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[mostlysignssomeportents]

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Which raises an important question: why do companies enshittify at a specific moment, after refraining from enshittifying before? After all, a company always has the potential to benefit by treating its business customers and end users worse, by giving them a worse deal. If you charge more for your product and pay your suppliers less, that leaves more money on the table for your investors.

Of course, it's not that simple. While cheating, price-gouging, and degrading your product can produce gains, these tactics also threaten losses. You might lose customers to a rival, or get punished by a regulator, or face mass resignations from your employees who really believe in your product.

Companies choose not to enshittify their products…until they choose to do so. One theory to explain this is that companies are engaged in a process of continuous assessment, gathering data about their competitive risks, their regulators' mettle, their employees' boldness. When these assessments indicate that the conditions are favorable to enshittification, the CEO walks over to the big "enshittification" lever on the wall and yanks it all the way to MAX.

Some companies have certainly done this – and paid the price. Think of Myspace or Yahoo: companies that made themselves worse by reducing quality and gouging on price (be it measured in dollars or attention – that is, ads) before sinking into obscure senescence. These companies made a bet that they could get richer while getting worse, and they were wrong, and they lost out.

But this model doesn't explain the Great Enshittening, in which all the tech companies are enshittifying at the same time. Maybe all these companies are subscribing to the same business newsletter (or, more likely, buying advice from the same management consultancy) (cough McKinsey cough) that is a kind of industry-wide starter pistol for enshittification.

I think it's something else. I think the main job of a CEO is to show up for work every morning and yank on the enshittification lever as hard as you can, in hopes that you can eke out some incremental gains in your company's cost-basis and/or income by shifting value away from your suppliers and customers to yourself.

We get good digital services when the enshittification lever doesn't budge – when it is constrained: by competition, by regulation, by interoperable mods and hacks that undo enshittification (like alternative clients and ad-blockers) and by workers who have bargaining power thanks to a tight labor market or a powerful union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

When Google ordered its staff to build a secret Chinese search engine that would censor search results and rat out dissidents to the Chinese secret police, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

When Google tried to win a US government contract to build AI for drones used to target and murder civilians far from the battlefield, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html

What's happened since – what's behind all the tech companies enshittifying all at once – is that tech worker power has been smashed, especially at Google, where 12,000 workers were fired just months after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years. Likewise, competition has receded from tech bosses' worries, thanks to lax antitrust enforcement that saw most credible competitors merged into behemoths, or neutralized with predatory pricing schemes. Lax enforcement of other policies – privacy, labor and consumer protection – loosened up the enshittification lever even more. And the expansion of IP rights, which criminalize most kinds of reverse engineering and aftermarket modification, means that interoperability no longer applies friction to the enshittification lever.

Now that every tech boss has an enshittification lever that moves very freely, they can show up for work, yank the enshittification lever, and it goes all the way to MAX. When googlers protested the company's complicity in the genocide in Gaza, Google didn't kill the project – it mass-fired the workers:

https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/statement-from-google-workers-with-the-no-tech-for-apartheid-campaign-on-googles-indiscriminate-28ba4c9b7ce8

Enshittification is a macroeconomic phenomenon, determined by the regulatory environment for competition, privacy, labor, consumer protection and IP. But enshittification is also a microeconomic phenomenon, the result of innumerable boardroom and product-planning fights within companies in which would-be enshittifiers try to do things that make the company's products and services shittier wrestle with rivals who want to keep things as they are, or make them better, whether out of principle or fear of the consequences.

Those microeconomic wrestling-matches are where we find enshittification's heroes and villains – the people who fight for the user or stand up for a fair deal, versus the people who want to cheat and wreck to make things better for the company and win bonuses and promotions for themselves:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

These microeconomic struggles are usually obscure, because companies are secretive institutions and our glimpses into their deliberations are normally limited to the odd leaked memo, whistleblower tell-all, or spectacular worker revolt. But when a company gets dragged into court, a new window opens into the company's internal operations. That's especially true when the plaintiff is the US government.

Which brings me back to Google, the poster-child for enshittification, a company that revolutionized the internet a quarter of a century ago with a search-engine that was so good that it felt like magic, which has decayed so badly and so rapidly that whole sections of the internet are disappearing from view for the 90% of users who rely on the search engine as their gateway to the internet.

Google is being sued by the DOJ's Antitrust Division, and that means we are getting a very deep look into the company, as its internal emails and memos come to light:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Google is a tech company, and tech companies have literary cultures – they run on email and other forms of written communication, even for casual speech, which is more likely to take place in a chat program than at a water-cooler. This means that tech companies have giant databases full of confessions to every crime they've ever committed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Large pieces of Google's database-of-crimes are now on display – so much, in fact, that it's hard for anyone to parse through it all and understand what it means. But some people are trying, and coming up with gold. One of those successful prospectors is Ed Zitron, who has produced a staggering account of the precise moment at which Google search tipped over into enshittification, which names the executives at the very heart of the rot:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Zitron tells the story of a boardroom struggle over search quality, in which Ben Gomes – a long-tenured googler who helped define the company during its best years – lost a fight with Prabhakar Raghavan, a computer scientist turned manager whose tactic for increasing the number of search queries (and thus the number of ads the company could show to searchers) was to decrease the quality of search. That way, searchers would have to spend more time on Google before they found what they were looking for.

Zitron contrasts the background of these two figures. Gomes, the hero, worked at Google for 19 years, solving fantastically hard technical scaling problems and eventually becoming the company's "search czar." Raghavan, the villain, "failed upwards" through his career, including a stint as Yahoo's head of search from 2005-12, a presiding over the collapse of Yahoo's search business. Under Raghavan's leadership, Yahoo's search market-share fell from 30.4% to 14%, and in the end, Yahoo jettisoned its search altogether and replaced it with Bing.

For Zitron, the memos show how Raghavan engineered the ouster of Gomes, with help from the company CEO, the ex-McKinseyite Sundar Pichai. It was a triumph for enshittification, a deliberate decision to make the product worse in order to make it more profitable, under the (correct) belief that the company's exclusivity deals to provide search everywhere from Iphones and Samsungs to Mozilla would mean that the business would face no consequences for doing so.

It a picture of a company that isn't just too big to fail – it's (as FTC Chair Lina Khan put it on The Daily Show) too big to care:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

Zitron's done excellent sleuthing through the court exhibits here, and his writeup is incandescently brilliant. But there's one point I quibble with him on. Zitron writes that "It’s because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it."

I think that gets it backwards. I think that there were always enshittifiers in the C-suites of these companies. When Page and Brin brought in the war criminal Eric Schmidt to run the company, he surely started every day with a ritual, ferocious tug at that enshittification lever. The difference wasn't who was in the C-suite – the difference was how freely the lever moved.

On Saturday, I wrote:

The platforms used to treat us well and now treat us badly. That's not because they were setting a patient trap, luring us in with good treatment in the expectation of locking us in and turning on us. Tech bosses do not have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

Someone on Hacker News called that "silly," adding that "tech bosses do in fact have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years. That's literally the business model of most startups":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114339

That's not quite right, though. The business-model of the startup is to yank on the enshittification lever every day. Tech bosses don't lie in wait for the perfect moment to claw away all the value from their employees, users, business customers, and suppliers – they're always trying to get that value. It's only when they become too big to care that they succeed. That's the definition of being too big to care.

In antitrust circles, they sometimes say that "the process is the punishment." No matter what happens to the DOJ's case against Google, its internal workers have been made visible to the public. The secrecy surrounding the Google trial when it was underway meant that a lot of this stuff flew under the radar when it first appeared. But as Zitron's work shows, there is plenty of treasure to be found in that trove of documents that is now permanently in the public domain.

When future scholars study the enshittocene, they will look to accounts like Zitron's to mark the turning points from the old, good internet to the enshitternet. Let's hope those future scholars have a new, good internet on which to publish their findings.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

[lamentationsofalonelypotato]

Chapter 8: Jealousy Doesn't Look Good On Anybody Except...

Pairing: Soldier Boy x f!reader, Reader POV

Summary: When the reader left Payback 40 years ago after a falling out with her childhood best friend she never looked back, but when two men show up to her apartment and start asking her questions about the past, the reader begins to think those things can’t stay hidden and starts to question what’s real and what’s fantasy.  This is a re-telling of The Boys Season 3, where the reader is a supe who's known Soldier Boy since 1927. The chapters will fluctuate between past and present. This is chapter eight of my "You Call It Madness But I Call It Love" series. (I'm so bad at summaries please forgive me!)

Word Count: 4.1K

Warnings: References to sex, Cursing (a few times), Drinking, Soldier Boy might be, is, really, absolutely, a little OOC,

Note: This is told from Reader's perspective. Any references to the reader is made using you or your. There is minimal use of y/n. I tried my best to proofread, but nobody's perfect. Reader is described as "curvy" occasionally. If you don’t like, don’t read, but if you do like, you’re my favorite!

The song they dance to is "You Call It Madness But I Call It Love" by Russ Columbo and this should take you to the song. It's the song I named the series for, because I believe it encompasses how both the reader feels, but also how Soldier Boy will feel in a few chapters. I also believe that the song House of Memories by Panic at the Disco, fits the more modern parts of the series.

Internal Monologue is in first person and is in italics

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Philadelphia 1938

The lights twinkled along the ceiling of the dance hall as the gentle swell of jazz floated through the air. Couples swayed on the dance floor clinging to one another as the soft tones of the music soothed the dull throb of the whispers of rising tension overseas. It was a Saturday night, and you and a few of your friends from the Dawson School for Girls had slipped away to spend the evening twirling in the arms of whomever caught your fancy.

Well, at least that's what your friends wanted to do. There was only one particular man who'd caught your fancy, but he was nowhere to be seen.

The Dawson School for Girls was the answer to your mother's prayers, a boarding school in Boston, far away from Ben's "corruptive influence" as she put it. Ben was currently at boarding school number ten in Upstate New York. The last time you’d seen him was when you were on break and Ben had just left boarding school number nine for fighting with other students, but he wouldn't say what for. You’d sent him a few letters to tell him how bored you were including a few sketches and watercolor paintings, with minimal response, but it was like him not to write back.

You hadn't mentioned that Howard Stine had been coming on the weekends to take you out. Your mother was pleased with him, he checked all the boxes: wealthy, not Ben, educated, not Ben, from a nice family, not Ben, and of course most importantly, not Ben.

She was practically making wedding invitations and choosing the names of your children after only three months. However, it was nice to see her happy for a change, kept her from sniping at your figure now that someone was interested. Well, not sniping that much.

Howard was… nice, but he was one of the most boring people you'd ever met and he never understood why you always carried a sketchbook with you. When he'd taken you to Franklin Park one weekend, you stopped along the pond to sketch some of the ducks that were waddling on the bank, but Howard told you he didn’t have time to wait for you to draw them. Instead of telling him that he could just leave, you shut the sketchpad and continued to walk with him and quickly learned that it was better to leave your sketchpad at the dorm whenever he was in town. You also found yourself talking less and less, allowing him to fill the silence with his talk of the stock market crash and how the United States economy recovered due to the efforts of President FDR.

You hated that. You didn't recognize yourself when you were with him. You didn't feel like you.

And every time he was here all you could do was compare him to Ben. Ben would never tell you to stop drawing, yes he would tease you about it, but he always sat next to you while you were sketching, watching you work. You never understood that. Ben was so impatient with everyone else, but he was willing to sit with you for any inordinate amount of time if you were drawing while making you laugh the whole time.

I miss him so much.

"Can I get you a drink?" Howard puts his hand on the small of your back, leaning in to whisper in your ear. You try not to flinch at his touch. He had already been in town, walking you home from a dinner that was dominated by awkward silence and the clicking of utensils on plates when you'd run into your friends just as he was walking you back to the dorm. They had rounded the corner giggling and begging you to come with them. Despite your insistences for him to stay in and relax for the night at his hotel, he refused.

It meant that now you were stuck with him while all your friends got to twirl around with men that made them warm and giddy. Howard made you feel like you'd swallowed a lemon.

"I'm fine, but thank you." You force a smile.

Howard shrugs, before he walks away towards the crowded bar on the other side of the room and blessedly far away from you.

Your thoughts drifted to Ben. You missed your friend more than words could comprehend. Not just because you were far from your family in another city, but because it felt like you were missing apart of yourself when he wasn't there. You briefly wonder if he felt the same way when he wasn't with you.

Probably not.

You turn away from Howard's retreating figure, to watch the couples on the dance floor. You sway to the music, holding your arms around yourself and feeling your dark green dress swish around your ankles, one that you'd picked out yourself, not a monstrosity of pink tulle, but something that you believed accentuated the natural curves of your body that your mother used other dresses to hide. Your mouth turns down into a frown remembering how Howard had reacted to seeing you in it, when he tried to give you his jacket to cover up, but you refused.

You had wanted him to be stunned by how you looked in it, or at least, wanted someone to be. The same someone that was miles away and probably tickling the skirt of someone who caught his fancy.

"One of the most attractive men I've ever seen in my life is at the bar." Your friend Pearl stated looking behind you with wide eyes.

I've got you beat. You think to yourself to a sigh, wishing, again, that you were here with Ben instead of Howard.

"Very funny." You roll your eyes, thinking that she’s making fun of where Howard is sitting probably flagging down the bartender with both hands to catch his attention.

"I'm not talking about Howard. This guy is seriously a looker. And he's staring at you." Pearl says again.

"Sure." You continue to watch an elderly couple sway back and forth to the smooth jazz that ebbs from the band on stage.

Must be nice to be with someone for that long.

You watch how effortlessly the couple moves as one, how the man stares down at the woman with more love than you can comprehend. It makes your heart sink in your chest.

The way things were panning out, you were going to end up with Howard and you couldn't imagine looking at anyone like that other than Ben.

"You're about to see, because he's coming this way." Pearl takes a step back from you as if anticipating the stranger interrupting your conversation.

"He's not-" You begin to say, but you feel someone place their hand on the small of your back, turning you towards them.

"Fancy meeting you here." Ben smiles down at you, a playful smirk tugging at his lips.

"Ben!" Your heart soars when you recognize your friend and you can't help but hug him so tight he laughs, the movement of his chuckle makes you feel alive for the first time in weeks. The sharp smell of whiskey and the familiar spicy scent of his cologne greets you.

"Guess you missed me." The rumble of his voice vibrates where your cheek rests against his chest.

"I did." You pull away from him reluctantly. "What are you doing here?" You can't help but smile at him, probably wider than what was attractive.

"Thought I'd stop by and visit on my way back to Philadelphia. Saw you walk into this place. " Ben shrugs. "What are you doing out so late?"

"Looking for trouble." You smirk.

"You found him sweetheart." Ben leans down towards you making your throat get unusually tight.

"Hi." Pearl says interrupting the conversation.

 Ben turns his smug smile on her. "Hi."

"I'm Pearl." She looks from you to Ben as if trying to decide that it's okay for her to introduce yourself.

"Benjamin." You watch him slip into the cool and smooth Ben, the one that charmed whomever caught his eye.

You can't help but feel a prick of jealousy against your skin. It was familiar, but every time it happened, it didn't make any of this easier. You knew that you shouldn't be jealous, you didn't have a claim on him, you were friends, just friends, only friends, best friends…

And now you were with Howard.

You let out a soft sigh watching the way that Pearl looks up at Ben and the way he leans towards her with the confident smirk you love so much on his face.

