to the overall story.

The story now lacking a threat had to create one from thin air, one that wasn't hinted at previously and so the Herrscher of Corruption fell into the story. And not even it was free from joining the Elysia worshipping cult the entire arc was.

After deleting Elysia, the Herrscher of Corruption also became infatuated with Elysia and decided to become her and leave the Elysian Realm to spread the gospel, if I had to guess.

I will say that the Herrscher of Corruption was a fitting enemy, an entity who's power revolves around data, set free in a realm entirely made of data is sure to create a dangerous foe.

Yet, despite being deleted from the Elysian Realm, Elysia came back and was used as a Deus-ex-machima type of character to finally defeat the final enemy, the finale wasn't a group effort it was just Elysia.

And just like that, Elysia deleted the Elysian Realm after being brought back through the sacrifice of others, she sacrificed herself and unfortunately this changed Mei's character, from hating self sacrifices and joining the enemy's organization solely to stop Kiana from sacrificing herself, to a character who is fine with self sacrifices all of the sudden.

And that characterization of Mei is one of the reasons Moon Arc was so terrible.

As I mentioned earlier, Moon Arc was yet another "open world" but even worse as it was scaled up, the lags worsen, I could barely play the chapter as I kept freezing, and so the frustration of Elysium Everlasting not only kept going but increased and made my experience of what is the final chapter of the original trio's story absolutely horrendous. And just like Elysium Everlasting, the story did not make me struggling to even launch the chapter worth it and I was about to give up on multiple occasions.

Moon Arc was a mess of retcons awful decisions.

The reveal that the Will of Honkai was the AI Prometheus made no sense at all and was not hinted at throughout the story, the Will of Honkai was always a naturally shapeless and emotionless figure that never spoke and only answered through actions, it did not seek anything, even when taking the shape of whoever is communicating to it, it had no face, it was just Thing. Not human, not herrscher just a physical manifestation of the Honkai's will, as its name say. But then the reveal of it being Prometheus made no sense considering the previous actions the Will of Honkai, and suddenly makes everything illogical and weird, and makes us ask why Prometheus did what she did, such as protecting Sirin and answering Otto's questions.

Then came Misteln, the "Hare" of World Serpent, who supposedly existed after Cecilia died and during Bronya's mother pregnancy, which is an inconsistency that has yet to be cleared, as those two time do not lineup at all, another confusing part of her is her powers, which are stigmata related but she seems to be able to do whatever the writers need her to do.

Staying on World Serpent, Kevin and his plan made no sense and their overall actions, or lack thereof was weird, they were supposedly trying to stop the trio and yet they helped them, talked to them for hours, and Hare even helped Bronya reached the full potential of her Herrscher core ; the overall pacing of the story was slow and there was no sign of the supposed emergency the trio was against, it was like a walk in the parc, slow walking and taking the time to have exposure.

But the worst part of all of it, was the introduction of Ai Lambda Hyperion, she was introduced in an event, in that event the player, aka us, were a part of it, it was a cute event about repairing the game and saving Ai Lambda. It was all there was to it. Until she came into the main story and so did the player, so did we. And that ruined everything, now the entire Honkaiverse is supposedly real in our world ; it especially ruined the final fight against Kevin, instead of the trio pulling through and beating Kevin, we do which makes their victory underwhelming and not as earned as if they won on their own.

Part 1's story started of as a really good, with character interactions and good character development but slowly the interactions and development worsen and disappeared leaving only an empty husk of its former self. Part 1 had a lot of potential for an emotional ending, but all we got was a nothingburger ending where Kiana is just physically stuck on the Moon but everyone can still visit her, instead of a feeling of isolation as a consequence of her saving the world, there was nothing to worry about, everything was going to be happy go lucky as usual.

- Part 1.5 : a breath of fresh air that wouldn't last

This part, or half part, started off slow and uninteresting for me, but it was still refreshing to focus on a character often put on the sideline : Seele, it also brought back a character shown in the manga and a visual novel, Shigure Kira, which was unexpected but welcome, they were focusing on existing characters instead of creating new ones.

But the start and my interest in this part was slow, but then the character Vita was introduced, a mischievous and humorous character that is still mysterious, a very interesting character with a lot of personality.

The 2nd half of Salt Snow Holy City, was way better, we had an actual threat in the form of Sa and Vita, while also having a lot of interactions between characters that otherwise wouldn't interact a lot, especially Veliona and Sentience, those two were very fun to watch and listen.

And so was the arc with Moriarty and all the Vita's, my only problem with this entire half part was the reveal of Griseo, while it does make sense somewhat, and Su I was hoping they would let go of the Flamechasers all together and never bring them up, their arc was over and they were only characters in a separate side story, but they slowly became main characters.

The twist of Vita doing all she did to betray and eventually kill Sa just to gain the freedom she craved and could never get as a proxy was wonderfully done and a well deserved ending for such a character, and it felt deserved and earned, she used everyone to advance her plans forward, and only relied on the other characters help at the end, when the final blow needed to be dealt, Kiana had to do it for Vita, but other than that Vita is the one who made her plan, worked towards it for years and manipulated Sa ; it was her win, she deserved it.

All and all, this entire half part felt so refreshing and made me hopeful for the future of the story... But unfortunately this miracle was just that, a short lived miracle the last bit of good writing Honkai Impact 3rd had.

Part 2 has a rough start, introducing a lot of characters in quite a shot amount of time and so the early bit felt quite rushed, but it slowed down once all the characters were introduced and set in the story it was quite good, and the threat of Perception was well set and the conclusion felt right... Or what I thought was the conclusion.

The twist of everything being a simulation from Dreamseeker's perspective just ruined everything, all the efforts went to waste and the ending suddenly felt worthless, it was just one of countless simulations so it meant nothing, all the emotial weight this had was gone.

I do like the mystery of Senadina, to at least have a bigger mystery connecting everything somewhat, and Vita's return to the story is one I am very happy about, it almost made me believe in MiHoYo again but as always, these moments of brightness in the other wise dark place the story is at are nothing more than dimly lit candles just about to go out.

- Honkai Star Rail : the false collaboration

It all started with a miscellaneous announcement of a Honkai Impact 3rd collab with Honkai Star Rail, Hi3rd collabing with other MiHoYo games happened before and it was very good, so we would get a collab character and outfit and lovely and funny noncanon event to go with it, everything should have been nice, I was on the fence due to the very bad Promare collab but I was hopeful, it was a collaboration between coworkers, they couldn't mess this up. Except they did, the moment it was revealed that Sparkle and other Honkai Star Rail related things were not noncanon events but fully main story canon.

Sparkle's introduction just created a whole mess in the timeline, her arrival in the mars computer happens before Welt's and Void Archive's departure, years before A Post Honkai Odyssey happens, it introduces the Solar System as a, weirdly, unreachable (supposedly protected by the Cocoon of Finality) place for Aeons and yet Sparkle and a random Messenger found it, that Messenger also sparks a new power scaling debate as she qualified Kiana as a "emanator" like entity, the interaction was not hinted at all throughout Penacony or anything Sparkle related prior to the collab happening, so it all just feels like a last minute decision to connect the two games, that were already connected through Welt and Void Archive.

From my point of view, there is no collaboration between the two games, this entire "event" and announcements were just to announce that the games were officially and connected as happening in the same Universe ; unlike collab valkyries Sparkle is fully gacha, an S-rank with no free way of being obtained, all collab characters are SP and farmable so this is already a suspicious play on Mihoyo's, and due to this Sparkle will have banner reruns after her banner ends, unlike collab that are only available in their patch, her stigmatas will be craftable despite being themed around her... All these points lead to the only possible conclusion : Sparkle was never a collaboration valkyrie, she is just a normal and permanent part 2 valkyrie. So the whole "collab" thing can only be assumed to be a bait of some kind, a bait for a valkyrie that is mediocre at best. A bait to lure in more spenders. A bait for money.

And so we reached the current end for the story, a beautiful story that unfortunately went downhill and the few good moments only ever lead to further disappointment, for we saw what they were capable of writing and producing and yet we were just let down, we were letdown more and more for one simple reason : the fandom kept praising the story, I barely saw complaints anywhere outside of my circle of friends, despite it getting worse and so mihoyo got away with writing worse and worse and worse until now, where we are at a point where salvation and redemption are no longer an option.

The fandom will crucify people who dare criticize the story because in their eyes mihoyo employees are some kind of Godly writers, hating a part will get you harassed, saying you dislike a character, especially Elysia and anything surrounding her, will get you seen as a bad person, this fandom has built so many layers of toxic positivity that it actively damaged the product. Mihoyo are not the sole responsible for the mess that Honkai Impact 3rd is, we are also sharing that responsability, for never calling mihoyo out their bad story choices, because the fandom kept "crying at the heartfelt stories" and because someone saying they disliked a fandom favorite was something worth getting bullied for, we like to call out other mihoyo games' fanbases toxic but we are no different, we are just as toxic if not more.

You may have noticed how I started to leave out details more and more as we progressed, simple answer I just skipped the story, because it was burning me out, going through long yet boring and non consequential stories was making want to stop playing, and so while I previously held the story above the gameplay and PvE aspect of the game, in current time that order has switched, and i skip story after reading summaries from CN to prioritize gameplay.

I also did not talk about events at all, and again it's really simple : the events, especially Captainverse, are really charming and well written, which is a very odd contrast to the main story, i focus more on those than the main story and find myself enjoying them even more ; this was a post to mostly complain and since I had nothing to complain about the events' writing I simply never mentioned them.

At least this whole thing is just my view of the whole thing, my view of the fandom, my view and opinion. And I just wanted it out of my chest.

I may add a portion about the character design, but this problem has mostly dissappeared since Part 2 began, so I don't feel the need to talk about it in details anymore, mihoyo moved on from that and so shall I.

[jmdbjk]

Episode 7: Still Purple

Beyond the Star, produced by HYBE Media Studio

"Every single one of our performances was significant to us, they are all precious memories." – Jimin

The song Butterfly starts and I know this episode is going to be hard to watch because I'm already tearing up.

This is a long post. Apologies. There's a lot to say about it.

They are talking about what concert memories mean the most to them:

Hobi says it was their first stadium concert at the Rose Bowl which was the most significant memory for him as far as which concert was the most memorable.

Jungkook says it was Chicago when it was the first time they'd ever performed in the rain:

Jin says it's when they perform IDOL that is his favorite concert memory.

Jimin says even though fans would see what he's talking about through photos but in real life, what they see from the stage is so beautiful, words can't do justice to describe it:

They reminisce about their concert at the Olympic Gymnastic Arena and recalling the emotions they felt then, that they had reached the top in 2016 are a very precious memory to them

Concerts are what they were made to do. Their type of performance, the big choreography, the big songs... big performances... belong on the live concert stage.

And now we're at the series of concerts that were to be their last before they really embark on Chapter 2: PTD Las Vegas.

BigHit/Hybe pulled out the stops for this one. The city of Las Vegas was all in and being the party city it is, it was one of the most fun and extravagant things I've ever witnessed.

I 1000% regret not going. I didn't know it was going to be the last chance for a long time.

They get to do things like attend a few concerts and visit the Bellagio Fountain when the fountains of water are set to the rhythm of Dynamite and Butter. I know Hobi has a video of Jungkook and Tae vibing to Dynamite at the Bellagio Fountain on his camera roll! Show it to us Hobi!!

Jimin, Yoongi and Namjoon went to the Silk Sonic concert.

