#probably more than the CP one

[billowyy]

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[grapejuicestyless]

The Things We Miss

JJ Maybank x fem!reader

Summery: There were only two rules between the Pogues. No Pogue on Pogue macking, and never mention the one we lost.

The chateau was littered with dry rot, and probably violated as many safety codes there were, hell, it probably created new guidelines just by standing, but it was home. It wasn’t legally anyones, no more did it belong to John B as it did to the rest of the Pogues. He could call it his childhood home, but so could JJ, right? If you spend all your time on the lap of another’s father, he becomes your dad too, right? He becomes more than the man who you wave to when you see to be polite. He teaches you how to fish, how to write, not to read cursive, he couldn’t even do that, but how to cook.

But maybe that was all just a perk, something to sweeten everything. Because truthfully it wasn’t the family, or his lack of family, or the house, or the food—though it was good, or the beer that kept JJ coming as often as he did.

It was her.

Y/n Routledge, a Pogue by heart, and a smile like gold.

Y/n was younger than John B, not by much. They didn’t even have a year separating them. They were irish twins, in the sense that their parents decided it would be best to try for kids as soon as possible after John B was born. Maybe it was the mother’s idea, maybe she knew she’d be leaving and she had to do everything she wanted as quickly as she could to escape faster. But John B figures it was just baby fever. So Y/n was ten months younger than John B, but never dumber, or slower, or calmer.

She was the center of everything. All things good, JJ believed happened because of her. Like she had a good luck charm that radiated onto the others. Though, she wouldn’t need it if she had, because JJ believed he was lucky enough to have her just breathing beside him anyway.

Maybe that’s why her passing was so hard for him, harder than it was for any of the other Pogues, even her own blood.

None of them would ever forget the night they lost her, John B had been suffering with the loss of his father, but Y/n seemed to power through like it was nothing. She hid the CPS documents from John B to keep him calm, payed the bills for him, and kept him fed and happy. She never cried. Never.

So imagine the surprise when they discovered the ghost of tears staining her face when the sun rose and they could finally see her, paled and cold.

They would never see her kind eyes again, or the smile that lit up every room. Her laugh wouldn’t echo through the chateau, and she wouldn’t rock the boat trying to wrestle Kiara for the last applesauce anymore. She was gone.

The hurricane was harsh. John B and Y/n had excitedly claimed it as a way to delay their CPS appointment, confident they would live another day on the island.

She didn’t want to surf the surge that night, she was scared. She begged her brother not to go, but when she saw the determination on his face, she grabbed her board and went with him. Because if anything were to happen, she’d pull him from the sea and drag him to shore if she had to.

The waves were restless, crashing onto the shore and knocking back anything littered behind. Y/n’s gut said don’t do it, but her best interest for her brother, and her JJ forced her feet into the waves.

It was fun at first, catching waves she never had before, laughing with JJ and John B, but soon it became too much, and when she wiped out, she went silently, her head coming down on a rock hard, and her board drifting away as she sunk into the soft sand below, the dark waters thrashing at her body, hiding the crimson that swirled around her.

She was scared, she was scared when the day started, and she was scared when she went. When the boys decided to call it quits, also unable to keep their balance, they called for her, but she was nowhere to be found.

“Y/n/n?” JJ had called out, wading back into the water quickly, only knowing the vague position where you had last been. “Y/n, come on, it’s not funny, seriously!” But the jokes had always been JJ’s thing, so only part of him held out hope she was only joking.

“I see her!” John B had called out, catching a glimpse of her hand underneath a softer wave, but maybe he wouldn’t have tried so hard, wasted so much energy, and carried her to shore if he knew just how late he was.

“Come on bird, come on.” He called her the nickname his father gave him, seeing lines of her paled face through the teary vision covering his eyes.

They preformed CPR, and JJ’s mouth met hers in a desperate attempt to wake her, he nearly broke her rib trying to restart her heart. He could feel the burning in his eyes, but he refused to cry over someone he believed he could save. When he dreamed of their first kiss, he never thought it would happen this way.

Y/n sputtered to life with a cough, rolling over to breathe, and the boys felt relief for the first time. They thought they knew the feeling, but now they truly did.

Y/n had a lot of fight in her, maybe that’s why she came back. But the darkness made it hard to see the blood staining her hair red, or how it dripped down the side of her neck as rain poured down on them. She laughed at something JJ had said, and she told him that she loved him as they limped along the path, and this time she seemed different about the way she was saying it. They didn’t know it just then that they hadn’t saved her, because she walked with her brother’s arm around her, but she fell into JJ’s when she collapsed.

“Y/n/n?” He asked, in a panic. He stumbled, but held her up, trying to brush the hair out of her face so he could see her. His palms came up red, wet with more than the salt water that consumed her. He swore as he sat on his knees, holding her head between his legs while John B kneeled above her.

“Come on, hold out a little longer okay?” He tapped his sister’s cheek, his fingers lined with the red that poured from her head. He silently prayed she was okay, that she was just weak from nearly drowning.

They whispered sweet nothings to her, because even with her eyes closed and her breathing shallow, they could feel it in the way she was tense that she was scared, scared even as she slipped away, as the life she cared for so much was ripped from her cruelly.

They cradled her close and lifted her head to press soft kisses to her cold skin. The boys hands were sticky with copious amounts of blood that didn’t belong to them. But still, they cradled her like their warmth was enough to undo what was done.

They laid her in bed when they got home. John B tucked her in like he had the first week their mother left, and like she had the first week after their father’s death. In the morning, her white pillow was stained red, and her body was unmoving, not even the faint rising of her chest from her breath could be seen. She was gone, and her red skin and streaky face told them that at some point as they laid her to rest, she had accepted it, she had cried and she had gone because it would be less painful than trying to stay.

JJ found her first in the morning. He screamed, and he punched a hole in the wall before crying on her lap. He positioned her arms to hold him one last time as he wept, John B rushing in only to break a lamp in grief, the weight of her death on his shoulders.

She was gone, and he blamed himself for dragging her out to a place she never wanted to go.

John B was left with the absence of his other half, and JJ was left with the regret of not holding onto her a little tighter before she passed. A sister, and the love of another’s life ripped from their hands under their noses. It made them equally sick.

“No, hell no!” JJ yelled, storming out of the sunroom in the chateau. The wood creaked under his heavy boots, which were caked in dust and stained from rain. There was a droplet of blood near one of the toes that he often focused on, a stain from a memory he wishes he didn’t have.

“JJ she can help us!” Pope called out for him, but his voice fell flat against the revving of his dirt bike.

“I don’t give a damn if she held up the sky with her pinky!” JJ yelled, tossing his bike in the dirt carelessly.

It wasn’t that JJ had a problem with the blond kook, like he had some personal vendetta against the Cameron girl, no, it was the way his best friend was looking at her.

He held a love in his eyes he hadn’t seen since the incident. A few weeks ago, it would have made him happy, he would have clapped a palm over his spine and laughed at how he hoped he would be next, but he would only half mean it because JJ was certain he had already found something to compare John B’s love sick stare to.

But now that was gone, and John B was looking at another girl like the most important person in their lives wasn’t gone. Like the red that still stained the sheets in a faint pink color wasn’t haunting the guest room that was once hers. The same room that John B had torn apart and made unrecognizable just hours after they took her away.

JJ kept her things though, selfishly, in a box under the bed. Her pictures and her stuffed animals, the bear that JJ had spent his first paycheck winning for her.

He slept in that room religiously now, clinging to the mattress like if he laid in it long enough, his body would find the indentation where her body used to curl up, like if he held onto her sheets for long enough, he could still smell her, and if he played her favorite CD’s, ones he used to tease her for liking because it was all girlish pop music mixed in with some dad rock and acid, he would hear her fading laughter one last time.

John B didn’t give a damn, he couldn’t care less, and that’s what made him mad. That someone he would have traded places for in an instant was gone and her own brother didn’t seem to care.

“JJ, calm down!” Kiara shouted aimlessly, scooting back when the screen door slammed open again and JJ’s boots slapped against the wood loudly.

“Do you not care?” He asked, venom on his tongue, and John B simply shot him a glare.

“Of course I care! I want this gold more than anything. Sarah can help us, I can’t help that love just…walked through the door!” John B spoke like there was nothing else that could possibly be getting under JJ’s skin.

He threw the ashtray that sat on one of the dusty tables outside, watching it shatter like his heart had. The pain was still fresh, and the loss even fresher. He still had her blood underneath his finger nails, and maybe thats what made him feel so sick.

“Who cares about the fucking gold!” JJ shouted, exasperated. “What about Y/n?”

His words earned gasps and loud silence from the group, his best friend’s mouth hung open in quiet understanding and also a deep grief that had a lingering anger.

“JJ, we said we wouldn’t talk about it.” Kiara warned quietly, eyes flickering between the boys.

“Y/n is dead, John B. Shes gone and shes never coming back, don’t you understand that?” JJ’s hands fisted at the collar of John B’s shirt, only letting go when Popes hands rested on his shoulders, yanking him back so hard they both stumbled backwards.

“Of course I understand that! She’s my sister, I loved her!” John B argued back, shoving JJ hard, but not getting much leverage as Pope had already pulled them apart.

“But you have no problem replacing her!”

The world seemed to fall quiet, even Sarah had nothing to say, though everyone around could tell she was trying to sympathize for a death of a girl she barely knew, someone she could only grieve through the stories she would eventually hear.

“None of you do!” JJ’s shouting died down into a pathetic cry, his lip wobbling and his eyes red. They all watched his nose scrunching to help with the stinging he felt travel down his face into the back of his throat. It only made it feel more real because if she had been there, she would have known how to make him feel better. But none of them did, and that was the hard truth.

“It’s like you don’t even care about her! You can’t even fucking say her name, it’s like…like it’s some poison for you guys. Y/n Routledge.” JJ sputtered on in an endless word vomit. “That’s her name and don’t ever forget it.”

JJ turned on his heels, pushing past Pope and brushing his shoulder hard. His boots kicked up the dirt behind them, but just like he always did, he had more to say.

“She was gonna be something great.” He declared, spinning on his feet, holding his hat she bought him in middle school between his clenched hands. “She said she wanted to make a difference, and I believed her. She was gonna be the one to make it out of here. She was gonna be something to someone!” He wanted to throw his hat down, but the thought of tarnishing something that she had once held made him sick.

“But that doesn’t matter, right? She’s dead. She’s dead because she was too busy saving all of our asses that she didn’t have time to save her own.”

He looked at his hands, the sight of the dried blood making him sick all over again. He sped off before anyone could say anything else, before they could see the way he turned green with grief and fought the urge to choke his vomit down just to see if it might work and he might see her again.

Instead, he sat on the beach. Between the grains of sand, there were some red blotches left on the ground. He kicked them around with his boot, not wanting to stare at the crime scene any longer. It was enough that a droplet was forever stained on his boots, and that it was tattooed into his skin.

When the tide was low, you could see the top of the rock that took her. It felt eerie because he had memories of her standing on that rock as a child. Pretending to be the little mermaid as the waves hit the shore, and promising her that one day he would get rich and buy her a real mermaid tail.

This was her favorite beach. The waves, the soft sand and the shady spots by the trees that hung over the edges of the land. Overtime, it grew to be JJ’s favorite beach too.

He knew he shouldn’t talk about her so soon from the accident. That John B was already torn up about the fact that he couldn’t afford a proper funeral, that Kiara’s parents had to buy her ashes so they could spread her in the sea, in the same waves that took her.

But not talking about it felt like failing her to JJ. To him, she was everything good in the world. A pure sweetness he wished he good have greedily taken more of. Because the truth is, JJ found love a hard thing to accept. He knew he loved his friends, even if he could never express it verbally, but he always knew he loved her. Part of him was glad that he had told her once that he did, love her.

Maybe she always knew, but he was glad he got it off his chest before she went, because at least that didn’t haunt him.

JJ swore he could feel her arms cradling him as the sun set, and he swore her laughter carried out through the winds that swept over the waves. She was as warm as the sun and as luminescent as the moon to JJ, and funny enough, as wild as the ocean.

