#only it's not bc they're women jim

[kinnoth]

I like everybody else terminally online watched the plagiarism video this weekend

And maybe I'm just coming at this from a perspective of someone who was not exposed to j som before he got exposed but like Jesus fuck what the shit

Plagiarism notwithstanding, that man makes some bogus ass, shit ass claims that on a very basic level just do not pass a sniff test by anyone who knows even a little bit about anything

I mean, the man waxes on longingly about the beautiful aryan nazi bodies to serve the conclusion that US troops volunteered for service to.....prove that it wasn't just the nazis who had perfectly sculpted hairless asses? Is that like......even something anyone thinks smells a little bit true? Like on a basic motivational level, for a nation, for a people, for a single person?

Making claims that the Roman empire was 70% slaves and 30% patricians.........does that even sound correct? Like, even if all you know about ancient Rome is from memes and shit, where are the plebs? You know, the thing we still call people today, when they're acting common and unwashed

The thing about how no songs prior to 1956 made references to kissing....I mean guys.....

And like ......not to like.... But like ..... The man has the charisma of a slow growing fungus. Granted I've only ever seen clips bc by the time I got there, he'd nuked his channel, but like.... I've heard AI voices reading tiktok subtitles inject more urgency and personality into text. J som reads text like he not only doesn't know what he's saying, he doesn't know any of the individual words and how they interact with one another. Like who voluntarily listens to this boring dumbass badly read from a script that has no coherent style tying it together?

Like I know people are gagging for gay rep but fuckin seriously, not only is he a plagiarizing douche who makes shit up wholecloth, he's not even a decent entertainer

Is this what y'all are settling for? Is the bar really that fuckin low?

[fexalted]

watching tos for the first time since like, roughly 2012/13-ish? i don't remember what year it was, or why i only got thru most of season 1 before stopping

it's been fun to refresh my swiss cheesed memory with this tho so here's a semi-liveblog of the first 10 eps that i watched over the past couple weeks

1x01 - the man trap

things i remembered beforehand:

salt monster

"plum" uwu

that gay little run and crawl jim does when he's taking cover (it fills me with such delight)

things i did not remember:

how many people died, good god man it's only the first episode

1x02 - charlie x

things i remembered:

jim's bright red exercise pants

that stupid fucking face charlie makes when he uses his powers

not liking this ep at all when i first watched it, possibly due to me being around the same age as charlie at the time

additional thoughts: i enjoyed it more this time and felt more sympathetic for charlie. poor kid needed some parents, and also, like, a hug

1x03 - where no man has gone before

things i remembered:

bones isn't in it :'( (bored) (sad) (missing my bestie)

"James R Kirk"

that post i saw on here recently about how their contacts were made of glass

the only thing i could think about while watching:

their contacts

were made

of GLASS

(yes i understand this was how contacts were made back then. still freaked out by the concept of people putting glass in their eyes on purpose)

1x04 - the naked time

things i remembered:

sweat disease

sulu fencing

oh kathleen

"ONE-MORE-TIME!!"

"love mankind"

spock breakdown (extremely uncomfortable to watch)

bones casually ripping jim's shirt sleeve to jab him in the arm (extremely hilarious every time i think about it)

did not remember:

anything about them almost crashing into a planet lol

jim's little monologue when he gets infected (lmao)

time warp???

additional thoughts: hey remember when they reused this plot in tng and tasha and data fucked (<- literally the only thing i can remember about it) ((edit from future fex: i rewatched that ep. it was wild. tos did it better tho))

1x05 - the enemy within

things i remembered:

unicorn dog :)

evil kirk and poor little meow meow kirk

"I'M CAPTAIN KIRK!!!"

things not remembered:

dog dies :(

evil kirk's killer eyeliner

additional thoughts: say what you will about shatner / his acting but this ep is Peak shatner performance and a lot of fun to watch. he put his whole pussy into it, as the kids say these days

1x06 - mudd's women

things remembered:

could not forget harry mudd if i tried

the women are color coded like the powerpuff girls lol

they're also like, on some kind of drug that keeps them looking young or something

cool costumes tho

i don't have much to say about this one lol, harry's a fun character but the rest of the ep wasn't super interesting to me. did finally learn how to pronounce "ophiuchus" tho so i'll thank it for that

1x07 - what are little girls made of

things remembered:

is this the penis rock episode (it is)

uhhh i think kirk gets put into some kind of spinny machine that makes androids (he does)

more cool costumes (debatable)

things i find funny:

the number of planets we've encountered so far that are populated by like. 2-4 people

the way ruk (the big guy) just picks up and throws kirk like he weighs nothing

so much buildup with kirk and the penis rock and he doesn't even get to hit ruk over the head with it smh

also not a funny moment but i liked the way kirk was able to get a message to spock thru the android kirk, v clever

wait i just realized bones wasn't in this ep either. deducting 1/4 of a star from my mental rating bc i missed him (but apparently not that much)

1x08 - miri

remembered:

planet of children (bc everyone else died of terminal puberty)

"no blah blah blah!"

bones tests his newly discovered, untested cure on himself, in true mad scientist fashion (also spones moment <3)

saw this ep on a "what's your fave 'bad' episode" poll here recently and i can't remember if i thought it was good or bad when i first watched it lol

forgot:

another earth?? there's just a second, identical earth floating around out there?? and (of course) they don't mention it at all for the rest of the episode

300 year old children

oh these kids are so much more annoying than i remembered, however i may just be biased bc i don't like kids shfkshfk

1x09 - dagger of the mind

remember:

absolutely nothing! oh boy!

thoughts:

wow this ep is fucked up!

okay actually i don't think i've seen this one at all before?

usually there'll be moments that jog my memory but the only thing even slightly familiar to me was kirk going "helen don't go!" while in the neutralizer chair, but i could've just seen a clip/gif of it before

i remember skipping episodes in season 1 (i was impatient and wanted to get to city on the edge of forever) but i thought i'd at least made it to halfway thru the season before skipping any

anyway did i mention this ep is fucked up? (star trek really does love to drop an absolutely haunting 50 minutes of television on you and then never address it again, i understand this now. roll credits!)

1x10 - the corbomite maneuver

remember:

uhh

there's a thing out there

it's in the way

preventing them from boldly going, even

looks like an old windows screensaver

i might've skipped this ep too now that i think about it

thoughts:

cute mckirk moment in sickbay :3

i love that this cube has its own theme music whenever its on screen

oh shit it's the sequel to cube: orb

jesus christ that's a big orb

man they really said "okay we've got 3 music tracks and we're gonna get our money's worth out of them"

i gotta say this ep slaps tbh—WAIT HE'S A BABY???

LITTLE BABY MAN

LMAOOOOO

honestly great episode tho i'll stand by that

[kitkatopinions]

You want to know what I think about why they haven't confirmed Yang as queer yet or had either Yang or Blake explicitly say anything about be attracted to women (unlike our "hetero" characters)? Because the writers know the bees are the beginning and end of their gay representation. We can have Arkos, Renora, some Rosegarden and maybe some White Knight now (bc framing), but when it comes to sapphic couples, the bees are it. And they see no problem with that either.

As I'm answering this ask, I will be heavily criticizing RW/BY and Bumble/by. Fans of the bees, please beware. If you can't stand to see criticism, just move along.

