#is it bc you outgrow the space they made for you

[mywitchyblog]

pls smooch me bc as someone whos biggest fear was/is outgrowing their dr s/os and is turning 18 in like a month u and so many other posters made menfeel less shitty

First, I want to send a huge virtual hug because I know how unsettling these fears can be. I want to remind you that in any reality, including your DR, you aren’t "outgrowing" your s/o. Reality shifting allows you to connect with them on a deep, personal level, and that bond isn’t defined solely by age or passing time in this reality.

When it comes to relationships,specially when it come to age shifting up and down i put the same level of scrutiny (i try the best to be) I always like to think about two key things:

Are both of you aligned in terms of maturity, emotional connection, and respect? Age is only one aspect of a relationship, but maturity and emotional connection are what truly matter. If you and your s/o in your DR understand each other, communicate well, and share mutual respect, then it doesn’t matter how your ages compare between realities. Maturity in your DR is specific to that reality, just as you fully embody the mindset and experiences of your DR self. It’s about your connection in that space, not about external standards.

Do you treat your partner as a person, not an object? Healthy relationships are built on care, understanding, and genuine love—not on treating someone as a fantasy or object to fulfill your desires. If you’re truly invested in their well-being, happiness, and individuality, then your love is real and valid. Relationships aren’t about checking boxes based on societal rules; they’re about how you both feel and treat each other. Fetishization happens when someone is reduced to just an object of desire without any real care for their personality or feelings. As long as you respect them for who they are and not just what they represent, you're in the clear.

If those elements are present, then what others think or how old you are in a different reality shouldn’t hold you back. After all, every reality has its own unique rules, and they aren’t blueprints for every experience you’re meant to have. What’s most important is how you feel and what’s right for you. No need to be bound by the limitations of this reality—trust your instincts and your journey.

Tomorrow or tonight, I’ll post my storytime, and I’m almost certain it’ll resonate with you. You’re definitely not alone in this journey. Keep shifting and keep growing—you’ve got this! 💕

[pompompinkyy]

A few years back I made a post that echoed this sentiment but I’ve just been thinking about it a lot lately. I am so grateful that there are spaces online where there are other people with the same interests as me and are unapologetic about the things that they enjoy and collect. However, in person it has always been a struggle not to feel a certain loneliness that comes with the interests I have. As I entered junior high, my friends were all selling their dolls & plushies, I still remember getting roasted by one of the girls in my class for still having Barbie dolls. I realized rather quickly that my love of dolls & toys in general was something that I should outgrow. But for some reason, I just never did. By the time I reached high school most of my toys were gone, not of my own accord. My parents moved us to another town and we were not allowed to bring all of our things. So I packed what I could and it wasn’t a lot. I found myself missing my stuff often. Even sitting in class and just being sad that I couldn’t go home and play with them. The summer in between my freshmen & sophomore years my ex boyfriend’s (bf at the time) mom gave me a whole bunch of Barbie dolls that she didn’t know what to do with. And I felt a certain joy that I can’t explain. I played with the dolls, made things for the dolls bc I was too poor to buy accessories for them, and I found a dollhouse on the side of the road and brought it home. eventually my ex even bought me some dolls & plushies too because he saw how much I genuinely loved them. On & off throughout adulthood I’ve always struggled with these interests though. There’s a certain shame that comes with loving toys at my age. I’m not an age regresser, I don’t buy toys to keep them in a box for all of eternity so I wouldn’t say I’m a collector necessarily either, I just genuinely love them. Sometimes I wish I would have outgrown my love of toys more than anything. Tumblr is the only place I have ever felt 100% safe sharing these interests of mine. Throughout my entire adult life I’ve gone thru phases where I’d try to hide away my love of toys by shoving them in a closet and I’ve definitely been in that phase lately. Everytime someone comes to my house who isn’t a sibling of mine I feel so incredibly judged. I truly wish it didn’t bother me, but it does. I couldn’t tell you the last time my calico critters saw the light of day or my Barbie’s or bratz. Recently, I put all of my plushies away save a shelf in my bedroom. It can just be really embarrassing when a guest makes a comment on my things. What I really want to say is ty tumblr for being the home base for me to share about all of the things that make me very happy.

[superm4ks]

~personally~ of course as someone who is very interested in 3344 i would love to hear from lewis what his perspective is on max, who is compared more to senna, who is lewis' hero within his senna stannie fan card. like if senna wrote the fucking book max wrote the smash remake. like obviously humans are messy and complicated but like in ur pysche if the guy you "hate" is cut from the exact same cloth (and even sharper!) than the guy you love hmmmm. there's a lot of things to be talked about when drivers talk about who they idolize and why (or don't idolize). but i also love what u posted form that 1991 article bc f1 has never not been messy and human and solely about "wheel" or whatever and that makes it more interesting.

This is such supermaks bait anyway lets TALK about it 🌷

Literally thats the whole thing wid Canada that really stuck wid me after Max broke Sennas most wins oat, like Lewis' lil selfie wid him and his 'this is a pretty iconic podium' and that whole sloppy toppy moment wid fellow old Dawg Nando ((yall remember Nando podiums . damn 🕊️)) like theres a certain gravitas here. Max ended the most dominant streak by an f1 driver in the most controversial, soul crushing devastating fashion and followed that shit wid his own brand of dominance. That is fucking brutal lmfao. U said it like this is thee smash f1 remake this is textbook Senna, we've seen the script, we know what kind of driver it takes to enact the script. Its not gonna be a nice lil driver, its gonna be somebody who has a deep cynicism for the whole thing while simultaneously being unable to not execute it to perfection. That is Senna. It is Lewis. And it is Max. Max is, by all measures, in his current form, wid this red bull team, driving this car, untouchable. Bro is the final dawg. And the way that he still drives bro, that aggressiveness he has, that unwillingness to give up the line, thats every ((good)) drivers' dream to face a driver like that and come out on top because, ironically, thats as close to racing as it gets and it is old school. It does emulate a different time, a time that Lewis not only grew up watching but contributed to himself. It is about 'wheel' in the end but theres also a person in that car that can break you, which is like an extraordinarily human thing.

I've always found Lewis' bias for Senna very interesting because I think prolly until he was 25, and mind u I havent watched every Hamilton title winning season only 2008 and then obvi 2020 was my first so like obvi really influences how I c him, but he had that same restless nature. The shouts Max was getting even in 2021, Lewis got them too, including being a risk to his own peers, being rash, arrogant, etc. But then Lewis moved past Senna, imo, and became ‘Hamilton’, took over his own narrative, his team, made his own legend, wid his own dominant cars, and like he was settling back into that. Max came in at a point where u thought a Senna-like figure had no more space in f1. But Max created room, literally by force, and is also slowly outgrowing that to become ‘Verstappen’. I think thats the thread that wont snap between them, the knowledge that they are the last true protagonists of their respective eras. I have in faith in sharl, I think sharl wid a competent car, a good team, can achieve history too, but I dont have faith in Ferrari. Ferrari cannot perform to that level rn. So u have this monster at 25 whos like alone in his greatness and refuses to act the part. I get why people who dont fw Max's achievements might not like it, but that doesnt keep him from being the racing driver he is. That has no bearing on it, on him. Its a complete fabrication from fans. That is why Max feels so inevitable, and like, genuinely upsets people who dislike him by saying or doing anything because he will always own up on track and like theres an almost existential horror u cause haters wid that type of aura. Lewis is that same breed of driver, so he recognizes it, he knows what it takes be f1's villain. U cant cast a shadow on something u dont stand over.

After Silverstone he said: 'for a long, long time we’ve had periods of dominance. I’m lucky to have had one with my team. Michael Schumacher had it, Sebastian Vettel had it, and now Max’s period has arrived.' Just now in Hungary right after taking pole he said some shit like 'Max was doing 'Max things' in quali' which is a lil crazy to me. 😐 when the fuck did u ever hear Lewis Hamilton refer to a 'Max thing' except when Max has his ((much beloved)) category 5 Jeddah moments or bullies him during fp1 because he liked dared to breathe in his direction. Like since when is 'Max thing' a compliment. Like something shifted here and part of that is Max's inevitability in this car but also like how Lewis perceives that inevitability. Yk personally I cud only ever measure myself thru the people who beat me. In sports truly competition is all that is, u find somebody better and u chase after them. That's what Max did. He's rewriting those same records, because he can. And everybody who was ever somebody in motorsport did the exact same thing, including Lewis. And Senna right up until he died, because of the way it happened too, unfortunately, changed not only how u saw motorsport but also how u saw the person inside the car.

sharl was recently asked about lewis and max and had a very Leclerc type answer that I found very interesting:

Q: You were able to beat both Verstappen and Hamilton, who is more difficult to deal with?

Charles: "Both of them, they have completely different driving styles. Max always goes to the limit, I like his approach. He is aggressive and creates spectacular fights. Lewis on the other hand is very clever. In the way he positions the car after a corner, for example. He is less aggressive but thinks more. If he doesn't overtake you in one place, it's because he's thinking of an easier one in which to attack!"

Like is this not the most senna prost shit you've ever read in your entire life 😭😭. I think it comes down to how u approach a race and what u do wid the machinery ur given and faced wid certain track-specific challenges. Like look at this Spa weekend and you'd think it's the opposite of what sharl described, but it isnt. Max and Lewis can both be very aggressive, they just came up in the sport differently and established themselves wid different cars. Also neither of them about to let checo catch a break djdkdkd. In CONCLUSION ‼️ motorsport in general is a narrative driven competition wid a mechanical element that can make or break anybody no matter how good they are. Max himself becoming part of the mechanical element is unique to him, tho. Its above and beyond. Trust that the driver who became synonym for dominance in f1 is definitely paying attention lmfao

[bit-dodgy-innit]

Playground Appropriate

Part of my 500 Follower Celebration set in The Shape of Youniverse

The Prompt: Marc is the best dad ever with Nyla at the local playground

Requested by: a lovely nonnie!

Pairing: Marc x afab!reader, background Steven x afab!reader and Jake x afab!reader, Reader is married to the system 

Spice-o-meter: 🌶🌶🌶, Explicit, Minors DNI!

Word Count: 2.5k

CW/TW: Bosses being terrible, Marc is a booty-ful DILF but reticent about another bb bc trauma, mention of lactation kink and pussy-drunkenness, dirty talk, sixty-nineing so both m! and f!receiving oral, P in V sex, a smidge of over-sensitivity and spanking, daddy kink

A/N: Is the gif shitty and low-quality with a tacky watermark? Yes, but guess what? I DON’T CARE! I made it myself because the video from whence it came and an idea from @lovetopanic that MAJORLY inspired me when writing this fill. To the beautiful little bambina who made this ovary-exploding moment happen, thank you for your service. 

As much as you loved being back at your job, you hadn’t missed days like these. Your and Marc’s plans to take Nyla to the Discover Children’s Story Center were promptly and thoroughly ruined when your boss called early this morning, a Saturday, and demanded you report into the office for an emergency meeting. You were in charge of one of your company's largest accounts, which while it came with lucrative bonuses and more challenging, fulfilling work, it also meant dealing with your superiors’ neuroses. 

Your husband patiently listened to your laments while you got ready to go into the office. You wanted nothing more than to tell them to shove it, but your family was swiftly outgrowing your current place and you needed every penny of everyone’s salaries – yours, Marc’s, Jake’s, and Steven’s – to afford more space in the overpriced and cutthroat London real estate market. 

“We can go another time,” Marc tried to downplay the inconvenience as you finished primping in the living room mirror to look office-presentable and he fed Nyla breakfast. 

“I know it’s not a big deal, it’s just–” you slipped on a pair of loafers and huffed, “--it’s the principle of it you know? Graham and Nigel are both middle-aged divorcees, they don’t have families they care about spending time with, so we all suffer. In-person too.” 

