#shes going to be the sole reason why i quit this fucking job if she doesnt fucking stop

[lilac-melody]

Feeling really feral rn man.

[soosth]

AANG ＆ OZAI PARALLELS: DEBUNKED

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Because apparently the true villain is the sole survivor of a genocide of his entire nation, and not the imperialist colonizer.

Where do I even begin?? Because I’m genuinely holding in laughter writing this, it’s absolutely insane how certain people can make such egregious parallels that aren’t even found in the first place. 

AH, so a little backstory on how this fucking shit stained idea even came to existence, well our dear z^tara fans pissed their pants over Zuko and Katara not tying the knot, so, as a way of retribution for their supposed “honour” They take any chance to jump on the Aang hate train and make him into some irredeemable abusive demon, aaand they got that perfect opportunity because the LoK decided to take a lick out of the great “Main Characters Must Be Bad Parents In The Sequels” Trope. Which personally, does absolutely nothing to the protagonists resolution aside from cheap family drama but I digress. 

Now, I’m not behind the idea of the writers trying to make Aang a “flawed” Parent, I think it really makes no sense by how they went about it, (I might touch on this in another post) 

((And it’s so very clear that they’re trying to give it a soft “retcon” And even taking extra steps saying that Kya and Bumi just “remember wrong” Which I’ll actually take, because season two of LOK was hell on earth anyway so you might as well give it some saving grace.)) 

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There’s three main parallels that they got from Ozai and Aang: (god help me)

Favouring a child

isolating the rest

leaving pressure On the golden child

I’m going to debunk all three of them while trying not to fall into complete lunacy over how ridiculous they are. 

Favouring a child + Leaving pressure: 

OK, so people are clearly blind with context clues and media comprehension, got it. No surprise whatsoever. I can’t be disappointed if I didn’t even have any expectations to begin with. 

Let’s compare the treatment on how Ozai treats Azula, and how Aang treats Tenzin. (Holy Shit)

Beginning with Ozai, well.. It doesn’t take much of a rocket scientist to understand that Ozai essentially could not give two fucks about Azula, as she in essence, serves the role of an attack dog, as long as it does its job, it’s worthy. 

Ozai favoured Azula because she was molded to match his ferocity and hunger for power, she was a prodigy bender, and was cunning and calculated, all traits that Ozai found endearing and someone worthy to be crowned the next “fire lord.” His “favouring” Of her didn’t come out of genuine love or care, she is his tool who serves a purpose. In short, she showed more competency and more ruthlessness and callousness in comparison to Zuko. Which earned her, her place as the “Golden Child.”  

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None of this is even remotely similar to how Aang treated Tenzin and his kids, aside from the fact he supposedly “favoured” Tenzin more, but that is such a baseline statement and has absolutely no relation with Ozai's reasons.

You have to understand that an entire FUCKING NATION IS DEAD. History, Culture, Tradition, is at the BRINK of being wiped out, Tenzin is quite literally the only Airbender that will be left after Aangs passing. Why do people devalue this concept so much? 

“B-BUT THE AIR ACOLYTES1!!” Still have limited knowledge, airbending is so heavily tied to its spiritual roots, you LOSE your ability to AIRBEND, if you aren't inclined to your spiritual side. Which is a core part of the air nomad culture. Tenzin is... Literally the only god forsaken part left of that, so yeah. It’s a pretty big fucking deal. Aang values his culture and teachings to such a high degree, he is literally the survivor of a genocide. His favouring of Tenzin was done out of necessity and love, not out of a need for power and a new attack dog to send orders around. 

Tenzin will literally be the future “Director” Or guide for the next avatar to learn airbending, people still forget this, and it’s hilarious. He needs to know all the moves, all the teachings because he will be the next avatar's personal guide. 

Aang constantly reassures him, and apologizes for the pressure that may be put upon him but he always reaffirms that he’ll be there to guide him and they’ll “learn together”

---------

So yeah not the same thing at all. Fuck you for being so inept at understanding the different reasons and perspectives of those situations, just for some petty ship discourse, genuinely disgusting.

Isolating the children:

OK this part, I have to say that the writers definitely messed up with aangs characterization, but I think the execution came out way differently than the intention, so I will try to look more into the intention of each decision.

Ozai isolated Zuko, mistreated him, belittled him, PHYSICALLY ABUSED HIM, but yeah totally on par with Aang actually. 

I don’t wanna touch on this part much mainly because his treatment was literally explained all throughout the show, and granted, while I understand most of these people haven’t touched the show aside from reading fanfic 300000 Where Aang is revealed to us as satan himself, but perhaps, even a small peak at Ozai's parenting would reveal the laughable contrast between the two.

Zuko was a slow learner, and much more of a softie, and a “mama's boy” To Ozai’s heavy dislike, he was thus treated as such, he was belittled, turned down, and literally burnt alive for showing “weakness” He is meant to serve as a direct contrast to Azula, ”The everything he isn't.” 

Kya and Bumi on the other hand, don’t show any actual signs of trauma aside from some petty jabs they threw at Tenzin, 

Bumis talk with Aang at the statue was *very very* Clearly, meant to highlight his own inferiority complex that he internalized growing up. His need for proving himself to be capable of doing just as much if not more than a “bender” Probably happened because his two parents were both prodigy benders and him being a first born son who was a non-bender must’ve hit pretty hard for him, and I’m so sure that katara and Aang reassured how special he is but that kind of thing doesn’t really go away.

------

------

Kya: [while healing Bumi] I told you those rocks were slippery. You're lucky you didn't kill yourself.

Bumi: You done with the lecture, mom?

Kya: Oh, grow up. You haven't changed one bit since we were kids. You're still trying to prove you can do everything a bender can. Well, you can't. Deal with it.

----------------------

 That talk with Aangs statue was very much meant to unveil an internal struggle rather than a conflict he had with his father. Kya even doubles down on this, telling him “of course he’d be proud of you” Basically spoon feeding to us, the viewers, that this is much more of internal than an external conflict that he has to overcome along the show. 

“Why Didn’t he share his culture with them 1!!1!” 

He most definitely did, or tried to, but it’s clear they didn’t show much interest so he didn’t pester, this is shown many times throughout the show. 

“You know I could never keep all those gurus straight… There were like a million of them!

remember that long boring story about the guy who never ate?”

This is literally Kya’s remark to Tenzin just after he tried teaching the airbender students this story, basically telling us that Aang DID try to tell them about his stories and culture, but much to their disinterest, didn’t try any further. 

And Bumi, literally could not pay attention to the story to save his life, and instead decided to fool around in his literal 60’s!! I mean Imagine what he was like when he was a kid!! 

I could imagine their dynamic was very similar to Jinora with Meelo and Ikki, Tenzin being the only one with actual interest and care, whilst Bumi and Kya goofing off and not putting much focus onto it. WHICH IS FINE BTW!! 

It only goes to reiterate that Tenzin was the only one who was actually giving interest and attention to the air nomad culture, and it was of Kya and Bumi’s own personal choice to not partake in it. To each their own I see. 

“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE VACATIONS” 

This.. I agree, weird for the writers to decide this, but given how they low-key are retconning it in interviews, my best guess is that each of those trips were side-quests during their journey to teach an important lesson that might’ve just drowned out because Tenzin may not have remembered it as well. 

Also keep in mind that Tenzin was put into a lot of pressure, Aang probably saw this, and as a way to still keep it enjoyable, he took him to trips that would help ease the mind for a little kid whilst also learning something valuable. That seems pretty on brand for Aang actually

And given that Kya and Bumi are literally in their fucking 60’s it wouldn’t surprised me if they didn’t have the greatest memory. Hell, they didn’t even fault Aang as a parent until Tenzin started boasting about “trips” That Kya and Bumi gave petty jabs but weren’t actually showing genuine hurt, just annoyance.

Kya even comments how Aang was too busy “Trying to save the world, and doing his duty that he didn't have much time for them” 

Phrasing as if it wasn't anything "important" But it's clear that this was Kya's own personal irritation towards Tenzin rather than an actual evaluation on Aang's duties.

A continuation comic best explains it in a deeper way:

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Literally showing that “neglecting” His kids wasn't up to him, and was out of a sense of necessity, trying to cram as much knowledge onto Tenzin, the only one who was basically putting his lessons into practices. Kya and Bumi were left feeling neglected. But that wasn’t out of his decision; he still loved them dearly.

-------

This. Literally highlighting how much pressure was forced upon Aang, so yes, as any person would, he struggled with making time for everybody. Holy shit who knew?? 

GASP!! IS THAT… A REALISTIC BUT UNDERSTANDABLE FLAW!!?? HOW DARE YOU! ITS OZAI #2 

The fact that the smiley energetic person forgets to SMILE, is a big deal, man was put through hells amount of stress but he never cracked.

So tell me, how is a genocidal freak, who treats his golden child like a tool and abuses the other both physically and emotionally for showing “weakness’ 

Even remotely comparable to

 the sole survivor of a genocide, trying to withhold his teachings and culture onto literally his only child that showed actual effort in doing so, while also maintaining the balance of an entire fucking world and being literally the biggest “advisor” And “Mentor” For society, OH! And also building and managing a literal city, but along the way struggling to make time for his children. 

Guess what, they’re not. And if you think they are. You are an idiot, with bias and headcanons.

So the conclusion is, Aang is a flawed parent, but he isn't a "bad" Parent - confirmed by the literal writers.

Comparing him to Ozai a literal dictator, is absolutely sickening, just for your petty shipping discourse when this show's been over for a decade is insane. Indulge in what you enjoy, but stop projecting delusions like they're canon.

:D

[author-ssi]

Music & Sex ~MYG

➜Pairing: Min Yoongi x Reader ➜Genre: Smut, (Slight) Fluff, One-shot Warnings: vulgar language (Yoongi cursing), oral sex;fem receiving (Yoongi’s tongue technology), fingering, hand job, vaginal sex (protected and kinda rough) [18+ MDNI] ➜Word Count: 2.6k ➜Summary: A rebellious Min Yoongi keeping the company of a docile girl seemingly appears a bit odd. However, there are certain things that connect the two and those are music and sex.

“Min Yoongi, get out of my class!”, the professor’s agitated yell echoes throughout the classroom and all the students are left to watch a fuming Yoongi storm out, slamming the door behind him. “Fucking asshole”, he growls marching up to his locker and starting to take out his things. “I swear that was the last straw! I’m going to drop out!”, he mutters frustratingly slipping his guitar’s strap over his shoulder and shoving his laptop along with his music equipment in his bag. “Fuck those shitty professors! Acting like they care whether I become successful or not, while all they do is promote their own favourites. What a shitshow! As if fake support and perfect grades will get me to my dream. I don’t need anyone’s help. I’m going to get there on my own!”, he determinedly grumbles to himsef slamming his locker shut. “Yoongi-ssi”, her gentle voice is immediately recognised by him and he halts his movements turning around to face her.

Y/N; one of his classmates, a quiet and mellow girl who Yoongi has developed a soft spot for.  “Sweetheart, I’ve told you before to stop adressing me so formally”, he chastises her with a small smile and a tender gaze, his frustration slowly dissipating. She mumbles a timid apology with a slight bow of her head before raising her eyes to meet his. “You shouldn’t drop out”, she tells him attentively, taking a step towards him. “You heard that huh?”, he half-smirks leaning his body against the lockers as he takes out his pack of cigarettes, not missing the frown that instantly takes over her features. He’s aware of her disapproval of him smoking but he can’t force himself to quit it; it helps him cool off whenever he’s upset. Having placed the cigarette between his lips, he glances over at her while he lights it, chuckling at her reaction. “You’re cute when you pout”, he teases enjoying the red tint on her cheeks that only he seems to be able to evoke.

One might wonder why he hasn’t already made a move on her. The reason behind that is because he doesn’t feel like he deserves her; he’s a rebel and she’s a sweetheart. He can’t trust his unstable self around her, sooner or later his reckless actions would hurt her. “After you left, professor Han announced to us that a showcase is going to be held at the end of the month where every student has to participate-”, his nonchalant groan interjects her making her memontarily pause before continuing unbothered by his evident expression of disdain. “He also mentioned that representatives from certain music companies will be present, on the look-out for new recruits”, she finishes her sentence knowing full well that by the end of it, she’s got his attention back. And she was right... Yoongi’s eyes gleam conspiratorily as the cogs in his brain start turning full-speed, brainstorming tons of ideas before ultimately settling on one, “Let’s do a performance together”.

Despite his rebellious tendancies, slacking off has never been a part of Yoongi’s vocabulary so the moment Y/N agrees to their collaboration, he has thrown himself right into work; coming up with a series of melodies and beats while trying to put together the best song he’s ever produced. After all, he has a knack for constantly surpassing his previous works and outdoing himself. “This is amazing Yoongi!”, and of course, the sight of Y/N’s impressed face when she listens to the final result is a bonus. A proud smirk appears on his face pushing aside his usually humble self; a behaviour brought out solely by her expression of admiration towards him. “Glad you like it. Can I trust you to have the lyrics figured out by the end of the weekend?”, he asks reverting back to his professional self. “It’s Friday... I’ll have them done by tomorrow night! You can count on me, Yoongi”, she grins widely at him, determination flashing over her clear eyes. He smiles satisfied with her work ethic, gathering his equipment from around the studio of their university where they had arranged to meet up. “Alright then! So... Want to go grab a drink or something?”, he suggests casually and when she shoots him a quizzical look, he reveals to her his habit of rewarding himself after finishing a project by indulging in the calming sensation of alcohol. Giggling at that, Y/N agrees in a heartbeat.