Here's what we have for confirmation of attraction to the opposite sex from our main characters:

Weiss asks out Neptune. Blake goes on a date with Sun and she and Adam had a prior romantic entanglement. Yang openly leers at shirtless men and verbally says that she approves of their shirtlessness. Jaune is romantically interested in Weiss and kisses Pyrrha. Nora kisses Ren and openly says she's in love with him. Pyrrha kisses Jaune. Ren 'melts into' the kiss with Nora and talks about his feelings for her. Qrow goes on about how he was undone by the sight of a female waitress's skirt length. That's eight out of ten main characters (the other two being Ruby and Oscar,) and if you count Sun and Penny as main characters, that's nine out of twelve because Sun asked out Blake.

The majority of this happened in season two. In the second season of the show, people were asking out people of the opposite sex, and the only characters that didn't have their interest in the opposite sex confirmed within the first three seasons were Ren and Nora. When Ren and Nora kissed after they were hinted at being romantically interested in each other for seasons, they were far and away not the only main characters to have confirmed attraction to the opposite sex and weren't even the first kiss between characters of the opposite sex. If someone wanted to prove that the ship between Jaune and Weiss was going to happen, they don't have to say 'Jaune looks at her, he was upset when she almost died, they go out with a group one time,' they can say 'Jaune has confirmed romantic attraction towards her' and 'At the very least, Weiss has expressed canonical interest in men.''

Here's what we have for confirmation of attraction to the same sex from our main characters:

Nothing. Literally nothing.

We have two very small side characters who appeared in a couple episodes of season six, a villainous character who is in love with her former friend who is described by her voice actor as straight in what looks like official RW/BY merch, and a transgender character who has only existed for two seasons as a more minor character. And then we have Blake and Yang, who have been coded as queer for years now with no canon confirmation so that even though they're clearly meant to be perceived as romantic by queer people, homophobes can pretend it's not happening and Yang can still describe Blake as her sister in side content like video games while Rooster Teeth the company with a huge history of bigotry can sell pride shirts. This is behind the curve of heavily censored cartoons made by big companies like Cartoon Network and Disney. There's no excuse.

When people say that there's nothing queerbaity about Bumble/by and that it's just a slowburn like Re/nora and therefore we should all say nothing about it, they're really ignoring that Re/nora is the exception, they were some of the only main characters who hadn't expressed confirmed interest in the opposite sex, while even Ruby and Penny had seemed to want to talk about 'cute boys' in season one. And even Re/nora at this point is far more confirmed than bumble/by. People like saying that Bumble/by is a slowburn, but that doesn't mean that Blake and Yang couldn't have been confirmed as queer looong ago. Like, people act like Jim and Pam had zero confirmed romantic interest in each other or any other people until they got together and were shown dating in season four. Most slowburns don't look like this.

And people also are pretending like no outside meta matters at all, whether that's the history of a lack of representation for queer characters or considering the company's history of bigotry or the biphobia of one of the creators and lead writers Miles Luna. Despite the fact that there's no queer main characters in ten years, despite the fact that Blake and Yang's progression is unnatural because their tender moments are not allowed to be backed by even a discussion of feelings, despite the fact that the first male character who was coded queer was brutally murdered, despite the fact that there was wild heteronormativity in the early seasons where several characters just casually talked about their attraction to the opposite sex while the creator of RW/BY said that he'd be willing to include queer ships eventually maybe if he thought they were earned, despite the fact that Blake was described as straight by her VA as late as 2019, despite the fact that RW/BY is the biggest money maker for a company that is not only seemingly always struggling with funding projects but also constantly having controversies often about displaying bigotry and needing to get back into people's good graces, despite the fact that they've tried to sell Pride merch and Bumble/by merch that said like 'maybe they're a couple,' despite all of this... No one is allowed to suggest that there might have been intentionally stringing queer audiences along, or that it's a bit suspicious, or anything like that. No queer person is allowed to side eye a bigoted company. Because then we're 'ignoring the slowburn' and just being really unfair to Miles Luna the man who told an 'anecdote' about how hot he thinks watching girls make out is. No queer person is allowed to think that Bumble/by is badly done, because we'll literally get attacked, no matter how much we might like tons of other queer ships, including the canon queer ships from other shows like Adventure Time, Owl House, or Steven Universe.

I think that it is because Blake and Yang are likely to be the end-all-be-all as far as their confirmed queer characters, I think that's why fans are so defensive. Blake and Yang as a ship had juice before volume six and had a lot of people who shipped them, I'm not saying that the only reason they've been shipped is because they're likely to actually be confirmed. But. There's a habit in most fandoms to take what's either the only confirmed queer ship or the queer ship that's most likely to be confirmed and then instead of asking why there aren't more queer ships, people start acting like any fan who doesn't ship it or has any problem with it is trying to hurt queer people. Like if the content creators hear that the ship might not be popular, they just won't do it. Like we'll be punished for not being grateful for the scraps. So fans take it upon themselves to be knights and guardians for these ships, because instead of having grievances against the content creators who make queer ships so rare (and sometimes, badly done,) fans often seem to act like other fans are the enemy for not liking the one ship we have or might get. There's this element of...

A lot of rwde posters who care about queer rep wouldn't care very much about the relationship between Blake and Yang if they weren't the end-all-be-all of the main character rep in the show. If Weiss and Ruby or Weiss and Penny had been a thing, or Jaune and Neptune or Jaune and Ren or something, or other queer ships involving the main characters existed, then Blake and Yang's own status as queer wouldn't be as important because they wouldn't be the only (coded as) queer characters. Like, Lapis Lazuli and Peridot in Steven Universe weren't in an official relationship, but we had Ruby and Sapphire, and Pearl had been in love with Rose Quartz, so I at the very least didn't feel strung along by their 'roomies' language.

Another thing to note is that once again, what I at least care about is whether or not Blake and Yang are confirmed as queer, not whether or not they're in a relationship. People accuse rwde posters of not being happy with a slowburn queer ship and that we think that queer relationships should all be rapid paced (the defense against comparisons to Disney's the Owl House or Arcane having Vi out and out say that she thinks Caitlyn is hot.) But in actuality, this is willfully ignoring that they could've been confirmed as queer without getting in a relationship, just like Jaune talking to Ren about his feelings for Weiss doesn't mean they're destined to be together, and Weiss asking out Neptune doesn't mean they need to have an emotional journey with each other and have a passionate kiss at the end of the show. Yang could've gone to the Vytal dance with Velvet instead of with no one. Blake could've had feelings for Ruby before she had feelings for Yang instead of going on a date with Sun. Ruby could've had feelings for Penny before the Fall of Beacon the way that Pyrrha had feelings for Jaune. Neptune could've had a crush on Jaune during the Vytal dance, instead of having only turned down Weiss because he couldn't dance. Clover could've actually been confirmed as queer and wound up in a relationship with Qrow. But instead all we have is... Ten years of nothing but side characters who don't get much screentime and two main characters nuzzling foreheads and a bunch of fans screaming at us for saying 'we want more.'

It's disappointing.

[crimsonwing62]

Bruh, okay I just had this idea so bear with me...

I'm re-watching heartstopper. now i hyper fixated on this show last year and I'm currently hyper fixated on Stranger Things especially the Fanon of Steddie and The Fruity Four (Six?).

I had a thought - the parallels. The similarities...

Nick Nelson and Steve Harrington - Golden retriever sports king, chaotic bisexual, Heart of Gold, and expected by social structure to be a certain way, date a certain type of person. Meets someone and *learns some things*. Fixated on his hair. A smooth mf whose also a dork.