“Which is why you have to hang in there and get promoted so you can change things,” your husband reminded you. He turned to Nyla, “We’ll find something to do just the two of us.”

“You’re right,” you conceded. “But can you blame me for wanting to spend every second I can with this chunky monkey?”

Rather than waiting for Marc’s reply, you peppered your daughter’s plump little feet and legs with kisses in her high chair. She squealed in delight at your affections, flailing her hands in delight and sending her banana slices flying.  

“Thanks,” he harrumphed at the additional mess. 

“Sorry,” you apologized with a kiss to his cheek before you pulled on your jacket and grabbed your bag.

Nyla proceeded to slam the tray of her high chair and shrieked even more when she saw her mom was leaving home without her. Marc knew he’d be dealing with an irate 16-month-old if he didn’t handle this right. 

“Okay, come here little girl,” he freed his daughter from her seat and scooped her in his arms. “Let’s say goodbye to Mommy.” 

They met you in the doorway and your baby’s sweet, cherubic face, currently with banana smeared across it, tugged at your heart strings. You wanted nothing more than to text your bosses to go fuck themselves, how dare they take you away from your baby any more than necessary, but you were tolerating these nightmare men ultimately for Nyla’s benefit. “Mommy will be back soon sweetie, be a good girl for Daddy.” 

“Wave bye-bye Nyla,” Marc encouraged her, modeling the gesture himself. After a few moments of watching her father, Nyla mimicked his wave. It was the cutest thing you’d ever seen. “Bye-bye Mommy, we love you, bye-bye!” 

“Bye Smushy, love you so much,” you waved back at her, swooped in for one last kiss on those chipmunk cheeks, then addressed your husband. “I’ll text you when I’m free, honey.” 

“Sounds good, babe,” Marc murmured and pecked you on the lips. 

Leaving the two of them felt akin to a death march as you exited your building for the Tube. No matter how big Nyla got, you always felt an ache when you left her. Even when she was in the more than capable hands of her doting dad, being apart from Nyla felt as if there was a piece of you missing. It was easier to cope with when you were sleep-deprived or your daughter was driving you crazy, but you and Marc’d had such a lovely morning with her.

***

It was a herculean effort for you to maintain a professional veneer during the meeting with Graham, Nigel, and a few fellow godforsaken colleagues. Thankfully, assuaging their concerns about the account didn't take more than an hour and a half. You just needed to send a few “urgent” emails and then you could return to the quaint, quiet weekend you’d been enjoying with your family. 

You immediately fired off a text to Marc once you left the conference room. 

From me: Leaving here in 10! 

From Hubby: K, we’re at the park. 

Marc was the “coldest” texter out of him and his alters. Steven loved his emojis, while Jake messages were always a mix of English and Spanish with an abundance of typos in both languages. He wasn’t much of an emoji user, though he did love the smirking devil one. It was usually fitting, after all. Boy loved to sext. You’d tried over the years to hammer into Marc’s brain that ending texts with a period meant that you were either angry or a psychopath, but it was a lost cause. 

Today Marc redeemed his unintentionally icy text by sending a photo of Nyla on the swings at Dulwich. You were impressed that he’d not only managed to dress your daughter in an outfit that wouldn’t get her seized by the local safeguarding children board, she sported an actual hairstyle to boot. You detested the phrase, but Marc was blossoming into quite the “girl-dad”. 

From me: PIGTAILS! 

From Hubby: Steven helped with those. 

From me: Well done, you two! See you soon xx 

***

When you arrived at Dulwich playground, you spotted Marc and Nyla before they saw you. You took a moment to covertly observe them, marveling at how attentively the man who was initially afraid to hold his newborn was now playing with his daughter. He followed her every move, steadying her with gentle and firm hands when Nyla needed it, encouraging her the entire time. 

Turned out you weren’t the only one admiring Marc with Nyla. You’d be the first to sing the praises of Marc’s butt, and with him bent over tending to his daughter as she toddled around, you couldn’t exactly blame the mums and nannies that were enjoying the view. 

You approached them before it got creepy and announced yourself with the exclamation, “Is that my big, beautiful girl?!”

“MAMA!” Nyla launched herself at you and you swept her in your arms at once.  You dotted kisses all over her face, and lifted her up above your head, earning a peal of ecstatic laughter. Then, just like that, she was squirming to be released. 

Marc sidled up to you once Nyla’s feet were back on the ground to ask lowly, “Do I get a kiss?”

“Hmm, let me see.” 

He got a kiss alright. One with tongue and that included your hand wandering into the back pocket of his jeans to give one of those luscious ass cheeks a squeeze. Were you marking your territory? Maybe. 

“Now, that was not playground appropriate,” he panted when you broke apart.  

You shrugged your shoulders and answered in a voice that was not one bit repentant, “Oops.” 

“Mama!” Nyla banged on the thick plastic of one of the playground’s slides. 

“Apparently the first fifty times we went down together weren’t sufficient,” Marc observed wryly. 

“Of course not,” you laughed and passed him your bag to hold.  

Twenty minutes with Nyla and all of your work frustration was forgotten. The three of you ended up spending the remainder of the afternoon at the park, stopping to pick up a pizza for dinner on the way home since neither you or Marc felt like cooking. 

Later, your husband tucked Nyla in while you wrapped up a few outstanding emails on the couch. You met Marc just outside of her door and collectively tip-toed into your bedroom.  

“That was impressively fast,” you remarked once it was safe to speak at full volume. 

Marc emerged from the en-suite with his toothbrush in hand. “The playground tired her out thankfully.” 

You sat up on your knees from your spot on the bed. “You can’t blame me for wanting another baby when you’re so good with her.”

You and your husband had begun to discuss Baby Number Two. While Steven and Jake were on board, Marc was the hold out. The last thing you wanted to do was pressure him since you suspected his reluctance was out of lingering fear and trauma from his past. 

“Steven and Jake just want to knock you up so they can milk your tits again.” Marc earned a little shove from you for that statement, but he continued, “Also you said you wanted to be in a bigger place before we had another?” 

You cursed Marc and his stupid memory when he disappeared back into the bathroom to brush his teeth. 

He joined you on the bed, and you tucked your fingertips under his T-shirt to strip it off. “How about we compromise then, and you pound that big cock into me instead?”

Your husband groaned, both from your naughty suggestion and the touch of your hands flitting from his chest downwards. “Shit, I hope she stays asleep because I’ve wanted to fuck you raw since that move you pulled at the playground.” 

“Hmmm, I can feel it,” you purred, wrapping your fingers around his growing erection. “Watching you take such good care of our little girl made me so wet.” 

“Lemme see,” he grunted, momentarily removing your hand from his dick to knock you back among the pillows. 

You spread your legs as soon as your back hit the mattress, and Marc wasted no time hiking up your nightgown to get a glimpse of your folds. A low, aroused rumble resonated from his chest at the sight, compelling him to trail kisses up the inside of your thigh.

“This little pussy is always so pretty and glistening for me,” he growled. 

“Marc,” you sighed, your voice thin while he touched you. “Wanna suck your cock.” 

Your husband didn’t have to be told twice. He manhandled you on top of him, leveling your eyeline with his throbbing dick while he lined up his mouth with your entrance, which was currently clenching in anticipation. You drew his length between your lips and swirled your tongue around its head, tasting the salty pre-cum that had begun to leak from it. Marc groaned at the stimulation and sank his face into your pussy in turn. 

Together you made the most divine feedback loop of pleasure, your slurping around Marc’s member, spurring him to lap at your folds all that more enthusiastically. It was nearly impossible to focus enough to apply any technique to sucking your husband’s dick when he was tongue-fucking your hole and drinking down your ample nectar like a man starved. His deep moans reverberated against the wet, sensitive skin between your thighs, bringing you even closer to the orgasm steadily building within you. 

You choked on your husband’s erection when he landed a slap on your ass, then moaned around him when the large pad of a calloused finger found your clit. The extra stimulation, in addition to Marc’s tongue swirling inside of you, is what you sent over the edge. Your eyes crossed, dick still in mouth, as your peak swept your body from head to toe. 

The force of your climax meant you needed to pull off his manhood to get sufficient oxygen into your lungs. Just when you’d recovered enough to resume your worship, Marc tapped your thigh to stop you. Though your husband was usually all too happy to come in your mouth, tonight was different.

“Need your cunt,” he clarified with slurred, pussy-drunk words. 

“Fuck…okay,” you gasped, your voice rough from having your husband’s dick down your throat.

Maneuvering you onto your back amongst the pillows was an easy task for Marc, your body made pliant and prone by the delicious orgasm. He leant down to share an absolutely filthy kiss with you, greedily tasting the tang of the two of you together, before he locked eyes with yours. Only once your dilated pupils had found his did Marc drape your leg over his shoulder and slide home.

You rewarded him with a drawn-out keen, writhing under his dark, suffocatingly hot gaze. He began with slow strokes, grinding himself against your pelvis, luxuriating in being one. 

“So deep, daddy,” you whined. Speared on his cock, your frame convulsed when he undulated against you, since your slit still felt like a live-wire after your orgasm. 

He rocked even more torturously slowly where you were joined, circling those sinful hips so you could feel every inch of him. “You like it?” 

“Uh huh,” you gasped, jerking once again from oversensitivity. 

Your husband transitioned to a faster pace to impale you on his member. His increase in tempo earned a euphoric whimper from you. With no orgasm to chase, you could simply revel in the sensation of his dick filling you over and over, losing yourself in the stretch of your pussy around his thick girth. 

“Yeah…come on, take daddy’s cock,” he snarled as he thrust into you, backing off his ferocious rhythm some. “So fuh-fucking tight.” 

“So big,” you whimpered, pretty sure that you were about a minute away from vibrating out of your skin. 

“No one fucks you like daddy, right?” Marc slowed, waiting for your answer before driving into you any further. 

You shook your head so rigorously, your cheeks collided with the pillow as your neck thrashed back and forth. “Please daddy, pound my pussy!” 

He approved of your response with another growl, “Well, since you asked so nicely,” and resumed a punishing pace. 

From there, it was a blur of the sound of skin slapping skin, Marc’s grunts, your cries, and your husband testing your flexibility by stretching your leg back to get a deeper angle before his hot cum was painting your walls. 

Marc straightened up after emptying himself into you, pressing a small, reverent kiss into the skin of your ankle before releasing your limb. 

Honestly surprised that you could formulate words, you somehow commented, “I know the jury’s still out on a second kid, but you are damn good at making them, Marc Spector.” 

“As are you, Mrs. Spector,” he echoed, collapsing back on the bed. 

He tugged on his boxers once again, and you pulled your nightie back down as you padded to the bathroom to clean and relieve yourself. Marc followed suit, and when he reunited with you in bed, it was important to you to confirm, “Another baby or not, you know you’re a great father, right?” 

Usually Marc would deflect with a (often dirty) joke, but this time, shrouded in the darkness of your bedroom, he replied quietly, “I hope so.” 

“You are,” you averred and snuggled closer into him. “It’s not just me either, the entire female population at the playground was salivating over you playing with Nyla today.” 

“So that’s why you greeted me with that pornographic kiss,” he chuckled.

“You’re mine,” you shrugged, not one bit ashamed of your actions. 

Marc pressed a kiss into your hair, “That’s right, baby.” 

A/N: Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by Oscar Isaac not putting a baby in you 🙋‍♀️ I’m doggedly making my way through these prompt fills, thanks to everyone again for your patience and support! 