In some ways, it made him feel a little more at peace that even if he physically couldn’t have her, they would always be a part of the same stars. He was just a little bit further away from reaching them as she was.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Anti's, Twitter Freaks, and Tumblr crazies seem to have this weird itch where they believe any women under 5'6" is "a literal child". And this shit has annoyed me for forever now. What's more this conversation always comes up in regards to Loli in anime and tall men with short women IRL. So here's a poll. And then more context.

Long story short, or rather as short as I can get it. I'm getting sick and tired of the idea that age somehow doesn't matter but, physical appearance of age does somehow matter instead. Especially when it comes with the context of anime. And even then more so I get frustrated at the fact that I have to talk with anyone about what is appropriate and not appropriate IRL.

The fact of the matter is and will remain that just because a girl looks like an adult does not in any way imply that it is okay to sleep with her unless you are also underage. (And I only make that caveat, because I know I can't stop young people from screwing around with one another.) But, when I see people whining about anime specifically I often end up with people who are fans of Ryoko from Kill La Kill or Kitagawa from My Dress Up Darling. Both of whom are minors. And if you like that, then you do you. Because I understand that with anime as an aesthetic they do have a tendency to look older or younger depending on how the people writing the story wanted them to come out.

However, a lot of people have a frustrating little quirk where if it looks like a character is too short, to flat chested, or has no back-end or thighs to speak of, they assess that that character is supposed to either be or look like a child (Ignoring they treat REAL women like this). Which also ignores this fun issue:

Because let's talk age of consent shall we. Sure, it's not universal across every country but it's pretty close among first world ones. But people make a big deal of characters that short with no bust, seek out people that like that character, and will literally treat that person as if they've harmed kids IRL. Yet are seemingly NEVER angry over the abuse of real kids. What's more they will claim something is pedophilia online, THEN SHARE IT saying something like "OMFG LOOK AT THIS EPSTEIN TIER ABUSER!", and I'm sitting here like, "I don't care how old you are if you're an adult you need to be punched in the throat and if your a minor, you and your parents need to be punches in the throat". (My reasoning here is simple. If you think something is CP why would you then share it to more people rather than just report it)

Epstein abused and trafficked MANY young girls and possibly young boys to a lesser extent. A person that likes this goblin?

Isn't even close to Epstein. Because:

This is a drawing

This drawing is humanoid but doesn't look like an actual human

This character is probably older than you are

This character is a dragon

This character is FICTIONAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My point for asking ladies heights is because I'm really sick of people more or less going, "as long as you look old enough it's fine" while not realizing they literally just made the argument that age is just a number and so long as you look of age you should be allowed to be sexually abused.

[hoseoksluna]

THE BALL OF LIGHT, ii. | jjk

pairing: friend!jeongguk x fem!oc

genre: angst

word count: 4.2k

summary: inside jeongguk's apartment is where you meet the possibility of life.

pin: ball of light / taglist: join / discord: join / masterlist: run

cp: ao3 / wp

warnings: mentions of smoking and vaping, described nudity, oc feels a lot of emotions and she's overwhelmed, guilt.

note: i really enjoyed writing this chapter and it opened my eyes actually to where it's going. i hope you like the chapter as well. writing about jungkook is my biggest comfort. i feel at home. i love you, guys. happy reading. don't forget to tell me what you think. i'd appreciate it if you tell me ur expectations. <3

side note: i also want to update my taglist because i feel like most of the people i tag haven't allowed themselves to be tagged on this app. if you want to be tagged in my works, let me know. in comments below or my askbox.

It seems as though Jeongguk is still turning your words over his heart once you arrive at his apartment and the sullen grayness of his personal space greets you. A certain pensive look, embellished with a wrinkle between his brows, paints him in the shades of stark reclusiveness, the unapproachability of that façade the blue highlights that make the current inertia of his usual hyperactivity uncannily animated. It’s an oxymoron, the stillness of his being, despite the fact you very vividly sense the turmoil happening inside his chest.

Turmoil must be second-nature to him. Almost like a friend.

You don’t know what to say. The downturned corners of his mouth are so engraved into your vision that when you look away, you can still see them. Sad and pouty, caused in most probability by the truth you uttered. War happens, Jeongguk, if Yoongi and I see each other outside of the walls of our home. Those were the most heart-felt, authentic words that were flung out of the chambers of your heart because—yes, if Yoongi were to know that you smoke one cigarette a day with a boy with a nicotine-addiction, a motorcycle and a tendency to go back to people who have spread agony down his lungs like the white fumes of his cigarettes, he would get up from the kitchen table and grab the nearest knife, start a war for your dream that, according to him, got interrupted by temporary, meaningless things.

But Jeongguk isn’t meaningless. You thought for the longest time that he was temporary, but his lingering presence through high school and now through uni convinced you of the opposite. You believe now, now as he bends at the waist to place a pair of pink, fuzzy slippers with a yummy fried egg on top in front of your icy-cold, socked feet, that he has more shape—the eyes of an angel born wrong, born human, the mouth of a saint that fears to say the wrong thing—than your dream does.

Your dream doesn’t have a face.

Your dream doesn’t have a meaning, either.

Yoongi knows this, pretends he knows the contours of that dream when he tells you to go study. Pretends he knows the color of its flesh, all the greens, purples and blues, when the only words he throws your way are of commanding nature. Come eat. Go shower. Go study. Don’t. You can’t recollect the last time you had a genuine conversation with him that did not include those very words.  

It’s exhausting. Your bones are burdened by it—by being treated as a student and not as a human being. But you ignore this because you respect him, hold him in high regard because of his own burden, laid heavy across the length of his shoulders that have become too thin, too skeletal, that have once been broad, beautiful and ogled by those, who had the luck to encounter him. 

He doesn’t go to the gym anymore, to fill the mass of his muscles with exercise. He works long hours doing food delivery to fill your tummy instead. 

And it’s hard—balancing your respect for him and your ostensibly inner desire to go in search of the things you read about in your books. You can’t help but expect to dig them out, selfishly, in Jeongguk. The kind, now somber, boy who has been by your side for so long. With words and simultaneously without. 

Would Yoongi understand? Doesn’t he, also, have a need for company? 

You push those thoughts away and focus on the clandestiny. On Jeongguk’s frown, on his adorable pout, on his emotions. Because perhaps in it you shall find your destiny. 

Jeongguk walks forward and you swell with the guilty need to fix what you’ve broken, to glue back the pieces that put together his traditional cheer. The tree in you shivers in cold. Your own bones are still frosty like that bus stop you both escaped from. But glancing at the span of his shoulders, drooped and rolled forward, the guilt expands, making you think that maybe you shouldn’t have said something, despite the fact the truth made a dent in the birdcage you have been dwelling in since the death of your parents. 

He empties out his pockets. Wallet, keys, phone, a pack of cigarettes, lighter and a pink, fat vape that you’ve never seen him smoking before. He places those essentials on the kitchen counter, stretching his hands backwards and ridding himself of his beige hoodie. The T-shirt he wears underneath rides up, exposing the smooth and muscled skin of his back, and your throat dries up at the sight. The tree stills, pacified by the movement of his shoulder blades. It puts a spell on you, this innocent yet consumingly heated view of a male’s body, one that continues burning down your body even when he grabs a hold of the hem of his T-shirt and pulls it down. 

Somehow, the act made it hotter. 

Your fingers wrap around your throat, a habit of yours that helps you compose yourself, ground yourself in the severity of the moment. Jeongguk reaches his hand towards the kitchen counter again and as you swallow with great difficulty, he fills his lungs with that scented fume before discarding it.

It isn’t until your breath comes out in pathetic staccatos that he turns around. Large eyes heavily lidded, clouded by that white smoke as he exhales. He purses his lips, dimples on full show, in order to make the smoke thinner. And that, the eye contact while blowing out the fumes, his full attention on you, the element that you’re here—in a boy’s apartment, all alone, for the first time, that warms up your bones, the frost melting away. You feel your body form little pearls of perspiration, overwhelmed and so suddenly overheated by his boyish beauty. 

He’ll never know—just like Yoongi. He’ll never know what he does to you. 

“I’m gonna make you some tea so you can get warm,” he says, softly, and shuffles his feet towards the brightly lit kitchen. You hear the water running, the clapping noise of the kettle being shut and then the boiling bubbles, but you’re frozen—red-hot and frozen—in the place you’re standing, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to be a normal human being. “You’re free to take a shower if you want.” 

A headache pierces through your undeveloped frontal lobe. Nothing about this is normal to you—being over a guy’s place, using his shower and his towel, drinking his tea. Being at home all the time never prepares you for this and while you feel so out of place, it also evokes the feeling of thrill. 

This is thrilling. 

And it should stay feeling that way, but your guilt eclipses it so quickly. Your guilt and your self-pity. Due to Yoongi, due to the fact that this should feel normal and that you should act normally. How many girls must’ve been in your place and how well they were able to talk to him and accept his kindness and hospitality without being weird about it. 

You run a hand down your face. Feel like crying. Feel like screaming. Feeling like slapping yourself so you snap out of it and act normal. Yoongi flickers in your chest, however, and you’re reminded that you should let him know where you are. Usually, at this hour, you’re settled in your cage. Right there in the corner, the only warm spot because you sit there all the time. But you’re not there. You fit your body through the slivers, your feet rubbing against the different, more warmer floor than the one inside your birdcage, while your wrist remains chained to the center. 

Your bus, the number 59, never came. Jeongguk’s, number 60, was the last one that came due to the thickness of the snow and he said that you should get on with him so you don’t freeze on the bus stop. I’ll drive you home on my bike, he promised. I got a helmet for you. And you agreed, despite the fact your thumb was ready to dial Yoongi’s number, because it came natural to you to follow a male’s order. 

You scratch your fingernails through your scalp, waking yourself up from the stupor, and you take a deep breath. You’re here and you’re safe. Jeongguk is the safest person you can go behind Yoongi’s back with. These are the words you internally repeat to yourself as you lift one leg and the other, watching where they take you. 

You wind up at the very edge of the counter where all of Jeongguk’s essentials lay scattered. You go to study all the charms hung over his keys when your fingers, somehow instinctively, take a hold of his pink vape. Light and pink, fitting just right in the palm of your hand. Your clandestine habits are invariably seen by Jeongguk, however. 

“Don’t puff on that,” he says, pouring the boiling water inside the kettle over your cup of tea. A Christmas-themed one, evidently for adults only. The taupe Gingerbread man has a raging, bare boner that sticks out to the side whilst his hands are lifted, cheerfully, in the air. Your mouth parts, blush coloring your cheeks in dusty pink, and your brain, bizarrely, connects the Gingerbread man’s emotion to Jeongguk—both emotions, in fact. So bizarrely that anger begins to grow in you because a picture of Jeongguk’s own happy boner pops up before your eyes. Big, hard, leaking. Your stifling heat descends to your lower regions and you have to rub your eyelids in order to stop seeing it, your cheeks scalding, embarrassingly hot. “It’s not good to mix it.” 

Without asking, he places one spoon of sugar inside that obscene cup, stirring it diligently. And the clinking noise rams a clapping monkey inside your brain. 

You’ll die. From this headache, from the heat, from how irresistible this boy is. 

You’ve never felt this way before towards him. Never seen him in this lustful light before. And you don’t know what to do—it’s towering you, so much bigger than you and you have very little strength to stand up to it. 

It’s not good to see your so-called friend like this. 

Jeongguk brings the cup over to you, placing it before his stuff. The Gingerbread man faces you, smiling ever so gleefully, and the blush of your cheeks deepens within this proximity. Jeongguk takes his vape from your hand and puffs on it—and your brain remembers what he just talked about. 

“But you mix it,” you say, your words dripping with confusion, and Jeongguk places the device back into your palm, the tips of his fingers brushing against your flesh. You regard it as intimate, that brief physical contact, and it speeds up your heartbeat. 

That touch-starved you are. 

“I shouldn’t, but I do,” he responds, his pretty eyelashes static, unblinking, those macadamia chocolate pools of his penetrating your pupils. “I try to stick to just one from time to time, but my nerves are asking for more.” 

You look down at the pink device, imagine it’s his hand that you’re closing your fingers over. Think his explanation has zero backbone, and so your confusion drips on. 

“Nerves?” you inquire, a wrinkle appearing between your brows akin to his, even though his has been smoothed out. It seems his act of service to you is slowly easing his sombreness. 

