#like you can tell rick was involved in this

[acearchivist359]

you know that feeling of wishing you could go back in time and read your favourite book again for the first time? watching pjo tv feels like being able to do that

like i’ll never be 11 years old reading percy jackson for the first time again but i think this is the closest feeling i’ll ever get to that like i feel like 11 year old me got to watch that and i’m so happy for her and that’s a feeling that i am so grateful for right now

[fear-no-mort]

terrible

[countlessrealities]

Kinda 👀 Prompts || Selectively accepting !

@mcltiples sent: [KNIFE] sender uses a knife to rip receiver's clothes { To Evil Rick from Weird Rick >:D }

There were a lot of things that Rick found fascinating about his partner. Some more entertaining, others more frustrating, but all undoubtedly worth his interest and attention. Even when he wasn't directly involved, he liked to watching, observing the other going through his motions, speeches, choices, hows and whys with the same focus he usually reserved exclusively to his experiments.

His alternate's mood were one of Rick's favourite phenomena to monitor. They were so volatile, and mostly unpredictable. They could be as explosive as the weapons the man enjoyed building or as subtle as a the light twitch of an eye. They jumped from an emotion to the other, always close to the extremes, always shying away from mildness.

He could tell that his partner wasn't being honest with his feelings whenever they were played out with strict moderation or calm.

However, this didn't mean, as one could think, that apathy was something unknown to his alternate. It was a rare show to witness, but it did happen. Just as everything else, it was deep, absolute, totalising, and it required a very special, very careful handling.

That, though, wasn't the situation at hand. Rick wasn't dealing with one of his partner's most violent moods, whether on the heated side of anger or with the ice cold quality of pure detachment. The other seemed to be in a quite cheerful mood, lively and playful, with a clear side of mischief.

And, of course, lustful too, judging by the way his alternate had shoved him into the closest wall and was assaulting his neck with his teeth and tongue. Judging by the viciousness of the attack, by the time their encounter ended, he would have sported quite the collection of bruises.

One of those hands was insistently grabbing at the front of his shirt, alternating pulling at it and pressing against his chest, as if to make sure that Rick's back would remain firstly pinned against the wall.

His partner's other hand was somewhere by his side, oddly not trying to touch him as he would have expected, and the reason for it became instantly clear when the sound of cloth ripping filled the air between them without a warning. Oh, so this was the game of the day.

The blade was so sharp that it cut through the fabric as if it had been melting butter and nicked the flesh underneath, drawing a steady red line from the top of Rick's sternum to the line of his navel. Thick droplets of blood gushed out of the wound, their warmth in contrast with the cool air of the underground hideout.

Rick's only reaction was a raised eyebrow, conveying the barest hint of judgement. He didn't mind the sting of the wound since pain had little meaning to him nowadays. If something, under the right circumstances he could even appreciate the way it lit up his nerves, forcing his whole being to feel connected, even if just briefly, with the universe that surrounded him.

In a different situation, he would have given into the urge of voicing what his gaze was already hinting at, but his partner seemed delighted and even more turned on by his handiwork. He could tell by the way the other was leaning more heavily into it, hard, hot and solid against Rick's thigh. Those hips were moving, slow and almost imperceptibly, seeking from his body a hint of satisfaction that could take the edge off.

How could he deny this pleasure to the man who owed each and every atom of him?

His features relaxed back into a more neutral expression and he let his nape rest against the wall, focusing on the feeling of that tongue teasingly lapping at the cut. His alternate's hand had slipped under the torn shirt, wrapping itself around his side, tight and possessive.

Rick's fingers found their way in the other's hair, tugging sharply at those blue locks and using them to press that face more into his chest. He wanted to smear his partner's chin and cheekbones with his blood, so that he could lick it off later.

A hum rumbled in his chest, as the knife worked to get rid of his belt and slash through his trousers, leaving behind more stinging cuts. Clothes could be easily replaced, he mused, distractedly registering the fabric falling off him piece by piece, until he was left bare for his partner's eyes to feast on.

This man who had made himself into a god and the twisted, unbreakable thread that linked them together? It was one of a kind even in a universe made of infinite realities.

[daydreamerdrew]

The Avengers (1963) #11

[tinfoil-jones]

The fact that Stan has made a whole career out of commit crimes and sell off scams—swindling people, conning them out of as much money as he possibly can, stealing, lying and committing a long list of goofily-named crimes—in order to survive alone in the world is part of what makes his character so interesting.

Filbrick realized a bit too late that Stanley never should have become a hardened criminal:

[Art by dimonds456] [Full vers in ch.24]

Because yeah, he's not a killer. He's never killed anyone, but at this moment Filbrick did not know that.

So here you have Stanley who is explaining, in-detail, from experience, what it's like to die of suffocation, while choking a man.

Here's the updated/final lore list of stuff he's allegedly done that only happened in this story and didn't happen in canon, Stan:

Doesn't start to worry about stab wounds until he gets to five

Used cocaine that he cut with Ambien, to the point that a standard dosage of Ambien for an adult man doesn't effect him, just kinda seasons his water more than anything.*

*This drug resistance also made it to where he's almost completely untouched by the dissociative properties of Ketamine.

*He was also totally fine after being loaded up with a tranquilizer that was not intended for human use, and was synthesized with paranormal creatures and monsters in mind. This same tranquilizer incapacitated his identical twin Ford for almost twenty-four hours, and he still had to be injected with Narcan to bring him out of out.

Has been kidnapped at least once before.

Has done questionable things for twenty dollars.

Has gotten shady back alley stitches before.

Was involved in a shoot-out with Agent Powers (an IRS agent) while he was running with Jimmy Snakes biker gang.

Has thirty unique attempts on his life so far.

Has escaped five prisons, two of those escapes were from the Infinetentiary. Which he broke into to rescue/conjugal visit his friend/ex Rick.

Was chased down the Interstate for fifty miles by Jimmy, who was trying to literally drag his soul to Hell.

Stole sleeping drugs from the Galactic Federation.

Has enough experience with unlawful abduction and confinement, and involuntary commitment, that he knows the distinct differences between them.

Has had his shoulder dislocated enough times he can easily reset one.

Caused half of the psychologists who tried treating him while he was committed to quit. The other half ended up also committed.

Was banned from Lottocron Nine for starting The Crusades

Was banned from Planet Chorus, for reasons unknown, but the domino effect would cause the Chorusan Civil War in 2552

Was banned from Arkansas for "corrupting" a large number of Southern Baptists.

Blew up an unmanned Galactic Federation warehouse because they didn't accept the prescription pad that he forged in English.

Did a keg stand with liquid ecstasy.

Was killed by the IRS.

Legally speaking, his full name in the Galactic Federation is "Staniel Danger Malone" because Rick was the one who registered an I.D* for him back when Stan didn't understand the regimes official language. His name is written in his I.D in Gromflomish as: ⌇⏁⏃⋏⟟⟒⌰ ⎅⏃⋏☌⟒⍀ ⋔⏃⌰⍜⋏⟒

Was banned from the City of Tijuana for selling flour tortillas that he mixed with sand, and telling everyone they were corn tortillas.

His DNA is potentially 104% identical to Fords

On one planet, his name is synonymous with "Customer Complaint" because he sold very subpar copper.

[cultofdixon]

Stress is a silent killer

Daryl Dixon • She/Her Pronouns • Don’t get me wrong, mothers are strong motherfuckers. But that doesn’t mean you can abuse an expecting mother’s abilities. • ANGST/SFW • TW: Pregnancy / Pre-Term Labor Anxieties / Anxiety

Requested by: Anon

Daryl silently returns his home he shares with Y/N who was currently seated in the living room wide awake. She was decked out to go outside the walls and search for him after the news but thankfully he came back in time before she risked herself at the hour it was.

“I’m sorry”

Y/N didn’t say anything, all she did was let the tears that build up roll off her cheeks.

“I’m sorry I walked away when yea first told me” His voice broke as he brought himself to kneel in front of her resting his hands on her thighs watching her tearful expression meet his gaze.

“I’m scared, Dar…”

“I know, me too. Cuz I want this. I want this with yea and I’m afraid of losing you…like Lori…or like…the others. I can’t lose yea to anythin’ or anyone.”

“You can’t…you can’t walk out like the way you did” She choked out through her sobbing as Daryl brought his hands onto her cheeks wiping away them while they fell. “Please…if you do that again, I’m only going to think the worse possible things”

“I’m stayin’ right here, sunshine. I’m never leaving again.” Daryl pushed himself forward and wrapping his arms around her as she did the same gripping onto his vest. “I’m never leaving you and this baby, I promise”

~

7 1/2 months later…

Another cold spring morning comes through causing the somewhat irritable not-a-morning person Y/N to bring herself to sit up the best she could given her “natural” circumference was different compared to the first and second trimester.

“Did you leave the window open?” She tiredly asks her husband who had sat up when she did, given the closer they get to 9 months the more he’ll be up and at it for anything.

“It was stuffy last night, yea asked me too” Daryl yawns stretching out his back hearing his partner hiss when she heard the occasional stretch out crack. “I’m good”

“Working on the wall repair does you no good…and I think I just forgot I asked you to open it” Y/N frowns bringing herself to the edge of the bed causing Daryl to get up in his shirtless glory about to close the window. “What are you doing?”

“I told yea you don’t have to get up and close it”

“I gotta get up and pee cuz a certain someone is stepping on my bladder.”

“So is that a no on me closing it for yea, love?”

“Can you please close it and help me stand up?” Y/N gave him a tired smile as he did exactly what was asked and while Daryl helped her up she couldn’t help but grab his face to bring him to her level to kiss him before separating to do what she needed.

“Are you sure you don’t need me or want me this morning? Rick completely understands why I can stay here” Daryl started to remind Y/N about the run he was asked to go on that involved stopping at the Hilltop to drop off supplies and go pick up more from the Kingdom.

“You pawned it off to somebody for the past two weeks. I’m not going to go into labor the second you leave. I’m not 8 months yet”

“Pre-term shit. You were put on bedrest during the second tri—whatever it’s called because your stress wasn’t helpin’” Daryl states slipping off his sweats to put jeans on when Y/N stepped out of the bathroom. “It’s easy for yea to stress out and back in the prison you passed out once cuz of it. Now you’re pregnant and Siddiq said it could cause more harm than good”

“Are you trying to stress me out now?”

“No, I’m just telling—-“

“It’s only for half the day. Both Maggie and Ezekiel know who you have to come back home to, they won’t hold you up and we also know Carol will shut Ezekiel up if he does start another endless conversation with you. You’ll be back before nightfall and I’ll be here waiting for my husband to come back”

The archer only gave her a worried expression because of how calm she was being, since a month ago she’d scream at him for just leaving the house. He brought himself over kissing her lovingly and holding her for as long as she let him, which could be hours and he’ll not be able to go anymore. But Y/N knew this trick.

“You seriously walking me out to make sure I actually go?” Daryl smiles walking his bike with his pregnant wife on the other side of such still wearing her sweats and one of his shirts.

“Did you forget about the morning and evening walks we do?”

“Nah I did not. Which reminds me to tell yea to wait for me for the night one. Take it easy walking back home and stay away from the new infusions”

Y/N whistled for Daryl to stop given she can’t maneuver fast enough to grab his arm. “Stay away from the new infusions?”

“Rick let in more ex-saviors to help around here. They are staying in the apartment looking houses” Daryl parked his bike a moment bringing himself to rest his hands on her belly. “Two of them are annoying shit stains of humanity. I don’t know the other one’s name but one of’em is Bryan and they’d much rather pawn their work off to somebody else”

“Daryl. I doubt they’d make a pregnant woman do shit”

“Well. I told Aaron to check on yea if he sees you doing anything sketchy”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Rick is at Oceanside, Michonne is watching a sick Judith, and the others are working on the bridge repair. You won’t let me stay to make sure you don’t over exert yourself. Somebody’s gotta check on yea and since he’s takin’ care of a baby girl at the moment? He’s more than happy to check up on you when Gracie is napping”

“You really have everything planned. Even have a radio?” Y/N smiles crossing her arms as he took out said device to show her resulting in a playful eye roll. “I’ll do my best, my love. But I’ve never seen those individuals before…you can’t blame me if something happened”

“Yeah, but I sure as hell can kill a man if he harms my wife and baby” Daryl states, sneaking in a kiss before getting his bike back up and heading toward the gates.

“I promise nothing will happen, Dar”

What was meant to be an easy day, turned into a weird one.

When the gates closed, Y/N held her belly for a moment feeling the shifting baby inside her make it a bit difficult to go immediately back to her home. She decided to take a longer walk around Alexandria, stopping occasionally to talk to her friends and see what they were up to improve their community. Then on her way back there were two Alexandrians carrying a few boxes to the pantry and infirmary. Both looked at her with curious expressions…

“Yo!”

Y/N ignored it at first until she flinched to the sound of the box dropping beside her.

“You’re Y/N right? The other Dixon in this place”

“Yes…? And you are?” She frowns, not liking the feeling the atmosphere gave when the individual didn’t share his name right away.

“I’m new here. Do you mind helping us with something?”

“Uhm I’m not exactly supposed to be…lifting anything heavy” Y/N gestures a bit on the obvious side about her pregnant belly as they both still gave stone cold stares.

“We’ll carry it to the pantry and infirmary. Just could use somebody to put it away while we bring the rest”

“Is Siddiq not her—-“

“Seriously, Dixon. You’re just pregnant not incompetent” one of them stated only for Y/N’s expression to go south as she supported her belly telling them that she’ll meet them in the pantry first to unload the boxes.

