#makes sense that i gravitated to it when i had absolutely no reason to and ten years down the line i got an adhd diagnosis

[inpursuitofnunchi]

Doctor who - the quantum mechanics of the sci-fi genre - it's as absurd as it is relevant.

[infernumequinomin]

I think everyone for the start assumes that Marcille is the fucking normal member of the party and is just that typical high strung elf trope when in reality, of the og party, Marcille and Laois are the biggest fucking freaks for the dungeon. It just makes sense that they're the ones the winged lion focuses on.

Marcille spent god only knows how many years studying dungeon design and how the magic of the thing works, on a very foundational level to the point of actively trying to design her own "safe" dungeon, Laois focused on the ecosystem and food chain simce he was a small child, Falin was obsessed with the dungeon as this mystery to explore so much she dropped out of school and joined her brother bc this was a Bigger Cooler dungeon than the one she had at school to explore. These three were absolutely fucking insane for the dungeon. They may have been some of the only people down here at first, NOT just here because they were trying to strike it rich.

Imagine being Namari like "oh these people just need a little help getting to the deeper levels for normal adventuring stuff" and then over your first meal together in like, the forest level, Marcille and Falin both start going off fucking science geek style about how the spirits are collecting in the area and what that means for monster cultivation and mandrakes and shit while the knight of your party is drooling imagining what a fucking ghost tastes like and being like "Oh no, I am the only normal person here" all the way up until you get to the fourth level and find a rare sword and spend four hours yelling abt metal composition and edge maintenance and then realizing "oh fuck oh god oh no we're ALL freaks".

Like high opinions of the siblings or not, why this party gravitated to each other makes sense, they're all fucking nuts abt this place in different ways. Even Chilchuck, who is arguably the most levelheaded of the group and arguably not here for insane reasons like "basically born here" or "wants to taste new and exotic food" or "needs to know how magic works or it'll drive her fucking insane for the next half millennia", is still clearly enamoured with how novel and interesting these locks and traps are. He likes the challenge of his skills! All of them are excited about the dungeon as a place to grow and feed their own desires for the future, and I think that is beautiful!

But fr Marcille is a freak and of the party. I don't think if the demon hadn't happened she, OR Laois, would have stopped adventuring.

[st4rtar0t]

Describing your first encounter with your future spouse as a writer 🙈

Picture one

She was like a radiant beacon amidst the sea of faces, her presence undeniable. His heart skipped a beat, and he couldn't tear his gaze away. He was starstruck, and it hit him like a ton of bricks. In that moment, time seemed to slow down, and all background noise faded into a distant hum. Her beauty was not just skin deep; it was a magnetic force that drew him in. Her hair cascaded in glossy waves down her back, and her eyes sparkled with a mischievous glint. Every move she made was effortless, a dance of grace that held everyone's attention. But what really made his heart race was the sense of competition. He couldn't help but notice how she effortlessly charmed the room, engaging in witty banter and laughter with the people around her. It was as if she had a gravitational pull that drew others towards her, and he couldn't help but feel the challenge rising within him. He knew he had to step up his game, to compete for her attention in this crowded arena of admirers. It wasn't just about wanting to be with her; it was about proving himself, showing that he could stand out in the crowd and win her over. The feeling of competition burned within him, igniting a fire of determination. As he watched her, he noticed how she laughed at another man's joke, her eyes crinkling at the corners, and he felt a pang of jealousy. He had to make his move, and he had to do it now. With a deep breath, he pushed through the crowd, his heart pounding in his chest, ready to engage in the battle for her affections. It was a daunting task, but he couldn't back down. He was drawn to her like a moth to a flame, and the thrill of the competition only fueled his desire. Little did he know that this starstruck moment would set the stage for a whirlwind romance that would change his life forever.

Picture two

As I walked into that bustling family gathering, my attention was initially scattered all over the place. I mean, it was the usual drill - a sea of familiar faces, endless chatter, and clinking glasses. Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary that night. But then, there she was. I'd seen pictures, heard stories, but nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared me for the real deal. Destiny, my friend, had other plans for me that night.As I scanned the room, my eyes landed on her, and time did this weird thing where it seemed to slow down. The universe hit the pause button. It was like one of those movie scenes where everything fades into the background, and only one thing remains in focus – her. It was the way she moved, like she owned the room without even trying. Confidence mixed with a hint of vulnerability, a combo I didn't know could exist until that moment. And her laughter, oh man, it was like a beacon in the chaos. It cut through the noise, and I couldn't help but be drawn to it. It was laughter that made you think, "I want to be the reason behind that smile." I couldn't put it into words, couldn't make sense of it, but there it was. It was an epiphany, a moment of clarity that told me this wasn't your average, run-of-the-mill encounter. This was something bigger, something that felt preordained. So, I took a deep breath, summoned every ounce of courage, and made my way through the crowd towards her. I had no idea what the night held in store, but one thing was for sure – this was the beginning of a wild adventure, and I was all in.

Picture three

It was the typical whirlwind of paperwork, people chatting by the coffee machine, and the low hum of office life. But then, I saw her. It was the first time our paths had crossed in this work setting, and I couldn't help but be taken aback. She was something else entirely. But it wasn't just her work ethic that grabbed my attention; it was how incredibly attentive she was to every detail. She would jot down notes during meetings, her pen moving as fast as her mind, and when someone spoke, you could see in her eyes that she was truly listening, not just nodding absentmindedly. It was like she had this superpower of making everyone around her feel heard and valued. And let's not even get started on her looks. I mean, come on, she was drop-dead gorgeous. With those mesmerizing eyes that seemed to see right through you, a smile that could light up the gloomiest of days, and a style that was effortlessly chic, she had this magnetic appeal that was impossible to resist. As I observed her from across the office, I couldn't help but be drawn to her in a way I hadn't expected. It was more than just physical attraction; it was admiration for her dedication, her attentiveness, and her undeniable allure. At that moment, I couldn't help but feel that I had stumbled upon a unique combination of qualities in her . It was like she was the embodiment of what I'd always admired in a colleague, someone who not only worked hard but did so with grace and charisma.

[ckret2]

Chapter 43 of suddenly human Bill Cipher is pretty eager to remain imprisoned inside the Mystery Shack:

The Eclipse: Part 1

Gravity's disappearing in Gravity Falls. Bill has an explanation for what's going on that has absolutely nothing to do with him, and also doesn't make any sense. Fiddleford has an alternate theory that makes a lot of sense, and has a whole lot to do with Bill. Ford trusts Fiddleford.

####

"An eclipse," Ford repeated. "Gravity's vanishing, you're floating, and you expect me to believe that it's due to an eclipse."

Bill shrugged. "I don't expect anything out of you. Believe whatever the heck you want. That's what it is, though."

"Even if it wasn't a ridiculous notion, there aren't any solar or lunar eclipses anywhere near Oregon this summer—"

"Did I say the eclipse was solar or lunar?" Bill asked. "No. I didn't." He breezed past Ford, heading to the kitchen. "Hey, is anybody gonna eat those pancakes?"

"Mine." Dipper ran past Bill to his abandoned plate.

"Then what kind of an eclipse is it?" Ford demanded.

Bill leaned on the kitchen counter, crossed his arms, and pursed his lips thoughtfully. Finally, he said, "Gravitational eclipse."

"There's no such thing!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Dr. I Think Having A Mere Five PhDs Means I Know Everything! Please, enlighten the trillion-year-old all-seeing eye who spent a year correcting all your math with your superior knowledge of physics!"

"It's twelve PhDs and you know it."

"Oh, so what! I can still count 'em on one hand." (Dipper gave Bill's hand a puzzled look.)

"Is that how it is!" Ford huffed angrily. "Fine, great teacher—would you be so kind as to educate your student on what the devil a 'gravitational eclipse' is!"

He fully expected Bill to start spouting some absurd science fiction explanation; but instead, Bill hesitated, gaze flicking nervously toward the ceiling. Ford looked up, but didn't see anything.

"Just don't worry about it." Bill rubbed his right eye. He turned away from Ford to watch Dipper struggle to squeeze pancake syrup out of an uncooperative bottle. "Everything will go back to normal in three days. Just—don't look at the sky."

"Why not?"

"Don't worry about it," Bill repeated.  "Hey, take off the lid and stick a knife in, you're never getting anything out that way."

"I've got it," Dipper said testily.

Soos came downstairs at about the same time Stan joined them from the hallway. "Dudes, I think something weird's going on," Soos said.

Ford turned his back on his fruitless conversation with Bill. "We've noticed. Gravity's decreasing."

Soos paused. "Oh," he said, slightly deflated. "I thought I was developing super strength."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"So what's causing it?" Stan asked.

"I don't know yet."

From the kitchen, Bill called, "I just told you!"

Ford didn't look at him. "I don't know the real reason yet."

Stan asked, "Think it might be a portal thing? When it was powering up, gravity got kinda screwy. It wasn't like this, though. Any time there was a surge, gravity hiccuped for a few seconds. It never just... went down a little."

"And not for this long, either," Soos said. "It's been like this all morning." He paused; then asked, hopefully, "You sure we aren't just all developing super strength at the same time?"

Ford shook his head apologetically.

"Aww."

"I suspected the portal first," Ford said. "But I just looked it over and checked the equipment. There's no way any of it could have powered on. It's been completely disassembled since last summer." 

Stan shrugged. "What else could it be?"

"The gravity anomalies occurred whenever the portal was connected to the Nightmare Realm. All I can think is that perhaps it's something else with a connection to the Nightmare Realm that might be having a destabilizing effect on the fabric of reality. Something much weaker, but steadily regaining power..." He turned to cast a venomous look at the kitchen. "Power like the ability to float..."

Bill had been preoccupied with dipping a strip of raw bacon into a stolen uncapped syrup bottle; but at the accusation, he stared at Ford in disbelief. "What—are you kidding me?"

"Have a better explanation for why, the moment all this starts, you can suddenly hover down the stairs?"

"Sure," Bill said. "I'm better at floating than the rest of you because I've been doing it longer."

"Oh, that's stupid!"

"You're stupid."

"You're up to something," Ford snarled. "I know it."

"What could I possibly be up to!" Bill spread his hands, exasperated. "Seriously! Tell me! What could I possibly be up to?"

Ford screwed his face into a scowl, trying to think of any way Bill could have orchestrated the gradual decline of gravity while imprisoned in the Mystery Shack. "You are up to something," he said firmly.

Bill groaned and rolled his eyes. "Well if you ever figure out what, let me know! I'm dying to find out what I'm plotting." He chugged from the syrup bottle like it was a flask. And then had to keep holding it up while he waited for the reduced gravity to work on the syrup.

"Hey, Dr. Pines?" Soos held up his phone. "Just got a text from Tate. He says Old Man McGucket wants to know if you can come discuss the gravity issue?"

"I was just thinking the same thing. Let Fiddleford know I'll be there as soon as I can. Does he want me to bring anything?"

"Nope. Just your handsome face." Soos chuckled. "He—he didn't say that part, though. I did. I just think guys should compliment each other more."

Ford nodded solemnly. "Thank you, Soos."

"Grunkle Ford, can I come too?" Dipper dumped his dirty dish in the sink. "I could—I dunno—help brainstorm solutions, or something...?"

"I'd be delighted." Ford had wanted to spend so much more time with Dipper this summer. By now, he'd thought they would have had at least one hike through the mountains around Gravity Falls and maybe dug into a couple of old mysteries he'd never solved. At least this was one mystery Ford could bring him along for.

Dipper's face lit up. "Hold on, let me go get my journal." He ran upstairs, bouncing up two steps at a time in the reduced gravity.

Ford murmured to Stan, "You can hold down the fort while I'm gone?"

Stan nodded slightly. "I'll keep a close eye on him."

"Good."

When Dipper had returned and they were headed out the door, Bill called from the kitchen, "Keep your head down out there. And get inside as soon as you can."

Ford shot a dark look at Bill, but said nothing. "Let's go." He shut the door behind them a bit harder than necessary.

Soos headed into the kitchen to make breakfast. As he passed, Bill said, "Hey. Does the 'guys complimenting guys' thing only apply to humans, or what?"

"Oh. Uh..." Soos pulled his head out of the fridge to look at Bill. "You... look good in yellow? Is—is that a good compliment? I don't know what triangle demons consider a compliment."

Bill considered it. "Sure, it'll do." He dipped another strip of bacon in the syrup. "I look even better in gold."

####

A quarter mile from the shack, Ford drove over a small bump in the road he'd gone over a hundred times before.

The car bounced so high that Ford's head hit the car roof.

Somewhere, he just knew, Bill was laughing at him.

####

Dipper's knee had been bouncing for three minutes straight by the time they approached the gate to the Northwest Manor. "Dipper, are you alright?"

"Sorry." Dipper planted his foot flat on the floor. "It's just—we're driving really slow, and this whole gravity thing is kind of an emergency..."

Just nervous. "I know," Ford sighed. "I can't go any faster without losing control. Lower gravity means lower traction between the tires and the road." But it was driving him mad.

At the manor, Tate greeted them at the door with a slight nod. "Hey. Dad's in the lab."

"Thank you, Tate. I know the way."

When they entered the lab, Fiddleford was working with a soldering iron on an electronic device the size of a toaster. He looked up as soon as they came in. "Stanford, Dipper! Good timing. Come in. How's the shack?"

"Down a few rubber balls."

Ford left Dipper to drift around the lab inspecting Fiddleford's equipment and listening in on the conversation as he and Fiddleford caught up. Fiddleford had first noticed something was wrong during his usual morning post-coffee rambunctious rollick, when he leaped high enough to bang his head on the ceiling. ("All the way to the ceiling? In this house?" "Well, I was standing on the counter, you see." "Ah, of course.") He'd immediately built a vacuum chamber he could drop various tools and cutlery in so he could measure the acceleration of gravity. Usually, objects on Earth fell 9.8 meters per second. When Fiddleford first measured, falling objects accelerated by 7.9 meters per second—almost 20% slower than they were supposed to. Now, it was 7.7 meters per second. If that rate of decline was steady, gravity must have been going down overnight without anyone noticing. By Fiddleford's calculations, gravity was decreasing by around 1.5% an hour—and, if it continued at this rate, it would be gone the day after tomorrow, by early afternoon.

(Bill had said three days. That wasn't even two and a half.)

Fiddleford had done some scans and called some old college pals down in Texas to ask if they'd noticed anything strange—and it seemed that Gravity Falls was the only place in the country experiencing anything unusual, at least according to NASA's data. Fiddleford had asked Tate to drive around town dropping things; quelle surprise, the gravitational oddity seemed perfectly contained to the circumference of the town's weirdness barrier.

"If you're in communication with NASA, I don't suppose you could ask if..." Ford winced at himself, "they've... noticed any astronomical anomalies?"

Fiddleford stroked his beard. "I reckon I could, but—why?"

Ford sighed. "Bill said this is being caused by what he calls a 'gravitational eclipse.' Which sounds like patent nonsense, but—on the one percent chance he's telling the truth..."

"I getcha. That Bill's as trustworthy as a rattlesnake with rabies—but until we know what's happening, we ought to consider every possibility."

"Yes. Precisely." Ford paused. "Can... rattlesnakes catch rabies?"

"Absolutely not! Which is why you should never trust one what says he's rabid."

"Ah. Yes. I see," Ford said uncertainly.

Like Ford, Fiddleford's first suspicion was that this had something to do with the portal—a suspicion that was scuttled when Ford informed him he'd already checked the portal. Ford's own next theory was that Bill personally was somehow behind this. His gravity already seemed to be far lighter than the rest of the town. But Ford didn't know whether that was because Bill was causing the gravity-reducing anomaly, or because the gravity-reducing anomaly was disproportionately affecting Bill. And even if Bill was causing it, as yet Ford had no idea by what mechanism he was doing it.

Fiddleford had the first idea that might explain how this was physically happening: dimensional rips.

At the end of last summer, the town and surrounding woods had been lousy with small dimensional rips torn in spacetime by Weirdmageddon and its aftermath. A few had been large enough for a grown man to stumble through, but many were barely as long as a fingernail. Ford and Stan had spent the last few days of summer running through the town and the woods with the kids, armed with alien adhesive, glueing shut the rips; and then—after traveling back and forth to California to attend Dipper's bar mitzvah and to get hollered at by Shermie for disappearing and/or faking a death—they'd spent most of the next month taking care of even more rips. (Just enough time for gnomes to steal Ford's new Journal 4.)

The remains of the rips could still be seen throughout Gravity Falls: odd invisible seams in the air that seemed to make the woods behind them bend strangely, like the transition between air and water where light refracted differently. Sometimes the sun would line up just right with a gap in the leaves so that you could see a sunbeam bending in midair.

Fiddleford had two theories:

Theory one: even after they'd sealed up all the rips, the distressed fabric of reality around Gravity Falls had grown threadbare. Rather than a few huge rips tearing through to the Nightmare Realm, countless micro-rips were forming—hundreds of thousands of holes between the fibers of reality, too tiny to be seen or detected—and they were reaching critical mass. The structural integrity of reality itself was about to catastrophically fail. The barrier between here and the Nightmare Realm could shred apart at any minute, ripping open a massive maw too wide to ever be repaired, irreversibly swallowing Gravity Falls into Bill's dying dimension of madness and leaving a frothing pustule of chaos trapped inside the weirdness barrier, ready to spread across all of Earth if anything should ever pop it!

Or two: something else was happening.

Ford thought it was worth investigating. The damage was already there; maybe Bill knew it, was exacerbating it—perhaps by his mere presence—and was just hoping the humans wouldn't figure it out before his homecoming.

"You remember the wormhole detector I built last September to sense when new dimensional rips were openin' up?" Fiddleford asked. "Well, it ain't detected a thing in town since March—but if these micro-rips are real, they'd be too little to detect from any farther than forty or fifty feet. So's I whipped up a portable scannermadoohickey!" He picked up the object he'd been working on when Ford and Dipper arrived. "You can take it to the places with the most damage and wave it around to see if it senses anything!"

Ford inspected the scanner. "It says it's detecting eighteen right now."

Fiddleford waved him off. "That's fine, a few itty bitty little tears oughta be expected for the kinda damage we got last year. But if my theory's correct, there's somewhere in Gravity Falls that'll have hundreds of thousands of tears within the scanner's radius. That's what we're looking for."

"Great. And, what do we do if we find them? Such small rips would be impossible to individually seal with my adhesive applicator."

"I thought of that, too!" Fiddleford scrambled over two tables, knocking tools on the ground as he went, to grab a plastic cone-shaped object the size of a football. He scuttled beneath the tables back to Ford. "Look! I made a glue grenade!"

"A—a what?"

"Once you figure out where the micro-rips are concentrated, just pour that alien adhesive of yours into this spout here, pull the pin, and chuck it! It'll instantly seal up all the micro-rips in the area and then cover the whole town in a cloud of alien adhesive, closing any remaining rips!"

"Hmm... It sounds risky. It would use up the rest of our andhesive all at once," Ford said. "And the environmental impact could be devastating."

Fiddleford blinked. "Environmental impact?"

"Just think of an adhesive this powerful settling over the whole town and forest in a thin film. It would glue people's pores shut! They wouldn't be able to sweat! Imagine. And that's just one example of the potential consequences."

"Hm." Fiddleford scratched his head. "I could invent a body lotion with alien adhesive solvent?"

"Or, maybe we should only use the grenade once we're sure that such an extreme measure is necessary."

"Aww." Fiddleford kicked his foot in disappointment. "Hold on—let me at least whip up a spray attachment for your adhesive gun. So's you can patch up any clusters you find as you go." He darted between several tables, searching through drawers and tool chests for supplies, and then returned to his soldering station.

"Wait, hold on," Ford said. "In the space of a morning, you've built a vacuum chamber to calculate the gravitational acceleration in Gravity Falls, called NASA to get ahold of somebody to collect data across the rest of the United States, built a handheld version of your wormhole detector, and built a grenade to distribute alien adhesive?"

"I sure did!"

"And, how long have you been awake?"

"An hour and a half!"

Ford stared. "Where do you get your coffee?"

Fiddleford glanced across the room at Dipper, and whispered, "I'll tell ya later."

Dipper had drifted over to the miniature particle accelerator and was slowly circling it, inspecting all the pipes, trying to figure out how it worked. He was leaning over the trash can when Ford drifted over to join him. "Hey, Grunkle Ford? I... think there's a cat in here?"

"You don't know that!" Fiddleford shouted. "It could be dead!"

"No it's not, I can hear it meowing."

"That might be something else! You can't tell!"

"I could just open it—"

Fiddleford chucked an empty plastic spool of solder wire toward Dipper. "Don't you touch that!"

Dipper withdrew his hand from the trash can lid and looked at Ford, baffled.

"I'll explain how it works," Ford said.

While Fiddleford worked, Ford caught Dipper up on the details of the fuel they needed for the Quantum Destabilizer, the contraption Fiddleford had built to synthesize it, and the complicated way they'd tried to paradoxically (not) observe the experiment in progress. When Fiddleford came over to offer the completed spray nozzle, Ford asked, "Any progress on figuring out how to get this thing working?"

"No," Fiddleford sighed. "I've been lookin' into more stable paradoxes to replace the cat. But as far as the observer—I'd hoped usin' twins might just get close enough, but I've redid my cac'lations three times and I'm afraid the only way to get this thing working is by gettin' one person to both observe and not observe it at the same time. If we can just do that, we'd have all the fuel we need. But for the life of me I can't figure out how."

"Maybe if we had two versions of the same person from different dimensions..." Ford mused. "But that would require opening up a portal to reach another dimension, and there's the risk that uniting parallel versions of the same person might destabilize our entire dimension. It's not worth the risk."

"It sounds like one of those impossible riddles," Dipper said. "Like, 'If only a barber shaves people who don't shave themselves, and if anyone who shaves himself isn't a barber, then who shaves the barber?' Because if he shaved himself he wouldn't be a barber but since he shaves other people he has to be a barber..."

