#comic I guess? there might be a second part no promises

[harpywitharobot]

Oh

[pucksandpower]

Ice Queen: Fire Meets Ice

Max Verstappen x Räikkönen!Reader

Summary: how you and Max went from playing together in the paddock while your fathers raced to being the ones racing

Series Masterlist

First Meetings

“Who’s that, Papa?” You ask, pointing to a slightly older boy playing with toy cars a few feet away.

“That’s Max,” Kimi replies, glancing down at you with an amused expression. “Wanna go play?”

You consider it for a moment, your two-year-old face taking on a comically serious expression. “Will he share his cars?”

Your father chuckles, “Only one way to find out.”

As you toddle over, Max looks up, his blue eyes curious. “Hi. I’m Max.”

You stare at him, sizing him up with all the intensity a two-year-old can muster. “I want that one,” you declare, pointing to a red toy car.

Max raises an eyebrow, a hint of a challenge in his gaze. “That’s my favorite.”

You mimic the same deadpan expression you've seen Kimi wear countless times. “Mine now.”

Max seems taken aback for a second but then bursts out laughing. “Okay, okay! We can share.”

For the rest of the day, the two of you are inseparable. Racing toy cars, building makeshift tracks, and causing minor chaos in the paddock.

At one point, you both decide to “race.” Max, being older, naturally has the advantage but that doesn’t deter you. You’re determined to keep up.

“Papa says I’m fast,” you tell Max confidently as you both line up for the big race.

Max smirks, “My vader says I’m faster.”

You frown, looking genuinely offended. “No way.”

The two of you race, or more accurately, engage in a hilarious toddler trot. It’s less about speed and more about who can go the longest without tripping over their own feet.

As the day draws to an end, Max’s father approaches. He doesn’t seem as warm as your father but he nods in acknowledgment, “Looks like you two got on well.”

Kimi ruffles your hair, looking down at you with a smirk, “She has a way with people.”

You and Max exchange a final high-five, both of you making a pact to race again someday but next time in real cars.

“Pwomise?” You ask Max, holding out your pinky.

He nods solemnly, linking his pinky with yours. “Promise.”

As you leave the paddock, your father leans down, “I think you’ve made a friend for life there.”

You nod, clutching one of the toy cars Max let you keep. “He’s alwight. But I’m still faster.”

Kimi chuckles, lifting you into his arms. “No doubt about it.”

Until We Meet Again

“Papa,” you begin, tugging at Kimi’s leg, “why is Max packing all his cars?”

Kimi crouches down to your level. “His papa is leaving F1, so they won’t be around next season.”

You frown, not fully understanding the implications but sensing the seriousness of the situation. “But ... I want to play with Max.”

The boy in question walks over, his toy cars clutched tightly in his hand. “It’s not fair,” he says, stomping his foot with a little scowl.

Your lip starts to wobble. “Very not fair.”

Max’s shoulders slump. “I’m going to miss this. And ... and I guess I’ll miss you.”

“You’re leaving? Like ... fowever?”

He nods, looking down. “Yeah. But we can still be friends, right?”

You think it over for a moment then smile, a plan forming in your mind. “We can write letters!”

Max seems to consider this. “That sounds cool. Let’s do it!”

The two of you spend the rest of the day drawing letters to each other seated on the rough tarmac, complete with scribbles and doodles. The content might be indecipherable to any adult but to you and Max, they’re precious messages.

As the final race of the season ends, and it’s time for Max and Jos to leave, you give Max a tight hug, your small arms wrapping around him. “Don’t forget, okay? Letters!”

He hugs you back. “I promise.”

You watch as they walk away, Max turning back every few steps to wave. Kimi, sensing your sadness, lifts you into his arms. “You okay?”

You nod, clutching the red toy car — Max’s favorite — that he gave you as a parting gift. “I’ll miss him, Papa.”

Your father presses a kiss to your forehead. “I know. But hey, you have a pen pal now.”

You giggle, the idea bringing some comfort. “Yeah. And when we’re older, we’ll race together!”

Kimi chuckles, “No doubt about it.”

Reunited and It Feels So Good

“Who’s that guy over there?” You ask, pointing to a young driver in a Toro Rosso race suit chatting with his team.

Your father squints in the direction you’re pointing and smirks. “That’s Max Verstappen.”

You blink in surprise, studying the taller figure with a more chiseled face. “Max? As in my Max?”

Kimi nods, eyes crinkling in amusement. “One and the same.”

“He’s … changed. I mean, he kind of looks like Sid the Sloth from that Ice Age movie.”

Your father chokes on his drink. “You always did have a way with words.”

Without any hesitation, you start walking over to Max, Kimi trailing behind. As you approach, Max looks up and for a moment, there’s no recognition in his eyes. But then something clicks.

“Is that ...” His eyes get even wider.

You smirk and cross your arms. “Last time I checked, Sid the Sloth wasn’t a Formula 1 driver.”

Max bursts out laughing, the sound echoing around the garage. “You haven’t changed a bit!”

You raise an eyebrow, “Can’t say the same for you. You used to be so cute. What happened?”

He grins, a hint of the mischievous boy you used to play with still shining through. “It’s good to see you again. Been too long.”

Your father walks up, throwing an arm around your shoulder, “She’s just here to make sure I don’t slack off.”

Max chuckles and shoots a wink, “Knowing you, I’m sure she has her work cut out for her.”

You nod sagely, “Full-time job, really.”

As the day winds down after free practice, Max finds you outside the Ferrari motorhome. “We should hang out more. Catch up properly.”

You tap your chin exaggeratingly, “Hmm ... I guess I could spare some time for an old friend.”

Max nudges you playfully, “It’s like Kimi copy and pasted his personality to make you.”

“Someone’s got to keep you on your toes.”

With a promise to meet up soon, the two of you part ways but not before your father adds, “Stay out of trouble, you two.”

You and Max exchange amused looks. “No promises.”

A Nudge in the Right Direction

“Remind why exactly we are watching an F2 race again?” Christian Horner asks, adjusting his sunglasses as he tries to blend into the crowd.

Max grins sheepishly, “Just thought it would be fun to watch some up-and-coming talent, you know? Besides, there’s someone racing today you might find ... interesting.”

Franz Tost, who has also been “accidentally” dragged along, narrows his eyes, “This isn’t one of your schemes, is it?”

Max looks offended, “Me? Scheme? Never.”

Christian chuckles, “Alright, Max. Who are we looking at?”

Max points to a car getting ready on the front row. “That one. Trust me.”

As the feature race begins, it’s clear who Max is talking about. Your driving style stands out with precision, aggression, and an undeniable talent reminiscent of a certain Finn of few words.

“Hmm,” Christian murmurs, watching intently as you expertly navigate the track. “Who is that?”

Max smirks, “Someone who’s used to the world of F1, thanks to her father.”

Franz raises an eyebrow, “Kimi’s daughter?”

Max nods, “Impressive, right?”

The two team principals watch with sharp eyes as you overtake competitors with ease and display skills beyond your years. It’s clear you’re a natural.

As the checkered flag waves and you cross the finish line in P1, Max turns to Christian and Franz with anticipation. “What do you think?”

“She’s certainly got the talent.”

“And the lineage. Räikkönen skill is clearly in her DNA.”

Max smiles widely, “So ... Red Bull or AlphaTauri?”

Christian chuckles, “You’re quite the talent scout.”

Franz sighs, shaking his head but smiling, “We’ll have to discuss it of course. But I think either team would be lucky to have her.”

“I just have one question,” Christian interjects. “How is she not part of a development program already?”

Max shrugs, “Kimi didn’t want her to limit her options and have to wait around to break into Formula 1 by binding herself to a team that might not have any seats open for a while. Just thought you guys should see her in action.”

Christian pats Max on the back, “Good call. We’ll be in touch.”

As they walk away, Max sends a thumbs-up in your direction. You, still high on adrenaline and not yet aware of the high-profile spectators, simply return the gesture, wondering what the mischievous grin on Max’s face is all about and whether it should worry you.

I’m Coming Up

“Guess what?” You blurt out as soon as Max picks up the phone.

“You ate my hidden stash of stroopwafels?”

You roll your eyes even though he can’t see. “No, although that sounds tempting. I just signed with Red Bull to race for AlphaTauri next season!”

There’s a moment of silence before Max erupts, “I knew it! That is brilliant!”

Your smile widens at his enthusiasm. “Thanks. Thought you’d like to know.”

Max snickers, “You’ll be driving for Red Bull in no time, watch.”

You laugh through the speaker, “Oh? Ready for some actual competition?”

The seriousness with which he responds makes you pause for a second, “Absolutely. I’ve been bored without you to race against.”

“Careful what you wish for.”

He feigns offense, “You think I can’t handle the heat?”

“I’m just saying,” you tease, “that once I’m there, you better get used to the sight of my rear wing.”

Max laughs again, “I’ve missed your comebacks.”

“And I’ve missed using them against you,” you shoot back.

“Seriously though, congrats. I’m so excited to see where this takes you.”

You nibble your lip, “Thanks, Maxie. That means a lot coming from you.”

“Just don’t forget us little people when you’re taking F1 by storm, okay?”

You snort, “Little people? Last I checked, you’re taller than me. And probably the best driver of his generation.”

“Probably?”

“Well,” you draw out, “Charles Leclerc exists …”

“Y/N …” Max whines.

“Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist. It’s not like he’ll do much damage to you if Ferrari keeps up this pattern.”

You can almost hear Max’s pout through the phone. “Fine.”

“But,” you grin, “that doesn’t mean I won’t.”

“May the best driver win. Just promise not to leave me in the dust.”

You laugh, “No promises.”

Easy Choices

“All right, drivers, ready for some quick-fire questions?” The Red Bull social media coordinator asks, camera poised.

Max nods, “Born ready.”

You tighten your ponytail, “Let’s do this.”

Sergio and Pierre exchange amused glances, clearly anticipating the shenanigans ahead.

“First question,” the coordinator starts, “Which driver would you want to be stuck on a deserted island with?”

Without hesitation, you and Max respond in unison.

“Max.”

“Y/N.”

“Always so predictable,” Pierre laughs.

Sergio grins, “Afraid of a little competition?”

You raise an eyebrow with a smirk, “From you? Not particularly.”

The group erupts in laughter and Max adds, “It’s just logic. We’ve known each other the longest.”

The coordinator smiles, clearly enjoying the banter, “Okay, okay, next question. Who is most likely to get lost in a new city?”

Again, without missing a beat, both you and Max point to each other.

Sergio chuckles, “Clearly, there’s a pattern here.”

Pierre nods in mock seriousness, “And if you two ever do get stranded on that island, please send us a postcard.”

You laugh, “Deal.”

“Last question,” the coordinator announces, “Which driver do you think has the best taste in music?”

“Definitely not Max,” you shake your head.

“Excuse me? My playlist is legendary!”

Pierre chimes in, “If by legendary you mean questionable ...”

Sergio retorts, “At least it’s better than your love for French pop.”

“It’s cultured!”

As the session wraps up, the coordinator grins, “You two are a match made in racing heaven.”

You and Max laugh but both of you can’t help the way your cheeks warm at the comment or how you avoid meeting each other’s eyes on the way out of the studio.

The social media coordinator must spend so much time online that fans’ ships are getting to her too.

That’s clearly the only reason she would say that.

Nothing else.

Nope.

Taglist: @ironmaiden1313 @ilovedreming @jamie2305 @reidsworld @notyouraveragemochii @faithm120601 @idkiwantchocolatee @cha-hot @formulaonemad3 @eugene-emt-roe @champomiel @topguncultleader @gods-menace @razielchrysanderoctavius @sainzluvrr @kimmchijjajang @imagandom @roseseraj @minkyungseokie @daniellarogers @that-aesthetic-chic @elijahslover @coffeewhore18 @glitterf1 @a-mixers-serenity @itsjustkhaos @leilanixx @scoobdoobdoob @lillianacristina @keii134 @olliesoakberry @ruleroftheuniverse @mellowarcadefun

[five-bi-five-mind]

omg when halloween comes we’re gonna need a top!jj smut (ofc) where they dress up and r’s outfit is very revealing

they go trick or treating with henry and the rest of the bau, so jj has to keep her hands to herself. eventually henry goes to bed and jj finally gets her hands on r

you’re the person i can see writing this AMAZINGLY

Cute Costume

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Pairing: Jennifer Jareau x fem!reader

Genre: Smut

Words: 4k+

Summary: There are not many good costumes to choose from when you need to buy one last minute. Unfortunately for you, you're stuck with a very revealing one. JJ is loving it, though, and even if you have a party to go to, she's finding it hard to keep her hands to herself.

Warnings: fingering (r receiving); oral (r receiving); edging kinda; top!JJ, bottom!r; clit play; nipple play; praise kink; JJ has a thing for costumes I guess?

A/N: This is a little different from the request. I just kind of ditched the trick-or-treating with Henry idea for a costume party... but anyways I hope you enjoy!

“God, this is ridiculous,” you muttered to yourself as you twisted and turned in front of the mirror. Currently, you were squeezed into a much too short for your liking, Dorothy dress. The way you grimaced at yourself in the mirror as you took in the way the skirt of the dress stopped far too high up your thighs was almost comical. You tried to pull down at the fabric, but it still remained just as short as you suspected. “Oh god,” you groaned again as your eyes made their way to the massive amount of cleavage that was visible with the top of the dress. 

Your eyes turned back to the other pile of outfits still waiting in their packages for you to try on. This was supposed to be the most modest one. Garcia picked out all of them, of course. And there weren’t even a lot to choose from to begin with. Not when Halloween was just a few days away. You hadn’t even planned to dress up, but Garcia decided to throw a last minute costume party and you couldn’t say no. Or, well, more like JJ agreed for you. And even with her party being semi-last minute, your costume planning was even more so. JJ had promised to go with you, but now it’s the day before the party and that still hasn’t happened. Why you thought Penelope would be a good alternative to costume shop with you, you didn’t know. All you did know was that you were seriously regretting that decision now. Apparently, when you said you wanted a cute costume, you two had very different definitions. 

Still in your short, little Dorothy dress, you filed through the other bags of costumes you had yet to try. It seemed like everything else had less fabric— meaning it showed even more skin than you’d like. If you went out to look for more costumes would you even be successful at this point?

“Hey how’s it— oh my gosh!” Penelope peaked her head in the changing room that moment, cutting off her own question the moment she saw you. “That. Is. Adorable!” She opened more of the changing room curtain as she took in your outfit and suddenly you had the urge to cover your whole body.

“Penelope,” you hissed, “all of these costumes show too much skin!”

“Just wait until you have the leggings and the shoes…” she didn’t seem to be listening to your protests. “Oh, and the basket! It’s perfect, you look so cute.”

“No, nope, no.” You shook your head. “This dress is too short. We need to go back out and find something else.” 

“I picked out the best I could find in the time we had,” Penelope pointed out. “So your only option is that one or to try the others.”

You looked back at the other options and thought it over. Part of you wasn’t so sure Penelope really looked for other costumes that fit your one request. There had to be something cuter… but then again the store was really cleared out. If you sent Penelope back out there for a second look she might come back with costumes you hate even more than the untried ones. Do you gamble for something better than this Dorothy costume or do you settle? 

“Did you try the Harley Quinn costume? I think that’s a good one too.” Garcia was now going through all the others she picked for you to try. “Maybe that one is-“ 

“No!” You panicked. That one showed your whole midriff and the shorts seemed shorter than the dress is. Dorothy might be your safest bet after all. “This is fine,” you looked down at your dress and gulped. “I love the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is great. It's very…” you gave Penelope a forced smile, “…cute.” 

“Isn’t it?” Penelope beamed at you, obviously proud of her own choices for your costume. “You look great!”

And that’s how you got saddled with a costume you’d never in a million years guess you’d be wearing. Penelope did set you up with all the rest of the accessories. The stockings, the red shoes, even the basket with a small dog plushie that was supposed to resemble Toto. 

Much like when you were in the store’s dressing room, it was a day later and you were now staring at yourself in the mirror with the same look on your face. The grimace was deep. You couldn’t imagine your wife’s whole team seeing you in this outfit and taking you seriously ever again. But then again, you thought about Penelope’s costume choice and you were a little relieved that you wouldn’t be the only one in an outfit you (and most others probably) would categorize as sexy. At least with Penelope’s sexy bunny outfit, she really knew how to wear it. It was perfect for her and she wore it with confidence. You, on the other hand, looked quite nervous and uncomfortable as you looked at yourself in the mirror. Sexy wasn’t really your vibe… especially in a public setting, but there’s a first for everything, right?

“Hey, are you almost ready?” JJ called from somewhere in the house. You couldn’t bring yourself to answer her, not when you were still stuck staring at yourself. Your mind was running through every possible back up plan you could think of, but there was no plan B for a costume change. The only options were excuses to cancel. Maybe you could say Henry was sick? But they probably knew he was with Will this weekend. What if you said you were sick? That wasn’t going to work and you knew it. JJ wouldn’t lie and she seemed like she really wanted to go to the party either way. Could you fake being sick to JJ? Maybe if you made it convincing… That wouldn’t work either. She would see right through you. You were screwed. 