Once she stepped far enough, one of them couldn’t help the laugh that escaped his lips.

“Cant believe that worked”

“Can it Bryan. We still gotta bring the boxes over then we can go fuck off for the rest of the day” The other scoffs picking up and the box carrying it to where it needed to be.

It had been a couple hours of putting supplies away in their perspective areas, thankfully Y/N has worked with Siddiq before so she knows where he likes everything to be. The doctor just didn’t expect to come back from checking on the little ones of Alexandria after lunch time to find Y/N standing on a stool putting away spare gauze in a tub that Siddiq put them in.

“Are you crazy?” Siddiq frowns watching Y/N stumble a bit unexpected as he quickly drop his medical bag to help his friend off the stool. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you in here?”

“Because I have to be useful!”

“Y/N what the hell do you mean?!” Siddiq frowns watching the discomfort grow on her face along with the tears forming. “Okay, come on. Sit down and tell me what happened” he made her sit on the gurney sitting with her.

“My husband—-“

“Did Daryl get hurt?!”

“No! He warned me about some slackers and I just. I didn’t think I was this stupid enough to fall for their shit” Y/N frowns wiping away her tears before wincing and holding her belly instantly. Siddiq pulled away to get the portable machine helping her lay down onto the gurney adjusting it for her to sit up. “It was just one damn conversation and I felt like I was being useless. We won that stupid fucking war. Lost a lot of people. Then this happened and it’s the best thing but all my hormones are all over the place—-“

“And that’s normal! It’s normal for hormones to take over control with all your other emotions.” Siddiq carefully rolled her shirt up to apply a bit of the gel and gently place the wand to check on the heartbeat. “Can you tell me your pain level? And I’m talking from the moment you’ve felt uncomfortable”

“A six…”

“Are you lying?” Siddiq stated watching the tears build up more. “Y/N how long have you been working today?”

“About an hour after Daryl left”

The look on Siddiq’s face only grew even more worried for his friend as he cleaned her up and before she even tried to get up, he carefully helped her back down grabbing a blanket to cover her.

“Siddiq—-“

“You’re having contractions and I don’t want you to force this baby out from your stress because it’s too early and while I think we can…handle that intense situation…I don’t want you to lose this baby if it goes south.” Siddiq frowns covering her more in the blanket and putting the gurney in the trendelenburg position to have gravity help slow the contractions. Before he pulled away to grab a few things that will help, Y/N grabbed his arm. “You stay here and I’ll get someone to radio Daryl to come back a bit early”

“You think he’ll…uh…y-you think he’ll be mad at me?” Her voice broke as Siddiq took her hand into both of his shaking his head.

“No. But when he finds out about who made you overwork, they aren’t going to see the next day”

By the time Siddiq got Daryl on the line, he was already making his way back to Alexandria and when he heard about his wife he was speeding even faster. Daryl parked in front of the infirmary, dropping his bike without another thought as he enters the building bringing himself to her side resting his hand on her belly.

“How are yea feeling?”

“I’m sorry—-“

“Love, please—-“

“I’m really sorry” Y/N broke down in a sob making her husband out of instinct gently wipe away her tears. “I’m really sorry I didn’t take it easy—“

“Y/N. I’m serious when I say this. You don’t have to apologize.” Daryl frowns rubbing circles on her belly watching her bring her hand over his. “Did Siddiq tell yea how long you’d have to be—-“

“She can go back down.” Siddiq interrupts the two coming down from his flat above the infirmary with a filled canteen for Y/N. “You can take her back to your home to be more comfortable in her bed but again, bed rest—-“

“Fuck” Y/N sobbed hating it already and she’s not in her own bed.

“Just for a week until your stress levels and blood pressure go down. Thankfully trendelenburg worked with the contractions but don’t want you, again, to overwork yourself” Siddiq set the canteen down to help Daryl get Y/N on her feet before giving her the filled bottle. “Don’t let her leave the house, then maybe nobody would abuse your hormones” he stated letting them be to finish what Y/N started before he made her rest.

After getting Y/N back home and in their bed, Daryl stuck by her side thinking of the words Siddiq had said before they left. But he wasn’t going to address it when she was still experiencing a bit of discomfort.

“You want another pillow?”

“Then what are you going to sleep on?”

“A mattress? I don’t need a pillow, just need my woman comfortable while she’s a human incubator” He jokes getting a short lived laugh out of her as he moves the extra blankets and his pillows to support her back and belly. When she first started getting uncomfortable, he tried looking for one of those pregnancy pillows that Carol had told him about but it was a lot of work and he didn’t want to leave her at all. Like he promised and is semi-regretting given he left to take care of business and some assholes were pushing her limits with emotional abuse.

“Daryl…?” Y/N tiredly calls out for him as he returns with her canteen filled for a fourth time since being home as he brought himself to sit on the edge of the bed setting her bottle on the nightstand.

“Yes, sunshine?”

“You still love me right…?” Y/N pouted only for Daryl to scoff at such a ridiculous question, leaning over to shower her in kisses making her bring her arms around his neck to keep him close for the moment. “Dar…”

“I’ll always love you. Even when yea risk yourself. But, imma stick by yea for the rest of this.” Daryl states. “No more tellin’ me I gotta go cuz I promised somebody. Someone else will get the work done, doesn’t have to be me and definitely doesn’t have to be you”

“Can you hold me tonight?”

“As long as you don’t kick me out of the bed when it got too hot” he laughs softly, bringing his lips to hers for a few short soft kisses before pulling away to get into comfortable clothing to sleep in and hold her.

The second Y/N fell asleep and was in deep enough sleep for the archer to slip away to check on a familiar hiding spot in Alexandria. Said hiding spot would have those who didn’t want others to notice they were smoking. Knowing damn well he’ll find the right men that have been bothering his partner.

“Ayo the other Dixon has retur—-“ Bryan immediately shut up when Daryl grabbed him by the collar forcing him against the walls of the community.

“You talk to my wife today? Mess with her and had your buddy over here help?”

“Dude I have no idea—-“

“Don’t lie. Don’t even try, or I will fucking end you right here and now” Daryl hissed shoving him harshly against the wall letting go of his shirt. He quickly turned to his buddy who put out his cigarette before holding his hands up defensively. “If I see you and or this son of a bitch near my wife or even hear about it, I’ll feed you both to the walkers after I’ve knocked the living shit out of you both. And don’t yea worry…I’ve got friends to let me know if yea fuck with the love of my life and soon to be mother of my child” and with that he took his leave letting the two regret their decisions and contemplate being moved to a different community to avoid the harsher Dixon. But even then, he’d tear them apart anywhere.

Y/N shifted slightly when the bed moved behind her, she relaxed instantly feeling her husband bring his arm around her pulling her into him.

“Where’d you go?”

“Got yea more water, and heard somethin’ outside”

“Another possum?”

“A pest that’s for sure”

“Mmm…” Y/N snuggles into his embrace getting comfortable as Daryl kissed her temple. “Nothing you can’t handle right?”

Right.

[lunajay33]

Lost Part.2

•🗝️🕊️🩶•

Summary: Carl Grimes was your best friend since birth, when he died the world turns grey, he was your partner in crime so you shut yourself off from the world, no one could get through, until one day you’re wondering Alexandria seeing Negan in his cell, maybe he could be the one to break you out of this hell

Pairing: Negan Smith x f!reader

Content: Age gap, Depressing themes, Consoling, Spicy themes later on, breeding kink, character development

Part.1

•Masterlist•

After Michonne caught me having a moment with Negan, she told Daryl and now they’re ripping me a new one, I’ve never felt like I disappointed anyone more but I can’t help how I feel towards Negan, I don’t get to chose how I feel

Daryl and Michonne are pacing back and forth in the living room in front of me as I’m sat on the couch waiting for their outburst

“Damn kid what the hell were ya thinking? Ya know what he’s done” Daryl groaned

“I’m going to chalk this up to you trying to distract yourself from Carls death but…..”

“DON’T!” I cut Michonne off feeling that rage

“Y/n…..”

“Don’t talk about him, and don’t tell me how to feel, you don’t understand how I feel, Negan does….he’s helping me, I don’t feel extremely depressed when I talk to him, I thought I’d get better eventually but it’s been 2 months, hell Maggie got herself together quicker than this after Glenn, I don’t know what’s wrong with me” I feel my bottom lip wobble again hating the disappointed look

“Why can’t you let us help? Daryl’s tried, do you want Maggie to come back maybe she could talk some sense into you, see the reason why she doesn’t have Glenn anymore” Michonne huffed before she stomped out the house slamming the door

“I don’t like ya talking to him but…….i can’t watch ya go through this anymore, if yer just talking to him and it helps do it, just be careful sunshine” Daryl said more gently as he rubs my back

“Thanks D, I’m just gonna go to my room” I say defeated but at least Daryl was sort of on board, thankfully Michonne never brought up what she caught me and Negan doing, if so Daryl would’ve probably marched down to his cell and beat him black and blue

It’s been a week since everything happened, the first day after I got up to go see him and right as I got to his cell Michonne dragged me back to the house, she wasn’t as keen as Daryl was, I tried again the next day and the same thing happened, see even got Rick involved so now I’m basically under house arrest, by the third day I could feel that darkness seep back in, I continued to stay in my room, Daryl would occasionally bring me food and water just like now

“Hey kid, ya hungry?” He asks as he sits on the edge of my bed with a sandwich and glass of water

I nod feeling too tired to even speak, this was way out of character for Michonne, sure she could be a hard ass but this…..this was too much

“They still won’t let ya leave?” My silence answered his question hearing him sigh

“It’s happening again isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Negan was helping for a bit, I can’t think of anything else except Carl when I’m locked up in here” I say looking at the letter that I have placed on the night stand, he followed my gaze taking it and reading it

“Ya can’t keep reminding yourself of this over and over”

“I….i didn’t even get to say goodbye”

“Would seeing his grave help?”

I didn’t even know he had a grave, no one even told me but maybe seeing it and talking could help resolve something that’s been missing

“I know this might be a long shot but could I take Negan? Would you be able to convince Rick just for the day to let him out?”

He watched me for a bit with that look I can never decipher what he’s thinking

“I’ll try but I ain’t promising nothing, now come on I’ll walk ya to the cell”

I ate my sandwich on the walk to Negan and of course when we got there Michonne and Rick tried to stop me

“I’m telling ya Rick let her go, ya haven’t seen what I seen, she needs this” as they are arguing I slip past them down to Negans cell

“Hey” I call catching his attention

“Long time no see darlin”

“I’m sorry, if you can hear them you’ll know they’ve been keeping me under house arrest, I tried to come see you but…”

“I know, I heard everytime Michonne tried to stop you, I missed our talks though, I can see you have too”

“I’ve been thinking about our conversation last time, it’s partially been keeping me sane all locked up”

“Can’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind baby, but you know I’d never use you right, I ain’t sick like that”

“I know, you’re different now hell I’m different now, I just wish you weren’t in this cell I’m working on it”

“What do you mean?”

“Daryl said I could go to Carls grave, I didn’t even know he had one until today, I asked if I could take you out for the day since I don’t feel judged with you, obviously only if you wanted, he said he’s gonna try to work something out”

“Oh sweetheart, you got a good heart but are you sure you want me out with you?”

“You don’t have to”

“No I want to, I wanna be there for you”

Just being here for a few moments have lifted that weight off my chest

Later that night everyone went to bed early and they left my door unlocked so I sneak out as quietly as possible, quickly making my way down the block to Negans cell and he was still wide awake, I unlock his cell and sit next to him his arms immediately wrapping around me

I sigh in relief to be able to touch him again, to feel his warmth, he moved me around so I’m partially laid against his chest and lap as he sat back against the brick wall playing with my fingers

“Have you tried anything since our conversation last week?” He asks breaking the silence my body feeling on fire instantly

“I still don’t know how”

“Want me to show you baby?” I look up at him feeling my legs tingle

“You’d do that?”

