#nobody would think spot's (powers) are great

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Animated Series ending tier list

Okay this is based on a discussion with @j4gm, kim and mifil the other day

These are all cartoons with the exception of Homestuck. I'll admit I don't get invested in a lot of TV shows, even animated shows, so this is limited to stuff I like. Maybe i forgot something but if i did it's probably not worth talking about.

Here's the list if you're interested in building your own.

So I'll go through each item one by one and explain. Yes, I did arrange them based on better (left) and worse (right) for each tier. I'll start from top to bottom so I have the most energy for the better show endings.

I'm rating them both in how they respect the stories of their show, and how entertaining/cohesive they are as a piece of media. To be honest, the former matters to me more than the latter, but some of the shows at the top of this list aren't even ones I particularly like, because their endings were just that well written.

Astonishing

Owl House. This show got better and better with each episode. I don't know, I was blown away by how bad it was at the start and how great it was at the end. And of every item on this list, this one's ending episode had the best pacing. There was lots of room to breathe, lots of reminders of the connections between various characters, and the villain was taken care of in a satisfying way. And we got a beautiful epilogue. The only reason Owl House is in the same tier as She-ra and Gravity Falls, instead of being its own category, is because I felt it had some shortcomings, particularly s3e2 focused on a bunch of characters nobody has ever had any reason to care for, and a lot of the cast don't reach the potential they could do because they lack focus, so I don't have as much emotional attachment to it as a lot of other shows listed here. Anyway here's my favourite moment:

2. She-Ra and the Princess of Power. This is my favourite show on this list because I think it's the most cohesive of the lot. Even though it has a rough start, and often follows cartoon logic, from the very beginning of She-ra to the end it focuses strongly on the same themes. The cycle of abuse and pain and that feeling you will need to earn love, you need to earn the right to exist. It does so with a wide cast of characters, but it's also very good at trimming down to a smaller cast when it needs more focus. There are a lot of good decisions to make sure it worked in the small runtime it had. The ending of she-ra is basically its entire final season. It's one long arc. It doesn't have any major weak spots like The Owl House's final season did, and it has more room to breathe, with 13 incredible episode of about 20 minutes each, more than twice the length. And it delivers on every single character. Every member of the cast gets a moment to shine across the season, yet it isn't so distracted as to pull attention away from Catra and Adora. What makes She-ra's ending a bit weaker than Owl House's is the pacing of the final episode. Heart part 1 and 2, while great, is absolutely rammed, and one of the weaker episodes of that season because of it. You don't get enough room to breathe, you don't get to soak in the characters' emotions quite as much as in the episode prior, Failsafe. But I would count Failsafe as part of the ending. So while season 5's finale isn't even the best finale of She-ra (s3 and s4 were harder hitting), the final season as a whole is incredibly strong. And it's a very entertaining piece of media too! Ugh. I love it.

Here's this powerful scene of Catra whispering and yet screaming to Adora to stay with her, even in the end.

3. Gravity Falls.

To be honest I'm not much of a Gravity Falls fan, so I don't have as much to say as I do about the other two shows, but this ending is highly regarded across the cartoon community. It works perfectly within the smaller scope of the show, bringing a wide, crazy calamity for the characters to work with.

My problem with Gravity falls is Mabel. Not that she's a bad character, but that they don't spend enough time making her a good one. And the ending reflects that - it shows her doing something very major, overturning the world, and that's interesting, but it keeps presenting Mabel's problems as rather shallow instead of focusing on her psychology and why she's making these mistakes. Meanwhile it spends a lot of time on Dipper and explaining and justifying his teenage boy mentality and it drived me crazy how much more of a main character Dipper is than Mabel. Because it's Mabel I relate more to. She's more like I was when I was 12. It's a teen boy's show for teen boys, so I don't like it as much as Owl House or Amphibia. Other than that the ending is a good time and I love the themes of family, I love that Dipper has such low self worth and is grappling with the idea of what manliness even is, facing misguided pressure from other relatives like Stan and Ford. And I love the relationship between Stan and Ford, the mistakes they made, and how Stan ultimately takes responsibility for being an obstructive little shit by removing his memory, taking Bill with him!

Yeah, perhaps this show's ending could've been further strengthened by Stan having his memory lost forever, or having a harder time regaining it. But it makes sense in the stakes of Gravity Falls, where the world resets after every episode even if there was a zombie invasion. I don't see them having Stan forget his great nephew/niece as the ending of the show.

And it has a nice scene with the characters driving off in the bus... Heartbreaking. I love that Stan and Ford go adventuring together afterwards. And I love the theme song.

Remaining rankings below - I think these three should be celebrated most. It's gonna be a shorter summary from here.

Genuinely Good

These are endings that blow you away, but do have a couple nooks and crannies stopping them from reaching the top tier. Another person's list might put them at the top.

Adventure Time Distant Lands: See what's crazy about Distant Lands is that anyone one of these episodes might be the best in the series if it was a different show, but Adventure Time is such a good show that the way Distant Lands is different stands out to me. Like, Together Again, you might think I'm crazy for not putting it above Owl House, but while it's a fantastic episode, really emotional, it's not even my favourite Distand Lands episode. That would be Obsidian which I felt was a more honest resolution to the characters of the show itself, showing the limitless future ahead of the cast instead of what TA did which was demonstrate that Finn really didn't go much further after the end of the show. I felt TA was very limiting in that sense, it contradicted the ending to Adventure Time, which had the strength of "the adventure never ends". Which means that growth never ends. Finn is supposed to be an ever changing character, but in Together Again, he's stagnant.

Other than that, it's absolutely top tier. But not good enough for me to call it the best of the best. Even if I think Finn's character writing was a downgrade, or harmed the main show, I think where DL and TA did better than Come Along With Me is it was actually coherent and had strong themes rather than being a mishmash of random parts of Adventure Time that they wanted to shove in before it was over. It was a better tv finale, one of the best and most emotional ever made, but it's hard to call it a better Adventure Time finale, because AT's legacy hinders on so much more. 2. OK KO: Let's be Heroes: This is a show that went under the radar. It was coming out at the same time as Steven Universe, which was far more popular. So I'll explain it to you: OK KO has two endings. KO has grappled with his alternate persona, TKO, for the entire show. In the first ending, TKO takes over, and starts fighting everyone in a giant tournament. He literally kills all the cast, while KO is struggling to regain control. KO's epiphany is that TKO is a part of himself he buried long ago. KO has always tried to be the sweetest kid possible, so all his rage and fire, all his strength, was neglected and buried. That became TKO. It's similar to the ending of Celeste. They fuse together, but KO is crying because he killed all his friends. So he makes a wish to the God of the Universe to give everyone a happy ending. Then you get a really nice ending montage of all the characters from OK KO having the time of their life. One interesting touch was Venomous, KO's bastard father, had very little to do with KO in this timeline. KO clearly wanted nothing to do with him. But Venomous is shown raising his adoptive daughter Fink and doing a fantastic job. The final episode of OK KO has KO seemingly stuck in time acceleration. Time is flying by, his friends are achieving their goals, leaving the town, way before he can begin to process what he's even doing here. Everything is going faster and faster and it's like he's jumping forward! He doesn't know what's going on!!! But when he explains his plight, he's told... This is normal. This is a normal part of growing up. What seems like time acceleration is just time passing by. Then the rest of the episode show KO going through his life in the same manner. A big gag of the show is KO is age 6-11. That's his age. It's the same as the target audience for OKKO. But you see him grow up. His twelth to fifteenth birthday... 18th to 24th birthday... 25th to 35th birthday... At the end, he's in charge of the Bodega, a full adult looking after runts just like Mr Gar did. I dunno, I felt this was a very meaningful way to end the show. Even if it's not the most emotionally heavy hitting series, even if it's way too short, it did something that stays in my mind to this day. Time goes by in such a flash that you don't notice it was there to begin with, so appreciate the good things life throws at you.

3. The Legend of Korra: The show Korra wasn't particularly great, if I was rating the media as a whole it would probably be at the very bottom of this list. Yes below Star and Homestuck and Kipo. It's not remarkable in the slightest and constantly fumbles.

However I was at the edge of my seat during the series finale in Season 4. I was excited by the conflict between Korra and Kuvira. I loved the metalbending battles. I loved Korra's actualisation, how Kuvira is a very good rival, how their whole conflict plays out with Korra demonstrating such an INSURMOUNTABLE LEVEL OF STRENGTH both in power and character to save Kuvira from her own mistake.

I love how Korra decides to take a break and leave with Asami into the spirit world through the portal she just opened. It was a nice relationship in a show that has so heavily fumbled its prior character dynamics.

And you can't forget how it felt watching this the first time. Afterwards, Bryke made a post on tumblr saying "Korrasami is Canon". You have to remember, this was long before Bubbline was anything more than subtext in two episodes. This was before Steven Universe's "Stronger than You". This was the first time two girls were confirmed to be in a relationship in a kid's cartoon in America. I was so happy. You have to understand Korrasami did a lot of good things and made a lot of the queer representation in these other items possible.

Did the job

These are endings that were OK. They were satisfying but they weren't anything special. They weren't the best episodes or seasons of the series they're from.

Avatar: The last Airbender: I will be honest this show is in a similar realm to She-ra wherein its whole final season is one big buildup to a couple of fast-pased episodes. And honestly its final episode might be better than She-ra's in a pacing sense? But... The simple part is I don't like Avatar as much. I didn't feel particularly strongly about most of these characters. It's a very competent tv finale, with strong scenes - the Agni Kai, and Katara's capture of Azula, are particular strong points. But it's quite long and there are a lot of scenes I don't feel much about, like Aang vs Ozai. Back in the day lots of people were unhappy Aang spared Ozai, and I get that it's not in character for him to just kill him, but it was the original "deus ex machina" for Aang to find a way to get out of it and get what he wanted. It isn't particularly interesting. And then Aang x Katara... I don't care. So yeah ATLA does the job. It's a great final season but I don't care for the finale itself and the characters. while great for the time - by far the EARLIEST show to release on this list - are more childish and cartoony than most. They don't have depth required to compete with more modern cartoons. You've only got maybe two outstanding characters in a tight story vs She-ra's one dozen in a looser story, and honestly I value character more than cohesion because that's what you remember. That's what makes you feel things. Anyone can make a story where things happen but what makes you care? Being a bit harsh here because a lot of people call this the greatest show of all time blah de blah and throw away everything all the other shows do better. But the ATLA finale isn't even in the top ten most interesting episodes of the series. This part went hard though (couldn't find a video of it alone):

Azula starts the scene dominating Katara, and then Katara turns the tables and restrains her using the very ice which fire is supposed to melt, which is mentally destroying for Azula. All she can do is scream and breathe fire when she is restrained, unable to let out all her rage and pain. And Katara spares a moment to witness this, looking troubled, before she runs off to Zuko, attempting to save his life.

2. Adventure Time original ending: Why is my favourite show of all time listed so far down? Why? Well it's because while that AT finale is emotional, hits a lot of themes, it's... a fucking mess. The first part is a war which has only been relevant for two episodes, the second part is a dream sequence which destroy any tension you might've had, and the rest is an unrelated battle against GOLB because we needed a real final boss.

It's a really bad tv finale. And it even does harm to my favourite character in the show, Princess Bubblegum, by making her seem irrational. She's someone who has had the entire series for us to get to know her, to see her biggest flaws and see her struggle to overcome them. So for her to fall back on them yet again, nearly fuck everyone over, with such little buildup and justification and literally throw a child tantrum when Finn interrupts it, it's an injustice to her. She deserved better than everyone thinking she's a fascist forever. The AT crew should have respected their own work on that character better instead of leaving her off like that.

But... even despite these issues, despite being so incoherent? It's a great Adventure Time ending. It makes perfect sense. Of COURSE it's anticlimactic! Of COURSE there's a ten minute dream sequence of crazy shit happening! Of course it's so sudden, things happen so quickly without much time spent to reflect on them! It's Adventure Time! This is what we're HERE for! And the emotional heart of the episode, it isn't really in the Great Gum War or the battle against Golb. It's in Shermie and Beth, and Future Ooo. The fact that the world will end again, but even then.. it's fine. Everything changes. Everything grows. Nothing can stay as it is forever, but letting it go might allow something new and beautiful to take its place.

It's in Jake trying to protect his home, freaking out, and BMO coming in... instead of being looked after, BMO decides to reassure jake, even in certain doom.

It's in Time Adventure. We may not be able to go home, turn back time, relive the past and return to how things were, but... you and I will always be back then.

3. Scavenger's Reign: I felt this show started stronger than it ended. The ending wasn't offensive but it wasn't good either. Honestly I don't have shit to say about the ending, other than that Barry is an annoying stereotype of an autistic character with no agency of his own and it breaks my heart. I liked how relentlessly bad Kris was and I liked Azi struggling to save the day. I liked how her character evolved from being straightfoward and pushing down Levi's curious, kind traits, to embracing those very things in her memory.... while maintaining the strength in adversity needed to challenge someone like Kris. The baby alien thing sure was there. I dunno, the earlier eps with those two hit harder than the ending. The worst part is the sequel bait. We are not getting a sequel. Why is there sequel bait? Seems like the crew were a bit too optimistic for a team of cartoonists working for HBO Max.

But the show as a whole is incredible and has left a strong impression. So, an inoffensive ending is completely fine. I like how everyone is still stranded because of Kris, who meanwhile is dehydrating to death in space because of the organic Levi invasion, and all the people they left behind are chilling in the alien wonderland, learning how to live comfortably.

4. Fionna and Cake: We're now moving into the endings I dislike for one reason or another. I liked Fionna and Cake's themes with Simon and Betty, how it showed a bit more from Betty's side, how obsessive she was with him and he didn't even know.

This does have a weakness though. It removes agency from Betty. It was her choice, in the finale, to sacrifice herself to become GOLB. She was chasing Simon over and over and over again, SHE was the obsessive mad scientist, and she finally achieved her goal at great cost even though could've given up at any time. It was a tragedy. But here it kinda shifts the blame on Simon, even though he was a victim of Betty's obsession. I'm not accusing it of victim blaming, more that I really liked that it was Betty making her own terrible mistakes. It added a lot of character and conviction to her. I don't think Fionna and Cake undermines this much. Kim was a lot more bothered. Besides the Simon plot, the rest is.. ok. It was very predictable Fionna would want to protect the boring, happy world she came from. It fits and it has heart. But it's not remarkable. The ending montage is... weird. Why is Jay and Little Destiny here? Why is Baby Finn here? What about their worlds? Won't they be missed? Did Farmworld Finn fucking die? And the big problem with Fionna and Cake is.. it's such a meanspirited show, even compared with Adventure Time. It relies on you finding tragic shit really funny, like BMO having a horrible gory deeath in jerry. When Fionna and Cake has desensitized me this much, it's hard to feel emotionally invested in this world anymore. It made mistakes by showing too many alternate universes and undermining the world of Adventure Time itself, and I have issues with how Marceline was completely absent from the series - AGAIN - despite allegedly being so important to Simon. It's an outright BAD Adventure Time ending!!! I do love the presentation of Casper and Nova, how it was revealed it wasn't Simon Petrikov but the little Fionna and Cake fan who was able to write the story that finally got through to him and made him realise he needed to stop holding betty back.

"You were a good experience, Simon. Goodbye."

Mistakes were Made

These are the endings that fumbled, disappointed people. They still have value in them but theyre largely disliked by the fanbases involved. I'll explain a bit of why.

1, Arcane: This one just ended last night and is the reason I'm making this post.

I explained a bit here and here, but the issue is: Arcane's a much better show than it has any right to be. It's a league of legends cartoon. But season 1 is so heavy hitting, a tight ship from start to end focusing on the dramas of Vi, Jinx, and the people around them. The main weakness of season 1 was Jayce, Viktor, and Mel. It would distract from the main story in order to focus on them, but wouldn't spend enough time making them compelling characters. Season 2 has this issue tenfold where it seems the scope of the season was so big that it had very limited time to have those amazing scenes from season 1. And there certainly some heavy hitters, like Ekko save-scumming his conversation with Jinx to find a way to stop her killing herself, or Caitlyn and Mel's battle with Ambessa, or Jayce and Viktor yetting themselves into arcane oblivion, but... the finale itself seems very disconnected from the rest of the series, having a generic big bad in Possessed Chaos God Viktor. It lacks any of the intrigue of the Piltover vs Zaun conflict that was so important from s1e1 all the way to s2e4, after which it was promptly discarded in favour of other distractions. And as a result, Jinx and Vi are left as side characters in the ending of their own series, with a lot of their internal struggles left behind. Instead of the tragedy of season 1's ending, we are left thinking of the tragedy of how much better the ending could've been if they had just one more season to give these characters justice.

The strongest episode of the season is probably episode 6. If you know, you know.

2. Ducktales: So if you were a casual viewer of Ducktales you probably had no issues with this one. It's a competent TV finale where stuff happens and all the characters get involved and there are emotional themes.

What's weird about this one, and why it's so far down, is because of Webby's role. Webby is a misfit because she's not a member of the Scrooge family. She's a wannabe. She wants to be part of them, part of the siblings, and she has more in common with Scrooge and Della's brilliance than the other three, but she will never have that blood relationship. Her own parents are dead too, so she has feelings about watching the triplets reunite with their mother.

But in season 3... Ot's like the Ducktales writers were told they only had one episode left to work with and just made something up, and what they decided to do was take the "found family" trope and say "actually it was real family the whole time because Webby was Scrooge's secret clone daughter".

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The show did such a good job before this point showing Webby's development as she gets loved and accepted into the family. But for her to have always secretly had that blood relationship undercuts it fully.

It also undercuts her relationship to her grandmother, who tries to move out of the picture as soon as the truth comes out. The show does have Webby embracing her gran to show theyre still family. But we already had this story told in a better way with Webby and Scrooge and the triplets.

The fact the finale has nothing to do with the rest of the season is also why it's so far down. The season 2 finale was pretty spectacular by comparison and had compelling scenes like Della freaking out over protecting her kids and "running to the moon" with them, recycling her trauma (yes a ducktales character has trauma).

If you're not bothered by it, it's an inoffensive, fun finale. But more obsessive Ducktales fans and Webby fans were quite upset, myself included.

3. Kipo and the age of Wonderbeasts

I can't remember much about how this show ended. Honestly that's part of the problem. The first season was far more intrigueing than anything that followed and the whole thing came out across 2020 and it was a forgettable experience despite Karen Fukuhara voicing the energetic Kipo.

