#since I really like the format of the thread with being able to put a picture after every point made

[swimming-karyss]

I've never really noticed that, but Sabo and Dragon's relationship with the theme of parent-child- (or more like blood-) connection are the two sides of the same coin!

Because both Sabo's parents and Dragon seem to believe that the bond between a parent and their child is unbreakable, but while Dragon's belief stems from love, for Sabo's parents it's a twisted desire to control. As we see Dragon love Luffy and continue to look out for him despite not contacting him for most of his life, and Sabo's parents trying to get him back despite thinking he's been dead for 5 years he's got a thing for it huh, and even after 12 years we see Stelly refer to Sabo as 'big brother', which most likely reflects their parents' position that hadn't changed.

But you'd say that holding onto relationships for an extended period of time is just a family thing, since Sabo too reached out to Luffy after 12 years of absence. But the thing is, the big part of their brotherhood oath is that it's meant to last despite time and circumstances.

(and look at these "..." what is going on in that noggin' of his...)

And I think it's really interesting that Sabo was unsure of his bond with Luffy, while having strong emotional connection, but no blood ties, and Dragon is sure of his bond with Luffy, while having blood ties, but no emotional connection!

And I wonder, what are Sabo's thoughts on that. I mean, he's most likely just fine with it, he does ramble to Dragon about Luffy after all… but I wonder if he ever felt even the slightest uneasiness, when he's inevitably reminded of his parents' views on the ties to children… …

ohhhh and Dragon keeps in touch with Garp… despite being on the opposite sides… can't even say that he cut ties to his parents because he didn't. And here's Sabo who'd rather pretend that he never had parents to begin with…

but lmao, my view on such things may be slightly twisted, so what do I know...

[sangreprince]

I wanna keep this brief (graphic design is my passion level effort but also it kinda works in a really funny way) !!! I wanna let you all know I appreciate the love you've given Zagreus and I'm so so happy to be here. You're all great and wonderful and I could say so many good things to say about each and every one of my mutuals. So fuck it, that's what I'mma do. Because you all truly deserve it. I'm super happy with Zagreus and being able to share my portrayal and have it be well received means so much !!! It's easy to say 'thank you all so much' but I want to acknowledge that I truly do appreciate and care about each and every one of my mutuals, even if my time / availability makes it tough at times. PART 1/4

@withinchains / @hercarnality : Elle you already know how much ily so I'm gonna keep this short. You're such an amazing friend and writer and you already have the screenshot about me gushing pinned so eat my shorts and play arams with me. Your Morgana is to die for and you write every character to a fucking T because of how you just interpret all their personalities and put them into words SO effortlessly.

@lasraichean : NEMO U SMELL LIKE BEEF and I think you're fantastic. You pour so much effort into all your OCs and that passion does you so much credit. You absolutely shower Annie with love in such a way that I shower everyone else with unrequested amounts of fromsoft lore so MWAH.

@blackrosesmatron : Lucy your LB is fantastic and you're so easy to talk to and communicate with. Genuinely every time we sit down and plot I find myself getting so enthralled in her antics and character. You do her so much justice

@avernusfuries : HAN You single handedly made me like Karlach and that isn't even a joke. Before we met and started writing I always thought her story was one of the weaker ones and you somehow managed to turn her into one of the more realized characters in the game. HATS OFF TO YOU and every day I beg for more of this big doofus.

@feuerwizard : Crys I know I need to get back to you for plotting things, I've just been so busy but I want to say: You and some of the other CR writers you write with are so talented and I adore reading your posts. Were it not for you guys I still probably wouldn't have any interest in CR and I'm so so excited to get started with more stuff and actually get threads going!

@soulcluster : Lilah I think all your portrayals are excellent. Your MM deserves all the attention it gets and I honestly couldn't pick a favorite muse if gave me truth serum. Plotting with you is a blast and I'm so thankful for all the ideas we pass between eachother!

@pitgritted : Your Sett, Taric, and Mutli are all so well done Jojo. I can tell you really care about all the people you write and it shines so brightly, right down the amount of detail you place into every reply and how you format things. Passion shows in the end and this is no exception!!

@palespawn : This sassy motherfucker. We've only just started writing and I still need to get to replies but you've showed interest since almost day one and I cant say how much I appreciate that. Courtney you do such a beautiful job with the twink, I almost dont wanna stab him. Almost~

@infinitysagas : I first of all wanna say thank you for writing such underappreciated characters. To see Damon get love brings me so much joy, I always take a second to read his posts when I see them come up. I know we haven't done a ton but please know that I see your writing and totally wanna do stuff, I'm just very busy skdjhf.

@deathdxnces : Irelia was a character I never cared about too much, but how you humanize her so much and have expanded on her character beyond what Riot's given us does SO much for me. I actually adore how you portray her, Mel, and I wish to get writing at some point soon!! I know you liked a starter a bit ago and I do plan to get to that, but please do not hesitate to hit me up for plotting in the meantime. It really does help and I promise I don't bite!!

@tealbeats : I know you're not super active on Ez (and I still owe you a lot of stuff actually) but I wanna say I love the amount of his personality you're able to paint into every interaction. You have such a way of making him the perfect amount of insufferable (in the best way) while still twisting it in SUCH an endearing light. I love that annoying little bug and I'm so glad you do too, because it really shows.

@agonizedembrace : Han it's been really nice to reach out and get into contact again. You're genuinely a really funny, interesting, and thoughtful person who cares about Evelynn in such a way that brings out every aspect of her character. The agony, the sex appeal, the sass, the confidence, you just nail all of it and I'm really hoping we can get stuff going soon!

@bendwill : Elder scrolls blogs are few and far between, but Miraak is absolutely one of those characters that deserves to be more written out. We haven't gotten to do a ton but please don't hesitate to hit me up and scream ideas at me, the idea of Tamrielic Zagreus is very fascinating to me. (And also I need somebody to ramble about my Oblivion D&D Campaign ideas with skdfjh)

@ofweave : First of all, trans gale is based as fuck and you have a vision. Second of all, I know you're on hiatus but once you come back I'd be so happy to get the ball rolling with this stinky wizard man!!

@kismetwilled : I'm not gonna lie, seeing how you pour effort into your headcanons and thoughtful replies kind of inspired me to do similar with my own. I also want to say that I'd love to plot more and yell ideas all day with you, your style is gorgeous and I find myself appreciating characters on your blog I've never even heard of or are barely familiar with. Seriously Dani, it's top tier and I'm so happy to be mutuals.

@enrogued : We haven't gotten anything started with but I'm so hyped. Rogue as a character has such fascinating potential with her powers, and that's not to mention her attitude towards others in general. Once stuff gets started I'm probably never gonna shut up in your DMs but like that's a constant sdfjkh STILL!!

@lunarrepel : Shadowheart my beloved. The aesthetics, writing, dialog, everything you do with her is SO on point and I can't get over it. I was already biased and liked her after Larian adjusted her a bit during the beta phase of BG3 but still. Man you just nail her and I'm so excited to develop these two out. They give wine aunt energy and THAT alone gives me so much life.

@dreadgloom / @cinderschild : I wont lie to you I was GIDDY when I found out you wrote a WoTR character. I honestly expected that fandom to have more of a presence on tumblr but I'll take what small fanclub we can get right?? And also can I comment on the takes you have from Salvatore are absolutely genius and play really well into WoTC's drow?? Genuinely fantastic worldbuilding and it's always a pleasure to see you crop up on the dash.

@nightsbloom : Your headcanons and replies have been gorgeus and I just want to say despite me being really busy and not getting around to approaching yet, I'm so excited??? Also a while back you reblogged a Qimir gifset and it's still living rent free in my head so thank you for the food chef--- Please though, if you have any thoughts or even just dynamic ideas - toss them at me at mach 5 and I will run with them because I'm HYPE.

@spiderwarden : I think you officially win the title of Minthara's #1 fan. Her performance (as I've mentioned) is absolutely captivating, as is your writing. I'm very excited to see where her interactions with Zagreus go and writing with you (or even just seeing your random hc posts and comments) is such a blast. I will always sit down and listen to you ramble about her, I think she's so fascinating and that's in no small part to how you manage to inject so much life and love into her despite all the cut content.

[dnangelic]

Get to know the mun ! repost, don’t reblog .

——— BASICS.

[ NAME ] : tsun (short for tsundere)

PRONOUNS : he / him

ZODIAC SIGN : pisces-aries

TAKEN OR SINGLE : single

ANYTHING ELSE ? : my dog is way cuter and more interesting than me

——— THREE SERIOUS FACTS.

you don't have to soften up your muse with me. really. i've written mainly antagonistic/villainous/horror-centric muses in the past so i'd like to at the very last believe i understand at least some of the struggle when it comes to having a muse like that. which isn't to say that daisuke won't still try to appeal to some form of compassion for even the most reprehensible muses because that's just the way that he's built, but nobody has to apologize and worry about hurting me, the mun's feelings for being mean to daisuke. if he wasn't built for helping then he was built for a lil bullying. it's okay. i love to see it <- mean older bro/failboy aficionado syndrome

i don't really do starter calls or memes anymore. the best way to start something with me is to either get at me directly for a thread/plot discussion or if that's too scary just make an ic remark on any random ass post and i'll probably make a new ic post for it. or send me an ask and we can go from there since my askbox is always open. i try to do the occasional inbox call but since i don't like my asks to be overly bland and it takes a whole lotta creativity, i don't do those super often either.

if you don't know something about my muse it's best if you ask. really. seriously. DN 'canon' is scattered in multiple directions and multiple pieces across multiple formats, and most eng speakers have only seen the anime or read the manga, which imo are the two bottom-most "best" formats for grasping what the hell is even going on overall in the series. atp pointing people to either my public vs private knowledge post or my canon divergence post is probably the best i can do to provide a comprehensive list of different 'facts' about how i work my characterization.

——— THREE RANDOM FACTS.

i have in fact been with DN since the early 2000/2010s-ish, around middleschool. i wasn't there when its re-serialization was announced in 2020 or so but the first and second volumes will always be a formative memory for me, and the tokyopop ENG translation set i have (up to book 12) has somehow survived over the course of like at least five different moves. this is also probably why i find sugisaki's original, absolute oldest style the most nostalgic/'best' in a way, if only to me. i've also been a vkei fan since vanan'ice started releasing music, immoral memory lost memory has and always will be my #1 comfort song. no wonder i ended up writing dn charas

i like to cook and bake. baking more than cooking, which is sometimes a problem since i can end up baking more than my family ever eats. i'd love to make DN style parfaits/cake cups sometime, i just don't know who's going to be able to eat all of it laksdjlakgjl. but anything to see icing wiz in a cup for realsies!

my life has been dominated by roguelike/dungeon crawler looter type video games. i've probably got literally like ten billion hours on mabinogi since that was my social system in 2000-2010 range (look i know but it was hot stuff back then ok) and now that elin's been released i've jumped from messing around in elona to there, but put me in front of something in the vein of the whole fate/torchlight series etc and i'm probably clocked out forever

——— EXPERIENCE.

i started a tumblr rp blog as a joke for a friend (now no longer my friend) i'd chat with during ~2015 give or take a year. i didn't even care about the chara at first but i've always loved writing, and i ended up actually getting into said chara and the series they were from to write some more/beyond just sheer crack for my friend. i've never written fic for the same reason that i've never written anything standalone tho, that being i completely lose confidence all the way down to the last drop in my bones

i like deep and firm muse connections. this doesn't necessarily even mean positive ic ones, but i like it best when muses absolutely have something. it doesn't even have to be definite either, like the way satoshi and daisuke's relationship within canon is somehow balancing both a killer rivalry and deep caring friendship and just about everything else they always got goin on in between. it's usually after any sort of dynamic is established that i feel much more comfortable sending unprompted asks too.

i have like 50 tabs open at all times and 600 things in my drafts. i did this to myself. but if i never catch DMs on tumblr it's probably because i never got a notif thanks to the 50 tabs, and if i never catch DMs on discord it's probably because i saw it, got busy, then forgot about it til i checked again and bam it's been like a month and now responding feels too awkward. i'm so bad at personal communication i'm so sorry. use my askbox if it's urgent i swear i've never failed to respond to any of those asap. losing drafts is thanks to the 600 things, but if you want me to dig up something because you miss it and so i can respond to it asap i can always do that too. im literally just too tired to scroll to find shit that isn't my most recent sometimes iawjewahjaiijkrf it's a bad hobby habit i knooooow

——— MUSE PREFERENCE.

i've tried to find the common denominator between all of my muses in the past multiple times and i've never been able to find it. i've written anything and everyone from, like, folklore ocs to meta knight from kirby. in general i like to have a muse that i don't always have to take too seriously though. or that comes off as comedic on the surface but i can still handle in a serious and legitimate/realistic way, ie just like dark and daisuke being clowns and a singular failboy but still just. kids, teenagers grappling with very real uncertainty about themselves and their futures and identities. muses have to have a voice, and i'm very particular about being able to clearly hear my muses in my head and my writing, so if anything that's probably my largest deciding factor.

——— FLUFF / ANGST / SMUT.

FLUFF : yep

ANGST : yep

SMUT : hell no. idk how many times i have to tell people i don't give a shit how hot you think dark is, he's physically 16-17 and is directly linked to daisuke, who's 14-15. these are minors. there's 2892859864 anime charas who are of age for you to smut with, get away from the middleschoolers!!!

——— PLOT / MEMES : see all the way above. i basically live in my activity notes so it's better to grab my attention somehow through that. i get shy about sending memes and also am just..... not around constantly so checking dash can be annoying. if there's a meme you have a really good idea for and you want me to send it specifically i've got no problem doing that though. love u guys

TAGGED BY : @cherriedrage thanks zaggy!!

[forgottenluck]

So just a small update on me in general

ADHD is really kicking my ass right now, and i'm either hyperfocusing on tumblr for 3 hours, or getting distracted by youtube for 4 hours. There's no real inbetween.

That being said, my carrd has been updated (thanks to a certain someone *stares*) which has prompted me to look at some things. I need to update my pinned post and some stuff. Not sure when I'll get to it, but it is on the plan!

Everyone has pretty pinned posts and mine's just kinda junky. Though there's good reason, I've found that a lot of people wouldn't read my rules unless i put them there...but now it's just kinda blocky and i don't like it. And long. So i'll probably streamline it.

I also need to finish editing Koun's icons to the new format. I'm missing a lot of my icons and keep having to use the same ones. I need VARIETY which i technically have, just have to edit them LOL.

I Am going through some bad shit right now irl, some stuff only a few people actually know and I'm not really up to talking about it just yet. I've got a therapy session next week so maybe i'll be a little more open afterwards. Either that or i'll completely shut down. One of the two. But it's not good, and I may end up having to ask for some monetary help due to not being able to cover a lot of what's going on.

If you want to go ahead and see about helping me out, feel free to DM me, i'll take whatever help i can get....however, due to my ADHD and life events any service i provide will have to wait for a bit. (I already have two commissions i'm trying to force myself to work on and can't get myself to even open SAI due to the overwhelming idea of it all.)

These events ARE effecting my ability to be on Tumblr right now. Mostly the irl stress is setting off my ADHD and executive dysfunction and depression. It's causing me to hyperfocus on specific threads or randomly not reply to things, and I just wanted to say that I'm not angry at anyone, i'm not dropping anyone, i'm not ghosting anyone. I'm just really stressed and not able to focus on but one or two things at a time. I'll get over this, and finish the stuff i need to do eventually, but bear with me guys.

I know this is really spacy and not well put together, but i just wanted to give you all an update on what's going on with me since i'm not replying to everything i need to reply too and can seem to be dropping or ghosting people when I'm not. I can't begin to express how much i love you all for putting up with my spotty nature, and i look forward to getting better and being able to actively work on things again!

[darkeneddawningmain]

Reblog chain removal rant

I just spent a long time composing this message about removing reblog chains to submit as feedback to Tumblr's help center and wanted to share it here as well. It's pretty long so I'm putting it under a read more, but I hope this post encourages more people to submit feedback to Tumblr about what a bad idea removing reblog chains is.

