#i also found that i somehow became semi-consistent

[abugidaithink]

just got back to playing Cataclysm (which would be a pretty significant new hardest)

and within 40 attempts i got 71%

[vermilionstarlight]

General World and Plot Happenings!!! <33

So I’m back to D&D things for the time being, and now I have decided I will elaborate on larger happenings within the “cosmos” of my minecraft-inspired setting.

 -  As stated before, each of the three dimensions are actually representations of the gods’ mindscapes, and that includes the denizens of each dimension. all creatures and landscapes are just manifestations of the gods’ psyches.

The End is the representation of Herobrine’s mind, the Nether is the representation of Alex’s mind, and the Overworld is the representation of Steve’s mind.

 -  During most proceedings in the dimensions, the gods are awake and in the ‘real world’. When they sleep, they appear as divine avatars within their mindscapes. This is the primary reason why the denizens of their mindscapes are aware of the existence of the gods. When dreaming, the gods typically appear as we know them, like their in-game sprites.

 -  In the ‘real world’, the gods are just normal people. People stolen from their lives, because they would be easily missed, for the purposes of inhumane testing. This testing is meant to investigate the existence and possible usage of a separate plane of reality from our own, the Void. Creatures reside in the Void -- creatures beyond human comprehension -- which manipulate energies that can do what most would consider magic. Steve, Alex, and Herobrine have been experimented upon, using these energies, in attempt to make them beyond human.

This experimentation is what has resulted in the unique position that Steve, Alex, and Herobrine find themselves in. The position of gods.

 -  Steve and Herobrine are identical twins, and Steve is in a romantic relationship with Alex.

Steve is naturally an explorer, a traveler, and before being captured he roamed the world with his girlfriend and brother. His mind is a representation of his experiences and attitude towards the world, a natural land of beauty and abundance. 

Alex has had a terribly traumatic life, and has severe PTSD and pyrophobia. Steve only met her two years ago, at the time of the setting, and he still doesn’t know very much about her past. She’s fiercely independent, and not very communicative, but they somehow make it work. Barely. The stress of being captured and experimented upon is putting further strain on their relationship. Despite its apparent hostility, her mindscape can still hold beautiful vistas and still hosts a blinding variety of life.

And Herobrine...

 -  Herobrine is special. The others have had their mindscapes turned to semi-reality by these energies, but his has also been warped. Herobrine has always naturally been a lucid dreamer, and when he first fell asleep and was transported to his mindscape, he did not have the same defenses against the Void that the others had. He found his mindscape a land of fantastical flora and dragons, that was doomed from the beginning. As his mindscape fragmented into floating islands above a fathomless abyss, as the denizens of his mind died in droves from a horrid plague, his mental state fragmented in turn. Over time, his memories became less consistent, his personality fluctuated seemingly at random, and his sense of self deteriorated. His eyes grew luminous, and his speech began sounding... uncanny. He denounced his old name, Jordan, and instead demanded to be referred to as Herobrine. He has striking moments of lucidity from time to time, but they are as intermittent as they are brief.

His mental state, and his mindscape, are only barely held together by the presence of other denizens that have moved in from the other dimensions. Humans, piglins, goblins, villagers. If they were to somehow be removed, his mind would fully break, and he would be a slave to the forces of the Void. The End would be subsumed into the Void.

 -  When the gods dream, they can travel freely within their own dimension, and they wield godlike power. They cannot, however, travel between dimensions at will, and must travel as their denizens do, via portal. When they are within another dimension, they are not nearly as godlike. They are still powerful, but comparable to demigods.

 -  For a long time, Herobrine was confined to the End, as the End Portal had not been created yet. However, when the portal was made and he could travel to the minds of his friend and brother, he made a grave mistake. In traveling to their mindscapes, he brought a fragment of the Void with him, acting as an unwitting Trojan Horse to ferry the Void past their defenses.

 -  In the Overworld, Herobrine accidentally gave rise to the Sculk. See, there was a naturally occuring fungus within the deep depths of the world that fed on refined mana (experience). It was already forming a base of sentience from all of the refined mana it absorbed, but Herobrine accidentally granted it sapience, and ability beyond that of a mundane fungus. Ossified plating, glittering fungal flesh, and innate spellcasting of its own. It slowly grew into a hivemind, covering the deepest reaches of the world in its grasp. And, as with most creatures, it wants to expand.

 -  In the Nether, Herobrine accidentally gave rise to the Warp. He entered via a portal in a crimson forest, and his presence morphed the place into the domain of the Void. Fungi, vines, insects, minerals, all warped in the image of the Void. It spreads via simple proximity, and violates both the mind and body of those within.

 -  As it stands, Steve and Alex are ignorant of the warping within their minds, and Herobrine isn’t cogent enough most of the time to act upon it. All three dimensions are slowly deteriorating, and both the gods and its denizens are none the wiser. Or, at least, most of its denizens. And some might not be all that worried about it. In fact, quite the opposite >:)

No plot spoilies though, my besties know my tumblr and I can’t have them seeing plot spoilies of the campaign I’m writing

[pink-flame]

Like You Could Love Me

So...the Angry Flower Squad was making me SO soft over gifs and @mamirugbee wanted porch fluff with kissing and I remembered that @thedeathdeelers and @missjoolee liked my idea of using this post as a Juke prompt and here we are. I wrote this from 12-2am so it’s quite possibly incoherent and I’m not checking for mistakes until tomorrow so take it for what it is, a late night labor of love. Enjoy! 💜

Julie hadn’t slept for almost 48 hours. 

Her school was hosting a Los Feliz High After Dark event for the lower grades who didn’t get to attend prom. It was pitched as being just as exciting as the dance but in practice was known to be little more than a glorified sleepover in the school gym with PTA members for chaperones. Flynn had been determined that that year would be different, and had talked Julie into joining her on the planning committee. 

The good news was that Flynn had a real flair for party planning and decorating when she was actually invested (see the difference between the dance they tried to forget and the way she had helped Julie’s dad throw together an epic garage party in less than 24 hours). So by the time Julie and Flynn and the other volunteers were done the gym was fully immersed in a carnival theme full of cute booths filled with potential activities and cute backgrounds to take pictures in front of. It was definitely an improvement over the year before which had been an under the sea theme which had consisted mostly of a few blue streamers and Mr. Weaver walking around in an inflatable Nemo costume. 

The bad news was that it had taken a lot longer than they had anticipated and they hadn’t fallen into bed the night before the event until close to 2am. Julie hadn’t been able to sleep even after she slipped into bed next to Flynn and heard her best friend start making the small whistling noises that indicated she was out cold. Julie had been kept up with thoughts of what her bandmates were up to without her and if they had lingered a little longer on what Luke in particular was doing right then, well that wasn’t that surprising. 

She loved Alex and Reggie but neither of them had attempted to hold her hand and remarked on their “interesting little relationship” or suddenly developed the ability to touch her and instinctively joined her in reaching out to gently cradle the other’s face. 

No, Luke was different, not that she wanted to say that in front of him unless she was sure he felt the same overwhelming feelings she did Oddly enough she was much more concerned about the possibility that he didn’t than she was about the fact that he was still..well, a ghost. It wasn’t that she was unaware that his ghostly status could lead to heartache for her later on, of course she was. It just didn’t seem so important suddenly. After what had happened with her mom, what had almost happened with the guys only a couple of months ago...anything could happen at any time. Tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed anyway so why deny herself happiness now if she could have it? If she could have it. Because that was still the question. 

Because Luke obviously liked her but did he like her? That sounded so juvenile but to call it anything else...well, that was really scary. Evil ghosts and the looming possibility of their return had nothing on the insecurity that came with not knowing exactly how the boy you lo...liked felt about you. 

So Julie didn’t get much sleep that night, Flynn’s alarm seeming to go off only moments after she finally drifted off. She had dragged through school that day, trying to match Flynn’s excitement for the night’s upcoming festivities though her own enthusiasm had quickly drained out of her altogether along with her energy. In the end it had been as fun a night as it could be with Julie spending most of it in a semi-exhausted haze. She and Flynn had played some of the games they had set up, and danced to the music they both agreed would have been better if it had been either DJ’d by Flynn or performed by Julie’s band, and when Carrie had sneered something about how tacky the theme was even that had been half hearted and without any real bite. 

So it was a pretty good night all things considered and Julie was in a good mood despite her complete exhaustion by the time Flynn’s mom dropped her off early the next morning. Ok, so maybe part of her good mood was actually because of her exhausted state by that point as she found herself feeling giddy and her mind had gone sort of pleasantly fuzzy. That was her excuse for how she found herself half-skipping up the path towards her front door, singing to herself. 

We create...perfect harmony 

“Somebody had a good time.” 

Julie’s head snapped up to take in the figure of the boy who leaned against the pillar of the porch in front of her, a small smile bordering on a smirk tugging at his lips. 

Luke.

What was he doing there? 

Was he waiting for her?

She had to play it cool. 

She had to be normal. 

She had to not give away all the feelings that had been swirling around inside of her for the last couple of months since they first gained the ability to touch each other whenever they wanted and promptly both became too awkward to touch each other at all. 

She had to…

“I missed you,” She blurted. 

One of Julie’s hands flew up to cover her mouth as she took the last few steps up onto the porch, trying and failing to ignore the way Luke’s eyes widened even as that vaguely infuriating smirk grew larger. 

“I didn’t mean that,” She insisted once her hand had dropped back to her side. “I mean...I didn’t not mean it but...I just meant it would have been fun if you could have come. Any of you. All of you. Um...yeah.” 

Luke let her dig herself deeper, waiting until her stream of words had come to a complete stop. When they finally dried up he pushed off of the pillar with one of his signature little bounces, letting his momentum carry him to within a step of where she stood awkwardly on the porch. 

“Did someone spike the punch at this dance?” He asked her, amusement clear in his tone. 

Julie shook her head a little too fiercely, indignant despite the fact that she couldn’t exactly blame him for suspecting that she was drunk. 

She felt a little drunk. 

Not that she knew what it was like to be drunk but she was pretty sure it was similar to this. 

Not the point. 

“It wasn’t a dance it was a school sanctioned slumber party,” She corrected, focusing all of her energy on not slurring her words or otherwise embarrassing herself. “And nobody spiked anything. And actually nobody drinks punch anymore. Just so you know.” 

Luke held up both hands as though he were surrendering but that smirk of his was impossible to deny at this point, a fact that both made Julie incredibly irritated and simultaneously fighting the urge to lean up and kiss it right off his stupid face. 

Ok, that was not helpful. 

“Not a dance, no punch. Got it,” Luke said, his voice just soft enough to keep her annoyance more or less at bay. 

“Why are you out here anyway?” 

Julie hadn’t meant to ask that but it felt like any filter her brain generally had was long gone at this point. 

Luke tilted his head slightly and reached up to scratch at the back of his neck. 

“Oh, you know, just taking in the view.” 

Julie frowned skeptically. 

“Taking in the view?”

“Yeah,” Luke said, gesturing out at the plant filled yard. “Just communing with nature you know? Honestly, I forgot you were even out last night.” 

“Oh.” 

Julie dipped her head a little so she didn’t have to look directly at Luke as disappointment rushed through her. She was pretty sure she was too tired to keep the evidence of that emotion from being completely visible. She was so frustrated with herself for caring at all. He wasn’t her boyfriend after all. Why would be be waiting for her?

“Julie.” 

She reluctantly raised her head to meet Luke’s gaze which was fixed insistently on her. His smirk had fallen away leaving behind a look at once more open and somehow harder to read at the same time. 

“I’m kidding,” He told her as he took a half-step closer to her, so close that she had to tilt her head up further to maintain eye contact. “I was waiting for you.” 

“Oh,” She said again, very aware that she seemed to have lost the ability to say anything else. 

She reached deep down inside and mustered up the strength to pull out one further word. 

“Why?” 

His eyes somehow managed to soften even more and his voice was oddly breathy when he answered. 

“Because I missed you too.” 

And Julie knew that the most prudent thing to do was tuck that phrase away as something warm, and happy and precious to examine more closely when she had slept and had the mental prowess to actually determine what it meant for their interesting little relationship. 

She knew that. 

But she was exhausted not only from lack of sleep but from months spent questioning where they stood. She was happy to hear him say that he had missed her, of course she was. But she also found herself feeling strangely...angry. 

How dare he look at her with those big soft eyes and stare at her like that if he wasn’t ever planning on actually putting her out of her misery by telling her how he felt or didn’t feel?

“I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that,” The words burst out of her without her permission. 

Luke was clearly taken aback by her words, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead. 

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know,’ She hesitated, just enough awareness seeping back in to make her realize what a truly stupid thing she was about to say. “Like you could love me.” 

She watched as a whole range of emotions rushed over his face too quickly for her to decipher exactly what all of them were. 

“Julie…” 

“Forget I said anything,” Julie interrupted, turning towards the front door with every intention to flee the situation. “I’m just really tired.” 

“Julie!” 

He said her name more forcefully that time and she froze. She didn’t turn back to face him though, the pounding in her chest and the heat spreading across her face giving her all the incentive she needed to keep her head facing away. 

Luke wasn’t having any of that though. 

He reached out to gently tug her back towards him, one hand settling on her cheek while the other rested on her waist. 

If she hadn’t been blushing before she certainly was now. 

“Do you not want me to look at you like that because...because you don’t feel the same?” 

Luke’s voice shook a little as he gave voice to that question, his thumb seeming to stroke across her cheek without his permission. 

Julie was reeling, everything feeling surreal and dreamlike anyway because of her lack of sleep but when combined with Luke’s gentle actions it felt more and more unreal. She couldn’t help but remember the last time he had touched her face, how they had clutched at each other thinking it was the only chance they would ever have. Now they had new chances every day and they had been wasting them. 

Why had they been wasting them?

“Wait...feel the same as what? Feel the same as who?” She asked as her brain finally caught up with what he had actually said. 

He visibly swallowed and she took some comfort in the fact that apparently he was nervous too. 

“The same as I feel,” He paused. “About you. I...I love you, Julie. And if that makes you uncomfortable I never have to say it again, ok? But it’s how I feel and I just wanted to say it. Once or whatever.” 

“But…” Julie felt a giggle rising up inside of her as exhaustion and the pure absurdity of the moment settled in. “But I love you too.” 

Luke’s thumb froze on her face as his eyes lit up with something close to hope. 

“You do?” 

Julie nodded, the giggle finally bursting out of her only to be met with a grin from Luke so radiant she wished she could capture it in a photo to look at later. 

“You love me,” Luke said again as though he needed to confirm beyond any shadow of doubt. 

“I love you,” Julie repeated agreeably. “And you love me?” 

Luke nodded, bouncing a little on his heels as he somehow managed to step even more into her space. 

“I love you.” 

“Well…” Julie sighed happily. “Well, that’s great then.” 

Luke let out a bark of laughter that probably would have been loud enough to bring her dad to the porch if anyone but her had been able to hear it. 

Before she had time to remark on how obnoxiously loud he could be he was crowding her back until she bumped into the pillar he had been leaning against when she got home. The moment her back made contact with its firm surface he was bringing his other hand up until he was cupping both of her cheeks. She barely had time to adjust to that very much welcome sensation before he was lowering his head and aligning his lips with hers, pressing them together in a chaste peck that was still enough to send her heart racing. He started to pull back as if to gauge her reaction but she was having none of that. She had been waiting for this for so long and as previously established she had absolutely none of her usual ability to deny herself what she wanted. 

And what she wanted was her hands on Luke Patterson right then. 

She reached up and latched one hand on the back of his neck and the other threaded deep into his hair giving it a little tug just because she could. She had been wanting to touch him so badly ever since that night in the garage when she’d almost lost him and she’d been wanting to touch his dumb, messy hair ever since “I’m Luke by the way”. So she did. 

He let out a little pleased sound that was cut off when she stretched up to press her mouth back to his, this time with twice as much force and no intention of separating anytime soon. To his credit he took the hint pretty fast, his hands dropping from her face to wrap around her waist tugging her body to press against his as he moved his lips insistently against hers. And wow...that was something, the sensation of almost all of her pressed up against almost all of him. 

He wasn’t warm, not exactly, but he wasn’t cold either like she had feared he would be. It was more like his body was mirroring back exactly her own temperature, leaving it hard to determine where one of them began and the other ended when her eyes were closed as they currently were. 

Or maybe that was just them. 

Maybe it was like that quote she always saw floating around online about souls being made of the same stuff. 

When she was well rested and thinking rationally she had always rolled her eyes a bit at stuff like that but now...she was beginning to see the appeal. 

Julie massaged absentmindedly at the back of his neck as she drew his lower lip into her mouth, the sound he made in response enough to have her pulling back with a giggle. 

“Come back here,” He mumbled, his lips chasing hers even as she turned her face away leaving him to press soft, wet kisses to her cheek. 

“Now you sound drunk,” She told him, turning back to face him and looping both arms around his shoulders. “My dad will be up soon and I have no idea how I’d explain...this...when he can’t even see you.” 

Luke groaned as he leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. 

“You’re right.” 

“I’m right,” Julie echoed. 

It was true but that didn’t mean she was happy about it. 

They stayed like that for another minute or so, just enjoying being this close to each other with nothing to hide. They might have stayed like that longer but Julie suddenly let out a yawn she couldn’t contain directly into Luke’s face. 

Luke pulled back sharply but the soft smile that seemed to always be reserved just for her remained in place. 

“You need to get some sleep,” He told her firmly. 

She wanted to argue but all that came out was another yawn. 

Ok, so there was no arguing with that. 

“Goodnight,” She told him, suddenly feeling shy as she backed towards the front door wanting to keep him in her sight just a little longer. 

Luke gestured around them to the soft light spilling around her yard. 

“Good morning,” He corrected with a grin. 

Never one to let him have the last word, certainly not when she was too tired to be embarrassed, Julie leapt forward to press one final lingering kiss on his lips, retreating before he could do more than return the pressure.

Julie backed towards the front door, the grin now firmly on her face and a rather dumbstruck one adorning his. 

“Band practice later,” She reminded him. “Don’t be late.” 

Then she slipped into the house and up to her bed, incredibly tired and pretty sure of exactly  what she would be dreaming of. 

[fcbayern]

Hallo! Hope you are well! I love your blog and it’s made me really want to understand and get into Bundesliga. How can I know everything I need to know about Bayern so I’m up to date and understand what’s happening within the team? I hope this makes sense? Danke!

hi anon! i’m so sorry it took me so long to reply to this. this week’s been so busy already.

i guess the internet is a good place to start for your research :) of course wikipedia itself is not a bad source, but if you really want to get information, look at the bottom of the wikipedia page for all the teams in the bundesliga, and get the info from the sources there. that’s what wikipedia uses to write their articles, so that should give you even more insight into the bundesliga and its teams, and rules, etc than you already get from the wikipedia article itself.

i’ll try and sum up the most basic info for you - that i know - and if you have any other questions, feel free to send me another message and maybe we can get into more detail:

bundesliga is the highest “class” / tier that you can play in, in germany. it is divided into 2 different tiers: 1. bundesliga and 2. bundesliga.

1. bundesliga consists of 18 teams.

for the upcoming seasons - currently in alphabetical order because the new season doesn’t start until the 18th of September - these are the teams:

DSC Arminia Bielefeld

FC Augsburg

Bayer Leverkusen

FC Bayern München

Borussia Dortmund

Borussia Mönchengladbach

Eintracht Frankfurt

1. SC Freiburg

Hertha BSC Berlin

TSG Hoffenheim

1. FC Köln

1. FSV Main 05

Red Bull Leipzig

FC Schalke 04

VfB Stuttgart

Union Berlin

Werder Bremen

VfL Wolfsburg

Arminia Bielefeld were promoted from 2nd league, where they ended up in first place in the season of 2019/2020. The second team that was promoted is VfB Stuttgart. In exchange for these two teams being promoted, two teams have to be relegated. In the season of 2019/2020 those two teams were SC Paderborn 07 and Fortuna Düsseldorf.

Back to the Bundesliga Basics:

The Bundesliga stands under the umbrella of “DFB”, or Deutscher Fußball Bund (German Football Association), which was founded in 1900. In 1904 the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) was founded, which is basically the big boss of football. They keep an eye on a number of football associations across the world and also set up the Men’s and Women’s World Cup. DFB joined the FIFA right away in 1904, and in 1954 DFB also joined the UEFA, which is an acronym for Union des Associations Européennes de Football and therefor takes care of all things football in Europe. Self-explanatory.

