#not other set of characters has made me feel so experimental

[beedreamscape]

When you thought you were in a contemporary rivals-to-lovers romance with touches of medical drama, but then they pull away your funds and you cry in each other's arms but you got hopes this might be your underdog moment, your chance to overcome adversities but then the bodies won't rot and the bodies won't rot and the bodies won't rot and J—'s eyes turn honey turn amber turn gold...

And maybe you've done something right but... they still won't rot and maybe he's crazy but maybe you're raiding a graveyard for him and it's the most romantic thing you've done in a while because maybe this isn't cute anymore, this isn't cool anymore, and he makes them move and he makes them walk and maybe this is actually the start of an apocalypse movie and here's where the disease begins.

Yet somehow the problem is still money and youtube comments and goverment lackeys and evil CEOs and bureaucracy and conspiracies and you were supposed to save the fucking planet, and now you're surrounded by meat and now he can kill and kill and kill and now the skeleton army doesn't sound absurd and now blowing everything up doesn't sound so bad—

And now you think you're tired of seeing the world in 2 by 35 and you just wanna go home and do Cappuccino Tuesdays and Popcorn Saturdays and walks on the beach with C— and dim lit nights with A—... but the movie isn't over yet and this is not your story to tell.

[psychedelic-pebble]

couldn’t sleep last night and that got me thinking about Stanford and experimentation… so here’s a little blurb of my thoughts! NSFW under the cut :3

- Stanford Pines has an experimentation kink. This is not a surprise. Have you seen him?

- He’d be nervous to bring it up at first, but once he does, your excitement is encouraging.

- You’d probably have to motivate him to actually do anything when you first start out, he’d be much too scared of hurting you to make the first move.

- Once boundaries and rules are set in place it takes a minute for him to build up his dominant persona, but god when he does, it’s insanely attractive.

- He’s really into power play, likes being in control, and especially likes being praised for it. He’d strap you down to a spare lab table (after some convincing), and good lord almighty seeing you like that is driving him insane. He has to keep himself from breaking character and just fucking you like some feral animal.

- He has specially made latex gloves for his six fingered hands that he likes to wear during it - running them down your sides and watching you squirm in your restraints is almost amusing to him.

- He’d get really into the doctor/patient or scientist/subject roleplay. He plays DD&MD, you cannot tell me this man isn’t a god at roleplaying.

- Loves to cut off any physical touch when you’re close, flashing a devilish grin at you and laughing softly.

- “Not yet sweetheart, we’ve got more tests to run.”

- Curse this man.

- Speaking of these “tests”, all he’s doing is edging you over and over. He’d run his hand down your abdomen to tease you before abruptly fingering you, going until your whimpering and begging him for release, but before you can he’d just remove his hand with a barely suppressed grin.

- “Excellent response, very interesting. Let’s see how you respond to this,”

- And then go back to stimulating you in some way or another.

- By the end of this you’re so mind-fucked that you can barely form a sentence. You probably haven’t even cum yet, you just need it so badly your brain feels like it’s melting out of your ears.

- He’s not much better, completely hard in his pants to the point it borderline hurts.

- He undoes the straps binding you and tells you how good you did and how you deserve a reward, and carries you to either the closest couch or bed, laying you down and kissing you deeply.

- You can tell how turned on he is as well, so the two of you spend the rest of the night clawing and biting at each other while he fucks you like he’ll die if he stops.

thanks for reading! i hope you enjoyed :3

divider creds to @cafekitsune :D

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

Quarterfinals, Match 2

expand to see all propaganda received! (wall of text warning oh my god this is a severe cautionary message)

Lauryn Hill:

"she paved the way and was hot as fuck the whole time"

"Girl c'mon. Look at her. You're gonna try and tell me that isn't the most beautiful and attractive person alive? Okay. You're lying but okay."

"if u freaks don't give ms. lauryn hill the respect she deserves..."

"actually one of the prettiest women ever I'm such a lesbian for her. like irl I'm already a lesbian but she is helping"

Damon Albarn:

"Don’t think Damon should be here? Why don’t you get your head checked by a jumbo jet? Maybe you’ll feel heavy metal and calm down."

"If Damon is in the “some guy” category, he’s the heavenly and heartbreaking version. Damon is the sort of significant stranger I’d see on the train out of Colchester but could never speak to, just a face seen in passing yet too radiant to be real. I’d fall in love for an hour and carry the ache for a month."

"Damon sets the standard for me. I think he’s the most fascinating man alive. What I find attractive in Damon is not just his gorgeous bone structure and boyish charm, but how wholly he’s committed himself to music. Damon is an artist who walked the walk: in one of his roughest years with some of his rawest songwriting, he said he was no longer excited by anything except the creative process. He was disillusioned with the celebrity of it all, with his relationships suffering for it, and only wanted to make art: nothing more, nothing less. He would go on to compose film scores, write operas and stage musicals, produce other artists’ records, form collectives to fulfill his passion for world music, and create some of the most globally successful music of his career in a completely innovative format that placed him as the phantom behind the characters. Whenever one band takes a break, he makes a solo record or puts together a supergroup to stay busy. He’s uniquely collaborative and still writes personal letters inviting artists to record with him, and yet can function as a one-man show, acting as a multi-instrumentalist, a singer-songwriter and a producer. He’s been a constant voice of bringing British music to the world *and* bringing world music into Britain. Sure, he’s won Brit Awards and a Grammy among others, but he also has a Guinness World Record and was named an Officer of the British Empire for his services to music; his long work with Africa Express earned him respect even from peers who’d previously dismissed him, and his commitment to support his Malian collaborators in the face of violence earned him the title of Local King in Mali. There is so much talent in the world, but there is truly no one else with a career that looks like Damon Albarn’s. Damon is far more than just a prettyboy to look nice on a magazine cover, but looks are the ultimate point of this tournament, so make no mistake: he was terribly, terribly pretty. You watch him performing in the 90s, you sift through photoshoots and interviews and documentaries, and it feels *cruel* how beautiful he was. If his talent was god-given, so was his face. To put a bow on this thesis: I don’t know if Gorillaz and Damon’s musical universe would be the experimental, globe-trotting, boundary-pushing community affair it is if Blur hadn’t become such a central figure in Britpop and if Damon had not been made such a media spectacle, and I don’t know if Damon would have been that spectacle if he wasn’t so ungodly pretty. The domino effect is that Damon’s cherubic face launched a thousand multimedia art school projects for decades to come."

"I wish I was basically any bloke in the 90s so I could tongue Damon Albarn down. Damon will see a man and ask “is anyone gonna kiss that?” and not wait for a response."

"I have a pillow with his face on it. I sleep with it every night 😊"

"“I’m more homosexual than Brett Anderson, always have been. As far as bisexuality goes, I’ve had a taste of that particular fruit, or have been tasted you might say…” is just the rawest most Shakespearean statement ever"

"he is the ultimate Pretty Boy ™. his glorious golden locks, his electric blue eyes. he is if Princess Diana was a Britpop Dude. he is the Regina George of Britpop. he is if Aphrodite took male form. Zeus would come down to earth to fuck him if he knew. he is a caffeinated orange cat let loose. he is deranged. he is unhinged. you never know what will come out of his mouth. he had sexual tension with every single man who knew him. he pulled justine fucking frischmann. his aura knows no bounds. he is a siren. he is a weird guy. but being so gorgeous stunning ethereal didn't stop him from also being one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation"

"THE MAIN BLUR"

"literally where do i even begin. i could write entire essays on this man. a good place to start would be the beetlebum music video, i suppose. i'll never forget the first time i watched that music video. something in me changed, my brain chemistry was altered, my life was never the same, i view the world a lot differently now. and a lot of the viewing i'm doing is of pictures of damon albarn's face because of boy do i have a lot of those saved. every time i try to look for a photo of something on my phone i can't find it because there's so much damon. okay that's maybe an exaggeration but this man has the most unfathomable beauty ever. his eyes? HIS EYES. god dammit i love his eyes i want to stare at them until the end of time like nothing else exists. i'm so normal about this man (lying) and while i'm usually very shameless about my interests i'm actually incredibly glad this propaganda is anonymous because otherwise. yeah. but the world deserves to see damon albarn's beauty and also hear his fantastic voice because what the fuck. his voice is literally the most gorgeous sound ever produced like bro sounds like that and expects me not to fall in love? i want this man to sing his silly songs and talk absolute nonsense to me until the sun eventually blows out and the world ends. cmon damon girlies let's demolish this tournament i know there are a lot of you."

"He’s beautiful. He’s a little rat. He’s a sweetheart. He’s a dickhead. He’s a musical genius. He’s a dumb bitch. He’s a jock. He’s a weirdo. He’s real. He’s an illusion. He’s everything. He’s just Damon."

"DAMON DAMON DAMON where do I begin oh jeez I've hyperfixated on this man for a solid 4 years and still going strong. Damon makes me wish that British people are real. That says A LOT. This man created a whole ass ANIMATED BAND WITH A SHIT TON OF LORE as a SIDE HUSTLE??? Not to mention, what other man has collaborated with Stevie Nicks, MF DOOM, Del the Funky Homosapien, Snoop Dogg, AND Beck?! People, we're literally in the presence of a god. And he's STILL GOING. Anyways, TL;DR, damon is so so so neat and cool and he should definitely win this competition. Thank you."

"Okay 90s Damon is The Perfect Boy yes yes, but the people who parrot the Daily Mail and say "he's ugly now" will never understand. I would still suck every drop from him on his deathbed."

"Vote for whoever you want to. But Damon is so pretty."

"i did not spend hours admiring this beautiful man's face on pinterest just to see him lose."

"Damon Albarn just brings me joy. When I'm watching him perform, following along as the camera lingers on and adores his pretty face, I get butterflies like I'm 15 again. It's nice to still feel that totally unguarded giddiness sometimes."

"God let the intrusive thoughts win making Damon. What if he's a beautiful blond twink with eyes like saucers and dick to his knees, he reads Herman Hesse and plays footie and is insufferable about both, he'll be the most prolific musician of his generation and write operas and seminal albums in 5 different genres and also he's gonna be the dumbest bitch alive? He'll also be kinda bi, but only kinda. And send."

"when i found out about his existence, my life was changed forever. i wish i could use him like the hannah montana boot milk pillow and chuck him at the wall so he makes a loud thud"

"Think of the drama and anon fights it'll cause if Damon wins it all! And think of how quiet it'll get after Damon's out. You'll miss him when he's gone, like memories of a noisy house years after it's grown silent. Choose Damon, and keep the messy train chugging."

"Even the Gallagher brothers have the hots for him."

"Kiss kiss I love him also you can't vote for any of the Seattle men they're literally copy and paste it's not fair. We need Brit representation"

"I want to take care of him, I want to provide for him. I need to gauge his baby blue puppy dog orbs out to I can clean them with wood varnish, paint shades of Pantone 320 C in his eyes, spray eau de parfume by dior in them and sew it back into his eyes like that scene in Toy Story 2."

"Seeing as simply filling the page with ‘Damon’ written 10000000 times isn’t going to cut it 😅 may I admit/submit: I DO have him tattooed on my being (no descriptive, is this anon?); he’s inspired somewhat unhinged late night/early morning fandom conversations in which I’ve served as ‘parish’ priest hearing confessions from all manner of folk about what they’d like to do to him/receive from him; sadly I lost an essay where I detailed why the letters that make up his name suit him so well, and described him as the hot caramel sauce to Graham’s cool vanilla ice cream. He’s a faerie princess with a nose that makes people weep and a voice that feels like the warmest home and he gives amazing hugs. He loves trains and chickens and his tuxedo cat. He’s annoying and sweet and somewhat unhinged and his music saves people and all this is on top of that fantastic dick. He’s a dream yet very real and we’re fucking blessed to be on earth at the same time as him, amen"

"Damon Albarn was a beautiful, beautiful boy. The world saw that, regardless of if every individual reading this has the same taste in men; it felt like a truth of the universe at the time. They don't make celebrities that angelic in face and erratic in personality anymore."

"I need to touch his eyebrows, nose and prostate just one time JUST ONE TIME COME ON"

[sporesgalaxy]

LET ME TELL YOU THE SETUP FOR MY BEAUTIFUL COOKIE CLICKER LOVE STORY

it's not everything but it's a decent introduction to the characters. I've been writing this summary for weeks. I'm hoping that feeling like I can reference parts in the middle will give me more ideas......

why does it hate my images...ok fine no images. god

•••

0 Ascensions:

Cookie is always on the lookout for new ways to bake ungodly amounts of cookies, so she approaches Kirschtorte after reading about the doctor's experimental portal research having once resulted in the retreival of a small amount of alien matter.

The first time Michelle Kirschtorte meets Cookie Cliquer, she does not touch a single morsel of the extravagant cookie spread that Ms. Cliquer made to butter her up. The same thing happens the second, fourth, fifth time they meet and discuss business, no matter what variety of cookies Cookie makes. At last Cookie subjects herself to the mortifying ordeal of directly asking Dr. Kirschtorte what kind of cookies she likes-- only to be shocked and horrified when the doctor says that she does not eat any cookies whatsoever.

Despite her inexplicable distaste for cookies, Michelle Kirschtorte is receptive to Cookie's business offer, but she remains unmoved by Cookie's sickly-sweet commercial persona. Secretly at first, Kirschtorte is deeply cynical about the whole arrangement; she was screwed over by her previous colleagues, and progress on her portal research has been stagnating for some time now because of it. Although she doesn't admit it to Cookie at first, the doctor feels humiliated by the prospect of turning to a baked goods corporation for funding. Michelle ends up accepting the deal under the impression that she is taking advantage of Cookie's deep pockets and naive enthusiasm for unorthodox theoretical baking techniques.

When the cookie-focused research initiatives start yeilding mind-bogglingly impressive results, Kirschtorte reassesses her portal research priorities and her impressions of her oddball benefactor. Cookies are, for some reason, the key to understanding and exploiting the greatest secrets of the universe. Even more impressively, Ms. Cliquer seems intuitively in touch with the logic behind these shocking cookie truths. What other great scientific discoveries could cookie research yeild? How does Cliquer think of this stuff? Why DOES everyone like cookies so damn much? Kirschtorte finds herself irresistably drawn in by these exciting scientific possibilities, as well as the much less sweet and more insatiably driven person she starts getting to know behind Cookie's crowd-pleasing public persona.

Despite a stilted start to their relationship, Cookie and Michelle get along very well once they find even footing. Both are driven to prove themselves through their work, both have been underestimated and cast aside by peers and superiors in the past. Cookie's obsessive drive to make and market infinite perfect cookies matches Michelle's obsessive drive to understand everything there is to know about the nature of the universe; both are deeply passionate about their work and typically striving tirelessly towards the same goal. Both believe that their ends justify their means, and that ethical concerns are a waste of time and a thorn in the side of progress.

Cookie has a knack for PR that Michelle has always lacked the patience for; Michelle understands and appreciates the true, transcendent importance of cookies nearly as much as Cookie does-- Cookie's business partners usually don't care about that part.

Cookie eventually achieves enlightenment and realizes the Secret of the Heavenly Chips, granting her the ability to Ascend. Cookie should be overjoyed at the cosmic knowledge within her grasp; great new possibilities in cookie production await her!

Yet Cookie drags her feet. She keeps finding excuses to stay where she is, keeps setting goals even as her progress slows to a crawl, and reaching those goals in this lifetime seems less and less feasible...

Still, the stress of failure and stagnation chips away at Cookie's resolve to keep dragging out her first iteration. The knowledge of how much she could be doing with the power Ascension would grant her makes Cookie increasingly irritable and bitter about the work which she's made her entire life revolve around.

Kirschtorte is stressed and angry about the slowed progress, too. She is increasingly afraid that age and death will catch up with herself and Cookie before they can discover everything there is to know about reality (and cookies). Michelle is vexed by Cookie's comparative lack of urgency-- or is it a lack of hope for any solution? Cookie has always been the most driven person Michelle's known, yet now Cookie's detatchedness toes the line of seeming resigned to failure. Michelle feels like everything she thought she understood about Cookie is slipping through her fingers, and she feels powerless against the onward march of time (DESPITE having access to time machines!), and she doesn't know how to cope.

The temptation of exponentially greater cookie production and the crushing agony of stagnation eventually outweigh Cookie's sentimental attachment to this particular iteration of her life. Cookie Ascends.

(Michelle lives the rest of her life feeling emptier in Cookie's absence, and never knowing why Cookie vanished.)

1st iteration to reach the Grandmapocalypse:

The first time Michelle Kirschtorte meets Cookie Cliquer, she is offered a slice of Black Forest Cake, her favorite. Somewhat suspicious of the COOKIE Magnate offering her cake, Michelle still can't bring herself to resist. Cookie is clearly delighted.

Kirschtorte doesn't take Cookie seriously at first and Cookie knows it, and finds it funny. Kirschtorte has to be convinced of the omnipresence and significance of cookies thru material evidence. Cookie is more hands-on helping speed along her research, but only ever reveals information in bite-sized pieces on a need-to-know basis. It becomes increasingly clear to Kirschtorte that Cookie somehow knows a lot about the most far-fetched characteristics of cookies before they're scientifically proven...and that Cookie has a suspiciously good intuition for knowing things about Kirschtorte herself.

Cookie is delighted by her extra power and knowledge at first. She's entertained by using her extra experience to tease Kirschtorte. Cookie enjoys getting to spend more time with Michelle, despite how one-sided the relationship is early on. Michelle is drawn to Cookie even more from the get-go, because of her strange intuitive understanding of Michelle herself, as well as Cookie Theory.

During the first Grandmapocalypse, Cookie is overwhelmed and focuses on trying to feel in control rather than seeking help from Kirschtorte. When Dr. Kirschtorte approaches Cookie about it, Michelle is surprised by how stubbornly Cookie refuses to bend even slightly to the wishes of the Grandmatriarchs, no matter how logical and cost-effective that would be. Not fully understood by to Kirschtorte, this is motivated mostly by Cookie's resentment for her own grandmother (who is now a parf of the Grandma collective, of course). Cookie insists that any compliance or appeasement would only lead to Cookie and her company being trapped under the Grandmatriarchs' elderly thumb forever.

Instead, Cookie is dead set on overcoming the Grandmatriarchs' sabotage by outpacing them through brute force. Michelle sees this as a fight she is doomed to lose, but Cookie refuses to consider any alternatives.

Cookie's seemingly pointless uphill battle convinces Michelle that cooperating with the Grandmatriarchs is the only way to keep cookie production and research moving forward at a viable pace (she is objectively correct about this). Michelle wants to trust Cookie's leadership, but the two of them are getting older (this is especially visible on Michelle, who is effected by constant proximity to Cookieverse Portals), and Michelle is beginning to fear they might die before they uncover and exploit all the cookie-based secrets of the universe. After all the work they've done, the thought of not being able to see it through upsets Kirschtorte terribly. The Grandmatriarchs subconsciously whisper things to Michelle which exacerbate these fears-- something Michelle is susceptible to due to her proximity to the Cookieverse Portals.

Eventually, Kirschtorte caves. Against Cookie's wishes-- but in Kirschtorte's mind, for Cookie's sake as well as her own-- Kirschtorte convenes with the Grandmatriarchs anyways by using the Cookieverse Portals. She asks them for knowledge of how to lessen the Grandmatriarchs' wrath, and she asks for them to help her understand the true nature of the universe. In exchange, the Grandmatriarchs' ask Michelle to bond her mind with them just a little (still retaining most of her individuality), and vow that she will continue to proliferate portals to the cookieverse as long as she lives. That seems like an easy promise to Michelle, and it makes sense that they would want this. She already makes portals to the cookieverse all the time, so no big deal. Cookie was probably being stubborn and mistrusting for nothing!

Michelle performs the Elder Pledge ("a simple ritual involving anti-aging cream, cookie batter mixed in the moonlight, and a live chicken"), and the Grandmapocalypse is halted. The Wrinklers and Flesh Highways withdraw and cookie production returns to normal, with the Research Facility's grandma augmentation benefits still at work.