I'm here to add another voice to the protest against removing reblog chains. There are a lot of things I wish was better about Tumblr (direct links to posts from the post header and being able to pause videos instantly on mobile at the top of the list!), but by and far the worst change Tumblr could ever make is to take away reblog chains.

By taking away reblog chains, Tumblr would be losing the entire essence of what Tumblr is. People have already illustrated this really well in posts (which I hope staff have seen), but getting rid of loved features to become a worse knockoff of other sites is the worst possible decision to make. It will not result in the users of the original sites Tumblr is trying to mimic abandoning the sites they're already established on to join Tumblr. The other sites already have their community ecosystems and brand recognition that people will not want to abandon just because Tumblr is suddenly operating in a similar format. All the change would do is drive away Tumblr users that are here for TUMBLR.

Even non-Tumblr users appreciate reblog chains! Have you not seen screenshots of funny and classic Tumblr posts circulate the web, beloved specifically for the collaborative reblog chain format? Tumblr has always been a source of engaging and satisfying content in a way that other sites share to feed off of, and it’s precisely because of Tumblr’s post format. In comparison, when people share screenshots of Twitter posts and threads, it’s obvious how much clunkier posting to Twitter and also sharing posts from Twitter is. (I refuse to call the site ‘X’ btw)

When people post to Twitter, they have to either make sure their message fits within a finite character limit (which works for small zingy posts, but ONLY the ones they can make fit), or they have to break up their message into many pieces, which is so clumsy.

1) The poster must compose their message in segments, which can cause problems if they realize they want to edit earlier parts of said message because it’s already been posted. It can also cause problems if they (like me) have ADHD and forget what they’ve already said if they can’t see the whole message at once. Workarounds like composing in a separate program are inconvenient, and posting long messages still requires many steps (e.g. cutting messages into character limit sizes and posting each individual tweet)

2) Readers have to be aware enough to see and/or find all of the parts of the message, which people will often miss or not care to follow up on.

3) If anyone wants to add to a thread, they can only reply to a single tweet, and then go through the same process of breaking their message into pieces. This means that anyone reading the replyer’s thread would have to follow a link to the original thread if they want to see all the context, and that’s just inconvenient enough that people would rather not.

4) Anyone who wants to share these threads via screenshots has to make sure they have all the tweets in the thread. Do they also navigate to other threads to additionally screenshot further context? What if the poster still has more to say and hasn’t finished their thread? Not to mention how much wasted space there is in these screenshots since each tweet is separate and has its own UI around it.

That got into a bit of a rant, especially since removing reblog chains doesn’t necessarily mean Tumblr will enact a stupid character limit, but I hope my point that Twitter is NOT a better site than Tumblr was made clear. People sharing Tumblr screenshots and laboriously trying to convey longer messages on a platform that is unfriendly to them goes to show that reblog chains are not confusing or overwhelming to anyone. If anything, Twitter’s format is far less intuitive and people have just been forced to get used to it. Many people HAVE to use Twitter for work; people feel like they have to since it’s the current dominating social platform; people think Tumblr is dead and not an option anymore, etc.

In conclusion, making posts less convenient to see the full context of at once is a HUGE slap in the face to your loyal userbase that has been sticking around specifically for Tumblr’s engaging collaborative platform. It’s a pointless cut to functionality that is not enticing to anyone, even the people you’re trying to entice. I hope the people in charge can recognize this and not move forward with the idea. Thank you for your time.

[roleplayingspinosaurus]

Blog is no longer active - follow @forestofforever​

This blog is no longer active, but it will remain online as an archive of sorts. If you are interested in interacting with me, please follow: @forestofforever​

Rules

No godmodding

No smut

No interactions with child characters 

No pregnancy plots. 

I only interact with those that are 18+

I don’t mind seeing these themes on my dash but I don’t personally enjoy writing them.

All of my characters are OC’s so it only makes sense that I am OC friendly. I can usually alter my muses somewhat to fit with your universe, though some plotting may be required to make it all go a bit more smoothly.

Any threads that include Benjamin are bound to be at least a bit triggering. Specifically dealing with themes of abuse, gaslighting and straight up torture. If you do decide to interact with him, please be aware that things could get very unpleasant. We can always discuss the situation beforehand though, since I do believe in respecting those that I write with as well as their muses.

If I don’t receive a reply on our thread for over 2 weeks I’ll consider the thread “inactive.” That doesn’t automatically mean it’s dropped, but I won’t be expecting a reply from you.

The Mun

Memes have no expiration date and I love receiving them, the same goes for my open starters. You're welcome to reblog memes from me, I don't mind it at all.

I’m always open to plot and my inbox and dm’s are always open, so feel free to reach out if you’d like to start a thread sometime or even if you just want to chat!

I’m Lisa, 23 years old with about 10 years of RP experience (though at least 7 of those years are going to go unmentioned because teenage me was no Shakespeare by any means).

I generally reply to threads in about a day, but I don’t mind if you take a bit longer, I understand that people have busy lives. I am a mess at formatting things so I don’t bother trying to make my stuff look fancy. If that’s your thing, totally cool! I just prefer the writing itself and I don’t understand tumblr well enough to make it look any better than it currently does. I do cut my posts though, or at the very least try to. I don’t use Icons but I think it’s cool when others do it. 

The Muses

All muses are played as 30+ unless otherwise specified. Age can be flexible if the thread asks for it, however their age will never go below 20.

Etienne- The Black Cat

Etienne’s family owned a theatre when he was younger, and so he has grown up surrounded by fantasy and drama. Sadly the theatre burned down when he was 15, killing his family in the process.

The experience has left Etienne afraid of fire. Candles won’t cause him to panic, but firepits or fireplaces may cause some visible discomfort. He remains in love with the theatrics that he grew up with, and dramatic is probably a good word to describe him. He’s quick to flirt but slow to let his walls down.

Sylvester- The Crow

Sylvester was a brilliant surgeon until his brother died on his operating table. The guilt and anxiety that followed his brother’s death left Sylvester a shadow of his former self, a shadow which was then mangled even further by a man named Benjamin Forest. Benjamin put Sylvester through hell in an attempt to see how many times you could break someone until they stopped being able to put themselves back together. Sylvester is still going, though one may wonder if he’s still himself after all he’s been through. Sylvester barely considers himself to be a person anymore at all. 

Sylvester is a nervous individual with many odd tics and habits. At first he may seem distant and cold, but as soon as his walls come down (and really, showing him a bit of kindness is often enough for them to go tumbling), he’s the most loyal person around. He’s been starved of affection and struggles to have healthy attachments, which allows your muse the choice; will they show him kindness and try to remove him from an unpleasant situation? Or will they use his already broken psyche to manipulate and control him even further?

Wester- The Big Bad Wolf

Wester is a ray of sunshine, a Golden Retriever in werewolf form. Energetic and social, Wester is easy to get along with, if perhaps a bit difficult to get rid of. Wester is friendly but also a bit naive and an airhead. He enjoys sports and long hikes, and chasing tennis balls (though he tries to only do so while transformed). 

Wester is a werewolf, and he’s not great at keeping it a secret. He is still friendly when transformed, and he can usually control his transformation fairly well unless it’s a full moon. His eyes remain amber even as a human, and his hearing and sense of smell remain more sensitive than that of most. He’s also colorblind. 

Benjamin- The Deer

Benjamin is a pompous prick with more money than dignity and a severe lack of empathy. Getting along with him is a chore, and people really only ever get close to him for his money. Not that they’re going to benefit from it, because Benjamin absolutely will not spend money on anyone unless it benefits him somehow.He’s arrogant, manipulative and just generally unpleasant. That being said, he’s got a pretty face and dimples that might charm some unfortunate individuals right into his bed.

Now if you can overlook all of these significant flaws, you will find a man that might still have a soul after all. He can be very protective of those he loves, but this does come with a great jealousy and possessiveness that should not be taken lightly.

[dementedmk]

This seems to suggest an interest in sending users to something other than what they’ve clicked on a link to. If someone clicks a link to see a specific post, they probably want to see that specific post and not random other content. SEO probably isn’t a bad idea, as long as it’s still possible for people to use the site for what it is. 

The user already doesn’t know how to navigate the application, because the buttons move around with every update for (as far as I can tell) no particular reason. I suspect any format would be fine if it were consistent, but it seems to me that every time I open the app or the site some button (shop, my page, the post button, etc) has moved. It’s unclear to me how much can change with the “first 25 posts” issue. To my knowledge, new users already have the “best stuff first” toggle on, while many established users have turned it off. As someone who has been using this site for the past 7 years, I think I speak for many users when I say that the feed still being chronological is one of the best features Tumblr has. All I ask is that the toggle still exists, and users are still able to choose a chronological format to their dashboard. I fully agree that the search feature needs some major improvements, and has for a long time. This is the first thing in the post I’m genuinely excited for, since Tumblr’s search function has been lacking for a long time, and for reasons unclear to me. Thank you for looking into it.

I like the idea of removing duplicate reblogs, I think there’s a lot of potential to that. It’s unclear to me what it would mean to “collapse reblog threads”, but as long as it doesn’t limit users’ ability to see what people are saying I don’t think it’s inherently a bad thing. The rest of this point doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I do want to mention that the unique conversational way reblogs work is one of Tumblr’s defining features, and one that many users would be sad to see go. We’re happy to use Tumblr, we don’t really want Twitter 2.

The “outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs” on the following page? That’s the purpose of the following page. Again, this seems like a change designed to create Twitter 2, which is a good way to lose Tumblr users uninterested in that style of social media platform. I agree that we need to prioritize supporting new creators, but I don’t think spamming people with content they don’t want is a good way to accomplish that. If users are spammed with content they didn’t ask to see, some users are going to respond with anger, negativity, and hateful messages, much the way that everything on Twitter gets covered with anger and negativity because people are seeing content they didn’t ask to see. This might make new creators more visible, but it would also make them more vulnerable, and worsen the user experience for everyone else. I wholeheartedly agree on the need to limit notification spam, and this is a great direction to move in. Embedded links are another positive change. 

Most of this seems fine to me, I don’t have strong opinions on it. I will say, though, that if users have push notifications off that may be because they don’t want notifications, and email spam isn’t necessarily going to be helpful with that. For example, I don’t get tumblr notifications on my phone, and if I started getting emails for every like and reblog, I would block Tumblr’s email address, because I use my email for communication that’s more time-sensitive. 

Wholeheartedly agree on this point, unless I’m missing something important. Tumblr, in the minds of a lot of people, is synonymous with weird bugs and a broken website, but it doesn’t have to be. I think heavy focus on this is probably the best place to be putting attention at the moment. 

Tumblr is a site with a unique style in the modern age, and that’s a part of what makes it work. When Tumblr tries to copy other social media’s features (livestreaming, non-linear post feeds, etc.), it risks alienating the longtime users and creators who keep the website interesting. 

I like this site, and I'd like to keep using Tumblr, not Twitter 2. Thank you.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[townofinaba]

Rules

-I am tracking the tag townofinaba!

-This is an in-character rp blog for a few p4 muses. I will be highly selective who I rp here with because muse is low and it's mainly to test a few I enjoy. I may not even rp with anyone but friends at first while I do.

-My social anxiety is really bad-- I really struggle to initiate conversation. If a person reaches out I'll happily interact with them though; I'm kind of a social-vampire, and feeling invited in helps a lot. On the other hand, once I'm spoken to, I talk a LOT, so I apologize in advance and hope it isn't too overwhelming. Feel free to tell me to tone it down!

-I think communication is vital to a hobby like this. If you have a question or issue, please let me know! Also, If I do something insensitive or hurtful, please let me know and I'll try to do better next time. Also, this blog does not condone any bigotry, and I refuse to write anything depicting incest or pedophilia.

-I will not do mature threads on this blog. Most of the muses are teenagers.

-I likely am going to be selective in what I rp. I will answer asks and reply to things from anyone, so feel free to send in! But while I want to interact, I also only have so much energy. I have the right to refuse to answer RPs or starters or asks.

-I am also chronically ill in a few different ways, so sometimes I will disappear to recover or not have much energy. I have no problem waiting for replies to rp or messages, and I hope we can be patient with each other as needed to have a fun time. Take your time, and I'll get to you as soon as I'm able, too.

-No autohitting, godmodding, or metagaming. If you want something to happen specifically, talk to me and we can work out why or how.

- I will always give at least a paragraphs or two in an rp response but even if you give me several pages, my reply may be succinct. I'm trying to be better about not putting filler in a reply just to match lengths. I also don't really enjoy backtracking dialogue in a thread, since it gets confusing really fast. I totally get wanting to respond to everything, but doing so to every talking point ends up with the muses having like six differing conversations at once. So I might skip things I want to respond to, to avoid that, and my replies may be smaller to keep the flow of interactions smoother. Hopefully I'll give my partner enough to work with. If not, let me know!

-I'm fine with writing pre-established platonic relationships with canon characters from persona 4, but I'm very hesitant to jump into anything romantic. I've had some weirdness with that in the past, since interpretations can vary wildly. Related, but I'm gonna try to stick to canon, but mine will likely be divergent in ways as well.

-All Icons I use will like be from p4 canon, if i use any. I don't expect anyone to use them to write with me. I also don't format my posts except for fun on rare occasions where it feels fitting. I don't expect anyone to match my format, and I hope my simplicity won't be an issue for anyone.

-Anything triggering or issue causing I will try to tag. The format for tagging will be ‘#cw *insert trigger here*’. Example being #cw injury. I will try to be consistent! Please feel free to ask me if I need to tag anything!

If you read through this, then thank you very much! I hope to interact with you soon, and if not, then I hope your day is great and I appreciate you looking at my blog!

[gammija]

The final Web!Martin evidence list

Now that canon is done, and we’ve got word of god confirmation that Web!Martin wasn’t complete nonsense, I decided to go back to my lil chronological evidence list and actually clean it up a bit, delete parts that in hindsight weren't all that indicative, and put everything in a slightly more readable format. (Obligatory disclaimer that i don’t and never did believe or advocate for some kind of evil web!martin, and that I'm not intending to connect a moral judgement to martin (or anyone else for that matter) having some of these traits)

So here: The (hopefully, please) final list with Web!Martin Evidence! Presented in order of importance, according to. me

The final (hopefully) Web!Martin evidence list

(In order from most to least obvious)

Spiders

I mean, it’s called the Web. TMA reiterates quite a few times that Martin liked spiders. Sometimes it IS that easy.

MAG022: Martin: "I like spiders. Big ones, at least. Y’know, y’know the ones you can see some fur on; I actually think they’re sort of cute -"

MAG038: | Sasha: "A spider?" Jon: "Yeah. I tried to kill it…" [...] Sasha: [Chuckles] "Well, I won’t tell Martin." Jon: "Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem."

MAG059: Jon: "I have done my best to prevent Martin reading this statement in too much detail. I have no interest in having another argument about spiders."

MAG079: Jon: "Apparently, biologically, his account of the spiders doesn’t make any sense according to Martin."

MAG197: Martin: “What? Because I like spiders? Well, used to.”

Lies and subterfuge

Martin is able to use lying and subterfuge to achieve his goals, and is called manipulative a few times.

Lies:

MAG022: Martin: "[He] became slightly more co-operative after I lied to him and told him that one of the upstairs residents had buzzed me in."

MAG056: Martin: "I lied on my CV."

MAG158: Peter: “But you said –” Martin: “Honestly, I mostly just said what I thought you wanted to hear.”

MAG164: Jon: "You – I actually believed you!"

MAG189: Martin: “Sorry. Sorry, John. Not sure how much everything up there actually understood what was going on. But, y’know, I didn’t want to take any chances so it made sense to… um…” Jon: “Put on a show?” Martin: “Yeah, basically, more or less.”

MAG191: Martin: "That's not true." Arun: "Liar!"