Ford said, "A second barber shaves him."

Fiddleford said, "He just don't shave at all."

Dipper paused. "I think I told it wrong."

Ford patted his shoulder. "But I think you're on to something. We need to think of this as a riddle; and every riddle has a solution. We just need to find it."

"After we save the town, right?" Dipper asked.

Ford smiled wanly. "One crisis at a time."

####

They agreed that investigating all the potential micro-rip hotspots around town would probably necessitate a camping trip—which was the only bit of good news to come out of this mess so far. Due to all of this summer's Bill bullsoup (as Stan had taken to calling it in front of the kids), Ford and Dipper had hardly gotten to see each other so far, much less do any serious paranormal investigating together. Hiking and camping while in search of the strange sounded like exactly what they'd been missing out on—and it would've sounded even better if the situation weren't so dire.

Ford and Dipper came back in the Mystery Shack as Shandra Jimenez said on TV, "Today's top story in Gravity Falls is that gravity isn't falling. Many residents recall similar incidents around this time last summer, when gravity intermittently shut off entirely, leading many to ask: could this possibly be another devastating effect of global warming? Temperatures today are—"

Ford scoffed. "Global warming. Of all things. Gravity is probably the only part of the environment it isn't affecting."

"I dunno, Ford, maybe you oughta consider it." Bill was sitting cross-legged on the couch, chin in his hand. He had his eye patch over the eye he'd been squinting that morning. "As long as you're already rejecting the real explanation to make up one you like better, why not go whole hog? Let's adopt a real crackpot theory."

"You want to talk about 'crackpot theories'? Global warming sounds at least as likely as an eclipse."

"That says a lot more about your education than it does about the theories."

Ford grit his teeth. "You know I'm one of the most educated men on Earth."

"And that says a lot about your planet's educational system."

Stan, sitting in his armchair reading the paper, folded it down to glower at Bill. "Stop antagonizing my brother."

"Tell him to stop making it so easy."

Ford grit his teeth harder, but ignored Bill. "Dipper, go pack your backpack. I'll check the basement and meet you when I'm done."

"Right!" Dipper hurried up the stairs.

Ford crossed the living room, checking the micro-rip scanner—88 detected rips, over five times higher than at Northwest Manor, but still nowhere near the 100,000 rip danger threshold. He'd see whether that remained true next to the portal. He paused next to Stan's armchair, "Stanley, do you remember where we stored the alien adhesive applicator?"

"Uhh... when's the last time we used it?"

"Last fall, right before we headed to Seattle."

Stan lowered his paper, staring at the ceiling. "I think we stored it in one of the lockers in the basement, right?"

"It's not there," Bill said.

Ford gave him an exasperated look. "And how would you know."

"Because the first day I came here, I emptied out all those lockers and hid their contents while I was waiting for the rest of you to get downstairs."

Ford smacked the back of the armchair, making Stan start. "So that's what happened to my infinity-sided die! Where the devil did you hide it?"

"Frankly, I don't think you're responsible enough to handle that kind of power," Bill said archly.

"Where's the adhesive applicator!"

"What do you need it for?"

"That's none of your business."

"Pity." Bill turned up the volume on the news.

Ford moved between Bill and the screen. "If you don't tell me where you hid it..." What threat could he make? This was the demon willing to threaten suicide if his captors didn't keep him entertained.

"Tell me why you need it."

"As if you'd give it to me if I did!"

"Maybe I'll find your cause noble," Bill said flatly. "Try me."

Oh, what did he have to lose. "Fine. I'm testing to see if imperceptibly small rips are opening between Gravity Falls and the Nightmare Realm. If they are, I'm going to seal them shut." He hoped the revelation would throw Bill off—he hoped he was close enough to the truth to shock Bill into giving something away.

Bill's eye widened, eyebrows shooting up; and then he burst out laughing. "That's what Specs filled your head with? Embryonic wormholes? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! And you're turning to him for an explanation when you've got a being with infinite answers sitting in your living room?"

Ford scoffed. "Sure, infinite answers—and just like the infinity-sided die, whatever I get is infinitely more likely to be trouble than anything useful. Now tell me where you put my adhesive applicator."

"I didn't put it anywhere." Bill held the remote out to the side to change the channel and stared at the TV straight through Ford, as if he didn't exist. "It's still in the basement. A little adhesive leaked out, I couldn't get the locker door open."

"Ha!" Stan slapped an armrest.

Ford whirled around to glare at him.

Stan held up his hands appeasingly. "Sorry! Sorry. That's not funny. Wasn't—wasn't funny at all. How dare you, Bill."

"I know, I'm just the worst."

Ford held in a harsh sigh and stalked out of the room. He didn't have time for this—not when they were on a deadline to prevent whatever was happening. (What if it became too late to reverse before gravity even reached 0%? What if they were approaching a tipping point when the whole sky would rip open?)

He opened the vending machine and headed downstairs.

####

He had to break the locker door to get the alien adhesive applicator out. He'd have to figure out how the nozzle had leaked before he stored it again.

According to the sensor, there were over a thousand micro-rips detectable just from standing near the portal controls. The number increased as he approached the portal itself; the highest quantity the scanner detected was nearly 5,000. Over fifty times higher than on the shack's ground level. It was clear some sort of damage had been done here.

But Fiddleford had said, for them to be concerned about reality shredding, there should be hundreds of thousands of micro-rips in one location. And Ford trusted any numbers Fiddleford gave him; wherever Ford tended to double-check his math, Fiddleford quintuple-checked his.

Even at the interdimensional portal itself—the spot where the veil between Gravity Falls and the Nightmare Realm had been ripped open and stitched shut so many times, the spot where the rift that nearly ended the world had been formed—there were less than 5% of the rips they needed before they started reaching dangerous levels.

Ford looked up at the portal, frowning.

The portal's torn and crumpled pieces lay against the cavern walls where he'd left them last summer.

Never mind. There were several other places that could be hotspots for micro-rips. He couldn't draw any conclusions about what was happening here until he'd checked them too.

But whatever was happening, it certainly wasn't an eclipse.

He added Fiddleford's spray attachment to the adhesive applicator and filled the chamber with a mist of glue, until the scanner read less than 200 micro-rips; then stopped by his study to grab a couple maps of the mountains around Gravity Falls, his antique lantern, and a tent; and headed back up to the house.

####

During their past year of travels, Stan and Ford had started keeping two emergency backpacks stocked in case they needed to flee on short notice. The backpacks contained everything they'd need to survive in the wilderness or a strange city for three days; and Ford had thirty long years of experience to teach him exactly what supplies that necessitated. He grabbed his backpack out of the guest room, and then spread out his map on the kitchen table to show to Dipper.

"If our micro-rip theory is correct, there are four potential places where I suspect they'll be most densely concentrated: the place where the interdimensional rift formed; where it was unleashed; where it was suspended for the majority of Weirdmageddon; and where it was sealed."

"And you've already checked the portal where it formed," Dipper said. "What about the place it was suspended? It was floating in the sky over town. There's no way we can get up there until gravity's completely gone, and by then it'll be too late."

"I've considered that. The closest we can get is Gravity Peak, but from there we should be able to get the sensor close enough to tell if there's an unusual amount of rips." Ford circled three spots on the map, and drew a dotted line connecting them. "We're heading out late, but we should be able to hit the locations where Weirdmageddon began and ended today. We can cross the lake to camp in the cavern behind Trembley Falls, get an early start, and take the hidden cave tunnel up to Gravity Peak."

"Not the best time for a hiking trip," Bill said.

Ford shot him an exasperated look. Bill was leaning in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, smirking condescendingly. "Or maybe it is, if you're trying to avoid as much effort as possible," he says. "But I still wouldn't go if I were you. You don't want to be outdoors during an eclipse—and you don't want to be on a mountain when gravity comes back."

"Nobody asked you," Ford said, turning his back on Bill. "Now—cooking will be difficult as gravity decreases, but not to worry—" he unzipped his backpack, "—I've already prepared everything we'll need." Grinning, he pulled out what looked like a toothpaste tube with a "beef and vegetables" label. "Astronaut food!"

Dipper grimaced. "Great."

"You should have asked me," Bill said, a bit louder. "Considering that Specs is sending you on a wild goose chase. But hey, if you're that determined to waste your time, just don't say I didn't tell you so."

"You haven't even told us what an 'eclipse' is," Dipper said. "If it's not important enough to explain, I don't see why it's important enough for us to listen to you."

"Well said," Ford muttered.

"It's too important to explain," Bill retorted. "I've told you everything you need to know!"

Ford said, "Ha," and started folding his map to pack.

There were a few seconds of blessed silence; and then Bill walked into the room, leaned on the fridge, and glowered at Ford. "Listen. As far as you're concerned, the eclipse is probably harmless. It should peak in three days—"

"Fiddleford said at its current rate of decrease, it should be the day after tomorrow."

Ford expected Bill to argue; but instead, he frowned uneasily. "I—Sure, fine, whatever, he's probably done the math, I've just been eyeballing it. Did he say what time?"

Surprised, Ford said, "early afternoon, by his measurements."

Bill nodded vaguely, glancing again toward the ceiling. "Whatever time it happens—gravity will gradually decrease until totality, and then it'll come back very quickly, so—if you want to help your town so much, tell them that they don't want to be climbing trees in zero G. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is stay inside, wait for it to pass, keep your eyes shutduring totality—and do not look up."

"Why can't we look up?" Dipper asked.

Bill laughed derisively. "Would you stare at the sun during a solar eclipse? It's like I'm talking to babies!"

The last fraying thread of Ford's patience snapped. He seized Bill's hoodie by the strings and dragged him closer. "Enough!"

Bill flailed, kicking the table as he tried to back out of Ford's grip, and ended up losing his footing and landing on the floor. It was too easy to drag him around—he was so light. Ford leaned down to glare straight in his eye. "If you're so worried about how we're handling this eclipse of yours, maybe you should come with us!"

Horror bloomed in Bill's eye. "What? No no no, that's—that's fine, I told you everything you need, I'd just slow you down, I'd really be much happier in here—"

"I bet you would be," Ford snarled. "As far as I'm concerned, the fact that you want to stay inside so much is reason enough to bring you along! Either something out there scares you, or there's something in here you want to be close to during totality! Maybe something will happen at the portal! Whatever it is you want, I don't want you to get it."

"Grunkle Ford?" Dipper had gotten out of his seat and was looking uncertainly between Bill and Ford. "I'm not sure about..."

Bill's gaze snapped from Ford's face to Dipper's, and Ford could almost see the gears shifting in his head as he latched on to a more vulnerable target. "Kid. Remember when I told you there are things out there you don't want to meet? Stay inside—let me stay inside—find a good book to distract you the next couple of days, and don't worry about things you don't want to know too much about. As far as you should be concerned, this is a weather phenomenon. You don't want to dig any deeper than that. Stay. Home."

The corners of Dipper's mouth turned down. He grabbed Ford's coat sleeve and said, voice low, "Great Uncle Ford, I... I'm not sure he's lying. I've never seen Bill scared like this before. And when he told me about things in other dimensions, this gravity thing hadn't even started, so he couldn't have..."

"Unless Bill was expecting this to happen, and everything he told you yesterday was the groundwork to make us believe whatever he wants us to believe." Bill had wormed deeper into Dipper's head than Ford had realized, if it was enough to make him consider Bill's nonsensical claims. Ford should have asked more about what Bill told him yesterday. The monster could have been filling his gnephew's head with all sorts of nightmares. "Doesn't it seem a little lucky that he told you all that one day before this?"

Dipper grimaced. "I mean..."

Ford glared at Bill again. "I'm not buying it. And the more you make up ridiculous explanations like 'gravitational eclipses' and 'things from other dimensions,' the more you insist that this is somehow both no big deal and incredibly dangerous just to witness, the less I believe this is anything but a patently ridiculous attempt to keep us from interfering with whatever is about to happen! And frankly, that makes me want to interfere even more!"

Bill let out a strangled laugh. "You've gotta be... If you think I'm that suspicious, how do you know this isn't reverse psychology?! Maybe I want you to take me outside!"

"Maybe you do. That's the awful thing about you, Bill: I can second-, third-, and fourth-guess everything you say, and I'll never be sure I've figured out the truth! At some point I just have to make an educated guess."

There was a knock at the doorway. "Hey, Dr. Pines?" Soos leaned into the kitchen. "I heard furniture and anger. Is everything... uh..." He trailed off, taking in the scene—Bill on the floor backed up against the fridge, Ford crouched over him, Dipper watching anxiously. "Everything cool here?"

Ford got to his feet. "Dipper and I are going on an expedition—and unfortunately, he has to come along. Soos, do you have a spare backpack we can use for his supplies?"

"Uh, I think so—"

"Great," Dipper snapped. "This is just perfect. I've been waiting a month and a half for us to do something cool together, and when we're finally about to go on an expedition, it's ruined by him?" He gestured angrily at Bill. "He's already ruined the rest of summer!"

Bill said, "Hey, I didn't consent to this plan either."

"You shut up," Dipper snapped. "This is all your fault! You could have just left us alone, but...!" He let out a frustrated noise. He pushed past Soos out of the room and ran up the stairs.

Ah. Ford's shoulders slumped. Sometimes he wasn't quite sure where he'd misstepped in a conversation, but this time it was pretty obvious. Between this and the nearly-disastrous trip to Portland, Ford was well in the lead for Worst Grunkle of the Summer.

"Wow. You broke that kid's heart," Bill said. "Not too late to make it up to him by going back to the original plan."

Ford shot him a dirty look.

Bill shrugged. "I'm trying anything I can think of at this point!"

Ford sighed harshly, and left to follow Dipper upstairs.

Bill sat up and waited until Ford's footsteps had receded. Voice low, he said, "Questiony, listen, I need your help. Stanford's gone completely insane. You didn't see how he was ranting and raving before you got in here. Who knows what he'll do to me if he gets me alone outside the shack with only his junior sycophant as a witness—?"

Soos looked deeply uncomfortable, but he shook his head. "Not buying it, dawg."

Bill groaned.

####

Ford knocked, and gently pushed the kids' damaged door open a crack. "Dipper?"

Dipper grunted. He was sitting on his bed, chin in his hands, glaring down at his journal in his lap.

"Can I come in?"

Dipper grunted again. Ford wasn't being ignored, so he took that as permission to enter. He delicately sat next to Dipper and tried to figure out what to say next. (He was surprised at how firm the mattress was—and then realized the real reason he wasn't sinking as far into it as he expected.) "Dipper..."

"You don't need to say anything," he sighed. "You're right—Bill probably is up to something. If he wants to be in the shack so much, and won't give us a straight answer why, then... it's probably safer to keep him out of it." But he sounded so terribly resigned.

"All the same, I understand your disappointment," Ford said. "I'd far rather go hiking with you than with him."

Dipper nodded. "Yeah. It's just..." He trailed off.

"I know. I wanted this summer to be different, too." Ford sighed. "As soon as he's gone, I owe you another hiking trip."

Dipper nodded again. He mumbled, "I've never gone hiking before."

This was some way to experience it for the first time. "We could treat this like a practice round? A warm-up with lower gravity to make it easier. Next time will be a real trip—without any crises to worry about, and without Bill."

"I don't mind the crises," Dipper said. "I'm kind of used to them, actually. They're almost fun now."

In his mind, Ford knew that this was probably another thing that should earn him a Worst Grunkle award. But in his heart, he was proud of Dipper. That was an adventurer's attitude.

"It's just... I haven't been able to get away from him all summer," Dipper said. "And even when I'm avoiding him, Mabel's spending all her free time either with her friends or trying to reform him, and you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to kill him, so I barely see you two..."

And that wasn't even something Ford could blame on Bill, was it? He hadn't been spending his time trying to figure out how to kill Bill since he'd handed over the Quantum Destabilizer design to Fiddleford. He'd simply been... obsessing. Hiding and obsessing. Ford stared down at his hands guiltily. "Tell you what. As soon as this is over, we can go do—something. I don't know what yet, but we've got a couple of days to think it up. I've spent too much time underground the last few weeks, anyway. We may not be able to go on that big adventure until Bill's gone—but it's something, for now."

"Yeah, I'd like that. Thanks, Grunkle Ford." 

Ford nudged him. "And as long as you do have to put up with Bill for this trip... look on the bright side. Haven't you been wanting to get a crack at him without your sister around? See if you can pry out any more alien wisdom before his execution?"

Dipper huffed—but one corner of his mouth reluctantly quirked up. "Thanks, but I'm starting to think that's a bad idea. Every time I try, he just says stuff that gives me nightmares."

"Well—consider it an intellectually broadening experience."

Dipper gave him a weak smile.

"Anyway, with a little luck, it won't be long before you'll never need to deal with him again."

####

Soos had an old Monster-Mon backpack with cracked vinyl around the straps that he hadn't used since he outgrew it in fifth grade. "Lucky I didn't throw it out when we moved. You never know when you're gonna need old stuff!"

Bill had no idea what he was supposed to take on a forced camping trip. He knew what humans took, but humans craved all kinds of material comforts that meant nothing to him. After a couple minutes staring at the bag forlornly, he stuck in a spare shirt and leggings—he doubted he'd need extra underwear or socks, right?—and the Pony Heist bedsheet he'd been using as his sole blanket the last month, his toothbrush and toothpaste, a cider six-pack, two boxes of cereal, a kazoo, and the TV remote.

"I need some first-aid supplies. In case of emergency," Bill told Soos.

"Sure, whaddaya need?"

"Bandages, painkillers, matches, and a knife."

"You got—" Soos paused, then pursed his lips at Bill disapprovingly.

Bill sighed. "Bandages and painkillers. And cold medicine. Woods get chilly."

He glanced up as he heard footsteps upstairs. Not much longer until he was dragged outside. He grimaced. "One more thing, Jesús. This is important."

"Whoa. Full-first-name important?" He stuck a bottle of cold syrup in the backpack, hit something hard, and peered in confusion at the six-pack.

"Stanford's being petty and refusing to believe anything I say, but I know you're not that stupid," Bill lied. "So listen: this thing will peak in a couple of days and then go back to normal. It's mostly harmless to humans—but once the peak has passed, gravity's coming back like that." Bill snapped his fingers. "So anyone you want to come out of this intact needs to do two things. One, the moment gravity completely disappears, they need to anchor themselves, as close to the ground as possible, before it comes back. And two, do not look at the sky. Got it?"

Soos hesitated; but then nodded. "Y-yeah, got it."

"Understand?"

"Understood."

"Good."

"So are you like... trying to protect the town now?"

Bill laughed bitterly. "I'm trying to cover my base. When this is all over, even if all my warnings were ignored, at least nobody will be able to say I didn't try. I could have sat on everything I know! But I didn't! And I'm going to rub. It. In. Ford's. Face." He punctuated each word with a jab to Soos's chest.

Soos endured the jabbing with a patience Bill didn't deserve. "Byyy protecting the town?"

Bill opened his mouth, reconsidered, and said, "Sure! Of course I'm protecting the town! Why would I want any harm to befall the citizens of my once and future capital?"

"I mean, no offense, but you befelled a lot of harm on us last year—"

"I did not," Bill snapped. "Everyone was perfectly comfortable in my throne of frozen human agony." He yanked the backpack's zipper shut, pulled it on, and pushed Soos aside to leave the kitchen.

Stan had stopped Ford at the foot of the stairs. "But if this is some nightmare dimension thing, isn't that just another reason not to take Bill outside? What if one of those wormholes opens up and he dives through? Maybe escaping back to his dimension will give him his power back, we don't know."

"I've considered that—but if that is what he's planning, all the more reason why he should stay with Dipper and me, so we can stop him if he tries anything."

"Are you nuts? It'll be two of you in the woods versus four of us here in the shack! We outnumber him more than you do! Plus walls and doors!"

"We have the hexed bracelets, he won't be able to escape us," Ford said.

"Aww, I get to share matching friendship bracelets with someone?" Bill gave Dipper and Ford what he hoped was his most obnoxious smile. "Who's the lucky guy?"

Scowling, Dipper raised his hand.

Bill's smile dimmed. "You are the lesser evil," he admitted grudgingly. "But I'm surprised ol' Six-Fingers doesn't want to keep as tight a grip on me as possible."

"We decided that if you try to kill your bracelet partner and escape, Grunkle Ford would have a better chance of avenging me than I would have avenging him."

Bill's brows shot up. "Ruthlessly utilitarian. Was that Stanford's idea?"

Ford ignored the question, pushing on with his conversation with Stan: "And anyway, there might be more people in the shack, but none of them would be me. I know him better than anyone else."

Bill laughed hard enough that his feet momentarily lifted off the floor. "Oh do you!"

Ford's gaze shot to Bill's face, eyes blazing with fury. "You know I do. I've spent thirty years learning every trick, every lie, every betrayal that's made you who you—"

"What's my favorite food."

Ford's mouth worked uselessly. "That—doesn't matter—"

"You think you know my innermost soul when you don't even know my favorite food?"

"Favorite... human food, or...?"

"Oh, sure, I'll give you a fighting chance. Human."

Ford chewed on the inside of his mouth for several seconds. Finally, he said, "Jalapeños."

Bill crossed the entryway, leaned into the hallway, and took a deep breath. "HEY, MABEL!"

From the far end of the house (where Mabel was seeing how high she could jump in the floor room), she shouted, "YEAH?"

"WHAT'S MY FAVORITE FOOD?"

"NACHOS WITH CHOCOLATE SAUCE AND SUMMER-SHAPED SPRINKLES!"

Bill gestured down the hall, ta-da. "THANK YOU!"

"I was close," Ford grumbled. "Nachos have jalapeños."

Stan said, "You're not even out of the house and he's getting under your skin. Are you sure you wanna—?"

"I am not," Ford said, "leaving him in the house. And if you'd heard how he was fighting to stay under this roof, you wouldn't trust him in here either."

Stan looked at Bill.

