#event : spiders den

[cutemeat]

i still just wanna know dennis’ safe word is all i want … .

[yuriskies]

A fun element to Otherside Picnic vol 8 (spoilers ahead after the break, if you're still planning to read it) is an easter egg about the location of Toriko's apartment. Actually, "easter egg" might be underselling it a bit; it has a huge amount of thematic relevance to Toriko's character. So here's the easter egg: if you follow Sorawo's description of her path to Toriko's apartment, you can actually find the building on Google Maps.

The train arrived in Nippori. Pushed by the rush of people, I got off, went down the stairs, and out the gate. I climbed the hill, out of breath, in the unrelenting rain. The wall of a graveyard continued along the left-hand side. Turning onto a side street at the top of the hill, I could see Toriko’s apartment in the middle of a residential area ...the building uses an autolock system... Getting off on the fourth floor, I headed into the hallway. The town I could see over the chest-high wall was misty in the rain.

The fun thing about this is that Sorawo's narration is just specific enough to follow along. In a way, it's an invitation to the reader to imitate Sorawo. Prior to the events of the series, she spent time tracking down the sites of ghost stories from the minor details that leaked into their narration. Tracking down where the weirdness happened placed it in context; stories from the edge of reality seem more reliable when the reality can be charted.

So, let's do it. Sorawo mentions a graveyard wall - this can only be Yanaka Graveyard, located on the west side of Nippori Station. Yanaka is located on the former grounds of the Tenno-ji Buddhist temple, and is one of Tokyo's largest cemetaries by area. It is the resting site of the final Tokugawa Shogun, as well as a who's who of Meiji-era academics, literati, and government officials.

The road along the north edge of Yanaka Graveyard goes up a steep hill, and where it reaches the top, a side road splits off on the left to go into a residential area. Going into street view shows that all of the buildings along this road are only two or three stories tall, except for a building at the very back. It's four stories tall. The building has an auto lock system at the front door, and chest high walls along the hallways to the apartments. Bingo.

The fun part of this is the name of the apartment complex: 山口マンション (Yamaguchi [Mountain Gate] Mansion).

The first part of the thematic relevance here is its relationship to Satsuki's monologue about being brought into the Otherside.

"What happens to the people who don't return?" "Who knows? They probably die, right?" "Life and death aren't the issue. Once you get to that point, that is." My brow furrowed. "What do you think mountains are made of?" Satsuki asked, smiling. "Trees and stuff?" I said without putting much thought into it. When I thought of mountains, the image that came to mind for me was the mountains of my home prefecture, Akita, covered in green. "If trees were sapient, they wouldn't think of themselves as a mountain. Only as a single tree. It's the same concept. People who go into the mountains, regardless of their mental state, are still people. But the wind that blows through the trees. The rocks. The birds. Every speck of rock covering the bedrock. The beasts, hiding in their dens. The ancient mollusks, sleeping in a geologic fold. The morning dew in a spider's web. The bacteria and microorganisms in the soil, breaking down the body. None of these individual constituting elements is the mountain on its own, yet the mountain is made up of them. So it is for those called by the mountain. Living or dead." She raised her hand, pointing all five fingers at herself. "That is how it is for me." Uncurling her fingers, she pointed at me. "That is how it is for you."

This "mountain gate" connection also ties back to Sorawo's previous visit to Toriko's apartment in File 4, where she opened the door to the apartment and encountered the ultrablue void of the Otherside. Thematically, this places Toriko's apartment at the interface between the surface world and the Otherside. The back of the building also abuts Yanaka Graveyard, and so thematically, also forms an interface between life and death.

Sorawo touches on this latter theme in the back half of File 26, when Toriko forces herself on Sorawo in her parents' bedroom. Sorawo becomes profoundly uncomfortable - equally, if not more disturbed by her surroundings than Toriko's behavior. After relocating to Toriko's bedroom, Sorawo realizes the following:

This home was a grave, and Toriko the crypt keeper—that's the image that I was getting. The sudden feeling of resistance I'd felt when we were in the bedroom might have come from that mental association. Even if it weren't the place where her parents had once slept, it was almost like flirting in front of a Buddhist altar. After entering Toriko's room, I finally got it. This room has color. It's the room of a living person.

Toriko's bedroom forms a small bubble of life in an otherwise dead house. The interface between life and death isn't simply close to Toriko's living space, it is actively defined by it. This ties in closely to Toriko's character, given that she's admitted her pushiness to do relationship things in the Otherside is driven by a fear of loss. Her mothers suddenly died, and Satsuki suddenly vanished. All she has left of them is her cherished memories, and she wants to form those memories with Sorawo, just in case.

Another element in play here is Sorawo's relationship to the Otherside. At multiple points in the series, the Otherside seems to suddenly draw closer when Sorawo gets stressed out with her thoughts about her relationship with Toriko. The most obvious example is in the hot springs when the mannequins appear immediately after Sorawo feels backed into a corner with Toriko's "cute boobs" comment, but those fears are also linked to Hasshaku-sama (both times the entity appears as Sorawo contemplates jealousy and the possibility that Toriko will be taken from her), Satsuki's surface world appearance (Kozakura implying Sorawo is manifesting Satsuki through her jealous fixation), the the love hotel girls' party (the lion dancers appear as Sorawo is trying to avoid a romantic bath with Toriko), and Satsuki's appearance in vol 7 (when Sorawo is considering where she would be without Toriko). In a sense, the terrifying aspects of the Otherside to Sorawo are closely related to the terrifying aspects of a defined relationship with Toriko.

One puzzle piece in play is a conversation from vol 7, as Sorawo, Kozakura, and Toriko are figuring out their approach to exorcize Satsuki. They discuss the concept of "atmosphere" and its ability to transmit emotions, particularly fear, and explore ways to change that atmosphere. Toriko mentions that she's mostly heard ghost stories where sex changes the atmosphere. Sorawo then elaborates to a doubtful Kozakura with the following:

No, it's true. There's stories where they were in a real bad situation, but then they started saying all sorts of lewd things and they survived. I don't tend to say that ghosts are this way or that, but sex is the source of life, so that makes it the polar opposite of ghosts, which belong to the world of the dead... At least, there's that sort of reasoning. It's an idea that's been around since ancient times.

Sorawo also goes on to mention that in some situations, the atmosphere can be overwritten, but in others, these attempts only reinforce it more strongly.

The thing about ghost stories is that for all its other indiscretions, it's an elegant genre in strange ways. There's not a lot of bawdy stories in it. Maybe that's because if you're trying to scare someone, and then sexual elements get involved, it hurts the atmosphere. Anyway, I only brought up the sex stuff as an example of how the atmosphere can get changed. It's too weak to be her weakness. There's some real nasty ghost stories with sexual elements, and there are people who've had scary experiences at love hotels.

All of these concepts start to interweave with one another when the two relocate to Toriko's bedroom. Sorawo immediately notices a change in Toriko's demeanor.

Her expression looked uneasy, without composure. She wanted me, but also feared rejection. Despite the way she'd been breathing heavily through her nose as she led me here by the hand, now Toriko was just standing there awkwardly. As if once she'd dragged me into her room she didn't know what to do anymore. Maybe as we entered what remained of the domain of the living inside this house of the dead, Toriko had come back to life.

This scene firmly links Toriko's fear of the Otherside (death) to Sorawo's fear of the Otherside (relationships). In her moms' bedroom, Toriko had been demanding, frustrated, and angry - the malicious emotional states traditionally occupied by spirits in ghost stories! However, she settles down when she enters her own bedroom. For Sorawo, passing through this interface changes Toriko from an unknowable force who inspires fear into a very human entity with whom she can sit down and discuss the uncomfortable topic of sex. In turn, this allows Toriko to an explore an aspect of their relationship that she views as fundamentally life-affirming. After this scene their Othersides are no longer totally different, or inspire mind-numbing terror, but are now operating on a common logic.

The concept of an atmosphere comes up again just after their first try at sex. Toriko has finally found a turn-on for Sorawo, and Sorawo describes the feeling in the same analytical voice she uses for ghost stories.

Until mere moments ago, our nakedness had been no more than that. Just another awkward state of undress, like when we got in the bath. Not anymore. My nudity, and Toriko's, took on entirely new meaning. One little switch inside of me got flipped, and it caused a startlingly dramatic change in my perception. It was mystifying how, as that change occurred, it swallowed up the entire atmosphere of the scene, including Toriko. Stuff like this can happen... I thought in a daze. The room was dominated by my lust which had suddenly materialized. As it overlapped with Toriko's desire, the atmosphere inside the room became something kind of extraordinary.

Prior to their second go at sex, Sorawo and Toriko take a moment to talk over their last remaining fears about sex - using their Otherside-altered body parts on one another. They come to the mutual realization that they have both been afraid of harming one another, but not of being harmed by the other. This last discussion is important, because it totally diffuses their fears around sexuality prior to indulging it. So as they travel into the deepest reaches of the Otherside, they have total trust and intimacy with one another - and an absolute lack of fear relating to what the Otherside represents to them.

The color of the calm world was blue. As we whorled together, intertwining, the ultrablue abyss spread out endlessly beneath us. We didn't fear it. Because this was our place. No one was watching us. No one knew we were here. We were the only ones watching, and the only ones who knew. So the only things Toriko and I have to fear are each other.

"Was it just me who wasn't that scared?" "Nah, it was the same for me. Everything around us was blue, but it wasn't scary." "I wonder why?" "I dunno, maybe because we were on the side that scared people?" Toriko got a mystified look on her face when I said that. "The side that scared people? You mean the Otherside's side?" "We weren't human anymore, were we, Toriko? When we were there." "...Yeah." Toriko suddenly moved closer to me and chomped down on my ear.

So to bring this full circle, this is why I love this particular easter egg, and Otherside Picnic in general. The setting is treated as an important aspect of the story, and it is carefully chosen for its emotional content and thematic relevance. Toriko's apartment isn't just some random place in an upscale neighborhood of Tokyo. It's a fundamental part of who Toriko is as a person. It's a location that lends a huge amount of thematic subtext to Otherside Picnic as a relationship story, and to the reader's interpretation of the Otherside.

Is it a metaphor for death? For queerness? For our ability to truly bridge the gap in understanding between self and non-self? The reader is invited to imitate Sorawo, and in doing so, finds a treasure trove of understanding. The little rush of discovery shows us what keeps Sorawo interested in exploring a totally alien world and trying to understand its workings.

Miyazawa's writing actively rewards readers for engaging with every little bit of the story, and it really tickles the analytical part of my brain.

[bandgie]

I have never posted a writing on here but I thought I’d give it try

Smut!

So Cruel

Synopsis: You we’re never too fond of Miguel O’Hara. Though he was a sight for sore eyes, his temper was always unchecked and it had only worsened after Miles Morales escaped. You made it your mission to stay away from him unless absolutely necessary, but O'Hara has never cared about your feelings.

3.6k word count

He scared the living shit out of you. The way he walked, talked, how his eyes looked like it could cut through diamond, he was madly intimidating.

After hearing about the original anomaly, Miles Morales, Miguel O’Hara because determined to correct all of the errors and make sure all events happened to their respective times. Morales was a tricky one though, he had managed to slip through every spider’s fingers and go back to his Earth.

You couldn’t help but silently applaud the kid. You had lost so many loved ones for these so called ‘canon event,’ but seeing Miles try to find another way was inspiring. You secretly hoped he did manage to find away to prevent these tragedies from happening to anyone ever again.

You were nothing more than a messenger, not even sure if anyone from the higher positions knew your name aside from ‘Spider-Woman’, so you’ve been slacking on finding specifically which Earth Miles teleported to. It didn’t matter anyway, there’s so many other spiders they can manage to-

“Hey, O’Hara wants you in his office.”

You immediately sit up from your couch, whipping around to see Jessica Drew standing at the door way of your room. Her belly is pronounced, you’re not even sure how she can still walk.

“Now?” You ask.

She nods in response, waddling back to her motorcycle.

“I’m busy looking for the spider from Earth-1610. I don’t think I’ll be able to-“

“Not an option. And you know I can tell when your lying from your teeth right?” She says unamused. You huff in defeat and scratch your head nervously.

Jessica takes notice and pouts, sympathy taking over. “Listen, I’ll be with you okay? Hop on and I’ll take you there. Hopefully he won’t be too harsh if I’m with you.”

You look at her gratefully and trudge to her bike. She might soften the blow, but you know you’re in for a rough time.

-

The ride to Headquarters was too fast, you wanted to slow down time to prepare. Truthfully, no time in the world could prepare you for the possibility of O’Hara ripping you a new one.

You silently cursed yourself for not at least making small attempts to find the kid. You’ve seen how Miguel ran to Morales, how he showed no mercy, yet you prayed he would let one spider slip. A foolish prayer.

Once parked right outside his den, you and Jessica stepped off the motorcycle and she took on your hands in hers. She could be surprisingly soft when she wanted to be. Her fingers gently squeezed your reassuringly.

“I’ll try to do the talking okay? You haven’t been super deep into his work so I’m sure he’ll let you off easy,” she says softly.

You nod, feeling sweat begin the collect on your forehead. You pull away from her hand as you begin walking to him, keeping your head down.

You never directly looked at O’Hara. You hated how he looked as though he could see what you’re thinking. He never would directly address you either. The person in command would relay messages or you would sometimes see Miguel on a screen, but not much one-on-one talking.

You hoped to keep it that way.

You could hear the machine lower Miguel from the higher platform, and you could hear your heartbeat increase.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, you told yourself in an attempt to control your breathing.

It wasn’t long before Miguel’s was in front of you both, you stared at his feet while he began to talk.

“You can leave Jessica,” he says, voice sharp and cold.

“I think it would be better if I stayed,” she says calmly, “You can be quite scary sometimes ya know?”

Miguel snorts, “It’s not my problem how people look at me. You did your job now leave.”

You flinches at his harshness, yet Jessica only sighed as a response. They went back and forth for some time. Pity and shame began to creep up your spine as Jessica continued to take his belittling. You were hiding behind someone for your own dumb decision, let alone this someone was pregnant.

“Jessica,” you say, interrupting their argument, “thank you, but I’ll be fine.”

She looks at her worriedly and back at Miguel in plea, she gives her shoulder a rub and says an ‘okay’ before leaving on her bike.

It’s not long before it’s just you and O’Hara. You can feel him drilling holes into your head as you continue to look down.

“I don’t think I need to say what you did wrong,” he starts, “We need all hands on deck, every spider man and spider woman. Yet here you are making absolutely no progress. You haven’t been checking other dimensions since the spider from Earth 1610 left…” Miguel’s doesn’t stop listing all the things you did wrong, but his last question catches you off guard.

“Why?”

You briefly look up at him and look back down, “Why what?”

“Why aren’t you doing your job.”

The silence is loud, nearly deafening. You can’t answer, you won’t answer. Your putting not only your job at risk, but maybe your safety. “I’m not sure.”

“Look at me,” he commands. You don’t, instead raising your head slightly but keeping your eyes down. You don’t want to look at him, you can’t afford to look into his eyes.

“I said look at me,” your name leaves his lips.

You’re eyes snap to his, and you wish you had looked at his nose instead. Such a deep red meet your own colored eyes. His jawline sharp and check hollow. The main think you notice are the eye bags, guilt eats at you.

“Look at me while you answer me. Why?”

You take a deep breath and build on the courage to only speak a few words, “Because I believe in him.”

Miguel’s eyes narrow, “Believe in who?”

“Miles Mora-“

“Don’t you dare finish that name,” O’Hara snarls, turning so that his back faces you. He runs a hands through his hair and heaves his chest. You take an involuntarily step back, prepared to dash in needed.

He turns back to face you, slightly better adjusted and gets closer to you. It takes every fiber in your body to not move. You maintain eye contact, but a part of you wants to look at his plush lips.

“I understand where you might think he can save everyone, but he can’t. It’s foolish to go against what is our destiny. I don’t need to tell you that I tried, I don’t need to tell you why I started this whole Spider-Man Society,” he tells you.