I think it's curious that they do not mention the 2022 Grammy performance or event at all. When they left Seoul for this trip on March 28, 2022, Hobi was not with them because he had tested positive for covid prior to departure. Jungkook wasn't with them because he'd left the day before for the purpose of a work schedule but I don't remember what it was, and upon landing in the U.S. he tested positive for covid and had to quarantine until he had a negative test.

They were to perform at the Grammy Awards show on April 3, 2022. They were missing two members up until the day before the performance. Thankfully Hobi tested negative in time to catch a plane to Las Vegas:

Jungkook tested negative the day before the performance and was able to practice ONCE with the group. Here he is doing a Vlive while quarantining in his hotel room:

And after all that, they gave a performance of a lifetime during the Grammy Awards:

Anyway... I digress... just curious they make no mention of it at all...

Jungkook brought his boxing coach (Coach Tommy) and this might be the workout he was doing prior to joining Hobi, Tae and Jimin for that Vlive following one of their concerts.

Jungkook says the only thing he regrets about the previous 10 years was that it took him a while to realize certain things and then put them into practice.

Namjoon wonders what it would've been like had they ended things after ON and Yoongi reflects that they would've taken a break from November 2020, if the pandemic had not happened and they would've been on a break for about two and half years (for enlistment). They didn't expect the pandemic to go on for so long (none of us did).

Namjoon wonders if he stayed true to the lyrics he wrote in ON while living his life. He thought they were running straight ahead all this time but as it turns out, they had gone in a circle and were back at the starting line. He contemplates what to do to run forward again.

The last PTD Las Vegas concert is bittersweet for all of us. So much has happened to culminate with this.

Tae says it's time for them to organize their thoughts so they can come back with a better image and performance and they aren't saying they are done, they are saying they've worked hard and now they need the time to grow.

And then we see Jimin in the car, on the way home after their last PTD Seoul concert on March 13, 2020. He is on the phone inviting someone over. Guess who?

It looks like he's taken a shower. He shows us a pot of fish cake soup his dad made for him. Jimin prepares three place settings, fetches 3 bottles of soju, and pardon me but the fact Jimin has a can of spray cheez in his auxiliary kitchen changes everything for me.

Why is he consuming that and why does he store it above the kitchen sink in is extra kitchen? Why do these expensive apartments have two kitchens? Jimin barely needs one kitchen but he has two...

Anyway, Jungkook arrives and they proceed to eat and drink.

While they are having a conversation about what time they go to bed and wake up, Jimin says he might sleep until 4 pm and then this ensues:

When Jungkook makes the remark that he sounds like Yoongi, off-camera, you can hear someone stifling their wheezing laugh. Staff camera man is in on the joke and the documentary editors are too as they cut briefly to Yoongi eating take out chicken.

The editors were wrong for that! HAHAHAHAH!

Then Tae and Namjoon talk about and show us their living spaces and how they feel living on their own.

Namjoon is very particular about his space and he says its very precious to him. He says the way one curates their living space speaks a lot about their personality and taste. I agree 100%. He says he wants to show us his space so we can know what kind of person he is.

Tae says he decorated his own space, commissioning art pieces for it. He has an extensive collection of vinyl records and puts on a yellow vinyl disc that appears to be Betty Wright, a recording of a live performance. He says boredom can be a given when living alone and he says he looks for Small but Definite Happiness in his daily life. SDH. We should all strive to do that.

Then we're back at Jimin's and Jungkook is cooking more food, chopping vegetables. FYI, that Miele induction cooktop is about $3,500.

Watching Jimin retell the story of when one of his friends pointed out that he seemed depressed, was not himself, was one of the most revealing things we've ever heard from Jimin.

And now he feels he's in a very healthy place. I'm gonna elaborate on this in another blog post when I'm done with this series.

All in all, the members had to learn to live alone after living together for 8 years or more for some of them.

Yoongi reflects on running so hard in their 20s. He wonders if they shouldn't have enjoyed themselves more and not let the pressures become overwhelming. Regardless, now that he's reached 30, all those worries and thoughts have disappeared and he feels liberated.

I've realized some of these interviews for these episodes were conducted on the day they traveled from Seoul to Las Vegas because they are wearing the same clothing.

Episode 8 coming soon... and more.

[dewitty1]

Fic Recs Wrap Up October 2024ꐑ(ꐌ◡ꐌꐐ)࿐࿔࿓ཥ•̬͡•ོཤ(((༼•̫͡•༽)))←～（o ｀▽´ )oΨ

In Another Life (I Would Make You Stay) by aboutmalfoy

Seven years out from the war, Hermione comes to Harry with a way to undo the lasting damage done to the Wizarding World, and save those once lost. The catch is, only Harry will remember anything differently. When Harry wakes up in the world where Voldemort never came to be, he’ll have to navigate the life he never lived as if he’d been there all along. Except, a version of Harry was there all along—and he may not be so easily overridden. (Rec Post)

White Horses by JStevens

They say there are no white horses—those that we think of as white are really just a faded deceitful gray. And if there are no white horses, certainly there are no true heroes who will come riding in on one to save us from all our pain. After learning of the prophecy that will change his future, Harry returns to Hogwarts School for sixth year and finds that not everyone is who he thought they were. It seems that he is not. Definitely Draco Malfoy is not. As he tries to find a path to the end of his time at Hogwarts, he will have to grapple with questions of who to trust and who to love while navigating a world full of threats. This is a story of how we sometimes deceive ourselves and others, but hopefully find something true in the end. (Rec Post)

Recursion by Tessa Crowley (tessacrowley) @tessacrowley

A process is recursive when it defines or contains itself; e.g., the Fibonacci sequence, which determines the next number as the sum of the previous two. But not all recursive processes are mathematical. Recursion can happen in a temporal context when, for instance, the powerful magical force that is true love drags you back in time so it can create itself, endangering the fate of the Wizarding World—not to mention the very fabric of space and time—along the way. ( Rec Post)

To have a Home by Aulophobia

Not quite a decade after the war, Draco Malfoy was happy with his quiet little Muggle life in Oxford. He had a small group of friends from the university he’d attended, and colleagues from the law firm where he worked as a solicitor. He played folk music on his violin around the city. And he volunteered to provide legal services getting mostly idiot teenagers out of trouble with the law. His life was full. He had no contact with the magical world, and all was the way he liked it. And the feeling of emptiness in his chest, the feeling some part of him was missing, was at least better than the alternative. Or at least it was until the last few months when he kept getting called down to the police station to get Harry Potter out of trouble. Indecent exposure and possession was one thing, but the latest charge was for murder. OR Harry and Draco find each other again after the war in Oxford, a completely non-magical city. Together they solve the mystery of the city which hates all wizards but them. (Rec Post)

Here are a few more fics I've read recently that y'all might like to check out as well!(ノﾟ∀ﾟ)ノ━☆ﾟ･*:.｡. .｡.:*･.*･｡ﾟ*:・ﾟ✧

Trade My Heart For Honey by MyNameIsThunder @thunderfiction

A witch who thinks she’s a Seer, a Seer who thinks she’s a witch, a former nemesis-turned-something-turned-acquaintance who thinks they could be friends, and a Scottish village full of Muggles who think this is as much their business as the fair folk in the woods. Draco is going to prove them all wrong. (So so good, and it's for me?!?!? ♡✧( ु•⌄• )💜💙💚💛❤💗💕💖)

Change the Ending by Anonymous for @hd-fan-fair H/D Muggle Fair 2024

When Draco gets hit by a curse that makes him essentially allergic to magic, Harry takes him in as a favour to Ron and Kingsley to teach him how to survive without it while they wait for a cure.

In the Fight for Someone's Heart, the Best Armour is Armani by Anonymous for @hd-fan-fair H/D Muggle Fair 2024

Harry is a famous actor. Draco is his stylist, who can't help but fall in love with him.

[ART & FIC] Starry, Silver Anchor by Anonymous for @hd-fan-fair H/D Muggle Fair 2024

Although no one can see it, Harry’s struggling and barely holding on. When he's given a chance, he asks for his deepest desire: for the war to never happen.

( •ॢ◡-ॢ)-♡ HI! I'm back! I hope y'all didn't miss me too much! Please enjoy these fics as much as I have! Happy reading! xoxo Carey  (◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*💜💙💚💛❤💗💕💖

[acaplaya-musings]

VoicePlay 'Zat You, Santa Claus? - thoughts/commentary

Oh I loved this so much! Over on my "main" blog, BismuthBookshelf, I made a post like a week ago (about my favourite non-VP/Geoff Christmas music videos) where I mentioned how I was wanting more jazzy Christmas music, and this might not be the same sort of vibe as Man With The Bag or I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm, but it's still great! And of course it's wonderful to see J with the group yet again!

Okay so starting off with the set design: Filmed at Pattycake, duh, and the brickwork kinda looks like a set that VoicePlay and/or Geoff have used before (like Geoff's Shenandoah video kinda?), except for the windows and the vertical wood planks. Idk, I'm writing this before the BTS video is out but I'll update it if I figure anything out (EDIT: yeah the woodplanks were added in for this shoot, and maybe the windows too, as the "bricks" aren't actually bricks)

Love all the Christmas decor, like the carousel and the felt/fabric Christmas calendar(?) thing hanging up, and the tree! (How long did that take to set up and decorate? EDIT: actually Layne's wife Cyndi helped a lot with set design!)) And of course the Voiceplay logo symbol on top of the tree is brilliant. At least a few Patrons have already been wishing for that to be an item in VP's merch store. Also the five stockings hanging up have each of the guys' first initials on them! <3 (From closest to camera to furthest away, it's G, C, J, E, & L).

The guys are all looking very snazzy in this video. Love Cesar's scarf, love Layne's red sweater(?) (the most colour that any of them are wearing in the video), and honestly Geoff is really working that long-sleeve black turtleneck, man! 👀 (And obligatory shoutout to Geoff's hair, of course, *chefs kiss*)

I'm of course just typing this all from the Patreon early access thing, but fun fact: this is both the second Christmas video and the second consecutive video of this year to be filmed without an actual cameraman! But unlike using an iPhone like in the previous cases, this was filmed using a robotic camera arm, fully programmed to the music, able to repeat precise movements with each take! I highly doubt Voiceplay are gonna give up on using human camera operators completely, but this is still a cool thing to have as a potential option for video shoots! (EDIT: it's called "Cinebot", and a guy called Ben Meyers helped out with programming/operating it!)

Right, now time to talk more about the vocals and the song arrangement itself!

As per with previous thoughts/commentary posts, most of these notes are after a second watch, with a few extra thoughts mixed in from additional watches, because as I've said before, the first-time watch is just for the vibes

Y'know when I listened to the cover of Zat You Santa Claus on the Peppermint Winter album, I was like "eh it doesn't really have much of a Christmassy vibe imo, gives me more spy movie vibes?" but like with this version I don't even care (the video makes up for it, it's fine), and by the the time you're reading this post, this song will have replaced the old version in my Christmas Spotify playlist!

On my second watch-through, I had the song lyrics up on my phone (while the video played on my laptop), and that made me realize that a few lines got slightly reworded, and then there's a whole section that's not in the original! The bit where they're singing "he's coming for you/hope you've not been bad" or something like that is definitely new, but not new for VoicePlay, because I went back and relistened to the 2012 Peppermint Winter cover and that section is in there as well.

Doing a relisten of their previous cover also made me realise that this arrangement really is different to the older one, even genre-wise, and I like this one more!

Okay I'm gonna do a third watch-through, pausing to take notes as I go, just to make sure I don't miss anything or forget to mention anything here!