“Hey, is everything—“ She cut herself off when she came to a skidding halt in the middle of the bedroom. “Holy shit.” 

You spun around so fast and your heart felt like it leapt in your throat. When your eyes landed on her, you froze much in the same way.

You had the same reaction that JJ did when you saw each other in costume. She was dressed as Supergirl and you didn’t think there was anything more fitting. Lucky for JJ, she had this costume ready so she didn’t need to shop. She looked so confident in it too, heroic even. There wasn’t a better costume. And it made her fifty times more attractive to you, if that were even possible.

Meanwhile, as JJ took in your short dress and the cleavage popping out from the top of it just right, her pupils were blown. She was practically salivating over how hot she found you in that outfit. Everything, in her opinion, complimented your body perfectly and all she could think about was getting her hands on you. 

It was really unexpected for her, to see that this was the costume you went with. She really didn’t expect for you to agree to something like this, but she knew it was all Garcia’s doing. Thank god for Garcia, JJ thought as she took in the way the dress made your legs look. 

“Wow,” JJ said with a heavy breath. “Look at you.” She suddenly was taking quick strides to where you were still standing frozen. She stopped right in front of you and her eyes dropped to your legs again before slowly dragging back up your body.

“Wow,” she sighed again. “This costume…”

“Ugh,” you groaned. “I know, it’s not really me.” 

“It’s just very unexpected,” JJ said as she reached out and played with the frill at the end of your dress. “But not bad. Definitely not bad.” Her hands were quickly making their way under your dress. There wasn’t much of your thighs that weren’t exposed by the shortness of the costume, but JJ was making quick work to run her hands up what wasn’t shown. 

“Hey- Stop!” You whined as you swatted JJ’s hand away. “It was all they had, okay?”

“Uh huh,” JJ hummed as her hands moved up the backs of your thighs. “It’s so… short.”

“Yeah, well,” you huffed, your hands bracing against JJ’s shoulders as she kept trying to practically grope you. She didn’t seem to care that you were trying your best to keep her from being all over you. “There’s not many options when you go looking for a costume the Friday before Halloween and you still want to look cute.” 

“Cute,” JJ repeated as her hands kept creeping up your dress. You let out a gasp when her hands reached your ass and she squeezed, effectively pulling you completely into her body. “Cute isn’t exactly the word I would go with…” she trailed off as she leaned forward and kissed down your barely covered chest. You bit your lip and tried your best to pretend like this wasn’t having an effect on you, but the way she was groping at you and pressing her body into yours had you blushing. 

“JJ…” you warned as her hands left your ass, only for one to return between your inner thighs. “JJ we have a party to-“ 

You were cut off with another gasp as you felt JJ boldly push your panties to the side with her fingers and press them to your clit. JJ looks up from where her lips were attached to your breast to see the flushed look on your face and the grin she gave you was nothing short of satisfied with herself for eliciting such a response in you. 

Part of you wanted to roll your eyes, but the way JJ quickly began rubbing circles against your clit only made them flutter closed. Your nails dug into JJ’s shoulder as she pressed more firmly to your clit. “You know,” She whispered against the bare skin of the top of your breasts. “I take it back. You do look cute like this.” 

She was being such an ass, but deep down you fucking loved it. Your hips barely moved against her as she kept playing with your clit, but she noticed and smirked even more at your actions. Your nails were digging harder into JJ now as she kept playing with you and you were sure your face was bright red from the way she was quickly working your body up. The fact that you were already so wet was embarrassing, especially when you had to leave at any minute. 

JJ, on the other hand, was enjoying this. The way everything about that costume just made it so easy for her to get hands on you was just another bonus in her mind. She kissed your lips and you immediately melted into her. You could feel her smirking against your lips as you kissed her back, but didn’t even care with how she kept touching you. When she pulled back from the kiss, all too soon, her lips fell yet again to what was exposed of your chest and she trailed them down with kisses and bites that were almost rough enough to leave marks behind. 

“What if we had a quickie before the party?” JJ’s voice was muffled by the way she had her head buried in your chest again. “I want to fuck you in that dress.” 

“JJ!” You finally had the sense to stop her from all that she was doing. “We don’t have time for this!” You pushed at her shoulders now and her fingers stopped. 

“So?” She said, looking up at you with the biggest pout.

“You know how I feel about being late.” You took a step back on shaky legs, trying to regain composure and pretend like the ache between your legs wasn’t tempting you. 

“Come on,” JJ whined. “You can’t tell me you’re good to go to the party now after—“ 

“Yes, we’re going now.” You didn’t want her to finish that sentence. She was going to break your resolve so fast if she kept looking at you like that. And you really did hate being late.

———————————————————

For someone who had such a serious life or death job like JJ, she really could be such a child. The way she sat next to you in the car, pouting the whole way, was ridiculous. You couldn’t stop yourself from rolling your eyes every time you looked over at her. She was also sure to let out very loud huffs any time her hand slid up your exposed thighs while you sat and you managed to swat it away. 

You had hoped that once you got to the party, JJ would be distracted enough by other people to stop being fixated on your costume. You were so wrong. If you were talking to someone across the room, you could still feel her eyes on you. Or more specifically, on your legs. Even if she was in a conversation with someone else, she was still frequently trying to check you out. 

When you were near her, she somehow was able to sneak subtle touches or just flat out grab your ass when no one was looking. It had you blushing like crazy, but no one seemed to notice. Lucky for you, you thought. 

All of JJ’s grabbiness did annoy you, but not because she was doing it necessarily. If you told her to completely keep her hands off she absolutely would. No, it was annoying you because it was reminding you of that unsolved ache between your legs that you chose to leave with. The more she touched your thighs, the more you squirmed and then that reaction just fueled JJ even more. It got to the point where you tried your best to stay on one side of the party with other friends while she stayed on the other. But that only worked for a while, as she kept trying to gravitate towards you. 

At one point, she wasn’t paying attention to the path in which she “naturally” tried to move towards you. She took a few steps backwards in your direction, hoping to land next to you, as she kept up the conversation. Only with this attempt, she took too far of a step back and bumped her back into yours. 

“Oh shit!” She exclaimed and you turned quickly to see that her actions had led her to spill her drink all over the front part of her costume. Part of you wanted to say that that was what she got for teasing you so much in public, but you held back. When she looked down at her wet clothes and back up at you she was wearing this helpless puppy kind of expression and you knew what she was going to ask before she even said. 

“Will you help me get cleaned up?” Her eyes didn’t show any ulterior motive. You looked at her for a moment before sighing. 

“Okay,” you gave in. “Come on.” You pulled her to Penelope’s bathroom, effectively missing the victorious grin that JJ had as she followed. 

In the bathroom, you immediately knew where Penelope kept some towels so you went shuffling in the right cabinet for them. Bent down and sifting through your towel options, you were completely unaware of JJ creeping up behind you. That is, until two hands again grabbed your ass. 

“Oh my god!” You jumped up and spun around. “We’re in Penelope’s bathroom!”

“So?” JJ gave you a guilt grin. “You just look so good in that outfit.” She took a few steps closer until there was barely any room between the two of you.

“There’s people outside.” You poked a finger in her chest, trying to talk some sense into her. 

“We can be quick and quiet.”

“You’re all wet,” you pointed out. “You’re going to get me all wet too.”

“That’s the plan,” JJ beamed and you just rolled your eyes at that. 

“You’re insufferable.” You swatted at JJ again, but she didn’t seem deterred. Her eyes were back to being glued to your breasts and the way the corset of the dress pressed them together just right. 

“I need to touch you.” Her voice was low this time and the way she said that wasn’t cocky or whiny or anything other than just hungry. You gulped at this shift and your eyes met JJ’s again. Her pupils were yet again blown and you watched as her eyes dragged from your chest down to your legs. She took another step closer, one of her hands trailing down your body until it reached your legs. Her nails slowly dragged up the exposed skin of your thighs until they reached your dress, but that didn’t stop her. Her nails kept dragging up with the fabric of the dress coming up with them. 

“Let’s get out of here,” you said breathlessly, not really processing that you said it at all. 

“Absolutely,” JJ agreed eagerly, her hand already tugging you out of the bathroom.

———————————————————-

If you thought the drive to the party was bad, this was way worse. JJ’s hand stayed high up on your thigh the whole time you drove and she didn’t miss the way you squirmed under it. Her eyes were also locked on you. The way she looked at you had your heart rate increasing too and, if you were being honest, just this alone was making you wet.

You fully expected JJ to drag you into the house and throw you onto the bed, but to your surprise she walked rather calmly to the door. It was when the door shut behind you that she did finally pounce. “Oh my god!” You yelped as JJ pushed your back against the front door and immediately fell to her knees. Her arms were hooked around your thighs in no time and her face immediately buried between your legs. Before you could even process it, her lips, tongue, and teeth were on your inner thighs and you were scrambling to grasp at something for support. 

You settled for the edges of the door frame as one of JJ’s hands snakes up your thigh and pulled down your panties. Immediately after that you felt her tongue take one long lick of your folds. Your nails dug into the woodwork of the door and you whimpered the second she repeated her actions.

Good thing Henry was at Will’s, you thought as a full blown moan left your lips the second JJ’s tongue met your clit. 

“Fuck,” JJ mumbled against your pussy. “I’ve been dying to taste you all night.” 

“M-mhm,” you mumbled as your eyes fell closed. The way she was lapping at your clit already had caused your thighs to tremble slightly. She was wasting no time in working you up the way you were before leaving for the party. But this time you weren’t going to tell her to stop.

Except, after another minute she did just that. You huffed and looked down, only to see JJ give you yet another smug grin as she peaked her head out from under your dress. 

“Not yet,” she taunted before getting up. Her hand immediately reached for yours and pulled you to the bedroom. You reluctantly followed on shaking legs. When you reached the bedroom, she pushed you down onto the mattress with surprising force. 

You looked back up at her to protest only to stop when you realized she was stripping in front of you. No matter how many times you saw JJ, it never got old and you immediately blushed when she caught you staring.

“You look so fucking hot in that little dress,” JJ praised as she fully undressed. “But I’m going to want to rip it off you now.” She stalked towards the bed until she reached the foot of it. Slowly, almost like a predator hunting its prey, she crawled onto it and over to you. Her hands grabbed at the ends of the dress, pulling it up slowly. Blue eyes never left yours as she pulled the whole dress off you and you let her. With your panties already off and somewhere in the hallway, you were left completely bare now.

JJ tossed the dress somewhere in the room and immediately fell onto you with her lips attaching to yours. “It’s so fucking hard,” she said between kisses, “to keep my hands off you when you look so good.” Her lips pressed harder and harder to yours and soon you had parted your lips for her tongue to invade your mouth.

Arms wrapped around her waist so that you could pull both your bare bodies together. The way she slightly rocked herself into you had a small whine fall from your lips. Her tongue was busy running along your own as her nails yet again dragged down your body until they got to your thighs. She slowly parted your legs even more under her before circling your clit.

This time she only did that for a few seconds before moving her fingers further down to circle your entrance. Her lips left yours and moved back to your chest, only to leave actual marks this time across your breasts. When her teeth clamped down onto one of your nipples and pulled slightly, you hissed. But that hiss quickly turned into a loud gasp as, without warning, JJ entered you with two fingers up to her knuckles. 

“Oh god,” you cried as her fingers didn’t even take a second to set a fast pace. She was putting her whole body behind the way she pulled her fingers out almost completely only to slam them back in. 

“That’s it,” JJ cooed after releasing your nipple. “That’s my good girl.”

“Fuckkkk,” you groaned as she fucked her fingers up into you. She wasn’t wasting any time and it felt like both a blessing and a curse. The rough way she was fucking you wasn’t something you expected or prepared for, but god did it feel so fucking good.

With your arms around her waist, you held her impossibly tighter as both of you practically shook the bed with how hard she was fucking you. You tried to keep up, fucking yourself on her fingers with each time she pumped them back up into you. With the way she had been teasing you all night and how she had played with your clit off and on, you were already getting close.

JJ knew it too and she started to whisper praises in your ear as she curled her fingers inside you. “You’re taking my fingers so well,” she purred. “I need to feel you cum on them, baby.” She pumped her fingers even harder into you and you couldn’t stop yourself from crying out. 

“Cum for me,” JJ continued. “Cum all over my fingers.” And you did with a pathetic whine. JJ helped you ride out your orgasm, slowly as you came down from it. 

After a moment, JJ’s body relaxed on top of you and you felt a gentle kiss to your lips. 

“Holy fuck.” You let out a breathless chuckle. “All that for some silly costume?”

“You looked really hot in it,” JJ said, grinning down at you. You just rolled your eyes and started to lift your hand to swat at JJ’s shoulder. Only, JJ caught it mid air and pinned it back to the mattress with impressive speed and force. “But we’re not done yet.”

And she really meant that. At some point in the multiple hours of JJ enjoying your body, you had missed a text from Penelope. It seemed you had totally forgotten to say goodbye when you two hurried out of the party. But from her text it seemed like she had a feeling this was how it would go. You just knew you weren’t going to hear the end of it the next time you saw her…

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[cherlawa-panna]

The interesting case of Barney Barton's name

Let's focus on a bizarre mystery in the Clint Barton universe (even though it's not really a mystery). And no, I'm not talking about why Clint is portrayed as a loser in the latest comics.

I'm talking about the the biggest idiot in Clint's life. His brother, Barney Barton. And based on the title, you can probably guess the topic of focus: about his name, duh.

To be fair, if you're not deeply into his lore or Clint Barton's family lore, you might not think his name is a mystery. You might assume his parents just didn't love him enough and named him Barney. Easy thing, right? Nope. Wrong.

Many people don't know this, and I don't blame them, but this bastard actually has a different name.

Please give a round of applause for: Charles Bernard Barton!

Yes, it's on his tombstone. And I bet he would rather be in his grave right now instead of being alive, but unfortunately, he didn't have much choice <3.

Don't feel bad if you didn't know this; his full name appears once and once only. It was shown in Hawkeye Vol. 3 and never mentioned again.

If you're like me, you probably have many questions. Why was his name mentioned only once? Why is his name Charles Bernard? Why is he ALWAYS called Barney? Why is his nickname based on his middle name instead of his first name? Why isn't he called Charlie or whatever????

Well, I'm going to answer every question you have—or at least I'll try!

We'll break this post into two parts: first, the real reason behind his name (from the author's perspective, but remember this is just my theory) and second, the fun reason I use in my fanon.

I'm dedicating it for @carcrash429 because I promised them Barney posts a long time ago but my depression didn't let me </3 I have more posts in my drafts so I'll public more soon. And for @hawkzeyes because they're my bestie.

Why Did the Authors Hurt Him with This Name?

The answer is quite simple. Barney was never supposed to have a significant role in Clint's story. Let me explain this. He first appeared in Avengers #64 (March, 1969) as a racketeer from the mob.

Look at him, the fancy criminal, with his own crew working for him. Even Egghead, a well-known villain bastard, wanted to work with him. He's a serious deal, guys; Barney must have held a high rank in the mob or whatever. Everything about him screams: a bad guy.

And despite all that, his sole purpose was to reveal Clint's name to us readers. And that's it, it was the only reason for his existence.

So, let's consider this from the author's perspective. We have a character who is a criminal, destined to die for the plot, just because we want to make Clint's name reveal more dramatic. He's suppose to be a bad guy who decided to change his ways before his tragic death, and in some way he serve as the other side of coin trope for Clint. What name should we give him? In this goofy comic with characters who look ridiculous—where even one of the villains is called Egghead—it's no surprise the authors would give him a stereotypical name.

If you don't know it: The name Barney is slang for "an angry argument." According to the Oxford dictionary, it's also defined as "a derogatory term for a man," originally meaning a worthless or contemptible man, but later used to describe an inept, unfashionable, or unattractive man, sometimes implying a loser.

In short: This name carries very bastard vibes.

I'm pretty sure they didn't pay much thought with naming him. They probably chose it quickly because it fits and that's it. And it sounds a bit like a nickname for a mobster (there is a real gangster from one of New York's crime families named Barney so yeah).

Barney remained Barney for a long time because he wasn't meant to be someone important like I said before —just a family member from Clint's backstory who was supposed to reveal Clint's name to us and make Clint angry for the plot.

But then came Hawkeye Vol. 3 where they decided, "Fuck it, let's un-barney your barney". And it turns out Barney isn't a very good name for someone like the Barney we see in Vol. 3. That's why they decided to give him a better name, making him seem more serious and fancy.

And now we have his name on the tombstone, and only on the tombstone. After that, Hawkeye Vol. 3 never refer to him as Charles and Bernard again. Even Barney's friend from the FBI calls him Barney in the letter to Clint for some goddamn reason.

The authors probably simply wanted to show, "Hey! He's a deep character with a serious name. He's more than just a goon from now because we need to give Clint more trauma."

You get that vibe, right? From now, Barney is just a nickname for Charles used by his friends, coworkers and family and that's it. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? And it should be, however something got very wrong. No one seems to use his real name. Everyone calls him Barney regardless of who they are, even those who should use his real name.

Like, in his freaking MEDICAL CHART in New Avengers (2010), they called him Barney Barton.

