#i'll stop now but i wanted to chip in with my own thoughts! i've seen an increasing amount of posts complaining about this issue exactly

[rin-star]

I wanted to preserve these tags because they're very good. I saw some people complaining why it took so long, this here explains it!

BREAKING MY SILENCE

I'm going to tear my hair out if I see one more person repeat the "Class A didn't contact Deku for 8 years" bullshit. This is why leaks are so harmful because bad takes spread like wildfire.

First, Deku never says that. He says it's harder to meet, because the schedules don't line up.

Second, I don't know if any of you went from living in a dorm and seeing people every day to suddenly navigating adult life in a competitive field with crazy working hours, but that's exactly what it feels like.

There is an empty hole that the people with whom daily contact was a given are suddenly sometimes cities or countries away, are working totally different schedules and you can't just spontaneously walk into someone's room to chat or go to the common area to hang out - you need to make conscious effort to meet and speak and any group meeting takes ages to organize and it's just not the same.

And while all his classmates left, Deku stayed in UA, among the same walls, the same classrooms - which means he felt more sharply a constant reminder of how things used to be and how they changed.

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire: Final Part

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~2.2k

Warnings: canon angst and violence, extra angst, feeling broken and utterly helpless to the point of depression, wanting to die

Summary: You're still reeling from the aftereffects of getting your soul back. It's safe to say you're not doing okay. Amara has a bigger effect on humanity than you thought she would, so while you're picking up the pieces she left behind, pieces of yourself are slowly chipping away.

Season Eleven Masterlist

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. I love seeing any and all comments <3

x

Dean gets Jenna stitched up quickly, and Sam returns from exploring. Only he doesn't come back alone. He is with a man holding an infant in his arms. His wife or girlfriend must have just given birth right before this happened, and she must be dead if he's not with her. Mike, the man, tries to calm his baby girl as she cries, and all you want to do is go into a rage. The baby crying, your guilt, and the dead bodies... it's enough to make your head explode.

"I'm sorry, please keep her quiet," you beg.

"I'm trying," Mike sighs. "The doc said it was gonna be a tough birth, but Janie stepped up. The twister hit and the power went out. She just kept on going. No drugs. Just pushed out this little dewdrop like she was nothing. Then Janie started bleeding. They tried, but... You'd think they'd know how to stop something like that."

"I'm so sorry, Mike," Jenna says.

They must know each other because Jenna is touching Mike like they're more than strangers. She tries to provide a comforting hand but it doesn't do much for him.

"Can you tell us what happened here?"

"I went outside to collect myself after Janie died and a truckload of them pulled up."

"The road crew?" Sam asks.

"Yeah, but they didn't say anything. They just went off, attacking folks like they were possessed. I tore back inside to get this little one. I found that supply closet, and you know, been there since. I could hear them, though. Tearing through the halls. I don't think they cared who it was. They wanted them dead."

"You said the road crew went nuts. Did any of them come after you?"

"Yeah, a few of them."

"Did they cut you or bleed on you?"

"Yeah."

"I don't understand. What are you saying?" Jenna asks Dean.

"I'm saying that whatever this is, it might be transmittable."

"What? We don't even know what this is. Now you're saying it can be passed on?"

"He's right. I can feel it. Inside. Something's happening," Mike whimpers and looks at his daughter.

"How long has it been since you were attacked?" Sam wonders.

"Three or four hours. The real question is, how long until I become like them?"

"Will you excuse us?" Sam asks. Mike nods and steps into the next room but keeps the door open. "Dean, I know what you're thinking--"

"Yeah, we need to kill him now."

"What? You can't be serious."

"Are you saying you want us to wait around and wait for him to kill us? Oh, yeah, that's a plan," he rolls his eyes.

"Or we just wait for him to die," Sam suggests. "There was a whatever you want to call it, a 'rabid' attacking the closet door and he just died. These things have a shelf life."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing here," Dean scoffs.

"No, he's right. We lock him up and find a cure. This is a hospital."

"Call it a hunch but I don't think you're going to find this in any medical books." Dean looks at you to see you staring at the other dead bodies with a pained look on your face. "Sweetheart?"

"I didn't open up that closet door to find a cure," Mike interrupts. "I thought maybe we could make a deal. I'll go find somewhere quiet and lay low until this is over. You save my baby girl."

"Yeah, you got yourself a deal."

"I'm grateful for that but I wasn't talking to you." Mike turns to Jenna. "I know you. I've seen you in church since you were knee-high. Please."

"I don't even own a Guinea pig," Jenna gasps but takes the baby anyway.

"There you go, little girl. Thank you. Thank you all."

With that, Mike runs out of the room to seek shelter away from the group.

"Why do I get the feeling that that is gonna bite us in the ass? Are you good?"

"Oh yeah, aces," she nods.

"Let's gear up."

"That might be tricky."

You look up to see Sam peering out the window. From where you are, you can see a truck pull up with even more rabid individuals. Dean, after looking through the window, starts to take stock of his weapons.

"What's he doing?" Jenna asks.

"We made a promise"

"To do what? Charge out there, guns blazing? We don't even know how to kill them."

"She does." He looks at her. "Chest, right? I'm guessing heart."

"This is madness," Jenna scoffs.

"No, that is madness."

"We can wait for them to die! Y/N, a little help here?"

You open your mouth to respond but nothing comes out. You're not sure where you stand. People die if you wait, people die if you kill them. People die wherever you go. I'm poison. If I was gone, everything would be fine.

"How long will that be? When they infect others, how long is that? No, if we stay here, that baby dies. We did this, Sam. Okay? We broke it, we bought it. You know there's no other way." Dean's phone rings and he puts whoever it is on speakerphone. "Where the hell are you, Cas?"

"I'm okay," he says with a strained voice.

"You don't sound okay."

"Dean, I am fine. Besides, what I have, you can't help me. Well, Y/N might."

"What do you mean, what you have?"

"Please tell Sam that Rowena escaped with the Book of the Damned and the codex."

"What?" Sam gasps.

"Oh, hi, Sam."

"Forget Rowena. Where are you?"

"Tell me that the Mark is gone from you two."

"Are you serious? You're worried about us after everything--"

"Is it gone?"

"Yeah, it's gone from both of us. We're good. Well, not good but you know what I mean."

"Makes two of us."

"Cas, talk to us about the darkness."

"Why would I talk about the darkness?"

"Because it's free."

"No, that can't be."

"Removing the Mark opened some kind of lock. Dean and I saw her," you say.

"The darkness is a woman?"

"That's what we're asking you. We were hoping you could tell us how screwed we are." Castiel doesn't answer. "Cas?"

"Sam, Dean, Y/N... Goodbye. It may be some time before we see one another again."

"Wait, Cas! Cas!"

"FBI, my ass," Jenna scoffs.

Dean pulls you and Sam off to the side to chat while Jenna tries to calm the baby. The throbbing in your head is back but you try to push the feeling aside for now. Dean and Sam stare at each other in silent conversation while you suffer silently.

"Look, I get it. I do. We're gonna save that baby, okay? We're gonna find Cas, and we're gonna stop the darkness."

"No, we stick to the plan we have. It's the same plan as it's always been. In order to get out, we go through."

"Yeah? How's that been working for us?"

"We can't save Cas if we're stuck in some hospital, okay? Just like I can't strap on a time machine, go back, and tell Cain to shove that Mark up his ass or stop you from releasing the darkness. Now, have we made mistakes? Yes. Hell yes. We can analyze each and every one of them over a couple of frosties when we're old and farting sawdust and out of this room! Right now, all I can do is gear up, I can head out, and I can save that fucking baby, which is exactly what I'm gonna do."

"When did we forget how to do this?"

"What?"

"If we don't change what we're doing now, all of our shit is just gonna keep repeating itself."

"Sam's right," you sigh.

"Excuse me?"

"Kill first, ask questions later? What happened to us? We're good at hunting, great even, but that's only half the battle, man."

"Sam, I am trying to save that baby," Dean sighs.

"What about the others out there?"

"You mean the ones trying to kill us?"

"I mean the ones that are sick, the ones that are dying."

"Yeah, who won't rest until they've infected us all."

"So, we forget about a cure?"

"What cure? Jenna's cure?" Dean asks and holds up a shotgun.

"Dean," you sigh.

"There is always a cure. You just have to want to find it."

"How are you gonna find it if you're dead? Around and around we go."

"Saving people means all of the people, Dean," Sam glares. "Not just that baby. Not just each other. I unleashed a force on this world that could destroy it to save you two." I don't deserve to be saved. Just let me go. Maybe I can do some good in this world before I'm destined to destroy it. "I'd do it again. In a second, I would do it again. That is what I'm talking about. This isn't on you. It is on us. We have to change."

"I'll stay behind to look for a cure. You two get Jenna and the baby out of here," you offer.

"What? No. I'm not leaving you alone."

"Dean, I am Amara's vessel. This won't affect me. Let me do this one thing, please. I need to do some good after all the bad I did. Please. Just go and pick me up when they're safe."

"She's right and you know it," Sam backs you up.

"I know," Dean sighs. "We will come back for you."

"I know," you whisper.

You leave the room in search of the intruders while the rest hang back until it's safe to leave. You find three of them looking through rooms and toppling over beds if they think you're hiding underneath them. You whistle to capture their attention before luring them away. All three of them quickly follow you away from the area where Sam and Dean are. Once they feel it's safe, they quickly escape the room and head toward the exit. You run into one of the supply closets and lock it behind you. The power is out but there is one emergency light inside that flickers on and off slowly.

You stay in silence for three seconds before hearing a growl from behind you. You turn just in time for an infected woman to tackle you to the ground. You scream as you try to get her off you but she isn't budging until you're dead. She tries to bite you and you keep her at arm's length, but she is slightly stronger than you. Whatever is on her neck is making her almost superhuman.

The only way you're getting her off you is if you kill her first. Through the tears, you grab whatever is near you and slice it across her neck. Her blood sprays into your open mouth, and you fight the urge to throw up. She gurgles on her own blood before falling on top of you. You push her off you with a loud sob just as the door is broken down by the three men.

"Please don't. Just let me help you!" you cry.

They don't listen and charge after you, and you use the weapon you grabbed to defend yourself. You don't think about anything else but your survival as you fight against the three men. You don't dare use your magic so killing them is brutal. You hate seeing their dead bodies on the ground with blood everywhere, but it is a necessary evil. Now that you're truly alone, you let out all the emotions you've been trying to push down. You fall back onto the shelves and slide down it with tears streaming down your cheeks. You cover your mouth but that doesn't stop the sobs from coming out.

I can't do this anymore. I don't know how to be okay anymore.

Thanks to your distraction, Sam and Dean were able to escape with Jenna and the baby without being seen. They're almost out of the hospital when they're stopped by Mike with black vein-like marks on his neck.

"The baby," he says and looks at her.

"No," Jenna gasps and holds her closer.

"We're not gonna hurt you, Mike. As long as you leave that baby alone," Dean warns.

"Amara."

"What?"

"Her name is Amara," he gasps.

He falls to the ground, dead, seconds after speaking. Sam and Dean don't have time to think about that right now. They need to get out of here fast. They get to the car and manage to peel out of the entire ghost town without seeing anyone else. Dean pulls into a gas station that's three towns away from the hospital or four hours away from you. This town is completely safe and normal. Whatever Amara did only affected those in that one town. Jenna takes Amara to the bathroom to change her while Dean gets gas. He takes out his phone and calls you to see how you're doing.

"Hey, sweetheart. We've made it to a neighboring town, about four hours away. Jenna's grandmother doesn't live too far from here, and then we'll come back for you and figure this out."

"I won't be here when you get back. I can't do this anymore, Dean. I can't keep feeling this way anymore. I can't hunt knowing I'd rather be dead. You and Sam are better off without me. All I do is ruin things," you sob.

"Fuck," Dean curses, gaining Sam's attention. "I'll be right there, sweetheart. Just give me a few hours."

"It's too late. I won't be here when you get back. I'll find that cure and leave it here for you. I'm so sorry but this is for the best."

Dean tries to say something more to you but you hang up on him. He yells in anger and almost slams his fist into the car window.

"What happened?"

"She's spiraling, man. I gotta get back to her. Look, get Jenna to her grandmother's. I have to go back now for Y/N. She's not okay."

"Yeah, we'll take care of it. Go."

Dean leaves Sam and Jenna at the gas station and hauls ass back to you, hoping you'll be there when he arrives.

x

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[shootingstarpilot]

An Interlude on Melidaan

(Please check the tags for content warnings!)

Stitch is sitting with Helix when he gets the call.

Helix had woken up for just long enough to squint, recognize Stitch, mutter something about his head having been trampled by a herd of banthas, and pass out again- enough to reassure Stitch that the surgery had gone smoothly. He doesn't like it when any of them are out of commission, but it had been agreed that de-chipping the medics was a priority so they could facilitate removals of the rest of the 212th when they were underway again.

Helix had volunteered first, with an expression that forbade disagreement. Needle's in pre-op now, Stitch knows- he'd hugged him tight and had told him not to worry, and Stitch had nodded against his chest and had told him he was going to worry anyway because that's what you did for your brothers, and Needle's smile had gone all soft around the edges before he'd vanished down the hall.

Stitch has a very long list of things you do for your brothers, and the list grows longer by the day.

And right behind worrying for your brothers is going to them when they need you.

"Needle?"

He knocks once, twice, three times before a steady voice tells him to come in.

He does.

Needle is sitting on the edge of the gurney, pale-faced, hands clutching the blanket under him so tightly his knuckles are turning white. Another person- Stitch had seen her at Jess's side, but had missed her name- is standing a safe distance away, head tilted back, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Stitch blinks. "What happened?"

Needle laughs, hoarse and hurting. "Nothing yet," he mutters. "I- can't. Apparently."

He shifts. "Sorry about your nose, Rittan."

The surgeon- Rittan- is olive-skinned and square-jawed and has a knot of scar tissue sealing shut the socket where her left eye should be. She wrinkles her nose assessingly, drops her hand, and waves Needle's apology off as she settles into her chair.

Stitch likes her immediately.

"Don't be," she says easily. "I've had worse. I once called a total evac when Bretta tossed me an apple and I saw a grenade. We've all got our own twitches."

It takes Stitch a moment to make the connection.

To realize why he's here.

And then he looks again at Needle's pale face and thinks-

Oh.

Needle glances up.

"I- can't," he bursts out. "I thought I could, but I- can't. I can't have- I can't-"

He stops. His shoulders sag.

"I can't," he repeats helplessly. "I can't. I want it out. I can't."

"But you know-"

"Yeah."

"And that it could-"

"I know."

"Or even-"

"Stitch."

Stitch's mouth snaps shut. Needle winces.

"I... know," he says slowly. "I do. I want it out. I want it out. I want it out."

He stops. Presses his hands hard against his eyes.

"I was this close to lying to both of you," he says eventually. "Tell her I'd get it done on the ship. Tell you I'd gotten it done here. And just-"

He shrugs. Helpless. Hurting.

"It could wipe you away," Stitch says desperately, and regrets it immediately when Needle's whole body jerks.

"So maybe I'll just sit here until the end of fucking time, then," Needle snaps, "because I can't let it stay in my brain but I can't let anyone else's fingers in there either! Not-"

He stops.

Stitch's whole chest hurts.

Not again.

"Sorry," Needle says hoarsely. "Sorry. I- hell. Rittan suggested calling someone, but- you can go. I'll figure it out. You can-"

Stitch has stopped listening.

A slow plan is bubbling to life in the back of his mind.

"Needle," he interrupts, "you trust me, right?"

"I- what? Of course-"

"And you want it out?"

Needle curls inwards, hugging himself.

"I don't want it to happen again, Stitch," he whispers, and Stitch nods.

Needle trusts him. Needle wants it out.

He can't let it be taken out.

But he wants it out.

Okay.

"I am going to get you something to drink," he says decisively. "Because hydration is important. While I think. You'll stay here?"

He's met with a wan smile. "Cross my heart."

Stitch hesitates.

(But Needle does this all the time. And it's- nice.)

After a beat, he cups Needle's face in his hands, leans down, and carefully presses a kiss to his forehead.

Needle's eyes are very wide, when he looks down.

"Did I do that right?" Stitch asks, suddenly feeling unaccountably nervous.

Needle's smile looks more like Needle, this time. "Perfect."

Oh.

That's-

That's good.

Right.

The plan.

He returns with a cup of grape juice.

(Needle trusts him.)

He hands it to Needle.

(Needle trusts him.)

Needle drinks, without a second's hesitation.

(Needle trusts him.)

Stitch catches both him and the cup.

"Pretty strong grape juice," Rittan observes.

She's- watching him.

Stitch meets her gaze. "Propofol," he says quietly. "Grape juice so he won't associate it with water later. I'll be your second."

Another item on the list of things you do for your brothers:

The things they can't.

Stitch is largely silent, as Rittan narrates every step.

Watching.

He can feel his heartbeat in his throat.

At one point:

"There's a lot of scarring," Rittan observes. "More than I'd have expected."

"Yes," Stitch says, and does not elaborate.

Needle is moved to recovery.

Stitch settles down next to him.

He doesn't know how much time passes before Needle's breathing shifts into something shallower. Faster.

Stitch knows panic when he sees it, and pokes him. "Needle."

"Mmph."

"Needle," Stitch repeats, and pokes him again.

"...'ch?"

"Yes. What's my favorite terrasaur?"

A moment of stillness. He sees Needle's eyes flicker beneath his eyelids, hears his breathing hitch-

"Needle. Needle. What's my favorite terrasaur?"

Needle's hands flex, curling into the sheet-

"'s a trick question," he manages. "Y'got two."

"What're the two, then?"

"...Blue. 'N tall."

"See?" Stitch whispers, smiling when Needle's eyes crack open and focus on him. "Still you. Still my Needle."

Needle's brow furrows, puzzled. "You..."

Stitch sits on his hands to stop himself from tapping.

"Stitch...?"

"Propofol in the grape juice," he whispers. "You couldn't. So I did."

A beat. A slow nod.

"Are you angry?"

A slow smile spreads across Needle's face.

"Good medic," he sighs, closing his eyes again, and Stitch carefully leans forward and rests his head on Needle's chest.

Feeling him breathe.

"I learned from the best," he whispers, and Needle's free hand reaches upwards and settles in his hair.

It'll be his turn in a bit, he knows. But Rittan will come and find him.

He's got time.

Needle's asleep by the time Stitch senses someone at the door.