A nice bit of whistling from Cesar at the start! (Seriously can everyone whistle except me? 😅)

"Is that you, Santa Claus?" pfft I love the little bit of dramatic flair Geoff put on the delivery of that line 😁

"Are you bringing a present for me?" ooh that harmony at the start of that line! I don't wanna say it's dissonant, because I'm not a music expert and I really don't know, but it sounded "different" and I liked it!

"Something pleasant that you can present; a present for me" this is one of the main line changes, because in the original (and in their 2012 cover as well, in fact), it's "something pleasantly pleasant for me". But sure, why not change it up a bit?

Eli killing it as always!

Oh man I'm almost tempted to make a screenshot compilation just for the "he's coming to get ya" section alone ngl. All their facial expressions are just so great! I feel like I gotta watch this video five times and just focus on a different person each time!

I'm assuming the YouTube description will confirm it (and/or the BTS video), but Patrons are guessing that "Santa" (the one handing over the present) is Tony, which'd make sense (though I'm also guessing that the voice of Santa would be Eli, since he did the same thing in Mission Jingle Bells and Oogie Boogie's Song, and was "Sandy Claws" in Jingle Bell Rock last year.

UPDATE TO THE ABOVE: Nope, that was actually Bucky as Santa Claus! Or as the YouTube description puts it: "Zat Ur Hands? - Bucky Claus" 😂

Omg now I'm just thinking that it would've been really funny if Geoff had subtly sang "Is that you, Sandy Claws", as a fun little double throwback, lol.

Not sure what I love more - Eli killing it on lead vocals yet again, or Geoff just fully grinning as Eli does so 😄

"Who's there, who is it? Are you - stopping for a -" Layne!!! I love him honestly, and it's always great when he gets a little bit of lead vocals.

J's Louis Armstrong impression was freaking amazing, and so was the scatting!

Yeah I love this song and video so much - it's so fun, they all look like they had a great time filming it, and it's such a freaking vibe!

And that's VoicePlay's final song of 2024 (SIKE! We still got Party Of Your Lifetime to come, but hey, I didn't know that when I was first writing up this post!) other than some VoicePlay Minis and stuff (and Party Of Your Lifetime!). I of course have not a single clue what VP has in store for 2025, but that's just part of the greatness of VoicePlay! You never know what you're gonna get next, but it's always gonna be amazing in its own way.

Happy Holidays, and see you soon for both some 2024 roundup posts from me, as well as whatever Voiceplay has been cooking up next! ;)

[uselesssomebody]

𝕗𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕥𝕙 𝕠𝕗 𝕛𝕦𝕝𝕪 (𝕝𝕝)- neighbor!joel miller x reader (pre!outbreak)

complete masterlist | joel miller masterlist

"𝕚 𝕟𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕚 𝕟𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦, 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕖 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕚 𝕟𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕟𝕖𝕖𝕕𝕖𝕕 𝕒𝕟𝕪𝕠𝕟𝕖" - you can be the boss | lana del rey

words || 𝟞.𝟠𝕜

summary || in which the reader and joel don't speak for a few months

previous part || fourth of july (I)

a/n || this is very feral but badly written smut; bad combo, man ➵ it's exam szn so me posting will be sporadic i can't lie. ➵ experimenting with the accent, tell me what y'all think ➵ same disclaimer: there is an age gap in this story !! if that makes you uncomfortable, i have many other non-age-gap fics you can browse on my page. reader is like 27 and joel is like 36. he's not old, though he is mentioned as such because he's old compared to her. also canonical dilf ➵ not edited (yet) ➵ i've been on a bit of a pascal spree and am thinking about writing for javier pena, frankie morales, agent whiskey and din djarin whenever i find time to update, so ➵ send me requests if you have ‘em. enjoy!

warnings || fluff/smut/bit of angst➵ unprotected p.i.v. ➵ oral (f receiving) ➵ fingering ➵ cum ig (tell me if i miss anything)

it was nicky’s first day of school. that was how much time had passed.

she adjusted her hair in the mirror for a moment, as her sister wrapped up her lunch and placed it neatly into a bag. as she came down the stairs, she had a distinct pep in her step, practically waltzing into the kitchen before she sat to eat her breakfast.

“someone’s excited!” nicky nodded at her sister’s accurate assessment, as she scarfed down the scrambled eggs on her plate. her sister watched her fondly, handing her some water, and then a napkin, before sitting opposite her.

the two sat, conversing in between nicky’s bites: nicky was telling her about all the things that she’d heard from sarah about the school, and her sister was listening adamantly, only interrupting her in order to remind her to chew her food.

when she was done, she grabbed her bag, kissed her sister on the cheek, and opened to door to meet her friends, making her way to the bus stop just a few doors down. her sister looked up to see the neighbor opposite them looking over the group with a similar smile on her face, as her daughter goes to join the group as well. she waves at her, and the neighbor smiles back.

they’d been in the neighborhood for a few months, and she found the people around her to be simply a part of her routines - waving at jerry the postman, greeting martha and john when either left for work, or spending a few minutes each afternoon petting the pinscher that the marriots had gotten when his daily walk passed her lawn.

she was accustomed to it all. except for one little thing.

joel miller.

after that fourth of july evening, she felt as though he’d been avoiding her like the plague, always jetting in and out of the house at odd times in his pickup, and seemingly stuck to the confines of his place whenever she was outside, tending to the small plants on their lawn to keep it presentable and inviting. when she smiled at or greeted him, he’d give her a curt nod or a gruff good morning, before taking just slightly longer strides away.

it threw her for a loop completely, unable to understand how the man could go from the affection present in their moment of intimacy, to something as foreign as a stranger. for the first couple days, she found herself offended and a little insulted by the change in attitude, before it morphed into something more carefree as she came to the conclusion everyone comes to at some point in their life.

men ain’t shit.

joel miller should have woken up that morning to the sound of his alarm, but the late night he’d had to pull last night had rendered him half dead as he slumbered deeper into the morning.

it took sarah shouting for him, knocking at his door, and then tentatively stepping inside to grab his arm and physically lug him up. the pressure around his forearm made him groggily open his eyes and, seeing her impatient but amused face, he nodded with a groan, ensuring her that he’d be up in a moment.

sarah’s uncle tommy was eating out of their pantry as he plated her toast, handing the slices over to her as her father descended the stairs. he patted sarah’s shoulder as he passed her, and she mumbled a sarcastic good morning through her bites. tommy smiled at his brother’s barely-awake face as joel reached for his coffee.

“you look like shit,” he chides, as joel sips out of his large mug. he places it down, shaking his head as he grasps his food from tommy’s fingers, and placing it back where it belongs.

“and ya eat like shit, tom.” tommy’s expression turns exaggeratedly indignant, and sarah laughs as she see it. she places her plate into the sink as she wipes her mouth, and she sidesteps her father to grab her backpack.

“you don’t need to drop me off - i’m gonna head to the bus with nicky and some of the other girls.” joel’s curious expression peers over his mug, but, seeing sarah’s excited face as her eyes glanced to the windows to see if her friends had already left home, he smiles into the beverage.

“’lright.” she smiles, making a beeline for the door as he follows her to wave her off. “ya ready?” he asks, as she puts her sneakers on and, when she rises again, she nods, almost solemnly.

“i’ll see you tonight?” joel winced, scratching his head as he thought about how long he’d be on-site that day.

“i - i think so?” it’s not a statement, instead a question, but it makes sarah smile a little as she rolled her eyes, pulling her father into a goodbye hug. he squeezed her tightly, before opening the door for her and watching her walk over to nicky and her sister’s place.

when he looked up, he saw the younger girl exit her house, her sister in the doorway as she said goodbye to her.

she was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, obviously also not having been awake for too long, but the mere sight of her makes joel adjust on the heels of his feet, straightening his back as leaned just slightly against the door way.

she was as gorgeous as two months ago, when he’d had the pleasure of seeing her in that much less. every time he saw her petting that one little dog, or meticulously looking over her flowers, all he wanted to do was hold her again.

but, of course, he realized how it looked: he was getting older; even sarah had started teasing him about it, and, well, she wasn’t. she may have had a type excluding men her age, but that wasn’t feasible - and joel had panicked after the realization that, though the sex was great, he wasn’t particularly capable of being much more than that for her without her having to sacrifice a likely healthier and more realistic relationship. besides, after his experience with sarah’s mother, he had always been worried as to what to do and how to handle future endeavors with women. so, he’d pretty much sworn off them.

that didn’t make it any easier when he had to pretend he didn’t care all that much about her when her gaze radiated in his direction.

tommy peeked out of the doorway, trying to see what had so keenly captured his brother’s attention. following his gaze, he sees the neighbor that sarah had been telling him about previously, and he suppressed a laugh as he looked between her soft, smiling figure and his brother’s ‘kicked puppy’ expression. he patted his chest as he exited the house, ready to start the car.

“don’t stare too much - y’already look like a creep.” joel blinked his thoughts away as he focused on his brother’s advice. he rolled his eyes, grabbing the car keys that tommy had somehow forgot and tossing them to him as he locked the door.

“stop runnin’ yer mouth, tommy.”

she found herself home alone so much more now. of course, she had work to keep her distracted, but she’d wrap up quickly, not having quite that much to do as she waited for her sister to come back and for her to routinely explain the events of her day. she’d subscribed herself to an almost-riveting nature show that would air in the afternoons, feeling her eyes focus and unfocus on the colorful videos of birds or the tense videos of predators and prey.

on the days the two girls wanted a bit of privacy, or maybe some quiet, they would head over the millers’ place, knowing that mr.miller wouldn’t be back in for another few hours

but when they didn’t, nicky’d tend to bring sarah back to hers for a bit. her sister was more than happy to accommodate the two girls, enjoying the company and finding a distinct amusement in their banter. sarah spent just as much time talking to her as she did nicky, mostly for - shockingly enough - cooking tips. she’d mentioned how often her father was out of the house, and how that owed to her sometimes becoming bored of the takeout that he or her uncle would bring, and that she would usually eat the leftovers from the next night.

when she suggested that she teach her some basic meals to add some variety to her dinners, sarah was more excited than expected. that enthusiasm, and the fact that she was a fast learner contributed to the both of them spending many a evening experimenting with some new meal that one of the three girls picked up. though nicky would usually listen in to the lessons, or help organize the correct ingredients or pans, she spent nearly as much time trying to swipe bites from practically each step of the cooking process, owing to sarah’s continued amusement, and her sister’s exaggerated annoyance.

truly, sarah had sometimes found it a bit lonely at her place, only really seeing her family when her father or uncle would sporadically pop-in as they’d forgotten some documents, or something like that. now, though, she was relieved that that loneliness didn’t occur as much, in the sweet company of her neighbors.

so, when she bid nicky goodbye a little early one night, as she’d had to go home and speak with her parents, she was shocked to find, as she unlocked her door, the dull sound of the t.v., followed by a mumbled greeting from her father. she turned the corner to the living room, and his tired form was sprawled over the couch, with a her-shaped spot next to him. she took the opportunity, sitting beside him as he gave her a quick squeeze, only half-paying attention to his surroundings.

“how was work?” she said it into the small space between her and her father, and, though she was quiet, her voice was loud in the near-silent house.

“amazing.” he whispered back sarcastically, making her smile.

“well, have you had dinner?”

“’ve ya?” he countered, and she shook her head, using his knee to lever herself up, heading to the kitchen. he quirked an eyebrow as his eyes followed her steps, “what’re ya doing?” she poked her head back into the hall between the living room and kitchen.

