#so now it's a little screwy

[bookwyrminspiration]

it does look like sophie!! if you wanted to help her look a little more youthful, you might try adding some roundness to the cheeks and emphasizing the cupid's bow a bit more

ty catherine I love you forever and ever dedicating this piece to you and you only <33

me vs the roundness of sophie's cheeks is an ongoing battle I keep trying but she is staying stubbornly a little angular. actually almost everything about her is fighting me.

I think the reason it's not quite doing it for me is that she doesn't match the other individual in the piece. Who has a certain *essence* to them, a style that Sophie doesn't have. So while she technically looks fine and like Sophie, she doesn't look like she belongs in the same piece as them. and I very much want the two of them to go together. Will continue trying, even though I have class tomorrow and will. get a bunch of homework </3

also!! thank you to everyone else who made comments and suggestions as well :)

[herebecritters]

Far far away in a magical land there’s a beautiful sparkly fairy princess who lives in a magnolia tree ~

Screwy belongs to @ickyguts

[lusalemaart]

uwu

[textmel8r]

[ SMAU + DRABBLE ] 𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒 ! ( sixth installment ) in which you are forced to plan a corporate event with your office enemy .

୨୧˚ part; one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. nine.

୨୧˚ incl; kento nanami

୨୧˚ cw; profanity , mentions of sex

୨୧˚ an; so sorry if anyone asked to be tagged recently and you didn’t get tagged!! tumblr is being screwy again and i can’t see any of my comments😭😭 also apology time from nanami woo hoo!!!

Nanami stole yet another glance at the expensive watch wrapping around his wrist. Your promptness was certainly an issue; how does she show up nearly thirty minutes late to a meeting she called?

And then he scoffs at himself, giving a little shake of the head. Meeting? There he goes again, speaking in corporate tongue.

But finally, you do show up. Bursting through the entrance of the quiet café, making an embarrassing show of noisiness with your heaving breaths and wheezes. Not that it had been much of a disturbance to anyone else—only two other patrons resided in the small establishment; one too engrossed in her book to care, and the other scrolling mindlessly through his cellphone with a pastry in his free hand. Even so, you bashfully clapped two hands together as you peeked around the room. “Sorry!”

The older woman behind the counter nods in appreciation. Nanami can’t help but exhale roughly through his nose in sort of an almost-chuckle. God, you were a mess, weren’t you?

“Sorry, I’m so late!” You approached the table he resumed, one near the front window like you’d asked for. Your heels clopping against the grainy tile, knee-length dress flowing like water around your legs. He stands, walking to the opposite side of the tiny, rectangular table and pulling out the chair for you.

“Impressively late,” Nanami derides, but it’s not full of any malice. Truth be told, he did have the patience of a saint when situations like these were called to question. He didn’t mind waiting, because despite your utter tardiness, he trusted that you'd show up eventually, rather than ditching him altogether and leaving him to sulk in the humiliation of being stood up over a cup of black coffee. You were scatterbrained at times, yes, but dependable? Always.

Nanami returns to his side of the table after pushing your seat in. It wasn't meant to come across as a romantic gesture; Nanami had made it a habit of serving the women in his life nothing but a respectful demeanor. Whether it be lovers, colleagues, friends, and anyone in between. Though admittedly, his behavior towards you these past couple of months has been anything but respectful. It’s too late to start making amends to things, but the least Nanami can do now is try.

You shudder. Flustered, maybe? “Y’didn’t have to do that,” you tell him, placing your phone and clutch bag onto the table.

Nonsense. “My mother would have my head if she knew I let a lady pull out her own seat.” While true—his mother, bless her heart, raised him to be the gentleman his is today—he also just… wanted to do it. It felt right to serve you a seat.

Your elbow slams rudely on the table, finger reaching across to wag in his face. “Sounds like a good woman!” You laugh, and Nanami gingerly swats your hand away. He’s about to say something, but you beat him to the next sentence. “Hey, what gives? I thought this was supposed to be a day of relaxation?”

He worms under the scrutinized glare you wave up and down from his face to neck to chest to abdomen, finally peeking under the table to gawk at his shoes. Nanami curls his toes, a feeble attempt to shrink away from the judgement casted in your eyes. “What? Stop looking at me like that.”

“You’re dressed in fancy-man clothes.” At that, he takes it upon himself to look down at his wear; an ironed dress shirt clung to his chest, tie resting flat and perfectly centered between his pectorals. His slacks were ashy grey and devoid of any wrinkles, cut and hemmed around his ankles just above those stiff, leather shoes snug on his feet. The matching suit jacket was slung neatly over the backrest of Nanami’s chair, sleeves tucked away into its pockets.

His least expensive suit, sure, but still far too pristine and tidy for a little coffee shop outing. "Is it so bad that I like to remain presentable?" Nanami offers the question while he busies his hands, plucking open the pearlescent buttons at his wrists and rolling back the sleeves off the off-white button down.

"Presentability and discomfort don't always go hand in hand, you know. I mean, look at me," your voice echoes the mocking tone of cockiness, clearly a joke but also not at the same time. With a gesture towards yourself, you beam and shimmy in the simple, breezy dress. It had a floral pattern, Nanami notices. "Cute, stylish, and comfortable."

He isn't jumping to disagree with that. "Sorry, all my sun dresses were in the wash." He surprises himself with the jest, but it has you splitting an unladylike snort, so he doesn't come to regret it.

The toe of a thick, wedged heel jabs into his sock-clad ankle. "You business men are all so sassy." Nanami glowers at the adjective chosen to describe him, but doesn't refute. You sigh. "It's fine, I guess. Nothing we can do about it now. Wear some sweats next time though, would you?"

Next time. There’d be a repeat of this?

“Sure.”

“Great.” Your toothy grin beams over your clutch purse, of which is now wrangled in your grabby hands. Rifling through its unorganized contents, dumping out tubes of chapstick, loose change, and sticks of gum onto the table before fishing out a wallet. “Right, I’m starved. Did you look over the menu any?”

Nanami looked it over five times during the wait, if not for anything other than something to pass time. “Not really. Tell me what you recommend.”

You bite. Rambling about the array of pastries and baked goods that have been worthy enough to be placed in the category of y/n’s favorites. Nanami soaks in your excited, leaning in ever so slightly with open ears a you passionately ramble about cake.

“I take it you come here often?”

The question has you nodding. “Like, all the time man. This is my spot, you should be so grateful that I’m not a gatekeeper.” You look back at the menu once more before verbally deciding: “I want pistachio cheesecake and peppermint tea.”

The man poorly stifles his chuckle, rising from his seat. "Alright then, stay here. I'll go order."

"Oh, okay thanks." You shove your wallet into the wall of Nanami's chest, "take my card with you."

He is bewildered that you would even think he'd let you pay for your own meal. "I've got it," Nanami tells you, gently pushing the leather thing back to you.

"Nanami, stop."

"Stop what?"

"Take my fucking wallet," you gnarr, and he thinks you look much like a soaked kitten in this state of agitation. "Don't make me slap you."

It's an unserious threat, but Nanami plays a long. He raises two thick, blonde eyebrows. "Jesus, okay, you win. Just please keep your hands to yourself.” He revels in your little smirk of satisfaction, snatching your wallet back before making his way to the front counter.

Nanami kindly asked for two slices of pistachio cheese cake and two drinks; for you, peppermint tea, and him a coffee, black. Of course, everything was charged to his card. You didn’t need to know that, though.

You scarfed your portion down with swiftness, slinging spoonfuls of chartreuse custard into your mouth with such savagery that Nanami feared you might choke. He was a much more serene sight, preferring to savor each bite between slow swigs of piping coffee. The dark roast complimented the nutty pistachio flavor stunningly. For such a nameless little eatery, the food was exquisite. He takes another calculated bite of cake.

“You like?” The question was garbled behind a mouthful, cheesecake clinging to your milky teeth as you smiled brightly. A childlike excitement radiated warmly off you, clouding across the table to heat him up, too. It was sweet how wired you were, hopeful that he’d, too, enjoy your choice of confection.

Nanami huffs, amused. “Swallow before you choke.” You make a show of swallowing, a big hearty gulp with your eyes squeezed shut. “And yes, I like it a lot. Your tastes are surprisingly refined.”

“Surprisingly?” You gape, offended.

Nanami wants to crack a quip, something referring to your sub-par taste in men, but this little get together was nice. Yeah, it was really nice, actually. So he refrained from ruining it like the asshole he’d been lately, and drowned the snide remark with another toss of coffee. “Sorry, sorry.”

The remainder of the evening was cushy; you both fell into easy conversation about the randomest of topics. Discussions that never breached corporate subject matter, and he was eternally grateful for that. You spoke in tangents, whistling appreciation for a new movie you caught recently, to describing a long list of bands you enjoy, to lamenting about the headache that your minty iced tea sprang upon you: “Ah, brainfreeze!” Nanami doesn’t add much to the conversation, but he is content to listen and provide little hums of encouragement to urge you to keep talking. His eyes, inquisitive honey-colored things, found your lips and stayed there. Despite the uncouth display in which you carry yourself ( Nanami had been itching to tell you to close your legs, what with the way you sit spread-thighed in your seat donning that dress. So careless and unabashed. If the cafe had been a little more crowded, had a little more men around, and he might’ve slipped his foot over the imaginary boundary line to your side underneath the table and nudged them shut himself ) there was an elegance in the way you spoke about topics of interest. Passion flourished from the little curve of your lips, teeth bared in a great smile because you really were just that happy. Nanami feels envious when he watches you.

“I’m shocked at how well this is going.” You grin cheekily, licking cream from the pad of your thumb. “Kind of makes me sad that we didn’t get off on the right foot, you know? I think we could've been good friends.”

“Is it too late for atonement?” Nanami bites back a frown. “I understand if you can never see me as anything other than an asshole. But I never got to formally apologize for my behavior these past few months, Y/n. And I’d like to, if you’ll let me.” Why was this humiliating? It was a seldom occurrence when Nanami was in the wrong, but he was never one to let his faults drift by unaddressed. You deserve an apology—a proper one, not over measly text messages. Still, he miscalculated how awkward this would be. 

You flail. “A formal apology? Nanami please, a simple ‘I’m sorry’ will work. It doesn’t have to be a whole thing, I’m mostly over it anyway.” But that was a lie and an obvious one, at that. You weren’t over it, he could see it in your eyes.

