#i had a lot more to say than i thought lol

[joojconverts]

4T3 Conversion of HistoricalSimsLife's CC Catalogue

So… here we are, haha! This is the grand project I’ve been working on for about three months now! I made a promise to all of you, so I’m here not only to fulfill that promise and make a bit of a comeback but also to celebrate reaching the incredible milestone of 3,000 FOLLOWERS!!!

I’m so grateful to all of you for everything that has happened since I joined this community, it’s one of the little shining points of my life, lol. So, let me give back by bringing your sims MORE THAN 150 pieces of CC, including clothes, hairstyles, accessories, and buy mode objects!

You’ve probably already guessed that I have A LOT to say about this set, so please, follow me after the cut! 💖

Hope you like it, enjoy!

In this compilation are included sets, mini-sets and standalone pieces that the original creator made! Posepacks, patterns, mods, and pieces categorized as “modern” are not included! HistoricalSimsLife has a lot of 3T4 conversions, and naturally they're also not included EXCEPT for the ones that are mesh edits (e.g. here and here)! TSM to 4 conversions are also not included, as you can find every item converted to TS3 here by votenga! I also re-converted CC that I had previously converted before, such as the printing press set and the dandy suit!

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I'll link the CC just so you know what I'm talking about!

Known Problems:

Most of the time the sleeping animation that comes with the One With Nature mod looks off when making your sim sleep under the prehistoric lean-to shelter. I'm not sure why but instead of sleeping horizontally they sleep vertically, so they clip with the branches that are on the floor. Two times while I was testing they slept horizontally tho, so I'm not sure if I can fix it. Sorry!!

The drawer (chest) of the Kativip Library set doesn't have an animation!

The telescope's eyepiece looks a bit off when a sim is using it. The way the mesh is made is very different from ts3's telescopes, and it would be quite hard to make it looks seamless and also it wouldn't look good, as ts3's telescopes all look kinda silly imo hahah. Hope you don't mind it very much!

The celtic cape might clip depending on the clothes being used and the animation being played!

The round weave rug of the Rustic Living Set generates some white lines when zooming really far out. I thought it was UV map, but I tweaked it and they're still showing up. It's only apparent if you look closely tho!

LIGHTING GLITCHES ONLY APPEAR ON CAS!

* Note that teens and elders have neck gaps. This is sadly the price for having them available! For teens, try using��this and this slider by gruesim!

Please let me know if you find any problems!

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ALL OG CREDITS GO T​O @historicalsimslife, Kativip and EA/Maxis! IT'S NOT MY MESHES, AND IT’S NOT MY TEXTURES, I JUST CONVERTED THEM TO THE SIMS 3!

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Buckle up now...

NOTES & INFO:

The whole catalogue is quite low-poly and gameplay friendly, so don’t worry about that!

The whole catalogue is categorized into folders once you extract the zip, so you can pick and choose if you're playing in a specific era!

The buy mode items have collection files so you can find them a lot easier (except for the crib, the map painting and the aztek sink)! Just put them inside your "collections" folder in ts3's documents folder!

I highly recommend using the One With Nature mod by @spheresims while using the prehistoric collection!

The printing press letter plate works as a functional computer, and it's categorized as so!

The printing press desk and chair both have 4 matching presets! They're all different wood presets!

The hollow food storage works as a functional fridge for your prehistoric sims!

The Pile of Rocks cave works as, you guessed it, a cave! Actually no lol, it works as a tent, and your sims can sleep inside! It also has 5 presets, all stone textures, first one is an overlay, the rest is recolorable!

The sleeping underlay works as a sleeping bag! It has 2 recolorable presets!

The Skyrim lean-to has 2 presets! First one has an overlay texture, second one is recolorable!

The prehistoric lean-to shelter has 7 presets. The last one (fur) is recolorable, the others are overlays!

The rustic living set has two bed frames (single and double bed) and two matresses! All you need to do is to put the bed frame first, and then the matress on top of it, now you have two separate objects that can be customized!

The weave rug has 6 recolorable presets!

The round weave rug has 7 presets, and they're all combinations of recolorable and overlayed parts!

Both love seats and both bed frames of the rustic living set have 3 presets, different types of wood! Not recolorable.

The matresses also have 3 presets, they're combinations of overlayed and recolorable parts!

The old map painting has 4 non-recolorable presets!

The aztek sink has 4 presets, and they're combinations of overlayed and recolorables parts except for the last one! It also works as a functional sink!

The two empty boockases of the Katvip library set work as displays, so there are many slots for you to put decor on!

All hats/caps are hat-slider compatible and unissex!

The Dandy Lady hat (renamed it from ts3's hairstyle) has 3 different versions: One with feathers (that I made), one without them, and one without feathers nor decorations (renamed as Gone to Riding Hat)! You need to have V1 installed for the textures of the other two to show up, as they're linked!

The maid dress has 4 different versions (i know the post says 3 but it's 4 lol), as you can see on the preview! They work just like the Dandy Lady hat, above!

The Pirate Dress has an overlay you can find in accessories! Using it with the outfit you can recolor the belt and the buckle! If you don't use the accessory, those parts will just be a usual overlay texture!

You need to use a no feet mesh to use the Boy's 1700s Frock Coat, you can find one here!

The Boy's 1700s Frock Coat has has an overlay accessory, same thing as the Pirate Dress! With it you can recolor the belt, the pockets and the buckle!

The Edwardian Tea In The Garden dress has 6 presets, 5 of them are floral overlays, and the last one is a solid version.

The Regency Morning Dress has 11 presets. First one is a solid version, the last four are patterned overlays, and the rest are recolorable patterns.

The Ester Wedding Dress has 4 recolorable presets, the patterns of the bodice change!

The Simply Rococo Dress has 15 totally recolorable patterned presets!

The Embroided Rococo Dress has 2 presets: the first one is the original texture as an overlay, and the second one is a recolorable version of it (though not as good, since it's a very complicated texture).

The Vintage Men's Exercise Outfit has 6 patterned presets, all recolorable!

The Edwardian Men's underwear and the Edwardian Men's nightgown both have 2 presets, one striped and one solid. Both recolorable!

The Dandy Suit has 9 presets, first one's solid and the rest are patterned, all recolorable!

The Celtic Warrior Outfit has 2 presets. In the first one the plaid is an overlay, original texture. In the second one you can change it however you want using CASt!

The Bodacious Boy Suit has 2 presets! The mask is different, so you can recolour different parts!

The Vintage Girl's Dress With Bows has 8 presets, one of them is a solid version, another one is a recolorable patterned preset, and the rest are patterned overlays!

The Colonial Living Girl's Dress has 5 presets, last one is a solid recolorable version, and the rest are patterned overlays!

The Victorian Tweed Dress Top has 6 presets. The last one is a totally recolorable preset, the other 5 are overlay presets!

The Celtic Dress Top has 2 presets. First one is a long sleeved version, and the second is a vest like top with long sleeved white shirt underneath. Both recolorable!

The Victorian Tweed Dress Skirt has 6 presets, same thing as the top!

The Celtic Dress Skirt has 2 presets. First one has an apron with it, and the second one doesn't! Both recolorable.

I think that’s all haha! Now to the download! <3

G-Drive |  Dropbox

☕  buy me a coffee or become a patron!

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Credits & Special Thanks:

@historicalsimslife, Kativip and EA/Maxis for all the meshes and textures! Check out the full catalogue here!

Thank you @deniisu-sims, @suteflower, @sideshowsnob and @twinsimming for the general support (and help, where needed lol) when creating this collection!

💖 @eternalccfinds @katsujiiccfinds @sisilou @darkccfinds @xto3conversionsfinds @wanderingsimsfinds

[hemi-demi]

Jon and Martin doing just a little birdwatching

-

Hey all! I'm still chipping away at the main fic, but wrote a short little thing that I thought might be fun to share here as a bonus! And some bonus art as well, because I really like drawing birds, lol.

Short fic below the cut! Rated G, just a bit of fluff.

Takes place sometime between chapters 4 and 5 of Oathbreaker, but it's spoiler free, so no worries if you haven't read it.

--

“Hey, Jon? What are you-”

Martin had already been speaking quite softly when they tapped Jon on the shoulder. Not quietly enough, as it turns out, as the thought is abruptly cut short by a slender finger pressed against his lips. 

A sudden rush of adrenaline surges through him, and he draws back his cloak, preparing to take the sword from his hip before Jon's tail wraps around his wrist, silently asking him to stop.

Martin tries to speak again, but Jon just shushes him with no real concern as to how rude it comes off, then points up to a nearby tree. 

Tilting his head up, Martin spots a bird. Not a particularly stunning one as looks would go; it's feathers a soft brown with an even paler belly, almost indistinguishable from the bark on which it's perched. 

But its song is far more distinct; a collection of chirps, clicks, and warbles that come in rapid succession and seemingly no rhyme or reason. It's a song he's heard before, but certainly not often, and Jon seems utterly entranced by the creature.

“Didn't take you for a birdwatcher.” Martin half whispers, once Jon allows him to, at least.

“Nightingale,” Jon replies, jumping ahead a few steps in conversation, their eyes scanning the trees for more of the little tawny things before turning back to the bird just above their heads, “don’t see a lot of them in this part of the continent.”

“Yeah, haven't seen one in ages…bit early for them, isn't it?”

“Yes…” Without looking away, Jon settles against the bark of the tree. “Apparently they practice their song in the winter months. Bit of choir practice before the big show.”

“Sorry, ‘show’?”

“Their mating season,” Jon clarifies, drawing their coat a little tighter as a cool breeze rolls last, “Sometime around late spring, I believe.”

“Ah,” Martin stifles a chuckle, “so the little guy is rehearsing his pick-up lines. Wonder if he's nervous.”

The bird's song comes to an abrupt stop, raising its wings up high before flitting off into another branch a few trees away. Jon's eyes follow the motion, and then the bird shoots up through the empty branches above and disappears into the sky. Its song plays out one last time, carried on the wind as it finds another spot for its practice, well out of sight.

“Certainly seems to be…” Jon replies. They almost sound – sad for the little thing. Or maybe they're just sad it left, their head hanging low, shuffling their feet without concern for the sound of crunching leaves now that the bird has left. “Can't say I blame him. Although memorising a song sounds far easier than most courting rituals.”

“Yeah…” Martin notices a bit of debris from the tree stuck to Jon's coat, reaching out to brush off the bits caught against the wool. “Just sing a little tune until someone fancies you. Would be nice if it were that simple. I think I’d much prefer that.”

That earns Martin an odd look, that same calculating gaze once fixed onto the bird now turned squarely in his direction for what feels like far too long. Long enough for Martin to wish he could fly off like that nervous nightingale before Jon can identify the source of the creeping blush that blooms across his cheeks.

Then Jon blinks, bowing their head again before stepping back towards the trail. “Right, so…camp, yes? I ah – saw a spot we could set up just this way.”

Before Martin can ask, Jon has already paced halfway down the path, and he's forced to jog behind to catch up.

Didn't take long for them to set up camp. Jon made quick work of things, nervously bouncing around the site and setting up tents, laying out bedrolls. Hardly sitting still for even a moment. 

Martin would have said something, maybe taken some of the work off their hands, but they seemed far too focused on their tasks. 

And if he did, Jon might have stopped humming whatever song they had stuck in their head, and that would be a shame. He always rather liked birdwatching.

[234moon]

I’ll admit a thing. Prior to Haikavetham I thought that Hoyoverse wasn’t interested in developing MLM ships too much. I was okay with that too because yuri gets less attention anyway and HYV was obsessively focused on it. But there was always that fear in me that their obsession with WLW ships was likely somewhat inspired by fetishisation.

But then Haikavetham came along and shattered that assumption for me. I thought no other MLM HYV ship could possibly come close to it but Phaidei is actually insane. You can see that this company, with their limitations even because of censorship, is trying pretty hard to make a good MLM ship that fans can decipher easily.

3.1 spoilers up ahead. And this post is absolutely an excuse to collate “evidence” for how gay Phaidei is

1. Phainon and Mydei being parallels to Kephale and Nikador (respectively), and also possibly being inheritors to their coreflame (Phainon left but it’s almost confirmed). Where Nikador allegedly fell in love with Kephale, who is their rival and fought them. A very direct parallel to Phaidei

2. But it’s less about their parallels and more about what they do at present in the story. The most conspicuous incident of this is the last part of 3.1’s quest, where they’re parting. Firstly, Phainon is the last person Mydei met. He was the last farewell Mydei wanted to give before he left. Secondly, when they do talk, Phainon asks this

To which Mydei first replies that the Kremnoan philosophy can never be encapsulated in a dictionary. And then he says this

Don’t tell me this doesn’t read like Phainon worried that the word for romance really doesn’t exist in the Kremnoan language but hoping that it does. Because language makes culture. And as a Kremnoan, that should mean, at least in theory, that Mydei is not fully capable of romance. But this reads like Phainon knowing they have feelings for each other, and teasing Mydei about it. Like “hey I know you say romance doesn’t exist in the Kremnoan language but you definitely like me so you’re probably lying”. Because why would this be one of his parting sentences? It’s too irrelevant at the moment.

