#it felt like watching a movie though of the characters whole life story and his thoughts in the process

[elegyofthemoon]

actually wait. re: that writing post

i think i actually dreamt the conversation. or i dreamt what i was hoping to write~ and then forgot as usual~

[fluffyk97]

Sonic 3 spoiler rambling about Sonic and Shadow under cut !

Y'know something that I feel might go lil under-appreciated is how well they made Sonic and Shadow mirror each other in the movie.

Like something that always can easily irk me are people boasting one of the two over the other because from the very beginning of his introduction to the series, Shadow's character is meant to reflect Sonic. They're meant to be equals that are so similar and complete opposites at the same time.

With the movie, I honestly wasn't expecting it that much. Sonic actually has a backstory that is just like Shadow's: powerful little hedgehog that is wanted for his power, so the one he's known his whole small life that he loves sacrifices herself to save him.

I fr fully expected Sonic to learn about Maria and be like "I lost Longclaw, I know you're pain, but-" blah blah blah- BUT they don't do that??

Of course, we have Commander Walters first telling Sonic that Shadow's story is a lot like his but wasn't able to find family and friends, and Sonic does find Shadow had a family from finding a picture of him and Maria together. He never gets told what happened exactly though, although it wouldn't make too much of a difference with the fact they did change up Shadow losing Maria just a little bit.

Since they didn't live up in space, Maria didn't have a capsule to send Shadow off with sacrificing herself and instead they made it an accident. WHICH- can be understandable if people don't like that, however personally I don't mind it that much because honestly the intent to shoot Maria was there, but she ended up being lost from an accident caused by Walters.

Which, ties in to Shadow hurting Tom...

Walters in trying to help save Maria's, Shadow's and Gerald's lives unfortunately led to Maria's death and watching Shadow be put in stasis for 50 years where all he thinks about is that painful memory burned fresh in his head. So of course when Shadow sees Tom disguised as Walters, he takes his anger out on him by hurting him while also stealing the key for the ARK. Leading to unfortunately another scenario of where the intent of harm is there, but someone still got hurt from an accident because Shadow never really meant to hurt Tom. But he does anyway..

Which of course in turn, makes Sonic mad just like Shadow was 50 years ago. Only difference is Sonic doesn't get immediately captured by GUN and forced into stasis. Letting him able to go straight to Shadow afterwards for hurting his family.

We have Shadow take note of all of that himself, telling Sonic he's feeling exactly the pain he felt and Sonic being the one to say "I'm nothing like you!". Just like how I thought Sonic would tell Shadow about Longclaw in hopes of redeeming him, but reversed and both sides full of anger and grief.

One awesome super fight later though, we come to the talk on the moon. Probably my favorite part in the whole movie. outside of the super fights and Live and Learn playing lol

After mentioning Tom and getting uppercutted straight to the moon by Sonic, Shadow loses his super form, leaving him vulnerable, easy for Sonic to take his revenge on him. Only for all of that to be stopped because of Shadow pointing at his own chest which reminds Sonic what Tom told him at the beginning of the movie and calm down.

"You didn't let pain change who you are."

This completely baffles Shadow, with him actually wanting Sonic to finish it, but of course Sonic just refuses saying "No one wins with revenge". It just leaves silence between them, finally giving Shadow his own moment of remembering Maria outside of her death by looking at the stars he used to gaze upon with her.

He mentions it to Sonic how all he knew and felt was just the pain, and now finally- FINALLY, Sonic mentions how he shares that feeling of loss from Longclaw. Not in a moment of trying to just redeem Shadow without the full weight of it, but in a moment of understanding.

A strong moment of these two looking at each other in a mirror, eye to eye. Sonic, who was allowed to grieve all those years ago after losing Longclaw, telling Shadow the pain of loss will never go away, but the love will always remain.

"The light shines, even though the star is gone."

And through that shared pain and loss, now coupled with empathy and understanding one another through it. They truly connect.

Sonic and Shadow's dynamic was just done SO WELL in the movie and I couldn't be happier with it...

[talesofesther]

what once was mine | ch 1

Loki x Reader

Summary: When watching what once was supposed to be the rest of his life, in an empty room in the TVA, Loki sees someone he can't recognize; a girl who's all tenderness and loose smiles, and most importantly, she was smiling at him.

A/N: A long overdue mini-series for one of my favorite characters of all time. I had this idea when season one of Loki first came out, but never got to writing it, and now with season two coming, I decided to finally do it. There are two important things that need to be said before we head into it though; firstly and most importantly, I will not be following the show's plot at all, this story will only be focusing on the relationship between Loki and the reader, after all that's what it is about and I don't want it to be unnecessarily huge; secondly, this story will be mostly told in moments, which means that not every single scene happening between the characters will be written down in length. Lastly, I do hope you can all enjoy it. <3

Masterlist

Things felt worthless. Everything suddenly seemed unimportant. His whole life, everything he knew, felt small and frail. Because here, infinity stones were mere paperweights.

Loki scoffed as he pushed himself up from the floor, one hand coming up to tug at the collar still wrapped around his neck. This place made him feel as if his brain was melting, it was all too much, too sudden—sacred timeline, variants. A sense of utter helplessness started to weigh heavily in the pit of his stomach.

Yet he couldn't hold himself back from sitting at the single table in the middle of the dim-lit room. The checkered image of the Avengers right in front of him seemed to be taunting him.

This was still the same day, right?

Or maybe not, Loki wasn't certain anymore; it sure didn't feel like the same day.

For a split second, as he looked down at the red, round device resting on top of the table, he thought about how everything here looked so old-fashioned. It was almost ironic, for a place out of time.

Loki couldn't help himself. His curiosity got the best of him eventually. But if anyone had their whole life just a click away, they'd probably do the same.

So he watched, through glimpses passing on a screen, a life that was supposed to be his. He watched his mother die, and then his father; he watched as Thor called him a brother with a smile on his face again, and as they made earth a new home for Asgard. Loki's eyes were already a pool of tears as soon as his mother's lifeless body had appeared in front of him, they cascaded down his cheeks freely, leaving behind a damp path of a lifetime worth of mourning, now seen in less than a minute. The loss somehow felt greater, because now he wouldn't even have those moments to begin with.

But suddenly, amidst the moments of suffering and mistakes, an unfamiliar face appeared. She had a smile on her face most of the time, and even through the static of the image in front of him, Loki could clearly see the glint in her pupils, the crinkle beside her eyes. She was quite captivating, maybe that's why it took him a second to realize she was smiling at him.

A frown etched itself in Loki's eyebrows, he leaned forward on his chair as he pressed play again. Curiosity and... apprehension twirled wildly inside his stomach.

The moments with her were endless. Walks on the beach, shared ice creams, quiet nights watching a movie, dancing together in a dark kitchen, the golden rays of a sunset shining against her hair in a memory tucked away like a treasure; and even a moment of her talking with Tony Stark and the others, while her hand held tightly onto Loki's, the other Loki, that is. All of them looked futile, a simple existence Loki would never have considered fit for him; so why did these moments feel important?

Inside TVA's lonely room, Loki held his breath until his lungs ached. His heart was threatening to jump out of his chest and his eyes were stinging for a whole new reason. He could feel the shaking of his own hands. That look in her eyes, it was one of love, anyone who saw would know it. But the cause of the sudden lump in Loki's throat was the fact that this look was always directed at him. That love in her eyes, that smile on her lips; was for him.

Several minutes went by with him silently looking at the paused image of her on the checkered screen. A few stray tears rolled down his cheeks, and he wasn't sure why yet. If it was for the shock of learning that someone could love him this much; or because of the envy, the longing for something that wasn't even his, not really, he never got there after all.

There was a hole in his chest, a missing piece of something he never had. Loki didn't even know her name, yet a part of him was screaming it anyway.

He eventually moved on, and almost threw up when he watched Thanos take his life from him. Loki watched his brother cry over his lifeless body, yet he wasn't seeing her.

And despite the boatload of information thrown at him, the questions clouding his mind were only; who is she? Where is she?

Lost. Loki felt more lost than he probably ever did in his entire life. He had just watched what was supposed to be the rest of his life, yet... it wouldn't be. So what now?

He sat down on the small stairs of the room, burying his head in his hands.

And then there was this girl; smiling and laughing and holding his hand as if he had been the best thing to ever happen to her. This feeling, warm and heavy, squeezing Loki's heart, was a foreign one—he couldn't quite place why that look of pure adoration in her eyes was directed at him.

He needed to know who she was. He needed to find her and ask her why. He needed to know what she was, or- would be to him.

The sudden sound of the door opening startled Loki, he watched as Mobius walked into the room, his steps overly cautious. "Loki? Nowhere left to run."

Gulping back a sob clawing its way through his throat, Loki took a deep breath. He slowly glanced up, voice calm and defeated as he asked a question he already knew the answer to; "I can't go back, can I?"

Mobius simply looked at him, his eyes holding some kind of sympathy as he spared Loki from hearing the truth out loud.

Loki pursed his lips, his gaze slowly trailed back to the screen on his left that again adorned a paused image of the mysterious girl. Her lips were turned up just slightly, dark sunglasses covered her eyes, and she held a slowly melting ice cream in one of her hands. "Who is she?" he asked quietly.

Placing his weapon on the table, Mobius let out a long sigh, "I was hoping you wouldn't ask about her."

The words made Loki snap his head towards him, a frown coming to his eyebrows immediately.

"She..." Mobius hesitated, "she is someone almost as annoying as you."

"That doesn't answer my question." Loki nearly sounded offended. He got up then, taking slow steps towards Mobius. "She seemed... important, yet I don't know who she is."

"I'm afraid you haven't met her yet."

"Then tell me who she is."

Mobius grimaced; "I don't think it's my place to say it."

"That's absurd," Loki scoffed, "it's my life we're talking about here."

"How about we help each other then, hm?" Mobius offered, and when Loki only frowned at him, he continued; "a fugitive Variant has been killing our Minutemen."

Loki narrowed his eyes. "And you need the God of Mischief to help you stop him?"

A small smirk came to Mobius' lips; "That's right. You help us stop him. I get you an opportunity to meet her and you can ask her whatever questions you want to know."

A meeting with someone didn't feel like much for his end of the bargain, but that same voice inside Loki was still screaming a name he didn't know how to spell. He had to know.

"Deal."

⋆* ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

Read ch 2 here

Thank you for reading this little story. Feedback and reblogs are literally what keeps me motivated to continue posting here, so I’d appreciate it if you could take some time to reblog and comment. <3

You do not have permission to repost, copy, or translate my works on any platforms (even with credit), please respect.

Loki’s taglist:@milkiane @v1ci0us

[gaybananabread]

✦༻Spoilers༺✦

~This has been in the back of my mind since the movie came out; the time has come. I’m making progress with TickleTober, so enjoy this meal in the meantime! There’s probably more than a hint of shipping in here, but you don’t have to read it like that if you don’t want to. I hope you Enjoy!~

Lee: Wade Wilson

Ler: Logan Howlett

Summary: Logan is struggling to get used to living with Wade; he has a limit for Wade’s bullshit. The merc loves pushing him to that limit regularly. Logan uses an unconventional method to shut his smartass roommate up.

Warnings: canon-typical language and jokes, spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine and Golden Girls (you’ll see). This is a tickle fic, so if you don’t like that, scroll away!!

I’ve finally done it: the ultimate team-up turned homo-erotic-roommates-story. And, ya know, saving my entire timeline; mainly the Logan stuff, though.

Wade had been incredibly happy since they’d saved the existence of his timeline. He was showering regularly, disposed of that horrid “toupee,” and started actually talking to the people in his life about how he felt. It kinda sucked, but hey – character development isn’t always sexy.

Things were going splendidly for the merc with a mouth.

Logan, on the other hand, was slowly going insane.

The Wolverine was grateful for the place to stay, of course; hell, he felt more at home than he had in years. The problem was how…Wade Wade had been acting.

Logan secretly admired how openly true to himself Wade could be; I mean, the guy literally said whatever came to his mind, no matter what. Then again, the guy literally said whatever came to his mind. No matter what.

Even if that thought completely spoiled something for Logan.

“Hey, Peanut! As much as I love that juicy ass, I’m gonna need you to get outta my spot.” Wade flicked his wrist at the eX-Man, beckoning for him to get up. Logan had been there for about twenty minutes, and there was no way he was moving; the episode of Golden Girls he was watching wasn’t finished yet. The man rarely got time to rest like that, savoring every half hour he got with the television like it was holy.

“I’ve been here, bub. Wait your turn.” Logan didn’t even blink, leaning to the side so he could still see the screen. He was gonna finish that episode, damn it.

“Ooo, is that ‘End of the Curse’?” Wade hums, taking a closer look at the screen. Logan wasn’t very far into the episode. “Turns out it’s just menopause, not pregnancy. Man, nothing wakes you up like an existential crisis and skinned minks.”

A low growl rumbled in Logan’s throat, his eyes narrowing dangerously. Ooooo, Wade fucked uuup…

“Did you just spoil the ending to my Golden Girls episode?” The livid tone of his roommate’s voice made Wade’s smile grow nervous.

It’s cool, it’s fine. All I gotta do is nail this recovery. Read and learn, people.

“At least I didn’t tell you that the whole Rose and Miles Webber thing doesn’t work out.”

Fuck. This is why you don’t stare at your roommate’s moobs while trying to save yourself, kids.

“You motherf- WADE !” Logan bolted up from his chair, charging at the blemish-skinned man. Wade made his first smart decision that entire morning:

He ran for his fucking life.

But, of course, luck refused to be on the red-suited man’s side. Wade tripped over one of Mary Puppin’s toys outside his room, Logan’s large hands quickly hoisting him up by the waist. Before he could fantasize anything, he was slammed down on his bed. Which, of course, opened up a whole new realm to dig his own grave in.

“Damn, Peanut! It’s customary to take me to dinner first, but you know I don’t mind gettin’ sloppy~” Okay, that was a little cliché. Wasted opportunity, Wilson.

Logan seemed pissed regardless. “You fucking ruined the one relaxing thing I get to do a week when Al’s out. Do you know how hard it is to enjoy a show when you know what’s gonna happen?!”

As entertaining as seeing Wade squirm beneath him was, Logan wanted revenge. He normally would’ve skewered the smartass, but Al was getting sick of smelling Wade’s blood whenever she left for a few hours. That, and he may or may not have gotten some blood on the couch (don’t tell her).

What else could he do? He wanted Wade to suffer, to regret his actions, to shut up for one in his god-forsaken existence. The only times he could remember that happened was when he was asleep, and when he was…oh. Ohoho, fuck yes.

“You’re gonna learn to shut that gaping, bottomless shithole you call a mouth, Wade, and you’re gonna learn it the hard way.”

“I do everything the hard way, Peanu- yeEEAHAHA! THEHE FUHAHAHACK?!” Before Wade could finish proving Logan’s point yet again, he felt ten muscular fingers knead into his thighs. It was – ironic, he knew – his death spot.

Now, imagine trying to explain why you’re smiling so much when someone’s grabbing at your thighs without stuttering. Spoiler alert: it’s torture.

“You can’t mouth off if you’re too busy laughing, fuckhead. Now shut up and scream for me.” Logan squeezed and squished at the merc's thighs, doing his best to tickle the shit out of him.

“Y-YOUHU CAHAN'T- FUHUHUHUCK! NOHOHO!” Wade tried and failed to speak through his laughter, his head reeling from the intense feeling. For the first time in many moons, the Merc with a Mouth was rendered speechless.

“I can’t fuck? Really? Bold ass statement to make when you’re at my mercy.” Logan’s more playful side was slipping out; how could it not with Wade’s goofy-ass laughter egging him on? Seriously, how could anyone expect him to act like a hard-ass with the man making such purposefully adorable noises?

“NOHOHOT WHAHAHAT IHI MEHEHEANT!” Kicking and squirming, the scarred man was quickly realizing he couldn’t talk his way out of the situation. They were matched in strength, but the tickling quickly un-evened the playing field. Maybe pleading for his life?

“COHOHOME OHOHON! I-IHI’LL QUIHIHIT!”

Logan paused for just a moment, his hands still resting on Wade’s hips. He was…actually gonna stop being a loudmouth? While he didn’t believe a word of that, he still wanted to take things a bit easier on the man; damn feelings…

Slowing down, the Wolverine moved his wiggling fingers to Wade’s stomach. Compared to his thighs, it was a decently tolerable spot; still, it fucking tickled.

“Wohoholvie, thihis is nuhuhuts! Ahand not thehe hohot kihihind!” Okay, maybe he immediately proved himself a liar, but Logan didn’t exactly quit! He was sort of justified, in that sense.

“You never learn, do ya?” There’s an air of amusement and affection in his voice that shocks the both of them. Logan immediately tries to correct it, clearing his throat with a glare. “Stubborn asshole. It’s a bad idea to taunt me when you’re this fucking ticklish.”

“Th-thihihis ihihisn’t fahahahair! Youhuhu’re thehe Tumblr bahahabygirl, nohot mehehe! Youhu shouhuhuld be gehehtting ihit!”

“The fuck is a Tumblr babygirl?” Logan snorted at the silly-sounding words, once again trying to figure out what the hell his roommate was talking about.

“Thehehey knohohow!” Wade pointed towards some unseeable audience, making the hairy man roll his eyes. He seriously needed to get Wade tested for something; it would probably explain so much.

“Do you want me to go back to your thighs?” Logan jerked his hands down threateningly, reveling in the squeal the motion causes. He didn’t even touch the other man that time; it was kinda cute.

“NOOOHOhohooo! Dihickhead!” Without thinking, Wade thrusted his arms out and shoved at Logan’s shoulders. Obviously, the brick wall of a man didn’t move, but his attention was drawn to a specific nuisance: the merc’s arms. Specifically, the fact that he hadn’t explored beneath them yet.

Gathering the mouthy man’s wrists in one hand, Logan forced Wade’s arms up and pinned them to the mattress. Once again, Wade was faced with a tough decision: smart off and completely fuck himself, or grovel and hope for some mercy.

Eh, smart choices are plot killers. This one’s for you, dear reader.

“Y-youhuhu’re really ehembracing your dark side, Peanut~ Next thing ya knowhow, I’m gonna be getting fitted for thohose fuzzy cuffs and a harn- FFFAAHAHAHAAA! OHO- OHOHOKAHAHAY! IHI’M SOHOHORRY! IHIT WAS THEHEHERE!”

Logan showed zero mercy, digging into Wade’s underarm with renewed vigor. He switched back and forth every few seconds, right to left, wrecking the man as thoroughly as possible. The man’s thighs were definitely still his death spot, but his armpits were a close second.

“You don’t act like you’re sorry, ya shithead.” There was a lot less contempt in Logan’s tone than Wade was expecting; he couldn’t exactly comment on it, but the Wolverine seemed almost happy that he had chosen to prolong his torment by being a smartass.