What I do remember is being pissed off about some things. Like how a lot of the talking animals were turned into non-talking animals and that was how things ended for them, and no vaccine or anything was made. It pissed me off somehow? Please kipo fans tell me your feelings on this.

I also disliked the final villain. She's a lot like Kris from Scavenger's Reign but even more generic and disappointing.

I dunno, to me the finale represents the wasted potential of this show. How it takes place in a world that rivals Adventure Time's, but Netflix did away with it so quickly, releasing three entire seasons in one year and leaving it with a generic end.

The peak into everyone's futures is nice, but it's not intrigueing like with The Owl House or Adventure Time.

4. Steven Universe: What a hot mess of an ending that threw out so much potential for the wider Steven Universe world. The motivations of the main villains were narrowed down to "we have emotional problems". Steven Universe has a consistent issue where it has emotional scenes at the expense of characters and story.

But I rate this more highly than the SU Future ending, despite that one having perhaps more cohesive writing, because I felt that the SU end had some incredible scenes that carried the spirit of the show while SU Future constantly undermined the original series without providing enough value of its own.

In particular, the scene James Baxter animated of Steven and Steven. This was mind-blowing, it was the climax to the most important part of the story, the truth of Steven's identity and whether he was his own person.

In retrospect that scene brings more value to me than all the bad parts of SU... but SU had so many amazing characters. It's a tragedy that Steven was the only one of them that the show still loved by the end.

Hardest line:

She's GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!!!!

5. Amphibia: Season 3 was plagued by being worse than season 2. The opening episodes on Earth were kinda bad, just "Amphibia season 1 episodes but in a far more boring setting". I hated anything involving the secret agents.

The fact Kipo, Scavenger's Reign, and Amphibia all have corpo villains at the end, and the fact I didn't like any of those endings, shows to me that it's not a particularly great thing to add to a fantasy story.

The first sad part is "the magic is destroyed". A popular theme in Disney shows. Well, what happens here is Sasha, Anne, and Marcy lose their magic abilities, and they decide to stay on Earth and lose the ability to travel to Amphibia. It's not massively offensive but it's kind of played out and generic and it does the sad thing of separating the trio from their found family. What's controversial is the epilogue shows that Anne, Sasha, and Marcy stopped hanging out after the end. They just broke off from each other's lives, it was easy as that. It wasn't a lifelong friendship. They do reunite in the end but it's been like ten years. It undermines the emotional turmoil that was present across the whole show. What Matt Braly wanted to show is sometimes things happen. Despite how much you want to be best friends forever... you stop being close to people, you lose touch with them. But this isn't a story that makes much sense when the characters have been through so much together in a fantasy world. It's like Marcy's worst fears have come true, and while that's a point of growth for her, it's frustrating for the viewers who believed the endgame bonds between the characters were better than that.

[Edit: Other than that, a lot of characters weren't delivered in justice s3 with how they had been built up in season 2. Sasha is hardly present in season 3 and Marcy is genuinely not present at all, and when we watched it we really thought they were gonna do more with Marcy when she came back. Swim in that emotional trauma a little bit! But no she's fine even with her evil father figure gone. It could've been better, should've been because season 2 was so stellar.] And I wasn't a fan of how Anne was portrayed at the end. I don't like how these stories make their characters "grow up" in such a way that they come across as love-all hippies instead of having anything resembling their original personality. Where's her sass? Why is she so melancholic and only melancholic? But that's a personal problem I haven't seen many others talk about.

Other than that, it's a competent episode. But it's the ending to a weaker season compared to what came prior.

The cat in this drawing has been my discord icon since we watched it though.

What the Hell?

These are the endings that shat the bed. I hate them! Everyone else probably does too.

Steven Universe Future: Unlike the other endings of this section, I did feel like Rebecca Sugar was going somewhere with SU future. They had a specific goal in mind for what they wanted to do, and every episode reaches towards that goal in some way. That's why a lot of people think Steven Universe Future is better than the more disjointed, huge tv series that came prior. It had a set start middle and end and carried through those themes. Unfortunately, those themes suck. Yeah, it's great deconstructing the impact Steven Universe had on Steven as a character, showing the damage that was done to him, the ways he's been let down. In isolation, it's a great way to show how a difficult childhood can affect you in adulthood, in ways that you would have never expected. This is the value SU Future has. It also has good sections showing how some other characters have recovered, how Pearl for example is healing and far more social than she ever has been but still has a ways to go, and finally talks to someone about her feelings over Pink Diamond, the previous Pearl that served her. Volleyball is a great episode. Unfortunately it takes the wrong lessons from the mistakes of the show. Steven Universe really wanted us to fall in love with its many characters, but it spent so much time showing Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl's flaws, spent so much time showing them failing Steven, that they ultimately came across as incompetent and sidelined. This is an issue with the original show. Steven Universe Future: "You know what? You're right! That was bad!" Me: "So are you going to do those characters justice and show them having growth and being competent and caring for Steven?" Steven Universe Future: "No. We are going to show them BEING EVEN WORSE and COMPLETELY FAILING to connect with Steven!" Me: "... For the entire thing????" Steven Universe Future: "Yes. this is never fixed and Steven leaves the county because of it." Me: "What the fuck?" Even people who were really into the whole thing were taken aback that Steven's kaiju transformation, the manifestation of his deepest fears about himself, was resolved with a hug. Just like the major conflict in the original show. And instead of a meaningful denouement, the show skipped all the resolution and went to Steven running the fuck away in an episode that would've had equal emotional value if it was in season 1 episode 1, or a competely different series. It was cheap and easy to make a bittersweet ending of Steven leaving the city. And it made it feel like the tragedy of Steven's mental breakdown was more important than his healing. Like they couldn't make an interesting story of him getting better because they're incompetent writers. I did like the scene of Steven crying his eyes out after he detransformed. And a lot of scenes in Future did go hard. But the Crystal Gems deserved better. Hell, Jasper deserved better.

Hardest scene:

2. Star vs the forces of Evil: Hooo boy. In the animation community this is HERALDED as The Worst Ending. It is the flagship of disappointment.

It disappointed people who loved the magical world the show took place in. It disappointed people who wanted to see Star reach her potential. It disappointed every shipper of every ship, not that I ever cared for the romance dramas but they took a lot of screentime on the show to its detriment. It disappointed people who like to apply basic logic to the things they watch. What a disaster!

Okay so why is it so hated?

Well, Star had been on the decline for a while. It had a fantastic start to season 3, with a great big war for Mewnie where everyone had great character moments, Star died and came back to life and utterly annihilated the villain. Toffee was a great villain, by the way.

There had been a bit of romantic tension between Star and Marco and they both had crushes on each other but refused to ever admit it and Marco thought he was into some other girl, and Star let him go at the start of season 3 and started dating... her ex... this shitty guy called Tom... he's a good character but a terrible boyfriend who kind of suicide baits Star back into his life. And Star would become a terrible girlfriend. I dunno, people really thought that pairing would be endgame but it was clear to me it was just an artificial obstacle in the way of the inevitable Starco ship. Like Kelly. Who Marco dates for a whopping half an episode before they break up offscreen. Great?

Anyway the romance in this series is on the same tier as Korra, though it does try to build up its endgame pairing from the start.

But from season 3 onwards Marco felt more like a joke character. I don't know, they didn't treat him with much respect.

The thing that EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT with Star, oh god it's going to be the longest thing on this list, is Moon and Eclipsa and Mina and the atrocious decisions the characters made.

I'm going to bullet point it so it's vaguely readable:

Star's mother, Queen Moon, goes missing following the events of the start of s3 special.

Star learns that the throne was stolen from monster-fucker Eclipsa and wrongly given to her own family line so she gives the crown to Eclipsa, to great controversy. Eclipsa is a dark magic user who is 300 years old and she's pretty cool but the show takes a sharp turn from this point to being about a racial conflict - Monsters being discriminated against by Mewmans and how a lot of people want to keep it that way.

The council which was previously on the side of good really HATES this decisionn and is now portrayed as bad.

Conflict breaks out and people are against Eclipsa and her giant person-eating husband leading the kingdom.

People have their homes given back to the monsters that they were stolen from hundreds of years ago. It's a silly cartoon form of reparations but it is shown giving them hardship because they are made homeless. By the way nobody in history has been made homeless because of reparations.

These homeless or disgruntled mewmans find Moon, who has re-emerged and decided to stay away from the kingdom. They want their old queen back and side with her, and she thinks they need someone to represent them. She also hates Eclipsa for various reasons.

Moon decides the best way to deal with Eclipsa is to arm the biggest fascist monster-killing character in the world with an invincible undefeatable army of magic soldiers, and retake the kingdom and go to war against the side her own daughter is on.

Moon gets a surprised pikachu face when she realises she can't undo the spell she used to make this fascist evil super army.

Star decides the best way to resolve this is to delete all magic. Kill it. They go to the source of all magic and use a spell to kill everything there. Lots of reindeer die.

Then every magical thing in the universe gets deleted. Every single magic-born creature. The entire council is murdered. All of the creatures in Star's magic wand die. Countless portals to other worlds are closed down, meaning many of the characters can no longer go and see their friends anymore. This is directly shown, by the way - not just inferred.

Somehow, Ponyhead survives.

Then this is capped off by Marco and Star wanting to reunite... and in a scene that is supposed to be emotional, they cleave their universes together. Mewnie lands on top of Earth. Normal humans are screaming as they are chased around by giant creatures.

The story ends.

Yeah do I have to explain any more why this one was unpopular? It's the biggest fumble you can speak of.

My biggest issue is how dumb they had to make Moon in order to achieve this outcome.

But Starco is kind of cute, even if Marco wasn't half the character he used to be by the end.

3. Homestuck: Which ending do you want me to discuss? Act 6? The epilogues? Or HS^2?

Let's start with the main work, as that's what makes Homestuck qualify as an animation.

Act 6 was a vast disappointment because it sort of ended. We had so much talking for so long that we were hoping something cool would happen and then we got a flash where the characters hit each other with sticks. There were no stakes in Collide, not really.

Then we got the Frog flash. We watched a frog for 8 minutes.

Then that was it!

There were so many unanswered questions. What the hell happened to the final boss and the MAIN CAST, for example. We had learnt earlier in the story that in some point of the future, the main cast all get stuck in a little homestuck house which Vriska fires at Lord English. But we never learn when, we never learn if they're ok, we never learn if English is killed or what happens to Vriska. So for a long time there was this disturbing implication that the cast would all die not long after the series ended.

We had the Credits which were much better but further solidified this implication, and it had Terezi fly out into the void looking for Vriska forever, which made me sad and depressed but that was because of my personal involvement in the story really.

Act 6 is more of a "mistakes were made" ending, but it's the Epilogues and HS^2, and the actions of creator Andrew Hussie, which are why it's rock bottom here.

I don't want to give my breath to those items. Let's just say they were the most meanspirited, intentionally offensive, hostile, character-destroying sets of stories every done, created by people who accused every homestuck fan who didn't like them of being "not really trans" or "pedophile harborors" or "deserving to be lined up and shot" (real quote).

And then the fact Hussie fired his entire crew twice and blacklisted them if he ever had any suspicion they complained about his leadership or financial decisions anywhere.

And the fact the entire whatpumpkin team were left uncredited in the original release of Hiveswap Act 2 because Hussie didn't want to give them any credit because he wants his friends to be a hivemind.

I have so much hatred for what Homestuck became. It's tragic because this series was such a big part of my life for so long.

It's also tragic because the main work is a masterpiece. Even Act 7, despite the criticism, is Guzusuru's masterwork with how much effort went into the animation. How much heart went into each illustration the old Paradox Space team made.

So that's it. Homestuck is the one that is not just a little bit worse than Star. Leaps and bounds worse.

But that's it. I have a lot of opinions on endings because they can colour how you view the entire previous work.

[furiouskettle]

losers

[an-ruraiocht]

90% of the time when i see reviews and posts saying "this book needed editing" i don't think the reader have any idea what editing actually entails. usually this is actually code for one of several "problems" with the book:

it's too long, or it's slower paced than this reader's preference. they believe "editing" would mean making it shorter

it has a heavily descriptive style, which the reader doesn't like. they believe "editing" means paring every sentence down to hemingway-style prose with no adverbs

it doesn't follow the very rigid "save the cat" style 3-act story structure, disrupting the reader's sense of narrative tension. an editor, they believe, would've made sure it did

there were a few typos or formatting errors, and they believe it's the editor's job to catch these (it's not, it's typically the proofreader and the typesetter who have responsibility for that kind of thing)

and finally, most often:

the author had different narrative priorities than the reader, who thinks an editor would have made the author change their priorities.

the thing is, there are actually issues with editors in trad publishing being overworked to the point where things aren't getting the thorough, thoughtful editing that they need to be the best version of themselves. there are plenty of badly-structured, poorly-researched, and clumsily written books out there. moreover copyediting is typically freelance and perhaps because of that, this is the area where i see the largest number of issues: continuity issues, grammar issues, factual errors etc that someone should've spotted and didn't.

but this is not typically what people's "this needed an editor" reviews are focusing on. most often it just means they didn't like the book and they've decided editing is an all-powerful force that would have transformed it into a book they liked. but that's not how it works. and disproportionately what this comment means is that the book doesn't match what current fashions have decided is The Correct Style to write in

"this book needed an editor" if it's traditionally published, it had one. like. by definition. it was an editor who bought the book. that doesn't mean the editor did a great job but they definitely existed. there were probably at least two (acquiring editor who does the dev edits; copyeditor who does copyedits), and the proofreader, and a bunch of other people besides.

also i think people think editors are the ones who like. implement the changes. but they don't. they give comments and recommendations and ask questions and the author is the one to act on them. the editor will not rewrite the book. they will not fix the problems themselves, they will highlight the problem and the author will figure out a fix for it, or they will decide they don't agree that it's a problem and leave it as it. and a lot of the sentence-level style stuff is entirely on the author so if they don't have an ear for the rhythm then nobody's going to fix that for them. editors do a lot less than people seem to imagine they do, tbh

anyway

for reference—

structural/developmental edits: is this chapter in the right place and does the plot make sense and is the characterisation consistent and effective

line edits: is this sentence in the right place and is it as stylish as it could be

copy edits: is this sentence grammatically correct and consistent/factually correct within the story/its world and do the spellings follow the publisher's stylesheet

proofreading: are there any typos in this sentence and was the formatting preserved correctly when it was typeset

[grimmweepers]

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄: OCT 3RD

— ♤ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: yandere!dottore x assistant!fem reader

— ♤ 𝐜𝐰: obsessive yandere behaviour, emotional manipulation, psychological manipulation, stalking, build up to smut is longish sorry, reader is gullible, dubcon, no preparation, pussy slapping (once), he calls you sweetheart, pet, pup, unprotected sex, creampie, rough sex, power imbalance, biting, 3.5k wc, 18+ only, MDNI.

𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

reblogs and interactions are always appreciated ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

It started with curiosity.

Maybe it was the softness in your voice as you confidently sat in his office, explaining why you would be perfect for the job, or perhaps the way you held onto the belief that he was a good person. But once Dottore saw how much you lit up when he offered you a position on the spot, he knew right then he needed to keep you close. 

This new revelation almost terrified him. 

Your voice was so innocent, clinging to him like honeysuckle, and that warmth behind your smile—it was too pure, too untainted. It had to be locked away before the world could tarnish it.

If you had paid attention, you would’ve noticed how his gaze lingered a little too long when you spoke; how his questions would dive deeper the more you got to know him.

You were ignorant of how much Dottore had deeply ingrained himself into every facet of your life, playing the role of the emotionally distant boss who eventually found comfort in your company. He saw that flicker of trust in your eyes and allowed you to believe you were the only person who could see the real him—“the man behind the mask who bled his heart and soul to you when nobody else was looking.” 

Everything was calculated. Subtle. You had become his latest obsession—a sweet, little experiment where the only result he deemed acceptable would be having you wrapped around his finger. So he made sure he was the first you turned to when things went wrong, planting seeds of doubts about everyone you knew. 

“Forgive me but your friends don’t seem to understand you.”

At first, you dismissed his comments but over time his critiques took root. You saw flaws in people that seemingly weren’t there before which made you wonder if it was truly only Dottore who had your best interest at heart. Gradually, you began to rely on him as your only confidant. Your rock. But it didn’t stop at just your relationships. Dottore had inserted himself into your daily routine, providing solutions for problems you hadn’t realised he created. After minor inconveniences and projects falling through, he was always there to pick up the pieces.

“Here, let me help you with that.”

And every time he did, you felt more indebted to him.

Dottore strung you along for years, feeding you enough affection to have you tethered with him while subtly isolating you from others. And when he finally made you his girlfriend, it was less a declaration of love and more of a confirmation of his control over you.

But you didn’t need to know that. 

You are his precious masterpiece, sculpted into the ideal partner—no longer the person you once were but a reflection of his twisted desires. 

When calling him “Doctor” transitioned from a professional title to something you moaned whenever he plowed you with his cock, it was difficult for him not to start touching himself at random hours of the day. 

Fortunately for him, he could simply just find you while you were working and suddenly, there was something hard pressed against your ass! It always satisfied him a great deal knowing how willing you were to please him, no matter the time of day.  

Sometimes he pitied you for never catching on so the first time you went astray, he was somewhat glad that his little darling wasn’t so dense.

“Dottore, I’m finding it difficult to get through to you. I feel suffocated. I’m worried about us.”

He glanced up from his notebook, almost affectionately, “You’re overthinking it, my dear.”

“I think we need some time apart," your words tasted bitter. "I just… need to clear my head. I’m sorry,” you felt guilty for even suggesting it.

“Time apart?” he repeated with a false frown, dropping his book to look at you wholly. “For how long?’

“I’m not sure.”

A tense silence hung between you, and you tried to steady your breath.

“Darling, you’re not making any sense,” he blinked.

“It makes sense to me,” you protested, “I wasn’t asking.”

Truth be told, he was more amused than angered. Although, he wondered what it was that finally provoked your sudden notion. Sure, disagreements were more frequent but it had been so long since this all began. He thought his tactics would be something you were used to by now. Perhaps you were starting to see everything for what it truly was.

Perhaps not.

Your voice was trembling but you were firm in your resolve. Dottore liked that you thought you had a choice, so he entertained you by letting the last of his smile fade from his lips, eyes narrowing in your direction. 

“So a break, then? If you think that will benefit us, I understand. But I’m not a mind reader. If something bothers you, you have to tell me, okay?”

His words seemed to melt some of your worries away so you couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him. Could you really doubt someone so patient, so willing to give you space when you needed it? 

