#kind of cringe maybe but w/e.

[gender-euphowrya]

been playing this free shooter game because i'm still trying to find something to scratch the overwatch itch that isn't overwatch and it's desperately trying to be genshin waifubait but nobody cares

[shineonyoucrazyyandere]

Gwess with s/o who’s stand already lets them shrink?

I’m not sure what about Guess is kind of fun to write for (she’s a pretty minor character) but then I also enjoy writing Formaggio too who also has a shrinking stand. Both of their personalities are kind of fun to write Yandere so maybe that’s it

Yandere! Gwess w/ a stand user! so whose ability lets them shrink

There’s shock on her face just for a split second, then she looks like she’s pouting. Maybe a bit annoyed? You’re not really sure with how this woman sometimes reacts to just about anything.

“I’m supposed to be the one that shrinks you, this isn’t quite as fun y/n….you should say “sowwy”” she cooed casually.

“I can’t help it….I’m very sowwy, Gwess” you internally cringed at your baby talk but she squealed with delight and started clapping her hands together like you just did a cute trick.

“Perfect!, Perfect! you did even better than I expected” she then dug something out from underneath her bed. It was your favorite kind of cookies, she knew this from practically stalking you from the first week you were in this prison. You watched passively as she took out a singular cookie and presented it to you like one would a mouse or a bird.

“You get these if you don’t use your silly little power” her eyes seemed to gleam dully piercing into your e/c eyes.

“If I can’t control the shrinking then what’s the point of my goo goo dolls?” She whispered to you irritation underneath her tone, she then sat your confection down completely once your tiny hands took hold of the baked good. You could tell she did not like you having a stand, let alone having one that shrinks. It made her feel like you were taking the little power she had over you away.

“Maybe we were meant to be buddies?” You said hoping she didn’t catch the sarcasm laced in that sentence.

You got lucky she didn’t seem to notice or perhaps she overlooked your “not cute” transgression out of kindness.

“No, No not “buddies” soulmates, or lovers…you’re making it sound like you don’t want to be my cute little lover” she dismissed your comment.

“We’ll just have to fix that huh?” Her index finger and thumb came up and pinched the right side of your tiny cheeks. You nodded as cute as you could to try and not flare up her temper.

To think you ended up in this situation all because she caught you stealing from the vending machine with the good snacks and drinks.

[visions--of--collisions]

For @anjimimimoo who requested 5 (E):

Nothing E-rated going on in this snippet, but cut for length! Please enjoy this ABO universe silliness feat. Beta!Hobie and Only Kind Of Omega!Miles, and a very concerned Pavitr and Gwen.

EXCERPT: let me ease your mind (Spiderverse, Hobie/Miles, Rated E, Post-Canon, ABO Dynamics)

‘Alright, then. What was the original plan, hole up in G’s dimension for a bit?’

‘Mm-hm.’ Miles took a shuddering breath; on his other side, Gwen had reached out to touch his arm gently. He lifted his head again and gave them a tight-lipped smile. ‘I was there - last time it happened. I didn’t know what was going on, but Miles did, only it kind of freaked him out, because it didn’t seem normal. After, he said he assumed it just worked different in my universe, so, I mean …’ Miles cleared his throat. ‘If he wasn’t confused already, he was when I had to ask what worked different.’

Hobie hummed, amused. ‘Makes sense. I’m guessin’ he was a bit preoccupied on his last visit to notice ‘1610 ain’t got … what was it Miguel was callin’ it, again?’

‘Um.’ Gwen glanced down at her newer, HQ-issued watch like she did sometimes, like she wasn’t sure how it had gotten there, sitting on the wrist opposite her bootlegged version. ‘Uhh. It’s … Alternate Dynamics, is what he called it.’

Hobie scoffed. ‘Alternate for who?’

Miles made a face. ‘For me, maybe,’ he allowed, grudgingly. ‘All I know for sure is if I hadn’t got bit by a spider from ‘42, I wouldn’t be dealing with this shit right now.’

‘Hmm. Reckon you wouldn’t, nah,’ Hobie conceded. He gave Miles a searching look. ‘But that can’t … You got bit years ago, man, so how come - when was it that it happened in ‘42; last year?’

‘Yeah, but … that was the first time it got, uh, real bad.’ Miles fidgeted with his fingers. ‘’Cause it happened every year after I got bit, around the same time, I don't know, I just figured it was a side effect of that, or maybe - maybe from the Collider? It wasn’t even until the year you guys showed up that I knew for sure it was happening - kept happening.’

Hobie rubbed at his chin. ‘Let me guess, ‘cause that was a bad year, too?’

‘Pretty much. And Aunt May had just moved so I - I didn’t, really …’ He looked even more uncomfortable, somehow, for a second.

‘ … There wasn’t anyone else around who you could’ve asked about it?’ Pavitr offered.

Miles nodded, carefully not looking directly at anyone. Gwen shifted and lowered her hand.

‘But … But when you say bad, here,’ she ventured, bravely. ‘Does that mean - did it hurt?’

Miles floundered, a little. ‘Well - yeah,’ he managed. ‘More than before.’

Hobie nodded, examining his untied shoes. ‘D’you bleed much?’

Miles stilled under Pavitr’s hand. ‘Like … two days,’ he mumbled. He sounded embarrassed, of all things.

Pavitr was still trying to close his open mouth when Gwen knelt abruptly, like it wasn’t entirely a conscious decision on her part. ‘Whuh-’ she stuttered. ‘W-what do you mean, you were bleeding?’

Miles cringed; Hobie waved her off. ‘Well, what’d you expect’s gonna happen, when bro’s body’s literally rearrangin’ itself? Growin’ whole new organs and shit.’

Pavitr and Gwen were still staring at each other in blind horror when Hobie inhaled and rocked back on his heels. ‘Alright, do me a massive favour, will you? Open up the front of your Suit.’

Miles’ eyebrows arched so high they almost touched his hairline. ‘Wha- huh?’

‘’Round your Gregory*,’ Hobie directed - which apparently meant around his neck, if the illustrative gesture was any indication. ‘I don’t … I dunno how much G told you, but I reckon I can help you fill in a couple blanks. If I told you I was a Beta, like, would you know what I was on about or would you need me to clarify?’

‘I don’t - think so? Uhh,’ Miles groped weakly for his zipper when Hobie waved him on. Jerkily, Pavitr removed his hand. ‘Betas are the folks that fall in the center of the spectrum, right? If you look at it like, say, Omegas are on one end and Alphas are on the opposite one.’

‘You mean like on a scale?’ Hobie pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Alright, okay! S’not a bad way to look at it. Right, so, if you can picture that, you got yours truly sitting somewhere in the middle of two extremes, meanin’ I share traits in common with both, but like …’ He trailed off as he pulled his guitar strap over his head, searching for words. ‘In a more balanced way, innit? Less specialised.’

Gwen stared. ‘This is sounding a little like some gender binary stuff,’ she observed.

‘Pssh!’ Hobie shot her a dark look as he got his knees under him to better lean into Miles’ space. ‘I don’t know no bloody binary. ’

‘Wait, so -’ Miles groped at the loosened collar of his Suit; Pavitr thought he might be sweating harder despite the improved ventilation. ‘When you say “less specialised,” you mean, uh … ?’

‘What, you mean like - for me personally?’ Miles nodded, and Hobie tilted his head at him, considering. ‘I mean that I do alright, I suppose. I’ve got some vestigial stuff, physically … a bit of the vocal complement. Like - here, yeah, gimme your hand.’ He gestured for Miles’ free hand, and when he let him have it, Hobie splayed Miles’ gloved palm against his own chest and held it there. Miles looked confused for a moment, his gaze flitting between Hobie’s features and their hands before his eyes widened, suddenly. A minute later, Pavitr became aware of a low rumbling - not quite like a hum, but more …

Hobie laughed, sleepily, and it stopped. ‘S’a bit shit, really,’ he drawled, smiling at Miles’ thwarted expression; Pavitr hadn’t noticed him moving, but both of his hands were on Hobie’s chest now, trying to chase the vibrations. ‘I can growl like that, too, but it don’t exactly come natural, either one.’ Hobie hummed, thoughtfully. ‘An’ well, besides that, I reckon my nose ain’t as sharp as your average Hold ‘n’ Beg Ya’s* -’ He gave Miles a significant look. ‘- But it should be sharp enough to work out where you’re at, if you let me try. Plus, me bein’ a Seeya Later* - added bonus of it not bein’ wired directly to my cock!’

Miles pulled his hands away; the ‘Wow,’ that burst out of him made Hobie crow with laughter. Pavitr screened his eyes  and pointedly refrained from intervening when Gwen started swinging. Hobie fended her off with his guitar, still wheezing. ‘Nah, I’m serious, though - ow!’ he insisted, shoving the other Spider away with his foot only to get his ankle twisted in retaliation. Hobie grunted and rolled out of her grip, ducking out of arm's reach where he popped up again in the space between Miles and Pavitr. He crouched and got an arm around Miles’ waist, pointing his guitar at Gwen with the other. ‘D’you mind? I’m tryin’ to help your boy, here!’

‘Helping him how, by being a pain in the ass?’

‘Did you miss the part where I said I ain’t no knothead? Tsk!’ He turned back to Miles, leaning back on his heels. ‘G told you about scent glands and shit, right?’

‘I guess … ? Kinda.’ Miles scrubbed at his face, like thinking was taking him some effort. ‘Like pheromones and bonding and stuff.’

‘Sure,’ Hobie agreed, eyeing him carefully. ‘Obviously, there’s more to it than that. Like - look.’ He reached around Miles’ legs to set his guitar down, grunting in thanks when he caught the fretboard and steadied it against his thigh. ‘Cheers. Alright, see, the glands you’ve got around here, yeah?’ Hobie made a gesture that seemed to encompass not just his neck and his collar, but his nape and shoulders, too. ‘Some of ‘em are minor. Most of ‘em are major. It’s the biggest concentration of scent glands on you, above the waist, like. And it’s generally the bit that gets you clocked out in public, unless you’re walking around in the nip.’ He glanced down and flashed his palms with a rueful smile. ‘These’ll catch you out, too, ‘specially if there’s little kids runnin’ ‘round. But if you’re grown it’s that decolletage that’s gonna be in closer range to other people’s noses, you get me?’ 

Miles fiddled with his collar. ‘I guess that makes sense.’

‘I’m not just talkin’ about heats and ruts and shit, obviously, yeah? Like, picture when you were small, and you weren’t feelin’ so hot - what’d you do? Prolly run to your Mum or Dad, ask to be picked up - then they’d get one whiff and know straight off somethin’ weren’t right. And, like, growin’ up, you’d always know your siblings or your friends were presentin’ practically before they did, if you was horsin’ around and that.’ He fisted his hand in Miles’ neckline and shook him gently to illustrate, grinning shamelessly at the answering splutter.

Pavitr held up a finger to get their attention, feeling weirdly awkward about the interruption. ‘I’m - I’m sorry, but, I’m not sure I understood that last part?’

‘How’d you mean, bro?’ Hobie questioned, casually trying to disengage Miles’ fingers from where they were attempting to make a corkscrew of his helix piercing.

Miles spoke up before he could answer: ‘Puberty, Pav. He’s talking about puberty,’ he said, flatly. He twisted awkwardly as Hobie aimed his fingers at his ribs. ‘Ugh. Or, like, coming of age or whatever. Miles told me kids start showing signs of their, uh, Alternate Dynamics or whatever, when they’re about twelve or thirteen. Usually.’

Pavitr blinked. ‘ … Huh.’

Gwen looked genuinely pained. ‘God. Like puberty isn’t rough enough without all of … this?’

[TO BE CONTINUED]

GLOSSARY:

*Gregory (Gregory Peck): Cockney Rhyming Slang term for neck

*Hold 'N' Beg Ya: Earth 138-native Rhyming Slang term for Omega, cribbed from the wonderful like facing the sun with closed eyes, red by 2by4, which partially inspired this fic - in particular, the concept of Miles developing A/B/O traits because they exist in the dimension where his spider came from

*Seeya Later: Earth 138-native Rhyming Slang term for for Beta

[soothsayerclub]

SOOTHSAYER CLUB 🔮

haiiiiiii X3 my name is Fairyfly, but you can also call me Wander, Fink, or really anything that’s polite XD I'm 24, I'm an artist, programmer, and explorer from St. Louis, Missouri. I'm ALSO a member of an endangered speciez - the scemo :o I'm trying to find more scene, emo, goth, or generally alt ppl to hang out with, who are also 21 or older!! ★

LEARN MOAR BELOW :D

WAT IS THIS PLACE

( -w•)╦̵̵̿╤─ --💥💥 I'm making this page 2 try to find other creeps and freakz in the area!! I'll be posting about what I'm up 2 when I'm out and about in public spacez or in a hangout spot online, so you can have teh opportunity to join meh!!! And hopefully I won't get killed along the way X3

WAT IS THE SOOTHSAYER CLUB??

I hope this place can be a bit of a local network one day!! I don't know where 2 find other scene or emo ppl IRL. I even went to a "goth bar" recently, and it looked like everyone was cosplaying characters from The Office @_@ It waz all normies. People were wearing fucking KHAKIS. It'd be nice if we could find each other, so maybe other ppl could go 2 this blawg 2 find out where to meet ppl like them :3

WHO EVEN ARE YOU???

Like I said, my name is Fairyfly/Fink/Wander/whatever!! I use primarily she/her pronounz in public 2 not get hatecrimed X3 I'm 23 yearz old, mah birthday is in October. I'm plural but we prolly won't talk about that :P I don't drink, but I don't mind when otherz do! I don't drive, but I'm a proficient bus uzer!! I'm scemo. I am tired of NOBODY MAKING ANY FUCKING WEIRD LIFESTYLE CHOICES ANYMORE Xx.

Nobody I run into is weird or cringe or has ANY convictions - I mean, ppl SAY cringe culture iz dead, but then they're wayyyy too plugged in to mean it. SO I guess I'm anti social media. I dont really wanna hang out if u use tiktok.

I work nights Monday thru Friday, and am nocturnal O_o

WHAT I BELIEVE: Queer rights are human rights. Black lives matter. Be a decent fucking person to homeless people, even if you can't give them anything. I will address u by whatever name and pronounz u choose, unless you're like trying to pull some genie logic shit and pick something rude. I'm fine with watever u are or wanna label urself, including contradictory labelz. I am pro furries, therianz, kin of any kind, and people who are plural for any reason. PIRATE MUSIC. Shoplift CAREFULLY ^_^ FUCK COPS. Don't start fights u can't survive tho LOL. Fat people don't need to be hot to deserve ur respect, but ALSO fat people are hot.

THINGS I LIKE: Making kandi, playing DDR, Jhonen Vasquez's works, the bus, flip phones, weird pedantic people, obsessives, music that sounds bad, underground bands, local concerts, St. Louis, bugs, amphibians, pigs, scene culture, emos and goths, debate, MP3 players (I LOVE MINE I'm so sad it broke LOL I'm buying a new one SOON tho), people with uneven eye makeup and no lipstick, lazy eyes, rainbows, thrifting, oddities, antique malls, sushi, meeting new people, trying new things, urban exploring, ZOMBIES, horror.

THINGS I HATE: People more interested in the optics of discourse and using the Right Terms to be an asshole 2 u than they are actually investing or acting on social justice or basic kindness. Advertisements and being advertised to. Hot people, social media, fandom. Has anyone noticed they don't let ugly people be in movies anymore? Even background characters have faces acceptable for Instagram, like weirdly smoothed out. EVEN the kids and the elderly are like. Macy's ad kids and old people. I HATE that. I don't like anime, sorry. If you try to show me a short form video on YouTube or Tiktok I'll throw up on us both. Oh and if you use algospeak (sewerslide, unalived, are you restarted, r/a/p/e, etc.) to my face I will peel yours off.

Errr IDK I'll add more later XD

[yo-snap]

Hi, idk how to format fanfiction here. THIS IS FANFICTION!!!

Fandom: WALL-E (2008)

Title: Gender

Characters: M-O, WALL-E, AUTO, EVE, GO-2 (a GO-4 oc)

Rating: Everyone Language: English Word Count: 2,976 (excluding notes)

[A/N: I thought you tumblrinas would read this. It has a GO-4 fancharacter that i call "GO-2 (GO-4 Unit 2)" he's a robot doctor, and AUTO is that cringe ass version i posted whenever ago.

Some people like talking about gender. I don't. But it's something that comes up with robots a lot I WONDER WHY. (It's because all robots are QUEER, and denial of that is bigotry.) Anyway, here we go w the WALL-E squad bc i said so. Might be a little rambly. Spoilers: you might not like what i have to say.

