#several folk who for years were good friends of mine

[pedgito]

𝐃𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘 𝐋𝐀𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐘 | Joel Miller x reader

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summary | you've got an issue and joel's willing to solve it. after all, what are neighbors for?

author's note | this was a prompt from a meet-weird thing i saw ages ago that was originally supposed to be javi, but jo (@undercoverpena) gave me the beautiful idea of making it joel and it spurred this monster.

content warning | established friendship, caught during sex, does the apocalypse having working appliances? probably not, but for the sake of this fic distend belief i beg. oral (eating out from the back), unprotected piv, subtly cocky!joel miller, he's a good ass neighbor, okay?, unbeta'd.

word count — 5.6k

Joel’s fixed this damn machine seven times, convincing himself every time that it was the last time. Shocker, it wasn’t. This time didn’t even last a month. He’s desperate now.

He would usually haul the load all the way to the communal laundry house closer to the group of joined townhomes that housed most of the younger adults—the spry and bright-faced ones who sprung up at the mention of patrol or work, any prospect of toting a gun around with any sense of leadership. They were eager, he couldn’t say the same for himself.

He was old, weathered—years of routine he had created to get the job done and get the hell home.

And truthfully, as he tapped the wrench against the metal machine, chin tucked into his palm as he scratched at his beard, he almost complied with the idea that he would just have to tough it out. Scrounging for parts was nearly impossible—dumb luck, really. In the past several years they’ve picked this town clean, bone-dry.

He’s elbow deep inside the barrel of the dryer when he hears the knock at his door, bumping his head against the rim of it as he exits and cursing under his breath as he pushes to stand, joints creaking and popping in disapproval. 

He can smell you before he sees you, the familiar scent of fresh-baked goods following you everywhere—Joel couldn’t feel guilt for being one of the folks addicted to your cooking. 

Grains had been hard to come by since the epidemic hit, everything was tainted on a global level. It took years and years of Jackson growing its own stock of wheat for things like pie or a nice, gooey cinnamon roll to even be plausible anymore. But, they were managing well so far.

“Saved ‘em for you and Ellie,” You tell him, a small plate of still hot brownies covered with parchment paper, dawning that trademark smile that Joel has come to love, tapping his fingers against the door frame as he passes the plate off to a quickly approaching Ellie.

“Girl’s got the nose of a basset hound,” Joel looks on in amused bewilderment as Ellie throws a mouth-stuffed thanks over her shoulder, “sorry ‘bout her.”

You wave her off whole-heartedly, taking in his sweaty appearance and casual attire. You were used to him in jeans and thick flannels, not a graphic tee and pair of sleep pants. He’s almost always dressed like he had to run at a moment's notice, you weren’t even sure he owned anything different until now.

“Everything good?” You question him, a small laugh escaping your throat.

“Damn washer and dryer is out again,” Joel explains, throwing a hand vaguely over his shoulder.

“Both of them this time?” You ask, “Damn.”

“I can fix ‘em, just a matter of finding the right parts,” Joel tells you, “ looks like I’m gonna have to hand wash again.”

Joel was a friend. You helped friends. It seemed like a no-brainer really, opening your mouth without thinking it through, the kindness tumbling out despite yourself.

“Oh, you’re welcome to load yours up at mine,” You offer and Joel looks immediately apprehensive, the southern charm and well-mannered tone gearing to creep up on you.

“Now, I don’t mean to make you feel like you have to—”

“Joel, I wouldn’t offer it if I didn’t feel comfortable with it,” You remind him, “seriously—anytime, just try and bring your own detergent—and for the love of god, empty your pockets before you put ‘em in.”

Joel chuckles tiredly at that, rolling his eyes as he nods in agreement.

“Got it, of course, sweetheart.”

“I leave an extra key under the rug, so if I’m ever not home just come in,” Given that Joel was Tommy’s brother, you knew he wouldn’t be up to any trouble, “sound good?”

“Yep. Anytime—just make myself at home.” Joel confirms and you nod with an even wider smile, waving a pleasant goodbye as you trailed down the stairs and made your way to the house you inhabited next door.

Right, anytime.

Unfortunately, Joel took that a little too literally.

-

Joel managed to scrounge up the courage a day later, tumbling into his house on tired legs after a lengthy patrol up at the cabin lookout, scooping the basket up in his arms and heading out his front door, taking the short walk to your house.

The lights were off, but that wasn’t unusual. Joel knew you liked to stay late nights in the town’s mess hall, often working on prep for the following morning to make the load a little lighter and sleep in a while longer, so when he fishes under the doormat for the key he thinks nothing of it.

And as the door swings open, it is still fairly quiet. Though, he can hear your own dryer running upstairs. He’s got the layout down too, having shared more than a few nightcaps with you. Friend to friend and nothing more, even if you had always felt a little more strongly toward being affectionate. A hug or a kiss on the cheek from time to time, he never pushed you away. Joel never seemed like the type of man who openly showed affection, even toward a friend. But, he was good, reliable–most of the time.

He reaches the stairs with trepidation as the sounds grow louder and part of him wonders if by some uncanny coincidence your dryer might be growling and rumbling on its own final leg. 

The moment his hand reaches that doorknob and turns he realizes he’s made a mistake.

He’s caught you at a…bad time. Head thrown back with your mouth hung wide, whatever noise you’re making was mostly drowned out by the nagging sound of the dryer as it tore through the spin cycle but he hears the tailend of it, a soft moan of pleasure from the man who’s buried inside of you right now, both of you naked from the waist down but your breasts on full display with your shirt tucked under your neck.

“Benny?” Joel asks, slightly amused.

You lift your head at the sound and spot him, your feet nearly slipping out from under you as you scramble to push Benny away, who perks with an even more perplexed, “Joel?”

“Goddamn it, Joel,” You curse behind gritted teeth, furiously readjusting yourself, pulling your sweats back on and over your ass and your shirt down, “What are you doing here?”

Joel looks down at the basket still clinging to his hip before back up at you, wordlessly.

You sigh through your nose with a tight lipped frown, cheeks puffing out as you brushed your fingers through your hair and down—Benny was still scrambling to redress behind you, unable to pull his gaze away from Joel.

“Benny?” Joel mouths at you quietly, eyebrows raised curiously.

You walk toward the now open door slowly as Benny buttons his pants and you shoot Joel daggers with your stern gaze.

Cut it out.

Joel smirks slightly, cheek dimpling with the action as he side-steps Benny, who leans around you and kisses your cheek—it was a kind gesture but given the situation, in horrible taste. You force a polite smile and once Benny is a far enough distance you hit Joel firmly in the arm as he passes by you and into the laundry room.

You walk Benny to the door with a million thoughts racing through your head, offering a distracted goodbye before you’re locking the door and racing back upstairs with determined footsteps and Joel has already loaded his clothes in the washer, turning the knob to set the load size and time.

“Benny?” He echoes his earlier questions, “Really?”

“What? Are you judging me?”

“No—just, that kid’s had quite an obsession with you for some time now. Just…surprised is all.”

Your lips pull together in a disapproving but nonchalant frown, taking his words for the bullshit they are.

“When I said anytime that did not extend to the middle of the night, Joel.”

“You’re usually still at work,” He supplies—and really, he’s not wrong, “M’sorry. I mean that.”

“Well, now I’ve gotta deal with the fact you’ve seen me naked,” You cross your arms over your chest and lean against the doorframe and Joel’s eyes track you for a moment, smiling with amusement at the thought.

“What? You want a fair trade?” Joel teases, “‘Cause, darlin’. I don’t mind—but it was an accident. Besides, ain’t nothin’ I haven’t seen before.”

He means it in a broader sense, but you can’t help the eye roll it induces. 

“No, no,” You chew at your bottom lip, watching Joel place the empty basket on top of the washer, “I can finish that up if you want to get some sleep. I know you had a long patrol today.”

“Oh, did you?”

He’s teasing you.

“Don’t push it, old man,” Joel shakes his head at that jab and chuckles, “Ellie clued me in when she picked up some sandwiches for her and Dina earlier.

He’s not going to pass on the offer, though. He nods, rubbing a hand over his tired face.

“Jesus—just…Benny?” Joel reiterates again, “Didn’t think the kid had it in ‘em.”

“Out,” You say with an over-pronunciation as you drag his slow and progressive steps further out of your laundry room and into the hall, “or you’re off my dessert list for a month, Miller.”

Joel smiles at you knowingly, “You wouldn’t dare,” He retorts, knowing you too well.

You wouldn’t make him suffer like that. Or Ellie, who wouldn’t hesitate to murder Joel if he robbed her of that pleasure. Not literally…but, she would carry a few choice words for him.

“Seriously, though, thank you,” He nods, leaning down to press a kiss into the crown of your head—an often familiar gesture when you parted after a long night of nonsensical talk and a couple glasses of wine or whiskey, depending on how hard the day had been, “I appreciate it, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, yeah—”

“And I do apologize for…not knocking and showin’ up at such a weird time.”

You shrug, “You’re forgiven. Just…don’t give Benny a hard time. He’s a good guy.”

“You’ve got my word, darlin’.”

Joel was determined to be on his best behavior, clearly.

-

It takes Joel a couple weeks to find the parts he needs and luckily there are no more run-ins on your midnight sex-scapades, still feeling the embarrassment from the first one. Joel doesn’t even seem to remember it after a couple days, thankfully. He was bypassing it for your own benefit, truthfully. And you knew that.

Selfishly, you're glad to have your appliances back to yourself. 

They’re good, solid, reliable—until they aren’t.

Your washer shits itself mid-load and you can hear it from downstairs. A loud screeching noise before an even louder pop that has you groaning loudly because you know. You can feel it.

You can’t even bring yourself to go check, peering through the window of your kitchen and catching a fresh pot of coffee in the house across from yours, a man coming into view and his stark white shirt contrasting the black coffee cup in his hands. He catches you out of the corner of his eye and looks at you with a quizzical amusement, smile tugging at his face.

Joel was always up before the sun rose, so with the sun just creeping into the sky you’re sure that’s his third or fourth cup of coffee. He reaches over his sink and fiddles with the latch on his window before heaving it up, watching as you struggled to do that same but eventually managed.

“You run outta coffee again?” He asks, sipping at the bitter, black coffee in his mug.

“No,” You reply quickly, slightly exasperated as you chew at your bottom lip, debating how to pop the question and feeling nervous under Joel’s intense gaze, curiously wondering if he’s still picturing you naked. He’s never explicitly mentioned it since, but you have caught him in the act.

Wandering eyes, gazes catching when your back is turned for half a second as you bend down or move in a way that exposes too much skin.

“My washer broke,” You cut to the chase and Joel chuckles at how comical it is, in hindsight.

Was this karma? It was definitely karma. 

You’ve never asked Joel for anything—despite your often bouts of kindness toward him you never expected anything in return, not even a favor.

“Doors open,” Joel nods toward his front door out of view, an invitation like you offered him.

You didn’t even hesitate, pushing the window close and bounding up the stairs.

-

You’re already loading your things into his washer before he appears around the corner, peeking his head in, coffee cup still in hand as he takes a few more steps and leans against the wall beside the washing machine and your eyes glance at him briefly before you continue moving the clothes, watching him watch you from behind the rim of his mug.

“I can start them and come back,” You tell him, “so I won’t be lingering around here all day.”

“No Benny?”

You stand up as you close the washer, deadpan stare pointed in his direction.

“You can be such a nosy neighbor, you know that?”

Joel shrugs, a smug smile covered behind his sip of coffee.

“It was just a few times. Besides he’s…too much for me.”

You turn the dial to start the load and it rumbles to life with a simple press of a button.

“You wanna talk about it?”

It wasn’t completely unnatural for you two—you knew quite a bit about Joel now: his life before, his work, his daughter…all things that come with trust and time. He’s waited patiently for you and you’ve given him peeks into your life, but nothing like this.

“It’s a long story, Joel.”

“Got time,” He smiles slightly, “I’ll go grab you a cup of coffee—sit down.”

You look around briefly, not a chair in sight. So, you raise yourself up just enough that you can slide your ass over the top of the washer, bare feet dangling off the floor and you wait, the subtle and quiet shake from the beginning of the load process keeping the awkward silence at bay.

Joel turns the corner a few minutes later with your cup, made up just to your liking and you nod with a gentle smile, taking the cup from his hand and allowing yourself a few generous sips.

“So—that night, you caught us,” You can laugh at the instances now, so you do in a soft, clipped manner, “it wasn’t the first—it had been a month by that point and he just caught me by surprise, showed up that night and things just got a little out of hand.”

Joel’s eyebrows raise in interest but he urges you to continue, leaning against the wall in front of you now, resting his mug on the shelf just above his head as he crosses his arms over his chest.

“He’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong—but I don’t do serious…I can’t, now with how things are. And I know a lot of people think the opposite, seize the moment and all that shit,” You sigh, a deep and heavy sound that expands and releases from your chest, “he was already talking about moving in, the idea of us having kids—so that night I just tried to distract him.”

“With sex? Seems a little…counter-productive, don’t you think?”

“Don’t judge me, Joel,” You warn him but it’s edged with a playfulness that Joel recognizes. You didn’t have a mean, deceptive bone in your body and Joel knew that from the first conversation he had with you.

“I needed him to shut up,” You groan at the thought of the conversation as it replays in your mind, “I’m trying to wash my clothes, he’s talking to me about babies. I do not want kids, Joel. Ever. At least none that are biologically mine. Who would want to bring a kid into this world?”

Well…Tommy. The thought comes to you after the words have already left your mouth and your heart sinks into your stomach, looking at Joel apologetically.

“Sweetheart, don’t even try to apologize. Ain’t nothing wrong with it.”

“It makes me sound horrible, I know but—”

“I’ve done my time—it’s none of my business how others choose to live. Besides, I’m pushing sixty, I don’t have to worry about all that…sorry, I’m not trying to be crude here.”

You nod knowingly with a smirk tugging at your lips, taking another sip of coffee before handing the mug off for him to place it next to his own, ready to slide off of the washer before Joel interjects with another question that catches you off guard.

“He treat you right, at least?”

You tilt your head with that same knowing smirk, pushing Joel away at his hip with your foot as he leans up from his position against the wall—Joel’s never flirted, always promptly skirted around the issue and went about it more gentlemanly. He’s not abrasive and straightforward like most of the men in Jackson, but damn did he know how to make you feel special.

Undivided attention, constant subtle compliments, giving up some much-needed sleep for a simple late night drink with you—part of you was too terrified to make your own move and make it clear just how badly you wanted just a small taste of him.

You’ve heard whispering, minimal talk from a few of the women in town. Joel didn’t often make his rounds but when he did, he left an impression. And you had every right to be jealous, because with him standing in front of you now—you knew it would be easy to say no and he would fix you right up, finally crossing that line that he’s been carefully dancing around for a few years.

“He’s a bit…timid,” You shrug, “and he doesn’t really…”

The air lingers and the side of Joel’s mouth pulls up—you don’t have to say it.

“Joel, don’t do that,” You shove at his shoulder as he approaches you, his hands pressing into the contraption you’re on, curled around the metal, “—he’s just…eager, but not in a good way.”

