#if you are able to vote and are not doing so because you think your moral grandstanding is more important than actual policy unfollow me

[mortish-writes]

Weekly Progress Report - February 3rd - 9th

I rather naively planned on spending a single day writing the NSFW scene for the Heretic route. Then it went from being 2,500 words to 7,000 because of all the pedantry. I love how it played out and I'm really satisfied with the scene. It was pretty painful to provide an alternate route without it, both because it was so solid and because it was kinda sad going back to the regular character dynamic after writing these raw moments of carnal understanding between the characters. As I mentioned previously, if you do go the NSFW route on Night IV, your night will go down a different branch with completely different scenes. The full route is around 13,000 words, so it makes for a very meaty episode.

The Zealot night and the non-NSFW Heretic night will be around 8,000 words each. I'm going to have the alternate Heretic night tied up tonight, then I'll be editing it. It will definitely be ready and uploaded on the 14th (possibly even the 13th), but the Zealot route may take another day or two depending on how long I spend on editing. I'm going to have to really pore over the Heretic route, as there's nothing quite so awful as being deeply immersed in an intimate scene only to stumble across a typo or an error. I'll keep you posted.

I'm almost ready to launch the Patreon. Rather than putting the NSFW content (Bound/Unbound modes) on Patreon I've decided to make a version with additional tendencies that offer unique romance/intimacy options, as well as early access to new nights. This will allow patrons to tailor a story and MC that's more to their liking, without taking content away from free readers. The first of the new tendencies are already established in the Night IV supporter edition. They're "coy" and "assertive" and you'll be able to flex them within NSFW scenes and romantic dialogue. This month, patrons will be able to vote on a new tendency for Night V, as well as which existing tendencies they'd like to see more of. Once we hit the Week One mark, I will be revising the entire week to add in the tendencies patrons have voted on, giving you new options from the prologue onward.

I'll be launching the Patreon this weekend once the Zealot route is finalized and uploaded to Itch. As soon as it's ready, I'll be sending out gifted months to everyone who has supported on Ko-Fi. Special thanks to UnknownOblivion for last week's ko-fi! I'm grateful to everyone who's supported the story, be it on Ko-fi or just leaving feedback as I get the hang of adapting my story and characters into an interactive format. It's been such a freaking joy to share them with other humans. I'll be checking in daily this week to let you know how Night IV is progressing. It's my favorite night yet. Granted, that's probably because I've been dying to get to the NSFW, idk. I just think all RO's are better once they've gotten a taste of the MC.

[[Play Bride of Shadows]] [[Ko-Fi]]

[leafnyx]

You don’t have to write a part 3 for the Nam-gyu x male reader fic, BUT if you decide to you got a prime reader right here!😛🙏🏻

Death Games and Attachments #3 (Nam-gyu x male reader)

Word count: 3.9k

Warnings: American reader ‼️, possibly ooc, talk of death, smoking, fairly rushed ending, happy/hopeful ending, open ending (?)

Setting: Post-season 2

A/n: Multiple people asked for a part three so here it is! This will be the last part of this fic, thank you guys so much for reading all of this and enjoying my writing :)

You wake up to the sound of music playing over the speakers and a weight in your arms. You blink your eyes open, immediately realize you aren’t at home. The first thing you see is Nam-gyu’s face, still asleep. The two of you are snuggling, face to face, and it seems like you have been for a while because your arm that is beneath him hurts like hell.

You wiggle your arm from underneath him as gently as possible, not wanting to wake him up, before realizing he’s gonna have to wake up anyways. You continue pulling your arm out but you make no move to be gentle now.

Nam-gyu wakes up with you moving him around. Ulike yesterday he makes no move to complain, just sitting up and rubbing his eyes with his palm.

“You ready for the game?” He asks you in a yawn.

“We’re gonna need to vote first” You reply, sitting up aswell.

“Shit, I forgot about that… some pussies are probably gonna fuck up the vote”

You hum in response, looking around at the 100 people left in the game walking around the room. It’s way less crowded than it was when you first came here.

You begin thinking about your vote. Part of you wants to vote X, you want to go home, but the other part of you wants to vote O just so you don’t feel like you betrayed your group.

You hope someone else changes their vote to X so you don’t have to decide.

The doors open in the front and the guards walk out. Nam-gyu hops off the bed and scrambles to get the shoes on, you do the same, before the both of you run off in the direction of Thanos. You’re able to spot his easily because of his bright purple hair and the two of you find him in no-time.

To your surprise, Nam-gyu doesn’t immediately ask Thanos for a pill, he just stands in the crowd waiting for his number to get called.

“Vote O, okay?” Thanos says in English.

You nod and so does Nam-gyu even though you don’t think he fully knows what Thanos is saying. The numbers are called up starting at 1, so you’re gonna have to vote before the other two.

You’ve decided to vote for O and just hope that someone from the O side has changed their mind and votes X. You don’t want to be seen as a traitor like Se-mi and Min-su.

Soon a voice calls “118” and you step forward. You pause infront of the button and raise your hand towards it. Your hand hovers over the X button but you ultimately press O, sticking to your guts.

You walk over to the blue side and look back at Thanos and Nam-gyu who are smiling at you and holding their thumbs up. You’re pretty sure you did the right thing.

“124” Nam-gyu walks up and presses O without a second thought, he proceeds to walk over to you and sling an arm over your shoulder. You don’t say anything about it, not minding the touch.

Min-su is called up after and as he walks to the podium you can see Nam-gyu’s face beside you turn to a scowl. Min-su presses X.

“Pussy..” Nam-gyu mutters. ���I knew we shouldn’t have let him on the team.”

“Yeah” You reply, just brushing him off and not really agreeing with his sentiment. Min-su isn’t that bad, he’s just scared and honestly you get it. He’s lucky to have a friend like Se-mi.

After a few minutes Thanos’ number is called and he half-runs half-skips up to the front and slams his hand down on the circle button. The votes are tied.

After a few more people vote it’s almost done and no one has changed their vote yet until one of the last few people. A woman with an O patch walks forward, you saw her with the crazy shaman lady earlier. Her hand hovers over the O button before she suddenly presses X. Cheers erupt on the side of the X’s and your mouth drops. You look over to the shaman and she looks pissed but she’s trying to hide it.

“Fuck” You hear from beside you.

You look over at Nam-gyu, whose hand is still around your shoulder, and he looks somewhat nervous.

You need 2 X’s to change their votes to continue the game and 1 to tie, though no one wants another 50/50. But you doubt that it’s going to happen, the X’s all seem scared, especially after the last game. There’s no way an X is gonna change their vote.

There’s numbers go up until it’s 456’s turn to vote, but by then it doesn’t matter, the votes are 50-49 The X’s won. 456 pushes the X button and the screen changes to 51-49. He smiles as he turns around. The X’s cheer but your side is silent.

“Mother fuckers..” Nam-gyu says beside you.

“I’m gonna kill Min-su next time I see him” You hear Thanos say from the other side of Nam-gyu.

The room starts to fill up with gas as the guards step back through the doors. An O tries to make a run for it but they don’t make it on time, slamming onto the shut door. Nam-gyu’s hand clutches onto your jacket and your hand beside him grabs onto his.

Your vision goes blurry and you start to feel tired. You hear people beside you colapsing onto the floor and you’re dragged down as Nam-gyu falls unconscious. You hit the ground and pass out.