Wade, on the other hand, was going through it; a vibrant blush had taken residence on his cheeks, little tears of mirth showing up for the housewarming party. Worst of all, his exhaustion forced his muscles to relax, allowing snorts to catch in his throat.

“Damn, Wilson. Goin’ hog wild down there, huh?” Wade’s heart would’ve stopped right then if it were possible. Logan “Go Fuck Yourself” Howlett…made a dad joke?!

“Y-YOUHUHU MAHAHDE A JOHOHOHOKE! IHI’M SOHOHO PROUHUHUD!”

“Fuckin’ Christ, just shut up already!” Embarrassed from both the acknowledgement and praise, Logan dug back into Wade’s thigh to silence him; well, keep him from talking by means of hysterical laughter.

About two minutes into getting his thighs attacked by the kitty man, Wade was rethinking all his life choices that led him there. I mean, he obviously wouldn’t do anything different if he actually had the chance to, but there were some regrets. His laugh was growing raspy, a few wheezes slipping in with the snorts as he struggled to catch his breath.

Logan noticed how tired Wade was getting almost instantly. The man hadn’t smarted off in a hot second, so he figured it was time to stop; definitely not because he was taking it easy on Wade or something stupid like that…

The moment the tickles stopped, Wade drew in deep, giggle-ridden breaths as he tried to calm down. He barely noticed his wrists’ release, too tired to lower his arms anyway. It was, admittedly, an utterly adorable sight.

Noticing he was still literally straddling the anti-hero, Logan climbed off and went to grab Wade some water. When he got back to the bedroom, the merc had curled up on his side, a blanket hap-hazardly tugged over him. The eX-man rolled his eyes at the sight, turning the man to face him.

“Here, drink this.”

Despite sticking his tongue out, Wade greedily gulped down the water. His textured cheeks were still a healthy red from the tickling, the ice water both soothing his throat and cooling him off.

“Thanks, Kitty.”

“Just take a nap or somethin’, bub.” Rolling his eyes at the statement, Logan turned and trudged out of the room; neither missed the light blush on his cheeks from the nickname.

Wade settled back into his bed, sighing at the ceiling. Despite everything, he was actually going to try and improve on his spoiling restraint; he kinda deserved what came to him, even if it was totally overkill.

As for the tickling…well, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Logan could’ve cut his vocal chords or sliced his head off in the tub, but he didn’t; the man just did something silly and lighthearted to drill the lesson into his brain. It was curious, in a sense; why would he choose to be lenient with the loudmouth?

It definitely deserved some looking at, to say the least.

Maybe I’ll insult his mutton chops tomorrow. Ya know, for research purposes…

[timebom]

thoughts while watching episode 2! ☆

summary: necessary amount of love for jinx, unnecessary amount of child hate lmao

oh my baby girl i love u it's ok don't be sad please

jinx focused episode let's gooo

me: omg was that a flash of powder?!

*rewinds*

me: ...who the fuck is that.

me: oh no. oh no. this kid is important enough to make it to the intro, jinx is going to take care of this child isn't she. that sure is... a choice

oh no the kid is here

ugh for me personally the only thing worse they could have done is make her pregnant or have a baby. i hate storylines like this im so sorry. it's different when the parent-child relationship is like the main focus or the premise of the show/movie (the mandalorian, the last of us, the walking dead game, silco taking care of powder who's the main character), but when a random ass child shows up years late to the party and needs someone to take care of them and the child character has no previous connection to the audience... i really dislike that in stories im so sorry. leave jinx alone

also, in what world is jinx ready to be a mother figure to anyone lmao she's very much stuck in a child-like state herself half the time. this is not what she needs, we both deserve better

i like the child's design though

honestly, i hope arcane makes me take all that i just said back, but we'll see

jinx i love you

her voice is so good, the voice acting is sooo good oh my god

does she kinda have a different vibe or is it just me?

honestly thought she would be doing a lot worse than she is. good for her!

don't get me wrong, i get that from the orphan's point of view jinx just saved her life and she's clearly super strong, what else is she supposed to do than follow

what i'm saying is that i personally do not want jinx to take care of a child right now. i want this to be about the sisters. the fact that i don't like this is on me, the writers can obviously do whatever they want with their story buuut.....

sevika<3

can't wait for her and jinx to team up

wait does sevika even know that jinx was the one who killed silco?

i don't know what's going on with viktor and whatever he's saying here is not helping

did she though?

everything viktor does now is so slow. the way he speaks, the way he moves...

im not a jayvik girlie but i imagine that those who are felt rly sad after this scene

ekko my boy! the biker mouse from mars can speak?

my brother: he really does look like one

i literally facepalmed and my brother groaned

ekko please ditch this creature you're better on your own

shut up. you're not cute, you're not funny.

i should probably clarify that heimer is my least favourite character in the show, i kinda have no patience for anything he does 😂

i literally said DO IT JAYCE out loud

this made me laugh

same, ekko, same.

can we talk about the way he's holding the cup lol

it's also kinda funny and kinda sad at the same time that this is probably his first time tasting tea

SHUT UUUUPPPP

i screamed

vi? nooo, what the hell 😫 i thought it was the bad guys after her but no it's VI? don't hurt jinx like this, don't hurt me like this

the animation is making me feel like i'm the one who can't breathe damn

hasn't my girl been through enough?? stooooppp

this looked really cool though

there's no way those were the only two times he saw her cry

also, she's insane, blinking and getting even closer. i am obsessed with her

YESSSHHHH

after getting her ass kicked by vi and jinx repeatedly in season 1, i have a feeling this is a battle she's finally going to win 😆

the whole-body movement she did here, so cute, i love her so much 😭

GET JINXED OMG!!!!!!!! 💙💙💙💙💙

holy shit you can always trust arcane with fight scenes

my brother: no one does fight scenes better than arcane.

me: i know right?! that was so good! best scene in season 2 so far!

brother: yep.

oh wow ok. girl, 1st of all, ew. 2nd of all, that thing was like 80% machine what was there left for you to eat? 3rd of all... this begs the question, what do these people eat, exactly? do they draw the line at cannibalism but everyone else is fair game? huh.

i doubt the people in piltover eat like this

no, let's not do that<3

what is he, jesus? this is a bit too much.

[crescentmel]

i watched the x-men films for the first time ever here are my thoughts *spoilers obviously* :D

small backstory: i was going to go watch Deadpool & Wolverine however i have seen the previous deadpool movies but i’ve never watch the x-men films at all, my knowledge of that universe is minimal. my coworker suggested i at least watch Logan before watching Deadpool & Wolverine so i did.

Logan is easily one of the best Marvel films i have ever watched in my life, like top 3 films for sure it was amazing im still thinking about this movie weeks later. so i watch Deadpool & Wolverine and realize im low key obsessed with logan so might as well watch all the x-men films ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ALSO I HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE FROM THE COMICS DONT COME FOR ME

The Original Trilogy

Overall i enjoyed the first two films, i think The Last Stand might be my least favorite of the whole franchise im not gonna lie

i’m just gonna say it, i was so not here for the Logan & Jean romance, like im kind of a hater so if this upsets you than this post is not for you lmao

ADORED JEANSCOTT WITH MY HEART AND SOUL !!! THEYRE SO FUCKING CUTE !!!!

Right of the bat, Logan & Jean’s romance felt SO forced. like it wasn’t believable for me, in the first movie it felt like Logan decided he was in love with Jean, not that he is actively falling in love with her, it was kinda weird

Meanwhile you can like clearly tell that Scott & Jean are in love with each other, but it feels like Logan’s character is just disregarding that

I understand in the comics it’s supposed to be a love triangle of sorts, i just think that if they wanted to do that for the films they could have portrayed it better

Ororo is an angel i love her

charles & eric need to make out

scott summers you ball of sunshine

i’m glad the rogue crush thing died in the first film bc ohmygod that was hard to watch

my favorite is X2 of this trilogy i really liked the plot and how it expanded more into Logan’s story

The Wolverine Trilogy

Origins wasn’t like, super terrible? i guess? my least favorite of this trilogy for sure though

i liked the plot twist that his girlfriend of 6 years was manipulating him, i didn’t see it coming, i was like WOW that’s fucked up

was disappointed he forgave her like wtf 😭

deadpool thing was weird i didn’t like that

good film to learn logan’s backstory, his brother was so fucking annoying though

The Wolverine was a decent film, if ur looking for an x-men film that’s more action centric than mutant centric this is your film

it felt like a wolverine side quest lol, nothing crazy going on, but i liked it more than Origins

logan is just tired

snake lady’s powers were cool

this girl is never going to see logan again so at least she got what she could

it goes without saying that Logan 2017 is the best film in the whole x-men/fox franchise

i could definitely make a whole post going into a deep dive of Logan but i’ll just keep it short

Logan’s dedication to taking care of Charles warms my heart in a way you cannot imagine, he truly cares so deeply for that man, charles gave him the opportunity of having a new family and i feel like logan will always be grateful for him

Logan & Laura :’)

it was like watching Logan go from only caring about kids in a “i’m a teacher” way to seeing Laura in a “i’m her caretaker now” kind of way, like there was a shift in his character that he wasn’t expecting

my little family of three that definitely lived happily ever after

my favorite scene of the whole film was when Logan realizes that it was his clone self that stabbed Charles, and his immediate gut reaction was to say “It wasn’t me” and to reassure Charles that Logan would NEVER do that

so that Charles would never die thinking one of his closest friends (AND SON FIGURE) would ever betray him like that and kill him

LIKE THAT WAS SO IMPORTANT TO LOGAN, HE DIDNT WANT CHARLES TO DIE THINKING HE KILLED HIM ;_________;

Logan 2017 the film that you are

X-Men Prequel Films

oh boy here go

right off the bat i’m going to say Days of Future Past exceeds all four of these films, so fucking good, my favorite after Logan

but yeah First Class wasn’t like, terrible per say, i just found myself a little bored ngl

absolutely here for eric & charles love story, they’re literally friends to lovers to enemies to still lovers but they’re still enemies i adore it

i liked the character that mystique brought (& jennifer lawrence) but it was just such a jump from the mystique in the first films

also i just think that if eric wants to kill his abuser then he should go for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ just saying charles it was a lil weird u wanted to stop him

i get the premise, setting up the basis of the x-men, but i just found it a little lacking

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

amazing 10/10 movie, i genuinely enjoyed every second, actually felt like a superhero movie

great balance of logan not knowing what the fuck is going on vs charles knowing exactly what to do next & logan just going along with it i love it

i’ve heard legends of how amazing quicksilver is in these films and this went beyond my expectations, fantastic character AND amazing showcase of his powers, the writers cooked on this, also makes me want to rewatch wandavision bc i didn’t appreciate his character enough son i’m so sorry

prison breaking out eric sequence was amazing

there’s so much more but just overall amazing film

apocalypse was definitely something? i mean it was probably difficult to follow up days of futures past so i can’t blame them, not like the worst film ever but ….. idk

THINGS I LOVED !! young jean & scott :’) !!!!! genuinely so happy to see the beginning of their friendship & romantic relationship, they’re literally so fucking cute AND young storm omfg a baby 🫶🏾

took me a second to realize it was oscar isaac lol, also OUCH eric’s little family but also like wtf was that death ??? 😭

idk plot was just kinda everywhere, nothing super memorable, also i just found it funny that logan was there for like less that 5 minutes and all he did was grunt lmfao at least he popped off on stryker for the millionth time fuck that guy

uhm dark phoenix

the one and only highlight for me for dark phoenix was once again, jean & scott lmfao

the whole solar flare & alien race thing was kinda weird, they didn’t even explain the alien race thing that well, idk what to even say about this movie

i thought it was weird that hank & eric were suddenly jumping on the “let’s kill jean” train when like they know she didn’t mean to kill raven ??? 😭 like wtf

someone explain the timeline bs to me bc i was surprised that jean “died” AGAIN.

wasn’t the point of futures past that logan now in the present is experiencing the new timeline in which charles, scott, and jean are all alive

so why did jean die in this, does that not defeat the purpose, like she’s alive in the present

or were they trying to plan another prequel film in which she comes back, again. then it’s just a repeating storyline from the og trilogy

anyways it was kinda bad

i don’t even want to talk about The New Mutants i’m gonna be real, it was also bad

and that is my long af reaction to watching all the x-men films for the first time. if you’re reading this and read all my yapping then thank you i really appreciate it lol 🫶🏾 in conclusion, i’m sad i missed out on a whole era of these movies when they were being released (probably bc im avengers obsessed lol) but i’m glad i did watch them now, and now i have a new universe to hyper fixate on lmfao (and logan) amazing movies !! gonna go rewatch Logan now ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

also here is my full x-men movies ranking, deadpool films included:

[0pooleart]

Sonic Redesign Masterpost

One thing I've always passively thought about the Sonic franchise is that it's great, but also always felt just a bit short of perfection in a bunch of random aspects (mostly some character designs and some stories). Around like late August of 2024 I sketched out some redesigns for some of the main Sonic characters, and I quickly realized that I kinda physically had to not only redesign like, all vaguely notable characters from across the entire franchise (not just the games) but I also really wanted to rewrite a ton of stories, so I just like, did, you know? I'm basically obsessed now so here's a giant masterpost that's more about the thoughts behind my redesigns than just the images. Don't expect this to be super organized and fun to read lol

(and I can feel the hyperfixation dying down so I really should just get this out there)

Also, if you'd rather read it in the form of a Google Doc, here's the link to that: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VvXMzQ2kr7HrqmUd0Z7Aa9xCprUZ1ojm5cD8lcAEjbQ/edit?usp=sharing

First things first, for one, Mobius and Earth are two distinct planets, and Mobians are one set species. I didn't think that was a crazy idea until I actually watched a video detailing how current Sonic treats the setting but yeah, I really want them to just be completely different planets.

Origins

Anyway, the main draw for rewriting most Sonic stories was the fact that he doesn't really have a canon origin in the main series games (yet?) so I felt the need to give him one, and a more discrete timeline. However, everything starts with Eggman (and this is a heavily truncated version):

Robotnik enters Mobius via a Ring portal (similar to how the movies portray them), but he's instead a skinny, charming young man (similar again to Jim Carrey's Eggman in the movies, a drawing of him is further down). At first he pitches his little, cutesy animal inventions to the Mobian public, and they actually like them quite a lot. He's not without an ulterior motive though, and as his inventions get more and more popular, he actually hires some Mobians to help produce them. He begins building his business over the years, using the unique powers Mobians have to boost production. He even gives some of his workers their own homes built up with his technology, but he starts using this as a way to control them, since he basically can take away their whole lives if he so chooses. As he keeps building and building, he steals more and more resources from Mobius, and he builds over the Mobian city he started in (haven't really specified what it was yet), slowly making it his own over time. The only place he knows he shouldn't touch (just to stay in the good graces of Mobians) is Green Hill, a place that's sort of sacred, but more sacred in the way art is sacred, since it's a place hand built by ancient Mobians to be a wild place for them to roam free. Time passes Robotnik has been fattened up by his personal chef/baker Vanilla, and he's settled into being in control of so much of Mobius.

It's around this time when Sonic is born into the factory (of course given the canon name Ogilvie at first). He's taken away from his parents, whoever they are, immediately, and is put to work as soon as he's able to push a button. As he grows up, he's obviously too restless to do something so sterile, so he's put to work on the hamster wheels that power the Robotnik Empire. He never even thinks there's anything special out for him in the world, but eventually he, like the other workers, is given his semi-yearly vacation to the Green Hill, where they can recover their will to live. However, Ogilvie is so completely overrun with joy that he just runs off, never to return to the factory again. Eventually, of course, he changes his name to Sonic to fit his new life of just running around Green Hill.

Robotnik catches wind of there being a deserter, and decides to set out his robots, who secretly had battle functions all this time, into Green Hill to catch him. This is essentially where the first game would begin, just Sonic running around destroying Robotnik's robots as they come at him. However, Robotnik has a second in command: A young, two-tailed fox who he found outcast on the streets, who had a surprising knack for machines, something he didn't see in many other Mobians. He was named Miles Prower, and he grew up working for the one person who didn't ostracize him for his tails or his skills. He was only around 12 when Sonic, approx 16, escaped, and he was tasked with leading some of their more sophisticated creations into battle. 

Robotnik came along too with his own weapons, but they were both completely outmatched by Sonic's unbridled confidence and cockiness. Robotnik tore out what hair he had in anger, and of course that's when Sonic taunted him with his new nickname Eggman. Since Miles was there too, and he felt like he was on a roll, he called Miles "Tails," but Miles' reaction was much more ashamed than he expected, so he felt a bit off about that one. After the fight, Miles was repairing the machine Sonic destroyed, but he found him and met him on more even terms, and tried to convince him that there's probably a much better life for him out with him. He wasn't totally convinced yet, and couldn't exactly just defect from Robotnik like Sonic did, so Sonic left him be for now.

This is the general part where I start writing too many fine details, so basically Miles slowly starts enjoying himself more and more fighting Sonic and meeting him after the fight. He even adopts the "Tails" nickname for himself on the card of a present he drops off for Sonic, which was his much more durable and iconic sneakers. He finally breaks away from Eggman completely during an aerial assault on Sonic, where he prepared some supplies in the plane he was set to pilot, so he could take it away with him. He even was able to use some scrap from the battle to build a workshop for himself to live and work while Sonic still mostly just roamed free. This is around the point where the second game would start, since Tails has joined the cast and they can both battle Eggman together. If this were to be a game, I'd want Tails to be in the cockpit of each boss in the first game, so it helps set up his inclusion in the second, but obviously this is just a random floating idea for now. This isn't meant to be a concrete game/comic/animation/whatever.

But, that sets up most of the future events, even though there are some major stories to come, so on to the designs themselves:

As for overall Mobian redesigns, I always thought their giant ass hands and feet sometimes got in the way of their expressiveness, if they didn't just look kinda doofy (especially with characters like Knuckles) so the generic "Mobian" template has a smaller head, feet, and hands, and has a generally longer torso. Basically they just have slightly more """realistic""" proportions even though they're still obviously cartoony, just more realistic on the spectrum compared to the canon designs. And, since they're all one species, that means they evolved over time to match some of the animals around them, like a macro-evolution version of how Chao take on animal traits. That also means that the animal parts of their names are more like tribe affiliations, since they aren't actually the animals they say they are. For example, Knuckles the Echidna isn't an echidna in the species sense, he'd just call himself that to show he's affiliated with the Echidna tribe, and more generally that his people took on traits of the local echidna-echidnas. Meanwhile, characters like Tails/Miles Prower have a more family-based last name and a nickname for reasons I'll get into later. Also aside from that, I wanted characters that are Reptiles and Insects (Espio and Charmy mainly) to seem more unique from the mammals, so they look more distinct. And even the mammals look more animalistic in general, with longer snouts, getting rid of that weirdly detached muzzle thing most Mobian characters seem to have. Characters that are like Cats and Rabbits don't end up changing much since they aren't known for having long snouts anyway.