The blonde clears his throat and rubs his hands together mindlessly. “No, please. It’s long overdue, and if we’re going to be working in alliance, then you deserve to feel secure with me.” Though Nanami’s hands wrench restlessly, his gaze never detracts from yours. He bares his sincerity in the intense eye contact, offering a peek into his soul. Vulnerability. “I’ve been nothing but rude and ignorant and vulgar towards you, ever since…”

“That night.” You finish for him. “It really upset you, huh?” 

“Yeah, I guess it did.”

“Why? Do you have a revulsion to sex or something?”

“What? Wh—I—No, t-that’s not…” Nanami sputtered, his ears growing warm from your accusation. “I don’t… mind sex?”

You play with the dainty straw flouncing around your drink, seemingly oblivious to Nanami’s flummoxed reaction. “You seem to have a strong opinion of whores, though.”

He groans, embarrassed with himself, and drags a palm down his pallor face. “Who you choose to sleep with does not make you a whore. It never did, I was just being petty and grasping at straws for anything that would get a reaction out of you.” Nanami runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth, inwardly wishing that the mug of coffee before him would turn to water so he could cure the dryness that ached in his throat.

“Why go through the trouble?”

Nanami opens his mouth, then closes it. Then opens again, “I don’t know.”

A piss poor attempt at playing the fool. Surely there was a reason for his unabashed cruelty towards you, but what the fuck was it? “Well, when you figure it out, let me know?” To his utter surprise, your expression doesn’t hold an ounce of animosity; you’re smiling at him. Finding humor in any situation had to be your special talent. Nanami nods dumbly. “In the meantime, you’ll just have to start making it up to me. You were a dick, big time.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Hmmm,” you make a comical show of humming, touching your index to the point of your chin, and now Nanami knows you’re fucking with him. “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm. I guess I can start the forgiving process if…” A pause for dramatic effect? The man raises his brows expectantly. “You and I make this,” you gesture between both bodies at the table, “a weekly thing.”

Nanami was expecting a punishment, but this suggestion was anything but. “I’ll need to take a look at my schedule first.”

“Listen, man, do what you gotta do. But I’m telling you, we are getting together at least once a weekend.” You scrub the corners of your lips with a napkin before crumpling it into a tight ball and discarding it on your empty plate. Nanami looks down at his own to see a healthy portion of his cake left. Wordlessly, he slides his plate across the table, and you accept the offering with open arms. “Oh shit, thanks! Like I was saying, this is fun, what we’re doing here. You’re having a good time, right?”

Sitting in a desolate coffee shop and listening to you prattle on has been the most fun he’s had in a devastatingly long time. “Yes, I am.”

“Good. You look fun-deprived.”

Fuck, I am. “I’m not.”

“Keep lying, I see through them all.” You scoop the last bite of Nanami’s cheesecake into your mouth, sighing with satisfaction and rubbing over your full tummy. “Anyway, I think hanging out would be good for us. Healthy, you know? Besides, I’ve been dying to know what off-duty Nanami looks like.”

He cracks a chuckle. “He’s nothing special.”

Your finger snaps in his face, invading his bubble of personal space, but this time he doesn’t shoo you off. “Another lie!”

likes and reblogs are appreciated !

tags . • @justbelljust @amnmich @ti-mame @silkija @maddietries @vyntagei @ebrysteria @aesukuni @lololooolleonnaaa @nanamiswife22 @r0ckst4rjk @mizzfizz @saiki-enthusiast @taelattecookie @enchantingkitty @kindadolly @reinam00n @hqtoge @syamamas @numblytemporary @xxravenxstarxx-blog @bloomedintome @guacam011y @jameinfrau @luvvmae @kazisupreme @nowhoremones @https-tank @venjrnjrbhrr19 @ya9amicide @darkstarlight82

[laundrybiscuits]

(ETA: now edited and up on AO3)

Look. Eddie knows he can be a little uptight about these things, but. There are rules. If you become a vampire, you don’t need to go full gothic Count Von Dickhead or whatever, but you absolutely cannot just wander around in a puffy vest and light-wash jeans. 

“Why not?” says Steve. He’s leaning back in an armchair, sipping on a bloodbag like it’s a goddamn juicebox. “What, are the vampire police going to arrest me?” 

He pauses. “Wait. There aren’t vampire police, are there?”

“No,” says Eddie. “Probably not. I don’t know. But there are standards which you are refusing to uphold, Steven.”

“Thought you were all about hating conformity, Edward,” Steve says. He’s got an obnoxiously cocky little smirk, the smug undead fucker. 

Eddie grimaces. “Don’t call me that, asswipe. Don’t you feel, like—the call of the night? The siren song of life coursing through fragile human veins? A hunger for destruction that those paltry plastic bags of blood can never truly slake?”

“The bloodbags aren’t so bad,” says Steve, around the straw. “Better than protein shakes.”

“I actually hate you,” Eddie tells him. “Vampirism is wasted on you.”

Steve noisily slurps the last of the blood out of the bottom of the bag. “Come on, you can’t really picture me in some Dracula getup, can you?”

The problem, of course, is that Eddie really, really can. When Robin had read him in on the whole situation, obviously he’d been horrified and concerned—but also, a whole wing of his brain had immediately been cordoned off to work overtime imagining Steve in elaborate Dark Prince regalia, maybe leaning elegantly out of a castle window on the moors, gazing into the foggy dusk. Velvet might’ve been involved.

“...guess not,” says Eddie. It doesn’t sound incredibly convincing to his own ears, but Steve just shrugs and gets up to throw the bloodbag away. 

“There you go, man,” he says, clapping Eddie on the shoulder as he passes. “It’s the 80s. Vampires can be whatever we wanna be.”

———

It gets way too easy to forget about Steve’s condition, until Eddie ends up having to haul him out of a bar in Indy before they get banned for life.  

“Simmer down, buddy,” Eddie says, pulling him into the shadow of the van. “Let’s get those fangs packed away before any of the nice villagers wander by with torches and pitchforks.”

“I’m good,” pants Steve. “It’s all good. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

Eddie lifts an unimpressed eyebrow. “Sure, that’s why your eyes are glowing red and you’re, like, fully vamped out. Which, by the way, looks extremely dumb with the whole clean-cut vibe you decided to rock tonight.”

“Fuck you, I look great,” says Steve, pushing a hand through his hair. He’s not wrong, it’s just not relevant to how he also looks extremely dumb like this, wearing a pristine henley with fangs hanging out in the parking lot for anyone to see.

“So what the hell happened in there, man? I was finally starting to get somewhere with Todd, and…” Eddie trails off in dawning realization.

“Holy shit, am I—I’m like your territory, aren’t I? Your stupid vampire brain got all screwy and decided to loop me in with Robin and the kids as part of your freaky human coven.”

“Uh,” says Steve. He looks unhappy in a shifty kind of way. “Something like that, maybe.”

“Wait, so, are Nancy and Jonathan—are you okay with them because they’re both already in the vamp pack? Is Vickie gonna have to be inaugurated before she and Robin can bone down?” Eddie perks up. “Shit, is there a ceremony? We could totally do a ceremony.” He bets he can get the kids to liberate some velour curtains from the drama club. With a few candles, they could get some serious atmosphere going.

“No, shut up, nobody’s doing a damn ceremony,” Steve groans. “Vickie’s fine.” 

“Okay,” says Eddie. “So…you gonna tell me what all that was about, then? Do I have to start running guys past you first so your vamp instincts don’t wig out? Or…hm, maybe Argyle’d be down to mess around sometime.”

Steve lets out an actual snarl with weird animal echoes, then claps a hand over his mouth.

“Sorry,” he says, muffled. The shadows around them seem darker somehow. 

“So I’m just not allowed to get laid ever again,” says Eddie slowly. “For vampire reasons.”

“Do whatever you want, man.” Steve’s still got his hand pressed tight over his mouth. 

“And it’s…just me?” Eddie peers at the tightness around Steve’s eyes; the way he’s scowling stubbornly at his feet. “Huh. Kind of…possessive, Harrington.”

“It’s—weird,” says Steve miserably, dropping his hand at last. “I know it’s fucking weird.”

“Maybe.” Eddie shrugs, biting down on the grin he can feel tugging at his mouth. “Lucky for you, I’m into that shit.”

“What?” Steve frowns. “You’re…”

“Always wanted a vampire boyfriend,” says Eddie. “Like, are you kidding? I would’ve sold my fucking soul at 15 for something like that.”

“I’m starting to feel a little objectified here,” says Steve, but he’s smiling, and he reaches out to snag Eddie’s belt loop and tug him stumbling closer. “Just in it for the fangs, huh?”

“Well, you’re kind of a shitty vampire, actually.” Eddie drapes his arms over Steve’s shoulders. “So I guess I must just be in it for you.”

Steve hesitates, searching Eddie’s face. Stray red lights are still sparking like embers in Steve’s irises. “Okay, but—you’re in it? Right?”

“Couldn’t get rid of me if you tried, Bunnicula. I’ll send the vampire police after you, just watch me,” says Eddie, and kisses him.

[trilobitepunch]

Time for some upgrades. Here's a battle shell design I was playing around with. I thought something a little sharper would be fun. He's also easing out of his arm/elbow pad phase to join his brothers on the arm/leg wrap train.

(Background: Space bridges are screwy so while his bros are all post movie timeline, Donnie's only from mid-season 2. 8];;; He has found out he's missed...a lot. And not at all upset that he's now somehow the little brother.)

I love Wearingeul's Verethragna. It is a very pretty purple.

[halfmoth-halfman]

My MWIII Thoughts

I’ve finally taken the time to get all of my thoughts about the new campaign together and put them in a single post. There are no spoiler tags since the game is officially releasing today/tomorrow, but everything is under the cut with a warning. I have a lot of things to say here, so I’ve tried to organize it point by point. The points I think are most important are first, and I ask that you take the time to read through them. If you want to skip to the points about characters and that death, the beginning of those sections is marked with red, but be prepared to scroll.

I watched the custscenes, with gameplay, all the way through once and I’m not doing it again. I tried to go back to specific scenes to reference in this post, but even that was a lot for me, so if my timeline in here is a little screwy don't fault me too much.