There’s a glint in Joel’s eye that leads you to believe he’s not thinking about Benny’s less than experienced sex life, feeling the sudden jitteriness from the coffee as your chest rises with a deep, shaky breath and Joel eyes the time over your shoulder.

Forty-five minutes and some change, plus the time to dry because Joel already knows you aren’t going to trouble yourself with walking the damp laundry through this cold, muggy weather.

“So, no then?” Joel asks.

He could have treated you better, sure. But, he wasn’t the worst.

But, the way Joel is staring at you knows makes everything and everyone dull in comparison.

You shake your head in agreement, chewing at the inside of your bottom lip as your hands fall to your lap, his hands ncreasingly closer to the tights covering your legs, suddenly feeling his thumb graze your hip. You both glance down at the action and your breathing halts, watching as his right hand slowly engulfs your thigh, fingers digging into the soft material and dimpling your skin underneath, his thumb only a few centimeters from dipping into the inside of your thigh.

They part on their own, welcoming Joel in wordlessly and his left hand echoes the other. His face is level with your own, staring down at your lips briefly before meeting your eyes and you’ve seen that look before—the adoration when he thought you weren’t watching, secretly you had become good at catching those glances, but Joel wasn’t trying to hide it now.

And it quickly dawns on you in the moment—he was jealous. Of Benny. Or really, any man that had come before him. But, he was using him as the scapegoat.

Honestly, you couldn’t even care.

“You want someone to treat you right?” He speaks softly and if you weren’t so close you wouldn’t have heard him, “I got you, sweetheart. I swear.”

He’s not looking at you anymore, eyes dragging down the bridge of your nose to your lips again. But, you are looking at him, flooded with that tricky feeling that creeps up on you when you want things you know you shouldn’t.

“Joel, I told you—I don’t do serious,” And you hold your breath for the response, wondering if that would send this moment crumbling to dust, but Joel doesn’t miss a step.

“Good for you,” Joel dotes, “neither do I.”

Then he’s on you, the press of his lips in a heated kiss sends you tumbling back, caught by the warm slide of his palm over your back to pull you in, throwing your arms over his shoulders as he pulls back briefly, just enough for you to open your mouth to speak, but his tongue finds its way inside and the words fade away.

Just friendly, my ass—you think.

If you had known he kissed like this—you would’ve jumped at the opportunity months ago; a night spent drinking too many glasses of wine and laughing over some movie far before your time, but not his. 

He was so entranced, giving you all the details, but you couldn’t help giggling over it, too touchy to be considered friendly.

You’d both cut it short quickly when Ellie popped in halfway through the movie, and beyond that, it never grew.

Until now.

“Sweet,” Joel notes with a subtle smile, his hand dwarfing the size of your neck as his fingers wrapped around the column of your throat, holding you firmly in place as he maneuvered you toward and away from the kiss as he pleased, swallowing every tiny moan that escaped your lips when his other hand squeezed at your thigh just a little too hard.

“All that sugar,” In your coffee, the taste lingering on your lips and he licks around them teasingly, pulling away briefly to look at you, your eyebrows raising in question as the gears turn in his head, “—you still with me?”

“I’m just wonderin’ if you’re okay with this,” Joel speaks candidly, his eyes trained on his thumb as it rubs against the middle of your throat, traveling up under your chin and tipping your head up slightly, watching as you swallowed, “before I take this further, jus’ need to know.”

You nod jerkily, not even a second of hesitation. 

“You would have known the moment you kissed me, Joel.”

In turn, Joel nods slowly before he speaks, stealing the air from your chest.

“Alright then, pull these down for me,” He tugs gently at the material clinging to your thighs before both of his hands find the spot behind your knees and tug until your feet hit the floor, “and push that pretty little ass out for me.”

The absurdity of this language on his tongue makes you giggle but abide in an instant, struggling slightly as the material bunches at your ankles and Joel helps you the rest of the way, tossing your pants aside before he’s kneeling despite how his body protests, too eager to give you a taste of the pleasure you deserve and he’s grabbing the cheeks of your ass and squeezing them between his hands before he’s leaning up to bite playful at the soft flesh.

He groans quietly against your skin, the press of his aquiline nose against your ass as his fingers fold around the string of your underwear and pull, dropping them down to your ankles and off and then his tongue is flat against the seam of your cunt, gasping as you fall forward and your own fingers clawing against nothing.

“Joel!” You squeak out as his fingers dig hard into your ass, forcing you up on your tiptoes as devours, licking into your cunt as it quivers around his tongue. 

Your hand pressed against the wall in front of you to keep your chest from hitting the washer, feeling your pussy tighten around the finger that enters alongside his expert tongue, a soft groan erupting out of him from behind you. That smug motherfucker was attempting a teasing huh under his breath as he busied himself with the task of eating you out from the back and you couldn’t even think straight. 

‘C’mon, baby,” He coos between his alternating licks and slurps of the heady slick that dripped from your cunt, “come all over my mouth, let me taste that sugar.”

It’s absurd, the way he’s speaking to you now. Your eyes squeeze shut as his thumb finds your clit amongst the chaos of his tongue and fingers, face heating up at how noisy your cunt sounded over the dull shake of the washer and Joel’s satisfied moans, occasionally massaging at the back of your thigh when your legs shake with the creeping feeling of your impending orgasm.

“Oh,” You squeal, reaching behind you to dig your fingers into his hair, panting out in desperation, “—fuck, don’t stop! Joel, right—right there,” and then glance you take back at him, his eyes peeking open from his position below, on his knees and dutiful to you and you alone, well…

It sends you tumbling over the edge as his thumb rubs over your clit quickly, soothing you through the aftermath as he laps up the mess you’ve made all over yourself, dragging his tongue along the inside of your thigh because if you knew anything about Joel, he didn’t waste a meal. 

And you were just about the finest he’s tasted.

You clear your throat as you rest your feet flat on the floor, feeling the faint quake in your legs as Joel rises slowly, forcing you to swallow down a giggle as he winces and he can see it on your face.

“Worth it,” He excuses himself, “don’t look at me like that.”

“No old man jokes?” You sound sad and Joel can’t believe it.

He shakes his head.

But, the smile that breaks out on your face quickly diminishes any comeback he has.

You begin to push him away with a hand gripped in his shirt, carefully avoiding the obvious bulge in his sweats as you reach for your tights, ready to redress and drop to your own knees as a favor but his fingers are wrapping around your wrist, pulling your attention back to him.

“I meant it,” Joel tells you, tilting his head to catch your gaze.

You smile wide and tilt your head to mirror him, “I think you proved your point—Benny is a pathetic man who doesn’t know how to make me come, blah blah…”

“My job ain’t done if you’re still thinkin’ about him, darlin’.”

His eyebrows raise in challenge.

Okay, you’re game.

Wordlessly you allow the hands at your hip that guide you toward the front of the joined appliances, his fingers sliding under your top until you get the hint to pull it off, your breasts bouncing free from the shirt—the few bras you had were already in the wash, big deal.

Joel chuckles and stops for a moment, admiring the sight of your breasts for the second time that month, albeit more openly this time. He reaches forward and rubs his thumb along your nipple, watching the nub harden under his touch and you bite at your bottom lip, eye fluttering closed at how sensitive they were to touch, something other men never took the time to notice.

“You like that?” Joel asks with a creeping grin.

You nod, watching as he squeezed your tits in his hands, showing your nipples ample attention as he circled them with his thumb before leaning down slightly and swiping his tongue over the hardened nubs, sucking your breast into his mouth and his eyes peer up, gauging your reaction which quickly developed from a soft giggle to a loud moan.

“Clothes,” You breath out, “off—if you still have a point to prove.”

A point that you wanted proven. Hard.

Joel pulls away and yanks his shirt over his head, allowing you an unobscured view of the mix of muscled shoulders and his softened stomach, running your hand over the patch of hair at the center of his chest and down, right along his hips until his own fingers hook around the fabric and pull his sweats and boxers down in one motion, his cock catching against the edge of his waistband before it bobs back up toward his stomach.

You find yourself smiling despite yourself, forgetting for a moment that Joel was standing there and watching you, feeling your mouth water at the sight of him hard and leaking at how just getting a small taste of you had turned him on that much, precum leaking slowly from the tip and he wraps his hand around himself, other hand tapping at your chin to drag your attention back up to his face, reminding you he was still there.

“Got somethin’ on your mind, sweetheart?”

You shake your head furiously, “No, no—no, nothing. Just, uh—”

“I’ll start slow,” He tells you and with the size of him, thick and girthy in ways you’ve only imagined or pictured in your head, it’s daunting, “are you still alright with all of this?”

Your face softens and you nod, appreciating the repeated check-ins, the need for confirmation, but it pulls at your heart as you wonder why he feels the need to ask so much. As if he was fearful you would change your mind on a dime—Joel was fine with that, but he was more worried about the change in dynamic. Thankfully, you were determined for that not to be the case.

“I’m pretty tough,” You shrug, a playful smile gracing your face.

Joel nods absently as his fingers drag along your waist before catching behind your knee and pulling it up over his hip, both of your eyes dragging down to his cock as he tugged at himself a few times, his brow furrowed as he spread your lips apart with the head, dipping his hips down slightly to catch against your hole before he pushes in slow, one solid stroke that steals the sound from your throat and transfers to his own. Joel groans out softly as he pushes into you, his hands gravitating toward your face and wrapping around the sides of your neck, tilting your head back to mouth at your skin, his tongue dragging along your collarbone before sucking and nipping gently at your skin.

“Don’t I know it,” Joel responds after a while, “find something to hold onto.”

Your soft giggle of excitement shoots down to your core and your fingers wrap around the edges of the washer and Joel pulls back swiftly before he’s snapping his hips back into you before repeating the process several times, the jolt of the machine hitting the concrete wall behind you drowned out by your loud moans, quickly swallowed up by Joel’s lips as he pulls your mouth to his, breathing into it with every sharp snap of his hips.

“Harder,” You beg, biting at his bottom lip as he groans, using his fingers intertwined into the hair at the nape of your neck now to pull your head back and he pulls his hips back quick, bottoming himself out inside of you so forcefully you feel like your legs might give out, his cock rubbing against your already too sensitive g-spot and continuously finding a way to bring you closer and closer to the edge, “fuck—yes, yes. Joel, oh my god—”

“Yeah,” Joel goads you, his eyes drawn closed as he tries to keep his own orgasm at bay, “give it to me, baby—wanna watch you make a mess on my cock, alright?”

Easy, you laugh airily and feel the instinctive squeeze of your walls around Joel’s cock as he pulls your face to his, foreheads pressed against each other as he angles his hips back and slams into you one last time before you come undone, head falling back in a similar position to how he caught you a few weeks ago, this time for him. 

Your grab for his shoulders suddenly, blunt fingernails digging into his skin and he takes a few harsh breaths through his nose before he’s pulling out, hand grasping his cock as he jerked himself a few seconds before he comes in thick, short spurts against your stomach, squeezing at the head of his cock as he drags it through the mess he’s made.

His expression is nothing short of mesmerizing, mouth hung open just enough that his tongue can drag over his bottom lip before his teeth are taking its place, eyes drawn to your skin.

Wordlessly, he pulls away on his own pair of shaky legs as he reaches for his wrinkled, worn shirt and brings it to your stomach, cleaning up the mess with a faint smile on his face.

“You know, I think it might take me a bit to fix my washer,” You tease, “so—I might be over here bothering you for a while.”

Joel peers up at you, his head still tucked down as he wiped at your stomach.

“Fine with me.”

Then he’s peering over your shoulder, watching as the washer time inched toward zero, dinging behind you. You turn around, letting your leg fall from his hip finally, ass brush against him in the process and Joel can’t help the way his eyes refuse to leave the sight of it.

Only feeling slightly guilty when you catch him this time, not giving him the pass you usually do.

“We’ve still got about an hour left if I dry them here,” You tell him, “anything else you wanna prove?”

Joel’s tongue pokes at the inside of his cheek, eyes dragging up toward the upper level of his house before flicking back toward you, a smile plastered on your face.

“I can think of a few things.”

divider creds: @/cafekitsune

[nellielsss]

｡･ﾟﾟ･ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏʏ ɪꜱ ᴍɪɴᴇ!

╰┈➤ I can't wait to try him... ✮✮✮

Summary: Just a little songfic inspired by The Boy is Mine by Ariana Grande. I figured it was about time that the tables were turned & the reader got to make a mess! However will these boys react? Includes: Toji Fushiguro, Satoru Gojo, Kento Nanami x Yandere!reader CW: murder, weapons, derogatory/degrading language (reader is severely flawed), allusions to sex

☆○o 𝙏𝙤𝙟𝙞 𝙁𝙪𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙜𝙪𝙧𝙤 ༶•┈┈⛧┈♛

╰┈➤ It's no secret that your man was a man of charm and persuasion. Although his demeanor was considerably unapproachable and intimidating, he still knew his way around a conversation (he had to if he wanted to haggle the local vendors). It's also no secret that he was an adonis. A wide, tapered back that extended outwards to a pair of broad shoulders, biceps bigger than your head, and a face that could make Narcissus himself do a double-take, he was practically walking sex! Not to mention those 9 inches he was packing!

It's not like it was his fault that his body was so built; those muscles were a result of his years of working out! If he wanted to make as much money from his missions as possible, he'd need his strength to be at its peak. It also wasn't his fault that god blessed him with a perfect face with perfect skin (save for the scar) & a perfect bone structure.

If two + two = four, each two standing for the aforementioned attributes, then four meant that there was a lot of unwanted attention thrown his way. Men, women, non-binary folk and everyone in between threw a couple of flirty glances and compliments his way every now and then. It seemed like he raised the pheromones of the places he was in: bars, the grocery store; hell, even on the street there would be a couple of people trying to pick him up!

"Baby, don't even pay 'em a penny of your time," he muttered into your ear after a girl tried to get his number at a bar. "They don't compare to you; not even a little. Fuck would I do without this ass, eh?" he asked with a grin, making you smile a little. "Atta girl." If he wasn't so reserved and committed to his gal, you, then he would've eaten that shit up. But he made a vow to be more responsible and stay loyal to you, and he'd kill himself before he broke that vow. He even bought you a promise ring, for fuck's sake (he also had an engagement ring in mind for when the time was right)! So, to any sane person, things should've been peachy keen...

... if you were sane, that is.

Toji knew all about your mental state. He knew that you had a few issues, but he didn't care; he wasn't a fucking hypocrite for crying out loud. He had a few screws loose himself, so he didn't bat an eye when you told him about how many you had loose. The two of you made an excellent couple anyways, and he wasn't stupid enough to throw away a good thing. So, he brushed over it and decided to move on with life.

If only he knew how many friends he'd lose along the way.

The most recent "departure" was the one friend he'd made in high school (before he was forced to drop out by his family). One of the only female friends he'd made during his life, she was the tomboy-type who had no trouble making friends with guys. She was a total delinquent; she even rocked the long skirt and the mask back in high school, and she also dropped out of high school after he did for setting fires behind the school. Leather jackets, piercings, the whole nine yards. She was like a walking Mötley Crüe song.