It's ridiculous. But why this happened? It's simple The authors simply doesn't know his name.

Those who wrote him later after Hawkeye: Blindspot didn't bother to check his previous appearances (which you can see by how they wrote him). This kind of thing is common in the comics industry. For instance, remember when in Hawkeye Vol. 4 they forgot that Clint was dating Jessica and accidentally made him cheat on her? Funny times.

The only reason Barney appeared in later comics as Trickshot after Hawkwey: Blindspot is because the authors wanted a villainous counterpart to Hawkeye and they didn't pay much attention to his character. They just wanted an evil Clint lmao

Barney's time as Trickshot was a weird chapter in his lore, where he became a very different character than he was before. He just became a loser copy of Hawkeye before the authors eventually forgot about his existence. Then, in Hawkeye Vol. 4, it was suddenly decided to bring Barney back without bothering to explain why he quit his villain work. Why? Because nobody really cares about him; he's just a side character and he was needed for the plot. That's why Barney is the most frustrating character I've ever liked—his personality and motives changes in every new comic. It's INSANE.

But not every author forgets the fact that his real name isn't Barney… though they still don't use his actual name correctly. In some comics with different Earths or in other media, they refer to him as Bernard.

(Secrets of the House of M #1 [Earth-58163])

Why? Perhaps because they want him to sound fancier or more serious. They likely didn't use his first name because those who are not into Hawkeye lore wouldn't know that Barney and Charles are the same person. It's that simple.

Which brings us to another question: WHY IS HIS FIRST NAME CHARLES????

To be fair? I don't know. I wish to know. I've tried to research it, but I've come up empty-handed. Maybe I'm not good in research.

I mean, people tends to have nicknames from their second name but it's still weird. We may never find out why they made him Charles Bernard and not Bernard Charles.

Why Did His Parents Hurt Him with This Name?

Alright, it's time for the fun part of this post: how I imagine the reasons behind his nickname in story-wise. Let's dig in, shall we?

First and foremost, it's important to note that his parents never called him Barney. Perhaps this is because flashbacks always focus on Clint alone. It's Clint Barton's world after all.

Their father referred to Barney as a brat in one issue, but that's the extent of their parents acknowledging Barney lmao.

And the only person in flashbacks from their early childhood who calls Charles by his nickname is Clint. So it's likely that his parents called him by his real name and the nickname came from Clint.

So we can assume it's a childhood nickname that carried into adulthood. But why Barney? You could assume that Clint just called him Barney because it sounds better than Charlie, but I like to complicate things. I have 2 (maybe 3) options I usually explore in my stories (which I've never published because I'm a coward, so you'll never read them).

1. There was a lot of Charles in their neighborhood.

Probably there were many other kids named Charles, and to avoid confusion, they started giving each Charles a nickname (because Charles is popular name, duh — it's #11 in Top Names Over the Last 100 Years). Which is a normal thing tbh. I had another kid with my name in school, and my friends gave me a nickname to avoid mixing us up too.

Maybe Barney's friends started calling him Barney, and Clint picked it up and started using it too.

2. There was another Charles in their family.

I like to write in my stories that he was named after his grandfather from his father's side, and to distinguish between them, they called Charles "Bernard." Clint became so accustomed to "Bernard" that he started calling him Barney. This nickname persisted even after their family stopped exist lmao.

Maybe he also had a cousin with the same name after their grandfather, and that could be another reason why he was called Bernard. I don't know why people name their children after their siblings' kids, but it happens sometimes.

3. BOTH

Do I need to even explain this? I always incorporate both of these headcanons in my stories. It began with family, as he was named after his grandparent so they called him Bernard, then his friends started calling him Barney. Easy story.

I imagine that he was also called Barney in the army/FBI, because there were too many Charles. And that's why his best buddy from Hawkeye Vol.3 calls him this way.

These reasons are also the same reasons why I believe he continues to be Barney and never Charles later in his life.

I'll borrow a bit from the canon, because there's one interesting thing here.

(I think it was from Thunderbolts issues but I don't remember now.)

He probably doesn't like his name. Yeah, I know this panel is probably about his name being Barney and him being bitter about it because it's a stupid name (because authors didn't bother to check older Hawkeye comics again). But I don't care. I'll do whatever I want with this panel and treat it as if he's bitter about his real name lmao.

Why is he bitter? Why doesn't he like his name? You can create any headcanon you want, but mine is simple: he was named after someone in his family, and he hates his family. Maybe this caused him to have a bad relationship with his name. Or his parents were the only one who called him Charles and he hated it because of that. And he would want to disconnect from his past and therefore uses Bernard.

He was called Barney for most of his life, so I think he usually tells people he is Bernard and not Charles. Or "Yeah, I'm Charles, but you can call me Barney". I also think that after the Trickshot fiasco, he changed his name to Bernard Barton (probably not legally because he's still a wanted criminal). And he did it in other universes (like in Earth-58163).

That's it. I hope it wasn't too messy. Remember, it's just my theories and headcanons so you can not agree with me if you want.

[ponyosfrogg]

INBETWEEN (PT 3)

Summary: You wake up, completely under the effect of your dream about comic characters, just to find out a new character has been added to DCU? Or has she always been there?

Pairing: Tim Drake x Reader

Author's Note: Gosh, sorry for taking some time. This chapter was a pain in the ass, all i wanted was to write about sweet moments but god 😶‍🌫️ sorry about the typos, I'll fix them as soon as i can i promise, hope you like it my loves! thank you so much for the support! 💗

Warning: Some of the themes and contents written in this fic might be upsetting for some of the readers, read at your own risk. Some parts have strong language.

As you woke up with a throbbing pain in your head, you couldn't help but wonder if this would be a issue every time you tried to wake up normally. Frustrated, you cautiously opened your eyes, preparing for the brightness. The light made everything appear blurry, so you tried shading your eyes with your hands, but it didn't help much. Suddenly, a silhouette rushed towards you.

"You got me so worried! I can't believe you didn't took your medicine's today! I'm so angry at you" A slap out of worry hit your arm and made you more awake and more aware of your surroundings. You were in your house, with your best friend beside your bed. She must've taken you to your bed since the last thing you can recall was washing some dishes. The slippery and weird feeling in your hand was just proof. "And so glad that you're okay." Amber hugged your laying body with compassionate behavior.

You reposition yourself on the bed and lay your back on the bedstand now facing your best friend who was sitting next to you on your bed. You were in your room. Your real room.

"Are you okay? You're very quiet." With her voice you tried to collect your thoughts in one place. So you had a dream about comic characters? God, you must've been going through some shit because you rarely even dream. Maybe you were in need to feel some family support? Or you just read a lot of them last night.

"Yeah, I'm okay no worries. I just had the weirdest dream ever. I'm sorry about worrying you I'll be more careful about my medicine." but you were so sure that you took all of them today. Why would your heart react in such a way. You found yourself questioning yourself once again, falling into a familiar pattern of self-doubt and second-guessing.

"Oh I can't wait to hear about it but first i have to tell you something." She must've done something she thought was necessary but not necessarily the best idea. "I called Nate." Yes, just as you guessed. Amber must've seen the shift in your reaction and started to get panicky. "Don't blame me! I got so worried and waited for one hour but you didn't wake up so i had to call him, i didn't know what to do. he said he's on his way to come here now. Could be here any moment now." She got up from the bed and started to walk around the room in a panicking way.

But you weren't focusing on her anymore, just hearing Nate's name made your heart flutter a little bit. He was your ex. You had been inseparable from your childhood and at some point it turned into a beautiful relationship. Nate was an ambitious student who wanted to have nothing more than a wife and a job. You on the other hand, you like the possibilities life could offer you. You never had something on your mind you were just going around wherever life takes you. Spontaneous trips to places you'd like to visit, working freelance and getting paid whenever you're in need of some money, reading books and comics whenever you're free. You were a kind of woman who would post something dumb on an afternoon during weekdays which would make all of your working friends question your sanity. So it's safe to say that you guys were completely opposites.

And whoever said opposites attract, they were wrong as fuck. You needed someone to think like you. It was hard to maintain the relationship when both of your needs were completely opposite, beside your characters. You guys broke up two months ago or something like that. you weren't keeping the count.

Although it was hard to not to think about him, you always thought you made the right decision about him. You wouldn't want to keep him from living his life, and you wouldn't want him to keep you from living your life either. It was the right decision. But why were you feeling nauseous right now?

"It's okay, we were going to see each other at some point anyway." You tried to smile in a relaxing way and you must have been successful since she gave you another big hug. She was one of the kindest soul you had a chance to meet on this earth. She had beautiful ginger curly hair with a lot of freckles on her face. She had this beautiful smile that made your day better whenever you saw her. She was just the most adorable person you could ever hope for and you were glad she was your friend, your best friend to be exact.

"Okay, I'll leave you alone and give you some privacy for you to change your clothes." You rolled your eyes at her words. Yeah, you took back whatever you said about her, she was devious. "I'm not going to all doll-up for Nate, Amber." She giggled at the annoyance at your voice while she was leaving the room.

You looked around your room. How could something feel so familiar yet so strange. You felt an unexplainable feeling on your chest. It wasn't about your heart, something was different. Maybe the dream affected you more than you could admit.

As you gazed around, your attention was suddenly drawn to the batfamily poster hanging on the wall behind your desk. It was an old favorite, something you had put up about three years ago. It included all of the batfamily members. Yet, this time, there was something different about it, or rather, someone.

You rushed to get a closer look, your eyes widening in surprise. Among the familiar faces of Bruce, Jason, Dick, and Damian, there was a new addition—a girl standing beside Damian. Who was she? And why the fuck she looked like you.

"Amber?" You yelled from your room, hoping her to hear. Her voice echoed back a response, and you called out again, "What did you do to my poster?"

You heard her quick footsteps and then Amber entered your room, her expression showing annoyance at being summoned. She glanced at the poster you were holding in your hand. "It looks perfectly normal to me. I didn't touch it."

You rolled your eyes, feeling annoyed more and a bit frustrated. "I mean, who's the new character next to Damian?"

Amber looked at you as if you had said the most absurd thing you could ever say. "Are you serious right now? Is this supposed to be some kind of joke? Listen, i need to go out. I know that you're kind of excited and anxious to meet Nate and you don't want to be alone but i have to go." You turned around and saw she already dressed up. You were speechless.

"Wait, what? Are you going out? Are you going to leave me alone with Nate and excuse me but what the fuck is happening right now! Who is this girl."

She didn't say anything and left the room, leaving you without any further explanation.

You reached over your laptop and opened it. Yes, something weird was going on and you were determined to find it and what would be a better way than google. You pull your soft, white chair and sit on it while you are waiting for your laptop to be open. When it got open, you typed the batfamily and searched for it.

After like three minutes, you saw the name Viperia, even though you read a lot of comics and familiar with almost every character at that point you've never heard of her so you typed 'Viperia' on a different tab. To your surprise, there were numerous posts and messages about this character. She appeared at the same time as Damian in comics. She was snarky, cocky and definitely a pain in the ass but somehow she literally had her own fan-base. You saw a lot of websites made in the honor of her, a lot of fanarts and literally thousands of fan fiction. But how come you've never heard about her and why did she literally look like you.

"Yeah, this must be a fucking dream."

When you heard a knock from the door, you remembered you were expecting Nate. Fuck, you already have forgotten about him coming. You pulled yourself together and promised to check this after you're done with Nate. Right now you have to focus on him.

You must have been so lost on your research, you didn't realize Amber already left the house. You opened the door and you saw Nate's bright face.

Seeing him make a lot of emotions rushing to you. There was longing in your heart, you were longing for his presence. There was some kind of disappointment. You were disappointed in him, he could've made this thing go further but he didn't. He chose to give up on you and you chose to give up on your relationship.

When you break up with someone, seeing them changing does have an effect on you. You expect them to be the same but you don't realize people tend to change every now and then, especially after going through a painful break-up. You felt sad but you felt you didn't have any right to be sad, after you were the who cut the cords of that relationship. You chose your path to leave him. It was painful for you but you knew that if you didn't, it would be more painful in the future. But somehow right that moment you were looking at a completely different guy. He had a bright smile on his face just like he always does but somehow it was different, it was full of confidence. His eyes were shining like two little stars. He was radiating some kind of sunshine energy that you became addicted once. And seeing him make all of these things rush through your mind.

He had a white shirt on him, which made him look very... professional? But in a pretty way. His partly long hair was slicked back nicely. You can see his newly grow beard that he probably is going to shave tomorrow morning. Even though he looked almost the same as two months ago you realized he changed, he's much better now. He's better off without you or maybe you were just that lonely who was considering going back to her ex just because you hated being alone or a narcissist who thinks everyone is in love with her.

"Hello." His stern voice made you startled since you were, once again, wandering on your mind. "Hello, how rude I am. Come in." you stepped backwards for him to enter the house. He was looking around when you closed the wooden door and turned at him.

"You guys made some changes on this apartment huh? It looks prettier." You smile at the compliment. Always too nice.

"Yes, it was time to get rid of some old stuff." Then you realized this was not an appropriate sentence to say since it's only been two months after the break up.

You cleaned your throat and talked again: "Take a seat I'll prepare us some coffee." When you were rushing to the kitchen, you heard his footsteps right behind you. "You never really learn do you? I'm literally here for your heart and you are offering me coffee? Way to go." You laughed at his point.

It was nice to be around him. He had such a charm that could make you feel comfortable all the time. There wasn't any awkward silence around him. It was always joyful, happy and full of smiles. He was like a home for you once. Now he was just a stranger you perfectly know.

"Well, old habits die hard." At that point you literally wanted to punch yourself on your face. There were millions of words in English and somehow you always chose the one that made you sound like a heartless person.

When you were preparing the coffee he sat on a chair beside the window. It was raining again. There was no lightning or storm but just plain rain. It was the fourth day today and the weird thing is, it was middle of the fucking summer, July to be exact.

"So, your heart?" When you put on his mug, (which was adorable by the way. It was dark red with little white hearts on it.) on the little coffee table in front of him. You sat right in front of him. "Yes, I think Amber is overreacting. I'm perfectly fine." He looked at you with his brown eyes, completely scanning your body. It's like, he was trying to find evidence of you being okay. But in reality he was actually thinking about how much he missed you. He missed being around you, your presence, your voice, your scent and everything about you. He missed hearing your stupid theories about comics, he missed talking about ordinary stuff under the stars on a hill that he would take you every saturday, he missed you making him laugh so hard that he would cry, he missed you. Simply you, being you.

"Still, i think you should come to the hospital and let me examine you over there since I didn't bring a lot of stuff." You nod, perfectly aware of the fact that you simply wouldn't do something like that. You knew something was different. You experienced a lot of seizures like that and it was different and since you already took your medicine, you wouldn't bother to go again. If there's something, that would mean more medicine. But you were sure that was not the case.

Your mind went to Damian's sister again. How could this be possible. She looked exactly like you and you were wondering how she can appear on your poster. It was there for three years now and you would've noticed at some point right? Viperia... Even the name sounds so made up, you still were trying to convince yourself that you actually imagined that person. But then again, Amber said she's been there for some time. Maybe she also hallucinated.

You tried to pull your attention back on the guy sitting in front of you. Viperia was the future you problem, right now you had Nate in front of you.

"You look tired." When he stated the obvious fact you simply smiled. "Yes, it's been a long day." More like two days in one. "And I'm kind of anxious maybe that's why."

He directly looked into your eyes with such a compassionate look. If he could make your pain go away, he would in a heartbeat. It was so weird to part your ways even though you love that person. But growing up meant realizing it's important have someone who has the same mindset as you and about that, you guys were not the best. 'Love can start something but it wouldn't make something keep going.' Your mother used to say this sentence a lot whenever she and your dad argued.

He reached over your hand that was on uour your lap. When he touched you, you could feel the vibrations going around your body. It was dumb to think that you were over him but when it's you, you can never be sure and you knew that all to well.

"You know that I'm here right? It doesn't matter what time is it, if you call, I'll come." He said almost whispering. His hand traces its way through your face. Cupping one of your cheeks. No, that wasn't good. You could feel that every cell of yours longing for him but that wasn't a good idea.

"I think you should go."

He looked at you for five seconds with a disappointed look on his face. He could tell that you were uncomfortable and he didn't want to keep doing whatever he was doing. Then he take his hand off your face and stood up. "Yes, I think I should go. Thank you for the coffee. I think tomorrow morning you should visit the hospital just in case." You nodded and said 'thank you' while he was taking his stuff and going to door.

"Goodnight." He was the one who smiled as an answer this time.

As soon as you closed the door, you released the breath you didn't even you were holding until that point.

You went into your room after sitting back of the door for some time, collecting your thoughts about Nate. You needed something to take your mind off from Nate and you decided to keep researching about Viperia.

Two hours later, your mind was almost going to explode from all the information you found about her.