Cookie isn't sure what to make of the sudden withdraw of the Grandmatriarchs, but she has a bad feeling.

The way Michelle's deal works is that Kirschtorte will die normally someday, but then the Grandmatriarchs will carry her consciousness and memories to another iteration of Kirschtorte who asks for the same deal, and their knowledge will be combined into 1 continuous consciousness. This will repeat over and over, with more knowledge added to the collective each time, and each new Kirschtorte never knowing about her past selves or the secrets they've uncovered before she complies with the Grandmatriarchs.

Kirschtorte asks the Grandmatriarchs if they can do the same for Cookie, and is shocked to learn that Cookie was never going to run out of time, and never told her. Was Cookie willing to waste the rest of Kirschtorte's limited lifetime arguing with a grandma hivemind?! Did the work they do together matter so little to her?!!

When Michelle confronts her about it, Cookie learns in turn that Michelle is permanently cosmically bound to the Grandmatriarchs. Cookie feels betrayed, but she mostly blames Grandma-- ignoring Michelle's agency in the situation, thoughtlessly belittling her to keep her on a pedestal.

They continue to have problems in this and future iterations, with Kirschtorte always spending a large portion of their time together unaware of all their past lives until suddenly becoming aware when she inevitably goes against Cookie's wishes and speaks to the Grandmatriarchs. And yet, as much as they both claim to be ruthless utilitarians who put their work above all else, it is always quite obvious how much they admire each other and how badly they always want to be together, even at their worst. With all the time they spend building and destroying and rebuilding a cookie empire over and over again, they come to know and understand each other very intimately. They're both insufferably weird about each other when they both have all their memories.

[kasugayamaisforlovers]

Experimental thought for my MotA gurlies: So I'm rewatching MotA to get a better handle on Gale and what's hitting me on the second time around is how human John feels versus how mythologized and illusive Gale feels? 

Exhibit A: You're Bucky and he's Buck?

We as an audience are introduced to Gale in episode 1 via the recitation of the Buck(ies) lore by Marge. And yeah, sure, John and Gale jump in to add color around the edges but tonally it’s a far cry from how anyone else in the show is introduced and, while John is intro’d the same lore, we come to know John with an intimacy that unravels any notions of manicured or whitewashed anything. We never really get this for Gale. 

Exhibit B: No Engine Cleven.

So before the fight between Curt and the RAF guy in episode 2 Curt’s regaling (pun intended) the homies with the story of Walla Walla wherein Gale buzzes the control tower with 3 of his 4 engines feathered. Now it's pretty clear from the dialogue that Gale's still got a functional engine, but Curt's telling the story and he insists on changing the details so that Gale's got no engines. 

The boys drink to ‘No Engine Cleven’--the myth.

Flashcut to the end of episode 3 and Gale's fort has taken a gnarly beating. By the time he gets in view of the runway in Algeria he has to feather all 4 engines. And he fucking does it: he manages to land sans engine power! He glides the crew to a safe landing, as if foretold. The No Engine Cleven prophesy made real.

So much of Gale feels like mythology, it's all stories and tidbits other characters seem to know on faith: Gale’s not a sports guy, Gale's an excellent pilot, Gale is Buck. And to be fair on each of these points we do get a little bit of bonus content. (Gale tells John about his dad which we come to understand is the crux of his sports dislike. We see Gale fly and know from his continued  survival and other characters' reactions that he's good. See exhibit 1 visa vis ‘Buck’.) 

Exhibit C: the deference.

Ok so bonk me with the rubber mallet if this is a reach but like the deference that characters (other than John) show Gale also makes it feel like Gale's something special/held apart. Like yes, I do get he's both hierarchically above a lot of the other characters and simultaneously one of the more central characters. We don't see a whole lot of interactions between characters and like Jack Kidd or Chick Harding to really compare how folks are acting towards Gale vs someone else higher up the ladder. But listen

Let’s take Croz as our test example as Croz interacts with Jack and Gale.  When Croz interacts with Jack he's definitely in a subordinate role. There's a scene wherein he recommends Bubbles for desk work and a later scene wherein Croz has inherited said desk work and is nervous about whether he's a good fit. Both times he approaches Jack with respect and the deference of a subordinate but there's nothing more to it. Jack’s a guy and Croz is a guy and so Croz feels like he can talk to Jack.

Take that in comparison to the first time Croz and Bubbles meet John and Gale. Croz and Bubbles want to pin a US map with the locations of the various crew members’ hometowns. There's a shyness in Croz’s behavior here that I think goes beyond ‘you guys are Majors’ and more toward ‘omg the popular kids. The dudes that set the tone for everyone else' there's a sort of starstruckedness to the interaction. (Help I can't think of another time he talks to Gale.)

My point is, the other boys talk to Gale and John like they're the big dogs. The Buckies occupy a space that’s nearer the men than command (Jack, Chick, etc) but higher than say a different crew member, or even other pilots (say Brady or Dye). But whereas we get some real interiority on John we never get to really dig in on Gale and it leaves Gale feeling like a marble statue. (Dare I say like a John Waynian archetype of masculine stoicism and competency and controlled violence? Is that too far?)  Like a mythical hero at least.

[absolutebl]

Genuine Question: Given how much people hate problematic topics in BL eg: kp, mame, love syndrome, etc. why is everyone so damn excited about Only Friends? Like we know nothing about the show. It's GMMTV so how sexy is it going to get? you know, like it's GMMTV. I like the cast as much as anyone and particularly FirstKhao but I don't see this 'sexiness' everyone is going so crazy over? Is it some bts thing like I know the director is jojo and he's gay. Is that why everyone so excited? Is it because we just haven't gotten anything really brilliant this year that gets the whole BL fandom together and that's why people are hoping this will, is that what's going on? I like everyone involved well enough but 'sexy', 'crazy', 'problematic', 'high heat'... I don't get it.

Only Friends & Jojo

Genuine answer.

Okay so this question got me invested enough to get off the phone, over to the laptop, and onto hotel wifi, which means typos rather than dictation homophones, but there it is.

I guess what I am saying it...

mistakes will be made

From the tenor of your question methinks you have not watched Friend Zone? It's a 2 part series. Mostly messy hets but...

Also a TON of broad spectrum queer rep (lesbian, bi, ace, demi). Real queers, not sanitized for straight consumption.

Because yeah, GMMTV will get messy and go into higher heat levels in a late night way (not in a KP way).

But actually what has most people excited about Only Friends is it being sourced in this man:

Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong

Jojo is a screenwriter (originals) and director, openly gay, multifaceted and a little experimental, naturally talented (on the job trained - he's an archaeologist originally), and he is behind:

The Warp Effect, Friend Zone and MOST importantly (IMHO)...

3 Will Be Free

There are others too, but for the purposes of this post, those are the 3 that count. I think of him a little as the GMMTV director version of Ohm's acting.

Jojo specializes in:

ensemble pieces,

good chemistry (NOT necessarily high heat, so by this I mean actor chemistry with each other all around - couples, cast, team, production)

working with and finding actors within GMMTV's stable who work well together (even if that means busting up a pair),

a queer lens,

queer rep,

and often very messy story (as in he is not invested in the traditional beats of a romance, let alone a BL).

AND he can shoot action (this is a specific skill set for directors and it's NOT easy),

thus he will shoot his sex/intimacy & COMEDY scenes as if they WERE action sequences.

This makes his stuff particularly exciting to watch. It's dynamic, there's a lot of movement, the eye is caught and dragged places. He doesn't use dirty/peekaboo framing or central aperture or manga style (not with INTENT the way trained directors do). In fact he does none of those things I harp on about because I like the romance stuff.

He's not being clever with us. He's being honest, but still applying skill. His stuff not quite raw, but also not really directed. You can tell he gives his actors a script, throws them together and then instructs them to just BE THOSE CHARACTERS. He has a light touch, he trusts them. He's not fussy or nit-picky. He's not doing a million takes to get that sene exactly how he envisions it. His ensemble pieces are just that, group projects.

His eye is wide, even for intimacy, by which I mean: he controls and watches for multiple actors at once when there are a lot of them on screen together, without them feeling stiff.

His style is quite organic but not too gritty.

Struggling to understand what I mean?

For example, watch a Jojo "group of friends chatting" scene where everyone is just standing around then watch the same thing in, say, SCOY. You'll see what I mean. SCOY is also a very queer ensemble piece, but it will feel quite stiff, unnatural, and "planned" (staged) by comparison.

For the giffers out there you might notice that Jojo's stuff is particularly difficult to gif cleanly? This is why.

I find him an exciting director. I didn't cover him in my directors overview because at the time he hadn't done much BL (and frankly, he still hasn't). It's not his focus.

I think Only Friends is actually not likely to be very BL. Queer = yes, BL = NO. He won't hit the tropes and there is no reason to assume it will end happily for all couples (if any). That's not Jojo's point of view.

He doesn't play our game. As a result, some of those excited by the idea of this show (or excited the general enthusiasm & anticipation around it), may be doomed to disappointment.

It's one of the reasons you don't see me getting excited about it.

I'm a fan of specifically the fluffy side of BL, this will NOT be that. And I can appreciate a director without necessarily liking the stories he tells.

I am industry enough to acknowledge Jojo's skill (and I LOVE 3 Will Be Free - just not as a BL), but I don't always like his narratives. No matter how good he is, his stuff is not why I personally watch Thai BL.

It's GMMTV, so how sexy is it going to get?

Again, see Friend Zone. GMMTV has a late night pantheon, mostly for het, but they will get salacious. Lots of cheating and terrible decisions. There will be no archetypes. Characters will exist in grey areas, even the "good" characters. There will be no paladins in this show. No seme/uke.

To answer this frankly?

Only Friends will get soap opera or telenovella sexy but no more. So we will be in Midnight Chicken territory, not Bed Friends.

I think the words being bandied about:

'sexy', 'crazy', 'problematic', 'high heat'

are used here on tumblr (and in fandom) as an attempt to articulate expectations set up by Jojo's style.

Most viewers only react emotionally to the tenor of a director with this set of skills. That's fine, that's what the production company wants: A visceral emotional reaction.

But I hope I've managed to clarify from a film-critic perspective what's bringing this sensation about?

But ALSO seeing a bunch of, essentially, lower heat pure BL pairs, have to push themselves into messy queer spaces? (Notice GMMTV only let the more established actors into this one? No JoongDunk, no GeminiFourth)

This is probably really what everyone is excited about.

They are gonna see their favorites cheat, sleep around, be gay (not BL gay, but actual gay). Some are legitimately excited about this, some are shipper excited, and the BL-stans who don't know Jojo are doomed to disappointment.

I'm mostly excited by how messy this is gonna make the fandom.

Su su na.

(source)

[kaeyachi]

So...I finished the Arlecchino story quest...

Spoilers below!

TW: Mentions of Suicide, Child Experimentation, Child Abuse, and Murder/Death

This is, by far, the best story quest I have ever done!

First of all, CHILDE?! CHILDE ESCAPING HIS PERSONAL AMBULANCE TO SNEZHNAYA JUST TO COME BACK TO FONTAINE TO ASK SKIRK A QUESTION? Bro is so funny, please-

please save him.

Wait, actually, yeah please do save him. Pulcinella and Pantalone are both plotting in the background, and they got Childe involved...

I also loved the children! Look at how terrifying they are! They're my absolute faves!!

Lyney cementing the reason as to why Arlecchino chose him as the next King is wonderful to see as well. For some time, I thought Freminet and Lynette had a shot, even with reading their lore. What I have failed to realize is that Lyney really is the inspiration for all of the people in the House of the Hearth. His frustrated and disappointed spiel about Freminet not trusting him with Clervie struck me to the heart. This is an older brother at work here people!

Also if I had a nickel every time a cryo younger brother hid a dangerous secret from his pyro older brother which got them into an argument once the truth came out, I'd have 2 nickels ✌️ (somehow gave me war flashbacks to a scene that doesn't even exist lmao)

LYNETTE IS THE FUNNIEST SIBLING BTW. SHE'S MY QUEEN FOR THIS.

Clervie! Our dearest! I'm not fully sure what part in her design did it, but she barely looks like an NPC somehow. Like, yes, this is still an NPC base model, but... is it perhaps the hair? And the extra lashes??

Also, her calling Arlecchino "Perrie" made me sob. I wasn't ready to hear nicknames!!

The mention of Snezhnayan auroras also made me sob again as well. You know what? This entire thing made me sob.

Clervie's dread and horror at the thought of her own mother, her unrelenting spirit that kept her going in her fight for her fellow peers freedom despite the abuse that she will receive, and her unfulfilled dreams repeatedly being mentioned throughout this quest was heartbreaking.

I do have to say- the animations they released for Arlecchino helped a lot with the emotions we are supposed to feel for this quest. Not only was that good Advertising and promotion for the Arlecchino banner, it also set up the plot that would have not been well presented ingame had they chose to do that instead.

Crucabena and Clervie part of this quest were not the only ones mentioned in this quest, but also that damn dude that she killed with her heels! I personally like the way they released all those animations because the quest feels more emotional and alive now, and we could follow with the story better than before (and it effectively increased the hype)

Speaking of more alive, the facial expressions have definitely improved! This quest had them utilizing various expressions well, specifically for the playable characters, so, again, this really helped with the feel of the quest.

Additionally, adding a picture to scenes also set the tone really well. It's not that pictures have never been included in quests before, but the way these were framed(?) made it look way better than the ones before.

By the way...is it just me? Or did Paimon's voice somewhat mellow out for this quest? I had recently played some other story and world quests, and Paimon's EN voice is admittedly high-pitched and painful to hear in those, but for this quest, it's as if her voice was toned down (like Mondstadt Paimon, but with current Paimon energy). I'm hoping this was them taking the criticism from past and adjusting their instructions to Paimon's VA accordingly, because I loved Paimon's voice in this quest (that or I'm delulu)

Quick lore tidbits before I go back to gushing about this quest:

1. Arlecchino confirmed not from Fontaine (like I legit thought she may be Khaenri'ahn due to the blood moon thing she has going for her, but it's nice to confirm her non-Fontainian status)

2. Crucabena was the one who had a deal with Dottore on sending members of the HotH to him for experimentation. Anyone who was physically impaired or left alive after a duel to death are automatically sent to him. Clervie has described this as a fate worse than death... Peruere rejected Dottore's partnership offer once she became the next knave. Also, Crucabena used Clervie as an "example" for those who wish to escape, meaning Clervie received the most abuse (which apparently worsened as the years went by). Clervie lost hope sometime along the way and was basically suicidal as well by the time she and Arlecchino had their duel... Her mindset by that time is that the only hope for freedom to her is death. The popular theory of Clervie letting Arlecchino kill her is proven in a horrifying way with this discovery... (yes, she wanted Arlecchino to be the king, but at the same time, she took this situation as a chance to hit 2 birds with 1 stone)

3. Project Stuzha is apparently something highly dangerous, and Pulcinella and Pantalone are trying to get Childe and Arlecchino involved (Childe was told to aide the project by Pulcinella, while Arlecchino says she doesnt want the HotH to be involved in it)

4. Here is me reannouncing that I am in fact taking the L on the Freminet and Crucabena situation. Basically, the timeline is that at age 16, Clervie dies, and we are left with a 1 year time period for a 6 year old Freminet to enter under Crucabena (I'm guessing this is either a retcon or a means to hide the Arlecchino plot by not having them directly say mother in Freminet's character story 4). After that said 1 year, Peruere kills Crucabena and has spent several months in Snezhnaya before reviving the House of the Hearth and adopting Lyney and Lynette (perhaps the children of Crucabena's HotH simply stuck together during that time)

Basically, yes, Arlecchino is in her mid-20s. Not my personal cup of tea, but hey, genshin ages are confusing most days (Ayato is older than her, and Ayaka may actually be older than her as well... ugh I need a moment please... I MAY BE THE SAME AGE AS HER. NO-)

5. Freminet used to also call Lyney "brother". What changed that, I'm not sure (and if I had a nickel...), but the thought of baby Freminet following around big bro Lyney and big sis Lynette makes my heart melt. Freminet actually cried after Lyney basically told him how important Fremi is to him, so whoever made Freminet think otherwise... 😡 they better square up because we ride at dawn

ok back to me gushing

THE BOSS FIGHT? IT WAS SO COOL! It was beautifully animated, and the fact that they added this at the end?

The fear on the traveler's eyes upon realization of what true power Arlecchino held was amazing imo. We canonically cannot defeat Arlecchino in her boss fight! She will be a weekly boss that we can defeat, but in actuality, we really cannot beat the number 4 of the Fatui Harbringers.

We now have actual proof that harbringers 1-4 are not within our capabilities to challenge, and to add to that horror, this is us fighting Arlecchino with Lyney, Lynette, and Freminet. This is also actual proof that we, the traveler, cannot defeat a ton of other characters as well! (were cooked if we never get a power boost and plot armor✌️)

Also let me sneak in this picture:

Cunty as fck. Powerpuff girls energy. They're the Heathers, and we, the traveler, are Veronica.

And finally, the last part of my commentary that cemented this quest as my top 1:

Everything Arlecchino has done for the House of the Hearth, it was all thanks to Clervie and her dreams.

Arlecchino has shaped the HotH into a more honest relationship between her as the father and them as her children. Everything Clervie hated about the old HotH is now nonexistent in this version.

The children could be set free.

Duels are not to death.

They will not be sent to their doom if they lose.

This is everything that Clervie dreamed of, and this is everything Clervie tragically never got to see and experience because she lost all hope.

Clervie's story ended in tragedy, but Peruere lived and breathed Clervie's dreams for her anyway. Seeing the aurora was the start of Peruere finding the goal of living Clervie's dream, and now, Arlecchino strives to do her best to see those dreams come to fruition.

And the qualities that Peruere admired in Clervie are the same qualities that made her want Lyney to become the next king. Hopeful, caring, protective, passionate, and full of conviction. Lyney will take the mantle and live and breathe for Clervie's and Peruere's dreams someday.

Honestly, I have more to say, but I think this is a good place to stop for now. The dynamics of all these characters have made this experience worthwhile, and I hope that genshin continues with this sort of style in the future. Here's to more amazing stories from genshin!

Bonus screenshot while we are still here:

[anyoldfandom]

I am actually. I am so emotional over the Salazar parents and I need to share this to tumblr too.

A lot of stories where the MC is adopted I feel. Either dismiss the biological parents and the impact they have on the kid's life, or makes them evil and abusive, framing the loss of the bio parents as a good thing, or at least something we shouldn't think about just look at this new family.

But Genrex doesn't do that. From the start, Rex wanted to find out more about his parents - it's one of his primary character motivations, next to helping people. He loves them, even though he doesn't know them.

And the more he finds out about them, the more he realizes they loved him. Rylander is consumed by guilt but as Rex's first connection to his pre-Event life, the first thing he does is hug him. And when he tells Rex about his parents, the two things Rex knows is that 1) they were scientists, and 2) that when he was in danger, they were desperate enough to use their secret, experimental technology to save him. Technology built from their desire to help the world, to save countless lives and end countless suffering.

And then. When he finds out that they were dead, he doesn't stop caring. It'd be so easy, too, to tie it up there - his parents were good people, he got his answer about them, the end. But they don't. He doesn't. Because the show is saying once again that they are his parents. He still calls them mom and dad, even as the show makes it clear Holiday and Six adopted Rex as their son. Even as the show even parallels Six and One with Rex and Six (and I will talk about that more later if I don't forget, trust me), to really drive home how much they're family. Rex even says he considers the two of them family, and later that he considers Noah, Claire and Annie family.

He has new family, the show tells us, but his old family still matters to him. He's upset that he never has the chance to meet his parents, that everything he hears about them, about his time with them, is secondhand knowledge. It tells us clearly that not only does Rex still love them, but that he still wants to know them. And everything we find out about them reinforces the love that they had for each other.

We see Abuela and the family in Mexico, who connect him to his birth family and tell him that he was so loved back then, and still is now. We see their office in Abysus through Rex's eyes. The picture of him and his dad on his desk. The drawing Rex drew, proudly pinned to the wall.