----

“How can you still look so pure? Naked and writhing under me”. He tried to resist. Really, he tried. How had an innocent offer for a drink led to this? “Yoongi please”. When did things go off track? Was it when the conversation somehow ended up heading to their past sex experiences? Was it when she revealed how much she craved to be eaten out since her fingers were not good enough for her anymore? Was that his breaking point? His eyes had darkened as he processed her drunken confession and without wasting another moment, he rushed her out of the bar they had been lounging at - the one he’d always opted for since it’s the closest to his apartment. Thanking the heavens for this convenience, Yoongi led the girl only two blocks down the street gently pulling her along by the grip his long, slender fingers had on her wrist. It wasn’t until he reached his doorstep that the reality of what he was rushing her into dawned on him and guilt started to consume him. He became so eager that he didn’t even glimpse at her the entire time. If he did, he could have at least gathered from her body language or expressions whether she was as eager to do this as him. He mentally facepalms himself for almost taking advantage of her innocence like that and proceeds to loosen his grip on her turning around to voice his apology. “Are we not gonna go in?”, her voice laced with anticipation reaches his ears before he’s able to complete neither of his intented actions; his fingers remaining encircled around her wrist, his apology dying in his throat. What he turned to face was the sight of her clear, impatient eyes gazing up at him, her cheeks flashed and her thighs tightly pressed together. Yeah... That was his breaking point.

Nose brushing against the skin of her inner thigh, Yoongi resumes his previous actions ignoring defiantly the begging whimpers of the innocent girl whose legs are wide open for him. “You’re so loud”, he sighs with a low chuckle as he finally stops his trail of wet kisses on her thighs. “Alright, if you need it so much... I’ll give it to you”, he smirks as his index finger creeps over to the part of her that seems to be calling out to him; glistening with her arousal, clenching over nothing. Yoongi only but presses his finger against her clit, slightly rubbing on it and that’s all it takes for him to hear the sweetest moan fall past her lips. “Is that it? That’s what you were whining about? Hm... You’re easier to please than I thought”, he mocks her moving his finger down her slit before he brings it - now coated with her arousal - over to his mouth. He doesn’t break eye contact, his intense gaze remaining on her as his finger leaves his mouth with an intentional ‘pop’. Y/N knows he is only teasing her. She knows Min Yoongi isn’t stupid. He had known what she craved for him to do the moment she was left lying naked under him, her legs parting as she bared herself to him. So, she whines his name again looking at him with furrowed eyebrows and pouty lips. "You're cute when you pout", a smirking Yoongi mumbles knowing she's had enough of his teasing by now. And so, his smirk disappears into her dripping and pulsating core as he starts to ravish her; wet lips pressing down fervently, skillfull mouth moving eagerly as if it belongs to a man who has been starved for days. “Now sing for me, your moans are the sweetest music”, he whispers with his warm tongue flicking her clit which causes her body to jolt and his request to be fulfilled. A string of moans fall past her open lips and her small fingers tangle themselves in his hair tugging them firmly in search of a way to channel the immense pleasure surging through her body.

Yoongi’s senses are overwhelmed by her voice, scent and taste and his resolve to go easy on her is easily broken. His slender fingers grip her thighs pushing her knees to her chest as he plunges his tongue in and out of her more forcefully. He feels her legs start to tremble as she continues to moan and mumble incoherently about how good it feels. This only adds to his fervour; two fingers take his tongue's place inside her slit and his tongue moves over to suck on her clit. That does it for Y/N. Her head drops back on the bed and her back arches against it as she reaches a toe-curling orgasm. Yoongi removes his fingers but not his tongue, simply slowing its movement instead, in order to prolong her pleasure. Y/N rides out her high humming in satisfaction before giving his hair another slight tug to let him know she's done.

A dazed smile appears on her lips when Yoongi lifts his head and locks eyes with her. "Good girl. Such a good girl for me", he praises her with a half-smile, half-smirk squeezing her thighs softly. His sturdy body then moves up to press against her own bringing them face to face. She simply stares at him too breathless to voice her own thoughts. Even more so when he kisses her deeply letting her taste herself on his tongue as he swipes it over her own. Y/N moans in his mouth, desperately wanting to reciprocate the pleasure she just experienced. Getting more daring, she sucks on his tongue lowering her hands towards his clothed erection. Yoongi won't deny that he's been feeling his cock straining in his jeans all while eating her out. When he notices her getting more daring, he pulls away from the kiss and casts his gaze down to the sight of her nimble fingers fumbling with his zipper. "Too eager, aren't we now, sweetheart?", Yoongi teases her slightly biting onto his lip while he waits for her next move. "I want to pleasure you too, Yoongi", Y/N states confidently, her words all the more fuelling his lust for her.

His hand joins hers to remove his jeans and he hastily kicks them off along with his briefs. Hardly does his erection make its appearance before Y/N's hands are touching it, feeling his hard cock up and down eagerly. Yoongi groans from the pleasure he's suddenly receiving, burying his face in her neck and sloppily sucking on it while he lets her do what she wants with him. A small whimper is all Y/N allows herself to release, her mind now set on only pleasuring him. Her thumb swipes across the tip of his cock smearing his arousal all over the head, before she resumes to vertically stroking his cock. "Ff-fuck Y/N, keep going", Yoongi grumbles under his ragged breath, his hands gripping the sheets on its side of her body as he hovers over her. She glances up at him with a satisfied smile, only now noticing how straining his position appears to be. Using her other hand, Y/N grasps Yoongi's shoulder firmly, pushing him to the side and making him lie down on his back. Her other hand keeps working on his cock, as she moves to straddle his legs, "Much better", she comments earning a simple nod from Yoongi as he lets out a deep breath, visibly relaxed and now more open to the pleasure he's receiving. Y/N slightly tightens her grip around his slim girth and moves her hand more swiftly on his long length. Shivers travel through her entire body, almost making her halt her movements, when she hears him let out a low moan. "Dammit Y/N", Yoongi hisses with his jaw clenched, abruptly lifting his torso and grabbing the girl by her hips. His lips find hers in a fervent kiss whilst she continues to stroke his cock.

"Y/N, I need you to answer me something...", a panting Yoongi murmurs against her lips placing his hand on top of her own to halt her actions. "Are we going to go all the way or...?", he trails off looking her straight in the eyes with a serious expression. Y/N glances down at his cock, erect in her hold between them, raising Yoongi’s doubts of whether she actually wants to do this with him or not. He deems his concerns as justified when he sees her lift herself off of his lap, drawing away from him. A deep frown settles on his lips in disappointment until he realises that she's settling herself beside him; lying down on her back and opening her legs for him. Once again, Yoongi erases all of his inhibitions - hastily taking out a condom from the drawer of his bedside table and eagerly moving to place himself between her legs after having put it on. "Are you sure about this, sweetheart?", he asks for her permission once again, gently cupping the outer side of her thighs. "Yes, I'm sure Yoongi. I want this, so don't hold back", she answers him urging him to go on with a roll of her hips towards his awaiting cock. That's the last consent Yoongi is going to take tonight...

Keeping one of his hands on her thigh, he uses the other to guide his cock to where she needs him most, entering her with a slow push. A whine slips past her now parted lips, drawing his attention. Yoongi focuses his gaze on her, drinking in the sight of her beautiful face twisted in pleasure, before moving his hips until his whole cock is buried deep inside her. He watches as she squirms and whimpers under him, wrapping her legs around him and pulling his body close. Her soft skin is burning hot against his with each one of his languid moves and her breathless moans sound melodic to his ears. As his rhythm accelerates, the sound of the raw contact between their bare flesh acts like the bass line to a song, providing him all the more satisfaction. His ears pick up on the moment her breath becomes more shallow, immediately knowing that she's close to coming undone. So, Yoongi leans in to Y/N’s ear urging her in a whisper, "Cum around me, sweetheart". It's like he flipped a switch in her because in that exact moment, he feels her walls tightening around his cock as she cums, granting him his own orgasm as well.

Normally, if this was just a hook-up, Yoongi would already be lying on his back and lighting up a cigar while watching the random chick put her clothes back on to depart. With Y/N it's different, though. After disposing of the condom, when Yoongi lies on his back, he doesn’t reach for his pack of cigars - instead, he reaches for her; pulling her body close to him as he hugs her waist. Closing his eyes, he relishes in the rhythm of her trying to steady her breath and the tuneful, satisfied hum that follows after she snuggles up to his side.

It is then that Yoongi realises that having sex with her feels the same as making music. And damn, he fully enjoys doing both.

[onyourhyuck]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐏 | L.JN | PART ONE

— Prologue: “Holy shit i have a MAN THING.”

— Summary: Kim Gauel is your typical smart girl who doesn’t mess about and Lee Jeno is your typical hot sports player on the hockey team. One night their bodies swap and are forced to be each other.

— Genre: SMUT SMUT DNI. SERIES. Crack comedy(?) with romance. Body Swap trope. Swapping identities trope. Bickering to lovers. Coming Of Age. Dirty jokes incoming. Jeno is a fucking horny ball of fire. Gauel is a good girl type meanwhile Jeno is your typical frat into sports with actual personality.

— Notes: I love identity swapping trope with comedy.

— Tag List: @baehaechannie @devinitysann @toroufriteh

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When Gauel thought about renting a house with a bunch of roommates she didn’t really think it would be a bunch of losers who are guys.

Every Wednesday night they open up the tv and have a whole gaming night until freaking midnight or sometimes past midnight until the sunlight comes up.

She is currently trying to study so it’s not very helping hearing screaming guys at each other.

Trotting out of the bedroom Gauel encounters a heinous sight of football obsessed boys with another gaming obsession to add on to their life bucket list. These types of people have the lowest ambitions and she hates to admit it, they don’t have anything going for them in her eyes they might be the low scum of the barrel but nonetheless the only sole reason as to why she is currently living under one roof with them is because they split the rent up.

It makes the situation easier and more adorable to split the high rent together into eight sections. Nonetheless Gauel not only feels like a freaking outcast now, she feels like she’s about to live through a nightmare now.

She steps in front of the tv causing the boys to combust loud groans complaining. “Come on move out my way my freaking Mario kart will become tenth place!” The blonde boy with a strong jawline and piercing black eyes, that would be Lee Jeno. The hockey star playing and an absolute menace on the high school team.

Jeno and Gauel never see eye to eye and whenever they talk it’s usually a bunch of misshaping insults thrown at one another.

They come from such different backgrounds it’s like comparing two different universes together. Gauel came from practically nothing with a single father who works hard labour fishing jobs and goes on sea explorations leaving his daughter to look after herself.

Meanwhile Jeno comes from a very rich part of Incheon where his father invests in truck companies and actually owns the most used truck company in Korea right now.

The young girl pushed her glasses on the bridge as she stands in front of the screen. “Can you guys keep your voices down? Seriously some of us are trying to pass our history test tomorrow.”

On the side a boy with black hair and a very noticeable accent. “Yeah — that someone being only you in this world.”

Gauel glares when the boys collectively laugh finding Mark’s side comment hilariously true. Which it is but that was no need to invalid her freaking complaint.

“Ha ha very funny.” She dryly replied and Jeno smirks widely checking her up and down. Now noticing the attire of what Gauel wore it was a simple pairs of shorts and a tank top which reveals enough cleavage and the sheer thin looking legs.

He whistles looking down. “You wouldn’t mind giving us a little twirl if you’re going to stand there looking pretty,” he soft leans adding. “Right?”

Gauel forms a display series of disgust and anger on her beautiful face as she wore the glasses reflecting the expression quite well. “You’re disgusting.” She spat turning around to leave going back inside the room.

The boys collect their laughter again together she can hear their voices finding this so amusing to see how reactive she became.

Donghyuck exclaims. “Good one Jen!” Renjun chuckles. “I’m still surprised she hasn’t kicked us out yet.” The Chinese boy with lavish split dye hair with the bottom being blonde spoke.

“Ehh. She was desperate and she knows we are loaded so who wouldn’t? On the plus side now we can party as much as we want without our parents being on our asses.”

Chenle whistles grabbing the remote controller of the Mario kart they were playing for hours now. “Just saying. If you’re not going to hit that soon, I might.” He retorts mentioning an emphasis on Gauel’s door as he widely smirks.

Donghyuck widens his eyes wowing again. “What no way?” He screams a little unable to contain the shocking truth from his friend. He leans whispering to Chenle. “You mean HER?”

He gave a strong nod smirking at the thought of actually hooking up with the smartest girl in their high school who’s known for a strict ‘no dating policy’ considering she puts on more focus on the studies than actual socialising or having fun per say. To have a popular boy want to actually do things with her was a surprise — but to have Zhong Chenle say that? Geez his friends were bewildering.

Jeno frowns. “I don’t know what you see exactly in her Zhong. I mean let me get this straight.” Turning around the blonde boy faces his friend with a serious expression unable to shake the idea even out. “You’re wanting to sleep with Kim Gauel the girl who’s never kissed a guy probably in her entire freaking life, only knows how to study and become a teacher’s pet — and has no friends. At all.”

“And she doesn’t even look that good!” Jeno shrugs not quite getting on the couch yet but still moving a lot.

Chenle cockily responds shaking his eyebrows in pleasure. “The innocent and smart ones are the way to go.”

“Trust me boys on this one.” Chenle said convincingly.

