#i had a specific character in mind here and my followers probably know exactly who it was lmbo

[jurassicsickfics]

A sarcastic, smart mouthed character's responses to being asked, "Are you crying?"

1: "No, I'm singing. Pretty ain't it?"

2: "Of course not. If I was crying you'd see tears. Oh wait."

3: "No, I'm cleaning out my eyes."

4: *just stares at them, tears running down their face* "Take a wild guess."

5: "Well, either that or eyes can sweat now. Sure hope I'm crying. "

[taylor-titmouse]

hey i want to talk about how you should be promoting your work as an erotic author/illustrator

i'm writing this up because the marketing aspect of my work as an erotic author/illustrator is a science to me, and also because i'm the guy who gets unreasonably annoyed when i see other creators not properly advertising their work. you presumably want to make money off your work. this post will be written under the assumption you want to make money off your work but are doing a bad job at it. it will be very confrontational. if you read this and feel attacked you're right and i am attacking you.

this is geared toward selling erotic comics/writing/books/art as products. i will probably write more than one post about this subject so if i didn't touch on something you want to know more about, comment/send me an ask and i'll keep it in mind for the next one.

i will start with my first and least specific but most important point:

DON'T GET FUCKING CUTE

hi are you paying attention. i'm gripping you by the sides of your face. do not get fucking cute with what you are trying to sell. you are not a big enough property to get cute, nobody LIKES it when big properties get cute, and you are selling porn. you have to own this. you have to be up front about this. don't be tongue in cheek, don't be all teehee i wonder what this could be~, don't be secretive. you are selling a product. you have to fucking act like it. you are an adult selling pornography to other adults. i am GRIPPING your HEAD you NEED to understand this.

and to be clear when i say 'cute' i mean coy. i don't mean cutesy, as in the aesthetic. you can be as hello kitty pastel ten emojis a post uwu as you like when you're building your audience and generating hype. but when you start trying to sell, don't be vague, don't be sarcastic, don't mislabel your work as a joke and assume everyone is on it. because they're not.

you must always assume 75% of the people seeing the thing you are advertising have no fucking idea who you are. and that includes a huge chunk of the people who already follow you. they do not know who you are or what you've been working on for two months or why they should care about it. they just got here. somebody just reposted it. they are seeing it for the first time. most people are only looking at social media for a tiny chunk of their day. they are not keeping up with you. you cannot get cute about what you are trying to sell because nobody knows what it is until you tell them.

okay are you still with me. we are going to talk about clarity now.

YOU GOTTA TELL ME WHAT IT IS

good lord the amount of times i have gone to buy somebody's comic or book and had no idea what's actually in it or what it's about. who are the characters? why should i care about them? what do they do in it? what is the premise of this thing you want me to spend $5 on? why would you not tell me? i'm shaking you again. please i have to know what i'm buying i only have so much money to spend on porn.

porn, arguably more than any other genre, relies on knowing exactly what is in it. you do not want to surprise your readers with a kink they were unaware of! and on the flip side, you do not want to miss out on your target audience! if your book contains a hot spider babe laying eggs in an elf, you have to say so. not just so people who don't want to read about eggs know it isn't for them, but so the people who are egg crazy can see that and go "oh fuck YES i love EGGS here is my $5 and an extra $2 tip for catering to me specifically". a contents/features list is as much an advertisement as it is a warning!

as for re: who the characters are and why should i care, i'm sorry but you need to learn how to write sales copy. you have to write blurbs. you have to get good at the shit that goes on the back of a book. we all hate it but we have to do it. i want to know who the characters are and what the context is. i, personally, am not interested in contemporary stories as much as fantasy and historical. please tell me what genre this porn exists in so i know if it aesthetically appeals to me. pull some books off your shelves and see how they do it. hell man go look at mine.

while you're there, note that every single book of mine has a sample of what's in it. this feels like such a no-brainer to me but again! the amount of times i have gone to buy somebody's work and they don't show me what their work looks like! you gotta give me the first page or two! just enough that i know if i like the way your writing sounds, or the way you draw your comics! i don't know you! i am not going to trust that you're good at what you do just based on a cover. the cover is to get me to this step, it is not the only step. you have to show me that you're worth spending my money on!

to put it less cynically, you want to catch my interest. you want me to go 'oh i want to see more of this', you want me to go 'ahh i want to know where this goes!' you need to get me invested and craving more. earn my $5!!!

YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT EASY TO GIVE YOU MONEY

hey go look at your bio right now. go look at your pinned post. do you have a link to your patreon there? do you have a link to your itchio/gumroad/whatever? do i have to click more than once to get to the places you want me to go to give you money? why? why are you making me click twice? have we learned nothing from every website making you click an extra time when they make some stupid UI update and how much it pisses us off? i have already given up, i have forgotten you, i am not giving you my $5 today. put your links in the easiest places to get to them.

god literally as i was writing this post i went to go find somebody's itchio to see how they described their work and it was not anywhere on their profile. grabbing you and shaking you PUT THE LINK WHERE I CAN FIND IT. don't make it hard! make it easy! i am a dickhead sitting on the toilet scrolling, saw your post, and was interested enough to read further. but you made me go to your bio to find your linktree and oops i have already gone back to my timeline to look at the boobies in the next post. stop wasting precious bio space on DNIs and put your fuckin links there!!!

this is more for the twitter people, but: just put the link in the damn post. just say the word commission. just say it's for patreon. "wuh wuh the algorithm" it is not the damn algorithm it's that everybody hates advertising and nobody wants to retweet ads. putting slashes in the words doesn't do anything and you look like a fool. i have posted so much art that says it's 'a commission for ___" and it did exactly as good as any other art despite having the word commission in it. and by doing the slashes you just made it impossible for anybody to search your account for your commission information (which should be at the VERY LEAST in a post under your pinned tweet if you're not actively posting about them being open).

okay that went on a tangent i'm going to back to the point of putting the link in the tweet. put it in the first post. not in the first reply. don't tell them to go to your bio. put it in the post people are actually going to share. it's fine to put more information in the thread but people are only ever going to share the first post. so put the link there. you have to make it easy. putting links in tweets can hurt you algorithmically, even in the replies. so you're better off having it in the post that actually gets seen and shared. i don't want to open the tweet and scroll to get to your sales page where i ASSUME you will have put all the information anyway. put it in the tweet that just got retweeted by itself onto my dash!

also you have to share it a ton of times. i repost my shit every few hours when i'm trying to push a new product. as i said before people are not 24/7 looking at their timelines. they missed it the first time. they missed it the second time. they didn't get paid yet that week but they were after the eighth time and you reminded them again so they finally bought it. that i will still get sales every time i repost a book ad weeks after release says there are always people who missed it, or who only just showed up.

abandon your pride and shill. shills pay their bills. anyone who gets annoyed about it isn't giving you money in the first place. don't worry about looking like a sell out. don't apologize for plugging your own work. post about it often, post about it in different ways. post about it. post about it. you are not going to make money if people don't know you have something to sell them. if you want to make a career out of it, you need to act like it.

I DON'T HAVE A FOURTH POINT

kisses your forehead. i'm sorry for yelling at you. i've been making and publishing and selling adult art for the past two-three years and have got myself to the point where it pays my rent, and i got there by paying attention to what does and does not work.

please do your best to make money. i want you to make money.

as i said above i plan to write more posts on this subject, such as cover design, how to actually write sales copy, and best practices with running a patreon, but if there's things you would want to hear more about leave a comment or send an ask! i will probably be less aggressive on future topics. these are just things that have grinded my gears for a grip.

[sugarlywhispers]

s.sanemi x reader (fem) | time-travel!reader x hashira!sanemi

a.n; it's placed somewhere before the confrontation with Muzan lol honestly, probably a lot of things are OC cuz i’m still catching up with the anime and i haven’t read the manga, sowy 👉👈🥺 — but i had this idea in my head that’s bugging me and i had to write it lol a.n2; this MONSTER was split into two 🙃 — next part will be posted next week. 😉 i decided to cut it there cuz next part is gonna be DARK and sad, probably not for everyone. so if you just like fluff, you can enjoy this part no worries~ next part is for the babies like me who loooove some tearing, ugly-cry angst with characters' deaths😜 (not Sanemi tho, that man will not die in ANY of my writings💚)

It’s been several months. Months since you appeared out of nowhere in this world. 

Nobody knows why, but you haven’t been the only one. Alongside you, two others appeared. A little boy of six years old, named Riko and another boy of seventeen years old called Minato. None of you have ever met before you three appeared in the middle of the woods, right in the middle of a drawn pentagram on the ground.

You didn’t understand what was happening or why, yet your instincts screamed for you to protect them. And that’s what you did. The moment the monster appeared –of course, at the moment you didn’t know it was a demon– your body moved to stand in front of them to protect them, even though you didn’t know what to fucking do.

To sum it all up, the altercation ended with you pretty harmed, dangerously wounded, and in high levels of pain. For a moment, you thought you were in a dream –actually, a fucking nightmare. But the pain was too real for your mind to fake it. You lost consciousness holding the two boys in your arms.

When you finally woke up three days later, you were in what looked like a hospital gurney. Your wounds had been taken care of and the pain was low considering what you have been through; but still there, making you grimace here and there when you tried to move. The two boys flew their arms around you in a hug when your eyes opened and you smiled, glad and relieved that they were okay.

A man with black shoulder length hair and a scar running down from his forehead til under his eyes was standing a few meters with another one next to him. This other one looked bigger, taller and muscular, with spiky black hair and a prominent scar running horizontally across his forehead. Both of them looked… strange. They weren't looking anywhere specifically, but you knew their attention was on you three.

That first man introduced himself as Ubuyashiki Kagaya and he explained what had happened. Including why, or better explained how you came to be there. I mean, their way of dressing and talking said much. He also explained what the term Hashira meant, introducing the guy next to him as one named Himejima Gyomei.

The demon that encountered you and the two boys was considered an Upper Rank demon, still not part of the Twelve Demon Moons, but just as powerful; able to manage time and dimension. That way it could bring humans who didn’t exist in this era and eat them, smartly going completely unnoticed by the Hashira.

“There hasn’t been a demon able to do this for centuries… I’m glad we were able to put an end to his harm, before Muzan got more interested in its power. And that’s mostly thanks to you,” Ubuyashiki had said to you with a small bow in your direction; the other guy, the Hashira, also followed suit with a bow, lower to show his respect.

The girls standing close to the door in silence gasped at the action of the men, following and bowing even deeper.

You weren’t that stupid to not comprehend that what was happening was something important.

What he explained next was that thanks to something you did, another of the Hashira was able to find where you were and helped you three just in time. What exactly you did to make this happen was not quite clear to you. Or more specifically, Ubuyashiki didn’t detail it willingly. For now.

He explained everything else quite thoroughly, patiently even when Riko would ask something more than twice. He looked like a smart kid, but you could perceive how difficult it was for him to assimilate the fact that this was another world, another time period. Truth is always hurtful. In addition to that, there was no way of going back to where you three belonged. You couldn’t avoid caressing his head each time he asked again something, trying your best to comfort him. He hadn’t cried yet in front of you, and you were preparing yourself for when it happened. You wanted him to feel that he wasn’t alone; by the way Minato also patted the kid’s back and held your hand, you knew he felt the same way.

That same night, when the three of you were alone, you did have a talk with them. You had to make it clear for them to understand the main theme here: You three were in another universe, another world. And there was most likely no way back home.

Minato, being the eldest, understood. He looked of course a bit down, but he accepted the circumstances. Riko, on the other hand…

“So… I’m not goin’ to see my mommy again?” His question broke your heart.

Both your hands cupped his cute chubby cheeks, thumbs caressing in comfort, “I’m sorry, buddy.”

The tears were there in your eyes, yet you refused to let them free. Minato though had to look elsewhere to not let the kid see his tears.

“So… If the three of us are here together, does… Does that make us friends?”

“Oh, sweetheart…” You picked him up, sitting him over your crossed legs and hugged him, “Of course we are! We can even be family if you’d like.”

“I would like that…” His little voice broke and you hugged him tighter, rocking him side to side. Minato sat closer to you and joined the hug. 

“We are going to be okay.”

It was a promise. You didn’t know if it was possible to promise something like that, but you did. You didn’t say it out loud, but you promised you would take care of them with all your being.

This is how your life in this new world began.

So, after a month, you have already settled in the Butterfly Mansion, helping Aoi, Kanao and the other girls with the injured demon slayers that came from time to time. You decided you have had enough with just one encounter with demons –thank you very much. Instead, you preferred helping the ones who needed after those encounters. It hadn’t been your choice completely, but after one boy called Kamado Tanjirou came pretty wounded, with burns around his body that no one knew how to treat due to the infection they had –not even Shinobu– you decided to step in. Your grandma had taught you a lot about herbal medicine, her also being a certified doctor specializing in dermatology contributed to the knowledge. It took you two days of constantly cleaning and applying the ointment you have prepared for his burns and staying by his side to control his fever and symptoms. He woke up on the third day and everyone hugged you in thankfulness. After that, Shinobu asked you to help her to run the manor alongside the rest of the girls. Of course, you said yes.

By the time Tanjirou woke up, you had already been told all about who the boy and Nezuko were. Their history was kind of harsh and admirable too. And after meeting the other boys that joined too, Agatsuma Zenitsu and Hashibira Inosuke, it didn't take much for Minato to follow their steps of becoming a demon slayer.

You were a bit worried if you’re honest. Riko and Minato had become the closest thing to a family, little brothers, in this time for you. Even though Minato was agile and hectic, you couldn’t avoid feeling worried and afraid something bad would happen. The topic even brought a discussion between you two that ended in him yelling at you, “You are not my fucking mother or my sister!”

It hurt. His words had hurt you, however, you could see the regret in his eyes after he said them. He was still a teenager, you could understand his swing moods.

“Apologize, now!” Tanjirou yelled back at Minato just as he entered the kitchen, where you and Minato were discussing. “She might not be related by blood to you, but she almost died for you when you appeared here. She has cared for you and Riko more than anyone since you have been here... Y/N might as well be like your sister by now.”

The moment had been tense, yet Minato accepted Tanjirou’s words and apologized with his head hanging low before leaving the room. You nodded in Tanjirou’s direction thanking him and then sighed. 

That same night you spoke with Minato, both more calm, while sitting outside watching the night sky.

“It wasn’t my intention to–”

“I know, Y/N. It was my mistake. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that… or said what I said,” he admitted, playing with a little ball in between his hands. He wasn’t looking at you, but you could sense his regret. “Tanjirou’s right, you know… After everything we went through, you are like my sister. You are the only family I have now.” 

You felt your eyes fill with emotional tears at his slightly broken voice and one of your hands flew immediately to his shoulder and squeezed it in comfort.

After a moment of silence, and with all the worry swimming at the mouth of your stomach, you said, “If… If being a demon slayer is what you really want to be… then you have my support.” Minato looked at you, face all lightened up with shining eyes that showed how excited he was. “Only one condition…”

“Yes, anything!” He interrupted lively, kneeling next to you and holding your hand.

You looked at him directly in his eyes, before saying, “There’s nothing braver than admitting when is time to fight and when is time fly. Promise me you will choose what’s braver.”

He looked down for a moment, assimilating what your words truly meant, and when he looked back at you he nodded, firm and sure, accepting your condition. You patted his cheek lovingly before he stood and ran inside, probably excited to tell Tanjirou, Zenitsu and Inosuke the news.

You stayed there for a few more minutes. You couldn’t shake the bad taste off your mouth at the idea, still, you took a deep breath to calm your nerves. When you finally got up to walk inside and turned, you saw Shinobu standing at the doors with a smile on her face that made you smile back.

“It will never go away…”

“What?”

She put a hand over your shoulder, reassuringly, once you stood in front of her, “The feeling that he’s on the verge of death.”

Her crude words made you recoil a bit, not expecting them at all. But she kept talking.

“With this mission we have, of fighting against demons, we can’t promise anything. We never know what might happen and would be just cruel to do so, for us and for our loved ones. Yet, you didn’t make him promise that he would be back alive. You made him promise to choose braver,” she smiled again, closing her eyes, showing content. “I think that’s a loving way to ask someone to choose life quite wisely… and unique. He will remember that now every time he is on that verge. He will remember you, and I think that’s the only comfort for you to hold onto to subside that feeling and breathe. He will choose braver.”

The tears ran down your cheeks freely and the squeeze on your shoulder suddenly turned into a hug.

Shinobu has become one of your closest friends since then. Sadly, she wasn’t around often, she is a Hashira after all. But when she was around, you enjoyed it the most. Shinobu taught you many things about what she did and her techniques, but always left you wanting to know more.