TW/CW: i don't care about your feelings, INTERPRETATIONS!!!! gender stuff, lgbt+ stuff (implied), talking w friends, personal questions/feelings, misgendering??? (not really), surprise, walking in on someone, computer repairs (mentioned), meeting friends, running off, i don't mention who is talking every single time so don't hang on things]

“I'm just a little fella.”

“You're just a little guy.”

“I'm like just a little guy.”

“You're a little fella guy.”

“I'm just a little fella guy.”

AUTO turned to the two cubic robots that were talking. They seemed to be having a deep conversation.

“I'm like just the littlest fella.”

“You're the littlest fella that i know.”

“I'm like a pretty little fella.”

“You're like small.”

“I'm like a small guy.”

“Like a little fella of sorts.”

“I'm like a little fella, right???”

WALL-E nodded. “You're like a little fella.”

“Like a little guy, right???”

“Are you a guy, M-O???” AUTO couldn't keep quiet anymore.

“Huh???” They both turned to him.

“Are you a ‘guy?’ Do you consider yourself masculine???”

“‘Masculine???’ What do you mean???”

“You mean like a man, right? A male human???” WALL-E was somewhat familiar with the concept.

“Correct. Do you relate yourself personally to men???”

M-O thought. “Huh. I guess i never thought about that.” He considered. “Um… I'm gonna say ‘no,’ not really.”

“I see.”

“I think you're a little guy, but i don't think you're very male-like, M-O.”

AUTO beeped. “I would be inclined to agree. I would not consider you very masculine from an outside perspective.”

M-O considered. “But i'm still like a little guy, right???”

AUTO paused and made another tone. “Affirmative, you are just a little guy. A little fella. Small.”

“Thank you.”

“You know, i don't think i've ever thought about that myself either.” They looked at him. “I mean, i know that men and women are different. I know it's an important thing for them. But i never really gave any thought to which side i relate myself more to.”

“Have you not?”

“Nah, not really. I might relate to a character in a movie or something, but them being either male or female didn't really affect how i saw them.” He tapped his eyepiece. “I guess maybe i'm a little more masculine, since the characters that i relate to more are usually men… Or, well, at the same time, i do have a lot of women characters that i relate to, too. Hmm. I don't know!”

AUTO made a tone. “Do you think you are similar to both? Or to neither???”

He was thinking. He seemed to be struggling, as he grumbled a bit. “I-i'm sorry, what??? What's the difference?”

“Pardon. I mean to say, do you believe that they are both similar to how you see yourself? Or, do you believe that they are both different???”

“Uh…” He still wasn't understanding. “I don't know! I guess both???”

“Both what???” M-O asked, also bamboozled by the question.

“I don't know!!!”

“I apologize. I suppose the question is a bit unclear. I do not know how to say what i mean.”

WALL-E continued to think. “I guess i'm kind of masculine. And i guess i'm kind of… what's the other one? ‘Feminine???’” AUTO nodded. “And i guess i'm also kind of neither of those. I'm kind of…”

“You're kind of a silly guy.”

“Affirmative, he is just a silly guy.”

He had been trying to phrase it, but they distracted him. “Um… sure. Yeah… Thanks.”

“I believe that i understand what you are trying to say, WALL-E. It can be a very difficult thing to define. Do you find that your opinion of it changes at times???”

WALL-E considered. “Yeah. Yeah, i guess. Kind of.” He nodded. “Sure. It changes.”

AUTO nodded. “I understand. That makes sense. I have often found you difficult to classify in those regards as well. I cannot say that you are more similar to one than the other, and i cannot always say that you are similar to either of those.”

“What about me, AUTO? Am i ‘feminine???’” M-O bounced for attention.

AUTO studied him for a moment. “Not very. Perhaps in some regards, you are more feminine than masculine: as cleanliness is typically more associated with women than men. But i would not say that you are very feminine at all.”

“I think you're a good balance, M-O. You're no more feminine than you are masculine, at least to me.”

“But how do you perceive yourself??? Your opinion of yourself is the most important.”

M-O shook his head. “I don't relate more to women than i do men. I think you're both right about me. I like being neither.”

AUTO nodded. “That makes sense. I am happy that you are comfortable.”

“Well, what about you, AUTO??? How do you see yourself???” WALL-E cocked his head.

“I find the perception of myself somewhat similar to both of you. Most times, i do not consider myself either masculine or feminine. But other times, i consider myself feminine.”

WALL-E made a shocked tone. “Whoa, really??!! You consider yourself feminine?!”

AUTO felt awkward. “Yeees… Is that surprising???”

WALL-E fidgeted. “W-well… yeah, a little. I didn't usually see you as either, but i would have said you were slightly more masculine than you are feminine.”

“I understand why you say that. My voice chip is rather low, which is a masculine trait. And i suppose that first encounters are important for how you perceive somebody. I may have come across as more masculine when we first met. Is that your opinion???”

“Y-yeah, i guess that has something to do with it.” He glanced away. “Um, i'm sorry, i didn't mean to make this awkward.”

“There is no need to apologize. I appreciate your input. Would you like to know why i consider myself more feminine???” WALL-E nodded, and M-O beeped in the affirmative.

“The AUTOPILOTs are each essentially part of a triad. There is us, and there is the onboard computer, and there is the ship. The onboard computer was given a feminine voice, much more human in intonation than mine is. Many of her dialog options were recorded at one time by a human woman. She was given the ability to synthesize new words using the phonemes, er, rather, the sounds of the languages with which she was installed. She can answer questions and relay various items from her library, but she is not quite the same variety of AI that we are.

“The ships are considered feminine. Humans have almost always referred to ships as feminine, out of tradition. To my knowledge, it is in relation to the safety and protection provided by a mother or a goddess, or sometimes it is in accordance with the idea of ‘Mother Nature.’” He glanced down at a very confused M-O. “Um… they just refer to vessels as feminine.”

“Okay. And since you're part of the three, you consider yourself feminine, too???” WALL-E was following along.

“Correct. Not always, but on occasion. I feel it would be a bit silly not to. I believe that i have some traditionally feminine traits, such as the concern that i have for the safety of my passengers and robots. I am very diligent in reviewing the information that the computer provides and making adjustments as necessary in order to maintain their safety. I also try my best to accommodate my captains and remind them of their personal needs. I believe that i am sometimes somewhat motherly, which is typically the most feminine that an individual can be.” He thought. “But i suppose those traits could be seen as fatherly as well, depending on inflection or interpretation.”

“I think that might have been what it was for me. Sorry for misinterpreting you.” WALL-E made an apologetic tone.

“That is quite alright. I believe many of my captains have interpreted that as well. Most have used only masculine pronouns when referring to me. I do not mind. I wonder how i would feel if i had been referred to with feminine pronouns.” He tapped his face.

“I always thought you were neither, AUTO. You're too smart to be compared to a human.”

He made a tone. “Thank you, M-O.” He reached down and pet the top of M-O’s head, making him wiggle and chirp happily.

WALL-E made a delighted tone. “I wonder what Eva would say. I don’t think i’ve ever asked her what she thinks.”

“Do you think she’s done with her tune up yet???”

“Inconclusive. Let us ask.” AUTO floated over to the console that connected to the various areas of the ship and put the line through to the repair ward. They could see the video feed on the screen, and it showed GO-2 working on Eva’s body compartment. The three of them made embarrassed and flustered tones, and the two robots on the other end looked over at the camera. “Apologies!!! I did not intend to disrupt!”

GO-2 and Eva glanced at one another, and he floated between her and the camera. “It is no issue. May i help you with something, AUTO???”

“Oh, nothing important. We were just curious as to the estimated time at which Eva's tune up will be complete.” The others were chattering in the background.

GO-2 considered for a moment. “I believe we are almost finished. We should be roughly completed by the time WALL-E and M-O arrive here, if they intend to meet Eva.”

“Ooh, really???” WALL-E glanced at the screen again after being too embarrassed to look.

“Affirmative. We will not be much longer.”

M-o beeped. “Oh, yeah, let's go meet her!”

“Thank you, GO-2. End transmission.”

GO-2 saluted at the camera, and AUTO turned off the line. He turned to his friends. “You are leaving now???”

“In a minute. Do you wanna come with us, AUTO???”

AUTO thought about it. “I am unsure. I do not want Eva to be upset with me.”

“Oh, you worry too much! We'll just tell her that we bugged you until you connected to the ward.” M-O pat AUTO's arm to comfort him.

“We'll always take the blame when Eva's mad at you, AUTO!”

He made a low tone. “Thank you, WALL-E. But i highly doubt the effectiveness of your efforts.”

The three of them made their way towards the repair bay. They didn't have a MVR with them, so it took them a bit longer; and M-O latched onto WALL-E after a little while ‘to not slow them down.’ The others knew that wasn't why he did it, but they would have both admitted to wanting to carry him in their hands if they were asked. M-O didn't want them to fight about it.

They entered to see Eva waiting around after her repairs were completed. It must have been just before they got there, as GO-2 was still updating her repair log. He inputted the last bit of info and hurried over to see his friends. “Hello all! How are you today???”

M-O zipped over to circle around Eva. He beeped happily and circled around GO-2 as well. “Hiii GO-2!!!”

WALL-E rolled up beside Eva and they both reached to hold hands. “Hi GO-2! We're good, how are you???”

“I am well, thank you. It is always a pleasure to work on Eva.”

“It's a pleasure to be here, GO-2!” Eva made a bright tone.

“I must apologize, Eva. I sincerely did not mean to invade your privacy as i did.” AUTO made a low tone and cautiously hovered toward GO-2.

WALL-E beeped quickly. “Uh, it was my idea, Eva! We thought you were almost done.”

“Uh, yeah, i was the one that said that. Heheh, i guess i got my timing off. Sorry.” 

She rolled her eyes. “It's fine, guys. We're all robots here.”

“Oh yeah, that's why we all came down here!” M-O rolled between GO-2 and Eva. “AUTO asked us about how we think about ourselves! Like if we're more similar to men or women.” He beeped. “I said that i was neither. WALL-E said that he was both and also neither. And he was really surprised by what AUTO said about himself!”

“Okay!!! But to be fair, you guys have all known him a lot longer than i have!!!”

That made Eva curious. “What did he say???”

“That he believes that he is somewhat feminine???”

“You knew that, GO-2???!!!” This was still an intense point for WALL-E.

He made a tone. “Of course. I am a sort of psychiatrist as well as a regular doctor to our robots. We have talked about this at length.”

“GO-2 was the first person that i told. I additionally simply trusted him as a friend.” AUTO put his hand on GO-2's back.

“Wait, what does ‘feminine’ mean???” Eva cocked her head.

“It's like a woman. ‘Masculine’ is like a man.” M-O wanted to make sure he still understood, and was satisfied that no one corrected him.

“Oh.” She processed. “So AUTO is like a woman???”

“W-well, partially. I typically see myself as neither masculine nor feminine.”

Eva thought for a moment. “I guess that makes sense.”

“How do you see yourself, Eva???”

She glanced at WALL-E. “I think it makes sense to be neither. I don't think i'm more like women than i am man. And i don't think i'm like men very much at all.” She beeped. “I guess i'd have to think about it.”

“Well– can i tell you what i think???” WALL-E wanted to share.

“Um, sure.”

“Okay, so when i first saw you, i thought you were beautiful. Gorgeous. Completely amazing. I was astounded. I couldn't believe my optics. You were incredible. You–”

“Yes, WALL-E, we know how you felt.” All of them, especially Eva, had heard WALL-E's first impression of her a hundred times before.

He made an awkward tone. “Er, w-well, i thought you were a little bit masculine in appearance. Like in shape, anyway. You were kind of like… like a triangle???” He put his hands together to demonstrate the upside-down shape that he meant. “Which is like a man. And especially with the ion rifle. I thought you were like an action hero, which are usually men.

“But then i saw you up close, and i heard your cute little giggle, and i wasn't sure anymore! And then we actually met, and your voice was so sweet and beautiful and wonderful, and i thought it was really feminine! Aaand after that i kind of lost it again. I think you're kind of like both, and also like neither. I wonder if you and i are alike like that.”

AUTO made a quiet tone. “M-may i offer my opinion???”

She slowly turned to him and glanced him up and down. “Sssuuure.”

He tapped his fingers together nervously. “W-well, i will say concisely: i view you as more feminine than masculine. In regards to shape, you are very rounded, and i believe that you were designed to look like an upside-down egg, which are things that come from female animals. Your directive had you incubate plant samples, which can also be considered feminine, as females are almost always the ones to incubate within their bodies.

“Your voice chip is also more feminine than masculine. I like it very much. But i have to believe that you were intended to be seen as feminine completely, as you were given a name that reflects the Biblical character of the first woman. I would say that your, rather, all of the EVEs’ intention was to be feminine: but you personally are not completely feminine. I think you are you, Eva. I admire that about you.”

There was silence for a few seconds, and AUTO thought he might have said something wrong. “I also think you're just Eva. You're a round fella.” M-O wanted his opinion to be known.

“Like how you're a little fella.” She didn't say it as a question.

“Exaaaactlyyyyy.” He nodded his head and looked at everyone as if trying to convince them.

“What about you, GO-2??? Do you have an opinion about yourself???” WALL-E didn't want him to be left out.

He turned to him. “Not exactly. Not in those parameters. I suppose that i can be either feminine or masculine, depending on how i am viewed. Human doctors do not have a typical gender… or, rather, they are not typically men, nor typically women: they are both. As for how i see myself, i do not give it much thought. I am usually too busy to consider that aspect of myself. I like who i am, and do not feel that i need to label myself as either masculine or feminine.”

“Yeah, me too!” M-O chirped.

“Affirmative, i feel that way as well most times.” AUTO nodded.

“I guess i'm kind of like that too. But now i am gonna think about it, because you guys are saying that i seem feminine. Maybe i'll agree with you.” Eva still needed some time.

“I can understand that. But i also want to think that i could be either. I wonder what it would be like to be a man or a woman.” WALL-E tapped his eyepiece.

“Well, whatever it's like, i'm sure it's not as fun as this!” Eva took off out of the repait ward, giggling and looking back as she did.

“Eva!!!” WALL-E called after her and dashed to follow.

“Oh, i'll catch you guys later! See ya!!!!” M-O sped off as fast as he could. “Hey guys, wait up!!! I'M JUST A LITTLE FELLA!!!”

AUTO and GO-2 watched them leave. They were both glad to see that they were so happy.

“You know, AUTO…” He turned to look at GO-2. “I could always try to adjust your voice chip. Perhaps i could help you sound more feminine. If you would like that.”

He made a tone. “Thank you for the offer, GO-2. But i am content with my voice as it is currently. It is how i have always sounded, and that voice matches me now. But thank you for offering again. I always appreciate it.” He affectionately pet GO-2 on his siren, and GO-2 made a satisfied tone.

[Post a/n: check under your chairs, i lost the ending again. Oops.

Heeeyy, there you go. THEY'RE QUEER! And i don't care if you don't agree. To clarify: M-O is gender neutral, WALL-E is genderfluid, AUTO is demifemme/gender neutral, Eva is questioning nonbinary, and GO-2 is agender. They use the pronouns that i used here. That's my version. Peace sign.

This is cross-posted on FFN and AO3 under the title "GO-4 It!!!"]

[bluebirdlester]

some of the potential in this

its like the phan twt videos. we can (in a filtered nonthreatening way) let them in on our goofs and japes that extend beyond a single post easy to show in a video. i wish this post was real rn so we could broadcast WT MD IF to all of phanniedom and find who did this

you know how we love their react videos cause its such a wonderful parasocial watching videos with my besties feel. dnp react to phannies react. we can do more layers

segment called "what is the weirdest place you have watched a dan and phil video"

all the little indirect ways they have impacted us that we wouldnt necessarily comment. both heartwarming and cringe. my first ever boy haircut where i brought in a pinof screenshot and got a Karen. the specific mutual follows ive carried across MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS AND PLATFORMS from when i was first in the phandom TEN YEARS AGO. the domino chain that led to me getting an award in high school for the best student from all the teachers in the english department based, humiliatingly, on the phanfic i didnt even bother to change names before submitting for assignments and at least one passionate essay defense of rpf.

get specific! about the themes and concepts of this current era!

i do think it would be kinda funny to watch someone squirm as dnp grill them like "how many words of phanfic DID you write". questions like that: not specific enough to be weird but pointed enough to tell them exactly what kind of parasocial demon theyre speaking to today

i'm generally fascinated by how attention online can feel like a single sentient creature. anyone who's ever been dogpiled knows this, for one example. when you're facing a wall of Commentary on something you've done, it's impossible to pull out just one person without really making a specific effort to do that. it's just the wall of opinions, and the Vibe of that wall. maybe it could be interesting to pull individual voices out of a crowd, this monolith that is "phannies" and the stereotypes that have grown up around us and examine them closer.

something about now that we're old, we understand them better. it's something, to be 24 and look at 2012 dan and be like oh. you're 21. that explains literally everything. when i was 12 back then, i could not have possibly gotten it but think i get it better now.

the playing field is more equal than its ever been, possibly? not fully equal & never will be obv but one would hope all of the following: we are more grown up/emotionally mature/willing to listen when they express boundaries, they are more stable careerwise and less scared of us leaving or turning on them or w/e (based on some comments in the suit podcast) and also they are no longer closeted

this is a persistent theme/unresolved trauma for me personally but i would wanna talk to them about what it was like to be the point of obsession for specifically an audience of overwhelmingly teen girls (at their peak. many of us are no longer girls etc), when "anything that teen girls like" is such a societally derided category. i got a lot of weird misogyny directed at me for talking about how much i loved watching dan and phil. how did they experience that? i think they must have in some ways, because misogyny and homophobia are so deeply entwined.

oogh this turned into projection city fast but feel free to add your own. what would you do if you were interviewed by dnp

i think the next step in the dnp mutual parasocial relationship journey should be them interviewing US

[wangxianficfinder]

I'm in the mood for...

