#so yeah its a good thing that the trash took itself out cuz i am NOT driving that sensitive princess around anymore

[clowningaroundmars]

super disheartening when you find out that one of your "friends" is a staunch liberal 😔

[natsunoomoi]

Chinese Romance Novels in English

So by chance and obviously successful marketing, I’ve had a lot of web novel apps being advertised to me and out of boredom I downloaded one and got hooked real bad.

The first app I got I think I might delete because most of it seems like trash and was clearly like American wannabe writers. I kind of just read the first few chapters of one story that they happened to put into an advertised Facebook post and I just wanted to continue the story 1 or 2 chapters just to get off the cliffhanger, but the story itself actually isn’t that good and the character motivations seem kind of stupid. The main character also seems kind of like a Mary Sue where like she is just special by some huge coincidence of fate and it’s kind of annoying. Like the beginning part was alright, and then it took a sharp turn when the first guy she was into that rejected her decided for some stupid reason to challenge her new guy who accepted her and then when he claimed to not concede a fight to the death, he went absolutely apeshit and somehow it traveled into dark magic. Idek. Plus like...almost all the stories on that app for some reason have to do with wolf people and packs? Like it’s obviously some kind of trend inspired from Jacob and Twilight and I don’t even like that series. And in addition to that, it’s like on par with the famously former Twilight fanfiction 50 Shades where it has some really uncomfortable unhealthy depictions of BDSM relationships. Like it’s just kind of thrown in there for no reason...? Like whatever floats your boat, but you can totally write it in there in a more sensible way and not just like throw it in randomly. In that sense, maybe it’s actually worse than 50 Shades. Seriously a lot of the stories on there read like horribly written fanfiction by a 12 year old. I was 12 once and my stories then were no better because I had too many ideas and wanted them all in. That’s how much of a mess those stories are. This one I just mentioned is the better one. There’s another one I started reading that’s much worse that’s like a high school drama that I barely remember the story too, but I remember the person putting in a whole ton of One Direction lyrics, which I think is going to get the person and the app sued because lyrics are copyrighted and the writer shamelessly pointed out they are a Directioner and to unlock new chapters you need certain items that you can earn or buy and basically they’re definitely making money off of it.

But then similar to how I found this app, I found another app that had Chinese romance novels translated into English in the same way I found the previously mentioned app through a Facebook ad, which is cool cuz I don’t often get to read literally anything with main characters that are Chinese let alone Asian. Most of the Asian protagonist media I consume is from Japan and I just gave up on looking up anything in Chinese cuz I honestly didn’t know I could find any in English.

But damn, the quality of writing is rather good. The translations could use some work and consistency where sometimes the translator doesn’t know common English expressions or there’s grammatical mistakes in newer chapters or sometimes I think they’re speed translating too fast and accidentally mix up characters. But the story itself is top notch and suspenseful. I’ve been reading non-stop for the last week and a half and caught up and am awaiting new chapters. Sometimes there’s bits where character decisions are a little frustrating or like some of the plot twists are like again or like how come this person can’t catch a break, but I got invested in the story so quick.

There’s two in particular I’m enjoying right now. One is Irresistible Romance and the other is Thorny First Marriage on Bravonovel. It’s actually a bit pricey to charge for diamonds and pearls to continue the story, but I felt like it was worth it because I did want to read more and didn’t regret it. I actually started a third today just because I ran out of chapters in those two. Both are similar in that the male lead that the female protagonist is with or trying to get with is like a rich Chinese business man that is so well-known for their business acumen and power via their company that they can strike fear into the hearts of other people and companies. So there’s like some intrigue and like really fascinating maneuvers and media manipulation.

In Irresistible Romance, the main character is an actress that had a really shitty relationship with the loser President of her management company who was cheating on her with another actress and he had convinced his fiancee (the main character) to basically give up her life for him and help him to push the actress that he was ultimately having an affair with. The main character, Yan Wen, gives up the final straw when like he ditches her at the Marriage Registration Office for some lame excuse where he’s with his mistress and by chance the rich guy in this story shows up at the Registration Office and gets stood up by his own prospective fiancee although for him it was a random girl he picked from a pile just to satisfy his family getting on his case about not finding a wife. So basically because the main character grows a spine and decides fuck her fiance she’s not going to just take his bullshit, she asks the rich guy, Jiang Sui-an, if he’d mind marrying her. He totally accepts though and they get married on the spot. He seems at first to be kind of a cold-hearted jerk, but he’s actually super cool. Like he marries Yan Wen just to get his family off his back, but then after he does some research into his wife and finds her super interesting and as she begins her journey of trying to take back her life from her ex-fiancee and his stuck up bitch mistress, he like finds out and helps from the shadows and like realizes she’s actually super cool too. And then like through the whole process they actually fall for each other and are super sweet and have each other’s backs. They have a really beautiful and healthy relationship where they can each have their own separate lives and do their thing, but they get supported and help when needed.

It was so refreshing cuz like the rich CEO thing was like a huge fetish for sure especially after 50 Shades, but like a lot of people noted, that relationship was hella unhealthy. This story though, Sui-an lets Wen take her time fixing her career and life in her own way and like postpones announcing their marriage so she can set things right herself. He totally supports her space and her own decisions, but if he ever sees that she needs an extra boost or gets backed into a corner by some unexpected thing, he steps up and lends a hand. But ultimately he leaves everything up to her decision. And like on her end too, she’s totally a really good supportive wife and tries to make sure she doesn’t worry him too much and that he gets plenty of sleep and eats regularly, and she even tries to help him where she can with his work. They are so cute together. Along the way a lot of other people try to defame Wen or pull some shady entertainment world tactics, but she stays poised and lets the truth come out on its own or even does some defensive research and stuff. It’s so good.

Plus, writing-wise it’s really fascinating how they intertwine the online commentary tabloid headlines into the story so you can see different angles. And then when they write the antagonists’ sides they give you their internal dialog POV so you can understand the situation the best. The actual story and plot development is so good.

Then Thorny First Marriage, holy shit the intrigue. Plus for the most part, the main character is most like my personality only I’m not a former journalist. It’s just a lot of her reactions and sassy thoughts to things are really similar to me and how I feel like I would react if I was in her position. There’s a few times where she does things that I don’t think I would necessarily do or I would do things a bit more drastically, but so good and I identify with her. Writing-wise I don’t think it’s as good as Irresistible Romance because there’s been two times where they kind of forgot about something that they mentioned in an earlier chapter, so they have some issues keeping track of their plot twists, and there’s a few times where I’m reading like, “Why don’t you just tell them what happened and then they’d STFU?”

But yeah, this story starts out with the main character, Xia Zhi, waking up in the presidential suite of a hotel and not knowing how she got there and distinctly feeling like she was raped and finding some...remnants on the bed next to her. As the plot develops you find out that her asshole husband, who had never touched her himself for some reason and has the spine of jellyfish, sold her to some rich guy for 2 million bucks (she finds out later). What the actual hell? What kind of husband pimps his wife to another man?! And like she gets a pregnancy test later and somehow someone blabs to her mother-in-law and her mother-in-law totally doesn’t believe her and she knows that her son and her were never intimate, so she throws her out of the house. Then some dude that’s like some kind of secretary or assistant just comes by all stalker-like that appears to be from some rich guy that knows her and basically coerces her into going with them and going to some mystery safe house mansion. She’ll be cared for there by two staff, but she also tries to escape and find out who tf this guy is and if he’s the Dad. She still has a job and goes to work as a journalist, but gets assigned to interview some rich VP of a famous company. All the while she’s trying to get a hold of her asshole husband to find out what the hell happened to her that night she didn’t remember where she got super frickin’ drunk at his company party. This dick has been in hiding and trying to avoid her for some reason since that night and he finally calls back in the middle of her interview and because she’s freaking out about her unexplained pregnancy she unprofessionally takes the call. The rich VP, Sang Qi, ends up calling her boss and getting her fired, which I mean, obviously. That’s a thing where I probably wouldn’t have taken the call. One of the differentiating things between her and me. But how she reacts to being fired, yeah, that’s totally me. She runs into Sang Qi later at a rich people shopping mall shop and somehow manages to steal his phone and starts a plotline where she tries to use it as leverage to like get back at him and make a living for herself that also involves him being crafty and like kind of tricking her into some situations like confronting her ex-husband. And then like at some point she remembers a custom cufflink she remembered finding in the room she woke up in that one time and starts to wonder and suspect if maybe Sang Qi was the guy cuz he does have those kinds of things. And she like looks at the cufflink she has that she took from the room as evidence, but she has to do a direct comparison. He like uses GPS to find her mansion prison and tries to take back his phone and Zhi gets like even more suspicious that he is the guy cuz for some reason he knows how the balcony door at the place works even though it has a weird af lock, and they have witty banter and somehow he ends up staying over and she tries to sneak in his room at night to check out his cufflink but he catches her. And like hot damn, so much intrigue. After like a ton of frustration with trying to interrogate everyone around her about who the baby Daddy is she’s just like f it, I’m not going to be your baby incubator and tries to go get an abortion (I would’ve gone way sooner) and before they can start the procedure Sang Qi shows up and claims to be the Dad, and then afterward also takes care of her because she’s allergic to anesthetic. Since she knows who now they like stay together and stuff and she tries to question him about that night, but he actually has no memory of it either cuz he was super frickin’ drunk too. It’s just a lot of unanswered questions. And like since he’s supposedly the Dad, he tries to get closer to her, but she won’t let him really. There’s a lot of witty banter between them and like he even helps her out with her loser husband by getting him demoted. Over time they actually become fond of each other and like used to each other, and it’s really sweet. He actually is there for her and helps her on a number of occasions even though she doesn’t really trust him cuz of course he bought her right? But then little by little you see them really start to like each other and it seems like he might be more interested whereas Zhi is like more reserved because he’s her captor as far as she knows. But then just when you think that maybe they’ll get together, Qi disappears and then the process of him showing up you find out who the actual Dad is and a whole lot of family drama, and other drama where like you actually don’t know where Qi stands, and it like isn’t until like where I am that you find out he was actually upright the whole time. It’s so stressful but it’s so good.

There was a couple of times earlier one where there’s misunderstandings with other people, where I was like, dude, just tell the people your asshole husband sold you for money. I think they’d be more understanding of your situation if they knew.

And then like...for me, I like Qi and I came around to him after awhile, but like I suspected him and didn’t like him toward the beginning especially because he didn’t do or say anything that made him seem trustworthy. He never really lies except for one thing (about being the father), but also he like isn’t that truthful either, or rather, he doesn’t stop to actually explain himself properly which would have made Zhi not like freak out or mistrust him and would have made me not mistrust him. Like I shared a lot of Zhi’s fears because she was in an unfamiliar situation and being manipulated like a puppet by someone with money, and this guy claims to be the one that bought her like an object to be a baby incubator. I and the main character can’t respect that no matter how nice he is. If he admit he didn’t do it at the beginning it would have made all the difference. It’s a trek to find out who though. And at first even that guy sounds disgusting, but like where I am in the story maybe not? Like almost sympathetic.

The only one that I like really hate and disgusts me is her original husband. Like eww. He’s such a greedy asshole. And like later on you find out that actually he lied to her about how much he sold her for and it was actually more. What the actual fuck?! It wasn’t bad enough that you sold your wife for money, but you had to lie to her too about how much it was so you can hide the money from her? And for such a long frickin’ time he tried to coax her to come back and to not divorce him. What the actual hell? What kind of delusion is he living in?! But like also her original husband reminds me of someone I knew in real life when I was in uni. He was a friend of mine initially, but at some point he started making really uncomfortable jokes and it seemed like he liked me or something. I never viewed him that way, but we just hung out. And then at my uni because there was a huge rush to like try to figure out 2nd year housing, we arranged to do a co-ed roommate situation where like me and another girl and him and his friend would stay in apartment from our second year. To me that seemed normal cuz other friends of mine did that too because there’s only so many people you know and you have to try to snatch up and apply for apartments as soon as possible. There were long wait lines and I actually hadn’t thought about it until the last minute, so I didn’t see it as having much of a choice. But he started making cracks and fantasizing about neighbors and people misunderstanding and thinking we were married, which I didn’t find funny and how and why when there were other people we were living with too? It made me super uncomfortable and during the summer he was kind of like a stalker and tracking where I went so I just started avoiding him every chance I could. After awhile thinking about him made me feel physically ill. The next year after that my roommate decided to move out with two other girls into a different apartment (after unsuccessfully trying to make him leave). But the whole thing with how Zhi’s first husband was written totally reminded me of that guy. Especially with the lame excuses when confronted and stuff and not thinking and his unhealthy tie to his parents’ way of living.

That said, finding these stories are kind of like an unexpected comfort. I wish I could find someone as supportive as Sui-an or Qi. Especially when the men I’ve met in my life were just as bad as some of the other male characters or arguably worse. I’ve been bullied by the guys I fell for, I’ve liked some guys that were way too moody, I’ve had guys that liked me that were not creepy too, but I just wasn’t interested in them or the timing was just wrong, I’ve given up someone I really cared for because a mutual friend of ours crossed a line and then posthumously went kind of crazy from the grief, and I’ve met guys that were really fucking stupid and didn’t know how to act appropriately in a professional situation and actually sexually harassed and retaliated against me. I’m so tired and almost 4 years into living in Japan, I’m starting to realize that because of that last one, I think I gave up on my life because of trauma. Just hurt too many times, so don’t even think about love anymore cuz why bother? It took awhile for me to even be able to become a functioning human being again after the PTSD of harassment. I was really bad and freaking out because the guy that did it was so frickin’ stupid that he like wasn’t actually responsible enough to know the things he shouldn’t do and it was freaking me the hell out that he just didn’t know when he crossed a line. So I ran away to another country and tried to rebuild some semblance of a life for myself. Now my home country is a goddamn mess and I’d be in a worse position to go home, but at the same time, although my heart has healed enough to the point that I can function as a human. I am not at all motivated to look for anyone or let myself care for someone ever again. When I was younger I had so many dreams and really wanted a family. But now I am sad to say I have resigned myself to believing that that will probably never happen because I am apparently plagued by horrible people. I haven’t met horrible people since I’ve been in Japan, but I also don’t go out and talk to anyone other than co-workers and students because I’m busy and in my free time I want to introvert. It’d be kind of nice if I was lucky and had a kind of random chance like Yan Wen cuz like, I just can’t and don’t want to put up with low quality people.

That said, I was talking with my boss and co-worker the other day and we were discussing how China’s population problem with the bachelor society so there’s a lot of men but less available women to be their wife, so I was kind of wondering if that was also kind of how come so many modern day Chinese romance novels seem to involve a rich CEO. I suppose in China right now the chance that you could marry one is greater than anywhere else in the world because of the population problem, so maybe they’re trying to promote moving there and marrying them. LOL I’d be kind of suspicious of whether or not they’d be able to be like actually good husbands for real, but I suppose there probably is some sense of desperation.

And then because I ran out of chapters to read for today because I have to wait for them to translate more, I started another one about a Bossy Ghost Husband? It’s kind of creepy at the beginning, but the ghost husband thing has been something I was kind of curious about because you can marry the dead in China. But like for real I also wondered if youkai really are real or not and if you could unknowingly marry a youkai or something too, so basically it’s right up my alley too. And then also because my life is garbage I was like seriously thinking and wondering if it would actually be so bad to be single to the people who know you around you, but married actually to a ghost and have a ghost husband to go home to? Like would that actually be bad? I suppose in that same vein, it’s not much different from WoL having a secret relationship with Emet-Selch, but yeah.

Anyway, all of this gave me a lot to think about.

[nyruratchet]

Time...

“...Why you punish me?”

So, I explained last time the situation regarding the creation of my music...monetarily. But let me explain and expand on how my time is utilized on a monthly basis.

If I haven’t made it clear, I hate my job. But here’s the thing, it’s flexible (for the most part), has benefits: (insurance, free-ish air travel, scheduled pay increases). Cons: passengers are allowed to treat crew like shit, always working with new people (that you may not mesh well with), anyone you try establishing a relationship with has pre-conceived notions/little to no faith you will ever be around, pay SUCKS until you get REALLY senior (7+), and...more, but I digress. But that flexible schedule, albeit limited, has afforded me the ability to work on music; until it doesn't. 

See, I was getting “comfortable” in my work situation a few years ago until certain a situation beyond my control forced me into deep debt, bad credit, and deeper depression. In order to fix all of this, money is needed. How do u get money? Work more. More work leads to more depression and sometimes health issues. So, I’ve been stuck in this seamlessly endless cycle of paycheck to paycheck living. And my desire and NEED to work on my music has not helped it (as explained in the previous blog post). Every time I get a bit more money, it goes to my craft. 

See, after you put all that money into creating art, you have to then put it OUT there. And in the case of a performer, you need to do live performances. That is a whole other situation in itself. There are lots avenues to get live performance experience. Open mics, concert showcases, live cabaret/karaoke bars, etc. Guess what THEY ALL COST MONEY. But not only money, LOTS of excess time is involved. 

This past spring, I was dragged into a showcase by my producer friend (who I’m partially in love with but he’s straight...but that’s another story). In order to do a showcase, you have to apply for acceptance. Applications involve you submitting current work and having a worthy social media following (which you have had to spend constant time building). Once you fill out the application, send the files and info, PAY your entry fee ($25) and receive your acceptance, you then have to sell tickets. Yes, how do they get people to come to the showcase? By having YOU bring them. And if you cannot find people to buy your tickets, all of those tickets come out of YOUR pocket. So, I was given 25 tickets to sell (last minute mind you); 25 tickets to sell at $20 bucks each. So, if I don't sell them, I owe the company $500 dollars. Yup, that’s correct. In order for me to perform my original content on their stage, I needed to make sure they got their $525 and help them get people in the venue so that they buy drinks at the bar (which we were given ZERO drink tickets for). Now before stepping on stage, you don’t get a sound check. So, you show up early before everyone to check in and simply check they have your correct music file(s) then wait...and wait...and wait. But your music has to be edited within their restrictions (this means more studio time. Remember, studio time =more $$...just making sure ur following me. Too many times you’ll hear big recording artists talking about how they have just sat in studios for hours creating a song from scratch. Yeah, only if you are signed to major label is this a thing! But anyway...back to the showcase.) 