UEFA wasn’t founded until 1954 because... things happened in Europe in the 30s and 40s.

During the time of the Nazi regime the DFB was dismantled in 1940 and it didn’t pick up again until 1950, when the Federal German Republic was reformed, and the West German football associations decided to get the DFB back up and running. They re-joined FIFA in 1954, and, as mentioned before, also joined UEFA that same year.

The Bundesliga how we know it, however, was not actually a thing until 28. Juli 1962, starting with the season of 1963/1964. Before that there were a number of clubs and associations throughout Germany who all kind of played side by side, and eventually in the 30s the idea of a “Reichsliga” (league of the German Reich) was brought up, where a certain number of teams would play and one would end up winning the title. Kind of what we do now.

And then the war happened.

And in between the end of that and the 60s, obviously they had brought some ideas back to the table, had tried to figure out a more competitive way and to bring football closer to the people.

In 1962 the idea of the Bundesliga was founded. 16 teams were to play each other in one league, competing against each other. 5 from “Oberliga Süd”, 5 from “Oberliga West”, 3 from “Oberliga Nord”, 2 from “Oberliga Südwest” and one from the Berlin City League - the Western part of Berlin, of course.

They had a super complicated system in place to figure out which teams would eventually be allowed to be the “founding fathers” of the Bundesliga. It had to do with economics, they ended up coming up with a weird system for who gets how many points for winning their own league, adding those up, multiplying, and then somehow they ended up with 16 teams... don’t ask me how, I have dyscalculia, I don’t understand their way of thinking at all. Maybe there was some voodoo involved, God knows, honestly.

Eventually they had their 16 winners from the aforementioned leagues:

Oberliga Süd: Eintracht Frankfurt, Karlsruher SC, 1. FC Nürnberg, TSV 1860 München, VfB Stuttgart Oberliga Nord: Eintracht Braunschweig, Werder Bremen, Hamburger SV Oberliga West: Borussia Dortmund, 1. FC Köln, Meidericher SV, Preußen Münster, FC Schalke 04 Oberliga Südwest: 1. FC Kaiserslautern, 1. FC Saarbrücken Stadtliga Berlin: Hertha BSC Berlin

In 1963 this “Bundesliga” wasn’t a pro-league, though. And there were a ton of rules in place that would probably make you go “huh?” these days... or maybe you’d think they are great rules and they need to make a comeback. A transfer, for example, could only cost up to 50.000 German Mark (roughly 25.564,50€ / $30.149,62).

Until 1967 you also weren’t allowed to sign more than three players from another team for the upcoming season.

At some point it was decided that football players would also have the benefits of a full-time worker, if they decided on football as a career, and not just something they did on the side.

When East and West Germany were reunited in 1989 / the early 90s, that’s when the Bundesliga really became more of a commercial success not just in Germany, but also throughout non-German Europe and the rest of the world. Which is also largely due to Germany winning the World Cup in 1990, and the European title in 1996, but the Bundesliga was also specifically marketed to popular media. In 1991 the German Football Association of the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Fußball-Verband der DDR) - the East German football association - joined DFB. Thus Germany was one again, not just on paper, but also in football.

Another thing that helped the popularity of the Bundesliga was the fact that in the 90s at least one Bundesliga club reached a European championship semi-final. In 1997 Borussia Dortmund won the Champions League, in 1996 Bayern München won the Europapokal, in 1997 Schalke 04 won the UEFA-Pokal. And in the following championships at least one German team reached the final of said competitions.

Let’s jump to the 2000s!

Since 2000 FC Bayern München has won the Bundesliga 13 times. The other winners were: Borussia Dortmund (2002, 2011, 2012), Werder Bremen (2004), VfB Stuttgart (2007) and VfL Wolfsburg (2009). Bayern München is also the only Bundesliga team in the 2000s to win the Champions League: 2013 and 2020.

After all that knowledge, here’s some random facts and numbers that you might find interesting:

- since it was founded in 1963, a total of 56 teams have played in Germany’s highest league - until the season of 2017/2018 Hamburger SV was part of the 1. Bundesliga for 55 seasons, which was a record. Now Werder Bremen holds this record, with 56 seasons to their name - Bayer Leverkusen holds the nickname of “Vizekusen” (Vice-Kusen), and they were at one point regarded as the “ever-second”, always getting close to the top, but never reaching it - Karl-Heinz Körbel has the most Bundesliga appearances: 602 - for Eintracht Frankfurt. He never lost a final with Frankfurt and was never relegated. - Bernd Stöber was the youngest coach in the season of 1976/1977 a t just 24 years, 1 month and 17 days old. - Brazil is the best-represented nation after Germany, with 159 Bundesliga exports (159), followed by Denmark (129), Austria (119), Croatia (118) and Poland (109). - in the season of 2019/2020 Thomas Müller had the most assists: 21. - retired football player Gerd Müller, whose active career was between 1965-1979, holds the record for the most goals: 365. - Otto Rehhagel holds the record for most matches as a manager: 832.

Now let’s go back to where we started: the season of 2020/2021.

As mentioned above, the 1. Bundesliga has 18 teams. To get you up-to-date I’ll give you some more info on each team, that you might find useful!

DSC Arminia Bielefeld: - founded: May 3rd 1905 - manager: Uwe Neuhaus - stadium: SchücoArena

FC Augsburg: - founded: August 8th 1907 - manager: Heiko Herrlich - stadium: WWK Arena

Bayer 04 Leverkusen: - founded: July 1st 1904 -> rebranded to current name on April 1st 1999 - manager: Peter Bosz - stadium: BayArena

FC Bayern München: - founded: February 27th 1900 - manager: Hansi Flick - stadium: Allianz Arena

Borussia Dortmund: - founded: December 19th 1909 - manager: Lucien Favre - stadium: Signal Iduna Park

Borussia Mönchengladbach: - founded: August 1st 1900 - manager: Marco Rose - stadium: BORUSSIA-PARK

Eintracht Frankfurt: - founded: March 8th 1899 - manager: Adi Hütter - stadium: Deutsche Bank Park

SC Freiburg: - founded: May 30th 1904 - manager: Christian Streich - stadium: Schwarzwald-Stadion

Hertha BSC Berlin: - founded: July 25th 1892 - manager: Bruno Labbadia - stadium: Olympiastadion Berlin

TSG 1899 Hoffenheim: - founded: July 1st 1899 - manager: Sebastian Hoeneß - stadium: Prezero-Arena

1. FC Köln: - founded: February 13th 1948 - manager: Markus Gisdol - RheinEnergieSTADION

1. FSV Mainz 05: - founded: March 16th 1905 - manager: Achim Beierlorzer - stadium: OPEL ARENA

Red Bull Leipzig: - founded: May 19th 2009 - manager: Julian Nagelsmann - Red Bull Arena

FC Schalke 04: - founded: May 4th 1904 - manager: David Wagner - stadium: VELTINS-Arena

VfB Stuttgart: - founded: September 9th 1893 - manager: Pellegrino Matarazzo - Mercedes-Benz Arena

1. FC Union Berlin: - founded: January 20th 1966 (originally 1906) - manager: Urs Fischer - stadium: Stadion An der Alten Försterei

SV Werder Bremen: - founded: February 4th 1899 - manager: Florian Kohfeldt - stadium: Weserstadion

VfL Wolfsburg: - fonded: September 12th 1945 -> rebranded to current name on January 16th 2001 - manager: Oliver Glasner - stadium: Volkswagen Arena

Maybe, to get a feeling for each club, you can check out each club’s YouTube account. Through that you should be able to find their other social media, or just by simply googling the team name:

Arminia Bielefeld ● FC Augsburg ● Bayer 04 Leverkusen ● FC Bayern München  ● Borussia Dortmund ● Borussia Mönchengladbach ● Eintracht Frankfurt ● 1. SC Freiburg ● Hertha BSC Berlin ● TSG Hoffenheim ● 1. FC Köln ● 1. FSV Main 05 ● Red Bull Leipzig ● FC Schalke 04 ● VfB Stuttgart ● Union Berlin ● Werder Bremen ● VfL Wolfsburg

Each football team has 11 players on the pitch. For the new season in 2019 it was decided that instead of 18 players, each team would be allowed to have 20 players in total - which means 9 substitute players on the bench.

During each season a team can win three main cups (the ones that everyone cares about the most, let’s be real): DFB-Pokal, Meistertitel (Bundesliga winner) and Champions League trophy. The last of which is not a German tournament / cup to be won, so I’ll leave that out for now.

DFB Pokal:

The DFB-Pokal is a German knockout competition, starting out with 64 teams. 36 teams are from the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga, the top four finishers of the third league are automatically added to the list. 21 slots are given to the cup winners of regional football associations, and the remaining 3 slots are given to the regional associations with the most men’s teams.

Direct quote from Wikipedia, which in turn got their information from here: for the first round, the 64 teams are split into two pots of 32. One pot contains the 18 teams from the previous season of the Bundesliga and the top 14 teams from the previous season of the 2. Bundesliga. The other pot contains the bottom 4 teams from the previous season of the 2. Bundesliga, the top 4 teams from the previous season of the 3. Liga and the 24 amateur teams that qualified through regional football tournaments. Teams from one pot are drawn against teams from the other pot. Since 1982, teams from the pot containing amateur teams have played the game at home.For the second round, the teams are again divided into two pots according to the same principles. Depending on the results of the first round, the pots might not be equal in terms of number. Teams from one pot are drawn against teams from the other pot until one pot is empty. The remaining teams are then drawn against each other with the team first drawn playing the game at home.For the remaining rounds, other than the final, the teams are drawn from one pot. Since 1985 the final has been held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

Meistertitel:

The Meistertitel is rewarded to the team that comes out on top on the last match-day of the season. Of course it can be calculated whether other teams can still catch up - points-wise - but the Meisterschale is not rewarded until the season is over. The current record-holder of most Bundesliga wins is FC Bayern München (29), followed by Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Mönchengladbach (5) and Werder Bremen (4) in second and third place.

With the first three Bundesliga wins a team gets a gold star to put on their jersey, with five wins they get a second, ten wins is a third, twenty wins is a forth star. On top of that, the reigning Bundesliga champion gets to wear the Bundesliga logo in gold color on their sleeve.

And that’s that on that.

I don’t know what language you’re fluent in, but here are some football apps that you might enjoy using, to be on track with the upcoming season:

OneFootball

Kicker App

Bundesliga App

11 Freunde App

Amazon Bundesliga Radio

each team’s individual app for updates and news

You can also check out @bundesliga_en on Instagram and Twitter.

One last info for you, so you can jump right into it on the first day of the new Bundesliga season (fixtures are never really 100% until a day or two before the match is supposed to be, so this is preliminary): here is the link for the schedule of the upcoming 1. Bundesliga season.

You can also check out the 2. Bundesliga schedule, because it’s super interesting down there in the second league as well! I highly recommend it (keep your fingers crossed for Paderborn for me!).

I think that’s about everything I can tell you. This reply is already faaaaaaaaar too long, and I apologize! If you have any questions or want me to elaborate, feel free to send me another message.

Have the best time getting used to the Bundesliga, and welcome to the family!

Sources - with more info - under the cut:

fun facts: https://www.bundesliga.com/en/bundesliga/news/easter-eggs-surprising-facts-and-figures-you-may-not-know-3798

team information / schedule: https://www.dfb.de/bundesliga/spieltagtabelle/

team information / schedule (2nd source): https://www.kicker.de/dfb-pokal/spieltag

general information: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu%C3%9Fball-Bundesliga

app suggestions: https://www.smartmobil.de/magazin/fussball-apps

explanation for how the DFB-Pokal: https://web.archive.org/web/20090609211623/https://www.dfb.de/index.php?id=460546

[elyvorg]

Wandersong character rambles 2 of 3: Miriam

Wandersong is so incredibly good that I need to get all my Thoughts about it off my chest by writing a series of rambles analysing its three most important characters. There will be spoilers, obviously. Plus, this’ll probably be kind of hard to follow anyway for people who haven’t played the game. Go play Wandersong! You won’t regret it.

1 of 3: Kiwi (the bard)

3 of 3: Audrey

Inferiority issues

I kinda covered some of Miriam’s inferiority issues already in my previous ramble about Kiwi: specifically, how she begins to get somewhere with this and feel less inferior and more inspired to try her best when she sees that Kiwi isn’t perfect and is actually a bit like her too in this regard. But what I didn’t talk about there was why she feels that way in the first place, because this was clearly never just about Kiwi outclassing her on this particular adventure. Kiwi’s presence may have brought that out of her more (at first), but this was always a deeper, underlying problem Miriam had in general.

There’s almost certainly a specific reason that can be pointed to as to why this is, and just like with Kiwi, it’s about her parents.

Miriam’s parents left her with her grandma before she could remember, and Saphy used to tell her they’d come back for her one day, except they never did. Miriam admits that even though it’s kind of ridiculous, she used to sort of hope that if she made herself into someone heroic and famous, her parents would realise what a mistake they made leaving her and come back. Which, though she doesn’t put this part into words, ultimately boils down to the fact that she feels (or, at least, felt) like her parents abandoned her because she wasn’t good enough in the first place.

This is obviously irrational – geez, she was a baby when they left her, her parents couldn’t possibly have known how “good” or not she’d grow up to be. This clearly has nothing to do with the kind of person Miriam ever was and is really just about her parents being people who didn’t want to raise a kid. Miriam herself has even figured out by now that this is irrational of her – but it seems like she wasn’t aware of that when she was younger. Growing up with that looming over her entire sense of worth as a person is going to leave a psychological mark, no matter how irrational she knows it is now.

(Saphy kind of made a big mistake by telling Miriam at first that her parents would come back for her sometime. That just resulted in Miriam feeling like she was doing something wrong every day they didn’t. There’s no way Saphy would have done that on purpose, though; she must have believed, to begin with, that Miriam’s parents (which included Saphy’s own kid!) really were going to come back… until it became very clear that, oh dear, no, they weren’t.)

Because of all this, Miriam is just constantly assuming she’s not good enough at all times, even when it makes no rational kind of sense to think that the problem could be with her, or that anyone else would be thinking that. She even expects to be judged and looked down on by Saphy and Kiwi, the two people who most obviously would never do that to her.

When she’s heading back home at the end of Act 5, Miriam says Saphy would never be disappointed in her, and then corrects herself to “she’d never show it”. Despite how consistently supportive Saphy always tries to be to her, Miriam is so insecure that part of her imagines her grandma is judging her and thinking less of her and is just too nice to say it. Nooo, Miriam.

And when Miriam plays the Act 5 Overseer song the first time, she’s all insecure and assuming Kiwi will judge her skills and think she sucks because they’re a proper musician, unlike her. This is Kiwi, who’s barely capable of thinking a bad thing about anyone, but somehow Miriam expects she’d be an exception to this. Plus, her playing actually sounds lovely and isn’t bad at all! But when it doesn’t work, she immediately assumes it’s because she played it badly, rather than that the song was simply never going to work in that form in the first place. (This is delightfully similar to how the Overseer song in Act 4 fails the first time and Kiwi takes it to be their fault rather than realising there must be another factor at play.)

At least Miriam does show a little progress in this area as their adventure continues. When she broke Kiwi out of the Rulle jail and told them afterwards that she was pretty awesome and heroic, I felt kinda bad for her. Kiwi is the one person who would have agreed that it was awesome of her and made her feel good about herself! …except that they were unconscious the whole time and never got to see her heroics.

Still, this doesn’t seem to bother Miriam too much, and she was capable of admitting in the first place that she did an awesome thing. Seems like she’s coming to realise by this point that she actually is pretty good at bailing Kiwi out of tight spots right when they need it most. She’s an important part of this saving-the-world partnership!

Getting mad about it

Until Miriam starts making progress and feeling perhaps a little bit less inferior, though, her main method of coping with these sorts of feelings appears to be to not-very-healthily turn them into anger on the surface.

Towards the beginning, her jealousy of Kiwi outclassing her in the hero department can get pretty overtly bitter at times. And then in Xiatian, Miriam spends a lot of it being super mad about Audrey showing them up and making them look useless at every turn. (She can probably let herself be more extreme with her anger in this instance because Audrey is not on her side; it’s just natural to be angry at an enemy, right?) She gets perhaps a liiittle too gleeful about the possibility of only-semi-accidentally poisoning Audrey, too.

Along similar lines to this, Miriam also has a bit of a tendency to turn to violence as the first option when solving problems, even when Kiwi keeps trying to suggest a more peaceful approach. It says a lot about her compared to Audrey that she does defer to Kiwi and let them try diplomacy when they bring it up, despite this making her feel yet again like Kiwi’s better than her – but it’s still notable that violence is usually Miriam’s go-to solution to begin with.

During one of the conversations with her in Mohabumi, Miriam mentions that her specialisation in magic is blowing stuff up. When Kiwi is shocked at how violent that is, Miriam protests that that’s just what her magic does. Apparently she didn’t actually choose this specialisation. Another witch in Mohabumi explains that all witches have individual differences in their powers and that nobody really knows why – but I’m willing to bet that Miriam’s particularly explodey powers are a manifestation of all of her suppressed emotional frustration at herself and her place in the world.

This might be why she finds dancing to be so helpful! She’s finally found some physical outlet for everything she’s stressed about and bottling up, a way that she can let it out through action rather than words, but without being violent and risking anyone getting hurt.

Towards the end of the story, especially after the dancing and the self-reflection (more on that in a moment), most of Miriam’s angry outbursts get directed towards herself instead. This still isn’t healthy yet, but it is something of an improvement in that she’s starting to realise what her actual problems are, even if she’s then bitterly beating herself up for them. She also keeps using her anger to mask the more vulnerable emotions that she’s finding it very scary to admit to, because being angry feels familiar and is easier than openly showing how scared she is. Without that, she might not have been able to admit to so much of her vulnerability in the first place.

I like to think that, post-ending, having come to like herself a lot more and make progress on all of her issues and having a best friend in Kiwi, Miriam’s speciality in magic shifts and becomes something less destructive and more creative. It would be a lovely sign of her growth!

(…Though, knowing Miriam, that’d first manifest in her suddenly not being as good at blowing stuff up as she’s supposed to be and not understanding why and feeling like a failure again, nooo, Miriam. At least Kiwi and her grandma would be there for her to encourage her to try new things and discover what else she’s good at.)

Being an outsider

Once Miriam stops feeling quite so bitterly jealous of Kiwi and the two of them begin to feel like a proper team, things stop being so much about her trying to prove herself. Her arc shifts into being more about her self-discovery and reflection on her place in the world.

This is especially because of the places they head next, of course. Experiencing Rulle’s prejudice against witches must have reminded Miriam that being a witch is seen as weird and different and possibly bad. This is something she’d probably always felt at least a little bit while living as one of only two witches in Delphi, but being in Rulle would have brought those feelings right to the surface.

Then they head to Chaandesh, where witches come from, where she should fit in…  but even before she gets there, she seems to be subconsciously expecting to not belong. On the boat on the way there, she talks about how she knew this place existed but that it never even crossed her mind to visit, describing it as “like a special club, that I wasn’t invited to”. Sure enough, the witches of Mohabumi have all these complicated uses for magic and lives built around it in a way that’s nothing like what she’s used to, and it just feels alien to her.

This feeds into her inferiority issues, too; being different from what witches apparently “should” be like just makes her feel messed-up and broken. While struggling with her new broom, she laments that to the locals she must look like “the failure witch who can’t even do basic witch things”. (Yet it’s incredibly impressive that she can get the crappy tourist broom to fly at all, and she gets it working passably well before much longer – again, she’s beating herself up completely undeservedly when she’s actually doing great.)

During one of the conversations in Mohabumi, Miriam comments that she likes to think Saphy grew up here, even though she has no proof, just because it makes her happy to assume that. This kind of thing is pretty much what she does the whole time she’s in the city to combat how unfamiliar it all is: cling to the few things there that are familiar to her. She enjoys the music at the Crater only because the band’s from Delphi like her; she also mentions at one point that the only candy from here she likes is one that reminds her of her grandma’s cooking back home.