Donghyuck blurts out. “As long as it’s not Jaemin’s type in girls I think you’re good on my part.” The boy looks over to him with a side-glare enough to burn a hole into Donghyuck. “Elaborate on what my type exactly is?”

“Whores with chlamydia.” He says with a fake smile. Jaemin the one with a side part on the hair gets up rolling up the sleeve to the shirt as he darkly exhales. “Yah Lee Donghyuck.”

“Your type isn’t any better. You’re the one who slept with a woman over the age fifty.” Jaemin smartly puts out causing Donghyuck and him to play punch each other and near-strangle themselves on the floor.

Jeno laughs watching his friends fight knowing they will make up in a bit or two only you had to wait it out to see their stupid faces come together once more. Mark taps on Jeno’s shoulder as he would point the daggers to the door opening when looking over Jeno saw the young girl coming out going to the bathroom with a towel in arm and a bunch of products in the other.

Mark smirks. “You can’t deny she has a cute face.” He said trailing as Gauel was no longer in the frame.

“Cute face but nothing going underneath.” Jeno said in a matter of insulting her as he looks away. “And not my type at all. I prefer — sexy girls. You know like Kim Jennie in class A3.”

“There’s nothing in this world that would make me feel anything for that annoying nerd.”

‘And there’s nothing that will make me love you, Lee Jeno.’ Gauel thought with determination with an ear to the door eavesdropping on the conversation.

‘They’re just a bunch of womanisers.’

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A new arrives just like any other but leaves a straining taste on the tongue surfacing soon to reality when waking up from the deep slumber in depths that felt like a heavenly surge dream but now deforms to a long lasting images of hell.

Rolling off the bed Gauel walks out of her bedroom groaning with half asleep eyes barely opening, only seeing blurriness and using hands to move around to get inside the bathroom.

And when she did she sat on the toilet sliding off the pyjama shorts and rubs the eyes with the palm groaning once again. “God I hate mornings.” She said reaching the toilet paper but once she did.

The legs spreading a little open she soon realised who she was. Gauel looks around gasping letting the toilet paper drop rolling on the ground completely leaving a trail of white toilet paper in a circular motion. She shakily looks in between the legs to see well something that shouldn’t even be logical possible —

A man thing, was all that came into her head as she stood up going to the mirror to check who’s identity it was.

She stood being Lee Jeno.

“Holy shit i have a MAN THING!”

But the minute she yelled out having a voice deeper octaves than before it sounded exactly like Jeno — it’s like SHE WAS Lee Jeno and no longer the girl she was before.

The bathroom door re-opens and she saw her own body now standing that has left her own very room shockingly watching Gauel with widen eyes pointing at her own chest.

“Holy mother-of-God I have TITS WOWSA!”

She glares shouting in absolute disbelief and shock to see what was happening; they swapped bodies.

They swapped lives out of nowhere, out of any triggering factor that could be causing this to happen.

Jeno was in her body and Gauel was in his body.

However the boy now stuck in a girl body was fondling the breasts in amazement he had widen eyes of fascination as he exclaims trailing a bunch of ‘Whoas’ and ‘Wows’ enough to irritate Gauel and come forward pointing at him.

“Yah don’t touch my breasts like that!” Gauel yells out reaching over to smack his hands off her own precious body.

Jeno looks down at Gauel seeing the shorts she wore that belongs to his a very vibrant bump on the crotch and he croaks out teasingly adding seeing one eyebrow wiggle.

“Oh look at you,” the blonde boy starts. “Something for you excited this morning or what?”

Gauel was confused what he meant but when seeing the boy’s eyes go down to the crotch area she hesitantly looking down puts up her palms on the crotch in panic rushing to her face.

“I- w-what is happening why are you getting hard?” Gauel fumbles upon the sentences beginning to stutter out and Jeno begins to smirk forward. “Oh no not me. You are getting hard.” He’d correct matter of factly.

“Why… Why is this happening to us. Why are you in my body? What is happening this can’t be real.” Gauel grabs her own head as she looks in the mirror finding this to be quite figuratively fucking impossible.

Jeno on the other hand turns around whistling. “I have no idea but honestly i did always wonder how it feels to be a girl.”

She glares pointing out. “I bet it’s your fault we are like this now! What have you done to me.”

“I didn’t do anything! I wouldn’t even want to be you if I wanted to be a girl I would’ve picked someone with a bigger ass and tits just saying.”

Gauel never felt so traumatised but as well as embarrassed and insulted at once it felt like a complete game loss to her and now Lee freaking Jeno has to be and act like her until they can figure out how to solve this voodoo mystery problem that’s going to absolutely be the end of her.

Another door opens causing them both to turn around and look at a boy coming in to use the bathroom but stops when they saw them.

Jisung’s ruffled up hair sideways he looks at them sleepily like he suddenly just woke up from a dream.

“What are you two doing here? Get out if you’re not using it.” He said going in.

Gauel begins to push Jeno and Jisung out now saying a repeating ‘No, No, No, No not yet’ causing the boys to be left shocked and behind the door as Gauel grabs the doorknob.

“I haven’t done my skin care routine yet.” She says seriously. This was her routine she has to continue or else it will damage her sensitive skin.

Jisung furrows at her. “Hyung you don’t have a skin care routine. The only routine you have is take a shower and brush your teeth in the morning.” It was odd to see his friend suddenly fall into a random pool of moisture and cleansing.

Jeno couldn’t help but mentally slap himself because she totally forgot she wasn’t in her own body — she was in fact IN HIS body now.

His friend is confused when the door slaps and he rubs the back of his head letting the hair run through the fingertips as his gaze turns to Jeno.

He awkwardly didn’t say anything because he usually doesn’t speak to Gauel, and she doesn’t usually speak to him either he was one of the quiet ones who did his own thing.

“Yo bro mind giving me back the tee shirt you owe me?”

He spoke freely because he knew that Jisung has his own shirt but he totally slipped out disregarding the fact that he’s a woman now and not himself which leaves him staring at a confused and broken down Jisung watching in fear.

What shirt does he own a girl?

“Uh what?” Jisung said back.

“Uhm never mind don’t… don’t worry about it… bro.” Jeno slowly trails look away and then turns around suddenly. “Wait,”

Jisung stops going back to stare at the girl who was scaring the living heck out of him.

Jeno warily questions.

“Why are you speaking informally to me?”

The taller boy with a younger baby face bows his head apologetically unknowingly he never once asked about her age and now he was scared. He assumed she was younger or at least similar age but apparently not?

“Oh… sorry… Noona.” Jisung added awkwardly.

“Ahuh better freaking be.” Jeno arrogantly said crossing arms grumpily.

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@onyourhyuck please refer from translating and copyrighting my work thank youu! Please reblog and follow me for more updates it helps a girl out .

[valya-kingoftherats]

Fair Fight

Your back hits the mat with a muffled thud, and you swear for a second you can't breathe. Doesn't matter. You are back on your feet quicker than any human would have any right to be. Stand up. Square your shoulders. Feet apart but not too much. Ready for her.

"Again." You growl. Chest heaving with every breath. You aren't giving up. You can't.

She doesn't understand that when you fight her, you're fighting for your life.

"As much as I'd love to keep kicking your ass," stupid smug smile. This time, you are going to wipe it clean off her face. "Maybe it's time you took a break?"

The only reason she's doing any better off than you is because she's won every round today. Every. Single. One. Unacceptable. Pathetic. You need to do better. Have to do better.

You can't read her. Stupid static head that feels no different from them once it gets to trading blows. You need to be able to take her in a fair fight. Then maybe you'll stand a chance if the worst really does happen.

"Sounds like someone's looking for excuses to call it a day." You grin as you taunt her. She won't say no, she won't quit either. "Starting to show your age, Marshal? Thinking about retirement?"

"Given the current score, I'd say I'm not the one who should be looking into retirement." Got her. She's back on the mat and back in position. This time, you won't mess up.

"Esta vez vas a caer, idiota." You think you have got to have the advantage this time. Just because you've lost doesn't mean you never landed any good hits. Unlike you, she must be hurting some.

It's an unfair advantage, but for now, you'll take it.

You may have taught yourself how to fight, but you did a damn good job of it as far as you're concerned. Focus. Stay on the defensive initially. Figure out the normal way how she moves and what her tells for attacks are. It's simple. You can do that.

You dodge the first punch, and you're pretty sure she isn't putting in as much force with her right side. Good. That you can work with. Spin around quicker than she can regain herself and deliver a kick to the back of her shins. She doesn't fall.

Dammit.

She isn't talking anymore. No quips. No teasing. Both of you are solely focused on the fight. Blow for blow. Dodging and countering. When it gets like this, you don't, can't, see her. Just static that's no different from back at the Farm. Can't tell her from them. Spar from genuine fight. It gets hard to sort out the difference and still stay focused enough to remember where you are.

She's back around, and you take a swing only for her to seize your arm and yank you forward. Not so fast. Dead weight. You allow it, and the lack of resistance sends her off balance. The jab to her shoulder lands without a hitch.

See? You are capable. No doubt. Show them who's the weak one. Good for nothing but sitting all dolled up in some stuffy room gathering intel. Fuck that.

They never saw your potential.

You almost miss how her weight shifts. Right foot coming forward, oh so subtly. Not for you, though. You catch the kick coming a mile away and make yourself scarce. You can't keep from smiling. You finally did it.

This round is yours.

You know to lead with your non-dominant foot. Not to telegraph your every move. Just one kick. One to her chest is all you need, you can feel it. You'll have won. Beaten the horrible static, no powers needed.

And it lands. Beautifully. You relish the 'huff' that comes out of her as it connects. Finally. It's all you. No one can touch you. You'll stop them all. Never ag—

"¡Mierda!" Wind rushes by you. She's still quicker than you'd given her credit for. More agile. She took you by the leg and took you down with her. No, not just that. She used you to break her fall. Wind knocked out of you, you try to beat back the surge of panic because you can't breathe for real this time.

"Guess this means I won again." And she's right. She has you pinned. Again.

"Fuck!! Why can't I beat you!? ¡¿Qué carajo me pasa?!" You don't get it? Are you that reliant on being one step ahead? Reading your opponent's every move? Crutches. Too dependant. You need to do better.

You have enough strength to less then gently shove Julia off of you. Back on your feet. Nails digging deep into your palms to beat back the pinpricks of tears starting up in the corners of your eyes. Insult to injury. Pathetic.

"Valya, you good? It's just a sparing match." She's up on her feet and only a few paces behind. "No te tomes las cosas tan en serio."

Hands on you, and you flinch away from invisible touches before you realize you shouldn't do that. Breaths going from exhausted ragged to fearful rapid all too quickly.

She's going to question you about that later. You're sure of it. But she feels like them, and you can't help but react accordingly. Self-preservation. Learned responses.

More hands, but these ones have a presence to them. Tugging you off the mat and away from Julia. "Call it a day. I don't feel like dragging the two of you idiots to the infirmary." Themmy snickers, but you know they're serious.

More quietly, they add, "Hey, you're okay. Whoever you thought you were fighting, they aren't here." They sit down on the bench, and you slump down on the floor between their legs. Relax as they lazily drape themself over you, chin on your head and arms around your shoulders. This is okay. Safe.

You watch as Julia comes to sit on the floor a little ways in front of you. As she takes a pull from her bottle of whatever sports drink she's currently endorsing. That she swears up and down is good, but you're well aware of the way her eyes keep darting to your own bottle of regular water.

You know she'll drink it all in one go, so you down a little more than you really need to before tossing the bottle at her. Maybe with a little more force than needed, but you're still sore from the repeated training failures.

She gulps it down far too fast for someone whose own drink is 'refreshing' and 'good for you.'

You ease up more as Julia and Themmy bicker back and forth about if it's the winner or loser of the day that buys the drinks tonight. Themmy is still a warm presence on top of you, Julia's smile is bright and warm, and she's talking to them, but her eyes are on you.

You can relax. This is your life now. Has been for years. You're okay and need to remember that. Enjoy spending time with your friends.

And you know for certain that next time you'll win the training match.

[living-lucid-dream]

Blind Pico AU (part four?!?)

Part One

Previous

Next

Pico startles awake from a late afternoon nap. At first he can't figure out why he is so on edge, and then he realizes: somebody is in his house and it is definitely NOT Boyfriend. (Or at least, not unless Boyfriend suddenly decided to start wearing hard-sole dress shoes, which yeah, that'll be the day.) The person is approaching his bedroom, so he does the only reasonable and rational thing he can: he grabs his emergency gun from under his pillow and holds it at the ready.

The footsteps reach his door--and then a familiar voice is giggling, "Wow, for real, Pico?"

Pico quickly lowers his gun, mildly embarrassed that he forgot Girlfriend was coming over to stay with him while Boyfriend was prepping for another concert. He chastises her for "sneaking up on him", ending with "I could have fucking shot you!"

Girlfriend laughs at him again and says, "Yeah, sure. Except you were pointing the gun at your closet, you silly goober." She goes on remind him it's time for his eyedrops and asks him what he wants for lunch. ("I can make you a peanut butter sandwich or a can of Spaghetti-o's because that's all I know how to make. Or we can do DoorDash. Yeah, let's do DoorDash. What sounds good to you?")

