#for the most part at least. and i'll stop bc i'll start a whole new ramble in the tags asdfg

[quietlyblooms]

feeling at peace again so i'm about to start yapping at y'all B)) but i just wanna say!! referencing my ramble about chiyo's arcane verse last night, i actually really, really like the idea that despite all the loss, chiyo moves forward. she doesn't hide within herself. i think there are ways in which she'll close herself off -- she won't discuss how she feels with anyone, for example -- but chiyo won't retreat and feel defeated. vague s2 spoilers below!

i think part of it is circumstantial bc things really start to kick off and move once viktor?? is ascend the right word?? you know what i'm talking about, and i think that gives chiyo something to focus on and fight for. but chiyo also understands that the world doesn't stop turning so she can grieve. she understands that she isn't the only one who lost someone. she understands that despite whatever failings she has, the people who loved her so much wouldn't want to see her hide away and give up.

kojirou held her hand, brought her out of her garden and showed her the world brimming with life that waited for her. her father believed in her -- no matter what path she chose, no matter who she chose to become. that love isn't gone just bc they aren't here. it's inside her, like a little light that she has to protect, and she will protect it. she owes that to them.

[arahdow]

WHO?! pt. 1

Pairing. Sonic x reader. Shadow x reader.

Content. fem reader. they mention another girls name as a prank. insecurities, angst but most of all hurt to comfort bcs in this house we appreciate aftercare after a sad moment. mhm humor.

Word count. 1.7 k

A/N. this is a two part post!! the reason i divided it was bcs i’m having a lot of trouble writing for silver and knuckles (i’m thinking on adding scourge too) 😫 so i’m trying to give myself some more time BUT in the meantime please have this and forgive me for not posting something of mine in a while 🤧 i assure you i’m working on different requests and ideas, so pls be patient and wait for the best!!

+ no beta read anddd a lil too ooc maybe

Sonic was always a prankster, but his prank backfired? That’s new…

Another tiring day at work, helping her coworkers get their job done even when she had her own work, doing extra hours, even walking home felt like a burden. She only wanted to lie down for at least the whole weekend. 

Sighing, she opened the door of her shared home with the blue hero, Sonic the hedgehog. He called himself a hero, something along the lines of ‘blue justice’ and she always laughed at his antics. She wanted nothing more than to hug him and sleep in his embrace.

As she walked to the kitchen, she heard Sonic humming and washing the pots he used to make dinner. He wasn’t used to cooking, but he liked to treat his girlfriend, especially when she went overtime.

“Hello.” She greeted, her voice weak as she noticed the delicious smell of the food he made.

Wiping his hands, he turned to his girlfriend, kissing her on the forehead. “Go and change, I'll be waiting darling.” 

The girl nodded with a sleepy smile and went to their room, before she could enter, Sonic yelled: “Be sure not to get asleep, Amy!” 

And it’s like her whole world crashed. Feeling like a cold splash of water running down her body, she soon felt her stomach drop. Amy? Why Amy? Was Amy there before? Why was he mentioning her? What?

A whole world of ‘what’s’ and ‘why’s’ ran through her head. Still, it wasn’t enough for her to stop feeling hungry, so, even if she wanted to stay by herself now, she knew if she didn’t eat she'd probably pass out in their shared room. 

Feeling a sting on her chest and throat, the girl changed herself and walked to the kitchen again. Her appetite forced her to meet her lover, but was he really tough? Was he still… Hers?

In silence, she sat beside Sonic starting to eat. The man looked at her confused but followed her movements without a word. She always thanked him for the food and let him have the first bite. It was a cute tradition between them and now she just went straight to eat. He couldn’t blame her, so he accepted it and kept on eating.

Sonic almost forgot the prank. Honestly, he was expecting some kind of teasing back, as his lover always had a callback, but now? She seemed too tired to add something of her own so he left it at that. 

He was ready to talk about something else when he noticed tears staining her face. “Dear? Wha-” He hurriedly went for a napkin and gave it to her. “What is it?”

The girl refused the napkin and turned away from him, her tears running free. Then he stared at her barely touched food. “Lov-”

“Why Amy?”

Sonic bit his tongue, looking at her. Amy?

“What’s with-”

“Do you love her? Again?!”

The man flinched a bit at her broken voice. His chest constricted with pain. 

“Listen, I-”

“I don’t…” The girl scoffed and braced herself. “I don’t want to know the details, just, have you fallen in love with Amy again?”

He reeled back, inhaling with insight. Oh. He. Fucked. Up.

“No, love-”

“Then why mention her? Why is her name in your lips when I’m the one you swore to spend your life with?” Sonic was already panicking inside watching the meltdown his girl was having. 

“It’s not like that!” He managed to say, stumbling on his words to prevent her from cutting him off again. “Love, it was a prank.”

The girl looked at him, her tears suddenly stopping, it almost looked humoristic if it wasn’t for the whole reason she was crying.

“I’m sorry you’d thought I could do that to you,” he explained, standing up and wiping her tears by himself with the napkin she refused to grab. “I was trying to be funny like we always are but… I guess it wasn’t the right timing.”

“No shit.” She replied, a sarcastic tone in her voice as she sighed, the weight on her shoulders disappearing. “Ah, thank chaos.”

“I mean, how could I do that to you when I already have an engagement ring somewhere in my room?”

“Yeah,” She nodded. Wait. “Wait what?”

“What?” He echoed, the atmosphere in the room changing completely as he winked at her. They were in for a long night, but first, he had to make it up to her, and he knew exactly how.

Sonic told him about it and said it was funny, so Shadow mentioned it while his partner was venting because he thought it was good timing. spoilers: it wasn’t.

“Can you fucking believe it, Shadow? My sister wants me to attend this stupid gathering, I told her it was fucking useless, I don’t give two shits about them because of what they did in the past, they never… They’ve never even fucking apologized! I’m just so mad right now, how can they be so stupid? Idiots! But you know what’s worse? The fact that…”

Shadow looked at his partner, listening intently at her venting. His gaze went in between her and her hands folding the laundry. His mind somewhere else as he recalled a conversation he had in the morning with his blue copy.

“This is a good way to cheer your girl up! Believe me! I’ve tried it before and it totally works.” Shadow looked at him, a skeptic look in his eyes. 

“Are you sure pranking her is the best way to cheer her up? But why if it’s something vulnera-”

“Naaah, I don’t think anything is that bad that you have to care too much about it.” Sonic explained while munching on his fifth chili dog of the day. “And besides, it’s just a simple harmless prank, she’ll laugh and it’d be alright.”

“...And I was like, ‘You remember what auntie said the last time I was there, why do you want me to go so fucking bad?’ ugh, it’s like a nightmare, I can’t wrap my head around it, really!”

He knew it was something serious because she was cursing a lot, or maybe she felt kind of free now that she was letting it all out? Was it a great time to do that prank? Maybe she’ll stop running in circles and just give herself some time…

“That sounds hard, Sora.”

Silence.

His face was stern, his position sitting on the bed seemed relaxed, but on the inside he was gauging her next words or actions in response to his words. Pressing his lips, he waited for her reaction, but it seemed like the world just stopped, did he stop time unconsciously? No, because the ceiling fan was still moving over their heads. 

“What did you just say?”

But he didn’t reply. More like he couldn’t. He already wanted to say it was a prank, but he stopped himself. Maybe if he waited a bit more… He could hear the sound of her cries.

Her cries?

His mind shifted violently, attentive to the sound of distress coming from the girl. Shadow took a step, horrified at the scene. She covered her face with her hands and dropped to her knees as she kept on crying.

That was his sign. Kneeling in front of her, Shadow took her by the wrist, relieved that she didn’t push him away instantly. 

“Shh sh, it was a prank, I'm sorry, I wasn’t being serious.” He said, trying to reason with her. That seemed to make the trick as she stopped for a bit, head still on her hands as she seemed to take a deep breath. The calmness didn’t last long as the girl shook her head and kept on crying, her face still fully covered.

He tried getting her hands away from her face, trying to get a glimpse of her eyes, wanting his point to come across, but she wasn’t budging.

Shadow just stared at her, his capacity of dealing with emotions almost close to none as he tried to find a way to solve this situation he himself caused. Lucky for him, her cries started to die down, not because she was less sad, but because she was tired from crying.

Being able to see her eyes eased him for a bit, but something still pulled at the strings of his heart: what would she say now?

The girl got up from the floor, walking out from her room straight to the kitchen. Shadow followed silently, afraid of her next move or word. She took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank. Two, three gulps and then she stopped, closing the bottle again. Shadow felt his heart beating hard against his chest with suspense, when she turned at him, her red eyes from crying staring deeply into his. 

And then she smiled.

“Damn,” she said, sighing. “I needed that.”

Shadow blinked a few times trying to register her words. “What?”

The girl chuckled and wiped the tears off from her face, staring at him. “Yeah, you think I believed you?” a sarcastic laugh fell from her lips. “Chaos, you seemed so nonchalant trying to convince me you really had another girl, that was so funny!” 

“Wait, you… You faked it?” He asked, still not being able to wrap his head around the entirety of the situation.

“Yeah! Woah, I really needed to cry, I feel lighter now, thanks for the push, Shadz.” She said, winking at the black hedgehog, walking past him to their room again. “And, I recommend you practice your facial expressions, you seemed scared even before I started crying, if you plan on pranking Sonic, you’ll need to try harder.”

The man stood there, shocked as he then turned and questioned. “What the- Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” She asked, stopping before entering the room, turning her head at him.

“That! I-“ He suddenly felt the weight of everything on his chest, making him almost suffocate from the whiplash of emotions he just experienced. “I almost had a heart attack.”

With a playful glint on her eye, she nodded before turning around and keeping on walking. “Suits you right.”

[l223m0nade]

Bees (a stucky au snzfic)

ok

ok ok

so I saw this random thing on a tumblr post:

and it got its Stucky-idea hooks so deep in my brain. It just did. And the thing is my deepest inspo is honestly in the land of snz. (This fic kind of ends abruptly sorry but i want to do more and it'll probably end up on Ao3 w like a M or E rating 😳🫣 when and if that happens i'll link to it)

Stucky au, no powers, age gap, what I'm picturing in my head goes less with the words "silver fox Steve" and more with the words "dorky Dilf Steve" like 2012 Cap fashion with current Chris Evans face? in..a good way? and longhair early-20s burnout Bucky. I have some backstory headcanons that are just hinted at here, hopefully it's tantalizing rather than confusing.

anyway have 11.5k words of this and encourage me to write more bc i have fallen in love with these particular boyz. Some light existential angst but mainly idiots pining aka the sweetest sauce

~Fic~

Sam isn’t sure how much longer he can allow this to go on. His barback and the new semi-regular square dude are once again being all awkwardly flirty while pretending they’re not, like two sad lonely white...ducks, who never learned a mating dance and have zero game.

At least Square Dude has an excuse: he’s the most obvious newly-divorced newly-out family-type guy Sam’s ever seen. He’s clean-cut, with a ridiculously handsome square jaw, wearing well-made but unstylish button-down shirts and pants that make him look like he belongs in a Norman Rockwell painting. He started coming in about two months ago, quiet, friendly when ordering his one or two beers of the evening, and firmly shy when it comes to the inevitable overtures sent his way. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is him dipping a first toe into the pool: coming to a relatively quiet gay bar, just to sit and watch men talk to each other and let the whole notion sink in.

By now most guys would’ve found someone to spread their wings with or gone elsewhere to find em, but Square Dude, whose name is Steve, seems content to talk to the guy who pours his beer about whatever DIY project Bucky is pulling questions out of his ass about.

The crush is painfully obvious, and suburban closeted Steve can’t be blamed for having no deal-sealing abilities, but Bucky has no such excuse. Sam has watched him pull stiff-backed business bros in five minutes flat when the mood struck him, with his big blue puppy eyes and his dark wicked smirk and long lean slouch. But with Steve all he appears capable of doing is asking him questions about crown molding as though those words mean anything to him while gazing at him like he’s beaming the words You could fix me directly into Steve’s skull. Steve, for his part, just doesn’t seem to be able to look anywhere other than Bucky.

As usual, anyone that tries to strike anything beyond a friendly conversation is kindly but firmly rebuffed. “He’s not ready for that yet,” Bucky had insisted with unnecessary defensiveness when Sam implied it was time for the new guy to move from spectating to participating in the relatively mellow flirting and hookup scene the bar played host to most evenings. “People go at their own pace.”

“The only pace he’s going at is towards you,” Sam smirked. Bucky glowered at his implication. “You gotta make it weird. He comes here to, like, practice. I’m part of that, in a chill, friendly way.” He shrugged and looked at the glass he was drying. “When he is ready, it’s not gonna be for me, it’s gonna be for someone actually in his league, like a...hot college professor, or something.” Sam had rolled his eyes and resolved to stop trying to help Bucky Barnes flail around in his mess of a love life anymore, for the hundredth or so time.

Tonight is busy enough that Sam can mostly be distracted from this bad sitcom, and not so busy that he has to yell at Barnes for being distracted. Still, there are a couple empties on tables in the Steve-less side of the bar, and after finishing the drinks for the people in front of him he turns, catching Bucky’s voice, in a tone of delight he uses when speaking with only one person, saying “Wait. Seriously? Bees?”

“Yeah!” Steve responds, equally puppyish. He’s tall and broad, sandy hair and beard just beginning to show a hint of salt-and-pepper. He looks like anyone’s fantasy fireman or lumberjack, at least in the context of a place like this. He also exudes genuine sweetness and vulnerability despite his intimidating muscled height.

Bucky Barnes, Sam’s barback and old friend, leans against the bar doing the helpless-goober-with-a-crush stare, a look on his face like Steve just announced he was a Nobel Prize winner. “No way. How do you keep bees? Just as, what, a casual hobby? That’s, like, a whole thing, you can’t be an expert in so many things!”

Bucky is all shaggy longish dark hair and stupid cheap graphic t-shirts, with a striking, animated face that is used mainly for sarcasm. He and Sam had been at the same high school a few blocks away, though Sam is older, and in the funny way of life they’ve wound up good friends. He’s working at Sam’s place because, in his words, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing with his life. Bucky’s going through his own version of one of those fairly bleak lost periods of 20-something misery, but he’s smart and not a drunk and decent at what he does for Sam, and if he bangs a third of the customers he does it discreetly enough. Sam never knew dark-blond, broad-shouldered, bass-voice sad-eyed dudes pushing 40 were the kryptonite that made him unable to do anything including flirt, until Steve came in one day and Bucky sprayed himself with the keg he was tapping.

Steve chuckles— is this man blushing? “Oh no, I’m nowhere near an expert. But it’s pretty easy once they get established. Don’t need much from you. I’m not, uh, living at the place with the backyard where the hives are, right now….so….but they’ll be fine without me.”

Steve gets a little quiet and Bucky’s fangirl expression dims with distressed sympathy. It gets sad like this sometimes when talking to Steve. Recently divorced guys had this problem, where everything came back to the one topic. Steve’s not doing it pathologically, didn’t seem like, just genuinely realizing another change. Bucky looks stricken. He doesn’t always seem young, at newly 24, but sometimes it still shows.

Sam finally manages to catch his eye away from gazing at Steve to convey a quick head jerk of get-the-hell-over-there-and-do-the-job-I-pay-you-for, and Bucky peels himself away with an apologetic smile at Steve. Sam picks up the conversation with Steve as Bucky clears tables at top speed, hearing how he’s renting a place month-to-month not far away, not able to plan something more permanent just yet. He doesn’t say anything revealing, but it’s still easy to paint a picture of a small, empty apartment. Bucky’s not the only one with a soft spot for this guy, and Sam is warmed by the thought that his little bar offers him respite.

………………..

“That’s so sad,” moans Bucky a few days later. It’s just after opening on a weekday afternoon, and Bucky seemed quieter than usual so Sam is tantalizing him with what he learned talking to Steve the other day. “Did he say—you know he has kids?”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam answers. He’d been as offhand as a person could be about that sort of thing, but it wasn’t hard to see how he really felt. He was standing in the rubble of a sincere loving marriage to a woman with whom he had two 11-year old twins. Helped explain his rectitude when it came from moving from his spot at the bar, meeting someone other than the staff. Bucky’s eyes are pools of sympathetic anguish and Sam feels the need to say, “This kinda stuff happens to people, Buck,” earning an eye-roll for his patronizing efforts. “It’s good he’s coming here, learning about himself. I think you help a lot, for the record.”