"Would you like to dance Benjamin?" She asks.

"I would." Ben's smirk turns into a smile.

Pearl steps forward to reach for his hand, expecting him to take it, but he doesnt.

"Come on sweetheart." Ben reaches out and takes your hand, twirling you ahead of him onto the dance floor.

"Ben-" You giggle, head spinning with the movement, but when he twirls you back into his chest, you feel your breath catch. This wasn't the first time you'd been pressed up against him and it wasn't the first time you recognized how perfectly you fit together. Your soft curves molding against the hardness of his muscles as you sway back and forth to the music. When you were pressed up against him, you didn't feel like you were too big, you felt perfect, because of the way you fit against him.

"You know I am here with someone-" You say, before you get too wrapped up in how good it feels to be with him.

"Yes. Howard Stine. Though I do believe you said he stepped on your toes." Ben smiles at you, eyes twinkling in the light.

"That was four years ago, and he's… sweet?"

"Hmph." Ben rolls his eyes. "You can't even say it with a straight face sweetheart."

"I have never said anything bad about your companions."

"Missy-"

"Besides her." You frown.

He laughs at your reaction, the hand clutched in your right seems to warm with his smile. "You've never said anything about them period."

Because I hate thinking about how many of them there have been. Because I hate that you don't see me as someone who could be with you.

"I try not to dwell on your numerous escapades."

"You sound a little jealous doll." He smirks at you.

"What was that you were saying about Howard again?" You tease, holding on to his shoulders as you sway back and forth to the music.

"Can't be jealous of someone I've seen get chased by a duck." Ben's eyes trace your body for a moment. Your cheeks blush under his gaze. "You look nice. Not one of your mom's I'm guessing?"

"What makes you say that?"

"You don't look like a cupcake." He spins you away one more time before bringing you back into his chest.

"No. I think she'd probably have an aneurysm if she saw me wearing this. Howard also thought it was a bit much-"

Ben's hand tightens on your waist. "What?"

You shrug, leveling your eyes on his chest to distract yourself from his hand placement. "He tried to get me to wear his coat."

"He what?"

You shake your head to dissipate the self-doubt and body-shaming conversation that was about to unfold in your head.

"It's nothing." You raise your gaze back to his, but you're surprised to see the anger that burns behind his green eyes.

"It's not nothing. He had no right to-"

"Ben." You soothe, rubbing your thumb over his shoulder to comfort him.

The song shifts to something softer, forlorn, a song that reminded you of the heartache you felt with Ben, but also a melody that eases your soul somehow.

"I don't understand why you're with him." Ben sighs, but you can still feel the tension in his shoulders beneath your hand.

"My mother is happy-"

"But you're not." The look in his eyes is unfamiliar, almost earnest, as if he's trying to get you to understand something that he can't say.

"Ben." You breathe.

"Fine. I don't want you to think about him when we're dancing to our song anyway." The look in his eyes shifts back to the playful green they'd been before.

"Our song?" The words make your heart skip a beat and you can't help but smile at him.

You couldn't remember the last time you'd smiled this much. Probably the last time I saw him.

"Yes." Ben dips you back, before bringing you up against him, the playful look in his eyes becoming softer as you come back.

You know that your own gaze is filled with love and you remember watching the elderly couple. The way they looked at one another warming your heart as you gaze up at Ben. The three little words tiptoe against your tongue, the three little words that you'd been trying to say forever, but you can't. You don't want to lose him, don't want to live in a world without him, because you know that it won't be worth living.

So instead you lean forward and lay your head against his chest, in the space between his neck and shoulder as the song continues. You think that you feel Ben's arms tighten around you, pulling you further into his embrace, but you chock that up to wishful thinking.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" You hear someone yell, and all of a sudden someone's hand is on your wrist jerking you away from Ben.

What?

Howard is standing there his chest pushed against Ben’s, trying to look intimidating, but Howard's inability to reach Ben's shoulders made it difficult for him.

You rub your fingers over your wrist, where Howard’s bright red handprint stands out against your skin.

Ben’s eyes shift to notice your ministrations, darkening with the force of his anger at the thought that Howard hurt you.

“I think I was dancing with my girl.” Ben’s eyes narrow, skating back to Howard.

Your heart skips a beat when he says that, but you shake away the thought, knowing that Ben is only saying that to make Howard angry.

“Your girl?!” Howard sputters, his face growing red. “She’s not your girl!”

“Howie, buddy-“ Ben’s confident smirk slips over his features but you still see the anger beneath the surface. “Calm down, you’ll give yourself a heart attack.”

“Just because you think you have some claim on her because you’ve been stringing her along with the harem that usually follows you, does not make her your girl!” Howard fumes. “She’s with me.” Howard grabs your wrist again and drags you towards him.

“Hey wait a minute-“ You begin to say.

Ben grabs the front of Howard's tailored suit, rumpling the pristine fabric. “Don’t you dare touch her like that.”

“I will touch her however I damn well please! She's mine-"

The grip on your wrist is so tight that you know it’ll leave bruises. “Howard wait-“ You try again to diffuse the tension, bringing your free hand to rest on his forearm to make him let go.

“Shut up.” He snaps, eyes flashing back to you.

Ben’s temper flares and the sharp crack of his fist against Howard’s face echoes through the room. Howard stumbles away, letting go of your wrist as he reels backward to the welcoming hardwood floor that catches him when he falls.

“Don’t you ever speak to her that way you arrogant son of a bitch!” Ben shouts taking a step forward. His shoulders are tense, fists clenched at his sides and his jaw is tight, as his anger burns through the air.

By now the band has stopped playing music and all the couples around you are watching with wide eyes.

I have to do something before he kills him.

You put yourself between them, your hands firmly planted on Ben’s muscular chest so your back is to where Howard stands fuming. “Ben. Don’t.”

But he’s not looking at you, his gaze is locked with Howard’s, eyes blazing, muscles tensing beneath the palms of your hands. You try to ignore how good his chest feels beneath your touch.

Damn it.

“Ben.” You say his name again.

His eyes snap back to yours. The soft green has hardened to an emerald with the force of his rage, so different than how he looked when the two of you were dancing. But he doesn’t say anything.

“Please.” You whisper. "Stop."

Ben looks from you to Howard, before he finally exhales. “Fine.” He mutters, and he turns and vanishes into the crowd of people without another word.

A minute passes and the music begins all over again, the band on the stage starting with a lively tune that makes the couples around you to move back on to the dance floor, but the tension of what just happened remains in the air.

Because what did just happen? Did Ben do that because he was protective of me? Or did he do that because he was jealous?

Your eyes trace where he vanished, longing for him to come back, but when he doesn't appear, you're left to deal with the aftermath. 

After numerous apologies to Howard, he finally relented and took you back to your dorm, leaving your group of friends at the dance hall. You knew there would definitely be a conversation about what just happened between you all when they got back, but even you were confused. Ben was always protective of you, but what happened seemed over the top. You think about how Ben called you “my girl," the way he said it sending a thrill down your spine. He’d never done that before and you wondered if it was because he wanted to get a rise out of Howard or because he believed it.

Not like he’s tried to do anything about it. You think to yourself stroking one finger against your bruised wrist. The discoloration was more prominent now, black and blue marks beginning to sprout like flowers in spring. Howard’s eye didn’t look much better when he dropped you off. You were surprised that he’d been forgiving enough to continue to see you, not that you wanted to see him, but you didn't think you could handle a letter from your mother.

Then again maybe she would pull you out of this ridiculous school.

A small tap at your window causes you to raise your head to look out the glass. Ben is sitting there, but he doesn’t smile like he usually does. Your dorm room was on the first floor, which meant that Ben didn't need to shimmy up a tree to get into it like he did when you were home. Then again this was the first time he'd showed up here and you wondered how he knew where your room was. You also weren't thrilled at his appearance because you didn't know when Pearl would come back and you weren't sure what your roommate would do if she came back and found Ben in your room. She was a stickler for the rules and despite your friendship, rooming with her was one of your least favorite things about the Dawson School For Girls.

“If they find you here I’m going to be in so much trouble.” You say helping him through the small window, putting your hand on the back of his head so that he doesn't bang it against the glass. "You might like getting kicked out of boarding schools, but I don't."

“They won’t find out.” Ben rolls his eyes. He glances at Pearl’s empty bed on the other side of the room. “Roommate not back yet?”

“No she was still dancing when I left.”

Ben frowns. “Where’s the asshole?”

“Ben-“

“What?”

“He left. And I don't exactly invite him up to where I sleep."

“Good.” Ben flexes his fist.

“How did you know which room was mine?” You ask. Ben had never come to see you before at boarding school and the fact that he was here probably meant that boarding school number ten was out.

“I might have guessed wrong.” He smirks.

“Uh-huh.” You sigh, but all you can think about is how he acted earlier. Your feet shift back and forth “Why did you hit him?”

Ben’s eyes darken. “He shouldn’t have touched you like that or said that to you.”

You stand there for a minute observing his reaction.

“He kinda deserved it." You say slowly.

You knew it was true. When Ben showed up Howard shouldn’t have lost it like he did, he definitely shouldn’t have grabbed you like that or called you his-

You stutter on that thought. But maybe he is right. I am Howard’s. We’ve been going steady… The thought of being his makes something curl up in your chest and die. There was only one man that you wanted to belong to.

"Yeah.” Ben sighs.

"Why did you call me your 'girl'?" You ask.

"Um." Ben shrugs. "Felt right in the moment."

"What?"

"I mean you are. You're my friend-"

"But that doesn't mean friend Ben." You say it gently trying to catch his eye, but Ben won't meet your gaze.

"Fine. I just wanted to mess with him a little bit." Ben frowns. "But I didn't like that he called you his, or the fact that he hurt you."

“But Ben I am his.” You whisper even though you don’t want to. “We’re going steady-“

“That doesn’t make you his!” Ben snaps, eyes flashing. “Just because he feels the need to say it doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“But Ben-“

“And I never want to hear you say it.” He continues loudly.

What is wrong with him? I've never seen him this angry about anything.

“Why?”

“Because that means he has some claim on you. You’re not his, you’re my friend.”

"You're being ridiculous. You're saying that he can't have some claim on me but you're possessively calling me your friend!" You shout back frustrated.

Why is he acting like this? Does he really hate Howard that much?

"I am not! I'm just saying that you're my friend and you're not his!"

“I can’t be both?” Your words hang in the air between the two of you and you mentally beg Ben to answer. He was acting like he wanted you to be his, like he believed that he had some claim on you and you couldn't remember another time that he'd acted this way. Sure he teased Howard, but this was more than that.

It was almost possessive and it kinda scared you how much you liked it.

Ben doesn’t answer your question. His shoulders are tense, hands clenched into fists at his sides, while something lurks behind his eyes that you can’t identify.

“Ben?” You say it like a question, ignoring the urge to press your hands against his chest like you did earlier at the dance to calm him down.

His gaze drops to your arm, where Howard grabbed you, tracing the bruises and clenching his jaw together. Ben’s right hand comes to delicately pick up your bruised wrist, running his thumb over the discolored flesh with a frown. “Does it hurt?” He rumbles changing the subject.

“No. Does that hurt?” You breathe noticing his bruised knuckles and gently probe your fingers along them.

You hated the though that he was hurt and for you, no less.

Why did he have to intervene? Why did he hit Howard?

“It was worth it.”

You both stand there for a minute, with Ben holding on to your wrist, touch surprisingly gentle.

“I just don’t like that he hurt you okay?” He mutters raising his eyes to yours. You weren't prepared for the soft look in his eyes. You expected him to still be angry over Howard, but he almost looked, worried.

“I'm okay Ben." You whisper back.

You want him to answer your question. You think again about telling him those three little words you wanted to say when you were swaying on the dance floor together but you can’t.

He nods once before he looks around the room, eyes falling on your sketchpad where it lays closed on your bed. "Got any new ones?"

You knew it was Ben's way of asking if he could stay, trying to tell you that he didn’t want to go back to Philadelphia that night, and you didn't want him to either.

"A few. If you're not too tired-"

"I’m never too tired for you."

You feel your heart beat rapidly in your chest. “Okay.”

The whole time you sit together on your bed, Ben doesn't drop your wrist, in fact he continues to brush his thumb against it while you look through your sketchbook. And in a few hours when Pearl finds you and Ben curled up in bed together, you’re not embarrassed, because deep down you’re starting to believe that Ben cared for you more than he was willing to admit.

Thank you so much for reading! If you'd like to be added to the taglist for this series, please let me know :)

Taglist: @roseblue373 @anundyingfidelity @cheynovak @cassiecasluciluce @muhahaha303

@deans-spinster-witch @kayleighmeister @demodemo909 @fruitfacess @bobbobbobinogs

@bughill126

[onyourowndaisymae]

𝒇𝒊𝒄𝒔 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒈𝒂𝒛𝒂 - 𝒐𝒃𝒆𝒚 𝒎𝒆 𝒆𝒅𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏

☆☆ 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 & 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 ☆☆

hi again :) i'm joining other lovely fanfic writers with @ficsforgaza to help raise money for the folks in need in palestine. i'm proud to be banding together with the community on tumblr to help palestinians during this horrible time.

to participate, make a donation to a vetted fundraiser found on @ficsforgaza's page (aka, don't send me any money lol) and send me a screenshot (with your personal information removed) along with what you'd like to request to my ask box. please do not "double dip" aka use the same donation for several writers-- this is a fundraiser, after all! here is what a request looks like:

hello! can i sponsor your [INSERT FIC] fic? i donated $5 to gaza, here is the screenshot! thank you! [insert screenshot]

my pricing will be as follows:

★ sponsor-a-WIP: $1/100 words ★ drabbles: $2-3/100 words (elaborated below) ★ no money to contribute, but you want to support the cause? that's okay. sign a vetted petition from the @ficsforgaza page and send proof, and i'll add a sentence to a WIP of your choosing.

if you have any questions, feel free to take a look here on @ficsforgaza's page or reach out to me. be patient, i will work on these fics when i can. thank you so much for helping me raise money for a good cause ;)

☆☆ 𝐖𝐈𝐏𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐫 ☆☆

★ pink pony club

on saturday nights, the lights at the fall dim as a performer takes stage. beauty, grace, taking the stage as music begins to trickle from the speakers for their performance. you're born naked, the rest is drag. how do the characters of obey me interact with this art form? are they a performer? an amateur? do they yearn for the spotlight or admire their own outfit from the shadows?

drag!au. bulleted fic/headcanons. estimated length = unknown. characters completed: none. wc: 0. current sponsors: one! sponsored word count: 0/500.

★ human!au x farming!au

a breeze travels through a small valley town. the spring is warm-- a perfect time for new beginnings. the moving truck pulls away from the small farm where you've been dropped off. this is your land now. to see it thrive, you must love and care for each inch. but first, you should probably introduce yourself to the local townspeople.

human!au and farming!au. heavily inspired by both harvest moon/stardew valley games and my mutual @misc-obeyme and their human!au. small paragraphs for each character. estimated length = unknown. characters completed: none. wc: 0. current sponsors: one! sponsored word count: 0/500.

★ obey me characters with earrings

accessories are a wonderful addition to any outfit. if the characters of obey me had their ears pierced, what sorts of earrings would they wear?

bulleted headcanons/fic. themes of x reader. estimated length = unknown. characters completed: none. wc: 0. current sponsors: none.