-

You wake up and open your eyes but you can’t see anything. You blink, you know your eyes are open, but it’s all dark. You try to speak but there’s something covering your mouth, all that comes out is mumbles. You realize your arms and legs are tied up as well and you’re very cold. You wiggle around but you can’t do much, you’re in a confined place. You hear someone trying to speak beside you but they can’t either.

Is this how they’re getting you out of the game? They could at least be a bit gentler and not have you are bound up.

A rush of wind comes in and you shudder before you’re suddenly pushes forward onto concrete.

You let out a muffled yell. You hear someone fall down beside along with some less heavy things being tossed out, then the sound of a car driving off.

You wiggle around the ground, now having more space but your movement is still limited. Suddenly, your hand touches something else, it feels fleshy. You touch around the person, you think you’re touching their arms. Your hand moves down and you feel a rope. You do your best to undo the rope, it takes a few tries but eventually you manage to get it off.

You hear the person move around, probably going to sit upright. After a few seconds of the sounds of cloth you hear.

“[name]?” It’s Nam-gyu. Immediately you feel relieved that you weren’t left here with some random person. You try to tell him to untie the ropes on your wrist but one again it’s all muffled. You wiggle your arms for emphasis and he gets the message.

He undoes the ropes as quick as possible, which really isn’t all that fast. Once your hands are free you take off the blindfold and the thing around your mouth. You let out a sigh, looking over to see Nam-gyu untying the wipe from his angled. He’s just in his underwear and you see that you are aswell. You see plastic bags beside the two of you and move to undo the wipe around your ankles so you can get changed.

One you have the rope off, and you throw it to the side, you grab the bag and untie it. Inside is your clothes, your phone which you had on you when you entered the game, and a lump of money. Your mouth goes dry, even though the money didn’t seem like all that much when it was up on the screen, seeing it like this. It’s a shit ton. Atleast more than wat you’re used to here.

You snap out of it and grab your shirt and pants, quickly moving to put them on, followed by socks and your shoes. Once you’re done you look over at Nam-gyu who’s also changed and looking around. The two of you are in an alley and the sun is setting in the sky above you. You don’t recognize your surroundings but it seems like Nam-gyu does.

“We’re outside club pentagon” He points at a small light up sign by the metal door on the wall. “I work here, my apartment is close”

You ask where exactly the two of you are and he answers. You realize where you’re currently living is no where close to here.

“You can stay over at mine for the night” Nan-gyu says. “It’s crappy but it’s good enough for the night. They you can take a cap back home in the morning, I’m sure with the money we got you’ll have enough to buy one.”

You smile. “Alright, lead the way” You grab your phone out of the bag and click it on before realizing it’s dead. You put it into your pocket and tie up the bag with your money in it before following Nam-gyu out of the alley.

The walk to his apartment is quiet, Nam-gyu doesn’t make any move to touch you or even get too near you. It’s like the two of you don’t know each other, like you didn’t go through a life or death situation together.

But ultimately you get it. Especially since you were just left to go. You assume he’s still trying to make sense of everything that happened, and you are too. You just hope that you’re able to go back to how it was between the two of you before. Yesterday.

It really doesn’t feel like it was just yesterday, it feels like you’ve known Nam-gyu for forever. It’s probably because of the situation you two went through together.

You walk up to a small, fairly dirty appartment building. Nam-gyu steps through the door and you follow. You’re greeted by a set of stairs which the two of you walk up until you reach the 5th floor. You walk through a small, cramped hallway. Nam-gyu stops in front of door 503 and takes a key out of his pocked, putting it into the handle and pushing the door open.

He steps through the door and you follow suit. Inside is a small living room with a kitchenette. There’s two doors, one you assume leading to a bedroom and one a bathroom. The room is fairly messy but it’s not too bad, it’s an organized type of messiness. For the most part, but there are a few piles of whatnot in the corners of the room.

Nam-gyu walks over to the kitchen and opens the cabinets, going through it.

“All I have is ramen, so I hope you’re fine with that cause if not you’re not eating”

You laugh. “I’ll absolutely eat it, I’m starving, we haven’t had a proper meal in days.”

“Yeah, fuck I’m hungry as hell”

He grabs two packs of cheap ramen and puts them on the counter.

“Oh, do you have a changer? My phones dead” You ask, remembering your phone in your pocket.

“Yeah I should have one in my bedroom, you can go find it.”

You nod and walk over to a door, you open it and it’s the bedroom. First try.

You walk in. It’s fairly cramped with a small bed in the corners of the room. There’s a dresser up against the wall beside the door and piles of clothes everywhere. You spot a socket on the wall with a clone charger cord coming out of it. You walk up and hope it’s the goth cord for your phone.

You get your phone and push the cord up against it and.. it goes it. You let out a sigh of relief, placing your phone on the ground, and you stand up from where you were crouched down. You look around the room again briefly and your eyes land on a pair of round glasses on a nightstand beside Nam-gyu’s bed.

You walk back out of the room. “You wear glasses?” You ask Nam-gyu.

“Yeah, I’ve had to for a while, I’m basically blind.”

“Why weren’t you wearing them in the game?”

“It’s embarrassing, man. I don’t wear them out of my house.”

“Whattt, it’s not embarrassing. You need them to see. Anyways, you’d probably look good with them on.” You walk up beside him and lean onto the counter.

He’s put a pot on the stove with water in it which is currently heating up.

“Yeah, sure” He says, brushing you off.

You smile at him. “You’re house is a mess by the way”

“Shut up, I don’t usually have guests around. Either way, atleast I know where everything is, it’s a clean sort of messy.”

“Mhm, sure” You glance over to the piles of junk on the floor.

“Fuck off, if you’re gonna complain then get out” He says, obviously joking.

“Nah”

He drops one of the packs of ramen into the pot and breaks it up with a chopstick. He then drops the second one in, breaking that one up aswell. He puts the chopsticks off to the side, letting the ramen cook.

“What do you think happened to Thanos?” You ask, not expecting an actual answer. You don’t care all that much for Thanos but you spent the past few days with him as well so you’ve come to see him as a friend, even if he doesn’t see you as such and even if he’s annoying as hell.

“He probably got kicked out naked like us. Image he got kicked out with Min-su” Nam-gyu snickers.

“I hope not, Min-su’ll end up dead” You laugh.

“Serves him right.” Nam-gyu says. He picks up two packets of spices that came with the rakes and pours the contents in, mixing it around. “But I’ll probably see him again at the club… well if I manage to get my job back.”

“Yeah.” You realize that you’ve also been gone for a few days, maybe even a week, without telling your employers where you’ve been. The thought worries you but you but you don’t deal with it right now, you haven’t eaten anything all day and the ramen is starting to smell good. You peek over Nam-guy’s shoulder to check on the food.

“You almost done?” You ask.

“Give me a second, damn.” He swats you off, but as you go to stand beside him again his hand rests on your arm. It seems like he’s still as clingy outside the game. You don’t mind it, it’s somewhat endearing, which you think is a weird term to refer to Nam-gyu, a drugged up asshole, with.

He soon removes his hand, though, to grab the pot off of the stove. He places it on the counter and turns the stove off. Nam-gyu grabs two bowls out of a cabinet and hands them to you.

“Put them on the table” You nod and put them onto a small two-seater table in the corner of the room. You place one bowl infront of each seat and Nam-gyu walks up with the pot and places it in the middle. He walks back to the kitchen and grabs two pairs of chopsticks before pausing.

“You know how to use chopsticks, right?” He says, teasingly.