You also watched Tanjirou, Zenitsu and Inosuke train some days, now joining them too was Minato. Each of the experienced three boys had their own styles and their own techniques. But none other caught your attention quite intently as much as Tanjirou’s. With some sways of his katana, they would change colors. It was almost imperceptible, but you could see it. Sometimes, they were blue and white, which reminded you of water waves. Other times, they were a mix of deep red, yellow and pink; almost as if there was lava dancing around him and his katana. You became pretty curious about those particular moves. But you didn’t dare to ask him, so you kept to your work.

Now it’s been six months, and by this time, you’re considered a great healer. Especially after a huge attack that left you taking care of and healing almost half the Hashira men.

It had been chaotic that morning. Aoi came running to your bedroom, profusely apologizing for waking you up so early and begging for you to hurry towards the infirmary section. You dressed as quickly as you could and sprinted.

Three of the Hashira men, alongside other demon slayers and corps, were being treated by the girls, Shinobu included. She barked orders here to there to everyone as she tried to hold down a convulsing big man. You recognized him immediately. Himejima Gyomei.

“What happened?” You quickly acted, helping her to keep him still, or at least to try not to let him fall from the gurney.

“A fuckin’ demon is what fuckin’ happened! What sort of stupid question is that?!” A guy yelled from the gurney next to Himejima.

That’s the first time you met Shinazugawa Sanemi.

You were surprised by how tall and muscular he was, the gurney looked too small for him –just like for Himejima. Yet who of the guys wasn’t? Almost all of them were big and bulky. Yet Shinazugawa somehow looked different to you. He had spiky short white hair that made you think not everyone could pull that look and still be considered handsome. Everyone but him. And he had large almond-shaped eyes with purple irises that, for a split of a second, left you out of breath. Well, that could have been more thanks to the force you were using in trying to maintain Himejima as still as possible for Shinobu, right? However, it's the amount of scars on his face that got your attention. He looked like he had done this job for years. And when one of the girls helped him out of his bloodied haori and shirt, his body said so too. Plus the new ones. That was kind of… sad.

“Let go of me, idiot! I’m fuckin’ fine! Go help the others!”

Yep, no, he was a douchebag.

You choose to not answer him back and focus on immobilizing one of Himejima’s arms so Shinobu could finally inject him with some antidote and he stopped thrashing around. Of course, all of this under the yells, protests and insults of the guy on the adjacent gurney.

Once the big Hashira was calmed, Shinobu sighed tiredly looking at the guy behind you, who was protesting quite loudly. She looked at you, shrugged, and turned to help the other hashira, Obanai Iguro.

“Fuckin’ let go!”

You turned around to face him. Shinazugawa Sanemi was half standing from the gurney, pulling back and forth his own haori with the little –and completely terrified– girl who was only trying to do her job and heal him. And at that, you completely lost it.

“Enough!” You exclaimed firmly at him, catching his immediate attention. And everyone’s. “Fucking listen to me, we are trying to work here and your yells are distracting and annoying. You are bleeding profusely from your shoulder, which means you’re going to pass out at any moment now if you don’t fucking stop moving around and get stitched up. So, I suggest you shut the fuck up and leave so we can do our job in peace. Or shut the fuck up and let the poor girl heal you so your stupidly annoying ass doesn’t die and can get the hell out of here. Either way, stay fucking quiet before I put you to sleep!”

Silence. No one said a thing or moved for a whole minute, expectantly. Of what exactly? You’re pretty sure of Shinazugawa’s answer and reaction.

Your eyes were directly connected to his, both sets firing daggers at each other, trying to win a battle just the two of you were part of. It’s heavy, the energy around felt charged and ready to explode at any second. And you were ready for it. This was your place, your job, and he was being a problem to everyone with his annoying remarks. He had to understand that you were the boss here.

And he did.

Everyone was witness to how Shinazugawa Sanemi sat back down on his gurney, grumbling under his breath, but didn’t say any more as he let the girl finally attend to his wounds. Two seconds later, he lost consciousness. You rolled your eyes, approaching and helping Kiyo with the hot-blooded Hashira.

After that day, everyone showed deep respect towards you. You have tamed the Shinazugawa Sanemi, the stubborn and wild Wind Hashira, and that by no means was something small. The word had even spread towards the Master, Ubuyashiki Kagaya, who Shinobu told you had laughed so hard over what happened that he cried.

Therefore, from that moment on, every time the hashira gets hurt after confronting some powerful demons, you are the one sent to heal him.

Because you’re the only one he doesn’t protest against or yell at when you’re treating him. He doesn’t even speak to you more than necessary. He went from insulting your guts one day to not even looking at you on the other. It is weird, but quite honestly you preferred it that way.

Even after several years have passed, he still hasn't said more than necessary whenever you treat him. Only informing you of his condition for you to do your job. But the moments only the two of you share during his healing are spent in silence. However, there is one time he actually says something different.

You are applying an ointment on his forearm due to a burn pretty similar to the one you once treated on Tanjirou, very concentrated on your actions. Gently, you hold the inner side of his forearm as your fingers from the other hand apply the cool and fresh ointment over the burn in slow, tender circles. Shinazugawa never moves or makes any sound when you are healing him, which you find weird considering the deep wounds he sometimes appears with for you to heal. But even though he mostly never reacts, you still treat him with gentleness. You know his wounds must hurt.

You have been like that for a couple of minutes, doing your job while he stays silent. Until he speaks.

“H-happy birthday,” Shinazugawa suddenly mutters, making you look up at him surprised. You then look towards the old clock hanging high on the opposite wall, which marks the end of the day and the beginning of the new one. It is indeed your birthday.

Your eyes travel back at him, but he is looking the opposite way, his typical grumpy expression on his face. You smile slightly.

“Thank you.”

He simply answers with a “mmh”, acknowledging your thankfulness, and proceeds to not say anything else. You try not to smile more than the small curve of your mouth, knowing fully any other sound will cause another argument with this temperamental man. He was leaving with your permission in the morning due to an important mission. Of course, under strict conditions, he would have to travel with the ointment and apply it at least four times a day. He agreed, so you were actually showing him how to use it. The few small pots with the ointment were ready wrapped in a cloth over his bed.

After telling him to send Sorai in case he needed some more, you bow slightly goodbye before leaving the room.

The next morning when you wake up, you find a red benibara flower on your bedside table. Somehow, you know it’s Shinazugawa’s birthday present for you and you can’t help but smile throughout the whole day.

The worry though is still latent.

It’s been years already and the worry you feel is still ineluctable every single time you have to treat any of the hashira or the demon slayers. But especially with Shinazugawa. He is a freaking Hashira –and one of the strongest in your opinion– which means he goes on the most difficult and dangerous missions. He wins mostly every time, but he also breaks his own body with each of them.

You always worry for Shinazugawa, you can’t avoid it. It’s almost like a string always pulling you towards him. Whenever something big happens and everything is chaos around, your body moves on its own and doesn't stop until you find him. Sometimes he’s alright; when your eyes find each other he nods, a sign that he is okay and that you can go and attend to others. Other times he’s a mess; gravely injured, bleeding profusely til he almost loses consciousness. Those times your whole being only focuses on him and you don’t leave his side until he’s completely out of danger.

You don’t know how to explain it. You feel… like you need to protect him every time you look at him.

Is this… some kind of… love?

You snort, sipping carefully from the little cup of red tea you decided to enjoy in the manor’s garden. It’s barely morning and everything is quiet and peaceful. Mornings like this help you analyze things in your head you mostly don’t speak to anyone. Shinazugawa Sanemi is one of those.

How could this be love when you barely speak to each other? Clearly, it’s just infatuation, right? The man is hot –you have eyes, for god’s sake. He is a man who walks with a purpose, filled with a confidence you have never seen before. That’s very attractive.

Now, he opens his mouth and he turns into an ugly ogre. It makes you want to slap your forehead in disbelief. He’s always yelling and bad-mouthing at someone, right in their face. Always threatening to kill, destroy, and many other harsh threats. It completely infuriates you when he treats the training corps –who are too young in your opinion, just kids– like that too.

Even so, he never treats you the same way. Shinazugawa hasn’t even raised his voice at you again since that first encounter where you yelled back. Why? Why does he never treat you like the others?

“MISS Y/N! MISS Y/N! Master Sanemi is in need of your attention! Hurry!” Sorai crows loudly at you, appearing out of nowhere after the first shine of the rising sun appears on the horizon, catching you by surprise just when you are about to walk inside the manor.

“What?! Where? There isn’t any–”

And just as you’re about to finish what you’re saying, Shinazugawa falls from the air. His stane is as cool as always. One leg stretched behind him while the other flexed, his forearm supporting himself after the fall in that one as the green residue from his technique disappeared with the wind he brought. You frown, he doesn’t look injured, his clothes aren’t even thorn or bloody. You could have even bet he just appeared like that and in that position just to brag about his skills.

But he doesn’t move from his position nor look up, which makes you feel something’s weird. “Shinazugawa?” You look more intently, eyes really focusing on his persona, and then you see it. The controlled and almost imperceptibly trembling in his whole body. Oh, his breathing technique is actually what is keeping him so still. Meaning, something’s definitely wrong.

You drop your cup of tea and run towards him when he lets his katana fall to the ground and his body sways a bit to the side, almost losing his balance. 

“Go find someone inside!” You yell at Sorai, who obeys you immediately and flies inside the manor.

Your arms surround the hashira’s torso when you approach him, helping him stand by putting his arms over your shoulders. You realize then how actually big this man is and as he stands, he towers completely over you.

“Hey, I got you,” you whisper, looking up at his face with both of your bodies impossibly close.

His eyes look down and find yours, but they look quite disoriented, and you know he’s minutes away from losing consciousness.

Shinazugawa lets a smart snort out of his nose and a crooked grin flutters on his face for a split second, which, if the action hasn't made you realize the blood inside his mouth and worry, you would have thought that expression was sort of cute, attractive even. But fucking blood is coming out of his mouth!

“You got me?” He whispers softly, tenderly even. He’s clearly in some sort of delirious state and that worries you even more.

“Yeah, I do,” he nods at your answer, his forehead then resting over yours and closing his eyes for a moment; but you decide that’s a bad idea when his trembling legs and your weak strength make you both sway back and forth, unstable. “Hey, no, don’t. Don’t close your eyes. Look at me.”

He obeys instantly, taking a long deep breath as he stands straight and more firmly on his feet. It’s clear his technique is the only thread that keeps him conscious enough. His eyes now look more direct at yours, after several consecutive blinks that help him focus.

“Good, good,” you repeat, putting all the strength you can around his torso as you press him against you. A smile then spreads on your face after looking down at your bodies stuck together. “You look like trash,” you joke looking up at him.

He lets out a breathed laugh followed by a grunt of pain and another sway in both your stances that almost makes you both fall, “Don’t– Fuck! Don’t make me… laugh…”

“Sorry, sorry… I’m sorry!” You cry worried, cursing yourself for your stupidity. He’s barely holding up and you go and joke about it.

He moves one of his hands then to hold the back of your head and makes you hide your face in his neck. It feels… odd. The tenderness in which he moved you. You could swear it’s his way of telling you to not worry. However, you think he’s doing it more for him, to ground himself. You then feel his chin rest over your head.

“Breathe, Sanemi. Breathe…”

You feel him take another deep inhale of air and hold it for a moment, before slowly releasing it in very tiny puffs of air.

“That’s it. You’re doing great,” you praise, and the slightly more firm grip from his hand on the back of your head is answer enough that he’s listening to you. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay…”

You promise. Even though you didn’t say it out loud explicitly, you did promise.

And, after eight days of constant attention during the day, sleepless nights sitting next to his bed and caring for his wounds very thoughtfully when he finally wakes up, you can’t help but really cry.

You have fallen asleep, sitting in that rough wood chair next to his bed, body bending forward with your arm used as a pillow over a small space on the side of the bed, right next to his hand. It is what actually woke you, his big hand patting weakly and softly on your head. You sat back uptight, eyes opened wide as he blinked several times, adjusting to the daylight entering the infirmary.

Shinazugawa then looks at you, a tiny curve on his mouth resembling a smile on his face, “You do got me, huh?” His voice sounds hoarse, painfully thick.

And that’s all it takes for you to start sobbing and weeping like god damn kid. You hide your face in your hands, letting everything out as you bend over again towards the bed. His hand goes back to patting your head softly, comfortingly. He never asks you to stop crying; in fact, his touch feels more like he’s encouraging you to let it out. And you do.

Relief finally settles in your body… just as that other feeling that warms your chest and makes your body shudder with goosebumps at his gentle touch.

Is this really… love?

[hellofeanor]

I know some people are upset about this, but

Adar had a complete and narratively satisfactory character arc and here's why.

(I'm saying "narratively satisfactory" because it satisfies his purpose in the narrative even if we think he deserved better.)

The two main problems I had with Adar's arc throughout most of S2 were as follows: his decisions to release Halbrand and then rabidly charge into Eregion after Sauron make no sense, and his character was inconsistent with what was established in S1. I complained about both of these things at length with people who were willing to listen, and some people who just smiled and nodded. But certain things in ep 6 made me start to rethink, one line in episode 7 really stood out, and the events of ep 8 put everything into perspective. So let's explore.

In 6, we have the scene of Adar and Galadriel speaking about Sauron. The major theme here is that he worms his way inside people's minds, insidiously exerting his will over them. Both characters at this point acknowledge this as fact. And in light of this revelation, Adar's "decision" to free Halbrand starts to make a little more sense. All it took was that one interaction for Sauron to get back inside Adar's mind and start influencing him again. There's no reason for Adar to do any of what he does in S2 unless he's under Sauron's control. Galadriel even says it herself: this is what Sauron wants. But Adar's mind and judgment are too clouded to see.

In 7, there's one critical line. "You think it was only you who put yourself in my power?" It's Annatar speaking to Celebrimbor, but he might as well be speaking to anybody here. It's pretty telling that this line shows up in most of the character-specific teasers, including Adar's.

Which brings us to 8, where everything comes together. Adar has Nenya, which has been shown to have healing powers, and a lot of people theorized that this might lead to him reverting back to an elven form. Which is exactly what happened. But the ring didn't only heal him physically.

Previously, we've seen Galadriel gain clarity of mind through Nenya: she better understands Sauron's ploy, and her part in it, and how she fell right into his trap. The exact same thing happens with Adar. When we first see him, crouching next to a rock, hiding his face, he's not just hiding his elven transformation. He looks like he's genuinely crushed. Not by seeing himself as an elf, but from the sudden ring-given clarity and the realization that he's been used by Sauron all along. His motivation and personality do a complete 180 here, and this isn't a plot hole or a contrivance. It's meant to show that the ring healed his mind as well as his body, shaking off Sauron's influence, and he's suddenly, for the first time all season, back to where he was at the end of S1. He's himself again. The searing desire to kill Sauron is gone, and he just wants to return to Mordor and build a home for his children.

He may have taken the ring because he thought it would help him kill Sauron, but in the end, it just helps him come to his senses.

Unfortunately for him, his actions can't be undone, and by sending the uruk to war, he's put them, as Annatar says 'under my control'. The minute Annatar asks Gl��g what his name is, and Glûg falters in killing him, it's over. Sauron has control of the uruk again. He's wormed his way in. How do we know this for sure?

Adar's children wouldn't have set up that elaborate ruse to assassinate him. If this were all their doing, they would have just stabbed him and been done with it. The foreshadowing all season hints that Glûg may disagree with Adar's orders, but probably would never have done anything about it without a strong push from Sauron. The scheme was all Sauron and Sauron's control. Sauron orchestrates Adar's death in the exact same way Adar killed Sauron in ep 1, specifically out of spite. Sauron even appears to watch Adar's final moments: he wants Adar to know.

Is it a shitty way to die? Yes.

Is it a shitty plot twist undeserved out of nowhere? No, because the entire season has been setting us up for this moment. Hell, even some pieces in S1 have been setting us up for this moment. Halbrand could have killed Adar way back when, but at some point must have decided that Adar was more useful alive for a while longer, and a more elaborate form of revenge was in order. Sauron gains control of Adar and uses him as a puppet warlord against the elves while at the same time setting Adar up for the ultimate betrayal at the hands of his own children once he's no longer useful.

I actually love this. It's a horrible way to go, and I'm sad to see the end of this character, but it's a complete arc for him and makes sense within the narrative. It doesn't feel cheap or undeserved or at all surprising to me. It's sad, but satisfying.

RIP Adar, you will be missed. But at least you died... uh... feeling betrayed by your own kind as a result of your own actions that you realized too late were orchestrated by the guy you hate most. And if that isn't top tier tragedy, I don't know what is.

[artemis32]

also the first person to come to mind when you said someone stubborn enough to ignore aizawa’s glare was bakugo, I feel like that would stress aizawa out so bad

platonic yandere aizawa shouta iii

Fun fact my top three favourite characters (in no specific order) in bnha are Aizawa, Bakugo and Shigaraki, so this is perfect

Also I finished this before any of the other subjugation drabbles as requested, but I'm clearing out my drafts, so hopefully I'll be able to post a few more this week

platonic aizawa masterlist

bnha masterlist

Class 1a was up to something. Aizawa knew they were.