We see it in the familiarity of the drawing. That that robot, that build, was what Rex created when he was lost and scared and alone - that it was made to keep him safe. That it first appeared in his mind in a place he felt safe.

The show says, tenderly and softly, that the love is still there. That the fact these people died was nothing but a tragedy, that their love is a big part of what made Rex who he is today - that every molecule in his body is filled with their final gift to him. That every time he cures someone, every time he uses a build, every time he makes a machine - we see the love that they had for him.

And the way he quietly absorbs his father's face. The way he freezes and whispers "Mamá?" when he finds out Zag-Rs has their mother's voice. The fact that she even has her voice as a testament to Caesar's love, too - that it was meant to bring comfort and safety. The way Rex yells at Caesar when he finds out they have a family property, a connection to their past, the way he fights to protect it.

And, none of this takes away still from Six and Holiday being Rex's family too. None of this removes the work either set of parents did for him, the love either set has - the show says that it was unfair that the Salazar parents were lost. That Six and Holiday are not replacements, that they still love him as parents but play different roles in his life. They can not, and have no desire to, replace the Salazars. But Rex needs parents, he needs protectors, and so they will do what they can for him - at first out of necessity, to keep this kid they barely know safe, but then out of love. They aren't replacing what was lost, but are doing their best to do what Rex's bio parents would do. And they do mess up in it - they mess up in ways Rex's bio parents might not have. Six is clearly bad with showing affection, affection we saw the Salazars give Rex so easily, and Holiday is overworked and stressed constantly, sometimes breaking under the pressure and snapping at Rex and Six, things we never saw the Salazars do.

It's just. It's about how sometimes things will not be the same. They will be different. That doesn't mean the people you lost aren't still with you.

[astrialuvs]

I’d love to hear ur personal headcanons for karma!!!

Headcanons for Akabane Karma as Himself | as a Friend | as a Lover

➻ PAIRING : akabane karma x reader

➻ CONTENT WARNING : my headcanons to these red-haired boy 😗🫶

➻ WORD COUNT : 845 words

a/n: it's actually my first time doing a request, so i'm sorry for taking a long time doing it. tell me what'chu think about it?

another a/n: also, i actually made three sets of headcanons (hcs for his character alone, hcs for his character as a friend, hcs for his character as a lover). though the other two are not yet done. so please bear with me 🙏 🙏 🙏 . (i might upload them tomorrow, though.)

I feel like he's a good chef but has a weird taste in food. I imagine him matching unbelievable types of food:

During a lazy weekend, Karma set out on his solo culinary adventure to indulge in his wickedness and hidden abilities. After catching sight of a fanciful idea, he resolved to prepare dishes involving the most unlikely pairings of ingredients.

In his kitchen, Karma created an exotic twist: a Chocolate-Soy Sauce Glazed Chicken Mélange that surprised even her own palate. He was surprised and delighted by the sweet chocolate dancing with the savory soy, which convinced him that there must be greater powers.

Karma then bravely went to doing a Strawberry-Wasabi Surprise dish. Sweet strawberries and fiery wasabi produced a unique taste—at least to his taste buds—that resulted in something delectably different from what is normally expected.

Continuing his culinary excitement, Karma made garlic-flavored pasta with marshmallows. Marshmallows, with their soft sweetness, worked unexpectedly well with the sharp garlic. The combination resulted in a dish that defied all traditional ideas about taste.

"Who says you can't play with food? It's all about bending the rules, adding a dash of mischief," he said to himself.

And, as Karma stood in front of his experimental creations with pride, he rejoiced at the prospect of pushing the boundaries of experimentation. During his one-man journey, he discovered that the most memorable meals are often accompanied by something unusual. For him, the kitchen became a zone of his imagination and creativity, leaving behind an appreciation for cooking.

I believe he has a soft spot for animals, particularly strays.

One sunny afternoon, Karma walked through the park, his steps light and focused. While he was enjoying the peace and quiet, he noticed a movement near a cluster of bushes. Nestled among the foliage was a stray cat—a small, scruffy ball of fur with curious eyes that met Karma's gaze.

His mischievous smile softened into a grin as he bent toward the timid cat, his hand slowly reaching out. He slowly handed out a piece of bread. The stray, at first hesitant, approached with caution. Karma's fingers touched the soft fur as he stroked the cat's back gently.

"There, there," he says, somehow sharing the feeling of loneliness to the cat.

In that one moment, Karma's tough exterior melted away, revealing a different side of him that was rarely visible. His eyes shone with genuine affection, and he didn't stop talking to the stray, quietly offering him words of tenderness. Karma had a deep affection for animals, particularly those in need, regardless of how daring or competitive he was. Afterall, he knows how it feels.

Karma's unexpected conversation with a stray cat evolved into an unspoken thrice of trust and understanding. However, the cat that had been nervous was now meowing contentedly beneath Karma's caress. In that serene moment, Karma's sympathy for stray animals demonstrated the depth of his character, reminding us that even the most unexpected people can have a soft spot for those in need.

Karma eventually stood up, giving the stray one last gentle pat before continuing his walk. The stray cat, now with a new companion, looked at Karma gratefully. In that peaceful park moment, Karma's compassion for stray animals demonstrated the depth of his character, serving as a reminder that even the most unexpected people can have a soft spot for those in need.

He who values the lessons he learned from Koro-sensei and applies it to his life.

Following Koro-sensei's death, the students in Class 3-E were enveloped in an atmosphere of grief. The once lively classroom echoed with a sense of loss and contemplation, leaving Karma and his classmates to deal with the void left by their beloved teacher.

For instance, each of them reminisced about stories that made them laugh, as well as memories of times when they grew and realized their fondness for each other through sharing experiences. Their teacher's presence stayed with them as a memory, inspiring them to pay tribute to the man by applying the skills and values he taught them.

As the days passed, Karma became aware of a slight change within himself. Koro-sensei's teachings rang true in his mind, altering how he saw and responded to life. The flickering wickedness in his eyes remained, but he had gained a better understanding of the importance of accountability and sensitivity.

Remembering Koro-sensei's teachings on resilience and compassion, Karma chose a different path. Instead of retaliating, he handled the situation without resorting to violence. He demonstrated a newfound maturity.

In the face of Karma's changed attitude, the group of students who were initially motivated by vengeance found themselves disarmed. Karma's resilience, strategic thinking, and compassionate demeanor helped to defuse the tension. Slowly, understanding replaced resentment, and the students exited the scene, leaving both parties safe.

While the pain of Koro-sensei's absence persisted, the students, led by Karma and others, turned difficulties into opportunities for positive change. Their journey continued, and Koro-sensei's indomitable spirit persisted within each student, ensuring that his legacy would always be a guiding light in their lives.

[sundrop-writes]

Dreaming Of You

Gar Logan x Fem!Mute!Powered!Reader

Part Two: Our Past, Our Present, Our Future

Summary:

After having an argument with Gar that nearly ends your friendship, you decide to finally get over your fear of using your own powers and finally embrace them. If you do things just right, you could finally get everything that you (and Gar) have ever wanted.

Gar Logan x Fem!Mute!Powered!Reader. Best Friends to Lovers. Smut, (Slight) Angst and Fluff. Set during Season 2.

Word Count: 18,000

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link | Series Masterlist

THIS IS A RE-POST. This is a fic from my old blog (a blog that was shadowbanned, forcing me to move). This fic is not stolen, it is completely mine, and I am just re-posting it to help people find my new blog, and to make my masterlist complete when I post new fics for this fandom.

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: general emotional angst (due to the reader and Gar having emotional distance from having an argument at the end of the other chapter), (very light) canon level violence, mentions of medical experimentation/medical torture, the reader character has medical trauma from years of illness, mentions of medical debt, manipulation and emotional abuse (from Doctor Caulder toward Gar and the reader), mentions of burns/burn scarring, mention of the reader being abandoned by her parents, mentions of vomit (no graphic descriptions), the reader character has a seizure, (likely) improper first aid performed for a seizure, the reader has chronic illness/chronic pain, use of prescription medication, the reader is more feminine (wears lacy underwear), the reader has a vagina and uses she/her pronouns. 

This chapter contains smut - both dream fantasies and played out sexual acts. The reader character is mute but all consent is enthusiastic and clear, biting/marking kink, some dirty talk, semi-public sex (having sex in the communal area of a house - also, coincidentally, the sex fic I have read where characters have sex in a space that just happens to have a camera in it), scent kink, oral - reader receiving, multiple orgasms (reader receiving), (slight) overstimulation (reader receiving), hair pulling kink (Gar receiving), it’s implied that the reader and Gar are virgins but it’s not lingered on and it’s not a plot point of the fic, unprotected sex, creampie, penis in vagina sex, rough sex, (idk how to phrase it?) marriage kink/commitment kink, passionate sex/love making, Gar calls the reader ‘wife’ (in a fantasy sequence), some mentions of blood (the reader scratches Gar’s back and draws blood by accident), I believe that’s it. 

A/N: I still think this is one of the most iconic things that I have ever written lmao. I love it so much and I'm so proud of it. Anyway, enjoy the repost.

...

After the argument, you didn’t see Gar for the rest of the day. 

When Dick came in to check on your progress with training, he immediately questioned why Gar was missing. You made up a lame excuse about how he had been feeling sick (which had to be translated to Dick by Jason) and Dick complained that all of you had to learn to ‘work through’ things like illness, but at least he didn’t question why Gar had locked himself in his room for the rest of the night and didn’t come to dinner. 

After you had washed the dishes and sulked through the rest of your nightly routine, you considered knocking on Gar’s bedroom door before finally going to bed yourself - but you just couldn’t bring yourself to face him. 

You had truly hurt him, and you weren’t sure how you were going to recover from it. 

As you laid in bed that night, so strung up with guilt that you couldn’t sleep, you stared at the ceiling. Of course, all you could think about was Gar. 

You thought back to when you had first met him - going over those first days of your friendship in your mind. The undeniable way that the two of you were drawn so close together. In friendship or in that unutterable, constantly denied romance - the two of you were soulmates. 

And you had fucked it all up. 

You missed your best friend so badly. You wondered where it had all gone so wrong. 

… 

You felt lucky that Doctor Caulder had taken you in. 

Before him, before the serum, your last chance at moving out of the palliative care ward would have been offering your body as a live cadaver up for experiential treatment. It was something that might have put a dent in your medical debts, but it also would have meant a lot of pain and torture as your body was used as a trial for vastly experimental medicine and treatments - none of which were guaranteed to prolong your life as the deadly brain tumors grew to consume your brain, seemingly trapping you in a loop of pain and torture for those last few years that you had. 

At the time, Doctor Caulder was a savior to you. 

He used the money he had from his dense inherited wealth to pay off all of the medical debt you had acquired from your lifetime of illness, giving you only one very small catch in the face of this intense generosity. He wanted your consent to try out his serum on you, claiming that it would either do nothing to change your condition, or it would be the magical cure-all that you had been looking for. 

(He conveniently let out the fact that in your state of unwellness, with your weakened body, there was a large possibility that the serum could overwhelm your senses, stopping your heart - but that was a risk he was more than willing to take.) 

Honestly - while you didn’t believe him - you couldn’t bring yourself to turn him down. 

You had no other options, after all. 

After he injected you with the serum and you woke up with your sight fully restored, you were shocked. It had somehow shrunk down the tumor in your brain enough that it was no longer pressing on your optic nerve, and you could once again experience the world in full, glorious vision. 

It was something you were entirely excited by as you arrived at what would be your new home. Doctor Caulder had described it as a ‘vacuum of scientific advancement against the bureaucracy of the world’. Naturally, you had expected some kind of cold looking industrial building, another medical center that you would be trapped inside for years to come. 

You certainly hadn’t thought that it would be a sprawling, gorgeous Victorian mansion in the secluded, peaceful countryside. 

He brought you inside and set down your bag. You were too busy marveling at the details of the architecture, the stunning antique decorations, taking it all in after years of being deprived of sight to truly notice anyone else in the building at first. 

You didn’t notice anyone else there until Doctor Caulder spoke to him. 

“Ah, Garfield, I’m glad I caught you.” 

You turned at the sound of someone’s name being called. Caulder had warned you that you would be living with several other people - people who he had helped and was continuing to help with their ‘unique conditions’. 

When you looked over at him, the person that Doctor Caulder had called Garfield, the only truly unique thing you spotted about him was his bright green hair. That, and the fact that he was startlingly attractive. 

Garfield paused his footing halfway down the hallway as Doctor Caulder spoke to him. When he turned back around to give the man his attention, you noticed that he had a candy bar poking out of his mouth as he held it there between his teeth, and a pair of large headphones over his ears with some kind of handheld gaming system in his hands. He reached up and moved one half of the headphones off to the side when he realized his full attention was needed. Then he bit off the candy bar, moving to shove the rest of it, mostly still wrapped, into the pocket of his large green hoodie. 

“What’s up, Chief?” He asked, his mouth obviously stuck together by the candy and some chocolate slightly smeared on the side of his mouth. 

“Garfield, please don’t talk with your mouth full.” Caulder - apparently the Chief, quickly scolded him. 

You guessed that he found it rude because he was more uptight and proper, more old fashioned. But it was something that you easily found adorable and charming. 

Garfield hung his head in shame and made a clear effort to swallow, running his tongue over his teeth to somewhat clean his mouth before he spoke again. 

“Sorry.” He mumbled quietly. “Did you need something?” 

It was then that he really eyed you up and down, as though he had just noticed you standing there. 

You felt entirely out of place, but tried your best not to look nervous, and simply smiled as his eyes landed on your face. You noticed a small tinge of pink come over his cheeks when he finally made eye contact with you. His eyes made a quick jolt back to the carpet, obviously nervous and not wanting to linger on you. 

“I’m sure you’ve heard Cliff mention my newest patient.” Doctor Caulder told him, gently motioning toward you. “Y/N will be staying with us for the foreseeable future while I explore her condition and any affects the serum has had on her.” 

Garfield nodded at this. The wild tendrils of his green hair bobbed in a very adorable way with the motion, and you suppressed a giggle because of it. 

“I’ll need you to show her around and help her get settled in for now, because I need to go up to my office and work on some notes while everything is still fresh in my mind. I’d like not to be disturbed for the next few hours, is that clear?” Doctor Caulder ordered, his voice calm, but oddly stern. 

Garfield’s face twisted slightly into a frown, as though he was afraid of the possible consequences if he did disturb the man. But nonetheless, he nodded once again. 

“Understood.” He said simply. 

Doctor Caulder gave him a curt nod and then walked up the stairs, leaving you in the hands of your seemingly meek, very handsome tour guide. 

He stepped toward you, and then realized the game console was still beeping in his hands. So he pushed a few buttons, shutting it off, and then he shoved it into his pocket as well before he slid his large headphones to sit around his neck. 

“Hi, I’m Garfield. You probably heard that. But you can just call me Gar. I prefer it.” He rushed these words out in a puff of air, seemingly still very nervous to be in your presence. 

You nodded at this. Before you could communicate in any way that you wouldn’t really be ‘calling’ him anything because of your mutism, he let out a huff - something akin to a nervous laugh and steamed rolled right into more conversation. He didn’t really seem to mind your silence. 

“Y/N, right?” He posed, easily remembering your name from when Doctor Caulder had introduced you. 

You nodded once again, giving him a small smile. 

“That’s a really pretty name. It matches you. I mean- I-” He stumbled over his words, clearly nervous that he had unintentionally said something flirtatious. “I’m supposed to introduce you to everyone, right? Come on.” 

He then took you on a tour of the sprawling house, his chatter filling the air in a most perfect way. The more he talked, the more he seemed to gain confidence around you. He became filled with energy, fueled by the things he was saying. Especially when he spoke about the house and the daily life that he lived there, pointing out the different rooms and where you could make yourself comfortable. His words filled the space so well that he didn’t seem to notice the fact that you couldn’t talk. 

As he took you on the tour, you came across the different eclectic members of the household and Gar introduced you to them. And you very quickly came to realize what Doctor Caulder had meant by ‘unique conditions’. 

If you didn’t have your vision freshly restored in order to see it, you likely wouldn’t have believed it. But they were very real. 

Gar introduced you to Cliff - someone who looked more like a machine than a man, squeaky joints and all. But it quickly became apparent to you that he had a shining personality underneath all that metal, and his humanity wasn’t easily defined by something like rust and bolts. He was working on a half-disassembled car in the large garage, and Gar explained to you how the mostly mechanical man was an ex-racer who had gotten into a bad accident and been put back together by The Chief. 

He then introduced you to Larry - who was in the kitchen, baking some kind of very tall, very impressive multi-layered cake (apparently in celebration of your arrival). He made a comment about you ‘being rather quiet’ and you just shrugged. They would probably be amused later when they found out why. 

Larry didn’t want to comment much or explain the reason that his entire body was covered in bandages, and you understood why. In your mind, you assumed that he had been badly burned and the bandages covered some kind of scarring. The visual reminded you of people who had passed through the palliative care ward with severe burns over their bodies and didn’t survive long because of it. But he seemed to move without pain and he was obviously thriving, so whatever Doctor Caulder had done for him - it had worked. 

Gar tried to introduce you to the last member of the household - Rita - but when he knocked on her bedroom door, he was met with silence. He simply told you that she likely wasn’t feeling well. And that you understood deeply as well. 

The house tour extended down into the basement, because Gar was very excited to show you his room. You couldn’t bring yourself to disrupt his rolling speech or dampen down his swell of excitable energy. 

He was showing you some of his movie posters - something for a movie called Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It was a movie you had never heard of before, and you only found yourself truly paying attention in order to learn about it now because Gar spoke about it with so much enthusiasm. 

“-it’s considered one of the first examples of parody ever in cinema, an effort to take horror, something that truly terrified audiences at the time, and turn it comedic. Like shining a light on that monster under the bed so he’s no longer scary. It’s brilliant.” 

Gar rambled on, his breath almost entirely escaping him as his enthusiasm overpowered his lungs. 

You couldn’t help but to feel a swell of fondness as you looked at him. 

His passion was so intensely palpable, it gave you goosebumps. It was a very old film that you likely wouldn’t have taken an interest in. But the way he talked about it - like it was revolutionary, like it was the most interesting thing in the world. It made you want to watch it ten times just to get to know him better, just to have a small taste of the passion that he felt so epically for it. 

You didn’t know it then, but feeling his overwhelming enthusiasm spreading in the air was the beginnings of your very intense crush on him. It was the moment that you started falling for him. 

“You know originally, Lou Costello scoffed at the idea of even making-” Gar suddenly cut himself off, a look of dawning crossing his features. “Woah, I’ve been talking for such a long time, haven’t I?” 

Technically, yes. 

But you would have been perfectly content to stand there and listen to him talk for hours more about this film or any of the others related to posters that he had on the wall. His enthusiasm and the way it was backed up by factual knowledge made him endlessly interesting to listen to. 

In response, you simply shrugged. 

Yes, he had been talking for a long time. But - you enjoyed listening. His tone and the abrupt way he had cut himself off made it sound like he had burdened you with his ramblings, and you weren’t sure why. 

“Sorry.” He giggled, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “I’m probably being so annoying. I haven’t even let you talk about yourself at all. What - what kind of movies do you like?” 

He seemed nervous suddenly, as though he had become self conscious in the conversation. 

You filled with nerves as well, coming to the realization that you would now have to communicate to him that you couldn’t talk. 

You motioned toward your throat, hoping he would be able to see the scar from the surgery that had stolen your ability to speak so long ago. Rather than understanding, Gar’s face knit with confusion. 

“What, did the sea witch steal your voice?” He asked. The action reminded him a lot of that cartoon mermaid, desperately tapping on her throat, trying to explain to others why she couldn’t speak. “Do you need a kiss from a handsome prince to get it back?” 

The words escaped him before he could stop it - and then he realized that it sounded entirely more flirtatious than he intended. 