“Of course I know how to use chopsticks, I’ve lived here long enough.”

He walks back over and throws a pair of chopsticks infront of you before grabbing is own and getting some of the ramen out of the pot and dropping it into the bowl, quickly eating what he got. You do the same, grabbing a small portion and eating it within the span of seconds.

“God, ramen has never tasted so good” You say, with food in your mouth.

“Fuck yeah” Nam-gyu say, grabbing more ramen out of the pot. His hair falls forward onto his face but he quickly pushes it back.

The two of you finish up the two packets of ramen in less than 10 minutes.

The conversation doesn’t start back up immediately, both of you sitting in silence, but you speak up with something that’s been on your mind.

“If you got the chance to, would you want to go back into the games?”

Nam-gyu stays quiet for a few seconds before responding. “Probably not. It was easy to keep going when I was already in it, and with the help of the pills, but now that I’m out of it I don’t think I’d have the courage to go back.”

You nod, his answer more thoughtful than you expected but not fully unexpected. You understand the sentiment, and you expected that part of the reason he was so confident with continuing was Thanos’ mystery pills.

“What about you?” He asks.

“Same. If I’m being honest I wanted to go home for a bit but I stayed because of you and Thanos. I felt more confident with you guys, like there was an actual chance for me to get far in it.”

“Huh” Is all Nam-gyu says to respond. The conversation stops there, Nam-gyu picks up the pot and you get the bowls and chopsticks. The both of you drop everything in the sink, Nam-gyu making a passing comment about dealing with it later before excusing himself to the bathroom.

You sit back down at the table and think. You wonder if your life is going to be any different now. You have more money, sure, but it’s not enough to cover everything. It’ll give you a good push forward either way.

But will the game itself affect you? You’re out of it but it was a fairly traumatizing situation. You feel fine now, but that’s probably because you haven’t fully processed what happened yet.

Truthfully you don’t know if you’ll be able to go back to your daily 9 to 5. It’s only been a few days since you were there but it feels like everything’s changed. You guess that’s your answer. It might feel different but it won’t be all that different physically. Well as long as you get your job back.

You snap out of your thoughts as Nam-gyu walks back towards you.

“Fuck I want those drugs Thanos had right now” He immediately says. “Do you want a smoke?”

“Nah”

“Alright” He walks off to his room and you decide to follow him. He grabs a cigarette from a drawer along with a lighter and opens the window before lighting his smoke. Outside it’s basically dark, you can’t believe it’s already nighttime since you feel like you just woke up. You suppose you were probably knocked out most of the day.

“So, are you always so touchy?” You ask, curious if he was clinging to you because he likes you or if it’s just something he does.

“Not usually, only with people I like” He replies, taking a drag. “I did it with Thanos, though, cause it was useful sticking to him. He helped me through the games and let me have some of his drugs. I thought he was stupid at first but he isn’t all that bad.” Nam-gyu rambles on.

He explained why he did it with Thanos but now with you. So that would mean he just likes you, right? You decide not to bring it up yet.

“Yeah, honestly Thanos was kinda funny. I found him annoying first though”

Nam-gyu laughs. “Same, the first time I met him in the club I hated him, he looked so cocky and self centered. But then I realized it’s probably to make up for him being insecure.”

“Hm, yeah a lot of people do that. The drugs definitely helped make him louder and more confident though.”

“Even without them he tried flirting with that girl in the first game, it was so embarrassing I walked away, pretended I didn’t know him the whole game.”

You laugh at that, you’re pretty sure you saw the first bit of it but walked away as to not experience him embarrassing himself.

After a bit Nam-gyu snuffs out the cigarette on the windowsill and throws the but outside.

“Fuck nature.” You say, jokingly, moving to go get your phone from the charger.

Nam-gyu huffs and closes the window. You pick up your phone, it’s not fully charged but it’s good enough so you unplug it. Once it turns back on you see new texts. You turn your phone off and put it into your pocket, looking over at Nam-gyu.

“Are you tired at all?” You ask him.

“Nope”

“Me neither, feels like I just got up”

“Well there’s not much to do around here”

“… if I lay down I’ll go to sleep eventually.” You say, shrugging your shoulders.

“You can sleep in my bed” Nam-gyu quickly says. “I’m sure there’s enough space for both of us” Now there’s definitely no excuse for the two of you to sleep in the same bed but you find there’s no need for one as you agree to do it.

“You can sleep in some of my clothes… I’m sure I have something clean around here.” He moves to look through his dresser before he pulls out a pair of shorts and a white T-shirt which he tosses over to you.

You go into his bathroom to change and when you come out he’s in a pair of sweats and a black shirt.

He sits down on the bed looking more awkward than he was previously. You realize it’s different out here than it was in the game in many ways. You sit beside him and lay down against the wall.

He says down infront of you and like last night you wrap an arm around him and he snuggles up into it.

Even though it was awkward at first you feel more at peace like this. And like you said previously, you begin to get tired and soon drift off to sleep feeling calmer than you have the past three nights.

The next morning goes by faster than you realize. You get up before Nam-gyu but don’t wake him, deciding to watch videos on your phone while he’s still asleep.

He wakes up an hour later and you finally get out of bed. The two of you talk over another packet of ramen, since it’s about all that Nam-gyu has in his apartment currently. After breakfast you walk out of the apartment and flag a taxi down, paying the guy in cash and telling him where to take you.

You exchange phone numbers with Nam-gyu and then you’re off, back to your home.

Part of you worries that it’s going to be hard to readjust to going back to work but you know that after a bit it’ll be as if nothing happened, hopefully.

You let out a sigh and stare out of the window. Atleast you have Nam-gyu’s number now, maybe you’ll get lunch with him someday, or visit club pentagon. Who knows.

[kellohara]

Kelley O’Hara Instagram story - 11/5/24

[poorrichardjr]

Ok, I can agree with both people here to some degree, though I think a few things should be brought up.

First, Gore actually won the popular vote in Florida. The Supreme Court stopped the recount that proved that Gore actually won, by a very slim margin. Second, instead of blaming Nader, as most mainstream democrats do, why don't they blame Jeb Bush for purging hundreds of thousands of people from the rolls who were alive and able to vote simply because their names corresponded to names of criminals in other states. This is still done btw every single election in republican run states.

Second, I don't blame all of the voters in the last election, republican or democrat. I don't blame the people who have no time to do the research because they work 60+ hours a week, have families to take care of and spend time with, or those who gladly lapped up the propaganda about Biden and Trump.

There is a caveat to that thought though. Being an informed voter is the responsibility of the people voting. Are you as a voter doing anything at all to learn about the candidates? Are you only getting your information from Fox and the like or RT or Sputnik or whatever? If so, you are slurping up that good ole propaganda and learning virtually nothing. Don't get me wrong, a lot of media outlets have some form of propaganda or slant to their news, but in aggregate, it isn't hard to determine some basic facts about a candidate even with all the partisan BS.

Believe it or not but Trump was not a normal republican president last time. He was crass, cruel, and tried numerous times to do things that his staffers said and warned him were illegal. He was impeached twice for doing things that no other president had done, especially inspiring the coup on January 6th. He also nearly led us into war with North Korea and Iran. We were on the brink of war with North Korea, and suddenly things changed when Russia spoke with both Trump and Un. What did they say that changed the heat? They probably told Trump that Kim wasn't really that bad and that he should be the bigger man and do some outreach, and they told Kim that all you had to do to get anything from Trump was flatter him, because he is an absolute moron.

