#god probably is a feral teenage girl

[neptune-scythe]

I am written by a feral teenage girl and I would like to have some words with her.

The foreshadowing is cool and all that, but can we tone down the angst and whump a bit please and thank you. Maybe put in a fun filler chapter with a silly lil adventure.

And if we're being honest it's a little repetitive, gotta quit using the same trope over and over again

And can we speed up the payoff of all the descent to villainy foreshadowing ... Maybe add in an unhinged madman arc?

And next time you put in some fluff maybe make it last thanks.

Sincerely,

Your suffering blorbo

[happi-tree]

Grant, Scary, and Taylor for the character ask!!!

Hiiiiiiii Bababird!!! Hope you're doing well 🖤🖤🖤 (also for reference: "I want to kiss them" means I want to kiss them on the forehead and tell them that everything will be. Dare I say. Alright <3)

First up: Grant Wilson! God this character can fit so much projection in him. Queer kids raised conservative Catholic got fucking ATTACKED by this guy and I am no exception! Also one of my moots (hiiiiii Seisei 🥰🥰🥰) just finished ep 35 a few days ago so I am chock full of Grant emotions. Something something the Wilson cycle of violence and hypocrisy and meaning what you say but not saying what you mean and. Sobs for one thousand years!!! Bingo for the gamer boy ever it's what he deserves <3

Up next: Scary Marlowe! She's my fucking SISTER my DAUGHTER my DARKENED MIRROR okay. Truly one of the teen girls of All Time and I literally have tears in my eyes as I'm typing this she means!!! So much to me!!! I am holding her gently in my arms and I am shielding her bodily from some of the meanies on this webbed site. She is also a fave of one of my moots (hey Ivy ✌️) but tbh I think she's become so dear to me that she's evolved Pokemon style from proxy blorbo to perhaps. Second blorbo. Favorite dndads character to play dress-up with also <3 I am literally so in awe of the arc she's had so far and I hope to everything that she finds happiness and belonging and- *rant fades out into the distance*

Ok so! Someone else ALSO asked for Taylor so I think I will tackle him in that one if you don't mind hehe :D Rest assured though I have Many Thoughts about this boy 😌

[buckyalpine]

18+ Minors dni. Buckys innocent neighbor who bakes him cookies and muffins just cause. The girl next door who has the coziest apartment he's ever been in. Shelves filled with books along with plenty of comfy blankets decorating the couches. Bucky has his own place right across but home is with her (even if she doesn't know it yet).

She's the type of girl he's going to take his time with, asking her out on a date, just coffee and a walk in the park. Nothing more than a kiss on her cheek at the end of the night. Another date. Dinner. Another kiss to her other cheek. He wouldn't dare rush anything, especially not someone as soft and sweet as her.

He feels like such a dirty little pervert when he thinks about her afterwards when he's alone in bed, all the blood in his body rushing south, and fuck he's so hard. He tries to ignore it, he didn't want to do something so debauched by thinking of her like that, he even tries to think about his grocery list, laundry, he'd probably wash his arm later, it would probably be fine in the dishwasher-

Nothing worked.

He groans, shuffling and kicking his sweats off, hissing when his hand goes down to tug at his aching cock, relief flooding his veins at the sensation. He lets his mind wander to how adorable she'd be, the way he'd take her apart in the most gentle way. Lay her against the pillows while he holds those soft thighs apart, giving her the most feather light suckles on that perfect clit, basking in all the sounds she'd make. He strokes himself faster thinking about the way he'd get her ready to take all of him. How he'd make it so good for her-shit he was going to blow-maybe if he was lucky, one day she'd let him put his cock in her mou-

"Fuck!!" Bucky threw his head back, spurts of cum shooting from his sensitive head, his post orgasm haze leaving him feeling like a filthy old man. She were here making him baked treats and he was jerking his dick off like a sick fuck.

Then the night finally comes. Bucky is ready to cuddle and nothing else but he's thrown off because never in his wildest fantasies did he expect this.

She is the girl who sends him reeling the first time he takes her clothes off one by one revealing dark ink on her back and hips. He has to suppress a growl, his eyes growing wide at the scantily clad lace that covers her body.

"Like what you see, Sergeant?" she practically purrs in his ear while he lets his han ghost over her bare skin, his chest heaving when his eyes fall to her perfect breasts, hints of silver peeking from under her lingerie, there was no way-

"Can I?" He asks breathlessly, his hand reaching behind to unclasp the bra, those pretty pierced nipples begging to be sucked.

Bucky who turns into a fucking menace, his entire world flipping upside down when she grinds down on his crotch not hiding exactly what she needs from him. He doesn't even have the ability to hide how feral he is, letting all his inhibitions slip.

-

"My little bunny's a slut, fuck, c'mere" He grabs you and tosses you over his shoulder, hauling you over to his bedroom like an untamed beast, tossing you onto his bed with no remorse. You're in nothing but your panties which he rips right off, your thighs squeezing together at the way he stalks over to you, his hungry eyes raking up and down your body without an ounce of shame. He tugs his sweats down to reveal his leaky cock, stroking it at the edge of his bed after tossing his shirt off.

"See this baby? Been fuckin' stroking and touching myself like a fuckin' teenager because of you-" He throws off his pants before climbing onto the bed and kneeling between your thighs, spreading them apart with his knees, "-and you've been here lookin' like God damn sin under those cute little sweaters"

He flicks his cockhead against your clit, humming at the clear beads of his arousal that drip onto your cunt.

"Fuck James, need more, pl-"

"Nuh uh, what was that you called me earlier, sweets?" He lets out a dark chuckle, the veins in his cock throbbing as he tightly holds the base, waiting to hear it again.

"Sergeant" you whine with mischief in your eyes and Bucky is a goner. He'll taste you later and most definitely feed you his cock another day but right now he wants to be nowhere else other than your pussy. He wants to watch you take every bit of him, rolling over to lay on his back while you straddle him, his length slotted against your cunt. He holds it up for you with a cocky look on his face, moaning when his tip breeches your tight pussy, your walls gripping his swollen, pink head.

"That's just the tip baby, c'mon, sit on it, wanna put all of my dick in you, that's it, good girl-shittt"

"Oh fuccckk,s'big" You moan feeling the stretch as you sink all the way down, panting and staying still while you adjust to his size.

"That's it bunny, that's it, ride me, ride your Sergeant" He grabs you by the hips, guiding you to grind down on him, making you feel his entire cock in your stomach. "You're a slut for big dick aren't you baby, acting all cute and shy when all you really wanted was the winter soldier's cock"

Bucky wasn't even sure where all the filth spewing from his mouth was even coming from but he couldn't stop.

"S'that it bunny? Say it baby, tell me how much you wanted my fat cock in you"

"Wanted it! F-cuk Sergeant, wanted your cock s-o-so bad!!"

"Fuck yes!!" His feet plant to meet your bounces, his hips thrusting up, slamming his entire length into you. "M'close, fuck bunny, gonna cum already, I can't hold it-

He doesn't have time to be embarrassed. You feel to good. He rubs your clit needing you to cum all over him so he can let go.

"Please, cum all over Sergeants cock baby, give it to me, be a good girl n'cum, c'mon, cum on my dick, yes, oh fuck yes I can feel it-milk it, shit touch my balls-"

You nearly collapse as your orgasm starts to wash over you, his sponge head hitting the most sensitive parts against your walls while he toys with your clit. His voice is muffled as you start to feel waves of pleasure consume you but you head just enough to reach behind, rubbing his heavy, so full of cum ba-

"FUUUCCCCKKK" He grabs you and wraps his arms around your body while he relentlessly thrusts up, biting down on your shoulder while he lets out the sluttiest, loudest moan with 0 remorse. It feels too good and he's sure the neighbors can hear but honestly, everyone should know how amazing it feels.

-

"I got you pretty baby" Bucky coos as you nuzzle into the crook of his neck, a shiver running through you while you float in bliss. Bucky pulls the covers up, deciding to cuddle up with you for a bit before running a shower, his previous demeanor replaced with the far less debauched version of him.

Anyway, just an idea. Also, it's past my bedtime.

[sugar-coat-it]

hi belle! what do you think body piercer is like as a bf 👉👈

also would you do an alphabet or something for him? lowkey dying for more content for him

Hiii!! <3 

Omgggg wait wait let me tell you some details

He’s very much into punk rock (Fugazi, Rage Against The Machine, etc.) and lives in his band tees. Much like the back room of the parlor, a lot of his stuff is covered in stickers for his fav bands. So I think he’d really like to introduce his girl to his music if she’s willing to try it out, it would mean a lot to him!