They weren’t good at being sneaky, and for the past two weeks, they’d been behaving strangely.

Ever since the class had seen you, he’d been slightly on edge, waiting for something to go wrong. And he knew that it would sooner or later.

Class 1a were disruptive and oftentimes insubordinate. They couldn’t follow the rules and they got into trouble more often than Aizawa could keep count of.

They were troublemakers.

Aizawa knew that.

Which is why he was so suspicious of them.

They had been perfectly behaved in lessons, quiet and diligent, completing every assignment he’d given to them. They hadn’t spoken out of turn or argued once within the past two weeks. Most suspiciously though, must have been the fact that they hadn’t once brought up the question of who you were again.

It made him uneasy.

It made him annoyed.

But instead of addressing the matter as he probably should have, he kept quiet, curious to see what exactly they were up to.

He found out by the end of that week.

****

“Okay sweetheart, I’m leaving now. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me? You’re more than welcome to, it won’t be long.”

You huff out a laugh. Aizawa was running errands and had been repeatedly questioning whether you wanted to come with him. You were sure he was trying to guilt trip you into joining him.

It might have worked.

It was working.

But you were a model student, as so, your homework and assignments had to come first - much to your father’s displeasure.

The only respite was that you’d be staying safely within the walls of UA, specifically in the apartment, which made your father feel much better about leaving you by yourself.

Sometimes you think he forgets that you’re a teenager – old enough to be home alone for a few hours.

“Yes, I’m sure dad. I’ll call you or Mr Yamada if there’s an emergency. I’ll see you later.”

He huffs, accepting that you wouldn’t change your mind.

The hug he draws you into is crushing and he presses your face into his chest. You feel his chest rumble as he lets out a laugh.

“Don’t let Hizashi hear you call him that, you know how much he hates it.”

You scowl slightly. The eclectic blond often insisted that you call him by his first name, or the ever-endearing title of 'Uncle Zashi', making a habit of reminding you every time you happened to accidentally ‘forget’. You enjoyed his company, but his persistent attitude grated on your nerves sometimes.

“Don’t you dare tell him.”

Aizawa laughs again before reminding you to stay safe and call him in the case of an emergency.

You bid him one last farewell before shutting and locking the door. Paranoia seemed to be one of your father’s defining traits when it came to you.

Fifteen minutes later, you’re set up in the living room, surrounded by snacks, stationary, and papers scattered over the floor and coffee table.

****

Three hours later, you decide to call it quits for the day, packing up your belongings and returning to the living room to flop down on to the couch.

You’d been laying on the couch, watching a rerun of some old movie your father enjoyed, when there was a knock at the door.

Thinking nothing of it, you haul yourself up and make your way to the door.

It could have been anyone - Midnight or Present Mic, here to keep you company or watch over you at your father’s request, or it could have been another teacher, here to drop off paperwork for your father. Perhaps it was your father himself, having forgotten his keys.

Living amongst a group of heroes and heroes-in-training makes you comfortable, and you don’t bother checking who is at the door before flinging it wide open.

Two boys and a girl, all around your own age stand before you. One of the boys and the girl look surprised, eyebrows rising, creasing their foreheads. The second boy remains impassive, his dual-coloured eyes trailing over you, head to toe.

“Can I help you?”

They continue to stare at you for a moment before the pink-skinned girl harshly elbows the blond boy next to her.

He exclaims in pain before clearing his throat and smiling widely. 

“Hi there. I was wondering if Aizawa sensei is home?”

If your father had passed one trait on to you, it had to be his suspicious nature. You straighten slightly, nudging the door closed a few centimeters.

“Aizawa sensei is out running a few errands. He should be back soon - would you like to leave a message?”

The boy with the dual-coloured eyes leans forward slightly, his upper body now crossing over the threshold into your apartment.

“May we come in?”

Though he poses it as a question, he doesn’t wait for an answer, already pushing past you and into the hallway behind you.

Your protests fall on deaf ears, and the boy and girl still in the doorway seem to panic alongside you, scrambling in after him.

“Todoroki, you can’t just barge in like that!”

The dual-haired boy - Todoroki - ignores them and chooses to look around the apartment instead, taking in his surroundings with an air of disinterest.

“I have a question. Answer truthfully and we’ll leave.”

His two friends, still panickedly trying to urge him out of your house, still as he speaks. They stare at one another, then at Todoroki, before nodding and looking at you.

By now, you’re anxious and wary, eager to get them out. You take a deep, calming breath.

Doing as they say seems to be the best decision. You didn’t want to stir up trouble, and you definitely didn’t want your father or another teacher stumbling upon the scene.

“Fine, one question and then you’re gone.”

You cross your arms and press your mouth into a hard line, attempting to cover up your anxieties with an air of anger.

The three agree to your terms, Todoroki humming lightly before speaking.

“Is Mr Aizawa your father?”

It’s a loaded question, one you aren’t sure you want to answer. 

While you and your father hadn’t tried to cover up the fact that you were his daughter, you also hadn’t gone out of your way to announce it. The fact that the three standing before you were so curious that they went as far as to basically break into your house to get an answer made you concerned. 

Their eagerness made you believe that it would be best to lie. Then again, what would you tell them - being honest may be the only way to get them to leave without a fuss.

You nod slowly, hesitantly.

“Yes, he is.”

While the boy and girl let out noises of disbelief, Todoroki doesn’t seem to be surprised.

“See guys, told you.”

The blonde boy splutters for a moment, shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Is that all?” You ask apprehensively, still tense and nervous.

An unspoken question lingers in the air.

Will you leave now?

Todoroki nods, thanking you before calling for his two companions.

At the door, he pauses, turning to you one last time.

“Can I ask that you keep this visit a secret, just for a while. Don’t tell Aizawa sensei that we were here. Please.”

His demeanour is serious, though it seems like more of a demand than a request.

You’re already nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, sure.”

Regardless of whether he asked you or not, you wouldn’t have told your father of their visit. The last thing you needed was for his paranoia to be proven correct. 

What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and he definitely didn’t need to know that three students - three of his students - had been to his home to see you while he was away. Worse, that they knew you were his daughter.

If he found out, you’d never hear the end of it. In fact, you were slightly afraid he may never let you leave the house again.

No, you definitely would not be telling him about their visit.

By the time your father returns home hours later, you’ve scrubbed the memory of the three students from your mind, and he seems none the wiser.

The two of you have dinner and talk for a bit before going to bed.

You make no mention of the day’s events, and he doesn’t ask.

****

For the first time in what could have been years, you were in trouble. Big trouble.

From the moment you entered the apartment, it had seemed eerily still, too quiet to be natural.

When you first entered the living room, you saw your father sitting with his back towards you, posture straight and still. He didn’t turn to greet you and you feel a growing sense of unease when he tells you to sit down.

“How was your day?”

You’ve known your father long enough to recognize his tone, to know that he’s not asking because he’s actually interested.

Right now, your father, the ever stoic Shouta Aizawa, was furious.

“Answer me.”

“It was fine, classes were good.”

“Hmm. How about yesterday? What did you do yesterday?”

You’re wringing your hands now, fingers gripping at each other in a feeble attempt to mask how obviously your hands are shaking.

“Y-Yesterday was good, same as today, classes and whatnot...”

You trail off awkwardly, unsure of what exactly he wants to hear. You don’t ask though, some sense of self preservation telling you to keep your mouth shut.

“And the past weekend? How was your day on Saturday. You had some time alone, what exactly did you get up to then?”

Staring down at the floor, you clear your throat and try to think of an excuse.

“Ah, well, I got a few assignments done and made dinner.”

His hand on your shoulder almost makes you jump.

“Sweetheart, look at me.”

You don’t want to.

You don’t want to look at him, you don’t want to see his anger or disappointment or whatever other negative emotion lays there at the moment.

But his grip tightens slightly on your shoulder, not enough to hurt, just enough to grab your attention. So you close your eyes and take a deep breath before looking up and meeting your father’s gaze.

He’s angry. Angry and disappointed and everything that you feared he would be. But most of all he looks concerned, worry pinching at the juncture between his eyebrows and at the corners of his mouth.

“What happened while I was out?”

You weren’t often emotional, and you definitely didn’t cry. Crying was pointless, it didn’t change anything.

But you had to bite your bottom lip and press your nails into your palms to stop yourself from bursting into tears in that moment.

It rarely happened that you kept anything from your father. You told him everything, no matter how big or small.

Truthfully, keeping a secret this big for as long as you had had been weighing you down. You felt guilty. Granted, you weren’t exactly lying to him, but it pained you to hide something like this from your father.

And so you cracked.

A few hot tears rolled down your cheeks as you sniffled, wiping at your nose with the sleeve of your jacket.

“Three of your students came to the apartment. They asked to see you but I said you were out.”

Aizawa’s grip on your shoulder had lessened, his arm wrapping around you, shifting you closer to him.

“Is that all?”

You debated lying to him, only for a moment. It technically wouldn’t be lying, you just wouldn’t be telling the whole truth.

The idea deflated quickly once his hand came up to brush away a few tears, his thumb gently rubbing at the soft skin under your eye.

“T-They just asked if I’m your daughter or not, they left after that.”

He hums again, staring at you for a few seconds longer. It feels as if he’s pining you in place, pressuring you into talking. Evidently, you have nothing else to say.

“Can you tell me what they looked like sweetie?”

****

You imagined that this is how criminals felt.

Under any other circumstances, it might have been funny.

Before you, lined up in somewhat of an identity parade, were a the three students from your father’s class, along with a few other guilty-looking students.

Three girls, five boys, all standing pin straight, facing forward. 

In the room next door stood the rest of the class, the remaining twelve students standing in silence.

Your father’s fury, evidently, had not been aimed at you. 

Well, not fully.

He was admittedly quite upset with you for not being truthful with him, but his anger was mainly aimed at his students for interfering with his personal life. With his family.

“Sweetheart, I’ve seen how high strung you’ve been over the past few days. I was concerned, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you so I gave you some space. But today one of my students let something slip and I put together the fact that they must have had something to do with the way you’ve been acting recently.”

You didn’t want to outwardly expose the three students who had come to see you that day, but your father had threatened to punish the entire class, so you’d caved and described them as best you could.

So here they stood, not once making eye contact with you.

"Go on," your father said, staring them down with a harsh glare, one like you'd never seen before. You knew your father could be strict with his students, but this was something else.

They all bowed forward at the hip, staring straight at the ground as they spoke in sync.

"We're sorry."

You stand in stunned silence for a few short moments, before shaking your head.

"Oh, um, it's fine. Thank you for the apology. And I'm sorry too."

The blond-haired student from before tries to raise his head, a wide smile on his face before your father's hand meets his neck, holding his head down.

"Did I say you could look up?"

"Sorry sensei."

Aizawa hums, glancing at you.

"Sweetheart, you can leave now. I'll see you later."

As much as you'd like to argue, you don't. Instead, you nod and bow to the eight students before you, bidding them goodbye before making for the door.

****

Aizawa couldn't find you.

He'd stayed behind to have a little chat with a few of his students, intent on returning home to you afterwards, but now, fifteen minutes later, you were gone.

You weren't in the 1A dorms and you weren't at home.

There was nowhere else that you could be, so where had you gone?

He begrudgingly made his way back to the dorms, resigning himself to spending his afternoon with the troublesome students of class 1A.

Only, he didn't have to go very far to find you.

Not with the small crowd of students trying, and failing to hide in the bushes next to the dorms.

He sighs heavily, walking up behind them silently.

Crouching down, he whispers, "What are you looking at?"

The yelps Denki and Sero let out are both panicked and silent, though they quickly scramble back to where they were, shushing Aizawa with flapping hands.

He quirks an eyebrow. Whatever they were spying on had to be interesting if they were brave enough to shush him.

Aizawa shrugs and cranes his neck to see what has them and their friends so intruiged, and-

Absolutely not.

There, sat on a bench in the hidden garden next to 1A's dorm room, was Bakugo Katsuki.

Accompanied by you, his daughter.

And unless his eyes deceived him - was he blushing?

Having seen enough, Aizawa stands and pushes between the students clustered behind the bushes.

He calls your name, and you look up with a start, eyes wide and dazed, your cheeks strangely flushed.

"Dad?"

You and Bakugo both jump up, and you head towards Aizawa while Bakugo slips away.

"What are you doing here? I thought you were going straight home? And why were you with Bakugo?"

You laugh awkwardly, deflecting his questions as you grab his arm and head towards your own apartment, away from the 1A dorms.

"Sorry dad, I got a bit caught up. Hey, how'd the interrogation go?"

You were trying to distract him. Aizawa knew that.

But your father was nothing if not willing, so he let you get away with it, making a mental note to look into what you were doing with Bakugo Katsuki of all people later.

****

Of all the students in your father's class, Bakugo was the one he thought would stay away from you. Far away.

Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be going his way lately, and Aizawa was infuriated to learn that Bakugo had taken a liking to you.

While he may have his own strong suits, he was definitely not the type of person your father would want you to end up with. Honestly, if he had it his way, you would remain happily single and by his side until both of you died.

But those plans were put on the back burner for now.

He learnt, from a collection of camera feeds and fearful student reports, that you had indeed been on your way back home after your father's intervention, but you'd gotten caught up exploring the grounds around the dorm area.

No one could fault you for that - it was Aizawa's fault really, he never let you out on your own, especially not to explore.

It was something he'd have to work on at a later date.

While on your little adventure, you'd run into a feisty blond.

Bakugo had been tasked with clearing away the autumn leaves around the 1A dorms, a minor punishment for some or other misdemeanour, and he'd caught your attention.

That wasn't unusual - you were curious when you wanted to be. It was a trait that your father both loved and loathed.

What was unusual was that Bakugo had played along.

Aizawa knew that Bakugo knew you were his daughter. That meant that he knew not to snap at you or treat you with his usual brutish attitude as he did with his classmates.

He knew that, but he couldn't understand why Bakugo had taken such a liking to you. Aizawa knew you were perfect, but he also knew that he was biased when it came to his opinion of you.

Well, he thought, I'll just have to ask him myself.

****

For the first time in all his years as a teacher, Shouta Aizawa was stunned to the point of silence.

He never imagined the conversation would take a turn like this.

"Sensei?"

He shakes his head, trying to rid himself of the heavy fog over his mind as he throws the quizzical blond a hard look.

"No."

"No?"

He'd never felt any genuine anger or violence towards any of his students, but this-

"Well sensei, we met a while ago. She- I knew she was your daughter, so I tried to keep my distance but, well..."

"I'm sure you understand what I mean."

"We've known each other for a while. "

"If you'll allow it-"

The conversation replayed in his head as a series of broken sentences and snapshots.

He felt off-kilter, unsure of himself in the worst way possible.

The only thing he knew was that, at this moment, someone was threatening to come between you and him - threatening to take you away from him, to steal you from him.

"No," he said sharply, "Stay away from my daughter."

It was Bakugo's turn to look shocked, though he was faster to calm himself than Aizawa was.

"Sensei, is this to keep her safe, or because you don't want to share her?"

It's a strangely phrased question, one that would puzzle anyone. Anyone but Aizawa.

He understood exactly what the hotheaded child in front of him meant by the word 'share'.

It spelt trouble in more ways than one.

"No. You asked and that's my answer. Now go back to your dorm," he says, waving him out without another word.

Bakugo nods and leaves without further argument, not once looking back.

Aizawa slumped back in his seat.

Bakugo knew what you meant to his teacher, beyond what most people thought they knew - he understood the lengths he'd go to to keep you safe and happy. The fact that he'd left without a fight proved as much.

More concerning than that though, had to be the fact that Bakugo was the same as him. He had the same unsettling urge to be with you, to be the only source of your attention.

Aizawa had seen it in his eyes, but heard it moreso in his words.

Share.

No, he wouldn't share you. Not with anyone.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello! I’ve been following you for a bit now, and all of your recommendations have been super cool and interesting! If you don’t mind me asking, do you have any recommendations for really long indie ttrpgs? One that could match the length of dnd or CoD books, I mean. The specifics don’t matter as much, I just really like sinking my teeth into long game books like that.

THEME: Long Indie Games

Hello friend! Fear not, I have a multitude of long indie games to recommend for you!

Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, by Jenna Moran.

Length: 578 pages.

The Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG is the diceless RPG from Jenna Katerin Moran, author of the well-regarded Nobilis and an important contributor to Eos’ Weapons of the Gods and White Wolf’s Exalted RPG.

Chuubo’s is a special beast. I personally don’t know how one actually plays this game, but the book itself is fascinating to read. It has recognizable parts such as character skills, Health Levels, and XP, but I think I’d want to sit down with a physical copy to be able to properly read it and get a handle on how you play through a story. If you enjoy a challenge, or even just something enchanting and evocative, I’d recommend Chuubo’s.