She was the sixth child of Batman, not a sister but twin of Damian. Raised by Bruce but also Talia too. Her name was the same as yours but she was using Viperia as an alias, which was a venomous snake. She was skilled at martial arts and she was a great assassin, maybe even better than Damian. She was quite popular with her rage and snarky comments just like Damian. She was getting along with almost every family member except Tim and you didn't find anything relating to that topic. On some fandom base sites, there were a lot of theories about them dating secretly 'why else they wouldn't even once mention about her relationship with Tim' they wrote. 'Tim never even refers to her as his sister.' You searched so deep that you even had came across a smut writing between her and Alfred which made you a little bit of uncomfortable and also scared.

You started to think how could you miss this character or did she literally appear out to nowhere in three hours?

The creator was releasing new chapters on that comic series in every two weeks. 'Batman's Daughter' was the title. It was covering the whole background starting from the birth which was crazy but useful also, since you learned that Talia literally put her in Lazarus Pit whenever she had some kind of blade cuts on the age of fucking three. No wonder that girl was total nuts but of course fun to read.

When you were doing your research your laptop's notification sound made you startled. Maybe you didn't have any resemblance with her since she could literally murder without even flinching and you were, well, getting startled from a notification sound.

It was an e-mail.

You took your laptop and stood up from the chair you've been sitting for some time now. Since you also started to get sleepy it was a good idea to going to your bed and read your mail over there.

You sat on your soft green colored sheets and opened your mail, you didn't know the person who sent you the mail. There was literally no name or anything. Just an attachment and a word on the subject part which was 'read :)'

You clicked on the attachment, even though you knew you shouldn't since it was a mail from someone unknown and you might even download a fucking virus on your laptop but however something inside of you was couraging you to open it.

It was a comic on a pdf format but it was more like a work in progress. Some parts were still empty.

The Doom of Batfamily?

That was enough for your curiosity to take over, so you started reading.

It was starting with Bruce talking with his family about some unusual murders on the city. He was suspecting someone from the League of Assassins since the murder weapon was a sword. But turns out it was Viperia who is getting more and more insane everyday because of the Lazarus pit. But it didn't even stop there, she was getting involved with some villains to trap her family one by one and killing them all, she was thinking they were on her way.

You were horrified. It was very graphical and the sketches literally showed everything explicitly. In the end, she was literally standing on all of their dead bodies, laughing histerically.

You close the laptop immediately and closed your eyes, trying once again to collect your thoughts. Everything seemed so messy right now and you didn't know what to do. Why Viperia appeared out of nowhere, Who was the sender of the mail, why is she killing all of her family, what the fuck is going on.

"Fuck, no."

Without resisting more, you give yourself in the sweet arms of sleep. You could try to solve that problem tomorrow, you needed some sleep now.

After like two minutes of sleeping you opened your eyes involuntarily since, well, you only closed them for two minutes.

"It took you long enough."

With this voice, you got scared again.

"I didn't know you like sleeping this much it's literally noon time now, wake up so we can go to my favorite cafe to have some breakfast and then feed the ducks."

You watched him in horror.

"Hey, haven't you missed your beloved brother?"

"Damian?"

[0heartangel0]

Pt. 4: Everything Else And Loading Some Bullets

After Sojiro promises the thieves he'll nab them an RV from a friend of his, we transition to the next day, where we comically cut to Zenkichi being all shocked and up in arms over them getting a camper.

(sorry, I had to. This line is too funny not to include).

He then brings up the problem of having the boys and girls sharing sleeping space (you can argue that this odd concern could be foreshadowing for something we find out about him later), to which the girls bring up that they can protect themselves.

Zenkichi then rightfully backs off from that topic all together, which lets Makoto ask him for Alice's phone, something she requested from him the day before (how she got his contact information, since we never see this exchange, I'll never know). He hands it to Futaba, who goes through it and discovers someone's been monitoring her phone. However, she can't trace who it is....

WAIT-

....why are you like this?

I like this little detail, where Futaba admits that that's all she could find, but Zenkichi still congratulates her for finding what she did.

It's cute! See? He DOES care! Despite being a smug d-bag!

The thieves are disappointed, but Zenkichi points out that there's more cases they can work with in the future that might turn up with more leads. And with that, Zenkichi confiscates the phone to give back to Alice and takes off, bidding the thieves fairwell.

BUT! This isn't the last time we see Zenkichi this arc, for he has one last appearance to close things off.

We see him waiting in the police meeting room we saw at the beginning of the game, seemingly lost in thought. So much so, that he somehow doesn't notice Kaburagi enter, walk in, and stand right next to him. He claims it's because he hasn't slept in a bit due to this case, but considering all the other crap we see him stay up for, I'm having my doubts. Also, what part of your stalking routine forced you to stay up for 3 days straight? What, was he looking through our window while we slept?

He then explains that he has successfully made cooperation with the Phantom Thieves, and that despite their standoffish-ness with him, he promises to fully win them over eventually. Is that what you were doing these past 3 days?

What proceeds is what I like to call, 'The Loading Of Chekhov's Gun.' Basically, we get a back-to-back of different setups that will pay off later on.

Kaburagi goes on to praise Zenkichi for being so "dependable", with him stating that it's only due to her taking him under her wing, and that he'll always do what she asks of him.

Bullet #1

She then reminds him that due to the brass wanting this case done and over with for some reason (foreshadowing), he should not in any way get attached to the thieves, for their arrest is only but inevitable. Zenkichi responds accordingly:

Load that second bullet into the chamber and place your bets, everyone!

Also love how not even Kaburagi believes him, it's great!

Before Kaburagi leaves, she then asks:

We don't know who she's talking about at this point, but judging by Zenkichi’s reaction being with a downcast, "Ma'am", we can only guess it's someone that's personal.

Bullet #3

As soon as she leaves, Zenkichi points out the obvious that there's no way in Hell his Commissioner would believe anything about the Metaverse, so wisely kept it to himself. He then goes on to ponder how he's gonna get something out of the thieves, and says this:

So, remember the deal he made with you, not...YESTERDAY ago?

Yeah, he was lying.

Despite it being for just in case the case were to go south, he's still basically going against the deal that he's been working oh-so hard for.

What makes this situation even more screwed is, remember what he says as a response to you threatening him if he went back on the deal?

He KNOWS the consequences if he goes back on the deal, especially given his newfound knowledge about the Metaverse, but the fact he still goes through with planning to backstab them shows that he's either,

1. EXTREMELY suicidal, or

2. Very dedicated to his job and loyalty to Kaburagi.

Either one I find absolutely intriguing and says so much about his character.

AND THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST ARC OF THE GAME!

So, what was the point of me covering this arc with just Zenkichi? Well, the answer is simple: he's great!

Well, that, and...

The wiki is utter garbage.

Pt. 1

Pt. 2

Pt. 3

[bluejaysandblackbats]

Catch and Release

Fandom: DC Comics, Batfam

Summary: AU where Jason doesn't die in the explosion and he and Tim end up attending the same high school months later.

Chapters: 12/?

Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Tim Drake, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Sebastian Ives, Jack Drake, Janet Drake

Relationships: TBA

Additional Tag: Jason Todd Lives, Jason Todd-centric, POV Jason Todd, POV First Person, Tim Drake Has Issues, Tim Drake Has Issues, Tim Drake is Not Robin, Jason Todd is Not Robin (Anymore), Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, Alfred Pennyworth Knows, Stalker Tim Drake, Jason Todd Has Chronic Pain, Jason Todd Has PTSD, Angst with a Happy Ending, Unlikely Friends, Injury Recovery, Emotional Baggage, Rage, Bruce Wayne is Bad at Communicating

Chapter Twelve: Middle Child

Tim came with me to get my cast off as promised. I felt queasy like I did all the other times, but I leaned forward and covered my face until the feeling passed. I traded my crutches for a cane, and Tim sat beside me as I gently attempted to stretch my leg. “Woohoo! Last one, Jason!” the doctor cheered. I cracked a smile. I liked her. She’d removed every cast I had from the accident. At first, it was because I thought she was pretty, but I grew to like her demeanor. She had a kid —a toddler— and it sometimes bled into her work. She sometimes baby-talked at me, but I didn’t mind.

“How many casts have you had removed?” Tim questioned.

“The long-arm one, the hip spica, and now this one,” Jason replied, “She’s removed all three. The hip spica twice, though… The bones in this leg wouldn’t heal together, so I had to get surgery which meant I was in this cast for another period. So I guess she removed all five.”

“That hip spica was a yucky one, huh?” the doctor replied.

“Yeah,” I replied. My body had been through hell, but it was healing. Maybe I’d never be the same, but at least I could train again.

“You can go as soon as you stop feeling yucky, okay?” the doctor whispered. I nodded. She left me alone with Tim, so she could grab a treat from her office.

“Jason, are you okay?” Tim questioned.

“Yeah… I’ll feel better in a second,” I replied.

“Does the idea of him returning to finish the job freak you out?” Tim questioned. I never thought about it. I thought about all sorts of things in the hospital, but the clown rarely ever crossed my mind. I wasn’t scared of him. He played a dirty trick and caught me off guard, but he wasn’t the threat everyone imagined he was. The clown was unpredictable, and that’s what frightened people. But I knew better. He had a sick obsession with Batman and was in eternal competition with Robin, but he hated me the most. He hated me because I had a bond with Batman. Batman was different when he was with me. Dick told me that all the time.

“I’m not scared of him. I might be traumatized by what happened, but it could’ve been anybody… Tim, all that Party City freak did was use my birth mom to lure me in and catch me off guard. I hate him for what he did, but it could’ve been anybody,” I answered.

“Is he part of your-?”

I looked up at Tim and shook my head. “I hadn’t thought of him until you asked… And I have no intention of getting revenge. I want to do something on such a large scale that Bruce has no choice but to look at me. I want Bruce to tell me he was wrong,” I answered honestly.

Tim patted me on the back. “I trust you, Jason… And I’ll be there to back you up with whatever you choose to do,” Tim replied.

“Tim, why do you believe in me?” I questioned.

The doctor returned with stickers. I picked one to humor her, and Tim got one for being a good buddy. We met Mr. Drake in the lobby, and he took us for ice cream. I know it wasn’t something Tim’s dad was accustomed to doing, but I had a great time. Janet met with us at the ice cream parlor. For a moment, I felt like we were a family. Bruce was supposed to be like that with me. He was supposed to be my dad, spend time with me, understand me, and-. I missed that more than anything.

Tim enjoyed his parents, and he needed that. "And then, Jason starts quoting the book from memory like it's nothing," Tim half-exclaimed.

It snapped me out of the momentary sadness I felt. "Yeah, but that's not half as cool as when Tim showed me how to develop pictures in a real red room. He's kind of a genius," I smiled. Then my phone rang… And it shattered the moment into a million pieces.

“Sorry, one second. It’s my older brother,” I mumbled as I stepped away to answer his call.

“Dick-.”

“Are you having ice cream with another family on a school day?” Dick questioned. I took my glasses out of my shirt pocket and scowled at him. “Don’t be like that… I’m checking in on you. I heard you got your cast removed.”

“Did Bruce ask you to follow me?” I asked.

Dick shook his head as he crossed the street. “No… But he did say you were mad at him. Can I borrow you for a little while?” Dick asked. I wanted to be cruel, but he caught me in a great mood. I grabbed my cane and met him a quarter of the way.

Dick was cautious once we stood close to each other, not wanting to be the first to start an argument. “Did you throw up this time?” Dick asked.

“Funny,” I rolled my eyes, “And to think I was gonna tell you how much I missed you.” Dick hooked an arm around my neck, nearly knocking me off balance.

“What’s it gonna take to get you home?” Dick asked.

“For Bruce to be normal,” I replied.

“What was your problem with Bruce?” Dick questioned.

“Not a good time… But I’ll tell you when my friend’s parents leave town for work, I promise. Oh, by the way, he’s a big fan, so you’re invited to have ice cream with us, as much as I hate the notion of you meeting my best friend,” I replied.

Dick followed me to the table, and I reluctantly introduced him. “This is my older brother, Dick Grayson. You might recognize him from-.”

“Haley’s Circus,” Tim interrupted. He was practically foaming at the mouth. I hate to say it, but I was jealous.

I swallowed my pride and ate my ice cream because there was no point in me being a spoiled brat about sharing my new brother with my old one… And it was worth the goofy smile on Tim’s face. It felt good to see him smiling. I felt how older brothers felt when they gave the perfect gift. It was nice being able to do something for Tim again. Besides, he’d always be my brother first.

[abrakuxas]

I watched the Penguin and it's a cool crime drama and all that, it's just... Not about the penguin. And what sucks is that it's clearly intentional up to this point. Everything I hear from the guys behind it is how much they want to get away from the comic book aspects of this.... Comic book adaptation.

I don't know why the fuck it has become the norm that Batman should not follow the comic book at all?

New Batman cartoon? No batfamily, they are random kids with two lines in a single episode. Every character is either not the character you know or a very diluted version of them (I'll ignore Harley on this one since her creator is the one behind it and I'm not gonna argue with how he deals with his OC)

A series about the stylish Mafia Boss supervillain, famous for his monocle, tophat and umbrella? Well, we kept the Mafia part but everything else has to go INCLUDING HIS FUCKING NAME!! Not only the moniker but the ACTUAL name. He can't be called Cobblepot because that's too much for this adaptation of a supervillain. The most they could do is give him a limp and a purple car. Yay! Let's work now on a prestige tv series about darth vader except he is actually an astronaut and maybe he could hold a red pen at some point so we can show how much we pretend to love the character idk. Maybe if we're feeling bold we might make him breath funny in a scene.

What sucks is that the show is not bad. It is objectively well written, well directed, it is good television, it just never had to be about the fucking Penguin. Just write a show about crime with your oc. Can you imagine if The Bear was sold as an adaptation of Sponge Bob "just more realistic and with less cartoony stuf. We deal with the life of Bob Stevens (we thought 'Sponge' didn't sound too real) dealing with the dramas of working on a kitchen and his traumas after being abuse at the 5 star restaurant 'Krusty's'".

It would be stupid as fuck and it's stupid as fuck for Batman as well, but it has been done so much that we're literally going to watch the second part of a Joker origin story film where Harley Quinn is Lady Gaga. Which is so fucking funny to me because not only the best Joker stories define him as a guy with a very ambiguous past and origin but Harley is very specifically her psychiatrist turned insane by abuse. That's the story. What you are showing me isn't that, it's just a story about a random loser dressed as a clown. Telling me this is Gotham and name dropping people won't make it an actual adaptation. It's not adapting anything, it's an oc, you're just making ocs and telling an original story.

Every single Batman thing has the "Pokémon is just Ashe in a coma" vibe now and I hate it idk.

I loved The Batman it really worked for me as this promise, this big change in the status quo of crime. Things are getting crazier, the quirkiness are showing and now the old face of old crime is busted giving the chance for actual supervillains to show up and take the city giving Batman a need for new partners and shit like that. I really thought it was a story that wanted to jump from that year two, early batman vibe into actual batman vibe. But now with this first episode of Penguin and even knowing that Reeves is involved with Caped Crusader I just lost any hope of it being actual Batman and I guess we'll just get yet another realistic Batman universe with solo Batman dealing with "the Scarecrow", a regular drug dealer who works with "Poison Ivy" she is the one who plants their weed. Don't forget about "Clay Face", a very ugly henchman to "Oz Cobb", the new regular crime boss. Idk, unless this series changes into actual supervillain territory I very much lost any interest in this universe.

[hellsfirekeepsyouwarm]

All Hell Breaks Loose Pt. 3

Hello my beautiful people, here i am with the third part, LET THE ANGST CONTINUE. I dunno how long this series gon be, so bear with me guys, and i'll promise i'll stop the angst train soon, just not now :d Comments, feedback and reblogs are appreciated, i love your reactions. love y'all

Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Reader

Warnings:, torture, language, graphic scenes, again: military men, mention of urination (weird i know), canon typical violence i guess, overall distraught

Summary: While your try to hold it together both body and mind in the midst of darkness and pain, Simon and the team try their best to get to you, without walking into a deathtrap.

A soft feather like touch is grazing the inside of your wrist, so light but apparent, eyes snapping open. Is he here? A wave of relief washing over you momentarily before registering your own finger on your own skin, caressing the veins under the thin skin.

You choke on the sob that erupts from you, realizing you tried to comfort yourself unconsciously, your mind in shambles, making you believe Simon got through all the Shadows to you. Damsel in distress you said? You snort at that, the fast switch in your head is comical at this point. You are loosing your mind already? That cannot be the case, no. You are stronger than that.

You keep petting your wrist, now fully aware of the fact that it's just you, not Simon making sure of the pulsing under his fingers. It became something so intimate between the two of you. When you woke up in the hospital, in the midst of nightmares, fire and pain, you could feel the sensitive touch of callused fingers, holding your hand the same way, all the time. Wrapped around your hand, warm, fingers meeting on top of the veins where you can feel the rhythmical thump of blood rushing in them.

So you woke up like that, him on your bedside, not letting your hand go for a second, pulling his chair closer when you found his gaze, devoid from the black camouflage makeup or haunting image of a skull. A handsome man with worry in his deep gaze, telling tales of how much hell he's been trough.

So it became a habit, a couple thing if you will. He does this anytime he seeks comfort, and anytime he feels you need reassurance of his presence. When you first sat up with a hole still in your chest, when he confessed how fucking terrified he was when you hit the ground, when you walked out scarred mentally and physically, when he tried to catch you attention, or when he wanted one more kiss before you turned back to the stove. It's a silent i love you. Neither of you are good with words, but you found other ways to communicate.