“Really?”

“Of course," the lie effortlessly slipped between his teeth, "I respect your boundaries."

You nodded as you squeezed his hand and before you could turn away, his grip tightened. “Before you go, let me remind you that I love you, so very much.” 

And without warning, he kissed you. It was lingering, with no remorse, disguised as a parting gift—as if to say he know you’d be back.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” you said, feeling conflicted. 

“Doing what?” He questioned.

Dottore knew exactly what he was doing. 

———

Weeks had passed but your time away from him was restless. Days felt semi-wakeful and what emerged was not clarity but the creeping sense that the world was conspiring against you.

It was like your life had taken an irreparable turn. Work became a constant setback, and friends you thought you had made you feel isolated and adrift. Even your home, which once felt cozy and safe, was starting to feel clinical and cold. 

And who would be the one to orchestrate your misery other than the Doctor himself? That vendor who suddenly couldn’t get your orders right? A bribe from Dottore. The neighbours who started fighting at all hours? A couple he had manipulated into conflict. Even your small office, a place that once made you feel so productive, now felt claustrophobic and stifling thanks to subtle changes he made while you were away.

Each of these inconveniences wore you down, making you long for the comfort and stability that only Dottore had ever provided. 

So when you received a short and carefully worded letter from him, asking how you were, you felt a surge of relief. You didn’t hesitate to see him that very evening, desperate to talk in person.

Before you knew it, you were falling right into his hands.

On your feet, you headed straight to the entrance of his lab and stared at the door before you gave a knock.

“Come in,” he said from inside.

The moment you saw him, he greeted you with that charming smile, and suddenly all the frustration from the past weeks melted away. You rushed into his arms, burying your face into his chest, “I missed you.”

He held you close, stroking the back of your head with practiced gentleness, “Ah! You’re finally back. I can’t say I’ve been happy without you.” 

If he was beaming out of satisfaction, you were blind to it. You were too distracted by the need to hear him say it back, to say that he missed you. But instead of the words you longed to hear, he merely held you tighter.

Looking up at him, your eyes searched for reassurance, “Did you miss me?”

He leaned in, pressing a kiss on your forehead, “Of course.”

“Everything’s been so hard,” tears began to well up, “I can’t believe I distanced myself when I needed you the most.” 

He was always enthralled whenever he was right.

“Let’s not dwell on that, shall we? I’m here now so don’t fret.”

His words felt like a balm to your wounded soul and you clutched onto his coat as if he might vanish if you let go. You could not refuse him and he wouldn’t allow that option to exist. Dottore watched you, elated with himself, “Come,” he said, taking your hand towards his familiar private quarters, “I have something for you.” 

After closing the door behind him, his gaze remained on you, “I was hoping you would see me sooner rather than later,” he started, guiding you to the couch where the two of you sat. “We have much to catch up on.”

Dottore wore his grief convincingly as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a delicate crystal necklace that flickered like ice in the light, “I don’t want to lose you again.” Your heart skipped a beat as he put it on for you, the weight of it cold against your skin. When you relaxed your guard, he leaned in and whispered in your ear, “I can’t lose you. I won’t.” 

You thanked him for the gift but felt him craning your head to the side.

“It’s ice quartz," he purred, "For the pure love I have for you. For the healing that I hope it brings to your troubled heart. I’m sorry.”

There was a pause—a thoughtful stillness, and without another word, he kissed the exposed skin of your neck as if you beckoned him to. 

His lips were impossible to resist, each kiss slowly claiming you as he trailed his way to your mouth. You allowed your hands to explore his hair, messing up the neatness that once was.

Dottore wasted no time, the moment his lips met yours, you felt his hungry tongue and how it tasted of false apologies and something sickeningly sweet. He kissed you like he was starved—like he'd wanted his mouth on yours for weeks.

"Do you still—" he lightly pulled your bottom lip between his teeth, "—feel suffocated?"

Yes, you wanted to say. But for an entirely different reason now. This type of suffocation made your head spin and left something tingling between your legs.

"No," you finally answered against him. A string of saliva connected the small space between your lips. You relaxed under him and he took it as a chance to shuffle himself between your thighs.

"Hmm, I'm glad," he smirked before forcing another kiss out of you. Between gasps for air, his impatient hands found the hem of your blouse, unbuttoning it as he pushed you on your back. You pulled him down with you because you refused to part from the sinful way his lips collided with yours.

Piece by piece, layers of clothes began to disappear until you were left with nothing except the necklace he had given you. 

Spread out like this, you were ravishing, like a fine piece of art and the sight of you went straight to his cock. It throbbed in his slacks and you could hear his breathing growing uneven. At that moment, he could’ve taken you like an animal but he wasn’t ready. Not yet.

“Mmh!” you moaned in surprise as he cupped your breast, fondling your sensitive nipples and practically anywhere else that was available to him. He was so precise in everything he did, it was no wonder he was in his profession. 

The time you spent apart had left you already aching for him so when he dipped his fingers between your quivering thighs, he felt your arousal. You were hot and puffy and embarrassingly wet.

Dottore began to toy with your clit and it pulsed under the pads of his fingers. You moaned instantly. But he was excruciatingly light with his touch which only made you desperate for more friction. You whined and even though the sound of it made his heart beat quickly, his face was unreadable.

“Patience,” he urged. Dottore waited for you for weeks and you had the nerve to whine? At the very least you could have made up for the time you robbed from him. 

You intended to listen. You really did! But when his fingers teased the entrance of your hole, your body acted before you could think and suddenly, your hips rolled towards him. He had barely even touched you before he stopped. 

Tsk, you heard from him, clearly disappointed by your lack of control.

Instead of continuing, he gave your pussy a sudden slap which left you whimpering. 

“Why—!” You trembled, feeling its stinging aftermath.

Why?

Simply put, he decided he wasn’t going to bother with what you wanted. 

In exchange for running away from him, he would show you that not everything was served on a silver platter. Seeing you go from distressed to dependent on him only excited him more. No one riles him up in the way that you do so he couldn’t bear to wait a second longer. 

“Stay like this,” there was something deranged about the smile that appeared on his face. The clinical white glow of his quarters dulled his pale skin yet his teeth glistened through his lips. You felt a chill and it wasn't because of the cold air.

He pulled away and you were immediately drawn to the tight bulge pressing against his pants. Dottore noticed. He knew you were watching.

"Now open your legs for me," he said, breaking you out of your daze. You shifted pathetically under him so it was ultimately his large hand, splayed across your thigh that held you in place. You saw his erection twitch when his eyes fell on your hole, drenched for him and all.

After quickly undoing his trousers, he pushed his throbbing length inside you in one, deep stroke. Your hands curled into the cushions and you were prepared to scream—

"Perfect," he breathed. You didn't need proper preparation. He knew your body better than you did.  

Your voice was lodged in your throat as his girth stretched you apart and Dottore couldn’t help throwing his head back, curses falling from his lips at how well you hugged him. You were so beautiful like this. He couldn’t wait to fuck you back into obedience. It was your fault for being this way, really. You were just so malleable, so easy.

“Ah, look at you. So wet already, my little pup. Did you miss me that much?” 

“Yes, I did. Yes, I did, Doctor!” you whimpered, and he began thrusting as if rewarding you for your response. His hips slammed mercilessly into yours at an unexpected pace, and you couldn’t even think about any of your frustrations anymore — each time he slid in and out was like erasing all the concerns you had before this. 

“Dottore,” he corrected you. “You call me by my name today.” There was a slight strain in his voice as he fucked you but that was better than what was going on with you. With each thrust bucking into your sweet spot, you could hardly talk. 

The coat on his back ruffled behind him with each erratic movement. It was almost humiliating how he remained entirely clothed as he rammed into you. Your bare skin was on display yet not so much as a zipper and his disheveled hair was out of place for him.

Maybe he was too eager, you thought. Or maybe it was because he wouldn’t strip himself for the likes of you. Not when he was trying to remind you that being with him was a luxury. What he needed to etch into your subconscious was: 

You could get whatever you want as long as you stay and listen. 

Huffing at the sensation of being balls deep inside your pussy, he held you with a bruising grip on your waist, fucking you in a way that had you drooling. You were trying to remember a time when he wasn’t the one making you happy or giving you pleasure — but you couldn’t. Because it didn’t exist. 

“Dott…ore,” you called breathlessly, your voice mixing with the sound of your necklace clinking against your chest. He knew you very well, you had more to say than just the spilling of his name. He could see it in your damn eyes. 

Lowering himself to your neck, he rutted you even further into the couch, “What is it, my dear?” He asked, biting into you, feeling his hot and heavy breath fanning your skin. You yelped as his teeth clenched, knowing there was going to be a mark later. 

“I… love… you…” The words came out in a broken whisper, the sincerity of your confession made his cock twitch inside of you, precum already painting the insides of your hole. 

His tongue began to trace a slow and deliberate path from your neck to your ear, keeping his relentless rhythm as he did. “Is that right?” There was a cruel edge to his voice when he spoke. And you nodded back at him, feebly. Truthfully. 

“Then act like it,” he hissed, grip tightening as he thrusted sharply.

You shuddered underneath him—out of fear or pleasure, you weren’t sure but you knew you didn’t want it to end. You pulled him closer, winding your hands around his neck while he was deep inside you. “I’m— sorry!” you moaned, an apology slipping out in a haze. 

He almost growled at the sensation of you trembling around him, his crimson eyes searing into you, “No, it’s not your fault. I should have paid better attention to you.”

Another lie but exactly what you needed to hear to keep you going.

Lewd squelching sounds filled the room as he reduced you to a filthy mess. Even in your years of being with him, you had never seen him so untamed. Your juices were getting all over his trousers and if you knew any better, you would've seen how he got off on that.

You had almost forgotten where you were, though, at that point, you didn’t care about whether anybody else in the building heard. He fucked you hard and desperately, whatever he needed to do to keep his darling at bay, and you shamelessly cried out his name over and again. It was adorable.

“Dottore… I’m close—! Fuck. Fuck!” You swallowed your words as he pounded you. 

"Dirty mouth," he grunted, "Who taught you how to speak like that?"

He hovered above you, so close you could almost feel his hair tickling your face. "Nobody," you moaned quietly this time, feeling ashamed.

Every veiny inch of him was inside you and the more you felt of it, the less you thought. You just wanted to snap, to cum on him while he drove into you.

“Oh my, you're getting tighter,” he cooed, his voice deceptively gentle as he neared his own release. “Feeling good, sweetheart? Finish with me then…” 

Fortunately—or unfortunately, his pace became rougher, like a repeated reminder of who he was to you and his hand traveled to your jaw, tipping your head to meet his gaze. Amid your bodies thrashing, he could barely keep up with his own voice,

“No one will ever love you like me

or care about you like me

or fuck you like me. Do you understand, pet?” 

“Yes—! Yes, I do,” you panted as you wrapped your legs around him, pulling his hips further into your sloppy cunt. In your lust-clouded daze, you were too weak to register the weight of his words. His sultry voice did a great job at masking the fact that he meant every single thing he said. 

Dottore’s face twisted into a more sadistic smile, letting his thoughts get the best of him. He relished in how little and helpless you sounded, how utterly pliant you were to his will. Everything felt right again and you were back to where he had woven you. With a final, brutal snap of his hips, he spilled his seed inside you, locking himself against you. 

You arched your back as your orgasm crashed simultaneously—you moaned collectively, and your walls pulsed around his cock like you were milking every drop he’s got. His hips stuttered, not giving a damn about the way your nails bit into his skin. Instead, he slammed his lips onto yours, devouring you in a messy, filthy kiss—a perfect match for the way he had just fucked you senseless.

Still panting, he clutched the side of your face, only gentler now. His thumb stroked your cheek as if savouring the moment of seeing you act the way you should.

“I love you,” he hummed, the words slipped from his lips like it was so natural to him. "I love you."

Of course, he loved you. Everything he has done for you was for himself. Everything has been catered to him. 

His sweat-speckled forehead shimmered in the dim light and as you looked up at him, your heart softened. The weight of him on top of you and the comfort in his embrace made you forget everything, lulling you into a peaceful state. 

You sighed, feeling a bit foolish for even creating a wall between you. In front of you, he seemed so fragile, like you were the only thing holding him together. How could you have thought he was anything but honest with you all along?

Now, everything felt perfect—perfect in a way that left no room for anything else. 

No room for doubt or escape.

a/n: imagine at the end of this you think it's over and suddenly his segments walk in

© 2024 grimmweepers — do not repost, copy, translate, modify my work on any platform

dividers by @/astrumaur

[audliminal]

Survivability Bias Pt 3

Masterpost

Content warning: This chapter involves depiction of a train derailment and subsequent fire throughout. There is also brief mention of death. I will be putting a brief summary in the description if you prefer not to read this part.

Danny jolts up from his fitful sleep. He’s intangible and invisible before he’s even fully sitting up and he’s in the air before he registers the loud boom that woke him. Any concerns about his bright transformation are made totally irrelevant by the warning sirens blaring in his head.

Wait, no. Those are real sirens.

In the distance, lights are now accompanying the sirens; flashing as they speed down what looks like main street. It’s pretty clear where they’re going too, from the violent orange glow cascading over the tops of the nearby buildings.

I knew it, Danny thinks, flying towards whatever disaster is unfolding. probably it’s stupid to get involved, when he still knows so little about this place, but- well, old habits die hard. It doesn’t take long for the problem to become obvious, and Danny freezes as he struggles to process the scene before him.

The metal carnage is nothing like Danny’s ever seen before; what looks to be a freight train has derailed at the worst possible location, sending its cars careening into the various apartment buildings and stores on the east side of town, and to make matters worse, one of them has clearly crashed straight into the gas station by the freeway, and fire is spreading faster than Danny could have imagined.

Danny can already see two buildings blazing, but he quickly focuses his attention towards the carnage of the train itself. Luckily it’s fairly obvious what direction it was headed, and Danny moves fast, looking for the engine. In ghost form, physical sensations always feel a little more distant but even through that, Danny can feel his heart rabbiting in his chest. Luckily it takes less than a minute to find the engine, but as he approaches it, the presence of death catches in his throat, and he immediately knows it’s a lost cause.

He can’t sense any actual ghosts, though, so instead Danny whips around to stare at the derailed cars. He’s far more used to fighting than he is rescues, but he can hardly just ignore the possibility of people trapped, so he carefully begins phasing through the wreckage, searching and listening for signs of anyone. Already, people are starting to gather outside; both those who were nearby and those who have managed to escape on their own, and Danny is careful to maintain his invisibility as he works. 

Danny’s made it through about half the wreck by the time he spots the firetrucks arriving, he’s pretty certain that nobody’s trapped under any of the cars, and he’s also thinking more clearly. The fire has also gotten worse now, and Danny watches as fully equipped firefighters spill out onto the street, already jumping to work as the fire chief shouts out orders. Some rush to start battling the flames, but others head towards the crowd.

They’re getting headcounts, Danny realizes. It seems so obvious in retrospect, but of course, Danny would have to be visible to check with anyone. And now that they’re here, anything he tries to do in secret would probably just make things harder. There is, of course, an easy solution to that, but- Danny has yet to find any evidence that all the meta stuff is anything but propaganda.

Even as Danny considers the dilemma, he knows what he’s going to do. He’s survived danger before, after all, and if he can keep people from assuming ghost, then he’ll have an advantage on them even if it comes to the worst. Besides, there’s that whole great powers-great responsibility thing, so in a way, it’s kind of his responsibility...

Danny floats out of the wreckage before shifting into visibility, figuring it’s probably polite to approach in their field of sight.

“What can I do to help?” Danny asks, causing most of the crowd to stare in shock. Belatedly he realizes he’s still floating, but actually that’s probably a good thing. Makes it clear he’s a meta right off the bat, at least

“New hero, huh? Powerset?” The man responds promptly, leveling Danny with an even gaze. Probably the lack of shock is a good thing. Probably.

“Uh, flight obviously, enhanced strength as well, and um... The ability to turn people and things intangible?” Danny responds promptly. It’s far from his full set, but he figures those are the most relevant, and keeping most of his tricks under his sleeve makes him feel better about what he’s doing.

“Is the fire gonna hurt you? I’m not sending some kid in there to die of third degree burns or smoke inhalation.” The man frowns, giving Danny the distinct feeling he’s not particularly impressed with Danny’s answer.

“Oh! Yeah, no, I’ll be fine! I like, don’t exactly need to breathe? And I’m fine in extreme heat too, so it shouldn’t be a problem...” Danny trails off and the head firefighter narrows his eyes as he tries not to flinch at the assessing look. To Danny’s right, someone shouts and when he turns to look, he sees a firefighter wave their arm and plant some kind of flag before moving on. No longer paying attention to Danny, the chief walks over and speaks to another firefighter. Danny wonders if he’s been dismissed, but before he can do anything, the chief calls out to him.

“Alright kid, you’re up, I guess,” he says, when Danny walks over. “We don’t know how injured he is, so do not move him, but if you’re strong enough to move this stuff fast and safe, that’ll be a damn good help.” He gestures to the twisted mess that Danny’s pretty sure was the edge of a building. 

Danny nods, stepping forward to examine the rubble. The firefighter that spotted the man points to a couple beams.

“Those beams are protecting him from the worst of it right now, but we’ll need to move them in order to get him out, so you gotta make sure that there’s nothing that’ll fall on him him when you move them.” 

“Righty-o,” Danny says, stepping forward to grab the two support beams he’d pointed too. He carefully examines the rubble collapsed around and over it. It’s sort of like a puzzle, he realizes - not quite the same as fixing his parents tech; certainly nothing here is supposed to be smashed together like that, but-

Danny blinks and refocuses. If he  just moves a few things first, he thinks he can get enough cleared away and just intange the beams. He tries to be fast as he does, without forgetting the emphasis the chief had put on safety, and after a few moments, he’s ready to move the beams. He gets into a good position, and then carefully makes them intangible, ready to react if anything bad happens. When nothing does, he carefully pulls them up and away, watching as the waiting firefighters rush in and start to work on actually extracting the guy.

He watches for a bit as a backboard appears and they begin a very slow and careful process of getting the guy onto it.

“Kid,” the chief calls, pulling Danny’s attention away.The chief guides him towards one of the buildings that’s on fire. “Got two people trapped on the third floor here. The stairs are unsafe, so if you can, get yourself up there, locate them, and get them out.”