Subterfuge:

The plan in 118, which revolved around convincing Elias that Martin was only “acting out”, to create a distraction for Melanie. (Also compare the way he evades giving a straight answer here with the way Annabelle talks in 196.)

Working with Peter in s4 under false pretenses, to distract him from Jon and eventually try to learn what Peter wanted.

Manipulation accusations:

These, I know, are somewhat contentious, since it’s mostly villains saying this to him. I’m still including them, since

1): From a media analysis standpoint, being mentioned 3 times is a sign to pay attention, even when it may not be the full truth.

2): I only see it as describing Martin’s behaviour in the previous points, not as a moral judgement; Especially since he almost always ‘manipulates’ people in positions of power over him.

Still, if it bothers anyone, feel free to ignore these.

MAG138: Martin: "That’s it? No, no monologue, no mind games? You love manipulating people!" Elias: "That makes two of us."

MAG186: Martin: “I can be a real manipulative prick, you know that?” Also Martin: “Oh yeah.”

MAG196: Annabelle: “Because you always managed to get what you wanted through smiles and shrugs and stammerings that weren’t nearly as awkward as they seemed.” [SMALL SOUND OF MARTIN’S CONCESSION TO THE POINT] Martin: “Point taken.”

The Lonely/the Web

The Lonely and the Web sometimes affect Martin to similar degrees.

In season 3, when Martin is getting used to reading statements for the first time, most of them leave him emotionally affected: MAG084, MAG088, MAG090,

MAG095: Martin: “S-S-Statement… done.” [HEAVY BREATHING & TREMBLING AS MARTIN STEADIES HIMSELF] “I don’t like recording these. There. I-I said it.”,

MAG098: Martin: [Panting] “End of statement.” [Deep breath] “I, um, I think I might need to sit down. Oh. Yeah, I am. Right. I don’t, uh, I’m not really sure if these are actually getting easier or harder. I mean I don’t feel –”

Only the last two statements he reads are remarkably easier. This might be a hint that Martin is just getting used to reading them, but the quote from MAG098 seems to contradict that. Either way, it’s likely not a coincidence that those last two happen to be the Lonely and the Web:

MAG108: Martin: “Statement ends.” (exhale) “That wasn’t so bad…”

MAG110: Martin: “Statement ends.” [...] “I mean, I think it sounds like a Jurgen Leitner book. About spiders. Hm. Good John didn’t have to read this one, anyway. I know he’s not a fan. Although, this one wasn’t too bad, actually! I – yeah. Anyway.”

In season 5, there are two powers’ Domains that actually affected Martin mentally, as opposed to only physically: the Lonely’s, in 170 (and arguably 186), and, depending on your interpretation, in 172, when Martin went exploring without knowing why he did so.

Proximity

Martin investigates a lot of the Web statements during season 1 to 3 (in other words, when the archive team still researches statements). The only ones he isn’t mentioned in during this period are MAG019 and MAG020, when he’s being harrassed by worms, and MAG081, which Jon records by himself outside of the institute.

Most notably, he’s the one who discovered the statement in MAG114, ‘Cracked Foundations’, which is the one statement in the entire show that sets up the interdimensional properties of HTR.

The Web!Lighter passed through Martin's hands first, before he gave it to Jon.

Similarly, Annabelle mostly spoke to Martin in season 5, despite most other Avatars usually focusing on Jon.

Aesthetics

Apart from the above obviously Web related areas, there are some other aesthetics which are mentioned in connection to both the Web and Martin, throughout canon.

These are describing the Web;

These are describing Martin.

Tapes:

Martin is the only character to treat the tape recorders as friends - any other character is either indifferent, or treats them as enemies.

MAG039: Martin: "I think the tapes have a sort of… low-fi charm."

MAG154 Martin: “Oh. Hi. Hello again.” … (small laugh) “Sorry pal, false alarm this time.”

MAG156 Martin: “Mm? Oh.” [HE LAUGHS, GENTLY.] “Yeah. (rustling paper) I was going to read one. Hate for you to miss it!” [SHORT, FORCED LAUGH, AS HE FLAPS THE STATEMENT AROUND.]

MAG170 Martin: “Oh. Oh, hello. What’s this? Wow, retro! What are you up to, little buddy; just – listening? That’s okay. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

MAG190 Jon: "[The tapes] seem to like [Martin]."

Retro:

MAG069: Statement: “I only saw Annabelle Cane once during this period. She wasn’t hard to pick out. She dressed like a vintage clothing store exploded on her, and her short bleach-blonde hair stood out sharply against dark skin.”

MAG160: Jon: “Anyways, don’t tell me the phonebox down there doesn’t appeal to your retro aesthetic.” Martin: “It – might. Maybe.”

MAG163: Annabelle/the Web callying Martin via an old payphone: [ A PHONE RINGS. IT’S NOT THE TINNY, ELECTRONIC SOUND OF A CELLPHONE – NO, THIS IS A TRUE, HEAVY, CLASSIC RING.] Martin: “Uh. John? Uh, J, John – the, uh, payphone that’s – here, for some reason – it’s ringing?”

Hatred of burns:

MAG067: Jack Barnabas’ statement: “I looked up and noticed within the corner of the room, where there had been a spider’s web this morning, there was just a faint wisp of smoke.” “Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundreds of tiny spiders.”

MAG139: Statement by member of Cult of the Lightless Flame: “The Mother of Puppets has always suffered at our hand; all the manipulation and subtle venom in the world means nothing against a pure and unrestrained force of destruction and ruin.” Agnes burned down Hilltop Road.

MAG145: The Web ties Gertrude to Agnes, stopping the Desolation’s ritual (the only Power whose ritual the Web is known to have prevented).

MAG167: Gertrude enlists Agnes’/the Desolation’s help in order to burn her assistant Emma, who was Web aligned.

MAG169: Martin: "Look, I just – don’t want to get burned, all right? It’s, it’s like my least favorite pain ever. [...] I, I legitimately hate burns, alright? They’re, they’re awful, and they scar horribly, and they just – it – it just makes me sick; I, I hate it. Hate it!"

Phrasing:

MAG039: Martin: "I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck. [...] It's just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too. We all are, I think."

MAG079: Martin's poem: "The threads of people walking, living, lovi–"

MAG117: Martin: "This last couple of years, I’ve always been running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but, but now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good leaving my own little web. Oh, oh, Christ, I hope John doesn’t actually listen to these. “Good lord, is Martin becoming some sort of spider person?” No, John, it’s an expression, chill out! Besides, spiders are fine. I mean, yes, people are scared of them, obviously, but actual spiders, they just want to help you out with flies."

MAG167: Jon: “Methinks the Spider dost protest too much.” Martin: “Jon –” Jon: “Joking! Just joking.”

Personality:

How applicable these are depends heavily on how you interpret Martin's own personality, so your mileage may vary.

MAG008: Statement: “Nobody ever said a word against Raymond himself, though, who was by all accounts a kind and gentle soul [...]”

MAG123: Jon: "The Web does seem to have a preference for those who prefer not to assert themselves."

MAG147: Annabelles statement: "I discovered a deep and enduring talent inside myself for lying. [...] My manipulations were not intricate, but they were far beyond what was expected of a child my age, and I have always believed that the key to manipulating people is to ensure that they always under- or overestimate you. Never reveal your true abilities or plans."

Word of God and Annabelle

I kinda wanted to ‘prove’ that Web!Martin had quite a bit of evidence to back it up, hence this header being last. But of course, in this post-canon world, there are a few lines that most obviously confirm the theory:

MAG197: Martin is Web enough to be able to read the 'vibrations', like Annabelle, and see Jon and Basira (the latter being especially notable, as he hadn't known she was there beforehand): [CHITTERING, BUZZING AND HIGH-PITCHED SQUEALS CHANGE CADENCE] Martin: "Wait… Wait, hang on, is that him?" Annabelle: "Yes. I guess you’re better with the Web than we thought." Martin: "And – Wait, ha– No, uh… is that… Basira? He – He’s got Basira with him!" Annabelle: "Yes."

Season 5 Q&A part 2: Jonny: “Essentially, it was fascinating looking at the fandom and, like, the Web!Martin believers, because what they were doing was correctly picking up on hints dropped in the early seasons that were later, like, not exactly abandoned, but it was much more like, ‘Well, no, he does have like aspects of The Web to him, but he is moreover The Lonely.’ And that came about very… very organically, really. Because throughout Season 3 and going into Season 4, we had this conversation and we were like, ‘No, actually he's like-” Alex: “‘It can't be, it cannot be, it must be the other way round’ Yeah.”

(Note that they say “throughout season 3 and going into season 4,” which likely means that season 1, season 2, and at least part of season 3, aka half of the entire show, were written with Web!Martin as an intentional possibility.)

If you read all that, thanks so much! Obviously, Web!Martin never really came to fruition, so it's fine if you still don't like it. This is just a post explaining where it was coming from, at least for me and the other theorists I've spoken to.

[krappykawa]

I read your s/o who likes to read hcs and was wondering if you could do the same request format or whatever it is you'd call it but with terishima,akaashi, iwa, Oikawa,and Daichi? Sorry if that's a lot! -anon

with a s/o that likes to read (part 2)

— iwaizumi, oikawa, terushima, daichi, and akaashi

word count. 1.4k

genre. fluff

note. i made these ones shorter than the ones in part two because anon requested a lot of characters and i didn’t wanna run out of headcanons to write,,, i hope you still like this though!

part one here

IWAIZUMI.

- will read the books that you’re reading just because he likes the feeling of being able to bond with you over something you love since you’re so supportive of him already (literally the perfect man. perfect bf. give me a kiss rn RN!!)

- maybe not all of them, but if you get him hooked on the description, then he will probably finish the book faster than you

- if he doesn’t like a book very much he’ll take ages to finish it though

- if you ask him about how he’s doing with reading it he’ll be like “oh i’m almost done” when in reality he’s only 20 pages in

- he’ll send you texts about the books you recommend but they’ll be super blunt like “this character just died” or “oh they kissed”

- you sit at your phone for 20 minutes debating on how to respond to those because HOW??

- he loves cuddles,,,, would literally die for cuddles

- so when you climb into his lap with a book in hand and bury your head in his neck as you read his heart literally malfunctions

- his cute s/o with their reading obsession that he secretly finds so endearing climbing into his lap for cuddle time,,,,,, his heart goes &2:$84!;💞💖💘💖💓💖💞/):&38,

- iwaizumi.exe has stopped working

- but he’s also not afraid to pull you into his lap if he sees you reading on the couch

- he’ll probably put on a monster movie and just hold you as you read and he watches

- probably also buried his nose in your hair and revels in your scent (also kisses your head every so often because he can’t help it and AHHHH HES SO CUTE)

- when you start sending him messages about your books, he will attempt to respond to every single text or he will just wait until you’re done and text back with “u done?” (not in a mean way though) there’s no inbetween

- he’s smiling every time you send him those texts though

- aoba johsai’s volleyball team (ESPECIALLY OIKAWA) teases him mercilessly if they ever catch him smiling at his phone in the locker room or during class or during lunch (basically u text him a lot lol)

- sometimes when you slam your book shut and scream into your pillow, he will just watch you with amused eyes and probably make an offhand comment that’s similar to “remember to breathe while you’re at it.”

- you end up throwing the pillow at him (which he catches and then proceeds to walk to where you are and swing you over his shoulder)

- get your mind out of the gutter on the “over his shoulder” part i swear he’s just teasing you for throwing a pillow at him (I CAN FEEL YOUR MIND WANDERING STOP IT)

OIKAWA.

- he makes an effort to read your books, really he does

- he’s just really busy, so most of the books he promises he will read stay only half way read through and never picked up ever again

- if you give him a sci-fi book though, this man will literally finish it at an insane pace

- literally he would be the one to text you at some ungodly hour (usually 3AM in the morning) because he just finished the book in one sitting and he’s literally brimming with reactions

- will text things like “WHAT THE FUCK HE JUST DIED”, “YN SEND HELP I THINK THEY’RE ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING STUPID”, “OH MY GODDDD I HATE THIS BITCH CAN THEY STOP TALKING” (always in all caps whenever he’s reacting to a book)

- you better pray that he doesn’t end up hating a character because he will text you every single time they show up on a page and complain about them

- “this character reminds me of ushijima why would you put me through this 🤕🤕”

- or “THEYRE TALKING AGAIN?? WHEN WILL THEY GET THE MEMO THAT I WANT THEM TO . ST F U ‼️😻”

- anyways, if it’s not sci-fi, it’s probably sitting on his nightstand and never touched again until you steal the book back

- CLAIMS he tried reading them (he got 2 pages in and then put it down)

- he is also a huge cuddler

- but you will not be able to read in his lap because he’s so fucking whiny

- “y/n-channn pay attention to meeee. you can read about that insanely hot dude in your book when you’re not already sitting in an insanely hot dude’s lap”

- big pouty face

- it works every single time and you hate him for it

- once you put your book down he will not let you go for a good ten minutes

- he also has tons of pictures of you reading on his phone because he thinks you’re so cute and feels like he has to snap a picture so he can remember how cute you looked at that very moment

- a lot like iwaizumi, oikawa will attempt to reply to every single one of your book related texts (except oikawa succeeds at replying to every single one)

- like you could literally send him fifty text messages in a row and you will get fifty replies back

TERUSHIMA.

- i am so sorry to say this but i genuinely cannot see terushima being interested in your books whatsoever

- he thinks that it’s boring and always questions how you can just sit down for hours on end and just read

- this changes when you give him one of those insane, mind-boggling, really dark, murder-mystery books

- he’ll scoff at it but after a lot of begging on your part, he’ll give it a try

- he loves it

- he told you that he never got bored and that feeling like that while reading a book is so weird to him

- that is the only book you’ll ever get him to read though (okay maybe he’ll read a few more if you beg him for it with that cute pouty face of yours that he cannot resist)

- like he’ll treat that murder mystery book as a holy grail and insist that nothing will ever top it

- i’m sorry again but he probably texts you “what u doing rn?” and if you say something about reading he’ll try to get you to do literally anything else (most likely will send a horny text to try and steal you away from your reading, let’s be honest here)

- “come over baby you can experience all that you’re reading in that book first hand 😏😏😏”

- if you send him text reactions of your book he will most likely reply with “awe babe ur so cute” but not say anything about the books in itself (IM SORRY HE’S NOT MEAN ABOUT IT THOUGH)

- cuddling with him while reading will never happen

- seriously

- he will do everything in his power to get you to put the book down

- like start peppering you with kisses or tickling you

- he just can’t stand sitting down in silence for so long lol

- he doesn’t put you down for reading though

- like yeah he might not understand it and thinks it’s boring, but he admires that you care so much about it and also admires your commitment

DAICHI.

- admires you for reading honestly

- like i feel like he’s the type to get really good grades but will not look at a book that he hasn’t been assigned to read for his life

- that being said, he probably has never read any of the books you ask him to read with you

- he’s told you he’s read one or two which is a lie (you know it’s a lie but you don’t tell him that because you know he feels bad about not reading them)

- he isn’t on his phone often so most of the time your texts don’t get answered for hours

- it’s kinda fun that way though because after a while you just start sending him long text threads and it’s like talking to yourself

- when he does respond it’s with something like “you look like you had fun there” (after that he’ll apologize for not seeing it and then ask if you had anything else about the book that you wanted to tell him about AWEHISHFNF)

- very good listener!! he’ll try and have a genuine conversation about the book even if he hasn’t read it (like if you want to talk about how you think the plot doesn’t work, he will either support you or give you valid reasons that sparks constructive conversation)

- will absolutely never see the texts you send at 1AM (until the morning) because he always passes out before 11PM

- will see them in the morning and will text back “well good morning to me”

- he has absolutely no clue what you’re talking about in the texts but tries his hardest to be supportive

- cuddling while you’re reading happens nearly every single time you’re together

- is very stressed from dealing with his volleyball children so he’ll more than happily sit on the couch and cuddle with you as you read

- sometimes he falls asleep while you cuddle and you just snuggle into him and it’s so cute

AKAASHI.