★ obey me demon brothers presenting you with a friendship bracelet in return

you presented the avatars of sin with a custom friendship bracelet to commemorate your growing bond. now, they're here to return the favor.

demon brothers x reader (platonic OR romantic, up to reader interpretation). revival of a long-dead series. bulleted fic. estimated length = unknown. characters completed: none. wc: 0. current sponsors: none.

★ the fall's private rooms (nsfw warning)

being a human in the devildom has left you with a certain... interest in demonkind and other fantastical creatures. but you're far too embarrassed to explore this fascination with anyone you know. the solution? an anonymous station set up in one of the fall's private rooms allowing you to fuck someone without knowing who they are, no strings attached. this set-up grows a bit more complicated, though, when word travels through the grapevine about the dirty things you're doing. the door closes to the room you're tucked away in, indicating someone is here to indulge you... but is that a familiar voice you hear on the other side of the wall?

nsfw. minors dni. obey me characters x reader smut. gloryhole dynamic. estimated length = unknown. characters completed: none. wc: 0. current sponsors: one! sponsored word count: 0/5000.

★ oc spotlight: introductions

the rules of the exchange program are simple: the celestial realm and the human realm both send three of their residents to the the devildom to experience hell's culture for an entire year. among the usual residents of purgatory hall, two new faces are seen wandering about. one, a straight-laced, fledgling sorcerer trying her best to explore the depths of the devildom's history and gain a grasp on her budding powers. the other, an angel born hard-of-hearing and further deafened by the celestial war with a penchant for beautiful artistic creations.

canon-divergent!au. x reader. introduction of two original characters. character profiles. estimated length = unknown. characters completed: none. wc: 0. current sponsors: none.

★ oc spotlight: vampire!au

vampirism is a strange affliction. it creates a recluse of the most social creature, driven from the sunlight and modern society into the shadows by bloodlust and misery. you are a human being who has recently become the source of blood for each of these two ancient vampires. how does your relationship with the evolve? do they grow to see you as more than a pet, or are you slaughtered for your insolence long before they remember your name?

vampire!au. ocs x reader (separate). full-length standalone fics. estimated length = unknown. characters completed: none. wc: 0. current sponsors: none.

☆☆ 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬 ☆☆

i'll be accepting drabble requests for the seven demon brothers and the dateables. drabbles are estimated to be ~500 words. they can be sfw/nsfw, tropes, fluff, etc. please specify what you'd like to see in this drabble, whether you only have a character in mind or a very specific scenario! (note: anon MUST be off for you to request nsfw, and you must be 18+).

since requests require a bit more work, i'll be pricing them at $2 per 100 words for sfw drabbles and $3 per 100 words for nsfw drabbles.

do you want to support gaza and request fics for twisted wonderland? check out my other blog here

[scarecrowsandcherryblossoms]

And the prompts for KakaSaku Week 2024: Falling For You are live! Come explore our favorite couple in different seasons of love. Each day has two prompts to choose from to go along with the theme for the day, taken from unused trope of the month prompts suggested by the lovely members of our discord and other suggestions from the mods.

Feel free to fulfill one or both of each day's prompts. Fics, art, moodboards, songs, we want to see them all! (It's understood that some of these may require a little more explanation, so see below the cut for details.)

Have questions? Want to brainstorm with others? Need to gush about KakaSaku in general? Send us an ask.... or come join our Discord! We're open for ONE WEEK starting today, ending next Saturday (9/07), approximately 10 AM EST.

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE SCARECROWS AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS DISCORD!

Falling For You Prompts (November 10-16, 2024)

Day 1-Slowly, Then All At Once

(Think about how a leaf falls from a tree, slowly, then quickly once it touches the ground. Kinda like a good slow burn romance that hits you with the feels once the characters realize that oh—they're in love)

🌸Fake Dating

🐺Gods and Mortals

Day 2-Forbidden Love

(Give me your best Montagues vs Capulets, enemies to lovers, Twilight, power imbalance dynamic, star crossed lovers etc. scenarios you can think of!)

🌸 Forced Proximity

🐺 Secrets

Day 3-Unrequited

(The angst, the heartbreak, the crying that happens in the midnight hours when one has an unrequited love. Sometimes it's not as unrequited as one thinks, but who's to say we'll ever know? 👀)

🌸 Blind Date

🐺 "oh my god they were roommates"

Day 4-It's Always Been You

(There better be so much pining a forest has sprouts in the background of the love story shown. Is the pining mutual but of course they don't know it? One sided?)

🌸 Hanahaki Disease

🐺 Firsts

Day 5-Accidentally In Love

(Think Shrek. Someone you're not supposed to fall in love with, or they were never supposed to be on your radar to begin with. Marriages/relationships of convenience, if we're not married by 35 let's marry each other! type situations.)

🌸 Fears

🐺 Love Letters

Day 6-Second Chances

(What if Kakashi and Sakura were exes? How do they get their second chance romance? Or they were almost lovers but circumstances ripped them apart and now here they are with another chance?)

🌸 Biggest Fan

🐺 Love Triangle

Day 7-5+1

(Remember all those fics about the five times a character did something or didn't do something and then the one time they did? Yeah? Well this is that. ie the fives times they almost kissed and the one time they did, or the five times they lied and the one time they didn't, etc. The possibilities are endless!)

🌸 Gift

🐺 There was only one bed

[harmonictechnicality]

Memory Log: Day 52

part 1 here | part 2 here | part 3 here | part 5 here | part 6 here (ao3 link here)

After seeing his ink-smeared biography all over Eddie Munson’s arm, Steve becomes extremely motivated. Obsessed, even.

He assembles a makeshift army. Eddie’s Memory Soldiers, he calls it. Okay - he doesn’t call it that out loud, only to himself (because even Steve is self-aware enough to know how deranged this all sounds).

Steve compiles a ragtag group of Eddie’s friends to nudge his brain along faster. Band mates, theater dweebs, potheads that can carry a tune. All of them bring mixtapes on their visits. After two weekends, there’s already a fuckload of thrashy melodies for Eddie to choose from.

He lets them take the reins on this music-healing plan because there’s no fucking way Steve will be helpful in that department. It means less visits that include his presence, which sort of sucks, but it’s worth it. Worth it to get Eddie back to where he used to be.

Before Steve heads out for one of his morning visits, Robin interrogates him. Asks him the question he’s been ignoring for weeks.

“Steve… not to sound harsh, but why do you care so much?” 

Yeah. Why does he care so much? 

She quickly follows it up with, “I just didn’t know you two were friends now. So I’m just curious, I guess.”

They’re not friends. They’re lukewarm tolerators - tethered together by monster hunting and Dustin Henderson.

They’ve flirted, sure. But who doesn’t? Steve would flirt with half of the leggy cartoon characters that appear on Saturday Mornings if he could. So that’s a weak argument to assume they’re more than just friends. Tolerators. Whatever.

So he lies. To Robin. To himself. Lies so much that it sits in his stomach like motion sickness.

He answers the exact same way he’s been answering since day one:

“I’m just doing this for the kids, Robs.”

He’s pretty sure neither of them are buying that statement. He tries again. Stamps the words onto his confused brain. Considers writing them on his arm just like Eddie might do.

“I’m doing it for them.”

Eddie is always on his Walkman (Steve’s Walkman) now that he has skyscraper of cassettes on his desk. Pretty much every time Steve returns, Eddie is head banging. Won’t stop until the nurses scold him.

Or Steve. He’ll stop if Steve scolds him too.

“You can’t keep jostling up your brain, Munson.” Steve whips the headphones off of Eddie’s ears. “Gonna undo all of our hard work.”

“Our hard work?” Eddie attempts to grab the headphones back. Gives up as soon as their hands make contact. “And who might be included in this our that you speak of?”

“You know…” Me. “The doctors and nurses and your friends.”

“Right.”

This is how things have been going lately. Eddie teases him mercilessly and Steve bats it all away. Doesn’t encourage it for a second.

Which blows so hard because he wants to flirt back. Steve wants to know what Eddie feels like beyond tubes and bandages and hospital gowns. He wants way too much after watching Eddie fall asleep smiling that night. After finding out that Eddie scams his own mind into remembering Steve in technicolor details every day.

But it feels wrong. Deep down, there’s this part of Steve that worries that Eddie only likes the scribbled notes, the good qualities of himself. The non-prickster qualities.

He doesn’t scribble the bad qualities on his arm. Eddie lets himself forget about those every night. 

So it seems wrong. Unfair to let Eddie only remember the good parts of him and take advantage of his weak mind.

Life was a fucking breeze before Steve cared about not taking advantage of people. Shit, he used the world’s biggest advantage-taker before all of this evil wizard nonsense.

“Quiz me, Harrington.” Eddie insists.

So Steve does. Steve goes down the list of questions. Things that Eddie’s memory typically hesitates to recognize. 

Music helps Eddie remember his childhood memories the best.

That’s the biggest discovery they’ve made over the last fourteen days. Tapes that include songs from the early to mid 70’s have the biggest mental impact on his memory skills. Every day, he recalls more moments from his past.

Winter birthday parties. Recess and tire swings. Nineteen chickenpox. A pet hamster named Sterling.

“Can’t believe Wayne trusted you with a living creature.” Steve sneers.

“Never said he did.”

He always gets fuzzy with stuff from the late 70s though. And the early 80s is just a jumbled-up shit show. That’s when Eddie really starts failing his quiz.

“What year did you get the tattoo on your chest?”

“You mean this one?” Eddie pulls down the wrinkly hospital gown, exposing way too much of his collarbone. “Or this one?” He pulls the fabric down even further.

They must’ve finally turned the heat on in this place. Or maybe Steve’s sweater is just extra itchy, scratching his skin all splotchy red. He rubs furiously at the collar, spreads the flush all over by accident. 

His eyes dart up to the fluorescent lights. Away from Eddie’s chest. “Um… the… creepy guy.”

“You’ll sprain your neck looking up like that.”

“Good thing I’m in a hospital then.”

“Okay - seriously, what’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure.” Eddie snorts. His heart monitor beeps faster. Steve hates that laughing must be a bit painful for him. “And he’s not some creepy guy. He’s a creepy demon. Please respect the body art and get your facts right.”

“Fine.”

Not flirting back makes Steve feel like he could break out into hives. He has a fucking stockpile of pickup lines. He hoards provocative catchphrases like a horny pack rat. Talking is becoming increasingly difficult when he can’t banter back the way he wants to.

“Don’t remember what year I got it.” Eddie admits. “Sorry.”

Steve pulls his focus away from the ceiling and scribbles that down:

Eddie still can’t remember when he got his tattoos.

“Gee mister,” Eddie imitates a very masculine Shirley Temple voice. “Am I failing the pop quiz already?”

Eddie remembers who Shirley Temple is (weird, but okay).

Eddie does a really shitty impression of Shirley Temple.

Steve just keeps writing. Not even writing words anymore, just moving the pen to stay focused. Stay distracted from flirting.

The energy starts to feel swampy and stiff as he continues to give short responses with lifeless enthusiasm. Steve can tell that Eddie is picking up on the weirdness too. 

He’s so fidgety. Drumming his fingers, twisting the one ring he’s allowed to wear on one of his less busted fingers. Bobbing his knees and kicking off his blankets. 

Eventually, Eddie puts his (Steve’s) headphones back on and closes his eyes. A nonverbal surrender. A borrowed Walkman instead of a white flag. Why does it feel so shitty to see that he is just as defeated as Steve?

Once Eddie is asleep, Steve peaks over at his arms.

The notes are still there. Fading, but there.

It shouldn’t jab him in the heart the way that it does every time he checks, but christ. It’s so fucked up.

Slowly but surely, Eddie is gaining pieces of his past, but never his present. Why the fuck is that? Steve is so selfishly pissed about that because he’s a main role in Eddie’s present life. 

He’s the one that’s here most days. He’s the one that listens to Eddie’s rants and incessant complaints. He’s the one that calls the nurses when Eddie is too prideful to admit when he’s in pain.

Steve should be remembered without smudgey reminders and foggy recollections.

Steve should be un-fucking-forgettable.

After an unhealthy amount of moping, he comes up with an idea. Well, Dustin comes up with an idea, actually. Steve bribed him with nougat and R-rated movie rentals to construct a gameplan.

“And you need Eddie to remember your favorite sweater…why?” Dustin’s mouth is full of chewy candy as he asks.

Steve chucks a raisinette at his dumb hat. “I thought we agreed this was a no questions asked request.”

“You suggested that.” Dustin points at Steve. “I never agreed to it though.”

This is the part Steve despises. If he admits it to others, he has to admit it to himself. And while he’s come a long way since that first day with Eddie, he’s not there yet. His pride can only take so much vulnerability before it fractures completely. “Just… I’m testing a theory I have on his newest memories.”

“Right. And what theory would that be?”

That he thinks about me in kissable ways. “That he remembers more than he gives himself credit for.”

Dustin chugs back his soda and scrunches the can in his grasp. “Okay. Well, the mixtape theory is working decently well with older memories, right?

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“So maybe it can work with newer memories too.”

Steve is lost already. “Meaning?”

“Find songs that relate to you.” Dustin shrugs like duh. He must sense Steve’s hesitation, so he sputters back into his brainy explanation. “Think about it: you’re there all the time -”

“Not all the time, but -”

“Shut the hell up. You’re there all the time, so he must remember the essence of Steve Harrington.”

Steve fake gags. “Don’t say essence, that’s fucking gross.”

“Will you stop interrupting? Jesus christ.” Dustin yells, scrunching the soda can even more with his irritation. “Just make a mixtape with stuff that relates to you. Get his current memories to stick with lyrics and shit.”

Steve twists his mouth to one side. Then the other. “That’s…”

“Genius?”

“I was gonna say worth a shot, but sure.” Steve agrees. “We’ll go with your conceited analysis.”

Dustin finally picks up the raisinette from earlier. Throws it back at Steve. “You should be nicer to me. I possibly just solved your dilemma.”

“I should be nicer to you?” Steve tosses the raisinette into his mouth, despite its questionable duration on the floor. “Dude, you’re never nice to me.”

“Yeah, but it’s affectionate hostility.”

“And that makes it better?”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Fine.” Steve rolls eyes, offers a hand to Dustin. “Thank you for the hostile affection.”

Dustin accepts the handshake. He’s overly smug about it too. “You’re very welcome.”

Memory Log: Day 53

Right away, Steve determines it’s a Kathy Day. Eddie is a verbal nightmare already, whining about the dead batteries in his tv remote.

“I’ll get Sam to grab some batteries when her shift starts.” Steve reassures the bitchy entity possessing Eddie Munson’s body at the moment.

“Why don’t you just get the damn batteries?” Eddie bites back. “You have legs, don’t you?”

“You have eyes, don’t you? Of course, I have fucking legs.” Steve can play it this game. Doesn’t want to but he can be just as obnoxious if Eddie keeps going with his attitude. “Please don’t pull this Kathy shit today.”

That simultaneously shuts them both up for a while. Steve begins flipping through one of the outdated magazines on Eddie’s desk, avoiding the escalated atmosphere. At this rate, there’s no fucking way Steve is going to bring up his mixtape. Kathy/Eddie will probably smash it. Roll over it with the wheels on his imprisoning hospital bed.

Eddie clears his throat, speaking softer than he did at Steve’s arrival. “You know… you were sort of a Kathy yourself yesterday.”

Eddie remembers Steve’s weird mood from the day before (needs to check Eddie’s arm notes to make sure he didn’t write that down).