Add to this what Mydei says in the end. Don’t tell me this doesn’t read like the most classic doomed gay ship trope! Because it is!! It is!!!!

(Also I don’t know how many people noticed this but when Mydei says the last sentence, his tone is uncharacteristically soft)

3. This GIF.

I can’t stop thinking about it. Phainon knows Mydei has his back (and vice versa because… lol). Phainon feels absolute relief knowing Mydei is with him, and they will fight together. Phainon trusts him, and Mydei trusts Phainon even more.

There is also this scene.

Since my post is getting long I’ll recommend reading a small breakdown of it here (much better explained than I could). They have each other’s backs, and they trust each other with everything. Also the way Mydei says “found you”. I cried.

4. Including their lives!

What an insane scene man. Reveal your proverbial Achilles heel to one man and one man only, who coincidentally happens to be the man who you trust watching your back.

5. They help each other get better. Not much explanation needed but Phainon and Mydei understand each other deeply, and they understand the other’s desires and even masked feelings. Phainon helped Mydei make that final decision that he needed to change the lives of Kremnoans and be a better king (by recommending he go to Chartonus, to whom Phainon had relayed details about Gorgo’s signet ring)

And Mydei helps Phainon with this

There is, of course, a lot more “evidence”. The smallest of expressions (like damn Mydei smiles a lot around Phainon lol) to it being heavily implied their comfort zone is each other. My point, though, is that I’m very impressed by a Chinese company willingly making so much implied gay content despite censorship restricting them. Phaidei has become another one of those iconic HYV ships for me at least.

Btw, if you see this post, please don’t add “but they could be friends-“ I’m aware and it’s a redundant argument. There is a very thin line separating platonic and romantic love. Yes this could be an example of a beautifully higher level of platonic love. But I choose to read this as romantic because I trust in a game company known for making heavily implied gay couples to have made another one.

And please do not treat this as discourse despite how I started it!! This is about Phaidei and I wanted to give a background about why I think they’re pretty gay

[thefrenchfryturtle2]

1. What is you middle name? Don’t have

2. How old are you? MINOR

3. When is your birthday? Somewhere in September

4. What is your zodiac sign? Virgo ♍️

5. What is your favorite color? Gee i wonder…

6. What’s your lucky number? 13 :)

7. Do you have any pets? No :(

8. Where are you from? My mom

9. How tall are you? 5,2”

10. What shoe size are you? 5 and a half

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? 6… okay that sounds like a lot but two of them are really old

12. What was your last dream about? Uh… I think i forgot

13. What talents do you have? I can fold my tongue into clover, wiggle my ears, flare nostrils, and make my eyebrows do a waveeee

14. Are you psychic in any way? Yeah. Sometimes I can read people’s mind and say things at the same time as them. Just ask @yourfavvvintj and @zerukye

15. Favorite song? Count on Me by Bruno Mars, tho Sweet Tooth by Cavetown is a really close second place

16. Favorite movie? Turtle Tale Sammy’s Adventure lol

17. Who would be your ideal partner? @zerukye lol aka my current one

18. Do you want children? NO THANK YOU

19. Do you want a church wedding? BEACH WEDDING!!

20. Are you religious? No

21. Have you ever been to the hospital? Haha yep-

22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law? No, I’m a law abiding citizen.

23. Have you ever met any celebrities? Do voice actors count-

24. Baths or showers? Showers

25. What color socks are you wearing? Pink and blue

26. Have you ever been famous? My tag game post has over 200 notes which is more than my average amounts combined.

27. Would you like to be a big celebrity? Yeah, but only in the science department.

28. What type of music do you like? Indie

29. Have you ever been skinny dipping? No, and I don’t intend to-

30. How many pillows do you sleep with? 2

31. What position do you usually sleep in? Fetal position or dead positon

32. How big is your house? Medium???

33. What do you typically have for breakfast? Bread and chocolate 😅😅

34. Have you ever fired a gun? Do Nerf guns count?

35. Have you ever tried archery? Yes and I sucked- i want to do it again

36. Favorite clean word? Shoot and dang

37. Favorite swear word? None, I don’t swear

38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? I’m not sure-

39. Do you have any scars? Loads :)

40. Have you ever had a secret admirer? @zerukye

41. Are you a good liar? Nope-

42. Are you a good judge of character? Absolutely

43. Can you do any other accents other than your own? Bottol o wotor???

44. Do you have a strong accent? No

45. What is your favorite accent? British

46. What is your personality type? INFJ-T

47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing? Glasses

48. Can you curl your tongue? Yep

49. Are you an innie or an outie? Innie

50. Left or right handed? Right handed

51. Are you scared of spiders? Nope, I want a pet tarantula.

52. Favorite food? RAMEN!

53. Favorite foreign food? RAMEN!

54. Are you a clean or messy person? In the middle….

55. Most used phrased? BRUHHHH

56. Most used word? Bruh

57. How long does it take for you to get ready?

58. Do you have much of an ego? Depends on situation—

59. Do you suck or bite lollipops? Bite

60. Do you talk to yourself? In my head

61. Do you sing to yourself? Of course

62. Are you a good singer? Yeah lol

63. Biggest Fear? Needles….

64. Are you a gossip? I’m gossiped about lol.

65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen? Titanic haha

66. Do you like long or short hair? Short

67. Can you name all 50 states of America? I’m not even going to try… but yeah probably

68. Favorite school subject? SCIENCE 🧪

69. Extrovert or Introvert? INTROVERT-

70. Have you ever been scuba diving? I want to!!!

71. What makes you nervous? The dark-

72. Are you scared of the dark? Terrified-

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes? Of course

74. Are you ticklish? Yes…..

75. Have you ever started a rumor? No.

76. Have you ever been in a position of authority? Yeah

77. Have you ever drank underage? Uh. I was eight….. we thought it was “tea”

78. Have you ever done drugs? Do antidepressants count-

79. Who was your first real crush? I’m not saying… @yourfavvvintj already knows-

80. How many piercings do you have? 2. One on each ear

81. Can you roll your Rs? Yes

82. How fast can you type? 100 WPM

83. How fast can you run? Not fast-

84. What color is your hair? Black and green and blue

85. What color is your eyes? Boring brown-

86. What are you allergic to? Nothing!

87. Do you keep a journal? Yeah but I don’t update it often.

88. What do your parents do? Love me

89. Do you like your age? I’m a teen, of course I don’t

90. What makes you angry? My sister-

91. Do you like your own name? I would change it to Turtle but that’s weirder than a white girl name.

92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? Zelda and Link for my future cats.

93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child? I don’t want children so I don’t really care

94. What are you strengths? Singing, creative writing, science, doing two pull up.

95. What are your weaknesses? Running a mile, literary interpretations, balloons…

96. How did you get your name? My parents named me after a president because they want me to be a good leader.

97. Were your ancestors royalty? I don’t think so.

98. Do you have any scars? Yes 👍

99. Color of your bedspread? Navy blue

100. Color of your room? Boring gray

Get To Know Me Uncomfortably Well

PLEASE DON’T LET THIS FLOP AHHHH

1. What is you middle name? 2. How old are you? 3. When is your birthday? 4. What is your zodiac sign? 5. What is your favorite color? 6. What’s your lucky number? 7. Do you have any pets? 8. Where are you from? 9. How tall are you? 10. What shoe size are you? 11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? 12. What was your last dream about? 13. What talents do you have? 14. Are you psychic in any way? 15. Favorite song? 16. Favorite movie? 17. Who would be your ideal partner? 18. Do you want children? 19. Do you want a church wedding? 20. Are you religious? 21. Have you ever been to the hospital? 22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law? 23. Have you ever met any celebrities? 24. Baths or showers? 25. What color socks are you wearing? 26. Have you ever been famous? 27. Would you like to be a big celebrity? 28. What type of music do you like? 29. Have you ever been skinny dipping? 30. How many pillows do you sleep with? 31. What position do you usually sleep in? 32. How big is your house? 33. What do you typically have for breakfast? 34. Have you ever fired a gun? 35. Have you ever tried archery? 36. Favorite clean word? 37. Favorite swear word? 38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? 39. Do you have any scars? 40. Have you ever had a secret admirer? 41. Are you a good liar? 42. Are you a good judge of character? 43. Can you do any other accents other than your own? 44. Do you have a strong accent? 45. What is your favorite accent? 46. What is your personality type? 47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing? 48. Can you curl your tongue? 49. Are you an innie or an outie? 50. Left or right handed? 51. Are you scared of spiders? 52. Favorite food? 53. Favorite foreign food? 54. Are you a clean or messy person? 55. Most used phrased? 56. Most used word? 57. How long does it take for you to get ready? 58. Do you have much of an ego? 59. Do you suck or bite lollipops? 60. Do you talk to yourself? 61. Do you sing to yourself? 62. Are you a good singer? 63. Biggest Fear? 64. Are you a gossip? 65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen? 66. Do you like long or short hair? 67. Can you name all 50 states of America? 68. Favorite school subject? 69. Extrovert or Introvert? 70. Have you ever been scuba diving? 71. What makes you nervous? 72. Are you scared of the dark? 73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes? 74. Are you ticklish? 75. Have you ever started a rumor? 76. Have you ever been in a position of authority? 77. Have you ever drank underage? 78. Have you ever done drugs? 79. Who was your first real crush? 80. How many piercings do you have? 81. Can you roll your Rs?“ 82. How fast can you type? 83. How fast can you run? 84. What color is your hair? 85. What color is your eyes? 86. What are you allergic to? 87. Do you keep a journal? 88. What do your parents do? 89. Do you like your age? 90. What makes you angry? 91. Do you like your own name? 92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? 93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child? 94. What are you strengths? 95. What are your weaknesses? 96. How did you get your name? 97. Were your ancestors royalty? 98. Do you have any scars? 99. Color of your bedspread? 100. Color of your room?

[oneforthemunny]

you mentioned rockstar eddie watching her have their babies and still being obsessed ofc, and i’m wondering how janitor eddie would be, esp if she was feeling self conscious

so here's my thoughts on this, because i love janitor!eddie from the bottom of my heart, but... he's a little ball of anxiety and sometimes it makes the situation soooo much worse. like he gets in his own head, and stays in his own head, won't tell you what's going on just starts acting weird, so you think it's you and in reality, he's just in need of prozac lmao.

since oliver was adopted, there was no "down period" ya know? if anything, i think watching you be a mom to him and be sweet to him and kind and loving, it made eddie even fucking more insatiable than before in the most love sicken devoted way.

after you gave birth to olivia, it was different. through the pregnancy, he'd already been a little nervous with you. there's a full blurb about it, where he's nervous to touch you because he doesn't want to hurt you. bless him, there's not a lot out there at the time (early 90s) about having sex and being pregnant lol. so he's just scared. better to stay hands off than hurt you. which in the blurb, doesn't last because once you tell him you want to and it's ok, he's actually feral.

but after olivia, the doctor tells the usual, no sex for this six weeks or it can hurt you. eddie, ofc, asked a million questions about every single thing (turned a thirty minute visit into an hour and a half), but specifically about what could happen, how would you know if you're healed, what did they do to verify that everything was good, was there a test- like a million questions.

six weeks turns into eight, and it's really not too bad because you're both exhausted and literally collapse into each other. but around ten weeks, the routine is becoming more normal, olivia's sleeping through the night, you both feel like you can catch your breath, but eddie's still so distant with sex? like everything else is so good, but if you try to initiate, kiss him a little deeper, make yourself into the little spoon and back your ass up on him, he stills and shuts it down.

by eleven weeks, you're frustrated. by twelve, almost three months, you're hurt. wayne kept the kids for the night, wanted to give you two some alone time and wanted to spend time with his grandbabies, and you think it's perfect. you're about to go back to work, and it seems like a good time to "break the seal" so to say.

you have a dinner at home, he cooked, wined and dined you, is so so soooo fucking sweet and lovey. you're on the couch, watching a movie, but really making out like you used to. you can feel him, feel him getting hard, and when you try to make a move, he starts like panicking. apologizing, and trying to hide it.