Needless to say, I did everything I needed to. But I had some help since I asked to do this last minute and told them UP FRONT they would have had to get that unsold ticket money from me in blood. I landed from working a redeye the day before, got a nap in, did my vocal exercises in my car on my way to New Jersey, checked in and sat there. Since some people didn't show up on TIME, I was abruptly grabbed from drinking my whiskey at the bar and told “YOU’RE ON NEXT!”  Being the seasoned professional that I am, took that shot to the head, said “Actually, that’s not my slot...but ok, I’m ready.” NO SOUND CHECK, NEVER given TIME on the stage beforehand...I went on. Sung my ass off with a standing ovation from the judges. Then, went back to drinking with my friends who were in shock because they had never heard me really sing live. Then I had sit for HOURS while mediocre “rappers” and “singers” rapped over pre-recordings of their own vocals. Finally, they were ready to announce the winners. I won that sucker.

But what did I win? ...A promise to be put into another show... *DICK FACE*  No money to recoup what I just spent getting to this moment. No free promotion on social media to help me and my art. NO, some bullshit. So, I took the experience fore what it was and cut my losses. I got some exposure and was able to test out an unreleased song...but besides that. Nothing but wasted time and effort. I left there feeling somewhere between elation and disappointment. Not to mention, I was exhausted; I had done all this after working my full time job, and had to work again the next day. So all I had time to do was drive home and sleep. 

“Like a wave bashing into the shore...

Since this, I have had some money issues and mental health issues, so I have just barely been able to work on music. On my days off, I have to sleep and get back in the groove of being a real person instead of a redeye zombie. Then when I’m feeling slightly normal, I’m back to work...it is a vicious, irritating, restraining cycle. I’ve tried working shorter flights so I’m home more; nope, the pairings (schedules) for those flights work you in a way that leaves you feeling raped. My company will build a pairing with a duty time of 27hrs and only pay you for 15-17 of those hours. DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. Then on top of that, your rest time at the hotel is set to 11hrs...WTF?? 

Let me explain this for those of you with normal jobs. On these pairings, you are schedule to work a number of flights each day. So, 3 day pairing means you work 3-4 flights each day and have 2 layovers. Now lets say FLIGHT time is 1.5-2.5 hrs each (8-12hrs). Then you land from your final flight for day one. We’re usually delayed at our carrier...honestly, rarely on time. So, you have minimum rest at 11hrs. BUT, before you can leave the aircraft we have to get all passengers off the plane, CLEAN the seats, wait on our shuttle which is probably late if your pilots are sucky human beings and haven’t called ahead to make sure they’re there (Pilots aren’t required to clean; just us lowly peasants). So, by the time you get to the hotel, down to 10hrs. If you get there and rooms are ready, great. IF NOT, another 20-30 min or longer. But, lets say you’re down to 9.5hrs now. Get to your room. Hopefully your key works, air/heat works, no one is already in you room (yes...it happens all the time), room already cleaned, no bed bugs, and you aren’t by a noisy ice machine/elevator. You then have to shower and eat. Let’s say you get all that done in an hour. You now have 8.5 hrs to sleep...BUT WAIT, the van is scheduled to pick you up from the hotel 45 min to an hour before you are supposed to report at the airport and you need to be dressed and ready to make that van. So instead of 8.5hrs, you actually have 7hrs at best to sleep and pop outta bed, get dressed and properly ready to do the shit show all over again; all the while, knowing they are really only paying you for the time you spend on the aircraft, AFTER THE DOOR IS CLOSED AND THE BRAKE IS RELEASED. Time before like boarding, checks, delays? nope...no pay. Just us waisting our fucking time. Literally.

Why, is this? cuz everyone does it is the answer. That is how all airlines do it, so you have no leg to stand on. Got a union, the company retaliates like a reprimanded toddler. Now as I said before, once you get to be a super senior in your company and can choose what you want to work, when you want to work, in the position you want to work, getting $40/hr at base hours and a crazy amount for premium (overtime) hour, etc. the job is GOLDEN. (Unless that company gets purchased/merged.) But for a young person/flight attendant in debt, living in NYC, with a high cost of living, life ain’t fun. I tried living in New Jersey for a lower cost; that came with its own issues. I’ve taken out loans, became a hermit to save money, worked holidays, etc. Dug my hole deeper is what I did. And I’m pretty good at setting goals and managing my time and getting things DONE. But for some fucking reason, life is not working in my favor. This job is not working for me. I see younger people coming up behind me doing LITTLE to no work, getting musical accolades with trash “music” (I know, matter of opinion...but really. C’mon now), young white/latino/asian twinks shaking their ass for anything that breathes and getting rich men to pay their bills or marry them, all the while telling me they just want my BBC or other racist BS like that (Yes, I have receipts) and I’m just like WTF AM I DOING WRONG?! Have I spent my time stupidly? 

And the most recent shit that really hurt my feelings: If any of you remember (to the three of you reading this lol), a few months ago I posted about help getting into bartending. Well, I had actually asked a friend in person before that about bartending and if he knew any directors who could do a music video. This “friend” told me “no, not really”. Didn’t know anything about that, he just does movies and short films (which I’ve donated to his kickstarters for btw...) but no one who he thinks does music videos. THEN, I asked this same “FRIEND” how much he would charge to be IN a music video, as I had a song (the one I won the showcase with) that he would be perfect for as it deals with subject matter he rallies for. I wanted to help his career out in turn by help my video out, because I’m ugly and having beautiful actors in my video would be a better sell (as again, I need this song to make money. He then tells me me, he’s not sure how much he would charge for that. SEVERAL MONTHS LATER...this bitch releases a music VIDEO to his NEW SINGLE about a SIMILAR SUBJECT!! Without promotion, he gets instant 2.2k hits on the video on youtube. MIND YOU, he would always be shy to sing around me and I told him, “you need to give yourself more credit. You have a beautiful voice.” Meanwhile, I’m asking for some knowledge from him, and he wouldn’t help me with ANYTHING. I have NEVER asked for a hand out. Just tell me where the door is, I will get in even if I have to pick the lock. But he not only pretended he didn’t know where the door was, he was holding the keys, had lock picks on the side and duplicates to share; But, for whatever reason...didn’t want to share that with me. Even though, I was going to include him in MY art without any thought and was willing to pay. Now, I have some thoughts on why he did this. But seeing as I’m on the verge of tears, I’ll end on that note.

...You wash away my dreams.”

[chokefriends]

Hall Pass

ZoSan modern AU fragment with cute boyfriend banter and light bondage. It's just 3+ kinds of trash, porny, giddy and fluffy, I cant stand myself 

Explicit, no warnings.

Read below or on AO3, I’m Ossicle!

Sanji blew through Zoro's front door swinging his keys on one finger, wearing a bloody oxford and a slightly frantic look.

“Mossman, I need a lemon zester and one hell of a hall pass.”

Zoro paused mid-crunch, hanging by the knees in the kitchen doorway, and took out one blaring ear bud. “...Whose ass??”

“Idiot. Move.”

Zoro crunched up so Sanji could get by underneath him. He checked his watch. Weird… the workaholic never left his shop before eight if he could help it. Sanji ran this artisanal butcher shop / charcuterie / whatever, the hipster kind with twelve different ground meat mixtures on ‘tap’ and all these tatted-up, lumberjack-looking shop boys manfully wrangling sausage links in the shopfront. Hence the blood-spattered shirt—chronic nosebleeds.

Zoro twisted around to watch the blond ransack his kitchen drawers, apparently for some ass-related thing.

“Turkey baster somewhere in there, if that's—”

Sanji stopped and shot him a look. “What? No. I'm looking for a lemon zester. And a hall pass… which, let me just say, I VERY fucking deserve after this hell week…”

Zoro plugged the earbud back in and resumed his upside down workout routine. Sanji was just getting himself into one of his rambling Sanji States. Probably just work-related; probably not requiring Zoro's input… He crunched and counted until, a few reps later, a blue eye was suddenly glaring in front of his face.

Sanji tugged an ear bud out of Zoro’s head.

“Lemon zester.”

Zoro dangled, and thought carefully. “The vibrating thing?”

“NO, you houseplant. The thing that's like a cheese grater but with little bitty teeth.”

“...and whose ass is this for?”

Sanji threw the earbud down and went back to tearing apart the kitchen.

Zoro swung down from the door-mounted bar and left him to it. He took a quick shower, and settled in the sectional couch with his sweatpants on and a pile of physio grading next to him. This class he was TAing for was fuckin brutal, tests every week and three exams, all graded by a small team of grad students who were rumored to be robots but were actually masochists. Just constant work; Zoro loved it.

Sanji finally found what he was after and slid over the top of the couch to join the stoic gradbot. He held his prize and looked at Zoro, eyebrows raised expectantly. This usually meant that he thought Zoro was being too stoic and should say something.

“...Bitty cheese grater,” Zoro commented.

“It’s a lemon zester.”

“For what.”

“Getting laid,” Sanji stated matter-of-factly.

Well. It wasn't the weirdest come-on the erratic gourmand had ever tried.

“Okay.” Zoro pulled the pert ass into his lap and went for it.

“Heyhey, hold it, hooold it, that’s not what I came here to… or actually… yeah, hm…” Sanji trailed off as strong hands grabbed at him greedily. His belt buckle clunked to the floor.

“Heh. Lemon zester…” Zoro shook his head. “You don’t have to stash all your weird kitchen stuff here just for an excuse to come over anymore. You know that right, Cook?”

“I know! Just… habit…”

“Mhm.” Zoro focused on the deepening arch of the back in front of him. He pulled the shirttails free and let his hands wander up underneath.

Sanji cleared his throat and tried to focus. “I was tryna ask for a thing, though. Uh…”

“Yeah? Something in particular?”

“Oh yeah, hall pass.”

Zoro paused for a second in case Sanji felt like making this easy and just saying what the hell that was. But the guy was either being coy or was getting distracted by the hand in his pants.

“That a position?” Zoro prompted.

“Hm? No, it's… do you seriously not know what a hall pass is?” Sanji looked over his shoulder.

“Well, sorry if I don't know all the gay lingo like some scene queens—”

He could just feel the force of Sanji's eyeroll. “It's not even! It's such a straight boy thing, you've definitely heard it, bro-y scene like yours. Like ‘bruuuh, Vegas bruh, got a hall pass from the ol ball and chain,’ ugh.”

Zoro frowned. “Great. So am I the bro or the ball and chain.”

Sanji clambered around to face him instead. “Oh my god don't be ugh about it. I'm just observing how your muscle nerd crowd is a whole thing. Don't get off-topic.”

“Well you're the one calling people bros, so—”

“Well you're the one going to grad school for gym, so.”

Sanji crossed his arms. He was doing his pout thing, as though Zoro was the one being difficult. And he was still all disheveled and covered in blood… A familiar tic went through Zoro's eye at the exact same time as that other tic went through his dick.

“Other way. Face the other fuckin way.” Zoro turned the blond away from him and got back to work on his pants.

“Nope, you're dealing with this FACE.” Sanji stubbornly resisted.

They ended up on the floor really quickly, as usual, Sanji trying to mush his face against Zoro’s, and the latter trying to pin him facedown. It did kinda seriously irritate Zoro that his superior crunch power didn’t seem to count for anything against the noodle-boned butcher. The guy knew it, too, and liked to aggravate his sparring partner with non-standard moves.

“If I give you a forehead-hickey, I win,” the clinging blond declared.

“NO.”

“C’mere, sexy forehead.”

“NO.”

It fuckin paid off once Zoro did get him under control, though. The satisfaction was nigh euphoric. This time Zoro got the butcher’s hands behind his back and a knee in his spine, and Sanji gave up his squirming with a laugh. He hmmed against the rug and allowed his hands to be secured with the ever-ready bandana. He was hard and eager when Zoro turned him back over and settled heavily overtop of him, smothering him with a deep kiss.

“It’s been a second,” Sanji breathed when Zoro let up.

“Yeah. I’ll go slow.”

“Mm. Kay but how about not slow.”

“Heh…”

Zoro went ahead and ignored that request. He liked to draw out the lead-in once he’d gotten to this point, to get back at the guy for all his ridiculous shit, but also because Sanji just got more and more fuckable the more desperate and disheveled he got.

Sanji blew his long curtain of blond hair out of his eyes and glared down at the too-slow proceedings between his knees. “Put the fucking dick in your mouth, fucking put. The fucking dick. In your fucking… ah!… fuck, ah…”

That was the third finger, and Zoro let himself grin a little. He watched the long limbs tense and un-tense as he eased his hand in and out. He gave the needy dick another swift, brief massage with his tongue, and stifled a laugh when Sanji kicked him.

“You want me to fucking beg??”

“Yeah, I’m a fan of that,” Zoro nodded his encouragement.

“DICK IN YOUR MOUTH.”

“That’s not begging…”

“DICK,” Sanji insisted.

Zoro laughed and came up to kiss the irate butcher. “...Dick??”

“Dick.”

With his slight smile widening into a full-on grin, Zoro got up so he was straddling Sanji’s shoulders. The blue eye widened, “Not THAT di—hhhhnnnck”

“Hm what?”

Sanji gave a deeply sarcastic roll of his eyes. He couldn’t say much else, though.

Zoro eased in deeper, feeling himself gradually hardening in the wet mouth with its quick tongue.

“C’mon, get me hard.” He pulled back a little so Sanji could swallow and adjust his head, then pushed in deep enough to nudge the back of his throat. “C’mon. You want me to fuck your throat? Suck.”

A cocky eyebrow challenged him to do just that, and Zoro obliged. He watched the smooth lips strain around his cock and the blue eyes start to water. Zoro fit a hand around the back of his neck and angled it way up, so he could hold him still and fuck down into his face. Sanji started making those urgent sounds he was after, and he felt himself edging already… fuck.

“Mm! Mmmm!!… ah!” Sanji’s eyes were screwed shut and his mouth wide open, gasping air, as Zoro pulled out of his mouth and hurried to get a condom on and lube himself up.

“Face or floor?”

“Face, cuz deal with it,” Sanji determined, stubborn streak still fully intact despite his flustered flush.

“Fair.” Zoro left him on his back.

He parted the well-toned thighs and braced a hand on each one, pressing Sanji's legs so wide apart they were touching the floor. God, this body was just made to be fucked, it was so smooth and yielding. Zoro’s dick found the tight hole, and it opened up around him just as smoothly.

“Fuck,” he groaned, steadying himself, “I can’t believe how flexible you are. I could do anything to you…”

Sanji made a little scoffing noise between heavy breaths. “Think you could you shut up and fuck me, though?”

Zoro leaned into him suddenly and heavily, without answering. That got a harsh intake of breath, but it wasn’t yet the desperate gasping he was going for. He canted his hips and dragged out frustratingly slow. He really wanted to let go and just… fucking pound the hell out of the trim, pliable body. Just as much as Sanji wanted him to do it. But he was the disciplined one, here, and also, holding out on the other was a pleasure in itself.

He slid into that perfect heat over and over, deliberate and deep, until the blond’s voice got that wild edge to it. He was as vocal when he was being fucked as the rest of the time, and it got to Zoro just as much. In a good way—Zoro usually prided himself on being all quietly composed during sex, but Sanji had this way of completely letting himself go, and taking the other with him.

“Zoro, Z-zoro ah! Ahh!”

“Shit… ah, fuck, Cook…” Zoro gathered up both legs and hooked them over his shoulder, so he could fold Sanji almost in half and sink straight down into him. Their faces were close together, they were breathing each other’s air, hardly even hearing what was being gasped out between breaths. Sanji was saying something like “Want you, want you, want you,” and Zoro was probably just saying “Cook” and “fuck,” but even he wasn’t sure.

“I’m gonna come,” Zoro gasped out finally.

“Fuckin cmon then, ah…”

It felt like he could just come and come like this. Everything was so tight and hot, Sanji was kissing him and he was getting lightheaded. Zoro waited until his ears stopped ringing and his blood pressure went down a little. He opened his eyes to Sanji’s flushed face, still glassy-eyed with need. He loosened the bandana and shuffled down to put that dick in his mouth, as requested.

“Yes… fuck…” Sanji twisted out of the ties and crossed his arms under his head, shuffling until he was comfortable.

They’d been fucking for a few months now, more and more regularly, and Zoro pretty much knew how to get him off any time. It was better to make him wait a little, though. Winding the guy up so tight like this, he'd go over the edge like a ton of bricks. Zoro swallowed him down smoothly and then pulled back off until he was massaging the head with his tongue, sucking hard. He jammed two fingers into his ass at the same time, hard and even, like Sanji wanted when he was close. And he was so, so close right now… He’d hooked both legs over Zoro’s shoulders and was hanging on, tensed and swearing.

He came and was wordless for a full minute while Zoro worked every last drop out of him with the same steady insistence.

“...Unnh… hh…”

Zoro grinned to himself a little as he caught it all in his mouth. Catching Sanji’s eye, he licked stray drops from his fingers and swallowed it all with deliberate relish.

“Fuck… that’s hot,” Sanji commented, letting out a spent laugh and flexing the feeling back into his toes.