You doing it gives a tiny bit of ease in the middle of the dusty cold room.

You look around, slowly to see every corner and darker part, and while you are certain no one else is in the room with you, you are still cautious with your surroundings. Everything is in the exact same place as before your head decided to give in to the bleariness. You remain on the sad wooden chair screwed to the ground in the middle, a reeking bucket of your piss behind you in the farthest corner, old electrical boxes so old you can't see the color of them under all the rust. You inspected everything, the boxes are rooted, they might open but you doubt you'll have enough juice in you to crack open any of it.

Other than the boxes and your makeshift toilet the space is empty, and it was a miracle that you even have the luxury to pee in something. Graves left you with one of his goons for a while, inspecting your every move, so when another Shadow brought it, you peed looking into his eyes. The man was so flustered he left the room minutes later, and you thought about how Soap would laugh at this story after going on a rampage of your humiliation. You couldn't care less. If this is all you have to endure, so be it. You are off the hook easy so far, and you fear Graves is waiting for the big finale. You are the bait, and he's hiding out to lure the targets closer and closer before he can land a solid attack.

The moment Graves left you behind, you had a deep breath, having a moment without the poker face and resistance. Now you are going mad in the quiet. Just how he said. Memorized every bit of the space around you, counted the steps on the other side of the door, focusing on the difference between boots, your brain high from stress. He wants you to crack, and you have to admit with shame, that if someone can do it, it's him. He knows you well, as a person and as a soldier.

You freeze when the door bursts open, Graves and two of his Shadow following behind. Here we go again, you think.

"You know what time is it Darling." Yeah, you know the drill already. He comes and watches as his men does the dirty job. God forbid Philip Graves gets blood on his hands.

So the first punch lands right to your stomach, air knocked out of you with a painful grunt. Shit, no foreplay this time? He's getting impatient. He wants progress, his math didn't work so he's upping his game. He anticipated the task force by now, a siege, an attack. Anything. You can see on his face, frustrated expression with deep purple bags under his eyes.

The blows are calculated. They cause pain, creating vivid colors on your skin, but too far from being fatal. A busted lip, blackeye, cuts and bruises deep enough to bleed, but drying out in a short time. It's not time yet. That might be your play.

He observes every hit on you, instructing the men assaulting you when he needs to. The pain is irrelevant at this point. You can barely feel the abuse after the impact. Which is good and real bad at the same time.

You need time. You have to buy some time for yourself, and for the guys to get to you before it's too late.

You realize you are on autopilot mode. Your brain working in military mode. Endure. Survive. Plan. No matter what. Just the reminder of a ghost touch on your wrist collect the tears in your eyes with the sting of the blade pushing slowly under your nail.

You blocked the pain so far, but your body has limits. In the middle of the constant blows, you didn't noticed the ziptie locking in on you ankles. Now when the sharp metal is threatening to broke off your first nail from your finger you try to move you knee up to meet with the man's jaw. But the impact never comes, and makes you wonder when it all happened. When the numbness left your body and switched places with pure agony and terror. Soon your hands are tied to the damn chair that's been your only support in this hell, and your wrists are painfully tight against the wood.

You hyperventilate, you cannot know but can imagine the pain you are about to experience. Simon told you it was probably the worst he ever felt. And he never says things like that unless he means it.

Then you scream.

*

He was ready. Blood boiling, heart aching, but ready. He was so close to action, and that clouded his judgment. Or blinded is a better description to it. He missed the subtle but clear signs that the others caught sooner. Though they agreed on the plan, it was clear and fast forward, they couldn't go with it. First Price suggested to take a step back, have an eye on everything, before making a move. That's what he did, watched and monitored and he ignored every fucking red flag that was in his face. Then everybody else hinted on the fact that the plan won't work, but he's too stubborn to hear them out.

"What are you suggesting? Leave her there to fucking die?" He's dangerously close to jump on Price for putting a complete halt on the mission. "There should have been proof of life delivered for hours now. Fuckin' 'ell she might be already DEAD!"

His voice is roaring, filling the room, dancing in his teammates ears. While they were prepared for Ghost's wrath, they never could fully understand the lengths this man will take to do what need to be done. Right now Simon is mere inch away from marching right down to the Shadow hideout, and demolish the place to the ground.

"You let me take the lead for a reason, Simon. What do you think why we haven't seen proof of life? So you lose your mind over it, because they anticipated us hours before. They know we had eyes on the area for days." Price is steady against Ghost, but he's a little out of breath, eager to reason with Ghost to prevent him do something life threatening stupid shit.

"You know Lt. the Captain is right. Every corner of that base is orchestrated for us. Every man there moved the same everyday, took the same route at the same time as before. They made it look hard but easy enough for us to try." Johnny is passionate as always, Ghost admires the fire he has in every damn situation. But in this hell of a state, Simon can't see past the red.

"She's the bait for us to go down there, and when the bastards have us, we guaranteed her death with ours."

Price and Soap talks from different sides of his head, desperate to knock some sense into his brain, making him see the ovious. But if they are right, Simon can't get closer to the goal. That means more hours and days of suffering. Suffering that he endures, and guilt doubling down on him when he registers he's afraid of his own suffering first, and not yours.

Simon's heart breaks over and over, the heart he had doubts about ever existing, head pounding against the thick skull of his. And while every fiber in his body tells him to break down the fucking doors and destroy anything and everything in search of you, he have to admit his brothers are correct.

Soap picks up Ghost's break, he can hide his face behind the mask, but he cannot hide his feelings, not when Soap watched his two teammates break into shreds, then slowly picking up what remained and putting the pieces back together. Before Simon can protest, Johnny is nudging him outside of their small long forgotten barn that sheltered them the past few days.

Simon lets Soap to guide him further, where he can breath, and might have that long awaited collapse Soap would have had at the first moment if it was about his significant other. To be honest, he already had his fair share of outrage and terror the moment he got the news about you. His best friend for years now, a friend he found in a place void of this kind of relationship he has with you.

He overcome that fury, but Ghost is a stubborn son of a bitch, and he's not sure he can turn his friend's head to the right way.

"C'mon man. You need to see what i'm seein'. You saw yourself, just think about it." Simon takes deep breaths, the cool fresh air clearing his head, the wind forcing some tears out of his eyes.

"I know." Simon grunts, head hanging defeated. "I know." He clears his throat in effort to swallow back his words. Fight is in his nature, not acceptance.

A few moment goes by like this, Johnny supporting his mate with silence, a comfortable and an awkward silence at once.

Just as Soap would try to speak again, Gaz approaches the men out of breath, stumbling over in his words before he can say it.

"We got a video, a minute ago. She's alive."

Ghost shots up, like he was shot with electricity. He lunges towards the barn, the boys hot on his trail.

*

The small laptop show a horrific scene, right in the middle of a scream. If Ghost wouldn't know better, he would think it's someone else, not her. But the inhuman voice is coming out of your mouth, he knows, because he sees your face fully for a moment before the video continues on to show how your nails are being removed one after one. While your face was shown in a swift blurry move, the picture of raw meat under your nails are as sharp as his precious knife in his holster.

Price reaches for the laptop, but Simon claps his hand before he could close it down, and prevent Simon to see all of it.

"No." He grumbles, Price retreats, not pleased at the slightest. He's done watching, the sound is enough to imagine the content of it.

It goes on and on, the images burning into Simon's memory, and he wants it that way. If you have to go through that, he'll too. This is going to be his fuel for what's about to come, because he will ravage the very existence of Philip Graves. He will erase his memory off of this goddamn earth, with nothing to remain.

Slowly every one of the guys takes a step back from the proof of life they awaited so much, and only Simon stays rooted in front of the screen. Not much is visible of the place, dark hugging the room, black gloves on the torturer, black tactical wear on the others holding her down, no face shown, no other sound just the screams and some grunts of the captivators. Because she still fights, of course she does. She has to.

Just as Simon feels his own limit of watching you in anguish, not fucking feeling anything anymore, your voice changes, turns into words before the torturing hand freezes, and video cuts off.

"Do you...do you remember Istanbul Phil? Hmmm, the good ol' days huh?"

Blood rushes with full force again in his veins, the words awakening his senses. Your voice drowning in the accent at the end Soap laughed so much on, and he did have some low chuckle himself when he first heard them in his ears through the comms.

All pair of eyes locked at him, realization hitting every one of them. You gave them a way in.

*

Taglist: @cabreezer0117 @multitargaryen @embers-of-alluring @batmanunicorns523 @5seastar @sweetybuzz25 @levisbebe @galagcica @briefwinnerpersonaturtle @afro-hispwriter @v-v-x-x @levi-llama @kat-nee @kuwizo @thefairybird @haythemsychopathicgirlfriendic @woodeelf @sinon36 @actuallyanita @khjssss

Please let me know if you want to be tagged, or be removed from the tags from now on.

[revserrayyu]

2.2 Penacony thoughts [part 1]

**Mild spoiler warning** in place as I didn’t reach that far into the new update as of yet. Stopped right after seeing Sunday being a holy man listening to the troubles of others, so if that scene doesn’t ring any bells, then please refrain from reading further. As always, don’t spoil anything that happens afterwards, not only for myself, but for anyone else who hasn’t finished the new story yet.

First things first, I’m so pleased that we start off with Boothill. It feels like it’s been forever since he was first drip-marketed and when we heard that phone call of his with Black Swan, so finally seeing him in game is pretty nice. Still love that design in his eye too.

I’m also happy that the jade abacus was brought up again. Once we saw DHIL & Jing Yuan team up in the 2.2 livestream trailer I figured that Dan Heng was gonna call upon our beloved general with this item. At present, I don’t know if it’s actually used or if we head to the Xianzhou instead and request for help. Either way, I’m a bit surprised the general lends a hand. Of course he’s an ally and promised to help us with any troubles, but.. last time we saw him, he had just encountered Luocha and Jingliu, right? Could Jing Yuan really have left that confrontation behind so easily? Are we ever going to learn about what happened during that conversation? Who knows, but I hope we find out one day if this story doesn’t mention the matter further.

Anyways, who do you think the Elation Emanator that Boothill is? Naturally, I first thought of Sparkle solely because of her “I AM Elation!” declaration during her character trailer and her being a Masked Fool, but seeing how Boothill is having issues accessing Penacony in the first place, I doubt the two have officially met. They could’ve met elsewhere, sure, but I still doubt it’s Sparkle. Still haven’t a clue on who else it could be though but whomever it is certainly can’t hold their liquor.

Then we cut to Acheron being cornered by a bunch of npcs who are apparently all part of the “Dreammaster,” but let me just say that I love how literal Acheron can be, like correcting how many slashes she actually used. It’s also a bit scary for her to mention, as I don’t even remember a second blade either.

She’s just.. ironically funny to me. Acting all threatening but being completely serious with her grammar.

It was humorous when we switched to Robin for the first time. I didn’t manage to get a screenshot of it but how the screen even questioned it like “switching to Robin’s POV?” was hilarious. And rightfully so because this certainly isn’t our beloved idol. Sparkle, please, stop handing out bombs to everyone!

It was a short switch, but we finally jump back to where we personally left off. I know the journey Firefly is referring to might be our time hanging out together in Penacony, but somewhere deep down I imagine it could also be about our possible time with the Stellaron Hunters before the entire story even happened. I’m sure we have some sort of past with them but who knows if and when we’ll touch upon that.

Firefly goes into detail about her actions, about how she informed Silver Wolf to contact us and the plan she wanted to share with us before “Death” acted out. I guess it makes the lies and secrets a bit more bearable? All according to the script and at least she originally intended to tell us everything before the monster lashed out.

Then we get scene with her and Blade and oh my god, they both look so good?? Learning that Blade actually owns a driver’s license is comical too. Who would’ve thought our edgy man could be so reliable.

I’m so thankful for this scene as it gives us a taste about how Firefly acts around the other Stellaron Hunters. Since the rumors about her being Sam started, I couldn’t imagine how this sweet girl could’ve been one of them, but it seems she gets along just fine, even teasing Blade a bit.

Now correct me if I’m wrong but this is actually a flashback that happens right before Kafka destroys the Jepella Brotherhood during that one Myriad Celestia trailer, yeah? That’s pretty cool. Confirms that Firefly has been here the entire time and Bladie is even wearing the same suit.

I never thought of a decent acronym for what Sam could really mean, but we finally got our answer: Strategic Assault Mech. Makes me wonder if Firefly is even her true name, since that also seems to be part of the suit’s name.

Rejoice, someone other than ourselves can actually see Misha and Clockie. Would’ve never guessed that person to be Welt though. I guess he really is a child at heart. I know he gets excited whenever mechs are involved, such as the Engine of Creation, but this also reminds me of how his E6 depicts him as a child.

It’s unsettling that Misha calls “Death” something so innocent as “Sleepie.” Also claims that the monster isn’t aggressive and sometimes fetches the wrong guests to bring here.. uh huh, right. Sure. But of course Gallagher controls it! I know we learn more about him during this patch but I still don’t trust him.

So it’s clear that Misha is still a giant mystery. It’s good that us and Welt can see him, but the kid still isn’t perceived by everyone here. That one pepeshi we found alongside March thought we were talking to someone invisible and it appears Micah and Himeko can’t see Misha either.

During that flashback with the siblings as kids, I sorta feel like Sunday is also talking about Robin here. I know we’re chatting about the injured bird they found, but all the caged bird metaphors that Robin has, from her splash art and trailers, is hard to ignore.

Then we learn Gallagher is a History Fictionologist that’s in charge of this new place, which is all fine and well I suppose? Great to know who he really is but chalk it up as yet another person who lied to us. Of course I don’t believe much of anything any non-Express family says but whatever. He’s using fancy words that went over my head.

And now it’s all started to make sense in my head. Inviting different parties that have experience handling stellarons or at least have capable means of preventing a disaster. The Express and the Stellaron Hunters themselves are an obvious and reliable choices when it comes to stellarons, the IPC certainly has impressive power if Aventurine is anything to go off of, and I don’t doubt the real Galaxy Rangers are strong fighters too. I’m sire Black Swan and Sparkle have some tricks up their sleeves too, as would Ever-Flame Mansion.. if they’re alive. Also, the fact that the meme is named “Dormancy”.. Ratio stated in his note to Aventurine that “Dormancy” was the impossible in the dreamscape instead of “Death,” but I figured he just meant it as the word’s true meaning, not referring to the monster itself. That’s clever.

Sir, don’t give me hope like this by saying you’ll fight with us. Do you know how many people are wishing for you to actually be playable?? I’d love it if he was, I’d even take him as a four-star at this point (even though he clearly has five-star energy) but something tells me he isn’t. He gives me Cocolia vibes a little, like he’s certainly an important figure but I would not be shocked if he turns on us somehow and ends up as a boss of some sort either.

Aventurine’s status is truly a mystery that I definitely need to know! Is our beloved gambler okay?? Preferably alive somehow?? It hasn’t been long but I miss seeing/hearing him in the story already! But I do love that the chip he gave is when we first entered our hotel room turned out to be a transmitter. I’m not sure if it’ll reach his place in that momochromatic world he’s in, but perhaps we can use it to call upon Topaz and the rest of the IPC chilling in the hotel lobby? After Topaz noticed one of the broken Aventurine stone pieces lost its shine, I can imagine that our gambler had several spare transmitter chips to hand out to those he can depend on.

Stuff happens in a quick cutscene and we climb up many stairs to encounter another Nameless who has certainly seen better days. He sorta looks like that one white-haired dude on that new light cone that they showed briefly during the 2.2 livestream. And since it isn’t much of a spoiler anymore considering the official HSR yt channel already put out a video on it.. yeah, harmony hat.

Pfftt there’s something so funny to me about hearing Himeko call that fierce monster who has already “killed” several people a mere pet. Show no fear mother!

I absolutely LOVE that this man canonically can’t swear! They can switch all the words they want but I know exactly what Boothill wishes to say and it is hilarious. This quirk alone makes me want to pull for him.

My memory isn’t the greatest, but this shot made it so clear for me to remember that the Forgotten Hall mirror is a sort of Garden of Recollection thing, so having Black Swan appear from it was simply perfect.

The girlies working together once again, oh my~

After the things you personally witnessed sweetie, I’m glad you think so. Gotta love strong women!

Whose?? The only relics that come to mind are the Ashblazing Grand Duke set which I’m fairly certain isn’t what Acheron is referring to. I only thought of it due to the memes about how she killed him and turned him into said relics.

There’s another cutscenes with Acheron and that old dude we heard last patch, but I don’t remember much aside from him reminiscing about his companions once being Galaxy Rangers and more chatter about Nihility. This scene however, with Sunday looking all handsome and holy.. OH BOY. He’s gorgeous with the light shinning on him like that. I feel blessed to have witnessed such beauty.

I never thought of him to actually listen to people’s sins, but it suits him rather well. Doesn’t seem like most people recognize him doing so either? Aside from this one pepeshi of course.. either that, or everyone clearly respects Sunday too much while this person could care less on how to act around him. I was gonna make fun of the merchant for having such trivial sins, but if you’re living a life where that’s all you have to worry about, then sign me up.