He shifts as much as he can without disturbing Needle and looks up, expecting Rittan-

"Hey," Helix says quietly. He's leaning against the doorframe, eyes bright. "Everything go okay?"

Stitch nods.

There's a lump in his throat.

Helix pushes himself up and makes his way over, his gaze flickering towards the monitors. He stops at Needle's side, brushes his hair back-

Then he leans down and drops a kiss on his forehead.

Quick and swift as anything.

He keeps one hand there when he turns to Stitch.

"Rittan asked me to call you," he says quietly. "You want company?"

Stitch shakes his head. "You have to stay here. With Needle. Okay?"

A faintly puzzled smile flickers across Helix's face as he settles into the other chair. "Okay, Stitch. Second bed in here's free, too- I'll make sure it stays that way for you."

"Thanks, Helix," Stitch says. He gathers himself, stands, makes his way towards the door-

Then he pauses. "Did Needle get that from you?"

Helix glances up. "Get what?"

"The forehead kisses. He's good at those."

Helix snorts a laugh. "Doubt it. I think he was kind before he got here."

Stitch nods.

He thinks so, too.

[storiesbyjes2g]

3.71 Derailed

When we got to Chi Chi's, Karmine hadn't gotten home yet, and I was relieved. She was a sweet kid and all, but man could she talk. I probably wouldn't have made it out once she cornered me. Ha, and now that she was a teenager, she probably had even more to say and gave Chi Chi a run for her money. Bless that child. I left from there and went immediately to Gilbert Gardens, feeling only 8% guilty that I didn't stop at Dad's. He would ask great questions and try to help me talk through it, but this was something I needed to do on my own. Sophia and I had many discussions about the future, and I sensed the urgency to seriously consider our next steps, especially since she had been prepared for quite some time. I was too, in theory, but that was the problem. My next move needed to come from the heart, not from panic or pressure. I wanted to make my request confidently, with a clear conscience and a pure heart.

A man I'd never seen before interrupted my thoughts. He looked pretty young, maybe fresh out of high school. His super light eyes struck me, and I halfway believed they were real. Gray wasn't an unusual color, but they seemed to glow against his dark skin.

"Excuse me," he said. "Sorry to bother you. I'm Wade."

"Luca. Nice to meet you."

"Yeah, same here. Look, this is my first time here, and I have a few hours to kill. Would you mind suggesting a few things to do around here?"

Ah ha! He was a tourist. Of course, I didn't know everyone in San Sequoia, but I usually saw the same sims everywhere.

"It's your first time in San Sequoia?"

"Yeah."

"Cool. Well, welcome. I love it here. Hoping to move back soon. But sure, I can help you out."

"Thanks! I appreciate that."

So much for my thoughtful walk. Did I really need it, though? I loved Sophia. Everyone loved Sophia, and I already considered her my family. When I thought about the future, she was all I saw. She and the rest of our family. What was there to think about? It's not like I needed to decide if I wanted to be with her forever. I just needed to do it. There was no such thing as the right time, and knowing Sophia, I didn't need to craft an elaborate plan. Just ask, and let the chips fall.

With that out of the way, my mind, and calendar, were free to help this guy. He was fortunate to approach me because he wouldn't find a bigger fan of San Sequoia.

"Actually, I have some time," I said. "I could show you a few of my favorite spots, if you want."

Those super bright eyes of his seemed to glow even brighter.

"Would you? That would be incredible!"

"Of course. How long are you here for?"

"Just for the day. Gotta catch the evening train."

"Where to?"

"Brindleton Bay."

"Oh, nice. I've never been, but my mom used to live there."

Wade shrugged dismissively.

"It's an okay place. I'm originally from Henford, and moving to BB had it's challenges. I posted a video about it on my SimTube channel."

"You're on SimTube? That's kinda crazy because I just started a channel. What are your videos about?"

"Some of them are personal vlogs, but I also do a series listing the top things to see in different towns. Maybe I'll do one about San Sequoia. What about you? What are your videos about?"

Wow, this guy seemed heavy into SimTube. He probably had thousands of followers and made all kinds of money. Maybe we could stay in touch, and he could teach me a thing or two about growing my channel.

"Uhh, heh, well, I've only done one so far, but I'm a yoga instructor. I do simple routines that anyone can follow and learn. So, I take it you travel a lot?"

"Not as much as I plan to. I've only covered Henford and Batuu so far. I'm currently working on one for Brindleton Bay, but like I said, the place is going to take some getting used to. The entire town smells like fish!"

"Eww. Really?"

Mama didn't talk about her single life much, but I think I'd remember her saying her city smelled like fish. I'd have to ask her about that.

"I think most places have their own set of challenges, though," I continued. "Like, I recently moved to Oasis springs. I love how it's warm all the time, but man is it dusty!"

He threw his head back and let out a hearty laugh.

"Dust might be just as bad as fish!"

"It might be! Which is worse: a constant bad smell or feeling like you're dirty all the time?"

Wade was so animated and fun to watch. My question made his face wrinkle up as if the whole world suddenly reeked of fish.

"Okay, you win! Filth is the absolute worst!"

His outfit was so sleek and fancy, it was clear he liked things neat. He also looked pretty fit, so I knew what our first activity had to be.

"You workout, Wade?"

"Most definitely! Gotta look good for the ladies, right?"

"Absolutely!"

We vibe'd well, and I liked him. I bet he'd be really fun to party with.

"Nah, but seriously," he said, "my dad's obsession with fitness has rubbed off on me. Oh, and you can call me Dub. Most sims do."

I grinned at the thought of us becoming friends.

"Okay, Dub. You ready for a scenic run?"

"I stay ready!"

Your eyes have not deceived you. THEE Wade "Dub" Banks from @mysimsloveaffair's The Banks Dynasty is in the building! Thanks so much for letting me borrow him and spark this amazing friendship.

If you don't know Dub, check out her story! It's one of my favorites.

Also...I guess him meeting Luca officially puts aDOLTing in the Pierson Cinematic Universe! Dub is Kai's oldest son, the one who climbed with Nate on Mt. Komorebi.

[runwayrunway]

No. 7 - A jetBlue FaMintly ReBluenion - The Quest for the Bluest Plane

And now, for something completely different.

We're done with jetBlue. I said that and I meant it. But we're not done with this train of thought. This post might not be what you expect. This is a very long post (and I do mean very long), a journey through the history of the US low-cost airline, the cognitive dissonance of the everyman millionaire, the thinly-veiled cynicism of the start-up airline, human kindness squeezed through cracks of a soulless machine which can never stop churning, and above all one man's quest to make the bluest planes he can, and my quest to tell you all if they look bad or not.

Let's begin here: have you ever wondered how new airlines are started? Well, when a wealthy individual or group of individuals love making money very much, they get together and incorporate a publicly traded company, lease a few airplanes, buy some airport slots...

I'll get to the point. Readers, there's somebody I'd like you to meet.

"Never speak to me or my daughter ever again." image: Rick Maiman

This is David G. Neeleman. He's jetBlue's dad. And jetBlue...has siblings.

David Neeleman is a Brazilian-American-Cypriot businessman I would best describe as a serial airline founder. Normally the description 'serial entrepreneur', to me at least, implies flakiness and perpetual failure to get anything properly off the ground, but that's not the case for Neeleman. He's very successful. He's probably some sort of pioneer. I've seen him compared to Howard Hughes. There's really only one stain on his record, one failure to speak of, and it's been over ten years. He has a net worth of 400 million dollars.

image: bloomberg

He's an...interesting person. Very interesting. He was born in Brazil and raised in Utah by a wealthy Mormon family. There are many very funny images of him available through Google. He has ten children, an ADHD diagnosis, no university degree, a whole lot of money, and a weird, weird, weird personal philosophy.

This interview is hard to sum up, but there's clearly a lot going on here. This is a guy who wants so desperately to be down to earth and kind and generous, who thinks he is down to earth and kind and generous, but who just can't take the extra step to realize the implications of the truly obscene wealth involved in venture capital and the inherent contradiction of that with his own ostensible charity and drive towards a fair and comfortable experience for passengers. In a way he seems like he's just too wealthy to really understand what being wealthy means. (It's also an older interview, and I imagine any scrap of genuine convictions he held through cognitive dissonance are now long-gone, given the CoViD thing.) He's also clearly got a chip on his shoulder about being fired from jetBlue. To be fair, having seen what they've done with their livery...I get it.

What else...he's also been CEO of airline booking program Open Skies, was involved with bizjet charter airline Superior Air Charter (then known as JetSuite), is founder and chairman of security company Vizgul for some reason, and is a minority owner of TAP Air Portugal. His nephew Zach Wilson is quarterback for the New York Jets. Oh, and he funded a study to underestimate the prevalence of CoViD. Classy, David. Real classy.

This isn't about David Neeleman. Not really. Not yet, at least. At some point it becomes about him, about his journey, but even then it isn't. When you have 400 million dollars you cease to become a meaningful subject as a person and become a meaningful subject as a distilled effigy of the things which the money came from. I dislike the Tony-Starkification of real people and I refuse to approach him in a way that supports that view of him. His life only matters to me in the context of the airlines he makes, and in what the way he changed over time represents. There's at least one biography out there for anyone particularly interested in the lives of Mormon multimillionaires who take issue with making people die less because they want the line to go up more. He is worth 400 million dollars, which is roughly a million dollars times what I make in one paycheck, delivered every two weeks. He's a creature in a suit who owns an absurd amount of wristwatches, each of which could pay for some sort of surgery for someone out there. There's a bunch of those in the world and this one happens to have made something which eclipses him, and that something is what's been occupying me since Wednesday.

If you're a book-reader - and I recommend being one - I think you're probably better off reading Barbara S. Peterson's "Blue Streak: Inside jetBlue, the Upstart That Rocked an Industry", which talks specifically about jetBlue and the way it pioneered what we now consider normal for aviation in the US. Reading it brought back memories for me of seeing adverts for jetBlue's planes on television, guaranteed to have a TV screen on every seat, and having my little mind which was still scarred by hours upon hours of complete boredom flying all the way from Tokyo to the American Northeast completely blown. Air travel really is unrecognizable from what it was when I was a child, although 20 years feels a lot shorter than it really is when you've lived it. There was no one factor that changed aviation so much in my lifetime, but there were a lot that contributed. ETOPS, 9/11, the recession, geopolitics, gas prices, the internet, legacy airline mega-mergers, privatization...and the jetBlue way of doing things.

It's easy to forget from our current vantage point but low-cost air travel wasn't always like this. Southwest did a lot to pioneer the modern low-cost model but jetBlue is probably the second-biggest player in the airline industry's shift to a culture which tries less to be glamorous and tries more to be fun and approachable (they by no means invented the Fun Airline, but PSA had been gone for 20 years at that point and the market had a gaping hole). They were a huge player in the rise of in-flight entertainment as standard even on low-cost flights. They helped keep aviation going after 9/11, when it was one of the few airlines to actually make money. And jetBlue's story isn't Neeleman's story, even though he founded it. I literally just listed four other major involvements of his, and he hasn't been involved in the business side of jetBlue since 2008. His story involves the founding of four - count em! - other airlines. Let's take a look through them and see if we can spot any patterns.

Morris Air (1992-1994)

sources and further reading: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

Never heard of Morris Air? Can't blame you. jetBlue's oldest sibling existed for two years in the 90s. Two years. That's pretty miserable. ValuJet was around for twice that. That said, you're actually probably more familiar with them under a different name: Southwest.

No, Morris Air did not become Southwest. Southwest existed at the time, and it was in fact Southwest which gave birth to Morris Air.

Morris Air was named for its founder, June Morris, who operated one of Utah's largest travel agencies. In 1984 she partnered with a then 25-year-old David Neeleman to launch Morris Air Service. The two had realized something that was about to shake the airline industry: plane tickets were really expensive, and you could charge even less than major budget carriers like Southwest by just buying all the seats on a charter flight and selling them on to customers at an attractively low price. If you did this, even regular working-class people trying to book a trip to Hawai'i or Disneyland could actually afford a plane ticket. This worked successfully, enough that Morris sold off her travel agency, until they incurred a large fine from the DoT for pushing too far and fraudulently passing themselves off as a scheduled airline (which mattered because commercial charters are operated under Part 135 regulations while scheduled services are governed by the much more restrictive Part 121). In response, girlboss queen June Morris and her investie David Neeleman went and started up Morris Air as an actual, genuine, fully certified part 121 carrier, making June Morris the only female jet airline CEO in the US. They operated a fleet of 21 737-300s around the west coast on both scheduled and charter flights, pioneering such cost-cutting measures as e-tickets (wrongly attributed to Southwest, they were actually first used by Morris). This fleet included N75356/N764MA/N697SW, the airframe involved in the TACA 110 incident, which was successfully landed on a levee after losing power in both engines.

image: Richard Silagi

Now, I don't know about you, but these planes don't scream 'vacation' to me. In fact, they don't scream anything. They barely whisper. They breathe lightly on my ear. There are a couple planes in their fleet with weird features, like multicolor painted noses or cheatlines, but these seem to be one-offs and I wouldn't even be surprised if they were just leftovers from previous paintjobs (the one with the cheatline does look suspiciously like the one used on Sierra Pacific planes, one of the operators Morris chartered from). So they don't count. What counts is this.

Maybe if Morris Air didn't want to be instantly forgotten they shouldn't have made their planes completely generic. I'm not sure they cared, though. They wanted to make money and they made money.

A D- for Morris Air.

In 1992, less than two years after gaining its air operator's certificate, Morris Air merged with Southwest and the brand was retired. Despite having posed a legitimate threat to the titan that was Southwest at the peak of its relevance, it's since largely been forgotten. June Morris and David Neeleman both worked in Southwest's upper management for some time, but it was only five months before Neeleman left Southwest for other ventures. Soon, something more familiar would spring up, fed by the dying rays of Morris Air's gargantuan profits.

WestJet (est. 1994, began operation 1996)

Not exactly a deep cut, is it? WestJet is actually the second largest carrier in Canada and the ninth-largest in North America. They carry over 25 million passengers a year. I've never been one of them, but David Neeleman probably has, because he was one of the group of absurdly wealthy individuals who founded this incredibly successful airline in 1994.

WestJet operates a primary fleet of over 100 Boeing 737s of various models and seven Boeing 787s; in the past they also operated the 757 and 767. They operate both scheduled passenger and charter flights, as well as having a cargo division, a fully-owned regional subsidiary, and a Delta Connection/United Express-style brand name under which Pacific Coastal Airlines operates.

These all use more or less the same livery, which has only slightly changed since the beginning of operations in 1996. Pictured above is the original livery. I like the colors, I like the angularity on the tail, but I despise the style of livery with just the isolated tail colored in. This said, they introduced a new, updated livery in 2018.

I am a very predictable person. Given a livery mostly seen on 737MAXes and Dreamliners, I will always pick the Dreamliner to use as a visual example. This is not a slight to the MAX. They are nice looking planes, but the Dreamliner's planform is just on another level. Look at that wing sweep. Immaculate.

I like this color scheme a lot. I just happen to really like sea-green-adjacent colors, this is not the first time I've mentioned this. The font is nice, big, legible. I like the all-caps, I like the descender on the J. I think removing the logo mark on the wordmark and making it solid color was fine as a choice, makes the whole plane feel more balanced between the turquoise and the dark blue. The 'l'esprit du Canada' feels utterly pointless and is blocked by the wing and too small to be clearly read anyway. Tail design not limited to the tail, but mostly white fuselage regardless. Boring, but there's nothing here I can really call...bad? It's what they don't do that feels like the issue here, not what they do. Like, some sort of design on the nose and directly above or below, maybe? I didn't even realize there's any paint on the engines until I was editing my first draft and from most angles you just can't see it. Come on.

Grade: D+

Before I move on, there is something I have to mention. And that is WestJet's sub-brands. WestJet Encore is a fully-owned subsidiary which operates a respectable fleet of Bombardier Dash 8 Q400s, and WestJet Link is a brand name under which Pacific Coastal Airlines operates a couple Saab 340s. And that is...fine, normal, even, but...

Is this a joke to you?!

Change your name to WestProp. Now.

...

Hey. Wait a minute.

David! The large blue plane is coming! It has no engine power because it ran out of fuel and is about to hit you on the racetrack during family day! Oh no, he has airpods in! He can't hear us! image: Cean W Orrett

This guy. David Neeleman. Yeah, him. We were talking about him. I mean, it's been a minute since he came up because as far as I can tell after founding WestJet he did nothing of note related to it again, but...what's he been doing? Wait...wait a minute. This is becoming a habit, David. All your airlines are...well...they share a certain trait, in a very specific area.

David knows what I'm talking about. After all, his next move, in 1998, was to found NewAir, which would shortly become jetBlue.

I have not stopped to count how many words I have written about jetBlue this week. It is a lot. I already delivered a verdict. We are moving on.

Because David didn't stop here. Why would he? It's 2008 and he just got fired from his own company because a winter storm went Southwest-holiday-scheduling levels of horrendous for the airline he raised from infancy. He's got time to kill and money to burn and he wants the line to go up, damn it! Well, maybe he can be in the right place at the right time again. Make a second jetBlue, win back what he's lost. After all, he's got something else up his sleeve - dual citizenship.

Just your regular average Mormon, lurking in forests with a model plane. Nothing sinister about that. image: conde nast traveler

I did mention earlier he was born in Brazil, right? That's always been part of his life. When he was in charge, jetBlue was actually the launch customer for the Embraer E190, an incredibly popular mid-sized regional jet made by Brazilian manufacturer Embraer.

Is it just me, or do the men in this picture somehow look like cardboard cutouts holding a real airplane? There is something very strange about this image. I would go so far as to call it unsettling. image: The Gainesville Sun

So, figuring he'd bled the US dry, I suppose, he moseyed on down to his birthplace with his millions of dollars and presumably a couple little blank model planes waiting to be painted and shown off at a press conference. If you've seen a pattern emerging, prepare to see it continue.

Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (est. 2008)

Mmm. Helvetica Neue Heavy. Not impressed.

Okay, sure. Technically there was a 'naming contest' and this name 'was the most popular'. But I think at this point I would believe that David Neeleman botted his own vote years before I would believe that Blue Airlines of Brazil just happened to be the winning name.