“I’d love it, you need to unwind, forget about your problems for a moment”

“Please, please help me forget” I whine feeling his hand rub up and down my thigh

“My pleasure” he smirks as he plays with the hem of my pants before pushing his hand fully down basically grasping my pussy

“Look at that baby girl, already wet and I’ve barely done anything” I can feel my face redden

“This is so embarrassing” I mumble hearing him laugh

“Nah baby, this is hot as hell, you’re being such a good girl” his praise eased me

His fingers circled my clit making me jolt it felt so foreign, everytime I’ve tried it’s felt like nothing but his strong hands touching me was so much more than I could imagine

“Oh god” I whine as he gets faster pushing me closer to the edge

“You like that angel? Do I make you feel good?” He teased as he grips my hair with his other hand

“Yes Negan! Oh it’s too much fuck” I gasp when he moves his hand down and enters a finger then another stretching me a bit with his big long fingers

“You okay darling?” He asks as he continues to finger me at a slow pace, doing a come here motion hitting a spot I’ve never felt before

“Woah, that feels…….oh god that feels different”

“Different good?” He goes a bit faster making me see stars as my head slumps against his chest

“So good, why does it feel better when you do it” I whine

“Cause I know how to please ya, this tight pussy just need a good man to clear your head, fix all your worries”

Something was building low in my stomach, it felt so weird but good but also like I was gonna lose control

“Negan wait I’m gonna…” but he kept going

“No baby it’s alright I’ve got you, let it go” his thumb came up to rub my clit again and I instantly let go feeling his hand wrap around my mouth as I let out a intense scream my sight going white, my pants felt soak as I came back down to earth laying limp in his arms

“Fuck baby, that was hot as fuck, you’re dripping” I sat up realizing what just happened, I look at him as he sucks his fingers clean making me hot all over again

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I told you something was happening now I made a mess and my pants are full of piss, I have to go” I turn to leave completely embarrased when I feel his arms wrap around me from behind

“Oh baby, you’re so damn cute, that’s normal and it’s so damn sexy, you just came all over my fingers and let me tell you, you taste like heaven” he whispers in my ear as I turn in his arms

“Are you sure this is normal…….it did feel really good couldn’t see for a second” he smirks gripping my hips

“If you think that was good baby, wait till I give you this dick, you’ll be begging for more after”

“Can we now?” I beg as I push him back on the bed straddling his hips

“As much as I’d love to destroy this pussy, I ain’t taking your virginity in some grimy cell where everyone can see and hear us”

“Okay, but what about you I can feel how hard you are, I can help” I say grinding down on him moaning as I feel his bulge rub against my sensitive clit

“Not tonight, tonight was about you”

“Well if I can’t help…..can I atleast see it?” I ask biting my finger aching to see his dick

“You ever see one before?” He asks laughing

“No please I wanna see it” I pull on his belt slowly undoing it waiting for him to stop me but he never does, unbuttoning his pants, we both stand so I can pull his pants down to his thighs, playing with the hem of his boxers

“Go ahead darling, he ain’t going to bite” he says gripping my hair, I pull them down seeing it smack against his stomach and my knees felt like jelly again, it was so big and thick it was mouth watering

“You like what you see”

“Can I touch it” I look up at him seeing his eyes were blown with lust

“Go ahead baby” I run my finger up the bottom till I reach the tip and circle it my finger wet with liquid, I bring it up and lick it and it tastes so good I want more hearing him groan as I do it

“Fuck you know what you just did?”

I shake my head I feel so clueless with all this

“God you’re going to be the death of me” I push him back down on the bed again and kneel between his legs

“Please I want more let me lick it”

“God how can I say no to that”

I lean down flicking my long over the tip tasting him again but I need more, I’ve heard others talk about blow jobs and this must be it, I take him in my mouth circling my tongue around hearing him hiss I look up but her looks like he’s enjoying it as he runs his hands through my hair

I take more of him in my mouth till he hits the back of my throat but I keep going till my nose is flush to his stomach moaning when I finally fit him in

“Jesus Christ baby” his moans drive me insane, I move my head up and down as his groans get more and more louder till I feel a warm liquid fill my mouth it’s surprises me, I lean back on my legs looking up at him with a mouth full of his cum, I swallow it feeling like ecstasy

“Was that your first time cause god damn woman I ain’t ever had my dick sucked like that”

“I want more, god Negan I could get addicted to this” he lets out a low laugh as he tucks his dick back in his boxers

“Oh baby what have I unleashed”

Part.3

Taglist: @lanadelnegan @lvrgirl6999 @aubiewabie33 @mordilwen-of-mirkwood @sweetbutpsychobutsweet @sadgenderfluidmaniac @aleemendoza2425-blog @donniedarkosblog @itsmytimetoodream @twisteduniverse5 @heidiland05 @negandevotee

[akajustmerry]

Can someone please explain this richonne van lore to me? I can't listen to the podcast you mentioned

oh, I will GLADLY. so season 7 episode 12 of The Walking Dead is called 'Say Yes' and is widely known as the rick and michonne honeymoon episode by cast and fans alike. It aired in 2017.

For context, it's not a literal honeymoon but those are the vibes. it's the first episode dealing with their relationship properly after they first get together in season 6. Rick and Michonne hornily volunteer for a sneaky cheeky supply run to go retrieve supplies surrounded by a herd of Walkers.

Rick and Michonne are horny as fuck so the episode has lots of them kissing and so forth. now, the VAN SCENE™ is them in the back of the van they've been driving around making out very aggressively. it's as close as TWD can ever get to a sex scene where people are not having sex because TWD was a cable TV show. It's a very brief scene, less than 30 seconds but it's uhh VERY hot.

after the episode aired, Danai Gurira and Andrew Lincoln were asked about shooting these scenes on a panel (I can't find a link but if I do I'll put it here/if anyone has one lmk). both of them mention that, while shooting the van scene, there was a take where they got so "carried away" the footage would never be released. the director of the episode also joked he keeps the footage locked up. None of them ever really said what was in the footage but....well, we're all adults and we can all have a guess. and that's all we could do.... UNTIL NOW.

So, there's a podcast called Richonne Revelry, hosted by some huge fans of TWD. In an episode they released earlier this year about the trailer for The Ones Who Live, one of the hosts mentioned that they met, TWD director Greg Nicotero. Nicotero directed 'Say Yes' and so the podcast host says that she asked Nicotero to tell her about the van scene shoot.

ACCORDING TO HER, Nicotero spilled the beans. Apparently, they just set up the gear in the van with no crew as a closed set and told Danai Gurira and Andrew Lincoln they could just do their thing, which is pretty standard for scenes like that. BUT, according to the host of this podcast, Nicotero said that when his crew got the footage, it was wayyyyyy too raunchy (she says he told her danai was topless for most of it) and danai and andrew were making out so uh.....intensely that the footage couldn't even be spliced to make it appropriate for the show. Danai and Andrew, apparently, were very shocked they had to reshoot because they were actually really happy with it, but Nicotero insisted they do it again and rein it in so they could have some usable footage. The version of the scene we see in the show is the "tame" reshot version, allegedly.

All of this is alleged, of course. A lot of people joke like it's a sex tape, but honestly nudity guidelines for commercial TV are so strict and specific it doesn't take much for any intimate footage to become unusable. Plus, unsimulated sex is a hugeeee no no in mainstream entertainment. Productions get crucified over it. so if that had happened we absolutely would not have heard about it, let alone hear actors joking about it for years. But anyways, that's the lore! One thing we can all agree on is that Danai Gurira and Andrew Lincoln are DEDICATED to their craft, by all reports lmao. personally, I'm just glad to hear a behind the scenes story about actors getting carried away in the moment which DOESN'T involve anyone getting hurt or mistreated 🥰

[whateverisbeautiful]

I think the Jessie story was TPTB testing chemistry. Just b/c Gimple and our beloved ship captain Andy were planning for Richonne to happen, that doesn't mean the other folks involved (::cough:: Nicatero ::cough::) wanted it to happen.

I think they were hoping he'd have chemistry with the pretty blonde, and if he did, I think they would have pushed her further into Rick's arms. THANK GOD Andy wasn't feeling it. You could see in interviews and just the way he acted with her versus how he acted with Danai -- he was not feeling the chemistry, baby.

So. Chop chop. They had no choice. The Richonne fan base is too strong. GN saying he had other things to do when it came to being involved in TOWL is just him saying he never rooted for the pairing and didn't want to be around all the lovey dovey -- he wants an asexual Daryl and gore. And the way the writers messed with Michonne after Rick left, turning everyone against her -- that tells me that without Andy around they were just letting it be known that they didn't care about Michonne the way that Danai and Andy and Gimple did. No one can tell me otherwise.

And I'll bet talks about the movie broke down not just because of the pandemmy, but b/c ANDY WANTED A LOVE STORY. I'll bet you anything that has a big something to do with the movie breaking down. B/c who came together like "eff it, let's give OUR PEOPLE what they want"? The golden trio that brought us the most successful spinoff of them all, fight me (not you, I adore you, just saying).

Just when I thought I couldn’t be more grateful for Richonne and our captains, you reminded me that it really is special that Richonne exists because they overcame some major odds. Not just within the show but behind the scenes too. A healthy soulmate pairing like them is rare to see depicted on TV and usually gets thwarted, tainted, or nipped in the bud before it can even bloom because as you’ve said, some people do not want to see it happen. Thank goodness Richonne was championed by the two wonderfully devoted actors who bring Rick and Michonne to life and the longtime showrunner who saw the vision early on.

I agree that similar to how people overlooked that Rick is and has always been a romantic at heart, they overlooked that Andy also has a solid understanding that love is the driving force of why these characters fight to survive and wanted TOWL to be a love story. TWD is a story of humanity and survival and it’s not just the fighting and action that contribute to that survival, it’s love and I’m forever grateful that all three members of the golden trio knew that and depicted that as excellently as they did. The best captains we could ever ask for truly. 🫡 (Also for the parenthesis at the end - thank you! 😋🫶🏽)

[cynthiav06]

With Percy, we know that he hates going to school and his goals don’t really line up with Annabeth’s, but Annabeth is kind of forcing him to do it with her because he can’t say no to her. Say Rick didn’t make Annabeth Percy’s entire personality, what do you think he would’ve done in the mortal world rather than go to university?

I was checking my drafts cause I am trying to catch up on all the asks in my inbox ( as I said in one of my earlier posts I was in middle of a medical situation so I have at least a month of backlog) and found this draft.

The funny thing is I had already written most of the post in the draft version, and this ask wasn't even being displayed in my inbox, so I was very confused as to when it was from.

But it's such a good prompt and a sort of controversial question in the fandom, so I wanted to post it asap.

Percy doesn't like studies, but he knows the importance of it, so I am sure he will finish his initial college, probably either in the science or arts section. We know at one point he got better grades than Annabeth at one point so he certainly isn't quitting studies and doing way better than what people expect. He also wouldn't like just staying at home and doing nothing (I am looking at certain Percabeth stans here), so he definitely would be doing one job or another.

1.

I don't think he would study marine biology like most believe. After a conversation I had with someone who had taken the course, I am convinced Percy wouldn't like it. It's heavily based on chemistry, and we know how much Percy is affected by sea creatures being mistreated or caged, so having to study marine biology wouldn't really be something he would choose.

2.

An interesting twist would be if he chose to be a writer like his mother.

We all know that Percy writes or at least dictates and narrates the first five books, which are written and narrated entirely from his perspective. Moreover, there are books on Percy just narrating his own sarcastic takes on Greek gods and Greek heroes. What if he did actually catalogue his own adventures in those books as a sort of manual for other demigods on how to deal with certain monsters and gods and such.

Through Percy's thoughts, even as 12 years old, we can certainly say he has advanced vocabulary despite being dyslexic and given how much he admires Sally, why wouldn't he be interested in following her footsteps. Sure, he has trouble reading, but that's not to say he wouldn't love expressing his thoughts through humorous retelling of his own adventures which he can pass as fiction to normal readers but actual experiences in demigod world. Who doesn't want to know the exploits of Percy Jackson?

Plus, it's a good money hack. And don't for a second tell me he wouldn't. Sally petrified Gabe, and then they sold his statute to a museum as a sculpture and earned money off of that. So Sally would definitely encourage it, and Percy would even follow through on it just for shits and giggles and the added benefit of helping demigods and earning money.

[I literally want this to happen just for the Godly reactions. I am all for god slander, especially Zeus slander. Poseidon would be half laughing at the book and half worried cause of the sheer catastrophes his son seems to fall into almost on a daily basis.

Apollo would be having a grand time, and Hermes will be half depressed and half impressed throughout. Overall, it would be hilarious all around, and it might finally make the gods feel a bit more accountable . It's literally the Reading Percy Jackson Series trope, and that's always fun.]

3.

One other option is that Percy will get into environmental preservation, specifically the protection of Rivers and Seas from pollution by actively involving himself and others in its cleanliness and purification. He would also run Beach cleanliness programs.

I think he and Grover would become environmental activists and would definitely get into preserving forest areas and other places where nature spirits dwell frequently. I can see them doing it a lot, long-term wise, too.

4.

I think he would kind of like marine explorations, but that might cause his powers to be somewhat exposed, so he might not do that, but it's a possibility.

That's all I can think of. I would like to hear everyone else's opinions on this.