The confession isn’t all fun and games though as some disbelief about the Family is brought up. Yet another reason for me not to completely trust this holy hot handsome man yet. Looking forward to continuing more later tonight.

[hijacking-hearts]

Unfortunately, I did not in fact disintegrate the second 2023 began so here I am in all my disgustingly depressed and repressed glory.

Anyways happy new years and what not, time is a construct and I don't exist bitch, fuck you.

But enough about me, I bring yee some definitely drawn this year and not last year Quackity sketches/wips to never be finished ever.

First one:

When Quackity reunited with his dead son while dresses up as Peppa pig look at em so happy. Makes a grown man cry.

It's me, I'm crying.

Second pic:

A rather rough sketch of revolutionary quackity that was suppose to be an overly dramatic piece but I got lazy and realized about halfway through drawing this that i don't know how to draw backgrounds.

So yeah...

The third one:

An even rougher sketch of Quackity and Luzu's meet up in the town center or whatever. I had this whole lil comic idea that I wanted to do, but unfortunately the sketches that I had drawn out at work were destroyed by my washing machine because I had sketched it all out on some sticky notes and my dumbass self had left em in my pockets and now they're gone.

This was a vague attempt at remaking them on my ipad but I just couldn't recreate the feel the sticky note sketches had.

Sadge.

Anyways here another attempt at recreating said comic but with color:

As you can see no background and I don't know how to structure comics. However, an attempt was made as you can clearly see.

I actually quite like the way this came out. I might do more of this type of thing but I dunno.

Hope y'all like these I'll try to draw some more stuffs but I make no promises inbox is open, feliz año nuevo, chupame la verga y dale un besito a tu mamá de mi parte.

Muah I guess.

[penissirius]

Secret Secret pt2

Lee Know x male reader  

SUMMARY: Part 2 is ‘you’re a secret and you’re sick of it’ Part 1 was ‘you’re a secret’ and I’m sure you can guess what part 3 will be! If you can't, you’ll have to wait until that’s posted! (Uh I got lazy so this is part 2 and 3 lolll, part 3 is ‘you’re a secret no more') 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: M/n is a very famous and well-known gamer and content creator. Idol Stray Kids still. M/n has braces but if you don’t you can just skip that part and imagine the hair as something else as well. I tried to keep it generally plain tho so you could more imagine yourself. 

AUTHORS NOTE: This is part 2 (and 3 lol) of this 3-part series! part 2 already ommmggg time flies lol, I’m looking forward but not looking forward to writing this! This one is more angsty than the first part but not by that much cause writing angst hurts me and because I used to be forced to do it so much with a certain ex-friend of mine it’s become something I avoid. It is slightly sad though! There is arguing! I repeat there is arguing.  

WARNINGS: arguing, angstish ig, jealousy from the reader, insecure thoughts, idol AU, famous gamer reader. Slight ooc Lee Know? Idk I don’t write for him a lot or imagine for him a lot so I don’t think I capture his attitude and his demeanor correctly- 

FEMALE ALIGNED PLEASE DNI <3 

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

*2 Months after the conversation with Lee Know* 

M/n was chilling on stream yet again but this time he was just talking and chilling with fans while drawing new chapters for his webcomic. It was actually a pretty good stream, M/n was in a good mood, the comic was coming along nicely with no issues in the design and the questions people were asking weren't all that bad until they were. ‘So, M/n how’s you and the boyfie doing’ One of the comments was read aloud to him by the computer. “Hm? Oh! We’re doing great! I absolutely love being in this relationship and I’m much happier than the last one I was in. He is such a sweet and amazing guy. I can’t believe it’s getting to almost 2 years together” M/n smiled looking up for a second.  

‘That’s good, we’re glad you’re happy again M/n!’ ‘We finally have our happy boy back!’ ‘It’s been almost 2 years when are we going to know who’s the idol boyfriend’  

M/n looks up, “Now you guys know I can’t do that. He’s an idol and they have dating bans and stuff. It wouldn’t be okay to announce we’re dating let alone that he’s dating some twitch streamer like me.” 

‘It’s okay M/nnie! It’s enough to know he exists!’ ‘Or maybe he doesn’t and this whole thing has been a lie’ ‘well it can’t be a lie cause we’ve seen him pop in sometimes, wearing a hoodie and a mask but he comes in and gives M/n a kiss before leaving!’ ‘Yeah, and even so we believe and trust M/n!’  

M/n smiles giggling, happy that his fans believe and trust him. He ignores the few haters. “Honestly if it was up to me, I would've told you guys by now! But it’s not and I’m more than happy just me and a few friends knowing!” He goes back to drawing and the subject seems to change back to randomness. An hour and a half later he decided to end his live because his hand is getting pretty tired. “Alright guys, that's all from me. I promise that the normal gaming live will happen next week! There’s a poll up on what game I should play and I might pick a few of you to play with me! I haven’t done that in a while lol. But this is me and my hurting hand signing off! BYEEEEEE”  

After shutting everything off and reuploading it so people who missed it can rewatch, he goes to his living room to watch tv and FaceTime his best friend. He grabs his MacBook and after a few rings AJ finally answers and he sees him still in his training clothes which means he just got back to his dorm. “M/n! Hey dude!” M/ns energetic best friend said once he saw his face. “Hey AJ how was training?” M/n laughed seeing AJs face turn up at the thought of training. AJ puts his phone down to change into comfier clothes while talking.  

“Omg dude, training was literally the hardest today out of any other day. Dance wasn’t bad, and vocal practice wasn’t either. But rap class kind of kicked my ass and weird classes like selfie class and walking class because apparently there’s something wrong with my walk! ALSO, this stylist for one of the other groups said that I should consider cutting my hair because it’s ‘too long’ and ‘no one would know how to take care of your foreign hair’!” M/n was lowkey offended for his friend.  

Anyone who knows AJ knows that the curls in his hair that come from his mom's Hispanic side and not his dad's Korean side are his pride and one of the only things that keep him tied to home while he’s here in Korea. “What? Did she actually say that?” “Yeah, she did! And honestly, I don’t know if you’ve seen Bang Chan's curls before the stylist got a hold of them but I am NOT risking that happening to my hair. That’s a walking nightmare. Also, when my hair is straight it’s not that much longer than Hyunjin’s was before they recently cut it!” M/n just shook his head, “Honestly just continue to do your hair by yourself, you do great and if you have any complications then you can call your mom!” “You right you right!”  

They talked for a while and played some games together before they were just lying there doing separate things and talking after AJ had switched the call to his laptop. “Oh, dude did you see the new article?” AJ said looking up from his phone to his computer where the call was set up. “No? What’s it about.” M/n looked up suddenly interested. “It’s about Lee know. People are suspecting that he’s in a relationship. I’ll send it to you” “Alright” 

He got the link and the article said: 

Stray Kids' dancer Lee Know is in a relationship?! 

Recently it’s been suspected that the said dancer is in a relationship. He’s often not in the dorm when members have done vlives at night. In behind-the-scenes videos, you can see him smiling at his phone and texting someone. His and Han's friendship has seemed to get a little less touchy-feely but still the best of friends. Also, when he shows his Home Screen it’s a picture of him and a shorter/taller man hugging! It has been semi-confirmed that it can’t be one of the other members because the hair nor body type match…. 

It continues but M/n stops reading. “Why should I be worried about this? It’s not like they’re actually going to find out about me or he would even tell them.” He chuckles bitterly. “Yeah, but there is this really stuck-up trainee in the same class as me who is swearing that he’s the one dating Lee Know. I know that’s not true and so does Stray kids and Miyeon (female best friend) but others don’t. He doesn’t even look anything like you or the picture Minho has as his Lock Screen but everyone is starting to believe him.” M/n doesn’t know how to feel hearing this.  

“You and him need to do something about this. Talk about it. I think it’s time to let people know. I know he’s an idol and shit but his dating ban has been lifted, and JYP PDnim has started not caring if we are public with our relationships (at least in this universe 🤪), plus you guys have been dating for 2 years. I don’t think keeping you in the dark like this is fair. To have to deal with other people claiming to be dating him, and for you to have to deal with the constant hate you get for having an idol boyfriend but not saying the name. You’ve respected him and his feelings through all of this, but I think now it’s time for you to tell him how you feel.”  

M/n listens and thinks about what his best friend has told him. “But what if he doesn’t agree? What if he doesn’t want to be public? I mean he’s an idol and being with me publicly could ruin everything he’s working for.” AJ tsked, “Yeah but you have to consider your feelings. It’s been 2 years, I know you would like to be able to spend time and actually go on dates together. I can’t keep watching you put yourself and your own feelings on the back burner for him. At least just think about bringing it up dude, I've got to go now. I have early training in the morning” M/n nods. “Alright, night AJ. Tell Miyeon I said goodnight as well!” “I will, bye bro”  

After AJ hung up M/n really got to thinking and maybe he should bring it up. In the end M/n ended up not bringing it up to Minho. They haven’t been able to see each other in a while with all the stuff happening in Minho's schedule recently so they never gave a time to talk about it. Plus, M/n just didn’t want to start an argument about it when he knew it would just end with the same result and his feelings getting pushed back. But the topic always stayed in his mind.  

A week and a half later and the situation have blown up. The article continued, more came after. And soon the Trainee that was claiming to be Lee Knows boyfriend was pretty much everywhere. People were asking him questions, he was answering with fake texts between them, edited pictures, etc. Nothing was heard from Lee Know or JYP though and M/n was starting to get sick of it. It was like everywhere he turned was another fake post about this dude and Lee know. Honestly, he was pissed. Not being able to see his boyfriend, this dude claiming to be dating HIS boyfriend and JYP and Lee know himself weren't talking about it.  

This day in particular he had finally had enough. His ‘fans’ were making tweets saying how it was understandable that the trainee was dating Lee know but it’s kind of suspicious that M/n claims to be dating an idol but couldn’t talk about it like Dal (the trainee) could. There were a good 30% of his fans though that didn’t believe that Dal was dating Lee Know because to them it just didn’t make sense and would actually make more sense if M/n was the one dating him which made him feel slightly better. All in all, M/n was pretty much fed up with this. He texted AJ to go ahead and talk to JYP about the situation and article, to which the best friend was more than happy to. He even made a slide show for it, that fact made M/n laugh.  

AJ had brought the situation up to his CEO and was in the middle of talking to him about it when Lee Know texted M/n.  

Lee doesn’t seem to know ���� 

Hey baby, how’s your day been?  

If M/n was pissed before he’s livid now. How’s his day been? They haven’t had an actual conversation in weeks and the first conversation that he started was ‘How’s your day been?’… M/n has thrown all previous feelings of not wanting to cause an argument out the window.  

My prince 👑💙 

It hasn’t been good, Minho  

They haven’t been good for the past few weeks.  

Lee doesn’t seem to know 🙄 

Minho? No baby?  

What’s wrong?  

My prince 👑💙 

Hm, I don’t know. Why don’t you ask that bitch Dal what’s wrong.  

Lee doesn’t seem to know 🙄 

Dal? Dal who?  

My prince 👑💙 

The fucking trainee that’s been claiming to be dating you for the past idk 2 weeks.  

Now a little part of M/n was starting to feel bad for coming off in such a harsh way instead of actually talking and having a conversation about this, and maybe he was being a little petty by changing his boyfriend's contact name last week. But there was the bigger part of him that was so tired of dealing with this bullshit. He’s bottled up these feelings for weeks and months and now they’re finally being set free.  

Lee doesn’t seem to know 🙄 

What are you talking about? I don’t even hang out with him.  

I’ve had like 2 conversations total with him.   

My prince 👑💙 

Well, those 2 conversations clearly seemed to be enough for him to say you’re dating.  

Clearly it was enough motivation to make fake texts and edited photos of you together. 

Lee doesn’t seem to know 🙄 

Where are these so-called texts and photos and why haven’t I seen them?  

I’m sure all of this will just blow over anyway it’s not like I’m actually dating him, I’m dating you!  

My prince 👑💙 

But nobody knows that. 

I’m tired of this secret stuff Minho.  

It’s been 2 years. This has been going on for weeks now. How can you say it’ll just blow over.  

Lee doesn’t seem to know 🙄 

I honestly haven’t seen anything or heard anything about it this whole time! Baby you have to believe me 

Send it to me.  

My prince 👑💙 

A part of me just can’t seem to believe you have seen it at all but I’ll send it to you.  

sends multiple links to articles and TikTok's on the situation 

It takes about 30 to 45 minutes for Lee Know to get through all the links and process the information. In that time M/n still hadn’t calmed down. The part of him that felt bad wanted to cry and apologize and just be held by his boyfriend, but he was too clouded by all the emotions that he had held back finally coming out. After those 45 minutes Lee Know was on a mission to put this all to rest and finally come clean, he texted Him back but M/n didn’t see it. He had put his phone on Do not disturb and was set on ignoring him because he took too long to respond.  

Lee doesn’t seem to know 🙄 

Give me a moment love, I’ll have everything explained I promise  

My prince 👑💙 has notifications silenced  

While M/n was locked in his room eating ice cream and watching his comfort show after he cried. Lee Know, AJ and JYP were setting up a last second thrown together live interview set up in one of the company's conference rooms. After getting one of the radio hosts under JYPE, Chase, who hosts Idol on Air and setting everything up, AJ’s job was to get M/n to watch it. AJ took off running to his car and speeding to M/n’s apartment, texting Minho when he got there. He unlocked the door with the spare key his best friend had given him a while ago. He quickly made a beeline straight to M/n's bedroom, shutting the door, sitting his best friend up and grabbing the remote and turning.  

“Hey, what the fuck! I was watching that!” M/n said confused and upset that his friend ruined his pity party. “There’s something way more important that you need to see” M/n pouted and watched as AJ quickly turned to where the interview was being broadcasted. He was quite confused when he saw his boyfriend on the live show that was clearly thrown together and not planned. ‘Maybe this is why he wasn’t responding- I feel so bad now. What is he even planning to talk about?’ M/n turned to AJ, “dude what is-?” “SHHHHH”, AJ cut him off, “it’s starting!” 

“And we are on! Hello and welcome to Idol on Air! I’m your host Chase and as always, it’s a pleasure to be here with you guys. Today we have Mr. Lee Know of Stray Kids with us!” Minho waves “hello”  

M/n looks at AJ unimpressed, “what does any of this have to do with me?” “You’ll see in a second just shut up and watch” AJ points back at the screen.  

“Today we will be talking about a topic that has been the biggest revolving said dancer and the JYPE trainee, Dal.” Chase said, looking back at the camera.  

Now that sparked M/n’s interest and made him pay attention.  

“As it seems, the trainee, Dal has been spreading and trending everywhere claiming that he is in fact dating Lee Know. This started when a big article speculated that the idol was in a relationship. These are the posts and quote on quote evidence given from Dal.” Multiple Instagram posts, tweets, and photos were shown on the screen and on one of the TVs behind the camera for JYP, Chase, Lee Know and the rest of the staff to see. “We are here today to debunk these rumors and fake posts” 

M/n stares wide eyed at the screen slowly processing what was happening and what it meant.  

Chase turns to Lee know, “Now I’ll let the man himself speak. Lee Know, are you dating the trainee Dal?” He sat up taller and looked dead at the camera before responding. “No, I am not. I have only had 2 conversations with him in total since he became a trainee here.” “Tell us more.” Lee Know smirked, “Gladly. The texts are fake for I don’t even have his number or social media nor do I have a personal Instagram at all let alone the one shown in the photos. All of the photos of us together are edited. I’ve only taken one photo with him and it is this one.”  

A picture of them in one of the practice rooms was shown. Lee Know and Dal are posing but to M/n it looks slightly off. He knows his boyfriend and that’s not the way he usually takes photos with someone who isn’t his members or friends.  

“Only this isn’t the actual photo. This is.” A different photo was shown, it was in the same room and they had the same clothes on but there were more people in the room and now M/n understood why it looked so off to him. The original picture was of Lee Know and Felix in a practice room with Dal and 3 other trainees clearly having just got done practicing. There were two trainees on the other side of Minho, then him with Felix being right beside him and Dal along with the other trainee on the other side of Felix. “This day me and Felix, along with Hyunjin who wasn’t there the whole time, had offered to help some trainees with their dancing and took a picture at the end.”  

“Everything that was said about me dating Dal was indeed false. We aren’t even friends let alone dating. I don’t know where he got the idea that we were or why he came up with this idea to fake like he was dating me. I knew nothing of this situation until today and I’m putting it to rest immediately” He nodded before turning back to Chase. “Well now we have that settled and put to rest. Lee Know and Dal are in fact not dating and everything the said trainee has said has been false. I do have one question though. Are you dating someone?”  

M/n held his breath awaiting his boyfriend's response. He knew this would be when he’d say no, he wasn’t and they’d go back to being a secret and no one knowing that the idol was indeed taken. He was upset knowing that he’d never get to be public about his relationship with Minho. But a very small part of him held hope that he would say he was, although it was unlikely, he subconsciously hoped for it. AJ just smirked and watched his brilliant plan unfold, ignoring the curious gaze from his friend beside him.  