Bill looked Stan dead in the eyes and said, "I don't know what he's talking about. I agreed to go as soon as he asked."

"Oh, shut your—" Ford snatched the bracelets off the coat rack, flung one end at Bill, and handed Dipper the other. "Put these on. We're leaving."

Bill scowled, but considered his odds of successfully resisting, reluctantly put his end of the bracelet on, and yelled down the hall, "BYE, MABEL! I'M BEING KIDNAPPED BY YOUR UNCLE AGAINST MY WILL! I MAY NEVER RETURN!"

"I'LL MISS YOU FOREVER!"

Ford opened the door and gestured impatiently. Bill took a couple reluctant steps closer, but stopped to look at Soos and say, "Remember what I said. Do not let Mabel be in the air when gravity comes back, you know if someone doesn't watch her she'll launch herself as high as she can—"

Ford snapped, "Either you walk or I drag you, Cipher."

"I'm coming." He stepped outside, paused, and cast a worried look at the sky; then squeezed his eyes shut, lowered his head, and walked into the sunlight.

####

(That's this week's chapter! I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts. Next week: I'm gonna do my level best to shatter your hearts. Look forward to it!)

[doormatty3]

Veiled Passions (Josh Lambert x Reader)

Masterlist Ao3

Summary:

[Josh Lambert x Female Reader] [Josh Lambert x You]  After you and Josh had sex, the mutual attraction between you continues to grow stronger. You know that you should stay away from him - he’s your friend's dad, around two decades older than you and divorced. And yet, you both find yourselves irresistibly drawn to each other. So, as the year progresses, you decide to pursue a committed relationship while keeping it a secret from friends and family. But lies never live to be old - especially when they are this severe. And yet, he makes you the happiest you’ve ever been, but doubts creep in as you're reminded of the reasons you should steer clear. And when Dalton, your friend, also confesses his feelings for you, the misery deepens, complicating an already tumultuous situation. Amidst the chaos, one thing remains clear - your heart belongs to Josh Lambert. OR: Josh shows you who you belong to.

Wordcount: 11440

Warnings: 18+, unprotected sex, creampie, breeding, vaginal sex, smut, dirty talk, older man/ younger woman, daddy issues, face fucking, blowjob

A/N: There it is - the second part of my Josh x Reader stories. So I advise you to catch up on the first one before you read this one: Part 1: Pushing Further

Being a senior has its perks because you have the privilege to venture beyond the campus. While freshmen and those in between can also partake, the administration isn’t particularly fond of the idea.

The freedom to come and go as you please became a valuable asset, especially when it comes to visiting Josh at his house.

Josh, your friend’s father, is almost two decades your senior and divorced but also unbelievably hot and caring.

You got fortunate when you first had sex with him in Dalton and Chris’ room -  you cleaned up and then chatted until they came by. 

You still get wet when you think about that afternoon. It had been and still is, undoubtedly, the hottest thing you’ve ever done. You can still remember how it felt to have his cum inside your cunt dripping out while standing there, trying to appear normal while talking to Dalton and Chris and not like you just got absolutely wrecked by his dad.

Nevertheless, you decided unanimously that the sex in that room had been a one-time thing - the next time, he fucked you in your own dorm bed. And to avoid being caught by anyone, you decided it was safer to meet up at his place since it would have been hard to explain why he was in your room and not in his son’s. 

So far, you haven’t talked about what exactly you are, but there is a silent acknowledgement that your connection goes beyond the superficial. Perhaps fueled by an underlying fear on his part  -  a fear of potential heartache. It’s as if he sees in you the power to evoke emotions that are both thrilling and terrifying. And he’s right with that - the whatever you have has the potential of stirring up dust for both of you. 

Yet, there is a subtle yet undeniable gravitational force that draws you closer to Josh, and in turn, he reciprocates with a magnetic attraction. 

But you know that your fondness for him goes beyond mere friendship or a feeling of infatuation - you genuinely like him. 

As the year unfolds, so does the depth of your friendship with Chris and Dalton. Your bond remains steadfast, growing stronger with each shared moment. You make it a point to meet up as often as possible, cherishing the camaraderie and the sense of belonging that comes with it.

_____

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air as you, Dalton, and Chris settle into your usual spot at the café. It’s a cosy haven amidst the hustle and bustle of the outside world, a place where you can relax and enjoy each other’s company.

Chris’s eyes light up with excitement as she leans forward. “Hey, guys, I was thinking,” she begins, a mischievous grin playing on her lips. “What do you say we do something fun this weekend? Maybe go on a road trip or check out that new exhibit downtown?”

Dalton nods eagerly in agreement. “That sounds like a blast! Count me in! We could even go camping if the weather’s nice.”

Your heart flutters at the thought of spending quality time with your friends, but as you consider their invitation, a pang of guilt tugs at your conscience. You already have plans for the weekend  -  plans with Josh that you can’t share with your friends.

With a regretful smile, you shake your head. “As much as I’d love to join you guys, I’ve already made plans for the weekend,” you explain, hoping they won’t press for details.

Chris raises an eyebrow, curiosity evident in her expression. “Oh? What kind of plans?”

You hesitate, knowing you can’t reveal the truth. “It’s, um, a family thing,” you reply vaguely, feeling a twinge of guilt at the half-truth. “You know how it is.”

Dalton nods in understanding, though there’s a hint of disappointment in his eyes. “No worries, we’ll catch you next time.”

As the conversation shifts to other topics, you can’t shake the feeling of unease that settles over you. Keeping secrets from your friends weighs heavily on your conscience, but the thought of betraying Josh’s trust is even more daunting.

With a heavy heart, you take a sip of your coffee, the bitter taste serving as a reminder of the complexities of your situation. As you sit in silence, lost in thought, you can’t help but wonder how long you can keep up the charade before the truth inevitably comes to light.

_____

The Saturday morning sun filters through the curtains as you make your way to Josh’s house. It’s early; the world is still waking up around you, but you’re filled with a sense of anticipation as you approach his doorstep. Each step brings you closer to the clandestine rendezvous you’ve been eagerly awaiting.

As you reach the familiar front door, you pause for a moment, taking a deep breath to steady your nerves. You can’t help but feel a flutter of excitement in your stomach, knowing that soon you’ll be wrapped in Josh’s arms, lost in the warmth of his presence.

With a steadying exhale, you reach out to knock, the sound echoing through the quiet morning air. Moments later, the door swings open, revealing Josh’s face, his eyes lighting up with a smile as he greets you.

His brown hair is tousled in a charmingly dishevelled way, and your breath catches in your throat. His stubble beard, meticulously groomed, frames his jawline perfectly, adding an air of ruggedness to his otherwise refined appearance. But it’s his piercing blue eyes, shining brightly with warmth and affection, that never fail to leave you spellbound.

Every time you lay eyes on him, it’s as if you’re struck by lightning, your heart skipping a beat at the sight of his undeniable handsomeness. His presence alone has a way of electrifying your senses, leaving you breathless and longing for more.

Dressed in a soft white shirt that hugs his toned arms and contours deliciously over his soft middle, Josh exudes an effortless allure. Paired with grey sweatpants and bare feet, he exudes a casual charm that only serves to enhance his appeal.

As you take in the sight of him standing before you, radiant and inviting, you can’t help but feel a surge of desire coursing through your veins. There’s an undeniable magnetism to him, a pull that draws you in closer with each passing moment.

“Hey,” he says softly, his voice tinged with warmth. “I’m glad you’re here.”

A rush of relief floods through you at his words, dispelling any lingering doubts or anxieties. You return his smile, a sense of comfort settling over you in his presence.

“Me too,” you reply, your voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

Without another word, Josh steps aside, inviting you into his home with a gentle gesture. As you cross the threshold, you can’t help but feel a sense of familiarity wash over you, as if you belong here with him.

As soon as the door clicks shut behind you, Josh wastes no time closing the distance between you, his arms enveloping you in a warm, reassuring embrace. The world around you fades into insignificance as he pulls you close, his touch sending shivers down your spine.

With a gentle yet firm grasp, he tilts your chin upwards, his blue eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that leaves you breathless. And then, without a word, his lips meet yours in a kiss that ignites a firestorm of emotion within you.

His kiss is tender yet passionate, a symphony of longing and desire that pulses between you with every beat of your heart. The softness of his lips against yours sends a wave of electricity coursing through your body, igniting every nerve ending with a spark of anticipation.

As you melt into his embrace, you feel a sense of completeness wash over you, as if every piece of your being has found its rightful place in his arms. The world falls away, leaving only the two of you suspended in a moment of pure, unadulterated bliss.

Time seems to stand still as you lose yourself in the sensation of his lips moving against yours, each kiss deepening the connection between you.

In that fleeting moment, nothing else matters except the overwhelming feelings that consume you. And as you bask in the warmth of his embrace, you know that this is where you belong  -  in his arms.

As you break from the hug, Josh leads you into his living room, the soft glow of the morning light bathing the room in a warm, inviting ambience. 

Both of you sit down on the cushions, and he pulls you close, sighing softly and content. As you steal a glance at him, you feel your heart flutter, and you know that this is the moment you need to talk about your feelings. 

There’s no easy way to broach the subject, no simple words to convey the complexities of your emotions.

“Josh,” you begin, your voice barely above a whisper, “there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

He turns to you, his blue eyes reflecting concern as he reaches out to gently squeeze your hand. “Of course, sweetheart. What’s on your mind?”

You take a deep breath, steeling yourself for the vulnerability of your confession. “It’s about us,” you say, the words tumbling forth hesitantly, and you see his brow furrow. “About where we stand, what we mean to each other.”

Josh listens intently, his expression a mix of understanding and apprehension - and fear. “Go on,” he urges softly, his voice trembling.

“It’s just...,” you begin, your voice faltering as you grapple with the weight of your emotions. “I care about you, Josh, more than I can put into words. But there are so many obstacles in our way.”

You pause, struggling to find the right words to convey the myriad of concerns swirling in your mind. “The age difference, the fact that you’re my friend’s dad... It’s all so complicated.”

Josh nods in understanding, his gaze softening with empathy. “I know,” he says gently, and as he continues, his voice gets quieter with every word until he is whispering. “Believe me, I’ve thought about all of that too. But none of it changes how I feel about you.”

His words wash over you like a soothing balm, offering a glimmer of hope amidst the uncertainty. “I want something permanent with you,” you admit, your voice tinged with vulnerability. “Something real and lasting.”

A flicker of emotion crosses Josh’s features, his expression a mixture of tenderness and determination. “And so do I,” he replies, his voice unwavering. 

“I want us to be in a proper relationship,” he continues, his words carrying a weight that fills the room. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”

The air seems to crackle with electricity as his declaration sinks in, and for a moment, you’re rendered speechless. His words echo in your mind, sending ripples of emotion cascading through your soul.

A soft smile tugs at the corners of your lips as you meet his gaze, your heart overflowing with warmth and affection. “I’d like that,” you say softly, your voice filled with a quiet certainty. “I’d like to be your girlfriend.”

The words feel right, settling into place like pieces of a puzzle finally coming together. In that moment, you know with absolute clarity that this is where you’re meant to be  -  in Josh’s arms, as his partner, his confidante, his love.

His face lights up with a radiant smile, his eyes alight with joy as he reaches out to take your hand in his. “Thank you,” he whispers, his voice filled with sincerity. “You mean everything to me.”

As the weight of Josh’s words hangs in the air, a charged silence settles between you, filled with anticipation and longing. In that moment, without a word, he closes the gap between you, his lips meeting yours in a tender yet passionate kiss.

Time seems to stand still as the world fades away, leaving only the sensation of his touch, the warmth of his embrace. His kiss is like a symphony, each movement a melody that resonates deep within your soul.

In that fleeting moment, as you melt into each other’s embrace, you’re lost in a whirlwind of sensation, every nerve ending alight with the electricity of his touch. It’s a kiss that speaks volumes, a silent declaration of the love and desire that binds you together.

And as you pull away, breathless and flushed with emotion, and Josh’s brilliant blue eyes lock with yours, a surge of electricity courses through your veins, igniting a firestorm of desire within you. Without a word, he leans in once more, his lips capturing yours in a kiss that is both urgent and tender.

His hand cups your face with a gentle yet possessive touch, his fingers tracing the contours of your cheek as if committing every detail to memory. In that moment, there’s no room for doubt or hesitation, only the raw intensity of the connection between you.

The world falls away as you lose yourself in the sensation of his lips moving against yours, each kiss igniting a spark of longing and passion that burns brighter with each passing moment. It’s a dance of desire, a symphony of sensation that leaves you breathless and intoxicated with need.

_____

As the weekend unfolds in a whirlwind of love and laughter, you find yourself swept up in the magic of the moments shared with Josh. Each glance, each tender touch, serves as a poignant reminder of the deep connection you share, a connection that transcends the obstacles looming on the horizon.

Despite the challenges that lie ahead  -  the age difference and the complexities of your relationship with Dalton and Chris  -  you can’t help but revel in the joy of what you and Josh have found together. 

But even amidst the euphoria of your budding romance, there’s a shadow that lingers in the recesses of your mind  -  the inevitable day when you’ll have to face the truth to confront the consequences of your choices. The thought of telling Chris and especially Dalton fills you with dread, like a Damocles sword hanging over your head, threatening to shatter the fragile peace you’ve found.

Yet, in the quiet moments shared with Josh, you find solace and strength, knowing that you’re not alone in this journey. He shares your fears and your doubts, but he’s also unwavering in his commitment to fight for what you have.

And so, hand in hand, heart in heart, you face the uncertainty of the future together, knowing that whatever challenges may come your way, you’ll confront them head-on, united in your love and determination.

As the sun sets on the blissful weekend spent in Josh’s company, a bittersweet sensation settles in the air. The time has come to bid farewell, though neither of you is quite ready to part ways.

Standing at the threshold of Josh’s front door, you exchange lingering gazes, each reluctant to break the spell of the moment. The weight of impending separation hangs heavy in the air, a silent reminder of the inevitable reality awaiting you both.

With a heavy heart, you muster the courage to speak, your voice soft but determined. “I wish this weekend didn’t have to end,” you confess, your words tinged with a hint of longing. 

Josh nods in agreement, his gaze filled with a mixture of sadness and affection. “I know,” he replies softly, reaching out to take your hand in his. “But we’ll see each other again soon, I promise.”

The warmth of his touch sends a shiver down your spine, a reassuring reminder of the bond you share. “Do you want to meet up next week?” you ask tentatively, hoping to prolong the precious moments spent together.

A shadow of hesitation crosses Josh’s features, his brow furrowing with concern. “I’d love to, but I have the kids next weekend,” he explains, his voice tinged with regret. “It’s going to be a bit chaotic.”

Your heart sinks at the realisation that your time together will be limited, but you refuse to let disappointment overshadow the moment. “That’s okay,” you say, forcing a smile despite the twinge of sadness in your chest. “We’ll find a way to make it work, even if it’s just for a little while.”

A flicker of determination crosses Josh’s features as he meets your gaze, his eyes sparkling with resolve. “How about you come over during the week?” he suggests, a hint of excitement in his voice. “We could grab dinner or just spend some time together.”

A surge of warmth washes over you at his suggestion, the prospect of seeing him again filling you with renewed hope. “I’d like that,” you reply, a genuine smile gracing your lips. “I’d like that a lot.”

His hands gently cup your face, his touch sending a wave of warmth cascading through your body.

With a soft, reassuring touch, he smooths his hands over your cheeks, his fingers tracing the contours of your face with a gentleness that speaks volumes of his affection. The sensation is electric, sending shivers down your spine and igniting a spark of desire deep within.

With a gentle yet firm grasp, he angles your head upwards, his touch guiding you with instinctual ease. His eyes, a brilliant shade of blue, meet yours with a tenderness that steals your breath away, holding you captive in a moment of unspoken connection.

And then, without a word, his lips find yours in a kiss that is both tender and passionate, a testament to the depth of the emotions that bind you together. It’s a kiss filled with longing and promise, a silent vow to cherish each moment shared between you.

In that fleeting moment, as you melt into his embrace, you’re consumed by a whirlwind of sensation  -  the softness of his lips against yours, the warmth of his touch, the overwhelming surge of emotion that threatens to swallow you whole.

“See you next week, sweetheart,” Josh breathes, his voice laced with longing and affection as you reluctantly part from his embrace.

A bittersweet smile graces your lips at his words, the endearment wrapping around your heart like a comforting embrace. “Until next week,” you reply softly, your voice echoing with the same longing that fills his.

With one last lingering glance, you tear yourself away from Josh’s warmth, a pang of reluctance tugging at your heartstrings as you step out into the cool evening air.

The weight of impending separation hangs heavy in the air as you make your way back to your dorm at university, each step a reluctant retreat from the haven of Josh’s presence. The memory of his touch lingers on your skin, a lingering reminder of the love and connection you share.

_____

The familiar aroma of coffee envelops you as you and Dalton settle into your favourite spot at the café, the gentle hum of conversation providing a soothing backdrop to your afternoon. With steaming cups cradled in your hands, you both take a moment to savour the rich, comforting warmth of the brew.

“So, something strange happened the other day,” Dalton begins, his voice breaking through the tranquil ambience of the café. You glance up, the corners of your mouth quirking into a smile as you listen to him speak.

“What’s up?” you ask, curiosity piqued by the hint of intrigue in his tone.

Dalton shifts in his seat, a thoughtful expression crossing his features. “My brother was over at Dad’s place on Monday,” he explains, his brow furrowing slightly as he recalls the memory. “And he said he saw some women’s clothes in his house and so on.”

Your heart skips a beat at his words, a surge of apprehension coursing through your veins. You try to maintain your composure, but the thud of your heart against your chest betrays the unease gnawing at your insides.

“Oh, really?” you reply, your voice carefully neutral despite the turmoil churning within you. “That’s... interesting.”

Dalton nods, his expression troubled. “Yeah, it is,” he agrees, his gaze fixed on the tabletop as if lost in thought. “I don’t know, it just seems weird, you know? I always thought maybe my parents would try again, but... I don’t know.”

His words hang heavy in the air between you, a palpable sense of unease settling over the table. You can sense the conflict brewing within Dalton, the uncertainty of the situation weighing heavily on his mind.

“What do you think about it?” he asks, finally lifting his gaze to meet yours. There’s a vulnerability in his eyes, a silent plea for reassurance amidst the storm of emotions swirling within him.

You take a moment to gather your thoughts, choosing your words carefully before responding. “I can understand why you’d feel that way,” you say softly, reaching out to place a comforting hand on his arm. “It’s natural to hope for your parents to reconcile, especially after everything they’ve been through.”

Dalton nods, his expression thoughtful as he processes your words. “Yeah, I guess so,” he murmurs, his voice tinged with uncertainty. “But still, it’s just... weird, you know? I never expected Dad to have a girlfriend.”

You offer him a sympathetic smile, knowing that there are no easy answers to be found in situations like these. “It’s okay to feel that way,” you assure him, your voice gentle yet firm. “But at the end of the day, your dad deserves to be happy, just like anyone else.”

Dalton sighs, a hint of resignation in his expression as he nods in agreement. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he concedes, though you can still sense the lingering unease in his demeanour.

As you sit together in the quiet of the café, the weight of Dalton’s revelation hanging heavy in the air, you can’t help but feel a sense of foreboding creeping over you. The fear of him discovering the truth about you and his father gnaws at the edges of your consciousness, a dark shadow looming on the horizon.

But for now, all you can do is offer Dalton your support and understanding, hoping against hope that he won’t uncover the secret you’ve been desperately trying to keep hidden. And so, with a heavy heart and a silent prayer for guidance, you continue to navigate the delicate balance between truth and secrecy, unsure of what the future may hold.

Dalton fidgets with his coffee cup, his gaze fixed on the table as if lost in thought. Finally, after what feels like an eternity of silence, he lifts his head to meet your gaze, his expression tentative yet determined.

“Um…I…There is something else I have been meaning to ask…” he begins, his voice hesitant as he struggles to find the right words. “I was wondering if... maybe you’d want to go out with me sometime?”

His question catches you off guard, a rush of emotions flooding through you at his unexpected proposal. For a moment, you’re at a loss for words, the weight of his request hanging heavy in the air between you.

But as you gather your thoughts, you realise that you can’t accept his invitation, not when you’re already seeing his father. The thought of hurting him further fills you with guilt, but you know that you have to be honest with him.

“I... Dalton, I appreciate the offer,” you say gently, your voice tinged with regret. “But I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

His brow furrows in confusion, hurt flickering in his eyes as he struggles to process your response. “Why not?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

You hesitate, unsure of how much to reveal. “It’s just... complicated,” you begin, choosing your words carefully. “I’m already seeing someone.”

Dalton’s expression darkens, a shadow of disappointment crossing his features as he absorbs your words. “Oh,” he murmurs, his voice barely audible over the din of the café. “I didn’t realise...”

You reach out to place a comforting hand on his arm, offering him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry, Dalton,” you say softly. “I should have been clearer from the beginning. You’re a great guy, but... I just don’t have those kinds of feelings for you.”

His hurt is palpable, a tangible presence in the space between you. You can see the pain etched in the lines of his face the vulnerability in his eyes as he struggles to come to terms with your rejection.

“I understand,” he replies, his voice thick with emotion. “I just... I thought maybe...”

You can hear the hurt and confusion in his voice, and it breaks your heart to see him like this. You wish there were something you could say or do to ease his pain, but you know that some wounds run deeper than words can heal.

A furrow forms between his brows, his eyes reflecting a mix of hurt and confusion. “I... I thought you were interested too,” he admits, his voice barely above a whisper. “I mean, we spend so much time together, and... I don’t know, I just thought...”

His words trail off, leaving an uncomfortable silence in their wake. You can see the turmoil churning within him, the weight of your revelation sinking in with each passing moment.

“I’m sorry, Dalton,” you say softly. “I never meant to lead you on. I value our friendship, but... I guess I didn’t realise how you felt.”