He bit his lip nervously and you let out a giggle. You became entirely overwhelmed by your own nerves, and your undeniable attraction toward him. If you were feeling at all bold, you might have leaned over and kissed him in that moment. But something in the back of your mind told you that it was rude - that he hadn’t truly meant it, that it was strange to come onto him so soon after meeting him. 

When the awkwardness swelled inside of him, he rushed to speak again. 

“Sorry,” He blurted out. “That was probably insensitive. If you’re really mute, that’s like a disability, and you shouldn’t make jokes about people’s disabilities-” 

You vigorously shook your head, meaning to tell him that ‘no, I liked the joke’. 

But his eyes instantly grew wide, believing that you were shaking your head negatively, believing that he was truly being insensitive and rude. 

You raised your hands and began explaining it in sign language, and he sighed in defeat. 

“I’m sorry.” He said. “I don’t - I don’t understand.” 

Then, a look of dawning came over his face so strong it was almost as if a cartoon lightbulb appeared over his head. He then rushed into the other room - there was some ripping of paper (what you didn’t know was him ripping pages he had used out of a notebook so that you wouldn’t see them). After a moment, he rushed back toward you, thrusting a notebook and a pen in your direction. 

You took it happily, and began writing. 

‘Yes, I am completely mute. Yes, it is technically a disability. And yes, I did think your joke about the sea witch was funny. But… I don’t think a kiss from a prince will fix me.’ 

You passed it to him and after he read it, he gave a small chuckle. 

“Yeah, that wasn’t so smooth on my part.” He said. “What happened? To your voice?” 

You explained it to him. You spent a long time passing the notebook back and forth, explaining things to him about yourself and your life. 

You told him how you had been ill for as long as you could remember, and it had only gotten worse as you progressed into your teen years. And eventually, the mounting medical debt became too stressful for your parents so they abandoned you and disappeared with no way for creditors to track them down. They had left you orphaned in the most cruel way. 

Gar’s eyes danced with tears when he read this. You didn’t know it then, but he vowed to himself that he would always be by your side. He would be the one person who never left you, no matter what happened in life that might try to draw the two of you apart. 

‘Can I ask you something?’ You scrawled out, passing the notebook to Gar with careful curiosity on your mind. 

“Yeah, anything.” He replied. 

‘Why are you here? What is Doctor Caulder helping you with?’ 

You were tempted to add on something about how he ‘looked normal’ - but you didn’t want to accidentally insult him. 

“My condition… it’s uh…” Gar stuttered through his attempt at an explanation, and confusion flooded your features. “It’s probably just easier if I show you?” 

You nodded in acknowledgement that you understood, and Gar put the notebook aside and stood from the couch where the two of you had been seated, talking for hours. 

“Would you - uh - would you mind closing your eyes for a second?” He asked, once again draped in that nervous energy. 

You hesitated for a second, but then complied. You weren’t sure how him ‘showing’ you would go if you had your eyes closed. But you trusted him to harness in that condition - whatever strange ability the serum had given and not let it hurt you. You felt safe around him even though you had only known him for a short time. And you wanted to make him comfortable rather than arguing about it. 

You were curious when you heard some gentle rustling, and you cringed slightly when you heard what sounded like the cracking of bones. You hoped that whatever he was doing, it didn’t cause him any pain. 

Your curiosity became too great and you opened your eyes when you heard a low rumbling. If you weren’t mistaken, it sounded like the purring of a very large cat. 

Shock instantly overtook you when you opened your eyes to see that standing in front of you in the middle of the carpet - rather than Gar - there was a very large tiger with bright green fur. When your sight had been restored, you never, ever thought that this would be one of the first things you would get to see. 

Your first instinct was to pull your feet up onto the couch, and the tiger - which you quickly had to reason was Gar, who had somehow shifted his body into a different form - hung his head in shame when he saw the fear overtake your body. You didn’t want to be afraid of him. You shouldn’t be, right? He had been nothing but kind to you since the two of you had met. He wouldn’t use this odd power to endanger you. 

When you looked into those large animal eyes, you saw nothing but kindness. And you couldn’t resist the urge to step off the couch and lean out, petting a hand gently under his furry chin. 

It was then that you were struck with the realization. The dream you had of being married to a large green tiger - it had likely meant something. 

But you couldn’t bring yourself to linger on it. 

Instead, you scratched under his chin and he purred, and you giggled at the fact that such a large, possibly terrifying animal was so docile under your touch. 

(When Gar transformed back, you would deny that you snuck a glance at him changing back into his clothes. And you would definitely deny that you became obsessed with what you saw.) 

… 

Later that night, you met Rita when she came down to join everyone for dinner. She was a lovely, sweet woman. She was actually the only person (aside from Doctor Caulder) at the table who understood your ASL, though she didn’t seem eager to explain where she had learned it. You knew that everyone in the house had somewhat of a painful past, so you didn’t bother to ask. 

The cake Larry had made turned out beautiful. A towering masterpiece that everyone had to purposefully crane their necks around as they spoke to each other. You couldn’t help but marvel in wonder at it and the rest of the amazing spread he had made. Gar told you that it really wasn’t that out of the ordinary, seeing as cooking was Larry’s favorite hobby. 

You felt slightly bad for Cliff - seeing as he sat with an empty plate in front of him. But he seemed to show up to the meal mostly out of habit, family obligation, and a slight curiosity to get to know you. So you tried your best to answer everyone’s questions and be welcoming to the new friendships. 

You enjoyed the meal well. Everything was delicious, and compared to the food you once ate on the ward - it was heaven. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. 

Larry cut the cake and made sure that you got the first slice - which you selected from the towering variety of many different flavors. He cited that he didn’t know what your favorite flavor was, so he made a good variety as insurance. The taste of lemon was sweet on your tongue and you were enjoying yourself - when one of the lights began flickering. 

It was just a few flashes above your head, just for a few moments, but it was enough to send a sharp pain shooting through the middle of your forehead and instantaneously cause a wave of nausea through your stomach. You dropped your fork onto your plate with a clatter, and everyone craned their necks around the towering cake to look at you. Gar immediately got up from his chair to rush to your side, wondering what was wrong. 

“Are you okay?” He asked quietly. 

Your senses were overwhelmed by dizziness, a horrid feeling that your eyes were churning inside of your skull. Sharp waves of pain radiated out from the middle of your forehead and seemingly caused the world to turn wildly underneath your feet. 

You didn’t know that the harsh unwellness was visible all over your face - from your unpleasant expression to the light layer of sweat that had so quickly formed over your skin. 

You shook your head, attempting to confirm to him that you were not okay. But this only caused the pain to worsen, and you held back a harsh gag, trying your hardest to keep the amazing dinner inside. 

“You need to lay down.” Gar said quietly. 

You felt safe under his touch and you let him guide you as he pulled out your chair. He put one hand around your back and used the other to take your hand as he helped you up and guided you away. You let your eyes fall closed against the harsh light as his hand came to rest on your waist, a calming comfort against the harsh pain throbbing through you. You let yourself lean on him for support as he did as promised - took you to lay down. 

You were partway up the stairs when a voice disrupted you. 

“Garfield.” 

Doctor Caulder called after him harshly, causing Gar to pause his movements. You leaned on the bannister and kept your eyes closed. You had to concentrate hard on willing yourself not to vomit while Gar was distracted with the conversation. 

“This is an important opportunity to study her condition, you should be taking her to-” Caulder began to argue against Gar’s actions, but he was cut off. 

“She needs to lay down.” Gar argued quietly. “She’s had a long day. She needs rest. You can do your studies tomorrow.” 

You didn’t know it, but this was the first time that Gar had ever gone against the man on anything. Doctor Caulder stood there in shock at Gar’s sudden shift in attitude while Gar put a hand on your lower back once again and helped you the rest of the way up the stairs. 

He helped you into bed and pulled the covers over you. And then he got a hot cloth to put on your forehead, and got a bucket to put beside the bed in case you did throw up. It was then that you knew you would never feel properly cared for again unless it came from him. 

When he thought that you weren’t paying attention, half sleepy and half drowned in the pain, he leaned down and laid a gentle, timid kiss on your forehead, right above the cloth. 

…

Later that night, after everyone had fallen asleep, Gar snuck out to town and picked up a book on ASL. He was especially careful that his teeth didn’t pierce any of the pages. 

He used the rest of the night to study, and he greeted you the next morning with a tray of gentle breakfast food (porridge, hopefully something that wouldn’t aggravate your upset stomach) and Advil. Despite the pain throbbing through your head, you broke into a beaming smile when he signed the words ‘good morning’ to you. 

It was then that you realized just how much you were going to have to suppress your feelings for him. 

… 

Later in the day, Doctor Caulder was carrying out his tests as promised. 

He had you in a different part of the basement - in an area that essentially looked like an operating room. Just seeing the tables and all the cold medical equipment triggered a lot of your fight or flight instincts, but you tried your hardest to remain calm. Especially because Gar was by your side, even though he likely could have been playing video games or doing something else a lot more fun. He told you that he would stay by you the entire time to make sure that you were comfortable. 

You tried to relax and trust the process. 

Doctor Caulder had adjusted the table, propping up the top of it so that it was much more like a chair. And he had wheeled in a large machine that consisted of a series of lightbulbs - something that turned out to be a strobe light, set to make specific patterns. He had taped several electrical probes to your head, ones connected to an EEG machine. Although he knew that this procedure was likely to trigger a seizure, he said that it was important for it to occur because your neurological problems were closely tied to your powers, and the areas of the brain that the serum had affected. He said that it was something important to measure - even if a seizure happened. 

“Just face forward, and keep looking into the light.” Doctor Caulder explained. “It will go through a series of flashing patterns. I need you to try your hardest to keep your eyes open, and stay focused. It’s important that we record your brain activity while this is happening without disruption.” 

You nodded in affirmation. You weren’t looking forward to the pain that it would cause considering that your head was still thumping with a migraine from the night before, but if he considered it necessary, you would do it. 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Gar asked. “How do you know this isn’t just gonna cause more harm?” 

He was standing beside the table, holding your hand, and you were entirely grateful for his presence there. 

He had seen the way you had reacted to a relatively dim chandelier bulb flickering at dinner the night before. He thought that this would be disastrous. 

“Garfield, if you continue to question me, then I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Doctor Caulder told him curtly. “You can’t keep disrupting the process like this. We need to move forward.” 

Doctor Caulder glared at Gar, giving him a moment to make his choice. To see if he was going to speak up and argue or remain quiet. Gar looked to you, wanting to see if you were truly okay with all of this. Nerves boiled in your stomach, but you feigned a smile, and squeezed his hand tighter, assuring him that you needed him there - right by your side. 

Gar then nodded at Doctor Caulder, who stood behind the machine with the lights and turned it on. Gar flinched hard against the lights as they began to flicker. He turned his head away and closed his eyes, but he kept a tight hold on your hand. 

Though it went against every screaming, pained nerve in your body, especially the ones pulsing through your head - you fought to keep your eyes open. Your carefully tuned hearing picked up on the scribbling needles of the EEG machine, Gar’s breathing. You could even hear the electricity sizzling in the bulbs as they went through three long flashes and then turned off. Three long flashes, and then off. 

You survived the first pattern well before it switched to two quick flashes and then a period of seemingly prolonged darkness - something that wasn’t any more than three whole seconds in reality. 

The moment that it switched to the intense, rapid strobing - you felt it. The tingling in your hands, the dizzying haze that said you were only moments away from having a seizure. 

You had no time to warn either of them, especially considering that this was the first seizure you had post-serum, and it had unexpected size effects. 

As your muscles became tight and your body began to violently seize, the house itself began to quake around you. It was as though the building were at the epicenter of a violent earthquake. Later, Doctor Caulder would come to the conclusion that your seizures now caused ‘rapid bursts of psychic energy’ to be released from you, completely uncontrolled by you. He realized that you would be needed to put on a high dose seizure medication to prevent any further incidents. 

In those moments, though, it was chaos. 

Between the shaking of the house underneath you and the unpredictable seizing of your muscles, you quickly rolled off the table. Gar easily caught you in a moment’s notice. Across the room, Doctor Caulder made a similar movement - reaching urgently to catch the EEG machine before it fell off of its own table. 

When the quaking stopped, and you were left quivering in Gar’s arms, he couldn’t help but to feel a rush of disappointment as he saw the obvious play out before his eyes - Doctor Caulder was far more eager to save his data, to preserve the research that you had given him than to actually take care of you - his patient who was clearly in need. 

“What was that?” Gar breathed out, looking from your unconscious face to the surrounding room. He didn’t think that it was a large coincidence that an earthquake had struck at the exact same time as your seizure and had lasted exactly as long. 

“I believe that her powers were responsible for that.” Doctor Caulder theorized. “We’ll likely have to do more research to fully comprehend it-” 

He abruptly cut off his own words when the scribbling needles of the EEG machine stopped. 

Gar began peeling the probes off your forehead and Doctor Caulder only looked up toward you when the EEG flatlined as it was disconnected. 

“Garfield, what do you think you’re doing?” Caulder barked at him. 

“We’re done right now.” Gar said, his voice choked off by his anger. “Clearly, this isn’t helping. She needs rest.” 

Gar resisted the urge to say more. He resisted the urge to berate Doctor Caulder for harming you. He resisted the urge to swear. He resisted the urge to threaten to run away with you - taking away Doctor Caulder’s precious source of research so that the two of you would never be seen again. 

He had no clue that his anger was so intense that it flared up in his eyes, threatened to invoke his transformation against his will. 

He felt calmer when he looked down at you, and petted a hand across your forehead. Although you were forced into unconsciousness because of the seizure, you looked peaceful and calm with your face so still, your eyes closed and your muscles finally relaxed. He hoped that you would feel better soon. 

That was the day Doctor Caulder decided to start keeping a tranq gun near the operating table. 

… 

Things were quiet for a few days after that. 

Doctor Caulder said that he needed time to go over the results of the EEG, and he didn’t want to induce anymore seizures in you for fear that it might bring down the house. So he did let you rest. 

But in the interim, he didn’t check up on you or attend to any of your medical needs. He locked himself in his office to contemplate the science of it all while Gar stuck by your side. He held the bucket and rubbed your back while you puked, he held a hot cloth to your forehead when you needed it. He held a spoon up to your lips to feed you because your hands were too weak after being rocked by such a harsh seizure. 

After a few days, you were almost thankful to Doctor Caulder for it. You and Gar were growing incredibly close so quickly because he refused to leave your side, and you had never felt so lucky to have someone like him in your life. 

You hesitated when Doctor Caulder called you into his office upstairs. 

He made a poor apology for the incident with the lights. He said that he was sorry for causing you pain, but it was ‘necessary’ to explore your condition, to map your brain and find out how the serum had affected you. 

He said that the next step would be further exploring your strange powers. The powers you had accidentally discovered while transitioning out of the hospital. When one of the nurses had been attending to you, you had looked into her eyes, and you couldn’t even fully identify the feeling at the time. But suddenly, you knew this shocking, painful information. One of the other patients on the ward who you had come to know as a friend wasn’t going to live much longer. And when you had asked the nurse about it, she had accused you of snooping, reading through files - because the information was supposed to be confidential. 

But Doctor Caulder - who had witnessed the conversation - easily saw it for what it truly was. An unnatural power given to you by his serum. 

He then called Gar into his office as well - someone you obviously trusted and could work well with. 

He set it up as a game. 

He had written down several things on flashcards. You and Gar would sit across from each other, and Gar would read one of the flashcards, fully capturing the idea in his mind. And then you would use your powers to try and push into his mind - figuring out what was on the card without him ever speaking a single word or giving any hints. 

As you sat across from him, preparing to begin, you were incredibly hesitant. 

‘Are you sure about this?’ 

You wrote this as a message to Gar on one of the blank index cards. They were intended for you to write the answers that you retrieved from his mind during the ‘game’. You intentionally held back with the message, not fully describing your worries. You wanted to ask if he was okay with you breaching the privacy of his mind, but you were worried about Doctor Caulder seeing it, because you knew the man didn’t like to be questioned. 

You flipped it around to show Gar, and he simply nodded after he read it. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Gar assured you with a smile. “It’s just a game, right?” He grinned. “It’ll be fun.” 

You didn’t quite think so. But you tried to take on his positive attitude. 

“Let’s begin.” Caulder said. He was standing behind Gar in a very imposing manner, reading the cards as well to ensure that he didn’t flub the answers just to please the Doctor. 

Gar picked up the first card and read it, and he concentrated on it for a moment, making sure that the idea was focused in his mind. He gave a small nod, and then looked up toward you, knowing that he had to make steady eye contact with you in order for you to use your powers. 

Pushing past your discomfort, you did as you had been instructed. You stared deep into those big beautiful brown eyes, and you purposefully breached the surface into his mind. The first thing you were met with was a rich visual of several golden retriever puppies frolicking in a field of grass, happily yipping and prancing around, almost tripping over their clumsy new feet. 

You soon withdrew - even though it was a happy scene that gave you joy, you knew that you had the answer. You had an unconscious grin on your face, and that easily made Gar giggle as you flipped over the message you had made to him and wrote down your answer on the other side. 

‘Puppies’

You lifted up the card and showed it to Doctor Caulder, who took a glance down at the card in Gar’s hand (which said ‘DOG’). He nodded at you, his stern face not flexing for a moment to show any sign of positivity. He picked up a clipboard from a small table on the chair beside Gar and began furiously scribbling. 

“Continue.” He said, not looking up from his fast paced notes. 

Gar looked down at the next card, took the same moment of concentration, and then looked back at you with a small grin on his face. 

This time, rather than feeling like you were committing some kind of crime or doing him a grand disservice, you looked into his eyes and pushed into his mind with a gleeful joy - as though the two of you were sharing a delightful secret. 

The next rich visual you saw featured Gar himself. He wore a pair of tight jeans and a leather jacket with some red tee shirt underneath, and he walked up to a red car - a very fancy, vintage looking car. He opened the door, got inside, and adjusted the mirror to look at himself before he stomped on the gas pedal and the car sped away with a screech. It was a very ‘cool guy’ moment, something that made you giggle because of the stereotypical absurdity of it. 

When you drifted back into the real world, you went to the next index card, and had more of a difficult time figuring out how to phrase your answer. 

You went with:

‘Driving a car?’ 

When you held it up to show Doctor Caulder, he checked Gar’s card, which simply said ‘CAR’. He frowned, and you thought that you had gotten the answer wrong. 

“You have to concentrate more, Garfield.” Caulder scolded him. 

Gar’s face dropped into a frown, and it made your chest twinge with sourness. You thought that a face as sweet as his should never have to frown. 

“You got it right.” He told you quietly, before flipping to the next one. 

You nodded. You hated the way that Caulder treated him. If you could scream at the man, you would. 

Gar waffled for a few moments, looking at the card with blank eyes before he then looked up at you. There was a slight glassiness swimming there that told you he was ready to cry, along with the hesitation of a quivering lip. You wanted to end the entire exercise and simply retreat to the basement to play video games with him, but you knew that Caulder likely wouldn’t let you get away with that. 

So you continued. 

You used your powers once again, purposefully entering Gar’s mind. 

You were surprised by the scene you were met with. 

It was a vision of you and Gar - it was almost like a beautiful painting, like a fantastic daydream. 

You were off in some grassy field, seemingly the same place the puppies had been. Lush greenery, boundless blue skies, warm sunshine that you could almost feel tingling against your skin. The two of you were holding hands - and the most peculiar thing that stuck out to you? 

Your attire. 

Gar was wearing a formal black suit with a green tie and a green vest to match his naturally wild green hair. You were wearing a long, lacy white dress that you couldn’t mistake for anything other than a wedding dress. There was a bundle of flowers looped around your head in a large crown, with a long, flowy lace veil going down your back, and a bundle of flowers in your free hand that wasn’t holding his. 

It was a wedding, a marriage. 

At the time, however foolish it was, you didn’t consider the scene to be any specific desire on Gar’s part. You simply thought that he was trying to communicate the idea - the concept to you. You thought that it was just part of the game. 

When you pulled yourself back to reality, you felt entirely confident in your answer as you wrote it down. 