Your fearful gaze turns into sadness as you recall his story. You’ve also lost someone close to you. Your fiancé who was captain of the police. You hated when people called you Spider-Woman, you changed it to Widow years ago.

Miguel just see your expression change because his does too. “I don’t want you thinking we’re the bad guys, or were doing this to hurt people. I need you to understand that we have a bigger responsibility at hand. So are you on my side or what?"

You let out a sight, "Why does there have to sides? Why can't we let him see for himself? Imma be honest Mr. O'Hara, the way you handled things was not necessarily in the best way."

You regret speaking you mind as you see Miguel get in your face, obviously offended by critiquing his strategy. He studies your features, eyes seamlessly exploring what you have as he looks back at your eyes.

"I don't need a no-name spider telling me how to do my job. You think I'm cruel? Join the club. All you can manage to do is sit there and look pretty. Maybe that's all you'll really ever be good at." Without warning he grabs your wrist and takes you to his lift, sending you guys up into the top of his office.

You follow without intending to, you were too busy digesting what he had told you. It wasn't until he flipped you around to see your backside that you started questioning him.

"Mr. O'Hara! What are you doing!?" You yelp, attempting to flip back around to face him. His hands were hard on your hips to keep you in place. You could feel the heat of his body and the hardness of his chest.

"I'm gonna show you what you're actually good at since you don't know how to do your current job properly," He answers. He uses his legs to push your feet closer together. Then taking one hand off your hips, he uses it to push the arch of your back down so you're sticking your butt out.

The position sends your heart racing, especially when he pushes his crotch to your ass. He gently slides himself up and down on you, fabric touching. You should stop him, tell him that this is insanely inappropriate and that he's being dramatic. Yet, you find yourself arching your back even more to try and feel him some more.

He chuckles behind you and leans down to have his lips ghost the shell of your ear, "Someones a little too easy. I thought I was the bad guy."

You shake your head, "I never said that. I just think you could've gone easier on the kid."

His rubbing stopped and you immediately missed the sensation. You let a whimper out and wiggled around to try and feel him. He gave you a playful slap on the ass and grab the back of your neck harshly, "Pobrecita perra, I'm not even close to thinking about finishing with you." He kicked your legs open and lifted one of them up to rest on his desk. Without a second thought, he ripped off your sweats leaving you in just your underwear.

Miguel knelt down and inspected your covered pussy. "Mmm, siempre me encantó el color rojo." Then you felt the warm wetness of his tongue touching you underwear.

You were already wet, so the friction of the underwear wasn't painful. It was annoying instead, you wished he had ripped those off along with the sweats. Miguel gave long strokes of his tongue up and down your pussy. He let his fangs gently nip at your clit which made you squeal. You could feel him smiling against you as he continued to work you with his tongue.

You started feeling hot, the remaining clothes too tight on your body. He was giving you exactly what you wanted but nothing at all. It was infuriating how he teased you through your underwear. You could hear how messy it was starting to get, and you couldn't tell if the liquid dripping down you thigh was from him or you.

Your underwear was drenched, and you moaned when he sucked your nub and pulled at it. He used his fingers to rub you and occasionally dip in your underwear to feel your folds. You pushed your body lower to have him rub more, to let him know you wanted him to touch your bare pussy, but Miguel was not letting up.

"Please," you suddenly begged, grinding against his mouth and hand. "O'Hara please take them off."

"I don't know," he teases, "Is this not enough for you? Am I not doing a good job?"

He harshly slaps your pussy, you jump and whine nearly on the verge of tears. "You are, it's so so so good," you praise him, "I just, I want to feel you more. Please Miguel, please please-"

You finally feel him pull your underwear to the side before he dives in. You loudly moan, finally at peace knowing you're getting what you want. You grind down on his face, reaching back to push him deeper into you. Who would've though all Miguel needed was a little bit of positive reinforcement to listen. Maybe that information will come in handy at another time.

"Oh fuucckkkk," you moan. He uses his lips to rub your lower lips, the softness was nearly enough to make you cum. You can't though, you need him inside you. To feel him pulse and cum inside, you clench around nothing at the thought of it.

He goes back to using his tongue to please you, dipping it inside of your pussy back up to your clit. You feel your body tense and the burning sensation build in your stomach. It threatens you to release and your moans start getting louder. You've been so deprived of intimate touches for so long, you don't know how you managed it all this time.

"Don't stop! Don't stop..." you repeat over and over, letting your hips abuse Miguel's face. It starts to build and build in your lower stomach. You throw your head back and bite your lower lip to suppress your loud moan. Then he's gone. The tenseness in your body disappearing and giving you a lonely pussy. You turn around and look down to see him with a malicious grin. O'Hara stands at his full height to look down at you.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asks innocently. Your eyes find his glistening chin and bruised lips. You go back to his eyes and you feel your own water.

"I was so close. I was almost there. Miguel I.... I need it," you cry, letting a few tears slip down your face. You weren't really sad, but you hoped you would get a few pity points for your tears.

"Is that so? I don't know if you deserve it. You've been lazy and no help recently. I'm thinking we should stop right here and-"

"No!" you shout. You turn to fully face him and touch him chest to Chets. "Please Mr. O'Hara I'll be better. I can do it and I can do more. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry just please! Please." You're ashamed of yourself. Acting like such a slut in front of your boss and swallowing your pride just so he could make you finish. At the same time nothing has been more important to you in so long, you need him.

He smiles, showing his fangs and all before gently pushing you away, "Sit up and spread your legs." You could weep from joy at his words. You obey him and hop up on his desk, careful to not fall off his lifted platform. Your underwear is still sticking to your skin, it's uncomfortable now, but you don't ask to take them off.

He walks towards you and kneels down again and you swear he was smelling you. Miguel moves your underwear to the side and plants kisses over your clit. You hum in delight as his lips travel to your opening, using his tongue to prod it open. You use one of your hands to spread your pussy more open with your fingers. He looks up at you in surprise, but he's more than happy to oblige to your request.

He sucks on the bundle of nerves of your clit, making sure his tongue coats over your entire pussy. You whine and involuntarily close your legs, trapping him between them. You move your hand to tangle it in his hair. You move his head up and down repeatedly, his tongue and lips eagerly listening to your body.

It starts to build again, and this time you're determined to finish on his face. You hook your ankles together and squeeze him close to you, making sure he has enough room to stick him tongue out.

"Shiiiiiiit right there, please don't stop please please," your chanting has him humming in response. You moan at the vibrations, feeling your orgasm coil at the top of your pelvis. Your body prepares for your finishing, throwing your head back and rolling you eyes to the back of your head.

It's ruined though, ruined by him ripping away from you making you nearly lose your balance. You were even closer this time, you could feel your pussy throbbing and burning hot. Now the tears in your eyes were very real.

"No! No, no, no! You said! You promised! I-"

"Shut up and hold your legs like this," he ignores your cries. He positions you so you're holding your legs by the thighs, opening them up and ripping your underwear off in the process. You're still whining to him about how he lied to you, that he really is cruel and ruthless.

He continues to ignore you and enables the suit to disappear, leaving him nude. Your complaints quiet as you stare at his physique. Huge shoulders but a small waist. His biceps could be the size of your head. You knew he was buff, but seeing it in all its naked glory was immaculate.

His dick was leaking, a fiery red at the tip and you swear you could see it pulsating. He had been edging you for so long, but you didn't consider that he was also holding himself back from cumming. You absent mindedly open your legs more, inviting him in.

He darkly chuckles at your body response, "Calling me all these mean names yet you're letting me through the front door."

He closes the space between you and uses his hand to guide himself to your pussy. You moan in anticipation, you're praying to God that he lets you cum this time.

The rubs the tip of his dick up and down your clit a few times to feel how slick you are. He must like it because of how he groans and the chills you see that appear on his arms.

"Please," you whisper.

Finally, you feel the tip enter you easily. You could probably take him all at once considering how wet you are, but Miguel was slow. He was probably soaking up the feeling of your pussy around him. Loving the way you clench around him and your warmth. He went deeper and deeper, and by the end of it you swear you could feel him in your throat.

You moaned loudly as he started to move, gripping you by your hips. Fuck, he just started and you're already going to cum. How could you not? He filled you up so nicely and you were denied two times prior, there's no shame in finishing so fast.

Your head went back, leaving half of your body upside down. You felt your blood rush to your brain as he started pounding in you. Whimpers left you lips every time he slammed into you, you could feel your entire body joint forward from the force of it. He lifted up your shirt and spilled your tits from out of your bra.

Miguel leaned down to put your nipple in his mouth before he started sucking. You gasped and pulled your legs even more back to give him space to do what he pleased. The sound of him slapping against you, your wetness dripping on the platform, his warm tongue. You're going to cum.

"Yes, yes, oh god, Miguel..." you babble. Please let me come.

And you do. finally sweet release leaves your body and you're practically crying from joy. You're clenching around him so tightly he groans your name. Miguel stops his movements just to feel you spread your essence on him down to the floor.

Your upper body is dangling off the loft, practically limp. You can feel your pussy twitching from such an intense release. Miguel pulls away from your tits and starts to pull out. Before you can whine in protest and sensitivity, he thrusts back in and pulls you down closer to him.

"Fuck, you've been hiding this pussy from me all this time. Deberíamos haberlo hecho hace mucho tiempo." It was such a low mumble you think you weren't meant to hear it. Your tits continue to bounce as Miguel keeps thrusting into you. Your moans start to sound like a man dying from thirst, and you don't care. Everything is so overstimulated that a part of what you wants to beg him to stop.

It's not until he lets out several loud groans to let you know he was going to cum. Miguel uses one of his hands to grip your throat as he finds the best angle to bury his cock in. He hooks your legs onto his shoulders and your arms grab his hips to steady yourself. He has you in a slanted mating press, a perfect position to stimulate your clit too.

You know you won't be able to cum a second time, but the thought of O'Hara filling you up makes you think you will. He makes sure you can feel his cock all the way inside when he cums, his dick pulsing. You let out a throaty moan as you look down to see where your bodies connect, seeing your stomach bulge from his size.

Whimpers leave your mouth and you're both breathing heavy. Miguel thrusts in a few more times to hear you whine more. He smiles when you do. He pushes your legs close your chest and pulls out slowly. You moan as you feel him slide out of you, immediately feeling empty save for the cum that pours out of you.

Miguel drops your legs down with little care, backing away from you. You pick your head up and feel the blood rush back down which makes you lightheaded. You watch as he throws you torn clothes away and uses his watch to put his suit back on. You're left nude from the bottom, "Do you have any pants I can borrow?"

He thinks for a moment and brushes the hair out of your face, making sure you maintain eye contact, "Yeah, but I'd rather you walk home like that." You hesitantly laugh likes he's joking, but the devious look in his eyes tell you differently.

"No way you're serious."

He smiles so innocently giving you a small wink, "What can I say? I love being cruel."

[transingthoseformers]

Basically, after Chromedome tried to throw him off a cliff, which led to Ultra Magnus having to pull him out of a Constructicon pile instead of getting to berate Prowl, he disappeared. Locked down and hid so the trial went on with Prowl watching the livestream and only emailing a few people. By the time people are looking around for him, Optimus, after their brief talk and his email to check on the Lost Light, which led to baby time, he's gone fully underground.

Ironhide made a few attempts but assumed the Starscream thing is why they aren't speaking. Wheeljack tried to eventually but couldn't find him. Only when Optimus Prime suspiciously side eyes Starscrema do people at large notice Devstator is missing.

This unnerves everyone, and Chromedome gets a lot of incredible side eye because the last confirmed sighting was Chromedome attempting to push him off a cliff.

Prowl showing up nearly a year later when First Aid and company temporarily show up to Luna-1 to make contact and find it crawling with Consructiprowl Babies and a Spider Baby with Fort Max attempting to learn knitting from Prowl (he likes the number patterns) and Tarantulas (the silk has multiple uses including medical and construction which he discovered with Hook and Mixmaster that Tara is getting on with a startling amount). He is then forced to Zoom Cybertron and Optimus Prime as proof, and everyone has to deal with the fact he keeps pausing to say things like "Black Arachnia do not bite your brother. Grimlock take your sister to Max. He brought home some turbofoxes for her to practice hunting on his last trip." and "Excuse me. I must go remove my son from Red Alert’s office. He is attempting to build a functional suspension bridge out of the extra comm parts again." and bending out of sight to whisper "Ask your sire. Mix should have some juice boxes. If not torment Max. He keeps a stash he thinks I am unaware of." while occasionally bouncing a round many legged black and gold blob with teeth occasionally.

Of course, it could have been resolved sooner if anyone thought to ask Springer who got a group zoom months ago to introduce him to his new sibling.

Informed to please tell us important developments doesn't improve things because then a year and a half later he sends out a birth announcement of Chase and Strongarm who were born from "a mutually agreed upon by all committed parties resolving of emotional and sexual tension from myself and Fortress Maximus".

The Luna-1 Polycule is incomprehensible to most.

Prowl spends him time sending out judgemental and vaguely ominous unasked for memos with his opinions on current and sometimes secret events to people as he calls in his spies and continues to den down mostly in relative secret and peace because he'd probably murser Megatron and anyone else pinging his danger sense on sight given his current active protocols.

Which is fair as hell, I mean as much as an asshole Prowl is known to be it's fair he bolted after being thrown off a cliff

Also they livestreamed the trial

Makes sense he'd still wanna figure out what's going on with the LL

Optimus: Starscream

Starscream: ?

Optimus: what did you do

Starscream: what do you mean "wHaT dId yOu dO"

Optimus: I mean, Starscream what did you do

I mean logical to think Chromedome may be at fault because the cliff pushing

The fact that we set a (relatively to million year robots) short carrying period is leading to so many cool baby boom consequences

Also awww on Fort Max trying to knit, also makes sense Prowl and Tara would like to knit

Less aww and more shhffjfjf on Mix and Hook learning the more useful applications of alien spider silk via getting freaky with Tarantulas

First Aid: oh so you were here

Yess on all the cute little pause moments, dear fuck yes that's adorable as hell Prowl it is it is

Sparkling!BlackArachnia has to be so cute too like yes

oh Springer. I hope he's got like a notebook to keep track of this mess of a family too.

Mutually agreed upon by all committed partners resolving of the emotional and sexual tension from myself and Fort Max

Aka, those two were advised to fuck each other's brains out

Love how Prowl has grown into this sort of mostly remote role into this with most of his interactions outside of the moon being online but him certainly wanting to know what's going on. Especially since for him, parenthood has ultimately made him even more aggressive and anxious towards those he does not like. I pity anyone who arrives on Luna-1 meaning harm.

[yanphobia]

Cleithrophobia - Chapter 11

Cleithrophobia: The fear of being trapped.

Pairing: Yandere Male Drider OC x Reader

Warnings (for the entire story): Yandere, Horror, Graphic Discriptions of Injury and Death, Spiders, NonCon Touching, Possible NonCon (depending on reader's interpretation), Implied Female Reader (although it doesn't really factor too heavily into the plot), Extreme Dead Dove Do Not Eat

Chapter 10 Index

Author's Note: Aaaand that's a wrap! I was going to wait until next week to post this, but you've all been so good waiting for updates that I thought you deserved to get it early. It's been so much fun starting this blog and seeing your reactions to the new chapters, and I can't wait to get started on my next story. I have a few ideas bouncing around, so stay tuned! But in the meantime, enjoy the final installment of our angry spider man!

This story was inspired by cobalt-sphinx's Drider x Reader from Quotev.

You didn't die that night; no. Death would’ve been kinder. 

Every waking moment, the events of that night haunted you. Every time you fell asleep, it was as though you were reliving it all again. 

Mars hadn’t let up the second you fell into his den. You tumbled down the tunnel that would be too steep to ever climb out of and slammed against the cold ground of the hollowed-out nest below, dimly lit with the lantern you had left in your meeting spot earlier in the night. The impact caused you to lose your breath, but almost immediately he was lifting you up again, roughly shoving his tongue down your throat as you weakly attempted to push him away. 