- THIS LITTLE SHIT

- man oh man he loves acting like a smart ass whenever you text him about your books

- you’ll be like “my favorite character just died!!” and he’ll be like “well tell them to not die then wtf”

- will stay up late texting you about your book though because he’s most likely reading it with you so you two can bounce ideas off of each other

- if you like a character that he hates he will not hesitate to start a debate about why you shouldn’t like that character (full one page of reasons. this man takes his opinions very seriously)

- if you’re together at his house or something and you start yelling at your book he’ll be like “y/n don’t hurt its feelings.”

- you momentarily pause your yelling to deadpan him

- he stares right back

- “just be nice.” (you’re like BWAH???)

- HE ALSO YELLS AT HIS BOOKS THOUGH

- it’s uncommon but it does happen

- if you’re both reading or you’re doing homework and he’s reading, he’ll slam the book shut and yell about how stupid this character is (and when i mean yell, i mean yell)

- and if he doesn’t like the ending of something he will rant for days and you’ll have to remind him to take a breath

- he gets so hyped up from reading books it’s so cute

- will read with you when you cuddle read (does that make sense??? like when you cuddle with him while reading)

- will mumble things under his breath while you’re both reading but you’re on his lap so you can hear everything and you just laugh

- one time he mumbled “stupid bitch just fucking die already” to this character he hated

- you had to put down the book because you were laughing so hard

[andypantsx3]

war paint | 3 | captain

pairing: Bakugou Katsuki / Reader

length: 27,765 words / 10 chapters

summary: Desperate times force you to disguise yourself and join the kingsguard. When a suspicious string of crimes strike the palace, however, Captain Katsuki Bakugou starts paying extra close attention. (spin off of in cinders)

tags: mulan AU, secret identity, romance, reader-insert

warnings: aged up characters, some violence, eventual smut

The first few weeks of your enlistment were inarguably the worst you’d ever lived.

If not on patrol, soldiers were awakened before dawn every morning and marched to the training pitch behind the castle where you drilled in different formations with various weapons. You were run through exercises that seemed designed to drop anyone with less than iron willpower, then set to menial tasks like cleaning the barracks or repairing any damaged weapons or equipment. The midday meal was the first break in your day, followed immediately by training in basic first aid and survival skills, then by more weaponry drills that took you until the dinner bell.

Between your extra training with Nishimura and the time you had to invest in sneaking off to use the lavatory or a spot to bathe in private, you were hardly resting. Even the time you did spend bathing, you spent in a constant state of anxiety, wondering if a random bunk check would reveal you missing. You hadn't chanced more than a wild, lightning fast scrub down in weeks.

At the end of the first week, you’d collected your enlistment fee with hands blistered from sword work, and it took you longer than you’d ever admit to count it out, stopping every few seconds when your eyes drifted involuntarily shut. You’d been happy to send it off to your family, though, with a short note that told them you were doing well.

Which was, of course, a lie.

You weren’t exactly the most popular among the kingsguard thanks to the show you’d put on when you arrived, and you had the misfortune of dorming in the same room as Nishimura. Despite Captain Bakugou’s warnings, he’d gone out of his way to make life uncomfortable for you, slipping bugs into your sheets and loudly discussing you in less than flattering terms well within earshot.

More than that, you were terrible at nearly everything and it was obvious. Kaminari helped you to the best of his ability, and so did Sero, the guard who’d poked fun at your age at the castle gates. Neither of them, however, could make up for the fact that as a woman, you were somewhat smaller and slighter, and hadn’t had the same opportunities building up muscle mass as men your age. Every sword felt like an anvil in your hands; lifting a mace like hauling a boulder.

The only thing you seemed to excel at was the first aid trainings. You found yourself listening with rapt attention as the court physician walked your battalion through wrapping injuries and cleaning wounds, noting which easily obtained herbs and flowers could slow blood loss or ease pain. Kaminari was always eager to pair with you during the practical exercises, as you were among the least likely to accidentally poison him with the wrong herbs. It was gratifying to be good at at least one thing.

Your favorite part of castle service, though, was the patrols.

After your first month of training, you’d been assigned thrice-weekly patrol routes and found that it was like wading into a cool river on a hot day. Patrols got you out of whichever drills were happening at the time and took you out from under Captain Bakugou’s purview and behind the relative safety of the castle walls.

Though monotonous, you only had to walk a specific route throughout the castle with a partner, and you were rarely supervised. On your first patrol with Kaminari, you also found that patrols were - for him - more of an opportunity to make social calls.

“L/N,” he said, nearly the minute you stepped inside the castle walls. “We’ve got an excellent route today.”

You raised an eyebrow in question.

He chuckled, gesturing you along. “Come on, our first stop is right over here.”

“Our first stop?” you echoed.

Kaminari grinned and grabbed your sleeve, pulling you into a side door. On the other side sat a cramped office stuffed with bright fabrics and colorful spools of thread. A woman with shocking pink hair hunched over a spill of pretty silk, working tiny, perfect stitches into the fabric.

“Mina!” Kaminari boomed and the woman sat up with a smile.

“Denki!” she said, reaching over to hug him. “It’s been a while since patrol took you over here! I have so much to tell you!”

Kaminari laughed and pulled you forward. “Me too. Mina, this is L/N! He lied about his age and wormed his way into the kingsguard.”

You whirled on him. “I’m old enough to be in the guard!”

The absolute wrong gender, but definitely the right age.

He gave you an innocent look. “I’m just passing on the popular opinion.”

Mina chuckled. “Oh, ignore him, L/N. We all do. It’s quite nice to meet you.”

Kaminari whined but Mina just laughed again, redirecting his attention to the dress she was making, saying it was for the princess-to-be. Apparently, Prince Shouto’s bride had been a kitchen girl that Mina and Denki had both been acquainted with, and they talked eagerly of the wedding they’d both been invited to and the food that would be there.

“Think old Bakugou will show up?” Kaminari asked at one point, making himself comfortable at Mina’s workstation. Mina met this with a shrug.

You gave them both a questioning look. “Why would the captain be invited?”

Kaminari turned to you conspiratorially. “Captain Bakugou and the prince grew up together - they’re something like old friends. Plus, Bakugou’s a marquis, he’s probably got an invitation just for political reasons.”

“He’s a marquis?” you asked. That explained the Lord appellation on your contract, then. “Why join the palace guard if he’s titled?”

Kaminari shrugged. “Probably not enough opportunity to torture innocent civilians in Musutafu. If he wants to hold the land, he’s got to be nice to them, hasn’t he?”

You grimaced, thinking of all the drills he’d run you through since you’d gotten here. That definitely wouldn’t endear him to anyone.

“Speaking of our favorite captain,” Mina said conversationally, “I heard he’s been meeting with the prince more often than usual.”

“Wedding stuff?” Kaminari asked, but Mina shook her head.

“As if he’d touch that mushy shit with a ten foot pole. He wouldn’t know romance if it pranced in front of him wearing a soldier’s uniform. No, I heard it’s because a bunch of papers and other valuables went missing from the prince’s study last Thursday night.”

Your mind wandered back to last Thursday, wondering if you’d been on patrol when it had happened. You only dredged up a memory of snuggling down into your bunk, relieved that Nishimura and his goon friend Hasumi were out on their own patrol and your bed was thankfully bug free.

Kaminari’s eyebrows went up. “Important papers?”

Mina raised a thin shoulder. “From what I heard, it seemed to be a weird selection. A couple letters, some wedding arrangements. But a land treaty disappeared as well. They think it’s a spy.”

Kaminari whistled. “Bet old Baku is pissed this happened on his watch. No wonder he’s been in such a foul mood lately.” He turned to you. “Don’t you think he’s been a little too happy when one of us gets clipped by the wrong edge of the sword?”

You thought back to his threats in the mess hall. “He seems normal enough to me.”

Kaminari mulled that over. “I suppose he’s usually that awful.”

Mina smiled. “Talking of which, shouldn’t you be getting on with your patrol? I’d hate to find out what he’d do if he found out you were in here gossiping.”

A spike of panic stabbed through your heart and you grabbed Kaminari’s sleeve. “Excellent observation, Mina. We really should be going. It was wonderful to meet you!”

You tugged Kaminari roughly back through the doorway. You thought it was a testament to his own fear of the captain that he went willingly enough.

The rest of your patrol proved uneventful, however, Bakugou thankfully never being alerted to your social stop. Your patrol ended just after the dinner bell and you ate quickly in the mess hall, then rushed off to the training pitch.

Today was also the last day of your punishment for fighting in the mess hall on your first day, and you thought dreamily of all the rested muscles and extra time you’d have on your hands once extra training ended. You might be able to sneak off to bathe at a normal time of the evening instead of in the dead of night, starting tomorrow.

Your good cheer faded quickly, however, as you arrived at the pitch to find Captain Bakugou there.

Nishimura was just behind you and he stopped short at your side. “Where’s our usual drill officer?” he demanded.

A horrible grin cut into Bakugou’s features, bearing his sharp canines. He looked like a wolf ready to tear into a nest of rabbits, and your stomach flipped. “Ojiro’s off duty tonight. Thought I’d see if you’d learned your lesson myself.”

You inhaled sharply, and Bakugou caught it, laughing. “Thought I’d forgotten about you two fucks, didn’t you?”

You lowered your gaze and took a deep, steadying breath. Just tonight. You just had to get through tonight and you would be free.

Nishimura seemed to steel himself as well, sweeping a hand through his dark hair. “What are our drills tonight, Captain?”

Bakugou’s crimson gaze flickered over you both. “Fight me.”

You looked up, startled. “Fight you?”

He looked you over disdainfully. “You’re a goddamn soldier, you telling me you can’t fight? Didn’t seem to stop you in the mess hall.”

You bit your lip, but Nishimura stepped forward, that violent gleam in his eye. “Yes, sir.”

Bakugou grinned. “I’m gonna fucking wipe this field with you.”

Nishimura didn’t dare correct his superior, but his hand went quickly to his sword and he leaned forward eagerly. Before you even had time to blink, the clash of metal rang out across the field and Bakugou had Nishimura on the defensive, pushing him back into step with you. You hadn’t even seen him go for his sword.

Swearing, you fumbled for your own blade, whipping it out just in time to catch the swipe Bakugou aimed at your side. You stumbled under the force of the strike, tripping backwards.

Nishimura growled and lunged again, but Bakugou was faster, parrying his attack and following up with his own. A low chuckle escaped him as he caught Nishimura with the back edge of his blade, winding him and sending him staggering back.

Bakugou whipped back to you, targeting you with another fast swipe that you barely caught in time. The strength of his blow almost knocked your sword from your grasp, shuddering up your arm and leaving you gasping.

“What the fuck are you in the kingsguard for if you won’t fight?” he snarled. Another swipe came your way and again you barely caught it. Your heart beat frantically in your chest and you tried to duck out of range of his arm.

“Come back here, pretty boy,” Bakugou taunted, advancing on you, but Nishimura cut in with another attack. Bakugou whipped the edge of his blade up again, faster than your eye could follow, catching the strike. You caught the curl of that savage grin on the corner of his mouth again before he moved, ducking under Nishimura’s arm and twisting his blade. It slid along the edge of Nishimura’s sword with an awful screech, then caught the hilt at an angle, ripping it straight out of Nishimura’s grip.

A kick from Bakugou had Nishimura on the ground and just as quickly he twisted back around, stalking back towards you. Your heartbeat quickened in fear as he approached, crimson gaze burning into you.

“You don’t belong here if you can’t face me,” he ground out. “Fight me or I’m discharging you. That’s a fucking order.”

You trembled, but lifted your blade. You needed the money to send back to your parents. It was too early to be discharged - if you left now, they’d have no way of clearing the debt.

You thrust your sword forward but Bakugou dodged easily. You quickly flicked through all the maneuvers you’d been drilling the past month, and followed up with a lunge. Bakugou grinned, flicking it aside with a quick twist of his wrist.

“Put your back into it, shrimp,” he demanded.

You gripped your sword with both hands, bringing it down on him with all the force you had in you. Bakugou deflected, and before you knew what was happening, your sword was rent from your grasp, skidding along the dirt of the pitch behind you.

The flat of Bakugou’s sword came up to tip your chin up to him.

“Pathetic,” he spat, “you fight like a damn woman.”

Your hands curled into fists at your sides. Bakugou’s sharp eyes caught it and he smirked. “You gonna punch me, pretty boy?”

You struggled to tamp down the hot anger bubbling up inside you like a spring from the earth. “No, sir.”

He eyed you distrustfully, pressing the flat of his blade into your chin a little harder. “I’d think seriously about what the fuck you think you’re doing here. This is the kingsguard and I don’t need weak little shits like you endangering the royal family or your fellow soldiers.”

You stared back at him, not daring to speak. Your blood rushed in your ears and your heart hammered wildly in your chest.

After a long moment he lowered his blade, sheathing it back at his hip. He looked over at Nishimura, who was delicately picking himself up off the ground.

“Disappointing,” Bakugou said roughly. “I’ve seen enough here. You’re both dismissed - back to your dormitories.”

You nodded, backing away from him. Nishimura stalked off, and you turned and picked your way gingerly back across the field, stopping only to pick up your sword and tuck it back into the belt at your waist. You set off slowly for the barracks, something like hot tears stinging at the back of your eyes.

You didn’t look back, but you swore you could feel a pair of crimson eyes on you as you slipped quietly through the dark.

[agntofhydra]

Sawbones // SIX

(gif credit) 

summary: Red String of Fate Soulmate AU

Soul mates have a red thread tied to each others pinkies that only one of them can see.

You’re the Resistance’s head medic. You can see the red thread of fate that leads you to your soulmate. Poe doesn’t believe in the soulmate / thread theory. You don’t agree with his tactics, nor does he approve of yours. Leia and Holdo just really want a win.

pairing: poe dameron x reader

rating: mature for later chapters

read me on ao3!

the masterlist  |  the playlist

read on till the end for notes!

CONTENT WARNING: this chapter contains drug use and more swearing than usual. 

SAWBONES // SIX

CALM DOWN, STARBOY. 

You’d surprised yourself, honestly. 

Maybe you were cut out for politics - the way you were able to stand in line with Poe and the Generals, keep your face blank and greet the new recruits without a scowl? It was nothing short of impressive. For you and Poe to stand shoulder to shoulder, his hands clasped behind him while yours were clasped in front, and not glance down at the stupid fucking string and notice that it was probably the shortest it’s ever been entitled you to an award. Maybe a nice vacation, off base? For the entirety of this training? 

That would be nice. 

You half expected Poe to jump into her arms, like people often did when their significant others returned from a flight. He didn’t. In fact, Poe’s expression did not crack from it’s diplomatic mask. Shoulders back, jaw clenched and chin out, Poe scanned the pilots as they left their ships, and you couldn’t help but watch him from the corner of your eye. Poe now diametrically opposed who he had been in your office, his stupid smile now a faint memory. 

Diplomatic, political Poe was one you hadn’t met nor seen in person. 

Diplomatic, political Poe was hot. 

Poe’s posture elongated his spine, jutted his chest out and brought forth his collar bones. Your eyes once again traced his gold chain. 

Maybe you didn’t deserve all the praise you’d previously granted yourself as you openly ogled the man next to you. But Poe was your soulmate. It granted you an ogle pass, whether or not both parties were aware. 

The pilots had lined up, helmets off and tucked under their arms. They were the perfect image, the very epitome of what people would want to see on Resistance banners. You’d purposely not remembered their names in spite. You were the Head Medic of the Resistance - they should have to introduce themselves to you.

Leia greeted them, her words sounded garbled as your eyes met the infamous Scoria Tane. She stood tall, her long white hair in a loose french braid. Her chestnut skin seemingly unmarred with such trivial marks like pores. You felt the breath leave your chest as her eyes flitted over to meet Poe’s. No matter how brief, you still caught it. You couldn’t feel any change in Poe’s demeanor, but you didn’t want to chance glancing over to see if there was a smile on his face. No need to put salt in an already festering wound. 