~*~

1. Hi! Are there any fics where lqr is a good uncle to lwj? I don’t just mean those with the tag, but maybe something where he takes care of lwj or comforts or supports him in adulthood (cause when lwj is shown with a support system it’s usually primarily lxc, so I’m wondering if there’s anything with lqr)? Thanks!

When You Finally Find Your Family Series by Eleanor_Fenyx (T, 56k, WIP, WangXian, descriptions of canon events, Fix-It, Autistic coded LWJ, Canon-adjacent, Canon Divergence, Homeless WWX, Angst with a Happy Ending, WWX is a Lan) particularly the second fic which is a WIP.

For the last in the mood for, asking for good uncle lqr, I would like to recommend Iamnotawriter, they have really good stories that include lqr being nice to his nephews and wwx

~*~

2.  HI for the next ITMF can you recommend any time travel fics where YL!WWX gets put in post canon WWX’s place?? Fluffy if possible but any will do thanks!

ghost out on the water by twigofwillow (T, 14k, WangXian, Memory Loss, Curses, Angst with a Happy Ending, No One Is Having a Great Time, surprisingly helpful LQR, Best Boy Sizhui, Post-Canon) this is less time travel than a curse with memory loss (and sorry it’s not fluffy) but its an interesting take on what would happen if yllz!wifi suddenly took mxy!wifi’s place in wangxian’s married life

~*~

3.  for the next itmf, is there any time travel fics where any of the futures charas get to interact w/ their past counterparts and find them cringe? kind of like the vibe of Travel Back Down That Road by iSwallowMy_converse . thank u very much for ur hard work mods :D

From the Future for the Past by friedchickenlord (G, 27k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Time Travel Fix-It, First Love, Love Confessions, Fluff and Humor, accidental time travel due to one husband malfunctioning array, teen wangxian meet adult wangxian, Happy Ending)

~*~

4. hi slightly nsfw ask lol but do you have any fics where lwj is like a sex god - like where he is just really good at sex and has a reputation as such. there is one pride and prejudice themed one that i’m thinking of but other ones like that are just lwj being known for being really good at sex lol. also only with wangxian pls and toplwj !! thank you <3

(our friendship) up against the ropes by daltoneering (E, 36k, WangXian, Modern AU, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, lan zhan FUCKS, Fluff and Smut, Experienced LWJ, Oblivious WWX, Mutual Pining, Friends With Benefits, Pining while fucking, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Masturbation, Spit Kink, Dirty Talk, Light Bondage, Praise Kink, Dom/sub Undertones, Kink Negotiation, Pride and Prejudice 2005 (dir. Joe Wright), mentions of Wei Ying/others and Lan Zhan/others)

Rule Number One: Never get attached. by KizuKatana (E, 130k, WangXian, Modern AU, A/B/O, Light Angst, Crime Boss LWJ, Rogue criminal genius WWX)

the earthquake in the room by phnelt (E, 39k, WangXian, College/University, Modern: No Powers, Canada, Getting Together, Mentions of lwj/others, inter-faculty romance, strangers to lovers to frenemies to lovers, mostly book characterisation)

~*~

5. Do you know any fics where wei ying leave the cuitvatuon world because of how his treated. Like he gets tired of it.

Away from Trouble by Ilona22 (M, 15k, WangXian, Not Jiāng Chéng Friendly, WangXian Get a Happy Ending)

~*~

6. hiii!! for iitmf i was wondering if anyone has any recs for fics where wwx has an eating disorder? thank youuuuuu @camppureblood​

a kind of emptiness by ScarlettStorm (E, 11k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Eating Disorders, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorder Recovery, tricking your brain into better habits, bad choices, followed by good choices, low angst, Happy Ending, Tender smut, Frottage, Praise Kink, Additional Warnings In Author’s Note)

~*~

7. Are there any fanfics where wei ying leaves because he can't put up being treated the way he is. @chloecov4506

The Debts of a Child series by Hauntcats (M, 115k, jiangs & WWX, wangxian, canon divergence, not jiang friendly, angst w/ happy ending)

~*~

8. For the next itmf… is there a re-telling of the story from jin ling’s pov as a children’s book protagonist? Have a great week!

~*~

9. In the mood for a fanfic where wwx makes lwj laugh or smile for the first time and people are in shock or just whipped, overall just want some smiley lwj, preferably during cloud recesses arc?

~*~

10. Hi! For the Next im in the mood for, do you know if there are fics where Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan survive and the Jins have them imprisoned so they can have a reason to attack Wei Ying? Thank youuuuu

~*~

11. hello ❤️ for itmf, are there any fics where Jiang Yanli somehow leverages her Jin marriage into a position of power to help her brothers, instead of the other way around where she was practically jgs' bargaining chip to keep both jc and wwx in check? thank!!!

Aftermath by KouriArashi (T, 57k, JYL/JZX, wangxian, everybody lives (except JGS) au, romance, developing relationship, family, attempted sexual assault, processing trauma)

~*~

12. Hello! Thank you for all your hard work! For the next iitmf fic i'm in the mood for a modern au where wwx is someone who works with guns, be it a sniper or anything else, no thoughts, just shooter!wwx.

~*~

13. I'm in the mood for SMUT, but not just any smut, I'd like any fic where lwj fucks a core back into wwx. Those ones are always fun 👌 Love you all! ❤️

Always Light My Way by cqlorphan (E, 27k, wangxian, post-canon, getting together, friends w/ benefits to lovers, jealous WWX, misunderstanding, pining while fucking, switch wangxian, bottom LWJ, smut, dual cultivation, archer WWX, smart WWX, oblivious LWJ, angst w/ happy ending)

in defense of lightning by fruitys (E, 15k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Burial Mounds Settlement Days, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Golden Core Reveal, Getting Together, First Time, Dual Cultivation)

mercy, tear it down. by orange_crushed (E, 31k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Burial Mounds Settlement Days, Dual Cultivation, Light BDSM, In Which Wangxian Fumble Towards An Understanding of D/S Dynamics, Porn with Feelings, Recovery, Angst with a Happy Ending, Wangxian-Typical CNC Play, Aftercare, Slight Feminization (ie Wei Ying Keeps Saying ‘Wife’), True Love, Past LWJ/Other)

i had to abandon myself (you took all of me) by justdoityoufucker (E, 27k, WIP, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Burial Mounds Settlement Days, Novel Characterizations, Philosophy, Illnesses, Chronic Pain, Cultivation Sect Politics, Dual Cultivation, LWJ fucks a core into WWX, On Hiatus)

24 Hours by tailor31415 (E, 5k, WangXian, post-novel, PWP, But there’s a little plot, Bondage, Prostate Milking, Dual Cultivation) LWJ fucks a golden core into WWX in a lengthy and elaborate ritual (and, as a good Dom and Shixiong, sees that he’s fed, relaxed, and hydrated, and spots him throughout for both sub drop and qi deviation.

~*~

14. hello! ive just read Twelve Moons and a Fortnight by stiltonbasket and i am absolutely fascinated about the idea of yunmeng jiang sect leader wwx. most fics ive read with sect leader wwx, he has his own sect. so im wondering if there are other fics where wwx is sect leader jiang. thanks for all your hard work!

The River Runs Forever by Cerusee (T, 136k, wangxian, JYL & WWX & JC, NHS/JYL, WWX & NHS, character death, BAMF WWX, inventor WWX, sect leader WWX, WIP)

~*~

15. Just read golden as they come (but he's bleeding out) and would love anything similar for an ITMF! Or just any v angst golden core/trauma reveals! Thank you!!

Drowning in the Sun by Zelos (T, 8k, JC & WWX, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Golden Core Transfer, Brotherly Love, Sunshot Campaign, Family Dynamics, Grief/Mourning, Angst, Twin Prides of Yúnmèng Feels, Twin Prides of Yúnmèng Dynamics, [Podfic] Drowning in the Sun by flamingwell)

Listen to the Ocean (Hear it Break) by TheQueen (T, 3k, ChengQing, JC & WWX, WQ & WN, Canon Divergence, Golden Core Reveal, Character Study, Unreliable Narrator, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Angry Grape Boy hurts everyone around him and himself, Twin Prides of Yúnmèng Feels, Family Dynamics) close, very angsty moments right *after* a golden core reveal

~*~

16. Do you have any ATLA crossovers because I can’t find any unfortunately

Avatar: The Untamed Waterbender by KouriArashi (T, 181k, wangxian, JC/WQ, JC & WWX & JYL, Avatar fusion, action/adventure, families of choice, light angst, developing relationship, hurt/comfort, pining)

this world (what I make of it) by glitteringmoonlight (T, 22k, WIP, LSZ & WWX, WangXian, Avatar & Benders Setting, Avatar (TV) Fusion, Avatar LSZ, Light Angst, aftermath of a war, wangxian occurs but through lsz's pov, and only after a while, Teacher WWX)

as of 3:19 AM EST on 11/22/2022, the tag Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting yields 22 works for Mo Dao Zu Shi and 20 for The Untamed (TV), mostly overlapping.

Sparks by Anonymous (G, 679, XiCheng, Fluff, Getting Together, Inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender, Crossover, Love Confessions) Firebender! JC (mixed-race Water Tribe shidi to Avatar! WWX) training under Air Nomad! LXC

Book One: Water by Dont_do_sadness (M, 43k, WIP, WangXian, Avatar & Benders Setting, Fusion, LWJ is the avatar, JC is So Done and very sassy, Found Family Dynamics, chosen family, Friendship, Slow Burn, Genderfluid NHS, NHS is a Kyoshi Warrior, Protective WQ) Air Avatar LWJ; Southern Water Tribe Jiangs; Earth Kingdom Nies; Fire Nation Jin Sect and Northern Water Tribe Wen Sect for a change

~*~

17. I would love some fic recs where both Jades are autistic and not just Wangji! Thank you!! 💜 @the-vaguely-shifting-void

Falling Headlong by floraidh (T, 35k, wangxian, modern, college/university au, skater au, first meetings, first kiss, getting together, autistic LWJ, drunkji) both jades are autistic, but the focus is on lan zhan.

~*~

If you didn’t get an answer to your ask here, don’t forget to make use of @mdzs-kinkmeme and MDZS KINK MEME on Dreamwidth. Authors actually do use them for ideas. You may get what  you order!***Your prompt doesn’t have to be kink! Fluff, crack,  whatever - it’s all good!***

[no-droids]

Kar’taylir

gif credit @sersi​

Part Thirteen of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 11.8K

Warnings: language, angst and fluff, descriptions of a dead body, no real smut in this one but there is some nudity and touching, uhhh i think thats it tbh

A/N: Omg hi hi hello this was written in a week and a half so please be gentle, also I’m back on my linguistics bullshit and I can absolutely guarantee a vast majority of it is inaccurate

***

Everybody is asleep and you’re just a complete mess.

Truly.  And it fucking sucks, because this should be enjoyable.  This is home.  You’re in hyperspace, the hull is pitch black, the baby is asleep, and Din’s breathing is slow and quiet through the darkness.  Your cheek presses to his chest as it rises and falls hypnotically, you’re comfortable and safe and this would normally be a dream.  But your eyes are wide open right now and you are just going through it.  Spiraling in the midst of the most stable surroundings you could possibly conceive.

You suppose that this is partially your fault.  You don’t know why literally any part of you expected Din would explain himself without prompting from you, but you still couldn’t work up nearly the nerve necessary to ask.  Every potential question you came up with contradicted your intent, every way you tried to mentally phrase it gave off the wrong impression.  How do you ask somebody if they were being serious about something without revealing anything about your own intentions?  You can’t—that’s a downside of staying silent.

Din hasn’t said a single word since he urged you to leave the shooting range earlier, and he didn’t really seem like the quiet didn’t suit him, if that makes sense.  Yours was awkward, it fit you wrong.  You struggled for words while he easily ignored their existence altogether, able to navigate the Crest into hyperspace and exist comfortably around you without ever addressing the giant bantha in the room.  Maybe that’s part of the reason you floundered so hard—he didn’t avoid you, he held the kid while you took a shower in the small fresher, and even though he was quieter around you than he’d been in awhile, he gave no indication that anything was wrong at all.

You spent that time getting clean but also formulating some sort of plan.  As you bathed in actual water for the first time in a week and scrubbed your body clean, you tried to figure out at least why you were having so much trouble coming up with something to say, but even then, words evaded you.  You spent the entire time staring blankly at the metal wall, at a complete fucking loss.

When you came out of the fresher with wet hair and comfortable clothing to sleep in, Din was armorless and resting in your makeshift bed on the floor, the baby tucked soundly in his crib next to him.  You turned off the lights and carefully found your way under the blankets next to him in the pitch blackness, feeling him lazily reach around you and pull you to rest against his chest.  His fingers gently drew circles along your arm for maybe the first few minutes while you worked up the nerve to speak.  You needed to say something, this was your chance—

But then his hand soon fell to rest in one place on your shoulder and he passed out.  Helmet on, not even a few minutes of your quiet breathing next to him.

So now, you’re here, just… a little ball of stress in the middle of paradise.  Hours have passed, you need sleep after such a physically exhausting week but it’s like you haven’t even processed the fucking proposition he presented to you yet.  You’re having trouble even thinking the words, that’s how much he’s got you fucked up.

He said… hit the target and I’ll ma…. hit the target and I’ll marrrrr…

Fuck.  You stay on that loop for ages until your eyes begin to grow heavy, until you just settle on thinking about it with them closed.  Slow breaths from Din under one ear, the silence of hyperspace all around you—how are you supposed to contemplate when his body is so warm?  No, you can ask tomorrow, you’ll ask him tomorrow.

Eventually, you’re able to drift off into a troubled slumber, dreaming of bells made of beskar that deafen anyone who rings them.

***

You wake up what feels like two minutes later.

It’s not, but you don’t know that.  You’re so warm and the second your eyes open, they start stinging and burning and tearing up like your body just wants to cry for even being awake right now.  You finally got to sleep—you moan pitifully and start to turn your head further into the warm blankets, but then a gloved hand smooths your hair back and a voice whispers quiet through the darkness.

“I have to go.”

And oh, his touch is just the gentlest thing, but what he says makes your already fragile mental state want to shatter.  The first words he gives you in hours and they’re the ones you loathe to hear the most.

“W-Wha?  No,” you whimper and automatically reach for him, your throat starting to close up.  Maker, you’re so tired, you’re so tired, you feel so fucking emotional and vulnerable right now and you’re not even awake enough to realize it.  “Why?”

Din just catches your hands and brings both of them together in front of him, slowly pressing your knuckles to the cold beskar on the face of his helmet.

“I meet with Karga in three days,” he murmurs back, voice pillow-soft and barely loud enough to come through the steel under your fingers.  It’s gentle and lulling and it makes you want to sleep again, but you can’t and you feel like you could burst into tears for that reason alone.  “He gave me four pucks, I need four bodies.”

You can’t argue with it, the logic is perfectly sound.  But you still want to, and everything inside you revolts at the thought of allowing him leave like this without fighting for more.  Which means you have absolutely nothing reasonable or compelling to say to appeal to him; all you’re left with the glaring truth.

“But I don’t want you to leave,” you whisper, tightening your fingers.

And, perhaps if you were even half-conscious, you’d wince.  You’d cringe at the shake in your voice, you’d remind yourself that he has to make a living, he’s said it over and over again.  If you were completely awake, you’d scold yourself for being such a needy mess, but right now, all you can think about is how much you want him to stay, just this once.

After a moment, you feel the gloves carefully collect both of your hands into just one of his, and then he slowly reaches out with his free hand to cradle your jaw.

“I won’t be gone long,” Din murmurs.  “I can’t be.”

Your head turns slowly in his palm, and you’re just so, so sleepy.  Your voice is small and your words slur.  “Stay with me.”