Okay, all else aside, I would really love to gently hold a plane like this. There's a certain caressing nature to the way he's holding this plane's snout which I crave to someday replicate with a similarly sized model aircraft. image: Paulo Whitaker

Much like jetBlue, Azul began operating Embraer 190 and Embraer 195 aircraft before expanding its fleet to include Airbus models, a handful of ATR 72 tubroprops, and two Boeing 747s for cargo. They started with just five aircraft but grew rapidly, absorbing a bunch of other airlines and securing large investments from the likes of United and Hainan Airlines. Today they operate a fleet of over 150 planes to 161 destinations and are the third largest airline in Brazil. They have a set of crossover liveries with freaking Disney. (I might review those sometime.) They also have a crossover livery with John Deere for some reason. You know, the tractor company. In 2020 TripAdvisor named them the world's best airline.

In addition to the name of the company, they also name their airplanes. I do not speak Portuguese, but thankfully a close friend, @ametri-e, does. I asked him if the names were silly puns like jetBlue's are, and I got this response:

some of these are puns but not particularly funny, some of them just have the word blue in them, and one was funny

So there you have it!

Unlike Morris, which no longer exists; WestJet, which he seems to have minimally contributed to past its founding; and jetBlue, which tossed him unceremoniously on the tarmac with his bags, he remains the chairman of Azul at time of writing.

I find myself briefly wondering if this is all an attempt to recapture his lost glory. Is jetBlue, larger even than the impressive heights Azul has reached, the one that got away? Is he now forced to go forward modeling his work in the image of that which he was robbed of, that which he can never go back to?

I don't know and I don't care. I care about if the livery looks good or not.

Well, I wasn't just going to leave the John Deere plane out. It's a bit underwhelming, though, isn't it?.

So Azul is pretty different from jetBlue at first glance. Mainly, it uses a much darker blue and has a logo to go with the wordmark - a cute little pixel Brazil that looks a bit like a heart to me because of the specific way it's drawn. Everything is scaled nicely so it looks pleasing on the turboprop and I think the dark underside and the way it curves around the ventral fairing actually looks really good with the ATR's airframe, which has a very pronounced ventral fairing relative to similarly-sized props. But, okay, let's look at a jet.

This...is not terrible. I really like the highlights on the trailing edges of the winglets and the end of the rudder, and bordering the deep blue belly. Not crazy about the Helvetica Neue still. Why doesn't the 'u' being cyan carry over to the actual livery? Also, Detached Tail Syndrome. In fact, although it has features beyond this which make a further discussion worth having, the basic layout is what I call the 'Deltalike' because that's the airline I associate with it despite them certainly not being the first to use it - detached tail, painted engines, painted underside that's large enough to see from the sides. It avoids a lot of pitfalls of the other popular archetype, that of the very tail-heavy (which WestJet fell into), but has its own loathesome features. All said, though, I do think Azul is one of the better takes on the Deltalike.

In the first picture the highlights look green, but in reality they're one line of green and one of yellow, for the Brazilian flag. I think they look really nice with this particular blue color, but I am exhausted of this man naming his airlines blue and then having the planes be majority white. They have such a nice shade of blue here, couldn't they make that the primary color of the body?

That aside, the way that the line curves up towards the middle of the plane combined with the tailing-edge highlights creates a sort of aerodynamic feeling. You even see them in other colors sometimes, like the pink ones on the E190s and blue ones on the E195.

It also comes in pink! Were this not a one-off I would ask them to change their name to Rosa Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras, but it is a promotion.

It seems like reconnecting with his origin has given David Neeleman the creative push he needed to beat jetBlue in at least one way - livery. All said, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras clocks in at a final grade of...

C+

Aww, not quite a B for Brazil. Better luck next time! Though I'll admit I considered putting it there for a bit. This is a very high C+. Still, no cigar. Next time try putting less white on the plane. If you're all about blue, why are all your planes still so white? Come on, David. You are spreading blue paint on every airline you've ever touched but never letting it get past the tailfin. Who are you kidding? You know you're holding yourself back. There's a desire deep in you. You know it's there. I know you want to. It's just a matter of when. You are going to give in to your most animal urges. This isn't enough for you.

You need a bluer plane.

You can feel the thirst for a plane blue enough that you might as well own a piece of the sky straining against the bonds you've tried so hard to impose on it all these years. When will you finally unleash it?

Breeze Airways (commenced operations 2021)

image: inc. usa

Here we are, David. Time has almost caught up to us. It's just you, me narrating, and a very, very blue plane indeed. We have finally reached jetBlue's youngest baby sibling.

"Together, we created Breeze as a new airline merging technology with kindness," David Neeleman said. ​"If you can just be nice, the people will be nice to you in return and your job will be more fun.”

This is an interesting pitch. When Cape Air, with its fleet of tiny airplanes and its founder who started the airline with himself as pilot just to fly one route that he found himself needing to travel regularly, makes their motto Make Our Customers Happy And Have A Good Time Doing It (Mocha Hagodti), it feels...well, it feels like the person who said that didn't understand yet what a company was. Cape Air is its own story with its own contradictions and the vicious cognitive dissonance of capital on stark display but you can sense the desire in its inception to provide a service before running a company. It is the opposite of cynical - it is naïve. It is hopeful and human and starry-eyed.

When a man on his fifth airline makes a pitch like that it's like trying to cloud-watch looking at the ceiling.

That's not the only pitch for Breeze. I mean, even if you've started four successful airlines already and it seems like everything you touch goes on to revolutionize some part of the industry I think that would be a hard sell to investors in 2021. There's a bit more going on here. I'm going to start with the bit that's boring and makes me roll my eyes.

Ever since JetBlue, Neeleman has, like the kid peering into the circus tent, longed to get back into the U.S. airline industry. 

Bill Saporito writes for Inc. USA. I let out one tepid physical laugh. Yeah, David. You've got something great going in Brazil right now, but you want more. You want jetBlue and you can't have it. So instead...you give us an app.

The Breeze app is designed to eliminate chokepoints between passengers and planes. That means fewer people on the ground and lower cost.

Is this revolutionary? Is this destined to end in a Southwest-tier scheduling catastrophe? I'm not sure. I think David Neeleman's history suggests he could make this work, and I think the history of apps being used for things that didn't have apps before suggests that this could horribly blow up in his face. It seems to have gone fine so far, as I haven't heard anything else about it. To be fair, I wasn't exactly invested in the idea, so I haven't been looking. There's always time for some situation to happen nobody had foreseen and it all to go belly-up. Saying you never cancel flights works fine until a blizzard hits and then you have to start all over again, but he didn't build jetBlue by being afraid to take risks.

More interesting is the service they offer. Breeze has a bit of an identity crisis. Breeze wants to be an ultra low cost carrier with a first class cabin. That sounds contradictory because it is. The ULCC model as used by airlines like Ryanair and Spirit fundamentally relies on charging a low fare upfront with the expectation that customers will not receive a crumb extra without paying for it. Everything from seat reservations to snacks to anything else you can think of, you can pay extra for or you can do without. Breeze also follows other trends common with ULCCs, like a lack of seatback screens (the very thing jetBlue pioneered!) and flying point-to-point to smaller airports located outside of major metropolitan areas rather than routing through hubs. Yet Breeze insists it wants to have a first class cabin!

It does have a first class cabin, apparently. The classes are called Nice, Nicer, and Nicest. I wish airlines wouldn't do this. Air travel is the floorboards of stand-up comedy. Everyone already hates flying except weirdoes like me who spend enough time looking at pictures of airplanes to write reviews of their paint jobs, and even I get pretty tired of it if I go too long sitting there without the plane doing some sort of plane thing. You can be honest. You can call the classes Bearable, Unpleasant, and Painful. We all understand. It's okay. I would rather buy a ticket for Miserable But Cheap class than Nice. It probably won't actually be that bad, since Breeze doesn't do long-haul, which makes the presence of first-class even more bizarre. If you want first-class short-haul and have that sort of money just charter a private jet! And David Neeleman has been involved with at least two private jet charter companies too, so...what is he doing?

In 2011, almost exactly 10 years before Breeze began operation, Neeleman was interviewed for Business Jet Traveler. I linked the interview above. It's a powerful display of the cognitive dissonance of a man who considers himself a regular everyday Mormon dad, who donates his salary to his employees, who insists on calling his employees crewmembers, even as the line goes up, and up, and up. I've heard anecdotes about him sitting in the backs of his own planes at jetBlue, observing what he could change to make the experience better for the cabin crew and passengers, noticing a lot of those things could even save money, and I have no reason to disbelieve them.

As the head of a company he is by necessity exploiting those under him, as a businessman he is providing a service not from altruism but because he knows that people need it enough they'll give him money, and the more comfortable the experience for both the less likely he'll lose their labor and their money. Conscious or not, altruism is a means to an end, but it is still startling surrounded by airlines which don't even go that far. 'Nice' as a name for economy class is a pretty good summary of the man David Neeleman was, and the one he still tries to present himself as. But there's a specific question, and a specific answer, which I feel the need to place here.

The airlines have been cutting back on frills and first class, which is driving more people to business aviation. Do they need to find ways to treat their high-end customers better? Well, JetBlue doesn't have first class. We treated everyone the same. Maybe it's funny I'm in the JetSuite market because it's so weird to me that on a plane with 150 seats, you give 12 people a great ride and you stick it to 138-squish them all back there because of 12 people. There's something about that that just feels wrong.

Does it still feel wrong, David? Did something change about you between the first million and the 400th? When did this transformation happen? Was it the Ship of Theseus effect? Or...was this what you inevitably were working towards all along? Was it a fool's errand to pretend that there is a difference between what you do and what you are? Aviation is not immune to the society which it is built to serve - it is shaped by it. It feels wrong for 12 people to have a nice ride while 138 are squished in the back, but if you think about the life that 5 million Americans live and the life the other 326 million have to live, all squished back there so the lucky few can have a nice ride, doesn't it feel a little less wrong? After all, you've got the reclining bed. You can just pull the curtain closed. You've probably known what you were all along.

The airlines are a tough business. Why start another after JetBlue? Well, I've done this three times. It's what I know. I've always made money at it, always been successful. I figured out a formula that works and Brazil really needed it. And I had this idealistic view of trying to make a difference. I've got 3,000 people in Brazil that work for us and love their jobs and we flew four million people this year and a lot of those people had never flown before.

Air travel is life-changing. It's not just for those of us who stand outside airports and take a picture of every airplane we see. It is a faster, safer, easier way of getting people and things from one place to another. There are people who live in the remotest places in the world, who deal with mountains and oceans and even just being so far away from anywhere else. They can travel now, and they can do more than that. They can visit their family. They can get places even if they're somewhere railroads don't run to. Cargo planes bring these remote communities necessities. They take their children to university and its sick to lifesaving treatment. It's a lifeline and a fundamental part of infrastructure. Once we invented it we stopped being able to go back.

It isn't an inherently cynical thing to start an airline - not more cynical than starting any other company, anyway. At least, it shouldn't be. But I think it's an inherently cynical thing to start five. To have your position at Azul, which is both massively successful and your own brainchild, which you think is doing good...and to say to yourself "I need more. I need America. I need what I was robbed of when I lost jetBlue."

Very few people have ever started one airline successfully. David Neeleman started four and sat at the helm of Brazil's third-largest airline and decided it wasn't enough for him. He's always made low-cost airlines. To a not-insignificant degree he made the low-cost airline what it is today. But he needs a first-class cabin.

The Inc. piece on Breeze continues to discuss the airline's planned operations. In 2011 Neeleman's employees were crewmembers.

Breeze is also introducing a program in which it will hire college interns from Utah Valley University and mold them into customer-service machines. In exchange for salary, free tuition, and housing, the students will undergo training and then work 15 or so days a month while taking their college courses online. "The big thing is we are going to provide a great service with kind people on a beautiful airplane with a fun atmosphere," says DePastino.

In 2021 they are customer-service machines. They will spend not just their days but their nights in Breeze's living spaces at one of the most vulnerable times in a person's life, learning how to be cogs in a machine right when they're transitioning from being students to entering the turbulent world of trying to find a job. And all of us want a job that makes us feel like we're still us, doing something that makes the world better and that helps us touch the tip of Maslow's pyramid. Almost none of us get it. Most of us slog through something utterly pointless that is entirely separate from our own self-identity to just keep our heads above water. Breeze turns this into a machine and it starts its cogs young.

Would I take this deal if it was offered to me? I'm a university student with barely enough money to keep myself afloat in a very expensive city while paying for university and for medicine and for anything else that may suddenly come up. I love aviation. I have customer service experience. I work in customer service right now and will probably continue to for a long time. I would hypothetically be an ideal candidate for this sort of program. Would I take this offer knowing that nobody, myself included, says to themself as a child that they want to be an airline customer service representative when they grow up? College is supposed to be the place you lay the groundwork for trying to start a career. Nobody wants their career to be 'customer service representative'. Nobody wants their obituary to say 'beloved son, husband, middle management at an airline's call center'. Sure, lots of people end up there, and plenty of them are happy and fulfilled and they have nothing to be ashamed of, but nobody's 18, going into college, and thinks that's what they want to live and breathe for years. They want to intern in the accounting departments, to shadow engineers, to see the sleek jets and peer in on the lifestyles of the people who built this. They want to be David Neeleman. But that's not an option for most of us.

So what would I do? Live this concession to the inevitability of automation which overtakes much more than the flight deck? I might, because at least it's a guarantee of shelter and stability that I don't have trying to stumble my way through an utterly shambolic job market caught between the price of school and the need to earn that money and the costs inherent to autoimmune disease and the number of hours there are in a week. I want to write, or even just to do something that involves words, because even a data entry job might let me pretend I'm still the person I thought I would grow up to be, and even that seems off the table. But it's one thing to know your dreams are never going to be realistic and another to say it out loud and yet another to commit to it in a place that even refers to you outright as a machine as if they don't understand the weight of that word when you provide someone's lodging and pay and everything else they rely on. This is a few steps short of being a company town populated exclusively by the young and vulnerable who think they're going to be entrepreneurs one day.

"When I started JetBlue, it was a customer service company that just happened to fly airplanes," Neeleman says. "Breeze is a technology company that just happens to fly airplanes."

He was talking about the app when he said this, but I think it comes through in a broader sense. jetBlue was a customer service company. Humans interfaced with humans. The idea was in nature lively, giving names to inanimate flying machines. It was a corporation, it made money, it did not actually care about people and it could not because it was not itself human, but it did not wear this fact proudly. It was a regrettable necessity of running an airline, and the CEO donated his salary to the employees. jetBlue under Neeleman and beyond clung to the human element, and to kindness and to making low-cost flight fun and comfortable even though there was nobody on the plane with a first-class ticket. You might be part of a fundamentally unethical system known for cutting corners and lying and sweetheart deals and never suffering consequences when something as simple as a jackscrew nobody lubricated kills 88 people, but you're going to at least try to dampen that impact. It might kill you just as dead but it can hurt less, maybe so much you never realize jetBlue occupies the same slice of the world as Pan Am and as ValuJet.

Breeze Airways lodges young individuals and molds them into machines. It is an ultra-low-cost carrier with a first class cabin. It presents a scenario where people are optimally herded by an app, served by employees who go home at night to the same place they work, and all of it can be reduced down to numbers so easily. It takes the human and it makes it technology. It makes it profit. The human element is gone. It doesn't matter how much it hurts you because if you aren't a person there's nothing to kill. It says the quiet parts out loud and makes you get on the phone and tell your family you're happy here with a gun to your head. It is a machine built of anonymized mannequins who, irrelevant to their role in it, happen to be alive, and it calmly tells you that this is a good thing, and that is a threat. The lowest category of experience you can have is 'nice'. Breeze Airways does not name their planes.

When I was a child I thought airlines were people and airplanes. I've flown many times in my life. There aren't many other ways to get from Japan to the East Coast these days. The world is huge but we can see it all so easily, assuming taking us there can make someone money. I remember being eight and having the pilot standing by the door to greet passengers, having him hand me a little pair of plastic pilot wings I still have now. I remember the stormy night I flew alone for the first time and the stewardess who let me sit next to her for a little bit and answered all my questions about the noises the plane was making. I remember the first time I flew on a propeller plane and the pilot who explained to me what all the gauges meant, and who insisted there was nothing to be afraid of and pointed out all the landmarks we flew past, who clearly knew this route by heart.

That's not what aviation always is. That's not what it usually is. People don't usually start airlines because they wish they could fly everyone around in their little single-engine plane on a commuter route from Boston to Provincetown, from Hyannis to Nantucket, provide that service to the people who don't have a plane and a license of their own, but they just can't do it all themselves. People who start airlines aren't usually intrepid pilots searching for new heights to push themselves to or flight instructors looking to fly people around in a single rented DC-3. They're businessmen. They want money. Juan Trippe was a businessman. Howard Hughes was a businessman.

The corporation is where passion goes to die if it existed to begin with. They build machines to suck the life out of pilots, exhaust them, put them in planes that are falling apart and let them take the blame when they fail to do things they failed to teach them. These people aren't your friends and they don't care about aviation, and if they do it's in the way an American child plays soldiers at the same time a school in Syria is being bombed. They're usually not even pilots. They're people with a lot of money who want even more money. jetBlue isn't unique in that sense and neither is Breeze. One just says it a lot louder.

Sometimes an airline is a technology company that happens to fly airplanes. That's true. Every single positive experience you have is with people, not airlines. I've never once spoken to jetBlue, just a matrix of pilots and flight attendants and customer service representatives who make up its many limbs. Maybe it should come as a relief, a sort of coming clean, that Breeze is tearing back the curtain and reminding you that the time a stewardess calmed you down during turbulence isn't really any different from the time a drugstore cashier let you off even though you were a few cents short of your total and said they'd take care of it. It's not CVS doing that. It's always people.

So many businessmen say they're here to do good, to make the world a better place, to reconcile kindness with venture capital. Any of them could build a tower that reaches all the way to the edge of the solar system and let us all know how many beautiful things there are that we can reach if they can find a profitable way to get us out there, and yet it's still the people who see your transit card is out of money and scan you in using theirs that make me remember that we are capable of kindness despite our surroundings. It is up to all of us whether we wish to be kind or not and it's not something anyone else can build for us.

Companies can't build a kinder, softer, funner, more human place. They can make money. They can provide a service. A service you need, at a cost you can afford, predicated on the fundamental question: whether they think you can make them money. Desperation, need, giving people a non-choice, that's how you make money and kill criticism. That isn't kindness. That's finding a gap in the market. Always has been.