"fuck, i-i'm sorry. i don't, just gimme a second, an-and i'll-"

"-so do you just think i'm disgusting now?" tears in your eyes, you're beyond hurt. you'd heard so many stories about men who saw their wives give birth and didn't want to have sex anymore, deemed them gross, but you never in a million years though eddie- your sweet, kind, perfect eddie would be one of them.

eddie is on the brink of an anxiety attack, because ???? why would you think that? you're the prettiest, most beautiful girl in the world to him, and he tells you so.

"then why... why are you not wanting to have sex?" you blubber around your tears. hormones still wild even after, emotional from the hurt too.

"i know you're hard. i can see it." you point to his crotch, his semi still prominent. "so it's me."

"no, no. what? no." eddie thinks he might throw up, head spinning so fast. "it-it's not you-"

"-yes it is! why else wouldn't you want to? it's because i had a baby, and-and you think-"

"-don't." eddie's throat is tight, swallowing his heart. "it's- i- i just- i don't want to hurt you."

"hurt me? you are hurting me. you're hurting my feelings because you won't even touch me."

eddie does nearly throw up, swallows bile and it's like his world is turned up side down. he was so fucking scared, petrified, of having sex with you after and accidentally ripping something. that maybe you weren't healed, that the doctor made a mistake, and he'd fuck you and cause you to like, internally bleed and die or something insane. or that he'd just hurt you, that it would hurt and he'd hear you in pain, and he'd never forgive himself.

you'd just given him everything he ever wanted, made the ultimate sacrifice out of love, and he would not- could not hurt you over that. if he did, he'd genuinely be unable to live with himself.

after he finally just tells you that, instead of being so fucking weird, you calm him down. tell him it doesn't hurt, that you'd let him know if it did.

"just... just use your fingers first. and if it hurts, we can stop and i'll go to the emergency room. i promise. you won't hurt me." you tell him, gently cupping his cheek.

and really, it didn't take much convincing after he finally spilled what had been eating at his mind, once you soothed him. i mean, he had also been in agony. every time you'd take off your top or bend over to pick up a toy, he'd have to run to the bathroom because he was so fucking hard.

it was never unattraction, it was genuinely just his own mind and anxieties and spiraling.

[callme-holly]

Can u write some hc’s for dally dating a Curtis!reader👀 also like how her brothers would think of the relationship 👅👅 BTW I LOVEEE UR ACC

𝐝𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐱 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

a/n: honestly thought i already had this posted but guess i was wrong LOL! thank you so much for the request <33

Dallas never really thought he’d fall for you; he knew that as a Curtis sibling, you were very much out of bounds. However, you were always there and he very quickly found himself drawn to you the most, and you seemed to just get him in a way that nobody else does.

He’s a lot softer with you than anyone else, but only in private. He knows that if he ever hurts you, your brothers would be on him like wild animals and he wouldn’t stand a chance against them. 

He’s incredibly protective over you, though it's not in a particularly controlling way. He knows you’ve been raised with your head screwed tight on your shoulders so you can handle yourself, but he still won't stand for anyone bugging you.

He won't ever admit to anyone how much he cares about you, but they can all see it in the little things he does. The way he lets you hold his hand without arguing, or stealing his cigarettes. The way he sometimes hums your favourite song…

He definitely smokes while playing with your hair. It’s incredibly comforting to him and one of the only things Darry will let him get away with under the roof.

He gets jealous very easily, especially if your attention is on someone else, but he won't say it outright. He’ll just linger near you until they get the message.

He’s never allowed in through the front door at night, so he comes through your window instead. Something about sneaking into your room makes him so incredibly smug and you can never really get rid of him.

How your brothers feel:

Darry is not a fan at all and nearly has a damn heart attack when youtell him. While Dally is a good friend of his, he’s convinced the kid is nothing but trouble and not someone you need to be associated with at all. However, after a while, he’ll see how much Dallas actually cares about you, and he’ll ease up a little. There will still be very strict boundaries in place, but he’s a little more approving of the two of you together. As long as you're happy, and the guy treats you right, Darry can learn to be okay with it.

Soda teases you constantly for it, but deep down he has his doubts about the relationship. He knows how Dally can be and his reputation with commitment, and he’s immediately worried for you. He tries to be friendly, but if he catches Dallas acting just a little too bold or reckless around you, he will call him out without any sort of hesitation. However, at the end of the day, as long as you’re happy, Soda’s happy. 

Ponyboy really know what to think; Dally is a close buddy, sure, but close enough to be dating his sister? He doesn’t really understand what you see in the guy, and will always say so when you’re hanging out. After a while, he’ll notice the way Dallas softens up around you, and he thinks it’s preactingeet. He’ll relax a little more to the idea; he still judges the relationship like hell, but he won't ever interfere. 

[bigsoggyboots]

Ephemeral

.

Cowgirl!Sev × Black!CityGirl! Reader

random disclaimer: sorry I dipped for like 2 weeks. I encountered major writers block for the first time and went through a stressful 2 weeks of school. Now I'm sick, had to miss a day and a half of school, and wrote this. You could probably tell what I was reading to have me make an idea like this LMAO.

wc: 774

cw: mentions of drinking.

I referenced so many songs I have to put a list:

SAY SOMETHING - TWICE

Brave - TWICE

Green Eyes -Erykah Badu

Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You - Erykah Badu

SAPPY - RED VELVET

an: I said a lot already but the image below is one i edited using Picsart for the first time. It's free to use lol.

“Who woulda’ thought..” Sevika's words brought you away from the scenery before you. She still looked ahead, gripping your hand a little tighter. “..that all I needed was a city girl to show me this.”

You looked ahead, at the rain you both couldn't bear to look away from, then back at her. “Show you what?”

You saw a smile creep on her face before a chuckle left her. “How to find contentment in the mundane.” You blink in surprise. “You think I ever sat and watched the rain with anyone else?”

You turn and feel the blush fill your cheeks as you watch the rain she was talking about. You hated when this happened; when you'd get flustered and grow acutely aware of every sensation. And fortunately so, Sevika did that to you.

Since the day she reeled you in on her horse to now in the early foggy morning on her porch swing.

God, it's a love-hate feeling.

You knew she was watching you, those perfect steel eyes swallowing you whole. She was waiting for you to say something.

‘Please say something you blundering fool.’

“I know the feeling,” You smile, your gaze meeting hers. Neither one of you looked away. “I hadn't known something like that until I met this girl.” Sevika grimaced at your words, the huff leaving her making you chuckle.

“The work I had to do was long, hard, and exhausting. Day in and day out, I did damn near the same things. Wake up, eat, feed the animals, do chores, sleep, repeat.” You saw the way her face softened. You'd be lying if you said it wasn't heartwarming. “I was bored of it all.”

She gripped your hand a little tighter, egging you on. She scooted in closer. Maybe a wrists length away from you now. If you weren't so desperate to kiss her, you wouldn't have calculated that so fast.

“Then there was this one night in the barn. We both got drunk as shit, and she told me all her secrets that night.” Sevika forgot about that. She thought you did too. You told her the day after you did. Liar. “I don't think I'll ever forget that night. The blush on her face, the open wrinkly shirt,” Your eyes trace around her lips. “the smeared lipstick on her lips.” You played a dangerous game there and Sevika chuckled at your bravery.

“Anyways, the night was boring. But, for the first time, I loved it.”

The rain picked up and so did Sevika's smile. You've never seen her so open with you, and the comfort that it brought you was better than any touch could ever give.

“I wanted to live in that night for the rest of my nights. I've never wanted to drink with anyone else but that country girl.”

The rain filled the silence the two of you didn't bother to disturb. What else more could be said? 3 years of feelings were just spat into the air. You couldn't feel simultaneously more uncomfortable and so proud of yourself.

Yet, you both still held the same distance. You feel the shaking in her hand as she forces her hand to still.

Why is she shaking? Why is she waiting?

Then it hit you.

She's waiting for permission.

“Kiss me? Please?” Your voice comes out in an embarrassing squeak. Her lips encapsulates yours before you can even think.

☆

Southern drawl soothes you, puffy lips infuse you, and Ms. Cowgirl can't take her eyes off of you. Nothing but you.

Sevika's too good to be true. You wish you could remember how many kisses were being exchanged, out of either happiness or lust, so you could possibly keep it somewhere in the back of your mind.

“You're smotherin’ me.” You joke as the dogs bark. Even they grew tired of your sappy shenanigans.

The sun peeked out now, the sunrises glow decorating itself on you and Sevika's complexion. It was beautiful seeing how the sun creeped on your figures.

Sevika didn't bother to say a thing, pressing one more quiet kiss to your collarbone. While you stared ahead, Sevika kept her gaze to you. Her laugh was mischievous, prying your gaze away for a moment.

You feel something being placed on your head, and as you felt the object, you realized what Sevika was missing.

Her hair was free now, a little ruffled with small fly-aways; and now she could hardly contain the smirk forming.

Ephemeral was this moment. In your mind, you took a million snapshots as she said her next words.

“You're mine beautiful. And I'm yours. Ain't nothin’ gon’ change that.”

☆

[zepskies]

Omg first of all, thanks so much for shouting out As Tradition Dictates, my lovely!! I have more Eomer coming in the near future. 😘

But first *rubs hands together* time to dig into this delectable love triangle...

Dear LORD you didn't have to do me like this from the onset with that opening scene of Butcher. 🥵

No man his age should look that good. 

Correct. 👆🏽 Why is it that rugged men in their 40s attract me more than men my own age. 🫠🫠

Your mind starts to slip into a fantasy of a shirtless Butcher riding horseback across a desolate plain, his dark hair long, and a sword strapped to his saddle commanding a group of riders behind him to his every whim. Before scooping you up onto his saddle to ride with him, his strong arm wrapped around your waist, and his face buried in the soft skin of your neck, his rough whisper in your ear a grating caress as he-

lmfao Eomer, is that you? ("romantasy" ftw! 😏❤️‍🔥)

The specifics weren’t important, let’s just say that there was a miscommunication and what the four of you thought was a supe who could turn into a single locust, was actually able to turn into a swarm of locust so thick you couldn’t see an inch in front of your face. 

lol this is one of my favorite aspects of reading/writing in The Boys fandom - everyone's creativity on creating our own fictional supes that cause mayhem for the boys. 😆😆 (Not "a reenactment of the eighth plague" 💀💀💀)

Outside the cabin there was a small patch of wildflowers that fluttered in the strong wind that blew from the East, an overgrown garden where tomato plants, potatoes, and herbs grew without care, and a small front yard that was more of a grassy clearing.

Can always trust you to give beautiful descriptions of flora and fauna. 🪴💚

Well… a lot inexperienced. You’d never been in a relationship before, never really done anything before because there wasn’t time when you were in school getting your degree, not to mention you had spent the last two years imagining yourself in a relationship with a man who didn’t know you existed.

Sigh. I can deeply relate to that first part, as you know lol.

Ben chuckles under his breath where he sits beside you in the other rocking chair, leaning back with one of his hands behind his head. His muscles tense in the black t-shirt as he adjusts his arm. 

Girl stop torturing me lmfao. (But actually don't stop though) "Big hands" indeed. 🥵

Ben saw straight through her though and I'm living for their dynamic! lol

“He could catch an earful of us tonight. I’d be happy to fuck you. It’d give me something to do.” Ben takes another hit of his joint, the smoke making you scrunch your nose in distaste, while he gives you an appreciative once over. “Fuck knows the only entertainment I’ve had for three fucking days is my hand and it would be good to have a nice tight-“

Oh how magnanimous of him. 🙄 Like yes, let's all jump (literally) on that opportunity to debase ourselves for his entertainment.

...But of course, there's also that whole ridiculously attractive factor that makes Ben difficult to resist, even though he's a complete asshole loll.

You’d tried the usual things… Leaving the room as soon as he walked in to avoid a conversation. Gone completely mute when he asked you a question. Pretended you didn’t see him whenever he walked into a room. Tried to bring him coffee, but then chickened out and drank his and yours and then immediately had to go to the bathroom to avoid shitting your pants while having heart palpitations.

OMFg. That last one is so real! 🤣🤣🤣 I feel for her for real. I wonder how Ben's actually going to help her self-confidence. 💗

“I don’t think you’re a monster Ben.” You sigh. “I just- I don’t have powers and you’re kinda strong and I-.” You take a deep breath to steady your voice. “I don’t think that you’d hurt me on purpose. But-” Ben’s hand comes out to touch your chin, tilting your gaze up to him and stopping the bicycle of babbling you were about to ride around the block. Your eyes widen slightly with the contact, you weren’t used to people touching you, certainly not like this. 

Awww this melted me so much! She's not in love with him yet, but I think he's gonna bring it out of her on accident with stuff like this loll. Also big surprise on how he said she didn't have to do anything she didn't want to do. 💚💚 I half-expected him to suggest exactly what she could do for him if she was so inclined. 😆

“Sweetheart, you’re about to find out just how smooth I am.”  What have I gotten myself into?