Then he carried you to the newly laid webs in the corner... you shut your eyes. You didn’t want to remember what happened next. 

But even now, you could still feel his hands ripping through your clothes, shredding them and leaving you in your most vulnerable state. You could feel his fangs tearing through the soft, delicate flesh of your body, the wet sound of his mouth slurping up your blood in between his loud proclamations of hate. Your voice was gone from all of the screaming, and crying, and begging for mercy, and you weren’t sure how often you passed out only to wake up again in the throes of your torture. 

He had left no part of you untouched, unviolated, and you haven’t seen him since. 

At some point, you had woken up to find him gone, and although it was impossible to tell how long you’d been here, it had to have been at least a few days. You were forced to lie there, starving and weak in a pool of your own blood and waste, as you fought with yourself to maintain your sanity. There was something inside of you, some weak desire to escape from the hell you’ve been subjected to, that was keeping you alive.  

It was quiet, but eventually you heard the scratching of his legs against the dirt walls of the tunnel. He stopped when he reached the bottom, no doubt confused by the darkness of the den. You couldn’t bear to look at your injuries anymore, and over the course of a few excruciating hours you were able to roll over and turn the lantern off. 

“This,” he said, as you heard him approach, “was supposed to stay on!” 

The lights flickered on and you saw your captor’s irritated face, which quickly turned to surprise. It would’ve been almost comical, if you had the heart to laugh. The two of you looked each other over, him, holding the corpse of a goat by its broken neck, and you, looking like a prey animal that had met a much slower end. As he took you in, his confusion turned to an obvious disgust, and the embarrassment and shame you felt at your current state overtook you. 

“...” 

“They’re infected.” You were quick to explain. “The wounds, they’ve, uh... they’re festering. They need to be treated.” 

It was awful and seeing them again was nothing short of nightmarish. There had been nothing here to clean them when they were fresh, and you wouldn’t have had the strength to do so anyway. In your solitude, you slowly watched as the area around the lacerations swelled and reddened, while a thick, foul-smelling pus leaked out of them. They burned and the redness spread around your body, along with the fever that’s been plaguing you ever since. Your skin glistened with sweat as you watched your skin begin to yellow, and then blacken, shriveling away to reveal the deep-seated fascia and layers of fat underneath. You laid there in agony as your condition worsened, all the while remembering your readings about the necrotizing properties of spider venom.  

You were rotting away, from the outside in. 

“Please...” you begged, your voice so weak and pathetic sounding that it only embarrassed you further. “Please, let me go. I just have to... have to treat it. I have to go to a hospital.” 

He remained unimpressed. “Do you really think that will work on me?” 

“I’m serious!” You begged. “I’ll do anything... I’ll come back the second that I can. But I can’t put it off any longer...!”  He eyed your injuries again, observing old blood stains on the webs underneath you. The smell was nauseating, and perhaps that was what made him compromise. 

“I’ll get you water-” 

“No! Water would not do anything at this point, not this far along.“ The only thing that could save you now was a clean environment, with plenty of antibiotics, steroids, skin grafts. 

“Please,” you tried again, “I swear to you that I will come back. I’ll die if I don’t!” 

“You’ll die?!” He scoffed. “What do you think I do every day? How do you think I feel, knowing that you’re here, wanting to be close to you, but then remembering all of the shit that you did to me?! What I suffer, [Y/N], is a fate worse than death, and all of it is because of you.” 

He leaned closer and held up the dead goat. 

“This-” he said, shaking it in front of your eyes, “is what I’m supposed to be. An apex predator, one that listens to no one, especially not a useless human like yourself!” 

And with that, he tore into its flesh. He maintained eye contact with you as you watched the meat of its body break down and liquify. You imagined yourself in the later stages of your necrosis, with your internal organs falling apart the same exact way.  

You didn’t have it in you to be sick anymore. You were too numb. As you watched Mars devour his meal, you realized that this was the exact fate that you deserved. For all of the things that you’ve done to the people you claimed to care about. For Laura, Stan, and Shadow, whose deaths you had caused. You could never be allowed to make a full recovery, physically or mentally, because you have not earned it. 

You sighed, closed your eyes, and waited for nature to take its course. 

--- 

Mars stared down at your unconscious form. You hadn’t been responsive for a few days, and he had lost the last of his patience. He knew, in his heart, that you were being dramatic, that your injuries THAT HE INFLICTED UPON YOU were not nearly as bad as you claimed. He even cleaned your wounds for you, scrubbing them down using water from a nearby pond YOU’D TOLD HIM WATER WAS NOT ENOUGH TO HEAL YOU and the scraps of your old shirt. 

He’s done everything he could NO HE HASN’T but you still refused to wake up. 

“Hey.” He barked out. Silence. 

“HEY.” This time he kicked you. Again, silence. 

He knelt, taking one of your hands in his. He briefly glanced over the withered, blackened fingertips and yellowed, peeling nails, before biting into your cold palm. Blood gushed from the puncture, and he waited intently for you to wake up screaming, but he was still met with silence. 

He stood and dropped your hand, which fell listlessly to the ground, and licked your blood from his lips. It was off, somehow, extremely sour and not at all as warm and sweet as it used to be. 

His hands raked through his hair as he thought to himself. He wasn’t stupid, he knew what a rotten carcass looked like, he had seen them many times out in the woods. But you weren’t dead. You couldn’t be. 

Slowly, he approached you again, and even slower, he lowered his ear to the marred flesh above your heart, ignoring the bit of yellow puss that rubbed off onto his cheek. 

A heartbeat. He could barely feel it, much less hear it, but it was still there. He looked again at your disfigured face, at the deep cuts in the muscles that so closely resembled the raw meat that you used to bring to him. 

He wasn’t stupid. He knew what a creature in its final moments looked like. 

--- 

You had no way of feeling your naked body being wrapped in a dirty threadbare blanket, or the night’s cool air on your face. You couldn’t feel the way it rocked back and forth as it was carried through the forest. You couldn’t feel it being propped up against the wooden balusters of a front porch, either. 

You could, however, hear a voice pulling you back from the darkness that you had been lost in. 

“Alright, you’ve won.” It said. It kept tugging on the fabric around you. Adjusting it. 

“I’ll take your previous deal.” 

When a star is about to die, it receives one final burst of energy before it diminishes completely. Why that was the first thought you had as you mustered up the strength to open your eyes... you could not tell. 

Your vision was blurry, and in your left eye it was almost entirely gone. You didn’t have a way to see how milky and deteriorated it had become. But somehow, you were able to make out a few pairs of red eyes staring at you, and a wide, thin mouth which revealed black fangs when it spoke next. 

“Go, then, to your little human hospital and sort all of this out. And then afterwards – immediately afterwards – you'll come home again. Don’t... don’t you di-” 

His voice caught in his throat, then he huffed in annoyance. 

“Don’t you try to screw me over, okay? I’ll know if you try to get out of this one...!” 

He stood up then, seemingly miles above you, and gave one final warning: 

“Go there and come right back, [Y/N]. Just like you promised.” 

Your eyes began to defocus as you heard him bang loudly on the front door and run away, into the pitch-black forest behind you. The door opened, and you heard the woman’s voice change as she processed the macabre scene before her. 

“Hello? What is...? Oh... oh my God! Kids! Brandon, Kayla, get in your rooms! Get in them, right now! Charlie, I – Charlie, call 911! You- hey... are you alive? ...Listen, we’re going to get you help! We’re calling an ambulance! Just... just stay awake, alright? Just don’t fall asleep...!” 

You held on to her words as much as you could. Deep down, you still felt the animalistic urge to continue living. No, a part of you still wanted to believe that you could get through to the other side of this, as little as you may deserve it. But as your eyelids pulled themselves closed, and as you felt your conciousness begin to slip, you weren’t so sure that you had the strength to hold on anymore... 

THE END.

[noirsfantasy]

On the fourth day of Christmas...

𝔄 𝔇𝔢𝔠𝔢𝔪𝔟𝔢𝔯 𝔗𝔬 ℜ𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔪𝔟𝔢𝔯 𝔭𝔱. 𝟐

𝔭𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 ➛ Actor!Michael B Jordan x OC!Naomi Samuels

𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤 ➛ Fluff

𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔱 ➛ 6.2K

𝔰𝔶𝔫𝔬𝔭𝔰𝔦𝔰 ➛ Naomi decides to go to the Christmas market with Michael, Dan, Ashanti, Teresa, and her husband James. Grandmother gives them an activity to do while they're out. A Christmas scavenger hunt. They decide to split into teams and Naomi ends up on a team with Michael... and Ashanti. It's looking like it will be an eventful day.

𝔞/𝔫 ➛ Y'all, why are there actually no Christmas movies with Michael B Jordan in them??? This man was made for the holidays! all I can say is that I'm wishing for him to be under my tree come Christmas day. But in all seriousness, this story is so fun to write and I just have so many ideas. Please let me know your thoughts and enjoy!

12 Days of Christmas Masterlist

Part 1 Here

Part 3 Here

The morning sun spills its golden hues into my room. I groan as the light reaches my eyes, causing me to squint. I sit up in my bed, grateful that my scarf stayed on the entire night. Glancing at my calendar, I note that it's only six days until Christmas. I try not to focus on the fact that I'll be spending those six days with Michael B Jordan, the idea is still unbelievable to me. It's a bit chilly, so I make sure I have a warm pair of socks on before heading downstairs.

As I step into the kitchen, the enticing aroma of breakfast greets me. The lively chatter of family members already fills the air as they prepare for the day. I notice my grandmother sitting at the table, sipping her coffee. She's always been an early riser.

"Good morning, Mimi," she greets me with a warm smile. "Did you sleep well?"

"Morning, Grandmother. I slept like a baby. It's a bit cold in here, though." I reply, giving a small shiver and rubbing my hands together as I return her smile. "Can we turn the heat up?" Grandmother gives me a knowing grin.

"Oh no, darling. We not running up my electric bill. It is fine where it's at." She shakes her head and I sigh softly, rubbing my arms to heat them up. I turn to walk away, but she starts to speak again.

"Why don't you go find that young man and ask him to light the fireplace for you? I know he's somewhere around here." She suggests, her grin growing. "You know, since you're so cold," she chuckles, sipping from her mug again. I smile and roll my eyes as I get up and head to go look for him.

I make my way through the corridors of my childhood home, the wooden floor creaking slightly as I walk along the boards. It's still early, but most of the house is already awake and alive with the energy of this holiday season. After a brief detour through the kitchen, where my aunts mingle as usual, I head towards the den. There, sitting on the couch, I find Michael, deep in conversation with my younger twin cousins, Matthew and Mason.

"Hey, guys. What y'all talkin' 'bout?" I ask as I shuffle over to stand in front of them. The twins look up with wide eyes, clearly still starstruck by the presence of the famous actor. Michael flashes them a friendly smile, instantly putting the young boys at ease.

"We were just telling Michael about our favorite superhero movies!" Mason exclaims, his excitement palpable as he holds onto his Incredible Hulk toy.

"Who's your favorite superhero, Michael?" Matthew chimes in, listening eagerly. Michael leans back onto the couch, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Is it Killmonger?" Mason questions.

"Killmonger in some ways, could be seen as a hero with a lot of depth and character. But he's technically a villain." He explains. "I'd have to say that Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, but I did enjoy playing Killmonger." Matthew and Mason giggle at Michael's reply and I smirk, finding it endearing.

"But the real question is, which Spider-Man?" I ask in a teasing tone. Michael raises his eyebrows at me.

His expression immediately lights up as he recognizes my attempt at taunting him. He gives me a small smile and laughs.

"Oh come on now, Mimi, you know that doesn't even have to be a question. It's obviously Tom Holland."

"No!" both boys reply in unison, laughing and shaking their heads.

"It's obviously gotta be Toby! He's the original!" Mason shouts and Matthew nods enthusiastically.

"Well, personally, I think Andrew Garfield was the best," I add. The boys go silent and stare at me with disappointed looks.

"No offense, Mimi, but you've let us down," Matthew says, shaking his head slowly. I look at them shocked as they look back at me awkwardly.

"What? Why can't I have my own opinion on this?" I question with a laugh.

"You're just not cool like Michael is." Mason shrugs his shoulders and Michael raises his eyebrows in surprise.

"Wowwww," I cross my arms in fake offense. "You know what? You boys haven't brushed your teeth this morning, have you?" I purse my lips at them and they drop their shoulders.

"No..." They both say as they slowly get up from the couch, groaning in protest.

"Uh uh, I don't wanna hear it. You got so much to say but you ain't even got clean teeth. Shameful." I taunt, causing Michael to laugh. "Make sure that Jessie girl brushes as well!" I call after them. Their mopey mood is replaced by a competitive one as they begin to challenge each other to who can get to their sister the fastest. Michael and I watch in amusement as they leave.

"Did you brush your teeth, Naomi?" He asks, raising an eyebrow. I narrow my eyes at him.

"Let's not go there, right now," I give him a sarcastic smile and he laughs a bit. "I need your help with something," I say, shuffling my feet.

"Sure, what do you need?" He responds, standing up from his seat.

"Well, it's absolutely freezing downstairs. Do you mind lighting the fire for me?" I ask, grinning sheepishly. Michael snickers at the request.

"Fireplace duty, huh? I think I can handle that." He follows me down to the living room and kneels next to the fireplace.

"Thank you," I say as I sit down on the floor in front of the fireplace and lean my back against the couch, watching as he adds the logs and lights a match. As soon as the fire starts to crackle, Michael steps back and glances at me. I realize that, even though it's early in the morning, he's dressed and ready for the day. The only thing he doesn't have on is shoes, but I still feel a bit embarrassed at my appearance. I haven't done anything to my hair and I am in my pjs still.

"You look pretty cozy over there, Naomi." He teases. I side-eye him slightly, turning to look at him as I hold my hands out to feel the heat and wiggle my toes while I let the fire warm my feet.

"I'm just trying not to freeze to death. I hate the cold." I retort, rubbing my hands together. Michael chuckles and sits down next to me, offering me his warmth. He leans his arm on the couch, letting it fall slightly so that his hand hangs over to the side of the couch where I'm sitting.

"Didn't you grow up here in the cold?" He asks, raising an eyebrow as he looks down at me. I smile slightly, letting out a soft sigh.

"I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. It makes me glad I moved to New York. It's at least a little warmer there." I shrug, pulling my knees to my chest so I can be warmer.

"I understand it. I grew up in New Jersey, so I've had my experiences with the cold." He admits. Michael looks over at me, seeing me shiver. "You know, you don't gotta put on this act of being freezing cold." He says and he puts his arm around my shoulder, pulling me to his side. "If you wanted to get close to me, you could've just said so."

I try to contain my shock, blushing at his boldness. My heart is racing and I'm hoping that he doesn't notice.

"It's not like that at all," I mutter, trying to keep my voice steady. He chuckles at my reaction.

"Oh yeah? Then what's it like?" He questions, noticing that I'm completely at a loss for words. I clear my throat and shrug.

"I just feel comfortable with you." I finally say, looking at him from the corner of my eye. I laugh, leaning into his shoulder.

"Better?" He questions as he rubs my arm to warm me.

"Much better. Thanks for the invitation." We both let out a light laugh, leaning back against the couch.

"I've got a question," Michael says after a moment.

"What's up?" I look up at him, realizing just how close to me he is.

"Why do they call you Mimi?" As he asks this, I stifle my laughter.

"Oh, God. That nickname haunts me everywhere I go!" I cover my face with my hands and Michael laughs at my reaction.

"What's wrong with it? I think it's cute." He winks at me playfully.

"It's little girl cute. Other names have cool nicknames like you have Mike and Daniel has Dan. But I just have this lil cutesy nickname, Mimi. Makes me sound like a kid." I rant adorably. Michael continues laughing until he composes himself.

"If it bothers you then why don't you choose a new nickname?" He suggests and I raise my eyebrow at him in confusion.

"Like what?" I question, doubting there's anything better for me. He thinks for a moment and then smiles when he's got it.