Sonic

Sonic was obviously the first one I tried redesigning so his design went through a bunch of changes, but the first thing I dealt with with him was his stupid conjoined eye thing. Obviously in that classic CD animation everyone loves it works out because its super stylized and simple, and all the current Mania versions of him make it work too, but it's really hard to unsee now in his modern designs. It's obviously meant to be like a Garfield type of thing, where it's just a cartoony way of having two eyes close together, but nowadays it really feels more like a Lightning McQueen type of eye windshield. If every Mobian had that then I'd keep it and just call it a stylistic thing, but no, only Hedgehogs have them, so... At first I tried representing that by making him have some kind of goggles to protect his eyes from the wind as he runs, but I couldn't get that to work, so I just split his eyes up. In his goggles-form I gave him this black brim to the goggles to kind of mirror Shadow's random red eye splotch he has, and since I liked that enough I kept a small bit of it in the current design. I also gave him some kind of double-sock type thing going on with much more athletic-seeming stuff to go under his more fluffy socks and gloves, which didn't feel all that necessary until I removed them at some point, and that just made him feel extra naked somehow. I do like them though. And, of course, he's actually wearing rings.

Aside from that, I kinda inadvertently made him look a lot like his Movie version, with his extra frazzled quills and blue arms and such. I definitely feel like he benefits from being extra sharp, so I added a bunch of spikes to things like his chest and shoulders. Even though it's not really important to mention I might as well, but the weird thing I think about his arms is that his normal Game design does basically need tan arms, but I actually think overall there's no reason not to give him blue arms in a form like this. It just makes sense.

Tails

Tails is mostly unchanged, just making his face fur blend more smoothly into his face instead of just being solo hairs glued on. His chest fur is more like a ball of fluff focused more around his actual chest, instead of just being a flat pattern on his stomach. I also gave him bigger ears for a bit of fennec energy, and a red scarf so his red shoes aren't the only red on his design. Aside from that, it's all just restylization, like making his tails extra fluffy.

Eggman (and Miles)

I'm still torn on what I want Eggman to truly look like. At first I wanted him to look a bit more like his SatAM-style version, with really short legs and a big fat belly, but then after seeing more and more fanart of him I tried to give him back his weirdly scrawny legs. No matter what though, he needed to have a giant coat with a massive collar to show his impression of himself. Also, I will always want to preserve his iconic smile, where his big toothy grin is basically glued to his mustache. That's pure Eggman.

And of course there's pre-Sonic Tails there too, with his fur very organized and clean, and with a much more grim demeanor. I also thought his tails would also be a lot less fluffy, and he kind of wraps them together like how a person wrings their hands together when they feel shy or awkward, showing how he hasn't fully embraced his mutation yet.

This is a quick little sketch I did of younger, thinner, and less bald Eggman when he first enters Mobius. 

After them, there are some characters that'd just be appearing around this point in the story, so here they are:

Amy… the Cat?

So for the longest time, I legitimately believed Amy was a cat, so I decided to make her a cat. It's that simple. She never really looked like a hedgehog, anyway. Plus, I do want to keep the main group as being Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, so it'd be nice if they were all different "species." Aside from that, I just made her former quills look like much more fluffy and soft hair, and gave her long sleeves just because this drawing convinced me it was a good idea. However, I did do a quick sketch to see how she would look if I kept her a Hedgehog, and in that one I took away the long sleeves since I thought that would be annoying with her chest/shoulder quills.

As for how she meets Sonic, she's working under Eggman as a blacksmith when Eggman starts going berserk over actually losing both a devoted worker and his right-hand fox. He puts up signs everywhere asking for people to enlist into an army with the sole purpose to capture him, but Amy is instead just smitten with this rebellious hunk she's just now heard of. She joins Eggman's forces, but breaks off on her own to join him. He's super willing to let anyone join, but since Tails knew how devoted to Eggman some Mobians could be, he thinks she's a spy at first. Over time, though, she proves herself, even if she can't quite catch up to Sonic.

Cream, Cheese, and Vanilla

Cream was always perfect, but I really hated that Vanilla was basically just a taller copy of Cream, so I tried to give her her own identity. Also since they're all named after food I decided to specifically make Vanilla a baker/chef, which also meant I could turn the one tuft of hair on her head onto an ice cream-y dollop. And even though that was decided before I decided to make Eggman start off skinny, it also meant that I could make her a pretty major part of Eggman's life, being the one who makes desserts so good he just couldn't help himself. Even though Eggman definitely loves stomping on the hopes and dreams of Mobians, he's actually quite fond of Vanilla (not in that way, thank god) and tolerates Cream. As for Cheese, I had this big idea of how to redesign all Chao mechanics a while ago, and one such idea was to have Luck and Intelligence forms of Chao just like the other stats, and I decided to make Cheese a Neutral/Luck Chao just before he evolves into his main adult evolution, since he's lucky to have Cream by his side. Literally. He's only with her because Eggman was experimenting with Chao, and Cream caught him in the act, and he tried to save face by giving her Cheese as a gift, which definitely took him off her radar. 

But, also, since when do rabbits only have one kid?

They're just rough ideas for now (except for Milk and Sugar for reasons) (and I also thought of there being a baby Butter as well but I can't be assed to save a new version of the sketch). Even though it doesn't make sense for each kid to be a different age, since rabbits more so have large litters, I just think this is more fun from a design perspective. Also, Vanilla having so many kids to worry about makes it more reasonable why she's so beholden to Eggman. She definitely can't just get up and leave when she has to worry about all of them. 

As for how Cream meets Sonic, I literally have a whole animated short planned out in my head because, if you couldn't tell, she's easily one of my favorite Sonic characters, but the gist is that once Eggman "gifts" her Cheese, Cheese starts drawing crude drawings depicting how Eggman treated him and other Chao. Cream slowly catches on to Eggman's evil in her own oblivious little way, and eventually just… walks out. Much to Vanilla's dismay. As she leaves though, Vanilla basically snaps from her goodie-goodie persona and practically holds a knife to Eggman's throat, telling him if any robot ever harms Cream while she's out there, "so help me god…" He relents as much as he can. Meanwhile, Cream just keeps walking to Green Hill. Tails notices her as he's flying the Tornado, and picks her up. She's a little disappointed that everyone's basically just living in the wild or Tails' crude workshop, but they try to make due for her pampered little self.

After that comes the first big story since the Origin/random extra happenings. 

Knuckles

Honestly I feel like Knuckles has to be one of my top redesigns. I definitely needed him to look more buff and big compared to Sonic, but not quite to the level of Boom Knuckles, and I think I really nailed it. Not only that, but making his coat and "skin" color darker just works so well. And, of course, with the dread-bands/paint of his tribe. Him just looking so much more square also just fits so well.

Knuckles starts off as usual guarding the Master Emerald all alone on Angel Island, but soon Eggman visits him without any armada, reading about the Chaos Emerald's power and finally wanting to use it to stop Sonic. He does his usual schtick of convincing Knuckles that Sonic is the real threat, and since Knuckles was so isolated he didn't even know who Eggman was, and joins him to stop Sonic. 

However, Tails isn't stupid, and keeps a solid ear to what Eggman is doing, and hears about his plan to take the Chaos Emeralds, so he and the others set out on a world-sprawling journey to get the Emeralds before he does. However, they aren't the only ones looking for treasure…

Rouge

Technically I redesigned Rouge first out of everyone, but for other reasons than the franchise-wide redesign. This is basically an adaptation of that. Similar to Amy, whose design was cursed by Girl-Character-Syndrome, I also wanted to fix up Rouge by going where no anthro female character has gone before… giving her a bare crotch. Crazy. The boys can run around stark naked while the girls can't not wear full body clothing, so someone had to pick up the slack. She at least has her top covered, but that's mainly because I'm kind of a sucker for her heart-boob thing. I really can't deny it. Oh yeah and the heart motif continues into her nose, because she's a bat, of course it would. Bats literally have heart-shaped noses but they didn't bother even giving her a tiny heart-shaped nose in canon. AND she even has full body fur, because her being completely bald across her body is even more of a sin to me than forcing her to wear full body clothing. Anyway, she's got dark skin too, because obviously, and I tried making her arms her wings at some point but I also wanted her to have normal humanoid hands, and that just didn't mesh well, so she's still got back wings. Aside from all that, I gave her a long index fingernail on her glove for lockpicking purposes or whatever, it just seemed like a weirdly fitting thing for a character once called Nails.

Anyway, Sonic and co stumble upon Rouge who had the same goal as they did, but of course with a different motive, although she promises to play nice and help them find the Emeralds (until she betrays them once they have them all)

At every Emerald, each situated in a different biome, they encounter Knuckles, who uses the elemental power of each Emerald to fight Sonic, although Sonic is usually able to snatch the Emerald away from him and make away with it. After every fight, Knuckles is more and more sure that Sonic is a threat, but once Sonic and co actually have them all, and find the Master Emerald too, Eggman is the one to make the first move, and snatches them away all at once to power the giant mech he built behind the scenes just for the Emeralds. Everyone teams up to steal back the Emeralds again, and Sonic feels a strange power inside of them and the Master Emerald. He asks Knuckles what it could be, and he says the Master Emerald must have determined that he should be granted their ultimate power. Sonic seems stoked, but Knuckles is seriously worried, thinking back to the tales his people told him of what happened last time… but thankfully this time, Sonic just turns an electric yellow, beats Eggman's mech to a pulp, and turns back to normal once the deed is done. Knuckles is a bit shocked, but relieved.

With all threats neutralized, Knuckles accepts that he was wrong, and makes amends, but he stays with the Master Emerald. Rouge goes off on her own again, too.

It's at this point, while still on Mobius, some other characters probably emerge. This could happen either after or during the previous events.

Sally Acorn

Even though I don't have much personal nostalgia for Sally, she used to be such a big deal that I couldn't NOT add her to the roster. Like Amy, I also got her species wrong, since I thought she was a squirrel and they just didn't have the guts to give her a big, bushy tail, but I was remiss to hear that she was actually a chipmunk, meaning her redesign couldn't have that amazing tail… but chipmunks do have pretty iconic patterns, so I made sure to include that in her hair. Apart from that, you can see all the changes. I imagined her home town being smaller, and even though she could be the daughter of her town's mayor, she wouldn't be a princess. I never really got princess vibes from her. Oh yeah, and she's still smol, like how she was always drawn in her original era. She can make up for it with her spunk. She would also have her own Speed/Fly/Power dynamic with Ray and Mighty, who are also still smol.

Bunnie Rabbot

I basically just mish-mashed all the parts of Bunnie's various designs that I liked, but the main part of her is her new story. She basically lives in this classic Western-style town held under Eggman's boot, and she's hired as an outlaw to catch Sonic, where she was given robotic enhancements both to give her extra power but also so Eggman could more directly control her. She's also the "bawss" of Fang and Trip, other outlaws hired by Eggman. Even though she doesn't personally hate Sonic, she needs to do what Eggman says, or else she knows he'll wreak havoc on her town. No amount of speeches about friendship and being a good person could turn her.

After all those events, the next stage of the story begins, where at some point Sonic goes Super to fight Eggman, but Eggman was ready. He manages to suck the Emerald power right out of him to power his ultimate plan--- the thing he more or less planned on doing from the moment he stepped foot on Mobius. However, the damage Sonic and co did to his plans during that time caused it to go haywire, sending giant white explosions shooting across the entire planet of Mobius. Practically every Mobian was transported to Earth, Sonic X style. And not just the people, but massive chunks of the planet too had warped on to Earth, practically fusing the two planets together.

But of course that opens up too many stories so time for a rapid-fire design overview lol

Chaos & Tikal

Obviously the events of Adventure would be next, but for the most part Tikal's design is just updated to match the new Knuckles. With Chaos however, I slightly changed his story to make it so that he mutated from a Chao for when he first turned into Perfect Chaos and destroyed the Echidna clan, and obviously making it so that he used to be a Neutral Chaos Chao. I also have a whole animated short mentally planned out of that moment which I'd kill to create. After the events of Adventure though, instead of like getting dragged off to Heaven or whatever Chaos is instead gifted just a little bit of power from the Master Emerald so that he could maintain a more solid form than his 0 form so he could live alongside people (as much as a water monster can), and in this form (which I'm calling Controlled Chaos) he looks more like a Chaos Chao and of course he also has an emotion ball, which the Chao quickly recognize and accept him in with them. I also like to think he could replace the role of Gemerl from the comics, where he is the superpowered being that helps protect Cream and her family (although clearly Vanilla is a bit more hesitant)

As for the events of the Adventure story itself, it's mostly the same, except for the fact that Knuckles wasn't at the Emerald when Eggman broke it open because he was slacking off alongside Sonic, which he beats himself up about before realizing the Emerald can be repaired. Also, with their Master destroyed, the Chaos Emeralds actually turn into chaotic masses of power that greatly affect the areas around them, making them more dangerous to obtain for Sonic and co. For example, maybe Ice Cap wasn't really that icy, but the Emerald Sonic was to get from there turned whatever it was before into a frigid mess. Maybe it would also spawn some sort of boss for them to fight to protect itself.

Also, here's Big. He's mostly the same except I wanted him to look more wild and unkempt. I also made it so he actually has a giant mouth, because in all his modern forms I honestly think his really tiny mouth looks super weird. 

Oh yeah and I guess one major thing I changed about all Mobians, they actually have feet and not just weird nubs. Really expanding the boundaries of design.

I also have ideas for Gamma and Omega from here, but it mostly boils down to Gamma actually having more personal interactions with the main cast, and once his story finishes and he explodes, Eggman laments that his best creation was going to waste, so he decided to rebuild him… but with less empathy. This backfires when the new Omega is disgusted by Eggman's method of just rebuilding him, and lashes out, going off to join the cause against him.

Then, for Adventure 2…

Shadow

For the most part, I just updated him to match Sonic's design, and gave him cooler gloves/shoes, but the main change is that I want him to feel more like a crazy genetic experiment. For one, you can see that he actually has gills similar to those of the Biolizard in his base form, probably just to help him take in more air/energy so he is less likely to tire, but more importantly I want his inhibitor rings to essentially be holding in the Doom powers he gets in Shadow Generations. When he takes them off, he basically becomes a darker shapeshifting mass that can barely hold himself together, instead of just becoming an objectively more powerful version of himself like in his canon form. It also makes more sense, since Gerald probably made those rings as he was ashamed that he had to resort to giving him Black Doom's DNA, and so that he could interact with Maria without hurting her.

The other big change is to Maria herself, who I wanted to be as goth as Shadow is, with her being more of the rambunctious goth type than an emo goth. I was always kind of annoyed at how generic anime-UwU precious babey Maria always was (even though she was greatly improved in Shadow Generations and Movie 3) so I thought making her have a more fun/imperfect personality would be more interesting, and would be more impactful during the Ark raid where she turns from a full-nonsense personality to someone who's actually afraid and desperate. I don't really have a solid visual design for her right now, but I've had a couple of iterations. I kind of want her to look less assured than she does here

Team Chaotix

You have NO IDEA how much I needed to change Charmy and Espio. Charmy looked like a weird cat/bear with a bee tail and Espio looked like some completely unrecognizable animal, even though you might be able to at least assume he's a chameleon if you knew his powers. 

For Charmy, I just needed to give him big bulging black eyes, a jagged mouth, and another set of arms to really show that he's an insect. If nothing else, it at least makes it obvious that he can't be anything BUT an insect. As for Espio, I decided that I could give reptilian Mobians various scales on their body instead of the mammals' chest coloring or whatever. I also gave him a more unique head shape and that weird fin thing which is much more chameleon-iconic than what he had before, and even gave him that wrinkly eyelid thing they have, while still giving him a more humanized expression.

As for Vector, since he was the rare Mobian who had an actually unique body type and head design, he stayed mostly the same. He's the main reason why I know the character designers at Sonic Team aren't ALWAYS copy-pasting their body types. I did have to change his outfit, mostly just to get rid of his weird shoulder-ball things which never will make any sense. What even are they?

Now, for the biggun

Blaze

Oooohh my god Blaze. When I was first thinking about adding her to the roster, I liked her a decent amount but didn't think about her too much. I did know that I wasn't going to change much about her design since it was already pretty much perfect, I just added more gold to her and made her ponytail more like a flame than her canon design, which looked more like feathers of some sort to me. I then just updated her tail to match the style.

What really changed was when I completely rewrote her story. I always thought it was so weird that they made her so special and weird, being a fire-bending princess from another dimension, but they barely went into fine detail about her, like, AT ALL. It doesn't seem like there's anything special about the Sol Dimension, aside from the Sol Emeralds, and her actual role as a princess is never really touched on at all besides her living in a castle as depicted in the comics, AND worst of all she's just sort of… born with fire bending powers? That's crazy even for Sonic characters. I mean I'll accept it but still, I feel like there should be something there. And it's also crazy that all of this was introduced in Sonic Rush, which, let's be real, has the most non-story there could be in a Sonic game. Nothing interesting and unique really happens in it. At least Rush Adventure did something new, but still. She deserves better

So anyway I changed practically every detail and am mentally organizing the full story, but the gist of it is essentially that 06 is now her debut game, and everything regarding Soleanna now involves her instead of Elise and all takes place in the Sol Dimension. You'd think it would be a little on the nose to make Soleanna a location in the Sol Dimension, but they didn't even bother to make that a thing. Same goes for Solaris. It feels so obvious, like it was meant to be that way in a beta form. On top of that, though, since she replaces Elise you can probably guess that she actually derives her fire bending power from Iblis, which is actually a power passed down in her family ever since Iblis and Mephiles were sealed. And, since she's clearly in more of a position of power than Elise, she can actually be the third in the 06 main character group instead of Shadow, since he gets enough attention elsewhere. 

As the story goes on and she realizes she has a flaming hellbeast inside of her, her sheer confidence gets broken and then regained thanks to Sonic supporting her. Maybe also includes a relationship with Amy because I can't help myself. Apart from that, there are so many details and story beats I'd love to share but really that would be a whole document all on its own. I'm surprisingly close to being able to write basically a whole movie script's worth on this thing.

But yeah every single detail I added to her story has now retroactively made her one of my all-time favorite Sonic characters, tied with Cream and Chaos. I basically freak out whenever she does literally anything, I'm kind of obsessed.

Also since the role of princess suggests there's a queen (unless you live in Equestria), here's the Queen of Soleanna

Silver

Now of course, ANOTHER peak redesign. I really think Silver specifically is the biggest upgrade out of everyone. I really needed him to look more weird and futuristic, making his whole body actually silvery instead of just kind of white, and making his clothes black to make his glowy tech bits more stark. I even turned his quills into flowing hair, just because. I like to think he's one of those characters that's unimaginably handsome without any effort, even though he doesn't realize it. 