Oh my God, YESSS. She's in so deep already and I can only imagine where you'll take this next if you choose! I can say for sure that I'd love to see how this little scheme unfolds lol.

Promise Not To Fall In Love With Me

Pairing: Soldier Boy x f!reader and a little bit of Billy Butcher x f!reader

Prompt: "I find him very attractive." /"I'm standing right here"/ "I know."

Requested by: @angrydragon90

Tropes: Fake Dating, Pining.

Summary:  When you first joined Butcher's team the last thing you expected was to develop a crush on him, but after two years of pining, you get a proposition from the last person you'd expect to care.

Word Count: 5K

Warnings: I'm gonna label this 18+ just in case (I don't really think it is). Some cursing, Sexual innuendo, References to sex, Over glorification of a man's shirtless body (I'm not complaining) Reader is a little anxious/anxiety/socially awkward? Drug use/Drinking (Soldier Boy), Soldier Boy being Soldier Boy (He's a warning, we all know it and somehow still love him for it).

Note: This is told from Reader's perspective. Any references to the reader is made using you or your. I tried my best to proofread, but nobody's perfect. If you don’t like, don’t read, but if you do like, you’re my favorite!

Internal monologue is in italics and is in first person.

Main Masterlist

Dean Winchester Masterlist

Prompt Celebration Masterlist

A/N: This is the third fic for my prompt celebration! This one was requested the incredible @angrydragon90 💗 Had to do something with a little bit of Valentine's Day spirit, but I'm going to be honest, this one turned into something that I didn't expect... let me know what y'all think. I also was thinking about @zepskies fic As Tradition Dictates for the more *ahem* gratuitous descriptions of Butcher 😉

Butcher’s muscles rippled over his bare chest and broad shoulders with every swing of the mighty axe down to the earth. Each strike of the axe against wood sent chips of bark flickering in the air around him like sparks. Sweat rolled down his sun kissed skin curving in the dips of his muscular torso, along the tensing muscles of his back, and through the dusting of hair on his torso, before disappearing into the waistband of the dark jeans hung low on his hips. 

Heat kisses your cheeks and darkens the skin the longer you watch him and you bite your lip hard to keep the appreciative sigh of the scene in front of you at bay. But it does little to stop your eyes which rove over the rugged man chopping wood. 

No man his age should look that good. 

Butcher props one of his feet up on the tree stump he’s been using as a table oblivious to your attention, shouldering the axe for a moment to glance at the stack of firewood he’d chopped, looking like a mighty warrior surveying his lands. 

Your mind starts to slip into a fantasy of a shirtless Butcher riding horseback across a desolate plain, his dark hair long, and a sword strapped to his saddle commanding a group of riders behind him to his every whim. Before scooping you up onto his saddle to ride with him, his strong arm wrapped around your waist, and his face buried in the soft skin of your neck, his rough whisper in your ear a grating caress as he-

You clear your throat, cheeks darkening crimson, and take in a shaky breath to dissipate the daydream that usually starred in several of your fantasies. The same ones that probably came from the romantasy book that you’d brought along on this trip and were too embarrassed to read when anyone else was awake.

He raises a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow, shuffling it back through his hair that turns a chestnut brown in the light of the setting sun that flickered through the thick forest surrounding the small cabin you were all staying in.

Oh to be a drop of sweat.

You think mournfully, taking a long sip of your lemonade out of a brightly colored bendy straw, the same lemonade that you’d made in hopes of enticing Butcher over for a break.

It had worked, but only for twenty seconds.

Twenty glorious seconds that you got to bask in Butcher’s presence so close that you could smell the familiar cologne and the scent of sweat clinging to his skin while he drank the lemonade and you tried not to stare at his bare chest for too long. You hoped that Butcher thought the flush on your cheeks had everything to do with the heat and nothing to do with all the things you were imagining him doing to you. 

And then there had been an additional two seconds when Butcher smiled at you and said “Thanks poppet” in the swoon worthy accent of his that made your knees weak before he sauntered back over to the woodpile and you watched him go shamelessly. 

Hughie says something to Butcher you can’t hear, but it makes Butcher laugh. He throws his head back with a wide grin that makes you sigh to yourself again, hands tensing where they sit poised over the tangle of wires in your lap. 

You were supposed to be working on a new gadget to help grapple up buildings, one that you and Frenchie had designed together, but you were distracted by Butcher. 

You were always distracted by him. 

It had been three days since Butcher, Soldier Boy, Hughie, and you arrived at the cabin in the middle of nowhere after a mission went wrong. The specifics weren’t important, let’s just say that there was a miscommunication and what the four of you thought was a supe who could turn into a single locust, was actually able to turn into a swarm of locust so thick you couldn’t see an inch in front of your face. 

You had a sneaking suspicion that MM and Frenchie had something to do with the miscommunication, given how eager they had been to stay behind at headquarters and do paperwork, and the secretive smiles they had shared at the briefing before your team left.

But needless to say, none of you had been eager to live through a reenactment of the eighth plague and all decided to lay low to consider your options, while hoping the locust supe didn’t decimate all of the corn in the midwest.

You shudder remembering the crawl of the scratchy legs along your skin, the flapping of millions of wings like the beat of a drum, the crunch of locusts underfoot, and the low pitched hum of the swarm that vibrated so loud it made you feel your body shaking from the inside out. 

At this point I would have taken a swarm of guinea pigs.

The cabin wasn’t the worst place you’d stayed at in all the time you’d worked with Butcher. There was running water and several rooms inside including two bedrooms with lumpy pillows and mattresses with creaking springs, a living room with a sagging floral couch, and a threadbare kitchen with dusty cabinets and doors that fell off whenever someone tried to open one. 

Outside the cabin there was a small patch of wildflowers that fluttered in the strong wind that blew from the East, an overgrown garden where tomato plants, potatoes, and herbs grew without care, and a small front yard that was more of a grassy clearing. 

Sure the cabin had it’s quirks, but the real problem was that the four of you were trapped here in the middle of summer with a generator that only did so much for electricity, but had no air conditioning whatsoever, which meant it was cooler to sit outside on the porch than inside the sweltering cabin. 

Overall, it had been three days of nothing, but listening to Soldier Boy bitch about the lack of extracurricular activities, three days of nothing but hearing the soft chuckle under Hughie’s breath when he texted Annie, and three days of nothing but you lusting after a man who was twice your age chopping wood.

Why was he chopping wood when it was so hot and none of you needed it… You had no idea, but you figured that the universe was finally throwing you a bone because you got to watch him do it.

The porch was cooler than sitting inside. There were two creaky rocking chairs that faced the overgrown “front yard” that was more of a clearing and the breeze did weave under the overhang of the roof to wick the sweat that gathered at the back of your neck, but the problem was, it was impossible for you to feel anything but warm, especially with what was unfolding in front of you. 

The weather isn’t the only thing heating up.

You think to yourself watching Butcher lean down to pick up another piece of wood, admiring the way his worn dark jeans cup his muscular ass.

Fuck, I’m just as bad as Soldier Boy. 

The truth was, you’d been crushing on Butcher for the better part of two years since the moment the two of you met on your first day when you’d tripped and dropped the giant pile of blueprints you were carrying to your desk and he was the only one who stopped to help you pick them up. 

After Homelander had been stripped of his powers and exposed for the narcissistic psychotic freak he was, you’d started working at Supe Affairs, thinking that it was the perfect way for you to make a difference in a world reeling from the revelation. It had shaken quite a few people to know that the so-called heroes they looked up to were in fact just as crooked as a line drawn by an elephant on a tricycle. 

But you liked your job… sometimes. 

Sure, the pay sucked, the benefits were dismal and the hours were long, but you didn’t care about any of that. You felt like you were making a difference, using the engineering degree that your dad had insisted on for something other than trying to figure out how to build a bridge that withstood the force of a punch from someone as strong as Homelander. 

And you hadn’t meant to develop a crush on William Butcher of all people, you swore that each day to yourself, but it happened without warning. He was nice to you, he always had your back on missions, and sometimes when you were working on something after hours on a mission- like the gadget in your lap- Butcher would sit with you while everyone else slept, nursing a glass of whatever it was he had, and he always made you feel like a valued member of the team.

Yes, he might be a little rough around the edges, but you liked that about him, that he didn’t pull punches, rather he told it like it was. It was refreshing in the world you lived in when everyone else was so afraid of offending someone that they just kept their mouths shut. 

But the problem was that you were younger than him and a little inexperienced. 

Well… a lot inexperienced. You’d never been in a relationship before, never really done anything before because there wasn’t time when you were in school getting your degree, not to mention you had spent the last two years imagining yourself in a relationship with a man who didn’t know you existed.

That might be a little harsh, he knew you existed, obviously, but rather he didn’t see you as anything more than a teammate or at least like a little sister. The nicknames that he called you were all some form of “kiddo” or “poppet.” Nothing like the things you’d read about men calling the women they loved in books or heard in movies. 

The most experience you had in the realm of love and relationships was binge watching Sex and The City (you could quote it by heart), flipping through Cosmopolitan Magazine and other articles about love on the internet like they were opioids, and reading through romance novels reverently as if they held the secrets of the universe. 

Not to mention the draft of the romance novel on your computer… but you’d go to the grave before anyone ever saw that, and if they did see it you’d take them with you. 

Reading about relationships was easier than having one, at least that was what you told yourself to feel better. It also didn’t help that you’d seen two out of three sisters married with kids, with the third one getting married in a few weeks and you without even a shadow of a date for the wedding.

That meant you would be stuck at the awkward reject table again with your weird fourth cousin who always came on to you and tried to show you the rooster tattoo he had on his hip bone, your dad’s brother who cleaned his dentures in public after he ate and his wife who always asked you what you were “doing” with your life and curled her lip up in distaste no matter what you said, and the gaggle of their ungrateful children who were always sticky for some reason and chewed with their mouths open while spilling food all over the table like cavemen.

Sitting there with them made facing the locust supe more appealing.

But even with the pressure of trying to find someone, anyone to take, you couldn’t muster up the courage to tell Butcher how you felt about him. 

Butcher glances over as if he can sense you and you immediately drop your eyes to the bundle of gears and wires in your lap pretending to fiddle with something that doesn’t need to be fixed.

Yes, because that’s the way I’m going to win him over, by making absolutely no eye contact. Perfect, masterful. What can go wrong?

What the books, magazines, tv shows, and movies didn’t prepare you for was how to find the courage to talk to someone of the opposite sex without feeling like your tongue was going to drop out of your mouth or like you were going to throw up. 

You wait a few beats until you’re sure that he’s no longer looking at you before you raise your head to watch Butcher again. 

Ben chuckles under his breath where he sits beside you in the other rocking chair, leaning back with one of his hands behind his head. His muscles tense in the black t-shirt as he adjusts his arm. 

“What?” You ask him. 

He exhales a long and obnoxious cloud of foul smelling smoke from the joint he has in his hand. “I think you’re a hypocrite.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re out here eye-fucking that asshole and you yell at me for staring at you.” He chuckles with a wide smirk as he takes another hit from the blunt.

How can he smoke that? It’s like 100 degrees out here!

“I am not!” You reply as loudly as you dare, glancing over to Butcher to make sure that he didn’t hear Ben’s comment, anxiety prickling along the back of your neck, but he’s still talking to Hughie about something. “And you don’t just stare at me! You come up behind me like some gremlin out of hell, with your big hands and-”

“We both know how much you like the attention doll.”

“I do not!” Your cheeks flare bright red. 

The only downside to working on Butcher’s team was sitting directly next to you. When you found out that you’d be working with Soldier Boy, one of your dad’s favorite heroes, you were excited to meet him, and then you had and he turned into another giant disappointment. He was loud, brash, short-tempered, rude, and was always either ogling you, coming on to you, smoking something, or drinking. 

You supposed it could be worse. You didn’t hate him, and you got along with him, but he was always around. The plus side was that Ben was the one of the only people you didn’t have a hard time talking to.

Yes, he was attractive, but his particular lifestyle didn’t appeal to you and for that reason whatever nerves you had about talking to attractive men of the opposite sex evaporated when it came to Ben. 

It was unfortunate that such a skill was wasted on him of all people.

“I just-” You hesitate, eyes dropping back down to the grappling device in your lap, not sure why you’re about to admit this to Soldier Boy when you haven’t been able to admit it to anyone else. 

Probably because I’m sick of singing the line from Frozen “conceal don’t feel” over and over in my head.

“I find him extremely attractive.” You mumble on a shaky breath. 