Whenever he picks her up, he’s always blasting music LOUD so she knows when he arrives 

Big fan of CDs. You can bet your ass that he’s burning CDs for her for all sorts of things. Songs that remind him of her, songs he wants to fuck her to. Some of them are stupid too, like “Good Shit” scrawled in black Sharpie on a disc. Sometimes he’ll scribble little drawings on there too. His handwriting is shit and she loves it.

Also music related, he's an amazing concert bf, always making sure she can see and no one is getting too close to her. He'd be SO PROUD if she went to a punk rock show with him

Now… if she ever did say she was interested in getting another piercing of any kind, he is begging her to let him do it for her (for free, with princess treatment). He’s very much like “fuck yeah, do it” whenever she brings up a tatt or piercing of any kind

Quietly cuddling, he’s tracing her features with his finger, he comes to the bridge of her nose and he’s suddenly like “You have a good nose for a septum piercing” and she’s like “???”

He remembers everything about her, and he makes a point to, even if he has to write sticky note reminders to himself sometimes (ADHD brain as hell)

This man SMOKES. My god his marijuana tolerance level is ungodly. If his girlie is into it too, it would be the joy of his life to roll spliffs for her.

Big fan of getting baked with her, putting on music, and then going off about the album’s impact on the music world because he knows she likes listening to him talk, and none of his boys let him ramble on nearly as much

The late-night diner visits after hotboxing his car go CRAZY (side note, don’t ask me why, but I feel like he has a rubber duck on his dashboard)

One time after a smoke session they built a fort in his room and made out for close to an hour, all giggly and hazy

I think he’d like to let his girl paint his nails. He prefers black, but he wouldn’t mind painting his nails the same shade as girlie’s so they can match

He also let her braid his mohawk once… lol

Tea had sent me an idea about this, but he’d absolutely buy her engraved jewelry. Like… barbells with hearts that have little M’s engraved on them??? Holy shit 

Also, from a discussion with B, HE GOES SO FERAL WHEN SHE GOES BRALESS AND HE CAN SEE HER PIERCINGS THROUGH HER TOP

He keeps a Polaroid picture of her both in his wallet and at the desk in the shop 

If anyone asks about it he’s like “THAT’S THE LIGHT OF MY FUCKING LIFE”

Veeery possessive. Not to a toxic point, but she is his, and he makes sure that everyone is aware in his own little ways 

He likes to be touching her almost all the time. Whether it’s an arm lazily slung around her shoulders or lacing their pinkie fingers together

Really likes love bites. One time he left hickeys in the shape of a heart on her collarbone 

Y’all remember that hip pouch thing he wore during the 2020 era? That but it’s filled with his girl’s things like her lipstick or her wallet so she doesn’t have to carry them

Teenage boy humor. Hella “that’s what she said” jokes

He forgets stuff at her place constantly. She’s starting to wonder if it’s on purpose at this point. Maybe it’s his own way of feeling like a more permanent part of her life

Finding his jewelry on her dresser, his lighter on her coffee table, a hoodie hung by the door

Sometimes he’ll leave his keys and come running back into her place just to end up messily kissing her against the wall

Overall, I think he probably looks a little intimidating to people because he has a mohawk and wears chains and platform boots but he’s such a sweetheart oh my god anon. He just loves her so so so much, and he’s so gentle with her. I love him. So much. That’s my baby.

And as for an alphabet, maybe! I’d be happy to if that’s something you guys would want to see

[kaen-ace-of-diamonds]

Christmas Horror Kids Tournament

Because this isn't the Hunger Games, the kids are in competition but not in direct opposition to each other. Basically: there's some big monster/villain threatening their holiday, which of these main characters is not just surviving but is coming out on top the fastest?

Propaganda for each contender (and spoilers for all movies mentioned) under the cut:

Pietari: fears neither God nor death nor army of feral elves. good at keeping calm under pressure and making plans on the fly. carries a gun around the whole movie but never actually uses it, so not sure how well he could shoot. his actor was 11 when the movie came out but I think he's supposed to be a few years younger?

Luke: horrific demon child, zero moral limits so long as he gets what he wants, -5000/10 would not recommend babysitting. extremely good planner, but vulnerable to overlooking small details that ruin him. about 12: very smart but fairly immature for his age. has to be reminded not to kill his competition this time.

Thomas: literally just wanted to stay home and play trains with his grandpa, but now he's got to defend them both from a killer Santa. models himself after action movie heroes and is so good at Home Alone-ing his house that his director tried to sue for plagiarism. about 10-11 years old?

Anna: would be better with her friends to help her, but is pretty damn capable of making it in the zombie apocalypse on her own. not sure exactly how old she's supposed to be, since I'm not clear on how the New Zealand school system works, but she's an older teenager.

Billy: definitely has his wits closer about him than his dad does, that's for fucking sure. does get tricked into creating gremlins, but you know what, who would have expected them to have fucked with his clock? successfully takes on and kills an army of gremlins, albeit with help. probably the oldest competitor here since he's out of high school (?)

Max: definitely willing to go to bat for the Christmas spirit, and to put his own life on the line to protect his family, but is pretty severely lacking in strength or savvy. is good at dodging an army of killer toys, but might not do so well without a bunch of relatives around to also be targets. like Pietari, his actor was 12 but I think he's supposed to be a bit younger.

Trudy: ngl, might be a little weak in solo competition, since she's maybe 7-8 years old and so relies a lot on Santa the one-man army. but she's clever, has exactly zero fear of hardened criminals with machine guns, and is very good at turning Home Alone traps exactly as deadly as they should be.

Winnie: the most Final Girl (TM) out of all the competitors imho. learns very quickly how to improvise and use whatever's handy as a weapon, and while she's also best with a partner to distract an opponent, can handle herself very competently in a physical fight. about 17?

Samantha and Clara: actually, fuck Billy, does Clara even count as a kid at all, being an ancient demon in the form of a child? has telekinetic powers and is good at Breaking Speeches, but is bound by being sealed in the school and unable to kill her enemies herself. Samantha is a pretty normal middle schooler (?), but also has the guts to go face a cult of killers with an axe when she could have run away and saved herself, so don't count her out.

Kevin: is Home Alone a horror movie? no. could I possibly exclude the king, the champion, the future Jigsaw apprentice? also no. smart and absolutely cold-blooded when he needs to be, he's excellent at fending enemies off from a distance, but it's game over for him if he's actually caught.

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

Can you tell us how your boys feel about kids.

I saw that blue doesn’t like children so I got curious.

Undertale Sans - He's not very expressive so it's hard to know, but he likes kid a hell lot. They're funny, gullible and they somehow takes everything he's saying for true which leads to the best laughs of his life. He's a bit nostalgic too of the time it was just him and Papyrus.

Undertale Papyrus - He loves kids, but it's not difficult because he loves everyone. But his kid especially. He's going to make sure they never miss anything to the point he can get a bit protective and it's certainly not an unhealthy way to cope with how painful his childhood was in the streets :D

Underswap Sans - Oh god, please no. Children make him so nervous. He's very uncomfortable around them, and he usually lets S/O take care of them if he has some one day. He is full of insecurities, way more than he thinks, and the fact his brother almost died from starvation when they were younger probably is the cause of that. He prefers to stay away.

Underswap Papyrus - He loves children, he wants children. He's one of the best dad to have, very loving and attentive, and he's working hard on his insecurities with children, to the point they completely disappear sometimes. He's just dad material.

Underfell Sans - He's a great dad, he just doesn't know it... Red spends more time thinking he will be a horrible dad and not enough realizing all the kids in the neighborhood likes him and sees him as a sort of father figure. If he ever has a child, that will be the revelation of the century for him lol.

Underfell Papyrus - He loves children but he's way too protective so when the kids reach the teenage era, he might struggle a lot with this. He wants all his kids safe and it's a bit obsessional. Other than that, he's a great dad. A little strict, but patient. He explains things very well to kids too.

Horrortale Sans - He loves kids but kids don't love him all the time :( He's always sad when he accidentally makes a child cry in the street because he's big and scary. He's nothing but a huge teddy bear with his own kid, with a bit of feral paternity lol. He's very nice, but threat his kids and suddenly you might die lol.

Horrortale Papyrus - He loves children, but it's hard to keep up with their energy. He has too many health problems to raise kids, or that's what he tells himself because he has no self-confidence. He's a gentle giant. He's lecturing kids a lot though. He's definitely a dad-strict-mom deep inside.

Swapfell Sans - See that squirrel girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? That's his kid. Nox has a dad girl who always comes looking for him when she has any problem and he will say yes to any of her temper tantrums because that's his little princess. That's his baby girl and he will fight anything trying to take her from him with his fists lol.