“Yeah well… I’m allowed to be the pissy one sometimes.” Steve doesn’t look up. He just keeps pretending to read the fossilized magazine in his hand.

“Whatever you say, Harrington.” There’s another pause. Just as awkward as the last one. Their dynamics today are clashing harder than their music styles. Eddie breaks through the awkwardness once again. “So… what’s on the brain agenda today?”

Eddie remembers their pop quizzes.

Right. The quiz. The quiz that Steve has no intention of administering today because he’s supposed to give Eddie this stupid mixtape. 

And look, Steve is pretty good at avoiding shit - homework and phone calls and extended family members. He’s good at dodging shit too, like the relentless one-night stands that can never seem to take a goddamn hint.

But this situation is different because Steve would clearly like to avoid the potential weirdness of giving Eddie Munson a gift. However, he’s innately aware that this particular gift could be helpful. Maybe more to himself than to Eddie, but who knows? If Eddie gets his memory tank back on track and Steve gets someone that reciprocates his affections? 

The payoff might be worth the weirdness.

“I actually wanted to contribute to your…” Steve gestures apathetically at the stack of tapes.

Eddie looks over at them and then back to Steve. “Oh you mean, Munsonopolis?”

“Boooo.” Steve heckles him immediately for that.

“You think of something better then.”

Steve thinks about this way too hard. “The Ed-pire State Building.”

“Boooo.” Eddie imitates Steve’s heckling.

“Better than yours.”

“Says who?”

“Says anyone with a sense of humor.”

“Brave of you to call that a sense of humor.”

“What can I say?” Steve clicks his mouth twice and does the most douchey finger-gun bit, blowing out the nonexistent smoke from each index finger. “I’m something else.”

Eddie bites down over his lip, hard enough that it goes white for a second. Doesn’t take his eyes off of Steve while he bares down.

“You sure are, Steve.”

Oh shit - did they just mindlessly segue onto Flirtation Boulevard without even trying? Is it really that natural with Eddie? Damnit, Steve needs to get his mind on the task at hand.

“Here.” He walks over, lays the tape on Eddie’s lap.

“Is this another one from Gareth?” Eddie flips the tape over, studies the back. “Cause I already assured him that I remember the concert we went to back in ‘84.”

Eddie remembers one of his closest friends.

“No, this one is actually…” Just fucking own up, Steve. “Well, I made it.”

Eddie’s eyes do that sequin thing again. Almost turn into disco balls. “You made me a mixtape?”

Ugh. “Don’t get too flattered, Munson.” 

“Too late.”

Steve was afraid that might be the case. So he does his damndest to channel Dustin Henderson. Provide a scientific explanation to his crush-driven theory. “It’s just an extension of our little music experiment. Some stuff that will help you remember me.”

“And why exactly do you want me to remember you?” Eddie does the same lip biting thing from before. He bites harder, and the color stays white even longer this time.

Steve involuntarily glances down at Eddie’s arm, giving himself away.

“Oh.” Eddie stops biting his lip, swiftly lifts the blankets over his arms. Hiding what Steve already knows is there. “Look… that’s just -”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, really.”

Eddie looks down, nodding in agreement. “Right. But it’s not-”

“Eddie.” Steve places a firm hand on Eddie’s shoulder because he can’t. He can’t listen to whatever Eddie is about to confirm or deny. “It’s okay. I mean it.”

He’s not ready for it, for whatever barricade that’s between them to come crashing down. Steve didn’t bring the proper tools to shield himself from raw emotions or desperate declarations of true feelings. And from the way Eddie goes breathless and tense under Steve’s shoulder-grip, he doesn’t think Eddie has the proper tools for that either.

“So you uh…” Eddie peers down at Steve’s hand. Catches a glimpse then abruptly looks away again. “Do you want me to listen now or…”

God no. Steve releases his grip at that thought. “Wait till I leave.” 

“Got it.”

The rest of the visit goes both fairly smoothly. There are only a few lingering particles of awkward tension left behind. It doesn’t bother Steve, not necessarily. The whole day has been kind of all over the place, just like Eddie’s Literary Behavioral Scale. So this uneasy atmosphere is to be expected.

They talk about movies while Steve packs up his things to leave. Eddie asks about all the new movies that have come out since he’s been in the hospital. Steve tells him to make a list of the ones he’s interested in seeing. Tells him that they’ll have a marathon at his place once they’re released to vhs. Eddie says he knows a guy that sells bootlegs before the vhs release date, but Steve shoots that idea down so fucking fast.

It’s not their usual banter, but that’s okay. At least they're talking. Getting along. Tolerating one another at a lukewarm temperature again.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?” Steve is met with the most anxiety-ridden face. Eddie’s whole forehead is covered in wrinkles, like that one fancy dog breed that his next-door neighbor used to have. There’s no shimmer in Eddie’s eyes, no disco balls. It’s all just dull. Fearful.

“Sorry if the arm thing made you...” Eddie trips over his words. He pinches the skin between his eyes, makes his even more forehead wrinkles. “I don’t know what’s the word I’m looking for.. Uncomfortable, I guess.”

“Don’t worry. It didn’t.” It made Steve a lot of other things: gutted, determined, confused, sulky, smitten. But no. Worried did not make Steve’s grocery list of Feelings.

“Don’t forget to tell Sam about the batteries on your way out.”

Eddie remembers bitching about the batteries.

Yeah, Steve’s memory isn’t the faulty one here. Even so, Steve reassures him:

“I won’t forget, Eds.”

Day 56:

Wayne had a couple days off from work and took over Steve’s Wednesday and Thursday shifts in the hospital. It’s probably for the best - especially since Steve decided to do the most high school shit ever, and gift Eddie a fucking bouquet in the form of radio hits and plastic.

He’s breaking out from the stress, just marinating on what Eddie’s thoughts might be of the mixtape. It can’t be good. None of the songs are his typical riffs of eternal damnation or whatever. But it certainly sounds like Steve Harrington in a Speaker. So it better help him picture Steve dressed in the tackiest, most burnable sweaters imaginable, goddamnit.

But like, why is he breaking out from thinking about Eddie Munson? Absurd. All of it. The feelings and the acne. His weird little crush is making him regress into adolescent woes and it’s pissing him off.

After popping the zit and crossing his fingers that it’s not outrageously noticeable, Steve sucks in a deep breath, and heads into Eddie’s hospital room.

“There’s my favorite Material Girl.” Eddie lowers the headphones, smiles bonus-level wide.

Steve’s gulps. His face feels like a fucking toaster. “I take it you listened to the tape?”

“I didn’t just listen to the tape.” Eddie picks up the Walkman and smacks it against the side of his head. “I practically absorbed that bubblegum bullshit. Think some of it is still stuck in my teeth.”

Steve plays along, hoping that his face will return to its usual complexion. “You should see a dentist about that.”

“With what insurance?”

“That’s fair.” Steve slides his hands into his jean pockets. He’s so rigid. “So?”

“So?”

“Final conclusion?”

“Oh, I hated it.” Eddie says bluntly. “In a very stick-that-syringe-in-my-neck kind of way.”

“Shocker.” Steve actually expected a meaner response than that.

“Why did you put so many songs on there that use Girl in the title?”

“Hey - it’s not my fault that all of the rich poster child songs are about women.” Steve gets defensive about that one. Honestly, it’s true. There needs to be more music about wealthy guys with genetically flawless hair. Somebody needs to get on that shit so Steve can have more songs that apply to him.

“Whatever you say, man.” 

“So did it…” Steve is still standing. Hovering a bit. “Did it help?”

Eddie sticks out both of his arms, flipping to reveal his forearms to Steve.

They’re blank, besides the usual tattoos and contusions. They’re as blank as Eddie’s arms can be at the moment. No more Steve Cheat Sheet to be found.

Steve exhales all of his relief. “And you remember me?”

“Remembering you was never the problem, Steve.”

“It wasn’t?”

Eddie shakes his head. “But if I ever allowed myself to forget, I…” He taps rapidly over the Walkman. Steve’s Walkman. “I just didn’t wanna risk starting over.”

“Oh.”

“With you.”

The metaphorical arrow, the one Steve has alway seen on department store Valentines Day cards, goes straight through his chest. Eddie aims the words with you directly for Steve’s heart. Punctures that wall he built up after Nancy Wheeler.

The monitor connected to Eddie is beeping faster again. It’s not like that day Eddie was writhing in pain. No, it’s a different tempo.

It sounds like his nerves are conducting the pattern. He’s nervous. Steve is making him nervous.

Or Steve’s lack of response is making him nervous.

But how does Steve respond? Is this Eddie giving him permission to flirt back again? To keep driving down the detour of attraction, take the scenic route?

Eddie’s heart monitor is screaming, ‘say something, Steve.’

But Steve’s archive of failed relationships is screaming, back, ‘don’t fuck this up, dickhead.’

Steve tries to meet the two in the middle. Say something inviting yet keep it simple.

“So… do you wanna make fun of the shitty soap operas together?” 

Steve puts a little emphasis on the together part, hoping it’ll tame the monitor. Make the tones evenly paced. He lets his hand tap once against Eddie’s arm. Right over his newly blank wrist. So clean. No more scribbles.

“I don’t know, I’ll have to check my schedule.” Eddie teases with his words, sure. But his hand lifts up. Tapping Steve back. Twice. “I’m a very busy man, you see.”

Steve shoves him away, laughing as he does it. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re not wrong.”

His monitor is ballad again.

One of Eddie’s (many) doctors walks into the room during their third hour of mocking the Home Shopping Network. Eddie has developed an elaborate backstory that they’re all cyborgs who are taking civilian money to grow their army of killer robots. Steve is surprisingly on board with this theory after the second hour. Some red headed lady twitches her eyes way too much to be human.

The doctor runs a few tests, looks over Eddie’s chart, the typical procedure. However, at the end of the visit, he decides to put Eddie on a new medication for his headaches. 

Headaches…

Steve flips back to that first day he started visiting Eddie. Finds the note he passive-aggressively took back then:

Eddie has a headache (that’s not a memory thing - he’s just told Steve a thousand times now).

He fans through the other pages as well. At least two-thirds of them mention Eddie complaining about headaches. How did Steve miss this? How could he be so stupid? He was too busy fantasizing about Eddie’s chest tattoos and making shitty mixtapes, that he glossed over something so significant.

Dustin wouldn’t have missed this. Robin wouldn’t have missed this. Nancy definitely wouldn’t have missed this - hell, she would’ve already cracked the Case of the Missing Memories by now. 

Steve is the wrong man for this job. Not enough brainpower to fix a broken brain.

“Uh oh.” Eddie says. “Where you’d go, Harrington?”

Steve glances up to see Eddie pointing his finger at Steve’s head. “Just.. thinking.”

“Share with the class, please.”

Steve struggles to make his voice sound causal about this. “I should’ve known about the headaches. Paid better attention.”

“Are you joking?” Eddie asks. “Because if you are, we need to work on your delivery.”

“Not joking, no.”

Eddie’s tone is mildly annoyed, still gentle though. “Stevie… that guy gets paid a shitload of money to figure out my problems. Truly - the reason there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is because it’s going straight into that guy’s pocket.”

Steve snorts. It’s even funnier to visualize because the doctor is kind of short.

“What I’m saying is, it’s his job to have a big brain.” Eddie’s eye contact is sharp. Broken bottle to his neck sharp. “And your job is to be my eye candy. Sit there and look cute while I try to not hack up my dinner.”

Steve’s hearing went crackly at all of the compliments. “Eye candy, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

Steve no longer has an excuse not to flirt back. Eddie has his mixtape; his arms are bare. He’s obviously encouraging it, even with the knowledge that Steve is a spoiled brat. He likes Steve, not just the good stuff. Eddie is still willing to pursue this even with Steve’s bad qualities.

So fuck it. Steve is gonna delve into his stockpile of pickup lines. He’s gonna rummage around his hoard of provocative catchprashes. Be the horny pack rat that he was born to be.

“Is the sitting part of my job description mandatory?” Steve leans forward, elbows resting on his knees.

“Oh, I’m very lenient on that detail.” Eddie’s voice drops lower. “The cute part… not so much.”

“So you’re only keeping me around for what? My great hair? My symmetrical bone structure? My biceps, maybe?”

“Definitely not your humility, that’s for damn sure.”

They share a smile as Steve gets up, inches closer to Eddie’s bed. He reaches out and pinches the sleeve of Eddie’s hospital gown between his fingers. He cautiously rubs it over a few times, waiting to see Eddie’s reaction to this droplet of affection.

Eddie catches Steve’s wrist with his other hand. Mirrors the rubbing motion Steve set in place with the material.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Steve nudges Eddie lightly. “Is this okay?”

And before he can even get a response back, Eddie’s face starts turning grayish-green. 

This happens. Eddie throws up biweekly, so it’s not a big deal at all. It’s just that Steve is usually not laying on the moves when Eddie is about to blow chunks. Honestly, it knocks Steve’s astronomical ego down a few notches.

He probably deserves it.

Eddie is really sick. He pukes three more times, and he starts running a fever after the second time. He’s all clammy and curled into a pillow, clutching it with shaky fingers.

It’s all side effects from the new medication apparently. Yeah, Eddie’s head is no longer splitting open, but his body is rejecting all of the cardboard hospital food.

Steve keeps an eye on him, not that he can do much about it. He gets a styrofoam cup of ice chips so Eddie can chew on it whenever his temperature spikes. He wipes the sweat off Eddie’s temples because one - it’s a nice gesture, and two - it gives him an excuse to be nearby.

The shivering is driving Steve crazy though. He’s so on edge just watching Eddie like this. Eddie keeps making jokes like ‘at least I’ll remember your stupid worried face in the morning’ or ‘damn, my past better be worth all of this.’ And Steve will chuckle halfheartedly each time.

The heart monitor is all jumpy now. Even, uneven, even, uneven. If Steve focuses on it for too long, it starts to sound like he’s driving by a highway collision. A pileup of beeps and tones.

He gets another cup of cafeteria coffee. Hopes the bitterness and chalky creamer will be enough to muffle his hearing. Steer his mind to an empty exit lane.

“What? No coffee for me?” Eddie is under an extra blanket now.

Steve scoots his chair even closer to Eddie’s bedside. “What’s the point? You’d just puke it all up.” He’s pretty lousy at supportive words, isn’t he?

“Aren’t visiting hours almost over?”

“You trying to get rid of me, Munson?”

“Never. Just figured you needed to catch the bus or whatever.”

Eddie remembers Steve taking the bus.

“Robin finally gave me my car back.” Steve conveniently leaves out how he demanded  for it to be returned to him. “So, I’ll stay until they kick me out… if that’s cool with you.”

He places his non-coffee holding hand over top of Eddie’s open palm. It’s sort of instinctual. Doesn’t give his mind a moment to wonder if this is crossing a line. 

Holding hands in a hospital doesn’t mean romance. It never has. People do it all time, no one bats an eye at them either. It’s just a gesture of helpless support. It’s what people do to signify, ‘I can’t heal you with medicine, but I can warm your under-circulated skin just a little.’

But when Eddie’s fingers curl around his own, Steve’s stomach swells like its romance. It swells with hot air, helium maybe. It swells and stays swollen. Stays thermal and full.

“Looks like I’m gonna have to pay my eye candy overtime.” Eddie’s face rushes all pinkish-red. Almost as if he’s trying to combat his blush with humor, but it’s not working. He’s all the colors now. And with or without them, he’s attractive.