Taglist: @twwcs​, @rmoonstoner​, @hot-mess-express1​, @murdickdocked, @toracainz​, @saahmi​, @unspokenmoon​, @winterbiipp​, @avatarofseshat​ @ilikeoldermenhelp, @losers-club6​, @harrys-tittie​, @ninebluehearts​, @lucianadraven32​, @dawnsutopia​, @strawberry1042, @nikitawolfxo​,  @weirdo125  

[rachaelswrites]

Shyness

Bucky Barnes x Daughter!reader, Steve Rogers x Child!reader

Word Count: 1,837

Requested By: Anonymous

Ok so I was thinking if you could write something where baby Barnes reader is very shy and only likes to be around Bucky and doesn’t talk much bc of hydra and Bucky had to go on a mission or something and asked Steve to watch her or something and Barnes reader slowly takes a liking to him and stuff

A/N: Reader is about 3 or 4 years old

Even before HYDRA had gotten their hands on you, you were a shy baby. You never left your dad’s side and when people talked to you, your dad always had to answer for you, even around Steve you were shy, your dad’s best friend. 

After HYDRA and after you two were rescued, you barely spoke a word, even to your dad. Bruce assured him that it would just take some time for you to be back to your normal shyness and he was mostly right. 

You became more and more talkative with your dad again but around the rest of the Avengers, you were silent. Sometimes you’d say a “please” or “thank you” but Bucky did most of the talking for you. He hoped you’d outgrow being shy soon. 

Bucky didn’t go on missions very often and when he did, they were short ones, lasting a day at the most. You weren’t close with any of the other Avengers and Bucky didn’t want to push you when it came to that kind of stuff. The mission he was leaving for now was going to last at least two days and he was still trying to think of who to leave you with. He decided on Steve, someone who’s known you longer than anyone else. Steve knew you when you were a baby but even then you didn’t speak to him. You certainly weren’t going to now. 

~~~~~

Bucky made sure everything you would need was out for Steve to find easier. He didn’t want to disturb your routine too much so he told Steve he could stay in his and your room at the compound. Bucky hoped that a familiar environment might help you open up to Steve more. 

Bucky was finishing up packing when there was a knock on the door before Steve entered. You were in the main area of the tiny apartment when he entered and when you saw him, you avoided his gaze and went back to your toys. 

“Buck are you in here?” Steve asked. He knew better than to talk to you when you were feeling shy. He wouldn’t get very far even if he did. 

“Yeah,” he responded, stepping out of his room. He spotted you in the corner of the room, not paying attention to Steve, “Hey Y/n, did you see Uncle Steve was here? Do you wanna say hi?”

You looked to your dad, who gave you a reassuring nod before you turned to Steve and waved shyly, “Hi,” you mumbled. You were used to your dad trying to get you to talk to people. 

“Hi,” Steve said as he waved back. 

“So I have everything you two are going to need. Most of her things are in her room but if you can’t find something you can ask her. She knows where everything is. Right babydoll?” he asked, looking over at you. 

You nodded. 

“Okay then,” Bucky said, grabbing his duffel bag. You recognized that that was the bag your dad always took when he left so you stood up from the ground to say goodbye. When you made your way to him, he picked you up and placed you on his hip. 

“You leave?” you asked. 

Bucky nodded, “Just for two days. Steve will be here to take care of you.”

You looked over at Steve and he smiled. You shrunk back into your dad and hid your face in his neck, “Y/n,” Bucky said gently, “Steve won’t hurt you okay? He’s a good guy and one of my closest friends. I promise he won’t hurt you,” he kissed you on the forehead before setting you back down on the ground, “If you have any problems, just call me,” he said to Steve. 

“Will do,” Steve hugged Bucky and watched him leave the room and close the door behind him. Steve then turned back to you, seeing you already back on the floor and playing with your toys again. He decided to give you space for now and find something to keep himself occupied until you needed him. 

~~~~~

It was nearing your normal lunch time and you were getting hungry. Most of the time Bucky would already be carrying you into the kitchen so you could help make it but you didn’t want to do that with Steve. You would rather not ask him for lunch but you could hear your stomach growling and knew that meant you had to eat. 

You made your way over to Steve, who was sitting on the couch reading, and tapped him on the arm.

“Hey Y/n, do you need something?” he asked, setting the book down so his focus was on you. 

You nodded and pointed to your stomach. 

“Are you hungry?” he asked. He looked over to the clock that was on the nearby table, “I can see why. It’s past twelve already,” he stood up from the couch and walked towards the door. He noticed you weren’t following him, “Do you want to come with me? I know you always help Bucky.”

You paused for a moment before slowly following Steve, from a distance, out the room and into the kitchen. You climbed onto one of the stools at the kitchen island as Steve stood at the counter, “Do you know what you want?”

You pointed to the cabinet next to Steve so he opened it. Once you spotted what you wanted, you pointed to it. Steve couldn’t exactly tell what you were pointing at, “You want spaghetti?” he asked but you shook your head. He looked again, “You want the cookies? I don’t think Bucky wants you eating those for lunch.”

You shook your head, “No. Mac and cheese,” you said quietly, pointing directly at the blue box in the cabinet.

Steve nodded and pulled the box out and read over the directions, ‘Do you want to help me with it? It’s okay if you don’t.”

“Can I?” you asked quietly. You enjoyed helping your dad and Steve seemed nice enough so you figured you should give him a shot. 

“Of course you can,” he pulled up the small step stool that Tony had made for you up to the counter before making sure you were on it. 

While making lunch, Steve managed to make small talk with you. It wasn’t much but he could tell you were warming up to him. 

~~~~~

After lunch, you stayed in the main common room of the compound. You spent most of the afternoon coloring as the other Avengers came in and out. They always smiled and waved at you but they never expected an answer back. Steve was sitting behind you on the couch while you sat on the floor in front of him at the coffee table. He was talking to Sam as he walked by when he felt a tug on his pant leg. 

He looked down to see you, holding up a crayon and a blank piece of paper, “Color?”

“You want me to color with you?” he asked. 

You nodded and shoved the two objects at him. He chuckled before sliding off the couch and sat next to you, filling his own page with doodles. 

A few minutes later, you slid your paper in front of him and pointed to it, “You and папа*,” you said, looking up at him, “He talks ‘bout you.”

“He does, does he?” Steve asked and you nodded. 

“For you,” you said. 

“Thank you Y/n. I love it,” he said, picking it up, “All artists sign their work. Do you want to sign it for me?”

You nodded and took the paper from him and grabbed one of the crayons from the table. You wrote your name as best as you could where Steve had shown you and gave it back to him.

~~~~~

Everyone who was at the compound that night got together for a movie night. Since you were going to be in attendance, Tony made sure all movies were kid-friendly (he didn’t want a lecture from either Steve or Bucky about inappropriate movie choices) and that there were enough snacks and drinks for everyone. 

Steve made sure you had something to eat and drink and that you had enough blankets and pillows before he let anyone press play on the first movie. He had already changed you into your pajamas, knowing you would fall asleep sometime during a movie. 

He was right. Right after the second movie started, he felt you start to inch closer and closer to him. You had started off a few feet away from him on the couch but now, you were snuggling up to his arm and using him as a pillow. He knew from watching you with Bucky that when you were tired, you got clingy and cuddly, “Do you want to go to bed now?” he asked you quietly so he didn’t disturb anyone. 

You rubbed your eyes and nodded so Steve stood up from the couch and waited for you to follow. When you didn’t immediately get up from the couch, he turned around to see you, with your arms out, clearly wanting him to carry you. He carefully picked you up from the couch making sure your blanket and stuffed animal you brought from your room were with you. He carried you from the common room and back to you and Bucky’s room and into your room. He had already done your nightly routine so all he had to do was tuck you in. 

He pulled back your covers and then laid you down on the bed, tucking your stuffed animal under your arm before covering you with all your blankets. He turned on the small night light that was next to your bed before turning back to you, “Do you need anything else?”

“Can you wead to me?” you asked him. 

“Sure,” Steve went over to your bookshelf and started scanning over the titles of the books, “Is there a specific one you want?”

“Can you tell me one?” you asked shyly. You didn’t know if you overstepped but from the small smile that formed on Steve’s face, it didn’t seem like you did. 

He walked back over to your bed and sat down on the edge but you scooted over and patted the space next to you. He got up and moved over to the spot next to you before laying down next to you. You cuddled into Steve’s side as he wrapped an arm around you protectively. He was so glad that you had taken a liking to him so quickly. He was almost positive that it would take a lot more time for you to feel this comfortable around him but he wasn't going to complain. 

Steve had only gotten a few minutes into his story before he looked over at you and saw you fast asleep next to him. You had somehow managed to hold onto his arm tightly, making him unable to get up and sleep in his own bed. 

*papa

Taglist

@ssebstann @peachyprincessss @emmy-writes-sometimes @dudele @prentisswrites @laura-naruto-fan1998 @multifamdomfan12 @aquariuslavenderhoney  @vxidsti1es @waxingmoonwrites @benbarnesbussy  @hallecarey1 @freds-slut

[consumedkings-archive]

ancient names, pt. viii

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt viii: the space between us

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~6.9k (????)

Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.

Warnings: Language, some “light” religious blasphemy (it’s Far Cry 5). Strong canon deviance from here on out. Some more PTSD symptoms/descriptions, though mild.

Notes: This chapter is like, nearly 2k longer than most others and folks, we got it all: identity crisis, PTSD symptoms, the irritability of being surrounded by Seed brothers, the irritability of perhaps not having eaten or had any real water for like two days, Jacob being a shithead, the "sees love interest in x state of undress" trope, YOU NAME IT. When does the fun stop?? We'll never know. tl;dr Elliot pops off like 6 times and honestly, who’s surprised anymore.

I hope you guys enjoy, it feels a bit like this chapter got away from me and not a lot of exciting stuff happens but it did feel important to have this lull of a chapter between all the action and drama. Thank you, as always, to my angel @starcrier the best proof-reader a girl could ask for an also a remarkably thoughtful and sweet friend who for some reasons decides to bless me with her presence to this day.

Thank you so much to everyone who comments, reads, reblogs, likes--all of it is always cherished by me, and it really does inspire me to keep going. <3

tagging my lover my life my shawty my wife @empirics bc she still wanna go here even when i babble at her nonstop

John had hoped that Elliot would go to sleep, but he knew the chances of that happening were slim to none and he wasn’t surprised when, out of what he could only assume was pure spite and anger, she stayed awake the entire drive to the compound. She stayed awake through John recounting what they had experienced of the cult already, what they knew about Faith; Elliot stayed oddly silent, in the way that swelled with the knowledge that she probably knew more than what she was letting on, but John didn’t push.

Jacob stuck to the side roads, the back roads, keeping them as far from the most populated areas as possible: and John could see that it drove Elliot batty, knowing they could just stop at Fall’s End. The radio’s gospel songs echoed eerily in the cab of the truck. After about five minutes of it playing—and, coincidentally, about two minutes after Elliot had smoked down the entirety of her first cigarette—she blurted out, “Can you turn that shit off?”

“Why?” Jacob asked evenly, and John passed a hand over his face tiredly as he heard Elliot take in a huge breath, as though she needed to make sure she properly had enough oxygen to spit her venom out.

As John began tiredly, “Deputy, mind yourself and close your mouth,” Elliot bulldozed him to say, “Because I’ve got a head wound that seems to get exacerbated by idiotic cultists,” their voices once again overlapping until their words strangled each other, Elliot glaring at John. He really wished she would stop looking so betrayed when he took the side of one of his brothers; it wasn’t as though she and him had ever really felt like a team , anyway.

Except for the ranch, dispatching of those Swedes in tandem. And except for when they’d been driving, and Elliot had actually looked happy for a second, even with their hands cuffed together. And except for—

Knock that shit off, John thought to himself, just in time for Joseph to say, “It seems as though your time together has made an improvement on your temperament, Deputy Honeysett.”