“making something to eat?” he had assumed that she was going to make a sandwich, so, when he heard her turn on the stove, he looked in her direction, confused. finally, he pushed himself up, heading towards her to see what she was doing.

she’d pulled out a few things as he leaned against the doorway, watching her.

“what’re ya making?”

sarah mumbles the name of the dish, mentioning how their neighbor had been polite enough to teach her the recipe, as she continues to move around the kitchen, meticulously following the steps that she remembered.

“well, d’ya want any help?” sarah shakes her head.

“you’ll throw me off,” she chided, making joel laugh.

over the next couple weeks, joel had had the pleasure of eating more home-grown food as opposed to the takout he’d practically been thriving off for the previous months, all at the hand of his daughter.

though he felt worried she’d overexert herself, he found her to be excitable as opposed to annoyed about the prospect, and he attempted to make it up to her by releasing her from a few of her other chores.

on one colder october evening, nicky comes back home a little earlier than usual, getting comfortable on the couch, to the shock of her sister.

“hey, nick? how was school?” nicky shrugged, fiddling with the remote, as she gestured for her sister to join her.

“it’s fine. i’ve got a math test next thursday.” her sister went to join her, letting nicky rest her head on her thigh, her eyes trained to the t.v.

“need any help with it?” nicky shook her head, the movement dragging over her sister’s thigh.

“actually, i wanted to ask: bea’s having a birthday sleepover at her place this friday. can i go?” suddenly, the affection clicked in her sister’s head. she’d done the same thing when asking their parents to go meet her friends, hoping the added sweetness would convince them to let her. of course, the same treatment wasn’t necessary with her, but it definitely didn’t hurt.

“sure, nick. where does she live?”

“closer to the city. her mom said she’d pick us up after school and take us there.”

“’lright, hun. get your bag set up well, okay?” nicky smiled at the confirmation, before sinking further into her sister and enjoying the movie she’d clicked on.

she has a meeting that afternoon, and it was her first face-to-face one since settling in austin. the company she worked for really pushed a work-from-home agenda, but, every quarter, they’d indulge in a conference in order to maintain good professional connections and ensure everything was running smoothly.

she was just slightly worried she’d be late, as she attempted to smooth down her blouse and skirt, struggling just slightly with the front of her heels not allowing perfect breathing room for her toes. she grabbed her purse as she stuffed an out-of-place clump of hair back into place. the light curls framing her face did a lot to add to the professional nature of her look, but one thing that would definitely not contribute to a professional first impression would be arriving late. she looks at the watch on her wrist as she exits her house, wincing as she tried to remember the direction towards the stop from where she’d have to catch her bus into the city.

from just a few meters away, joel’s placing his tools into the back of his truck, getting ready to head into the city for a job he and his brother had been called in on. he glances up when he hears the faint clack of heels on the pavement, and he nearly does a double take when he sees her.

sure, she’d been nice and dressed-up for that neighborhood barbecue, but nothing quite like this. he averted his gaze in a moment, remembering what tommy had told him the other day, but, when he sneaks another peek at her, he notices her confused impression.

“’re ya alright?” against his better judgment, he starts bridging the gap between them, calling her name, making her whip her head towards him.

she’s pretty sure she hasn’t spoken to him in, like, a month, so she can’t really look at his still-intense gaze, instead fidgeting with the strap of her purse.

“hmm? yeah, ‘ve just got this meeting to get to - honestly i’m running a bit late-” she can feel herself beginning to nervously ramble, so she cuts herself off.

“which direction are you heading in?” she finally looks up at him, shaking her head.

“into the city? i’m actually looking for the bus stop.” he gestures to his car.

“c’mon, i’ll give you a ride.” her mouth hangs open for a moment, shocked by the offer, before she shakes her head.

“no - joel, you don’t have to do that-”

“the buses come every 30 minutes, besides, i’m heading to the city anyways.” conflicted, she goes to disagree again, but decides not to. she allows him to accompany her to his pickup, and thanks him when he helps her into the passenger seat.

as he starts up the vehicle, she adjusts a little in her seat, suddenly feeling warm in the knowledge of her proximity with her neighbor.

“thanks, again, joel.” she mumbles, as he pulls out of his driveway.

“don’t worry about it, sweetheart.” she’s a little shocked by the reuse of the nickname, but doesn’t hate the feeling it reignites in her. joel, on the other hand, cringes at the slip of his tongue, reminding himself that this interaction was strictly in order to help his neighbor, and not the otherwise beautiful woman in his front seat, whose skirt he was trying very hard not to focus on, as he kept his eyes religiously on the road in front of him, “what’re ya all dressed up for?” he sniffs, an attempt at small talk as the danger of silence threatens to envelop the distinctly small space between them.

“oh - um, yeah. i’ve got this conference for work, and - well, have to look professional, y’know.” he hums in agreement, but his brow quirks.

“i thought ya work from home?” she glances over at him, confused as to how he’d known. though many things happened during that one evening together, she didn’t remember telling him that.

“yeah, i - the company has 4 conferences annually, to make sure everyone still remembers everyone, i guess.” his lips don the hint of a smile at the quasi-joke, “how’d - how did you know?” joel’s eyes trace over her expression for a half-moment, before returning to the road.

“i - sarah’s mentioned it.”

“oh, of course.” that silence creeps up on them once more, and it makes her swallow dryly, “um, nicky was telling me about this sleepover she’s got in the city,” she continues, “i assume sarah’s going, too?” joel nods, running a hand through his hair.

“yup - girl’s excited too. was shocked, she’s not the type to go to these things.” she smiles at the comment.

“nicky’s a bad influence.” she makes a joke, and he finally smiles, putting her at substantial ease.

“eh - ya make up for it.” he makes the comment lowly, and she wonders if she’s supposed to have heard it.

her breath stills, as she glances at his unemotive expression, as she wonders what the hell he means.

“wh - what?” joel’s eyes widen just slightly as he realizes the implication of his words.

“you’re - y’re a good influence, s’all i’m saying. with ‘er cookin’ now n’all.” his southern accent comes out heavily in his lightly flustered state, and she suppresses her laugh so as to not embarrass him further.

“right. she’s cooking for you too, now?” he nods.

“almost ev’ry night. damn good food, too.” she laughs at his aggressive praise for his daughter.

“i’m assuming nothing for friday, then?” he sighs, not really having thought about that.

“yeah, wonder how i’ll manage.”

her friday had started with a 4 hour call from 8 in the morning, fleshing out the plans for the upcoming quarter discussed briefly during her face-to-face conference.

after joel had dropped her off, he’d offered to pick her up as well, but she’d been insistent he not worry about it, citing he’d done more than enough for her already, and she’d instead taken a ride home with a coworker who, shockingly enough, lived in the same area as her.

she’d helped nicky set up her bag during the opening hour of her call, fixing her a hearty breakfast, and having over some money in the event of an emergency. she smiled at her young sister’s bubbly attitude over the prospect of her sleepover than night and, later, when she saw nicky meet up with sarah, she saw that same emotion plastered over the other young girl’s face.

her next few hours consisted of another two calls, a presentation for a meeting next week that she had to make, and maybe a grand total of a fuck ton of emails.

she had just the slightest hint of a moment of reprieve in the afternoon, so she spent a moment taking a breath of fresh air, stepping outside onto her porch. she glances to her right, almost instinctively, and she feels a distinct lack of surprise that his pickup wasn’t in the driveway. he really was out of the house a lot.

she remembered what he’d jokingly mumbled in his car when she’d mentioned sarah wouldn’t be home tonight: how would he manage? of course, she was sure he’d be just fine, but that didn’t stop her from feeling sympathetic at the, likely tired, man’s plight for what would likely just be leftovers of monotonous take-out.

knowing this, and knowing that she did technically owe him for the ride he’d given her, that night, she made a little extra for dinner, packing it up as she finished cleaning the kitchen before her own meal. she can see his car in his driveway now, just a little earlier than the long nights sarah would mention her father pull, and, with a steely resolve, she dons a sweater to combat the uncharacteristically cold night air.

after she’d knocked on the door, and was waiting for joel to answer, she wondered if this was a stupid idea. did it come as desperate? intrusive? assumptive? it wasn’t like they just did this, hell, they spoke for the first time in months just a few days ago. and since, it’d been realistically radio silent.

she tries to quell her racing mind. she was just being a friendly neighbor. it wasn’t like she was trying to get in his pants - again - right?

she’s snapped from her thoughts when he opens the door, donning just a solid grey shirt and sweatpants. she spends a half moment just blinking at his chest, before shaking herself out of it, smiling as she adjusted to look at him.

“hey - hey, joel. i never properly thanked you for the drive and i know sarah’s out so -” instead of fully explaining her presence, she opts instead to brandish the tupperware box with his assumed dinner, placing it into his slightly confused hands.

“i, you - ya didn’t have to do that.” his voice is a little hoarse, as if he hadn’t spoken in a few hours, and she looks away from him, suddenly embarrassed.

“i - i know, i just thought i’d -” she trails off, and he shakes his head.

“no - no, i really ‘preciate it. here, come in.” her eyes widened at his offer, assuming this to be a simple drop-off.

“oh - um-” she hesitates, “right, thanks.” she slides past his frame as he closes the door behind her.

she wonders why he’d be willing to let her in after placing so much distance in between them. he wonders why he’s opening himself up to temptation after trying so hard to avoid her.

they both come to the same conclusion: he’s just being a friendly neighbor.

he goes to set the dinner table for the both of them, placing the box on the kitchen counter, but, seeing the documents he’d haphazardly scattered on it this morning, he gestures to the couch.

“oh, shit,” she peers in to see if everything’s alright, and the lightly flustered look on his face makes her shakily exhale - though quietly. when he turns to her, she tries to smile, “uh - make yerself comfortable, ‘lright?” she nods as she resists the urge to peel off her sweater in the warmer house, knowing she wasn’t exactly wearing much under it.

she can hear the tinkering of plates in the kitchen, and she lets her eyes drift over the minimal but homely living room, the added decoration of a couple of sarah’s trophies on the mantelpiece being a sweet touch.

when he walked in with two plates, he was quick to tell her to turn something on, if she wished. she obliges, taking the plate he’d set for her, flicking through the channels until she found something, realistically, not remotely interesting. a few minutes into it, they eat in near silence.

“god, this is good.” he mumbles, not even attempting to praise her - moreso in observation. she laughs at the comment, looking back at him, as he attempts to fix himself up and properly appreciate her.

“thanks, joel.” they’re silent for another moment.

“ya didn’t have to do this f’r me, sweetheart.” he mentions, and she swallows.

he’s getting too comfortable with that nickname.

“i wanted to.” when she glances at him, he’s got the ghost of a smile in his expression.

sporadic conversation graced their meal, but the majority of it carried in silence. unknown to the other, both spent a long time stealing glances at the other, appreciating the way that the low light of the room accentuated their features.

finally, when she rose to place her plate away, she swiped his own empty one before he could tell her to sit down and act like an actual guest, taking them both to the sink. he follows her, the movie quickly abandoned as he places the rest of the food into his fridge.

she’s turned on the faucet as his back is turned to her, and he turns back to see her beginning to wash the few dishes in the sink.

“no - wait-” he goes to stop her but she brandishes a soapy hand to ward him off, laughing at his immediate recoil, “ya can’t-” he attempts to dissuade her from the action once again, but she’s not having it.