Swapfell Papyrus - He's that Dad who doesn't seem to really care about anything, but it's actually not the case. He likes when kids learn things by themselves, so yeah, the kid is going to get hurt, a lot. But they will draw on all his bones too, cooking explosive cakes, paints the walls of the house... Rus is a fun dad.

Fellswap Gold Sans - Uh, no thanks. Kids make him too anxious. He's struggling with Coffee already, he doesn't need more people he needs to watch over obsessionally, thanks. Or he could take the opportunity to, you know, see a therapist about this. But, uh, not today.

Fellswap Gold Papyrus - He's going to give his anxiety to his kids lol. They all have a very strong bond when they are together. However, if one of them is missing, everyone is panicking, father including, and it turns terribly wrong. Every time. That's going to be complicated lol.

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

oh no I fully planted the seeds of jaydickate knowing it would probably get horny 😂

i could wax poetic about how soft they can be (and i absolutely think they are) but i think especially when they’re first messing around… they are FERAL. they have awakened some Things™️ in one another. kate goes headfirst into this established complicated relationship featuring more than a little rivalry and she thinks oh this is fine and she’s in control and can make these boys behave… and then she can’t walk after. girl has bitten off more than she can chew and she is loving all of it.

i also just enjoy thinking about how not a single one of them is good at reacting to things in a normal manner so god help us all if one of them gets hurt, the other two are going to burn the world to the ground.

Oh thank god

Thinking about the Worst One to get injured because the combo of the other two is too chaotic. and there IS no worst one because each revenge combo is fucking terrifying.

Kate is injured? That's the fucking crime lord Red Hood, who fears no god or Bat, and Nightwing who people only think is less terrifying than Batman because he smiles more. Goons would pick a fight with Batman over Nightwing. This is the first Robin, who was groomed as a child to be a Talon for the Court of Owls, and the second Robin, who died and then was trained by the League of Assassins. They have both been Batman (I think Jason has, I just don't know when?). I mean this might be the most terrifying option simply because you pissed off Batman. You pissed off at least three, because Bruce would at the very least be angry on behalf of Dick and Jason, and the sword Robin (because Dick and Jason are his favorites you can't change my mind) and probably Black Bat who is arguably also Batman. That's like four Batmen what the fuck is wrong with you. And this is terrifying because Dick and Jason (and Cass and Damian) have the Batman Training but NOT the Batman moral code. Honestly Bruce is the only reason this outcome isn't pants shittingly terrifying. If the boys call her team in? Now you have two angry gods to deal with too. And Jason will gladly lock Bruce in a closet so the voice of reason is gone. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord etc etc.

But then if Dick is injured...well, Jason and Kate are toeing the nonlethal methods line to begin with. They basically sneeze and they are over it. And without Dick to pull them back with "they suffer longer if you keep them alive" they are going to do whatever they deem necessary. Jason "heads in a duffle bag" Todd and Kate "casually shoots people in the throat" Bishop. Once again, that is the fucking crime lord Red Hood and a goddamn Avenger. To avenge, that's to exact vengeance. That's her JOB. not protect not defend not promote justice. AVENGE. Honestly just call her a fury cos that's what she is. She WILL blow shit up she just might make sure not to do it around Jason. Look, if Kate can keep her shit together there's a good chance Jason will follow her lead and not steal bones. However, she is NOT going to keep her shit together which means there is no one holding Jason's leash. (Well, there is, Kate is holding it, she's just saying 'attack' more than normal. And Jason trusts her moral compass, so he'll do it without question. Not that he wouldn't do it himself for Dick, but it's nice to let someone else make the choice.) And they will absolutely not listen to anyone, not listening to authority figures is a DEFINING part of their time as teenage superheroes. There's like three people they might listen to and none of those people are going to tell them to calm down, and every person who WOULD tell them to calm down they will tell to fuck right off. Specifically Batman and Captain America.

Dick and Kate is the surprise terrifying one. Jason gets injured and nobody is really worried that Kate and Dick are going to go off the rails. They ARE the rails! They are the nice ones! The good ones! Wait what do you mean you found them waterboarding the Joker? Some idiot is going to think that it's JUST Jason. They won't go crazy. He's the Red Hood, this should be expected, right? Its not a surprise. Comes with the job, right? It's not like he's a real good guy--idk who says this, but someone does. And that's when they truth comes out.

This is THEE horrifying combo because first, everyone thinks they will be calm and levelheaded because they are team leaders and established solo heroes, they are respected, they've been doing this since they were kids--

WRONG! what they've actually been doing is stacking up a lifetime of Good Hero chips and now they are cashing in for their murder hall pass. And they are going to get so much more worked up if they feel the response from the Bats et al is not sufficient. if it's a "no one mourns the wicked" moment and you aren't upset because you think Jason is a bad person and he deserved it the cops WILL start finding pieces of your body before you are dead. That's Dick's Little Wing, are you fucking insane? He gets suuuuuuper possessive of Jason and a thousand times more protective of Kate. He will bite.

Hot take i think Dick and Kate are more deeply unhinged than Jason. Jason wears his anger openly, his violence is there for everyone to see. Dick and Kate have to hide that shit, hold it back, because of who they are and who they are seen as. They aren't keeping themselves in check if you hurt Jason. Jason has been hurt enough. Such a source of angst too when Jason is well enough to learn what they did for him and he's all "I'm not worth it you shouldn't have done that for me" which obviously makes Dick and Kate mad because he IS worth it

Also Dick and Jason canonically getting mistaken for each other, Dick steps in as Red Hood so that there's no a power vacuum in Gotham in case word gets out Red Hood is out of the game. I just want Dick to take over for Jason I think that is very hot I think Jason and Kate would literally be on their knees for him. I'm sorry. I'm sorry they are all so into it and I'm sure it means something psychosexually but we're not looking at it that deeply

Either one of the boys getting injured is sooo funny because I do believe that everyone thinks Kate has a no killing rule. She doesn't kill when she and the boys start...whatever...and then she's spending a lot of time in Gotham and generally she doesn't try to antagonize Bruce. Like she wears purple and shoots arrows and has a dog and a shark. She's just a goof! She doesn't kill people!

Except she very much does. She's been not killing people as a courtesy. You hurt her boys, she's done being polite. Kate on a murderous rampage is very hot btw. I think if she has a dark alter ego she goes by Shrike. You know the birds who impale their prey? Yes she could pick up the Ronin identity because Clint and Kate sharing alter egos is something that can be so personal, but also I think Kate should be able to murder people in horrifying ways with a cool costume redesign as a little treat. (Tim would help her with this btw)

fwiw the next most terrifying person for someone to go after when this relationship configuration exists is Roy and/or Clint, and Roy slightly more, because if you go after Clint you have all the other Avengers trying to stop them from exacting their bloody vengeance.

Anyway let's go back to Kate biting off more than she can chew. She wrangles superhero boys as her job. Literally her job. Personally and professionally. She can totally handle this! Genuinely have no idea how they get together though.

Do they have something going on in costume? Do they hook up at a gala? I've talked a little about Hawkeye being into Red Hood and Kate Bishop being into Dick Grayson and honestly Dick and Jason being mistaken for one another makes this funnier or angstier. Like she genuinely thought Dick was the Red Hood and the Red Hood was Dick. Considering how flippy Jason can canonically be, you know, it's not completely stupid. Jason and Dick, who do not see anything in common with each other, are deeply offended by this. Did she not notice the different personalities??? And in her defense she DOES understand the concept of a secret identity, she thought it was him trying to distance his night self from his day self!

She tries to engage their competitiveness to help them break through stuff emotionally and it does eventually work (because they realize they can ruin her more thoroughly as a team but who's counting?) But before that moment there's a lot of uhhhhhh Kate having to sit missions out because she can't walk very well. At some point she enacts a sex embargo because 1. She needs to get work done and 2. They need to come up with ways other than sex to compete with each other.

This turns into Dick and Jay's Kate Sex Ban which involves them making out with each other (as a GOOF) and slamming each other into walls to grind etc in order to make her jealous/get her hot and bothered with NO RELIEF!!!

obviously this backfires spectacularly when they realize they're....kind of...into???? each other?????

One of the defining points of Jason and Dick being less asshole competitive with one another is when some B-tier rogue says something derogatory about Hawkeye. Maybe something about Red Hood setting up so the rest of the rogues can run train on her since he shares her with fucking Nightwing no problem, and honestly Red Hood can do better than Nightwing! Just because you have to work with the Bats sometimes doesn't mean you have to share your slut or something and

You insulted Hawkeye AND nightwing. implying there is someone better than Nightwing???? that Hawkeye could not kick the asses of all the rogues??? thinking the only thing she is good for is sex?!?!?!?!!?