I read that at JetBlue, you also didn't have your own parking spot and you donated your entire salary to a crewmember crisis fund, saying, "It seemed hoggish of me to have all this stuff when others didn't because every time I would get something someone else would have less." Yet then I read about your $14 million mansion in Connecticut. It's my wife's mansion. I never would have built that, ever. I think she's repentant. It was a project for her and it kind of got out of hand. But we all felt funny moving in. That's why we want to sell it.

I'd wondered how you reconciled the mansion with your philosophy. I don't.

image: Bill Bernstein

Okay, Marx or Megatron or whoever you think you are, that's enough of that depressing schlock. You are a tumblr.com airline livery review blog. We're here to answer if the plane looks good or not.

It's not like Neeleman's only goals are money and vapid personal satisfaction. We've been with him from the start. It was just an unacknowledged bit of the tail. He probably didn't notice it at first, but we did, with the gift of hindsight. It germinated. It took root. It grew. It became identity. It became his white whale. Are the planes blue, though?

Well, everyone, meet N206BZ. She's an Airbus A220-300. She's just a year and a half old and was delivered brand-new to Breeze Airways. She doesn't have a name, just a registration, but that's sure one blue plane if I've ever seen one!

The color scheme is visually pleasing. It's all over but it keeps visual interest with the darker tail and rear fuselage, the darker engines, the big white check-mark that serves as an instantly recognizable emblem for the airline. The repetition of it on the winglets is a nice touch.

I hate the wordmark, honestly. The text feels like it's located too low, the lightest blue blends in with the main fuselage until it borders on illegible. As far as I can tell, the typeface is custom. I hate it. It's ugly. The text is bad and it weighs down the rest of the plane.

A lot of how a livery looks depends on the lighting. So let's look at another example. I'd like to introduce you to N140BZ. She's an Embraer E195-200 and she's coming up on 15 but she hasn't slowed down any. She flew for Air Europa for a long time, but from 2016 on she was in limbo, all sorts of holding groups leasing her to each other but nobody putting her into service. Now she's with Breeze. They'll retire their E190s somewhat soon, but for the moment they like to have them. It allows them to operate shorter routes and free up time for charters on other days, just to maximize productivity. She doesn't have a name either. I'd say she still looks pretty blue. A lot of the concept art has a very metallic and reflective feel which I'm glad isn't as present in the actual planes, because it looked a bit sci-fi movie and not in a campy way. It was very blue chalk marker.

I like these colors just as much in this sort of washed-out environment as I do in direct sunlight gleaming at full intensity. Maybe more, even, since the text of the wordmark is so much more legible now and you can even see that the checkmark itself is blue. There's almost nothing on this plane that isn't blue. The only thing not blue about this airplane is that she doesn't have a name to revel in it.

The Breeze livery gets a B-.

It is a competently executed version of the thing it wants to be. There's visual interest. There are choices made. It's more than a logo slapped on a tail and sent off to sit on the tarmac with hundreds of other primarily white airplanes. I like it, I think this is the best Neeleman livery. It's also the bluest.

I find myself thinking the checkmark is an apt logo. Azul wore the shape of Brazil - a country full of people. Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras S/A is a company. It cannot have a soul. But its founder says it does. He wants to make something better for people. Breeze Airways is a checkmark. It satisfies a need. It is 'nice' but there is no pretense that it is people.

The pilots will be kind all the same, and the stewardesses. People will agree to swap seats so families aren't separated. People will compliment strangers' outfits and help the person in line in front of them who's fifty cents short for a bottle of water. We will hold the door for elderly men with canes and exhausted women with strollers. We will take every little chance we can to be kind. We do this because we are people, and not because of where we work, and it's definitely not the people with 400 million dollars to put down on a shiny new airline making that happen. Everything is scheduled through an app, minimizing contact with humans even as the ones we do talk to are 'molded into customer-service machines' over the course of years. N140BZ wears her blue colors well, and not having a name doesn't make her any uglier. So what is it that's changed?

David Neeleman can't make jetBlue a second time. But he doesn't know that. To a man with so much, maybe it makes sense how he could fail to realize that. When you're high enough in the air a thriving uptown and an area of condemned slums look more or less the same, just little blocks of color all the way down there. He doesn't even realize he's given up the ghost. This is only a tragedy if your definition of a happy ending was us believing someone is better than they are instead of being left no room to continue failing to recognize what money is and what money does. The corporation wears two masks - the mask that it wears when it is a corporation wearing a mask, and the mask it wears when it is so close to human that you mistake it for your friend. The businessman wears these masks too. To be sad they've taken them off is to invest more in the virtue of these men than they ever do in the life or death of the 138 people squeezed in the back.

There it is. Two decades, five attempts, the bluest plane. If you've kept reading all the way to the end let me know in the replies what your favorite Neeleman-proximate livery is. I'll see you all tomorrow for our regularly scheduled Runway Runway livery review, and I hope you all have a wonderful night.

[daresplaining]

Butch: "Wait...you're telling me it was actually Matt?" Matt: "Yeah...it was Matt. He came back from rehab, went to his apartment... I don't know what the #$@% Fisk was thinking, but I know they've got history and... Ah, Butch. He killed my brother." Butch: "I'm sorry, Mike. I really am. But I'm so #$@% glad it wasn't you. I thought...I thought I sent you away, right into my Dad's hands." Matt (caption): "[...]I've done this before. Back in the day." Butch: "[...]I'm sorry, Mike. I really am. All I can do now is be better than I have been. I know you weren't...happy about some of my decisions lately, but I want you to know..." Matt (caption): "The trick was always in the eyes. Not just making sure they faced the right direction...but that no matter what, he had kindness in them..." Butch: "...I'm going to be better. No more killing. I don't want to be him. I want to run this city with fairness, with compassion." Matt (caption): "...and I don't." Matt: "You better." Butch: "I...what? Look, you're my partner here, and I know you're grieving, but maybe take it down a--" Matt: "Let me make it clear for you. If you hurt people, if you commit violence and terrorize others...I'll come stop you." Daredevil vol. 7 #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Matthew Wilson, and Clayton Cowles

This post has been in my drafts folder for almost a full year, for no reason other than the fact that I kept feeling like I had more to say about it. But I always have more to say about Mike scenes. Return with me to this bombshell of a conversation from Daredevil volume 7 #1 (twinkly flashback SFX)...

Kind eyes? I always thought the trick to an effective Mike Murdock disguise was in the feathered cap and the goofy sunglasses, but what do I know?

Anyway, jokes aside, let's talk about this doozy of a scene from the new #1, which kicked off the second volume of Zdarsky and Checchetto's Daredevil run. To start, I am delighted by the return of colorist Matthew Wilson, whose stunning work previously graced the back half of Daredevil volume 4.

Daredevil vol. 4 #14 by Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, Matthew Wilson, and Joe Caramagna

I've really missed that bright red hair.

This scene directly follows up on the events of Devil's Reign, and the brutal (but maybe not permanent!) death of Matt's dear Real Boy twin brother at the hands of the Kingpin. Specifically, it follows up on what we have seen as the progression of Matt's response to Mike's death: attempting to take advantage of the situation for his own gain in ghoulish and disturbing ways. We have seen Matt bury his brother under his own name-- in a way, capping the Soule/Noto "Double Vision" arc by erasing Mike in the only way still possible (possibly not Matt or Zdarsky's intention, but the parallel is undeniable). And now we see Matt using Mike's identity as a tool and a weapon, trying to gather information on Fisk's whereabouts, and toying with Butch's grief for the sake of adding weight to his crimefighting. We are getting a close look at what it actually means to give Matt Murdock an identical twin, and wow, it is not pretty.

That said, I do not believe that this new horrible co-opting of Mike's identity undermines any of the previous indications that Matt is, in fact, grieving-- despite how callous this seems on the surface. We will always have Devil's Reign #6's brutal display of Matt's pain before he started putting his emotional shields up, and in this issue he has a wonderful scene with his superhero BFF Peter Parker in which, among other things, he opens up a teeny-tiny crack in those shields regarding Mike.

Peter: "Oh god...Mike. Your brother." Matt: "Yeah. I'm okay-- it's just been...it's been hard."

(I love that Peter knows about Mike, since he was largely responsible for Matt creating him in the first place. And of course, I also love that Matt has finally restored his friend's memories-- though that's a topic for another post.) But let's take a look at what we have here, which is, plainly and simply, the weaponizing of the Mike Murdock identity. Which is amazing. Matt mentions here that he has impersonated Mike before, "back in the day". We learned in the 2020 Annual that in the new MCU (Mike Continuity Universe), Matt pretended to be his brother as a kid, back before his accident, to get Mike out of summer school. However, that is almost certainly not what he's referring to here. I'm pretty sure he's referring to this:

Daredevil vol. 1 #25 by Stan Lee, Gene Colan, Frank Giacoia, and Artie Simek

We're coming full-circle! Zdarsky has said before that in this version of reality, Matt did still pretend to be Mike in the original Mike Murdock Saga, rather than it being Mike himself, but this is the first actual on-panel reference to that being the case. We don't get context, we don't get the full story, but even just that little reference to the events of "back in the day" warmed my little Mike nerd heart. And having seen Mike pretend to be Matt in this run, we are now finally, finally! getting to see Matt pretend to be Mike, bringing this whole grand Real Boy Mike experiment-- again-- full circle.

I joked about the "kind eyes" comment at the beginning of the post, but I do want to talk about it because it's a striking thing for Matt to say. I had a great conversation with @thosemintcookies about this a while back, regarding how that comment might be interpreted. After all, while there are many colorful adjectives that can be used to describe Mike Murdock, "kind" is not one that jumps immediately to mind. Not that Mike isn't a decent person, but he has never been shown to be any kind of bastion of goodness, even in the 60s. He's a rascal. And kindness in his eyes? What does that look like? How long has it been since Matt has even seen his brother's eyes? It's an odd thought for him to have, and it reeks of projection. On the surface, he is saying "To pretend to be Mike, I need to seem like a nice person", but what it really may mean is "To pretend to not be me, I have to pretend to be a nice person". Again, we return to that hidden grief, and attached feelings of (normal, secular!) guilt. Matt feels like a scumbag, and in this instance, he's got a pretty good reason. He did not directly get his brother killed, but his brother is still dead because of him, killed by proximity just like so many other people in his life, and now he is doing horrible things to Mike's memory. If he's feeling like a sucky human being at the moment...then yeah, he's not entirely wrong there.

But! Note the past tense: "The trick was always in the eyes". This feeling that his brother is a better person than him is not new. We have painfully few details about Matt and Mike's new past together, so this is worth examining. Is Matt, in his grief, now projecting a morality onto Mike that wasn't actually there? Or has Matt always looked up to his brother in this way? Does he see himself as capable of dark things that Mike, for all of his rascallitude, would never do? It's a fascinating shift in a dynamic that we have previously seen only from Mike's perspective, which showed us the smart, obedient, selfless brother and the disappointment of a twin who could never measure up. Here, we may have Matt's side of things: the flawed but ultimately decent brother and his violent, deceptive, disobedient, callous, chaos gremlin twin. The idea that they both may have seen each other as the better person is absolutely fascinating, and is, of course, informed by the layers of secrets they were keeping from each other.

And of course, there is another facet to this-- Mike's origins. As Mike was once a wish fulfillment source for Matt at a time when he felt he had to hold his personality in check, now we are seeing him as a different flavor of wish fulfillment-- a vision of a better, kinder version of Matt when he is feeling at his most scummy and unkind. The body is barely cold and Matt is already martyring his brother.

Moving on to the rest of the scene, Matt is being horrendously cruel to Butch here in using his dead best friend to get close enough to threaten him...though he doesn't have any reason not to be. It's very likely that he blames Butch for Mike's death-- if not in the immediate sense, then in the fact that Butch's friendship led Mike into a life of crime. Plus, Butch is the new Kingpin and has been going around killing people, so there's also that. When Matt is in pain, he doesn't need much of an excuse to do nasty things to people he dislikes. He could have just shown up here as Daredevil with Spider-Man in tow and delivered his threat, but instead, he adds some psychological warfare-- dangling the hope of Mike still being alive in front of Butch and then ripping that hope away.

Not only that, but it is, for lack of a better term, ballsy as hell. He just strolls in here without a mask on, confident in his ability to fake being Mike well enough to convince Butch, and then he goes "Psych! I'm not Mike after all. I'm just Daredevil in a...really, really good wig and make-up?" Has Matt just revealed his secret identity here? Is Butch going to connect the dots: Matt Murdock vanishing into thin air despite supposedly being "in rehab", Daredevil not only managing to look exactly like Mike but also to play him with a degree of accuracy that suggests he knew him well...? Sure, this might spook him into being a well-behaved little Kingpin, but isn't it also going to make him extra angry and determined to avenge his best friend's death? (I hope so.) Maybe Matt no longer cares. He is leaving the city, and he mentions in this issue that he feels like he isn't going to return this time. (Obviously he will, but that's not the point.) Maybe it doesn't matter anymore if one NYC bad guy knows his secret identity. Maybe he is taking advantage of that, even, to go in here and have the unique pleasure of doing this face-to-face-- in a way, using Mike once more as Daredevil unmasked.

[dwarf-vader-of-middle-earth]

Y'all I haven't known happiness like this since I lost my last cat, Emma, 2 years ago now.

So as I said before, Patron was found on the streets of a dangerous city, chipped, but the chip wasn't registered. He was thrown out after a family tried to take him in, and decided they no longer wanted him. Patron was taken to a shelter where he was depressed and sleeping, unlike the other active kittens of the place. He was also, unlike them, fully grown. 2 years old now.

I went to check him out, and as the workers closed the door and let him see me, he walked straight up to me and perked himself up happily within not even a second. I picked him up, he melted into my arms, and the workers were so astounded that he did this because Patron didn't like being held. At all. By anyone. Ever. And here he was, a completely different and happy cat, because of me.

I took him home that day, and he's been my baby ever since.

However! He seemed to love mom more than anyone. She fed him since she got up first out of all of us, so I guess it made sense. Patron never snuggled up to anyone while they sat, he never sat in laps, and he really was just hesitant to get close to anyone in a relaxing way to be honest. He wouldn't beg for pets, and he'd tolerate being held for short periods of time, but other than that, he was always perfectly content on his own just chilling here at the house, being relatively near his people (in the same room, but at a distance).

And ever since Mom went to the hospital, Patron cuddled up on her clothes, her bathrobe, everything. He clearly missed her.

But for about a week now, Patron has been walking up to my closed bedroom door, meowing and smacking it for a few minutes before going away. A few nights later, one session of this turned to multiple sessions of his meow smacking.

Then tonight, I broke.

Patron would not leave the door. At all. For any amount of time. He wouldn't stop meowing at all, and every couple of seconds he smacked the door. As I tried to sleep, I couldn't because of his meowing. So, finally, I gave up, and opened the door.

Patron raced to my bed. Our bed. He jumped up and purred louder than I ever heard him purr before, more than I thought any cat was capable of. Instantly, he began making biscuits, he stepped all over me (he's never stepped on me in his life for 2 years), he kept pawing at me to get more pets, and he even kissed my face with his which he's only done once before!!!!!

This baby boy was so curious about everything. He was so happy to be with me, and he never stopped or lessened his purrs the entire time. Eventually, he wanted out, so I let him out. And the moment I got back into bed, he was already body bashing the door to come see me again.

Patron snuggled me, he was so excited he barely sat for more than 10 seconds, and he just kept giving me love physically, more than I've ever seen him give me in two years combined. I didn't think I was going to get any sleep at all because I was just so damn happy with my boy being with me, and I wanted to be awake for every second of it.

But Patron eventually left to go get food, and then went elsewhere. Now, I will sleep, alone physically, but not in heart. Nowhere near alone. I've got my boy, my Patron, who loves me so much that he showed an entire different side of himself to just me tonight. He trusts me. He loves me. And damnit, I haven't loved this hard since before Emma passed and slept with me every night.

All I can say is, if he meows on top of me then chomps my cheek to wake me up, just like Emma did, I'll know she's looking out for us both. She knows I'm going through it right now, and that I've been the loneliest I've ever felt my entire life. To the point that, some nights, when the door is closed and I'm the only one in here, I feel cat paws stepping on me, and a small body conforming to my feet to cuddle them, just as Emma did when she was alive. I felt that feeling at least 5 or so times, but it has been a few weeks now, and I was getting really lonely.

Now I know why.

Emma wants me to open my door to Patron. He will fill the void in my life, and warm it up with his gigantic soft body cuddling me. :)

Thanks, Emma. Thanks, Patron.

[s0lar-ch3ri]

pretzel centric shit but lots of gillion too (not just fic ideas this time, also hcs) (once again spoilers lol)

pretzel can read gillion's thoughts perfectly. like only his, it is magic, and even applies to humanoid pretzel. i like to think about it especially for like a scene where gill finds out jay was a traitor before after a fight thing and you know what just take it in a fic form (references to jay's dad btw so spoilers lol)

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Gillion gripped his sword tightly. First, a giant monster attack and now he's only just found this out, one of his best friends being a traitor, having lied this whole time to his face. The distress on Jay's face was almost enough to get him to stop.

She was terrified. Jay was a traitor, yes, but there's a reason it's was and not is. She knew the look in his eyes, that grit of his teeth, the more heavy breathing, and it was the same anger he had during the duel with Chip. She felt the tears on her face and did not care. She didn't want to fight a friend but she knew as a friend Gillion would still do so.

Both were tired from the monster attack and in need of more healing. Jay seemed to want to make words, yet only her eyes could plead for him to not do what she knew he would.

"Jay Ferin, if that's even your real name," Gillion started.

"Gill, please." Jay begged him.

Tiny hands came and grabbed Gillion's sword away from him, and Jay noticed them take her weapons as well. As the two looked to their right, they saw Pretzel with them both, handing them off to Oliver already.

"You two are in no condition to fight, and Gillion you don't even WANT to fight! I understand you have honor, but I can't let my best friend fight his best friend over an issue that was already resolved." She glared at Gillion like a parent who told their kid to not eat dirt and they still did.

"Pretzel, please do not interfere-" Gillion tried to argue back, but she grabbed his back, sat him down, and started to take off his armor. Jay didn't know if she was really that strong, if Gillion was tired to fight her back, didn't want to hurt her on accident, or if maybe it was just because Pretzel was herself that she could do such a thing.

