#no more dogs with photoshopped human mouths

[roosterbox]

The two most recent ads/sponsored posts I’ve seen.

Has tumblr… figured me out???

[gonermaker-ocpicrew]

tag list/general info post

Undertale/Deltarune character distinction: overall I'm going to organize with an Undertale bias as it came first. Any kind of "crossover" is pretty much excluded from that rule and will be tagged with both.

I've reblogged like 2 posts that apply, but I tag criticism of Undertale Yellow as "UTY criticism" for blacklist.

"Mad Mew Mew" is her default form. Fanart of her pre-transition self is tagged as "Mad Dummy" as well as this the same way Hyperdeath is also tagged as "Asriel".

As for chapter-based tagging, fanart of Deltarune characters which doesn't reference any of specific chapter won't be tagged as one, but for instance a drawing of the Fun Gang in their doctor outfits will be tagged as Chapter 2. Hat Ralsei doesn't count as a ch1 reference.

Originally, the following reference list had hyperlinks but then I hit the limit (100) and removed them all for consistency. If you want to look through a tag, use gonermaker-ocpicrew.tumblr.com/tagged/example but replace “example” with the tag’s name. If you really want to use the the onsite version of my blog, use tumblr.com/gonermaker-ocpicrew/tagged/example. While I theoretically rely on the ability to search two terms at once for tag overlap (eg. looking up "papyrus 2015" for papyrus art from that year), note that it won't necessarily show you everything since tumblr sucks. This list is not completely exhaustive.

No character tagged as “oc” is necessarily mine; it’s just a way of categorizing non-official utdr characters. Same goes for “au”. Some more tags here are listed ahead of time and may be empty.

I usually publish reblogged posts on a 1-per-hour 24/7 queue, but this is subject to change. Exceptions include emptying my queue so seasonal posts can publish at a certain time or when I add commentary other than short compliments.

I don't use punctuation other than colons in organized tags because it tends to glitch out in some cases. Keep that in mind when searching things like "snowdrakes mother".

Characters

Alphys

Annoying Dog

Asgore

Asriel | God of Hyperdeath

Big Mouth

Bratty

Business Dude 1

Burgerpants

Catty

Chara

Charles

Chilldrake

Clam Girl

Clam Guy

Diamond Boy 1

Diamond Boy 2

Dogamy

Dogaressa

Doggo

Dress Lion

Drunk Bun

Echo Flower Explainer

Endogeny

Fallen humans (any of the 6 other kids that fell underground)

Faun

Ficus Licker

Flowey | Adobe (Omega/"Photoshop" form) | Floweypot

Frisk

Froggit | Final Froggit

Gap Bird (Bird That Carries You Over a Disproportionately Small Gap)

Gerson

Gift Bear

Glyde

Greater Dog

Grillby

Heats Flamesman

Hot Dog Harpy

Ice Wolf

Inn Keeper

Knight Knight

Lesser Dog

Library Lizard

Library Loox

Loox | Astigmatism

Loren

Napstablook

Madjick

Mad Mew Mew | Mad Dummy

Mettaton | box | ex | neo | ghost

Monster Kid

Muffet

Newsletter Editor 1

Newsletter Editor 2

Nice Cream Guy

Oni

Onionsan

PAPYRUS

Politics Bear

Punk Hamster

Rabbit Girl

Ragel

Reaper Bird

Red Bird

Red Demon

River Person

Royal Guards

Sans

Scared Donut Guy

Scarf Mouse

Skateboard Girl

Small Bird

Snowdrake

Snowdrakes father

Snowdrakes mother

Snowdin Shopkeeper

Snowman

Suzy

Temmie

Toriel

Ugly Fish

Undyne | Undying

Whimsun | Whimsalot

—-

Addisons

Ambyu Lance

Berdly

Bloxxer

Catti

Clover

C Round

Dess

Elnina

Everyman

Gaster

Hathy

Head Hathy

Jevil

Jigsawry

Jigsaw Joe

Kris

King

K Round

Lancer

Lanino

Maus

Noelle

Plugboy

Ponman

Poppup

Queen

Rabbick

Ralsei

Roaring Knight

Rudinn Ranger

Rudinn

Rudy

Seam

Spamton | N30 (the last character is a zero)

Susie

Swatchling

Swatch

Sweet Capn Cakes

Tasque Manager

Tasque

Top Chef

Vessel

Virovirokun

Werewerewire

Werewire

Locations, Chapters

Ruins | Home

Snowdin | Grillbys | Skelebros House

Waterfall | Undynes House | Blook Farms (ghost houses included)

Hotland | Lab | True Lab

CORE | MTT Resort

New Home

The Surface

---

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

LW (Light World) | DW

Endings/Routes

True Pacifist

Neutrals | Queen Toriel (used for Toriel Ending Tree overall) | Empress Undyne | King Mettaton | King Papyrus | Queen Alphys

No Mercy

Weird

Misc.

NSFF (Not Safe For Frisk; a tag for suggestive art. Explicit art isn't reblogged here.)

Crossover

Spooky Tag (halloween related posts)

Gyftmas (holiday season themed)

The Mirror (anything that plays with the "It's you!/Despite everything, it's still you" flavor text/imagery)

Newsletter (also tagged by season and year of said newsletter's release ex: "Winter 2024")

Anniversary (also tagged by year ex: "6th". sorry no ut/dr distinction at this time)

(I tag most reblogs by year of original post creation; self explanatory)

GIFS

Animation

Text (text-based ask responses and art/images I find to have interesting commentary are included)

Pixel art

Group photo (those cool drawings with most of the main cast)

Mass group photo (the above, but even more characters)

Official

Associations (myself or others associating any unrelated media with utdr ex: web weaves)

Personal tags

saying something tag: for anything i say

art tag: art tag. don't expect anything special

commentary: for my reactions to any utdr related thing im playing or otherwise experiencing

hehe: reblogs i personally find funny/amusing

[gonermaker-goner]

tag list/general info post

Undertale/Deltarune character distinction: overall I'm going to organize with an Undertale bias as it came first. Any kind of "crossover" is pretty much excluded from that rule and will be tagged with both.

As for chapter-based tagging, fanart of Deltarune characters which doesn't reference any of specific chapter won't be tagged as one, but for instance a drawing of the Fun Gang in their doctor outfits will be tagged as Chapter 2. Hat Ralsei doesn't count as a ch1 reference.

Originally, the following reference list had hyperlinks but then I hit the limit (100) and removed them all for consistency. If you want to look through a tag, use gonermaker-ocpicrew.tumblr.com/tagged/example but replace “example” with the tag’s name. If you really want to use the the onsite version of my blog, use tumblr.com/gonermaker-ocpicrew/tagged/example. While I theoretically rely on the ability to search two terms at once for tag overlap (eg. looking up "papyrus 2015" for papyrus art from that year), note that it won't necessarily show you everything since tumblr sucks. This list is not completely exhaustive.

No character tagged as “oc” is necessarily mine; it’s just a way of categorizing non-official utdr characters. Same goes for “au”. Some more tags here are listed ahead of time and may be empty.

I usually publish reblogged posts on a 1-per-hour 24/7 queue. Exceptions include emptying my queue so seasonal posts can publish at a certain time or when I add commentary other than short compliments.

Characters

Alphys

Annoying Dog

Asgore

Asriel | God of Hyperdeath

Big Mouth

Bratty

Business Dude 1

Burgerpants

Catty

Chara

Charles

Chilldrake

Clam Girl

Clam Guy

Diamond Boy 1

Diamond Boy 2

Dogamy

Dogaressa

Doggo

Dress Lion

Drunk Bun

Echo Flower Explainer

Endogeny

Fallen humans (any of the 6 other kids that fell underground)

Faun

Ficus Licker

Flowey | Adobe (Omega/"Photoshop" form) | Floweypot

Frisk

Froggit | Final Froggit

Gap Bird (Bird That Carries You Over a Disproportionately Small Gap)

Gerson

Gift Bear

Glyde

Greater Dog

Grillby

Heats Flamesman

Hot Dog Harpy

Ice Wolf

Inn Keeper

Knight Knight

Lesser Dog

Library Lizard

Library Loox

Loox | Astigmatism

Loren

Napstablook

Madjick

Mad Mew Mew | Mad Dummy

Mettaton | box | ex | neo | ghost

Monster Kid

Muffet

Newsletter Editor 1

Newsletter Editor 2

Nice Cream Guy

Oni

Onionsan

PAPYRUS

Politics Bear

Punk Hamster

Rabbit Girl

Ragel

Reaper Bird

Red Bird

Red Demon

River Person

Royal Guards

Sans

Scared Donut Guy

Scarf Mouse

Skateboard Girl

Small Bird

Snowdrake

Snowdrakes father

Snowdrakes mother

Snowdin Shopkeeper

Snowman

Suzy

Temmie

Toriel

Ugly Fish

Undyne | Undying

Whimsun | Whimsalot

—-

Addisons

Ambyu Lance

Berdly

Bloxxer

Catti

Clover

C Round

Dess

Elnina

Gaster

Hathy

Head Hathy

Jevil

Jigsawry

Jigsaw Joe

Kris

King

K Round

Lancer

Lanino

Maus

Noelle

Plugboy

Ponman

Poppup

Queen

Rabbick

Ralsei

Roaring Knight

Rudinn Ranger

Rudinn

Rudy

Seam

Spamton | N30 (the last character is a zero)

Susie

Swatchling

Swatch

Sweet Capn Cakes

Tasque Manager

Tasque

Top Chef

Vessel

Virovirokun

Werewerewire

Werewire

Locations, Chapters

Ruins | Home

Snowdin | Grillbys | Skelebros House

Waterfall | Undynes House | Blook Farms (ghost houses included)

Hotland | Lab | True Lab

CORE | MTT Resort

New Home

The Surface

---

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

LW (Light World) | DW

Endings/Routes

True Pacifist

Neutrals | Queen Toriel (used for Toriel Ending Tree overall) | Empress Undyne | King Mettaton | King Papyrus | Queen Alphys

No Mercy

Weird

Misc.

Crossover

Spooky Tag (halloween related posts)

Gyftmas (holiday season themed)

The Mirror (anything that plays with the "It's you!/Despite everything, it's still you" flavor text/imagery)

Newsletter (also tagged by season and year of said newsletter's release ex: "Winter 2024")

Anniversary (also tagged by year ex: "6th". sorry no ut/dr distinction at this time)

(I tag most reblogs by year of original post creation; self explanatory)

GIF

Text (text-based ask responses and art/images I find to have interesting commentary are included)

Pixel art

Group photo (those cool drawings with most of the main cast)

Mass group photo (the above, but even more characters)

Official

Associations (myself or others associating any unrelated media with utdr ex: web weaves)

Personal tags

saying something tag: for anything i say

art tag: art tag. don't expect anything special

commentary: for my reactions to any utdr related thing im playing or otherwise experiencing

hehe: reblogs i personally find funny/amusing

[fly-on-the-windscreen15]

Alan Wilder and The Guardian: Y-fronts and socks (Interview; 25th February, 1999)

Q: Are computers important . . . for you? . . . for the world?

For me, essential. For the world, perhaps not. One should retain one's quality of life but not at the expense of progress. Shopping is a good example. Just browsing a virtual supermarket, then sitting back and waiting for some spotty youth to deliver my weekly choice directly to my door has got to be the way forward. However, pottering around your local country deli for some unusual delights should not be eradicated.

Q: What about the Internet? Does it threaten or enhance individual freedom?

It's a paradox. My solo project, Recoil, takes advantage of the Net to spread the word and benefits from fans being able to exchange material (essentially bootlegging); whereas Depeche Mode, my other source of income, needs to take precautions to prevent unauthorised material flying around.

Q: Do you use an Apple Mac or a PC?

Strictly Mac, because that's where I started (best for music). I use a 9600 with two 21-inch monitors for music running Digidesign's Pro Tools Z24 [a 24-bit, 32-track digital music studio] (and nothing but music-related software is installed). For the office and Web site, I use a G3 and a 7600 with 17-inch monitors.

Q: What do you use the machines for?

Primarily making music but also running a Web site (www.recoil.co.uk). No games. I have a strong aversion to Sonic The Hedgehog.

Q: Any favourite software, and anything you'd like but can't have yet?

Logic Audio and Recycle for music; and Go Live Cyberstudio and Photoshop for Web design. And no!

Q: Any favourite spots on the Net?

Stories of foreign objects lodged in the body along the lines of 'I was Hoovering my signal box in the nude when I tripped over the dog and accidentally sat on the kettle . . .' complete with X-rays and full medical jargon (www.well.com/user/cynsa/newbutt.html); to translate anything into 'Saaf Lahndahn', 'Redneck', Swedish and more (www.rinkworks.com/dialect/); The Citroen DS- An Homage to the Goddess (www.id-ds. com/Pages/the.godess.htm); Anton Corbijn Photographer (www.photogenic.net/corbijn/index.html); Lord's (http://lords.msn.com/scoreboard/scores/default.htm); and Mouth Almighty Records - Bringing the Muse to Market (www.mouthalmighty.com/index.htm).

Q: Do you get into dialogues with strangers on the Net? 

Yes, a little. I quite enjoy talking to faceless people on occasion. Perversely, it can be a freeing experience.

Q: Do you use your own name when surfing?

Generally, no. I prefer Norman Gland or Dr Feschel.

Q: Spend long at the terminal?

Yes, an unreasonable amount of time. I'm taking fresh air therapy at the moment.

Q: Are you a geek? Got any favourite geeks? 

Yes, I sit up late into the night, writing e-mails wearing nothing but Y-fronts and socks. Stephen Hawking (a Recoil fan, so he says :-).