Jeongguk doesn’t want to elaborate, though. He flicks his eyes towards the cup and nods, just once, encouraging you to drink. You let out a quiet huff of a scoff. Consider it strange that he’s so unwilling to expand on this matter when he has shared with you in the past the reason behind his smoking habit. Trauma from his relationship with Ka-eun and the difficulty of his field. What else is behind those nerves of his that you can’t know about? 

You follow the trace of his gaze towards the cup, feeling smaller than you are. Incompetent, inexperienced for the vivacity, immensity of his life that looks nothing like yours. Your pointer finger pokes out, clicking against the emerald green handle. 

“Am I supposed to really drink from this?” you murmur, meaning it as a joke that would fix what you cooked in this situation, but it comes out much sadder than you planned, the hollowness from all of your lacks coating your vocal cords. 

Jeongguk scowls and turns the cup around, his brows springing upwards as he glances at the naked and aroused Gingerbread man. You begin to anticipate his laughter that would make you feel worse about yourself, but it never breezes through. 

Actually, Jeongguk apologizes. Makes a big deal out of it. 

“My God,” he sighs, adding your name, running his fingers through his hair before he puts the cup away, but you stop him by enveloping your fingers across the warm, naked skin of his forearm. His eyes widen en route to yours and he holds the misting cup in his hand, immune to its hot temperature. The good ones don’t get burned, your mother would say with hatefulness whenever your fingers would get burned by steaming cups and hot running water in the sink, and she proves you right in this moment. You bet she smiles in her grave, seeing from the afterlife that you are indeed bad while the others are good. “I didn’t notice. I have one just like this, but he’s dressed. I thought I’d pulled out that one. I’m sorry.” 

But you’re not scandalized by it. As a matter of fact, you like the little Christmas man—there’s something oddly comforting about his own comfort in his sexuality, smiling as gleefully as he is. What you said was a stupid joke, one that shouldn’t have left your mouth. 

“No, I don’t mind. It’s fine. It was just a joke,” you say, hurriedly, sweeping your eyes over his in the same pace whilst he remains calmly staring at you, a steady stream of thoughts filtering through those features of his that you wish you knew the contents of. 

You always said you’d die for knowledge, and right now you’d die to discover what he’s thinking about, looking at you the way that he is. 

He flattens his lips. “I’ll make you another one.” 

He turns around and you yelp your disagreement, cupping your hands around his. And the greater intimacy of this physical contact consumes you whole. 

The heat grows, your spine wet with perspiration. Jeongguk swivels his head back, the shorter pieces of his hair swooshing past his forehead, landing on those pretty, pretty eyelashes. And it’s his turn to part his mouth, for blush to creep up his pale cheeks, and your heart—it melts. 

You’ve never held hands with a boy before. And right now, you’ve come very close to doing it. In fact, the tender grip bears the resemblance of hand holding and you can’t take it. 

A pained, indistinct pout quivers on your lips. A characteristic expression of yours, which conveys that something has hurt you. Your mother would give you a hard time because of it and that’s how you learned that you do it. That’s how you learned how to fleetly hide it, too. 

This is the closest you’ll ever get. 

Tears rush to your waterline. You blink it away, stretching your lips into a little, neutral smile. The scent of cinnamon and cloves from the tea hits your nostrils and from the edges of your palms, you feel how hot the cup really is. It sobers you up quite rapidly. 

“It’s hot, set it down,” you breathe and don’t let go of his hands until Jeongguk complies, the pensiveness back to shadowing his face, but he’s not unapproachable, not at all. The entirety of his dispirited and contrite aura is welcoming, pastel blue instead of that grayish undertone, and he looks at you as if you held the entire world in your palms and he was content with just being near it, silently hoping you show him grace and give it to him. 

But that’s not you. You’re too small to cup this world. Too stupid, too unfledged. 

It’s him who’s flown around it, deeply acknowledged with it. Who’s smart, who’s a full-fledged bird, unlimited and unhindered. 

It’s you who should be looking at him like that and drinking from his vulgar cup. 

And you shall. 

“I’ll drink it, it’s cute.” 

He doesn’t trust it, though, and that’s the scar Ka-eun carved into the flesh of his mind. You brush the pads of your fingers across it, however, when you take the scalding cup to your lips, blow on it and take a small, hesitant sip of it. And the wintry taste of cinnamon and cloves, it is the sap to your tree. 

You hum in delight, taking another sip, even though the temperature burns the tip of your tongue. You watch as Jeongguk’s brows twitch and as a certain glimmering glint of endearment laced with unbelief fills his eyes with the canvas of stars. He straightens his spine while you swallow, his lungs inhaling and exhaling slowly but surely. 

It is a sight to behold, the entirety of his boyish beauty. And you hate that you regard him this way, that your forced visit caused this because you’ll walk out of this door with a longing entwined around your heart.

A longing for him to be yours. 

You set the cup down, cradling it in your palms, your sweat clinging to your body. Jeongguk averts his gaze and rubs his chest, roaming his eyes everywhere but on you, landing on the pink vape you placed on the counter before almost-holding his hand. 

But he doesn’t take a puff of it. Not this time. 

And you want to heal that scar of his even more. Only because he pushed you very close to the things you read in your books and always wanted to experience. 

“I think the tea tastes so good because you made it in this cup,” you chirp, tenderly, giving him a genuine smile, one that Jeongguk doesn’t reciprocate. That one corner of his mouth doesn’t lift, the long cleft of his dimple doesn’t appear. Your heart trembles for a brief moment. In a foreign kind of emotion that feels like fear but isn’t because the turmoil in him rages on and you’re useless. Completely and utterly useless in your efforts. 

His stare is deadly, marked by the depth of his thoughts. 

“Why did you say war happens if you and your brother see each other outside?” he asks, his tone low and grumbling. 

A frightening question. Because no one has ever asked you that. Because you’ve never had the chance to answer such an intimate, personal question. Because no one has ever cared about your home situation. 

The trembling of your heart reaches your entire body and you hide your hands behind your back. Lament that you can’t cradle the cup. Lament that you can’t drink it and postpone your response. Lament that you don’t have a normal life. One worth talking about happily, that is. 

You don’t know what to say. How to begin, how to string the words together in a way that he would understand. And it’s not that you fear that he will judge you; it’s that you fear that the way he looks at you, regards you will forever change. 

You were never the cool girl and you never were the weird girl, either. Somewhere in the middle you stand, solitary and detached, regardless. 

You open your mouth, willing the words to spring out of you on their own, without any careful thoughts to cover them. 

“Yoongi wants me to live a life that doesn’t look like this,” you start, mirroring his tone, unable to look him in the eye. You sense the demons of your guilt and your ungratefulness cornering you, coming closer and closer—and you can’t walk away, you can only speak.

Jeongguk, however, is quick and curt with his following question.  

“Like what?” 

The pearls of your perspiration thicken on the planes of your throat, which constricts. You blink, thinking that you don’t wish to offend him with any formulation of your sentences. So you go around it, hoping he understands. The demons inch closer—and you can’t breathe. 

Jeongguk doesn’t blink, focused intently as he is on the emotions written on your form. It creates a delicate, yet protective ring around you that keeps the demons outside. And he lessens your strange fear owing to that.

“He wants me to focus on school and focus on my dream while he takes care of everything else. It was a deal he made between us. I study, he works. Nothing else,” you continue, and Jeongguk bites his lip, nodding in understanding as he glides his eyes down your face to your sweat-coated neck. For some reason, that little act of his acknowledgement dispels those demons—and you no longer feel guilty, you no longer feel ungrateful because Jeongguk validated those emotions, didn’t scrunch his nose at them. And that heals, little by little, your wounded, flightless bird wings. 

“What does your dream look like?” he asks once again, and you wonder at the formulation of his question. It’s not what’s your dream; he’s asking for a description of the biggest mystery of your life. 

And you chuckle, humorlessly. Jeongguk flicks his gaze back to your eyes, seemingly not knowing what to expect.

“That’s the thing,” you say. “I don’t know what it looks like, and Yoongi doesn’t know either.” 

The roundness of his eyelids spasms, as if the truth you just uttered irks him. The validation grows and buds of blossoms sprout open, in the middle of this sunless winter, upon the twigs of the tree within you. 

“He doesn’t know what your dream is and yet he decided how you should live,” Jeongguk scoffs, shaking his head, and you marvel at the light bursting in your sternum. It is the sun to your growth, to your tree’s growth. 

A moment of bliss that is too brief, for you begin to sense an uncompromising responsibility to stand up for your brother. He means well—he’s doing it out of the love and kindness of his heart as the root of this declared problem is literature. 

And literature is your life. It’s all you know. 

You begin to say these words, but Jeongguk interrupts you. 

“I understand, but you need to live a life that you want to live,” he rasps, standing taller than he was a minute ago, greater and powerful than he ever was. That confident and assured he is in his opinion and you gawk at him as if he were a cult leader, about to change the course of your life. Maybe, just maybe, the cinnamon tea was the kool aid—and you want to drink again, but you’re ashamed of the trembling of your hands. “And if you feel like you’re indebted to him, you shouldn’t. You’re an adult. It’s your life, it’s not his just because he’s older.” 

Your throat dries and you risk it all, enveloping your fingers around the cup. Jeongguk’s all seeing eye notices your movement and his powerfulness drops. He sighs, rubbing his eyes. 

Bare, bare you are all for him to see. For anyone for the first time in your life—and at this point, you don’t even know how it makes you feel. 

Where light and so many emotions were inside you, emptiness falls like fine dust. You’re reminded of that one sentence in White Nights and, quietly, you reflect on it while your fingers tremble on. 

My God, a moment of bliss. Why isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime? 

Jeongguk makes space, like the ring of protection he created around you, by taking a few steps back and leaning against the counter. He crosses his arms over his chest and simply looks at you, reads your body language, and lingers at your hands. At the fact you don’t drink. At the fact you don’t speak. At the fact that nothing will ever be the same after this conversation. 

When he asks his last question, he softens his voice. His demeanor, too. Allows his arms to plummet down to his sides. Sags against the counter. 

“He doesn’t know we’re friends, does he?” 

Something that resembles a cry leaves your mouth and you’re so shocked by the freedom of your emotions that your hand leaps to cup your mouth, as if to hold back any more outpouring. That is your reaction. 

Jeongguk’s is more earth-shattering. 

By his instinct, he lengthens his spine and his hand… his beautiful, strong and veiny hand jerks towards your direction, as if to catch your hand, prevent it from hiding your outpouring—or as if to catch your outpouring alone. 

And it is so heartbreaking to you that you mutter the first thing that comes to your mind and run away. 

And you don’t realize where you are until you get a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. A mascara tear stains your cheek in blackness, and the smallness of the bathroom encloses around you. 

You want to wash it away. Feel like the decision is yours to make, a right one at that. Feel like it’s the first step in the new way Jeongguk bestowed over your life by his wise words. And so you undress. 

And you don’t lock the door. 

And you don’t hear your phone ringing ten minutes later. 

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @jjk7k , @tkslovechild , @euphoricmyth, @cinmmongirl , @ririkookiemonster , @perfectiondazesworld , @https-mei , @bangtansonyeondanue , @jungkoock , @cinmmongirl, @hoseokkie-caeks , @kam9404 , @fr0ggieth1nk , @parkinglot-nights

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[bet-on-me-13]

The one where Bruce is the asshole (again)

So! We have a typical story where the JLA finds out about the Situation in Amity.

Whichever way they find out doesn't matter, but either way they end up sending Batman to do a threat analysis and review of whether this requires their attention.

And while there, he runs into a Kid who obviously needs to be saved from his Abusive Home. Look at him, he's far too thin, his grades are horrible, he has many unexcused absences, and he has bruises hidden under his clothes.

Even after figuring out that Danny is Phantom the local Hero, he thinks Danny needs to be saved from his Parents.

I mean, it's plain to see! They Hates Ghosts with a Passion, negelct their son very often, shoot at him nearly every day, and are probably the ones who killed him in the first place!

So, with no input from Danny himself, Bruce calls CPS on the Fentons and uses his Wealth to expedite the process and avoid the actual Investigation. (I mean, why would you even need one? It's so obviously a bad home!)