Pico mumbles that she can order whatever she wants; he'll just have whatever she's having. Girlfriend lets out a happy little squeal and tells him not to worry, she knows just the thing~

While Girlfriend is busy ordering up some lunch (It's McDonald's. Pico already knows that there's no way it's not McDonald's), Pico gets dressed for the day. He has a serious struggle with getting his lower half dressed but he decides there is no way in hell he going to ask Girlfriend to help him. (The last time Boyfriend "helped", he ended up with his pants on backward and NO underwear. Boyfriend insists none of this was intentional. Pico has his doubts).

After getting dressed, Pico comes out of his room. Girlfriend starts to put his eyedrops in and asks him why he didn't ask her for help. He tells her "Girlfriend, I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself." She tells him she knows that...but his outfit clashes.

He feels his face getting hot (because he didn't choose clashing colors on purpose but it's not like he can use the goddamn color wheel to coordinate his wardrobe and seriously, isn't that the least of his worries?). He snarls, "Who cares? Not like I can see it anyway."

She says, "Well, I can and I'm not looking at that shit all day." Then she drags him back to his room and helps him pick out an acceptable color combination.

While Pico is changing his shirt, Girlfriend remarks that they should arrange his clothes by color so he doesn't have this issue later. ("That's what I do and it's never failed me!")

At first, Pico is surprised that GF came up with such a reasonable idea. Then he remembers: "Wait. Don't you only ever wear red?"

"Yeah, what's your point?"

Pico decides to just bite his tongue, even as Girlfriend exclaims, "Wow, it's going to take WAY longer to do your wardrobe than mine!"

They end up making quite the project of it, with Girlfriend bringing their lunch (which is indeed McDonald's) back to Pico's room so they can work while they eat. Pico decides to organize everything by ROY G BIV, then by style, and then by fabric type.

As they work, Girlfriend is surprised to find a nice suit in the back of Pico's closet. She says she's disappointed that she and Boyfriend never get to see him wear it because she is absolutely sure he looks HOT AS FUCK. Caught off guard by her assertion, Pico mumbles that it was just some cheap thing he had to get for one of his "jobs" and did she seriously just mean to say "hot as fuck?"

Girlfriend laughs and says, "Oh, sorry; I meant SEXY AS SHIT!"

Pico has no idea what to do with this revelation. (Is she flirting with me? Should I tell her to stop? But what if she's NOT flirting and I sound like an asshole who assumes being nice is the same as "I want to have wild athletic sex with you right this very moment?" Jesus, first Boyfriend and now this....)

Girlfriend seems to notice Pico's discomfort. She quickly amends, "Seriously, though, you should think about wearing it sometime."

Pico tells her that he'll think about it, all right. Then he says, "Now let's get started on the sock drawer--and since I know you're going to tell Boyfriend that's where I keep my weed, tell him he'd better not steal any of it because I know EXACTLY how much I have in there at any given time!"

Much later, Boyfriend returns to Pico's apartment to find the two of them just finishing arranging his shoes. Girlfriend rushes over to him, almost knocking over a carton of Chinese food on the way. (They ordered dinner at some point during their project and Pico insisted on "anything BUT McDonald's." He could practically HEAR Girlfriend pouting, so he'd told her "Look, I like McDonald's as much as the next guy, but if I eat one more burger my sweat is literally going to turn into fryer grease.")

Boyfriend is riding high on another successful performance. "They were chanting my name at the end of my set--the whole crowd! Hell, they were calling for an encore!"

Girlfriend jumps into his arms and showers him with kisses. He then admits that he didn't actually get to do an encore ("apparently, they don't let opening acts do them. But the crowd wanted it!"). She gives him another kiss and says, "And how could they not?"

Pico clears his throat and says, "Yeah. Congrats, man."

Boyfriend and Girlfriend go quiet for a moment. Then Girlfriend says, "Babe, I think it's time to tell him."

Pico says, "What, the thing you two have been so cagey about lately?"

Boyfriend says, "Yes, that!" and agrees with Girlfriend that now is the time.

"OK," Pico says. "Spill it."

They then proceed to tell Pico that he means more to both of them than he knows; that Boyfriend never really stopped caring for him and that Girlfriend's feelings have grown to the point that they can't be ignored. ("It was seeing you keeping us safe while Boyfriend was battling that military guy...that...Tank Man! I may be a demon, but you made one hell of a savior!")

Pico asks them what, exactly, they are saying.

Boyfriend says, "We're saying we both wanna jump your bones!"

Girlfriend laughs as Pico sputters and turns red. "Well, yeah, we ARE saying that. But we're ALSO saying we love you and we want you to be with us and we really, really hope you want to be with both of us, too!"

Pico seems to take a moment to work through this in his head. "So...we would all be together...like, sharing each other?"

Boyfriend says, "Yeah, pretty much exactly like that!"

"And you're both OK with this?"

Boyfriend and Girlfriend assure him that they are.

Pico takes a moment to reflect, realizing that yes, he really does care about these two idiots far more than he could have thought possible. He realizes that he liked having Boyfriend holding him when he needed to be held and that he'd really felt something when Girlfriend was ribbing him over how he might look in a suit. So he takes a deep breath and says: "OK."

Boyfriend and Girlfriend both cheer and he can hear the two of them jumping up and down like a couple of morons. He lets them have their moment before saying, "So...now what?"

Girlfriend says, "Well, now I have to go home. Mom and Daddy are going to be expecting me to be home when they get back from the concert and they will freak out if I'm not there. But--" and here she squeezes both of Pico's hands in her own while her voice gains a sultry edge "--I think you two should take the rest of the night to...reacquaint yourselves!"

Pico's response is to basically go "Huh WHAA?" to which she absolutely cackles. She swoops in to give him a quick peck on the lips, gives the same to Boyfriend, and bids them both farewell.

Left alone with Boyfriend, Pico is suddenly nervous. Boyfriend assures him, "We don't have to do anything if you aren't ready, but if you are...."

Pico feels like his brain is broken. Words are not happening right now. He just stammers out, "I...dunno...?"

Boyfriend tells him that's fine and suggests they watch a movie together. Pico snaps out of it enough to say, "Hate to break it to you, Bee, but I don't think movies are going to be as fun for me as they used to be."

"Well, we'll pick one where you can just listen then!"

Pico decides that this is acceptable. They start the movie sitting together on the couch, Boyfriend holding Pico. After some time, they do begin to kiss...which turns into making out...which seems as though it might turn into something more until Pico's incision starts to hurt.

Boyfriend quickly leaves off, not wanting to hurt Pico. Pico tells him he's fine but he's not really sure he's ready to go that far yet. Pico then tries to apologize, but Boyfriend brushes it off, saying there's no need to apologize and he's more than willing to take his time. They end up dozing off on the couch together.

As they sleep, Pico's cell phone receives a text message from Darnell. The text reads: "Bruh, are you OK? Have you seen this shit?" Attached is a movie file labeled "Carrot Top".....

~

Uh...this piece ended up WAY longer than I intended it to be. My "summaries" are beginning to become closer and closer to "actual proper story-writing" and it is completely unintentional. Also on a side note: the scene between Pico and Boyfriend was much more detailed (and consequently, somewhat...erm...steamier), but I wasn't sure it was appropriate to include in a post labeled "For Everyone." If I ever DO turn this into a proper fic, that scene WILL be included! More coming soon!

[jazzybot4]

Ok so I've had a Think about this and I've got another snippet:

So the thing you gotta understand is that my Great-Great-Aunt was one of the most miserable people I've ever known. She hated most people for the crime of being people, she disliked her entire family, she barely contacted any of us for anything outside of graduations, weddings, and afternoon tea once a decade. I spoke with her once when I was ten, and then again at my moms funeral, where she didn't say anything to anyone else but me.

We were all convinced that she'd die and that her house would get foreclosed because she wouldn't write a will. Except she didn't die and her house foreclosed. She died, and left everything to me. For some WILD fucking reason, she thought that I was the one member of the family that wouldn't just leave her house vacant and sell off her assets to make a quick buck.

She's mostly right. It's hard to find work in this economy, since most jobs require so much and will pay you so little. I'm disabled too, because I've got the neurospicy brain that likes to freak out throw up slam all the alarms panic when my boss abuses me. I'd been coming up on the end of my apartment lease and wasn't going to be able to renew it.

Then a Private Eye shows up where I worked at the time and tells me that he's been looking for me for months. Fair, I guess, since I cut ties with my fathers family when I was seventeen by dint of just packing up my little rucksack and hopping a train to anywhere.

So I wound up taking a train to the City, and she didn't own a house. She owned an entire city block, and I did in fact spend some time in the hotel atrium hyperventilating. There was the hotel, that she lived in, there was an apartment building that she owned, and then there was the skyscraper on the other half of the block, seventy stories and a fucking skyline landmark. That I owned now.

Because her father had built all of this.

The hotel was built in the '10s when her father bought the block. He ran the hotel, but she closed it in the '70s when he died, and the whole place was converted into something like an apartment block? but not? It was a 300 room hotel once upon a time, but over the years the lower floors had been renovated for businesses and the upper floors were, to be honest, her HOARD.

I would not be surprised if this woman was a dragon. She had SO MUCH stuff. This is WILD to me, since it wasn't even gross layered hoarder stuff. She had furniture, she had each room done up in a different style with different things. She had a whole six hotel room spaces dedicated to being a library. She had thousands of dresses and bolts of fabric and other outfits, she had rooms dedicated to her jewelry collection, she had an entire display set of the strange stones and fossils she must have been given. It was a whole fucking museum.

The ground floor was set up to hold businesses. There was one tax prep company in the corner lot, there was a boutique shoe store between that and the end businesses, and the one business in the alley was vacant. It looked like it had been set up like an industrial kitchen at some point, gleaming appliances and tables and ovens, but dusty as shit from being essentially abandoned for five years.

It wasn't a home, not quite, but it was in my name as the sole owner and being managed by several different companies, because she'd never incorporated her assets, these were all private. The lawyers had been sympathetic and also very good at making sure I couldn't do something stupid with all of it.

I'm not sure why she'd leave this to me. There's a whole office I haven't gone through yet and I don't know if I'm going to find answers there or not. Probably not considering she was a closed-off private person.

Either way, I spent a solid hour panicking in the atrium, then I went and walked the block, and then I ended up in the industrial kitchen that was probably a 'ghost kitchen'. It had a walk up window in the alley, it had a little front space that was closed off and the windows papered over, and more importantly it had the counter space to do something useful.

It took me two days to clean the place, but that was two days that I wasn't panicking. It took me another three days before I could go into the office my great-great-aunt had left behind, and so I did the one thing I was good at and knew would be productive.

I went to the store, bought fifty pounds of flour and other shit, and I proceeded to bake enough bread to tire myself out enough to sleep. I still slept in my school bus conversion in the parking garage, because the idea of sleeping upstairs in one of those ostentatious rooms terrified me. Not that I was sleeping reasonable hours, mind you.

That's how the bakery started, though. I was at the window listening to traffic while the bread rose for my latest batch, and someone knocked on the window scaring the everloving fuck out of me.

She was very drunk, very sweet, and she paid cash for a loaf of bread to share with her girlfriends, all of them in pretty glittering dresses and clearly drunk and having a good time. I gave them two loaves, split and buttered, and they shrieked as only drunk girls do. I made all of them drink a bottle of water each too, and they wandered off in a perfumed cloud of bread-gorged joy.

One of them posted on Instagram and the next day at two AM I had a line. Which was useful really, considering I had fifty loaves of bread and nowhere near enough room to eat them all myself, and it made them all happy.

So, that's how it started. With me inheriting a fortune I couldn't comprehend or quantify, and a truly enormous amount of stress baking that turned out to be what the locals wanted to have. It wasn't fancy, wasn't posh, wasn't expensive, it was just good bread bullied into softness and served without a license.

It was incredibly human, and that's why I think the 3 am customers started coming by too. The witching hours in the City are just as active as the daytime hours, and people will always want bread. It didn't matter if they were human or not. At that point I was so exhausted and stressed out that I didn't give a fuck anymore, I just sold them bread.

I think they also started coming by because I would take anything for payment, and didn't care much about what it was so long as the currency value was countable or convertible. It also helped that it was so human that it didn't fuck with whatever and whoever they were, so the food was always safe to eat, since it wasn't really barter as much as it was a fair exchange.

I still have so much fucking bread. Every time I open a new door in the building I have a whole panic attack. Last week I opened one room and it was full to bursting with an entire Broadway Shows original costumes. They're out at the appraisers now and I've got no idea what to do with them next, but I do know that they probably belong in a museum.

So long as I keep making bread, I can get through the rest of this shit. Taking out my frustrations on dough is a lot safer and a lot kinder than taking it out on the memory of a woman nobody in my family knew.

