#but it's not GREAT either wow

[aparticularbandit]

several sentences sunday

I was tagged by @spyridonya!  ...whose name I will eventually learn to type out on here.  XD

I will tag @only-freaking-sunflowers (belle if you have agatha/eve/caro/agnes stuff then grabby hands for that), @hahnspoetrywrites, @butimnotasexyrussian, and @our-blood-is-our-ink.  If any of you have things you would like to share with the class please and thank.

Alright, cool, bits and bops of current projects.

I will submit five!

...under the cut because this gets long, but I’ll also tell you what they are in case you don’t want to read:

1) Glass Onion Family Fluff

2) The Nature of Soulmates (next chapter)

3) Agatha/Eve ACTUAL Date (next one-shot)

4) Roisa Soulmate Timer AU Book 4 (...this has been done for almost two years and I really just need to edit it)

5) Noir Fic (which has been done even longer and is on the fifth draft and really needs some heavy revising)

Birdie Dresses Claire which is exactly what it says on the tin.

“Clairebear, I’m going to tell you a secret,” [Birdie] says, wrapping her arms around Claire’s waist and resting her head on her shoulder, “but you’ve got to promise you’re not going to tell anybody.”

Claire couldn’t promise anything right now.  She can’t say anything right now that wouldn’t come out as incoherent mumbling because she’s not sure if she’s comfortable with this or uncomfortable with this.  Birdie, do you even realize—

Birdie begins to play with Claire’s hair, wrapping strands of it around one finger, and if Claire thought she could say anything, she certainly can’t now.  “So you remember how I used to fix everyone’s clothes?”

It’s been a while, but Claire remembers.  Back when everyone had first met, when they’d first become friends, when Andi had convinced them it would be cheaper if they all moved into a little house together, and then they could pull their resources to help each other out (and she’d been right, but it had been weird, like living in a frat house, sometimes, with Duke in the basement and the sort of bro-ship he’d built up with Lionel), Birdie set herself up as their tailor.  It was one of the things she was trying – looking at fashion from the clothes side of things instead of the model side of things – and it helped her to practice on their clothes…and when she got good at it, it had helped them to have clothes tailored to fit each of them specifically, even if they just got cheap jeans from Walmart, because it made them look sharper.  More capable.  And Birdie had gone from tailoring their clothes to making some of her own design, and—

Claire swallows once.  Nods. “I remember.”

“I, uh.  I still have all of your sizes.”  Birdie giggles, buries her head in the slope of Claire’s neck, smiles against her skin, and then continues, “Not just yours, but.  All of us? So sometimes, when I’m really bored, I just.”  The fingers of the hand still around Claire’s waist drum against her skin.  “Peg says it’s good to keep me busy doing something that isn’t Twitter.”  She slumps, pouts.  “Bras are harder to make, but I can do it.”

“You….”  Claire takes a moment, wets her lips.  “You make us clothes.”

Birdie nods.  “Mmhm.”

“And you don’t…you didn’t tell any of us about this.”

Birdie nods again.  “Mmhm.” Her head tilts.  “Well, I think Andi knows, but she asks for stuff from me.  You don’t.  Duke never does.  Lionel does sometimes, but only when he’s already found something he likes and just can’t get it in the right color.” Without thinking, she scowls, bites soft into Claire’s shoulder, hangs there for a second.  “That’s not the same, though,” she mutters into Claire’s skin.

Claire swallows again.  The worst thing about Birdie – the absolute worst thing about Birdie – is that she doesn’t mean anything by this.  Being handsy.  Setting her teeth into Claire’s shoulder.  It’s just her.  And yet Claire still shivers when she does it, like she does mean something when she knows – she knows – she doesn’t.  “So you’re saying you have a bra.  For me.  For this dress you’ve made?”

“I didn’t make the dress.”  Birdie unhooks her teeth from Clarie’s shoulder, and Claire resists the urge to turn to her, to open her eyes, because she already knows the confused expression Birdie is wearing.  “You’re not ready for the dress I made for you.”

Somehow, this does not make Claire feel any better about this whole letting Birdie dress her thing.

“But I made a bra—”

The Nature of Soulmates chapter whatever we’re on now (is it really nine?!)