‘A wedding’

When you flipped it over to show them, you were grinning proudly. 

Gar’s face immediately dropped - embarrassment clutched at his stomach and panic overtook him. Caulder sighed with annoyance as he looked at Gar’s card, which said ‘WATER’. 

Before any further discussion of it could be had, Gar dropped the cards and they scattered over the floor. He rushed out of the room, moving so swiftly that he was practically a blur. Doctor Caulder called after him, complaints wafting through the air. 

You didn’t care to listen to the man. You got up and chased him, almost tripping over your own feet to get to him. 

You caught him as he zipped up his jacket, clearly ready to escape out the basement door and go into town (something he told you he was not permitted to do, but often did anyway). You stepped right in front of his path. He sighed hard through his nose and tried to dodge you, and you stepped in front of him and kept blocking him. Eventually, he was forced to look up at you. 

It was then - when you saw the look of a truly kicked puppy spread across his features, naked embarrassment lingering in his eyes - that the truth clutched at your stomach. You got the sense that what you had seen was truly private. 

Part of you wanted to prod at him about his desires and ask why he had been thinking about that. But a larger part of you worried far more about the fact that you had upset him with the freakish invasion by your powers, and you wanted to remedy it. You wanted to save this amazing new friendship. 

With the index cards and pen still in your hand, you quickly wrote a message to him. 

‘I’m sorry.’ 

You wrote down, and then quickly flipped it to show him. 

“It’s fine.” He huffed, clearly eager to escape the conversation. 

Once again, he tried to dodge around you. 

Once again, you blocked his path. 

And then, you wrote down something else to show him.

‘It’s not fine. I shouldn’t use my powers on you like it’s a game.’ 

“The Chief needs to explore your abilities, right?” Gar sighed quietly. 

‘Not at your expense.’ You reasoned. 

Gar was silent when he came into this information - like this was the first time he had ever truly considered that the Chief’s methods were unethical. 

‘We should make a deal. I shouldn’t use my powers on you unless it’s an emergency. Your mind should be your private space. I don’t get to go poking around in there for fun.’ 

You scribbled this down with haste, feeling very emotional about it. Then you handed it to Gar. 

He gave a small smile and nodded after he read it. 

“That - uh - that sounds fair.” He said, chuckling nervously. “And we… we don’t have to talk about what you saw.” 

You both nodded and dissolved into giggles at this. And then, he took off his jacket, and fired up his X-Box so he could teach you how to play Cuphead to help the two of you forget about the whole thing. 

…

Back in your room at Titans Tower, so long after those first amazing days of your friendship with Gar - you fell asleep deep in thought about him. You couldn’t stop going over those early days in your mind. Thinking about all the intense kindness he had given you when the two of you had first met. 

Thinking about all of it truly made you realize how badly you had fucked up. You genuinely wondered if your friendship with him would ever have any chance at recovering from the cruelty you had shown him. 

You were genuinely stuck between a rock and a hard place. You thought that if you told him about the things that had happened - about the visions you had seen - even if you stressed to him that it had been by accident, then he would feel that you had violated his privacy. He would be wounded by you seeing into his mind and not reporting it to him right away. He would be upset that your powers had put a wedge between the two of you. And now, he was upset because you had stolen his secrets and you weren’t confiding any of yours in him. 

You were a bad friend. And you didn’t know how to make it up to him. 

You woke up the next day feeling like crap.  

You quickly realized that Gar was avoiding you. He did finally come out of his room because Dick banged on his bedroom door, demanding in a harsh voice that if his illness was really that serious, he needed to get it checked out. And Gar came out shoving a hoodie over his head saying that he was fine - while wearing the saddest expression you had seen over his face in a long time. 

When you placed a coffee cup down in front of him as a peace offering - dark roast filled one third with vegan marshmallow flavored creamer, just how he liked it - he distinctly ignored it. He didn’t even look at you as he got up from the breakfast bar stool, taking nothing more than a dry piece of toast for breakfast before he stormed off toward the training room. 

He placed himself in a secluded corner of the gym with his headphones blasting music, doing harsh pushups and pummeling the punching bag. He was making it very clear that he wanted to be left alone. And even when Dick called all four of you into another room for a verbal quiz on The Art of War (where you wrote down your answers on a white board) - Gar refused to make eye contact with you. 

Even when you drew a satirical comic of Dick’s Robin cape being propelled by a fart (that you labeled ‘pent up aggression’) - Gar’s face didn’t flinch from the hard stone it had been set into. It made Jason snort water out of his nose and caused Rachel to call you both ‘immature’. And it got you a verbal lashing from Dick and three weeks of washing the dishes - by hand. So not worth it considering that Gar hadn’t even cracked a smile. 

Gar’s cold indifference toward you rolled right into dinner. Gar didn’t flinch or try to take sides when Jason and Rachel broke into an argument about what had happened during game night. Jason brought up how stupid the concept of the game had been and he and Rachel began arguing about the rules. 

(“If I’ve never seen the movie before, I should get a new question!” 

“That’s not how it works, dickweed! Trivia is supposed to be difficult because you don’t know the answers!” 

“So not true. Trivia is a test of memory. How am I even supposed to remember the answer if I don’t know the damn source material?!”) 

The argument lasted long enough for you to finish your meal. 

When Dick realized they were debating who was the true loser of the bet you had made, he pointed out that regardless of any bets, you had to do the dishes as punishment for the dumb little drawing you had made. You didn’t care all that much as long as it got Jason and Rachel to shut up - but Jason was all too smug about it as he handed you his plate. Once you had finished cleaning up, something you found oddly calming, a nice distraction from the chaos of the last few days - you found yourself wandering to Rachel’s door. 

Much like you, she didn’t talk about her powers often. 

Especially not since she had been tricked into summoning her demon father to earth and then she had been forced to kill him because of what he did to all her friends - the people she considered family. But you knew that like you, she had some kind of capability to see into other people’s minds - to delve into their memories or walk the long, winding halls of their thoughts. You knew she might be the only other person on earth who might be able to understand what you were going through. Someone who could give you some kind of solid advice about it. 

After steeling yourself with a sharp breath, you raised your hand and knocked, waiting to see if she would even answer. The music that she was playing stopped, and after a moment, she opened the door, a look of surprise knitting over her features when her eyes fell upon you. 

“Y/N.” She greeted you in a quiet voice. “What is it?” 

‘I need to talk to you.’ You signed to her. You had some hope that she would understand what you meant, but her face was immediately overtaken with confusion. 

“I’m sorry - I.” She sighed, quickly cutting herself off, looking for the right words to explain it. “Between Dick’s whole list of mandatory reading stuff, and the sparring practice… I’ve been meaning to, but I haven’t had any time to study sign language,” 

She had genuine regret in her voice, which you could appreciate. 

You exhaled through your nose, a deep sigh. 

You gently pushed past her, inviting yourself into her room to settle in for the conversation. It did frustrate you that ASL wasn’t just a common language that was taught in schools, especially because it was psychologically proven that it was easy for toddlers to pick up on it with their brains being at a developmental age for it. It frustrated you that sometimes it was difficult for you to communicate with the people around you. But you tried not to let it get to you often. 

You got your cell phone out of your pocket, gesturing with it to let her know you would be texting her the things you needed to say. It was a simple, easy system. You invited yourself to sit on her bed, flopping back among the messy, unmade dark sheets as you carefully chose and typed out the words you needed to say. Rachel settled back into her desk chair, turning on her music once more, adjusting the volume to a low hum that settled into the background. You recognized it as the Arctic Monkeys and silently admired her taste in music. 

‘Have you ever accidentally seen something you regret?’ 

You sent the message. It took only a moment to race through cyberspace and you heard Rachel’s phone ping where it sat on the desk beside her. 

She picked up the phone and looked at your message. She then looked back at you with her eyebrows knitted tightly, a mixture of confusion and deep thought pulling them tight together. 

“Well there was that one time I accidentally walked into the bathroom when Jason forgot to lock the door-” She began. 

You cut her off with a raised hand and a pair of wide eyes glaring her down. 

You looked back to your phone and began typing another message, wanting to clarify what you meant. 

‘With your powers. Have you ever seen something with your powers that you didn’t want to see?’ You typed it out quickly, hitting send. 

Rachel read it over, placing her phone against her chin pensively as she contemplated the answer. 

“I… I don’t know.” Her voice was thick with thought. “I used to have these horrible nightmares. Almost every single night. And now I realize that those nightmares are what led me here. And I wouldn’t have been able to stop Trigon if I hadn’t seen those things.” 

Your throat tightened up. 

You and Rachel had never really talked like this before. You almost felt bad asking her for advice, knowing your problems were very different from hers. Quite pedestrian compared to the woes of somebody who had literally stopped the apocalypse and saved your life, and everyone else’s. You were worried about a school girl crush and she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. 

“Why, what did you see?” Her curiosity leaked through her lips. She had quickly connected the dots to realize that you wouldn’t be asking questions like this if you hadn’t seen something of significance. 

Naturally, you weren’t going to tell her the details. Not only because the things you had seen were incredibly graphic, revealing, and private, but because you did suspect that she had some kind of small crush on Gar. And you didn’t want to crush her small hope of being with him and make her upset. Especially considering you had seen what she could do when she was upset. 

You opened the one-way text conversation and thought for a moment, carefully contemplating what you would tell her. 

‘I saw something private. Something I probably wasn’t supposed to see.’ You sent the vague words, and she read them over quickly. 

“What, like a sex dream?” She posed. 

There was a laugh on the edge of her voice, as though she was only joking. But the accuracy of the comedic prod scared you. You wanted to change the topic quickly - before she truly sniffed out the truth. 

‘Doesn’t matter.’ You sent quickly. When she saw the three small bubbles pop up, indicating that you were typing more, she simply waited. ‘Have you ever felt weird acting on information you’ve gotten from your dreams? Doesn’t it feel like cheating the system? Like you should just shut up and pretend to be normal?’ 

Rachel sighed, a sharp breath that clung to the insides of her throat. She placed her phone down in her lap and leaned back in her desk chair, swaying slightly with the swivel of the rolling chair’s base. 

“I don’t think any of us can just pretend to be normal.” She noted quietly. 

Rachel’s words were calm and wise. It was something she had probably realized about herself a long time ago. It was a truth you had yet to fall to. You caught glimpses of the future in your dreams, you could see things about people they never dared to admit to themselves. You were in love with a man who could turn himself into a tiger at will, and yet, your heart still cried for something that resembled ‘normal’. 

Rachel saw it written all over your face - that warring. And more of that oddly aged wisdom came pouring from her lips before she could stop it. 

“What’s that saying?” She pondered aloud. “‘What’s normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.’” 

It was a saying you had never heard of before, but it was oddly comforting in those moments. The idea that ‘normal’ means something drastically different for everyone. 

When you didn’t say anything, didn’t pick up your phone to start typing, Rachel continued. 

“I mean, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be the spider, or the fly, but…” 

She trailed off for a moment, getting lost in thought. She looked up at you when she had found the proper words, her eyes filled with a steely determination. 

“Look, somehow, I saved Dawn from a coma.” She firmly reminded you. “She didn’t give me an open invitation to go poking around inside her brain, but she needed me. And I needed her. I know having the ability to see inside people’s minds can be weird. But you shouldn’t just go around pretending you can’t do it because you’re afraid you’ll hurt people’s feelings, or whatever. You could save their lives.” 

You knew the information you had obtained wasn’t exactly life saving, but she had a point. An excellent one. Maybe the reason your powers were acting up like this was because Gar was reaching out to you. Maybe it was because he had felt the same way about you for a long time now and he didn’t have the guts to tell you either. So unconsciously, he was reaching out, trying to show you his feelings so he wouldn’t have to risk getting hurt.  

‘Thank you. That actually really helps.’ You sent the message and gave her a smile, hopping off the bed and leaving the room once again. 

…  

You had some time to kill before going to talk to Gar. 

You really wanted to talk to him this time - truly wanted to conquer everything you had been holding back over these past few days. So you were hoping that everyone else would be in bed asleep so they couldn’t interrupt the two of you. 

You took up some of the time with a nice, long shower. Which was partially interrupted by Jason banging on the bathroom door, complaining about how long you were taking - once again. And you took your time getting ready afterwards. 

You did your hair neatly and smoothed nice smelling lotion all over your skin. Of course, the thought did occur to you that the ‘conversation’ could lead to you and Gar having sex. That’s what had been so prominently on his mind for the past few weeks. That thought likely did influence your decision to put on a pair of skimpy, cute lace underwear and forego wearing a bra underneath your pajamas. A thin matchy cotton tank top and shorts set. 

Your stomach was ripe with bubbles, absolutely full of air and anxiety as you sat on your bed, waiting for more time to pass. There was a book in your hand that you barely knew the name or contents of as you tried to kill more time. Your eyes flicked over to the clock. It was almost one in the morning. Surely you had waited long enough. 

You didn’t bother with socks or slippers, your cold feet eager and quiet on the floor as you sneaked your way to Gar’s room. You were surprised to find empty, his wide open door revealing a messy, unmade bed without him in it. You hovered in the doorway for a moment, almost losing your courage and going back to bed. 

But then your eyes landed on his nightstand. 

There was a wide picture frame holding the picture of him and his parents. And tucked into one of the outer creases of the frame’s wood was something else - two photobooth pictures of the two of you. The pictures were from the first time he had snuck you out of the house to take you to the arcade at the roller rink. You had taken the other two pictures off the set of four, and always kept them in whatever journal you were currently working on. 

Seeing the memento kept so close to him, so dear - it filled you with a fresh wave of confidence and desire. You turned around, determined to find him. Luckily, there weren’t that many places to check. 

The kitchen and living space were empty. The bathroom was empty and the doors to the security room were shut - meaning Dick was likely in there, researching something, occupied. The only other place to check was the training room. 

Gar was in there, putting himself through another rigorous training routine. Clearly he couldn’t sleep with the fight the two of you had still weighing on his mind. And he was quite a sight to behold. 

He was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxing gloves and black sweatpants that hung dangerously low on his hips. He was pounding away at the heavy punching bag, clearly trying to take out some of the frustrations that you had caused to run ramped inside of him. He was aglow with sweat, the tips of his green hair hanging down in his eyes, sticking to his forehead. His tight abs were slick and shiny in the light in a way that made you want to lick your lips. 

His attire easily revealed the delicious cut V of his hips and even a slight bit of pubic hair where he hadn’t properly tied up his sweatpants, and they were beginning to slip slightly due to his activity. You could see a rather impressive bulge, signifying that he was definitely not wearing any underwear. It swung around freely as he worked, punching hard at the weight bag. You had to force yourself not to become distracted by the movement of that mighty snake inside his pants - especially now that you knew what it felt like against you when it was throbbing and hard. 

He either hadn’t noticed your presence yet or didn’t care to interrupt his workout to acknowledge you.

“If you came to train, don’t let me bother you.” 

Gar huffed quietly when he finally paused his movements for a moment. He sounded so entirely wounded, and the words caused pain to radiate through your chest. He leaned down to pick up his water bottle between the two clunky foam gloves without taking them off. He took a large gulp from it while he not-so-subtly eyed you through his peripheral vision, clearly waiting for your reaction. 

“Apparently that’s all I am to you lately.” 

He added on after he swallowed the water, deadly quiet. His words were barely louder than the metal creaking as the punching bag continued to swing from the residual momentum. But you heard him absolutely clear. 

The sentiment weighed on your heart like a pound of bricks. 

You knew there were no words to explain it to him. You knew he would still be angered at you for using your powers on him without permission, even if it was by mistake. You couldn’t explain how it had been a mistake, how it had only been with him. You still didn’t know exactly why or how it had happened. 

After he gulped down a healthy dose of water, he tossed the bottle aside and rose to his full height. For the first time all day, he finally cast his attention over toward you. His face was set with one of the most sullen expressions you had ever seen. You hadn’t seen him this upset since he had attacked that man back at the asylum. Every bit a kicked puppy, as you looked at him, you tried to find the right words, but came up empty. You almost turned to walk away, almost burned dry of the courage you needed to face this. 

But with Rachel’s words still ringing in your ears, you looked into his glassy eyes, and for the first time in a long time - you pushed into the quiet realm of his mind purposefully. You needed to dig to find something that would help you. Something that could remind you of how perfect you were with Gar. 

You were surrounded once again by the thick, plush world of his own imagination. 

Even if it wasn’t that different from the world you lived in. 

The two of you were in the training room, with him wearing a blindfold as you practiced the unorthodox drill that was assigned to you. You got in a few good hits with the practice sword in your hands, and ultimately tackled him to the ground. 

The two of you ended up in a position that wasn’t too different from the reality of the day before. Though it was playful and light, rather than hypersexual and startled. 

You pinned him down with your thighs on either side of his waist, your hips sitting dangerously above his. Your body weight was balanced partially on your knees and partially on him. You held your wooden sword to his throat, poised in a threat you would never carry out against him. 

He swallowed hard, his throat muscles jerking underneath the wood. You knew it was more because of the rising heat your compromising position was causing him and not because he was actually afraid of you. Or perhaps him being just a tiny bit afraid of you turned him on that little bit more. 

You let out a laugh as you tossed the sword away, leaning in to take off his blindfold and give him a kiss on the cheek. 

“What was that for?” He asked, regarding the unique new affection you had never really shown him before. 

‘Kiss it better.’ You signed, before leaving in and leaving a deeper, more heated kiss fully on his mouth. 

You forced yourself out of the thick, hazy daydream then. 

This was the answer. No words would be able to fix this - you needed to kiss it better. 

‘Kiss it better.’ 

You repeated this to yourself in the real world, confirming it as the truth. 

Gar read the signs you performed and - out of context - it draped him in hopeful confusion. 

He continued to stare you down with that delicately confused look enveloping his features as you marched across the room toward him, your steps over the cushioned mats of the floor filled with pure determination. 

He wondered if he had read your signing wrong, or if you were really planning to kiss him. Part of him thought you were going to hit him, or finally flip out on him for whatever perceived crime he had committed. And when you did it - he could hardly believe that it was truly, finally happening. That it wasn’t some dream. 

You reached up and grabbed him by both sides of his sweat damped head. And after years of waiting - you pulled him into your lips. 

Without hesitation, going on the pure fire in your belly, you kissed him. 

You channeled every ounce of raw need that had built up since the first time he had sucked you into a daydream where he so ferociously kissed you. His shock was evident at first. His whole body went stiff under your touch, which almost caused you to pull away. But a small moan rang out from the back of his throat - something that made you instantly dizzy with need. It made your lips seek out his with even more force, making your grip on his head clamp down as if to not let him escape. 

He began to kiss you back with just as much ferocity as he had in his dreams - echoing out another moan as he truly appreciated the taste of your lips. 

You felt him move but you didn’t open your eyes to look. You heard the tearing of velcro as you gnashed your teeth across his top lip and then latched onto the bottom one. Behind your back, he was taking off the boxing gloves, throwing them somewhere on the floor with a careless, quiet thump. Then his arms were around you, snaking around your waist. His flat palms went up the back of your shirt like impossibly hot magnets and pulled your body to his. He closed the small gap you had left for fear of being rejected - he welcomed you into his world with the utmost sincerity. 

Your shirt stuck to him because of the sweat he had worked up, and you wanted it off immediately. You wanted all your clothes off. You wanted to feel the naked rawness of the bulge you could feel swelling against your hip. But for now, you were too distracted by the other sensations he drowned you in to even consider pulling away to strip down. 

You were too caught up in the wicked work his tongue was doing as it snaked past your lips. You were obsessed with the loving way his hands held you. You lavished in the heat of his body as it radiated out against you like a wildfire. One of his hands was sprawled out in the middle of your back underneath your shirt. The other cupping the back of your head like you were the most beautiful, delicate doll he had ever had the pleasure of holding in his life. 

Eventually, both of you were forced to pull away from the kiss - succumbing to that formidable human breath. 

“Is this real?” 

Gar said quietly, seemingly almost more to himself as he pulled away from your lips. 