If you just want my quick, overall thoughts: This campaign was two hours of egregiously incoherent, poorly written, shoddily thrown together military propaganda, even more than the cod games usually are, and your money would be much better spent donating to help Palestine - there are links to do so in this review, marked with green, as well as boycott information, and the same donations links are also provided on this shorter post if you want to go directly to them.

(There are spoilers below, and this is long. I'm not kidding. Do not click the readmore unless you are prepared to scroll.)

Military Propaganda/Islamophobia

I spoke about this some already here and here because I felt this was an important enough topic that deserved its own post.

Call of Duty has never been has never been the game where I expected to see proper representation of the Middle East or Middle Eastern politics. It is first and foremost military propaganda. More than that it is American military propaganda. Just like with every superhero and pro-military movie post-9/11, it should be expected that you’re not going to get any kind of meaningful insight or depth when it comes to Middle Eastern storylines and characters, but there is usually more of an effort to hide the Middle East = Terrorist subtext.

To say I was shocked at how overt and blatant the Islamophobia was in this game is an understatement. We get four deaths of named characters in this game. Two of whom are Middle Eastern women, Dena and Samara, from the country Urzikstan, the fictional combination of Syria and Afghanistan and home to terrorist group Al-Qatala (real subtle, right?). Both of these women are associated with the ULF, the Urzikstan Liberation Force, Farah’s group of freedom fighters whose goal is to free their country from foreign subjugation with Samara no longer being an active member. Both of these women are introduced in this game. Both of these women are minor characters. Both of these women, Samara in particular, are trying to live their lives peacefully now that their country has been freed.

Both of these women are given deaths more brutal and more shocking than the other two deaths of two main characters in the series.

We meet Dena at the beginning of the game when we’re first re-introduced to Alex and Farah. We see her have a heartfelt reunion with Farah, and the two have a conversation while driving where Dena expresses her concerns about wanting Urzikstan to remain peaceful but assures Farah that everyone will support her. After, Dena is suddenly shot in the chest, and Farah is forced to take control of the vehicle they’re in, which ultimately flips over and we get Farah’s first death fakeout.

It’s in this cutscene that we see a lingering shot on Dena as well as her corpse being thrashed in the car as Farah tries to take control and as it flips. We are given a Middle Eastern woman showing hope for her country that the peace she has fought for will be maintained only to then watch her die for shock value and a fakeout for another character, and watch her body fly across the car as it flips. We don’t get that with either of the other two gunshot deaths in this game. Soap’s is just as sudden, but we see it coming, and there are no shots of his body being thrown about, no closer views of his face like there are with Dena. Shepherd’s is entirely off-screen and all we’re left with is a shot of him lying face down on his desk - no blood or bullet wound in sight.

Notably, the only other person we see a comparable amount of blood on in this game is Makarov, the enemy of the series.

Samara, who gets the worst death in this game, in my opinion, is a retired ULF soldier we’re introduced to on a plane. I’ll start by saying I was under the assumption this may have been the reboot replacement for No Russian, the mission in which Makarov and Co. shot up Zakhaev International Airport to frame America for terrorism in the original series, and the mission that was teased after the credits in the MW2 reboot. We get the scene of Makarov and his men at the airport before boarding the plane, which could just be a nod to the original mission. However, until there is an official reboot of the No Russian mission, I’m going to assume this was Activision’s new take on it. 

In this mission, we learn that Makarov plans to use this plane bombing to frame Urzikstan, Farah and the ULF specifically. The thing is, as Big Mak and friends are in the airport preparing to board, we are shown that the ULF is already being blamed for the missile attack on Arklov Military Base from the previous mission where their missiles were stolen, capped with Konni’s chemical gas, and one was detonated. There’s even a news sequence showing that the world already thinks of the ULF as a terrorist organization, and has not-so-quietly thought that for years. That makes this upcoming scene feel not only unnecessary but like a deliberate choice made by Activision to be extra cruel to a Middle Eastern character. 

We see Samara text with her family and are shown a picture of her husband and children before the man next to her begins speaking to her in Arabic. He compliments her family and, I assume as we’re not directly shown, gets the No Russian text - a text, for those who have not played the original games, meaning to not speak Russian to not tie the terrorist act they’re about to commit back to the Russians. The Traveler, as he's called, then reveals that he knows who she is, knows her family, and knows that she is a former ULF soldier and fought the Russians. He then pulls a gun on her and Makarov and Konni take the plane hostage, purposely speaking Arabic and declaring this is for Urzikstan. 

We are then forced to watch as Samara fights back, but is ultimately taken to Makarov where a bomb is strapped to her chest. He gives his usual cryptic speech, and over-explains to the audience what’s happening before diving out of the plane D.B. Cooper style. 

Samara is then dragged to the back of the plane by a Hijacker, where the remaining passengers are, kicking and fighting and trying to reason with him to stop. He pauses and we then get this exchange:

Hijacker: Are you a terrorist?

Samara: No…

Hijacker: You look like one.

He then puts a gun in her hands, tosses the cellphone that will let her stop the bomb, and shoves her into a crowd where we have to watch her struggle to explain what’s happening to her and that she needs the phone to a crowd of people that are either afraid of or angry with her. She is shoved to the ground by a random man, forced to fight through people trying to tackle and beat her, and, when the phone is finally within reach in the hands of a scared passenger, the plane blows up. 

I want to emphasize that most of this is a cutscene. There are a few button presses for the player to try and get the phone, and you are allowed to look around and try to fight back, but that is quickly stopped, and you are forced to sit and watch through Samara’s perspective. The end result? There’s an investigation for who may have done this, and you play as Farah collecting evidence from the crash site so Makarov can’t frame the ULF. The mission succeeds, because it’s a story mission and it has to, Makarov is unable to control the narrative so people can only suspect the ULF did it but can’t prove it, and Samara…died for nothing. All of that was so people could suspect the ULF was a terrorist organization, which the game has previously gone out of its way to establish was already happening before Makarov got on that flight. This entire sequence and the mission after added nothing to the storyline other than the brutal forcing of a Middle Eastern woman to hijack a plane 9/11 style and die a death worse than two of the series’s main characters.

Two side characters, two Middle Eastern women who have never existed before this game, are put in this game solely to die in ways where their deaths are more emphasized and graphic than a character we’ve played as since the series began, and one of the main villains. 

There is a genocide happening in Palestine. Islamophobia in the United States, and the West as a whole, is rising to post-9/11 heights. There is already so much propaganda being spread in an attempt to dehumanize the men, women, and children who are being murdered by Israeli forces, to justify the actions - the war crimes - of the Israeli forces. Could this be a sloppy attempt at Activision trying to mirror real-life stereotypes and how quick the media is to jump to the Arab = Bad narrative? Possibly. I don’t think it is. I think this was a deliberate change from the original No Russian mission in which America is framed for terrorism, made by an American company that makes games meant to garner interest and support in the American military, during a time when the American government is being criticized for funding and aiding an ethnic cleansing. 

As slapped together as this game was, I don’t believe they couldn’t have changed the campaign in the time since the situation in Palestine escalated to this level. I firmly believe it was a purposeful choice to write that scene, to film that scene, to keep that scene. 

It is blatant, it is clear, it is as in-your-face as it can possibly be. It is not something this fandom gets to ignore because they don’t like the campaign. It is not something this fandom gets to overshadow with Soap’s death as poorly written as it was. It is not something this fandom gets to stay silent about while also posting about #freepalestine. 

I have never expected the best when it comes to Islamophobia from the Call of Duty games or its fandom. I’ve never expected anything beyond mildly okay. Call of Duty is military propaganda, I know. The fandom is known for its racism and it’s not getting better, I know that especially. But I don’t see how anyone, in the times we’re living in right now, would be able to look at this and not acknowledge it for what it is. 

It is the purposeful brutalization of Middle Eastern characters. 

It is propaganda.

It is racism. 

It is Islamophobia. 

It is wrong. 

Engaging Critically/Acknowledging Privilege

While I may be stepping back from the CoD fandom, I understand that not everyone is going to. For some people, these games are a comfort or an escape. I’m not here to call for a boycott of Call of Duty or Activision while there are more important boycotts to be focusing on - and you can find more info on them here & here.

What I am asking, particularly of those of us in the fandom that are not being directly affected by what’s happening in Palestine, is that there is more acknowledgment of the level of privilege that we have and that people learn to engage more critically with the media they consume. 

It is a privilege to play a game like Call of Duty and not have to think about the propaganda. It is a privilege (and ignorant) to say “it’s not political”, “it’s just pixels”, or “it’s not real”. It is a privilege to be able to just turn the game off and never have to think about war, and the impact of the representation of the characters, and the real-life events that these games base themselves on. And this isn’t just a CoD issue, this is something that should be considered with every piece of media you engage with. 

There is no such thing as a “politics-free” book/movie/game/show. Everything carries the biases - conscious or subconscious - of the person or people who created it. There is no such thing as media or fiction not having an effect on real life, especially in a fandom for what is essentially War Crimes: The Game.

I’m going to take a quote from this post by @yeyinde.

"It’s incredibly egregious to pretend that the media you consume isn’t based, in some part, on real life or has no repercussions outside of it just being fiction. And it’s especially dishonest to say this isn’t the case within the COD fandom when people have said that the erasure of Gaz from the fandom in favour of a white character is traumatising. The portrayal of the Middle East is traumatising. The portrayal of Makarov in fiction as an uwu-sympathetic babbie is traumatising. The portrayal of the military as heroes is traumatising. These are real people expressing real emotions and bringing up important matters that impact them long after they’ve logged out of tumblr. Just because they stop being relevant to you after that does not, and SHOULD NOT, matter. Their trauma, their feelings, and their interpretations shouldn’t be ignored in favour of some catch-all excuse to limit your responsibility as a consumer to think critically about the media you’re devouring just because it has no consequences for you."

Fiction mirrors real life whether you want to admit it or not. It shows real biases, and it affects real people. Participating in fiction and the surrounding culture does not magically absolve you of consequences. It does not suddenly mean you get a free pass at things like sexism, racism, ableism, colorism, romanticization of abuse and sexual assault, etc. just because your escapist fantasies are conveniently free of people who are different from you.

It may be your fiction, but it is someone else’s non-fiction, and you do not get to decide that it isn’t or that the impact doesn’t matter because it’s about fictional characters.

I'm going to link another post from @yeyinde with another quote here.