They're going to be scraping you off the pavement bucko.

(Kate 100% sincere when she asks what running train is. And both of them have a split second of "oh what if she learns and she's INTO it???" without speaking or even looking at each other they decide their first pick is Roy, second is Eli. just like. IF she's curious)

of course another option is established jaydick which i love (mostly because it means i don't have to navigate how their dynamic shifts from fellow Bats to boyfriends bc i am bad at it) but ALSO because it means Kate thinks she is Just A Friend and Jason and Dick have been actively hitting on her for four months. this version goes from 0 to 60 so fast because Jay and Dick have ironed out a lot of the kinks in the bedroom between them which means they are incredibly good at working together to Wreck Kate's Shit.

I mean honestly there's no version of this where Kate is not in over her head. Kate is used to being the dominant personality in her relationships in that she's assertive and she's confident in herself, and she does have a habit of going for guys who are...not. At least not at her level. (this is where the team dynamic comes in for me. regardless of how strong willed etc people she dates are, if they're on a team together, she's the leader and them defaulting to her becomes a habit but i digress)

but the boys are very big personalities as well as physically large. kate doesn't have to make herself smaller in any way which i think is a nice chance for her to get even more comfortable in her own skin

what was i talking about

right, so kate isn't used to people who are leaders in their own right towering over her and telling her that actually she will not be calling the shots tonight and then like. holding to that. neither of them are scared of her either

(they are. they are just less scared of her than most men are. and with jason and dick it's like a scared and horny)

And kind of easing over control to Jason "Service Top" Todd and Dick "Praise Kink" Grayson who are tag teaming?!!?!

[koutone]

vexshipping is sooo cute i love hearing you talk about it!! i'd love to hear more about how bakura accidentally confesses and anzus reaction! for me i feel like between him freaking out and her working through denying her feelings he'd run off before she could answer and they'd have to have a redo confession later probably initiated by anzu this time since i imagine he'd be like a hissing scared cat thinking she was gonna come reject him every time so he runs off or hides (totally NOT in a cowardly way ofc its a tactical retreat obviously). but i'm curious on your thoughts too as vexshipping ceo ^^

I SMILED SO HARD READING THIS... YOU ARE SO SWEET....... ;U; !!

i just think bakura doesnt have a filter when he starts passionately yapping about his plans to fuck the world into eternal darkness or whatever and i think that towards the end of his speech when he's at his most manic he'd slip and say that "the stupid girl's charm won't work to stop him again" or something like that. they both know anzu isn't dense and immediately know what he just admitted to so of course bakura, wanting to get blasted into oblivion, disappears never to be seen again (until he is hungry or needs something). since at this point they'd both be pining and denying their feelings for each other i think bakura would be more angry at himself for giving "the enemy" (anzu, aka the pharaoh's "girlfriend" in his head) a possible weak point because in bakura's head there is no place for human feelings and he is just experiencing a side effect of sharing a body with a teenage boy or something (excuses excuses denial etc etc).

anzu is VERY conflicted about this because on one hand... did the evil spirit that's trying to kill her and all her friends (and the rest of the world!) just kind of admitted he likes her??? but on the other hand... oh my god the boy she likes likes her back??? ANZU GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER. anyways yes i think she'd also struggle to decide how she wants to tackle this but eventually go seek the feral cat out and like, talk their feelings out or something. which would make bakura want to die a fifth death.

[gnomey22]

Top 5 Therapy-Needers in Failtopia

5.

Chin "Chi" Kid. This girl went through the horrors of saving the entire world twice, got beaten up more than most other characters on both of those journeys, and was placed on the frontlines for an uncountable number of extremely dangerous fights (the primary cause of my previous point). She was locked in a dungeon for a month and had her face implanted on a feral beast, twice in a row for both of those things, and was almost completely alone for three years between these journeys, heavily implying that she's been alone her entire life. This all happens when she's 15-18. What the fuck.

4.

Deko. He may be one of the least remembered character stories in the entire series, but the story he has is horrible. He, a sixteen y/o, decided to submit himself to an unethical experiment to give himself superpowers he felt insecure about lacking, which resulted in him being trapped in the role of an Imp (a literal monster), and bound by the gods to battle for the world with some blond guy he hates. Then, he finds out that there's an alternate universe version of himself who lives a happy and normal life, all because he didn't make the same stupid mistake he himself did. This acts as his 'redemption arc', but if that happened to me, I'd take a very long time to even recover.

3.

Erica. You all know why, but I'll break it down anyways. She has no personal life to speak of, and fully immerses herself in work she doesn't even really enjoy, watching a majority of her coworkers die horribly, partially because she couldn't save them. Then, she joins a somewhat-functional team for the first time, and allows herself to make a genuine connection or two - which are then ripped away from her as soon as the journey ends, leaving her with the same overworking nightmare of a life she had before. This time, she feels the need to abandon a core personality trait, her caution, for the sake of taking out her deeply-bottled-up anger on anything that moves. Because of this, she struggles even harder to make personal connections, and can't bring herself to call almost anyone her friend, or get the concept of death off her mind for two seconds.

2.

Friend. Imagine having a little guy magically attached to your face, by accident, clearly a lost soul who needs all the help he can get. As a Cleric, helping random people is your literal job, and you're a naturally kind person, so of course you care for this stranger! He might be corrupting your mind to increase your aggression, sure, but that's a normal side effect, probably. You miss him when he suddenly disappears. Then, you finally find him again, and he reveals himself as a genocidal demon who intends to reinvent the world for the sake of a revenge plot you can't even comprehend. But you have to comprehend it, because it's partially your fault that he got this far. Not only that, but he's had a clear effect on your mental state, and you start using inanimate objects to cope with his absence, out of sheer desperation. This man has left an irreversible mark on your psyche, and even then, you were entirely expendable to him.

Honourable mentions go to Failboat, Simple Bob, Rose, Orion + Slapo Oopsie, and Bo. Mar does not make the list because he's already been through his three years of therapy, he doesn't need it.

1.

Shrimp. She was abandoned by her father in her vulnerable teenage years, and she has no reason to know he feels bad for it. Due to this lack of protection, many of the awful people in her age range take the opportunity to bully her, mainly over her greatest dream of singing, which they hate that she has. They do everything they can to make her believe her singing talent, one of the only things she has left in her life, is worth nothing, and it gets more than verbal. It's heavily implied that the reason she has an unfixable chipped tooth is because these bullies got violent, and this also gives reason to believe they bullied more than her dreams and talents, they tore into her for her very appearance too. As a result of this, she's left with no option than to abandon her home, just like her dad did, and flee to the unfamiliar surface, hoping she can do anything up there while knowing nothing about it. Her home is behind her now, she has to join a battle party trying to save the entire world just to get by. It's here, where she finds a found family she adores, but they can't replace what she's lost. She still doesn't have a single friend her age, and relies on random adults to survive out here. I don't think it's a coincidence that she has so much fan content, and enough trauma to match it, literally everyone wants this girl to have some happiness.

[theafictionado]

Okay, I’m never actually going to write this (for reasons I’ll go into in a moment) but do know that a few years ago I was playing with a fanfic idea where a glitched out Holy Grail manifests in rural New South Wales. An ordinary teenager just trying to scrape by ‘til graduation in this tin-pot dairy town is out on a beer run for some crappy country high school party when two supernatural beings crash through the bottle’o wall, one with a spear and one with a pair of shiny, impossibly fast pistols. She survives being caught in the fight but inevitably ends up on her arse looking up at the glowing gunslinger, who says something about being a Heroic Spirit needing a Master. Our heroine then replies “Yeah nah, get fucked”. Nonetheless, she’s dragged into this battle, and the adventure begins from there.

I had most of a cast of Servants laid out: some smartypants mage decides to summon Ned Kelly--an Australian Heroic Spirit if ever there was one, and who is naturally depicted as a hot lady--before remembering that Ned Kelly was famous for being an outlaw who embodies the quintessential Aussie lack of respect for authority. Summoned as the Archer, Kelly has a degree of independence but ultimately needs a human to keep her anchored, hence going “wait, shit” after breaking her own contract, then reluctantly teaming up with our country town hero in the scene above. Since Ned Kelly’s homemade armour is so famous (to the point where a lot of art just depicts the armour, and it’s way more recognisable than his actual face despite photographs of him existing!) the armour would be constantly on, but invisible, in the same way that Arturia obscures Excalibur. Plenty of potential here for dramatic reveals, not to mention the Themes and Motifs. 