“What gave you that impression?” Elliot prompted, despite John’s not-so-subtle pleading look.

“Well,” Joseph continued, “we always do try to have faith , you know, especially in our brother. But considering the animalistic state you were delivered to him in, I would have expected much more poor behavior out of you.” A gentle smile tugged at his lips, an expression John could see reflected in the rearview mirror. “I like to see the impact he’s had on you.”

John couldn’t quite sort out how he felt about his brother’s words. He wanted to be proud; he wanted to think, yes, see? I’ve tamed her, the hellcat, look at her keeping her hands to herself. He wanted to, but there was a complicated feeling wound up in it, because he saw the way Joseph’s words struck Elliot, the way they collapsed the iron-clad battlements of her expression, the way they folded her up and crushed them in his proverbial fist. It was exactly what Joseph did; disarmed, unwound, pulled each tangling thread until they were so knotted all you could do was cut it out.

So yes, John felt an immediate burst of pride in his chest at Joseph’s words, and that pride was almost instantly wiped away at the look on Elliot’s face. It was as though she couldn’t stand the idea that he had made an impression on her, in any way. Disgust, he thought, fending off the insult of her abhorrence of his influence, hatred. She has always been spiteful and venomous, underneath it all.

“Just wait until you outgrow your usefulness, Seed,” Elliot managed out, her voice crackling with something violent. “You’re the only one I want to see dead before I hand you over to the government.”

Joseph rolled his window down. “I see that your manners still need some polishing, though.”

Elliot looked at John. Her gaze was hard, but he returned it nonetheless, expectantly. She asked, “Proud of yourself, are you?”

“Elliot,” John began, moderating his voice so that he didn’t sound as pleased as he felt (and of course he didn’t know why he was doing that; there was no reason he should work so hard to preserve Elliot’s feelings, and yet… ) so that she wouldn’t be right about him, “it doesn’t…”

“Shut up,” the blonde snapped. Her voice rattled, with anger and with the sick inside of her. She pressed herself back into the corner of the bench seat in the back; she looked like she wanted to melt into the truck’s frame. “I’m fucking tired of your voice.”

“Watch your mouth,” Jacob said from the front seat.

“You shouldn’t be smoking,” John interjected tartly, feeling himself scramble for something—anything—that felt like normal between them again; the normal that had happened with being forced into each other’s company. “Not until you get better. You still sound sick.”

“ You got those cigarettes for me,” Elliot quipped, vitriolic, “and what the fuck isn’t clear about shut up?” 

As soon as the words left her mouth Jacob pushed on the brakes, hard, the movement slamming the back of her head against the window in the back of the truck. The blonde let out a volley of swears, her hand flying to the back of her head instantly.

Jacob said, his voice prickling with hostility, “I told you to watch your mouth.”

“Jacob—” John began, having braced himself against the driver’s seat, but he could already feel Elliot seething. 

“You fuckhead ,” Elliot bit out, spiteful as ever, her fingers coming away sticky and crimson. “You absolute piece of—”

“Jacob,” Joseph murmured, “let’s not waste time on the road.”

“Elliot, stop squirming,” John insisted, his voice more urgent now. “You’re going to get blood everywhere.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is it inconvenient for you that your brother reopened my fucking head wound ?”

“That isn’t what I meant,” John growled. “Stop squirming.”

His voice came out more authoritative than he had intended, wound up-tight and hard by the antagonizing nature of Elliot and Jacob’s exchange. The blonde’s jaw clenched, but she stilled; his hands went to her face, tilting her head so that he could take a look at the wound. Reopened, yes, but only just.

“Don’t move,” John said firmly. He could feel Joseph’s eyes on him, and he thought he knew what he was thinking—that once again, he had reaffirmed Joseph’s words, that he had made some kind of an impression on her, that had he told Elliot two days ago to stand still so he could look at a wound that she probably would have sunk her teeth into his arm like a wild animal.

“Didn’t grab any bandages when we were at the ranch, huh?” John asked, trying at something closer to civil.

“I wasn’t thinking particularly beyond bare necessities,” Elliot replied dryly, her voice muffled by her chin tucked against her chest. John made a noise of agreement—he hadn’t thought to grab any, either, having anticipated they’d get the fuck out and be at the compound by now—and sighed a little.

“Well, let’s rip your shirt.”

“Why aren’t we ripping your shirt?” Elliot prompted, and John blinked at her incredulously.

“Do you have any idea how much this shirt costs?”

“Oh, you pretentious little manchild —”

“Fine!”

John didn’t rip his shirt. Instead, he peeled the shirt off, shrugging out of it and folding it to press the gathering of fabric to the wound. Elliot straightened back up into a sitting position, reaching up; her fingers fluttered over John’s, almost shyly, replacing the pressure of his hand with her own so that he could pull away and let her hold it herself.

“You should have just ripped it,” Elliot said, her eyes flickering over him before she caught herself and looked away. Were John not convinced she was running a fever, he might have thought he saw her blushing. All the same, he felt the corners of his mouth tick in something close to a smile.

“It’s easier to scrub blood out than it is to stitch it back together.”

“That’s our John,” Joseph acquiesced from the front sagely. “Ever-giving.” He paused, tilting his head to peer at Elliot and John in the back, “All we ask for is a little civility, deputy. After all, it is our sister that’s been kidnapped.”

Elliot replied, “You seem very concerned about that.” And then, “By the way, they have Joey too, which wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t pass her off to this idiot,” and she jerked her thumb at John.

“If they wanted to kill Faith, they would have already,” Jacob replied, hitting the bridge to the island and flipping the cruise control on as he blithely ignored her comment about Hudson. “Since she was alive when the two of you saw her. Isn’t that right?”

Elliot muttered something of an agreement, as though Jacob were not saying the things she had already said, as though she so desperately did not want to agree with him about something that she would rather choke on her own words than say it out loud.

“We have some search parties sent out,” Jacob continued, his steely gaze sweeping across the road as he flicked the turn signal on—certainly, pure habit at this point. “To pin them down. Once we have them located, we can work on getting Faith back and wiping them out.”

The blonde beside him was quiet, now. As Jacob pulled the truck into the compound—which looked nothing short of a ghost town, now—John glanced over at her again, nursing the wound with his shirt. She looked only tired, as though she’d spent all of her energy in just this car ride alone.

Jacob put the truck into park and turned it off; as they filed out of the car, John swept his gaze over the compound; everything seemed peaceful, as if nothing were happening, a low breeze drifting over the houses and church while the early afternoon sun drenched it in a harsh, unforgiving light. Though it was quiet, the stillness of the compound unsettled him, and the knowledge that many of their followers had been tucked away in the bunkers for safekeeping made his skin crawl.

“John.” Joseph’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. “Why don’t you take our dear deputy to one of the guesthouses to get settled in? There’s no reason why she can’t rest while we’re getting the radios set up to contact her...” His voice trailed off as he seemed to search for a word, and then eventually mustered up, “Friends.

“I’m not your dear anything,” Elliot said slamming the truck door behind her. Joseph’s lips quirked in a small, muted smile, his eyes beneath the yellow lenses of his glasses nearly unreadable.

“Not yet,” Joseph relented.

John's hand reached Elliot’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said, shaking the way Joseph’s pinning gaze unsettled him, just a little, like there was nothing that was happening that his brother wasn’t cataloging for later.

“Don’t touch me,” she muttered, shrugging his hand off of her but following him nonetheless. John could hear his brothers exchanging words in low voices on their way into the church, and that little sting in his chest lingered, more firmly: the idea that Joseph was pawning off responsibility to him to make him feel like he was doing something important remained.

Elliot pushed the door to a guest house open. “You really just took your whole shirt off instead of ripping a little piece, huh?” she said. It might have been her attempt at casual conversation, but John couldn’t say for sure. It was always so hard to tell what was going to trip that hairpin trigger into enemy territory again.

“It’s Versace, Elliot.”

“Oh, boo .” She pulled it away from her head. “I think you just wanted a reason to be shirtless in front of me.”

John blinked. He didn’t know what to say to that, the most friendly, nearly flirty thing Elliot Honeysett had said to him in many years—which was saying a lot, considering the last time they had spoken in a friendly manner, she’d hardly said more than a stammer of a sentence to him before Joey Hudson swept her away.

“Wouldn’t you like that?” he managed out after a moment, taking the shirt back from her as he got his mental footing back. “I saw you looking. No need to be shy about it, though—we’ve already established you find me handsome.”

Elliot scoffed, but he saw her face flood with red just before she turned away, pacing to the bathroom at the back of the house. “Found, once, years ago,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t let it inflate your ego, Seed.”

He called after her, “Too late,” and she slammed the bathroom door; the very definitive sound of the shower running echoed in the empty house, and John exhaled a small breath in relief.

As he inspected the bloodstain that had gathered on the front of the shirt, he felt a pleasant little thrill in his chest; a stain was a small price to pay for having made Elliot squirm her way out of that conversation, he supposed, and he remembered the way Joseph had said, I like to see the impact he’s had on you. 

Not so wild now, John thought, are you, hellcat?  

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The benefits of a hot shower were never to be underestimated.

Though Elliot had gone into her shower feeling bedraggled, worn down, furious, and more than unseated—both by Joseph’s assertion that there was a yet to be had with the friendliness of their relations, but also by John’s casual confidence in her attraction to him.

She wasn’t attracted to him. John had held her under like he was going to drown her, really drown her. He’d wanted to tattoo wrath right on her chest.  

Elliot’s fingers fluttered over the spot where John’s had dragged, just a day or so ago now, as he said, I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you think? Maybe just over her heart. The same place dream-John had touched, the same place her skin had been burning when flower-eyed John, spilling petals from his mouth, had gripped her face in his hands.

They were getting mixed up in her head now, all of these Johns: the John she had spooned for warmth with in the forest, the John that hadn’t complained when she anchored her fingers into his arm for steadiness, the John that held each side of her face while her body and mind split, somewhere in the middle, bringing her back down before she slipped away permanently; they all wove and intermingled themselves with the others that she knew, the Johns that kidnapped her friends or kidnapped her or held her under or leered at her in a bar when she was young.

It was almost— almost —romantic, the kind of ferocious dichotomy she would have read in a book somewhere, sometime, in a place where she still had the leisure to do something like that: read a book, take a nap, browse television channels. 

Almost, but not quite, because there was and could never be something romantic about John Seed.

Elliot startled out of her thoughts when someone knocked on the bathroom door, the sound echoing in the small bathroom much louder than she thought the knocks would have actually been.

“You’re not climbing through the window right now, are you?” John’s voice came through the door. Elliot quickly wiped the amusement she felt creeping into her face and ducked her head under the water, the heat of it stinging her wound in a sort of catharsis.

“If I was,” Elliot called back, “what would you do?”

“Very funny, Elliot.” And then: “I’d probably kick this door down.”

“How very caveman.”

“Well, you know—desperate times. Plus, I hear women like that kind of thing.”

She rubbed her face with both hands to stop the smile tugging at her mouth. She had to keep focused: she had to remember the way John had practically glowed, radioactive with pride at Joseph’s praise that he’d made an impact on her, that he was changing her. For the better, they thought. For them. Elliot had hardly seen John around his brothers, but the short amount of time that she had (and wasn’t drugged out of her mind) it had become very clear to her that the relationship between them wasn’t as easy to swallow as she would have thought.

But it was easy, when she was given the luxury of a hot shower that molded all of her muscles into relaxation, to feel like they were on a team. It was easy—especially when John had handled her so carefully, like his hands hadn’t inflicted pain on numerous other people, like he hadn’t carved sin after sin into flesh as a macabre brand. Easy, Elliot thought, willing herself to turn off the hot water, because she couldn’t stay in a shower forever. Easy to forget. I can’t forget what’s happened.