Biden wasn't a great president, but honestly he really only did two terrible things. He appointed Merrick Garland to oversee the DOJ, and though he was a great prosecutor, he moved far too slowly and initially only focused on the foot soldiers of the insurrection. He never even went after all the congress people who were also deeply involved. Other than that, Biden did what he has always done his entire career and that is to support Israel. He would not use his presidential influence to curb what was happening in Israel, and that turned a lot of good people away from him.

Kamala wasn't really in the running long enough to get a good footing, and she didn't try to differentiate herself from Biden that much, simply because much of what Biden was doing worked. Jobs were up, the economy got much better than the rest of the world, and actual wages were going up for the first time in nearly thirty years.

In the end if you listened to Trump for a single hour and Kamala for a single hour their demeanor, ideas, and temperament should have been enough to get people to do the right thing, but it wasn't. The blatant racism and cruelty espoused by Trump wasn't enough. The knowledge that Trump would support anything Israel wanted in Gaza wasn't enough. The constant lying and whining about 2020 wasn't enough. In the end, if you couldn't guess that some of what is happening now and what could be happening soon was on the table, then you were a fucking idiot or so deeply into a partisan whole that you really didn't care.

Americans failed in their responsibility, and now they will be paying the price for their inability to take this seriously.

Just to be a clear, I am not a democrat, and yet I have voted for them in the last three elections because only a god damn moron couldn't see what Trump is. I hated Hilary because she was untrustworthy, despite my same opinion that she was probably the most qualified candidate for that position in decades. I hated Biden because he really is part of the reason we have many of the problems we have today, and he has been out of touch with a lot of America for years. I had no problems with Kamala, except that she was embracing the right-wingers who gave us Iraq and the quagmire that was Afghanistan and didn't do enough to try and get democrats to vote for her. You can criticize Trump all day, but republicans don't care and are going to vote for him anyway. She needed to rebuild the coalition that was disintegrating because of Gaza and the DOJ's inaction.

[dittolicous]

i dont care where you live in the usa or w/e... if you dont vote for biden you are throwing away your vote and enabling trump. because *everyone* thinks their vote doesnt matter and piddles around because of that. hell, everyone thinks 'its only me, it wont make a difference' about THOUSANDS of things, like littering, picking seashells, taking stones from rivers, etc. and in all of those situations THEYRE FUCKING WRONG. if anything unites us, its our damn ability to think we alone are the outlier despite everything indicating otherwise.

and miss me with that 'biden is just as bad/is a murderer' shit. 1) cool, and how do you plan to change things in a mr. nazi-dictator trump world? how are you ACTIVELY making a difference? 2) CHANGE IS INCREMENTAL. the reason things suck so much is because the left keeps taking slow change as 'no change' and giving up before we can gain any momentum to make big change!

if you vote in hamas or w/e to protest... you might as well throw dirt at all those suffering innocent people. you arent saving palestine that way. that is not a helpful protest. you'll only enable trump to win by throwing away your vote. it is the one bit of actual power you have, so USE IT RIGHT! stop in-fighting for one moment! look at what is possible to achieve in reality! dreams arent fulfilled overnight!

when you feel like your vote doesnt matter, remember this - you have to try anyways

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[amalthiaph]

Get to know your mutuals!

Thanks for the tag @leapingbadger! LET'S GO!

What's the origin of your blog title? EDIT: I'm stupid, it says "blog title". So, "Daughter of Eve" is one of the names they call humans in Narnia. It used to be "Management Trainee Skywalker" from that Chinese bootleg of ROTS, but as much as I like that one, something really unpleasant happened to my blog during the time it was my name, and every time I open my page, I read it, and be reminded of that one time, so I decided to change it. (One day, I will have the courage to tell that event, but for now, I'll begin to get over it.)

But I don't wanna waste this. So, for the origin of my username: Jupiter's Moon. Amalthea is one of Jupiter's moon. I first used this for League of Legends, and unfortunately, 'Amalthea' is already taken so I tried to change the 'e' into 'i', and that's how I ended up with this spelling.

OTP(s) + Shipname: OKAY, this is going to be great. The answer is Caspian x Susan. They're my first ever OTP. I want to begin this with saying I really like the book canon Caspian x Ramandu's Daughter but Caspian x Susan ended up being a lot more interesting to me. IDK what's up with me but I always go for the ship that doesn't end up together, bec I think happily ever afters are boring, give me some angst, some wishful longing, the AUs, the fix-its, these things are what makes a ship interesting.

Some of the other ships I like are LeviHan (RIP Hange), Zutara (we all know how this ended), Tech x Phee (I still wanna believe Tech lives), and Anidala (this is self-explanatory).

Favorite color: Canary yellow. But for art, layout, and clothes, I like shades of brown.

Favorite game: League of Legends, Need for Speed, Criminal Case, Minecraft

Song stuck in your head: The World Will Know from Newsies: The Broadway Musical

Weirdest habit/trait? Here, let me revise the question: "What's not weird about you?"

Hobbies: Drawing, Reading, Singing

If you work, what's your profession? Architect (I just passed the licensure examination!)

If you could have any job you wish, what would it be? Any job where I'll be able to design spaces. Designing is therapeutic to me.

Something you're good at: Art.

Something you're bad at: Human-ing

Something you love: My cat, my family, my hyperfixations.

Something you could talk about for hours off the cuff: Star Wars, Narnia, and Newsies

Something you hate: Just like @leapingbadger, I also hate the current state of the world, especially in the country I live in. Election is once again near, and the leading senatorial candidates in the polls are not-so-good people. There are agriculturists, a great lawyer ,an animal rights activist, and a labor rights activist running for senate but the majority of the people in this country surely won't vote for them because "they're ugly" or "they're not stars".

Something you collect: hatred, and Lego sets, and books

Something you forget: I'll do you a better one: "Name something you don't forget".

What's your love language? Acts of service. Also remembering the tiny details of the stories I tell.

Favorite movie/show: Star Wars (with the exception of the Sequels and Resistance), Narnia, and Newsies

Favorite food: Tinola.

Favorite animal: Cats. I accidentally typed "cars" but you would have gotten it anyway.

What were you like as a child? Quiet, introverted, and stuck in her own little world.

Favorite subject at school? Maybe English. Also geometry.

Least favorite subject: Chemistry

What's your best character trait? I like to learn as much of anything as I can, also very observant. Oftentimes, it ticks me off when people aren't like that.

What's your worst character trait? I'll do you a better one: "Is there a character trait of you that isn't bad?"

If you could change any detail of your life right now, what would it be? Try "What do you not want to change?"

If you could travel in time, who would you like to meet? Serial killers a day before being executed. I have so many questions.

Tag as many mutuals as you want!! (Sorry if you've been tagged before): @loge2718 @mimpinightmare @dragonrider9905 @ahsokastechie

Get to know your mutuals!

What's the origin of your blog title? When I was in middle school, someone told me "you dress so goth, but your personality is so happy. You're like a really cheerful grim reaper. A joyful soul collector." And that's been my username for most everything ever since!

OTP(s) + Shipname: Oooh, right now it's Jayvik, and tbh I can't think of another one, this is one of the first ships I've been really really into tbh. Other dynamics focused on my blog have actually been more platonic, like Irondad

Favorite color: Red!

Favorite game: Dungeons and Dragons! Both as a player, and DM!