"Nao." He says waving his hand as if the name is supposed to appear out of thin air. I look deadpan at him and he starts laughing once more, a genuine smile on his face.

"Nao?" I raise my eyebrow even higher.

"You know, like Ne-yo, but cooler. Nao..." He does the thing with his hand again and I shake my head, giggling.

He continues to laugh as I mutter, "You're so corny." I roll my eyes at him and he gives me a playful shove.

"Well, you love it." He teases and I cross my arms. "So are you gonna consider the nickname or not?" He questions and I pause. My eyes shift to the side and a slow smile spreads across my face.

"I guess anything is better than Mimi," I concede with a sigh.

"Nao it is then." As Michael and I laugh with each other, we hear a loud bell from the kitchen. Michael looks at me with confusion.

"It's the breakfast bell. Means the food's ready. I should probably go get dressed." I mention. Michael removes his arm from around me and stands up offering his hand to help me up as well. I take it graciously. He pulls me to my feet, smiling warmly at me. Our hands linger for an extra second, our eyes locked onto each other.

"Alright, let me go see if I can help set the table." He says after a moment, letting go of my hand. He heads towards the kitchen, but not before calling back, "Don't forget to brush your teeth!" I smile to myself as I go back up the stairs.

As I walk through the common area to get to my room, I'm stopped by a voice behind me.

"You don't really think he'll go for you, do you?" I look over and see Ashanti in the doorway of the bathroom. I raise an eyebrow in confusion.

"What are you talking about?" I ask, already knowing I'm about to deal with some bullshit.

"Michael is a man who is way out of your league, don't you think?" She questions, crossing her arms.

"Ashanti, I'd love to get into whatever this is, but I need to get dressed," I say, turning away.

"I'm saying he should be with someone more on his level. Someone like me." She has a smug look on her face and I turn back towards her.

"Don't you already have a boyfriend?" I narrow my eyes at her.

"He's more of... a friend with benefits." She lies and I roll my eyes.

"You literally share an apartment with him." I retort.

"Don't try to deflect, Naomi. You need to back off of Michael, so I can show who he really should be with. A refined and classy woman with my social standing is the perfect match for a perfect man like him." I side-eye her as she spews these delusions.

"Whatever, Shanti. Have him, I don't care." I walk away before she can respond and shut my door. I should have known she'd come at me like that. It's always like this with her. She's jealous of me and wants Michael for herself. I won't try and stop her from going after him, but if he wants me, there's not much I can do about that. That being said, there's no telling if he likes either one of us. For one, we just met him yesterday, and two, we don't even know where his head is at right now.

I shake that conversation off and get ready for the day. I make it back to my bedroom, deciding to take a quick shower and change into something more decent to eat breakfast in. I'm feeling pretty good about myself until I remember the moment this morning with Michael and I suddenly get butterflies in my stomach. I take a few deep breaths and take my time to apply lotion and perfume.

After I feel I'm presentable, I slip on some jeans and a brown sweater to stay warm. I quickly brush my hair, checking myself in the mirror one last time before heading down to eat.

As I get down the stairs, everyone is already eating. I notice Ashanti sitting very close to Michael as she talks his ear off while he eats. Michael smiles politely, but it's obvious he's not into it. I head into the kitchen and grab some breakfast before sitting at the kitchen table, next to my mother.

"Good morning, Mimi." She greets me, smiling warmly at me.

"Morning, Mom. What are the plans for today? We doing anything?" I ask as I take a bite of food. My mother glances around the table, her eyes lingering for a bit on Michael and Ashanti.

"Well, I was thinking." She starts, "Why don't you older children take a trip to the nearby Christmas market? I'm sure there will be some great activities there."

"Sounds good," I reply. I steal a quick glance at Michael, who seems to be searching for an escape from Ashanti's chatter. Our eyes meet for a moment, and he offers a small smile. "Are we bringing the kids, too?" I ask, looking back at my mother. She shakes her head.

"Your uncles are taking the boys and Jessie to go sledding." She tells me and I smile at that.

"They'll love that," I say as I finish my food, putting my utensils on the plate. "Give me a call if you need me."

"Don't worry, baby, you just go have fun. Oh and..." She leans in to whisper to me. "Make sure to put the works on Michael. I need a son-in-law." She teases. I cover my face in embarrassment and sigh.

"I'll see you later, Mom." I laugh as I walk away, putting my dishes in the sink. After everyone is finished, I grab my brother, Teresa, James, Michael, and Ashanti and tell them what we're about to do.

"Hey guys, Mom suggested that we go to the Christmas market for the day. It's just a short walk down the street, y'all down?" I ask them.

"Oh my God! We used to love going to the Christmas market when we were younger, remember?" Teresa asks, beaming at the memories. I nod, smiling in response. James gazes admirably at Teresa as she brightens up. He always likes to see her happy.

"That sounds like a good plan. I've been dying for that food all year!" Daniel says excitedly. Michael laughs and shrugs his shoulders.

"I'm down to go. I've been wanting to see more of this place." He replies, looking a bit excited as well.

"Well, you already know if T is going, J will be there also," James smirks, leaning against the wall. Ashanti gives him a look of disappointment.

"Please, never refer to yourselves as 'T and J'. It sounds stupid." She tells them. James and Teresa both laugh and Ashanti rolls her eyes. "Oh, we're going to have so much fun!" She squeals, wrapping her arm around Michael's and leaning into him. He winces as she lets out a loud gasp, "Let me go get changed! There might be paparazzi there!" She giggles excitedly as she leaves the room to get ready. Michael gives Dan a surprised look.

"Is she always like that?" He asks, chuckling nervously. We all slowly nod our heads.

"I'm afraid so..." I reply.

"And, unfortunately, she's a professional at missing hints." Dan jokes and we all share a laugh. Grandmother makes her way over to us slowly, carrying six sheets of paper and six mini Polaroid cameras. Teresa's eyes light up once more.

"Are those what I think they are?" She inquires and Grandmother gives her a warm smile. Teresa reads her list carefully, eyes growing wide as she realizes what Grandmother has set up for us.

"Yes, it is, baby." We each are given a piece of paper and a camera. Upon closer inspection of the paper, we realize that it's a checklist.

"What is it?" Michael asks, a bit confused. I grin excitedly as I realize as well.

"It's a Christmas hunt!" I blurt out. Daniel looks excited as well and turns to Michael to explain.

"So, when we were younger, every year we'd visit the Christmas market and we'd do a holiday-themed scavenger hunt." He starts.

"Grandmother always made the list and we had to take pictures with each item on this list. We'd spend all day checking things off of it." Teresa chimes in.

"And, if we finish everything off of the list, we got to have Grandmother's famous Snickerdoodle Cookies! And a bunch of cute photos to put on the mantle." I add with enthusiasm. Michael looks at us all with amusement and nods his head.

"Okay, I'm in!" He tucks his list into his jacket and Teresa and I look at each other eagerly. Eventually, Ashanti returns from her room, dressed in a pink sweater and matching pink leggings.

"What? A scavenger hunt? You should've told me! I would have dressed accordingly." She whines. We all laugh and roll our eyes and head out the door, James and Daniel each pulling a wagon behind us.

The Christmas market bustles with activity as we pass the booths, and festive music all around. The colors and lights take me back to when I was just a little girl. The air carries a sweet scent of roasted chestnuts and the lively hum of joyous conversations.

"Wow, it seems like forever since I've been here," I say, my eyes lighting up as I look around.

"It hasn't changed a bit." Dan smiles, enjoying the nostalgia he gets from the place. I'm walking between Michael and Daniel and Ashanti clings to Michael's other side. Instead of letting her get the satisfaction of walking on Michael's arm, he links his arm with mine as well and I do the same with Dan so that we are all walking together. This seems to annoy her a bit, but we continue on. Teresa and James are walking hand in hand ahead of us and stop at the entrance of the market so we can make a game plan.

"Okay," I start, pulling out my list. "So it looks like we've got enough of things on here to keep us out here for a while." Everyone gathers around with their lists out.

"I've got an idea. How about we split up into teams? Three vs three?" James suggests.

"I like that. So who's on who's team?" Daniel questions. Teresa puts her arm on James' shoulder, smiling.

"It doesn't matter to me. Just as long as I have my boo with me. Otherwise, I'm lost." She says, causing me to giggle at her cuteness.

"Aww." He grins back at her. "I'll make sure to take good care of you then."

"You better. Or I'll come after you." She replies, punching his arm playfully. He laughs and puts his arm around her shoulder. Ashanti rolls her eyes once more at them.

"You two can do what you want, but I'm gonna stick with Michael." She says in a condescending tone. Michael raises an eyebrow at her, but he doesn't bother to argue. I shrug, already knowing she'd choose to team with him.

"Dan? Which team are you going to?" I ask and he gives me a mischievous smirk that seems to only have been seen by me.

"You know, I gotta team with my boy James and Cousin Tt." He shrugs his shoulders. "Sorry, I'm in it to win it." Dan and James dap each other up and I shake my head while laughing.

"Sigh, I guess I'm stuck with Ashanti and Michael," I say in mock annoyance, putting my hand on my forehead dramatically.

"Oh poor Naomi. Forced to walk around with the two hottest people here." Ashanti pretends to wipe a tear.

"Shut up." I roll my eyes.

"I'm just saying, we just look so good together." She wraps her arm around Michael's again and he looks off to the side. I feel the annoyance building but I push it back down.

"Don't be mad, girl, you know you're up there, too," Teresa assures me, nudging my shoulder.

"And besides, I wouldn't consider you being on my team a bad thing..." Michael replies, winking at me. A small smile comes across my face, but I quickly remove it.

"Perfect," Ashanti says under her breath, but I ignore her.

"Alright, teams. It's currently 1:00. We'll do as many items on our list as we can and meet back up here at 4. How does that sound?" James looks around at all of us and we nod in agreement.

"And the first one to find all of the items wins the cookies!" Teresa announces excitedly. We all chuckle a bit and nod again.

"You're on," I say competitively.

"Alright, see you back here in 3 hours." He says, handing his wagon to Michael and walking away with Teresa and Daniel.

"This'll be fun..." Daniel replies, nodding. Our teams split off to do their own thing and find the items on the list. Ashanti sticks to Michael the entire time, sticking to his side as though they were on a date. I have a feeling this is going to be a painful day.

"Okay, let's get started," I say with a determined smile. As we make our way through the market, we start looking at our list.

"Let's see, it looks like the first thing on the list is to take a picture with the most festive-looking person in the market," I say and Ashanti grabs her camera, handing it to me.

"Oh, that's easy." She does a little twirl and puts her hands under her chin. "It's obviously me." Michael and I glance at each other and start laughing.

"I'm not so sure that pink sequins and fur coats exactly scream 'festive'," I giggle and she shoots me a glare.

"Well, what would you know?" She turns her nose up.

"How about her?" Michael says, pointing towards a woman walking in the snow with a beautiful umbrella. She's wearing a cozy red dress and has Christmas trees stitched to the fabric. She has a green fur shawl on and lights braided into her hair.

"Now THAT'S festive," I grab my camera and we all start heading to her, Ashanti groaning under her breath. "Excuse me, miss!" I catch her attention and she turns around, smiling as we approach her.

"Hi, I'm Naomi, this is my cousin Ashanti and our friend Michael." I introduce. She holds her gloved hand out and shakes mine.

"Hello, I'm Helen." She does a small curtsy. After exchanging pleasantries, Michael asks her if she'll take a photo with us. Helen says yes and holds her umbrella out as we get someone to hold the camera for us. We gather around her and smile. With a flash of the camera, the small Polaroid photo ejects out the top and starts to develop. We thank the kind gentleman who took the picture and thank Helen. She walks away and we happily check the first item off the list.

"Alright, that's one off the list." Michael pumps his fist in the air and gives us both a playful high-five.

"Okay, next thing," I say, tucking the photo into my pocket. We set off to check more things off of the list. "We need to take a photo with a street performer or musician. That shouldn't be too hard; the market is filled with them."

As we continue through the lively market, we encounter various street performers showcasing their talents. From musicians playing cheerful tunes to magicians captivating the crowd, the festive spirit is in full swing. We finally settle on a group of carolers dressed in Victorian-era attire, harmonizing beautifully.

"Perfect," Michael declares, "Let's ask them for a quick photo!" As we approach, the carolers welcome us warmly, and we pose in front of the Polaroid.

"Ooh, let me choose the next one!" Ashanti says, pulling out her list. "How about the handmade ornaments?" She suggests.

"Now you're talking," I reply with a smile and we head towards the market's craft section. There are many booths with cute wooden trinkets, nutcrackers, and toys. After a bit of searching, we finally settled on a booth.

"Oh my gosh! This one would go perfectly on the tree! Don't you think?" Ashanti picks up an ornament that is covered in pink sparkles and shimmers. Michael and I grin at her, nodding in agreement.

"It really screams Ashanti," I comment and she takes it to the vendor to buy. I look around for a bit, wondering what I should get.

Michael picks out a small carved wooden reindeer from the section and I settle on a mini clay Santa Claus. I look back over at Ashanti and see her holding a star ornament made out of gold wires and encrusted with gems. I raise an eyebrow at her.

"I thought you wanted the other ornament?" I ask with a snicker. She simply smirks.

"I know, but this one is just speaking to me right now. I have to get it."

"Well, I gotta admit, it does look pretty festive," Michael adds, nodding his head. Ashanti smiles proudly.

"See, Michael likes it." She playfully sticks her tongue at me and I laugh.

"Don't worry, I like it as well." I look at my Santa Claus ornament and head over to buy it from the vendor. We take our pictures with the ornaments and place them in our wagon.

"Alright, that's three down, we're making good progress," Michael says as we start to walk again. He looks at the list and smiles. "I like this next one." Ashanti and I both look at his sheet to see what he's pointing to. It says "Find a mistletoe and take a group photo underneath it." Ashanti immediately lights up.

"Oh! I remember where they sell those!" She says, grabbing Michael's hand enthusiastically and pulling him in the direction of the booth. I sigh, shaking my head as I grab the wagon and follow behind them.

When I finally catch up, I see them standing in front of a charming mistletoe display near a Christmas tree vendor.

"Naomi, you hold the mistletoe, and Michael and I will kiss, okay?" She suggests and I raise my eyebrows at her. She's being bold today. Michael chuckles nervously and takes the mistletoe from Ashanti.

"How about you both hold the mistletoe and you both kiss one of my cheeks while I take the photo? That'll be a good picture for sure." He holding the mistletoe out to us. I exchange a playful glance with Ashanti, who seems to be more interested in being near Michael than holiday fun. Nevertheless, we gather beneath the mistletoe and we lean in to kiss his cheeks. Michael makes a silly face and snaps the photo. The result is a cute selfie that really captures the fun that we are having.

Over the next hour, we get pictures with a holiday elf, a gingerbread house, and even a guy with an ugly Christmas sweater. Ashanti keeps trying to cling to Michael, but he always seems uninterested in her. Instead, he makes sure to include me in the fun and we all have a good time hunting for the items off of the list.

"Dang, it's already 3:00," Michael tells us, checking his watch.

"And we've only got 9 things marked off the list." I sigh and Ashanti groans loudly.

"Ugh, this is taking forever!" She whines, dropping her shoulders.

"Well, this next one should be great, then. We need to take a pic drinking some hot chocolate. We can rest a bit there." I suggest. Michael smiles at the idea.

"Sounds good to me." He says and Ashanti nods as well.

"Oh, yes! It'll be the perfect pic to post on my story." She says, completely forgetting about the scavenger hunt and walking ahead of us. Michael walks beside me, breathing a sigh of relief.

"What, do you miss your little girlfriend?" I ask, teasingly. Michael rolls his eyes playfully and shakes his head.

"Don't even get me started on her." He replies, shaking his head as he laughs. "She's very determined, I'll give her that. But can I breathe?" He shudders and I laugh.

"Well, I guess that's the price of being a famous actor, Mr. Jordan," I smirk at him and he raises his eyebrows.