“This is our head medic,” Leia introduced you. Your head turned to hers before returning back to the recruits with a small nod. You were really mucking up your air of superiority. 

Besides Scoria, there was only one other human. And he was staring at you. 

“It’s an honor to be here, Generals,” the man spoke up, his eyes momentarily leaving your figure to address Holo, Ackbar and Leia. “It seems like a large base. I don’t know about my fellow pilots, but I would love a tour.” His eyes were back on you. 

“I’m sure Commander Dameron would be more than willing to accommodate you, Commander Ancin,” Holo nodded. 

Ancin smiled slightly. “Doctor, would you have the time?” 

You had been trying very hard not to meet his gaze, but his lack of subtlety forced your hand. However, Poe had beaten you to a response. 

“She’s very busy,” he cleared his throat. “Still has to conduct your physicals and stress tests. I am more than willing to give you a tour,” his tone was clipped. 

Ancin didn’t even spare Poe a glance, and you saw Poe clench his hands from behind his back out of your peripheral vision. You desperately wanted to pause time, to knock your shoulders or nudge him with your elbow. But you couldn’t, not with the audience in front of you. 

“It’s fine, Commander Dameron. I’m sure I could spare some time,” you responded, feeling like your skin was on fire. No doubt the white of your coat further contrasted the fact that your face was also on fire. 

“Great,” Ancin switched his helmet to the other arm. “Can we begin now?” He turned to Leia quickly. “My apologies, unless there was more to be discussed?” 

Leia gave him a tight smile. “The specifics can be gone over later.”

Ancin nodded before breaking formation with his fellow pilots and grabbing your arm. “Shall we, Doc?” 

If you would’ve had the time to turn your head as Ancin grabbed you, you would’ve seen the way Poe clenched his jaw impossibly tight and watched as the Coruscant’s pilot Commander dragged you away. If you would’ve perhaps taken the time to drag your eyes away from Poe’s chest and face earlier, you would’ve noticed that since the beginning of this whole situation, Poe had been slowly dragging the pointer finger of his right hand over the base of his left pinky. 

If you did, maybe you wouldn’t have agreed to showing someone around a base you barely knew yourself. 

“I’m going to apologize in advance,” you began, subtly removing your arm from his grip. “I don’t really know the base that well either. I know hangars, cafeteria and meeting room. But only in relation to the medbay.” 

“That’s okay,” he smiled down at you. “We can figure it out together.”

You hadn’t forced yourself to memorize the names of the pilots, but hearing Ancin jogged your memory from when you had skimmed their files. You were pretty sure his first name was Cane, and if the galaxy could pick one person to represent them, it would probably be him. 

Cane Ancin was objectively gorgeous. He was tall, several inches taller than you and most likely Poe, too. His cheekbones and jawline were sharp, and you remembered bitterly that he must be ridiculously fit, because he had one of the lowest resting heart rates you’d ever seen. He was broad, and his curls rivaled Poe’s. You outwardly winced at the comparison. 

“Something wrong?” he asked, putting a hand on your shoulder. You tried not to shrug it off. 

“Nothing. Just uh, remembering all the stuff I have to do back in the medbay.” 

Cane wasn’t bothered. “Let’s start moving then, yeah?”

The two of you had continued walking for a couple of paces, Cane watching you out of the corner of his eye, not even bothering to take account of where the two of you were. 

Fleetingly, you wondered if the base would be able to accommodate both Cane and Poe’s ego. 

“Why did you want me to give you a tour?” you asked, his silent watching pushing you to the brink. 

Cane shrugged. “Is it a crime to ask a beautiful woman to show me around?” 

You blinked at him. 

“Tell me,” his voice viscous like honey. He increased his stride so he could stand in front of you, abruptly stopping your movement. Throwing civility to the wind, you openly scowled. 

“Can you see your thread?” 

You wanted to roll your eyes. Could you have a conversation about literally anything else or was the soulmate tether your whole life now? You couldn’t work, sleep, or even eat without thinking about it. You’d never piloted one before, but you were sure that you could figure out how to steer an x-wing into oblivion. Sure, you had two of the best pilots in the galaxy on base that would catch your ass in no time, but it was nice to pretend that they couldn’t. 

Cane looked you up and down slowly. You weren’t exactly sure  what  he was looking at. Your boots, black leggings and white coat buttoned up to your throat didn’t really emanate sexy, but this guy was weird. It probably did seem sexy to him. Your scowl deepened. 

“I can see mine,” he drawled. Now would’ve been a great moment for one of your infamous ‘i’m gonna be sick’  moments. “And let me tell you, I like where it leads.” 

You snorted. “Calm down, starboy. I can see mine, too.”

Cane deflated. 

“Does that actually work? Do you get people with that?” you questioned, tapping on your chin. “Even on a few shots of fire-water I still don’t think I would’ve fell for it.”

Cane didn’t stay off-guard for long - after you were done speaking, he let out a laugh and held his hands up as if to say, ‘well, I tried.’

“It does sometimes,” he said. “The addition of fire-water does seem to increase the chances, though I figured I would try it with you regardless.” 

“You pilots are always so risky,” the two of you fell into step again. The tension seemed to have dissipated instantly. “Always shoot first, ask questions later.” 

“You speak from experience,” Cane raised an eyebrow. 

“Do you know how many pilots end up in my medbay because of that mentality?” You shook your head. “Craziest beings in the galaxy, I swear.” 

“Dameron is the worst of us,” he responded, and you didn’t miss the way his expression steeled. You stayed silent, waiting for him to continue. 

“Commander of the Resistance? You really trust that guy?” 

You narrowed your eyes, the words your brain wanted to speak in defense of Poe stilled at the tip of your tongue. You didn’t expect someone to join the ‘I hate Poe Dameron’ club, but as soon as it crossed your mind, you realized you weren’t even part of that club. You were in the ‘I hate loving Poe Dameron’ club. President of the ‘My soulmate is a douche but it’s totally my fault’ club. 

You could go on. 

“What’s your issue with Poe?” you asked. 

“Typical he hasn’t mentioned me,” Cane scratched his bare jaw. It made you realize you preferred stubble. “He’s just...not the guy you all think he is.” 

“Don’t be vague,” you said, annoyed. 

“The guy just...he’s not this straight-laced, hero of the Resistance. Hell, I haven’t even been here a day and I can tell the whole base fucking worships him, and for what?” 

“For being a good pilot?” you answered what was most likely a rhetorical question. “For risking his life every time he gets in that ship, getting us First Order intel and directly playing a role in saving the galaxy?” You were getting angrier by the second. Whatever past he had with Poe, you didn’t care about it. 

“Might I remind you it’s the same galaxy that you and I both live in? We all have shit we’ve done in the past. How we move on from it defines us.” You stopped yourself before saying something you would regret, revealing too much to a man you didn’t know. And honestly? You didn’t care to. 

You continued when Cane stayed silent. 

“You don’t have skeletons in the closet? If you know Poe’s, I’m sure he knows yours.” 

You turned to him, conveniently stopped outside of the double doors to your medbay. The harsh fluorescents illuminated Cane’s face, exposing the conflict and discord written all over his features. Whatever thoughts were floating in his head made you feel uneasy, as though you were teetering on a tightrope. Cane didn’t meet your gaze, instead he chose to finally notice his surroundings. 

He inhaled deeply and exhaled for longer. You waited patiently. 

“I’ll see you around for my tests, Doc.” Cane continued to walk down the hallway, and you fought the urge to point out that it was the opposite direction he needed to go. ...right?

You couldn’t dwell on your mediocre sense of direction before you heard the whoosh of air form the double doors opening and FX-7’s bulky metal frame towering over you.  Droid or not, you could feel the disapproval from the lit, annular holes in its head as they bored into your back.

“You have plenty to do,” was all the droid said before it retreated back into the medbay.

✗ ✗ ✗

  Yes, you had plenty to do. So much so that it took you up until early morning to finish. It was so early, (or late?) that you had recoiled when you’d checked the time.

But, as you were heading back to your quarters to catch up on sleep because you were in no rush to start taking vitals on the new recruits, your arm was caught on fire. 

Not literally, but it felt literal. Like every nerve ending was ripped from your skin, abraded and exposed. And it all originated from one point on your hand. You fought the buckle of your knees, desperately applying pressure to your pinky finger after loudly yelling a string of expletives. As you took another step in the direction of your quarters, the pain impossibly intensified. Somehow, your brain was able to act logically as you quickly retraced your last few steps. 

As you moved backwards, the pain slowly dissipated into a deep throb, coming from both your hand and somehow your chest? You inspected your arm, turning over at least seven times. Your medical training had never taught you, or even touched on anything related to...whatever just happened. As you retreated back to the medbay, the pain intensified again. 

“What the fuck,” you gritted through your teeth. Stepping back from the double doors, you continued forward. And for the next few minutes, you continued like that. Walking and retracing your steps, following the path that didn’t beset your body in so much agony your vision went white.  

In your course around the base, you were at a junction you’d never been to previously. To your left, the hallway led out to the runway and to your right, a dead end. However, a few experimental steps in either direction revealed that your phantom arm pain was directing you straight forward. 

Honestly, fuck the galaxy, you sized up the door in front of you. Whatever forces were at work right now, pulling your sensory nerves like strings on a marionette could fuck off. Sending you to weird parts of the base that you’d never been to (it could’ve been a common area actually, you never really explored) and sending you to a blank, durasteel door? Another healthy dose of fire shot up your spinal cord. 

“The thread is sentient,” you tried to catch your breath. “All of the past soulmates in the galaxy have joined together to kill me.” 

Rationally, there was no way you were correct but you were running on empty and had been updating the files on the pilots until you thought your retinas would burn out. Maybe this was a dream? You could definitely be dreaming. 

Shaking out your right arm, you bounced back and forth on either foot. You were going to go through this mystery door. Enter the mystery door that didn’t make your arm feel like the thread was pulling tight between your arm and torso as if to amputate it. Yes.

Before your mind could bitch out, your muscles pushed your legs forward by reflex - acting before the brain could process. Your hand pulling down on the handle, a component most doors on the base didn’t have. 

Blue. 

Your entire field of vision was met with a murky swirl of blue. The room was of decent size, maybe slightly smaller than your office. From what you could see, it looked like a storage room. The walls were lined with shelves that contained extra orange jumpsuits, helmets, blankets and clothes of all sorts. In your pursuit of orienting yourself, you disregarded the figure sitting on the ground against the wall opposite you.

 With one leg forward and the other bent at the knee, the source of the smoke dangled loosely between the fingers of Poe Dameron. 

But you didn’t realize that yet, because it was dark and hazy and you were confused and what was that smell?  The acrid fumes were coupled with an odor that was almost...sweet? No. Tart felt like the better word. Sharp and sour and sitting on your tastebuds. 

As Poe dragged on the stick in his hand, the embers that burned at the end burned brighter and attracted your eyes. Then, you noticed him. 

“Dameron?” you squinted through the smoke, trying to swat it out of your vision. “Are you seriously smoking spice right now?”

In your confusion and disbelief, you didn’t notice how the throbbing from the remnants of pain in your arm had become an amalgamation of both the lingering pain and a new, warmer sensation. Pleasure.

“I’m surprised you know what this is,” he blew out a long stream. 

You tried not to scoff. “I was a teenager once, too.” 

He was silent for a moment before lazily motioning with the hand that held the joint to the spot next to him. With a concerning lack of reluctance you’d think on later, you sat down next to him. 

“My entire left arm has been killing me all day,” he took another hit. You frowned as he blew the smoke out at you. 

“So weird that there isn’t someone on base that could do something about that,” you replied casually, but your mind was spinning. His arm was hurting too? What the hell was going on?

He shook his head, ignoring your response and offered you the joint instead. Surprising both him and yourself, you took it, rotating it in your hand. 

“Take a hit,” Poe urged. “You can turn off your doctor-mode for one seco -  are you really inspecting it right now?”

You looked at him, confused. “Um, yes? Why are you inhaling this when you don’t even know what it’s made of?” 

Poe blinked at you, albeit much slower than usual. “To get high.”

You tapped the ashes into the palm of your hand, then handed the spice back to him. His hand slowly, meticulously took it from your grip and brought it back to his lips. Rubbing the ashes with your pointer finger in your palm, you brought the fine, cerulean powder to your eyes, studying it before lightly placing your finger on your tongue. Poe’s eyes tracked every movement. 

“It’s similar to Ryll,” you noted. “An ore from Ryloth. It’s usually used medicinally, but it can be refined into some good fucking spice.”

“You’ve smoked spice?” 

You took the object in question from his grip, putting it between your lips and taking a deep inhale. Holding it, you smirked at him. You laughed while exhaling, your lungs somewhat relishing in the sweet burn you hadn’t felt in years. 

“Medical school was hard.”

“That’s…” Poe’s eyebrows twisted as he tried to find the words, “so...normal? Of you?” 

“Thanks?”

Poe leaned his head back against the wall. “You’re always the head medic, the doctor of the Resistance. You make it really hard to get to know you outside of that. Is there someone beneath the white coat?” 

You took another hit to avoid answering and Poe had no issue in continuing. 

“I had to ask that engineer you always hang out with,” he paused, thinking hard to remember Jasti’s name before giving up and continuing, “what your actual name was. The people I asked before didn’t know.” 

“Everyone calls me Doc. I don’t mind it.” 

“I do,” Poe snapped, uncharacteristically hostile. “Stars, I’ve made such an effort for you.” 

“An effort?” you echoed.

“To get to know you, to spend time with you. Maker, I even thought for a second - “ Nope. Poe wasn’t high enough to let that statement loose. 

But you were just high enough not to notice. 

“I’m sorry,” you apologized, the usual weight on your chest now heavier. “I don’t know how to act when people want to get to know me. I haven’t for a long time.” 

Poe placed the joint on the ground, letting it burn out. The two of you sat in silence, slowly inhaling and exhaling the chemicals that swirled in the air. You could feel yourself becoming heavier and weightless at the same time. Your physical sense felt light, but the burden of everything else came down heavy. 

“I hate having him here,” Poe began. “Ancin.” 

“Did you know him previously?” 

Poe swallowed thickly, and you watched his adam’s apple bob up and down. The thought crossed your mind again - the sensitivity of his carotid. It would be so easy for you to find out right now, to just lean over and place a finger, or even your lips on it. That part of your brain that kept you rational and reasonable must've been short circuited by the spice because it wasn’t telling you not to find out, not reminding you of any and all consequences. For once, your brain felt quiet. 

Leaning his head back up towards you, he caught your staring but you couldn’t be bothered to look away. Maybe he was sensitive elsewhere, too. You had dated a guy from Corellia who went absolutely feral when your lips met his sternum. You wanted to find out if Poe was the same way. You wanted to place your lips on every inch of his body, test each section of skin for a quick intake of breath, a twitch, goosebumps. To feel his fingers, calloused from years of flight maneuvers and switches, testing you for sensitivity. 

In your reverie, Poe had begun to inch closer at imperceptible increments. His left hand resting flat on the ground - next to your right. His left pinky laid over your right as he leaned in, tucking some hair behind your ear to justify his proximity. His head turned, his lips now ghosting over the strip of space between the bottom of your earlobe to the joint of your jaw. 

“Is this okay?” He whispered, and you closed your eyes at the feeling of his lips brushing against you. 

“This better not be a dream again,” you said under your breath. 

Chuckling, Poe pressed his lips to your temporomandibular joint as you tilted your head, giving him full access. “Again?” 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Your filter was gone - your brain now occupied with the double assault of the spice and having Poe Dameron press kisses onto your skin. 

“We don’t have to talk,” he said, unbuttoning the top two buttons of your white coat to give him more access to your neck. He sucked lightly at your own pulse point, and you sucked in a breath. 

“Sensitive?”  Stars. The irony. 

“Are you?” you bit back as you brought your hand to rest on his bicep. 