Danny nods, not waiting for further instruction. He flies up two floors, and goes straight through the wall with his intangibility. The majority of this building isn’t terribly damaged, but one side has collapsed in on itself so if that’s where the stairs were, he can understand the difficulty. The air inside is already thick with smoke, and he quickly stops breathing, belatedly remembering that he’s supposed to not get smoke inhalation. Luckily, it doesn’t take long to catch the sound of voices, and Danny follows it to a room where two people are huddled next to an open window. Right, that’s a smart way to limit the danger of the smoke.

“Rides here!” Danny announces cheerfully, dropping his intangibility. Both people startle as they spot him, but one recovers relatively quickly.

“Him first,” they say, nodding towards their companion, who definitely looks more dazed.

“Right, here we go!” Danny says, stepping forward, and scooping the person up, and wasting no time flying directly through the building, and down to the waiting paramedics. There’s no stretcher currently available, so Danny gently sets them on the ground away from the worst of the smoke, before flying back to get the other person. They’re already standing up, and waste no time in wrapping their arms around his neck as he picks them up and flies them out to the medics as well.

Danny hardly has time to set the person down, before the chief is pulling him away again. They send him in to save a couple other trapped people, but after that, it sounds like everybody is accounted for, because the chief starts focusing all their energy on putting out the fire, rather than just containing it.

Danny is surprised to find himself pulled into helping with this part too. He gets assigned to a fire attack team, and Danny trails along after the two firefighters as the enter the building and begin to fight the fire from the inside.Occasionally, one of them will point at some piece of wall or ceiling and ask him to check what’s on the other side. He goes where they say, looking for signs of the fire, and when he does spot flames, occasionally tearing stuff down so they can get to it with their fire hose. It’s honestly a fascinating process. Danny’s never been anywhere near a major fire and the fact that the firefighters actually do more damage to the building as they work echoes in Danny’s brain as a morbid refrain.

What they’re doing is clearly working though, because he can actually feel the ambient temperature going down as time goes on. He briefly wonders if he should be trying to use his ice powers when one of his teammates complains about how hot it is, but they have protection, and he doesn’t want to risk any more info on him getting out. And anyways, he’s busy enough just doing his job. By the time they leave the building, Danny is exhausted. The interrupted night’s sleep is making itself known, alongside the surprising realization that Danny has actually worked harder tonight than he ever has before.

He lets himself half-collapse against a wall beside one of the fire trucks, once they finish their work putting out the fire. Beside him, his teammates are divesting themselves of their gear. it’s funny, Danny was anxious about revealing himself at first, but this whole night - and Danny belatedly realizes the sun is beginning to drift above the horizon now - he’s not been scared at all. Sure he’s been worried; with people in danger he’s hardly going to feel good, but in the last few hours he’s both worked harder than he has in any of his fights, and he’s done it without feeling terrible. Now, with just everyone accounted for and just about all of them either fine or in the hands of doctors, he feels odd.

It’s not a bad feeling or anything, kind of like when he successfully beats a hard level in a video game, or how he used to feel when he finished science projects in middle school.

Satisfaction, he realizes. And that’s what it is, though it’s far stronger than any version of it that he’s ever felt before. He does have a lot to feel proud of too. He  helped, even though he wasn’t sure it was safe to, and he might’ve actually saved somebody’s life tonight.

“You did good, kid.” One of his teammates says, echoing Danny’s thoughts. He startles a bit, feels himself flushing, and then in his embarrassment, he feels himself tumble over into a full blush. It’s always felt more embarrassing blushing in his ghost form. The way his skin actually glows with the green tinge is just so obviously inhuman, and he tries to avoid, tries his best to seem normal and alive, even when he’s a ghost.

Of course, these people don’t know he’s a ghost, but from what he’s seen, most of the heroes out there at least look functionally human, and he waits for the firefighters around him to freak out at the reminder that he isn’t even remotely one of them.

“Damn,” one whistles. Green glow is a new one. Makes your freckles real cute though.” The others laugh, and the other of his teammates steps forward to pat him gently on the back.

“Stop embarrassing my new favorite hero,” the chief says, walking up to join them. “You gotta name?” 

“Oh, yeah!” Danny answers, desperate for a distraction from this line of conversation. “I’m Danny!”

“Danny,” the chief responds flatly. he almost sounds exasperated, though Danny can’t imagine why, unless...

Unless that absolutely sounds like he just introduced himself normal and they think he’s a hero and he sounds like a dumbass without a secret identity, which- technically isn’t exactly wrong. 

“Yup!” Danny says, trying to make it sound intentional. “Danny Phantom at your service! Y’know cause of the intangibility and like. It just sounded good?” There. That sounds plausible. If he actually does end up having to be a hero, though, he’ll probably need a different first name. If he gets a civilian identity, that is.

“Well, Phantom,” the chief grins, that same assessing look from before back, but noticeably more relaxed now that there’s no immediate danger. “We’re damn grateful for all your help, and if you need anything you come let us know, alright?”

“Yeah, one of his teammates echoes. “You’re an honorary firefighter now, you should come hang out at the station sometime!” A couple of the others echo the sentiment. It’s surprisingly kind, and Danny smiles at the unrelenting wave of welcome.

“I’ll think about it,” he offers uncertainly. “For now, I think I ought to go back to sleep for a few more hours.”

“That sounds like a good idea, Danny,” the chief says. “Just make sure to get something to eat first. You’ve burned a lot of calories today.”

“Yeah, will do,” Danny offers an awkward salute to the man, and then, before he can actually fall asleep standing up, he takes off to hunt down a good spot for a nap.

[lunamugetsu]

The CIA is trying to kill Danny

Now hear me out.

I stumbled upon this prompt idea where somebody wrote that they want to see a story where the CIA is trying to kill Clark Kent (not Superman, reporter Clark Kent), the reason is because that Clark Kent is a very good reporter. And everybody knows that a mark of a good reporter is that they die of natural causes, with bullets in their head. So that story would have centered around the CIA trying to kill Clark Kent and having no idea on how Clark Kent is still alive after the multiple attempts on his life.

Now this got me thinking.

In an AU where Danny is interning or working at the Daily Planet, probably under Clark or Lois.(you choose) And Danny is a really good reporter, his ghost powers help him gather information undetected. He's exposing corporations left and right, all ranging from either illegal animal experimentation, environmental pollution, horrible working conditions, toss in a couple of sleazy terrible rich people. So while all of his stuff is getting published and the govt is going, "we gotta stop that reporter." And proceed to constantly try to end this kid's life with no result. They try to poison food, Danny grew up eating radioactive food, if anything the poison is just added seasoning. They try to set up his place on fire, Danny's just conveniently not there. They try to have people tail him but they can't because Danny just disappears whenever he turns a corner.

And layers could be added to this, like Danny's just talking to Clark at work (y'know water cooler talk) and when Danny brings up all of these strange things happening to him like "people following him, the elevator at his place just conveniently broke down and crashed into the ground around the time he would have left for work, or how his usual food orders look a bit different than what they normally look like and they taste slightly different." And Clark is hearing all of this and is going "wait a minute!" and there's a scene of Clark walking with Danny as the kid is waiting for his uber and when the car pulls up. Clark uses his x-ray vision and spots the driver sporting guns, knives, poison gas (whatever CIA agents use for assassinations, I don't know) and just goes "Hey Danny did I ever take you to my favorite diner. No? GREAT! Let's go now!" and he just immediately drags Danny away from the murder car. And from that point on, Clark is taken it upon himself to stop all of the assassination attempts on Danny because he believes that Danny is a fragile young human being.

OR

This could be set in Gotham

And Danny is just exposing all of elites of Gotham, including Gotham's rogues and all of that song and dance. Which then leads him to be targeted by the Court of OWLS! Danny in this scenario would be friends with Tim, because they go to the same coffee shop and order the espresso on steroids drink. Danny tells him all of the stuff that's been happening to him and Tim goes "oh shit." In which he then tells the batsiblings. They all band together to protect Danny because he is a normal human being. (said nobody ever) So Danny becomes unofficially adopted by them. They don't tell Bruce about this because then they'll have to come to terms that they are just like him because they just took in a black haired blue eyed kid into their family.

[auspicioustidings]

Kinktober Day 15

Moniker: Velikan Risk Level: Medium. Velikan is a permanent resident of the Kennel. Brief: Restraints, squirting Safeword: Refer to first brief. Velikan doesn’t talk. They’re potentially the deadliest person in the world, but we have never had a problem with them in the Kennel and they were the one that checked themselves in as a resident, so I don’t think you’re in any danger at all from them. Safeword out and I’ll shoot them if they don’t listen - Laswell

So far everyone had been pretty casual, but Velikan was in full gear including a hard mask with an oni pattern on it. You knew immediately that it would be staying on.

They patted a gloved hand on the bed and as you approached they stopped you to relieve you of the robe your were wearing, leaving you naked. You couldn’t see if they were looking at you, but you could feel it, your nipples puckering from what you were sure were eyes on them and your clit throbbing a few seconds later as you imagined their eyes going south.

The sheets felt luxurious enough but a little strange on your skin as you lay down on your back. You wriggled a little to get used to the feeling, trying to pinpoint what was strange about them.

Velikan said nothing, but they took the glass of water from the side table and spilled a few drops on the sheet. They beaded and ran off the side. Waterproof. The sheets felt odd because they were waterproof.

“I don’t know if I can… um… you know…” you mumbled nervously as your ankles and wrists were buckled into cuffs attached to the four corners of the bed.

You automatically tested them, yanking and finding they only had a little give. Velikan just let you lay there for a while, getting used to it. You thought they must be experienced, because if they hadn’t you’d have safeworded from how uncomfortable it felt to be so at their mercy. It made your stomach fizz not being able to move properly, not being able to fight if you had to.

After a while the feeling started to dissipate and instead the powerlessness started to feel sort of liberating in a way. You couldn’t fight this so nobody could blame you for not trying. Once your brain switched to that kind of thinking it was like everything untensed all at once and you melted into the bed.

Velikan only stood and, you presumed, watched until your body relaxed and only then did they approach. They had a clinical touch as their gloved hand ran across your clavicle and down to run their fingertips over one nipple and then the other.

Your body was so primed and tuned in to their touch. You hadn’t realised how much not being able to touch yourself or touch them back would sensitize your body, make all your brain power only focus on what was happening rather than always having to tick over with escape routes or contingencies.

Once they were satisfied that your nipples were at attention for them, they moved down to your belly and spent a great deal of time there, pressing against the fat and tracing swirls into the skin. You’d never really considered the stomach to be an erogenous zone but the press of leather glove was making you squirm and you choked an annoyed noise when you tried to close your legs to get some friction and the restraints stopped you.

It was maddening that you somehow knew they were smirking under that damn mask.

Only when your ankles were chaffed from the constant attempts to get any sort of pressure did they moved down again, fingers swirling around your clit, through your slit and probing inside you just as clinically as they had assessed your nipples.

You couldn’t tell if they were getting any sexual gratification from this because their touch felt like you were a puzzle to figure out more than a body to play with. The leather clad finger inside of you curled and poked and prodded while their other hand pushed down on the outside, testing different spots.

You felt like a science experiment and that was weirdly doing it for you. Fuck, were they all turning you into a sexual deviant or had you been one all along?

There was a spot they hit that made you spasm and had a sharp sound of surprise spilling from you. It was odd, you weren’t sure if it felt amazing or uncomfortable. It seemed to be what they were looking for though because suddenly that finger was jack hammering inside of you at just the right angle and you were straining against the restraints.

“Oh fuck, wait wait wait, something is- I feel-!” you babbled.

This did not feel like the build up you were used to. If anything you felt like that moment just before peeing where you had been desperately holding it all day. They pressed harder and you nearly blacked out at how sudden and sharp the fall was.

The scream that tore through your throat hurt when you came. Not a normal orgasm, not by a long shot. This was explosive, like there were other parts of your insides getting involved that you hadn’t known could. You looked down at yourself horrified because you could hear the splatter of wetness on the sheets, a lot of wetness, as they pulled their finger out and rapidly ran their palm back and forth across your pussy to sustain it for as long as possible.

You were soaked. The sheets were soaked. Fuck had you…? You looked at Velikan whose mask was as impassive as ever and they simply gave you a short nod as if to say ‘good job, now we know it works’.

They took a silk sash from their pocket and made it clear that they were intent on blindfolding you, giving you the chance to protest. You did not. This person was massive and imposing and yet you really had no fear of them at all. It was something in how they treated your body, oddly non-sexual even while you were still reeling from squirting all over the damn bed.

They started the touch again, this time that gloved finger soaked. It was different with the blindfold on, your cunt violently throbbing with every drag of leather against flesh since your brain couldn’t send any warning signals about what was coming.

There was a click this time when they got to your clit and a warm pressure. A tongue. Oh, the blindfold made sense now, they had taken off their mask. You wished you could see the face of this fucking machine because nobody should have a tongue so dexterous. Not even Soap had been able to flick his tongue so fast against you for so long.

When you started to build up again you strained against your hand cuffs, needing to push their head away because you screeching at them wasn’t working. If they kept going like that you were going to squirt all over their face.

Velikan did not let up nor did they pay heed to any of your manic warnings and soon they were content drowning in your squirt, free hand forcing your hips down so they didn’t miss a drop.

You expected the click of their mask and to be undone from your blindfold and restraints. A silly notion really, you should have known better. It wasn’t until a half hour later when you were cumming dry because you had nothing left to give that they relented and by that time it didn’t much matter that they masked up and removed everything because you were pretty sure you were too strung out to actually take in any visual stimulus or move at all.

To your knowledge they hadn’t gotten off. In fact they looked much the same as when you had walked in, not rumpled in the slightest. Before they left you for Kate to clean up, they caressed your cheek, their damp still gloved thumb rubbing against your cheekbone fondly.

“I um… thanks. This was nice. Probably not an everyday thing because I’m pretty sure I’m severely dehydrated but still nice” you said, stupidly proud of yourself for actually being able to talk to someone like a normal person after such an intense session.

You swore you heard something like a chuckle and then they booped your nose and left. Strange character that one, but their brand of fondness left you smiling for the rest of the day.

[s9fti3]

‘Think it took it too far, when I sold you my heart.’- Draco Malfoy @riu-riu

“Wait, what?” Their question was so random from the conversation you were just having, it caught you off guard. “Draco. Do you like him?” Your friend had asked again, this time peering up from their plate for a few moments before looking back down and stabbing a piece of food before taking a bite.

You had paused, calculating their question and how to respond. It was true, you had. But nobody had known, love wasn’t a topic that had been commonly discussed. Well, not until the ball’s, the dances and the holidays had been coming up. Picking up your glass, taking a sip and setting it down, you had answered.

“I think he is a good person. Quite charming but has flaws.” You say, poking something on your plate with your fork, but never bringing it to your lips. “I have a few classes with him, and he’s really smart.” You trail off, never noticing the small smile that was plastered on your face. “Sometimes him and his friends will risk their futures in this school to make the class laugh! Or how he’ll score a goal in quidditch like nothing!” You had went on and on, talking only about his charming qualities, never his flaws.

Your friends had made eye contact with each other, smiling ear to ear. “Huh. You’ve got a crush on Malfoy.” Your brunette friend had spoken, seemingly in a mocking tone. She had giggled, though you had only seen it as a gesture of excitement. You were wrong.

That giggle wasn’t out of excitement, but out of power. Your little confession had been passed around Hogwarts like wild fire. Every house, year, teacher, anything you could’ve thought of had known. Even worse, Draco. He had went from never looking in your direction or acknowledging you to dirty glares across the class room or great hall.

His eyes would piece through you, as if you had placed a spell on him and had cursed his family for years. His friends would do the same. Glares, mocking, laughing, pointing, teasing.

A few weeks had passed and the joking and mocking had went down. Finally your life went back to normal, or you thought. The sound of glass clinking loudly and boys and girls cheering is what caught your attention. Draco, standing on a clear spot on the table, looking as if he was preparing a speech. You friends had laughed and looked at you, smiling. They might have known your crush on Draco, but not what was planned.

“Excuse me for a moment. As many of you have heard about the certain someone who had taken a liking to me, I’d like to say a few things.” He says, looking at you and your friend group. “Me and this girl are not dating and as a matter of fact, I would never date this girl. She is ugly, disgusting, stupid and frankly nothing any guy would look for in a woman.”

He finishes off with his last statement. “And if one ever catches me with a women like her, you have my full permission to slap everything and anything out of me.” He was done, stepping down as everyone had laughed and clapped, cheering on his name as they clapped and slammed on the tables like a ritual.

Frozen you were, still as a statue. Your friends had stared with blank expressions, their faces going one shade lighter after his speech. There was nothing you could feel. Embarrassment, sadness, anger, shame, guilt. Nothing, it was a open, white canvas.

[colourstreakgryffin]

Nezuko!reader × Alastor please🙏

Haha! Awww! I am not sure it’s platonic or romantic but I’ll go with what I’m thinking. I think Alastor would have lots of fun with a Nezuko!