Part-Time Gods, by Third Eye Games.

Length: 318 pages.

The gods of today are shadows of what the old gods possessed. Their power has been heavily diminished, and many choose to live a regular, mortal life, revealing themselves as gods only when absolutely necessary. The reason for this is twofold. First, fate doesn’t like it when the gods share their secrets with a mortal. Unless they are the god’s worshipper, terrible events and horrific accidents have a way of happening to the people closest to the god. Secondly, divine works attract creatures and monsters called Outsiders, created by the Source (after its capture) to destroy any god they encounter.

This is a game that’s on my TBR shelf - and it might stay there for a while, because this is another pretty lengthy book. I am very grateful for the index at the back of this book, because I think this would be pretty difficult to navigate. Part-Time Gods is set in the modern-day, but the premise behind your god-hood is very unique, so one of the first chapters is dedicated to telling you what exactly it means to be a part-time god, part-time taxpayer. The book also contains small pieces of prose set in the world, meant to give you a flavour of the genre and tone intended by the designer. I’m really interested in the concepts expressed in this game, and I hope I have enough brain space to read it in the future!

We Are All Mad Here, by Shanna Germain.

Length: 226 pages.

Jack climbing the beanstalk. The little mermaid finding her voice. Alice struggling with the madness of a place unruled by the laws of reality. The queen. The child. The woodsman. The knight. When you think about fairy tales, who do you become? Where does your imagination take you?

We Are All Mad Here is a tabletop game about fairytales and mental health, providing you with new options for the Cypher System while also creating a setting about visitors to a magical land called the Heartwood. In the fiction, only those who have had some kind of struggle that affects their mental health are able to travel to this magical land. Germain intends this to be a way to tell a narrative about mental health using allegory and metaphor. The Cypher system itself is pretty complex, and you probably won’t be able to play a game of We Are All Mad Here without the core rulebook, so it might be worth it to take a gander at the Cypher System Rulebook while you’re at it.

Coyote & Crow, by Connor Alexander.

Length: 484 pages.

More than 700 years ago, a massive disaster changed the course of history. The world was plunged into centuries of darkness, but the event also introduced the Adanadi — the Gift — a strange mark that appeared on all life. This mark would have an enduring impact on humanity. Centuries later, the Earth is healing. New, advanced nations have risen. Ancient legends stir.

Coyote & Crow is a pretty extensive and unique game, using pools of d12s pulled from your stats, as well as narrative beats such as character motivation, Gifts and Burdens to help give your character a personality. Because it introduces an alternate history and a drastically different future, the core book as a decent amount of lore to acquaint you with the city of Cahokia and the world that surrounds it.

This game has quite a bit of support out there, with adventures such as Stolen Heart, Laughter Lost & Found, and The Case of the Great Underwater Panther.

Impulse Drive, by Adrian Thoen.

Length: 242 pages.

Play a crew of misfits and scoundrels living a life of danger and adventure as they explore space and try to make their ship a home in a technicolor sea of stars. Fight dangerous organizations, investigate unnerving mysteries, and find trouble in a game that rewards you when your characters face their shortcomings. Grow your characters and ship with new gear and abilities as you discover and create the universe together, as a group.

For a PbtA game, Impulse Drive feels pretty substantial. It provides a quick primer on Powered by the Apocalypse games, and includes advice for the players as well as the GM. This might be because the game includes a lot of details about gear and vehicles, as this is a space game that cares what your party has on hand and what their ship can do. There’s also advice on changing the game, extra moves, and a roll table for mutations! If you’re looking to see how to play out a space adventure in a more narrative-focused system, you might want to check out this game!

The Shrike, by Alice the Candle.

Length: 162 pages.

The Shrike is a game about fantastical voyages aboard a skyship. It's inspired by Avery Alder's The Quiet Year, John Harper's Lady Blackbird, Italo Calvino, Ursula K. Le Guin, and utopian and dystopian fiction. It features four complete adventures (two multiplayer, two for solo play). 

This indie game is on the short side of this list, but it’s definitely long by indie standards. The author has provided 4 different adventures that you can read through, which will likely spark your imagination along the way. Interestingly, the voyages are placed in the first half of the book, while the information about Solo, Co-operative. and Guided Play embody the second half of the book. I’m not sure how I feel about this layout choice, but if you’re mostly looking for a book that you can read, flipping through the voyages might be more interesting to you than the rules of play.

Games I’ve Recommended in the Past

Lancer, by Massif Press. 431 pages.

The Wildsea, by Felix Isaacs. 364 pages.

Exceptionals, by Sahoni. 253 pages.

Gubat Banwa, by makpatatag. 399 pages.

Monster Care Squad, by Sandy Pug Games. 176 pages.

[lavenderchqn]

𝑅𝐸𝐷 𝐿𝐼𝑁𝐸𝑆 - 𝐸𝑁𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑇𝐻𝑂𝑈𝐺𝐻𝑇𝑆

[Content warning: This is chaotic. Very chaotic.]

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for reading this, if you've managed to get here somehow... and thank you for reading Red Lines in general.

This project is the reason I started my tumblr, inspired to write a smau with an element of thrill and mystery - something you'd get in a Desperate Housewives or Pretty Little Liars type of thing.

A special thank you to those who have joined the taglist or kept up with the releases in general. I know who you are and every time I would post a chapter to see the notifications of tiny comments and notes just filled me with much much joy. In all honesty, Red Lines was the first project where I feel like I have completely written from the beginning to the end. Also a big big thanks to my irl friends and online friends who have been subjected to reading the chapters and my random thoughts about the story.

As I have said, there are some thoughts I have to share (as well as some tips for anyone who plans on embarking on this journey.)

First of all, holy I wish I had prepared better. For the sake of pointing out a timeline - I have gotten the idea for writing this series around the time of April (so around patch 4.5 - 4.6). The initial chapters didn't get released until the start of 4.8... And despite all that time I have given myself to map out the story did not feel like enough.

The biggest hurdle for me was getting through planning act three, as... aside from the ending. In my mind, some plans were already being made as the middle point of writing act 2... but they weren't prepared in the slightest.

Another thing is that I think I haven't used the social media apps (twitter in specific) to it's full potential... and the same goes for some of the characters in general.

Another thing is that - oh my god, if you put out anything but your smau fanfiction, make different profiles for the same characters if you post them. I have gone mad at myself from constantly having to switch Wriothesley's and Neuvillette's profile in my texting app. The next time I am using a different app for the smau entirely, that is for sure.

I feel like out of the entire cast of characters there's few that do not feel as developed as others (I'm looking at you Clorinde and Navia)... And some probably feel quite out of character when comparing to their game counterparts - that's Neuvillette.

When I was writing out stuff for my story, I wanted to capture the change of behaviour a person goes through when faced with a stressful and painful situation, with the character of [Y/N] or reader. Clorinde in my eyes played the role of the 'realist' who shared her thought process with the main character. Even though [Y/N]'s decision-making methods have changed, Clorinde remained constant... but also brutally honest at times. If I was remaking this story I would've tried to do something more with her character.

Navia is in this boat because... yep, I for sure could've utilised her much much better. What I was against was adding the ship of her and Clorinde, because I didn't boil down either one of their personalities to just being with the other one. Navia is a sweetie and I love her to death though.

Neuvillette is an interesting character to talk about where, in a sense, he was written exactly how I wanted him to be. He is actually modelled after a good friend of mine, acting very aloof and silly at times. I love for Neuvillette, such a serious character in game to be reduced to a confused comedic relief character <3

Be mindful of how much stuff you put out. If you may, or may not know, I am an accounting student - currently in my final year of university. Two weekly chapters as well as two regular posts (for people who don't follow red lines, as they are entitled not t) was a deathwish and a toll on my body.

Well, those were quite negative thoughts haven't they? don't you worry, I haven't been only miserable when writing this series, so let's talk about that too.

I love Fontaine. I love the setting. I love the characters. I love the story. This smau was what felt to me like a love letter to a region I've held deep to my heart as we were switching onto Natlan's release.

Back when I began the planning phase of this group, I initially thought of the Beverage Members as a group and began establishing them. As I am the absolute pioneer of the headcanon of Wriothesley and Furina being besties, addition of Lyney was an interesting one to be putting out. He's a complex character I felt like I was able to discover and use really well.

Speaking of Lyney? God I love that guy. Even though prior to the series I was a huge enjoyer of his, the process just made me attached to him even more. Thanks to the current (5.2) patch I was even able to get him on my account with his bow.

I've actually became attached to everyone in this cast in general. Although the main story of Red Lines has ended, I would like to revisit this cast one day in the future... but probably for like an additional oneshot if anything. I would really really like to develop Beverage Gang's side of the story and they are my blorbos.

All in all... wow, this was actually a thing I did. I have actually managed to write a story from start to finish and post it all.

Once again the biggest thanks to you, the readers. I think if it wasn't for the people actually reading the story, I would've given up at a point or another.

As of this point, I'm unsure when another long-term project like this will emerge. For starters, I'd actually like to take my own advice to heart and not post until I feel like I'm in the clear with my mind that I'm satisfied with my planning etc.

At this time I'm far too swamped with university to work on something like this. I'm due a half of my master thesis till the beginning of January... and I have not even started. Once I'm clear with that, perhaps my planning phase will being again.

Thank you so much for reading to these silly thoughts I have accumulated over the span of writing this series. Stay cozy everyone, let's chat soon <3

[krchar]

Some thoughts on Himerish and Trial of the Oracle

Ok so it's weird that I hardly post anything and now I go with this, but these thoughts are for some reason so pressing to me these days! And this feels like the right space.

tldr: i love 4th arc, I like Himerish's development, but after rereading last week I have some surprising ambivalence about how his warrior identity goes with his previously implied nature - or at least to my view of the character - happy to know anyone's thoughts on that!

Firstly I want to state that I love the stories, and mostly the first 4 arcs! This is just a thought on one character development...

So I belong among the fans of 4th arc, definitely, and I think that most people who have some soft spot for Himerish/Oracle, started to feel so throughout this arc (although I know some did before it was cool!). I always loved that story, that he was confronted with such a downfall, the dramatic almost mythical story of regaining his identity is so awesome, i liked that he cooperated with the guardians as a person, that he realized he was too removed from the world after all the time...

Last week I got this sudden fanfic inspiration (it's cringe, but I struggle to be creative for years, so my 7 pages are a huge cheery win!) and so I reread the story... and it's so great, but I have some odd feelings about some parts..

I think it is mostly about him being a warrior.

So. The first notion that felt off was in the issues from his coming to earth to the fight of Phobos + Cedric, when I suddenly felt like what is his almost never leaving resting bitchface? There are some really nice mentor moments, but most of the time he seems strangely annoyed without specific reason. Now in the previous arcs, he was not very popular, for he was indeed a terrible pr*ck, intentionally in arc 3, possibly intentionally in the previous ones ( but i don't know that, his behaviour always seemed to be somehow explained or something, even if the reader didnt have to buy it..) but what i did like was his serenity and at times his appearance of a lightness of heart that calmed everyone.. (that is, in moments when he wasn't a pr*ck) suddenly here Himerish is a dynamic warrior, always angry fighting etc etc - like he was serene and wise only because he was an oracle and it was his function, and not that he was chosen to be an oracle, because he was such in his nature in the first place, which i would like much better.

But! In the flashback with Endarno, that is, to my mind, exactly what Endarno implies! H. is a fighter in a war here and E. saves his life saying he senses a great power in H. and that he should act on it - then in the following flashbacks it's like H. went and became a cool martial arts master... and it just feels sort of... why...

(note: i presume that the flashbacks went in this order, bc E. calls Himerish "young asha (tribe name)")

my problem may be that I am not as much into warrior trope, as Im into powerful spiritual being trope... and also im probably too much of a hippie

But the first flashback actually looks like there would be more beyond! Endarno literally goes against his own commander, as H. is from the enemy tribe and is a captive to be executed. And it is said that E. already had doubts, even though he was a great warrior, bc his boss was very cruel, but it is meeting Himerish that gives him the final motivation to stand against the meaningless bloodshed! Implying that H. has definitely a hippie vibe... and H. also gives this impression, bc he's so serene and passive when they aim to kill him (although that may be some basiliadian feature dunno..) but.. then he goes to be just a better fighter.. like don't they have any other kind of spiritual power in Basiliade than becoming a cool warrior??

I mean, I liked Orube-Luba flashbacks very much, where Luba was the wise warrior mentor and it was cool. But we don't get anything like that with Himerish, right? He's just shown to have been really cool at fighting. Yarr is just really crazy about him as his former master, as if he was truly a different kind of being, but there is no word then about him being also a spiritual mentor.. maybe it is just not shown, but then - why not?

when i saw the first flashback, i sort of thought it would have been better, if H. was actually a hippie in his heart - maybe even against the custom of Basiliade. He said E. helped him a lot - so couldn't it be that this young guy who fights like everyone else does, then realizes he could just stop doing that and work out his inner spirit and power that has the nature of peace and connection, instead of fighting? I really really doubt that the Kandrakar council would have gone like - this guy is cool with sword, let's make him oracle. He must have had some other power before and I'm kind of sorry that they didn't work with it somehow... I'm also not so much into his warrior attire hehe

Now to go a full circle, I associate this type of wisdom actually with his nice and light-hearted mode and not so much with angry fighter mode.. he was angry before when something bad happened to Kandrakar, but that was different, then when he couldnt admit his mistakes, that was foreshadowing of his downfall, but his fighting mode was just so strange to me.. what's with the sword, do some magic and restore the peace of Kandrakar after your return, bc the peace and stability and light powers are your nature and not just your politcal function..

then again i admit that while i didn't like much what they did to his character in the following arcs, i could understand his departure.. so the described reason seemed like all his change was to nothing, for he again just didnt listen to anyone despite his former promises, but i could see another reason in line with arc 4, and that is actually his change, he became too human (or whatever species he is) and maybe it was even difficult for him to return to the position - bc this is literally shown at the end of arc 4 when he's contemplating before being reinstated.. and i like that.. cause im kinda very much into spiritual beings becoming human tropes.. or like generally emotionally repressed people rediscovering life..

Well, I get that some people really like warrior trope, so no hate, fandom is a free space yeah! Anyway, these were my thoughts, Im impressed you scrolled this deep, thank you! Tell me your thoughts on this pls Im happy to find more people to discuss witch to an unhealthy level! As a bonus, my two favourite memes/fanarts about H.'s earthly clothes:

(source: https://tuherrus.tumblr.com/post/189587505767/oookay-heres-a-witch-art-dump-im-gonna)

(source: https://www.deviantart.com/rukietta89/art/Shopping-with-Orube-97101177)

EDIT: ok i posted this like half an hour ago, but i got a sudden feeling that i was not entirely fair, so i want to say that i also feel that his conective and calming spirit shows up in those really nice mentor moments towards the guardians, although that doesn't go really against my original interpretation/headcanon - he was a confused young boy with a talent, now he's a mature, more steady guy with a talent, regaining understanding of life in 4th arc, which, ideally, would make him even more sensitive and calming, and that would be cool

[static-scribe]

A Night To Remember | Ticci Toby Oneshot

HI! I hope you enjoy this fic! This is my first time writing for Toby and my first fic post here! I'm sorry if this feels out of character in anyway, I'm still working on how I want to portray him!

-

In times like this, you have to think to yourself, “What the fuck did I do to get here?” And the answer to that question is relatively simple; it's not what you did to get here, it's what other people did to get you here. Specifically, it's what your creepy-ass roommate did to get you both here. 

Where is here exactly though? Well to answer that lovely question, here is attempting to bury a body in the middle of the woods at 3:57 am. This was honestly not what you were expecting to be doing on your night off from work but you can’t go back now. Not when you had already killed your roommate. Oh did I forget to mention you had killed your roommate?

It wasn’t your fault at all, it really wasn’t. You couldn’t control the fact that you woke up to your roommate standing at the foot of your bed watching you sleep, knife in hand. Blame it on the tiredness but you just couldn’t control yourself when you saw that, and you admittedly let your anger get the best of you. You hadn’t even realized what you were doing until you had already choked the… well you wouldn’t say poor man out. 

Every sign pointed to the fact that you might be crazy, but you weren’t crazy. At the least, you were way too calm about this situation. You seemed to be learning many new things about yourself tonight. Like the fact you were strong enough to choke someone out, or like the other fact you were way less guilty than you probably should've been. Maybe reevaluating yourself after all of this was over would be the best plan.

The sound of a branch snapping freezes you in place. You're like a deer in the headlights. You dart your eyes around trying to find the source of the sound but come up empty. Not knowing whether to run or not, you just stay there frozen. Someone had seen you and you're probably royally fucked. There was no way they wouldn’t tell the police. Your genius plan of hiding the body and reporting him missing in a couple of days was rapidly falling apart in front of you.