You run a Bakery, just a normal bakery, the only problem is that your customers at midnight to 6AM are mythical creatures who pay with gemstones and ancient gold and silver coins

[whyispotatoheadalreadytaken]

Response 1

Bourbon and Toulouse is fine. I feel like I’ve said this before so sorry if I’m repeating myself. I’ve said it so many times to so many people that I can’t remember who I’ve said it to. If I have to work more, it can’t be in mental health. It has to be a job I can walk away from that is super chill and straightforward. That’s the best part about BnT. I clock in, take orders, clean tables, and then clock out. Depending on whether I’m closing or not makes a difference in my responsibilities. I plan on working at BnT through the winter until Spring. There’s no way for me to keep a second job in the spring or summer because of the demand for music during that time. I’m not sacrificing music. I think I would rather eat ramen for four months if I had to. The nice part about gigs is that we usually get free food, so we can rely on those meals. The end goal of BnT is to get by…which is so sad because that isn’t really an end goal. It is to keep our heads above water and try to also save at the same time. I have some credit card debt from our last trip to Hawaii that I’m trying to pay off, so I don’t have to worry about paying on those and can just save. We will work mostly Fridays and Saturdays. I am also worried about burnout, but it is also not forever. If I could work 12-hour shifts 7 days a week for 6 months in a factory, I could do anything for a time. It hasn’t been an easy adjustment. My back has been so angry at the concrete floors. I was in so much pain after working the 12 hour shift on Friday, and I limped out of BnT, unable to drive home after being there for 6 hours. I curse Jill every time I experience lower back pain like that. Makes me wanna forward all of my chiropractic bills to her. We desperately need another car for so many reasons. We’re highly considering a tax ID for the band because we’re making money from it and could be claiming taxes. The sad thing would be that we would lose a portion of our income, but we could write off SO. MANY. THINGS. Like a car, for instance, because we need a better one to travel in that is reliable. I essentially kept our fingers crossed the last time we went to Paducah.

Yo, isn’t it crazy how normalized unpaid work is in America???? Like, you gotta learn how to do your job, and you gotta learn for free. All of my practicums during my senior year were unpaid positions. I’ll never forget having to do 19 credit hours, my practicum, working at the after-school program and guitar center on the weekends. If I can do that, I can also go to BnT for a few months, hahaha. It’s awful, though. Student teachers should be paid for that work. IT IS THE SAME WORK. I bitch about this alllllll the time hahaha Why on gods green earth do I make a third of what licensed clinical social workers make???? WE HAVE THE SAME JOB I JUST MEET WITH SOMEONE EVERY WEEK ABOUT IT UGGAHHHH. Sorry, just makes me scream internally every time I think about it. Sometimes externally.

Poor Zoë is only recently fully realizing how much she has sacrificed to personally attempt to keep the business afloat. For a long time, she was always like oh, it’s awesome 99% of the time when Karen isn’t in a mood. She’s now realizing that it’s been a lot more than 1% of the time, and the only reason Karen has had the business for so long is that she puts out all of the fires for herself. I dream about quitting and finding a new position. It’s hard, though, because I need to have at least 30 hours of clinical work, or my whole timeline gets all fucked up and dragged out even longer. I can’t even go back for my doctorate until I have my independent license, or I would already be back in school to prolong the student loans.

The music thing is so weird cuz I don’t wanna be famous. It would just be really nice to be successful and be able to maintain that as my sole income with something else I’m passionate about on the side, like advocacy work. I already attempt to do that through music anyway. Sustainability would be my dream. Traveling and playing music for people. The dream started when I started learning how to play guitar. One day, something just clicked inside me when I was learning how to play the live version of “I Hear Noises” by Tegan and Sara. It has three chords. That’s it. Just over and over, with a different rhythm for the chorus and a different chord for the bridge. Then I started learning the Mean Everything to Nothing by Manchester Orchestra from beginning to end. I thought it would be this crazy hard thing, and I was blown away by how simple it was, and that made no sense to me because it sounded complicated. I wrote a little bit about how Andy goes back and forth between his full band sound and his acoustic sound, and I became very enthralled by that concept. So, I started recording acoustic versions of various Tegan and Sara, Coldplay, and Snow Patrol songs on my brother's Macbook. And I was like, woah, I can do this with other people’s songs, so what is keeping me from writing my own??? Once I started writing, I couldn’t stop. Music always seemed too magical for me to be able to write my own, and then suddenly, I was creating magic. Getting to share that and receive positive responses just fueled the fire to keep going and see how far I get. Our geographical location is the biggest barrier to success in music. If you don’t do country or bluegrass in KY, no one really cares about you so it’s hard to break out. It’s all about making connections and networking. That was what Julien Baker told me when I met her. Make friends with everyone because you never know where those people will take you.

I feel like I’ve always dreamed of making a lasting change, which is why I wanted to be a therapist. If I can’t change the world, maybe I can change someone’s world? Maybe that will have a ripple effect? I think my depression and anxiety come down on me really hard when I feel like I’ve amounted to nothing. It took me so long to become a therapist, to begin with, and I’ve spent so much of my life just wishing I was dead. And I’m 30 now…unable to pay my bills…so stressed out and in survival mode for a lot of the time. I know I’ve made a positive difference in the lives of other people…at least, I hope I have. I just would have hoped I would be more successful than I am currently. Like, I never thought that life would be easy, but holy shit, why is it SO hard???? Surely it isn’t supposed to be this hard, right? I feel like our generation got handed the shittiest hand, and we’ve just been white knuckling through life since 9/11.

                  I am so glad that the thought of amounting to nothing isn’t something you’ve been worried about. I mean that too, that’s not sarcastic. Keeping it super simple is the way to go and the way to see it. If we’re doing something good with our lives and we are happy, that’s all we can do.

BROOOOOOO, I would have lost my absolute shit on that lifeguard if I had been there. YOU HAD ONE JOB. You literally had your baby in your arms like for the love of god HELP. That is so scary. Poor Rory was just being a kid not really knowing what he was getting himself into. I’m sure that was horrifying for you and also for him. I’m obviously so happy he’s alright.

My cousins came to visit for a summer when I was in 6th grade, and the youngest was such a brat. I could not handle her. I love my cousin who was my age. I got to see both of them the last time I was in Ireland. Lauren decided she didn’t care if she could swim; she was just gonna jump in the pool's deep end at the pavilion by the slide…which children are not supposed to be in any way because of the slide!!!!! She was something else, man, just defiant. Well, she jumped in and never came back up, and the lifeguard didn’t notice because he was watching the slide!!!!! And no one swims there!!!!! So, I jumped in after her and pulled her out of the water. So, when I was visiting, my Aunt Karen was like remember when Niamh saved you from drowning??? BRUH.

Praying Mantises are COOL, but they are aggressive, so you can’t get too close hahaha. There was one in the sensory garden last year that was longer than a pencil. That was horrifying, hahaha. They are awesome to have in your garden, though, because they kill caterpillars!!!!!

Bro Aiden and his croc charms for trump. Will literally never understand how people can still support that dude. Like, okay, republicans, be republican but why this guy???? I’m glad that he is kind to the babies. That is very nice and preferred.

Tabby is my new daddy 😭 broooooo. Is John doing any better now? Do those comments not bother him or motivate him to self-reflect on why his son would say things like that? Kids pick up on whether or not adults pay attention to them, especially their parents. I hope he can figure it all out. I have all the empathy in the world for struggles with mental health, but like he can do something about that.

The fact that kids will fight naps is so crazy to me. Like my brother in Christ, what I would give to go beddy-bye hahaha. Those toddler years are hard; learning how to process and communicate big emotions is hard for little people. Your parenting is solid. It takes a lot of practice for kids to regulate their emotions, but it eventually clicks for them. Having a supportive parent who can teach and model them those things is so important and so good on you, momma. I love that he’s telling those things to you. Has he gotten better about not being picked up when your back is in shambles? I remember you mentioning that he struggled with that and understanding why you couldn’t pick him up.

I can’t believe Jonah is gonna be one soon. That is so insane. I know he is an October baby, but I was unsure if he was the 13th or the 14th?

[grace-aline]

Why I think Bob Newby had to die (part 1: a postscript)

On being consumed by the abnormal

It's difficult to name our last glimpse of Bob because the Duffers love themselves a good flashback. The fact that Joyce has several concerning Bob could be a whole other post. I could fairly confidently put 'extremely veiled allusion to Bob/Bob flashback' on my Season 5 bingo card, let's put it that way.

What I'm talking about, though, is the last time we actually see Bob linearly, as opposed to a memory of him. I's not a very pleasant moment; he's being torn apart by Demodogs. I'll spare you the GIF, although I do think it's a striking shot and a masterclass in practical and visual effects, because anyone who is familiar with Season 2 has that bird's-eye view of his desiccated body burned into their retinas.

In my last post, I talked about Bob's thematic value to the Duffers. I argued that he is the perfect candidate for a transformation from someone achingly, comfortingly normal into something abnormal, corrupted by supernatural trauma.

But by the last time Bob is physically present in the show, ravenous Demodogs have taken things a step further. Bob's face is still recognisable, but the frozen, dumbstruck expression on it is horrible and new. Because in the end, the Upside Down doesn't just traumatise him; it literally consumes him. He actually becomes a part of it, sustaining the supernatural ecosystem feeding off his body.

Horrible, I know, but also true, I think.

The conclusion that Bob was actually, physically kind of absorbed by the Upside Down is a bit whacky, I know. But just stick with me here, I think I might be onto something.

Reason 1: Bob's disappearing act

First and foremost, it is actually strange that after that haunting final shot of his corpse, Bob is simply no more. No funeral, no grave, no photos, no belongings in Joyce's house for her to come across and cry over. Sure, his ghost haunts the show through flashbacks, drawings, even in a news report; in any way that isn't physical evidence of his existence.

And what's even weirder is that after Season 2, no character ever mentions him again. He literally never comes up again, he's never directly mentioned or indirectly referred to by another character. No one even says his name.

And I know they would've cleaned out the Lab after so many people died there in Season 2, but hell, Bob Newby's death is arguably the goriest death in the whole show; which is quite the mantle, considering how violent ST can get; but when Hopper and Joyce return to that exact spot a year later, there is not a single blood-stained tile or indication that someone had died a graphic, messy death there.

It's fucking weird, is what it is. The way that any physical, tangible manifestation of Bob is just wiped from the show.

(Almost as if the Upside Down had consumed him, you could say.)

Reason 2: It's happened before, and it's happened since

Way back in Season 1, whilst searching for Will, Eleven comes across the body of Barbara Holland. We see her again an episode later, when Hopper and Joyce are searching the Upside Down version of Hawkins Library for Will. In both scenes, and without going into too much gory detail, the grotesque state her body is in is confirmation that Barb is definitely dead.

Now, you could argue that from a purely cinematic perspective, the inclusion of Barb's body is designed solely for shock value; it serve to scare the audience a bit, to up the stakes and tension for surviving characters, and of course, to tug on the viewer's heartstrings. That bird's-eye shot of Bob does a similar job.

From an analytical perspective, though, the deteriorated state of Barb's corpse can be read as a kind of fatalistic symbolism. Barb was also literally consumed by the Upside Down. Her horrific postmortem reappearance makes her a convincing part of the scenery in an alternate dimension otherwise inhospitable to warm, familiar forms of life.

And she's not the only one. This happens just about every time there's a supernatural death in the show. Shocking, Upside Down-ified imagery of their corpse, then the disappearing act begins, rinse and repeat. When the supernatural gets you, it seems to keep you.

Still not convinced? After all, so far I've put forward circumstantial, educated guess work. Nothing concrete, nothing canonical. Yet.

Reason 3: What we know about Vecna/Henry Creel

Enter a villain who tells everyone the details of his masterplan before he kills them.

Fast forward to Season 4. We're introduced to the Mind Flayer's "five star general" Vecna, who is systematically terrorising and murdering the traumatised youth of Hawkins (one thing that Hawkins never seems to be deficient in.)

As it turns out, Vecna was always there, pulling the strings side-stage. A dominant force in the Upside Down's hivemind complex, it's implied that Vecna was aware of, and even somewhat responsible for all supernatural deaths in the show to date. Following the Hawkins Lab massacre, Vecna lets Eleven in on a rather morbid little secret: "With each life I took, I grew stronger. More powerful. They were becoming a part of me." The implication here is that Vecna kills, not only to "restore balance to a broken world", but to transform the lifeforce of the victim into energy. (A theory confirmed once again by Brenner's initial studies of Henry in The First Shadow, if I recall correctly.)

Vecna's powers allow him to tamper with, but not erase memory. As far as we know, Vecna has no interest in, and in any case no ability to remove the drawing of Bob Newby, Superhero from Joyce's fridge. Nor to prevent memories of TV dinners and Cheers from resurfacing every time Joyce finds herself alone on her couch after her boyfriend's death.

And yet. As we've established, Bob's physical imprint; his body, his name; is banished from the show post Season 2. Vecna may not be able to erase memories, but he can erase people. Because people seem to give him energy, power, and above all, a way to frighten and taunt the living.

In other words, Vecna couldn't leave it at permanent abnormality and a slap on the wrist for Bob Newby.

He had to die, to be consumed.

[violetsystems]

Lunch with my dad was borderline traumatic. Making me feel I'm going to lose a job if I don't update my wardrobe to all long sleeves. I knew him and his new wife hated my tattoos. But the implication was that the reason I wasn't employed for all these years was solely because of that. As if they were 'praying' for me to get this job and I shouldn't fuck it up because nobody would hire me otherwise. I wore a dress shirt and a tie to the zoom interview. I was kind wondering why he kept asking me if I had met anyone in person. I can't really talk too deeply about the job because of employee guidelines I'm trying to respect. But it isn't as conservative as my dad's view of religion. They didn't even bring it up at lunch as they were drinking beer in front of me. They don't even remember I quit drinking. He called after I texted him saying that he felt that he upset me and something was a little off about me. Then proceeded to give me the "old school" advice not to show off my tattoos because I would lose the job. He even prefaced it by saying "we have some people in our church that have tattoos and we are Missouri Synod." I don't belong to a church for precisely these reasons and I'm sure a lot of people I've talked to over the years are the same. A woman who works for my mother said she was criticized for her hairstyle because it was "too black" at a conservative church my dad belongs to. Ironically, my grandfather on that side was a minister in an all black church in a more liberal division of that faith. My father had said mysteriously before that I should work a warehouse job since I couldn't find work. And I didn't understand that he was projecting his distaste about the tattoos in terms of class. He kept saying "I don't know if I upset you because of the political talk." And I kept saying I don't really care about politics or arguing. But really I just realized nothing I can do will make him think I'm worth anything other than the child he had with his ex wife. Only God can fix that for him. And I don't think God really planned this out this way for his benefit and not mine. I know in the back of his head he was more worried about a surgery he has to have and projecting. But that doesn't excuse the last six months of him acting out and yelling. Don't know what to say other than write it out and forget about it. I'm sure his church is watching. And that's scary to think about. Add it to the roster of people keeping tabs on me I guess. I'm sure all the people around him are just worried about his money in the end. I spent all this time looking for a job so I wouldn't have to care about that. I did that out of love and I know it doesn't mean shit to him. That's the sad truth. Doesn't change the love part but it doesn't also make me feel good about it. But it does make me who I am. Not him.