“joel - you’ve had a long day. it’s just one thing, isn’t it?” a silence falls over him, as he mulls over her words.

he’d not mentioned a thing about how long his day was - or how truly exhausted he felt on his way home. she just knew, and went the extra step of trying to make it that bit better for him. it’d been the same with the food she’d brought over: he’d not asked for it once, yet she felt compelled to do it simply through her caring nature. he thinks about how much she seems to care, and how upset he would feel to lose that, regardless of the taboo that their relationship would entail.

and he thinks about how much he missed caring about how she felt.

so, when she turned around, wiping her hands on the cloth beside her, she was shocked to feel the gentle tug of her body towards the kitchen counter, as joel’s warm hands grip her now lightly cold wrists. she’s shocked by the gesture, but even more shocked when she feels his hand on her cheeks, pulling her lips into his. it’s a languid motion, soft, and satisfying, as she allows the brush of her soft lips to graze the coarseness of his own.

she pulls away for a moment, if for nothing more than to breathe, and joel exhales, shaking his head.

“i’m sorry, sweetheart, i shouldn’t have-” she cuts him off by tipping her head forward, hungry to feel his lips against hers again. his beard tickles her chin, but she can barely pay it any mind, enraptured by the warmth of his body. she reciprocates the movement of his hands, pulling at his neck to press up more closely against him, as she felt his own gently holding and squeezing her waist. the cold of her hands sends a shiver up his spine, but the sensation does nothing to rival the jolts he gets when he feels her tongue graze against his own.

“fuck, joel. what’re we doing?” she mumbles it into the air above him as his head ducks into her neck, his chapped lips ghosting over the skin of her throat.

“m’sorry, sweetheart, le’me make you feel good?” it’s a question, but it doesn’t exactly wait for an answer as his teeth begin nipping the supple flesh of her barely exposed chest.

“i’ll - god, joel-” her breath’s just a little more labored now, and she’s itching for the wandering hands on her waist to meander their way further south.

knowing himself, he knows that there’s little chance he’ll have the patience to take her all the way upstairs, so, in just a moment of reprieve, he opts instead for the couch, not detaching himself from her form as he guided her there.

“c’mere, baby,” his voice is nothing over a whisper, but the licks of soft baritone grace it, making her immediately oblige, allowing him to pull her onto his spread legs over the couch cushions, the movie behind them providing a quiet ambiance, doing little to disguise the sounds of her soft gasps, and his rough exhales, as he eases her sweater off, pulling her chest into his fervent lips.

she can’t help the buck of her hips as his teeth pull as the supple skin of her chest and breasts, and she can feel his smile against her when he feels the grind of her hips over his. he can sense her desperation pique as he continues, so, taking hold of her back, he’s quick to set her down against the couch.

she’s a little shocked by the action, rising up on her elbows to see him beginning to unbutton her jeans.

“take these off for me, sweetheart,” it’s not a question anymore, and she finds her hands working faster than her brain can, sliding the fabric off her thighs and calves in one swift motion. he helps her the rest of the way, doing little to hide his fixation on her anticipating expression. when he’d finally removed the offending clothing, he looked down at her, taking her ankles in his hands and placing them over his shoulders. he doesn’t break eye contact, allowing her ragged breathing to be the only discernible noise to his ears as he lowered down towards her thighs.

she can feel the tension in muscles dissipate - though not entirely - when his lips finally make contact with her inner thigh, pulling her up by her hips just a bit to place her in a more favorable position to him. he kisses up the soft flesh of both her thighs, doing a immensely annoying job of teasing her just right.

“joel - joel, please.” she’s not ashamed to beg after the third time his lips choose to press against the corner of her panties, before swiftly switching to her other thigh.

“hmm? whad’ya want me to do sweetheart? wanna le’me taste this pretty pussy?” his casual tone is overshadowed by the nature of his words, and she feels her stomach churn at the direct statement. she can’t do much but nod, light ‘please, please - please!’s tumbling off her lips. it’s enough for him, though, finally obliging her as he pulls the fabric of her underwear to the side, letting a slight chill graze her exposed cunt, causing her to shiver.

when she feels his tongue lightly trace a circle over her clit, the tension of her muscles crash, making her let out a long, low, shaky exhale. it’s not a moment of reprieve, though, as his assault quickens, his tongue meandering over her slit with a passion - renewing that tension, though now in her core.

his pace switches between quick and languid at a moment’s notice, causing her body to be unable to release the tension in time, but to rather hold onto it for longer, staving off her orgasm with precision as his thumb pulls lightly at the apex of her cunt, putting pressure on - but not quite on - her clit as his tongue experimentally dipped in and around her dripping entrance.

he begins to speed up again, and it manifests in moans and whimpers spilling from her lips as she attempts to place a hand over her loud mouth, though, when he slows down for the umpteenth time, he heard a garbled sound fall from her instead.

“fuck - joel, please, don’t fucking tease!” her frustration had gotten the better of her, and it only increased when she felt him smile against her cunt.

“tell me what ya want, baby.” she swallows roughly, her thighs tensing just slightly against his head, before she lets out a shaky breath.

“please - please, let me cum.” for a moment, he doesn’t move, and she wants to scream at his lack of action, but that’s until she feels his clloused fingers against her thigh.

his mouth reattaches to her cunt, alternating between short, quick licks and sucking, as he eases two of his fingers into her, with little resistance. the added sensation against her walls makes her toes curl, her moans only growing louder.

her orgasm, already impending, suddenly feels as if it’s been increased tenfold by the drag of his fingers against a specific soft spot inside her, the movement of them in and out of her allowing them a way to find that spot each time. that, accompanied with his mouth’s renewed focus on her clit, makes her want to scream, and she does, as the tightened sensation in her stomach snaps, the tension building to her orgasm releasing with an aggressive sensitivity.

her moans are broken as he helps her through the feeling, continuing to slowly pump his fingers inside her, only stopping for a moment when he felt her thighs squeeze her with the might of a guinness strongman.

as she comes down from the sensation, she attempts to place her hands over her warm face, but he doesn’t let her, taking them off her to truly appreciate her flushed expression.

“good - good, really, really good-” she’s babbling quietly in an attempt to praise his effort, and it makes him laugh, rising up so that he can place a chaste kiss to her lips. she doesn’t allow it to be quick, though, allowing her mouth to indulge in the taste of herself, as opposed to continuing to mindlessly mumble. he groans at the action, not expecting her to be into it. pulling back to let her catch her breath, his lips flit over her neck, feeling her rapid heartbeat under the thin layer of skin, “joel, please - i-” she’s saying something, and it’s causing him to come back up to look at her.

though he can’t interpret it initially, when he feels the lazily roll of her hips against his again, he realizes what he wants, laughing lightly.

his laugh does little to quell her desire - instead, spurring it on, as her hands snake down his torso and towards the elastic of his sweatpants. he lets her hands work them down, pulling out his cock over the waistband of them, and gritting his teeth as her soft hand gently grips him.

“slow - fuck, slow down, there, baby-” she shakes her head adamantly.

“joel, fuck - i need you, now. right now.” she does little to disguise her thoughts, the small space between his cock and his cunt too much for her to think straight.

“’lright, sweetheart, ‘lrigt” he pulls his pants the rest of the way down, not removing her still, but exploratory hand, as, on her palm, rested his cock, her fingers grazing his inner thighs and balls. he props her up again, pulling her legs over his shoulders. though knowing she was definitely wet enough to accommodate him, it doesn’t stop her from spitting into her fingers, coating the tip of him in the makeshift lubricant, before adjusting so that he rested against her.

he tapped the tip of her cock over her clit, if for no reason other than to hear her squeak just one more time, before dragging himself down, and pushing in. she fights her urge to close her eyes at the sensation, wanting to really see him, but the feeling of it was almost too much, and she bit down on her tongue to keep quiet.

“don’t hide y’r sounds fro’me, sweetheart, let’t out, babygirl, let it out.” his accent’s thick in her ear as his hips meet her ass, and the soft order makes her mouth fall open, a low, quiet moan befalling her as she adjusted to the size of him. he practically filled every crevice inside her, the warmth of him enough to make her overheat as she tried not to focus on the increasingly sensitive feeling of his cock just lightly grazing against that one spot inside her.

“joel - move, god, i need you to move.” he doesn’t hesitate, pulling out slowly, the drag of his cock making her breath ragged. then, when he pushes back in, it’s just a bit harsher, owing to her squeaking.

“feel good, baby?” he mumbles it right into her ear as he thrusts in and out of her, his pace teetering between slow and aggressive, as if he were holding back.

“so - so good, joel, fuck, you make me feel so - good-!” she’s cut off when he readjusts and begins hitting another angle inside her, amplifying the feel of him significantly.

“that’s the spot, isn’t it, sweetheart? ya gonna be a good girl and scream for me?” he doesn’t even have to ask her, as her moans become unabashedly loud at the intensity of his new thrusts. the spur him to move just that bit faster, owing to her hands wildly grasping at his arms in an attempt to ground herself against the overwhelming sensation.

it doesn’t take long for that reignited tension in her core to beg for release.

“fuck, joel - i’m gonna cum, can i cum? please let me cum, please?” she’s begging him to keep going just like he is, and the honeyed pleas sound like the sweet music to his ear.

“that’s right, sweetheart, go ahead - cum all over me.” the approval pushes her over the edge, her legs shaking violently as her fingers dig into the muscle of his forearms. he want to slow down so as to not overstimulate her, but the feel of her pulsing walls wills him over the edge as well, pushing into her just a few more times, “whered’ya want me, baby?” he’s not sure if she’s able to answer him, but the lazy, gesturing hands towards her torso seem indication enough, as he pulls out of her, stroking himself to completion and spilling over the heaving skin of chest.

for a minute or two, they both catch their breath, before she feels him detach from her. she can hear his light footsteps into another room, and then the sound of a tap, before he reemerges with a damp towel. she’s sure she raises her hand to take it off him, but he ignores it, instead running the damp cloth over her himself. first, he cleans his own mess off of her chest, before lightly pressing at the flesh of her thighs and cunt, trying very hard not to stimulate her farther. the gentleness of his actions seems very joel miller-esque, she thinks, but not exactly akin to the man he’d been for the past few months.

she takes the towel when he’s done, returning the favor, before she speaks.

“didn’t think we’d do this again.” he winces at the implication of her words, stilling her movements as he pulls her cheeks to look up at him.

“i - i know, and i’m real sorry, sweetheart. ya know that, right?” she cups the hand against her face, smiling softly.

“of course i do. you think you’ll tell me why?” she wasn’t mad - just curious.

“i -” he trails off, before shaking his head, a humorless laugh escaping his lips, “why’d you think, baby? m’too old f’r ya.”

for a moment, she’s not sure she heard him right.

“what?”

“c’mon. you’re this gorgeous young woman - new to the neighborhood and everything. shouldn’t end up with someone like me. people’d talk.” she adjusts so that she’s closer to eye-level with him, taking both his hands.

“i don’t give a shit what other people say, joel - god, all anyone should care about is what i actually want.”

“but-” he goes to disagree, but she cuts him off with a soft kiss to his lips.

“i want you, joel miller. you’re the only person i want - i don’t give a shit about if you’re a little older, or my neighbor - anything like that.” he finally raises his eyes from the floor to look at her. the earnest expression on his face makes his resolve crumble, his contemplative expression morphing into a small smile.

“ya want to spend your nights me, then?” she rolls her eyes.

“and my mornings, afternoons and evenings.” the admission of them as so much more than just the fuck-buddy status that they currently have makes him grip her just a little tighter - a show of his affection, “really, our only problem is telling the girls.”

joel thinks about that upcoming challenge, wincing.