“I’m sitting right here.” The frown in Ben’s voice is prominent, but it only makes you roll your eyes at him. 

“I know.” Your eyebrows furrow together. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Why are you looking at him when you could have my full attention.” He leans forward, dark hair falling forward into his eyes, mouth pulling up in a confident smirk. "I mean there's nothing else to fucking do, might as well do me."

Your cheeks flush with his words, but you tilt your head to the side to study him, eyes slipping over his rugged features. Tracing over the neatly trimmed beard on his cheeks, the brilliant green eyes that seemed to glow, the way his muscular body filled out his black t-shirt and blue jeans, the soft dusting of freckles that contrasted the hardness of the man he was flecked over his skin, and his full lips that are curved up in a sinful smirk that would make even the strongest woman crumble. 

But not you. Ben was… Ben. He was brash, obnoxious, handsy, impatient, and disrespectful. 

At least, that’s what you thought.

Sure you didn’t work with him often, but you believed you had a pretty good grasp on the kind of person he was. You did, right?

“You’re not my type Benny.” Your eyes flick back to the project in your lap, moving your fingers deftly through the wires of the internal mechanism.

Ben recoils at the use of his nickname, but he recovers with a low chuckle. “Don’t call me that and I’m everybody's type.”

“Not mine. I don’t like supes.”

You weren’t sure if that was 100% true. You liked Kimiko. What you meant to say was that you didn’t like supes like him. Supes that used his powers without care for the consequences, Supes like Homelander who didn’t give a shit who got hurt as long as the job was done. 

And you weren’t a supe, which meant that if you were with a supe there was always the possibility of you dying during sex or dying before you had sex in the first place. Your job also presented the possibility of you dying before you’d had sex, but you weren’t going to let that hold you back.

“But Butcher has-” Ben begins to say.

“Temporary powers. Not all the time.” You correct, unable to stop your eyes from drifting back over to where Butcher has begun to start swinging the axe again. “And look at him. Fuck, he’s over there like Paul Bunyan, rugged, chopping wood-” You sigh continuing to watch the man who probably has no idea you exist.

Ben rolls his eyes. “I could do that.”

You don’t pay Ben any attention, because Butcher is bending over again and you bite the inside of your cheek hard. 

Ben sits there for another few beats watching you watch Butcher. The wind chimes that hang above your heads jingle merrily as the breeze picks up once more bringing the smell of the wild flowers and wet earth from the forest surrounding the cabin. 

“You know I could help you.” Ben says slowly.

Your eyes flick back to Ben from Butcher in confusion. “Help me?”

What is he talking about? Does he think he can figure out how to fix the grapple gun? The other day he couldn’t figure out how to open the automatic trunk of a car and he just ripped the trunk door right off.

“Get him.” Ben nods his head in Butcher’s direction, but you’re still confused.

“How?”

And why? Why does Soldier Boy want to help me of all people?

“Well, I could help you make him jealous.” Ben leans towards you, his eyes sweeping once over you as he does, lingering too long on your chest and the edge of the jean shorts you were wearing.

“And how would you do that?”

“Well for starters you could come sit on my lap baby, see how you like it.” Ben winks. “Take me for a little ride.”

“Pass.” You roll your eyes. 

“Oh I see you want to have a more advanced lesson.” He smiles, scooting his chair towards yours, a dull scrape of wood on wood, so now his knee is touching yours. “He could catch an earful of us tonight. I’d be happy to fuck you. It’d give me something to do.” Ben takes another hit of his joint, the smoke making you scrunch your nose in distaste, while he gives you an appreciative once over. “Fuck knows the only entertainment I’ve had for three fucking days is my hand and it would be good to have a nice tight-“

“No thanks.” You interrupt, face flushing when you imagine what he was about to say.

Ben stiffens in surprise. “What?”

“I’m good.” You shrug. “I’m gonna get him the old fashioned way.”

The same old fashioned way that I’ve been using for the past two years and had absolutely no results.

“And what way is that? Pining after him and hoping that one day he’ll finally notice you?” Ben scoffs. “I can see how well that’s working for you doll-face. How long have you been working with him?”

“Two years-”

“Fuck, two years?” Ben sputters. “You should just tell him that you want him to fuck you.” 

“That won’t work.”

Ben’s face scrunches in confusion, the joint clasped in between his thumb and forefinger forgotten. “Why the hell not?”

“Because-” You glance down at your hands, thumb running along the jagged edge of the grappling hook slightly embarrassed. The last thing you wanted to tell Soldier Boy was that you were a virgin. The guy would mock you endlessly. “Because I’m younger than him and he’s-”

He’s experienced. 

“So? You think that he hasn’t thought about fucking you?” Ben takes a long sip from the whiskey sitting beside his chair. “He’d be lucky to have a little piece like you.”

You blink in surprise. It was the closest to a compliment that Ben had ever given you. He did tend to compliment your figure whenever you were around, but you usually ignored that because he did that to everyone. 

Truthfully, the thought of dating Ben didn’t appeal to you at all, but the thought of using him to make Butcher jealous was not a terrible one. And at this point, you didn’t have anything to lose. 

Well… except THAT, but you wanted it to be special, at least that’s what you’d always told yourself.

You sigh, a little frustrated, watching Butcher out of the corner of your eye swing the axe in a glorious arch to the earth. You weren’t sure how to get Butcher’s attention. You’d tried the usual things…

Leaving the room as soon as he walked in to avoid a conversation.

Gone completely mute when he asked you a question.

Pretended you didn’t see him whenever he walked into a room.

Tried to bring him coffee, but then chickened out and drank his and yours and then immediately had to go to the bathroom to avoid shitting your pants while having heart palpitations.

Basically the social anxiety was working wonders on the office romance you wanted so badly. 

“Ben?” You say tentatively, hands tightening on the contraption in your lap. At this rate you were never going to fix it and Butcher was going to have to figure out how to fly. 

“Yes, gorgeous?” Ben raises an eyebrow. The blunt is between his lips now and he’s looking at you curiously.

“If we did pretend to be…” You swallow nervously. 

“Fucking?” He leans forward eagerly, eyes twinkling with interest.

Well… I’ve never understood what it meant when someone wrote “his eyes darkened” until this very moment. 

“Dating” You correct holding up a finger.

Does his mind always go to the gutter?

You remember everything you think you know about Ben.

Yes. Yes it does.

Ben leans back with a frown. “I don’t date.”

“Well it wouldn’t be real! You’d just be helping me make him jealous and it would be nice to have a little practice maybe…”

“Practice?” He looks confused. It wasn’t the first time he had in this conversation or within the last five minutes, but like hell you were about to admit without at least one drink to Soldier Boy the extent of your dating life.

“Yeah. I’m not the best at talking to people or-”

“You’re talking just fine right now.”

“You’re different.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you annoy me and I don’t know you’re easier to talk to for some reason!” 

“Thanks.” Ben says dryly. 

By now all the anxious energy has begun to pop and crackle against your skin at the thought of what the two of you could be doing and at the thought of you two actually pulling this off and you having a shot with Butcher. Not just a shot in hell, a real shot.

“But if you’re serious about helping me get him-“ You continue.

“I was.”

It was odd that he was the one who had suggested this in the first place, and even weirder that he didn’t seem hesitant at all to be doing this. 

Maybe he thinks that we’re going to have sex. Your throat tightened at the thought, eyes widening, your nerve endings electrifying with anxiety. Oh holy fuck what if he thinks that if we do this he’ll get to do whatever he wants to me?

You clear your throat, heart beating just a little bit harder in your chest. The entire situation was making you regret the extra cup of coffee you had this morning. “What exactly would I have to do?” You don’t recognize your voice. It comes out a little more wobbly and just a little more tentative than it was. 

You didn’t know what Ben was expecting you to do and you didn’t want to say yes, only for him to force you into sleeping with him like he’d suggested earlier, the most you'd thought the two of you would do is just make out a little-

Oh holy fuck then we’d have to kiss and I don’t know if I’m a good kisser and he’s definitely kissed more than one person not to mention he’s-

The thought made you flush to the roots of your hair. 

Ben hesitates, eyeing you and you wonder if he can hear the deranged monologue inside your head or if he can hear just how hard your heart was beating. You hoped not. 

“You wouldn’t have to do anything, doll. I’m not going to force you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.” There’s something genuine in his eyes when he answers your question, something that you’d never noticed before. 

Your mouth drops open in surprise. 

It wasn’t that you believed that Ben was that kind of man, but rather that what he just said to you might have been the most caring thing that he’d ever uttered in front of you. He was the last person that you’d expect to care about someone being uncomfortable or care if someone else was okay with everything that was happening in the bedroom.

Maybe I don’t know him as well as I think I do.

In all honesty you only knew the way Ben acted, you didn’t know anything about his life. The man kept his cards closer to his chest than a well-seasoned card player and his poker face, forget it. You couldn’t crack that combination even if you wanted to. 

Everything else you'd heard about him was through the grapevine of gossip at work. None of it was first hand.

Ben sighs and shakes his head at you as if he’s a little annoyed with himself for saying that out loud. “But I still think it would be easier if you just told him that you wanted him to fuck you. Would’ve worked on me.”

“I’m not good at that sort of thing.”

And it was true. You could take down a target, diffuse a bomb in less than ten seconds with a thin mint and a bobby pin, but saying something out loud like that to something else made you feel nauseous.

Ben hesitates again and in his hesitation the anxiety and embarrassment starts to come soaring back into your chest.

You were asking Soldier Boy, Soldier Boy, to pretend to date you so Billy Butcher would fall in love with you. 

Well kids, this must be what rock bottom feels like. I might as well just pray that the locusts come back to take me away. 

“Fine.” Ben states. 

“Really?” Your eyes widen.

He shrugs, but doesn’t answer.

“We’d have to have rules.” You blurt, and Ben makes a face.

“Rules? Never been too good with those, Sweetheart.”

“And I’d need you to promise that you wouldn’t-” 

You lose your train of thought in the wind chimes that rattle over your head and the sound of Butcher’s laugh.

“Wouldn’t?” He arches an eyebrow.

“Lose control.”

Honestly, sometimes you were a little afraid of Ben. You’d never say that out loud or admit it, but he was stronger than Homelander.

You knew Ben's reputation around the office- heard the hushed whispers of the women in the break room who said he was the best fuck of their lives, heard the horror stories of what he did to his old team, and had seen first hand what his temper was like. You also knew about his powers and worried that Ben might have a little bit of a control problem or at the very least anger management issues.

“I’m not going to fucking hurt you if that’s what you think.” Ben growls, his eyes narrowing at your insinuation. “I’m not some fucking monster, doll.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster Ben.” You sigh. “I just- I don’t have powers and you’re kinda strong and I-.” You take a deep breath to steady your voice. “I don’t think that you’d hurt me on purpose. But-”

Ben’s hand comes out to touch your chin, tilting your gaze up to him and stopping the bicycle of babbling you were about to ride around the block. Your eyes widen slightly with the contact, you weren’t used to people touching you, certainly not like this. 

Keep it together… 

“I wouldn’t hurt you by accident either.” Ben’s green eyes are focused on yours, and you can see just a sliver of emotion behind them that you can’t identify. “But if we’re going to do this you gotta promise me one thing.”

“What?” Your voice comes out like a squeak.

“You’ve got to promise not to fall in love with me.” He sends you a saucy wink that makes you want to punch the strongest man on earth, instead you settle for pushing him back from you.

But you’re not prepared for the wave of disappointment you feel when he lets go of your chin. 

“I’m not in any danger of that Benny. You’re not half as smooth as you think you are.” You start to lean back in your chair, but Ben reaches out to grab your wrist, his touch surprisingly gentle, the contact burning through your body, as he pulls you forward, so close you can smell his cologne. Somehow it's something that smells classic and modern at the same time, a hint of spice that tickles your nose and makes your throat tight. 

His voice lowers into a purr that vibrates through his chest, his next words expelled on a warm breath that weaves through the air between the two of you. 

“Sweetheart, you’re about to find out just how smooth I am.” 

What have I gotten myself into?

A/N: Again, not what I was expecting, but I really love this one y'all and I probably laughed way too hard at bits when I was writing it.

Thank you so much for reading! Likes, Reblogs, and Comments are not required, but are always appreciated! I love hearing what y'all think! 😊 If you'd liked to be added to my taglist please let me know!

Taglist

@roseblue373 @livya99 @mrsjenniferwinchester @zepskies @waynes-multiverse

@jollyhunter

[acourtofthought]

A fun post to get away from the ridiculous angry people.

Do you have any theories or thoughts on Lucien’s power levels or his role to play in the books to come?