Charlie Spring and Eddie Munson - The outcast at school but comes out of his shell with his friends. uncertain when it comes to love because of previous experiences. Nerdy, Curly Hair, Smart, Musically inclined. ? Potential MH issues - depending who you ask

Darcy Olsen and Robin Buckley - Awkward, Chaotic Lesbian, Confident in herself, Rejects society by dressing however they want, also musically inclined, Possibly knows Charlie/Eddie via band. The scene on the rugby field where Darcy asks Charlie if him and nick are friends or *friends*, I think Robin would do the same.

Tara Jones and Nancy Wheeler - Confident badass, Observing everything. Less confident in her sexuality than Robin as she hasn't consciously known for long.

Also, The kiss when we were 13 and Stancy dating parallel.

Tao Xu and Jonathan Byers - Film/photography obsessed, not academically inclined but copes well at school and smart in other ways. protective of friends/family

Elle Argent and Argyle - okay there's hardly any parallels between these but I also don't know much about Jargyle.

Isaac Henderson and Will Byers - Quiet, out the way, creative, when they speak they mean what they say and when they relax they come out of their shells. doesn't quiet work with the Byler ship and AroAce Isaac but they're parallels not 100% match up.

Harry Greene and Tommy H - homophobic prick who may or may not be in love with their best friend. (not that Harry and Nick are friends but some friend group)

Ben Hope and Billy Hargrove? - abusive arseholes that hide behind macho bravado. Tries to date women to hide their fruity tendencies (The girl at the gate and Karen Wheeler)

Imogen Heaney and Carol Perkins? - only girl in an all male friend group. Or Tammy Thompson - Tries to woo Steve but fails bc he is in love with someone else (I know in canon timeline

Tori Spring and Max Mayfield - ignoring the age difference, Sarcastic, Observant, teasing, sibling like relationship

Oliver Spring and Dustin Henderson - okay personalities don't quiet match up buuut hyperactive, annoying younger sibling energy, that absolutely adores both Charlie/Eddie and Nick/Steve.

Mr Ajayi and Mr Hagan - kind, amazing teacher who actually cares about their students well being. offers a safe space in their classrooms.

Julio Spring and Wayne Munson - protective quiet presence in their children's lives. not seen much but we know they'll be ready to bat for their kid in a heartbeat if they asked.

Yan Xu and Jim Hopper - no reason other than they "leave the bedroom door open a tad" comment...

Idk that's all I got there's sooo many more characters I've missed but those are the ones my brains found so far.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

Thoughts on my sweet baby darling (Oluwande)

favorite thing about them: i love how he’s such a level-headed guy like 99% of the time but he got into a verbal argument with black pete in e2. like he was right, but the """mature""" thing in that situation isn’t bickering so loudly you get trapped by the indigenous residents of the island you’re stuck on. the fact that the show doesn’t make him “be the bigger person” 24/7 honestly makes his maturity and emotional intelligence that much stronger because like, yknow what? fuck being the bigger person sometimes. he deserves to bitch at this annoying tryhard who wont stop lying about working for blackbeard.

least favorite thing about them: my least favorite thing about olu is that there’s not enough of him. olu should be in every scene

favorite line: “Coming, nana! I’m coming for some cake~” because OBVIOUSLY

brOTP: i’m picking two bc i’m greedy lol.

first off: olu and stede. their vibes are SO different and i think they’d probably have a hard time like, picking a casual activity to do together, but i feel like they have a lot of core similarities when it comes to who they are as people and caring abt others. also whenever i think about the two of them being sad and lonely in stede’s cabin in e7 i want to laugh! these poor heartbroken boys!!!

number two: olu and frenchie bc they worked together SO well to pull off their scam and i want to see them just hanging out. it kinda feels like olu has more common sense whereas frenchie has more life experience and i think the two of them together can get up to some CRAZY shit but also they'd be able to do those casual activities together that olu and stede would not be able to agree on. frenchie should play songs and olu should sing to them and also i am picturing olu helping frenchie get over his fear of cats and my heart is so full of love rn

OTP: uhhh jim, obviously

nOTP: izzy. also obviously

random headcanon: he grew up in a huge family that was almost entirely women. his only siblings are sisters and his dad passed when he was young, so the only men in his family are like two or three uncles and a handful of cousins, all of whom are either way older or way younger than him.

unpopular opinion: idk if this is unpopular but i think olu should get to top jim sometimes. i always see jim topping and while i have ZERO complaints abt that i think maybe sometimes they should switch? pretty sure that for a lot of fans it's like a dysphoria thing they're projecting onto jim which is super valid. but i personally would like to see art of olu topping.

song i associate with them: ugh so like i said in this post, i don't really get Blorbo Song Associations the way a lot of fans do unless something about the show itself makes me think abt songs differently. so i don't have a fun answer it's just under the sea from the little mermaid bc of the bts vid of samson singing it

favorite picture of them: sunshine boy <3

[roobylavender]

So I'm pretty new to comics and the DC comics fandom and I've been noticing this interesting parallel in the cultural ideas and fandom discussions with the star trek fandom, specifically the concept of Kirk Drift. In brief the term was coined by an article talking about how the cultural perception and modern conception of Jim Kirk is completely made up and utterly divorced from the Kirk we actually see in the original series. And your analyses of male characters as they were portrayed in the 70s and 80s (Hal Jordan and Bruce Wayne in particular) really reminded me of this article.

It's interesting how similar the warping of these massive cultural icons is given the similarities (being a part of a decades old property and having been written by multiple writers over a long stretch of time) and the differences (the sheer volume of material that dc characters get as opposed to 3 seasons of a tv show plus some movies, the mediums, different industries, and being a part of a genre that kind of espouses different ideals). Another interesting commonality is that they're both media that everyone knows about but very few people have actually engaged with.

I don't know how much of star trek you've watched but the idea of a hotheaded, rash, womanizing dick is wildly different from the canon Kirk who was a nerd, pretty by the book, utterly devoted to his ship and his duty to his crew as a starfleet officer, was on really good terms with his exes who were all accomplished and intelligent women with lives and aspirations of their own, sensitive, and extremely professional.

The reason why I'm explaining that is that it's really striking how the imagined version of Kirk and various superhero characters ends up diminishing the point of these stories and the progressive themes that they actually did have and ends up creating a version of the story that is significantly more regressive than the source material. This not only affects the character in question but often also ends up flattening and erasing female characters that actually existed. For instance the whole purpose of star trek is to imagine a better future, a world where we've moved beyond the issues of today. It wasn't always great at it but the intent was always clear. Similarly the superhero comics genre to my limited understanding is meant to inspire the idea of regular heroism in the readers, to make you feel like you could be a hero too. And I get that these male characters get treated significantly better than their female counterparts but the destruction of their characters doesn't just affect them it also affects the overall story and the world of the story and ends up destroying anything good these stories had to say in the first place.

I don't really have anything to conclude this with just noticed this similarity and thought you might find it interesting given your interest in looking at stories within their cultural context and would love to know your thoughts. Have a nice week!

i unfortunately never got into star trek! i do think i've watched the first chris pine movie but i imagine going off of what you're saying here that it wasn't entirely accurate to who kirk is as a persongjkdfjlhdf. still though, this totally resonates and i couldn't agree more! i really believe there is a huge issue with with the life span of various media allowing their core message to deteriorate over time, esp bc that life span means they evolve in response to political changes in the real world. we are progressively moving into a very conservative time period in our history right now and that could not be reflected more than in what is being propagated via popular, long-standing source material. it's a very worrisome and disheartening phenomenon and i imagine much won't change unless the public political spectrum changes first :/

[the-golden-oath]

Femslash February 2024 Masterpost

I posted 9 works throughout the month of February this year and I thought I'd put them all together in one post. They're in a series on AO3 as well.