"It’s easy to get swept up into something when you have no tangible ties to the effects of what’s being portrayed, which can lead to making dismissive or hurtful statements out of pure ignorance. My biggest gripe was the excuses being laundered out and (either unintentionally or intentionally) giving the creators a pass for what they created and the harm they caused other people to experience. Just because they did not experience the same trauma, it does not diminish its impact on others. This is a very important distinction, which I think was being missed."

Does this mean you can’t ever write or read about traumatic things, or that you can’t enjoy the CoD games ever again? No. 

But I need you all to understand that you can criticize the media you enjoy. You should criticize the media you enjoy. Criticism does not mean never letting yourself enjoy a piece of media again. Criticism does not mean trying to get a character or creator “cancelled”. Criticism does not automatically equal hate.

Criticism is an act of love, and it is necessary when deconstructing and confronting biases - both yours and other people's.

Resources To Support Palestine

The lovely @moondirti provided some organizations where you can donate to support the humanitarian aid in Gaza with the note:

It's important to acknowledge that, while limited aid is being allowed through, recent negotiations have allowed your charity to reach the people of Palestine.

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

PALESTINE CHILDREN RELIEF FUND

UNITED MISSION FOR RELIEF – PALESTINE EMERGENCY

ANERA

Onto the actual game.

The 141

I don't know what happened during development between this game and MW2, but the relationship between the members of the 141 is severely lacking. We get the usual Soap and Ghost banter for one mission, because, let’s be real, that's what got a lot of people into the last game, but that's about it? There’s nothing new, nothing added to their relationships, and the game sticks to the same duos (Ghost/Soap & Price/Gaz) that we’ve had for the past two games. Even Soap and Ghost’s banter during the attack on Milena’s private island doesn’t have the same impact on the characters as their banter during the Alone mission in MW2. They get a few lines about Soap admiring Milena’s cars and Ghost taunting him about marrying an Oligarch, and…that’s it until the cutscene where they interrogate her.

There’s maybe a few quippy lines here and there, but overall the 141 gives off the same feeling as a group of semi-friendly co-workers that sometimes work on the same project rather than an actual team that has shed blood, sweat, and tears with each other.

This would’ve been such a great time to explore deeper into the team dynamics, show us pairings we don’t get to see as often and build on those relationships, make us really feel for these characters on a personal level. In the original series, you got a feel for every character and their team dynamics, and the player felt the impact of each death as they watched the other characters react (something I’ll talk about later). With this game, we get…what? Four men that desperately need a lozenge throwing a few sassy one-liners at each other and giving each other a harsh pat on the back like a bunch of dads at a barbecue?

I feel like so much of the heavy labor regarding the 141 in the reboot is done through fanfiction at this point because this game especially gives us barely anything to go on, and that’s such a missed opportunity on Activision’s part considering how so much of MW2’s popularity came from the relationship built between Soap and Ghost. It all just feels so hollow and surface-level; there’s no depth here, no attempt to build a connection from the player to this group as a team. In my opinion, Activision relies too heavily on the older fanbase’s connection to the original series, and the newer fanbase’s self-created characterizations, to fill in the blanks so they can leave these characters as empty and vanilla as possible in order to appeal to a broader audience.

And they’ve still somehow managed to fail at that. Speaking of failing...

Graves and Shepherd

Graves should’ve died in that fucking tank, and I will stand by that opinion even after I die. It was such a cop-out to have him live, and for him to suddenly come back with the excuse, “Well, I wasn’t in that tank, blah, blah, blah.”

This is supposed to be a game series where characters die and stay dead. The characters die. Some die heroically, some die horrifically, some die quickly, some die painfully slow, most die bloody, but they die. It’s a staple of the series, like Game of Thrones pre-season 5. I don’t know if Activision didn’t know what to do with his character, or if they realized he was semi-popular with the fans and decided to magically bring him back via deus ex remote-controlled tank, or if they were trying to “subvert expectations” and give us all a little surprise plot twist, but it sucked.

Also, no one checked the tank for a body? That seems to be something everyone has a problem doing in these games, and I don’t know what Activision thinks that does for the 141, but what it does do is make these elite military officials look incompetent as hell because their “dead” enemies keep coming back.

There was nothing different that Graves did in this game from what he did in the previous game. We get the same air support mission from him that we got last game, and really that’s it. Okay sure, he’s working with Farah now, that’s a little different, but what did he do in that mission? Give her vague instructions on where to find some GPS trackers and then give her more vague instructions on where to find the missile containers to slap the trackers on? He could’ve easily been replaced with one of Farah’s people who scouted ahead, or Alex, or a decorative cowboy hat, and the mission would have gone the exact same.

Other than that he spends the entire game hiding behind Shepherd like a scared child up until the end when he ultimately turns on Shepherd, and even that felt so blah. He faces no consequences for his (racist) actions in Las Almas other than Gaz refusing to shake his hand, he faces no consequences for betraying the 141, going so far as to lie that it even happened in front of Congress, and he gets off completely free as far as we know. There was no point to his character, no point to bringing him back, no point to him being in this game at all, and if I find the Activision employee who decided to keep him alive I will be throwing hands expeditiously. 

Shepherd was…there, I guess? I’m sure he was meant to be a menacing, sly, back-stabbing character, but he came off as more irritating than anything. His rescue mission felt akin to being forced to babysit your annoying younger sibling who questions everything you do. They give you a cute little nod to the OG series with his cutscene with the 141 in the snow (because Activision has to rely on nostalgia and easter eggs since they know this game is emptier than the promises of an absentee father), but most of it is spent with Shepherd preaching about how great he is and threatening the 141 like he’s been doing the entire game. I’m sure he’s supposed to come off as clever, outsmarting the 141 and tricking them into rescuing him - this big, bad, battle-hardened General - but all of that is undercut by him getting captured to begin with.

The General Shepherd in the original series killed two of the player characters. How am I supposed to be intimidated by this nagging grandpa briskly jogging through the snow behind me in his ugly pajama jumpsuit? Even his ending is lackluster. He’s outwitted in front of Congress by Graves of all people, and then we get a cutscene where Price shoots him off-screen. That’s it. There was no satisfaction like in the original series, no triumph, no sense of vengeance, only a tired feeling of thank god I don’t have to deal with this anymore. This constant attempt at build-up in this reboot series of Shepherd being this looming figure over the 141 ends not with a bang, and not even with a whimper.

Makarov

I’m going to start this off by saying I mean absolutely no hate to Julian Kostov, Makarov’s actor, he definitely did his job.

Unfortunately, that job was playing a random Russian man that happened to have the same name as the Vladimir Makarov from the original series. He’s literally just a dude. There’s nothing particularly menacing about him, nothing that really screams Leader of an Ultranationalist group, nothing that would set him apart in a line-up of kind-of-gruff white men. I wasn’t expecting him to be some over-the-top supervillain, but he feels too normal, too regular, too everyday. Maybe that was the point Activision was trying to make - that having a villain with too-sharp features, eyebrows with in-your-face arches, and two-toned eyes is realistically too much - but it feels like they leaned too far in the opposite direction to compensate.

How am I supposed to take Makarov seriously when they gave him such big, brown, babygirl eyes? Though I realize this may be a character model issue because everyone in this game seemed to have huge doe eyes at one point or another (looking directly at you and those unblinking baby blues, Soap).

The first time we get a proper cutscene with Makarov, he shoots one of his own men – one who had questioned his plan in the rescue mission – and he gives some passionate Make Russia Great Again speech that involves a lot of big gestures, promises of showing the world “true power”, and him being weirdly touchy with one of his men. It’s not a bad scene, and I think Julian really shines here as Makarov. It’s a little in-your-face for me, but overall not a bad introduction to what is supposed to be the overarching big bad for the rest of the series. It gives you a good enough sense of danger, and just enough worry for the main crew as they get ready to go up against this guy.

Unfortunately, the rest of the game doesn’t really follow through on that. Makarov spends more time monologuing, asking his men “philosophical” questions about prisoners and guards, and cryptically foreshadowing at the 141 than he does doing…anything. We are told about all of the bad deeds he’s done. We are told how evil he is. We are told that Makarov needs to be stopped at all costs. The only problem is, we aren’t shown any of that. We see the aftermath of Verdansk, a distant explosion after Makarov has been captured, but we never see Makarov do any of that. When we do get to see Makarov, his men are doing all of the dirty work while he stands around and looks evil. It’s his men fighting and killing guards to get him out of prison, his men attacking Farah and her soldiers, his men launching missiles topped with biochemicals, his men forcing Samara to blow up a plane, his men guarding Milena and his finances. The most he does during any of these scenes is order his men around and give evil villain speeches to give the audience exposition about why he’s doing all this.

We probably see more of Makarov’s shirtless Tinder pic than we see him in action. 

In the original series, we see Makarov being at the forefront of his movement, unafraid to get his hands dirty. He is part of the group that commits the massacre/terrorist attack on Zakhaev International Airport, he kills the two FSO agents protecting President Vorshevsky, he’s the one who shoots and kills Yuri, and that’s only part of what we see in-game. Sure, we’re told about his other crimes, but we’re shown enough to back up the claims that he is evil. In this game, he kills two people himself, one of them being his own soldier that I mentioned earlier, and the other being Soap (and we’ll get to that later). Two extremely lackluster deaths that are over before you get the chance to really digest them. Maybe he kills more people during the intro mission when you rescue him, but it’s during gameplay and easily missed when you’re too busy trying to fight your way out of this Arkham-esque prison. I think I could look past it if he wasn’t also present during some of the scenes where his men are carrying out his atrocities for him, but instead, Activision chose to have him in the background standing there…menacingly. 

I don’t want to say Makarov was a bad villain; he was certainly better than Shepherd and Graves. I just think Activision made very strange choices with his character that resulted in him becoming this weird mishmash of an average monologuing movie villain and the micromanaging boss that stands over your shoulder, and it took a lot of the “oomph” out of his character for me. 

Soap's Death

I hope whoever made this decision at Activision has to live the rest of their life constantly feeling like they have to sneeze and are never able to. What the fuck happened here? In what world did Soap’s death make any kind of sense here? This felt like they knew fans were expecting someone to die (and they already retconned the yeehaw war criminal) so they put a bunch of names in a hat and had some poor unpaid intern pick one out. 