Footsteps could be heard to the right of you. Whipping your head in that direction you make eye contact with a guy who was a bit taller. Upon seeing your frightened face he grabbed his stomach and hunched over laughing. You were angered and slightly embarrassed by this and couldn’t help but yell out, “What’s so funny?” You tried to sound confident and calm but you kind of just sounded way more whiny than you wanted.

The man said nothing in response. Instead, he opted to laugh a bit more before gathering his composure. As his laughs died down you felt your face flush with embarrassment. What was this guy's problem? You wanted to give him a piece of your mind, but as soon as you went to speak you were cut off by him beginning to say something. “So this is your first time, huh?” He asked while walking closer to you. The stranger leaned down to get a closer look at your face. He was expecting an answer from you.

You took a large step back from him to create some distance. You wanted to yell at him, but all that came out was an exasperated, “What?” Who the fuck would phrase it like that? Apparently, this asshole does.  

He said nothing in response to your shouting. You watched him carefully as he made his next moves. He approached the body laying on the ground, lightly tapping at it with his foot. His head turned towards the shovel that lay on the ground a short distance off. “Yeah, you’ve def-definitely never done this before.” He started with a twitch of his neck followed by a clicking sound. “You’re lucky I showed up to help you or you’d be fuckin’ screwed.” He laughed, elongating the last word slightly. This guy was really starting to get on your nerves. 

He grabbed the shovel off the ground and put it between his backpack and his back. After making sure it was secure he turned back to look at you, “I’m Toby, by the way.” He stated before he reached down to grab the legs of your now former roommate. This was quite the turn of events. You hadn’t expected him to be enthusiastically helping you but he was, so you probably shouldn’t complain about it. 

You approached the other side of your roommate’s body and grabbed him under the shoulders. Looking forward at Toby, who was staring back at you as if waiting for you to say something. You realized he was probably waiting for you to give him your name so you guys weren’t just nameless strangers. Without another thought you offer him your name to which he nods in approval. 

With little word from each other, you head off in a direction carrying the body while Toby leads. You have little clue as to where you were going, but Toby seemed to know the forest pretty well. 

It was painfully silent for a while. The only sounds being made were the crickets, your footsteps, and the occasional clicks and small words that came from Toby. You figured he probably had a tic disorder and that it would be rude to question it, so you didn’t. 

Eventually, the silence became too much to bear and you had spent who knows how long racking your brain for something to say. You eventually settled on what was probably the most awkward thing for someone to say in a moment like this but that didn’t really matter. “So…” You started, catching Toby’s attention. “You do stuff like this often?” 

Toby laughed a little but this time it was different. He wasn’t particularly laughing at you. Well, he kind of was, but he was more so laughing at what you said. You still felt a bit embarrassed at your last statement. God, why were you so awkward? “To an-” His speech was quickly interrupted by his head slamming to the left side followed by a click. He let out an angry huff before continuing, “To answer your question, I kinda have a knack for these kinds of things.” He chuckled as though he was deeply proud of himself. 

The way he talked so casually about it freaked you out a bit. It wasn’t really normal to have such knowledge on hiding bodies nor was it normal to help someone you don’t know hide a body with such enthusiasm as he had. Like you were one to judge though when you were literally doing a piss-poor job of hiding a body. You were just going to dig a shallow hole, dump the body, and call it a night before he showed up. If anything, you should be thankful he showed up to help you and that he knew what he was doing. 

“That’s pretty cool.” You told him rather awkwardly before the pair of you fell back into silence. You didn’t really know what to say, and he wasn’t talking to you much either. Toby seemed focused on getting to your destination, so you didn’t want to bother him, lest you accidentally piss him off by saying the wrong thing.

Eventually, the dense woods turned into a small-sized clearing. Toby let go of his half of the body and looked to you expectantly, you got the point and let go yourself. “Okay,” He started with a clap, almost seeming excited for what was to come. “Drag the body over there and start digging a hole,” Toby pointed towards the middle of the clearing, “and I will g-gather what we need to get rid of it!” You could tell from his tone that he was likely smiling at whatever he was thinking, but you couldn’t see due to the mask covering his mouth. 

You didn’t argue with him though and did as you were told. You spent the next hour or more just digging while he zipped around grabbing sticks and branches then dropping them off beside you when he had a sizable bunch. You wished you had energy like his. 

At some point, Toby had sat his backpack down beside you and taken his jacket off before tying it around his waist. Maybe all this moving around was making him hot. It was at this moment you decided to look at him and get a good feel for his appearance. He wore a black turtleneck under his jacket, yellow goggles over his eyes, a mask over his mouth, dark-colored jeans, and boots. You couldn’t tell what the features of his face looked like due to all the coverings and the darkness, but you could tell he was rather pale with dark brown hair that looked quite soft. 

Honestly, you hadn’t even noticed that you had completely stopped shoveling to stare at him but he did and was staring right back at you. The both of you made eye contact and you moved your gaze to the ground with a flush on your face. You had to admit from what you had seen he did have a nice body and probably a nice face to match. To say you weren’t at least slightly attracted to him would be a lie but you also knew that nothing would likely come from hiding a body together. The two of you would probably go your separate ways and you’d never see him again. Besides, you did not know anything about this man other than the fact his name was Toby, and he had a lot of experience disposing of bodies. 

When you looked back he had gone back to gathering stuff to, what you assumed, burn the body with. What other reason would he be gathering sticks for? Fetch? Of course, you guys were burning the body.

Toby jogged back with another pile of sticks and dropped them on the ground. He leaned over the hole you had dug that was around the same length as your roommate and nodded in approval. “Looks good,” He said giving you a thumbs up. 

Toby threw the body into the hole with a bit of your help. “So, you start covering the body with sticks and shit, while I get to do the fun part.” He announced, turning his body towards you, waiting for your next move. You weren’t particularly happy that you had to do most of the work, but then again it was your kill and not his. His helping you out was more than worth some labor. 

Making haste, you piled the sticks on top of your poor, poor roommate’s dead body. You probably didn’t go as fast as Toby had hoped you would because he would soon start helping you out. With the help, you guys were able to get the task done relatively quickly. 

After you were done with the sticks you looked over at Toby, expecting him to give you new instructions or to just say anything. He was squatting on the ground digging through his overly full backpack, pulling random things out, and throwing them to the side. “I know it's fucking in here.” He hisses through his teeth, his anger barely contained. His tics seem to increase in frequency and severity the longer he searches which just makes him more irritated.

Toby seems to be getting more angry the longer he searches. “Um..” You’re looking around frantically when he whips his head around to look at you, obviously frustrated that you interrupted his almost hard-to-watch search in his backpack. “Are you okay?” You ask, your eyes settling on his piercing gaze through his goggles. You both just look at each other for a moment before his head violently jerks towards his shoulder. 

“I-I’m fine.” He snaps, looking away from you and returning his attention to his half-full backpack. He lets out a frustrated groan into his hands. You watch his next moves carefully as he grabs the bag by the bottom and just dumps its contents on the ground. That's one way to solve his problem.

Toby seems to become more content when he finds what he was looking for, which happened to be a can of lighter fuel. It was rather large and hard to miss, but you weren’t going to comment on that wanting to avoid another bad reaction. His rapid breathing slows as he calms down which makes you feel less worried about him. 

You approach him from the side and crouch down to help him put his stuff back into his bag. He nods his head at you but doesn’t say anything while you help him. To his right is a small pile of things that include lighter fuel and a couple boxes of matches. 

As you were picking stuff up you caught sight of a camera. Maybe that could help ease into conversation with Toby who hadn’t said much of anything all night. You wanted to know more about him and what was on his mind but you understood his obvious distrust of you. “You take pictures?” You asked, looking over at him with a small smile on your face, almost encouraging him to talk. 

Toby seemed to perk up some at your question and quickly looked over at you. He brought a hand to the back of his neck as he looked around awkwardly, his previous confidences seemingly buried at the mention of himself. “Yeah, sometimes… I mostly just take pictures of things I find interesting.” His tone was almost as awkward as his body language.

“That’s cool!” You smile at him, extending your hand to offer the camera. “What kind of things do you find interesting to photograph?” You ask. Toby takes the camera before standing, slinging the now full backpack over his shoulder, and offering you a hand up. 

Taking his hand, Toby pulled you up onto your feet. “Anyways, I take pictures of stuff like nature, food…” He pauses while looking around, “And y’know…my victims.” He laughs at his words, clearly amused by the fact.

Toby only seemed to become more amused at your facial expression. You hadn’t even realized you were pulling a face until he started laughing more. “Really?” He asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. “What’s with the shocked face? It’s not like you haven’t killed someone before,” He said, gesturing toward the hole. Even you had to admit that he did have a point. 

You didn’t know what to say back to him. You couldn’t argue in your defense because there was nothing to defend there, nor could you think of anything clever. So you fell back into an awkward silence of your creation. Good job on finding a conversation topic. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask.” Toby said in a rather nonchalant manner “Who is this guy? Like why’d you kill him?” He asked, curiosity laced through his voice. 

“He was my roommate, and he was always kind of a creep.” You said looking at Toby who just nodded, waiting for more information. “But I always thought he was harmless until he was standing over my bed with a knife.” You finished, hoping your answer satisfied him enough to move on.

Clearly, it didn’t because he began to ask you more questions, “Yeah, and then what happened?” You really didn’t want to go into this, but since he was helping dispose of him then you guessed you owed him some explanation.

“So I strangled him?” You said but it came out more like a question. As though you weren’t quite sure of your answer. It was still hard to wrap your head around the fact you had taken someone’s life.

Toby’s only response was to pull the mask covering his mouth down and spit onto the pile, “Fuckin’ pervert.” He mumbled, quickly returning his covering into place before you could see the other side of his face. From what you saw he was rather attractive, prompting you to wonder why he covered his face to begin with.

 You couldn’t help but laugh a little at the gesture which caught Toby’s attention. “Yeah, I can be pretty funny sometimes,” He said with a slight laugh in his voice, as though he wasn’t taking what he said fully seriously. This just made you laugh more. 

It was nice to laugh. It was the first time tonight you hadn’t felt completely stressed out about potentially getting caught. Having Toby helping you was quite the stress relief, and you felt as though a heavy weight was taken off your shoulders by his presence alone. You should probably thank him after all this was over. You wished there was some way to make it up to him for his help, but you guessed a thanks was really all you could do. It’s not like they made cards that said ‘Thanks for helping me bury a body!’ 

You were so lost in thought that you admittedly got startled when he placed a hand on your shoulder. In his other hand was the can of lighter fluid that was placed in front of you. “You wanna do the honors? I mean he is your kill, not mine so...” He shook the can a little after he spoke, wanting you to take it. 

You reluctantly took it out of his hands and began to splash the flammable liquid onto the pile, slowly circling it to make sure you had as much of the body covered as possible. You had begun to feel slight excitement for what was about to happen. It wasn’t every day you made a bonfire out of some creep. 

Taking your attention off your task, you look over at Toby who can barely stand still. He was picking at his fingers while bouncing slightly, unable to contain his excitement. Based on his behavior and the contents of his backpack, it would be safe to assume that he had a bit of a passion for fire. It was kind of cute, in a rather fucked up way.

Standing across from him on the other side of the body, you shook the final contents of the can out onto the body. Toby was still picking at his fingers when you cleared your throat. He then looked up at you. “Cans empty.” You said giving it a shake for emphasis. 

“Fuck yeah!” He practically yelled, grabbing a box of matches off the ground and waving you over. 

Taking your place beside him, he grabbed around 4 matches out of the box and prepared to strike them. “You ever smelt a burning body before?” He asked in a joking manner, looking down at you. 

 “Um... I can’t say that I have.” You stated, not really seeing the point of his question. Of course, you hadn’t smelt a burning body before. What normal person has? 

He clicked his tongue at that, “Well, it ain’t pleasant, so just be prepared and try not to breathe through your nose.” He patted you on the head twice after saying that which made you stiffen up. That was a bit weird but okay.

In one quick movement, he struck the matches quickly and out burst a small flame. You watched carefully as Toby extended his arm and dropped the matches onto the pile.

With a loud ‘fwoosh’ a raging flame bloomed into life. You could feel the heat tickle at your cheeks even at the safe distance the pair of you stood from. For a burning body, it was almost beautiful.

You noticed shuffling out of the corner of your eye, looking to see what was going on. You saw Toby pulling his goggles down to hang loosely around his neck. Probably to get a view of the fire that wasn’t tinted as yellow as his lenses were. 

Not being able to help but stare, you took note of his eyes. They were chestnut brown and the way the fire bounced off of them was mesmerizing. It was almost as though the fire provided life to his eyes and so did his excitement. He was rocking slightly back and forth as a way to, what you assumed, get his excess excitement out. 

It wasn’t long before Toby noticed you staring at him and just like earlier began staring back at you. His eyes lit up in amusement and he raised his eyebrows slightly before speaking, a smirk ever-present in his voice. You may have just inflated his ego. “See something you like, sweetheart?” He said in a serious voice but burst out laughing a minute later, completely unable to handle the bullshit that just spewed from his mouth.

“You should have seen the look on your face,” He wheezed out between laughs. You, on the other hand, were profusely blushing from both being flustered and embarrassed. It couldn’t have been that funny, but he seemed to find a lot of things you did amusing enough to laugh at. 

Toby was quick to gather himself and catch his breath before slinging an arm around your shoulder with a sigh. You stiffened at the contact but said nothing. His behavior around you was getting way more casual than you expected seeing as you spent a large chunk of the night in awkward silences filled with mostly nonverbal cues. 

You guess you didn’t mind the contact too much because you did nothing to break it. You were content with this in some odd way. Nothing about this was normal nor would it create a content feeling in any sane person. There was probably something deeply wrong with your psyche yet you couldn’t bring yourself to care about that much. You’d deal with that another day, but as of right now, you were having what was probably the weirdest, most thrilling experience of your life.

Toby cleared his throat and removed his arm from your shoulder, freeing you from the not-so-unwanted but also not really wanted contact. Your gaze met his and for a moment your heart fluttered. 

“So, you enjoying the show?” He asked sounding almost nervous for your answer. You just nodded in response averting your eyes from his. You missed when he had his goggles on, and you couldn’t see his stupid eyes too well. 

Toby took a knee, whipping his backpack off his shoulder before rifling through his bag and pulling out his camera. He zipped up the backpack and took a seat on the ground sitting criss-cross.

Toby looked up at you and patted the ground beside him as an invitation for you to sit down beside him. Making you wonder what he was up to, but without much question you sat down beside him. His body language read as nervous while he seemed to be mustering the courage to say something important. Quite different from his previously confident demeanor. 

“Co-could I take a picture of us?” He asked, looking at you with almost pleading eyes as false confidence wavered throughout his voice. The thought made you kind of nervous, what if someone got ahold of his camera and turned it over to the police? You both would get in deep trouble which is something you didn’t want at all. 

 “I promise no one will see it!” Toby blurted out rather quickly as though he knew what you were thinking. He was picking at his fingers once more while his head jerked again. He was probably as nervous as you were from asking you such a question. “I just don’t want to forget tonight,” He sounded almost sad as he spoke which made your heart clench a little.

What did you have to lose? Other than your freedom by creating more evidence of your crime but then again there was still a chance you wouldn’t get away. There was a lot that needed to happen before you were truly free of your crimes so again, what did you really have to lose by taking one picture? The answer was nothing. 

So with a soft sigh, you gave him your answer, “Fine, but only the one.” You said trying to be stern but a slight smile pulled at the corners of your lips. He seemed happy at your approval and started fidgeting with his camera, setting up to take the picture.

This whole situation was starting to feel quite funny to you. Here you were sitting on the ground with a serial killer, burning your roommate's dead body as the sun came up, and you were about to take a selfie with said serial killer so he can remember tonight. You let out a small chuckle at the thought which catches Toby’s attention briefly, but he looks away as quickly as he looked.

You’re ripped out of your thoughts by Toby wrapping his arm around your shoulder and pulling you closer so you’d fit inside the camera screen. He puts his fingers that were resting atop your shoulder into a peace sign and you flash a smile at the camera. With a click and a flash the picture is taken, and Toby is looking down at his camera happily. 

“How’d it turn out?” You asked looking over at his camera but he hides it away from you. You shoot Toby a confused look but he just shrugs before stowing it away in his backpack. 

“Don’t stress, you looked cute” He laughs a little trying to sound confident but you could see the tips of his ears and cheeks were tinged in a soft pink. It took you a moment to register what he had just said to you. Did he just call you cute? You couldn’t help but blush a little at his words.

“Don’t worry, I’ll show you next time.” Next time? You sure as hell didn’t plan for there to be a next time of you hiding a body, but seeing him again did sound nice. 

Toby pushes himself up off the ground and adjusts his backpack properly onto his back. Once again he extends a hand towards you and you accept his offer for help. “What do you mean by ‘next time’? Are you expecting to hide another body?” You question him but he shrugs again.