Bucky starts and gives him a bewildered look. “What?”

This is aging him. Sam sighs, “He’s lonely. Maybe feels kinda lost right now.”

Bucky’s mouth gets a pained downward slant to it.

“He. Likes. You.”

At that, of course, Bucky gets uncomfortable, blushing and moving off to wipe tables somewhere away from Sam, rubbing his nose and clearing his throat like he’s been doing since he got there. He brightens when Steve comes in an hour later, and Sam rolls his eyes and leaves them to their game of mouse-and-mouse.

Steve is telling Bucky... how window insulation works. He thinks he asked, he hopes to god he did, at least. He’s been embarrassing himself for weeks, coming to this place almost every day. He’s kept it pretty well under wraps that although he liked the neighborhood simplicity, and talking to Sam, and got comfortable after the first few visits, the real reason he’s there more evenings than not is to see Bucky. With his bright grey-blue eyes and dark hair hanging past his chin, swinging against his cheekbones, with his smile and wicked sense of humor and his confounding ease in himself, the ease that gives Steve despair and hope for himself. With that mouth and that divot in his chin, and those last two thoughts are not allowed, because the need to put his thumb into that dot in his sculpted chin and kiss those ridiculously pink lips is urgent and unthinkable.

He doesn’t do that, he just sits and pines and chats awkwardly with him, and gets to know a few other regular guys and talks sports with Sam. He just likes talking to Bucky, it’s easy, easy like nothing has been in a long time, and he’s a creep, he’s a pathetic older guy using his experience to take advantage of a younger guy—

Only, he’s not actually experienced here, at all. And Bucky is so smart, he’s self-deprecating about it but it’s not like he and Steve aren’t generally on the same level beyond his inner glossary of home improvement terminology. He downplays the fact that he knows cars like an expert, insists the stuff Steve learned from keeping up an old house and the hobbies he picked up to stay sane is somehow far more impressive— Steve’s pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose, to make him feel less adrift and clueless. He has that way about him, of someone who looks after other people without realizing it.

Things were all dark there for a while, with the end of his marriage to Peggy. But he’s pretty sure he and Bucky are friends, and he feels bright when he sees him.

Tonight, though, Bucky seems just a little worn down. He’s wearing a waffle-knit shirt under his incomprehensible-thorny-calligraphy-t-shirt, as though he’s cold, and his eyes are tired. Steve waits for a reply to the last thing he said and looks to see Bucky with a dazed, spaced-out expression, before he shakes his head and rubs his nose, saying “Sorry, I thought I was gonna sneeze, what’d you say?”

Talking about the goddamn weather and window insulation was segueing into a real conversation, to Steve’s delight: “How my mom moved us out to Jersey so we could live somewhere better and I never forgave her.” Bucky gives a wide-eyed grimace of agreement and he can’t help the bright laugh that bursts out of him. “How about you, you grow up in the city?” He’d inadvertently spilled his guts about the divorce on like his third time in the bar, something that humiliated him to think of but Sam had simply said with an understanding face wasn’t too unusual, so Bucky knew the basics about Peggy and the twins, but Steve had felt clumsy asking Bucky about himself.

He rolled his eyes with his problematically attractive crooked grin and answered, “Aw man, I grew up practically around the block from this place. Went to high school at the big catholic cinderblock in the neighborhood. I was at school on the west coast for a couple years, but…” His eyes cast downward. “now I’m back.”

Steve remembers how bad it felt at that age, to not have accomplished enough fast enough. Saying that will make him sound like an old grey dad and even if that’s what he is he can still hold out a little hope of being something different here, so he just says, “Brooklyn’s a good hometown to come back to.”

That makes Bucky smile at him and look him in the eye, like he liked what Steve said, even like it made him feel better. Steve tamps his answering grin down to reasonable levels.

Bucky’s also been rubbing at his nose on and off this whole time, and he can see it give a little twitch right before he breathes out a “scuse-me” through hitching breaths, his eyes flickering closed. He pushes his nose firmly into his long-sleeved elbow. “hhh-hh-tdschuh!” He sneezes quietly and muffled. “Oh, snf, sorry,” he says, blinking and emerging from his elbow but not lowering it, the hazy ticklish look still on his face, breaths hitching. “Another—hhh—‘nother one?” He freezes, looking up at the overhead lights, nostrils flared, but after a second he deflates with a sigh. “Nope, nevermind. Snff.” Steve’s guts swoop. This crush is so unsustainable. He’s gonna fail to be cool and friendly and he’ll have to watch Bucky go all uncomfortable and pitying as he explains to Steve that he has six hot boyfriends who are not almost-forty almost-virgin losers who only know how to take up his time when he’s trying to work. According to his therapist these “harangues of negativity” are “unhelpful.” But Bucky looks tired and a little pale and like his nose is going to start turning pink and Steve is just trying to survive.

“Bless you,” Steve says softly in his gentle voice that’s so deep it takes Bucky by surprise and makes his stomach flutter every time he talks to him. He feels like he might be blushing.

“Thanks,” it comes out husky and he clears his throat hard, moving to the little sink to wash his hands.

“Allergies, or…?” Steve ventures, a little divot between his eyebrows of concern-more-like-pity.

“I dunno, something’s bothering my nose today,” he says lightly with a shrug. In truth Bucky has a good idea what’s making him sneeze. The fucking radiator that was supposed to heat his cheap shitty basement apartment had stopped working in the middle of the night, so he’d spent six hours until dawn shivering, and an itchy tickly feeling had been growing in the back of his nose and throat since around noon. It’s starting to evolve into a runny nose and an ever-present but elusive feeling of being about to sneeze, and he knows that means he’s coming down with a cold.

He sees some convenient glasses to clear and excuses himself with a smile so he can sniffle out of Steve’s earshot; he’s enough of a mess compared to Steve on his best day, he doesn’t need to show off his scraggly urchin runny nose aesthetic of tonight any more than he has to.

For the next hour, these light, tickly sneezes either sneak up on him or abandon him at the last minute, leaving his nose feeling like it’s going to start getting stuffy.

Steve watches Bucky do his job, sniffling, rubbing his nose, and sneezing furtively into his sleeve or collar; tucking the strands of hair that have come loose from his short ponytail behind his ears, and feels so helplessly tender for him that it can’t be normal or healthy even by desperate crush standards.

Bucky’s coming down with a cold. He seems to want to brush it off, but Steve can hear a slight change in the resonance of his voice that gives it away even if the tired pink starting to border his eyes and nostrils doesn’t. The place is getting crowded and he’s busy; Steve feels for him, as well as pathetically jealous of his attention as he banters with him in passing once in a while.

He glances up as Bucky heads in his direction with a short stack of empty glasses and sees his steps slow; he pauses, blinks up at the overhead light, eyes hazy, and then, wavering, starts to turn his face into his shoulder, before pausing again and then sighing and sniffing as the sneeze evaporates. He looks up and sees Steve watching him like a creep and laughs, “Damn, lost her,” and then as he continues behind the bar, “You havin’ fun watching me look stupid?”

“It’s agony actually,” he responds, gets a laugh, and feels the now-somewhat-familiar internal squeal of this is flirting! I’m flirting with a guy and I think he can tell! It’s painfully pathetic, but he can’t help but track the fact that Bucky knows plenty of the folks that come to Sam’s, that he’ll give anyone his attention if they ask for it, smiling and joking, but the only person he really goes out of his way to talk to, initiates teasing with, is him, Steve. It’s still nothing more than polite obligatory chatting, he’s sure— when you work at a bar this kinda thing is natural. Bucky is young and charismatic and gorgeous. His love life would probably give Steve enough combined envy and jealousy to cause heart failure, which would be perfectly appropriate because he is an old square divorcee. It makes him warm and bubbly enough that he seems to be Bucky’s favorite customer to pass the time with.

A guy down the bar gets his beer from Sam and sidles closer. “This seat taken?” he asks with a good-humored cocked eyebrow. This is why Steve actually started coming to this place: to meet people, to meet guys, in a way that, well, went somewhere. To call his own decades-old bluff. Not to moon over staff half his age who woulda been out of his league even if he was still in his twenties. He turns to the guy—his age or a few years older, attractively lithe with muscle, a hard but handsome face, and smiles.

Bucky gets busy for a stretch— Sam’s place is actually full tonight thanks to the playoff game. He enjoys the feeling of being a genuinely necessary part of the bar’s operation, when some nights it’s hard to believe he’s more than Sam’s charity case. Nights like this remind him that he has a real job, he’s decent at it even with a bum left arm; whether he’s living out his dreams or not he’s an adult with a job, a place to live, and people he cares about. Plus it distracts him from feeling sorry for himself for coming down sick.

His satisfied feelings fade when he looks over to the Steve end of the bar and sees Brock Rumlow talking to him. He scowls. Fucking Rumlow. He only ever comes on nights with games these days, but Bucky would be perfectly happy if he never came in at all.

It’s fine. Steve’s fine. He is a grown-up, significantly more of one than Bucky. Of all the people who have no need of his misplaced ineffectual chivalry, Steve has got to be last in line.

Maybe he finds more stuff to do in the general area of that end of the bar, and maybe he’s listening for Rumlow to say something dickish, or maybe he’s just a masochist and he wants to know firsthand if they hit it off. Sam is trying to point his “Don’t-be-Stupid” face at him like a flashlight beam but he resolutely ignores it while he replaces a couple bottles that legitimately needed it, ok, just because they’re in a convenient place doesn’t make that untrue.

“Yeah, I’m glad I found this place,” he catches Steve’s cheerful voice. A wave of bar noise obscures their next words, and then he makes out Rumlow,

“—actual sports on the TV. ‘Course,” the smile is audible in his voice, “the clubby places are good for at least one reason, y’know?” He quiets down to say it but not enough. Steve wouldn’t particularly like that, Bucky guesses, and then grinds his teeth as his brain helpfully supplies him with the memories of how easily Brock had charmed him, months ago. It wasn’t any kind of nightmare, but it was still probably his least favorite hookup to date: he’d been so happily focused on Bucky at first, then rough and selfish in bed, capped off by an unnecessarily clear implication that he wouldn’t be calling. Bucky knew the score with casual sex, but it had still given him enough whiplash to sting; it crossed his mind a few days later that it had been like Rumlow wanted him to feel like a dumb kid.

Steve has sputtered something about “not sure he’s looking for anything like that” while Bucky fumed about the past. He has to grab beers for a couple guys, and bending to get in the lowboy fridge makes his nose run suddenly, and flush with an insistent tickle. He manages, just barely, to squash the sneeze completely into a silent mmp! into his shoulder, andmakes a getaway to the bathroom. He blows his nose, but it won’t stop tickling, so then he stands there like an idiot, holding paper towels like they’re a book he’s reading, staring up into the lights and waiting to coax the sneeze out.

He can feel it coming but it still takes forever. At least the bathroom is empty. He wrinkles his nose exaggeratedly and sniffs and his breath finally starts to catch.

“hehh...heh...heh—heh-Uhh....huhh. Fuck.” There’s no way it’s not happening though, his goddamn nose tickles so bad— “hhHAh—EHSsschhooo!” It’s a ridiculous cartoony sneeze but at least it’s satisfying. He blows his nose again, then sighs. He’s definitely sick. Gonna be great sleeping in a freezing apartment. Turning into kind of a shitty night, he thinks with sarcastic pep.

When he leaves the restroom he can’t help glancing over to where Steve sits, and sees he’s now frowning at whatever Rumlow’s saying, looking politely uncomfortable on the way to annoyed. As he drifts back into earshot he hears, “….fun, but, if you’re looking for more than, um, casual, I dunno, kind of a dead end.” Then his pulse jumps as Rumlow looks right at him and finishes, “not dating material, trust me. Either way,” he leans in, “I think you can do better.”

Bucky closes the distance but puts himself behind the bar so he doesn’t immediately clock the asshole. His fists are clenched. Can he throw him out? If he doesn’t get away from Steve and shut up Bucky’s gonna end up fired and charged with assault, probably, but he doesn’t know if he can throw someone out on the grounds of being a jerk that he hates. Thank God, Sam’s caught on that something is up.

Rumlow doesn’t seem to have won Steve over, in any case. He’s turned cold and hard in a way that makes him look unfamiliar, and he says quietly but very clearly, “I think you’ve got the wrong idea.” He sounds like a straight Army Captain contemptuously shattering an underling’s heart immediately post-office-suckjob or something; in the morass of anger and panic it still registers with Bucky’s dick to his utter bewilderment. It definitely triggers some core memory for Rumlow, who turns the color of old milk before flushing and standing. He takes in the sight of Bucky glowering behind Steve and barks an ugly laugh. “It’s like that, huh?” he asks, shaking his head in mock pity. “Good luck with that rescue mission.”

Bucky feels like he did when Hank Ackerman pantsed him in 8th grade. Everything’s too bright and clear. He wants to cover his face and run into the back, but he’s rooted to the spot by the thought that that’s just what the dumb baby slut Rumlow’s been making him out to be would do.

“That’s it man,” Sam comes up beside him, smile on his face as though he’s just casually joining their conversation. “You’re done. Get outta here.”

Rumlow scoffs, takes a step towards the door, then turns with the beginning of a macho intimidation-lean in Sam’s direction. He’s hammered, Bucky hadn’t realized, and he can usually tell with people. He’s...kind of fucking scary. Had he gotten rougher around the edges, or had he been like this when Bucky went home with him? Jesus Christ.

Sam just returns his stare, all semblance of friendliness gone from his face. “Get out.”

Rumlow glares another second, but then he goes. There’s a reason Sam’s successful running a bar in the middle of the still-managing-to-be-seedy part of Brooklyn, as well as his finely tuned sensibilities to the unmet needs of Brooklyn’s grownup queer folks. He has the air, recognizable to serious troublemakers, of someone who will absolutely meet and raise any escalation. There were, in fact, a taser and a gun behind the bar, but Sam had never had to use them.

Steve stands up sharply, like he’s—what, gonna follow? Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but then—“Steve.” Sam’s got the side bar entry folded up and he’s intercepting his angry stride. “Please don’t.” He goes on, too quiet for Bucky to make out. Steve deflates and sits back down, taking a long drink of beer and then frowning at his knees.

Bucky consciously lets go of his tension as he sees Rumlow’s silhouette, walking outside, disappear from the last window on the right. He feels shaky, the way any kind of confrontation leaves him, and embarrassed as hell. He avoids Steve’s eyes for all he’s worth, scrubbing a hand under his nose and sniffing sharply.

Steve was just a customer. Bucky was just one of many people that Steve made polite conversation with in the course of a day. Feeling like this was just a consequence of getting that confused. Because he’s an idiot. He has to sniffle again. He also feels about ten times sicker than he did a few minutes ago, and successfully blinking away the brief prickle in his eyes just turns it into the need to sneeze.

Steve tries to breathe smoothly and calm down. This frat-boy rage is ridiculous, he still wants to go punch the hell out of that fucking creep. He must be drunker than he realizes, although deep down he knows it has more to do with the inarticulate surge of protectiveness he’d felt for Bucky since the guy had gestured to him with a jerk of his head as he crossed the room.

He hears a shuddering gasp and sees Bucky duck down to crouch behind the bar. His concern flares way up, but then he hears the three muffled sneezes, all in a rush, “hhhMPtchsh—hmptsschoo—hptsshhuh,”. He straightens back up, sniffing hard, more wetly than he sounded earlier. He’s rubbing his nose and glaring at the door, not looking at Steve.

“Bucky,” he says, frowning, determined to get this across, “what that asshole said about you—”

“Steve, snff, it’s fine, just drop it, okay, I’m asking you,” he meets Steve’s eyes with a downcast expression, before it flickers as his breath catches, and he sneezes again, half-pinched down into the collar of his shirt, “ihh-dtsschuh!”