But even walking rock-and-roll songs could catch feelings. Unluckily for her, it was high time that she kicked the bucket and made way for you. The only person who deserved Toji's attention was you. You were the one who kept him warm every night; you were the one who took his dick like no other; you were the one with the promise ring on your finger, not that bitch.

Killing her was quite simple. Although she was tough as nails, you were the one who actually had experience with killing people. All you had to do was sneak into her place at night and stab her. Then, you'd write a flimsy little note and make it seem like she fled the country; it was quite plausible for a chick like her.

┆ . "Hello? Who's there?" the chick's voice asked when she heard a few thumps in the other room. She was in the kitchen drinking a beer and listening to the radio (could she not afford a TV? how sad). She had a plate of Korean fried chicken on the counter as well, and the only light illuminating the area was the flimsy lightbulb above her head.

Her head immediately snapped in the direction of the noise she'd heard, and she grabbed a switchblade from the linoleum countertop. She took a few steps forward, the sound of the radio being drowned out by her heartbeat.

Another noise from the opposite direction, this time to her left. "Alright, who the fuck's fuckin' with me? I swear, Toji, if that's you-"

"Don't even say his fucking name, whore." She felt something grab her neck from behind, effectively choking her. The hand then pressed a nerve that stopped her from moving, rendering her frozen in place. She recognized that voice, but she couldn't believe it; was that girl seriously in her home...? She turned her eyes to the best of her ability, trying to catch a glimpse to confirm her suspicions. Her eyes widened when she realized who it was, being met by Toji's girlfriend's pretty face which was now marred by a look of sheer venom and malice.

"P-please, can't we talk this out?-"

"It's too late to beg. You shouldn't have come back into his life; you shouldn't have even met him to begin with." The last thing she saw before she felt something stab her was a sick, twisted grin on her face, widening as the knife sunk further and further into her tattooed skin.

The knife left her side and then sunk back into her neck. A snap was the last thing she heard before her eyes went shut.

It definitely wasn't the last thing you heard, though; the knife sunk back into her neck again, then again, and again, and again, again, again, again, again, all the way until her neck practically ripped in two.

The plan to make a smooth escape was a little behind schedule considering all the blood splatters that needed cleaning on the linoleum flooring, but it was nothing a little bleach couldn't fix.

"Toji did tell me I looked good in red once," you sighed, dragging some blood down your face with a lovesick grin as the finishing touch.

You could rival Elizabeth Bathory with the amount of blood that was on you and the black sweater you chose to wear for the killing. Ah, it's not like that sweater was anything too important or sentimental to you; you always made sure not to wear anything nice when murdering a target of yours.

"Toji, Toji, Toji Toji Tojiiiii," you hummed to yourself, taking your gloves off and throwing them aside. You decided to put on a new pair of disposable gloves in order to clean the crime scene, considering how soaked the others were with the amount of blood that was in them. Making the mess an even bigger mess wasn't on your agenda for the night.

"The boy is mine... I can't wait to try him... let's get intertwined... the stars they've aligned," you hummed to yourself, "the boy... is... mine!"

Just as you'd started to get into the swing of things and dance around the kitchen of your victim, cleaning up the mess in your own sick & twisted way, that little fantasy of yours was broken by the sound of the door opening. Your head snapped in the direction of the sound, your blood running cold at the thought of being caught in such a predicament. You reached out to grab a nearby knife, already making a plan in your head. You'd killed a few other people who walked in on your murders, so it really wasn't anything new to you.

But those people weren't your boyfriend.

"Yoohoo, anybody home?" He asked in that deliciously deep & sarcastic voice of his. "I thought I oughta bring you that shirt you asked for. Y'know, the ACDC one?-"

When he turned his head to the side and saw you, his girlfriend, cleaning up a spilled pool of blood that belonged to his friend, he also froze. The two of you stared at one another, each completely bewildered by the other. Here was his sweet, amazing, practically angelic girlfriend all covered in blood & standing over his now dead friend's body. And at the same time, here was your boyfriend standing in the doorway, looking at you as you cleaned up a particularly messy crime scene.

Oh, right, your boyfriend just walked in on you in the middle of your crime scene.

He was a witness to his friend's murder, as well as your own crimes.

"No... it's- it's..." you stuttered, tears welling up as you backed away from the dead body as if that'd make it any better for you.

One step, two steps, three steps of your boyfriend's boots echoed throughout the kitchen as he walked closer to you.

"D-Don't look at me, don't... don't look at me, Toji! You can't see me like this! I'm a monster-" as your eyes were closed out of fear and shame, you felt two fingers grip your chin surprisingly gently. You opened your eyes slowly, your boyfriend forcing you to look at him.

"Look at me, sweetheart," he murmured with a soothing undercurrent of love. "Geez, look at you... you're all covered in this sticky, disgusting blood. That's no look for a pretty girl like you, is it?"

You stayed silent, and he cocked his head to the side, almost amused by how shy you were being in this scenario. "Fine. If you wanna stay silent, then that's fine with me. But do you really think you oughta be embarrassed right now? Like I'd judge ya for anything... Do you remember when we first met, and I told you that I'd never, ever judge you in any circumstances? I'm a man who stays true to my word, (Y/N). Even if you were covered in the blood of four different people, my love for you's never gonna waver."

You looked at him with more confusion than anything. Was he being serious right now? Weren't you a monster for killing one of his friends? "I'm confused..." you finally started, "are you not... disgusted with me? Aren't I a monster? I just- I just killed one of your friends!" you exclaimed.

Toji's eyebrows merely raised in amusement. "I'm a man who stays true to my word, (Y/N)," he said once more. "I ain't goin' back on it, baby. Besides, it's not like I was friends with anyone other than Shiu to begin with--and he's my manager! She was pissin' me off anyway. She had the audacity to challenge me to a drinking contest and then decided to puke all over the new pants you bought me."

Your eye twitched when he brought up that knowledge.

"Doesn't she know that alcohol doesn't affect a big guy like me?" he asked rhetorically, shaking his head out of amusement. "You did me a favor getting her off my back."

"So, you're really okay with what I did?" you asked once more. Toji shook his head and cupped your cheek gently with his calloused fingers.

"Do I gotta repeat myself thrice?"

"N-No, you don't gotta..." you trailed off.

"Good." He stood up, offering you a hand to help you up as well. "Y'know, I really didn't expect you to be such a little psychopath. I mean, you're all cute n' shit with your little mini skirts and your heels that I still don't know how you walk in. If I'd known you looked so hot covered in other people's blood, I would've taken you along with me on my missions."

You blushed profusely at all his little words and praises, and he cooed (again, out of amusement). "Look at you, all shy over a couple compliments thrown your way. You really are just a sweet thing underneath all that blood, aren't you?"

"Stop it, stop it!" You whined, swatting his hand away when he pinched your cheek.

In response, he put his hands up and chuckled again. "Whatever my girl wants, my girl gets. Now, would you like some help with cleaning this mess up, or would you rather I just bend you over this counter n' eat you out?"

You looked at him again, yet again out of confusion and bewilderment. "You wanna have sex with me... when I'm covered in blood, and in my own crime scene?" You asked, shrinking away from his touch.

"'Course I do; you look fuckin' sexy baby. Shit gets my dick hard seeing you so protective over me... I oughta reward you for havin' my back, anyway."

He reached out again, only for you to shrink away even further from his touch, making him click his tongue and sigh. "I think I'll pass," you muttered, throwing him a side-eye as well.

"The fuck are you side-eyeing me for? You're the one who killed a girl."

*°:⋆ₓₒ 𝙎𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙪 𝙂𝙤𝙟𝙤 ˱ 𓈒 𓈊 ┈ 𓈒 ˲

╰┈➤ Satoru Gojo was nothing short of a dreamboat, and you knew what you were getting into when you said "yes" to the first date. From the moment he picked you up wearing a crisp light blue button-up, slacks, and his silver-blue porsche, you knew he was gonna be one silver-tongued prince charming.

Not only was he sweet on the first date, but he was also sweet on the second, third, fourth--hell, even on your second anniversary, when he asked you to move in with him in his penthouse located in the heart of Ginza, you swore your knees buckled from underneath you and not because of the blue gown that he'd bought you after seeing it on your computer screen all those nights ago.

He was like a sweet saccharine fantasy, a delicious daydream which you never wanted to wake up from. His soft, snow-white hair; his incredibly vibrant blue eyes which seemed to have specks of every color in the galaxy and then some with flecks of purple, cerulean, indigo, and even a milky way here and there; his towering stature and lean muscles--god, you could go on and on about how dreamy he was! And the sex? Good god, he was a man who knew how to put it down.

The sweet little nicknames he had for you only furthered your infatuation for him: "hey there, sweet cheeks," was one rather childish one that he reserved for you.

"Lookin' good, princess," was probably the most fitting one that he had for you. It was his way of reminding you of how good he'd always treat you, how he'd always put you first above all else. After all, he used that name when he bought you a diamond tennis bracelet for your half-birthday.

While most people would've been worried that he was love-bombing you, you knew deep down that you had absolutely nothing to worry about!

Even his best friend, Suguru Geto, said as such at one of the many parties he threw.

After one of Satoru's weird little groupies made a snide remark about how he gave that treatment to anyone who would open their legs for him, he pulled you aside with one tattooed hand (he has tats IMO) and helped you lighten your mood. "Don't even listen to that chick, (Y/N), you have absolutely nothing to worry about. I haven't seen him look at anyone like that since, well, ever if I'm being honest--and I've known the man since grade school," the sorcerer said.

"You really think so?" You asked, a light smile gracing your features.

"I've been his best friend since we've both become sorcerers, (Y/N). I've seen him go through everything, even that phase when he decided to wear his hair like a Backstreet Boy for a day." now that was a joke that really brought that light back to your face.

"Okay, okay, I don't think I need that image in my head," you replied, waving your hands in front of you. He simply smiled at you and patted your shoulder.

"Trust me, you don't. Now go find your boyfriend before he throws a fit; you know how he gets."

You had nothing to worry about when it came to your relationship--even his vigilant best friend thought so. But that lack of worry only extended to your boyfriend, not the countless groupies that threw themselves at him.

How many had you killed by now? 6? 7? Eh, you lost count by the time it reached double digits.

┆ . At one of his many parties that he threw on his yacht in the harbor, yet another groupie decided to take a chance on the already-taken sorcerer/heir of the Gojo clan, none other than your boyfriend of 3 and a half years, Satoru. By then, you'd disregarded who any of the groupies were, only knowing them by hair color (if they dyed it some stupid color like pink or purple) or did something obscene to your boyfriend.

But that night at his summer party, a purple-haired groupie took it way too far: when you were returning from the bar with Satoru's favorite drink in hand, you saw her accidentally "trip" and fall into your boyfriend's lap. The hand holding your drink-of-choice was gripping your glass so tightly that it shattered in your hand, but the blaring music was loud enough to hide it.

"Whoopsie!" the girl said with fake-sincerity, giggling as she looked at her friends who obviously put her up to this shit.

Satoru, being the amazing boyfriend he was, pushed the girl off of his lap and looked rather annoyed at what she'd done: "hands off the merchandise! This seat's already taken."

The girl threw her hands up and gave him a fake apology, obviously not serious about it: "sorryyy, I tripped on my heels! You know how these things are."

But your brain didn't register it; it merely registered the sounds of the blood rushing through your body and your heartbeat's thumping. Your breathing quickened, and everything in your world was reduced to that stupid bitch and her stupid giggles and her stupid hair color.

Who the fuck does she think she is? She's not the one who's already been living with Satoru for over a year now. Her fake nails, her fake hair--she probably doesn't even want Satoru and instead wants some notoriety for being his groupie.

She shouldn't get to live; stupid whores like her shouldn't be alive to begin with.

She needs to know her place. I wonder how fast I can throw this drink at her head? Maybe it'll kill her if I'm hard enough-

"Yo, (Y/N)!" Satoru's voice said once he saw you a few feet away. "C'mere princess; I got this seat nice and ready for ya!" he said with a grin, patting his lap. You happily obliged, bounding over like a little puppy who was called by their owner for a tasty treat.

"Isn't she the cutest thing?" Shoko Ieiri asked her friend who nodded in agreement.

"Sato, baby, here's the drink you asked for," you said, your voice dripping with adoration like the sweetest ambrosia from the Garden of Eden. "Mine... spilled, sadly, but I can just get another one."

Out of the corner of your eye, you spotted that stupid whore trotting off down a hallway, headed to a bathroom by herself. An idea formed inside of your head, and your eyes narrowed and zeroed in on her fake purple hair.

"(Y/N), baby, look at me! This is my party!" Satoru protested, suddenly bringing your attention back to him with a cute little pout on his face.

"You don't mind if I go and use the ladies room? I'll be back before you know it," you asked with the subtlest croon you could muster up without bordering on corny.

"But, baby-"

"It's an emergency. You know how us girls get," you said with a smile, making Satoru relent reluctantly.

"Fine, fine... go on ahead, but don't get too distracted on your way there. Your boyfriend wants some attention," he muttered, placing a small kiss on your neck before letting you go. You gave him a small kiss on the forehead and carded through his snow-like hair, getting right up off his lap and going in the same direction as that groupie.

Your Christian Dior heels tapped on the hardwood floors of the yacht, taking you down one of the hallways that seemed to go on for forever. Coincidentally, this was also the same hallway that led to your spare room; the one you used whenever you were mad at Satoru for whatever reason and felt like sleeping in another bed. You made sure to step as quietly as possible so as to not alert the girl of your presence; however, she made hers known by the sound of her shrill laughter coming from the bathroom.

"The boy is mine... I can't wait to try him," she sang, clearly oblivious of the fear and rage coursing through your body. Was she seriously singing that fucking song right now, acting as if Satoru wasn't in a committed relationship?? Oh, she needed to be reminded of her place.

Like a soundless sabertooth, you stalked up to the door and opened it, acting as though you were merely freshening up in the bathroom. You took your lip gloss out of the bag that your boyfriend bought you on one of your many outings, swiping it over your lips.

"Oh, you're Satoru's girlfriend, right?" the chick asked once she recognized you. She pointed an acrylic at you, drawing your attention. "Hey, don't ignore me! It's not like you're anything special anyway."

"What do you mean?" you asked, deciding to provoke the beast yourself.

"Satoru swipes through relationships like it's nobody's business!"

"Groupies don't count as relationships."

"Just you wait. He's gonna abandon you for someone way hotter and way less annoying than you. I mean, I don't even know what the fuck he sees in you!" she exclaimed. "You're a 3 at best."

The chick continued to ramble on and on about how Satoru could do way better than you, and it was high time that she shut the fuck up already.

You grabbed the martini glass she was holding, wrenching it easily out of her hands, and you broke it on the marble countertop. You then took the sharp, pointy end and drew a deep, jagged cut on her neck with it, the tendons practically ripping in half with the intensity of your cut. She grabbed her neck and put two hands over the gash, gasping and breathing for air, only to have her hands cut by the glass. You stabbed her over and over again, screaming at her to "SHUT UP!" and "DIE ALREADY!!" You pushed her onto the ground and mounted her hips, driving the broken glass further in until her head disconnected from her body.