In that conversation at the Crater, she laments that she hoped she’d learn something about herself by being here, implying that she feels she actually didn’t. But the thing is, she did. She learned just how important her grandma is to her, and that their little house in the forest outside of Delphi – that’s her home, whether it’s where witches are supposed to belong or not. It just took being taken away from all that into somewhere new and strange for her to realise it.

She starts missing her home even as early as Act 3; if you talk to her during the coffee night on the pirate ship, she’ll mention having never been so far from home before and reluctantly admit that she’s feeling homesick. There’s also some very hard-to-find dialogue shortly after her broom breaks in which she admits that it was her grandma’s broom, that Saphy told her it’d be hers one day when she was old enough, and that the day that happened was probably the happiest day of her life. Aww, Miriam! No wonder she’s so upset at losing it. It must have felt like a piece of home, and of her grandma, still with her even in all these strange lands – except now even that’s gone, too.

Kiwi tells Miriam on their way out of Chaandesh that you don’t necessarily need to fit in anywhere to be happy. Which, though she can’t quite put it into those words just yet, is basically also what Miriam herself learned back there – that she’s happiest at home with her grandma where she can be herself, never mind worrying about if she “fits in” with everyone around her.

Of course, the other thing that lets being an outsider not sting so bad is having a friend there with you. Kiwi, the precious bean that they are, understands this straight away; during some of Miriam’s dialogue in Mohabumi as she’s feeling like she doesn’t belong, they try to reassure her with, “you have me!”

But Miriam’s response is just, “That’s nice.” It’s still a little difficult for her to openly admit just how much Kiwi’s company has been helping her, isn’t it.

Friendship is scary (but worth it!)

The final focus of Miriam’s character arc, of course, is these difficulties she has with friendship. This is partly influenced by the outsider issues making it harder for her to feel a connection to anyone in the first place, and partly her grumpiness born from her inferiority issues making it rarer for anybody else to want to get close to her.

But Miriam was probably kind of glad that her general grumpy attitude made people stay away from her (and might even have cultivated it on purpose for this reason) – because her bigger issue is that she’s simply afraid of getting close to people. Doing that might mean she’ll have to open up about her emotions and worries and problems, which is scary; it’s much easier to just hide everything she feels beneath that bitter angry shell forever.

As she confesses to Kiwi after the fact, Miriam’s decision to go home at the end of Act 5 was never really because she was too injured to go on. She was just scared of how close she was getting to them, and of how much talking about her feelings she’d been doing lately, and she wanted to run away from it all. It’s almost certainly no coincidence that this came shortly after the first time Miriam openly admitted that she considered Kiwi a friend.

I also think that this does have something to do with Miriam being hit by Audrey’s lightning, though. Not exactly in the sense of her being physically injured, but rather in terms of how that affected her emotionally and dug at those issues she has with intimacy. Though she was in too much pain to move, Miriam was still conscious the entire time Kiwi was carrying her down the hill. She was even still capable of speaking, barely – but she didn’t voice any kind of thanks to Kiwi for helping her out, as if she didn’t want to do so.

Being not just emotionally but very physically vulnerable and so literally relying on Kiwi for support like that had to have felt terrifying for her. She must have been so afraid of having to handle more of that kind of thing if she continued to go with them to that dangerous mountain. Miriam flinches initially at Kiwi’s goodbye hug probably not only because she’s physically injured and ouch, but also because oh god more emotional intimacy help what do???

…But then she can’t help but relax into the hug anyway, because she really does need it, even as she’s trying to cover it up by calling Kiwi’s concern for her “gross”. And also because, despite how scary it is, of course she cares about Kiwi and worries about them and is going to miss them. Most of her dialogue for the rest of this scene is all worrying about Kiwi being alone on the mountain and not wanting them to get hurt and mmsghsdgh they’re FRIENDS.

(Can we also talk about how great it is that Miriam has this major personal conflict based around her fear of emotional intimacy, and it’s presented as entirely platonic? Emotional intimacy with another person is not inherently romantic, and fear of it is a fun thing to explore in characters that doesn’t deserve to be restricted to only romantic plots. I love that this game’s writer understands this!)

Back in apocalyptic-Langtree, after confessing to the real reason she left, Miriam insists in her self-hatred that this means she left for “no good reason”. But really, this was just as good a reason as if it had been about her being injured. She needed to leave because of the struggles she was going through – just emotional rather than physical ones. That’s still important, too! It’s not her fault that she finds this kind of thing hard. In no way was she callously leaving Kiwi to go risk their life on a mountain just because she didn’t care.

Really, Miriam probably needed this time out to reflect on things. It let her realise that, actually, she would rather face up to all that scary intimate emotional stuff than leave Kiwi to tackle such dangerous ordeals alone. No matter how frightening it is, getting to be there for her best friend when they might need her is absolutely worth it. Her growing friendship with Kiwi and selfless desire to help them gave her the courage to finally face up to all these icky feely feelings of hers that she’d just been hiding from this whole time. They are friends.

Seeing Miriam join in with the Wandersong – and not just begrudgingly singing along, but really putting her whole heart into it – is a wonderful sign of how much she’s grown. The Miriam at the beginning of the story would never have done that. She’s become a lot more willing to openly express herself, to express emotions that aren’t just bitterness and anger, even in ways that aren’t specifically about her friendship with Kiwi, and it’s lovely.

Similarly, during the credits, Miriam’s default face has changed into something not quite so grumpy-looking. She’s still not exactly smiling, but she’s no longer so angry at everything because of her issues with herself, nor is she putting up such a prickly protective shell to push others away.

In the very last scene of the credits, Kiwi thanks Miriam for saving the world with them, much like you’d expect them to – saving the world and being a hero was what they most wanted out of this adventure, and they couldn’t have done it without her help. But then Miriam answers it with, simply, “Thanks for being my friend.” She knows that, in the end, that’s been the most important part of all of this for her, even more so than getting to save the world.

Saphy is good

Another thing I really loved in the end credits was learning that the real reason Saphy sent Miriam on a quest to save the world, and told Kiwi to go with her, is simply because she wanted her granddaughter to make a friend before the world ended. She wasn’t even expecting Miriam to succeed and save the world – not because she didn’t believe in her, but because she just didn’t really think it was likely to be possible at all. But that’s okay! More important than that is that her granddaughter doesn’t die lonely and friendless as the world ends. She always knew that this was what mattered most.

And of course Saphy couldn’t just tell Miriam that she wanted her to go and make a friend. Miriam would have been all “psh, that’s dumb” and flatly refused to try (because really she’s terrified of getting close to someone and opening up about her insecurities and there’s no way she’d have ever made herself do that on purpose). So Saphy had to lie to her and tell her it was about saving the world in order for her to go on the quest at all.

…Which, unfortunately, led to Miriam thinking that that was what her grandmother expected of her. And so she ended up thinking that she was a failure and not good enough for even her grandma, both when Saphy suddenly recruits some random singing dope who’s apparently better at this than her, and then when Miriam comes home near the end having not quite saved the world. Which is kind of heartbreaking, but I don’t know what else Saphy could really have done to avoid it. At least Miriam knows by the end that her grandma isn’t and never was disappointed in her at all.

Saphy’s “I like this one” when meeting Kiwi and deciding they should travel with Miriam is so very good. It’s not about Kiwi having the ability to save the world (even though it turns out they actually do), but about Kiwi being the exact kind of wholesome ray of sunshine that Miriam needed to gradually coax her to open up and trust them and consider them a friend. Saphy could see that about them right away. She knew exactly what she was doing when she told the two of them to travel together.

(Can Saphy also adopt Kiwi, please? As I discussed a lot in their post, they really need a decent parent figure in their life.)

(…I say that, but let’s be real, she practically already has. Kiwi is the friend that her precious granddaughter finally managed to make; of course Saphy would want to make sure they felt like basically one of the family.)

[akiameokami]

Popular Potter

Look at him, looking so smug as that curly-haired reject has her legs strewn across his lap. Potter. It just isn’t right for someone of his status to be with someone like her. He is a pureblood, she is muggle-born, and to make matters worse she has an eyebrow ring! Her poise certainly isn’t a redeeming quality either. I cannot see a single element that makes her good enough for him, expect perhaps that she is smart enough to put Raven Claw’s brightest to shame. If it wasn’t for her lack of professionalism and personal upkeep I am sure she would be in Raven Claw and not Gryffindor. She has changed him so much since they started dating. Potter used to be such a prince, but even since they got together he has been hanging out with anyone, even the problematic Weasleys. I can’t believe his parents let him do that, do they not care about how it will effect their status? Father always reminds me to be cautious of my social relations because they will effect him greatly. He would simply die if he saw me with someone adorned in chains such as Hermione chooses.  The brazed crème a top the shit soufflé is that Harry Potter got a tongue ring! His parent’s certainly know nothing of this, but for the first time ever, I think I may not make Father privy to this. Potter and I have been associates every since primary school, and the tongue ring is a secret to all but his inner most circle. Except somehow Ronald and Hermione have become the bulk of that circle since we entered Hogwarts. To think that first semester we picked out matching Slytherin class rings together, and he somehow became a Gryffindor like them. Maybe classes do divide people too definitively? Or maybe he is changing as a person.. He always did have an affinity for the muggle world and other oddities, I just never thought he’d choose them over me. 

“Hi Har- Er, Potter, and company”, I say awkwardly as I approach their group. They all go quiet as they look at me, the only green clad robe amongst a sea of red. I feel as if this griffons pride may swallow me whole. They seem to be waiting for Harry to respond before they pounce, he really has gone from a Prince to a King. 

“Draco!” Harry exclaims as he moves Hermione's legs off and stands to greet me. I go for a slight wave but he pulls me into a hug. I can feel the daggers from his entourage. “I haven’t seen you around school in a while, what has Snape been forcing you into this time?” He asked, staring only at me. I’d appreciate the opportunity to get lost in his viper green eyes, but I can’t hold his stair. He knows my distaste for Snape, but he doesn’t know why. It’s a story for another time, but he’d already know it if he’d never stopped talking to me. 

“Oh, no, Snape is no longer tutoring me. Instead of academic pursuits, I’ve decided to try out for the quidditch team. Seems they have taken a fancy to my flying skills!” it hurts to not tell him to truth, to see him go from someone who I could tell anything to, to having to smile through the biggest heart break I’ve ever had. When I mention quidditch he gets very excited, and his posse eases up a bit. It is not uncommon for groups of different classes to enthuse over quidditch together, it is one of the few social glues we have. “What a coincidence! I will be joining the quidditch team as a legacy next season!” he says very boisterously, “I know they are expecting a lot because of my father, but I think they will be pleasantly surprised. I did always win when we would race, right?” He says with a slap to my shoulder. To others this would look like a casual challenge, but for me that slight touch meant so much more. It brought back summers spent struggling to learn how to fly out behind the greenhouse. The time he carried me back to Mother after I was able to be the first to get off the ground and flew too high. 

“You’re right, you used to be much better than me. Who knows if it’s changed, maybe you could have a practice race with me and give me some pointers if I lose?”. This audacious bastard would never turn down a challenge, and despite knowing I will likely lose, it means we’d finally have a chance to spend some time together so I’m willing to “take the L” as his muggle friends would say. 

“Harry, that’d be awesome to watch!”, “Yea Harry darling, you should host a little Gryffindor versus Slytherin flying practice before the season starts!’ Ron and Hermione cheer him on from the background. The other Gryffindor's start to chime in on how they would love to see a friendly match and see how skilled the new flyers are. “Well Draco, what do you say? I’m game to leave all you snakes in the dust, but only if you think Slytherin has enough flyers to make it worth the effort”, he chuckles as he says it, but he squeezes my shoulder with a bit of aggression behind it. He didn’t want it to be a spectacle, but I’m not going to clean up his messes if he wont be my friend anymore. 