I have not been quiet about how much death I wanted in this game. I expected at least two deaths, with one of them preferably being Price. Going into this I was prepared to lose characters, and I was prepared to lose them to a heroic sacrifice, to an exhaustingly epic gunfight, to an explosion in a clocktower, to literally anything, but I was not prepared to lose a character to bad writing. And that’s what Soap’s death was. There is no build-up to it throughout the game other than a cryptic, “I’ll see you again, MacTavish.” from Makarov in a flashback scene. There’s no exploration of Soap’s character arc, his background, his family. There’s nothing.

Price and Soap try to defuse a bomb, Makarov shows up and his men overpower them, Makarov goes for the kill on Price, and instead shoots Soap when Soap tries to stop him. The entire cutscene can be summed up as A Series Of Conveniences. Makarov conveniently gets to Soap and Price just as they’re about to defuse the bomb, the officers they have with them are conveniently incompetent to stop any of Makarov’s men, Makarov’s men conveniently don’t notice Soap getting up to stop him from shooting Price, Ghost and Gaz are conveniently one second too late save Soap, and a train conveniently passes by to let Makarov make his escape. It’s over in less than a minute, and there’s little to no reaction from the surviving 141 members before the game starts shoving in your face that there’s a bomb you have to defuse that has conveniently not gone off yet and was conveniently missed in all of the gunfire.

Aside from the bullshit way it happened, the most disappointing thing here was the cutting of Soap’s arc and the lack of reaction from Price, Ghost, and Gaz. There was no growth for Soap in this game, no building of his story that would make his death feel like a satisfying conclusion. We just got the same Soap we’ve had in the rest of the series, and then he was gone. And the fact that we got absolutely nothing from the team in that moment was so…frustrating. Yeah, Ghost kneels by his body, and gives a brief, “Johnny!” but that’s…it? Price says nothing. Gaz rushes to the bomb and says nothing. After that moment in the cutscene, Ghost says and does nothing. There’s not even a hitch in their voices as they finish disarming the bomb. In Soap’s original death, we got Price screaming and begging over his body. We got to see his grief and pain and hurt at losing someone so close to him. Here we get…them standing over the body, a cut to black, and then a funeral cutscene that doesn’t feel earned full of commiserations that feel empty, hollow, and generic. 

Maybe I’m too nostalgic for the Captain MacTavish we had in the original series, and the death they gave him that was impactful enough that people still talk about it to this day. Maybe there’s something meaningful here that I’m not seeing. Or maybe Activision can’t write for shit and rushed Soap’s death without a care just like they rushed this game as a quick cash grab to ride the hype of MW2.

Whatever the reason, these characters deserved far better.

Soap deserved better.

And I deserved to see a rebooted Captain MacTavish.

Gameplay

This section is going to be short because I didn’t spend money on this game to actually play it, I only watched gameplay. The general consensus seems to be that this game is nothing but glorified DMZ, and I can’t disagree with that. Supposedly, at least two of the campaign settings were ripped straight from Warzone, the Gulag and Verdansk Stadium, and I think that really shows how much of this game was slapped together because Activision wanted to hurry to release so they could capitalize off the CoD hype as much as possible. The combat is the same in every mission, the air support mission is as boring as ever, the NPC AI is all over the place, and the character models constantly shift from being really good to mobile game bad within the same cutscene.

I’m not saying I could do better, but I don’t think I could do worse. You can take that however you’d like.

The Writing/Storyline

Starting off, I’m going to say this with my whole chest:

Main story content should be in the main story, and not in optional or additional content.

Look, I don’t mind an easter egg here and there in DLC. I don’t mind the mention of a big bad in an extra, paid quest to build up hype. What I do mind is when the understanding of the main storyline of your game is dependent on things that happen in content that players are required to complete outside of the main game. 

Do you know how we found out Alex was alive? An optional Raid.

Do you know how we learned Graves was a little bitch and wasn’t in the tank? An optional Raid.

Do you know how we–

You get my point. These kinds of reveals should have been in the main storyline because they pertain to the main storyline. Otherwise, you have people reacting with confusion because the main campaign was all they played, and they were left under the assumption that Alex may or may not be dead, that Graves burned in that tank in Las Almas, that Farah’s brother (Remember him? Activision doesn’t.) was alive and out there somewhere, etc, etc. It feels like they’re trying to do what Marvel does when they interweave their cinematic universe with their television shows: leave references to things only the more committed audience - the audience who will watch every show, play every game, see every movie, buy every DLC - would understand while punishing everyone else. It feels lazy on Activision’s end, and cheapens any kind of suspense they may leave us with going forward.

I wouldn’t even be surprised to see something like “Oh, Soap died and Makarov escaped at the end of the main campaign? Just kidding! They revealed in the newest Raid that Soap actually survived, and Makarov got hit by that train at the end.”

Outside of that, the whole storyline just feels unnecessary. This whole game feels unnecessary. I know there are rumors that this was meant to be a DLC for MW2 that got extended into a full game because Activision wanted more money, and if I didn’t already believe that, the writing would confirm it for me. Nothing feels fleshed out. Not the story, not the plot, not the characters. It all feels very surface-level and shallow, like more of the exact same thing we got in the last game, but somehow worse. The banter between the 141 is just not there, the tell don’t show when it comes to Makarov, the rapid POV switching, it all feels so thrown together, so last minute, like the writers had no idea what they wanted to do up until release. 

One thing that really bothered me was the constant death fakeouts. It felt like every mission something awful would happen and one character would be left with their fate unknown in a dramatic cut to black as a cheap way to build suspense…only for that suspense to be immediately undercut by showing them alive in the very next cutscene. This happens with Farah (twice), Price, Alex (partially, there’s no cut to black, but there is a fakeout that he has been captured), and Laswell all within the first half of the game. At some point, it starts to get irritating and kills any and all suspense going forward. I was spoiled on Soap’s death, I knew it was coming before I watched the cutscenes, but by the time I got there, I was almost expecting Soap to show up in the next sequence without a scratch on him. Up until that point, I had stopped caring when characters were in danger because the writing led me to believe everyone was safe. There’s a way to build suspense, and every writer understands that, a majority of the time, less is more, so I don’t get how this went so unbelievably wrong. 

The characterization is also so weirdly off. In what world would John “Somebody has to make the enemy scared of the dark. We get dirty, and the world stays clean.” Price not immediately take a kill shot when he has Makarov in custody? Soap was ready to kill every person he talked to in this game, so why did he let Makarov live? Why would Gaz advocate for giving Shepherd a gun after his multiple betrayals that he shows no remorse for? Why would Farah continue to begrudgingly work with Graves after learning about Las Almas? Why is Makarov over-explaining his plans to his victims?

I’m not saying I expect Shakespeare-level writing from a Call of Duty game, but I expect something better than whatever this is. 

I don’t know who Activision hired for their writing team, but there are so many instances here where I almost have to believe that they may not have hired one at all.

Overall Thoughts

I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to who I was before I watched this campaign. This whole game was nothing but a DLC lazily stretched to two hours with assets taken from other games and a storyline that was slapped together using blindfolds, a dartboard, and too much alcohol. Please do not use your money to buy this game. Your money would be much better spent donating to help Palestine.

[kitspindles]

Nobody crucify me for this but I really don’t get why people are so mad about the “Percy is still 17 thing” because like… Rick’s explanation made sense enough to me? In a book series that’s spanned almost 20 years now and takes place in “our world” but not “real world time” (and where there’s schist like literal gods and monsters), people are fuming that the timeline doesn’t make sense with all the references to pop culture? Like, we already know the actual plot timeline within the books is a little screwy and not perfect, but why are we all big mad out here trying to fight the author in a Denny’s parking lot? Just because Percy isn’t canonically 18 yet? (Or 30 something). I don’t blame him for keeping Percy on the cusp of legal adulthood with the way some of you guys have been acting lately.

There’s no year ever given in the books to date the exact time of Percy’s adventures (or his birth year) because, like Rick said, his adventure is happening whenever you pick up the book and read it. Yes, there’s a wide range of pop culture references and jokes from over the years in the series but like… so what? He writes jokes that the current audiences and year will understand, that’s all. The series has been going for, what, 17 years now? And new fans of varying ages are always joining. The series and the jokes are ever evolving to reach these newer fans (many of whom are elementary and middle school aged, remember). As far as I know he never claimed for there to be a strictly linear timeline based in our real world time. He’s kept stuff vague on purpose to avoid giving exact years.

I think we all forget that The Lightning Thief started out as a bedtime story for Rick’s son, and that it took some time to even be accepted and published as a book. He didn’t initially set out to create a whole series with 15+ books spanning almost 20 years. I’m sure he didn’t know how large and expansive the series would become, and so that’s why there’s no set in stone timeline. Some authors give their series set years and stick with it throughout (Cassandra Clare, for example, has a whole intricate timeline going for her Shadowhunter books and sticks to it like glue), and some don’t. It’s just how it is. And most characters don’t tend to age outside their books… so yes, Percy is still 17 because, as of The Tower of Nero (which came out 2 years ago now, btw), his last canonical book appearance, he had yet to celebrate his 18th birthday or even officially start college. Just because we’re out here “celebrating” his birthday in the real world doesn’t mean he’s actually aging. It’s just a little goofy thing because he’s a popular character.

Are people just mad because this character we grew up with who kept aging in the books is now frozen at 17 (because his story is done) and we keep aging? We do need to remember that it’s a kids/young adult series, ergo, the characters are all still teens and pre-teens. Not yet adults.

Anyway I’ve just been thinking about that sorry

[marlynnofmany]

Racetracking

“The good news,” announced the gravelly voice of Mimi the tentacle alien, “Is that this model defaults to zero-g when it breaks.” He led the way down the corridor with tentacle slaps instead of footsteps, which managed to sound exasperated.

I had the brief thought that he was louder than Mur and Wio when he walked, possibly because he spent so much time in the engine room where everything was noisy. But I put that thought aside. I had a pretty good idea what the bad news was.

“The bad news,” Mimi grumbled, “Is that the carrying cage that these high-paying customers insisted on is so broken that I can’t fix it. Even with the right tools.”

“So we have animals in zero-g,” I said.

Mimi waved a tentacle in a way that I privately found hilarious. “We just took off! Just! It’s like they’re trying to frame us for damages!”

I looked at him in alarm. “Are we sure they’re not?”

He made a dismissive motion, still walking. “That’s what the cameras in the storage holds are for. There’s proof that no one dropped it or whatever. And I think Captain Sunlight is already talking to them about it, which is a conversation I do not envy her.”