By the time you were finished with her dead body, she was practically unrecognizable. One of her eyes was open (the other was stabbed out), her head was severed, and the tendons in her neck were exposed. You didn't mean to get so carried away, but you let it happen anyway.

With a swipe to the eyebrow, you let out a "whew," only to realize that you had this huge mess to clean up. It's not every day that you manage to sever a head, after all.

"Nothing a little bleach can't deal with."

You took out the trusty bottle of bleach that you hid underneath the counter (in case of emergencies) and started unscrewing the cap. Just as you did that, though, you heard Satoru's whiny voice from behind the door calling out for you. "(Y/N)! (Y/N)! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Normally, you would've entertained him, but right now you were standing over a dead body, your party dress covered in blood with a bottle of bleach in one of your hands and a broken glass in the other. If he were to see you right now, everything you've worked for would've been for nothing. All those dead bodies thrown into dumpsters, all those weapons that you kept hidden--it would've amounted to absolutely nothing! Your perfect life with your perfect boyfriend and your perfect friends would all go to shit, all because you couldn't control yourself around a fucking groupie with too many bad dyejobs for her own good.

"(Y/N), I'm coming in!" he said once more. He managed to yank the door open with his bare hands, and he couldn't have prepared himself for the sight in front of him.

There you were, his pretty little princess, standing over the dead body of one of his partygoers. His six eyes took in everything almost immediately: he noted the bottle of bleach, the sheer amount of blood that was on you, and just how mangled that corpse was. You looked down at the floor and you shut your eyes as tight as you possibly could, desperately hoping that it wasn't him, that it wasn't your amazing boyfriend who did nothing wrong.

"I-I'm sorry, I made a mess," you mumbled, tears flowing down your face and mixing with the metallic blood. He stayed longer than you thought was necessary, and you just braced for the inevitable look of disgust followed by the demand that you leave.

His footsteps echoed on the marble flooring and he crouched down to your level, taking his glasses off and looking at you.

"Just- I'll just get out of your hair after I clean this up-"

"Don't bother, princess. I'll just have one of my maids clean it up. A spoiled little thing like you shouldn't have to inhale all the bleach smell," he said with a chuckle. "My princess shouldn't even have to lift a finger in the first place."

You stopped looking at the floor, your head craning up slowly and looking at your boyfriend out of sheer confusion. "I don't- I don't understand..."

"What's not to understand?" he asked with a cocked head. "My girl's not gonna hold a single mop, not while she's with me."

"But... I just killed someone... aren't you afraid of me? Aren't you disgusted?"

He shrugged, his blue eyes remaining on you. "You think I'm gonna break up with you over some meaningless groupie? Don't be ridiculous, sweet cheeks. Now, if you'd somehow managed to kill someone like Shoko or Suguru, then I'd have a problem, although I am quite impressed that you managed to cut her head off with a martini glass... C'mon, let's get you out of these clothes and into something nicer. We can't have my guests wondering why my date's all red and sticky, hmmm?"

You said nothing, instead following his lead as he snuck you into another room. He slipped your ruined party dress off, then he turned on the faucet and grabbed a hand towel, washing off all the blood that was on your face and your body.

"I still just can't believe that you'd accept this. Aren't you scared of me?" You asked once more, finally speaking up as he washed the blood off your soft skin.

"Hell nah, baby. You forget you're dating the strongest guy in all the land," he said with a sly wink. "Plus, I think it's cute; you're all protective over me. Who would've known that you had bark and bite?"

"You're such a freak, Satoru," you said with comically narrowed eyes. "I bet you find that shit hot, you narcissist."

Satoru merely laughed and shook his head. "You know me too well."

*:..｡o○ 𝙆𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙉𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙢𝙞 ∞ ₒ ˚ ° 𐐒

╰┈➤ If there was one thing you hated more than anything, it was the widely accepted fact that having a work wife was considered the norm, especially in an office where people spent a good 9 hours a day typing away at their computers and drinking for another extra hour afterwards. Kento Nanami was the exception to the latter, though. You knew you were a lucky girl when your sweet, sweet boyfriend Kento told you on the third date that he was a homebody, and how he'd much rather just lie in bed with his lover than go out for drinks.

"I'm not really the extroverted type, if I'm being honest," the deliciously handsome blonde man said after taking a sip of his wine. "I'd much rather spend the night watching a movie or making dinner for my loved ones. I'm actually quite the cook, if you'd be interested in trying out some of my dishes. I don't even know why I decided to try out dating in the first place; it actually makes me quite nervous."

"I would love to try some of those meals out, but I think that we should try out some of your recipes later. It sounds like a fun date idea regardless! Maybe you could even teach me how to make those amazing meals? Perhaps the ones that you hold close to your heart? And, honestly, I'm not the going out type either. It took me so much to hype myself up for this date, but I'm glad I'm on it."

Kento smiled when you found the idea rather fun. He knew you'd be a great match for him, especially since he loved to make others smile by filling up their bellies with his own creations (double entendre?)

"But you? Nervous? Seriously? You've been nothing but kind to me, suave even. You're punctual, and you held the chair out for me to sit in. You're just my kinda guy, Kento. Those other tinder matches ain't got nothing on you."

He blushed at the usage of his first name, but he couldn't say he didn't like it. A naïveté towards norms, he presumed, but a naïveté he could appreciate.

Yeah, he knew you were a keeper.

You also quickly learned early on just how tight-knitted his schedule was, but what he lacked in time spent with you he made up for with romance and courting. He'd frequently send you flowers to your workplace and to your home; he took you to the finest restaurants and even the opera; and he made sure to text you regularly. The seven months you'd spent with him were some of the best of your life, and you prayed to god that you wouldn't fuck it up in any way. You were both dating for marriage, and he couldn't have found a better future wife.

Well, that's what he thought, at least. He didn't exactly know about your jealous tendencies, the tendencies that made you buy so many cleaning supplies and bottles of bleach, you started to receive discounts for the shit. The local utility store employees even thought you were a maid, given by the amount of disposable gloves that you went through.

"I should hire you as a maid someday, when I can actually pay for one at least," said the cashier of the home improvement store that you frequented (if you couldn't tell, he was low-key making a pass at you).

"A maid? I'm not-" you quickly stopped when you realized that this would give you a possible coverup and alibi if you needed one.

"I'm confused... aren't you a cleaning lady?" He asked once more.

"Oh, yeah! I totally just forgot all about my job!" You exclaimed, passing it off with a laugh and a smile. "I'm sorry, but I'm not taking any more clients. I'll let you know when I am, though," you followed up with a wink.

Oh, how suave you were. You'd always been an expert at lying, and now was no different. In fact, with the amount of bodies you'd racked up, one could say you were the best liar in all of Japan.

And no, not in terms of sexual partners; you were a killer. A killer by textbook definitions, at least.

It's not like you wanted to kill all these girls! It's just that, with the amount of people that so obviously flocked to your boyfriend of seven months, you'd have to make sure that he wasn't getting any ideas.

It started out with the local call-girl that hollered at him when the two of you were walking home from a date. "Hey, suga! You ever thought about spending time with all this?" She hollered from the other side of the road. Nanami kept his cool and ignored her, passing her off as no more than a streetwalker trying to scam him for all his worth.

You made sure she was forgotten about, though; her body was found cut into pieces a few nights later by the garbage people.

Next came that stupidly innocent bakery worker (get the ref?). "Come again soon!" She called out to Kento after he bought a few pastries for the two of you. You came back a few nights later, and you wiped that innocent look off her face and replaced it with a wide cut on either sides of her mouth, along with a giant slash along her torso.

Soon it was girl #3, then #4, #5, and #6. By the time you hit your first anniversary, it was up to 11 people in total. You knew that your man was a desired man, but god, could people really not keep their hands and words to themselves?

#12 seemed to cause quite the nuisance for you, though. It just so happened that Kento had a "work-wife," or at least according to Miss Work-Wife herself when you met her at an office holiday party. After spending so much time together, your sweet Kento brought you to the party, intending to show you off to all of his jealous colleagues who couldn't keep a partner, even if they tried. He intended to have you on his arm, a subtle act of pride and showing off. He always kept to himself, so why not spice things up a little bit? It was his time to be selfish.

He seemed to have two women on his arm, though: you and the stupid work-wife who just couldn't stop butting into every single situation.

"Oh, so you're Kenny's girl? I didn't know that he liked the girly type; I always thought he'd be into the straight-laced, conservative type. But to each their own, I guess!" she remarked.

Oh how much you hated backhanded compliments. Could people really not understand just how bad they were at covering that shit up? She might as well have called you a brainless bimbo who wore heels that were too high to save her own life. As if she wasn't wearing a face full of fucking makeup, you thought to yourself. Glowy foundation is still foundation, regardless of how "low coverage" it was. And those clumpy ass eyelashes--why the fuck would your man associate with such lowly looking wenches? If he were to talk to women, the least he could do was talk to the nice looking ones. At least then you'd have something cute to carve into.

You'd made a vow to stop killing every woman you see, it wasn't fair to kill all of Kento's friends! He hadn't even given you a reason to doubt him. He was still the same suave gentleman from the very first date. It wasn't like those Reddit AITA posts where the men gradually started putting in less and less effort. If you were a sane person, that would be your train of thought.

But you're not sane--whoever said you were? You're crazy, and that's just a part of you. At least Ken had a loving girlfriend to come home to at the end of the night, even if you needed antipsychotics.

So, when you invited the chick over for drinks one late night, you made sure to do it with a certain plan in mind.

You were going to stab that stupid smile off her face, then dump her somewhere inconspicuous.

┆ . It was laughably easy for you to kill her. You swapped out the white carpet in your apartment for a black one that absorbed all the colors that flew into it, and brought out the spare furniture that you'd been meaning to get rid of a while ago. You even covered the walls with spare wall art that was also gonna go into the trash.

"It's so lovely of you to have me over for drinks, (Y/N)! I knew that from the moment I met you, the two of us were going to be friends," she said, stupidly oblivious to what was about to happen to her.

"Oh, well, I try to be as active in Kento's life as possible, and that includes making friends with his friends as well," you said smoothly, lying through your teeth. She wasn't his friend; he didn't even have her number saved. You grabbed a martini glass from your mini-bar and poured her a dirty martini, making extra sure that the poison didn't look too out of place. You even added pineapple juice to hide the slightly white film in the liquid, mixing it up with your drink mixer. "Y'know, I have a thing for mixology. Care to try one of my new concoctions?" You asked, handing her the glass.

"Would I?" she asked excitedly, taking the glass from you. She took a sip and let out an "ahh," looking satisfied with the drink.

"You like it?"

"Oh, you bet I do. I've always had a thing for pineapple juice."

About 10 minutes in, and she only barely started showing signs of fatigue, much to your fucking dismay. Whoever said that this poison was a fast acting agent must've gotten it on Canal St. "Gosh, I'm a little tired. Do you mind if I lie down?" she asked, already lying down on the couch.

"By all means, go ahead," you smiled, though deep down you wanted to peel her grimy face off your pillows with a potato peeler.

She yawned, stretching her hands above her head, only to have them fall back down on her torso and go to her heart. "My c-chest hurts a little," she laughed. "I've always had a problem with... heartburn. It's a genetic thing."

You took a sip of your own martini, already sick and tired of playing the long game. "It's not heartburn you stupid bitch; I poisoned your fucking drink." The obvious change of voice caught her heavily off guard, and she looked at you with bewilderment. "God, I am so sick and tired of hearing you yap, yap and yap about my boyfriend. Don't you know that one day, we're gonna get married? We don't need suck-ups like you to soak up all the attention."

"Wha- what do you mean?" she slurred, freaking out as she felt her chest tightening. "You put poison in my drink?! Are you... crazy?!"

"I am; I even take meds for it," you said nonchalantly, splashing around the martini in your cup. "Here, try some of mine, see if you like it better," you said cruelly, splashing the alcohol in her face and making her eyes burn. "You really should be wary of the people whose homes you walk into; you never know what exactly to expect with strangers. Especially if you're trying to steal their boyfriends."

"I-I'm not trying to-"

"Girl, please, I've poisoned you, I think it's time we cut the bullshit and the niceties, yeah? I've never been one to be nice anyway, at least not behind closed doors." You got up off the chair, walking to the nearby dresser and pulling out a knife. "When I first saw you, I knew I'd have to kill you eventually. Kento's a nice guy, and he shouldn't have whores like you around him. You're all just a bunch of fucking flies, do y'know that?" You asked, wiping the blade of your knife with a cloth. She could no longer speak, her face turning purple as she fumbled off the couch, crawling towards the door. "Don't even bother with that," you sneered, kicking her down and away from the door. She meekly crawled away, only to have her hair pulled back forcefully by you.

"Have you ever had someone try to steal your boyfriend before? Lemme tell you: it's not a fun feeling. The idea that people would be so dumb as to lay their paws on what's yours... I know my Kento's a dreamboat, but there are other eligible bachelors to choose from in this city. Unluckily for you, you picked the wrong one, because that boy is mine."

You grabbed her and hauled her over to where you had a tarp laid out in the kitchen, and you brought the knife to her neck. "Take a long, last look at this filet mignon, because it's what's gonna be the last thing you fucking see." You then cut it across her throat, hard enough to almost rip her head off of her spine. "Maybe in your next life, you won't be such a whore."

She fumbled about, her hands going to her neck, only for you to grab the knife and stab her brain, effectively killing her. "Poison was taking too long, anyway," you muttered.

The murder was quite clean and it went pretty smoothly, although you'd wished it was the poison instead.

"I'll make sure to give it a one star," you muttered, holding the poison.

You stood up, reaching out for a nearby smock to wipe your hands clean of the blood. You thought you were in the clear, your twelfth kill under your leather belt, only for a voice behind you to disturb the serenity: "love? Are you home? I wanted to surprise you-"

You stopped in your tracks, frozen like a deer in headlights. It didn't take a genius, much less his girlfriend of over a year to realize who it was behind you.

Were you really that idiotic? Did you forget to lock the door?

You looked in the reflection of the kitchen window, seeing Kento's puzzled expression on his face. He was even holding pink roses in one of his arms and had chocolates in the other.

"Ken... I didn't mean for you to- you shouldn't have to see this mess-"

You stopped for a second, trying to swallow the lump in your throat. You turned around, nothing but fear written on your typically calm and gorgeous features. "I didn't mean for you to see me like this," you said, your voice cracking slightly.

"I could guess that," he remarked, his voice as soft as ever. He knew that you were quite fragile in this moment, so he was careful to walk closer to you and wrap his strong arms around your frame once he got to his destination.

You stood there in silence, not knowing what to do or say when he hugged you. Wasn't he... afraid? Wasn't he disgusted by you having killed one of his coworkers?

"I meant to surprise you tonight with dinner. I brought you some takeaway from your favorite place, and I even bought you roses."

You looked down at the bouquet of pink roses that were freshly picked and bought from the local florist. Some of the blood on your hands dripped onto a petal, staining it a hauntingly beautiful color, somehow making this whole situation more romantic.

You'd only ever hurt people, so why was this situation so comforting?