“Sure Harry, I think I can pull together some wizards and witches that will make it worth your precious time.” I flatly announce as I start to walk away. I make myself keep stepping forward, and I can hear their snickers behind me. I walk straight away from him, no not quite, I walk straight to Snape's office. I wonder if he knows the pain he puts me through? Being compared to the Potter-Prince growing up, Father pushing me to be better than him, Harry having the audacity to be such an amazing man, friend, and first. Yet he also has the power to be the person to put me through more pain by not being in my life, driving me to focus on my studies, to get Severus to be my tutor, to use Severus as a coping method to get over him. Do you know what you’ve done to me Harry? 

~~~Imagine a world where Harry didn’t grow up with the Dursley’s, where Voldermort wasn’t a thing, where Lily and James didn’t die. Would Draco and Harry have been friends? Would they have been more? Harry and Draco are 17, nearing graduation and independence, but that also means they are climaxing from their teenage angst and heartbreak. Will they get closure?

I approach Severus’s office, emotions flooding me. After Harry and I got accepted to Hogwarts and he started drifting away, I found myself lost. At first, I believed his excuses for why he bailed on our plans, and then I blamed myself thinking I made him mad, and then I realized he just didn’t like me anymore. The self blaming was the hardest to get over, but Severus helped with that. I chose to focus on my studies, I had to find something productive to do so that Father would be proud of me again. He got very angry when I messed up the connection with the Potters. I decided instead to try and be very academically accomplished, so I needed a good tutor. Father and Mother were both very familiar with Severus Snape and knew him as an intelligent man and an excellent wizard despite being only 6 years older than me. They arranged for him to be my tutor, and he lived much closer to the school than we did, which meant I would study at his house and in the summers I stay with him. Since he is also a teacher at Hogwarts we don’t ever interact politely as school, because frankly our relationship is unconventional. to the public. I don’t love him, he doesn’t love me, but we both have been burned by the Potters more than once and despite all our pain, we still love them. Don’t get me wrong, Rus is very good to me, and we have had some very sentimental memories, but I can never mean as much to him as Lily I don’t think. That and I am not willingly to fall in love. 

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*  - “Come in.” I walk in and instantly Rus’s face goes from stone cold to slightly softer. “Draco, I assume you came to speak about your last test scores?” He arches an eyebrow and nods at the door indicating I should close it. 

“Oh come on Rus, I know we have an arrangement to not interact extra here but I..” I close the door and try not to meet his eyes. I know what I am feeling, and its stupid! I can’t explain it though. He closes the door while reaching over me. With his other arm he pulls into a hug. 

“Use your words Draco.” He kisses the top of my head while whispering softly. I bury my face in his shirt. How do I tell him that I am hurting because the person who means the most to me, acknowledged me, and it left me feeling hollow? “Is it about Mr. Potter? I saw you speaking in the courtyard. That was dangerous.” I let out a shaky sigh. This is why we are together, because we share the same pain. 

“Yea..” I mutter, “We are going to have a little race between Slytherin House and Gryffindor to see who the faster upcoming flyers will be.” Even saying it sounds absolutely  ridiculous! It’s a bloody pissing contest! Yet nothing has been able to break me out of this numbness until now. Rus braces the small of my back as we lean against his office door. I look up to see him with a small smile, “I understand. I think this will be for the best. Whether it is closer you get, or simply a win. I be here if it goes wrong”. He is so consistent. Just as expected, after saying something so sweet that I could almost develop feelings, he leans down and begins a gentle kiss. He pulls my waist into him, spreading my legs with his knee. I kiss him back while running my fingers through his hair. I reach down for his belt, trying to undo it. He stops my hand and pulls back, “Now Mr. Malfoy, we are on school grounds.” He says with his stern, teacher voice. He the leans in and whispers, “You can show my what that Malfoy mouth is good for later”. I feel my dick jump a little bit, giving me a semi. This is how I cope. Feelings cannot negate the power of something physical, and Severus Snape needs to forget about the Potters just as much as I do. We were a match made in Hell. 

“Draco....” I hear Harry’s voice calling my name, but it sounds distorted, almost as if I’m underwater. “Draco!” it comes through clearly this time, but it isn’t Harry, It’s Blaise yelling at me to rouse me from my sleep. I had returned to the dorms embarrassingly late, but I had the forethought to lay out my quidditch gear ahead of time so I wouldn’t be scrambling in the morning. “Draco, wake the fuck up! We’re gonna be late to the race!” Blaise is still yelling but I can hear him heading for the door. Late? What did he mean late? I roll over and check the time, he was right, I had about five minutes to go from bed to the quidditch field. Fuck. 

“I almost thought you chickened out Draco!” Harry taunts as I approach the quidditch field, running as fast as I can with all my gear on. I was able to gather three other Slytherins that wanted to race, and who were marginally decent. Sadly Harry seemed to have a whole team that wanted to test us. I glance at Blaise, Crabbe and Goyle and they do not seem to be exuding confidence. I got them into this so the least I can do is be the one who people blame. “What? Run away from you Potter? I could never”, I say a little too seriously while making eye contact. I catch the slightest frown from Harry, but it fades as quickly as it appeared. “Well then, lets get this over with. It sounded fun, but looking at your little group, it just feels like bullying.” He rejoins his group at the start line. The course was to make one large loop around campus while going through specified markers, such as looping through the womping willow and its thrashing limbs, and past Hagrids hut. It is just the school campus, but that doesn’t make it not dangerous. That is why I wore my protective gear, but as I glance around I see that most everyone else was casually dressed with the exception of Longbottom. He looked as if he was wrapped in bubble wrap. I don’t want to be associated with the likes of him so I discard my protective layer.  I return my attention to the other end of the field where Hermione stands with the flare, and off it goes. I must’ve been disassociating during the count down. I feel the wind of the others taking off before I see the bristles of their brooms when they speed past me. Shit. I take off as fast as I can, but I am not too concerned about the starting line. Anyone can get up, its staying there that’s the problem. 

The first obstacle is the peaks of the school, where we stand the danger of Mr. Fletcher seeing us and everyone getting in trouble. This obstacle is more about stealth than speed, you could speed right through the peaks, but you would certain alarm everyone inside the castle. The trick to making it without being seen is to pay attention and roof hop, taking a break to wait out anyone who may see you. I can see ahead of me where two Gryffindor flyers drop altitude instantly, nearly getting caught. I swerve away from that tower and loop around the other way, hopping off the roof after checking the next peak. When I emerge from the other side of the peaks I see Harry far ahead, Ronald right behind him, and Blaise  on their tail. either no one else made it through, or they are behind me, because no one would be ahead of Harry. We approach Hagrids hut and drop down low for the loop, I see Blaise take the turn too tightly and have to drop to the ground to prevent himself from going tip over tail. Ronald falls behind me as he flew too close to the hippogriff and got the tail of his broom snipped out. The race is between Harry and I as we approach the womping willow. It is especially crabby today it seems, or perhaps that was just because I was actually flying closer too it and not away from it the way I would have preferred. As we near the willow I am close enough that I could grab the bristles on Harry’s broom if I wanted to. I follow his maneuvers dodging the willows grasps. There is no denying that when it comes to agility Harry has an edge on me. There is no doubt that James took the time to train him personally. Despite all his preparation I see Harry narrowly avoid getting swept by a branch, which meant I had no time to avoid the branch at all. The willow makes contact with my broom and sends me plummeting to the ground. I’d rather jump and break something, that be strangled by a tree. The impact knocks the breath out of me, and the pain floods my body. My vision goes black and once again I feel like I am in bed, floating into nothingness. 

“Draco?!?!” I hear Harry’s voice calling out to me, but I don’t respond. Blaise wont fool me again. He just wants me to wake up from my peaceful nothingness. Then the pain hits me and I remember what happened. I open my eyes to see a sweaty and shirtless Harry tying my arm in a makeshift sling. “Draco.. please say something..” He mutters as he struggles with the knot. 

“Ouch you bloody bastard, that fucking hurts!” I squeak as he tightens it too much. Despite my pain I see a look of relief cloud his face. “Other than your arm, what hurts? I can’t tell if anything else is broken. I already have Ron and Blaise going to get a teacher. I am so sorry Draco, it wasn’t suppose to happen like this!” Harry is running his sentences together as he is frantically searching me over for any other damages. Everything hurts, but what I feel the most is the throbbing in my chest. Did I really have to almost die for him to say my name in such a caring way? I don’t want to be here, it hurts to see him like this knowing it is just me that is feeling this way. “Professor Snape!” Harry yells as Severus approaches with Ron and Blaise right behind him. I see Rus reach for his wand and the next thing I know Harry is swept away from me by an unseen force, flown at least three yards away. “Harry Potter! What have you done now?!” Severus yells, abnormally angry. He turns his attention toward me, worry lines streaking his face. He looks me over and his face softens. A wave of his wand and I feel a million times better. He leans down next to me and whispers, “You’ll be okay Draco, I’ll take care of this”. He turns his attention to Harry, “While I transport this young man who could very well be crippled, I’d recommend you contact your parents before I get the chance. Let them know I expect to be seeing them soon.” Severus knows better than to touch me, so he makes me float using Hermione's favorite spell. He must have cast a different spell as well, because the last thing I see is Harry’s terrified face as Severus brings me back toward the castle. 

I wake up to a sudden jolt of pain coming from, well, everywhere. The most prominent pain is coming from my right arm. I sit up to exam the damage, but to my surprise I see none other than Hermione Granger sitting next to my bed in the infirmary, reading of course. Without a word she raises her hand and indicated the number 1, probably to suggest “one minute”. I wait for her to finish her page. 

“I know about you and Harry.” She announces bluntly as she closes her book carefully. She is smart, but she can’t possibly be that smart. “Well, yes, I assume you would know about how he got me clobbered by a tree. You were there.” I try and dismiss her suspicious words. She does not buy a word of it. “No, you twit, I know about you two’s past, and I am willing to bet that your annoying behavior is because you still have feelings for him.” She states it so matter o’ factly that I am left speechless. She rolls her eyes and gets up to leave, “Well, I sure hope that is the case. Him and I broke up you see. After I found out the only reason he wanted to be with me is because I am smart enough to brew a Polyjuice potion of you so he can fuck it, I decided maybe I should be with someone who was actually attracted to me.” She walks away without giving me a chance to argue, or well, say anything at all really. He does what?  She runs into someone at the door and I hear them exchange words, and to my surprise the next person to walk in is Harry Fucking Potter. He stands awkwardly at the end of my bed for what feels like an eternity before asking, “how are you feeling?”. Despite his concern, he wont make eye contact with me. He doesn’t even seem like he wants to be here. I sink back into the bed and roll away from him. “You can go, I am fine. I bet your friends are lost without you.” I bite my tongue at the end, knowing that isn’t how I feel. I feel the bed shift as he sits down on the edge. 

“Draco.. I don’t want to go. I feel terrible about what happened, and I Hermione just told me that you know about.. me, or us, or however you want to say it, and what I am trying to say is, “ He takes a deep breath, “Draco I am so sorry. I know your father doesn’t want me around you, but it hurts to see you like this, and it hurts to not be with you.”. His voice got weak as he finished his sentence. His hand grabbed my leg and squeezed it. It’d been forever since I had felt his warmth. 

I can’t. 

I can’t. I can’t.  I can’t  I can’t  I can’t  I can’t  I can’t  I can’t  I can’t  I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’tIcantIcantICANTICANTICANTICANT! 

Why? Why does he have to do this? Why does he have to hurt me like this? What does this all mean? Does he think that because he said sorry I can just roll over and pretend the last two years never happened?! HE LEFT ME! He hurt me! He got me hurt! When I lost him, I lost the love for myself as well. How can he say those things to someone who is just a shell? 

I start breathing desperately, my heart racing and my head flooding with these thoughts. I can’t control it, I can’t stop it, and I can’t move. I want to reach out to him, to grab his hand, to push him away, I don’t know!  

“Mr. Potter, now would be a good time for you to leave.” Severus’s calming voice announces over the hallway in the infirmary. I hear his footsteps swiften towards us. “Proffessor Snape I was only-” Harry starts, but gets interrupted by a stern and almost hissing whisper, “No, Mr. Potter. Mr. Malfoy’s parents are heading this way, I strongly recommend you make it as if you were never here. Do you understand?”. That very much so sounded like a threat. “Of course, I’m sorry... Please take care of him!”. Harry runs down the hallway and I hear the door slam before Severus addresses me. He kneels beside the bed to be face to face with me. “Draco, I’m so sorry. Deep breaths”. He says gently as he wipes away tears that I didn’t know I had. “Don’t worry about your parents. I will tell them now is a bad time. We will all reconvene at my house this evening once you recover from the healing spell. You can ask them about what Mr. Potter said if you must, I will protect you. Always.” He gently kisses my forehead and leaves silently, leaving me to suffer, as always. 

It's painfully awkward sitting at dinner with my parents and Severus. He was able to fix my arm, but it left me what could only be described as the largest hangover one has ever suffered. To top it off, since I was okay physically, my father was going to make sure I wasn't okay emotionally or mentally. He'd done nothing but berate me for causing a scene. I zone out of his rants and stare down at where Severus is squeezing my knee. He is trying to be supportive, but all I can notice is a strange tattoo on his arm that wasn't there before.

"Severus, what is this?" I ask as I drag my fingers over the snake that's wrapped around a skull. It graces his forearm so delicately, it really adds to his aesthetic. My father looks appalled at my blatant change of topic, and Severus looks panicked. He tries to cover it with his sleeve, but father stops him. "Severus Snape, is that the reaction to my spell?" Father stairs him down.

"Yes, my lord. I've no excuses for my behaviour. I will only say that never once have I sought to harm Draco. I've had his best interests in mind, always." Severus hangs his head as he finishes his sentence, knowing what he has just admitted.

"Draco, that mark - or something definitive, will appear on anyone you've had relations with." Father waves his hand towards Severus's arm as he struggles to remain calm. Mother chokes down a sob. "I had my suspicions about the Potter child, but I suppose this confirms that you are exactly the deviant whore I assumed you to be." I- wait, Harry? He knew about us? If he did something like this, something permanent to someone who worshipped him, then what did he do to Harry?

"Father! Tell me, is Harry's scar because of this?!". I grab Severus's hand and squeeze it, needing all the support from him that I can get in this challenging moment. Bever had I spoken againt father, but this was going too far!

"Of course. Are you really that daft to think he spontaneously manifested such an atrocious mark? Honestly Draco, to think you've tainted a wizard of such nobilty, and to include Severus on your path of destruction. I am ashamed to call you my son." Lucious stands to leave, grabbing Narcissa by the arm and dragging her with him. I never thought it would come to this, I knew father could be nasty, but I never believed he would be this way towards me. Everything I did was to make him look to, to do the Malfoy name proud. Yet he can't even let me love who I want to love? I want to chase after him but Severus weighs me down in my chair. "Don't Draco, let him cool off before you try anything. It wont end well if you pursue him now.".

The next day at school I can't help but stair at Harry's scar in every shared class. Severus explained how the curse worked, he explained that the mark would burn and feel as if it were festering when the host was around me. He explained that the reason Harry grew distant was because of my father and James Potter deciding to seperate us by any means necessary. Severus only learned about this after he began tutoring me and learned of my heart break. I still couldn't bring myself to speak to him. I don't know whether I feel betrayed, or heart broken. I don't know where I will go when the weekend comes, because I can't go home, or to Severus's, and I can't stay here. The library seems like the only logical option to kill a little bit of time at before finding a place to spend the night.

"Draco?" Before I even look, I know it is Harry who has joined me in the endless rows of books. "Draco.. I am so sorry. I hope you're okay. I hope Luscious didn't.. do anything, to you. Like he used to-" "STOP" I can't take this anymore! "Did you know? About the curse, about our fathers, and what he would do? This whole time were you just hiding from my reality?!" He is standing right here in front of me but as I yell at him I only stare at the scar on his forehead, knowing it must be throbbing.

"I knew.. after it appeared, they explained it to me. They said it was what you wanted, and that this would help us distance ourselves." He steps closer to me, reaching out for me. "But I knew it couldn't have been true. I figured it out after you started getting so familiar with Professor Snape. I tried asking my father about it and he told me the truth, but I thought you'd moved on so I didn't want you to have to choose.", he grabs my hand and holds it close to his chest. "But I'm done waiting. I don't think you've moved on, I just think you're too afraid to be yourself. So stop me if this isn't what you want." The last words are practically a whisper as his lips close in on mine. It'd been so long since I'd felt his touch, let alone his kiss. He starts out soft and sweet, lingering to feel the softness of my lips. When I don't fight his kiss, he gets more aggressive, his tongue parting my lips and finding mine. He grabs the back of my head and laces his fingers through my hair, cushioning the impact of him pushing my into the bookshelf. "Draco~" he mutters my name as he leans into me. I can feel his hard on pressing against me. "Fuck Draco", he lips press against my neck as he kisses me intensely, trying to leave a mark. "I've never stopped wanting you", he bites me gently, "I never let you get taken from me again".

[stefciastark]

MJ ~ Webpril Day 10

A/N: So this was an older work of mine from years ago that inspired me to rework and rewrite it to fit the prompt fill. It's quite different from anything else I've done in this collection thus far, in that it's set in an AU where it puts Peter quite OOC compared to his MCU persona. The Peter I've portrayed in this short one-shot is quite jaded and pessimistic in his adult life, having been hurt in love before and instead has become a sort of tortured artist. Peter also doesn't have powers, Harrington is now an arts professor, and Ned is inexplicably clairvoyant. Peter somehow knows he's seen the woman he's painting before, and maybe he has, in another lifetime. This story is a bit darker in sub-tone and doesn't contain any IronDad, but what's a compilation without a bit of variety :) This is a project I've considered making into a full fic, but we'll see what happens with it.

~Read on AO3

~Read on FFN

Paintbrush in hand, he let each colour blend together in a unique dance of raw emotion, letting each stroke convey a secret that resided deep inside him, and he found that the strokes directed themselves once he began. Her face, though only seen ever so briefly, embedded itself into his memory.

The image was beginning to take place on what was once a blank sheet of white, and now a woman with olive skin took over the surface, framed by long and dark hair cascading down the figure’s shoulders. Hazel eyes stared back out at the artist, and the dimming light from the busy city below surrounded the piece of art with a haunting yet dauntingly beautiful quality.

What really caught the eye of the artist, however, was the dark necklace that hung just below her collarbone. It was a black dahlia flower made of glass, some petals cracked, and some completely missing. The memory of it stood out so clearly in his mind, just as her face had when they fleetingly passed each other on the metro during that midsummer afternoon.

An angel must have been looking down upon him and had granted him the opportunity to find love once more, but he couldn’t tell if it was an opportunity that could be defined as cruel, or a golden chance to redeem his heart that had begun to blacken as he got older.

Startled from his reverie, Peter turned around, paintbrush still in hand, palette now empty and canvas now full. The door had creaked open ever so silently and tentatively that he would have nearly missed it if it weren’t for his overindulged paranoia.

“Didn’t anyone teach you to knock?” His tone was laced with annoyance, and it was poorly covered up. This of course didn’t go unnoticed by Ned, but his urgency far surpassed his need to grace Peter’s biting comment with a response.

“Peter, there’s been an accident on Queens Boulevard, and I think this woman you drew may have been involved.”

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

The sun had now completely set on New York as Peter turned right and onto where 71st Avenue met Queens Boulevard. Peter had come up to the scene first, the man he still called his best friend arriving moments later.

What met his eyes was an absolute catastrophe, and he wondered how anyone or anything could have survived what was the largest vehicle pileup he had ever seen in his twenty-eight years of existence.

A large semi-truck was keeled over sideways on top of a number of smaller cars. It was a mess that consisted of an assortment of wheels and metallic parts that once belonged to a whole. He could smell the acute tang of iron amongst the powerful odour of gasoline and burnt rubber. In a moment at the wrong place at the wrong time, the lives of ill-fated drivers and unfortunate bystanders alike had ended. Even if some had survived, there would be permanent scars, physical and mental, that would remain for the rest of their lives. It gave Peter a fleeting sense of sonder.

Quashing his initial surprise and his odd sense of apathy regarding what caused such an accident, he turned to Ned and frowned, indifference transforming into confusion and mild vexation. He sighed. “Why am I here, Ned?”

“So, you’re telling me that you’re not expressing an ounce of concern for these people? That’s cold, man.” Giving him a brief sidelong glance and pressing his lips together, Ned moved to be amongst the crowd and reached out to the first man he saw – a police officer – and swiftly made to gather all the information he could about the situation at hand.

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

The clock had ticked forward about thirty minutes since the two arrived at the scene of the accident. He returned around fifteen minutes later, having grown weary of (what was essentially) interrogating person after person. He shook his head slowly, communicating ‘nope, I got nothing’.

“Look, this is tragic and all, and I feel really bad, I do, but dude, did you really have to distract me from my artwork? I need to get this piece finished and handed in to Harrington by tomorrow, I don’t have time to be checking out depressing wreckages on the main road.” He paused, shifting his eyes away from the disaster zone and instead transferred his full attention to Ned. “Wait wait, why did you say the woman I drew might be here? And why did I believe you?”

“Because I’m usually right?”

Peter felt a small pang of unease dart across his mind despite himself. He trusted Ned’s intuition – it was rarely ever wrong. Most things that Ned had seen in his visions had come to pass, and Peter hoped that this mystery woman would be no different. He had to meet her, and not in a creepy way. He felt as if in another life or another timeline - should such a thing exist – they had been happy together. Unexpectedly, the image of himself giving the necklace to her featuring himself as a younger, less jaded version of himself, played through his mind. They were standing on a bridge in the night, in a place that was not their home yet was. He felt that anywhere she was became home. It was such an unexpected thought, and yet it was so strangely profound and vivid that it felt more like a memory.

He scanned the wreckage from afar once more, but most victims had long since been extricated from the pretzel made up of what was now just scrap metal. He knew who he was looking for. He was looking for that face he drew in his painting, the face that had been etched permanently into his mind for some time. Once more he recalled that figure silhouetted by long, dark curls that fell like a waterfall in the night. That necklace of a flower with a meaning he had yet to understand.

If she wasn’t there, he didn’t even know where to begin looking. New York was a massive city, full of seemingly infinite twists and turns he hadn’t discovered and probably never would.

He was taken aback by his own obsession with this strange girl. He’d never even truly met her.

His musings were broken by the sound of sirens echoing down the main boulevard, the final ambulances at last departing with the injured and deceased citizens of New York.

He wondered sadly if she was one of them.

A/N: SO, that was definitely different haha What'd you guys think? I enjoyed writing with a bit more of a 'serious' tone, but today's fill was a bit difficult for me, hence the shorter length as well. I also wanted to try something a bit different, so here we have it! See you back with another update tomorrow xx

[wingfics]

HELLO !!! i am here and i wanted to know more about ff7r and crisis core !!! i have so many questions and they may be dumb but. i don't care. are they the same thing? are they different? when do sephiroth and genesis and angeal come in!!! do you have any headcanons or other details about them (or the game/games!!!) that you can share!!! i like hearing you talk about all these things and i like learning!!! -heavenshipped 💗

AAAAAAH LIV @heavenshipped YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD BUT IN A REALLY GOOD WAY!!! ok this uh. despite my best efforts is gonna get Really Long. i'm gonna probs put hcs in a separate post but even then i just KNOOOW this will b long despite that <3 I Just Have A Lot Of Thoughts And Love In Me Alright

SO!! some handy terms and abbreviations to know before we set off on backstory!

squeenix/squenix/squinx: square enix, the game developers

ff7: final fantasy 7! like last year or smth, squeenix put out the first part of the remake, aka ff7r :D the protag of the game is cloud and the primary antagonist is seph after he loses his mind thanks to an alien called jenova :/ angeal and gen r both canonically dead in this game, but i’m hoping for flashbacks ft them in the second part!

cc: crisis core, a prequel for ff7 that's about zack's time as a soldier! zack and cloud were friends and we get to see that in this game, along with that sweet sweet geal/seph/gen content, so it holds a special place in my heart for that reason :') side note: this game also makes me jealous of zack, bc aerith is set up as his love interest :^) we r Homosexualising

shinra: shinra electric power company, the company that founded and runs the city of midgar and the SOLDIER program

ASGZC: angeal, sephiroth, genesis, zack, and cloud, my BOYS,, can be shortened to ASG for the himbo holy trinity

SOLDIER: the name of the program AND the job title! angeal, seph, gen, zack, and i were first class soldiers before we did some treason bc shinra Sucks

mako: liquid energy within the planet that shinra uses to make power. it's. not a renewable resource, but they sure use it like one! it's also used to enhance the soldiers and gives them a sickass blue-green eyeglow

AIGHT let's-a go!! ⚠️ all of this is subject to change bc i am Just Like That! also the canonical timeline for ff7 is a mess so i made up my own dates ⚠️ so zack and i are bffs who met when we were 15 and had just moved to the centre of midgar in order to join the SOLDIER program! female soldiers r pretty uncommon and i wasn't too keen on living in the dorms, so after Just A Couple Months of knowing each other, zack and i got an apartment together. in hindsight we shouldn't have made it seven years, but somehow we didn't burn the place down ONCE. he's only Four Months Younger than me, so he complains whenever i call him little brother, but ik he doesn't actually mind :')