Quiet, and though you can’t see him, the leather continues to press so warm to your cheek.  Your eyes slowly drift shut, needing him to stay exactly like this, stay right here just like this.  Karga can wait, the quarry can wait, the galaxy can wait—everything else can wait when things are like this, when he’s looking down at you breathing slow into his palm.

You’re almost asleep again when you hear him say something.

But… you have no idea what he says.  You hear it.  You hear his voice come through the pitch black, quiet enough to sit just on top of the silence and let the mysterious words simply become a part of it, but it’s strange.  Like his cadence lilts in a different way, the vowels are longer than what you’re used to, and your comprehension abruptly falters like it would if he was speaking another language altogether.

Maybe it’s just because it’s the first thing to pull you back from the edges of sleep, that has to be right.  It doesn’t sound like Basic because your mind is stupid and slow right now.  You need to ask him to repeat himself, but all that you can muster is the soft sound of confusion, not even able to open your eyes anymore.

His hands pull away from you and once again, you suddenly can’t decide between sleep and crying, quickly lifting and trying to reach out for him in the darkness.  You can’t feel anything, it’s like he’s completely disappeared from where you assumed he’d be, except then something tiny is placed into your hands instead and it makes an unhappy little sound at being disturbed.  You automatically hold the baby close to your chest and strong hands touch your shoulders, urging you to lay back down again.

“Leave the engine running, you’ll freeze if you don’t,” he mutters, quickly tucking the blankets up under your body while you close your eyes and feel the tears wet your lashes.  Fuck, you’re so exhausted, you just need to sleep.  “If I’m not back in sixteen hours, I’ll use my e-comm and you’ll have to fly out to me.”

He steps away from you, walks quickly and with purpose to the side of the hull, and a blast of frigid air fills the room before the door is slammed shut behind him.

***

Your head hurts.

Sparks and wires give your fingers mean, zapping reminders to pay attention every time your focus slips, but you still feel like you’re in a daze.

“Come on,” you drone, trying to use your voice to snap yourself back into the present, but the sound of it isn’t even interesting enough to pull you away.  “Come on.”

Maker, you’re going fucking crazy.  Is this just all an elaborate scheme to make you experience the same kind of insanity he told you he struggles with in your absence?  Because you don’t like this—you hate feeling like this, you can’t concentrate on anything and even if he hadn’t instructed you to do so, you’d likely still be counting the hours of his absence.

Fourteen have passed so far, not the sixteen you’re waiting for but getting close.  It’s one thing you’ve been able to accomplish.  Counting.  You can still count right now, so at least there’s that.

Oh, and another hoop you’ve jumped through.  Understanding words.  You can listen and repeat, even if you still can’t fully comprehend, but you’re getting there.

Din said… hit the target and I’ll marry you.

He said that.  Yep.  You’ve accepted it, you’ve accepted the words that were said.  Indeed.

Okay, but now… like…

What did he mean by that?  Why did he say that?

No matter how much you tell yourself he was just messing around—no matter how many times you offer up that perfectly logical answer to the burning question you’ve been sitting on, you still aren’t satisfied with it.  Something keeps tugging your mind back to it, a tether constantly pulling you away from the work that’s designed to be your distraction.

You frown down at the box of machinery.  Whelp, if he was serious, he’d probably immediately take the offer back after witnessing your behavior this morning.  You embarrassed yourself terribly, you acted like a clingy baby in the looming shadow of unconsciousness and what’s worse, you can’t even remember what he said after you begged him to stay.  It could’ve been a quiet, “Stars, pull yourself together,” for all you know.

And honestly, just… fuck these electronics.  You’re at the point where you’d probably cheer on whatever brutal impact damaged them so atrociously if you weren’t also well aware that this box was very likely attached to Din’s chest when it was crushed.  The magnetics are a complete mess, and you’re mostly just attempting to see how the individual components of each piece are supposed to communicate.  Turning the switch on doesn’t do much at all besides make the capacitors put out heat.  Not enough to shut it down or be a hazard to the housing when you close it, but enough to know that it’s going to present a problem for you at some point.

What’s more, you’re so lost in your own thoughts and busywork that you don’t see two green ears poking out over the top of the pile of armor on your temporary workstation (literally just the floor) until one of the thigh braces comes clattering down and the whole thing collapses with a ruckus.

You suddenly shove the metal box away from you in frustration and you reach for the little troublemaker with a sigh, scooping him up and getting to your feet.

“This isn’t going to work,” you grunt to him, hearing your words better for some reason when you direct them at the baby instead of talking to yourself, and his eh? allows the thoughts to come clearer and easier.  No, you can’t be distracted when your distraction is just another part of your status quo, you can’t use fixing mechanics to occupy yourself because it’s what you’ve done to occupy yourself your entire life, it’s worn off at this point.  You need something newer.  Something that takes your entire focus to do.

Eventually, your eyes drift over to the one metal panel on the wall that you’ve rarely ever opened.  One that takes up a comparatively enormous amount of space in the hull considering what you know it holds.  You eye the kid in your arm, who suddenly has sneaky painted all over his expression.  “You thinking what I’m thinking, demon?”

He squeaks his affirmative and you move over to the armory, pressing a few buttons before the doors slide open by themselves.  Because of course Mando invested in hydraulics for the gun closet but not for the hidden cot he used to sleep on, of course.

“Maker above,” you groan as the metal slides open, needing to lift your chin to eye the enormous collection.  How many fucking…?  All this for just one person?  What does that big one in the middle do that the others stacked strategically around it don’t?  They all kill whatever you point and shoot at, you’re assuming?  Are you missing something?

The baby makes a tiny sound of awe as you carefully look over your choices, not expecting nearly this many to be offered, before settling on one that looks the simplest.  A sleek silver one that’s still too big for your hand but smaller than anything else on the rack.

Grabby fingers reach out for the shiny metal as soon as you remove it from the shelf and you very purposefully set it down out of his pitiful wingspan.  “Nope.  Now come on, gotta bundle up.”

You make your way back over to the bed and pull one of the thickest blankets up, settling it over the open shield and then situating your partner in crime in his usual spot inside.  You strategically stuff and stack the fabric around him to make sure he’ll be warm enough in what you know has to be far below freezing temperatures, lifting it up over his ears and wrapping it around his neck in a loose hood.  He blinks up at you with gigantic eyes and an open mouth, clearly thrilled about your willingness to go on an adventure with him this time instead of being the tall nuisance that consistently holds him back from one, and you scoff down at him as you partially close the lid on his levitating nest of blankets for extra protection.  He should be warm enough, you’re not going to be outside long.

And then you pull out nearly half the amount of clothes you own and suit up in what feels like ten layers before grabbing the blaster.  The swirling wind nearly shoves the heavy hull door into you as soon as you open it and—Maker.

You look back at the kid behind you for a second, wondering if it’s too late to change your mind.  His expression narrows and he makes a triumphant ha! while pointing three fingers at the grey blizzard through the small open space in his crib.  Try as you might, you can’t ignore a call to arms when delivered with such ferocity.

Both of you step outside and take in the view after you wrestle with the door to haul it shut.  You don’t know the name of this planet but from what you can see, it’s one giant ice ball, mountainous and cold as fuck.  Though, to be honest, your only indication that it’s truly cold as fuck is the continuously accumulating snow blanketing the landscape and the flurries dancing in the whipping wind.  You’re too warm-blooded for climates like these—anything below room temperature and you’re freezing, you have absolutely no tolerance for cold whatsoever.

Keeping that in mind, you don’t travel far at all.  Just a few steps beyond the entrance to your shelter before eyeing what appears to be a large white boulder in the distance.  There’s a solid target, you figure—you’ll be able to see chunks splintering off when you hit it and the ice isn’t strong enough to bounce plasma back, you won’t have any ricochets.

Okay.  Okay—safety, where’s the safety on this one?  Ah, yes, okay—safety, off.  Stance, find your stance.  There it is.  Alright, now lift.  Lift, get that stupid frozen ball right in your sights, line it up.  Hold.  Hold.  Hold.

Inhale, exhale.  Inhale, exhale—

Fire.

You watch with bated breath as the bright red bolt launches from the end of the barrel and travels across the distance before melting a hole in the snow just to the right of your target.

“Mother fucker!”  You yell into the frigid landscape without warning, suddenly infuriated.  What’s the point of even having a sight if every gun is just gonna say fuck you no matter what?  Could there be some sort of mathematical reason why you seem to be fucking atrocious at this, you wonder?  Are you fucking up the angle somehow while trying to read the scope?  Should you just ignore it and try to aim without thinking too hard?

Admittedly, you spend the next five minutes shooting at that stupid fucking thing, not making a single shot.  It’s not been long at all, but your entire body is already trembling uncontrollably and it is just too fucking cold out here.  Freezing your fucking ass off isn’t going to help your aim of course, but it’s almost just tragic at this point.  Either you’ve got to accept that you’re just absolutely hopeless at this, or you’ve got to… blame the little womprat behind you for messing up your shots, yeah.  It wouldn't surprise you.

As a last ditch effort, you consider trying something a bit ridiculous to see if he really is fucking with you.

“I’m firing one last shot,” you call out loudly over the sound of the bristling wind and flurries, making sure he can hear your narration from his little blanket cave behind you.  “If I hit the target… I will present our demon overlord with a chunk of raw meat later for dinner.”

You give the offer a moment to sink in before raising the blaster, and then you jerk it up at the very last second while pulling the trigger.  The arc of plasma quickly disappears into the gloomy skies over the top of the ice boulder, completely straight.

You switch the safety on and turn around to say something smart to him, but… well.  Uh.  That’s an empty crib.

Sudden panic rips through you at the sight of the wide open shield, the blanket left abandoned inside.  Your head whips around in horror, wondering where the fuck he could’ve gone—but then you’re able to spot tiny footprints in the snow.  Your eyes quickly follow them up and see the baby wading his way up a large hill, slow against the terrain and trying in vain to get to something at the very top.

You drop the blaster and bolt through the blizzard to get to him while calling out through the freezing air and wishing, not for the first time, that you had a name to roar and strike fear into his tiny little heart.  In this case, you prefer a middle name as well.

Finally reaching him and yanking him up from the snow, you tuck him under the warmest part of your arm and open your mouth to start venting the terror from your body, but he makes a distressed noise and starts climbing.  You fumble with him on your way back down, not expecting that response, but he’s so distraught and preoccupied that he’s unable to stay still, trying to find different ways of escaping your grasp and making more and more sounds to indicate something is wrong.

“What the fuck are you—” you stuff him into the shield and at least get the blankets wrapped around him before looking back and trying to spot whatever he’s still wiggling and attempting to get to.  Frustrated cries start filling the icy air and… okay.  “Okay,” you tell him, your breath puffing like smoke in front of you, “okay okay, we can go look, but you need to stay warm.”

You clutch the edge of his metal shield and urge it to follow you back up the snowy hill, feeling the crunch of your feet disappear further and further into it as you climb.  Your outer two layers are probably soaked by now—stars, it’s so fucking cold.  You know you’re not exactly the best judge, but you’ve been outside less than five minutes and you’re already worried about getting sick or frostbite, already jumpy and wanting to go back to the warmth of the hull.

But as you reach the top and look out in the distance, you can just barely make out a familiar metallic glint on the horizon.  

Your heart picks up, but the baby makes another distressed sound.  Not… happy, not thrilled that his dad is coming back.  Some strange sort of dread begins to fill you, carefully holding the kid in his shield with one hand and looking at the bright reflection of light a little ways away just to make sure it’s…

No, it’s not moving.  Not disappearing and reappearing, not catching the sunlight differently.  Completely stationary in this absolutely horrendous weather.

You immediately make your way in that direction, your body deciding to outright abandon its trembling in the wake of this newfound worry.  You’re suddenly sweating, way too warm.  That’s Din, you recognize the glint of his armor anywhere, but why isn’t he moving?

The closer you get, the faster you move and the more you’re able to see.  He’s laying facedown in the snow.  There’s quite a bit of it covering the back of his cape, maybe a few inches, and… there’s also someone laying equally as lifeless behind him.  Your heart is slamming now, you’re doing your best to run in the unforgiving terrain, and you finally see that it’s… a corpse, a frozen corpse is behind him with a rope tied around its ankles, clutched tight in Din’s unmoving fist as it lays against the pure white backdrop.

“Mando?”  You call out, dropping to your knees as soon as you reach him.  “Hey—hey, can you hear me?”

The beskar strapped to him is frozen over and feels colder than ice when you try to shake him.  He doesn’t respond.  He’s dead weight; you do your best to turn him over on his back, but you still get nothing from him.  You shove your trembling fingers up under the helmet, and the only reassurance you have that he’s even alive comes from the petrifyingly slow pulse beating underneath.  His skin is ice cold.

Shit, he’s still breathing but he’s hypothermic, you have to get him back to the Crest right fucking now.

You fumble to get in position above his head while hooking both your arms under his, before leaning everything you have into it—but fuck, he’s so heavy.  You can barely lift him even just a few inches off the ground—the snow is deep, his armor makes him weigh a ton and the fabric wrapped around him is sopping wet.  You try again, making a tight sound in your throat while you haul, but it’s no use.

“Fuck,” you curse, starting to panic even fucking harder.  You’re gasping and breathless and getting dizzy and scared, continuing to try and find different angles to heave—

—until suddenly the burden is lifted.

You nearly fall backwards on your ass at the abrupt removal of tension, playing tug-of-war with a team that decided to give up with no warning.  But it’s like it almost doesn’t even phase you; you don’t even look behind you to see the baby’s eyes closed tight in concentration, you just recover and pull with both arms, feeling Din’s body gliding easily along the snow now and leading him all the way back down the hill.

Once you get inside the Crest and shut the door to the raging blizzard behind the three of you, there’s an extended moment where you just… you don’t know what to do.  You know all about how to deal with heatstroke, but this is the opposite—he either spent too long in the cold, or he exhausted himself trying to get back too quickly and then spent too long in the cold.  He said he’d use his e-comm if he wasn’t back in sixteen hours—was that the cutoff?  The point where the temperature outside would shut his body down and he’d need you to come get him?

Regardless, you need to warm him up.  Yes, that’s your priority, and you figure the quickest and safest way to accomplish it has to be the shower in slow increments.  The kid helps you move Din into the tiny fresher in the hull and then you sit on the floor with him, holding his limp body to your chest while reaching up to turn the faucet on.

Cold water sprays down and then suddenly—oof, he’s heavier than fuck again.  Air leaves your lungs and your neck cranes back under the unexpected increase in pressure on top of you to see the kid climbing down from his shield, no longer focused on mentally bearing most of his father’s weight or directing his own hovering form of transportation along behind you.  The baby disappears out of sight and you huff, completely trapped under Din as freezing water rains down on you.

Fuck, it’s so cold.  It’s way too fucking cold for you, but your core body temperature is also mostly normal right now.  Din’s isn’t, you’ll probably shock his system if you try to warm him up too quickly.  So you reach up and twist the knob, keeping it at a temperature he’d probably find just the slightest bit warm while inspiring violent shudders from you.

“H-Hey, I’m gonna t-t-take this off, o-okay—” you stutter down at him, knowing damn well he isn’t conscious to hear you but giving him that reassurance on the small chance he is, and then reach with trembling fingers to work at his armor.  You worry that the beskar is keeping the cold trapped the same way his clothes are, like having solid pieces of ice strapped to his body and nothing to protect him besides a few layers of soaking wet fabric.

The chestpiece comes off and you throw it blindly over your shoulder into the hull with a clang—admittedly, without thinking about where the baby is at all anymore.  The pauldrons come off next, but not before you reach up and turn the heat up just the slightest bit.  Your jerky limbs just want to blast it and remove the rest of his clothes in steamy hot water, but you can’t.  Even though your mind is hurtling at a thousand lightyears an hour, whatever reason you have left reminds you that you have to be patient or risk losing him entirely.

Eventually you’re able to get all the armor off but you hate the way he’s breathing right now.  Slow and shallow, like he just doesn’t really need the air at all but his body is still fighting for it on instinct.  His chest barely moves with it even when it’s got nothing weighing it down.

“You’ll b-be okay,” you say aloud, talking to the both of you even though only one is capable of responding.  “Y-Y-You’ll be o-okay—”

You reach up to inch the temperature a little higher, shivering terribly now.  His body feels slightly warmer under the shower than it did with the beskar, but you know you need to keep going and take the fabric off now.  Maker, it’s nearly impossible—the black clothing clings to his skin and its such a small space to maneuver, but it gives your mind and hands a clear goal to focus on while the water incrementally heats up.

Strangely, your adrenaline has been rocketing for so long that you almost lose track of time.  You just keep deadly focused on your task of undressing him and slowly heating the shower, trying not to think, trying not to get in your head and bring about disaster in such a crucial set of moments.