Song stuck in your head: The Challenge - EPIC

Weirdest habit/trait? I download thousands of still frames of tv shows that I love so I can make memes out of them. But I have to sift through and delete all the pictures that are blurry or unnecessary, which takes hours. I think it's super fun because I'm autistic and really enjoy sorting stuff lol

Hobbies: Writing, playing DnD, making memes, and hanging out with my friends!

If you work, what's your profession? Not so much a profession lol, I work at a toy store. It's a part time job while I'm in college, studying to be a radiologist!

If you could have any job you wish, what would it be? Realistically? Radiologist. But ANY job I wish? Professional DM or Professional DnD player, like the people on Dropout or Critical Role haha

Something you're good at: I'm good at writing stories! I can write them well and write things that make people feel deep emotions, and I like that.

Something you're bad at: Recognizing when someone doesn't want help haha. I tend to try and fix things or help people when they just want to vent, and it ends up frustrating for both of us.

Something you love: I love stories. Any kind, I love so so many

Something you could talk about for hours off the cuff: My favorite shows and stories, my dnd campaigns and characters, my stories and ideas

Something you hate: Fascism. Bigotry. Willful ignorance. Fearmongering. Propaganda.

Something you collect: Dice!! I'm a dice goblin for sure haha

Something you forget: I often forget chores unfortunately

What's your love language? Physical touch and acts of service

Favorite movie/show: Ooh right now it's definitely Arcane haha

Favorite food: Sushi!

Favorite animal: Cats!

What were you like as a child? In a word? Unwell haha. I'm a good bit better now, still struggling with a lot, but better than I used to do

Favorite subject at school? English, I was always good at that class

Least favorite subject: Chemistry. I hate that shit so much lol

What's your best character trait? I think that I'm kind and willing to stand up for others

What's your worst character trait? I can be disrespectful to some types of spirituality unfortunately. It just doesn't make logical sense to me. I have two friends that are fully convinced that a cursed doll gave some youtuber testicular cancer. And I just can't see the logic or critical thought in that

If you could change any detail of your life right now, what would it be? Mmm. All of fascism shit is definitely damaging my calm so I'd love to change that specifically

If you could travel in time, who would you like to meet? Harry Allen. Google him he's a badass transgender cowboy

Tag as as many mutuals as you want!!

@sb-essebi @glitternightingale @blatterpussbunnyfromhell @captainhollowstories @kydrogendragon @misforvendetta @poetryinmotion-author @bocularteletheric @kai-ovillager @thatoneneuvichiliauthor @4amarcanethoughts @alexspearsxoxo @kotonni @buckybucananbarnes @kakesuwolf @martybaker @patheticjayce @sleepycrowhours @aixabi @up-the-bracket @snoopyviktor @emdashflower @humanshapedstress @hellsalore @juuzousmom @softandslow @fangirlshenanigans04 @batmans-attic @lvrstrsh @bluemoyai @tearexxwrites @bodyofvvater @lifeandeathepub @areesespiece @lancesblueazaleas @monaisme @milkywaysipper @carmendyy @tseecka @heazueken @tophat-69 @velocitychroma @prjctdiva @gremlinofchaos @ourvectorviktor @kenjinx @jxmimac @gh0stedvhampir @voxconcordia @arcaneheraldslawyer

ngl I tried to tag ALL my mutuals that I have, but this was how many it allowed me to do before it made me stop lol so here's as many as I could fit!

[sskk-manifesto]

!

[rainingincale]

...

[sunflowercandie]

stop telling me to vote i don't live in your piece of shit country

And I don't live in yours so I don't think I need your opinion 😀😀😀

[scientia-rex]

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

[sillimancer]

2024 us political landscape as someone on the lefter end of the spectrum feels kinda like the end of that one spongebob episode where he finally starts doing fry cook shit after pissing everyone off trying to act and sing and everyone's cheering for him as he gradually figures out people don't want him to act and sing they want him to make their fucking krabby patties

[thebibliosphere]

He sounded interested and even concerned. I thought he had been touched by what the doctor and advocates in the meeting had just shared about their journey with their patients and their own family members. But I was wrong.

“Those people . . . ” Donald said, trailing off. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

I truly did not know what to say. He was talking about expenses. We were talking about human lives. For Donald, I think it really was about the expenses, even though we were there to talk about efficiencies, smarter investments, and human dignity.

I turned and walked away

[from later in the article]

Donald took a second as if he was thinking about the whole situation.

“I don’t know,” he finally said, letting out a sigh. “He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”

Wait! What did he just say? That my son doesn’t recognize me? That I should just let him die?

Did he really just say that? That I should let my son die . . . so I could move down to Florida?

Really?

[...]

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear Donald say that. It wasn’t far off from what he’d said that day in the Oval Office after our meeting with the advocates. Only that time, it was other people’s children who should die. This time, it was my son.

When you’re legitimately so evil you tell a parent, your own fucking nephew, to their face that it’d be more cost-effective to let their child die because they are disabled.

Honestly, it's not the ableism or eugenics that shocks me. Donald Trump has shown who he is time and time again. I guess what got me was that he’d be willing to hold the same views for family members.

Usually these types of people make exceptions for their own. “It’s not immoral if it’s my abortion, I’m only doing this because I have no choice, mine is necessary” kind of thing.

But nope. Donald just straight up thinks his great nephew should die because it’s expensive to keep him alive.

Jesus Wept.

Fucking vote. Please, I’m begging you. As a disabled immigrant who isn’t able to vote I see so many people saying they’re going to boycott the election by not voting and I want to scream.

You boycott products by withholding money.

Not voting in elections only disenfranchises yourself. You’re not protesting. You’re giving tyrants power.

Please vote like people’s lives depend on it because they do.

If you need help figuring out how to register I will help you but please. Please vote.

[foone]

Your posts are in an AI model

and then Tumblr decided to sell them to AI models.

Now, don't get me wrong, tumblr selling out the users to AI companies is bad, yes, they shouldn't do that. It sucks.

but don't lets get this confused: your posts were already in there. Tumblr selling them is about tumblr making some money and about the AI models having more exhaustive post collections. It's not about your posts being in an AI model, vs not being in one. That battle has already been lost.

Can you find your post on google? Then it's almost certainly in an AI model already. Think about it: These AI sites showed up before all the sites were making deals to sell their users' content, right? How do you think they built them in the first place?

They scraped the posts. Just like google and bing and such do when they build their search indexes.

It's a fundamental part of how the open web works: you want your posts on tumblr to be visible to users, right? You want them to be readable?* Like, look how much stuff broke when twitter changed their whole read-while-not-logged-in policy, ruining a bunch of thread links/NSFW links. And if it's visible, it's scrapable. That's what the AI models were built on.

I've done website scraping before (not for AI models, of course. I was doing search engines and website archival), this is just how it works. You hire a few relatively smart CS graduates and tell them "build me a scraper that'll give us a bunch of tumblr posts" and they go off for a month or two and come back with a database of a few billion posts, and you stuff that into your AI model. That's how they got all the deviantart and flickr and twitter and pinterest and so on posts. They didn't pay for them: they just took them.

They only ever pay for this shit because either:

they fucked up in such a way that the site might be able to sue them for taking rather than paying

They can buy them cheaper than they can finish taking them. Maybe they'd need to pay the CS grads for an extra month? well, that might be more expensive than just throwing the site a couple hundred thousand bucks.