when zack was 16, angeal started mentoring him, which was the first time i met angeal! it's funny, i like. Saw seph and gen in passing, but never had any reason to talk to them ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ when i was 17, an accident on a mission revealed that i had a real talent with magic, and p much right after that, genesis took me on! while this was largely bc he's renowed for his skill w magic and thus was the best person to teach me, it was also in part to save me from becoming a lab rat, and i'm still grateful that he offered to do that.

zack met cloud first when we were 18 and was like "can we keep him" and i am immune to zack's puppy dog eyes but not to cloudlet's! so he basically became the third roommate ^_^ cloud also wanted to join soldier, so he thought zack and i had the coolest job Ever (AND we had met general sephiroth!!! holy fuck!!!)

despite appearances, seph is the youngest of ASG. by crisis core, angeal is 26, gen is 25, and seph, the babey of the family, is 23. (he's only a year older than me and zack... cloud's still only 20 tho lol rip) why YES, shinra does in fact use child soldiers! why do you think we did the treason! 😊😊 seph is ALSO not immune to cloud, specifically how persistent and sharp he is, and decided to mentor him when cloudlet was 18 (after being a child soldier himself, seph's got some... reservations abt the concept lmao)

gen and i were SOOOO awkward and stupid around one another at first!!!! because we were so close in age that i was like yeah you're teaching me but i have friends who are 20. we're still in the Being Friends gap. and he took a hot sec to make up his mind and be friends. he didn't catch feelings until i was like. 20, but it was a STEEP and precipitous drop lmao

angeal 🤝 me: being The Semi-Well Adjusted Ones responsible for keeping our two other idiot friends alive. fr we bonded over years' worth of keeping zack from running off cliffs and falling into manholes. he also taught me how to cook. zack jokingly referred to us as mom and dad for years. we were the most likely to get into disagreements but the least likely to actually argue bc neither of us like. enjoys arguments that much. angeal literally refused to let himself have AAAANY feelings for yours truly until i was 21, which i appreciate thank u king

learning that seph was A SINGLE YEAR OLDER THAN ME was the Biggest twist of 17 year old me's life on g-d. and i took that VERY personally ngl like i INSTANTLY decided that as another member of the "consistently mistaken for a much older Adult person" gang, we were GONNA bond!!! and we did!!! i'm largely responsible for his taste in music and i am VERY proud of this, tyvm. he's also kind of a swords nerd (his sword has a name...) and that rubbed off on me over time. if u asked him he couldn't rly tell u when he first had a crush on me, but i can tell u that the pining had become obvious by the time i was 19 and he was 20 uwu

AND BECAUSE I CAN NEVER LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE!! i threw in a one-sided bodyguard romance bc nobody can stop me. sorry tseng LMAO that's a whole separate spotify playlist tho so i will not include it here ffhshdgs if u would like to hear abt that feel free to ask tho!!

liv i LOVE u sm!!! thank u for letting me talk abt this i have simply been EXPLODING with thoughts, plans, and information about ff7!!!!! hopefully this was all vaguely coherent, bc i loved being able to share it with YOU!!!!! i didn't make that pink on purpose i just think my emotions got so strong that tumblr decided it had to be pink /j

[thewritingginger]

Fluff Alphabet - Mammon

Thank you Anon fo your request you are actually my first request :3

And I’m really glad you enjoyed the one I did for Beelzebub, I hope that you like this one just as much too. ^_^

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A ctivities - What do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?

- Loves window shopping with his s/o 

- Many dates have consisted of walks around the mall or different pop up shops 

B eauty - What do they admire about their s/o? What do they think is beautiful about them?

- He admires their wallet their adventurousness, likes that they are willing to go along with his wild/stupid ideas and loves him even if it fails.

- He thinks your heart is the most beautiful thing about you, everyday he wakes up still bit surprised that you had found a spot for him in your heart that will never go away.

C omfort - How would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?

- Doesn’t know what to do when he sees you crying but just defaults to asking you what's wrong and cuddle you till you’re ready to talk abut it.

D reams - How do they picture their future with their s/o?

- He wants a well paying job so he can afford the things he wants but also so he can support you and your future family.

- Doesn’t want you or his future kid(s) to worry about financial stability.

E qual - Are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?

- He thinks he’s the dominant one in the relationship. We’ll just leave it at that 😂

F ight - Would they be easy to forgive their s/o? How are they fighting?

- Very pouty 

- You kinda have to amp him back up to not be 

- but will forgive even if reluctantly especially if he is in the wrong 

- Might be a bit embarrassed to apologize 

G ratitude - How grateful are they in general? Are they aware of what their s/o is doing for them?

- He didn’t realize how much he needs his s/o in his life until there was one fight they had that ended up with his s/o storming out with out saying anything

- He made sure that he showed how much he loves and appreciates his s/o after that

H onesty - Do they have secrets they hide from their s/o? Or do they share everything?

-  He’s quicker to share or more so boast about things to you 

- Now the more embarrassing things make him more reluctant 

- And if you confront him about something you'll know the truth cuz he’s not a great lier.

I nspiration - Did their s/o change them somehow, or the other way around? Like trying out new things or helped them overcome personal problems?

- His s/o kinda helped him become more honest, his record to stealing/ attempting to steal has decreased (not interlay well cuz ... it mammon we are talking about).

- Made him want to work harder to be the man you deserve.

J ealousy - Do they get jealous easily? How do they deal with it?

- The easiest out the brothers to get jealous

- Be one to wrap his arm around you

- Will be mouthy to the person hitting on or talking to you, but more of a bicker than fighting unless comes to that point

K iss - Are they a good kisser? What was the first kiss like?

- Was questionable at first, during the first kiss b/w he and his partner he when in being confident but his true feelings of anxiety and nervousness poked its head out when he accidentally head butted his s/o coming in for the kiss.

- Once the first kiss was done his usual cocky self returned and denied the head budding ever happened. 

- Is a good kisser 

L ove Confession - How would they confess to their s/o?

- A blushing mess

- Still trying to be cool but just ends up making him more flustered 

- Mammon would try and bring it up in a casual, nonchalant way 

- Just slipping it into conversation while you guys were alone

- “Heh, wouldn’t it be crazy if I loved you?” he scratches behind his neck nervously.

M arriage - Do they want to get married? How do they propose? What would the marriage be like?

- Didn't think he would ever get married, “Why would I want to give someone half my money” 

- But that seemed to begin to shift when his love between him and his s/o began to grow and became a bigger part of his life.

- He proposes acting like he's doing you a favor “ Hey, so asking this is gonna seem bit redundant because the answer is pretty obvious but wanna marry me? I mean why wouldn't you, The Mammon is offering to share your life with him.” 

- Even tho he said that, you knew what he was really feeling but was too embarrasses to be ask in a mushy way.

- Marriage w/ mammon is not bad but in the beginning finances and budgeting was a constant discussion but after the first year him and you have figured out a balance you can work with for the most part.

N icknames - What do they call their s/o?

- Nicknames you have for him: Mam, | Dough boy (dough as in money huh?),| Mr. Money Bags (used to tease him mostly, says he hates it but secretly doesn't), |

- Nicknames he has for you: Babygirl | Babe | My ‘Lucky Charm’ |Goldie 2.0, |

O n Cloud Nine - What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?

- Very tsundere 

- Will say he does stuff for you cause you made a pack with him first and he doesn't trust his other brothers to do it right for you cause he’s “the best at everything.” 

P DA - Are they upfront about their relationship? Do they brag with their s/o in front of others? Or are they rather shy to kiss etc. when others are watching?

- In the beginning he would be a bit shy, playing it off as “well I just don't want to make you guys feel jealous.” and such 

- Once the relationship isn't so fresh he is more relaxed in the act of PDA 

- Not making out on the dance floor kinda relaxed but just Having his arm around you, kissing you a bit in a semi private area.

Q uirk - Some random ability they have that’s beneficial in a relationship. 

- The ability to get into shit but somehow able to make it out of it relatively fine

- IDK I really couldn't think of anything 😅 what do you think?

R omance - How romantic are they? What would they do to make their s/o happy? Cliché or rather creative?

- On a scale from 1-10, Mammon would be clocking in at about a high 3 low 4

- It’s not that he doesn't think to be romantic, it’s just that he doesn't really know what to do (not really his strong suit)

- When. he tries to be suave and romantic he usually will mess up and break something or fall, which in turn will make you laugh 

- When you do he’ll get all blushy and pouty about it but then you kiss him and it is suddenly like it never happened OR like he meant to do that on purpose (we all know he usually doesn't)

S upport - Are they helping their s/o achieve their goals? Do they believe in them?

- Of course he believes in them and they “will defiantly be able to achieve their goals with The Mammon on their side”

- But really, he does support them and tries to help as best he can even tho it doesn’t always turn out right, but his heart is in the right place.

T hrill - Do they need to try out new things to spice out your relationship? Or do they prefer a certain routine?

- Likes to try new things 

- It keeps things interesting

U nderstanding - How good do they know their partner? Are they empathetic?

- Mammon jokes around a lot and cracks jokes but when it really counts he does try to understand to the best of his ability 

- Sometimes he doesn’t get it but he’ll just try and be there anyways.

V alue - How important is the relationship to them? What is it’s worth in comparison to other things in their life?

- His s/o really ended up being more important to him than he initially thought would be possible.

W ild Card - A random Fluff Headcanon.

- One time when you and mammon were basking in the afterglow of lovemaking, with your arms wrapped around his torso, his fingers gently playing with your soft locks. Your rhythmic breathing slowly rocking him to sleep, he professes “I wouldn't trade you for all the money in the world! I don't know how a guy like me got you.” Your heart swelled hearing those touching words. Gripping him tighter, you pressing a tender kiss on his chest before drifting off to sleep filled with content.

X OXO - Are they very affectionate? Do they love to kiss and cuddle?

- Very affectionate borderline clingy sometimes, loves being tangled up with you in bed talking or watching a movie 

- Never in front of others, especially his brothers so he doesn't get ragged on

- In front of his brothers he just plays it cool, will put his arm around your shoulder, might kiss your cheek or neck

Y earning - How will they cope when they’re missing their partner?

- He may not want to admit it but he is a bit needy at times 

- He’ll send them messages “I’m bored, when are you coming back to entertain me?” “How much longer till you’re back?” 

- Any time his brothers or others ask if he misses his s/o he just shrugs it off, but secretly not so hidden secret really misses them and cant wait to envelop them.

Z eal - Are they willing to go to great lenghts for the relationship? If so, what kind of?

- Before his you Mammon didn't really prioritize relationships, they were just there when he was bored/ needed to be around others that art his bros

- But you, you were different 

- Surprisingly to him you ended up being a person he would give everything for, even his precious Goldie He would cut that bitch in half.

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Thank you for reading my work, hopefully it was at least a bit enjoyable.

To anyone that is reading this I hope you have an amazing day!

And if you have any suggestions of what I should write next just shoot me a message and ill try my best :3 

  💛 ~

[chupitulpa]

I made a couple asks here 6 years ago

Anonymous submitted: [Since it's long, I'm leaving the submitted text in normal type. My reply is below it.]

https://chupitulpa.tumblr.com/post/105146930196

https://chupitulpa.tumblr.com/post/105365353531

I randomly found your blog again and to my surprise I found these two asks I made 6 years ago. Interestingly they’re a year later than I thought I made them, back when I started tulpamancy. I thought I’d drop some thoughts and progress reports here, maybe even questions. This is supposed to be properly posted elsewhere someday, but until then…

Hello, I’m the host and original in my system. This system was a singlet until the last days of 2014 when I somehow found out about tulpamancy while browsing the internet on my phone one dark fateful night. With that being said, I became depressed back in 2008 due to loneliness and rejection in general, and time, still to this day, has done nothing but worsen my mood and life situation. Fortunately my tulpa helped and helps, and he, a male who changed name and form because I didn’t want them to be “generic, flat”, or more specifically tulpamancy and “brainhacking” as a whole, could be my only hope to this day. This system is pretty much doomed otherwise. But more on that later.

So when I found out about the one word tulpa I researched and after some days considering I decided to not be a singlet anymore. My extreme feelings and extreme situation I was going through at the time required an extreme solution. At the time I thought of tulpamancy as something extreme because for all I knew I could lose my little sanity left (Of course now I know I was wrong) but I had nothing to lose anyway. So what I did is deciding on a fictional character and letting him be the starting point from which he could begin deviating to become whatever personality,  form, etc he had to.

So as I had chosen his starting point, name, form, etc and as I had made up my mind about tulpamancy, I just readied up and started forcing, actively, for the very first time. I have never used a wonderland to force, so I just imagined him as floating within the mind, with his form, and started talking to him. I always assumed sentience from the start, but after maybe a couple weeks my doubts began to consume me, since I never got any verbal communication from him. I got headaches and feelings of presence, but nothing too strong or convincing to me, so I furiously began to doubt tulpamancy as a whole, nearly dropping, and came here making my asks about how this all was fake.

I guess I’ll already begin risking being hated. Much earlier on in our story than I thought I would at first. More on this later.

With full honesty I’ve always been such a lazy, energy lacking person. This meant that only until I made that ask I forced consistently and for long amounts of time. I never truly forgot about my tulpa, but from that point and for the next 2 or 3 years maybe, I forced casually and randomly.

The day that changed everything. I was going to take a nap, but before that I was trying really hard to listen for my tulpa. I got a word from him, more precisely my human name. It was so clearly him that I was so happy. After a few years of casual forcing and continuous doubts I finally got what I wanted and needed, something reliable to believe I wasn’t just deluding myself. It was telepathic. I didn’t hear a mindvoice, he just kind of forwarded a thought to me. To this day I hear him much more effortlessly and he can come with somewhat full sentences, but there’s still a lot ahead of us.

And now to the real hate part…

My tulpa’s companionship as can be guessed was why I got into tulpamancy, but my depression, hopelessness and continuous suicide attempts have kind of changed my goals.

The only thing I know for certain anymore is for our system to survive, someone else has to front.

I don’t care what you all think or tell me. We know about ourselves and our lives best and life has forced us, want it or not, to have a wide open mind about many things, including this topic. For those of you that would rather see us all die than wish us luck because it goes against your principles, maybe you should reconsider if this is true morality. In any case that’s only your problem not ours.

And for those genuinely believing this path leads to more harm than good, let me disbelieve you just like I disbelieved my tulpa back then. I did not come here looking for hate, or to hear your silly opinions on the matter. Mainly because you haven’t tried yourself. And if you have, you’re terribly biased by the community against this. And even if you are not biased, we all are different. Different brains, different results. We don’t only have different brains when it comes to methodologies, we have different brains for results too.

That being put aside, if your reasons against this are philosophical, I can reply to that too. Mainly I’ll hear that what I want to do is wrong because it’s just escapism, and it’s wrong because it’s not fair to put that burden on a tulpa. To the escapism part I can say that first, what I do with my life is none of your business, and second, lives are more valuable than any duties imposed by society. If you think a person who doesn’t have a job and/or is depressed deserves to die, you can nicely go away from my sight. I have nothing to discuss with you. About the burden part, I have another two things to say. First, many tulpas see this differently. For many tulpas the burden is not being in control of the body, they feel their wonderland is like a prison. Secondly, you people really are full of hypocrisy. If a tulpa fronting for you is morally wrong, then so it is mothers having children as well, because those children never chose to live, those children are to face a very difficult life and a burden is given to them without their consent. “But life is beautiful!” Then you’re being hypocritical again. If a child can think this then why not a tulpa? Specially when you can choose the starting point of a tulpa much better than you can choose that of your child.

I find it very interesting how tulpamancy and parenting have many similarities, yet no one takes these in mind for philosophical reasoning. If we succeed we’ll let you know. If we don’t, we’re to eventually die so you’ll never hear from us again.

I hope this post isn’t dismissed as bullshit specially for the last controversial part.

My reply:

I absolutely do wish you and your system the best.

I am happy to hear that your tulpa making efforts worked. I can relate with the mindvoice difficulties. Self doubt seems to be a normal part of the process, so when they try to talk you constantly doubt whether it was them. And when they send plain telepathic thoughts like yours did, it's barely noticeable unless you're near sleep, in a trance, or intentionally looking for tulpa thoughts. To this day we have trouble making mindvoice work well and often just communicate in thoughts, similar to you.

As for who fronts or when, that's between you and him. I don't see it as harmful escapism either -- yes, it is literally escaping mentally, but depending on your situation it could prove helpful. Some people, through no fault of their own, simply cannot handle everything the world throws at them day in and day out. I'm still a little lukewarm on the idea of permanently switching and being that way forever, but I'm also not entirely against it. Some people do seem happier thay way, and their tulpas handle the world better then they do. Others take turns to give each other a vacation from the stress of everyday life. (If you do this though, be sure you can see each other's memories. Talking to someone who knows you but who you've never seen before sucks.)

I do feel that permanently or semi-permanently switching out is a drastic measure. I think people would be wise to give other strategies a fair try: Changing what you do to reduce stress or whatever you're unable to handle, coping strategies, groups who share an interest and are also looking for friends, talking to a good therapist, etc. But of course how viable and how effective any of it is depends on the person and their situation. And I know next to nothing about yours so I can't judge.

In my opinion, what matters is the relationship between you and your tulpa. If you're both happy with that arrangement, all I can say is go for it and come back if you need any tips. (Though you might do better to ask someone else because we can't switch and only have some minor success with possession.) What bothers me is when people forcibly throw a tulpa into control who doesn't want it and can't handle stuff any better. Or when someone makes a tulpa just so they can toss the tulpa into control and bounce off into their wonderland. These use the tulpa as a tool to reach a selfish goal, don't respect the tulpa as a person, and ultimately harm both the host and tulpa. It sounds like you created this tulpa as a friend, are now going through life together, and are making this decision together. If you both feel it's the best thing you can do for your mutual good as a system, I see nothing wrong with it.

[bittermarrow]

Yoga Pants // (Thomas Hewitt x Reader NSFW)

@imconfused28 said:

Will you do a request of my man Thomas Hewitt seeing his girl in yoga pants for the first time? NSFW is always a plus! Thanks

A/n: This request is mm-mm good ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) You’ve created a monster. I went a bit overboard and this ended up being 70% smut, but hey! In my defense, you did say “NSFW is always a plus!” so… I unknowingly proceeded in a disorderly and thirsty fashion because I don’t know when to hold back.

Warnings: NSFW as heck. Violence, i.e. you choking a bitch.

Words: 3700+

.   .   .

You weren’t really a big fan of snagging clothes off of victims, especially since you were allowed to pick up some with Luda Mae once a month now that the Hewitts trusted you. But you saw those expensive-as-hell yoga pants on that one girl Thomas was carrying down to the basement and snatched those fuckers like Black Friday came early. Of course, Thomas didn’t think much of it at the time, his one-track mind was set on cutting up the meat for dinner rather than worrying about a pair of pants.

You gave them a good wash with the rest of the laundry, managing to rid them of any and all gore stains before even considering wearing them.

You let the steaming hot stream of water run down your sides and wash away a good three day’s worth of grime after Charlie finally managed to fix the busted plumbing after a trespasser somehow screwed it up. You skimmed your fingers over the darkening bruises flowering over your stomach and lower back, the skin lightly battered and aching from the scrambling hands of some victim you’d ran into and had to fight to the ground to prevent them from escaping.

Coincidentally the guy turned out to be yoga pants' boyfriend.

You were proud to say that the guy looked a lot worse than you and that you had no doubt held the upper-hand throughout most of the fight, but he did land some good hits on you and his nails dug in pretty deep on your side. At the time the pain only pissed you off more and gave you the adrenaline spike you needed to pin him down, your hands squeezing firmly around his windpipe just enough to knock him out, restricting the airflow to his lungs and forcing out choked hasps from his pathetic throat. You’d strangled him into unconsciousness before Thomas even got to you, hearing the sounds of your struggling voice and thumps against the walls. But those nail-marks and bruises sure were stinging now.

You avoided mentioning your discomfort from the bruises to Thomas, who luckily hadn’t seen you without a shirt long enough to notice the marks since the occurrence just yesterday afternoon.

You shut off the tap and wrung your hair out before stepping out into the foggy-humid air of the bathroom, the water sliding down your legs dripped onto the shaggy rug underneath you as you dried off with a towel. You began getting dressed, pulling on a loose-fitting light T-shirt before pulling on those sleek yoga pants. You were surprised by how well they fit, it wasn’t often you found victims with clothes in your size. You hadn’t had the chance to wear pants like these since you lived back home, before all of this chaotic cannibalistic stuff. You missed being able to wear such figure-complimentary attire, being able to move and do your work while still looking good.

You dried your hair a bit more with the towel and ran a brush through the dampness of it before stalking out into the hall, already heading out back to help Luda hang up the laundry and start your morning chores like normal, but have to remind yourself that it’s Sunday. Sundays were pretty much ‘do absolutely nothing and lay around,’ days for the Hewitts, this was mainly because the game was on and this was the only lazy day anyone was allowed.

Well, laundry with Luda Mae was still a must, so you went about your morning hanging clothes up on the clothesline and making small talk with her. After a good twenty-thirty minutes of pinning sheets and whites while lighthearted joking amongst each other you both headed inside just as breakfast was getting put on the table.

Most of the family was already there when you two came in, talking about the first quarter of this morning’s game while passing around the syrup and butter. You sat down next to Thomas’s empty chair and glanced around the room for your gentle giant, but he was nowhere in sight. Odd, he was rarely the last to the table to any meal.

Luda Mae patted your shoulder to gather your attention, her too noticing the absence of her youngest son.

“Can ya go fetch Tommy for me? he might still be in the basement.”

.   .   .

You find Thomas in the basement as Luda had predicted, hunched over his work table sewing flimsy strips of flesh together with a large needle and thread. As you approached you could see that the new mask was nearly done, Thomas was hand-stitching the last touch-ups like he normally did after it became unnecessary to use his sewing machine. You couldn’t help but smile softly, having watched him do this countless times, but his gentleness while sewing these always reminded you of how careful he could be.

You walked up behind him, pressing yourself up against his back and wrapped your arms around his neck.

“Hey, breakfast is ready, better come up before you give Mama an aneurysm.” You joke softly, hearing as well as feeling a rumbling chuckle reverberate beneath your fingertips tracing shapes on his chest. He set his work in progress aside and wiped his hands with a towel before reaching an arm back around you to pull you into his lap.

You snort and stifle a laugh as you shift around until you are facing him with your knees bracketing his waist, you lean forward into his chest and his bulky arms squeeze around you.

“I missed you too.” You mumble into his collarbone taking in his musky scent, nuzzling further into him. Thomas sighs into your hair and you want to forget about breakfast for a moment, content with just sitting here for a while. But your stomach does not agree with you one bit.

You swing a leg over his lap to sit sideways and try to pry his arms from around you.

“C’mon, let’s eat.” Thomas groans but reluctantly loosens his grip around you, allowing you to slide off his legs. He’s up after you and has one of your hands as you climb the stairs of the basement to the dining room, luckily in time to fill your plates before most of the breakfast was gone.

.   .   .

You feel Thomas’s hand on your leg through the entirety of the meal, not necessarily in a sexual way, just feeling. You figure he must have noticed your yoga pants and liked the material, and it didn’t bother you, so you let him.

After finishing up, Thomas’s hand didn’t stray from your hip as you headed upstairs to your room for your alone time, which usually consisted of you reading or talking to him as you snuggled up against each other on the floor or bed. You had expected him to trek back down to the basement to grab his mask and finish it upstairs with you, but he seemed adamant to stick by your side today, and you couldn’t complain.

But you also didn’t notice the way Thomas was looking at you, eyes fixed on your legs and hips in those pants. You hadn’t ever really worn anything like those around him before. And Sure, you’d worn much more revealing stuff to accommodate the heat, but something about the material and smallness of what you had on now drew his attention to your generous backside and wound his nerves tight. His face was heating up under the mask of dried flesh around his features. Thomas wasn’t really shy with staring anymore, especially since you’d mentioned on several occasions that you liked it, but he still couldn’t help but feel like he needed your permission to look at you like this.

You are just a few steps away from the now-closed bedroom door and mid-sentence when you feel Thomas’s large hand sliding away from your hip and down to your backside. You gasp and stop walking immediately, your face heating up before a smug grin crept up to your lips upon the realization that he might like those pants a little more than you thought.

You did have the whole day to yourselves, and it wasn’t often you got opportunities like these.

You attempt to smother a giggle in the back of your throat and turn around to face Thomas who appeared to have braced himself for your response, you may have sex often and he rarely has trouble initiating it, but he’s still a bit timid with these things. Afraid of making you uncomfortable or doing something wrong, you’re prepared to be-rid him of those feelings.