Story-wise he doesn't change much, except of course since Blaze is doing her own thing, he's completely alone fighting to protect his future, which personally really helps show his character. He's the type to fight to his dying breath even if he knows he can't win, just so he can protect as many people as he can. I also think he's still the type who would take a can out from the bottom of those can pyramids in a cartoon supermarket, only to freak out when the whole pyramid topples down. He's a devoted warrior who, in low-stakes scenarios, is still kind of a lovable loser.

Except he wasn't always alone. He's the last remaining member of the Crested Knights (or whatever I want to call them), a genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced army of people made to quell Mephiles and Iblis as much as possible in the future. The second-to-last, his mentor Steel the Wolf, fell in battle with him, so he vows to keep fighting for him. Personally I think Silver having a deep personal attachment to someone in this way really makes him feel more loving and empathetic, which makes his goofy sides much more charming. I imagine him sharing stories of their past together over a campfire while Sonic and Blaze listen intently.

Also just because Blaze gets her own special super form because of the Sol Emeralds, I thought since the Chaos Emeralds are said to grant wishes, each individual who gets their power has a different "super" form. If we get Super Sonic and Burning Blaze, then we can also get Psychic Silver (it's still alliteration) where his psychokinetic abilities go haywire and his senses basically become perfect. 

Forces

The one thing I realized I didn't like about the IDW comics is that Amy was barking out commands like she was some seasoned war hero (which she kind of was) in her cutesy old Adventure dress, so that made me think that I should give her and everyone else their own special outfits for the Forces section of the story. Also, since the story of Forces is practically the same as SatAM aside from Sonic being involved, I made the Freedom Fighters become a part of this story, which are their own little task force. That also includes Nicole, who now actually looks like a holographic projection instead of just some random Mobian, although I might eventually design a more corporeal form for her. And, since Forces is one of those games where you realize they just didn't want to include humans for some reason, I decided to give Topaz from Sonic X a spot alongside Rouge in the Resistance. She'd still start off as a cop that Rouge enjoys ""messing"" with, but then once Eggman starts taking over she joins the forces against him. And since the IDW comics are practically a part of Forces' story, Lanolin can also be here, who I made chubbier since sheep always have a chubby aura. Tangle is there too but she's completely unchanged since she's already perfect. Same would go for Whisper but I haven't drawn her yet. And really the same goes for pretty much every other IDW character, since their designs are some of the best in the series imo.

The Ancients

I really thought the Ancients needed to look more alien and weird, and I wanted to give them clothes to mimic that of their tech. I also thought that the Koco could instead be their true brains/bodies, and the gel is another part of their tech. 

The main thing of their story is that I want them to be the origin of all Mobians and Chao. When they fled from The End to Mobius, after the big fight The End broke their bodies and brains, destroying the rocky shell around their true bodies, and making them back to being nearly animalistic. However, over time their malleable bodies evolved over time, some turning into the more capable and intelligent Mobians, while those that ended up in more protected areas didn't change quite as much and became the Chao, still being pretty soft and helpless. However, I also thought that the branch of them that fled to Mobius surely couldn't have been the ENTIRE species, so the other branches that fled away from The End ended up evolving into the species of the Black Arms and the Wisps. The Black Arms being a people who use more meaty, grotesque technology, and with the Wisps tending to use more abstract, colorful technology, assuming they use any at all, since they decided to live more naturalistically, even with their core bodies living outside of any other tech. This essentially makes Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) and Colors parallel stories, where they deal with the offshoots of the Ancients. If you couldn't tell, I also made them have traits of the Dark and Hero Chaos Chao, with Black Doom having the flame orbs above his head, and Mother Wisp having the halos and the head protrusions of the Hero Chaos Chao. They each also have cores similar to the Koco, with Doom's Eye essentially being his core, and the Wisps themselves each being a core, but with the Mother Wisp having a bigger body her core goes into. 

Those are all the major designs, but of course that isn't even it. For example, Some other characters that exist in my redesign are Sonia and Manic (fans of Sonic who hype him up in battle with music), Bokkun (mostly unchanged), Metal Sonic (just looks cooler), Sage (who I redesigned but honestly might not keep), Cosmo and the Metarex (both made a bit more alien), the Zeti (the Deadly Six and others of the species), and a whole redesign of Secret Rings and Black Knight which features even more stories like Peter Pan and Journey to the West. I could basically go on and on about it all but I have to stop somewhere lol

Thanks for indulging me

[dufferpuffer]

Dude, I need someone to simp over David Thewlis with and I have no one to go to. I have a feeling I know your opinion about David Thewlis as Remus Lupin (and I think it's a positive one? correct me if I'm wrong, I know some people don't think he did the character justice).

To be honest, I don't think the movies did his character justice, but I think David Thewlis was THE cast for him. The movies made him too soft, too gentle, too perfect. Book Remus is a lot more polarized than that. For every soft quality, he has a YIKES counterpart that is never shown in the movies. The only time we truly see this "yikes" counterpart is the Shrieking Shack scene when he smirks menacingly at Sirius and you think he's a villain. David pulled that off really good. I saw the movie before reading the book (I was a young kid at that time and PoA was too much to read for me) and I felt cheated, I suddenly didn't think I could trust him anymore.

The thing David Thewlis pulled off best, imo, is the fatherly quality of Remus. I know, Remus is a pathetic man with an avoidant personality, but we can't deny he is fatherly. And I feel that, no matter what movie I watch with David in it, the fatherly vibes just radiate from him. In a way I am glad it is like that in the movies because I use PoA as a coping mechanism in life. Stressed? PoA. Sad? PoA. Crisis? PoA. David absolutely nailed the comfy professor aura. Everything about him in PoA is inviting, it draws you in. His voice, his smile, the way he carries himself, his quiet strength. Who could've done it better? I love him.

Enjoy this young David Thewlis edit that I'm obsessed with. Cheers my tumblr friend <3

https://www.tiktok.com/@.dearlupin/video/7410813583577091334

David Threwlis is a fucking GEM and the PERFECT pick for the character in every aspect, yes. I can't think of how anyone could actually think otherwise. He looks perfect and acts perfect.

To the point where I would actually be happy if he played Remus AGAIN for the TV series or whatever - even though he looks so much older. Play up the fact he looks 'older than his age' or do some makeup, I dunno, I don't care. I would be alright with it.

I don't think any of the movies do anyone justice, TBH - ignoring the fact that of course things will have to be trimmed and simplified. I think most people agree though that the way they chose to do so was destructive and missed the point of the overarching story.

OotP and HBP were enjoyable as individual movies - but cut out so, so much that it damages the series as a whole. OotP especially should have been two movies, to REALLY get to know the Order Members, the adult world harry desperately wants to enter - revisit Lupin and Sirius, get attached to the real Moody - set up Tonks... maybe end the first one with Dumbledore leaving...?

But some actors pulled through wonderfully with the limited time they were given to portray their role, Alan Rickman of course being one - and I think David Threwlis is an underrated other. He did fucking BEAUTIFULLY and it made up for imo a half-assed performance from Gary Oldman as Sirius. He has perfect aesthetic and his fatherly moments with Harry were gorgeous... but most of the time he felt like his heart wasn't in it.

Remus, in the movies, HAD to be soft... but always carry a touch of coldness. A comfortable room but the heater isn't on. A cup of tea but you're asked to leave right after. Gentle eyes that pierce. Slightly odd expressions that feel kind, but also... off. He nailed that. Absolutely. That softness that makes you want to cozy up close, but a constant distance that makes you wonder why. Also the mustache was absolute genius. If only they gave him greys...

THIS LOOK? Underrated. SO MUCH PACKED INTO IT. Displeasure, surprise, 'oh shit im in danger' - but then forced innocence, a bit of weariness, a cheeky idea...

How he came out of the darkness, too - Snape specifically calling Lupin to show him the map was meaningful in the books, but Remus walking out of the pitch black was symbolic in the movies. It was a decent change. THIS is when I felt a 'Hm...' about Remus. (I saw it as an adult though, first time last year. I had no idea I'd love him so much.)

I LOVVEEEE going on and on about Remus being a wet tissue paper - because he is so often mischaracterized in so many different ways... but he IS good. He IS strong, compassionate, wise, clever... Fatherly. He will put himself aside to comfort someone in need. He just can't do that for himself. He will punish himself for the things he is gentle with in others.

"His voice, his smile, the way he carries himself, his quiet strength. Who could've done it better? I love him." YEAHYEAHYEAH David can pack layers of depth into every movement he makes. His little head bobbles, the ways his eyes pin on something and stare, his control of exactly how he smiles... ITS SO GOOD AHH

Normally a link to tiktok earns an instant vaporization but you get a pass aight I wont kill you God he's so wonky looking, look at him, he is delightful, I am going to spread him on toast with my vegemite

[naughtyneganjdm]

Love's Second Chance: A Holiday Reunion - Chapter 20

Summary: After denying Negan's proposal, Y/N is miserable alone. Negan shows up in attempts to fix things and later Joel shows up hoping to stop her from considering marrying Negan.

Characters: Joel Miller, the reader (OC), Negan Smith, etc.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60501985/chapters/158662978 Warnings: Swearing, Angst, etc.

Notes: I've had this story done, I just haven't taken the time to edit it. I'm sorry about that. I'll work to get it up as soon as I can edit the chapters.

Standing before her bathroom mirror, Y/N realized she looked terrible. Last night she couldn’t sleep after what she had done to Negan. Instead of talking to him, she took off on him and had someone else pick her up at the skating rink. Hell, she wouldn’t even answer any of his texts or his phone calls. At one point during the night, she was pretty sure that he showed up at her door knocking, but she didn’t answer. Honestly? She didn’t know why she was avoiding him. Maybe it was because she was embarrassed? Or she felt guilty. Regardless, she felt weird about the whole thing. She loved Negan and she knew that Negan loved her. Most people would have loved getting a proposal like she did with Negan. It was romantic, it was sweet and it was a story that people would have loved to tell their friends because they would have been jealous. Yet she denied him. It made her feel like a horrible person.

By now? She was sure that her daughter knew that she had turned Negan down. It seemed like her and Negan were closer than she expected them to be. Especially since Elizabeth was so willing to go and help Negan set up his proposal. Elizabeth loved her father and she knew deep down that Elizabeth had always expected her parents to get back together. So to accept Negan into her life? That was a pretty big deal.

All night she thought about the things that Negan offered her. A job, a life of travel. Something she always wanted. A source for her to get her word out there. A way to finally live after not being able to for years. Yet, she immediately told him no because of the other factors in her life. Her children and Joel. There was no way for her to do what Negan wanted because she had Elizabeth, Peter and Joel in her life.

Dragging her hand down over her face, she realized that she felt miserable about everything. All she could think about was Negan. About the face that he made when she turned him down and the way he just about begged her to get married to him. She wouldn’t blame him if he hated her now for that. After everything, she threw away their relationship like it was nothing.

Getting ready this morning was hard. Depression was eating away at her and she knew that. Everything hurt, especially her head and her chest. She regretted the way that she ran off on Negan last night. They should have at least talked about things, but she was emotional. Both about him and mad at herself for having the reaction that she did.

Tonight the children were supposed to be with Joel for something with Tommy so she would be left alone to herself. That meant she got up late, even though she didn’t sleep. It meant that she was walking around in comfortable clothes and she looked like shit. This was supposed to be the happiest time of the year. It was Christmas Eve after all. Yet, she wasn’t happy.

Today was just going to be spent watching Christmas movies on the television alone. Because that’s what she felt like she deserved today. To be left alone.

Not even thirty minutes into the watch, she noticed her phone starting to vibrate on the coffee table. Looking to it, she saw that it was Negan and exhaled loudly. Ignoring the call, she kept watching television, but she should have expected Negan to be more stubborn. There was no way that Negan would just give up. That wasn’t who Negan was. It never was.

After a few more calls, things went silent. That was until there were knocks at her door. No question that was Negan. And she was left to wonder how long she would let it keep going. This time he didn’t seem to be giving up.

Lazily getting up from the couch, she headed across the living room and opened the door. Standing before her with a bouquet of her favorite flowers was Negan. Hell, he looked as bad as she did. Sad with dark circles under his eyes. His hair was messy and it looked like he hadn’t slept either.

“I didn’t think you were going to answer,” Negan admitted, his voice raspier than normal. It had her looking down at the ground and he could tell that she wasn’t comfortable with him.

“Well, at least you’re better than Joel. When he wants to come in, he just grabs the spare key and comes in,” she informed Negan with an extended sigh, appreciating that he wasn’t like Joel in that aspect. “So I appreciate you waiting.”

Nodding, they both went quiet. Neither one of them was really looking at the other and it was awkward. Swallowing down hard, Negan shrugged his shoulders and held the flowers out to her, “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” she blurt out, her heart hammering away in her chest with Negan apologizing to her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I just…” Negan stuttered, his hazel eyes incredibly confused with her response to his apology. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I thought you were upset with me so I came here with this big apology and you’re telling me that you aren’t mad at me?”

“It’s complicated,” she accepted the flowers from Negan, pushing the door open far enough for Negan to join her in the house. Going into the kitchen she added the flowers that Negan had given her to the previous ones that were already in a vase. By the time she came back in, Negan was sitting down on the couch. He was at the edge of it showing that he wasn’t exactly relaxed in the moment. “I’m the one that needs to apologize. What you did last night? It was beautiful and I made it seem like I hated it.”

His lips parted, his hands waving about, but he reconsidered talking and he simply just dropped his head down in a moment of defeat, “I should have talked things out with you instead of running off on you. That was wrong and I’m sorry.”

There was that muscle in Negan’s jaw that would flex every time that he was upset and it broke her heart, “I imagine you hate me now.”

“Come on,” Negan’s broken breath filled the air, his hazel eyes lifting to show they were burning over with tears. Shrugging his shoulders, Negan lifted his hand to swipe at his eyes with his thumbs to collect the dampness. “I could never hate you. I fucking love you. You mean everything to me.”

Hearing those words had an involuntary whimper falling from her throat. Moving in beside Negan, she sat down slowly having his breathing growing louder, “I just wish you would have talked to me. You running off made me think that you were angry with me and I didn’t know what to do with myself. And then you wouldn’t answer me.”

“I’m a terrible person,” she suggested eliciting an eye roll from Negan who scoffed. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Yeah, I’m hurt, but I would appreciate if you could stop attacking the woman that I love the most,” Negan snorted, still trying to avoid showing her that he was so upset with things because he didn’t want to guilt her into feeling a certain way. “Something just happened yesterday and you were very emotional about it. Which I understand. I just don’t know why.”

By now she should have been unloading to him all of her thoughts, but she hated seeing him so upset, “Please don’t do that to me again Y/N. I want the two of us to be close. If something is going on, please just talk to me. I want us to be close and open with one another.”

“Okay,” she outstretched her hand to place it in over Negan’s. Caressing her thumb over the back of Negan’s hand, she was thankful that his fingers hooked with hers.

“Can I take you somewhere to show you something?” Negan sniffled, his thick eyebrows bouncing up with him turning to her.

“I look like shit,” she pointed out with his nose wrinkling in disappointment since she was attacking herself again. “I haven’t taken care of myself yet.”

“You’re beautiful, always,” Negan corrected her, hooking his fingers tighter with hers. Bringing her hand up, he deposited a kiss over the back of her hand. “Where we’re going, I don’t think it matters how you are dressed. I’ve just been thinking about things all night and I did something this morning that I want you to see.”

“Alright. Let me get my shoes on,” she agreed to going with him. She at least owed him that. Gathering her things, she followed Negan out of her home. Like before, Negan still helped her into the car and was as sweet to her as he normally would be. Wherever Negan was driving her, she had no idea. What surprised her was how short the drive actually was. By the time that Negan pulled into the driveway of a massive home on the outskirts of town, she didn’t know what to say. Staring out at the home, it made her smirk when she realized what it was. “What are we doing here Negan?”

“Do you remember this place?” Negan leaned back in his seat after turning off the car. Rubbing his hands on his thighs, Negan waited for her answer.

“Of course I do,” she looked up at the home seeing that it was a little bit more worn down than from what she remembered. “We used to ride our bikes by here all the time when we were children. Talk about how one day when we were older and famous, we’d come back, buy this house and live here. So that way we could remember where we started, but still know that we succeeded. Make people jealous.”

“Right,” Negan winked, getting out of the car. Moving around the car, Negan opened the door and she gave him an odd expression. Helping her out, Negan led her up to the house. Looking around, Negan kicked aside the welcome mat where there was a key underneath it. Picking up the key, Negan opened the door and it had her panicked. “Come on.”

“What are you doing?” she was appalled with Negan just walking into the home, turning to face her. Waving his hands at her, Negan urged her to follow him, but she was still nervous. “Are you breaking into this home?”

“Follow me,” Negan outstretched his hand to curl his fingers around her wrist to pull her into the home. Once they were inside, she let out a surprised breath at how nice it actually was. When they were younger and they chose this house, they picked it based on how it looked on the outside. They never knew what the inside looked like. Yet it was just as nice, if not nicer. It surprised her that someone who could afford something like this actually lived in their town. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re insane for breaking into this home,” she noted following Negan throughout the place. It was like they were in a museum getting to look at everything. It looked like something out of a magazine, but one thing she noticed is that it didn’t look like someone was living there. “Your celebrity status won’t stop us from getting arrested, you know that right?”

“I’m not going to get arrested,” Negan stopped in front of a pair of large doors that led outside. It brought in a hefty amount of light that brought attention to how impressive the home actually was. “This house is mine now.”

“It’s yours?” she stammered, still not sure what was going on. “How?”

“When you didn’t answer the door last night or the phone I went for a drive. And I drove past this place,” Negan kept one of her hands in his, waving his free hand about in the air. “It brought back so many memories for me and I realized that you were right. Your home is here. You need a place where you belong. And we always wanted this home when we were kids. I got in contact with some people and all I have to do is sign some paperwork and this house is ours.”

“So you’re saying that you bought yourself another home?” she was shocked to hear that and Negan cleared his throat.

“I’m probably going to get rid of the farm or the beach house because I don’t need those. The farm brings back too many Lucille memories for me…” Negan explained, his thick brows full of emotion talking about how he wanted to give up some of the places he owned. “It doesn’t matter to me. I can get rid of both of them. Because at the end of the day? You’re my home. You are what is home for me. I want to be with you. And I remembered our dreams of having this home one day.”

Surprise flooded her veins with Negan shrugging his shoulders, “I don’t think you realize, I don’t care about money or jobs, I just care about you. I want to make your dreams come true and I realize that I made a mistake with what I did.”