“that’s f’r t’morrow. tonight’s about you, sweetheart.”

[hersweetrevenge]

corey cunningham headcanons [volume three]

corey has my heart, i want to know every single detail about him, and if i am not given that information then i will simply make it up (he told me through prophetic dreams). based on this set of questions. and if you missed the previous instalments, no you didn't: volume one and volume two.

[credit where credit is due, some of these hcs are shared with @/slutforstabbings, and i have merely adopted into my own belief system and expanded on certain points that i latched onto, so please go read through blake's stuff too because they actually know what they're talking about !!]

WARNING for angst, brief talks of sex, and mentions of child abuse, child death, mental health, trauma and sexuality.

[image sources: X, X]

What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?

corey had a pretty isolated childhood, the internet wasn't really a thing for a while, joan put a lot of restrictions on his television time, and he never had play dates or the chance to hang out with people outside of school. therefore corey is the daydream king, always in his own little world. corey had a lot of spare time and he can sit and zone out for hours, unbothered, if he has the time. he's been chastised so many times by joan for not paying attention or being away with the fairies.

however, that's not to say he can't pay attention when he needs to, he has a very good attention span when he has something to focus on, like school work or reading or watching movies. but, if it's a mindless task he can do without thinking then his mind does tends to wander.

How easy is it for your character to laugh?

i've said this before but the way having a laughing fit with corey until my sides hurt would literally fix me.

corey has a funny sense of humour, kind of dark but kind of dorky. pre-accident corey laughs pretty easily. at school he had a kind of off-beat friend group who had an overall off-beat sense of humour that occupied them in the cafeteria or while they slacked off in gym class.

post-accident corey holds back from making his own jokes or being funny, like he doesn't know the social rules anymore. like he doesn't deserve to laugh or thinks people will be mad at him for thinking he can be funny.

How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?)

as previously mentioned, corey has a lot of time to think. he struggles to sleep well at night and honestly his daydreaming can make things worse if he latches onto a thought and keeps following it when he should be trying to clear his mind.

if he wants some stimulation though, he goes on wikipedia. he will fall asleep having fallen down a wiki rabbit hole and wake up in the morning on the page for like the 1847 great fire of bucharest with no memory of how he ended up there.

How easy is it to earn their trust? How easy is it to earn their mistrust?

it's not that easy to earn corey's trust. corey is used to being in a pretty emotionally volatile environment, so he does a lot of premature damage control around people that he doesn't know well enough to read their moods and behaviour. however, once he feels more comfortable, he's a lot more open (though still has a sense of wariness in the back of his mind). basically, it's not impossible to earn his trust.

post-accident corey is a different story though, he has an automatic distrust of everyone. he can't assume anyone intentions are solely good for a long, long time. honestly, he doesn't trust most people, he canonically only goes to one gas station because he trusts they won't speak to him. and he distrusts his co-workers at prevo for different reasons, i.e. he's been low-level pranked more times than he cares to remember.

What triggers nostalgia for them most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

corey gets good nostalgia and bad nostalgia.

bad nostalgia is usually something to do with joan, or remembering how he felt as a child when he was on edge so often. spaghetti truly was joan's worst meal so the smell, taste, texture and look of spaghetti is something he can't really stand anymore. if he never eats spaghetti again, it'll be too soon. rabbit paraphernalia give a lot of bad nostalgia.

corey's sense of good nostalgia is pretty specific. good nostalgia comes from watching old movies. he loves westerns and anything cowboy adjacent. a lot of the shows he watched as a kid were older cartoons so he gets a lot of nostalgia from those too. the smell of night time, where everything feels kind of dewy is good nostalgia for him, as well as the smell of the woodwork room at school.

What were they told to stop doing most often as a child?

i've mentioned before that as a baby, corey was actually very content and not fussy at all, which joan was unreasonably pleased about -- he was her perfect, happy, chubby-cheeked baby. however, once he hit the terrible twos and developed some autonomy, that's when joan's control issues started to really kick in with her parenting.

joan told corey off for doing all sorts of things as a child -- fidgeting too much, being too boisterous, getting grass stains on his clothes, not finishing his dinner, meddling with the rabbits (or anything else around the house), watching cartoon network, not holding her hand around the store, playing with a kid she doesn't approve of, asking too many questions -- the list is honestly endless, and not all of these misdemeanours have any logic behind them other than joan's moods and keeping corey on his toes.

Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?

he swears sometimes but not that much. his first swear word was probably 'shit' (he overheard joan mutter it once), like out in the yard at recess him and his little friends all went around in a circle and said the worst swears they knew. once he hit middle school and high school, swearing becomes more common and he sprinkles it through his vocab. then when he starts at prevo it's a much more rough-and-ready attitude to language and he gets (light-heartedly) teased for how much more reserved he comes across compared to the other mechanics.

joan would kill him if she ever heard him swear, so he'd never dream of swearing in front of her. he has a distinct line he draws between his language at home and outside.

What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?

corey lies a lot, but none of his lies weigh too heavily on his conscience.

corey would sneak out at night to parties and joan never found out about it. he can navigate his house is total darkness as to not wake his mom, and to his credit joan never found out. he used to lie about his day when he was in college all the time, and he lies saying that he comes straight home after work now.

i guess you could say he emotionally lies a lot? it's easier to placate joan with being agreeable than to admit anything (to himself or joan).

How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

joan used to (and still does) tell him off for fidgeting so he will restrain himself until he can leave the room and will then become a grizzly bear and itch his back on the nearest doorframe.

Are they easily embarrassed?

yes. end post.

but seriously, he is pretty easily embarrassed. corey has never had a very good self esteem, he honestly is under the impression he's kind of unlikable and that all his actions are under some kind of social scrutiny.

pre-accident his self confidence was healing a little bit with his growing independence, so he could more easily brush things off but awkward moments still stick in his brain for him to agonise over later.

although he's learnt to deal with it in most situations, if he's feeling more vulnerable or he's with someone he really likes/admires then he does not cope well when he feels like he's being made fun of -- he gets all defensive and sulky.

What is their favourite number?

i don't think corey has a favourite number, but if he had to pick one, i think it'd either be something like a mathematically "special" number, or something sentimental like his dad's birthday.

If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?

oh man, this is not corey's forte at all. corey does not have a very good grasp on (his own) boundaries or the lines between different types of relationships.

i've said this a million times before (and no one has stopped me yet heehee), but because he's so used to the lines being pretty blurry with joan and having such an insular upbringing, he doesn't really know how to draw lines between how he loves someone. he's a real all or nothing type of person -- he's only ever learnt how to put all his feelings onto one person. joan wants that person to corey, because corey is that person to her.

subsequently, corey has only really experienced familial love in this abusive way, so projects the opposite (and what he reasons to be "normal") onto his imagined relationship with his father, idolising him to an unrealistic extent.

platonic is a sort of grey area for him, he tends to feel emotions either very intensely or not at all. he can go from really "loving" someone (either a friend he already has or someone he wishes he could befriend) to being mostly indifferent. the strength of his emotions tend to mean he can't really pinpoint exactly what he desires from the friendship/relationship. that's not to say he doesn't understand what "being friends" is, he does, but it doesn't always feel as poignant for him. it's something he was starting to figure out in high school and college, but then regressed with after the accident.

[this isn't the case for everyone] for corey romantic attraction and sexual attraction are usually linked, so romance does becomes slightly easier to differentiate. however, coming back to his boundary issues, even if he undeniably feels romantic love for someone, he's hesitant to communicate it unless he's figured out "the rules". everyone has rules (boundaries) to learn, and once he understands them, corey knows how to play the game -- he can do what he has to to be loved/wanted/tolerated enough to satiate his own feelings.

Why do they get up in the morning? 

currently, it's because ronald will kick his ass if he doesn't show up to work. well, ronald is usually pretty lenient on him, (maybe too lenient, and the other mechanics know corey doesn't get as much shit because he's ronald's step-kid). corey does actually like going to work though, his dream didn't pan out the way he expected but he does love being a mechanic -- it's just dampened by the rest of his circumstances.

corey has never been very good at getting up in the morning though, and back when he was at school he was no stranger to nearly missing the bus every morning.

during the manslaughter trial, he had so much to do, between trips to his lawyers office and then the courthouse once the trial actually starts, he is stressed enough that he gets up and ready for the day pretty early and then just sits and worries until someone tells him what to do.

after the trial though, he honestly just doesn't get up in the morning. he has no job, no social life, and honestly no reason to do anything at all. he spends most of his time in bed, unless joan nags him into showering, eating or running errands with her, or if he has an appointment with his shrink.

 Is sex something that they’re comfortable speaking about? To whom? 

as previously mentioned, corey is pretty self conscious so he won't admit to a crush under any circumstances, and he doesn't have a lot of his own experiences to talk about, so he's kind of refrained when talking about sex. he is a known prude, to be honest.

but, he is also a teenage boy with a weird friend group, so sex is a frequent topic. he can't talk about sex in regards to himself at that point, but he'll laugh at jokes and is kind of enthralled by hearing anecdotes (not that his friends have many).

in a relationship, i think it takes corey a while to open up and be comfortable talking about sex outside of doing the act itself. dirty talk makes him blush, and he's never really had a lot of experience or opportunity to seriously think about what he likes and then be able to convey that out loud.

 What are their thoughts on marriage? 

i don't think corey cares about the legal aspects, but he does like the idea of marriage. devoting yourself to one person and one person only, whom you love dearly, forever and ever until you both die? literally exactly what corey wants, the legal part doesn't really matter.

the only wedding he's been to was when joan and ronald got married at the courthouse. he was 15 and honestly had surprisingly few feelings about the whole thing -- he caught on pretty early on that his mom and ronald were hardly "in love" but this is what adults do, so here he is in his best clothes and thinking about the wedding cake he'll get to eat later. this is partly why he doesn't care too much about the legal side; anyone can get married, but the real true proven commitment if what love really is.

corey would be more than happy with a courthouse wedding himself, he just wants to be with his s/o forever, so a simple, no guests, sign on the line type wedding is good enough to get the job done.

 What is their preferred mode of transportation? 

motorbike, of course. he knew his dad had ridden a motorbike since he found some old photos, but corey never actually rides one himself until ronald gives him the kawasaki. he knew theoretically how to ride, because he knows the mechanics of a basic motorbike, but he truly learns as he goes when he fixes up his own bike. the motorbike gives him a huge sense of freedom, and fulfils all of his easy rider (1969) and the wild one (1953) fantasies.

corey learnt how to drive at 16 through drivers ed, but joan rarely lets him drive her car, and he obviously can't afford his own. sometimes she lets him drive them home from the store, but she is a serious backseat driver so it's sort of just a nightmare for everyone involved.

corey hasn't travelled very far before, so he's never been on a train, but i think he'd enjoy it. long journeys where he can zone out and just look at the landscape? a very good combination for corey.

and how can we forget his trusty bicycle. corey learnt to ride a bike as a child, joan wasn't a very good teacher, but he got the hang of it pretty quickly anyway. corey has had his current bike for almost 10 years now. the chain constantly comes loose, and he's had to tape up the seat and the handle grips more times than he can count. it mostly does the job, and it did give him a lot more freedom as a teenager than he'd had before that.

 Who do they most regret meeting? 

is it cliche to say the allens? maybe so, but it's definitely the allens.

if he never met the allens then jeremy wouldn't have died and corey would have gone off to college and got his degree and a graduate job at mercedes or boeing or somewhere and --

mostly corey tries not to think about the "what ifs" but they do creep into his mind.