“Want to find out?” he pulled back to meet your eyes. In spite of your slow movements and cloudy train of thought, you had never felt so clear, so confident in an answer. 

You licked your lips, moistening them as your hand slid up from its place on his bicep to the side of Poe’s face, stroking your thumb lightly. Poe sighed, leaning into your ministration and tangling his pinky finger with yours. You could feel the blood buzzing underneath your skin, your sympathetic nervous system sending adrenaline and epinephrine by the gallon to account for how fast your heart was racing. 

You copied his earlier movements, pressing your lips to various points along his jaw, his neck. Testing what he liked the most. When you got to your target, you boldly licked the spot up to his jaw. Poe’s hand tangled in your hair, breath shuddering. 

“That’s a yes for you, too,” you whispered with the last remnants of air in your lungs. 

Finally, your brain rejoiced through the fog. 

You continued kissing, nipping at spots here and there. At the notch between his collarbones, Poe groaned. 

“Scoria.”

You stopped. 

Pulling away, you mustered the courage to meet his eyes. The smoke of the room now felt suffocating, not intoxicating. You felt like you were being smothered, and you were now noticing the lack of fresh air in your lungs. 

Poe’s eyes met yours, too before widening. 

Your hand left his face, your pinky leaving his. The dull ache in your arm had returned. You swallowed thickly, nodding. 

“Fuck. I’m - “ Poe couldn’t straighten out his thoughts, let alone form a sentence. Very clearly in his mind, he had known it was you kissing, sucking on his neck. Her name had just..slipped out. 

“No,” you cut him off before he could formulate some half-assed excuse you didn’t want to hear. “I’m sorry. I should’ve have - I forgot about - “ You couldn’t find the words either. 

Standing, you looked down at him briefly, noting how the red thread of fucking fate bisected his torso, standing out starkly against the blue of the smoke and his button up. 

“Thanks for the spice,” you forced, before leaving the room. 

Walking down the hallway, continuing your initial course of returning to your quarters, you felt extremely sober. What else could sober you up faster than the guy whose neck you're kissing moaning out the name of another woman? 

Looking down, you quickly redid the buttons Poe had undone. 

I’m sorry? Your mind replayed the moment.  Sorry for what? Poe is yours. 

You stopped in your tracks. 

Poe was yours. Why the fuck were you embarrassed that you were indirectly kissing your soulmate? Apologizing because he was currently in the middle of wasting his time with another woman? Sure, it was girl code not to do what you had previously been doing, but soulmates were excluded from girl code. Whether or not it was indirectly (...or directly) your fault that he was with her wasn’t important. 

So, yeah. Fuck being sorry, fuck being embarrassed. You were done tiptoeing around the subject. Operation ‘Poe is my soulmate and I’m finally going to do something about it’ was a go. You couldn’t waste any more time. 

The realization that you would explode if you had to spend any more days of your life without Poe’s lips on you was completely unrelated. 

 -----

are you guys screaming? i'm screaming.

also, poe looks high af in the gif above so...i felt that it fit well. 

but what a wild rollercoaster this has been & will continue to be. I hope y'all are excited for the ride, because I am. Can't thank you guys enough for the love & support. don't be scared, share the angst with your friends!! xoxox

also!!! official sawbones playlist because i am a slut for playlists. i’ll be adding and removing, so lmk how you feel about it :) 

TAGLIST (message me to be added!)

@yayrainday @samhollandssweaters @softly-sad @rebelgeneraldameron @btillys @daydreamerinadazedworld @teaofpeach @iamthe-shadow-on-the-wall @fandom-addict-aesthetics @peterwandaparker @bookaholicinwonderland @roserrys @clydesducktape @heythere-mel @justrunamok @corrupt-fvcker @lets-do-get-help @agents-assemble @idocarealot @phoenixhalliwell @afootnoteinyourhappiness @gottalovethefandom @bbuckysbeardd @stanningtoomanypeopleatonce @missreyskywalker @katrynec​ @lizajane3 @shootingstarzmagick

[entertainment]

Entertainment Spotlight: Michele Weaver, Council of Dads

Before her current role on Council of Dads, Michele Weaver had roles on Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, Love Is__, and 2 Lava 2 Lantula!, with film roles including the thrillers Nighthawks and Illicit. Additional television credits include supporting roles on Switched at Birth and Cooper Barrett’s Guide to Surviving Life. Currently, Michele can be seen playing Luly Perry on NBC’s Council of Dads. Luly is original dad Scott’s daughter, whom he raised as a single father before meeting his wife Robin, played by Sarah Wayne Callies. Michele took a few minutes to answer some of our questions. Check it out: 

What’s your go-to preparation for a role, and what did you do to prepare for the part of Luly?

To be transparent, I am still developing my 'go-to' preparations for every role. The only thing I do consistently for each role is read the script first, using it as my guide to know where to begin. I usually find where I can't make connections and then begin to fill in the gaps. With Luly, I initially had multiple conversations with the creators of the show (Tony Phelan & Joan Rater) to get their full vision of Luly. From there, I turned to blogs and articles to get the perspectives of people who have similar experiences to Luly. I relate to her on many levels such as being a writer, a sister, a Daddy's girl, and being biracial.

To gain a perspective I don't have experience with, I researched articles and blogs on topics like grief, loss, terminal illness, and blended family dynamics from a clinical and consumer perspective.

Playing a character who loses their father at young age is more than just crying on cue, it's finding the core of a person's hope and courage to put the pieces of their life back together. Luly is a fighter.

What’s your favorite part about being on Council of Dads?

My favorite part of being on Council of Dads is the family aspect on screen and off. We play a family and after working together we were able to create our own family with the cast and crew. It's a beautiful feeling to not only get to do what you love but share it with everyone around you.

You’re in a room with every character you’ve ever played—what do you do?

What a good question! What I would do is ask them, "If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?" I have been blessed to play women of many different ages and backgrounds and yet they all have common themes and threads. It's always the characters you think are the most different that actually are the most alike. I am sure their answers would show that just like in real life.

You work in theatre, film, and television. How does the work differ, and do you prefer one format over the others?

I don't know if I prefer one over the other despite their differences. I love them all for different reasons. I LOVE the theatre. It was my safe place growing up and there is something powerful about sharing space with your audience. Even though there is something special about working on a film, knowing the beginning and the end while having the time to dive deep into the character, there is something exciting with the unpredictability of television. Television reminds me of life. You can plan all you want but you never know how it will end up until you get there.

 If your life could be a musical, which musical would you like it to be, and which do you think it would actually be?

I LOVE MUSICALS! This question also makes me realize that I actually haven't seen that many musicals. I can't think of a musical I would like to be my life but I haven't had a chance to see In the Heights or Hamilton. Thoroughly Modern Millie is one I feel is closest to my experience. A simple yet curious girl finding her way in a big city is relatable to me, especially since I used to weirdly tap dance in a middle of my shift at my old job. Ha.

What do you like most about Luly’s personality?

She knows she wants and she is not afraid to go for it.

What would you say makes a really good scene partner?

A think a good scene partner is someone who is able to be present in the moment.  When we are both present (a skill I am still mastering), we can experience the scene in real time instead of creating what we thought it should be before hand. This way it is organic and not forced.  

You’ve played a few roles in thrillers. What is it that draws you to that genre?

I love watching content that makes you think and question. It's an amazing feeling to finish reading a script and feel surprised or effected by the characters and their actions. A good thriller tends to do that. I love puzzles and thrillers feel like a puzzle on the screen.

Thanks for taking the time, Michele. Catch Council of Dads on Thursdays at 8pm on NBC.

Photo: Jeff Lipsky/NBC

[thejollyroger-writer]

THE WASTELAND - DEAD MAN’S PEAK (14/15)

Some triggers: this story is rated TEEN, mostly for violence. It takes place during wartime, and some of the characters go through some violence and torture. If you need more information about this, please just message me!

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Almost there!! Thanks for sticking around with me for so long -- I promise it’s all worth it. 

SUMMARY:  In a world that has been saturated in war for as long as anyone can remember, Emma Swan has rebuilt her life as far away from the chaos as possible, opening her own maternity hospital after spending too many years in makeshift battlefield aid stations. But one night, a bloodied and battered soldier finds her hospital trying to get away from an enemy with a penchant for torture and a personal vendetta against him. With the help of Emma’s childhood friend Prince David and a motley collection of humans and magic-wielders, the quest to save Killian Jones’ life from the poison used by the enemy takes them to places even beyond the known world.

Specialist thanks to @spartanguard for her lovely art and @cssns​ for making it happen, and especially to all you guys who have stuck around for all of this – we’re almost done, I promise! Special shout-out to @thisonesatellite​ for her incredible fight scene beta work, bc I’m terrible at them and she is not and she helped wrangle my thoughts like Merlin had to wrangle -- well, you’ll see. Her help created one kick-ass kicking ass scene, and I hope you all enjoy it. 

Also on AO3

“The last climb to the peak is just ahead,” Wendy huffs, out of breath from the last big hill as she points ahead of them. Though they have kept the thought to themselves, there is a collective fear that the large wall of rock ahead of them was the last step of their journey, a silent prayer said to whatever higher power they believe in to spare them from what looms ahead. 

But even with that, not a single one of them is surprised to learn that their worst fears are true. 

Their adventure across the island has taken only a few hours since Wendy finished her story, a breath of fresh air to the hardships they’ve encountered over the last few days. It’s like the island has run out of obstacles for them, is ready for them to take the last leg of their journey and finally reach where they came here to go in the first place: Dead Man’s Peak, home of the healing waters which will hopefully save not not only Killian’s life, but David’s, as well. 

Now that they’re so close, can see the crags and footholds on the formation instead of simply a looming presence, a thought forms in the back of Emma’s mind, the reality of things she hasn’t allowed herself to think about. Though most of her fears come from travelling all the way to this island and failing to save Killian’s life, she finds herself thinking about what would happen if they failed to save David, about what it would mean for them to return to the Gale with news of the Prince’s death. What would they tell his father? How would they announce the news to the kingdom, when David’s rejection of his father’s views brought so much hope to so many people? The riots, the bloodshed, the anger that would come from that could be worse than the toll the War has taken on the people of the Gale.

She looks up from the path in front of her to where David and Mary Margaret are walking side by side and watches as he releases her hand to offer her the canteen from his hip. What would Mary Margaret do? Heartbreak would only be the beginning of her grief, raising a baby without the love of her life, without the man she has planned everything with for most of her life. In a world without him, without the hope he brought her, not to mention the rest of the world. Not a day would go by that she wasn’t reminded of her loss. 

“Emma, love, you okay?” She almost doesn’t hear him, drowning in her own fears, but Killian’s words pull her back to reality as he takes a few larger steps to catch up to her. 

“Hm?” She turns to him with as much of a smile as she can muster at the moment, though thankful that he acted when he did, before he could find herself more lost in the fears in the back of her mind. 

“You just looked like you were worried.” 

“Well,” she replies before gesturing generally around them, pulling a soft chuckle from Killian. 

“More worried than usual, then.” 

She wants to just shrug it off and say the island is getting the best of her, but she makes the mistake of turning towards him, seeing just how much he cares obvious in his pure blue eyes that have had her attention from the first moment he opened them the first morning she found him in her office. She sees the worry painted on his face, some of it from their circumstances; but knowing that some of that worry comes from the way he cares for her, she feels the walls she has built around herself crumble just a bit. “Something about almost being there is making me start to face the things I’ve been avoiding since this all started.”

“It’s going to be okay, love,” he whispers, reaching out to squeeze her hand, and though she can tell he doesn’t want to let go, he still does. 

“How do you know?” She has no idea where the question comes from, and the last thing she wants to do is put more stress on him, but once it’s out, there’s no taking it back. 

He just shrugs. “I don’t know for sure, really, but I have faith in you and in David and the rest of our crew.” 

“Aren’t you scared?” She feels the same way about this question as the previous one, and he stops, watching as David and Mary Margaret move down the path in front of them. This time, she’s the one who reaches out for his hand; he’s thankful for it and turns his attention towards how she threads her fingers through his instead of looking at her for his confession. 

“Of course I’m scared. I’ve never been so bloody terrified in my life. But if we’re destined to beat this, to get past this and leave Neverland behind, then whatever we find at the top of this mountain should be a piece of cake, as long as we do it together.” 

The urge to kiss him is too strong, the second time today she’s dealt with it, but there’s nothing to stop her now. They’re at the end of the group, no one to come through the brush behind them. “Killian,” she whispers, moving to close the space between them as she rests her other hand on his chest, careful to avoid the area where she knows his injury to be. She can feel the pounding of both of their hearts, his under her fingertips while hers is strong enough to be felt through her whole body — but just like every other time they’ve touched, it comes with the same wave of calming peace rushing over them. 

But Killian shakes his head, releasing her hand to rest his on her shoulder. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he mumbles with a chuckle. “I don’t — I want our first kiss to be without this cloud of death and destruction hanging over us, not until we know we’re both making it off this damned island.” 

She laughs softly, resting her head against his shoulder, “That might be the most sensible thing you’ve ever said to me, even if going home means going back to the Wasteland.” 

“After this, anything seems possible.” She moves to step away from him, but instead he places his hand on her hip, keeping her close to him. “Just… promise me something, Emma?” She looks back up at him and she doesn’t mean to pull her bottom lip between her teeth, but doesn’t regret the way his eyes grow wide at the sight of it, focused on her mouth until he blinks it away. “Don’t — don’t go back on this, yeah? On us?” 

Nodding, she swallows the lump in her throat. “Okay,” she says, her voice much more hoarse than she expected it to be. For a moment, neither of them dare to move, Killian’s thumb moving slowly against the soft skin above the waist of her pants as her fingers toy with the material of his tee shirt. If they could stay here, time unmoving around them, able to ignore everything but each other, no threat of poison, death, war, looming over them — they would take that without a second thought. 

But that’s not their current reality. “We should catch up with the others,” he whispers, though he already regrets that it would mean moving away from her, out of their shared moment, and she nods, stepping away from him, but reaching down to thread their fingers back together. A shadow of a smile crosses his face and he lifts her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss against the back of it, against the sensitive spot at the base of her wrist, as they begin to move back towards the rest of their friends. 

 The climb to the peak proves less futile than it looked, and between the magic of the Magistra, an Elder, and Merlin, they quickly build a quick magic-driven pulley system after Emma and Merlin climbed together. 

Everything moves smoothly, every climb taking only a few minutes, until only David, Robin, and Belle remain at the bottom. David takes the rope in his hands, wraps it around his left wrist — and falls to the ground, his knees hitting the worn dirt with a thump. 

“Dave!” Robin cries, rushing to his side, and Emma has to wrap her arm around Mary Margaret’s torso to keep her away from the ledge, soothing her as she screams out in fear. “Dave, what’s wrong?” Robin asks, kneeling next to where the Prince has fallen in the dirt. 

“Dreamshade.” He can barely get the word out, his shoulders rising and falling with quick, labored breaths. “Spreading.” 

Robin moves to lift his shirt, pausing to allow David to nod his permission. 

It’s bad. Very bad. Robin has watched as Emma checked on this wound over the few days since he obtained it, and has seen how it failed to spread from the man’s rib cage to the opposite side, staying away from his heart. Now, all of that has changed. Robin watches, eyes wide, as the poison continues to spread, inching closer to where David’s heart is pounding in his chest. 

“Bloody hell,” he mutters, and David turns his attention down to his wound, which he has been avoiding. When he sees what Robin sees, what causes Belle to gasp and cover her mouth as she looks over Robin’s shoulder, every drop of hope drains from his face, taking the color with it.

It’s just as bad as he expected, the absolute worst case scenario, and he squeezes his eyes shut as his nightmares come true, trying to keep himself from spiraling. He’s not making it off this island. He’s never going to see the Gale again, never going to watch the sunset over the mountains from his balcony. He’s not going to meet his heir, the child that has made it through the same Neverland hardships that he has — save the poison. 

“I can’t climb,” he whispers, wrapping his fingers around Robin’s forearm. 