I also liked the idea of each Master having a kind of disjointed cultural relationship with their Heroic Spirit, e.g. a young mage who’s grown up as part of the Greek diaspora in Australia summons a hero from Ancient Greek legend; a character whose noble family fled Russia during the revolution (and hasn’t lived there since) summons a staple of Russian folklore like Baba Yaga (as Rider, you know, for her walking house). These old stories are part of these characters’ heritage, but the versions that exist in lore and legend are unrecognisable from anything they’ve known due to the passage of time and the transformation of culture through the immigrant experience. I thought that could be a fun thing to play around with, you know? Especially with the Australian setting.

I also messed around with the idea that someone summons what they think is a Valkyrie (back before they turned up in FGO!) but, in a third act reveal, turns out to actually be Loki in disguise. Loki would be Very Gender and extremely fun as an amoral pseudo-villain who gets into some cheeky chats with Ned Kelly about the way humans mythologise their troublemakers while also shooting them down.

Oh! It was also going to be gay. At least, in terms of the rowdy teen heroine having a female love interest (in the form of a traumatised but deeply powerful girl from an abusive, traditional mage family. She was gonna be full of plants. The heroine was going to throw it all away and go feral to save her in the end, probably punching God in the face to do it. Do you see what I’m doing here? You gotta have the archetypes).

Anyway, while there were some Cool Ideas floating around here, I ultimately shelved and buried this thing. a) it was going to be a SUPER research intensive project, not only in reading up on the myth and history to get the Servants right, but getting my head around the intricacies of Nasuverse worldbuilding not only enough to understand it but enough to mess with it in way that would be satisfying to the reader. These plot bunnies were bouncing around my head when I was in the middle of my Honours year, and heading towards my doctoral studies, so unfortunately, much like real bunnies in Australia, they were deemed an invasive species that would suck up too many of my resources. 

And I was alright with this, because b) I realised that the thing about Fate that makes me want to write fic is its characters, not its world. So staying in the world but taking the characters out felt... well, not like my kind of creative direction. And I would need bucketloads of passion to get me through this thing, because naturally as the story of my very own Grail War it would need to be at least novel-length. And not a thin novel, either...

I thought to myself “If I’m going to do this much worldbuilding and develop this many OCs for a novel-length fic, I may as well be writing my own original fantasy novels”. Which I’m doing! Some ideas that started here have ended up being folded into other, more successful projects. My interest in exploring a trickster god character flowed right into my PhD work, which is largely about trickster god characters; and I’ve nicked and repurposed a few other elements, too, like the idea of a mage family who get their mana from a freaky symbiotic relationship with plants that they grow in their own body. I feel like my angry, take-no-shit, typically Aussie Ordinary Heroine--the girl I placed in Shirou’s archetypal role--will wander into an original project too, since she has a lot of presence and I think would be really fun as a protagonist. 

Anyway--I’m not going to come back to this, but the idea echoes in my brain every now and then, so I figured I’d share it here. What do you all think? If you could devise your own Grail War from the ground up where would you set it and who would you throw in the ring? 

[holytrohmanempire]

Oh! Oh! I volunteer! What's your all time favorite vampire media and do you have links?

Thank you anon I'm so delighted you took the bait!

It is with deep bemusement and slight dismay that I inform you and the world at large that the best vampire story I have ever read is called "temperance" and reader, "temperance" is an NSYNC fanfiction.

Yeah you read that right this is a fanfiction about the men in the boyband nsync (and the backstreet boys, and elvis' manager? for some reason?????) and it's 64,000 words long with two short sequels and listen. I don't want this to be the best piece of vampire media ever any more than you do. But my god, it is. The vampire rules are well thought out. The world is built richly but without Dune-style infodumps - you just learn to understand what the universe is like so organically as the story progresses. The romance is sweet, the debate regarding the souls of vampires is explored thoughtfully. The prose is beautiful and it's easy to sink your teeth into. It's equal parts beautiful and horrifying, the way vampire media should be, but the beauty is of a southern gothic cottagecore nature and the horror is feral and toothsome, as opposed to the genteel nature of most vampire stories. I genuinely believe you don't have to give a shit about NSYNC to enjoy it, either. Cannot sing its praises enough - link to the first story is here: http://www.nopseud.org/nsa/fic/temperance.html

My second fave piece of vampire media is the Carmilla webseries. Picture it: the year is 2014 and you have come to terms with being a bit of a lesbian and someone takes The sapphic vampire story of all time and turns it into a college au romcom (ft some gorgeous leads, by the way.) Laura only drinks from a tardis mug. Carmilla eats cereal with blood in it. Black cat/golden retriever dynamics. It made my cry. The theme song ("Love Will Have Its Sacrifices") is baller and I've put it on every playlist for THWTH I've ever made. I have, to be fair, only finished season one, but god, I fucking love Carmilla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uPd3g5wi1A

My third fave piece of vampire media is a little more traditional and it is the book "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" by Holly Black. Holly Black as in author of grimdark fae novels for teenagers, yes. "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" is excellent and on my list because it is, in spite of being written for teens, probably the sexiest piece of vampire fiction I have ever read. Gavriel is such a hot lead and we finally get an author unafraid to make the blood drinking sexy as well as gory and alarming. 10/10 would recommend this book to literally anyone, and it has shockingly good trans rep for being released in like 2013: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-coldest-girl-in-coldtown-holly-black/110465?ean=9780316213097

Lastly, I think the Fright Night remake from 2011 is amazing. Like, look. I know it's not "good" as in well-written or anything, but like. It's funny, it's sexy, they play into the ridiculousness. I fully believe Fright Night walked so that Renfield could run. It's star studded for literally no reason. The CGI is terrible. The vampires are ridiculous. The soundtrack to this one is also way better than it had any right to be. It comes in fourth because it is kind of sexist and I think we should have had more characters fully soaked in blood a la Evil Dead Rise, but c'est la vie. Please please please note that I do mean the 2011 remake the one from the 80s was, like, fine, but the 2011 one was camp: https://letterboxd.com/film/fright-night-2011/

[hannahssimblr]

Chapter Thirteen

Jude slides into the seat across from me at the table of this brightly lit Turkish kebab place on Liffey Street. He’s only bought a bottle of Pepsi, while I’ve piled the table high with taco chips, lamb kebab, chicken goujons and a giant strawberry milkshake. I eye him as he twists open the cap of his drink. 

“Wow, greedy.” I say.

He laughs. “Yeah you’re going to have to have me airlifted out of here. Can I’ve a chip?” He reaches out but I smack his hand away. “You’re doing that thing that boys always complain about, when girls don’t order enough food so they steal theirs.” 

“Come on.” He says. “Just one, for God’s sake.” I relent and let him, but only one. I eye him suspiciously as he plucks it out of the box.

“Did you want to count it?” He teases. “To make sure I’ve not hidden another one in my hand?”

“Okay just shush for a minute.” I urge him. “I just really want to eat.” He signs and leans back in the seat, taking slow, leisurely sips of his pepsi while I tear at my food like some kind of feral beast. Nothing has ever tasted as delicious as this particular kebab, in this particular restaurant, even though the floors are sticky and there’s a drunk man snoring in the booth across from us thus creating an interesting ambience. 

“Skipped dinner?” He queries after a few minutes of silence where he allows me to satiate myself.

“Mmm.” I say. “Didn’t have time to eat.” I grab a napkin and swipe it across my mouth, afraid that it’s as coated in sauce as my hands are. I try to get some small talk going to distract from what is probably an abominable sight for him. “So you ate at some Mexican restaurant earlier?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“Risky move, I’d say, bringing an American to a Mexican restaurant.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because everyone knows we can’t ever compete with the way they do it over there. Everyone’s always like ‘Oh you don’t know Mexican food until you go to the states’. Or whatever.”

“Or Mexico.” He supplies, and I grin.

“In case your memory has been lost to the sands of time, I did actually live my entire teenage life in Dublin. I was here for the inception of the burrito craze, but still, you’re right. It’s not the same.” He drums his fingers on the side of the plastic bottle. He’s still got some of that zippy, restless energy that he used to have, but not as intensely as before. I no longer get the sense that he might rocket out of his seat at any moment. “It was nice to see Shane and Claire again, they both look good.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah! Shane looks so much fitter than he ever did, he’s in great shape.”

“He’s been training a lot. He has to drive back home twice a week to train with the team, and even outside of that he’s in the gym the whole time.”

“Good for him.”

“Bit miserable though, you don’t think?”

He smirks. “Clearly you think so.”

“Well.” I begin, swallowing a huge mouthful of kebab. “He doesn’t really ever do anything fun. He gets barely any free time, and even at that his coach has all these strict rules about how much he’s allowed to drink and whatnot.”

“Alright Evie.” He says in a mock-condescending voice, but it makes me feel a little ashamed all the same. I never realised how easily unkind words spilled out of my mouth before, and it’s not even like I have a particular problem with Shane. But Jude is being nice, he goes on speaking before I start flailing around looking for an excuse for myself.