“You don’t pay me at all.”

“You got me there.” Eddie shakes a frizzy curl in front of his cheek. A poor effort to hide his flushed face. “I’m a terrible employer.”

Steve traces the grooves of Eddie’s palm lines. Pretends that they form a railroad track. “The worst.”

Once his fever finally breaks, Eddie falls asleep. His body unfolds, his fingers uncurl. It’s a heavy sleep, one that makes him all languid and soft. Any traces of bones are questionable now.

And even though Steve is about to pass out from exhaustion, he doesn’t move his hand from Eddie’s. He’d rather give up his whole arm than move it.

Sam peaks in just before Steve nods off. She lets in the bright hallway light, not too much though. Not enough to wake Eddie. Honestly, not a lot of things wake Eddie up these days.

“Sorry.” Steve yawns. “I overstayed my welcome.”

She shrugs, checks the fluids in one of Eddie’s IV bags. “You know, you can stay the night, if you’d like.”

“Really?”

“It’s pretty late… you shouldn’t be driving on the highway at this time of night.”

“Won’t I…” Steve reworks the phrase. Tries to be less selfish about it. “Won’t you get in trouble for letting me stay?”

“Oh no.” She winks. “Because I never saw you here.”

Steve smirks. “Got it.”

“But if I did see you here,” She gestures her head to the door on her right. “I would tell you there’s extra pillows in the linen closet over there.”

Sam deserves a fucking raise. Steve would become a goddamn patron of this hospital just to give her more money. Let the godsend of a woman retire early for christ’s sake.

“Thanks, Sam.” Steve whispers.

“Thank you for keeping him company.” She whispers back. “He’s lucky to have someone like you.”

Steve doesn’t know if that’s true, if Eddie is lucky to have him, but he nods anyway. Gives a gentle wave as Sam heads back out of the room.

He sets the pillow next to Eddie’s leg, keeping their hands connected as he dozes off. Steve falls asleep the same way he used to fall asleep in class. All bent over in his chair, one cheek flattened out on the desk. It’s very reminiscent of that.

Only better because he’s with the guy that makes his chest swell, even when he’s being sarcastic or melodramatic. Even when he’s cobwebbed himself into a maze of cords. Even when he’s bitching about batteries and Steve’s vomit-inducing fashion sense.

Steve thinks maybe he likes the undesirable traits of Eddie Munson just as much as the desirable ones.

And once he’s knocked out entirely, the rhythm of his heart matches the beeping monitor hooked up to Eddie’s chest.

Day 57:

It’s been a long time since Steve has had a decent dream. And this dream he’s in right now? It’s fucking luxurious.

He’s at the hair salon, because of course he is - it’s his home away from home. 

His head is reclining back in that giant sink thing. The one that’s like a soup bowl for hair or whatever. The stylist is shampooing his scalp, scrubbing all of those foamy products into his roots. This is Steve’s favorite part of getting his hair done, he always feels blissed out of his mind afterward.

They keep washing it for the whole dream, digging their nails into his head, dunking water over his hair every so often. It’s downright perfection. A dream he could stay stuck in forever. 

The scenery of the dream flickers out, but the sensations linger as he gains consciousness. His squints both of his eyes open, immediately greeted by too much brightness, too much sunlight. Steve shuts them again, soaking up the remnants of his dream. The hair scratching that’s ongoing even though he’s awake.

Awake.

Steve is awake and can still feel all of that salon paradise. His brain finally wakes up enough to realize it isn’t a dream. It’s Eddie’s hands in his hair, combing it thoroughly.

Fuck, it feels so good too. Steve wonders if Eddie is aware of what he’s doing or if he’s also in that suspended place between awake and asleep.

It doesn’t matter, not really. It all feels way too incredible to care about the logistics. Steve nuzzles deeper into the pillow to hide the happy little hums that keep escaping through his mouth. 

Eddie doesn’t stop. He keeps moving his hand around. Twirling strands and releasing them. Ruffling strands and smoothing them. Massaging the pads of his fingers in all the right places. Every bit of it is dreamy. Better than the dream Steve initially believed to be unbeatable.

Being Eddie’s own personal petting zoo is way better. Miles, light years better. Is there any form of measurement longer than lightyears? Because it’s bigger and better than that too.

Eddie tugs a little harder, just once, but once is all it takes to make Steve melt. He open-mouth sighs into the pillow, hoping the fabric mutes the neediness of it. There’s drool on the pillow and it’s unclear if it’s from when he was asleep or if it occurred just from that one hair tug. 

“Steve?” Eddie’s voice still sounds coated in sleep. “Is this weird?”

Steve shakes his head no, still unable to lift his face from the pillow.

“Should I stop?”

Steve shakes his head much faster. Absolutely not. Stopping should be banished from Eddie’s vocabulary. The word ‘stop’ should be homeless as far as Steve is concerned.

Eddie tugs again, more firmly this time. The tug goes straight to Steve’s dick, which yikes. Humiliating. Yeah, it’s morning and this shit happens, but not this kind of boner. Not one brought on by hair salon fantasies and a metalhead with magical fingertips. This can’t be the reality of Steve’s life right now but somehow, it is.

“I think I combed through all of that cake-up hairspray.” Eddie talks as his hand continues to roam around Steve’s scalp. “Feels like cashmere now, so you’re welcome.”

Steve sighs again, pretty sure it’s much more audible this time because Eddie laughs.

“Embarrassing.” Steve mumbles. That’s all he can muster out without becoming a puddle of humiliation.

“The sounds you’re making?”

Steve nods.

“Oh that is not the adjective I would’ve gone with.” Eddie claws his fingers all the way down to Steve’s neck. “Not even close.”

Steve is all hormones now, all slurred speech and thoughtless words. “So good, Eddie.”

“Oh my god.” Eddie whines, sounds breathier than Steve. “You cannot say my name like that when I’m in a tissue-thin gown.”

Steve wants to sneak a peek, see if what Eddie is suggesting holds any truth. He resists, only because he’s trying to sort out his own tent-pitching problems at the moment.

He gradually lifts his head off of the pillow, back cracking as he straightens his spine out after hours of being shaped like fucking tetris piece. It’s the last thing he wants to do because it means Eddie has to take his hand out of Steve’s hair. But as Eddie pulls away, his knuckles brush against Steve’s ear, awakening this newfound urgency to not let this moment fizzle out.

Steve hops up onto the bed, sitting side-saddle next to Eddie. He looks through Eddie’s eyes, the ones that remind him of shimmery dresses and the backseat of his car on prom night. He looks through to find a reason to stop his actions. Stop his need to touch Eddie’s jawline or thumb over his lips. He’s searching for a reason to stop and finding none whatsoever.

“Do you remember me?”

“You’re Steve Harrington.” Eddie kind of stutters as he says it. “Hometown Slut extraordinaire.”

The nerdy bastard is never going to let that one go.

Steve gives a quiet laugh, leaning in to his impulses. He slides his thumb over Eddie’s bottom lip, curving around, mapping invisible outlines. A blueprint for his imagination when they’re apart later. “Am I reading this wrong?”

Eddie’s gaze is glued to Steve’s lips as he shakes his head no.

“Good.”

Steve uses his free hand to lift himself up, get closer. Breathing in the same stale oxygen, sucking up the same early morning courage, existing in the same dizzying climate.

He can feel Eddie exhale softly over his skin when there’s a knock at the door.

Steve has never stood up so fast in his damn life. Gets a head rush that’s so overwhelming that his vision speckles out momentarily. 

It’s Sam. Thank god it’s only Sam. But also, screw god for interrupting what almost happened just now. Not cool, sky man.

“Just a heads up,” she starts, shutting the door behind her. “You have another visitor that just arrived.”

Right. It's the weekend.

Steve and Eddie say it in unison. “Dustin.”

Sam hums in reply. “I can stall him for a couple minutes. Give you time to sneak out the stairs that are tucked in the back hallway.”

“You’re the best.” Steve says. “I’ll be quick.”

She leaves, cracking the door on her way out.

Both of them just look at each other for a moment. There’s no time to even discuss the events that just took place. No time to recover the kiss that is already sneaking out the back hallway stairs.

Steve nervously whistles. “So…”

“I’ll see you Monday?”

“Monday.” 48 hours apart seems insane. “Yeah.”

Steve hurriedly makes his way to the door - refusing his horny impulses the opportunity to kick back in and ruin everything. “See you later, Eds.”

Eddie licks over his bottom lip - the one Steve mapped out with his thumbprint. “Later, sailor.”

Um. What?

Steve’s eyes go large. “What did you just call me?”

“Go.” Eddie flashes the wickedest grin. “We’ll talk all about your ocean of flavor on Monday.”

This can’t be happening. “Ocean of -”

“Get out of here already!”

Steve flings himself out of the room, sprinting down the hall. Does Eddie actually recall Steve working at Starcourt? How can that be possible? Steve doesn’t remember seeing Eddie outside of school ever. 

Plus, they’ve never even talked about his job at Scoops Ahoy. Family Video? Sure, that’s more recent. But Scoops? Steve tries to forget just about everything from his time at that seaside shithole.

Goddamnit, this is confusing. The hair foreplay. The almost-kiss. The nautical nickname. Confusing is an understatement. Steve needs to go back to high school and learn a better word for what this is. Confusing isn’t cutting it anymore.

If Steve can make it till Monday without spiraling into a bucket of nerves, he deserves a fucking trophy.

And a kiss on the lips.

Mostly the second option (although a trophy would be nice too). 

[nivannedyweek]

NivannedyWeek 2024

What?

A whole week of prompts for fanworks dedicated to celebrating Piers and Leon together!

When?

The first week of December, so from Sunday December 1st to Saturday December 7th.

How?

There are four prompts for each day that you get to choose from: a word, a quote, a trope, and a canonical moment from the RE franchise.

I’m so excited!

Good! So are we!

Rules and miscellaneous info under the cut!

Rules

1. All fanworks must be centered around Piers/Leon. You may include other ships and characters as much as you want, but in its core it should be about Piers and Leon, and the relationship between them.

2. All works must be inspired by a prompt, but how directly or vaguely is entirely up to you. You can interpret the prompts in any way you want: combine them, put a twist to them, whatever you feel like.

3. Please tag your works with appropriate warnings if applicable.

4. No harassment of any kind. Be nice! Have fun!

5. No generative AI allowed. There’s not much we can do to punish anyone if they do, but we will be frowning very hard if we find out someone stole other people’s hard work through using AI.

Other things

To have your work reblogged by the nivannedyweek blog, please tag the blog directly so we won’t miss your work. If we haven’t reblogged your work in a few days, feel free to drop us a message.

There is an AO3 collection for the event. It’s unmoderated and open, so feel free to add your works as you post them. We would love to see your works in the collection!

You may collaborate with a friend if that’s what makes the event fun for you. Remember to credit everyone who worked on the finished product tho!

A prompt fill can be a new work done for the week specifically, or it can be a new chapter to an existing work, a sequel, a prequel, a remix, whatever your heart desires.

All types of fanworks are allowed and encouraged! For fic, there is no minimum word count requirement.

Late submissions are also allowed. We might be slower in reblogging them, but we will!

You may create multiple works for each day if you so wish.

Questions? Hit us up! We’d be happy to help.

[sparetheninja]

Can I request that the reader has a snort laugh and the turtles find out by tickling them and the reader gets embarrassed by it and hides there face but they turtles reassure them that it’s cute and tickle them more please and thank you

WAHHH THAT SOUNDS ADORABLE !!! I genuinely loved writing this (as a lee) aaahhehehehe ….. sorry if this didn’t turn out the way you expected cause tbh ….. it didnt turn out the way i expected. But i TRIED. And izTs like 3 am rn.

« Give me that remote ! »

The turtles find out you snort and, oh boy, do they love it.

Includes: Tickling !!

Lee: (gender neutral) Reader ,

Ler’s : Leo , Raph , Donnie & Mikey

Itteration: written as 2003 but it can be imagined as any itteration <3

Words: 1,014

“I’m telling you, the origional star trek series is way better than the next generation !!” Mikey attempted to grab the remote from your hand, yet you managed to lift it just out of place for him to not be able to reach it.

“You’re only saying that because its nostalgic.” You fought back.

Everyone in the lair loved watching movies and old shows. Especialy on saturday when you had no school/work. Its become a tradition where you would buy the best candy in New York City and you and your strange little green friends would choose a show or a movie to watch (and eventually fall asleep to).

You had, for good reason, chosen to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the orange masked turtle himself was begging to watch the origional series.

“If we are gonna watch something Star Trek related, we have to watch the origional!” Mikey tried to jump to the controler but you managed to slip past him with the remote.

“Geez, Mikey. Can’t we just watch the origional series next saturday?” Donnie, who was sitting next to both of you and had to deal with most of the pushing and play fighting, spoke up with a sigh.

“Pshh, kids.” Raph, who was next to Donnie again, rolled his eyes.

Leo was standing behind the couch, standing over all of them with a small smile on his face. It was always humerous with you around. “I don’t have a say in this, but the nostalgia of the origional series hits hard.”

“Exactly!” Mikey cheered before looking back at you with a threatening look. “Now, give me that remote…”

You decided to see just how far he would go to get this remote. “You gonna fight me for it?” You said, knowing full well the youngest turtle wouldn’t even think of hurting a hair on your body.

“Oh, you asked for it…” Mikey slowly crawled himself towards you.

There was no way Mikey would actually hit you… right? Over a remote? Over a joke?

Thats when you saw that grin. That cheeky little grin on his face. A grin that basically told itself what would happen.

But before you could react any further, Mikey jumped on top of you, holding your right hand above your head, the hand that held the remote, and sitting on your legs.

Instead of grabbing the remote, which he could’ve easily grabbed by now, he pinched your sides.

No way. No how. You had never told the turtles about your ticklishness before because you were horrified they would discover your snort…

“Nohoho- snort Wahahait!!”

Shit. It had only been a second and you were already snorting.

You felt Mikeys hand thankfully pull away in an instant, but when you opened your eyes, you saw all four of the turtles. Staring at you.

No way this was happening.

Donnie seemed intrigued, you could basically see how much he wanted to smile just by looking into his eyes. Raph had raised an eyebrow whilst grinning at you. He thought it was hilarious how embarrassed you seemed. Leo just stood right over you holding back a chuckle from just how adorable your snort was, whilst Mikey; oh, this guy was glowing.

His smile seemed to grow ten times its size and he had a new glimmer in his eyes.

Your face quickly turned into a crimson red, pretty much resembling Raph’s mask, as you covered your face with your hands. “Oh god…” you muttered.

“Whahat was that?” Mikey held back his excitement whilst asking a question he already knew the answer to.

“If you-” you huffed, not knowing what to say. “That- you- you didn’t hear that. That was… wh- that was your imagination.” You felt your face glowing red. Even though you tried to cover it, it seemed like he redness was glowing through your hands.

“That was ADORABLE !!” Mikey squealed.

Wait… what?

“I didn’t know you were capable of doing that.” Donnie grinned, finding your snorting fascinating (as Spock would say).

“Wh- no its not cute, its embarrassing!” You managed to sit up, still partly covering your face.

Leo placed a hand on your sholder, causing you to flinch a bit. “Embarrassing? You haven’t even heard Raph yet.”

“Hey…” Raph grunted in a low tone.