“Mm…” Zoro sighed and sat up to consider his own state. His dick was half-hard again, come leaking down inside the condom. He watched Sanji lying back and trying to recover his head, still all hazy and addled with pleasure. So fucking fuckable.

He pulled the blond over by the arm and nipped his ear.

“Ah!”

“Can I do it hard?”

“I dunno. Can you?” Sanji needled him. “Ow.”

Zoro gave a soothing suck at the chomped ear. “I dunno, can I?”

“Haha… mmm. Floor?”

“Yeah…” Zoro moved on to sucking at his neck urgently, massaging what was now a fully hard erection.

Sanji laughed at him. He turned over facing the floor and braced on his forearms while Zoro fit a new condom on. “I should make you beg instead. Shitty dog, practically humping my leg.”

He quieted for a moment as Zoro pushed him flat and ground into him in one insistent push.

Sanji steadied himself and chuckled, “Ahh… haha. Here, boy. Now sit—mff!”

Lying atop of him like this, Zoro had his hands free, so he clamped one over Sanji’s mouth.

“Shhh… stay. Good boy.”

Sanji huffed an outraged sigh through his nose at the order. But by the way he moaned into Zoro's hand and arched his back into Zoro's driving thrusts, he was probably gonna come again soon.

“Why do you always wanna cuddle on the floor?” Sanji teased him, afterward. “There’s pillows right up there. I got them for a reason.”

“Just stay still a second,” Zoro mumbled from somewhere between Sanji's shoulder blades, thick arms wrapped around the narrow waist.

“I wanna smoke.” Sanji was already fidgeting and trying to get up.

Zoro tightened his arms so he was stuck.

“Why the floor, is all I'm saying,” Sanji objected.

“Well you're the one who likes to fuck on the floor, so.”

“Well you're the one who flips furniture when they get too into it, so.”

Zoro grinned to himself. “Yeah… You make yourself hell to wrangle, to be fair.” He shifted up a little so he could hook his chin over Sanji's shoulder.

Sanji laughed. “You like it.”

“Mm. I like fucking you into the ground, yeah.”

“Ah...” Sanji shifted and exhaled sharply at the lips on his neck. “You angling for another round? That why we're still down here in the fuck zone?”

“Nah, just comfortable.” Zoro let up his hold a little, so Sanji could turn in his arms and settle in facing him. “Hey, so what's this ass thing you want?”

“Hall. Pass.” Sanji sighed, and then swallowed. He was suddenly tense in Zoro's arms. “Uh. So first of all, the lemon zester. I need it to lend to this… individual? So I have an excuse to go over and say heyy? Cuz earlier he was kinda like, heyyyy, lookin for a lemon zester. And this is NOT how I normally do things, okay. I'm pretty much the king of cling. But this guy is Christian Slater-level exceptional, and it'll be just once because honestly I'm getting a Christian-Slater-in-Heathers vibe more than anything and that is a sometimes-food…”

Zoro listened for a while, then counted to ten once he'd gotten lost, and tried to get back into the conversation. “...what?”

Sanji frowned. “What part is unclear.”

“The… hall pass.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sanji muttered to the ceiling.

“No, literally just use words that go together.”

“I have been! I've been so patient and thorough!”

Zoro reached for his sweatpants, lying on Sanji's other side. “I'll just fucking Google it. Gimme my phone.”

“N-no wait. Uh!” Sanji extended a long leg and kicked the pants across the room.

“...This is getting weird,” Zoro growled, getting up. “Did you not eat all day again? You know it's real ironic how often you forget to feed yourself.”

“I did forget but that's not the issue here!”

“Let go of my leg.”

“No!”

Zoro sighed at the weirdo hugging his ankle. “Okay. What's a hall pass.”

“It's when you ask your otherwise committed, exclusive partner for a one-time go-ahead to bang someone else because Christian Slater wants to get in your pants and it's a fucking sin to pass that up!”

Zoro sat down heavily on the couch. Sanji slowly came to sit next to him, legs folded and hands in lap.

“One-time,” Sanji insisted. “Christian Slater.”

“...actual Christian Slater?”

“Oh, uh, no, I just mean he's really hot and kinda weird.”

Zoro rubbed his head, his mind grappling with several, very urgent aspects of this matter. There was one part that really stuck out, though.

“So you'd say we're… exclusive? And stuff?” Zoro wondered, a little wild-eyed.

Sanji frowned. “Aren't we? Wait, are you—”

“Nono, I'm not seeing anyone else. I just mean like, we're… in a committed thing? You'd say?”

“Oh. Yeah,” Sanji confirmed, just realizing that he'd maybe skipped several steps in this whole talk. “Yeah, like, dating.”

“Oh, okay.”

Sanji was getting flustered again. “I mean, I guess I don't know if you wanna be… that way. We don't have to. It's so status quo, right? Ugh, haha, very not radical haha…”

“Nono, it's good. That's good.”

Zoro wasn't sure what else to say, and Sanji was looking at him expectantly, so he gave him a little peck.

Sanji seemed to accept this. “Okay good. Good talk. Um. So… all of it is good?”

“All of what.”

“Can I… the hall pass?”

Zoro frowned and thought. “Oh that. I don't know. I need to think some more.”

Sanji shuffled a little and Zoro realized he was stealing a look at the clock. “How much more.”

“Well more than a few fucking minutes!”

“Hour?”

“You're planning to go right now??”

“I was… Um.” Blue eyes wandered around the room. “Or not. If that's weird.”

“You’re weird. You're always so weird.” Zoro grumbled, trapping him in another bear hug and toppling them both to the couch. Sanji huffed but Zoro held on, an unfamiliar feeling making him stubborn.

Sanji waited til the count of ten, then went about disentangling himself from the other, anxious for a smoke.

“Let go of my leg,” Sanji complained.

“No.”

“Are you getting clingy?”

“No…”

He laughed. “Monosyllabic Marimo.”

Zoro wasn't budging on the time-to-think issue, so Sanji had to message whoever it was to postpone the lemon zester handoff. He'd already delegated things at the shop, so he actually had a rare evening free. He made snacks, and Zoro dragged the duvet over to the couch.

“So Christian Slater is a psychopath,” Zoro offered his thoughts on the nonsense movie they were watching, “But also, the Heathers seem like a high school Resident Evil situation. I'd purge with fire too.”

“Um, Christian Slater is a misunderstood super sweetheart with a minor murder problem,” Sanji objected. “And the Heathers are fabulous beyond reproach.”

“Her scrunchie matches her lipstick,” Zoro complained.

“That’s how you know she's a powerbitch.”

“I could tell from the shoulder pads.”

They watched Christian Slater shoot some more frat boys.

“Okay, not terrible,” Zoro approved by the end. “But I'm not convinced that Christian Slater should be allowed to fuck anyone, let alone MY otherwise exclusive, committed… thing.”

“You can say boyfriend,” Sanji offered.

“... 'Boyfriend,��” Zoro tried the word out, and immediately felt that stubbornness spike again. “Hmph.”

“Well this actual guy’s not a psycho killer, okay? He just… likes to give the impression that he is?”

“You're not selling this super well,” Zoro informed him.

Sanji considered the matter. “Well, what if you met the guy and saw that he was okay? You might already know him, actually, we have friends in common.”

“I doubt that,” Zoro grouched. “Who is it then.”

“Okay so you know your stupid orc-looking friend with the hair?”

Zoro spat out his cucumber water. “KIDD is Christian Slater??”

“Oh my god NO. It's his boy-thing, not him. As if I'd let that get its dick in me, plllease. He literally clanks when he walks.”

“He’d just be getting his dick in you by proxy,” Zoro put on his own pout face. “And I didn't know he had a boy-thing.”

“Yeah, apparently Christian Slater is into orc ass…”

Something occurred to Zoro. “This guy's a top?”

Sanji thought. “I guess…? He made it pretty clear how he'd like to do me in particular, so I assume—”

“Whoooaa, what if Kidd's a bottom,” Zoro interrupted.

“Hah. I doubt it. He’s always talking like he's the one getting his dick in everyone and everything… Christian Slater’s probably vers.”

“Nope, Kidd's a pillow-biter, it's settled,” Zoro settled back smugly. “And I can leg-press more than him.”

He got a pillow thrown at his smug green head by an exasperated boyfriend. “Yeah, yeah, you're supreme dick, dumbass. Biggest, sweatiest package around. Fucking typical top...”

“Damn right,” Zoro caught the next pillow. “Well I'm feeling rosier about this whole hall pass thing.”

Sanji paused with a cushion in hand and raised a flawless eyebrow. “Really? I literally just had to talk up your little guy?”

“Yeah, heh. Just make sure Christian Slater knows how monster this meat be.” Zoro patted his junk.

“I’ll bring it to his attention,” Sanji shook his head. But then he laughed and put his head on Zoro's lap. “Boyfriend,” he murmured.

“Boyfriend,” Zoro affirmed.

[yumidarkheart]

k for the fandom ask!

send me a fandom and i’ll tell you…

The first character i ever fell in love with:

I’m not gonna lie... My first K love was Isana Yashiro (adolf) and I still love him...But the red idiots stole my heart lmao.

A character that i used to love/like, but now do not:

Akiyama Himori.I still like him...But idk, at some point I started to see him as a plain character ans stopped paying attention to him

A ship that i used to love/like, but now do not:

KuroKuri (Kuroh x Kukuri)I don’t hate it on the actual day but I just slowly forgot about it and now it’s kind of meh for me(?)

My ultimate favorite character™:

In this especific order and I can’t talk about faves without think on the other two(?)

- Eric Surt/Soult/whatever go-go wants to call him(?)

Gif by @mikoto-tatara​ (direct tag since the gif search never give me the actual gif -.-)

- Kushina Anna

- Neko (Ameno Miyabi)

Prettiest character:

Everyone in this effing series is pretty tbh...But if I have to choose I’ll say neko without think twice for the girls

And Hisui nagare for the boys

My most hated character:

Mizuchi for being an asshole who experimented on a poor child and pretty much killed her parents when she tried to scape from that hell and also fucked up her whole life (Thanks god homra appeared on the escenario).

I also kinda hate Niki, he as a character is really interesting in the novels but them the movie appeared and I just get exasperated xDU

My OTP:

FUJIERIC FTW!!!

I also like MikoTotsu, Mikoizutotsu, IzuSeri and KuroShiro lol.And the abc homra boys ships in general because I’m a multishipper sucker lmao.

My NOTP:

I couldn’t call it a NOTP, but I’m not a big sarumi fan (blame facebook latinamerican fans).Also ANY SHIP related to Anna that isn’t sukuanna.Also any ship with neko, to me she is mentally a kid, ship her with anyone on me has the same effect as ship Anna with anyone from the main cast and totally repulses me.

Favorite episode:

K Memory of Red: Chapter 6 & 7 (Basashi Panic)

K project: 01. Knight (Great exposition) & 06. Karma (I like to hurt myself with my 2 fav clans lol)

K Return of Kings: 01. Knave (cuz homra foes speaking and interacting and I’ll admit it...I fell for the fanservice of the first part with everyone fighting and I keep laughing over Awashima shameless hentai like fanservice because my humor sense sucks) & 09. Kids Room (Interesting plot points and the formal izuseri it’s a A+++)

K Seven Stories: Memory of Red: BURN.

Saddest death:

Mikoto’s death...I mean Totsuka’s death hurts as hell and after MoR (Manga and movie) it’s painful as fuck, but it’s a plot point and it was an announced event years before it happened by Anna, so even if it’s painful and everytime I see it I cry a little, Mikoto’s death it’s sadder for me.He is a man with a serious depression that was never treaten, his biggest “stabilizer” was one of his best friends who was a frigging moron. His friend gets murdered, and in a horrible way, it was recorded and it was in the birthday eve of one of his most dearest people on his life, Anna. He get unstable and get blinded by the rage and pain and only wanted revenge, even if that means he can die in the process and let his other best friend behind with a little girl and all this boys who stimated him so much. Then he finally get his revenge but hw knows he can’t scape his fate, no matter how he see it he can only die, so he practically forced one of the persons he trusted the most to finish what he started, knowing there could be consecuences but just giving up since he knows he can’t do anything else. Giving his last words to the one he knows would be more affected for his actions because she will be now alone in a colorless world.

Yeah when you compare the contexts...Mikoto’s death it’s hella sad...

(I also think nagare’s death was sad but I’m more salty over how slightly unfair it was rather than how sad it was)

Favorite season:

Season one. K project, even with a lowest bucked have a better direction on scenes, fights and script. The fanservice wasn’t obsene at all, Go Hands didn’t abused of the CGI and managed to make a good balance between CGI, photography and actual classic animation and gives you an interesting mistery that even if you could solve it in like chapter 4 still makes you wonder what is going to happen.

Least favorite season:

K Return of Kings.

MAN I HAVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH THIS SEASON I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE THE HECK TO START OKAY!!!???

It has a horrible script direction, things start ridicoulusly slow and then it’s like gora remembered they only have 13 chapters to finish it all and make everything so fast its absurb. it took 4 CHAPTERS for the actual protagonist to appear and even when shiro appeared it didn’t gives a big impact until chapter 6 or something like that. Nagare it’s an interesting antagonist but the way go/go settle him don’t give much chance for people to care much about his cause until the last shapters (and it was because they aired Dream of Green at the same time of the series itself because if not it would be hard to get attached to the green clan out of certain escenes) and then the friggin kings battle of the tower came.

MAN I HAVE SO MANY PROBLEMS WITH THIS BATTLE!!!

Munakata and Iwafune’s fight it’s good, it’s normal to think iwa-san have more experience in batlle since after Adolf, he is the oldest king there, he is from an old generation of kings and participated on the kagutsu disaster and lost everything there, and for the aparent nature of his powers it’s kiiind of credible for him to overcome munakata sicne he can go on a offensive and defensive way thanks to his fog thing...BUT WHAT IT’S THE EXCUSE FOR THEY TO JUST PUT ANNA AND SHIRO ASIDE!? I’m sorry go/go I’m not going to swallow that thing that iwafune’s sadness it’s so frigging strong to let anna unable to move. Yeah, she is empathetic, she can feel other people emotions and read minds for her strain powers. But thats a excuse and we all know it, you just didn’t know what to do with the little bird lolita who can use fire and with her aura put on a complicated corner iwafune because he can hide but not scape a fire wall. I can understand shiro step back since he is a pacifist and it’s not used to fight, but you showed us Anna learned to fight and use her aura for offense so if you’re not going to use her i could be better to idk, actually knock her out not inmovilize her with iwafune’s crippling depression??Also what’s the excuse for neither Kuroh or Shiro to stop the effing elicopter with the slate when it was in a close height???? Seriously the plot conveniences on that chapter are so much that it stressing and more when you did it so great on the first season and even on the movie before this???

And I could be rambling about the script problems for hours but I’m not a youtuber and neither a critic so I’ll let it here for this...

Also don’t make me start with the fanservice... Ussually I don’t pay mind on fanservice, I even find it hilarant, but here was so overbold and in your face it was actually irritating.

Character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but I hate am not so invested in:

Yata and Saruhiko, I don’t hate them but I’m just not sooo invested in them as the whole fandom is. LSW make me understand them better and stop hating them but still if I can choose, I can keep ignoring their existence and it isn’t going to affect at all y fandom experience.

My ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave:

Can I say Eric and his sass tongue? no?Okay then, Shizume’s don juan Yoh Chitose and his impulsive ass of a king Suoh Mikoto lol

My ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave:

Totsuka Tatara even if he is more like a SINnamon roll...But he actually deserved better lol.Also Anna, please let this kid have a rest with her family full of stupid big brothers and her step father the stressed bartender who is going to kick everyone with a chancla at this rate after get drunk(?).

Also Fujishima just for that short story with the friggin octopus, the baby just wanted a pet why you’re so cruel gora???(?)

My ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship:

Any ship with that surpass the father like relationships.Read as: MikoAnna, IzuAnna,ShiNeko, IwaHi (Iwafune x Nagare), IwaSuku.Also any ship between the main cast and the underage characters.Read as: SaruAnna, YataAnna, NagaSuku, YukaSuku.

My ‘they’re kind of cute, and I lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: 

- ReiSeri. I see them more as co-wrkers but they have cute shipping material.

- AkiSaru. I ship them for the aesthetic lol.

- YukarixNagare (I forgot the ship name lol). They’re cute and have a good chemical, but I’m not that invested into them.

- Most of ABC scepter4 ships. Sorry I’m not too invested in this clan but they have good shipping material that I can appreciate even if they’re not my favs.

[borisbubbles]

12. DENMARK

Rasmussen - “Higher ground” 9th place

Ok, so somehow, in a contest with a nautical theme, the one song which *literally* started with the line “Ships in the making, bound for a distant shore” never got to open any of the live shows??? ¿¿Que??

So, Denmark. Quite possible the opposite of my previous entry, yet its greatness is just as challenging to put into words? As much as “Taboo” was a inaccessible conglomeration of every possible fucking staging trick, so simple was “Higher Ground” It is a great song, but I find it hard to explain why. It is just so much fun? 

It’s like a chapter of the Edda Saga come to life, with its Old Norse chanting, banner-swaying and feigned-drunken slrrrrring uv wrrrrds creating a truly immersive atmosphere. (I love all things Norse, so I was never NOT going to stan this) I love how one of the backings looks like precisely like Conchita Wurst’s long-lost sister. I dunno, Higher Ground just shines on its own, without the need of convoluted gimmicks (tho still bless Malta’s souls for burying “Taboo” under them for no other reason than it (barely) fitting within their ad-funded budget <3). 

So it’s of no surprise that this ended up the Michał of the year, yes?