Q: On a desert island, would you prefer a human or a computer for company?

A human. I'm not quite that sad.

Q: Professionally, what's taking up your time? 

Making a new Recoil album - on a computer. And running a Web site - on a computer.

(some of the links above are a bit hit or miss)

source

[supersonic-darling]

Dad Van Fleet - Headcanons

The boys as dads, as requested by Anon! 

I like imagining them as dads sometimes but I get that some of you don’t, hence why its under the bar.

Josh

Josh is a fun dad, I can imagine him being really good with small kids

Like you wake up and walk into the kitchen, and Josh is there with your baby in a high chair, doing airplane noises with his breakfast

He sees the joy in everything so I can imagine he can’t get enough of your babies’ giggles

He’s always kissing their chubby little cheeks and it makes your heart explode

Josh seems to be quite family orientated (I think I read somewhere he’ always the one to ring home) so I think he’d want to give your kids family names

But their middle names would totally be something nature related; like, Kelly Aspen Kiszka

You’d definitely go on family hikes

I can imagine Josh wearing a papoose with your kid in it constantly taking group selfies with matching smiles

Whether you have one or more kids Josh is going to be that dad with so much energy all the time that he can keep them all entertained all the time

And when you get home in the afternoon Josh is asleep on the sofa, mouth open; with baby on his chest and any other kids you have scattered around the room, also asleep

Jake

I can imagine Jake inadvertently having a lot of kids (… like his dad)

He always has his hair tied up around the house because your babies grab at it

He’s always got a weird stain on his shirt and he never knows where it comes from – and those eye bags … permanent

Jake loves being a dad but he also loves dropping your kids off with Uncle Josh for the weekend and sleeping

A bit like Josh, Jake is always taking you guys camping in the summer

He’s good at teaching them practical skills, like tying ropes and cooking

Also you cannot convince me that he doesn’t start giving them instruments to play with as soon as they can hold a spoon

I think Jake would name his kids something traditional or related to someone he admires eg; Thomas James ‘Jimi’ Kiszka

Falls asleep next to his kids bed, holding their hand, when he’s reading to them or when they’re sick and he goes to sit with them, its so cute but you have to wake him up because he’ll get a stiff neck sleeping like that

‘One black coffee’ Dad

Danny

Simultaneously Traditional and Hippy!Dad

Definitely names his kids something traditional but is up for more nature related names like Robin or Willow

Gets them novelty onsies about Drums or Golf

His hair is in a permanent very high bun, ever since your baby grabbed a tiny fistful of his curls and tugged so hard his eyes watered

Loves blowing raspberries on their tummies because he can’t get enough of their giggles

When they play together (because they’d have the same relationship he did with his sister) he wraps his arms around your waist from behind and watches them with you

Always playing outside with his kids – his tall lanky frame flailing about trying to catch his kids

Teaches them to ride bikes, swim, play golf (obviously)

When they’re babies he has a papoose which he straps to his chest when you guys go out, its just incredibly cute to see your tiny human strapped to his broad chest

You walk in on them one day and he’s bench pressing your five year old

You all get matching jumpers every year for Christmas… his mum sends them to you

Sam

Has an oops baby, especially the first one, it definitely wasn’t planned

Full on laid back dad – he doesn’t mind what they want to do, as long as they don’t seriously injure themselves

You name them after role models (*see Ruth Bader Ginsberg)

You guys go and do things like pick litter at the beach or go on kids nature courses like looking at sea life in rock pools and things

Occasionally he remembers to go and visit his family and the car journey is when he really regrets his life choices

Because his kids are just as loud and crazy as he is and he’s definitely going to apologise to his mum when he gets there

His kids look so much like him its almost as if you could stack them all together like Russian dolls

When they’re babies he’s always taking photos of them with your dogs, they learn to walk by holding onto their backs and puling themselves up

When you leave them alone for the day you will come back to your child dressed either in a costume or just absolutely insanely

You guys troll your families with ridiculous family Christmas cards; like ones where you’re photoshopped at a cliff edge you climbed and Sam is throwing your baby in the air – anything that looks almost believable but isn’t real.

[mothman-did-nothing-wrong]

okay fine. what about bones. does mothman have teeth. if yes, are these teeth made how human teeth are? does he lose baby teeth? or is it more like goose teeth? moths dont have teeth. is it like a shark? or more like those images of horses photoshopped to have a full mouth of dog teeth?

God okay, fine fine fine fine fine

Yes moths don't have teeth, much less a mouth, so if he were to have teeth they'd more likely be on the human side

But mothman with flat dull teeth is unnerving and doesn't feed into my Monsterfucker side so I'll ignore that and say that his teeth are like "crows photoshopped to have sharp teeth"

[sharkfish]

late summer recs in the endless year of our lord 2020

masterpost of rec lists /// yeah it’s october  but i’m in texas so it’s still basically summer! 

*~*~*~if you like the fics, give love to the author via kudos and/or comments!!*~*~*~*~ 

under the cut to prevent endless scrolling~ 

8 Reasons by Threshie ***WIP***

Space pilot Dean is caught trying to break Sam out of prison, and ends up tossed into a cell with a half-man, half tentacly monster alien.

Adagio by noangelsinthegarrison (6k)

“His name’s Dean," Cas sighs, "And he’s really stupidly attractive, and when he dances, he feels it, you know? And it makes me feel like I know him, even though I don’t. He makes me feel like… like he’s dancing just for me.”

Gabriel rolls his eyes, “Wow, you’re over-dramatic when you’re horny.”

And He's Oh So Good by @jemariel ***WIP*** - completed, 10/13 chapters posted

Dean Smith is a man of routine, and it's been working very well for him, thank you very much.

Then Castiel walks into his life, and suddenly there's a splash of color that reveals just how gray everything had been before.

Can Dean let himself step out of his comfortable shell and experience the good things in life that he's forgotten about?

A Thousand Lies by @goldenraeofsun (73k)

Dean Winchester is the best con artist in the continental US. Conscripted into the life after a stupid mistake as a teenager, he works for a man only known as the Lightbringer. He specializes in the marriage con, tricking his marks into falling in love with him and bolting after the honeymoon with everything they own.

But the morning before his meticulously planned meet-cute with his newest assignment, he runs into an adorably clueless accountant named Cas in a coffee shop, and Dean’s entire view on life implodes.

Christmas Treats and Angel Heats by @malmuses (20k) 

Angels don't have a sex, or gender, nevermind a secondary gender—right? At least, that's what the Winchesters have been led to believe.

It's Christmas, and Dean misses his angel friend. He's been AWOL for days, and the Winchesters are worried.

When Cas returns to the bunker on Christmas Eve, very clearly in heat, a few of their assumptions are going to have to change.

Oh, and Dean is going to have to hide his feelings for Cas in the face of the news that the angel is an unmated omega, who desperately needs their help.

Merry Christmas, Dean!

Cliché Bingo by noangelsinthegarrison (3k)

Sometimes, Castiel thinks that if he were playing a game of cliché bingo with his own life he’d get a full house within seconds. He’s the smart kid who wears glasses; he’s the Christian who wears sweater vests; he’s the quietest, youngest son in a family of seven and, oh yes, he’s in love with Dean Winchester.

Who just happens to be his best friend. And his neighbour. And a jock. So that’s three in one right there.

Blaze And Fall by @casbeanwrites  (13k)

Dean's not handling his best friend and ex-roommate's "kinks" very well.

Until he learns how to handle them.

Dean Winchester and the Patron Saint of Blind Dates by @goldenraeofsun  (18k)

Dean Winchester's friends are a bunch of traitors. So he had a bad breakup two years ago and hasn't gotten back on the horse. Their intervention - a series of blind dates - can't be the solution.

But if this'll get his friends to stop, Dean can choke down over-priced spaghetti, make forced conversation, and drink whatever random cocktail the blue-eyed weirdo bartender makes for him next.

At least Cas has his back. One nod from Dean, and he'll swoop down from behind the bar and make excuses for Dean to bail. It would be a perfect system - except Dean can't stop trading knowing looks with Cas and focus on his damn dates instead.

From Ashes by kradarua (12k) 

“You’ll be able to use your legs again,” Sam rushed, “just...well, it might take a while.”

Dean exhaled sharply, frustrated, but forced himself to raise his head and take a look.

OR

Dean gets injured on the job, and Castiel falls in love with him by mistake.

Head Down, Walk with Reason by @goldenraeofsun (63k)

As an omega, Castiel is ineligible for the throne after his father dies. When his uncle takes the crown, Metatron's first order of business is to arrange a betrothal with King John for the hand of his firstborn son, the Crown Prince of Terra.

So Castiel flees.

On his first night on the run, Castiel stumbles into a band of outlaws just at the border. Injured and wary, he has no choice to stay with them. And although he had planned to return to his own kingdom once it was safe, home might not be the place he left, but instead with Dean, their alpha leader that took him in.

Russian to the Altar by @malmuses  (144k) 

“I need you to marry Castiel.”

They weren’t the words Dean expected to hear from his business partner’s mouth before their bakery-slash-chocolate shop opened for the day. He’d been quite happy being single—and who the fuck was Castiel, anyway?

It turned out that Castiel was a Russian erotic novelist in need of a ticket to America, and Dean… well, Dean was a last resort.

Save the Drake by VioletHaze (@scones-and-texting-and-murder) (33k)

Encouraged by his best friend Meg to create more connections in his life, Cas jumps into an online discussion surrounding the closing of the Drake, an independent and historic theater in his neighborhood. If nothing else, the confidence Cas gains as he makes a new online friend helps him to be less awkward around the guy in his building that he likes: Dean Winchester.

It’s not like Dean Winchester needs help meeting people, but a hasty decision to comment on a local news article leads him to make a virtual connection. It's a new sort of relationship for Dean, but soon the two of them are chatting all day long. He only wishes getting to know his downstairs neighbor Cas was this simple.

Sparks by vipjuly (21k)

The creepy house on the corner has been abandoned for years, everyone says. It's ramshackle and decrepit, the yard overgrown, the wrought iron fence bent and broken in some places. The adults in the neighborhood have asked the city to do something about that eyesore for so long, but the city insists that someone is paying property taxes on the house, therefore they cannot do anything about it.

So, everyone ignores it and pretends it doesn't exist. They definitely don't go anywhere near it, either.

Dean, though.

Dean is drawn to it as if by gravity.

Little by little, Dean repairs what he can. The monster inside the house ain't so bad, either.

Y'know. For a monster.

Such Familiar Magic by @saltnhalo (26k)

When solitary witch Castiel finds an injured dog unconscious in his garden, he takes it in. He's expecting to heal it, look after it for a few days, then perhaps return it to its owners.

He's not expecting it to be one of the strongest familiars he's ever met.

Sugar Stages by VioletHaze (6k)

He heard Dean before he saw him. It was like he brought an energy into the test kitchen that crept under Cas’s skin, an awareness of his carefree attitude that was equal parts calming and infuriating. Still, Cas resisted the urge to turn and look over his shoulder. He knew damn well how the internet talked, the way they “shipped” them, always zeroing in on what they considered lingering looks. He’d seen too many gifs of himself with his eyes photoshopped into hearts not to be aware of the way his every word and action with regard to Dean were being scrutinized.

You Shook Me All Quarantine Long series by @goldenraeofsun (4 fics around 10k each)

A series of quarantine-based one-shots with Creature Cas and Human Dean.

[hyannah]

Anon Archives vol. 4 (right?)

full res: x I miss him too. He was the first of the cast I ever designed and without him, there would simply be no TBoA. Rest assured there will be no shortage of him in the comic :) I understand that the concept of Wolfe with facial hair will be like marmite for most of you, but it’s probably something that you should prepare for regardless! Wolfe no longer has use of his hands due to extensive nerve damage and he has to get imaginative with ways to keep his grip on things - but some tools, like razors - are simply impossible for him to use anymore due to his tremors. Before the gang comes together he will be looking quite worse for wear. 

full res: x She calls him “Marty” :) Her mother called him that so it makes him happy. He’s not her father but he loves her as one would. He was the one who delivered her as a baby, though during the process there were complications. She broke her leg on the way out and though Martin was able to treat her, it caused her to walk with a slight limp growing up. Teaching her to dance wasn't just Martin's idea of physiotherapy but his way of showing her how dearly he cared for her. Music and dance are our good doctor's love languages, you see. He will have Twinkletoes refer to him as “Sir” when he reprimands her, but due to some of Martin’s own issues growing up, he hates disciplining children. If he absolutely must, it’s firm but merciful, and under no circumstances would he ever raise his hand to them.

full res: x Michael Graves is one of three of Ashwick’s Senior Wardens, the other being Hunter Gerhardt and an as of now unannounced third. Wardens are the town’s law enforcers who work directly under the church’s orders. Neither entirely police nor militia, they’re a bit of both. Wardens patrol the streets at night and make sure no one is out after Curfew. Wardens are simultaneously feared and revered amongst the deeply religious townsfolk who view them as God-sent, but no one strikes pure terror into their hearts quite like Graves. While Hunter is known for being terrifying but sometimes merciful, Graves holds no such reputation. If gunshots are heard in the night or blood stains the cobblestones in the morning, townfolk know to keep their mouths shut and heads down.

Thank you so much! I still have some demons to battle but I want to get better, and your support means the world.

Thank you! I kinda wanna die when I look at that piece. Damian deserved better than my art in that funky phase and I will capture his true beauty one day.

LOL Bloodborne has been a huuuuge visual influence on me over the last few years. Expect to see some similarities I'm sure.

