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m1ckeyb3rry · 1 year ago

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Catching and Falling

Pairing: Satoru Gojo & Fem Reader (platonic)

Length: 2.7k words

Summary: Satoru Gojo is not quite sure how he feels about you, the child that took his beloved babysitter away from him. AKA the pomegranate ink prequel mini one shot nobody asked for, featuring Gojo and Y/N’s relationship before she joins Tokyo Jujutsu Tech.

Warnings: minor swearing, gen fic, makes more sense with knowledge of pomegranate ink but ig could technically be read without that

A/N: Something completely random based off of Gojo mentioning during the exchange event chapters that Mrs. L/N used to babysit him before Y/N was born!! I am VERY scared of writing Gojo so Gojo stans please be gentle about me mischaracterizing him horribly 😭🙏🏻 I did my best

Satoru Gojo stood in the dimly lit hallway of the L/N manor and craned his neck, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible when peering through the open door. It was not the child that everyone was cooing over that he was trying to see; in fact, it was someone else entirely.

“Satoru! Did you want to hold the baby?” his mother said, noticing his curious gaze. His expression immediately dropped into a scowl as he was forcibly handed that thing.

“Where’s Mrs. L/N?” he grumbled, glaring at the baby in his arms, which gazed up at him with large, adoring eyes. It was a dainty and tiny creature, like a little dove, entirely unaware of the vitriol he held for it. He was tempted to throw it across the room, but it would not do for the almost-twelve-years-old heir of the Gojo name to toss around the child which might one day stand beside him as the head of its own clan.

“She’s resting,” his mother said. “It’s hard to be the mother to an infant, you know.”

“When can I see her again? I don’t like the other people who watch me. Mrs. L/N was nicer,” he said.

Mrs. L/N, the mother of this child — she had belonged to Satoru first, hadn’t she? She had told him that he was her favorite person in the whole entire world, allowed him to have extras of everything she made for him, turned on movies he wasn’t supposed to watch and ate popcorn as they made fun of the characters. She was only ever supposed to be his babysitter. So why’d she have to go and have a baby of her own?

“Likely not for a while,” his mother said. “She’ll be far too busy with this one.”

“That’s not fair,” Satoru said. “Tell her she has to spend time with me.”

“She is a L/N, not a Gojo,” his mother said. “It’s not our place to demand things of her. If you really want to see her in the future, you could marry this one.”

She pointed at the baby, which was still held securely in his arms. It was a good thing it was so secure, too, because his mother’s words almost made him drop it as he gagged.

“It’s a baby,” he said.

“A baby that will one day become a woman capable of using the Reverse Cursed Technique and maybe even healing entire armies with it,” his mother said with a shrug. “Allying our clan with the L/Ns would be a smart move, so I doubt your father would have anything to say about it, and then your precious Mrs. L/N would be your mother-in-law.”

“But it’s a baby,” he insisted. The baby shifted in his arms, blinking lazily at him, perhaps mesmerized by the bright blue of his irises.

“She will grow older,” his mother said.

“So will I,” Satoru said. “I don’t wanna marry it. That’s gross.”

“It is a she, and she has a name, by the way,” his mother said.

“What is it?” he said, though he didn’t really care. He just was getting that sense that his mother wanted him to ask and wouldn’t let him go until he did, so he jutted out his chin and waited for her to answer.

“Y/N,” she said.

Satoru’s eyes widened. There was only one person who could’ve chosen that name: Mrs. L/N herself, who had been enamored with the story of the Heian sorcerer Y/N, the woman that had died sealing Sukuna before being revived by her husband, one of the healers of the L/N clan.

Abruptly, he handed the baby back to his mother. If it was true that Mrs. L/N really loved the thing more than she loved him, then he wanted nothing to do with it at all.

☆彡

“Gojo!” the toddler shouted, chasing after him — well, chasing was being generous, he was walking at a medium pace while she wobbled desperately to keep up — and reaching out her chubby little arms in his direction.

“Leave me alone!” he said. Technically, as the now-head of the Gojo clan, he should be attending the meeting with the rest of the higher ups, but he had been told in no uncertain terms that he was a child and ought to play outside with the rest of the children. When he argued that he was a teenager, they laughed and said that that was actually worse before slamming the door on his face and locking it to ensure that he could not get inside.

With a sigh, he deactivated his Infinity and crouched, wondering if they’d find him mature for entertaining the little girl. She began to babble in delight, fingers opening and closing when she reached him, tugging on his clothes, his hair, and his ears. He scowled but did nothing more, finding it to be too much effort to tell her to stop. What an irritant. How did the poor Mrs. L/N deal with having such an insufferable being at her side constantly? He was sure that she regretted it all now.

“Gojo,” she said again. That was the one thing she seemed able to say with confidence, and he patted her on the head for it.