List under the cut. It's a bit long since I've included all the tags/warnings.

01. First Impressions

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

Jim and Bones make quite the impression upon the new guest instructor.

Words: 2,882

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/F, Gen

Fandom: Star Trek

Relationships: James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Spock, James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Spock, James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock, Christopher Pike & Spock

Characters: Christopher Pike, Spock (Star Trek), James T. Kirk, Leonard "Bones" McCoy

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe – All Female, They are all women bc I can do whatever I want forever, Academy Era, timeline? what timeline, canon? I hardly know her, meet cute, Jim Kirk is Allergic to Everything, Smitten spock, Christopher Pike is So Done, Pre-Relationship

02. An Arrangement for the Heart

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

Frodo stumbles upon a flower shop in her search for a gift during an unfortunate rainstorm. The shop owner is a charming artist of flower arrangement and the nearly-forgotten language of them. Frodo’s foray into the world of flowers brings welcome discoveries and the blossoming of something Frodo will cherish more than any flower.

Words: 6,816

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F, F/M

Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types

Relationships: Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee, Arwen Undómiel & Frodo Baggins, Aragorn & Frodo Baggins, Bilbo Baggins & Frodo Baggins, Frodo Baggins & The Fellowship of the Ring, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Aragorn/Arwen Undómiel, Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield

Characters: Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Marigold Gamgee, Daisy Gamgee, Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn (Tolkien), Arwen Undómiel

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Modern Setting, Alternate Universe – Flower Shop, Female Frodo Baggins, Female Samwise Gamgee, Female Bilbo Baggins, Language of Flowers, Tea Dates, Soft, bagginshield is only mentioned and also het

03. People Miss Me on Tuesdays

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

It felt like becoming. It felt like forming into the concrete before emerging in a burst of iridescent blue wings made of fluff and scales. It felt like a transformation.

Words: 1,043

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F

Fandom: Merlin (TV)

Relationship: Freya/Merlin (Merlin)

Characters: Merlin (Merlin), Freya (Merlin)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Modern Setting, Freya (Merlin) uses Neopronouns, Merlin (Merlin) uses She/Her Pronouns, Trans Female Character, Coming Out, Dresses, No Transphobia

04. My Horizon

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

Sakura finally finds a moment to breathe. In that breath, Ino shows her the horizon.

Words: 1,002

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F

Fandom: Naruto (Anime & Manga)

Relationship: Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino

Characters: Haruno Sakura, Yamanaka Ino

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, short and sweet, Hospitals, Mentioned injuries, marriage proposals, Sappy, don’t ask me when in canon this happens for I do not know

05. Gimme Gimme (What I Want)

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

Kaikaina Grif usually gets what she wants, even if it takes years. Even if it’s hard. Even if she feels out of her depth when faced with an ex-Freelancer. But she usually gets what she wants. So does former Agent Carolina.

Words: 6,888

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: Explicit

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F

Fandom: Red vs. Blue

Relationship: Agent Carolina/Kaikaina Grif | Sister

Characters: Agent Carolina (Red vs. Blue), Kaikaina Grif | Sister, Agent Washington (Red vs. Blue)

Additional Tags: Post-Season/Series 13, Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, Chorus (Red vs. Blue), Clubbing, Porn with Feelings, Trans Female Character(s), Trans Agent Carolina, Trans Kaikaina Grif, t4t kailina, Making Out, Dirty Talk, Soft sex, it’s what they deserve, Intercrural Sex, no beta we die like this fic the first time i posted it, Rewrite of an OLD Work

06. Between Your Heart and Mine

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

From the Carrock to the town of Esgaroth on Long Lake, Thorin’s heart yearns for its song and Bilbo wishes she were better at singing.

Words: 10,320

Chapters: 3/3

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F

Fandom: The Hobbit - All Media Types

Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Bilbo Baggins & Fíli & Kíli, Bilbo Baggins & Bofur, Bilbo Baggins & Beorn

Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, Gandalf (Tolkien), Thorin's Company, Beorn, Fíli (Tolkien), Kíli (Tolkien)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, plucked the orc and eagles scene from the movie and dropped it into mostly book canon, Female Bilbo Baggins, Female Thorin Oakenshield, half of the company is women bc I can do what I want, Thorin’s shirtless for about 2 mins, The company ships it, Female Beorn, Dwarven Ones | Soulmates, Conversations, Music, Love Confessions, I’m still salty they didn’t let the company have their musical instruments in the movie, I also gave thorin more of a beard than in the movies but less than in the book

07. Circadian Rhythm

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

Gwen does not expect a mermaid to be part of her vacation. She does not anticipate how much she will grow to care for said mermaid, either.

Words: 12,006

Chapters: 3/3

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F

Fandom: Merlin (TV)

Relationships: Gwen & Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Elyan & Gwen (Merlin), Gwen & Morgana (Merlin), Gwen/Morgana (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Morgana & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)

Characters: Gwen (Merlin), Merlin (Merlin), Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Morgana (Merlin), Elyan (Merlin), Minor Characters

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Mermaids, Alternate Universe – Modern Setting, Alternate Universe – Modern with Magic, Vacations, Background Merthur, Photography, Good Morgana (Merlin), Curses, near-drowning, past trauma, Near-death Experiences, Agravaine is mentioned quite a bit, Developing Relationship, Weddings, Happy Ending

08. Sand in the Dawn

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

After Gaara wakes up next to Lee with no memory of the night before, she comes to the most emotionally complicated conclusion. She does her best to avoid the inevitable, because she values their friendship more than she has interest in destroying it because of her feelings. She doesn’t consider the odds that Lee feels the same.

Words: 4,539

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F

Fandom: Naruto (Anime & Manga)

Relationship: Gaara/Rock Lee

Characters: Gaara (Naruto), Rock Lee, Minor Characters

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Modern Setting, Female Gaara (Naruto), Female Rock Lee (Naruto), it’s Gaara’s birthday in the fic!, Waking Up Together, References to One Night Stands, Rated T for Sexual References, Misunderstandings, more like no communication, Love Confessions, Kissing

09. Race Me to Tomorrow

AO3 Link Here

Summary:

Bart’s about ready to snap and lock Tim and Kon in a closet together until they work out their obvious crushes on each other. Not that closet would stop them, but a boy can dream. And hey, why do his teammates keep coming out to him?

Words: 2,314

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F

Fandoms: DCU, Young Justice - All Media Types

Relationships: Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Bart Allen & Tim Drake & Kon-El | Conner Kent & Cassie Sandsmark

Characters: Bart Allen, Tim Drake, Kon-El | Conner Kent, Cassie Sandsmark

Additional Tags: POV Outsider, young justice core four, trans female characters, Vignettes, Coming Out, Comedy, Bart Allen has a Crisis, not the one you think, timkon plus bart shenanigans, getting your ears pierced at claire’s, Trans Tim Drake, Trans Kon-El | Conner Kent, Trans Cassie Sandsmark

[transkenshitakahashi]

yugioh & warriors for the series questions!

hmmm gonna choose gx for the yugioh if that's okay! If not, i can do dm later!