“Any chance you’ve got some jeans out there?” Elliot said, stepping out of the shower and finding a clean (clean?) towel hanging; she didn’t have much time to be picky, so she wrapped it around herself and squeezed some of the water out of her hair. Outside, she could hear John stomping around, fumbling through things, and once she’d gotten mostly dried off she opened the door.

“Oh,” John said, like he hadn’t been expecting her, standing just a foot away from the door and holding a collection of clothes in his arms. Jeans, it looked like, and a few shirts. His own shirt was back on, the dark bloodstain turning the navy blue nearly black on the front.

“Oh?” Elliot prompted. She held her hand out for the clothes while the other kept the towel in place.

“It’s just that you look...” He paused, and then handed her the clothes, regarding her almost warily. “You look—”

And he stopped again, and Elliot thought, well go on, spit it out, then, her eyebrows arching upward expectantly.

“Nice,” he said after a moment. As though catching himself, he amended, “Normal, I mean.”

Elliot’s expression deadpanned. “I am normal, John. You’re the one that’s part of a cult, remember?”

He squinted his eyes at her. The spell was broken; the clock had struck midnight; he was no longer enchanted with her, numerous days of grime scrubbed off of her body.

Rather than argue the logistics of his family’s venture being a cult or not, John said, “Change quick, it shouldn’t take long for them to get the radio ready.”

“Yes, boss,” Elliot replied demurely, mimicking the words he’d used when she’d told him to shut up and be a good blanket. John’s eyes flashed to her face and then away, but she didn’t spend too long trying to parse out what his expression was; she closed the door and busied herself with shimmying into the clothes, leftovers from Eden’s Gate members, it seemed. Relatively clean, too, considering she usually saw peggies in various states of disarray and neglect.

After she’d pulled the rest of her clothes on, the white shirt—clearly meant for a man—nearly swallowing her up, she kicked the old, dirty clothes out of the way and opened the door.

“Would you have really kicked the door down if I was climbing through the window?” Elliot asked, scrunching her hair. The back of her head throbbed, but in a pleasant way; the wound had been thoroughly rinsed, and though it still ached from Jacob’s foot slamming the brakes, she didn’t think it was concussive. Yet.

John leaned against the door, regarded her with a dry expression. “Why?” he asked. She opened the door from the “guest house”—it was really more a bunkhouse than anything—and shrugged.

“I hear women like that kind of thing.”

A swift, easy breeze drifted through the doorway as Elliot stepped outside, taking one moment—just one moment—to close her eyes, and breathe, and think, I’m so close, Joey, to rescuing you. I’m so close, I swear I’m on my way to you. Please, just hold out for a little longer.

“—than woman.” John’s voice rattled around in her head, and she opened her eyes looking at him over her shoulder.

“What was that?” she asked.

He sidled up behind her, his hands in his pockets, and bent just a little at the waist so he could say into her ear, “I said, it’s a good thing you’re more devil than woman,” and against the wishes of her mind, the skin of her neck prickled with goosebumps.

She scrunched her shoulder up to her ear to fend him off. “That’s right, John,” she replied evenly, “I am a devil, and don’t you forget it.”

Elliot saw movement out of the corner of her eye, her body stiffening a little before she turned her gaze and saw that it was Joseph, standing at the steps of the church.

“Children,” he called, his voice welling with some kind of emotion that Elliot couldn’t quite pin down—perhaps amusement, or something else. “Are you done? The radio is ready for you, deputy.”

“Born done with this one,” Elliot replied, feeling the small smile that had been fighting its way onto her face slip from her features. There was just something about Joseph that put her on edge; every second she spent in her presence reminded her of the way he’d looked at her, that night in the church, when he’d said, God will not let you take me.

Like she was the only person in the room. Like she was the only person that had mattered.

Elliot liked to think that she was not the kind of person that would be so easily won over by a cult—but she also knew that they looked for people like her, people with a history of trauma, people who had fewer parents than a child ought to have, people whose one functioning parent was only barely functioning and only crested the standard when they had a few drinks in them. She was exactly the kind of person that Joseph nurtured, cradled, forgave, and she thought that for a second in that church, that night, she had thought about how nice it would be to feel that. Once.

But she had a family, and people who cared about her and relied on her and would miss her. Like Joey.

With long strides, she crossed the small courtyard to the church and stopped in front of Joseph, waiting for him to move aside so that she could go in.

“Feeling better?” Joseph asked her mildly, and when he didn’t move aside she shouldered past him. “You look like one of us.”

“Peachy,” Elliot replied flatly; she purposefully ignored his last words, rinsing them away by focusing on the task at hand. The inside of the church was dim, with only the Eden’s Gate window at the back. Her stomach dropped unpleasantly; a surge of panic washed through her, and she was suddenly reminded of the feeling of Eden’s Gate members shoving past her, watching her through fringes of dark, dirty hair, and Joseph, hands outstretched, waiting.

And John, prowling in the background, ever a predator waiting for his prey.

Joseph brushed past her, walking down between the rows of seating to where Jacob had set up a table, the radio crackling as he adjusted some settings on it. Elliot pushed her way down as well, hating that her steps faltered, that Jacob’s piercing eyes caught every step that didn’t quite hit the way that she wanted it to. Behind her, she heard the easy, confident cadence of John’s steps, the door to the outside shutting.

For the first time since getting in the truck, Elliot felt like she was in the belly of the beast. If only, a voice inside of her said, if only you had known this then, instead of now.

“Well,�� Jacob said, “are you going to call them or not?”

She snatched the radio out of his outstretched hand, her heart hammering in her chest. So close; she was so close. If she wanted to, she could tell Jerome and the others where she was, flush the Seeds out well and good once and for all.

But she couldn’t, because she still needed them. At least, she needed one of them, to get Joey back.

Elliot adjusted the settings on the radio to the proper channels, swallowing thickly, and hit the button on the side. Joseph lingered under the window, a few feet away, his back to her; behind her, she heard John’s steps pacing closer to her.

The radio clicked, static buzzing patiently on the end. Her mouth felt dry. “Jerome?” she asked, tentatively into the static. “Jerome, do you—read? It’s me.” And then, quickly and feeling like an idiot, “Elliot, I mean. It’s me, Elliot.”

Silence stretched on the other side for just a moment. Then, the static crackled, and a familiar voice broke over the radio, “Elliot? It’s so good to hear your voice again. Thank God, we were—” Jerome’s voice broke up a little, and then picked up, “—about you. Where are you? Did you get away from John?”

Relief immediately flooded her system, the sensation almost painful; her heart thudded painfully against her chest, and she gripped the table with her free hand to keep herself steady.

“I—” Elliot paused. Her gaze flickered to John, who now lingered to the right of her; Jacob loomed to the left, and Joseph, ever the pinnacle, ever the point of the pyramid, just in front of her. The closest to heaven.

John’s gaze weighed down on her, pinning her, so that instinctively she wanted to squirm right out of it.

“—I’m okay, don't worry about me," she said after a moment. "I'm on my way to get Joey. Jerome, I need you to listen to me."

“Tell me where you are,” Jerome insisted, his voice crackling through the radio with urgency. “We’ll help you get Hudson back. It’s been quiet, here.”

John rolled his eyes, barely veiling his contempt. Elliot shot him a look and cleared her throat, trying to ignore the way that the pastor’s words clutched and pulled at her heart. Jerome’s voice was like a balm to her nerves; she realized, quite suddenly, how much she actually missed being around people who weren’t the Seeds, or members of Eden’s Gate—someone who actually cared about her.

“Please listen to me,” she tried again. “There’s someone else here. A different group, a new—cult. They’re here and I think they’re going to wipe everyone out. I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but you need to take everyone out of Fall’s End and get them out of here, okay? Everyone, and just evacuate as fast as you can.”

“What? Elliot, what are you talking about? ” Jerome’s voice faltered for a moment, and then he said, “Please don’t try and Atlas this thing, deputy.”

Elliot pressed her hand to her forehead. When she lifted her head, Jacob’s eyes were fixed on her, and he said, “Two minutes, deputy.”

Of course, she thought, both exhausted and infuriated. This fucking Darwinian psycho wouldn’t want to give them a fighting chance.  "There wasn't a fucking time limit on this radio call before."

"You're calling the people that want us dead," Jacob deadpanned. "One minute."

Elliot wanted to say that not even a full minute had passed, but she knew better. She bit down on her cheek until she tasted cooper, trying to refocus her attention.

“There’s no time, Jerome,” she insisted, talking faster now as the proverbial clock ticked down. “Take everyone from Fall’s End and leave, okay? I’m getting Joey and we’ll meet up with you a town over, or further way—just don’t stop driving. I can’t explain anymore. I have to go. Jerome?”

There was no answer on the other end for a minute; she could picture Jerome and Mary May arguing back and forth about what they needed to do for this, for her, and her heart ached a little in her chest. Finally, his voice crackled through: “I hear you, but Elliot—let one of us come and help. We’ll get you and Joey out of here.”

“Give Mary May a hug for me, okay? And get Dutch, and everyone, and get the fuck out of here.”

“Elliot.” Jerome’s voice had changed. Her hand had gone to turn the radio off, but it stilled. “Tell me you’re alright and mean it.”

It wasn’t his Resistance Business voice, anymore, and nor was it his pastor voice. It was his dad voice, firm and unrelenting, but not unkind. It welled with gentle affection.

Elliot felt her vision wobble a little. It was embarrassing, that Jerome could disarm her this far away, without seeing her or knowing what the last two days had been. She swallowed thickly and ducked her head against her chest a little when her breath shuddered in her chest.

“We’re worried about you, kid. All of us.”

“Deputy,” Jacob said, impatient, and Jerome continued, “You can tell me if it’s not okay.”

“I’m alright,” she managed out into the radio, willing the tears back away, back from where they had come from. “I’m alright, Jerome, I promise. Please get everyone out of here.”

She put the radio back down on the table and switched it off; she exhaled sharply, once, through her nose. Her chest felt tight, and her body ached, every muscle and tendon and joint in her body feeling deeply bruised. She thought, for one awful, terrible moment, that she might actually start crying right here in front of all of the men she least wanted to do that in front of.

“I guess we’ll see if they make it out,” Jacob said, his voice painstakingly casual and clipped all at once. Elliot felt something hot and sticky flare in her chest, like all of the oxygen had been sucked right out of the air around her. "And if they don't, well—probably means they weren't ever meant to."

She didn’t want to think about the Resistance not making it out; she didn’t want to think about the slow, oozing creep of the cult sidling up on them, of Ase’s fingers on their faces, lovingly planting their gutted corpses with fresh, vibrant blooms.

“Shut the fuck up,” she managed out, her voice wobbling. Jacob’s mouth curved at the corner into something like a wicked smile; he might have been infuriated by her petulance, she thought, if her voice wasn’t thick and wet with unshed tears. She straightened up, digging her nails into her palms, thinking, I could kill him right now, wrap my hands right around that big neanderthal neck and strangle the life right out of him.

But she couldn’t, even if at that moment she really wanted to, because talking to Jerome for even that short time had reminded her about what it felt like to have people around her that cared about her; it had reminded her about being around people that she trusted, that trusted her, that shared the same beliefs. That wanted to take care of her.

She had almost forgotten that, being handcuffed to John Seed for almost two days straight.

“We’ll pray for their safe departure, of course,” Joseph said. His words echoed, tinny and hollow, in her head. She blinked furiously. Elliot was only vaguely aware of John pacing back across the room and saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear what it was; not really.

I am so tired, she thought, over the sound of John talking to her. I am so tired, and I want to go home.

“When will your peggies be back?” she asked, interrupting the sound of Jacob and John blustering back and forth. Joseph paused, and then cocked his head at Jacob expectantly. She waited for one more beat and then said, louder and with more fervent impatience, “I said, when will your little cockroaches be back from finding Joey and Faith?”