[and, if you're that way inclined, if corey had never met roger he could have saved himself so, so much heartache, and maybe not have ruined his perceptions of relationships for the foreseeable]

 Could they be considered lazy? 

on a superficial level, maybe. he sleeps in late and doesn't do any housework, so maybe out of context he could seem lazy, but he actually has a really good work ethic and likes to be doing something. joan doesn't enlist him to do chores because chores are skills and she wants him to be dependent on her.

he definitely is not lazy at work though. when he first started a prevo, he mostly just did grunt work and the easy tasks that the other mechanics were too busy for but still needed to get done. he pulled his weight, no one can deny that. a few years in, he still doesn't handle many full jobs himself, but he is trusted to do more specialised things.

 How hard is it for them to shake a sense of guilt? 

joan ingrained it in him to feel guilty about a lot of things that aren't his fault. baseline guilt like that he can cope with, he just grovels and submits himself enough to earn forgiveness and then the whole thing starts over the next time joan finds a bone to pick.

after the accident though, his guilt is pretty constant. everything serves as a reminder of what happened, and even if he got acquitted, he does feel like it was at least partly his fault jeremy died.

Do they have a system for remembering names, long lists of numbers, things that need to go in a certain order (like anagrams, putting things to melodies, etc)? 

corey has a great memory but he doesn't really have any particular system, things just stick with him. he's great with remembering conversations, and when he was studying he could retain information in maths/science pretty easily, but his "less strong" subjects required more work on his part.

he does remember all the states and their capitals because of the animaniacs song.

What memory do they revisit the most often? 

it's not his most frequent, but there's this memory that corey has about his dad that usually comes to him when he's on the cusp of sleeping and awake. subconsciously, i think he's aware that it's probably a false memory. wally "died" before corey could really form any proper memories of him, but he loves this one anyway. corey remembers himself, as a baby, laughing while his dad is holding him, maybe he's playing with him, or bouncing him on his knee, but the details are pretty fuzzy -- it's barely a fragment of a memory but it makes corey happy.

a memory that has involuntarily has made it's home in corey's brain is from the accident. the blood was bad, but mostly it's the sound that corey can't forget. that sick thud sound.

How do they feel about children? 

pre-accident corey didn't care much about children. he doesn't dislike them, but he doesn't really interact with them (he doesn't have any family, and at the houses he does yard work, the parents tend to keep their kids out of his way so he can work without dodging any kids). he's kind to them though, if a little awkward.

post-accident, corey avoids kids as much as possible. he's no more mean to them, but seeing kids just brings back too many memories of the accident and also it just is not good to be seen near kids when you're regularly called a kid killer in public.

corey never wanted his own kids. maybe in some half-baked daydream he thought about a life of college, then a salary job and marriage and 2.5 kids, but i don't think he ever took it seriously.

part of him kind of wants the chance to be a better parent than his ever were, but he also worries that he'd just fuck his kids up like his parents did him. maybe he'd be unable to break the cycle (no matter how badly he wanted to) and be destined to become a helicopter parent -- trying his best to protect his child but ultimately smothering them.

to be honest though, i think his idea of love is so skewed towards obsession, that a kid would just get in the way. he wants to be the only person his s/o loves, and they will be the only person he loves in return, a baby is going to take that love away from him.

How badly do they want to reach their end goal? 

at one point, all corey wanted was to go to college and get out of his house, out of haddonfield. he wanted that more than anything else, and if he just worked hard enough, for just a little bit longer, he'd make it. if he were in a better position (more supportive family, better socio-economic status) his goal would be much easier to attain, but if he did have those benefits, would he feel so strongly about that goal?

i feel like even though college is his way out, corey requires and enjoys mental/intellectual stimulation enough that he would want to go to college anyway, even if things were better for him at home.

post-accident, he doesn't have a goal at all beyond surviving, and even then we see his commitment to that goal is pretty tenuous.

If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so? 

ahh well if you read my hcs about corey's sexuality, you would already know. but that will not stop me repeating those hcs here.

corey doesn't really consciously label his sexuality, but if he was asked point blank i think he could probably connect himself with bisexuality, but he's way more of a euphemism person -- "swing both ways".

[maochira]

omg i just saw ur chris comforting the reader after a mental breakdown post! do u think u can do that again but with bigbro!karasu? thank uuu 🫶🤍🤍🤍

I've done two similar things with Karasu already (comfort after a bad day and anxiety attack comfort) but I can do this as well!

Requests open! - masterlist

Synopsis: Since Karasu went to Blue Lock, you started feeling lonely and now you even had a falling out with your friends, leaving you completely alone. Luckily, your brother returns just in time to comfort you.

Tags: gn!younger sibling!reader, slightly overprotective big brother!Karasu, comfort

Ever since Karasu left to go to Blue Lock, home started feeling empty. Your parents work a lot so you're alone most of the time. For a while, you were able to find distraction by keeping yourself busy or meeting up with friends. The latter thing just hasn't been possible lately.

Last week, your friend group had a massive falling out and you just can't help but feel like it's all your fault. Without anyone to talk to about it, it's been eating you up from the inside. Usually, you'd talk to your brother about things like this but even though he has his phone in Blue Lock back by now, he's busy most of the time and there's no way to properly tell him about what's on your mind.

Watching him play on the Blue Lock Eleven team was amazing and you were happy to see him again, but as soon as you were back home you started feeling awful because you just miss him being around. As much as he teases and bullies you all the time, he does it with love and that's exactly what you miss.

Since that day, you haven't gone to school because your mental health has been declining more and more and by now you're just lacking the energy to leave the house. It's not just because you miss Karasu, but also because your previous friends started contacting you again and put more guilt on you than you already felt. It just became too much.

A few minutes ago, you finally managed to find the strength to block them. It's something you should have done way earlier, but something in you had hopes that everything will go back to how it was before if you apologize enough - even for things that aren't your fault at all.

While you're crying on your bed you can hear the front door open. It's a bit too early for one of your parents to return from work, but you just shrug it off.

You're still lost in your thoughts, so you only realize your brother is back at home when he knocks at your door. You know the way his knocking sounds compared to your parents' very well.

"Nii-san?" You turn your head to the door and seconds later, Karasu opens it. You haven't called him Nii-san in a very long time. At some point, you just started calling him Tabi-nii or Tabito, but Nii-san feels more fitting right now. "You're back?"

Karasu doesn't answer, and instead he quickly shows concern and sits down next to you. "You were crying?" He grabs both of your shoulders to pull you closer to himself. "What's wrong?"

"I just missed you a lot..." You tell him half of the truth. "It's been lonely without you..."

Your big brother immediately pulls you into a tight hug. He doesn't speak yet, it always takes him a while to find the right words to comfort you. Instead, his arms only tighten around your body.

"I missed you a lot as well. But did you miss me so bad that it made you cry?" Karasu says while he realizes he's been hugging you a little too tight. "Come on, you're not that much of a sensitive crybaby." He lets out a little chuckle, hoping to cheer you up a bit. He always tries to leave teasing out when he comforts you, but he can't hold himself back most of the time. It's just his love language.

"It's not just that... Some stuff has happened with my friends and-"

Karasu quickly interrupts you as soon as you mention your (not anymore) friends. "Those 'friends' who I've always said are too mediocre to deserve being your friends? I don't wanna say I told you they're bad for you but... I mean, I told you they're bad for you."

"I'm sorry I just-" You stop your own sentence because you quickly notice you don't actually have anything else to say. You just feel bad for not listening to your brother's advice.

"Don't apologize for that," Karasu pulls away from the hug so he can look into your eyes, "Now tell me what those pieces of shit did so I can make them regret it."

Taglist (sign-up link): @starhrtz, @kaineedstherapy12, @zyuuuu, @yerinsshi, @luvcalico, @truegoist, @vanitasbrainrot, @deerangle3, @toruden, @keiidaydreams

[angelthefirst1]

01x01 ♾️ 10x10

YEARS...

TOWL

First off, I loved episode one, and I hope you all enjoyed it too.

I very much believe the title is linked to Beth - The one who lives.

I mentioned in previous posts that we would be heading back to repeat season 1 of the walking dead. We got many callbacks in episode 1 of TOWL. Such as Rick stepping into Merle's role of being handcuffed because he is "difficult."

Like Merle, Rick has to chop his own hand off to escape.

The callbacks are quite detailed. If you remember back, Merle was horrible to T-dog, refusing to take any direction from him because of his skin colour. He almost kills T-dog and wants to become the leader of the group, which leads to Rick handcuffing him.

Whereas to contrast, Rick wants to escape the CRM to get back to Michonne, whom he loves.

Rick also doesn't desire power in the CRM at all and even says so to Okafor.

Rick, in season one, is also looking for Lori his wife.

Merle and Daryl (the brothers) are separated.

It's a beautiful rework of that time around the rooftop scene in Atlanta...

The exciting thing about all this is that Andrea was first introduced just prior to Merle (Daryl's brother) being handcuffed on that rooftop.

They are reversing and reworking season one and season 5 scenes combined (I'll get to the season 5 patterns soon), so Beth (a reworked Andrea) is close...

We even saw Rick's own version of a Brulent (burner) walker that leads to cauterization...

I talk about the cauterization theme at length here from DD1.

The cauterization theme is related to walking away from God, which is interesting with Rick specifically because Rick is "walking away" from or running away from the CRM.

The CRM logo is a representation of God.

The Borromean rings have been used in different contexts to indicate strength in unity. In particular, some have used the design to symbolize the Trinity.

The end is the beginning theme ♾️

This theme reveals a major clue to the story and what they are drawing from, and that is the Revelation or revealing of Jesus Christ.

Beth's revealing is symbolic of this...

The book of Revelation is known as a book about the end of all things but also the beginning of something new.

To remind you, not that you need it, this is a show about the end of the world, and the writers are heavily incorporating biblical end time events into the show.

Jesus describes one of his characteristics in the book of Revelation, he says:

‭‭Revelation 22:13

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

The beginning and the end theme, will eventually reveal Beth. 01x01 ♾️ 10x10 get well soon.

The symbolism around her character is used to link her symbolically to Christ, I've mentioned this many times before. As a reminder, some aspects of this are:

She dies wearing a cross.

She dies sacrificially (goes all in) to save Noah.

The bible says Noah walked with God, so God saved him from the biblical flood. In the cauterization post i linked above, i go into how 510 events when it rained and they hide in the barn (Ark) was a rework of the biblical flood.

Beth was also the only character given the symbolism of an "empty" or missing body/grave.

She was innocent and considered "good" as Daryl was trying to indicate at the "oh" moment (and yes, he was also saying he loves her 😉)

Jesus was also called good by his disciples. The real definition actually means morally perfect, so while back in Alone the writers were using the "good people theme" to indicate someone that hasn't become out-rightly evil in these evil times, with Beth, it was just one more way of linking her symbolically to Jesus as morally perfect.

Seeing what Rick has experienced with the CRM is a shadow of Beth.

Now let's talk about how season 5 Grady has been reworked.

While we are back in season 1, they are also showing us Rick's version of being at Grady.

Dawn is Thorne, and yes, we're rhyming names now it's becoming that obvious.

Rick (Beth) and Thorne (Dawn) play a game of Poker, and Rick goes all in... Thorne folds.

Thorne tells Rick she's great at poker, but she loses.

Dawn also liked to play poker... Poker is about holding the right cards, having the upper hand, and even bluffing your way to a win.