"After I get this off you, your going to sleep. Think about it before jumping into another combat. If you still want to duel her, that's up to you, but maybe using that coral would help you. Oh, and you better heal up too, or I will be forced to use the stickers Ollie got all over your armor. As for you..." She referenced to Jay, who hadn't moved still.

"Gill may have been...out of commission and it may have been your doing, but I wasn't. I've seen you and how good of a friend you are to Gillion. Heal up, then you better sleep too. Next time that dumb idiot comes around, I'll punch him for ya." She winked at Jay, who stopped being so tense as she gave a nod and headed down below to do as Pretzel said.

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humanoid pretzel is such good friends with ollie you do not understand

most of these are humanoid pretzel but since finn and gill have scrolls, pretzel has a scrapbook and probs would own a polaroid (she also doodles and writes, its really a mix but she has special pages for everyone but gill, who has like 3)

edyn would braid gill's hair but pretzel (both humanoid and frogtopus) is the one who remembered not gill so when he wants to get his hair away and more securely he just very embarrassedly gets up and sits infront of this small pink frogtopus (or light pink child for humanoid) who talks to him as if shes his hairstylist (she is)

pretzel can no problem pick up gill's old sword (and new one lol) (applies to humanoid and frogtopus) but only gills sword. like chip's swords are too heavy, but gill's old giant ass sword? balancing on her fingertips. shes just great like that <3

ok so the ring scene was gay af but like pretzel and gill have a ring. like its definitely not magical anymore yet gill and pretzel just kept it because it was so special to them (again applies to humanoid and frogtopus)

i can see pretzel being trans or genderfluid/fluidflux but doesnt change her physical appearance because im trans and i dont plan to get rid of anything so you dont have to either

ftm gill where pretzel helped pick out the binder because she didnt trust him enough to know how they worked and not damage himself (also had to make sure it would be okay under the heavy armor gill wears so he can breath)

gillion has rushed into battle with crayon marks all over his armor because pretzel felt it to be "bland" and in need of her magic

even as a frogtopus pretzel likes ollie and his hair is a spot she has perched before and he just doesnt care at this point

pretzel is fully prepared to like die for gillion and she always tells him this cause the chosen one is still someone to himself and someone to her

mermaid pretzel au. thats all.

in a pokemon au pretzel is still herself but i find it funny if like pretzel was a legendary and like thats gill's starter. like theres only one of her and chip and jay are so confused and amazed on how he got his hands on her and he just goes "oh yeah shes my partner i found her one day and she just vibed with me and now we're here"

autistic humanoid pretzel hates the feeling of sand sticking to her and likes lots of liquid textures and stickers (also gillion is her fav textures because yes)

hear my vision out: theres like these bad guys fighting the riptide pirates, and theyre cornered to a wall. then, in a flash of light, the tiny orb on gill's hip starts to glow and when it clears, humanoid pretzel is there with a pistol and says this: "YOU'VE SEEN DESTINY, BUT NOW IT'S TIME TO MEET YOUR FATE BITCHES!"

pretzel is the #1 hypeman for sure no questions needed

BAND HUMANOID PRETZEL LOVES SINGING NO DOUBTS (also plays both a flute and kazoo because yeah)

i remember hearing someone mention how funny itd be if pretzel was secretly an all powerful monster and stuff so that goes here but the reason she stays as a lil frogtopus is cause gill likes it

did i forget to say humanoid pretzel would have a cutlass? it seems i did so yeah she would (that or a pair of daggers)

i have to fight the urge to say autistic gill as a hc because i have so many that are pretty common for him (ill just run through them, tail truther and along side being a canon ace hes also probs a homosexual hes literally the flag colors) (NOT SAYING COMMON HEADCANONS ARE BAD, ITS JUST ID RATHER SHARE MY OWN AND THROW NEW ONES INTO THE RING)

gill has lots of jewelry in a little pouch but he doesnt wear it much because of the long amounts of fighting leave him without time to put them on and hes scared hed lose them in battle (a lot are from edyn, a couple from pretzel, and theres a lot of hand made ones). however, he definately has the ring for pretzel and the necklace from aslana on (chip's ring either is still on or in his pouch) but yeah hes like a crow he likes the shiny jewelry

highschool triton gill has a video camera which he uses for learning about the above world

modern day tattoo artist gill (to add on chip does piercings [but that can be swapped with gill i feel like], pretzel does hair [see stanzi, shes how i imagine pretzel acting], and jay either works at a hot topic, a makeup store, i got a lot ideas for jay up in here that ill share later lol)

gill didnt really know at first what tattoos were so when he saw chip had some (because chip had to have had some) he thought chip got dirty and tried to wipe it off

GILLION WITH TATTOOS GILLION WITH TATTOOS GILLION WITH TATTOOS GILLION WITH TA-

pretzel has listened to gill do gay rambles late at night ontop the deck about marshal jon and you get a fic thing for it too (do note i am not good with the albatross layout so if i make characters go from one area and then have them materialize somewhere else entirely im sorry i just dont have a clue where shit is)

It was late out and Earl knew that, but it was one of those nights he may have been in his tavern, chatting the patrons into maybe giving him a couple more gold for the drinks, the likes, so he didn't feel like sleeping yet. When it didn't leave after a couple minutes, he just got up and went to get a drink. Some juice may do the trick.

"...oh my gods Pretzel, just so cool!"

Earl may be old, but he wasn't old enough to start hearing things...he hoped. Taking a glass with him, he headed to the main deck. Pacing back and front infront of a wood barrel was Gillion in his pajamas. He looked to be rambling to Pretzel. Normally, Earl would have told Gillion to shut the fuck up and get back to sleep, but there was nothing to do so he listened in from the door way, wondering why he was still up.

"...is pretty amazing right, but have you seen Marshal Jon? Like, if I hadn't ever seen him and you described him to me, I'd think you were crazy. Jon is just so tall and so big and while he could have stayed on the dark side with evil somehow I convinced him to become my friend on the side of heroes! The sideburns, the tattoos, oh the tattoos! Just wow, Pretzel, wow."

Pretzel let out a couple of purrs in response. She looked as though this kind of talk was a normal event for her. "Well, maybe it might be seen as a tiny bit strange to think about a man so much...BUT HAVE YOU SEEN HIS PECKS?!" As Gillion talked, he saw Pretzel using her tentacles to try and cover her mouth from laughing, making him stop. When Gillion turned around to see what was causing her to find such humor, he saw an old man Earl, just standing there with his face blank and his jaw a little open, trying to calibrate what was happening. They both just stood there staring for a while.

"I'm too tired to figure out what the shit I just witnessed, just get to bed ya fucking knuckle head." Earl broke the silence, finishing his juice and turning back around so he didn't have to watch Gillion shove Pretzel onto his face and jump into the sea out of embarrassment. Of course he was riding with the strangest (and gayest) of fucking kids.

couple of notes on the lil fic thing; 1. yes ill be doing earl hcs later on 2. i asked a friend who would find gill rambling and they said either ollie or earl so i did earl 3. earl called them kids because theyre younger then him and he sees them to be as idiotic as children are portrayed as

as seen in the fic thing i just did, gill jumps into the closest (and biggest) body of water when embarrassed and if there arent any close by he goes either in a barrel or becomes a ball

tbh this was meant to be mainly gill hcs with lots of pretzel but i realized not even half way that it was the other way around

highschool au gill owns squeaky toys for himself and pretzel (they also play dolls unashamed)

ok now more fic ideas rather then mostly hcs cause yeah

gill either teaches or is taught by chip about things like autism and such

gill teaching the crew about special undersea traditions

pretzel takes gillion to a pride parade (highschool au)

humanoid pretzel and actual undersea king gill where the translator is pretzel and shit

a mini fic series of ollie being taught by both gill and humanoid pretzel about how to do magic

remember the ollie pranking the crew with therapy? pretzel helps out with it 100%

pretzel finding out that the entire crew is trans and shes the only cis one onboard (besides maybe earl)

siren pretzel is presented something new today: a human child (its ollie i like them hanging out :D)

shapeshifter pretzel decides to make earl think hes lost his mind lol

gillion spends time with caspian but pretzel cant come so ollie helps her handle the missing him

pretzel has the powers of god and proceeds to show it in a battle becaus yeah (like she just casually tackles a guy to the ground effortlessly)

gillion tries to communicate with pretzel and learn more about her because his study topic today is frogtopi

shapeshifter pretzel tries to attack jay after the shooting gillion incident

pretzel beats up jay's dad, thats all

in ep 54 theres a scene where gillion is looking around for a weapon and bizly is just hoping that theres a spiked bat so gillion with a spiked bat

edyn and pretzel beat up the elders together (i have barely a clue what they did despite being at ep 61 which is over half way but i have some idea and since the fandom doesnt like them plus the way ive seen them written aint something you could do so easily for nice people i think they deserve it)

if yall got more share them pls

[profblahson]

It's a read more cuz I want to vent and get kinda real a bit here

I have been not good recently. 2022 literally knocked me down, spit on me, kicked me as I tried to get up, and ended with me being just about the lowest I can ever remember being. I contemplated different methods to end myself. I almost tried some of them.

But some movies came out that have literally kept me going.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is probably my favorite film I have ever seen (you wouldn't know that based on my tumblr recently, but I'm gonna get to that). Working through so much of my own familial trauma, depression, and thoughts of suicide, this film resonated with me more than basically anything. And it's done through this absolutely silly premise with so much goofy action, but dammit if it didn't get me tearing up over a fucking rock with googly eyes. Joy's anger and frustration and exasperation at the end of the film is exactly what I was feeling at the time, and still honestly do.

I literally do not know where to begin with what feels so goofy to say, but it's so real right now. This fucking movie about a Ginger Cat that wear Boots has me in a vice grip. Puss' (Puss's?) figurative and literal entanglements with Death and the value of life is hitting me so hard, because of how much I wanted to stop my own. The wolf is hot. I haven't wanted to consume so much media about a fictional character like this, ever, that I can remember. It feels so silly to say out loud (type), but how much Death values life in this film is so interesting and cool to me, and if the fucking sexy wolf wants people to cherish their existence then dammit maybe I should, too. And consuming all this media is bringing me so much joy, I literally haven't just randomly smiled as much as I have these last like, two weeks thinking about this film and character in a long time. Is it healthy to be so consumed by fictional characters? I don't know, but it's making me happy right now, so I want to ride it out.

I've lately felt like the universe has just put a giant brick wall in front of me, and is continuing to add layers as I chip and pry away at it with my bare hands. I've been feeling like I'm fighting to merely survive for over a year, and my mental health has really tanked because of how frequently I feel like I've been shat on the last twelve months of my life.

I know that there's an end to it all. I know there will be a way out of where I am. I am working so hard to try and find the ladder to climb out of this pit.

If being horny on main for Death gives me a little light, I think I'll let that candle burn as long as it can. If screaming into the void now and then helps calm me down, I might rant more like this here and there.

If you know me in real life, I'm okay. I will be okay. I appreciate and love you for taking the time to stick with me and through all my ups and downs (and also the wolf).

Thanks for your time.

[ryanlockheart]

feelings weren't something that beau prided himself on being in touch with. he did his best to keep them at bay. no crying, no fear, no outward expressions of love. so, imagine the whirlwind raging inside of the massive boy when fletcher's perfect self, with his coiffed curls and plush lips among other things, had walked right into his life. something blossomed in his chest for the other boy that went beyond purely physical attraction. he didn't know how to show that yet, so he'd devised this little plan. "you and i both know where twenty questions leads... so why not just skip a few steps, yeah?" beau remarked, cocking up a brow. one thing that he'd learned about fletcher these past few months was that he seemed to hate having attention on him. that, in turn, only made beau want to give it to him more. he liked seeing the smaller boy flushed and squirming. "you're not a boring person at all... sure, you're dorky enough to be in a plant parent group. sure, you're sneaky enough to steal my dirty socks... but are you brave enough to touch me?" the older male questioned. "we're both smart enough to know you think about me when you're touching yourself, so who are we kidding? you've been thinkin' about this dick filling you up for weeks now. prolly since you moved in. isn't that right?" that ever-present smug grin on his lips just seemed to grow the longer he was around fletcher. there was something the slightly younger boy did that brought out the arrogant, cocky side of himself. fletcher did a number on his ego, and beau teased him to return the favor. it was their little cat-and-mouse game, and beau was coming to love it. still, the tension was starting to chip away at his patience. he was going to need to feel fletcher's soft skin on his own — and soon. "c'mon, fletchie. you know, what i mean," beau started to explain, letting his socked foot graze the other boy's thigh. "you'll get to taste 'em for real this time, get to breathe 'em in... and if you do a good job, maybe i'll let you play with my feet. let's say you do an extra good job, princess, might even get to fuck 'em... but none of that if you keep on actin' shy." that was an offer that beau knew he couldn't refuse. he'd seen with his own eyes that that desperation just to get a taste. "nuh-uh. let's not get carried away here, fletch. 'm not gonna be stickin' anything in me," beau said firmly. "i could pick you and fold you in half... think that says it all, princess." he was stuck in his ways, worried about his own masculinity too much to ever dare to let anyone venture down there. truth be told, if fletcher begged hard enough, beau would never say no. it wouldn't be easy for him, but he wanted nothing more than to give fletcher everything he'd ever dreamt up and more. "i mean, you will live with a pornstar soon enough. ain't that fitting?" he teased with a chuckle. "wanted to make it hard for you t'say no. been thinkin' 'bout this for awhile now. that's why i've 'forgotten' a towel a time or two. was tryin' to get ya all worked up... and it worked, fletchie. i've got you wrapped around my little finger, and i promise 'm gonna treat you like a princess." it was taking a different turn than he thought it would. he was gentler, softer — those feelings were starting to rear their head. there was nothing beau could do to stop them. "you are mine, aren'tcha? you'll let me play with that pretty little cunt whenever i want... let my friends hit it if i want. 'cause, at the end of the day, y'know that pussy belongs to me 'n' me only," beau said, his voice low and raspy. this was the moment he'd been waiting on for weeks and weeks. beau was finally getting what he wanted. "find out for yourself, princess," beau encouraged. his toes wiggled in his white socks, tempting the younger boy. he hissed out a breath of pleasure as the dainty hand squeezed at his cock. "i don't care," he answered affirmatively. "she won't wake up, but worst thing that happens is she learns a thing or two about how to treat a real man... but she'd be a too little late, now, wouldn't she?"

fletcher was a natural born nurturer — someone who would always make sure that his friends and family were taken care of before himself, someone who expressed his love in small, gentle acts of kindness. beau was a new friend, but he fell right into that category. besides, if cooking a home cooked meal every night meant that there would be someone to watch netflix with him as he ate, then he could deal with the burning desire that boiled in the pit of his stomach when beau was around. "surely there's an icebreaker game we could play instead. don't straight boys love twenty questions?" fletcher couldn't help but giggle. any mention of ashley was long behind them, and the spotlight was shifted onto fletcher. there was nowhere for him to run, or anything that he could hide behind. fletcher could only look to where his hands were folded in his lap, cheeks flushed soft pink. "naming your plants is a very normal thing to do, i'll have you know. everyone in my plant parent facebook group does it, and i'm awful at latte art!" fletcher groaned. "i'm a very boring person, with very boring interests. i just like to write, read, water my plants, and... steal your socks, i guess." fletcher swore he could hear something else in beau's tone, something that sounded a lot like inclination rather than the nonchalance he was used to. he couldn't help but wonder if he'd misjudged the entire situation, if beau wasn't stringing him along or using his obvious crush to earn some cash — perhaps beau actually liked him, and he had been oblivious to it this entire time. "from... from the source?" fletcher hiccuped, swiping his tongue across his bottom lip. he knew exactly what beau meant, but he was afraid that giving it up would come with some pretty disastrous consequences. fletcher did not have the best track record when it came to guys, especially guys like beau. "what makes you think that you're such a man, huh?! what makes you think that i wouldn't wanna be the one fucking you?" fletcher asked, but the expression on his face gave him away. the palms of his hands were tingling at the possibility of getting to touch the other boy, his mouth watering at the thought of getting to taste him. he needed it more than he could put into words. "it's not like you make it easy, beau... living with you is like living with a fuckin' pornstar. you're always walking around here naked or coming home from the gym and kicking your feet up for me to drool over. 's like you want to get worshiped by some eager slut, and we both know that's not ashley," he sighed softly. "you could have had me whenever you wanted me, beau. if you would have walked in, and replaced the dildo with your cock, you could have been slutting this tight cunt out on camera, to all your friends, t o fuckin' strangers for all i care. i would have been yours." fletcher couldn't believe all that was happening, but he was falling into his new role easily. beau was playing into all of his fantasies, and fletcher was eating out of the palm of his hand. "three workouts? f-fuck, i bet they're wet," he said wantonly, cock twitching in his sweatpants. his own hand squeezed beau's cock slowly, teasing the defined tip with the pad of his thumb. "right now? but... but your girlfriend is in the other room?" fletcher asked, but the wheels were already moving. he wanted nothing more than to drop right to his knees, ashley be damned — but he didn't know if he could really go through with it. "but what if... what if she wakes up? what if she catches us?" even with his inhibitions, fletcher could only resist those sweaty feet for so long. he found himself on his knees shortly after, cock hard and leaking between his thighs as he settled in front where beau's feet rested on the table. "you... if you're not serious about this, you should say it now. 'cause once i get started, i'm not going to know how to stop."

[beels-burger-babe]

Beelzebub's Very Bad No Good Day

***So this is the new format in which I'll be answering requests. In my experience, actual posts get spread further than asks do, so this will hopefully help with that. ANYWAY, I am crazy excited about this request as a major Beel simp and YES I will proudly do this request! Thank you @sinnoman for blessing me with it. -B*** Summary: Beel doesn't get anything to eat one day, and it doesn't go well for anybody.

From the moment Beelzebub woke up, he knew that today was going to be a terrible day. For starters, he had apparently raided the fridge in his sleep the night before, so there was not a crumb left in the house for anyone to make breakfast with. Most of the others had gone and grabbed something from Hell's Kitchen on their way to class, but poor Beel had slept through his alarm due to the food coma his nighttime snack had put him in and had to rush to RAD. The entire school was talking about the monster that they believed had awoken beneath the school. Teachers were on edge ready to evacuate the premises for the earthquake they believed to be happening. Beel avoided eye contact, blushing as his empty stomach continued to rumble and roar throughout the day. He ended up eating a few pencils just to get it to quiet down and even that didn't have much effect. The Avatar of Gluttony nearly cried tears of relief when the lunch bell rang. But it seemed that fate was not his friend that day. He was going to order a gargantuan-sized Little Devil mango slushy, a side of Hellfire curry rice, fried shadow bat, and 108 seed salad and the main course of at least twenty shadow hog burgers with three servings of caramel shadow tart for dessert. Beel was drooling at just the thought of it. He was almost at the ordering station when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Beel growled and turned around, baring his teeth at whoever dared to disturb him.