The Fenton's are arrested, and Bruce reveals that Danny is Phantom to convince the Courts that they are horrible people for shooting at their own son, and that they should be locked up (ignoring the horrified looks on their faces, probably cause they were living with a Ghost for so long, thats probably why).

He immediately offers to adopt Danny, even when Danny vehemently refuses his offer. He knows that Danny will come around to it, he's doing this for his own good. He still thinks his Parents were good people, and not thr Villains they really were.

Meanwhile Danny's life has been completely uprooted thanks to the self-righteous machinations of an Adoption Crazed Fruitloop! And not even the usual one!

Sure his parents were often busy with their work, but they Always set aside time to hang out with their kids and make sure they were okay. They never abused him, the neglect was only for like a month or two when the portal before they got their act together and apologized for it, and (most importantly) THEY DIDN'T KNOW he was a Halfa when they shot at him! They only found out when the ASSHOLE revealed his Identity in Court!

And Danny is Extra enraged by that part. The Adoption Crazed Fruitloop had revealed his secret identity for the ENTIRE WORLD TO HEAR!

He would never be able to live a normal life anymore, even if he managed to get away from the Moron who caused all this!

Bruce Wayne was a Villain in his eyes.

He ripped him from his home and from his family (basically kidnapped), revealed his identity to the world so he was forced to stay with him for fear of the GIW, and spun the whole story so that it looked like he was the Good Guy in this!?

It was official. Danny Hates Bruce Wayne, possibly more than anyone else in the World.

And that's a High Bar.

[biscuit-munchies]

I'm on my stupid shit again people ;; Had an idea of a Harpy Jimmy Z cause bro NEEDS a creature power suit. How he got like that is Chris and Martin (mainly Martin) wanted Jimmy to get used to the creature power suits seeing he's the only one that doesn't really have one. Jimmy isn't all too keen on getting his own suit right away, so they use Martin's as a test. Chris shows him the basics of proper use of the CPS and which disks to use and what exactly to touch to activate (using chris' animal bits collection or whatever he calls it). They probably start off with 'easy' animals (like songbirds or small mammals) and Jimmy starts getting used to it, maybe even a bit more confident.

So these idiots boys keep cycling through different animals probably faster than the CPS is used to until BANG! The suit malfunctions! (as suits do) and Jimmy comes out as a mashup of different kinds of birds! (mainly a Harpy Eagle (hah), a heron, a vulture, and a hummingbird). Martin is amazed, Chris is like "huh?", and Jimmy is like "?????? WHAT THE FUCK????" and so hijinx ensues, or whatever

[thenightwolf51]

So i originally had this idea when i reblogged this post by @saphushia but i wanna just seperate it out as its own little prompt.

A quick context is that Danny seems to be roaming around Gotham like some homeless cryptid, kinda Bus to Nowhere style but with more vigilante interaction and casual offerings of first aid. And the batkids are keeping their adoption bait First Aid Cryptid(tm) secret from Batman.

One set of tags in the reblogs from @little-pondhead caught my attention

I came up with both funny answers and an angsty answer for that "#why?" but here's the angsty one (though i promice i actually envision it to be more hurt/comfort with a lot of family fluff)

Actual Prompt⬇️⬇️

Something happens, maybe a reveal gone wrong, maybe he got capture by the GIW, maybe he lost Jazz and his parents somehow.

Whatever it is, it leaves Danny with a need to escaped to a new dimension which just so happens to end up being the DCU. He winds up in Gotham and is just trying to start over, easier said than done but at there's plenty of heros around so he doesn't need to go ghost and he can still patch up the local vigilantes to feed his obsession. He's just not up to being Phantom yet and he's still recovering from whatever happened in Amity, whether it be mentally or physically.

Plus these vigilantes are kinda fun to mess with. Danny can practically see the gears turning as they try to put together and make sense of his little "lore drops", that Red Robin almost reminds him of Wes in a way.

Its not like he really needs to hide anyways. There's no GIW here, no Anti-Ecto Acts, if it really comes down to it he could probably pass as meta and fall under those protection laws. Judging by Signal, Danny's pretty sure Batman's bluffing on the whole "hating metas" thing anyways.

It takes awhile before Danny actually does meet the big bat himself and the reaction he gets is nothing anyone was expecting.

You see theres one little detail danny couldn't have been warned about, and its that there just so happens to be a version of Jazz here.

Except this Jazz lost her Danny when they were in high school, as in full on dead and gone Danny, no halfas here, the portal simply did not work and it was just regular ole lethal electrocution that hit her little brother.

What if she grew up with a young Bruce somehow, whether it be because CPS took her from the Fentons after her Danny's death or Amity Park simply doesn't exist in the DCU making Gotham the city with the thinnest veil and thus where the Fenton's chose to settle down.

This Jazz is an adult in her 40s but was once a kid smart enough to go to Gotham Academy on scholarship (or maybe the Fenton's had enough money from patents?). A kid who took one look at young Bruce's grumpy little face and decided he needed a honest friend, one that wasn't after status or money.

This Jazz grew up being a secondary voice of reason for Bruce, ganging up with Alfred in their own crusade to enforce healthy habits on him in between their weekly tea sessions.

This Jazz lost her brother and could not only understand Bruce's resoning on a minor level but encouraged his planned "journey of self discovery and healing". (Though the bat costume he made when he came back was unexpected and she gave him a look to rival Alfred for it)

This Jazz grew up to be a social worker because if anyone had cared enough to take her away from the Fenton's sooner then her brother might've still been alive

This Jazz being the one Bruce calls when he first gets Dick because holy shit he has no idea what hes doing and "Jazz, i just became a father, help!"

This Jazz being a sort of aunt to all the Batkids and is a major influence that has led to their dynamics being similar to Wayne Family Adventures

Bruce goes pale and later calls Jazz after he finally gets a glimps/meets the so called "First Aid Cryptid" his kids have been obsessed with. Because this kid that he's looking at with the barely visible lichtenberg scars... that's a face he hasn't seen in little over 20 years, that's his old friend's long dead baby brother.

Bruce sees danny and his mind rapidly jumps to all sorts of possibilities. Is this a clone? Is this a trap? Are the Lazarus pits involved somehow? Time travel? He does consider a ghost but this kid is too solid and they're nowhere near the old dilapidated Fenton Works building

Eventually, down the line when they get the full story of Danny being from an alternate dimension, Jazz might try to adopt him. Which has potential to be unhealthy but i fully believe Jazz would be aware enough not to project her decades old grief on this Danny, who is so similar but so different to her brother.

(Because I think a Gotham raised Danny would've been similar to a young Jason in street smarts so this Amity raised Danny is noticeably different)

Danny on the other hand... not sure if i could say the same, especially if he just lost his Jazz before winding up in the DCU. But again, this is an adult Jazz in her late 40s with professional experience dealing with traumatized kids, and she'll do her best to help him through it

Im imagining Jazz and Bruce to have a more platonic friendship, maybe even see each other as family, but you could go with Parent Syndrome if you want

(And because i love to see other peoples ideas and opinions, @omnicrafts @ailithnight @atiyasnake @hdgnj @nelkcats @nerdpoe @im-totally-not-an-alien-2 @dcxdpdabbles. Sorry i tag you guys so much but i like your writing, im eager to offer ideas, and your posts have been major sources of joy while ive been hyperfixating on DPxDC)

[faeriekit]

Immediate Roadside Assistance Required

Phic phight fill for sapphireshield (no tumblr listed)

Warnings for: extremely mild depictions of domestic violence

The car that pulls over is a SUV. Beige. Kind of grimy. There’s a mom at the front; inside, Dani bets there’s probably one or two kids.

The mom rolls down the window. She looks nice. Kind of soft. Tough, in a kind of mom sort of way, but soft enough to see a girl with her thumb out at the side of the road and actually pull over. It’s a sweet gesture; Dani has a vague idea that hitchhiking hasn’t been trendy since the eighties, so this’ll have to do.

The mom sticks an elbow out the window and looks Dani up and down. “You alright, sweetheart?” she asks, a different twang on her tongue than the vowels Dani’s been used to all her (short) life. Dani might be out farther than she thought.

Dani grins. For this mom, it’s nice ‘n sweet. “I’m good! I need a ride, though; I’m trying to get to my stepparent’s place. Tryin’ to get as far as the border.”

The woman flattens her lips. She probably thinks Dani’s a runaway, but she’s not. Dani’s something a lot worse.

“You sure?” The mom looks up at the sky, even as her kid squeals about something snack-related in the back. “It’s about to get dark out, honey. Storm’s coming.”

Dani’s grin doesn’t let up. “I’m gonna go meet my brother! I already know where I’m gonna lay up, so don’t worry!”

The mom is for sure worrying; worrying her lip between her teeth, and worrying over a scruffy kid in a torn-up hoodie. “...Well. ‘Long as I get to see him when we get there. Hop in.”

Dani grins, and hops up in the car.

It’s a little warmer in there. Smells like cheerios; there’s a baby, Dani notices, in the back seat. It’s got her middle two fingers in its mouth and big brown eyes.

Dani waves. The baby stares, since babies do that, and Dani occupies herself by making funny faces over the shoulder of the passenger seat, eager to elicit a giggle from a little kid. She loves little kids. She wishes she’d been allowed to be one.

“You might want to turn around and buckle in, young lady,” the mom drawls, wiping stress off her forehead. “Don’t want you to die if we end up in a crash.”

I can’t, Dani doesn’t say, because she’s nice. I’m already dead.

So she turns around and buckles herself in. The mom flicks on the radio, and a woman’s voice starts growling over an electric guitar and a roughed-up drum kit. It sounds fun.

This ride’s going to be good. Dani grins, all teeth and brimstone. There’s a storm rolling in, bad luck hanging in the air like vapor and sparks. Lightning’s on its way.

It’s a long way to the state border. Dani’s going to enjoy every minute she can with the window down, electricity in her fingers, and the quiet humming of the driver singing along.

*

They make it to a rest stop about three quarters of the way there.

Dani’s not against stopping, so she just peeks out the window, watching cars and exhausted drivers slog through the paved flats of the rest stop parking lot. “What’re we doing?” Dani asks, entertained in her own way. Maybe this nice mom is going to try to hand her off to CPS!

It wouldn’t work, but, you know. It would be kind of annoying, if ultimately well-meaning.

“Diaper change for the baby,” the mom offers, and, yeah, that’s practical. “Vending machine break for me. Bathroom break for you, probably.”

Oh, that checks out. “Alright!”

The child lock pops, and Dani hops out of the car; she waits, patiently, for the mom to bring out the baby, who looks even more luminous asleep and spitty than when it's awake.

“It slept through a lot of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Dani admires. The baby gets held to mom’s chest, a blanket wrapped around them both. “That’s cool.”

“He’s heard a lot of Joan Jett since he was born. I’d be shocked if he couldn’t sleep through a hurricane at this point.”

Dani trots after the mom, patient in her wake. They don’t look too much alike, so maybe there are other people wondering if they even know each other at all, or if Dani’s getting kidnapped or traded away for cigarettes. Or probably they just think Dani’s getting babysat, helping watch a baby while the mom ends up driving them over and away from wherever Dani’s landed herself this time.

The diapers the baby uses are a thick, sort of plush material. They look soft. There are little pastel teddy bears on them: one blue, one pink. Dani gets to touch one when the Mom asks her to pull one out of the big blue bag. There are a whole lot crammed in there; they’re packed in so tight that it’s hard to pull one out of the stack without pulling out all the others, but the baby can only wear one diaper at a time!

“Thanks, sweetheart,” the mom says. It’s the nicest anyone’s been to Dani in ages. She’s glad she lived long enough to hear a soft mom call her sweetie and sweetheart for no reason other than being convenient. “You have to go?”

Dani shakes her head. The mom gives her a look. “We’ll be in the state for another hour. You want to try, at least?”

…She hesitates. The baby doesn’t notice, busy playing with its toes as its mom tries to wriggle it back into its butt covering for the sake of covering its butt. She doesn’t usually have bodily functions that actually…function. But the mom lady didn’t know that.

Whatever. She’d play a game of Snake in there. “‘Kay.”