"Thank you, Kento... I appreciate it," you muttered, still reeling from the realization that Kento glossed over the fact that you were the person responsible for all those murders in the newspapers. You wondered if he knew that all this time, his wonderful, graceful girlfriend was the one killing and maiming random girls. He took you to the sink and washed all the blood off your hands with some bleach, then scrubbed the bleach clean with a lavender-scented hand soap.

"Careful now, we wouldn't wanna stain your dress, would we? Not when you're already date night ready," he remarked, his deep voice a soothing balm to your ears.

You simply nodded, going along with whatever he said. After washing them off clean, he wrapped up the tarp and made extra sure not to spill any of the bodily fluids anywhere, putting it in a spare closet nearby. You stood there, watching as your boyfriend cleaned up your crime scene in your apartment. You watched his features, and you couldn't tell if he was upset or not.

He guided you back to the dining table where the bag of food was. He set out plates and cutlery for the two of you, not letting you lift a single finger. Once the two of you sat down, he started eating in silence when he saw you looking at him.

"(Y/N), don't let it go cold. Eat up," he instructed softly.

You obliged, picking up your fork and eating the red meat hesitantly. Red meat, how poetic.

"Kento," you started, putting your fork down and looking up at the blonde man. "We're gonna have to talk about it eventually."

"I know, sweetheart, I know. Just... not over red meat, okay?"

You simply nodded, going back to your food. You ate more comfortably, the knowledge that you no longer had the secret hidden making you rest easier now. Perhaps he did know already, and he just didn't wanna make you any more worried than you already were by bringing it up. Perhaps he was put off by it, but he was willing to gloss over it and act like it didn't matter. Whatever the reason might've been, you could rest easy knowing that your boyfriend wasn't going anywhere.

"Work was quite eventful today. They handed out promotions, and I was one of the lucky few who got one." He looked up at you after swallowing his food, carefully watching your expression and making sure you were alright.

"That's great news, Kento, I'm happy for you." He smiled softly at your acquiescence, happy to finally change the topic.

Blood always seemed to scared him.

I hope this was good enough... 👅

© ʙʀᴜɴᴇᴛᴛᴇ-ʙɪᴛᴄʜ77 on tumblr - get your own shit bitches | ca. 6/10/2024

[rosemaryandthejack]

I want to talk about Harry Potter.

Well. Sort of. I want to talk about Harry Potter in a roundabout way, in that, I want to talk about the reaction my friend group had when shit started really going down with That Bitch Rowling.

Because Rowling is a horrible person. She’s a TERF, a denier of Nazi Crimes, homophobic, anti-Semitic, the list goes on and on (and most recently, has been attacking a trans soccer manager, if my dash is to be believed? Somehow, she just seems more cartoonishly evil with each passing day). But this isn’t about That Bitch Rowling, not really. Or if it is, she’s merely a footnote in the story.

Harry Potter was, and I think this is true for many of us, a large part of my childhood. While the writing may be mediocre at best, it was wildly influential. I didn’t know a single kid that wasn’t hoping for a letter to Hogwarts. It was a Big Deal for a lot of people, and that included my friend group. My friend group, which is made up of members of the LGBTQ+ community. My friend group, which includes a young lady who we didn’t always know was a lady. I’m sure you can see where this might be going.

The day I got a tear filled phone call about That Bitch Rowling was, frankly, heartbreaking. She was mad because a woman she had respected up until now didn’t respect her. She wanted to get rid of her copies of the books, but didn’t want to donate them. I never want to hear her cry like that again. So I made a decision.

I told her to hold onto her books for just a little while longer. I phoned the group. I figured out when everyone could get together for a weekend, and when I had hammered out dates, I packed up my car, and drove the six hundred miles back to my childhood home.

In the passenger’s seat, was my set of Harry Potter books.

Excluding my trans friend, there were seven of us. I had made a plan, and my father had the space to enact it - I grew up on acres of land; complete with 200 year old oak tree, creek in the woods in the backyard, and a massive fire pit.

Nostalgia and youth, I find, paint everything with a rose tinted hue; if Rowling had just kept her mouth shut, I’m sure many of us would have looked back on the Harry Potter series with some amount of shame. But I don’t think it would have suffered the sort of fall from grace that led us to this point.

The fire pit is important for several reasons. For example, it had been the popular gathering place for my friend group of literal decades at this point. Small towns mean that you know everyone from a very early age. We lived right beside the woods, so we used the fire pit to burn the leaves, and the branches storms took down, of which there were many. And when the first six of my friends rolled down the half mile driveway that day, I had already collect enough wood to get a decent fire going.

Six of my friends. We told the seventh a later time. We wanted to be prepared, and anyway, we all had the same cargo (six sets of seven books joined mine on a rickety folding table). I put them to work collecting more firewood (is it really a good bonfire if you’re not risking setting the barn on fire?).

By the time our last member rolled up, I had a fire going.

She had her set of those damn books too.

(There is a visceral grief that comes from being let down by your childhood heroes, and I fully believe that That Bitch Rowling embodies the phrase “never meet your heroes,” because folks, as a general rule, I am not a fan of burning books. But I was prepared to make an exception.)

We burned our copies of the Harry Potter books that day, all eight of us. They were well read, beaten to hell and back, with cracked spines, and dents in corners, and pieces of the pages missing where we had bent down the corners one too many times. And I won’t lie to anyone. We cried. Tears of sorrow and rage, for the piece of our childhood that we were choosing to give up, because to keep it would be to disrespect the woman we had known and loved for longer than we’d ever had those books.

Letting go sucked. But it was the right thing to do.

When they were gone, we put out the fire, went inside, and built the pillow fort of our dreams. We marathoned Star Wars, and ordered too many pizzas, and had way too much soda. We fell asleep playing Risk, because that’s what our friend choose, and in the morning, I made waffles with chocolate chips and too much maple syrup.

I wanted to talk about this, not just because this is a fond memory for me (even though it is), but because one of my coworkers confessed to me that they hated Rowling, and everything she stood for, and they refused to have anything else to do with the Harry Potter franchise, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to get rid of the books.

I said I was happy to host another book burning.

But I wanted to write this down because I know that sometimes it’s hard to take that final step, to leave behind that last thing. So for anyone who needs to hear it, it’s okay to grieve the things we loose when we grow up. Letting go can be hard, but I promise you’ll end up better off. It’s been awhile since things really went downhill, but I maintain that, in this case, death of the author is nonexistent, and it is better to have loved and then lost, than to hold on too tight.

Don’t hurt yourself on the shattered remains of your childhood magic.

[sachermorte]

Ok, so then who did you actually name yourself after? Or was it the vibe that drew you in?

i've gotten two anons about this since I last checked my phone so this is the real story.

it was the third week of september in 2019 and I had just launched myself out of the united states after living there my entire life and getting my bachelor's in linguistics summa cum laude. I knew if I stayed there any longer I was going to die, and I'd had this supernatural surety that I was going to live a full life in vienna since I was nine years old at the oldest, so against the vehement objections of family I had accepted a teaching assistantship position jointly facilitated by the BMBWF and Fulbright Austria. before I began my misadventures, of which there have been many incredibly crazy bullshit stories you would never believe in a million years, I had to attend a week-long sleepaway orientation in a tourist town in Salzburg called Zell am See, where I would meet the other TAs (including someone who remains like a brother to me to this very day), learn what was expected of me, and drink quite literally and without exaggeration for every waking moment.

believe me when I say that this was fucking wild. we had classes in the morning to teach us how to do our jobs but we were pouring full bottles of vodka and gin in our water bottles and taking it to class with us. one of the hotel receptionists started supplying us with weed and pills. people were hooking up left right and center. I ended up at one point being dragged away without any greetings or explanation to make out with a lovely but very drunk british girl named holly in another room. believe me when I said that not a single one of us drew a solitary sober breath for the entire seven days straight.

so because they wanted us to acclimate culturally (which is unneeded because I've always been a dramatic, cranky, whiny, pessimistic, ambiguously gay complainer genau nach wiener art), one night they brought in a trio of dance teachers to teach us some traditional folk dancing. so we, being generally hospitable and gregarious taken as a whole, decided to invite these three to party with us that night.

we.

got.

HAMMERED.

this is the drunkest I've ever been without having to go to the hospital. and as the night proceeded it became exceedingly clear that one of the dance instructors could not hold his liquor, and what's more, had been going through some stuff as of late.

cut to the end of the night. the man who is now like a brother to me had given the dude, out of the kindness of his heart, nearly a full bottle of 7€ hofer brand gin, which he drank without a mixer in nearly one go. shortly after, this man had punched through not one, but two windows. the police had been called, and a friend of mine had managed to grab his phone and literally call his mother. someone else was guarding him to make sure he didn't break anything else, while he kept shouting "MIR IST SCHEIẞEGAL, MIR IST SCHEIẞEGAL" to anything and everything that was said to him.

this event lodged itself solidly in my short term, long term, and everyday working memory. I thought about this three or four times a week at bare minimum. not only because I considered it rather embarrassing and distasteful, but because I thought if you were going to be a good for nothing dipsomaniac (as I considered myself to be as well, even then), there were far more stylish ways to go about it.

when my egg shattered during quarantine his name was the one that wouldn't leave my head. when I went public with my transition, I received several messages from friends who had witnessed the event in question, going "did you really name yourself after That Fucking Guy. why"

to which of course I responded "mir ist scheißegal"

[lustrous-dawn]

Some Positivity

I'm absolutely surprised I do not have an image of my sona with a heart so Zhen will have to do it. Especially given his ‘job’

The start of the year for me has been rough. The folks who know my situation know my words are a severe understatement but I can’t let that hold me down. But it has made it abundantly clear that I am loved. 

Loved.

I genuinely have folks who love me for who am I. 

I couldn't ask for any more words than that today.

I am loved for what I am and what I do and that's all I could ever ask for. And I love myself for it.

So today, lets give out a little bit of love to some folk today. 

Edge; @casteliacityramen

I love how you are incredibly indecisive about reblogging some things on your side account. Something that means a lot to a character that someone may get a free hint on. I mean hell I used to do that all the time in my younger days to keep them on my brain to stay a little consistent on it. But man, I'm sure you've been hearing a lot from other people and honestly I'll be one of them hollering in the back about how we love Rio. 

MepersonallyIwanttoseeRaybutwe’llgetthere. 

The point is your story and characters have managed to grab people by the throat. You have an eloquent way of making them pretty relatable and gripping their attention. 

Hope you're enjoying the day with your significant other :0

Owli; @askvekpa

I always wonder if you be like “THERE GOES THIS GIRL AGAIN ASKING FOR HER DANG LUGIAS TO BE DRAWN AGAIN.” I can't help myself. You're too damn good at your craft and your attention to detail on beasties, dragons and animals alike. It's praiseworthy so I hope you always treat yourself kindly when it comes to what you do. Also, you seem to be doing better in the anxiety department, or I hope so. It's been a pleasure to see you be more interactive as of late with others so I hope you have been able to adequately spread your wings in that environment and get better.

Vega; @pokitsune

MAN I SURELY DO MISS YOU RIGHT. I HAVE SO MANY BRAINWORMS ABOUT YAKO AND ROSHI FIGHTING AND TEA TIME WITH ROSHI. Then I remember you're literally a DM away and my ass is just straight-up forgetful. I remember you chatted away about your Ninetales lore and goddamn I was eating it up. It FUELED ME to be so motivated with my characters, you have no idea. And coupled with your old ask blogs, I am so glad we started to chat last year and I am always grateful you send me images of stuff I can relate with on my characters. 

I hope you're having fun with FFXIV and I hope you and gf are doing something good today or both of you are taking some good ass time to relax.

Skins; @asksavel

I mean there are a lot of words I want to say. Overall it is always overwhelmingly positive. We were both there for each other in a horrible mental down. While mines is a bit still ongoing, you still have been sending me kind words and images to make the day all the more bearable. You noticed I have been withdrawn lately and you consider that when talking with me. 

Communication. It's something I always prized and I really appreciate it when we have chatting. Thank you so much for being the person you are and helping me. It has meant a lot to me.

Kai; @bunnkick

I'm pretty sure you weren't expecting me to do this! But HA I GOT YOU NOW TODAY. 

EVER SINCE YOU TOLD ME YOU CONSIDERED ME A FRIEND I HAVE BEEN LIKE A NERVOUS LITTLE PERSON TO CHAT MORE WITH YOU. I have been doing good to shoot messages your way to check in on you though and I'm proud of that much. Ah, I love your work man. I have been saying this for years as I have been working with you and imma saying it again, your style rocks man. And the chats we have, I love staying up for 3 hours to chat with ya. It's always a great time. 

Now I gotta hit you up for shows. I have been watching some and I always loved your insight ~

[aritany]

what's the origin story for dgdss? if you don't mind 🥺

oho! well. as it happens, i love telling this story.

if you want to know how my childhood best friend writing a short story about me ended up leading to me getting a big 5 book deal, read on.

tw for reference to self harm and some...... unpleasant commentary (not mine) about it later on, folks.

so.

i was homeschooled until my very last year of high school (yes, like mean girls, except my mean girl dominated the first 15 years of my life and that last year was just blissfully chill) and like many homeschooled children, i was a part of a co-op.

cool, right? it's like School Lite™ where you put a group of feral children in a classroom, except you're all varying ages and grade levels, and also, nobody in the room is an accredited teacher, and nobody seems to have an issue with this.

my mom and her mom were best friends, and we were born around the same time, so naturally, we were best friends too from birth, and we were part of the same co-op all through my elementary and junior high school years.

anyway. i won't air all of the dirty laundry regarding our early friendship, because the whole book deal thing doesn't touch it, and i also think there's no need to be pointing out the behaviour of an Actual Child in retrospect. all you need to know is that we were best friends, our relationship was fraught, and by the time we hit 12-13 it was to the degree that people started telling me, hey man, this is Very Strange Behaviour and You Might Be A Victim, and i had to go do some introspection.

the introspection led to the general conclusion oh shit, but we stayed friends, because obviously. when you're 13, breaking up with a best friend is literally The End of the world, and anyway, there was a lot of good in there too, right?

right?

anyway, things took a turn when we were about 14. i struggled heavily with mental illness and self harm as a closeted religious teenager (who'da thunk?) and i confided in her about a small fraction of what was going on, because she was my best friend. i didn't tell her details, because even then i knew what i was experiencing was heavier than was probably appropriate to burden another kid with (and i stand by it!), but she knew the gist.

several Tense moments resulted, one of which was the day she pointed out self harm scarring in front of other people and asked me what happened, ran away, and refused to talk further about it, so i had to talk to her mom, who told me i should apologize to her, considering my mental health struggle had been so difficult... for her.

yeah, you know the type of people we're dealing with, here.

she was determined to undermine me in front of our mutual friends. anything to make me look worse, in one way or another. anything to step just a little higher. if i was interested in something, here's a public dissertation on why it's a dumb thing to be interested in. if i had a crush, forget keeping it a secret, and forget the notion that it's normal, because it's not, it's stupid, and shallow to have a crush in the first place. if we had a similar interest, here's a dressing down about how all i ever do is steal the things she likes (even if i liked them first).

needless to say, by the time the whole deal with the short story is going down a few short years later, we're on the rocks.

let me set the scene. we hadn't seen each other in several months, due to the On The Rocks of it all, and were meeting up for coffee while our moms were also getting coffee. hashtag classic homeschooled behavior, etc.

we're catching up, and she tells me she needs to apologize for something. i am, as you might imagine, agog, considering the rarity of apologies from this girl. she tells me she wrote a short story and submitted it to her university journal to be published, and that in hindsight she thinks she should have asked for my permission first.

i am, obviously, suspicious. to her credit, she gives it to me to read through and then leaves to go do christmas shopping. it's a muddy-ish faux-deep piece about a narrator who has a best friend struggling with mental illness and self harm.