Outside, a brisk autumn breeze tussles Wanda’s hair, cools the unanticipated heat that now flows through your veins – the opposite of yesterday, when you’d been struck freezing again simply from grazing the thinnest thread of a fragile leaf.  It isn’t silent; it can’t be, with the vroom of cars that speed past, the honking when one driver doesn’t notice that the light has changed as soon as the one behind them would like, the chirping of birds that you can almost make out underneath everything else, if you really think about it.  But that doesn’t mean things can’t still feel awkward, full of things you want to say but don’t or the expectation that Wanda has something to say but doesn’t, because awkward doesn’t need true silence to still be silent.

This, however, is not awkward.  Wanda sneaks glances at you every now and again as she sips at her chamomile tea, and whenever she meets your eyes, her lips curve up in what is almost a smile, although she hides that with her paper cup as much as possible.  For your part, maybe you shouldn’t be staring at her, tracking her every movement, the excitement you can read beneath everything, but you can’t stop.  You lift your thermos, sip at the last dregs of the hot apple cider you’d poured into it an hour or so ago (you still aren’t used to the café’s coffee not being shitty, and you still know better than to pour that much caffeine down your throat on any given day when you don’t want a huge anxiety attack), and smile when Wanda glances over to you in the same motion with her cup, meets your eyes, glances away quickly, and then looks back, meets your eyes again, and holds your gaze.

“So,” you start, not wanting to break the comfortable air that has fallen between you.

“So?” Wanda echoes, waiting for what you might say, both brows raising with the slightest hint of fear.

“Do you, um.  Do you live around here?”  Okay, that’s awkward.

Actual Agave Autumn Date

Eve looks at her text for probably a good ten minutes before sending it, swallowing hard as she clicks the button.  The last time she’d even brought up the idea of a date, Agatha had been extremely uncomfortable, and even though that had, eventually, turned out well, she’d spent a week avoiding her texts and scrubbing dishes until her hands got raw and broke down crying in her hallway. She’d rather not have to go through all of that again.  Hopefully setting the text up like one of those old school notes that she’d passed in middle school and elementary school and that had almost always (fuck Timmy Newton) ended with the warm, happy feeling of the boy she’d had a crush on sending it back with the y circled would succeed.  Of course, her mom hadn’t actually let her go out with any of those boys, but sometimes she’d set up playdates with them (when she was in elementary school) or let her go to dances with them (when she was in middle school, which didn’t really count as a date, but at the time, it’d been close enough).

do you wanna go out with me?

please text one: y/n

That’s not the point.

The point is that hopefully sending it in this format means that Agatha won’t have the same reaction she did last time.  Actually, sending it as a text instead of just dropping it on her one morning, right after she’d woken up and was probably more than a little groggy, is probably also a better idea.  Maybe she should always bring up the date idea as a text.  Give Agatha more time to think about it before she says—

y

Eve stares at the text.  She maybe should have thought this through.

y as in yes or y as in why

The Time of Your Life: Book Four: Love Is Not A Victory March

Michael Cordero, Jr. had never had a strong fascination with hotels like the Marbella.  He knew they existed, but to him, they had always seemed like tourist traps, destinations for people who didn’t live in Florida, meant for an elite sort of people that he and his family had never and would never be part of.  That made it sound as though he had a strong distaste for them, and maybe, to some extent, that was true, but for the most part, he just didn’t think about them.

That was until his timer went off for one of the waitresses who worked there.

At the time, Michael couldn’t have guessed that’s what she was, and in the years since, years he’d spent watching her from afar while he tracked down a crime lord who had grown mysteriously silent until, finally, he’d been connected to the very same hotel where his soulmate worked, he’d found that distaste slowly growing.  His soulmate deserved better, and he couldn’t wait to see her grow into whatever that better would be.

Mostly he couldn’t wait to spend his time watching something other than this stupid tourist trap hotel and its absolutely unattractive current manager with his rippling muscles that looked like they could burst out of his shirt at any moment or his leggy blonde wife who seemed to have no sense of propriety and wore bootie shorts everywhere like she wanted to be seen as a piece of meat. Not that he was one of those misogynistic assholes who thought that women couldn’t wear whatever they wanted, because he was not that.

He was just growing very, very tired of watching all of it.

Until Roman Zazo fell from a window on the twelfth floor and landed with the sharp point of an ice Marlin piercing through his chest.

Then everything seemed to suddenly grow a lot more interesting.