“Y’know, next time we hang out.” He says as if it was a fact extending his hand out to you. In between his fingers was a small slip of paper with a number scrawled on it in messy but readable handwriting. It suited him. 

“You didn’t think I’d just let you go off by yourself right?” His question was less of a question and more of a statement. He was just saying stuff he thought should be obvious to you. “Also, it doesn’t have to be hiding a body. We can do whatever you want.” 

Your eyes darted across his face waiting for him to start laughing again like he was joking once more, but he didn’t laugh or show any sign of not being serious. “We like bonded and shit. You don’t just burn a body with someone and then never meet again.” He chuckled as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

You were stunned silent but he didn’t seem to care as he grabbed you by the wrist and started leading you in a direction, “Where are we going?” You asked, dragging slightly behind him. 

Toby stopped moving and turned around to face you, letting go of your wrist, “I’m taking you home. The woods aren’t safe for people who don’t know their way around here.” He started, observing your face for a moment before continuing. “Plus it gives us more time to hang out.” He admitted.

There it was, the real reason. He was quite the character that you had grown to enjoy being around over the last couple of hours. Maybe hanging out with him again wouldn’t be so bad. Toby took your silence as a response of understanding and began walking in the same direction he was leading you. 

The way home was filled with plenty of laughter and pleasant conversation between you and Toby. You never would have thought burning a body with someone would lead to such a strange yet genuine connection. The rational part of you screamed that becoming close to him would probably bring new, yet thrilling, situations that could put you in danger. You didn’t want to listen to the rational parts right now. You were more concerned with what your heart had to say. It ached for excitement, an excitement that only someone like Toby could bring. 

With a smile on your face, you grabbed his hand, hoping he wouldn’t mind too much. He looked over at you and just shook his head before interlocking your fingers together. 

<3

[detectiveaku]

hihi!! you asked for my thoughts on stormbringer after i finished reading it, so i'm here to say what few coherent thoughts abt the book i currently have because oh my god that was life changing in the best possible way. genuinely considering buying a physical copy for myself now.

i love how much more fleshed out chuuya was as a character, and the dynamics between him, verlaine, adam, and shirase were all extremely compelling to me. like i didn't expect to come out of this liking shirase but AUGH the character development from him was not something i saw coming. AND ADAM'S DEVELOPMENT OHHH MY GOD. what if i exploded in the best possible way i ended up loving him a lot.

i also found some of the bits we saw from dazai to be extremely fascinating.... like when he tells verlaine that he'll mourn over his birth rather than his death. augh. and the skk dynamic in this book was so. they're both insane in the best possible way. ESH you two are perfect for one another etc.

funnily enough i came out of this book with verlaine being my favorite from it. something about him is so incredibly tragic in a way that always gets me specifically. like him just sitting and mourning rimbaud. oh my god. oh my god. also the amount of sympathy he showed towards chuuya's clone despite thinking he was a human is so. gah. i need to re-read stormbringer at some point this book is absolutely amazing

@heartless-curr (so i get the notif. sigh. when will tumblr let you send asks on a side blog </33)

haiiiii i hope you didnt mind me in your replies throughout the liveblogging, stormbringer is probably my second favorite arc, second only to the mersault/airport arc which goes crazy of course.

what i admire most about stormbringer is bringing in this cast of characters that perfectly exemplifies the theme it is very explicitly telling you it is diving into. it creates incredible tension because you know how this plays out from the beginning. chuuya will discover that he is human. the thing in question isnt that, its what that means to chuuya, and what it means to you.

so you have adam, a non-human with human traits. N, a human with inhuman traits. dazai, who questions whether those "inhuman" traits are inhuman at all, or if murder and torture are perfectly human, but also dazai, a human having a lifelong existential crisis of what that means. verlaine, a non-human who lived a human life for a time, and who rejects doing it ever again.

and chuuya. and stormbringer isn't necessarily about whether chuuya is human or not (its obvious that the conclusion will be that he is human), its about what that means. and where everyone else falls in that world.

are you born human, or do you become human through living passionately?

and the rest is history. dazai trusting chuuya, chuuya trusting dazai. suffering, and fighting back. vengeance and forgiveness. whatever the fuck rimbaud and verlaine had going on.

"disgrace, huh?" <- i think about this line dozens of times in a day. what do you mean by that dazai? what exactly are you feeling about this person who literally by the hand of a god completes your plans, whose hands you put your life in at every chance because he puts his in yours, and who helps you understand your own humanity through his struggle with his own? if chuuya's true form isn't a disgrace, what might it be?

im tired of gay people. adam frankenstein is incredible and i want him in the ADA right this minute. i love him so much. "i get to protect you. i couldn't ask for more." putting aside the skk of that sentence, thats love, isnt it? the most passionate thing you can do! adam's ability to follow his heart makes him, in my opinion, human.

[moongothic]

Okay, here goes. What's your ultimate Crocodad timeline? You can go as wild or as believable as you want.

I mean I made this timeline chart/post/thing.

But if you meant it in a more "how do you think things actually went down" specific kinda way, uhhhhh. Great question, not sure I know how to answer. Like. The possibilities on what could've happened and how are nearly endless and all those options are so interesting to me. Even if there's ideas I feel like might be more likely than others, or I find myself more invested in some ideas, I can't fully like, dedicate myself to any specific idea for a plot point or a storybeat or anything, especially if there's nothing to suggest if anything even remotely similar could've happened.

Like, say for example, how did Crocodile and Dragon meet? There's literally infinite ways they could've met, to the point I'm not even really that interested in speculating on it, because more likely than not, any guess I make will probably be wrong. Like speculating about something like that feels almost pointless. Compare that to say, how did Luffy end up in Garp's care? While we know like nothing about what exactly happened, we do have any theoretical information (ex: Garp and Croc should not know about each other, meaning there must've been a third party to deliver the baby, and it's more than likely that was Dragon) that we can get to much more specific when speculating about what might've happened. Like there's still plenty of options, but the options are far fewer, which makes the speculation so much more interesting, for me at least

But at the same time, I don't want to get too fond of any idea in because Oda could still prove me wrong and debunk it and I'd be sad if I got like fond of a concept and I ended up being dead wrong lmao

Mind you, for me, a big part of the reason I'm invested in the theory to begin with IS the possibility of it being canon. Like yes Crocodad would and always will make for fun AU fanfics regardless of if it's canon or not. But I am here to more or less speculate about canon.

So between my brain treating Crocodad as this monstrous, gigantic flow chart, and me not wanting to get too attached to any potential path on the chart... Yeah I don't know what to tell you anon, I'm sorry

Like. Just as an example. On how my brain processes this shit.

(Sidenote, this chart is like under the assumption that Croc and Dragon had mutually agreed that their child would be put in the care of Dragon's father. And while that makes the most sense to me by a long shot, technically it's totally possible Luffy was taken away from Crocodile by force by Dragon or something else) (THERE'S SO MANY POTENTIAL THINGS THAT COULD'VE HAPPENED, AHHHHHHH)

Like here, I think the most likely canon scenarios would be the "Respectful Rejection" followed by "Too Stunned To Speak -> It's Bad" routes, though personally I might be most interested in the "It Was Really Bad" route because it'd be really fucked up and sad

So like. Yeah. I have no idea what my "ultimate Crocodad timeline" would be, there's too much room for speculation to the point anything specific would leave the room of Neutral Canon Speculation and just turn into a plain old fanfic, and I'm just here for theorizing

But hey if you wanted a fanfic, here's a TL:DR;

(You know I say this is a TL:DR; but this got so fucking long it almost broke this post. Like Tumblr would not let me save the draft or post it anymore because there's a 4k character limit to "blocks", I had to break this into chunks man)

If Crocodile was betrayed by his crew after losing to Whitebeard and had to kill them himself in self-defence;

Who the fuck knows, maybe by some twist of fate our wounded/dying, exhausted and traumatized Crocodile drifted in the sea and his ship ran into Dragon, the man rescuing Crocodile from the kindness of his heart or something IDK

If the dude had to kill his own crew immidiately after Whitebeard crushed his hopes and dreams, Crocodile must've been just absolutely shell shocked. Depressed and withdrawn, just out of it. So maybe Dragon being there could've been great for Croc's mental state. Maybe. Big maybe.

If Crocodile did turn out to be the Rev Army's Secret Sugar Daddy then perhaps this is how that relationship kind of started: Crocodile could've paid Dragon in cash money as thanks for saving his life, and then just kept the money coming since Dragon had an army to run and needed the funds

(Like we don't know why Crocodile joined the Shichibukai anyways, but if it was only ever for The Benefits of not having to deal with the Marines chasing his ass anymore and if he didn't give a rat's ass about the Government... Like yeah, why not fund the Revolutionary Army, give money to the people trying to directly take down the fuckers while right under their noses.) (Who knows maybe Croc does have his own reasons for hating the WG and had like a genuine reason beyond just being a petty king and/or having basic human decency in understanding why the WG was corrupt and needed to be overthrown)

Thus begins a secret comradery where Crocodile every now and then goes and drops off some money to Dragon to help fund the Army, nobody on either side of the war any wiser (except maybe Iva-chan, they're allowed to be in on the secret, as a treat). It's their secret that they keep for years

Time passes

Whoopsie poopsie Crocodile's prégónánté

The two realize that their kid is going to be in so much danger for a pletora of reasons and that neither can raise the baby. Dragon knows his father would keep their baby safe and they both agree to leaving the child to him (not a happy decision, it's just for the best, for everyone's sake)

Anyway Crocodile's gender dysphoria goes into turbo mode during pregnancy. Maybe he never really realized it was there and/or what it was, but boy howdy, it's there now and it's really really bad. Like, if it wasn't for the baby he might just kill himself (and god knows once the kid is out and taken away, there's not going to be anything to stop him from doing just that)

Crocodile must've gone into hiding during the latter half of his pregnancy to keep it a secret from the Government, and I could totally imagine him being hellbent on being completely isolated. He is a Shichibukai, everybody knows him, he can't risk having even some random doctor recognize him and find out about the baby. Besides, it's not like he can do much while hiding anyways, like he might as well read 150 medical books to ensure he can deliver his baby by himself

(Sidenote but the narrator in OP has called Fuusha Village Luffy's "birth place" (think the term he used was "umereta machi", lit. "town he was born in"), and if that's true, then. Croc should've been hiding in and/or near Fuusha Village in Goa Kingdom. Additional sidenote, there are wild crocodiles in Goa, which are the Sir's favorite food.)

To avoid suspicion and the risk of being found out, Dragon might've agreed to not go see Crocodile during this time, only agreeing to see his significant other after the child was born so he could then deliver the baby to Garp (after not just leaving the Marines but also starting a fucking revolutionary army, the dude probably didn't want his father to find out he had been dating a fucking WARLORD)

But surely he'd think Crocodile was insane if he thought he'd let Crocodile deliver the baby alone. Like no, somebody needs to be there by his side. Someone Dragon could trust, a fellow Revolutionary perhaps. Oh yeah, just send Ivankov, what could possibly go wrong

(Personal headcanon but since we don't know when Ivankov got their Fruit, I kind of want to imagine they ate it just a short time ago at this point and that they hadn't fully realized the potential of the Hormone Fruit yet. Like their genderfluid ass may not have understood the power they now held)

Iva-chan did not know Croc was prénánté, whether Dragon told Ivankov ahead of time why they were being sent to check on Croc is up or debate (if Iva-chan was aware of Croc being their Secret Sugar Daddy though then I'm sure they understood why Dragon wanted and was willing to help out Crocodile in this situation). Croc and/or Dragon probably lied through their teeth about the father of the child if Iva-chan ever asked about it, and whatever Iva-chan was told they clearly bought it since they never knew about Dragon having a kid.

When Iva gets there though they can see right away that something is fucking wrong with Crocodile, in ways even he can't understand. He is so uncomfortable 24/7 for seemingly no reason. So naturally Iva-chan pokes and prods at the dumbass until Croc has a break down and explains his weird feelings he can't even word properly and this is how Emporio Ivankov discovered transgenderism

What's that? You don't like what pregnancy has done to your body, doesn't feel like it's yours anymore? You feel love for your child but don't want to be its mother? Good news, you can be its father instead. Bad news, gotta wait until the baby is farted out. Aren't sure about it? No worries, there's time to think about it, and shit's 100% reversible anyways. Just hang in there for a little bit longer, you may feel god awful rn but that too shall pass

(Maybe this is how Iva-chan starts calling Crocodile "Crocoboy", just to get him to warm up to the idea that he could be(come) a man, get used to it etc)

Crocodile has an identity crisis of a lifetime. Like either he knew since he was a small child that something was fucky wucky, or he never realized it until now, either way, he must not have even been aware of the idea that he could trans his gender (which would make sense if Ivankov only recently got their Fruit just sayin'). So yeah. Enjoy that gender crisis, dumbass

Like he straight up just goes through the five stages of grief before he's like "god dammit if it'll make me feel less like I'll kill myself then it's worth a shot, don't care what Dragon ends up thinking"

At some point Croc must've contacted Dragon at least one final time just so they can agree on when and where they'll meet to hand over the baby once it's born (if Croc doesn't die at child birth. I mean they both know he'll be fine, Croc's survived worse. But if something did happen, Iva-chan will take care of the baby until Dragon arrives)

This is One Piece. Luffy was born at dawn.

Crocodile probably insists on getting the T literally immidiately after the baby is out. If he doesn't just pass out immidiately after giving birth. But like within 24 hours of giving birth. Iva-chan is probably like "Crocoboy you're exhausted, chill, your cooch needs to recover" and he's just like "why wait for it to recover when you're going to get rid of it, just do it"

(Iva-chan probably goes and gets Croc some emergency clothes and like bottles and baby food etc because god knows he's going to burst out of his old clothes and he ain't gonna have the tiddies to breastfeed that baby either)

Anyway he gets the rones and gets to enjoy gender euphoria for the first time in his life. Happy times, happy tears, a happy croc

Dude probably nearly shits himself when he tries to speak as he is now voiced by Ryuuzaburo Fucking Ootomo (even Iva-chan is like "HOLY SHIT your voice dropped") (like they probably agressively try to encourage Crocodile to speak more and let them hear that voice and Croc is like "ssssshhhhhhhhh stop yelling you'll wake up the baby!!")

Anyway he finally gets to fucking rest and relax and enjoy the sheer relief of not just being free of his dysphoria but also his baby boy being born and looking all healthy and happy. A happy dad

(If Crocodile was the first person Iva-chan helped transition, and under these circumstances specifically. I think seeing the guy and his sheer relief would give like Iva-chan a new mission in life. To help people like Croc)

(Ivankov: "It's like a great weight has been lifted off your chest... GET IT, 'CAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE TITS ANYMORE! HEEHAW!!" / 🐊: "If you wake up the baby I will skewer you")

Anyway if the Rev Army member stays with Crocodile for too long there's a risk of them getting found out and that'd be bad, so Iva-chan needs to GTFO (they have better things to do, like overthrow some governments and stuff). Also Crocodile needs to prepare because he can't have the Government wondering where the fuck he's been all these months much longer (god knows explaining his sudden manliness is going to be enough to deal with) and the kid needs to go into hiding. If Iva-chan asks where the child is going, Croc probably won't give a straight answer, just that there's a plan and he needs Ivankov to keep the baby a secret etc (perhaps that could be the blackmail Iva-chan brought up in Impel Down 🤔)

Crocodile gets to spend a little time with his baby boy (before and/or after Iva-chan leaves). Crocodiles (the animals) look after their babies for three months before they're on their own, so at most he stayed with his baby for three months, though I'd argue just 3 weeks, simply because that'd a painfully short amount of time that's just perfect for tragic storytelling

Perhaps that was the happiest time of Croc's life. No stupid Government to deal with, no pirates to fight, no villages to pillage. Just him and his beautiful baby boy. Not even the knowledge of knowing he'd have to say goodbye to his son forever would get in the way of his happiness at that moment.

(Did he ever think about what to name the child? Maybe Dragon had wanted Crocodile to name their child and Crocodile was supposed to think of something while expecting, before the baby was born. Or maybe, knowing he would never see that child again (until the Government blows up) he could not bring himself to think of a name. It'd be Dragon's father who'd look after the baby anyways, Dragon should name him)

Dragon comes. Either exactly at the agreed upon time, or perhaps a day early (dude was too excited and wanted to be with his wife and child, together as a family, even if it was for a day). Whenever he arrives;

See the chart earlier in the post

However things go down, Dragon and Crocodile go their separate ways. Crocodile leaves the island immidiately.

Well. I certainly became absolutely deranged writing this.