“I remember having to do that back when I was on my school rugby team.” He reminisces. “Funnily enough, another rule was abstinence.”

I glance up from my food. “Really?”

“They said that sex’d diminish our energy and testosterone and we’d end up playing a weak game, but…” He shrugs. “I don’t think it ever made a real difference. It was probably another one of those weird Catholic rules that your country is obsessed with.” I bristle a little bit against the way he says ‘your country’ like he’s divorced from it, like he hasn’t got our weird Catholic blood in his veins. 

“So come on, Evie.” He says, leaning his elbows onto the table. “What’s been going on with you? I can’t believe it’s been so long since we spoke.”

“I know.” I say. “I guess we lost touch at one point there.” I slide my eyes up to meet his, not feeling as jovial as I had a minute ago, and his smile falters to become a little rueful. “Yeah, I regret that. Life got so busy for me so quickly after I moved, I guess it was kind of a whirlwind situation.” He touches his hair self consciously. “But I thought of you often, I always imagined that we might see each other again.”

“Ah well, here we are.” I say. “A year and a half later.” I watch his hand reach out to touch my arm but I swiftly move it out of the way to grab my milkshake so that his palm hits the table instead. He curls it slowly into a fist and pulls it back onto his lap. “You look really different.” He says. “You know, I always think of you with that really long hair.”

“Yeah I cut it all off.”

“ And are you still running? And swimming? Do you still do all of that?”

“No, actually, I don’t.” I say. “I suppose I fell out of the habit of it when I moved here, I don’t really do many of the things I used to do.” I’m different now, I’ve changed so much since we last spoke. I look different, I do different things, and I feel differently about him now than I did when I was seventeen. I have to keep repeating this in my head as he gives me the kind of familiar smile that threatens to wipe out the last nineteen months. 

I stare at him unsmiling. “How’s things in Berlin? Better than they were here after all?”

“Really good. Hey.” A frown comes between his eyebrows and the corners of his pretty mouth turn downwards with concern. “Are you angry with me over losing touch?”

“Why’d you ask?”

“You’ve just gone so chilly all of a sudden, I don’t know.”

I pause for a moment. “It’d be a bit intense if I was still angry over something like that, wouldn’t it?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Well, good to know you got my email. It’s a pity it wasn’t worth responding to.”

He laughs with surprise, as though he was expecting me to act the way I used to act. Docile. “Oh, come on, don’t be like that. I could have dealt with it better, but I was in a new city, and there were all of these new people. I left it sitting there too long and then, well, it felt like it’d be weird to respond after so much time.”

“Well, you know if you really wanted to you could have emailed me in a new thread.”

He arches his eyebrow “And equally, you could have sent the first message.”

I snap my mouth shut and pick through my food again, knowing that he’s right, but also knowing that I wouldn’t have been capable of doing something like that, double emailing him, like some kind of pathetic, desperate fool. The kind of pitiful low that I’d never have stooped to, not in front of him. 

“You have a new piercing in your ear.” I say quietly after a few moments of silence, grasping at anything that will stop this conversation heading down a too-vulnerable path. He reaches up to fiddle with the third tiny hoop in his ear, this one on the left side, looped around his anti-helix. 

“Yeah I figured that I already have a girl’s name and my dad thinks the other two piercings mean I’m gay so I might as well double down.” He grins. “I got it done when I went to Slovenia, actually. It was painful.”

“Little baby.” I tease. “I don’t remember mine being that bad, I got it done when I was like sixteen.”

His eyes go wide as he suddenly recalls. “I remember your piercings, you used to have four on one ear. Let me see.”

I turn my head to show him that they’re all gone now, nothing dangling from them but a simple set of gold hoops in my lobes. “I took them all out.” I admit. “They just didn’t feel like me anymore.”

“Damn, I always thought they were cool.” I almost remind him that nothing about me back then was cool, but then stop myself because I know now that language like that is a trap and he’ll only feel obligated to deny it. 

“Any other surprises up your sleeve?” I ask him, and he quickly steals another chip. I don’t stop him, finally starting to feel human again. 

“Funny you should ask.” He says as he chews on it. “I got this in Thailand.” He rolls up the left sleeve of his sweatshirt to show me the tattoo on the smooth inner skin of his forearm. It’s a mango on a stem with two leaves, done in simple black ink with this appealing, sketchy style. It looks a bit like something he might have drawn.

“Oh, nice.” I say. “Did you design it?”

“No, the woman in the tattoo parlour did. We were just passing by and I knew I had to get something done by her, like, I knew it was a kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

“Does it mean something special?”

He grins. “Nope, it’s just a nice drawing.”

“Fair enough.” I wonder what it’s like to be so nonchalant about something that’s going to be on your body for the rest of your life. It’s exactly the kind of free spirited thing that I wish I was capable of doing, but sometimes I have anxiety dreams that I’ve gotten a tattoo that I regret in a really prominent place like my face and for some reason nobody will laser it off for me. I take them as a sign that I’m not ready for anything so permanent. He picks at my chips again and I slide them towards him so he can tuck in with fervent enthusiasm, and while he eats I ask him about Thailand. 

“I went June last year.” He says. “I always wanted to visit. So my friend Jonas and I decided to take off for a month while we had the chance and it was incredible. Seriously. I think everyone should go and experience it if they can.”

“Really? What was it like?”

“I can’t even do it justice by trying to describe it to you. C’mere.” He pats the seat next to him and pulls out his phone. “I’ll show you some pictures.”

I slide out of my seat and move in next to him, being very careful to leave enough room for Jesus between us in case our legs touch and sand of those dangerous feelings I used to have come flying back. 

“No Blockia.” I comment. 

“Hm?”

“Your old phone. It’s gone.”

“Yes.” He grins. “I couldn’t fight the future anymore, it just wasn’t practical, I needed Google Maps to get around.”

“They have torches built in now, did you know.”

He exhales a laugh and shakes his head. “Alright, well, let’s look at my holiday to Thailand, when you’re ready.” And he starts scrolling through photographs of the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, his phone screen becoming like a travel brochure with almost unrealistically spectacular vistas. Thailand looks like paradise, crystal blue waters and white sand, these huge rocks covered in lush vegetation jutting out of the sea and the sky awash with gold as the sun sets over a bay. “That was the Phi Phi Islands.” He narrates. “Jonas got food poisoning from a street vendor and was holed up in the hotel for two days so I just wandered around on my own.” Next he shows me photos of beach bars with thatch roofs, of intertwining roots of mangrove trees and of people selling shell necklaces under colourful tents. He’s taken a snap of a hand painted sign that says, in English: Beach This Way.

“You know, in a funny way, it kind of reminds me of the beach we stayed on.” I tell him. “Just something about the way those signs are painted, it’s like how it was at the Surf Shack.”

“Actually, I thought the same thing.” He says, and flicks to the next picture, which is him and a big, blonde German looking guy, presumably Jonas, standing in a little wooden boat holding a pair of oars. “Oh, this is when Jonas was better.” 

“I like your hair band.” I say, snickering. 

“Ha. Yeah, well, my hair was longer, I needed to keep it out of my eyes somehow.”

“Did you keep it?”

“The hairband? Why? Do you want it?”

“Oh yeah for sure, gimme. It’s so stylish.” 

He laughs and flips through more, and tells me about them all, Phuket, Ko Samui, Phi Phi islands, Bangkok. In all of the photos he’s got that golden tan that I remember he used to have, summer coloured skin lost now to the winter, and he looks so free and easy and so happy, riding on a motorbike, lying in a canoe, shirtless on the beach and stretched out doing a goofy pose on a sun lounger, I find myself mesmerised by this depiction of his life, like he’s only ever having good days, only ever in gorgeous places, smiling, happy, and I let myself get sucked into the fantasy that a life like this is possible for me too until he scrolls too far and I have to look at a picture of him kissing his girlfriend. My stomach drops instantly. 

“Oops. “ He says. “Went too far.”

I laugh awkwardly. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s okay.”

“That’s my girlfriend, Astrid.” 

“She looks pretty.” 

He nods in agreement. “She’s, yeah… she’s absolutely beautiful.” He quickly flips to another photo of her where she’s not locking lips with him and makes me look at her smiling face so that I can pretend I didn’t spend months cyber stalking her. I don’t really know what to say. “Yeah, wow, she’s something else.”

He stares down at the phone with this adoring expression on his face as though he’s the luckiest man alive and this feeling comes over me that I haven’t felt in a very long time. It’s the same way I felt when he rejected my misguided teenage attempts at seduction, and the same way I felt when I saw his face when he spoke to Michelle. It’s the feeling that I’m not what he wants. I’ll never be what he wants. The memory of it is too much and all over again I feel the stinging pain of knowing that I offered my love to someone who saw no worth in it. 