"So, it's like that then?" He questions, faking a look of hurt.

"Oh yeah, especially after today," I reply with a nod. Michael smiles mischievously at me and puts his arm around my shoulders.

"Aw, are you upset because Shanti keeps stealing me away from you, Ms. Samuels?" His voice is low as he leans into my ear and I find myself blushing again. I ignore the feeling of butterflies as I wrap my arm around his waist, looking up at him.

"Oh yeah, I'm so jealous, right now. I just want you all to myself." Sarcasm drips off my voice as our back-and-forth banter causes us both to burst out laughing.

"If I'm honest, I feel less pressured when I'm around you," Michael admits. "Most people treat me like I'm royalty or something, or they just see me as a celebrity. But I don't feel that with you. I feel like I'm just some regular guy and like you actually genuinely like me."

"Well, I do genuinely like you. You're more than just an actor and I think you deserve to be treated like a human being." I smile at him, leaning my head on his shoulder. Michael gently rubs my arm and gives me a reassuring smile.

"Thanks. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I genuinely like you, too," He whispers, playfully nudging me as we continue to walk. We catch up to Ashanti at the booth, where she's sitting on a stool posing for selfies with her mug. I sit next to her and Michael sits beside me, causing her to glance over at us.

"It's about time you two came over. Here, Naomi. Take some pics for me." She shoves her phone into my hand and I sigh, holding it up for her as she does various poses. Michael chuckles and starts ordering drinks from the vendor. When Ashanti finishes, she snatches her phone back to look at the results.

"You're welcome," I mutter under my breath. Michael slides a mug of hot chocolate towards me and I accept it graciously. "Thanks, Michael," I say, appreciating the gesture.

"Of course, here." He says, taking his Polaroid and standing it up against one of the menu stands. He sets the timer on the camera and leans close to me, flashing a smile and holding his mug up. I do the same and the camera flashes, printing out the photo. We clink our mugs together as the photo develops and begin to sip the hot chocolate.

Ashanti, noticing us clink our drinks together, seems upset again and pouts, glancing over at me before turning back towards Michael. We make eye contact and I give her a smile because I'm in a good mood and not about to be a killjoy. She ignores my attempt to be kind, though, as expected.

After finishing our hot chocolate, Michael stands up and picks up his camera. "All right, it's about time we get out of here. We're halfway through our list. Team, what items do we still have left?" I pull out my list and scan over it.

"Next one says to find a gift for someone in the family and have it gift-wrapped," I reply, before looking up and seeing the others. Teresa, James, and Dan stroll over all grinning at us.

"Well, well, well. Look who it is." Daniel gives us a smug smirk as they walk over.

"What's the smug look for?" I step up to him and cross my arms and he does the same.

"Oh, nothing, just worried you might go hungry when we eat all those cookies in your faces." He responds and we both glare at each other jokingly before breaking out into laughter.

"You two are something else." Teresa shakes her head.

"Don't act like you're not just as competitive, Teresa. I still have back pain from playing musical chairs with you." Dan retorts, rubbing his lower back. Michael leans over to whisper in my ear.

"Remind me never to play musical chairs with her." He says and I nudge his shoulder playfully.

"Have y'all gotten to the snowman one yet?" James asks and we all shake our heads. "Perfect, how about a contest, then?"

"A snowman-building contest?" Ashanti gives him a look of confusion.

"Yeah, each team makes the best snowman they can think of," Teresa adds.

"What does the winning team get?" Michael inquires.

"Nothing, it's just for fun."

"Oh, no, I don't do these types of things for 'fun'. There's gotta be something at stake." Ashanti says, tapping her foot.

"How about the loser has to knock down their snowman and take their photo with the remains," I suggest with a mischievous smile on my face.

"I like the sound of that." Dan nods.

"Let's do it!" Teresa shouts and we all head over to a wide patch of snow. The teams huddle to discuss our strategies and then take a couple minutes to gather any items we need.

"How about we make a fashion icon snowman?" Ashanti suggests.

"No, it's got to be something outside of the box. Something no one would think of." Michael replies, tapping his chin as he thinks. I smile once an idea comes to me.

"What about an upside-down snowman?" I look at their faces to see their reaction. "Who is also a fashion icon," I add and they both slowly smile.

"I've gotta admit, that is pretty outside the box. Let's go get the stuff!" Ashanti says and we hurry to find supplies. The snowman building begins and we enthusiastically make a snowman with its head buried in the snow, making sure that the other team doesn't see what we're doing. Michael, Ashanti, and I work together to create the perfect snowman, laughing as we give it quirky accessories and make it stand out.

Daniel's team reveals their snowman to be a gentleman with a top hat and a scarf, seemingly scrolling on a phone that happens to belong to James. We all get a kick out of it, but I know that ours is the one that's really gonna blow them away. We bring them over to our snowman and they immediately start laughing, enjoying how we put boots on top of the snowman for its feet.

"Wow! Okay, I think it's obvious that's the winner right there." James says in surprise.

"What can I say? We've just got that creative touch." I say, putting my elbow on the snowman. Unfortunately, it wasn't packed together sturdy enough and my added weight caused it to crumble and me to fall on top of it.

"Naomi!" Ashanti shouts, annoyed that I ruined the snowman. Michael rushes over to help me up as Dan, Teresa, and James all laugh at the sight. Michael is laughing a bit too, but he makes sure I'm okay and pulls me to my feet. I brush snow off my bottom and chuckle at my clumsiness.

"Oh shit, I didn't mean for that to happen." I rub my neck sheepishly and look over at Ashanti, who looks livid. "You okay, Ashanti?"

To Be Continued...

[bugs-in-situations]

we can't get the illustrations done so we're just going to talk about the "how leif forgot what kind of animal they are" saga so we don't go insane in here

as we said in the last post, wearing each other's pelts as apparel is usual for married selkies. muse and leif had figured out a practical application of this: wearing their pelts on missions so they had a way to signal to each other while split up. one tap on the pelt for "i'm stuck in place", three taps for "i'm in immediate danger", so on.

muse felt it when leif died in snakemouth den, when the feeling of leif clawing at her pelt for help stopped and when their pelt turned cold in her hands. she wasn't allowed to go back in to find leif or her pelt, and lived out the rest of her life sick from pelt separation. she couldn't stand looking at leif's pelt anymore and put it away in a box, buried in storage until she died.

leif was still wearing her pelt in the spider web.

decades later, when they awoke, all their memories of being a mongoose selkie wiped, and with a sea lion's pelt on their back... the logical conclusion, of course, is that they had been a sea lion selkie. their head was still fuzzy, and their memory was malleable - a few events that didn't really happen began to implant in their mind. what other explanation was there? they don't remember any selkie tradition that would explain why they would wear someone else's pelt.

it takes leif a long time to remember muse even existed.

in the mean time, they're trying to be a sea lion and... not doing it very well. when they wear the pelt fully, it hangs on them loosely and is incredibly uncanny to look at. they're afraid of water and can't stand to be in their "natural" environment. they don't crave fish like the other pinnipeds around them, instead craving much crunchier and explicitly forbidden prey.

there's also the fact that their pelt is cold in the way only a dead selkie's pelt should be. they rationalize this as being because of their ice magic. it's harder to explain why nothing happens when someone takes it away and tries to command them.

despite all of this, leif can't bear to take the thing off or leave it anywhere they can't reach.

tl;dr leif died wearing muse's pelt and now thinks her pelt is theirs and they're being very normal about it

[adelaidedrubman]

“How about we put that pretty mouth of yours into good use, hm?” for JohnJess, please? Hopefully whatever sin occurs isn't used to terrorize Mary May for once lmao - fourlittleseedlings

HI MOLLY thank you for sending this in, apologies for what i decided to do with it. everyone give it up for the bad head valentine’s day event! at least mary may is spared. 

summary: jessie agrees to finally hookup at john’s place for valentine’s day, he thanks her by bringing his a-game. (“how about we put that pretty mouth of yours into good use, hm?” + john x jestiny | set in the pre/no reaping au (although frankly it doesn’t match the timeline of the “get off my lawn” verse proper) | bad head valentine’s day event )

wordcount: 4.6k 

warnings: explicit nsfw. alcohol. verbal berating. johnjess typical power struggles and creepy behavior (including brief references to stalking type activities), general toxicity. bad head. terrible, horrible, no good, very bad head. john says a praise kink and degradation kink can coexist peacefully, actually. love wins 

Stepping into Seed Ranch had felt quite uncannily like stepping into the lion’s den. 

Or some kind of animal’s den, she had thought with a shudder upon entering and casting her gaze about to pick out each piece of imposing taxidermy placed around the expanse of the main room, the towering bears and hunkered down wolves successfully creating the illusion of being closed in by a viciously tacky pack of wild animals. 

Although perhaps the predatory air of the place radiated strongest from the homeowner himself — and the annoyingly victorious grin that had fixed onto his face the moment the doors safely closed behind her, bearing distinct resemblance to an understimulated housecat convincing itself it had caught an impressive prey in the form of a cheap toy mouse thrown across the room.

Because it had been a truly trivial prize; an astoundingly empty victory she’d chosen to hand the man — finally agreeing, after months of stubborn standoff regarding the particulars of where they carried out their ill-defined and ill-advised affair, to for once go to his place. 

A concession she’d only granted due to, well, the timing. 

And by that she did not — absolutely not, by any stretch — mean because it was Valentine’s Day. 

In fact, she hadn’t even realized it did happen to be February 14th until well into the evening, upon strolling into a strangely packed Spread Eagle — and noticing a moment later (as it were too late), after fighting her way to the bar through a crowd of singles flirtatiously offering to buy her a drink, that the back wall was covered in carelessly hung crepe paper hearts, and the man already proudly perched upon a stool at the counter had switched the usual blue tones of his wardrobe (which she knew were a vain attempt to bring out the color of his eyes, by the way) for a dark pink cashmere sweater. 

And once she had already found herself situated there and caught directly in the sticky center of the spider’s web of unfortunate timing, its gossamer threads only wound tighter around her to spell her doom. Primarily in the form of Mary May being so backed up running drinks to the holiday crowd that she didn’t even respond to Jessie’s repeated calls for a craft beer, and without drinking there was precious little else left to entertain or serve as a distraction from the man undergoing his usual work in pestering her. And no distractions meant it was difficult not to engage with him, and if she was going to engage with him she was at least going to engage in a manner that proved pleasurable. 

And from there the factors compounded, all holiday neutral. There was the relative distance of her house near the edge of the county compared to his just outside of town (five minutes, she thought — perhaps she’d found the address and driven by it on occasion just to see how gaudy the place must really be, only to find equally condemnable evidence of poor taste in the fact it couldn’t even be seen from the main road, although a cheap billboard ad with his face plastered on it could). And the distance was a not so insubstantial consideration given the mounds of powdery white Montana winter that coated every mile of the drive, making the meandering trek to her place all the more treacherous, particularly in her 2003 Ford Taurus with last year’s snow tires. 

And the holiday had left the Spread Eagle too full of prying eyes and ears for slinking away still on the property to be a feasible option. And the only other proposed alternative — John’s suggestion they could simply rent a room at King’s Hot Springs Hotel, or perhaps those little chalets along the river — seemed more likely to result in hokey holiday bullshit, foreboding visions of rose petals floating along the frothing surface of hot tubs and room service strawberries dropped into champagne flutes flashing through her mind in dire warning. 

And so after a last failed shout for Mary May to bring her a double of McHelen’s and a whisper in her ear that he had a very nice vintage whiskey back at his place, that was how Jestiny found herself nursing a drink at the very place she’d spent upwards of six months stubbornly avoiding. 

“Can’t believe this is the only fucking whiskey you have,” Jestiny complained with a disparaging glare towards the tumbler filled nearly to the brim with expensive amber liquid. She brought it to her lips as she ascended the stairs, the rich smokiness lavishing itself along her tongue. “Scotch fucking sucks,” she said decidedly, savoring the lingering flavor as its smooth burn faded. “Get some fuckin’ bourbon, a whiskey fucking worth a damn.” 

“I’m happy to start keeping whatever you’d like in stock,” he hummed, curling the fingers threaded in her hair from his place clinging to her back, guiding her through the unfamiliar house while obligingly upholding the illusion she was in lead, herding her through the door to the balcony — she knew he must just want to show off the vista, there was no way he built this stupid place so that he had to go outside every time he wanted to get to the bedroom. “Now that you’re finally visiting.” 

“I’m not gonna be making a fucking habit of it,” she spat back, kicking open the door after he’d tugged her skirt to signal to pause at it, without waiting for the additional permission to enter. “This is a one time only thing, a —” 

“A special occasion,” John offered in agreement, a laugh falling into the cascades of hair he buried his face in. “For the —” 

“It’s not for the fucking holiday,” she spat, shimmying her feet free of her boots and purposefully kicking them into the dead center of the bedroom floor. “It’s ’cause Mary May was ignoring my drink order for some reason.” She punctuated the assertion with a swirling of the scotch in her hand, ice cubes clinking against the glass. “And this place is closer than the next bar.” 

“Of course,” he said, reaching to gently pull the glass from her hand and set it atop the nightstand, then flashing her a smile softened in artifice. “But how would you have known that?” He clicked his tongue against his teeth, cocked his head to the side in equally feigned confusion. “You’ve never been to the place.” 

She shaped the surprised cough catching in her chest into a dismissive grunt, snatching the whiskey back from where he’d placed it. She brought it to her lips, holding her glare at him as she drank in place of an answer. 

“Well, regardless of what I have to thank for the privilege…” He paused, the hand that had been hovering in wait now pulling the glass from her again the moment she lowered it, taking a sip from it himself before placing it back on the table — this time pausing to put a coaster beneath it, now that any suave nonchalance of the gesture was ruined anyways. “I look forward to being able to fuck you on a proper bed for once.” 

She scrunched her nose. “The fuck you talking about?” she asked. “We’ve fucked on a bed plenty of times.” 

The smarmy smile on his face fell with sudden somberness. “We have not.” He shook his head back and forth slowly. “We have not fucked on a bed, not once. We’ve fucked on a mattress —” 

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ…” 

“— on the floor. With no frame and no box spring,” he continued harping, a complaint she thought she would for once be spared by not going back to her place. “We have never fucked on an actual, proper bed, let alone a —” 

“How about,” she interrupted sharply, gripping his jaw and pulling him towards her, satisfied to see his eyelashes flutter with sudden pleased deference at the action, “you stop doing worthless shit with your mouth like talking?” she suggested, briefly receiving a look of offense from the statement, before she shifted her hand so that his chin rested in her palm, her thumb sliding along his lower lip. “Instead, how about we put that pretty mouth of yours into good use, hm?” 

Before he could answer she shoved the thumb into his mouth, pressing it against his tongue — and any remaining trace of a glare vanished with the ticking of his eyes back up towards his skull as he wilted forward, reaching hands towards her waist and bunching up the fabric of her skirt as he melded his tongue against her finger and bobbed his head forward to purse his lips around the base of her knuckle. 

Her breath hitched, the tingle at the back of her neck sharpening itself into a spark of desire sliding down her spine at the feeling of the plush of his tongue caressing against her thumb as he sucked. She caught herself, pulling it away just as his eyes flicked to her, breaking the seal of his lips with a wet pop. 

“Gladly,” he answered breathily, placing a soft kiss to the pad of her thumb as he stiffened the hands at her hips to push her back onto the mattress. “And since we are for once on a proper bed,” he added, shifting the work of glaring back to her yet again as he lowered himself to his knees, looking up at her once he was settled, “I can finally bring my A-game to it.” 

He ignored her dismissive scoff, reaching for the waistband of her fleece tights and briefs to slip them down her legs at a snail’s pace. He brushed equally slow creeping and feather light touches along her thighs to push her skirt up past their tops, walking the fingers back down with equal teasing delay. She made a point of having her heel make contact with his collarbone as she kicked off the underwear and tights hanging around her ankle, then gave another kick against his back to push him forward as she dropped the leg atop his shoulder. 