Thank you ;.; I used Paint Tool Sai religiously but I've unfortunately fallen out of love with it in the last year in favour of Clip Studio Paint. I would highly recommend CSP and since it comes with a one-month free trial you'd be missing out not to give it a go. I occasionally use Photoshop for some final touches but not enough to say it's worth paying that silly subscription fee for. Lately, I've been using Procreate on my iPad. It was one hell of an investment (😔💸) but it was worth it - the iPad feels great to draw on.

Thank you! Yes, definitely expect that. There are a few timeskips in canon and I have outfit changes planned.

Wolfe can sometimes be seen circling a bed or chair a few times before sitting/lying down not unlike a dog would. Rose cannot - and I truly mean this - fathom numbers. To say she is bad at math would be a terrible understatement. Martin needs a few shots of whiskey a day to keep him going but he never seems inebriated so it’s impossible to tell (unless you’re Hunter). Hunter is so tall that churches are the only buildings he doesn’t have to duck to get in to and he Riker Sits everywhere. Gloria is a little superstitious, and Graves is a cigarette smoker. Twinkletoes likes pigeons.

I would certainly recommend it! If drawing inspires you, give it a shot! Though whether or not I recommend going to school for it is a more complicated question. The good thing about pursuing a career in art is that at the end of the day your work ethic and portfolio are your best friends. Having degrees and connections will help in the industry for sure (and why I DO recommend art courses for people who have the money and want to experience student life), but if you're a poor kid that can't shell out the dough for art school or if you studied a different field, or if college didn't/isn't working out for you, it's not the end of the road. You can build your career on your own terms if you're driven enough.

Hm, let's see. I think Wolfe and Gloria would appreciate some sweet treats! Hunter rarely eats anything that isn't meat, and Rose has lived on the road most of her life so campfire food is what she's used to. She's the kind of person you'd see eat something horrifying like uncooked beans straight from the tin. Gloria appreciates her guilty pleasures and Wolfe recalls her sharing taffy with him as a little boy. But those memories are hazy now, and he's long since forgotten the taste.

Oh jeez, that would mean the world to me! As for the dialogue, it’s probably a bit of both honestly haha.

Hunter: 43, Wolfe: 23, Gloria: 41, Martin: 45, Rose: 19, Graves: 38. Some of you may recall Hunter being younger but I had to make a few timeline adjustments. Otherwise, everyone has remained the same.

Oh, well, it just might be! Wolfe is used to carrying the frail and sickly through the Charnels, but human touch in that regard is alien to him.

You're right about one thing, Ashwick is certainly in the title! I'm pretty close to revealing it so hopefully you won't be stumped for too long. I can reveal however, if I haven't already (and I think I may have, I haven't read the previous Anon Archives in years), that TBoA was going to be called Memento Mori.

He raises an amused brow at your sentiment but if you're under 35 you're all toddlers and babies to him. Plus he can't go 5 minutes without thinking about his wife so it's safe to say he’s settled down.

Haha, yeah! All of the above. Though it goes both ways. Hunter’s antics drive the poor man up the wall for sure but Hunter will be the first to tell you that doc is a force of nature too when he’s got to be. They’ve known each other for decades. They’ve taken bullets and bruises and stabs wounds for one another. Martin makes sure Hunter doesn’t get himself killed (at least he did before Malignancy took that off the table) and Hunter makes sure Martin doesn’t work himself to death. Gloria just wonders why they both have to be so damn dramatic.

1. Rose's candles simulate artificial sunlight and can temporarily vanquish Spectres from the area at night until the wick runs out. These are especially useful to the common folk who may be suffering from seeing their dead loved ones night after night. Her special coloured candles are different, though. They block a Malignant from being able to possess their Host's body and thus allow the Host to keep control of themselves when night falls. You'll learn more about the ins-and-outs of this mechanic in the comic.

2. I can't share that! You'll just have to wait and find out. Though it is a wonder how someone as formidable and self-disciplined as Hunter could fall prey to a Malignant's manipulation … I suppose even men like Father Gerhardt have been vulnerable at one point in their lives, huh?

It’s private, sorry :( It was a kind gesture from a fan who wanted to show their appreciation but it quickly got a little out of hand and very inappropriate. I’m good friends now with the few who did join so it’s not so bad and we have a good laugh, but it’s given me a small taste of “Fandom” on a grander scale and it was enough for me to realise it makes me pretty uncomfortable to be in the middle of it. I love being able to communicate with you all but I don’t love being in awkward situations so much. I might try again in the future, we’ll see.

Malignancy is unpredictable and what happens to one Host won't necessarily happen to the other!

ohohohoh who knowsssssss ;D

Nope, she’s Hunter’s danger noodle gal.

Yes, I love them!!!! I recall checking them out after you sent this message quite some time ago. I had heard a few of their songs before but I've been listening to them regularly ever since. I appreciate the recommendation since music is a really big thing for me.

Oh thank you very much! They're my own characters yes :) I first created them when I was 16 for a college project. One day I would like to share that with you all because it's come a long way. The comic is in development. Thank you all for your questions, I think that’s most of them. If you don’t see your ask in here it’s because it was asked already, I got a similar question and took a screenshot of that instead, it was too inappropriate, I can’t reveal the information yet, or I simply didn’t see it. As always if you’re looking for more prompt responses please message me off anon so I can reply privately since I respond to most anons in bulk!

[gav-san]

White as the Driven Snow

-Wash-

1/7

------

You wondered how long it had been since you had seen the sky. Or breathed fresh air (and not the sharp ventilated afterbite of it). It was too long since you held felt the prickly blades grass between your toes or the wind fluttering your hair. Too long since you had seen the sun.

Your skin had once held a rosy glow but now was reduced to a sickly shade. This seemed supremely ironic as being locked away underground was supposed to prevent the grime and grit that the world above offered. But like a child picking up a dirty lollipop of the street, some things couldn't be prevented by you alone. Not that you would scream. No one would hear you, and at this point, you wondered if anyone good was even looking.

Your mother never exactly revealed why you weren’t allowed to meet her side of the family (totally understandable in retrospect), and your dad had been remarried after your mother’s death. Now all of that growing apart and not calling much was going to get you killed. 

But even if your life had been truly unfair in many respects, there were a lot of good things going on. You were in your second year of college, part of your college’s cheer squad, famous for performing at the UA sports festival, and had lots of friends.

This was not the slightest bit fair.

The slightest uncareful sound from your lips could cause these monsters to descend again, but not for any rational sort of torture. These masked creatures with false beaks were a special sort of savage. Clean wasn’t good enough for the plague doctors.

You needed to be spotless. Pure.

Ever since they had invaded the safety of your home, kidnapping you, all they murmured about was making you pure enough.

You hated that word.

You weren’t sure what the correct definition of Pure meant, but you soon got a dark idea of what it entailed.

Stolen, you had imagined many horrors. Human trafficking was not common in Japan, but it did happen. Girl shackled to beds, placed on drugs so they could neither escape mentally or physically. The plush doctor’s office didn't entirely fulfill that morbid fantasy. And upon waking, it took hours to connect the dots. Not until the female doctor with a large wart on her cheek gave you the worst surprise appointment of your life, did you fully realize how twisted the situation was. You didn't speak, trying to pick up on any fragment of conversation.

But all you heard were mutters of Overhaul, requests, Hassaikai, and those meant nothing to you.

Strapped up by one of the ‘expendables’ as they called themselves, you were subjected to several cosmetic procedures, some dangerous, teetering between being vaguely awake and unconscious. You finally break, begging for an explanation, and receive none, just a gag accompanied by a breathing mask. The woman examined you from head to toe, removing moles, and just so much touching. Lasik, teeth whitening, minor surgery, freckle removal, chemical peels, and microdermabrasion. She probably had some sort of medical quirk, because you should not have been able to do so much so quickly. Any hair specifically not on your head was lasered off, and your skin scrubbed and polished with creams that removed any hint of spots or blemishes.

The last memory in that awful office was of a large needle, and finally, through the cloth in your mouth, did you screech.

You awoke out of the drugged stupor with breathing mask strapped on you. No longer strapped down you quickly sat up, but didn't tear it off. You could feel the heaviness in your chest, and waited a long while, trying to take in your surroundings before doing anything rash. Your mother, long paranoid of some monster sweeping you away, had taught you to remain calm in an emergency. The long white dress you are in is light, and cool air pierces it easily from the air conditioning in the ceiling. The bed is screwed to the ground, and so you can't even adjust it away from the airflow.

The whitewashed room was small, featureless save for a large TV embedded behind glass in the far wall. The bare outline of a door was next to it, and it looked so much like a mental ward that panic did fill you. What had happened? Surely you had never done anything to warrant this! You tried to think of what had happened... Your last memory wasn't so clear, just you sitting at the dorm room kitchen counter, eating cereal. There was a knock on the door, strange as most people are on spring break. Perhaps a roommate got locked out? You opened the door, and then it was nothing... just black.

Clarity and an explanation don't come quickly.

Your only link to the outside world is the instructions that occasionally flash on the TV.

EAT. Meals appear on cue, painfully scanty and light.

SLEEP. The bare light on the ceiling goes out.

EXERCISE. You are not a lazy person. You had been on the Mustafar University Cheer team, taking tumbles, dancing and flirting riotously at events. But they don't care about your muscles and refusals. They want you thin, not fit. With a diet that rivaled celebrities and daily exercise routines, your body became slender and lean.

The day SHOWER appeared on the screen, you were perplexed. They had left you to sit in your filth and sweat for days, so the change in routine was sharp.

You didn’t have a shower in the room, and so the moment the door opened you got a real look at the monsters who moonlighted your nightmares.

It's another woman, with ugly, bulbous eyes and arms that twisted into tentacles as the elbow. Someone who would be bullied. Some quirks were worse than none. An ugly retort was on your tongue but as she lumbered forward, something black and viscous dripping from her body, you zipped your lips shut. A large, bird mask lay on her features, the beak twisted and unfriendly, like a toucan with a disease.

Down flat empty halls with no windows, she led you to a bathroom contained the most high-powered torture device spray possible. Brutal water pressure and you discovered one of the guards was female, as she was the one who forced you in, sprayed you down, and stuck soap all over you, all while telling you how fortunate you were. Apparently, your mother happened to be the second child of a prominent mobster, and the current head was looking for someone in the family to marry and continue the bloodline. You earned a slap when you suggested that your dog was still single. She told you since you were quirkless, you might as well be a dog.

You didn’t know how much more you could take. Any more showers and ritualistic cleanings by people with gruesome quirks who refused to look at you for long, only scrubbing when you have been insufficiently rubbed raw.

The smell of disinfectant and whatever was in the awful shampoo was all you smelled anymore, and they used something similar for laundry, done daily, if not more often. Was there a thing as too clean? You had never been dirty but this was an obsession. They were a cult of cleaning fanatics, and your body was their fixation. The mere white dress was your only article of clothing.

Even if you still had the strength to fight, the red reminder on your skin still stung from the decontamination chamber (what as you had named it). The tips of your fingers were still shriveled and pruned from grabbing the bottom of the shower. There was no more fight on you tonight, just the little desire to sleep.

Which is why you almost broke into sobs when the door opened again. She was back.

“The boss is coming tonight for final evaluation. We need to finish making you presentable.” 

“How  thoughtful.”

“Watch your mouth. Overhaul has little patience, and even if you share blood with the old boss, he will finish you himself.” She didn’t slap you. Instead, she just gazed at you with dark, hateful eyes.

“Is that his name then?  Overhaul?”  This earned a smack.

“You will treat Master Overhaul as a god. For all intents and purposes, he is one.” She carefully wrapped you in one of her clean tentacles. You didn’t get the heavy bath treatment, and you realized that she was being unusually considerate as she ushered your down endless long hallways. At the end of one, she opened a door and your eyes widened. 

Did it look like... a beauty parlor? In a mafia hideout? 

Not totally new, but spotless, and utterly white like everything else. There was a nervous-looking woman there to transform you was in all white as well. You looked at her, and she turned away, unable to look you in the eye. You turned to a mirror and didn't question why.

“Make her pretty. Try not to use much makeup. The boss has no patience for unclean things, so nothing with a heavy scent either.”

The technician went to work. There was the first hint of color as she opened her bag, glorious colors of tan, orange, brown and off white. The fierce smell of a beauty salon escaped and for a moment you were outside again. It made the next bit bearable, the part where she painted you, fixed your hair, and made your look alive. Unwilling to drag the terrified looking technician further into the delusion, you didn’t fight her. 

As she finished curling your hair, you glanced at the mirror, to see how she had done. What you had seen in the mirror for twenty years was gone, replaced by an almost photoshopped version of you. Real people didn’t look so strange. It wasn’t you.

A huge wave of nostalgia and misery hit you, bringing tears to your eyes. You desperately wanted your couch, sitting and watching some reruns of CSI or something normal. You just wanted to be normal again, eat ramen and wear your hair in a ponytail and enjoy the sun. Now pretty, clean and polished, you were given another white dress, this one much more fitted than the smock you had been in. Forced into the snug creation you were dragged to the last room.

You weren’t this woman in the mirror. You didn’t diet to be this thin or have hair this color or have eyelashes this long. This was a lie. And after the tears subsided, your only slim comfort was that it would be over soon. It was coming, the moment you couldn't do it anymore.

Mob blood withstanding, you were a bit mouthy, and that never boded well for you around people who had large egos. You had already lost several jobs and were barely funding your college tenure with your latest one at a bookstore. Well... had. It was just so unfair. 

A bitter thought kept coming to you, over and over. 

Where were the heroes?

The tentacle around you tightened.