[autism-alley]

hi originally posted this at the end of a long thread of back and forth, here’s the og post if you want full context but i feel like this needs to be its own post especially bc i keep seeing this argument being made—the argument that the kids (in this case it was annabeth) SHOULD just know the monsters are monsters and who they are and how to defeat them before ever encountering them, that it’s a problem if they don’t.

the problem is not if 12 year olds should recognize a trap when they see one, even if they’re smart 12 year olds, and if that’s realistic. that is entirely beside the point.

the problem is rick riordan wrote a book series whose formula is bringing myths to the modern age and he’s not sticking true to that in the show—percy jackson and the olympians’ Shtick is taking these classic, ancient threats and giving them a new face. these traps work because these kids are not walking into a cave marked with Get Out and getting ambushed by monsters—the monsters are disguised as harmless mortal human beings, in harmless mortal human being places (for the most part) and i think we—and more importantly, the show—are all forgetting the mist, the magic involved here. it’s not just that medusa is a “creepy lady with her eyes covered” it’s that there is ancient magic at work here, magic that, like the systems of abuse pjo exists to criticize, has been evolving and continuing its malevolence for millennia. it’s formulaic, that’s the point. it’s the same trap you’ve learned about all your childhood, the same trap a thousand children before you learned all their childhoods, and still, it works. you fall into the trap. because that’s how generational abuse works. it’s a trap. it isn’t enough to learn monsters exist, what they look like from a second hand story that originated thousands of years ago. if you want to escape alive, you have to adapt as quickly as they do, recognize their face, and ultimately, beyond any individual trap, the game itself has to change. real, generational change.

so. the problem is rick riordan wrote a series with a formula for action that perfectly captures the overarching, systemic conflicts he was commentating on, and then threw that formula out in the show because it was “unrealistic”. i don’t give a damn about realism when it works to the detriment of the story. this is a story about generational abuse, yes, but it’s told through ‘a tale as old as time’ and that’s why it works so fucking well. and when it comes to basic storytelling, if your characters know the threat before they even walk in and you do practically nothing to then make up for the stakes you have removed, that’s a flaw. now you’ve lost the entertainment value for your audience, on top of also lessening your themes.

something else that is so. honestly soul-crushing as a writer and a creative, is that to me this is reflective of the way we are now afraid to tell earnest stories. stories where we care not for listening to the people who want to pick apart fictional, mythical, fantasy stories for not being “realistic” instead of aligning with our target audience who acknowledges reality is not what makes a story. think of your favorite movie, show, book, comic, what have you—has the reason for your favoritism ever been because it is the most reasonable, the most grounded, the most practical out of any you’ve seen? or is it because of the emotion? the way it speaks to you, to your life and the person you are? the journey it takes you on? is the percy jackson and the olympians book series so good because it’s inherently realistic?

the secret to storytelling is, very simply, focus on your story. everything else is secondary. if it’s written well, it doesn’t matter to me that the characters walk into a trap that, to the audience, is obviously a trap. because i can understand how the characters don’t know it, and how the story falls apart if the narrative just tells the characters it’s a trap from the jump. that’s what dramatic irony is—first used in greek tragedies! this is literally a tale as old as time in every sense except for the end—where it’s happy. and it’s not earned if we don’t first see, over and over, the status quo as a tragic trap.

it’s not about if annabeth (or the other kids) is “smart enough” to not walk into a trap, or about if she’s just too prideful to not walk into what she knows is a trap (or any reason that could apply to the other characters), it’s that annabeth, at the end of the day, is a character. she is a storytelling tool for the messages of the narrative. that doesn’t make her any lesser. in fact ignoring it reduces her, because it reduces what she represents. it’s about how rick riordan, or whoever else at disney, has fumbled the storytelling bag so ridiculously hard that they can’t take the simple, effective formula outlined from start to finish (by good ol 2009 rick himself) and adapt it to the screen without answering the most unimportant, derailing, anti-story questions.

[w3ndytheraccoon]

Octavian's one of those character that you could tell me anything and while I'll be skeptical, I'll still accept it

Oh he's homophobic ? Yeah, sound right, probably internalised that shit. He's straight ? Damn, guess hanging around with queer do affect how you act. He's gay ? Well obviously. Aro ? He and Reyna can be Aro solidarity ! Trans ? FtM or MtF cause they both fits tbh. Non binary ? Eh, why not, I can see the vision. Agender ? Woah, he's me !

And that's just about his sexuality and gender.

Feral ? Probably was as a child if he's willing to murder. Theatre kid ? Duh, have you seen how he acts ? Nerd ? He literally have a Roman gods hyperfixation. Soft ? Maybe with a selective few. Perfectionist ? He reeks of the vibe idk what to tell you. Nice ? Again, maybe a selective few. Innocent ? Not entirely, but then again, is any person who's involved in this shitshow ?

But like. Do you see my point. You can say anything and I'll be skeptical about it at most. And I don't know if it's intention on Rick's part but I find it glorious.

[cantcompetewhereudontcompare]

A complete deconstruction: Louis Tomlinson is a terrible songwriter. Part II

In part one, I debunked this assertion that Louis' songwriting was "crucial" for 1D. That post, I know, was probably quite boring and full of statistics, but I think it was important to be able to go to the fun part now.

Now we get to prove that he's not a good songwriter in the slightest.

POINT 1. He can't play instruments

Louis Tomlinson has been in the music industry since 2010. He was in a band when he was a teenager and he auditioned for the X Factor twice before he got in (2008 and 2009).

Despite all of that, and the millions he's racked in and rubbing elbows with incredible musicians, he still cannot play an instrument proficiently.

I stopped paying attention to him when the band broke up, but I've actually been asking around and digging to see if I was wrong about this before sitting down to make this post. Turns out, I'm not.

For instance, he has never played an instrument in one of his albums, and he barely ever does his backing vocals. He doesn't do ANYTHING ELSE either.

These are the personnel credits for his first album. He didn't even play the tambourine in it. In fact, he only did background vocals in 1 song out of 12.

For his second album nobody bothered to transcribe the personnel credit to its Wikipedia page, so I had to manually check song by song on Genius. You can skip this list as it's super long and nobody cares. I'm adding it because I find it super funny that SO many people are involved in his albums and he's, well, not. But his fans will tell you he's the songwriter of the century.

Vocals:

Louis Tomlinson — lead vocals (all tracks)

David Sneddon — backing vocals (12)

George Tizzard — backing vocals (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16)

James Vincent McMorrow — backing vocals (1, 7, 13, 15)

Rick Parkhouse — backing vocals (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16)

Robert Harvey — backing vocals (2)

Stephen Sesso — backing vocals (4)

Theo Hutchcraft — backing vocals (10, 11, 12)

Musicians:

Alex Thomas — drums (10, 11)

Carlo Caduff — drums (8)

Christopher Illingworth — piano (11)

Dan Crean — percussion (3, 4), drums (3, 4)

Fred Ball — percussion (1, 7, 13, 15), keyboards (1, 7, 13, 15)

George Tizzard — piano (2, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16), acoustic guitar (2, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16), keyboards (5, 6, 16)

James Birt — drums (2, 5, 6, 9, 14)

James Vincent McMorrow — guitar (1, 7, 13, 15), drums (1, 7, 13, 15), percussion (1, 7, 13, 15), keyboards (1, 7, 13, 15)

J Moon — bass (1, 13, 15), guitar (1, 13, 15), percussion (1, 13, 15), keyboards (1, 13, 15)

Joe Cross — guitar (10, 11, 12), bass (10, 11, 12)

John Foyle — synths (1, 7, 13, 15), bass (1, 13, 15), guitar (1, 7, 13, 15), drums (1, 7, 13, 15), percussion (1, 7, 13, 15), keyboards (1, 7, 13, 15), piano (15)

Liz Hanks — cello (10)

Mike Crossey — keyboards (3), bass (3, 4)

Nicolas Rebscher — guitar (8), keyboards (8), bass (8)

Paul Walsham — drums (12)

Rick Parkhouse — electric guitar (2, 5, 6, 9, 16), bass (5, 6), bass guitar (16)

Robert Harvey — electric guitar (2)

Stephen Murtagh — bass (9)

Stephen Sesso — acoustic guitar (3, 4), electric guitar (3, 4)

Tobie Tripp — strings (6)

END OF BORING BLOCK OF TEXT

Anyway, this time around he didn't even do backing vocals on 1 track. I'm not saying he should play the cello or the synth, or even bass. I'm not saying he should do every instrument like an absolute prodigy, but the LEAST a MUSICIAN can do if they're this incredible of a songwriter is participate in any capacity aside from lead vocals. At least on one track. One instrument. The fucking tambourine. SOMETHING.

I checked his other singles (the ones that aren't on either of his albums), and aside from (shared) backing vocals on Miss You, he also doesn't have any sort of credit in any of them. He has 34 recorded tracks total (12 in his first album, 16 + 2 bonus tracks in his second one, and 4 standalone singles) and aside from the lead vocals (duh) he only does backing vocals IN TWO. And NOTHING ELSE.

For comparison's sake, in his debut album Niall plays guitar in 9 out of 13 tracks, in his second album he does background vocals in 9 out of 16 tracks, plays guitar in 6 out of 16, and acoustic guitar in two additional ones, and in his third album he does background vocals in 9 out of 10 tracks, and plays harmonica and piano in track 6.

In his debut album, Harry does background vocals on every track, plays guitar on track 4, and the omnichord in tracks 1 and 4. In his second album he does background vocals on all tracks except 11, plays the dulcimer on track 10, and acoustic guitar on track 12. In his third album he does background vocals on all tracks, plays the glockenspiel on track 10, keyboards on track 11, and the tubular bells on track 4.

And Niall and Harry are not exceptional, top notch, creme de la creme songwriters. I'm comparing Louis to them because they were his peers, have the same background, and had the same opportunities to learn their craft for the same amount of time.

I could also compare him to Shawn Mendes, who plays guitar and keyboard in his own albums. Or even to someone like Olivia Rodrigo, who played the piano in her debut album. Billie Eilish played multiple instruments in her latest album. Taylor Swift has become quite lazy, but she used to play multiple instruments in her albums. Adele plays instruments on her albums as well. So does Lady Gaga. Someone like The Weeknd plays multiple instruments in his albums.

Not every popstar plays instruments, but those who don't 1. aren't regarded as great songwriters and/or 2. do other things, such as producing or stacking vocals. Like, Ariana Grande isn't a huge instrumentalist, but she does her own vocal engineering, for instance.

If he at least played a single instrument live, we could look past this, but he's been in the industry professionally for close to fourteen years and he has never, not once, performed a song while playing an instrument.

He toured the fucking world TWICE as a solo artist and never picked up a guitar for a single song.

The most we've seen of him with instruments is idly stroking a guitar for a couple of seconds twice that I can find (here and here) and then he once, in 2012, played 15 seconds of a song by The Fray on a keyboard.

He has posed with guitars a bunch

And he has footage of himself looking forlornly into the horizon as he "plays" guitar, but that footage is muted while he talks about himself very seriously on top of it.

He also has an entire music video where he acts like he's playing piano on top of someone else playing it (Duck Blackwell), which would be all fine and good if he had actually ever even hinted at being good enough to play an entire song on the piano. Both Taylor Swift and Harry, for instance, have similar music videos (in Cardigan Aaron Dessner is playing piano, in Falling, Kid Harpoon is playing). But we know that Taylor and Harry both can actually play (and have both played piano or keyboard in their own albums as well, just other songs).

It's a Thing that he doesn't play instruments nor does melodies. His often writing team Liam, is on the record saying that he would do melodies while Louis did the lyrics while they were in 1D.

He said it first in 2017 in a fan Q&A:

Fan: When you were in One Direction, you and Louis were a really strong writing team. As you've transitioned into solo stuff, have you felt really strongly about working on music vs lyrics more? Liam: To be honest with you, I've never been much of a lyrics man. I kind of bungle along with the lyrics. I'll be honest with you, sometimes lyrics just feel like homework. So when I'm sitting down to write I'm more of a melodies man. I like to just escape a little bit. There's a lot of pictures of me asleep in the studio, it looks like. But I'm not asleep. That's just where I go to when I'm trying to think about what's gonna come next in the song (...). I'm kind of more of a melodies person, I'd say. Louis was always more for the lyrics

Then he said it again in 2023 in an interview with a Chilean media outlet (note how Louis doesn't even do the lyrics alone haha):

"Whenever I was in the studio with Louis, I'd kind of do the melodies and then Louis would kind of do the lyrics with Jamie (Scott), and I'd kind of zone out whenever there were words on the page."

Louis said it as well in an interview with Radio DeeJay in 2022.

"Personally, for me, it's always been easier to write lyrics than melody and music, but I think it's like, each to their own in that."

He also said this in 2022:

“Sometimes, it’ll depend on who you’re working with, sometimes you kinda lean on whatever their side is. For me, 9 times out of 10, I come into the room with minimum a concept, or a lyric, or a title or something I want to talk about. And again, my strength lies in lyric, I’m trying to get better…So we’ll have a concept, and then probably some, one of the lads I’m working with will pick out a guitar line, we’ll find a melody about that and try and match the title we started with to what were writing.”

I think we can thoroughly confirm that Louis is not proficient with instruments. Add to that that he even confirms himself (two years ago, so 12 years into his career), that he has an easier time writing lyrics than melodies and music and that he's not really that good at writing melodies. There's nothing wrong with it, everyone has their own strengths, but it's the combination of things that makes it sting.

He has never played an instrument in public, he has never played an instrument in one of his albums, he only did background vocals for 2 out of 34 songs, and he AND Liam both say his strength isn't melodies. He's even outright admitting that his co-writers often come up with his melodies.

Songs aren't just lyrics. The melody of a song is just as important (some would argue, more important). If he himself admits that he has issues with melodies and music, then you can't just decide that it doesn't matter and he's "an incredible songwriter" anyway. He's simply not. If you like his music, then what you like are the co-writers he chooses to work with.

POINT 2. He's not that involved in his own songwriting process

I'm not saying that he's not involved at all or that he never writes anything, but he's not the driving force behind it. He's not the main songwriter, the one who commands the room, the one who comes up with everything.

How do we know this? It's pretty simple.

For one, the amount of collaborators he has.

Walls had 34 songwriters in 12 tracks. THIRTY-FOUR. Huge block of text incoming (used for impact):

Sean Douglas

Jamie Harman

Stuart Chrichton

Cole Citrenbaum

James Newman

Stephen Wrabel

Bryn Christopher

Andrew Jackson

Duck Blackwell

Levi Lennox

Julian Bunetta

John Ryan

Amish Patel

Jim Lavigne

Danny Majic

John Mitchell

Justin Franks

Noel Gallagher

Dave Gibson

Jacob Manson

Iain James

Wayne Hector

Steve Robson

Matthew Burns

Jason Reeves

Ali Tamposi

Andrew Watt

Ed Drewett

Yei Gonzalez

Jamie Scott

Johan Carlsson

Joe Janiak

Valentina

Louis, obviously

Of course, not every songwriter was on every track, but you can't possibly have a vision if you're working with this many people for a single project. There was only one sample (Noel Gallagher on Walls), so it's not even a Beyoncé case, where she had many songwriters but it was because she was sampling a bunch of songs.