He nods, his expression pained as he struggles to come to terms with your words. “It’s just... it’s confusing,” he admits, his voice tinged with frustration. “I mean, you never mentioned that you were seeing someone. Not to me or Chris.”

You shift uncomfortably in your seat, feeling the weight of his accusation bearing down on you. Guilt gnaws at your conscience, knowing that you’ve withheld the truth about your relationship with his father.

“It’s... it’s still pretty fresh,” you explain, your voice tinged with uncertainty. “I’m still just... figuring it out, I guess.”

Dalton’s brows knit together in confusion, his eyes searching yours for answers. “But...” he starts, a note of disbelief creeping into his voice. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

The guilt weighs heavily on your shoulders, a burden that threatens to suffocate you. “I... I don’t know,” you tell him, your voice barely above a whisper. “I guess I was just... keeping it private.”

Dalton’s expression remains puzzled, his confusion evident as he tries to make sense of your explanation. “So, who is it?” he presses, his tone tinged with curiosity. “Is it serious?”

You swallow hard, the weight of your deception pressing down on you like a lead weight. “Um... well, it’s someone I met recently,” you reply vaguely, your voice faltering as you struggle to find the right words. “And... yeah, it’s... it’s getting pretty serious.”

As the silence stretches between you, a heavy tension settles over the table, the weight of your deception hanging in the air. And when Dalton speaks again, his voice is tinged with a hint of sadness.

“I want to be happy for you, I really do,” he says softly, his eyes betraying a mix of hurt and resignation. “But I think I need some space to process all of this.”

Your heart sinks at his words, the realisation of the pain you’ve caused him hitting you like a punch to the gut. “I understand,” you reply, your voice barely above a whisper. “And I’m sorry, Dalton. I never meant to hurt you.”

He nods, though the hurt in his eyes remains. “I know,” he murmurs, his voice barely audible over the din of the café. “I just... I need some time to figure things out.”

Before you can respond, Dalton rises from his seat, his movements stiff and uncertain. And with one last lingering glance, he turns and walks away, leaving you alone with the weight of your deception and the echoes of his pain ringing in your ears.

As Dalton’s footsteps fade into the distance, leaving you alone, a heavy silence settles over the café. The air feels thick with tension, each breath you take weighted with the guilt of your secret.

As you sit there, staring into your now lukewarm coffee, your mind races with thoughts of Dalton’s reaction when he inevitably discovers the truth about your relationship. 

The realisation that Dalton harbours feelings for you catches you off guard, adding an unexpected layer of complexity to an already delicate situation.

You had always assumed Dalton viewed you as just a friend, never once considering that his feelings might run deeper. But now, with the truth laid bare, you can’t help but wonder how he will react when he learns that you are involved with his father.

The thought churns in your stomach, a knot of anxiety tightening with each passing moment. You hadn’t anticipated the depth of Dalton’s emotions nor the potential devastation his discovery could bring. The prospect of facing his hurt and anger fills you with a sense of dread, knowing that you will be the cause of his pain.

But even as you grapple with the implications of Dalton’s feelings, you know that you cannot hide the truth from him forever. Sooner or later, he will learn the truth, and you must be prepared to face the consequences of your actions.

You take a deep breath, trying to steady your nerves as you contemplate the difficult conversation that lies ahead. 

But for now, all you can do is wait, trapped in the limbo of uncertainty, and pray that somehow, someway, you will find a way to navigate the tangled web of emotions that threatens to tear you apart.

With a deep sigh, you find yourself grasping for the lifeline of your phone, the urge to seek solace in Josh’s arms overpowering. Fingers trembling slightly, you unlock the screen and navigate to Josh’s contact, your heart pounding with desperate urgency, and you text him.

Hey,

Can I come over? I really need to see you right now…

Please?

The words spill from your fingertips, a plea born of desperation and the overwhelming need for solace. 

Seconds stretch into eternity as you wait for a response, each passing moment feeling too long. Then, finally, a notification flashes across your screen, and you exhale a shaky breath as you read Josh’s reply.

Of course, you can come over. Is everything okay?

Relief floods through you at his words, a wave of gratitude washing away some of the anxiety that had threatened to drown you. 

Without hesitation, you gather your belongings, the need to see your boyfriend overpowering any lingering doubts or hesitations. 

With each step towards his house, the weight on your shoulders lifts slightly, replaced by a glimmer of hope that perhaps, in his embrace, you’ll find the strength to weather the storm raging within you.

Arriving at Josh’s doorstep, you knock eagerly, the sound echoing through the quiet evening air. The door swings open, revealing Josh’s familiar silhouette framed in the soft glow of the hallway light. Without a word, he pulls you into his arms, the warmth of his embrace enveloping you in a cocoon of comfort and security.

As you sink into his arms, the weight of your troubles begins to lift, replaced by the simple reassurance of being held by someone who cares. In that moment, as you bury your face in Josh’s chest, you know that you’re exactly where you need to be.

Then, as if sensing your need for a moment of connection, Josh pulls back ever so slightly, his hands gentle as he brushes a stray strand of hair from your face.

In that simple gesture, you feel a rush of gratitude and affection, a silent acknowledgement of the bond that exists between you. And before you can say a word, he leans forward, kissing your forehead softly.

The gesture sends a shiver down your spine, a tangible reminder of the depth of his care and concern for you. For a moment, you simply stand there, lost in the warmth of his touch and the softness of his lips against your skin.

With a wordless understanding, Josh steps back, his gaze lingering on you with a mix of tenderness and reassurance. He gestures for you to come inside, his silent invitation a promise of safety and comfort in the midst of the storm. With a grateful nod, you follow him into the warmth of his home.

As you settle into Josh’s living room, the weight of your troubles pressing heavily upon you, he takes a seat beside you. His blue eyes, usually so warm and inviting, now reflect a hint of concern. “So, what happened?” he asks gently, his voice a soft murmur that cuts through the silence.

“It’s about Dalton,” you continue, your words hesitant as you try to find the right way to explain. “Today, at the coffee shop... he...”

Josh’s brows furrow slightly, a flicker of concern crossing his features. “He what?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper, his blue eyes searching your face for any signs of what happened that left you so distraught.

“He told me that he... has feelings for me,” you admit, the weight of the confession hanging heavy in the air between you. 

 His hand freezes mid-motion, his fingers tangled in his hair, his eyes widen in surprise, and his lips part slightly as he processes your words.

“I see,” he murmurs, his voice tinged with a mix of emotions you can’t quite decipher. He leans forward, his arms resting on the table, his muscles flexing slightly under the fabric of his shirt as he waits for you to continue.

You swallow hard, the weight of the conversation settling heavily on your shoulders. “I... I didn’t know how to respond,” you admit, your gaze dropping momentarily before meeting Josh’s again. “I care about him, of course, but not in the same way.”

You take a deep breath, feeling a knot form in your stomach as you gather the courage to speak your truth. “Josh,” you continue, your voice gaining strength, “I want you to know that I only want you.”

The room falls silent, the gravity of the conversation hanging heavy in the air. You watch Josh carefully, waiting for his response, the uncertainty gnawing at your insides.

His blue eyes meet yours, a mixture of surprise and uncertainty flickering within them. He leans back in his chair, running a hand through his hair once more, the tousled strands falling across his forehead in a way that makes your heart skip a beat.

His brow is furrowed slightly, and his lips are drawn into a thin line while the soft afternoon light filters through the window, casting a warm glow on his features and highlighting the gentle contours of his face.

For a long moment, he says nothing, his gaze fixed on some distant point beyond the walls of his living room. His eyes, a mesmerising shade of deep blue, reflect the turmoil of emotions swirling within him. His jaw clenches slightly, the muscles flexing beneath the surface as he grapples with his own thoughts and emotions. The silence stretches on, the tension between you growing more palpable by the second.

And then, finally, Josh’s eyes search yours, a hint of uncertainty clouding their usually bright blue depths. “Maybe... maybe someone like Dalton would be better for you,” he suggests quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.

The words hit you like a ton of bricks, a shockwave of disbelief rippling through your body. You stare at him, the weight of his words sinking in with a sickening finality as your heart aches at the thought of losing him.

“But Josh,” you protest, your voice trembling with emotion. “I don’t want someone like Dalton. I want you.”

He meets your gaze, his eyes filled with a sadness you can’t bear to see. “I know,” he murmurs, his voice heavy with regret. “But maybe... maybe I’m not what you need.”

The words hang in the air between you, a painful reminder of the chasm that lies between your desires and reality. You want to reach out to him, to plead with him to see things differently, but the weight of his resignation holds you back.

At that moment, you realise that no matter how much you want things to be different, you can’t force Josh to change his mind.

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes as you struggle to come to terms with the harsh reality of the situation. You had hoped that Josh would be the one to offer you solace in your time of need, but now, it seems that even he can’t fill the void that lies within you.

With a heavy heart, you rise from your seat, the weight of your sorrow pressing down on you like a physical burden. “I should go,” you say quietly, your voice barely above a whisper.

Josh nods, his expression filled with a sadness that mirrors your own. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his voice thick with emotion. “I wish things could be different.”

But as you turn to leave, a surge of frustration and anger rises within you. You refuse to accept defeat without a fight, not when he clearly wants you as much as you want him. You whirl around to face Josh, determination flashing in your eyes.

“No, Josh,” you say firmly, the intensity of your emotions rising. “I won’t accept that. I won’t settle for someone else when all I want is you.”

He looks away, his expression troubled as he grapples with his own thoughts. “I just don’t know if this is such a good idea,” he admits, his voice filled with uncertainty.

You reach across the table, taking his hand in yours, the warmth of his touch sending a shiver down your spine. “Josh, look at me,” you say firmly, your voice filled with conviction as you wait for him to meet your eyes before continuing. “From the moment I met you, I knew there was something special between us. I wanted you then, and I want you now.”

His eyes widen in surprise at your outburst, the weight of your words hanging heavy in the air between you. But you refuse to back down, the fire burning bright within you.

“I love you, Josh,” you declare, the words tumbling from your lips before you can stop them. “And I won’t let you push me away because you’re too afraid to face your own feelings.”

For a moment, the room is filled with a deafening silence, the tension crackling between you like electricity. And then, slowly but surely, Josh’s expression softens, his walls crumbling in the face of your unwavering resolve. He looks at you, his blue eyes searching yours for a moment before he finally speaks. 

“I... I love you too,” he admits, his voice barely above a whisper and filled with a tenderness that takes your breath away. “But I’m scared, sweetheart. I’m scared of what this could mean for us. Especially now that Dalton has feelings for you.”

You step forward, closing the distance between you until you’re standing mere inches apart. With a trembling hand, you reach out to cup his cheek, the warmth of his skin sending a shiver down your spine.

“We can face this together,” you say softly, your voice filled with hope.

His gaze softens, a glimmer of affection and determination dancing in his eyes as he draws nearer. “Yes, we will,” he murmurs, his voice a gentle reassurance amidst the storm of emotions.

With his vow echoing in your ears, you close the distance between you, pressing your lips to his in a tender, desperate kiss. The initial brush of your lips ignites a fierce passion between you, each touch sparking a wildfire of desire that threatens to consume you both.

His body responds to your touch, drawing you in closer as if unable to get enough of you.

As you both lose yourselves in the passionate embrace, his hands roam over your back, pulling you nearer with each caress. His touch sends electric currents coursing through your veins, drawing you closer with an irresistible magnetism.

When he pulls back slightly with a soft groan, his eyes flutter closed, his breaths coming in ragged gasps as he tries to steady himself. But the yearning between you is undeniable, pulling you back into each other’s arms with an irresistible force.

But before you can catch your breath, his lips find yours once again, reigniting the flames of passion that threaten to consume you both.

“I want you, Josh - only you,” you whisper breathlessly, the words a fervent declaration of your undying love and devotion.

His hands slide up your back, the warmth of his touch sending shivers down your spine as he pulls you even closer as if trying to erase the space between you. You can feel the fervour in his embrace, his body trembling slightly with the intensity of his desire, his lips seeking yours with a hunger that matches your own.

“I can’t imagine wanting anyone else either, sweetheart,” Josh murmurs against your lips, his voice laced with raw emotion. “The way you make me feel... it’s indescribable.”

His words wash over you like a comforting wave, enveloping you in a cocoon of love and longing. In this moment, there is no doubt, no hesitation, only the overwhelming certainty of your connection.

With each word he speaks, you feel your heart swell with love for him, aching to express the depth of your emotions in return. But words seem inadequate in the face of such overwhelming passion, so instead, you let your actions speak for you.

You deepen the kiss, pouring all of your love and desire into the tender caress of your lips against his. as you lose yourself in the intoxicating rhythm of his kisses.

Feeling a surge of emotion overwhelming you, you break the kiss, your heart pounding in your chest as you take a deep breath. 

With a shaky breath, you reach out, your fingers trailing lightly over his skin as you trace the contours of his jaw. His eyes never leave yours, a silent acknowledgement passing between you as you share this intimate moment.

With trembling hands, you slowly sink to your knees before him. The gravity of the moment washes over you like a tidal wave.

Looking up at him, your eyes meet his, a mixture of love, desire, and vulnerability reflected in their depths. There’s a raw intensity between you, a silent understanding of the depth of your connection and the magnitude of your feelings.

“Josh,” you whisper, your voice barely above a breath, filled with a mixture of reverence and longing. “I need you. I need us.”

You begin to trace delicate patterns over the fabric of his jeans, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath. Each touch sends a jolt of electricity coursing through you, igniting a fire that burns hot and fierce within your veins.

Josh watches you intently, his gaze locked on yours with an intensity that makes your heart race even faster. His breath hitches slightly as your fingers dance over his legs.

You can feel the tension building between you, a palpable energy that crackles in the air around you. It’s as if the world has faded away, leaving only the two of you in this moment of pure connection and desire.

With each caress, you feel yourself falling deeper and deeper under his spell, lost in the intoxicating whirlwind of sensation and emotion. There’s a hunger in his eyes, a silent plea for more, and you’re more than willing to oblige.

Your touch grows bolder, more urgent, as you trace the outline of his muscles, feeling the strength and power that lies beneath his clothes. His breath comes in short, ragged gasps, his chest rising and falling with each passing moment.

And as you continue to explore his body with your fingertips, you can’t help but marvel at the beauty and complexity of the man before you. He’s so much more than just a physical being  -  he’s a soul, a heart, a mind, all wrapped up in one irresistible package.

As Josh watches before him, his eyes widen with a mix of surprise and excitement. Without hesitation, you quickly reach for the waistband of his pants, your fingers deftly undoing the button and zipper. With a swift motion, you push his trousers and boxers down to his ankles, and he steps out of them gracefully. 

His erection springs free, thick and hard, glistening with anticipation, and you can’t help but lick your lips as you take in the sight. The dim light of the room dances across his skin, highlighting every curve and contour of his muscular frame.

His breath comes in short, ragged gasps, his chest rising and falling with anticipation. There’s a hunger in his eyes, a primal desire that mirrors your own. He reaches out to you, his hand trembling slightly as he cups your cheek, his touch sending shivers down your spine.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs, his voice husky with desire. “I can’t believe you’re here with me, doing this.”

His words send a thrill coursing through you, igniting a fire that burns hot and fierce within your veins. You lean into his touch, your heart pounding in your chest as you feel the heat of his body radiating against your skin.

You reach out and wrap your hand around the base of his dick, causing his breath to hitch and his eyes to roll back in his head. He is hot and heavy in your hand, thick enough that you can’t close your fingers around him as you jerk him off slowly.

After a few pumps, you swirl your tongue over the head of his cock, coating him in your saliva and tasting his precum. Josh groans lowly in his chest as you tease him with your mouth.

The whole situation turns you on beyond belief, and you really like how responsive and loud he can be - it gives you the confidence to continue and take it even further.

So you open your mouth and take the tip inside, sucking lightly as your hand continues to stroke his length. 

As Josh’s hands find their way into your hair, gently gripping the strands, you feel a rush of electricity shoot through your body. His touch is both commanding and tender, his fingers threading through your hair with a delicate precision that sends shivers down your spine.

His breath comes in shallow gasps, his chest rising and falling with each ragged exhale. His eyes flutter shut, lashes brushing against his cheeks as he succumbs to the pleasure radiating from your touch.

“Christ, sweetheart,” he murmurs, his voice rough and strained with desire. “You know how to drive me crazy. Keep doing that, please…”

His words send a thrill coursing through you, igniting a fire that burns hot and fierce within your veins. You continue to take him deeper into your mouth, relishing in the way he responds to your touch, his body trembling with anticipation.

As his fingers tighten in your hair, you feel a surge of desire and unconsciously clench your things.

The sensation of your warm mouth enveloping further causes his breath to hitch in his throat as he gasps in ecstasy.

His moans grow louder, echoing off the walls of the room as the sensation threatens to overwhelm him. “Sweetheart, that feels incredible,” he groans, his voice husky with desire.

When you run your fingernails over his balls while pleasuring him with your mouth, he bucks his hips, causing his cock to be pushed down your throat.

You gag from the sudden intrusion and instantly feel tears pooling in your eyes. 

Josh keeps his dick deep inside your mouth until he realises you’re gagging on him. His grip on your hair slackens, and his eyes widen with concern as he pulls back slightly, watching you carefully. 

“Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to push it that far,” Josh’s voice is filled with genuine concern, his eyes searching yours for any sign of discomfort.

But before he can say anything more, the words tumble from your lips without a second thought. “Fuck, do it again,” you gasp, your voice hoarse with desire as you struggle to catch your breath.

His face contorts into a mix of surprise and excitement, his eyes widening in disbelief at your bold request. But he won’t hesitate for your pleasure. With renewed determination, he gently pushes his cock back into your throat.

You gag again, but this time you’re more prepared for his dick, so it’s easier to take it. His fingers tangle in your hair, a firm grip that sends a thrill down your spine as he takes control of the situation.

Looking up at him, you’re struck by the sight before you. His mouth is slightly parted, lips glistening with anticipation as his tongue occasionally darts out to moisten them. His brows knit together in concentration, a display of the focused desire that burns within him. 

Beads of sweat adorn his forehead, catching the light and casting a soft sheen over his features. His blue eyes, usually so warm and inviting, now smoulder with a fiery intensity that ignites a passionate flame within you.

As he guides your movements with a gentle yet firm hand, you feel a rush of excitement course through your veins. Each touch, each stroke, sends waves of pleasure crashing over you, building the anticipation to dizzying heights. 

In the heat of the moment, you find yourself lost in his gaze, captivated by the raw hunger that burns within him. His touch is electric, sending sparks dancing across your skin as he guides his cock deeper into your throat. 

Saliva pools around his dick and drips over your chin and onto the floor as you gag lightly with each thrust. 

Josh’s hips pick up pace as he continues to fuck your mouth, driving himself closer to climax. And as you surrender to the passion that courses through you, you know that this moment will be etched into your memory forever.

His breath is ragged, his chest rising and falling with each laboured breath as he pulls out of your mouth, his dick coated with your spit. 

Almost greedily, you take a few deep breaths to fill your lungs with air again properly as you try to steady yourself after the intensity of the moment.

Worldlessly he steps closer to you, his hard cock still glistening with your saliva and his precum, framed by his shirt that sits clings tight to his defined frame, accentuating his toned arms and soft middle.

Bending down, he presses his lips against yours, his tongue eagerly seeking entrance as he pulls you up to stand. The kiss is electrifying, sending a jolt of pleasure coursing through your veins as you lose yourself in the sensation of his touch.

With a primal need driving him, Josh breaks the kiss, his lips parting from yours as he slowly removes his shirt. As the fabric slips off his shoulders, it reveals the expanse of his chest, every muscle rippling beneath smooth skin. He tosses the shirt aside without a second thought, his gaze never leaving yours.

You follow suit, fingers fumbling with the buttons of your own shirt until it falls away, leaving you bare before him.

There’s a moment of hesitation, a fleeting pause as you drink in the sight of each other, the raw desire reflected in your eyes.  The sight of him, shirtless and exposed, sends a shiver down your spine. 

Appreciatively, you let your eyes wander over his defined, muscular arms - the play of light and shadow accentuates the contours of his muscles, creating a mesmerising display of power and grace.

As your eyes roam over his torso, your gaze is drawn to the dusting of brown and grey chest hair that adorns it. Each strand seems to catch the light, creating a subtle shimmer that adds to his allure. 

You trace the trail of hair with your eyes, following it as it leads over the softness of his middle, which is a gentle curve that speaks of warmth and comfort. It’s a stark contrast to the chiselled lines of his arms, yet somehow, it only adds to his allure. 

His skin is warm to the touch, and you can feel the heat radiating off him as he moves closer to you.

His gaze roams hungrily over your exposed skin, tracing the curve of your waist, the swell of your breasts, and the line of your collarbone. 

Without a word, you step closer, closing the distance between you until you’re standing mere inches apart. His hand finds its way to the small of your back, pulling you into his form until your bodies are pressed together, skin against skin, heart against heart.

His touch is electric, sending shivers of pleasure coursing through your veins as you lose yourself in the sensation of him. The fire that burns within you is fuelled by him. 

“I’m going to fuck you hard, sweetheart,” he growls, low and primal deep in Josh’s chest, sending a shiver down your spine as you feel the intensity of his desire wash over you. It’s a sound that speaks volumes, letting you know exactly what he plans to do with you in the moments to come.

His eyes, dark with passion, lock onto yours with a hunger that sets your heart racing. There’s an unmistakable longing in his gaze, a fierce desire that leaves no room for doubt about his intentions.

He lifts your legs up, resting them on his shoulders as he positions himself at your cunt.

You moan loudly when the tip of his hard, thick cock parts your slick pussy, entering you without resistance. The stretch of his dick sends shivers down your spine as he continues to push it slowly into you.

This is the first time he takes you without proper preparation - normally, he would eat you out or at least finger you before, but you can’t bring yourself to really care. 

Not when he feels so good, so right, and so big inside you.