I winced. “Yeah. Which animals? It’s just one of the carriers, right?”

“The little ones. I dunno what they’re called. They were alive when I left, but they looked pretty upset.”

That didn’t narrow it down. As the ship’s resident animal expert, I’d had a look at each of the half-dozen life support chambers that passed for carriers among the rich folks. Each of them held a different type of little furry whatsit in wild colors. Each was sealed with its own supply of air and gravity — or at least it was supposed to be.

I couldn’t hear any distressed noises yet, but when Mimi poked the button for the door, it slid open to a chorus of muffled squeaks.

The six chambers were lined up in a row, on display in the center of the room, with nothing close enough to so much as touch them. Five held animals calmly nosing around the bottom.

One held a whirling tornado of blue fur.

I dashed over to peer through the glass, hands dancing uncertainly. I shouldn’t touch it, shouldn’t open it. But—!

…But.

I looked closer. “They’re running.” I dropped my hands and stared.

Mimi plopped down next to me. “Is that bad?”

“No, it’s just — Look at them! They’re doing this on purpose!” I started to smile as I realized why the squeaks sounded familiar. “They’ve made their own hamster wheel.”

“A what now?” Mimi wanted to know.

I gestured vaguely. “It’s an exercise thing for animals like this where I’m from. A wheel that they run inside of, and it keeps spinning. These guys—” I pointed at the chamber. “—Have created their own.”

“Uh-HUH.” Mimi tilted his head to watch the antics, which were slowing down as they noticed us. “That is a strange reaction to zero-gravity.”

“I’ve heard of mice that did that, actually,” I said as a memory surfaced. “It took them a while to make a game of it. I wonder if this isn’t the first time the carrier’s gravity has gone screwy.”

Mimi held a curl of tentacle thoughtfully to his face. “That is an interesting data point. The captain will want to know.” He lowered it. “And if you’re sure these things aren’t about to die of organ explosion or whatever, then we should go tell her.”

The blue furry things — which did honestly look a lot like mice — had settled down to some more even-tempered bumping around in there. None were limping as far as I could tell, and none had been knocked unconscious or worse.

“I think they’re okay,” I said, looking closely. “The food dispenser is closed, thankfully, so there aren’t any pellets or globs of water floating about. They just got a bit of excitement.”

Mimi levered himself off the floor. “They’re not the only ones,” he grumbled. “Annoying little meatsticks must be in cahoots with the rich jerks, trying to make our lives harder. Why would they even do that?”

I gave the chamber one last look, then stood and followed him toward the door. “I dunno, it looks like fun. Probably a lot of animals would enjoy that if they knew it was an option.”

Mimi stared at me with one large eye. “Animals from your planet.”

“Well, yeah. Probably others too.”

He made a wet-sounding snort of skepticism and led the way into the hall.

I followed, smiling. “Come on, it looks like fun. I was just thinking it would be neat to try in a zero-g room, though flat walls wouldn’t be as good as curved ones.”

“Your planet’s full of weirdos. You know that, right?”