“Besides, i wanna hear that cute laugh again.” Leo said as he wiggled his fingers across your side.

Did they really find your laughter cute? “Whahat?”

“Yeah, that was adorable!” Donnie added, sitting next to you and smiling.

Mikey nodded excitedly. “Yeah, you shouldnt be embarrassed of your laugh. Especially since its so cute!!”

Raph cracked his knuckles. “Oh, we’re totally doin’ this.” He spoke, still in a low tone, but more teasing this time. “Get ‘em!” Raph shouted as Mikey held your legs to stop you from kicking around whilst repeatedly squeezing your thigh, causing you to scream out laughing and snorting. Raph was sitting on the floor, digging one of his hands into your hips and the other into your stomach.

Donnie and Leo didn’t hold back either. Leo held both your hands above your head with one hand and ised the other one to scribble along your side whilst Donnie attacked your ribs.

“WAHAHA- snort WHAHAIT!! I CAHAHA- snort snort CAHAHANT!!” As much as you wanted to die from the embarrassment, knowing that the turtles found it cute made you less insicure about it and it actually made you feel happy as well. It was a tickle session you actually enjoyed.

“You can’t?” Mikey asked the question that wasn’t a question. “Too bad!”

“Yeah, thats right!” Donnie cheered on, loving the sound of your snorting and laughing. “You’re not going anywhere!”

“This might just be better than binge watching old shows,” Raph said. “We should do this every Saturday instead.”

“NE- snort NEHEHEVER!!”

You knew you couldn’t get out. I mean, they have been training since they were pretty much babies! No way you would ever get out of this.

In your mind you sighed cause you knew you were going to be here for a while.

[nerdiel-has-no-braincells]

If I Stay

ft: michael kaiser x f!reader

summary: you don’t know how you got into this predicament, taking beating after beating, insult after insult, all for what? for your daughter, who your fiancée loves more than anything. you begin to think back on how you put yourself into this position

cw: aged!up, abusive relationship (not michael & reader), angst, physical and emotional abuse (not michael & reader), please do not read if this will trigger you (for your own safety and mental well being 🫶🏻)

It’s always easy to say that we would never let a significant other treat us badly. It’s so easy to tell ourselves that we respect ourselves too much to allow someone to put us down.

When we’re on the outside, we see toxic relationships and always tell ourselves that we’ll never allow ourselves to be in one until we do become in one. How hard is it to leave when you don’t remember the reason why you originally left?

That’s what you keep asking yourself as you look at your fiancée of 5 years. Why do you stay? Why can’t you bring yourself to leave?

Is it love? Is it because you’re stuck? Is it because you want to make it work? You don’t have an answer to these questions. But when you look at your 2 year old daughter, you can’t help but wish she wouldn’t hear her father yelling at you, calling you every name that had ever existed. You prayed she wouldn’t see the bruises that covered your body, causing you to be forced to wear sweaters even during the hottest seasons because he doesn’t try to leave bruises in easily hidden places.

You prayed so hard every night that your daughter would never allow herself to be in a relationship as toxic as yours.

You shielded your daughter from seeing and hearing the fights that go on in the night. You shed silent tears in order to not wake her from her slumber as you cowered in the corner taking punch after punch.

Your fiancée was a narcissist in the worst way. Not only was everything your fault, you didn’t do anything, you paid for nothing, and you never took care of your daughter even though you were the primary caregiver, everything was in your name, you were the one who had a steady job while your fiancée was once again unable to work due to his “back injury” that he obtained while at work.

He really did though, in the beginning. He went to physical therapy and you were there for him every step of the way until it became months after he had finished his therapy and was cleared to go back to work. Instead, he used it as an excuse to not work, do chores, anything.

Your days include taking care of your daughter, going to work at one of your two jobs, going to your second job, coming home to clean, make dinner, and continue taking care of your daughter. All while your fiancée sat on the couch playing games.

While you were at work, your daughter stayed with your mother, who had been worried for your well being. You never told her what really happens at home, always playing it off as just another silly argument, saying he was going to anger management, and that things were getting better. Your mother knew better, though, but the only thing she could do was love and be there for you. She’s tried to help you; tried to get you to leave, but you couldn’t bring yourself to. You tell yourself time and time again that you love him and that’s the reason why you stay. You chose to relish in the good times rather than the bad, even when the bad outweighed the good.

That being said, you were looking forward to the weekend. Your darling baby girl had recently turned 3 and her birthday party was on Saturday. Your best friends, who you considered as family, were coming to spend time with your daughter.

They’ve always expressed their concerns about your fiancée to you, but they choose to love and support you no matter what.

Because you’re paying for everything out of pocket, you had reached out to take a rain check on the party because you didn’t have the money to be able to afford to take everyone swimming. One of your friends, Kathrin, offered to pay for it instead just so that your daughter could spend the day having fun with her cousins and aunts. You were so thankful and had talked to your fiancée about it, to which he agreed to it.

The day of the party, however, you were in the middle of getting your daughter ready for her party by dressing her in her favorite party dress, and your husband had passed by your daughter’s room after just waking up. Stopping, he turned back around and looked at you in anger, causing the hair on your arms and nape to stand. You instinctively turned around and shielded your daughter behind you as you stared at your fiancée, waiting for him to say something as he glowered down at you.

“Tell your little friend that she’s not paying for shit.” He finally speaks. “I don’t fucking accept handouts.”

You stared at him in disbelief.

“It’s not a handout. Kathrin genuinely wants Emma to have fun with her cousins and aunts.” You responded, careful to not raise your voice or change your calm tone. You didn’t want to start an argument but calmly talk it out. Sometimes he’d be in a good mood to talk things out and you were hoping, praying that today was one of those days.

“She’s not paying for anything.” He seethed. Looks like today wasn’t one of those days.

“All she’s trying to do is make me look bad. Tell her she’s not paying for shit.”

You scoffed before you glanced down at your daughter. Giving her a small smile, you tell her to go play with her toys so that she wouldn’t be in the same room as the impending argument that would shortly unfold before looking at your fiancée.

“She’s not making you look bad. Sometimes people need help and it’s ok to accept help. She just genuinely wants to make Emma happy.” You respond. When it came to your daughter’s well-being and happiness, you found your voice.

Your fiancée’s glare never wavered. He didn’t like when you talked back to him, especially when you were attempting to make him look like a fool.

“I know what your friends think about me. You think I’m fucking dumb?!” He shouted, causing you to flinch.

Wrong move.

He immediately reached out and grabbed you by your neck, lifting you up to where your feet barely touched the floor, dangling below. You grabbed onto his wrist, trying to get him to loosen his hold onto you until he threw you against the door causing you to choke in pain.

“I don’t give a fuck if your friends want to talk shit to me but the moment you open your mouth, you bet your stupid ass I’m going to shut you up myself.”

Squeezing his fingers around your throat, you feel your airwaves close and you begin to gasp for breath. Your body’s alarm bells ring and you begin to struggle and scratch at his hands and wrist, trying to loosen his grip on you.

In the corner of your tear filled eyes, you see your daughter in the hall as she sees her father choking you and begins to cry.

The one weakness your fiancée has is his daughter, so when he hears her cries, he immediately drops his guard and looks over at her. Dropping you to the floor, he runs over to her and scoops her up in his arms.

“It’s ok sweetheart, daddy’s got you now.” He soothes as he walks away, leaving you coughing on the floor trying to find your breath.

Damn him. Fucking damn him.

You reach for your phone and send a quick text to your friends that the party was cancelled. When they expressed their worries and asked what happened, you didn’t respond back.

As soon as you caught your breath, you go into the bathroom, turning on the light and looking into the mirror. Forming on your neck were bruises in the shape of your fiancée’s fingers, steadily growing darker as time passed by.

The tears that had formed in your eyes earlier fell and you felt yourself sink onto the floor. Covering your mouth with your hand, you finally let yourself cry.

That night, you gently got out of bed and dressed yourself in clothes that would hide your arms and neck. After your fiancée had calmed down, he apologized for what he did to you and cried asking for your forgiveness, which as always, you forgave him.

After putting your daughter to bed, he came up behind you and began to kiss your neck, apologizing over and over while you cleaned the dishes from dinner.

This happens every time. He would have an outburst, hit you, and then beg your forgiveness when he felt horny. So you ended up forgiving and sleeping with him. Today wasn’t any different and you wanted nothing more than to take your daughter and leave.

But you couldn’t do that to him. He loved his daughter more than anything and despite how horrible he is to you, he’s an amazing and wonderful father. Emma is his entire world and she loves her father very much.

Your friends and family have told you that it wasn’t healthy for her to be raised in an environment where you were being abused. You knew it. But you just couldn’t take her away from him so long as he never laid a hand on her. And a part of you felt like he knew that.

Leaving to go to the convenience store, you thought back on when you were laying underneath your fiancée. He kept whining about how much he wanted another child, a sibling for Emma. You weren’t ready for another child just yet. Not with him at least. So while you took birth control to prevent another pregnancy that would result in you being stuck even more than you already were. Yet another reason that would make you feel the need to stay.

As you entered the convenience store, you bought a pregnancy test and water. You couldn’t bring yourself to take it at home, so you took it in the store restroom. Even with birth control, there was always the chance that you could become pregnant still and while you didn’t experience any symptoms with your daughter, you found yourself becoming nauseated as the days went on, so you were worried. You couldn’t let your fiancée find out because then you’d end up underneath him every night to make sure you would become pregnant. You were thankful that you kept your birth control a secret from him, feigning an illness when you received the implant so you would never be worried. Unfortunate for you that you were.

As you washed your hands in the sink, you thought back to 7 years ago.

You walked along the halls of your high school after school while you waited for your brother, Alexis Ness, to finish practice. He asked for you to wait for him so that the two of you could go home together…after accompanying his friend Michael. You were supposed to stay near the field, but you got bored watching the guys kick a ball around. Or the one man who believed he was better than the rest, even your brother.

Not wanting to watch your brother subject himself to be treated like a dog, you snuck away during a play.

You love your brother, you absolutely do. He was just very protective of you. If anyone thought he was serious about Michael, it was worse with you. He wouldn’t hesitate to threaten any guy who came up to you, good intentions or bad. It made dating hard and you wanted to be able to experience your first boyfriend. Hell, you’d take a first date.

Passing by the classrooms lost in your thoughts, you felt a hand grab your arm and pull you backwards and into a hard body. Looking up behind you, you met the owner of the hand and body, who looked to be a couple of inches taller than your brother and he had an attractive smile.

Letting you go, he stepped back and rubbed the back of his neck while you turned around to face him, keeping silent. You didn’t know who he was but you guessed he had to find a workaround to talk to you since your brother scared away just about every guy in your grade.

“Sorry.” He apologized. “I saw you and didn’t know how else to get your attention without alerting your brother.”

You were right.

“It’s ok.” You responded, giving a smile. “My brother can be scary when he wants to be.”

He laughed and the sound of his laughter made your heart flutter.

“Yeah, he’s never said anything to me, but I’ve heard a lot of stories so I figured my best bet to talk to you was to wait until you were alone. N-Not that I was following you or anything, I was in the faculty office.”

Your smile widened.

“Uh huh. Sure.” You teased.

It felt nice talking to him. While your experience with talking to guys was limited to your brother, this conversation felt easy.

“I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime?” He asked.

You glanced over at where the football field was to see if practice was still ongoing. It looked like everyone was starting to disperse causing you to feel nervous. Once Alexis saw that you weren’t around, he was going to lecture you.

Looking back at the man in front of you, you nodded.

“Sure! Sounds fun!” You agreed, taking out your phone and handing it to him so that he could add his number.

As soon as he handed you your phone, it began ringing as if Alexis knew that your phone had been handed off to someone. You immediately answered and waved goodbye before you turned and walked towards the field.

“What’s up Alexi?” You greeted.

“Y/N where are you? I told you to stay near the field. What if someone kidnapped you while you weren’t around?!” Alexis lectured in a panicked voice.

Rolling your eyes, you exited the building only to find your brother running around in a panic while Michael was watching him in amusement. Laughing, you waved to get his attention. Alexis looked at you and ran as quickly as he could, enveloping you in a hug that caused you to groan when he body slammed you. Alexis leaned back and held your cheeks in his hands and it was evident he teared up from worry.

“Alexi, I'm fine. I got bored.” You explained. “So I was in the halls.”

“What if a pervert found you? Like one of the teachers?” Alexis responded with furrowed brows.

A chuckle was heard behind you as Michael appeared, which caused you to furrow your brows and glare at him.

“Let her be, Ness. You can’t ask her to sit there every day and expect her to not be bored.” Michael said, giving you one of his signature smiles, which caused you to roll your eyes.

Alexis dropped his hands and smiled at Michael, his cheeks tinted pink.

“You’re right! I can’t be overprotective all the time, especially during practice when I need to focus on giving you a great pass.”

You inwardly groan.

It was that day that brought you to your current predicament. That guy that was shy and sweet is now your abusive fiancée.

You were aware of his anger problems, especially mixed with his narcissism since back then. But he never laid a hand on you until right before you broke up.

It was a stupid argument that was so stupid you couldn’t even remember what it was about. But whatever it was about caused him to give you one good slap to your face. You held your hand to your cheek and stared at him in disbelief before you broke up with him and ran off.

You were scared Alexis would find out so you avoided going home for a while until you were sure your brother would be in his room.

What you didn’t expect was to run into Michael Kaiser. He had exited a coffee shop and you ended up walking into him because you weren’t paying attention; you just wanted to get away.

His trademark smile formed as soon as he saw you, but it faded just as quickly as it appeared. His brows furrowed and he gently placed his hand on your chin, tilting your head to the side to look at the fresh red mark on your face. Tears threatened to fall as he stayed quiet.

“Please don’t tell Alexi…” You whispered.

“Give me one reason why.” Michael answered sternly. “Or better yet, give me the name of the person who did this to you, liebling.”

Your eyes widened. You had never seen this reaction off of Michael. He had always had a carefree attitude. Looking away from him, you moved his hand away.

“I just know how protective he is of me. It was just a silly argument and even then, I broke up with him.” You bit your bottom lip as the tears formed in your eyes once again.

Michael stared at you not saying a word. It felt suffocating to you and you just wanted to run off. You didn’t even like this man but the simple action of him getting angry on your behalf caused butterflies in your stomach. It felt like an eternity passed before you heard Michael sigh as if he’d come to a conclusion in his head and didn’t like the thought.

“Alright, I won’t tell Ness.” He said.

You looked at Michael, the shock evident on your face. This was something else you didn’t know about him. You were sure he was going to tell your brother. He definitely seemed like the type who would at least hold it over your head.

“In return,” He said, gently taking some of your hair and bringing it to his lips. His usual smile on his face as he looked directly into your eyes.

Oh boy. You were tired of being right.

“Let me treat you today. You need to see how a real man treats a woman.”

Despite the disgust you felt, your cheeks were tinted pink.

Sighing, you recognized your utter defeat. If you didn’t do what he said, he would tell your brother. You would rather deal with him than the wrath of your brother.

“Fine.” You answered in a monotone.

Michael chuckled and winked before letting your hair fall.

“Braves Mädchen.”

It took everything in you to not roll your eyes at his response even when it made your chest tighten. You would never admit he had his charms. He annoyed you to no end.

Michael had successfully distracted you from that day and you were able to move on. Then 3 years ago, your ex came back into the picture.