Josh’s intense blue eyes remain fixed on you, unwavering as they drink in your every reaction. It’s as though he’s trying to memorise every detail of your face, committing the moment to memory as he loses himself in the depths of you.

You mewl when he bottoms out deep in your cunt, filling you completely. 

“You feel so good, Josh,” you whisper breathlessly, your chest heaving with desire. “Please, move.”

Your words hang in the air, thick with longing and anticipation, as you await his response. Josh’s gaze darkens with desire, his lips parting slightly.

With a low growl of approval, he shifts his weight, his movements deliberate and controlled as he begins to move against you, his hips setting a steady, deep rhythm. The sensation of his body moving with yours sends shockwaves of pleasure coursing through you.

As he moves, his hands roam over your body, leaving a trail of heat in their wake. You gasp at the sensation of his touch, your senses overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment.

With each movement, the pleasure builds, the tension between you reaching a fever pitch as you both give in to the undeniable chemistry that burns between you. At this moment, there is nothing else in the world, but the two of you lost in a sea of desire and passion.

And as you cling to each other, consumed by the heat of the moment, you know that this is just the beginning of a night that promises to be filled with ecstasy and bliss.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he says, his voice hoarse with desire. “Take it.”

His words send a shiver down your spine, igniting a fire deep within you as you move together in perfect harmony. Every touch and every movement is electric, sending waves of pleasure crashing over you with each passing moment.

“God, you’re so hot,” he groans, his eyes locked on your heaving chest. His words only fuel the flames of passion between you, driving you both to new heights of ecstasy. 

His thrusts become more forceful, each one driving deeper into your pussy. The smell of your sweat mingles with the slick sounds of our skin slapping against each other.

He slowly lowers his head, taking one of your nipples into his mouth and sucking hard, igniting every nerve ending it touches with a searing intensity. You arch your back, a moan escaping from your lips as he teases the sensitive nub with his tongue.

His lips follow, leaving a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses in their wake, each one leaving you gasping for breath.

“You’re so damn responsive for me,” he murmurs against your skin, his voice husky with desire. His hands roam freely over your body, tracing the curves and contours with a possessive urgency that sends a thrill down your spine as he moves to capture the other nipple between his teeth gently.

“Only for you, just you,” you mewl, your voice barely a whisper as you surrender to the overwhelming pleasure washing over you.

“That’s right, sweetheart,” he grunts out, his words punctuated by the soft sounds of his lips trailing lower, his breath hot against your skin. 

His hands grip your thighs tightly as he drills into you, his cock hitting all the right spots inside you.

You feel like he electrifies you, setting every nerve ending ablaze with a tantalizing intensity. With each caress, each whispered word, each deep thrust, he ignites a fire deep within you, stoking the flames of desire until they burn with an almost unbearable intensity. 

You feel yourself teetering on the edge, the pleasure building with each passing moment until you’re on the brink of losing yourself entirely to the intoxicating sensation he evokes within you, your cunt clenching around him.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” his voice is rough with desire as he encourages you, each word sending a jolt of electricity through your body as he pushes deeper and faster into you. 

His chest rises and falls with each ragged breath, the exertion of pleasure etched across his features as sweat beads on his forehead glistening in the dim light.

“Nobody fucks me like you do. Nobody pleases me like you do,” you stammer, your words a mixture of moans and gasps, “You feel so good, Josh.”

“You belong to me,” he growls possessively, his voice thick with desire and dominance, his hips slamming against yours as he takes you roughly. The headboard of the sofa thuds against the wall with each powerful thrust.

His eyes, darkened with desire, lock onto yours, his gaze filled with intensity as he thrusts deeper into you. He dominates you with a primal energy, his every touch igniting a fire within you. As the pleasure builds, you feel yourself getting closer to climax, the intensity of the moment overwhelming yet exhilarating.

Your breath comes in ragged gasps as you feel the tension building within you, reaching a fever pitch. “I’m so close,” you whimper, the desperation evident in your voice.

His own breath comes in ragged gasps as he urges you on, his voice a deep growl of desire. “Let it all go, sweetheart,” he encourages, his hands gripping your hips as his hips thrust rapidly into you and his thumb finding your clit to rub rough circles. “I want to feel you come apart in my arms.”

With his encouragement ringing in your ears, you give yourself over to the overwhelming pleasure that courses through your body. Every nerve ending is alight with sensation as you tumble over the edge, waves of ecstasy crashing over you in relentless waves.

He watches you with hunger in his eyes, his own release imminent as he follows you into oblivion. “That’s it, sweetheart,” he groans, his voice strained with the effort of holding back his own climax. “Let me feel you.”

With one final, desperate cry, you shatter into a million pieces, the intensity of your orgasm washing over you like a tidal wave as his name falls from your lips over and over. And as you collapse against him, spent and sated, his fingers dig into your hips for better control as he drives into you one last time.

He releases himself into you, his body shuddering with the force of his orgasm. His hot seed pumps into you, filling every inch of your tight cunt as he loses control completely.

“Oh fuck,” he breathes heavily, still buried deep inside you. You feel your pussy clenching and throbbing, pulsating with the aftermath of your orgasm, milking his aching dick. 

With your bodies still intertwined, he holds you close, unwilling to let go of the intimate connection you’ve just shared. His chest rises and falls in sync with your own, the rhythm of his breath gradually steadying as the euphoria of your shared passion begins to ebb. His cock remains inside you, refusing to let go of the warmth that is your pussy.

“I’ve never felt anything like this before,” he pants, his voice husky with emotion as he continues to hold onto your hips as his dick twitches inside you, slowly softening. “You’re incredible, sweetheart.”

Your heart swells with affection at his words, the warmth of his embrace enveloping you in a sense of security and belonging. “You’re incredible, Josh,” you whisper, your voice barely above a murmur as you nestle closer to him.

“I love hearing that,” he whispers, his breath hot against your skin as he slowly withdraws from you. 

His cock slides out with a wet pop sound, leaving behind a trail of their mixed juices on your thighs. His gaze lingers on you, filled with a mixture of adoration and desire, as his chest rises and falls rapidly.

“Damn, sweetheart,” he says, his voice thick with desire, his eyes tracing the curves of your body with unabashed admiration. He reaches down, his fingers brushing against your wet and well-fucked cunt, and a soft moan escapes his lips as he feels the warmth of your juices mingled with his own.

His lips find yours in a tender kiss, a silent testament to the depth of his affection.

As you break apart, Josh’s blue eyes sparkle with a mixture of adoration and gratitude, the soft light of the room reflecting off their depths like a shimmering pool. His skin is dewy with sweat, a sheen of moisture glistening on his smooth complexion as he leans in to kiss you once more.

His muscles flex beneath the surface of his skin, the sinewy lines of his arms defined and sculpted from years of hard work and dedication. You run your fingers lightly over his torso, tracing the contours of his body with a sense of wonder and appreciation. 

Josh’s hair is sweaty and tousled, strands of brown falling haphazardly across his forehead as he leans in to kiss you again. His breath is warm against your skin, his touch gentle yet possessive as he pulls you closer, deepening the kiss with a sense of urgency and desire, enveloping you in a cocoon of warmth and protection.

His stubbled jaw clenches with a mixture of desire and restraint, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he struggles to contain the intensity of his emotions.

As you lose yourself in the moment, the sound of footsteps echoing through the house brings you back to reality with a jolt. Panic courses through you as you scramble to dress, the urgency of the situation pressing in on you like a suffocating weight.

Josh moves quickly, reaching for his shorts and tossing you his shirt as you both try to cover yourselves before the inevitable confrontation. 

But it’s too late. Before you can even process what’s happening, the door swings open, revealing Dalton standing in the doorway, his expression a mask of shock and betrayal.

Your heart sinks as you meet his gaze, the guilt of being caught washing over you like a tidal wave. Shame burns hot in your cheeks as you shrink back, trying to make yourself as small as possible in the face of Dalton’s accusing glare.

“Wha- What the hell is this?” Dalton stammers, his voice filled with disbelief as he takes in the scene before him.

But Josh steps in front of you, his protective instincts kicking in as he shields you from Dalton’s wrath. His jaw is set with determination, his blue eyes blazing with a fierce intensity as he meets Dalton’s gaze head-on.

“Dalton,” he says firmly, his voice tinged with warning. 

But Dalton’s eyes are filled with hurt and betrayal as he looks between the two of you, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place in his mind. His anger is palpable as he takes in the sight before him, his fists clenched at his sides as he struggles to contain his emotions.

“I can’t believe this,” he says bitterly, his voice trembling with emotion. “I confessed my feelings to you, and this is what you do? Fucking my father?”

The accusation hangs heavy in the air between you, casting a shadow over the fragile happiness you had shared just moments before. His words cut deep, a stark reminder of the tangled web of emotions and secrets that now threatens to unravel before you.

Josh’s jaw tightens, his eyes flashing with a mixture of frustration and regret as he struggles to find the right words. “Dalton, I... I never meant to hurt you,” he begins, his voice heavy with remorse. “I know this is difficult to understand, but...”

But Dalton’s fury is unrelenting, his eyes blazing with a fire that threatens to consume everything in its path. “Difficult to understand? You’re sleeping with my friend, Dad.” he retorts, his voice laced with bitterness. “She could be your daughter!”

The accusation cuts deep, slicing through the fragile facade of peace and happiness that you had clung to just moments before. Shame washes over you in waves, threatening to drown you in its suffocating embrace as you struggle to find the words to defend yourself.

You feel a pang of guilt at the hurt in Dalton’s eyes, knowing that you are the cause of his pain. But before you can offer an explanation, he turns to you, his gaze filled with betrayal. “And you,” he says, his voice trembling with emotion. “I thought I could trust you. I thought you cared about me.”

Tears prickle at the corners of your eyes, the weight of Dalton’s accusation crushing you beneath its weight. “Dalton, I...” you begin, your voice faltering as you search for the right words. But the damage has already been done, the rift between you widening with each passing moment.

But Dalton shakes his head, his eyes clouded with anger and confusion. “I don’t want to hear it,” he says bitterly, his voice barely above a whisper.

But before you can speak again, Josh reaches out, his hand finding yours in a gesture of comfort and support. Instantly, you feel a sense of reassurance wash over you, the warmth of his touch offering solace in the midst of chaos.

Dalton recoils at the sight, his face contorted with disgust at the intimate gesture. “I can’t believe you would do this to me, Dad. And you,” he adds, turning his gaze to you, “you should be ashamed of yourself.”

With that, he turns and storms out of the room, leaving you and Josh alone in the wake of his departure. The silence that follows is deafening, a stark reminder of the pain and heartache that now fills the space between you.

Josh squeezes your hand gently, his eyes filled with sorrow and regret. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, his voice thick with emotion. “I never wanted things to end up like this.”

You nod as your heart is heavy with guilt and uncertainty. “I know,” you reply softly, your voice barely above a whisper. “But we have to find a way to fix this. For Dalton’s sake and for ours.”

Josh nods in agreement, his expression filled with determination. “I’ll talk to him,” he says firmly, his eyes meeting yours with unwavering resolve. “I’ll make him understand.”

A sense of hope stirs within you. The road ahead may be difficult, but with Josh by your side, you know that together, you can overcome any obstacle that stands in your way.

[courtney-deserved-better]

the mkulia alliance IS in character

ive heard a lot of people, some of them mkulia shippers, saying that while the evil lesbian alliance is great to watch, it isn't in character for mk and julia. however, i believe it is, and i believe it's still consistent from last season, and this is why:

facades

mk and julia were both hiding under facades in the beginning of sesaon one. mk was downplaying her skills to fly under the radar, and julia was posing as a chill influencer both to maintain her online image and not make herself a threat. these two facades had their advantages, but also their downsides. mk's contributions, specifically in the skull challenge, went unnoticed by her team, while julia had to completely hide her true personality. mk expresses frustration at everyone thinking she hadn't done anything when she got her team the win, and julia later goes on to say that it's exhausting to pretend to like yoga and whatnot. for most of the time they interact in season one, mk and julia are not behaving like their true selves.

animosity

did mk and julia have a rivalry once julia's true self was revealed? yes. did it result in mk's elimination? also yes. was mk the one to instigate that rivalry by posting the video of julia's true self? absolutely. and while they definitely had beef while this was going down, in the end, it was better for both of them. julia says that it's freeing to get to be her true self, and she even gains followers from it. the consequences of being her full nasty self don't catch up with her for a while after mk's elimination, and the worst thing that happens is julia too gets eliminated. as for mk, julia revealing that she watched everyone's confessionals means that while mk can't fly under the radar as much as she previously had, she gets to be recognized for her brains and sneakiness. because of their initial rivalry, mk and julia don't have to keep hiding their true selves.

necessity

julia and mk are both smart enough to know that in order to survive on their team, they NEED an alliance to counter the bowie-raj-wayne voting power. and seeing as scary girl was the first boot, and chase and ripper are chase and ripper, it makes sense that they would gravitate toward one another. especially with their underhanded playing styles, and especially being the only girls on the team. julia and bowie did not like each other in season one, and they still teamed up to counter the priya-millie alliance. julia has already proven to be willing to team up with people she doesn't like in order to stay in the game.

friendship

they became enemies in the first season, but after the passage of time, a necessary alliance, and most importantly, the shedding of their facades, it's reasonable that they could become friends. mk only got to interact with the real julia for an episode's worth of time, and julia never really got to see the real mk. now, she's watching mk steal an intern's uniform, sneak into production meetings, stash cheating supplies, and get the challenge answers from computers. julia is seeing a whole new side of mk, and as someone who appreciates vicious, strategic competitors like herself, i can absolutely see julia growing to like the real mk. and mk doesn't have to hide her true self from her team anymore, as she can be very upfront about cheating.

despite her rivalry with bowie, julia also had moments when she enjoyed being in an alliance with him (talking in the confessional about how they both thought they would be in the final after priya and millie were supposedly dead via avalanche) and trusted that he had her back (not thinking that he would double cross her and vote for her instead of millie even though it was the smarter move for him). i think it would make sense for julia to enjoy an alliance with mk and admire her clever thinking.

as for mk, yes, julia got her booted last season, but mk instigated that by exposing the real julia, and i think she's aware of that. i also think that even though she was the first person to see the real julia, mk still didn't understand that she wasn't just a mean girl with an influencer persona, she's a force to be reckoned with. julia loses it for her team in the episode mk is eliminated in, so mk doesn't get to see julia doing great in other challenges before her own screentime is over. i believe mk underestimated julia when she exposed her.

seeing as emma was able to watch the episode where she thought chase was performing an act of love for her when it was really just for pizza, it's completely reasonable for mk and julia to watch or at least know of each other's actions in the last season that they didn't get to witness in person. their first direct interaction is complimenting each other's moves/style, meaning that they have a greater understanding of how the other girl operates than they did last season.

because of how they play/interact with others, mk and julia don't have many friends. the closest thing julia has is bowie, who's more like her rival, while everyone else knows she's mean and doesn't like her. meanwhile nobody on mk's team would like her after she stole their stuff, and nobody else would like her for secretly watching their "private" confessionals. it makes sense to me that not only would they latch onto the other girl out of necessity, but because they're someone who can actually appreciate their play style and not turn against them because of it. not to mention mk can finally hang out with someone who likes her sarcasm for a change.

and while mk and julia definitely act like they have a romance plot in the future (and god i hope they do), i don't think their interactions together are very out of character even though they're praising one another and enjoying each other's company. julia is still mean and enjoys people getting hurt, mk is still devious and has no qualms about cheating, they just get to scheme and sabotage with someone by their side now. and while this development was unexpected even for a lot of us mkulia shippers, it is hardly unwelcome, and to me, hardly illogical. thank you for coming to my td talk.

[hannibals-favourite-meal]

Sunshine and Flowers

Logan Howlett x plus size reader

Logan has had a great many loves in his long life and he’s over it. He doesn’t want to lose anyone else yet somehow, the annoying and very much younger art teacher at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, wormed her way into his heart.

Warnings: grumpy and sunshine, jealousy, Logan is a dick but we been knew, reader is kind of oblivious and touch starved, age-gap (reader is mid 20s and Logan is old as shit), Logan POV, bit of a slow burn, reader and Logan are Keely and Roy coded

WC: 3.8k

Minors DNI

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

“Yo Logan!” The seemingly ever present pounding in the older mutant’s temples suddenly got worse, the band around his forehead tightening as the young woman cheerfully skipped up to him without a care in the world. Her arm looped through his own, tucking herself into his side, like she always did. 

“What d’ya want?” He grumbled. It was easier to just ask her outright than stay silent and her chatter away at him for an hour before she finally got to her point. Y/N beamed up at him, her e/c eyes sparkling. “Wellllll… I was wondering if you wanted to come with me on a little field trip with the kids! I was thinking of bringing them to the MET, you know because art.” She waved her right hand around as if to emphasise her point. 

“No.” Logan said firmly. 

“Aw please! Please Logan! Please! Please! Please!” He could practically feel his blood pressure rising as Y/N pleaded with him, pulling on his arm, acting like a complete child. Dear god, what had he done to deserve this?

With the huge throngs of students constantly being enrolled in the school, Charles had come up with the bright idea to introduce an art program to the children as a way of “expressing their creativity”. But what that actually meant was hiring a new teacher specifically for this class since no adult in the school had even an ounce of artistic talent.

And so six months ago, Y/N Y/L/N, a recent college graduate, strolled into the mansion and never left. Her gift to generate small stars gave her the remarkable ability to light her classroom in any way she wished, allowing her students the perfect lighting to create absolute masterpieces. And like her gift, she herself was a big ball of endless energy that constantly bounced around, latching onto whoever she came across, and more often than not, that person was Logan.

For some inexplicable reason, she gravitated to him, always seeking his approval, trying to get him to engage in activities with their students, among many many other things that made the older man truly resent when the final bell of the school day rang and she would float into his classroom, ranting about something or another. The only way he could get her to stop was by distracting her, usually by shoving her in the general direction of her best friend, Alex Summers.

But Havok was on a road trip with Sean and Peter for the next month, so he had been abandoned. Logan sighed as her grating voice made his sensitive ears ring, and the overpowering smell of her flowery perfume was a downright assault on his senses. “Logan, come on! It’ll be soooooo much fun! I’ll even buy you lunch after!” 

While the temptation of free food was great, Logan knew it wouldn’t be worth spending the entire day with Y/N glued to his side, forcing him to do whatever she wanted. Taking a deep breath, prepared to let her down as gently as he could, given that his patience was hanging on by a thread, he would probably be more rude than he wanted to be, when he paused, really taking in the young woman.

“Is that my shirt?” He drawled, his dark eyes flicking over her plump body. She was wearing one of her typical outfits, white converse splashed with paint, shorts that very well could be called Daisy dukes, they were that short, with little flowers embroidered on them. Her chubby thighs almost entirely on view with one of his favourite red plaids on top of a black tank top instead of her usual blouse, making her sizeable cleavage pop. Y/N looked away bashfully. 

“Yeah, I um found it in the movie room and it looked so warm so I took it and it’s super comfy like seriously how do you get your shirts so soft it’s really weird but they always smell like cigars so I guess that’s the downside. That’s not to say you smell bad! I’m just saying that it’s like your trademark-“

There she went again. “It’s fine kid, just wash it before you give it back.” 

“What about the MET!” She called after him.

“Maybe.” He grumbled and with that he walked away, be-lining for the kitchen where he stashed his Vodka, losing her in the sea of students just getting out of class.

“Now, for today’s class, we’re going to go over some art history!” A collective groan resonated through the room but Y/N’s bright smile never faltered, it actually got bigger as she looked over her small group of students sitting around the art-filled room. “I know, I know but this stuff is important! Art plays such a big role in human evolution. Actually, the argument can be made that our ability to create art is what truly sets us apart from other animal species-“

There was no denying that Miss Y/L/N’s class was a favourite among the young mutants. Her rants not only served to brighten up their day but they also prevented her from giving out any actual work. It especially helped when most of them came from Logan’s class the period before. He was quite well known to be, well there’s no delicate way to put this, a hard ass. 

So when, during this spring afternoon, with just a month left before summer break, Logan strode into the art class, his heavy boots thundering loudly against the hardwood floors, everyone was shocked. Y/N was pacing the room now, well and truly absorbed in her own thoughts, which became an impassioned speech as soon as the words formed in her mind. Logan cleared his throat as he leaned against the door jam, his jaw cleaned tightly when she didn’t answer or look at him.

The collection of children were now starting to get nervous as the seconds ticked by, Logan’s eyes getting steadily darker with anger, the muscle in his lower jaw working over under his mutton chops. They could all see his famous tempter growing and none of them wanted to be on the receiving end. “Um Miss?” A young girl spoke up, trying to break her train of thought. But nope, that couldn’t stop her.

Logan was getting fed up now. How in the hell did these kids even learn anything with the way she was carrying on? “Kid.” He growled, immediately making the entire class freeze, including the young teacher. 

“Oh Logan! Sorry, I didn’t see you there.” She laughed nervously, pulling on the edge of her sheer pink sleeve. He noted she was wearing a dress today, it was frilly and absolutely drowning in flower print, with translucent sleeves that went all the way down to her wrists.

“Right, Wheels needs us in his office. Now.” He pressed as she opened her mouth to point out she was in the middle of a lecture. Y/N nodded then addressed the class. “All right, students. I guess you’re getting out early today. No homework!” She was quick to jog out of the room before the kids were able to leave their seats, effectively avoiding the clambering mass of them trying to practically sprint out. 

Her smaller hand easily slipped into Logan’s bigger one, intertwining their fingers as her left hand came up to rest on his exposed forearm. He felt the cool of her metal rings against his skin. Unconsciously, he noted that he had never seen her wear any kind of jewellery before. “Did Charles say what he wanted?” Her eyes caught his brown ones, falling into step with the older mutant through the quiet halls. Logan just shrugged, fishing a half used cigar from his breast pocket and sticking the thoroughly chewed end in his mouth, a sharp canine slicing into it.