[astraves]

Session in Ink - Means

A week and some days, Ouvedhe said.

Let yourself rest for a week and some days, and we’ll come back to this.

A week and some days have passed, and here I sit again, this time with fewer guards, though I’m sure there’s a brigade waiting for me down in his lobby.

Salivating.

The Duskwatch, and really the whole of the Sanctum of Order, took quite a hit after the revolution. They were, after all, the bulk of the force opposing us. And it was their job - and your job, after ten thousand years or so, becomes the purpose of your life.

Why you draw breath. Why you bother to eat.

Why you fuck to keep the line going.

Order was their make, their bread and wine. I, the Trespasser, the transgressor of that social contract and order, and any other of us that defied them in that time, went against every fiber of their psychology and being in doing so.

I can only imagine the extents they’d go to, in an effort to redeem their House.

I’m sitting in it now, part and parcel to its redemption.

And the irony isn’t lost on me, rubbing shoulders with cops.

I’d rather be with a gorgeous woman, summoning demons. Beating them into submission, and eating dinner under the stars afterward, with the old Ouroboros as our mutual dessert before we get to any impassioned conversations our hips need to have.

And if you don’t know what the ouroboros is, in terms of coital maneuvers, I pity you.

And if I realize how far I’ve fallen in my solitude to bother sitting and ruminating on these things, I’ll only disappoint myself further. A man well into ten thousand years can still succumb to his needs. Even his wants.

You are trying desperately not to fall. You really don’t want to explain mistresses to your son, or beneficial friendships; doxies, sugar babies, kept women...

Nonetheless, Ouvedhe begins the first cut with a razor-honed scalpel.

You killed to avenge your father. Your family and people. You remember days when Kalimdor was free and lives flourished, and the brunt of that theft was in his suicide. The final weight of it that broke you.

Yes.

If it can be so easily summarized.

How did you execute your desires, Volseth?

That’s a story.

My first killing was a noblewoman in a belfry, a daughter of others. She was Duskwatch vicariously; pertaining to the administration of keeping order, never dirtying her hands herself.

Getting close to her wasn’t difficult. We had already been, and she was... Suitress Number Three, as I recall. We had dinners, and nights together. Fleeting moments of holding hands and carousing.

Lips to earlobes. Nothing more.

Before us nobles get to the tedium of sex, which is solely for procreation unless it is the most amoral, deviant fucking thing you can think of, there’s a lot of idle teasing and flirtation.

But Ydraele Veurronte was pretty. And she was cruel beyond reason.

To her workers, to others... If you weren’t a rung on her ladder, if you weren’t a goal to achieve before climbing ever higher, you were flesh to her. Disposable, nameless and fit to exploit and demean.

The reality of our situation had long-since set in. This was the world, this was life. Death and everything, contained here beneath our comfortable veil forever more.

And by the time this night was upon us, it had been five decades since my father’s death. I had already been running wine under their noses with Roseaux, Herand and Tomille. For the record, I didn’t name my accomplices. Ouvedhe can do his own damned work, and I’m not a rat.

I was already spending my money, and then our money, on as much distracting philanthropy as possible. Deronthel hated it. Asurei romanticized it. The people loved getting aid on two fronts from the same source.

To me, it was one facilitating the other. Admittedly I loved helping them, though.

I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Ydraele was due to accept her position formally, however. She had invited me to the grounds of her estate one night so that she could formally accept a position over the balcony in front of me.

I didn’t want to, but I was only going to get out of the situation if I complied.

As I went to enter the belfry however, I saw one of her laborers tending to the roses ringing the tower, making choice cuts with a large hand scythe. 

I could tell the woman was exhausted, and that she’d been beaten, in her task of refreshing all the bouquets in the estate. Bruises about her face, a black eye... Even her hands were worn raw from where the thorns had torn her.

Gloves weren’t provided. I can hear Ydraele tell her people to not touch the thorns and to stop being idiots. And I can hear this because she had actually said it in the past, uncaring that I was there to hear it.

I asked her name. Lyvaene, she said.

I knelt beside Lyvaene and offered my flask, and asked if I could borrow her tool for a moment. She gulped down the arcwine and acquiesced, thinking it a kinder sort of demand from a superior.

She wouldn’t make eye contact with me, but her smile was genuine.

Her sickle was laden with her own dried blood about the grip. The blade, leysteel, was still fiendishly sharp.

That’s when the idea came to me, to cull Suramar’s roses. To make my bouquet.

Stalking up the stairs, I kept it low and hidden. To no surprise, Ydraele waited for me, her hands on the rail, her face cocked out to the artificial twilight of the veil as she surveyed her gardens. She caught me out of the corner of her eye and grinned.

In profile, I realized I hated her face. Impish and porcine, childlike.

She flicked her likeness away and beckoned me over, her neck craning just so. A request for breath. Lips. A graze of teeth. Ever the diligent man, I walked up behind her.

She didn’t realize the edge of the blade wasn’t my fingernail easing a stray hair or two away. She even yelped and giggled when I pulled her hair for leverage.

The rest was a blur. My heart raced.

I pulled the blade from her collarbone back, kicked her forward, and held on as I bore my weight into her spine. When the sickle hit bone, I stopped and wrenched back as if I’d ripped the cork from a bottle of champagne. Her body’s response made the metaphor complete.

In my life, I had never heard such sounds as I heard growling and wheezing from her opened throat. Every hole was bared before me beneath the river pouring out of the stump and every quivering muscle read itself aloud like a live review of an anatomy chart.

It was the longest five minutes of my life, subduing that evil wretch and ensuring she was well and truly dead. I had damned-near decapitated her with a gardening tool, and it felt right.

Poetic, and moreso just.

And I realized then that there was now a corpse and a belfry absolutely painted in blood, and my own state was just as colorful in wrestling her head over to touch her spine.

Lyvaene heard it all and came running up. She saw me standing there, silent, with the hand scythe dripping from her Ladyship’s scarlet insides as the woman writhed about in a pool of it below me, still holding on and clawing uselessly at the floorboards.

I remember telling the gardener that this wasn’t over. That I wasn’t done, and that Ydraele wasn’t the worst of them.

She asked if I was going to kill her - and I stowed the blade inside of my coat, then raised my hands. Whether this was my first body or the last tonight, I’d have done what I meant to do.

It only continued out of dissatisfaction. 

There were thousands of other Lyvaenes throughout Suramar. There were hundreds of other Ydraeles.

One or five hundred, it wasn’t enough.

She lead me down through the belfry, to a manhole that lead into the Arcway just outside. I told her about our wine-runners, and that we always needed good people.

This was, of course, said with a warm corpse in my arms.

Her agreement was rushed. I told her who to find, how and where, and made off into the depths.

The Arcway wasn’t safe. We had heard stories, of course, about the things lurking within it. I remember in my youth that the Moon Guard would actually go through a rite of passage to navigate the place for weeks on end.

I remember wanting to be one, even.

I suppose this was as good a time as any for me to have proven myself, and I made my rounds briskly. I didn’t know how appetizing I was, but I know that a dead body made for an easy meal.

An hour after I started, I was actually calling for them to come take her. I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t want some noisome children or down-and-outs chancing across her bloated corpse and bringing word of it to the surface.

I’m not sure how my solution came to me, really. There was an alcove with a flue that I found. I had to stuff her limbs over one another to fold her into it, but eventually she fit.

It looked like a fireplace almost, and so her dead, lifeless stare watched me as I made her into kindling by arcane fire. At this point, I reasoned, anything can come skulking out and take her.

I wouldn’t fight it.

Left to my own devices, I waited until the bones crumbled softly in their cremation. That’s when I noticed the soot caked up above her ashes.

It reminded me of making lampblack ink. Scour the roof of a lantern, crush the remnant to a fine power and mix it with water, and now your pens can happily drink.

It was a godsend in the field, when we could still leave and get lost in the forests.

Nobody would know. And this wasn’t sufficient enough to simply erase the woman - no, there had to be some memory. A crypt to bury her wickedness in, so that anyone visiting in the future would know.

They’d know the sort of people that flourished in Suramar, once. They’d know what sins they committed, and the names of those they wronged.

It was justice for those who suffered under them. It’s too easy for the upper echelons to duck their heads and wash their hands when we simply say “those corrupt nobles.”

No, this had to be a call-out. Names were going to be named. Shame would be catalogued like a biography tonight, I told myself.

Some poor nightfallen had chanced along and watched me carve the soot from the flue with the hand scythe. He didn’t say a word at first, and politely kept his distance before approaching.

And I remember he asked in the most... Embarrassed, fearful way if I had any wine, or a mana crystal. And that his bones hurt, and he wouldn’t bother me, and that he was sorry for the interruption.

He said he hadn’t seen anything, when I asked. Only that I was scraping something from the wall.

And so I asked, that if he sees me in the Arcway again, no matter what I’m doing, if he’d keep quiet about it. And that if he kept quiet about it, I’d give him what he needed, a cask at a time, for him and the others.

This part wasn’t philanthropic, I confess.

He nodded eagerly as I gave him my flask and took my soot before leaving for the surface half a mile down the street.

And the rest?

The rest... I made her remnants into ink and filled a book that I’d made myself. I spared no expense in them - the finest tooled leather, the purest silver. Cabochons with flawless clarity and color, and vellum with perfect texture and tooth to hold her color.

Each of my books was, and is, a mausoleum. 

A work of art. 

I savored the hunt, the screams, the fight and the blood and gore up to my fucking elbows and the bite of that blade through their flesh because they deserved every last second, and that was when the real work began.

You memorialized their evil.

I memorialized their fall, and I hold them to account. 

If I had any glory or stake in their deeds, I wouldn’t have killed them. But the world forgets their horror. Suramar does, at least, and all-too-readily.

If anything, I regarded my books as gifts to the people. And if you’ve ever read any of them, you’d know that the tone I take it far from any apologist’s in terms of how I present my grotesques.

And a gift to the people should be embellished and beautiful, because what we give to our people, we give to our society. What we give to society, we give unto provenance and posterity alike for the whole of our civlization.

My books are memorials dedicated to anguish, and every stroke of my pen was put down in the names of those who suffered and lost the most.

So it began to play into this delusion of vigilantism you enkindled throughout the period of your murders.

The difference between delusion and affecting actual results is just that. Unless avenging your flesh and blood was simply a momentary psychotic episode from a delusional killer, for all that man did to her.

Which, again, I’ve been thanked for by my very inquisitor.

This... All of these were my means. I carried on for six centuries, and five hundred bodies. By hollow seductions and empty friendships, or stalking them in the dark the way a nightsaber goes to cull sickly deer.

I cut the crown from the stem, and made my colors from the flower before putting them to paper, so readers could know that the monster was well and truly dead by the time they hit the back cover. 

Five hundred of this city’s powerful, influential and demented sociopaths, men and women all collected and arranged in my books. 

My bouquet and love letter to Suramar.

And I do love you, darling. 

                  Still, and always will, 

       Heartless bitch that you can be.

   Please take mine instead, 

           With the flourish of my pen.

 No city or people can compare.

[agentnamed-gone]

I'm going to complain about my day (and my dad) because this is my blog and I can. If you don't want to see this, you can black list my OOC tag.

I am going through some EXTREME autistic burn out, possibly Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Hence why I haven't been here much in the past week, I literally do not have the energy to do anything. Just typing this right now is a Herculean feat.

Regardless, no one in my immediate circle cares and keeps saying things like 'just go to bed earlier!' When quite literally IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW MUCH SLEEP I AM GETTING, I COULD SLEEP FOR THREE DAYS UNINTURRUPTED AND I WOULD STILL BE EXHAUSTED!

On top of that, they expect me to still function and you know talk because and I quote: "You're just tired, you just gotta push through it."

AUTISTIC BURN OUT/ CFS (because it can be both, the two are linked). CAN AND WILL PERMENATELY DISABLE ME IF LEFT UNCHECKED FOR TOO LONG. BUT YOU DON'T GIVE A FUCK, YOU JUST WANT ME TO MASK 24/7 (also bad for my health as I have tried to explain but again you don't give a flying fuck.) AND BE QUOTE UNQUOTE "NORMAL". SO I WILL NOT BE GETTING THE REST I DESPERATELY NEED, BECAUSE YOU CAN'T JUST FUCKING LEAVE ME ALONE!