“Oh, it’s been said before.”

~~~

Thanks to this post for inspiration! It was too good an idea to pass up.

Anyways, this is the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. But you probably already knew that.

[luimagines]

How about a reader who seems to have no experience with a weapon, but come to find out is terrifyingly good with a bow.

Like not on Wild's level but definitely better than the majority of the chain.

Ooooooohhhh! I like that idea! Let's see if I can make something of it!

Masterlist

Content under the cut!

You were beginning to suspect that the boy were getting annoyed with you.

Not that they were ever to say that to your face, but you didn’t want them to come to your rescue all the time... and you didn’t think that they wanted to either.

That being said, you had asked to learn self defense. Sky was the one who more or less made the Master Sword and he’s had proper training in how to use it. You thought he would have been perfect to teach you.

And for all intents and purposes, he had been more than willing to help. He was patient and kind and what he said and how he did it made a lot of sense. The things is, after being thrown to the ground over twenty times and you did try for multiple days- bordering multiple weeks- you gave up.

You footwork was screwy at best. Your grip on the sword was subpar and frankly, you weren’t close to being as psychically strong as Sky to throw him off.

The next option was maybe something magical. Legend and Warrior have their magic sticks and stuff. You didn’t know what you were doing but you figured it was easier to just throw things at the monsters and let it stick than have an actual strategy.

That was shot down. Instantly.

Warrior tossed you the fire rod on a whim and you nearly burned the whole forest down. So naturally, you’ve been banned from touching all, if not, most magical items.

The boys were more than happy to agree, especially those who don’t really fancy the magic stuff anyway.

You thought about a boomerang. A lot of the boys had those and it wasn’t bladed or magical (at least it didn’t have to be) so you thought that would work just fine.

Hyrule agreed and tried to show you the basics. And for the most part, it seemed simple enough. Until you nearly took Time’s head off in the process and you were afraid of touching it ever since.

At this point you were running out of options. While the boys seemed to understand your willing to learn, they didn’t want you get hurt. You suspect that they just didn’t want to get hurt in the process of you learning. Which stung a little, to be honest.

You had thought of one last weapon that you could learn and you knew just the person to ask.

“Wild.” You whisper. “I wanna ask you something.”

Wild pauses and nods, standing up to follow you away from prying eyes and eager ears. “What is it?”

“Please show me how to use the bow.” You bow.

Wild blinks and tilts his head. “We told you that we could-”

“Please?” You ask again, cutting him off. “I have to try.”

Wild sighs and shakes his head. With one hand, he unhooks his sheikah slate and takes out a simple wooden bow. “If anyone asks, you say you just found this.”

You nod and take it gratefully.

Wild also takes out some of his normal arrows, handing a few to you. “We have at least an hour before the others start to worry about the two of us being alone.”

You bounce on the balls of your feet. Feeling giddy, you start to move the bow in your hands and play with the strong, getting a feel for it. 

Wild moves away and you see him set up a small tower of ice in one of the puddles nearby. You gape. How did he do that?

“Ok.” He says, hooking the slate back to his belt. “You see that? That’s your target.”

You notice it’s in the opposite direction of the group.

Wild comes in close and guides your hand to where they should rest on the bow. It feels right in your hands. You adjust your feet accordingly and steady yourself

Wild look pleased and hands you an arrow, setting it up against the notch and gently placing your fingers to hold it without injuring yourself. “Ok, there. Now aim and let go.”

You nod and look at the ice pillar in front of you. Pulling the arrow back again just like you’ve seen the boy do before, you let go.

It hits it.

You scream and jump in place. Your first reaction is you bring Wild into a hug, wrapping your arms around his neck. “I did! Look! I actually hit it!”

He laughs. “Good job. Do it again.”

You bounce back and take out on the arrows Wild gave you. You set yourself up just like before and fire again.

You split the arrow in twain.

You don’t react this time. You stare in shock just as Wild runs over to inspect it. He gets a stupid grin on his face and comes back to punch your shoulder. “Do it again.”

So you do.

“Again.”

Again.

“O-hohoho.” Wild looks giddy. “We have to show the others this. They’re never going to believe it.”

You look at the bow in your hands in shock. “I am a god.”

Wild starts laughing. “Please do against Twilight. I need to see him go down.”

You grin and nod. Do actually think you’ll be able to do so? No, not really. But Wild’s energy is contagious and it’s nice to have something work as nicely as this has after so many failed attempts.

So when you eventually set up a few target and go off against Twilight- recreating your first attempt. Legend losses a bet, Sky gets his money back and Time lets you set up the opportunity to practice with the bow you’ve more of less stolen from Wild at this point.

Given the smile on the Champion’s face when he turns to mock Twilight for not being able to do what you did, you don’t think he minds one bit.

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

if you're interested: headcanons about tav with shadowheart as their confidant? i think she'd give good relationship advice—especially early on when tav is struggling to figure out astarion's whole deal

Astarion x Ace!Tav Masterlist (for reference)

That’s the thing, I think Tav believes they have a solid grasp on what Astarion’s “deal” is

He’s a flirt and a rake and just wants to get into their pants, nothing serious is going to happen there

The problem is, they like his flirting

They like having his attention, and being able to joke around

And at first that’s all it is, just an excuse to banter and have some fun

The thing is Astarion isn’t exactly subtle about his “desires” and so eventually Shadowheart would approach Tav like, “so I’m not sure if you noticed, but Astarion definitely wants to sleep with you and clearly you like him so why haven’t you tapped that yet”

Tav would avoid the question basically telling Shadowheart that they all have more important things to deal with than who is sleeping with who, but Shadowheart isn’t buying it, still she lets sleeping dogs lie for now

She does say that there’s nothing wrong with a bit of fun, to which Tav says their definition of fun and his are two very different things

The further they get into the adventure, however, Tav starts to develop much deeper feelings for Astarion and that just makes them feel guilty for presumably stringing him along with the promise of sex that’s never going to come

They genuinely can’t tell whether or not Astarion actually cares about them or if he’s just pretending

Tav tells all this to Shadowheart, just looking for a second pair of eyes on this, are they deluding themselves?

Shadowheart can’t speak for certain about Astarion’s intentions or feelings; she does know he does spend a lot of time with Tav and actually relaxes around them in a way he doesn’t around the others, it’s possible he’s developing real feelings for Tav

However, she’s more focused on the true distress in her friend’s face and the guilt in their words

Finally she asks, “are you in love with him?”

Tav tries to brush it off, “contrary to appearances I’m not that stupid”

Shadowheart pushes it though saying, “I asked you a simple question, do you love him”

Tav finally breaks, “Yes, but don’t hold it against me. I’m a little screwy myself.”

Shadowheart is then like, “okay now that we have some truth on the table, are you planning to do anything about it?”

This is where Tav falters, because if they do something about it, it ruins the game, one they can’t help but lose every time

Shadowheart counters that they don’t know that for certain, and Tav tells her they’ve got a pretty good idea

That’s probably when they explain to Shadowheart that they are asexual and considering how obvious Astarion has been with his intentions to bed them, it can only end badly

Shadowheart is sympathetic, as she does see Tav’s feelings are genuine, but she also says then what Tav is doing isn’t fair to themselves or Astarion for that matter

They deserve somebody who is going to respect their boundaries and if they’re mooning over somebody that won’t, best they find out for certain and allow themselves to move on

Tav hears this, but it’s easier said than done

Of course, certain events speed run that long time coming conversation (read I Want It All for that story)

I admittedly need to learn a bit more about Shadowheart to say what her full opinion of their relationship is, but considering how she got a front row seat on how messily it started, I can only imagine she’s in camp, “they deserve each other because whatever shit they’ve got going on needs to be quarantined”

[westofessos]

So. . . I’m thinking about starting Doctor Who.

But with that, I have a few concerns.

1) will I even like it? I’ve seen a few clips/gifs that I thought were good, but you can make any show look good through just clips and gifs

2) where do I even start? Surely not at the very beginning with the 1st doctor, where it’s in black and white? Or should I? Are there references to those older ones in the new ones (don’t bullshit me now, I take that shit very seriously. And by ‘that shit’ I mean watching every little part in the exact right order so you get all the references and Easter eggs exactly when you’re meant to, and when they’ll mean the most to you. So don’t bullshit me on this. It’s important to me.)

Also I saw one guide one time that said something along the lines of ‘oh start on episode 10 of season 3 and then go from there’ or go back. I don’t remember exactly what it said. Something screwy, that’s all I know. Please don’t tell me to do something like that unless it’s actually necessary/will enhance my viewing experience

3) I’ve heard the newer seasons aren’t as good? But is that because they’re actually not good or because the Doctor was a woman? (Also why is David Tennant back and how is that possible? Isn’t Ncuti Gatwa supposed to be the Doctor now? Don’t actually tell me. These are just things I’m confused by as someone on the outside that I’m sure all of you fans are laughing hysterically at.)

4) will I even like it?? I know that was my first point but it remains one of my bigger concerns. That’s a lot of time wasted for something I end up hating.

I don’t know. Doctor Who fans, let me know what I should do. Give me some advice. Hype up the show. Should I do it?

[herebecritters]

Overwhelmed ♥️

Screwy belongs to @ickyguts

[slashingdisneypasta]

Horror House AU!Freddy Krueger x Reader || Drabble

Plot: You are So Beyond Uninterested in this guy Jennifer left you with that when you see Freddy in the kitchen you are So Beyond Relieved. Pretending to Evan that Freddy is Your Guy just seemed like the natural course of action!-

Warnings: Sexual references.

As soon as you saw Freddy in the kitchen doing nothing-in-particular, you felt the heaviest rush of relief you've ever felt in this house- which is saying something. Living here is like having your life on the line every second of the damn day.

But with Evan here talking your ears burning red about his job, and 'dumbing it down for you' since it was just so complicated (And you should be s o grateful he's being so inclusive, right?? 😒), Freddy with his dumb puns (That sometimes make you laugh. Admittedly) and creepy remarks That sometimes... aren't t h a t creepy... ) somehow looks... kinda good.

You mean- well- if you were going to go out with anyone here... in this kitchen... well-... it wouldn't be Evan.

Welp. You can use that.

"Freddy!" You exclaim cheerfully, making it across the kitchen in 2 seconds, happy to get away from Evan standing too close behind you, throwing your arms around the demon. You fill your voice up with joy and stick a grin to your face, like you're so pleased to see your guy. Like you missed him, when he was gone from you. "Hey! Where have you been, today?" You ask, tilting your head to the side inquisitively, like just the perfect little sweetheart.

Evan has stopped talking about work, thank god, but he definitely have some questions about this. You don't take your eyes off of Freddy's trying to figure out whether he gets it or not. There's an odd pondering look on his face. "Wait... what's happening here? I thought... Look, Jennifer said I might like you... I thought we were gonna- " He sounds so baffled. you feel slightly bad.

But not that bad.

"Oh yeah," A look of guilt on your face, you turn back to Evan, leaning back against the kitchen bench just like 'your man'. You read somewhere that couples mimic each other. "Um- well- Jennifer doesn't know, yet. Ha." When Freddy is still just standing there, watching you struggle with amusement all over his mean dumb face, you oh-so-subtly elbow his arm off the bench (making him almost fall), before placing it around your waist. Fidgeting, you turn your head to 'glance out the window' behind your both and hiss a desperate, pleading, "Work with me here- " into his ear.

"Really?"

"Uhuh." You nod, not liking the tone of disbelief in Evans voice. Where does he get off thinking you're a liar?? He's known you for 3 minutes!, he doesn't know you- he doesn't know Freddy- how would he know you two aren't a perfect match!?-

"Its new." Freddy finally speaks, and you nod along eagerly. Yes! Thank you. Yes, its new- Great-

"Oh."

"It happened last night." Freddy goes on, and honestly, you wish he wouldn't. Compliancy is all you need from him!!- Theirs a dirty smirk on his face and you do a double take at it. Oh, hell- "Lights off, clothes on the floor, Daddy's tongue drawing- "

"Ha ha OKAY- honey, he doesn't need the r-rated version. Thank you." You give Freddy's shoulder an awkward pat, like, thats enough sweetheart. Thats not enough, though, not for him-

"Oh that wasn't the r-rated version, princess, you know that~ " When you turn your head to see Freddy, because his voice is close to the side of your head now (a mistake you greatly regret, admittedly), Freddy flicks his tongue at you. And you have to hold very still, conjure all of your self control to keep yourself from cringing or exploding or something equally red-handed and just look perturbed at him. Your eyes are only a little squinty and your nose is only a little screwy, so you're very proud of yourself.

His eyes are laughing though, and you so badly want to pinch him really hard, or something, but you cant in front of Evan!

"... sweetheart save that for later." You eventually say very quickly, before turning back to Evan. "Anyway, Evan, as you can see, I'm- " Before immediately freezing there with Freddy.

Jennifer's there, now.

And she's seen your antics.

Oh, dear.

[underesources]

KINGDOM HEARTS SENTENCE STARTERS ; DONALD DUCK !

quotes taken from the kingdom hearts series , but all of them are things said by donald duck. feel free to change quotes as necessary.

❛ Wake up ! ❜

❛ This is serious ! ❜

❛ What do you know, you big palooka ? ❜

❛ Let's go get 'em, __________ ! ❜

❛ you can't come along looking like that. ❜

❛ No frowning. No sad face. Okay ? ❜

❛ Hold on. ________, this is for you. ❜

❛ Should we trust him ? ❜

❛ What's the big idea ?! ❜

❛ Who would've thought it ? ❜

❛ Just leave it to me. ❜

❛ Come out ! You can't run ! ❜

❛ We have to remember our mission. ❜

❛ Stop staring and keep pushing ! ❜

❛ Well, now what do we do ? ❜

❛ Looks like nobody's home. ❜

❛ I don't get it. ❜

❛ Why isn't my magic working ? ❜

❛ Get a move on ! ❜

❛ ___________'s up to no good. It's written all over her face. ❜

❛ Don't be so rude ! ❜

❛ Have a little faith, ___________. ❜

❛ Ahh, somebody tell me what's going on here.. ❜

❛ Of course it matters ! ❜

❛ You have to go through us ! ❜

❛ This is it , _________ ! ❜

❛ Why didn't I think of that ? ❜

❛ I can't remember. What was it called ? ❜

❛ Stop goofing around ! ❜

❛ Something's screwy. ❜

❛ ___________, do you remember our very first promise ? ❜

[missmeasured]

Growing

Summary: At six months pregnant Lily Potter takes a mission to check in on Severus Snape who has been seen with suspected dark wizards. When her now husband had stripped her old friend in front of their classmates many years ago she had made an observation about her friend’s anatomy that proves to be abundantly false.