“I just wish we would have talked about it,” she stressed to Negan, using her free hand to place it in over the center of her chest to defend herself. “It was a lot of things to put in front of me without thinking about it.”

“You could have said no about the contract. Work means nothing to me. I just want to marry you,” Negan declared, his big hazel eyes hooked on hers. “I thought you wanted that life still when I heard you talking to Joel in New York. When both of you were standing in front of that window. So I made this deal thinking that’s where you wanted to be. I should have talked to you about it first. I heard what you said and I misunderstood what it was you wanted. I just more than anything want you to be happy. I want to be with you.”

Should she have said something here? Yes. She should have, but she didn’t. Rather she just felt her eyes tearing over and her chest aching, “Here, you’ll never be too far away from the children or Joel. You can start your life here with me and still be with them. Instead of having you travel, maybe I can help you start a local newspaper or site to focus on this part of town. Whatever subject you want to focus on. I just want you to be so fucking happy.”

Lowering her head, she knew that this was the most that someone had ever worked to make her happy, “I still want to marry you. I want you to be my wife more than anything. I want to share the rest of my life with you. I’ll finish off my year with the team and then I will retire all together. I’ll turn the coaching job down so we can live here. Start our life together in this town.”

“You shouldn’t give up this job opportunity in order to make me content,” she stressed to Negan, her eyes tearing over when Negan started to get very emotional. “I don’t want you to give up this incredible opportunity so you can just be with me.”

“You don’t understand, I don’t want this job more than I want to be with you,” Negan claimed with a whimper, his Adam’s apple bouncing in this throat. “I would easily give up the opportunity of being the coach if it means that I get to be with you. Because you are more important than any money or baseball team for me. When I look at my future, the thing I want to see more than anything is you. Not this job. It’s just something fun to have on the side. It’s something I’m used to. But I don’t care about baseball, I care about you because I love you.”

“I don’t want you to give up your life for me,” she felt her tears burning at her cheeks when Negan expressively shook his head. “Please, Negan…I don’t want to be known as the woman that forced you to give up your life. A life that so many people love you for.”

“But I don’t care about those people, I care about you,” Negan interrupted her, his bottom lip quivering as he spoke. “I already bought this home. Regardless of things with us, I will make sure that I’m here so that way we’ll never be far apart. I love you Y/N. You’re all I think about. You’re all I see when I close my eyes. Every breath, every thought…my heart…” reaching for her hand, he placed it in over the center of his chest and tipped his head to the side. “It belongs to you. I love you so fucking much.”

A moment later, Negan was lowering down to capture her lips in a tender sweep that took her breath away. The one thing about Negan? Every word he said, she believed it. She didn’t have to question it because she saw it in the way he talked to her. He was willing to give up everything for her.

“I love you,” she breathed against his lips, stroking her fingers through Negan’s dark hair. Cuddling her face in next to his, she knew that when she was with Negan, she was joyful. After last night? She knew that she was a miserable mess. There was no doubting how she felt about Negan and what he meant to her, but it still confused her why Joel was one of the first things that came to her mind when Negan asked her to marry him.

She should have recognized that she could have told him yes about the marriage and no about the contract, but she didn’t. And that bothered her. It confused her. Negan made her happier than anything, so she didn’t understand why she was still having these feelings.

Tipping back, she swept her thumb in over Negan’s bottom lip and gave him a nod, “I just need some time to think over things. This is amazing and I know you so desperately want to do everything in your power to make my life better, but I can’t even understand the feelings I’m having right now. So I can’t give you an official answer. Not right now.”

“Okay,” Negan responded, disappointment flooding his features, but he didn’t fight her on it. That wasn’t the answer he wanted. She knew that, but this was the best thing she could give him right now. It was a lot to think about. There was a lot on the line for him and her. More so him and she had to make a choice that would affect them for many years to come.

Trying to ignore the uneasiness that lingered between them both, Negan continued to show her around the home. It was a short trip before they were both headed back to her home. They had something quick to eat together and some hot chocolate. They talked about random things, but it wasn’t like before. They both still had everything hovering in their minds, but they were trying to make the most out of the day.

By the end of the night, Negan was laying in her lap fast asleep. Since he hadn’t slept, he was exhausted. For a long time he tried to fight falling asleep while they watched Christmas movies together with the fire on in the background. But by the time she had him resting in her lap and she was stroking at his scalp, there was no way he couldn’t have fallen asleep. Heavy breaths were surrounding her and she looked down to watch Negan while he slept.

Love did flood her veins when she looked at him and there was an undeniable happiness too. This felt good and that should have been a good thing. Tracing over Negan’s features, she didn’t know how to respond to all of this. She should have eagerly accepted Negan’s proposal. She was an idiot in her mind that she didn’t. Negan was perfect. And even if he wasn’t perfect in general, he was perfect for her. No one had ever gone above and beyond for her like this. It was hard not to love him with how much he truly loved her.

So her doubts didn’t make sense to her. Not one bit.

A rustling filled the room and she lifted her head to see that the front door was pushing open. Once her eyes fell upon the familiar brown eyed expression, a sense of frustration overwhelmed her, “Joel, you’re supposed to call or knock.”

“You haven’t been answering to me or your daughter. She got scared,” Joel expressed his worry, carefully tip toeing into the house and closing the door behind him. That was his way of trying not to wake up Negan because he noticed that Negan was sleeping in her lap. “I was worried what I might find here since you never do that to us.”

“It’s been a hard day,” she whispered, looking down to see that Negan was still deep in sleep breathing heavily. Adjusting her position carefully, she managed to slide out from underneath Negan and helped him lower his head down onto the couch. Being quiet, she motioned Joel to follow her into the kitchen so Negan could continue to sleep.

“I guess this is where I should congratulate you,” Joel stammered and by the expression over his face she knew that he wasn’t happy. Pointing toward the living room, Joel had a hard time looking at her with his face scrunching up. “Your daughter told me what happened last night. I assume that you two were celebrating about being engaged.”

“Your daughter?” she repeated, her head tipping to the side. Curiosity flooded her veins with jealousy becoming fairly obvious in Joel’s dark eyes.

“Our daughter,” Joel fixed what he had said, dramatically shaking his head as if what he had said was no big deal.

“I told him no,” she alerted Joel with a loud swallow. Almost immediately his head bounced about and he was visibly shocked. Instead of saying anything, he just nodded, but his dramatic expression said everything. “Nice reaction.”

“I just can’t believe you said no,” Joel looked toward the living room knowing that Negan was sleeping on the couch still and he didn’t want to wake him. Even though it was wrong, Joel was excited to hear that. “Why?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she was quick to shut down his question. It wasn’t his business. Truth be told? She really didn’t know why either. She told herself it was because of the children, but she honestly just panicked.

“It kind of matters,” Joel retorted, snorting as she turned away from him. It looked like she was trying to distract herself which led to her getting a drink. “I’d like to know.”

“It’s none of your business,” she stressed feeling overwhelmed with him just asking her.

“Is it no forever or…?” Joel continued on still finding himself wanting to know more. It was involuntary and he knew that she didn’t want to talk about it, but he needed her to. His heart was racing when she downed her drink incredibly fast.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, stroking her thumb over the glass. “It’s complicated.”

“Well, you can talk to me,” Joel offered and she made an amused sound that almost offended him. Stepping in closer to her, Joel braced his hands on the counter and stared out at her. Lowering his head, he tried to get her to lock eyes with him, but she was definitely avoiding doing that.

“Negan is in there,” she reminded him looking beyond him toward the living room where they left Negan sleeping on the couch.

“So he’s okay with you saying no?” Joel’s eyebrow arched in curiosity, biting at his bottom lip.

“No,” she responded, guilt eating away at her with what Negan had done today alone. Offering to quit his job and buying their childhood dream home was his way of proving how much she meant to him. “He wants me to reconsider because of…things.”

“Why are you being stingy with the information?” Joel grumbled irritated with her lack of being open with him.

“You’ve been weird about this whole Negan thing,” she blurt out, finally looking at him after pouring herself another drink. “Half the time you like him and then the other half of the time it seems like you hate him. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Joel huffed, shrugging his shoulders at the thought of his feelings on Negan. “I like him, I just don’t know if I like the idea of him being married to you. If you were engaged to him, I was going to ask you to think about it first before you do it.”

“That’s a lot to ask,” she shot back, her eyes narrowing when she downed the second drink faster than the first. “You really have no right to ask me to do anything. Especially after the things I found the other day. You haven’t even bothered to show up and talk to me since. So…”

“You say that you know I’m a different man, yet you’re upset about it still,” Joel expressed that he was uneasy with what she was saying. “Plus, you did say you wanted some space from me. I just was trying to prove that I could give you that.”

“Yeah, and you went right to Negan and fucked him, so…” she pointed out what he had done and it made Joel tense up. “And you even told him about the thing I told you to keep your mouth shut about. You’re lucky he handled it so well.”

“He broke my nose,” Joel retorted, pointing toward his face to show that there was some bruising under his eyes.

“You deserved it,” she voiced her opinion on the matter, knowing that she desperately wanted to hit him herself that night. By Joel’s face she knew that what she said irritated him, but she didn’t care. “I wanted to kick you in the balls, so I’d say you got off easy.”

“You want to kick me in the balls for something I did over four years ago?” Joel sneered folding his arms in front of his chest. There was color pressing in over her face and he knew that she was trying to keep her temper from growing. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I never hit you our entire marriage. Or after. When you certainly deserved a few slaps,” she declared getting a scoff from Joel. “Let’s see…you kept sex videos without my consent. You trash talked me to Lucille and said horrible things. You cheated on me.”

“I didn’t cheat on you,” Joel interrupted her, his face scrunching up in anger. “Cheating on you means I stuck my dick into someone else and I never did. I was loyal our entire marriage. I never slept with another person until we were separated.”

“We were still married when we were separated,” she reminded him how he was incorrect with what he had said in defense of himself.

“You know what I mean,” Joel rolled his eyes and leaned back against the counter having a fire flood her veins at how stubborn he was being. “I never cheated on you when we were together.”

“You would have been furious if I was having an online relationship with another man where I was sharing nude photos with him and role playing sex scenarios with him” she claimed, her throat tensing up and her eyes narrowing showing just how pissed off she really was at him. Joel’s face softened and he dropped his head to stare down at the ground. “You were mine when you were doing that. I was yours. And you would have been so angry with me if you thought I was doing that. And the things you said about me…”

“Those were personal,” Joel cleared his throat, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. Really Joel was right. And the other night Negan proved to her that this was not something that she should have been holding against Joel. But she was emotional in the moment. “You went looking for trouble when you read my e-mails. What you did in reading them was wrong. They weren’t yours to go through. You hurt yourself doing that because those were just me venting my feelings. Which I’ve already told you a million times that I was wrong. As I’ve stressed many times, the man I was then, I’m not now.”

“So I’m just supposed to forgive you?” she wondered, her eyes burning over at the thought of what she saw. “Suddenly, I’m just supposed to say you’re right Joel? You are a different man and you’re the man I want to be with? You’re the man that I want to re-marry?”

Instead of answering, Joel swallowed down hard and his brown eyes lifted to meet her stare, “That’s what I thought. You don’t want me getting married to Negan because you think I still belong to you. Even after everything.”

Stroking at the side of his face, Joel didn’t know what to say when she laughed and shook her head, “Negan never talked about me the way that you did.”

“Yeah, I know Negan is fucking perfect,” Joel growled in frustration, rolling his eyes again that it was going to this. “Even if I wanted you to marry me again, you would always be comparing me to Negan. Then again, you always did.”

“In your head I did,” she whispered, looking down in disappointment. “You always forget how much you meant to me. Let’s see…I was so fucking annoying with how clingy I was. With how I constantly needed attention. It wasn’t enough that you were paying the bills or working hard, I needed you to bend over backwards to show you loved me. You didn’t want to show me the affection I wanted because it was overwhelming you that I wanted you to be someone that you weren’t.”

“How many times have you read those e-mails?” Joel questioned, his head tipping to the side and his eyes narrowing. These were things that he assumed that he told Lucille in the e-mails. Hell, he didn’t even know, but since she seemed to be quoting them off, he assumed she read them a lot. “You can quote them now?”

“Once,” she answered, reaching up to try to wipe at her eyes because the last thing she wanted was to cry in front of him again. Yet, she knew that she was failing. “All I needed was once.”

“You still had no right to read those,” Joel countered, his voice growing deeper with his southern drawl filling the air. “It was wrong.”

“You’re right. It was wrong,” she agreed with him, which surprised him that she gave in so easily. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. Watching your videos, reading your e-mails…it was wrong. I just got emotional and what I did was immoral.”

Nodding, Joel just lowered his head and sighed loudly, “At least I know what you think of me. It’s better to know than have some kind of twisted, warped thought of us in my head.”

“Jesus,” Joel growled, rolling his eyes even more dramatically this time. “I think you’re being mature and then you go and say something like that.”

“You’re going to judge me on maturity?” she snapped back at him with a frown.

“I don’t think those things about you,” Joel reasoned with her, throwing his hands about while he spoke trying to get her focused on him when a single tear slid down her face. “What are you doing to Negan, Y/N?”

“Excuse me?” she didn’t get what he was hinting.

“You are so visibly still in love with me,” Joel suggested with a firm shake of his head. It made her scoff and look down toward the ground. “You cry all the time when you think about the thought of me not loving you. If you didn’t love me, it wouldn’t hurt you so fucking much. So why are you dragging Negan along when it’s obvious that it should be the two of us together? Yeah, we have a fucked up history, but the two of us are meant to be together and you know it.”

“I love Negan,” she corrected Joel who snickered. “I do.”

“Of course you do, I didn’t say you didn’t,” Joel countered, stepping in closer to her to get her to tip her head back to look up at him. Even though she was crying, there was still anger that resigned behind her eyes. “We’re the soulmates. Not you and him. Yes, you love him. But you love me more.”

“Don’t…” she warned with him stepping forward, pressing her hand into the center of his broad chest. Right now there were tears sliding down her face with Joel staring down at her. “Don’t!”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Joel begged of her, nodding over toward the living room where Negan was. “Tell me that I’m not the one you long to be with. It’s the reason you told Negan no. There was no logical reason for you to tell him no.”

“It wasn’t about you,” she claimed, her eyes getting angrier with him going off about the two of them. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Bullshit,” Joel snarled, closing the distance between the two of them and it had her breathing loudly. “You’re enamored with Negan. He makes you feel good. He’s everything you wanted me to be. But he’s not what you want. It’s me that you want. You want me to be like him. That’s why you told him no. That’s why you gave me that chance in New York. That’s why you are open to me having a poly relationship with you two. You can’t let me go.”

“You’re very arrogant,” she huffed, her body visibly shaking with Joel so close to her. Hovering his lips in over hers had her sucking in a sharp breath of air. “Just because I still love you doesn’t mean that I love you more than Negan nor does it mean that I want to be married to you.”

“My arrogance was something you were originally very attracted to,” Joel reminded her of their youth, his eyelids heavy with want. The urge to kiss her was there, but he didn’t know how she would handle it with Negan in the other room. “Does Negan know that you gave me the opportunity to win you back in New York?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she responded with a long exhale dropping her head down to break the idea that they could kiss in that moment. “I knew that you wouldn’t say the right thing. That’s why I made the offer. And I was right. How you think you are better for me than Negan is mind blowing because all you do is hurt me.”

“You know,” Joel reached for her wrist to stop her from walking away from him. “You think that you want me to be a certain way, but the truth is that you don’t. You love me the way I am. I can try to be a little more like Negan. Be honest. Be more open and truthful. But you have always been wildly attracted to me. You like that I’m less affectionate because when I do give you affection, it makes you feel special. You like the rough sex because you’re a freak. And you like fighting because it proves that we’re passionate. That’s what this is right now. What you and Negan have? It’s nice, but it’s unrealistic. No one is perfect. And you don’t want perfect. You want me.”

Lowering down, Joel’s lips hovered in over hers just enough so that his bottom lip dragged across hers. Going to bring their lips together, Joel felt the pressure of her fingers pressing in over the center of his chest to stop him, “I deserve perfect.”

A sharp exhale fell from his throat, surprise flooding his handsome features that she turned him down, “Even talking to you, I realize just how much we don’t belong together. All we do is fight. And you just confirmed to me that you have no intentions of changing.”

There was a sense of disappointment in her eyes after he said what he did, “I don’t want to feel lonely again, hoping that tonight is the night that you think I’m deserving of you holding me in your arms. I deserve someone who tells me how much they love me all the time. I deserve to be made love to sometimes and feel like the center of someone’s universe. I shouldn’t be made to feel like I’m overwhelming just because I want to touch you, hold your hand or cuddle with you. You’re right Joel, I wish you were a little more like Negan, but most of all? I wish you were the Joel that I married at eighteen years old. I wish you were the man that made me fall in love with him every single day. The man that was so proud of his children and me. The man that made the rest of the town jealous because they knew that our relationship was perfect. The man that would sing to me all the time not because he was in trouble or trying to win my heart, but just because he wanted to. The man that told me every single day how lucky he was to have me. The man that wrapped me up in his arms at night and made me feel safer than I ever have in my life because I knew that no matter what, in his arms I would be taken care of and loved. We could have nothing and it would be okay because we loved each other and that’s all that mattered.”

By now she was sobbing and there was red flooding into Joel’s cheeks at her breaking down about the way things used to be, “I know that you thought you drove me crazy because you didn’t do the dishes or you left your dirty clothes all over the room instead of putting them in the hamper, but those were little things Joel. They were worth it because I never once questioned your love. That man was the love of my life. And that Joel? He’ll never exist again.”

“Why not?” Joel stammered, trying to reach for her again but she made it clear that she didn’t want him to touch her. “You won’t even give me a chance to try.”

“You just told me that you wouldn’t,” she recalled what he had said to her not long before. “And we may have passion Joel, but I can’t take this fighting all the time. And truth be told…”

There was a silence between them when she let out a whimper, “You ruined that Joel for me. Over and over again. You can only break a plate so many times before you can no longer glue the pieces back together.”

“Then let me be a different Joel,” he grabbed her hands to stop her from leaving because he wouldn’t take that answer. “Let me be a Joel that you learn to fall in love with again. I don’t care if we have Negan in our relationship. I like him, you like him, he makes us better. I want him around and I think you know that. I may have not told you how I feel about him, but you know how I feel. He knows how I feel. We can have Negan. But if you’re going to marry one of us while you’re with both of us, then marry me. Yes you deserve both me and him. He gives you what I can’t and I give you what he can’t. But marry me, not him.”

“Stop it,” she reached for his arms to pull him up when he went to lower down to his knee. Frustration flooded her body when Joel scoffed. “You don’t even have a ring.”