“Actually, yeah I am dating someone, and he is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.” The look on the idol's face when he was saying this was one of pure love and happiness. You could tell that he was being genuinely serious about what he said. “Oooo? Who’s the lucky guy?” Chase said, looking at Lee Know waiting for him to spill the tea. “His name is M/n! He’s a popular twitch streamer. We’ve been dating for a while now; I love him so much.”  

M/n was about ready to start crying when he confirmed he saw taken but he definitely started crying when his boyfriend not only said to the world, they were dating but also mentioned him even if he didn't have to. The hate that he was getting would finally stop. He could finally be open and talk about his relationship. He didn't have any other thoughts in his head other than to immediately get to his boyfriend and kiss him silly.  

Some more things were said before they closed up the interview but M/n was no longer interested instead he was hurriedly putting his shoes on, dressed in some shorts and one of Lee Knows hoodies that he had left. He forced AJ up and ushered him to the front door ordering him to drive them to the company, not without complaints from the Hispanic about him being comfortable. By the time they got to the company, the interview was just finishing up. M/n sped into the building as soon as they were parked, with AJ rushing behind him. He had to eventually wait for his best friend because despite how many times he had been to the building he didn’t know where he was going. When he finally got to the room where Lee Know was, he throws all rational thinking to the side and the second Lee Know walked out he jumped on him wrapping his arms and legs around him like a koala making the dancer hurry and support him with his arms under M/n's butt.  

“Omg, I love you so much! I love you I love you I love you!” M/n says with his face hidden in his boyfriend's shoulder starting to tear up again. AJ and the staff members had gone about their business putting things away and doing whatever they had to do, to give the newly public couple some privacy. Lee Know walked into the room that was right beside them and sat in the chair with M/n still in his arms. “I love you too, I’m sorry it took all of this for me to finally do this love.” he kissed the top of the love of his life's head holding him tighter. M/n looked up at him with the biggest smile Minho had seen in weeks, “No it’s okay! The fact that you not only said we were in a relationship but said it was me and confessed your love for me on live where people everywhere can see made up for how long it took!” Before Minho could say anything unless M/n had grabbed his face and kissed him. After the initial kiss, he left a ton of kisses all around the dancer's face smiling brightly. Looking at the smile on his boyfriend's face, all the doubts Minho had in his mind about how his lover was feeling washed away and he knew they would be okay.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Authors Note: So I combined the last 2 parts into one because A) I really didnt want to write 2 more parts B) My friend who was Beta reading thought it would be better in just one part and C) if it had been three parts I don't think part 3 would have been too long- but anyways I hope you liked it and im sorry this took me so long to write I was struggling to think of new stuff plus writing my book and school and work all on top XD but its finally out now even if it is awhile after I said it would've been posted. (Lmaooo this has been ready since Sept 11 and I’m just now posting it- sorry)

[creatively-cosmic]

What up, Starry—You already know who it is! B)

Sorry about Tumblr being a buggy mess and crashing halfway through! I’ve experienced the frustration of losing writing due to crashes and it always sucks. But thank you for continuing to answer these questions and satiate my curiosity! Learning more about Missing Numbers is like reading a book that just keeps getting better and better and better with every new chapter. Also: don’t worry about the delays or how long responding takes! You come first and foremost. Your health/work/school/whatever it is ya got going on in your personal life, is infinitely more important than me getting an answer to a question. So please, take your time, as much as you need—I will wait.

(Also, young Red being just as much of a little shit as Blue was is surprisingly wholesome and I love that. And after seeing their heights I realized I’m the same height as Blue! That detail is not important in the slightest, I just thought it was funny.)

Anywho, let’s get into the meat and potatoes, shall we?

First things first: Y’all mentioned biology mechanics and the nature of Glitches? 👀 Well, guess what? I love that kinda stuff! My curiosity is piqued—please explain.

Second question though: What is Leaf’s Duty? What does she do and how do her powers(?) work? Are her abilities like how the move Imprison was in Fallen Leaf?

And third: What’s the relationship/dynamic between Leaf and Red? That comic y’all posted has me wondering what Leaf is warning others about.

That’s all for now though! Please take care of yourself. Have a good day/afternoon/night!

Ahh, thank you so much for your patience! its really appreciated,, im glad youve still been enjoying things- your comments (and your FANART OH MY GOD??) have still been giving us LIFE i truly cannot thank you enough!

Red and Blue’s childhood friendship and rivalry has always been something we’ve wanted to come off as just plain silly and enjoyable- I’m glad we’ve been succeeding in that, hehe. And Blue was actually originally going to be shorter (our height, actually), we just added a few inches to be nicer to him lol

Per usual now, we’ll keep the big stuff under the cut! It’s another long one: Consider this Leaf Lore Part Two.

For the Glitch stuff, we’ve been thinking and might make a BIG formal post going over all of Professor Maple’s speculation and studies, to make it a good access point for the worldbuilding of Missing Numbers. I can’t promise it’ll come soon, but! As a starting point, I do have a pre-written thing with information on different classifications of Glitch that should clear up a good bit to start with. 

Unless we get any sudden further realizations, every Glitch, Corruption, and Anomaly in Missing Numbers (and arguably in Pokemon as a whole) can fall under these five classifications.

Leaf’s duty is the main aspect of what we failed to touch on in your previous question. So, I’ll finish that part of the story. :) 

To answer your questions, we first have to establish how she got her powers. When Leaf died, she did not get to rest peacefully. Most who die in this world don’t. The afterlife for the fallen and forgotten is not pretty. It is not merciful. There is no heaven for the ones who do not matter to God. 

The Distortion exists in layers. At it’s lowest, the farthest from contact with the main reality, is a void of unused, scrapped, and null data. A graveyard, or worse yet, a dump where things that can no longer exist in the surface world go to rot. Unused data. Scrapped NPCs. Removed characters, Pokemon, items. 

Assets of old games that never carried over.

Leaf's soul was discarded here when she was erased from existence at the end of Abandoned Loneliness. Left to rot with the unborn Ghosts that had haunted them both with the intent to drag someone of significance down with them. Hoping they too might escape. That they might receive mercy through her. 

Unfortunately, Leaf was the unloved child. So instead she fell to their ranks, swallowed up by the abyss that was their resting place- thrust as far from reality, from her home, from her friends, from her purpose as feasibly possible. Still conscious. Still aware. Still suffering.

… Leaf was not one to accept things lying down. Leaf was a fighter. She hated injustice, unfairness. She wouldn’t stand for this. She wouldn’t lie down and give up. No matter how suffocating the darkness was. No matter how the bloodied hands tried to drag her further down. No matter how the chaos and corruption tried to break and dismantle her. 

No. Matter. What.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And if there was one thing that defined Leaf even more than her bleeding heart, it was that her will was unbreakable.

So she climbed. Climbing over the damned- the forgotten- the spiteful- the vengeful- everything trying to hurt her and pull her down. Focused solely on escaping, on going up. Until things began to become more tangible. Until she could see more than black and red. Until there was light, and color. Until data became form- albeit still broken, chaotic. Numbers. Misplaced bricks. Impossible plants. Incomprehensible collision. 

Glitch City.

She broke through the floor of the second lowest layer of the Distortion, and though the surface’s light was still so far… She’d found solid footing. 

And here, though it may have been quieter… She wasn’t so alone.

The City had the odd few inhabitants. But the first that she met was a strangely familiar boy, a teenager that reminded her of someone she knew, but wrong. With a cocky, lopsided grin, unruly black hair, and bright red eyes. 

Someone who wanted out just as badly as she did.

Leaf and Red never knew each other outside of Glitch City. But during their time trapped there together as children, they were friends. Leaf wasn’t the first person Red befriended there… 

But she was significant. They were allies with a shared goal, after all, and if one of them could find a way out, they could get out together! They worked in tandem to find hope, grasp at an escape. Everything they could, as a possibility. They were friends, after all. Right?

Right?

… Leaf didn’t wholly trust Red. It wasn’t personal, but there were things that were risky. She could see the instability of corruption plaguing him, and she wanted to ensure her loved ones’ safety more than she wanted to escape. The greater picture was something that she could wrap her head around, even if it was hard to grasp.

Red was not the same. Laser focused on his goal and uncaring of the consequences, it was a factor that, over time, divided them more and more as Leaf realized the severity of Red’s condition, and began to think…

Maybe he was here for a reason. … Still, she tried to turn a blind eye. Let herself hope things weren’t that bad. 

The growing obviousness for his resentment towards Fire, though Red tried to hide it, didn’t help- her distrust towards him only grew, further clouded by her personal fears and dedication to protecting her loved ones.

And one day, while discussing a possible window for escape… She let a thought she’d been hiding slip. The final nail in the coffin.

Afraid for her brother’s life, and angry seeing how Red reveled in the idea of hurting him, she left him behind and didn’t look back.

From there, we aren’t sure of the exact details of how she escaped. But we know she had help on the surface- from someone a little too curious about the nature of the Anomalous, who was all too eager to free a willing entity. Professor Ace Maple (specializing in “anomalies”, and original to the Missing Numbers story!) helped free her soul. 

Of course, releasing a long-buried corrupted entity wouldn’t go unnoticed by the higher power that had put her there. But… It saw how careful she was. How she was now completely wary of all glitches. How she’d come to understand the dangers they posed to the world and the people in it.

So, the Almighty came to her in a Golden light. Extending an offer to her.

YOU CANNOT BE PERMITTED TO EXIST IN THIS WORLD AS YOU ARE.

THERE IS A REASON YOUR KIND WERE BURIED.

THIS WORLD IS ENDANGERED EVERY TIME CORRUPTION ESCAPES.

I MUST PRESERVE THE ORDER OF THIS REALITY.

BUT YOU, HEROINE, HAVE PROVEN TO BE SPECIAL.

I AM WILLING TO MAKE A COMPROMISE FOR YOU ALONE.

YOU KNOW THINGS I CANNOT PERMIT ANYONE TO KNOW.

YOU’VE SEEN THINGS I CANNOT PERMIT ANYONE TO SEE.

I CAN ALLOW YOU TO KEEP THESE MEMORIES, AND YOUR PRESENCE HERE, ON SIMPLE TERMS.

DO NOT SPEAK OF IT TO ANOTHER SOUL…

AND PUT THIS KNOWLEDGE TO USE.

YOUR SHACKLES WILL BE YOUR WEAPON. KNOWLEDGE. POWER. 

PROTECT MY WORLD. CLEANSE THE CORRUPTION. HOLD THEM BELOW.

YOU ALONE WILL SEE EVERYTHING, FOR YOU ALONE SHALL BE THE WARDEN.

BUT DO NOT FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM.

DO NOT FORSAKE ME.

… Of course she accepted the bargain. It was all beneficial in her eyes. Her complete freedom, and the ability to protect those she loved most in ways she never could have before. What happened in their childhood would never happen again now.

Thus, Leaf was blessed with her body yet again. Rightfully hers, and aged to grow with her. Though she’d never again be a Vessel, that was okay. She was something far greater now. 

The chains could Imprison any code they touched, and they were completely under her control. With these, she could fight and restrain any anomalies necessary. She was also given the one-of-a-kind ability to freely move between the Main world, and the Distortion… To ensure that no activity occurred in either that could allow the escape of something catastrophic.

Of course, things weren’t perfect. The world and the people in it had changed since she’d been gone. It had been years. People would be different.

Blue, for one. It was hard to face him again. Tensions never stopped being high between them. They both remembered, after all.

She mostly just cared about her brother, now. It took her a bit to find him, idle at the top of Mount Silver. 

It was heartbreaking to see the emptiness in his eyes. Him barely acknowledging her. The realization that he’d never… He’d never looked for her. Never tried to free her. 

Never even mourned. 

She still loved him. She always would. He was her family. He was the only one who’d been anything like her.

It was okay that he got everything she had. It was okay that he’d completely replaced her. It was okay that he now had everything she ever wanted. It was okay that he wasn’t the one who looked for, found, freed her, instead of a complete stranger. It was okay that when he spoke it was soulless and objective and only reminding her of her duties. it was okay. it was okay. 

It was okay that he didn’t care. 

It was okay that he was living the life she should’ve wanted DESERVED that he was destined to.

It was okay that she had to protect him. It was part of her duty, after all.

She wasn’t bitter. She wasn’t mad. She loved him.

… And then there was Red- “Glitchy,” as she now called him, unwilling to give him the name that belonged to her brother. He never did give up on her. He was PISSED, mind you, that somehow she had escaped and left him and the others stuck down there behind- but he still refused to back down.

They were enemies now, though. As he grew more restless- and more powerful, much to Leaf’s horror- his imprisonment became a direct responsibility of hers. And as Professor Maple grew more curious about glitches, unknowingly bringing him closer and closer to true freedom, even though she felt indebted to them, she had to resist their studies. Warn them of everything- especially him.

“I thought you hated injustice. Don’t you think this is unfair?”

Still, she had to face him often. And even in his madness, and even in chains, Red could speak so… Persuasively. 

“If you could escape, why shouldn’t I? You have the ability to free me.”

“And I know you’re hiding me from the others. Don’t they deserve to know?”

“You knew as a KID that Blue was looking for me. Doesn’t HE deserve it?”

“I think you know this isn’t the right thing to do.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“But it’s okay. I’m not mad. I can be patient.”

“I’m sure you’ll come around.”

“After all, you’re just like me and you know it.”

[taiblogcomics]

He's Mr. Action, Not Mr. Satisfaction

Hey there, caramel apple scents. We're starting our second part of Countdown! It's only going to get worse from here!

Here's the cover:

Oh boy, I promised you we'd get here for issue 38, and here we are! We finally get to make fun of Jimmy Olsen's superhero identity! We've already made fun of his supranym, Mr. Action, and this isn't even his first appearance, so this comic is lying to you. But oh boy, this costume. This costume is basically DC's equivalent to the proto-Spider-Man costume in the first Sam Raimi film. Like, he silk-screened that A logo on pretty good, and that's all the praise he gets. At least he had the foresight to have his mask cover his signature red hair, but he forgot about his equally signature freckles~

So, for the recap, we have Jimmy Olsen (the appallingly named Mr. Action) having decided to join the Teen Titans with his new superpowers. Former Titan Donna Troy and friends are looking for former Teen Titan Ray Palmer (that's a long story). Mary Marvel is seeking mentorship with Zatanna, whose nephew Zatara was a Teen Titan. Pied Piper and Trickster are on the run from the Suicide Squad because they murdered former Teen Titan Bart Allen. Karate Kid and Una, members of the 31st century equivalent of the Teen Titans, are on a mission from the future. And Holly Robinson and Harley Quinn are hanging out in a women's shelter with no connection to the Teen Titans, but do have a conneciton to the Greek god Athena. All right, Titans: go!

To start with, I will say, since I'm reading this from a trade, I do appreciate that the trade does start with a paragraph of summary of each character(s)'s plotline from the previous volume. We don't need it for this review, but I appreciate the effort to keep the reader informed with what they thought was important to know about what was going on. Unlike the issues themselves, the trades did not come out particularly close together, so at least you can just re-read the summary instead of having to try to keep this junk in your head yourself~

Anyways, the issue really starts with the effects of that computer virus attack Oracle was alluding to in the previous issue. We see a bunch of heroes who don't have anything to do with this storyline out saving the day: Superman, Supergirl, and Power Girl catching airplanes, Hal Jordan rescuing a space shuttle, the JSA stopping a prison break, the Freedom Fighters capturing some accidentally-fired nukes… Standard superhero stuff, it's great! The odd ones out here are the incident happening on a cruise ship, the same one where Mary Marvel and Zatanna are making their first team-up.

Mary and Zatanna have encountered Deep Six, who were another obscure batch of Fourth World-related characters, a bunch of sea-life monsters. They've jumped onto the cruise ship and are terrorising the passengers--except as one of them, Stig, tries to explain, they're just trying to escape something else coming after them. However, since the Deep Six were bad guys, they're not exactly behaving rationally about this. Stig in particular is turning the guests into sea creatures as he demands protection from the killer coming after him. He also gropes Mary Marvel and burns her top with his grip, pissing her off.

So this whole security crash is because of Noah Kuttler, AKA the Calculator. Calculator is an interesting one, in that he started as a lame Batman villain with a stupid costume, which he ditched and became an info-broker. This whole incident is basically him having a dick-waving contest with his heroic counterpart, Oracle. It's a hacker war! And as you might guess, Oracle is completely calm (if harried), while Calculator is getting increasingly pissed off that she keeps thwarting his hackery. In response to her latest efforts, he turns off all the lights in Gotham City.

Speaking of Gotham, you might recall Pied Piper and Trickster getting confronted by the Question and Batwoman last issue. The duo admit that while they were present, they didn't participate in the Flash's actual death. Question asks them to convince her, and Trickster actually pulls out hand-puppets of himself and the Flash to act out how Flash actually helped him get appointed to the FBI to root out the Rogues. Batwoman decks him in the face, but Question decides to let them go. The puppets convinced her--not of their innocence, but of them being too stupid to be murderers. I don't think that's quite the defense she thinks it is.