ANYWAY: my point is, don't treat this "oh no tumblr is selling our posts to AI" like it's a big thing that might happen and it would be bad to happen. Yes, it's bad, tumblr shouldn't do this, this'll let AI models get continual updates of content for far easier than just scraping them would be, tumblr betrayed user trust, and so on...

but realistically, this is not a black and white matter of "if only tumblr didn't do this, then we'd be safe from AI models!"

Nope. We already lost that battle. I'm sorry, and it does suck, but that's just how it is. The avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote. * I'm assuming here that you don't run a private blog that's set to only followers or something. You'd be safer then, of course, but you're not really my target audience for this rant

[pianocat939]

part 2 plz

Yandere Player 230 (Thanos) Headcanons Part 2

(IF YOU HAVENT WATCHED EP.6 YET NO LOOKY)

Tw: No murder (yet), brief mentions of violence and potential murder, unconsensual touching (NOT NSFW), threats

I know him being killed isn't a big surprise- BUT IM STILL MAD. I want bro to come back. I need him. Heck at this point I'm just gonna watch all the dramas T.O.P has been in because man's just too fine.

Part 1

Beginning where I left off, during the Merry-Go-Round Mingle game, you best bet he won't let you be separated from him. He'll hold your extremely tight if you try to get away. He'll turn his head, and give you a very maniacal closed-lip smile.

"Don't run mousey. I'm not letting you get killed. I wanna be able to play one more game with you."

If it's just 2 players? He won't let the others kick you out. He'll probably just kick someone and run off while holding you in his hand. Once you're in the room, he'll probably pin you to wall give you big smooch somewhere on your face. Literally could be anywhere.

If you resist, he'll just hug you tight and cover you in even more kisses. He's just waiting for you to submit.

If you just stand there and not really do much about it, he'll hug you tight.

"Good. I knew you were a good mousey. Those bastards can't compare."

During the game, if someone tries to separate you or prevent you guys from winning, he won't hesitate to hit the violence button. You can honestly just stand there and watch him go nuts.

For the voting after the game, if you choose to continue the game, he'll be much more pacified. Just doing his usual clinging and teasing. He likes holding hands with you and swinging your arms in-sync as you wait for the voting to finish.

If you choose to not continue the game, he'll stare into your soul. He couldn't believe you. Weren't you supposed to be his good little mousey? You won't expect much during the voting, but during meal time he'll go nuts. He'll pull you aside and keep you pinned against the wall. He won't let you ignore him.

He'll harshly whisper to you that if you pull something against him he would personally kill any of the people who want to continue. All to prevent you from leaving him.

"Don't pull that shit, 'kay? All those fuckers are gonna die anyway. Just you and me baby. Just you and me."

As we know, he dies during the teams fight. But I want to do a possible part 3 where he does in fact live. Basically a theory on what he would do if he survived.

So until I upload a part 3, that'll be that. Sorry this part was shorter, but I need to think a bit more for part 3 considering I'll be twisting away from the drama's story.

—————————————————————————

Chat I would absolutely allow him to drag me into a room during the Mingle game. Like sir of course I will follow. Bro's voice is simply perfect like could you please read a book to me and I will be knocked out within minutes.

- Celina

[mvth3r]

daryl doesn’t think he’s anything special. he never has. but to you? he’s everything.

or

5 times daryl feels your affection down to his core and the many 1 time he unconsciously returns the favor.

cw: 18+ MDNI, p-in-v, mention of injury, swearing, mostly fluff, 4283 words

a/n: this draft got the most votes in the poll, which was surprising tbh! next up medieval au, princess reader, forbidden romance?? hmmmm

one.

daryl hears you coming before he sees you. he knows it’s on purpose, so you don’t startle him (“and get an arrow in the tit or something, i don’t know!” you had explained, laughing). he’s long since taught you how to be quiet when walking over leaves and branches.

his eyes drifted in the direction of the noise, watching you melt out of the trees, water bottle in one hand and knife in the other. you had a bad habit of speeding through or ignoring your own duties in favor of tracking him out into the woods while he was hunting. the teasing looks from rick and carol when they saw the gates open in the evening, revealing the two of you instead of just him, were enough to have him blushing up to his ears, but he couldn’t find it in him to stop you. if anything, daryl found himself lingering closer to the prison when he was first setting out for the day and making his tracks a little easier for you to follow as he went on. he liked to think of it as a teaching moment, encouraging you to follow his lessons, but he knew what it really was.

he liked having you here with him, away from prying eyes and ears. daryl wasn’t big on pda, he’d never been, and you knew that, but you could be as affectionate as you wanted out here.

the smile that split you face when you saw daryl was blinding, creasing your eyes and cheeks, “hey, handsome.”

daryl felt his heart start to pound immediately in his chest and warmth radiate through his belly and down his limbs. he had the distant, bizarre thought that any walker for a few miles would probably be able to smell his blood as it rose rapidly to his face, coloring his cheeks and the tips of his ears.

he scoffed quietly to keep the words he really wanted to say from spilling unbidden from his throat as you caught up to him, instead deadpanning, “handsome? really?”

you hummed, raising a hand to card through his long bangs, eyes tender when they met his, “mhm, very handsome. don’t i tell you every day?”

you leaned up to press a sweet kiss to his lips, no longer than a moment. you hand drifted from his hair down to cup his jaw as you did, and daryl found himself leaning into your palm, his own hand coming up to grip your wrist loosely.

you pulled away with a smaller, more intimate smile, one that daryl had only ever seen directed at him. and, if you had felt the pounding of his heart through his shirt or seen the intensity of his flush, you didn’t say a word.

two.

daryl was distracted.

this council meeting was dragging on much longer than intended. what was initially supposed to be a quick conversation about planning a run to get supplies for judith and a few of the other kids had turned into a heated debate about possibly opening up the council to a few of the people from woodbury. he could understand why. there was still a stark divide between their group and the new people, but daryl had been content to sit back and let the situation mend itself, so long as it didn't escalate.

the discussion was split down the middle. or.. maybe there were more in favor of maintaining the current council? daryl couldn’t tell because he couldn’t focus and he couldn’t focus because every time he tried to lock in on the conversation, he could feel your fingers brush over his knuckles.

earlier, when the meeting started, you had sat yourself right next to daryl, reached under the table, and grabbed his hand where it was resting on his knee. no fanfare, no lovesick gazes, just your fingers intertwined with his calloused ones like they belonged there. which, he mused to himself, maybe they do.

and so there your hand had remained as the meeting went on. every so often, you would brush your fingers lightly over his knuckles, or give his fingers a squeeze if you happened to catch his eyes… which would lead to you chuckling quietly to yourself when his neutral expression would warm over with a blush.

the meeting had been going on for at least an hour. god.

“daryl, what do you think?”

glenn’s voice cut through daryl’s thoughts like a knife. he jerked a little, almost dislodging your hand when he looked across the table, meeting the expectant stares of the council.