Alastor- Bamboo Binds

You’re one of the weirdest demons he’s ever seen. You don’t want to eat demons? What’s the point of being in Hell then if you don’t sin. That’s how Alastor feels and that’s how he thinks as he watches you with the sharpest eye a deer like him can at your entrance to the Hotel

As soon as Charlie checked you in to the Hotel, she begun introducing you around and trying to have you befriend everybody but yet, you somehow clicked the most with Alastor. Nobody can explain it, you just did

Alastor can’t help but view you as an attached kitten, following him around, your off yet cute bamboo muzzle, light pink kimono and long haori covering your body well, light pink slit eyes. You’re so cute, like a child. He can’t help but view you as a child… a naive, easily manipulated little one

Alastor eventually ‘adopts’ you after pretending he doesn’t even acknowledge your presence around him for quite some time. He finds you way too perfect for his own purpose to just ignore your existence further so he goes from ignoring to openly addressing you

Alastor just drags you around when he needs you. He has a tab on you so he can teleport you from place to place with his voodoo magic. He nicknames you ‘Kitten’ so his voodoo entities know the target but he won’t ever explain how he managed to spread his magic onto you

Alastor isn’t the biggest fan of your bamboo muzzle since it’s restricting your ability to communicate so the only way he knows your answer is based on nonsense muffles and your gestures. At least, you’re naive enough for this to work

Alastor isn’t entirely sure what to call you. You’re not necessarily a younger sibling or a child figure to him but he also doesn’t feel comfortable with calling you a servant. You’re just some type of thing he favours and appreciates but also needs for his own selfish reasons

Alastor may pretend he doesn’t truly care for you but he does. He’ll put on your muzzle for you, he’ll crate a shade for you so you can walk in the sun of the Pride Ring without being burnt and he’ll give you a corner for you to sleep in. He does care… in his own way

Alastor also does express that he isn’t a fan of your style but is of your preferences. You’re from the Tashio Era, around his time on Earth so you view technology like him and it makes him feel more appreciative that you get him. You’re his best tool ally after all, he didn’t suspect anything else from you

Alastor is surprised by how sweet and compassionate you are to him, even him where everybody else kinda makes sense. He isn’t a nice man at all, he may believe he deserves a number of things but does he deserve kindness from people like you or Charlie? Not really. He doesn’t want it but once more, he doesn’t care much

Alastor is actually quite impressed and interested in how you’ve basically been brainwashed… through whatever, maybe some old guy, into believing he is your family so you defend him, just viewing your lost siblings through him. He finds it cute how you rely on kickboxing to fight or even argue, he finds you cute. Like a little fawn

Alastor believes you’re a powerful useful tool-ally to him. You keep his threats away, you serve him. It’s a give to and give back relationship you two share. You give him something, he gives you something back as to keep you under his thumb

But really… he’s grown to have a bit of a soft spot for you so he will tolerate giving you and your pretty blank pink eyes a bit more benefits than he would normally dare to

That shrinking power of yours is great at infiltrating Vees Tower and squeezing through hidden areas easier, and whilst Alastor does leave you to do those type of missions solo as a ‘favour’ in exchange for a ‘favour’ back, he likes you too much to let the Vees lay a hand on you so he swoops in when he needs to

Alastor has seen your Awakened Form before. The first time he’s ever been intimidated in this realm. It was triggered during the Exterminator Battle for the Hazbin Hotel. You were kicking around angels viciously, setting them ablaze, almost targeting your own allies out of immense hunger, but Alastor had to restrain you to stop you from going too far and it… was amazing for all that he even stepped in, despite the danger you opposed in this state

Your strength and your healing fire touch makes you become a further valuable item to Alastor, more and more everyday, so it makes him protective and possessive over you. A demon with your power and capabilities must be under his servitude but also being treated like a pampered kitten by him and only him

Alastor legit gets so pissed if anybody dares to put you outside in the sunlight with no protection, even when they don’t mean to hurt you! It doesn’t matter to him!

“Oh. My darling little kitten, are you tired? Come. In this box, where you’ll be in my tower with me as I work. High up, away from the sun and from your belly rumbles. Does that sound good?”

[bi-panicatthedisco]

Twst first year incorrect quotes: ver 2

Yuu: Sebek is forbidden from monologuing, especially about malleus.

Sebek: did someoNE SAY MALLEUS?!

Jack: What is wrong with you?

Ace: Loaded question. Elaborate.

Deuce: Everyone has a toxic trait. Except Yuu, they’re perfect.

Yuu: Wrong! My toxic trait is how badly I want to domesticate a raccoon.

Yuu: I’ve been sleeping so little the past few nights that when I go to the alarm app, I click on the “power nap” button. I don’t set up alarms, I set up timers.

Deuce: Can you be quiet?! I'm trying to think.

Ace: Don't worry. Doing anything for the first time is difficult.

Epel: Screw lactose intolerance! I will consume as much dairy as I want!

Epel 2 hours later, crying on the floor: WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH?!

Jack: You want some leftovers?

Grim : What are those?

Jack: You've never had leftovers before?

Grim : No, ‘cause I’m not a quitter.

Deuce: I’m afraid of clowns. There, I said it.

Epel: Deuce, if you don't like clowns, why are you hanging with Yuu?

Yuu: Did you just call me a shrimp, you asshole?! I'm still growing, dammit!

Epel: Get in, loser, we’re committing vehicular manslaughter!

Yuu: *on the phone* Just snap his kneecaps and he’ll talk, I’m at a parent teacher conference.

Yuu: Anyways, you said Grim is enjoying finger painting! That's great.

Grim: *Kicks the door open, looking panicked*

Sebek: What did you do?!

Grim: NOBODY DIED!

Sebek: WHAT KIND OF ANSWER IS THAT?!

Jack: Don’t weep for the stupid. You’ll be crying all day.

Epel: Accidentally indulged in too much ‘free time’, turns out I’ve been reported missing for over six months and presumed dead by most local and national authorities.

Yuu: So, everyone, what does a story NEED?

Deuce: A character!

Ortho: A setting!

Epel, a gleam in their eyes, in a near-whisper: REVENGE.

Yuu: You gave me up, you let me down, you turned around, and deserted me.

Ace: But did I make you cry?

Yuu: *cries on the spot*

Ace: ...Shit.

Grim, with their hands cupped over each other: I found a cool spider!

Epel: Oh? Lemme see!

Grim, opening their hands to see nothing there: …hm.

Deuce: …where’s the spider.

Grim: *looks troubled and stares at their hands*

Ace: Oh no.

Sebek: GRIM, WHERE’S THE SPIDER?!

Epel: If it pleases the court I would like to say that my opponent is TALKING SHIT!

Yuu: ...

[sebastianswallows]

Nobody's Darling — 1. The Road

— PAIRING: Benny Cross x F!Reader

— SYNOPSIS: Benny comes across a girl walking alone in the middle of nowhere and offers her a ride to the nearest town. They stop at a motel.

— WARNINGS: none

— WORDCOUNT: 3.1k

— A/N: Hello, my dears! So yeah, I saw The Bikeriders because of Austin (and Tom Hardy) and of course I had to write something for it 😂 I've been labouring at it for the past two weeks lol This was meant to be a one-shot but it kept growing and I decided to split it into chapters. The plot is partly based on something that happened to me, namely I missed my stop and the bus drove me way out of the city before I realised what had happened 💀 Anyway, hope you enjoy it! 😘💕✨

Grey clouds floated across the sky. Fields of yellow and burnt grass rolled along like waves. A string of birds cut through the far horizon. The fading light of the sun seeped softly through the glass and warmed her cheek but she was happy to keep sleeping, caught in that special spot between awake and dreaming when her thoughts were peaceful, settled, and she could weave from them a pretty fantasy. The chill of a November evening didn’t quite make it into the bus but the windows were already fogging and the seats grew cold.

She woke up with a start when the wheels struck a hole in the ground and everything jolted.

“Where am I?” she groaned, squinting at the window. Her reflection frowned back but beyond it, she could see… nothing. She was in the middle of nowhere with only naked fields and swaying power lines around her. She checked her watch and her heart stopped.

“I should’ve been home by now. Oh no, I did not sleep through my stop,” she whispered to herself — but she did. “Wait! Driver!”

She got up and ran to the front, scrambling past all those empty seats, her jacket in one hand and purse flailing in the other. The driver gave her a bored expression as she leaned panting against the divider.

“Wait, please, I need to get off! Where are we?”

The man looked at her with all the serenity of an overworked drone in a dead-end job. He didn’t seem particularly alarmed to see her there, nor did he seem to care about her predicament.

“Halfway to the next town,” he mumbled as he started to slow down. “There’s another stop ‘bout a mile back.”

“Great…”

“Next bus comes tomorrow ‘round seven thirty.”

“Oh.”

She looked around again as if she could see something different from up here but it was all the same. The vastness of it frightened her and she half-wished she’d never woken up.

The driver pulled over at the side of the road and tilted the cap on his bald head, his teeth tight around a toothpick.

“You’ll be alright?”

“Yeah…” she said automatically. “Sure.”

He opened the door and her whole body began to tremble, the situation suddenly completely real. She gathered all her nerves and put one step in front of the other, and as soon as her feet were on the ground the bus started to move again, driving away.

The sun was dipping into a pool of pink and the birds that circled overhead were growing louder. She was alone in a darkening field with nothing in front of and behind her except for lamplight spilling yellow and pale over an empty road and dead grass all around. If she regretted getting off that bus, it was too late now.

“At least it was warm inside,” she muttered. “But I could never make it back in time for work tomorrow from the next town… Damn it.”

There was nothing left to do. She sighed to herself and started walking back. In her head, she tried to calculate how late it would be by the time she made it home but each result only scared her further.

“Best not to think about it,” she said. “Just keep walking…”

She hadn’t gone on such a hike since she was a little girl, and never far outside of town. She’d only walked through fields and meadows and the forest that stretched east. There was certainly no time for it since getting hired at the local newspaper, and she liked it that way. Her days were measured and predictable, her clothes were always clean, and nothing ever hurt her — except her back if she sat down writing for too long. She was scared now not just because she was alone and in the dark but because she’d never done a thing like this before. Her heels were unsteady on the crumbling tar and her purse felt heavy on her shoulder. Insects were singing in the grass and creatures rustled through it that she dared not think about. Were there snakes around here? Rats? She pulled her jacket tighter around herself.

After half an hour she came across the bus stop that the driver mentioned. The sign for it was half-chewed off and the wooden bench was worn and stained a sickly yellow beneath a flickering light. She considered for a moment sleeping there until the morning but then the ignominy hit her: to sleep on a dirty wooden bench under the flutter of moths and mosquitoes. To come home unwashed and stinky with her hair a mess and her stockings torn. And if any of the neighbours saw her… No. She walked past that bus stop and didn’t look back, and soon found herself surrounded by darkness again.

“You deserve it,” she muttered as she wrapped her arms around herself, her body ambling forward with none of the grace and poise she had half an hour before. “How could you fall asleep? You weren’t even that tired, and the bus ride is so noisy. You couldn’t wait another ten minutes to get home? Idiot, idiot…”

The walk back to the city was taking longer than she thought it would, and by eight o’clock she was still out there. The sky was sprinkled with stars and the wind was flitting gently through her hair and the creatures in the bushes were growing ever louder. If she weren’t so cold and terrified she might have felt exhausted. Her feet hurt and her back was bent under the weight of her purse and she hadn’t eaten since noon. But suddenly, in the distance, she saw a glint of something made of glass and metal — it was a phone booth. The joy that rushed through her wiped all her pain away and she hurried to reach it, nearly tripping. She felt halfway home as soon as she stepped inside its murky walls.

“Please work, please work, please please please.”

She picked up the receiver and held it on her shoulder as she opened the phone book and started leafing through for the nearest police station. They would be obliged to come and pick her up — that is if she could only explain where she was…

“Hello? Operator?” But no voice came from the other side. The tone was dead. “Operator?” she tried again, her voice growing shaky. “Hello? Anyone?”

As she kept tapping on the phone hook, desperate to reach someone, a bright light came peeking over the horizon from the direction she had just come from. It couldn’t have belonged to a car but whatever it was that approached her was fast and loud as all hell. She held her breath as she watched it getting bigger, brighter, closer. This was the only driver she’d seen the whole night and she was equal parts hopeful and horrified of just what it could be. After all, what kind of person would be out driving at this hour on a weekday?

She forgot about the telephone as she followed this strange light until it was close enough to blot out all the darkness. It blinded her for a moment but that thunderous rumble soon settled to a pur and it stopped on the other side of the road from her. When her eyes adjusted to the brightness she realised it was a motorcycle, thin and lean and silver.

Its rider propped himself against the ground on one long leg clad in blue jeans and reached into his pocket. He was tall and slender, his figure swathed in shadows, his motions simple but relaxed and almost elegant.

“It doesn’t work,” he said as he lit a cigarette. “Been broken for a while now.”

The flash of flame from his zippo lighter gave her a hint of his face. He was young, perhaps even younger than her, with full pink lips and a slight stubble, soft blue eyes, and a sprinkle of dirt like freckles on his face. There was a wildness to him and an air of gentleness as well, but his jacket was a dark denim and thick with patches, symbols that probably meant something to him — he must’ve belonged to some sort of “club”. She didn’t know much about bikers aside from what she read about them in the papers, but they’d always seemed to be a bunch of layabouts. Aside from drinking far too much and smoking she knew they got into trouble with the law, had fights, caused accidents, and were generally dangerous to be around.

“I’m… just trying to get to town,” she said in a wary voice.

“Well, I’m headed that way.”

She said nothing, her hand still frozen on the telephone.

“Want a ride?”

It was a tempting offer but one that made her shiver. She’d never been around a man like that, never even exchanged words with one, and everything that she expected from his kind — rudeness, lewdness, and a bad attitude — was suspiciously absent from him. He looked at her with those soft eyes, his long leg braced against the road, and waited. She should have accepted his offer, she should have just gotten on his bike and wrapped her arms around him, but… she couldn’t.

“No, thank you.”

He kept on smoking quietly and looked her up and down much as she’d done with him. She wondered what he saw… She was probably a pathetic sight and a strange kind of person to come across in such a place. When his eyes finally left her figure they strayed across the wilderness. There was nothing around them for miles, they both knew that, and other cars wouldn’t be around that road for hours.

“You know how far away you are?” he asked, rolling the cigarette between his fingers.

“I’ll be fine.”

“It’s a long walk.”

“I don’t want to…” She was about to say she didn’t want to ride all the way back with a stranger but instead said, “trouble you.”

He didn’t react at first, keeping that air of stillness about him that made her wonder what he thought. But after a few moments, he nodded and dropped the cigarette, crushed it underneath his boot, and with a leisurely motion mounted his bike once more and revved the engine up. Before she could say another word he’d already sped into the distance and left only a cloud of dust behind.

She almost felt sorry to see him go. Almost felt guilty too… She didn’t want her distrust of him to be so apparent or to cause offence, no matter what kind of a person he was. But she told herself he must’ve been a dangerous man and that she was better off alone than riding back to town with him. Well, she wouldn’t be riding back with anybody now… The telephone line was dead, just as he’d said. The wire must’ve been disconnected somewhere.

She wanted to cry. Instead, she began to walk once more, trudging through the dark.

The sky was as black as a curtain cast across a silent stage and against it lit from below the pale lights of interspersed lamps. The roaring of the bike got slowly lost in the road that lay before her and soon only her steps echoed to remind her of how alone she was. She watched the small light of the rider fade and hugged herself against the cold, holding the purse to her chest as if it could protect her. Her feet were hurting so much she worried they were bleeding and she considered taking them off until she looked down at the road and its uneven dirty tar. She closed her eyes even as she kept on walking, too tired to gaze out at the same old nothingness again.

But then she heard a roar floating on the wind and felt a tremble in her chest as if an earthquake was approaching, and when she opened her eyes again she saw that lone light making its way back to her. He seemed to ride back faster than he did as he was leaving and he reached her in no time at all. She slowed down to a stop and so did he, parking right beside her.

“Hey,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck in an awkward, boyish way. “Look, I’m sorry if I scared you earlier. But I can’t just leave you out here. You sure you don’t want to —”

“Alright,” she said, her voice already weak and weary. She was hungry and cold and scared that she’d never make it back to town that night. Too scared to refuse his help a second time. “Just… just get me to the edge of town. I can make my own way home from there.”

If he was surprised at how quickly she accepted now, he didn’t show it. He simply moved closer to the front of his seat and made space for her behind him.

She took a deep breath and approached him carefully as if he rode a beast, not something made of metal. It looked solid and precariously thin at once and yet he straddled it confidently. The saddle looked just big enough for two. She hopped on as best she could and tried to keep her legs together but when he looked at her over his shoulder he shook his head and laughed.

“Legs on either side,” he said. “You’ll fall off if you ride like that.”

“But, my skirt…”

He looked up and down her legs and she tried not to read too much into the way his eyes had darkened.

“Roll it up,” he said in a low and soothing voice. “Don’t worry. I won’t look.”

She held her breath as she rolled her skirt up high enough so that she could throw her other leg over the side. He waited while she settled into the position and planted her feet firmly.

“Ready? Hang on,” he said as he revved the engine up. “I’ll go real slow, alright?”

“A-alright…” she said as she placed her hands timidly around his waist.

But he didn’t go slow, at least not by her standards.

It was completely different to riding in a car, more visceral and real with no windows to protect her. She let out a little scream and clung to his body more tightly than she meant to, eyes falling shut, legs tightening around his bike. He smelled of gasoline and metal and several days’ worth of sweat cooled down by the chilly autumn night but he felt so solid in her arms, so firm and steady, even as the world flashed by. Eventually, she was brave enough to rest her cheek against his back and opened her eyes to look at the vacant countryside. It was a little frightening, as she expected, but peaceful too. As she fisted her hands in his jacket, right over his heart, she tried to peek over his shoulder but could just see the side of his face, focused and relaxed, and the white circle of the headlight. Somehow, that was enough for her. His hair tickled her forehead, feeling softer than it had any right to be, and she found herself smiling. There was something base and ancient in the way he smelled, the way he spoke, even in the way he moved. It was as if he had in him the blood-memory of an ancient Knight on armoured steed galloping alone and steadfast through the fields and woods of untamed lands.

The outskirts of town were much tamer than that, however, and before long they could see the faint lights of the outermost buildings, squalid flats, and blinking advertisements. When he started slowing down she felt herself breathe a sigh of relief. It must’ve tickled the back of his neck because he bent his head forward as if to get away — or to ask for more.

“Where are we?” she asked once the noise of the motorcycle died down.

“Marshal Avenue,” he said, easing the bike to the side of the road.

She didn’t know exactly where that was, but she guessed they were on the other side of town from where she lived. All along the street were boarded-up shops, derelict flats, and liquor stores. Across from where he parked was a building that looked to be about a hundred years old. She could hardly fathom walking home at that hour, especially through a neighbourhood like that, but it was better than being in the middle of nowhere.

“Well, thank you. For the ride.”

He lit another cigarette and dismounted the bike, rolling his broad shoulders to unwind. She got off quickly, scrambling to cover her legs in the crumpled skirt before he turned around and saw her. He gave her a look over his shoulder when he heard her fussing and slowly turned around.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you home?”

“Yeah, I… I can walk from here.”

He looked at her and stayed quiet but there was something in his eyes behind that veil of smoke that made her curious about what he had to say. He simply nodded and turned toward that old building behind him. She hugged herself and looked up and down the street, waiting for him to say anything — to ask for money, to make fun of her for thinking she could make it home, to make a pass at her…

“Well, good night,” she said.

And as soon as she started walking away he spoke to her again.

“Hey, it’s kinda late. They got rooms upstairs.”

“What?” she asked, turning on her heels a bit unsteadily.

“Owner knows me,” he shrugged, crushing the cigarette beneath his boot and immediately lighting up another. “Could get you one for cheap.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to another and looked around pretending to think… but her eyes kept coming back to him. He puffed quietly away and gazed at her with no design behind those clear blue eyes, looking just as uncertain and awkward as she felt standing in the middle of the street. She didn’t want to trust him but a part of her responded in the same way that she did when she saw a homeless puppy.