“Hmm.” She hummed, her gaze shifting down to her feet, trusting Logan to guide them to the headmaster’s office. “Do you think it’s a mission?” 

“He doesn’t send you on missions.” Logan said firmly. 

“Yeah I know but it could be! Stranger things have happened.” 

“Like what?” He humoured her.  

“How about Peter actually scoring a date~” She teased, making the Wolverine’s lip turn up briefly in a smile then dropped again into a frown before she could see. 

“You do have a point.” He conceded. They rounded the last corner and came to a stop outside the solid door of Charles’ office. Logan went to knock, a muffled ‘please come in’ sounded before his permanently bruised knuckles could meet the stained wood.

Charles sat behind his grand desk, glasses perched on the end of his nose as he looked over a mountain of paperwork that gave Y/N a headache just from looking at it. She pulled her hand from Logan’s and bounced over to one of the two chairs in front of the headmaster, immediately making herself comfortable. 

Clasping her hands on her lap with her back up straight, Y/N focused on the older mutant as he took off his reading glasses and laid them on what looked to be his grade book. Logan himself leaned against the doorjamb, much like he did in the young woman’s classroom, crossing his muscular arms over his broad chest. 

Charles sighed deeply as he looked at his teachers. “There really is no way to say this delicately so I suppose I’ll just say it: Erik’s come home.” Logan’s entire body seized with an emotion akin to fear.

“Fuck.” He snarled. But Y/N had an entirely different reaction. Her face visibly lit up but not with excitement but instead with the joy of someone who didn’t have to lie anymore. Charles raised an eyebrow at the young woman, prompting her to explain herself.

“He slept in my room last night, there was no other free space.” She said casually as if she hadn’t just dropped the bomb that she spent the night with a dangerous mutant who hadn’t hesitated to kill before. “Don’t worry! I was being safe. He slept on my couch.”

“Like that makes this whole thing any better.” Logan muttered under his breath but only Charles heard him. The telepath gave him a strange but knowing look before turning back to the young art teacher.

Her smile wavered only for a moment before returning with full force. “He was super nice to me! He even picked out my jewellery today.” She flashed her hands towards the headmaster, showing off the various silver rings that adorned her fingers. Logan huffed at her naivety but Charles had an entirely different reaction. He took her hands into his own, delicately tracing the metal with a soft touch.

“Erik did a good job, they look wonderful. But Y/N, I still want you to be wary. Erik can be very volatile and unpredictable and his abilities far outmatch your own. Just be careful.” She gave a firm nod. “Although, I believe you could do him some kind of good to be around someone who finds him tolerable.” Charles gave a not so subtle glance toward the Wolverine who scoffed and rolled his eyes.

An awkward and tense silence fell over the trio. Y/N cleared her throat, tugging on the hem of her dress which lay only an inch above her knees. “Is that all you wanted to tell us?”

“Well, I do need to speak to you about this art trip you have planned. Logan, you’re welcome to stay, you might find this information useful.” 

“Fuck no, I have better things to do with my time.” He regretted the words as soon as they left his lips. She visibly flinched at his words and her smile became so fake it made him ache. Charles’s own expression fell as he sat back in his high-back chair.

“Then if you’ll please excuse us, we have some things to discuss.” He said sternly, quite obviously not pleased with Logan’s rudeness. “Close the door on your way out.” 

As the door swung shut behind him, Logan caught the smallest whimper escaping her lips and the muffled words of his old friend consoling her.

The manor was almost dead silent as Logan emerged from the cave that was his room. There were no sounds of footsteps (save for his own), or screaming or chatter, there wasn’t even the ever present clatter of utensils from the kitchen. 

Curiously, he wandered through the empty halls, occasionally glancing into the empty rooms he passed. Just as his dark brows began to furrow with concern, Ororo turned the corner, nose buried in a book. “Hey Storm.” Her dark eyes met his own.

“Logan?” She replied with a curious head tilt before returning to her book. Logan huffed through his nose.

“Where is everyone?” She gave him a strange look and glanced over her shoulder as if the answer to his question was just behind her. The young mutant snapped her book shut.

“At the MET? You know the big field trip that Y/N organised. I thought you were going with them. She has been talking about it for weeks.”  Logan’s frown deepened. That was today? Storm seemed to pause as she took in his stormy expression. “Oh, I guess you forgot. No wonder she was so upset when they left. I guess it’s a good thing Erik went with her then.”

Just then, noise exploded through the halls once more as dozens of feet stomped on the expensive hardwood. Ororo sighed heavily through her nose, upset at not being able to have a little more quiet to finish off her chapter. But Logan remained frozen in place, his veins filled with icy terror. “Repeat that last part?”

She glanced at him with a devastating side eye. “Evidently, Erik saw how upset she was this morning when you didn’t get on the bus so he decided to go with her to take care of the kids.”  She shrugged and tucked the leather-bound volume under her arm. “She looked like she was going to cry before he stepped up.”

Poison curled in his gut but he quickly stamped it down. Just then, kids and teens stampeded around the corner, hyped up on what Logan guessed to be sugar and excitement. And right smack dab in the middle was Magneto, his head thrown back in laughter, the corded muscles in his neck and shoulders rippling with the movement. His right arm was bent allowing for the soft hand of the younger woman to rest on his forearm. Y/N was smiling shyly at him, not used to the undivided attention he was giving her.

As they passed him, Logan caught her eye. She barely even gave him a glance but he saw the sadness deep within those e/cs and he knew it was because of him. She quickly looked away, drawing her gaze back to the dangerous mutant who was speaking once more, his laughter fading. But Logan couldn’t hear what he was saying over the roaring in his ears. 

He watched them until they disappeared into one of the many living rooms of the manor. “At least he got her smiling again.” He barely registered Ororo’s words before she too left him.

This went on for weeks. It seemed that everywhere he turned, Logan would see the unlikely pair together. Whether that be baking in the middle of the night, reading quietly in the library, working on lesson plans, he even saw them training together! 

He watched them from afar as they grew closer and her pull away from himself until one day he was walking out of his classroom after a long day. “Wait up!” Unconsciously, Logan slowed his pace , a smile crawling upon his face. He expected the familiar weight of her touch against his arm, the smell of her floral perfume and the bright sound of her laughter but when a blur raced by him, his heart dropped.

Y/N flung herself at Erik who was just a few paces in front of him, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug too tight to be just friendly. He caught her easily, his arms winding around her thick waist and tugged her closer. 

Logan forced himself to turn away, missing the sad look she cast him, heartbreak clear in her eyes.

The end-of-school party was alive with laughter and music. Lights floated over the small dance floor that had been assembled in the gardens. Professors mingled on the wooden stage, swaying to the smooth acoustic guitar Kurt was strumming. But Logan’s attention was trapped on the centre of the crowd where a small circle of space had been formed and trying as hard as he might, he couldn’t look away. 

Y/N twirled in time with the music, her eyes shut as she let it wash over her. Her skin glowed in the golden sunset, the sweat along her brow sparkled like glitter as she moved. Pale green tulle embroidered with dozens of sunflowers floated around her, her dress fluttering in the light breeze. She was absolutely breath-taking. No weight rested on her shoulders nor anxiety in her face. She was serene, she was like a goddess in human form, dancing and delighting with mere mortals. 

How badly he wanted to stride across the gardens and take her into his arms, to feel her curves beneath his palms as they moved together. Logan shook himself from those thoughts and took another sip of whiskey. The alcohol burned as it slid down his throat but that was nothing compared to the burning rage in his stomach as another man approached her.

Erik, dressed in a matching dark green suit, caught her mid-twirl, his left hand holding her hips in place as he captured her left hand in his right. She fell easily into step with him, her once fluid movements becoming a slow waltz. 

Logan was so consumed in his anger that he hadn’t noticed another person walking to his side until they were right next to him.

“Why are you so worked up about this? You’ve made it very clear that you can barely even tolerate her.” Logan’s scowl deepened, his eyes growing even darker with rage as Hank spoke to him. “I mean even I’ve heard about the things you’ve said to her and I barely leave the lab.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Beast.” He didn’t bother to hide the way he was glaring at the pair. Almost as if in slow motion, Erik pressed his lips to her ear, speaking in a whisper so quiet, even Logan’s powerful hearing couldn’t pick it up. She pulled away from him for just a moment and hope bloomed in his chest. But it quickly died as she nodded in response.

Erik took her hand, their fingers intertwining as he led her away. Logan slammed his now empty glass down on the temporary bar behind him and stormed off towards the couple. The music faded away as he ran. 

Her laugh carried on the breeze, the skirt of her dress fluttering behind her. Logan ran faster, now regretting the tight suit pants and button-up he donned for the evening as they got steadily further and further away.

Without thinking, he made a sharp left, launching himself over the perfectly pruned flower beds Charles loved so much and tore through the gardens. Then suddenly, she was within sight. One heeled foot was over the threshold but he still had a chance.

With a final burst of speed he grabbed Y/N’s wrist before she could enter the manor, forcing her to let go of the other man. “Don’t go with him. Please.” 

“Logan, what are you doing?”

“I can’t let you go with him. Y/N, I-“ He swallowed harshly, his grip tightening ever-so-slightly. Y/N looked over her shoulder to the other mutant only to find him gone. “Fuck why can’t I just say it.”

Her body was fully turned to him now. “Say what?”

Taking in a deep breath, he looked into her eyes. “I love you.” The slap came out of nowhere, knocking the breath from his lungs. Y/N’s jaw was dropped in shock as if she didn’t see it coming either even though it was her hand that now burned with the sting of meeting his unshaven cheek.

“Let me go, who-who put you up to this?” She attempted to pull away from his hold but he wouldn’t let her go. 

“Y/N-“ He started but was quickly interrupted when she spoke again, tears spilling down her full cheeks and voice wavering.

“No. You can’t feel that towards me, you barely even like me. You’ve made that very clear over the past couple weeks, no the past year! You brush me off! You make me feel like an idiot! You ignored my blatantly obvious feelings for months and now you say something?!” 

“You feel the same?” He asked in disbelief. 

“Of course I do! That’s why I asked you to go to the MET with me. I was gonna bring you to the American wing where all the native art was because I know you love it so much and then I was going to tell you. But then you were just so awful to me when Erik got here and you forgot about the trip!” Once again, she tried to break his grip but Logan instead tugged her back and right into his broad chest.

With a massive paw, he cupped her soft jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Can you just let me explain?” Her bottom lip popped out in a pout but she didn’t object. “I have lost so much, too much. Every woman I have ever loved has died because I loved them. And you, you are so young and so beautiful and way too kind for your own good. I love you more than anyone else and I guess that scared me. I pushed you away. But I can’t do it anymore, I can’t watch you fall for someone else.” 

“Goddamnit.” She growled before her arms shot out and wrapped around the back of his neck so she could yank his face down to her level, and then she kissed him.

Stars burst around them like little fireworks as he pulled her closer by the small of her back. Her hands travelled from his neck downwards so her fingers could curl into his shirt like she was terrified that this was all just some dream. 

“You do anything even remotely close to that whole fiasco again and I will let Erik do whatever he wants to you.” She murmured against his lips.

“Just kiss me again, sunshine.” And she did.

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Logan Howlette

@springdandelixn

[tu-es-gegg]

I think I'm crazy but like my favourite part of slimeriana that I don't hear much of is their intense loyalty to each other

Like I feel some people underestimate how they are very close and always come as a pair because they both are obsessed with each other, they never want to choose anyone else that isn't the other misclicker

In that sense of, yknow when you hate someone so much they live rent free in your head, yeah it's that with them, and they will always seem to gravitate to each other in any circumstances

In the early days before the first death they only stayed together because of Juanaflippa, they both ceased any sort of conflict if it made Juana upset (in spite of their collective attention span, seriously)

and they could've moved apart after that and push each other away, but no

Funeral stream, they both were by each others side and grieved together. They were petty and jealous torgtehr, even without a reason to. Because it had to be them together

They always joked about divorcing and argued ofver miniscule things and in the end, they are each others safety spots, they like it better when they make each other crazy

And the absence of another half already had a toll on slime, nobody who could really understand him in his eyes like Mariana, it took him so long to find somewhat of a safety net, a safe place where he could be happy because his one safe thing, his family, was gone

Wedding stream, slime talking with foolish and he says nothing sets his heart ablaze anymore, no one is able to love the same way he does or spark the same intensity as Mariana did to him

So he had to have courage and find it in friends by himself, which already took fuckign forever and even then, he doesn't really have anyone as close to him that he can fully confide with or that he mentions OVER AND OVER as much as Mariana (compare that with how easy fit moved on from spreen, the pinnacle divorcees) slime could easily say 'i don't love him anymore' but no, he can't say that because love is in just simply being so obsessed

And Mariana is the same, no matter what he never considers anyone else to be his husband, he can complain over and over about slime and poke as many flirty jokes to others but at the end of the day, when he meets new people on the qsmp he says he is married with slime, and he is never ashamed of that fact, in fact he's the one actively trying NOT to let divorce happen when it gets brought up because he does want to stay with slime, he's just as head over heels obsessed

If the missclick divorce is ever actually real, you know that shits gone ABSOLUTELY wrong, cause really could that ever happen under normal circumstances

Cause are they a healthy couple? Fuck knows, they dorve each other crazy to the point they turn the clock around back to sane for each other that, if you pair them with anyone else they will just make it worse

Are they one of the strongest couples that never waivers in their loyalty to each other? No matter what it will always be those two even if apart? Yes

[tornrose24]

I’ve been rewatching The Ghost and Molly McGee and have concluded watching season 1. These are my thoughts and observations:

-I love how Scratch slowly warms up to Molly across the season and it is easier to catch when you watch the episodes in order. From going to a complete jerk, to valuing her friendship, to caring about how she views him, to not wanting to lose her.

-I also love how this show’s art style is like a storybook come to life in every shot.

-It makes even more sense as to why Scratch haunts Adia’s old home. Todd’s soul gravitated to the one place in Brighton that held happy memories for him, where life had yet to turn him into an anxious, fearful adult. It was a safe space for him, and he was mad when a family managed to move in and invade it. Especially Molly specifically moving into his personal room/the safest spot in the house for him.

-Molly and Scratch are BOTH horrible liars. It’s funny how similar they are in that detail, and it’s even funnier if they call each other out on it.

-Scratch is an absolute asshole to a lot of people and enjoys seeing them suffer during this season, but I think that partly stems from a ‘I was/am miserable so I like seeing others suffer.’

-I’d say Molly’s worst episode is the Snow Day episode (not listening to what everyone else wants to do) and Scratch’s worst episode is the Internship episode (taking advantage of an intern to do basic, unhelpful tasks and being a bigger asshole than usual).

-Molly nearly dies 4 times (the machine during ‘Friend off,’ was willing to catch hypothermia in order to have fun in the snow, was almost hit by the truck, and was nearly sliced in half by Jinx).

-Scratch, Mr. ‘So afraid of dying that I never lived a day’…. Gets trampled by animals, eats poison berries, gets hit by a tour bus, gets blended by the machine from ‘Friend off,’ and is sliced in half by Jinx among all the possible things that WOULD have killed him in this season if he hadn’t been a ghost at the time.

-In ‘Very Hungry Ghost’ Scratch doesn’t get to eat any of the food intended for the ghosts. Because he wasn’t fully a ghost, that feast was not meant to be eaten by him.

-I admit I have yet to catch Scratch’s ‘nervous habit of scratching his arm’ during these episodes.

-There’s a recurring theme of the adult characters regaining their passion for something they once loved in a few episodes.

-However I also appreciate showing very realistic struggles, like financial concerns and how you can’t magically restore your community and town to its glory days without some effort put into it.

-Libby’s mom can be seen as an early cameo during ‘The (Un)natural.’ Of course, she would be there for her daughter ^_^

-I’m not a huge fan of the Christmas episode (never rewatched it until now) but GOD do I love the pink sky they use against the Christmas decorations and snow.

-In Pete’s news article in ‘Twin Trouble’, it mentions that other city planners mysteriously disappeared. However, I don’t think the show EVER addressed that, because such a story fascinated me and made me wonder if there was more to Brighton than meets the eye.

-There was a wasted opportunity in not discussing who or WHAT The Chairman was. Was this mystery meant for season 3?

-Scratch mentioning that he is dead throughout the show hits differently now that we know its quite the opposite. So does seeing him having to do mandatory things for the ghost world that he technically shouldn’t NEED to be doing at that moment.

-So does his interactions with Geoff. Oh boy.

-Was Scratch specifically assigned to scare Brighton? What about the other ghosts from there, like the Tugbottom siblings? Howlin Harriet? Sonia? Why don’t we see them doing their job as much as Scratch has to?

-The sheer irony of Scratch believing that he didn’t have any fears in ‘Scaring is Caring’ only for fear to be the reason WHY he was a ghost to begin with. Once again, there’s a hell of a difference between ‘Scratch as a human being afraid of everything’ and ‘Scratch as a ghost being afraid of losing Molly and would do anything to save her.’

-No seriously, it gets to a point where Scratch risks his existence to save Molly in this season and in the next one-if he had been human, he would have been willing to die for her.

-‘All Night Plight’ is an episode I hadn’t rewatched until recently. And it hits a LOT differently this time around. Molly wanted to form a forever memory with Libby and Scratch by seeing that comet and she managed to win over Scratch who went above and beyond to ensure that was possible. While that memory is now somewhere hidden in Scratch’s mind as a living person, this episode likely was one of the events needed to push him into becoming someone who would take chances and embrace life upon coming back to life.

-Considering the number of times Molly almost dies, it would have been one thing if Scratch didn’t take it too well if he failed to save Molly. But if he learned that he was the one who had the chance to come back to life and not her? Yeah, that would have seriously wrecked his mental state.

-That moment when you realize that it was TWO souls hovering on the edge between life and death that changed everything in the Ghost World. Also I could be wrong, but I caught that Molly AND Scratch both have a brighter glow compared to most other ghosts in the Ghost World. Was this stealth foreshadowing, or just a coincidence?

-Scratch’s declaration that knowing Molly was the highlight of his afterlife. That moment when you realize Molly brought him joy after years of being miserable as both a ghost and as a human. This girl reached out to him and was able to get him to open up when no one else did. This girl who is showing him how to truly live once more. This girl who he openly declares to be his friend no matter what others will think.

-When I see Wraith!Molly hugging Libby and Scratch, I just wonder ‘WHY DOES MOLLY HAVE 3 ARMS?!’

-As good as this show is, a lot of folks who watch these Disney Channel shows are likely used to the more story-oriented shows. While the ‘slice of life’ style for TGAMM did pay off, the slow pace and length it took for the episodes to release likely worked against it and I could see why it didn’t attract more viewers at the time.

Stuff relating to Todd:

-Scratch possesses people a lot in this show, but especially in season 1. I’m reminded of someone who talked about the wraith theory on YouTube and he had this guess that Scratch might someday possess Todd and then realize something is different this time. I think that having Scratch use the possession trick so often was building up to that one moment in the last episode because it WAS a matter of time until he possessed Todd.

-As I said in a previous post, I caught Todd in the stands during The (Un)Natural, which was his ACTUAL debut episode. It was easy to miss the first time, but its a noticeable establishing character moment since he’s the only audience member who is visibly NOT happy despite that the team is winning.

-Molly stopping at Todd’s house during the song montage in the bandshell episode hits a lot differently now after the series finale. But then I laughed when she smacked him in the face with a flyer upon stopping by the house a second time in the same episode.

-We have confirmation that Scratch (as Todd) knew the mayor when they were kids and that is a tale I’m very curious about.

-I caught Todd in the audience during ‘Citizen McGee’ when the mayor bestows the honor of being mayor for a day to Molly. I admit a cynical side of me thinks that this is how he actually remembers her name in the last episode…. But at the same time he was so on auto-pilot during that time that he likely wouldn’t pay much attention or remember those events that well. (Plus, you can’t be expected to remember someone’s name once all the time). I refuse to believe that he remembered this event and that Scratch’s memories were what actually triggered the name.

-Todd’s actual lines are very limited (I don’t think he gets many in season 2 compared to this one). While Dana Snyder was voicing him, Snyder lowered his voice so much that it’s really hard to tell that he’s the one voicing Todd. I keep putting my ear to my computer to listen, but Todd barely sounds like Dana. I think they did this on purpose to avoid making it too obvious that Todd IS Scratch. (And that’s probably why he doesn’t talk as much in season 2…. Until the last episode of course).

-The Internship seems to double as foreshadowing, and not just because Todd appears or that his ‘junk’ held some very crucial clues. Molly believes that the pawnshop is where happy memories go to die while Weird Larry assures her that it’s where memories can be reborn into something new. So… is the pawnshop a metaphor for Scratch’s own depression causing his ‘death’ and how he’ll be resurrected into a happier person?

[sanjisblackasswife]

Hiya Tate! I love your writing! May I please request some SFW and NSFW headcanons of Zoro with a thicc and curvy fem s/o, please? I live how you write our favorite booth hunter. Stay awesome!

A/N: Hiiii :) Ur a doll thank u! Enjoy! This may not be too long because I made a similar HC to this but I enjoy writing him so why not lol.

Zoro with a Thick/Curvy S/O (SFW & NSFW)

Black Fem Reader in Mind

SFW

I believe Zoro loves strong willed women. The type that can handle their own and not afraid to back down to a fight.

More importantly though he loves ass.