“uhh,” he grunted eloquently, “‘bout bringin’ some of them folks on?”

hershel nodded expectantly, his voice thoughtful, “don’t you think we could afford their input? after all, this is their home now just as much as it is ours.”

your fingers brushed again over his knuckles and daryl willed himself not to lose focus. not to allow his mind to run on with thoughts about the softness of your fingers and how much he liked the feeling of your palm against his. how comfortable-

no.

daryl blinked and cleared his throat, “we don’ even have rick on the council right now, i’on think it’s a good idea.”

glenn nodded along with maggie and, reluctantly a moment later, hershel did too, though his mouth had settled into a thin frown.

daryl felt your hand squeeze his twice, taking it as a nonverbal ‘good job!’, and paused only a moment before squeezing back his own nonverbal ‘thank you’. he saw a small smile flit across your face out the corner of his eye.

before the debate could start up again, you were leaning forward and speaking up, saying, “alright, let’s table this for next time then. the run is already planned for the baby stuff, so—?”

hershel’s eyes swept across the table and he nodded, “meeting adjourned, i suppose.”

three.

the woods were clear as daryl looked out over the gate. he could see everything from the watchtower, as was intended, but for once the calm darkness was not a comfort.

instead, every moment that passed heightened the panic that had been swirling in his gut since earlier that evening.

it had been roughly fourteen hours since you had left on a run with glenn and maggie. there was a small gas station a little ways out that looked to be mostly untouched, and you had been pulled to fill in daryl’s usual slot since he was already slated to go hunting.

he was regretting it now, though, as he continued to watch the road leading up to the gate for any sign of maggie’s headlights.

while the general rule of thumb was to be back to the prison before dark, everyone knew that sometimes shit happens, whether it be walkers appearing at the worst possible time, or not being able to secure the haul. hell, shit happened more often than it didn't, as far as daryl was concerned.

maybe the haul had been much larger than the three of you had planned for, and you had to hide some of it away for a return trip.

maybe y'all had come across a herd large enough to block the car's path and had to find a way around it to get home without leading them back behind you.

maybe the gas station had been a bust all together and you’d gone further out in hopes of not returning empty handed.

the thoughts swimming through his mind sent daryl pacing across the small area of the watchtower. back and forth he went, eyes flashing over to the gate of the prison every few seconds.

“you’re gonna wear out your shoes like that.”

oh right. daryl isn’t even on watch, not officially at least. he’d joined carol a little after the sun went down and been up here ever since.

carol continues on despite his brooding silence, “they’re okay. something probably held them up, it happens.”

daryl turned to face carol, scrubbing a hand down his face. he opening his mouth to respond, but before he could, the sound of wheels crunching across gravel made him whip back around.

he barely registered that it was maggie’s car before he was yanking the floor hatch open and climbing down. rick, who’d been poking around the farm despite the late hour, unwilling to admit his own anxiety, was already pulling the gate open to let the car in.

daryl stopped further up the hill to meet you, and, as soon as you popped the lock on your door, he was tugging it open with one hand and reaching for you with the other.

you went willingly, a sheepish smile on your face as you let him turn you this way and that, checking for any injuries or bites, neither of which you had.

“sorry i’m late, handsome,” you whispered, “i didn’t mean to worry you.”

daryl grunted in response, resisting the urge to press himself against you and feel your heart beat against his skin. he understood that you were capable, and that you had lasted just as long in the apocalypse as he had, but he can't help but wonder if he'll ever get used to this, or if he'll spend any moment you aren't within his reach on the edge of a panic attack.

by then, rick had made his way up the hill to the car and was helping unload their findings from the boot. all things considered, the three of you had brought back a pretty decent amount of stuff.

“everyone alright?” rick questioned, eyes skirting over the contents of the trunk to scan the three of you instead. "what held y'all up?"

maggie shook her head with a smile, “nothing like that. we found a good bit at that gas station, but there was a map of a small trailer park a little ways away, and we thought it was better to go for it while we were right down the road.”

“and we had the space anyway. didn’t make sense to waste a second trip, but it took a little longer to search than we thought,” you added. you had turned to face the group and, under the cover of the dark, you leaned back just slightly into daryl’s side.

carol, who had followed daryl down from the watchtower, hummed, and rick nodded thoughtfully. they both followed behind maggie and glenn, grabbing as much as they could carry from the car and heading up to deposit it for sorting tomorrow.

now alone, daryl took a moment to breathe you in, but he was moving soon as well, heading for the trunk to grab what was left.

he didn’t notice you coming up next to him until he felt your fingers slipping into his pocket.

“found something for you,” you said quietly, standing at his side.

daryl patted his pocket, feeling the dented box of what he assumed to be cigarettes and looked over at you, brows furrowed in confusion.

“i noticed you ran out the other day,” you answered his unasked question, a small smile lifting your cheeks, “combed through every trailer looking for ‘em.”

with that, you turned away from him and back to the trunk.

daryl stood speechless, his heart building up to that rapid thrum he only seemed to feel in your presence.

you had brought something back for him. had spent the daylight rummaging through dirty trailers on the off chance that you’d find a pack of cigarettes to replace his empty one that he himself hadn't even bothered to go searching to replace.

he wanted to think he didn’t understand why you would do something like this, why you would care, but he did. he’d done the same for you, time and time again on the road, if only to see you smile. he understood exactly why.

“‘preciate it,” he grunted, thankful that the darkness surrounding you kept his blush from being too obvious.

you hummed in acknowledgment, and daryl could your small smile growing out the corner of his eye.

four.

having sex in the prison was no easy feat, mostly due to the lack of privacy. a sheet could only provide so much, and even then it did nothing for the noise echoing constantly off the concrete walls.

as far as most were concerned, maggie and glenn had found the best spot early on, making the most unused watchtower their designated private retreat, but you and daryl knew otherwise.

deep in the tombs, which were no longer a threat as they had long since been cleared and sealed, there were a few tucked away offices that had sat empty even after the woodbury residents had been moved in. noise didn’t escape the tombs, and no one ever just wandered in, especially not in the middle of the night, so despite the cell that you and daryl shared, you both much preferred spending your more intimate moments here.

well, daryl did. you weren’t picky, and could be quiet when you really tried, but it made daryl more comfortable.

he’d like to think it was just because he was wary of any listening ears, especially with all the children roaming around, but he knew the truth of his resolve.

daryl had never been a selfish man, and certainly not after the world fell. everything he had, everything he was, he would give to his family in a heartbeat.

but this.. this was just for him.

your body arched beautifully under his, legs falling open to accommodate his weight settling against you. daryl’s hand left your heat, fingers dripping with wetness, to squeeze your hips, using them to guide you as your moved against him.

you were already bare, both of you having stripped each other of your clothes between heated kisses while you stumbled in the office. you hadn’t even made it to the double-stacked cot in the corner, daryl instead pushing you firmly down on the dusty desk and leaning in to mouth at your neck.

you moaned under him now, a breathy sigh of his name, and the sound sent a shiver down daryl’s spine.

“needy girl,” he grunted teasingly, reaching down to grasp his hardness. he dragged the head of his cock up your slit, collecting your wetness and smearing it over your clit.

your head knocked back against the desk and a loud groan burst out of your throat. your knees tried to close around daryl’s waist as if to keep him away, but you arms came up to wrap around him, pulling him closer to your body, and he leaned into you willingly.

your voice trembled when you spoke into his ear, want dripping from every syllable, “please, baby. need you inside me so bad.”

and god, daryl wanted to make you beg for it. he wanted to wait until he could see the desperation in your eyes and then wait some more, but he couldn’t. not when you looked so pretty spread out beneath him and your hands were petting over his shoulders and neck just how he liked. he almost thought you were doing it on purpose, but he knew better. this was just you.

you couldn’t stay off him when he was in you, always tugging at his hair or rubbing his chest, hands scrabbling for any skin you could reach. it used to send him reeling, flustered and blushing bright, but now he looked forward to it. he could feel the want in your touches like physical imprints of your affection.

daryl pushed into your slowly, groaning deep in his chest. your slick walls felt heavenly around him, but daryl was more focused on you right now.

soft whimpers fell from your lips as your hands drifted over his sweat slicked skin. daryl’s thrusts were slow but purposeful, and he ignored your legs squeezing around his waist, trying to urge him to speed up.