HOPE YOU FOUND THAT ENTERTAINING

[doverstar]

Hey Doverstar. Fellow Christian here. :) What do you think about The Chosen? They just started releasing Season 4 eps in theaters this February in the United States. I really love this show. What about you? If you do...I think that would be groovy! If not...well. That would also be groovy too. ✌

Hi there! Woah, it's in theaters, that's crazy! Back in my day it was barely stream-able and we had to be in a specific person's living room to get it on the TV, how far we've come by matchbox twenty- I'm glad you asked, this will be long-ish!

I used to attend the church that the creator of the show had been attending at the time when we lived in IL (his name is Dallas, I think we had dinner with him? don't remember). That was before The Chosen was a thing. He had great ideas about what Christian media could be, but The Chosen in particular went downhill fast for me. I think it's an excellent show, but I also think that when you're using historical, real people in the content, you have to be very careful. Especially when it's biblical figures in history. Then you have to be insanely careful, and Dallas is not being as careful as one would hope. Because you don't want people who know nothing about Jesus to watch that show and have that expectation in their minds when they go to read the Bible. Jesus probably didn't talk like that, may not have looked like that, and may not have even smiled like that during His ministry here. But I've literally spoken with people who say things like if Jesus doesn't smile like Jonathan Roumie when they get to Heaven, "what's the point". That's dangerous. (And theologically the show is not sound.) I get taking creative liberties in order to make a television show more engaging for a modern audience, but not with the Bible. I get trying to make it easier to understand and follow for people who are just not brought up in the church and don't know the language. But I've decided for me, personally, not to continue watching The Chosen. For one thing, I don't want those actors/actresses in my head when I'm reading the Bible, and for another, I don't want to start being in a "fandom" for a show that's supposed to be portraying the events in the Bible. I don't want to start treating the Bible like it's fiction, like Peter's my blorbo (as the kids say), like it's just entertainment. It's not. It's real. It's all real, and I know me, and I know I have a tendency to over-romanticize the media I consume. I'm not going near that show with a 39-and-a-half foot pole anymore. It would be too easy to start thinking the wrong way about what I believe based on the way the show makes me feel. That, and I think the show is disrespectful and wrong. Great idea, good execution, went off the rails. And yeah, The Chosen is so good at making you feel things! I saw that first Season. I loved that first Season! Little ideas like having the Jesus-character laugh in bed while knowing exactly what the family of the lame man he cured is waking up to, literally able to see them rejoicing miles away? That's beautiful. When the Jesus-character cries with the woman at the well, and he tells her from now on it will all be about the heart, not about works? And she says "You promise?" And he cries and smiles and promises and she's so happy? That's beautiful. I cried too. And my favorite was the line when Mary says that before she met Jesus, "I was one way. And now I am completely different. And the thing that happened in between was Him." That's perfect. That's so good. That's what it's like, in three sentences. Excellent. Well done. Oh, and the music swelling at the end of each episode? Fantastic. Emotions everywhere. But like I said, I don't trust it. I got through about four episodes of Season 2 before I was like, okay, that's enough. This isn't good for me. Does that make sense? I could go into the discrepancies and how they often treat Jesus in the show as though He wasn't fully man and fully God (He was), and how they often make it seem like you can believe He was or He wasn't and it's all fine, when it's not all fine. But that would take a while! In a nutshell: I'm glad the creators had the right heart to start out with, and I'm pleased to see it proven that Christians can make excellent media, but not if it's like this, and I don't think the show should continue. If it does, I think they need to get their heads on straight and be super clear about the Truth, otherwise there's no point. I won't be watching it. Doesn't make you evil if you watch it! This is just what I think. Since you asked. Glad to hear from you! <3

[galactic-feelins]

Runaway City AU talk ahead:

Sometimes when experiencing media of all kinds I end up thinking about crossover scenarios CONSTANTLY. The worst of it is when I think about how my own ocs would interact with the world or how characters would interact with those ocs. But enough about original characters, I'm here to share some thoughts I had about the gummi crew!

So for anyone that follows my main blog or knows me personally, you'll know I've been thinking about "Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn Of The New World" again! Obviously I have thought about KH crossovers before and several years ago I tried drawing Emil and Roxas together, however I haven't shared that one because I'm not so proud of how it turned out. When it comes to the Runaway City AU (as I'm tentatively calling it) I keep thinking about what worlds Roxas and co could visit for both thematic narrative purposes and for moving them along on their journeys, be it personal character growth or a step towards finding Sora! Unfortunately, I have a very obvious type when it comes to characters I like, and Emil has a very similar story to what Roxas is going through in this au...

Anyway I want to share a late game idea I had with Emil before I forget, but I can't exactly draw anything for it yet as I haven't shared enough context behind it! Spoilers ahead:

Anyone aware of Dawn would probably know about Ratatosk's Ain Soph Aur, and may or may not know you can use it in regular combat upon using Devil's Hellfire. Well, the idea is that Roxas would've met them on a first visit late enough in Emil's journey to be able to see this for himself, but early enough that the whole truth behind Ratatosk hasn't been revealed yet. After finding Sora, I had the idea that Roxas doesn't immediately remerge with him and instead Sora joins the crew as they try to find a way to allow both Sora and Roxas to live as themselves, hence the heartless Sora designs I'd shared! But, this leaves a chance for Sora to tag along on a second visit >:3

On the second visit, enough time would have passed for Emil to learn the truth about who and what he is, and subsequently seal his other half away in his heart. Emil is dealing with a lot, but so are Sora and Roxas, so they talk and confide in each other and try to give support and condolences. In the base game, Emil cannot use Ain Soph Aur after Ratatosk is sealed away, but he still has Ratatosk's power as he is a part of him. This probably comes up in conversation with Roxas even!

Now for the fun part!

If they'd been talking things through in room at an inn for example, then someone would have to come by to tell Sora an Roxas it's time to go. Danny is the one to fetch them, but while he's there he shows great respect and honor towards Tenebrae who immediately comments upon Danny's formality.

"Of course I'd respect you! Your job is one of the most important of them all. After all, it's only in darkness that stars shine the brightest!"

Now that may not be as nice to Tenebrae as poor Phantom had expected, but it does stick in the minds of Emil, Sora, and Roxas! While Sora is reminded of Riku by the statement, Roxas begins to think deeper. Sora is seen as a beacon of hope to the people that sent him on this quest in the first place, and yet he's so full of darkness that he becomes a shadow when he's feeling too emotional and high-strung. But even Roxas can see just how brilliantly he shines, while Roxas himself has no light or dark or his own. This would be a catalyst to Roxas deciding once and for all that he'll save Sora, even if it means sacrificing himself. Sora wouldn't like that; why would someone so set on living suddenly decide to sacrifice himself, and for HIM specifically? Roxas goes to bed, but Sora leaves the ship to make sure he has no chance of recombining in his sleep, and so he goes to Emil to talk!

Emil has taken the experience to think about his own plans, and from talking to Sora and Roxas he recognizes that there may be another way to go about things. Emil is Emil, but he is also Ratatosk, and while Emil doesn't want to let Ratatosk end all life in Aselia, he may not have to give Ratatosk the chance at all! I don't remember the exact conversation I had imagined, but Sora also comes away with the reassurance that Roxas wants to help him and he should respect his decision and accept the gift he's being given. And since Emil/Ratatosk is a summon spirit, he tells Sora to call him if he ever needs help, granting Sora yet another summon.

This is all to lead up to Emil relearning Ain Soph Aur and making it his own: Sora summons Emil into battle for the first time later to find Emil prepares an attack with "Darkness Empowers, Ain Soph Aur!" Sora is a bit confused about the first part, but internally Roxas is filled with glee and pride for Emil being able to accept himself and his power as his own!

[nothums-from-tj]

What is your hc on boomercup? for me, I think they bonded over the fact that they are the odd ones out of their siblings. Brick and Butch are always together doing things Blossom and Bubbles doing things together, and Buttercup and Boomer are just left out, not that they want to do the things their siblings are doing I also hc that boomer moved out like when he was 15-16 so that just adds to how estranged his relationship with his brothers is whilst buttercup is going out all the time with her friends just so she doesn't have to see how close her sisters are and how estranged she is and I also hc that they both were the last to get together so their siblings mostly blossom and bubbles set up double dates just so they make buttercup and boomer be together

I’m literally so excited someone asked me abt them I’m like in tears. This is a super long post just to give you a heads up

Just rq I feel like with how oblivious the two are they’d be like “why are we literally being dragged on a date” and then ditch their siblings to hang out with each other, said siblings laughing at them when they finally get together like “that’s literally WHY WE INVITED YOU BOTH WE BASICALLY FORCED YOU ON A DATE WITH EACH OTHER” “oh”

Ok so a one-shot I actually had in mind basically touches upon exactly that also loosely inspired by “Pity Party” by Melanie Martinez (full idea beneath the cut), although my main work right now—the fic I have going (you can find it under the tbmg tag I have on this post and my pinned) is Boomer being impulsive to try to impress some girl in a class they all share by trying to be “good” and so asking for help, and given it’s the most-behaved Ruff and the least-behaved Puff and somewhere along the line they’re still classified as a villain and a hero respectively despite not being too different fundamentally and it’s mostly a character study in that aspect while still building their friendship before getting them together. I like to think that as crime lessens in the future the Ruffs mostly stop having contact with Mojo and low contact with HIM providing they’re mainly just tools to them unlike the Puffs to Professor, who he sees as his children and created them specifically to have children in his life. Boomer, in Buttercup’s opinion, is the most annoying since he’s as much of an instigator as she is. For the most part they lose contact with the other groups save for Boomer and sometimes Brick just trying to have a bit of fun by getting on their nerves and eventually only really focus on Buttercup since she’s the only one to still give them a reaction

That, and it’s nice to have someone that can actually match each other’s strength—they mostly get into fights when having a rough day, when they need to either beat the shit out of someone until they feel better or it means violence is still some kind of physical contact that says there’s some kind of care in it, good or bad

This is sort of what I’m alluding to at the start of said fic that I’ll try to delve into further into the next chapter or the one following. During the next chapter is when I have them actually chatting and getting to actually know one another aside from any insecurities to jab at to initiate a fight

I have another hc I’ll put in a rb here at a later date bc it deals with some heavier topics (EDIT: some are featured here)

Alright one-shot idea:

It’s the girls’ 15th birthday, a Saturday, and Buttercup has always been the first to pick on her sisters right and it seems that’s the only way she really knows how to make connections which is a little bit what @milksteaki touched upon in her (edited to use proper pronouns) hcs as far as how she “flirts” with Boomer (not quite the same, it’s close enough), and I doubt her sisters would ever fully understand that

Especially as they get older I have a feeling Blossom and Butters would argue a bit more given they’re probably the two who bear the most insecurities and they’re so alike in sometimes getting on what really makes people tick. Anyway they probably had one the night before bc Buttercup is sometimes just so intense they don’t really know how to take it the way her sisters do and it literally scares their friends, especially when BC’s friend group are boys who roughhouse or are able to match her competitive nature and they mention this to her sisters in private who then try to relay the message to Buttercup or they try to encourage their friends to tell her straight up bc she really doesn’t mean any harm. Either way, Buttercup either didn’t invite her friends for those reasons or was told to invite someone else and she doesn’t have anybody else, that or everyone was busy/had games/whatever else. Blossom asks Buttercup not to “scare the guests” and she, in a bout of teenage angst, takes it as “don’t show up”

After that she’s left alone in the room and her immediate thought is to contact Boomer to play basketball at a park or something—just the two of them, since all he was really doing was either trying to ignore Brick and Butch fight or, providing you’re the second person I’ve known of to hc Boomer moving out as a teenager, he’s doing absolutely nothing and is more than happy to hang out with someone

They chat during the game and sometimes after shots—not like it’s a real game anyway—and Buttercup mentions that she’s been “kicked out for the day” or that she fought with Blossom again, really anything to keep from sharing too many details and it works as Boomer continues to say that he’s so glad to not really be around his brothers like that anymore. While Boomer is never the one really involved with Brick and Butch’s spats, he feels left out and like no one pays attention to him in kind of the opposite of how Bubbles feels

It’s late afternoon when Blossom finds her after realizing Buttercup isn’t in the room sulking or looking for privacy but straight up left, and only then did she realize Buttercup probably had no intention of showing up and felt horrible—they’re a tight-knit group, even with the arguing they both miss their sister terribly and their birthday is never too fun without the third

Another argument starts out since Blossom’s concerned and Buttercup’s pissed and they eventually forget Boomer’s there for a minute—at least Buttercup, until:

“You said you didn’t want me there!”

“I never said that! All I wanted was for the guests to have a good time!”

“Forget them, Blossom—it’s our birthday! I should be able to enjoy the day, too!”

Boomer’s heart sinks as he’s looking between the two as they argue and his voice is softer than he ever expects: “It’s your birthday today?”

Her heart stops when she remembers about his presence and how she was actively avoiding that detail and she can’t even think about a response, Blossom’s as silent as she is, and he just looks hurt that he was never told and about everything that’s already been said, “Why didn’t you tell me it’s your birthday?”

“It’s no big deal, Boomer. If I cared enough, I would’ve said something.”

“I care. The least I could’ve done is, I don’t know, made you dinner or something.”

They discuss to talk about it later since the most important thing is that Blossom wants her there for cake and they’ve refused to even light the candles without her there. They make up, there’s probably some tears, and Boomer is then invited to every party (he also probably makes a little friendship bracelet or a favorite snack as a gift that he brings to her in the midst of the night)

[inposterumcumgaudio]

Promised I'd do Victoria Byng for @axxloe too so.

I don't have any specific thoughts about her in the way that I did General Byng and Reg Cutty because I feel she's actually pretty well explored in the game and mostly understood by the fandom. Nonetheless, here's a laundry list of Victoria miscellanea.

Though her strikebreaking activities are treated neutrally by the narrative as a necessary action, it does make her a tool. Which, if you're on the ball, you know this because her entire DLC is about realizing she's a fkn tool.

I don't think anyone questions that Verloc is a psychopath who takes delight in drowning people for fun, but again, the people telling us that he's a psychopath are Sally and General Byng. So if we are eyeing that notion suspiciously, it may then be possible that - at least from Verloc's perspective - he actually has a valid reason to hate Victoria as much as he seems to. What is it? There's nothing in the lore that specifically points to anything large enough to merit that. She does call him Tony and we know from other places he not only hates being called by his first name but insists upon his honorific being used... but you can't really tell Victoria Byng how to address you, can you?

Being called Tony would be annoying, but probably not enough to be delighted that the Joy supply saboteur turns out to be her. Moreso I think this points to something that a lot of people miss when being told about who has the power in Wellington Wells. Verloc is said to be a law unto himself on the Holm of Uskglass, but whatever power he holds only extends to that one island. He still has to answer to General Byng and Victoria. And they do put the screws to him about showing progress whether it's viable or not. Maybe to the detriment of Verloc's other interests.

While you can bet Verloc hates being called Tony and I implied in my stories that doing so was a deliberate subordination tactic on Victoria's part, I actually think Victoria only did it because she thought it made her more approachable and that it was the culture of Haworth Labs to be so familiar. She recalls Haworth as "never one for ceremony" and she calls him Harry in her quest notes, suggesting she probably called him that in person too. It would have been awkward to be so formal as to call Verloc by his title when his boss was fine being on a first name basis. Tony is obviously a step further than Anton would have been, but maybe that was supposed to be a nudge. That is, if Verloc had actually called her Vicky back, even spitefully, she wouldn't have minded. She calls herself Vicky in her own thoughts. (Interestingly, when she calls herself that it's spelled "Vicky" in the subtitles, but when she's imagining her mother calling her that, it's spelled "Vickie".)

While her father strives to be on top of the pyramid and to wield his power over his subordinates, Victoria goes to great lengths to make herself seem very Of the People. She lives in the Village rather than the Parade. She isn't exactly hiding from the rest of society the way a lot of the other notable characters in the game seem to be (Nick Lightbearer, Dr. Faraday, Dr. Verloc, Jack Worthing, General Byng to an extent). Indeed, she organizes public activities quite frequently. Victoria's motivation in all things is to appear as much a common Wellie as anyone else, fancy clothes and mansion notwithstanding. That Wellies in her DLC feel comfortable approaching her on the street to make idle conversation (even though she probably looks like hell) is something she's worked to imbue in them. Obviously this is informed greatly by her being visibly Other and her desire to negate that, but it's also part of what she's come to think of as her duty and her power in the town. The people of Wellington Wells do listen to and follow her (as they have since she was quite young) and she uses this - she believes - to their benefit. Indeed, she's more a post-war English ideal in that way than practically all the Actually English people in town. She's had her shoulder to the wheel the entire time.

One of the few personal items General Byng keeps in his safehouse is a drawing Victoria did as a child. He's quick to cut her loose when called out for having been looking out for himself, but it may not be as easy a decision as it seems to Victoria in that moment.

Indira had one too. And we see it right as Victoria realizes that she had to make a choice about how Victoria should feel about her moving forward. Parallels! And perpendiculars!