“Don’t cry. I’ll get angry if you mess it up.” You sniffed, anger coursing through you. Who did these people think they were? If you were going down, you decided that they were all coming with you.

  The end of the line was one last room, generously sized, but filled. Rushed in by the tentacle woman, you still had time to see the final set-up. There were several other women here, all dressed the same as you. Each with their own handlers, each looking upset and panicked as the situation rightfully called for, each sitting tied to a chair, hands tied behind them. They looked to you, eyes wide and fearful, and you gazed back, understanding and upset.

You were led to the end, the last seat available, and forced into the same position. And then the entire group waited, and not a single soul uttered a word. Their handlers had beaten obedience into them. Well, for the moment.

The slowly growing dread that was starting to eat away at your nerves, and it was only a matter of time. Someone finally broke down, the girl with pink hair at the other end, a sob erupting. It was followed by a hard slap, and the sounds of a rag being stuffed in her mouth. She choked on the vile cloth, but finally managed to calm down, her 'handler' swearing viciously at the mess. 

Ten minutes passed.

Twenty minutes. Two more girls broke. They both received a rag in their mouths.

Thirty minutes. 

Fourt-

 The door opened.

 In a world rife with quirks that deform and mutate it isn’t unusual to see people who are suffering from the backlash of horrendous deformation and downright disability. It was almost as common as not for someone to be born with pink or green hair, then just brown or blonde. You hadn't given much thought to who are the monsters behind this desecration of women is, but you are sure he is no catch. How could someone who is so merciless to a potential wife be anything but ugly?

The other girls are curious as well, and you see eyes struggling to stay down. But caution is hardly going to help at this point, so you glance up. And before your head is shoved down, into your knees, you catch a glimpse of a pale face, delicate shaped, and exquisite amber eyes pointed away in disgust. Your chest feels an uncomfortable weight as you realize that not only ugly men are monsters. Even handsome men with glossy, golden eyes can be them, and the color sticks in your eyes, burning them. It’s not even an uncommon color, yet paired with black lashes and a narrowed expression, they appeared to be glowing. All of this is topped off with a bird mask.

No, you tell yourself, this must be the son of the man.

After a moment your thoughts return, enough to hear the sound of the man's measured steps, hurried and impatient. They come near, examining each downturned head, and you wonder if he can even see your faces. You can only see the faint image of your plucked face in his shiny leather shoes that appear in your downturned vision. You faintly register a second pair of shoes that follow, light as a child, but don’t see anyone.

“Repulsive. They’re all filthy.” He says, and you realized that this is the boss. There's no mistaking it. This was the guy with the phobia. It shocks you, as mob bosses were never this young, handsome or disgusting... right?

You don’t know his age, but his voice can’t be over thirty. It's something from a well to do accountant, not firm and deep like an evil All Might, but almost cracking and boyish. But such a mild voice wasn’t running off numbers. Just contemplating just how unworthy you all were. Obviously, the group hasn’t made a good showing. You can’t bring yourself to care anymore. All rational emotion has left you discontent, and needing a drink of water.

A high voice answers the boss, some lacky, probably with a crap quirk.

“These are the best we could find. Each is from an aligned mafia family, and most are quirkless. If not, well, that’s always fixable.”

One of the girls sobs through the napkin in her mouth, and you can imagine the anger in his glowing topaz eyes.

“You think any of these creatures are worthy of being next to me. Look at them. They are shaking. A disobedient woman is just as bad as a being  unclean.” The boss says flatly. "Where's Chronostasis-"

A monster with a cleaning disorder, and a bigot. He's talking like it's your fault, that you were here by choice, and your chest fills with a disdainful, mocking swearword. Unable to contain your utter vitriol as the absurd conversation, you wheeze out a  laugh. Well, at least it wasn’t the swearword, you think fatefully.

The room goes deathly quiet.

The other women are quiet, knowing you have just signed your death warrant, the first of the day. The leather shoes had retreated out of sight, but the sound of them returning is ominous. Not only that but the hand on the back of your head has twisted you forward painfully. She's very upset, you guess. The position is bad, and your lungs struggle to function properly. Tears pool in your eyes, and the makeup in coming off. Your hands strain, trying to escape the bounds. Your accompanying cough does nothing to improve your case. If there was ever a sign of uncleanliness, you’ve displayed it. Perhaps all those freezing cold showers had, ironically, gotten you sick.

One moment you are coughing to death, the next you are on the ground, the chair under you cracking into a million pieces. The surprise takes the air out of your lungs, and you manage to stop coughing. Your hands are freed, though still tied together, and wood in poking your back. Your dress rides up dangerously to your thighs.

None of this matters as much as the hands that are firmly around your throat. Small ones. For on top of you is what looks like a stuffed puppet come to life, a bird mask attached to his front. The top of the beak is dangerously positioned over your throat, weirdly strong for being a puppet. You laugh again, hysterical, and he drags your throat up.

“How  dare you insult Overhaul!” He says, and you slowly blink the mascara away, senseless.

The puppet turns up, glowering. The tentacle woman is in trouble. 

“Who is this creature who you have brought?!?!” The masked woman is pressed against the wall, sweat pooling around her face. Her tentacle hands are gripping the wall. “We  instructed you to only bring the best!” His hand is getting tighter, and your already strained breathing is getting even harder.

“She’s the old bosses granddaughter, from his estranged second daughter.” The woman whispers, frightened to death.

There's an audible pause. 

  “Mimic. Don’t kill her just yet.” The voice of the boss says, breaking the silence. The hand around your throat loosens, just a touch.

“She’s..." The words seem to fail the creature named Mimic. "Her? His granddaughter? The one?”

The handler nodded, and Mimic's hand is suddenly gone from your throat. You breathe in that overly sterile air, unsure of what had just happened. Had you been saved from death? You slowly sit up, coughing violently in your sleeve, and once the attack is over, you look around you.

The other girls and their handlers are gone.

Before you is a pair of black slacks, and you can see the expensive fabric he's wearing, though his ankles are bare between his white shoes and the pants. Your eyes trail up, slowly taking in the man before you, hitting the thick brown belt, hands in white gloves, a green parka with a purple color, until you see a mask that belongs 1656 and resolutely look down. You don't want to see his eyes again.

You have the undivided attention of Overhaul, who is giving you a similar appraisal, taking in the softness of your mouth, a slender tilt of your shoulders, the curve of your waist under the dress.

You wondered if he would lift his foot and crush your skull in himself, or if he saved that sort of thing for his cronies. 

A hand reaches out and not aware enough, you don't flinch. The plastic glove encasing his hand brushes your cheek, coming away with black and tan makeup. He brings it up to examine it himself, putting two fingers together to rub the colors together.

"My apologies. I didn't realize that you had come." You aren't sure what to say to such unhinged civility he provided. "It looks as though your stay here has been less than what is demanded."

You aren't looking up, so you don't see that his gaze has turned away from you, twisting to the woman on the wall behind you. You don't even realize it's happened until it's over. One moment the mob boss is standing before you, the next he has moved beside you, hand clutching the handler who had done little to gain your favor. But you don't realize that your silence is enough to sentence her.

You look over just in time to see him holding her.

As his hand squeezes the trainer’s face the woman just...  explodes.

Blood, organs, and sick flesh litter the room behind him, and your eyes widen in disbelief and disgust. Red drops hit your white dress and your feet move before you can think. Fear floods you, the ache in your back fades to a thrum as you scramble up, standing next to the door, trying to open it. It is shut like it never was meant to be opened in the first place. You glance back to him as he is straitening his stance, looking furiously animalistic at the mess he has made.

But upon hearing your cry of fear, the sound of your nails against the door he seems to regain sense.

He straightens, walking forward to the door, his one, plastic-covered hand placed on it. He's boxed you in, and you are forced to stare at his mask, refusing to look in his eyes. Never look into the eyes of a wild animal.

"It seems as though you will need some adjustments. Your mother has done you a disfavor." He doesn't explain himself, just raising a bloody hand to raise your chin. You don’t break into tears, just close your jaw so your teeth stop chattering, refusing to look him in his eyes. You can see that perhaps it's not just a mental disorder, as his skin has broken out into hives where the blood has touched, red angry boils that marr his pretty face.

He puts a plastic-encased finger to your lips. Nothing happens. 

“Acceptable. If just  barely .” It’s a threat and a promise rolled into a proposal you couldn’t refuse. 

Read more at https://archiveofourown.org/works/21353212/chapters/50860795

[ranty-ramblestein]

(captions~) I babysat the nephew today, so I came back home late... But story-wise,  Croissant staying in bed until 5pm would just freak Raymond out, thinking he got a concussion.  (”Ahh, should I go over and see if his dog is okay!?” the cat would fret.)

Anyway, apparently Raymond sent Croissant a fake statue over to Croissant before the reaction-confession... (Yeah, Smugs can only send fake statues.)

Then Axel got a new greeting with a new muscle group, Croissant got a cursed Paydirt spot that wouldn’t stop breaking shovels (and the third one I picked up also broke shortly after on a rock!), the Halloween notice finally went up, and I finally had a lost item that wasn’t for a Smug Boy! (Not that I would’ve minded, lol.)

Anyway, gushy love story under the cut, lol. (...or tumblr could decide to glitch while I was at the end of the first scene, making me re-write a beautifully heartfelt scene... Bleck, this regret is disgusting, fire the chef. I tried to make v2 just as heartfelt, but it’s a bit stale because I barely managed to remember the basic outline and followed that... I put something new into v2, but it’s just a weird joke...)

“Oh, Croissant, thank goodness!” Raymond gasped, hugging the human without a thought.  Croissant froze up in Raymond’s grip, eyes wide.

“Oh, so that really happened... I should apologize to Wisp next time he visits,” Croissant gulped, trying not to freak out too much.

“Yes, and I’m really sorry about that!  It’s just, our conversations always help me relieve stress when I’m swamped with trying to deal with my business...” Raymond sighed, looking guilty.

“Oh, so it wasn’t really a...” Croissant’s heart sank, and he looked down to stuff his pendant in his pocket.

“No, look!” Raymond shouted, grabbing Croissant’s hand.  “I do want to try this, but I probably won’t be a good boyfriend if I’m just thinking about work all the time!  But if you really love me, I’m willing to-”

Without thinking, Croissant gave the cat a hard hug.  “Hey, you don’t need to feel obligated to date me!  You never did something like that when you were a celebrity, right!?” Croissant joked.

“Well, uhm...”  Croissant quickly pulled back from the cat, eyes wide in disbelief.

"But that was blackmail!  F-from photoshopped pictures!” Raymond shouted, feeling obligated to explain himself.

Croissant put his finger near Raymond’s mouth. “Aaand, I don’t need to hear any more of that, if you don’t want me to.”

Raymond nodded, taking a deep breath and thinking back to his crazed thoughts last night.  “I know I’m not like my public persona, and uh, uhm... I’m just worried that if this becomes an actual relationship, that you relieving my stress from work all the time would make the relationship feel one-sided, and... I’ve seen how you look when you talk about Australia!  I don’t want you to look at me like that!” Raymond rambled on, his voice getting louder and louder as he spoke.

The cat sighed when he finish.  “That didn’t sound refined at all...”

“And it doesn’t have to be!” Croissant assured the cat.  “But hey, maybe we could just start the relationship with a date?  I really really want to be boyfriends with you, but you’re right about Australia... Crushing is easy, romantic relationships definitely aren’t,” Croissant said, looking out into the distance. (Except Raymond’s house doesn’t actually have windows, so...)

Pulling himself back from his trance, Croissant made an offer, “And hey, if we decide to continue dating, we can always actually talk about stress, right?” {You can tell he’s had bad relationships before... Well, mostly one.}

“I’d like that!“ Raymond smiled.  “So, uh, moving the topic to Halloween...”

“Yeah, I should reorder some stuff, huehue~” Croissant chuckled.

“That’s why I’ve got a whole stack of thirty!” Croissant bragged. “...OK, I won them in a giveaway,” Croissant admitted. “Should you really be entering so many giveaways?” Raymond asked, worried. “Don’t worry, the platform they’re on can’t ask for payments to enter the giveaway,” Croissant assured the cat, er, his boyfriend...?

‘Should I really call him my boyfriend if we haven’t even had a first date...?’ Croissant thought.

“I should probably change what I have planned for you after this talk...” Raymond realized. “Hey, don’t take it easy on me for Halloween!  That’d feel like cheating,” Croissant admitted. “Alright, then I should probably find where that bucket is...” “O-On second thought!”

(Oh, and Celeste came back to give me that Scorpio Lamp DIY, yay!)

[soihadthisdream]

I was out in the middle of nowhere, researching a local tradition. The townspeople were rolling hay bales down a hill along with one wheely bin which was filled with the various flesh and severed body parts of animals. Once we got to the bottom of the hill, we went into cabins and settled down for the night. The next morning, my best friend had disappeared. We looked for him but couldn’t find him and went to bed again the next night. I woke up around midnight to see someone sitting on the edge of my bed, asking me questions. It was the owner of the cabins. I answered a couple of questions before looking out the window and seeing a creature in the woods creeping closer to our room. It was unnaturally tall and thin. I got a horrible gut feeling that I had to go so I ran out of the cabin and away as fast as I could. As I did, more of the creatures emerged from the trees. They looked like someone had gone into photoshop and poorly mashed human body parts together to make crude creatures, all as tall as the tree tops. Just as I was nearly out of the forest, a giant creature that towered over the others launched towards me out of the forest and opened its mouth horrifically wide. I can’t explain how it looked but it was so wrong it instantly made me sick to my stomach. I barely escaped and when I did my dog almost at my cats. Not a good night.