Because you originally blocked him after that breakup, he couldn’t get in contact with you and as soon as he saw you at random, he got on his knees and apologized.

When you decided to hear him out, he told you after he hit you, he realized his anger was out of control and he went to therapy to better himself. He told you he had changed and missed you.

So you took him back.

And you saw that he did change. His anger was controlled around you and he treated you much better.

Until the day he proposed after your daughter was born.

Sighing at the memory, you picked up the pregnancy test and looked at the results: negative. You felt a wave of relief wash over you, not realizing how much tension your body was holding during those few minutes.

Throwing away the test, you exited the bathroom and rubbed the bridge of your nose before colliding into someone. You really need to pay attention.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” You apologize without looking at the person.

“Liebling?” A familiar voice called out, causing you to immediately look up and find the familiar blonde in front of you.

“Michael?” You breathed.

masterlist | chapter 2 ⤠

taglist: @xamilarin @vr00m-vr00m @oshiimaiy

taglist is open

series taglist form here

normal taglist form here

Blue Lock is created and owned by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura

Art is owned by Haru

©️nerdiel-has-no-braincells 2023 Please do not copy, translate, and post as your own. Reblogs, likes, and comments are ok with me!

[sargeantposting]

A little earlier in the F2 season, we caught up with Williams Racing Academy Driver Logan Sargeant.

Wanting to get to know him just a little bit better, and with a big date in Austin now on the horizon, we tasked him with answering 22 questions about racing and life in general.

Here’s what he had to say…

What race day rituals do you have?

If weekends are going well, I tend to stick with the same underwear for each day. Before you worry, they’re different pairs! I have a Friday, Saturday, Sunday set. But if it’s not going well, I have to make a change!

What's your go-to coffee order?

Latte, but it's a double espresso before quali.

What's the inspiration behind your racing number?

This year it’s six because I can’t choose in F2, but when I am allowed to pick, it would be No3. Three for Dale Earnhardt, an all-out American hero.

Your favourite drink?

I’ve only just turned 21… but it’s water, of course.

If you had to cook one main course to impress a loved one, what would it be?

Oooo… I’m not much of a cook, but I can tell you what I would order in! I love a good prime rib.

What’s your favourite film?

Love the Jump Streets, but I’ve got a lot of time for Step Brothers. But if I had to choose out of the two, I’d go Jump Streets. I suppose I have to choose which one?! But 21 and 22 are both pretty good. Ah, I can’t decide.

Who is the toughest rival you've come up against so far?

It’s got to be the battle in Formula 3 between myself and Oscar Piastri.

Your favourite cheat meal?

Fortunately I have a quick metabolism, so they come relatively often… my American roots mean it would have to be a nice, juicy burger.

How many attempts did it take to pass your driving test?

Just one, which is apparently pretty rare for racing drivers! That’s including the practical and the theory.

Which track are you most looking forward to in 2022?

It’s got to be Monaco, but I’m looking forward to seeing the F1 team in Miami.

You can choose one song only to listen to before a race, what is it?

Lose Yourself - Eminem.

Is there one circuit not on your calendar that you'd love to race at?

Obviously it’s either Miami or Austin; to have a home race would be amazing. That said, I’d love to race at Suzuka some day.

Who is your favourite sports team outside of F1?

Anything Miami! We’re talking Heat, Dolphins, Marlins, Inter Miami… they’ve all got my support.

Least favourite exercise your trainer set for you in the offseason?

I’d say it’s got to be all the extra cardio I had to do to get ready for F2.

What's a better feeling, nailing a quali lap or executing a late overtake?

I saw what Nicky and Alex said to this answer and I have to agree. Nailing a quali lap all day long. It’s my favourite part of a weekend, I love putting it all on the line.

Is there anyone you idolised when growing up?

In racing, my first hero when I was a kid was, funnily enough, Jeff Gordon. I just loved watching him and the way he fought on track.

Favourite sport that's not F1?

At the moment, I’d have to say NFL. But it switches between that and the NBA.

If you could invite anyone in the world to a dinner party, which three people would you choose and why?

I would invite Leo DiCaprio, I feel he’s kind of cool. Then let’s also invite Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt. Let’s make it an A-List movie night!

What is your favourite Grand Prix?

Well, I could be biased and say Austin. I mean, how can you argue against 450,000 fans across the three days last year? That was pretty awesome. But I’ve got to say I love Silverstone as well.

What's been your favourite moment of your career so far?

My rookie race in Macau where I finished third. Definitely, 100%, hands down my favourite track in the world.

One word to describe how you're feeling about the 2022 season?

Confident.

One word that best describes Williams Racing to you?

Supportive.

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

03/02/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Cast & Crew Sightings; SambaSchutte; Vico Ortiz; Captain's Orders; AdoptOurCrew Saturday Sillies; Saturday "Masculinity" Fuckery; March 3 Reminders; FOTC and Short Poppies Watch Party Polls; Our Flag Turns 2; The Pirates Watch party; New Watch Party: Next Goal Wins; Repo News; Articles; Love Notes; Daily Darby/Tonight's Taika;

= Cast&Crew Sightings =

= Samba Schutte =

Samba's new short film "I Keep Bumping Into Candy Maldonado" is screening tomorrow Mar 3 @ 10 am at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival! If you happen to be there, give it a watch!

Src: Samba's Instagram Story

= Vico Ortiz =

Vico's out here re-tweeting the AdoptOurCrew #TheseThems Watch Party! Way to go @adoptourcrew!

= Today was Captains Orders!=

Several folks got out and took some time to enjoy nature! I only got a few permissions to share so if I get more, I'll add more tomorrow! Thank you to @lucyrosebutler for sharing! The last two images are me and my sad dry state. Bonus, my nugget before he ran off.

== AdoptOurCrew Saturday Sillies ==

Our lovely crew-mates @AdoptOurCrew are back again with more #SaturdaySillies! This time around it's Pirate Connections! Want to know how to play? Check out the guide. If you already have twitter, please visit the Adopt Our Crew Thread to play! Don't have twitter? No problem! Their links to the Pirate Connections are below!

Game 1

Game 2

Game 3

Game 4

Game 5

Game 6

== Saturday Fuckery! ==

Our darling @RedsiesWorld on twitter started up a fuckery! Various crew members managed to lots of positive, healthy masculinity posts running through the #MasculinitySaturday tag!

== Reminders for March 3 ==

= FOTC/Short Poppies Watch Party Polls =

Have you voted yet for times for the Flight of the Conchords or Short Poppies Watch Party? @iamadequate1 still has the polls up!

How should ep breakdown in a Mon-Fri week be for the 12 eps of FotC S1?

What is a good hashtag for a FotC watch party?

What is a good hashtag for a Short Poppies watch party?

= #OurFlagTurns2! =

Our friends over at @AdoptOurCrew are hosting several questions on twitter regarding #OurFlagTurns2! If you're on twitter, please respond on their feed, otherwise, if you want to respond on any other platform, just add the hashtag #OurFlagTurns2!

Mar 3: The Pirates! Watch Party! 

This is a family friendly movie so bring the kids! Or the adults-- or anyone you know, really, as long as it's not against their will! Sunday March 3rd, 3 PM EST, 12 PM PST, 8 PM GMT!

Watch Party Hashtags:

#OurPirateCaptain

#SaveOFMD

#AdoptOurCrew

== New Watch Parties! =

March 8th - Next Goal Wins!

When: 8 pm GMT / 3 pm EST / 12 pm PST

Thank you @lamentus1 for the info! Now available to buy in the UK: £11.99 @ Apple (https://tinyurl.com/mr3p6bvm) and £9.99 or £11.99 @ Amazon https://tinyurl.com/2fwdmezz.

(US fans can watch on Hulu, and Disney Plus)

Watch Party Hashtags:

#SaveOFMD

#OurFlagWins

== Repo News ==

Hey all! Sorry it took so long.. I finally got the Renewal Repo Resources up with approved resources this time. I also added a new permission form so if you'd like to offer up your creations to be added to the repo for the purpose of sharing (with or without credit) you can do so and choose how your creations will get to be used. If anything on that form doesn't make sense or doesn't include something you feel needs to be included, please reach out to me! I got lots of feedback but I know there's always room for improvement, and I want to make sure I'm covering everyone's bases.

Please Note: This form is for shareable media. For "Fan Spotlight" I'll still be reaching out individually and those will be in a completely different part of the repo and not for sharing purposes.

OFMD Renewal Repo Sharable Media Submission / Permission Form

== Articles ==

Anti-Warner Bros. Sentiment Grows as Major Boycott Gains Traction (A shout out to @adoptourcrew in it! woo!)

== Love Notes ==

Hey lovelies. I hope if you were able to get outside today that it helped a bit with giving you some relief. Nature really can be healing, as the captain says. If you weren't I hope you got to do something fun, like make a gif, read a fanfiction, eat something you love, and get some rest. Just wanted to remind you that you can do anything. You can write that fic. You can draw that art. You can learn that language, or that subject you want. You can get that new job, or take that break. You can make it through another day, even when it feels like you can't. Remember that. I believe in you <3 The crew believes in you <3 If you don't already, one day I know you'll believe in you too. Sending all the love <3 To Quote @bossbabe.inc "yes the fuck you can".

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

The gif theme tonight is "Strut your stuff". Rhys Gif Courtesy of @lacefuneral Taika Gif Courtesy of @fuckyeahworldoftaika

[matheoxs]

Wow omg u are 17?? And u are already doing so good! That’s amazing sweetheart, I am 19 and I always feel like I have achieved nothing in life. I just had one question, my mum has a really bad job Monday to Saturday, the pay isn’t well, the work hours are so bad, she gets no time to spend with u and on top of that her boss is the most dehumanising person to ever exist. Any advice, any affirmation or anything cause like it’s so sad to me and I did try to manifest a better job for her before but it always end up after interview round :(

Yes, yes, I am 😭. Somebody on IG texted me that they didn’t believe I’m 17 because of the way I look, but that’s not the point here. Let’s talk about your situation.

What are you trying to do? There’s nothing to try

You said, “I have achieved nothing in life.” I believe you’ve been persisting in that for so long. Understand that this isn’t something new to you; that’s why manifesting feels natural—you’ve been doing this all your life.

Also, when you assume something in your imagination, it becomes real in an instant. That’s why they say there’s nothing to get; it’s already done, it already happened, and your job is to just remember that, no matter what.

Stop trying. How? By doing what you want in the 4D. Just imagine having whatever it is that you desire and let that be.

You’re assuming something and then looking at the 3D, not remembering that it’s already done in the 4D.

Your 4D is real, and when I say real, I mean really real. Your 3D is just a copy-paste of what you do in the 4D, so that’s why when you try to change the 3D, it feels like you’re battling with yourself. It doesn’t feel good, and it’s a pain in the ass.

For Yourself

1. "I am living my dream life now."

2. "I am successful and fulfilled."

For Your Mom

1. "My mom has a perfect job that she loves."

2. "My mom is respected and appreciated at work."

3. My mom is surrounded by supportive colleagues.

You assume that in the 4D and continue to assume on that because that’s what you choose no matter what.

[reqxxyt]

coffee m.s

[unedited]

this sweetheart needs more appreciation <3 requests are open !

pairings: mick s. x f!reader

warnings: none (i think??) except for rushed ending....

masterlist

_________ ׂׂૢ་༘࿐

This had to be a nightmare. The only way to justify this scenario. Toto, my boss had asked a simple thing this morning, like every other day: coffee freshly brewed from the local coffee shop that he claimed to be the best because according to him “there is a big difference between rich flavorful coffee and one that tastes like burnt shit”. 

This morning had started like any other; wake up, get ready, head to the coffee shop, wait patiently (considering the line can get very long), and finally head to the office to hand in the coffee to Toto before finalizing plans with one of his many assistants. I hadn’t anticipated the line to lead to the end of the shop, way longer than usual.

That's fine, I can just wait a  bit longer. Shouldn’t be a big deal. I thought to myself before I finally realized after nearly 15 minutes passing. I wasn’t going to make it in time and I had just finished ordering his custom drink. My leg started to bounce, in anticipation as I made a timeline in my head, calculating how long it would take from here to the office barely going over the speed limit (with hopefully no traffic). 

They called my order and I thanked them before quickly leaving. The ride wasn’t completely terrible, just a few people who shouldn’t have a license cutting in front of me. I glanced at the clock in my car, showing I was already 10 minutes late. Crying internally, I exited the car with the hot coffee gripped in my hand. 

“Y/n, you’re unusually late,” one of the desk ladies said with fake concern hiding back her smirk. I only turned to her for a second ready to make a remark or witty comeback but before I could even get a word out I felt another body come into contact with my own, sending the hot flavorfully rich coffee forward. 

Apologies were said before I could even get a glance at who exactly I was trying to help with dainty napkins. “It’s fine” was the voice that made me  finally look up, feeling the most embarrassed. 

Mick Schumacher. 

The guy I had been crushing on since I was first employed. I froze before finally remembering that he had made contact with hot coffee. Coffee; a very hot liquid that could cause third-degree burns. I mentally cursed at myself before apologizing frantically. 

Before I could suggest, he took off his white t-shirt taking the napkins from my hand, still trying to reassure me that it was fine. But no matter how hard he tried, I would glance at his face and internally feel terrible seeing the wincing pain he was experiencing. 

“You should probably get that checked” I informed, still trying to help. He only made eye contact with me for a split second, mumbling an agreement. 

Footsteps were heard from behind me and I glanced behind me, spotting the last person I wanted to see. 

“Should I not be witnessing this?” he asked, staring down at the shirtless Mick. My cheeks burned bright red at the thought of that ever happening and we both said

“It’s not what it looks like” I picked up the empty cup of coffee and he made a face of understanding before finally giving me a death glare and handing back the cup. 

“Get me another one. I’ll send someone to clean this up” he blankly stated before walking away not sparing another glance. 

I  was ready to apologize again to the still shirtless Mick who stood beside me before he interrupted me “You want my forgiveness?”

I gave him a confused look, about to ask a simple question that started with a w and ended with an “aht” but he choose to interrupt me again offering me a deal. “Buy me coffee, not today. Saturday maybe?” 

This sounded too much like a date. Too good to be true. Again, confused I asked “What?” without being interrupted. 

“Go on a date with me. This Saturday. Then I’ll forgive you, of course, you’re paying” he shrugged and I finally understood. 

He clearly just wanted free coffee after I had nearly sent him to the hospital. 

“To be honest, I’ve liked you for a while just never got the chance to ask you out. Now I do” what. 

Of course, I agreed, trying to be the most chill meanwhile internally I had contemplated if I was dreaming. 

Best nightmare I’ve ever had.

[adrienneleclerc]

There’s A Frog In My Hand

Masterlist

Pairing: Xavier Thorpe x Hispanic!Reader

Summary:after scrolling on TikTok, Enid decides to try the trend on Ajax and tells Y/N to do it on Xavier so Enid can compare their reactions.

Warnings: Boyfriend!Xavier because he’s just the cutest, very fluffy, implied Ajax x Enid

Y/N was walking to the quad when she heard someone yell her name. “Y/N, Y/N, Y/N, Y/N, Y/N, I gotta show you something!” Y/N turned around and saw that it was her best friend, Enid. Enid tan as fast as she could and almost bumped into Y/N. “Sorry. I was on TikTok and I was looking at couple trends so I can do some with Ajax, and look at what I came across.” Enid told Y/N. They both sat down at a table in the quad before Enid played the video.