(using dub names bc thats what i learned first!)

Favourite character: Ohhhh this is hard....i love almost everyone tbh, but I think I'll go with Jim Crocodile Cook! Absolute king, perfect fella.

Funniest character: The Chazz. Manjoume Thunder. Funniest motherfucker alive. So iconic i named my cat after him dskjfkldsjdlks. Close seconds go to Atticus for being....himself, and Aster, who is unintentionally hilarious to me. (affectionate)

Best-looking character: Camula my beloved,,,,love vampire women

3 favourite ships: Hmm..... Jesse/Jaden, Zane/Atticus (and maybe Yusuke?), and Jim/Axel or Jim/Tyranno, i can't decide!

Least favourite character: If i so much as look at Adrian Gecko i will feel Absolute Rage

Least favourite ship: Other than the obvious gross shit of shipping any of the siblings together, I'm gonna say Adrian/Echo. i dont think anyone does ship it but still. She deserved so much better than him

Reason why I watch it: My god it is so insane (affectionate)

Why I started watching it: My partner wanted to watch it with me, so we did!

now for warriors!

Favourite character: Crookedstar, Squirrelflight, and Dovewing are my top three!

Funniest character: Berrynose. Fuckin Berrynose. I don't even feel particularly strongly about him but he cracks me up

Best-looking character: In terms of designs, I tend to like the torties most! They're fun to play around with markings with. If you're asking which one I'd go "Oh my god just LOOK at that pretty kitty!!" about while walking through the forest, I'd go with Leopardstar! I love marbled and rosetted cats, so I'd probably gasp seeing one.

3 favourite ships: CloudBright, DoveBriar, And CrookedWillow. Close seconds for FireSand and SquirrelDaisy!

Least favourite character: Gonna ignore the obvious answers for this one (though I agree with most) and say Shrewclaw from Tallstar's Revenge. Man literally told Tall no one would miss him if he died and then turned around and said "I was only teasing umu"

Least favourite ship: uh. a lot ngl, but lets say BrambleSquirrel atm

Reason why I read it: I mean, I only learn things through osmosis at this point, but even then its like hotel california - you can never leave.

Why I started watching it: 5th grade me saw cat books and went crazy went stupid

[gracemyface]

Daryl: The Professional (Daryl Dixon x Young! Reader)

Chapter Six

Key:

Y/n - Your Name

Y/l/n - Your Last Name

Y/e/c - Your Eye Color

Y/h/c - Your Hair Color

Series Masterlist | Previous Part | Next Part

Summary: Things are unsettled at camp after the fight and Jim's breakdown, and the Reader finds themselves too worried about Daryl to really enjoy any of the festivities. Meanwhile, Daryl finds himself struggling in the city, wanting to return to camp but not wanting to face the wrath that would come from leaving Glenn behind. They're finally reunited when, in a turn for the worse, the camp is attacked by a wandering herd of walkers...

Warnings: Major Character Death, Canon Typical Violence/Gore, Some Angst.

A/n: I will have no real Lori slander. She did some shitty things, yes, but she loved her kids and the other women’s kids. Anyway, how do we like Daryl’s pov? I really, really struggled with it bc he’s such an asshole (I mean that affectionately.)

Shit really goes down this chapter. You guys have a slight breakdown, but it's been a long time coming. Character development ig?

also, do we want more stories from when the Reader, Daryl, and Merle were together?

Word Count: 4.8k

The first time Daryl ever saw you, the blood-soaked orphan with a far-off stare who’d barricaded themself into the corner of his father’s cabin, he felt a prickle of annoyance travel up his spine. 

He didn’t know why you were out in the woods, or what had happened to result in you being covered in the crimson liquid (though, if his father hadn’t just been eaten in front of him, he would’ve assumed it was a pig slaughtering gone awry), or how you got into the cabin. He, especially at that moment, hadn’t even cared. He knew immediately that Jess wouldn’t have left you behind, cursed his father’s half-brother and his bleeding heart, and reduced you to nothing in his mind but another mouth to feed — a weak, sniveling mouth at that. He wasn’t ever keen on being around kids, smart-mouthed teenagers even less, and he didn’t really want to have to handle the collapse of society with anybody who couldn’t fend for themselves. 

You showed him, though. You really did.

In those few days when it was just you and him after Jess took that fall off the truck when you officially became his responsibility, you proved you weren’t weak. You adapted to the end of the world quickly — learned to be quiet when you needed to be, to be useful most of the time, and to just eat whatever he managed to catch. And then you took on Merle in a way that nobody really dared to, most nights ending with you sending his older brother a heated gaze over the fire, the flames reflecting in your y/e/c eyes. Now, he still wouldn’t leave his life in your hands if he had the choice, even after you shot that man clear in the head back in Fontana and walked it off, but he knows for sure that he can trust you to handle your own — and, even if he doesn’t really appreciate being wrong, he can’t help but admire you for it… though, he’d never admit it aloud.

Standing in a long-abandoned lab building in an overrun Atlanta, the redneck stares down at the whimpering kid they picked up with pure disdain. His lips are curled back over his teeth in a sneer and his eyes are slanted as he stares down, internally picking apart every little thing the teenager does. That is what he expected from you.

What a shit show this little expedition-slash-rescue mission has turned out to be.

Not only was Merle not where they left him — currently down one hand and on the run through the sweltering pit of hell that has become of the once lively city — but now they’ve lost Glenn, too. If Daryl’d known that the younger man was going to get taken hostage by a bunch of wannabe gangsters and hold them up like this, he’d have left before these assholes could’ve even thought about getting into the truck with him.

He wanted to be the hell out of dodge three hours ago. “Them guns are worth more than gold. Gold won’t protect your family or put food on the table— you’re gonna give that up for that kid?”

Both of them give him a stern look, and he resists the urge to roll his eyes. Sure, the kid is nice and all, and half the camp (including you) would be really pissed off if they came back without him, but they can’t give up half of these guns. It’s either Glenn or a better chance at survival and he picks survival.

“If I knew we’d get Glenn back, I might agree. But, you think that Vato across the way is just gonna hand him over?”

Daryl nods in agreement. There’s that, too. They have no idea for certain if giving up the guns will even get them what they want. It might just be a trap that gets them all killed.

“You calling G a liar?” Their hostage— Miguel, was it?— inserts himself into the equation.

His mind once again drifts to you. If you were kidnapped, you wouldn’t be this stupid. You’d be smart enough to not mouth off to the people who held you captive, smart enough to figure out how to get yourself free, and smart enough not to make promises on his behalf that he might not be able to keep. You’d be mute, sitting there and watching your captors with those dangerous little eyes of yours.

This kid, though? Christ.

“Are you a part of this?” He crosses the room and leans down over the kid, slapping him lightly. “You wanna hold onto your teeth?”

T-Dog continues on, ignoring the violence. “Question is, do you trust that man’s word?”

“No, question is what are you willing to bet on it? Could be more than them guns. Could be your life. Glenn worth that to you?” He holds Rick’s gaze.

Truth be told, Daryl doesn’t quite get risking why anybody would risk their life for someone who wasn’t their blood. Glenn wasn’t any of their brother, son, or cousin — he was just some (former) pizza running kid that was on the highway, in the right place and at the right time when Shane spearheaded the group and lead them off the highway. Merle is probably the only person in the world that the redneck would even think to sacrifice anything for.