Your smile is innocent, warm, but your eyes are coy and deceiving. You catch a glimpse of Thomas’s Adam's apple shuddering under a gulp as he was backed up into a wall, with his consent, of course, otherwise moving him would be impossible. It was a sight to behold, someone two-three times your size at your mercy, it was almost funny.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” You ask in an accusatory and semi-authoritative tone, playful but firm. Thomas shrugs and avoids your eyes, you could almost see the splotches of red peeking out of the gaps in his mask. He was also beginning to sweat. “Eyes on me.” You reminded, and his dark brown eyes obeyed, flickering back up to yours.

“Naughty, you really like these don’t you?” You grab his hand and place it over one of your spandex-covered thighs, drawing out a runt and a small-but-eager nod. You grin and lean forward to press yourself fully against him, guiding both of his hand to your ass and clutching his biceps for something to hold onto. “Me too, I like how they feel.”

Thomas hums as if to agree, but it sounds distant because his attention has centered on the feeling of the soft cushions of flesh against his twitching palms. His fingers kneaded the softness of your ass and your eyelids fluttered at the feeling, you stretch your arms up as far as they can and stand on the tips of your toes in an attempt to reach up around his neck.

Thomas got the message and bend down to your height so you could loop your arms around the back of his head and pull him into an unhurried and passionate kiss. Your nose bumps into the rough dry leathery material of his mask distractingly, but you don't ask him to take it off, not yet.

It would take too much air, and you honestly quite liked the idea of him keeping it on while he fucked you. Just for a little while, it reminds you of a time where his mask was his face to you. It's as morbid as it is sexy to you because it's was what you became accustomed to. And sure, you adored his real face much more, but you didn't hate his fake one all that much either.

Thomas pulled you against him tighter, a growl forming deep in his throat and vibrating pleasantly against your lips as your stomach presses against his rapidly hardening erection. His meaty hands are already tugging at your shirt, and you almost let him strip it off, but instead, you push his insistent fingers away from your hemline and press one last chaste kiss on his soft lips and turn around.

You were not at all experienced in being “seductive” in this way, and you could feel your face burning up to dangerous levels as your blood settled behind your scarlet flushing cheeks. Surely Thomas is confused, and you are correct in your assumption, he even thinks you're going to walk away for a split second as you turn your back to him. But he is quickly proven wrong when you back up into him, bending over ever so slightly and press your ass right up against his crotch. Thomas breathes in sharply and you can feel him twitch against you, you try to focus on that instead of the absolutely obscene view you are giving him and can't help but grind backward onto him when you hear him start to pant.

You do not expect Thomas to move much, thinking he's practically paralyzed or unsure of how to recuperate. So when you hear him make an almost animalistic noise and feel him grab onto your hips in a bruising grip, you can't choke down the cry of surprise when one of his arms locks around your waist and crushes you against the solid shape of his chest. Your hands fly back to hold onto his forearms and you tug, he doesn't budge, and the display of his strength compared to yours sends a shiver of pleasure down your spine and a shot of arousal between your lightly trembling legs.

“Thomas, touch here.” Your voice penetrated the air like a pin in a silent room and cuts through his resistance as he recognizes your words as offered guidance, and you've discovered he likes being bossed around in the bedroom. For one, he likes pleasing you, secondly, he likes being told what you want him to do even if he knows very well what makes you squirm. He’s like moldable putty, you can shape him into whatever you desire, but Thomas just likes you to tell him exactly how to give you pleasure, especially in explicit terms.

In other words, Tommy was a sucker for pillow talk.

He lets you pet his hands away from your hip and waist and drag them up to your plush chest. Your huge man squeezes his hands over your breasts enthusiastically and buries his face into the back of your shoulder when you resume a steady grind against his throbbing cock through the seemingly too-thick-for-comfort layers of clothing. His hips buck involuntarily against your ass during a particularly hard thrust against him and the movement allows his bulge to wedge in between your cheeks and press against you in a way that makes you moan distractedly.

Gaining the confidence you needed from his quiet whimpers and groans into your neck and shoulder, you pull out of his reach once again. You lean over the edge of the bed and look over your shoulder at a frazzled Thomas, who is straight out staring at your ass and thighs— and most likely the wet spot where you've soaked through your panties and now started to seep through your yoga pants. You hadn't even noticed how wet grinding against him had made you, and by the look in his face, neither did he.

You wriggle your hips in his direction, encouraging him to come over without words. He scrambles over so fast it’s almost a little funny, and you bite your lip to stop yourself from potentially sending him mixed signals by laughing. After all, you find his enthusiasm incredibly sexy, And, who wouldn't want to bend over you after getting teased so much?

You feel him lean over you, his chest and stomach pressing up against your back, hairy arms caging you and his hips laying flat against your tempting behind. You groan into the sheets as his probably painful erection brushes against you once again, you decide to have mercy on both of your by reaching back and snapping and pulling on his zipper, you allow his cock to slip out of his pants. The moment his bare flesh brushing against your inner thigh you are pressed down deeper into the sheets, his hands curling around your wrists and holding them down to the mattress. You gasp and moan as he takes control over your movement and a flood of pleasure sparks between your legs as his cock slides in between your thighs.

You close your thighs around him so he is squeezed tighter against your core and the soft spandex covering your skin.

“Mhh, I want you to fuck my thighs, Baby, can you do that for me?” You squeeze out through rough pants, and you hear Thomas whine loudly against your shoulder blade.

The hulking man nods frantically against your shoulder and releases your hands to grab your subconsciously gyrating hips. The first few thrusts between the gap between your thighs are stuttering and unpracticed, you can tell he's still hesitant. You adjust the pressure around his member as he self-consciously ruts against your backside, hips clumsily bumping into yours as the new sensation of the stretchy material of your yoga pants against his hot, hardened flesh starts to overwhelm him.

After a few minutes of trial and error, and him accidentally slipping against you, you muster up the guts to start talking again once he’s gotten the hang of it.

“Feel- ah! Good? you're good right?” You ask a bit dizzily, not even sure if he made sense of your question. But once his cock starts dragging against you at just the right angle you're a mess of babbling praises.

“You feel- mmh, so good! That's perfect, ahh you're good, such a good boy— oh, god!”

The moment you start saying nice things and calling him pet names he’s melting above you, hips rutting faster and more desperately between your quivering thighs and his heavy panting picking up speed and grittyness. Thomas always responds strongly to praise, he thrives on feeling valued and once you start the wave of compliments it's hard to stop. Why would you want to? It makes him eager to please and makes him come faster, and you’re all for making him feel good.

Oh god, you're really close now, your walls are clenching around nothing and your thighs are twitching and stuttering around his girth uncontrollably as you approach orgasm. You need a bit more pressure, and a bit more direct stimulation to actually come but teetering on the edge is as pleasurable as it is torture. You want to slither and hand in between your legs to grind on your palm but you're absolutely boneless from the waist up. You're practically sobbing without actually crying into the sheets, you can't help but wonder how much longer Thomas is going to last with all this friction, he's always been on the sensitive side, how in the hell was he holding out for this long?

You sure hoped he wasn't trying to hold back his own release because of you, the faster he came the quicker you got to as well. Words of encouragement are streaming through muffled lips before you can stop them.

“Hah- yesss, please come, baby, I'm close, I can't- ah! It’s oh- okay! Please, come for me!” You practically wail, and Thomas whines and groans into your hair, he’s panting like a hound against your back, almost drooling under the intense waves of ecstasy buzzing through his entire nervous system. The sound of your sweet voice begging and urging him to finish sends him in a downward spiral and his dull fingernails dig crescents into your skin.

Thomas's mind flickers to a sudden thought, reminded of the significance of your own pleasure. He forced one hand away from your buckling hips and slides a thick hand beneath you and between your thighs to apply pressure to the general area of your clit through the tight-fitting pants to help you along. Your orgasm rips through you not a moment later, and your back arches under the overwhelming shots of drunken pleasure. You hips buck back into his and your thighs squeeze tightly around his slickened member repeatedly.

Thomas bellows out his pleasure and goes stiff, shoving himself against you and accidentally pushing you up the sheets a few inches. After a split second your giant man is moving again, rutting against you and groaning into the sheets and against your neck as he spills all over your inner thighs. Thomas has always been a heavy producer, and his cum drips heavily down your spandex-covered legs and into the thin sheets. Once his shuddering finally starts to calm his body relaxes, pressing you down into the suddenly overly-cozy bed sheets. You sigh dreamily and smile when Thomas mumbles something incoherent, sounding apologetic as he rolls off of you. You appreciate his cause to not crush you, but you're far from ready to be away from him.

You manage to get Thomas to scoot over so he's at least not half-way off the bed and curl up at his side as you recover just a bit longer. Your soaked yoga pants feel kind of gross after a while and you’re already overheating, so the next moment you are kicking them off and toeing them off the mattress. Your underwear is just as cum-soaked and not at all comfortable, so those go as well.

Thomas must have been getting too hot as well, because when you turn he is stripping away multiple layers as well. Either that or he’s about to roll you over and fuck you properly. You can't say you have a problem with that, on the contrary actually, you were counting on it.

You're overcome with a playful adrenaline rush and perform operation sneak attack by hopping over to his position sitting on the edge of the bed and drape yourself over his back. You're both giggling like teenagers as you smack kisses all over his ‘face’ from behind, gushing to him about how good he was and pulling him back in your arms to cuddle you. Thomas didn't require a whole lot of respite time before he could go another round, but you liked to relax a bit in between sessions when you had all this time to yourselves.

It isn't long before Thomas starts pulling you tighter against him, already starting to get hard again as your ‘conversation’ melted into gentle praise and things you’d only say to get him going. Using those bedroom-specific pet names that got him breathing heavy.

Your fingers curled around the neck of Thomas’s mask, and one of your legs swung over his hip, you hoisted yourself on top of his large mass. You started to tug at the dry, leathery material you certainly weren't in the mood for now that the kinkiest part of you has receded, and your softer, loving side starting to seep through. You wanted to look at his real face.

“Take this damn thing off.”

.   .   .

[brandtmax]

welcome back to gallagher academy, soo-yun ‘maxine’ brandt ! according to their records, they’re a first year, specializing in research & development; and they did not go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of ( sugar-free mints, a messy low bun, wisps of hair alongside her face, the end of a pen between her teeth, the patek philippe calatrava 4897r-010 in rose gold, off-white pants in every fabric ). when it’s the ( virgo ) ’s birthday on 08/23/1997, they always request their japchae from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. 

henlo it me again i hope u guys aren’t sick of me yet bc i have a new bby named max! i’ve written a lot™️ so brace urself but it’s worth it ( i think ) + trigger warnings: death and alcohol dependency under the cut xxx

the basics

full name: soo-yun ‘ maxine ’ brandt

nicknames: max — just max

age: twenty-two years old

birthday: august 23rd, 1997

gender: cis female

preferred pronouns: she / her

sexuality: bisexual

major: research & development (  formerly a b.a. political science degree from yale university )

known languages: english ( native ) / german ( native ) / korean ( native )

background

nationality: american

birthplace: new haven, connecticut, new hampshire

current location: gallagher academy, roseville, virginia

financial status: upper class

religion: non-theistic

appearance

eye color: brown

hair color: black

height: 5′8.5″

notable features: curly hair on lazy days, rosy cheeks

usual mood and expression: calm, furrowed eyebrows whenever her eyes are on work; lethargic and irritable when she’s overworked ( or without alcohol )

family

birth order: second born

parents: soon-bok ‘ vivian ’ jang and stephen brandt ( d. 2018 )

siblings: min-jun ‘ parker ’ brandt ( b. 1995 ) & georgia ‘ gigi ’ brandt ( b. 2001 )

significant others: chris harmon ( 2013-2015 ) / ava carrillo ( 2015-2016 )

her story so far (this is so long n serious lol)

soo-yun 'maxine' brandt was born and raised in new haven, connecticut, to jang soon-bok ( vivian ), a surgeon, and stephen brandt, a ( n allegedly shady ) criminal justice lawyer.

the brandt siblings were raised like any other blue-blooded, very strict but loving household ( strict = mom / loving = dad )

brandt house rules: get straight a’s, follow the 12 am curfew and don't bring anyone home that you know you’d get disowned for. follow those three rules, and you can do whatever you want.

there was pressure for the brandt siblings to be academically accomplished, but it wasn't anything they couldn't handle. they were well-tutored, semi-popular, attractive teenagers, which were common in new haven, and everyone knew they were destined for ivy league.

in high school, she dated chris harmon, and it was the kind of relationship that could only be described as the personification of a kinder egg. sweet on the outside, a waste of time and money on the inside.

which is fine; it took max about 2 months to get over it when they broke up halfway through senior year, because neither of them thought of their relationship going far. the joy of getting into yale ( already expected ) trumped the feeling of losing a boyfriend. she even bet parker $5,000 she'd get early admission. she won.

during college, she had an on-off relationship with ava carrillo for a year, which inevitably became a permanent off. it turned out that it wasn't a good idea to throw herself into a committed relationship the minute she stepped foot into yale. max never had the time, and ava didn't have the patience. at least she tried it tho !

things seemed to be on the up and up for their family, and the worst thing max has ever been through is being awake for 24 straight hours to prepare for a final presentation. but ! you know what they say about the calm before the storm.

( tw: death ) on december 18, 2018, their father unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack during a layover flight in new york. the brandt family was at home when they heard the news. needless to say, they had a quiet christmas and new year.

the family tried to move on as best they could, but the siblings knew their dad's death irreversibly changed their mom. they have a rocky relationship to begin with, the siblings always feeling like vivian never wanted to become a parent and only did so for their father. they have absolutely no mother-children bond, and it got worse when stephen died. being the older brother, parker took it upon himself to take care of vivian, balancing that with running the home stretch with his undergrad degree.

on the other hand, maxine still had a few years left at yale. no amount of therapy helped her cope with the loss of her father, the way her mother seemed to become a shell of herself, how parker had to break the momentum of his career to be there for their mom, and the constant pressure to do good academically.

( tw: alcohol dependency ) it started with buying bottled moscow mules because she didn't like how beer tasted, and she wasn't dumb enough to go straight to hard liquor. just one to take the edge off whenever stacks of coursework became too much, or when her mother would send her an email talking about her day, and she didn't have the courage to read it. then it went from a one, two, three-time thing to a whenever-i'm-upset thing, which slid into a whenever-i-feel-like-it thing. after a while, it became a daylight thing where she would add a splash of soju ( or whatever ) to her lunchtime drinks, and she genuinely thought it was just a funny idea at first. max wasn't the only day drinker in her social group, anyway. she found it acceptable, no different than how other people would pound red bull every 6 hours like it's their life force. it was manageable for her since she was able to schedule when she'd be indisposed, and she still can.

parker had ( and still has ) no clue. despite the two being close, max spared him the burden of having another thing to worry about. as long as she can control it ( or she thinks she can ) then nobody had anything to worry about.

eventually, both maxine and parker were offered the opportunity to join gallagher academy, with parker in line to graduate with honors in global affairs and maxine, not far behind with her own impressive academic portfolio in political science.

though really, her acceptance into gallagher has less to do with her published papers ( still impressive, tho ) and more to do with her covertly helping her father win cases by doing some expert sleuthing, strategizing, witness dispatching + discrediting, sexc breaking and entering, and good, old-fashioned manipulation !

it was something they both wanted; to be a part of the bigger picture in the world, but they knew they couldn't leave their mother alone. parker, who chose to make the sacrifice, let maxine go and stayed behind to take care of vivian.

( but if we’re honest, maxine would’ve left for gallagher regardless if parker was coming with her, but she’ll never tell him that )

despite the guilt and telling parker she wasn't going anywhere ( cough ), he insisted on her taking the once-in-a-lifetime chance to be a part of something they never knew existed. he knew they were going to end up resenting each other if they both stayed. at least one person in the family should be doing something that made them happy.

and so max dropped out of yale and left for roseville, even though she hadn't thoroughly planned out her career trajectory.

she’s eager not just because of the school, obviously. she can't handle going back to their childhood home and seeing how hollow everything is. plus, the immense anger and denial she feels over her dad’s untimely death has no place in new haven anymore.

she promised parker she'd make it up to him, though. somehow, someday.

who is this b*nch

max is relatively easy to get along with, tbh !

she’s a mood matcher; meaning if you’re nice to her, then she’s nice to you ( and if you’re gonna be a punk bitch, then she’ll be a punk bitch right back )

she’s a lil spoiled, lil sheltered, and lil ignorant but her general friendliness makes up for it, she’s the type to be friends with ( almost ) everyone

internally: perfectionist to the point of being ruthless, first place is the only acceptable place, meticulous, neurotic, workaholic, overachiever, if you’re not useful then what’s your purpose?, slightly egotistical, etc etc

externally: caring, protective, and supportive mom friend who just wants people to get their shit together because inadequacy is unacceptable, fixer, likes to dip into different social circles, consciously makes the effort to be more patient with people

she’s incredibly ambitious ? morally ambiguous ? slightly self-serving and self-involved ? her father’s a criminal “justice” lawyer whose clientele doesn’t exactly consist of the beacons of society so... she learned a lot of lessons about how you can win any case in the courtroom if you’re smart enough to a ) make a good story, b ) get the fitting evidence by any means necessary, c ) discredit and discard the necessary people, and d ) be charming and persuasive enough to rock the jury

she’s actively trying to be more open-minded and assimilate to a diverse group of people because back in yale she was definitely in a wasp bubble, and admittedly there are times where she will come off as super snobby without meaning to and tbh sorry about it

she’s still an extremely sociable person because yale also taught her how to network like a motherfucker, and how it’s important to know / be friends with everyone

honestly, intense people turn her off ( both positive and negative ) a little because she can't handle concentrated personalities in one sitting

even though she’s a little intense herself sometimes but it’s fine, we love hypocrites in this house !

neat freak ? but honestly who doesn’t like a friend who squeegees the shower every day and has a tiny can of lysol in their bag and an aroma diffuser with three ( 3 ) oil blends

she’s like... weirdly aggressive sometimes and most definitely has anger issues ( still in denial over her father unexpectedly passing away and getting stuck with a mom who doesn’t like her own children very much )

but also, she’s just agro in general and has a number of physical hobbies. she’s an ice skater, equestrian, a soulcyclist, and a kickboxer. she can fite.

she’s not the type to make fun of herself because she's not at a point where she sees qualities in her that are okay to laugh at ( unless you’re tight )

keeps her negative juju to herself because she’s a very private person

will prioritize work over play because she'd hardwired like that, but that doesn't mean she's anti-fun ( clearly )

definitely needs to loosen up a little that doesn't involve alcohol... jenga perhaps ? or actually try therapy again ?

very effectively sneaky about her growing alcohol dependency ( sugar-free breath mints, brushes her teeth + uses mouthwash after every meal )

dry sense of humor

at all times: wears a 1-carat, emerald cut, pavé diamond ring ( family heirloom ) + carries her trusty black hydro flask with her ( 24 oz. ) and no one is allowed to drink from it !

her signature scent is le labo bergamote 22 🤍

hmu on my discord @ tin#0697 for plottage !

[gyromitra-esculenta]

The Mating Habits of Cluster-Lizards

I’m not back but, well, have this, for completion’s sake. Unapologetic crack.

A dead assassin, a half-lizard pleasure slave, a guy who had his hand eaten by a lizard, an Omnic head, and a cannibal walk into a bar... 

Jesse almost suffered a fatal case of accidentally swallowing his own tongue when Jack slammed the Omnic head on the table, and then flopped into the chair with the overdramatic, and frustrated, urgency. Not because it had been something unexpected, the bugger just refused to wear shoes and thus moved around soundlessly, which in turn made tracking him all that harder. At least, he had compromised on the underwear: the skirt left almost nothing to the imagination, especially with his legs up on the table like they were now.

"Oh, sweet-cheeks, if you could move me closer..." This was another thing defying logic, how could a robot sound so undeniably lecherous? Jack absentmindedly turned the Omnic head around with a flick of his toes. "No, no, let me gaze at you, my beautiful sun!"

"Athena told me we've found a solar system, and it might be inhabited."

"Uh, yeah, looks like it."

With a wave, Jesse put the picture of the city on the screen. Jack slinked over the table in a blink with a singular predatory focus on his face, and practically laid on the console.

Leaning definitely too close and rubbing his hip against Jesse's side.

Adding to the general discomfort, the Omnic head gave out a long appreciative 'oh yes' ending on a breathless note while Jack, licking his lips, observed the feed with the intensity of a starving carnivore. Then came the ear-piercing screech of excitement no one remotely sane would bother to stay around long enough to hear in full. Jesse had to admit he was partially used to it and only wanted to run half the time - which probably would end very badly for him one day. Getting accustomed to cluster-lizards' screeching was unadvisable. More so, if one had lost one hand to the beasts already, but sure, Jesse would willingly give up some other limb to get out of the whole deal of being stranded in the dark sector with no foreseeable way of return.

Scratch that, the dark sector was okay by itself. Getting stranded on the same ship with a dead assassin, perverted Omnic head, and half-lizard on the prowl for a partner, or rather, the victim - that took the cake.

"We're going sightseeing!" Jack exclaimed, grabbing his arm.

"This isn't a good idea! We should wake Gabe first!"

"No, no, let's leave him, we don't want him to come. Ever." The Omnic head, snatched by Jack on the way, hurriedly rebutted him.

"At least, wear something!" Jesse protested while dragged by purposefully striding Jack.

"I'm wearing something."

"But not that!"

Jack stopped, turned, and with his head tilted to the side, fixed him with an unblinking stare.

"Is there something wrong with my clothes?"

"They are perfect, my love," the Omnic head piped in, unasked. "Just a little snip and cut, maybe."

'Everything', Jesse wanted to say - because that immodest scrap of blue fabric wrapped around Jack's hips barely qualified as clothes, not to mention the black harness framing his shoulders and chest that couldn't serve any fathomable purpose by itself except being, maybe, a fashion statement.

"Nothing," he squeaked out.

"That's what I thought."

Jack nodded and continued on the way to the dock where he finally released Jesse and climbed into the waiting drone. The Omnic head landed between his thighs, at first silent. After several seconds, it started to buzz as if short-circuiting.

Jesse counted down from ten and asked himself if he really had to do this. Then answered that yes, someone had to chaperone Jack, even if his ability to babysit someone able to scale vertical surfaces and throw objects weighing more than they did themselves was severely limited.

And that was the short story of how Jesse ended sitting in a stinking jail cell with the Omnic head whose lamenting wails he was trying really hard to tune out. The full story was a bit longer and included crashing a local wedding (the groom probably had not survived having been found in the closet with Jack by his spouse-to-be). There was also a clash with a religious institution and the intended 'virgin sacrifice' - despite the fact that using the word 'virgin' in the context of Jack seemed implausible, they probably weren't that much off. Technically. Next, someone had stolen the Omnic head. After Jesse managed to retrieve it, the local authorities became involved, and damn, if they survived all that, Jesse would very much like to invest in, or procure otherwise, the weapon they used because it had dropped Jack almost immediately amidst unholy amount of lizard screeching.

And that lead to Gabriel, who had been woken up by Athena, occupying the cell next to him, sitting awkwardly by the wall with his eyes closed and arms crossed. The fact his legs were lying in the corridor outside of the cell only intensified the awkwardness of his position.

Literally.

They even twitched once in the while. Jesse turned the Omnic head who still refused to shut up around so it faced the corner.

"Is that... you know... uncomfortable?" He waved in the general direction of the corridor.

"Dead feel no pain."

Figures.

"Can't you do, you know, your scary shadow trick?"

"There is too low diffusion of proto-blood in my body for me to make use of the shadow step abilities."

Just peachy. Jesse sighed. For now, he was stuck here with the wonderful conversational partners both the head and Gabriel were

"Listen, right? This is all Jack's fault, again, couldn't you, like... take care of that? He's rolling around like, well, unfixed cluster-lizard?"

Gabe shot him a scathing look.

"Certain physiological functions require having a functioning circulatory system. I don't have one."

Jesse mimed the rest of the usual monologue consisting of 'I am dead' to himself.

"I don't know, get creative, or something, tie something, just do something, or I'll have to even if I hate...!"

"Your dirty hand won't touch the perfection of my love!" The head decided to join in.

"Oh, fer fuck's...!" Jesse didn't finish since the door opened with a bang and Jack, twirling a ring of keys on his finger, sauntered in. There was something definitely off about him because instead of being tense like a coiled whip he was all curves and soft angles, almost gliding.

"Oh, hi Gabe," Jack mumbled in a sing-song voice and promptly unlocked the cell - ignoring both Jesse and the now frantic Omnic head calling out for its 'sweetpea'. Somewhere midway, he dropped to all-fours, slinked to Gabriel, and snuggled against him immediately. Purring.

"Is he... is he high?" Jesse asked, trying his damnedest to ignore the head while Gabriel lifted Jack's chin with one claw and observed his face intently.

"Jackie."

"Mhrrmm?"

"Jackie, legs."

"Right. A moment." The 'r' was long and rolling, and Jack slowly moved back with a hitch in his step. He grabbed the legs still lying in the corridor by the ankles and dragged them over - after which he resumed cuddling Gabe without a pause between the two actions.

"What is wrong with him now?"

"Nothing is wrong," Gabriel muttered, lining the legs against the stumps. The cut sealed nice and proper, together with the fabric, and not for the first time Jesse wondered what was up with the whole getup.