Belphegor narrowed his eyebrows in concern. "Woah. Beel, relax. It's just me. We've got a student council meeting, and Lucifer has threatened to take away supper from whoever skips out." Beelzebub scoffed as the air around him darkened at the mention of someone taking food away from him. "I'd like to see him try." Belphie raised an eyebrow at his twin's uncharacteristically grumpy behaviour. "Are you alright, Beel?" As though to answer his question, Beel's stomach let out another loud roar, causing several students to flinch and Beel to scowl in frustration. "I'm hungry." Belphie's frown deepened. Beel was always hungry, but he didn't usually let it get to him like this. The younger twin rifled through his own bag before pulling out an obviously full paper bag. "You can have my lunch if you want. I ate a little bit of it during class and swiped a bagel from Mammon during the first period, so I'm not all that-" Before he could finish Beel ripped the bag out of Belphie's hands and devoured it, bag and all. Belphie blinked at his now empty hand and chuckled as Beel chewed. "Man, you must be starving huh?"

Beelzebub merely grunted and continued to chew before swallowing down the small meal. He glanced back at the lineup in the cafeteria and put a hand on his stomach as he thought about the lunch he should be enjoying. Belphie nudged him. "Come on, big guy. We got to get to that meeting. The sooner we get it over with, the more likely it is that we'll end early and you might be able to grab something before class starts again." Only the meeting was not short and quick like Belphie had said it might be. Diavolo wanted everyone to come up with an idea for a school fundraiser, and Lucifer was arguing with Asmodeus on what was and was not appropriate. To make matters worse, you were unable to attend as, according to Mammon, your charms professor had asked you to stay behind afterwards to discuss your progress in the class. The bickering on top of the lack of food in his stomach was giving Beel a migraine and the longer he sat there, the more irritable he had become. Eventually, it became too much and he snapped. "ENOUGH!" he bellowed, flipping the table as he stood. "No one cares about the stupid fundraiser anyway and you're just wasting all of our time arguing over something that will inevitably fall apart and cause an even bigger mess, just like it always does!" "Beelzebub! Watch your tone in front of-" "Shut it, Lucifer!" his brother's gaped at him in shock as he snarled at their elder. "I am sick and tired of you pushing us all around and punishing us when the slightest thing goes wrong just because you-" Beel poked Lucifer's chest hard enough to make him take a step back, "won't take responsibility for your own mistakes!" "Oh shit," Mammon whispered under his breath, as Lucifer's eyes narrowed and his body tensed in defence. The second-born quickly squeezed his way between the two of them and spread his arms to try and create some distance. "Okay! Tensions are high. People are upset. But this is not the place to brawl it out." he glanced over at Lucifer who looked like he was a second away from stringing him up to the ceiling. "Might I remind ya Lord Diavolo is still in the room?" Lucifer looked over at Diavolo, who appeared to be both hurt and concerned by Beelzebub's words, before sighing and fixing his composure. He gave Beel a hard look. "Obviously something is upsetting you, but we can discuss this at home. For the time being, I recommend you work on calming yourself and clearing your head." Beel just growled at him before stomping out of the student council room. He had been about to re-enter the cafeteria again when the bell rang signalling the end of lunch hour. Beelzebub felt his eye twitch before his demon form burst into existence. He let out a deafening scream as he grabbed a table and threw it across the room (students still seated on it, included). Students were yelling and scrambling like mice as the large demon rampaged through the halls. He tore the locked grate off of the serving station and grabbed the nearest server by the scruff of the collar, causing them to squeak in fear. "I'm hungry," Beel rumbled lowly as the demon trembled in his hands. "Get me something to eat now or I will not hesitate to eat you." "R-R-Right away, Beelzeb-b-bub." Beel carelessly dropped the demon, who scattered off to gather as much food as they could. He began pacing like a caged animal. Having been alerted by all the noise, his brothers and Diavolo rushed into the nearly destroyed cafeteria. Diavolo's jaw dropped. "Beelzebub, what's the meaning of all this?" Beel's famished brain didn't acknowledge Diavolo as an authority at the moment. Instead, he was yet another person trying to keep him from eating. "I need food. NOW!" Lucifer's eyes widened in realization as he whispered something to Diavolo. The prince nodded and took a step back. "I'm sure the cooks are doing all they can to get you food right away. But I need you to control yourself before I am forced to take action." Satan had his phone out and was urgently texting someone, as Belphie moved forward.

"You'll get your food shortly Beel. You just need to wai-" "I don't want to wait!!" There was a part of Beelzebub's brain that was aware he was acting like a child. But his stomach physically hurt from how empty it was. He was tired. He was starving. He didn't have the patience for pleasantries. "I've barely eaten anything all day, and people keep staring and talking about me because my stomach just will not stop growling and I'm so hungry that I can barely think straight! I hate it! But I know it won't go away unless I eat, so I NEED TO EAT!" The brothers looked at Beel in shock. They knew that he ate a lot, but they always passed it off as just another quirk that made him Beel. They didn't know it bothered him like this. They thought back on all the instances where Beel had stated that he was hungry out of nowhere, always with a distressed look on his face. Every single time they had brushed him off. Before any of them could respond, you casually walked into the war zone that was the cafeteria. "Alright Satan, what's so urgent that you needed me so badly?" The room fell quiet as everyone's attention snapped over to you and you took in the situation. It didn't take long for you to connect the dots.

You immediately began to rush over to Beelzebub; Mammon stepped forward to stop you. "Woah, MC! I don't think that's a good idea right now!"

You ignored him and continued to make your way to Beel. Seeing you, the small human that you were, made Beel realize just how reckless he had been acting. He held out his hands to stop you and took a step away. "You should listen to Mammon, MC. I-I haven't eaten all day and I-" "You haven't eaten all day?! Oh god, this is worst than I thought." Beel watched as you slid the oversized backpack that he had seen you carry around RAD with you every day off your back and begin to dump out the contents. In a second, dozens of bags of chips, candy, fruits, and other snacks spilled across the floor in front of the two of you. Beel didn't waste a single moment. He instantly began consuming the snacks, causing you to smile happily. "Wha-What?! MC?! Why the hell do you have that much food on ya?!" Mammon sputtered as he cautiously began to approach you. You shrugged. "Beel gets upset when he's hungry, and I don't like it when he's upset. So I stocked up on some of his favourite snacks a while back and always keep them on me just in case," Beel paused his eating to look up at you in awe, "He can't help that he's always hungry. It's not like he asked to be the Avatar of Gluttony." Suddenly there were a pair of arms wrapped around your waist. Lucifer, Levi, and Mammon called out your name as Beel pulled you tightly against his chest. You just grinned and hugged the friendly giant back. "Thank you," he whispered softly into your hair, his arms tightening around you just a little more. "There's nothing to thank me for." As Beel finally began to calm down, the cooks came out with platters of food and shakily laid them out around you and Beel before taking cover back into the kitchen. Seeing that the threat had passed, the other brothers began to approach as well. "You know Beel, I didn't know you had that much pent-up anger inside of you. It was terrifying!" Asmodeus chirped as he plopped down beside the two of you.

"Yeah! You were just like the antagonist in My Boyfriend Turned Into a Cannabilistic Rage Monster, And Now I Have to Stop Him From Devouring The Whole City!!!" Levi began to ramble about specific scenes from the show that matched perfectly with Beel's rampage, causing Beel to blush as he munched on a burger. Belphie sighed and elbowed Beel as he took his seat at his side. "We'll have to make sure that MC's always around you. Just in case you know?" he smiled softly, before looking at his twin with a more serious expression. "You should've told me about all that stuff you said earlier. I had no idea you felt that away about your appetite." Beel looked away uncomfortably as he took another bite of his food and avoided the question. You snuggled closer to him, to provide him with some comfort. Satan tapped his chin as he watched the group. "I'm sure we could talk with Barbatos and come up with some sort of high-protein shake or bar that would better satisfy you. That way you wouldn't have to eat as much." Lucifer glanced over at Diavolo, silently asking if it was a possibility. The prince smiled warmly. "I'll have Barabatos begin working on something right away." Forgetting all about class and the anger that had previously consumed him, Beel looked around at his family. A warm feeling blossomed in his stomach as he felt content with the rare care and affection that they were openly showing. Maybe it had something to do with the thirty burgers he had already ate, but for just a second, Beel didn't feel so hungry anymore. ***Boy that got a little angsty there for a second, but I hope this was to your liking @sinnoman! I definitely enjoyed writing this one, and I think it made me fall in love with my boy Beel even more 🥰*** TAGLIST: @vampwiire @bunna-does-stuff

[thebeeduo]

Ranboo: Do you want me to just reading random- Do you want me to just- I'm gonna just start texting you

Tubbo: Yeah, just start texting me random input on the space

Ranboo: *texts Tubbo*

Tubbo: "Microwave explode"? Yo, thank you. "This is awesome"? Ok, stop texting me now. You didn't even respond to my message I sent you this morning

Ranboo: That's 'cause I was asleep!

Tubbo: Yeah, but like.. *sigh* Maybe I should just go live on instagram

Ranboo: Eughhh!

Tubbo: What? Is that cringe?

Ranboo: Yes

Tubbo: Maybe I should just go live on TikTok

Ranboo: Ahhh! Ahhh!

Tubbo: Is that cringier? Is that- *laughs*

Ranboo: *laughs* You go "Is that cringe" to Instagram and your next one is TikTok

Tubbo: *laughs*

Ranboo: I can make fun of it 'cause that's where I was born

Tubbo: Pffft!

Ranboo: I was born there/on TikTok [?]

Tubbo: Do you ever look at someone and wonder what's going inside their head?

Ranboo: I was- I was born on TikTok [?]

Tubbo: *starts playing the piano* You gotta remember your roots

Tubbo: I want my grand piano back, electric piano is cringe

Ranboo: *coughs* [unintelligible]

Tubbo: He just- He just decides "Oh I'm going to spit my germs around the room"

Ranboo: Yep!

Tubbo: *giggles* Wow, wow. You're a bad- I suppose you're anti-vax as well while we're at it

Ranboo: I am literally- I am literally vaccinated

Tubbo: I'm not allowed to be vaccinated, leave me alone!

Ranboo: That's just a major L for you then

Tubbo: Ahhhh

Ranboo: You're/Keep on getting coughed on!

Tubbo: *starts to play the piano intensely*

Ranboo: That's what happens when you're not vaccinated, people will come up to you and cough

Tubbo: That is a terrible sentence. I despise everything about that sentence

Ranboo: *laughs*

Tubbo: *plays The Owl House theme song, then switches to City of Stars*

Ranboo: Ughhh

Tubbo: So..

Ranboo: Oh my gosh!

Tubbo: What?

Ranboo: I just found more food to order

Tubbo: Nooo! Oh my god, if I get one more Amazon box arrive at my door and it's like a 25 large sized bars of Rice Krispies treats or fucking those shitty cheese squares that you haven't even eaten I'm gonna lose it

Ranboo: It's ding dongs

Tubbo: What the fuck is a ding dong?! That sounds like slang for a dick! You're literally eating dick!

Ranboo: *laughs* I am not! Jesus Christ

Tubbo: Why!

Ranboo: That is so far from what it is

Tubbo: What is it with all this fucking BS American food! Twinkies? Oh yeah, let me just-

Ranboo: I didn't get those actually. I don't know where those came from

Tubbo: Where did the Twinkies come from!?

Ranboo: I'm gonna be entirely honest..

Tubbo: Where the fuck did they come from!?

Ranboo: ..I have no idea where those came from. I did not order- That is not what I ordered

Tubbo: Look, you've got your-you've got your Cheez-It's and your Twinkies and your fucking ding dongs. I'm gonna f- I'm gonna blow some shit up

Ranboo: Sorry, I'll make sure to order a plain cheese pizza the next time

Tubbo: Honestly, that would be so much- I'm actually- I've been really healthy. So far I've had a fruit pop for breakfast

Ranboo: That's good. I had.. *silence*

Tubbo: You haven't had breakfast yet

Ranboo: I haven't- I haven't eaten yet

Tubbo: You haven't eaten yet today, and your first meal of the day will be Taco Bell

Ranboo: No, it won't!

Tubbo: Will it not? Oh

Ranboo: Why do you think- Taco Bell doesn't even deliver here!

Tubbo: *sighs* Fair enough

Ranboo: Why would it- Why- Mkay..

Tubbo: American

Ranboo: I know that the algorithm on Amazon works too well because it was [unintelligible]

Tubbo: *starts playing City of Stars again* Oh no

Tubbo: City of staaars.. *laughs* That song- It kind of annoys me, I'll be honest

Ranboo: I'm looking at- I'm looking at the, um.. I'm looking at your- the Tubbo space hashtag and someone just sent this, like, chart of, like, eye colour but it is, like, the most low res thing that I have ever seen

Tubbo: But I don't know- I think my eyes change colour depending on what I'm wearing, I'll be honest. Is that weird? Because everyone on twitter asks me "Ah yes what is your eye colour" and I'm like "Uhh how the fuck am I supposed to know" and then

Ranboo: My eye colour is [?]

Tubbo: Then I went through a bunch of like- I went through a bunch of, uh.. like, old photos of me and they just change colour depending on how sunny it is, what I'm wearing.. like.. Yeah, so, I don't know

Ranboo: *laughs*

Tubbo: What?

Ranboo: Nothing

Tubbo: What?

Ranboo: *loudly typing* It's time to listen

Tubbo: Time to listen to what?

Ranboo: To my music, I'm just gonna listen to my music

Tubbo: You're not gonna listen to me? Listen to me. Stop dancing. Knock that off. Yo, keep your clothes on! Woah, why are you so- *laughs* sorry

Ranboo: Why do you do this!

Tubbo: 'Cause it's funny, 'cause there's no video

Ranboo: Why do you- why do you do this

Tubbo: and.. and there's no video

Ranboo: What did I- What did I ever do? Nothing

Tubbo: *laughs*

Tubbo: *reads something about chip shops?*

Tubbo: Why do people keep sending me, like, soviet bunnies as well? I don't wanna see bunnies from soviet Russia. What's with the soviet Russia bunnies?

Tubbo: Thoughts on him? Bill Cypher? Pretty fun loving lad- Why did you just mention me and write "awesome"?

Ranboo: I didn't- No, it's a response to a tweet

Tubbo: Oh

Tubbo: *sees Michael fan art* "Oink! Hello father" Oh, I see

Ranboo: Just buff Michael

Tubbo: Buff- *laughs* He went to prison from lack of parent supervision and he came out buff, oh no! Oh no! *laughs*

Ranboo: What do you mean lack of parent supervision? I'm gonna go brush my teeth

Tubbo: Oh ok.. Bye

[Video cuts directly to when Ranboo comes back]

Tubbo: Hello. You seem hollow. Your mother is here? Wait, I shouldn't have read that out. You just texted me that so I didn't read it- Ok, well.. She's here guys!

Ranboo: Ahhh! Why!

Tubbo: She's here!

Ranboo: There's a reason-

Tubbo: She's here! *laughs* Just thought I'd let you know! *laughs* She's raring to go! That's awfully exciting..

[Video cuts again to the next beeduo clip]

Tubbo: Guys, I want to- How does one get the- What is the max people that have been in a single space, like, ever?

Ranboo: I own the number two spot for that!

Tubbo: Do you? How many was it?

Ranboo: Yeah. It was during MCC, it was 36k I think

Tubbo: 36- guys, can we get 38k please?

Ranboo: *fakes being angry* Can't you let me have anything!? *laughs*

Tubbo: Wh- Ok, Mr. 100k subs, Jesus

Ranboo: I don't- I got that once

Tubbo: Twice

Ranboo: It was six times actually..

Tubbo: SIX TIMES!? Oh my god, ok..

Ranboo: Alright... Goodbye space people!

Tubbo: Bye!

Ranboo: Goodbye!

Tubbo: Bye! Leave

Ranboo: I'm leaving the U.K. actually

Tubbo: He's not

Ranboo: *laughs* I'm not.. Wouldn't that be just terrible?

Tubbo: You just said bye and left..

Ranboo: The whole time everyone thought that I was going in, like, October but then I actually just straight up just leave..

Tubbo: You wanna go home?

Ranboo: ..in the middle of August

Tubbo: You can just leave.. get out!

Ranboo: Ok..

Tubbo: Pffft

Ranboo: Bye!

Tubbo: Bye!

[Video cuts again to the next beeduo clip]

Ranboo: I'm back from the U.S.!

Tubbo: Oh, what did you forget?

Ranboo: My- my beloved locket

Tubbo: *mocks American Accent* and the AirPods *laughs*

Ranboo: Yes

Tubbo: Have you told them what you've called your AirPods? The name of them?

Ranboo: Oh yeah, no, it's because basically, right, if you put a slash and then an asterisk at the end of a word it will bleep it out, so, right, me of course being young I thought that was the funniest thing to have that. So whenever Siri said my name she would just go like "You [beep]" so I thought that was funny. So it's like beeping noise, yeah

Tubbo: Oh, I see. So is that why mine do that as well?

Ranboo: I guess so, yeah

Tubbo: Yeah

Ranboo: Yeah.. yeah..

Tubbo: I see.. So..

Ranboo: I'm gonna go now

Tubbo: Bye, again!

Ranboo: Bye! Back to the U.S. I go!

Tubbo: There's no "E" in Tubbo.. Just throwing it out there..

[babytaes]

The Kickback

summary: What happens when your long-life crush's secret is discovered? In hopes of not wanting him to find out, what do you do... nothing.

pairing: dk x female reader

genre: fluff, slice of life, crack lol.

warnings: profanity

word count: 3k

a/n: today is my birthday and I wanted to share this one that has been in my drafts for so long. this campus life is stressful but I’m finding time to upload here and there. I hope you enjoy and have a great day/night. Much love from Babytaes! :) Also I really didn’t read this over sooo... if it doesn’t make sense. Take it up with corporation. 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

“Dear diary, I saw my crush today. I saw him in the living room after my brother invited him over with another friend. It's not as if I'm scared of him. I've spoken with him numerous times. I mean, I'm almost fluent in his language, lol. Seeing him and hearing his boisterous laugh was still entertaining. I'm wondering if he'll be at the kickback this weekend; if so, maybe I'll have the bravery to approach him. Okay, goodbye journal, love y/n.”