“We didn’t have a ring when I asked you to marry me the first time either. Well…it was my class ring, but…” Joel stuttered through, his eyebrows furrowing with her shaking her head. “Come on, Y/N. Anyone in their right mind would have told Negan yes, but you didn’t. Because you know you’re meant to be with me.”

“Knock it off,” she warned Joel who rolled his eyes, but wouldn’t let go of her wrists. “You don’t want to be married to me Joel. You divorced me.”

“I was wrong,” Joel repeated what he had so many times. “I wish I never did it. And I think it happened so we could bring Negan into our relationship. But you shouldn’t be married to him. You should be married to me.”

Capturing her lips in a forceful kiss had her hitting at the center of his chest at first, but the longer he kissed her, the softer the hits were until she finally started kissing him back. Cupping her face in his palms, Joel’s tongue brushed out against hers leading her to fall in against his chest. Their breathing grew louder until Joel picked her up and led her over toward the table. Dropping her carefully on top of it, he urged her back to lay down. Working open his belt, Joel’s fingers fumbled to get it open. Once he did, he was quick to get his pants apart. Pushing his pants down to the bottom of his hips, he reached for her and pulled her down to the edge of the table. Turning her over roughly had her gasping out. Firmly pushing at her pants, Joel got them down to her thighs before pulling her to him.

“Joel,” she stammered his name, her hand reaching out to press in over his naked hip. Stroking firmly at his body, Joel pushed her legs apart with one of his feet. Lining himself up, he went to press forward, but felt the firm shove of her hand with her pulling up and away from him. “Stop!”

“I just…” Joel was breathless with her sliding out from under him and working her pants back over her hips. Realizing that she was upset, Joel unhurriedly pulled his pants back up over his hips with a disappointed breath. “I’m sorry. I got caught up in the moment.”

“You make loving you hard,” she confessed to him with a broken sound, her eyes lifting to his in a moment of sadness. “The fact you think I want to be face down on the table with you fucking me after everything…”

“Then I will take you upstairs and we’ll do it the right way,” Joel offered pointing his hand toward the stair area. “We’ll be quiet, go to the attic. We can have sex under the stars on the nook area that I made. Turn the lights on…”

“I don’t want to have sex with you Joel,” she announced eliciting a frown from him. “All you’ve done is confused me more tonight. Please just go home.”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Joel reminded her and she gave him a shrug like she didn’t know what he was hinting. “We should be together.”

“Tomorrow I’m still having everyone over. So just bring the children, Tommy and Maria,” she responded, not even looking at him and he felt guilty. He hated it. “Negan and his mom will be here. Rosita and her family too. I’ll just pretend this never happened.”

Trying to strum up the strength to say something just to get her to see him in a positive light, Joel cleared his throat and she shook her head, “Just leave. Please.”

“Listen,” Joel tried to stammer, his eyelids growing heavy. “I got too heated at the idea of you telling Negan no. I thought that meant you still wanted to be with me and only me. You have to understand where I’m coming from here. I love you, very fucking much.”

“Joel,” she looked like she was going to yell at him, but then stopped and nodded her head about. “I love you too. And I know you love me. But I know that you care about him too. I don’t know why either one of you want to be married to me. Being married makes things complicated. Do you understand that?”

“Why wouldn’t we want to be married to you?” Joel reasoned with her, stepping forward trying to get her to focus on him and what he was saying. “You’re the thing that makes us the happiest in the world. Yeah, we don’t mind sharing, but having you? Being married to you? That means that you love that one more.”

“You were the one pushing for the poly relationship the hardest,” she reminded him, getting Joel’s Adam’s apple to bounce in this throat. “You know that, right?”

“Because I like Negan more than I should,” Joel explained, having a warmth flooding into his face. “I like being around Negan. He makes me feel good. I mean he makes me also feel like a piece of shit, but I reckon I understand how he can make someone feel like the most important person in the world. So I understand why you feel the way you do about him.”

“I feel like the two of you just want me to marry you over the other so you can have one up over the other one,” she thought aloud, the lump growing in her throat when she rest against the corner of the cabinets. “Can’t I just love you both equally? Why does one need to be better than the other?”

“It’s complicated,” Joel admitted, not sure if he understood it himself when he folded his arms out in front of his chest. “You’re everything right in the world Y/N. And being married to you? That proves that something is right in our lives.”

“But I’m not. I’m not everything right in the world. I’m not perfect and hearing you two say that all the time? I’ve never felt more imperfect in my life. I’m a fucking mess. I break your heart, I break his heart,” she threw her hand about in the air showing that she was getting emotional. “I love the both of you so fucking much, but I hate hurting you both. You both accept that I love both of you. But you both want me to marry you. And when I say no to both of you? I hurt you both. It’s destroying me because I love you both so fucking much. And for vastly different reasons. But I do. I can’t lie about it. Yes. I’m head over heels in love with you, but I am him too. And I feel fucking stupid for telling him no. But I also feel stupid for telling you no too. But being married to either one of you? It just makes things hard. You understand that, right?”

“I get that we’re both putting you in a hard spot,” Joel admitted, a frown tugging at his tired features. “But you have to realize it’s just because the two of us love you so much. We like each other and we’re getting more relaxed with one another. And I’ll admit the reason that we were ill at ease at first is because of me. It’s just I was going through some things. I was angry because the last time…”

Biting down on his cheek, Joel sighed loudly and moved over toward the table to sit down. Dropping down into the seat, he didn’t want to look at Y/N when he spoke, “I’m uneasy being attracted to Negan or doing things with Negan because my father…”

Joel lifted his hands hearing the sound of Y/N pulling the chair that was beside him out so she could sit near him and give him her attention, “Before you and I were together, before I realized how I felt about you…I liked Negan. A lot.”

“I assumed so originally,” she knew that she was upset, but she could tell that he was working himself up to something by talking to her. “And I don’t care that you liked him. I’m okay with it.”

“But I wasn’t okay with it because…Negan and I used to do things together before he started doing…sexual things with you. Just touching. Never anything really extensive. He’d come over and we’d watch some porn and jerk off together. Occasionally we’d start to jerk each other off. One day my dad came home early and he found us doing that. Kicked Negan out and then he beat the shit out of me for it. I’m sorry I’m not telling this story well, but I’ve had to think about it several times and talk about it a few which never gets easier,” Joel admitted to her, his dark eyes locking with hers when he opened up about his past long before she had ever gotten with him or Negan. “My dad was a lot of things that were positive, I guess, but he was homophobic. And he beat it into me that I couldn’t have those feelings.”

“When did he do that?” she seemed upset hearing Joel tell her that story and it had Joel shrugging his shoulders.

“When I lied and said the person from our rival team attacked me when I had my back turned,” Joel was honest with her causing her lips to part. A disappointed breath escaped her with learning about Joel’s father. It was a big deal to her back then so he knew that she would remember the time he was talking about. “He beat me so bad that I probably should have gone to the hospital, but he wouldn’t let me. My mom never knew. My mom died thinking my dad was a fucking saint, but he beat the hell out of me for being attracted to another guy. So anytime I felt something positive about Negan? Or something happened with Negan? I was hearing my dad. So you’ll have to excuse me when I get tense about things because twenty plus years of listening to that man’s voice inside my head is hard.”

Joel swallowed down hard with her dropping her hand to squeezed her fingers around his, “You were and remain to be the only person that I have more feelings for than I do Negan. No one else ever made me feel normal or so in love like I do when I’m with you.”

“Joel, I love you,” she grabbed his hands squeezing them firmly. “But you are normal. You were normal. Don’t say that. I wish you would have told me.”

“What would it have done?” Joel slurred, pain visible in his face. “You were just a kid. You were a hot head but you weren’t about to take down my father.”

“But I could have been telling you all along that you were, you are perfect just the way you are,” she muttered, lifting her hand up to press it in over the side of his face. Slowly his eyes fluttered to a close with him leaning into the warmth of her touch. “Both of us didn’t win the lottery with our parents. We’re both broken because of what they did to us. What they continue to do to us, even if they aren’t here anymore.”

Closing the distance between them she pressed a loving kiss against his cheek and brushed her fingers throughout his hair, “Regardless of what you think Joel, I wouldn’t have picked someone else to be the father of my children. I think because we both went through what we did, we knew what it took to be loving parents. I don’t regret one bit having the life that I did with you. You’re a good father and your children will always know what unconditional love is because you’re an amazing father. That’s what you have to think about. How what happened to you impacted you in a positive way. Stop beating yourself up over something that you can’t control.”

A broken breath fell from his throat and he turned toward her palm to place a loving kiss against the center of her hand, “Come with me.”

“Where?” Joel muttered with her standing up holding her hand out for him. Accepting it, she led him toward the living room causing him to panic when they stepped before Negan. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to include Negan in any of their discussions. Especially since he just tried to convince her to marry him and not Negan.

“Honey,” she lowered down, still holding onto Joel’s hand while the other caressed over the side of Negan’s face. Stirring on the couch, Negan’s long eyelashes fluttered to an open and it took a minute for him to realize where he was. Exhaustion had set in and when he pushed himself up into a seated position, he seemed confused to see Joel there. Holding her hand out for Negan, he tipped his head to the side and took her hand in his. “Follow me.”

Instead of questioning things, Negan got up from the couch with a wince. Neither of them said anything as she led them up the stairs stopping at the attic. Getting the ladder down, she pointed up getting confused expressions from both of them.

“Up,” she spoke with Negan licking his lips and giving her a nod. Moving up the ladder to the attic, she had followed him up with him helping her up. When Joel reached the top of the ladder, Negan helped him up into the attic as well. Moving over toward the nook area, she took a seat on the edge of it and motioned them to follow her. There was tension between both Negan and Joel as they did as she asked of them. “We need to talk or we’re never going to be okay.”

“What does that mean?” Joel stammered with Negan sitting at one side of her and him at the other. Reaching for both of their hands, she held onto them and she looked deep in contemplation. “Y/N?”

“Joel,” she looked to Joel, her throat tensing up when she gazed upon her first love. “I love you. I will always love you. And nothing will ever change that. But I need you to stop overthinking things. I need to forgive you for the things that happened, but most of all you need to forgive yourself. Because you’ve been hurting yourself for far too long. And that’s kept you from truly being happy.”

A tremoring breath escaped his lips, with his brown eyes locked on hers. Giving him a nod, she then turned her attention to Negan who looked upon her with his big hazel eyes, “Negan, I love you so fucking much. You’re fun, you make me smile and every moment I spend with you is special. But with you? You have to realize that you just being in my life is enough. You don’t have to give me the world because I have it. With you. With Joel. And with my children.”

“I’m confused,” Negan was the first to say something, his Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat. “What is this?”

“I need to hear this from both of you,” she began, looking between the both of them. “Do you or do you not want to have this poly relationship? Because if we are going to do this, I need to know that you both want it. If you do, we have to work together and include each other in things. Make sure that it’s something we really want because otherwise, it will never work.”

“Are you okay with it?” Joel was the first to speak up, his southern drawl raspy with his free hand reaching up to urge her to look at him. “I need to know that it’s something you want because sometimes I feel like you’re going above and beyond to make us happy. Because you don’t want to hurt either one of us.”

“I love the both of you,” she was honest, gazing back at Negan who was still seemingly confused with where this was going. “And that’s the thing. I love both of you so much that my heart can’t choose who it wants to be with. Which makes me greedy, but I know I love the both of you so much. But I can’t have you just accepting this because you want to be with me.”

“I love you so fucking much,” Negan finally spoke, palming in over the side of her face. Sliding in closer to her, he gave her a weak smile and nodded his head. “And you know I care very much about Joel.”

“I think I care about you more than you care about me,” Joel surprised both of them when they looked to him and he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m okay with the poly relationship because you were the first person I think I felt anything for and she’s the love of my life. She’s okay with the poly relationship because she loves the both of us and can’t decide. I think even though it feels like I’m the odd one out, it’s actually you.”

“That’s not true,” Negan tried to defend himself having her tip her head back to look him over. “I’ve always been very supportive of both of you. I want the both of you happy and more than anything I’ve been trying to make you both happy.”

“This is what I mean,” she pointed between the both of them, “We have to know that the feelings are real and this is something you both want.”

“I am okay with this poly relationship,” Negan insisted with a shake of his head, “but if you want me to be honest, no, I don’t love you Joel like I do her. And I know you don’t love me like you do her either. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to learn to love you too. We obviously both like each other. We’re both attracted to each other and I know that maybe you do feel stronger feelings for me than I do you, but it doesn’t negate that I care about you. I’ve just been in love with her from the moment I laid eyes on her. It takes time to build that kind of fucking love. Y’know?”

Something in Joel’s face showed that he didn’t exactly believe that, but he just nodded because he didn’t want to be the one to push it any further, “We’re just going to have to tell Ellie and Peter in a way that makes sense because I don’t want to hide anything from them.”

“That’s something to worry about when we figure everything out here first,” she agreed with Joel, swallowing down hard. Dropping back dramatically on the oversized cushion that Joel put in the nook area of the attic had both men looking to her. “I could really just use a night of relaxing. Especially with it being Christmas tomorrow.”

“Yes ma’am,” Negan slurred, leaning back to lay down onto the cushion with her. Sliding in beside her, his nose nuzzled in against the side of her neck and his hand pressed in over her abdomen. Realizing what she was asking for, Joel was careful in the way that he lowered down beside her as well. Mirroring what Negan had done, Joel pressed a kiss over her cheek. “You mean everything to me.”

Knowing that she wanted silence, Joel knew that it was going to take a whole lot more than just this simple talk, but he was going to give her what she asked for right now and hold her close. For him? Sharing her with Negan and getting to explore what he felt for Negan when he was younger was the best option. One he hoped that they could figure out altogether.

----

Tags: @chainsawsangel @fancypeacepersona @violent-darkness @negansbestie @elegantfanficluv

@sanctuaryforthelost @dead-of-niight @dilfsandmartinis @jennydehavilland

[lookingfts]

My totally unqualified opinions of Wicked

Well I went to Wicked for JB and he did not disappoint. That man is fucking charming. My mom swooned for him and now wants to watch Bridgerton (she's never seen it).

I think most of the scenes he was in are things I've already seen in trailers or BTS. Which is to say, I would have been happy to watch him a whole lot more. But every scene he's in, I absolutely loved him. I don't think the role of Fiyero shows much of his emotional range and depth (I mean, compared to what we've seen him do as Anthony), but I think that's just due to the actual amount of time he's in it. But obviously he sounds amazing in the musical numbers, I loved watching him sing and dance and enjoying this other side of him. And his smolder is just unmatched.

Some light spoilers, but not much. Other random thoughts:

Costumes, 1000. I wanted all the clothes, especially Michelle Yeoh's coats.

Set design, very cool. Knowing how much of that was practical made me enjoy it more. Everything feels pretty immersive.

I'm not a musical theater fan, and I guess every musical has those songs that are like...eh, I could skip this. But I loved Dancing Through Life and Defying Gravity, and a few of the other smaller numbers.

It was way too goddamn long, but so is every big-budget movie these days. I think a lot of what could have been cut were musical numbers, but of course you have to include them if you're trying to adapt a popular show. And a few other scenes that just felt long. Overall though I thought the pacing was good, there was just a stretch in the third act that I got a little restless.

Cynthia, holy shit. I got chills several times when she sang. Also, as my mom said, Elphaba just cool and you would want to hang out with her.

Cynthia and Ariana have great chemistry together. Galinda is way over the top but she made me laugh quite a bit. If the central thread is their friendship, I think they really make that work.

Side characters are all great but most of them have so little screen time that they don't feel integral to the story yet - perhaps in part 2.

So, if you want to see it, I think it's very enjoyable! People clapped in my theater. I was happy I went. Will definitely see Part 2, and would probably rewatch Part 1, I imagine there are a lot of details I missed on first watch.

[howlingmod]

follow-up to Allusive !

summary - hcs + drabble continuation of allusive ... the ooc confession hath arrived. lampert x reader

wc - 1.5k

misc - sort of requested by @ra-bies . technically. (sorry for the @)

-Lampert did not actually tell you that night. Woops. He wanted to, and he really thought he was gonna! He knew if he didn’t just get it off his chest there was a pretty good chance he’d end up never telling you and agonizing over how he could for forever. Even then, though, he couldn’t risk blurting it out wrong and saying something entirely by accident. He would be mortified for life if he said something stupid after such a special moment between the two of you. So instead he just made up a story about something he saw at Rokea earlier that day he thought you’d find funny and then stared off into space for the rest of the night. Needless to say, he had to come up with something better, and soon.

-He’s really not sure of where to start. Sure, he knows the cliche romantic stuff people to do confess their feelings, but all of it feels a little … off. It’s just not something he would do, and he’s sure you would notice if he was doing something so wildly out of character for him, which runs the risk of making you uncomfortable or think he’s not being genuine and that’s the last thing he needs.

-So, he’s gotta figure out something you would understand. He thinks a lot about how you two normally hang out, all the places you tend to drag him whenever you’re off of work and have money to spare and the energy to go out. You’ve taken him to a couple of places near your work, a handful of small stores and a restaurant or two, but that’s just a little too casual, isn’t it? I mean, yeah, he had a lot of fun on those little outings with you, but they’re all right by your job. You see them every day– hell, you probably go visit them pretty often!

-You’ve taken him to a few more ‘special’ places, too. There was some clearing at a nearby park you’d showed him, flopping down on the ground to look up at the stars. There wasn’t anything super unique about the place, but Lampert didn’t really remember it for that anyway. He mostly just remembers talking with you there, how you went on tangent after tangent about customers or random conversations you overheard or something you remembered from when you were younger. He didn’t have too much to add, his day had been pretty normal and his childhood was a lot of just him looking at furniture, but it was nice. He liked hearing you talk, the sound of your voice, how much fun you were having. You’d gone long enough that your voice was still scratchy the next day, much to your chagrin. Despite the sore throat, he was sure you had fun too, since you talked about going back there with him someday soon.

- … But that also felt pretty cliche. I mean, yeah, that was a pretty special experience to him, but a “beautiful, starry clearing” felt just tropey enough to make him cringe. He might as well bring a bouquet of roses and a handwritten letter.

-So, that left him with one other idea: your place. Sure, it seemed pretty lame– It’s your house. You go there every day and spend a whole lot of time there, but it felt like the only place really unique to the two of you. You two have spent plenty of nights watching bad movies on your tv or going on about this and that over drinks. Besides, that’s where he was planning on telling you in the first place, wasn’t it?

-He would’ve considered his place, but he didn’t really wanna risk some random passerby overhearing such a sensitive conversation, especially if you didn’t return his feelings. A fort in the middle of a store only has so much privacy, and he wasn’t sure you’d be a fan of the dark of the store after hours.