(oh, you might say. to which i say, yeeeeah.)

in the story, the narrator depicts the struggle of trying to care about somebody who is in pain, referring to the best friend as 'cariad' the whole way through, which is just so weird i'm not even going to touch on it. google it if you'd like. the line that i still remember (and will probably remember until the day i die) is the one where she describes her cariad as feeling the need to use a razor as a microphone.

i honestly don't recall what i said when she eventually came back, but i contained all of the aggression of a piece of pocket lint at the time, so i imagine it was along the lines of oh. yeah, okay. [insert image of the saddest wettest cat you've ever seen]

i never saw her again. we went our separate ways, and that was that. we never talked about it.

(the one upside of it was that my mom, with whom i have a Notoriously Contentious relationship, was outraged on my behalf. that was the first (in many years) and last (ever) time we were on the same side of a battle, so, you know. silver linings.)

but the real indignity of it to me was that my friend never really knew. i never really told her about what was happening in my head. she never knew why i was hurting myself, or how bad it got, because i did everything i could to keep that to myself, and at the end of the day, she thought it was all for attention to the degree she wrote a transparently biographical account of it and chose razor as a microphone as a phrase on purpose.

dead girls started as a way to process the complicated feelings i had about that friendship and then obviously ultimately became a whole different creature in the process. i wanted to write about how it felt to go through that never having had another close friendship to compare it to, and how confusing and nauseating it was to have other people point out shitty behaviour.

it became about healing when you can't get closure. how do you move on when you'll never know why somebody hurt you?

nothing that happens in the book is based on real life events between us, partly because i'm not a hypocrite, and partly because if your work can be traced back to your personal experiences, perhaps you should do what you can to be kind.

'my julia,' as i like to call her (she is not named julia, because, oh my god) is nothing like julia hoskins in appearance or general personality. but the way she made me feel? oh, that's all there. nora feels it the way i felt it.

i wrote dead girls back in 2020, and got agented with it in 3 weeks of sending my first query. we got a book deal for it with a penguin random house imprint 1 year later to the day, and next week it's going to be out in the world, and i'm not going to lie, it feels really damn good.

also, her short story got rejected by her university, because it was bad. so you might lose some, but you win some, too.

[musings-from-an-elder-goth]

Every October from 1966 until 2020, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" etched itself into across the collective consciousness of young darklings with it's once a year broadcast on network television. (To watch it, click on the above link & jump to 5:45 on the timeline.) The importance of "The Great Pumpkin" to me and my fellows, regardless darkling or normie, cannot be overstated. Elementary school children simply did not miss "The Great Pumpkin." However, it lost much of it's 'weight,' for lack of a better term, once VCR's became available. Prior to those wondrous devices, you literally only had one chance per year to watch "The Great Pumpkin" - that's it. To be a kid & miss "The Great Pumpkin" airing was akin to Linus fainting and missing the arrival of The Great Pumpkin, himself. I recall hearing the tragic tale of one kid on the school bus who had missed the airing the previous night as his house had lost power & we all sat in silent horror at this revelation - a fate worse than death or dentist visit.

Of course, me being me, I had already somewhat prepared for such an unthinkable eventuality by having acquired a copy of the 1967 book adaptation of "The Great Pumpkin." In the 70's, my folks choose to live in the boonies, so losing power for no reason was something that could happen. Fortunately, I never did have to cower in a dark corner, clutching my well worn book copy, silently cursing the Fates for inflicting such an indignity upon me. After all, this was one of those vanishingly rare instances where the book version was objectively not as good as the TV version.

(Just as an aside, my fav Charlie Brown character was always Schroeder. I never gave it much thought, but Schroeder is actually kinda goth with his dark colors, quiet demeanor, & music obsession, so...makes sense. I imagine when he hit his teen years, he joined a goth band, died his hair black, & played wicked dark keyboards at countless gigs.)

Fast forward a few years & I can still vividly recall my profound shock at learning a friend of mine, who owned an early VCR, had recorded "The Great Pumpkin" upon it's previous airing. It was a singular wonder to be able to watch something you could previously only have seen once a year, watch it whenever you want, & not even need to find the most sincere pumpkin patch as prerequisite to do so. It was as if you could reach up into the heavens &, with a simple twist of hand, rewind the celestial sphere back in time to the previous eclipse or passing of Haley's Comet, so staggeringly cosmic in power it seemed. There we sat, watching "The Great Pumpkin" in early December of 1981 & it was a big enough deal to me that I still remember it as if it happened merely a month ago. And I wasn't even really that much into it anymore as I was 11 going on 12 at that point & was eager to put 'childish things' behind me. But I still watched it right the way through. I'm sure it found it's way to most folks VCR's during the 80's, & was officially released on VHS in 1988 & DVD in 2000, so I'm sure nowadays it's a rare household with children which lacks their own copy of "The Great Pumpkin."

Of course, there were other Halloween children's specials eager to rake in the chips like "The Great Pumpkin" did, but none of them ever reached the same level of quality as "The Great Pumpkin." Unlike most other Halloween children's specials, "The Great Pumpkin" has several sequences that, to a child, are legitimately spooky, such as the intro sequence, Snoopy making his way behind enemy lines, & the rising of 'The Great Pumpkin' in the pumpkin patch. I can still recall cynically thumbing through the TV Guide at any given year's new entries & weighing each against "The Great Pumpkin." Be it "Halloween is Grinch Night," "Fat Albert's Halloween Special," or "Bugs Bunny's Howl-oween," all were decidedly lacking. There were some older ones that I'd see on local independent stations that were reasonably good, such as the stop motion "Mad Monster Party" but even that was still a distant second. To this day, no Halloween children's special can hold a Jack-o-lantern to "The Great Pumpkin."

So this Halfway to Halloween, take a 25 minute break to revisit everyone's favorite Halloween special, & may the pumpkin patch in your particular neck of the woods always be the most sincere.

creaturesfromelsewhere 4-29-2024

[knifedog-machina]

What’s In A Name?

Musings on our names and our relationships with them, particularly around transitioning, OC fictive experiences, established character fictive experiences, and our reluctance to create a system name.

Max

So I'm transgender, and I decided to change my name, as is a common choice among trans folks! I went through several different names before settling on the ones I have for myself now - Kitson, Gray, Finch, for a few examples. I was nonbinary in my teenage years, genderfluid before my gender settled into masculinity as its new home, and I wanted a name that was kinda difficult to nail down as masculine or feminine. I played around with it for a long time, I got silly with it!

My online name is Max now, derived only a little bit from misspelling mackerelgray as maxkerelgray one time! I think it’s a name that ages well, and I really like the potential longform nicknames for it - because I like saying it's short for Maximilian, but it can also be Maximus, Maxime, Maxwell, Maxfield, Maximum, Maxilla, etc. It’s fun! The possibilities are endless!

And on February 29 (wow! a Leap Year!) I got a new addition to it! I was attending the 2024 Centaurus Festival, a three-day online convention centered around mythic and folkloric alterhumans, and it was an absolute blast, especially because of the name thing! 

I was jokingly lamenting that I’d chosen a really boring name to represent myself, when surrounded by the likes of Page or Cynder or Daski, because it does look like I just chose one of the Top Ten Dog Names despite not being a dog. Everyone around me got a whiff of self-deprecation and immediately went about tearing it down, joking about how they came up with their own handles and complimenting mine, and it was honestly really nice? Like I’m not the only one who made up my name in a silly way, or feels like their name is a little underwhelming, and it felt really nice to break up the impression of Big Intimidating Community Names™ with the understanding that we’re all just weird and vibing together!

And Benry said, hey, if it were actually a top ten dog name you’d be a Fido or a Biscuit, and I said, hey, I like biscuits! I’d be a great Biscuit! And in ten minutes I’m being dubbed Max Biscuit in the general chat and giving people virtual baked goods, and honestly, it was so fun and sweet that I’m immortalizing it by putting it on my handle now. Hi fellow alterhumans, I’m Max Biscuit, I was Assigned Baked Goods at the Centaurus Festival and it was absolutely delightful.

Jude

First off, my name is technically short for Judah, and I don’t actually use that name here, for a couple reasons.

Mostly, it’s because Judah is a work name. My handler only used my full name - she wouldn’t shorten it, that’s improper, that’s not my actual designation. It’s a name that I associate with my job, with doing something for people who don’t actually care about me, and it’s not something I use with people I’m trying to get along with. My friends and siblings and partners all call me Jude in friendly contexts, but I’m Judah if it’s for something official, and that’s a signal for me to stop fucking around and do what I need to. I’ll use it as a burner name while talking to strangers, to people I don’t care about. Now that I’m in a system, I only directly talk to people who I care about getting along with, so I just cut out the middleman and introduce myself as Jude.

(There’s also definitely the fact that people see Judah and think I’m a guy, and I hate being misgendered. Jude has a more neutral association that I like better.)

That’s what I have for my first name, but I have more thoughts! About other names I have and their funny little origins, related to being an original character fictive.

See, if you’re talking about my model and serial number, I’m called RK800 476 032 660. In beta testing, before being officially given a name, I used to be called Sixty from the last couple digits. Which is really funny to me, because that’s the usual fandom nickname for the Cyberlife Tower doppelganger in Detroit: Become Human, and that was where Max got the original inspiration for my character! Listen, the moralizing machine characterization compelled them. 

Max just ran with the pieces, glued them together, and wrote that guy into weirder and more canon-divergent AUs until they realized they had fully replaced every part of that man’s characterization and I was the result. They just went full Ship Of Theseus with him. So my name got changed because I was a completely different person, and I don’t identify with that name anymore, but I’m pretty fond of it. And I like Sixty in DBH fandom and fics when I see him, he’s kinda fucked up and feral and feels a lot of things and I can relate to that. He’s just a funny little bastard.

And before I walked in, Max wrote a bunch of different alternate universes with me - and honestly I adore it, I love being known and psychoanalyzed by my loved ones because I like to know what they’re thinking about me. Most of those AUs have different settings and premises - like we’re all werewolves, or selkies, or chefs, or in the Star Wars universe or something. And this usually meant that my name is different, because I need a full name, I can’t just be called Jude. So he settled on Judah Nicholas Rook, Rook from RK and Nicholas because it has a good ring to it, and I also have it as a legal name in my timeline.

It’s funny to think about my name in terms of the meta of being a fictive of an original character, because on one hand, Max went through various iterations of a character that would eventually become what I’d recognize as me, including name changes, and that’s really interesting! And on the other hand, I definitely remember talking about what to officially last-name ourselves with my brothers when we finally got the time, because I felt kinda weird about identifying myself by a model number, or worse, a serial number that people never remembered. Watsonian versus Doylist commentary on what went into making me a person, I guess! They’re both real enough, one of them just happened in my life and the other happened in Max’s brain.

Gavin

My name is Gavin Zachary Reed, and I still think it’s really funny that I can just announce that without getting doxxed. Like I don’t think anyone should follow my example, but it’s fucking comedy gold that I can do it. I’m not even revealing my identity to anyone who’s familiar with the video game my source was based on, because my source is so canon divergent that the character who shares my name is fully unrecognizable to me.

If you recognize the first and last name there, yep, I’m technically an iteration of Gavin Reed from Detroit: Become Human. Unfortunately, I’m nothing like him - I look nothing like his character model, his voice is different, his only personality trait is being a dick, and he’s not even 5’2” - and I hate his stupid fucking ass, including the video game he’s from and most things related to its fandom that we’ve interacted with. This kinda sucks, because I’m not going to change my name again just because it’s associated with a character and game and fandom I dislike. I like my name, thanks.

Here’s a brief rundown on how I got my name. Gavin - I’m trans, I chose this name myself. My middle name, Zachary, I also came up with that, because it worked way better with Gavin than my old middle name, and I go by Zach in spaces where I don’t want to use my first name. And Reed is my aunts’ last name, because I moved in with them as a teenager, and I did not want anybody knowing I had ties to my famous older brother or dragging me back to my shit parents. I legally changed it all at once. My aunts were my guardians until I got my own place, and really, they’re way more like parents to me than the people who fucked over my childhood.

So I’m really attached to my name. It carries a lot of meaning for me. I’m annoyed that it’s connected to a character I hate, but I can’t exactly control that, so there’s not really a point in getting tetchy about it. I’ll readily bitch about it in private, but I genuinely like who I am and I’m not about to abandon that by letting a game dictate what I call myself.

System Names

We still don’t have a system name and don’t really care to officially make one, for a couple reasons.

First, there’s only three people here, and we have our individual names already. Addressing us by a collective system name feels like it means losing some of that individuality, because people use the system name because they don’t want to assume who’s fronting or anything, and while that’s understandable, it’s not something any of us really likes. Like, we’re very much separate people! If you wanna talk to one of us, just say it, we’ll probably show up!

On the other hand, I do understand wanting an identifier - like, there’s loads of Maxes and Judes and Gavins out there, we have really common names, there’s gotta be something to distinguish us from another group, right? Like a last name.

Honestly, looking at it like a last name makes it feel better. If you’ve read through the rest of this, you can tell we’re already experts at getting new last names, and this is just another one! So on that note, we’re not gonna call ourselves anything like The X System, but if you have to tag us as a collective, just use Machina as a funny end tag, like how people talk about Sans Undertale.

(Max Machina is a misnomer, since he’s not from Machina, but he came up with the title so he counts. And it’s really fucking funny.)

[tomato-bird-art]

SF ZINEFEST 2024! Some pictures from the San Francisco Zinefest last week! I had a wonderful time, and it was SUPER busy! thanks everyone who swung by to pick up prints and zines from me, I really appreciate it. It was really heartening to see people enjoy my art and remember me from over the years—I’ve had a very busy year and not as much time to “be an artist” as I’d like, so it was very invigorating to be around other queer artists again in a dedicated and enthusiastic space. When online a lot, you tend to forget how it is to be around art in person, and this was a great reminder of it—also every year, I’m always excited to see the beautiful outfits and fashion of the attendees! Someday I’ll dress up more special, but alas it’s just work and apron for me XD

I also finally got to meet longtime mutual and incredible artist @megamoth in person, and got a copy of their Devilman zine series here I contributed to some years ago! Here’s a pic with a cool itabag as well.

This year, I debuted a few new works:

“Fujo X-Ray Visions”

is a collection of personal comics from the past year I’ve been posting here and on Patreon, mostly about trying to balance life as a cartoonist and as someone pursuing some new career experiences in the healthcare field. Like “Voids and Visions” before it, there’s a bunch of personal stuff and angsting along with regular goofiness.