This many people on a single, very short, project simply means that there wasn't a unified vision and a unified leader. How can you possibly make an album sound cohesive if it was written by two entire soccer teams and their benches?

Faith In The Future was much more concise in terms of its collaborators with fourteen (seventeen if we count producers), which is not a small number, but it's more standard for a pop album. So props to him for narrowing it down, I suppose.

The problem here, and with Walls and all his other singles, is that there are a lot of cooks on every song and Louis doesn't seem to be the primary songwriter in any of them.

I don't want to be hypocritical, so first I'll address that Harry's debut album also had a lot of writers in each song, but there was a caveat there, Harry's first album was written in a retreat in Jamaica. All the songs had the same names because he just gave blanket credit to everyone present.

The main producer of that album was Jeff Bhasker, so he got writing credit on every song. Then Tyler Johnson was basically an assistant to Jeff, and he also got credit. Ryan Nasci and Alex Salibian were engineers who were helping with the mixing, and they also got writing credit on every song. With two exceptions, 1. Two Ghosts, which Harry had written when he was in 1D in 2014/2015. 2. Sweet Creature, which he wrote alone with Kid Harpoon. The rest of the 8 tracks on HS1 were written by the same six songwriters. The total number of songwriters + producers for HS1 is 9, including 2 former 1D songwriters who got credit for Two Ghosts.

Another caveat here, is that if you read my last post, you know we can tell the % of songwriting of each collaborator. Harry was the driving force behind every single HS1 song, Jeff, Tyler, and Mitch got minority credit, while Alex and Ryan got a small percentage.

For instance, with Sign of the Times (the lead single and most successful song of that album)

Ryan Nasci + Alex Salibian = 9.5% Mitch Rowland + Tyler Johnson + Jeff Bhasker = 40.51% Harry Styles = 50%

Harry has primary credit on every single song on that album, FYI.

For Fine Line, the team was tighter. There are still 9 names total but the average number of co-writers goes down in half to 3.6 per song, because the core group is smaller (Harry, Tyler, Kid, and Mitch) and the add-ons are just there in one or two tracks. Harry also has primary credit on almost every single song (except Lights Up, where he has 40% credit and Tyler Johnson has 45%).

In some songs, such as She, he has 80% credit and the other 3 split the remaining 20%. This screenshot is old, Kid Harpoon has since signed to GMR so we can no longer split his and Harry's %, but that happened after the release of Fine Line, and luckily I'd saved these.

For his third album, the team is now 7 (with Harry, Kid, and Tyler doing the bulk of the work), and the average songwriters per track is 3.07. Sadly, since Kid signed to GMR I can't get a breakdown of the % anymore.

One day I'll make a post about this because I think it's so telling, in terms of Harry as a musician, but I just wanted to get this out of the way. I HATE hypocrisy, and I'm not going to bash Louis for something if the person I support is doing the same. He's not. And I needed to show that.

So, for his first album, Louis had the 34 songwriters I mentioned above + 5 extra producers. Each song had an average of 4.25 songwriters.

For his second album, Louis had 14 songwriters + 3 extra producers. Each song had an average of 4 songwriters.

The average in and of itself isn't that bad. It's pretty standard for pop musicians. The thing is that the standard pop musician isn't constantly gloating about his songwriting prowess and doesn't have a fanbase that constantly boasts either.

If Louis had primary credit in his songs, even if he had a lot of collaborators, I couldn't really fault him for it. Alas, he does not.

As I said in the other post, Louis' PRO is PRS, which is British. Foreign PROs have to collect through an American one, usually ASCAP or BMI. It seems like Louis collects through BMI. Why? Well, because

In songs where all the other songwriters are with BMI, BMI controls 100%, meaning, also Louis' part. We can't say what % each of them wrote, but we can infer that this means Louis is collecting royalties through BMI.

Anyway, there's nothing really all that interesting about the % of his writing credits. All songs have an equal distribution among all participants, except some notable ones (and I'll get to that in a sec). The fact that everyone gets the same % of credit on every song is... well, telling. It's impossible for every single collaborator to have contributed the same amount to every single song in every single case. That's just not what happens when you have a group of 34 or 14 people writing an album.

Louis made a point, particularly with his second album, of working with artists as opposed to professional songwriters:

“Through my own experience, sometimes, with a ‘professional’ songwriter (...) they write hits for a living, that’s their livelihood. So to ask them to go in the room and want to write an album track, sometimes those are difficult things to ask for. ‘Cos the back of their mind they’re thinking 'but if we shape this like a single, who knows?’ and all of a sudden, again you’re changing the song. Whereas with artists, they completely understand this is a 16 track album, track 11 is as important as track 1.”

What he calls a "professional songwriter" takes this job as a 9 to 5. That person will split % evenly and call it a day, unless there's some very specific reason to get more or less credit. But Louis was writing as a collaborative effort with a group of people who he calls artists. This wasn't a job for them, this was art.

They didn't all contribute the same, so why should they all get the same %?

It does save me time, because 99% of the songs look like this:

If there's one songwriter from ASCAP among 4 songwriters, and he gets 25% and the other three divide the remaining 75%. Pretty straightforward, each get 25%. You're free to look it up yourself.

The notable exceptions are Only The Brave

We know Louis is with BMI, and BMI only controls 5% of the song. So the other two songwriters split 95% of the writing credit (this isn't surprising because it's known that Louis hadn't actually written in this song. Seems like they threw him in a 5% for some reason).

And Just Hold On

Steve Aoki has 25% and the other 75% is divided among four people (we don't know how, though, but it suggests that Louis has slightly less than Steve).

Anyway, I'm bringing this up because I'm trying to be as fair as possible. You can be very charitable and believe that Louis was the driving force behind every song and he just generously gave away equal writing credit for people who didn't do as much as him. But that's simply not true. He got equal credit when he didn't contribute to those songs equally.

You can actually look up what the people involved have said, and if you're honest with yourself, you will conclude that Louis was not the driving force behind his own music.

Louis said this about the process of writing his songs:

“9/10 melody will come first, but before any of that happens we normally talk about a general concept on what we want to get across, what we want it to sound and feel like. Then it kind of just happens naturally, really.”

So they come up with a concept, then go to the melody, then the song comes up from that. Cool.

Now, remember that quote I posted above? About how he has a hard time coming up with melodies and how he leans on whoever he's writing with?

“Sometimes, it’ll depend on who you’re working with, sometimes you kinda lean on whatever their side is. For me, 9 times out of 10, I come into the room with minimum a concept, or a lyric, or a title or something I want to talk about. And again, my strength lies in lyric, I’m trying to get better…So we’ll have a concept, and then probably some, one of the lads I'm working with will pick out a guitar line, we’ll find a melody about that and try and match the title we started with to what were writing.”

He gives them an abstract concept and whoever he's writing with comes up with the melody, and then they go from there. That's not an equally collaborative effort. "Whoever he's working with" is doing the bulk of the work while all he does is say "yes" and "no" and give vague concepts and ideas.

Let me be clear, this isn't bad. Most pop artists work this way. It's FINE. But those artists aren't considered proficient songwriters and are usually belittled for their small contributions, while Louis is out there talking himself up as a songwriter and his fans eat it up and attack his peers.

If you can't write music, or play instruments, if you don't come up with the melodies, and you get help to come up with the lyrics, how exactly are you "a great songwriter"?

The answer is that you're not.

But let's actually see what Louis has to say about his songwriting process. I looked up quotes to see if he has any insight that would point to him being more involved, having some technical (if base leve) knowledge, being knowledgeable about processes or any sort of musical element and I found absolutely nothing. I could be missing it — as I said, I stopped paying attention to him years ago. But I do think I'm a pretty good researcher, and still found nothing.

But since I'm very charitable, I decided to use two long-form sources where he specifically talks about his second album.

The following is a track by track breakdown of his second album he did on Twitter. It's basically just his tweets for every song. If you're already familiar with this you can skip it. I'll discus it in an abridged way anyway.

The Greatest: "[It] was written in London with [co-writers]. It was always written as a tour opener, but also made sense to start the album off with a bang."

Written All Over Your Face: "Love the guitar line that comes in towards the end. Rob Harvey working his magic."

Bigger Than Me: "[It] was really important for me making the record. It gave me the confidence early on in the process. Ambition [sic] chorus vocally but suits a big show and us singing it together."

Lucky Again: "This song started of [sic] with this like hypnotic guitar riff Jay Moon came up with and we built the song around that. Feels like a good driving song."

Face The Music: "Me and Dave Gibson wrote [it] together in LA. One of my favourites on the album! Love that opening lyric. Did so many great sessions with Dave!!"

Chicago: "[It] was written in LA with Dave. Love the lyric and the concept."

All This Time: "I've always loved [it]. Just feel like a feel good tune from the off. James had a great vision for this song."

Out Of My System: "[It] was such a moment in the studio. I was with Nico and Dave was on zoom. I wanted to write something that had a bit of danger to it and had the title. Nico straight away played the riff and we were off."

Headline: "I think [it] was the last song for the album. Red triangle lads smashed the production and the academic for writing it. Made some subtle changes but loved the song as is."

Saturdays: "It felt emotional writing recording and performing this song. There’s something about it. Love the trainers lyric as well! Joe cross absolutely smashed the production, love the way the song grows.

Silver Tongues: "Had such a great few days written with Dave Sneddon, Theo Hutchcraft and Joe Cross. [It] is defo one of my favourite on the album. Love everything about this song!"

She Is Beauty We Are World Class: "Written in the same few days as the last two songs. Dave turned up with this picture on his phone of the title ‘She is beauty we are world class’ it was taken in the toilet mirror of a train. Felt like a weird place for such a poetic sentiment"

Common People: "[It] is about Doncaster having a place on my album. Such a big part of who I am. Love the simplicity of the song and the lyric.

Holding On To Heartache: "[This] is a song I’ve always loved. I’m glad I found a place for it on the deluxe. The middle 8 takes it to another gear as well! That’s going to be a fucker to sing night after night haha!"

That's The Way Love Goes: "Also one of my favourites. Always loved dry your eyes by the streets and wanted to write a similar concept. Again love the strings at the end!"

Overall, he had one sort of technical comment to make, about Holding on To Heartache. "Middle 8" is when a song switches up/adds new elements. He's saying that the song had a switch-up and it took it to the next level.

The rest of "songwriting notes" are:

I wrote [song] with [name of collaborator]

We wrote [song] while [activity] in [place]

[Collaborator] had a great idea and we built on that.

I love [part or sound of the song]!

The only commentary on what he wanted from sound is about That's The Way Love Goes. He liked a song by a band and he wanted to recreate it. Of course, he doesn't say what he liked about that song or that band and what he wanted to recreate. Is it the drums? The ambiance? The backing vocals? The reverb? Does he even know?

He never talks about coming up with ideas himself — it's always one of his collaborators coming up with something and then building up on that.

He also never mentions specific instruments or sounds that he likes. Reading these, I definitely he believe he was there when the songs were written. I believe he told his collaborators, in very vague terms, what he wanted the songs to sound like, and I believe he told them what he wanted the songs to be about. But so far, I have no reason to believe he had any of the knowledge necessary or took any of the necessary steps to achieve those sounds.

Of course, this could be just off the cuff commentary and not serious, so I can't take this as the only contributions and opinions he has on his album, can I?

Give me credit for how charitable I am... Let's give him one more chance. This time, going by his track by track video. He's going to discuss every single song and the album as a whole in detail. It's a one-on-one interview posted directly on his YouTube channel.

He starts off discussing how different his sound is from his last album and worrying about alienating fans, but he doesn't describe what's different or why. Why would it alienate fans? I don't understand why he's so vague. It just sounds like he has no idea what he's talking about.

About The Greatest:

"I think straight away, from the off, Fred Ball did a really — goes way beyond my musical comprehension — but really really clever kind of opener, really slaps you round the face."

That's all the songwriting commentary we get about this song. His collaborator did something he didn't really understand but it was sick. He's not starting off very promising...

About Written All Over Your Face:

“That’s a song where straight away I can picture Rob Harvey, he’s a brilliant lyricist but also brilliant with melody as well. He sang out that melody and from the off, once we had that lead part — I don’t want to say the song wrote itself, but it kind of really set the tone for the kind of style that we wanted to do.”

Someone else came up with the melody and the song "wrote itself". Well, he didn't want to say that it wrote itself, but he also didn't say what it did do, so I'm going to believe that it did write itself. It certainly doesn't sound like Louis wrote it.

About Bigger Than Me: Nothing. He just talks about what the song is about. No insight on its composition.

About Lucky Again: He repeats what he said on Twitter about the hypnotic melody someone else came up with setting the tone for the song. It's completely normal for an artist to bounce ideas off collaborators, but it's slightly worrying that every single time it's someone else's idea that he builds on. Are none of this ideas his own?

He then talks about post-production of the album, and I said to myself, "Oh, he's finally gonna give us some insight!" Nope.

He just said that it was hard because he was on tour, and he'd say yes to something and then he'd regret it, but being on tour affected the way he made decisions because he was being influenced by the shows.

And this actually grinds my fucking gears. What did he say yes to and why did he regret it? What part of the shows influenced the songs and how?

This man has now been a part of releasing SEVEN profesional studio albums. And he can't name a single specific production note he gave?

"I wanted this instrument here because of this reason." Or "because of the live shows, I realized I preferred a crescendo of the melody." Or even "I asked the background vocals to be this way because of this reason." LITERALLY ANYTHING. He can't articulate a single music-related thought. It's actually impressive (derogatory).