His nostrils keep quivering and he lets out a shaky sigh of frustration before ducking around the corner out of sight with his hands tented over his nose and sneezing, “hiih-hih-HIDtschoo!...hih-HIH-TISchoo! ..heehh...heh—HEH—” the last one deserts him and leaves him sniffling. They’re still pretty quiet, but a lot heavier and spraying than the first sneezes Steve heard earlier. Bucky blows his nose and washes his hands thoroughly, and when he’s back behind the bar his nose is decidedly pink.

“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky’s lips thin in exasperation— it’s not like him, compared to the guy Steve’s talked to the last few weeks. Whatever, he can’t help but say, “you do sound like you’re coming down with something, you should—”

“Steve, I’m fine,” says Bucky, in a soft tone that brooks no argument. Still tense, he turns to Steve with a crooked smile and says, “Really,” and it’s warm, if strained, between them again, and it seems like that’ll just have to satisfy Steve, and he says as much to Bucky who blushes and bites his lip for some reason.

Sam rescues Bucky by asking him to do inventory in back, letting him be sneeze and be dramatically in his feels without anyone around, especially Steve. The bar is slow enough now that he just shamelessly hides for the rest of the night. He’s constantly sniffling and sneezing and needing to blow his nose with the roll of rough brown paper towels back there, and even without that he’s too keyed up and pissed and miserable for human company, so it’s for the best.

He casts furtive recon glances to the bar where Steve sits, first craning his neck trying to spy Bucky, then brooding into his beer glass which makes Bucky feel like an asshole, then perking up at least a little shooting the shit with Sam, hopefully talking shit about Brock Dickface Rumlow. Then the misery wells up enough to get him to actually focus on work to avoid feeling it, and then it’s a few hours later and they’re closing up and he goes home to his little icebox and tires not to think about anything.

The next day, Sam chooses evil.

Steve and JB Barnes are both at least somewhat complex men, and it is always a bad idea to meddle in the affairs of others. But screw it, he’s had Bucky moaning in his ear for months now, and he was gonna have to recheck all his angry counting from last night, and these guys really seemed dumb enough to let the tension of mutual attraction strain between them until it just broke, some misunderstanding threw them both on the defensive or whatever, and they missed the chance at any of the fun part of connecting with each other.

So.

It isn’t a big surprise when Bucky calls him around 2, apologizing and pausing to make some gross “ihHgjshuhh!” noise, saying he was probably too sick with this cold to come in. What is a surprise, for poor Bucky, is Sam’s implacable response: “Duuude, I’m so sorry, but there’s some kinda convention in town and the place is packed, I need you here so bad, no matter what. You can take the next two days off, I’ll pay you.” He hears Bucky swallow back the what the hell and resignedly say ok. He feels diabolical. But hopefully it will be worth it. Steve usually comes in early on Thursdays, and he’d looked all hangdog-worried about Bucky the night before.

He’s been there twenty minutes already, chatting distractedly with Sam and staring at the TV screens but really looking all over the room like Bucky might be hiding somewhere. Bucky slouches in, ten minutes late, takes in the mostly empty room and gives Sam a betrayed glare.

“You really ndeeded mbe, huh,” he mutters as he puts his backpack away.

“You don’t even sound that bad,” Sam rejoins cheerfully, and Bucky’s mouth drops open with incredulity.

He moves some boxes around in back without issue. Then he tries to start prep by the bar. In a fifteen-minute period he has two sneezing fits that require him retreating to the bathroom to blow his nose endlessly and wash his hands. Sam decides that’s plenty sufficient. He and his customers are gonna pay a price in germ exposure for this stupid ass cupid skit he’s putting on.

“Steve, you believe this guy?” Bucky’s been avoiding Steve’s concerned hopeful looks since he got here. “He insisted on coming to work.” Bucky chokes in outrage, then coughs for real, while Steve moves a few seats closer. Sam turns; Bucky couldn’t look more betrayed if there was a knife with Sam’s name on it in his guts. Lord deliver him from dramatic white boys. “Did you take the bus here, Buck?” There was no other way for the guy to get to work, but he just replies flatly,

“Yeah.”

“You oughtta go home and rest.”

“Le me give you a ride, Buck,” Steve jumps in with the Air-Bud eagerness Sam had expected. They confirm it and bustle Barnes into a Civic while he’s sneezing too much to protest. Sam washes his hands metaphorically of the situation, and also very literally and thoroughly.

Steve’s car is a little old, and cold, and dusty. Bucky shivers as he buckles his seatbelt. He feels silently nervous and thrilled to be in Steve’s Car!!, but at the moment it’s hard to be anything but….sneezy…

“hhh-hh-hhmmPtchuh! S-s-sor-ry-hiihHIptchsh!” Holding them back when he feels like this just makes his nose more irritated and thus even sneezier. He stubbornly jams his fist under his nose to quell the tickle. He has some napkins from work, so a nose-blow is possible, but it doesn’t feel possible, not so close to Steve, who has it a million times more together than Bucky even on days when he isn’t falling apart on a cellular level.

“Bless you,” Steve says quietly. He looks at him reflexively, to see a small, sweet, sympathetic smile. “Ready?” Bucky gives a little nod and the car pulls out into the slushy road.

His nose is running onto his finger, it’s a crisis. This is why it’s always a terrible idea to leave the house when you’re really sick. “Ugh, I gotta blow mby ndose, I’mb sorry, I’mb so gross right ndow,” talking also makes his nose angry. Fucking Sam and his supervillain plan to humiliate him. What had he done to deserve this? He fumbles for the napkins with his less-dextrous left hand, the one he should have stuck under his nose, goddamnit, he’s gonna sneeze again…

“Psh, don’t worry about it,” scoffs Steve like the big huge dad he is, then with a sympathetic glance he turns the radio on, to the classic rock station, because of course, Bucky almost laughs even while racing to get tissues on his face before this giant wet sneeze overcomes him. The music is loud and it does help him feel less embarrassed.

“heh—HEH-KSSSHOOoo!” he gets the wad of napkins in front of him just in time. Blowing his nose after that demolishes them, but he feels a little closer to a human being.

“Bless you!” Steve chuckles. “Man you got a good bug, jeez!”

Why are he and Sam both so cheerful. “Thanks, I’mb glad you’re impressed,” he croaks.

“You have cold stuff at home?” Huh? When Bucky doesn’t answer he continues, “Tissues, tea, soup, medicine, you know?”

“Oh, umb, sorry, I’m tired,” Steve makes a sympathetic sound. “I usually just use toilet paper. I took the last of my Dayquil before work. I dunno if it even helped, all it feels like it did is mbake me jittery and sdeezy.”

“Why don’t we stop by a drugstore.” He sounded decisive.

“Oh, you don’t have to bother with that, really Steve—” he pauses to sniffle desperately. Technically he can afford a couple things, and he probably needs them. “Or—you could drop me off and I’ll get myself home from the store, that would totally be a big help—”

“Is the heat even on in your place?” Steve interrupts, shrewd-eyed. At Bucky’s wide-eyed sputtering response he continues, “I knew it. I used to be a broke Brooklyn kid, once upon a time. Only reason to come into work, am I right? Can’t believe landlords are still getting away with this shit.”

Bucky considers denial, then slumps. “S’why I’mb so much...hhh...worse...hh-huh-hudschuh! Snff-snff. Worse today. They said it’ll be fixed by tomorrow so...we’ll see, ha. I got a space heater and an electric kettle though, I can get in my blankets and drink tea and I’m fine.”

Steve is quiet, no response, and Bucky worries irrationally that he pissed him off. A few minutes of classic rock later, he pulls into the small parking lot attached to the drugstore, turns the car off, and turns to him, looking a little uncomfortable.

“Bucky I—” he breaks off and laughs to himself. “I know you have to be polite to customers, I don’t want to—” he makes eye contact, looking pained and rueful. “I’d like to think we’re friends. But I don’t want to put you on the spot or anything,”

“We’re friends,” Bucky interrupts gently. Steve’s face brightens like a sunrise and Bucky’s chest does a nice warm thing.

“Yeah? That’s...I’m real happy to hear it.” Steve says, sheepish but grinning. Then his eyes get the determined look that Bucky is starting to think means trouble. “Well the reason I asked is, as a friend, I really hate the idea of you trying to ride this out in an icebox apartment. I have heat. And a couch!” He hastens to add at whatever wide-eyed look Bucky’s giving him. “It’s just, I know it’s no fun being sick by yourself, and, well, honestly I wish I’d socked that asshole at the bar last night, and I really wish I’d clocked him as a jerk faster, and I’d feel a lot better if I could do something nice for you, and you really seem like you could do with some rest and medicine. Will you let me grab some stuff here and spend the night at my place—where there’s heat— and let me fuss over you?”

“Steve, that’s—that’s so nice, but I really can’t imb—snff—impose on you, and I gotta be so contagious right now…”

“I don’t care about that,” Steve says easily. “And I know you’re not gonna die on your own, but,” and, whoa, he’s deploying some kind of dignified mature version of puppy-dog eyes, it’s so sincere, and also so certain, that it starts to seem like the only sensible course of action is to let his gorgeous crush take him to his apartment while he’s the polar opposite of sexy, an unspeakable snot factory, and also possibly starting to run a fever.

….His apartment is gonna be so goddamn cold.

And lonely, incidentally.

And Steve is so nice. He’s literally, actually here, he seems to mean it that he wants to take care of Bucky’s sick bedraggled ass as some kind of friend-favor. There’s no way this is a come-on with him in this state, even if he can still muster enough energy to wish it was. No way Steve’s ever gonna want to fuck him after watching him snuffle through 200 tissues and mouth-breathe all evening, but he was nuts to think he ever would anyhow. He’s just that nice, and Bucky is that pathetic, and that might not feel great, but he wants to be Steve’s friend, he really does, and even through his own shyness he can see that the guy is pretty lonely.

“You, umb. You really don’t have to.” He says, watching Steve, who waits with obvious hopefulness. “But. Uh.” Steve raises his eyebrows and gives him a little smile, and Bucky finds himself returning it helplessly. “If you really don’t mbind. It could, potentially, be really ndice to take you up on that. You really don’t have to though!”

“I want to, though.” Jesus, he’s so sincere. Bucky feels some weird kind of protective way about the earnest honesty in his eyes.

“Well, then, okay. Thangk you, I really appreciate it.” He laughs, finally feeling how miserable it would have been to go back home and try to sleep in a cold blanket pile on his mattress on the floor. “Mby place sucks right now.”

“Alright then,” Steve beams. “Let’s get you a couple things and then get you cozy.”

Bucky’s nose is not okay with him using his face to talk instead of constantly blow it. It’s gotten completely blocked, and it’s tingling unpleasantly, and running so bad again he has to smush his knuckles under his nostrils. The tickle crests and his breath catches before he can do anything about it, but he clenches his jaw and forces it into a stifle. “hhh-huh-MMP!!” The problem with doing that is it just makes the tickle— “hh-mMP!” worse. “Ugh, sorry.” His hand is a dam against his nose at this point.

“Bless you!” They both step out of the car, but Steve hurries over to his side with a crinkle in his brow. “Why don’t you just stay here and I’ll grab a few things. Anything in particular, or just tissues and NyQuil?”

“Dyquil is just schndapps,” Bucky grumbles, then his brain catches up a little and he says “tissues,” fervently, and then it catches all the way up and he says “wait, ndo way are you buyig!”

Steve cocks an eyebrow like a handsome jerk. “You really wanna go in there?” With your current nose situation? He’s kind enough to not say.

He casts about for a moment—“Grab me a little pack and then I’ll go in!”

Steve gives him a skeptical look and says “Sure,” in a way that makes him think his orders won’t be followed, but he’s too busy squishing his nose more firmly and silently begging it not to make him sneeze again to keep arguing, or to protest when Steve opens the door for him and puts his car keys in his hand before dashing into the store with a promise to be quick.

He’s back not even ten minutes later, by which time holding his nose plugged and not letting his sneezes out has put Bucky in a state of perma-misery, stifling relentless sneezes every few seconds, unable to keep his eyes fully open. Steve tosses a box of tissues onto his lap before he gets all the way into the car because he is a saint.

“Guh,” Bucky says gratefully, pulls out a wad of about ten, and lets the miserable sneeze that had been building out into the nest of forgiving softness. “HehgSHOOmpff!!” And then blows his nose forever. Finally he feels like he can speak and have a face again; the little drugstore bag is now home to a dozen nasty used-tissue balls. “Well,” he says as he puts the last one in there, “wish I hadn’t had a witness for that.”

Steve just chuckles. “You’re fine,” he murmurs, his voice a soothing rumble. “I grabbed you a toothbrush, and I’ve got some stuff that can fit you for pjs.”

Bucky feels like he sneezed out the last of his strength. “You’re way too nice.” He sniffles and slumps against the window, looking at the familiar blur of orange streetlight. “I should be more worried you’re a serial killer.” Steve chuckles again, and he likes that, so he goes on, “Probly got a nice Jeffrey Dahmer setup at your place. Sorry if I don’t make a good steak.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Steve replies, sounding indignant. Then laughs for real, shaking his head, “I’m not gonna chop you up and eat you, I swear.”

“It’s fine. Just mbake mbe into soup,” sighs Bucky. That would be warm. He’ll just be a big hot pot of Bucky, and Steve will stir him and season him so carefully with his big strong hands. This is a weird train of thought. He might have a fever. But he can still hear Steve chuckling.

Steve pulls into his parking spot and the car shudders to stillness as he takes his key out of the ignition. Next to him, Bucky is asleep with his head mushed against the window. He’d conked out for the last five or so minutes of the drive. “Hey, Buck, we just got to my place,” he says softly, trying not to sound too bedroom-y. His eyes flutter open, the blue of them standing out, and Steve takes a steadying breath because Bucky is so good-looking it catches him off guard and overwhelms him sometimes.

His eyes are glassy-bright and there’s a flush high on his cheekbones, and as he shifts upright in his seat Steve reaches over and touches his forehead without thinking about it. It’s noticeably hot, but not burning. The twins’ childhood bouts with the flu gave him a sense of bad-fever heat. “Think you got a temperature,” he murmurs sympathetically. Bucky just blinks up at him, a little wide-eyed, and only then does he realize his big meaty hand is practically covering half his face. He feels himself flush to match Bucky, and for a second they just look at each other.

Until Bucky sniffs a miserable liquid sniffle and they both almost jump. “Sorry,” Steve mutters awkwardly, and Bucky’s saying the same thing at the same time. They both move to get out, “Just one flight of stairs up.”

“huh—tschumpf!” is Bucky’s answer, his nose buried in a new handful of tissues. “huhh, hUH—huh.” The second sneeze fizzles, leaving him blinking and frowning and wrinkling his nose snifflishly against the ticklish haze as he shuts the door. “Fuck. Sorry, scuse mbe.”

“Bless you.” It’s probably not normal to find someone so sick so adorable.

Steve leads him up and along the hall and then he’s unlocking the door, feeling giddy that he’s letting Bucky into his apartment, and then guilty for being excited, when the poor guy is just hesitantly accepting a much-needed favor. Bucky trails in behind him and then stands still while Steve sets the bag from the drugstore and started to turn to him, saying, “It’s not much, but—”

“ASHHOO!” Bucky’s sneeze interrupts and snaps him forward into his tissues, and then he just stays folded over for a second like it sapped the last of his energy. Then he straightens, rubbing his nose into the tissues and sighing. “Jesus, sorry,”

“Bless you! You don’t have to be sorry, you’ve just got a cold.” Steve has to hold himself still to keep from rubbing his back.

“You’re...hh-huh….? Snfff, ugh. Totally gonna catch this, I owe you way mbore apologies.”

“I won’t hold it against you,” he chuckles, toeing his shoes off. Bucky follows suit and he continues, “I stopped caring after raising toddlers, they’re little germ factories, you catch everything.” Why’d you bring up your old-dad status, Steve? “I’ll grab you some things to sleep in.”

An hour and one confrontation about Steve giving up his bed later, Bucky is ensconced on his couch like the king of cold-medicine commercials, surrounded by blankets and pillows and tissues and steaming cups and bowls. He feels a little more human, which is nice, but lets him access how incandescently awkward he feels at being rescued from his idiotic life like a snotty Cinderella. Steve has been flitting back and forth between the couch and kitchen, fussing over him to a truly excessive degree while exuding satisfaction and cheer, like some kind of calendar-model Santa with a caretaking kink. He was practically rubbing his hands together at the prospect of getting Bucky blankets and tea on his couch. Now he’s giving a rundown of his TV system standing next to the couch and it feels the tiniest bit manic and Bucky can feel himself getting a little too quiet but he can’t help it. After a minute Steve notices, and sets the remote down.