Gabriel tentatively flexed both limbs and then set himself to the gargantuan task of getting up with Jack still latched affectionately onto him. Apparently, somehow, somewhere along the way, Jack gained some qualities of a liquid, switching and melding to Gabriel's frame with alarming ease of someone at least double-jointed. With the lizard thing he had going on, it wasn't completely implausible.

"Hey, hey! Aren't you forgetting about something!?" Jesse jumped to the bars.

"No." Gabriel took the keys out of the lock and threw them to him. Jack tried lazily to snatch them out of the air. Thankfully, his reflexes seemed to lag at least one second behind everything happening. Jesse clambered after the keys, almost dropped them two times total, and immediately tried to open the cell. Past the door, he stopped, and with a heavy sigh turned back to pick up the Omnic head. It wasn't at fault today.

"Keep your filthy paws off me, you disgrace!"

Mostly.

"Shut up. Or I'll throw you into the first latrine on the way," Jesse barked at it while running after Gabe. And stopped mere millimeters shy of smacking face-first into his leather-clad back. With a certain amount of caution, Jesse leaned to the right to peer over his side. Well, he had not expected a whole welcoming party, the band which started to play some happy tune included.

"Dear esteemed guests," the big person with a frankly ridiculous hairdo full of feathers spoke, "I hope you can forgive the indignity of the incident, had we known..."

Addendum: the band tried to play a happy tune. Not one instrument worked in harmony with any of the other but together, they did manage to drown the speaker completely.

"What's going on?" Jesse hissed at Gabriel's back, only to have him turn left.

"We're leaving."

"I think he said something about a 'feast'... I could use something to eat, you know?"

"We are leaving," Gabriel, with one arm wrapped around Jack's stomach, added more forcefully - and started to walk towards his drone standing just a short distance away from the prison.

Jack, on the other hand, somehow dug his heels into the dirt and left behind grooves in it while dragged by force, almost flowing over Gabe's arm like some kind of semi-liquid putty with much too content expression on his face. He was actually wriggling his fingers at the speaking man. The speaker was now blowing kisses in their general direction. The unwelcome epiphany dawned on Jesse. Gods have mercy, he really didn't want to think about the implications.

"Okay, we are leaving, like, now, you're absolutely right."

He scurried after Gabriel trying not to look. Fitting the three of them into one drone proved slightly problematic but finally, Gabe took hold of the steering sticks however improbable the prospect of him being able to pilot with Jack splayed over him seemed to be. How was it possible for there to be this much of legs?

Jesse, squished against the glass, kicked the Omnic head lying on the floor and once again considered the clusterfuck his life had become.

Then the new sound came, one jarring deep to the core, like some poor creature in the final stages of an extremely excruciating agony.

Jesse slowly looked to the source. And then to Gabe.

Gabriel ignored his very obvious stare. At least, he managed to do so for the first several minutes. He cleared his throat audibly even if he didn't need to, and finally broke.

"It is a nesting call of a cluster-lizard."

"Wait, like..." Jesse looked at Jack with newfound fear. "Wait, like, please tell me he can't lay eggs!"

"I think you will find out."

"No, no, no, no! He's your whatever he is! You're not leaving me to deal with a cluster-lizard infestation!"

"I think you'll find a solution."

"Oh, no, I'm not going crawling through Athena's innards looking for cluster-lizards, you'll be the one doing that!"

Jack chose this moment to start on another set of 'nesting noises' rendering any further dialogue impossible, and shifted. Jesse barely avoided foot to the face. Thank gods, Gabe carried Jack off somewhere away after they docked, and left both Jesse and the Omnic head to stew in their own personal problems. At least, that's what Jesse thought until a hand with well-manicured nails on it had wrapped around his chest from behind.

Great. The cannibal woman was still alive. He forgot about her.

"I wanted to note," Moira whispered, "that we are running low on brains. That's not good. Also, what were the four of you up to now?"

"Ask him!" Jesse threw the Omnic head at her and ran for his life.

*

Two days later, Jesse just stared at Jack, who not-so-entirely down from his high yet sat at the table with one foot propped on the Omnic head, and the other swinging in front of its optic receptors.

The head either gave out disturbing kissy noises or begged to be crushed.

What actually kept Jesse focused was the pulsating with the inner light object with the circumference slightly exceeding that of the Omnic head resting on the table while Jack ate using only his fingers, as he usually did.

"Dude, like, how...?" He finally asked, eyes drifting between the egg and Jack.

"Beats me." Jack shrugged, slipping another piece of meat into his mouth. "Just woke up with it."

[broadwaycantdie]

Disneyland / Part 1...The Journey! - Newsies (Pride) Month . Day 9

( all ) + ( modern ) + ( hc story )

a/n: oh my do i love a good road trip // also sorry this is split up, i just ran out of time but i wanted to give y’all something

( this is part one but imma post the second part soon, so this is the journey and the next part is them actually at disneyland )

warnings: mentions of intimacy // minor cussing

background: Every year the newsies all get together and go on their annual Disneyland trip. They drive from Manhattan to Anaheim because it’s cheaper than buying 20+ plane tickets. They also have a collective jar in the lodging house that everyone puts money into to help pay. Davey plans the whole thing for months and somehow things still go wrong. It’s never not a wild ride with their family. But every year they still enjoy it.

——————————————————————————

it’s damn near impossible to squeeze everyone in one car unless they rented out a bus which didn’t fit into budget

but

they also couldn’t afford another car

so they just piled everyone into one van

that’s right

29 people in one van

davey bought a van a few years back that could fit everyone semi-comfortably before they had so many people

it was a big van, made for seating 18 people technically

but new people kept coming and they made a vow to never turn down someone in need

they also added partners and siblings and whoever else

so it was tough fitting 11 more people in an already packed van, but they did it

was it safe? no.

was it comfy? no.

did it work? sure.

they had curtains on the windows so police wouldn’t see in

and blankets and pillows on the floor for everyone sitting and laying and sleeping

they also put up a sheet across the back of the first 3 seats to create a wall between the adults and the children

also cause Jack is paranoid of the police finding out

but they keep it up high enough to slide snacks under the gap whenever people asked

Darcy drives most of the time since he is the best driver

Bill and Davey sit next to him in the two front seats and give directions

Jack sits on the floor between Davey’s legs and guards the snacks

they don’t stop at hotels

cause dear god that’d be a whole other budget they can’t deal with

so they just switch between the four people in the front driving and go continuously

occasionally stopping at rest stops, food places, etc.

the back is where it got crazy

the first row consisted of Crutchie against the window, Buttons in the isle seat, and Kenny on the floor next to them

behind them was Katherine against the window, Sarah in the isle, Smalls and Sniper in the gap, and Finch in the single seat on the other side

the third row was Specs against the window with Romeo in the isle, Henry in the gap on the floor, and Jojo and Tommy Boy sitting on each other’s lap sharing the single seat

behind them was Albert against the window and Elmer in the isle, with Bart and Myron in the gap, and Mush and Kid Blink sharing the single seat

then the back row

oh my the back row

Spot sat against the window behind the single seats with Race on his lap, Hotshot sat on the opposite side with Mike halfway on and halfway off his lap, and they stuck poor Ike in the middle

bless his soul

and Les just randomly found spots on the floor wherever he could fit himself

the ride was eventful, to say the least

there were a lot of games played

the people on the floor played uno, go fish, and other card games

while the people in the seats played i spy, the alphabet game, word association, would you rather, 21 questions, never have i ever, and the oh so popular “shut the fuck up, i’m trying to sleep”

they played punch-buggy for a bit but that had to stop on account of everyone getting hurt and Davey yelling at them

Davey also counted his lucky stars he set up that sheet because everyone’s favorite game is padiddle

everyone played—except for les cause he was too young, also if you were asleep you automatically didn’t count cause that’s only fair—and it was insanity

the people on the floor would fly up as soon as they had a chance to make sure they were safe

it was their only continuous game throughout the entire trip

the worst time of all was during hour 22 when everyone was going crazy and they all started singing

the look in Davey’s eyes was priceless

he didn’t even know how to react

he’s just glad he didn’t have to be back there

god bless his ability to drive

in the front—while Darcy was driving—Bill would rest his head on Darcy’s shoulder or place a soft hand on his leg

nothing too distracting

they couldn’t risk an accident

Jack could fit his whole body in front of Davey’s seat

for how packed it was, it was a pretty spacious van

but when Jack got tired of laying he would sit up and rest his head on Davey’s seat between his legs

and Davey would pet his hair and hold the side of his face

or he would sit upright, leaning his back against the seat and have Davey play with his hair or lean his head back far enough for Davey to place a kiss on his lips

none of them even wanted to think about what was happening in the back

Specs read almost the entire time

Romeo would cuddle up on his lap and beg for attention but Specs would just pet his hair and continue on

they exchanged kisses every time Specs finished a chapter

both Mush and Kid Blink as well as Jojo and Tommy Boy periodically switched who was on whose lap for comfortablilty

they also sometimes just sat on the floor or hovered above the tiny gap between the wall and the seat for extra space

every time Elmer slept he’d curled his legs up on the seat and place his head in Albert’s lap

Albert just rested his head against the window and put his arms around Elmer, holding him

at one point they forgot other people were around and during one of Elmer’s special dreams he starting rubbing up on Albert’s thighs until he woke up to do more and saw Myron’s disappointing glare

Sarah and Katherine held each other a lot

Mush and Kid Blink exchanged more than a few kisses but what’s new

Jojo and Tommy Boy were saints to be next to because they just wrapped their arms around each other and kept to themselves

everyone was pretty tame with their relationships in the van

except for the back row

that’s why they got put in the back, so no one had to look at them

Hotshot and Mike were actually the tame ones

only in comparison to Spot and Race

Mike sat mostly on top of Hotshot

they were always touching

most of the time they just held each other

but other times they wanted more

they would makeout and grab around but nothing too crazy

they kinda knew the time and place

whenever they started doing anything Ike would just slide down to the floor and play cards with Bart and Myron

but Spot and Race

oh god

Race sat on Spot’s lap pretty much the entire time, only adjusting to sit more comfortably or sleep

sometimes Race would drop down to the floor and wrap himself around Spot’s legs

there were certain times when everyone was asleep

with the exception of whoevers turn it was to drive

usually the entire van slept at night cause they didn’t want to ruin their sleep schedules that bad

though they did take naps throughout the day

but there was one time when everyone was asleep except for Spot and Race

so they did what any dumbasses would do

suck dick in the back seat

yup

race ‘dumbass’ higgins dropped himself on the floor and tested how quiet they could be

no one woke up and they didn’t dare tell anyone

when they finished, Race wrapped himself in Spot’s arms like nothing happened and went to sleep with the rest of them

they stopped at so many mcdonald’s, 7/11’s, diners, and random rest stops

the first stop—hour 4—they found a rest stop and a few people had to pee so some people got out and stretched while others slept inside

they got back on the van and left

it took 18 minutes for them to realize they left Crutchie

“Buttons! How could you not notice your seat partner was missing!”

“that is not my job, I was asleep”

they turned around and picked him up

after that Davey made an alphabetized list of everyone and took role before they left any stop after that

it also became a joke within the group

after what felt like the car ride of a lifetime, they finally made it

at 10 o’clock at night

and seeing the disneyland sign was like arriving at heaven’s gates

when they got out so many boys flipped and jumped and ran around

just because they were so happy and they finally didn’t have to sit in a car waiting anymore

they were like children

they are children, but still

they got to the hotel, checked in, got their rooms, and slept for the night

but the next day was when the real fun was going to happen

part two of them actually at disneyland coming soon

[fyeahwonderbat]

Can you please write me a ficlet about wonderbat's first kiss, that would be really cool thanks!!!!!!!

WonderBat Week 2018: Day 5 - Meet the Family

Title: Shut ‘Em Up

Author: MaidenOfTheWorld

Universe: DCAU (something along the lines of Young Justice, if it included everyone)

Rating: PG

Word Count: 3,005 words

‘Batman.’

“I’m a little busy - Gyah!” exclaimed the man who was waist deep in the Gotham City Sewage System in his fight against Clayface. His heart raced as he was being submerged into the dreck, his only hope of escape relying on one impossibly accurate fire of his BatClaw at a set of pipes overhead. The smell was nauseating and he did his best to fight the urge to cover his face in order to line up the shot…!

As soon as he heard the grappling hook collide with the metal overhead, Bruce pressed on the button that would send him flying into the air and away from all of Gotham’s waste. He wrapped his body around the pipes like an animal clinging to a tree, not for his own security, but in the hopes of scouting the sewers in the hopes of having his opportunity to catch up to Clayface still. He had hoped to convince the troubled man to return to Batwoman’s team, but it seemed that discussion would be left for another night.

Of course, his eldest son - ever demanding of his attention - knew how to fill his father’s evening now that his schedule had suddenly cleared. ‘Meet us at the BatCave when you’re done. We have something to discuss.’

“Us?” Bruce repeated back into his communication link, suspicion clear in his voice.

‘Just hurry up.’ Was the rather rude way Dick ended the call.

Bruce felt his calculative mind try to unearth what possible motivation Nightwing could have for summoning him to his own BatCave in the middle of a Tuesday night. Based off of his wording, Bruce assumed that the ‘we’ Dick referred to would be the two of them, along with either Barbara or Jason. Or, most likely, there was yet another complaint about something Damien had done. But would he interrupt his work in Gotham for that?

It would depend on what Damien had done to anger Dick, truth be told.

And yet, none of that mattered at the moment. As an odd bubble popped in the stream of sewage beneath him and made the smell in the pipes gain an almost physical state, Bruce decided he would simply deal with the matter when he got home. 

His first concern would be breathing clean air again.

His second concern was the size of the party in his BatCave.

It wasn’t merely Nightwing and his girlfriend or one of his troublesome brothers. His entire BatClan was waiting for him when he exited the BatMobile and headed towards his computer. Dick sat in his chair, with Barbara positioned next to him in her wheelchair. Jason stood like a bouncer at a night club while dressed in his anti-hero attire, which was surprising to no one, most likely. Tim leaned against the keyboard while Stephanie seemed to be discussing something private with him in a hushed tone. Even Duke and Cassandra were present for this sudden intervention, but standing in front of them all was none other than his biological child Damien, arms crossed and glower strong.

Thankfully, his cousin Kate wasn’t asked to be apart of whatever sort of semi-private lynching his children had planned for him. There was, however, a surprise guest to take her place.

And it took all of his strength to not blurt out her name in surprise. “What is Diana doing here?” The tone he used to ask his question was much angrier than he intended to sound, but he refused to abbreviate himself in a setting such as this.

“It’s nice to see you too, Bruce” - she teased him gently as she prepared to make her way over to his side, until her nose visibly twitched and instead, she took a step back - “but maybe it’s not so nice to smell you.”

“Where the hell were you, Gotham Sewage?” Duke grumbled as his face became stony.

Bluntly, Bruce barked back. “Yes.”

“Go shower then, father. We’ll be here when you clean yourself up.” Damien issued an order rather than suggested a course of action to him. Still, though the smell was truly awful, he refused to step aside as the frontal figure of their makeshift pack.

“No,” clarified the Batman. For Diana’s sake, he would have, if not for the impression this gathering left on him. There were too many people present for the conversation to be typical, let alone delicate; whatever they wanted to say to him was something they intended to drill into his head with all of their voices. They could handle the smell he brought in with him. “I want to know what is so important that you’re all neglecting the people of Gotham and Bludhaven for this, as well as the calls from the League.”

Diana jumped to her own defence. “I was summoned here the same as you, Bruce. This is even the first time I’m meeting a few of these people.”

“Sorry, Di’,” Dick softened when he looked to the Amazonian princess, just like anyone but the Batman himself did. “I didn’t realize that you only knew me, Jason and Barbara. Though, knowing the person who connects you to this family, that’s not a surprise.”

Bruce could have gagged on the way his eldest sucked up to Wonder Woman. Always a charmer, that one.

“Dick, enough.” Sighing, Barbara came to Bruce’s defense. She put a hand to her forehead, most likely with a few motivations behind the act.

“Yeah, we’re sorry this is so sudden. But it’s something we all felt had to be done.” Stephanie piped up in the hopes of being the mediator figure between the obviously different parties - the Justice League members versus the Titans, young and old.

“Is this an issue concerning the League?” Bruce brushed past Stephanie’s attempt at peace to cut straight to the point.

“No, trust me,” Jason chuckled, his voice rumbling a bit inside his mask. “Relax, Bruce. You’re getting so tense.” So he said, but the man known as the Red Hood was clearly enjoying his obvious discomfort.

As Bruce opened his mouth, it was none other than Cassandra who stepped forward and tried to shield him from those who were there to watch him squirm. “Stop it. Just start.” Then, she looked up at her adoptive father through her mask. He nodded to her and put his hand on her shoulder as a sign of gratitude.

“Yeah Dick, just get on with it already. Some of us did have other plans.” Tim scolded the organizer and ratted him out in the process.

Nightwing glared through his face plate and decided to begin. “Bruce, Diana, we need to talk to you both about something that Oracle found.” He began the impromptu conference as if there hadn’t been all of the smalltalk beforehand. In Bruce’s opinion, he should have started with that as soon as everyone was present, but leave it to the son he trained the longest to do things his own way.

“What was it?” Diana asked, reminding Bruce that she was also apart of this, present and forced to endure the insanity that was his family. When she grew more serious about the matter, so did he. Perhaps he underestimated his children and cohorts, perhaps there was a deeper meaning to this that genuinely required all of their combined efforts.

“Well,” Barbara began, “I had finished gathering information for Bruce on Clayface’s last sighting the other night, and I was about to deliver the information. I was preparing to contact him via the computer and–”

Jason couldn’t take it anymore. “She saw you and Diana locking lips!”

The room fell silent as the blurted out words registered with everybody. It was now Dick’s turn to hold his head, disappointed and yet seemingly unsurprised by his brother’s behaviour.

Bruce, however, was floored. “What?” The word shot out somehow between his gritted teeth.

Duke shifted his stance to appear more like the authority figure before he decided to take control. “Normally, this wouldn’t be our business, and some of us realize that.”

“But you’re a mess with women.” Damien flat out accused his father of such a thing in a room full of people and would never, ever retract his comment. Still standing in the dead center of it all, he was not put out by the topic, but rather appeared to be highly invested.

“And this is Wonder Woman.” Tim motioned to Diana, looking confused and flattered all at once, as he smiled sheepishly as a form of some kind of respect.

“Thank you, everyone,” Barbara raised her voice in order to reclaim her place in the conversation. Hre words echoed in the underground cave and forced the consistently rowdy group to obey her. “Now that we have gone completely off script, I’d just like to say that I wasn’t the one who panicked and told everybody.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bruce snapped. He released his hold on his most respectful child, walked past the disgruntled Damien and stood in the middle of them all. The scent he carried with him was no longer dominating his sense of smell, but it crashed into everyone around him the moment he came closer. “Whatever concerns you may or may not have about what happened between Diana and I is none of your business. Any one of you.”

Tim decided to play a less diffident role and held up his hand. The other one pinching his nose closed, of course. “Unless we want what’s best for you and hope you two will succeed, romantically.”

“I didn’t realize that a single kiss meant we were expected to exchange vows.” Diana mused, shocking the room with her lighthearted words. All eyes fell upon her, but no one’s heart was as abnormal as Bruce’s as Wonder Woman herself weighed in on concern of the volatile Bat-family.

Stephanie, perhaps because she was the closest to Diana at that moment, leapt forward and tried to change her perspective on the entire situation. “That’s not what we are trying to say, really. But this is a big deal - you work together, you’re figureheads of the Justice League, and a lot of us know what it’s like to date a coworker.”

At once, Tim, Barbara and Dick looked away from the direction Stephanie was in.

“Well, if Bruce and I do decide to date, that is something we will need to figure out for ourselves. I’m sure that, even if Bruce had given any of you advice about relationships, you would have ignored his warnings and proceeded to date anyway.”

“Definitely.” Dick wasn’t even shy about his rebelliousness now, as he once tried to be.

“That doesn’t matter!” Damien shouted in frustration.

Bruce frowned. “Damien!”

“Why not?” Diana asked, looking down at the young man as though she was ready to accept his challenge.

Damien knew what her gaze meant and faced her head on. “Whether he takes our advice or not, you have to understand that he is unable to give himself to anyone. His first love is Gotham City, and a relationship that tries to get in the way of that will ultimately end in pain and suffering.”

For a second, right near the end, Bruce wondered if those had been words of thoughtfulness rather than merely sharpened predictions.

When he glanced at Wonder Woman for her take on the admission, her baby blue eyes seemed to have liquified as she stared back at the young man before her. “I know that,” she promised, before glancing up at the group of young vigilantes. “I may not know that fact as well as some of you, but I am aware of what this city means to Bruce. If Themyscira wasn’t shielded from the rest of the world, I can only imagine how frightened I would be if it came under attack.”

“Those are Amazons - the people here are just regular people.” Damien fired back, unfinished in his quest to make them see his ways.

Cassandra huffed, Duke sighed, and Jason shouted from the opposite side of the huddle. “That’s why we’re here, genius.”

Damien whipped around with a fire-like energy. “I wasn’t talking to you!”

“That’s enough!” Bruce had had his fill of the entire conversation. The accusations were one thing, but the screaming was a sign that they were all about to descend into dangerous territory and he had already lost his patience for the entire debacle. In fact, so angered was he that he tossed his hand through the air as if it could cut through the conversation and the tension, killing it that very moment. “Your concern is duly noted, and that’s the end of it.”

“Hey, we’re allowed to care about what happens to Diana.” Jason shot back as his voice hardened suddenly. No longer relaxed, he dropped his crossed arms, prepared to go toe-to-toe with the Batman if he had to.

Bruce knew he was mirroring his son when he spun on his heel to acknowledge Jason, but he didn’t care. “You don’t know what you want from this. You’re all firing off different opinions and it’s become a mess. Whatever your goal was, you failed. Now accept whatever happens - or doesn’t happen - after this, and keep your thoughts to yourselves.”

A hand fell onto his shoulder, one that was warm and familiar. He looked over to his left and there was Diana, trying to ease his riled spirit. She wore an aura of confidence - as if she could handle all eight of his children by herself when he had never mastered that ability himself - as she tried to speak again. Not before making a face at his smell though. “We’ve heard you. After all, it’s hard to ignore an intervention like this.”

“Good.” Cassandra sounded much more pleased to hear that, compared to how she looked rather intimidating while still in her crime fighting suit.

“Hopefully next time I encounter all of you, it’s under less invasive pretenses. And should Bruce and I consider taking things beyond that of mere kissing-”

“Diana!” He admonished with a hiss.

“-we will see how things go from there, the two of us, on our own.” Then, she did something phenomenal.

She turned Bruce towards her.

She asked, “How deep were you in the sewage?”

He answered, “To my waist.” And nearly asked why.

But he didn’t need question her further, as that was all Diana needed to know before she pulled the biggest power move and kissed him in front of his entire BatClan. The only sound heard as their lips met was the distant cry of one of the many bats living in the BatCave.

Just as quickly as she claimed his mouth with hers, she released him and waved to the room. Then, she proceeded to the teleporter control pad and stepped on, leaving for the Watchtower without so much as a second thought.

Her control over the room shattered the moment she fazed away. The power she possessed was indeed godlike if she could silence every single person she left behind.

Of course, the first to speak up was the level-headed Duke, but his words were fitted with a soft chuckle. “Well, I think we’re done here.”

“I’m not gonna chase after an Amazon.” Jason agreed.

Slowly, the lot of them started to disperse. Just like that, the meeting they organized was drawn to a close and Bruce himself felt rather ineffective when he reflected on the entire conversation. “That’s it?”

Damien sighed as he headed upstairs, very clearly over the entire ordeal. “If she said she’ll be smart about your engagement, then I’ll wash my hands of this.”

“Same, only…less cruelly-worded.” Tim’s agreement came in softer terms. Stephanie nodded as she looked at her own boyfriend - for which there were no meetings held for their relationship - and took his hand as she led him away.

“Good night, everyone.” She bid them farewell and led them both behind Damien.

As they climbed the stairs to the manor, Duke found his helmet that sat on the computer desk behind him and placed it back on his head. He said not another word, but merely patted Bruce on the back sympathetically before heading out through the garage. Cassandra saw who was left and with a toss of her head, she left with Duke, ready to escape the scene.

And then, there were four.

“I’m sorry if this felt like an ambush.” Barbara acknowledged the event for what it was once it was over.

Bruce scowled, but Dick jumped in to cover for her. “I was the one who arranged this–”

Jason held out his hand to his brother as he snorted with derision. “I doubt he thought it could have been anyone but you. You’re sitting like a crime lord in his chair.”

That comment shocked the typically stoic Nightwing, and his mouth fell open, flabbergasted by the comparison. He looked down at his chair before removing himself from it with an unceremonious hop. Clearing his throat, Dick stated with weakened pride, “We thought we were doing what was best for you.”

“But Diana showed us there really is nothing to fear.” sang Barbara with a smile on her face.

“Yeah,” Jason’s grin could be heard through his metaphorical hood.

Dick explained, “If she’s willing to kiss you when you smell like that, I honestly don’t know why it took you two so long to get together in the first place.”

Bruce was ready to chew every single one of them out, but he recoiled when they mentioned the smell. She had mentioned it too - had his nose become numb after being drenched in the sewers? He smelt nothing, but he remembered what it smelt like when he first entered the pipes. It did truly give him pause that Diana was willing to kiss him when he definitely smelt absolutely putrid.

She truly was a Wonder Woman.

“And don’t you forget it.” Bruce ordered with a pointed finger before he finally took the opportunity to head towards a well deserved shower.

[here-after]

Unfinished Business

The sport that doesn’t love me back.