“You mean, a room of my own?”

“Yeah.”

She looked from him to the large building again.

He could probably tell that she was torn because he helpfully supplied, “They got food too. Hungry?”

She was. It had been over twelve hours since she’d eaten or had anything to drink.

“I kind of am.”

“Me too,” he said. “Come on.”

[comicaurora]

What are your thoughts on guardians vol.3? (If you have watched it) I went into it, expecting it went to the garbage like the rest of the mcu, but I was pleasantly surprised by its creativity, trope subversion, and how it wrapped up the previously unresolved arks of its characters.

That's what I've heard!

The thing is, Guardians 3 could be the most transcendent work of cinema ever made, and I'd probably still feel little to no motivation to watch it at this point. It's not Guardians's fault - it's just suffering from the same problem that superhero comics have been struggling with for decades: no matter how good an individual arc or run is, absolutely nothing good lasts or matters in the long term, and the stories are shaped in such a way that "the long term" is the only thing anyone gets to build towards.

Whenever I complain about the MCU I get a handful of people loudly complaining about my complaining, with the general thesis that if I don't like it I shouldn't watch it or talk about it - if I'm not having fun, just stop engaging with it. And the thing is, I have. I am intellectually interested in why this massive franchise is fumbling the bag so hard, which is why I still check in on it sometimes, but I've long since stopped turning to the MCU for uncritical entertainment. And even the good movies or shows with a lot of interesting ideas - good character arcs, fun concepts, interesting planting for future payoff - don't draw me in anymore, because they're hooked into a massive moneymaking machine that will scrap and squander anything if they think it'll make them more in the quarter. It doesn't matter how good the writing is, because the writers are not allowed to tell a complete, finished story, and they have no control over what happens to their characters outside of their own script.

Captain America's arc was set up from literally minute one to answer one burning question at the core of his character: does a world without a war still need Captain America? After that incredibly basic tee-up at the end of First Avenger, half a dozen movies failed to come up with a reason to say "yes," and now Steve is retired for good after getting fumbled through four different storylines that couldn't even pretend that they needed him (the unused Chekhov's Phone from the end of Civil War still haunts me). The foundational arc of his entire character never happened because nobody bothered to keep track of it past a single movie.

Taika did something interesting with Thor in Ragnarok - take away Mjolnir, force him to recognize what it means to be the god of thunder, give him a very Odin-y missing eye - and the very next movie undid all of it. Just kidding, never mind, here's an eye and a new weapon and also his old weapon again, and in one more movie we're even gonna give him his hair back, probably as an apology for all the completely unironic fatphobia we're gonna slather him in for two and a half hours. I'm not even surprised Love And Thunder was such an overblown mess that barely took itself seriously - why would Taika bother trying to give Thor another arc when the powers that be will just roll it back in six months anyway?

I hear Rocket Raccoon has a fantastic arc in this movie. That's great, and demonstrates that he's being written by a writer that deeply cares about him. But he's part of the MCU, and the MCU doesn't let anything end, so if current patterns hold, Rocket is going to continue to serve as quippy plushie-bait for the next dozen movies and none of that depth is going to come through in the long term. Hell, since they're making Kang noises for the Next Big Threat and Kang's entire gimmick is rewriting timelines, literally none of this is guaranteed to matter. By next year, it might not have even happened anymore.

The MCU has successfully shaped itself into a paradigm where the bright spots of good writing are overridden and lost as soon as the writers room turns over, and that makes it really hard for me to muster up the enthusiasm to watch even a really good movie that's locked into the exact same grist mill as everything else. I'm glad people liked it, I hope it gets to stay good this time - I just have no desire to watch it.

[audliminal]

Survivability Bias Pt 4

Masterpost Ao3

“Cassiopeia,” Danny murmurs, his eyes never leaving the glimmering void above him. “Though epsilon looks dimmer than it usually is. I wonder if it still has a ring...” Around him, the world is shadowed, the distant lights of cities visible on the horizon but not bright enough to truly disrupt his view of the night sky. It had been a bit nerve-wracking leaving the town, but he’d been making an effort to lay low for the last week, and had seen nothing to indicate anyone was coming to search for him. The idea of visiting the firefighters still makes his skin itch, but a little trip to stargaze had started seeming like a reasonable risk to take, and with the calm expanse of void above him, Danny can feel something deep inside of him settle. The buzz of fear that’s been around since before he even got here evaporates, as he counts the stars and constellations. They’re not all the same, Cygnus seems to be mostly missing, and a few of the individual stars Danny remembers seem to be gone, but for the most part, it’s the same. Certainly more familiar than anything else has been so far. The technology here is all far more advanced than anything Danny’s seen before, which is ironic considering the portal.

It’s funny, really that he can be this far away from home (a literally incalculable distance), and the stars are still generally the same. Even the ones that are new are still stars; still the same burning masses fueled by fusion and gravity, and feeding the universe at large with new material. They're still millions of light-years away, and yet they’ve been there for so long, streaming their light into a void, where it can eventually reach this very spot where Danny’s currently standing. All his problems seem so small in the face of the great expanse of space.

“Amazing!” Danny exclaims, letting himself just laugh with delight. Maybe he’s alone here, but has he ever felt this free before? Nobody to drag him away, or force him into fights, or yell at him about the chores he hasn’t done yet. Hell, if he really wanted to, he just take off, go hang out in space, maybe fly until he finds one of those alien planets that he’d seen mentioned on Wikipedia. Sure, it would probably take a stupid amount of time to get there, but he could , if he wanted.

Behind him, there’s a rush of air, and the sound of a person taking a breath, and Danny tears his gaze away from the stars, flipping himself into a fighting stance as he runs through the list of heroes he’d read about, trying to remember which of them could fly. As he turns, his eyes lock on to another boy, though, that looks to be close to Danny’s own age.

“Woah, dude.” The boy says, holding his hands up and floating a few feet backwards. “I’m not here to fight?”

“Then why are you here?” Danny asks. He is just a kid, so like, maybe , it’s safe, but also the symbol on the kids chest is the same one Superman was wearing, so he could just be a recruit or something.

“I dunno, man, I just heard you talking and got curious? Not exactly many people around that can just hang out in the sky, you know. I can leave if you want.” The other  boy’s expression seems sincere. Mostly he looks startled and a bit uncertain, and deeply unlike the weird, heroic, confident posture that Superman seemed to have in every picture. This guy looks like he’s trying to look confident, sure, but not like he actually is .

“You’re not Superman, but you’re wearing his logo.” Danny says. Dropping his stance, but not letting himself fully relax. Just because it’s not a fight, doesn’t mean he’s safe, after all.

“Yeah, uh, I’m Superboy.”

“Superboy,” Danny echoes. “I read something about sidekicks? Is that-” Danny cuts himself off when the other boy winces.

“No, I’m not his sidekick. More like he’s helping to train me. We’ve got the same powers, so... Yeah.”

“Huh. Training sounds... Nice? What’s that like?” Honestly, training sounds downright miraculous. Danny hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the destruction caused by the train crash, and how everyone in Amity had always complained about the damage caused by ghost fights. He hasn’t forgotten how much he’d gotten himself hurt in those early days either, not that anyone else had ever noticed that bit.

“Yeah, I guess it’s nice. I take it you don’t have a mentor, then?”

“I’m not a hero.”

“No? I thought- I mean, you look a lot like the description of the guy who helped with the train crash over in Concord.” Superboy frowns, glancing off in the direction of Danny’s hometown.

“I mean, yeah that was me but I’m not. I don’t wanna fight anyone.”

“Oh, yeah that’s totally fair.” Superboy immediately responds with a laugh. “Honestly most of what we do isn’t actually fighting people, so y’know. You don’t have to be a fighter to be a hero.”

“Oh.” That kinda makes sense. After all, Danny had done a lot of fighting back home, and nobody had called him a hero there.

“Yeah, it’s like. There’s a lot of stuff about emergency response and civilian rescue and stuff. Hell, from what I understand half of what the Bats do is just, like detective work. That’s a lot of what my training’s for, actually. I’m pretty good at destroying stuff, I guess, but Supes says I need better control, before I can be trusted to handle relief stuff, because I might accidentally hurt people with my strength or something.”

“That’s. Cool, I guess?” Danny risks a glance up at the stars. No attack comes with Danny’s split attention, though after a moment, Superboy slowly floats over to his side.

“What are you looking at?”

“The stars.”

“Just, like, in general?” Superboy asks. He sounds dubious, and Danny can feel him glancing between him and the sky every couple seconds.

“What, have you never gone stargazing before?” 

Superboy doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Danny glances over. The false confidence has completely evaporated from the other boy’s expression, and instead he just looks unsure.

“I’ve never really had the opportunity before.” Superboy finally murmurs, quieter than any of their conversation so far.

“Well, I guess you’re in luck!” Danny says, offering his new companion a smile. “Because I’m something of an expert in it!” And Danny begins to point to the different constellations, and tell Superboy as much as he can about all the stars and planets above them.

“You really are an expert, huh?” Superboy eventually says, in the middle of Danny’s tangent about why Pluto isn’t considered a planet anymore. That had been one of his most interesting discoveries in his Wikipedia explorations. He’d been kind of surprised at first when it hadn’t shown up on the list of planets, but he’d specifically searched for it, he’d learned about it’s reclassification, along with all the reasoning behind it. He’d been a little sad at first, but the realization that it came alongside the implication about a whole number of other bodies orbiting their sun had been exciting in it’s own way.

“Yeah,” Danny responds with a laugh. “I, uh, really like space. I actually wanted to be an astronaut as a kid.”

“But you don’t want to be one now?”

“I mean,” Danny hums. “It’d be nice, but I don’t think it’s really a plausible goal anymore. It- the way I got my powers came with some... complications. And anyway I kind of don’t legally exist anymore, so it’s. I can’t even go to space camp, let alone go to actual space.”

“Is that, uh, why you don’t have a normal heart beat? I didn’t wanna ask and be rude, but like, you sound kinda like a really large bee.”

“Yeah, that’s, um. I mean I’ve never been called a bee before, but yeah.”

“Wild. But like, if it’s meta stuff, then aren’t they legally not allowed to discriminate against you for it? They’re not just gonna be like ‘oh you don’t have a heartbeat guess you can’t go to space.’”

“I mean, there was, like, a meta scholarship on the website, but...”

“You’re worried about revealing your identity.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, that’s fixable. I mean, I didn’t have an identity to even reveal until this year, so the Justice League can definitely-”

“I don’t want them to know about me,” Danny interrupts.

“Oh.” Superboy says. “Well, what about just, like one person? Because Robin could definitely make you a whole new identity all by himself, and I know he has no qualms about keeping shit secret from everyone else.”

“Robin.” Danny thinks he remembers that name being referenced in relation to Batman. Something about a boy wonder. “Is he our age?”

“Yeah.” Superboy looks excited. “I could introduce you sometime if you want?”

“I dunno.” Even one Justice League associate knowing about him is concerning, and if Superboy knows about the thing with the train, then probably the adult members do too.

“Well, you don’t have to decide now! I have super hearing so if you call my name I’m almost guaranteed to hear it!”

“You can just hear me anytime?” Danny asks.

“Oh, uh. I mean technically yes? But generally it’s like effort to just tune into one person from a distance. But I listen for anybody calling for me, in case they need help or whatever, so I’m always kind of listening for that.”

“I’’ll keep that in mind, I guess.”

“Right. Uh, do you wanna tell me more about the planets?”

[headkiss]

single thread

part 1, part 2, part 3

pairing: spider-man!steve harrington x fem!reader

summary: steve has a big secret and convinces himself he needs to stay away from you to keep you safe. that’s tough to do when you’re his neighbour.

word count: 8.2k

warnings: spider-man!steve au, some violence (r is attacked and a pocket knife is mentioned but nothing major happens), blood/injuries, strangers/sort of friends to lovers (ish?)

a/n: i really liked writing this one and i hope u guys like it too!!! spidey!steve is something i’ve wanted to try for a while and here it is!!!! he’s my baby <3

/ᐠ(๏‸๏)ᐟ\

When Steve moved to Indianapolis, not once did he think he’d get bit by some radioactive spider and gain super powers. Yet, here he is, swinging through the city like something out of some comic book. Sometimes he doesn’t even believe it’s real, and it’s his life.

On his way home, he spots his building easily, the route embedded in his head. The corners to turn, the spots to shoot his webs.

Stuck to the wall beside his window, he tries to open it and realizes he left it locked. “Idiot,” he grumbles to himself.

With a groan he jumps down, landing in the alley. He throws his clothes over his suit and makes sure nobody’s around before slipping the mask off and into his bag. For once, he uses the actual door to enter the building.

He opts for the stairs and when he makes it to his floor he sees you in the hallway. He resists the urge to go back down and wait a couple of minutes.

His door is across from yours, and when he walks over, you’re quick to send him a smile and a ‘hello.’ He nods at you and faces his door, unlocking it quickly and going inside.

It’s not that he doesn’t like you, it’s that he doesn’t want to involve people in his life when it’s gotten so complicated. He has Robin in the city and that’s about it. And he already worries enough about her. If he’d met you pre-bite, things would be much different.

He’d return your kind smiles and greetings, he’d tell you when he likes your outfit or thinks your hair looks really nice (which is pretty much every time he sees you, even when you think it’s awful).

He’d rather not put you in any danger, though, so he doesn’t. He just thinks you’re pretty and keeps it to himself.

You don’t know any of that, however, so you’re convinced that Steve doesn’t like you and you have no idea why. Every time his only response is a nod or a limp wave, you wait until he’s out of sight to frown, to scrunch your eyebrows.

You try to think about what you might’ve done.

You first met Steve when you moved into the building, your hair held away from your face with a clip, baby hairs sticking to your damp forehead, and your sweatshirt hanging off your shoulder. Not your best look.

He must’ve heard the thump of boxes hitting the ground, the mumbled curses you kept uttering. Knuckling at his tired eyes, he opened his door and peeked his head into the hallway.

“What the-”

He shut right up when you turned around, smiling (almost wincing) at him.

“Hi,” you introduced yourself, and he repeated your name so quietly you didn’t even hear it. “Sorry about the noise. I have a lot of stuff.”

He nodded, looking at the few boxes in the hall, “you’re moving in?”

“Yeah.”

“You need some help?”

“Seriously?” He half nodded, half shrugged. “That would be great. Thank you so much.”

“Sure. ‘M Steve, by the way.”

Steve. He’s pretty, you thought. Brown, fluffy hair and soft eyes, a mouth you think must look even better when he smiles.

He carried the heavier boxes without complaint or breaking a sweat. His arms flexed with the actions, but his face was completely unaffected. You were amazed. And probably stared at him too much.

When every box was inside your apartment, you’d thanked him, and he’d brushed it off saying it was no problem and went back inside his own place.

No problem, like he didn’t carry box after box for you because you couldn’t afford movers.

Now, with your back against the inside of your door after seeing him in the hallway, you replay that meeting once again. You can’t figure out what you did. Worse, you think, maybe you didn’t do anything at all and you’re just someone who’s easy to dislike.

Maybe it wouldn’t matter so much if he wasn’t so good looking. If he didn’t make you nervous whenever his eyes glanced over you, if you had actual friends to occupy your time, if you didn’t want him to like you so bad.

If, if, if.

You try to stop thinking about it and pick up the book you’d left on your coffee table. You have to reread passages, distracted and unfocused.

-

The bookstore’s been slow today.

You’ve been keeping yourself as busy as possible, even with an empty store. Dusting shelves, re-organizing sections that looked fine before, switching displays around. Eventually you gave in and sat behind the counter with a book, watching people pass by the front windows.

The sun set at some point, sinking behind buildings and leaving the city lit by streetlights and warm glows seeping through windows.

As boring as it can be, you wouldn’t be doing much different if you were at home. Finding things to do to pass time, sitting around aimlessly. At least here, you get paid for doing it.

When it’s time to close up you’re not sure if your sigh is from relief or disappointment. You’re lonely often, but it’s harder to ignore it when you’re all alone at home, no people around at all, even if they’re mostly just passing by on the sidewalk.

You go through the list, sweeping, setting the alarm, shutting off the lights, and locking the door.

The night air is cool, light wind blowing at your cheeks, ruffling your hair. The usual sounds surround you. Honking horns and tires rolling against pavement, indistinguishable voices and the click of the bookstore door locking.

You keep your keys in your hand while you walk home, one of them sticking up between your knuckles. Just in case.

One foot in front of the other, again and again, you walk along the sidewalk. Your footsteps a steady rhythm, hands tucked in your pockets to keep them warm, head bent to avoid making eye contact with any other pedestrians.

Only a couple of minutes from your place, you can hear someone walking along behind you. You shake your head, telling yourself they’re probably just headed in the same direction.

That reassurance disappears when the stranger whistles at you.

You don’t look up, you don’t turn around, you just keep your head down and walk faster, your heartbeat speeding in your chest. You’ve seen stories of what can happen to someone walking home alone. You never thought you’d have one of your own.

“Hey, cupcake! Where you going?” His voice is scratchy and scary. You pick up your pace even more.

At your ignorance, the man speaks again, “I’m talking to you.” His hand grabs your sleeve when he says it.

More afraid than you’ve ever been, you jerk your arm from his grasp and stupidly turn down an alleyway as a shortcut. It’s a horrible decision, but when you’re scared like that, it’s really hard to think straight.

You feel bad for being annoyed with people in horror movies. You get it now.

You’re almost jogging now, but it doesn’t deter the man. No, he catches up and grabs your wrist, twisting you around and pushing your back roughly into the brick wall of the building behind you.

Your wrist is slammed against it where he grabbed you, no doubt scratching your skin and making you flinch, your keys falling from your grasp.

This is it, you think. I’m gonna die here. Alone.

Your eyes water, a tear drips down your cheek and the man laughs in your face. You try to break away from his hold but he doesn’t let up. The only thing you manage is to knee him in the thigh, but it doesn’t do much.

“Nice try, cupcake. I’ve got you now.” he says. That’s when you notice the glint of a pocket knife in his hand.

“Please. Don’t,” is all you can say, trying and trying to get your arms out of the man’s tight hold. Tight enough to bruise.

Steve’s hair stands at the back of his neck, on his arms. Until now, his patrolling had been quiet. Easy fixes like an elderly woman not crossing the street quick enough or a man who’d locked his keys in his car.

Now, his instincts tell him this thing isn’t so small.