Back on the cruise ship, Mary is now fighting with the mutated sealife, while Zatanna is reminding her that they used to be people and she has to hold back. While Zatanna uses her powers to return the people to normal, suddenly the rest of Deep Six bursts out of the ocean, surrounded by a silhouette bathed in light. Or should I say, their bodies do. Slig begs before them, but the silhouette just shoots a beam at him, killing him. That's another six New Gods you can add to the list as they fly off, leaving Mary and Zatanna baffled.

All right, so the main attraction to this, the thing they put on the cover. It's only three pages. Jimmy Olsen is at Titans Tower--which at this point, I believe the Titans were still stationed in San Francisco. So regardless of whether Metropolis is in Kansas (my headcanon) or the east coast across from Gotham (a stupid idea), this is quite a distance to travel for an audition or job interview or whatever you'd call this. He's meeting with Tim Drake/Robin (who's the only Titan to appear in this issue, despite what the cover would have you believe), who is just not impressed with Jimmy's résumé.

Jimmy's really eager to prove himself to Robin, though, and he asks Robin to attack him to prove what he can do. Robin kicks him in the face, which is a funny image, at least. He quickly apologises, thinking Jimmy would've ducked. But no, Jimmy expected his powers to kick in. At least until he realises Robin was holding back, since his powers only work when his life is actually in danger. Which, I mean, duh. Robin also thinks this is a "duh" moment, because he's not sending Superman's pal to the hospital just for an audition. He tells Jimmy to stick with the photography thing, as he can still help people that way, even if it's not as glorious.

Back on the cruise ship, with most of the incident over, only the magical cleanup remains. Mary Marvel gets impatient with how slow Zatanna is at fixing everyone, so she just mass-transforms everyone back to human. Zatanna is impressed and a little concerned--she didn't think Mary had that kind of power. Mary begins to scoff, thinking she might not even need a tutor after all. And this whole scene is being watched from afar by Eclipso, who at this point is possessing the body of Jean Loring, Ray Palmer's ex, who got him started on that whole multiversal journey to begin with, just to tie these plots together~

Also watching (or should I say, monitoring) this scene are the Monitors. They note that with Deep Six's deaths, the number of New Gods murdered has now broken double digits. Which, like, on one hand, yeah, that many murders is pretty bad. On the other, though, it took six guys getting killed simultaneously to break double digits, the easiest barrier to break. So I'm not sure what the level of concern is here. They also note that both the Multiverse Crew and Ray Palmer himself are invisible to their monitoring, which kind of makes them sound like they suck at the one thing they're specifically named to do.

Oracle finishes up her hacker war with Calculator and gets him to log off for a while, then turns her attention to the two Legion of Super-Heroes members who have been standing there watching her this whole time. Long story short, Karate Kid finally explains his deal for this series: he's dying. That's it, that's all he says this issue. And the comic closes out with Darkseid's action figure collection, as he backhands his Deep Six figures off the board, figuring they were but pawns, and therefore okay to sacrifice, as long as he winds up on top.

This issue sucks, blah blah blah, whatever. I want to use this space to mention an annoying gimmick it was doing that didn't come up in the actual recap. But whenever it switched perspectives, whenever a new scene started, it would pick up someone else's dialogue, finishing a sentence started in the previous scene. Like, for example, the scene with Robin and Jimmy Olsen ends with Robin saying "Stick with photography, that's what you're good at." And Jimmy replies, "No, Robin. All I want to do is..." And then it cuts over to the scene with Mary Marvel and Zatanna on the boat, with Zatanna finishing the sentence: "...help these people!" This happens constantly throughout the issue. I dunno if they though they were being cute or making the scenes cohesive or what, but they were wrong. I just found it distracting~

Otherwise, this issue is mostly harmlessly dumb. It feels like maybe we missed something with how Mary Marvel and Zatanna are just working together, when I think last we saw her, Mary was merely watching Zee's performance and just considering asking her? Like, as much as I liked the superheroics montage at the beginning, it ultimately meant nothing in Oracle's hacker war, and maybe could've set up Mary and Zee together instead of just cutting to them already mid-action. Cohesion is just not a very good thing in this story altogether, and this issue in general, I guess.

[dashawfrostart]

This Week In "Time & Again" #3: Gettin' Technical... Again?! And A Little Cynical

Hello again! I must admit... My weekly blog posting schedule has slightly shifted - first, because I posted the Halloween poster a.k.a. The First Teaser a bit later due to the creepy holiday itself, and second - because a bunch of life stuff is happening (yup, don't underestimate me, I do have a life outside artworks! 🤣). Usually everything has been fairly straightforward and gradual in my life, but there's a bit of certain activity going on in it right now, more than usual. And potentially also non-artistic side projects in my life. Because of that, I didn't get a chance to draw as much as I anticipated to during this week (already last week?! wowie!!!.. time flies, indeed!). But nevertheless, I tried my very best to go ahead with "Time & Again", for this is a project of the greatest importance to me. Slower or faster it's reaching its "well done" state - it doesn't matter. As you know, I'm not big on time limits 😁 At this point of time, the product is still very undercooked, so I'll be cooking it until done (even though I absolutely can't stand it when the packages say "cook until done"... because would you PLEASE be more vague?🤣).

To my surprise, I do not have an awful lot to say today. One might even say I'm ruining the format, for the previous posts I made had quite a (relatively) high word count. That said though - and some people close to me know this very well - every time I say I don't have much to say I end up writing twice or thrice as normal. Which leads us to conclusion that, perhaps, I actually do have things to say?!.. Either way, I'm sure you're not yet tired of me rumbling on and on about strange things that only some people - primarily digital artists - understand... Namely my habits of work. I am sure quite methodical in the way I draw, perhaps oddly. So I'll continue being technical for a while, until I run out of techy topics to talk about. And when I do... then I'll just spam more pictures 😁

However... A small demonstration of progress would be good for a wee little "teaser" of sorts:

(Note the layer names. I often make typos when I rename the layers - and I just don't bother and leave them as is, because it doesn't really matter. Pains me as a languages and grammar nerd, of course, but also entertains me a bit 🤣 Also, the cigarette smoke has been drawn on a separate layer as well, and it humorously states how I feel about this particular habit of this charming dirtymouth individual. Eeeew, Lothar. Not cool.) I do not always do that, but sometimes I start off drawing the outlines of the characters' bodies and end up "wrapping" clothes around them afterwards, like on the screenshots above. I think the reason why I completed the work on Chapter 3 so unbelievably fast last year was due to the fact that on majority of the frames Lothar appeared topless... Because I've noticed that when the characters don't have much clothes on them, it takes significantly less time to draw them. But of course!.. In this case you don't have to draw every single fold and wrinkle on shirts and skirts, extra seams on jeans, or additional stylish detail on any piece of garment that looks far too plain without it... Drawing characters naked - or half-naked - sure saves an artist a TREMENDOUS amount of time and effort. ... I suspect this is also the reason why in a lot of modern comics and mangas - and animated shows, too - the artists tend to include a lot of nudity in their projects... Why yes, isn't it obvious?! Because who, pray tell, wants to spend extra hours drawing all the clothes anyway?! Come on, clothes are overrated! I'm sure of it now.

... That was plenty enough of cynicism and sarcasm for a single post, I guess. Alas! I'm rumbling, again! That was not planned by me! So let's move on to the main part of this post now! Finally, on to the techy stuff, as promised! Yum! 🤤

First of all, I would like to mention a very important change in the way I work on my graphic novel now. One fine day, not long ago, I have discovered something... that turned my digital artist's world upside down. And the name of the phenomena that shattered my whole life was... Krita's weighted smoothing for the brush. (ok, ok... that sounded very exaggerated and pompous. But oh well!)

The screenshot on the left shows the brush settings I used all the time prior to Chapter 5. I used amazing Krita's Stabilizer smoothing, because I found it quite useful back in the day as I only started to use my Huion graphic monitor. I was so fascinated with it... It truly felt magical after a few years of using "a blind", screenless Wacom drawing tablet (which I will never ever go back to, for, to be honest, I have no idea how I was able to draw anything 🤣... tried using it a couple years ago just to see the difference, and I ended up exclaiming, "How in the ❤❤❤❤ do you even draw on this thing?!", and I set it aside for good... to collect real thicc layers of dust on the shelf 🤣). The right screenshot depicts the current settings I use for the weighted smoothing. Those are the Krita defaults.

An unskilled eye would probably not even notice any remarkable difference between the two as they watch somebody drawing in real time - or if they compare my older works versus the very latest ones. I must admit, the difference is sure very subtle. But to me, there's enough of a difference in how it FEELS when I'm drawing. The lines turn out better overall, somehow it makes me feel as if I'm drawing on paper rather than on a slippery screen. I could say, to me weighted smoothing imitates pencil drawing on paper very well. Which ultimately means... it's easier to draw in general. Thus, the digital artworks look more like my regular artworks on paper. It makes me happy that I can just be me when I'm drawing on both paper and on the graphic monitor. Back in the day, I was very worried about how switching to digital format was gonna impact my peculiar art style. Turns out it hardly does. ... Not that drawing on a graphic monitor has ever been challenging to me, for I learnt pretty fast, and yet, at times something felt a little off. So right now, I ponder, there's gonna be much less "off" and much more "awesome". Which is indeed lovely.

Now I question myself on why I've never used this brush smoothing before, for I truly think it would've made the process of work much faster and the final result a tad nicer. This proves that one needs a perspective, a few types of materials to compare before springing to any sort of conclusions. Seems like back in the day weighted smoothing simply didn't get enough attention and any sufficient "test drive" from me. But I am very happy I discovered this wonderful thing now. And I'm gonna stick to it - quite possibly forever from now on, as I will keep working on the rest of "Time & Again" chapters as well as everything else including random little arts with the other characters that I love to sporadically work on every so often, and the pieces for my online greeting cards store, and such.

... Like I already mentioned in the beginning of this post, as I write - I might get seriously carried away. And I see this post keeps growing bigger and bigger in size, again, so I should better wrap it up and save a little more exciting information for the next post (that I will hopefully try to schedule properly in order to restore more or less consistent posting timeframe, for now it's aaaaaall over the place!.. no promises tho).

I'm afraid, no animated gifs today. But for a nice goodbye, I'll drop a little "teaser" picture - a very rough sketch for some other "Time & Again" artwork that I'm going to finish up shortly (hopefully).

You will most likely see the end result of this particular artistic torment as a layout element on my social pages.

And for now - doooooodly doot doot! - I wave goodbye and leave the online world for a while to keep working on my obsession... and to eat some peanut butter, too, of course. See ya next time! 👋

[starbylers]

Speculation about potential spoilers—related to the leak we just got but some extra info you might care to hear

Okay about that leaker’s reliability: yes. I’ve also seen multiple people on Twitter claim that they’ve been wrong about stuff in the past & then tried to cover it up allegedly, so like…it is possible they have something that's just plain wrong. It's also possible they just guessed at it, because it’s a pretty obvious observation someone could make and then later claim they were right when it inevitably happens. Or it’s possible they do have something real but it’s missing a lot of context (cause I don’t believe for a second Will has an endgame new character love interest lol). In which case yeah I agree about the possibility of a side character.

So I’ve always sort of theorised that that could be one of the ways they hint at Mike’s feelings before the reveal. Given they just rebuilt their friendship and promised to be a team and all the visual foreshadowing to emphasise that point, it makes a sense Mike would be unhappy at the prospect of what he sees as Will replacing his spot as "best friend" even if he doesn’t understand why it bothers him so much until he realises his feelings later on.

If it was to be a more substantial plot point it could begin before the season does to avoid taking time from the main story. One of my theories has been that the boys drift somewhat over the skip because of everything they’re individually going though (Dustin with Eddie, Lucas with Max, Will with Vecna but also his sexuality issues, Mike with stressing about El who’s stressing about Max and Henry, and his relationship simultaneously coming apart at the seams), and that scene we saw with all their hands is a friendship reunification of sorts. It's possible Will could’ve been hanging around new people and met someone who's like him. Doesn’t even have to be a result of drifting, could just be someone Will crosses paths with now he’s back in Hawkins permanently. Possibly it could be something that we see in timeskip flashbacks, that's done/is about to be done by the time we get to present day because, well, many possible reasons (he's still dealing with internalised homophobia; it was just a minor crush or flirt/someone who liked him more than he liked them; he's obviously still head over heels in love with Mike—matches with Alex’s leaks you mentioned). Maybe Mike complains or starts an argument about this person later on when him & Will are inevitably working together because of the supernatural and that's when it’s hinted that he's jealous.

But it could also just mean a brief flirtation with someone like idk a classmate or someone in town, a one time or even few time recurring character, who clocks Will as gay and that Mike happens to witness and acts weird about. A very minor plot point (maybe even played slightly comically), main purpose to again give clues about Mike.

These are all just thoughts but to make a point that a "love interest" rumour can be interpreted in many ways. Generally I do think it could be positive for his development to not spend however long the jump is just being miserable over Mike and instead maybe getting some life experience. It could very well be a way for them to progress his self-acceptance arc, which we know is a major part of his story and the show's conformity themes. Although I think in any scenario it would be wrapped up by the first episode, after which his & Mike's relationship grows. The Mileven break up could hypothetically coincide with this. It also works with the leak you mentioned from the hopsital person from ep 2 about their ‘relationship developing’. I think there are lots of ways a "love interest" could be a thing without it being a hinderance to Byler's development.

Also: they’re nearly halfway through filming and we’ve heard nothing about what would be a pretty significant character if it was to be his genuine endgame love interest. There’s been no sightings or reports of someone unknown filming with the main cast. They’ve said no new characters and I know there’s been Linda & that kid but I think it’s more plausible they meant no new ensemble cast members like Robin, Eddie & Argyle. They were always going to need new characters for plot purposes, I don’t think anyone disputed that idea.

It honestly makes more sense to me that there would be an epilogue extra as a love interest rather than a fully fleshed out character who Will has relationship development with and ends up with, but I don’t for a second believe that is true either just because of the numerous analyses I've made of this whole story.

Also about Noah: he’s said a lot of stuff at different points in time but literally a month or so ago he liked that TikTok calling them boyfriends, and of course back in Jan he did the whole ‘Byler kiss….we’ll see 😉😉’ thing on his live like you kinda mentioned. I really don’t think he has a reason to string Bylers along. It’s not like he’s Netflix trying to market, and also he’s notorious for just being excitable and not being able to keep his mouth shut which tracks with the liking a romantic Byler s5 TikTok and also liking multiple TikToks asking if it was Will screaming in the leaked video. I swear he also spoiled Hopper being alive in s3? He loves spilling and I mean he’s the one playing the character, I’m slightly more inclined to put stock in the words/actions of one of the only people on the planet who 100% knows the whole truth as opposed to "leakers" especially this early on, who get monetary gain from stirring chaos and don't cite their sources. Also like you said he's capable of toning it down when he's unsure, like he said in the past Mike likes El and that he doesn't write the show etc, but since filming he's only encouraged the idea.

Anyway thanks for sharing! I def don't believe there is any true love interest i.e. someone he will end up with, outside of Mike of course (I don’t really believe the leak is legit at all tbh, I just like covering all the possibilities). I may be biased but I'm just that confident in Byler haha

Warning! Potential spoilers for Stranger Things Season 5!

This account has tweeted a ‘scoop’ stating that Will Byers will have a love interest in season five. I’ve seen varying reports on this acc’s reliability - otoh it has apparently revealed Marvel spoilers, but on the other it’s been called out for making up things, so it’s hard to say.

It has tweeted this in the past:

That RejectedScooper person is being incredibly unreliable. First they insinuate it is Mike:

the they deny it:

then they like a byler tweet:

However, while RejectedScooper is absolutely not reliable, MyTimeToShineH is more debatable. One stranger things stan acc on twitter, an acc which closely follows filming, dm’d then and was told only that it’s a ‘new’ character, with no elaboration.

I’m sharing all of this to paint the fullest possible picture, as I know many of the accs here aren’t on twitter. It’s worth noting that they’re on filming for episode 4-5 now, and no leaks of any plausible Will LIs have emerged… but the casting for the Turnbow parents didn’t get out either, only that of the kid who has a crush on Erica.

It could be a side character whose role is to make Mike jealous. Noah was very uncertain about byler when asked back when he had only the first few episode scripts - ‘don’t be sad if it doesn’t happen’, etc. Right before filming in January, however, he went on tiktok live and read out ‘byler endgame’ and ‘byler kiss’ comments - this is after he got up to episode 7. The video of this is in my Noah Schnapp tag. Could just be a ploy to keep bylers strung along, however, and I am remaining pessimistic.

I will be sure to update the byler tag again if we get more details on this!

ETA: One last note: if you check my other posts, you’ll see that the messages Alex gets are all straightforward about Will not being over Mike in the first few eps. There’s a leak floating around stating that he’s very upset when Mike is injured and that he arrives at the hospital in an awful state.

I have also personally seen, from a reliable source present during ep 2 hospital filming, statements that they’ve heard Will’s relationship with Mike is ‘developing’, that he’s more of a leader this season, and that Mike is having a self-discovery arc and is being more like the protector he was….