[timeclonemike]

The War of the Words, Part 5: Counterstrike

Previous installments of this essay have repeated the point that the tactics used by nazis, terfs, and other varieties of bigot are those adopted by a force with a numerical and strategic disadvantage when facing a larger and stronger opponent, among other things. This may have given the impression that these types will eventually just die out. While I believe that this is true in the long term, it is demonstrably true that they can still do considerable damage in the short term, so this is unfortunately not the kind of problem that will solve itself. Action must be taken to undermine them at every possible juncture. This is especially true given that the current, semi-covert “secret agent” / muddy-the-waters approach was adopted because previous open displays of aggression were not getting the results they wanted. It is entirely possible that a shift in strategy will occur again and allow them to make more headway than they presently are.

Any given strategy employed by the nazis and terfs and racists has one or more potential counter-strategies, but simply waiting to recognize a specific type of propaganda or psychological manipulation or social engineering method puts everyone else on the defensive - by the time the problem is recognized and understood, it has already been effective for some time and may allow for a certain amount of momentum. Also, rapidly shifting strategies can lead to the defensive side lagging behind or being overwhelmed, which is one of the potential advantages of the “increase the signal to noise ratio when it comes to dog whistles” approach mentioned previously.

Therefore, as the old saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. The best chances of combating these ideologies involves going after them directly, rather than trying to play damage control after the fact (although that is also important.) And to do this most effectively requires a certain level of understanding of the psychology (and pathology) of the kinds of minds that are most amenable to fascism and radical exclusionism and racism.

The most important point worth considering is what I have taken to calling the Fascism Paradox. Fascism derives its name from the Fasces, a symbol that was adopted during the days of the Roman Empire and then appropriated by authoritarian political movements in the early twentieth century. It consists of a bundle of rods tied together, incorporating a handle and axe head, and the symbolism is pretty straightforward; a single stick might break, but a bundle of them together is much more robust. The obvious idea behind it is that many people united in a single cause and goal can accomplish what an individual cannot, which is why it was adopted by so many governmental offices and magistrates before the early twentieth century.

The titular paradox is that the Fasces symbolizes strength despite being an admission of weakness. The whole point of tying the rods together is because an individual rod is inadequate to the task at hand. Likewise, most authoritarian displays of power revolve around numbers; large military parades, massive rally crowds, mobs of angry young men wearing polo shirts and carrying lawn torches. The power of symbolism, and the attraction they hold, is a door that swings both ways; those who are attracted to the idea of fascism are those who are individually weak, and can only achieve strength and power by proxy, as part of a larger group.

Given that knowledge, the obvious counter is to strip away the protections of the group itself. After the Unite the Right rally, quite a large number of participants were identified by photographic evidence where they did nothing to conceal their identities, and the social consequences were considerable. These individual people were not part of a larger, dangerous force; they were people with names and addresses and once people could pair them with the faces in the photographs, it was basically open season. This technically wasn’t even doxxing; nobody can realistically make a claim to privacy when they are in a  public space, much less when they are deliberately drawing attention to themselves. (The lessons learned from this are implicit in the “secret police” tactics used by unidentified federal agents in Portland as of this writing.)

If this sounds like a roundabout way of saying “Divide And Conquer”, it’s because there’s another element to the paradox. A bundle of sticks may be stronger than any individual stick, but the strength of said bundle is still limited by the strength of the individual sticks. For an object lesson in why this is important, compare breaking a single uncooked spaghetti noodle with an entire package of uncooked spaghetti. The whole package technically puts up more resistance, but the difference is marginal in comparison to the forces involved. So it is with fascism and the people who are enticed by it; because their attraction to the group and the cause is motivated (subconsciously or not) by an attempt to mitigate personal weaknesses, the group itself inherits all off these weaknesses. This is especially true when it comes to the subject of morale and courage under fire; each individual in the group is relying on the group as a whole, and they take their cues from each other, so as soon as one person falters everyone around them starts to hold back. The result is a chain reaction of hesitation and lost momentum. (This can be seen in real time when watching videos of right wing protests fighting with counter-protest groups, and can also be seen in recordings of police and riot cops against protestors when a charge doesn’t immediately turn into a rout.)

This paradox also comes into play with another peculiar psychological characteristic: Being disgusted or enraged by compassion. Compassion directed towards weakness can serve as a reminder of said weakness, or an admission, or symbolize a loss or negation of strength; the human mind is very complex and this can get rationalized and justified many different ways, but it all comes back to a central idea; that they can’t or don’t have what they want more than anything. This is another reason why these groups turn on each other at the drop of a hat, because displaying compassion for, or receiving compassion from another, is an insult in a culture where strength is prized: “I’m helping you because you’re weak and you need my help / pity / support.”

(In a world, and especially a year, where the hits keep coming and they don’t stop coming like some sort of Fae contract involving a Smash Mouth song, this attitude is even less healthy than it normally is.)

The sense of personal weakness at the heart of the paradox can take multiple forms, not just physical strength. Financial stability, social leverage, political authority, health and wellness, even good looks can all qualify. What matters is it’s something that a person wants and does not have. This by itself is the origin of most conspiracy theories; some other nation or ethnic group or political party is hoarding or stealing all the food or medicine or political power, and if they weren’t, things would be different. The conspiracy theory angle is so complicated it requires its own essay to explore in full, so for the purposes of brevity and clarity we will leave that unaddressed for now; all we need to focus on is the idea that these people want something that they can’t have. The “can’t have” part especially plays into the idea of radicalization and recruitment. Somebody who wants to be physically strong can work out and get swole, and can measure their progress over time in terms of sets and reps. As a matter of fact, they have to in order to determine what exercises are working for them. How much they can lift and for how long and with what body parts will vary greatly depending on factors like genetics, environment, childhood and adult nutrition, but what matters is that it can be quantified and measured and progress can be seen.

But fascists, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, fascism-susceptible people, are in a different situation. As much as they glorify, praise, and fetishize strength and power, what really drives them is their weakness. No matter how ripped they may be and how much they can bench, it’s never enough; they will always be afraid and insecure and there is always the possibility, if not the certainty, of somebody stronger. It’s the difference between wanting to be strong and wanting to not be weak. This also applies to knowledge, to social acumen, to power and influence. So long as they are unable or unwilling to confront the root cause of what drives them - to admit their weakness in whatever form they find intolerable - they can’t come to terms with it psychologically, never mind take action to correct it practically.

This leads directly to the next strategy for dealing with fascists; mockery and ridicule. The insecurity and weakness that drives fascism is bone deep and borders on the universal, and this is why so many alt-right insults are disparaging terms referring to a perceived lack of strength or fortitude or power. Trying to use those specific terms against them is about as effective as children on a playground going “I’m rubber, you’re glue” but individual insults and derogatory remarks are not what’s important; the underlying insecurity is. Simply not treating them with the deference and respect they desire is itself a potent starting point, and from there any number of comedic possibilities present themselves. Autocratic and authoritarian regimes are notorious about cracking down on dissent for this reason even more than an attempt to keep the citizenry from being agitated; just look at Vladimir Putin’s heavy handed retaliation against Russia’s internet access when somebody photoshopped heavy makeup onto his face. Wannabe dictators with no power can’t remove the object of their ridicule and it eats them alive from the inside out.

The final aspect of this counter attack strategy has to do with enemy morale and opposition. As stated in previous parts of the essay, a number of fascists and crypto-fascists abandoned the cause and ideology when they decided it was less stressful to stop being one. In other words, leave the door open for somebody to switch sides. Consider an analogy where Fascism is an island; some people will burn all their bridges in pursuit of the ideology, but others might not; if other people burn those bridges, the result is the same and they end up trapped on Fascism Island anyway, so they have nothing to lose by doubling down. A number of people on and off Tumblr have discussed this topic and the problems with what is called “essentialist” thinking long before this essay was written; there is a nearly decade old TED Talk by a DJ called Jay Smooth who suggested we start thinking of bias and prejudice the same way we think about hygiene like brushing our teeth, that prejudice is something people do as opposed to an inescapable part of their character.

It’s worth keeping in mind that this may be interpreted as weakness by the fascist or fascists in question and this may prompt them to redouble their attacks or attempt to “play” the person giving them an out in order to get information or undermine their confidence or even try to recruit them into the fascist cause; it’s also worth keeping in mind that it is impractical and unrealistic to expect everyone to adopt this approach. Some people have lost too much personally, and some people are too close to the ideological or physical front lines to even consider letting their guard down. Not everyone can be Reverend Wade Watts.

[dailytechnologynews]

The Coming Age of Imaginative Machines: If you aren't following the rise of synthetic media, the 2020s will hit you like a digital blitzkrieg

The faces on the left were created by a GAN in 2014; on the right are ones made in 2018.

Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues gave the world generative adversarial networks (GANs) five years ago, way back in 2014. They did so with fuzzy and ethereal black & white images of human faces, all generated by computers. This wasn't the start of synthetic media by far, but it did supercharge the field. Ever since, the realm of neural network-powered AI creativity has repeatedly kissed mainstream attention. Yet synthetic media is still largely unknown. Certain memetic-boosted applications such as deepfakes and This Person Does Not Exist notwithstanding, it's safe to assume the average person is unaware that contemporary artificial intelligence is capable of some fleeting level of "imagination."

Media synthesis is an inevitable development in our progress towards artificial general intelligence, the first and truest sign of symbolic understanding in machines (though by far not the thing itself--- rather the organization of proteins and sugars to create the rudimentary structure of what will someday become the cells of AGI). This is due to the rise of artificial neural networks (ANNs). Popular misconceptions presume synthetic media present no new developments we've not had since the 1990s, yet what separates media synthesis from mere manipulation, retouching, and scripts is the modicum of intelligence required to accomplish these tasks. The difference between Photoshop and neural network-based deepfakes is the equivalent to the difference between building a house with power tools and employing a utility robot to use those power tools to build the house for you.

Succinctly, media synthesis is the first tangible sign of automation that most people will experience.

Public perception of synthetic media shall steadily grow and likely degenerate into a nadir of acceptance as more people become aware of the power of these artificial neural networks without being offered realistic debate or solutions as to how to deal with them. They've simply come too quickly for us to prepare for, hence the seemingly hasty reaction of certain groups like OpenAI in regards to releasing new AI models.

Already, we see frightened reactions to the likes of DeepNudes, an app which was made solely to strip women in images down to their bare bodies without their consent. The potential for abuse (especially for pedophilic purposes) is self-evident. We are plunging headlong into a new era so quickly that we are unaware of just what we are getting ourselves into. But just what are we getting into?

Well, I have some thoughts.

I want to start with the field most people are at least somewhat aware of: deepfakes. We all have an idea of what deepfakes can do: the "purest" definition is taking one's face replacing it with another, presumably in a video. The less exact definition is to take some aspect of a person in a video and edit it to be different. There's even deepfakes for audio, such as changing one's voice or putting words in their mouth. Most famously, this was done to Joe Rogan.

I, like most others, first discovered deepfakes in late 2017 around the time I had an "epiphany" on media synthesis as a whole. Just in those two years, the entire field has seen extraordinary progress. I realized then that we were on the cusp of an extreme flourishing of art, except that art would be largely-to-almost entirely machine generated. But along with it would come a flourishing of distrust, fake news, fake reality bubbles, and "ultracultural memes". Ever since, I've felt the need to evangelize media synthesis, whether to tell others of a coming renaissance or to warn them to be wary of what they see.

This is because, over the past two years, I realized that many people's idea of what media synthesis is really stops at deepfakes, or they only view new development through the lens of deepfakes. The reason why I came up with "media" synthesis is because I genuinely couldn't pin down any one creative/data-based field AI wasn't going to affect. It wasn't just faces. It wasn't just bodies. It wasn't just voice. It wasn't just pictures of ethereal swirling dogs. It wasn't just transferring day to night. It wasn't just turning a piano into a harpsichord. It wasn't just generating short stories and fake news. It wasn't just procedurally generated gameplay. It was all of the above and much more. And it's coming so fast that I fear we aren't prepared, both for the tech and the consequences.

Indeed, in many discussions I've seen (and engaged in) since then, there's always several people who have a virulent reaction against the prospect neural networks can do any of this at all, or at least that it'll get better enough to the point it will affect artists, creators, and laborers. Even though we're already seeing the effects in the modeling industry alone.

Look at this gif. Looks like a bunch of models bleeding into and out of each other, right? Actually, no one here is real. They're all neural network-generated people.

Neural networks can generate full human figures, and altering their appearance and clothing is a matter of changing a few parameters or feeding an image into the data set. Changing the clothes of someone in a picture is as easy as clicking on the piece you wish you change and swapping it with any of your choice (or result in the personal wearing no clothes at all). A similar scenario applies for make-up. This is not like an old online dress-up flash game where the models must be meticulously crafted by an art designer or programmer— simply give the ANN something to work with, and it will figure out all the rest. You needn't even show it every angle or every lighting condition, for it will use commonsense to figure these out as well. Such has been possible since at least 2017, though only with recent GPU advancements has it become possible for someone to run such programs in real time.

The unfortunate side effect is that the amateur modeling industry will be vaporized. Extremely little will be left, and the few who do remain are promoted entirely because they are fleshy & real human beings. Professional models will survive for longer, but there will be little new blood joining their ranks. As such, it remains to be seen whether news and blogs speak loudly of the sudden, unexpected automation of what was once seen as a safe and human-centric industry or if this goes ignored and under-reported— after all, the news used to speak of automation in terms of physical, humanoid robots taking the jobs of factory workers, fast-food burger flippers, and truck drivers, occupations that are still in existence en masse due to slower-than-expected roll outs of robotics and a continued lack of general AI.