It’s available now both as a physical zine, as well as a digital download!

“If All The World Were Mine!”

My collection of artwork and comics I’ve done for my medieval rpf side account, @angevinyaoiz over the past couple years. It’s a mix of some serious historical illustrations, goofy cartoons, and nsfw works. It’s probably one of the most “niche” things I’ve ever made or gotten into as of late, but I’m happy for the audience who has appreciated my work over the past several months. It’s available currently as a physical zine purchase on storenvy, and I’m planning on making an expanded digital zine version available later—fill out this form to be notified!

“Best Yaoi Movies of 20th Century Hollywood”

In this collaborative project I did with my friend @titilvating, in the style of classic cut and paste, copied zines, we offer our takes on 19 movies made before the year 2000. Many are acclaimed classics; some are underrated gems.  We made this zine to both introduce folks to the richness possibilities of classic movies; whether longtime cinephiles familiar with queer subtexts,  or young fujos looking for more material to sink their yaoifangs into.  Our sample size caters to our personal tastes rather than “good representation” and reflects a fraction what’s out there, with a focus on western US/European media, but hopefully can serve as a fun introduction and celebration. Old movies are a lotta fun, who would’ve thought?

It’s available now as a free digital download, but contact me if you’re interested in a physical edition as well!”

Other Works:

My print version of “The Sons of God” was very well received! I realized sometimes giving little titles to print pieces make for great conversation starters, and I got to chat a lot about my inspirations for the respective pieces. Grab a physical print here!

Ending Thoughts

Overall, I’m glad I got to meet lots of people this year and also pick up lots of zines! I didn’t have a chance to really browse this time around since it was so busy, but I got to trade a lot with folks and also pick up some cool zines and stickers myself.

For those who’d like to keep up with what I’m doing, follow me here, on Patreon, either as a member or free-follower, since I tend to post my sketches/WIPs there first. For me now, it’s back to the grind of school and also continuing creative projects. I have a lot of stuff I dream of doing, and it’s always a challenge to balance that with what needs to get done. If I learned anything from this event, it’s how valuable it is to connect with people in the real world art space (Something I always learn and forget like every few months.)…also, always bring water and snacks—can never be TOO prepared!

Wishing you all a good autumn,

-Allie

[auroramoon-draws16]

I can’t stop thinking about this, but it’s not Assassin’s Creed, sorry folks.

Hogwarts Legacy x Harry Potter

(No real spoilers, mostly vague references, iykyk)

I just need BAMF! Player Character/MC to pop up in the Harry Potter era. I’ve thought about several ways how:

1. Ghost. MC is the damn best duelist in history, but they can’t win ‘em all. Keep fighting the hardest fights, or get caught in a bad ending, and it’s curtains. So, what if MC didn’t feel like they did enough, hadn’t been able to help their friends enough, so they stayed, and in that decision, the wizarding world’s history changed. You call that defense against the dark arts??? That’s bullshit is what that is! Hey kid, here’s how you properly duel a bitch. Yes, it’s entirely legal to throw furniture and other objects at your opponent. Yes, you can throw your opponent. Prophecy? You guys traumatized a child! Hey, you, Harry was it? I gotchu, kid.

2. A painting. It’s pretty clear that the portraits all over the school are alive and retain some personality and characteristics of the subjects. Mostly when the subject actually adds more to their portrait to have a better effect. The MC was also one of the few who could use ancient magic, so that could be a reason they decided to have their portrait done, to ensure the next generation would have some sort of guidance they didn’t get. Not only that, but also help future duelists. So maybe the portrait can only be accessed by asking the Room of Requirement, mostly because ancient magic secrets are best kept between users. Imagine that portrait being found by Harry, he asks the room for help teaching Dumbledor’s Army spells and suddenly a portrait of a person no one has heard of, but apparently is the best duelist in the history of the wizarding world perks up and goes “alright, bet.” (This can also work for the ghost version) Well, the portrait could also just be out in public, but the MC is just not there, cue mystery to be solved!

3. Time travel. Ancient magic is wonky, it can happen! Cue sudden transfer student shenanigans. Also, chosen one? That is a child, MC has seen enough shit to know that’s fucked up and Harry needs better supports in his life, dammit. Older sibling MC goes brrrrr.

4. Apparition. Ancient magic wonky shit, part 2! Prophecies are bullshit. That is a child, and that bitchy 80 year old snake face needs to eat concrete. Harry stumbles upon an ancient magic item before he gets to Hogwarts. A necklace or a bracelet or some shit. Now baby Harry has a friend! MC takes one look at this child and goes “anybody gonna love and care for this one? No? Aight, mine now.” They can’t do much, but they are visible and heard only to Harry, so that means they can keep him company and tutor him wherever possible. How did they end up like this??? Uh…. Don’t worry about it.

5. Pensives. Somebody has to learn from history, and books are boring dammit. And easily edited. MC’s got your back kiddos.

6. How long do wizards live? Oh shit, yeah, MC is still alive. Heyyyy bitches, I’m your new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor! Who here knows how to throw a bitch at a wall? No? Well we got a lot of catching up to do. I may be old, but I’m still the best damn duelist around.

Idk, I wanted to have some fun with this and I haven’t seen anyone do this with an actual character. You can add backstories and shit. I hate reader inserts, okay? Don’t judge me :/ (also I’m tired of the romance, I love me a good ship, but my aromantic ass wants to see cute platonic shit, okay?)

Here’s my MC for Hogwarts Legacy, even tho I don’t have the game, lmao:

Morgan Diane Rook (They/Them)

Black wavy hair that goes just past their ears, gray eyes, tan skin, freckles, round face, scar on their cheek, and in Hufflepuff (my house, also for the rep)

Sass master, protective friend, and just a little bit feral, will laugh in the face of enemies. Unforgivable curses? I don’t need to be forgiven, I just need you to cease existence. You were very rude to my friend.

Obligatory Slytherins need a designated Hufflepuff best friend.

Blame the attitude on the Uncle who took them in after their parents died in an accident. Uncle Jack is from the states and ran in a gang before he went straight for his kid, he’s trying his best dammit. It’s also why they’re a transfer student, they spent a few years with Uncle Jack in the states before moving back into Mom and Dad’s place. He hired a wizard tutor, no worries. He don’t get all this magic shit, but he loves his kid, and that’s enough reason for him. They’re a damn good duelist for a reason.

Morgan also knows how to use a gun, just because :)

Idk, I think they’re neat

[withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus]

So you want to listen to Alice Nine? (prt. 3)

Moving on with my suggestions for potential new Number Sixes (I took my sweet time, I know, but time and mood are two big issues of mine), cause summarizing their work in one post was impossible, let’s dive into the final era (again based on how I personally separated them).

The years after PSC (2014-hiatus, From “Ginga no Woto” to ��Grace”)

Self-explanatory, the following songs are from stuff they released after leaving PSC, a time during which they experimented the most and walked away from their signature sound, which worked for some and for others didn't. If you're a new fan, choosing to start from this era might be easier for you than a returning fan who's set some expectations, but I want to show everyone, regardless, that they kept releasing amazing songs, which fell under most fans' radar, turning them into a severely underrated band.

Reminder: the songs I use in these posts aren't those I necessarily consider their best works, I focus more on what's easier to listen to for a new listener.

Let's go:

Phoenix was one of the first songs they released as an independent band, hence why it's a song closest to the style they were known for, until then, and a very easy first listen, imo. Personally I took my time getting used to it, but now I wonder how it didn't work for me right away, cause it is rather addicting.

Oh you like guitars? This might be a good starter for you. I love this song and the guitars give me chills every time. It was different for them, had speaking parts, a certain type of thrill to it, and I wish I could have experienced it live. If you have a good sound system, turn up the volume. These guitar sequences are meant to be listened to, loudly.

Now this was very different, but it's chill, it's fun, it's sth to go for a walk to, dance in your room on a weekend morning, even do your chores to. xD It's an easy and beautiful first listen I think.

Hands down one of their cuter and more fun songs and concept mvs, but maybe I'm biased cause it felt like a song devoted to the several eras of rock and their own fanbase. I don't know. It's laid back, it's playful and definitely sth I'd enjoy if my journey as their fan had started in this era.

A must-listen imo. Youtube's sound compression is killing me but...it's still good as is. If you get your hands on the album, it will sound even better, trust.

*Aggressive nodding* Yes yes, press that play button! Especially if you love bass lines, this is your song. My sister calls this song a hymn and she doesn't listen to much from vkei bands, so... xD. It's one of my favorite songs, too, and the kind I think could probably capture you as a first listener as well.

While this isn't sth you will see more than 3 times in their discography, cause they generally didn't use folk sounds in their songs, it's a banger and worth a listen early on, on your journey.

Sit back, chill and let's go on a trip, cause this is exactly the vibe this song gives xD. Nostalgia, car rides, 70s or 80s too, maybe.

This sounds so 80s or 90s fun in Tokyo for me, I don't know xD. It's giving fun with friends. Maybe's just me. But another goodie to start with.

This song was from a series of single releases they made in 2021, for which each member was to compose one song. I don't remember whose this one was, but it was my favorite so I thought of sharing.

And we've reached the end of my recommendations for Alice Nine newbies.

I didn't hit the video limit for this post, yes, cause this era, I will admit, is the hardest to get into. Again, I don't think this was a bad era, I found plenty of songs I liked from it too, but because they experimented with so many different sounds, if you're the type who listens to only few genres, you might be bothered by it. Personally I listen to pretty much every genre, so as long as sth sounds good to me, I'm going to listen to it. ^^'>

I hope you find sth you like, if not, it’s ok, you might enjoy sth from other eras. But well, if you still don’t find sth, we all like different things, it’s alright, but yeah, this was an attempt to entice more people listen to one of my favorite bands, Alice Nine (their final era before hiatus, according to my understanding, at least).

[dragonstepp]

Cummittees for we older folks who are liberal and interested

I like the idea of communties, especially for we older folks.

I was born in 1940. My mother married my dad in 1938, after I was born, WW II started, my dad moved us to Los Angeles where my dad tried to join the military and join the war, he was not allowed in because of his wearing glasses, and me. We moved to Las Vegas, a brand-new town building up out of the desert and near Hoover Dam, where he was an architectect and builder, and helped to build Las Vegas out of the desert floor. My sister was born there in 1943.

My dad was getting known as a builder, and a great help to building Las Vegas. He also build a building to be used by the Church of Christ, which was my mother's religious leaning. After WW II was over, in 1946, men started coming back home, including several uncles, my mother's brothers, and my mother told my dad she wanted to take me and my sister back to Corpus Christi, TX, to see her brothers, my uncles. I remember well the train trips from Los Angeles to Corpus Christi, and the many servicemen that were with us. Yes, they loved this little girl of about 5 years old.

After a while, my mother refused to return to her husband, my dad. I am aware that my grandmother was on my side, felt sorry for me as I was definitely my daddy's girl, but of no use. My dad, as a man, was taken up by a woman in Las Vegas, and being a man during those days, was caught up with her. As my mother has informed him that she was not going to return, and Joyce tricked my dad into believing she was pregnant (it was learned later that she was incapable of having children), my mother allowed my dad to get a divorce. The church threw him out. My mother that he bitched that he would not even send her her iron. My sister and I lost all our toys and things because of the loss of our home. We did own our home in a place called Huntridge. I remember the house and the toys and the tub of water when both Patti and I got the measles, then the mumps, one after the other. I remember it all.

Moving forward a many years, my mother married a second time, then they had two children, and Patti and I were left behind as being not his children. In the meantime, we had been led to believe our daddy didn't want us any longer. Patti was young enough not to remember him, but I wasn't, and I was definitely a daddy's girl.

My sister caught fire in 1957. She was burned badly (she did survive, but that is a different story), and my mother contacted my dad. I never got over him, though I was angry because I thought he didn't want me, and after I got out of high school, I moved to Las Vegas to meet and be with him.

Joyce, his second wife, was not a friend of mine. One of her sisters had a daughter Sharon, who taught me how to smoke. I got my first job in Vegas, and lived a pretty good life. But I started drinking. I had my first child in 1961, went back to Corpus, had my step-father theatren to rape me because I had a child out of marriage, and I went back to LV with my daughter. I worked in some of the casinos as change girls, started drinking, and ended up at a dude ranch outside the city where I was a barmaid and a cook, and lived there. I was really drinking by then, had an abortion, had a second child, and moved back to CC in 1964. By then the 60s movement was in full stride. JFK had been murdered, and I was trying to raise two children by myself. I had a good job, but my drinking was out of hand, I gave my two children up to forage, and took over as management of a merchant seaman's bar in late 1964. During the year of 1965, I gave up my two girls for adoption.

Drinking alcohol was my choice during the next few years. I was all involved over the war in Vietnam, drinking, sleeping around, and moving from place to place in 1968. I had had a child in 1967, gave it up for adoption, moved with a couple of friends to Biloxi, MS, got pregnanted one more time, moved to Wichita Falls, TX, had a seond child in 1969, and finally moved back to Corpus Christi, where I tried to find work. I got there, but I didn't stop drinking, and eventually found another job, which I lost because of my drinking. I went to work as a change person, stopped drinking in 1973 because of the alcohol, moved to Austin in 1975, and got real work.

I was at the University of Texas for well over 22 years, and also worked in radio where I programmed Celtic music, and because of the p roblems of women being discriminated against women, finally went into early retirement in 2003. I did some cleaning of apartments for a friend of mine, but when it became difficult for me, stopped, and moved into assisted housing in 2009.

I served on the Board of Directors, put up with a lot of changes of the apartment complex, went suicidal (fourth time over the years), got psysological help in 2019, had a nervous breakdown in 2020, then Covid came along which kept me penned up, wrote my autobiography. In 2021, I started drinking again. I drink my scotch every day, not enough to get drunk (though that happened once because of some music and memories coming together) and drink a few drams every day. I was going to quit smoking, but decided I don't want to do that.

I fight all the time for my rights as a human being, as a woman, for fairness for all. I am a liberal Democrat, support a couple of organizations that help people, and keep up with politics, to my sorrow. I have found Acorn TV and British shows. It keeps me calm. I take an antianxiety pill, in spite of mixing it with alcohol. I have overcome suicide attempts, a life with liars about my father, been able to have him as a friend before he died in 1984, and never been in love or tied myself to anyone. I am independent, survive by my own wits.

And yes, I fell in love with Sam because he is the man I might have been able to survive with half a lifetime (mine) ago. And no, I use common sense, and I know he can not ever be in love with me, and in fact, does not even know I exist. There are reasons why he moved me so much,

If these communities are brought to reality, I know there are other folks in my age group who would be interested. I expect to live a long time. In fact, I have overcome so many things that I believe I must be immortal.

I love this site. It has people who believe as I do, that everyone is equal, has the right for their sexuality, their lifestyle, their habits, their hobbies, their caring for the general population. I love you all, so don't judge me for loving Sam.

Could have used him when I was his age that he is now, and I am well beyond.

Comments and criticisms welcome. But be careful unless you have walked in my shoes.