The Story of a Girl (title subject to change)

The sun shone down on the Manor, illuminating its ruins. Once the buildings must have been reminiscent of the ancient Greeks, but now all that remained of those glorious structures were their crumbling Corinthian columns.  Living vineyards filled the grounds, a gentle breeze rustling their branches, and beyond these stood three intact buildings, built of decaying bricks.  Throughout the rows of grapes stood a handful of women who tended the berries, their white robes barely so much as fluttering in the breeze. Some checked the leaves while others watered the still fragile fruit.  Others disappeared from their work into the three standing buildings – most headed to the nearest building for their midday meal.  On the whole, it looked like a child’s play area, bricks torn and made into new creations, while ants swarmed everywhere.

One woman glanced up at the sun, her lips parting as though to drink it in with a relaxed breath.  She closed her eyes as the heat of the sun beat against her skin, the purple fabric along the inside of her robe.  

Altena opened her lavender eyes and turned away from the plants, heading into the building farthest away.  As she walked, the breeze tugged strands of her copper hair out of its loose braid without throwing them in her face.  She shuffled down the pathway, steps hurried but steady.  A few of the other women – her children, her servants – nodded in her direction as a way of acknowledgement, knowing that even the softest of words to her might distract from her current task.

As she walked, a calm smile appeared on her face – one that, although it appeared somewhat motherly, nevertheless did not reach her eyes. Therein one could see no joy or sparkle, just a grim determination and a deep-seated poise.

The smile did not leave as she entered the cool stone building, nor did it disappear as she reached her destination, footsteps slowing to a halt outside a bedroom just a few feet from the inner temple.  She did not hesitate as she knocked twice on the closed door.  She waited a moment, listening to the hustle behind the door.  It did not concern her – not because she trusted her people but because experience was on their side.   This was not the first time they had performed this particular procedure, but she knew it would be the last.

She did not expect that they would live long enough to pull it off a third time.

A woman with graying hair cracked the door open and upon seeing her mistress she opened it a sliver further.  “Lady Altena,” she murmured with a lowering of her head.  “We have just finished.  Would you like to see her?”

“No, thank you, Anastasia.  I just wanted to make sure everything is going according to plan.”

“Yes, mistress,” the woman said, averting her eyes. “Joanne is on her way to get the transport now.”

“Good.”  Altena let her smile grow without losing any of the serene charm.  “I trust that you will make sure nothing will go wrong. I’m counting on you.”

Anastasia nodded and closed the door once more, but before it shut, Altena could see an Asian teenager lying on a cot, seemingly asleep. She refused to focus on her, the checkmate, the last piece to the puzzle that was her actions.  Instead, she stepped away and headed into the Temple, where a large carving of two women, half-kneeling with swords in their hands, stood.  She stopped in front of the carving, gazing not at the two women but on the high priestess behind them, her hood lifted to hide her hair but not her serene face.

The two women may have been a team of assassins, but their actions were always guided by a soldier, a woman standing behind as guardian and head of their small family.  But now the soldiers who might once have birthed them were just as corrupt as the world they were meant to save.  No one, even the woman staring at the carving, could direct them without bias. But hopefully, with her current plans in motion, the new girls to take these women’s place would be free to seek the light together.

Altena bowed her head in front of the statue, hands clasped together in reverence.  She closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath.  If her plans within plans worked, then this new team would become the new man within the man, the new love within the love, and, above all, the new sin within the sin.  And with their dark hands, they would protect and save the grieving children of this world from everything that would corrupt them.

The breath escaped from her thin lips as she released it, letting go of her last strands of control.  From now on, she would work in the shadows and wait for her saplings to return to her.  Her small mouth moved in a whisper to form these words—

“Let Le Grand Retour begin.”

[elexuscal]

so. June. Pride Month.

listen, i love pride month. obviously. but partly as a consequence of being Terminally Online, partly because my country's pride month is in July which means all the actual in-person events don't start for another 30 days, often my first association with it is All The Discourse Posts

which means every year i have to physically restrain myself from making in-universe Pride discourse for different fictional universes

[madbard]

“Ford is irredeemably self-centered” this, “Ford’s a bad person” that, etc…

Alright. Tell me then.

What was he supposed to do?!?!

Be a better brother? Ford loved Stan! When they were children, Ford took care of his brother as best he could. But Ford was also a kid in a bad situation, and there were limits to what he could do. Not to mention that Stan relied so heavily on Ford that it honestly wasn’t healthy for either of them. Stan couldn’t stand by himself and he wasn’t trying. They were both struggling; maybe pin that on the parents instead of the kids.