(Author's note: This story is about Lily finding out that Severus is a “grower not a shower” as they say. I do not condone the idea that size means anything in relation to penises. All penises are good, valid and equal. I just thought it would be interesting to explore if she had assumptions and opinions and was forced to reckon with them.

Pairings: Lily Potter/ Severus Snape

Rating: Explicit

Contents: Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Cuckolding, Penis Size Discussions

Growing

Lily wasn’t really sure what was going on with her decision making abilities while she was pregnant, but they were a bit screwy. She had been moved to make this bad decision by a series of smaller ones. Her brain knew that she had come here on a very specific mission and yet it was currently overcome. It was unable to provide helpful information other than Oh my god, it’s so big.

“You thought I was small because of that day by the lake, didn’t you?” Severus suddenly asked, voice full of smugness in the question. It was like he knew that her body was reckoning with being so full as he slowly inched the massive thing into her a little more with each small thrust. She should be reckoning with the fact she was betraying her husband. Instead there was only jaw dropping, brain emptying thickness splitting her open.

This whole month of her pregnancy her pussy had felt like a swollen throbbing beacon. Sex was her every thought, every dream. She was never not in the mood. Every caress of her sex was like scratching an itch that was never ending. Now she was dripping with eager excitement in this bad decision she was making. Bent over the back of his sofa, thinking about how full she was, how deeply that itch was being scratched, and not particularly about James.

“Merlin, woman. Listen to you. Does your husband never fuck you?” He asked with satisfaction after she had cried out when he reached his hand around her to pet her clit. With the little promise of pleasure her body had relented and let him press that last inch inside.

Lily did not know what to say to that. James did fuck her, but wasn’t around very much lately. He was always off Order of the Phoenix-ing and telling her she could not join him because of her “condition”. It meant alot of being bored, alot of masturbating angrily when he didn’t come home when he said he would. Then grief and terror when the hours passed and she imagined him dead, then anger again when he showed up with Sirius drunk as a skunk, from too much celebration over a victory.

Knowing what to say to Severus’s jabs at James was a moot point at this juncture as forming sentences was not going to happen. It was just. so. thick. She felt herself clinging to his length each time he withdrew, felt torn open again when he replaced it. She was sure she was a little torn, there was a stinging pain, intertwining with the pleasure. A problem for later. Her hormones had been running wild through her and they demanded this violence. Wanted her own destruction.

Severus was right of course. He usually was, annoying git. She had assumed he was small. That horrible day, the end of their friendship, she had seen- they had all seen… and it had been wrong of James to do it. It had been the cherry on top of the mudblood comment. Not only had Severus hurt her, but what she had seen while James stripped him had moved him into the category of pitiable creature to her. She had been so naive then, they all had. Of course, as an adult woman she knew that some men grew after they became aroused, not before. But Jame’s cock was always at his steadfast just above average length and width. Or so she had been told by James himself, for she had not seen over many penises.

Now, the truth that she had been so wrong was a fact she was being forced to consider with every bloody centimetre. This cock was more of a stretch than the stretch it would take to figure out how she got herself into this situation.

When it had come up that someone close to him should go see if they could find out if he was a death eater now, she had volunteered without even casting a consulting glance at her husband. So many months of doing nothing, checking in on a former friend who has been seen in public with suspected dark wizards was hardly a mission she was too frail to perform. James was as angry as if she had volunteered to take out He-who-must-not-be-named himself with a toothpick and teaspoon as her only weapons. He had yelled. It had been ugly.

Lily had failed to see how it was going to be a problem. She knew that Severus’ father had recently passed and that he had inherited the house and moved back into her parents' neighborhood. That was all the pretense she needed. To go by and see how he was doing. She hadn’t expected him to be so transformed.

When he answered the door, it had not been the string bean with oily hair and old clothes who answered the door. He had very suddenly become a man, it seemed to Lily as he opened the door to his house. He was transformed, new clothing, well kept. She supposed being best friends with a Malfoy had a dress code.

There had been a few tense back and forths between them, but while he intimated he had no interest in seeing her, he did not close the door. Intent on her spying mission she had kept up pressure at forcing a reconciliation, all the while keeping track of his newfound confidence, his cocky kind of air when he showed her the changes he had begun making to the run down house she had seen only a couple of times while they were kids.

She tried to pry into his life, asking about his job and everything she could think of without asking outright. Severus was too clever for this kind of direct approach she realized too late. She felt like the one under observation, his eyes were burning her with their direct stare, like he could see inside her. She hoped he was just surprised to see her. When he tried to get her to leave she let herself give him her full bright smile. Let her eyes twinkle. It was as close as she would dare go to flirting with him. She immediately felt guilt about it, for trying to exploit feelings she knew full well he had before.

She had almost left. She had almost walked right out the door when he started flirting back. The worst thing about it was that when she responded, it didn’t come from the calculated spy’s intentions, but instead it came from something much lower in her body; that pesky ache that would never cease its wanting. Why had she needed attention today? Needed it extra badly that James was giving her the silent treatment.

One small bad decision to flirt after another and as they were saying goodbye he very suddenly pulled her into an unexpected hug. His hand cupped the back of her head, his fingers parting the strands of her hair too intimately. The hold was too close and when he had pulled her away from him and locked eyes with her. She knew full well what the eyes were asking, and she knew that if she did not pull away that he would take her stillness as a yes to his silent question and kiss her.

Her head had been screaming to break away but something deep inside her had a little too much curiosity about a different version of her life. When the distance between their faces slipped away to nothing, his lips ignited a fire inside her hormonal body. Like how sometimes she would just be ravenous to eat everything in their cottage, now she was ravenous for Severus and there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing would stop this very primal urge from having its say.

His hands started grabbing at her like he couldn’t quite believe his luck. No one expects an old friend and flame to show up at their door. Certainly no one expects them to crumple at the slightest attempt at seduction, but here she was acting like the easiest slut that ever lived. As the pretence of leaving was dropped, so was her bag and suddenly this snogging was taking place against the back of the sofa that was on the way to the front door. He had peeled off her denim jacket and she had heard the metal buttons hit the floor nearby.

Severus put her behind up on the back of the sofa so he could part her legs. Lily’s thighs were happy to receive the visiting hands, her sundress provided very easy access to her legs. At her eager mewing he went right to her centre and found that under that growing baby bump she was soaked through her cotton thong already, he moved the damp pittance of fabric out of the way and wasted no time in inserting his middle finger deep inside her.

“I finally have my fingers inside Lily Evans.” He teased into her ear. “Remember that summer when we were fifteen and you were so… horny and angry at everything? You almost let me that day by the pond. Remember?”

“Of course I remember.” She fairly panted as he explored her slick entrance.

“You’re even wetter now than you were as a ready teen.”

“Hormones.”

“Here I thought you were here to poke around and ask questions for that club your husband is part of and now I see why you’re really here. You want to be fucked, and your prig of a husband isn’t doing it for you.”

“That’s not true.” Lily had tried to assert but her voice quavered as her old friend's long fingers had begun rhythmically plunging in and out of her. Then she moaned in a way she had not done during sex in quite some time. The moral wrongness about what she was doing, mixed with her body’s needs made her feel quite unhinged. She forgot about Severus’ unkind assertions and reached to grab his cock through his trousers.

She palmed him and apparently that was all the permission he needed, he took it out and her jaw fell open. He stroked the massive thing and looked at her while she looked at it. “Merlin, Sev… that’s…huge.”

“Be brave little Gryffindor. You can take it.” Was his teasing reply as he had turned her over so she was bent across the sofa back. Then he had started rubbing the head of this tree trunk up and down her soaking wet slit. When he grabbed her thong and pulled it out of the way she shivered with arousal as he stared at her most intimate places.

“I used to lay in bed upstairs in this house as a sixteen year old imagining this… Trying to guess what the head of my cock would look like surrounded by your pretty copper coloured curls. My imaginings were very accurate I think. Such pretty lips…they look quite nice around me. I take it from your moaning that you want me to put this inside you?”

Saying yes felt too guilty. Lily murmured in a tone of agreement instead as if that was less of a betrayal of her husband. Her mouth hung slack as he made his first press, the head of it alone made her feel full. Some minutes later, when he was fully inside of her and finished with his interrogation confirming she had assumed he was small he kind of started laughing.

“Your asshole of a husband showed most of our year my cock that day… serves him right that it’s in his wife now.” Severus smugly asserted while he fucked her. Lily knew she should tell him to stop saying such things but she found his words made her even more aroused.

His hand came around to her clit again.”Let’s make you come on it, shall we?” He asked rhetorically before increasing his pace. Her moans fell out of her mouth with no stopping them. She had never felt so full before, she had never needed to come so bad in her life. “I have to say, knowing I’m cuckolding your husband makes it really hard not to come right… this… second.” He grunted.

His fingers on her clit in combination with his continuous stretching of her pussy was bringing her to the brink. “Look at me in the mirror over the fireplace. I want to see your eyes as you come on my cock, Mrs Potter.”

She hadn’t noticed the mirror before then. Knowing he had been watching her face this whole time, every slack jawed moment of taking his cock had been carefully observed Lily Potter began having an orgasm. It was big and it didn’t stop. She just kept finding new levels of pleasure as his cock ravished her senseless.

In the mirror she saw a completely wanton woman playing dangerously with her life as she knew it, and the sight should have woken her from her reverie but it did not. Her former friend finding his release inside her should have made her snap out of it, but it did not. She relished the depth of the heat he had just released inside her and as soon as he withdrew she felt it start dripping out of her. He held her still with two hands, pressing her against the sofa, looking at the mess he had made before he let her go.

When she was back on her feet and the lust had begun to fade, she pulled her panties back into place but knew the wadded up wet middle of them would do next to nothing to stop his orgasm from spilling down her leg. She would need to spell it away but first she needed to find her bag and get out of here. She grabbed it and she ran with a hasty goodbye. The guilt flooded in as soon as the tide of lust had gone out.

Halfway down the walk his hand was on her wrist, she yanked it back. He looked at her with squinting eyes. She wondered if ripping her wrist away was too much like another rejection of him. “You forgot your jacket.” He informed, handing the bundle to her, but not releasing his side of the garment.

“Thank you.” She said quickly. Out in the open now, James could be watching, waiting for her. He knew where she was.

“If you ever need… anything.” Severus began and trailed off. He seemed to remember something, a wall he had let down. He stopped speaking. She knew what he meant. She knew where to find him. He released the jacket and turned on his heel and back into his house.

Lily muttered the spell that would clean up the bulk of the slipperiness between her thighs before crossing his garden gate. The spell line for defences on his house must be there for as soon as she crossed it, she heard James whisper to her from under his invisibility cloak.

“You had me worried sick you should have been home half an hour ago.”

Lily remained silent as they walked down the block, but James kept up his whispered questioning. Finally when they were actually a safe distance away to speak she said “People do not just come out and tell you when they are a death eater you know. I was talking to him like an old friend as the mission called for. He showed me the improvements he was making to his house. I do not need a babysitter for this.”

“Well. Is he a Death Eater?”

“I didn’t see any evidence of dark magic in his house.”

“That doesn't mean-“

“I KNOW.” She snapped. Suddenly the baby was moving and she had to stop walking and touch the growing bump. One growing thing at a time. Her growing annoyance at her husband would have to wait. It always seemed like the little one got upset when she did. It fussed inside her, kicking her in the bladder.

James must have noticed her stop and hold her belly for suddenly he stopped yelling, got softer, turned back into the man she loved for a moment.“Are you alright? Is it kicking? I’m sorry about how I’ve been handling this. I just feel so protective of you. If he so much as laid a finger on you I’d kill him.”

A clearing of a throat behind them and Lily’s head snapped up, her eyes widened as she took in Severus having just caught up with them. His eyes peered at the space where James was standing like he could see through the cloak. Of course he couldn’t but James had been speaking too loudly not to be heard if he had been close.

Severus extended his hand out, inside was Lily’s locket. It must have come unclasped somewhere in his house. Her cheeks burned red at looking him in the face beside her hidden husband. “Look what I found… in the pillows…” his eyes watched the space beside Lily as he said it. How like Severus to choose to say pillows instead of cushions. To paint her husband a picture, to provoke him from coming out of hiding.

“Thanks.” She said ungraciously, snapping the precious object out of his open palm.

“I just want to say…” Severus began, purposefully trying to make her sweat, to panic, to reveal her hidden husband. Lily’s mind came up with a hundred endings to that sentence that she wouldn’t want James to hear. Was he about to blow up her life on purpose? His eyes flicked to the empty space Lily was desperately trying not to look over at. “That it was kind of you to visit, and open up to me. I’m glad I got to fill you in on what I’ve been up to. I hope you’ll come again.”

Lily could have choked on all the double meanings. She managed to squeak out a “See you around.” With a passing attempt for a casual smile. It was all lost on James luckily.

Later, when James was bent on reconciliation and apologies, she found herself having makeup sex, trying not to show her guilt, her hesitance to do it when she had been begging him for it just that morning. No shower, no bath could wash away the growing feeling that her husband was a small, petty person, and worse… that his cock would never make her feel like she had on the back of Severus’s couch as her eyes rolled back in her head and he had thoroughly and deeply scratched that itch.