Robin nods. “Yeah, okay, then you — you and I will stay down here.” 

But David shakes his head. “No, they... need you. To fight.” 

“I’m not leaving you down here alone.” 

“What’s going on?” Mary Margaret calls from the top of the cliff, still held back by Emma’s arm, though they have moved closer to the edge. 

“He can’t climb!” Belle calls back. 

“Let me go back down,” Mary Margaret says to no one in particular, and Emma releases her with a nod. 

“I'll go, too,” Regina says. 

No one argues with either of them, even through Regina’s uncharacteristic offer of assistance. 

“Can you poof us down there?” Mary Margaret asks, taking Regina’s hand when she offers it to her, confused but relieved by the soft smiles they share. 

Regina squeezes her hand with a nod. “I hope so.” One hand wrapped around Mary Margaret’s, she swirls the other in the air in front of them, leaving only a cloud of dark purple smoke. 

For a moment, then another, nothing happens. The whole island seems to hold its breath. And then they appear at the bottom of the cliff, just feet from where David and Robin are still kneeling in the dirt. 

“David,” Mary Margaret breathes, crossing the space between them with quick steps, Regina following close behind. Together, Robin and Regina help the prince to his feet, moving him away from the base of the cliff and helping him find a seat on a nearby rock. Mary Margaret sits beside him, threading her arm under his and weaving their fingers together. 

Once they’re set, Robin and Belle share a glance. “You ready to climb, ma’am?” 

Belle nods, but gestures for Robin to climb first. Though he hates to leave his friend behind, he has faith that Regina will be able to offer David the same protection that he would, perhaps more with her powers as an Elder. But David is right, and Robin belongs where the fight will be, his rifle more useful to Emma and Killian. 

Hopefully. 

As he makes the ascent, Robin fears that they may have played right into Pan’s trap, leaving David and Mary Margaret behind at the bottom of the cliff, far from the waters that should heal him once and for all. 

“You just need to make it to the water.” Wendy points through the brush towards the sound of rushing waters. “One sip, and you and your friend will be healed.”

Killian nods, his chest suddenly heavy with a weight that has been strangely absent, a fear that he has successfully avoided thinking about since he first learned that David had also been poisoned, that their fates were now entwined. The chance of them all getting off the island is slim — impossible, with the knowledge shared by Wendy just that morning. He moves towards the brush, knows that he must be the one to cut down the brambles — but he also knows, somehow, that if they were to look at his wounds, they would find the black spreading under his skin as well, further than it has before, getting closer to taking his life, to the end that he always knew was coming, somewhere in the back of his mind. 

“Who gets to do the honors?” Merlin asks, and though many of them are holding knives, no one moves any closer to the wall of plants. 

“It has to be me.” 

“Why?” Killian turns his attention from the brush to an overly-worried Robin for a moment before returning his gaze to the thorns that he recognizes from twelve years ago, from the day his brother died and every nightmare he’s had since then, and he points to the brush with his knife before taking the last step towards it. 

“Because it’s—” he begins, but Emma reaches out and places her hand on his arm, suddenly overcome with the overwhelming feeling that something is about to go terribly wrong. 

"Pan," she whispers. "I can feel him."

“Careful, Captain,” a voice calls from behind them, and they all turn to see Pan. “Though I’m sure you recognize—” 

“Dreamshade,” Robin says, still trying to put the pieces of it together. 

The demon and Killian nod simultaneously. “Did you tell them that you’re not feeling too well, that you can feel the poison reaching your heart?” He doesn’t want to look at her, but he can’t keep his gaze from finding hers. He should have told her. He shouldn’t have hidden it from them — from her. “What if I get your heart rate up? What if I tell you that the plant has gotten more potent since the last time you stood on this peak? It took minutes to kill your brother, but it will take mere moments for you now.” 

He can’t let his terror show on his face, he knows that, but still takes a small step away from the brush. 

Pan smiles. “You can’t hide your fear from me, Jones.” He turns away from Killian towards the rest of the group around him. “None of you can. Neverland thrives on fear. I know what all of you fear the most. The island can sense it. It tells me your deepest fears, though most of you are mortal and fear petty things like death and isolation.”

He turns on his heel and points directly at Emma. “Except you. The island senses nothing about you. I’ve given you the hardest tasks, the Echo Caves and bringing back his past love, but you, Miss Swan, are still unreadable.” 

Killian wishes he were surprised. Ever since he first crawled through the doors to her hospital, he knew she was something special, something unlike anything he’s ever experienced. Fate or not, he was never surprised that he fell in love with her. He’s only surprised that he’s gotten this far without acting on it, save his words in the Caves and his confession earlier that day. Every moment since then, he has regretted what he said to her earlier, not letting her kiss him, with the doom of their current adventure hanging over them like a bad omen. Everything about her has surprised him from the very beginning, from her beauty to her powers, from their connection to the fact that she is seemingly unaffected by this bloody island. If he can make it out of this alive, he wants a future with her, with the most amazing, brilliant, and beautiful woman he has ever met. He wants a future, he allows himself to think for the first time. He wants to make it off this island, back to his ship and his home and a place where he can live a happy life with her beside him, even if it’s a life filled with war and violence. With her, anything is possible. 

And that includes beating Pan. Once and for all, he senses. Somehow he knows that their battle against him will bring the end to the island, an end to the life of a timeless demon. If they can get there. 

“So, what, Pan?” Emma asks, and when Killian turns to her again, she has pulled the pistol from her waist holster. “Is this where we battle you? Where we fight for a winner once and for all?” 

He steps forward, right into the middle of their half-circle. “Is that what you want, Miss Swan? Or — what if I offer you a compromise?” 

“No,” Emma replies, without even a moment’s hesitation.

But Killian surprises himself when he says, “Hear him out, Swan.”

“No!” She wishes she could know how David felt about all of this. Since their first meeting, she has needed his guidance, and has barely made a decision, let alone something as important as this, without talking to him about it. But when she looks at Killian, who simply shrugs, her face softens — her whole frame softens, her pistol drops. 

“That’s more like it,” Pan says with a smile. “Here’s what I offer you: I’ll clear the thorns and heal the pirate and the prince, let you leave with who you’ve picked up along the way, but you must choose the two of you that stay.” 

Emma’s eyes go wide, and she lifts her pistol again. “No. No way.” Away from the rest of the group, Milah and Wendy also shake their heads, not willing to make their new friends make that decision.

“Fine” Pan says, turning away from them to look at the brambles of Dreamshade sitting behind him.

Whether Pan expects it or not, this is the opening they are waiting for, and everything happens in the same moment: Emma fires a shot, just as Will throws one of the knives on his hip and Merlin raises his hands to bring smoke up around him. 

Emma's bullet grazes his arm as he flicks his other hand, sending Will's knife back towards him. It lodges in Will’s shoulder, and Belle is the fastest to act, reaches out to take Will’s hand and disappears in a cloud of golden smoke. Pan turns his attention towards Emma, glares at her as he raises his hand to stem the bleeding. 

Robin and Emma share a glance and fire simultaneously, serving as a distraction from Merlin, who is trying to wrangle a path through the brush. The brush reacts like a living entity, fighting against each one of the Merlin’s movements as it bends and waves towards him.  

Pan poofs to another location as Killian sheathes his knife and brings his rifle to his shoulder just as Graham quickly aims his rifle and fires. He senses the demon's movements and puts himself between Pan and Killian just as Emma raises her pistol, also moving towards Killian as he fires again and Pan deflects — but it finds another target when it hits Graham in the chest and knocks him to the ground. 

Merlin, successful with his tussle with the Dreamshade, rushes to Graham’s side, magic already shooting from his palms as he presses them against the injured chest, and Robin moves towards them. 

Milah rushes towards the action and pulls her knife from its sheath before turning towards Pan, who is pushing Emma and Killian towards the Dreamshade with his magic.  When Milah is inches from Pan he turns towards her, waves his hand in the air, and the knife disappears from her hand and reappears in Pan’s just in time for him to plunge it into her chest. “Oh, Milah,” he says, mock sadness in his voice, as she falls to the ground. Killian screams, trying to rush Pan, but he pushes back with his magic, powerful enough to knock both Killian and Emma off their feet and through the hole Merlin wrangled in the brush, right into the water beyond it. 

Killian feels it acting right away, as soon as it soaks through this clothing and reaches his skin. All of the legends and the research, and even Wendy just a few minutes before, said that the healing power of the water would come from drinking it, but something else is happening here. 

Something magical. 

It rejuvenates him, all of the energy of a perfectly warm shower on a cold day, lighting up the dark crevices inside of him that have been broken and hidden for so long. His skin tingles with a power unlike anything he has ever experienced, and he watches, eyes wide, as the scratches, scars, and bruises that cover his arms disappear. When he feels it reach his heart, it almost knocks the wind out of him, and he lifts his shirt just in time to watch the healing powers of the water reach the gash in his side, and the magical iridescence of the poison slowly disappears before the wound closes, leaves only a scar behind. He is aware of every movement within his body: the beating of his heart, yes, but the way his blood flows through his veins and the movement of his skin as it heals around the wound on his arm and the gash in his side. 

He turns his attention towards Emma, who has been watching him intently since they landed beside each other in the water. He's not ready for the tears in her eyes, her relieved, elated smile, the brightness of her eyes that has been muted since they first met, brought back to its full brilliance by watching him heal from wounds that, only hours before, had been deadly. 

"Enough!" Pan yells, raising his hands in front of him, and everything around them stops — the rushing of the water, the wind through the trees, and the movement of their friends on the other side of the bushes — but Pan's magic has no effect on Emma and Killian, hands joined as they stand in the waist-deep water. 

“You can do this, Swan,” he whispers, watching Pan's eyes widen in fear as he realizes that they are not affected by his magic. Something more than ever before flows through her with his touch. She wonders if it is from the water, or Killians newfound hope — or something more, something deeper than what she can imagine, older than the War and the Gale and older than the earth itself — and with the energy from Killian’s touch flowing through her she focuses all of her power into her hands, creating a bright ball of light that even Pan cannot deflect. 

It hits him square in the chest and he falls to the ground, releases the rest of their friends from his power, and, mouths agape, they watch as Pan changes before their eyes, aging from the young teenage body he was in, through young adult and adult and middle-aged into a wrinkled, withered old man, who takes his last gasping breath with Wendy standing above him. 

"The island dies with me," he chokes, and they barely have time to celebrate their victory before Pan's words become a reality. Everything around them starts to crumble, and Killian quickly fills his canteen with the healing waters before they begin to disappear. 

"Let's get out of here," Merlin says, reaching out to take the hands of his companions. "I've never moved this many people at the same time. Emma, maybe you can help?" 

"Just tell me what to do." 

"Close your eyes. Picture as much about where we left the Jolly as you can, not only the ship, but the beach and the water. Do you think you can do that?" 

They take their place beside Merlin, hands still clenched together, and she smiles at Killian as they join the circle. "Yeah, I can do that." 

Robin lifts Graham’s corpse over his shoulder, the last to join them as the earth under their feet begins to shake, threatening an earthquake. 

"Let's get out of here," Killian says, hoping that the faith he has in Emma is enough to get them back to the ship. 

But after what they just experienced, anything seems possible. 

TAGS:  @shireness-says​​ @cssns​ @kmomof4​​ @thisonesatellite​​  @teamhook​​ @darkcolinodonorgasm​​ @cocohook38​​ @ultraluckycatnd​​ @facesiousbutton82​​ @hollyethecurious​ @stahlop​ @tiganasummertree​​  @angellifedeath​​ @pepperpottss​ @mariakov81​ @scientificapricot​ @kday426​ @xarandomdreamx​​ @ohmightydevviepuu​ @xhookswenchx​ @nikkiemms @carpedzem​​ @superchocovian​ @resident-of-storybrooke​​ @snowbellewells​​ @courtorderedcake​ @captain-emmajones​ @killian-whump​ @officerrogers​​ @killianjonesownsmyheart1​ @captainkillianswanjones​​ – want to be added or removed? let me know!

[oldsmobile-hotdogs]

Questions for crossover jatp ghosts crossover fic: I hope Julian and the sunset curve boys talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Yugoslav wars that happened when they were alive + Bill Cilnton. I wonder what pat and the band would talk about considering that they would of been kids when pat died? Do you think Julie would think of Les Mis and Hamilton cos Thomas and Kitty are from about the same time period as those musicals? I hope Julie calls Fanny Mary poppins.

Anon, or "Mimi", or "Lulu", or, heck, maybe even "Carl Birtles": Update: Not Carl Birtles. Carl Birtles sent me an ask and is cool, actually.

Stop. Right now. I'd say stop while you're ahead, but you are so far away from ahead at this point it's laughable.

For everyone confused, this is that "commenter from AO3" I joked about making a 2017-esque story time video about.

A couple days ago I uploaded the first chapter of a Julie and the Phantoms/BBC Ghosts crossover fic.

You know what? I’m gonna promo it here bc it’s my callout post and I can shill if I want to: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30681704/chapters/76661471

It was generally very well received and I've had a blast interacting with readers.

Except for this.

Honestly, there's so much to get into, so I’m putting it under a cut:

This was their first correspondence (email notif bc I deleted the comment, the deletion to be explained later):

(Funnily enough, the links very much do not work on AO3, making the comment only more jarring)

I gave you *so much* benefit of the doubt when I saw this comment, and assumed that maybe you're an ESL user, just very enthusiastic to share ideas, and I pretty much said so in my reply, but know that at that point I'd already had friends- who fucking know about this, don't you dare think you're getting me alone- tell me that you were being very demanding.

Below was my reply (another email notif):

I'm gonna be honest, I think I responded really well to what I was given, and now that I'd replied, I was pretty certain the situation was dealt with. You, evidently, didn't agree, as shown by your reply to my reply:

A word of advice: when replying to someone, at least pretend like you read what they wrote.

At this point I'm left wondering two things:

What do they expect from me, if a general reply is not it?

How much more shit do they have waiting to tell me to put in my- reminder, JATP/BBC Ghosts crossover, rated T, comedic- fic?

In order to avoid finding out either, I freeze the thread on AO3. I'm liveblogging all of this on Discord.

It's then that I notice that the username on AO3 isn't clickable, so even if I wanted to block or report them I couldn't. I assume, therefore, that they've deactivated, and since them seeing their comments gone and getting angry was the only thing stopping me deleting the comments, I delete the comments.

It's also at this point I see "Mimi" never left kudos. I guess I don't deserve praise until I mention "Bill Cilnton".

There's relative calm for a short amount of time, until I get another comment:

This one is much kinder than the others and doesn't mention any specific, weird, historical events, so the extent to which I think this is "Mimi" is debatable, but bestie I'm weirded out enough that anything that even uses the enter bar unnecessarily and misses out conjunctive words like "because" and "and" is going to activate fight or flight. Update: Carl Birtles is not Mimi or Lulu. Carl was just being genuinely kind and I misinterpreted it and that's on me.

However, "Carl"'s case is not helped by the fact I can't click his account either, that AO3 offers me the ability to report it as spam, and that guess who replies to "Carl"'s comment: Update: Carl, having done nothing wrong as he has, is therefore also a victim in the situation that is being replied to by Lulu. It would seem Lulu is trying to correct??? some of Carl's commentary.

You must think I didn't get a 7 on my English Literature GCSE because you seem to underestimate my ability to compare two texts.

So clearly this is "Mimi", who has also just replied to "Carl". "Lulu" is also deactivated, and I've fallen off the end of my tether, let alone reached it, at this point so I mark it as spam. "Carl" gets to stay bc he said the idea for the crossover was good. Update: Carl also gets to continue to stay because I have it on good faith that he's a stand-up dude.

So at this point you've readily admitted through your inability to shake up your writing style to using at least one sockpuppet to convince me to talk about the "Yugoslav wars".

If "Carl Birtles" is the real(-est) of them, and "Mimi" and "Lulu" are the sockpuppets, by the way, I have questions and ideas about what you do on your free evenings and I want them neither confirmed nor answered. Update: This is slanderous and I want to apologise wholeheartedly to Carl for making assumptions about him and judging his character. Once again, he is not Mimi or Lulu. He's just a normal, cool guy.