Dani goes into a stall, flicks open her phone, and manages to eat like twenty little pixels before she actually runs into her own little snake body and dies. Ugh. It doesn’t take up too much time— how much time are humans supposed to spend in the bathroom, anyway??— so she fires up a new game and almost gets through it before she hears someone yell. Dani jolts.

The baby starts crying, faint and far away. Dani quickly grabs herself together and puts the phone away. If something’s happening— something happening to the mom and the baby—

Dani dashes out of the bathroom. There’s a guy at the door. There’s a guy holding the baby by the arm so that the baby is dangling and the guy is yelling at the mom who’d driven Dani here, physically pushing her when she tries to get her baby back.

The instinct to hit him is impossible to wrangle. It’s too bad, but Dani has to help the baby and the mom. Hitting him might hurt the baby, if she isn’t careful— doubly true if she uses an ecto-blast.

She goes invisible instead.

Carefully pulling the baby intangibly through the man’s grip is a quiet, tense process. The baby keeps crying and crying and crying, but the more she hides it, the quieter the cries seem.

And then there’s a baby shallowly crying in her arms.

The guy doesn’t even realize, too busy shoving and hitting the mom who’d done nothing wrong. Dani hates this guy. He reminds her of Vlad— too angry that he isn’t getting his way, and never understanding why no one’s obeying him fast enough.

Dani hoists the baby into one arm, mirroring the way the mom had carried it into the rest stop when they first came in. The hold doesn’t feel as secure as Dany thinks it ought to, but it frees up a hand.

Dani grabs the mom’s hand.

The woman disappears into thin air. The guy looks so spooked.

Dani giggles. Either way, it’s super easy and simple to fly the mom and the baby through the bathroom walls, and hiding them in the bathroom cleaner closet seems safer than hiding them in a stall. Dani doesn’t pause when the mom gasps, frightened by the change in scenery; she pops the baby into her arms and disappears back the way she came.

Dani Phantom has a guy to beat up.

There are lots of ways to scare humans, Dani finds; humans are afraid of the dark, and afraid of what they can’t control. They’re afraid of pain, and they’re afraid of loud noises. Humans aren’t afraid of everything all the time, but they can be afraid of more things when they’re combined than when they’re not.

So Dani flexes her aura. The lights flicker in the main room of the rest stop. The man stops, but his hand is still raised.

He looks to see where the baby is, and realizes that he’s empty-handed. The woman is gone.

The lights go out.

Dani loves being seen sometimes. She doesn’t like being bothered, but she loves attention when she knows no one can call the cops on her; so she drips green. She lets herself glow, gloopy and malformed, as she pulls herself through the wall. She turns melty eyes onto the man who took the baby from its mom.

The guy kind of looks like he’s going to piss himself. Good.

Dani starts to fake cry. It starts out as little sniffles— and then moans, and sobs, Dani clawing herself out of the wall until she’s floating, midair, half-formed and wailing. She kind of hopes she looks super spooky, like one of those CGI gross guys from Stranger Things, or that girl who walked down the stairs in a spooky backbend one time.

The guy steps back. Great. Dani inches forwards. The guy steps back again, face pale as a china plate, looking inches from giving up the ghost and bolting off to the parking lot.

Excellent.

Dani takes her hands off of her face to show melting, distorted features. And she screams.

The guy is gone in seconds. He should just be a sprinter instead of bullying moms and their little babies! Dani huffs, hands on her hips. Whatever. As long as he’s gone, he can do whatever he likes.

Dani barely remembers to set her face right before going to get the mom and baby out of the closet. It doesn’t matter how human she looks, though, because when she opens the door back up for them, the mom looks like she’s seen a ghost.

Dani grins, and probably her teeth aren’t showing anything too weird or spooky. “That guy left! Can we go now?”

The mom takes a deep, rattling breath. She does that thing where she touches her forehead, her chest, and then the air above her shoulders. No one’s told Dani what that means so far, but she’s seen it a lot.

“...Sure, sweetheart.”

Dani beams.

They make it to the edge of the state just as the rain starts to pour down. The mom is still looking for Danny by the time Dani points them into a gas station, but Danny’s not here; Dani made him up long enough to get a ride as far as she thought she could get tonight. The mom is still peering through the gloom of the driver’s side window as Dani turns herself transparent and flies out and away.

The mom was nice. The baby was nice. Dani liked this ride.

She walks, intangible, through the rain. The highway is dark, and wet, but Dani’s optimistic; sometimes people feel bad for her, so she gets more rides in a thunderstorm than on a sunny day. After an hour, somewhere on a rural road she’s never seen nor heard of before, Dani sticks her thumb out for a low little car going exactly the speed limit.

The car has a little old couple in the front and passenger seat. They look like grandparents. The grandpa rolls down his window, white eyebrows pushed together. “You need a ride, honey?”

Dani grins.

[moonbiscuitsims]

CP 2077 Rogue Conversions set + extras (TS4)

This set took me so long but it's finally here! It isn't perfect but I'm happy enough with it. I've probably spent over a month doing these conversions, trying to fix the textures to make them better, trying to make it all the best I can. I hope any cyberpunk fans will appreciate this. 🙈 A lot of the items are Rogue's but a lot are just V's garments from the game plus things I added. All items are (I think) disallowed for random. Includes: 💛SWEATER (3 Versions) Converted by me from CP2077

- Rogue Survive sweater conversion + all rainbow colours, 28 swatches. Edit: I just reuploaded, there was a hole in the bottom, you couldn't see it unless you looked from under but it is fixed now 😄 - Plain Sweater without survive label all colours. 28 swatches. - Sweater with V garment/CP materials conversions, 16 swatches. -12K polygons (I tried to lower it but this was the best I could do) - Has specular and normal maps - Sweater category 💛PANTS (4 Versions) Converted by me from CP 2077

They clip with some shoes but can be tucked in boots with cuts and work well with short shoes or chunky ones that cover them. You an see the shine more in game and in live mode. - Rogue's pants + all colours, Very Shiny (includes her young version). 28 swatches. - Rogue's pants + all colours, Matte (slight shine to give synthetic appearance but not much, includes her young version) - Same pants mesh in all CP materials conversions + random experiments, 27 swatches. I also made some swatches match the CP gangs, others just made up. Shiny and Matte versions (regardless of whether it made sense for the fabric, e.g. there are shiny jeans lol I imagine in cyberpunk some jeans are plastic 😅 Some swatches could pass for leather or synthetic etc so I just added both. It was just easier to have all the swatches and less packages. - 14K Polygons - Has specular and normal maps - Sorted by colour swatches - Skinny/pants/jeans category 💛KIROSHI OPTICS EYES WITH LIGHT EMISSION (3 Versions)

I copied Rogue's eyes and made them in all colours. Hers are a bit different in each eye but sims doesn't allow that so they're symmetrical. They have four little light emitters and you can make out the word "Kiroshi" to the side of the pupil. They work with any eye. These are much better to see in live mode in darker places, in CAS it can be hard to see the light emission on some as it's the same colour as the textures. The light emission flashes. - REQUIRES Android Eyes MESH by @lady-moriel for emission to function - Found in face paint category. - All colours of the rainbow with white light emission, all in one package/CAS thumbnail, including white, grey and black texture colours, 19 swatches. - All colours of the rainbow with separate matching light emissions (i.e. red swatch with red light etc). These are in separate CAS thumbnails cause I didn't know how to put more than one emission in the package or know if it was possible. Doesn't include black grey and white as these have white emission and are in the previous package. As they're all separate I have merged them into one package. - Rogue Kiroshi separate (hers were a slightly pale red, with matching emission) In the GIF it looks a little worse than in game. 💛ROGUE HAIR RECOLOURS (NEED MESHES) These are just simple recolours of @aniraklova rogue hair, and qicc Synergy hair to match rogue's teal colour, young and old versions. Make sure to install these hairs too or the recolours won't appear. 💛ROGUE'S BOOTS Converted by me from CP2077

They only have one cut, when I tried making two cuts they were too short compared to maxis boots and the leg was missing and I couldn't be doing with it lol, they work with skinny pants or shorts and such, but some baggy pants might clip. - 8,7K Polygons - 6 Swatches (light grey, medium grey and black, each with silver and bronze detail versions) - Has specular and normal maps - Boots category 💛ROGUE'S CYBERWARE BODY AND FACE

@skaterboisims has awesome rogue face cyberware but I only made my own to match my body one better. Textures were just baked from the extracted CP2077 mesh. Has a shiny specular map but not super strong.

💛Disclaimers/info: - These are not my first but some of my first conversions and work with 3d models, I hope they're ok, I know there may be imperfections in the mesh or textures. - I don't play with HQ mod nor did I make these HQ, they're maxis sizes, so of course the textures can sometimes be a bit blurrier than in Cyberpunk which is a higher poly & quality game. Sorry for any HQ fans. If I used it my computer wouldn't be able to even fit my CC + game on hard-drive lol. -Meshes are slightly high poly compared to maxis items, but not too much, tried to reduce as much as I could where it was possible. I didn't do the pants cause I didn't know how to do that yet when I made them. - When you apply these items to custom body presets they sometimes distort a bit in certain areas, it works completely fine on maxis bodies. - If anything goes wrong or isn't showing up please don't hesitate to ask me or get in touch so I can inspect it. 😄

💛Thanks to the creators that helped me on S4S forum, thanks to @stamsim for helping with my earlier conversions and in general, and thanks @pinkydude for helping me find the decals and textures in wolvenkit and explaining how to use them! 💛

💛This took me a lot of time and effort so RESPECT MY TERMS OF USE. They are not my meshes but converting them and making everything else is still work. All my cc is free and I have no support in making it so: - PLEASE DO NOT REUPLOAD - PLEASE DO NOT PUT BEHIND PAYWALL OF ANY KIND - PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE CC IN ANY DOWNLOADS - PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE MESHES IN RECOLOURS - PLEASE DONT CLAIM YOU MADE IT - If you use my cc in a post or recolour or something please link to my post/mesh or tag me 😄 - For any inquiries about modifying one of the meshes you can ask so I know what you want to do. See this link for more info about conversions etc

💛💛If you wish to help me out with this content and support my work I now have PATREON💛💛

💛DOWNLOAD (PATREON) 💛 DOWNLOAD (GOOGLE DRIVE)

[rubydubydoo122]

could you talk more about fanon vs canon tim drake? i havent gotten too far into the comics yet but have seen a lot of him (mis?)characterized by others

Just a preface, I'm not gonna crucify any Tim fans who find themselves writing these tropes, because it is fandom, and everyone's allowed their own interpretations of the character, I'm just personally not a fan of these takes on Tim because in my mind they just don't make sense for the character. If anyone has differing opinions, feel free to (politely) explain them to me, because I'm happy to hear them.

Ok, so much like Fanon Dick Grayson, there are two versions of fanon Tim Drake.

There's version A.) where where he's one minor inconvienience away from becoming a supervillain (I understand where this one comes from and I don't HATE it) and there's version B.) where he was criminally neglected as a kid and is infantalized (This version of Tim I Loathe)

I'll start with version A. I see where it comes from. Mainly the Red Robin 2009 run, but we have to remember that Tim was grieving pretty much everyone close to him during that era. He was being self destructive because of that grief, and yeah, grief changes a person, but Tim is the type of character who would still turn out good despite all the hurt handed to him. Oh! But Gun Batman-- Tim actively chose against being that. He would rather kill himself than let himself become a version of Batman who went against everything Batman stood for. I know there are multiple storylines where Tim meets and evil future version of himself, but those versions would constantly be like a weight on him to be good. All in all, if I had to choose between the fanon Tim Drakes, I would choose villain Tim Drake, as long as it's done in more of a character-study way rather than a 'He deserves to go evil, as a treat' because it's an interesting take with the right motives.