(Except maybe…)

“What life I have I owe to him. I was nobody to Glenn, just some idiot stuck in a tank. He could have walked away, but he didn't.” Rick loads his revolver and sticks it in his pocket. “Neither will I.”

Daryl scoffs in his soul. “So you’re gonna hand the guns over?”

“I didn't say that.”

The sheriff's voice has now taken a quality that has his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline.

“There's nothing keeping you two here. You should get out, head back to camp.”

T-Dog winces from his injuries, rubbing his head with his hand. “And tell your family what?”

Daryl and Rick stare at each other for a beat, a silent conversation happening between them, before he sighs shortly and reaches for a weapon. You’d probably be really pissed at him if he didn’t try, and he doesn’t want to deal with an emotional teenager right about now.

“Come on, this is nuts.” The boy sits back down when Daryl holds a hand out to him. “Just do like G says.”

The redneck ignores the whining boy and starts loading a shotgun. He needs this to be over as quickly as possible, and he needs the gangster assholes to go down without a fight.

He made a promise to come back alive, after all.

──────────────────

Jim has a heatstroke. Or, at least, that’s what Shane keeps dismissing it as. With the current state of the world, it could’ve very well been post-bite fever or a psychotic break.

He’d been digging for reasons unknown and unintentionally ruined the good news of the incredible amount of food they were going to have tonight in the process. Shane went all cop on him, which didn’t really surprise you after what happened with Ed, and the whole ordeal ended with Jim being tied to a tree after ranting and raving about how he left his family for dead. Everyone seemed to move on after that, the mothers dragged their children off to do schoolwork and a few of the other adults started setting up for the fish fry, but you found yourself a little nauseous.

It looked like he was digging graves, and why did he go into such intense detail?

Hiding away in your tent, you lay down on top of your sleeping bag and throw a ball of socks up just to catch it as it comes down. You hoped the action would be therapeutic — something to take your mind off the image of Jim’s poor family and how it bleeds into the image of your own — but the socks lack the weight of a real ball, and you can’t get out of your head.

Had washing your parents’ blood off your skin absolved you of any responsibility in their deaths? Were you doomed to end up like Jim?

Would you also, someday soon, have a psychotic break?

“Hey, Y/n?” Lori’s soft voice drifts through the thin fabric of your tent as he speaks timidly.

For a beat, you decide if you want to be silent and let her think you’re asleep. “Uh, yeah. What’s up?”

“Shane’s gonna teach Carl and Sophia to clean fish. He wanted to know if you’d join.”

You already know how to gut an animal. Squirrels, rabbits, and even a deer, once — Daryl had always been very big on you learning how to survive in the time you spent together, and that learning involved getting over the grossness of animal entrails very, very quickly. You were living through the end of the world, he’d reasoned, you don’t have time to be weak-stomached.

And you don’t want to spend time with Shane. That’s at the top of the list of things you don’t want.

But you’re not going to tell the woman that you dislike the man she was sleeping with, so you say, “I already know how to.” 

There’s another beat of silence, and you can see the shadow of her willowy figure shift through the wall of the tent.

“Can I come in?”

You, certainly not expecting that, pause. 

“Uh, sure.”

You sit up and push yourself to the back of the tent, watching as Lori unzips the door and ducks down inside. She’s got sincere eyes. So sincere that when she crouches down in front of you and meets your gaze, your skin starts to crawl.

“You feelin’ okay?”

You hate that question. Something burns behind your nose and you snuggle, shrugging pitifully. “Dunno. Pretty shit — what happened to Jim, I mean.”

Lori nods thoughtfully. “Yeah… it is.”

She looks a little pale. Surely, the death of children doesn’t sit well with a mother, even if they aren’t her own.

“I, uh, I understand that you’ve had a rough time.” The brunette doesn’t seem to know what to say to you, and you almost feel bad. “I mean, I don’t. Not really. And you don’t have to tell me anything.” She stresses that point with a sweep of her hand. “But I know something must’ve happened because everyone has something happen.”

You nod along, fiddling with a loose string on your jeans. 

“I— Daryl and Merle don’t exactly seem like the easiest people to talk to, so if you ever need anything, me and Carol are right here, okay?”

“…okay.”

She smiles softly at you, and you spare one back. Lori and Carol are perfectly nice women, but you almost prefer Daryl, who has put a ban on personal questions and mostly ignores the emotional side of everything. You know you aren’t going to go to Lori and tell her things.

You wouldn’t even know where to start. 

“Y’know, Carl likes you? Like, a lot.” 

“Really?”

“Mhm. Sophia, too.”

Deep down, you know this is her trying to coax you out of the tent, but you let it boost your ego anyway. There’s something so incredibly normal (and endearing) about being looked up to — even if, sometimes, it gets a little annoying.

“And I’m guessing they would really, really like it if I went out there and helped Shane gut fish with ‘em?”

“Yeah. They would.”

Pursing your lips, you stare at the woman through slightly narrowed eyes before sighing and giving in.

“Alright…”

She grins widely and it kind of makes up for it.

Shane seems to be getting frustrated with the ordeal when you arrive, correcting Sophia’s stance with a tightness pulling at his smile as Lori gently nudges you along. You take the seat next to him without a word, pretending you don’t notice how he and the woman exchange a look, or how Carl shifts toward you on the log. It’s a hundred degrees out and he’s attached to your hip already, watching with those big blue eyes of his as you silently grab a fish off the pile and get to gutting it. 

You can remember the steps well: descale, cut a slit in the belly, remove the guts and fins and head, and rinse. 

“Look at you.” Shane compliments in a drawl, finally getting Sophia to do what he needed her to. “Like a swan to water.”

With a wrinkled nose, you drop fish innards into a bucket and turn to look at him as you shake the blood off your hands.

“Yeah, well, you spend enough time with the Dixons and you’ll learn how to gut anything.”

Something dark flashes across his face but you don’t care. You turn back to the fish, making a little joke to Carl about fish eyes that makes his entire face scrunch up and draws a long ‘Ewww’ from his lips. The laugh that bursts from you rattles in your bones.

──────────────────

“Hey, Dale, you got a?—“ The question dies on your lips as, upon stepping over the threshold of the RV, you stumble upon Andrea.

Every cabinet in the mobile home’s little kitchenette is open and she appears to be rooting through them desperately. At the sound of your voice, she pauses, looking up at you like she’s an animal and you just caught her looking through your garbage cans.

“Hi.”

“Hi?” You retort, shifting your weight. “Do you know where Dale is?”

“No, but I wish I did.” She heaves a sigh and runs her hand through her hair.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen the woman quite so frantic. Somewhere down the line, Andrea Harrison was a lawyer, and it’s hard to imagine her standing in the front of a courtroom, prim and proper and ready to kick some ass, with her standing in front of you like this.

“Can I help you any?” You ask just as Dale finally responds to his summons, stepping over the threshold with a quiet, “Did I hear my name?“

“Yeah.” Both you and Andrea answer at once, but you step back and gesture to her. “I think she needs help first.”

The blonde spares you a nervous smile.

“Alright. What do you need?”

“Wrapping paper, color tissue, anything?”

(Okay, maybe you regret letting her go first. At this rate, you’ll never get that bandaid.)

You stare at her with furrowed brows and a scrunched-up face. 

“Seriously?” Dale shares in your confusion, glancing warily between the two of you. You offer him a shrug.

“How could you not have any?”