Without a second thought, he jumps from where he’d been perched at the ledge of a building and swings in the direction his senses take him. In your direction.

One second, you’re squeezing your eyes shut, thinking it’s the end, and the next, there’s the sound of someone landing in the alley and the thwip of a web.

The man is pulled off of you so fast you can barely keep up. There’s a flash of blue and red, hints of webbing being shot, and just like that, your attacker is knocked out and stuck to the opposite wall.

Your chest heaves and your back slides down the wall, landing on your bum on the pavement.

Steve turns around now that the man’s been dealt with and he thinks his heart stops for a second. He hadn’t realized it’d been you. You and your sweet smile, now turned to tears streaking your cheeks.

He thought, without him, you’d be better off. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he should’ve been keeping an eye on you. For now, he’s sort of glad he hasn’t spoken to you much, only because there’s a better chance you won’t recognize his voice.

Steve moves to crouch in front of you, “are you okay? Did he hurt you?” His hands hover by the sides of your face, like he’s holding himself back from touching you. Restraining himself.

Spider-man is in front of you. Spider-man with his suit and white-eyed mask who just saved your life is right there in front of you. So much for a slow day.

You shake your head and wipe your cheeks with your palms, “no. No, just- um, just my wrist, I think.”

“Can I look?”

You hold out your arm for him to see, and he moves his hands down, one tugging back your sleeve and the other holding your wrist gently. The fabric of his gloves brushes against your skin lightly, careful not to touch you where you’re hurt.

“Doesn’t look sprained. Just scraped,” he says. He looks up from your arm to your face, the eyes on his mask narrowing ever so slightly. “You’re sure you aren’t hurt anywhere else?”

He sounds genuinely worried. Like, you can hear it in his voice. It makes you want to cry all over again. You’d always thought that when Spider-man dealt with the bad guys, he’d just move on. Now, you can see that he cares a lot more than that.

You shake your head, “I’m fine.”

As fine as you can be after what just happened.

He nods and stands, offering you his hands to help you up. You pick up your keys and accept, slipping your hands into his. He pulls you up and squeezes your fingers before letting go.

“Will you let me take you home?” He asks.

You’re sort of in shock, and you’d rather not walk anymore. So, you agree.

He opens his arms for you, picking you up easily with a single arm wrapped around your waist. Your own arms go around his neck, legs tentatively wrapping around his waist.

“Ready?”

“Yeah,” you almost whisper.

He hears you loud and clear, your mouth close to his ear, his senses seemingly even more heightened than usual with you around.

“Hold on,” he says.

Then, you hear the whip of his webs and you’re in the air. Your limbs tighten around him.

“Oh my god. Oh my god.”

The wind rushes all around you. In your ears, your hair, your jacket. The city does, too, lights flickering by and buildings growing distant over his shoulder. You squeeze your eyes shut.

“You okay?” He asks over the wind.

“Maybe!”

You can feel his chest rumble with a chuckle. You wish you could’ve heard it, too.

He swings you towards your building when he remembers he’s not supposed to know where you live, “where to?”

You tell him, yelling over the noise not realizing he can hear you just fine normally. You don’t know about those superpowers, focused on the ones that have him transporting you home.

He gets you there quickly, landing just outside the front entrance. You stay wrapped around him for a second before you realize you’ve stopped moving. You remove yourself from him so quickly he has to steady you with hands on your upper arms so you don’t fall.

“You okay from here?” He checks, his head lowering to catch your gaze.

“Yeah. Thank you for…” Saving my life, making sure I’m okay, taking me home. Everything since you landed in the alley.

“Just doing my job.”

“Right. Thanks again,” you turn to head inside.

“Goodnight. And take care of your wrist!”

“Goodnight, Spider-man.”

-

Steve sees you more often after that night. He thinks the universe might be punishing him. Making him see you more, making him work harder to keep his distance.

He tossed and turned the entire night after bringing you home. He wondered if you were actually okay, trying to listen in case you were crying or having a nightmare. He worried so much more than he would have if it had been any other person and he hated it.

He saw you the next morning. You were checking your mail at the same time as him. Your sleeve had ridden up, exposing the scratches on your wrist from the brick wall, the faint bruises of fingerprints, your eyes tired.

“Are you okay?” He couldn’t help but ask, gesturing limply at your hand. Maybe if you give him a convincing yes, he can finally stop thinking about you so much.

You look down at your arm when he asks, quickly tugging your sleeve back down to cover it up. “Oh. It’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing. He knows it isn’t because he was there and he saw at least a part of what happened to you. He can’t let you know that, so he just nods and turns to his mailbox, listening to your footsteps as you walk out of the mailroom and back up to your apartment. His fingers twitch by his side.

Steve’s used to feeling protective over people, that’s not new, but to feel so protective over someone he barely knows hasn’t happened before. That night haunts him. Your tear-streaked face, the blooming bruises on your arm. He never wants to see you hurting again.

Maybe that’s why he starts returning your greetings in the halls, actually pausing to ask how you are, to smile back at you (they’re tight-lipped smiles, but it’s something).

He’s trying to be kind without getting any closer. No matter how much he wants to know you.

One day, as Steve’s heading out for the late shift, you’re just getting home from your own job, it seems. The clip in your hair has loosened since you put it in, strands falling freely around your face. For a second, Steve has the urge to tuck them behind your ears.

He pushes that down.

“Hi,” he says, his door shut behind him.

“Hi, Steve.”

“How are you?”

“Okay, thanks. Tired,” you fiddle with the frayed hem of your knitted sweater. “Had the opening shift today.”

“Ah. Any plans?”

“Probably just gonna take a nap.”

He nods. For a second you think he might’ve asked because he wanted to do something with you. It’s a stupid thought and you push it away.

“Have a good nap, then,” he gives you the close-mouthed smile that’s become more common between you, and heads towards the stairs.

The shift in his behavior towards you hasn’t been huge, but it’s been enough for you to notice it. He talks to you sometimes—always briefly, but still—he doesn��t turn away from you as soon as he gets the chance like he used to.

It’s confusing, but you’re happy about it anyway. Maybe he just needed some time to warm up to you a bit. Maybe he doesn’t hate you after all.

Inside your apartment, you change into sweats and practically collapse onto your couch, playing something mindless on the TV and pulling a blanket over yourself.

You really are tired, but it’s not only from working early. Lately, your dreams have been haunted by rough hands, dark alleys, and flashes of blue and red. You constantly feel like there are eyes on you, and when you walk home from closing shifts, you always search for a certain superhero at the tops of buildings.

You fall asleep at some point, and by the time you wake up, it’s dark outside.

-

Days seem to blur together. Repetitive and tiring all the same. The only thing you have to look forward to lately is your short conversations with Steve in the halls.

You’re not sure how many days later it is when you fall asleep on your couch again. This time, you’re woken up by noises coming from the hallway, right by your door. You get up slowly, feet hitting the cool floors as you walk over to your door.

You don’t know what time it is, but from the darkness of your apartment and the random game show that plays on your TV, you know it’s late.

Peeking through your peephole, you see Steve, fumbling with his keys and almost limping. You open the door.

“Steve?”

He shuts his eyes when he hears your voice, all sleepy and worried.

Like an idiot, he’d left his window locked again and had to use the door after a night of patrolling. A worse night than usual.

You gasp when he spins to face you, one of his eyes swollen shut, a cut on his eyebrow, his nose bleeding, and another cut on his lip.

“Oh my god,” you step forward a little, leaving your door open. “What happened?”

“I’m fine. Sorry for waking you.”

“You’re bleeding,” you say. “Come on. Let me help you.”

You grasp his arm lightly in both of your hands, and when he doesn’t protest, lead him into your apartment.

Steve’s suit feels tighter now, scratching his skin where it sits because he worries you’ll see it despite his layers on top of it. Still, he could use some help. And he can’t bring himself to be upset that you’re the one helping him.

“You don’t have to,” his voice is scratchy.

“I want to help you, okay?”

You bring him into your bathroom, making him sit on the toilet lid. You leave him there for a bit, coming back with some ice in a dish cloth.

“Here, for your eye.” He takes it from you and sucks in a breath when he presses it against his swollen skin.

“Thank you for doing this.”

“‘Course.”

You pull out your first-aid kit from under your sink, setting it on the counter and taking out what you need. You grab another cloth, wetting it in the sink.

“Here,” you stand between his legs, using a bent finger to tilt his chin up towards you. You wipe the dried blood from his skin in silence, Steve’s eyes shut, yours running all over his face.

You’re surprised he trusts you enough to let you do this. You wonder if this is why he’s so closed-off. If maybe he’s involved in something that gets him hurt. Often.

An underground boxing ring, debt with bad people, so many possibilities cross your mind, not a single one being the truth.

Once his face is as clean as it can be, you move on to disinfecting the cuts by his eyebrow and lip. “This might sting a little.”

“S’okay.”

His face pinches a little bit when you dab away at his cuts, but he doesn’t make any noise. All you can hear is his deep breaths and the small sound of his leg bouncing.

His nose hasn’t bled anymore since you cleaned it, and he keeps the ice over his eye the entire time. The cut by his lip looks much smaller when there’s no blood surrounding it.

Only his eyebrow needs a small bandage, which you grab and unwrap. “Last step.”

He feels you press the bandage on, your fingers lightly pushing the sides onto his skin to make sure it’s stuck. The process, he finds, hurts much less when you do it.

He misses your warmth when you step away from him. “Thank you.”

“Are you in trouble, or something? What happened to you?”

“It’s not a big deal. I swear.”

He hates lying to you, but he convinces himself it’s better this way. For your own good.

You don’t look convinced but you drop it. “Okay.”

“I should go,” he stands from where he’d been sitting and waivers a little, leaning on the counter.

“You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“I’m fine, just got dizzy.”

“You can take the couch, if you want. It’s not a problem, really.”

“I live across the hall, I’m sure I’ll be fine.” He steps towards the doorway and has to pause again. “Or maybe I’ll stay. If you’re sure.”

“I wouldn't have offered if I wasn’t.”

You walk him to the couch, letting him lean on you whenever he needs to along the way. He sits down, and you go to get him a pillow and blankets.

This is the longest amount of time you’ve ever spent with Steve, and it pinches at your heart that he’s hurt during it. That he only needed help, not company. Even so, you fight a smile when you come back to the living room and find him laying down, already half asleep.

You spread the blankets over him. You take the pillow you’d brought him and guide him to lift his head. You’re convinced he’s asleep, so you let yourself push the hair off his forehead just once.

When you turn to go to your room, he catches your hand in his.

“Thank you, honey.”

Honey. That’s new.

-

Steve was already gone when you got up the next day. The only evidence of his visit the blankets he’d left folded up on your couch and the washcloth stained with his blood you used to clean him up.

Every time you pass his door you think about knocking and checking on him. About making sure he’s okay.

You’ve been worrying a lot more ever since the night you were attacked and saved by Spider-man, and that goes for more than just yourself. You worry about every person you see walking alone, about Steve being hurt again, about noises you might be imagining at night.

You probably look over your shoulder fifty times on your way home from the grocery store, your hands too full with your bags to be able to defend yourself if anything happens.

You breathe out when you make it in front of your door. You’re safe, you’re fine, you have to tell yourself.

In your rush to get your keys from your pocket, you drop two of your bags. “Shit.” Boxes and cans thump against the floor.

Steve hears everything, all of the time. He hears you curse and the sound of your stuff hitting the ground. He blames the fact that he heads to the door on boredom and nothing more.

“Need some help?” His voice startles you.

“Oh! Hey, Steve. It’s fine, just dropped some stuff.”

You set the rest of your bags down, kneeling to pick up things that fell out of the ones you dropped. Embarrassed, you keep your head ducked.

Steve can sense it, the way your pulse jumps a little around him. He doesn’t know whether to be glad or worried that he makes you nervous. Either way, he bends down beside you, helping you pick things up.

A bag of apples, a can of soup.

You both reach for the bags at the same time, fingers brushing before pulling away. Like there was a shock, a little spark where your skin met for the briefest second.

Before you can, Steve picks up the bags. “I got ‘em. You get the door.”

“I- Okay.”

You turn around and fumble with the lock, opening your door and walking inside. Steve follows you and puts your bags on your kitchen counter.

“Good?” He checks.

“Yeah. Thank you, Steve.”

“No problem, honey. Think of it as payback for you patching me up.”

Honey. Last time he said it, you chalked it up to his tired state. That excuse can’t be used this time, and the term warms you.

“Right,” you look him over. His injuries are almost gone and it’s only been a couple of days. At least, you think it has. “You’re feeling better?”

“You did a good job,” he says.

“I’m glad.”

He nods, rocks back onto his heels once, “so, um, I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

He nods again and heads out, shutting your door behind him. With every conversation you have, Steve seems to warm up around you just a bit more. You don’t want to hope too much, so you push your hair from your face and turn to put your groceries away.

That evening, when you’re getting ready to cook dinner—a simple spaghetti and meatballs—you realize you’ve never seen Steve bring groceries into his apartment. Not once.

He must eat, you know that, but you wonder if he eats well, or enough. You cook for two without realizing until it’s finished. There’s extra of everything.

It’s probably stupid, maybe weird, but you make a bowl and head out into the hall. You knock on Steve’s door, three little taps of your knuckles against the wood.

He hears the knocks right away, listens closer to hear your voice mumbling to yourself. He knows your voice well. Sometimes, he can hear you humming to yourself in your apartment. He doesn’t try to listen in on you, but it’s like his ears subconsciously seek you out.

Steve opens the door and sees you in the same clothes as earlier, a shy smile on your face, and a bowl of spaghetti in your hands.

“Hey. What are you…?”

“I accidentally made too much food, and I thought maybe you’d want some?”

Actually, you made too much food for him, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Oh,” his heart does a stupid jump in his chest. You’re so kind and you don’t even seem to be trying. If anything, you seem to be embarrassed about it, like it’s a fault. “That’s really nice.”

“It’s just pasta. You want it?”

“Sure,” he takes the bowl from you. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And I promise it’s not, like, poisoned or anything.” You wince at yourself, “I don’t know why I said that.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s not poisoned.”

You laugh awkwardly. “Okay. Um, enjoy.”

He stands in his doorway while you go back inside, his smile spreading as soon as your back is turned to him. He heads inside after you do, kicking his door shut.

He’s never smiled at a fucking bowl of pasta the way he does. It’s getting harder and harder to make himself avoid you, avoid that light in his chest that seems to brighten when he sees you.

He’s in trouble.

-

You bring him dinner often. At least twice a week, on days you don’t work or when you’re pretty sure he’s home.

He thanks you every time with a close-mouthed smile and brings back your dishes the next day, perfectly clean.

It feels like, over time, with every dish you bring him, a chip falls away from the walls he’s built up around himself. You can tell there’s a lot of them, and that they’re tall, but you don’t mind waiting for them to lower piece by piece. He’s worth that wait, you think.

You’re happy to cook for him—you’re cooking for yourself already anyway—and you’ve grown closer because of it. Something like friends, almost. The conversations seem to grow longer each time you see him.

Sometimes, on good days, he even invites you inside to eat with him.

You aren’t very close, but right now, he’s the only friend you have (besides your coworkers, who really only hang out with you because they have to). You’d think the way you get excited to see him would be sad if it weren’t for how nice he is, for how he makes you feel.

He listens to you when you speak, his eyes don’t stray, either. He always tells you he likes your cooking when you know it isn’t all that great. He even hugged you before you left his place once, his arms around your waist, hands running over your skin delicately before he pulled away.

“Thank you for dinner,” he’d said. “Again.”

“I like making it for you. Makes me feel useful.”

“Still. Thank you, honey,” he’d surprised you with it, moving close before you could really process it.

“Oh,” you’d stupidly let your arms hang limp for a second before wrapping them shyly around his neck. “I don’t think my cooking is this good.”

“It’s not just your cooking,” he’d told you.

He pulled away after that, leaving your body warm and your smile difficult to suppress.

You’re well aware you have a crush on him, but you don’t want to let it ruin the beginnings of the friendship you’ve built.

Steve’s not sure what the pull he feels towards you is, like one of his webs is tethered to you even though he can’t see it. It’s something his senses can’t tell him, no matter how much he focuses on them.

He thinks you’re the sweetest person and you don’t even try, all shy smiles and soft gestures. He likes how when you talk, he can really hear how you feel about something in your voice. He trusts you, despite not knowing you too well.

He also thinks you’re really pretty, but that’s not important.

Steve had another rough night patrolling. Some guy decided to play Wolverine—he’d made gloves with blades and everything—and scratched Steve pretty good on his upper arm. It hurts like a bitch, even though it’ll heal quickly. And he’ll have to sew up his suit.

He got the guy, which is something, at least.

Luckily, he actually remembered to unlock the window this time, so he’s able to sneak into his place with ease. He stripped out of his suit and took a shower before anything. Maybe not the smartest decision while actively bleeding, but he felt gross.

Afterwards, clad in plaid pajama pants and a plain cotton t-shirt, he searches his bathroom for his first-aid kit while keeping a towel pressed to his arm. A dark stain blooms on the fabric the longer he keeps it against his wound.

“Yes,” he cheers to himself when he finds the small white box.

He sits on the tile floors, back against his sink cabinets, and the kit in his lap. He opens it with one hand, the other too busy trying to slow the bleeding. When he gets it open, he’s disappointed with what he finds.

“Fuck,” he says. There’s barely anything left. A roll of gauze, a box of bandaids, and one tiny alcohol wipe. That’s it. He really needs to remember to refill this stuff.

He pushes himself to stand, winces when he has to use his injured arm.

There’s only one person close by that he knows for sure has a first-aid kit that has what he needs, because he’s seen it pretty recently. That person is you.

He hates that he’s dragging you into this again, that he’s gonna ask a favor of you that he really shouldn’t. One he doesn’t even think he deserves. He needs the help, though, so he walks to his door, into the hallway, and a few steps to your place across from his.

He knocks, his towel more red than its original color by now.

The sound doesn’t exactly wake you up. It’s late, and you’d been in bed, but you’d been having a hard time falling asleep. You were tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling.

You sit up, push your hair out of your face, and head to the door. You should, but you don’t even look to see who it is before opening it, keeping your body behind the door and peeking your head around. You certainly weren’t expecting this.

Steve stands in front of you, his hair damp and a mess, falling over his forehead. His face is pale and, when your eyes flicker down, you find that his arm is bleeding. A lot.

“Holy shit. What happened to you?”

He ignores your question. “Can you help me?”