“relax, peach,” he soothed, hands drifting up and down your sides in pace with his thrusts, “i’ma take care of you.”

“kiss, please,” you whispered, voice floating past daryl’s ear. he would have missed it if you weren’t pressed together like this.

daryl would not describe himself as a selfish man. he might have had his moments in the past, but now, with the dead walking and a prison full of survivors to protect, it was virtually out of the question.

but as he leaned down to press his lips to yours, feeling your hands finally make their way up into his long strands, daryl thought that he might be a possessive man.

he’d sooner spread you out deep in the woods than have you where anyone could see you like this or hear the noises you make.

no, daryl thought, tongue sliding in your mouth to tangle with yours, this would always be just for him.

five.

daryl came into awareness slowly and then all at once. he startled, trying to sit up, but a searing pain made itself known in his abdomen. the pain clouded his senses, blooming out across his torso and down his limbs. he flops uselessly, feeling like the wind has been knocked out of him.

hearing bits of voices above him, daryl wills himself to focus. he’s hurt, obviously, and it’s pretty fucking bad, but he’ll have to suck it up and figure out a way home if he’s in bad company.

the voices start to filter in. the volume makes his temples throb in rhythm with his abdomen and his heart as the situation starts to force adrenaline through his body.

“—harder! put more pressure on it!”

daryl relaxes just a bit. that’s rick. frantic, angry, but rick all the same.

“what the fuck do you think i’m doing?!” the other voice, higher, snarls in response, “just drive the damn truck!”

and daryl feels his body try to relax all together. he would recognize your voice in his sleep, and this milky haze of pain is no different. he can feel your hands pressing a wad of something soft into his abdomen.

he can hear your panicked breaths and feel the way your fingers flex continuously against his skin. whatever’s wrong with him must be bad, and it definitely hurts like hell, but daryl takes comfort in the weight of your body against his. you won’t let anything happen to him if you can help it, you’d sworn that fiercely, and if you can’t help it then he doesn’t think anyone could have.

daryl can just barely make out the creaking of the gate being pulled open over the sound of rick laying on the horn.

as they pull in, the gravel of the path rocks the truck and daryl feels the ache in his abdomen bloom again, distracting him from his thoughts, but here, knowing he’s safe and back with his family, he allows himself to drift away.

—

this time, when daryl comes into awareness, the first thing he feels is fingers carding through his hair, tugging gently as if to untangle a couple of knots and snarls.

without even opening his eyes he knows it’s you. he can feel the heat of your body settled next to him and smell the soap you like to bathe with. daryl leans towards you, chasing the warmth of your hand against his skin.

the bandages on his stomach are wrapped tight, but it’s more annoying than anything and the pain has finally, thankfully, subsided to a dull ache. daryl stretches on the cot, trying to loosen him limbs from their inactivity, but what he focuses on is your fingers immediately pulling away.

“daryl?” your voice prods quietly, “you awake?”

he opens his eyes slowly, squinting at the sunlight that streams through the bars of the cell. the privacy sheet isn’t down, actually there’s no sheet at all, daryl notes as he looks out. he must be in one of the cells near hershel’s.

“‘m up,” he grumbles, a cough working its way out of his throat. before he can attempt to clear the dryness, you’re standing to grab a bottle of water off some boxes stacked nearby and pressing it into his hand.

your fingers linger against his wrist as you pull away, but you’re resuming your previous position anyway, in a chair brought right up to his bedside.

daryl hasn’t sat up yet, staring instead at you as one of your hands return to his hair and the other rubs down his arm.

a few quiet moments pass before you speak again, head bowed and voice a little choked, “we almost lost you. i almost lost you.”

“didn’t though,” daryl croaks. he feels your grip tighten on his arm and just knows. knows that you’ve been sitting right here every moment that you could since he went down. knows that you probably haven’t had your hands off him. knows you’ve spent the time, however long it’s been, agonizing over what went wrong and how to keep it from happening ever again. he knows.

“i didn’t,” you agree with a barely restrained sniffle. you refuse to allow the tears beading your waterline to fall, but daryl sees them all the same.

oddly, he feels that familiar warmth blossom in his chest. he hates to see you upset, but to see your love, your heart laid so bare for him? daryl thinks he can finally understand the depth of your affections.

plus one.

to anybody who knew what to look for, it was obvious that you and daryl were.. something.

you remembered when the woodbury residents had really began to settle in, how they began to whisper about ‘the hunter and his lady’.

it had confused you at first. the group knew, of course, nothing could be kept a secret from them for too long, but for strangers? it was odd, given that you weren’t very public with your affections.

regardless, with an entire prison to secure and almost triple the amount of people to provide for, it was nothing to think too hard about. there was always something that needed to be done or something bigger to think about. you couldn't afford to think about it now.

eventually, though, you ended up mentioning it to carol, and the older woman had laughed, a teasing edge to her smile as she considered you.

“i think it has less to do with you and more with him, if i’m being honest,” she said.

“more to do with.. daryl?” you said slowly, raising an incredulous eyebrow, “nah, no way.”

carol hummed, her smile turning knowing, “just watch. he’s more affectionate than he gives himself credit for.”

you’d left the conversation feeling like carol had no idea what she was talking about. later that evening, though, when you were sitting with the group for dinner and daryl was sliding a couple pieces of meat from his plate to yours despite your multiple protests, you understood.

your face must have been the textbook picture of a lightbulb going off because carol sent you a wink from across the table, lips twitching like she was hiding a laugh.

it wasn’t that the woodbury residents were over analyzing the very minimal physical affection that passed between you and daryl in a day, no. instead they were observing his quieter, more unconscious actions.

they saw the way that daryl always took care to come and find you before leaving for a run, even if it meant holding everyone up a little.

and how every so often they could find daryl sharpening a knife that was far too small for him to be wielding safely while you sat nearby, watching with a grateful smile.

and how whenever you were in the same room, you always had his eye. daryl had been adamant about keeping you within his sights while you were on the road, and the habit hadn’t left him just because you were behind walls now.

even now, months later, the newer additions to the prison were starting to catch on quicker and quicker.

they overheard daryl talking to glenn about taking your place on the run later today because you’d overdone it in the sun earlier and he wanted you to get some rest.

they saw you gush excitedly every time daryl brought you back any kind of gift, whether it be a pretty rock that he thought you’d like, or your favorite animal to cook into the stew.

they watched him watch the road every time you left for a run, regardless of who was with you, and also saw him come back to be the first to greet you when you returned if he could help it.

daryl was a quiet lover and a private man if you didn’t know what to look for, but if you did, you’d see that his affections ran just as deep as yours.

your thoughts brought a sleep smile to your face as you stretched out on the cot in your shared cell, waiting for daryl to shut off the lantern on your makeshift nightstand in the corner.

you could barely make him out in the dark, but the weight of him settling in next to you sent you right into his arms, your head pillowed on his chest while his arms came up to wrap around your back.

you tilted your head up to place a small kiss to the bottom of his jaw, mumbling a quiet, “love you.”

daryl’s arms tightened around you momentarily before loosening again. you felt him lean down to press a kiss to your hair in turn.

just over the steady thumping of his heart against your ear, you could hear him whisper back, “love you too.”