So, I go to work, with zero energy and find out today that because we have no work for the temps/new employee we just fucking hired we're going to be training them on how to do the electronic jobs! Great, only I am the sole person today working on one specific job because the other person is only part time and today is their day off. Not a problem right? It's not like we are woefully behind on this job because the system is broken as fuck and barely works and you only have ONE person on this job.

Oh wait, that's exactly what it's like.

So instead of letting the ONE PERSON WHO IS DOING THE JOB GET ON WITH THEIR WORK OR I DON'T KNOW, STICKING SOMEONE ELSE WHO IS ALSO TRAINED ON HOW TO DO THIS JOB, ON THE JOB SO THAT WE DON'T FALL EVEN FURTHER BEHEIND. WE'RE JUST GOING TO SAY "FUCK YOUR NUMBERS AND YOUR PRODUCTIVITY, YOU GOT TO TRAIN THE NEW EMPLOYEE ON HOW TO DO THIS SPECIFIC JOB BECAUSE WE HIRED THEM AND HAVE NOTHING FOR THEM TO DO!"

And of course, because they're new at this job, what would only take me a couple hours takes for fucking ever (I get it, they're new, nothing against them. Speed comes with time.) AND those big batches of like 40, 50 documents? Yeah I can't touch those and do them because I have to train the newbie, and I know for a fact the bigger the number of documents in a batch is the more complicated that batch will be.

I'm already struggling to teach this person how to do the job, because guess what? I don't teach! There is a multitude of reasons why I am not working in a school as a History teacher right now. the biggest one being I DON'T FUCKING KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN MYSELF CLEAR ENOUGH TO TEACH ANYONE ANYTHING!

SO HERE I AM BURNED THE FUCK OUT, SO I PASS OUT AFTER DINNER, WAKE UP AT LIKE 10 PM TO SEE I MISSED A CALL FROM MY DAD, HE WOULDN'T FUCKING TELL ME WHAT WAS WRONG, WHICH MADE ME PANIC BECAUSE MY BRAIN INSTANTLY GOES 'WHO FUCKING DIED?' SO I DIDN'T SLEEP AT ALL LAST NIGHT BECAUSE I WAS FREAKING THE FUCK OUT.

GUESS WHO FUCKING DIED! SOME AUNT I DON'T KNOW, HE CALLED TO TELL ME SHE DIED, I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS! (We have a BIG family, don't judge me) HE THEN PROCEEDS TO TELL ME THAT THIS AUNT I DON'T KNOW FROM ADAM WAS NOT A NICE PERSON BUT I SHOULD TOTALLY GO TO THE VISITATION ON WEDNESDAY.

TLDR: I'm too burnt out to function, my job sucks, and I had a panic attack because my dad couldn't just text me that Great Aunt whats-her-face died.

[yoinkschief]

Holy shit I wasn't expecting so much interaction with this AKSJH but here's my yap about probably the worst AU I've ever made /j

SPOILER WARNING: I will be writing this series out in the future and this does have spoilers for important plot points (some or subject to change as the story's not 100% ironed out)

Also for everyone who I've talked to about this this is just a fucking copy and paste of what I've already told you JFSDKSD

So, for precursory information, everyone has their own storyline in this basically, there are MANY DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES and it's my most expansive,,,, anything, really But these are the main plot points:

× The End is canon, relatively exactly as shown in the episodes

× Tord isn't in the army, he's instead a mob boss and him leaving the crew was because he got a lot of heat on him, basically he took a loan from a guy he could NOT pay back (it was the robot and that's why it was abandoned until he came back)

× Tord starts buying out a lot of places in London to expand his territory, and there's plenty of buildings he owns, it doesn't really matter what they are (he owns restaurants/chains, grocers, movie theaters, and yes strip clubs obviously)

× Tom, Edd and Matt all live in the same apartment complex together - different rooms, but neighbors nonetheless

× The story starts as Tom gets let go from his job as it shuts down - there's an inside joke between me and Dames that the diner was about down because it's a cannibalistic diner and the owner was about to get caught

× Edd and Matt fail to try and help Tom get a new job and Tom spirals into a depressive episode because of it until he gets a call from an old friend of his: Elana (she's important to the story as she's Eduardo's sister who recently moved to London to help Eduardo with grieving over Jon's death - he's not handling it well)

× Elana offers the job she has (being a stripper) to Tom, who at first is apprehensive before he realizes how much it makes and it literally at rock bottom so, well, what other option does he have ?

× It goes smoothly in the beginning until the owner of the club starts showing up - he's decided to conduct business there: "it's less business and more of 'we just casually met each other in a place of entertainment and decided to catch up' "

× The owner buys out a private room for him and his "associates" and Tom ends up being one of them without him realizing it - obviously Tom uses a code name for him and the eye thing is just "contacts" for safety reasons obvi

× Tom quickly realizes the owner is Tord, who quickly realizes this stripper is actually oh my God Tom

× They're both stubborn assholes and Tom doesn't quit solely because it would make Tord's life easier if he did quit, and Tord goes out of his way to tip Tom and exclusively buys him out to piss him off because he "doesn't want Tord's blood money", and this ensues for a while - it's also why Tord more frequently shows up at the club more than any other place (that and, fucking look at him, he's a degenerate)

× In the background of this, Edd and Matt are kind of suspicious of what Tom's doing to suddenly get this money and why he's so bent out of shape with his job - wondering why he doesn't quit if he hates this "mysterious boss" of his, and after a particularly suspicious dodging of the question, Matt gets incredibly worried over safety, worried that he's working a dangerous job just to make ends meet and being too embarrassed about it to admit it, which is a very Tom thing to do

× Matt follows Tom to his job after convincing himself it's not weird to do that and in fact he's helping Tom by stalking him, and finds out that he's actually working at a strip club - but why wouldn't Tom just say that ? Thinking there's something more going on Matt sneaks in × In typical Eddsworld humor Matt makes up a ridiculous lie about his "status" of being done underworld criminal to get in without giving away his identity but it ends up being true and he's let in (later the guy he's impersonating is thrown out thinking he's the imposter lol)

× Matt finds out that Tord is actually still alive which is crazy to him, even crazier that Tom is working under him, and EVEN CRAZIER that Tord is going by this gay ass "Red Leader" title exclusively

× Matt kind of goes crazy over this knowledge and ends up leaning more into this dark persona he made up in the moment to instead actually make a following and a rivalry against Tord until it becomes hard to tell where Matt ends and his alter ego starts, to the point where his face is Even scarred - something he'd NEVER let happen

× While that's happening Edd has like an entirely different thing going on, but because this is WTFuture adjacent the time machine does exist and Tord's showing it off to some "investors" when Edd steals it (this is also where he finds out that Tord is alive - he's pretty much the last to know LOL this happens around... Mmm... Chapter 5? Chapter 6? Relatively late in the series as it currently only has 9 chapters which I'm rewriting, but yeah in a crazed heat of the moment decision he swipes the machine and takes off with it)

× Edd sits on it for a while, not sure what to do about it or with it or if he should've Even taken it in the first place but eventually decides to confront Tord about it and basically give him an ultimatum to stop whatever the hell he's doing or he'll destroy the machine, effectively his life's work - Edd still believes that Tord is his friend and he can fix him, that he's just misunderstood and going through a rough patch

× Things quickly get messy and they start fighting, Tord can't bring himself to genuinely hurt Edd and Edd's the same until he ends up using the time machine to go back in time to try and prevent this from ever happening which is probably THE WORST THING HE COULD DO and it genuinely terrifies Tord because all of his delicately balanced work could be so easily and quickly undone and he wouldn't know and it could possibly be so much worse, like literal calamity worse

× Way way later this is what gets Tom and Tord to "bond" effectively because Tom sees Tord going THROUGH IT for the first time in actual years and it kind of tears at a soft spot he didn't think he still had for Tord seeing him in such a horrible state (it reminds him of they went to college together) after only ever seeing him as this "perfect being who could harbor no wrong", so it's very refreshing,, but basically they "bond" by Tord desperately trying to rapidly create a new time machine to find Edd and Tom wants to find Edd because he's missing and holy shit did he say Edd was lost in time?

× While that's going on Edd is actually in the past and getting up to shenanigans with the old friend group, what originally starts as him casually hanging out and doing normal Eddsworld adventures slowly turns into him trying to be more and more controlling of what happens and who does what (think the eddisode where he goes crazy cause his friends are gone and he makes puppets out of them)

× Eduardo also has plot !! He's the leader of "The Other Side", the resistance against Tord trying to own London by basically buying it out ("The Other Side? The other side of what?" "I dunno, that's just what it's called")

× Eduardo never forgot Jon's and instead of going to therapy like Mark and Elana HEAVILY INSISTED UPON, he instead creates an entire revolution against him after he finds out that he's actually Red Leader (this group consists of Elana, Eduardo, Mark, Kim, Katya, other BG characters)

× They also try to recruit Laurel who is Tom's bestest friend in this (besides Edd and Matt ofc, she's just his longest standing friend) and when she does join The Other Side it kinda ruffles Tom's feathers cause around this time is when Tom and Tord start getting closer

× Paul and Patryk also have plot but I need to think about it more cause a lot of their plot is just having a past with Tom and Tord separately

× I want to incorporate Bing and Larry into this but currently I got no idea how

× The ending is figured out tho I may workshop it a bit now that I'm rewriting it: Matt fucking dies due to the war against him and Tord (which is a damn feat cause he's a vampire lol), Edd gets arrested, and Tom kills Tord but I dunno how much I wanna keep all that There's obviously a LOT more in-between

× I want to give Laurel more storytime as well, like Paul and Pat, because it's basically to help the main four's storyline along and I wanna give more nuance to her

I actually am really excited to write out Matt as Purple Leader/Purple King - I see this the least in the fandom and I wanna feed the hungry with him <3

The dream is for this story to have Eddsworld humor in it with serious subject matters too, not SUPER serious obviously this AU is birthed from the Strip Club AU stereotype there's not much to be taken serious with that KJHFKKDS

Also there will be more story plotlines for each character once this is more fleshed out

Would y'all still fwm if I started yapping about literally the stupidest AU you've ever heard of but holds such a dear place in my heart 🥺🥺

[fuck-customers]

This is a fuck coworkers.

I work overnight at a convenience store. In recent weeks, we've lost a lot of our staff for various reasons. One person's out on medical leave, our old assistant manager found a new job and quit, and a third person was fired for giving out free cigarettes. A fourth person is transferring pretty soon, and our part timer who works in the early mornings has a history of flakiness, which just leaves me, the store manager, and the new assistant manager who's being trained from scratch. We're all overworked and we're all fucking sick of it. Which is why I was totally okay with my manager taking a weekend to himself after working nearly 3 weeks straight with no days off.

We knew about this long beforehand. There were no surprises. We had a plan: since I know bits and pieces of the manager's duties, I was going to help our assistant while bossman was out of town. He gets his weekend, and I get to actually go home before the sun comes up for once, which has been a struggle ever since the clocks changed. Win win. But THEN, the day before my manager leaves, our assistant manager calls off due to COVID. Now, the veracity of her claim is up in the air. My boss thinks the timing was no coincidence, and that she's probably a bit nervous about having to do his duties while he's away, but she presented proof of a positive test, so the higher ups have to give her PTO just in case. Bossman's obviously disappointed, but not discouraged. He puts together a last minute plan in which the part timer comes in to relieve me at 7 am, and leaves me to do the manager's stuff all by myself. I'd just have to call someone from a different store to help me with the paperwork. No biggie. One small problem: remember how I said our part timer has a history of flakiness? Yeah. I wasn't having that.

I've been flaked on by her many, many times in the past, and I wasn't about to wait until lunchtime to get off work (leaving a store that's supposed to be open 24/7/365 unattended would get me fired, so I'm stuck there until someone comes to relieve me). So I call the district supervisor and I ask her to send someone to help me with the paperwork that morning. However, she tells me that my manager will be there that morning, when I know FOR A FACT that he won't. He told me himself, but he DID NOT tell HIS boss, which is inarguably more important. So now, I was backed into a corner, and I spilled the beans and told her what his plan was. I emphasized that I was worried that I wouldn't get off till much later, because, you know, flakes, and told her if nobody came to relieve me before 7 am, I wouldn't be able to work the following night because I'd need to waste a whole day catching up on sleep. Perfectly reasonable thing to be concerned about, right?

She understands, but now my manager's upset with me because she's blowing up his phone, because he failed to tell her he'd be taking that extra day off. Now, I know district managers are typically harder on store managers than us regular cashiers, but requesting two days is perfectly reasonable and he had a backup plan. There was no reason not to at least TELL her, and she would have found out regardless.

Anyway, she agrees to come in and help me with the paperwork, so I still get to go home at a reasonable time like I planned, but I still feel bad, so I put in a good word for my manager in an attempt to save his ass. I tell her it's just a stroke of bad luck that his store is in such disrepair, which, yeah, honestly it is. Losing half your employees in 2 weeks is bad luck, plain and simple, and while I agreed that my manager needed his days off, it really feels like I'm left to clean up everyone else's mess. And now I feel like a pariah at work because I was never made aware that he didn't tell his boss the truth, and that I wasn't about to rely on someone I knew I couldn't solely on her word. But whatever. I'm not gonna be at this job forever, at least.

[mylazyreactions]

FO4 Companions react to playing FNAF

Cait: "Fuck this!" Every swear she knows under the sun is being said. Can barely make it past night 1. Puts the game down and refuses to continue. Will do fine just watching Sole play it instead. Thinks the lore is looney.