Your life consisted of short, insignificant interactions with him; however, when you had a crush, life was exciting and unpredictable. Since you're so near to him on a daily basis, your crush increased exponentially as you couldn't control your intrusive thoughts.

Yes, you did think of him, probably 25/8. It's not like you didn't know him, but you only knew the head version of him. And we all know they could be two different people. So the only thing left to do is keep it secret.

It's impossible for your secret to come out when you're the only one who knows about it. Right? Unfortunately, this isn't a movie, and your secret was revealed, and the perpetrator was none other than your arch-nemesis, Boo Seungkwan.

Okay, not quite that far, but you and him frequently collided because you and him could never agree on anything. He's just Boo, and he has his own behavior category.

He was the second-to-last person you wanted to find out about, after your crush, of course. From this point on, your life was not going as planned.

Your secret would never be revealed to Lee Seokmin, and you would do anything to protect it.

“What are you doing?” You leapt to your feet as you hurriedly closed your diary, terrified of prying eyes.

You rolled your eyes and stuffed your journal into a drawer with random papers, saying, "Shit, why don't you ever knock."

“Well, this is my shared dorm, and you're basically free living here,” he chuckled. You gave him a sidelong glance.

He was right.

“Is that a way you treat your twin? Is it now.”

He strolled away, completely oblivious to your yelling, and into the kitchen.

“Shut up, and get your ass out here we have to go shopping for the kickback. If you’re not out in 10 I’m leaving your ass.”

Great sibling love, what more could you ask for.  As much as you know that this is the way he expresses his love, you still got up and started getting ready for the day despite his warning.

Amidst your constant disagreements with him, you still loved him. The only problem was that you had to keep your love interest hidden from him. You could see it now and the big brother trying to protect and all that annoying shit.

You were old enough to take care of yourself and you didn’t want unruly men to ruin something that you wanted for so long.

“Coming, if you leave me, I'll tell Mom.” And I think we can all agree that I am the favorite twin.” As he slammed the fridge door shut, you could hear his huge scoffs.

You hurriedly grabbed your purse and beanie as you dashed for the door, laughing at his tantrums. He had a habit of leaving you behind.

We will not speak of March 5, 2017.

“Hey, wait up,” you said as you ran to his car and jumped in before him, grabbing the aux before him.

He started the car and sped out of the dorm parking lot on his way to the store, saying, "You're such a pain in the ass."

“Oh, don't act as if you don't love me.”

“Whoever said I did must have lied to you. Mingyu laughed as he accelerated through Seoul's crowded streets.

The jokes, the laughter, and the love were all part of the experience of living with one of the biggest Kpop groups.

You wouldn’t have it any other way!

While listening to your playlist, the song "Come to You" perfectly complemented the mood.

You smiled as you passed many streets and watched the busy lives of many different people. You could say you had an imaginative mind.

We arrived at the store a long way down the road, grabbed one of the carts, and proceeded to a separate aisle of the store.

Buying stuff was always expensive with a party of 13 and more friends on the way. Almost everything had to be doubled, and the meat had to be tripled. When throwing a party, everyone is required to provide a dish.

You didn't seem to mind; after all, you weren't paying, so you just chilled on the cart while you watched Mingyu placed the goods in neatly.

You told Mingyu to grab a specific chip as you walked to the chip aisle, and he furrowed his brow.

“What are those? I've never seen them before.

"Dokyeom likes them," you blurted out without a second thought. As you mentally processed what you had said, you stared at him with wide eyes.

Shit.

“When they're not there, Dokyeom and Soonyoung get upset.” You shook your head and scooted by him, tossing two bags into the overflowing shopping cart.

“Oh-okay I guess you can get them.”

As you pushed the cart toward the cashier, you mentally slapped yourself in the face. You were certain that you would not crack.

The ride home was silent as the only noise was the continuous taps from Mingyu's fingers on the wheel.

Mingyu called wonwoo on his phone as he drove up to the dorm and asked him to help with the groceries.

As you heard Mingyu pout over the phone, he refused, and not even minutes after, wonwoo is strolling down the driveway on his way to the car.

“You shouldn't even have picked up I know I wouldn't"  Wonwoo pushed your shoulder and chuckled at your humor. “I know”

“Heyyy I'm right here,” Mingyu began to sulk as he observed his sister speaking without him.

You and wonwoo both chuckled as you gathered your belongings and began walking away from Mingyu.

---

The days went by slowly as you reached the door. It was time to leave the house. You grabbed a jacket and purse. Today, the boys went to Hybe for a quick practice session before heading out for the weekend.

Because you are such a good friend and thoughtful person, you decided to buy them a few drinks as a gift. It wasn't anything special, you didn't want to see anyone, noo.

It took some time to order everything, especially with the large number of 13 items. Since you've known each other for most of your lives, the drinks on the list haven't changed. Ice Americanos and Frappes were the most popular drinks.

As soon as you arrived at the Hybe building, you swiftly grabbed the bag containing the drinks and proceeded to their floor. You finally made it to their practice room after thanking the employees for their assistance.

Slowly pushing the door open, you drew the attention of almost everyone as they turned to face you. As a number of them raced over to you and took the beverages from you, smiles crept across their faces.

As they sipped their drinks, the room was filled with thank yous and hellos.

The voice of an angel said, "Thanks again, y/n." He gave you a short smile before returning to his practice. Oblivious to people around you, words spilled out.

“Fuck, he's so attractive.”

“Whose good looking?” As you slowly turned around, you heard a voice speaking to you from behind you.

Fuck

It's Boo Seungkwan. He smiled at you as he grabbed a drink from your hand. He cocked his head as he sipped it, and his eyes widened.

“Don’t tell me you said dokyeom is good looking, no fucking way.”

As you coughed to relieve the high tension in the air, you started to mentally sweat.

“That's insane, I said the room was in good condition," you said as you slapped his shoulder and shook your head.

Come on, y/n, that didn't even make sense.

“You know you're not going to fool me, y/n?” Afraid that someone would find out, you dragged him into a back room and locked the door behind him

“Shit..shit..shit. If you tell anyone, I swear I'll -

Laughing, before raising his eyebrows after taking a sip of his americano, he cut you off.

"You're right, this is important information. But you already know that I'll keep my mouth shut about the situation. I don’t even know what we’re talking about right now.”

Seungkwan heard dokyeom announce that practice had resumed as the door opened. Before he left, he smiled at you and waved goodbye.

“Y/n and dokyeom in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. As you were about to leap across the couch to silence him, he jumped up and ran out of the door laughing.

All of a sudden, your mind was filled with confusion and paranoia.

It became increasingly difficult to watch them practice as the session progressed. Your thoughts were not positive, and your attitude was slowly deteriorating.

Imagining the worst-case scenario. You paced in the back room when you heard a knock at the door. As you mentally prepared yourself, it caught you off guard. While walking side by side, Hansol and Seungkwan were whispering.

“Did they know?” You didn’t want anyone to find out so you ran, and didn’t stop running. To avoid society, you hurried out the door after saying a quick goodbye to the boys.

The goodbyes were not even heard as you hurried out of the Hybe parking lot without looking back. In a small group, information spreads quickly. And he was bound to find out.

Flushed and worried, you staggered into the dorm room. You knew your secret was going to get out eventually. In the case where Hansol and Seungkwan knew, Joshua is likely to know.

And since Joshua is close to the older boys, Seungcheol and Jeonghan know. The news would then spread to Hoshi, and then the entire performance team would be in the know.

The only remaining candidates are Mingyu and dk. If Mingyu finds out, it's game over for you at that point.

There was no point of living any more. Having completed a full loop of the house, you had come to your room for the final time. You slowly melted to the ground and fell out.

Dokyeon is more likely to know if Mingyu knows.

"What went wrong?" Unable to control yourself as you rolled around the floor, you erupted into a tantrum.

You sat up and shook your head, "I'll just have to leave the country," you said. "Man, you're so smart. Your plan y/n is fantastic."

You ran to your room, grabbed your suitcase from your closet, and began tossing things into.

No need to pack everything since you were only going to be gone for a year. As soon as your adrenaline slowed down, you began packing.

(A few hours later)

You were relieved when your clothes fit into your luggage when you had finally done packing. You were on your way now, and as long as it wasn't here, everything was good.

“Ah, I figured it out; now let's book it.”

When you approached the door, you unlocked it, and we were greeted with a pleasant surprise.

You walked up to the door and opened it, where you were greeted by Mingyu and his gang. Outside the door, you could see him, hao, dk, and wonwoo. They stared at you as they looked you up and down, perplexed as to why you appeared to be departing.

“Um, what is going on and where are you going?” Mingyu reacted with a rejoinder of his own.

Your throat felt as though it was clogging up, and you began sweating furiously under your armpits. Thank god for hoodies.

“Well, I was simply going to visit a friend's house,” you explained.

You knew he wouldn't believe you; he knew most of your friends, and they didn't live that far away for you to be carrying that much.

“First, that's a lie, and second, I need to speak with you, so your "buddy" will have to wait.” You sighed and closed your eyes.

Your escape had to wait.

Mingyu took your suitcase and slid it near the door, while the other members shuffled awkwardly into the room. While the other lads sat in the living room, Wonwoo went to his room.

“Maybe I could escape now?”

“What did you say y/n?” minghao said as he glanced at you.

You waved your hand in front of them and did a walk of shame to your room as you physically and mentally prepared yourself for whatever Mingyu had to say.

So much for your crush now.

Mingyu sat on the edge of your bed, arms crossed, staring at you.

“Sit down, he patted the bed on your side before lightly coughing.

"Some rumors have been going around, so I wanted to clear the air."

Seeing what he was about to say made your heart race, and you couldn't take it any longer. Does anyone else hear their loud banging, could Mingyu hear it?

You leapt to your feet and shouted at him before apologizing on your knees.

What a sight to see, a grown ass woman on her knees apologizing to her twin brother.

“I apologize; I should have told you first, but I was afraid you'd tell him. That's why I kept it a secret and plus dating a member of seventeen. That's dangerous enough-“.

Mingyu's "WHAT" cut you off.

You came to a halt as he got up, slowly staring up at him.

“Wait, weren't we discussing my crush on Dokyeom or something else?” Worries began to creep in as sweat began to accumulate on your brow.

“What the fuck, you have a crush on do-?” you exclaimed as you jumped to your feet and tackled Mingyu to the ground.

“Don't say it so loudly; he'll hear you.” As Mingyu began to pace around the room, as he pushed you off of him.

You could see his anger as he panicked, and his small rage tantrum was truly uncomfortable because he couldn't communicate his ideas to you because he was afraid of his companions' sensitive ears.

He pointed to the door and said, "Wait, so you do have a crush on him." You sighed, shaking your head.

As he walked away from you, he had another outburst.

Everything is now turning to shit, this was your only chance.

“I have to escape” you said as you dashed out the door and to your suitcase. Mingyu was standing behind you, staring at you in terror.

It wasn't in the plan for you to fall on him, but it was still nice. Focus y/n.

“I’m sorry, dokyeom; it was my fault. I didn't realize you were there. “Are you okay?” As you extended your hand to him, you pushed yourself off of him.

“Yeah, I'm OK, are you okay?” he asked. You've had quite a tumble.”

“Yeah I’m good, I live with a clumsily brother so I’m fine”

“Hey!"

You swiftly let go of each other and placed your hands behind your back as you became embarrassed.

“Hey, Seungcheol texted the group chat and said he wants to go out to eat. He said whoever can come.”

The boys instantly got ready as they wanted to eat, food is a great scapegoat. As you saw them exit the dorm, you took a step back and found your way back to your room.

“Is leaving still an option?” you murmured into your pillows, plopping your exhausted body on your bed and overthinking life.

---

You rolled over and looked at the clock, which reads 9:30 a.m.

You turned over in your bed, unable to yell, and trudged to the bathroom to make yourself presentable.

“What have you gotten yourself into, y/n?” You stripped off your clothing and stepped into the hot water after turning on the shower.

You didn't spend much time in the shower, but today you were engrossed in how your plan had devolved into this ordeal.

Resting your head on the tile as the hot water traced down your back, you contemplated on what the HELL you were going to do.

*BANG BANG*

“Y/n hurry up, we have to prepare.”

Hearing Mingyu's voice drew you back to reality as you turned off the water and got out of the shower, unlocking the door and letting him in.

“Hey, no snarky remark?” he said as he watched you walk to your room with your head down. You ignored him as you closed the door and prepared for the party.

It didn't take long for your calm disposition to be noticed, since you were the outspoken one. Even if you tried to fake it, it didn't work out.

You grinned as you walked through the background of Seungcheol and Jeonghan shared housing, looking at the celebration.

There were groups of people near the pool, at the grill, and even by the chairs, as you could see.

“Hey, bring the food inside; I'll take the meat to cheol,” mingyu said, shaking your head as you picked up the bags and headed to the kitchen, where you recognized some familiar faces.

“Y/nnnnnnnnn, heyyyyy, I’ve missed you.” When you saw her, you put the bags on the counter and hugged her, smiling into her embrace.

“It's great to see you again, yeji; how are you and the rest of the group doing?” Are the others here?” As she led you back outside, she interlaced your hands in hers.

You saw dokyeom and a few other people descend the steps before you left, as he waved and gave you a quick glance.

As you reach for a drink from the cooler, your heart begins to race. Something had to be turned off if you wanted to make it through the night, and this was the only way.

You took a sip and coughed loudly as you followed Yeji to the poolside.

It was going to be a long night for you.

---

As you and a group of individuals began to dance uncontrollably, the effects of the alcohol in your system began to show as you staggered to the grill.

“HeEeeyyYY, Wheeeere d'ya think yeeeeer goin’?” you slurred, jabbing a finger into seungcheol’s back

The other members laughed as they glanced at you, plainly detecting your intoxication.

“I forgot how drunk you can get, so why don't you take a break,” your overprotective brother says, making you scream within.

He always did this.

Gerroff me!” you said. “I’m ash sober ash ’m gonna git. And nuffink I - wait wait wait - nuffink you can do ‘boutit.” As you ambled back to the kitchen without so much as a hiccup in their direction, they laugh.

As you struggled to reach the door, you fell forward and were grabbed by a hand. As he lifted you from your imminent doom, his hold felt warm. With your eyes enlarged, you focused on the individual and stared at his face.

As you grabbed on to him, your words tumbled out of your mouth, “Ohmygoshimsosorry.” He drew you closer to him by taking your hands in his.

Saying your heart was racing was an understatement, it was literally pounding out of your chest. You were hand in hand with your crush, who you believed was exceptionally attractive and talented, and you wished he knew more about your sentiments or could somehow fill them.

But you know no huge idol like him would go for you. Feeling that made you sober up real fast as you felt your arm being pulled upstairs, you had no idea where you were going but it looked like someone's room.

Dokyeom eased open the door as he sat you on the bed and went to get some water from a little fridge. He handed it to you and sat next to you.

“Thanks”

“No problem, also I've been trying to talk to you all night but you appear to be occupied.”

As you took a sip of water, your heart began to beat faster; “waitttt, we donthavetotalk. Let’s dance! As he chuckled at your erratic movements, you began to wander around the room, pulling your hands into yours.

The alcohol was definitely making its way out of your system.

As he spun you around, his body in tune with the music, the bass of the song could still be heard. Even though this felt like a dream you didn’t quite care at the moment. Was it because you'd finally met the boy from your dreams, or was it because he wanted to meet you in person?

Your connection with him got stronger by the second, as did your heartbeat, which began to rise steadily with it. You couldn't keep stalling any longer; you needed to listen to what he was saying.

“I think I'm sober up for now,” you said as you let go of his hand.

Dokyeom chuckled before tossing his head back, “I didn't realize you could move like that” he said as they sat back on the bed, a little closer than before.

“I guess I learnt a few things along the way when you're friends with the best dancers out here.” As you finished your sentence, he peered into your eyes, making no sound as the room fell silent.

“Soo, what did you want to talk about?” you awkwardly state to relieve some tension in the air.

“I don't know how to explain it, but I kind of heard your "secret" as it passed through the practice room, and I simply wanted to be the first one to tell you about it because-

Your heart stopped pounding as your world came crashing down around you. You didn't want to hear it; the rejection; you'd rather live in your fantasy world, where you don't have to worry about anything. It wasn't true if you didn't hear it.

“Wait, if you can't reconcile those feelings, don't say anything; just let me go.” They're probably curious about our whereabouts anyway.” And with that, you stood up and walked towards the door, but you were pulled back by his hand.

He kissed you as swiftly as his hands linked with yours. You were taken aback at first by his passion, but you regained your calm and reminded yourself of what was going on: he was really kissing you, and you were really kissing him, and the rest of the world was inconsequential.

You were chilling on the outside while shouting for joy at the top of your lungs on the inside, as if your inner child had been set free. You had to be sure if this was a dream or if it was happening in real life.

“Ouch”

“Why did you do that?” Dokyeom asked as he gripped your arm in his.

“I had to double-check that I wasn't dreaming; this isn't the first time something like this has happened to me.”

“So you're saying I've been in your dreams?” he laughed as he cocked his head to the side and placed his hand in yours.”

You smacked your forehead and shook your head, realizing you couldn't get out of this one, and now he knew you fantasize about him. You didn't mind because the lad of your dreams was right in front of your eyes.

AND HE WAS HOLDING YOUR MF HAND. It was clear that your diary needed to be updated.

Stopping at the door, you placed your palm on his chest and worriedly stared at him.

“Wait, how did you find out?” 

“Well, a tiny birdie was chattering loudly about it, his name rhymes with coo,” he said as he grabbed your hand in his and opened the door and began the walk downstairs.

“Fucking Boo Seungkwan”

[hinatastinygiant]

Chapter Thirty Three

Cyclargus Thomasi Bethunbakeri

Pairing: Haikyuu!! x Fem!Reader

previous | next | 2099

KUROO'S P.O.V.

Though I made up my mind to leave Kenma, Y/N, and the others from the group I've been with for awhile, my heart aches as I walk away. Kenma was my best friend before the power outage and I really did want to keep my promise to Y/N. Honestly, I almost did turn around and walk back to her after hearing what she said, but I just can't go back there. And now, I know I'll never be welcome back again.