You move away from the door. The cold air from the hallway combined with the way Steve’s eyes look down before quickly looking back at your face remind you of your attire. A sleep shirt and underwear.

“Fuck! Sorry,” you go to shut the door but remember that he’s literally bleeding. “Come in, you know where the bathroom is. I’ll just- um. Let me put some pants on.”

He’d laugh at the way you pretty much sprint into your room if he wasn’t so focused on the pain of his arm. He’d also be thinking a lot about the way your legs looked just then.

You meet him in the bathroom, legs now covered in a baggy pair of sweatpants. Steve’s sitting on the shut toilet just like he did the first time you helped him. You haven’t touched your first-aid kit since then, finding it exactly where you left it then.

“Sorry about that,” you tuck your hair behind your ears quickly before opening up the box, turning to him afterward. “Can I see?”

“Yeah.”

You take the towel from Steve’s hand, slowly moving it away from his wound to see how bad it is. Steve’s hands twitch where they sit atop his thighs. He’s holding himself back from touching you.

Three gashes break his skin. The outside of his arm, just below his shoulder.

“Do these need stitches?” You ask, the concern is clear in your voice, in how it shakes a bit. “Maybe you should go to the hospital-”

“No. Please. No hospital.”

“I don’t know how to do stitches, Steve. I don’t know if I can help you.”

“I don’t need stitches, I swear,” the look on your face makes him feel awful. The sadness in your eyes, the small frown you try to hide. “I ran out of bandages. That’s all I need.”

“Are you sure?”

He can’t tell you that his skin will mend on its own, that he’ll be fine in just a couple of days. “Positive.”

You nod and grab a different towel than the one he’d been using, pressing it against his arm to make sure the bleeding stops. He groans quietly when you do. “Sorry,” you whisper.

“I’m alright.”

When you’re almost 100% sure that the bleeding is done, you pull the towel away. You hold it under the sink, wetting a part of it that didn’t soak up his blood. You use it to clean away the dried blood on his arm, apologizing every time he sucks in a breath through his teeth, hissing at the pull on his cuts.

One of your hands holds his arm up, the other occupied with the towel. You’re bent close, stood between his legs, your loose hair tickling his skin.

“Steve?” You whisper, still focused on his gashed arm.

“Mm?” He hums, watching you help him with the most careful touch he’s ever felt.

“Who’s hurting you?”

“It’s nothing.” He says it in a way that tells you it really isn’t nothing. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

Maybe you don’t need to worry about him, but you do. You worry constantly. Anytime there’s a bandaid or scrape on his skin you wonder if it’s the same people that gave him that black eye and split lip weeks ago.

You worry because he’s so good. He’s a soft person under the invisible armor he protects himself with and he doesn’t deserve to be hurt. His skin is too delicate for it, his face too pretty.

You pull away and grab the roll of bandages you have in your kit. When you look at him again, his eyes are set on you, scanning your face.

“Please don’t worry about me,” his voice is quiet, and you hate the way it breaks on the first word.

He hates it, too.

“I’ll try my best,” you force a small smile at him, trying to lighten things as much as you can given the situation. You look back at his arm, wrapping it slowly. “Is that good?”

He looks at his arm, his wounds now covered with white wrappings. He looks back at you, “thank you, honey.”

“It’s not too tight?”

He shakes his head, standing when you step back to give him the space. You stand toe-to-toe, his head bent down to look at you, yours titled up.

“It’s perfect.”

Your breaths mingle in the air between you, growing thicker. Before you let yourself hope for something you shouldn’t, you move to the counter and grab the rest of the bandages you have.

“Here,” you hold them out to him, “for when you need to switch it.”

“You won’t need it?” He asks instead of telling you that by the time it needs switching, it won't be an open wound anymore.

“The most I use from that kit is the regular bandaids. I’ll survive without it.”

He takes the bandages from you, his hand brushing yours.

“I’m sorry for showing up the way I did.”

“I’d rather that than have you bleeding out in your apartment,” your eyes flick over to the bloody towels on your floor, your heart pinching in your chest. “If you need to talk to someone, or anything, I’m here.”

He leans closer, pushes a gentle peck into your cheek, and speaks with his lips still brushing your skin. “I don’t deserve your sweetness.”

He drops his head into your shoulder, just for a second, before moving away from you.

“Wha-”

“Bye, honey. Thank you,” he says, walking out of your bathroom.

You stand there, a hand lifting to press against your cheek in the spot his lips did. You pull it away and look at your fingertips, like you’d been expecting to see a physical residue of the kiss. Flecks of glitter, or the soft pink of the sky at sunrise.

You just see your skin, painfully normal.

-

After thinking and thinking and thinking, you determine that maybe Steve likes you more than you thought he did.

The way he calls you ‘honey’ in that voice of his, the softness of his eyes that he can’t hide no matter how cold he tries to keep his exterior, the way he kissed your cheek and let his lips linger when he spoke.

All of those things make you hope that maybe he likes you at least a little bit in the way that you like him, but if not, at the very least, he likes you more than you thought.

You think he tries to hold himself back from getting close to you at all, and you really don’t know why. All you know is that his shoulders were slightly slumped when he forced himself to leave after you'd bandaged his arm, after he told you he doesn’t deserve you.

There’s something in his life that makes him think that way and as much as you wanna know what it is, you hope that the best you can do is prove him wrong.

That’s one of the reasons you’re cooking dinner for two once again tonight. You also feel like, since this is sort of what brought you closer, the dinners are a tradition for you and Steve. Something completely yours.

It’s nice to have something like that with another person. You knew you were lonely, but you never noticed how much until you started talking to him more. With each meeting, the string between you both shortens.

You’ve never cooked this meal before. You’re extra attentive with it, tasting it to make sure it’s right, keeping your eyes on things closely to avoid burning it at all.

When everything’s done, Steve’s meal packed up nicely and your ponytail now a loose mess, you head to the bathroom to look at yourself in the mirror. The most you do is fix your hair before feeling silly for caring so much about your appearance.

He’s seen you tired-eyed and pantless. This is better than that, at least.

You haven’t brought Steve a meal since you patched him up and he thanked you with a kiss on the cheek and possibly, maybe, loaded words. You’ve seen him, yes, but this is different than a two minute conversation in a hallway or the mailroom.

It’s your way of checking on him.

Your door shuts with a click behind you, his meal in your hand as you step into the hall. You knock on Steve’s door in quick, small taps. You’re not sure why you’re nervous to be doing it this time.

The doorknob twists and you’re met with Steve’s smiling face. Like actually, fully smiling. You don’t think you’ve ever seen that from him before. Not like this. It’s like a beaming ray of sunshine, warm and beautiful.

You’d like to be the one to make him smile like that.

“Hi, honey,” he says. It’s then you notice his cheeks are slightly flushed, little pink blooms on his skin.

“Hey. I made you dinner again,” you hold the container up awkwardly to show him.

“You don’t have to keep making me dinner.”

“I like doing it.”

He nods. Steve knows that you do it as an excuse to see him, and if he were braver, or less concerned about involving you in his impossible life, he’d tell you that you don’t need to have food to knock on his door.

He’d tell you that you could knock whenever you wanted, that he’d happily open the door for you.

“Steve!” A voice—a female voice—calls from inside the apartment. “Who’s at the door?”

Fuck. Okay, he has a girlfriend. You probably interrupted something, you think, looking at his flushed cheeks, thinking about the smile he wore that most definitely was not for you.

You’re embarrassed for even thinking that he could like you, embarrassed for having read everything wrong, for hoping too much.

“Oh. You have company. I’ll just-” you pivot on your heel to leave and realize you’re still holding his dinner. You turn back around and hand it to him, awkwardly turning towards your door again and heading inside.

Steve stares at your door for a couple of seconds before going back inside. He sets his food on the counter and sits back on the couch.

“So, who was that?” Robin asks.

Robin, his best friend and the only person in the world who knows pretty much everything about him. Spider-man and all.

“My neighbor. She was bringing me dinner.”

“It was her? And you didn’t let me say hi!”

Yeah, Robin knows all about you. She knows that you make Steve dinner, that you’ve taken care of him without digging too deep for answers, that Steve thinks you’re the ‘prettiest girl ever.’ His words.

“She left pretty fast after you yelled.”

“Oh no.”

“What?”

“Nooo. I scared her off!” Steve is clearly very confused, so Robin huffs and continues, “she heard a girl’s voice in your apartment.”

“And?”

“God, you’re such a boy sometimes, it’s insane. She thought I was your girlfriend!”

“Why would that scare her off?”

“I know you don’t get out much, dingus, but seriously?” She literally facepalms. “She likes you! Why else would she be making you dinner and shit? She likes you and thinks you’re dating someone.”

“Oh. Oh. No, she doesn’t like me. Not like that.”

“You’re an actual dingus.”

Steve doesn’t want to think about that possibility because it’ll make it much, much harder to keep you at arms length. Though, even now, that arm is mostly bent, losing resistance.

“So what if she does like me? I can’t do anything with her.”

“Why not.”

“Because I’m Spider-”

“Spider-man, yes, I know. Who cares? You can't live your whole life ignoring every single romantic feeling you have because of that.”

“I don’t wanna drag her into this.”

“Did you ever consider that maybe she would want to be dragged into this?”

“I guess not.”

He goes quiet after that, and Robin, knowing him so well, drops the subject.

-

Steve thinks about what Robin said even after she leaves.

It’s hard for him to believe that you’d like him enough to worry that Robin was his girlfriend. You, a dream girl, liking him, with his unexplained injuries and past grumpiness towards you. There was no way.

But, on the slightest chance that it did matter to you, Steve decided he wanted to explain.

His crush on you isn’t something he should explore, isn’t something he wants to let grow because, despite what Robin says, his life is dangerous and you already worry about him enough without knowing that.

Still, the thought of you being upset because you think he isn’t single is enough to make him head across the hall.

While Steve wondered what he’d say, you stewed in your embarrassment. You’d sat on your couch in your sweats and tried to forget the girl's voice or the smile on Steve’s face. You were unsuccessful.

The knocks on your door have become a familiar sound—there’s only one person who actually comes to your apartment.

You walk over and muster up a smile that you hope looks genuine, “Steve, hey.”

He scratches the back of his neck and looks at you, “can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

You move aside as he walks in, shutting the door behind him. The apartment feels smaller with him in it, you think. His presence takes up space for you, it draws your focus.

“Thanks again for dinner,” he says.

“You’re welcome-”

“That wasn’t my girlfriend, by the way. The voice you heard,” he cuts you off because he worries that if he doesn’t say it now, he never will. “I mean, she’s my friend, and a girl, but we’re not dating. Her name’s Robin, she’s my best friend, that’s it. Promise.”

You’re not sure whether to be even more embarrassed at how obvious you were with your concern, or to be relieved that he’s not taken like you thought. You settle for a bit of both.

“You don’t have to- I know I was weird earlier but you don’t have to explain yourself to me,” you tell him, tugging at the ends of your sleeves with your fingers.

“I wanted to make sure you knew.”

There could be a lot of weight in that sentence, if you let yourself look hard enough.

Rather than reply you confess, “you know, I used to think you hated me. Or, didn’t like me. Before we talked and stuff.”

Steve’s standing really close to you. Has he always been this close? You can smell his soap and feel the light puffs of air leaving his lips. It’s almost dizzying—like, if someone poked your shoulder, you might fall over.

You notice a lot about him from this close, especially when there’s no blood on his face. He has the lightest dusting of freckles over his nose, his eyelashes are dark, framing his brown eyes.

Steve reaches out with a hand to link his fingers with yours, loosely and slowly, like he doesn’t want to startle you. They fit together easily. His other hand brushes his knuckles against your cheek before cupping it gently in his palm.

His touch is so gentle, so much less guarded than his usual actions. You blink up at him and without even thinking, you push yourself into his touch, just a little.

“I never hated you,” he says. A murmur between your mouths.

“Oh,” is all you can say.

Steve’s strong, inhumanely so, but he isn’t strong enough to stop himself from kissing you.

The first brush of his lips on yours is so light that you think you might be dreaming. When you don’t pull away, he kisses you more firmly, his lips a little bit chapped but still soft as they land on yours.

You haven’t kissed a lot of people but you’ve never felt one like this. One that you’ve been dancing around for longer than you ever realized.

Steve’s hand squeezes yours, his thumb running back and forth against your cheek, his mouth moving with yours like a dance. He probably shouldn’t have let himself kiss you, because there’s no way he can fight whatever this is after feeling your lips on his.

He pecks you once, and twice, before pulling away. If he kept kissing you, the single thread left holding him back from you would’ve snapped. A clean break.

He leans his forehead against yours, and whispers so quietly you would’ve missed it had he not been so close to you. You could almost feel the words being spoken, lips still a breath apart.

“Never hated you.”

/ᐠ(๏‸๏)ᐟ\

if you enjoyed, please reblog and/or let me know what you thought!!! it would mean a whole bunch <3

[myrskytuuli]

I've seen few dreamling Star Trek AUs, but I keep thinking about canon dreamling in the Starfleet era future.

The moment humanity makes first contact, Hob Gadling obvioulsy makes it his next goal to get up there and start exploring as soon as possible. New Frontiers! New species! New experiences!

Which great. He's good enough at being just the most normal (surprisingly lucky and durable) red shirt, just there, doing his job. Nothing weird to see here, no sir. Too bad that he managed to get a job at the Enterprise, the galaxy's most ridiculous incident prone ship. And as the Enterprise incidents(TM) keep happening, so does the niggling feeling that there's something fucking funky going on with Ensign Gadling. he has....a very surprising range of skills and knowledge. And that boyfriend of his...is always there when they have shore-leave, no matter how implausible it would be for him to travel the distances with the speed he does with Federation spacecraft. Nobody can sus out what his job is, but it has to be some very high level federation one for his and Gadling's shore-leave's always to align.

But the most disturbing thing about the boyfriend(TM) is how the first glimpse any of the crew gets of him is always always just a bit fucked up.

For a second, before he blinks and realises that that is just Gadling and his partner sitting down on a spaceport café, Spock could have sworn that sitting across the man was Run S'haile made flesh, appearance just like the statues now gathering dust in Vulcan ancient history museums. And the andorian officer could have sworn that for a blink there she saw the Sparkling King of All Fantasies walking hand in hand with Ensign Gadling, before the image settled to two humans walking side by side. And one calm night a tellarite engineer spots ensign Gadling snuggling and star-gazing by one of the ship windows with The Great Nightmare Beast of Sleeping Terrors and decides to get the fuck back to her own quarters and try to never think of it again.

And it really doesn't help that while your average sentients aren't anymore impressed by Gadling than the agressively boring and normal man warrants, it has been more than once that the Cosmic Entity With Unimaginable Powers of the week has gotten suspiciously polite when Gadling enters the scene.

In a normal Starfleet ship Gadling might be able to fly under radar, but USS Enterprise is not a normal ship and the crew is starting to get the heebie jeebies...

[radioapplerevue]

See a lot of questions scattered about regarding "Why do people even ship Lucifer or Alastor? They hate each other/Lucifer's married/Alastor's ace etc etc etc." And while I doubt most people are asking in good faith, I figured I'd give my answer anyway! In part because these two in conjunction with each other fascinate me and I want to talk about it.

First off, you have Alastor, this character whose whole shtick is trying to convince everyone around him all the time that he's the most mysterious and most dangerous person around. And... he's not. We know he's not. Hell, he's not even in tier 3 of "dangerous people in Hell." But it's very important to him that he is perceived that way, and he goes to great lengths to manufacture and maintain that image.

Then you have Lucifer, who is the most dangerous person in Hell, power-wise, by far. But he doesn't seem to give a shit about that at all. His power means little to him, he didn't want the throne, he doesn't do anything with this position that Alastor would do everything to have. Lucifer is a deeply broken individual whose only concern is his family, and he's not intimidated by Alastor in any way, and never will be.

So he was pretty much tailor-made for Alastor to hate. This guy who has everything Alastor wants, but doesn't give a shit about having it, who he can't scare. Ever. The only way he can get under Lucifer's skin is by digging into his emotional sore spots, and boy howdy does Lucifer have a lot of those. And here's the fun thing! Or one of the fun things, anyway. Most people, even in Hell, would never dare to try and upset Lucifer. Upset the King of Hell? That's suicide, right?

But Alastor knows it's not, because he sees two things right off the bat: one, Lucifer wouldn't do anything to hurt Charlie, and hurting Alastor would do that -- and two, it's just not in Lucifer's nature to do so. Surprising for the King of Hell, but nonetheless true. Lucifer's a showy guy, but he's not a violent guy -- even against Adam, he only toyed with him until Adam made the mistake of going directly for Charlie a second time. Needless to say, it takes a lot to make Lucifer get violent, and it's unlikely to be anything that only targets himself.

And thus sets the stage for what is already a really fun and interesting dynamic, and one that can become even more so with time. Because these are two characters who treat each other in a way that nobody else can or will. Alastor can poke and prod and peel back Lucifer's scars and peer directly at his insecurities. Lucifer can give as good as he gets and challenge Alastor and there's nothing Alastor can do to scare him off. In short, they can make each other confront things that right now just aren't likely for other people.

I like to think eventually, once they get over the initial "how dare he, this isn't allowed, I hate everything about this" stage, they begin to actually... enjoy it. Enjoy the back and forth, enjoy hitting the ball to each other's court, enjoy having someone around who won't back down. And Lucifer is, at his core, sweet. How unsettling it must be for Alastor, to see this extremely powerful man who is also just. Good. How over ten millennia of pain haven't changed that, even as they crumbled his heart into little pieces.

I think Lucifer would fascinate Alastor. And I think Alastor, with all his idiosyncrasies, and his ballsy manner of never backing down from a challenge, would fascinate Lucifer too. And there are so, so many ways you could go from there. Darker ways, softer ways. But there's so much potential, and I am finding it an absolute blast to explore.

As for the ace thing, hello, hi! I'm aroace. And on the sex repulsed side, even! I shouldn't have to reveal this in order for people to get off my back, but hey, there you have it. Now please stop expecting people to volunteer their sexual orientations just so you can be sure they have the... what? Right? To ship things? I enjoy this ship in all flavors. A lot of people have been taking the time to explore asexuality in their fanworks with Alastor, and it's been a delight to see! But in the end, fandom is a sandbox, and I don't care how you are smashing your dolls together as long as you're having fun. And if seeing them in a particular configuration is uncomfortable for you, there's nothing wrong with that, either... just back out, and move on to things more pleasant.

And goodness, don't go after real actual people in defense of fictional ones.