And lastly...

Christian Louboutin has only just been born the previous year (to say nothing of Wellington Wells' policy of isolation) and yet she's got the red bottom shoes. But if she had a favorite designer and the ability to shop them, it'd be Hermès all the way.

[lagingersnapz]

Some Rain Must Fall - (Fallout Fic) Chapter 11: A Mapping of Scars

Chapter: 11/?

After Cooper wakes Lucy up from a nightmare, the two of them have a conversation about the time Cooper tried to sell her for vials.

Characters: Lucy MacLean/Cooper Howard(The Ghoul), Dogmeat(CX-404), Original Characters

Word Count: 3482

Warnings: Violence, Swearing

Author's Note: I have no idea what to say. I am so tired right now. Some downtime in my morning. Sipping on hot cocoa because coffee doesn't do jack for me. I can barely see from the fatigue. There's probably errors everywhere. Tunnel vision. Hazbin Hotel soundtrack. Remember me. Also I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Previous Next

Ao3

~~~

Cooper lay in a Vault-Tec Vault, in a Vault-Tec bed, wearing Vault-Tec pajamas, with a Vault-Dweller curled up against his side. If ever there was a time to reflect on things, this was it. Specifically, Cooper decided to try and dissect the impulses he was starting to feel in regards to Lucy. He wasn’t surprised, exactly, that there might be a little bit of an attraction forming on his side of things. He’d always been drawn to strong women; Barb had been strong, too. But as far as following through with any of these feelings or impulses, Cooper knew he absolutely could not let it happen.

Finding himself a partner had been so far off of his radar that it had never even come to mind. When he had realized that the radiation was changing him, rather than killing him, he had despaired. For a few years, Cooper had wallowed in pity for himself, wishing he was dead. Janey’s look of confusion when Barb took her but left him haunted him. After awhile, Cooper decided that he needed to make sure Janey was still okay.

When he returned to the Vault he had left them in, he found it damaged and abandoned. Cooper had spent over a month, combing the Vault from top to bottom looking for signs of Janey and Barb. In the end he had managed to get into one of the working terminals and found logs saying that those who had been living in the Vault were being moved, but it didn’t say where they were going. One thing Cooper knew was that neither Janey or Barb were there, so they must have been moved. And so his new goal in life was set: he would do everything and anything to find Janey again.

Lucy had set him completely off track in his goals. When he had first found her, Cooper thought she might be a solution to his problems in a way. The daughter of someone he had known before the war and of someone who had worked directly for Barb? Sometimes the world felt like an awfully small place. If anyone would know where Barb was, and by extension Janey, it would be Henry MacLean. If Cooper followed Lucy, he knew he would catch up with him eventually. And then he had lost track of her at the Super Duper Mart.

“How the fuck did I end up here?” he breathed out again, repeating the question he’d asked before Lucy had fallen asleep. The familiar frustration and anger stirred in his chest. He’d been so overwhelmed lately that it hadn’t had a chance to really sink in just how crazy things had gotten. The rule of there only being one pace was so far out the window he couldn’t even see it anymore. And as far as Lucy doing what he said when he said it… Cooper shifted in his lovely new Vault-Tec pajamas. This was bullshit.

Eventually Cooper felt himself starting to fall asleep. The days had been hectic enough to wear him out, and there was nothing better to do. If he kept thinking about how fucked up everything had become, he’d just get more and more angry without any outlet for it. It was Lucy’s sob that woke him back up. She was still pressed against his side, her face buried against his ribs, one hand clutching the fabric of his shirt. A shudder ran down the length of her body, and her breath hitched.

“Hey, Sweetheart?” Cooper didn’t bother with a quiet voice. It was obvious she was in the grips of a nightmare–so much for his presence being calming for her–the least he could do was wake her up. Easing his arm out from under her he sat up, reaching down to shake her by the shoulders. “Lucy?”

Lucy’s eyes flew open and she let out a strangled shriek. Her arms came up and she shoved him harder than Cooper expected, sending him off balance. His first instinct was to grab her wrists and stop her from trying to strike him until her brain caught up with the fact that she was awake now, but he suspected restraining her would only make her panic further, so instead he put an arm over his face to protect it.

Lucy was up quickly, throwing a leg over him so she could pin him down and raising her fist up to strike him, while the other shoved his arm out of the way. Then she paused, breathing hard, and in the darkness Cooper saw her looking around. Ghoul eyes worked better than human ones did in the dark, so he knew she couldn’t spot anything familiar around them like he could.

“Wyatt?” Lucy asked, voice thick. Her breath hitched, and he felt her body relax on top of his. “Cooper.” This time it wasn’t a question. She must have remembered where she was and who he was. Cooper’s arm fell away from his face and he looked up at her.

“You alright?” he asked.

Lucy took a deep breath, shoving both hands back through her hair to push it out of her face. “Yeah, I’m…” She trailed off, looking around at the room. “I forgot where I was. I thought we were still outside. I thought…” She shivered, resting one hand against his stomach and rubbing at her eyes with the other. “Damn it.” Looking down, she realized how she was sitting and shifted, pulling herself away from him. “Sorry. I was having a nightmare.”

Cooper snorted. “Yeah, no shit.” He moved to sit up, scooting himself back against the headboard of the bed. “Wanna tell me about it?”

Lucy settled herself next to him, straightening her tank top which had become dangerously askew during her moment of panic, then leaned heavily against the headboard as well. “I don’t think there’s much to tell. It was a bunch of things.”

“Like..?” Cooper prompted.

“Mostly it was people. Max, Irene, Monty, Rob, Ellie, Moldaver, my mom.”

“Shit, Sweetheart, that’s a hell of a list,” Cooper tried to make his voice light. Part of him wanted to reiterate that the surface wasn’t gentle and that these losses were to be expected and that she should just get used to it like he had. But a much bigger part of himself didn’t want Lucy to become like he had, so he kept it to himself. “That Max fella wasn’t dead when you left him though, right? Should he really be on that list?”

Lucy cast him an annoyed glance. “Oh, I’m sorry. Let me just tell my subconscious to stop feeling guilty about abandoning Max, since at least he wasn’t dead yet like the others were.”

Cooper hummed. “Ah, so it’s a list of people to feel guilty over, is it?”

“Not all of them. I don’t feel guilty about Monty.”

“So why’d he make the list? Who’s Monty?”

Lucy bit her lip, clearly thinking over what to say. Her answer couldn’t have been more surprising.

“Monty’s my husband.”

***

Lucy knew she had to amend her statement as soon as it left her lips. “Well, he was my husband. Until he tried to kill me and my dad drowned him in some pickles.” She turned her head to look at Cooper and found him looking right back at her. The room was dark, but her eyes had started to adjust, and she could see the confused twist of his mouth.

“There’s a lot to unpack there,” he finally said. Lucy snorted.

“Not as much as you probably think. We thought we were trading with a neighboring Vault to get me a husband, but they ended up being raiders led by Moldaver. They killed a bunch of our people and kidnapped my dad. Monty didn’t try and kill me until later, after the wedding, when he had me alone. Stabbed me right here.” She raised a hand to the scar on her side.

Cooper cleared his throat. “And you said your daddy did what, now?”

Lucy picked at the blanket she had pulled back up into her lap. “Well, I thought I killed Monty in our housing unit, so I went to help the rest of my Vault, but he came back and tried to kill me a second time. My dad showed up and hit him with a shovel, then drowned him in a barrel of pickles.”

Letting out a low whistle, Cooper shook his head. “Well, god damn. Gotta say, I don’t think much o’ your daddy, but I can’t fault him for his reaction. If someone ever tried to do anything like that to J-” He cut himself off abruptly, but Lucy had turned to look at him as intently as she could in the dark room. He had mentioned family before, his reason for surviving so long was apparently the ongoing search for them, but beyond that he had had a wife before, she didn’t know anything about them. For as much as her dad talked about Cooper Howard, he had never mentioned a family.

“Sorry, Sweetheart. Ain’t ready to go down that road, yet.” He was quiet, almost whispering, but she heard a depth of emotion in his voice that betrayed his unease.

Lucy reached over and patted him on the leg. “Don’t worry, Wyatt. You don’t have to talk about it if you aren’t ready.” They sat in silence for awhile, and Lucy tried to forget her nightmare. Once she had woken up she had forgotten most of the details, but she knew she had seen the faces of a lot of the people that had been lost.

Eventually her eyelids started to feel heavy again, and she leaned over, putting her head on Cooper’s shoulder. “Thanks for waking me up. Sorry I jumped on you.” She felt Cooper shift a little bit.

“‘Course, Darlin’. And no worries. Ain’t the first time someone’s jumped on me like that.”

Lucy thought of how she’d been perched on top of him and chuckled a little, but chose not to say anything else about that. “Can you talk to me about something?”

Cooper shifted, moving so the two of them were laying down again rather than sitting against the headboard. “About what?”

Lucy managed a little shrug from her place nestled at his side. “I don’t know. Anything. Just talk so that the last thing I’m thinking about isn’t my nightmare again.” She could hear his heart beating in his chest, a slow, steady rhythm, and when Cooper hummed thoughtfully she felt it against her cheek.

“Remember the Super Duper Mart?” he finally asked.

“I thought you were gonna distract me from my nightmares,” Lucy said dryly.

“Well, I figured there was something you should know about that whole clusterfuck.”

“Okay, and what’s that?”

“I wasn’t gonna leave you there.”

Lucy’s mouth twisted in confusion and she propped herself up on her elbow so she could look down at his face. She wanted to be sure he saw the disbelief plastered over her features. “You remember that you sent me inside to have my organs harvested, right?”

“Well,” Cooper started, drawing the word out, “normally they don’t get right to the harvestin’. I was gonna get my vials and come right back in to get you, but they took their sweet time delivering on their end of the bargain.”

The skepticism on her face must have been plain, because Cooper continued with his explanation.

“Not out of kindness or no Golden Rule bullshit, but because by that point I figured maybe you really were related to ol’ Henry MacLean, and I wanted to have a word with him. Plus you had that handy little tracker for the head strapped to your wrist. Needed to keep you close.”

It took a moment for Lucy to digest this. “So, you were going to pretend to sell me to organ harvesters, which I thought was going to be sex slavery, by the way, until the robot clarified things for me, and then you were going to break in and steal from the organ harvesters afterwards?”

Cooper made a little strangled sound in the back of his throat. “You make it sound like stealing from people who sell organs is a bad thing. And hold on, you thought I was selling you to be a sex slave ?” He sat up again, looking down at her until Lucy sat all the way back up as well.

“Well, I mean, what was I supposed to think?! You were selling me! I’d never exactly been sold before.”

“Holy fuckin’ shit. I can’t believe you didn’t scatter my brains across the dirt when you had the chance that day.”

The two of them sat there, staring at each other for several long breaths until Cooper let out a heavy sigh and laid back down, putting a hand over his eyes and rubbing like he had a headache. Lucy didn’t lay back down yet.

“How many other people have you sold to them before?” The conversation from before came back to her. She knew he had done plenty of bad things in his time, but how many people had he traded to death so he could stay alive? Was he responsible for any of the other ghouls she saw locked up in there?

“I fucking didn’t.” Now Cooper sounded genuinely angry. “I done a lot of bad shit, but I’ve never sold an actual person before, Ms. MacLean. I just knew they did that shit there. I’ve traded for vials with caps and other drugs before.” Cooper growled in the back of his throat and then pushed the blankets away from him, standing up and pacing for a second. “Fuck, what the fuck am I even doing here right now? I said there’d be one pace, and here I fucking am, getting nowhere and being sidetracked by every other’s person’s goddamn problems in the Wasteland but my own.”

Turning to the doorway, he reached down, pulling off his shirt as he went. “Where’s the damn laundry? I’m putting my actual clothes back on. This is ridiculous.”

Lucy scrambled out of bed to follow him, picking up the shirt he had left on the floor. “Cooper, wait.” She reached out to put a hand on his shoulder but he spun, grabbing her by the wrist to stop her from touching him, and stepping her backwards until her back bumped into the wall and she was looking at him wide-eyed.

“I told you not to call me that here.” His face was dark, but Lucy could tell there was more going on under the surface than outrage at her for thinking he was selling her. Though that wasn’t all that had her attention. The lighting in the living room of the unit was brighter than the bedroom had been, and with the shirt off, Lucy got her first good look at Cooper’s skin. He was usually so careful about keeping himself covered that all she had seen before was his head and hands. Even when he had been butchering the frogs he hadn’t so much as pushed up his sleeves.

The flesh of his torso looked burned, like his face, and was covered in scars. Long slashes from blades and more healed bullet wounds than Lucy could count in that moment, some fresh enough that she knew they must have come from the fight with the raiders. Though Cooper kept a firm hold of one of her wrists, pressing it back against the wall next to her head, Lucy dropped the shirt from her free hand, raising it to touch one of the more recent wounds. Cooper flinched at the contact, his breathing a little ragged, but he didn’t say anything, didn’t move to stop her, letting her map out the scars.

As her fingers explored, Cooper moved ever so slightly closer, and she noticed his eyes drop to watch her hand. Under some of the scar tissue she felt the hardness of what must have been old bullets still lodged in his body. Was his whole body like this? An unhappy story mapped out across his skin for the rest of his life?

“Please stay,” Lucy’s voice was quiet, like she was talking to a frightened animal, and she looked back up to his face, leaving her fingertips against the skin of his chest. The scar tissue almost burned under her touch. She wanted to ask him about them, where he had gotten them and if he remembered the first one. Were they all from after the bombs dropped, or were some of them from the war he’d fought in before the world ended?

Slowly, Cooper’s grip on her wrist relaxed, until he finally let go of her, keeping his hand braced on the wall instead. Lucy didn’t move yet, waiting for his breathing to slow back down, noticing that her own had picked up too. Their eyes locked, and Cooper started to lean forward. For a second, Lucy thought he was going to try kissing her, and in that second she wondered if she would have let him. The air felt charged in a way she hadn’t noticed before. Yes, she decided. If he wanted to kiss her, she’d let him. Maybe she even wanted him to. The thought felt like an immediate betrayal of Max, but Lucy tried to ignore the sudden twist of guilt in her stomach.

Instead of trying to kiss her, Cooper’s eyes closed and he leaned his forehead against hers, drawing in a deep breath through the hole where his nose would have been and letting it out slowly from his mouth. They both stood like that for awhile, heartbeats settling and breath slowing. It felt like a wordless apology between them. Eventually though, Cooper moved back again, and his hand fell away from the wall.

“Come on,” Lucy said, stooping down to pick up the dropped shirt. Then, taking his hand in hers, she slowly eased back towards the bedroom. “We’ve all been through a lot. We need sleep.”

Cooper let her lead him back into the room, and when she offered the shirt he took it wordlessly, looking at it for a heartbeat before he put it back on, hiding his torso from view again. Lucy crawled under the blankets, looking at him expectantly. Eventually Cooper joined her, though this time she was determined to give him some space. At least until he moved his arm, silently inviting her back to his side. Gratefully, Lucy accepted the invitation. Whether he believed it or not, his presence did help, and she’d prefer having the human contact over laying there alone.

This time it was Lucy who waited awake until she heard the sound of Cooper’s breathing become slow and even before letting herself drift off. Eventually she was woken again by the artificial sunlight coming in through the fake window set into the wall. With a groan, Lucy shifted. As she slept she had rolled over, and now instead of her being pressed to Cooper’s side, he was pressed up to her back, his arm wrapped around her waist. Her movement apparently woke Cooper as well, because he snatched his arm back and rolled back away from her like he was expecting her to bite him. Lucy could guess why.

“No need to worry. It’s a perfectly normal thing to have happen in the mornings,” she chirped, hopping to her feet.

“Christ, Sweetheart, I don’t need you to tell me how my body works,” Cooper grumbled. His agitation just made her smile. After their little argument last night, she had been worried what would happen when they woke up. Would he get up and immediately leave? Would things be awkward between them? Her fears were apparently unfounded, because Cooper was still here, and he sounded like his usual self.

“Okey-dokey.” Lucy left the bedroom, finding Dogmeat and the kids in the living room, already watching the TV, an open box of Sugar Bombs in front of them.

For the next hour, Lucy let herself play pretend. As she cooked breakfast, she let herself pretend this was Vault 33. The marriage trade had played out perfectly and she had been married for years now. This breakfast was for her family: herself, her husband, and their children. What surprised her about her little fantasy was that her partner in it wasn’t Max, but rather Cooper Howard. Not Cooper Howard from the movies, but the one she knew now, sour temper, no nose, burned skin and all.

The ridiculousness of this little daydream was driven home as they were eating, and Kelly set down her forkful of powdered eggs with a sharp clatter. Her eyebrows were drawn down sharply, and she looked Lucy straight in the eyes.

“I want to go with you and Wyatt,” she announced, and the room went quiet.