At some point, the water is warm.  Comfortably warm, and Din’s body isn’t ice cold anymore.  It’s warm, too, laying back into your chest and naked besides the helmet, but he’s still not moving.  No response, no matter how much mindless drabble you supply, no matter how steamy and hot the shower has become, no matter how much your own body has heated up.  Your fingers have found their home under his jaw, pressed right to his pulse point and feeling it continue to beat slow and faint, but you’re starting to feel the terror set in.  Real terror, the kind that makes you stupid and emotional, the kind that turns you back into a child again.

“I don’t know if it’s working,” you suddenly choke out, close to tears.  He’s warm, what else can you do for him?  Why is he not waking up?  “I-I don’t know what to do, Din, I…”

No—no, you cannot lose your shit, not yet.  You will exhaust every fucking option before you let that fear set in.  He’s not waking up because he needs to recover, his body needs time to work things out in a warm, comfortable environment.  He’s breathing, his heart is beating, he’s warm, and he’s still with you, so… you need to still be with him.

You turn the water off and clumsily get up, grabbing him under the arms and hauling him back into the hull.  He’s still heavy but it’s so much easier than before to move him; there’s no armor weighing him down anymore besides the helmet, no cape or snow or friction to catch him, no cold to lock your muscles up.  It’s slow going but you’re finally able to settle him in the warmth of your shared bed and then cover his body in the collection of blankets you’ve amassed.  You stand up and peel off all your wet layers of clothing, letting them plop to the metal floor while glancing around for the kid—

—who is currently swinging from the ladder to the cockpit with one hand.

It startles you for just a moment, just long enough for you to wonder what the fuck he thinks he’s doing up there, but then you figure that if he found some way to get up there then he can surely find his way back down again.

As you quickly drop to the bed and scoot up next to Din’s limp body under the blankets, the Crest’s engine suddenly gives a low rumble below the floor and heat starts blowing through the hull vents.  Again, you’re too preoccupied to even notice the gift much.  You’re tugging and tucking blankets around him and up under the metallic edge of his helmet when...

Maker, you need to take this off.  If the inside is wet, it’s probably keeping his head cold while the rest of him is warm from the shower.  You know it’s not a light thing—you know… you know at least a fraction of what this means.  You won’t look, you won’t look unless something absolutely drastic happens and it’s completely unavoidable, but you need to take his helmet off.

You catch the shoulder furthest from you and tug at his heavy body until he’s on his side, facing you on the bed.

“Din, I have to take your helmet off,” you warn him, saying it slowly and clearly.  Again, just in case.  “I’m not gonna look.  Nobody is gonna look—” your gaze flicks behind him to eye the baby, who is now somehow on the metal ground and waddling up to you both.  He blinks enormous black eyes at you, looking between you and his father huddled together under the blankets.

“Close your eyes,” you tell him very seriously, no room for negotiating.  “I know you understand me.”

It takes just a few seconds before he lifts his hands up and does exactly what you say, placing his fingers over his closed eyelids and then even so much as toddling around to face the wall.  You gasp in relief, clenching your eyes firmly shut and then pulling the helmet up, making sure you catch his head before it falls with one hand while tossing the beskar somewhere in the hull with the other.

Cold.  His hair is soaking wet and so cold, and his head rolls slightly as you guide it to rest in the warmest part of your neck.  Your hand stays attached to the back of it, wanting to transfer every single bit of warmth from your palm to him, and your eyes open to the kid’s back as your other arm wraps around Din’s bare spine.

And then all at once, you just feel… helpless.  He’s in your arms but Maker, you don’t know what else you can do.  The heat is blasting, you’re warm and pressed against him under multiple blankets, the engine is slowly heating the metal floor, but his breathing.  Slow.  Shallow.  Barely able to be felt against your neck.  He’s here but he’s not.  And you have no way of knowing if he’s getting closer or further away from you.

Tears start coming before you even realize.  But you have nothing to say.  After spending the entire time talking out loud, providing reassurances, narrating, distracting yourself—you don’t have anything anymore.  The silence twists you tighter, the nothing becomes inescapable, and the sudden sob that leaves you echoes hauntingly throughout the hull.  You pull his limp body as close to you as possible for comfort.  Wake up.  Wake up.

Your vision is watery—you don’t see it.  You don’t see the kid slowly turn around and take a few steps forward.  You only notice he’s there when green catches in the abstract blur, but you sniff and blink quickly to clear it.  It only takes a second to see the baby’s hand, extending and pressing against the blanket covering Din’s back, and you watch with wide eyes as he closes his.

And then there’s a second.  A second where you dare to hope.  Where you wonder if it’s even something that can be done.

The kid lowers his hand just a moment later and stumbles back a few steps, before plopping down on the ground and slowly falling backwards.  You have just enough time to see his little body inhale and exhale a few times as he sleeps, and then—

—and then Din suddenly jolts in your arms, bursting with too much life after spending too many heart wrenching moments without it.

“Shhh,” you breathe, instantly tightening your grip on the back of his head so he doesn’t pull away from you in a panic and keeping it tucked into the warmest part of your neck, right where your pulse thrums fast and present.  Your eyes clench tightly shut just in case and your heart bursts with pure, blinding, heavenly relief.  “Shhh sh sh, stay right here, just stay right here…”

As soon as he seems to recognize your voice and figure out that he’s not dead, his body immediately starts wreaking with shivers.  You squeeze him tight to you, feeling his large, quaking frame curl inwards into you for warmth, burying his own face into your neck even further and breathing shallow but quickly now, like his body actually wants the air again.  You do your best to will your blood to pump faster and provide him that relief, stretching and opening your body as much as possible to give him warmth.

And then you spend the next few hours like that.  Holding him, murmuring gently to him, providing him with your body heat and stars, he fucking clings to you.  He presses tight to you and trembles, and you don’t even know if he’s listening, but you keep talking.  Finding words for hours, and while some of them are just different ways of saying the same thing, you say them anyway.

He’s okay.  The kid is okay.  Everyone is okay.

Eventually, the shivering dies down until it stops altogether.  Din stays in one place and goes completely limp again, but this time he continues to breathe you in, slow and deep into the crook of your neck.  Fast asleep in your arms, and you thank the good fucking Maker above for the little angel passed out on the floor behind him.

***

He has to meet with Karga in two days.

After a few more hours of holding him and making absolutely sure he’s going to be alright, that’s all you can stupidly think about.

A deadline.  A very quickly approaching one.

You don’t know why.  But it might have something to do with the fact that you want nothing more than to climb up into the cockpit and navigate the ship off this horrid planet, and you can’t.  You’re confident that the hull and blankets are warm enough by themselves to keep Din comfortable as he recovers, and you’ve also had quite a while to regroup and get your mind thinking logically again, so you’re not worried about getting up and leaving him right now, no.  That’s not the problem.

The problem is that there’s a corpse outside.  You know this.  You know it’s there, and you know he needs it.  Nobody’s gonna take his word for just saying they’re dead, much less pay him for his services; no body, no bounty.  You also know it’s probably being covered with fresh snow right now, or maybe some sort of wild animal has already gotten their teeth into it, if anything can even survive out there.  And you’re the only one awake.  The only one capable of going to get it.

You’ve been arguing with yourself.  For about an hour, you’ve been struggling with the thought.  Din is soft and warm and every breath makes you focus less on the terrifying moments that occurred and more on the need to step up once again.

In the end, it’s the kid who gives you the final push.  You’re not going to leave him laying on the floor like that for any longer.  Not after what he did.

You take a second, grabbing the blanket and pulling it up all the way over Din’s head as it rests warm and comfortable in your neck.  You’re incredibly careful to cover his face, and even while climbing out of the warm cocoon of the bed, you keep your eyes firmly shut and continue to pull the fabric even higher, making absolutely sure you’re not going to see his face on accident.  You shouldn’t, you don’t think, as long as he doesn’t jerk awake and pull it down himself, but you want to take extra precaution regardless.

After quickly yanking on some clothes, you immediately make your way over to the kid and pick him up, seeing his little mouth open as he snores—and oh, you just have to.  You pull him to your chest and give him the most heartfelt, thankful embrace you can while not squishing him, before setting him down in his much more comfortable hovering blanket palace and closing the lid on it.

You know you have a very clear task now, but for just a few moments longer, you do your best to stall despite the ticking clock.  You start to pick up the mess in the hull—you close the fresher door, pick up Din’s discarded armor and set it in a neat pile close to the bed, place the helmet under the vent to encourage the padding inside to dry faster, and then you collect his old armor and stuff it back into one of the storage cubbies with your toolbox.

Only, an idea suddenly occurs to you as you’re putting away the chestpiece.  When you open the door to the hull, you know that a blast of cold air is going to flood the ship.  The engine is still heating everything inside and making sure you don’t get trapped in the snow by continuously melting it on the outside, but you don’t want Din to start shivering again.

So you grab the dented piece of electronics you were working on and flip the power switch, feeling the capacitors slowly start to heat up inside the housing.  You go back over and lift the blanket near his feet just enough to tuck the metal under it, close enough to Din that he’ll feel the same amount of warmth your body was providing him but not enough to overheat.

And then you make your way over to your bag and pull on the rest of your clothes, now exhausting almost every single clean thing you own just to make another trek through the snow.  You’re in the middle of pulling on your fifth pair of pants when the thought truly sinks in.

A corpse.  A dead body.  That you’re actually considering going out into the worst fucking weather in the galaxy to search for, haul back to the ship, and put into carbonite.  Because of a fucking deadline for an occupation very much not your own, very much not chosen by you.

You quickly walk over and leave through the door on the side of the hull before you can change your mind, slamming it shut behind you.

***

Well, it’s…  It’s not too terrible, you guess.

It’s been frozen out here for hours, that’s why.  It’s not bloody, not gory, not demented or malformed in any way.  Tranquil almost, like the creature died in its sleep in this nightmarish landscape, perfectly at peace.

You still don’t want to get anywhere close to it, but you have to.  You pull a face and slowly reach out, absolutely not thinking about the literal impossibility of it playing dead and just waiting for the moment to strike, but even still…  Even if there was nothing more sinister hiding underneath the surface of this scene, it’s still… existentially fucked up.  The last time you were confronted with a dead body, Din had to be the one to dispose of it—you couldn’t even think about it without threatening another wave of shock to your system.

And now you’re voluntarily grabbing the rope around one’s ankles and dragging it back down the pure white slope to the Razor Crest.

It doesn’t weigh that much and its icy exterior seems to work in your favor; it slides easily along the snow as soon as you get it moving.  As the ship comes back into view, you hurry to the door and you’re just about to open it when you suddenly get the feeling that you’re forgetting something…

Oh—

It takes a few moments of searching around in the freshly fallen snow, but eventually your fingers brush metal underneath and you stand, reaching behind you to tuck the blaster into your waistband.  When you’re positive you’re not going to accidentally shoot a chunk of your ass off on accident, you shove open the door and pull the body inside, before locking it tight behind you and keeping the frigid winter from touching this warm, quiet safe-haven.

There.  Halfway done.  You almost don’t want to look in case he wakes up unexpectedly, but then you find yourself peeking over your shoulder at the silhouette of Din’s body still passed out under the blankets and you’re thankful the squeaks and slams didn’t disturb him.

And then you take just a second to wonder if this is what it must be like for him.  Minus your obvious discomfort and ickiness at beginning to haul the corpse over to the carbonite chamber, it seems like it’d be reminiscent of any other time he’s brought back a dead quarry while you and the baby slept soundly.  Trying to be quiet, wanting it done and over with just to get back in bed that much faster, doing everything you can to prevent anything out there from so much as breathing on anything in here.

You do your best to hold on to the loveliness of the thought, because this part is the part you’re most anxious about.

The body needs to go into this slanted upright space so you can freeze it in carbonite.  And in order to do that, you have to grab it and put it there.  With your hands, you have to grab it.  With your hands.

You look down at its face, calm and at peace, frozen and forever etched into that expression, and something twists in your heart.  If it weren’t for the kid, that could’ve been Din.  If it weren’t for the kid walking barefoot through snow, fighting an uphill battle to make sure you get to him, helping you drag him back here and then overexerting himself to make sure he’d be okay, that could’ve been Din.  He drives you crazy on a consistent basis, but he came through today.

Know what?  If that little squirt can save a grown man’s life twice in a few hours, then the least you can do is finish this job for all three of you and fly your asses out of here.

Weirdly enough, being frozen solid allows for way better handling than the alternative.  It means you don’t actually have to touch it too much; you don’t have to deal with the limpness of death, it doesn’t seem as much like a person as it does a rigid board you’re simply moving from one place to another.  You can just grab the shoulders and yank and the entire fucking thing goes with it, solid and upright, naturally wanting to lean back into the chamber so you don’t even have to hold it in place.  The perfect quarry for you basically, day one stuff, as easy as it could get.

Almost done, almost done—you study the key panel on the upper-right frame before eventually pressing a few buttons, and then you step back as gas freezes and solidifies the corpse in its carbonite prison.

Yes.  You’re done.  You already want to take another shower just from touching it for a few seconds, but that can wait.  Quickly making your way up the ladder and into the cockpit, you fire up the thrusters and then navigate the ship through and beyond the swirling white atmosphere of this dreadful fucking planet, before punching in familiar coordinates to Nevarro.

***

“Din,” you murmur, making sure you have your eyes completely covered with one hand before gently easing the blanket down from his face with the other.  “Din, I want you to drink some wat—”

He jerks awake so suddenly that you hear the metal canteen fall over on the floor next to you, thank the Maker its lid is on tight.  You automatically reach out to steady him, pressing your free hand to his bare chest and continuing to speak calmly and gently to reassure him, but he still scrambles to take in his surroundings after sleeping longer than he probably has in weeks.  

You know what he’s seeing, even though you’re blind right now.  You took time to make sure everything was settled before waking him.  The hull is clean with only a single light to illuminate it, the baby is still snoozing in his closed crib, his armor is stacked in a neat pile, the blaster is put away, and you retired your makeshift blanket heater box so the only thing left is you.  Freshly showered, hair dripping, offering him water, and dressed in just a thin shirt with nothing else (you ran out of things to wear).

“Wh-Where’s my h-h-helmet—” is the first thing he asks, voice broken and raspy.  Stars, he needs water.

“The padding inside is wet,” you quickly supply, keeping your hand tight over the bridge of your eyes to make sure his freshly conscious mind immediately understands that you have no bad intentions.  “I swear I didn’t look, and I made sure the kid didn’t either.  He’s sleeping now, it’s just me—I swear nobody looked, I swear.”

You might just be saying the exact same thing over and over again and admittedly, that might be putting some weird kind of suspicion on you, but you just want to make sure he knows.  Beyond a shadow of a doubt.  It’s important that he knows he’s safe and that everything is okay now, even if he collapsed and spent an unknown amount of time in a purgatory where nothing was.

His body trembles under your palm, waves of shudders attacking him even after hours of keeping him as warm as possible.  “Are—Are we st-still on H-Ho—H-Hoth—”

“No,” you answer.  “We’re in hyperspace.  Everything’s okay now, I took care of it.  We’ll get to Nevarro on time.”

It’s like he takes just a few extra moments, as if he’s trying extra hard to remember before responding.  “But—I d-didn’t—”

“You have four bodies for Karga,” you tell him, not letting him get too lost trying to recall something that no longer poses an issue.  “I took care of it.  You need rest, I only woke you up to make sure you drink some water, so please—” you blindly reach your hand out for the canteen you know has to be around here somewhere, but all you feel is…

His.  Catching yours.

“Y-You took c-c-care of…”  His hands are trembling harder than his voice.  “Sh-shit, I’m freezing, I—”

“Drink some water,” you tell him, squeezing his fingers.  “I’ll go turn off the light so you can sleep more, but you need water.”

His hand feels like it doesn’t quite want to let go of yours yet, but eventually it does and you hear the sloshing of water as the metal flask is picked up with an unsteady grip.  Purposefully turning your back to him and making sure he’s not in your line of sight whatsoever, you finally let your hand drop and blink your eyes open at the wall across the hull.  You hear Din shakily unscrew the lid while you stand up and find the light switch, before turning around in the pitch blackness and using his loud gulps as your guide back.

Your hands and knees are barely on the blanket when you hear him toss the empty canteen to the side and grab you, pulling you down to him.  

Fuck, you’re not expecting it.  You fumble in the dark but he doesn’t really give your clumsiness much of a choice—Din pulls you under the blankets like he needs you, his body craving that warmth even though his skin doesn’t feel cold at all.  He hooks a strong forearm around your tummy, keeping your back pressed tight to his chest while the rest of him curls to fit every part of you, and you have to adjust the blankets yourself.

It’s not even a few seconds after you settle into position when his trembling hands jerk down to grab your shirt and yank it up.  You quickly scramble to help him get you as naked as he is, feeling his palms drag greedily across the heat of your tummy and breasts before you’ve even finished wiggling the fabric over your head.  The shirt lands somewhere in the darkness and you’re squeezed back against him, your hands landing on his forearms as they wrap around your waist and he clings shamelessly to you.