Now onto Version B. Loser Tim Drake. The reason I Loathe this version of Tim is because it usually involves Characters Assassination of the characters around him. Ok, so do I agree that Tim Drake was somewhat neglected? Yes. But goddamit, the way I see Jack and Janet portrayed, you would think that they were running from the feds or something. They were good people, just bad parents. Maybe a little immature to raise a child, but it wasn't to the point where they would probably need to call CPS. Neglect isn't black and white, and the Drakes fell into that grey-- which I personally believe to be a lighter shade. You do have to remember that a lot of Tim's introduction was written in the 90's where parenting styles were a lot different compared to Today. Still, they sent him to boarding school, meaning they made sure that some form of adult was taking care of Tim AND a lot of people try to make Jack Drake out to be the villain for stopping Tim from being Robin, and blackmailing Bruce for it, but... It's What Any Sane Parent Would Do? I'm 18, but I know if I ever had a kid, and then fell into a coma and then woke up and found out that my Kid was fighting crime in one of the most CRIME RIDDEN CITIES alongside my middle-aged neighbor who dresses up like a furry I WOULD CALL THE FUCKING COPS. But enough about the Drakes. Because not only does Loser Tim Drake assassinate their character, but why is 17 year old Tim the victim when it comes to 10 year old Damian-- "Oh he tried to kill him' They're both trained by assassins. They're both trained. They're both Trained. Why Is a Junior/Senior in high school hurt by the actions of a 5th grader. I have a similar age gap with my younger brother. We have had pretty brutal fights and the next day we're fine. I'm not going to get into "Attack on Titans Tower AUs" but I will say this, Every Time I Start To Read One Of Those, I Lose Half Of My Hair Because of How Bad the Characterization Of Both Jason And Tim are. Please, Read, The, Comic. Jason Wasn't Trying To Kill Tim. If He Was, Tim would Be Dead. ANd Tim was Snarking Jason Through The Entire Confrontation. Lastly, Why Has DICK 'BAMF' GRAYSON TURNED INTO TIM"S NUMBER ONE OP????!!!! DIck IS LITERALLY TiM's ChiLDHOOD HEro!!!!! NoT BAtMAN, DICK GRAYSON. And like, not only that, Dick and Tim are the most brotherly. I'm Begging, Please go read a 90's comic. Why is it, the only time I see Dicks Manipulative side in fanon, It's in opposition to Tim? I bet it's bc of Teen Titans Go. I bet the only Tim and Dick interaction they've seen is TTG Robin going "No BOdy cARes AbOuT TiM DrAke"

Sorry that ended up becoming rant-y, and less objective. Since actually reading comics, fanon Tim Drake gets on my nerves.

[cripplecharacters]

hello! so, i currently have an oc in the works. i dont have much for his character yet, and hes kind of a blank slate at the moment, however, whilst trying to develop him i had the idea to give him a disability; its something i dont do with my characters very often, and i feel like it could give some depth and realism to his character. however, i..... dont know where to really start with it? i have the vague idea that i think id like him to have crutches, so some sort of leg disability, but just going off that its been hard for me to find any condition that feels quite right. im unsure about making him an amputee either; seemingly the "go to" for anyone who wants to make a physically disabled character. i want to try and represent a disability thats less fetishized by the general public, and looking through this blog here its definitely apparent that a lot of people are tired of seeing basic half amputee characters with overly functional prosthetics; i wanna avoid that. sorry this has gotten a bit rambly, but basically what im asking is,, do you have advice for what i could use as just. a general starting point in this? im terribly uneducated and lost at the moment and id love some help. thank you :]

Hi!

It's great that you're interested in writing a disabled character (with care)! I'm always happy to see more writers/artists/creatives do that.

You mentioned wanting to give him crutches, which is cool! Mobility aid users in media make me happy. However, you mentioned crutches as meaning a leg disability, which isn't always the case — and while I don't have statistics on it, I believe that most crutch users do not use them for leg-only problems, and a lot of them have the not-so-fetishized conditions. Here are some suggestions of what you could give your character, which hopefully gives you some ideas. If you need, you can get back to us with a more specific question after you figure out what exactly your character has! :-) (smile)

Cerebral palsy — probably the most common reason for using crutches in non-elderly people, and the most common (physical) disability in younger people in general. If your character has diplegic (meaning lower limbs affected) CP, he could use crutches and if he has hemiplegic (one arm and one leg affected) CP, then he could use a single crutch or a cane. Cerebral palsy is generally extremely underrepresented when compared to how many people have it IRL! Just be aware that there is a lot of research involved just about the condition itself — multiple types (spastic/ataxic/dyskinetic), different kinds of body involvement, tons of different mobility aids and orthotics to learn about. There is also hereditary spastic paraplegia, which is not the same as CP but similar and progressive.

Spinal cord injury — the general assumption is that all people with spinal cord injuries are fully paralyzed below the neck or waist, and that's not the case. If your character has an incomplete SCI on any level or just a very low level injury, he could be using crutches or switch between a wheelchair and crutches. It's essential to research SCIs to have them be more than “legs don't work, but that's literally it”. SCI can come with severe nerve pain, spasticity, atrophy, and a lot of other things. Worth noting that spinal cord injury could be traumatic, but could also be congenital (spina bifida) or illness related (polio, transverse myelitis, spinal stroke, or cancer, for example). You could think that it's overrepresented in media, but SCI is generally just used as a “default condition” for why a character is in a wheelchair, and a lot of these representations are unfortunately very shallow.

Paralysis — in the monoplegic sense here. Much more rare than the rest of the things here, but your character could have a single paralyzed leg, largely due to nerve damage. Could be traumatic or illness-related (e.g., cancer, infection, or multiple sclerosis).

Stroke (and other traumatic/acquired brain injuries) — stroke can cause a million different symptoms and depending on what happens to your character exactly, he might need crutches! A big portion of stroke survivors deal with hemiplegia and could use a crutch on their non-affected side, for example. Some kinds of stroke might cause your character to have troubles with balance and require a mobility aid to not fall. Of course stroke will also cause other symptoms for your character (it wouldn't be too realistic to only have him have problems with his legs) for example speech issues, headaches, or seizures. Stroke can happen to anyone, and it wouldn't be weird to have a younger character with it. Very common in real life but very rarely represented in fiction.

Limb difference — you can definitely write a character with a limb difference or an amputation without fetishizing it! The main concern with the fetishization is the concept of the robotic limb that works just as well as or even better than a meat leg, and thus the character is “fixed”. But your character could just… not use a prosthetic. A lot of congenital amputees, people with limb differences, or with high level (above knee) amputations might do that. He could also have a leg length difference, which could cause him to need crutches (for example, Morteza Mehrzad has one of his legs significantly shorter after a pelvic injury, and he uses crutches among other mobility aids).

Chronic pain — very broad category for too many specific conditions to count. Neuropathy in the legs and/or lower back could be a reason for using crutches, for example. Unhealed, or poorly healed past injuries. Arthritis in knees or hips. Hypermobility that makes him unsteady or dislocate joints. Pain in bones or muscles where he can't fully weight-bear.

Gait disorders — another broad category (sorry). Your character could have problems with his gait and need aids for that. It could be caused by dyspraxia (I have it), ataxia, progressive muscular dystrophy (there is a lot of different types), Parkinson's disease, or a lot of other things! Could also be injury related.

And of course you could have multiple characters that are disabled to make sure that there is some variety :)

I hope that the above list gave you some ideas for your character :-) (smile) if you have more questions, feel free to send another ask

mod Sasza

[rapplesart]

Ok but like hear me out .

One of the dc crossover fanfics where Bruce adopts a kid (Danny phantom or Peter Parker iykyk) but instead of you know the bats finding them on the streets or having a whole hero cants and mouse thing or Barbara seeing them in the library they just go to the Wayne’s doorstep asking for money after being broke and having the idea in a half drunken state or joking about it .

Like for example Danny after being chased away from amity park and escaping his parents sits on the rooftop and talks with a gargoyles named Gary

„Yeah anyway that’s how I got here Gary, no clue what imma do know“ he says between another bite of pizza „like I’m pretty fucking broke and yeah maybe buying Pizza wasn’t the best investment in my situation but I was hungry I think I deserve a treat after all that .“

Gary stays silent as the two of them look over the city . Sirens echo in the distance, a few roofs in front of the, a black shadow appears between the gaps of the buildings, disappearing into the shadow just as fast as it appeared. Must be one of the bats Danny thinks .

He sets the piece of pizza back down into the carton in order to take a swig of the wine he stole from Vlads gift basket before his great escape. The man puts puts them on the counter for Mandy to find on a weekly basis now as part of his latest attempt to woo the woman. Jack adored the baskets when they first appeared, exited to have his best friend care about him and his wife.

Danny didn’t really plan on drinking it, he just brought it because it was the closest thing to grab. It was there so he took it . Now, sitting on the rooftop realising how fucked he truly was he decided he might as well be drunk for this too.

„And it’s not like any safe and sane workplace will take a random kid without paperwork. I probably need to do something illegal to go by now , Jazz would be so disappointed „ another swig from the wine .

It was fruity and dry and scratched his throat and Danny honestly didn’t enjoy the feeling but it made his wine just a little bit fizzier than before and it helped in a strange way.

Gary remained silent .

„sure there are a lot of Wayne foundations in Gotham that give out stuff , I did my research once I arrived after all, but they’d call cps and cps would either give me back to my parents or just straight up hand me over to the government so that is not an option „

Another bite of pizza . It was delicious a stark contrast to the wine

„It’s not like I can just go to Bruce Wayne and be like ‚yo got some money?‘ the guy would probably think I’m robbing him and call the cops and yeah, you get the gist of it Gary“

Another few beats of silence .

„But the dude is like crazy rich right? And he has his name on all of these foundations , and people say he’s an airhead so maybe I can just go to his house or something and ask for a donation. I mean it would be for a good cause , feeding a hungry homeless teenager is a good cause isn’t it ?“

„Yeah sounds like a pretty good cause Danny“ Damny answered himself as Gary by lowering his voice . The way one might get more into his head than he thought .

„You know what , I think imma just do this. Let’s just ask the rich guy for money he probably won’t even notice that he’s being scammed and if he does he probably has enough money nöt to care „

[pepsiboyy]

HEARTSTRINGS. - p1

masterlist ⚜ p2

pairing: chris sturniolo x fem!reader summary: after moving to massachusetts from florida, y/n lives with her half brother, nathan doe, who is part of a small garage band. their sassy guitarist, chris sturniolo, can't help but get on her nerves. but there's something about him. warnings: use of y/n lol, mentions of drugs, cursing a/n: rewrote the FUCK out of this, i hope this one is SO MUCH BETTER. love u guys. <3

"chris?"

"phone charger girl!"

"the fuck is he doing here?" my voice boomed in the garage, causing nathan to flinch slightly.

"woah, you two know each other?"

"sort of." chris responded with that stupid smug smirk on his face.

"not at all, actually." i responded quickly, immediately shutting down chris' disgusting expression.

my heartbeat was racing. i couldn't feel anything but anger in every fiber of my being. i couldn't help but remember to myself earlier today.

i had been living in massachusetts for about three days now. very interesting place, very different from florida.

after my mom's drug addiction became a major issue, cps was informed and i was sent to my dad's in boston, where i was completely unfamiliar with everyone and everything.

my dad's side, they weren't complete strangers if checking his status on facebook counted as being close.

shortly after i was born, my mom took me and left my dad in boston while we fled to live in florida. and as i get older, i can't help but feel more hatred towards the woman. my dad was a great guy, never deserved the way she treated him. he definitely did not deserve his first child being ripped away from his grasp a few months into my life.

when my mom and i moved to florida, my dad met another woman and had a child with her, whose name is nathan.

he seems like a really cool guy, an awesome brother to have, so i was looking forward to this move a lot, more than i probably should have.

the feeling of fresh air was appealing to me and the feeling of finally being there to reassure my dad that i want to be with him was even more exciting to me.

nate and i clicked pretty quickly, talking about our music taste on the way home from the airport. we talked a lot about video games, and he told me he was involved in a small garage band and plays the drums.

"that's so fucking cool!" i exclaimed with a bright smile, and nathan nodded.

"yeah! we mostly do covers now, but i plan on releasing some new and original music soon."

i nodded as i stayed focused on nate as he spoke, playing with my hands in my lap nervously.

the fact that this kid was my brother was so mind blowing to me. i couldn't wait.

the doe family had left to go to an event they had only bought three tickets for. i reassured them over and over that i was okay with staying at the house and continuing to settle in. and with that they left.

i dug through my bag and frowned when i came to a tragic realization.