Jacob replied, bitingly, “Within the next few hours. They’re going to pin down a location and get back to us.”

“Great.” Elliot turned on her heel, marching herself down the same hallway that just a little over a week ago, she had been walking down with Burke and Whitehorse. “Fuck off until then, you piece of shit.”

It felt like her lungs might burst, or her heart might beat right out of her chest, before she made it out of the stifling darkness of the church. She pushed the door open and hurried outside to take a lungful of fresh air, air unpopulated and unshared with Seed boys.

I’m just one girl. The thought was a desperate one, one that turned over and over again in her mind. That these things were just happening to her, that she had no agency in her life, that it might always be like this. Forever. I’m just one girl.

Elliot walked to the bunkhouse, pushing each step into the dirt in the hopes of feeling more grounded, each breath of air slowly bringing her back to the earth. When she made it inside, she closed the door quickly behind her and paced, rubbing her face. The bunkhouse no longer felt surprisingly clean. It only served as a reminder of where she was, where she wasn’t, where she might never go again.

She pushed her hands against her face until spiderwebs crawled behind her eyelids. They blistered, red fractals of light swimming in her non-vision. She was only a girl, and she was alone—no family and no friends nearby to help, and that was supposed to be good; if Jerome listened to her, they'd be out of Hope County within a few hours.

There was no more room for error. Fall's End evacuating meant there was no rescue party coming, in spite of her words. It meant that she was really only going to get one shot at getting in and getting out, for good. Get Joey, get Boomer, get out. Period.

The door clicked open. Footsteps echoed against the hollow wooden flooring. It was John; she could tell by the way he walked. “Elliot.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement, not a how are you, but something else, something that Elliot didn’t know what he meant and or what he was saying or what he thought to gain from it. Did he ever do anything that didn't have any personal gain for him?

“John,” Elliot said, her hands pressed into her face, “can you just leave? I am so tired of hearing your voice.”

“Elliot,” John said again, “take a breath.”

“I am breathing, you fuckhead,” she snapped viciously, turning to face him—John, in his stupid fucking designer shirt, his head cocked to the side as he watched her, the venom in her voice landing but not hitting the way it should have. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be alone? Really, truly alone? Like, for fucking good, unless by some godforsaken miracle your insane brothers don’t kill me as soon as I’ve served the purpose of fetching Faith back.”

“I do," John replied angrily, "and they don’t want to—”

“Oh fuck off, John.” She raked her fingers through her hair. There was a nasty, wicked monster, crawling up from through her, fingers sliding between the slats of her ribs to get a good grip. “You should see yourself whenever Joseph says anything. You practically fall over to kiss the ground he fucking walks on, and for what? For him to give you a little pat on the head? You’d do absolutely anything he asked you to. You’re fucking pathetic.”

That hit the way she wanted to. She saw the hurt slide across John’s face, and then the anger, a power-point presentation on How To Make One Man Hate You. 

“You have a lot of nerve, deputy,” John bit out (and she didn’t miss the way he no longer was using her name, like he wanted to distance himself from her), “to talk to me like that, given that you would probably be lying dead in a field with flowers coming out of your eyes without me. Not to mention that you need us to get your little friend Hudson back—”

“It’s your fucking fault!”

She felt the rasp in her throat, the claws of sickness shredding her delicate insides as her voice flexed painfully in volume. John was staring at her, and she thought, I have to stop yelling, I have to stop, this is just what they want, for me to lose control, but she couldn’t, the words welling up inside of her, wrecked and vicious, and she felt like all of the blood had fled from her hands and feet; she was ice, now, frigid and unyielding.

John’s mouth twisted, like he was shaping the words he wanted to say before he said them. He started, less heated this time, “Elliot—”

“It’s your fault,” she interrupted, clenching her fists at her sides until her hands itched and burned with the intense need for circulation. “It’s your fault—I should—I should be leaving with Fall’s End and leaving this absolute fucking nightmare behind, or—or maybe that shouldn’t be happening at all because this is my fucking home and you and your stupid family took that from me, and I fucking hate you, John Seed, John Duncan, whatever the fuck your name is, whoever the fuck you are, I don’t care and I hate you!”

He stepped forward, his hands lifted, like he was going to touch her; perhaps rest his hands on her shoulders, take her face the way he’d grown so accustomed to doing when her breathing shallowed and her eyes unfocused. But she pushed his arms out of her immediate vision, and while infuriatingly he didn’t get out of her space she still bit out, crushing the words on their way past her teeth, “Don’t fucking touch me, John,” and his hands dropped back to his sides. 

She tried to ignore the strange, fleeting disappointment: as though she had been anticipating his grounding touch, as though she had wanted it, her body betraying her words and her head.

No more, she thought through the haze in her mind, no more of that.

He shifted on his feet. “You’re tired,” he said after a moment, which sounded not like the thing that he wanted to say but instead the thing that he decided was safe. “You should rest. The search parties will be back soon, and you’ll need to be at full capacity.”

Elliot stared at the bloodstain on his shirt. It felt like all of her insides had been scooped out, emptying her; her stomach twisted, both with anxiety and hunger.

“Yeah,” she replied numbly. “Alright, John.”

He turned on his heel, walking through the door to the bunkhouse and letting it swing shut behind him. The room felt colder without another human body in there; emptier, lonelier. Elliot sat herself down on the wooden floor and pushed her face into her knees.

This wasn’t supposed to be me. Her ears rang, her heart thudding painfully in her chest, a black stone falling over and over until her ribs bruised and cracked. This wasn’t supposed to be my life.

She closed her eyes tight, arms looped around her knees, pressed against the wall of the bunkhouse, and willed herself to sleep.

[oswald-privileges]

Could you talk about The Magnus Archives to a potential new listener? What do you like about it? What drew you in?

I HOPE YOU’RE STILL INTERESTED IN THE ANSWER BC HEY I’M GIVING IT TO YOU NOW

short version! The Magnus Archives is a horror anthology podcast with an incredibly refreshing stance on horror, an overarching metanarrative, and Chill Queerness. Also just. Such a good range of scary things. Such a good range 

You can listen to the trailers on the podbay here http://podbay.fm/show/1095138637

Long version!

I picked this up on someone else’s horror recommendation, and I’m pretty easy when it comes to horror or weird anthologies- I’ll give everything a go once! But I DID fall in love with tma for some very specific reasons, so I’ll expand on them here.

Refreshing Stance on Horror

What I mean by this is that the short stories that make up the show and the overarching metanarrative have a consistently unique take on horror tropes, styles, and traditions. It revels in those that work; the stories usually have lightly sketched first person narrators, placing the main focus on the events and horror of the story itself; the Magnus Institute in whose archives the show is set is a classic “spooky organisation that documents and collects weird stuff”; the topics or horror-creations it chooses to explore are incredibly wide ranging, so there’s a monster or a transformation or a situation for everyone. While the show is definitely aware that you’re there to be spooked, it’s also like a celebration of the best parts of the horror genre. It’s a show that has fun. 

And when it comes to the tropes that don’t work well, or the parts of the genre that are tired or straight up facilitate all the horrible “isms” of criticism? They’re cut or adapted if they’re useful, or outright excised if they’re not. 

An example of the former: There’s an in-universe explanation as to why the people giving these statements to the Institute are so loquacious and well-spoken. It’s also a spoiler, which kind of indicates how neat a trick it is and how well integrated it is into the lore of the show

An example of the latter: The writer has explicitly stated in a Q&A episode that they have zero interest in writing sex as horror. Perspective characters will occasionally have sex with someone, but that will just be part of their lives or the situation they find themselves in. A good example of this is the episode Squirm- the statement giver visits a club, and brings home a companion-

“I mean, we had sex. There’s not much more to say about that, really. The important thing is what happened afterwards.”

The situation itself is not the horror, nor is it there to sell the story to the listener. The normality of it is what produces the discord, the familiar/common setting of bringing someone home for a night juxtaposed with the suspense and culmination of the actual horror story.

Overarching Metanarrative

The Magnus Archives is kind of a story about stories. The individual statements are linked by their narrator, The Archivist, and a slowly expanding cast of his co-workers, investigative team, people trying to kill him, and terrifying monsters. Most of the characters fall into at least two of these categories. As the stories that get read slowly reveal more and more, the characters responses change, their arcs progress, and conflicts develop and are resolved in a truly suspenseful fashion.

Several other podcasts try to do the same thing- I’m thinking particularly of TANIS and The Black Tapes- but in my own opinion, fall very far short of the kind of depth of character and sense of cohesive progression that The Magnus Archives creates. I feel as though that might be because with other podcasts, the unravelling of the mystery is very linear- one clue progresses to the next and the next with little deviation or space for reflection. The Magnus Archives keeps character arcs linear and focused, but allows the mystery to come to light in an organic, non-linear way. It feels as though you are solving things alongside (or sometimes before) the characters, as opposed to just following the breadcrumb trail. 

The Magnus Archives has also managed something I’ve never seen another podcast do so well- it maintains the “this is being recorded” conceit almost flawlessly. Most podcasts that aren’t pretending to be Real Life radio shows tend to outgrow that concept eventually, as excuses for the recordings become more and more tenuous, and are eventually quietly dropped (Wolf 359 does basically exactly this). But The Magnus Archives preempts this, with multiple different in-universe reasons for the recordings. Again, most of them are spoilery, but also sufficiently spooky. The general feeling is that there’s something listening in on everything that’s going on, and it’s not just the audience. 

Chill Queerness

A shorter, more simple point here, but this show is just. So relaxed about diversity, and not in the vaguely irresponsible way that can happen when the topic just Isn’t Addressed. Someone’s sexuality or race or disability is never made a topic of horror. I’m of the opinion that those things should never be left out of horror altogether; Get Out, and certain episodes of I Am In Eskew are examples of how those things can work together without being either suffering porn or punching down. But The Magnus Archives doesn’t bring that kind of horror, and it’s honestly deeply reassuring in some ways. The variation is there- the narrator is asexual, statement givers mention husbands or wives or partners, mental illness or gender issues, physical disability or just physical variation- but it’s never used against them, and it’s never used to scare. 

Such a good range of scary things. just so much cool horrible nasty things are you kidding me

Horrible anglerfish things that dangle empty people-shape lures at you. Walking masses of disease and worms. The entire concept of entropy. Doors that open into corridors that only turn right forever and ever and ever. Spiders!!!!! Living shadow dark things. The man who met The War. Caves that want to keep you down in the dirt forever. Endless sky in all directions. Books that Can And Will do so much worse than kill you. 

there’s something here for everyone and it’s such a good time

[thanks--for--listening]

bravery

as promised, the AWAE fic i wrote months ago and forgot about. i think i accidentally made some stuff up but i’m not sure (will elaborate in tags). also it takes place toward the end of season 2 but i don’t remember the specific episode but its after anne burns her paper for miss stacy and they talk about it and shit hopefully you all know what im talking about. also i haven’t seen season 3 yet bc america sucks so no spoilers. (also on ao3).

~~

Anne had decided long ago that she would never grow bored of staring at Cole’s statues.

They seemed to dance, the way they stood scattered among the trees, each one in its own unique position. They had a rhythm to them, when you looked at the whole of it. It was as if they were meant to be together, to be seen not as individuals but as pieces of a bigger picture, like you would never truly understand them if you looked at just one. 

“They truly are beautiful sculptures.” The voice startled her, and she turned to find Miss Stacy standing behind her. Marilla had left already, and Anne had assumed that Miss Stacy had followed suit. 

“I think they’re the most magical things I have ever laid my eyes on, even more so than the Lake of Shining Waters.”

“I hope I get the chance to meet him someday, your friend the artist.”