```

My college ultimate career was over, whether I liked it or not.  For five years, I have committed myself to college ultimate at the expense of nearly all else.  You would think I’d be torn up about my career’s abrupt demise.

```

I made Georgia Tech’s A Tribe Called Tech (Tribe for short) as a freshman and committed myself immediately. College ultimate was a mythic thing to me, so I dove in.  My freshman class was large and bought in across the board.  Through practices and tournaments and long car rides full of conversation, Tribe became my friend group, my haven from school, and the defining part of my college experience.

But on the field, for my first four seasons, I was stuck.  Injuries derailed part or all of every season.  Freshman year: torn quad, missed all of Fall.  Sophomore: hamstring tendonitis, missed all of fall.  Junior: strained quad, missed all of regular season. Senior: torn hamstring, missed all of regular season.  I tried different PT’s, different workout regimes, and took considerable time off from playing club to focus on training my body.  Nothing stuck.

I was effective when I was able to take the field but was certainly not living up to my potential. I made Chain Lightning when I was 19 and subsequently had an excellent sophomore season in what would prove to be my last fully healthy Spring season.  I have not reached the heights of that season since.

For my first four season, Tribe was stuck.  Every year, we showed glimmers of potential and had lofty dreams, but even reaching Sunday bracket play at Regionals—where college ultimate teams truly prove themselves—was out of reach.  We placed worse at Regionals each successive year.  We began 2019 Regionals by taking half on the tournament one seed, UCF.  2.5 games later, our tournament was over.  Three games, three losses, done.  

Over my four years on Tribe, I had committed myself more and more to the team.  I was team President by my third year, Captain by my fourth. I took over planning our team’s workouts, created team bonding activities, and did my best to create a program out of a team.

After our 2019 Regionals loss—our fourth consecutive disappointment—I sat with Micah Jo, one of my freshman class and now my co-captain, and mulled over years of work and continual disappointment.  We had one more chance.

```

My 2019-2020 season was certainly promising: I was leaving the previous season relatively healthy for the first time in years, so I committed myself to training like never before.  I had a workout plan I was incredibly confident in (shout-out GPP!).  Everything was set up for me.  I was past dreaming of individual accomplishments that I had sought as a young player: to be one of the Region’s best players, to be nominated for the Callahan Award, to dominate games like my college ultimate heroes,  Now I would be satisfied with helping my team win, no matter my role.  Was this my year?

Our 2019-2020 season was certainly promising; we graduated few players, retained many, and added proven talent via transfer and exchange.  The past three seasons had been an emotional rebuilding process for Tribe.  We had gone from a disjointed, fragmented team to a unified one thanks to the efforts of previous captains Brandon Chen and Ashwin Anantharaman and new coach Cate Woodhurst.  My co-captains Micah, Arthur Shim, and I decided to push the team to be as competitive as possible.  We had laid the groundwork of positivity, now we needed intensity.  Although Tribe hadn’t done much of note in the last 4 seasons, we had goals of playing deep into Regionals and dreams of making Nationals. Was this our year?

At our first Spring tournament, T-Town Throwdown, my first game began unevenly.  I made some good plays but also had some bad drops.  I was rusty (not a novel condition for me).  I had missed the whole Fall semester with a mysterious knee ailment (after a healthy Summer, I injured my knee at my first Fall practice); an MRI was clean, but pain persisted.  I was a game-time-decision for T-Town, but my knee felt relatively okay, so I suited up for my first regular season game in 3 years. I finished the game with no worsening of the pain, so I kept my cleats on for our second of the day.  Three points in, I collided with a teammate and badly contused my face.  I was done for the tournament.  My injury worries hadn’t been left behind after all, and while my face would heal quickly, my knee would not be so lucky.

At our first tournament, our first game began awfully, generously speaking.  We went down 2-5 to the bottom seed in our pool; doubts immediately crept into my mind: “would this season be another disappointment? Have the last 9 months been for nothing?”  But, defying the weight of our collective past, we pulled out the game and won our pool.  Tribe showed newfound resiliency.  Eventually an injury-shortened roster would catch up with us, but we placed third, an encouraging if not perfect start to the season.

```

As Tribe’s season was building towards something great, mine was rapidly deteriorating.  Since the Fall I had been battling repeated illness, and the numerous bouts finally caught up with me.  I was robbed of consistency in my training and in practice attendance.  After T-Town, my knee pain returned with a vengeance.  My season had fractured from my team’s and would only continue to diverge.

Ultimate has long been my refuge, but it was becoming my torture.  The weeks between T-Town and our next tournament—Florida Warmup—were some of the lowest of my Tribe career.  Sidelined or home sick for practice after practice, I became angry and bitter. Negative thoughts dominated my mind: I could do that better or why does nobody care? or why are we fucking that up for the fifth consecutive year?  Subsequently, I would think get your head out of your ass. I worked hard to suppress my personal torment, but it was undeniable that five years of personal and teamwide disappointment had gotten to me.  I was forced to admit to myself that frequently I wanted to be anywhere but at practice; I invariably left practice seething with anger.  At my team, at my body, at the pain of wanting something so badly and watching my time running out.

```

Tribe had not been invited to Florida Warmup since 2015, and we again began on the wrong foot, to say the least.  In our first game, Tufts took half 1-7, only for us to battle back and tie the game. We lost on double game point, but Tribe again showed immense heart, the likes of which I had not seen before.  We finished pool play 4-2 and squeaked into the bracket.  Our reward? A quarterfinals rematch with Tufts, who had gone 6-0 in pool play.

The game that followed is the best I have ever seen Tribe play.  We began the contest too amped up, and both teams made dangerous bids and committed overzealous turnovers.  We played under the lights on a field equal parts dirt and grass.  Dust flew with every step.

A handful of points in, Tribe found its footing.  Our decisions became smarter and our execution cleaner.  Tufts continued to throw their bodies around and into us; we matched their intensity but exceeded them in judgement.  They laid out into our backs; we got massive clean layout D’s. They grasped for what was just out of reach; we were in control.  We took half 8-6.

In our first game against Tufts, we had turned the tide by switching to zone in the second half.  This time around, we didn’t need a plan B.  We crushed with our discipline and our legs. The dam broke: they stopped getting separation and were reduced to endless swings and wishful hucks.  We stayed our course and played the game I had long hoped we had in us.  When the dust settled, we won 14-7.  Vindication.

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We went on to lose a double game point heartbreaker to Texas in semis, and then lost the third-place game to Carleton and finished in fourth place.  It was not a perfect tournament (we went 5-4 after all), but it showed that Tribe finally had real ability and the mental fortitude to go with it. Simply put, it was the best tournament performance by Tribe in my 5 years on the team, by far.

Florida Warmup rejuvenated me to some degree.  I re-found my voice as a sideline and leadership presence and lost myself in the game.  It was terrifically fun to watch my hard work bear fruit even if I could not contribute on the field.  And yet, once practices started up again, I fell into many of the same old feelings. My knee was not improving, and I dwelled on how fun and rewarding it would be to truly be part of the team’s success.  I considered asking for time off from practice to make my peace with my role.

And then, of course, coronavirus upended the world.

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Weeks of uncertainty followed.  It seemed like USA Ultimate was marking time by periodically releasing progressively worse news.  The college season was essentially totally cancelled.  Even as I dealt with the abrupt loss of our season, I also felt a weight lift off my shoulders.  I was free.

I slowly made my peace with our circumstances.  I imagined telling the tragic tale of my fifth year; somehow, the sudden end of the season felt right.  If my college career felt cursed, why not its ending?

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Then, USA Ultimate made rumor into reality: fifth year players would receive another year of eligibility.

In a way, USA Ultimate’s decision creates the cruelest possible timeline.  My team is graduating ten players.  Only three have the guaranteed option of playing for the team again.  Many of the remaining seven will apply for graduate programs, but that is much less than a sure thing.  Even if they enroll in a master’s program, they will also be working full-time.

But I am one of those lucky three players with a guaranteed opportunity to run it back (I will be in grad school at Georgia Tech).  A sixth year will in many ways feel like a fake season, a shadow of the fifth year that could’ve been.  Every sixth-year player will be a reminder of those that couldn’t be there.  No result will be satisfying—in victory I will wish my teammates could be there with me, in loss I will have infinite what ifs.

I already feel something akin to survivor’s guilt.  My sixth year is not an opportunity I am ready to accept.

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I miss playing ultimate. More specifically, I miss playing for Tribe.  More truthfully, I miss what Tribe could’ve been.  What I told myself it would be.  What, for a brief time, it was.