We needn't have general AI to replace those jobs that can be replicated by disembodied digital agents. And the sudden decline & disappearance of models will be the first widespread sign of this.

Actually, I have an hypothesis for this: media synthesis is one of the first signs that we're making progress towards artificial general intelligence.

Now don't misunderstand me. No neural network that can generate media is AGI or anything close. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that what we can see as being media synthesis is evidence that we've put ourselves on the right track. We never should've thought that we could get to AGI without also developing synthetic media technology.

What do you know about imagination?

As recently as five years ago, the concept of "creative machines" was cast off as impossible— or at the very least, improbable for decades. Indeed, the phrase remains an oxymoron in the minds of most. Perhaps they are right. Creativity implies agency and desire to create. All machines today lack their own agency. Yet we bear witness to the rise of computer programs that imagine and "dream" in ways not dissimilar to humankind.

Though lacking agency, this still meets the definition of imagination.

To reduce it to its most fundamental ingredients: Imagination = experience + abstraction + prediction. To get creativity, you need only add "drive". Presuming that we fail to create artificial general intelligence in the next ten years (an easy thing to assume because it's unlikely we will achieve fully generalized AI even in the next thirty), we still possess computers capable of the former three ingredients.

Someone who lives on a flat island and who has never seen a mountain before can learn to picture what one might be by using what they know of rocks and cumulonimbus clouds, making an abstract guess to cross the two, and then predicting what such a "rock cloud" might look like. This is the root of imagination.

As Descartes noted, even the strongest of imagined sensations is duller than the dullest physical one, so this image in the person's head is only clear to them in a fleeting way. Nevertheless, it's still there. Through great artistic skills, the person can learn to express this mental image through artistic means. In all but the most skilled, it will not be a pure 1-to-1 realization due to the fuzziness of our minds, but in the case of expressive art, it doesn't need to be.

Computers lack this fleeting ethereality of imagination completely. Once one creates something, it can give you the uncorrupted output.

Right now, this makes for wonderful tools and apps that many play around with online and on our phones.

But extrapolating this to the near future results in us coming face to face many heavy questions, and not just of the "can't trust what you see variety."

Because think about it.

If I'm a musical artist and I release an album, what if I accidentally recorded a song that's too close to an AI-generated track (all because AI generated literally every combination of notes?) Or, conversely, what if I have to watch as people take my music and alter it? I may feel strongly about it, but yet the music has its notes changed, its lyrics changed, my own voice changed, until it might as well be an entirely different artist making that music. Many won't mind, but many will.

I trust my mother's voice, as many do. So imagine a phisher managing to steal her voice, running it through a speech synthesis network, and then calling me asking me for my social security number. Or maybe I work at a big corporation, and while we're secure, we still recognize each other's voice, only to learn that someone stole millions of dollars from us because they stole the CEO's voice and used to to wire cash to a pirate's account.

Imagine going online and at least 70% of the "people" you encounter are bots. They're extremely coherent, and they have profile images of what looks to be real people. And who knows, you may even forge an e-friendship with some of them because they seem to share your interests. Then it turns out they're just bundles of code.

Oh, and those bot-people are also infesting social media and forums in the millions, creating and destroying trends and memes without much human input. Even if the mainstream news sites don't latch on at first, bot-created and bot-run news sites will happily kick it off for them. The news is supposed to report on major events, global and local. Even if the news is honest and telling the truth, how can they truly verify something like this, especially when it seems to be gaining so much traction and humans inevitably do get involved? Remember "Bowsette" from last year? Imagine if that was actually pushed entirely by bots until humans saw what looked like a happenin' kind of meme and joined in? That could be every year or perhaps even every month in the 2020s onwards.

Likewise, imagine you're listening to a pop song in one country, but then you go to another country and it's the exact same song but most of the lyrics have changed to be more suitable for their culture. That sort of cultural spread could stop... or it could be supercharged if audiences don't take to it and pirate songs/change them and share them at their own leisure.

Or maybe it's a good time to mention how commissioned artists are screwed? Commission work boards are already a race to the bottom— if a job says it pays three cents per word to write an article, you'd better list your going rate as 2 cents per word, and then inevitably the asking rate in general becomes 2 cents per word, and so on and so forth. That whole business might be over within five to ten years if you aren't already extremely established. Because if machines can mimic any art style or writing style (and then exaggerate & alter it to find some better version people like more), you'd have to really be tech-illiterate or very pro-human to want non-machine commissions.

And to go back to deepfakes and deep nudes, imagine the paratypical creep who takes children and puts them into sexual situations, any sexual situation they desire thanks to AI-generated images and video. It doesn't matter who, and it doesn't have to be real children either. It could even be themselves as a child if they still have the reference or use a de-aging algorithm on their face. It's squicky and disgusting to think about, but it's also inevitable and probably has already happened.

And my god, it just keeps going on and on. I can't do this justice, even with 40,000 characters to work with. The future we're about to enter is so wild, so extreme that I almost feel scared for humanity. It's not some far off date in the 22nd century. It's literally going to start happening within the next five years. We're going to see it emerge before our very eyes on this and other subreddits.

I'll end this post with some more examples.

Nvidia's new AI can turn any primitive sketch into a photorealistic masterpiece. You can even play with this yourself here.

Waifu Synthesis- real time generative anime, because obviously.

Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Models | This GAN can animate any face GIF, supercharging deepfakes & media synthesis

Talk to Transformer | Feed a prompt into GPT-2 and receive some text. As of 9/29/2019, this uses the 774M parameter version of GPT-2, which is still weaker than the 1.5B parameter "full" version."

Text samples generated by Nvidia's Megatron-LM (GPT-2-8.3b). Vastly superior to what you see in Talk to Transformer, even if it had the "full" model.

Facebook's AI can convert one singer's voice into another | The team claims that their model was able to learn to convert between singers from just 5-30 minutes of their singing voices, thanks in part to an innovative training scheme and data augmentation technique. as a prototype for shifting vocalists or vocalist genders or anything of that sort.

TimbreTron for changing instrumentation in music. Here, you can see a neural network shift entire instruments and pitches of those new instruments. It might only be a couple more years until you could run The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" through, say, Slayer and get an actual song out of it.

AI generated album covers for when you want to give the result of that change its own album.

Neural Color Transfer Between Images [From 2017], showing how we might alter photographs to create entirely different moods and textures.

Scammer Successfully Deepfaked CEO's Voice To Fool Underling Into Transferring $243,000

"Experts: Spy used AI-generated face to connect with targets" [GAN faces for fake LinkedIn profiles]

This Marketing Blog Does Not Exist | This blog written entirely by AI is fully in the uncanny valley.

Chinese Gaming Giant NetEase Leverages AI to Create 3D Game Characters from Selfies | This method has already been used over one million times by Chinese gamers.

"Deep learning based super resolution, without using a GAN" [perceptual loss-based upscaling with transfer learning & progressive scaling], or in other words, "ENHANCE!"

Expert: AI-generated music is a "total legal clusterf*ck" | I've thought about this. Future music generation means that all IPs are open, any new music can be created from any old band no matter what those estates may want, and AI-generated music exists in a legal tesseract of answerless questions

And there's just a ridiculous amount more.

My subreddit, /r/MediaSynthesis, is filled with these sorts of stories going back to January of 2018. I've definitely heard of people come away in shock, dazed and confused, after reading through it. And no wonder.

[tippitv]

Recap: “Ouroboros” 14-14

Hey everyone! In an effort to get the recap out in a timely fashion, I'm trying something new. I'm doing it live-blog style and adding gifs already available on Tumblr as I format it for posting. Making pics with captions and photoshopping is super slow and laborious on my ancient computer. Just that part of the recaps usually takes 8-10 hours to do. In a recap that has a LOT of graphics, it might take 12.

THEN!

Ooh I've apparently missed more episodes than I realized. Veronica Cartwright, who's one of my favorite character actresses ever, brought Jack back to life. 

But with like... dire consequences, as per yoozh.

NOW!

Raton, New Mexico. Hey I've been there! I was driving to Colorado when I was 19 and we hit Raton riiiiight before we had to start driving up a narrow mountain road... when an ice storm hit... and I, a Texan who'd never driven over so much as an ice cube, thought I was going to kill us all.

Anyway it's nice to see an episode start somewhere in the Southwest for a change of pace.

This music is super cute. Someone let me know what it is? Also, I don't know who this guy is but he knows how to chop vegetables. I like him already! Oh... oh wait. There's a dead man on his kitchen island and the knife guy is harvesting his organs for dinner. Sorry, my dude, but I only have room in my heart for one cannibal

Oh he's got some lizard eyes on him, too. That's also a deal breaker. Somehow his repto-vision allows him to sense that the Winchesters are coming for him, so he grabs his pet snake Felix and sneaks away.

The episode is titled "Ouroboros," and I can't see that word without thinking of the episode of Red Dwarf where the people found the cardboard box with Lister in it. They misread the word as "Our Rob, or Ross." Shout out to the handful people following me who know what I'm talking about.

The Winchesters show up. Oh hey Castiel and Jack are with them, too! Snake Boy didn't see that. "Oh no," Cas says, despairing at the scene in the kitchen. I know. A wasted pasta dinner! Also a dead body.

Sam and Dean are frustrated that they've failed to catch this guy yet again. How is anyone not barfing at the smell of fried human liver? Have they become inured to it because of all the flaming hunter funerals? That's probably it.

"My money's on witchcraft," Dean grumbles. Rowena walks up behind him like

Oh ho ho why's she so flirtatious with Castiel? What did I miss there? Well he seems as confused as I am, and less titillated. Maybe nothing happened and she's just someone with eyes who happens to see how cute he is.

Everyone wonders why the victim, like all the other victims, appears not to have fought back. I mean, there's a lot of nihilism these days. Maybe it's a case of "fuck it, if this guy doesn't kill me the climate change will." Jack finds a freshly shed snake skin on the floor.

They wonder if the victim had pet snakes but think he doesn't seem the type. Like, I know a stay-at-home suburban mom with multiple snakes so I don't think there's just one type of herp enthusiast. Jack starts coughing and everyone's like

Jack assures them he's not dying again but he probably is.

Rowena notices there's a blackish powder around the victim's lips. The others tell her the other victims had something similar but they ignored it so that Dean and Rowena could look back and forth at each other with their best So Done faces.

As funny as the exchange is, I do so hate plot-necessitated dumbness. There's no way they wouldn't have looked into the black powder on all the victims' faces.

Sam and Rowena do some research in the motel de la nuit, which has a fabulous Missoni-inspired wallpaper. Man I wouldn't mind having some of that! Anyway, she's curious about Jack being not-dead and Dean keeping an archangel locked up in his head somehow. Sam doesn't want to talk about it.

Meanwhile, Jack's in the bathroom having one of those Moulin Rouge coughing fits. Has anyone thought of like... getting the kid some Robitussin? He uses a small amount of power to heal his cough. I think Veronica Cartwright warned against this in the previouslies.  

Dean's growing a mite weary and still thinks their inevitable option is going to be the magic coffin. Cas's face goes

Castiel tiredly explains what the word "liturgical" means when Jack and Dean give him confused looks. I mean I guess Jack might not know, but Dean should sure as heck know.

When they get back to the motel, Rowena says they're dealing with a Gorgon. "Like Medusa!" Dean pipes up. Oh I bet this leads to a Clash of the Titans jok---and there it is. They blah blah blah about how eating human eyes allows a Gorgon to see the future and evade capture. "So even if we use your tracking spell, he'll know," Cas says. Why do they assume it's a man when the Gorgons have always been depicted as shes?

So Snake Boy approaches a guy outside a truck stop and asks for help. "I'd find a way to pay you back." He turns the flirting up about ten notches and the trucker shiftily tells him to get inside. They kiss and the trucker is slowly paralyzed. Oh noooo I have a dozen things to say about queer villainy and victimization but I'm live blogging so remind me to come back to it.

Cas's hair is high as hell today. Remember there was this whole plot a while back about how Heaven is running out of power because there are so few angels? Maybe he's powering Heaven with his hair.

Noah, that's apparently the Gorgon's name, has left a note on the body for Dean. "I see you standing alone reading this note," NUH UH he's standing with Cas. He warns Dean to stop chasing him. "Why doesn't he mention me?" Cas asks. Right?? "Maybe you're not his type," Dean says. Cas rolls his eyes upward but the low-hanging fruit is practically on the ground.

After a confab with Sam and Rowena, they work out a plan for Cas and Jack to go after Noah since they seem to be invisible to him. They just need some anti-venom in case the Gorgon tries to poison them. Or just tell them not to kiss the guy? Maybe they don't know kissing is how he

OH MY FUCKING GOD ROWENA TURNS JACK INTO A VERY TINY DOG AND RUSHES HIM TO THE VET WITH SAM AND HE LOOKS LIKE A MUPPET

Jack the dog gets a thermometer up the butt... Then the vet or tech or whoever she is just... leaves him on the exam table unattended. That's not remotely what happens at clinics but whatever. As soon as Jack is alone, he turns back into a person with all his clothes on. I don't know why that seems more unrealistic to me than him turning into a dog, period.

He finds the anti-venom, makes a joke about his poor butt, and then Sam and Rowena have a conversation in the parking lot about how he was brought back to life. Then the vet runs out and confronts them!

Just kidding, they talk as long as they want without ever being discovered.

Noah's got his latest victim tied up somewhere. He says he finds more men to eat because women are more cautious. True dat. He kept the guy alive long enough to blah blah for a while but now he gives him a smooch on the cheek to paralyze him.