As you are well aware of, Eurovision is in a continuous process of ‘reinventing itself’, which is code for ‘rejecting its Euroschlager roots in favour of increasedly pallid Ultratop50 knock-offs’, like guuuuurls you can do better than that. Think of an entry in this year that was actually *original*. I come up with... “O Jardim”, “Mercy” and maybe “Hvala, ne!”? Congratz 3/43.  This shocking display of self-loathing creates a power vacuum for the few -for some godforsaken reason- critically panned Euroschlager anthems which *do* make it into Eurovision proper. As the only entry in this year (out of 43) which can be described as “classic eurovision schlager”, “Higher Ground was always going to attract a lot of attention. Add in a few clear-as-crystal references to Game of Thrones (Rasmussen is literally Tormund + guyliner and a weave), a ubiquitous Viking tone and just general dramatic badassery, you’ve found yourself an audience’s fave and the bane for any jury chairperson’s existence. 

This is the long explanation why “Higher ground” is actually a great entry. It is the only entrant, in a year so widely praised as the “first serious contest in years”, that actually feels traditionally Eurovision.  For a brief moment, we are hooked up on pure Classic Eurovision, the term often used to describe the time when “Eurovision Songs Were Still Good”. 

And yes, it is highly ironic (and tragic) that the one entry that reminds many of that very murkily defined time period venerated by the critics, is also one that was critically panned by crappy self-important jurors. Would it that jurors had any self-awareness (I’m pretty shocked the EBU were able to find 43 rooms big enough to house the jurors and their egos), but oh well.

I suppose this is where I address the Melofestivalen shit, yes?

So, the jist of it is this: Two Swedes write “Higher Ground” for Melodifestivalen and get brutally rejected by Christer for reasons I can only guess, as HG was far better than anything in Melfest this year.. (Christer = Melfest’s Jeff Probst). 

Considering that Denmark has a herstory of recycling past Swedish trends- omg reminder that the 1986 Danish entry was a frame-by-frame carbon copy of the 1985 Swedish entry 😂,  please enjoy the pictorial evidence I have provided in support of this statement

 ps: I love that the Danish entry was called “You are full of lies” so unselfaware, so meta, so Denmark <3 

but I digress. Anyway,

Considering that Denmark has a herstory of recycling past Swedish trends, they of course picked up the "Higher ground”, put it in DMGP, substituted the Swedish singer with a Danish one and voila! The melfest reject wins DMGP with his fingers up the nose, cementing his place amongst the canon as an audience darling, and YES scoring significantly better than Ingrosso in the televote 😍The discrepancy shown by televote wasn’t as hilar as “Colour of your life” rising from last to sixth with one sudden stroke (given that Sweden had a higher combined score than Denmark somehow 🙄) but whatever, the ending was perfect because much like the Edda, this Viking Saga also ended with the evil trickster getting swallowed by the World’s Serpent. Sorry, Christer, should’ve taken the LEEP LAKYU WERBWND; FRR HIYRRRR GRWWWWWWND!!!!!

RANKING SO FAR:

12. Denmark (Rasmussen - “Higher ground”)

13. Malta (Christabelle - “Taboo”)

14. Cyprus (Eleni Foureira - “Fuego”)

15. United Kingdom (SuRie - “Storm”)

16. Serbia (Balkanika - “Nova Deca”)

17. Portugal (Cláudia Pascoal - “O jardim”)

18. The Netherlands (Waylon - “Outlaw in ‘em”)

19. Ukraine (MÉLOVIN - “Under the ladder”)

20. Macedonia (Eye Cue - “Lost and Found”)

21. San Marino (Jessika ft. Jenifer Brening - “Who We Are”)

22. Sweden (Benjamin Ingrosso - “Dance You Off”)

23. Austria (Cesár Sampson - “Nobody but you”)

24. Latvia (Laura Rizzotto - “Funny girl”)

25. Azerbaijan (AISEL - “X my heart”)

26. Israel (Netta - “Toy”)

27. Norway (Alexander Rybak  - “That’s how you write a song”)

28. Montenegro (Vanja Radovanovic - “Inje”)

29. Armenia (Sevak Khanagyan - “Qami”)

30. Poland (Gromee ft. Lukas Meijer - “Light me up”)

31. Greece (Yianna Terzi - “Oniro mou”)

32. Georgia (Iriao - “For you”)

33. Belgium (Sennek - “A matter of time”)

34. Italy (Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro - “Non mi avete fatto niente)

35. Romania (The Humans - “Goodbye”)

36. Ireland (Ryan O'Shaughnessy - “Together”)

37. Croatia (Franka - “Crazy”)

38. Belarus (ALEKSEEV - “Forever”)

39. Russia (Julia Samoylova - “I Won’t Break”)

40. Spain (Amaia & Alfred - “Tu canción”)

41. Iceland (Ari Ólafsson - “Our choice”)

42. Australia (Jessica Mauboy - “We Got Love”)

43. Czech Republic (Mikolas Josef - “Lie to me”)

FOOTNOTES

1. I couldn’t really fit it into the narrative, but the actual reason why Rasmussen is only 12th and not higher is because I found the act kind of visually underwhelming. (the snow at the end is particularly sad) Like I said, the song is great and I often have it on loop, but the act is a bit too small for a stage that big.

2. That said, “Higher Ground” is by far the song I’ve listened to the most often this season, which bodes well for any future positive morphs when I rewatch this year in the distant future.

3. Rasmussen bombing with the jury probably has more to do with the lack of gimmicks than the genre of the song. Like I said, the song pretty much carries itself, so if you stop to ponder and list all the things great about it, it all boils down to “the song is catchy and fun”, which is not what juries look at (juries love intricate acts, layered complexity and technical finesse, none of which are particular strengths of this entry)

4. Yes, I think it’s MASSIVELY hypocritical to glom onto songs such as “A Matter of time” under the pretence of “It’s a good song” when yeah it was, but everything else was shit and then subsequently ignore “Higher Ground” for being “only a good song”. wtf.  

5. While I do enjoy trashing the juries on a regular basis, be aware that during the actual Jury Era of this show, none of the juries were professional. In fact, when I rewatched 1978 and 1985, both times the hosts were ADAMANT to remind the audience that the juries were in fact NOT professionals, but 10 randomly selected civilians (Celeb and non-Celeb) with no direct ties to the music industry whatsoever. This is precisely why entries such as Riva, Bucks Fizz and Toto Cotugno managed to win a ’jury vote’ with a comfortable lead lmfao imagine that happening now. Anyway, the bottom line is that today’s “five professionals” jury system fucking sucks and has to be swallowed by Jörmundgandr also. 

6. ’Eurovision used to be good before’ is such a weird statement, yet I hear it all the time in relation to the contest (by people of my age group????) Like... what exact years are you refering to, cuz like... the 2000s were trash and I can’t honestly think of a decade as consistently good as the 2010s lol? We haven’t had a weak year since 2012!! (but of course, most of the people I’ve talked about this in person have, by their own admission, not seen a year since 2010 so how would they know lol)

7. If we assume that 'Eurovision used to be good before’ refers to the time when Eurovision was song-centric, that doesn’t make a lick of sense either? If you’re old enough to remember the late 1960s your taste is probably irreconcilable with mine anyway. And yes, while it took until #London1977 before we finally got a ‘gimmicky’ year, this also made for one of the most watchable, consistently fun contests ever, -even to this day- while “song-centric” years like 74; 75 and 78 are grueling to sit through nowadays unless you have the taste of the average Söngvakeppnin voter. Gimmicks were a part of ESC even during the Chanson Era, as the language barrier was a massive hurdle for any song not sung in French. And true, the “gimmicks” then weren’t more than “performing barefoot” or “having a key change”, but good lord it’s the sixties, flat, boring French Chansons dominated and only because everyone fucking understood French, SO GRASPING AT STRAWS HERE.

 8. The funny thing is that Denmark didn’t copy Kikki Danielsson’s evergreen once, but twice. 😂 “Hallo Hallo” (DK1990) was just a repackaged “Du er fuld af løgn“ (DK1986), which as I said, was itself just a slightly different “Bra Vibrationer” (SW1985). It’s seriously some Bra Vibraception shit.

9. I will never stop shitting on Melfest 2018. It was pure Tropical House Torture and yes, Rasmussen > literally everything in that, including the entries I actually like (which were... Jessica Anderson, Ida Redig and... um... Edvard Blom? Rolandz? Margaret? Samir and Viktor???? *gunshot*) 😂/🙄@ rescinding their roots for 2014′s musical fade. Pray that Christer never discovers reggaeton - though who am I kidding, it will dominate ESC selections in 2020, bank on it.

10. Now that I’ve mentioned them, one of “Higher Grounds” songwriters (Niklas Arn) actually was the bass player for Rolandz (who were my second faves in the finale by fucking default). Robbed twice, both in Melfest and outside of it, smfh.

11. Oh and I think “Higher Ground” in the hands of Sweden, absolutely would’ve been guaranteed top five (watch how most of these “professional” jurors suddenly would *like* it because, you know, Melfest Winner) and that’s all the humiliation I need. That said, I doubt “Higher Ground” ever would have actually won Melfest (it has the Heartbreak Hotel “dominates televote, gets screwed over by juries” label stamped all over it) but oh well, that’s just because Melfest SUCKS and the “International Juries” are a fucking farce. So it worked out for the better that “Higher Ground” was in fact not in Melfest, I think. 

12. Rasmussen is actually the first Danish ESC contestant since Emmelie de Forest that I’ve liked. Gratz? 

[randomfanficlounge-blog]

Say Goodbye~

I recently got into the Antisepticeye frenzy and really enjoying the events that happen. I am a Jacksepticeye fan, really love his energy... yes, I know. A fan that had no idea about Anti until like... two weeks ago? Yeah. I rotate between YouTubers a lot, so chances are I missed videos on him so I’mma go do that after I post some stuff. 

But I digress. I have posted these four things on my deviantart and my archiveofmyown account and my wattpad. But figured I ought to post the stuff here too.

Anyway, enjoy this! This is a novelization based on the Say Goodbye video Jacksepticeye and Robin had done together. I really loved it and wanted to practice writing with it, so... here you go!

And yeah... its pretty LONG fic... I apologize for that. I just don’t know where to cut it to make it look good.

Ah, Halloween~

A wondrous time of the year, the chill of the autumn air… the beautiful display of the vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves. Children and adults alike psyched about putting on their costumes for their candy hunting and parties respectively. Nothing was better than that. Well… except there was something about Halloween a certain someone loved doing each year.

Jack huffed a little as he shoved the table into place in his room, the white board on his door happily displaying 'Happy Halloween' on it. He grinned to himself as he continued to go about his business in getting his setup done for the upcoming video. Once the recording equipment was set, he turned his attention to the black table he dragged into the room and set that up. He strung up the orange lights on it and placing a few candles, for that touch of Halloween spirit. The YouTuber was giddy about doing this video as he placed what he needed on the table's surface.

Two knives

A ladle… or as he called lazily called it the spoon.

And… a large pumpkin.

That's right. He was going to do another pumpkin carving video. What? He loved doing it, it was fun for him and he was sure his viewers loved it too. When he was sure he had everything, the Irish YouTuber made a final check on his recording equipment, doing a test recording of him doing some silly faces and firing jokes at the table, to be sure it was recording properly and the audio was fine.

The set up was working perfectly.

The Irishman gave a wide smile, again happy to do a tradition with his viewers for this year. Hitting the key to start recording for the video, he quickly sat at the table and did his intro, grinning at the camera.

Jack opened up doing an air high-five. “Top of the morning to ya laddies! My name is Jacksepticeye and welcome back to carving pumpkins!” He greeted in his usual way, lifting the pumpkin at the mention of carving. He placed it back down, his bright smile never fading. “We did one of these last year, and I think its a cool tradition to just do a carving pumpkin video every year.”

He threw his arms up and outward in celebration.

“So welcome back! Happy birthday! Happy Halloween… birthday to the pumpkins.” He chuckled, placing his hands on the pumpkin, happiness just radiating off of him. “I got a bigger pumpkin this time. Last year, I used a really really tiny one to get my desired look… and I have no idea what to carve into this…yet.”

He drummed his fingers on the pumpkin's surface as he thought carefully. “I'm going to try to think up of something really cool...” The YouTuber scrunched up his face a bit, knowing his limits. “But, it'll probably just be a simplistic design...again.”  

Jack went on, explaining a little of why he was carving a pumpkin in a different location in his house. It was really simple… the sound quality sucked downstairs and he wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance on that notion. And mentioning he loved seasonal videos. “Okay then, I need a...” He looked around his table, knowing he had forgotten something that was just as important as the knives and spoon for carving. What was it..?

A marker.

'Oh duh~' Jack thought to himself as he spotted the marker on the floor by the door. “...marker.” He got up briefly to retrieve the item and return to his chair. “Because I forgot I need to draw a face on this little duder.” Then he paused and looked at the camera in surprise, remembering something else. “Oh! Happy Halloween by the way! ...Did I say that at the start?”

He quirked his mouth in thought, but couldn't recall if he did. He had terrible memory. “Probably. Okay...” He shrugged it off, figuring he'll find out when it came to editing the video later.

Jack tilted the pumpkin to begin drawing a face to carve, tilting his own head to the side a little as he tried to think of one. And after a couple of attempts (that he'll have to edit out later), he mumbled as he scribbled yet again on the orange object. “I'm trying to draw a different type of design...” He glanced at the camera, “'Cuz I always go for the stereotypical,” He lifted the marker and waved it about as if to draw it in the air, “gnashing teeth kinda thing.”

He paused as he eyed the pumpkin's face that he drew, thanking god he didn't have it facing the camera yet. “This is probably bad already.” The pumpkin stared back up at him with its goofy, scribbled on expression. Jack stared at it for a few more seconds, 'Yeah… that's bad.' “I need something to wipe this off.” He recapped the marker and got up from his chair again, chuckling to himself. “Damnit, I'm so unprepared!”

It didn't take long to find what he needed. Returning to his room and was wiping the marker ink off the pumpkin when the spoon began to rattle on the surface of the table. Jack had ignored it in favor of finishing his clean up when it shook harder from the movement the YouTuber was making. He rolled his eyes at the noise and in seeing that the ink was cleaned off, he looked at the spoon. “Okay, Mr. Spoon, you're going to go on the floor because you're making a lot of noise.” He chuckled as he took the spoon and placed it on the carpet, along with the wipe he was using.

Jack continued his attempts at drawing the face, holding a one way conversation with his viewers. It was one of the things he enjoyed doing as he recorded… well… anything. He liked having that connection with his fans, feeling that he truly was talking to them as he commented on making the pumpkin's eyes bigger and showing it off. The pumpkin staring at the camera with large, wide eyes. Simple, yet fitting.

Smiling to himself, he went on in drawing the mouth for the face, again holding a conversation as he did so. When he was finished, he tilted his head one way then another, admiring his work before being satisfied and showed it off to the camera.

The pumpkin proudly displaying its smile to the world.  

Jack giggled, having fun with the whole thing before remembering the mess that will be made when doing the carving. “Also,” 'Shit.' he thought to himself before spotting the bright green trash bag that he had brought up earlier. 'How the hell did I forget that?' “you need a bag to put all your shit into!” He called out as he stooped to the floor and scooped up the trash bag, bringing it up to show the camera. Before raising a brow at the lens, wagging a finger at his fans that would later see the video. “No, don't throw yourself in there. I know you think you're a piece of shit, but you're not! You're beautiful!”

Jack lifted the two knives he brought to use for the carving, introducing them as 'Biggie' and 'Smallie'. And reciting a quote of “That's not a knife… THIS is a knife.” He placed the smaller blade away as he looked at the top of the pumpkin, “I'm going to… oh god...” The Irish YouTuber looked nervous as he studied the object in question, hoping those that would watch the video would be careful with the knives and that the younger viewers would have adult supervision when carving. “This gonna get dangerous.”

'Okay then… enough stalling, time to do this carving.' Jack thought to himself as he readied the bigger knife, poised to push into the spot on the fruit he was aiming for. A slight glitch effect shimmered in the video feed….

“So right, what you're gonna-”

Suddenly, a strange distorted laugh echoed into his room, cutting him off mid-sentence...

Jack froze, startled by the alien sound. He never heard that before... 'That's not normal. No, shit its not. If it WAS I wouldn't be freaked out right now.'

Suspicious and a bit frightened, Jack wisely placed the knife on the table. “What the fuck was that?” he whispered to himself, straining his ears in attempt to catch any other strange noise and think about of what it could be. Nothing came to mind. It didn't take long for curiosity to get the better of him as he got up and made his way carefully to a door that was off screen.

During that whole time his attention was away from the camera, the video feed distorted again...

Jack opened the door and poked his head out of his room, “Hello?” he called out, wondering if it was someone at his door, pulling a Halloween prank. 'Has to be one hell of a good prankster to pull off that laugh and not be around to be seen.. right? Right.'

As the Irishman was busy with the door to the hallway…

The video feed glitched again, tainted in green with slight static…

And for a few seconds, a mirror image of Jack's face glitched into view from the upper right hand corner of the video screen, giving a twisted smile at the camera.

The face vanished as Jack looked around the hall again before shrugging the noise off and headed back inside his room. “That was we-ird…” he drawled a little as he sat back down. He was going to have to edit that out, he didn't need to creep his viewers out. They'll get that when it comes to horror games he'll be playing. He kept his voice low as he thought about it, “What was that?”

'Creepy fucking sounds, that's what but let's get back into the video here. The pumpkin won't be carving itself, y'know.' He turned to look at the bigger knife and reached for it, feeling slightly compelled to check the sharpness of the blade. Inwardly, he tilted his head in confusion. 'Odd, why would I..?' The strange compulsion vanished as soon as he did check Biggie for sharpness, satisfied with it. Why did he need to check for..?  