Appearances was never an issue for Zoro if he liked you he liked you, but the fact that you had more meat on your bones was like frosting on the cake

However if Zoro did have a type physical wise I’d say he would naturally gravitate to thicker/larger women. He wouldn’t blatantly say it but it shows lol

But at the end of the day he likes what he likes

He thinks your cellulite and stretch marks are nothing to make a big deal over so when you make negative comments about it he’ll just roll his eyes. He also will trace over them when he lays on you

He loves rolls too you’ll sometimes catch him poking at it like a damn dog playing with a toy. It’s cute but can get annoying

Zoro obviously loves laying on your thighs, butt, or breast. It’s a cushion that can’t be replaced by any pillow ngl

He Lowkey is freaked out/amazed by how naturally warm you are. During the winter season prepare to be this man’s personal heater because he will never let go

He has mindlessly picked you up and threw you over his shoulder whenever you got mad whether it’s with him or someone else he kind of has a 6th sense of knowing when you’re about to do the absolute most and nips it in the bud completely

He won’t ever point out if you gain weight, he’ll obviously notice but unless you tell him he won’t say anything. He won’t really care either unless it begins to truly mess up your health. That’s when he would probably talk to the girls or Chopper about you.

If you ever do decide you want to lose weight he’ll be a little upset because he doesn’t want you to lose your fluff, but will workout with you and be your personal trainer if that’s what you truly desire

Does not tolerate men/women catcalling you or making derogatory statements about you. He hates that. You’re not some kind of animal to whistle at.

Zoro is without a doubt the most loyal man you’ll ever come across, he has no reason to even entertain other women around him. When he’s with you you’re really the only woman to exist in his eyes.

Zoro enjoys showing you off to the love cook so he’ll have you sit on his lap a lot in the kitchen with a sly smirk

I don’t think this is NSFW worthy so I’ll put it here: he touches your butt as a way to get your attention. It’s never sexual (well 90% of the time it’s not). He’ll Pat your butt to say hello, goodbye, or to get your attention. You don’t remember where it started but you have no complaints.

NSFW

Your pussy is a gold mine to him

No listen he loves fat asses but what could possibly top fat asses is your fat 🐱 ngl.

He cups your pussy a lot.

Like a lot.

Like a lot a lot. He has an obsession over your fat cat.

He loves how it feels whether you’re naked or clothed it’s just fun.

He makes THE MOST lewd comments about your naked body

“I love when your body jiggles as I fuck you dumb.”

He just says that bs AT THE MOST RANDOM TIMES

Wall fucking is like a must this man knows how strong he is and you weigh absolutely nothing to him let him do it

Almost Everytime you workout with him it ends with you bent over a bench he cannot control himself when you wear tights

Speaking of clothing he likes grinding against you when your wear dresses or tight bottoms. He’ll try to mask it off like “I’m jUsT WaLkInG BeHiND yOu” but really he wants you to feel his hard on

Whenever you talk down about your body he fucks you in the mirror to show you how pretty you are <3

He definitely loves you being a thick mama because he can manhandle you a little more and it won’t hurt you.

Sit on his face. That’s all imma say. sit on it. Yes he can breathe.

He loves having you on top despite always cumming first because the view is so deliciously overwhelming. Your stomach, your breast, your thighs, all moving at once as you try to keep balance he can cum alone at the sight

You may be thick but you are still dwarfed under this man lmao. You don’t know who has the size kink worse you or him but it doesn’t matter when your meaty thighs are on his wide shoulders as he pounds you silly.

Now when you both are in public he doesn’t like too much PDA. Hand holding, fine, butt pats, okay, MAYBE a kiss on the cheek

But when you two are alone his hands are never not on you. Butt slaps are vicious, and it’s not just a regular slap it’s the one where he slaps and GRABS and SQUEEZE

One time while you were sleep he woke you up with feeling needy and you just suggested him to just fuck your thighs. He never done it before but once he did that was like an internal awakening it felt so damn good.

His brain malfunctions when you wear lingerie. Face is redder than a tomato, the way the fabric is just barey clinging on to your body, most of the time the crotch part of the panties only cover one lip and that just gets Zoro really going

He finds it sexy when clothes barely can contain your fatty parts of your body.

Doggy style is a default between you both, as much as he loves to see your pretty fucked out face, your jiggly ass is mesmerizing .

He loves laying on top afterwards though, your soft squishy body is something he can just melt into and he’ll never admit it but you’re the only woman he ever wants to be with like that.

[eazy-peazy54]

ugh THANK YOU for making that will wood fandom post. okay this ask is gonna be super long and i’m really sorry to vent in your inbox but anyway. i heard about will on tumblr several years ago right after the normal album dropped but before he “blew up” (using that term loosely lol) and i’ve steadily watched his fanbase become more and more unbearable. for context i’m in my mid 20s, so unfortunately quite a bit older than a large portion of his current fans.

it’s really disappointing to me to see how strangely and unhealthily young people interact with media they like. i won’t waste time reiterating what you already said very well, but i will add something about the opposite end of the weird fan spectrum. so you basically called out some of the very public manic obsession that his younger fans display, but then there’s the other fans who do literally the opposite (to an obnoxious degree) where they say he’s literally just some guy etc. and like. i’m totally on board with the just some guy movement like yes let’s please acknowledge that artists are just people who happen to create something that you enjoy (especially small artists like will who aren’t even “famous” like he’s a niche indie artist that gained some recognition for a viral song but there are some kids out here treating him like a c-list celebrity like??) HOWEVER i do not understand why they have to act like any sort of emotional attachment to him or his work is toxic fan behavior. there’s absolutely no balance and it’s exhausting.

i personally feel like i and some of his older fans (older in age and duration i.e. mid 20s and/or been a fan since before early-mid 2021? i feel like that’s when he went viral) naturally engage in a more sane way. i personally am incredibly attached to his music, it means a lot to me, i listen to it a ton, and i also enjoy will as a person; i very much admire the brain, the mind, the person behind the art. i think he’s funny, intelligent, interesting, not to mention one of the most talented musicians / artists in general that i’ve ever come across. i like listening to him in interviews and on his podcast. and i think i manage all of that in a healthy and respectful way. i don’t think it’s difficult. but for some reason there are some fans who probably wouldn’t like the second part of that. they take “separate the art from the artist” way too far. “Do Not Have An Opinion About This Human You Perv”. it’s annoying. calling him pretty or attractive or whatever also gets met with some very weird reactions. “HE’S JUST A GUY” yes most of us are, in fact, just a guy™️ (gender neutral). saying he’s cute is not sexual harassment.

another thing that actually pisses me off so much is these fans describing and categorizing him based on their and their mutuals very specific demographic. “white teenage transmasc audhd neurodivergent mentally ill queer etc. etc. etc.” music. that is such a limited and myopic generalization. first of all, he had fans way before you, your age group is not his target demographic, nor is it his core demographic, on top of that he’s explicitly stated he doesn’t want people your age listening to him. he’s not for you. second, it absolutely makes sense that mentally ill people gravitate towards him given that he himself is severely mentally ill, so this part of the description pisses me off the least, but still, he’s also a recovering/recovered alcoholic, but i don’t see people saying he makes music for addicts? idk.

next is the queer bit. yeah gay people like him. i get it. he’s a queer safe space and that’s cool and i appreciate it but i feel like it’s still narrowing the categorization. he also has a lot of neurodivergent fans and i understand why. i think my main issue is just a combination of all of these very specific descriptors you know? like yeah he has fans that fit all of this but when you lump all of it together to describe his music and the entirety of his fandom then it becomes too much. whatever. anyway. the one that makes me the most mad is the white thing. i hate it when music that isn’t inherently racial is divided by race. it’s alienating and divisive and exclusionary and unnecessary. there are plenty of fans of color and there would probably be even more if some of y’all didn’t insist on generalizing his music based on your own limited experience. i think that’s sort of a microcosm of what a lot of poc talk about on here, about being shoved out of fandom spaces? like imagine you’re an adult queer black guy and you keep hearing about this will wood person who makes really cool music so you go to give it a try and find a bunch of 14yos calling him white preteen transmasc music. super off putting. even as someone who actually does fall into a couple (not all) of the demographics they talk about i know i would absolutely not be a fan now if i’d discovered him later than i did. which makes me sad. anyway. sorry this is definitely getting very long and rambly so i’m sorry about that i just have a lot of opinions about this fanbase.

oh my god this put everything i missed into words THANK YOU 😭

I completely agree with everything you just said!!! Honestly the whole big point with my essay was to just say "hey guys, don't be weird about this, and be respectful because there is a real person behind the screen!"

everyone who goes too far with the "HES JUST A GUY" thing isn't helping. its like. yeah, hes just a guy, but that doesn't mean i cant have any sort of attachment to his music whatsoever??? some people's idea of treating people like real people is really just treating them worse than how they were being treated before 😭

The people who are policing the fandom too much aren't helping either, its getting really exhausting to keep seeing posts saying "oh he looks really good in this photo!" and seeing like 200 replies being like "STOP SEXUALIZING YOU CREEP!!!!" (although there are people who actually do sexualize him, (which is really gross and weird) but i digress,)

music based fandoms are usually very,,, eh.. but honestly most of the fandom isn't bad, its just the people who take things to the extremes (in both directions) who are kind of making it a bit more awkward.

i think the fandom, and his music as a whole shouldn't just be narrowed down to "gay neurodivergent weirdo music," but it should just be like. "music for cool people" or hell, just fuckin "music"

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Jojolands 13: Ohana Means I'll Set Your Ass on Fire

Dragona dropping some great truth about the absurd in this bizarre adventure. We finally got a peak behind that mask. I love it and I hate it, if you've read the chapter already you know what I mean. We'll get to that, because this right here isn't spoilery and it was such a cool nugget.

I love the way Dragona talks about the "absurd." Chance moments that alter one's life for better or for worse. The things that just don't make sense. Especially paired with Dragona opining about nearly losing their heart in the same chapter that last part about hearts being destroyed hits hard. I'm definitely sure we're looking at a trans narrative here and one we'll see play out. The chapter does a good job of implying what we need to know. Nudges at an early theory you've been changing your body with Smooth Operator. We ready? What follows is no place for beginners or sensitive hearts:

Oh HELL yes! As if I needed a reason, these two were well on their way to top Jojo status and now the dynamic duo of the Joestar Siblings are definitely there. Mean girl sets her sights on a much more timid Dragona who we now know looked way more masculine at 14 than 18. Talking physical build and not just fashion. You know, I don't expect an 18yo to have all that figured out and with this I do think we'll see her keep coming into her own. But holy shit that was fucked up and I sincerely hope we can get through the rest of this with no more sexual assault on my Jojos blorbo.

If they do...Jodio will fuck you up. Set a whole damn bus on fire! And while I'm not looking forward to having to relive the impetus in the inevitable anime adaptation, since we've already had the cop I kinda like the perpetrator being a girl here. For one because it shows a side of this kind of bigotry that often goes underrepresented. You see a little more space made typically for trans men who had bad experiences with men prior to coming out, largely because it tends to overlap with those who found a comfortable half-step in something like a radical feminist group. But this sets up Dragona pretty well for a realistic other side of the coin to that. Your experiences with bullying might make you a little skittish of girls your age, you keep a foot in this criminal world even if we keep showing you (not unlike Okiku) as someone who doesn't fit super well, all this would certainly explain why you'd gravitate towards a figure like Meryl Mei. Why there's great potential for drama if she shows a nastier side. It's all great for a trans story that justifies still figuring yourself out through it...but sticks to a fairly realistic path for a lot of young women who find themselves running with gangs.

All that said, Jodio you absolute freak. Burning the whole bus is metal, it's scruffy, he's protecting family. Doooooope. These two are fantastic and I can't wait to explore their story, their dynamic more. Jodio & Dragona's sibling bond is the beating heart of this part. As much as I love Kiku/Izo & Killua/Alluka yeah this is gonna be a banger. Speaking of, this chapter was also the second time we nudged at Jodio getting shit for looking fey too. These two are ride or die for each other and their awesome mom Barbara Ann. How this all ties into their family falling apart and their desire to become filthy rich? No need to ask...

In lighter news. They. When Meryl learns of the other lava rock that got smashed. We're all clear on who's the brains and who's the firepower in the dynamic duo right? I trust Meryl as far as I can throw her and she's a big lady. But for now everything seems on the up-and-up. Charmingman seems to have passed the sniff test and yeah it looks like he's just going to hang around. I like this new setup. Scouting a shadowy company to see if we can get more lava rock.

All in all one of the best chapters of Jojolands so far. I'm loving it, this is the exact direction I hoped it'd go. The backstory made this pretty heavy and I hope we can have more fun with this gang on the new excursion.

[taizi]

If you're taking prompts and like this one might I request Sabo's pov on 'if I go I'm going on fire?'

That fic absolutely floored me it was so incredibly good. I just had to lie there and process it. But I can't stop thinking about how afraid Sabo must be that Ace will be angry but it would never stop him from going to try to help Ace, who doesn't even know he's not the last of the three...regardless if you want to write this I just had to tell you how much I loved it!

quite the keeper of you

read on ao3

x

When Sabo was fished up out of the sea as a child, all he had to his name were the clothes on his back and an ancient monocular telescope tucked safely away in his inner coat pocket. And that was all he had. And when he woke up initially, he was half out of his mind, hysterical, begging not to go back to wherever he’d come from. So for all he knew, he wasn’t leaving anything worthwhile behind. 

It’s a sick joke. He’s waiting for someone to pull the curtain back and laugh, to let him in on it. 

“You’re my brother!” Straw Hat screams, claiming Portgas D. Ace for the whole world to hear, plunging headlong into a war like it didn’t make sense for him to be anywhere else. The broadcast is shaky, grainy, but Sabo can still see the way Fire Fist’s face crumples in terror and anger and something specific to older siblings—something Sabo’s heart recognizes in that split-second.

Did you know? If you share a cup of sake, that makes you—

Sabo stands frozen, his brain on fire, the rest of his body encased in ice. Images were crowding forward; a rainforest with rich, colorful foliage and giant beasts, a bandit hut that was always waiting for them when they decided to give into the elements and slink inside for the night, a junkyard they picked through for treasures, though it took forever nowadays, because one of them always had to look after the little crybaby and make sure he didn’t drag something stupid home. 

A kingdom square, unkind faces looking down on them. A treehouse where they could see for miles. A tiny body crawling under his blanket during a storm, and the automatic way Sabo put his arm around them, mumbling without waking up all the way, “This is the last time, Lu.”

For a moment, in the footage, it looks like they’ll get away. They’re running to the wharf, backed on all sides by allies, and Sabo finds himself holding his breath. Straw Hat is beginning to flag, but Fire Fist has a firm hand wrapped around his arm, is pulling him resolutely towards the sea. 

Then for some reason, he stops. He whirls to face Akainu, face distended in a snarl. 

No, no, no, you idiot, Sabo thinks with a fury that nearly blinds him. What are you doing, keep running, freedom is right behind you! 

You idiot, come on!

When there’s an enemy in front of me, I won’t run. 

When it happens, Ace is seconds too slow to stop it, an arm’s length away, his face the picture of horror. All around Sabo, the air goes out of the room with an audible sound, everyone sucking in a short, pained breath. 

“Oh, no,” Koala whispers, putting her hand on his wrist. “Sabo, I know you really liked him. I’m sorry.”

Her sympathy is genuine and meaningful—she liked that rookie pirate, too. It’s impossible not to like him. His devil-may-care, take-no-shit attitude, how daring and reckless and joyful he was as he threw himself into each new corner of the world. Sabo always found himself gravitating towards Straw Hat’s Wanted posters the same way he did Fire Fist’s. He always lingered to look at their faces an extra second. He never knew why.

And now Straw Hat is—

This means that from now on, the three of us will always be—

The broadcast starts to shake. The transponder snail is curling and shriveling away from what must be an intense heat. A Devil Fruit awakens on Marineford, broadcast to the world, as Fire Fist Ace lights up like a supernova and cremates everything in front of him. The man who killed his brother dies in seconds. His own allies are pushed far away, back and back and back. No one is able to reach him. 

And he’s screaming. When the transmission ends abruptly, Sabo can still hear him screaming. 

He’s weak, and a crybaby, but he’s still our little brother. Look after him for me. 

##

When Sabo boards the Moby Dick, he’s alone. He sailed in a straight line from Baltigo to intercept the Whitebeards without waiting for approval or permission from anyone. He didn’t even requisition the cutter, he just took it.

Less than two weeks after the Summit War, it’s a grave-faced group that greets him on the ship. Sabo doesn’t see the gargantuan figure of their captain abovedeck, so he casts around reflexively with observation haki and deduces that he must be resting in his quarters. 

“What business does a Revolutionary have here?” Marco the Phoenix asks, with as much veiled threat as Sabo expected, though decidedly less than he deserves. 

“Fire Fist,” Sabo says. All around him, hackles go up. “I’m here to speak with him.”

“He’s not exactly seeing visitors at the moment,” Marco grits out. 

“He’ll see me,” Sabo replies, as steady and solid as a rock face that the ocean crashes against. He speaks as if his hands aren’t shaking, as if there isn’t a pit in his stomach that it’s hard to breathe around, as if he feels anything else but cold.

It takes four minutes for Portgas D. Ace to appear. He walks like a puppet, something recently brought to life that is still figuring out its autonomy. His eyes are dark and endless and if there’s a spark left in them at all, Sabo can’t see it from where he’s standing. Ace turns his head and picks Sabo from the crowd as the outlier remarkably fast, hardly needing haki to do it. 

It takes four seconds for confusion to surface through the apathy, hints of it touching Ace’s face; the narrowing of his eyes, the downward turn of his mouth. And then it’s six seconds after that for understanding to set in, a swift river rush of it, followed by a tiny little silverfish dart of wonder. And then grief and rage trample over everything else, hand-in-hand. 

Ace is on top of him an instant later. It’s a full-body tackle, and they go rolling across the deck in the type of knockdown, drag-out brawl that Sabo only just remembers from another life. It was like learning how to swim by jumping in the deep end—the wild boy from the forest had taught Sabo how to fight as if his life was on the line. They skipped things like how to tuck in your elbows and untuck your thumbs. Ace’s lessons involved finding the soft underbelly of your opponent and digging into it with tooth and nail. 

The accident at sea that stole his memories away took those lessons, too, but his body remembered them. And while formal training with the Army was much different than wrestling with his brother in the woods, Sabo always had a bit of a nasty streak his teachers despaired over.

“You don’t have to bite,” he remembers Hack saying with measured patience. “This is a class, not life-or-death.”

Of course it is, Sabo had found himself on the verge of snapping. If I don’t fight for my life, someone else will take it. If we don’t fight for each other, no one else will. 

But he didn’t know where the thought had come from. And he was discomfited by the way his instructors were watching him, and the way Koala stared at him, at the smear of blood left on the corner of his mouth, like she suddenly saw something in his face that she recognized in herself. So he didn’t say anything at all.

Now he knows. Ace showed him how to protect himself in a brutal, bloody, final way, because Ace loved him enough to want him to exist at any cost. Live, those lessons taught him. Survive. 

Voices cry out and feet stamp around like people are trying to get close enough to tear them apart—but Ace’s fire shoves his crewmates back, a wall of snapping, snarling teeth that towers above Sabo from all sides. 

It licks against him without burning. Ace’s hands are another story. He’s hitting to hurt.

Sabo absorbs every blow, and even when his face is tender and swelling and his lip is bleeding, it still doesn’t feel like enough. 

Ace clutches the front of his waistcoat and hauls him half upright, expression twisted into something bleak and hateful. It’s the way he looked at Sabo when they were children and still strangers to each other. The first time they were strangers to each other.

“If you were going to come back from the dead, it should have been for him,” Ace snarls. “What the fuck are you doing here? What’s the fucking point now?”

I should have been there is on the tip of Sabo’s tongue, but it seems a waste of breath to say something everyone already knows. I’m sorry surfaces next, is the obvious right thing, but what he actually says is, “I had to come.”

His voice is just barely more than a whisper. Ace’s face only screws up more. 

Ten years ago, it would have gone without saying. Maybe they wouldn’t have needed to speak at all. The only person in the world who really understood Sabo, who could look him in the eye and practically read his mind, was his best friend. His twin brother. 

But now he’s staring at Sabo like he’s never seen any creature like him before. 

“I had to,” Sabo chokes out. “Ace, I had to.”

Even if you hate me, he doesn’t say. You’re my brother. I’ll always come for you. 

Ace drops him. Sabo’s head hits the deck with a solid knock, his brain ringing inside his skull like a gong. He’s still waiting for his double vision to clear when Ace lays down next to him. Their shoulders are touching, and even when Sabo’s starts to shake with the force of his sobbing, Ace stays pressed against his side. 

Their shoulders are touching, and the fire, when it finally closes in, still doesn’t burn. 

##

“I’m stepping down,” Ace says suddenly. “From the Whitebeards.”

Sabo rolls his head to the side to look at him. Ace goes on staring up at the sky and doesn’t look back. They’re still sprawled on the deck. Ace’s crewmates have been giving the brothers a wide berth since they stopped seemingly trying to kill each other but a wary few of them are still lingering nearby. If they’re close enough to overhear, they don’t give any indication. 

“The Straw Hats,” Ace says, “Luffy’s people. They’re monsters, like us. They love the way monsters love. They’re gonna drag as much of the World Government down to hell with them as they can. I’m going, too.”

He lifts his hand, holding it out above him. It ignites, merry orange flames crackling from his skin, sending shadows flickering across his blank face. Then all the color bleeds away until it’s a ghostly thing, shock white with hints of blue, and the packed heat becomes searing and uncomfortable. It superheats the air like a flash fire; Sabo can feel it in his lungs, but he doesn’t move away. 

Luffy burned. His last breath was agony, choked with smoke. There isn’t a force on this planet that could hurt Sabo as much as knowing that. If the fire in Ace’s hand leaped over and caught him and he went up like rice paper, it wouldn’t even come close. 

“Don’t want my name attached to Pops anymore,” Ace goes on. “Don’t want him claiming the consequences for my choices this time.”

Sabo asks, “What did he say?”

“Called me a stupid kid,” Ace recounts like it’s something that happened to someone else. “Said I could go as far away as I wanted for as long as I wanted and my family would be still waiting for me when I decided to come back home.”

There’s a quirk at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. It’s some distant cousin of wry humor but not the real thing. Sabo gets the joke—“come back home.” As if that’s a place that exists anymore. 