“Just fucking bring some game to it already,” she complained, dried gel crunching between her fingers as she pulled at his hair. 

“But I was looking forward to finally savoring it,” he replied, hooking an arm around the leg atop his shoulder to stroke up and down her thigh as he paused to make sure the hungry glint in his eyes was sufficiently visible before he place a single teasing kiss at the crest of her lips. He pinched his brow, slanting upward as he widened his eyes to gaze up at her in some half-baked parody of reverence. “But I suppose if you’re so very needy and impatient…” 

He batted his eyelashes; dropped his jaw for his tongue to flop out, then stretch down along his chin until its tip reached to tangle in his beard. But instead of craning his neck forward to make any contact with her, he shifted back onto his calves and reached a hand towards his belt, unfastening it and guiding his already fully stiffened cock past the fabric. And he stayed there with tongue out, posed as if waiting to receive a communion wafer as he began to give himself a few slow strokes while she remained untouched. 

She furrowed her brow in confusion at the odd display — was this something that had actually done something for someone before? or was it just that no one had ever bothered to tell him he looked ridiculous? 

Regardless, she gave two quick snaps of her fingers, a call of hey to draw his attention before pointing her index between her legs in gesture with a few flicks of her wrist, as if reminding him where the tongue he held out was supposed to go. 

His eyes narrowed, his jaw twitching in impulse to fire back a retort — seeming to realize a second later that it would require retraction of his tongue, shaking off the urge as he finally bent forward to press against her. 

She sighed in some semblance of relief that he had at least gotten started, that she could feel his tongue flush against her. She ran fingers through her hair, closing her eyes as she tried to make sense of his positioning — waiting for the (teasing?) up and down drag of his tongue to come to a stop to be replaced with the familiar sensation of it flexing rigid to dip inside her as a thumb pressed against her clit. 

And waiting. And waiting. And — 

She coughed, opened her eyes to confirm the only progress that had been made was the length of the arc of his head bobbing each time he glided his tongue along her folds, still never managing to make meaningful contact — rubbing shallowly at her entrance at shortest pulses, the bridge of his nose managing to painfully clip the underside of her clit at longest. 

It was one of the latter moves that finally caused her to yelp and shove the heel of her hand against his forehead to push him back. 

“Do you plan on actually reaching anything that matters down there?” she hissed. “Or just bashing your nose against it?”

He shot an offended look between her legs. “I’m working up to it.”

“You’re at least two inches under it!”

“Well, I’m getting to it!” he snapped, wiping the saliva from his mouth onto his sleeve. 

“Then fucking get to it!” she barked, shoving him back between her legs. 

He scoffed, a heavy breath that at least had the mercy of falling against her clit, making her tingle with something close enough to arousal to remember that she had at some point wanted him enough to come home with him. 

Enough that she did feel some small jolt of pleasure as the tip of the tongue he slid past lips made contact with her clit — not moving, once it did, merely tensing against her. 

She scrunched her mouth to the side, trying to make sense of the way he increased pressure without movement, poking against her. His eyes found her, the rest of him remaining completely still save for the slow steady jerks of his arm — he apparently felt as if he should be rewarded for a job well done at least, while his tongue stayed glued in place. 

“What —” as soon as she began to ask the question he answered it in the form of his tongue wagging back and forth — seeming to make a grand spectacle of showing off its range, barely grazing her clit on its path to opposite creases of her thighs. 

She briefly considered just trying to rock along to the ministrations rather than give him more direction — until he shifted his lashing path downward, so that even the minimal contact made where she needed it was lost, replaced with a useless swiping along her inner lips. 

“You fuckin’— ” she cursed, burying fingers in his hair and tugging — the little moan he gave indicating he apparently thought it was in reward. “You know better than this,” she growled at him, yanking his head back so that he was forced to look up at her disappointed and confused face. “I — I know that you know better than this,” she offered, genuinely taken aback. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I told you,” he purred, seemingly undeterred as he sat back, returning to that same back on his heels and stroking himself pose in which he’d begun. (And with the tongue sticking out like a cartoon wolf yelling an enthusiastic ‘awooga!’ removed, she had to admit he did look pretty like that.) “I’m taking the time to bring my A-Game,” he said, brushing a thumb to dip just barely inside her to collect the slick built there — primarily his own saliva, she assumed, which was returned from whence it came with the slipping of the finger into his mouth. “Or at least I would be,” he bit out more sharp with irritation as he removed the thumb. “If I could stop being interrupted.”

“I never —” she huffed, clenching her hands around the hair her fingers had been threaded through, separating it into two fistfuls, “thought I would have to tell you of all people not to think too much,” she said bitterly, jerking the fistfuls of hair to pull him as if leading a horse by its reigns, until his mouth was once again hovering just shy of where she wanted. “But don’t overthink it.” She kept one fist bunched in his hair to hold him in place as she untwined the other, bringing fingers to rest in a V shape on either side of her clit, using them to spread the plump of her lips and better expose herself. “Suck it.”

Pink smoldered bright along his cheeks at the command, a whimper following it in fluttering past his lips. So when he dropped his jaw, licking his lips before leaning forward to cover her with his mouth, she was briefly hopeful that she’d finally broken him down to the version of himself that kept her coming back to their unwise tryst in the first place — the John who was eager, ready to jump to please, obedient and pliant.

But those hopes were soon dashed when the lips pursed around her failed to narrow to suckle, but rather expanded — as if he’d decided to strive for breadth over precision, make sure that the better mass of her mound was joined in on the action as his tongue made the briefest gentle brush-bys of her clit at most. 

She looked down, giving a confused little ‘huh’ sound he must have mistaken for a pleased moan, because the dropping and rising rhythm of his jaw increased as he french kissed the general vicinity of her clit. 

She rubbed her chin with her hand, considered. He was at least in the right area and doing something halfway useful now — the occasional slide of his tongue along her clit produced something akin to pleasure when it happened, and he had to give up the misguided effort at teasing and just get the job done eventually, right?

Yes, she decided, better to just let him tire himself out. At this point, it was a sunk cost. 

She sighed, untangled her fingers from his hair, keeping one hand there to pat the top of his head encouragingly while the other reached for the glass of scotch on the nightstand. She brought it to her lips, taking a sip.

Monday was supposed to be the warmest temperatures they’d had all month, good to finally get some fly fishing done, she thought with a pleased hum taken as more encouragement. 

She was still finding the best spots around here, winter fishing was always tricky. She took another sizable drink of her scotch, realizing she was nearing the bottom. She had good luck with trout over near Silver Lake during the summer, maybe she should give it another try. 

She threw back the remainder of her whiskey, the burn settling pleasantly in her stomach, heat flushing along her cheeks. Of course, it could get crowded even in winter, so maybe she should see just how frozen the more distant tributaries forking off from it were. 

She lowered the glass once she was sure she’d drained the last drop of scotch, ice cubes settling back along its bottom with a resounding clink. 

The noise caused John to shoot his head up, eyes wide and searching in confusion for a moment — before they narrowed in offense as they settled on the glass in her hand. 

“Were you drinking while I was doing that?!” 

“I fuckin’ got bored!” she barked back, throwing her hand up defensively. “I said to fucking suck it, not make out with it!” 

“I was getting there!” 

“Well I fucking wasn’t!” 

“Very fucking well, then!” he cursed, reaching his free hand to grip her thigh almost too hard and scooting her further towards the edge of the mattress. “Since you’re so opposed to my adding any amount of artistry to the endeavor,” he hissed, allowing it to slowly fade into a sigh as he resumed furiously stroking himself and settled between her legs. “I guess it’s straight to my A-Game.” 

With that he slipped his tongue past his lips again, finding its place without delay this time — hugging her contours with a tight pressed caress that made her suddenly realize with a dizzying flicker of heat just how much she’d missed being paid proper attention. 

She groaned low and heavy as she tossed her head back, feeling the mere reality of his tongue finally massaging against her with some fucking force was almost release enough on its own. 

It was. It really was. For the almost twenty seconds it lasted. 

But that was the extent of its duration, before his tongue curled and flipped over so that its slick underside rested against her before rising, breaking the contact to hover in limbo — then slap down, then repeat the motion rapid-fire. 

She opened her eyes. She set them on the cedar molding; pausing a beat to study its grain, ground herself. A moment to try to talk herself into believing that what she thought she felt certainly couldn’t be real — but the sensation of the tensed tip of his tongue sweeping back and forth over her at a machine gun pace didn’t vanish, the wet slap slap slap it produced announcing its reality and leaving her without the luxury of doubt. 

She could feel it, she could hear it, and upon finally daring to look down she could see his tongue flicking against her clit at the speed of light, as if trying to hammer any last remaining prospect of arousal out of it, the quick flex of his arm showing he continued pumping himself in the same racing rhythm. All while he looked up at her with those wide, pleading eyes and flushed cheeks; that desperate expression he wore that silently begged for praise, screamed ‘please tell me I’m good’ — an expression she normally would have to admit being something of an undeniable sucker for, but paired with the useless exaggerated flicking of his tongue it only inspired annoyance. 

She bent her neck, so that she could be directly eye to eye with him as she spoke. 

“John,” she cooed, dripping with an artificial sweetener of sarcasm, “you look very fucking pretty doing that.” His pupils blew wide, face deepening its pink with excitement — apparently still unaware the praise she gave was in mocking. “But it’s as fucking worthless as you are!” 

His tongue froze in its place for him to draw in a sharp gasp that was quickly pushed back out as a broken, bleating cry that dragged out long and quavering; as black-blue lust clouded eyes switched to glistening white as they rolled towards the back of his head, then shuttered just as quickly as he squeezed them shut tight. From there his head dropped to collapse in her lap, so that she briefly worried she’d caused him to break down and cry — before she felt sudden heat sling along her shins, trickling down to her ankles as he trembled against her. 

Her thigh grew nearly as damp as the lower half of her leg as he pressed his face flush against it to bury his next fading moans into it, until they crumpled into a last whimper and he went limp. 

He took a few more shaky breaths in her lap before he pulled back to sit upright on the floor again, chest still heaving with breathlessness. 

She unbent her leg, stretching it out to glance at the release dripping down her shin, then darting her eyes back to him. “So your A-Game, huh?” 

His slackened features took turns furrowing and tensing at different places on his face, trying to fix for itself which expression it wished to solidify into, seeming to shift between half-formed renditions of angry, embarrassed, and apologetic. 

Before they finally all fell, drooped with his head hanging in tired shame. 

And she studied him in silence: still gasping for breath, face sheened with sweat and rosy flush, the drops of release that hadn’t made it to her skin settling on his thighs. The ache at her base pulsed fresh despite herself, and she had to admit he did, in fact, look very, very pretty like that. 

She gave an exasperated sigh as she bent forward, reaching for his forearm. 

“Come here,” she grumbled, tugging at the arm to pull him upward, then forward for her other hand to find the back of his thigh and guide him to settle into her lap. 

He gave a soft whine, allowing his arms to rest atop her shoulders as she brought her hand upward to hold him at the hip. She then slid it to cradle the small of his back, trailing up and down as her other hand lifted to brush a thumb against his cheek, then cup his jaw — lavishing him with all those tender caresses she always was so bad at denying him when he was finally all broken down and fucked out and drained and softened by the comedown, although usually he’d done a little bit more to earn the reward of her spoiling him with stray affections. 

“Well,” she began, leaning forward to press a kiss against his heartbeat. “Have we learned our lesson, then?” 

He nuzzled against her hand, pressing a matching kiss to the pulse of her wrist, sighing a defeated, “Yes.” 

“You gonna just do what the fuck I say without going off script to try to show off next time?” 

“Yes,” he nodded, batting his eyelashes at her. “A-Anything,” he rasped against her palm. “Anything you say, Jessie, really — I want to make you feel good, make it up to you.” He wove his fingers through her hair, tangling them. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered against her lips. “Anything. Tell me what to do.” 

“Anything?” she questioned. “And you’ll be good and do it?” 

“Anything,” he agreed. “I’ll be so good for you.” 

She hummed, pleased. “I want you to slide off my lap right now, stand up…” She purred, pulling her head back to gaze at him, expectant look in his eyes. “Put on your pants, get in your car, drive to the liquor store, and fucking buy a bottle of bourbon.” She heard the beginnings of an offended scoff, pressing her index finger against his lips to shush it. “Without saying a fucking word, because you’ve officially lost ‘using your mouth’ privileges for the next hour.” 

He swatted her hand away, remaining obediently silent nonetheless, settling for flashing her a bitter sneer as he shot up to stand, shoved his legs into his pants and threw open the door. 

She trailed just behind him, stopping in the doorway to lean crooked in it with forearm propped against the frame. “Oh, and John?” she called after him, grinning at the sight of him wordlessly but dutifully turning around, jaw tensed tight but eyes softened as he stared at her. 

She gave an upward jerk of her head in a half-nod. “Happy Valentine’s Day!” she chimed, flashing her index and middle finger parted into a V for him — holding it and bringing the hand to her mouth, poking her tongue out to flick at the space between the fingers. 

She continued the act the entire time he swung around and stomped along the length of the balcony and down its steps with silent indignation, barking laughter after him as she did. 

Happy for one of them, at least.

[deadbyoffering]

25 things that the Survivors are not allowed to do

My Christmas present to all.

The motto is “Death Is Not An Escape,” and not the following: Dead Body Department, David Bodybuilding Development, Decatini, Baileys and Disaronno, Dickson, Bénédictine and Dark rum, Bourbon, Delilah and Daiquiri, Dwight’s Balding Dilemma, When in doubt throw at (insert killer’s name), Flashlight click until they DC, The realm of toxicity, Hookers and Complainers, Slugging equals winning, Let’s S.T.A.R.S. handle it, Society of angsty teens, Hall of horror and stupidity, Army of the Misfits, Crows are a camper best friend, Circus of the sleep deprived, Den of the Hungry Spider and Camp of teabaggingers.

No one is no longer allowed to rapidly click on their flashlights. The clicking was irritated to the killers me everyone.

Miss Karlsson is not allowed to “borrow” the snow boards from  Mount Ormond resort for the purpose of “shredding some slopes.”

Telling new arrivals that you can have dominance over any Killer by t-posing over them is right out.

Mr. Visconti is no longer allowed to host poker night in Dead Dawg Saloon after being caught cheating with cards up his sleeve. Mr. Myers was especially wasn’t a fan of it.

Mrs Thomas  Anyone is not allowed to feed anything with peanut butter to Mr. Deshayes.

Just because Mr. Park has a bond with the crows, doesn’t mean he’s their handler and doesn’t hold any responsibility for them for anything they do. Same with Miss Mora.

Just because a majority of survivors are in the police force, there will never be a survivor police department. And if there was, mostly they hear complaints reports of killers being flashed all the time.

Mr. King is not the king of anywhere or thing.

Mr. Hak is not to be given song requests, especially not "Cut though you".

Nothing in the realm is rated 'Over 9000.'

Mis Kassir is not allowed to interview killers during trials. 

"Was doing a Challenge Tome" is not a valid excuse for anything.

Miss Kimura is not allowed to repair and drive any cars from Autohaven. Especially during trials.

Never again to hold game tournaments until everyone learns to control their temper when they lose. Especially you Miss Min.

Survivors are not allowed to pick fights with killers even if they’re sure can win.

No one is to pack their lunch in med-kits and bring them to trials.

Miss Karlsson No one is not allowed to contribute to this list. That is not a challenge.

The crows are not to be hunted, cook, and eaten. Bunnies are fine though.

Firecrackers are no longer allowed to be set off in the camp. May that wildfire be a lesson to you.

No building snow fortresses in front of the camp entrance during the chill event. Mr. Myers had stern conversation about standing in front camp entrance just to stare at Miss Strode. Killers will have a stern conversation about this matter.

No longer to have rap battles with the Legion any Killers.

There will ever a fashion show in this realm. Period.

Iridescent shards are for currency only and not to be made into jewelry.