Not be angry at Stan for messing with his experiment? Of course Ford was angry! This was his dream college; in that moment he thought his entire future was crumbling. I assure you, if my sibling had ruined my chances of getting into my dream school I would have been more than a little upset, and I’m sure the same goes for most of the people reading this. Of course, Ford did hold onto that anger for considerably longer than was justified, but in this case I would argue that Ford less “held a grudge for 10 years out of spite” and more “never got the chance to make things right with his brother and held onto that anger because it was better than the nauseating guilt over that final argument, the uncertainty at times that his brother was even alive.” (Which is not to say that Ford isn’t spiteful. Our man has plenty of spite. But him being spiteful is not the only thing going on here.) Which brings us to our next point.

Stop Stan from being kicked out? How?! That household does not appear to have been a safe place for either of the brothers. Should Ford have gotten himself kicked out too? Should he have known exactly what to say to talk his father down - the man who just violently threw his twin out of the house? Ford didn’t kick Stan out. He just wasn’t able to stop it from happening, and that’s not something any teen should be blamed for.

Behave himself when reuniting with Stan at the culmination of the worst period of his life thus far? There’s stress. And then there’s being dangerously sleep-deprived and at the mercy of a horrifying demon that betrayed you, leaving you alone in a shack in the woods with no one to call for help except your estranged brother, who’s complaining about a mullet, of all things. Yeah, I’m not going to say Ford’s behavior was anything other than atrocious here. But really. How well would you handle that?

Thanked his brother? Stan could have destroyed the universe; it makes sense that Ford’s upset! He’s also had literally decades to stew in the terror and fury he experienced in those last moments before falling through the portal (something which almost certainly would not have happened if it weren’t for Stan). Again, Ford’s not acting like the world’s best brother here, but it’s understandable.

Ford’s not perfect. He can be arrogant, spiteful, and bitter. He makes serious mistakes (often due to his own hubris) that put himself, his loved ones, and sometimes the entire universe in grave peril. Ford is, in fact, deeply flawed. That’s part of what makes him a fun character! It’s also what makes him a well-written and believable character. Yes, Ford acts like a jerk. He does so quite often.

Ford also spends nearly the entire narrative bouncing from one deeply toxic situation to another, desperately trying to survive and make life better for himself and his family and watching as his brother makes mistake after mistake - sometimes making choices with severe, negative consequences on Ford’s own life.

Ford is doing the best he can. He’d not a bad person. He tries to be good. He tries to do the right thing.

He just fails sometimes.

Don’t we all?

[violetheart77]

All was golden when the ☀️Day met the 🌔Night . . .

Margaret & Samuel edits for Day 13 of @pulpmusicalsfortnight2024 with the theme Light/Dark!

I’m sooooo Normal about them I swear guys

(All background components sourced from Public Domain images found on Rawpixel)

[theladyfae]

smith & jones shenanigans <3 – starcrossed losers (the fratellis)

[figofswords]

wow I didn’t think reblogging that tea post and then seeing people’s tags would deal me such strong psychic damage. come over I can fix you I can find a tea you will like. “I don’t like tea” how can you say that as a blanket statement when there are so many vastly different kinds of tea. head in hands

[supermusicallee]

NO other show in existence understands sister dynamics better than fleabag. especially from the perspective of older sisters i believe. having the same character yell "...you're fine! you'll always be fine. you'll always be interesting, with your quirky cafe and your dead best friend. you just make me feel like i've failed," AND "the only person i'd run through an airport for is you" !!!!!!!!! it's insane and it's exactly how i feel

[thebest-medicine]

I just wanted to type out some feelings here

I really love who I am on here…who I’m allowed to be… I feel like I can be really authentically myself and connect with people about something that I have had such a fear/shame/insistence on hiding in most areas of my life but it’s just like..wow here’s this cool little place that you made for yourself and other people made for themselves and joined together and it’s like. Wow I can MEET the PEOPLE in my little website and they’re REAL and I can TALK to them about this stuff and they GET ME and we have SILLY COMMON CANON EVENTS FROM CHILDHOOD it’s just so fun and crazy and makes me want to cry and hug everyone and ahhhhh!!!!!