Do you think he has the potential to be as powerful or more powerful than Rhys? Like Rhys claims mate bonds might just be a way to broth strong offspring. And we know that and Tamlin both had mate bond parent and both of them are extremely strong and powerful. If Helion and LoA are mates than Lucien is the product of another mate bond pair having offspring. And one parent is from the seasonal court and the other is from a solar court and LoA is stated to be from a powerful line of fire users (and I believe she is from the true line of Autumn high lords and that Beron is from a branch line similar to Rhys saying at some point the high lords line branched off from Keir’s family onto Rhys’ family).

Do you think his fire and possible healing (although I think Elain will have strong healing magic) will play a role in the defeat against any remaining Daglen (Koschei) in the books?

Do you think Narben will become Lucien’s sword? Narben means scar/scars in German.

I feel this one is random but were you at all frustrated that Rhys has a red headed girl in his dungeon that can glow and yet not once did he think maybe I should connect her to the other read head that can glow in my court, lol?

Do you think that the day court powers are also connected to the starborn fae line? In HoFaS after Bryce receives her full star power her light was described as a sun multiple times.

Sorry for all these random Lucien and acotar lore asks just wanted to get your thoughts or discuss theory points. 😊😊😊

Hi!!!!

I don't think anyone will ever be as powerful as Rhys since Sarah made it such a point to mention how he's the most powerful HL in Prythian history (though.....you never know, Amren did make that comment that if Rhys were not going to claim what was his birthright the Cauldron's benevolence would be extended to another) but I do think Lucien will have more influence than Rhys.

I don't think Lucien would need to be "the most powerful HL in history" to make what could arguably be the biggest impact in current history. That's not to discredit what Rhys and Feyre did before / during the war, they were willing to sacrifice their lives to save everyone and while that's huge, their grand gestures weren't really enough to usher in an era of peace. As things stand right now there's still a lot of turmoil across their lands. Spring is still in a state of unrest, Beron is scheming to take over more land, the fae on the continent are looking to expand their territories and the humans are trying to figure things out now that the wall is down. While Feysands actions helped them obtain tentative peace, it doesn't seem like they've been able to secure it as a long term thing and I think that's where Lucien (and Elain) come in.

Power is a necessary thing to be taken seriously, knowing that someone with power cannot easily be pushed around, but I don't think Lucien has any desire to really wield that power against others, even those he does not care for, in an effort to have them follow him / do his bidding / accomplish his goals (in the way Rhys used his power to intimidate those around him). With Lucien, I think his biggest strengths are the desire he has to do right by everyone (he wasn't only concerned for Feyre in ACOMAF but all those in Spring, has tried to keep Tamlin from falling apart, helps the NC regardless of his affiliation to Autumn / Spring, helps the humans, etc), his likeable nature (even when Feyre was mad at him she said it was difficult to hate him), and his intelligence. To me, Lucien's greatest strength will come from securing peace for everyone and acting as the one who oversees that peace. With that said, I absolutely think he and Elain will be strong enough to defeat Koschei (I'm thinking Elain will stop him / break Vassa's curse in a way that is similar to Yrene stopping the Valg) and Beron.

I have actually been thinking Gwyn will find Narben considering it's rumored to have been lost in the sea when it would not "bend" to Amarantha. A girl who has water heritage and can "beckon" things to her with her song being the one to find and wield Narben seems to write itself.

I have considered either Mor or Lucien ending up with Gwydion. Mor because she could be a female heir to Theia (since her family was the original ruling family before Rhys's and they are cousins) or Lucien if he were written into the High King plot. Fionn had Gwydion when he reigned over the peace of their lands (not necessarily war) and that would be fitting for Lucien, in my opinion. Not to mention (and to your point about Helion / Bryce), it is possible that he's Starborn through Helion (or maybe even the LoA since there were Starborn Autumn fae - maybe Lucien is a Starborn ancestor twice over). Bryce could use the mask because of being Starborn and it seems like one of Helion's ancestors wore the mask, to the point that it may have left an imprint on his blood (even Nesta seemed to be struggling with the pull of the mask in HOFAS after having worn it a few times despite being made so I don't think being Starborn gives you absolute immunity to wield it without consequence after a period of time). Not to mention Bryce's light is often described similarly to Helions.

"Red head that glows and connect her to another red head that glows" made me laugh. But no, I'm not surprised because I don't think Rhys would subject the priestesses to a complete stranger and unknown threat. Also, while I do think he really likes and respects Gwyn right now, I don't think she is someone Rhys would think to talk to about court business. I also don't think he's aware that she glows.

Thank you for the ask!!! ❤️❤️❤️

[mzannthropy]

Anne of the Island Chapter 26

A remarkably short chapter. (Still I had a lot to say about it, lol. I think there was a lot packed into not many words.)

I like it, bc it has the things I would want more of in this book: girls dressing up for an event, exchanging confidences. (Reminds me of that chapter in AOGG when Anne and Diana are in her gable while she's dressing for the concert.) Not that I necessarily like everything they have to say wrt Jonas, but *shrug* whatever.

Anne, this is certainly your night for looking handsome. Nine nights out of ten I can easily outshine you. The tenth you blossom out suddenly into something that eclipses me altogether. How do you manage it?

I love this. Phil's aware of her own beauty but also compliments other women. No jealousy detected. This is abundant thinking, ladies and gentlemen! Someone else's beauty doesn't negate your own.

The dialogue about flowers is very interesting. I know it would seem that Roy sending Anne orchids means he's not the one, but she says he knows what flowers she likes, and that he doesn't usually send orchids, so on some level he does get her. Yet he still sent her orchids. I don't know much about flowers. I wish I did bc I like photographing them and it's maddening not knowing what they are and then having to post them online with "idk what flower this is but it looks pretty so here you go" or "some white/pink/whatever colour flower, enjoy!". Anyway, "he knows I like flowers I can live with. Orchids are only things you can visit with"--it's brilliant, isn't it? Can she only "visit" with Roy?

“Who is Christine Stuart?” “Ronald Stuart’s sister."

Okay, who is Ronald Stuart?

So Gilbert is hanging out with a music student named Christine. I mean, why not. It's his right to spend his own time with whomever he chooses. Anne refused him, so he's looking elsewhere, sorry not sorry. *shrug*

“Get off that cushion instantly, you cat, you! Why don’t you stay down where you belong?”

I'm like that sometimes. When us humans get annoyed, it's cats who receive it all.

The Sarah-cat did not approve of him. She always turned her back on him.

A warning sign? Anne is not specially attached to Sarah-cat. If it was Rusty who didn't like Roy, that would be a red flag. IIRC Sarah-cat was described as regal, so it might just be the case of a cat looking down on a lowly human. (My next door neighbour had this cat who thought he was an emperor, he didn't let anyone pet him and he had a look of utter disdain for humans. Upon seeing me, he would wag the end of his tail and I found this the highest form of honour. Sadly, he has now gone to where all the good cats go... but he will never be forgotten.) We've not been told how Sarah-cat reacts to visitors, so we can't draw any conclusions.

And so we meet Christine Stuart.

“Rose-leaf complexion—starry violet eyes—raven hair—yes, she has them all. It’s a wonder her name isn’t Cordelia Fitzgerald into the bargain!" 

I posted this before, but since we're doing the book club--I think the actress Dagmara Dominczyk represents that:

(On the left it's her as Mercedes in the 2002 film The Count of Monte Cristo.)

Anne comforts herself with the fact that her nose and her figure are better than Christine's.

One's got to wonder why she's so bothered, what do you say, readers?

[synthshenanigans]

What platform do you use to make your art?

Also any tips for very new artists who are bad at art

IbisPaint X!! Its free & im p sure its on most devices (i use my phone for like 90% of my art).

But sometimes ill plan out or make a rough draft of a piece on my tablet. Its an amazon one so its got like NO art apps...at all. But the best ive found thats free & its called ArtFlow!

As for tips about art, im like the worst at answering that since 90% of when im drawing im just fuckin around and attempting to find out. Most I can think of to say is below! [its a bit long oops]

1. Have fun with finding your style. My art style almost changes every year if not like multiple times a year. Hell if you look at how i drew HMS in like, March it looks very different than how i draw them now. But every time it changes i feel more confident in it! Also its just fun sometimes to draw in a different way :}

2. Its 100% chill if you ever feel burntout or feel like ya "lost the touch". Feel like its said a lot but you do get out of that pit (haha get it like the song) eventually and youll prolly even make something ur hella proud of! Also if its not goin great its good to take a br8k and maybe try the next day. Sometimes ya just be in a funk and its best to make sure ur all hydrated n rested. And a much as i don't listen to myself sometimes, those things rlly do help

3. Last thing i can think of is that its sometimes real difficult to find a good reference of somethin. Whether it be like a pose, an outfit or something, you can always use yourself as a ref! For things like a ref to look at or even to use as a base. And of course not everyone like taking a photo of themself (me included) but its not only very helpful and takes less time than searching through pinterest & google for like an hour, but helps you get confident in yourself! Ive never be confident in myself (specially with that gender dysphoria an all) but it helps to take a photo in a pose, outfit or even a half ass cosplay. Gettin used to yourself in a photo might take a bit but it takes you a good way.

Sorry if this didnt help im not quite good at tips and teaching things. If youd like more ideas/help with things like shading or somethin, id be happy to post a vid of like a speedpaint or something on how i color n stuff :}

Hope this helps!!! 💜

[deswhomst]

i once heard someone say andromeda almost made it out unscathed (in the sense that her family survived the first war & ted and tonks only died near the end of the second war) but, honestly, she had already lost one family before all this even started.

i think sometimes people see andromeda as another version of sirius, but their disownments were not the same to me at all. from the top, andromeda was sorted into slytherin. sirius would have spent all his time with the gryffindors and there would have been barely any interactions with regulus while at hogwarts but andromeda was in the same house as both her sisters, and since she was the middle child, there wasn’t even one year where she didn’t have either bellatrix or narcissa at hogwarts with her. i imagine them to be more like weasleys in terms of hanging around the common together & seeing each other a lot throughout the school year. i also imagine that bellatrix showed andromeda around when she started school. point beinggg, andromeda was probably not rebellious by nature and spent all these years close with her sisters.

we know that she was disowned because she married ted, so she didn’t run away while still at school or anything like that. which makes me wonder a lot … when did ted & andromeda start talking? andromeda probably took measures to hide it because it wasn’t acceptable for her to do so … but then i think about if bellatrix caught them meeting up, she would have been disappointed and lectured andromeda but probably wouldn’t have told their parents … like, in bellatrix’s mind, she probably handled the situation herself and andromeda knew bella was clever so either she did stop seeing ted for a while or became extra good at hiding … or maybe bellatrix had already graduated, and it was narcissa who caught them. she would have kept the secret. it would have been quiet disapproval but solidarity nonetheless … just the sisterhood of it all is special to me. another important detail to me is that she was disowned after marriage, so i do imagine a part of her might have hoped they would accept her still. i mean, she was one of three girls, & the other two made respectable marriages so maybe it was fine if she didn’t? and she probably cared more about bellatrix and narcissa accepting her than their parents. but we know they didn’t accept her.

& then obviously she was cast out by everyone she knew and loved </3. she built a new family with her husband and daughter … had them for years but then, eventually, lost them to a war about the same blood purity she first lost her family to. having lost ted & the tonks dying in the span of a few months. bellatrix killing tonks. teddy being an orphan … and !! i also think about how the wizarding war finally ended that day so everyone else would have been celebrating because they were finally free of voldemort and all the death and destruction but andromeda had just lost her twenty five year old daughter, courtesy of her sister.

anyways LOL sorry for rambling i just had too many thoughts and found an excuse to share them.

just thinking about how harry freaked out when he saw andromeda because she looked insanely similar to bellatrix, and then at the battle of hogwarts, bellatrix is the one who ended up killing tonks. the last face she saw, the face of the person who casted the killing curse on her, was her mother’s. just thinking about how narcissa almost lost her son that day but andromeda did lose her daughter, and they both lost their sister. wishful thinking, maybe, but my personal headcanon is that narcissa reached out to andromeda after the second war. she could sympathize with her pain because she had spent the last two years fearing that that would happen to her.

[cy-cyborg]

Toph Beifong doesn’t hold up as disability representation - Disability in the Media

[ID: A screenshot of Toph, a twelve-year-old girl with black hair in a loose, green and tan short-sleeve shirt and shorts, cheering in an arena. Next to text written in a rough, blocky font: "Disability in Media - Toph Beifong Doesn't hold up as disability representation" /End ID]

Avatar the Last Airbender is one of my all-time favourite TV-shows, and Toph is still easily one of my favourite members of Team Avatar. I was a few years younger than Toph when the show first started airing, and being a disabled kid who was into martial arts, constantly being dismissed by my able-bodied opponents and teachers, meant that I connected very strongly with her right from the get-go.