In the video, there was a couple on the bed, the first girl said to her girlfriend that there was an invisible flea in her hand and that it was going to do 3 backflips. After doing the backflips, the first girl asked her girlfriend to hold his little hat as he does more backflips. Then the first girl asked her girlfriend if she really believe that there is a flea in her hands. The girlfriend says no and the first girl asks “then why are you holding his little hat?” And the girlfriend answers “because you asked me to!”

“It’s literally so fucking cute!! You should try that with Xavier.” Enid tells Y/N. “Do you really think Xavier will go along with there being an invisible flea in my hand?” Y/N asks. “Well it doesn’t have to me a flea, I’ve seen people say there was a frog in their hand, a cricket, it could be anything really. I’m gonna try it with Ajax and see his reaction. I’m gonna say flea because I’m a werewolf so that’s easy.” Enid commented as she puts her phone away.

“Then I guess I’ll choose that there’s a frog. I’m naming the frog though.” Y/N commented. “Only you would name an imaginary frog. I wonder how different Ajax and Xavier would react to having an invisible animal in our hands.”Enid said. “I honestly think Ajax would just be asking a lot of questions.” Y/N said, the girls started laughing and that’s when Y/N felt someone cover her eyes.

“Guess who.” The voice said. “Could it be Nevermore’s resident tortured artist?” Y/N guessed and Xavier uncovered her eyes and gave her a forehead kiss. “I expected you so say your super hot boyfriend but that works too.” Xavier said as he sat down beside Y/N. “What were you girls talking about?”

“About nothing, cariño. My parents wanted me to invite you to dinner Saturday night, by the way. My mom is making tallarines saltado, It’s gonna be really good.” Y/N mentioned. “That’s spaghetti, right?” Xavier asked, making sure he got his Spanish right. “Yeah, It’s spaghetti. So is that a yes?” Y/N asked hopefully. “Yeah for sure. I gotta go find Ajax, see you later, angel.” Xavier said, kissing her forehead. When Xavier was far from the table, Enid started talking again.

“So I was thinking you record the video on your phone, and then you can send it to me so I can post it on my gossip site. I will also post my video with Ajax and we’ll have a poll of who’s the better boyfriend. Do you accept the challenge, L/N?” Enid said, holding out her hand to Y/N. “Challenge accepted, Sinclair.”

After classes were over, Y/N went to Xavier’s dorm. “Mi amor, It’s me, Can i come in?” Y/N asked. Xavier opened the door so she could come in. They greeted each other with a kiss and Y/N walked in and sat on Xavier’s bed. “To what do I owe the pleasure, milady?” Xavier said in a bad British accent as he bowed down. Y/N laughed and hit him lightly on the arm. “No seas payaso (don’t be silly), Enid showed me this couples video today, do you want to try it with me?” Y/N asked Xavier.

“Sure babe, let me take a shower then we can do it, okay.” Xavier said and kissed her forehead before he went to the bathroom so he can shower. Like 15 minutes later he’s out and dressed. “Okay I’m ready.” Xavier said. “Great, I’m gonna record it if that’s okay to prove to Enid I did it” Y/N said and Xavier nodded his head. Y/N propped her phone on his dresser, leaning against his cologne bottle and Y/N pressed record.

“Okay, Xavi, so there’s a frog in my hands, okay? His name is Rogelio.” Y/N said. “Why is his name Rogelio?” Xavier asked. “I was watching Shrek 2 in Spanish, okay. Anyway, Rogelio is going to do 3 backflips.” Y/N said, keeping her eyes on Xavier. Xavier nodded. “Okay Rogelio, do your thing, buddy.” “1, 2, 3” as Y/N counted Rogelio’s backflips, she also moved her head as if following his backflips, Xavier did the same.

“Can you hold his jacket for him?” Y/N asked, showing Xavier her cupped hand. “Yeah sure, Rogelio must be feeling hot after doing 3 backflips in a row.” Xavier commented, he went to your hands and moved his hands as if taking the jacket off of the frog. “He’s gonna do 3 backflips again. 1, 2, 3.” Y/N said. “He did a double backflip at the end! Rogelio, you are a very talented frog, you must be exhausted.” Xavier commented, Y/N wanted to laugh so bad, Xavier is just the cutest. “Does Rogelio want his jacket back? It’s a very nice jacket, actually.”

“Okay, Xavi, here’s a question for you. Do you really believe there’s a frog in my hands?” Y/N asked him. “Well you told me there’s a frog in your hands and I’m holding his jacket. He’s probably an invisible frog.” Xavier said, Y/N giggled. “Querido, how would I get an invisible frog?” Y/N asked him. “I Can anímate anything I draw and you’re asking me if it’s possible to have an invisible frog?” Xavier countered.

“We’re getting off the subject. Do you really think there is a frog in my hands.” Y/N asked. “Probably not.” Xavier said, finally. “Then why are you holding Rogelio’s jacket?” Y/N asked. “Because you asked me to, love.” Xavier said laughing, Y/N laughed too and hugged Xavier, hiding her face in his chest and Xavier kissed the top of her head. When they were done, Y/N stopped the video.

“Did I do the video right?” Xavier asked Y/N. “Yes, you did it perfectly, mi vida.” Y/N said. Y/N grabbed her phone and sent the video to Enid. A free minutes later, Enid replied to her

Enid: AWW 🥰😍🥰😍 HE IS THE SWEETEST!

The next day, when Y/N was walking to the quad, everyone stared at her, mostly the girls and all she heard was “you’re so lucky!” “He’s so sweet!” “Your boyfriend is adorable.” And so on. When Y/N at a table, Xavier approached her. “Hey, love, did you see Enid’s gossip site?” Xavier asked. “No, not really. I knew she was gonna post it but I didn’t know when, why?” Y/N asked.

“Everyone is commenting that we’re the best couple. That and that I’m totally whipped for you. I mean I am, but still.” Xavier said, putting his arm around your shoulders. “At least now everyone knows we’re dating, that should keep your jealous fits in check.” Y/N commented and Xavier just laughed. “Ha ha, very funny. Come one, let’s go to class.” Xavier said as he grabbed Y/N’s backpack to carry it for her and held her hand while they walk to class. Maybe Xavier is whipped for Y/N but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Should this be my brand? Just writing Hispanic Reader fanfics? Let me know!

[goomens]

I've had an idea but I won't get around to writing it think.. I imagine Crowley being drunk on wine, taking to Nina after *the event* and just word vomiting, telling her everything about who he is. And then Nina ist like "so when you said 'angel' you actually meant..." maybe you can do something with that? 😂

such a cute idea!!! fic under the cut <3

It’s nine in the morning and Nina is jolted from her sleepy reverie by the violent tinkle of the front door bell; a figure in black slithering into a nearby seat and thunking his head down onto the table. Crowley, she thinks, watching him carefully from behind the counter. Without Mr. Fell in tow, tense around the shoulders, and creating quite a sad display, she feels a pang of something like pity inside her chest.

“Gretel,” Nina calls quietly to one of her newer baristas after a moment of consideration, “Take over for a bit, please?” And she makes her way over to Crowley, not bothering to say hello as she pulls out the other chair and sits down in it. He doesn’t lift his head. By all means, he seems lifeless. Completely still. Eerie, like he isn’t breathing. Her heart stutters in fear for a second, thinking he’s just up and died in her coffee shop, but—

“Oh, calm down.” Crowley retracts his forehead from the cold plastic table with a grunt and glares at Nina—she thinks, at least—through the impenetrable black lenses of his sunglasses. “I would like a mug of coffee with four measures of vodka, please and thank you.”

“It’s not even half nine yet, you know,” She scolds him, not really meaning it, but not willing to serve him alcohol so early either. He’s a bit of an odd fella (or, whatever) but Nina draws the line at serving a customer four units before noon. “No boozy breakfasts here. You’ll have to wait ‘til later—on Saturdays we have a boozy brunch. There’ll be cocktails.”

Crowley doesn’t speak for a moment. Then, “Pity.” He sighs. Snaps his fingers for some reason. He reaches into his blazer, pulling out an entire litre bottle of ABSOLUT and uncapping it. Nina opens her mouth, ready to tell him off, but he holds a finger up and guzzles down half of it before she can get the words out. When he sets the bottle down, she raises a questioning eyebrow.

“Thirsty?”

He ignores her, choosing to scowl instead, and looks off out the window of the shop looking a bit lost. “Your advice was shit. You and that—that vinyl seller. Thought you should know. Don’t go trying to influence anyone else’s ‘love’ lives, eh?” His words are full of forced humour, but his voice shatters a bit at the end, and suddenly Nina feels like some kind of villain. She looks at Crowley and sees someone in mourning. He’s grieving. He’s heartbroken.

“Fuck,” She says with feeling, and motions for Gretel to bring over two mugs.

Hours later—in the midst of Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death’s boozy brunch—Crowley is drunkenly taking Nina step-by-step through his and Aziraphale’s extremely long history. They go back much, much further than she ever thought. Than she ever thought possible, actually. It’s all quite strange. And sweet, and sad, the way he talks about Aziraphale. “He’s so smart,” He says. “He’s good. He’s lovely. He’s the one I love. He’s only gone and returned to Heaven and left me on my own.” He also says, “I’m a Demon, I know I don’t deserve him,” and “He’s an Angel, he doesn’t want me. He could never want me.” And Nina is suddenly putting the pieces together, making sense of it all, her stomach—full of the buttered bagel she’d had for breakfast, half a bottle of vodka, and not much else—turns and swoops, threatening to expel its contents.

Crowley watches her then bursts into a startling laugh. It’s low and surprised. “There’s no way—no way—you’re just now realising what I am. What he is.” She just blinks and stares, and his laugh dies down but the lines of amusement remain etched on his face. “Oh, brilliant. You humans are brilliant. So bloody obtuse.”

“Oi!” She protests, reaching out to push at his shoulder. But she misses on account of being a bit more tipsy than she thought, and he laughs at her again. “I am not obtuse! ‘M quite clever, actually.”

There’s a smile on his—the Demon’s—face now, which is nice, much better than the frown he sported earlier, but when he gestures to his face and grins fiendeshly, she only stares confused for a second before realising that, ah, maybe she is a bit obtuse. His eyes are bright and a little bit playful, without the sunglasses. Big and yellow and snake-like, and oh, that’s what the Eden story had been about. It hadn’t been a metaphor or a weird figure of speech, but the truth. She’d been so busy listening to him she hadn’t noticed the moment he’d pocketed his sunglasses.

Instead of crippling fear or mortal terror, Nina just laughs and laughs. She orders them both a creamy coffee and some malt biscuits, even at his weak protests, and she lets him tell her all about the planets and the stars, Mesopotamia, the crucifixion, the Seven hills of ancient Rome, the burning of witches in the fifteenth century, the Armageddon-That-Wasn’t…

[suzzukiiii]

hello! :33

i wanted to request something for simon “ghost” riley x fem!Reader and there’s an age gap between them where reader is 19 and simon is in his late 30s and he moves in next door to her and her family and she starts getting a little crush on him then simon finds out about it and starts teasing her about it you can choose if there is smut :3 i would love to see what you do with this!

have an amazing day/night! <3333

ɢʜᴏꜱᴛ ᴍᴏᴠɪɴɢ ɪɴ ɴᴇxᴛ ᴅᴏᴏʀ ☆

ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ ☆

a young female notices that someone finally moves in next door, she decides to talk to him. ☆☆☆

pairing; female!reader x ghost. !! a/n; there will be a part 2 of course, i just wanted to post something lol. !! genre & disclaimer; fluff i think ?? contains age gap

it was a sunny afternoon, and y/n was sitting on their porch, enjoying the weather, when she noticed that someone was moving into the house next door. it was a tall man, probably in his late 30's, carrying a bunch of boxes. strangely, he was wearing a mask? he then walked outside the house again to grab more boxes, when he noticed someone staring at him. he turned his head to the young female. he asked in a deep, cold tone that suggested he might be a little irritated, "can i help you?". the sound of his british accent was quite noticeable. y/n's eyes widened, realizing that she had been caught staring at him. a nervous stutter was heard from her as she replied. "uh, no. sorry, i was just...looking around." the guy looked away and continued transporting the boxes.

never ever had y/n seen someone like that. wearing a mask, randomly like that, and who knows why? she somehow found it attractive though, as-well as his muscular build, deep voice, and him surely being way older... this guy was totally her type.

the day went on and y/n just couldn't stop thinking about his voice, his line just went over and over through her mind. "do i try to talk to him tomorrow? like give him some sort of welcome gift..?" she thought to herself. "he seems a bit scary though.."

and then she fell asleep.

day after,

y/n woke up. it was a saturday, which meant no school. she thought of maybe baking something to the new neighbour. she instantly went on her phone to find a few recipes, and with that, about an hour later, the house was filled up with aroma of the choclate cake y/n just had made, feeling proud of herself. she went to her room to go and grab a cute outift, letting her hair out and left the house with the choclate cake in her hands. she then knocked on the door of his and suddenly felt her heart beating faster, she started to feel nervous.. "this isn't too much, is it? but this might be the chance where i could ask about the mask he's wearing...." she began to think. not so long after, the door opened, only to reveal the tall and muscular man.

"hello! me and my family live next door, i thought i would bake something for you as a welcome.." y/n stated, pretty quickly, but was good at hiding her nervousity.

the neighbour looked down at her, he had to be around 6'4 or something as tall as he looked. "you didn't have to do that, but thank you" he stated and took the cake, he placed the cake on a table and walked to the front door. he didn't really say anything after that, as if the conversation was over but y/n quickly came up with something.

"...your name?" she slowly questioned, waiting for him to answer. "name's simon ghost riley. you can call me simon" he responded. "and yours is?"

"my name is y/n! nice to meet you." she exclaimed, stretching out her hand, waiting for him to shake her hand. he looked down at the empty hand and then shook it. his hands were big, firm, yet soft. she couldn't help but feel her heart skip a beat. "nice to meet you" he replied. he then let go of her and was about to walk inside his home. "well, i'll see you around" he implied before closing the door. y/n was just completely frozen about what had just happened while her hair swinged with the wind. her heart was beating fast and a thousand emotions came across her body.

part 2 coming up tomorrow !!

[megop]

MegOP Week 2023 is Here: Dates and Prompts Now Available!

(click here for blog info)

Hello everyone! Based on the results of the interest check poll, we picked the week and prompts that had the highest availability of participants possible.

MegOP Week 2023 will take place from Sunday, June 11th - Saturday, June 17th.

This event week celebrates the ship Megatron/Optimus Prime and all its variants. It is a voluntary, open-participation event for creators of all types and skill levels. You can complete prompts for as many days as you’d like, and you can choose which prompt you want to do for each day-- one, the other, both, or even combining them into one entry! Participants are free to make as many entries as they want and interpret the prompts however they wish.

Speaking of, the prompts are as follows:

Day 1: Loyalty/Betrayal

Day 2: Private/Respect

Day 3: Marriage/Tears

Day 4: Sweet/Death

Day 5: Sharing a meal/Hands

Day 6: Atonement/Blood

Day 7: Freedom/Mercy

Please stay tuned to this blog, as we have our asks opened to answer any questions people have about the event! As June comes closer, we will post additional clarifications regarding rules, FAQs, etc. as they come up. :)

We hope that this year’s MegOP Week will be as fun as previous years! Good luck brainstorming and creating your entries!