“I told my boss the same thing,” he offers, “more or less.”

His conversation with Dragon was less a conversation and more the total destruction of the communications room. Sabo doesn’t remember all of it. He does remember the rawness of his throat, the leftover ache of screaming, “Why weren’t you there? Why weren’t we there?” and the splinters in his hands from the broken furniture he’d hurled at the walls. 

“I’m on sabbatical,” Sabo says mildly.

Ace finally turns to look at him. He’s different from Sabo’s recovered memories of him. He’s different from his Wanted posters, even. Gone is that proud, angry little boy, and that devilishly grinning pirate. He was a big brother before he was anything else, and now he isn’t that anymore. It’s carved a hole into him, scooping out the golden, shining parts that it took years to cultivate. All that’s left is the burnt remains of something once wild and beautiful. 

He could be all those things again, Sabo thinks. If he tried. If he leaned on the support and love of his crew. If he let himself hurt and then let himself heal. If Sabo were a better person, he would make Ace try. 

But he isn’t. Sabo is burnt remains, too. 

“Pops told Luffy’s monsters it was suicide,” Ace says. “He says there’s no way we can accomplish what we want to do. He doesn’t get it.”

“No,” Sabo agrees, not unkindly. “But he will.”

Life is a series of lessons. 

Sabo taught his brothers how to steal, how to be cunning—how to slip through High Town in their ratty shoes and dirty clothes like they were invisible, the way he learned to maneuver the mansion his parents lived in. Ace taught them how to fight bigger, stronger people—how to go for the soft, unguarded places, how to dig in with your teeth until you won. 

Luffy taught them, too. Every single day. How to be silly. How to laugh at themselves. How to face the day like it was an adventure instead of a challenge. How to pry open the guarded cages of their hearts so that it became possible for other people to sneak in there down the road. How to dream huge, impossible dreams, and go on dreaming them even when no one believed in you but you. 

This, their stubborn little brother showed them, day after day after day, grin stretching beneath a straw hat that Sabo would never get to watch him grow into, hands always open and reaching for them, is what you fight for. 

And the Marines thought they had any right to touch him. To take him. To drive a fist through the heart of the one purely good thing in this world. The audacity leaves Sabo breathless. 

“There are battles we have to lose,” Dragon had said, sitting in the middle of a ruined room like he’d been chiseled from stone, the beginnings of a terrible, pitch-black storm in his eyes, “in order to win the war.”

But there was no such thing as winning now. Not for Sabo, or Ace, or the Straw Hats. There was only taking as many of those people down as they possibly could, and making it bloody, and making it brutal, and leaving behind something that it would be impossible to ever forget. Something historians would discuss only in whispers for the next hundred years. 

They’ll remember him, Sabo thinks, eyes roaming away from Ace, back towards the sky. Maybe there are stars up there tonight, maybe the moon is full and beautiful. All he sees is the blackness in between, the empty space. We’ll make them remember. We’ll teach them what it means to do what they’ve done. 

And then they would finally see their little brother again, and they would tell him all about it. 

[bloggingboutburgers]

Firstly, Hi! Hope you are doing well, so my question is - Is it normal to question if you really can engage with stuff that is about romance?Because I like to read webcomics and there some that are in the realm of the romance genre, but recently I been thinking if I am actually invested on it or is more of a "I liked the art and the world building and I started to read it" kinda of impulse,even though I still can enjoy romance when it feels like is actually build and not just for the sake of having a romance in a story.

Usually when there's romance I just go "Oh! Good for then!"

Oh! And also congrats on your engagement!

Thank you so much for the good wishes!^^

It's healthy to question things I think, it's always a good way to find out more about yourself and how you reason! With that said, it's also healthy when the questioning culminates to "yes, it's OK and I can do that", and I definitely think it's OK to engage in stuff that's about romance, AND to find your own sources of enjoyment besides the romance in those stories too.

For one thing, ima be blunt but... Romance is so shoved down our throats everywhere, it's like people don't know how to write WITHOUT it most of the time, so... If we had to focus only on romanceless stories we'd have very little to go with.

But also... If I can share my own experience here, I DO get tired of romance, WILL gravitate typically to other types of relationships, and WILL find my enjoyment in other aspects than the romance in stories that involve romances most of the time, but also... Like you said, if a romance is actually built, and actually makes sense (imo it sadly rarely even does, it seems so few writers are actually putting in the effort), then I'll appreciate it too, and definitely root for it. There are fictional romantic relationships I'm absolutely obsessed with to the point where I'll yell "CUTE" or "YES" at my screen when watching because it's done so right.

I'm definitely not the first person to say this, but aro people appreciating romance because it was written with care and makes sense seems perfectly normal: we don't experience it ourselves, or experience it less than most people depending on where we are on the spectrum, so if a relationship like that manages to be written in a way that makes it make sense to even us, then of course it deserves to be appreciated.

Idk. That's my stance on it anyway.

[ottiliere]

oh my goodness your dios.. what a delight to see someone so fully invested in phantom blood dio wow. i am very happy. i love your 3D dios. really makes me want to sculpt him as well

Do it... clay is cheap bake it in the oven paint with 10 dollar set of acrylics your life will never be better. I adore phantom blood Dio so very much... years ago saw someone coin the term “phantom blood purist” and it's so funny I think about it literally every time I enter a Dio cycle. There are many aspects that go into this preference of course, and upon a great amount of time pondering i can say confidently that this is because mainly that:

1) I love history (especially the fin de siècle) and I love thinking about him in relation to Victorian values/etiquette/sociology in general... there's something so special about a society that enabled such a gross disparity of wealth&poverty while being so inherently pretentious that its asinine etiquette rules would completely elude you unless you were raised in an aristocratic family or had access to etiquette books. Dio absolutely read a great amount of these before going to the Joestar mansion btw, even before his father snuffed it I think. God help him he would not be doomed to look like a slovenly ill-bred gamin if and when he needed to manipulate the upper classes. I really can't think of a way for him to have developed these skills enough to outclass Jonathan otherwise. god and like thinking about him as a barrister too with his profligate fashion sense you just KNOW he gets drawn that way into all of the court sketches that go in all the newspapers since everyone loved to read about crime and there were a million papers for this in England alone... he'd get caricatured so bad sometimes and he is NOT happy about this.

2) You can probably tell from my indifference to the rest of the parts (except sbr; I call this the "diego rule") that I'm not the biggest fan of fantastical elements and I'm much more interested in interpersonal conflict/relationships in general... PB is extremely unique to the rest of the series because for five WHOLE chapters absolutely nothing abnormal happens and we just get to see Dio harassing Jonathan and his girlfriend until Jonathan snaps and humiliates him so bad in beating him up that he makes Dio cry. and then Dio kills his dog. Like it's literally just some impoverished child abuse victim bullying a spoiled rich kid who wanted to be his friend because lalala sunshine daisies only knows what "poverty" is from reading Oliver Twist and has no conceptual understanding of what the real-world implications of that are. That was the character development that needed multiple chapters to develop it's so fucking awesome. like yeah I'd read an entire novel of just this alone happening and how it impacts their relationship as adults no vampirism needed. I reread "dio the invader" so frequently I'm surprised the spine of my jojonium copy isn't cracked at the exact endpoint of it. I just adore him interacting with Jonathan so much it's hard to remove him from that… that's his FOIL... all the stories (some "AUs") I make with Dio involve the way he and Jonathan gravitate each other to some degree. we get the clearest view of who he is in the face of someone who is the polar opposite of himself. 🤯

2) This iteration of him is the closest degree of separation he has from his "humanity" (childhood), thus

3) I find him to be the most interesting, endearing, etc., version of him walking around, given that... well. behaviors stem from somewhere... the thematic & active severance of himself from a species he is fundamentally incapable of connecting with due to the way he adapted to help him tolerate his childhood... from his point of view I can't imagine that there is one convincing reason for him to continue being human after given the opportunity to deviate from it (despite likely still being inebriated when he vamped himself — very much an impulsive decision since he had, what, an hour or two to think that through? drunk?). If everyone's underneath him, yes, after the fact the choice seems extremely fitting. Maybe he'll cultivate a vast swathe of worshippers and disciples that obey his every command. Maybe he'll rule the world. And then, maybe, he will start to feel genuinely content for the first time in his life. But probably not. That's the drawback of having something fundamentally missing from within you.

4) He lacks a certain type of introspective awareness that 100 years alone in a box might enable him to develop... he's very animalistic to me and possesses a precarious/immature/nonexistent grasp on his emotions just given the fact that he exhibits enraged outbursts from perceived ego wounds (in both childhood and adulthood) + struggles with alcoholism due to an incapacity to self-soothe any sort of negative emotion that makes it past the self-aggrandizing filter he can't help but see life through; he really isn't in conscious control of anything happening inside of him despite needing control over everything and everyone so he can get exactly what he wants, and deserves, always. PB paints a very dim and pathetic view of his character by allowing us to see when he's most "vulnerable", which is the thing he likely hates being the most, so getting to see scenes where he's walking around publicly intoxicated and disparaging himself for acting like his father (implied: again), who he hates, and attacking men with a wine bottle for evoking the concept of his mother, who he also kind of hates but lacks the cognizant cogency to dissolve whatever cognitive dissonance is causing this mental incongruence, rules. he rules

tl;dr SDC dio is "iconic" but I feel like he misses a lot of the charm he had in part one, removed from the context of the society that had such rigid social boundaries and rules of decorum, in addition to his maladaptive approach to interpersonal relationships, his substance abuse issues, his humbling foil... he's too "cool" for me. In the end SDC dio is simply not my Dio... he is someone else's Dio. And that's okay.

[thegoddamnwordsmith]

TMayNT SUPERPOST!

Hey all! I haven't really had a chance to post for TMayNT, which is a bummer, because TMNT is my comfort food.

I know a lot of people who follow me on here may be more familiar with me as a Transformers fan, but I was born in 1983. TMNT has been the constant fictional presence in my life since I was old enough to remember. Moreover, it was the major fiction that I followed through the formative years of my childhood, and while I haven't always been active in fandom spaces or interacting with every part of the franchise, I've always kept that flame burning in my heart and my eyes on what was going on with all things Turtle.

So I'm going to be posting the full month's worth of TMayNT in one post (put under a cut, of course, to spare y'all from having a stretched-out timeline). Also, this will give anyone who's interested a better idea of just what slice of the fandom I'm a part of, which I think is kind of fun.

Anyway, let's get on with the show, shall we?

1 - Your favorite Turtle - This kind of depends on your definition, but if we're just pulling from the Brothers, it's easy: Michelangelo.

He's fun and funny, compassionate and caring, arguably has the biggest heart among all his brothers. Often irreverent and irresponsible, but always dependable. His lack of discipline usually ends up balanced out by his incredible natural ability, and what he lacks in forethought he makes up for in thinking on the fly. I love all the Brothers, but I'll always gravitate towards Mikey first.

If we go outside the green teens, however...

I. Love. Slash. The original action figure was one of the coolest I owned in a toyline made of cool, but it wasn't until the Archie comics that I fell hard for the guy. And while he showed up in other fiction before and after that, when IDW utilized him, he was just an incredible character. Sure, he seems like a violent brute on the outside, but even as far back as the 1987 cartoon version had deeper desires, sentimental longings that were almost at the core of his rage. He's a character that's both straightforward and incredibly layered.

2 - Favorite April

Another easy one, the Archie Comics version.

First, I'm personally a fan of April being an investigative reporter, since it gives her a perfect reason to get into messes that would be on the Turtles' radar. But moreover, where '87 leaned more into April fitting 'damsel in distress' tropes, her evolution in the Adventures comics would set the pattern for future versions of the character. She started learning how to hold her own in a fight, to the point where she was on equal footing with the rest of the crew. She was able to have adventures and plots independent of, or only peripherally involving, the Turtles themselves. She had her own supporting cast and enemies, and even got to have a stable romantic relationship (and not with usual pair-partner Casey Jones)! I feel like any version of April that gets the chance to stand on her own in subsequent TMNT iterations owes at least a little to this Splinter-trained independent reporter.

3 - Favorite henchman

This one is a bit tougher than the last two, only because there's so many to choose from! But I think that Tiger Claw rises above all the others.

He is dangerous. He is ruthless. He is loyal. And worst of all, he is competent. You have a lot of villainous characters that can use at least one of those words to describe them. But Tiger Claw uses them all. Armed to the teeth, well-trained, and able to take even major injuries in stride, Tiger Claw is one of the most terrifying soldiers to work under The Shredder in any continuity.

4 - Baby Turtles!

Look at these little guys and tell me that they aren't the cutest Baby Turtles we've ever gotten.

5 - Best Leo (all incarnations)

A bit of an odd pull, but I feel like 2007 Leonardo was a great examination of the character, specifically how much his sense of responsibility and his perfectionism both drive him, and get in his own way.

Also the absolute delight he has in the final fight when he gets thrown into a room full of swords.

6 - Favorite mutant ally

My immediate go-to is to say "The Mighty Mutanimals" as a whole, specifically the original Archie iteration of the team. However, if we want to narrow it down to a singular character among them, it would likely be Jack Finney, AKA Man Ray/Ray Fillet.

A former marine biologist and ecological activist, Man Ray was not someone you wanted to make an enemy of. Honestly, the only reason he didn't have a body count was because of the people he hung out with. Man Ray felt that the ends often justified the means, if the ends were protecting the lives and environments of sea-dwelling creatures, and was not above using theft and violence to reach those goals. But even with all that, he was shown to be incredibly loyal, and even forgiving of those who genuinely wanted to make up for their mistakes.

7 - Best Turtle gadget

Does 2012 Metalhead count? Because if so, 2012 Metalhead.

8 - Favorite Turtle + ally dynamic

Raphael and Ninjara, again from the Archie comics. Aside from how much I was a fan of their romance, their relationship was one of mutual respect and appreciation for their strengths, but also being willing to call each other out when the need arose. The two genuinely made a great team whenever they went into action together.

9 - Best Raph (all incarnations)

This one is a tie, because the 2012 version of Raph is my favorite of all the major incarnations of the character.

Unlike many other versions before him, 2012 Raph was much more nuanced. He was angry, sure, as the character often is, but he also really loved his family. He's got a warm heart that he does share, just with a select few. He goes on multiple journeys of growth and change, and they stick as the series progresses. Also, he loves animals so much.

But of all the versions of Raph, my hands-down favorite is Future Raph, from the Archie comics. Older, wiser, having mellowed with age but still having that fire inside. He settled down into a somewhat calm life, got married, ran a restaurant, and still helped his brothers take care of the bad stuff going on in the city. He also lost an eye to Armaggon, learned to handle Leo's swords as a hobby, straight-up shot someone who threatened his family, and decked Hitler while time-traveling with his brothers.

How can you not love him?

10 - Favorite Turtle curseword

"Shell," for its sheer versatility.

11 - Favorite Splinter

2012 Splinter hits the perfect balance of wise master, trained ninja warrior, and caring father for me. Not only is he willing to take on any threat to his family, but he can fight on surprisingly equal footing with many of their foes, even the Shredder depending on the situation. He has the patience and wisdom to train April, put up with Casey, and even calm down characters like Leatherhead and Slash, who could easily (and even accidentally) cause him major harm. And yet, this is a father who has a cheese-themed phone for the boys to call him on "for emergencies."

12 - Best Turtle vehicle

The Turtle Van. The original and still the best.

13 - Best Don (all incarnations)

Something that always fascinates me with Donatello is how often he gets put into "crisis of faith" stories of a sort, usually putting his scientific mind at odds with magical or supernatural forces beyond his understanding. Nowhere is this more pronounced than with the Archie version.

Over the course of the series, Donnie ended up seeing Izanagi and Izanami intervene in mortal affairs, speak to the manifestations of yin and yang, encounter an entire world that existed out-of-time in the center of the Earth, speak with an elemental spirit of the Earth while being present for the events of Columbus' landing in 1492, and had his mind opened to the infinity of the cosmos when he held the Turnstone. All of this made him a much more subdued and grounded version of himself than many other iterations, without a doubt.

14 - Favorite Turtle movie

I love when the Brothers are written the most like teenagers, and nowhere did that hit the best than in Mutant Mayhem.

Not only that, this one had the unenviable job of having to manage a large cast without the story feeling bloated... and it succeeded. As a lifelong fan, this movie hit all of my notes and then some. I can't wait to see where things go from this one.

15 - Best Karai

Once again we go to 2012, as this version of Karai had some incredible complexities to her, both in her character and in her origins. The connections between her, Shredder, Splinter, and the Turtles made her entire character arc incredible.

16 - Favorite episode/issue

The Future Shark Trilogy (TMNT Adventures, Issues #42-#44). Featuring one of the most dangerous threats in the franchise, a time-travel tale that's both fun and has high stakes, and of course, Future Raphael. Runner-up would be "United We Stand, Divided We Fall," from TMNTA #38-#39 and Mighty Mutanimals #6, because it's hard to get over a story where the TMNT, the Mighty Mutanimals, and a handful of their friends and allies face off against Mr. Null and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

17. Best Mikey (all incarnations)

Above all the various versions of Mikey, the IDW comics have given possibly the most emotionally open and heartfelt version of the character. Mikey befriends humans and mutants alike, and really would rather not have anyone be fighting anyone. He has such a strong moral core that, despite how much he loves his family, he left when he didn't agree with Splinter's more flexible stance on morality when running the Foot Clan. If any one Turtle could bring you to tears with how much of a good person he is, it's this version of Mikey.

18 - Human version of the Turtles

Not something I've dwelled on much! That said, my favorite version(s) have been done by @thisistab so there's that.

19 - Best Casey Jones

A rare 2003 pull! This is the perfect example of Casey being this lovable guy who's also genuinely unhinged. Too many other versions lean into him being a grim vigilante (or a parody thereof), but 2003 showed him at his best - a guy who knows how to weaponize the fact that he's not quite right in the head.

That said, shout out to Rise's Cassandra Jones, for being a very different take on the character, and a refreshing one at that.

20 - Favorite Turtle merch/toy that you own

My copy of the Official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Treasury, which has a very cool collection of photos of early TMNT merch, including the tabletop miniatures, an assortment of wild tie-in items, and even prototypes of some of the first Playmates figures. This thing is well-worn and will leave my possession when I die.

21 - Favorite Shredder

The 2012 version has been both the most human, and the most monstrous, version of the character to date. He walks a very thin line of invoking feelings of hatred, pity, fear, and sympathy. He is an aging man, trained in the ways of warfare and assassination, who refuses to let go of his grudges to the point of deluding himself of the truths behind them. And even the people and things that he cares for are still tools to him - no matter what he feels towards them, they can always be discarded once they no longer fit his goals. He is no less dangerous as an ally than he is as an enemy.

22 - Favorite Turtle duo

Regardless of the version, it's gotta be Donnie and Mikey.

Whether it be bonding over the same kind of nerdy wavelengths, Donnie being frustrated over Mikey's inattentiveness or negligent curiosity, or the two of them offering color commentary whenever Raphael and Leonardo have a blow-out, these two are easily my favorite to see interacting, especially during downtime.

23 - Favorite human ally

Oyuki Mashimi from the Archie comics. While she ends up more of an April supporting character, she nonetheless a bit of a unique type, being a Japanese street urchin that came this close to being a human sacrifice, only to get saved by the actions of the TMNT. She went on to follow them back to America and provide a no-nonsense, sometimes rough point of view when it came to their adventures. She also became April's trusted friend, roommate, and coworker, and even got to see some infiltration action to help the Turtles on a few occasions.

24 - Favorite Turtle + villain dynamic

Raphael and Xever/Fishface from 2012. It was a take on the "we're not so different" kind of relationship, but in a way where neither party was left feeling more lenient towards the other, and instead they seemed to have a mutual, if begrudging, respect for one another that would've been fun to see explored more, but was a pretty good relationship as it was.

25 - Your turtlesona

I do not have one, sorry!

26 - Favorite series

The Archie comics are my nostalgia. The 2012 cartoon revitalized my love for the TMNT. But overall, nothing even comes close to the IDW comics. The series has run the gamut of everything that's been a part of TMNT since their inception, from humor and wild adventure to raw emotions and dark twists and turns. This series, this universe, is hand-crafted by creators who know the Turtles, and moreover, love them. They have cherry-picked the best things from the past to bring back, and given them a rework to be even more beloved than they ever could be before. The stories, the characters, even the concepts have depth and growth that one might never have assumed possible for this 1980s-spawned property, and the fact that the IDW continuity lasted as long as it has (and isn't even over, just getting a 'soft' reboot/jumping-on point) is a testament to how well this all came together.

27 - Favorite mutant/alien villain

Armaggon, hands down.

A ruthless criminal with his sights set on mastering time itself, the cybernetic mutant shark Armaggon presents a threat to the Turtles and their allies in two different time periods. He's personally responsible for the loss of Raphael's eye, and if given half the chance would end the threat of the Turtles permanently by way of just straight-up eating them. He'll gladly work alongside other villains, but he's only out for himself.

28 - Favorite Turtle intro/song

Favorite intro would probably be the 2012 version of the theme (the standard version through most of the series), but my favorite Turtles song all together would be Mutants on Broadway, from the Shredder's Revenge game. As the kids say, it slaps.

29 - Favorite alternative outfit or design

Even tie between the Stump Intergalactic Wrestling outfits, and the Future Ninja Turtles outfits (both from, surprise surprise, the Archie comic)

30 - Favorite human villain

IDW's take on Baxter Stockman bumps him into the upper echelon of fictional schemers along the lines of Lex Luthor and David Xanatos, what can I say? Plus, he's still a bit of a mad scientist.

31 - The Turtles in your favorite style

Just go look up any of Chris Allan's work from the Archie comics, or pretty much any TMNT art that Sophie Campbell (@mooncalfe-art) has done.

OKAY! Did it! Whew! That took a minute. I hope you all enjoyed getting a chance to see my taste in Turtles. This was fun, if a bit taxing to do all at once.