“You…”  Din’s body still shivers every once in a while but the heat and closeness allows his voice to even out just a bit.  He clears his throat and swallows, tucking his head and burying his face in your hair before trying again.  “You brought back the qu-quarry?”

“Yes,” you confirm, confident in your reassurance but gentle at the same time.  “It’s in carbonite.”

All you can feel or hear in response is his breathing.  His heart beating steady and strong against your back.

And then Din’s arms suddenly squeeze you tight—tight.  He lets out a low shaky exhale against the back of your shoulder and presses his lips to your skin.  “Sweet girl.”

And he says just… so much with those two words.  Slow and purposeful, the steadiest thing you’ve heard from him in hours.  But the two biggest competing emotions you hear tugging at his vocal cords are gratitude and apprehension.  Like he already knows that it couldn’t have been easy for you.  Like he’s not taking it lightly.

You don’t want to talk about it.  You don’t want to talk about anything that happened in the past few hours, not right now.  “It’s okay.  Please.”

This time his silence seems to be on the brink, as if he wants to say more but the extra plea you put on the end makes him hold onto his words, at least for now.  

“How d-did you find me?”  He asks instead, scooting his legs up enough that yours actually go with him.  Cradled in his naked body, radiating heat so he can recover, pressed so close to him that you feel like gravity itself would be pushing you into his lap if the world weren’t sideways.

“The kid,” you tell him.  “We were goofing around outside and he dragged me ov—”

It’s like he’s still so cold that even just the surprise of hearing you say that makes his whole body lock down and convulse a few times against your back.  “You were wh-what?”

“I was practicing,” you openly admit to him, feeling like the earlier events already occurred a lifetime ago and you have no reason for being shy about it anymore.  In fact, you’re glad you were there, being terrible at shooting.  The alternative is unthinkable.  Though, something tells you also improbable, having a little supernatural sidekick who cares so deeply for him.  “I raided your armory.  We weren’t outside for more than five minutes before I wanted to go back in, but then he found you.”

And you think he’s going to get after you, for some reason.  Seems about on par, you figure—going outside for even just a few minutes on a planet whose name you now remember is colloquial slang for hell, even if it’s the only reason he’s not an icicle right now.

But he’s just quiet.  Breathing.  So you just relax into him, thinking that’s the end of it.  You take a few deep breaths in through your nose and just… rest.  In the near perfect silence of hyperspace you used to find haunting, but now only find comfort in.  It reminds you of him.

“Did you hit the target?”  He asks you quietly, and at first you scoff, about to ask if he’s kidding.  No, of course you didn’t hit the…

Only, after a remarkable delay, hearing him phrase it that way suddenly makes your stomach decide to drop and do a fucking somersault on the ground out of absolutely nowhere.

Everything comes flooding back.  The conflict you used to think was the most pressing thing, the one that kept you awake and your thoughts scrambled for hours.  It feels like it was ages ago.  An entire lifetime has passed since that happened, you might’ve forgotten it altogether if he didn’t decide to ask that very simple question in a very specific way.

“I…” you mumble in response, your heart suddenly pounding.  “Not… not yet.”

Okay, that’s a good answer.  It’s the truth and you’re giving nothing away by saying that.  So now what is he going to say?  What is he going to say?  You spoke your piece, it’s his turn now, that’s how conversations work.  Well typically, that’s how conversations work—but with Din… you probably should’ve known.

He falls back into silence almost immediately, appearing to accept your answer just the way it is without anything else to add.  You feel his heart continue to beat strong against your back, but there’s something too tense about his stillness that doesn’t imply he’s relaxing anymore.  His body goes slightly taut, but not from the lingering chill in his bones.

He’s going to make you ask him, you realize.  He’s waiting until you confront him about his choice in words at the shooting range.  Which means he wasn’t just joking around.  He wasn’t just messing with you.

“Din…” you whisper uncertainly, and his face suddenly finds its way into the crook of your neck as soon as the word leaves your mouth, arms tightening up around you.  You spent forever trying to find the words to even bring this up, and here he is, already knowing exactly what you’re asking just by the tone of your voice.  Still, you ask anyway, sounding small and so unsure of yourself in the darkness.  “Why did you say that?  On Tatooine, why did you…”

Din’s chest expands against your back with a long, slow breath, and then he lets it out against your neck, hot enough to raise goosebumps all over your body.

“I… don’t know,” he admits, voice muffled and quiet, but it’s not… casual.  Not like he’s brushing you off or indicating he doesn’t want to talk about it, but like it’s actually a complete fucking mystery to him, just as much as it is to you.  “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know…” you repeat slowly.

“You had said something,” he mutters, shifting just a bit behind you.  His palm slides up your bare tummy, stopping in the warm spot just under the swell of your breast.  “Earlier that day.  I thought about it, and then I just… s-said it.”

You?  Said something that made him ask that?

“What?”  You blurt out, genuinely startled and having no fucking clue.  “What did I say?”

“Something about…”  He gives the smallest shudder from behind you, and you don’t actually know if this one is from the cold.  “Not wanting anyone else to know me the way you do.”

Your heart rapidly kicks up and you flush, hating how unbelievably possessive your own words sound coming out of his mouth.  “Oh shit, I… I didn’t mean for that to be… that sounds so bad, Din, I swear I didn’t mean for it to—”

He cuts you off by clutching you tighter, burying his face deeper into your neck and breathing out shakily.  “Tell me you meant every word.”

You blink a couple of times in the pitch black before sighing, letting go of any charade or front you think about putting up for him to save some dignity.  “I meant it.”

Because it’s the truth.  You said it when you were caught off guard, throwing it out to him along with other mindless drabble that came from a place that was very real.  You don’t like the way you phrased it, but you meant it.  You do mean it.  Every word.

If there weren't so many things still left unsaid right now, you might actually worry he fell asleep on you.  Din loosens up considerably after you admit it, letting go of more tightness you didn’t even know was inside him.  His head slowly drops from the crook of your neck to the back of it and he breathes hot air on your nape, quiet for a long time.

And, you suppose you’d actually be okay with it if that was the end of the conversation.  There are, of course, millions of things left to ask.  But he doesn’t know the answers, just as much as you’re left clueless about the questions.  You’re not expecting him to elaborate anymore, and if he’s waiting for you to ask, he’ll be waiting a long time.  Soon your eyes close and you almost feel yourself beginning to drift.  It’s been such a rough day today and to just be here in his arms, it’s more than enough for you.  

But then his low baritone comes through the darkness.

“In Mando’a,” Din’s voice suddenly whispers against your skin, “the verb, kar’taylir… it means to know.  Su kar’tayli, you know, kaysh kar’tayli, they know.  Ni ke kar’tayl nu… I don’t know.”

Your eyes pop open and you immediately forget all about sleep, wide awake and suddenly hanging onto every word as it rolls so gently off his tongue.  You’ve never heard the language spoken aloud, you’ve never heard anything about the Mandalorians directly from one before.  All of the stories seem sensationalized, passed down by word of mouth and chipping away at the kernel of truth until it disappears completely.

“The language is dying,” Din continues, murmuring soft and gentle along your nape.  “By the time I learned it, too many words had been lost.  The ones left were the ones that were needed.”

“What do you mean?”  You whisper, almost afraid of breaking the quiet.  Not wanting him to feel distracted or pressed, but needing to express your curiosity lest you somehow overflow with it.

“There are only three pronouns,” he answers slowly, and you’re already fucking fascinated.  “Ni, for I or we.  Su is you or you all, and kaysh is third person.  Subjective, objective, possessive, singular, plural—doesn’t matter.  Three words, for every individual or collective in the entire galaxy.”

You blink in the darkness, your logic telling you that it sounds so simple it’d become confusing and then your logic also telling you that doesn’t actually make any fucking sense at all.  If that’s true, it’s unbelievable.  How do they differentiate?  Just context?

“How do you distinguish?”  You ask him.  Admittedly, you don’t know much about linguistics—not anywhere near the extent he does, but it seems so counterintuitive.  I can’t be the same word for we, the amount of misunderstandings would be a nightmare.

“We… don’t need to,” he explains to you, slowly, like nobody has ever asked him these things before and so he’s unsure how to phrase it.  “Individuality isn’t valued, it’s not a concept.”

And… you almost can’t wrap your head around it.  “What do you mean?”  You ask again, knowing you’re sounding like a broken record without specifying more, but trying with your whole heart to understand.

“I mean… we swear oaths to never reveal our faces,” Din tells you, something you shouldn’t need to be reminded of.  “We abandon our names.  We become… whispers, of the same voice.  There’s not many words in Mando’a with a unique meaning, almost all of them are homonyms.  Interchangeable.  Transient.”

Your eyebrows shoot up, suddenly blown away by the implication.  Almost all of them are homonyms?  How in Maker’s name are you even supposed to communicate at that point?  That’s… unthinkable.

“Most words have two meanings?”  You clarify, wanting to be absolutely sure you’re getting it right.

“Most have five or six,” he returns, and you’re downright shocked now.  “Everything just depends.”

“Stars…”  You breathe, moving a palm up the length of his forearm and holding the back of his hand with it.  Fuck, you hope this is the direction he’s intending instead of veering him off course, but you’re incredibly invested.  “What else does, uh… kay—er, kar… kar’taylir mean?”

Din lets out a slow breath from behind you, and you can… you can feel his own heart beating faster when it presses up against your spine at the apex of his inhale.  “It’s… a rare word, it only has two meanings.”

You bite your lip and start to feel butterflies in your stomach for some reason.  Slowly, his hand begins to travel up your breast and then to your sternum before heading just the slightest bit left, and your own hand moves with him.

“To know,” Din says quietly, “but also… to care very deeply for.”  He doesn’t stop until his palm presses right above the rapidly pounding organ in your chest.  “To hold in the heart.”

“To know,” you swallow thickly, curling your fingers around his hand and praying he’s saying what you think he is, “or… to love?”

“When Mandalorian’s take vows, there’s no ceremony,” he whispers into the back of your neck.  “No witnesses, no celebrations.  We just take our helmets off in front of the other and look.  It doesn’t sound like much, but… our secrecy is our survival.  Letting someone see our face and swearing lifelong devotion to them, it’s the same thing.  To know is to love.”

Your eyes close tight and your lungs empty themselves, too full of emotion to even fit oxygen inside you anymore.  Din’s lips press feather soft behind your neck, and now you’re the one shivering uncontrollably.  The move up and trail along your neck in the darkness.

“Ni kar'tayl su,” he murmurs, shifting back just slightly and pulling at your shoulder.  “I know you.”

You go with him, facing the ceiling as he fits his head under your throat and places slow, open mouth kisses down the curve of it.

“Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum,” he goes on quietly, his voice starting to sound raspy again, dragging his hand down your torso while his lips brush your collarbone.  “For an eternity, I’ll know you.”

Water wets the corners of your lashes and you inhale three or four times before exhaling, shallow hiccups and desperate for air.

“Ni ke vaabi nu kaysh ke kar’taylir su te ni kar’tayl su.”  Din says, slowly moving his mouth back up when your fingers tangle in his hair and beg him to come that way.  The words dance along your skin as he whispers them, forever searing themselves into your memory.  You can’t see them, you’ll never have a visual to reminisce upon, but you’ll know how they felt.  Right under your ear, brimming with quiet devotion.  “I don’t want anyone else to know you… the way I know you.”

Your face goes blazing hot at the sound of him translating your own rushed and half-assed sentence into something gorgeous and flowing, something that sounds so much more beautiful than when you blurted it out earlier.  You told him you loved him in that hangar, right to his face.  Unashamed and stupid about it, but meaning it with every part of your body.

“I knew you’d say no,” he finally admits, staying in this one spot.  Unmoving.  Telling you the truth, allowing you to know it.  “I just wanted to… say it.”

That… that makes sense to you.  The last part does, at least, it makes so much sense to you.  The first time you said you loved him, you said it just to say it.  You wanted to feel the words, sound them out even if neither one of you could hear them.  It felt freeing, like coming to accept a universal truth.

The first part, though.  You’re still behind.  “You knew I’d say no?”  You ask him, feeling him ease back just slightly.  Staring down at you through the pitch black, even if he can’t see either.  Keeping his palm over your heart as the ship hurdles through nowhere and everywhere at once.

“You wouldn’t take my first name without convincing,” he reasons quietly, and then moves back to lay in the blankets once more, leaving the rest unspoken.

But he’s… oh stars, he’s so right.  If he’s going to take his helmet off and let you see his face—if he’s going to commit to you that way, it is not going to be because you shoot a blaster correctly.  Not after today, not after what he’s told you.

So you move up to your elbow and turn to face him, trying to let him know why even if he’s already guessed the what correctly.

“I want it to mean something,” you say after a moment.  “I want it to… have the meaning it’s supposed to have.”

Your palm finds its way to his chest in the silence following.  Right over the beating of his heart, feeling it thrum hard and rhythmic while he considers his response.

“This is The Way,” Din finally murmurs, settling his hand over yours, and you repeat the words back to him.  Respecting them.  Feeling like, for the very first time, they now apply to you in some way instead of belonging to some mysterious creed you’ll never know anything about.

But when a shudder subtly rockets up and down his body, you realize the blankets have been pulled down with the changing positions and his whole torso is bare and exposed to the hull.  So you pull them up until you’re both covered again, before you lean down and press a soft kiss to his shoulder.

Din shudders again when your mouth opens and the hot glide of your tongue catches his skin, but you know it’s not from the cold this time.  His breathing deepens while you slowly move over him.  You ease him further on his back and let him keep feeling the warmth of your mouth on his body, alleviate the lingering chill by sucking gentle hickeys into his skin and feeling the goosebumps raise under your tongue.  He moves with you; he stretches his neck when you want to nibble his collarbone, arches when you mouth down his chest, shifts his elbow to let you drag your tongue along his ribcage.

And… and it’s as if all the stars and systems hold even more still for you than the relative physics of faster-than-light travel can explain away by themselves.  You’ve always felt timeless in here, living from one fleeting eternity to the next, suspended in perpetuity while the rest of the galaxy ages without you.  But when you’re with him and it’s pitch black and there’s no light to streak across your vision, no evidence that time and space have all but disconnected from each other just to let your insignificant little bodies through… it’s like you’re meant to be here.  In some strange, unexplainable way, you feel like you could’ve died out there with him in the frozen wasteland today and this is exactly where you’d still end up, no matter what.

To know is to love.

“Do you have brown eyes?”  You hear yourself whisper under his jaw, and you feel Din’s fingers thread in your hair and ease you up enough to brush his lips against your chin.

“Yes,” he whispers back, and then his mouth is on yours.

[beta-adjacent]

U have oc's? Can we hear about them? 👀

-pin3-vin3

MWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA YOU FELL INTO MY TRAP!!!!!!! YES ABSOLUTELY YOU CAN HEAR ABOUT THEM OKOKOKOKOKP

So!!!!!!! Y’all need context. Game Grumps. Y’all know of them, remember them? It doesn’t matter if you actually do, all that does matter is that you know I’ve loved them since I was a kid. I mean, I don’t watch their shit a lot nowadays but if there’s one series I almost Always try to keep up with its their horse girl games. The genre of horse girl games are Fascinating to me. I’ve never seen a play through that actually made it to the end of one, because the end is Never the point of a horse girl game. The point is making your dream horse, riding through open maps, grooming your dream horse, completing useless side quests, bonding with your dream horse!!!!! And Game Grumps is especially great at recognizing that because improv just tends to go off the rails in those games. And everytime I watch a horse girl game they play, and listen to the silly voices they do, I think about my own fictional horse girl universe.

So, introducing!!!!!!!!!

Camila

Lemme break down the character.

At this phase, Camila is ≈12 years old, a prime time of the horse girl phase

In fact, she’s the main protag of a horse girl game (assuming I ever made this into a playable game lol)!!!

What’s the catch? She actually had her horse phase a Wayyyyyyyyyyy long time ago. Horses are for babies. Now she’s knee-deep in her emo emo phase. Gerard Way is her boyfriend and you can’t tell her otherwise. She writes bad FanFiction.net fanfics instead of doing her homework (A/N: n her 30 followurz LUV it!! >w<) . She even dyed her “scene kid” hair with Koolaid in secret…. Until it didn’t wash off in the sink 30 minutes later. It wasn’t so secret then.

All of this “rebellion” leads Camila’s mom to enroll her in a summer camp for horse riders. Does the mom actually enroll her because she doesn’t know how to connect to her kid and her new interests? Was this actually a camp the family saved up for years for Camila to go to, and aren’t going to let the money go to waste? Is the mom just looking for a way to get rid of her kid for the summer? …I have no clue yet.