I start gathering my empty milkshake cup and the greasy papers onto a tray to dump them into a nearby bin. “We should get going now.” I tell him. “I’m sure everyone else is waiting for us at the bar, and they’ll be closing soon.”

“Right.” He says, pushing himself upright and swiping salt from his black jeans. “Thank you for the chips, by the way. I wasn’t even that hungry but those things are like crack to me.”

“No problem. And I appreciate you coming with me to get food.”

Prev // Next

[tricornonthecob]

Ow my legs

LK 110: Warshington Takes Command

(pt1)(pt2)(pt3)(pt4)

awww Sarah is so excited to be doing a journalism with her crush.

Ayyy! Its his pigeon phase!

This frame has such an energy.

Also, he was kindly to pigeons as a street orphan. They kept him company while people shunned him. He is now a pigeon person.

James is so concerned for his pigeon friends. I bet he can mimic their cooing sounds.

I love this interaction I love sibling interactions I love feral little sibling irritating the older sibling energy.

Dudemanbro is as unfazed by casual gunshot sounds as I now am after having grown up close enough to a base that occasionally tested artillery and would shake our windows, lived in Richmond for seven years, and then lived in a neighborhood with one person who really likes fireworks.

The beagle/great dane puppy is so excited.

Calm down, Lydia Bennet.

womp womp everyone's injured because war were declared.

And she would know what a good one looks like!

Damn James laid into them alot more than what I expected him to.

Fuckin' Yikes. Destroys the evidence.

...You know I don't think it was a brave thing so much as a hare-brained, coke-nosed thing, go on though, there's a but in that sentence.

Is this Moses' extremely diplomatic way of saying Benji Franx was being a dumbass.

Okay but Benji, she's one of your reporters, too, and why does the girl always have to be the eye-rolling mom friend keeping the boys of the trio in line. What if its the blonde boy with main character energy that's actually supposed to be the mom friend??? He'd make a great mom friend when he isn't having ADHD teenager brain!

I do like the visual of James going to Franklin, excited as hell and overwhelmed that his chosen Role Model supports his Interests, and excitedly chattering/brainstorming about his idea to use homing pigeons. It was probably adorable and I wish it was shown. In this house we stan Empathetic James and Excitable James.

Quick someone get Lydia Bennet Sarah over here, she's missing the Army Sandwich.

Wow this Keebler Elf really stands out. He must have been rejected by his clan for being so tall wait isn't this Aaron Carter's character

Butterfliiiiiint he must have been too clumsy with the cookie dough in Keeblerville or wherever the fuck their tree is.

Why was it loaded, Elfo???

I'm very sorry, animation department, but what the hell.

...This is a reference to some boomer shit, isn't it. I know they make a scooby-doo reference somewhere.

Talking mad smack for the New England version of West Virginia. What secrets is Connecticut hiding in its forests, that it so jealously guards them from Pennsylvania???? Is it the location of the Keebler Elf tree.

Colonial Walgreens Manager.

Sarrrrrge you weren't supposed to tell anyone my occupation GOSH

Why is this guy so ominous.

Oh my god Striker? Even his name is edgelord.

That is the correct answer, Henri!

[rarepairnation]

Your ™ (aside from faramir obv) is how unhinged you are about denethor AND having the most correct takes abt him🧡. Oh and also oranges maybe

AAAA...THANK YOU ??? THIS KNOCKED ME FLAT like for real i cannot express how much ive been thinking about this ask all day. like i was in the grocery store thinking about it. i cant decide if it's funnier if you've been here since i was 19 and a hater and watched me have my dramatic change of heart in real time or if youre new here and don't know my tragic backstory. TO ME it's hilarious to be assigned denethor girl bc like teenage me is having a heart attack but i bear the badge with pride nevertheless <3333 and thats what we call character growth!

pj had totally got me with the mad-and-vindictive-with-despair denethor gambit for years and years but literally i started working on the faramir goes to rivendell au and thought for about two seconds about how complex both faramir and boromir's relationships with their father are and how the film changes genuinely weaken all of their characters so much and did a total 180 degree turn on a dime. by doing denethor dirty i would automatically be doing faramir dirty and then i started thinking and went hang on a second he is so complex and interesting actually. like i can't emphasize how much that was the exact logic that allowed me to achieve this development.

i mean okay LISTEN TO ME oh my GOD denethor IS a good leader there's a reason why gondor stood so long alone against the enemy and he NEARLY fucking beat SAURON in 30 years worth of head-to-head knock-down-drag-out psychic stalemate warfare and he only falls into despair when he loses both of his sons. you don't need to like him to respect the achievement!

i almost put a read more here but fuck it denethorposting on main. hit j on your keyboard or do a big scroll if youre sick of me LOL

i am very well known for going totally feral over duty vs love dynamics and that is literally what is going on between denethor and his sons. he cannot be their father and their commander at the same time and they are at war!!! being their commander has to win out above all else!!! whether any of them like it or not!!! do you know what ruthlessness means do you understand that duty wins this one.

do u guys understand that denethor and faramir are a father and son who love each other above else and yet do not like each other at all. there was a schism somewhere there along the line and love without bitterness and political sniping and ideological misalignment is a DISTANT MEMORY. No Of Course He Shouldn't Have Said He Wished Faramir And Boromir's Places Exchanged Jesus Christ No Son Should Have To Hear That From Their Father But Girl Sometimes When You're Grieving You Say Stupid Shit That You Shouldn't Have. doesn't mean you should've said it but [pippin voice] we can understand poor denethor a bit better, huh?

its just so interesting to me to think about faramir and denethor's relationship from a standpoint of like. ok listen good stewards that are not good fathers and dutiful sons who will not compromise their moral compasses for love. i don't like you and i agree with approximately 1% of everything you've said ever and your expectations of me have always been unreasonably high even when i was a child but you also are the only person who could ever understand the terrifying psychic powers that just live inside my brain and you are probably the incarnation of lordly dignity and power that i have had and i have wanted to emulate all my life and i still have the instinct to ask for your approval even if i'm going to hate what you're going to say. and when i'm dying i will call out for you. and i don't like you and your moral compass is going to get you and me and everyone in our city killed and you haven't listened to a single thing i've said since you were fourteen and i fucking hate that you're listening to and trusting the fucking wizard over me but you are my best captain and you are everything that i wished i could've been without the war and you'll never understand that that's why i pushed you so hard i just wanted you to live. and if you couldn't live at least we could die together. LISTEN i am a faramir girl until the death you all KNOW THIS BUT THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE- [i am forcibly yanked offstage]

[catchingpapermoons]

27

just musings on aging and mental health and being alive.

content warnings for suicidal ideation, death, self-loathing.

as the days ticked down to my 20th birthday, i became acutely aware of the fact that i was still a living, breathing person.

i hadn’t thought about it much; i’d been surviving on empty for so long i hadn’t realized it was time for me to leave my teen years behind. for me, much like it was for everyone else in the world, being a teenager knocked me around like those inflatable tube guys that blow violently in the wind outside the most drab-looking car dealership.

i grew up a lot from 13 to 19. i was very different at 19 than i was when i entered high school, but an apt comparison of those girls would be that i was so deeply, achingly insecure of my personality, because i wasn’t really sure i had one at all. much of it came from other people because i wanted them to like me, because i wanted everyone to like me. i wanted to make myself fit in spaces i probably wouldn’t have fit in at all. i didn’t know how to rise above it. i wasn’t sure i wanted to rise above it. all i knew, with absolute certainty, was that everyone would find out that i was secretly a terrible, jealous, conniving, uppity cunt who no one would ever love.

i had long believed i wouldn’t make it to 20. unfailingly, i’d hoped, maybe even believed, that something would happen and i wouldn’t have to face the rest of my life. and as much as i had believed that, suddenly i had made it through two years of undergrad and i was marching headfirst toward my 20s. i even wrote something too, braving how uncomfortable i was in facing my emotions to tell my community of facebook friends, people i’d known since birth, since middle school, since high school, since i started college, that i was grateful to them for giving me a safe place to land when it felt like i’d been freefalling for years.