The big pumpkin sat innocently on the table, awaiting to be sliced up. Jack blinked at it, before remembering what he was doing. 'Ah… right, forgot. I mean I am going to be carving a pumpkin. You can't do that with a dull blade.'

Satisfied with his logic, Jack pushed the brief incident with the weird sound out of his mind. He was going to be editing out his hesitation later. But for now… back to carving! He picked up where he left off, positioning the knife to his earlier spot. “What you gonna wanna do is cut in a little-” Jack paused as he realized he was going to be cutting into a pumpkin's head. A little roleplay never hurt anyone, right? Right.

“I'm sorry buddy… I'm gonna have to give you a name. Um...” The Irishman looked at the camera, puzzled as he thought quickly to come up with one, “Gerald. I'm sorry Gerald, I'm gonna have to cut into your head.”

After the naming, Jack wiggled the knife slowly to pierce Gerald's skin, struggling a bit with the thickness of the pumpkin's flesh. “I've never used a pumpkin of this size before either so-” The knife sank deep with a soft squelch and pumpkin juice flowed out. “Oh god, all the juices...” Jack flinched as he forced the blade to sink deeper. “All the juices...” he murmured with a wince.

Getting the knife as far as it could go, the YouTuber now struggled to get knife out, Gerald's flesh refusing to give it up easily. Again, he wiggled it out, surprising himself as the blade popped out of the pumpkin, “Mother of god… This is very dangerous.” He was reminded that this, while fun, was dangerous if the viewers were using knives like he was. Still, he smiled and held the blade out for the camera to see as he gave a disclaimer. “Do not use sharp objects at home like this, if you're not a qualified professional!”

He paused himself, blinking at what he said as he went about on puncturing cuts into the top of Gerald's head. “Then technically, I shouldn't be doing this either...” Jack chuckled to himself as he continued the carving. “But just be very careful when you're doing this shit. Because things can go very wrong-”

The video feed distorted again, showing a brief and odd image of a red tinted Jack with his back turned to the camera, touching the white board on the door. It vanished just as quickly as it came, and for a flicker of a second, the white board's 'Happy Halloween' sign was scrubbed out but the glitch faded and the white board's sign was shown as perfectly fine.

“-very easily.” Jack's comment didn't stop and he didn't notice anything wrong, too busy with Gerald. He stood now, still struggling to cut around the top of the pumpkin. “I got up because I needed to leverage myself… It was getting very hard to dig into this dude while sitting down.” He grunted as he pierced another cut into the fruit, still struggling to get through the thick flesh. 'Why do the big pumpkins have to be so damn hard to carve?'

For a moment he scowled at the orange item that still gave its goofy grin to the camera. “Why didn't I go for the smaller pumpkins!?” He grunted again then mumbled something as he wiggled the knife free once more, “You're a big one Gerald but Jesus I love you!” He slapped the top of Gerald's head, both in a joking manner and of course… frustration of cutting into it. He glanced at the camera and smiled, wagging his finger at the lens, “Slap your pumpkins. I told you before that slapping your pumpkins is always a good idea. It gets them motivated! Gets them ready-”

Another distortion in the video feed… Again tinted in green, the white board's message smeared… Jack… was slumped backwards on his chair, head tilted back and…a bloody slit across his throat? Gerald the pumpkin grinned at the camera, almost mockingly so. It was already completely carved... a smear of blood above its eye…

The image flickered out faster than the previous ones, lasting less than a second…

“-to be chopped up into bits.”

Again, Jack didn't notice a thing…

After another few minutes of struggling to cut all the way around the top, he'd have to edit that boring portion of him doing so; Jack was finally able to get the top open with a resounding pop!. 'Good God finally!' He gave an excited cheer as it popped off, reaching to make sure it didn't fall into the inside of the fruit. The Irish YouTuber then played around with it, making a show of showing Gerald's 'brains' to the camera and pretending to try to bite it like a zombie.

Though he quickly recoiled once the smell hit his noise, making him gag at it. 'Holy hell, that smell could knock the green out of my hair… Why do pumpkins smell so nasty?' Then spent a few minutes shearing off the 'brains' to dump into the trash bag he had waiting. He also joked with Gerald, asking him if he was okay of removing the brains and to blink once and twice for yes… which Gerald did neither. “I did not think that through...” 'Fuck you too, Gerald. Fuck you too.'

But after a few minutes, Jack felt a wave of discomfort and sat there with a sick look on his face. It felt like a headache… but not quite. It wasn't painful but just… off. He figured it was the smell of the pumpkin. “Ugh, the smell of this isn't making me feel well...”

Another distortion. A glitch shimmer before freezing the video feed for a few brief moments…

Before Jack could say more on how he was feeling, (clueless to what was going on with the recording) he felt something else that surprised him. A warm liquid slowly ran down from his nose…

The freezing distortion stopped in time to catch Jack, looking confused at the warm liquid before touching a few of his fingers to the liquid above his lip. 'Please tell me, I'm not leaking boogers all over my face.' He looked at his fingertips and jolted a little, seeing them smeared with blood. 'What the hell?!'

He quickly pressed them back to his nose in hopes of stopping the flow and checking to see if it wasn't getting worse, rightfully shocked by what was happening. “Oh my god… what the fuck?” Jack yelped, practically jumping to his feet to get some tissues. That right there was going to be edited out! No ifs, ands, or buts about it! No way in hell was he going to scare his younger viewers with that shit.

The Irish male quickly fled the room in hopes of stopping the bleeding. But as he paced in the other room with a tissue pressed to his face; another glitch took place.

The red tinted version of the YouTuber was sitting at the table, a neutral expression… almost distant look, was on his face. Like he wasn't quite aware of what he was doing. He just… sat there… staring at the camera. But was that blood on his neck? His image flickered the entire time… before it was then replaced but a green tinted Jack. Only… this one had that twisted smile on his face like before, his head was tilted forward a little and leered at the camera from the tops of his eyes. Like the previous one before him, his image flickered briefly before winking out completely.

Unbeknownst to what happened, Jack returned, clean faced, though he still touched at the space beneath his nose to be sure. “Oookay, just got a random nose bleed in the middle of that. I never get nosebleeds...” He said, still shocked and confused about it. 'That… is strange… was it from the headache?' He thought to himself, putting a smile on his face as he, again, made sure he wasn't bleeding. 'No… it shouldn't have been. The headache wasn't even painful. And sure as hell couldn't have been the smell of pumpkin… so why..?'

He really didn't want to dwell on that subject. The thought was brushed aside as Jack checked his nose, sniffing a little. Other than a slight scent of iron… he wasn't bleeding again. That was good. “It seemed to have stopped now. Jesus...” Though he laughed it off, hiding his insecurity with a smile. “What a coincidental time for that to happen on Halloween of all things.”

He'll think about what happened later, but for now he wanted to do this carving for the video. He already wasted enough time with all these delays. The Irishman owed his viewers that much at least, not like they'll see him nosebleed everywhere on the video. So back to carving he went, snatching up the spoon he left on the floor to scoop out the innards of Gerald. The YouTuber commented about scraping out the pulp and seeds. He switched to Biggie to help out clean the pumpkin out, whining a little about how he hated cleaning.

He did point out, amidst the cleaning, about how creepy the sounds were when the spoon scraped against the insides and seeds. He laughed and lifted Gerald, showing the insides to the camera for the viewers to see. “It looks even nastier!” 'Seriously, that is sick. Just… eeww~'

Pulp and seed slid a little in a garbled mess…

Another distortion… A shadowed version of the Irish male stood by the door, looking down at Jack with an unreadable expression. Then it vanished just as quickly as it appeared.

“Eeewwww~!” he laughed before reaching over to grab the garbage bag. He paused a little to rub at his eye, which strangely began to twitch for no real reason. “Now my eye is twitching, what the fuck?” 'This is familiar, though… this happened before… in one of my other videos. Meh, eye twitching happens to a lot of people. Right? Yeah, sure.'

The YouTuber was still giggling, having fun with the carving before looking at Gerald then the trash bag and finding a problem, still giggling the entire time. “How do I do this? I have to empty this out.” 'Good fucking game, Jack… you forgot how you were going to empty the pumpkin.' “I didn't think any of this through.” He snickered as he silently berated himself for forgetting THAT important step to pumpkin carving, but hey he was having fun! The Irishman shrugged off the problem as he maneuvered the bag to settle on his lap. “I can't get any of it on the floor here either because there's carpet.”

Jack then lifted Gerald to flip him over to dump the contents into the bag, making sure he didn't spill anything onto the floor. “Ooooh yeah~” He lifted his bright blue eyes to the a computer screen off camera to make sure it was still recording. What he was doing, as he shook the pumpkin to get most of the pulp and seeds out… looked rather… wrong. In a sexual sense. 'Welp if this isn't edited out I know damn well there's gonna be a rule 34 happening because of this moment. Ah, what the hell, let them have their fun a little.'

Another burst of giggles bubbled from him as he flicked his eyes to the camera. “Does that look good?” he joked, returning his attention to the pumpkin, checking once more that he didn't spill anything onto the carpet. “It looks like I'm fucking my own pumpkin.”

He made a mental note to add a “No!” and a close up of Gerald to that. It'd be pretty funny, wouldn't it? Jack continued the clean up, scraping out more of the pulp and seeds that remained clinging to the inside of Gerald and dumping the remains into the bag. He spoke to the pumpkin, asking if Gerald would be happy to be a part of him after making some pumpkin soup from the pulp he had collected. He spent another couple of minutes cleaning before he was finished.

“Well there! The pumpkin is-” Jack exclaimed, happy to finally be done with removing the insides.

Another distortion happened on the video feed, the laptop screen showing it briefly but the YouTuber did not look at it. The screen tinted green and showed static once more, the mirror image of the Irish male stood to his left, glaring down at him before reaching out to him. The image flickered away as the glitch effect got worse. For some reason, Jack was twitching on the computer screen (while the man himself was perfectly fine) as the glitch shimmered on the screen, focused solely on the YouTuber.

Even the audio feed distorted. "̸͜-̶͝į̵̷ş̶́ ̴͟à͢A̡̢͠-͜A̧a̧-͡a҉͡LL̸͜͜-͘"̀̀

And for a short moment, the mirror image was up close to the camera, his head tilted to the right and wore a dark smirk before vanishing.

“-all cleaned out!” Jack held up the pumpkin to show that Gerald's insides were removed completely. Though his eyes were focused on the laptop's screen, which showed him… nothing was wrong, everything was still running smoothly. “Well...” he peeked into the pumpkin. It was still a little messy. “I could do it a little bit more brushing up.” Fuck it, he'll do it later. He took whiff of the smell of pumpkin, “Mmm~! Smell that…” He scrunched up his face again. It still smelled nasty to him. 'I swear if I get another nosebleed again…' “Fucking gross.”

“But~ now that he's all clean out, its time to cut out your eyeball holes!” Jack said, speaking to Gerald the pumpkin and glanced to the smaller knife, Smallie. “So I'm gonna use the smaller knife for this because its more intricate.”

He began carving out the first eye, having another one way conversation with Gerald, joking about a hacksaw to the face then apologizing. He tended to get a little weird around sharp objects. Then at one point, he drifted his arm over the candles' heated air, burning him a little, causing him to yelp then giggle over it. He struggled a little more this time with the thicker skin and the smaller and thinner blade, making it difficult to turn it as he cut.

Finally, he was able to pop Gerald's eye out, which he then cleaned… only to realize how stupid it looked. The goal was to cut the eye out, not pop it back in. He flushed a little in embarrassment before tossing the 'eye' into the trash bag, commenting about how he should have used his brains. And that now he had about as much brains as the hollowed out Gerald the pumpkin did.

Jack moved on to the second eye… as was the first one, he struggled with the second eye. He growled and grunted as he sawed the smaller knife through the pumpkin's flesh.

“Stop resisting, Gerald!” Jack growled, working the knife to make the cuts, “It's time-”

"-̸̢͡t̢O͞ ̡̨͘d̵͡I̴E!͜"̴͡

The recording equipment picked up both the audio and video error. With his attention away from the laptop, the screen showed a quick glitch of Jack twitching madly; as the mic recorded his twisted growl. It was lightning quick but there and it was gone just as fast.

“Why did I name you Gerald?” The Irish YouTuber questioned, unaware of the distortions. “Where did that name come from? I should have called you Pete. Pete the pumpkin. But no, I like Gerald. It's cute, so cute.”

It took him a bit but Jack managed to get the second eye out. “Two eyes out.” He giggled, happy that the carving was going well so far. He took the section of cut out pumpkin and tossed it into the bag; but as he twisted in his chair and reached for the spoon, he paused his movements when he heard something, his fear spiking a little.

Stomp.

Stomp.

Stomp.

Jack sat upright, going quiet as he listened for the sound, doing his best to ignore his heart beating louder than it should be to him. 'What is that?'

The sound stopped.

Briefly and out of reflex, he touched the bigger knife and slid it away a little from the direction of the door off screen. As well as to reassure himself that the knife was still there. But… why would he need to-?

Stomp.

The sound returned then faded to be more quiet. Jack continued to listen to what sounded like someone walking nearby, but it didn't quite… sound right. 'What the ever loving Christ is going on? What is that?' “I swear to god I'm hearing something.” he said, suspicious of the sounds. Once again, curiosity got the better of him and he stood to investigate, moving off camera to open the door once more and looked out into the hall.

But as Jack was distracted and had left the camera's view, another video feed error took place. His color stayed behind and continued to sit at the table as Jack turned gray in leaving. It vanished and the laptop's screen tinted green as Jack's doppelganger returned, up close and simply wearing a dark smile before it flickered away.

He returned not a moment later but this time he leered at the camera with a smirk; before it switched out with the same image but this time with his eyes were jet black in color than his usual bright blue. The image vanished and static took its place for a few milliseconds before the mirror Jack returned; much closer this time.

Bright blue eyes stared wide at the camera lens and he held something to his neck. It wasn't clear from all the static but one could see he wore a demented smile. It vanished then flickered back, much clearer than before but also darker. The twisted Jack still wore his disturbing smile but moved what appeared to be a knife across his neck and the area there was a bright red.

The disturbing image glitched clear as the YouTuber returned from his investigation of the hall. He found nothing out of the ordinary there. “Maybe its just the neighbors I'm hearing,” Jack said softly as he sat back down at the table. Still he paused faintly, listening. “It sounded like someone walking around or something like stomping or banging. Christ.” 'Whatever the fuck it was, is freaking me the fuck out.'

He took a breath to calm himself and picked up the spoon again to do some more scraping around Gerald's eyes. “Maybe I'm paranoid because its Halloween.”  

'Yeah… that had to be it… right?'

….

His fear didn't go away as he had hoped.

'Moving on~!' Jack, again, pushed aside incident and focused on cleaning up around the pumpkin's eyes. “You have to clean out behind the eyes as well,” he explained as he leaned over Gerald to watch where he scraped behind one eye, “Because you don't want any danglers. You don't want him to look stupid.” He turned his attention to the other eye, “I mean if you wanted to make him look 'rotten and decayed'-”

The video feed gave a slight distortion at the word 'decayed' but did nothing else.

“-There's easier ways of doing that. Just leave him out on the porch, for like, three days.” The YouTuber turned and dumped the spoon's contents into the trash bag. “He'll do that on his own.”

Jack examined his handiwork, satisfied with it and showcased it to the camera, looking at the laptop to be sure he was angling the pumpkin correctly for the viewers to see when the video came out. “There's the eyes. Now comes the mouth.” He studied Gerald from the laptop's screen, trying to figure out how he was going to do this. “The mouth is gonna be hard, but I'm gonna make him look like he's got 'ah-hurr~'. That he's got a load of teeth.” Jack replied, making the sound and showing off his own teeth to emphasis what he was going to do.

He lifted a brow at the camera and shook his head, as if to disagree with a few viewers of them asking about the type of teeth. “But not sharp, jagged teeth. That's lame, its not scary.” The Irishman took the smaller knife and began carving out the mouth. He smiled a bit as he worked, “Even though… that was what I did last year. But I'm a different… changed man! A different person!” He growled softly as he once again struggled to get the knife to cut through the thickness of the pumpkin. “Gerald! You should go see a dentist!”

The YouTuber continued to saw at the mouth but smiled a bit. “The teeth are coming out nicely… at least I think they are.” He quirked a brow as he worked on the carving. “I haven't been able to follow the lines properly because… the knife is like….” He tried to word it correctly and failing at it. “Sometimes the knife is a bit too big and sometimes I'm terrible at this.” He amended then perked as he saw it was nearly over. “Oh god, almost there. Almost there...”

The laptop's screen picked up movement to the man's left while Jack was focused hard on the pumpkin's mouth. A shimmer of distortion showed on the screen, revealing a shadow moving towards Jack's location before the glitch vanished.

“Almost there! Last one! Did it work?” He wondered aloud as he put the knife aside and twisted Gerald to the camera as he worked at the teeth, trying to push them out. “Is your mouth gonna come out?” he asked the pumpkin as he stood and bent over the fruit to check and was cautious in pressing the carved section out. It wouldn't do him any good if he pressed the wrong thing too hard and snapped one of Gerald's teeth out. 'That'd be a pain in the ass…'

“Come on...” Jack murmured, coaxing the carved piece to pop out. After a few careful presses, a section of it shifted loose and slid out. “Yeah boi!” Jack cheered as the pieces popped out, piece by piece to reveal Gerald's toothy grin. Giddy that things were going well and the odd delays were forgotten, the Irishman giggled as he wiped away the marker ink outlines that were obviously still there from his carving, explaining away that it would look stupid if he left them there. After he was done, he proudly showed the pumpkin's finished look to the camera.

Gerald gave the camera his toothy smile.