“Oh, you would love Cole, Miss Stacy. He is truly the most marvelous of people.”

“May I ask you a question, Anne?” She said, and Anne nodded. “Why do you want me to like you so badly?”

“I—“ Anne stuttered, that sinking feeling of dread forming in the depths of her stomach. She had begun to believe she’d never outgrow that instinct, the one that always prepared herself for pain. 

“I’m honored, don’t get me wrong,” Miss Stacy continued, “I just don’t understand it. You don’t know anything about me — why would my opinion matter so much to you?”

“I suppose everyone’s opinion matters to me,” she said softly. 

“Do you have any idea as to why that might be?” Her voice was so soft, so light and without judgement, that Anne didn’t quite know how to proceed. It didn’t sound like she was about to be punished, but why else would she be asking if not to scold her on her vanity?

“I suspect it might be because it’s the most splendid feeling in the world. It’s intoxicating, Miss Stacy, to have people look at you and like what they see. To have people who want to spend their time with you, who want to listen to what you have to say.” She looked back at the sculptures. “Being wanted and being liked are so intrinsically intertwined. I suppose that’s why it matters to me.”

“That’s a very normal feeling, Anne,” she said in that teacher voice that made her feel both as if she was being scolded but also as if she was learning a valuable lesson. “But you know, there are worse things than not being liked.”

“I’m not quite sure there are, Miss Stacy.” She turned back toward her teacher, and felt a flame ignite in her chest at the look on her teacher’s face, the one that said without words that Anne could not possibly know more than what her age deems she must. “I assure you, I am no stranger to the horrors this world has to offer.” Anne spoke with a power she often kept hidden from her teachers, one she rarely used even with Marilla. “But it is my experience that not being liked, not being wanted, either leads to those horrors or makes them infinitely worse.”

“How so?” The look from earlier had disappeared, and Anne only saw curiosity on her teacher’s face. 

“People don’t hurt those who they like. And those who are wanted never have to suffer the feeling of being completely and entirely alone.” 

“Who taught you that?”

“Everybody, Miss Stacy. Everybody.”

Miss Stacy paused for an instant, before saying, “You’re fairly young to have learned such a horrible lesson.”

“I may only have fourteen years, but I have spent most of them without the benefits of childhood innocence.”

“And why is that?” She asked, and Anne felt shocked for a moment, at the realization that one person on this island truly had no idea who she was. Where she came from. 

“Because I’m an orphan. Or, I was, until the Cuthberts adopted me just over a year ago.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, and Anne didn’t want to think about what that tone implied. 

“That isn’t gossip, by the way. Everybody knows it, and it’s about me, so I think I’ve still managed to learn your lesson. Although, I suppose perhaps at one point it would have been considered gossip. But can a person’s very being be considered gossip? I’m as much an orphan as I am a girl with red hair, and no one would say discussing the color of my hair is gossip.”

“No, that’s quite alright,” Miss Stacy said. She stared at the sculptures, and for a short while didn’t speak a word. The silence seemed to linger, slowly filling the space between all the statues and trees that surrounded them. Anne couldn’t stand it. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Why are you sorry?”

“I shouldn’t have said anything about it. People get uncomfortable when I talk about where I came from.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

Anne shrugged. “Sometimes I don’t want to remember. Especially last year, I’d try to pretend it never happened, pretend I was like everyone else. But I still haven’t quite figured out what’s normal and what isn’t, so I haven’t had the most success with that plan. I’ll think I’m describing something everybody experienced, and then I notice the way they’re all looking at me, and I realize that most people haven’t known the feeling of a whip on their back, or of sharing a room with more people than you can count, or of spending nights without food.” She paused a moment, before adding, “I don’t think they like being forced to acknowledge that real people experience all that bad stuff all the time. Especially not someone who’s like them now.”

“I think you may be right,” she said. “And if you ever have questions, you should know that you can always ask me. That is, assuming I’m still here. I’m not too sure how far those young mothers are willing to go to get rid of me. It seems I’m the talk of the town.”

“Thank you, Miss Stacy,” she said with a smile. “Although I think Marilla will wish you’d have come sooner. As it is, I’ve already done more than enough to establish myself as the resident scandal in Avonlea.”

“Don’t look now, but I think I’m coming for your title,” Miss Stacy teased, and Anne laughed, even though the sentiment wasn’t funny at all. But she knew more than anyone that you couldn’t get through life without laughing about horrible things. 

“I should go home,” Anne said, grabbing her books from the ground. “If I’m not back soon, Marilla will be sure that fox has come after me now that he’s gone through the chickens.”

“Hopefully I’ll see you in class soon, Anne,” Miss Stacy smiled. “And don’t forget — I’ll still be expecting that essay on the perils of gossiping. Preferably in one piece this time, and not burnt to a crisp?”

Anne laughed. “I promise I’ll try my best not to burn this one.” 

She turned to walk away, but Miss Stacy called out her name. “You’re very brave, Anne,” she told her. “I hope one day I can say the same for myself.”

“If you need bravery, you can always borrow mine,” Anne said with a smile. “I’ve found that courage is much easier when you have people with which to share it.”

She turned to leave, slowing her pace as she navigated through Cole’s artwork. The wind sang as it blew through the trees, and she felt as if she was one of the statues around her, dancing to the tune the Earth gave her with not a worry in the world.

[gayagendaofficial]

Wait, what’s gay lingo? Like, what does twink, bear, etc. mean?

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED!

Before I get into actually defining these terms, I’d like to write about a few things:

So this is probably in reference to this post I made. Not to explain the joke to death, but that’s exactly what I’m about to do. I wanted to make fun of how people who aren’t mlm think they know what mlm terms like “twink” and “bear” mean and how they blatantly use them incorrectly everywhere, because they think they’re funny (bc gay men are a joke, right? //sarcasm), or because it makes them look “woke”. It’s an idea I had for the longest time when I saw something a str8 woman wrote about Zac Efron being a twink, in the present. Like yes, Zac Efron was a twink, past tense, but he is absolutely not a twink anymore (if you can even call a str8 man a twink). And she also implied that being a twink is something you can’t outgrow, which is laughable, because it’s kind of a meme among gay men that being a twink is something you grow out of whether you like it or not.

This mostly seems to be a problem among cishet women, since cishet men tend to be too concerned with their “masculinity” to touch gay culture. But since this is tumblr and virtually none of you are cishet, a lot of the times I’ve seen people misuse these terms on this site were LGBT+ people who weren’t themselves mlm. In those cases, the reasons seem more that these people are just misinformed, and they use these terms because mlm use these terms, and we share a community. Part of it comes from the fact that wlw might see the terms “twink” and “bear” as analogous to “femme” and “butch” respectively, which is not true in the slightest (Butch and femme are their own complex thing. What they actually have in common with twink and bear is that few outside their communities actually know what they mean lol).  Another reason might be that other LGBT people see mlm using these terms sarcastically and think they’re being used in earnest; if an actual gay man calls a bodybuilder a twink, he’s probably being sarcastic, and also probably trying to insult him (which is a whole can of worms I’ll open up in a bit).

I’m gonna try to define what “twink”, “bear”, and a couple of other terms actually mean, as well as give a little bit of context to how they’re used and controversy surrounding these identities within gay spaces, partially based on my experience as a gay man and partially based on casual research. I’m just one gay man, and I’m not an expert in queer studies or anything, so take from that what you will. I hope this will be useful to mlm who are just discovering their identities and exploring their sexuality/gender, who are new to the community, and I also hope to inform our siblings elsewhere in the LGBT community. This info could also be useful to cishet allies, although please be mindful of your intentions in using these terms.

Anywho, lets get to the definitions:

A twink is a young, smooth, slim mlm. The definition here is generally seen as being pretty strict on those 3 criteria, although “twink” is sometimes used for older mlm who are skinny and don’t have much body hair. Those last two criteria are the most important, because there are other categories for mlm that fit one of the criteria; an otter is essentially twink + bodyhair, and there’s a whole host of other words for other body types.

The definition of “bear” is a little more flexible than “twink”, although it generally comes down to the inverses of those same 3 criteria. The most important of these is the bodyhair requirement; any definition you find of bear includes something about being hairy. Almost as important as bodyhair is body type, although “bear” covers a slightly larger range than twink in that regard. Usually, “bear” indicates that someone is large or plus-sized, although it can also sometimes be used to describe someone who is muscular in the sense that they are beefy (if you can see a 6 pack, he’s probably not a bear). It’s also sometimes associated with being slightly older, but that’s not nearly as important, and “bear” can refer to any age. The term “cub” refers to mlm with the same body type as a bear, but who are smooth and young.

Now, let’s get into some misconceptions/controversies surrounding these terms. The first of these is that twink and bear are the only two options, and that all mlm fall into one of these two categories, or that other terms are simply variations on those two main terms. This misconception is really only one held by people who aren’t mlm themselves (or are, but are only just learning the terminology). These terms are extremely specific, and the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of mlm don’t fit into either of these categories. And that’s ok! There are a ton of other words mlm use to describe themselves. I’ve already mentioned “otter” and “cub”; there’s also “jock”, which refers to muscular mlm; “wolf”, which also refers to muscular mlm, but specifically hairy ones (with a bit of overlap with the “beefier bears” I mentioned earlier); the relatively new term “twunk” which you may know from this video as “a combination twink and hunk”; and many many more. In addition, all of these categories are really just physical descriptions of your body, and don’t have any bearing on anything else. You don’t need to fit into any of them.

That being said, there are a number of stereotypes associated with these terms, and it is important to address them.

Our next misconception is one that’s as common among mlm as as it is among everyone else: that twinks are by definition fem, and bears are by definition masc. “Masc” and “fem”, short for masculine and feminine respectively, come with their own host of problems, and that is a can of worms that I am not going to open up right now. This post is long enough as it is. If you want the sparknotes version of the controversy surrounding the masc-fem dichotomy, it basically boils down to misogyny, transphobia, and internalized homophobia. But back to twinks and bears: I would like to assume that it’s obvious that your body type or bodyhair has absolutely no impact  on your personal presentation of gender. There are plenty of fem bears and masc twinks. But unfortunately, most people don’t seem to get this. And this super important, because the gendered way we think of these terms affects everything else I’ll be talking about in the remainder of this post.

My next point, which is really and observation based on my experience in the gay community, is that bear as a term seems to be much less… loaded. However, being a twink myself, there might be a gap in my personal experience, so any bears feel free to correct me. However, from what I’ve seen, “bear” isn’t really used as an insult in the way “twink” is. Which is a bit of a miracle, considering how prevalent fat-shaming is in the gay community. From what I’ve seen, bear isn’t a term that’s forced on you, it’s a term that bears choose for themselves, almost always in a positive way. It’s a term associated with body positivity, and bear communities seem to be much less toxic than the gay community as a whole. Even when it’s used to describe someone else, it’s always a neutral statement of fact. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used as an insult, or even sarcastically. The worst I’ve seen of it is that it’s used as a porn category, which contributes to the fetishization of fat people; but then again, twink and jock are also porn categories, so it would be weird for bear not to be. This isn’t to suggest that bears are treated better than anyone else in the gay community, if anything they’re treated worse; just that the word “bear” itself has neutral to positive connotations. (Again, any bears correct me on this if you’ve seen it used negatively!)

Twink, on the other hand, is absolutely used as an insult, and frequently. And while this may sometimes be harmless, more often than not it’s really problematic. If you’re plus-sized and you use twink as an insult in the same vein that Nicki Minaj said “fuck the skinny bitches”, that’s completely fine. Twinks are seen as being desirable (if they behave a certain way; more on that later), so effectively it’s punching up instead of punching down. However, a good 95% of the time that “twink” is used as an insult, it really comes from one of the many stereotypes that all essentially boil down to the idea that twinks are fem. And the idea that being fem is inherently bad and insult worthy is, once again, rooted in misogyny, transphobia, and internalized homophobia. 