“Had I been informed of the impending apocalypse I'd have stocked up.”

Your snort at the old man’s dry words earns you a particularly derisive look from Andrea. “What? It’s the end of the world and you need wrapping paper. Shoot me for finding that amusing.”

“It’s Amy’s birthday tomorrow.” She says it like you should know that (probably because you should.) “I've been marking days on the calendar just to make sure.”

Your eyes wander over to the calendar on the wall of the RV as she lifts the necklace that she stole for a gift to her sister. Surely enough, Andrea has been crossing out the days on it. 

Despite what you expected, there is no big circle over Amy’s birthday or anything, but you then figure that would probably ruin the surprise. Your older (in age and not maturity) blonde friend had come to you earlier in the week and lamented to you about the situation. While you’d always known that Andrea was the older of the pair, you didn’t know just how much until Amy filled you in on the ghosts of birthday past; she told you all about the older blonde’s broken promises to return to the nest for her little sister’s birthday, about how, more often than not, college and other things got in the way. She must’ve seen the calendar, too, and been disappointed by the apparent lack of acknowledgment that it was growing closer and closer to her favorite holiday.

“You can’t leave a gift unwrapped.” 

“Oh, it’s good that you got something. I think she thinks you forgot.” That was told to you in confidence, but you stretched the truth a bit, so it isn’t that bad, right?

Dale and Andrea both look at you for a moment before he nods his head slowly. “Alright. Deep breath. I’m sure we’ll find something.” He turns back to face you. “What did you need?”

As if a lightbulb turned on over your head, you lift up your hand and the handkerchief that’s been wrapped around your minor flesh wound. “Carl cut me while I was demonstrating. I just need a bandaid.”

The old man shakes his head at you and steps around Andrea to go get the first aid kit, muttering to himself about the youth of today and how you’re going to lose your limb if you aren’t more careful.

──────────────────

As the grating summer sunlight fades into the darkness of dusk, taking the heat with it, the whole group (excluding the men in Atlanta and Ed, who refused to show his face around camp) sits down for the biggest meal most of them have had since the end of the world.

Cold beer and water are handed out as serving trays full of fried fish get passed around between the clusters of people who gather around their fires, the murmur of their happy chatter and soft laughter cutting through the blanketing sounds of the night. After the big fight and Jim’s foreboding breakdown, it’s nice to see everyone smiling and knowing that nobody’s going to ruin it this time — even if you can’t really find yourself joining in on the festivity.

“Pass the fish, please?”

“Here you go.”

“Man, I missed this.”

Sitting down on the end of one of the logs and feeling a little removed from everyone else, you wrap your coat tighter around your frame and let yourself worry about the group of men who went into the city. You don’t know Rick Grimes too well — he didn’t exactly give you the chance to get to know him, did he? — but you do know Glenn, T-Dog, and Daryl. You know that they’re very capable men and that, in certain circumstances, most of them have more experience with geeks than you do, but you can’t help but worry. The sun has long since set, meaning that the men, wherever they are, are stranded out in the dark. You don’t really remember the nights from when it was just you and Daryl (a combination of many sleepless nights and too-high adrenaline made the memories blur together), but you know enough to know that things do get worse when the sun goes down; geeks aren’t exactly quiet, but they can really sneak up on you when there’s no light and your body wants to sleep.

Experienced or not, they're going to be tired eventually, and, if Merle doesn’t try to kill them, something else will.

“Hey, Nervous Nellie.” Shane draws your attention to him by nudging your leg with his boot, “Yeah, you— how's the fish?” 

Your eyes flit down to the bottle in his hand. Beer surely makes him a little looser.

“It’s alright.”

The ex-cop cocks a brow and echoes your response. “Alright?”

You really wish he’d just leave you alone. 

Truth be told, you don’t really like the food. It’s bland and it tastes fishy in the worst way, and (even if you’ll admit that you’ve been eating it like a death row inmate getting their last meal as if indigestion isn’t a thing), chasing it down with water isn’t helping. Sure, it’s better than the food you’ve been eating for weeks — better than measly mushrooms, canned rations, and whatever game the Dixon brothers could hunt up — but it’s not great.

“It’s no cheeseburger.” You shrug, stabbing some more of the pale flesh with your fork. “But beggars and choosers, and all that.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Morales interjects lightheartedly, tipping the head of his beer in your direction. You smile a thin-lipped smile.

The arrival of his long-lost best friend has made Shane rather… unsettling. Whether it’s because of how cold Lori has been acting toward him or his superiority complex, you’re not sure. You just know that you want Daryl to come back, even if that means putting up with Merle for the rest of his life.

“I’ll be right back.” You dismiss yourself quietly to Jacqui when the temperature changes and your discomfort proves to be too much. She nods absentmindedly, too engrossed with whatever Dale is saying to really respond, and takes the plate from you when you hand it over. 

You slip away into the darkness pretty easily, retreating to your tent in search of a sweatshirt, a breather, and maybe some reassurance that the redneck you’ve grown to like could survive whatever came at him. 

With a press of your hand, the nylon flap of your tent opens and you step in. Pausing briefly to turn on the little electric lantern on the floor, you then scan the small space with your eyes, looking for anything that might pass as something with long sleeves. There’s already a pile of dirty clothes forming in the corner and most of your stuff is strewn about, but you ignore that and grab for your bag— an old duffel that belonged to Daryl’s deceased father. Curling your fingers around one of the fraying straps, you pull it up and toward you, rooting through the stuff in there until you find it. A red and black flannel.

Somewhere down the line — just like most of your stuff did — the flannel belonged to one of the Dixons. It hangs loose on your frame, the sleeves too long for your arms and the length stopping mid-thigh. 

Buttoning it up, you cuff the sleeves and fiddle with the ends for a few minutes until they sit in a way you like. 

Just as you’re able to breathe a deep breath and feel remotely at peace, a blood-curdling scream, followed by many more, cuts through the quiet dark of the night. Adrenaline is the first thing you feel, your heart beating in your ears and your lungs squeezed of air, and worry is the second, fear for your friends forcing your legs to move and push out of your tent again. Though, before you can do that, you’re greeted by two rotting hands shoving their way through the opening and grabbing at your shoulders in a surprisingly iron grip. The shock of seeing a geek so up-close causes you to stumble back, but your ankle twists harshly — sending you sprawling to the ground with the monster right on top of you. 

“Oh, god!” The cracked scream leaves your lips, the now-shattered glass from the lantern digging into the skin of your leg.

The walker is — or, was — a man. It gnashes its teeth and pushes toward you, the sound of the bones clacking together making you whimper. Is this what your parents felt in their last moments? Jim’s wife and kids? Very quickly, your arms start to tremble under the weight of the much larger body, and you decide to not resign yourself to the same fate. Craning your head, you search for a weapon. 

There’s no way for you to reach your gun right about now, which you can’t really shoot with one hand anyway, but there has to be something else — anything you can use.

As the walker claws desperately at your shirt and groans miserably, you have to make the rash decision to remove one hand from its chest and give yourself less leverage to reach blindly behind you. Panicked breaths puff past your lips and your head starts to feel light as you grab at your stuff. Your fingers tightening around your sleeping bag, you give a harsh tug and hear the faintest sound of objects clattering around. The walker pushes down on your forearm as your fingers touch what feels like the hilt of a knife. Daryl must’ve thrown it in with your belongings a while back.