“It came out pretty well.” Jack said proudly then quickly decided to check if the top of the pumpkin would still fit. “Does your head still fit on?” Pop! The top still fit on perfectly. “Yay! He's a fully formed pumpkin!”

'Man this is so much more fun than last year!' He thought to himself. Gerald looked good, but there was one last step to do before the carving could be complete. The YouTuber removed the top once again and shifted in his chair, focused on his task.

“Okay, so the last thing you want to do, is get your knife. You're going to have to do some fine-”

Jack's voice suddenly trailed off mid-sentence as the video feed glitched, flashing a tinted green. But it wasn't just the video that stopped for a second…

The YouTuber himself didn't move at all.

*~*~*~*~

As the distortion continued, Jack mentally jolted at sudden loss of control. 'What the-?' He tried to move his eyes, to look at something else… but his gaze didn't shift at all. He just stared at the pumpkin as Gerald stared right back at him. 'What the ever living fuck!? Why can't I move?!' He attempted to try to straighten his posture in the chair, but his body did not respond. 'What the hell!?' Jack began to panic, this wasn't right… why couldn't he move? Why was he just staring at the damn pumpkin? He struggled to move something… anything… but his body remained locked where it was when he last had control over it. 'Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck?!'

Laughter echoed around him, much more clear than before. Was that outside his room? '...No… its a lot closer, louder than when I last heard it earlier.' That's right, back at the beginning of the video.

He thought about it, gladly latching onto something other than his mounting fear, even as he struggled in attempt to move his own body. But that didn't last long before he jolted in further fear when he realized where that laugh was coming from.

The laughter was inside his own head.

'Oh god… ohgodohgodohgod! What the fuck is going on?!'

Another ring of laughter, familiar and strange at the same time followed by a voice that shook Jack further in fear. Why was his own voice..?

'S͞hH͡h̛...͜ S̨e̢T̡tL̀e̴ ̧dO̧w͢n̢, L̵UcĶy c͝H͠aRM͝s..͟. En̢J͝OY tH͝e̢ p҉Er̨fơRmaN͘c҉e͠. H͢ee͜h̕ee҉h̷aha̛h̶a~͏!"̨

Who the FUCK was this and why did they sound like him?! Whatever it was, it made Jack uncomfortable more than he already was. His body still did not respond to what he wanted it to do… like getting the fuck out of the room. And the voice in his head was NOT helping the situation. 'What do you mean?'

A giggle.

'J͢͝uST͘͞ ̵̨w͡A͜͜tĆH͡.̢̢́ ͢͞H̕͟e͡e͜͝҉he̴ȩ~̸̵'̵͢͝

Jack turned his attention away from the voice that occupied the darkness of his mind and looked out to see what it meant.

Outside the confines of his mind, the YouTuber slowly and silently placed Gerald down on the table; and just as creepily looked up from the pumpkin and stared at the camera as he straightened in his chair. His expression was distant… blank….

'THAT'S NOT NORMAL! WHAT IS GOING ON?!'

Jack was already freaking out that his body was moving of its own accord, refusing to listen to his thoughts. But now, it took a moment for him to realize, that he while he had no control of his own body… he could still feel with it. And he mentally froze at feeling the familiar weight of the knife in his hand. Feeling his own hand curled around it, gripping it firmly.

The Irishman gasped. 'Oh no…' Was the camera still recording?! The red light on it showed that it, indeed, was still recording. What about the software? Did it crash? Nope. The laptop showed no signs of failing, everything running perfectly fine to him. He had a feeling he knew exactly where this was going, 'No…'

Jack's body… lifted the knife, all while the screen continued its distortion, unseen by the YouTuber.

'No! No no! Please… don't do this...'

'Heehe̕e̡~! ͢N҉o̕w̶ w͟Hy̸ Ẁòul̕Dn͠'̧T I d̶O͡ t͜H̷is?̸'͏

The YouTuber growled in fear and anger, lashing out in attempt to cease the action. The voice chuckled at him and moved to intercept the attempt. The knife continued its ascent as the two clashed wills. The fist and blade quivered, slightly pausing as Jack fought savagely for control. He will NOT let this happen. Not while everything was being recorded. He can't do this to his viewers… not like this. Never like this.

'Because I won't let you, you sonofabitch.'

The voice crowed over the declaration. '̛Ḩ̀̕a̴̢h̴̴a̸H̶̷͏ÁḨA̵͢Ḩ̶A̛!̀͜ ̡͟"Wo͟N͠'̀t̸͞ ͢Ļe̸̷Ţ̛ ͠mE̴̢͡"̵̧?͏'̛ ̀ It moved closer and whispered into Jack's ear. '̵Fo̵Ol̛.̶..͟ ̧y̨O̕u ͟CàN̕'t͠ e̶V͠En̨ b͢LiǸK.̨..'

It laughed and then there was a sound of someone snapping their fingers. The Irishman's body broke free from Jack's momentary control and his arm lifted the knife higher until it rested on the left side of his throat. 'Fuckfuckfuck!' The YouTuber flinched at the feeling of cold steel against his flesh, quivering… he felt himself quiver under the blade. The bravado he had faded when the knife nicked his neck a little.

'Please… don't let them watch this…' Jack begged, terrified of what was going to happen. Terrified of his viewers seeing this somehow, scarring them for life. God, he wished he had someone over to help him…

The voice giggled again. 'Oh҉.҉.͢.̸ ̷bUt I ̴w͞A̛nT͠ t͞HeM̶ t͡O̶ SeE...'

The knife pressed a tad harder and the YouTuber's arm moved slowly, making the blade bite and cut as it glided across his skin. In his mind, Jack cried out in pain, feeling the burning sensation as his flesh split open, feeling hot blood pour from the cut. He couldn't see it with his gaze fixed on the camera, but he could feel it. Physically, his face didn't even didn't so much as bat an eye as the knife sliced by.

'Aaahhh! F-Fuck! P-please… please don't…' Jack hissed painfully, flinching as the knife continued its journey across his throat. He felt more blood escape, felt dizzy and light headed; getting weaker. The darkness in his mind crowded closer, pressing at him. 'Please…'

The voice ignored his plea. Instead it giggled, enjoying his suffering as it circled him like slowly like a hungry wolf.

On the laptop's screen where is still showed distortion; it briefly flickered the green tint and revealed Jack's doppelganger slitting his own throat, grinning wildly at the camera, enjoying the action immensely. The image flickered out and showed that the YouTuber's body wilting, weakening from the loss of blood; his head was drooping and body tilting forward, unable to support itself as well. But the grip on the knife remained strong, still needing to finish the cut.

Trapped in his own mind, Jack felt that pain, weakness and fear hit him like a truck. He felt himself fading, having a harder time trying to stay awake. 'P-ple...ple...ase… d-do...don't… le...let th...them… sss...see…' he whispered brokenly.

The voice only let out an amused giggle, again ignoring his plea. '̨T͞a t̢a~ ̵L̷u҉C̷k͢y͠ ̛c͡Har͝M҉s͏~ ͠Heeh́e̵ehah̴haha̷~!'̸

The Irishman growled before losing consciousness, unable to watch the action further. Blue eyes rolling to the back of his head as he faintly felt his body crumple on top of Gerald the pumpkin. 'G-god… dam-damn it...I...I'm… so… sor...ry… guys…'

Jack…. went limp.

On the laptop screen… the distortion returned… worse than before, it flickered green and for several moments it had trouble keeping the YouTuber focused as the video feed shifted downward enough to split the video in half on the screen. It tried to correct itself to no avail…

Until the video feed suddenly snapped back to perfection, showing the grim sight of Jacksepticeye, famous Irish YouTuber, laying limp on top of his carved pumpkin in what was suppose to be a fun seasonal video…

*~*~*~*~

…Silence…

It stretched from seconds… to minutes. Nothing moved.

Jack continued to lay limp where he was… silent and so very very still.

The camera continued to record the body…

The microphone continued to record the dead silence…

The laptop continued to show that the programs ran smoothly, displaying Jack's corpse on its screen…

Eerie, eerie silence dominated the apartment room as the computer screen slowly faded to black when nothing happened for a while, activating its sleep mode…

….

Suddenly, the body lurched upward, smile wide as Jack reached for the camera, the laptop coming to life from the sudden movement, the screen a darker green edged with black with distortion. The Irish YouTuber laughed madly, so unlike his usual self.

"̸H̷͡E̸͡e̶̵h̶ȨęH͘͏A͘h̀A̴͝H́͡a̷~̢̡͝!̕"̴

The camera, overwhelmed by the glitching and distortions, went dark. The laptop, blind without the camera, showed nothing on screen… but the microphone continued to record, picking up a trace of a soft and weakened voice.

“He-help… m-me...”

Then another beat of silence.

The YouTuber flexed his fingers, smiling and reveling at the feeling of it. Finally… he was in control now. He suppressed a giggle, fully aware that the mic was still working. Not yet, he wanted to enjoy this a bit more; granted he was surprised at how easy that was to accomplish. A simple illusion and boom, easy control. He was also quite aware of another presence within his mind, one that was regaining consciousness.

'̡Q̧uITe tHe ҉sT̢u͞BbOr̛N ͝On̨E,͠ a̕R҉e̡N'͟t͘ YO̡u, ͡L͘u͘Ck͝y cHaRMş?' The being thought, amused by this. 'THat'S͡ ͡ơK͜aY.̵.҉.̢ I̡t ḿAK͜es͘ ̢t̵HIs ͟S͠o M̸u͜CḨ ̴mOrE f̶UN̸~'̀

He circled the fragment of light that represented Jack, waiting for him to awaken.  

*~*~*~*~

Jack groaned softly as he slowly awoke, feeling a massive headache and so weak he trembled. 'Ugh… Wha-what... happened?' He shifted a little, bringing himself up carefully onto his hands and knees; wincing at the lethargic feeling. 'Oh… my head…' Was it a dream..? It didn't feel like any dream or nightmare he had before. But… he was still breathing? 'Wha-?' He groaned again, way too foggy to really focus on anything solid at the moment

As his senses slowly returned to him, he was partly aware of a presence circling him, but he was too dazed to make sense of it. The presence… helped him out with a 'friendly' jog of memory.

'T̕oP҉ oF ̷t̸He͟ Mo̕RNi҉Ng̷ t͡O͞ y̶A, ̷L̵áDD͢ie̵.̕.̸.͠'̢

Jack went very still, eyes wide as he stared at a mirror image of himself. The duplicate tinted in green with a bloody slit around his throat and glitchy, his movements awkward as they seemed to move frame by frame incorrectly. Everything that happened earlier, returned in a rush. That was no dream..! 'Oh no…'

'M̶y naM̕E̷ ́i̵S ̸An͟tişep̸ti͞c̶e͞ye...'́

'What?!' Jack didn't get to say much more before Anti flicked his wrist and watched as the Irishman was slammed against the ground of their shared mind. The YouTuber crying out in pain from the blow as he landed hard on his belly. 'Ghak!' He tried to get up again but felt far too drained to move, 'Wha… how..?'

Anti snickered as he calmly walked over and pressed his shoe against the back of his host, keeping him pinned easily. He twirled a bloodied knife between his fingers before placing the blade against his lips in a mocking universal sign of silence before shushing him.

'He̕e͘he͜e~̶ ̕RȩL͏a̡X̕, LưCKy͘ cHaR̨Ms͡...̨ ҉YoU͡'͘ll ̡F҉i͠Nd͟ oUt̷ şOon͡ ̛e͜N͞ǪúgH.̵.͞.' he jeered, ignoring Jack's soft growl of rebellion, 'JuS̡t̕.̵..͠ ͡w̧A͟Tc͢h̶..҉. a̡n̕d͟ L̀i̢StÈN.'

Satisfied that his captured audience wasn't going to do anything, Anti turned his attention to the camera, slipping into control of the body he just commandeered. Snapping his fingers yet again to reactivate the camera, letting it take a quick shot of him hunched over the pumpkin before keeping it dark.

He was going to enjoy scaring these viewers and Jack so much...

*~*~*~*~

"H̶͞e̴e̢͢h́͝à̧͝h̕͠a͢͝~"̡

The camera slowly regained picture and the laptop now no longer blind, just as slowly began to show the image on its screen, still glitched and tinted in dark green and black. The YouTuber was hunched over the pumpkin, head down and giggling, his tone warping and echoing.

"̵Ha̶̶h͟͡a̷͞h͟a̛͘҉h̀a͜~̶̸̧"̵̴͝

The image faded to black before returning, glitched and flickering, trying to capture the figure's movements as Anti lifted his head to look at the camera. He gave a sick grin at it. Before his face twisted in a snarl.

"̷Y̷̡oU.̶̛͠.͜.̶͞ ͜"́̀ he hissed at the camera, directing his words to the viewers and Jack that would watch this. But strangely his speech was chopped up, the laptop having trouble translating the words and ending up having them interrupting themselves between sentences. "H͘͡͠i̡̕S͜͟͞ ̸bOd͟Y̛̕͞ w̡̡ĄS̴͡ ̴͘W̷͘͝E̷A͝͠K! ̷̷H́͢͏eh̨e͡h͜a͏̛̀h̡a~͏̧"̕͘͡ He sneered, pointing the bloodied knife toward the viewers, hissing and giggling at them.

The laptop's screen still showed the distortion, his image flickering between frames chaotically. One second he was pointing the knife at the camera, the next he was poking Gerald with it, another mockingly looking dazed and confused as he blinked at the table; imitating Jack's blank stare before he offed himself. The entire time his voice echoed and contorted as he giggled at what was happening.

"̨Y̡̛o̧͜Ú͞ ͘A͝L̛L̢͟ ̵̧s͜͞A̡̕͡iD҉ ͏͟͟m̵̶̧Y̵ ̕͟n̸͢ÁMę..͡͡.͏̧́"̀͞ He laughed then snarled, stabbing the knife against the table, "͢Ke͠Pt̡ ̴mE̢..̧.͝ ́I A̸M ̢H̢E͏RE͘ N͢O͝W̵.͟.̵. i͟Ns̡I͠d͠E.̴.͞"

Anti raged at the camera, at the viewers… at Jack, waving and stabbing the knife into the two objects within reach that wasn't himself. The pumpkin and the table. He stabbed Gerald with a snarl, clearly agitated. "́Y͢O͞U̧..͢.͘ i̶T͞s ͟All̵ ͞y͜OuR̸ ̵fA͞u͢LT.̨..͠ ͢To͞O ̢L̢oNg̴..͘.͜ "͡ The doppelganger spat in rage, his image warping further in reaction to it. The camera and laptop had trouble still in keeping up with his constant glitching and twitching, frames going in and out of order. "..̢.̵Will ͝L͡iSţEN ̨t͡Ó M͢E̸..̵. ͜Y̕ơU̸ aL̡L҉ mAD͜e̵ ̡t̛Hi͢S͞ h͝APp̷E͢n.́.̧. H͢ee̷ha̢h̶ah҉aha̧~!̛ ̷"͘

Suddenly, Anti's glitching calmed even as he sneered at the camera. "͜YoU͘ ̷̡c̡̛̀Oųl̡͝D͞͝͏ h̛A̧v̧E̵ ̡͢͜sT͜oP͢͝p̀̕E͡͞d̸ ̷͡ME̴̛..̵͢͢.̸̀̕"̀̀ He hissed in a cold fury at the fanbase, pushing Gerald aside and resting one arm on it. He grinned all the while as he leaned a little closer to the viewers. "B̶U̸t y̧O͠u̡ JưS̨t ̸wÀTc҉h̀Ed..̴" His eyes flickered from bright blue to jet black for a second before they returned to normal. Anti glared at the camera and snarled. "a͘Ş͢ ̛tH̶́͜íŞ͘ ͏͟h̶͘͞A̢͘p̧̛͟P͜͡͡ȩ͞N̡̨̛ed̴!͏"

"̢E͏h̛͞e̸h̡͠a͡hah͝͏a͢~̨̡"̨͢ The laptop's screen flickered, showing Anti 'slitting' Gerald's throat and grinning wildly. His laughter was twisted and warped before it flickered back to him glowering at camera. He tilted his head as he glared and gave a smile of contempt to the viewers.

"̡͘N͠҉ó͟W h͜E̢͏'̀̀s̸͘ ͞G̡̕̕ǫN̨e͏... ̴f͠O͠ŗ̕É͠v̴͠e͟R̷̕͢.̷͜.̴͢"͠

The laptop's screen cut to black, the camera shut off but the microphone was still operational, awaiting for any sound to record.

He felt Jack rise in protest in the back of their fused minds, angry at him for accusing his viewers for this. Inwardly, the evil counterpart giggled at the sad attempt before grabbing Jack by his throat and power slamming him back against the ground. 'I̸'̷m͟ ̸No̶T̵ ̵p̕L̢ayIng ̨w͜I̛t̷H͝ yOu h̢ErE.̶.̀.' He then crushed him under his heel, grinding it into his chest as his influence weighed heavily on the Irishman. At Jack's cry of pain, Anti pressed more of his weight on the man's ribcage, hissing. '̶I͏ ̀s͘A̶iD̸ ͞tò ̢wAtC̴h ̵aNd ̨L͢iStE̵n̵, Ja͜Ck̨.̡ Yo̕U bRo͢UgHt҉ tH͝i͡S͠ uPo̵N͞ ͏y͡O̕uRs̛e̡L͢v̵Es... ͢y̢Ou ̢A̡L̀L҉ ͞dId.͜'

'No… we didn't!'