But upon my last couple of rewatches of the series, I began to come to the realisation that my opinions on Toph as a shining example of good disability representation were... well, pretty heavily influenced by my nostalgia for the show and that many aspects of Toph's character just don't hold up today. Which, honestly is fair, the show is nearly 19 years old (if it were a person in my country, it would be old enough to drink) and I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect every part of every character from an 19 year old show to age well. So today I wanted to talk about the things I think Avatar the original Last Airbender did right with Toph, where I think they missed the mark, and what changes I think would need to be made to Toph to make her work for a modern audience.

So let's start with why I think Toph doesn't really hold up as "good disability representation" today, and the elements of her character that just haven't aged as well.

For me, one of the biggest issues I noticed upon rewatching the show, is how often we are told (often by Toph herself) that she is blind, but how infrequently we are actually shown it's impact on her life beyond her bending or outside of jokey contexts. Outside of her bending, we only ever see her blindness impacting her ability to do things like read or write, otherwise, she functionally has full vision -so far as the audience is informed - with the only exceptions being when she's in the air or water (e.g. on Appa or in the submarines) or in loose soil (e.g. the desert). Having places and circumstances where she doesn't have access to her power that allows her to "see" was a step in the right direction, but I do think it would have been better if her seismic sense wasn't quite as accurate, even in the most ideal of circumstances.

But why? Well, I think Suki explains it really well, long before Toph is even introduced. when Sokka says "I should have seen you as a warrior instead of a girl" Suki stops him and says "I am a warrior, but I'm also a girl". Being a warrior and a woman are both important parts of Suki's character, and only recognising her as one or the other means ignoring a big part of who she is, and the same is true for Toph. Being blind is a big part of toph's character that has informed a lot of her life, but so is being a warrior and bending master. Many people see Toph as a warrior or fighter, but ignore her disability, but both are important. She's disabled, and a warrior, and those things don't cancel each other out, the same way being a warrior doesn't diminish Suki's status as a woman.

When the show was still airing though (and even still today) it was very common to see non-disabled fans of the show exclaiming that they honestly forget that Toph is even blind sometimes, with many people going so far as to say that she's not even disabled (and that this was a good thing). While I do think some of that comes from the fact they weren't used to seeing a disabled character as both disabled and an active participant in these kinds of stories, I do think this mostly happened because of the show's lack of, well, showing the impact of her blindness on her daily life and allowing her earthbending and seismic sense to erase the effects of her disability to some extent. It's much harder to forget a character is blind when it impacts their daily life in ways that are shown to the audience. This doesn't have to be in big, showy ways mind you, showing things subtly but consistently works way better than one "very special episode" type setup.

In the show as it is though, the seismic sense functionally gives Toph a perfect image of her surroundings until it's just not available anymore for *plot reasons*.

[ID: A black and white shot of Toph and how she sees the oponent she's fighting, with shockwaves radiating from him towards her to indicate how she's interpreting the scene. Her foe has jumped into the air and now has his hand dug into the ground of an arena, about to launch rocks towards her. /End ID]

In many ways, her picture of the world is better and clearer than what the non-disabled characters can see, leading to this feeling of her disability being erased. It may have been better though if the seismic sense could give her a general idea of big things in her immediate vicinity but she still missed the finer details, functioning at least a little bit more like a tactile/earthy-vibration version of the limited sight some legally-blind people have in real life. Things like a person's position, movement and overall pose would still be "visible" to her in a general sense, as well as big things in the environment (including things underground, since there are a few plot-points that require that), but smaller things like details about objects and creatures, people's facial expressions or what they're doing with parts of their body that have no direct contact with the ground (like their hands) is less clear. On top of this, she may struggle to detect smaller, lighter objects or creatures that realistically wouldn't cause much of a vibration at all. creatures as small and as light as Momo and Hawky for example might be detectable, but "fuzzy" to her, and anything smaller might make enough of a vibration to tell her it's there when it moves, but not enough for her to be able to tell what specifically it is without some other cue (such as sound). There are a few moments in the show that seem to imply this is what they were initially going for, but it's not really consistent, and is directly contradicted in her debut episode, "the blind bandit" when she explains that she can even "see" something as small as the ants off in the distance.

[ID: A shot of Aang, a twelve-year-old bald boy with an arrow tattoo on his head, dressed in a yellow and orange outfit, standing with Toph at night. In the foreground is an anthill will a trail of ants, which Aang is looking for. /End ID]

With an adjustment like what I'm suggesting though, she still serves her narrative purpose of teaching Aang the importance of being able to wait and listen - possibly even more so, as her needing to wait and collect more information in order to get a clearer image before striking, would back-up what Bumi tells Aang that he needs in an earth bending master. It would also still help to illustrate the connectedness of the world, a theme Toph continues to embody heavily in The Legend of Korra, while still showing the ways her disability impacts her more frequently.

When I talked about the "super-crip" trope a while back, I mentioned that one way to avoid the more harmful elements of the trope (where the character's disability is erased by their powers) is to use the ability in question more like a mobility or disability aid than a straight-up cure. The power should help them, but shouldn't make their disability redundant. People are creative and we would find ways to use a superpower or magic to help with our disabilities if it were available in real life, but what's the point of including a disabled character if you're just going to functionally erase their disability? For a character like Toph, I think this is the kind of approach that should be taken with her. Her seismic sense still helps her, but it's not a perfect replacement. (Ironically, I did use Toph as a "good" example of that trope, but I do think after this last rewatch, for the reasons I'm discussing here, I might have to backtrack that a bit).

I considered giving an alternative approach here, to keep the sensitivity of toph's seismic sense as it is in the show as is, but giving it draw-backs such as making her susceptible to sensory overload similar to what autistic people experience. However, while replacing one disability with another can work for some characters and stories, I don't think it's the best adjustment to make for Toph or any blind character, largely thanks to this also being a trope. The "blind (or d/Deaf) person who's other senses become super-human to make up for it" trope is very common in fantasy, sci-fi as well as older martial arts films, and while I'm not really the best person to cover it, I do know that members of both the blind and deaf communities have expressed a lot of frustration with it. Toph already falls into this trope quite a bit, and any suggestions I could make would have just dialled that element up to 11, and fixing one problem with another is never a good idea.

Another thing that actually did bug me for a while, even before my most recent rewatch of the show, is how Toph is treated on the rare occasions she does point out something won't working for her. There are a number of times where Toph advocates for herself and points out that something The Gaang is doing isn't accessible to her or sets a boundary to do with her disability, and she's either left behind, her concerns are brushed off or she's ignored entirely. The three most noticeable examples of this are in the Episodes "The Ember Island Players," "The Library," and Toph and Katara's segment of "Tales of Ba Sing Se."

In the Ember Island Players, Toph complains that the seats they have for the play are too high up and too far away, and she's unable to "see" what's happening on stage. Her friends don't really take any notice of her though except for Katara who tells her not to worry, "I'll tell your feet what's happening."

[ID: A shot of Katara, a fourteen-year-old girl with long brown hair and blue eyes, sitting with Toph, who is sitting with her arms crossed, annoying in a theatre seat. Both Toph and Katara are wearing red and gold, fire-themed outfits. Katara is looking at something off-screen. /End ID]

My problem here is that this particular kind of situation is something that is familiar to a lot of disabled people. Even the least independent disabled people I know get annoyed when their access needs or requests for accommodations, even among friends, are ignored and their pushback is brushed off with "don't worry, I'll just help you!" It's one of the first things that many disabled people tell non-disabled folks wishing to be better allies to us: you offering help instead of actually accommodating us isn't a good thing. We don't want to rely on others if we can avoid it, because honestly, non-disabled people often aren't very good at actually helping or in this case, relaying information to us without training and more often than not, it just results in us being left out. I find it very hard to believe a character as independent as Toph would accept that without any protest, especially considering that is pretty much exactly what ends up happening (even if the show didn't really acknowledge it). Katara never actually conveys anything about the play to Toph, except when she's attempting to throw Toph's words back in her face when she asks for clarification about the actor playing her - which ends up backfiring on her.

[ID: A shot from the same location as before, this time Toph has a huge smile on her face and is leaning on the balcony excitedly while Katara is leaning towards her, annoyed by her reaction. /End ID]

While it would have been better if Toph was actually listened to, it would have been…fine? if a justification was given for why they had to sit there (e.g. to avoid being recognised), if Katara had actually described the play for her. This wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have been better at least. In real life, many movies, TV shows (including this show's sequel series, The Legend of Korra) and other forms of visual media have an Audio Description track that does exactly that. If they weren't going to move for Toph to be able to see better, having Katara describe the play could have introduced kids to the fact this is an option. but instead it's brushed off, and I'll admit, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, even back in 2006.

The Library is a bit more forgivable in my opinion, since Toph is still new to the group, but in this episode, she states that she doesn't want to go inside the spirit library because she isn't able to read and therefor there wouldn't be anything for her to do. However, it still would have been nice to see her friends consider this at all before they actually arrived. They could have (and should have) still gone, but some acknowledgement that they at least thought about the inclusion of their disabled friend would have been nice.

[ID: A shot of Aang, Katara, Sokka and another man are talking while looking down at a map on the table. Meanwhile, Toph is sitting on the other side of the table, completely disinterested as she sips from a large ice cup with her feet up on another chair. /End ID]

Alternatively, I do feel like Wan Shi Tong, a self-proclaimed all-knowing-spirit or his assistants would have been able to point her in the direction of something to interest her, since he does imply books aren't the only form of knowledge he collects.

The reason I mention this though is two-fold. In real life, disabled people are very often left out of "fun" group activities, whether that be in formal settings or in casual ones, like hanging out with friends. If the episode had been framed as "the Gaang learns about the library and decides to track it down," I might have been less critical, but it's specifically framed as something that at least starts out as a kind of break for the team where they all take turns picking out fun things to do so they can rest, and Toph's access needs not being considered at all until they're already there hits a bit close to home, especially since they just end up leaving her outside. Secondly, there's also a stereotype that disabled people (and especially blind people) don't belong in academia and places of learning, such as in this case, libraries. This stereotype is about as old as the concept of organised institutions of learning, and definitely isn't unique to AtLA, but the assumption is often that disabled people wouldn't be interested in more formal methods of learning, so it's not worth accommodating us. With blind people in particular, when I've seen this in media, the premise is often "well I can't read anyway so why bother?" which Toph definitely falls into here with no push-back against the trope.

[ID: A close up of Toph and the rest of the group, Katara, Sokka and Aang standing in a desert. Toph shrugs, looking bored, while the others looks confused and surprised with the exception of Katara, who looks mildly annoyed, standing with her hands on her hips. /End ID]

It does make sense that she would have been resistant to going in, and I'm not saying this episode should have turned Toph into a bookwork akin to Wings of Fire's Starflight (another blind character) or anything. But there was a chance in this episode to push back against some of these assumptions, and I think it's a shame they missed it. How cool would it have been if Toph had mentioned not feeling welcomed in more formal learning spaces because of her disability, which was just reinforced by the way her old earthbending instructor and her parents treated her. She decides to go inside the library anyway as "backup" in case something goes wrong, grumbling about it the whole way down. Wan She Tong starts his introduction mostly the same way, saying humans aren't welcome and Toph makes a snarky comment about it. Wan She Tong, equally offended that this human thinks he, the all-knowing-spirit, wouldn't have considered something, shoots back with an annoyed comment about humans being so self-centred. He explains that spirits come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them have eyes, but they can still access his library. She's not the first sightless being in his study, and he-who-knows-ten-thousand-things knows this too. Once everyone is permitted entry, one of the knowledge seekers shows her to a series of slates about a lost earthbending form that she can actually read (or at least, "see" the pictures on) because it's carved. Or instead of a slate, it's a series of statues outlining the form, similar to what Aang and Zuko find in the episode "The Firebending Masters". Perhaps this form is something that helps her develop metal bending later on, and lays the groundwork for Toph becoming interested in teaching in the comics.

And finally, Toph and Katara's segment of Tales of Ba Sing Se. Katara convinces Toph to go get a makeover with her as part of a girl's day. Overall, this segment of the episode is pretty nice, and I liked that they showed that a person's gender expression (in this case, being a tom-boy) doesn't mean they can't like things outside of what we usually associate with that. Tom-boys can like girly things on occasion, and vice-versa, and I think this is an example of an episode that would seem a bit ham-fisted today, but honestly, was needed in 2006. However, there's a throw away joke where Toph says "as long as they don't touch my feet," and it immediately cuts to show spa workers filing down the calluses on her feet in a way so painful several staff are required to hold her down.