Rowena casts a locator spell... Why wouldn't Noah be able to see her and know something is up? Only the angelic ones are invisible to him. Oh my word Castiel kicks open the door VERY forcefully and I'm like

But wait... first he knocked. Why did he knock first? You know what let's just move on. Castiel goes and de-venomizes the latest victim. For some reason nobody's cutting off Noah's head yet so he just goes on talking. Something about a snake and some chicken eggs. Even Castiel is like, "Why are you telling this story??" And Noah, looking at Jack, goes, "Because I can't tell if he's the chicken or the snake."

Fisticuffs attempt to ensue! Lolol it's briefly a slap fight. Noah kisses Cas on the cheek. This is the most unrealistic part of this episode. Why would you kiss some rando trucker on the mouth and not this guy.

Hm there's still 15 minutes left. For some reason, the anti-venom doesn't work on Cas, so Jack has to use some of his powers. Maybe you should have tried giving him more of it first but whatever.

LOL they drive all the way from New Mexico to Kansas with unconscious Dean and rush him into the med bay. It's at least an eight hour drive! Maggie's like, "I'll get some ice!" It's been at least eight hours! Why didn't they just bring him to a regular hospital?? Nothing supernatural happened to him! He got his head wanged!

Jack is pretty upset about the prospect of Dean dying but Cas seems... philosophical about it. Maybe he knows they got renewed for season 15 and isn't too worried.

Oh Dean's awake and everything's fine! Just kidding he's on a rampage knocking everything over. Someone tell Maggie to forget the ice. He's in a rage because he "let his guard down" and now Michael has left. I mean... you were knocked out by a plot contrivance, my dude. Don't be too hard on yourself.

Oh shiiiit Michael's gone and killed everyone in the bunker. Not any of the main characters, obviously, but everyone else. Oh double shiiiiiit he's got Rowena as a vessel now. Wait. Why would she have said yes to him?

Ah...Michael paid her a little visit in her mind and said he'd kill everyone she cares about. She's loath to admit it but she does care for these people. Well, the main characters, at least.

Oh my gosh I love Ruth Connell. This is my fave version of Michael yet. Too bad it won't last!

Jack decides to use his powers to save everyone even if it means dying! Except he doesn't die because it's only March. He forces Michael out of Rowena, then sucks down the evacuated grace like

Everything goes quiet. Everyone's like... wtf? what?? the fuck??? They wait on pins and needles to see what happened to Jack. Jack's like, "I'm me again!" with the glowing flame eyes and the shadow wings. The music makes this seem very ominous. Maybe it means he doesn't have a soul anymore. Either way he seems very powerful again so good luck getting a rectal thermometer into him now.

Wait... why was this episode called Ouroboros when it was an entirely different snake thing? Ohhh maybe it was Jack eating/using his own powers to help himself? Let's say it's that.

If you enjoyed this recap, and are able, please drop something into my virtual tip jar here: https://www.paypal.me/tippiblevins  Henry the Hound and I could use grocery/vet money so anything is appreciated, including reblogs!

Thank you for reading!

[five-rivers]

I scribbled a little ficlet because your phight post was hilarious

Maddie dropped the piece of paper onto the workbench. Jack frowned at the distraction, turning away from his microscope and picking it up. “What is it?” he asked, smoothing out the buckled edge where it had been torn from a notebook. She stayed quiet as he read, clasping her hands to hide their trembling as her husband’s face bloomed in horrific realisation.

“It was in Danny’s sock drawer,” she said once he had had time to read it. Jack continued to stare at the paper, eyes moving up and down as though reading it several times. She waited until he finally looked up. “What do you think it means?”

Jack shifted on his stool, pushing it away from the bench. The legs screeched along the tiles, and he gingerly handed the paper back to her. The smile was gone from his eyes. “Mads-”

She clenched her fingers around the list, its crinkling oddly satisfying. “I know,” she snapped, the pity in his tone too much for her to keep listening to. “But why does he still need human things? Why can he even look human?”

Jack was sagging, shoulders low and hands loose and empty. It mirrored the hopelessness in his expression. “I don’t know,” he said, voice hollow, “but he’s a ghost.”

The words slammed into her, and Maddie felt herself begin to shake her head. “It doesn’t make sense,” she choked, a sob forcing its way through her lips. She clenched the paper tighter. “It’s impossible.”

Jack reached for her, and Maddie folded into him. “I’m a terrible mother!” she wailed, pressing her face into his chest while he stroked her hair.

Jack made small shushing noises, his arms safe and firm around her. He was shaking as well, sniffing as he tucked his chin over her head.

Neither of them spoke as their world rocked. Maddie felt like everything had been torn away from her, her only link to the truth clutched in her hand. She pulled away from Jack and wiped her nose on her sleeve, uncurling the paper and looking at it again. “He… He’s hidden stuff in the walls,” she said, the words thick and nasal. “Things that would be incriminating?”

Jack pulled an ectoblaster from its holster at his hip. His mouth was a grim slash, eyes darker than Maddie had ever seen them. “I’ll start in his room,” he said, brushing past her and heading towards the stairs.

“Mind the house support beams,” Maddie called after him, re-reading the list yet again with a frown. It was definitely her son’s handwriting, far sloppier than usual. The paper was smudged and words had been crossed out and re-written, and down near the bottom of the sheet there were the telltale signs of teardrops.

The house shook with the sound of an explosion, fine streams of dust trickling from seams in the ceiling. If they were wrong about all of this, Danny was going to be furious when he came home to find one of his bedroom walls in splinters.

Jack’s feet were heavy above her, and he strode down the lab’s stairs a moment later. In his hands were two things that sent panic shooting through her veins. She stuffed the paper into her pocket and took the items from him, trying not the overreact. She ran her fingers over an old cassette tape from when they had actually had a security system, before it had broken to the point of being irreparable. It had happened shortly after the portal started working, and they had always blamed invading ghosts.

The other item was a plain notebook, with a note scribbled on the front in black marker. The handwriting matched the list in her pocket – Diary. Don’t read!

She looked up at Jack. “This was it?”

He shook his head. The pain in his expression had dulled, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “There was a pile of blasters,” he said, “and some ectoplasm containers, along with a first aid kit and the broken Ghost Gabber.”

She hefted the tape in her hand, feeling the weight. It was as though everything rested on this one little thing. “Does the old VCR still work?”

Jack nodded. “I used it the other day to watch those old research tapes again,” he said, heading over so a small television in the corner of the lab.

Maddie followed him, passing the tape back and chewing on her lip as Jack slipped it into the empty slot.

It was time to find out what was really wrong with their son.

——

And then after they figure it out they decide that instead of confronting Danny about it they try to make true all of the things on the list that they can but pretend to remain clueless. They even put the list back in his sock drawer, fresh laundry carefully placed on top.

So finding the things in the wall? “Oh Danny, did you know that we caught a ghost hiding stuff inside the structure of our house? You’d better watch for that haha, you wouldn’t want them to put YOU there!”

Jack waits in the bathroom, deliberately standing in the empty shower with the curtain drawn closed when he knows that Phantom has just finished a fight. Soon enough Danny flies in and transforms, and Jack simply pushes back the curtain as his son jumps clear into the air for a moment in fright. “Hiya son, could you help me hunt these ectospiders? I saw some in here this morning.” Danny nopes out of there so fast…

They install security cameras EVERYWHERE and make sure Danny sees them doing it. He keeps sabotaging them. They keep fixing them. He doesn’t know how they haven’t seen him transform yet. (Hint: they have…)

They still haven’t figured out the ‘Technus’ thing, whatever that is, so Jack just named their new security cemeras The Fenton Technus System TM. Danny is super confused.

Maddie catches Phantom in a net at least once a week. She rigs them where she knows Danny will be, but is always SO clumsy that she 'accidentally’ lets him loose whenever she tries to move him to better containment. (Danny might just be starting to get suspicious)

Maddie photoshops pictures of Phantom doing normal things, like eating cereal or lying on their couch where Danny likes to rest. She says it’s to help them be more aware of the possibility of ghosts around them. Danny starts losing sleep because he can’t figure out what the hell is going on.

Jack finds Wes’ Fenton/Phantom conspiracy page and deliberately leaves it up on the family computer’s screen. Danny isn’t seen for almost three days after that. For some reason, Phantom suddenly becomes very camera-shy.

The ghost list in Danny’s diary mentioned that Cujo was a ghost dog, so the Fentons decide to adopt a shelter puppy (for ghost hunting purposes, of course). Maddie names it Cujo, a wicked glint in her eye as Danny’s face goes so pale that she thinks he might faint.

They can’t do much about the Guys in White, and they really don’t want to risk anything terrible happening to their son (whose 'ghost’ is seeming more and more skittish and less and less threatening every day), so Maddie and Jack dress up in white suits one day and talk at the dinner table about how they’re hopefully going to be joining the greatest ghost hunting organisation ever! (Danny has no clue that they’re talking about his team)

One morning, when Danny doesn’t look as exhausted as he usually does, Maddie tells him that she saw Phantom walk through their front door and up the stairs the previous evening. She apparently didn’t have a gun with her, and she’d been so shocked that by the time she reacted, the ghost was already gone. (Danny remembers how quiet she was when he got home the night before. He swallows his spoon as the realisation hits him. He has no idea that it didn’t actually happen.)

The next one is a bit more difficult, but Maddie and Jack doggedly follow Phantom every night for a week while he patrols the town. One night he literally turns back into their son in front of them, but they were standing off to the side, so when they blow it off like nothing happened he just assumed that they didn’t see him.

Jack calls Vlad one day, wailing about why he didn’t TELL him?!?! (He’s talking about Vlad not joining them for Christmas. Danny thinks it’s something else entirely.)

Every time Danny gets the hiccups, Jack presses a button that sets off the house’s ghost alarms. When Danny looks away at the commotion he uses a new little spray gun to blast a bit of dry ice over the surface of whatever Danny had been facing, covering it in a thin layer of frost. The wild terror in Danny’s eyes is almost funny, but Maddie thinks that maybe they’ve taken this whole joke a bit too far.

Jack keeps saying that all ghosts are edible and that Maddie should grind them up and use them to make fudge because of ectoplasm’s viscosity. She pretends to actually try it. Cue Danny trying to save them from what he perceives as sheer stupidity. (He steals the entire platter of fudge when Jack tries to have a slice and yells at his parents for almost giving themselves a lethal dose of ectoplasm poisoning. Later that night Phantom is seen sitting on top of the Ops Center eating the fudge, and looking very confused when it’s obviously not glowing in the middle.)

They say that they’ve made a helmet that can read ghosts’ thoughts. Jack jams a normal motorcycle helmet from the shed onto Danny’s head before the poor guy can escape, and asks with a frown why Danny is thinking about Phantom.

It’s been a month, and Danny’s starting to show cracks. It wasn’t what they’d intended to happen, but he’s visibly stressed all the time and jumps at every noise. They decide it’s finally enough, so one day when he gets home from school, they pretend he’s invisible for ten minutes. Jack almost blows it by acting like he can’t hear his son either, but Maddie has a fake panic episode and clutches her 'invisible’ son close to her with big 'sobs’ until Jack can stop quietly laughing into his gloves. It’s sort of like a prank video that Danny had once showed them, but he really begins to freak out, and Maddie finally can’t stop herself from laughing. Danny’s so confused and stressed, and his eyes and freckles have started to glow really brightly with emotion, and it’s that strangeness of glowing freckles that finally tips everything over the edge. They tell him between bursts of laughter what’s been going on for the past month, and Danny isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry as everything finally makes sense.

@lexiepiper Thank you for writing this!  It made me laugh, too.  I’m blogging this because I think that everyone and the ghosts that don’t live in their houses should be able to see it too.

[the-everlasting-dream]

...Pregnant - Drake x MC

Summary: Elizabeth finds a special way to tell her husband he is going to be a father. 

A/N: So for some weird reason Australia’s Father’s Day is on the 1st of September so I’ve put together a little fic to show how my favourite pairing find out they are pregnant. 

Word Count: 3100+

Warnings: Implied smut?

Permanent tags: @chantelle-x0x , @choicessa, @pbchoicesobsessed , @meeraaverywalker , @drakewalkerwhipped , @mfackenthal , @srawesleyghuewrites , @topsyturvy-dream , @enmchoices , @gardeningourmet @debramcg1106 , @alesana45 , @meladoridarcy, @blackcatkita , @tmarie82 , @annekebbphotography , @xxrainbowprincessxx , @lizk77 , @jayjay879 , @tornbetween2loves 

TRR only: @speedyoperarascalparty Drake: @fairydustandsarcasm

Elizabeth Richmond-Walker was standing at her bathroom sink, breath held, fingers drumming against the marble countertop as she eyed the small white stick laying face down there. Nervous energy and uncertainty coursed through her while she waited for the result it would produce.

After she and Drake had gotten married slightly over a year ago, she’d gradually stopped taking her birth control pills to acclimatise her body to its natural cycle and they’d switched to condoms. But as life happened and they found themselves with less and less time in their individual schedules, more often than not lately they’d been forgetting in their desperation to make the most of their time alone together. When her period had been more than 2 weeks late, she’d stopped speculating and finally talked herself into going to the store and buying a test. It had remained hidden deep in her bathroom cabinet for another few days until her day off where she found herself alone and pushed herself to get it over with.   

As she waited she contemplated both possible outcomes, Elizabeth took a deep breath attempting to rationalise her thoughts. If it was negative, it would be alright. She could just throw the test away out of sight and Drake would never get to know. 