Fortnite dances will never be emotes during trials. Ever

@mistermiles7

[eddie-munson-lives]

Eddie's tattoos and Season 5 foreshadowing

OK, probably being delusional again, but the gradual release of Eddie's tattoos is making me think of how the whole sequence could foreshadow his character arc in season 5.

We know that the most visible ones (the bats and the Master of Puppets) were a reference to the events in season 4. But the others (the ones that we couldn't so obviously see) are currently being released by people in the costume department.

The wyvern is a symbol of protection, valor, vengeance, and triumph over a demonic enemy. This fits in with Eddie's character arc and hints at a possible comeback.

Then there's the spider. This piece in Den of Geek refers to the spider imagery associated to Vecna:

"Incidentally, the recurring spider imagery in Stranger Things season 4 is an intriguing side note. On a symbolic level, Vecna is trapping his victims in a sort of manipulative mind web, and Nancy sees the macabre display of those he’s captured. However, the Dungeons & Dragons version of Vecna also happens to carry the epithet “Master of the Spider Throne,” and much of his power is in his spidery hand. In fact, the Hand of Vecna was a magical item in the game before the monster himself was even fully developed."

I'm taking it as a reference that Eddie will join Vecna, the Master of the Spider Throne.

The next tattoo they're showing us is this demonic creature with blood in its mouth. Blood, yes. Could this be a direct reference to Kas?

Now we only have one tattoo left, and I think it might be something different--perhaps something more hopeful, like a regal or heroic figure, which could hint at what he'll become at the end of season 5.

I might be reading too much into it, but I also know that costume department choices are never casual, and I'm finding it very curious that they're choosing to share his tattoos with the audience, when they don't really need to, particularly when the character is supposed to be dead. Also, if the tattoos were simply to characterise Eddie in season 4, they wouldn't have bothered with hidden ones. The bats and the Master of Puppets would have been enough. Why show th rest, if not to have people talking?

So yeah. This is giving me hope.

[frostyreturns]

Best And Worst Books From 2022

Top 5 Classics of 2022

5.) Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury 4/5

4.) Dracula - Bram Stoker 4/5

3.) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 4/5

2.) The Screwtape Letters - C.S Lewis 5/5

1.) The Hobbit - J.R.R Tolkien 5/5

Bottom 5 Classics of 2022

5.) War Of The Worlds - H.G Wells 3/5

4.) Animal Farm - George Orwell 2/5

3.) Beren And Luthien - J.R.R/Christopher Tolkien 2/5

2.) Roughing It - Mark Twain 2/5

1.) Walden - Henry David Thoreau 2/5

Top 5 miscellaneous genre fiction of 2022

5.) The Road -Cormac McCarthy 3/5

4.) Misery - Stephen King 3/5

3.) The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson 3/5

2.) Batman No Mans Land - Greg Rucka 5/5

1.) Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay 5/5

Bottom 5 miscellaneous genre fiction of 2022

5.)  Splintercell - Raymond Benson 3/5

4.) Skin -Ted Dekker 3/5

3.) Pirate Latitudes - Michael Chrichton 3/5

2.) Skipping Christmas- John Grisham 2/5

1.) Small Steps- Louis Sachar 2/5

Top 5 Star Wars Novels of 2022

5.) Jedi Search - Kevin J Anderson 4/5

4.) Dark Apprentice - Kevin J Anderson 4/5

3.) Heir To The Empire - Timothy Zahn 5/5

2.) The Empire Strikes Back - Donald F Glut 5/5

1.) The Last Command - Timothy Zahn 5/5

Bottom 5 Star Wars Novels of 2022

5.) Dark Force Rising -Timothy Zahn 3/5

4.) Tatooine Ghost - Troy Denning 3/5

3.) Rogue Planet - Greg Bear  3/5

2.) The Courtship Of Princess Leia - Dave Wolverton 3/5

1.) Splinter Of The Minds Eye - Alan Dean Foster 3/5

Top 5 Young Reader Novels of 2022

5.) Charlie And The Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 4/5

4.) Holes - Louis Sachar 4/5

3.) The Magicians Nephew - C.S Lewis 4/5

2.) The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe - C.S Lewis 4/5

1.) A Series Of Unfortunate Events: The Penultimate Peril - Lemony Snicket 4/5

Bottom 5 Young Reader Novels of 2022

5.) Bailey SK:Swamp Monsters Don’t Chase Wild Turkeys - Debbie Dadey 1/5

4.) Goosebumps: Go Eat Worms - R.L Stine 1/5

3.) X Men Cyclops And Phoenix - Paul Mantell 1/5

2.) Of Mice And Nutcrackers - Richard Scrimger 1/5

1.) Harry Potter And The Cursed Child - John Tiffany 1/5

Top 5 comics of 2022

5.) Calvin And Hobbes: Revenge Of The Baby Sat - Bill Watterson 5/5

4.) Calvin And Hobbes - Bill Watterson 5/5

3.) Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic Omnibus Vol 2 -  John Jackson Miller 5/5

2.) Batman Hush - Jeph Loeb 5/5

1.) Calvin And Hobbes: Attack Of The Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons - Bill Watterson 5/5

Bottom 5 Comics of 2022

5.) Archie Jumbo Digest 326 3/5

4.) Amazing Spider-Man Coming Home - J Michael Straczynski 2/5

3.) You’re So Smart Snoopy - Charles Schultz 2/5

2.) Marvel Comics Digest #2 Avengers 2/5

1.) Batman Serious House On Serious Earth - Grant Morrison 1/5

[wild-blue-sonder]

Although most of my fics have been put on hiatus due to me getting a job and becoming more involved with my free company in FFXIV, that doesn't mean I've neglected my writing entirely! One of my WIPs is a three-part PPG story featuring color-coded ships, beginning with Blossick. The premise was inspired by The Promised Neverland and the 2005 movie The Island (starring Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor). Click the read more for a snippet of this story!

Also! I'm no longer posting new stories or updating existing stories on FFN because it sucks. All of my works are now AO3 exclusive, and you must be a user to read them. If you would like an invitation to join AO3, I'd be happy to give you one, so don't hesitate to ask!

Habitat

She lived in a twelve-by-twelve room during the formative years of her life. Her first memory was looking up at round, brightly colored things she later learned were flowers, which she was named after. They spun in a slow circle while emitting music, and she always fell asleep watching them. She recalled looking to either side of herself, finding white bars that were too close to crawl through and too high to climb. As time passed she grew taller and stronger, and one day she hoisted herself over those bars. Suddenly her cage became a lot larger, but it was still a cage with no windows and only one door she couldn’t open no matter how hard she pushed or pulled.

She read a great many books from the ages of four to six such as The Very Busy Spider, The Rainbow Fish, Stellaluna, Little Monsters, and her favorite, Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones where she learned the words oviparous and ovoviviparous from Latin ovum. She learned that as a human female, she too carried eggs, but they didn’t have hard shells. They were very small like the size of a pinhead and would exit her body on a monthly basis in a process called menstruation. Once her ovaries released all their eggs, she would experience menopause. Both words came from Greek mene, and as she had never seen the moon, her caretakers rewarded her on her seventh birthday with a light that allegedly glowed like it.

She experienced several other major events after turning seven years old. The greatest one was moving out of her small room into a new habitat. It seemed to stretch on forever but was still encompassed by four walls; however, these ones buzzed with electrical currents that made her hand go numb after a while. She had an entire dwelling to herself with a big bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, a dining alcove, and a den with sofas and pillows for lounging or reading on. She preferred the latter, having developed a disdain for idleness. The more she read, the more her caretakers indulged her requests, such as cooking. She needed fruits, herbs, and vegetables, so they gave her tools and seeds to cultivate a garden. Once her plants had matured, an unexpected specimen was introduced to her habitat.

A boy.

He wasn’t a permanent addition, he was just visiting from elsewhere in the facility. Having only interacted with adults in positions of authority until now, she wasn’t sure how to engage someone her own age. The boy explored her habitat as she followed him in silence, observing, forming opinions. He was more impulsive than her, promptly climbing a tree when they reached the woods. “Why are you doing that?” she finally spoke.

“So I can see farther,” he answered.

“What are you looking for?”

“I just wanna see everything.” He glanced down at her with reddish-brown eyes. “There’s nothing like this in my habitat.”

Until today, she had been under the assumption that she was the sole child in the facility since the caretakers never mentioned otherwise. She must have surpassed some milestone allowing her to interact with them, which filled her with excitement. “What’s yours like?” she wondered.

The boy gazed at the lush fields, the quaint cottage, the meandering brook, and the peaceful grove. “I don’t have grass, trees, or a little house like yours. I just live in a room.”

“That sounds boring.”

~*~*~

They spent the whole day together. He taught her to climb trees and she showed him how to blow on a blade of grass to make silly noises. They splashed in the brook, picked more berries, and laid in the field as the sun started to sink beneath the glass dome overhead. A caretaker finally arrived to collect the boy. The girl walked with them toward the only exit from her habitat, stopping at a cement pad lined with red and yellow paint. If she stepped over that line, she got a warning buzz. If she touched the door, she got a nasty shock. “Hey, wait!” she called as the boy crossed the threshold, “What’s your name?”

“I’m Brick,” he replied with a grin.

“Brick.” She also smiled. “I’m Blossom.”

[pokemonbiologyirlthetabletop]

Rockruff & Lycanroc (#744, #745)

Rockruff (#744)

Lykanthropos familiaris (Rockruff)

Abilities:

Keen Eye, Vital Spirit, Own Tempo, Steadfast

Rockruffs are a pure rock-type dog Pokémon that average at 1’08 feet tall and weigh 20.3 Ibs. They have in impeccable sense of smell, to the point where they’re known for remembering anything they’ve smelled once.

Habitat: Rockruffs are found in Australia, but like the dingos of our world, were brought there by humanity a long time ago—estimated to be maybe 8,000-9,000 years ago. So, late enough that Tasmania split from the rest of Australia, which is why Rockruffs are not found natively in Tasmania. Unlike the dingos of our real world however, Rockruffs can even be found in the forests of Southeast Australia. But they generally prefer more arid climates.

Life Cycles: Rockruffs have fairly standard lives as a dog Pokémon. They are born between May and August (winter) to litters ranging widely from 1 to 10, but 5 being fairly standard. The pups will stay in their den for the first 3 weeks of their lives, then leave it completely with their parents at around 8 weeks old. These dens are typically under rocks or in abandoned burrows.

Rockruff pups will stay with their parents until around 10 months old, where they will then leave the pack and start their own lives. Rockruffs in particular will form small packs, often sibling packs, for a couple years until they evolve into Lycanroc. While reproduction cannot occur before reaching level 15, they also cannot reproduce until around 2 years of age.

The mating season for Rockruffs and Lycanrocs is between March and June, though individuals in tropical climates can mate at any time of the year, but litters are once per year. Once the mating rituals have completed, eggs will appear in their burrows. The gestation periods for these eggs is 60 to 70 days, and the Rockruff/Lycanroc pair will take turns defending their eggs from egg thieves during that time period.

By and large, the biggest threat to Rockruffs are territorial disputes, giant spider Pokémon, giant snake Pokémon, large bird Pokémon, and stochastic events such as falling from cliffs, wildfires, or mass floodings.  

Behavior: Rockruffs are quite friendly as pups, even making for excellent starter Pokémon for new trainers. Be aware, though, that Rockruffs become increasingly more aggressive as they get older, but to a trainer or its family it will remember the love that is there and continue to be steadfast in its loyalty. The temperament behavior change in Rockruffs can be too much for some trainers to handle, and this leads to many being abandoned by their unfit trainers.

As a show of affection, Rockruffs enjoy rubbing their rocky neck manes against the object of their affection, but this hurts! A lot!

Rockruffs hunt in packs and are very persistent predators, capable of outlasting prey much larger than themselves and wearing them down through running. To train themselves for combat and hunting, Rockruffs will run around a lot, or as humans like to call it “they have the zoomies.” This is an excellent behavior for anyone who wants an energetic Pokémon!

Diet: Rockruffs are carnivores that can eat more omnivorous diets, like rice, pizza, carrots, potato chips (you know, things we feed our dogs and probably shouldn’t) but really, you should be feeding your Rockruff a proper carnivorous diet, or at least suitable Pokémon food. In the wild they eat moderately sized animals like wallabies,  Komalas, and invasive Bunnelbies, Numels, and Mudbrays.

Conservation: Threatened (in the wild), Least Concern (Captivity)

Climate change, habitat loss, and the killing of Rockruffs and Lycanrocs (to prevent livestock deaths) are the biggest reasons that wild populations are declining. This actively includes the massive wildfires that have been decimating Australia over the past several years.

Relationship with Humans: Rockruffs are a common starter Pokémon in Australia. Though they have been introduced into predominately white (read: settler) communities of Aotearoa (New Zealand) and other parts of Tasmania, conservationists require these Rockruffs and Lycanrocs to be spayed/neutered. Unfortunately, this does not stop bad trainers from releasing their Rockruffs/Lycanrocs into the wild, where they do untold amounts of ecological damage on the local ecosystem. Conservationists and local rangers have to work hard to keep feral Rockruffs and Lycanrocs out of the wild and relocate them to more suitable habitats.

Like the dingos of our world, Rockruffs and Lycanrocs are culturally significant to many of the indigenous cultures of Australia.

Classification: The genus Lykanthropos is a believed to share a common ancestor with other dog Pokémon, but it’s uncertain where this connection falls on the family tree. The evolutionary relationship between the different dog clades continues to elude scientists.

Lycanroc (#745)

Lykanthropos lykanthropos dieslapis (Lycanroc- Midday form)

Lykanthropos lykanthropos vesperalapis (Lycanroc- Dusk form)

Lykanthropos lykanthropos noxlapis (Lycanroc- Night form)

Abilities:

Keen Eye, Sand Rush, Steadfast (Midday)

Tough Claws (Dusk)

Keen Eye, Vital Spirit, No Guard (Night)

General Information: Lycanrocs are a pure rock type species with three separate forms depending on the time of day (or, more specifically the amount of sunlight it receives) when it evolves. These three forms, its Midday, Dusk, and Night forms, all weigh the same average of 55.1 pounds, but while the Midday and Dusk forms average at 2’7 feet tall, the Night forms stands on its hind legs like a werewolf and reaches 3’7 feet in height. Importantly, only Rockruffs with Own Tempo as its ability can evolve into Dusk form Lycanroc.

Habitat: Lycanrocs are found in the same environments as Rockruffs, which is all of Australia natively.

Life Cycles: Lycanrocs have the same life cycles as Rockruffs.

Behavior: Once they evolve from a Rockruff, Lycanrocs become independent hunters… well, depending on the form. See, Night form Lycanrocs are nocturnal predators that hunt alone, Midday Lycanrocs also hunt alone and do not form packs as a measure of avoiding conflict, but Dusk form Lycanrocs will form packs with each other. Now, Dusk form Lycanrocs are the rarest of the three forms, but they’re able to find each other during the twilight hours and cooperate. Because of their cooperation, they’re able to take down prey that is significantly larger than themselves, such as Kanghaskhan. This puts them in a different ecological niche from their Midday and Night counterparts, who also have separate niches by being diurnal and nocturnal respectively.

Midday Lycanrocs are even tempered and prefer to avoid conflicts. Nighttime Lycanrocs are voracious and hard-headed who like to tackle their problems head-on, who only respect those they like. Dusk Lycanrocs are largely even tempered, but in combat or in a hunt they become quite vicious, and this dynamic shift in personality often makes them the more temperamental for trainers to work with. However, Dusk Lycanrocs can pack bond, and this is hugely important for household and trainer dynamics. In general, the only time Midday and Nighttime Lycanrocs pair up is for mating and raising Rockruffs… which can last an entire year. It’s not uncommon for some to skip mating cycles so that they have a year alone to themselves before raising another litter, especially in situations where resources are plentiful and pup survival is high.

Diet: Meat. Lycanrocs will hunt moderately sized prey like Diggersby to megafauna like Kangkaskhan. Overall, while Rockruffs eat small to medium sized prey (if they work together) Lycanrocs eat medium to mega-sized prey (if they work together).