[ID: An image of Toph in a bath robe being held down in a chair by two spa workers while a third scrubs at her feet so hard that she is sweating. Meanwhile Toph is fighting against the two holding her down and has a facial expression like she is in a great deal of pain. /End ID]

this might be a minor thing in the grand scheme of the show, but it's still another example of Toph's boundaries about her disability and her access needs being disrespected by her friends, which the show just doesn't acknowledge it at all. People ignoring Toph's wishes about a part of her body she depends on in a much more direct way that others do is played off like a joke in a montage of otherwise enjoyable and goofy activities and this is a very, very common experience in disability circles.

There are a number of other, much more minor issues that show up with Toph as well, such as the fact she's the only one of the main cast who never has an on-screen (or on-page) relationship. not in the original show, not in any of the comics and not in The Legend of Korra. Again, it's not a big issue on it's own, especially because in AtLA, she's young enough where it's possible that she was just not interested yet, and she does have kids in The Legend of Korra where she mentions a relationship with a man named Kanto (Lin's father). So it is implied she does have some form of relationship eventually, but the issue is that it's never shown on screen or on the page. This feeds into a wider pattern in media of disabled characters being the only ones in their respective cast not given on-screen romantic relationships in stories, and so I still think it's worth pointing out, especially since the creators have had a lot of opportunities to correct that by now.

Toph is also portrayed, pretty much undeniably, as the best earthbener in a way that, at times, comes across almost like the creators felt like they need to compensate for her being on the team "despite" her being blind. This trope is one that I think Toph, at least partially, helped to popularise with the current generation of story tellers: The Disabled Savant. In this trope, disabled characters aren't really given the same room for growth as other characters; they aren't permitted to be average or still learning, they start good and get better. If they do progress, they often become the best, which is the case for Toph. To be fair, everyone in the The Gaang is the best at their respective skill by the end of the first series, which is why I say this is a minor point. She dose, however, have the least amount of on-screen growth in skill out of the whole team. Katara starts out barely able to lift any water at all, let alone actually bend it. Sokka is skilled with weapons from the start but does get his butt handed to him a number of times by others with more experience than him whom he learns from throughout his story arc. Zuko spends most of the early-to-middle of the show having things "blow up in his face" (to use his own words) and being belittled by his family of prodigies. While Aang is an airbending and, to a lesser extent, waterbending prodigy, he fails at pretty much everything else for a while before he starts to find his confidence - especially earth and firebending, not to mention the entire situation with locking himself out of the Avatar state. Toph is the only one who doesn't seem to fail or struggle all that much from a combat perspective. She does grow and improve in her bending (she invents metal bending after all) but she never has any moments where she really messes up or even struggles in combat all that much compared to the others.

All of these points and criticisms I've mentioned are not necessarily big in and of themselves, but when looked at together, they build up to create some issues with how Toph is depicted and how the people around her treat her disability

So that's it then? Toph is bad disability rep and Avatar should be "cancelled"?

God no. Like I said at the start, I still adore Toph and Avatar as a whole, but the show is a year away from being two decades old, it's bound to have some elements that don't hold up and I think it's worthwhile discussing them, specifically because I love the show and it's characters. Despite all the negativity I've brought up, I do think there are a lot of things AtLA did well with Toph too.

I've mentioned a few times that we rarely see how Toph's blindness impacts her life outside of her bending and combat abilities, and there's a reason I made that specification. Unsurprisingly, if you know much about the show's development, the ways in which Toph’s blindness and seismic sense impacts her bending and fighting style is one area where the show really does shine, and I still think that is worth a mention. The various types of bending are based on different styles of martial arts, specifically, different types of Kung Fu. Most earthbending in the show takes heavy inspiration specifically from Hung Ga, but Toph is different. Her bending heavily references Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, something unique to her within this world.

The reason for this (outside of simply wanting her to be visually distinct) was because the show’s creators made sure to consider what limitations Toph might have and what parts of the more common earthbending styles wouldn't work for her. Since her connection to the earth was critical in order for her seismic sense to work, they decided on a style that would keep her feet on the ground more, prioritised strong stances with minimal jumping and put more focus on attacking with her upper body. While not an intentional choice, the style they went with for Toph, according to the show's head martial arts consultant, Sifu Kisu, was supposedly developed by a blind woman in real life, at least according to legend. The creators also made further adjustments to the style with the help of martial arts consultants and just watching Toph fight is evident that a lot of love and care was put into the decisions made on that front.

I also appreciate that Toph's disability wasn't off-limits to joke about.

[ID: A picture of Toph waving her hand in front of her face with an exaggerated smile to remind the others she's blind. /End ID]

As I already mentioned, they didn't land 100% of the time, but lot of shows are afraid to use disability as a source of jokes, which would have felt weird and out of place in a show like Avatar. I see this hesitance in real-life too; people get extremely uncomfortable when I joke about my own disabilities and I've heard several people and even disabled comedians talk about the same observation. My last video on Tik Tok that got outside my usual audience was a joke about my prosthetic leg, and every single stictch and duet I received was people saying some variation of "I'm such a bad person for laughing!" "I'm going to hell!" or just straight up asking if they're aloud to laugh. If I didn't want you to laugh, I wouldn't have posted the joke! But joking about disability does make it more approachable. Despite how often Toph and the others made blind jokes though, outside of the one instance I mentioned earlier, they never felt mean-spirited or like they were punching down. Even when a very sleep-deprived Katara was intentionally trying to be.

I think it's also worth keeping in mind the context of the media landscape when Avatar The Last Airbender was airing. Today, characters like Toph are very common, so much so there's a whole trope about them (super-crips) but at the time, having a character with a major disability be a main character in an action-orientated kids show like Avatar was really rare. She wasn't the first of course, but a lot of the time, if they were included, they were almost certainly sad and depressed, wishing for a cure or they were designated to the roles of "Guy in the chair" (which is a character, usually a tech person, who helps from the background), inspiration, scary villain fake-out (or other variations of "creepy" character) or the actual villain. Having a character that was not only comfortable in her skin as a disabled person, who didn't want or need to be "fixed" or "cured" to be directly involved in the story, and who's main obstacle (at least in season 2) were how the people around her treated her, was pretty ground-breaking at the time (pun not intended) and went against the most prevalent stereotypes of it's day.

And I really want to emphasise that. For many Millennials and older Gen Zers, myself included, Toph was the first character that didn't tell us we were broken and needed to be fixed in order to be part of the group (even if they slipped up with that messaging occasionally). Prior to seeing Avatar, I honestly thought there was something deeply wrong with me for being happy with my life (a reminder, I was 10 years old when this show first started airing), because every other disabled person in the media only ever talked about how much worse their life was because of their disability, how much they hated it and how much they hated themselves. Many outright said that they wished they had died rather than become like me. Toph wasn't the first to go against those tropes, but she was the first example of a disabled character who wasn't like that many people my age saw. Did she do it perfectly? Hell no, but personally, back then, I was happy to have a character who maybe over-corrected and took things a bit too far than another sad character talking about how lives like mine weren't worth living.

I also deeply appreciated that Toph did struggle with her independence, at least initially, and where to draw the line with accepting help. Because of how much she'd been coddled and overprotected as a little kid, she saw any attempt at people being helpful and working as a team as them trying to baby her. It was very on the nose, but I liked that the show gave her an episode just dedicated to realising that it's ok to accept help. Again, this is a bit of a story telling trope today, but having the disabled character realise that it's ok to accept help, and to do it without talking down to them or saying that them wanting independence was bad, was a refreshing change compared to what was around at the time.

[ID: a zoomed out image of Toph, standing before her parents with Aang, Katara and Sokka standing behind her. /End ID]

While I think the show's creators could have benefited from consulting with disabled people and specifically blind people the same way they brought in consultants for the martial arts featured in the show, it's very clear to me that the intention behind Toph's character was good, and that actual effort was put in to make sure they depicted her well, even if some of it was a bit misplaced. It's also worth noting that the groundwork for a lot of my suggestions is already in place, they just didn't follow it all the way through. Overall, I'd say Toph was good for her time, and she's what was needed in the 2000's, even if she doesn't hold up as well today. I also think it speaks to how far we've come in terms of disability representation. When I first started engaging with the online fandom directly, almost no one, even other disabled people, argued that Toph wasn't good representation, because honestly, the bar was on the floor and we were just happy to have something different. But now there are options, and the standards are higher, and that's so, so good. It means that people, even in the media, are starting to listen and be more thoughtful about their depictions of disability than we were in 2006.

And finally, I want to really quickly mention The Netflix adaptation of Avatar. A few people have asked me now what I think they should do with Toph when they get to her, and what my predictions about the show are. I'm not going to talk about my predictions here, because this post is already way too long and that's not what this is about, but I don't think the suggestions I made today would necessarily work in this particular remake, primarily because of the tonal differences. Some adjustments definitely could, such the other characters doing a better job at listening to Toph when she points out inaccessibility and them actually considering her in the first place, but others might be harder to balance. The original show could get quite dark and serious at times, but it was primarily a light-hearted adventure story for kids. From what I've seen of the live action remake though, they're more heavily leaning into those serious elements - for better or for worse, and as such, trying to tone Toph down in the specific ways I mentioned might not balance out as well as it would in the original show. At the very least, the specifics would need to be different. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what approach they should take, that's not really the point of this post, but I did want to quickly address it to avoid confusion. My suggestions today were specifically on how to approach the cartoon version of Toph for a modern audience, and were not meant to be read as suggestions on how her live-action counterpart should be depicted.

[storytellering]

Torn apart. Inspired by Romeo and Juliet by Sergio Cupido

[arolesbianism]

May I offer some Siffrins on this fine day

[freedelusionshere]

For me the main thing is Mikey gave The Beef to Carmy because Carmy had a dream about it becoming The Bear and he thought he had escaped his toxic family. He also didn't just give Carmy the business, he actually knew Cicero wanted to buy it, and then hid all the likely dirty money Cicero gave him in tomato cans so Carmy could walk away with the cash, the books were indecipherable, and Cicero would then sell the property and they'd be done! He didn't tell Richie where the money is for a reason! Carmy, however, does something honorable with the money and includes Richie anyway, so Mikey made the right choice in the end.

Why didn't Mikey clue Richie in, hmm. Well, Richie is also terrible with money and didn't know how to keep books or turn a profit. The ones who know the financial side are clearly Syd and Nat. Meanwhile in S1 Richie was out here accusing Syd of blowing someone for a review and calling her "sweetheart" within five seconds of meeting her. Great leadership skills! LOL. It's amazing how people forget that, like it was erased because he wears suits now and feels better about himself. Commendable, but Richie was sucked up into doing toxic masculinity just like Mikey was - to front.

Richie in S1 is also someone who was trapped in his precious delicate ecosystem that was serving no one, least of all himself. Carmy actually saw more in him and sent him to Ever and stuck by him when he went to jail. Syd telling Richie in S1 he knows this can be better, where people aren't shitty? This is all largely due to Syd's influence, which plays out in S3 when Syd, who has put in all the work and become the leader, keeps calm and carries on, just like Chef Terry was when Carmy worked for her. The kids are alright and are actually more mature than a lot of the adults (Tina as well, and how she treats Syd in S1, Donna all over the place, Lee sucks, Cicero shady).

I do think Richie was Mikey's best friend but very clearly also his enabler. Syd and Carmy are getting themselves into a similar codependent relationship in S3 (Syd even says she's his accomplice), but they will turn this around because it's showing it happening in real time and Carmy has already realized what he stands to lose, and Syd will likely confront Carmy just like she has in the past. We don't really see Richie and Mikey doing this yet in flashback, and it's strongly hinted they probably bonded over getting wasted, just like the people at the party Claire takes Carmy to. This is all about cycles of generational stuff and people getting second chances, but I don't think Mikey thought for a second Richie could fix any of this any more than he could.

Donna talking to Syd about work family vs "family" family in that S4 promo could just as much apply to Richie as well. But Syd was offered a partnership agreement because, my shipping thoughts aside, she wrote a whole business plan and Carmy trusts her more than himself.

You know, despite calling Richie "cousin", I think Mikey didn't actually consider him family.

Because at the end, he left The Beef to Carmy. His blood brother, who he never let into his restaurant, from who he kept his addiction, and hasn't talked to probably for years.

Yet Richie was with him at The Beef every day, knew how to run the restaurant, and knew about Mikey's drug use. The guy whose marriage collapsed because he prioritized supporting the Berzattos instead of his own wife. In the end, he was just a friend.

And then, Carmy, the kid with zero financial sense, tries to make another kid, Sydney, his partner in the restaurant. A kid he's known for a few short months. A partnership that requires ZERO buy-in from Sydney.

#RichieDeservesBetter