You opened your eyes, running a hand down to gently cup his cheek. He felt your gaze on him and opened his eyes. For the first time in days, he stared into your eyes so intimately and the dream became real. 

“Are you forreal right now?” 

These words were a bit louder. 

Not loud enough to break the sacred bubble of hot mingled breaths, spit, and sweat you had created. He wouldn’t dare do anything to shatter this if it was just another sleepy fantasy. But even if it was a fantasy, he still wanted to ask for your consent. That much you realized. 

Hesitantly, you tore your hands away from his glistening, flushed skin to formulate your reply. 

‘I want you.’ You told him simply. 

Without another moment of hesitance, he used the strong hold of his arms around your torso to take you to the ground. 

You wrapped your legs around him upon instinct. Your arms came up to clasp around the back of his neck as your ankles fumbled somewhere on his back. The action unintentionally drew your hot centers closer together. 

Gar bringing you down elicited a surprised squeak from you, which staved off into light laughter as your back met the mats. The laughter was easily echoed by him, deep and hardy. The sound turned into a playful, pleasurable growl into your neck as he ran his teeth along the skin there, nipping, marking his territory. You didn’t think his growling would ever be so sexy to you - but fuck, the noise ran a shock up your spine. It made your pussy clench around nothing and sent a wave of wetness into your underwear. 

This was going to be fun. 

“You have no fucking idea how long I’ve wanted this.” 

Gar grunted into your neck, his voice already deepened by the cloud of his lust. His tongue licked a hot path down your skin into your cleavage. His hands ran down your sides to grip your hips through your shorts, his touch feeling blazen through the material. 

“Wanted you.” He groaned, sounding so lust-drunk already. “You’re so fucking perfect.” 

You had some idea. 

But just hearing him say it, feeling the words vibrate against your skin made you moan for him. It made your fingers dig into the flesh of his shoulder blades. You were desperate for some kind of anchor on the plane of reality to assure yourself that you weren’t lost in the depth of another beautiful dream. 

You were vaguely aware of the fact that there was probably a camera somewhere in the room. Maybe multiple cameras seeing what Dick’s personality was like. Hell, Batman was the one who had designed and built the place and Dick was only teaching you guys what he had been taught. He probably used the footage of you guys training to review your weaknesses so he could make you better - build better soldiers. 

But all those thoughts melted out of your mind the moment that Gar lifted up your shirt. He continued the wet trail with his tongue down the middle of your stomach, stopping once and a while to make sloppy kisses against your skin. You knew exactly what his intentions were when his hands curled into the waistband of your shorts and underwear all at once. 

Your legs fell limp as he started to pull them off. 

A fresh wave of heat surged through you, making you absolutely drunk as he tossed your clothes behind him. He poised himself between your bent knees, kissing up your thigh with a tight hold on it, holding himself up with the other hand. 

“You smell so fucking good.” He growled out, low, heavy under his breath. You moaned out, only getting drunker with his words. “Fuck, I can’t wait to taste you.” 

You didn’t have a moment to sign to him, to give him some kind of encouragement or permission before he was diving in. He got low on his knees, wrapping both his hands possessively around your thighs. He leaned some of his weight on his elbows and from what you could see - canted his hips toward the mats, fruitlessly humping against the softness, seeking some kind of relief. 

He used his hands to spread your legs - not that it was much of an effort. Your legs practically fell open at his touch. You whimpered hard in the back of your throat as you felt his breath fanning out over your wet pussy. A heavy moan swelled on your tongue when he licked a broad stripe across you from your hole to your throbbing clit. 

“Shit, you taste so fucking good.” 

He hoisted your legs over his shoulders so your feet rested comfortably on his back, laying so he was more flat on his stomach, clearly getting comfortable. He laid a few tender kisses on the inside of your thigh. Then he looked up at you with dark, ferocious eyes. 

“Just, ah… smack me on the head if you want me to stop, okay?” Gar told you. 

Clearly, he was saying this for your safety - putting in a failsafe in case you changed your mind or became overwhelmed. But it came off as a sharp, pleasant warning of what was to come. 

Your pussy throbbed and you only ached for him to hurry up, biting your lip as you looked down at him. You nodded briskly, communicating that you understood his words. You had a feeling you most certainly wouldn’t want him to stop. 

Gar’s fingers dug into the tenderness of your thighs as he ducked his head down, latching onto your swollen, needy flesh. He soon brought a whole new definition to the words ‘eating pussy’. Like with everything he did in life, he did with the utmost enthusiasm and passion. He lapped at you, put his beautiful pink lips around you and sucked. He kissed your pussy just as passionately and wholly as he had your mouth. 

He shoved his tongue between your folds and dragged it in long, languid strokes. Clearly he was eager to lap up every last bit of your essence that he could - eager to devour you. He moaned into your pussy, moaned just as loudly as if he were the one being pleasured. It made the vibrations of his tongue on your clit even more deadly. Your hands were on his hair in a minute, both of them grabbing up as much of the gorgeous green as you could and holding tight. The action pulled a rumble from deep in his chest as he was satisfied by the pleasant pain of you tugging at his roots.

“You’re so fucking good.” 

He moaned into you, and you echoed back a high pitched noise that you hardly recognized as your own. 

“Everything about you is perfect. Every inch of you is perfect.” 

His grip around your thighs became even more possessive, his fingers digging into you hard enough to leave marks. Your lust clouded brain couldn’t clock the pain. You could only enjoy the view of his gorgeous hands gripping your skin. He labored over your clit, determined to make you cum. He flicked his tongue hard and fast over your clit as his hot breath fanned over you in quick, lustful pants. The orgasm washed over you so suddenly, a rubber band snapped from his actions. The tension had been built up over weeks of him living inside your mind, torturing you through lustful dreams.  

Your back arched, every muscle in your body pulled tight. Your thighs quivered and spasmed around his head as he continued to grip them hard. Your mouth became a mess of foreign noises that sounded daft and dumb to you but were absolute music to Gar’s ears. 

He chased you hard the whole way through it, shoving his tongue deep inside your throbbing cunt so he wouldn’t miss a single drop of your juices as they flowed out of you. You thought perhaps he might come up for air when your orgasm subsided. The aftershocks were still shaking your thighs, one of your hands falling to lull by your side, the other petting fondly through Gar’s now even messier hair. But it seemed you were wrong. He was just getting started. 

He growled with a feral hunger, the noise making your hips jolt, unintentionally canting toward his face as a whimper fluttered from your lips. He lapped at you in a drunken, lazy way for a few moments before he went back to eating your pussy with a renewed kind of starvation. 

Nipping at your swollen pussy lips in a way that made your entire body jolt, forcing his tongue inside you and fucking you with it while his nose bumped at your thrumming clit. Your second orgasm built up so quickly on top of the first. Your fingers curled in his hair as an unspoken signal to it. The feeling of your nails digging into his scalp only driving him to makeout with your cunt with an even deeper desire. 

He soaked up your practically pornographic moans with reverence. The wear and tear on your extremely damaged vocal cords began to hurt your throat, but the noises were absolutely unstoppable as they poured from your lips. His talented tongue was forcefully driving the moans and whimpers from you. He loved the feeling of your fingers ripping at his hair, leaving a pleasant sting across his scalp. He didn’t let up at all as your second orgasm plowed through you. 

He wasn’t satisfied even as your voice was echoing the wrecked, harsh moans of a third. 

He had you panting, your lungs struggling for air. Your muscles twitching with the excess of adrenaline and electricity. You whimpered pathetically as he tongued over your intensely sensitive clit again. Deciding it was time to give in, you reached over and tapped him gently on the top of the head. 

He looked up at you with those beautiful, wide brown eyes. This time not a lick of innocence or confusion anywhere to be seen - his irises completely overtaken with a deep, primal lust. 

You crooked your finger at him, motioning for him to come back towards your face. He kissed the inside of your thigh a few more times. He unintentionally smeared your sticky wetness, which had gathered on his lips in a heady, thick coating, across your skin. 

“I love your pussy so fucking much.” He murmured into your skin. 

Hearing him spout such filthy words without shame sent another wave of heat rolling through your belly. You had no idea how you were still so needy after cumming so many times, but Gar had easily done that to you. 

You reached over and gently tugged on his hair again, bringing his attention back to you. You suddenly became very aware of the fact that you knew exactly what you wanted, but you didn’t know how to ask for it. Surely, there had to be a sign in ASL for intercourse - but you just didn’t know what it was. You had never felt the need to look it up before now. You decided to improv, knowing that Gar would get the meaning either way. He always understood when it came to you. 

You raised your hands, making a partially closed fist with one hand and sticking your finger into it. You knew that it was probably a rather juvenile motion. To make your point perfectly clear, you mouthed the words ‘fuck me’ in an exaggerated way, hoping it would be easy enough for him to pick up on. 

“You want me to fuck you?” 

He gently shucked your legs off his shoulders, sitting up on his knees. He wiped your essence off his mouth with the palm of his hand, a delighted, surprised expression falling over his features. 

You nodded swiftly, enthusiasm spreading across your face, biting your lip as you could barely contain a giddy smile. 

“I mean, I don’t have a condom or anything… should I go find one?” 

He moved slightly as if to get up and leave you, but you were quick to trap him, hooking your knees around his thighs and squeezing tight. This touch was a good enough signal to bring his attention back to you. 

‘Don’t worry about it.’ You signed to him, firm and final. 

He clearly wanted to question you, but there was something heavy dancing in your eyes, and he didn’t want to ruin the moment by pushing it. 

(You were infertile. Just another thing your illness had taken from you. If it meant this moment with Gar would be a bit more worry-free, then you’d take it. If it meant he would break up with you down the road because he wanted kids that you couldn’t have… then you’d just enjoy the time with him that you were given.)

“Okay.” He breathed quietly. 

Your attention shifted dramatically when his hand moved to adjust his cock in his pants, which was straining harshly through the fabric. It was a long, thick outline like a shadow beaming out from the black fabric, with a damp spot at the tip. Fuck. 

Eating you out had turned him on so much that he was leaking precum into his pants, quite a lot of it. You latched onto your bottom lip at the sight of it. You couldn’t help but to outright stare now that you were allowed to look - lavishing your eyes over the thick, magnetic outline of his beautiful cock. His hand gripped it once more, adjusting himself, trying to make his throbbing cock more comfortable where it strained against the fabric. It made the sight even hotter somehow, and your eyes jumped up to his to see the almost shy look on his face. Even after what he’d done, he was shy about you staring at his bulge. 

‘Show me.’ 

You egged him on, trying to be encouraging. You wanted to play up the obvious desire that you knew was prominent on your face by pouting your lips and batting your eyelashes for him. He raised his hand to the edge of his pants, but his muscles strained, hesitant still. 

As a show of good faith, you sat up slightly, peeling off your tank top, which was now stuck to you with sweat. Your skin appreciated the cool air of the room, and your ego preened at the way Gar’s eyes devoured the newly revealed skin. 

He let out a harsh breath before he stood up on the spot and took his pants down, letting them fall to his ankles and kicking them away. 

“I thought you might laugh at me.” He said quietly, insecurity racking his voice. “Because… ya know… the carpet matches the drapes.” 

Laughing was the last thing you were thinking about doing. 

As you laid there, propped up by your elbows, staring at him, your mind could only focus on how entirely fantastic he looked. His body was so perfect, his muscles built, building up more each day with the training. His whole body covered in perfect, smooth skin, surrounding a gorgeous, filthy prize that you had only dreamed about being this amazing in real life. 

His cock sprang out from a nest of green pubic hair - which yes, ‘the carpet does match the drapes’. But you found that to be nothing to laugh at. There was absolutely nothing laughable about the gorgeous, nine inch monster that stood proudly in front of you - smooth skin covering hardened, gorgeous flesh just like the rest of him. With a drooling, bright pink tip just ready for your lips to be wrapped around it. 

‘Why would I ever laugh at such a beautiful prize?’ You told him, assuring him that you held nothing but admiration and lust for his body. 

A light dusting of pink came over his cheeks, absolute flattery from your words. He dropped down to his knees once again. His cock bobbed so deliciously as he moved, and you knew that would be so whipped by the ability to have it. When Gar realized the power he could hold over you with sex - you would be done for. 

“Jason thought it was pretty funny.” He shrugged, his voice gruff with the memory of it. 

‘Jason is a clown.’ You assured him. 

The conversation was cast aside when he gripped your ankles, playfully tugging you across the mats toward him - something that caused more giggles to erupt from your throat. 

Then, he was hovering over you on his hands and knees once again. With one hand beside your head, the other came over to grasp your chin with two fingers. It was so light and careful compared to his previous touches. He peered down into your eyes, making your stomach seize up with the sheer amount of love and affection he stared you down with. 

If you didn’t feel the same way for him, you might have backed down from the towering might of his feelings. You might have been tempted to run from something so divinely grand and beautiful. But no - you wanted to be his. You wanted to make him yours. 

‘Take me.’ You mouthed. 

Your hands were numb and useless at your sides. Your body was stilled by the cosmic depths of his affection, hoping your silent lips alone would be enough. 

Gar leaned down and swept your mouth into a kiss. His thumb on your chin rubbed sweet circles on your skin as his lips smoothed into yours. Your tongue reached out to eagerly dive into the cavern of his mouth. Soon his touch was gone from your face as your hands woke up to find him, to reach out for the perfection of his body. 

You eagerly sought out to touch his arms, his back, his ass, anything you could reach. He used his hand to hoist your knee gently over his thigh, opening you up to him. Then he poised his cock perfectly at your hot, leaking entrance. 

“You sure about this?” He breathed across your cheek, pulling away from the kiss to ensure your consent one last time. 

You nodded with the most frantic posture you could muster, impatient breaths spilling from your nostrils and pouring across his clammy skin. 

Satisfied with this, he rolled his hips forward. Finally, after weeks - no, years - of waiting in quiet agitation for him, you became complete. 

Even with his massive size, his cock slid easily inside you. 

Your pussy was readied by the many orgasms he gave you, your muscles relaxed and naturally slicked up for him. He fit perfectly like he belonged there, your hot inner walls pulling him in. Your hot cunt clung to his cock in a way that made him groan deeply into your neck. The feeling made his buttocks tense as he pulled together his last ounces of self control to not lose it - to not pound into you like a careless sex doll. You were perfect, and you deserved to be treated perfectly. 

“Fuck, you feel so good around my cock.” 

He groaned, leaning down on his elbows. He trapped you completely in his warmth, pressing his body firmly into yours from chest to chest to where he was smothered deep inside you. 

“You’re so fucking perfect. Fuck, Y/N.” 

You dug your nails into the muscles of his back - hearing your name on his lips with such a gravelly desire making your pussy squeeze around him. After a few restrained moments, he finally pulled his hips back and began to move. It started off as a slow, deliberate grind, a slow drag of his hips into yours, but it quickly became unhinged. Not that you minded one bit. You wanted to tempt that animal inside him - you wanted to see his rougher side.  

The sloppy sound of skin slapping against skin echoed through the room as he hammered his hips into yours. The sounds almost completely drowning out the quiet wave of your pathetic whimpers and his possessive growls. He tried to trap the sounds in the skin of your neck, while gnawing mindlessly at your skin, sure to leave some kind of mark on you. 

He was impossibly heavy and hot inside you, hitting all the best spots. His cock drove more electricity into your nerve endings and absolutely milked you for everything you could give. His knees pinned open your thighs where they jolted and jumped, your body so overstimulated from your previous orgasms that they wanted to clamp shut on his hips to keep him from moving. Your unconscious wanted to pin him down and hold him there - wanted to hold him inside you so that you could feel so impossibly full forever. 

And then, just as you felt another orgasm coming to form like a screeching fire in your belly, he dared to raise his head from your neck, dared to look into your eyes. 

Before you knew it, you were tumbling once again through the thick curtain of reality and into his mind. You were pulled against your will into another one of his fantasies. 

In the fantasy, you were on your back, still, completely naked. You were slicked with a sheen of sweat with his thick, pulsing cock deep inside you. But this was slightly different. The material under your back was most certainly a mattress - plush, more giving than the stiffness of the padded floor of the training room. It had an almost too soft layer of silk sheets covering it that your skin stuck to unpleasantly with the sweat. 

Your hands were poised on Gar’s chest, your nails digging into the skin there, leaving light marks. One of the things that stood out most to you about this picture was not the fact that Gar was having a fantasy about fucking you, but the ring on your finger. Seeing as this was his mind, he was the one who had put it there. Quite clearly a wedding ring or an engagement ring. It was beautifully ornate, poised on the correct finger for marriage. It held a bright green stone in the middle - green like a certain someone special to you. 

“Fuck, I love you so much.” 

Dream Gar moaned as he pounded into you, his hips taking on a sloppy rhythm as his orgasm drew near. 

“My beautiful wife. Mine. Finally fucking mine. You’ve always been mine, haven’t you?” 

‘I’m yours.’ 

You found yourself mouthing the words without even realizing it, whipped out of the fantasy world so harshly once again. A very small part of your mind wondered if it had been a small slice of the future that you had seen or if it was simply a conjuring from Gar��s imagination. 

You didn’t have the time to think or care, because your body went into overdrive. The Real Gar’s forehead was now resting on your tits. His hands created a tight grip on your hips as he pounded into you harder, harsher, deep grunts spewing from his lips each time his cock settled back inside you. 

“Please cum for me, Y/N.” His words came out as a whining beg, something so wonderfully small from the man splitting you open on his cock. 

He kissed between your breasts, his thumb coming to rub harsh circles on your clit, sending jolts right through you. 

“Cum on my cock. Please.” 

With the vision still hot on your mind and his words searing through you, the orgasm tore you up like a rabid animal. It was like nothing else you had ever felt in your life - like your entire body was on fire, being entirely consumed by Gar, by his touch, by his love for you. Finally being owned by him, finally having the one thing you wanted, needed most. Finally having him, full and whole. 

You screamed so loudly it hurt your throat, something you knew you’d be feeling for days afterward. Your whole body shook around him while your eyes screwed shut, your head tilting backwards as the pleasure was exorcized from you. 

You felt a hot dampness under your fingertips that you recognized as blood. In the back of your mind, you realized that you had gripped him hard enough for your nails to cut him - but he didn’t seem to care. In fact, it only spurred him on more, if the deep, ferocious grunts pouring from his lips were any indication. He was absolutely wild as he chased his own orgasm, breath fanning out in hot grunts against your breasts as he bucked wildly into your spent, tired hips, making your muscles twitch with bitter overstimulation. 

“Fuck! Y/N!” He cried out as he came, finally spilling his thick, hot cum inside you. 

You let out a small moan at the feeling. It became even hotter when you felt his cum pooling around the base of his cock, where you were connected, and leaking down between your cheeks. He lingered inside you for a few moments, petting his hands up and down your sides while your hands laid numbly on his back. He pecked small, delicate kisses across your clavicle that were almost an irony to the whole interaction. It made you smile. 

You were quickly falling tired from the massive aerobic exercise and post-orgasm haze, disappointed by the fact that you had to get up and make your way back to bed. You hoped Gar would let you sleep in his. It came as a bitter shock when he pulled out of you, leaving you empty and cold as he moved away from you so suddenly. When you blinked, he was standing, bending over with his back to you as he picked up his pants and righted the legs so he could put them back on. 

What he did next came as even worse of a shock to you. 

“I - uh… I understand if you don’t want this to affect our friendship.” He said, just loud enough for you to hear him. His tone was flat, completely void of emotion. 

“I totally get being horny and just… needing someone. We’ve been locked up here for weeks, and like. Like you said, Jason’s a clown.” He let out a laugh, but it was hollow and tired. He clearly didn’t even think his own words were funny. 

The words were so strange in those moments they took far too long to process through your sex-hazy brain. 

Was he really insinuating that you might go to Jason for sex? Was he trying to… let you down easy? Was he saying that he only wanted to be friends? Friends with benefits? 

Was he seriously saying that he didn’t love you? 