Codsworth: He hates it. Robotic animals going berserk, only to discover their possessed by dead children? He's gonna stick with Pac-Man thank you very much.

Curie: Cue Girlish Screams She much rather just watch someone else play, but does find the rhythm to each night a good watch. Tries to understand how the possession works and whether or not the animatronics count as A.I. Cries over the lore while trying to figure out how Michael survived.

Danse: Gets used to the jumpscares fairly easily. "Why are you making me play this pre-war game?" Just shut up and play man. Finds William deplorable and is genuinely grossed out by his ScrapTrap form. Man was never meant to mix with machine in such a way!

Deacon: “Oh man I remember that place. Always thought foxy was overrated.” Just roll your eyes at him. He finds the game a lot of fun otherwise. Oh no. That look in his face. No deacon you cant make your own Spring Lock suit. Quit asking.

Dogmeat: Just a dog. But he barks along when people scream, so he’s helping.

Hancock: Don’t let him play stoned. He just gets mad since his reflexes are slowed. Otherwise he has a great time. The lore pisses him off, but gets a kick out of seeing Will burn.

Maccready: *nervous sweating png* Of course he’s a brave guy he can totally han- NOPENOPENOPE he’s not drunk enough to deal with creepy ass robot bears in the dark. Like curie, he’s gonna be stuck just watching Sole play. Absolutely loathes William and totally doesn’t tear up at the bite of ‘83.

Nick: “I remember when that game came out. Good job getting it to work again, but I'll let you youngsters have your fun.” He doesn’t have any desire to play, but he might stop by to check out how everyone is doing. Might make a comment or two about how he’s a little run down like some of the machines.

Piper: Shes scared. Shes having fun. She died. Over and over. Eventually she gets a good rhythm, and asks Sole to bring the game to Diamond City so the kids can play. “Cmon Blue, are you absolutely sure this isn't based off a real story? Seems like something your corpo’s back then would do.” She never beat Sister Location.

Preston: Finds himself having quite a lot of fun. Greatly enjoys lore seeking and flat-out refuses help from Sole. At the end he finds the games quite depressing, but is glad he could enjoy the journey. “General, I hope you're not getting any ideas, but a little pizza place for people to relax isn't a horrible idea.”

Strong: Oh god please no. Great now he wants to fight Fred-Bear. Congrats.

X6: “I don’t think this is a good use of my time, but as you wish.” It gave him a small bit of adrenaline, but after the shock wore off, it was go time. Beats the games before anyone else and sets a speedy record. Was very curious about the whole possession thing and wonders if they would replicate it.

Ada: Please do not dress her as Bonnie for Halloween. Strong almost sent them flying over a house. Also please uninstall that creepy music from her files. What do you mean you didn’t install any music?

Longfellow: He’s too old and drunk for this creepy shit. The first jumpscare and he’s gone. He did find the 50-20 Custom Night to be hysterical purely for intensity reasons.

[danses-with-dogmeat]

romanced hancock reacting to pregnant sole? (obviously not his baby, but a donor's haha)

Hancock x Pregnant! F!Sole Headcannons:

Oh look! I've been enabled yet again! No, but this is great though, I love thinking about happy companions starting a family with Sole ❤

Also, if y'all want any headcannons or anything for companions as parents please hmu, cuz my brain just naturally seems to consider that after doing these pregnancy prompts anyway 😅

Anyway, thanks for the ask, I hope you enjoy!

The ghoul always wondered whether or not his tear ducts would still work after his whole ordeal, and the news that the love of his life was ready and willing to start a family with him would certainly seek to find out. As soon as she gave the word that the donorship had worked, Hancock would be grinning wide and tearfully, with upturned brows and a trembling lip. Unable to speak at first, he would pull an equally tearful Sole into the tightest hug he could muster, their bodies flush, his arms enveloping his love as his roughened cheek pressed insistently against her smooth one. “You just made me the happiest ghoul in the whole damn world, you know that, sunshine?” He’d say just before touching his lips to her cheek in a long, drawn out, tender kiss. (The action may or may not escalate into a long trail of kisses spanning across Sole's entire face as mirthful giggles escape her lips.)

Who would've thought that this was in the cards for him? Certainly not Hancock. He thought he was lucky enough just to be in the presence of someone like Sole, but for her to return the feelings he had for her? To enthusiastically agree to being in a relationship with him? To want to start a family together? Hancock was sure he was dead, or riding the wildest high of his life, for how could this be reality for someone like him? A junkie, a bachelor, a coward, a ghoul, a flimsy torn page with "bad news" written all over it. Nah, he didn't deserve this, but damn was he overjoyed at the fact that Sole thought he did, and who was he to question her judgement?

Hancock had never thought this would be possible, the whole "baby" thing… even though he knew about donors and such, he always thought it would be too painful for Sole to consider having a family again. And with him? Of all the folks in the Commonwealth and beyond, she wanted the infamous ghoulified mayor of Goodneighbor to be a father? To her kid? He was fucking ecstatic. He didn’t quite understand why she wanted to raise a baby with him, why she thought he’d be any good at it, if she thought that. He knew he wouldn’t be the perfect fit for this kinda lifestyle; that he knew for certain, but the fact that she wanted him to try… that shit made his whole body tingle with warm gratitude from the inside out.

He would try to be calm, collected, and altogether nonchalant about the whole process in order to keep Sole relaxed. From finding the donor, to the fertilization, to the pregnancy, and all the way through to Sole going into labor, he would try to be as calm and cool as a November night. And on the outside, he'd do a damn good job, but inside? Nah, inside, this ghoul's worried sick. If anything went wrong with his sunshine, he wouldn't know what to do, he's not sure he could take a blow like that.

So, he’d try not to think too much about what could go wrong, since he knew that would only make it harder for him to be there for Sole in the way that she needed, but occasionally he’d just have those kinda days. A bad trip, a fitful night fraught with horrific dreams, a bout of horrifying overthinking as Sole uttered a pained sound from one little thing or another, or a stint of morning sickness that seemed to last just a bit too long for his liking. All of these would have the poor mayor on edge. Normally, when he was stressed, Hancock would try to chill out with some jet, or calmex, but he really was trying to give up the junkie life to the best of his irradiated abilities. It was a vicious cycle of anxiety every once in a while, but Sole was always there to help him through it. To remind him that this wasn’t her first experience with having a baby, to tell him that he was doing a wonderful job, despite his anxieties, and to remind him that they were the Sole Survivor and the Mayor of fucking Goodneighbor, and that they could face damn near anything when they were together.

Those were only the bad days though. On the good days, oh, hon... Hancock was simply blissful. Sole really is in for a treat, as she is absolutely 100% pampered and loved on, coddled and looked after for 9 months straight, and then some (minus the couple of bad days, where she has to be the one doing the coddling, but really, how could she mind?). As soon as the pair finds out that Sole really is going to have this baby, Hancock is already offering her anything she may need in order to stay safe and comfortable for the next 9 months.

Hancock’s chill personality really shines when it comes to any mood swings Sole may have, and a lifetime of chem and alcohol use has rendered the ghoul particularly skilled at cooking foods that are comforting and easy to make/eat that come in handy after bouts of morning sickness. Who knew that all of his hangover experience would come in handy like this?

While Hancock loves nothing more than going on adventures in the Commonwealth alongside his beloved, he wouldn’t say it in so many words, but would be more reluctant than usual to leave Goodneighbor or Sole’s house. When, before, he would have leapt up at the prospect of hunting down some goons and making the world a better place through some good ole fashioned violence, Hancock couldn’t think of anything worse than having Sole get injured, or potentially losing the one he loves more than anything in the world, and the possibility of a future family with her if some shit went wrong. So, while he absolutely knows she is capable and an complete beast in combat, and he recognizes that Sole can’t stay cooped up indoors for the whole 9 months, (and let’s face it, he certainly doesn’t want to either, but he’s not about to leave his love behind so he can get outta the house once in a while) he definitely steers the pair away from the areas he knows to be more sketchy than others.

Hancock just loves showing Sole off. He did this before the pregnancy as well, but man, now if anyone comes up to the pair when she starts showing, you know Hancock is already beaming as he tells the inquiring stranger just how far along she is, whether it’s a boy or a girl (if they know), or even what they think the baby’s gender is if they don’t want to know/can’t find out, how often the baby has been kicking, and he may even ask for opinions on baby names from certain kind folks who come up to chat with the parents-to-be. It’s also quite likely that he uses these passer-byes as an indirect way to further compliment Sole, saying things to them like, “Doesn’t she look gorgeous?,” “Just look at how she glows,” or “It’s just incredible how you/these ladies do this, isn’t it? Damn it if she's not the strongest person I know,” just to showcase his admiration for her. Does it sometimes result in strange looks from the strangers? Of course. Does Hancock care, or even seem to notice? Not remotely. He's too busy gawking at the love of his life and her blushing, embarrassed glory.

The mayor tends not to be rude about it unless the person ignores him, but if he notices someone smoking nearby, he will ask them to put out whatever it is, or to simply move if he and Sole were there first. In addition to that, he will make quite the lifestyle change for himself, voluntarily giving up chems to the best of his abilities so long as withdrawals don't prevent him from caring for Sole, and when he does partake, Hancock won’t do it around her, he’ll move outside or to another room. He would also offer to give up alcohol, since he knows that she won’t be able to drink with him anyway, and leave it up to her if she wants him to go cold turkey like her. Even if she doesn’t mind, he still won’t drink in excess around her during her pregnancy. It's kind of a respect thing for him, and there ain't no one he respects more than the future mother of his child.

(little bit of NSFW content here) When it comes to sex, Hancock is even more generous than usual in the bedroom (if you can believe it's possible). His every movement acts as a tribute to his appreciation for the woman he loves more than life itself. He’d be sure to be gentle, but in all honesty, Hancock wouldn’t change anything too much (no need to fix what ain't broken, ya know?). He has always paid particular attention to Sole beneath the sheets, since he’s quite experimental, and comfortable with most kinks and things himself, so he tends to let her choose positions, location, duration, and pacing, and would definitely keep it this way during the pregnancy. You think this man used to really get into body worship before, this is just a whole nuther level. As Sole puts on weight later into her pregnancy, he takes full advantage of her swelling plushness, running his hands over her body, taking the time to squeeze and palm every bit of her growing softness, constantly complimenting every bit of her as his starving eyes eat up every inch of her beauty. Especially if Sole is self-conscious about any of the changes in her body, Hancock will be sure to constantly remind her that she’s the most captivating and gorgeous person he’s ever met. No stretch mark appears on her body without being lovingly kissed, no soreness will develop without the offer of a nice, long massage (this perhaps is just another excuse to get his hands on her), no tenderness will go unnoticed and will be accounted for when his hands are roaming her body. In general, he’s as loving and doting as ever, but he's also on high alert for any signs of pain or discomfort coming from his other half.

He’d be SO excited every time the baby kicked. For some reason, the babe seems to wait until he’s around to do it, and he’s thrilled. Sole is a little weirded out by it, but she honestly takes it as a good sign. But oh man, Hancock's hands will be all up in that shit, not wanting to miss a thing as Sole smiles at him like this isn't the fourth time this has happened in one evening (does he use this as yet another excuse to touch Sole? Hmm, who knows [the answer is yes]). Sometimes he forgets to be sympathetic when Sole can't sleep due to the fluttering in her belly, but his roughened hands smoothing rhythmically over her stomach throughout the night might just help her catch a few Zzs after all.

He’s admittedly quite nervous as she approaches labor, becoming ever more protective as her belly swells to its largest point, ensuring she avoids any kinda gun fight, crazy high heights or unneeded stress, and he would be adamant about Sole sitting out any outings, missions, or other activities in the dangers of the Commonwealth. But man, would he make an environment she didn’t want to leave. Pillows, snacks, dim lighting, good conversation, music, soft touches, compliments galore, and a man who is at her constant beck and call, willing and happy to do anything and everything she might need or want? Yeah, here’s to say, Sole didn’t really want to leave anyway.

By the end of the pregnancy, Hancock has a strange mix of apprehension and denial going on. He’s used to Sole being pregnant now, he knows how to deal with everything, how to take care of her, what makes her uncomfortable and how to fix it. But a kid? An infant? He doesn’t know how babies work, doesn’t know how to tell what they want from him. He’s excited beyond belief at the thought of being a father, but he just doesn’t know how to do it. He tries to think back to his own dad, and the way that he was brought up as a kid, (though, he's not sure that's a great frame of reference given the way he turned out) and definitely goes off of Sole’s judgement, but he can’t shake the feeling that he was never meant for this. To settle down and have a family. He isn’t his dad, he’s Hancock. He’s not a “family man,” not a picturesque pre-war looking man with a normal job and a cookie-cutter backstory; he’s a self-made ghoul, a junkie, a deadbeat whose earned his position of power by bathing in the blood of tyrants who died by his own hand, and shooting his veins up with every kinda poison the wastes have to offer. How do you explain that to a kid? That he made himself the way he is, cuz he couldn’t stand the man he’d grown up to be? What the hell kinda example is that? He wouldn't doubt for a second that his baby would be the center of his world from the moment he sees it, but if anything, that only ups the anxiety that he'll do something to mess the kid up. Hancock would be nervous as shit, but if Sole had confidence in him, well… he trusts her judgement more than he does his own, so if she thinks he’s "daddy" material, he ain’t gonna argue with that. All he can do is hope she’s right, follow her lead, take it one day at a time, and hope that him trying his absolute hardest will be enough.