 Drake… 

Elizabeth couldn’t help but notice how he was trying to be more involved with Bartie every time they went over to Savannah's house, asking his sister all sorts of questions about potty training and feeding to all of their surprises. A few weeks he’d surprised her by bringing his nephew back to their home while his sister took the day off. Elizabeth’s heart had melted at the sight of him playing with the little boy, pretending to be a spaceship as he piggybacked him around their living room. She’d never seen him so happy, so joyful like this before and after catching him reading one of Savannah’s parenting books a few times, in her heart she knew he was ready for children of his own. They’d breached the subject on a few occasions before but they’d never really settled on a time frame or even made the conscious decision to start trying. 

 She wasn’t worried about being capable to care for a child; she’d been caring for her many cousins and friend’s kids since she was a child — being Indian there was never a shortage of kids to help out with. By the age of 15 she’d learn more about things like potty training and feeding than anyone else she knew. Her mother and grandmother had bestowed her with a wealth of organic cures and herbal remedies for almost every ailment in the book. So in terms of all that she was ready but emotionally… less so. 

 Her phone chimed, signalling the end of the waiting period and while she could not ignore the sense of impending doom — why was she so scared — Elizabeth steeled her nerves with a deep breath and turned the test over. Her eyes flew over the small window, taking a few seconds to comprehend the conclusion that she was… pregnant. 

 An odd sensation rippled through her as the words repeated themselves in her brain. 

 Pregnant. 

 She was pregnant. 

 Elizabeth slid down the wall until she was seated on the bathroom floor, the test in her hands. She didn’t how to feel about being… pregnant. 

 Her first thought should have been pure happiness - and it was there - but she couldn’t help but feel a little... wistful. She was painfully aware of the fact that her and Drake’s relationship had not been normal from the get go. Because of the whirlwind of the social season, engagement tour and Unity Tour they’d never really passed all the normal milestones that couples go through. From big things like progressing through the dating phase to other tiny details like his first car or what his favourite movie was growing up, it may have seem insignificant to others but for her it was a big deal. And now that they were married, she thought that finally, finally they could settle down and take things slow and just get to know each other like they hadn’t had a chance to previously. A baby was a big thing, having children totally changed the dynamic of every couple and so far they were only just beginning to find their rhythm… 

She couldn’t ignore her happiness however and she clutched the little stick tighter. She’d always wanted to be a mum, and after watching her father and mother argue all her life, finding a man who would make a committed and nurturing father was a top priority in her life.  Though Danvir Richmond was well out of the picture right now, his effect on her life had still remained. 

 But he wasn’t Drake, Elizabeth reminded herself. 

The man she had married was almost nothing like the man she called her father and their marriage thus far had only cemented that thought in her mind. Not that he needed to but Drake proven himself over and over to her in more ways than she could ask for. He loved her with all his heart as she did him so maybe this was possible… 

They would be alright. 

Elizabeth sighed, feeling some of the tension leave her body. Her doubts were by no means gone but they seemed to have receded a little and in their place happiness blossomed. She was going to be a mum. Her and Drake were going to be parents. The longer she thought about it, better it started to sound in her head. The bathroom door was nudged open and Cooper her corgi came waddling up, nosing the stick in her hands in curiosity before looking at her with his head cocked to the side. 

 ‘I’m pregnant Cooper,’ She whispered, the words almost taking her breath away. 

Now that she’d finally voiced them out loud, the concept of it suddenly seemed so much more real, much more profound and she cuddled the corgi towards her. He gave a little whine of confusion and she chuckled, snuggling him closer, explaining, ‘You’re going to have a little brother or sister soon.’ 

Cooper’s tail began to wag ferociously and his whole body followed, as it usually did when he was excited. Elizabeth swore dogs could understand real human feelings as he dragged his long pink tongue over her face, making her chuckle. 

‘Now we just have to find a way to tell Drake..’ 

 She had no doubt in her mind that he’d be overjoyed regardless of how he found out but she wanted to make the announcement in a way that was unique their relationship - a little bit of teasing to keep him on his toes. She jumped up, mind racing as the beginnings of an idea began to form in her head. 

‘Come on Coop,’ she called to the corgi. ‘We’ve got some shopping to do.’

-

After a quick trip to the shops and some creative photoshopping, she was ready and at 6pm the front door to their manor opened to reveal Drake arriving home after work. 

‘Walker? Liz?’ He called out, keys clinking as he put them away. 

 Elizabeth could barely contain her excitement - her new last name never failed to thrill her when he used it -  but forced herself to remain composed before she rounded the corner leading to the foyer to find her husband kicking off his shoes. 

‘Hey marshmallow, how was work?’ 

 ‘Terrible because I missed you,’ he told her, cupping her face to bring her into a deep kiss. 

‘Did you really?’ She teased, kissing him back and hoping he wouldn’t be able to detect a change in her usual demeanour. 

‘I always miss you,’ he answered, his voice revealing just how worn out he was. ‘Today was particularly tough though.’

‘Would a drink help?’ She pulled back, looking at him in askance. 

’That would be perfect,’ he admitted as she pulled him into their lounge room, settling him on the sofa before bringing out a familiar bottle and two tumblers with ice. 

He smiled appreciatively, recognising his favourite bottle of amber liquid. ‘Did I ever tell you how much I love you?’ 

Elizabeth scoffed a little as she poured out the beverage ‘I could stand to hear it again,’ she quipped, handing him the glass before taking a seat on the other end of the couch. 

 ‘You’re just trying to get me to say it again aren’t you?’ Drake smirked.   

She shrugged in reponse.‘Wouldn’t hurt.’ 

 His dark eyes softened as he halted in his action of raising the glass to his lips. ‘I love you Elizabeth.’ 

Even though she’d head the words thousands of times before they never failed to make her stomach flutter a little in the best way. ‘I love you too and I like doing nice things for you,’ she replied, gesturing to the glass several inches from his mouth. 

Instead of him taking a sip like she’d expected, Drake astonished her by setting down the glass on the coffee table, making her frown at his uncharacteristic action. When her gaze flickered back to his, she found a deep hunger in his dark eyes. 

 Oh fuck... 

 Loosening his tie, Drake smoothly slid over to her end of the couch, his hand immediately finding her upper thigh as he lowered his head to whisper deeply in her ear. 'Maybe I should return the favour.. My turn to do something nice for you now and show my beautiful wife how much I appreciate her.’ 

 His husky voice sent electricity sparking through her body and before she could react, his warm lips were on hers, enveloping her in a kiss so passionate she couldn’t stop herself from moaning in pleasure against him. His hands slid across her body, fingers tangling themselves into her hair, pulling sharply to expose her neck. As he lavished a collection of hot wet kisses across her skin, Elizabeth was suddenly reminded of her earlier mission. 

 'Don’t you want that drink?’ She choked out, brain clouded with the haze of pleasure he was giving her.   

Drake barely stopped in his ministrations, teeth scraping deliciously against her skin as he growled his answer. 'The drink can wait, I can’t.' 

 His touch left trails of fire on her body as he began to lower them into a more comfortable position, grinding himself against her. Feeling the heat build up in her core, Elizabeth was loathe to stop her husband but her eyes fell on the bottle. 

'But I thought it was your favourite.’ She tried again, hoping to distract him just temporarily. 

 'Wrong again Walker,’ Drake drawled from where he was nibbling her collarbone, slipping his hands under the hem of her t-shirt to massage her through the thin bralette she was wearing underneath. His eyes met hers again in a heated gaze. ‘You’re my favourite.' 

 Biting back a moan, she struggled to ignore the sensation of his hands slipping under her clothing to tweak at her nipples — by no means was he making the task easy — and wound her hand into his soft hair, pulling him up to face her. 

'I really think you should try some Drake. I wouldn’t want it to go to waste.' That made him stop. 

Brows furrowed, he brought his eyes up to hers, peering at her intensely.'What’s wrong Walker? You’re acting kinda suspicious.’ 

 'Nothing Drake I swear,’ she attempted to backpedal, searching for a believable excuse. 'I just want you to have your drink is all. And when you’re done we can make all the mischief you want, I promise.' 

 Her husband let out a huff, shifting into a sitting position as he eyes her. 'I’m holding you to that,’ he told her seriously picking up the glass again and took a deep appreciative sip. 

Elizabeth watched in glee as his face screwed up in disgust at the taste. 

‘What the fuck?!’ He spat, almost spraying her with the mouthful. ‘Elizabeth is this fucking apple juice,’ he demanded angrily. 'You should know never to mess with a man’s whiskey!'   

‘I didn’t mess with any whiskey,’ she retorted. ‘You’re the one that shouldn’t jump to conclusions without making sure you have all the facts. 

Drake set the offending glass down and glared at her. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?' 

 Sitting up, Elizabeth rolled her eyes, keeping up the pretence of being annoyed as she jerked her head towards the bottle.’Maybe you should take a look at what you’re drinking before you drink it.’ 

 He cast a dirty look her way before grabbing the bottle, grumbling under his breath while his eyes scanned the label while she waited anxiously. Drake suddenly froze, body rigid, the only things moving were his irises as they darted over the bottle again to make sure he’d read it right before he brought his gaze up to hers.   

 'Is it… Are you…’ His voice was impossibly soft, in disbelief, not fully allowing himself to believe it just yet. 

 Elizabeth immediately nodded, her own eyes filling with tears of happiness. I’m pregnant Drake. We’re going to be parents.’ 

Drake stared at her, shock still for a long moment — just long enough for Elizabeth to wonder if her little prank had gone too far — before suddenly lunging towards her, big hands on her waist as he picked her up, spinning her around their lounge room. 

 ‘You’re pregnant!’ He exclaimed, joy radiating from every pore and she couldn’t help laughing along with him. ‘I’m going to be a dad!’ 

 He set her down and immediately pulled her into a joyful kiss, clutching her towards him as he enthusiastically roamed her lips. Just as she was starting to kiss him back, he pulled away, running a hand through his dark hair as he began to pace. 

 ‘That means you’ve been pregnant for a month and the baby will be here in eight more months and we still need to get everything. The crib, the pram, the baby clothes, nappies, formula, car seat. I need to start reading baby books, I have to know what to do...’ He rambled on before Elizabeth caught his hands, halting his pacing. 

 ‘Drake we don’t have to get everything done now. Like you said, we have at least eight months to prepare. We should just enjoy it for ourselves,’ she told him, though the flatness of her tone at the end gave away from to the doubts she’d been feeling earlier. ‘We should enjoy ourselves,’ she repeated lamely and picking up on her uncertainty, Drake immediately drew her in, looking intently at her as he spoke. 

‘ Walker… Liz… Do you not want this?' 

 Elizabeth hesitated. With her face trapped between his palms and his dark gaze boring into hers, she knew she couldn’t could never lie to him. The joy in his eyes moments ago had been replaced with a profound concern and if she looked closer, there was… fear. Fear that she didn’t want this. The sparkle of joy that had lit up his entire being seemed to vanish right before her, the longer she looked at him and she forced herself to find her voice again. 

 ‘I do… I do want this,’ Elizabeth told him, trying and failing to sound convincing. 

 ‘But...?’ 

She sighed, unable to hide it from him any longer. ‘I just wanted to have more time as the two of us you know? This entire time, our entire relationship has been full speed ahead from the moment we met, I just wanted to take it slow for a bit and have time to learn about each other before another big change happened.’ 

‘Oh.’ 

That one word broke her heart and his shoulders sagged, revealing just how badly he’d wanted this. 

Elizabeth rushed to finish what she was saying, grabbing his hands from where they’d fallen to his sides. 'It might have been a little sooner than I expected but seeing you so happy only affirmed how right this is for us.’ 

Drake eyed her hesitantly, his voice deep and sombre. ‘Are you sure?’ 

 'Yes I’m sure,’ she nodded, trying desperately to bring back the look of joy from just moments ago. 

 ‘Liz…’ he sighed, looking deeply into her eyes. You can tell me if you’re not. And we can…’ — he sighed again, this time the devastation in there hit her hard — 'We can wait for as long as you need.’ 

 Elizabeth let out a small gasp, stunned at his words. This man loved her so much he was willing to sacrifice his own happiness and joy just so she could be comfortable. Marrying her had meant taking on the title of Duke, a title he still struggled with but he’d done it. He’d already given up so much to be with her, all his old habits, the wedding he’d wanted, the chance at a normal life, free of prying eyes and harsh critics of the public eye. When she put it all into perspective, her wishes seemed rather selfish. 

 ‘Drake I am sure about this,’ she told him firmly, her turn to grasp his face now. ‘Its a bit unexpected I’ll admit but if you’re willing to put up with the late night cravings, swollen ankles, midnight feedings and everything else, how can I not give the man I love what he’s always wanted?’ 

As soon as the words left her mouth, the tension in his body released and a deep relief settled onto his handsome face where it were held between her hands. 

 ‘Oh Elizabeth you don’t know how long I’ve wanted this..’ he admitted with a sigh, turning his head to kiss her palm and her heart soared at his words. He was going to be an amazing father. 

 ‘I love you,’ she told him, closing the gap between them, feeling the intense relief in the kiss and as it deepened she rediscovered the joy there too. 

 ‘I love you too,’ Drake whispered back breathlessly against her lips as he pulled away to rest his forehead on hers. They stayed like that for a long moment, just basking in their joy and each other presence before he pulled away to look at her, his gaze reigniting the fire in her belly. 

 ‘I believe I was in the middle of showing you just how much earlier.’ 

 Elizabeth returned his smirk as her hunger for her husband returned with renewed intensity. ‘Oh I think I’ll require a very thorough demonstration before I’m satisfied.’ 

 He grinned back at her devilishly, making her knees grow weak as he swept her up into his arms with a flourish before addressing her flat stomach. 

‘You better hang on to something in there, little one. Mummy and Daddy have a lot of loving to do.’