With that in mind, my next thought is to go find somewhere to get some food. I walk down the street alone until I see a building with its front windows shattered. It looks as though a car crashed right into the building and then drove away.

Curious as to what the inside looks like, I step over the glass and through the window. I go down a few aisles, looking casually for something to snack on.

When I find a bag of chips, I pull apart the wrapping and stick my hand inside. For some reason, I suddenly remember how I first met Y/N, Tsukishima, and Bokuto. They seemed like an interesting group, so I asked if I could join for that sole reason.

As the thoughts of old times flood into my head and won't leave no matter how hard I try, I turn the corner and see a girl about my age with a barbecue lighter in her hands.

I stop in my tracks and look at the girl with long, black hair and bubble gum in her mouth. When she hears me gasp, she looks over with a slight frown. She then narrows her eyes and knits her eyebrows together.

"Tetsuro?" she then mutters in disbelief. I can hardly believe my eyes.

"Emi?" I call back. The last time I had seen her was when I got arrested.

She runs right up to me and throws her arms around me. I squeeze her tightly, so overjoyed that she's still alive and well.

"What happened to you that day? I can hardly believe that was real life. I'm sorry it happened. It was all my fault," she shakes her head disappointedly as she pulls away from the embrace.

"It wasn't your fault," I remind her. "I ended up in the slammer for a little while, but it's all worth it now that I know you're still alive."

Her expression saddens me even further as she listens to me. I'm not sure why, though, until she sinks down to the floor and holds her legs in her arms. Worriedly, I sit down beside her and wait for her to speak.

"I've been alone this whole time, Tetsu. Even before the outage," she whispers as tears stream down her face silently. "I just can't do this anymore. It's too much."

"Then... what's with the lighter?" I ask carefully.

"Didn't you notice? The other day I watched as a car crashed right in front of this store. A girl almost got killed. I was going to say something but, I don't know, I just couldn't. Thankfully, she got saved."

"How could I notice that? I only just got here now?" I respond with a shrug.

"I mean, I spilled gasoline all over the floor. This was my last aisle. Then, the lighter-"

"Geez, Emi, what a way to go out," I chuckle.

"Tetsu, you should leave before I go through with it," she says honestly, looking straight into my eyes to show just how serious she is.

"I already left you once. I had no idea if you were safe or somewhere worse than death." I then look down at her hands around her legs and take one in my own. "I'm not leaving you again."

"You mean-"

"Yeah. I kinda fucked up my last situation anyway. There's no way I can go back now," I sigh.

"Tell me about it. I want to know what you did while we were separated," she smiles softly. "If you do, I'll let you stay."

"Alright then," I nod. "I was wandering around from place to place living on whatever I could find. I didn't really have a point to my exploration until I met this girl. She was traveling with two other guys. One of them had a huge stick up his ass, and the other was the complete opposite."

"So you stuck around?" she smiles, remembering me so well. "You wanted something to keep you entertained, huh?"

"You hit the nail right on the head," I smile back. "We got really close after that. Especially me and Tsukishima."

"The one with the huge stick..."

"That's the one," I laugh. "Our group eventually began to grow until one day... well, something happened to Tsukishima. We found him dead. Shot by someone."

"And then?" she asks curiously.

"I left. I promised Y/N that I'd look out for her but instead I just left her. That's why I can't go back, Emi. They'd never let me back in there and even if they did, it would never be the same."

"I get how you feel," she nods. "After the day you left, everything was different. Boss thought you and me were conspiring to get back at him and the other girls, well, I'll just say they all had the biggest crushes on you," she chuckles softly.

"Are you scared?" I then ask her seriously, changing the conversation. Honestly, I don't want to think any more of the past.

She lifts my hand to her chest and places my palm flat over her heart. "Can you feel it? Of course I'm scared."

There's then a silence between the two of us. I suppose you really can't ever fix the broken. If we're going to go out, though, at least it's in a blaze.

"Wait for me on the other side," she then smiles as she takes the barbecue lighter in her hand. "K?"

"I'd wait for eternity," I whisper as I nervously grin.

Emi nods and turns on the lighter.  I watch as she bends forward and silently lights the ground before us.

I'm so scared to die. And Emi hates being by herself. Both of us just want to feel nothing. We're already drowning, so I suppose burning is the best thing to do.

I'll get over my fear and we'll be together. Maybe then, we'll both be saved.

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[enthusiasmforpretty]

Confluence

(This is one of those stories that really needs about 50k more words to do it justice)

(also mild Endwalker spoilers)

Following the events of Endwalker, Jayesh found himself alone for the first time in years. Alone he wandered Gridania, the city he called home. He thought about going back to Radz-at-han to visit family, but his mother and father had been killed in the chaos, and he hadn't the heart to return.

One afternoon, as he was picking up lunch in the inn, he spotted a mi'qote girl sitting alone with her own lunch. He recognized Xironi Heartlight, a fellow adventurer and accomplished gunblade. He approached her table with a hesitant smile. "Xironi?"

She looked up, a little fearfully, but relaxed into a smile when she recognized him. "Jayesh! Sit down, sit down. I haven't seen you in ages."

He did so, and they chatted like old friends. Xironi had given up adventuring and was working odd jobs around Gridania. Jayesh didn't ask why. He was too glad to see a friendly face again. Without his friends, he'd been crushingly lonely.

After that first meeting, they had lunch together every day, and often dinner as well. Jayesh offered Xironi his help with her various deliveries and resource-gathering trips, so they spent a lot of time on chocobo-back, talking as they traveled.

One day she told him why she had stopped adventuring.

"Do you remember the attack on Baelser's Wall?" she asked, tucking her red hair behind one ear. "When the Garleans retaliated with those war machines? I took a bad wound, all down my right side. With my last strength I cast Return and teleported back to Gridania. I was rushed into the medical ward, and they saved my life. But ever since then, I haven't had the strength in my right hand to use my gunblade."

"I'm sorry," he said, glancing at the faint scars on the back of her right hand. "I haven't been doing so well, myself. With cold weather coming on, I think I want to spend the winter someplace warm."

"I'll bet you have lots of scars and old injuries," Xironi said, patting her chocobo's neck.

"Well, yes," Jayesh said. "It's from my last battle with Zenos. He killed me--twice, I think. It's a little hazy now. But we were in this place where death didn't matter much. By the time the fight ended, he'd caved in my sternum, broke my arms, broke my jaw ... the only thing he missed breaking was my spine, and that was just because I never turned my back on him. If my team hadn't have had two healers standing by, I'd be one more tombstone right now."

Xironi's green eyes widened. "I didn't know that! I knew you defeated Zenos, but not that he hurt you so badly."

"Oh, they had me back on my feet by the time we got home," Jayesh said lightly. "The saviors of the world have to look good for the parades and feasts and all. But some days I'm still in a lot of pain. I can't tolerate cold weather, and I can't lift my greatsword anymore. It's just too heavy."

"Jay," Xironi exclaimed softly. "Why didn't you say so before? Does riding your chocobo hurt you?"

He deftly changed the subject. "Anyway, would you like to spend the weekend in Costa del Sol? It's supposed to rain in the Shroud and I want to see the sun."

"I'd love to," Xironi replied with a smile.

Costa del Sol was a beach resort in the south. Jayesh and Xironi drank fruit juice out of coconut shells, enjoyed fish and chips, and sampled the lobster. That evening, they sat at the end of the boardwalk and watched the moon rise over the sea.

"Xironi," Jayesh said, "I feel like I'm at a crossroads, and I need your opinion."

"All right," she said slowly, his tone piquing her curiosity.

"A few days ago," he said, "I was made an offer of an island farm, not too far from here. I have plenty of gil stashed away, and the idea of settling down to a quiet life like that appeals to me. But I don't want to live there alone."

Xironi's heart leaped. Now she knew where this was going.

"So," he said, drawing the word out. "I think it goes without saying that I've had feelings for you for years. What with the various wars on, I never felt it was the right time to speak up. But now, I'm thinking of asking you to marry me. I can give you a home, and, well, companionship. We'd be running a small business with the farm. But if that's not the life you want, it's all right. I can decline the island offer."

"Oh, don't do that," Xironi blurted. "It sounds wonderful. To the you the truth, I've been thinking about marrying you. But marrying the hero of Eorzea is a big step. Plus, I didn't know if I was reading you properly. You're kind of closed off all the time."

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "When you've lost as many people as I have, it gets hard to open yourself up anymore."

She took his hand and pressed it. His powerful hand closed gently around hers, the fingers callused from swinging a greatsword.

"When do you want to get married, then?" she asked.

"Tomorrow, maybe," he said thoughtfully. "Then I could close the deal on the island. Would you be all right with a very small ceremony? None of my friends are in town, and I'd rather not attract attention. The reporters shadow me enough as it is."

"Sounds good to me," Xironi said.

And thus two lives wove about each other until they met in a gentle confluence. Two war-weary, hurting souls found solace in each other, and set about seeking peace and rest in a new place, where they could grow strong again.

[xiu21chen99]

hxh headcanon/imagine.

again... still about hisoillu but about their engagement instead of illu's influenced fashion choice.

also this is more of... idk it gave reason why they chose to marry instead of uh other ways i guess??

i've seen so many fanarts where illu would break the news to the zoldycks or how killu would react to having hisoka as his brother in law- like srsly it's meme worthy at this point- and lotsa ones that showed how hisoka proposed as a joke or smtg but... I've been overthinking abt it these past few days sO i present to you how i think "the big question aka the proposal" happened... (manga spoilers??)

it's after hisoka resurrected himself obviously, and def after he killed kortopi and shalnark (so he knew there was gonna be empty slots in the spiders' lineup)

i imagine illu went back to the zoldyck estate after the whole fiasco and only heard of hisoka's "death" from rumors while he was on a mission

and then when he was idk maybe contemplating on whether or not he should visit the body(?) to pay respects or something, he gets a text message from the devil himself

their text went like this probably:

hisoka: hey~ where are you right now?♠️ (and no u can't tell me hisoka doesn't text w card suits u just can't-)

illumi: who are you and how did you get the phone you are currently using?

hisoka: ooh~ illu~ i feel betrayed, did you delete my number?♣️

illumi: hisoka is dead

hisoka: *image attached*

illumi: oh

illumi: hello hisoka, how are you still alive?

hisoka: you sound disappointed~♦️

illumi: i kind of am...

hisoka: rude, just tell me where you are♥️

...and that's how they met up?? ngl i think illu has a know-it-all syndrome where he just has to,,, k n o w everything

he's curious so he agrees to the meetup ofc

he's also surprised when he sees hisoka is in good shape when they meet (idk at a bar in an unknown city?)

they drink whiskey on the rocks because... you know...

hisoka explains how he survived and his next plan of action (which is terminate the spiders)

illumi makes a mental note of nen after death bc he's heard and seen it all before but... not to this extent,

this is gonna be,,, bland but i think this is the logic behind why hisoka chose to get married/engaged instead of just paying up front (reference to the ten dons' commission to get chrollo killed and chrollo's commission to get the ten dons killed)--

anyways here's how their conversation goes:

i: "why did you want to talk in person?"

h: "oh y'know, for old times sake."

i: "...right"

hisoka laughs, "okay so maybe i want to ask you for a favor..?"

confused, illumi asks, "why could you not have just texted if you wanted me to kill someone for you?"

h: "no, no- wait, actually, you're not too far off."

i: ~mOrE cOnfUsiOn~ "huh?"

h: "how do contracts for assassination work in your... family business?"

i: "half the promised pay before, the remaining half afterwards. should the target be eliminated by a third party, the assigned zoldyck still gets the pay and should the employer die, then the contract is terminated and the zoldyck will report back immediately."

h: "and has anyone made a contract to have themselves terminated?"

i: "i beg your pardon?"

h: "what complications will arise should your employer's target be... themselves?"

i: "i believe... i have never encountered such circumstance before. the people who hire us are those who have enough money and resource to have their enemies killed quickly. no one's tried to test the zoldyck assassination prowess."

h: "so... how will that work?"

i: "are you implying this is the reason why you have contacted me today?"

h: "yes~ ♥️" (how he said a heart emoji out loud is up to you, reader)

i: "it will be a pointless paradox. logically, the zoldyck will only get the employment bill. and i, myself, do not find pleasure in going for the kill like you lest i get my reward, so you will not get a contract out of me, hisoka."

h: "is there no leeway?"

i: "a zoldyck stands up to their word. so no."

h: "even for a friend?~ ♦️"

i: "we are not friends, hisoka-"

hisoka raises his glass of whiskey along with his eyebrow.

i: "oh..."

h: "didn't you tell dear killua that a zoldyck didn't need friends?"

i: "you... are an associate, someone reliable in the killing world. it's different."

h: "hypocrite"

i: "i ask you for favors and you make me return them. it is not like we spend our time together leisurely like killu with that island boy..."

hisoka clinks their matching glasses of whiskey even though his is already empty, a shit-eating grin on his lips.

i: "you suggested we meet here."

h: "this isn't the first time we went out to drink, right illu?"

i: "regardless!! i will not kill you just for half the money. i do not like wasting efforts on fruitless missions."

h: "as i said, is there no exception, to make sure you get my money if you were to succeed in killing me?"

i: "are you doubting my skill, hisoka?"

h: "that's not the point right now~ ♠️"

i: "wait, why do you want me to get all of your money?"

h: "haven't we just gotten over this subject? because you're my friend, of course."

i: "i... we are not friends, hisoka."

hisoka claps, "that's it! illumi!! ♣️"

i: "eh?"

h: "marry me! that way in our prenup I'll make sure you get all of my money, and even without a prenup you'll still get it since you'll be my only relative! that solves it!"

i: "hisoka, are you sure death did not took a toll on your brain? you did say you used Bungee Gum only on your heart and lungs..."

h: "i'm being serious, illumi!! and doesn't this solve your earlier conflict? we don't have to be friends, we'll be husbands!"

i: "do not use that tactic with me, you manipulative bastard. stop joking."

h: "this is purely beneficial for you, honestly i don't get why you just won't accept it."

i: "then humor me this first, why now?"

h: "dear illu, i've been to literal hell and back. i think it's time to leave my mark in case i fail to escape death again."

i: "was it that bad?"

h: "you'll love it there, illu~ ♥️"

h: "on a more serious note, though, i do plan to marry you. out of everyone i've encountered, you're the most eligible candidate. you're powerful, fully capable and extremely pretty to boot! you're the ideal husband!"

(blushing obviously, illumi downs the remaining whiskey in his glass) i: "death has changed you, hisoka."

h: "so?"

i: "fine."

h: "excellent!"

and in one fell swoop, illumi has a pin against the curve of hisoka's jugular, wrist held tightly by hisoka- a card matching against his own neck.

"not yet, dear husband." hisoka whispered into his ear, "we have to manage the papers first. and i've a request before you do."

they let each other go at the same time, not even breathing an unnecessary breath in the other's personal space (well, they're nearly pressed thigh to thigh anyways, what's the point of personal space anymore-)

"a condition rather than a request, really."

"what?" hisoka orders them refills, and downs his when it arrives.

"join the ryodan first."

glass already pressed on thin lips, illumi's confused hum resonates softly into the concave utensil. "why?"

"so things can get more interesting. i assume you know of the dark continent expedition that's soon to take place?"

"father has advised i take part on it, since kalluto told me the ryodan plans to rob some cliches who'll join the expedition- to look after him. you want me to join them?"

"yes, and i plan to board as well, don't fret."

illumi's eyes turn to slits, "how should i know you would be there? i can't take your word when you might just disappear when we've all boarded."

hisoka grins, wide then wider, "you should know by now illu, i plan to avenge my wounded pride. that damned chrollo didn't even fight me properly."

tilting his head, illumi stared at the man beside him, "is that not contradictory? i thought you did not mind your opponent using whatever means necessary to win?"

"magicians use tricks and misdirection to awe the audience," hisoka says almost thoughtlessly, "chrollo's a narcissistic hypnotist who used the audience as a damned shield because he knew he couldn't handle me face-to-face."

he groans, tinged in regret. "i shouldn't have picked heaven's arena, if i'd chosen a more discreet location then maybe the damage won't be this bad."

"damage?" illumi rests his chin on his palm, facing his husband.

hisoka swipes a hand over his face, and the glamour comes off. the picture he sent illumi now present in front of him. he was missing a nose, his left hand didn't have any finger left and dried blood chipped on his white skin. "oh."

with another swipe, everything's made correct again. hisoka was grinning again. he downs the remaining alcohol and leaves jenny bills under the emptied glass.

"come, lovely husband. we're to elope and legalize our union!"

illumi follows suit after downing his own glass, "i think there might be another loop hole, if you were to join the family. zoldycks do not kill family."

"so if i were to wed you, here and now, you'd think me more of a family than alluka?"

"alluka is not family."

"are those your words, illumi? or silva's?"

"i..."

"wow, you're really just as fucked up as i am."

"where do you plan to take me? i've just said i cannot kill family."

hisoka chuckles, "then you're the one to take my name, of course."

"preposterous!"

"who the hell still uses that word?"

"i am and will always be a zoldyck-"

"exactly. it's just legal papers, if you kill me then you'll just be a widow and even get your name back! see how everything'll work out in the end?"

"hisoka-"

"are you doubting your skill of assassination, my dearest husband?"

"... i better get the most expensive ring in this damned city."

"that's the spirit! now let's go get married!"

"wait, hisoka. what is your last name?"

later that night, when they leave a chapel, something gold glimmers on hisoka's bungee gum/texture surprise ring finger. a matching one around illumi's finger.

unlike hisoka, though, illumi had an extra red glimmer right under that gold, in the dead center of a silver band of intricately designed pattern. hisoka had foregone the traditional diamond in favor of a 16 carat ruby engagement ring, such a curious choice but illumi accepted it all the same...

(much later on, hisoka took both rings as collateral and reminded illumi that he would get them back even if he died bc it was in their damn prenup- and bc it was technically bought under illumis name and that's how hisoka assured illu that he'd be on that black whale,,, bc he had the rings and planned to give them back to him there)

"I thought a red gemstone was better suited for the rather bloody and murderous ending that our relationship will inevitably come to, wouldn't you agree?"

-Hisoka Morow whenever someone mentions his preference of proposal ring...

"I disagree with most of his ideals, our relationship has always had a fragile foundation, and I knew from the start that we'd eventually end up killing each other."

-Illumi Morow, nee Zoldyck when asked about his thoughts on his husband...