Letting out a strangled and panicked sound, you take the weapon and stab the walker with all your might.

The steel of the blade pops the walker’s eye upon entry and slides right through to its brain. Closing your eyes and mouth, you whip your head to the side as a mixture of ink-like blood and gel-like eye fluids drip down the hilt of the knife and onto your face. Its body, now eerily still and limp, falls on top of yours, making it hard to fully inhale as stuttered, panicked breaths rack your chest. As the sounds of gunshots and screams continue from outside the tent, you roll the body off you and force yourself up on your knees, gasping breaths through frightened sobs as you try to tug the knife out of the dead head.

As you pull it free, another walker stumbles into your tent and tries to pounce on you. Before it can bite a chunk out of your body, the tent door is being pushed open and a bullet is shattering its skull.

“Y/n!?” Glenn’s voice is just audible over the deadly mixture of your heartbeat and painful ringing in your ears, his eyes wide as he hopes what he just shot was actually dead before he shot it. “Y/n?!”

“Glenn.” You whimper, kicking the other dead body away from you. Your alleviation that the men from Atlanta are alive is short-lived.

“Oh.” He breathes in relief and slings the gun over his shoulder, reaching out to hold your forearms. “Oh. You’re okay. Oh, god. That’s good.”

“Daryl— is— is Daryl?” You can barely form words, your fingernails digging into his skin.

“Daryl’s fine. C’mon. We have to get out of here!”

He ushers you to your feet. The pain in your calf worsens as you stand up on shaky legs, every movement causing the glass to shift in your skin, and you stumble forward into his chest.

“I can’t— I hurt my leg.” You hiccup and Glenn sighs softly, wrapping one of your arms around his shoulders so he can half carry you.

“I have you.”

Glenn leads you out into the chaos. What’s left of camp isn’t very different from what Sedalia was like all those weeks ago — bodies, both rotting and fresh, littering the floor and the once-contained fires roaring loudly against the stones. Howls of anguish and sobs fill the air. 

“Y/n! Y/n!” Daryl’s southern drawl echoes through the remains of the camp, worry, fear, and anger lacing his words. “Where the hell is the kid?!”

The survivors are all gathered around the RV, and you watch as he shoves Shane lightly for getting in his way.

“Where are they? Did you leave them alone?” Rick tacks on as T-Dog tries to get in between them, his son in his arms. “Has anyone seen Y/n?”

As the moonlight casts a blue shadow on your blood and grime covered skin, you let go of Glenn and find it within yourself to shout. “I’m right here!”

The redneck’s head snaps over to you and he abandons his antagonism against the ex-cop in favor of running over to you. Daryl grabs your face in both of his hands and starts scanning over your features.

“You alright? Any of this blood yours?” He whispers gruffly.

“I’m… I mean I hurt my leg but otherwise I’m fine. No bites.” Your hollow voice cracks slightly as you speak, and your gaze flits away from him as he bends down to check your leg. “Is that?…”

Andrea sits, crumpled at the foot of the door into the RV. In her lap is Amy. Sweet Amy. Amy, who missed texting more than most and still had this beautiful ability to wonder in her twenties. Amy, whose birthday is tomorrow.

Amy, Amy, Amy.

Your blood runs cold and your stomach drops so fast you might fall over as the older blonde’s bloody hands brush across your dead friend’s pale skin. 

“Don’t look.” Your guardian orders once he’s followed your gaze, but it’s too late.

Tears, burning hot and long coming, spill out of your eyes and down your cheeks. Daryl sighs and, because the attention isn’t on either of you, lets you curl into his chest, his hand rubbing down your back in an attempt at comforting you.

It’s useless, though. 

Andrea’s sobs filter through the air as a heavy silence overcomes the rest of the group, each and every one of them consumed with the weight of what they’ve lost.

──────────────────

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[wh33zy]

(re: meme for shippers) 1, 2, 19 bc idw be fired im already unemployed have mercy (ಥ‿ಥ) LOOOLLLLL

CONGRATS for sending in this ask, you have been PROMOTED!

ANYWAY thank you for the ask lol!!! Sorry I'm getting to this a bit late, I've had online finals this weekend (they're due Monday) and I have an in-person final Monday morning so that's been my life as of late oirjoeijgreo. 1. Talk about my first ship? Hm...I can't exactly pinpoint my first ship because I used to HATE romance as a kid (thanks mom and dad) so as far back as I can remember, my first ships that I LIVED, LIVED for were as a young cringe bucket: Robin/Starfire, Raven/Beastboy, Inuyasha/Kagome. ESPECIALLY the first and last ones. With Robin and Starfire, I was and still am, a HUGE Starfire fan and a part of the ship was me wanting her to be so happy because SPACE QUEEN DESERVED IT. With Inuyasha and Kagome, the show really Orochimaru'd me into the ship because there was so much "will they/won't they" and I loved the characters A LOT. These two ships have the Jim/Pam affect on me in that you think "well, they HAVE to be together!!"

2. Three of the most important ships of my life? This one is a little hard so do bare with me.

The first ship that was really important to me was Inuyasha and Kagome. At the time I was really into the show, life really sucked and was so tumultuous that it was my form of escapism. These two really taught me what it meant to grow and change not only for yourself but also for the benefit of those around you. Not only this, but it also gave me a look into a very loving relationship regardless of romance and really showed me how you'd do anything for the person you love the most, who you consider your soulmate. It also taught me that relationships change, the importance of communication, and that relationship can flourish when you grow together. Hope that makes sense!

The second ship I can comfortably say is Barnaby/Kotetsu from Tiger & Bunny. I am a bit obsessed with super heroes and at the time of me first watching this series was when, again, life wasn't so great at 14 so I sought after escapism. I also was looking for LGBT content to consume because my bi ass was so faaaaaar back in the closet. This show ticked both boxes, went even further with AMAZING representation, and to this day Barnaby/Kotetsu remains my number 1 ship. This ship taught me so much in regards to communication, what it means to really connect with someone and put your trust them, what it really means to be there for someone, doing the right thing despite everything, living your life regardless of what the world thinks. Hell, it taught me how to be a better person in general! If you haven't seen Tiger & Bunny, then PLEASE DO! It's very underrated here in the states, but is SUPER popular in Japan and has one best anime and inspired MHA for a reason. It's also coming back this April with a brand new season on Netflix!

The third ship is Utena/Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena. If there's one thing that can make me cry without any hesitation is witnessing strong women. When the Wonder Woman trailer came out and I saw it in a theater for the first time, I could barely keep it together! Not to mention, I've been really looking for mainly lesbian media to get into. Utena and Anthy really display full on girl power and strength, especially in regards of what it means to love someone, what it means to do anything for her, and what it means to find the strength to pursue your own happiness. This show also came really in handy because I'm currently trying to write an original work of my own that has very similar qualities to Utena/Anthy. If you haven't watched Revolutionary Girl Utena, I highly recommend it. Like Tiger & Bunny, if you're an anime fan, it's just one of those shows you should watch at least once.

19. Have I ever shipped something despite myself? Hmmmm....I can't say for sure. The only thing that comes to mind was my first gay ship which was Finland/Sweden. I remember at the time of watching Hetalia that I didn't understand why everyone shipped these two together because I found them both a bit too different and Finland to be too intimidated by Sweden. And then I saw more scenes of them together and I was like "FINE, okay??? IT'S CUTE. I GET IT NOW, ALRIGHT??"

Thanks again for the ask!!