i built up so much of my psyche on the idea that my ‘wires’ in my brain got crossed and I was just this weird person who no one else thought like at all (add to kink/fetish that I was figuring out wtf ace/demi was but didn’t even hear of that or anything like it til like college) and then I meet nice cool people on here and then they’re like hey want to meet up and DO THIS FUN THIS with no implications and like ?!?!?!!? And then it’s FUN FOR BOTH OF YOU ?!? is this what vanilla allo people feel like when they have sex all the time??!

anyway I just really appreciate this blog and place and all of you and (not to sound like a middle aged white suburban mother of two doing yoga but) I want to work on honoring this part of myself more in my life and being able to be more comfortable with all of me

[television-overload]

Nick sneaking up on Parker and lifting him and shaking him to crack his back 😂😂😂 whenever stuff like this happens, I always picture Gibbs in his place, like whoever did that would be on the ground immediately and with a massive smack to the back of the head

[blueskittlesart]

POST MORE SWORD OF FATE PLS IM BEGGING

i have very little in terms of actual art LMAO but i CAN explain the sword thing because i checked and i did in fact never make this plot point public. i struggled for a while with creating a villain for this story until i realized that. i put "sword" in the title of the game. of course it has to be about the fucking sword. DUH.

so i want SOF to deal very heavily with religion, specifically the way in which hyrule's religion forms post-sksw but pre-reincarnation. i've placed it on the timeline directly after sksw, making it the first actual reincarnation in hyrule. what this means is that there's no actual proof yet that the reincarnation thing is real and not just an insane bluff on demise's part, and so several key characters including link and zelda barely believe in hylia or demise at all when the story starts. my thought with this setting's version of ganon is that he's the polar opposite of the nonbelievers. The gerudo don't really exist as of now, but he DOES come from the desert region of hyrule--specifically, he was raised in a cultlike offshoot of the sheikah religion which interpreted the hylia/demise myth completely literally and believes that a doomsday is coming, heralded by the foretold return of demise. Because of this, he knows more about the cycle and how to set it in motion than basically any other character. Crucially, he and his people are some of the only ones at this point aware of the existence of the master sword.

ganon finds. a sword. a sword which he THINKS is the master sword. and this theory is only reinforced when the sword begins to speak to him about his destiny and the salvation of hyrule. unfortunately it is not the master sword and he ends up basically a pawn in the greater plans of what's left of demise & ghirahim within that sword, manipulated into attempting to revive demise and destroy the reincarnated hero and princess. he remains in denial until basically the very end of the final battle, completely convinced that he is the true savior of hyrule and LINK is the one being misled. ghirahim is a very good manipulator lol

[lilidawnonthemoon]

[miharuhebinata]

you guys really weren't kidding about how fucking good lake mungo is

[skitskatdacat63]

Some matador studies :)

+ ref pic I like but couldn't even attempt to draw 😭

[meiloorunsmoothie]

jeremy jordan this week...

You all look BEAUTIFUL

About right there, you’re probably not going to get any 50 dollar tickets, so you should probably just leave

Tell me your names!

Did you spray paint her? I’ve never seen a dog that color

I don’t know what time it is where you are, but here it’s morning

Standing ovation from your crowd.......I did nothing

Is it 40 feet???

It’s a little awkward though. You’re just in Times Square and just like *looks around*

You weren’t watching me the whole time?

I’m gonna go home y’all

We went to target. I got a bathing suit.

Please love me. Please don’t fire me.

I don’t really have any pockets, so I have to figure out what I’m doing with my hands

It’s better in the show!

Jay Gatsby is a little bit of a gangster 😏

[that-was-anticlimactic]

*sprays fandoms with a spray bottle* height is NOT a personality trait!!!

[amelikos]

Something about the way Spinel, Friede and Liko's first Pokemon all share (or will share) the Dark type under certain circumstances (Spinel's Blacky being Dark type, Friede's Lizardon becoming Dark type upon Terastalization, and Liko's Nyarote will eventually gain the Dark type if it evolves into Masquernya). And how all three of them craft strategies around diversions, creating distractions, observations and running away.

Also thinking about how Spinel's Orbem is a Psychic type, similarly to Liko's Tebrim. Psychic moves being used to restrain or limit movements, or stop opponent's moves and use them against them. (Liko's Tebrim using her Mind Power during the battle against Grusha to stop her opponent's Icicle Spears and send them right back at it really reminded me of Spinel using his Orbem's Psychic moves to restrain Friede's Lizardon's movements back in HZ014.)