Conservation: Threatened (in the wild), Least Concern (Captivity)

Relationship with Humans: Lycanrocs have had a long-shared history with humanity for tens of thousands of years, and it’s believed that werewolf legends derived from ancestral Lycanroc populations when they still thrived on the mainland of Eurasia. Scientists are unsure what caused Eurasian Lycanrocs to die off entirely, but many believe it may have been a combination of factors including humans, climate change, and being outcompeted by other Pokémon. These infringements simply do not exist to the same extent in Australia, where they have been living peacefully for thousands of years now alongside humanity.

Classification: Lycanroc’s three forms each have a subspecies modifier, but the base species Lykanthropos lykanthropos is what defines the genus. Dusk form Lycanrocs are ultimately more likely to mate with other Dusk form Lycanrocs, and this seems to be a case of internal speciation at work via different social patterns, though the effects are quite early in the process and interbreeding remains frequent.

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Hey guess what, if you like my stuff, this is my website where you can find other Pokémon I've written on and more information about the game that I’m slowly making! Check it out! I write books sometimes too.

[nyxcaelum]

My Fanfics Masterpost

These will be sorted by length, and each by fandom underneath. They are all on AO3, I moved all my works to their archive.

I keep this list up to date as good as I can. In this case, all fics unless stated otherwise are written romantically, just to make it easier I use & instead of / for the Ships.

Works in Collections will not be listed each one by one, but instead can be found under the "Collection" tab.

Yuukoku no Moriarty/Moriarty the Patriot

Rated 18+: All are Sherliam unless noted otherwise

Three Minutes in Heaven

The color of Depression - Albert & Mycroft

Sinful Indulgence

Desire, Flavor, Bliss

On Fire

General Audiences, Teen and Up:

Memories lost at Sea

Watching Fireworks together

Dancing in the Moonlight with you

Between Strawberry cake and coffee

Trigun

And we took the leap (explicit), Vash x Wolfwood

Love your next like you love your coffee, with or without milk and sugar. (CW: Incest) Plantwood /Vash x Wolfwood x Nai

Bungo Stray Dogs

Soukoku:

Kissing Strangers

Addictive Whispering

Oda & Ango:

A Promise of a lifetime

Sunshine & Pancakes

I´ve always liked you, you know

Hypnosis Mic

A heartfelt talk at dusk - Hitoya & Jakurai

Sugary sweet Sleepover time - Fling Posse Fluff

Drunken Confessions - Doppo & Hifumi

Persona

Signs of Love - Protag/Akira & Akechi

Arknights

Cold, cold, twisted hearts and an unusual proposition - Doctor & SilverAsh & Gnosis

Sk8 the Infinity

Usagi to Yuki - Reki & Langa

Prickly like Soda, Sweet like Juice - Reki & Langa - unfinished, probably will never finish it

Shall we Date? Obey me!

Maybe you´re the reason I can´t sleep - MC & Belphie Sleepy Fluff

Idolish 7

A Confession - Tsumugi & Gaku

Vanitas no Carte

Tarte Tatin, for my beloved - Vanitas & Noe

Fate Series

Under the Christmas Tree in NY - Saber & Gilgamesh (was a work for secret santa)

Be naughty and you pay the price- Gil & Gudako R18

Dango, Dango - Miyamoto Iori & Yamato Takeru

In rememberance of a good time gone by - Bazett & Krei R18 + Warnings apply!

Deeds, not words - Ritsuka & Murasaki Shikibou

Oh so bitter sweet, is young love - Gray & Waver Velvet

FMA

And do they? - Roy & Riza

Fairy Tail

A drop of Sake - Jellal & Erza

Tears of Themis

Curry together tastes better than having it alone - Rosa & Vyn

Honkai Star Rail

Always make sure to pay your bottoms well - Sampo & Stelle R18

Desire and blood, between spider lilies of another world - Luocha & Blade R18 - Collab Event Fic

Ohh to be the ducky in his tub... - Ratio & Stelle R18

Sleeping Together - NuCarnival Fluff One Shots (All guys)

Tunas DOA & Hunting Dogs Crack One Shot collection

Tunas Genshin Reader Fics (Eng, Ger, and 18+ available separately inside)

Tunas Writing Requests (EN, mostly Prompts Fulfillfing for Fate Series Kink Prompts. Some 18+)

Yuukoku no Moriarty/Moriarty the Patriot

Oh woe me, my sick heart - Will & Sherlock

In solving Crimes, we find Love - Will & Sherlock

Tales of

The sun and the moon and the stars Mikleo & Sorey mainly

These are all basically German works.

Nur jeweils eine Fic:

When the Devil meets the Fox - BSD Soukoku

Empty Dreams - LoL SettPhel

-> LoL Novel lange Fanfic Collection

Cantarella - Arknights Doctor & SilverAsh

Blindfold of Love - Riza & Roy

Mein Servant und Ich - Fate Grand Order Misc. Geschichten

Rabenschwarz - Tekken Jin & Reader

The little Sweets - My Hero Academia - Ochako & Bakugo

In the name of Love! - Soul Eater - Blackstar & Tsubaki

At the end of a long escape - Resident Evil - Sherry & Jake

Grandiose Stadt - TEWY - OC & Joshua - freundschaftliches Ship

Der der die Sonne stahl - Noragami - Iki & Yato

Winterwunder und blaue Jeans - Miraculous Ladybug - Adrien & Marinette

Persona

Schwarzer Kaffee - Protag/Akira & Makoto

About the Pleasant Boy - Nur Goro Akechi

Tales of

Abends in der Taverne - Zaveid & Eizen

Memories of Brother - Eizen & Edna Drama

The tale of the time traveling Girl - OC/Autor Insert & Zaveid

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy x Reader Short Stories - Collab mit Schwester , mit den 15. Protagonisten

Nacht des Kristalls - Generelles Abenteuer mit Luna, Noctis, Ignis in AU

[risingsunresistance]

Hi, how does one get the little Islands? Like the winter Island you got? Also do you have a good map of the Main hub? I get lost all the time.

most of them are craftable in collections! the winter island is an exception, you get it at random by opening red gifts obtained during the winter events. usually that happens once every ~5 days, but right now it'll be open for all of december. here's a list of all the islands

i don't have a particularly great map since the map in the game isn't labelled, but here's a map anyways. i added a red dot where you spawn, and when you spawn you are facing north on this map

south is the mountain with the entrance to the dungeons, southeast is the wilderness, northeast is the farming stuff and entrance to the barn, north is the coal mines and entrance to the other mines, northwest is the graveyard and entrance to the spider den, west is the oak trees and entrance to the birch park, and southwest is the castle where the wolves spawn

[thezanyarthropleura]

The Muan-Atlantean War

And what exactly is Wold Newton?

Different sort of Gamera March post today, and a history lesson in digging through a bunch of websites I found probably 10-15 years ago that permanently influenced my take on kaiju films and how I write about them.

Readers of some of my own kaiju fandom stories (barely worth mentioning here considering the weight of what I’m about to talk about) may have noticed hints of a concept I’ve been recently building up to tackling, the origins of various Toho and Daiei kaiju and how they relate to two warring ancient civilizations, Toho’s Muans and Daiei’s Atlanteans. The story of how we got to this point begins in 1795 - yes, 1795. Really.

The Wold Newton family concept, per Wikipedia, is effectively a study of fictional universes, with the aim to figure out which of those universes might actually be the same universe after all. This exists largely outside of official crossovers, although those are often considered as evidence. The premise is basically “if it fits, it’s canon, and if it doesn’t fit, some version of it might still be canon.” AKA the absolute bane of a certain no-fun-allowed type of kaiju fan that I probably annoyed the hell out of in my younger days and remain damn proud of it. (/hj)

The concept dates back to a real meteorite that fell in the town of Wold Newton, Yorkshire in 1795, and Phillip José Farmer, a later American writer who proposed the hypothesis that many improbably strong or intelligent fictional heroes and villains are in fact descendants of two families irradiated by said meteorite. It’s since evolved to be more centered on the universe-connecting I’ve described above, but the idea of the two families seems to still be mentioned on occasion.

(Important note: Wold Newton historians thematically phrase their findings in a way that describes fictional events/characters as if they were part of a real history and dismiss contradictions between the included stories as ‘errors.’ This is not a slight against established canon or willful misinterpretation of official material, but a device meant to imply the official material is an erroneous or exaggerated retelling of the ‘true’ events as present in the Wold Newton Universe)

Which brings us to the first leg on the journey to how this is at all relevant to Gamera, the article Prehistoric Survivors in the Pacific by Mark Brown. This an oft-cited article by later kaiju writers, seeming to be the first ever suggestion that the people of Mu are responsible for the prehistoric creatures encountered by modern explorers in various fictional island adventure stories. I’ll note here that this article actually has nothing to do with Toho’s Muans, or the film Atragon, or any other kaiju films for that matter. It instead concerns other fictional depictions of the real-world hypothesis of the continent of Mu/Lemuria (proposed to explain similar lemur fossils appearing on continents separated by water and since discredited with the discovery of plate tectonics).

Among those writers that expanded on Mark Brown’s concept and adapted it to kaiju films, I specifically bring up Den Valdron and Chris N., who have done much of the most creative and scientific writing on Godzilla, Gamera, and their ilk that I have ever encountered - everything from hypothesizing what Gorath really is in true astronomical terms to a personal favorite wild theory that connects every giant spider that’s appeared in every film ever.

In constructing a kaiju universe to tell stories in, these following articles in particular are those I remembered best and find most relevant to revisit (note that all these links are to an old Angelfire site, The Godzilla Saga, and were written decades ago by Godzilla fans from decades ago, so may contain terms or phrasing that didn’t quite age well. Also note that the timeline is very, very long and may require several full days’ worth of reading to get through, if one feels inclined to make the attempt. The first article sums up the main concepts in a more digestible format, however):

THE ALIENS OF THE SHOWA TOHO UNIVERSE: COMMON ORIGINS? by Den Valdron, edits and supplements by Chris N.

GODZILLA SHOWA SERIES TIMELINE by Chris N.

To summarize, most if not all of the science fiction aspects of the Toho universe are ultimately derived from the ancient Muans - the kaiju are genetically-engineered bioweapons bred for war, the alien races are the descendants of Muan space explorers, the advanced level of modern human technology (Maser tanks, moon base in 1999, etc.) is a result of studying technology left over from the Mysterian invasion in 1957.

Likewise, one can assume similar, Atlantean-related origins for the Daiei science fiction elements (although I personally posit that the aliens seen in Showa Gamera are not actually living Atlanteans, more on that in my upcoming Gamera vs. Guiron review).

That said, these timelines for the most part do not seem to endorse putting the Toho and Daiei films and elements in the same universe. Each one only requires that the other ancient civilization exist as a rival to justify the creation of kaiju, not that that other civilization also created kaiju or that any of them survived to the present day. They also most certainly do not endorse my personal attempts to create a timeline not only involving Showa Toho and Showa Daiei, but one that includes the rest of the Godzilla and Gamera films including all five Godzilla Millennium series timelines (GMK and Final Wars need to be heavily modified), GODZILLA(1998) and its animated series, and perhaps most significantly, the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, whose elements give some insight to events of Earth’s distant past before the Muans and Atlanteans.

But my most obvious Wold-Newtonian element may actually be the recent inclusion of a version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in this universe - because the operative question isn’t “Why would they be there?” it’s “Why wouldn’t they be there?” There are actually quite a few stories and characters where I’ve hinted at there being at least some version of them in this universe (with the caveat that they don’t include any obvious complicating elements like superheroes or aliens or the world ending, etc.). However, and I feel this is important, when writing a story I’m careful to make sure the non-kaiju-related references have no more relevance than background details, unless the story I’m writing is tagged specifically as a crossover.

I’m not going to go over every single aspect of this timeline attempt, because that would be way too long and some of them are spoilers, but since this is Gamera March, I’ll end with my version of just the Gamera elements of this timeline (save for the aliens, which I’ll get to later, and Irys, whose origins I haven’t completely settled on yet. Also note that I include characters and elements from The Last Hope in my world-building but not the exact details of the legend). I use this timeline in the stories that are set in my main kaiju universe (only two definitively so far), but you can bet I’m probably still thinking about at least some of its elements, even in one-off stories and AUs that don’t directly follow these events.

12,000 years ago: In response to the Muans developing creatures that absorb atomic power (or similar energy) to grow larger and stronger, the Atlanteans switch from their arsenal of such weapons to one that includes a genetics program. The earliest kaiju created include Gyaos, Barugon, Jiger, and possibly Zedus, but when they (most significantly Gyaos) go rogue, the Atlanteans create Gamera to stop them - emboldened by the discovery of Universal Energy/Mana and their acquirement of Elias metals to use in the Magatama amulets to channel it (the same technology as the seal used on Desghidorah). Their efforts are ultimately futile, and Atlantis is destroyed.

12,000-10,000 years ago: Toward the start of the intervening millennia, a group of Atlantean survivors establishes an underground city near what would become New York. The purpose taken on by this city and its inhabitants is to allow Gamera to protect future civilizations from the Gyaos horde. During this time, Gamera’s reincarnation cycle is developed, including a number of eggs that would be distributed across the Earth and used as beacons to re-absorb and house Gamera’s Mana upon death. (The Atlantean survivors would also establish an observation outpost nearer to the surface, which would millennia later become home to four mutant turtles. At least one Atlantean inhabited the underground city up until that time, however, his intentions were ultimately malicious and an encounter with the mutant turtles left him imprisoned in stasis, where he could do no further harm).

10,000 years ago: The continent of Mu is destroyed by Battra after an attempt to gain control over the Earth with a weather machine. With humans now nearly extinct, the adult Gyaos turn on each other and the rest die of starvation. Gyaos eggs laid across the world during this time fail to hatch due to the recovering environment and associated increase in Mana, and would remain dormant until ecological destruction and the decline of Mana reaches another peak with modern humans.

3,000-1,500 years ago: It is unknown how many incarnations Gamera took on over the next many thousands of years, but by Magatama being discovered in association with Japanese cultures from these periods of its history, we can infer he had at least one, possibly many encounters with humanity in this stretch of time. It is unknown for what purpose he emerged or what other monsters he may have faced.

1965: Gamera, in either a new body hatched from an egg in the arctic or one that was imprisoned there at some point prior, is freed by an accidental nuclear explosion and (for reasons I will theorize in my review of the original Gamera) initially chooses to wage war on humanity. He would go on to later battle other monsters either directly or indirectly created by Atlantis (more on that upcoming in my Guiron review), including a reawakened Barugon (unconfirmed if Barugon follows a similar reincarnation cycle or if the cave contains a finite number of eggs) and the first new Gyaos of many to revive during this era.

1971: the events of Gamera vs. Zigra take place (the 1985 date appears to be an addition of Sandy Frank, who commissioned the dub in 1985, and if Super Monster is included in this timeline, it appears to necessitate these events taking place before 1980).

1973: Showa Gamera is Avant Gamera, and dies sacrificing himself against a larger swarm of Gyaos that awakens six years after the first.

1980: If Super Monster is included on this timeline (and at this point I’m leaning toward yes), then another incarnation of Gamera appears when, newly hatched, he somehow winds up placed in a pet store terrarium with other turtles. This Gamera would grow to full size over several days and sacrifice himself again to stop the Zanon spaceship.

1995: After hatching inside the atoll and growing large enough to lift it to the surface, Gamera engages another group of Gyaos, then later fights Legion and Irys (for now, I’m leaving Legion as a genuine interstellar lifeform, with no connection to the inhabitants of ancient Earth).

1999: Gamera succumbs to his wounds and dies, after his triumphant defeat of a much larger swarm of Gyaos (with the help of Godzilla Junior and the other broken-loose inhabitants of Monster Island, along with several rogue or territorial kaiju active at that time including Titanosaurus and King Cobra, in an event that becomes known as the Gyaos War).

2006: Gamera reawakens from another egg, and while only partially grown, manages to defeat Zedus. Which brings us to where our story (or one of them) begins...