Your head was spinning with questions as you propped yourself up on your elbows, your whole body stiff as those beautiful, orgasmic chemicals faded away. It left you tired, shocked, and… feeling used. Your eyes scanned over Gar’s back as he tied up the drawstring of his pants. You focused on the dark red, deep, partially bleeding marks you had left. You had marked him, whether he liked it or not. You had some claim to him. You should. 

“I’m gonna stay for a while and finish my workout.” He told you quietly. “Do you need help getting back to bed?” 

When he came over and offered you a hand, you brushed it away. For the first time ever, you felt cold and unaccepting of his touch. You felt angry with him. How dare he invite you into his mind, show you how much he cared about you - how dare he fuck you with so much love and passion and then try to brush it all off as if it were nothing? 

‘I’m fine.’ You told him, hoping your coldness could come across in tired, limp handed signing. 

You forced yourself up on quivering knees and then onto your feet. You gathered your clothes where they had been carelessly tossed and shoved them back onto your used, dirty body. You would have preferred a shower first, but you preferred the precaution of drapery in case you did run into anyone on your way to the bathroom. 

“Oh. Okay. Cool.” 

These were Gar’s last words to you before you stormed out of the training room, going to the bathroom to ruminate on the whole experience by boiling yourself in hot, steaming water. 

…  

You thought about it for a long time while you were in the shower. 

Just stood there, under the hot spray and let your mind concentrate on the things Gar had said. He had fucked the living daylights out of you, ate your pussy like it was his fucking job. He was apparently having daydreams about doing so while calling you his fucking wife, and then once it was all said and done - he backed down from it. He told you that he ‘understood’ if you only wanted to be friends. 

He was afraid. 

It was like everything else in his life. He could transform into a fucking tiger, but he was afraid to bite people. He didn’t want to use the fantastic power that had been given to him. For years, he hid away with Doctor Caulder, a man who emotionally abused him and manipulated him. He had been too afraid to stand up for himself, too afraid to leave the house and chase the things he really wanted. 

And with you. He was clearly terrified you were going to reject him. He wanted a life with you, he wanted to worship you. He wanted you and your heart, he wanted your everything. But he was too afraid to voice it. He was too afraid he’d look like an idiot if you didn’t feel the same way. 

That’s probably why he had unconsciously reached out to you, unconsciously broadcasted his fantasies to you whenever you were near. And you’d thought it was your stupid powers acting up. 

Just like with kissing him to initiate that amazing sex - you were going to have to shake off your fear of rejection so that the two of you could be together already. 

… 

You woke up the next morning with a pounding migraine. 

Even with the preventative medications Doctor Caulder had prescribed to you to help with your seizures and migraines, the tumor that still lived inside your brain did get to torture you occasionally. When you lifted your head from your pillow and saw the gray, gloomy sky looming over San Francisco, the raindrops racing down your window, it didn’t take you long to figure out the cause of your pain. You groaned, falling face first back into your pillow, not wanting to get up. 

The ever present pain from coming from your head was topped off by soreness that had spread through your whole body - undeniable evidence that what happened between you and Gar last night wasn’t just another dream. Dreams don’t have consequences. Especially considering that your pussy was aching hard, still sore from having his impressive length splitting you open. On top of it all, your throat was stinging with an almost flu-like ache from having screamed so much through your surgery damaged vocal chords. 

You really hoped Dick would let you have one day off from training. You probably could have gotten through it with just your body being sore. But the migraine was already ravaging you, already turning your stomach sour with systematic nausea. 

You heard a knock on your door and sighed quietly. 

You had just barely hoisted yourself into a sitting position by the time the person entered. Squinting through your tired eyes, you were able to makeout a flash of green and immediately knew that it was Gar. 

“Hey, you don’t look so good. You feelin’ alright?” He knew the look that always settled upon your face when you were overtaken with such intense pain. He hardly needed to ask. “Where’s the bottle?” 

You motioned toward the drawer that held the item he spoke of - your hot water bottle, which you used to help ease the bitter pain of a migraine. He opened and closed a few drawers before he found it. Your eyes gently closed against the harsh light pouring in from the hallway, too sensitive to the light to actually look at him. 

“It’s okay, lay down.” He told you, his voice a comforting lull past the aching thrum in your forehead. He patted your thigh gently through your blanket, and you eased back onto the bed, throwing a forearm over your eyes to block the light. “I got it.” 

He went to the kitchen and filled the rubber bladder with boiling water, returning quickly with it and a glass of water. You took the now very hot water bottle. You gave him a small moan of gratitude as you placed it down on your pillow and pressed your forehead into it. 

In a practiced routine that only spoke to how much he loved you, he closed the bedroom door, blocking out the harsh light of the hallway. And then he walked around the bed to close the curtains, blocking out any potential light from the outside. He placed the glass of water down on your nightstand with a harsh clink that only radiated through your skull so painfully because of the migraine. Then you heard him open the nightstand drawer, digging around for your medication. 

You trusted that he knew which ones you needed right now. You trusted that he didn’t need your advice on how to take care of you. It was something he knew well after so long. 

You felt his fingers brushing your open palm, then felt the round tablets of your medication left there as he pulled away. 

“Sit up and take these.” He said quietly, voice barely above a whisper, as if he was afraid to hurt you with a single decibel. 

He used a gentle grip on your forearm to hoist you into a sitting position, and you swallowed the medication dutifully with the water he’d brought. 

“I’ll tell Dick you need to sit out of training today.” He explained quietly. “You need anything else?” 

‘One thing.’ You signed to him, your hands weak and tired. 

Though your pain was disruptive, and you were glad Gar was not acting any different after what had happened last night, you couldn’t wait any longer before doing this. 

Before he could question what that thing was, you leaned in. Your lips easily found his in the darkness and you planted a smooth, gentle kiss on his mouth. 

‘Don’t wanna just be friends.’ You signed, opening your tired, painful eyes to see his reaction to your words. ‘I love you. I have loved you for a long time now.’ 

A broad smile came across his face, his expression of pure joy practically glowing in the darkness. 

“Yeah. Awesome. That sounds amazing. I love you too.” His voice was slightly louder now, his joy overriding his caution for your hypersensitive, pained ears.

He felt absolutely giddy - this was what he had been waiting for, dreaming of for so long. He wanted to climb in bed with you and lay by your side for the rest of the day. But he knew that he needed to attend to other things, and more importantly - you needed your rest. 

“Get some rest now, okay?” 

He tucked you into bed, made sure the covers were up over your body, full and warm with the hot water bottle under your head before he left the room once again. 

It wasn’t long before you heard voices coming from down the hall. 

“Where’s Y/N? We’re doing balance drills in ten minutes.” Dick’s gruff voice echoed down the hall, very obviously directed at Gar, who he’d sent to wake you up.

“She needs the day off. She’s got a wicked migraine and she needs rest when it gets like this,” Gar told him simply, hoping Dick would respect him at his word. 

“We don’t get days off, Gar.” Dick pressed. “All of us have to train through pain, or injury. Do you really think some psychotic asshole is gonna care if you have a little headache while they’re trying to kill you? Do you think they’re just gonna come back another day? Do you think they’re gonna stop shooting at you if you have to stop and bandage your boo boo?”

His words cut through you, causing a sallow pain to rise up in your chest. It was something you’d been hearing since your childhood - since your treatments and hospital stays had caused you to miss too many days off and your teachers quickly stopped taking pity on you. You had always been told to just work through your pain, that the world won’t stop for you. You considered getting up and just going to training. You wanted to tough it out just to show Dick that you could, that you could puke into a garbage can and keep going, that you could boot and rally. 

You heard footsteps coming down the hall, and in your pain heightened sensitivity, you heard the metal of the doorknob shift as someone put their hand around it. The sound of Dick coming to get you out of bed anyway. 

He didn’t get the chance, though. 

“Leave it, Grayson.” Gar’s voice growled - a harsh, sharp sound that you had rarely ever heard from him before. “You don’t understand what she’s going through, and I won’t have you pushing her until she pukes on the floor just to satisfy your ego. She already trains harder than you ask and you know she could probably kick your ass,” 

You heard a harsh sigh, a deep breath through nostrils - Dick’s surrender. His footsteps disappeared down the hall, and Gar’s followed shortly after. 

Your heart bloomed with affection, awed by the blanket of protection he had put around you. 

You really were his. You always have been. 

...

When Gar was getting dressed after his shower later that day - he came across a small box in his underwear drawer. It was the ring that Rita had given him before he left Caulder House, a very expensive looking vintage piece from her days on set. Gar tried to insist that he couldn’t take something so nice, so sentimental from her. But she had closed it tight into his palm with the promise that it would be yours someday - that he would use the polished emerald ring to propose to you. 

Of course, she saw that big, beautiful, dangerous thing brewing between the two of you from a mile away. Gar considered marching down the hall and giving it to you right then there. But he tucked the box back into his drawer. In honor of Rita’s vision - he would make it old Hollywood, romantic. 

He had plenty of time.

THE END.

[hee-blee-art]

Have you ever done the whole spidersona thing? Whats your spideysona?

I have! I don't think I've ever posted about them though. it took me ages to dig up these drawings from last year, but here they are:

this is my spideysona! her name is gwaine stacey, aka spiderspiral. she was intended to be a spiderverse/tma character because I thought that would be fun, she is an avatar of the spiral that got mixed up venom-style with a creature of the web, which gives her a lot more detriments than powers, including random teleportation / dimension-shifting. in her story, her friend paige parker was tortured and eventually killed by a monster of the web, and when gwaine got wrapped up in that business she ended up weirdly linked with the web monster that killed paige. so she's a servant of two horror entities and is never in a stable reality, which as one can imagine is quite the toll. she tries to do good hero-y stuff when she can to off-set the guilt around the fear she incites for the web and the spiral, but that gets complex very quickly, and it would be difficult to consider her even an anti-hero, but she tries to be a good person.

here she is with the sona I made for my partner, perry parker aka mindweaver! perry is a neuroscience student that accidentally stumbles upon a rogue professor doing secret experimentation with mind-control fungus on insects and arachnids, and gets bit by a spider test subject that escaped and gains thrall / limited mind control among other spidey powers. the professor becomes their nemesis when he discovers perry's mutation and proceeds to human testing with the fungus on himself, which makes him into a mushroom monster. perry and the professor become psychically linked through the fungus to the point of feeling each other's pain, and perry has to find a way to stop the professor before the fungus gets completely out of control and/or kills them both.

gwaine ends up in perry's dimension accidentally during one of her random teleportations and grows very attached to them. perry is able to create a mental link between the two of them strong enough that gwaine can use it as a tether to teleport back to them when she gets lost, which is immensely helpful in stabilizing her whole situation, and the two of them fall in love :)

thanks so much for asking! I had almost forgot about them til now, but I like them a lot

[dateamonster]

webcomics*! webcomics baby!!! i grew up reading these bad boys like they were the sunday funnies. im serious i would get up early in so i could check my daily roster of webcomic updates before leaving for school.

webcomics sort of feel to me like my generations version of zines. not that both those things arent still around, i just mean that, in the same way that there was this big boom of super creative zine self-publishing in the 70s through the 90s thanks to the increasing access to copy machines, and later home printing, the early 00s-10s was sort of the moment people seemed to collectively realize they could kind of just upload whatever they wanted to the internet and people would actually see it, leading naturally to another boom in indie art and storytelling.

a lot of the comics that popped up around this time were sort of... rough. raw. weird. there were no rules about what a webcomic had to be other than 1) a comic and 2) on the web, so there was some freedom to be as messy or as precise as the author wanted. this led to some real bangers, and some absolute flops. but regardless of how it turned out i think theres something to be admired about the sheer amount of creativity going into these projects that, for the most part, were purely passion-driven without any guarantee of greater recognition or success.

obviously webcomics are still around, but the culture surrounding them has shifted quite a bit. most people who are willing to put in the work of a longform serialized comic In This Economy are also doing so with the hope of being able to profit or at least sustain themselves financially on their work. theres no shame in that! but it has made the webcomic scene more competitive, more polished, less experimental. capitalism at work, you know.

people arent really as incentivized to try new things and dare i say get a little weird with it when innovation doesnt pay the pills. however that doesnt mean that there arent still artists out there who are challenging that.

i got the idea a while ago that i wanted to put together a list of webcomics that have been really influential to me and my own creative efforts, but i realized that list would be a mile long and wouldnt really give me the breathing room to talk about why those works resonate with me. so i decided instead to make a list specifically of my (currently) most beloved, most influential webcomics that i feel like are doing something unique that sort of pushes the boundaries of what is considered a "normal" comic.

presented in no particular order, with all attempts made to be spoiler-free, below:

nasty red dogs and feast for a king by kosmicdream (18+)

delicious, dark, meaty comics. ffak in particular is like this massive sprawling scifi stream of consciousness thick with blood and viscera and. a lot of highly transsexual erotic cannibalism tbqh.

personally i find nasty red dogs a lot more like easy to get into story-wise, but both are just chockablock full of this beautiful grotesque unapologetic and downright indulgent physicality. its pages dripping with every fluid you can think of and some you cant, and its also compelling surprisingly empathetic characters set against a backdrop of otherworldly rituals, cosmic pre-apocolypses, and worlds inside of worlds inside of worlds. body horror heaven lives here.

mr boop and crimehot by alec robbins (very 18+)

if youre at all into weird webcomics youre probably already well familiar with mr boop, and if you arent theres really nothing i can say other than Please give it a shot, but if you havent been keeping up with alecs work since then you might not be as familiar with his current project crimehot. and thats a damn shame because it is all the comedy, unabashed horniness, and surprisingly understated storytelling of mr boop taken to its absolute max.

crimehot is set in a future where nearly every aspect of human life and culture is controlled by an all-powerful all-seeing computer algorithm. but who cares about all that when theres a ragtag team of ultra sexy ultra horny master thieves going on wacky little misadventures together!

alecs style is blunt and simplistic in a way that comes off as juvenile at first glance, and then uses that presumption to completely blindside you with its actual content, reminding me weirdly enough of memeable classic tails gets trolled. in spite of their potential as works of ironic comedy however alecs comics really give me this impression of total earnestness. crimehot in particular is so blatantly un-erotic, with its complete lack of any subtlety, comically exaggerated (and surprisingly diagetic) anatomy, and impossible physical positions, that it circles back around into becoming, indeed, kind of hot. i think silliness can be hot so sue me!

blind alley by adam de souza

departing completely from my last couple recs, blind alley is a cozy, peanuts-inspired comic strip about the day to day lives of the children of blind alley. its also occasionally a deeply unsettling horror-mystery that has just barely begun to show its hand more than two years in. its distinguishing factor to me comes from the fact that the cozy exterior doesnt seem to be there to conceal or divert your attention away from the growing sense of unease that infiltrates its panels on an increasingly frequent basis as the story progresses. it feels more like the two elements live side by side, horror and mundanity, otherworldly creatures and secret conspiracies living peacefully alongside lazy summer afternoons and goofing off with your friends. it perfectly captures the anxiety of knowing that theres something the grown-ups arent telling you, the powerlessness of being a kid.

blind alley feels to me sort of like if those "what if Nostalgic Cartoon was secretly DARK" media theories were actually real, and actually scary. i might be getting ahead of myself as the series likes to take its time and is really only just starting to peel back the layers, but what ive read so far feels makes me feel like this could be something very special.

boy island by leo fox

beautiful beautiful beautiful first of all. the dreamy, surreal visuals? the colors?? oujhjh.. boy island is set in a world split violently in two, divided into boy island and girl island, and surrounded on all sides by a sea of monsters mutants and ghosts, those sorry souls who committed the trespass of trying to cross from one land to the other, or even live outside of either! a boy named lucille must strike out on his own to make it to boy island, but in doing so begins to discover things about the world and in fact himself that reveal an even greater mission.

im making this all sound very dramatic. its a trans story. its about trans people, being trans. its also about surviving the ripples of a world laid out for you by your parents, managing grief for the ones that didnt, and a funny little blue guy named jounce. also did i mention its gorgeous? hot fuckin diggity it is gooorgeous.

vivians ghost by hal schrieve (18+)

speaking of trans comics!! (plot twist: theyre all trans comics suckerrrr) look, all of hals comics are fucking baller and im sure the book zes got coming out will be too, but ive like Imprinted on this one. its attached itself my brain. much like the main protagonist collin has been attached to by his suicide victim best friend and ex highschool bf viv!

the sketchy art style threw me off at first but it quickly becomes part of the charm and meshes very well with the chaotic pace and gutpunch emotional moments. theres a strong element of magical realism that i honestly think comics as a medium were made for. viv is a ghost, and viv is grief, and guilt, and fantasy, and shame, and glorious trans revenge taken form, and hes not even the only apparition in this story, taking the stage alongside cameos by jesus christ, a detransitioners fursona, almanda palmer, and (checks notes) gonzo for a second there i think.

as a disclaimer (or incentive, depending) no one in this story i think is someone you could really call a good person. some of them are in fact plainly terrible. they are all so undeniably fucking fascinating though. and viv himself gleefully inhabits that moral gray area, deliberately and loudly disturbing any image of himself as a pure perfect victim, blurring lines and thrusting both the characters and audience out of their comfort zone. its a challenging read thats not going to be everyone for sure, but i definitely think its worth the read.

(and if this sounds interesting to you but youre not sure you can handle it, hal has other equally good comics that are still heavy on the trans gay relationship drama but much lighter on the childhood trauma.)

what happens next by maximumgraves

if youre reading this on tumblr i hope that youve at least heard of what happens next by now. thee seminal tumblrina art of our time i swear. it starts with a true crime podcast exploring the strange story of griffin and his accomplice milo, trans teen murderers, the latter of which has since been released from the psych hospital while the former continues to serve his sentence. but thats in the past, and in the present milo still has to figure out how to live the rest of his life.

the story moves rapidly, though not necessarily chronologically, in and out of the real world and the online lives its characters frequently inhabit like its guiding you through a twisted dream. its a comic on the internet about the internet from someone clearly well aware of its more poisonous aspects, as well as the addictive quality it can have for someone who has become otherwise isolated from the world.

at the end of the day though the major appeal i think is the characters, how messy and horrible and tragic they can be, which is all you can really hope for from a largely character-driven narrative. to say much more i think would ruin the experience, but ill say what happens next absolutely delivers on its ominous title, and im waiting on the edge of my seat for the next chapter.

preeny has to repeat 6th grade by momodriller

on a Much lighter note, preeny has to repeat 6th grade is a super cute adventure series about a magical little kitty named preeny who on her first day of sixth grade is called upon to go on a great mission. its a sparklefur comic!! ive been really starting to dive into furry art lately, and if youre the kind of person who raises an eyebrow at that statement, fine, whatever, but im talking to the cool people right now so keep it to yourself.

art from within the furry subculture is such insanely creative and passionate stuff, and the focus on this subset in particular, calling back to the early 2000s deviantart xD rAWR s0 rand0m era of online culture, feels so intensely nostalgic it makes my chest ache, despite never being heavily involved in the sparklefur scene myself.

the author states in the comics description that the story takes inspiration from her experiences as an autistic child, and even before reading that man i felt it. what really makes this comic unique to me though is that the majority of characters that appear are based on adoptables the author purchased off of, as she puts it, the children of deviantart. i LOVE that. not only is that probably amazing for the kids, it makes every character feel truly unique and adds perfectly to the overall flavor of the world shes created. there is just not another comic i can think of that feels alive like this one.

broccoli soup by secretpie

ok so i know how we might feel about webtoon comics but hear me out. broccoli soup is probably the first comic ive seen to really exploit the otherwise sort of bland and restrictive format of webtoons, utilizing the excess of white space to enhance the feeling of emptiness that characterizes the protagonist broccoli's time in the blank void they call home as well as to make the sparse use of color really pop in contrast.

broccoli soup is a mysterious series thats a little hard to pin down in terms of genre. a strange little being named broccoli spends their days in a vast blankness drinking tea with their loving yet highly suspicious Best Friend and benefactor, doris. doris has the ability to move between worlds, coming and going as she pleases, while broccoli is only allowed to leave when they are on a mission on her behalf. these missions vary, but the goal is always the same: make everything Polite and Good.

as the story progresses, little by little more friends and more color come into broccolis still new existence. the art style also changes from world to world, which imo is a very nice touch. and! theres music! its an interesting project that dances back and forth between fantastical whimsy and some surprisingly dark moments. and thats the shit i like to see.

thats all for now! though if im lucky there will be many more fun stories and projects to talk about in the future. keep in mind as well that this is like barely half of all the webcomics im currently reading, just the ones that most stick out to me as really doing something special.

until next time yall!!

oh wait sike honorable mentions time

awful hospital by bogleech

the only reason this isnt up there with the rest is bc im woefully behind at the moment. ill get back to it eventually! awful hospital is an interactive multimedia horror-comedy webcomic about a hospital that is. well this hospital is simply sub-par to say the least.

hedgehog's dilemma by mellodilla

this ones still a little new to say much on but so far it looks like a cute series. what most appeals to me is that the art style looks like something that fit in seamlessly with an early 90s newspaper comic strip. in particular it has a strong calvin and hobbes vibe to me. just, you know, about wacky lil lesbian animals living their lives.

ok now im done for real

*for clarity's sake, im using webcomic here to mean "a series of comics that was first published and predominantly exists online" so even if a print version exists, i still consider it to be first and foremost a webcomic. this also includes comics that contain a multimedia or interactive element. if its a combination of pictures and words to tell a story, its a comic.

also my list is probably going to end up massively favoring serialized fiction because thats just what i like to read, but i dont necessarily think thats a required element.