“I should stop babbling at you and leave you in peace,” he says with a bashful chuckle, turning to leave the room.

“No, I— you don’t—” Bucky doesn’t really have a response beyond ‘please chill out and hang out with me and let me picture cuddling with you,’ which will not be said aloud.

“You really don’t hafta feel like you need to entertain me, Bucky.”

“It’s not, I don’t,” he sighs and then sniffles. He doesn’t want to sit here and stare at the wall and stress about this, alone in this room in Steve’s goddamn apartment. He maybe should have thought about just how much he’d fallen for Steve before taking him up on this offer, because the concern and sweetness and fussing are starting to ratchet up his anxiety, because what if there was a chance it meant—

“Is anything the matter?” Steve crouches smoothly to be on his level and torment him with his eyes’ blueness. When all Bucky can do for a moment is flounder he looks more concerned, and a little downcast. “I really don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. If anything’s bothering you, you can just tell me.”

What the hell is an ordinary sinner supposed to do in the face of this much sincerity? Act like he thinks he’s a damn grownup, Bucky guesses, and girds his nervous loser loins.

“Why’re you—” he starts, frowning, then cuts himself off and tries again with a small, apologetic smile.

“It’s just...this is such an imposition, and you seem...kinda weirdly happy about it? I just don’t get why.”

One side of Steve’s mouth quirks up, making him look dry and self-deprecating and unfairly handsome. “You’re worried I’m gonna start talkin about Scientology, or put you in my basement dungeon?”

Bucky shrugs. “Kinda.” Just ‘cause he went home with strangers didn’t mean he had no sense.

Steve seems to cast about for an explanation, and he also starts to turn pink. “It’s—you’re just so—” and then he sighs and sits on the end of the couch, next to his blanketed feet, addressing his words to the wall in a rush. “Honestly, Bucky? I have a huge crush on you, and,” he laughs in embarrassment, decidedly blushing now, “I’m just real happy to have a chance to take care of you in whatever little way.” Now he does turn to look at him, pained. “I’m sorry, that must be so uncomfortable to hear. I promise you’re not my hostage! Please don’t make a break for it, it’s cold out and you’re so sick. I swear I’m not Cathy Bates in Misery.”

“Y—hihdsschuh!” The sneeze catches him by surprise, but he has wadded-up tissues in his hand already anyhow. He has to blow his nose, and he does it thoroughly to buy time. Steve stares stoically at the ceiling as though waiting for sentencing. Is this seriously Steve telling Bucky...he likes him?

“You…” he stops, sniffs. He needs a plan. He doesn’t have one. His mouth is gonna keep moving anyway, “You said, ‘you’re just so—‘, what were you gonna say?”

Steve looks confused for a second, and then just helpless. “Bucky, you’re just so sweet. I’m happy for a chance to do something for you because I owe you, you get that, right?”

“Owe me?” Bucky asks, nonplussed. Steve laughs with what seems like disbelief at his confusion.

“Yes, Buck! For the last few months! For taking pity on me that first night I came into Sam’s. You asked me a question about antifreeze.”

“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs. His world is rearranging itself. Steve remembered that?

“I feel—real self-conscious, I guess, coming into the “scene,” he gives it air-quotes and Bucky’s heart swells a little more, “by the route I have. Y’know, married dad who woke up one day and realized the stuff he repressed at sixteen might be the real him. Sam’s was the third place I tried to go into. I just felt so ridiculous, I still do— 39-year-old brand-new gay dude, it’s idiotic. I was practically gonna have a panic attack, I was definitely gonna leave and not try again and just...stop trying in general, maybe, to figure this new scary shit out. Except you were there, this—this smokin-hot guy, and you’re acting like you actually want to talk to me, and… so I stayed. And came back.” He looks Bucky in the eyes and it makes Bucky’s stomach clench. “I feel like you’ve been taking care of me this whole time, helping me ease into things, helping me not to feel bad about being completely uncool, asking me about stuff I actually know about instead of laughing at me because I’ve never heard of ‘poppers’,”

At that, Bucky has to give in to the giggle bubbling out of him, which inevitably leads to a short coughing fit. His first instinct is to keep laughing, rake Steve over the coals, but Steve is looking at him with a careful sort of expression, and it occurs to Bucky that just because he’s older and seems like he has it all together and has great posture doesn’t mean he’s immune to feeling vulnerable. And he looks like he’s feeling really fucking vulnerable right now. Acting like Bucky is worthy of this adorable schoolboy crush is absurd, but it’s not like it was so many eons ago that little baby Bucky Barnes was having his First Gay Bar experience, and he’d been scared as shit.

He already feels like he missed the boat on his life. Steve is starting over at 39. He’s so fucking brave. Bucky...somehow, unthinkably, Bucky is in a position where he could really hurt this guy.

“I’mb, umb. Snfff. Thing is, I’m a little surprised…” And Steve must think that’s the prelude to rejection because he pulls this sad little smile onto his face that’s the worst thing Bucky’s ever seen, and he has to make it go away, “It’s just, to hear you tell it I took pity on you and I’ve been talking to you to, like, guide you along and coach you because I’m some saint!” He smiles, starting to feel amused. “Steve— I just wanted some reason to talk to you, dude.”

Steve blinks at him. “What?”

He has to laugh, putting his forehead in his hand. “Sorry. I, just, I have not been operating under the assumption that I had a chance with you? And now it sounds like you’re telling me I do? While I sit on your couch filling your trash can with my disgusting tissue mountain?”

All he gets from the man is “...Huh?”

“You said ‘crush’,” he insists, and he’s not laughing, his heart is pounding actually. “What did you mean by that?” He’s gonna awkwardly say that he wants to fuck, and once that box is checked in his Gay Awakening, he’ll move on to actually date people actually in his league, and that’s maybe not gonna feel great, but, well…

Steve looks up from staring at his hands, makes eye contact, and he looks a little confused and a lot like he’s facing a firing squad. “I meant, I mean that…” he blows a breath out. “Jesus I have no idea what I’m doing. I mean that I’ve been trying to work up the courage to ask you out on a date, since pretty much the first night I met you.”

Bucky’s head does a record scratch and Steve scoffs and rolls his eyes, “But I guess instead I kidnapped you when you were sick and blurted this out to you while you were trapped on my couch waiting to be left alone to sleep. I was never smooth but I swear I’ve done better than this.”

A giddy feeling is rising up in Bucky’s chest, making him forget completely about how tired and crappy he feels. “Well, I am smooth,” he says, “I’ve got game. At least, I did, until you showed up and turned me into a giggling bimbo. What the hell, Steve.”

“This is starting to seem like a romantic conversation but I can’t tell,” murmurs Steve with his face still uncertain but a little twinkle in his eye.

Bucky’s nose is gonna ruin this, he’s surprised it gave him that long a grace period. “Yeah, snfff, real romantic, I’mb gonna—hih—fuckin’ sndeeze—heh-heTShoo! Againd.”

Another sneeze teases out, and then he has to blow his nose for about ten years. “Bless you,” says Steve all quiet and bedroomy in his deep voice, and he’s definitely smiling, sparkle-eyes, leaning towards him the tiniest bit, but still looking like Bucky’s leaving him hanging a little, unsure, and he can’t help the wave of doubt he feels.

“Steve, you—” he stares at the blanket on his lap. “I’m a mess. You’ve accomplished shit, you have a real goddamn job, I—I’m just, ok, we’re both adults, but I feel like a screw-up kid compared to you.” He takes a deep breath and says what he doesn’t want to, “I’d be...pretty damn flattered if you wanted to hook up. I kinda can’t imagine you actually want to date me.”

He dares to look up and Steve looks more serious. He doesn’t say, “no shit.” He says, “I won’t argue if you say you don’t want anything, but I sure don’t agree with how you describe yourself. I don’t want to hook up—at least, not just that— I want to date you, get to know each other better, because I like you. I trust my judgement, when I think someone’s a good person.”

He says it so simply, and Bucky finds himself believing it despite himself, and a warm happy fire is kindling under his ribs. “Well, shit,” he murmurs, “it’s starting to seem like you’re asking me out.”

“It’s...starting to seem like you might be saying yes? If I am?” Steve looks agonized and Bucky’s doubts are no match for the giddiness fizzing up inside him, and he lets it show on his face with a grin, and whatever that looks like makes Steve kinda gulp and scootch up closer to him. Bucky makes a show of giving a slow, considering nod. Yes.

Steve has this soft, nervous little smile on his face, but his eyes hold something weighty, almost burning, as he moves even closer, and it’s just, it’s really, wow, Bucky has maybe never been taken seriously in quite this way by anyone before, it makes his knees feel watery and kindles something in his core. “I know you’re sick,” he rumbles, “but I feel like I gotta kiss you,” and how is it that the softer he speaks the deeper his voice sounds? He brushes his curled fingers over Bucky’s cheek because that’s how close they are now and this isn’t really Bucky’s life, is it? “What if I was to kiss you, right now?”

It’s hard to tell with the sexiness melting his brain but he realizes Steve is actually asking, because he’s a gentleman— a gentleman Bucky wants to be taken apart and turned inside out by. “Then you would be a guaranteed victim of my plague,” he breathes. “But I wouldn’t stop you, I’m not that selfless.”

“Sounds like a dare,” Steve murmurs, and tilts his head and presses their lips together.

It’s a short simple kiss but they each give a quiet gasp at the contact, and then stay there a moment. Steve’s beard isn’t huge but he feels it, like a firm underline to the shockingly warm plush pressure of his lips. He thankfully tragically remembers that congested people can’t make out and pulls away after just a brief press of lips, but not before giving a soft lick to Bucky’s, full of promised things to come.

They sit there a few inches apart and breathe. Bucky feels like a vibrating tuning fork. He just barely stops himself from shakily saying “wow,” like a highschool virgin, but when he sees Steve looking at him with lips still parted and a gobsmacked expression he changes his mind and lets it out anyway, “wow,” with a giddy grin.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, blinking like he got hit with a cartoon hammer, going from pink to red, and then he swoops in and kisses Bucky’s cheek, and then stands, going, “Excuse me, just gotta go...out of your sightline, and. Do something cool. And serious. No victory dances.”

…..the next morning…….

Steve could hear Bucky in the shower, sneezing three times, but not sounding—four times—nearly as heavy or exhausted as the night before. A few minutes and one loud noseblow later, he came out wrapped in a towel, mercilessly bare-chested, his nose bright red but his eyes clear and cheerful. Steve’s attention caught on his chest as his nipples tightened in the relative chill as Bucky said sheepishly, “forgot my clo-hothes—” his voice swooping to a breathy quaver on the last word, “hhh-hh-hehh—EHisSHOooh!” he turned as far away from Steve’s part of the room as possible and sneezed over his shoulder. “Snnfff. Excuse me, sorry.”

“Can I lend you some warmer stuff, just for now while we eat breakfast? There’s no way you’re not still sick,” Steve fussed, forcing himself to round the kitchen island slowly and casually instead of rushing over and wrapping him up in his arms and kissing his red nose that was twitching again. He quelled it with another sniff that sounded a lot less congested than the previous night.

“Ah, I’m ok. I felt really bad yesterday, but I slept so well,” he said with a warm grateful smile at Steve that went to his toes, “I don’t feel shitty and run-down anymore, just all, like, shnuffly.”

Steve chuckled helplessly and went over to rub his shoulder. “You’re adorable.”

“No way!” Bucky glowered, but then a few drops fell from his wet hair to his chest and neck, and he shivered into a sneeze so quick and light it sounded incomplete, “hih—tish!” followed by “ih-hihtchoo!” and he blinked, taken by surprise.

“That was... the cutest thing that ever happened,” Steve said truthfully.

“Shuddup— heh—edschoo!”

[roseworth]

hey <3 heres what i think of every scene that rosenberg has written with rose

disclaimer: most of this is me being very nitpicky. rose was a side character for all of these appearances so obv i understand that its not gonna be perfect characterization. but i rly like talking about rose characterization so this is just me pulling apart her appearances for fun <3

ok lets go

overall

i LOVE the jason & rose dynamic. im not much of a jayrose fan but since its happening im glad that its like this. i love that its so much "rose is excessively horny and jason is giving her nothing" bc its so in character for both of them. shes fucking with him and he does not know how to reciprocate. they r so sillies

HOWEVER. rose would not just hang around him like shes doing. as much as i like that dynamic i feel like he also has to at least sometimes show that hes. you know. interested in having her around. shes just kinda tagging along and i wish there was a reason why she would put up with him never giving her anything, especially since she has a tendency to leave at the first sign of not being wanted

on a completely different note, im a little disappointed that shes wearing her old costume instead of the new one she has in btbatb/kt ravager. i appreciate that shes still drawn like an adult but i rly like her new costume so im sad that she doesnt have it

man who stopped laughing #9

STRONG start. beats up a bunch of cops, then right after she appears she does her stupid flirting thing then immediately says that she doesnt want to associate with the batfamily. queen.

not to mention right before this is my fav failgirl moment where she goes through her whole plan to crash the car and break jason out of prison. then just goes up and knocks on the door

flips the car over then walks up and says "hey its the fire department. open up" and not a single person believes her. i love her

lesbian rose crumbs <3 i still choose to believe shes talking about cass here idc. shes so silly and this was a cute lil panel

so yeah. she was on one page of this issue but that one page was great and i love her

mwsl #10

shes so lame <3 i talked about this moment a lot when this issue first released but i love it. "somebody had all the fun without us" upon finding a body, then realizing someone else was there and just. starts shooting. she doesnt hit anything. she doesnt even know where the other person is.

my big problem here is that she does not carry a gun and pretty much never uses guns. honestly now that im thinking about it this is one of the only times shes ever used a gun on panel (the other times i can think of being: shooting wade off a cliff after her mom died, shooting starfire in n52 outlaws (but new 52 rose barely even counts as rose), and using deathstroke's gun when she was pretending to be him in deathstroke 2016)

shes not anti-gun or anything but it still bothers me just a little that suddenly she has a gun (hence why i fully believe she stole jasons gun <3)

if i want to nitpick, kate should not have been able to hit her. rose should've seen she was coming wayyy before (bc precog) and she wouldnt be knocked down from one hit. i fear we are headed down a path of her becoming jasons incompetent girlfriend but i wont be too dramatic about her getting hit one (1) time

but other than that i thought this was a fun moment of rose getting hit then jason immediately fighting the person that hit her. toxic girlbesties fr

then also her needing to be held back after she gets up so she doesnt start attacking the person thats helping them <3 i love her

mwsl #11

this is a nice issue for her just because in true rose tradition she LOVES to have homoerotic fights with every other female character she interacts with. the kate & rose dynamic was soooo fun i love it when shes mean to people for no reason <3

i did not like this part though. i feel like there are a lot of implications about rose here that are unfair to her character & her place in the dcu. i'll meet the book on its own terms and say that we're only talking about post-52 rose (blah blah everything's canon rn but this book is very clearly not using pre-52 rose lore) but even then? theres no real reason for her to be ducking superheroes or for superheroes to keep an eye on her. shes not a villain or even much of a killer, the fact that shes "staying off the radars" of good guys doesnt make much sense. and the fact that kate knows her and "studies" her (fellas is it gay to study another woman despite never meeting her) implies that rose is like. a threat. shes just kind of around there is no reason kate should know her like that

cute moment! but also it bothers me. i think its fun that she refused to go since its not her fight and she doesnt want to get into a joker mess. HOWEVER. when has she ever in her life passed up an opportunity to get involved in someone elses problem. to me she wouldnt have even delivered the list of addresses without a fight if she wasnt gonna go along

other than her using a gun again (where the hell did she even get that) i like this <3 her showing up and saving manhunter after she said she didnt care what happened is so her. also i just like the fact that she shot joker

gay gay homosexual gay

the rest of this issue is fun <3 just kate & rose fighting together then getting blown up together <3 this was a nice issue for her despite the problems i had with it

gotham war red hood #2

gotham war break!!!