And now you come to me, on the day of my daughter's wedding on a different platform, leave me an anon ask in the exact same format as you're so fond of, and expect any different ??

Well, yeah, then I guess I'll give you special treatment this time.

Here's exactly why I will never include anything you have told me to include:

Julian and the Phantoms discussing the Berlin Wall would be highly inappropriate for the largely fluffy, cracky tone of my fanfiction, especially given how recently the event occurred, how many Eastern Germans still experience prejudice to this day because they were born within the old borders of the DDR, and because of how nuanced this, essentially proxy war, was and how ill-informed a huge amount of the world is on the actual factors in play during this time and the Cold War in general.

Julian and the Phantoms will not discuss Yugoslavia dissolving, nor the fallout and conflict that resulted, because it was genocidal. There is nowhere I can fit Julian, pantsted, casually asking Luke “hey do you remember when the Herzegovinas were killed en masse by the Serbs?” Not gonna happen.

They won’t discuss Bill Clinton because all of them know who the current world leaders are: they don’t have amnesia, they’re ghosts. The fic is also rated T, so it would be inappropriate to make any explicit reference to “sexual relations”. None of them play saxophone.

Julie wouldn’t think of Les Mis or Hamilton because Thomas is Regency, not French Revolution, and Kitty is Georgian, not Colonial.

Julie won’t be calling Fanny Mary Poppins because she is perpetually stuck in a white dress, doesn’t wear a hat, doesn’t own an umbrella or a purse and was not the nanny or housekeeper of Button House.

The ghosts will not discuss the marvels of modern transportation or how long it would’ve taken to cross the Atlantic on dinghy because the ghosts have seen Friends. The house irl is on a flight path. They know airplanes exist. Alison and Mike pulled up in a car.

I will probably have the phantoms and Willie talk to Pat and Julian about being from the ‘80s and ‘90s. That I will actually probably do.

The Captain will not mention FD Roosevelt because, again, they all know who the current world leaders are, and I doubt he expects a ‘90s pop punk band to have any insider knowledge on the man.

It was interesting to think of the phantoms’ grandparents having been alive during WW2. I wasn’t lying. But there is nearly nothing I can do with this information.

But above all: both sets of ghosts have already adapted to modern life. Because the shows are shorter, and meant to actually be able to fit jokes in them.

If you want to see any of this, write your own damn fic. I don’t own the concept of a JATP/BBC Ghosts crossover.

What you will not do, “consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel”-nim, is hound me on multiple accounts and then change platform to hound me again. I’m absolutely not having it.

I have never received an interaction quite like this before, and I cannot help but wonder if this is because this is my first work in the Ghosts/HH/Them There/Six Idiots/Yonderland/Bill fandom: that this is where you primarily camp out.

So it’s at this point I ask the Them There/Six Idiots fandom if they have/if they know anyone who has had a run-in with this person or thinks they may have, or if anyone perhaps even knows who this is? Maybe I’m just one of many. Maybe this is a necessary fandom evil I was unaware of.

This experience has left me royally freaked out, as one might imagine, especially since my anxiety in general has been acting up due to it being exam season. I want to thank everyone who’s read my rambles on Discord and on here and even listened to them irl and offered support from the bottom of my heart.

I’ve enabled comment moderation on the fic. I will continue to write it, and I will put exactly what I, and only what I, want in it.

Believe it or not, I wanted to do literally anything else today.

Anon: Fucking Leave Me Alone.

Update: Just reiterating: Carl is not Mimi or Lulu. Carl is a cool dude and I want to sincerely apologise for having brought him into this mess, passing judgment on his character, and making him feel like he should stop practicing English online.

[antialiasis]

Morphic: the Musical

The Thousand Roads forums have a fanfic music thread. While I don't really do those kinds of threads usually because I don't really listen to a very wide variety of music and generally have a hard time associating music that already exists with unrelated fiction, one of the questions in it is this:

Talk about what would happen if some Broadway hit-maker scooped up your fic and turned it into a script. What songs would be in it? Describe a dance number/dance battle?

And immediately, the musical analysis glint lit up in my eyes. This question was presumably intended in a lighthearted jokey sort of way - imagining some fight staged as a dance battle, a hypothetical Broadway hit-maker doing the adaptation. But that's not enough for me, say I! Musicals are a good and interesting medium for serious fiction that I care about and I am going to serious this up.

See, to me, the musical format has two major strengths as a narrative medium. The first is that it can explore the inner worlds of characters in a pretty unique way. Characters get to monologue in a sort of heightened, non-literal manner, intensified by music: we can learn what they're about, what makes them tick, what's going on in their heads in a particular moment, in a way that wouldn't really make sense presented as actual inner monologue in another medium. The music aspect itself then adds a layer to it that's impossible to replicate in any other.

The second strength of the musical format is that it's really good at highlighting recurring themes, parallels and contrasts. Reprise the same melody, the same lyric, a parallel but opposite lyric, and you've instantly connected two things together. Is there a character arc? You can highlight what has changed. Are there two characters going through something similar? You can draw that out. Is there a recurring theme throughout? Use a recurring lyric, a recurring melodic phrase! Nudge the viewer into forming connections! Delicious! And you can do subtler things on the music level itself - particular instruments with particular connotations, recurring motifs...

So naturally I decided I should think up what a musical adaptation of Morphic would be like. It'd be a fun exercise in putting all my thoughts on musical adaptations into practice, but also an interesting way to help sort out some of my thoughts about characters arcs, etc. for the actual Morphic rewrite. And in the process, I may have gone slightly overboard. I regret nothing.

(I'm about to spoil most of the fic here, if this wasn't obvious)

Morphic: the Musical - tracklist

(Note: this musical is not sung-through; there are regular non-musical sections with regular dialogue in between. Morphic would almost definitely not make for a good sung-through musical.)

Act I

[Intro song] (Brian)

A monologue by Brian at the TV studio as he tries to work through what to say, how to explain or justify any of this (which conveniently serves to exposit to the audience as well as introduce his character). He makes nervous false starts and cuts himself off, starting the verse over each time, and through these false starts we learn what's going on, that the press has been calling them Pokémorphs, that this was all Dave's idea, that alcohol was involved, that it was meant as a basis for further research, that there were never supposed to be *children*, that he doesn't know what he'd even do with a kid, that Dave roped him into going on this show because he couldn't.

[Dave song] (Dave)

This musical properly introduces us to Dave via Jane walking out on him followed by this song, wherein he contemplates chucking baby Jean out the window. It's a dark rock song with big emotional contrasts and raw lyrics that is almost definitely my favorite song in this musical in the hypothetical reality where it is an actual musical and I didn't write it, because I am me. Probably starts with a couple slower lines of desperate disbelief before launching into wild anger about fuck that fucking whore, followed by what I will be referring to as the everything-is-shit verse (please bear with me), just a general cynicism rant about why the world is a shitty place not worth living in, followed by him wildly fantasizing about killing his infant child. What a delightful human being that I adore. The song ends abruptly, he's standing there staring at her in his arms for a moment, then he silently goes to feed her. On the soundtrack you probably might think he just did it.

Fatherhood (Brian)

A montage song covering the timeskip, which probably reprises [Intro song]. Brian initially has no idea what to do with his new squirming horrorblob child and is convinced he will screw it up the way he tends to screw up everything. Makes a couple of false starts again, but then gains confidence as time passes as he genuinely bonds with Gabriel and legitimately thinks he's a pretty amazing kid. There's a repeated line along the lines of that Gabriel's a weird, weird kid, but he's his, initially in a tone of "oh god I'm responsible for him what do" but towards the end is said with pride and fondness.

[Villain song] (Isaac and Jacob)

A duet between the two brothers, exploring what makes them tick. Isaac is all about this heavy pressure and sense of responsibility, originally imposed by his father, that he continues to impose on himself. He's been appointed to take over leading the family/cult and was raised with that constantly in the back of his mind as his future, and he believes that they're God's true righteous people and he cannot go wrong. He has dreams with some regularity that he interprets as visions from God, as he has been encouraged to since childhood by his father. When he has one about murder, it frightens him but he sees it as basically a divinely-appointed mission.

Jacob privately doesn't really believe any of that. He is trapped in this cult and goes through the motions but is not actually driven by any of the things that are driving Isaac. He's fairly quiet for most of the song - as Isaac is going on about his vision, Jacob has a line here and there obliquely challenging it, but Isaac has an answer for everything, and he doesn't press it, instead moving seamlessly on to suggestions for how he should do it. Jacob gets a quiet variant of part of the everything-is-shit verse from [Dave song], expressing the same kind of cynicism in a more reproachful, apathetic way - all in his own head, of course.

Just Like My Hero (Jean and Will)

Jean sings about how she is just like her hero, Sarah Hooter! Starts off describing how they look the same, moves on from there to how she will torch anyone who's mean, etc., just like her hero. Halfway through, Will joins in, and it becomes a counterpoint duet: Jean may be immature and ridiculous, but he deeply wishes he was confident and adored and nothing would get to him, and he admires and envies that about her. His just like my hero has a bit more of an ironic vibe, he'd hardly properly call her his hero, but he looks up to her more than he'd normally admit nonetheless.

Storming the Castle (Jack and Gabriel)

Jack and Gabriel are playing a D&D game with their friends, arguing about the best course of action. Jack is eager to waltz into the bad guys' fortress, storm the castle, while Gabriel urges lying low, says they're too weak. Jack wants to take the leap and try it; Gabriel insists no, we're not taking the leap, it's stupid. "It's brave!" Jack counters. (In the end, Gabriel gives in and they go ahead with it, and it goes fine.)

Unique (Mia and Lucy)

Mia and Lucy play one of their games. The song is about how Lucy needs someone like Mia to challenge her and let her actually indulge her powers, which are otherwise unsettling to people and she's ashamed and self-conscious about them, while Mia needs someone like Lucy to get a real outlet for her hunter's instinct. The word the lyrics are built around is unique; by being the precise way they are, they are each the only person who can provide this for the other.

Mia doesn't sing. She speaks her lyrics in her usual monotone, not even rhythmically. They also don't rhyme. It's technically a duet but really it's just Lucy singing and Mia talking.

[Peter/Katherine song] (Peter and Katherine)

A counterpoint duet between the siblings, contrasting their experience as Pokémorphs. Peter can pretty easily hide that he's different and be treated mostly as a normal kid, and feels free in his privilege, not confined quite the way the others are, able to be a bit reckless and incautious. Katherine, meanwhile, has a very different experience, being extremely noticeably different, getting stared at, and struggling with basic activities, and feels a huge sense of responsibility weighing her down, worrying about Peter and grounding him and reining him in. There's a lyrical contrast involving something something bird freedom plant rooted down something.

Brian's Death (Isaac and Dave)

This is one of those mostly-instrumental pieces that they include on the soundtrack anyway, but Isaac gets a couple of sung nondiegetic lines in here, a sort of frantic excitement, realizing in a brief panic that he shot the wrong guy before rationalizing that God must have planned it this way.

Dave is probably also in there screaming and attempting to call the police, because I am always in favor of screaming and panicking on musical soundtracks.

The Funeral (Gabriel and Jack)

Begins with Gabriel at the church during the funeral, singing about his vague discomfort being there, but slowly becomes increasingly frantic and anxious, working up to a breakdown where he exits and finally manages to cry for his dad. There's a verse about little things, how they ordered pizza the night before he died, etc., culminating in the bit about him having been in the middle of this mystery novel and never getting to learn who did it; the verse trails off quietly there, backing instruments gone, as Gabriel breaks down. Jack follows to comfort him.

Act II

[Montage song] (everyone)

A montage of the days after the attack, where everyone gets a couple lines about how they're coping, scared and grieving.

Dave's lines are like, spoken slightly too desperate annoyance at having to do some work that Brian didn't get to finish, or rebuking somebody who asks how he's doing by saying he barely even knew Brian. He is not singing along with this kind of grief-porn bullshit, fuck you.

[Villain song II] (Isaac and Jacob)

The brothers come up with a new plan. Isaac is agitated, reprising some of his bits from the original villain song in a quicker, more frantic tempo, while Jacob picks up the slack, walking him through a new idea. Isaac takes to it with conviction and goes back to the original melody/tempo, talking again about his God-given purpose. Jacob does not join in with any of that, only with the bits about the actual plan.

The Kidnapping (instrumental)

I'm just going to say this is on the soundtrack too and contains panicked Gabriel noises because I want it to be.

Storming the Castle Reprise (Jack)

Jack tries to rally the others for a rescue mission, echoing the D&D game from Act I. The lines about storming the castle and taking the leap make a reappearance.

Just Like My Hero Reprise (Jean)

Jean, on the bus, miserably contemplates how she is unlike her hero. Again, it begins with a verse talking about how she looks - not a thing like Sarah Hooter anymore - but then moves on to how she's scared and pathetic and running away, unlike anything a hero would do.

Church Sequence (Will, Jack, Mia)

A single track, largely instrumental/dialogue/sound effects, with a couple of brief song snippets:

- Will reprises "Just Like My Hero" as he wills himself to go on. He is cut off mid-line as he is shot.

- Mia slits that guy's throat and she actually sings a few words, for the first and only time, before she is also cut off mid-line by a gunshot. The line is something about, like, warm blood in her face or the guy's satisfying death throes, reprising part of the melody of "Unique".

Strong (Gabriel)

Gabriel discovers his powers. Starts slowly, calling back to the bits from "Storming the Castle" about lying low, being weak. But as the song continues and he makes his discovery, the tempo builds, and he starts reprising Jack's bits instead: he is strong, taking the leap, storming the castle.

Perish Song (Lucy)

Another brief reprise of "Unique", distorted and deafening and terrifying, mourning her sister.

[In the Hospital] (Jack and Gabriel)

The two of them work out their feelings about what happened. Includes Jack going "It was stupid" (i.e. the rescue mission) and Gabriel responding "It was brave", echoing the bit where they said the opposite in "Storming the Castle". Jack blames himself for how it all turned out, feels stupid and weak, while Gabriel actually felt kind of awesome. (This is also calling back to their opposite bits of "Storming the Castle".) They end with a shared duet verse as they realize they've both got that same innate desire to fight and win. Possibly calls back to the weird, weird kid line from "Fatherhood".

Eulogy (Dave)

Dave's eulogy for Mia (which also touches on Will, but this is Mia's funeral). It reprises "Unique". There will never again be anyone like the two of them, two of the only truly unique people on this Earth. (And, while he doesn't say it straight out because hahahaha, he needed Mia, too).

Taking the Leap (Jack and Gabriel)

Jack's suicide attempt and his swirling inner turmoil as he tries to talk himself into taking the leap once again. Gabriel, of course, comes in with don't take that leap. Am I overusing this one line by putting it in like half the songs in this thing? Well, who's going to stop me.

[Peter/Katherine song reprise] (Peter and Katherine)

The two of them contemplate indefinite house arrest (in contrast to the freedom Peter's enjoyed most of his life) and Katherine's failure to stop all this (despite her sense of responsibility). In the end, they both find their own ways to accept the new state of things and support each other through this.

Finale (Dave and Jean)

After Dave breaks down on his couch and Jean comes in to ask what's wrong, Dave sings a reprise of the everything-is-shit verse, going over the many things he's angry about, because that is the only emotion involved here clearly. At the exact point where Dave's song originally went from there to fantasizing about throwing her off the balcony, Jean throws her arms around him and sniffles "It'll be okay, Dad," and after a stunned "What? Jean, I'm--", he continues with a slow, hesitant *inverted* reprise of the everything-is-shit verse, "Everything'll be fine", constructing a little fantasy reality for her (and himself) where everything turns out all right in the end. It's backed by, like, a simple, quiet, slower piano rendition of the original melody, and trails off at the end, never quite coming to a satisfying conclusion before he tells Jean she should go back to bed.