This association between twinks and femininity also has a lot of scary implications on the beauty standards twinks are held to. I’ve noticed that twinks fill a niche in the gay community that is similar to the role cis women are supposed to fill in western culture as large, and that we’re only seen as sexually valuable if we perform the same behaviors and meet the same beauty standards that are typically reserved for women. We’re bottoms by default, submissive both in and out of the bedroom (yes I actually am a sub bottom, but that’s beside the point). We’re supposed to maintain a completely smooth, hairless appearance; a shaved ass is the bare minimum of hygiene. I once met a guy on grindr who demanded that I be completely hairless everywhere beneath my eyelashes, and while that’s a bit extreme, he was by no means an outlier. Just today I talked to a guy who wanted me hairless between my neck and knees. We’re often seen as vapid and stupid, and infantilization of twinks is rampant (some guys put way too much emphasis on the young part of the definition). And, to cap it all off, there’s the racism! Who’d’a thunk that all forms of oppression are connected? (sarcasm). Twinks can of course be any race, but the ones you’ll see men on grindr going after the most are white or light-skinned Asian twinks. Combine that with stereotypes of Black, Latino, and Middle Eastern men as dominant and aggressive, and you have a whole slew of white supremacist ideas painted over with a thin coat of gay porn.  (mlm of color who’d like to add or correct me on anything, please do so!)

I’ll end this already long post with a comparatively brief discussion on who these terms apply to. Basically, if you’re an mlm and you fit the definition of “twink” or “bear”, congratulations! You’re a twink/bear! “Can bi men use these terms?” Of course! “What about trans men?” Are you attracted to men and male-aligned people? Then of course! That last one might be controversial to some cis gays, and to that I say fuck right off. However, it does get a bit muddier with trans women and transfem nonbinary people and the word twink. Trans women are absolutely not mlm, but many of them have been a part of mlm communities for a long time, often before they even realized they were trans, and some may be reluctant to give up the word twink (I haven’t seen this for bear, although again, lmk if you’ve seen evidence to the contrary). And on top of that, a lot of cis men looking to have sex with trans women conflate trans women and cis twinks. Because remember what I said about twinks filling the niche of women? It’s often a niche they share with trans women, except trans women have it even worse, because they are actually women. My two cents is, if a trans woman wants to refer to herself as a twink, she’s more than welcome to. Just don’t go around calling trans women “twinks” unless they specifically say you can; it’s a gendered term, you are misgendering them, and, once again, you can fuck right off. (trans women also please comment if you want!)

Well, anon, I bet you weren’t expecting a post this long. At least I hope y’all learned something! Be gay do crimes!

[queerhannibal]

Yeah tbh at this point if they kept will and Hannibal at each other's throats it would honestly just be boring?? Like we've seen that, we saw two seasons of that. Now I wanna see will getting comfy with the beast inside him and indulging in everything he fought against for so long, and learning how to live with the monster he's fallen in love with. Will's chosen Hannibal and now they've got to make that work. That's the interesting story. Nobody wants another mizumono at this point

Yeah??????????????????? It would be boring and it would be shitty writing and I mean I hope that’s obvious enough that they would know better than to do it but it’s hard to say

the problem with television shows is that it’s difficult to really have much in the way of actual character development bc people watch the show bc they like the themes it’s exploring and if you let your characters grow in a natural way then they outgrow old themes and grow into new ones and the people who liked the original characterizations might not like what the characters grow to be as much, you know?

So a lot of times even creators with really neat and innovative ideas fall into this trap of making characters basically repeat the same mistakes over and over without growth bc they think that’s what the fans want. Which works if your show is like The Simpsons where time literally does not pass, but doesn’t work at all for a show like this one

And obviously there has been some obvious character growth that’s happened; none of the characters are making the same choices in the finale that they would have made in the pilot. They did that well. But the finale leaves them at an odd point in regards to that: they’ve so far managed to keep similar overall dynamics despite the characters’ individual positions shifting around within them, and now with that embrace on the cliff there’s a shift out into an unknown space

If suddenly Hannibal Lecter is not capable of exerting power over... basically anyone... then what is the show about? Hannibal holds Will close and lets him throw him off a cliff. Will holds Hannibal to him and throws himself off the cliff at Hannibal’s side. Realistically, they can’t come back from that with the same kind of dynamic that they had before

Like it seems to me that while there is bound to still be antagonism and certainly a fair amount of unease (possibly awkwardness) between them after that experience, taking either of them back to a place where they were inclined to be genuinely at odds, with a genuine intention to cause the other irrevocable pain, death, or imprisonment would be ridiculous??

They’ve both gotten to the point where they realize they need to find a way to make this work, and maybe that’ll be really goddamn hard and maybe they’ll fuck up with each other some, but that’s totally different than the dynamic we’ve seen between them up to this point, so if we get more show, their relationship will have to reflect that or it will be, again, bad writing

And I mean, the people who want another Mizumono the least have to be them???????? Both of these characters suffered so much bc of that. There’s no reason either of them would want to put themself in a situation like that again, and if the writers had them do so it would be an obviously cheap attempt to introduce more drama

When in reality the far more interesting (and character consistent!!) story would be one about them learning to love each other peacefully, while the drama comes at them from outside forces and from the difficulties that arise when changing ones life so drastically

[tonyglowheart]

knightinironarmor replied to your post “8′) tfw the “defense squad” concept outgrows the original concept and...”

lmao your post is so real oh god

like i had to unfollow the tony stark defense squad tag bc it just became senseless vitriol. it's like watching my own child go out into the world Making Mistakes and i can't control them anymore

best of all are the people who are like 'i see u do not hate character x so why do u even list tsds in your description, get out' and i'm like!!!!! bitch no offense i fuckenin MADE YOU but OK

sorry i'm gonna stop i just feel this so deeply

honestly all of this is super Real Feel

I seriously had the weirdest “wtf” moment when I was talking in a completely unrelated Discord and it came up that the server head didn’t like Tony, and I was like D: D: and honestly as we spoke I had this...chilling realization of “oh god has THIS been going on in the peripheries,” like I’d seem some bits of it through the tags but I scroll by? But gdd there are ppl who are doing the thing where somehow they find?? untagged posts?? and then they don’t stay in their lane???? like I get it, Tumblr search blah blah blah. but just. hey if they’re not coming at you or other ppl or in the actual tags, and just posting on their own blog space then just leave it? ....pls ppl.

but yeah, god, the whole.....I don’t even know how or when or what, but this whole like. lmao I don’t even know how to put this in words.

It’s like. it’s the defense squad? not the “best defense is a good offense” squad. And like, I get it. I have my share of salt, too. and god, those days when it got really bad, when the Cap 2 fandom was getting huge... I Get It

but at the same time, it’s like “y’all.” pls don’t BECOME them, that’s...Not Helping 8′)

[weirdshitishappening]

Hello it’s me!

Listening to the new Lana Del Rey song/Mitski album and (again) finally getting back to making some record of my wild life as I level up into being a professional psychic/healer/priestess.

I started working with Miwa this past week, mostly running errands and bottle feeding my new sidekick, Orion.

She asked me if I would be interested in becoming a core staff member at the school. This meaning I’ll be on salary (hopefully 40k) at only 30 hours a week so I’ll still have time to do readings at my own practice. She even mentioned eventual training to teach, which is the BIGGEST HONOR other than being able to be in her home and hang out with her first lil one. 

When I first came to the school I couldn’t imagine this for myself. In such a short time I’ve progressed enough to find my passion/life’s purpose and make a career out of it. What the fuck. 

One major life stressor checked off my god damn list.

I’m so grateful I cannot explain it.

Next up, keep working on self growth things and clearing enough bullshit in myself to attract the love of my (this) life.

SPEAKING OF

After nearly two months of certified radio silence from A, I get a super cool random text from him saying that he “feels bad” for never responding to my last text and that he “just got back from an 8 day backpacking trip” that was the “perfect end” to his time in Boulder with me and his friend Travis. Even though the end of his time in Boulder with me was the last night we spent together before he moved to the mountains. He’s been back around town since then to see his friend I think, so I’m not really sure where this cognitive dissonance is coming from. Hopefully shame?

I decided not to reply because I have literally just given myself the closure I so desperately wanted from him. I spent weeks and weeks just waiting for that text, trying to give him space and hoping for an explanation for the sudden change in him. I mean, we spent like three days and nights a week together for at least a month. I met all his friends. He took pictures of me and rolled me herbal cigarettes. He told me he didn’t like head before me. I knew he was moving but I thought there would be a formal goodbye. I thought he would do that.

THEN

The bastard texts me again yesterday to let me know he’s “actually in Boulder for a friend’s birthday party” and that he would be “stoked to grab a beer” because he’s curious about how school has been for me lately.

Which... he’s not because every time I would try to talk to him about it he would glaze over and so I tried not to because I thought he would think I was weird and leave me and I liked him so much

HAHAHA

A quick morsel of advice, mostly for myself: ALWAYS B URSELF BC THEY MIGHT LEAVE REGARDLESS

So, again, didn’t text back. Went out to the fall festival and to some bars with Trevor and Alex to try and fun it away. Wanted to text him once I was many beers in, but did not because now that I’m mothering myself I need to have my best interest at heart. If he was in my best interest then he would have not left my heart to bake in the August sun for so god damn long, if at all.

I’m mad and sad about it, but mostly mad. Maybe a little disappointed.

Other things: went to the metaphysical fair last weekend and had two amazing readings. Basically confirmed grandpa is one of my guides and that I have a really strong grandmother figure (not sure who exactly) as a guide as well. Grandpa was saying my future is so bright I’m gonna need shades, which is something he probably would say if he still had a body.

He also said I need to be more confident in myself and pep talk myself because I am pretty cool and special. Plus I’m about to level up and start seeing things -outside- my mind’s eye. He told me not to freak the fuck out, basically. Which made me freak a lil but it’s ok I’ll get over it bc I am the next supreme

----side note----

Just remembered somebody leaked another unreleased Alex G song which means I get a little dose of pure love and dopamine for the next three minutes or so.

Sometimes when I listen to him or other music that really hits me in my soul I think of Ginny and how we’re not friends anymore and how it’s sad to outgrow people but important to set boundaries.

Most people don’t know how to look at themselves neutrally and see that where they’re triggered, lit up, hung up, or upset is really just a place where they’re not letting themselves have permission to do or be that thing. Or that maybe they’re taking out stress or pain from other area of their life/psyche out on somebody who triggers them in a completely different way.

END GAME

People are really good mirrors for us to check out where in ourselves we should look at, love on, and heal.

For example, me being so upset and angry at A basically shows me pretty clearly that I have some f u n abandonment fears, need to be better at giving myself what I need so I don’t put unfair expectations on others, and reminds me that ultimately I am the only one responsible for how I feel. I can take some time to be a human and be angry, but eventually I will chill tf out and learn what pitfalls to avoid in -myself- next time I meet somebody I really like.

Like, don’t sacrifice who you are. Communicate. Set boundaries and let them know how you feel and what you want. Realize when a person cannot give you what you want and leave instead of energetically cording them and wistfully hoping they’ll move around their life bc they love you so much.

We’ve all got our bullshit, but as my roommate Jeff always says: don’t trust anyone with baggage that doesn’t have wheels.

Goodbye for now. It’s 3:17pm and I’ve done nothing today except watch videos on the Cardi Nicki fight, drink coffee, and sit on the porch in this irregular September heat.

Oh yeah, and the Europe trip got cancelled and I’m done dancing I think. Seasons are shifting and my life follows.

Big love,

Cass