okay first of all i LOVE that he took her along. there was no reason for rose to be here but jason was told to meet someone and said "ok ill go but my weird friend comes with me" its so funny

ive seen a lot of people complain about the "you're my only friend" line but i LOVE it. not necessarily because she doesnt have any friends but because she would not in a million years ADMIT that she has friends. she would rather be shot in the head than say that she actually likes the people that she hangs out with.

but to be fair.... she also doesnt have friends. "what about the lazarus island gang?" the only person she actually liked there and showed any friendship toward was damian, and they ARE friends but she considers him more of a little brother than a friend. "what about the teen titans??" a) she would NEVER admit that she is friends with any of them b) its technically.... not really canon that she was ever on the same team as them. like i said before, im meeting this book on its terms, and rose being a teen titan hasnt been mentioned since flashpoint :( i wont go on a whole tangent about her friends but given that she hasnt really made a friend in years and never talks to anyone else, i think its fair for her to say that she has no friends

so yeah all this to say: she has friends, but it is 100% in character for her to say that she has no friends. i stand by this line

i dont have much to say here i just think shes so cute <3 i also love the fact that jason jumped straight to "rose is robbing a dead person" instead of "rose is inspecting the body"

but im OBSESSED with the fact that she DOES rob him. i feel like we're not talking about this enough. she saw a dead body and took his money. im not even mad about it because its so fucking funny to me

im sorry jay/rose fans this makes me want to vomit. this feels too "earnest emotions" for both of them. the rest of this scene was fine but this panel specifically feels so :/

"i just need help" "always" and "please take care of yourself" and "meet at our spot" "promise?" "i promise" does not feel like them at all. its a very sweet and genuine moment but they would NOT have sweet and genuine moments! neither of them would ever express their feelings and they would not have this conversation

this does not feel like rose at all idk who this is. where is the rage!!!!!! where is the anger!!!!!!! why did she stand there for hours just. worried about him. why isnt she lashing out

comparing this to the scene in tt03 where she's worried about eddie:

she gets angry! shes worried about him and starts yelling at everyone around her because hes hurt and she doesnt know whats happening. i would have LOVED this energy in this book and its sooooo disappointing that she just. stands there like 🥺 when she doesnt know what happened to jason

mwsl #12

i rly liked this part fhdkjfhakjdfd i thought her pretending to be him just to get batman out of the way was so good and so real. shes helping out AND fucking with batman

very minor complaint here but this isnt even true . she DOES try to run into him in ds16 when slade kidnaps damian and rose gives bruce the ransom terms. also i feel like this line is vaguely implying that she HAS found him (/he found her) on accident before which is also not true given that their only interactions are in ds16 and being in the same general area in shadow war. and also reiterating that shes not a villain so batman has no reason to track her down or cause problems for her but. whatever. this is entirely just me jumping to conclusions about what this one throwaway line means and then getting mad about it

LOVE this. she inserted herself into the situation then complains about it. this isnt her business and shes making sure that jason knows it. but also she completely volunteered for most of this

BOOOOOOOO she would not fucking say that. "sorry about that whole chase" no she would not apologize. "please dont kick my ass" she would NOT say that!!!!! first of all given that this is after gotham war she would probably kick his ass just for what he did to jason. even besides that she would not be afraid of him even a little. comparing their convo in ds16 #5 to this is so sad bc </3 why is she afraid of him instead of being a huge bitch and yelling at him

this ending is really good for her though. she absolutely would dive into the water with joker gas, trash, and dead bodies just to save her friend <3

this is more like it!!!!!!!! shes worried for him and takes initiative to save him by jumping in the water despite it being a very dangerous decision and then insults him while she saves his life <3333 its a tiny bit more of her being mean to express worry which is nice <3 its not perfect but its closer

in conclusion: there are many good moments. there are many parts i like about it. but there are just so many things that dont feel like rose </3 most of the broad strokes are there but it just doesnt feel like her when shes not full of rage and going out of her way to piss people off

[moonyasnow]

Additional thoughts about that Oiran!Irina AU

bc I know way too much about the lives of women in the red light districts of the Edo period of Japanese history (and I'm also close to falling asleep and that seems to be when all the motivation and good ideas come)

[ original post here. Would have just reblogged it with this new stuff but I'm about to go to bed and only have my phone and wrote this in drafts before I had that idea ]

First thing's first, I wanna educate some people bc this is a genuinely super fascinating topic to me:

Patrons were basically always LONG-TERM— at least if you were a courtesan and not the kind of sex-worker who was hired for one-time things

Because it wasn't only the obvious aspect that the men who were with courtesans were paying for; it was also basically a 'relationship' experience. They payed not only to sleep with the courtesan— and that usually didn't happen until at LEAST the 3d date— but also to come and basically have dates with them, spend time with them, flirt and stuff, and for them to listen to your troubles. It was also assumed to be monogamous— at least for the Patron. The courtesan was, of course, a courtesan, so it was literally her job to be with multiple people. But the Patron was only allowed to be seeing one courtesan at a time

And back to what I wanted to say

There was a thing where, a courtesan cutting off a lock of her hair to give to one of her patrons was seen as 'proof' of her love, since the hair was considered very valuable to a courtesan and to her beauty. (Some courtesans even payed someone to get a lock of hair from just— wherever, and pretended it was their own)

And I started thinking about Malleus, slightly misunderstanding the intricate, unwritten social rules of this whole thing— it was typically only the courtesan who did it— only seeing the 'a lock of your hair is a proof of love' part, and one day he cuts off a lock of his own hair and gives it to her, saying something about her now always having something to remind her of him, even when they can't always be near each other.

And, there was also a more extreme version of the hair thing, which involved the courtesan cutting off her pinky finger to give to her patron. This was most likely faked most of the time though, and it was more about the intent of it if I remember correctly— so it was normal, and actually expected, for a courtesan to make a big deal about how she was going to do it, maybe even taking out a knife, and the patron stopping her right before she actually did it.

And Irina, having grown up in this world* (I'll explain this more at the end of the post bc I caught myself infodumping again) has kinda come to romanticize this.

So I imagine that she actually tells him that she'll give him her pinky finger— just because she'd have grown up with that being what was expected to do to show your devotion to someone— but instead of the response she expected he looks really sad. And he kisses her fingers and tells her that he would never want her to hurt herself for his sake, and that it broke his heart to hear she would even think of doing something like that to herself. And also that it will always be infinitely more beautiful still attached to her.

Irina, having grown up with all these weird social rules (that were ONLY 'the norm' in the red light districts— and most of the really out-there stuff more in Yoshiwara) and— she, at least, given her mental state— seeing them as the norm, as 'just what one does' felt a bit confused by his actions.

She's the kind of person who would genuinely buy into the 'proof of love' stuff, especially if it was just a thing in the culture she grew up in, so she sees it for exactly the gesture he meant it as. And she's never been the one who had someone wanting to show proof of their love to her.

So it kinda made her go

Irina ended up cutting a big lock of her own hair to give to him, as well— not bc it was expected of her, but because of his own sentiment, of having something of the others for when they missed each other

Oh oh also—

A thing that could add angst in this AU is that, in general, a courtesan wasn't actually allowed to fall in love, even with one of her own patrons, bc it might risk her wanting to run away with that person or refusing to see her other patrons entirely. A courtesan's job was to pretend to be in love, but never actually be in love

But maybe one day she'd lament how she wished she could be with only him

And then Malleus says he'll just double whatever the combined sum all her other patrons are paying is so it wouldn't be something her Madame could complain about

Irina, probably not realizing he's actually being 100% serious, would say it would be nice if he could

Then the literal next day she finds out he actually fckn did it

*Women who went on to become high-rank courtesans were almost always purchased by brothels from starving or sick or indebted or otherwise not well off families when they were still very young, between the ages of 5-9. At first they were made basically the 'little sister' of a woman who was already a courtesan. So the girl's big sister would care for her, feed her, clothe her, etc. And the girl would basically be her way of communicating with people. Because a courtesan couldn't just DIRECTLY go up to a patron she liked and ask him to spend more time with her bc of a bunch of those aforementioned unwritten social rules. So instead, the little sister would find him and ask him to come see her big sister.

They also did things like run errands, accept gifts on their big sister's behalf, and tell their sister about any news or gossip they heard

Courtesans usually had one or two little sisters. And I don't remember exactly when, but at some point, if one of them showed promise in music or some other art, was particularly pretty, and socially skilled, she began to be considered a courtesan-in-training herself, until she was considered old enough to become a fully-fledged courtesan (which was usually still very young by today's standards— I've heard around 14-15 was a common age— though I could be wrong, it's been a lil while)

[riddlerosehearts]

HII ITS IDIAVIL ANON AGAIN!!! i wanted to respond to the post u made in response to my ask... I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND NOT BEING ABLE 2 WRITE FICS LIKE!! ive been creatively writing for years and when it comes to stuff im rlly passionate abt i can become super duper creative. my struggle with writing fanfic is finding the time and motivation, plus my adhd makes it difficult for me to focus, BUT IVE BEEN DOING BETTER RECENTLY!!! im kinda familiar with wicked? i saw it on stage back when i was just a wee lad but i dont remember much of it (i honestly think i fell asleep ;-;) but i've been wanting to watch both the play and the new movie, i just haven't gotten to it yet. i will definitely keep this in mind as i watch both!! a few weeks ago i actually watched jennifer's body for the first time, i'd been wanting to watch it but then i saw someone mention a jennifer's body idiavil au and oh my gods i literally couldnt stop thinking about it. i've definitely kept that au in mind, and i will do the same for the wicked au!! when i do eventually watch wicked i'll probably send another giant yapping paragraph in ur asks abt it... ALSO PLEEASEE I WOULD LOVE LOVE LOVE TO HEAR MORE ABT UR AU IT SEEMS SO COOL!!! also. hercules au. oh my god u get me. i'm not exaggerating when i say i've thought abt the idiavil meg and hercules parallel at least once a day for the past like five or so months. i NEVER stop talking to my friends about it EVER. i was actually on a disney cruise (twas a family trip) about a month ago and they had a giant tv above the pool, they showed a movie every fifteen minutes (after the movie prior had ended) and WHEN I TELL YOU I FREAKED OUT WHEN I SAW THEY HAD A SHOWING FOR HERCULES. AND I HAD TO RESIST FROM STIMMING (i get embarrassed when i stim in public bc i dont like being looked at or percieved like ever) DURING WONT SAY IM IN LOVE LIKE THATS PROBABLY MY FAVORITE DISNEY SONG OF ALL TIME OH MY GOODNESS. I WOULDNT STOP TEXTING MY FRIEND AND TALKING ABOUT IDIAVIL. also i did see ur response and oh my goodness i think abt it so much. ill probably share the keychains and playlists off anon later... also i LOVE the fact u keep ur pins of them next to each other... my birthday was actually a while ago (oct 28th) but the art has been delayed bc shes been busy which idm, shes putting a ton of effort into it. ill also probably share that off anon whenever its done!! alr im gonna wrap this up, i do have a few things i have to get done soon but i'll try to send in those playlists and pictures of the keychains b4 i go to bed tn!!

hi again haha!! whenever you watch the wicked movie i really hope you enjoy it! just keep in mind that they kind of, extended every single scene in act 1 to make it 2.5 hours long (when the whole stage musical with both acts combined is that length), so it's only a part 1 and we won't get part 2 until next year. which admittedly DOES bug me but i still loved the movie anyway. if you want to watch the stage musical after that, well, the people who record bootlegs usually ask you not to put them on youtube but people do anyway AKJDGJFSG. so you can probably find one easily enough! it's my absolute favorite musical! when i went to see it live in april, i kept thinking "well, vil does share glinda's love of fashion and her popularity and ambition, but he's different from her in a lot of ways too! for example, he doesn't believe that popularity is the only thing that really matters, and he would never sacrifice his own morals and ideals to achieve his goals... oh... wait..." and then i realized that the whole plot of book 5 is that vil kind of DID do all that! that's the whole tragedy of it, that he overblotted because he DID start to think that his hard work was meaningless and that he SHOULD resort to any means possible to be the most popular at the expense of his moral compass, and he thought of himself as ugly for doing so! he COULD have ended up basically alone, being praised by others around him as beautiful and good while inside he secretly believes himself to be wicked, just like glinda if his friends hadn't done everything to stop him from poisoning neige.

and idia may not be an animal rights activist like elphaba, nor is she an otaku LOL, but elphaba grew up lonely and ostracized because of her green skin and idia's family curse forced him to grow up isolated on the isle of woe and have blue fire for hair. she's a caretaker for her disabled sister whose father blames her for her condition, and idia has a robot brother whose death he blames himself for. elphaba is jaded and sarcastic and abrasive and deeply insecure, and who else fits that description? the only issue is that idia is far too pessimistic about the future to decide to do what elphaba does in defying gravity on his own, but i think in an AU he could be pushed to do it. also there's this part in wicked where after glinda and elphaba get back from a big dance at the ozdust ballroom glinda says "was that your first party?!" and elphaba deadpans "does a funeral count?" and i can just so clearly see that with idia and vil AFKJDGHF. there's so many other scenes too that i just see as being perfect for them.

as for fiyero i had two ideas here: in the actual musical, there's a love triangle in which elphaba and fiyero ultimately end up together but as i mentioned i would want to give my AU a happy ending and make vil and idia end up together in it. so i would do one of two things: 1) cast kalim as fiyero, because he literally just fits the role perfectly. fiyero is a foreign prince, and look at the lyrics to dancing through life and try to tell me kalim wouldn't sing this. but i don't ship kalim with either vil or idia, so in this scenario i'd probably cut the love triangle and have him somehow end up as their bestie who supports whatever insane gay thing those two have got going on. imo kalim really does fit fiyero better than anyone else and this idea is just so funny to me. or 2) cast rook as fiyero, keep the love triangle, and have it end in polyamory because even though i've never even considered shipping rook with idia i do ship rook/vil and i think this would be hilarious as an AU. also, there's a scene in wicked where glinda and elphaba are hanging out and glinda is like "let's tell each other our best secrets! i'll go first! FIYERO AND I ARE GOING TO BE MARRIED!!!" and since they've just started dating elphaba is like "he's asked you already??" and then glinda goes "oh no, he doesn't know yet!" and imagining vil saying that about rook just makes me laugh so hard.

OKAY. so there is an incomplete summary of my thoughts on a vilidia wicked AU!! honestly i don't really watch horror movies so i haven't seen jennifer's body but if i ever do watch it i'll have to keep that AU idea in mind. as for the hercules parallel idk if you've seen this post of mine but it makes me so happy every time someone likes or reblogs it because then i get to think about them again. hercules/meg has always been one of my favorite disney couples so when i saw this happen in book 6 i was immediately just. doomed to be insane about vil/idia forever because are you KIDDING ME?? also your birthday is right after mine omg, mine was october 25th!! so a late happy birthday to you, then! one last thing i'd like to say in this already way too long response is that i have two sets of floyd and riddle nuis--listen, they're my other favorite ship so i bought the first ones online and then saw more at a con i went to and couldn't resist--and i'm going to be getting idia and ortho nuis for christmas. hopefully soon i'll be able to get a vil nui as well so i can keep him right next to his boyfriend and his film club buddy/future brother-in-law 💙💜

[one-winged-dreams]

Fucking LEAPS out of bed because I'm like 80% sure an actual old god just visited me in my dreams to try to romance me because I have NEVER felt that kind of love for someone in a dream EVER.

under cut for length

Like, in the dream, I was moving somewhere far away, to a different country, even, I think? And I went through the whole process of saying goodbye to my family, and then it cut to me looking around the, admittedly kind of spooky, new apartment complex I was living in. And I found a courtyard that was a liiitle bit neglected, but, like, in a maybe a couple months at the most kind of neglected.

There was this little vent-looking thing under the curb, and when I sat down on one of the benches for a while this black smoke started pouring out of it and a HORRIFIC fucking huge creature started pulling itself out, which looked very frantic because he was a BIG LONG MOTHERFUCKER.