-Even with a location figured out now, he was a little apprehensive. He really didn’t wanna risk throwing out your guys’ friendship over unreturned feelings, but he also knew he couldn’t really make them go away and you would start to notice something’s up eventually. You probably wouldn’t cut him off just because you didn’t feel the same, but the fact it was a ‘probably’ and not a ‘definitely’ felt like it may as well have been an outright no.

-Either which way, he had to give it a try. If you didn’t feel the same, that was fine, he’s sure he could still be your friend. Hopefully. If you did feel the same, though, then … yay. He’s not really sure how to put into words how happy he’d be.

-You’d invited him over as per usual and the night had been pretty normal for the most part. You two had dinner and were just sitting around talking, but he’d decided to let you take the lead in conversation tonight, since he had to gather his confidence to say this right.

“… You alright, man? Been pretty quiet,” You hummed, looking over at your friend. He’d been sitting pretty stiffly, now that you looked at him. He was on the other side of the couch, facing forward with his hands folded on his lap and looking right ahead, though his eyes had shifted over to look over at you once you addressed him.

“Huh? Oh, uh … yeah, I’m fine. But uh … could I talk to you about something?” He asked, uncharacteristically anxious. That was enough to make you sit up straighter, already dreading what was to come.

“Oh, yeah. For sure. What do you wanna talk about?” You hoped you sounded normal enough, it was a little hard to get those words out through the worry tightening arond your throat.

He seemed to pick up on it, though, efforts be damned. He’d suddenly turned to you then, fully shifting to face you and waving his hands, “Don’t worry! It’s nothing bad! I probably should’ve worded that a little better, sorry, it’s just sort of … big? Complicated? I dunno.”

You relaxed at that, but still kept an edge of uncertainty, unsure of where this was going. There was a pause for a few moments, each of you waiting for the other to say something more. “Well … you gonna tell me about the big news or what?”

He smiled at that, scoffing a laugh, “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. But … do you remember when I asked you if I could tell you something?” He paused, looking at you. You stared back blankly, lips pulled into a straight line. “That one night? The one where you got those wires for me? I followed it up with some like, dumb story or whatever.”

“Oh! That night! Yeah, I remember, what about it?”

“Well,” Lampert took a breath, looking off into the side and folding his hands together again, “I wasn’t really … honest, about what I wanted to tell you.”

“I didn’t just wanna tell you about some stupid guy at Rokea,” he continued, leaning back against the arm of the couch, pulling his legs up to fully mirror your position, “I was thinking about something else and just kinda panicked once I’d actually said something.”

You blinked at him, and he took another breath, tensing up as he physically braced himself for the point of no return. “So, I was actually kinda thinking about … ugh, how do I say this? Us? Like, ugh, no, that sounds so …” he trailed off, rubbing at his eyes hard, “I don’t know, I just … I felt so safe, y’know? I don’t really like other people touching me, much less sticking their hands in me like that, but I didn’t mind it when it was you.”

“I always kinda felt like that, I guess, but I just never really noticed it until then. And it’s not just that, either. You’ve always been there for me, you’re funny even if you’re being annoying, you always think about me and you’ve done so, so much for me and I just–” he sighed, letting go of held breath, “I really appreciate you, I like having you in my life. You mean a lot to me.”

He risked looking at you then, meeting wide eyes, “You can say no if you want to, of course. I don’t wanna lose you over some stupid confession. But … if you’d want to, I’d like to go out with you.”

You didn’t respond for a few seconds, blinking at him. Okay, clearly you didn’t feel the same. That’s fine, okay, he can deal with that. He should say something, he opens his mouth to speak again.

“Lampert I’ve been dropping hints for like weeks now.”

“Huh?”

“Dude,” you were laughing now, badly biting them back, “Do you think I invite anyone over this much? Why do you think I took you to that one stupid, fancy cafe a while ago?”

“I- Well,” Lampert stammered, struggling to wrap his head around what you were saying, “How was I supposed to know that?! You never said anything!”

You threw your head back, laughing harder now. If he liked you any less, he would be walking away right now. Instead, he was sitting and watching you laugh at him like an idiot. “Man! Whatever, who cares. But yes, I’d like to go out with you too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You mean a lot to me too, if that wasn’t obvious.”

…

“But for the record, I knew you were bullshitting that story in the first place.”

“Oh lay off!”

[candycandy00]

Roses in the Sky - An Original Alien x Reader Story Part 6

In a future where humanity huddles in decaying domed cities controlled by alien invaders, you and your best friend Anna work as make-shift nurses in a tiny clinic run by the young doctor Terrian. The city is ruled by the aliens' violent, half-breed offspring who serve as brutal overseers. You and Anna have always tried to avoid these overseers at all cost, but your life is changed when one of those same terrifying offspring is brought into the clinic, injured and unconscious.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

This is an original Alien (well half alien) x Fem Reader story! I hope everyone who enjoys my fanfiction will give this a shot! Any feedback whatsoever would be loved! I’ve already written this story so it’s not going to delay my fanfics. Just thought I might post chapters of this between fanfics if anyone is interested.

Slow burn, as this is a novel-length story, but there will be smut in later chapters! Also: violence, blood, rape attempts, death of side characters, etc.

Vartan nearly knocked you over as he stumbled inside, holding onto the wall as he made his way through your kitchen and to the living room, where he fell onto the couch.

You closed and locked the door behind him, then hurried over to the couch.

"What are you doing here?"

He looked up at you, and for first time you could see a hint of annoyance on his face. It was both frightening and comical. "They asked me to leave the base. So I came here."

"They threw you out?"

He laid back on the couch, making himself a bit more comfortable, though every move still seemed painful. "Yes, that is basically true."

You were holding your forehead. This was ridiculous. If the neighbors happened to see Vartan on his way in, the whole building would be in a state of panic.

He glanced to the side. "You do not have a television?"

You frowned. "No, I'm not that rich. And besides, I don't even like watching movies. Wait, why did you come to my apartment? For that matter how did you know where I live?"

"I followed you home. And you are the only human I know."

You couldn't help but feel a little bit special upon hearing that. How many girls in the city could say a half-breed knew them well enough to crash at their place? But you tossed the thought out of your mind. "You know Terrian too. He has a really big house."

"But you are the one I followed," he said simply, as if that explained everything.

You sighed. "Alright, you can stay as long as you need to, but please don't go walking around in the hallway or anything. The other people in the building might have heart attacks if they spot you."

Vartan nodded.

"And," you said carefully, "there's one more condition to staying here."

He looked you in the eyes again. "What is it?"

You felt a little scared. You just couldn't get beyond the fact that you were talking to a half-breed. You took a deep breath. "You can't punish anyone while you're staying with me. No matter what."

He raised his eyebrows, and you flinched, as if expecting him to jump up and decapitate you. "And what will you do if I punish anyone?"

You hesitated for a moment, then built up your courage and said "I'll throw you out!"

Vartan stared at you in response, and you could've sworn an extremely faint smile had tugged at his lips for an instant. "Very well," he said, "I will abide by your rules."

You blinked. A half-breed was agreeing to your rules? It was beyond bizarre. You shook your head and walked into the bedroom, where you pulled out an extra blanket and took one of the pillows from your own bed. You brought them to him, and he politely thanked you.

Once he was comfortable again, you waved to him and told him goodnight, going into your room to change into pajamas. You opened your door a crack and peeked into the living room, but it was too dark to make out anything more than a vague shape on the couch.

It was a very restless night, as you had trouble sleeping while knowing that a half-breed was lying in the next room. Your mind was going crazy, telling you that he was different, that he was kind to you and had gotten himself into trouble for your sake, but at the same time reminding you of how callously he had murdered Miranda's parents only a few days before. You couldn't decide whether he was a gentle boy or a barbaric monster.

In the end, you fell asleep just a few hours before sunrise, and so overslept terribly the next morning. What little sleep you got was plagued by nightmares, of your parents screaming, of following a tall, black-clad stranger in the snow. You don’t even remember what snow feels like, but in your dreams it was bitterly cold. 

You climbed out of bed and staggered into the kitchen. Vartan was at the table peeling an orange. His jacket was gone and, to your embarrassment, so were his pants. He wore boxer shorts, plain black cotton. He looked up when you entered the room. "Is it alright that I took an orange?"

You nodded, still a little disoriented. You were wearing a tank top and a pair of knit shorts. It was nothing scandalous, but you felt a little self-conscious so you held your arms over yourself and stepped toward the door.

"There is no need to be embarrassed," he said, biting into the peeled orange, "I have seen you in less."

You remembered your first time meeting him, in the clinic while you were in your underwear, and cringed. You had almost forgotten it. You turned around to face him. "Right, about that, I have another rule. You can't... um... do anything... to me."

He looked highly confused. "Do anything?"

"You know, what you half-breeds do to humans all the time. Um, how did that girl put it yesterday... 'enjoy'?"

Vartan obviously understood now, and you were more than a little embarrassed.

He took another bite of the orange. "I will do nothing to harm you."

You sighed in relief. "Great, I'm glad we cleared that up." You sat down at the table and grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit, biting into it without peeling it. "By the way, I wanted to thank you for what you did yesterday. You really saved us, Anna and I."

Vartan nodded without a word.

You watched him for a moment while chewing the apple. "I'm curious though, why did you do it?"

"I already explained. You saved me, I wanted to save you in return."

"But when you spared Miranda, I mean, the little girl a few nights ago, you said your debt had been repaid."

He was looking at the half-eaten orange in his hand. "I am... not on the best of terms with those three."

"Oh. I see. So going up against them wasn't exactly new?"

"Correct," he answered. "I have fought with them many times."

"Why?" you asked, the question slipping out of your mouth before you thought.

"I believe Celeste, the girl you met, harbors feelings for me that one half-breed should not have for another."

Your jaw dropped. "You mean she has a crush on you?!"

"Yes, I believe so. And the others, Aden and Marcel, harbor those feelings for her. As such, they despise me."

You laid the apple on the table, too intrigued to eat. "Wow, so they're jealous of you! But why would she attack you the way she did? Why would she allow them to?"

Vartan looked at you, surprised. "Why would she not?"

"Because she's in love with you, isn't she? You don't hurt people you love!"

"We do not understand the feelings of humans," he said. "If we somehow come to experience them, we do not know how to react to them."

You looked back down. "Oh," you said, then looked at him sharply. "But why don't the half-breeds get together? Why don't they ever date each other or get married or anything?”

Vartan looked positively shocked by your question, his expression even going beyond mere raised eyebrows to include wide eyes and a gaping mouth. "That is forbidden! We can never touch each other in that way!"

You were quite surprised yourself. "Why not?"

Vartan settled back into his usual expression. "I'm not sure. We've been told from the time we were children that we must never, ever mate with fellow half-breeds. Doing so would be punishable by death."

"Wow, that's a really harsh rule. But I guess that explains why you guys fool around with humans so much."

"Yes," he replied, eating his orange again and seeming strangely uncomfortable, "We were told to satisfy our physical desires with humans."

You placed your elbow on the table and leaned over, supporting your head with your arm. "But don't you guys ever want something more? More than just a physical thing? How do you get any pleasure from it when the human obviously doesn't want it?"

Vartan was focused intently on the orange, as if purposely avoiding your eyes. "We were told that humans are hormonal creatures who always desire physical pleasure. We were told that the humans wouldn't mind, that they would be happy to satisfy us, because we are pleasing to their eyes."

You wee positively amazed to be hearing all of this. Finally things were starting to make a little more sense. "But couldn't you figure out that humans didn't want to be used?"

Vartan suddenly stood up from the table. "Do you mind if I use your shower?"

You blinked, caught off-guard. "Oh, sure. There are some towels in the closet in the hall."

He stood up and pushed his chair in, then cleared the table of the small mess he had made with the orange. It really struck you that he was unbelievably polite. You wondered if half-breeds were raised to be that way, or if this was simply a personality trait for him.

You heard him open and then close the closet door, then listened as he walked a little further down the hall and into the bathroom. Then the water came on. You resumed eating while you waited, and he eventually emerged from the hall again, but this time he was without the boxers. You nearly choked on the apple, but stood up and quickly backed away, covering your eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Please put your clothes on!" you cried.

"Why? You have seen me nude before. Why are humans so bothered by such things?"

You slowly removed your hands from your eyes, but looked straight at his face. He looked genuinely curious. "Because things like this should be reserved for couples."

"Why?"

You thought for a moment, trying to come up with the best way to word it. "Well, it should be special, when two people who are in love see each other naked for the first time. Exposing yourself like that is like revealing your deepest secret."

Vartan's puzzled expression made you realize that you had indeed worded it wrong. "Wait, that didn't come out right. I mean, even with people who are not in love, you want to save that 'secret' for when you decide to become intimate."

"So, humans do not allow anyone to see them nude unless they are intimate?"

You rubbed your forehead again. "No, that's not exactly it. I mean, doctors see you naked, but that's for medical reasons. It's different. And when you're a kid and your parents see you naked, like when you're taking a bath. Or if you're spending the night with your best friend and you change clothes in the same bedroom, it's not a big deal. But, when it comes to someone you're attracted to, it makes you shy about it, so you only want to show yourself to them when you trust them to not be judgmental and..."

You trailed off, noticing that Vartan's look of confusion was gone and he was instead staring at you intently. "I see," he said, stepping into the living room. He returned a few seconds later, buttoning his pants. "I suppose I no longer have a secret to reveal."

"What?"

Again that faint smile seemed to flash across his face for the briefest of moments, but it disappeared just as quickly. "You're not going to the clinic today. Are you going anywhere else?"

"Terrian's house. He gave me a new job."

"What kind?"

You raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you really interested or are you making conversation?"

"I am interested."

"He wants Anna and I to be his new maids. I know he just wants to give us a reason to take money from him and come to his house, so we won't feel like we're robbing him, you know? But I hope he doesn't make us wear uniforms again."

"The white outfit you were wearing at the clinic, that was a uniform?" he asked. 

"Yeah. Terrian picks them out. I think he has a costume fetish or something."

"Does he not make you feel uncomfortable?"

You laughed. "We know he's just joking around. Yeah, he likes to see us in cute clothes, but he would never do anything inappropriate. In fact he's ridiculously protective of us."

"Yes, I saw that," Vartan replied. "He was quick to attack me when he thought I was doing you harm."

You laughed again, and in the back of your mind you wondered when you had reached the point that you could laugh with a half-breed. Your eyes drifted to the clock on the kitchen wall. "Oh crap, I'm really running late now. I better get ready."

You hurried to the hall, grabbed some towels, and took a quick shower. You dressed in the bathroom, having no desire to go prancing into your bedroom with nothing but a towel on while Vartan was there. He promised he wouldn't do anything, but you decided it wouldn't be a good idea to tempt a half-breed, despite the circumstances.

You fixed your hair and even dabbled on a little makeup and perfume, things you normally never bothered with. When finished, you looked in the mirror and asked yourself why you were trying so hard to look good. Was it because you wanted Vartan to find you attractive? But you had gone to such lengths to avoid attracting that sort of attention from him.

But what was wrong with it if you liked him?

You took a deep breath and walked out of the bathroom. You grabbed your bag from the counter in the kitchen and stepped into a pair of shoes by the door. You glanced into the living room, where Vartan was sitting quietly on the couch.

"Um, I'm leaving now. If you decide to go out, lock the door behind you. There's an extra key on the table by my bed so you can get back in. Remember not to let anyone see you in the building, okay?"

He looked up at you and nodded, then waved as you left.

You arrived several minutes later at Terrian's house. You usually visited in the evenings, after they closed the clinic, so seeing it in the daylight, under the red-tinged sun, made the huge house look a little scary. Now you understood why he often asked you and Anna to come live with him.

You walked up on the porch and rang the door bell. A few minutes later, you heard footsteps and the door suddenly flung open. There stood Anna, positively fuming, in a frilly french maid costume that was obviously bought for Halloween many years ago. You wanted to laugh, but then it occurred to you that you would probably be wearing that horrendous getup too. You grimaced.

"He's gone too far this time!" Anna said loudly, stomping her foot as she talked as if to emphasize every word. "Look at this! I look ridiculous!"

"It's not that bad. I mean, it's kinda cute."

"It's awful!" Anna cried.

You opened your mouth to respond, but heard Terrian's voice ring out from within the house. "Is she here? Send her on up to get her uniform!"

You paled. "Well, at least you won't look awful by yourself." You stepped inside and began climbing up the stairs, dreading what you would see when you reached the top.

Tag List:

@scrumptiouslampwobblercop

[gallafics]

𝙶𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚊𝚏𝚒𝚌'𝚜 𝚁𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚠

Title: Quatervois Author: @dodgerbear84 (Ao3)

Rating: Explicit Series: N/A

Chapters: 8/8 Word Count: 51.5k

Archive Warnings: No Warnings Used

Favorite Character: Two lovely side characters; a bartender named Cam & Mickey’s friend Kenny. And of course our boys.

Least Favorite Character: I didn’t have any characters in particular that I disliked, but Gracie’s mom?? iykyk

Ao3 Summary: “Quatervois (Qua-ter-vwa): A crossroads; a critical decision or turning point in one’s life.

Closeted soldier Mickey meets farmer Ian in a bar when on leave from his base in the Deep South and discovers that making the leap toward happiness isn't as tough when you have someone on your side.”

Review: This fic actually blew me away. The writing style is extremely cinematic and had me convinced I actually just watched a movie instead of reading a book. I could vividly picture Ian’s farm, their facial expressions, the bar, the creek—everything. I felt like I was there watching it in person.

Mickey and Ian’s build up in this fic is beautiful. Their flirtation is both cute and sexy while also having hints of pining and being slight idiots. Mickey falling for Ian in this fic is a favorite of mine because it’s so obvious how much they want one another but have things that are keeping them apart.

This fic really has it all. There’s spice, there’s banter, theres fluff, there’s lust and longing and perfect comedic timing! It’s all around a beautiful fic that has made its way to my personal downloads because I will be re-reading it!

Spoilers Below↓

Favorite Moment: So, I’m a sucker for the moments in a story that just rip your heart out and absolutely stomp on it in front of you, so, I would say my favorite part is when Mickey is leaving the state, getting ready to deploy and he and Ian are saying good-bye…

“Don’t think about what you’re leaving behind. Think about the bright future ahead of you. Promise me you won’t dwell on us saying goodbye.” Mickey’s heart clenched tightly in his chest. “I promise.”

Equally favorite moment is their first meeting, it’s so tense and Ian’s so nice and Mickey is gay panicking and ends up being an asshole

“I wasn’t asking to be your friend. I was just being friendly. Big difference. Sorry to have offended” Mickey watched as Ian headed back to his corner and felt irrational anger bubble up inside him. “What? You’re not gonna thank me for my service?” Ian laughed loudly and hollowly, turning to face Mickey and lifting the hem of his black shirt up to his chin. Mickey gaped at the display of rock hard abs and firm pectoral muscles. It lasted a moment before he spotted the livid red skin of severe but well healed burns covering the left side of Ian’s body from waist to armpit. “You gonna thank me for mine? Didn’t think so. Drink your beer, soldier, I won’t bother you again.”