He expands on how he thinks he writes better in the UK (?????) and when he starts his writing sessions midday instead of early in the morning (????????) because he doesn't want it to feel like work (IT IS WORK!). None of this is technical songwriting stuff. Next he's gonna describe his BREAKFAST on songwriting days. HOW IS THIS RELEVANT TO A TRACK BY TRACK ANALYSIS??

These anecdotal details are great when surrounded with technical commentary. They're shallow and ridiculous when surrounded by literal empty space.

He waxes poetic about how cool the people he worked with are (which is great!) but he doesn't really get technical about why he likes working with them other than "attention to detail" and "really fucking cool." At this point it feels like he's writing an essay and he's trying to run the words.

He mentions being inspired by Arctic Monkeys... again.

And The Snuts (one of his openers on tour). He mentions nothing specific about the sound of either of these bands, because that'd probably kill him on the spot. The only specificity we get is that he grew up close to Sheffield, where AM are from. In case you forgot he's a Northern Lad From The North.

"And it wasn’t until I heard that DMA’s record and how Stuart Price had produced it and of course they’re using some of these modern, trendy, radio, whatever word you wanna use to describe it sounds. They do it in a really authentic way, it’s not in there just because it’s trendy, it’s in there because it serves the song."

"Modern, trendy, radio, whatever word you wanna use to describe it." I don't wanna use any words, Louis, you're the one nit!! Describe it?? have NO IDEA what he's even saying here. This was in 2022, what was dancey, modern, trendy, and radio in 2022? As it Was?? WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT??

I actually went and played some DMA's to try to understand what he's saying. Their most streamed song is a chill-out version of Believe (the Cher song), the only dancey, trendy, modern thing about that song is the inspiration. it's literally chillout pop. The second most streamed song sounds like old Coldplay + bossa n stone. There is nothing modern, dancey (does he mean EDM?) or trendy about any of this. I'm losing my mind. This man is musically illiterate.

About Face The Music:

"I am not the most sophisticated musical listener, I kinda like songs like this that have got that wall of sound that will give you that energy. Again, it’s easy to kind of imagine in the live context."

This is actually hilarious, because Louis is so musically illiterate, that he just used a real concept (Wall of Sound) to describe something that doesn't apply in the slightest. "Wall of Sound" is a concept by Phil Spector (who, incidentally, is a convinced murderer). It consists on duplicating or triplicating a certain sound and making it build up on itself to the point where the sounds are indistinguishable from each other. For instance, you play the piano, then you replicate that on a keyboard, then you replicate that on a synth, and you mix them together in such a way that you can't tell each instrument from the other, you just hear the result.

The most famous example of a Wall of Sound song is God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. It can be applied to any genre and sound, but because of the nature of how you mix it, it tends to have an almost orchestral sound and it works well in very grandiose songs that sound kind of ethereal. Another song that uses Wall Of Sound is Halo by Beyoncé or Set Fire To The Rain by Adele.

Face The Music does NOT do this in the slightest. You can very clearly hear each individual instrument (derogatory). Louis is using the very real and tangible musical concept of Wall Of Sound to describe this because the song is loud. He probably heard of the concept in passing and took the meaning of it in its face, a literal wall of sound, as in, loud (and this song isn't even that loud — he's a pussy).

This is why I say this man isn't a great songwriter. He's been in the industry for FOURTEEN YEARS. Can you imagine being a professional songwriter and going to the studio with someone who can't articulate a singular musical thought? And he's worth millions while you're struggling to pay rent?

He used this expression wrongly twice so far, btw. (After the interviewer says it's a festival song) "Yeah, yeah definitely but you still kind of got that sing along chorus but dressed up with enough of that wall of sound behind it."

About Chicago:

"Sometimes what I find challenging, is I can see the picture or I can hear the song or I can see the concerts in my head and sometimes it’s quite hard to articulate that cause you’ve got such a clear vision in your head and you just want someone else to be able to read your mind, go ‘Yeah that’s what Im talking about!"

You know what you could do to help you with this Louis? Study music theory. Read a book. Watch a documentary. Listen to literally any music. He can't articulate it because he knows nothing about music and can't play any instruments. I believe wholeheartedly that he has a vision for his albums. It's not that hard to conceptualize a sound in your head, if you're able to hear and have lived in this world for a couple of decades. But it's very, very hard to translate that into words if you don't know the first thing about music theory.

Other than this, he just discusses being vulnerable in his lyrics in Chicago. Cool, not really technically about songwriting, but whatever.

About All This Time:

"I think Fred did a brilliant job on this. And again this is something where I know what I like, but in terms of a production, it wasn’t as if I had loads of notes to give on this. It’s a little bit more me taking a risk, doing something slightly dancier."

I hadn't listened to this man's album, and good lord I wish I hadn't taken research for this so seriously. This has got to be one of the worst songs I've ever heard. But I was curious as to what he meant with "dancier." And I mean, I guessssss??? I don't think this song has any idea what it's supposed to be.

Notice how he said he didn't have any notes to give? He just let the man do his thing? He shouldn't have. Perhaps notes would have killed it and ended its misery.

About Out Of My System:

"That was a song, again, where we started out with a guitar riff. I went into, I want to say, definitely Arctic Monkeys, maybe Teddy Picker, maybe Dancing Shoes, and I was listening to it on the way to that writing session. I went in and I said to the lads, Nico and Dave ‘I want to write something as punk as I can get away with’ and that’s when Nico straight away came up with that really kind of punchy riff. And that riff kind of sums up the song, really, that kind of danger and that kind of energy."

I don't even know where to start.

Once again, he doesn't come up with a melody, he doesn't come up with a song. He goes to the studio, tells other (more talented) people "I want a song that sounds like this", the other (more talented) people come up with a riff, and that's how he builds the song. THIS IS YOUR GREAT SONGWRITER??? He's using his co-writers as ChatGPT in human form are you fucking kidding me?

The AUDACITY to compare Teddy Picker or Dancing Shoes to whatever it is he's trying to do actually offends me. Teddy Picker and Dancing Shoes are two technically flawless songs that sound tight and fresh 20 years later.

If you've never listened to Teddy Picker, I implore you to press play here.

Now go and listen to Out Of My System. Don't get me wrong, OOM isn't nearly as criminally offensive as All This Time. The musicians playing it (not Louis) are competent enough and it doesn't sound bad. It also doesn't sound good. It's a 6/10 song. It sounds dated, like a 2000s Christian rock band doing a Limp Bizkit but if the lead singer had to leave and they let the son of the pastor take over for shits and giggles.

He's also SO BASIC. I love myself some Arctic Monkeys, but does he not know any other bands? If at least he picked songs that weren't incredibly cliché I could overlook his fascination with the most obvious choice he could reach for over and over. But no, he chooses a huge single and a cult classic. If anything, I think Out Of My System is more similar to Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But... (still kind of insulting to a quality song, but more appropriate). But I doubt Louis has ever listened to any song of theirs below 100M streams on Spotify. I already covered that this whole indie rock thing is all a front and he's a Top40 poppy boy at heart here.

About this song, he actually does give a morsel of technical commentary, saying he recorded the vocals right after a show to get a rougher edge. I mean, I don't think he needed to wait until after a show to get a rougher edge to his vocals. They're rough 24/7, but anyway. The one insight on something technical and it's about the one thing he obviously knows about, since the lead vocals are his one and only job in his albums.

Then he talks about touring, and about one of the million indie garage rock bands with multiple white boys that all sound the same that he has in his "festival." And then about his "festival." Then for some reason he gets on to talk about his bucket list and skydiving. And I'm here wondering WHEN IS HE GONNA START TALKING ABOUT SONGWRITING?

About Headline:

"Um, yeah this was the last song that we got on this record and I’m not gonna lie, it was like 85% finished when I heard it. Well, it was finished, um and there was just a few things across the lyric that were good, that were great but they just didn’t feel true to me so we kind of remolded it, reshaped it so it felt kind of relevant to this record."

So the song was done when he got it and he just touched a couple of lyrics. Color me surprised. His voice sounds like nails in a chalkboard on it. Worse than I've ever heard it. I can't believe he put this out to the world.

He says it kinda sounds like Blossom when they do their 80s sound. I mean, he's not completely off. I would say that the song sounds like a The 1975 or Bleachers reject if Matty Healy/Jack Antonoff had swallowed several sheets of sandpaper. I guess I'll give him props for knowing another indie English rock band aside from Arctic Monkeys and the ones that do his "festival"?

About Saturdays:

He talks endlessly about lyrics and Doncaster and........

Anyway, then he says this:

"Again goes way above my musical comprehension when he mentioned at the time I’m like I don’t really know what you’re on about there but Joe, did Joe Cross do something brilliant with Saturdays and there is little to no bottom end until the drums come in which is about halfway through the song now, once you hear it and listen back you kind of miss it you’re like where is it and then when the drums hit in every single time it just feels like a slap around the face and that was one of those moments for me where just thankful to being for being around these brilliant musicians because that’s not a trick I could pull out your sleeve."

He thinks having the drums come in mid-song is revolutionary. BEYOND HIS MUSICAL COMPREHENSION. Bless his heart. The fact that he admits that this is something that he could never come up with himself simply blows my mind. He was 30 years old when he did this, btw. He sounds like a child who's setting foot in the studio for the first time ever.

He's gonna lose his mind when he finally hears In The Air Tonight for the first time.

He then adds:

"I have a very, what’s the word? I’m not, you know in terms of when I speak about music there is no musical education there it’s all on feel so I rely on people like Joe to bring that incredible musicality to the production."

Really? I never could've guessed... Maybe you should tell your fans, as they have somehow convinced themselves you're the best songwriter to have graced this earth.

About Silver Tongues:

"Sonically I think it’s really clever because the first time people hear it you kind of get into a false sense of security where it comes in with the piano and it feels really emotional. It feels like you’re gonna go into a ballad and then straight away the production kicks in so that’s something again in the live show I think that’ll be a moment."

He's endlessly fascinated by the most basic musical concepts. It's kind of sad. Starting a song slow and upping the tempo is not "really clever," Louis. It's been done a million times. You literally "wrote" End Of The Day in 2015. Were you asleep the entire time? Huh??

About She Is Beauty We Are World Class:

He repeats the story he told on Twitter. Then adds this:

"That was that was an interesting moment I think this is where we said, “let’s really try and go all in on the dance-ier sound of things” because I kind of allude to it on like All This Time but like it’s not quite as like trancey as this is. Almost has that kind of DMA’s lift with it with the instrumental that comes in on the post chorus."

I haven't listened to a ton of DMA's music, but the few tracks I did listen sounded nothing like this. It cracks me up that he doesn't have the lingo to describe music genres. We saw it painfully when he kept describing hip hop, rap, and trap as "urban" back in the day, but the fact that he keeps describing electronic music/EDM as "dancey" and "trancey" is super funny. Like, EDM does have the word "dance" in its name, but nobody calls it "dancey", Louis. You sound like an old man.

About Common People:

"I'm from Doncaster, and me friends, and me family, and Doncaster, and I'm just a lad from Doncaster."

About Angels Fly:

The technical commentary is limited to "it has a big chorus." Moving on.

About Holding On To Heartache:

"It's a bit more pop. I think fans will like it." is the extent of his analysis. He's actually incapable of uttering a single technical sentence. It's incredible.

About Lucky Again:

He gives lots of credit to one of his collaborators (Vincent McMorrow), which is nice of him. Once again he cannot articulate what's so good about good ol' Vince. He's just "an absolute genius" and "constantly challenging different ideas." What those ideas are, we won't find out.

He then starts to talk about a concept, loses train of thought mid-sentence, and he says (and I quote) "We’ll just scrap that. I can’t remember what it was… fucking some line." Why wasn't this edited out? I truly cannot even begin to understand.

About That's The Way love Goes:

"Me mates, and Doncaster, and me mates..."

He then again talks about having a Wall Of Sound, and at this point I'm getting extreme second-hand embarrassment because I can totally picture him describing loud songs like that in front of very well educated musicians, who in turn would have to contain their laughter and do their very best not to correct him.

And that's the end of it. I think I've given him enough opportunities to talk about songwriting. He doesn't know the first thing about it.

When I say I want him to talk about technical stuff or about the process. I mean stuff like this:

"'Fine Line' I wrote during a gap in the tour. It was January 2018 and I was at my friend Tom's house, who I work with, and we just started strumming this thing, and we started layering these vocals, and it turned into this 6-minute thing. (...) I wanted it to turn into something else at the end, I wanted like a big crescendo ending. While we were in Bath, Sammy [his engineer] started playing this little thing on the piano, and I tweaked it a little bit, and I was like 'That has to go at the end of Fine Line.'"

Harry for NPR in 2019

I don't need him to discuss this sort of thing as if he was a Juilliard professor. But just... some idea of the technical aspects of it. Like layering the vocals, wanting a crescendo. And HE did it, HE tweaked it, HE got the idea of adding it to Fine Line. It's a collaborative effort, for sure, but he's an integral part of it, because at the end of the day it's HIS song.

"That's just a voice note of my ex-girlfriend talking. I was playing guita and she took a phone call — and she was actually speaking in the key of the song."

Harry for Rolling Stone in 2019

Super simple and short, but it explains an artistic decision (adding Camille's voice at the end of Cherry), and why he made it, and how HE made it, how it was his idea and his decision, and why, musically, sonically, he chose to do it.