“as a very lonely freshman in high school, for some reason, reaching the age of 20 seemed impossible,” i said in my post. “i’m happy to be 20 today.”

and just as suddenly as i’d approached 20, i was 21 and falling in love, and i was 22 and falling out of it. 23 and finally feeling a sense of self after being (mostly) properly treated for my depression, and then the world shut down. 24, 25, and 26 came and went. and a constant in all those years was that i’d come to this realization, this understanding of myself, that there was something—something young, feral, and bright—that was hurt. not irreparably, not from one single blow, but taken altogether, there was something fragile that needed tending to, like the broken ankle i never let heal properly.

there was an instagram story prompt the other day that asked you to show yourself in the past six years. what was startling to me was, first, that i found six pictures from six different years within the 20 thousand something photos in my library. but the prevailing thought was, looking at the pictures side-by-side, that you could tell how unhappy i was at 22, 23, 24 even. how halfway through being 25 you could see how settled i had become, that at 26, about to graduate with a professional doctorate degree, despite the massive stress and anger and anxiety and imposter-syndrome-god-complex that every law student has, i looked happy.

there’s a lump in my throat just thinking about it.

because when i was 14, i couldn’t picture life past 20. i could barely see the 15th birthday light at the end of the freshman year tunnel. when i was 19, i was shocked to see 20 flying around the corner, and even more shocked that i wanted to keep aging. it’s a source of pride for me that i’d managed, despite everything trying to tear me to pieces, to make it that far, and even farther than that.

there were reasons, of course, that i would never have left. i knew even in the throes of my insurmountable incapacitation that i couldn’t ruin my family like that. maybe that’s narcissistic to say, but maybe it’s just true, that a lack of grace in the world would hurt people in a way that would never leave them. i’m still haunted by memories of people i knew—whether i knew them well or more peripherally—because they’re gone and i won’t be able to send them a follow request on instagram or run into them on the train on our morning commute  because they died too early. and some of these people weren’t even my friends, just friends of friends or boyfriends of friends or kids i passed in the hallway. i think about them still and the mark they left, and i couldn’t do that to my family or friends or people who feel like me about the people whose posts they “love” on facebook or whose tweets they like on twitter.

and now, as i’m typing this, i am two weeks away from 27. in the past 6 and a half years i’ve been so adrift. i’d been so certain of life not existing past 20 that i never thought to picture what it would look like. i graduated from university and didn’t have a plan, and i was traumatized from my last relationship and heartbreak. i had no immediate plans beyond “make enough money to pay for gas” after i’d completely bombed the GRE, and i didn’t know who i was beyond my illness. 

now, i’m getting ready to take this exam that will determine my future and i worry about passing because everyone worries about passing the bar, but i’ve made it 7 years past where i thought i would. and i want to make it 10, 20, 30 more years, and beyond that. i want to be 100 with a family of kids and grandkids and great-grandkids and i want to be hopeful about the world that we live in even when hope feels fruitless and when climate change feels catastrophic because even when i was my most depressed, my most helpless, the little hurt part of me still felt hope.

the thing in me that’s hurting is simultaneously more prevalent and less painful than it has been. i like to picture it like a child version of me. and some part of me is telling her, whether she’s 5 or 13 or 21, that she’s going to be okay. she might feel lonely, she might feel sad and scared and panicked, she might try—well-meaning and missing the mark often—to help those around her when they just need to be left alone, but that it’s okay to make those mistakes. it’s okay to believe the best in people until they’ve shown you otherwise. it’s okay to be kind and know that, for as many loud and awful people there are in the world, there are more people who just care about helping each other. and it’s okay to believe all those things. and it’s okay to be discouraged and disappointed.

but i’m going to turn 27 and i’m going to celebrate with friends who live near me and call my friends who live far away and i’m going to provide help when i’m asked to and support when it’s needed. and i like to believe that’s made at least one person’s life a little brighter. i’ve never liked my birthday much. i think i’m just excited to turn another year older and to just keep going.

reaching 30 doesn’t seem so impossible anymore. 

[straycalamities]

24 for kian, ace, and daisy waisy

What is an alternative life path your OC might have gone down? How different would their life be if they’d made those decisions?

AH! the nearly-uncomfortable au strikes again

kian: hrmm...im trying to think...i cant imagine a world where he doesnt eventually leave his dad... like...is it even feasible to live ur whole life in those conditions and not try to get away. theyre just..UNLIVEABLE. if he didnt leave he'd just DIE

tho...even if he just left later that'd make a huge impact on him i think...he'd be soooooooo cold. he wouldn't even have the unserious funny haha nihilism he has now. he'd just be an angry dick that's entirely dead inside. he would survive doing the bare minimum bc he wouldn't think about how life could get better than that. everyone would avoid him besides the naïve "ooo sexy man" initial response but just one interaction would have them being like nah, actually,

ace: oogh, there's so many decisions he made that i could unmake, oogh. delicious.

if he decided to not help his dad financially as a kid. oh thats a big one. oh its so big the more i think abt it. holy shit. that's what formed his entire personality. all his interests and everything. (special mentions for if he decided to not befriend jack or decided not to pursue his dreams so hard)

but i wanna do this one

so. honestly? ace would probably be taken away from his dad if it got worse. even if CPS fucking sucks there's nooo way i think it'd be allowed to go further downhill. (otherwise they'd be literally on the streets and THEN ace would get taken away? either way) and i honestly cant see ace getting adopted, unfortunately.

his dad, even if he didnt spoil him with STUFF, he spoiled his attitude. it's like...probably some way of like making up for not being able to get ace anything is to let him act however he wanted. so it'd take some reeeeeeal patient parent(s) to wanna take ace in because he wouldn't have the mind to hide it at that point. ace would maybe eventually learn to chameleon his behavior? but i think by the time he learned it in the foster system it'd be too late bc..ppl dont tend to adopt teenagers either

god this is making my brain gears TURN that one decision rly is everything

i think that his growing up would be pretty shit. bc now im thinking abt the differences between this and cult au ace AUGH. cult au ace at least had a stable home with a turn-around of income even if it wasnt from him specifically busting his ass to earn the money (well in a way it still is, but, different)

ace, but...jaded O_O he wouldn't evolve that charming personality. i think he'd lean more into the class clown personality. but it's not as endearing bc everyone sees him as a girl. and i know from experience, girl class clowns are just...weird-girls w Issues to everyone. its not endearing like it is w boy class-clowns to other ppl. he'd still have like..pretty strategic ideas for situations and stuff bc that's inherently him. but..i dont think it'd get him as far as it normally would

so he'd be so..lonely lmao. like regular ace also has issues w loneliness but its way more complex. this would just be straight up. fkn lonely. and straightforward misery from it. maybe he'd have some goons or smth at some point? but idk if he could ever truly connect w them unless they were also from the foster system.

cuz see im thinking that normal ace learns everything he does bc he makes the decision that he HAS to. he has to to survive so it all becomes this like...ok i do this or i starve. whereas an ace that's either decided its hopeless, not his responsibility, or just didnt think to do it, wouldnt have that same direct "inspiration" riding his ass. so his social skills would form in a rly weird way based mostly off how much of a brat he is and how much he desires everyone to like him (which is also true of any other ace but this one has a like..feral desperation to it in comparison. like a stray animal more than..someone who grew up too fast and forgot to make real friends along the way <- the usual)

he'd still have these like lofty dreams and i think he'd still want to chase them somehow, but he wouldn't have the connections nor the charm normal ace has. he'd be, at most, some stand-up comedian who performs nights at some local venue and he's just an opener for the main act. maybe he'd sing and put in the work to be good at it, but a big part of this kinda career is the ppl you know so :pensive emoji:

god this ace is the epitome of sopping wet meow meow. what a miserable little man. so richie tozier-coded but more of a failure bc he doesnt have a group of friends to bond w over other-dimensional clown trauma

anyways i think that's enough rambling abt this. i could go a hundred different directions with it from here and i cant choose one. so. there u go. something to chew on. (god he wouldnt care abt sleight-of-hand shit or magicians or card tricks or any of that. WHO WOULD HE BE??????????? maybe he'd hold onto the bar interest in general? like billiards n stuff? oh my god he'd be more likely to be an alcoholic like his father NOOOOOOO)

after that daisy's gonna seem so lack-luster LMAO

daisy: the thing w daisy is i dont rly have a set story in my head for her rly? i kinda just have..scenes and things i like her doing. ive never sat and gave her a like...biography

so idk what decision she'd make that i could undo and have it make an interesting change...if she didnt decide to sing, she'd be an actress. if she didn't decide to kill ppl, she'd just be focusing on her dreams full-time. and so none of that's super interesting to get into uh...

if she didnt decide to push being famous, she'd probably just be happy being some homemaker or smth. someones trophy wife or...a singing waitress or waffle house worker idk.

even with nyanpire daisy its more like...her big decisions is to not...die. uh. (bc shes miserable as a vampire) so if i reverse that then shes just dead LFJKSDJF

so idk 8_8 thank u for including her but IDK WHAT TO SAY!!!!!!!!