Honorable mentions, their first kiss, Mickey visiting the creek, the conversation about Ian’s bed (iykyk), still obsessing over their reunion, the waterfall scene (!!) and so so many other good moments in this one!!

Favorite quote(s):

“Anything happens to Ian and you’ll have this whole bar looking for you.”

“You totally fed it.” “The fuck you on about?” “The stray cat. You fed it. You make out like you’re this tough badass but you have a caring side”

“I just… I ain’t ever… this is all… wow fuck. Kiss one guy and you use your grip on life.”

“There’s a sight I could never get tired of seeing.” Ian leered. “Me sweating my tits off while I try to stay fit enough to be a soldier even though I drink beer like water and smoke more than a funeral home chimney?”

“Nobody has ever touched me there.” Ian mumbled against Mickey’s mouth. “You’re beautiful.” Mickey had never said those words to anyone before.

“Then you came along. You, with your fucking attitude problem and killer smile.”

There were honestly so many moments in this fic that made me insanely happy and have stuck in my brain. It’s such a beautiful story. If you haven’t read it 10000/10 recommend, if you have read it? Go read it again!!!

Final thoughts: The plot was plotting. The spice was spicy. The romance was romancing. The chemistry was off the charts. I cried. I laughed. And everyone in the gym probably thought the lady on the treadmill was crazy cause I couldn’t stop grinning at my phone! Amazingly, beautiful, cinematic masterpiece!!

Thank you so much, DodgerBear, for blessing us with this fic!!

— Harley, Gallafics Reviews

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

medialog july 2k24

watched

the seven samurai - classic that holds up IMO!! like lawrence of arabia, one where you can see why basically every person to make a movie since cites it as a formative influence. lots of really beautiful shots but what really stood out to me was how human it felt - small scale but not in a way that means "minor," in a way that emphasizes that even the smallest of scales is everything to the people living it. every character feels so real and carries such a sense of a life lived, thanks to both the writing and the absolutely wonderful performances. it feels so empathetic and compassionate and warm even though it's ultimately a war movie - one of those movies where you get the sense a fundamental love for humanity is one of the animating creative impulses. also toshiro mifune, one of the hottest people ever to live, spends the back half of this movie, to quote nick, dressed like hercules with his ass hanging out and it's incredible.

tank girl - every single Look and Aesthetic in this movie is an absolute 100/10 and lori petty is a foul-mouthed delight, but wow was I not prepared for how much of this movie is about the discovery of a secret underground society of kangaroo people

read

megan whalen turner, the thief - a pair of friends of mine basically shoved this into my hands when i was at their apartment with the promise of great craft & an ending that goes crazy. the first in the series of six, this one is more or less a sturdy and fairly straightforward middle-grade adventure story, and while it was at times a little heavy on descriptions of the characters making their way across various types of terrain, overall my interest was sustained by a few things: a clean, deliberate writing style that washed me in nostalgia for the middle-grade classics of my own youth (which this could have been - it came out in 1996 - but somehow i never came across it); a setting deliberately out of any real historical time but clearly influenced in Vibes by (among other places) ancient greece, which contributed to the nostalgia; glimpses of a convincingly rendered mythology (and the fascinating choice, which continues throughout the series, to render the characters' occasional glimpses of the actual divine as more unsettling than anything else); and a wonderfully compelling set of characters, above all gen, the book's narrator and the series' central character (although not most of the books'), who as i said a while ago is a classic blend of clever, brave, and incredibly annoying to everyone he meets.

monique wittig, the straight mind - collection of essays by a french lesbian feminist/theorist i first heard of, to be very honest, because adele haenel was one of the panelists at an event at the local french bookstore and i wanted to see her in person, lmao. the first essay in the collection opens with a call to abolish the concept of sex, which is one of those claims i'm not sure i actually endorse or even fully understand but find really invigorating to read, all of which more or less applies to my experience of the collection as a whole (including the part where i was not sure i was always following it). i did particularly appreciate her interest as a writer (she was a novelist as well as a theorist) in language and the role it plays in upholding gender/the work of imagining a way to play a role in dismantling it. and i found her general rejection of "the myth of woman" quite bracing.

rick emerson, unmask alice: LSD, satanic panic, and the imposter behind the world's most notorious diaries - i heard about this book on an episode of you're wrong about before i stopped listening and it was in fact an incredibly entertaining and fascinating bit of light nonfiction about a truly bonkers episode in american publishing history. go ask alice is the obvious draw here, but a large chunk of the book is devoted to "editor" and professional liar beatrice sparks's follow-up, jay's journal, which emerson reveals to have, in fact, started as the actual diary of a suicidal teenager whose family entrusted it to her in the hopes that their dead son's pain might somehow be able to help other families prevent similarly tragic outcomes... only to have sparks expand his few dozen entries into a story of the absolute most insane satanic panic ground zero nonsense (this book predates michelle remembers!), but somehow leave in enough identifying details that everyone in the family's small mormon town knew exactly who it was about. truly truly monstrous and if emerson sometimes veers a little close painting sparks as a cartoon villain, it's honestly hard to blame him given how much time he spent contemplating this unbelievably heinous act.

courtney summers, i'm the girl - the simplest way to describe this book is to paraphrase the author in some interview i can't remember as a story about a girl who confuses beauty for power because that's what the world has told her is true; it's emotionally rough but highly readable, and as always i just so admire summers' lack of interest in morality tales or lessons learned, her keen understanding that having a sixteen-year-old being groomed come suddenly and fully into a perfect feminist analysis of what's happened to her would make the book more palatable to some but ultimately be a betrayal of the character she'd created. summers has alluded in her newsletter to this book, loosely based on research about the epstein/maxwell case & the testimony of their victims, closing the chapter on the first arc of her career as a writer - eight thorny, painful novels about interior lives of teenage girls struggling with themselves and the world they live in - and it feels like a fitting capstone, one that both calls on the skills she's developed over the years and feels like it digs even more deeply than the project into an area of interest that feels fitting for an author who started writing YA in her early 20s and is now in her late 30s, namely, how to write a book that makes space for real empathy with a young person naive enough - some might say, and indeed some have said, stupid enough - to be well and truly taken in? (and i think one of the smartest things the book does is foreground early on how badly its protagonist doesn't want to be thought of as stupid, which is part of what makes her vulnerable and part of what makes processing the reality of what's happening to her so difficult.) also, despite the fact that romance has never been a huge or simple part of summers's novels, she's always had a knack for crafting a YA dreamboat love interest, and as someone who it turns out was figuring out her sexuality in her 30s around the same time summers was - it was great to see her do it again but this time with a girl :)

ted chiang, exhalation - my friend recommended me this because i was looking to read more sci-fi short stories but running into my perennial problem with sci-fi which is that frequently the writing is bad. ted chiang is pretty good! i liked how much he clearly conceives of or intuits that form & story are one and the same - almost all the stories in this collection take the form of a document that has some in-world reason to exist, which keeps the style feeling fresh and which he often uses to merge character work & sci-fi concepts in a cool way (as in a story with the fascinating premise that creationism is real but earth is not god's favored planet). it was unfortunate that the longest story in the collection was by far my least favorite, being both the most subject to sci-fi bland prose disease and focused on a concept it is impossible for me to muster interest in (the ethics of digital sentience... they're pictures on a screen...). the last story, the only other one written in the third person, suffered a little stylistically as well, but made up for it with an INSANELY good premise, which is that it's a multiverse story focused on a variety of psychological challenges people might have in response to learning for sure parallel universes are real - there's a support group for people addicted to checking in on their parallel selves! that's the most awesome multiverse concept i have ever come across.

evelline adams, astrology for everyone - astrology got less fun when the ratio started shifting of people viewing it as A Fun Pretend Thing to people taking it very seriously, but i do retain the same aesthetic appreciation for the particular kitsch of vintage astrology writing that i did when i borrowed this from my friend several years ago.

patrick radden keefe, rogues: true stories of grifters, killers, rebels and crooks - a collection of 12 of keefe's new yorker #longreads that i read because (a) i liked empire of pain, his book on the sackler family, a lot (b) i'm trying to get back into my library ebook habit to keep me away from Scrolling and hopefully learn some things and substantive-but-still-easy-to-read journalistic nonfiction is my favorite genre for this purpose because i don't feel i lose anything by reading it in 5 minute snatches while waiting for the train, and (c) his other books had all the licenses checked out. anyway this gave me what i wanted! i think my favorite was the one about wine fraud just because i think wine fraud is funny because anyone shelling out crazy money on wine deserves to be scammed so it's basically a victimless crime. the book closes with his profile of anthony bourdain, which is a really lovely read although incredibly sad in retrospect because bourdain comes across as so full of life and would die the year after it was published.

megan whalen turner, the queen of attolia - book two in the series, and everything is growing up a bit, as we shift from an adventure story to a war story, from gen's narration to an expertly deployed omniscient/shifting third, and from an irrepressible protagonist to one Truly Going Through It. this book kicks off strong by opening with a set of circumstances that permanently and painfully changes gen's circumstances, and the question of how he's going to process this and move forward drives a lot of the emotional suspense of the book. it also upends our understanding of a character introduced in the first book en route to an absolutely insane romance that shouldn't work but in its quasi-mythical context absolutely does. i tend to prefer hard copies for fiction, but starting here and for every book after i got to the end and went straight to the library app so i could keep going.

megan whalen turner, the king of attolia - THIS BOOK SLAPS SO HARD IT'S UNBELIEVABLE!!!! at first you're like, WHY is the narration primarily focused on some random no-name member of the royal guard we have never met before? but then you realize it's so that the entire book can be propelled by the dramatic irony wherein we, readers of the series, know gen well at this point and also know exactly how and why things went down the way they did at the end of the last book, but almost no one else does and (partly because of the ways he is annoying) many assumptions are being made... so a lot of the "suspense" in this book comes from, like, when is this new guy's understanding of gen going to start aligning with ours? it's soooo cool and something i don't remember reading in a series before (although i don't read a ton of series), and this book is, like, relentlessly entertaining on its way to its insanely satisfying conclusion, and also contains two of the most romantic paragraphs i have read in my LIFE despite the fact that the couple they center on barely appears together in the book.

megan whalen turner, conspiracy of kings - we catch up with a character from the first book who's been having a rough go of it and now needs to toughen up a bit in response to his circumstances. i think as a novel this is maybe the weakest of the set but as a character i love my sweet baby sophos so much i would have read 500 more pages. also contains one of the DUDES ROCK scenes of all time.

megan whalen turner, thick as thieves - this one picks up with a minor character from book two that i was happy to see again, because he really punched above his weight in terms of interest. it kind of combines the adventure-story of the first book with the dramatic irony as suspense of the third, and both the narrator and the central dynamic between the two main characters are delightful. this book has the least gen of all the books and i did miss him but it was funny how intensely his whole Deal hung over the circumstances regardless, and also despite the fact that the ending of literally all of these books so far has involved the reveal of some five-dimensional chess magic trick, so to speak, and thus i knew logically it was coming, i once again found myself so swept up that i was fully :O when it all went down.

megan whalen turner, return of the thief - an incredibly satisfying ending to the series, even if it left me sad that it was over! as was often the case with these books, it was, like, so satisfying that part of me almost felt like it should feel like cheating... but it didn't and i was just so happy to be there rooting for all my close personal friends. also the narrator of this one is a new character who is both physically disabled and nonverbal, and a) i thought that was generally pretty cool and the way the text engaged with people underestimating him was interesting and b) the descriptions of him as a kid being fascinated by triangles & numerical patterns was THEE most endearing thing i have read in my life.

listened

willow, empathogen - i don't know why willow decided to put out the best tori amos record since scarlet's walk? but i'm glad she did, because this album rocks! (and, like, seriously, if you're a tori person, you owe it to yourself to check this out - the influence is strong and undeniable, IMO, and on its own merits the album sounds gorgeous and takes you on a rich and textured sonic journey, even if you do maybe get the sense that being the very rich daughter of two incredibly famous millionaires in the entertainment industry is an impediment towards having all that much to say as a lyricist.)

other

anna di resburgo - my friend had an extra ticket to a short-lived production of this, the only surviving bel canto opera by a woman (recently assembled for performance from its discovery in some archive). it was only her second aria and as per the program notes kind of flopped, possibly partly due to its thematic similarity with another opera first produced around the same time by donizetti, by then an acknowledged master of the form while di resburgo was a novice (she had previously composed one opera, which has since been lost, and none after, although iirc she did some other composition) (also disclaimer that i know very little about opera, like just barely enough for all that to kind of make sense to me lol). anyway the work is uneven and (as my friend pointed out) oftentimes the music, while pretty and sometimes interesting, is at odds tonally with the plot - the plot is in theory quite dramatic with life-or-death stakes but for much of the runtime the music feels more suited to a farce - and the libretto is... not a piece of well constructed drama overall or scene to scene or line by line (there are some, like, accidentally comical exposition dumps along the lines of "father, do you remember that mysterious orphan that showed up on our doorstep all those years ago?"). but it was not without its highlights, and we agreed that as a second outing it showed promise we wish the composer had received support for the way men with similarly Just Alright second operas did.

inwood shorts - we went with some friends (actually the same friend as above) to see some shorts by local filmmakers at a place in inwood with an incredible view of the river featuring on that day an unbelievably gorgeous sunset and while nothing really wowed me a nice time was had by all & there was a big laugh in the crowd when the guy in a short giving a little "tour of my neighborhood" schtick said "for a while i lived in this place upstate called yonkers." :)

[antyoneelse]

(Screaming about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice into the void):

Even if Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a lot of problems with it, I can’t say I disliked it. I mean, I saw it five times— maybe my fixation goggles are on too tight, but I enjoyed it for what it was even if the original movie (and cartoon!!) are leagues above it. Here are my thoughts (mostly about the characters and their stories).

I was very dissapointed with Delores’ story, as a lot of people are. I wasn’t super interested in her from the start, and that makes me seriously dislike her overall… but if she were actually given more screentime, more plot relevance, and a bigger part of the climax, I am sure she would have been amazing.

I thought Astrid was a brat, and I do love her, but fleshing out her motivations better would’ve been, y’know, a Helluva lot better for the story. This goes in line with Richard— we don’t see him until halfway through the movie (unless you count the few seconds of him in pictures), and maybe I’m dense but that really disconnected me from him as a character and plot point. His only use is to create and then fix the drama between Astrid and Lydia. His character design is really awesome though.

Jeremy Frasier, I don’t really know what to say about him. I liked his introduction but I feel like his plot with Astrid was the most normal in the whole movie, and took away the original Beetlejuice vibe so thoroughly, it was disappointing. Really disconnected from everything else, and just kind of solved through Beetlejuice in a useless, albeit funny, way. I don’t know, he drives the plot forward by making Lyds interact with Beej and keep the family in Winter River, but I don’t especially like him.

I actually liked what Rory added to the story, though I feel like it messed up Lydia’s characterization a lot. I guess since most of the exposition for Lydia’s life since the events of Beetlejuice 1988 were told verbally, we missed out on a lot of what makes adult Lydia who she is… who is very different from the generally strong, moody, but troubled kid she is in the original. Now that I’m thinking about it, it really felt like I was just looking at Winona Ryder in goth clothing. I love her, but it didn’t feel the same. Rory was a dumb jerk, but I love hating dumb jerk characters.

Beetlejuice himself was probably my favorite part of the movie, though he was less strange and unusual than he was in the original. Fun visual gags with him, he’s still witty, Keaton is in his 70’s and still playing him and that itself I think deserves some praise.

Also, Delia was flawless, I don’t know whatever else to say about her. I love Delia no matter what lmao, only one who made me consistently laugh throughout the movie. Catherine O’Hara rocks.

I think the biggest issue I have with the movie is how reliant it is on verbal exposition, since we’ve missed years of the characters’ lives. It makes some things not make sense on the first watch-through, and frustrating on consequent ones, and messes up character believability to a really sad extent.

All this being said, I still really love the movie. Maybe when my fixation wanes I’ll have more mixed feelings, but I still appreciate it for being the catalyst that got me involved in the fandom, and I still think it’s really fun to watch.

If you read this far, thanks! I am very mentally focused on Beetlejuice right now, and would love to be friends if you are, as well. Having conversations about the plot (be it movie, both movies, musical, cartoon, or hypothetical plots) would be really awesome.

P.S. I do NOT fw the Beetlejuice baby I am throwing that thing in a meat locker and leaving it there. I hate it.

[andvys]

What are some Eddie head canons you can tell us about him in this story? 💗 Or basically of how he was before being introduced

Anything really ♡

Eddie always had his eyes on reader and had a crush on her from the start. He always judged her relationship with Steve though. He didn't hate Steve but he disliked King!Steve. He saw the way he looked at other girls and the way he treated reader sometimes. In his eyes, she always deserved better.

Eddie always had a little sketching book with him and would take it to every class, he'd mostly draw DnD related stuff, things for his campaign etc.

He loves writing (storylines for his campaign and songtexts). He also created a DnD character, which was basically reader.

He loves horror movies. Can't decide on which one is his favorite because he loves too many.

He had never been on any dates and he didn't wish to go on any, (deep down he did). He knew how everyone always felt about him, he didn't care to ask out any girls, besides, there was never one he was interested in, except for one (that he thought he could never have *cough* reader *cough*)

He was never a fan of prom and couldn't care less about it. (He still showed up for reader)

He always admired reader, every chance he got, he'd watch her

Reader once slipped him a note when he drew a picture she fell in love with, telling him how much she loves it. He ripped the page off and gave it to her. She still has the drawing and he still has that note.

Eddie is not the most talented cook but he can make a few simple meals. He makes the best sandwiches.

Eddie may be chaotic and his room is always a mess, but it's still clean and it smells good. He always tries to cover up the smell of cigarettes and weed with a room spray that smells like vanilla (lol)

He has a sweet tooth. He loves anything sweet.

Secretly loves a few slow sad songs.

He would tease Steve in their shared classes and would piss him off (on purpose), especially after seeing reader upset.

His hair is very special to him (him and Steve do have things in common)

He is very insecure but doesn't really show it, he always has his walls up in front of everyone, mostly everyone.

The first time he hung out with reader was after a party at Steve's place (when they were still dating). She bumped into him after a fight with Steve, Eddie offered her a shoulder to cry on, then a drink and then a few more and they ended up spending the whole night together, sharing stories and laughing with each other. He was nervous and blushy but it was one of his best nights.

Weeks later him and reader became friends after Steve broke up with her. At that time, he didn't know how much she would change his life or how much he'd change her life and how deep their bond would be.