Carol in Austin

[mollymarymarie]

hello love!!

i just finished a re-read (one of several) of DYH and i came here to tell you (remind you really, it’s yours ofc you know this) how lovely and brilliant it is!! i went back to my original comment on ao3 and realized my first read was just over a year ago which is so wild.

i have so many thoughts but the one that i can’t help but smile about—the thing that has really stuck with me as i started publishing my first fics and writing more regularly and being more invested in this fandom over the past year—is your response. you replied back! and that was the first time i had really interacted with an author on ao3. you were so kind and thoughtful and overall i could tell that you really cared and wanted to create space for conversations about your work that made it feel like we were all on the same level, loving these characters together.

there’s so much discourse rn on fandom and popular fics and interactions within this space that are harmful and negative, and it’s all so valid. like, you did not owe me a response. you don’t owe anyone anything as a writer. but the community aspect to fandom is still very much present and wanted and for folks not on tumblr, most of that discourse happens in fic comments. so even a small interaction over a year ago in the comment section of one of my favorite stories is still HUGE to me, because it made me feel like i could interact; like the space was also mine to claim. and i am so very grateful to you for making that happen, even unconsciously.

you’re a superstar and a fabulous writer and i’m sending you all of the flowers and sweet treats and affection in my arsenal <3 thank you!! hope you’re having a good day :)

FRIEND 🥺🥺🥹🥹

I am so happy you took the time to send me this because it means SO MUCH to me. Because I really do try to be as kind as possible, especially to those who are already so kind to me to read (and reread!) my work and comment on it and enjoy it! This genuinely made me tear up 🥹

This is what fandom should be! A space for community and conversation and connections, enjoying things that we love together! I'm so thankful you think I'm a good author but I'm also just a regular ass nobody lol. it might take me some time to reply to comments or asks (especially now that I'm not as active as I used to be) but i met some of my closest online friends through comments and messages on Tumblr and ao3 so I love those connections

I wish I could say, yes, interact!! Don't be afraid!! But that would be hypocritical of me, because I don't interact much anymore specifically because of negative interactions. But your incredibly thoughtful ask has reminded me that the good outweigh the bad by far ❤️

[thedreadvampy]

I had a really good conversation the other day with a friend of mine who works in frontline homelessness support about the pandemic and what he said was really obvious but really interesting

so in Edinburgh, rough sleeping was reduced to 0% during 2020. like a lot of places the council repurposed hotels etc to increase temporary housing supply and worked to get everyone sleeping rough indoors.

recieved wisdom is that this was a really good thing. there's a huge issue with overuse of long term temporary accommodation in Scotland, but temp is also safer and healthier and allows for more access to support, and while people were there they were stable and fed, unlike in eg hostels or shelters where you could be kicked out at any time. and it really helped a lot of people! it was a huge deal!

anyway then the pandemic "ended" and everyone got moved on to less stable temp and a lot of people ended up returning to rough sleeping, because the reason most folk sleep rough in Scotland is because standard temporary accommodation is often awful and wholly incompatible with their needs (lockins/lockouts mean you're never really free to set your own pace; socialising is often discouraged in single-room options but sharing space can be a huge challenge and danger for people; a lot of temp is a long way away from anywhere you might want to be during the day; and ultimately you never know what's happening or whether you can stay tonight, you might get booted in the middle of the night, you might get there too late and lose your spot, etc)

so. we generally agree. in 2020 the government proved it could end rough sleeping, and in 2021 it demonstrated that it wouldn't because it didn't want to.

but Mark also brought up another very clear angle on it that I thought he framed really well which was: they moved rough sleepers indoors but not because they care about rough sleepers. They moved rough sleepers indoors because they might be vectors for the virus spreading. providing adequate, stable, liveable temporary accommodation for people in severe need didn't happen because Covid made people give a shit about homeless people. It happened for the same reason you might exterminate rats in a plague, or lock in birds at the moment during avian flu. it wasn't because they're people, it was still because they might infect The Normal People

and this isn't news like all the large-scale funding we get for working with rough sleepers is from business organisations who want to make the streets nicer for The Normal People and from police building on the fear of the abstract threat The Normal People feel from seeing rough sleepers and beggars. and it's so fucked! it's so fucked! cause we have a lot of individual support for working with people. with the human people who need support and friendship and stability!!! but the only thing that has ever moved the government or the council or any large entities to do shit about homelessness is concern over the impacts that Having To See The Homeless might have on The Normal People.

and that's why the second there ceased to be a public health reason (public health referring of course to the health of the Normal People) to not let people sleep on the streets and in graveyards in fucking December in Scotland, out went everything they put in place. that's why the average stay in temporary accommodation in Scotland before accessing permanent housing is over a year and a half. that's why there's no interest in building affordable housing. because the only reason the people in power care about homelessness is inasmuch as it might affect them to have to see it.

and that's not gonna change until people are forced to recognise that people in homelessness are people. not problems for The Normal People to deal with.

it's obvious but it beats repeating. dehumanisation Is The Problem. we could end homelessness if there was the will, but it has to be the will to help people in homelessness, not the will to Solve The Homeless Problem

[agnerd-bot]

So... Goku Vs Superman(2023) was absolutely peak

A lot of people say that Bill Vs Discord was a love letter to the community, and I definitely agree with that. It had so many in-jokes and references to Vs creators and reactors and delivered on one of the most wanted episodes in Death Battle history.

But if Bill Vs Discord is a love letter to the vs community, I'd say Goku Vs Superman III was a love letter to the very idea of vs debates itself, as well as a reminder of why so many folks get invested in these silly little fights to begin with.

If you're not one like me and you don't spend time in endless debates regarding who would win in a fight, a little backstory:

(Also, spoilers. Obviously.)

In 2013, Death Battle released Goku Vs Superman as its finale to its first ever season, an episode over half an hour long tackling one of the biggest rivalries in pop culture to ever exist. And it broke the internet.

While I'll fully admit that this episode has aged significantly since its release, it's also undeniably Death Battle's most iconic episode, and for a damn good reason. It brought in MasakoX from DBZA and ItsJustSomeRandomGuy from I'm a Marvel/I'm a DC, two of the most iconic internet voices of Goku and Superman, was the first Death Battle to have its own original score, and is over ten minutes of non-stop action between two of pop culture's biggest juggernauts. It was a spectacle unlike any other.

Unfortunately with nerd debates like these, you're gonna also get some toxicity, and the results of this episode were... controversial to say the least. While folks loved the fight, the salt and anger it stirred up rubbed many the wrong way.

Then, two years later, after the release of Battle of Gods and several other new movies, Goku Vs Superman II was released.

Originally meant to be a highlight reel of cut content that didn't make it into the original, it was instead released as a full episode and advertised as a rematch. Many people were dissatisfied with this, including Ben Singer, one of the minds behind the series, who straight up admitted its his least favorite Death Battle because of how he felt it as an unintentional kick in the nuts for Dragon Ball fans. And he wasn't the only one, as many folks have deemed the episode one of their worst. While I personally don't hate the episode, it does do a disservice to both Goku and Superman as characters I feel, and like many, I dreaded the idea of an inevitable rematch happening that'd bring back the debate that many felt needed to just die at this point.

So when the news of Goku Vs Superman III came out... a lot of people felt nothing but immense dread. Many were sick and tired of this matchup and thought that this would be another episode that would just end up making people more angry.

And then the episode came out:

God, am I glad we got this episode. While my #1 favorite still goes to Cole Vs Alex at this point, I can't deny how good it felt to watch this episode go down.

Close friends of mine know that I am a massive Superman fan. He's my favorite character of all time, and I'll fully admit that the original Goku Vs Superman was a big reason for that. It really introduced me to Superman as a character beyond the baser knowledge that everyone knew. Similarly? This was the episode that got me interested in Dragon Ball. I'm still very new to the franchise(only got started recently with Xenoverse and FighterZ), but this rematch got me to understand why Goku's such an icon in his own right. I never got into Dragon Ball unlike a lot of folks, and I'll fully admit I didn't really 'get it'. I watched stuff like DBZA, but that's still a parody that doesn't quite get to the heart of who Goku truly is as a character, as much love as they put into it.

This episode does such a good job approaching both Goku and Superman not just as icons of strength or power, but as genuine inspirations to look forward to. Goku symbolizing someone who is always willing to push himself further when all hope seems lost. Determination incarnate always willing to bring out the best in himself and others. Superman symbolizing a simple wish for goodness and humanity. A hero beyond the stars who will help fight back the darkness in any way he can. They're the greatest embodiments of goodness and hope in their respective universe, and inspire countless people inside and out of it.

This further ties into the actual fight itself. In the original Goku Vs Superman and its sequel, Goku and Superman were very aggressive to one another, their attacks vitriolic and seeing the other as an enemy, kind of reflecting the toxicity that this debate symbolized for so many people. But now? They're fighting because they're enjoying themselves, seeing the other as an equal they can find themselves at ease around. Goku is constantly encouraging Clark to cut loose and stop holding himself back, and Superman is realizing that he doesn't have to fear his own strength here. This fight is as much a battle to the death as it is therapy. There's two moments in particular that really draw my eye and love for this fight.

"World made of cardboard..."

Superman is someone who has often been characterized by fearing his own strength in several stories, always worrying if he'll break someone or something, afraid to truly put himself at his limits.

But after this poignant moment... he smiles. Because now, he has someone he can go all out against and encourages him to go even further beyond. And that he does, truly releasing his unrestrained power at his rival's request.

"Finally."

This is such a good moment both in and out of context. In context, Goku's looking on in excitement and pride as he finally, finally gets to see his rival go all out against him, not holding back to let him see him at his best.

Out of context? In both the previous versions of Goku Vs Superman, Superman was treated as an impossibility for Goku to overcome. The idea that Goku could even come close to his rival was seen as something that could never happen? But now? After how hard he's worked? After how far he's come? He's reached the point where he can stand tall alongside him, even if he can't win.

In the end, these two titans meet for their final clash in a beautiful call back to the original Goku Vs Superman, creating a punch parry strong enough to rewrite all of reality itself.

And in the end, when the dust settles?

Goku has lost again, for the third time now. But instead of last time where he simply accepts that he'll never beat Superman, he just goes, "Ah, darnit," and laughs the whole thing off, saying he'll work even harder to win next time. Because even in the face of the impossible, Goku will always try to make it possible.

And how does Superman respond?

He smiles, admitting "That was actually pretty fun!" He enjoyed himself, a far cry from his somber and serious nature in the previous fights. He got to let go and really unleash his limits thanks to Goku, and has come around to the Saiyan's lighthearted sparring(well, lighthearted for them at least).

This episode has a wholesomeness that not many other Death Battles have, and definitely not as well. So many people have come out expressing how much they've loved this episode and how happy it made them, and I think the episode itself does a fantastic job at encapsulating why.

"There's more than one way to appreciate something. We're having a great time talking about awesome characters, and slamming action figures together. And that's okay!"

The debates on who's stronger or who would win are never going to die. There's always going to be something new to bring to the table, new arguments to be had, new thoughts to debate. And... there's nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, we engage with these nerdy debates because we love these characters and we love them interacting. Who wins or loses doesn't matter, what matters is that we simply have fun with it. I think that's something folks have forgotten at some points, myself included.

Hell, Death Battle is the reason why I started writing in the first place. It's how I chose to put myself out there by writing combat fanfiction with my friends, and it's how I found my own footing as a writer. I would not be where I am today without this silly little internet series, and I'm so grateful that it's still going on to this day.

It's so amazing to see where Death Battle started and where it is now. Season 10 has given us so many fantastic episodes, to the point that every episode this season, at least one person I know has claimed an episode to be their favorite. It's been so fun with this season, and it's honestly given me a lot of inspiration to pick up writing again, both for Vs and in general.

If you somehow haven't seen this episode, please watch it. It's grand, it's heartwarming, it's overwhelming, it's so many things going on at once.

And at the end of the day, it's just... fun.

"Let's go again."

"You're on."

[wickedsrest-rp]

Welcome to our weekly round-up! We do these every week to provide plot drops, highlight starters posted that week, and share other information about the setting. Anyone is welcome to use these bullet points in starters, plots, anons etc. Also let us know if you want us to include one of your setting-related plots in here for next week by sending us a bullet point!

What's new in town?:

Further mining efforts by EER have left Wicked’s Rest in a state of disarray as the anomalous sludge has covered whole blocks of land. People and animals alike have become encased in it as well, unable to escape as it slowly hardens around them. Check out our final plot of the week of Season 1 for ways to interact!

Local spellcaster, Molly Cooper, thought it’d be funny to play a joke on her classmates for Mean Girls Day. Unfortunately, she hasn’t quite gotten the hang of this whole spell casting thing just yet. So instead of just the college kids having everything they touch turn to pink when they asked what day it was on the fateful October 3rd, the spell has been a bit more wide reaching. Some parts of downtown may be giving visitors who ask the day a bit of a ‘Barbie touch’ for several weeks to come. 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year and as is to be expected in Wicked’s Rest, a handful of teens have already gone missing during their October games of Truth or Dare. Maybe don’t dare your friends to lower themselves into a sus looking well, kids. No cap. 

Every year, without fail, someone decides it’d be a great idea to host a music festival in the scenic town of Wicked’s Rest. Sure, all the ghost stories might seem like a good warning that it’s a bad idea, but somehow that only seems to add to the appeal. This year, the unfortunate event was an event featuring artists of the farmhouse grasspop variety. A little bit niche, but the festival goers had some interesting farmer meets raver looks… which has led to a chimera lit up with lots of glow sticks and the faint sound of a tambourine running around Seven Peaks. Members of Club Cryptid have started lovingly referring to it as the Fleetwood Men.

Starters:

Do you need a place to live? Hit up Arden or Wynne to become one of the worm-mate roommates today! (Or when the building is un-gooed, but what is a little goo bonding between roomies?)

Please read the menu before asking Van for toppings they just don't have, you're making frogs sad

Please do Dis a favor and collect your reptile, it is not wanted at Elysium Casino

Leila loves spooky season as much as the next nightmare (daydream?), but this feeling of being watched is not very cool

How is a vampire supposed to brood book and bother in these conditions when Cassius can't even enjoy a night hike without running into walking beehives

After a conversation with a not very nice classmate who might deserve burnt cookies Ariadne has to question if loving root beer is a character flaw

Who's got sculpting equipment lying around that Teddy could possibly borrow for certainly very normal reasons

If you know Archie's address you have full permission to break his door down since Wade (a truly good dog) locked Archie in a closet

Sorry folks in need of investigative services, Emilio has updated that Axis Investigations is closed for... goo? Apparently a fellow tenant named Jeff is hopeful that the update was a typo and really meant "for good".

Goo might be where Winter has really reached her limit, she's not trekking through that. If you're looking to make some cash, get a pizza to Winter ASAP

The PSA that many in Wicked's Rest sadly probably needed. Van is here to tell you, don't eat the goo. Ask Van for safer snack alternatives today!

It's a sticky situation for many in Wicked's Rest with all the sludge and Leila is feeling very generous. If you were displaced by the goo, please stop by the Party Thrifter for any clothing you may need on the house

Save Jerome, Owen's neighbor and send him two truths and a lie to prevent murder today!

Parker wants you to weigh in on the cats vs dogs debate and attach a photo if you must