'͡Y͘ES͏ YO̶U̡ D͠ID!̴'̀ Anti snarled, leaning down as best he could with his foot on his host's chest, pressing more weight on him. Jack flinched and gasped in pain. He smiled at him, making the Irish YouTuber more uncomfortable with staring at his own face with a twisted smile plastered on it. '̕Y̶oUr Li̷T̢tLe.͟.̀.͏ v͞IèwErs̀,͝ ̢JaC͢k̸aBoY̛.͞.͢.̀ dI̕d ThIs tO ̛y̢Ou..͞.̕'

He giggled as Jack began to shake his head, refusing to believe him. '͘'͏tH̷eY̨ wA̢nTe̷d̀ ME̵ h̢E̵rE and ́sO dI͝d ̶YoU...̴' He laughed, amused by his host's denial. 'NoW͏ ̡yOu͡'R̢e ̶Ge͏T͘t̷Ing ̶EXA͢CTLY ̶w͟H͜aT ̀yO͟u ͢A͠l̀l W͘a͢Nt́Ed̷!'̢

He let out another howl of insane laughter in their shared mind, staring down at Jack. '͝T̵hE͡y͟ KìLLe̵D͠ y̧Ou,͡ ͠L̵u͞CkY̸ ͏cH̸aRMs̶... So͝~" His eyes flashed to his eerie jet black as he gave the YouTuber a demonic smile, speaking both to him and to his viewers aloud for the mic to hear and record.

"̴̸S̵aY ̕͞g̡͡͡O̕ó̀D̕b͟Y҉̕͏e..̸̛͜.̵̡"̷

[nur-is-tired]

🔥🔥🔥🔥Sanji in these recent chapters please

I’m pretty sure you’re asking me regarding Sanji’s decision to save the Vinsmokes.

My unpopular opinion on this is that, BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE VIEWS REGARDING THIS MATTER ARE VALID.

I’ll touch on the Positive view first. I know how majority of the fandom praise Sanji for this behaviour. It’s the ultimate most selfless thing he could do. It is unknown if Sanji has any other ulterior motives to why he saved them. Bear in mind he might have something up his sleeve, and he MAY not be doing it out of pure kindness alone. Remember, as selfless as he is, Sanji is also very cunning when he can be.

But regardless, I can understand why would Sanji do so, assuming he IS doing it out of good-heart. He might not be doing it because of “family”. He might be doing it because it’s the humane thing to do. Remember, Sanji’s plan from the beginning was to sacrifice himself and make sure EVERYONE stays alive. This may or may not include the Vinsmokes. Sanji may not be saving them because he cares about them, he may be saving them, because to him, the Vinsmokes are humans with actual lives. And regardless who they are, their lives shouldn’t go to waste. You may argue with me that Sanji would’ve pulled the trigger on them if he chose to do so, but remember the fight with Yonji? He BEAT THE CRAP out of the green-haired trash boi, but STILL he chose to kept him alive. It might be due to Yonji’s genetically mutated defense mechanism or something, but recall that Sanji SERIOUSLY took him down to shit, while he remains fine. Sanji’s plan from the beginning was NOT to kill the Vinsmokes. He wanted to deal with them diplomatically to leave him alone, and maybe follow a couple of orders just so he can get them off his back. But yaknow, things went for different turn then we got Oda’s Ultimate Year of the Angsty Sanji.

So what I’m trying to say is, he made that choice because as Sanji, its not in his best preference to see people die/murdered. Especially people you know, unless they’re pieces of shit (which they are tbh). Though, he may want to save them because of Reiju. But again, he could’ve told Luffy he wanted to save HER ALONE. But who knows ?

It could also be because Sanji wants to prove a point to them. He wants to be SO ULTIMATELY ‘nice’ to them, that he will make them REGRET they ever crossed/rejected him ever.

I say that, because I’ll admit something; I do this. I’ll become the nicest goddamn person in the world to you, that the day you decide to become a piece of shit to me, HOO BOI you are going to fucking regret it. But don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I’m using you. I AM, in fact, generally nice to people, unless they cross me personally. And believe me when I say, once you cross me, you’re gonna fucking regret it.

Though Sanji might also be doing it because he wants to make a debt deal with them. Ï save your life, you stay the fuck away out of mine. Deal?” Cuz lets be real here, the LAST people the Vinsmokes would ever DREAM or EXPECT to save them is Sanji. They know he’s weaker than them, so they probably don’t see it coming. BUT OH BOY what debt would they have to him if he manages to save them from death itself.

You can say that this choice of his is ‘admirable’ since it shows just HOW MUCH of a kind person he is, despite everyone in the fam treating him like shit.But remember, Sanji may have other motives behind this choice.

NOW FOR THE NEGATIVE VIEWS

I know another part of the fandom are just “WTF SANJI ???” at his choice. Like just HOW. HOOOW can you even have the THOUGHT of being nice to a bunch of assholes who treated you like dirt.

And I get where they’re coming from.

Its kinda like watching your friend who broke up with a toxic ex-boyfriend/girlfriend who is abusive af, but your friend still chooses to be nice to them. And you’re just standing there like “GIRL WTF OH MY GOD YOU KNOW WHAT SOLVE THIS PROBLEM YOURSELF HE DOESN’T EVEN APPRECIATE/CARE YOU WHY DO YOU EVEN BOTHER ?”

It’s the same feeling is it not ? Its frustrating to see, when CLEARLY Sanji no longer wants to be a part of them, but YET, HOW just HOW can he even STILL opt to keep them alive? Its just ridiculous.

Some people can feel sympathetic with these kind of things, ESPECIALLY if you are close (or emotionally connected) to said friend. But if you aren’t, or maybe you’ve continuously helped said friend OVER and OVER and OVER; at some point you’re gonna start get tired of it. Like, ‘God, when will you ever learn ? Just how much more suffering are you willing to do for yourself?’ That’s how its like.

And you just…you don’t know how to help your friend anymore. And yes, you HAVE every right to feel so, because remember, its not YOUR obligation to make your friend feel better, THEY have to realise for THEMSELVES, before you can intervene to assist them. That’s how life works.

And its very VERY similar to this case as well. You may be sympathetic now, but along the way, you’re gonna grow tired of it at some point. And yeah, part of the fandom already has.

Please read and take my words with a grain of salt. These are merely my personal opinions, and you may or may not agree them if you wish to do so. But keep it a friendly and domestic discussion if you want.

[chokefriends]

Pit-town Strays Ch.1

Kidlaw softness and redneck shenanigans in a northern mining town. Everything's fucked but whatever.

Rated T, no warnings, or just general warnings for setting-specific social ills and violence (racist cops, shitty parents, etc). Someone ordered wholesome kidlaw family feels? well HERE.

[Ch. 1] - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5

Read on Ao3 too, I’m Ossicle

“What the hell are you going to Pit-town for?” Bellamy chewed at Law with his mouth open, a smarmy sneer on his pasty face.

“None of your business.” Law scowled, turning his eyes away from his brother’s ground-up breakfast. He shoved a random pile of coursework into his backpack.

“Well I know what kids like you go up there to do. Everybody knows.” Bellamy drawled on, like he knew shit about anything besides scamming beer and shooting bottles at the quarry.

“Don’t make assumptions, idiot. I’m just babysitting.”

“Why?”

“It’s called a job? You should try it,” Law suggested primly. “Feet.”

Bellamy lifted his feet off Law’s pile of textbooks. “Why, though? You got that big scholarship, I seen the letter when it came in.”

Law frowned at him. “How did you…”

“Well it was just there, so I read it. Why don’t you move out, if you got all that money? You hate it here so much.”

Law waved this matter aside. “I owe that money to someone. Give me the volvo keys.”

Bellamy didn’t move his stupid stumpy self from the ancient recliner—prized spot in the basement space the three brothers shared. “No, I need it, I’m meeting up with some guys later to go down to the quarry. Dad said I could.”

“Bellamy, I need it to get to town. Just gimme the keys.”

“Well I need it to pick up little ladies! You can hitch, right?”

Law didn’t bother arguing. He sighed through his nose and slid his feet into his severely ratty sneakers before heading out into the yard.

“Don't tell Dad where I am or I'll tell him about your girlfriend!” Law called on his way out.

“Obviously,” Bellamy muttered.

The ancient volvo wasn’t feeling cooperative today, or Law was having a lapse or something because he couldn’t fucking hotwire it. He slammed his fist on the dash and took out his phone. It was an oddly summery fall day—not too cold to walk or bike—but his shoes were getting thin in the soles, and Law didn't like asking his dad for little stuff like that. Didn't wanna be such a burden all the time.

He scrolled through his messages and sent a couple off to see about a ride. But Robin (who'd suggested the job) was teaching, and Baby (sweet, bitter Baby) was already in the sauce.

BB: i cn still come tho? you real stuck?? big bro awwwww im sry

You: Nono dont go driving if youre partying it up, Ill hitch a ride I guess

BB: Where?

You: Just into town

BB: Where in town??????

You: The Pit.

You: or whatever.

BB: LAWWW NOOOOOOOOooo jus kidding lol no judgement here

BB: id sell it on weekends too if i were pretty liek U

You: I’m not selling my ass!!!

BB: Lol

BB: sure

BB: why else ndn boi hangs w miner trash? Shady.

You: Lots of reasons, including a babysitting job. Don’t make assumptions.

BB: “babysitting”” “””job”””’

You: Yes.

BB: God ur sheltered

BB: shltered bebe in u nice rich house

BB: don get picked up there, pit-town piggies love ndn bebes

Law pocketed his phone with an eyeroll and started walking down toward the highway.

Once he’d found a ride and gotten dropped off, it was a twenty minute walk from the highway to the Pit. Law ended up climbing over the bare, rocky hill behind the truck stop, cuz his phone’s map had the place all wrong. On top of the hill, he could see the Pit in all its glory laid out before him.

Pit-town was the weird little enclave where the town’s mine workers were housed, in tar paper houses as outdated as the mine itself. The tangled machinery of the refinery loomed just beyond the houses, and above all that, the smokestacks. White smoke drifted from their peaks, as high above him as the clouds. Nothing except low bush berries grew around here—it was like an outpost on the moon.

Law went down into the village. Men with tattooed arms watched him from pickup trucks, and women smoking in lawn chairs whispered. Half-feral dogs barked and circled.

“Ya lost, hun?” one busty woman called from her front step as he passed, and her friends chuckled.

“No…” he mumbled back, and hurried on as they all laughed.

He was flustered and out of breath by the time he got to the address, on the other fucking side of the whole village. The house was like the rest: a single-storey bungalow on a small plot of land with a car port full of dead appliances. There was a little pink bike lying on the front step, and a short dog chain attached to a pole in the middle of the bare yard. A deep trail had been trod in a circle around the pole but there was no dog in sight. Law went up and knocked lightly.

He stood there for a few minutes, feeling the neighborhood eyes on his back, before trying again. He knocked a little louder. “Hey, um. Hello?”

A harsh voice called, “YEAH IT’S OPEN.”

Law tried the door. “No it’s not?” he called back.

“YEAH IT IS JUST KICK IT AND TURN THE THING AT THE SAME TIME.”

“...No, definitely not open,” Law assured him after trying every kick-turn combination.

“AH FUCK.”

“Yeah.”

“OKAY, CAN YOU JUST BREAK IN?”

“...What??” Law was almost offended.

“I’M DOING A THING, CAN’T GET THE DOOR RIGHT NOW, JUST TRY SOMETHING.”

Obviously Law could break into stuff, because his shitty little brothers thought it was hilarious to lock him out of the house all the time. And because their father thought it was prudent to keep things like Law’s ID in a secure location. Law didn’t think that skill set was a great way to start this ‘job’ thing, though… He looked around at the prying eyes across the street and they flitted back behind their blinds. He sighed.

The lock was just one of the doorknob ones, and the jamb didn’t have a guard on it so it was easy to get a credit card in there. The door swung open and Law stepped into a cluttered hallway.

“In here!” the big voice called from down the hall.

“I here!” a little voice added.

Law navigated his way carefully, stepping over baskets of laundry, unreturned empties, and sealed up moving boxes. Something obnoxious was playing on tinny speakers in another room. He rounded the corner into a sweltering little kitchen that seemed like the only clear spot in the house.

There was a very tall redhead with a face full of piercings sitting at the kitchen table in his boxers, and a much smaller redhead in a frilly blue bathing suit beside him. They were painting their toenails black, with their feet up on the table.

The bigger redhead seemed really shocked to see Law. He almost toppled backward on his chair. “H-hi! Uh! You’re Native.”

Law blinked. “Yeah. Um. You’re naked.”

“I’m Nami!” announced the little girl.

The guy was pretty much naked, by Law’s standards. Also kind of jacked… Law could feel his face heating up and was glad that it didn’t really show on him. The man sitting there in his boxers was pale as a fucking ghost, though, and so his sudden flush was super obvious. He rushed to recover from that intro.

“I don’t mean like, ‘oh, you’re Native.’ Well, obviously you are, heh, but I don’t mind or anything!"

“Yeah, uh.” Law nodded helpfully. “I don’t mind either, that you’re… naked.”

“Kidd is a naked...” Nami sang to herself.

“I'm not even,” Kidd protested. “I'm just hot as hell. Aren't you hot?”

“Am I??” Law was completely lost.

“Not—! I mean, yeah, but you're in a hoodie? Aren't you sweltering?” Kidd clarified.

“Oooh. No, not really. I like to keep covered up,” Law explained, picking at a fraying sleeve. He supposed it was weird to be wearing jeans and a hoodie in this weather, but no weirder than wearing Crocs in public, like people here seemed into doing.

Kidd was distracted by Nami painting patterns on her feet with the nail polish. “Fuck, Nami, stop, we just paint the nails. It’s messy, see? MESSY.” He took the tiny girl and sat her on the counter instead, then went about cleaning up the table. “Sorry about the door. Can’t go anywhere with wet toenails, it smears like hell.”

Law nodded harder and went to help him. “It’s cool, I know how to break into stuff. I mean I don’t usually! But your door was easy. Not that I’ll do it again!”

“Not a problem… uh, Kidd. I’m Kidd. Hi.” The guy finally got his head together and extended a hand. His fingernails were painted black too. He had a really firm grip.

“Law,” Law replied in relief.

“And this is my sister Nami,” Kidd jabbed a thumb at the toddler perched precariously on the counter. “She’s a fucking psychopath.”

Nami ignored them, sticking towels into the toaster instead.

“You have a dog too? I saw the chain outside.” Law wondered.

“No, Dad took the dog with him. And the fuckin car…”

“Your parents are both working?” Law asked, and immediately regretted it. God, he really was sheltered.

Kidd blushed again and started stacking dishes.

Law rushed to clarify. “Or, ‘parent'? I only got one too—a dad. I'm adopted though, and my birth parents are both passed, so.”

Kidd was wiping off each dish absently under the running water, not really cleaning anything. “We got a dad and mom, they’re just… not around right now. So it’s just us! Which is better, believe me.” He growled the last bit under his breath.

“Oh, got it.”

“Anyway. I didn't wanna ask someone to come all the way here to watch Nami, but that bitch down the street won’t take her anymore because of lice or property damage or something, and I got an interview today. I’ll prolly find another illegal daycare somewhere around here if I do get this job, though, heh.”

“Yeah don’t worry about it.” Law tried not to seem squeamish at the mention of lice.

“If they do take me I’ll be starting right away, so I might be out til pretty late,” Kidd warned him. “I’ll pay you for however long you’re here for though.”

“Sounds good. You gonna work at the mine?”

This seemed like another sensitive issue. Kidd looked away and muttered, “No… you gotta be 21, and take all these courses and stuff. And anyway, like HELL will I end up in the fuckin pit,” he finished with unexpected heat.

Law was saved from having to come up with a response by Nami blowing up the toaster outlet. The kitchen appliances all blinked out.

“FUCK! Again…” Kidd rushed to pick her up and sit her back on the table as a loud dryer beep sounded from the bathroom. “And fuck, there’s my pants. Listen, can you grab a fuse from the drawer there and stick it in? I actually REALLY gotta go, like right now.”

“Yeah of course!” Law watched the strange redhead duck through the kitchen door and pick his way down the obstacle course hall to another door.

He pulled his eyes away from the muscled back and onto the little girl, who was… eating nail polish.

“You!” Law scolded her, and put her in a chair. He grabbed the few towels that weren’t burnt, and tied her to the aluminum frame. “Okay, eat cheez-its while I fix this.”

Law had got the new fuse screwed into the panel and the nail polish off Nami’s face by the time Kidd came back, dressed in clothes that didn’t seem like interview clothes to Law: heavy duck pants and steel-toed boots. He grabbed a duffel bag that was sitting on a box stack, shouldered it and then stood looking at Law.

“Uh,” Kidd was blushing again. It was kind of amazing to see this tough blacklung brat acting so unsure. “If I come back really late maybe I could bring something? To eat? And we could eat it here?”

“Yeah, that'd be good.” Law shrugged like he didn't mind either way.

“KFC?” Kidd suggested.

“Oh I don't like breaded stuff. Fries are good, though.”

“Chinese?”

“I'm trying not to eat MSG actually…”

Kidd tried to think. “So what do you eat?”

“Mostly sushi.”

“I didn't know there was any sushi places in this shit town,” Kidd admitted.

“At the college there's one. Uh, but whatever you bring is fine, don't worry about it!” Law reassured him.

“Okay. Well, see ya.” Kidd made his way outside, yelling at some hovering dogs to git!, then started swearing. “Aw fuck, Nami's FUCKING bike…”

“You trip on it?” Law poked his head outside.

“No,” Kidd was looking at an empty front walk. “Fuckin kids took off with it again. I'll just go punch their dad in the throat later, not a big deal.”

“Holy,” Law commented mildly.

He watched Kidd pull a frankenstein-ian motorcycle out of a side door and roar away on it. Then he looked around to see if anyone had caught him looking. He was just sending a good glare at the prying eyes across the street when he remembered that he was babysitting. He returned to the kitchen where Nami was sitting once again on top of the table, drawing circles in a nail polish puddle with one finger.