He had like, a canine-ADJACENT (bc idk how to fuck to describe what kind of creature that skull looked like it was from) face, and then a fluffy mane with a couple eyes clustered around where the floof overtook the bone. And he was REALLY long. Like, not serpent-long but waaay longer than anything with that particular body shape should be. It was like a dragon body but with black fur of varying lengths. Also, he had a tail that was like, very out of focus in a really reality-warping sort of way, and eye-like shapes would flicker in and out.

And it was, by all means, the most terrifying sight I had ever seen in my goddamn life but there was no way I was gonna run past him so I just kind of sat there horrified and then like

He stopped thrashing about and started more DEXTROUSLY pulling himself out of the vent and telling me to not be scared, I was the prettiest thing he'd ever seen and there was no way he couldn't at least TRY to talk to me, seriously, I'm a god, don't you want to talk to a god?

But not at all in like a duplicitous or fae-trickery or anything way, it was legit like he was trying to rizz me up lmfao. And I was fucking STUNNED into being like "Are you serious?" "Absolutely, yes. Please, just sit with me for a little bit, I know I'm not easy on the eyes but you are SO beautiful."

And we talked and I was like "Oh my god he is actually really super hot, we are entering the monster fucker zone." and he was CUTE too. Definitely just some dude trying to slide into a pretty boy's dms. And then he went on about how he was just trying to see what sad motherfucker was making the vibes for his burial ground all mopey and then was like "WAHEY" and started trying to come onto me without even thinking about the semantics.

"Ohhh, I see how it is. You DEFINITELY already have a crush on me."

And I was embarrassed and hiding my face and blushing and saying that he was cute and I couldn't help it and he was very much pleased with this, saying "Good luck getting rid of me now, I'll romance you if it's the last thing I do." and then left

And there were several montages of us just being together and getting to know each other.

In one of them, I got confused and tried to open the wrong apartment door, and some drunk lady in her mid-20s came out and started yelling at me, and then tried HITTING on me. But then I felt this arm around my shoulder and look up to see this OBSCENELY tall super handsome goth dude smirk and be like "He's taken, thanks," and spin me around and escort me back to my apartment.

And in time it took me to put my stuff away and be like "Are you serious? Thanks, though," he was lounging on the couch in this very monstrous, like, half-human-half-god-form appearance, and I was blushing SO hard over it.

"Of course, I wasn't gonna let that slide."

And then we started CUDDLING on the couch, and I was extremely flustered but SO happy, and that was the part where I had never felt so in love with someone in my dreams before, and I was talking to him like "I want to take a few more steps," and he looked at me and was like "You don't have enough life in you right now for that, you're gonna have to wait a little more." "Are you really pay walling me right now?" "Just think of it as one of those pay-to-read so much per day romance webtoons."

And then after I expressed my disappointment, I woke up.

I don't remember him ever SAYING his name, but I know for a fact that it was Akingraeux

Idk man, I'm STILL flustered over it. You ever meet an elder god so thirsty for you that you can't NOT fall in love with him?

anyway

so

maybe

i'll do something with this

👉👈

[tiredmamaissy]

hey, i want to get into writing but like idk how 😭 like how would i even start it off, how to finish, how to write smut? yk but i wanted to ask u bcs ur so good at it, so maybe u could help😋😋, perfectly okay if u don’t 😭

Hey! Thank you so much :').

I'm flattered that you're even asking me this question.

I honestly have no specific way of writing! (not that I'm aware of at least). I kind of feel like my writing is forever changing. When I wrote 'neteyam's first rut' (first post) I had the idea in my head for like days. One night I was like 'I literally can't keep this in my head any longer'. So I wrote it out, in no specific way/style of writing and did a quick proofread and decided:

"hey, why not post this shit? lol people probably won't even see it. and then i won't have this filthy smut in my hard drive for people to find when i'm dead (not even joking, this was literally what was going through my head.)"

But since I feel like my writing has changed a bit, hopefully not too drastically or out of character. Of course I've also gotten a little more comfortable on this site, too. :)

My experience with writing goes back to high school and university. I majored in a 'soft science', as they like to call it. Did tons and tons of research papers (way too fucking many to give it a number). So all I can really say about that is the more you write the easier it becomes - kind of like a muscle memory? Eventually it just flows out of you. Also reading. Reading helps ya know, the more you read the more you're exposed to other styles of writing, vocabulary, the whole shabang. Like @lovemyavatar, I love her style of writing, literally obsessed (and she knows it, hehe.)

I'd say write when you're motivated, inspired - driven. Or else it'll kind of dull the sparkle and take the fun out of it (wasn't fun writing any of those papers). So when an idea pops up, just go for it. Don't even think about grammar, vocabulary, etc. Just get that shit out of your system. You can always go back, fix any errors, and change things up - switch out a word with another, rephrase a sentence (or a paragraph or two), change up the plot - whatever you see fit. If I'm mid-washing the dishes and I get an idea I'll stop and make a quick voice note or a note in my phone.

As for starting and finishing, hmm. These are good questions, because I kind of feel like there's no standard or set way to start or finish literature. It all depends on what you're writing about and what your intentions are with it. What are you trying to portray? How do you want the reader to feel? What tense do you want to write in/most appropriate? What's your plot, if any? Where does it take place? What tone of voice do you want to use? How do you plan to differentiate the characters? I like to imagine the character's voice in my head actually saying the phase, or ask myself if Neteyam/Lo'ak would really say this.

For example I did a double POV for the first time, and when researching about it the article said "...you should be able to flip to a random page, read a couple sentences, and know which character is speaking." Which is so true. So I tried to keep that in mind, and focus on the characters development and make their voices more distinct.

I read a Lo'ak one-shot on here and a lot of people (including me) wanted a part two - I'm assuming so we could get some sort of closure/feel better/happy ending. But, the authors intention was to portray him in a dark light - to hurt the reader so to speak. So well-written and I really love their other work, too.

As for smut 👀. I'm honestly still new to this so I'm learning as I go. I love to consume smut so that has definitely helped - seeing other people and what terms and vocabulary they use. Overall, I just try to be very descriptive, so that the reader can really immerse themselves into the scene and feel what their character is supposed to be feeling. I try not to go overboard with the words though, because that can take away from it at times. For example, I wrote about a fight scene with Neteyam and Auzo (in 'with my life') and I kept it short and simple - "He throws a punch to his jaw, knocking him off his feet." type of shit.

I also do some research (lool thought I was done with the research life). My google searches are riddled with "synonym for..." "how to describe [this action] in writing". No shame in doing your research. There are a few blogs on this site that actually help out in regards to basic knowledge of coitus, cunnilingus, fellatio etc. as well as other sites, too! They list descriptive words, alternatives to 'she said' (lool i eat those up), other do's and don'ts.

And of course, I do some research about the na'vi. I try to make it somewhat realistic, especially with the fic I posted 'with my life' (longest one to date). I did some deep digging on their website about the 'first blood' ritual, and just other simple information about the flora and fauna of the planet.

This is my favourite source of information for smut.

Out of all the sources I've read, this is the best one so far. If I'm ever in a stump, or I feel like I need a better fitting word - I'll refer to this. This author also includes some really good points about sex, down to first times, anal - the whole works.

This is my favourite source of information for avatar.

I hope this helped somewhat and that I was able to answer your question! If you do get into writing, and you do decide to post it, I'd love to read it.

Sorry this is kind of lengthy, I have an issue with overwriting, and overall just talking too much. lmao

~ issy 💜

[fangaminghell]

( @valkyrie-of-the-rising-sun )

A hopefully quick debrief of the very self indulgent Supernatural Au!!!

How it started: I literally was just thinking about Sasha, and if he was a mermaid. Literally couldn't stop thinking about it, bc Sasha already is so fun to think about, but him as a man eating mermaid? Impossible to ignore.

What came after: I don't remember the exact events that lead to it, but at some point 1) I started to imagine what my other ocs would be like as monsters and 2) my friend Rowan ( @eclysia ) added Asfrith to the table ( bc at this point, Asfrith being tied to Sasha or ( especially) Isador was always a given, hehe) as a researcher of sorts of monsters. He uh. Was almost drowned by Sasha before Sasha thought it would be very funny to let him live. And thus started....whatever they got going on. Because Isador is Devil in Paragon, I thought it'd make sense if the twins were both demons in this au, and by proxy, Flynn. I could go into deeper detail but the main gist is that things Expanded than just " omg Mermaid Sasha he's so hot".

How's it going: While the world building is super set in stone, I'm honestly having fun here lol. Au's are great for showing sides of characters that aren't usually shown in canon. The post about Teddy is a big example.

I know this was supposed to be short but lemme breakdown the characters so far reaaaal quick:

Sasha: Mermaid. Favorites past time is sinking ships, eating humans, and looking amazing. Is currently having fun with his new little play thang ( Asfrith). Was planning on killing him when he finally gets bored but uh. Maybe not?

Isador: One half of the Arkwright Twins, he's still a grumpy bitch, but when business calls, he knows how to put on a performance~ Got connected to Asfrith when he summoned the two for a deal. Instead of taking Asfrith's soul like Isador wanted, Teddy instead offered to look after their cousin Flynn, hence, the two becoming more connected than Isador thought would be necessary.

Teddy: The other half of the Arkwright Twins, and is usually considered the friendly options. It doesn't help that he looks more angelic compared to his brother: no he's not half angel, he just looks like that. Great for business, easier to lure people into a false sense of security- Ahem. A sweetheart who can and will go on a rampage if you dare hurt his family. May or may not be a bit of gremlin. Who's to say ( Isador. Isador is to say)

Flynn: The twins younger cousin, a kitsune that is often in disguise in the village where this whole thing is taking place. She's terribly shy, and has low self confidence, much preferring to be away from the attention. Her parents believe they have power over the village - they don't - and often pester Flynn to do something in order to increase their- I mean her status. Really, her only solis her cousins, and bc of their business they tend to be too busy to visit. It's a lonely life, but she's fine....at least, she think she is until two humans(?) show up in her life

Imani: The only human of my ocs so far! Well not really, but I'll explain that later. Her story isn't fully fleshed out, but she's Asfrith self appointed assistant! She happens to hang out with monsters more often than not, even getting along with those she really really shouldn't be! But it's okay, more friends means a greater time!

Arrow: I'm still not sure but I'm working on it I swear! Maybe a harpy, but still gotta think about it.

Other ocs: So, this au is actually a build up on the old mermaid au I had featuring Leo and the reborn gang. Given how I didn't exactly want to get rid of it, I just decided that the old au and this au are the same thing, with different things happening to different people. They don't all have to know each other, these stories are, for the most part, separate but within the same time and place, basically. Aaaand. Yeah!

This was not short at all! Lmao. Hoped it was decent context though. Probably not, since it. Doesn't fully explain Teddy. Ah well.

[epickiya722]

Deku/Mirko hate is extremely hilarious when it comes from angry dudebros bc you can feel how strong their ego and masculinity is as much as of a wet piece of paper.

But when it comes from ppl whose favorite manga/anime is CSM, JJk and Mp100, calling Deku "pathetic" or complaining abt how Mirko is too sexy... Girl what the fuck are you talking abt you're literally in the pathetic loser meow meow man and sexy girlboss fandom WHAT

(Anon, means the two characters separately, not as a ship. I just have a feeling someone would have taken as such.)

NOT THE WET PAPER! 🤣

But no, for real, it's astounding to me when people hate on Deku or Miruko for reasons I find totally backwards. And it honestly just increases my love for both characters.

I was gonna make a post about it, but I stopped myself because "Kiya, cease the saltiness". But you know what? Imma say it here.

Warning, this is about to get LONG because I have so much to say and I'm tired of just writing posts and deleting them.

Let's me start with my queen, my goddess, the icon Miruko.

I get it when people are tired of the whole "sexy anime girls with the big boobs and butt shots" especially in shonen, I'm annoyed with it myself at times, I am.

But compared to what I seen for female characters in other shonen, especially with Rabbit girls, Miruko is both something tamer and new. Let's be real here!

A lot of rabbit female characters, most really in general, in anime be tiny and meek. Have big boobs and showing off cleavage. And even if they are strong, their physical appearance doesn't mirror it because they're supposed to be "cute".

Miruko though? She has muscles, but she isn't packing them like fucking All Might now. Her body is reminiscent to someone who would work out, someone who is an athlete, especially those who specializes in speed and agility.

What's even better? It's not like Miruko is incapable of being cute.

People look at her and see "aggressive, feral woman with muscles".

But come on now!

This? This can't be cute?

Fuck out of here!!

She is a short rabbit woman! How the fuck isn't she cute to anybody?!

(And honestly, again, I love that she is short because it makes sense. Her being tall is just awkward to me. It's ridiculous, I'll be frank. And honestly, makes me mad for several reasons as someone who shares similar physical features as her.)

Oh, so it's illegal to be sexy and cute for Miruko, but some of the same people lose themselves over shirtless guys in the same anime.

"Look at all the gratuitous shots of Miruko's legs, blech". Not even a moment later, Dabi shows a little bit of tit and people are drooling. Oh, please. Hawks does anything, "he's so cute". Get the hell of out here.

Miruko gets shots of her legs, sure. It's expected in a shonen. But at least her boobs aren't unnecessarily huge and her waist is nearly the size of a pinch. The most that is emphasized is her legs. Midoriya and Iida even gets shots of their legs sometimes!

Oh! Let's not forget how people hate on her because how much she's a fighter!

What bothers me is that I get why it's iffy that Miruko is "aggressive" while having brown skin, I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, being that she is a brown skinned woman, it is off that she is the way she is. On the other hand, and this is a theory, she could be a reference to Horikoshi's previous protagonist Shiina. Who is an albino rabbit man who had the exact personality Miruko does.

Now the thing that bothers me about this on the part of the fandom is they hate Miruko for being aggressive, right? THEN WHERE THE FUCK IS THE SAME ENERGY FOR SOME OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS?

No, no because almost every character is ready for a fight in BNHA. We are not going to act like Miruko is the worst case out there because she isn't. There are people who love Toga for her bloodthirsty nature but hate Miruko. Bakugou may have some haters, but oh my gosh there are plenty of people who find him badass and attractive for that attitude. The other villains can be just as "mean" and talk about killing, yet oh! They have fans! Hell, even Endeavor got fans!! Kirishima is always ready for a fight, too and practically NO ONE hates him!

So why hate on Miruko?

Hell, even in the mentioned animes/mangas you pointed out, Anon, the women are worse than Miruko. Come on, example, Chainsaw Man. I cannot recall any female character in there that wasn't like evil or bloodthirsty or is like super nice.

And it's not like Miruko is mean. She's just blunt and isn't afraid of who she is. Her "mean" side comes out when she's facing villains. She is a "no-nonsense" character.

Now let me move on to my green boy, Midoriya because whoo boy. When it comes to people within and outside this fandom, I want to gatekeep him so bad.

"Midoriya is so pathetic, he's just a crybaby".

So I guess other shonen protagonists don't exist, huh? So other shonen protagonists don't be crying whether it be for gags or serious moments?

Like this is the same kid who has moments like this.

Him? Him? Are we sure this is the "pathetic" one?

No, this is someone who eventually gets tired of everyone else's shit. (True ♋ Vibes right there.)

Kid cleaned a beach WITHOUT ANY POWERS.

His goal to be a hero is no different than any other protagonist back then and now. And he looks badass doing it.

Know what I adore about Midoriya? That he actually comes off like a damn teenager and have other defining traits that is opposite of other protagonists.

He isn't girl crazy. He's awkward around girls, but he isn't some pervert. Hell, girls are the last thing on his mind.

He's also not some dumb kid. He's may not be #1 in his class, but he's isn't book dumb. He's smart both on and off the field and relies on what he observes to win battles instead of taking five episodes to train while his friends fight some overpowered villain and come back and win within two minutes.

He actually struggles in battle, even with all those quirks, he does have struggles, including what happens with his body. Physical evidence. We barely get that in anime. The most it's a scar or a lost limb that happens BEFORE the story. Midoriya gets abrasions, scars, crooked fingers and even warnings about losing his arms.

Even his appearance is a breath of fresh air to me because I swear red, orange and yellow are too common for protagonists. Don't hate the colors at all, but let's be for real here. Warm colors, be it clothes or hair, is a sign of "Oh that's the protagonist".