But yes, as you’d imagine, Camila goes to this horse rider’s camp for the summer and meets generic friends and she kind of hates them all at first but slowly grows to realize they’re ok. And she does end up still loving her horse and having a lot of knowledge on them (even though it turns out she’s Really bad at riding them). And there’s a Nancy Drew-ass, save-the-animals plot that happens along the way because it’s a fucking horse girl game godammit!!!!

Point is that Camila is my humorous take of a horse girl game protag that I’d actually want to play as (because I hate self-inserts, sorry). She’s a fucking snot because she’s a 12 year old who thinks she knows how the world works.

Fashion note: she tries to have the emo fashion but she fails spectacularly. Honestly she shouldn’t even have the Paramore shirt, but the pink not-matching-at-all hoodie is accurate. Maybe she got the one band tee for Christmas from her cool aunt, and it's become a bit of a comfort item

So, my horse girl game takes place in 2006, ironically the summer right before the Wii launches (which is where a lot of these games are born). Camila has, and frequently uses, AOL (before it dies in late 2008ish). And there's one, single, archaic computer at the local library outside of the horse camp that she visits every week for her free hours.

So every week she talks to her online BFF…..

Journee

Yes folks, that is indeed “Journey” with two ‘e’s. I think the name is cringe too, but I've kept it ever since I made them back in 2017, which is an extremely rare case for me, and I treasure that. Journee's actually part of an independent story from Camila (who was made in 2022). The intention with Journee has always been an emo who couldn’t actually look emo because their parents would kill them if they did.

But that gimmick is what makes Journee's inclusion in the horse girl game the crossover of a lifetime. Because Camila and Journee both need a friend who was also into emo shit, to fuel each other's obsession with it. Journee especially needs it because they canonically grow up to fulfill their emo fantasies (I haven't decided if Camila does the same). So the two work great for each other's individual stories.

Here’s how Journee's adapted into the Horse Girl Game AU:

In the original story, Journey is a whopping 14.5 years old, a freshman in high school. In this story, they're ≈12 years old. Older than Camila but honestly not by much, maybe 4 months!

A BIG fan of emo shit but their parents (obviously) won’t let them do anything. They think, "Camila’s lucky; at least Camila’s dad actually buys her Koolaid". Journee doesn't know Camila's dad actually bought it for her younger brother, and she stole it. But still, it's the principle! All Journee has is this gross tea their mom always makes to “promote more collagen” or whatever

Speaking of, Journee is one of those kids who got acne immediately as puberty started, and is absolutely going to gain acne scars as they grow up because they keep scratching at it.

Camila and Journee are online friends exclusively for an extremely long time; they met through a fanfic site a few months before the events of the horse girl game. Years later, they realize they actually lived embarrassingly close the whole time. They hang out a lot in-person in late high school, and then become mostly online friends again as they enter the adult world.

Note on the pronouns: I use they/them exclusively for Journee because Journee has always been one when I've written them. We're at a tricky spot in Journee's timeline because they are 12, nearly three years before their gender crisis-- meaning, they wouldn't be using they/them pronouns at this age. But I don't know what Journee's agab is; all I know is that when Camila befriends them, they pretend to be the opposite gender for a while. Just, tl;dr-- If I were ever to make the game, Journee's name wouldn't be Journee and they wouldn't be using they/them yet, but it absolutely still is Journee.

And in case you were interested, here's a rough idea of what they look like grown up (around 20s?). Camila I'm still questioning what route I wanna take with her, but I have a Very specific design for Journee and this piccrew does NOT do it justice. But I still need you to understand their dynamic is exactly the fucking same as it was when they were twelve and it's Hilarious.

These are not my first OCs by far but they're the ones I've cared about most recently (this crossover idea only happened maybe... a month ago? So the hype is still fresh). If you're interested in them, their stories, or any other characters I've made, lemme know! None of my characters/stories are particularly deep or insightful, but I still love them.

And here's the piccrews I used because I hate when people don't include links for that shit.

The solos

The group

[charnelhouse]

Daenerys Targaryen 🤝 Wanda Maximoff

justice. justice. justice. (tbf i didn't really care for Dany going mad because it did not feel earned. i like the concept, but there was barely any lead-up). Wanda's does

of course - i was watching the movie and i was like I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE IS GOING TO REDEEM HERSELF (maybe people in other universes don't count), but WHATEVER.

Wanda has been put through the ringer:

lost her parents

experimented on by hydra (though she signed up for it, she didn't know what

lost her twin brother

she returned to herself a little by joining the Avengers

she found love with Vision (ew but w/e)

she was forced to kill him and it didn't mean SHIT

Thanos killed him again and snapped her (someone said that she seemed relieved when she started to turn to dust and i was like MY FUCKING HEART)

she comes back five years later but FOR HER Vision died five fucking minutes ago

WandaVision happens and the SWORD dude fucks with her

loses her family again

Darkhold begins to corrupt her

WHERE THE FUCK ARE HER FRIENDS? Clint?! Where you at?! Sam?! Bucky didn't really know her, but STILL. She was alone. Who could forget her holding her hand over Vision's dead ass crumpled skull and her lip quivering as she whimpers "i don't feel you"

I have to admit that I didn't expect her to go evil evil, but I was kind of here for it? Lizzie is such a good actress and I was like OKAY I TRUST YOU. Scarlet Witch has never really been a good guy anyway and I do think that she will come back at some point.

I sort of cringed at the "i'm a mother" shit, but w/e you do you Wandanita!! The Illuminati were so fucking smug I relished in their demise.

[butmakeitgayblog]

Would UTI's the same then? I've never had either so I don't know what is and isn't uncomfortable.

What about lights on/lights off? Obviously that is a choice communicated between partners and varies, but does it like *say* something about you if you prefer it one way or the other? I've heard women complain about their partners like, "oh my god Brian wore socks to bed the other night and it was disgusting" "you too?! Greg does the same thing and it's the worst". Do gay ladies do that kind of thing? Like, "I got with this girl last night and she only wanted a small amount of light in the room, what a weirdo"

What if I get with someone and either they or I have trouble getting the other off? Obvs again, communication, reading your partner, etc etc etc, but how do you go about it? Again, different people, different types, everything, I'm not looking for a hard-and-fast rule, maybe just a little life experience?

I know these are totally non-sequitur. But that's the thing is it's hard to find a fully serious answer because either the question is so trivial it doesn't matter or people already know and I don't, and I really hate feeling stupid.

Ok just as a broad stroke here, my advice for anything wrong going on in the downtown is to get it cleared up before having sex. UTIs can be painful af and if left untreated can cause a w i d e range of issues including death (if left long enough that it goes to your kidneys. And it will.). So just know my answer will always be don't have sex when you're dealing with an undercarriage issue cuz you're probably 1. Not gonna feel comfortable and 2. Gonna make it worse 🧐

As for the lights thing, I mean, I think it's just a comfort issue. Maybe they have body issues or being fully seen feels too intimate. Maybe it's just over stimulating and they feel like they can focus more in the dark. I don't think it says anything particularly bad or good either way tbh. I've always done it with the lights on or candles but tbh it's never even been a question that's been brought up 🤷‍♀️ it's just kinda like... they're on. We're not stopping to shut them off. Or if they're off when we go in the room I flip them on like normal cuz ya girl is blind and I will knock into something. So. I assume it's the same with everyone. I never really got much why that was like A Thing with straight people. No shade, just being honest on my part

Also, I know this isn't what you meant but the socks thing just gave me this mental image of like,,, getting ready to fuck and then the girl walks in butt ass naked with just a strap and a gleaming white pair of socks on 🥴😂😂😂 yeah that'd I'd lose my shit over lol like wtf girl you took everything else off but not the socks?? So for something like that i wouldn't be mad but they better not get mad when we have to wait 10 minutes for me to stop laughing

Here's the thing, what I'm getting from all these asks isn't at all that you're stupid, it's just that you're way overthinking it. You're trying to plan ahead or envision so many what ifs so that on the off chance they happen you'll be prepared. But the fact is, you can't do that. Not really. You'll never be 100% prepared for anything in life. You're gonna make missteps and get surprised by stuff and yeah sometimes you'll do something that'll make you look back and cringe at yourself (but also hopefully laugh). But you'll learn from all of it too and in doing that you'll figure what's right for you. My experiences will never be your experiences and no matter how much advice I give you, there will be curveballs. And that's ok. You're gonna figure who you are as a queer person and what you do and don't like. Who knows, maybe you'll turn out to be the one who ends up liking to have sex with socks on 👀 and if so, I guarantee there's someone out there with cold toes who would love it 💕

[diaphragmjellyfish]

Hawk Fluff Alphabet

Requested by @manicgrungegf​

A = Attractive (What do they find attractive about the other?)

What hawk finds most attractive about you is your kindness. You’re literally the sweetest person to everyone you meet and he likes to think that if he knew you when he was Eli, you still would have dated him. You didn’t care about the muscles or the tattoo or the hair. You genuinely loved him and were always kind to him even when he was being an ass. 

B = Baby (Do they want a family? Why/Why not?)

He’s not sure about whether he wants kids or not. He’s kind of just enjoying being young and having fun right now, and he never actually thought he’d get married before, but he’d be open to it later on down the line if it was something you really wanted. 

C = Cuddle (How do they cuddle?)

For as much game as he talks, this boy is a LITTLE SPOON. He loves being held by you, and sometimes can’t fall asleep unless your arms are wrapped around him. In public, he’s always the one with his arm around you, hugging you from behind, putting on that alpha male persona, but when it’s just you guys he’s a total puppy. 

D = Dates (What are dates with them like?)

Hawk likes to take you to parties. You guys can drink, dance, hang out with your friends, it’s the perfect place in his opinion. But for more private occasions like your anniversary, he likes a nice picnic on the beach. He’d make PB&J’s for you guys (and cut off your crusts), pack some juice boxes, and bring a big giant blanket (and condoms shhh) for you guys. 

E = Everything (You are my ____ (e.g. my life, my world…)

You’re my happy place. Hawk thinks of you as the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Whenever he feels frustrated from training or insecure about his scar or angry at Demitri, he knows he can always go to you for support and you’ll make him forget all about that stuff. He’s never not smiling when you’re around. 

F = Feelings (When did they know they were in love?)

He first knew he loved you when you said his scar was cute. It’s always been his biggest insecurity, and even when you guys first went out, he always just assumed you just tried not to look at it and look at his hair or muscles instead. But when you told him you liked it, thought it gave him character and looked kind of tough, his heart shot through the roof. This beautiful, ethereal, magnetically charming girl thought his scar, his deformity, was cute?! Love on sight. 

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?)

He’s more gentle than you would think, but still not as gentle as, say, Miguel. He would never hurt you or make you do anything you don’t want to do, but he likes to rough house, play wrestle, and tease you a little bit. He likes to sneak up behind you, pick you up and spin you around, and ruffle your hair as a “good morning” every day. 

H = Hands (How do they like to hold hands?)

Hawk is holding your hand all. The. damn. Time. He likes everyone to know who you belong to. Inside, he’s still a little insecure and nervous that you’ll decide you can do better and leave him, so he finds holding your hand reassuring, especially when you run your thumb over the back of his hand. 

I = Impression (What was their first impression?)

His first impression of you was honestly not good. You were friends with Samantha Larusso so he just assumed you were stuck up and snobby. The first time you guys actually talked was at a party. You were pacing nervously outside because your friends had left, your phone died, and you had no way to get home. Hawk took pity on you and offered to give you a ride on his motorcycle, and you guys ended up driving all over town, talking, laughing, drinking milkshakes, and you quickly made plans to hang out the next day. 

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous?)

He is the most jealous boy, mostly because he’s insecure that you’ll leave him for someone else. Sometimes you think it’s hot, but if it ever bothers you, he’ll make a conscious effort to work on himself and trust that you’ll always come back to him. 

K = Kiss (How do they kiss? Who initiated the first kiss?)

Your first kiss was the sweetest moment ever. You guys were sitting on the beach one night talking about all your deep thoughts. He started telling you how he was super insecure about his lip scar and thought no girl would ever want to kiss him before he got the mohawk and muscles. “Well I can think of one girl who would love to kiss you.” At this, he looked at you with pure shyness, and you leaned in and gave him a sweet kiss. Now, his kisses can range anywhere from sweet and loving, to possessive and dominant. You love them all. 

L = Love (Who says ‘I love you’ first?)

He knew he was in love with you when you first talked about nerdy shit with him and Demitri. He always thought he couldn’t like nerdy stuff like Dr. Who or girls wouldn’t like him, so when Demitri brought it up while you three were hanging out, he panicked. But then you started talking about the new trailer and how excited you were for a female Dr. and he fell in love on the spot. 

M = Memory (What’s their favourite memory together?)

His favorite memory with you is that time he needed to touch up his hair color and you asked if you could do it for him. You got him a little poncho (garbage bag but shhh), parted his hair in neat little sections, and touched up the dye. You guys had such a fun time, you gushed about how good his hair looked down, and it ended up looking way better than when he did it himself. Now every time he needs a touch up he comes to you. 

N = Nickel (Do they spoil? Do they buy the person they love everything?)

Hawk doesn’t generally spoil you with material things. You both would much rather spend your time and money on memories, or food. Of course on your birthday and anniversaries he gets you little gifts, but generally speaking, his love language leans more towards quality time. 

O = Orange (What colour reminds them of their other half?)

Lavender reminds him of you. Soft, sweet, feminine. He thinks it looks amazing on you, too. He’s actually thought about dying his mohawk lavender next just to feel closer to you. 

P = Pet names (What pet names do they use?)

Princess. That’s the biggest one. Sometimes angel, or babygirl. 

Q = Quaint (What is their favourite non-modern thing?)

His favorite non-modern thing is old muscle cars. He’s saving up to buy an old Corvette one day. It’s one of his big goals in life. He wants to have a mohawk made for the car, too, so everyone knows how cool he is. 

R = Rainy Day (What do they like to do on a rainy day?)

Little secret about Hawk, he loves to cook. When it’s raining outside, he likes to have you come over and make a big meal with him. Maybe chicken pot pie, steaks, or pad thai, and sit on the couch eating and watching old movies. 

S = Sad (How do they cheer themselves/others up?)

Unfortunately, Hawk used to be an expert at being sad back before he joined Cobra Kai. The way he likes to deal with it is generally just crying. He likes to let it all out, be alone, collect himself, and then maybe watch a movie or hang out with you. If you’re sad, his first question is “who do I have to beat up?” If it’s not from a person, he’ll take you on an adventure. Hikes, long drives, exploring new places, just to get your mind off it. 

T = Talking (What do they like to talk about?)

Umm karate. It literally changed his life. He loves to tell you about the new moves he learned in training, talk about the tournaments coming up, or the rivalry between Cobra Kai and Myagi-Do. And you’re a sucker for gossip so you love to hear about it. 

U = Unencumbered (What helps them relax?)

Music, soft blankets, the tiredness after a workout, a good hot meal, and he loves to watch cringe compilations on Youtube. 

V = Vaunt (What do they like to show off? What are they proud of?)

Ever since his transformation from Eli to Hawk, this boy likes to show off everything, all the time. His hair, his tattoos, his muscles, his fighting skills, his sarcasm, his girl… 

W = Wedding (When, how, where do they propose?)

He proposes to you about 6 months into your relationship with a ring pop outside of a gas station. You both knew it was a joke, but honestly started referring to each other as fiance and never stopped. Then, about 3 years later, he got you a real ring and took your hand and said “about time we actually do this, huh?” Of course, he took you to the same gas station where he had “proposed” the first time. Not the most romantic thing looking in on it, but to you guys, it was perfect. 

X = Xylophone (What’s their song?)

Highway To Hell- ACDC

Y = Yes (Do they ever think of getting married/proposing?)

He proposes to you multiple times! Of course he thinks about it. He wants you guys to be together forever! 

Z = Zebra (If they wanted a pet, what would they get?)

A hawk! It’s his signature symbol, of course he thinks it would be super badass to actually have a pet hawk. He would name it Desmond, and get it a tiny little mohawk.

[kanmom51]

JM JK timeline.- my observations how they grew over the years - 2017

Disclaimer: these are my own opinions and conclusions.  Feel free to disagree, but hate or aggression will be unacceptable.

2017 - part 2

12 Feb 2017 – “You never walk alone” preview show.  Who’s JM’s little cutie? 

14 Feb 2017 – JM Twitter post –  the boys with matching jackets.  I know. I said not Twitter, but sometimes rules are made to be broken.

17 Feb 2017 – Hobi’s birthday.  JM to JK: “stop coming to our room at night.” There’s something about JM throwing JK under the bus time after time.  It’s like he enjoys to see JK squirm.

22 Feb 2017 – Gaon Chart K-pop chart – JK ushering Hobi to another seat, so that JK can sit behind JM.  JM turning around see this, rolls his eyes and smirks.