"fuck." i cursed under my breath as i stood up and slid on my shoes.

time to go to that one gas station down the street we stopped at on the way here from the airport.

i left the house through the front door and slid my earbuds into my ears, playing my favorite playlist as i walked down the street.

boston was a lot more close together than florida. it genuinely made my heart happy.

about fifteen minutes into my walk and i find the gas station, pulling the door opened and look at the employee at the counter, smiling faintly to greet him. his eyes were glued to his phone though, so i turned to make my way up and down the aisles and look for the phone charger that works for my phone.

"eighteen dollars is fucking bizarre." i muttered under my breath at the charging brick box that i now have between my fingers. i carefully took it off the bar and grabbed a six ft long cord, making my way to the counter.

this is great. no job, new place, and i was already burning a hole into my savings for a fucking phone charger.

i set the two boxes on the counter and began digging through my pockets to find my wallet, the boxes hitting the counter a little harder than i had intended.

"woah there, sensing some aggression from 'ya. boyfriend start an argument with you or what?"

i finally found my wallet, but my eyes shifted quickly to the boy at the counter. "excuse me?" i asked, my face flushed at the thought. "it doesn't-" i blinked a few times. this kid was insane. "just ring me out please." i sighed as i inserted my card in the cardreader.

"relax sweetheart, just yankin' your chain." he stated defensively, skipping through the prompts on his screen. his hair was a little longer than average, and fairly wavy. he had a silver cuban link bracelet on one wrist and a few small handmade ones on the other, a ring or two on each hand. he had silver hoops in his ears and a plain black t-shirt on over his blue baggy jeans.

i stared at him in disbelief before i put my pin into the pad, yanking out my card as soon as it beeped and quickly shoving it into my wallet. chris set the charger boxes into a small plastic bag, placing it on the counter between us.

"i'm not your sweetheart," i narrowed my eyes at the nametag on his shirt, sucking in through my teeth, "chris."

i gripped the bag and left the gas station, and never turned back to see chris with his arms raised, and that disgusting smirk on his face.

my music was playing extra loud in my headphones in a desperate attempt to drown out the sound of nate slamming the drums in the garage.

i carefully sat up, my hand moving to run through my hair as i slipped on my shoes and stepped down the stairs. i was just wearing some pajama shorts and an oversized hoodie, but who even cares, right?

my hair was thrown into a messy bun, and i had one earbud in as my eyes were glued to my phone. i turned the doorknob to the garage carefully before stepping in and lifting my head as the music came to a halt.

and with that, my eyes widened.

and that's how we got here. with a finger pointed to my face.

"the fuck is he doing here?" my voice boomed in the garage, causing nathan to flinch slightly.

"woah, you two know each other?"

"sort of." chris responded with that stupid, smug smirk on his face.

"not at all, actually." i immediately barked back, crossing my arms.

nate looked between us both and shrugged it off quickly before he pulled a chair beside him. "come listen, y/n. i think you'd like it a lot." he told me.

i couldn't say no. i really was curious to hear nathan play. "okay, sure. just for a bit though." i reminded him of the time, and he smiled brightly and sat down in his seat.

i felt chris' eyes burning into the back of my head the whole time, his shaggy brunette locks perfectly draping over his forehead, which was a bit damp, while his eyes shifted to focus on his guitar again.

nate turned to me with a bright smile, grabbing his drumsticks as he glanced to the other two, making sure they were ready.

i watched the three and smiled as they began playing.

they were really good, actually.

better than i had expected them to be.

with nathan slamming the drums with his drumsticks and the boy i didn't know yet playing the bass, chris actually knocked his part out of the park.

chris glanced up for half a second, where we locked eyes. my eyes widened as he turned back to his guitar and a small smile grew on his face.

i hate this kid.

the song came to an end, and i turned to nathan, applauding happily.

"you guys sound great, genuinely. have you guys worked on any original stuff?"

nathan chuckled and shrugged, glancing between the other two. "a bit. chris writes phenomenal lyrics. we're working on it."

i glanced to chris for a moment, who was now gently strumming the strings of his guitar. i gulped as i stared at his hands, then turned back to nate. "i'm excited for you guys. let me know if i can do anything to help?"

nate nodded happily, and i stood up.

"alright, i'm gonna try and go to sleep. good luck to you guys." i waved at the three, and smiled at nate, my eyes quickly glancing at chris who waved softly back, no clear expression on his face anymore.

and with that, i opened the garage door and shut it, before taking a deep sigh and leaning against it.

"dude, you didn't tell me your sister was bad as hell," an unfamiliar voice rang, which i assumed was the bassist.

"wh- ben, gross! shut up dude," nathan quickly stated.

i cringed at the boy's comment, shaking my head quickly as if he could see me responding or something.

"invite her more often." chris stated blankly, standing up from his seat as he adjusted his guitar strap.

nathan turned to chris and narrowed his eyes.

i quickly stood up and made my way back to my bedroom, laying flat against the bed and turning up the music playing in my earbuds.

chris playing guitar and writing some lyrics.

it made me genuinely curious about whether or not this guy actually wrote good lyrics.

i hated being curious about him.

but i needed to know more.

masterlist ⚜ p2

comment to be added to taglist!! taglist;; @sturnioloshacker

[rosietrace]

This is a personal rant about my thoughts on Greek mythology retellings, and just the way Fantasy books and the publishing industry is at this point 🧍‍♀️

I have nothing against Greek mythology retellings, or just anything Greek mythology related in fantasy in general!

However, I have certain gripes about the way Greek mythology is portrayed in media, specifically in the way its interpreted in Fantasy.

[ More under the cut! ]

I love Percy Jackson, and I think that Uncle Rick did a wonderful job at expanding the world and making Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse mythology entertaining and easily digestible for young audiences. Genuinely, he does a better job at writing children's books than R*wling could ever be capable of.

However, as much as I can love PJO as much as I do, I still find certain bits of the world building and character writing as... Very hit and miss.

To start, I don't like the way Ares was written in the series. I can understand that it would make sense for his personality to be that way, because he's the God of War and it helps with Clarisse's character development; but I find fault in it because Ares in the myths is nothing like PJO Ares. (He literally killed one of Poseidon's sons because he raped his daughter, Alcippe, and he's one of the only gods who doesn't hump anything that can breathe in air. At least Ares has the courtesy of asking for consent 💀)

The Gods being the reason behind WWII and Hitler being a child of Hades. All I must say.

The portrayal of the Aphrodite cabin

The fact that Athena can have children. Annabeth, pjo fandom at large, I love you are, but you gotta admit it must've felt weird when you first read the books and you find out Athena — the maiden Goddess of Wisdom — can have offspring. Regardless of the reasoning, I still find it weird 😭 (EDIT: I've now just remembered that it was a reference to how Athena herself was created 🤡 I'm a clown)

I get that the Hermes cabin is also the cabin for the unclaimed, but couldn't have Hestia's cabin worked too? She doesn't have offspring, sure, but it probably would've made more sense for the unclaimed to go to Hestia's cabin so that the Hermes cabin wouldn't be so crowded

This isn't really a world building issue, but I think I should bring it up: I'm not saying this against the Kane Chronicles fandom, but... Sadie and Anubis. Why. Like you can't convince me that no one WASN'T weirded out by that.

Less of a complaint and more of a question because I can't remember if the question was answered in HoO or not, but when Percy told the Gods to start claiming their unclaimed children and be more decent parents (as he should, go off king), did that request apply to the Romans at Camp Jupiter too? Because that's gotta have been confusing when the unclaimed kids at CP suddenly started getting claimed 😭😭

I could go on a whole ass tangent about PJO, but that would make this post longer than it needs to be 😭😭 and any of the points might not make much sense, since I haven't read the books in a LONG time

Off to the YA Fantasy segment... Hoo boy.

The oversaturation of Hades/Persephone retellings makes me SEETHE. Why is it always Hades and Persephone why can't it be something else 😭

I just don't like the “modern feminist” retellings of Greek myths in the YA Fantasy genre, in general. They tend to completely miss the point of the original myth, and it's the case with a lot of Hades and Persephone retellings where they try to paint Hades as the good guy taking Persephone away from her control freak mother, Demeter.

Because that wasn't what the myth was about. The myth isn't a love story, at least, not a romantic one. It was about Demeter's love for Persephone and how much she wanted her daughter back after Hades stole her away. Keep in mind, in the historical context of the myth, the daughters of women in ancient Greece never really get to see their mothers after their engagements are solidified.

If they wanted to make a “feminist” retelling of the myth, they'd have it centered around the love Demeter had for Persephone to almost doom the mortal realm to an eternal winter to get her back.

I love the myth of Hades and Persephone, truly, I do. I understand the appeal it has on people, the appeal it has one me. I can see why people adore the myth in the way they do because Hades is one of the better husbands in Greek mythology (a low bar, but my point still stands).

Personally, I blame Lore Olympus and especially the video of the myth by Overly Sarcastic Productions for the way the myth is portrayed in mass media. And I say this as a former LO fan and a fan of Overly Sarcastic Productions 😭

I'd also want to go into my many, MANY gripes about “Crown of Starlight” by Cait Corrain, but in all honesty? I don't think I can properly convey how much I DESPISE Cait and their book. So I'd highly recommend y'all to check out the videos about Cait Corrain by Reads With Rachel, WithCindy, and Xiran Jay Zhao on YouTube if you're interested in going into more detail about the controversies, especially for those who weren't made aware of it.

I feel like the publishing industry just... Isn't good anymore, after Booktok went viral. Reading has been “hot girlified”, and all Booktok seems to ask when they get recommended a book is: “Is it spicy??”

Reading is like fast fashion, now. It's all based around certain popular tropes that that's how books are promoted now. Not for the plot — or sometimes lack thereof — but for the tropes the book has.

The only thing I can thank Booktok for is that they helped me discover The Cruel Prince. And even then, it's marketed as romance on there, when it's a political fantasy with a romance subplot.

‼️ Woah! A secret bonus section! ‼️

I, personally, don't read — nor do I like — Sarah J Maas. (Especially considering the problematic aspects of her storytelling, character portrayals, and is (apparently, correct me if I'm wrong) a Zionist)

However, that isn't to say that I don't like some of the characters she makes. A lot of them have potential, actually! From what I've seen, I think Nesta, Gwyn, Azriel, Eris, Tamlin and Lucien from ACOTAR are the only characters I actually like, based on what I've heard — and seen — on anything in the SJM critical tag on this hellsite.

And while we're at it, let's discuss the elephant in the room with ACOTAR, right? Rhysand.

By all that is good and holy, I hate Rhysand so much and I think I'd hate him even more if I actually READ the books. I don't get why Booktok is so invested in him when Maas retconned Tamlin's character to make him look better as Feyre's love interest.

Also, from what I recall, didn't Rhysand sexually assault Feyre? And he didn't bother to apologize for it, and justified it with his sad tragic backstory??

I can't with y'all, istg 😭 the fact that “Feysand” is apparently a Hades and Persephone retelling too makes me even more mad about it because it isn't even a GOOD retelling. It just takes away what ACOTAR originally was— a Beauty and the Beast retelling, with Feyre and Tamlin as the leads.

Didn't Maas dedicate ACOTAR to her husband because “He would go under the mountain” for her??? BECAUSE IT CERTAINLY WASN'T RHYSAND WHO SAVED FEYRE FROM UTM, I'LL TELL YOU THAT

I think, out of all the series Maas has made thus far, Throne of Glass is the only one I ACTUALLY kind of like, based on what I've heard. Crescent City seems to be too complicated to understand, and even though I've never read it myself, I miss what ACOTAR could've been. (My hope lies with Nesta, Elucien and Gwynriel, at this point)

[bearbunnycheetah]

🐆🐰✨CHAPTER 2: WRECKING… BALL..?✨🐰🐆

Note: This chapter is much longer than the last one! Hopefully there are no errors… haha… I’ll have the rest of my notes for this on the end section!

It’s been about a day or three since Percy visited the toy store. Molly lays in her bed awake, blankly staring at the ceiling. She knew she had a lot to do today, the anxiety of having to deal with all her responsibilities woke her up early. So she savored every second that she got to lay in bed.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Molly turns off the alarm on her phone immediately, then sighs. She shuffles out of the bed to get ready, shower… Make breakfast… Eat… Open the store… 

In this part of Sweet Jazz City, It was actually surprisingly really quiet. It meant Molly didn’t have to worry about noise overwhelming her, but it also meant that not that many people come in to the toy store. 