Midoriya? Green. HE'S GREEN AND I LOVE IT!! The most he wears of red is his belt and shoes and his backpack is yellow, but Horikoshi makes it very clear that GREEN is his signature color. His name means GREEN.

Midoriya is not the typical shonen protagonist and I adore that about him.

Overall, out of all the characters, I adore both them and find some of what people complain about them just so... *sighs really loud*.

[deathwish-confession]

Interesting reading about the beginning of Occupy Wall Street. Ironically on /pol/.

Coping anon's bc got tired of screenshoting:

When it first started out there were only about a dozen of us hanging out in a park in downtown. We had some tents, we made some signs protesting the banks, but mostly we just sat around and talked about our ideas for governance. Honestly those first few weeks where it was just a handful of us young idealists were really cool.

Then things started escalating.

Counter protesters happened a bit, people driving by and yelling slanderously at us but not being brave enough to stop and have a discussion or anything.

Then one day I was hanging out on my lunch break at work holding up a sign and one of my friends came up and told me that that night the cops were planning on coming out in force to bust us up. I didn't believe him, we'd heard rumors about it before but it didn't sound serious. He said this time the ACLU was getting involved and was sending a rep over to talk to us about everything to get us ready for the cops coming, which I should have taken more seriously but I still thought it was just people talking big because things got really heated in New York at that time.

But then the cops DID come that night, and they maced all my friends. I'll be perfectly honest, when they were talking about arresting people I stepped off and watched from the sidewalk and others took video with their phones but for some reason the word had gotten out that something was going down that night and there were SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE THERE.

I couldn't understand that part, how we had gone from a couple of dozen of us in total hanging out to around 200 people there that particular night when the cops escalated.

They maced a bunch of people and arrested them. This caused an explosion of popularity and a whole host of other problems with it, especially once the ACLU got more involved with us.

When things started getting big in Wall Street in New York, a few of the more clever people got logically pointed towards as leaders in the movement, just college kids who happened to be charismatic.

They were immediately smeared so hard that as a tactic we decided to be a leaderless organization without a hierarchy. This wound up being a large part of our local chapter's downfall by itself--we had a leader we all deferred to we just didn't want the public to know about him.

Anyway after the macing incident from the cops things got way bigger. Suddenly we had dozens of people at the site night and day. And with them came a lawyer from the ACLU, I'll never forget it because that was the day I felt like I truly lost my voice entirely in this organization that I had quite frankly and literally been a large part of starting. This was because with all the new people coming in, and those of us veterans who had been around in the beginning trying to impose a culture on a population 20x your size proved to be virtually impossible immediately.

With the ACLU immediately a hierarchy formed because two other people showed up with them that assumed command roles. With all the new people we couldn't convince all the newbies that our actual leader was in fact our leader and had orchestrated the entire presence that was there at all, his voice disappeared too in what we thought was great at first, an explosion in popularity and what looked like funding and big support from the people.

Anyway the ACLU sent their lawyer and the two ugly people came with them at that time or that was largely when I recall they showed up, a man and a woman. Anyway I mentioned that a hierarchy formed, they seemed to have known the ACLU lawyer who came and gave his spiel and at the very least that was the beginning of their involvement with the group.

They stayed day and night. I lived in the area and worked in the area so I came during my free time but I still went home to sleep most nights, they came and immediately stayed day and night never leaving.

At first they seemed great, they were older than everyone else and they seemed to have a lot of experience with protests. They were good at getting everyone calmed down and listening to them and coming up with ideas for organization, like getting a bank account started and getting donations put into it and then deciding on a list of donations of things that should be brought up to reinforce the camp, this that and the other.

[lqfiles]

user lqfiles i have no idea what to call you.

see saying "hello tumblr user lqfiles" sounds ominous and it's giving sigma... god i hate that word. i have beef with the gen alpha slang, everytime i hear a reel with "what the sigma" i grow a little closer to throwing that toaster right into the bathtub. ANYWAYS, my point is that i'm going to figure out how to come up with a nickname for you. it'll come, eventually trust. i'll think of one okay. something to do with l & q idk. unless there's something else you want me to call you? ALSO NOOO IM NOT RICH. 😭😭 as i mentioned before i bought like... 3x the amount of pcs i OWNED BEFORE i went on a buying spree. so all i had was just the pcs i collected from albums that were gifts from friends... (i never thought it a good idea to spend money on this stuff for myself.) I was actually traveling abroad which was why i hadn't checked in for a bit, and the prices... were just so much cheaper!! So I decided, why not? fuck it we ball! (my life motto to everything at this point...) and i'm in a decent financially stable point in my life where i can indulge in this stuff, so i bought quite a bit... i tried to focus on buying pcs... cause storing albums in my suitcase makes it a lot heavier.

i definitely have a hand kink its not a joke anymore. IT REMINDED ME OF THIS IMAGE (idk if it's going to work if it doesn't uh.... ignore! cause i've never sent links on anon and tumblr hates making things easier for us.) https://postimg.cc/1gWC0B48 AND IDK IF YOU CAN SEE IT BUT ITS SO FUNNY I COULDNT STOP LAUGHING. they're both me

i also have no idea who louis partridge is BUT HOLY FUCKING SHIT I JUST LOOKED HIM UP AND GOD DAMN. like my taste in men is obviously questionable, and like most people i did have a thing for andrew garfield and theo james... but i think i often find myself crushing on east asians half of the time, mostly because i am eastern asian myself, and it's not like on purpose cause i do find other races hot, it's just the way i grew up finding famiiarity in those faces? does that make sense idk im yapping at this point.

ALSO THE SMAU IS SO FUNNY IM CAUGHT UP NOW.... HAECHAN LITERALLY GOING THROUGH ALL STAGES OF GRIEF. HE WANTS HER SO BAD BUT ALSO THE COMPLAIN ABOUT THE WHOLE PINTREST BROWSING.... LIKE HES SO REAL AND CUTE AT THE SAME TIME I LOVE HIM. (chatgpt is too real AND THE FACT THAT y/n IS EATING IT UP IS SO FUNNY LIKE I WOULD'VE ALREADY BEEN LIKE.... why does this sound like it's written by ai...) holy fuck that's a lot i ranted a lot anyways hello, look forward to the next chapter. love you and hope u have a great day TUMBLR USER LQFILES - 🤠

hejdhskdj sometimes i’m tempted to put my name back in my about me so you guys can put a name to my account but then i remember how don’t wanna be perceived THAT much and rethink #SOZZZZ idk maybe i’ll come up with a new alias that you can start addressing me by, tho if you’re curious you can figure my name out if you find my main blog and check my tags 😭

you’re gonna hate me omgg bc except for the word sigma (cos that cringe) i unfortunately love brainrot content atm… like yess give me the skibidi toilet rizz party, give me the ohio fanum tax, GIVE ME RHE MAXIMUM AURA 😅😂 the effect of living with little boys..

FUXK IF WE BALL IS SUCH AN AMAZING LIFE MOTTO like exactly.. we are ballin.. anyways you not spending any money yourself on albums is sending me lmaooo but at least you were able to use the money you had saved to buy yourself some cheeky pcs. tbh i think pcs are the only appealing part for most part when buying an album anyways so it’s a good thing that you didn’t buy albums lmaooo

THE IMAGE IS SHOWING LMAOOOO i love this pic so bad ughhh he has such nice hands i wish i could hold his hands and play with them.. the perfect mix between girly dainty hands and manly veiny like I WANXTHU SO BAD HAECHAN

MOST PEOPLE MUST NOT INLCUDE ME… but tbh i don’t think i have a specific race i like in men, THO IM IN MY ARABIC BOYS ERA RN… idk if anyone knows slushynoobz but hamza.. i wantchu saaaur bad like GIVE ME THE YEMENI BOY.. also i don’t think it’s weird to prefer your own people!!! its something a lot of cultures have too so don’t worry about it you’re not yapping, my mum is the same 😭

LOLLLL HAECHAN EXPERIENCES THE LOSS OF HIS UNOFFICIAL GF he was probably with his head in his hands when she didn’t respond to his apex request. and ntm he tweaked the letter a bit to make it more personalised!!! a bit of ai here and there but still personal!!!!

I LOVE YOU TOOO COWBOY ANON!!!

[lexicals]

I said I’d post this the other day and then Completely forgot but here is the first bit of…… murderbot the movie?? I don’t even know if I can call this a fic but it’s basically how I would want a visual adaptation of the series to be, so it’s in (attempted) script format, hopefully it’s still decent to read :v

Edit bc I still get the occasional note on this and people don't seem to know: there's an expanded version of this on ao3!

-

[Opening: fade from black into a slow drone sweep over an alien planetary landscape. The music is dramatic, swelling. We see stretches of ocean, then beaches--]

VOICEOVER: [Sigh.]

[--plains, mountains, jungle--]

V/O (MUTTERED): Come on. This isn't a nature documentary, no-one cares about the stupid planet.

[The footage fast-forwards, and then returns to normal speed. From a distance, we see a ship landing on an open plain, and several people in environmental suits exiting it.]

V/O: Wait - they're starting here? What's next, 'once upon a time'?

[Footage continues, but the audio is muted.]

V/O: That's not how - this is gonna put people to sleep. This is could put me to sleep, and aside from the obvious reasons that would be an achievement, I have tens of thousands of hours of experience being so bored out of my mind that I'd watch just about—

[A pause. The footage continues to play unhindered.]

V/O: Huh. New idea.

[Cut to black.]

V/O: I'm telling the story now.

[Extreme fast forward, under title credits. The footage stops at the beach survey area, with BHARADWAJ and VOLESCU working crouched at the bottom of one crater, and SECUNIT standing at the edge of it. Sound is low, but not entirely muted.]

V/O: Okay, this should work.

[Medium shot of BHARADWAJ and VOLESCU working in the crater. An overlay annotates their feed IDs - name, gender, occupation.]

V/O: So, hopefully it's obvious by now that this whole… thing, is about a planetary survey group. It consisted of six humans, one augmented human, and one contracted SecUnit. Me.

[Pan up and zoom to the edge of the crater, where SECUNIT is standing guard.]

V/O: If it looks boring standing there like that, that's because it is. This whole contract had been going smoothly, so I didn't exactly have much to do. Which is why at that moment I was only half paying attention to what was going on while I tried to figure out if I could stream music this far away from the habitat without anyone noticing. If I'd had another few minutes, I might have managed it, too.

[Overlay: a stream of feed-code showing SECUNIT'S progress as it continues to stand completely still, outwardly emotionless.]

V/O: Music was just one option, anyway. At this point in my existence, I'd consumed about 35,000 hours' worth of various media. Since then, it's been a few thousand hours more. Which is how I know that when you're telling a story, you never start at the fucking beginning.

[THE WORM bursts up out of the ground, half-eating BHARADWAJ and knocking VOLESCU to the ground. The footage freezes on that tableau.]

V/O: You start at the part that makes people pay attention.

[A beat to let that sit. Somehow it feels smug.]

V/O: This next part's too fast for most humans to see properly, so I'll slow it down a little.

[Footage begins to play at 75% speed. It still looks fast as SECUNIT jumps from the top of the crater, draws its weapon, removes BHARADWAJ from THE WORM’S mouth and shoves its arm inside to fire down its throat and (hopefully) at its brain. Overlays show the chaotic feed from MedSystem, HubSystem, etc. THE WORM recedes, and footage returns to normal speed. When the shot shows SECUNIT again, it's badly bloodied, revealing the metal sections of its frame, but the worst of it is quickly blurred out.]

V/O: Ugh, no-one wants to see that. Least of all me. All you need to know is that there was a lot of leaking, and yes, it hurt a lot, at least before I turned my pain sensors down. Then it only hurt a little. But, I was replaceable, and the humans weren't.

[SECUNIT adjusts BHARADWAJ in its arms and starts making for the edge of the crater, before pausing and looking back at VOLESCU. The overlays clogging the screen gradually clear, with the abort order from HubSystem being the last to go.]

SECUNIT: Dr. Volescu, you need to come with me, now.

[VOLESCU appears incoherent with fear.]

V/O: Great situation, right? One human critically injured, me so badly damaged I could barely hold her, the other human losing his shit - not that I didn't understand the feeling - and no telling if or when the hostile fauna was going to come back to finish us off. I didn't really have any choice but to do something drastic.

[The face plate on its helmet retracts. Its expression is neutral-gentle, focused on VOLESCU.]

SECUNIT: Dr. Volescu, it's gonna be fine, okay? But you need to get up and come help me get her out of here.

[VOLESCU stares for a moment, and then scrambles up and over to SECUNIT, grabbing its arm. They start making their way up the side of the crater. The audio is almost completely muted, but we can see SECUNIT and VOLESCU talking the whole time.]

V/O: Now, I don't know what kind of backwater polities they're planning on broadcasting this to, so if you've never seen a SecUnit before - first of all, congratulations on not being in a corporate mining installation. Second of all: some background.

V/O: A SecUnit is physically part-bot, part-human-organic-material, and mentally equal parts depressed, anxious, and paranoid. We're manufactured at the absolute lowest cost possible to act as Security for survey teams, mining operations - basically wherever you need someone to stand around for hours on end making sure humans don't get killed or kill each other, and also to datamine the shit out of everything they say and do. For some reason, they decided we should have human faces. To make us more approachable, or something. Which is completely redundant when 99.9% of humans never see our faces anyway because we're always in armour.

[The group reaches the top of the crater, and VOLESCU collapses. SECUNIT is trying to coax him away from the edge until a hopper lands nearby, and it turns to look. Its helmet goes back up.]

V/O (QUIETLY): [Sigh.] I miss that armour.

[The hopper ramp opens, and PIN-LEE and ARADA exit, heading for the group, who are slowly coming to meet them. One of them makes to take BHARADWAJ.]

SECUNIT (OVER COMM): Dr. Mensah, I can't let go of her suit.

[We see Mensah at the hopper controls. She pauses for a moment, and then:]

MENSAH: That's alright, bring her up into the crew cabin.

V/O: She would've bled out if I'd let go.

[The group make their way into the hopper, ARADA helping VOLESCU, then SECUNIT with BHARADWAJ, and then PIN-LEE, who is armed with a small pistol and watching the landscape.]

V/O: You'll notice she had to give me verbal permission to do that. That's because normally, SecUnits ride in the cargo hold with the rest of the equipment. Maybe that sounds like a horrifying thing to do to a sentient being, and in hindsight yeah, I guess it was, but I actually preferred it. It meant I didn't have to interact with people.

[RATTHI waits until the rest are on board, then jumps to his feet.]

RATTHI: I'll get the cases!

EVERYONE: NO!

PIN-LEE: For fuck's sake, Ratthi!

[PIN-LEE halts him by the arm as the hopper begins to take off. Right as the ramp retracts, THE WORM once again emerges from the ground and almost takes a chunk out of the metal.]

RATTHI, ARADA, PIN-LEE, VOLESCU: [SCREAMING.]

[Audio dips again as SECUNIT keeps speaking, over the crew righting themselves, gently admonishing RATTHI, taking stock, and starting to treat BHARADWAJ and VOLESCU. It seems to fade into the background amid the human commotion, only moving when instructed and not interacting with anyone.]

V/O: And maybe some of you, probably not many, are thinking, "but these humans seem nice, why would they treat a person like that?" and the answer is: they had no idea I was a person. Honestly, I barely knew I was a person, and I was actively trying to prevent anyone else from figuring that out. SecUnits aren't supposed to be people, we're supposed to be a step above human-form security bots, and we did used to be, but a construct with limited intelligence makes mistakes, which means it needs a human supervisor, which defeats the whole point of having an expendable security unit. So they gave us human brain tissue, made us smarter, and to make sure that didn't give us any ideas, added a governor module that sends a high-voltage shock through our nervous system if we step out of line.

[The hopper continues to travel back towards the habitat. The footage becomes more of a montage, showing the flight, landing, and other team members coming to meet everyone as they disembark. Once it's placed BHARADWAJ onto a gurney, SECUNIT is left outside alone as the others rush away - an overlay shows it checking systems, sealing the hoppers, and setting a security interdict.]