“Your brother is an entire entrée,” Law informed her.

She didn't reply, intent on her craft. But she objected when he tried to pick her up. “Nooo!”

“No?” he put her down.

She glared at him, a tiny girl of no more than four, ginger hair in little pigtails and her frilly blue bathing suit spotted with nail polish.

“I'm Law,” he sat down so he was at her level, and introduced himself. “Lawww.”

“Law...” She appraised him solemnly for another moment and then seemed to deem him acceptable. “I’m being a witch,” she confided in a whisper.

“A witch?”

“Yah.”

Law sat back in the chair with a laugh. “My girl! Let's talk!”

Law had the kitchen scrubbed to his own exacting standards in short order, having secured Nami firmly to a chair (with duct tape and towels this time).

She was starting to nod into her cheezits by the time he'd finished, and Law figured it was nap time. He went to review the rooms along the hallway, looking for a baby room. He couldn't figure out the logic of the place, though. There was a largeish bedroom, which seemed to be the source of the stale smoke smell, mostly taken up by a tacky king bed and Seinfeld DVDs. It clearly hadn't been used in forever. He closed that door. Then there was a smaller room that might've once been a child's room, decorated with glow in the dark stars on the ceiling and complex Lego structures piled in one corner. It was stacked floor to ceiling with file boxes and covered in dust too. Another small room seemed to be Kidd's hideout, though the bed was just a box spring covered in laundry and books. There was a guitar and practice amp, and a desk piled with half-dissected old laptops. Law resisted the urge to snoop, and closed the door.

He went back down to the other end of the hall, past the front door, where the narrow corridor opened into a small living room space. A couch and a single mattress were neatly made up into beds, in front of a large TV that seemed like the only new thing in the house.

“I want a Kidd nap.” Nami had somehow gotten out of the duct tape high chair and was at Law's side, rubbing her eyes.

“Okay? In the big bed?”

“You're silly,” she accused. She went to lie down on the couch, pulling a fuzzy blanket over herself.

Law went to sit next to her. He gestured down at the mattress on the floor, with its orange and blue comforter and many fuzzy cushions. “Is that your bed? Don't you wanna nap there?”

“No,” she explained patiently, eyes already closed.

“Right, obviously.”

He watched her shuffle and sigh her way to sleep.

“I could've had a sister,” he murmured, partly to her and partly to himself. “I mean, I do have a biological sister, but I didn't grow up with her. I think it would've been nice, though…”

Nami was already asleep when he looked over again. Easy! Law totally had this babysitting thing in hand. He pulled his stats assignment out of his bag, and got down to the real work.

Nami turned out to be a pretty chill baby, as well as being an utter terror. She mostly ignored Law, preferring to go about her little play tasks uninterrupted, with the TV playing in the background. “Being a witch,” she explained whenever Law asked what she was doing.

“Keep it up,” he encouraged her, turning back to his own work.

He quickly learned, though, to keep an ear out for silence, because she was probably blowing shit up. Law found her building a fire in the oven, then making what he was pretty sure was mustard gas in the toilet.

“How’d you do that??” He took the bleach from her and she threw a mild fit before toddling off to the next game.

By the time Kidd returned, Law was just sitting in a kitchen chair with his stats assignment disregarded in front of him, watching the four-year-old expertly jimmy the makeshift lock he'd put on the knife drawer.

“More twist on the lever,” an amused Law recommended.

“So this one's being a psychopath huh,” Kidd entered and threw his duffel bag on the table.

Law corrected him.“Um, she's a witch and a prodigy? She made several deadly potions with cleaning supplies today."

“Oh jesus now there's two of you.”

“One more and we got a coven.”

“Great. Nami, it's like 11, why ain't your ass in bed?” Kidd growled at his sister, who ignored him.

“She went down for a couple hours, but kept getting up when she heard a car go by. And I couldn't get any pajamas on her,” Law reported.

“Yeah she won't take the bathing suit off unless I bribe her. She's big into being a ‘mermaid’ this month, on top of being a witch.”

Nami had gotten the knife drawer open and was feeling around in it with one chubby hand.

Kidd scooped her up. “No knives.”

“A knife!!!”

Law shook his head and smiled. Child after his own heart. “What's she want a knife for?”

“She's been trying to slash my tires lately, so probably that. It's usually pretty funny to watch, but yeah, not at bedtime. Eh, Nami?”

“I WAN A KNIFE! A KNIFE A KNIFE A—”

Nami stopped and stared at the chocolate coin Kidd was holding up. She grabbed it and wiggled out of his arms. They followed her to the living room where she was stashing her prize under the couch.

“Holy, she's got a hoard,” Law gave a low whistle at the cache of foil coins and random shiny things.

“Yeah I think she's more dragon than mermaid,” Kidd commented.

Nami lay down in her floor bed, where she could see the glittering pile.

“I got food, if you wanna…?” Kidd nodded back toward the kitchen.

“Is she good here?”

“Yeah she pretty much puts herself to sleep, just leave WrestleMania on for her. She likes the noise.”

They went back to the kitchen, and Kidd turned on a thing Law had thought was a smashed toaster oven reconstructed with safety pins, but which turned out to be a radio. Kidd gestured to a bag on the table, and Law unpacked it while the redhead fiddled with the receiver. It mostly seemed to be picking up country music and static.

“Can almost get that alt rock station with this thing,” he muttered, “probably just needs another coat hanger.”

“You went and got sushi??” Law pulled out several little plastic containers.

Kidd’s back was to him but Law could see his neck and ears going red. He kept fiddling with the dials. “Yeah, whatever.”

“From all the way at the college?”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

“...I think that radio is using you as an antenna,” Law observed, changing the topic.

Kidd snorted and let go of the screwdriver-dial, and the radio went to mostly static. “Faboo. Maybe it wants a piercing too.”

His face had returned to a normal color under all that metal, and he joined Law at the table. Law offered him the dragon roll and took the sashimi plate.

The chopsticks were an obstacle.

“Do you stab it?” Kidd glared at the sushi and the two little sticks.

“No, look at my hand: hold one like a pencil, and the other one loosely—”

“I stab it.”

“Don’t stab it, hey, you’ll ruin the integrity of the roll shape!”

“Hm,” Kidd chewed his mangled piece. “Tastes like salad.”

“Here.” Law scooted over a chair. He took the chopsticks out of Kidd’s fist and rearranged them. Kidd’s hands were large and rough to the touch, and the scent of sweat and gas clung to his clothes. The sudden impression of body heat and machinery smacked Law right in the back of the brain.

“I’m gonna say this is finger food,” Kidd decided.

“Yeah,” Law agreed automatically.

“Yeah, fuck this. Want a beer?”

Law hated beer. “Yeah. I mean, whatever.”

Law sat and nursed the beer with determination, trying to pay attention to Kidd's animated take on government surveillance vans and Nicolas Cage. His brain was getting fuzzy really fast, though. He was such a fuckin lightweight.

“He’s not an actual human person, is all I’m saying. You seen his face tryna do face stuff?” Kidd argued, crunching his second beer can and tossing it in the bin across the room. "Nother beer? Hey, you’re not even done that one.”

“Tastes like bread,” Law noted distractedly.

“I guess. You don’t like Bud?”

“I liked the first movie,” Law hiccuped.

Kidd laughed like a fucking hooligan, and Law had to laugh too. Normally loud laughs grated on Law's ears, but he decided he liked this one. It wasn't mocking or cold; just big.

Kidd shook his head with a final chuckle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Me too. Sooo uh, what you studying at the college?”

“General science right now, thinking I'll go into the pre-med stream,” Law answered right away. “Or maybe something more research, less clinical… uh. Or you know, like. Whatever.”

Kidd actually seemed interested. “Yeah that sounds awesome. I always wanted to go into engineering, but pure research would be cool… You um. Doing some math, there?” He looked over at Law's assignment, abandoned on the table.

“Stats. The bane of my existence. Don't stare at it too long, it'll put the bleed on your brain.”

“...you're stuck, huh?” Kidd glanced over again.

“No.” Law sniffed. “I'm considering it from many angles.”

“Okay, man.”

“Oh, like you know anything about sample sizes and shit.”

Kidd shrugged, but the line in his forehead deepened. He cracked another tallboy.

Law gripped his own beer can in the uncomfortable silence that followed, and then downed the rest all at once.

“Nother,” he wiped his mouth and Kidd raised an eyebrow but passed him a fresh one.

“Git it in ya.”

“Mhm.” Law took a deep swig and almost fucking barfed. “Sooo… you make that bike yourself huh?”

“...yeah,” Kidd's face lost the put-out look and split into a grin. “Or whatever, I just added some stuff and changed other stuff… actually, it's…”

That got another good long ramble out of the redhead, full of startling laughter and crass parallels with female body parts. Law wondered idly if Kidd was actually familiar with any female body parts, or whether this was just how people in Pit-town talked.

“Hm?” Law sat up straight, realizing that Kidd had asked him something. His brain was definitely all swimmy now.

“Or I can give you a lift back now. It's a long way to the Rez.”

“I'm not from the Rez, I live down the highway. I can just hitch my way back, it's not a big deal." Law looked at his phone—after midnight.

Kidd was giving Law a look, like he wanted to say something about that, but then grunted and downed his beer instead. “Here, for today,” he said, taking an envelope out of his pocket and pushing a few folded bills into Law's hand.

“Thanks.”

“If you're free tomorrow I'll be working again at noon. And like I said, you can stay here tonight if the trip out is—”

“Oh!” Law felt his face heating up again. “No, I gotta get home. My dad's gonna kill me as it is. I'll come back tomorrow, though, okay?”

“Okay! Or, whatever, good.”

“Yeah.” Law stood and started stuffing things back into his backpack. “Okay see ya tomorrow.”

Kidd gave him a flippant salute and cracked another beer.

Pulling on his sneakers at the door, Law felt a little tug at his pant leg.

“Law, you are going to go?” Nami worried.

“Yup, gotta go home.”

“Law, you won't be here if you go,” she started snuffling.

Law picked her up and put her back in her bed. “I'll come back tomorrow. Okay?”

“No.” She hid under the blanket and kept snuffling.

He hesitated. “I have to go.”

“She’ll get over it in a minute,” Kidd told him from the doorway, leaning backlit against the frame with crossed arms. “It's better not to draw it out.”

Law looked at the little lump among the cushions and shrugged. He stood to go.

The redhead chewed at his tongue piercing and watched him. “Okay, I don't wanna be weird about this, but like. It's the Pit. And you're... You know?”

Law wasn't getting it. “I'm...?”

“C'mon, you stick out. And it's really late, and it's just past check day, and… it'd really just be faster if I gave you a ride.”

Oh, fucking chivalry or whatever.

“So I'll put my hood up,” Law dismissed this.

“It’s the Pit, though,” Kidd said again.

“... See you tomorrow.” Law left without drawing it out any further.

Law got halfway through the village before someone pulled up next to him, apparently to offer him further unwanted courtesies.

“Looking for a place to stay?” the man offered.

“Just heading home,” Law deflected.

This didn't seem to be the answer the guy wanted, and he followed Law in his pickup at very close range, until they got to the village limits and the end of the street lights. Law gripped his phone in his pocket. He heard the truck door slam just as he went to detour off the road between two houses.

Law tried not to back away as the guy advanced. “I'll call the police.”

“I am the police,” the man pointed to the badge on his belt.

"Shit..."

"And you're trespassing."

Law held onto his phone, a harsh roaring steadily growing in his ears. The smart thing would be to play dumb and helpless so he wouldn't fucking get shot, and just hope someone came by… but the man went to grab him and he panicked just as the roar peaked. Law snapped the fist holding his phone into the man's temple, and it made a loud crunch. A couple more frantic strikes sent the pig down in a confused pile of limbs.

Well he'd fucking done it now. Maybe he could run before—

“Oohhh shit, haha,” someone commented.

Law glared over at Kidd, who was sitting there on his noisy rat bike, peering at the man on the ground.

“Hi?” Law crossed his arms.

Kidd scratched his neck. “Saw him drive past after you left, and figured… yeah. I was just gonna come and like, bam! Do a drive-by with a crowbar. But that Rocky shit was actually way cooler, haha. Is that a brass knuckles phone ring?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah…” Kidd considered the lump on the ground. “Kay, well. Can I drive you home now?”

“...” Law really, stubbornly wanted to refuse.

“Just so you can see how Marlene here rides,” Kidd patted the motorcycle. “Did I tell you I built her?”

Law's tension cracked and an incredulous laugh bubbled out. “Yeah. You told me. She's a beauty.” Kidd passed him the helmet and Law slid into place behind him.

“She’s a rubber-tit, chain-smoking old blacklung biddy, fuck yeah she's a beauty. You can ride her all day and night, she don't get tired.”

Law had been wondering how he'd get all the way home like this without popping a boner, but that mental image cleared it up.

“Uh,” Law gave the unconscious cop a guilty glance, “should we get this guy somewhere…?”

“Oh, I'll just call his wife to come get him, I guess,” Kidd snorted at the pathetic pile and took out his phone.

“You know him?”

“Everyone knows everyone here… hold on a sec. Hey, Mrs. Kyle? Yeah I just seen Kevin going off tryna fight that goose again.”

“Fuckin what??” Law snickered.

“Yeah, Cobb Road. Looked like he'd taken a good one on the head already. I dunno who taught that thing to make a fist. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, bye.” Kidd hung up, nodding to himself like that was it.

“No one's gonna believe that shit,” Law objected.

“Oh the goose? That's real, the thing's a monster. I think they should just shoot it but there's a pool on who'll defeat it in hand-to-hand combat.”

“...okay. Sure.”

“It's the Pit,” Kidd explained again.

Kidd tied a bandana onto his face as a windguard, and they pulled out of the village and onto the highway. It was fall but the air was warm and smelled like tar. Law held onto Kidd's waist and directed him by patting his arm and pointing. The smokestacks receded behind them, though the tar smell lingered on through the treeless landscape. Eventually Law signaled for them to stop.

Kidd pulled off the highway and stopped just under the lone streetlight at the turnoff. He looked around. “This is just a carpool lot. I might as well take you all the way home, right?”

“Nah, my Dad's already gonna be pissed that I'm out this late. If I ride up on a bike smelling like booze… yeah.” Law passed him the helmet and dismounted. “It's not far from here, I'm good now.”

Kidd was still processing the first part. “Aren't you in uni? You still have a curfew?”

Law shrugged. “He's strict. He just worries. Though, yeah, he's nowhere near as protective about my fuckin brothers so—”

At that exact moment Law's brain registered the whine of a familiar car, and he had to grip his bag to keep from bolting. He relaxed slightly when he saw it was just the Volvo.

“Hey Lawnboy,” Bellamy chuckled, leaning an elbow out the window.

“Hiii Law,” a gawky, sharp-eyed girl chirped from the passenger seat.

“Monet, my dream girl,” Law flirted mildly, leaning on the door frame. Monet giggled and Bellamy scowled.

“That your ~boyfriend~?” the blond troll mocked, jabbing a thumb at Kidd, who tensed and sneered.

“Yeah,” Law shot back.

There was a pause.

“Really???” Monet scrambled to get a good look at them both. Bellamy's face went slack with shock.

Kidd stuffed his head into the safety of his helmet.

“What're you doing?” Law questioned the helmeted Kidd.

“He's shy!” Monet squealed. “Ahhhh you guys are perfect!”

“Are you blushing?” Law tried to flip up the mirrored visor and Kidd held on stubbornly, shaking his head.

“Law, bring him to Hawk's place with us, I'll make youse guys’ drinks!! I got sourpuss and peach schnapps!”

“They're not coming to Hawk's,” Bellamy told her sullenly.

“Shut up Bellamy. Law, you guys coming?”

Law demurred. “Gotta work tomorrow, Monet-fique. Nother time.”

“Aw.”

“See you at home, Bellyache,” Law dismissed his pouting brother, who scowled.

“‘Babysitting’, huh. I'm telling Dad you're hoeing it up in the Pit,” Bellamy threatened.

Monet punched him in the shoulder. “Oh my god Bellamy no you're not. Later, Law! Byyye, strong silent boyfriend!”

Bellamy took his cue and screeched away.

Law turned back to Kidd, who was still hiding under his helmet. “Sorry. That was my brother. It just seemed like the best way to get him to leave.”

Kidd gave a slight shrug.

“So. See you tomorrow?” Law shouldered his bag.

Kidd nodded.

“Thanks for the ride. And for dinner and stuff…”

“Yeah it's whatever,” came Kidd's muffled voice.

“Oh yeah I mean, whatever.” Law started off down the road.

“Uh…! Thank you too, for… coming...” Kidd called after him a few steps later.

Law stopped and looked back awkwardly.

“...And for being chill about Nami's issues, and the house, and dealing with that creeping fucker… You don't have to come back after that crap. And if all this is gonna get you in trouble with your dad anyway,” Kidd offered in a nervous jumble, as Law wandered back over and stood there, feeling suddenly sad.

Law had had his share of sweet goodbye kisses under this streetlight, when he'd been a little younger and a little less worried about everything. He kinda really wanted another like that right now… But Kidd was holding onto the helmet on his head like a life preserver. And a kiss seemed like such a shallow, wrong-headed kind of assurance to offer against all ‘that crap.’

Law leaned in, and bonked his forehead lightly against the glossy helmet instead.

“Well, pick me up tomorrow, at the highway. So I don't gotta risk crossing the goose,” Law shrugged too, like it really was all just whatever.

He couldn't see Kidd's face but he could see his heaviness lift.

“You got it, Cap.”

The scruffy redhead leaned into his bike and the road, and became a fading engine roar in the dark. Law walked home slowly.