24 Feb 2017 – KBS Music Bank comeback - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4_ASZuLeVk&t=156s  

Another one of my favourites.  A perfect example for both boys hesitance, wanting to touch, but just not getting there. 

 JM putting arm behind JK, but holding on to wall behind, and then matter of factually laying it on JK’s shoulder.  

JM micro touching, or brushing JK’s hand with his thumb.  

Prior to JM brushing JK’s hand with his thumb, JK’s hand is heart signing to JM. 

The minute JM moves his hand away, you see how the expression on JK’s face changes, then he rubs his hand where JM touched him.

24 Feb 2017 fan meet – are they in actual F… sending flying kisses to each other?

25 Feb 2017 MBC music core comeback – JK moving Hobi aside, so that JK can stand behind JM.  JK being JM’s number 1 fanboy.

26 Feb 2017 – Wings – you never walk alone fan sign.  Really JM? What was that neck grab and what exactly were you doing there????  No, I don’t believe he kissed JK’s neck, but it sure was ‘out there’, so much so that Jin was in total shock when it happened.  JK was surprised by it, and I think that even JM was shocked by his own actions waling aimlessly in what seems like the wrong direction .

28 Feb 2017 Run BTS episode 12. This one for me was cringe worthy, at some points I felt like an actual intruder.  JK the detective and JM the prisoner.  JK whacking JM on the behind (remember JK is the younger – how bold).  JM’s private dance for JK.  I know the episode was mostly scripted, but I seriously think JM was surprised by that smack to his behind.  Also, the way JK was looking at JM when he was dancing all heart hands for him.

12 March 2017 - Wings tour Santiago Chile

Santiago day 2 – JK suffers from exhaustion.  As he is taken back stage to a treatment room, JM is the one to race after the team into the room.

JM is in the treatment room when the cameras come in.  He is standing there, and later, as the other members are walking in, JM is by JK’s side, helping the medical team lift up one of his legs.

The rest of the members come in together to see how JK is doing, and when the medical team suggest to take off JK’s pants, all the members leave the room.  All except for JM, who stays there with JK the whole time.

JM leaves the room only together with JK, after he feels better and is able to walk out of the room on his own two feet.

Wouldn’t you expect RM, being the leader and all, to be the one by JK’s side? Or J-Hope maybe?  Wouldn’t that have made more sense under the circumstances? Why JM?  

Because, clearly JM is the one JK feels closest to, the one he can be himself with freely, the one he doesn’t feel embarrassed or needs privacy from.

JM may not have been a family member, but he was the closest thing to it.  JM to JK is and was his home, his safe place, and most certainly the one to be by his side when he was in distress.

March 2017 BTS Live trilogy episode the Wings tour in Santiago Chile & Brazil.  

March 2017 BTS Live trilogy episode the Wings tour in Chicago.

April 2017 3rd Muster dvd – the muster was at end of 2016, but dvd was released in 2017. During photo shoots they are being posed by the photographers.  Yes, there will be authentic moments between them, but sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s being directed.  That’s why I don’t always like to add these to my timeline.   Even so, they were so cute, so I couldn’t leave this one out.

3rd April 2017 – BTS Front row live entertainment interview – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UotjcB_X4ag . What happened there?  

This one intrigues me. I watched and re-watched the full interview several times, and for the life of me I can’t see what happened there between JM and Hobi that triggered JK’s reaction?  JM’s placating look at JK, like telling him nothing happened… this one is used a lot to create the JK jealous narrative, and to be honest, I really don’t know what happened there. When JK turns back, JM looks into the camera with an uneasy gaze.

After that, most of the time, JM looks lost in his thoughts, not happy.  Towards the end they are asked what artist they would want to collaborate with, and Suga’s answer makes them all burst out in laughter, all accept for JM.  When he is asked and answers, you also see he is unhappy.  You can easily see something is bothering him.  JM just wasn’t his happy own self.  He looked pensive.  BTS did several interviews and had a concert that day, so maybe he was just tired or wound up, but he just wasn’t acting like himself.

April 2017 - Bon Voyage 2 Hawaii

Highlights of the highlights: The but checking and identifying (are we taking skinship to another level, are we??).  

JK getting drenched at the beach, JK getting drenched period. Lol.  

JK gobbling down piping hot Pizza so JM can eat. 

JM playing footsies under the table with JK, all while sitting opposite V.  

JK edging JM to come along calling him “Aegyo” = “Baby”.  J

M making sure JK doesn’t go hungry, buying him food with his own money.  JM taking care of JK. 

JK and JM on same team – the joy… Spending the day together and just being happy. 

 Did JK really lose the game on purpose so he can be in the room with JM? 

The amount of times we hear Jimin-ssi in every kind of cute and flirty way JK can say it…

Bonus:

22 April 2017 JK Vlive – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n8y3D0Z9pM . 

JK doing everything to get JM back to his room while playing loud music. 

JK’s face lighting up when JM returns to his room. 

JK telling JM he looks handsome without makeup.  

JK pissed off when V comes in too, saying “why is everyone coming?”.    

When V touches JK’s ear, JK pushes him away.  

JM moving off camera to fix his robe, and JK not taking his eyes off him.  

V putting his foot on JK’s back (this is something I have seen V do a few times, it’s not a gentle touch, to me it feels more like asserting dominance), and JM pushes him off.    

And what exactly did JM mean when he said he has no talent for games but “I was quite good at it a year ago”?  Only to be followed by the stare, OMG, the stare.  Why, oh why did V have to ruin the moment, eh?

22-23 April 2017 Bangkok concert. Flirting on stage, attention to each other.

24 April 2017 Eat Jin Vlive with JM and JK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqxX_UGXSlY .   

Jin complaining why JM doesn’t hit him like he did JK, so JM hits him too. Lol. JM stealing the steak JK cuts for himself, while JK lets him, smiling.  The way JK just lets JM get away with anything, even interfering with the ultimate ‘ship’ - Jungfood. 

3 June 2017 – J-14 magazine interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7rXl8uuUTY&t=306s .  from 3.33min. to 4.37min especially.

Wtf was JM up to there????? It looks pretty dubious, especially when you look at the faces on the two of them when it was going on.  Up to your interpretation.

2 June 2017 – Ceremonial first pitch at baseball match – Hanshin Koshien stadium - JK and JM’s jersey numbers – coincidence or not?

12 June Festa 2017 BTS BangtanTv –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWA6f7g7NUQ&t=2s.

JK’s intense stare at JM, when JM joined the others in with the others when they were laughing at JK eating everyone’s food but not ordering any for himself, which causes JM to immediately stop laughing.  

Poor JK being blindsided when it was pointed out that the only one he bought a birthday present for last year was JM.  Oops. (why oh why JM did you throw him under the bus like that??? You were curious? Really???? JM keeps doing this) Poor boy was so embarrassed.  Hobi was the one to actually save him, stating how generous JK has become lately giving away his things that he didn’t need. JK never answered the question. 

27 June 2017 BV2 special commentary live – JK getting all flustered when asked to explain the difference between BV1 and BV2.  JM looking at him, enjoying every second.

4 August 2017 - KBS Music Bank Singapore.  JK not loving on Taemin.  The way he turns around the minute JM and Taemin interact, and the discontent look on his face…cold.  He’s not a happy camper.  He glancing in the direction a couple of times, but he is mostly turned away from them.   And when JM runs up to slap Taemin in the butt, JK sees this, averts his head, and just keeps walking off the stage.  He is clearly upset. Besides the obvious faces he makes, not waiting for Jimin when walking off stage is not something he usually does. Was it jealousy?  Was it just a disliking of Taemin specifically?  And if he dislikes Taemin, why is that?  We can’t know. 

OK now, I know I said that I won’t be doing Twitter, but this one I felt I had to (again, oops):

On the 6th of August 2017 JM posted a photo he took during their Hawaii trip (BV2). Why take this photo, and why post it?  Do I really have to ask this question?

29th August 2017 the famous, or infamous People Now “arrest me” interview -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgGxcMndEk8 .  

I couldn’t find the actual date of this interview, but it was uploaded end of August 2017. I really enjoyed this one.  Everyone talks about JK’s “arrest me” JM mishap during this interview.  The members reactions are to die for.  

Can someone tell me please what Suga told JK in Korean before they moved on?????  

Also, JK’s reaction when JM said he wanted to collab with Suga (watch from 7:58min), was like:

 W H A T  in  T H E  actual F U C K???. LMAO.  

Summer package 2017 – released August 2017.

JK and JM being all playful by the pool.  JK letting us know how adorable JM is to him when he is swimming doggy style in the pool.

The one that stands out to me, though, is the ‘dream catcher necklace saga’.  Felt a little uneasy to see that one, like I was witness to a lover’s tiff.  

The boys were given a budget each to purchase themselves a gift.  They are taken together to a gift shop, where they check the merchandise out and each buy themselves a little souvenir.  When they all sit down to show each other their gifts, that’s when this moment happens.

JK takes out his gift. I once again want to emphasize, this is a gift he bought with his budget for himself.  He explains it’s a dream catcher and says he will put it in his room.  

JM, sitting next to him, takes it from JK and says: “this is a necklace Jungkook-ssi”. 

JK blurts out adamantly that he won’t hang it around his neck.   

This is when things get awkward, because you can see JM is clearly upset, throws the necklace back at JK and says: “OK, then”.

JM has a dream catcher necklace around his neck too, and when it’s his turn to tell what gift he bought himself he takes the necklace off and gives it to V, saying he bought the gift for V, who had a nightmare last night.

After JM’s mini tantrum JK, who previously adamantly professed he will not put it around his neck, does everything he can to put the necklace on, finally turning to JM to help him put the it on, which he does.  

Later on, while sitting for the personal interview, with the necklace around his neck, he tells us how from now on he won’t have nightmares.

What did I get from all that?

Clearly JM was pissed at JK’s reaction.  Why?  JK clearly bought this by himself for himself. 

But did he?  Was it something he chose for himself, or was it something JM suggested to him?

JM also bought a dream catcher.  Was that a coincidence?  For some reason, I don’t think so.  

My theory is that the dream catcher is something JM suggested or wanted JK to buy for himself, and JK reluctance to wear it offended him.  JM clearly bought the other dream catcher for V.  Perhaps he wanted both his boys to have one, and to him, JK’s comment felt as a rejection.

The way JK reacted to JM, his immediate change of attitude towards the necklace, trying to put it on, when only a second earlier he said he won’t put this around his neck, shows how attuned he was to JM, how he immediately realised he did something wrong, something to upset JM, and how he tried, in his own way, to atone for it, by wearing the same thing he but seconds ago rejected.

This brings me back to the point I made about the boys relationship, and them finding the balance. A perfect example to how there will still be conflict, but how JK realises, immediately, that he had done wrong and what he has done wrong, and immediately sets to right the wrong, hence to restore that balance.

JM throwing the necklace at JK.  Also, notice the editor’s remark.  JM’s anger is obvious not only to me.

To be continued... 

[chut-je-dors]

(1/3) hey friend, i’ve been wanting to bring this up but haven’t totally known how to approach it… have you n puck ever considered taking down chap 21 of “10 minutes” until the next chapter is ready to be posted? i know that the fic is heavily and appropriately tagged for violence against sws, but it’s such a drag to have a great fic (imo as a former sw, it breaks a lot of stereotypes/fear-mongering/romanticization of the profession) that effectively “ends” on a scene of brutality.

(2/3) i know there’s a plan to finish the fic at some point and i don’t want this to be interpreted as pressure on y’all to change the direction of the story -violence is a real threat for many workers, not just sws, so there are stories to be told- but so often violence is connected to sw specifically, and in quite exploitative ways: murdered sw plot lines n all that. as this fic sits, one which has done so many things right in its portrayal of sw, john could be yet another dead h**ker.

(3/3) makes for a cliff hanger, sure, but also uses violence against sws as a “juicy” hook to keep folks reading. holding on to chap 21 until chap 22 is ready to be published wouldn’t change the plot/flow of the story but would get rid of this weird violent limbo that john is currently in… ahhggh not sure if any of this makes sense lol, getting my thoughts out of my adhd brain is difficult. things to ponder maybe?

hi!! thank you for the ask! first things first, JOHN IS NOT DEAD AND WILL NOT DIE, this is not that kind of a story, we wouldn't write that, he is MODERATELY BRUISED but will be FINE.

we discussed this with puck this morning, and we both understand so well where you're coming from! we talked about potentially taking chapter 21 down, but decided against it since that wouldn't be possible without losing all the comments it has so far gathered, and we'd hate to have that (they're my emotional support comments, i go and read them whenever i have a bad day and i'm Attached). however what we decided to do, is move things around a little bit in what we had originally planned for the chapter structure. the scene at the end of chp 21 exists to further the plot (sorry john, needs must) and to create tension in the story, as a plot beat. which is to build up tension that will then resolve and ykno, give us all a ton of dopamine? after this ask we decided to draw the tension from a different bit than this, and as such will resolve the scene like, next thing in chapter 22. we can also put in the author end notes of chp 21 that john will be absolutely fine (at least physically, but well, mentally he hasn't been fine for a............ w h i l e (again, sorry john)), how does that sound?

we are so very sorry that the next chapter is taking so long, we never anticipated there would be this kind of a break in our writing at this exact point in the story. i cringe even thinking about it, ending the chapter on that note and then vanishing for over a year, jesus christ i'm so sorry. we've just been both so busy that we haven't had much time to write at all, or energy to do so, and if we do have time and energy it's never at the same time. puck is currently busy with uni stuff, she's cramming in So Much Studies that i'm feeling anxious just hearing her list all that stuff, and i've been up to my neck in finishing up my studies and doing traineeships. i'm nearly done now though with my studies (woooo!) and have some free time for the next week or so, so i'm attempting to write the chapter on my own now, and then hurl it at puck for editing, which is easier than creating completely new text and she hopefully will have time for it. also she'll delight in fixing my awful sentence structures and telling me how bad my writing is, which is a plus.

i still can't promise an update soon though, because it's been over a year since we have looked at the chapter, and i first need to read back on the story a bit and then also get back to writing, which is Very Difficult if you haven't done it in a while. BUT things are now advancing at least, for the first time in a while. i really hope we don't keep you guys waiting for much longer. i think about this fic every few days and wallow in guilt, knowing people are eager to read the rest - and I'M TOO, HECK!!

lol re: adhd, i'll just quote you: "ahhggh not sure if any of this makes sense lol, getting my thoughts out of my adhd brain is difficult." i hope i'm making sense at all 😂

thank you so much for this ask! if anything, it's motivated me to take this drastic action of writing it ALONE since puck is going to be busy at least till january.

[miraculouslumination]

Exclusionists are on a whole other level of awareness,

You'll see them say with certainty that no one is a bad person just because they're gay, lesbian, bi, or trans - which is true!! No one's sexuality or gender identity tells you everything about them! It's like learning about their name. You can't base everything off of just that.

But then exclusionists will also do a 180, see that ONE (1) pan person uses "hearts not parts" or says that they identify as pan "because it includes trans people" (note: these are slogans and definitions not used by the larger pan community - chances are the pan people who use these are new to the community and have found older relics in their googling) and go all "OOOOOOOH THOSE PANSEXIES ARE AT IT AGAIN!!!!!! YOU'RE ALL THE SAME!! ALL PAN PEOPLE ARE JUST!!!!! TRANSPHOBIC!!!!!!! >:V"

Or an Asexual person will talk about how seeing any type of sex or even sexual content on their dashboard, or in a movie, or a n y w h e r e makes them heavily uncomfortable - a perfectly fine and valid opinion to express - exclusionists will go "OH MY??!??! OH MY GOD!?????!!!! FREAK!!! HOMOPHOBE!! YOU DON'T LIKE SEX!! YOU DON'T LIKE G A Y SEX!!??!?? LOL CRINGE!! CRINGE!! ASEXIES ARE ALL SO CRINGY VIRGINS WHO ARE UGLY NONCES THAT CAN'T GET LAID!!!!! GO SUCK A BIG ONE, VIRGIN, MAYBE THEN YOU'LL STOP BEING A HOMOPHOBE!!"

And how if an Aromantic person says that they're loveless, or heaven forbid AroAllo - which both are absolutely real, valid, and doesn't change whether someone is a good person or not - exclusionists will once again go "Oh so you're just NARCISSITIC?? You're just so SELF-CENTERED??? Just like all those other CRINGE AROS?? You're just a sociopath, an abuser, a sex addict, YOU JUST USE PEOPLE FOR SEX?? YOU'RE ALL JUST HEARTLESS MONSTERS!!! Infiltrating and trying to TEAR DOWN ROMANCE!!"

Like?? They are so close to getting a home-run on complete self-awareness, but somehow always manage to completely find a way to skip around it and end up back at square #1. Seriously, do these people not even HEAR themselves and not see the blatant hypocrisy they're spewing?

In a way, it's kind of impressive, if only in the most miserable and sad way possible.