"It's a weird one. It started simple, but I wanted to have this big epic outro thing. And it just took shape as this thing where I thought, 'That's just like the music I want to make.' I love strings, I love horns, I love harmonies —so why don't we just put all of that in there."

Harry for Rolling Stone in 2019

More about Fine Line. Concise information about what he wants in music instead of "oh I have it in my head but I can't put it into words."

Harry: One of the songs on my record, She, we got James Gadson who played on all the early Bill Withers stuff. He's like 81. And he came and played on the record. We were like, putting down like a demo drum-thing, and we were like, "Oh, we love the sound of these drums." And they [the engineers] were like, "Oh, he's still alive." So we just got him to come play! Zane: Can I ask you what you got out of that session? When you actually got to experience a player who was inspiring the sound you were searching for, and you got to actually witness the player... Was it the feel...? Cause we can try to recapture all we want, but only one person can play like Gadson, right? Only one. Harry: Yeah. I think it's one of those things that, like. I mean, with all instruments, but with drums, and with live drums, you just can't get the feel from a machine. You can have it so it so it makes your chest drawl, but there's like a groove and a feel and a swing, that someone who's that seasoned, who has just played on anything and everything and is such a master...

Harry for Selects Beats 1, March 2020

DO YOU UNDERSTAND? A songwriter involved in his own music knows at least surface level technical stuff and can off the cuff talk about them in conversation, because he lives them. He's there as they happen. He makes the decisions and he understands what's going on. Even if they aren't a proficient drum player, they still have some level of understanding.

Same interview, talking about doing his own backing vocals:

"I do all the harmonies. I can go pretty high full voice, and then there's like a falsetto bit, and then if I'm doing really high harmonies, you wanna get like that Queen-y thing. I have like a squeal thing that's pretty up there, which you don't wanna do too often, but... I have a funny video of me recording some harmonies from the record. I'll send it to you. It's definitely squeal-y. I usually stack my own harmonies. I can't remember when I started doing it, but I try to get a crowd sound, so I just do each harmony in a different accent. And you end up with someone Scottish in there, like a French guy. And you go like London, Northerner, couple of Americans, and you end up with like an amazing crowd."

I'm using Harry as an example because he's an artist I pay a lot of attention to who has the same background and has been in the indistry for the same amount of time as Louis. They share the same resources to learn and educate themselves, perfect their own profession.

I don't think Harry is necessarily a prodigy, but he's an actual songwriter who's involved every step of the way.

And this is what I wanted to close with.

"I think that the first cut that changed it for me was the Steve Aoki song with Louis Tomlinson. I just wrote that with this amazing writer Eric Ross (...). We just wrote a bunch of stuff together, and we wrote that, and one day a couple of years after it was written I got a text, and it was like, 'Hey, Louis Tomlinson is cutting this.' And as a One Direction stan I lost my shit."

Sasha Sloan, co-writer of Just Hold On.

"Louis Tomlinson’s track ‘Silver Tounges’, from album ‘Faith In the Future’ recorded @80hertz | Engineered by @gj_atkins, recording to a Studer A80 1” tape machine (courtesy of @studio_magnetique) | Produced & written by @joejrcross"

Caption by the studio where Silver Tongues was recorded

"I was in with Andrew Jackson and Duck Blackwell, two of my collaborators, Louis wasn't there, my manager had a meeting with his management and they said 'Louis is looking for songs', the brief was like Oasis and I was like 'I don't think he should do Oasis so let's give him a pop ballad." Bryn explained that the trio didn't know much about Louis but were aware of Johannah's death and decided to channel that into the song. "It was a little bit weird, we don't know him, we don't know what he went through," he said before adding: "But we did it and we're bringing our own elements, we've all lost people so we were putting our own words into them. "We sent it to his team and he was like 'Oh my God, I've been waiting to write this song but I couldn't,' I heard that he'd been encouraged to 'write a song about my mum but I couldn't' he'd heard bits and was like 'This is it. This is what I was feeling. This is all that I wanted to do'. And so then he went, came in and wrote a bit more like the middle eight and yeah, then he released it."

Bryn Christopher, co-writer of Two Of us

James Vincent McMorrow via instagram (he has archived all posts prior to the end of 2023, so this is gone now)

I'll be fair and include this quote by Theo Hutchcraft:

"I absolutely love these lads and being part of [Louis Tomlinson's] masterplan and creative vision has been a total joy. He deserves it all."

It does absolutely nothing to convince me that this "masterplan" and "creative vision" was anything other than him giving out vague notes that he couldn't otherwise describe.

This is what Harry's collaborators have to say about him:

"The other thing that happened with me not being there at first was that Harry got to lead the room. He didn’t have to sit there and constantly feel like he’s got to defer to me. Harry was the boss. And they all just bonded so hard and it just became the dream scenario, and everyone contributed in such a fantastic way. (...) I wanted it to be something that Harry really felt was his baby, making his creative mark. With me, if it comes from the artist, that’s the best thing. If it’s real, people are going to know it’s real. (...) I’m hopeful that we’re gonna do many more albums—this is just the beginning. But I thought it was really important to set the tone of, “We’re gonna do exactly what’s in your heart, Harry.” (...) And what a luxury to have Mitch and Ryan, where they could come up with an idea and it could just be tracked and sound like a record instantly. And that’s how “Sign of the Times” happened. Harry was playing it on the piano and we fleshed it out a little bit. Then he jumped on the mic, I played piano and we cut that whole record in three hours."

Jeff Bhasker, producer of HS1

"He had asked for a specific guitar, which I loved. He knew my music well enough to request a specific sound from a specific instrument. I got there and he said, 'Let's eat.' We ordered food, we sat, we talked, we laughed. (...) And then we went in and spent the day recording. When I watched Harry track his vocals, it was a singing lesson in its own way."

Ben Harper, who played guitar on Boyfriends.

"One of my favorite parts of the session was after the session, because as I was loading out all my gear Harry invited me to stick around because he wanted to finish the song right then and there. To get to watch Harry in his process was eye-opening, and I learned a lot. He orchestrated the vocal harmonies like a classical composer, spot on, note for note. He just stacked them perfectly in pitch, one better than the next, and it was really eye-opening to see somebody step on the mic and have the parts orchestrated in his head. I’ve never seen anything like it. actually."

More of Ben Harper

“Day one, we’re writing a song, and [Harry] came up with this piano part. And then I was like, ‘Oh, that could be faster. And you could do this chord, and we could do this.’ ” That evolved into “Late Night Talking,”

Kid Harpoon, producer of Fine Line and Harry's House

We recorded the song at Rob Stringer’s house in England. We moved all the furniture out and put a drum kit in the TV room. “As It Was” was done in that setup. Harry came in with a riff idea, and we ran with it. It’s a funny one because it happened so quickly that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to recreate that magic again — it was just so good. Lyrically, what I love about Harry on this whole album, is that he has a lot to say but he can tease meaning. What’s going on in his life is intertwined in that song, and in that line, “Harry, you’re no good alone.” I love the way he built the lyrics across his whole record, so when I think about “As It Was” I think about the whole album, to be honest.

More from Kid Harpoon

I could go on...

If Louis isn't interested in that sort of thing, that's fine. He doesn't have to be an involved songwriter. But then his fans should act accordingly. The Hags, specifically, who continue to pedal this idea that Harry is dumb, a puppet, who takes credit for his producers ideas, who can't explain the songwriting process. The projecting is off the charts. And it's why I needed to include this section about Harry.

There's actually a final part to this series, which is analyzing his lyrics. I thought I might be able to put it in this post, but it's already long enough, so I'm going to split it.

But bottom line, there isn't a single musical bone in Louis' body. He's not curious or interested in music, clearly. He got lucky he got put in a band because his looks fit what the producers of the X Factor were looking for. And he got lucky that his bandmates were charismatic, naturally talented, and also good-looking.

He could perfect his voice, he could learn instruments, he could study music. He could do something to improve. He's had the time, the money, and the resources for a very long time. The fact that in almost 15 years he hasn't, isn't just telling of his lack of natural talent, but also of his own lazy personality.

[s10127470]

So recently I've been seeing some discourse online about voice actors.

Particularly ones that can only really do one voice.

We're talking about the likes of Kristen Schaal, Dana Snyder, Patrick Warburton, Kevin McDonald, Keith David, Brad Garrett, H. Jon Benjamin, David Kaufman, Brian Stepanek and Eddie Deezen.

However, it's not in the way you may be thinking.

In fact, the discourse is about praising these guys and showcasing just how good of VAs they are despite only being able to do one voice.

Thought it did get me thinking about another notable VA that can also only do one voice.

However, in contrast to the VAs I just mentioned, they're looked down on for that.

If you haven't guessed who it is already, I'm talking about the infamous Justin Roiland.

It got me wondering why are the aforementioned VAs so beloved and praised as being good, while Justin isn't.

Well putting aside the obvious fact that they're not abusive creeps or talentless hacks, there are a few reasons I can think of.

Characters and Inflictions:

Despite using the same voice for their characters, what truly makes those aforementioned VAs such great VAs are....well, the characters they play.

Just about all the characters those VAs are different from each other, and the VAs use different inflictions in order to perfectly capture their personalities.

Justin unfortunately lacks this skill.

A common complaint towards his characters is that a lot of them tend of feel similar to one another.

Which is not helped by his lack of a vocal range.

The worst examples of this are in the case of Rick & Korvo and Morty & Oscar.

The latter duo have this the worst.

Not only being similar to each other character-wise, but also having the EXACT same voice.

Rick and Korvo are a little better (though not by much) since the latter does sound a little different (though once again, not by again), but they still suffer the problem of being too similar to each other from a characterization standpoint.

Acting:

Although most people consider them two separate mediums, acting and voice acting are essentially similar to one another, as it involves performing as a character.

And although they can only do one voice, you can tell those aforementioned VAs can actually act!

They can actually sell on the emotion their character may be feeling.

H. Jon Benjamin is one of my favorites when it comes to this.

Because of how he always talks in a monotone voice, I always get taken aback whenever he screams or yells.

They just sound so genuine.

Now compare this to Justin.

Justin seems incapable of doing emotional moments.

Whenever he does, it feels rather stilled and somewhat forced.

Like, compare his last official voice performance on Rick and Morty....

To some scenes featuring some of the aforementioned VAs.....

You can hear the emotion in their performances!

Back to that Mr. Poopy Butthole scene.

Apart from the fact that at the point of this episode's premiere, Justin's trademark of doing an annoying goofy voice has ran its course and became, well, annoying.

Listen to when PB is in pain.

He doesn't really sound like it.

Like dude, his legs were crushed.

He should be screaming bloody murder!

But instead he just sounds like he's having a sugar rush.

Justin is also famous for heavily relying on ad-libbing and improvising when it comes to voice acting.

Hence his trademark stuttering

And while that isn't a bad thing in itself, it gives off the impression that he really just can't voice act.

And given how much of a talentless hack he was proven to be, I honestly believe that is the case.

There's also the fact that he famously drinks before voice acting.

And I don't think I need to explain to anyone here how alcohol can negatively affect....well, anything.

Quantity:

I think the biggest reason why so many people don't like Justin's voice acting is just how of him there is.

Justin famously has a lot of voice roles in Rick and Morty.

Not just voicing the titular duo, but also a decent chunk of secondary characters and a WHOLE LOT of extras.

Contrast that to the aforementioned VAs, who only really voice one character in whatever show they're in.

Bar a few exceptions like Bob's Burgers.

Since after hearing so many characters voiced by Justin in the same show, you can't help but start to get tired of it.

And I know there's gonna be some people who are gonna bring up Seth MacFarlane and Alex Hirsch, two creator who also voiced a lot of characters in their shows.

Both in the main and secondary cast.

And as extras.

But both of them use different voices for just about every character they voice.

And although this is a slightly smaller example, but the MTV animated series Undergrads had the series creator, Pete Williams, voice all FOUR of the main protagonists.

And to this day, I'm still shocked by his performance as all four of them.

Like, they all sound so different from each other. So much so that you wouldn't be able to tell that they're all voiced by the same dude.

To wrap this all up, I wanna bring up one last thing that makes this especially bad.

And it doesn't have to do with Justin's quality.

Apparently, the reason why Justin voiced so many characters in this show was so he could use it as an excuse to not get fired.

Anyway, that's all I have for today.

A short post, but something I wanted to talk about.

And also, Justin, if you're reading this......

Go fuck yourself.

[sinsandsweetness]

i have stepdad!rick brainrot rn, i’d love one where he punishes the reader for being out past curfew, rick sitting by the door watching another boy drop her off

i’m so excited to see where you go with this omg <33

cw- stepdad!rick, dub con? kinda toxic tbh but… it’s fictional so… all for funsies <3 oh and um… not proofread (is it ever anymore?)

The porch light is on and you know you’re screwed. Walking up the creaky steps to the front door and gently turning the handle. Your stepdads figure, standing at the counter sorting some papers. He glances over at the sound of the door latching behind you.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” His gaze goes back to the stack of papers he’s sorting.

You place your bag on the stool next to him and go for the fridge. Grabbing a glass of water and taking a sip before answering.

“We lost track of time, I didn’t mean to-“

“It’s 1 in the morning. Curfew is 11.”

“I’m an adult. I don’t have a curfew that’s ridiculous.” You almost laugh.

“You live under my roof don’t you?”

He’s fully focused on you now. Standing there. No papers in hand.

You want to scowl back. But you’re already in trouble. And being a brat won’t help your situation. Not when Rick is already coming in at you. Backing you into the corner cabinet. Your ass hitting the cool marble as he approaches. Cornered.