Well, her classmates did swarm her with questions after news got out about the museum. Maybe people will come here to buy things! Maybe… 

Molly walks up to the sign on the front door and flips it to open, before hopping on her chair and starting her shift at work. Maybe she could use this time to finish homework. 

Yeah, okay. She pulls out some paper from her backpack and started doing answer sheets, occasionally looking up when she hears sounds coming from outside. Suddenly, the bell on the front door jingled. Molly was about to speak when her eyes widened, and she realised that standing in front of her was Percy. She scrambled quickly to put away her homework and greeted the detective.

“Oh, Percy! I didn’t expect you to come back… Is... everything okay?” Right, the break-in… Maybe she just had more questions.

“Good morning, Molly! It’s been going quite well, the investigation was quite eventful. We didn’t manage to catch the perpetrator, but we successfully snagged the amulet back.” Percy smiled.

Does that mean boss is fine? Probably, I mean he got away once right? And at least she said it went well! “Wow, that’s… that’s great! Did you come here to um, tell me that?”

Percy sighed and furrowed her brows. Oh no, is Molly in trouble!? “Yes, but I’m also here on a more pressing matter...” 

What she didn’t expect is Percy approaching the register where Molly was sitting with a serious expression. A trickle of sweat going down Mollys face as she got closer and closer...

...What she didn't even see coming, was for Percy to place down a file on the counter in front of Molly. 

'Child Protection Services'

In bold letters on the front of the file. 

Molly stared for a couple seconds, dumbfounded.

"I'll give you a quick rundown." Percy opens the file for Molly to read. "We were tasked in bringing you and your sister out of this very unethical situation by both the police force and CPS themselves, I was to be temporarily assigned to be your guardian before you two were adopted by better, more responsible parents".

Molly’s eyes slowly widened at each word Percy said, did... did she really mean it? Was she really free from all the work her dad and sister had put her through? Is she going to have a normal childhood?

Before Molly could say a word, a certain someone walked up the stairs from the basement of the Toy Emporium, Martin Blyndeff. Said parent Percy deemed irresponsible. 

Martin was holding a toy playset that he was about to set down on a nearby table. “Heya, kiddo! This your friend? Oh Lookie there seems to be some sorta police getup you're goin for eh?" Martin said, attempting some sort of conversation.

Molly was about to tell her father what was going on, but Percy began speaking before she could form words.

"Ah what perfect timing! I apologise, but we will not be able to continue our 'chit chat'." She pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “You're coming with me, Martin Blyndeff. You are under arrest for child neglect, and several other crimes including tax evasion. Everything you say can and will be used against you."

“Awh what gives? I’m takin’ care of my little princesses I swear!!!” Martin protested, holding his arms out as if that would do something.

“The only thing you’re taking care of… Is jail time!” Percy said with full confidence attempting to be witty.

There was awkward silence as neither Molly or Martin understood what she meant.

“Wait- What- HUH!?” Molly let out the panic in her voice that built up over time, what the hell was even going on? Percy turnt to Molly as she handcuffed a very confused Martin.

“Please do not fret, Molly” Percy said, as a few other police officers came in to take away Martin. “Is it alright if you bring your sister here? So that I can give the rundown and explain to the both of you, of course”. 

Molly sighed, and tried putting on a smile. “Okay..” 

Molly wasn’t really…  sure how her sister would react to this. But all she could hope for is that Lorelai wouldn't protest or go into a dream bubble to hide away, it’d probably inconvenience Percy if she were to do that and she didn’t wanna bother her too much.

Molly made her way up the thin staircase, and then approached her sisters door. Despite the sign that said ‘DO NOT ENTER’, Molly knocked. 

“Uhh… Lorelai, are you there? I need to tell you something important, its not work or anything! Not like we’ll even work here anymore…” 

To Molly’s surprise, Lorelai actually opened the door! Though.. she was dressed up in some sort of knight armor?

“Oh, Lori! I… Didn't expect you to answer this qui-” 

Lorelai interrupted Molly. “Yeah yeah whatever, I was already gonna go downstairs anyway cause you guys we’re making a racket!”

Molly let out an exhausted attempt at a laugh, a bead of sweat dripping down her face. “Well.. It was about explaining the ‘racket’... And well… Dad is getting arrested for some stuff and we.. uh…” Molly paused, she wasn't sure how to continue this. She was about to raise her voice again, but Lorelai suddenly zoomed past Molly to go downstairs. 

“LORELAI WAIT!”

Molly rushed to follow her sister downstairs, eyes widening when she realised Lorelai was blabbering out to Percy who looked rather displeased. Urgh, not again…

“What the hell are you doing to our dad? Who do you think you are!?” Lorelai said, putting her arms on her hips all sassy and upset.

“Well, I am Detective Percival King from the Sweet Jazz Police” She holds up her badge. “but you may refer to me as Percy. And as your sister most likely explained, we are taking Martin to court because of his mild crime spree, such as avoiding taxes and child abandonment.”

Percy peeked behind Lorelai and saw Molly, who was currently shaking in her rain boots. “I was going to ask where your younger sister is, but it appears that she's already back. Hello!”.

Lorelai squinted at Molly and Percy with a disdain in her eyes.. “Did she call you to come here?” Lori said raising her eyebrow, Molly looked down to avoid eye contact “Cause CPS already came here before and we’re perfectly fi-” 

Percy decided to interrupt Lorelai herself, noticing how upset Molly looked. “I am very much aware of that, Miss Blyndeff.” Percy crossed her arms. “But after talking to Molly a few days ago regarding the museum incident she was involved in, I decided to reopen the case. After dealing with all of my work, of course.”

“Hmm…” Lorelai squints at Percy, unconvinced. “What about the toy store? What’s gonna happen to that huh?”

“We will deal with that after interrogating your father which will probably take a bit. But there’s no need to worry about you or your sister, as I’ve been assigned to take care of you two before more suitable parents can take care of you.”

Lorelai turnt to look at Molly again, then back at Percy. “Fine, what do we do now? Theres gonna be a bunch of legal stuff we need to deal with or whatever, right?”

“Correct. Thank you for being cooperative, Miss Lorelai. You may take your personal belongings at a later date.”

Lorelai rolls her eyes, and walks past Percy to the outside of the toy emporium. She waits there, still wearing her knight outfit. Molly nervously walks over to Percy and looks at her.

“Sorry about my sister… She’s a handful.” Molly apologized.

“I don’t mind all that much, I’ve dealt with many interesting people at my job before.”

“Sounds about right. I honestly thought the whole CPS thing didn’t work out because of last time…”

“The only reason something like that happened is because that person was a fool.” Percy scowls. “It’s cruel when events like this are overlooked, hopefully you and your sister can live life more peacefully.”

“Yeah, that sounds nice.” Molly pauses and smiles a bit. Maybe this was for the better, but she suddenly remembers something. “Oh! Is it alright if I tell my friends about this? We were supposed to have a meet up here tomorrow and I don’t wanna worry them too much.”

“Of course, you can go ahead and contact them on the way to the police station.”

Molly goes up to the door and flips the toy store sign to ‘closed’, then walks out. Percy follows closing the door behind her, she had brought back-up incase Martin was a dangerous person or if something went wrong but things actually turnt out alright! She speaks with some of the officers before most of them leave the toy store to the police station.

A couple hours pass, all three members of the Blyndeff family were interviewed. A few more hours pass and now the two sisters sit in Percys car, the detective was busy doing a few more things before going home so the two of them just sat in silence. Both Lorelai and Molly were in the back, but still sitting as far away from eachother as possible. 

Percy finally walks out and opens the car door.

“I’m back, apologies for the wait.” She sits in the drivers seat, she started the car a while ago since she thought leaving them in a hot car would be a bad idea despite the fact it was extremely cold during this time of year in Taiga Country.

“Its fine…” Molly yawned, it was night already and probably past her bedtime.

“I don’t have an extra room ready in my apartment, so both of you might have to sleep in my room in the meantime. But it’s fine, I’ll sleep on the couch.” Percy smiled reassuringly.

“Huh? Oh, no we couldn’t possibly… It would feel weird sleeping in someone elses room. We don’t mind, right Lori?”

Lorelai scoffed as if she doesn’t wanna talk right now, Molly scowls at her then forces a smile as she looks at Percy.

“One of us can sleep on the couch and the other one can sleep on the floor.”

“Understood, I’ll see if I have an old mattress lying around.”

Percy locks the car door and begins driving. It was pretty late outside so that means there wasn’t as much traffic as usual, just smooth sailing from here. Molly holds her hand out and puts it on the car window as she watches the city skyline zoom past here in a flurry of lights, a manufactured aurora borealis.

‘It’ll be okay.’ She thinks to herself. ‘Besides, this means I don’t need to run the store anymore right? Maybe I can catch up on my homework tomorrow. Yeah. Okay.’ Molly smiles a bit, then closes her eyes.

Note: This chapter was actually the first thing I wrote for this AU YEARS ago! Back before PoP even came out actually! It was much shorter back then but it was fun revisiting my writing and adding more onto it. Hopefully I’ll have the next chapter done in a few days :3

~Cherry

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[hijinxinprogress]

Coffee addict Never sleeps Tim drake ❌ 

Solving cases in his sleep off 87 energy drinks Tim Drake ✅

The coffee addict never sleeps perpetually tired Tim Drake thing is a widely accepted headcanon however that was elementary school tim but after he stayed up for a week straight subsisting entirely on coffee to decipher the bat weekly patrol schedule and how it aligns with rogue attacks/Arkham breakouts, he crashed then when he woke up it was fucking wednesday so he missed his chance to commemorate his discovery with pictures of Robin and he decided that shit would never happen again and made himself an ‘efficient’ sleep schedule so he could run around doing fuck shit, add to his robin shrine, and stay on honor roll bc he was even more pissed to see the gotham gazette had pictures of Robin with an on site interview credited to Vicki Vale (listen bowl cut tim had a one sided beef with vicki vale that included tim judging who gets better pics of the bats but she isn’t even aware that she’s competing with a whole ass child 😭 he’s sitting at the table with a mug of orange juice and looks at the newspaper snorts and goes ‘fucking amateur I could do better’) 

Regularly unsupervised tiny businessman in training Tim ‘Ten hours of uninterrupted sleep?? That’s so inefficient not to mention fucking stupid’ Drake is so pissed he missed getting shots of Robin dropkicking a rogue from 6 six stories up (for absolutely no reason dick just thinks it’s fun) that he just takes at least 3 hour naps every eight hours 😭 he refuses to spend almost half a day sleeping ‘for no reason when he could be doing something productive’ 

And he still does this as a bat but it’s just easier to tell if he didn’t take his nap bc he has less than zero impulse control and he’s just fucking done with everything like the gcpd is terrified bc tim’s saying shit like ‘This guys a fucking moron, I could’ve done this in half the time without killing anyone fucking loser doesn’t he know if you keep them alive you can prolong the torture?’ and ‘you’re like all hysterical and for what 🤨 ‘you blew up 83% of Bristol waah’ stfu and fucking rebuild it?? It’s only rich mfs that live there, it’s just a matter of them opening their fucking wallets’ once a new recruit made the mistake of asking if robin had adult supervision regularly and Tim responded with ‘well if you’re gonna snitch to cps like a little bitch then yeah’ and that cop did snitch so tim fucking doxxed him

Yj has just accepted that sometimes they will find tim in an air vent, on the roof, in one of their closets, or something just fucking knocked out then an alarm will go off and he’ll just get up like nothing happened but for the first couple of months they were probably concerned bc ‘I’ve never seen you sleep?? wtf are you on man’ and Tim’s confused bc ‘I slept next to you this morning wdym??’ and that’s how yj discovers tim sleeps with his eyes open

But one of the worst things about Tim’s ‘time efficient sleep schedule’ nonsense is that it fucking works he’s one of the most well rested and coherent bats even after back to back Arkham breakouts however the absolute worst thing about his sleep schedule is the likelihood of going into the cave and seeing tim staring in a daze but wide eyed yet somehow never blinking at the batcomputer with 57 tabs open on top of being unresponsive and thinking he has a fucking concussion or he’s been replaced but he’s just doing case work while muttering nonsense in his fucking sleep for some reason