V/O: If that sounds unethical to you, you're most likely not from the Corporation Rim. Not that I necessarily disagree, and neither did most of this survey team, as far as I could tell. Dr. Mensah hadn't even wanted to bring me along in the first place for that exact reason, but you don't get to go to unexplored survey planets without a company bond, and a company bond requires a SecUnit. So there I was. I figured they were doing their best to just forget I was there.

[It starts limping back into the habitat, slowly and dripping fluids as it goes. Eventually, it reaches the security ready room. Narration over this:]

V/O: For the record, I wasn't offended about them not wanting me - I wouldn't have wanted a terrifying bot/human construct following me around and recording all my conversations either. Also, they had no idea that they had been saddled with the only company unit that didn't actually have to do anything they said. I do a really good impression of a SecUnit whose governor module actually still works.

[The door to the ready room closes behind it. The suit helmet retracts. There's a moment of silence, and then it sighs, looking marginally more relaxed. Very marginally.]

[It begins to strip off what’s left of its armour, and starts to patch the worst of the damage - this isn't shown in detail. Conspicuously, any company logos on it or the equipment have been blurred out. Over this, the narration continues:]

V/O: Now that we've got the gasping and fainting out of the way, I can cover the big stuff. Yes, I could have gone on a killing spree and become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor. Yes, I did consider it. Then I found something better to do.

[Having treated what it can, SECUNIT wraps itself in a survival blanket, attaches the repair and resupply leads and climbs into its cubicle, visibly shivering. A small overlay shows its performance reliability at 59%, and immediately drops to 58%. White lights fade up, and it lets out what might be a sigh of relief. Another overlay appears, and opening credits with a theme song begin to play: Sanctuary Moon.]

V/O: I found the entertainment channels.

[SecUnit closes its eyes. The theme continues to play for a few seconds as we start to fade to black.]

[…]

[SFX: A triple knock.]

[hyocherie]

baby || s.shinichiro (tokyo revengers)

"you fell through the cracks of my hands"

🥛 - sano shinichiro ( + black dragons founding members )

🔎 - word count: 1,581

🧾 - female reader, second pov (you/your), mild angst and fluff, au, no character death, mild profanity

✉- this is my first time writing these types on tumblr bc I'm always on wattpad and quotev so please forgive me. I'll also post this on wattpad, but the original is on quotev (all socials on my carrd). mild angst and fluff, so the mood of the story will change. (requests open) FIRST POST OF 2022!

🔖 - inspired by the song "Baby (feat. Marina & Luis Fonsi) by Clean Bandit)"

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ: Baby (feat. MARINA & Luis Fonsi) - Acoustic

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

1.

Shinichiro. Sano Shinichiro. That name was always ringing in your ear. That sweet melancholy voice he had still left a mark on the back of your mind, words repeating again and again. Words of love, comfort, and warmth always were accompanied by this voice, and every day you can't get a break from hearing it. Though you didn't mind, it was starting to hurt you.

Shinichiro. Sano Shinichiro. He fell through the cracks of your hands, and you don't know if it's over or not. You found a new lover, but you're still attached to him. It's been at least after college since you two parted, and you've been in a year relationship with your new partner, and you haven't heard of him ever since (except rumours of him about being the most well-respected delinquent in Tokyo-or even the whole Japan).

Shinichiro. Sano Shinichiro. You miss him even if you deny it. He made you feel such emotions that even you never knew existed. Though that sounded weird and exaggerated, that's what you felt about him. But, does he still love you? Does he still think about you as his baby? Or is he's someone else's baby? These questions haunted you a lot, and it's bothering your thoughts. But now, you think it's better to sweep them away. After all, you had Wakasa by your side.

But, you couldn't control your hunger for his love and touch when you saw him walking past. You and Wakasa were having a date by the cafe beside his home, hanging out after a while of being busy with each other's businesses. He was still the same. Pale skin, black eyes, and raven hair. His aura was still intimidating but warm and inviting, his expression more relaxed than before, and his stride still carries his signature. You couldn't stop staring at him, he was intangible and it was such a shame he left. You want to have him but you don't want to hurt Wakasa, he loves you so and you love him equally. Maybe you thought you can endure it a bit more.

Then, you forgot, Wakasa's Shinichiro's close friend. Oh shit, hell's breaking loose. This day made you realize that this event made you remember.

"Hey sugar," Wakasa called out your attention. His back was facing you, as he was making coffee by the kitchen. You were by the couch in the living room, using your phone to entertain yourself while waiting. "I'll be meeting with the Black Dragons' founding members. They asked you to come."

He then turned his head to you with a smile on his face. You smiled back and responded, "Sure, I'll come. When is it?"

"Hmm? Later," Wakasa then turned back onto the coffee his making. Once he's done, he took them and went beside you, placing the two cups filled with caffeine on the coffee table in front of you both. He rested his head on your shoulder and closed his eyes. "Around dinner."

"Alright," You answered, resting your head on top of his and then returning to your phone. "Who's coming?"

"Benkei, Takeomi, and Shinichiro."

Shinichiro. Sano Shinichiro.

"It's already four. Should we get ready?"

"One more hour."

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

You were getting ready to go out when he, Shinichiro, came into your mind again. How is he? What will he think of me when he sees me? These questions, lots of questions, strangled your mind. Suffocating curiosity filled you, and it's getting you mentally tired for no reason. You then took a deep breath and tried to remove him from your mind by thinking about other things.

Ignore him, ignore him, ignore him. Ignore him later.

"Sugar," Wakasa opened the door and stood there, "Let's go."

"Sure."

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

Right now, you and the rest were in a restaurant, and of course, Takeomi's paying. You were beside Wakasa, very awkward of how you're surrounded by the strongest delinquents in their generation. But you felt somewhat protected, at least they're kind. You were relieved that Shinichiro didn't arrive, and you hope he doesn't. You want to see him but you don't, you want to talk to him, but you don't. That confused and anxious expression is painted on your face, and the other three are starting to get worried.

"Y/N, is there something wrong? What's on your mind?" Takeomi asked. You shook your head and smiled.

"I'm fine! Don't worry!"

"You always say the same thing every time. Do you, Y/N."

You froze that voice that keeps haunting you.

"Shin, you're late," Wakasa put his arm around your shoulder, pulling you close.

"Eh, I slept through a little," he glanced at you before sitting down beside the vacant space by Wakasa.

"You don't sleep," Benkei replied.

"Yes I do, I just look sleep-deprived."

And you know to yourself, he sleeps peacefully all the time. You glanced at him, and you caught him staring at you. You looked back and avoided eye contact. This was getting uncomfortable.

"Now that you're here, Shin," Takeomi noticed you're cramped so he started a conversation with Shinichiro to calm your senses. "It's very unusual of you to be late and...dressed up."

For the first time, he looked decent. He did, but he looked plain sometimes. Though that attracted him to you, seeing him in much decent and many stylish clothes made your hunger for his presence full. And damn, the heels. He's wearing heels.

"Why, what's wrong with me dressing up?" He smirked, raising an eyebrow.

"You look like you're goin' to impress someone," Wakasa looked at him.

"I'm impressing myself, setting new standards for myself, you know?"

"No, we don't know," Takeomi answered.

"But, really," Benkei said. "It's very unusual of you to dress up."

He was wearing something out of his style. He was wearing a white turtle neck and on top of it was a brown sweater. His legs were clothed in brown slacks, darker than the sweater's colour, and he was wearing boots with heels. He had his hair down, his usual hairdo, and his chain necklace, but he had a piercing on his right ear.

"You all are judging me because I changed my style," he cutely frowned. "I just wanna change."

"Please no," Wakasa covered his eyes. "It's blinding me very negatively."

"Ouch."

"The food's getting cold because you're late," Takeomi took his chopsticks and took some beef on the plate in front of them. "Eat up, bitches."

And you ate without focusing on him, but he focused on you.

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

"Y/N..."

You turned to look at Shinichiro, who was behind you a few meters.

"What do you want, Shin?" Wakasa said with a blank face but his voice sounded scary. He then took your hand and pulled you closer to his side.

"I'll just borrow her," He then took your wrist and pulled you away, causing Wakasa to let go of your hand. He then walked away with you in hand. "I'll give her back."

"You should," Wakasa warned with a mutter. As he watched you and Shinichiro walk far from him, he felt his heart beat faster. Looks like something's not good.

"Sano, where are we going?"

"Now you're calling me Sano," Shinichiro scoffed. "What do you call me back then?"

You stayed silent, glaring at him.

He stopped in his tracks, still holding your wrist, and turned his body to look at you.

"What? Why won't you answer me?"

"Because I don't want to...?"

"If I told you I want to hear you calling me 'baby' again, would you do that for me?"

You would but you don't want to.

"If I said no, what would you do?"

"Is that my answer or is that a what-if question?" He smiled playfully.

"What do you think my answer will be?"

"Maybe. You always say maybe."

You always know my answers.

"If you know my answer, why would you still ask me?"

"Because I like it when words roll out of your tongue."

"So do you want me to call you that?"

"Absolutely," He immediately answered.

"I have a boyfriend and I've moved on, Sano."

I'm lying to myself.

"You're lyin' and I know it."

Damn it.

"What's your proof that I'm lying?"

He then leaned closer to you, "because I know."

This is why I can't ignore you.

"..."

You stayed silent. You don't know what to say.

"So, I know and you know calling me Sano is wrong. Who am I to you again?"

"My...baby."

He smiled, "Good girl."

"But I'm already someone else's baby, Shin."

"But is he your baby? Or am I still entitled that in your heart?"

You're always making my life hard. Fuck you.

"What do you think?" You raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'm still your baby," he leaned in by your ear and whispered. "And I'll always be. And you'll always be my baby."

You can't take it anymore.

"Love me," You muttered unconsciously.

"I will, always. Just come back to me again."

"But Wakasa-"

"Who do you love more?"

...

You stared into his eyes, deep and pitch black, warm but perilous.

But, this love story ends for you and I.

"...I'll stay with Wakasa."

"Are you sure?"

"..."

He wrapped his arms around your shoulders and held you close to him, "I'll wait for your response, my baby."

spotify link : my own playlist for shin

wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/story/297044526-baby-s-shinichiro

quotev: https://www.quotev.com/story/14508788/baby-sshinichiro

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Wait what's wrong with the sunset lesbian flag?

[ID: screenshot of an ask from an anonymous user. it says “Hello, newly discovered lesbian here, I don’t know much about the lesbian pride flags or the history behind them. Could you explain what the sunset lesbian flag is and why it’s not necessarily the best flag to use? I’ve gone back in your history but can’t find an actual picture of the flag and can’t get a visual idea in my head to know what you’re talking about. Thanks!” /end ID]

someday i'll make a post about this that i can just link people to when they ask me about this anyway. i'm glad you asked and are willing to learn, that's super cool! also congrats on the being gay anon that's fun the sunset flag is this one:

[ID: the "sunset" lesbian flag. it has seven stripes, three on the top in varying shades of orange, a white one in the middle, and three in varying shades of pink on the bottom.]

i think it's the most popular lesbian flag atm and most of the people using it have no idea of its history, which is understandable. so let's get into it!

first of all, the whole entire reason we started looking for a new flag as a community is because we wanted to ditch the lipstick flag (the old all-pink one you may have seen used up until a few years ago). this flag had a lot of problems, but the short version is: it only represented femme lesbians specifically and the creator was a racist, biphobic, plagiarizing dirtbag. so you can understand why we wanted to leave it behind!

...and then we somehow ended up with a flag that just color shifted the top part to orange? the entire point of getting a new flag has been basically defeated, because we haven't actually left the lipstick flag behind. we need a more visibly different flag, or that flag and its creator still have a massive influence on our community.

secondly, the reason this new flag is so popular now is due in large part to (mostly exclusionist) lesbians going around harassing creators to use it, calling them lesbophobes for not immediately making merch for it, or saying they wanted to "replace lesbians with ace/aros" if they made ace/aro pride merch but not this specific flag. (source: i was there, gandalf) 

this sucks because, first of all, it's nobody's business what a creator makes merch for, second of all, this flag in particular? sucks to make merch for. yes, even the "simplified" one. it requires different tones of the same orange and pink colors, which mean more fabric costs that can't easily be repurposed for other things and can be difficult to find esp. if you're shopping at smaller stores or making knitted things. add on to that that a lot of creators have said that this flag just... doesn't sell well. the people who force them to make it then don't buy it, so they have all this stock or work put into a design that then makes them no money at all. how is that fair?

i won't talk about the flag's creator bc frankly i haven't kept up with her. all i will say is that this flag was immediately claimed and used by transphobes, aphobes, exclusionists, and people who felt comfortable attacking people over not using their favorite Biphobia Racism Pride Flag Rebranded. not exactly something i want to identify with, yes?

there are plenty of other options! i personally favor the "lesbian flag for all" (it's based on a sappho poem! it's explicitly inclusive! it's so pretty and has clean, distinct colors!)

[ID: the "lesbian flag for all." it has four evenly-sized stripes from top to bottom: purple, pink, yellow, and green. the stripes are all thick and vibrantly colored.]

but there are a ton more and i'm not gonna tell you you have to use this one. just. stop promoting the sunset flag. please? this has been your local tired lesbian.

also if you’ve read this far, please please reblog this post so more people see it. i at least want people to be aware of this flag’s history and connotations.

[panharmonium]

omg—so have you finished your teen wolf watch-through yet or is it still in progress alongside the naruto watching?

no spoilers at all in what i’m about to say, but i literally just watched teen wolf for the first time a couple months ago and i love your merlin meta, so the serendipity of you watching teen wolf right now is like ✨yes✨

anyway, i would love to hear your thoughts on s5&s6 bc basically everyone i know (who has seen the show) told me to just stop watching after s3 but i ended up finishing the whole thing anyway bc i grew too attached to many of the characters 😂 if you’re comfortable chatting in dms, i would be totally down to talk more detail there—but also i would be excited to see any teen wolf posts from you, if you feel inclined to make any, bc like i said, you always have such a wonderful way of talking through things and sharing your perspective on stuff and i always love reading your metas but also most of the people i’ve been talking to about teen wolf watched it so long ago (and only the first few seasons of the show besides) that it’s just not the same 😂

—forever-rewatching-merlin

(i always sign these things as my merlin sideblog bc that’s where most people know me from, sorry if that’s weird) 🤣

*waves a big hello to you* HI!

Teen Wolf is still in progress alongside Naruto, but I'm getting closer to the end - we've got four episodes left in Season 5 (part 2), and then we're moving on to Season 6!

Everyone who told you to stop watching after Season 3 was probably right, or at least that's the impression I'm getting so far - I obviously haven't seen S6 yet, and I'm happy to be going into it not knowing anything about it, but I haven't enjoyed S4 and S5 the way I wish I could have, and that makes me doubtful about whether S6 can course-correct in a way that satisfies me. But hope springs eternal - I always go into new seasons optimistically; I was really enjoying the first couple episodes of S5 before it started to lose me, so I'll start S6 with the same open-mindedness.

My Teen Wolf watch actually started a looong time ago - I started watching back in 2015 (never as it was airing, though; I always just watched it on DVD) and got hooked partway through S1. I watched the first three seasons all in a row and was totally in love with it, but the very end of 3B (*cough*allison*cough*) made me so angry that I stopped watching for like two and a half years. Then I came back and watched S4...and it was so terrible that I stopped watching again for another three years. And now...I am finally finishing. XD

There is a LOT of Teen Wolf on my blog; it was my main fannish interest for years even when I wasn't actively watching new episodes, and it's still what I consider one of my "big" fandoms, despite the fact that I've been running around in Merlin and Naruto-land lately. My general Teen Wolf tag is (predictably) "teen wolf", and then I also use "pan watches teen wolf" for thoughts about episodes I'm in the process of watching (currently working on one of those posts right now).

There will likely be many more Teen Wolf posts here as I work my way through the end of S5 and all of S6, and I'd be totally happy to talk about it anytime! I do find it a lot easier to reply to asks or reblog conversation threads back and forth than use the tumblr messaging function - I don't have a problem with dms or anything like that, it's just that the messaging window is SO tiny and I have a much easier time with longer-form/asynchronous communication (things like Discord servers give me hives, and I have similar trouble with texting, so. I guess I am just Old. XD )