“Answer.” He demands. Annoyed. No. Angry.

“Yes. I do.” You day through a clenched teeth. He’s still in his work clothes. The police uniform that Deanna gave him way back when they first arrived here. When he first met your mom. When he first took notice of you.

“Who were you with?”

“A friend.”

He breaths out what you assume is a laugh. An unimpressed huff of air and the smallest hint of a smirk pulling at his lips.

“A friend, hm. Don’t know many friends that touch eachother like that.”

He must have seen you. Watched the boy drop you off from his spot on his chair under the living room window. Watched you kiss the boy goodbye after he opened the car door for you. No doubt catching the way his hand grabbed your ass when he pulled you in for another.

Though Rick seems exceptionally calm if he had seen.

“I’m sorry.” It’s not sincere. And Rick can hear it too.

“About the boy? Or about being out past curfew. Curfew that’s been set in place for all of Alexandria by the way. Not just you.”

“Since when?” This is news to you.

“Since one of your friends fucked up and got three of our people killed.”

There was an incident. A recent one. Only a few days ago actually. Some pretty heavy drinking was involved. Shitty decisions were made and it cost the community three precious lives. An open gate in this world will do that.

“I didn’t realize. No one told me.” You’re telling the truth. He must sense it because his jaw relaxes slightly.

But he moves in even closer. If that was possible. You feel trapped. A heavy weight pulling you further into the counter space between his hands. Ricks strong arms framing your entrapment.

“You missed the meeting,” he leans in, though it doesn’t feel particularly intimate. More intimidating than anything. “I wondered why that was. Wouldn’t have to do with some… friend would it?”

You shake your head. Your heartbeat is off the walls and you want him to close the gap between you so desperately. You want him to bend his own house rules and make a fucking mess out of you right here on the counter. Right here in the kitchen where your mother could walk in at any moment.

Right where he refuses to touch you out of his own moral agenda. Outside it didn’t matter. But in this house, touching you was rare.

He’s so close it hurts. His nose almost brushing your cheek. The stubble on his jaw scratches your cheek as he moves to whisper in your ear. Lips so warm against your ear. Brushing the gold metal hanging from your lobe.

“I don’t believe you.”

His voice is quiet. Soft and deep. But It makes you shiver as if he’s just yelled at you.

“I-I…“

“Shhh,” he cuts you off. He’s smirking against your cheek. Though nothing about his demeanour is funny. You’re in trouble. That’s all you know.

“You broke the rules. And you lied to me-“

“I’m sorry-“

“Sweetheart, if you interrupt me one more time, your ass is gonna be sore for a week.”

You gulp. Fuck. Ok.

“You’re not getting away with just a slap on the wrist this time. Not tonight, baby.”

He kisses your lips. Gentle and warm. And you’re more than eager to kiss him back. To make it up to him. Anything. Everything. All for him.

It’s not like the boy from outside means anything. He’s nothing compared to the man you live with. The one that sleeps down the hall from you every night. Tempting you with just the smell of his skin and the blue in his eyes.

Your arms wrap around his neck to pull him in close.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper against his mouth between kisses. Muffled and faded into the moans that can’t seem to stay put.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it this time, sweetheart.”

You tug on his hair. Hoping he’ll just let you give him your body as a form of repentance. But it won’t be enough. He needs to punish you himself. To show you some real discipline.

“What are you gonna do?” You ask finally, pulling away for a moment. Just for show really. Giving your most innocent doe eyed act in hopes of even a smidge of pity from the officer.

He doesn’t buy it for a second.

He smiles and your heart skips a beat. You know by the look on his face that you’re in for a night. A week. Maybe longer.

You realize quickly that it isn’t a matter of what he was going to do to you. It was a matter of what he would refuse to do to you. No matter how hard you begged.

And judging by the arousal already seeping through your panties, he’d have you begging on your knees in no time.

—

taglist- @rickswh0r3 @elnyrae @catt-leya @miinbun @ankhmutes @eternalrose81 @cl0wnb0yyy @grimesthinker @whatthefuuuck @olive3oil @taylormarieee @virtualreader @lust4lovee @fanngirl19 @movidita @cavillsgirl105 @dylanisstilladumbass @dixonslvr @aangelbabysworld @raininhell @gvf23 @iamacowboi @dqllgarden

(lmk if I missed you or if you no longer want to be tagged)

[jadeylovesmarvelxo]

Surprise

Summary; Eddie didn't expect to fall for Henderson's sister but when she joined the gang in The Upside Down a bond was forged between them, they spent more time together after Vecna was defeated, and they begin to fall for each other.

But How does he tell Dustin that the girl he's in love with is yn? Especially as the gang begin to find out. One by one.

Warnings; Fluff 💞 teeny bit angst, Murray makes an appearance and an observation ;) slight shenanigans. 18+

I don't give anyone permission to copy my work.

Likes/reblogs are always appreciated ❤️

Ever since the defeat of Vecna and The upside down was destroyed peace had returned to Hawkins.

After living in fear for their lives since Will first disappeared and the reveal of the Upside down it was time for everyone to rest and find a little joy.

Eddie hadn't expected to find both joy and love at the same time but since helping Dustin and his friends defeat Vecna, he wasn't just introduced to monsters and the supernatural.

When he first went on the run and Dustin and his friends found him he had also met Dustin's sister for the first time.

It was crazy that he had known the little shrimp for months but his sister was elusive to him, spending her senior year working with Nancy on the school paper.

Their paths rarely crossed and when they did he didn't realise she was the sister Dustin raved or ranted about depending on how well they got on that day.

So you can imagine when she came along when the gang found him at Reefer Ricks...

Yn had been suspicious of her brother's activity for years. Unlike some people in Hawkins, she didn't have her head in the sand about what had been going on for years now.

Strange shit was afoot. Especially last July with all those deaths at the mall... Will Byer's disappearance in 1983, her brother has nightmares where he screamed out about The Upside down.

Whatever that was she was sure it was connected to what was going on in Hawkins for a while now.

So when she noticed Dustin heading to Family Video with Max she discreetly tagged along.

She was worried as well as wanting to find out what was going on. There had been news of a death at the trailer park, Chrissy Cunningham, Hawkin Highs golden girl and head cheerleader, Max was saying something to Dustin about his friend Eddie.

Dustin would be pissed when he found out she was following him but she had to know that he wasn't walking into danger.

Okay... so it wasn't so discreet to bring a baseball bat with her but she wanted something to protect herself, Dustin and Max with if there was danger.

After Family Video she followed Steve's car to a house in the woods, Reefer Ricks place.

What the hell did he want with Reefer Rick? and why was Steve taking her brother there?

Curious and trying not to get angry she heads around the back of the house and sees the gang heading into the shed.

After about ten minutes of waiting, she grows worried when they don't come out and heads inside.

"Shh, someone's coming!" Robin hisses and it's all quiet. She hesitates knowing Dustin will be super pissed but she has come this far now.

Pushing the door open she storms inside and glares at her brother.

"Dustin Henderson! What in the hell are you doing here?" Dustin gapes.

"What the hell? You followed me?" She ignores his rants.

"With good reason? Do you think I don't notice all the shit going on around Hawkins and not worry about you? Especially since I think you've been involved in most of it. Of course, I was worried"

She looks around the room and zeroes in on Eddie Munson and marches up to him.

"Is this some DnD thing you've created?" he shakes his head.

"Jesus h Christ, I wish it was but no" she frowns.

"You're not just saying that and using those pretty brown eyes of yours as a distraction?" His cheeks turn pink.

"Pretty?" he chokes out and she softens when she notices the slight shake in his hand and how his eyes look haunted, pained.

"What's going on?" Dustin groans.

"Shit again? we just explained this all to Eddie?" she levels him with a glare that makes him swear and he sighs, sits down and begins to talk.

💞💞

Eddie was lost in a daydream by the time she woke up, their first meeting still fresh in her mind.

After she found out about the Upside Down and all that it entailed she was thrown into the world that her brother had known about for years.

Being in the Upside down, seeing Steve dragged underwater by the vines in Watergate, hearing about Vecna, fighting off Demobats and seeing Eddie almost killed by the bats, gave her nightmares at times.

With The Upside Down closed and Vecna defeated peace had descended over Hawkins but the memories still remained.

She knew Eddie struggled at times and she was there for him and him for her whenever needed, she was the one along with Dustin who helped treat Eddie's bites, every day for weeks until they healed.

She held him through every panic attack, every nightmare.

Spent nights wrapped up beside him and they would talk about anything and everything, their hopes, dreams, likes, and dislikes.

They formed a deep, emotional connection as well as an intense attraction that was growing stronger and stronger by the day.

The only thing was telling her brother that she was in love with his idol. Dustin hero worshipped Eddie, especially after the events of the events with the demobats.

Eddies lips press to her shoulder and he wraps his arms around her waist, spooning her.

"Hello little spoon" he jokes and she giggles as her plays with her hair.

"Hi"

"What are you thinking about princess?" she sighs.

"Christmas, also how to tell Dustin we are dating when everyone else knows" he smoothes her hair.

"Yeah, think Robin and Steve had a shock huh?" he looks amused and she grows flustered at what happened the other day.

...💞💞

"Eddie" she giggles and he grins as he lays her on the back seat of her car which str brought in for service to the Munson's auto shop per Eddie's request.

The minute she saw him in that mechanic uniform, his hair in a bun and grease on his cheek she couldn't resist him.

The outfit never failed to make her aroused and she wanted him there and then.

Unfortunately, they didn't realize that Wayne had booked in for Steve to get his car fixed, and in her and Eddie's passionate haze they didn't hear Robin and Steve come in.

"Shit" Eddie's tools clattered to the floor and she shrieks as she caught Steve staring and Robin babbling looking anywhere but at her or Eddie.

"Steve what the fuck dude!" Eddie huffs and Steve looks flustered. Eddie notices her mortification and has her mostly hidden as she was laying down.

Flustered she grabs her dress as Eddie tells Steve and Robin to turn around so she could get dressed.

"Oh my God, you and Eddie! I knew it, I and Nance had a bet going but Steve didn't think you two were seeing each other Nance and I knew the entire time so obviously, we notice more than Steve does" Robin exclaims very fast, so much so that Steve tells her to breathe.

"Does Dustin know? Eddie, dude. The little butthead is gonna freak" Steve whistles.

"No, but we will tell him you just gotta give us a little time," she asks Steve pleadingly and he looks a bit uncomfortable at the idea.

"Okay, soon though, I don't like lying to the little butthead" she and Eddie agreed and now they just had to figure out how to say something.

💞💞

El, Nancy and Max guessed straight away, Lucas catching on quickly after that. Mike was the only one who didn't know along with Dustin and Will so movie night was very awkward.

What she didn't realise at this particular movie night hosted for them by Joyce and Hopper was that Murray who was Joyce and Jim's friend would be there and he had an...apt for weedling out couples so you would say.

His attention had turned to them when Eddie kept making excuses to be next to her, see her for a few minutes to discuss some bullshit reason he made up.

That's when Murray starts laughing gleefully.

"Gosh, you two are adorable aren't you?" she exchanges an alarmed look with Eddie who frowns.

"No idea what you mean dude" Murray bursts out laughing.

"I thought Jonathan and Nancy were obvious and don't let me get started with Jim and Joyce but you two? You couldn't be more obvious"

Dustin looks confused as turns to her and Eddie wearing an expression that plainly says what the hell is he talking about?

Shit! This is not how she wanted to come clean and she glares at Murray who looks like he's thoroughly enjoying himself.

"May I suggest that you two go away and find an empty room and get it over with because you're distracting me from the film"

Steve snorts. "Dude, you have no idea but that's already happened" Eddie's eyes narrow and Steve makes an uh oh face.

"Thanks, man" Dustin jumps up and looks between them stunned and she bites her lip trying to work out what to say.

"Dustin, I'm so sorry I never said anything or Eddie but the truth is I love him" Eddie gently grasps his shoulder.

"I love her too Dude, I hope you're okay with this because you mean a lot to me man, even if you are an annoying little shrimp"

They wait with bated breath but Dustin instead of being mad laughs.

"Dude, I know you're in love with my sister and I know she's in love with you. The two of you were so mind-numbingly obvious" she gapes.

"You little shit! You knew all this time and didn't say anything" he shrugs and settles back down beside Lucas.

"Suzie and I had a bet on how long it would take you two to crack. Just saying" so that was that.

Eddie glares at Dustin then shrugs and kisses her forehead.

"Ahh well, cats out of the bag now princess. At least we can be open about how we feel. I can kiss you whenever I want" a mischievous look crosses his face and she smirks.

Dustin looks afraid. Very afraid.

"Ugh, gross dude. I knew about you two but it doesn't mean I need a visual" Eddie pulls her close to him and grins.

"Oh, we'll see Dustybun" Dustin turns to you and looks offended.

"You told!" he whines and she grins.

"Mmm, he hasn't heard your favourite song has he Dustykins?" Dustin's eyes widen.

Robin snorts. "Oh, dont do the whole Never Ending Story thing again "

Eddie laughs and turns to him.

"Dude really?" Dustin huffs.

"It's Suzie and mines thing okay dude? are you going to gang up on me with my sister. Really??" Eddie throws his arm around Dustin.

"Henderson, I'm going to be around for a long long time"

❤️

*Not me wanting to write a fic set a few years later and Eddie is now Dustin's brother-in-law and the hijinks that would ensue. 🙃😂