Remember the hostage trade at Grady? They focused a large amount of time on the numbers of cops to trade with Dawn.

Daryl says to Rick, "3s better than 2" talking about the 3 cops they have to trade back for Beth and Carol. 3 cops gives them the winning hand...

Now, in poker, that's a true statement. All you need to win is a better hand than your opponent.

Well...in fact Dawn and Beth were playing poker in that hallway at Grady.

Beth made the choice to go all in like Rick did. Dawn dies (folds)

It's a big risk to go all in, but the pay-off can be huge. Dawn got nothing in the end.

While Beth is the one who lives and survives a bullet to the forehead. This is actually confirmed in this episode twice, so read on.

A shadow of this is shown with Rick...

In the very next scene after the poker game where Thorne (Dawn) folds, we see Rick hold the bullet right to his forehead. It's not a coincidence...

In that defining moment, you'll make the right choice...

Beth made the right choice.

Beth won and it was lights out for Dawn before she even got to play... just like Thorne said...

Confirming the poker theme and bullet graze theme.

This combination is actually reinforced as it's mentioned in sequence twice in this episode.

Rick and Thorne both sign up to the CRM, and Okafor asks them to work secretly for him. Afterwards, Thorne talks with Rick, and Rick asks her if she gave Okafor the scar on his forehead (a shadow of Beth's scar)

It's then she admits to shooting Okafor in the head, but the bullet just grazed him, she missed. Rick then asks if she will shoot him, too...

Then, she stops and seemingly very randomly brings up the topic of playing poker. But it's not random at all.

It's a reworked reverse shadow of what happened at Grady.

Bullet graze to the head, missed didn't make the kill but it did leave a scar, poker and lights out for Thorne/Dawn. All while Rick (Beth) asks if she will shoot him too.

And all while Rick (Beth) is trapped in the CRM (Grady) away from the love of his life.

Thorne also gives us more hints that she is a new version of Dawn back at Grady. She thinks the system of the CRM is working fine and it doesn't need to change.

Rick disagrees as no one is free to leave.

Beth kept telling Dawn that she wasn't staying any longer than they made her. She wasn't free to leave either, and Dawn told her she shouldn't see it as a sentence. That out there, she would be dead.

This whole rework also gives us insight into Beth's mindset. Just as Rick was trying to escape to get to someone he loves, so was Beth trying to get back to Daryl.

The A's and B's - a repeat of Grady only taking in the ones who they thought were weak. In Beth's case, they got it wrong, she thought for herself, which classified her a an A.

They thought she was a B but she was an A

The man i was with, is he here?

They thought Daryl was an A and same with Noah's Dad so they left them out in the world to die.

Okafor, Thorne and Rick are a reworked version of Beth, Dawn and Noah.

The repeats in this story should give hope that Beth survived that bullet and just like the end of this episode with Rick and Michonne, the story will eventually lead to two people who love each other reuniting. One of whom thought the other died but could never find the body...

[toastess-with-the-mostess]

Voltron: The Series

Last stop folks! One I'm sure you already know well This was my introduction into Voltron, fell in love with it, led me to its predecessors, then had a rocky relationship with it, and still do Thanks for joining me so far! I love Voltrons history because there's so much to be inspired from Dotu/VV - V3D - VF - VLD (here)

Word vomit under the cut <3

Oh boy 2016, nothing can go wrong here Frankly this is the better looking Voltron out of all of them, I'm glad to see what 2D and 3D can really do together since VF had a rocky time with that itself. Like I said in the Dotu/VV post, this show is a hard reboot, at most it takes the names and basic legend of the original show and just runs with it. Though it does take inspiration from the previous shows, again with Pidge being a genius, the lions being mystical, and this time I'm fairly sure the bayards were directly inspired from the voltcoms from VF That's the main reason why I don't find it fair to compare Voltron Legendary Defender (VLD) to the other Voltrons because it's not the same story at all, it's its own thing and is pretty well isolated. It has major changes to the story beats, like Lotor not automatically being a villain, the pilots aren't trained soldiers and instead cadets themselves, for a while the team aren't even friends, Allura's planet is renamed (to be fair it's back to the original anime name) and also destroyed, and Pidge is a girl now, which I don't mind but from what I've learned its a joke between older fans since many of them thought dotu Pidge was a girl at first due to his headband. The gist of VLD is vaguely similar to the rest of them, a team of five lands on Altea (Arus) and discovers Voltron which is then used to defend the universe. Like I mentioned though, the team isn't made up of soldiers, most of them are cadets with only one (1) seasoned soldier on the team who has been missing for years until the group found him. They have an Indiana Jones moment and find blue lion hidden away on Earth which abducts the entire team to Arus, a planet unrelated to Altea, where the castle of lions sits locked up. The rest of the show is them learning to work together and the best way to handle dangerous situations when more than just easily ignored lives are on the line. In total, it had 8 seasons in 2 years (yikes), the most of the shows (probably ran too long in retrospect), spawned 3 volumes of comics (15 in total), and brought the return of the toy line. This iteration brought in the most viewers because of the original fans who were still kicking, the animation, the story (in the beginning), and it was on Netflix which many people had at that point so it was easily accessible. It also spawned an incredibly large fandom which could be amazing at some points and down right radioactive at others. Either way though, it created avenues for merchandise, podcasts, fan interactions, and furthering the legacy of Voltron itself! As of this post, there's information slowly coming out about a live action movie for Voltron (probably not VLD related, that ship has sailed lads) which has many fans excited for what's to come

[namesnamesandmorenames]

Okay, so since my last post I have decided to make a few previously select or multi-select properties into separate database relations properties– I've also completed separated my fanfiction and old library databases and I am letting myself put fan art banners and more fun icons on some pages lol. One of these projects– you'll be able to see which because I haven't finished it– is going to be incredibly time consuming 😞. Again, this is starting as a speech to text voice note so it's going to get really conversational and probably have typos even though I'm going to edit it later. So sorry about that. I already typed it out once I can't.

Short spiel– I'm a library science grad student who is using notion to create a person fanfiction database. It's for fun but it's kinda interesting how my classes impacted what I do with it so I decided to make a post or two. I'll do a line brake now so you don't have to read more if you're not interested 🙂

Okay so the first section I consider a like Retrieval Information section– It answers questions like have I read this? Where can I find it? Who wrote it? Is there a podfic? Who recorded it? What stage in the writing process is it (One Shot, Multi Chapters, Work In Progress, Abandoned)? Was it written for a challenge/ is it in a collection (excluding personal favorite collections which there are so many of on ao3 I swear- pet peeve but I get it I was once one of those people, now I have a database that I've sunk too much time into lol)

The sorting section is actually automatically filled out based on the Creator information, I explained my tbr sorting is based on favorite, prolific, or new to the fandom authors so it's easiest to trust pull that information from the Creator record in a roll-up property because then I can move everything in a group if I miss something at the end of the week when I'm adding things.

Story info is pretty self-explanatory in my opinion, I pulled all of it from ao3 though I will fudge the information if I read a fic on Tumblr that isn't cross-posted. The pages it's not really useful per se. Just something that I think is interesting. It's also based on the PDF versions that you can download on ao3 and even then not really because I just averaged out the pages on one fic and have been dividing page numbers by that number for ages lol. Timeline I mentioned in my previous post. It's all based on 911 because I am currently hyperfixated on it to a degree that is genuinely… not great.

Authorized Tags… I'm still working on this. This is the time consuming project. I decided to make the multi-select property Tags– which has an insane amount of tags in it, which are all kind of jumbled because I was using different language for all of them like for instance “Evan Buckley is a Teacher” and “Bartender Buck” are both tags in that property but also it's just in that section so I can't even see everything that's in there and at this point there's over like 200+ tags that I can't really search very well and I can't really browse fics in the tags easily so it limits use in that way. Also, there's no real organization so everything that could be tagged wasn't there- also creators all use tags in very different ways so a lot of that was me tagging fic as I read them because this is a personal database, it's just what I want to do. But basically Authorized Tags is *loosely* based off of Authorized Heading from my cataloging course lol. Basically I've cleaned up the language and created more of a type and tier organization (“Evan Buckley is a Teacher” and “Bartender Buck” are now “Teacher! Buck” and “Bartender! Buck” respectfully and are specific character tags under the broad character tag of “Not a Firefighter! Evan Buckley”) so I'll be able to find things easier… when I finished retagging the like 3000 records that I've been tagging multi select up until now 😭. This is also giving me the chance to pull my OOC/Bashing tag into a little alien 👽 check box- like I said the tags are mine some creators tag way more extensively than me, others imo under tag– bashing isn't a DNF for me and I just ignore it when fix are tagged “Specific Character! Bashing” because sometimes people will tag that when it's just canon accurate behavior in my opinion? And again actual bashing doesn't bother me *most of the time* but it is one of the things that I want to know about effect on first glance if I'm going to reread.

Series was a single select property up until my last post actually… it was much easier to convert because unlike tags not every fic is in a series lol. But also I am going to go back and see if there were any fics that aren't in what I would consider a series but are how some creators use series like a place where they collect their one shots or a bunch of fic that they wrote with a single trope or even personal entries to fandom challenges, I also decided to use this database to track works that were inspired by other works if it's a very direct correlation– like if there's a sequel or one shot in the same world written by another Creator. The previous/next relations direct to other related works within the database, if Fic 1 is previous to Fic 2, Fic 2 is next to Fic 1. You'll be surprised how long it took me to add these fields or you'll think it's overkill– it's both. Part of the reason that I really needed these is because both the tags and the series properties were select properties. I could tag a fic as a sequel fic but that didn't directly connect me to its predecessor, I can see that'll work as part of a series but I would still have to leave the record to then go and look to see what else is in that series. It's kind of a non-issue. Obviously all of this is non-issues. This is way too in-depth for what it is. But it's going to be even more of a non-issue now that Series is a separate database but I'll probably still keep it for conveniences sake because if nothing else it is convenient.

Housekeeping– when did I start and when did I finish the fic? Was it a favorite? Was there a quote that I took note of while reading it?

Meta-Metadata (I had that labeled as just metadata for an embarrassingly long time considering literally the entire record is metadata…) I used to have a record created property but it broke somehow. I don't know I want it back. I'm going to try at some point. I just haven't gotten around to it. It's not like a useful thing. It's just interesting to see how long after a record is created I back get around to reading it you know? But the two check boxes there are formulas attached to the read status. The first one includes up-to-date works as read And the second one only includes read read works as read– I like keeping up to date with a few authors so if they have work in progress work that I am keeping up to date with, I want it included in their tally on their record. So I have two separate roll-ups for read lol.

You'll see on the completed record that the only thing that I have written in the bottom part is reread dates. I don't know, I've never felt the need to take notes outside of the records? Or if I do, it's very rarely. I haven't really figured out a way to record reread dates in a way that doesn't seem clunky to me so I just put it there.

But yeah as you can see way too extensive lol a lot of these properties won't apply to every fic and are therefore hidden when empty (a few are always hidden in the collapsed view (Next/Previous notably) because if I'm looking for that information I'll look for it, you know?)

So here is a completed record of one of my favorite fics!

As you can see, a few things have been collapsed the labeling is always hidden because I don't really need it it's just so it's not a wall of properties on the back end, but you can also easily find the information that's important in my opinion?

Anyway I'm tagging @percyjackson-winchester because they asked me too if you have questions or want me to make a follow up post about the Series of Creator Databases (of the Tags Database when I finish it lol) let me know 😅