[riacte]

im soooooo emotion over dearly beloathed. it is so good as an epistolary work, and i genuinely feel like that format/style/genre worked really well for the story, it let us know the characters through how they portray themselves to others and who they are to different people/groups. i also loved how my understanding of Freth grew naturally over the course of reading it, I didn't notice until i was like "oh yeah that's just the culture there. ofc they'd do something like that" because it was so fluid and seamless.

every twist was well set up and just. it was crack-y and comedic, but those only made the emotional parts hit harder????

anyways. favorite random character/not main one. go! (i choose herohqphobic) also was there any like. reference or small thing (maybe characters who had different usernames across platforms or something?) that you loved and nobody seemed to notice?

i want to know. this is my new blorbo. entire fucking thing

Hii thank you for reading 🥺🙏

I could genuinely go on and on about Freth as a city because it's based after where I was raised, Hong Kong. The superhero genre is most commonly associated with American comics. It feels like their cities are either in USA or USA-inspired. To me there's subconsciously an inherent USA vibe even if that's not the actual case. I felt the pull myself before going, hold on, I live in a city, it's a pretty significant city, and theoretically superheroes can exist anywhere.

I'm of course biased on this but Hong Kong is an interesting city with interesting implications if you use it for a setting. And especially because it naturally seems so "cyberpunk". Densely populated, gives off the impression of being highly urbanised, but 70% of the land is not developed. Has a natural harbour, next to the sea, at the mouth of a river, but is hilly and full of scenic spots. Well developed public transport system (if the rail goes down for half an hour it gets on the news). The city with the most skyscrapers in the world, has one of the world's highest life expectancy (I'm still confused by this lol), ranked 4 in HDI for 2022 (also confused by this 💀 like we're above Denmark and Sweden?).

[Night view of Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong Tourism Board]

I wanted Freth to be busy, hectic, fast-paced, rich, technologically savvy. A glittering city with heroes for celebrities. Freth is an important port which is why the heroes fight so hard to protect its infrastructure for the ~economy~. But then the government decides the heroes are getting too powerful and culls the herd.

Anyways. I love all the random characters. Flora balefires_thighs had quite the arc pivoting from Tach anti to Tach fan (and is still bitchless, rip), but I have to go with arcussy because I love that name 😭😭😭 like Arucs is their babygirl meow meow grown adult son who cheated and got "cancelled" etc but it's fine ❤️ they still love his annoying ass ❤️

Small thing that didn't get picked up on! The location names! I based a lot of those on existing places in Hong Kong— Triple Shark Territory (Tsim Sha Tsui), Cannon Hill (Fortress Hill), Crossway (Causeway Bay), etc. Lots of these names have animals in them, like Dolphin Bay and Starlingfield, and these are based after real species that can be found in HK— except for one. Ravenwood. I don't think ravens exist in Hong Kong, making it fitting for an underground human experimentation lab. I don't expect anyone to know this though, it's more of a fun niche trivia for myself.

I don't know if this is obvious or not, but Cora has a crush on Archie. And Reina likes Cora while Lyra and Ben are doing their whole situationship thing. The consequences of crushing on your best friend.

Final note: the four main characters spell out Blue Bats. Blue for civilian names (Ben, Lyra, Uma, Ethan (he chooses this eventually)), and Bats for (future) hero names (Balefire, A??, Tachythanatous, S??). The year is also 827 because Aug 27 is when the MCC9 teams dropped lol. 🤡

Thank you so much for reading, glad you enjoyed it! <3 <3

[sphagert]

Reposting this from spreddit but here is my ideal set of classes for Fire Emblem! Explanations as follows:

This is basically a combination of Fates and Engage's class system. I prefer somewhat limited reclassing just so that not everyone is made to be a flier. I may or may not be interested in engage's blue weapon system that lets some characters have higher weapon ranks but most of this is up for interpretation.

Lord: I like experimental lords (dagger lord?) But any lord would be fine

Noble: Just an extension of the current lord. Whether that means mounted, gaining a weapon or whatever

Mercenary: I don't see the need for a myrmidon class since it ultimately serves the same purpose as an infantry sword unit (and in some games these classes are related anyway)

Swordmaster: A regular in the series. I'd like to see the return of throwing swords just to make being sword locked better but I think a general nerf to throwing weapons (think Fates) would be appreciated to make normal 2 ranged weapons still have a purpose

Hero: Another regular. I liked engage having sword/lance heros so I would like that to return

Fighter: A neat class

Berserker: Just mentioning that innate bonus should return and berserker should get its +20 crit -5 avoid again

Warrior: A somewhat common class. I'll say now that I'd like archers to have a small buff so that warrior (if engage class types return) isn't just better archer

Lancer: A rare player class that deserves its spot among its infantry bretheren

Halberdier: Another rare class that should be more common

Dragoon: (name not important) had some suggestions to put a lance/bow user here and I liked the idea better than anything we currently have so here we go!

Cavalier: I don't want too many classes with weapon options but I'd be erasing herstory if I didn't include all the cavalier types (mostly thinking about axe Titania)

Paladin: Same as cavalier. Depending on what type of cavalier you were determines which weapon is A rank and which is B (A swords B lances, A axes B swords etc.)

Wolf knight: A new edition that I quite like. Also spreads out daggers among the classes

Armor: Lance and Axe armors (excluding knight for promotes, just for orginization) are both pretty common so why not include both (sorry meg)

General: Again, just get the weapon you didn't have before. I like fates movement so that might be a handycap for armors but I also like how engage gave cavaliers just one more mov then their infantry counterparts so hopefully they wouldn't suffer too much.

Great knight: the only class to get all normal weapons at once which I think is neat

Archer: I feel like archer deserves +1 bow range. With the addition of daggers as another physical ranged weapon and with engage's magic system, it feels only fair to me.

Sniper: Same as archer

Bow Knight: A pretty common class. I feel like if you are using a mounted bow user the other weapon you get doesn't matter too much so being sword lock both adds more swords to the class roster and limits bow knights a bit.

Mage: I really like engage's magic system (fire is the basic one, thunder has 3 range but can't double normally, wind is more accurate, is flyer effective, and has some crit) and I want it to return

Sage: I'm open to sage having S tomes and B staves but for now A A at least gives it a unique distinction

Tactitian: There have been multiple ignis magic user with sword usage but they have all been unique classes, so no more! Also finally gives mage its own promotions instead of sharing them with anyone

Theif: Idk why theif didn't have promotions in engage, so here we go.

Assassin: A favorite of mine. Daggers are basically bow swords so I don't see the need to give assassin either, which also lines up with the other S rank weapon classes

Trickster: There have been a few theif secondary promotes (rouge, adventurer, mechanist) but trickster is the most interesting to me so I'll leave it here. Also the return of a magic dagger would be appreciated and made for this class

Dark mage: An uncommon regular but a regular nontheless. Also means the return of dark magic, but I'd appreciate if they all had a unique purpose (nosferatu, luna to cut resistance, dark spikes, etc.)

Sorcerer: I thought it could be neat to give Sorcerer's daggers but it's just a thought

Dark knight: Now a dark mage exclusive, I wouldn't be opposed to them getting dark magic too but thats just me. Since tactitian is a class now I figured why not let dark knight use any secondary weapon (though they'll prob want swords since I'd like levin swords to still be the best magic weapon option)

Cleric: idk if I like brawling that much but I like how it played with the weapon triangle in engage so I'm keeping it, Qi adept is also just a fun class type idea

High Priest: "why is their weapon rank so high???" They only get light magic, which would be weaker fire magic, though with affects like dark magic (think thani, nosferatu but light this time, seraphim, siege tome S rank?)

Monk: Or martial master if you are so inclined. I'd be willing to up its staff rank to S but thats up to you

Troubadour: Absent in engage but it deserves to be here

Holy Knight: or Valkyrie if u r sexist or Strategist even though it has name overlap with tactitian. Also only gets light magic but wouldn't get the S rank tome (or maybe lower it to B? Up to you)

War Cleric: I just like Jacob and Felicia okay!? Also covers Fate's priestess so maybe giving them a bow option would be neat (name also not important)

Pegasus Rider: Sorry to any Axe pegasus riders but I'm weaponist and it just ain't right. Also gender neutral because pls guys ;-;

Falcon Knight: I like this class, its just so cool

Griffin knight: I was convinced to put a bow flier here, and it does look quite nice next to falcon knight doesn't it? Also doesn't have to be a griffin put whatever flier u like

Wyvern Rider: No swords sowwy

Wyvern Lord: idk why its not wyvern knight but go off royal

Malig knight: Tome flier has come up a couple of times now so including it here feels good to me. Doesn't have to be a necro wyvern, put whatever flying thing u want here

Beast: Okay so 'bear' with me here. Beast transformation classes are pretty common and they deserve to be included. I thought it would be cool if the class determined what the stones did, so normal beasts would have a beastone and runestone equivelent (attack stone, defensive stone)

Beast Royal: (name experimental) A stronger beast in about everyway. They could have the SMASH effect on their weapon or be given the same property as brawling, or maybe always have weapon advantage!? Last one is overpowered but you get the idea. Any idea wprks here

Animal Spirit: Would have higher resistance and maybe speed. I feel like these are supporters (think radiant dawn dragons) or they could have terrain effects (think Emblem corrin)

Manakete: Even more common than beasts but rarely has a promoted class. I thought they could have a dragonstone and a magestone that deals magic damage, something that often occurs in the games

Wyrm: (names not important) Wyrms get 1-2 range on their stones.

Amphiptere: If you couldn't tell from the spirte, they'd be flying units, but with infantry movement and no 1-2 range. Some might want to include a flying beast but I feel like we already have enough fliers as is.

Villager: or Trainee if you are so inclined. Not my favorite class type but they are kind of a staple so here they are. Maybe they can only become specifically types relating to their weapon (mage trainee can only become classes with tomes)

Performer: or dancer. A staple in the series but no promotions as far as I can see, so lets change that

Singer: Basically they can refresh 2 units at once, (think lene) could also incorperate galdr or singing giving different buffs along with the refresh.

Bard: Can refresh and still use their own turn. Could put gimicky stuff on it like item usage and other weird stuff.

And that's how I'd do it! I'd like to hear any opinions or what you would do differently. If you read all the to the bottom then thank you and have a good day <3

[ask-elland-n-will]

OOC Question:

I am sorry, I am sure you already answered that Question, but how did Will and Elland come to life? 💚

How did you come up with their names and personality?

[I'm gonna call this recent series of ooc asks "Lily rambles while on a walk without proofreading anything"!

Cyrus was first, I cannot begin this conversation without bringing him up. I played him in a DnD campaign for about a year. Elland happened a little while later, but was just an NPC, somebody for the game master to bring up to get the plot going. I switched into playing Elland cause I wanted to give another class a go: Cyrus went home to take care of family stuff, and Elland moved into his friendgroup to help prevent the end of the world. Typical DnD stuff.

Elland is supposed to Cy's foil. Their dynamic was great, their differences stood out more when they were paired up. I wanted a really strong bond.

HL came around — and as I was playing Elland in DnD at the time, I used him in HL. When starting a replay of the game, I went with another archetype I always loved, a talkative cute ginger sunshine boy (we know how he mutated since then 🤣). It was a switch from Cyrus into Will, because Cyrus, being an adult in DnD, was, for the lack of the better word, too horny and abrasive. He didn't fit in a school, and at the time the thought of changing him felt like a monumental task.

So I created another foil for Elland. Will now is so far from his original self that I might as well come up with another cute sweet OC. It always happens like that with my characters. When it feels like one has too much of everything, the character branches out into other characters. Will used to be a coward — and don't get me wrong, self preservation is strong in this one but he knows when to pick his fights and is not easily scared when he can explain things logically (pickle was an exception but he got over that fear after a while). But with time Fred took over the coward role.

Lilith was supposed to be sweet — yet now she's unhinged, strong, domineering — those qualities didn't sit right with any other characters.

Elland was supposed to be more like he is in DnD, this figure making tough choices and not being afraid to get his hands dirty to protect family. But it felt wrong for the HL setting, and thus I have Fyodor, who is even more straightforward. Wherr Elland still can tell a white lie — Fyodor is brutally honest, even if it needlessly hurts somebody's feelings.

I'm rambling at this point haha

Names? Elland — I was in a book club at the time, going through The Mistborn series and The City of Brass. There was a character in the first book series, Elend Venture, whom I liked a lot. When I was coming up with names, I wrote "Elland" and only way later realized why it feels so familiar. I got inspired without knowing.

The second book is fantasy set around the world of djinn. That was the inspiration that made Cyrus a genasi, and de Strontiums in general came from the Middle East (still haven't decided if Egypt or Turkey). There were a few centuries of assimilation both in DnD and HL, so Elland and Cyrus are mixed race.

Cyrus is a name of Persian origin with Greek roots. It meant "sun". With how the boy is burning, it was fitting. And in Genshin there is a guy named Cyrus who is the head of the Adventurers guild. So I had a good feeling about the name.

Their last names, too. Strontium is/was added to fireworks to give them red colour. I've mentioned before that their family came from firework making origins. It's a tradition for them, even when they became nobleman. They branched out into firearms eventually, that's how the majority of their family's wealth was accumulated, helping supply the Crown. In DnD — making weapons for the city guards, and a bunch of other experimental projects that had to do with explosives. Cyrus was reeeealy born for this.

William — always loved the name, no other reason. Abbott — I was looking all over the wiki for a family name that would soften their stance on muggles. I don't remember exactly, but later down the line Abbott's married muggles. Even is Sacred families weren't really a think in HL times (I think?) It doesn't make Will any less generationally pureblood.

For personalities - I'll lump Will and Cyrus in the same category. I needed someone fun. Fun, outgoing, energetic, inspired. And to pair them up for a dynamic I liked, I needed someone calm. Supportive, more empathetic, good listener but somebody with a firm hand to direct Will/Cyrus if they get carried away. W/C should hold E in high regard. E is the kind of person to ground them and make them see things they are too blinded to see.

In practice (roleplay) it's a bit harder to do, so don't be surprised if the characters sometimes do things you didn't think they would do. That, and coming from DnD, Elland especially, Tumblr will just never see some of the sides of him I see critical for understanding his character. Now that I made up my mind about my boys' as OCs lore, the dangerous and unforgiving environment that was HL MC lore and DnD lore — it moved aside.

Elland is a Hufflepuff here only because I couldn't decide between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff because I wanted Puff's commonroom. If I made a choose on behalf of the DnD Elland, he is more Ravenclaw than Puff in terms of personality. A lot of it just didn't come to him until he went to magic academy. And again, bringing up harsh MC lore, now I can't really show off how he operates under pressure and how smart and quick-thunking he is, and how passion can cloud his judgement, especially when his loved ones are involved. Dueling might be the only way for that to slip through.]

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 8 Matsuribayashi pt. 41

I promise you I’ll have some commentary soon.

Keiichi Maebara continued

I wasn’t quite as surprised that Keiichi can see Hanyuu because I was operating under the faulty assumption that the rest of the gaming club would be able to see her because of the events of Minagoroshi. That since they all died at the hands of Takano and met in the afterlife they would somehow retain the knowledge that she exists. I sort of figured they wouldn’t exactly remember her, but that they would remember that she, as a person, exists. If that makes sense.

I have to say I was kind of surprised they were going with a vaguely antagonistic relationship between Hanyuu and Rika in these early scenes. It really should have been one of the things to tip me off that the chapter wasn’t going to play out the way I speculated it would.

Hanyuu and Rika are such confounding characters to write about. I’ve complained at length before about how I feel that Rika has been very inconsistently written across the last couple of chapters, and I regret to inform you that doesn’t really change across length of chapter eight. Hanyuu, meanwhile, is aggravating to talk about because of the fact that as she exists in the story she should be much more interesting of a character. Unfortunately I consider her to be one of the most mishandled characters to exist in this entire series. Strictly speaking of what she does in the story, not taking into account the things Ryukishi07 said about how she was originally going to be portrayed in this chapter. That… is its own particular set of issues I have with her portrayal.

An invitation to an end

“Every hour holds the promise of an Invitation to Love.”

This might sound like a stretch, but I kind of wonder if Takano was written to be sort of a parallel to Rika’s despair? It’s kind of a tenuous link at best, but in Minagoroshi Rika is shown to drink her wine when she’s at her lowest points. Coming to a head at wanting to just drink her sorrows away during the time when Satoko was being held prisoner by Teppei. So, I just was thinking that Takano wanting to drown her sorrows over people and their lack of belief in Hifumi’s work is meant to parallel that somewhat. I do think it’s somewhat telling that now, at this point Takano mentions that there really isn’t anything to the notion that Hinamizawa Syndrome, or similar parasites, are the root cause of humanity believing in the divine.

Cast your minds back long ago in to this playthrough, and remember if you will, the idea that Hifumi Takano had witnessed similar parasitism elsewhere in the world. More specifically, I don’t understand how the queen carrier gets passed from generation to generation. When whoever is the queen carrier reproduces does the parasite just go along with them to infect the infant Furude child who is now the head of the family? When Rika’s grandma was still alive, were there two queen parasites in both of the Furude women? How about when Rika was born, and up until her parents deaths? I admit that I don’t know very much about parasite based infestations, but this notion that the queen parasite is able to manipulate the various other parasites of the syndrome does sound a little bit unbelievable.

Is that why Takano really wanted to get her hands on Rika’s mom? To do some experimentation to see if the queen parasite was still in the host? Now that I think about it, does Irie even know anything about the idea that the syndrome is caused by the parasite? All that they’ve mentioned about his research seems to indicate that he is operating under the assumption that Hinamizawa Syndrome is just a neurological condition, made worse by mental stress and fatigue. I know that he’s mentioned they made strides in their research because they had Hifumi’s notes to work from, but do you think he ever really bought it was the work of parasites?

Say what you will about her experience vs his, Takano is apparently a more than capable scientist in that she was able to create an upgraded and more lethal version of the weaponized version of Hinamizawa Syndrome. Unless, of course, H173 has been retconned into H170, then in which case never mind.

Not the last time you’ll hear a character tell Takano she should kill herself.

And so the drunk loser and the mysterious woman begin chatting it up.

I don’t necessarily want this to color what you think I might think of this chapter as a whole, but I’ve become aware of the fact that I think three of the main characters of this series are done real dirty by this chapter.

Hanyuu, Rika, and Takano. I feel their characters get it the worst out of everyone in the cast. But, as I seem to be repeating a lot, we’re still a ways off, and we’ll get there when we get there.