“That’s right, Gojo. That’s me,” he said, pointing towards himself before pointing towards the locked door where the higher ups were having their meeting without him. “And the people in there? They’re assholes. Can you repeat after me? Ass-holes.”

“Ass-holes,” she parroted.

“Oh, shit,” he said as he realized he had just taught Y/N how to swear. Now he would never be allowed into a meeting of the higher ups.

“Shi — shit?” she said, stumbling over the foreign word and tilting her head at him as if seeking out his approval. His already pale face went even whiter, and he began to make the cut-it-out motion.

“Nope, no, stop saying those things! Stop it! What would Mrs. L/N do if she heard you?” he said with a groan. To make matters worse, the door squealed open, and the higher ups filed out, still chatting amongst themselves about whatever had happened during the meeting.

“Ah, Satoru, thank you for watching Y/N, you really didn’t have to do that!” Mr. L/N said, swooping his daughter up into his arms. “I hope she wasn’t too much of a bother.”

“Um, no, she was fine,” Satoru said faintly, his head spinning as he realized this might actually be the end for him. Every single important person in jujutsu society was gathered there, and though he didn’t necessarily care about their opinions of him, they had the capabilities to make his life incredibly difficult if he made them upset.

“Papa,” the toddler said proudly. “Ass-holes!”

The room grew deathly silent. Mr. L/N’s jaw dropped, and he narrowed his eyes at Y/N, who was entirely unaffected by the tense atmosphere, giggling to herself about whatever it was that dumb little kids found amusing.

“Darling, who taught you that word?” Mr. L/N said.

Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it don’t —

“Gojo!”

Fuck.

He decided then and there that he would never have children.

☆彡

Satoru hated the stupid parties that he was forced to attend under the guise of being a good clan head. He usually tried to slip away as soon as he had finished eating, but today was different; namely, that annoying thing was following him once again.

“Gojo, your glasses are so cool,” she said. “Can I see them? Huh, can I? Please please please can I try wearing them?”

“How about you please please please try bothering someone else?” he snapped. “The twins are your age, and Noritoshi Kamo isn’t that much older. Play with them!”

“But my father said I’m not to associate with the Zenin twins in case their uselessness rubs off on me, and Noritoshi Kamo is too busy to play with me, so I can’t! Also, my mother said that you were really super duper nice and cool, so that’s why I’m following you around,” Y/N said. He froze at the mention of Mrs. L/N, whose face was the first he thought of when someone asked him about his mother.

“Fine,” he said, taking off his glasses and placing them on her face, ignoring the stabbing pain in his head as his Six Eyes were exposed to the harshness of the world. “There.”

“Do I look nice? Do I look like you?” she said. “I can’t see anything, so you have to tell me.”

“You look —” He was going to say stupid, but it would be a little uncharitable for him to call her that to her face. “Not as cool as I do.”

That got the job done. And it was true, to boot; there was just no way that he looked quite as ridiculous as she did with them on, the black lenses too large, dominating her face and giving her an owlish appearance.

“Nuh-uh, I bet I look even cooler!” she whined.

“Impossible,” Satoru said with a snort. “No one’s as cool as me.”

“Y/N! Come say hello to Noritoshi, won’t you?”

“Oh, it sounds like my father is calling me. Can you help?” she said, feeling around blindly for the door. He watched in amusement before bending over and plucking the glasses from her face, putting them back on and smiling slightly at the relief they provided.

“Hey, wait, Y/N. Does your mother mention me a lot?” he said. Surely she must have. After all, he had been her favorite person growing up, so of course she regaled her daughter with tales of their time together.

“Nope! I don’t even think she knows who you are?” she said, voice ticking up in that way characteristic of children, as if everything they were saying was a question. Satoru tried to fathom this, a world where Mrs. L/N did not even recognize him. Mr. L/N never brought her to clan meetings or parties, so he had not seen her since Y/N had been born…had she forgotten about him entirely? In such a short time?

Y/N. It was definitely Y/N’s fault. Though it was petty, he stuck his tongue out at the girl’s disappearing back and hoped for something equally as horrible to happen to her.

☆彡

A few days later, the news came out that Y/N L/N showed no aptitude for the Reverse Cursed Technique. The failure of the L/N clan, she was lambasted as an embarrassment akin to Ogi Zenin’s twin daughters Maki and Mai.

Satoru thought it must be his fault for cursing the girl. Every night, he’d feverishly whisper apologies to whatever deity he had accidentally contacted, telling them that it was alright, he didn’t care that much, it was fine that Mrs. L/N didn’t remember him as long as they gave Y/N the Reverse Cursed Technique back.

It was all for nothing, because of course it was not actually his doing; whether Y/N L/N could use her family’s Composition had been determined at her birth, and nothing he could do or think or say would change that. Still, Satoru stared at his hands and felt something like guilt whenever her small face crossed his mind.

☆彡

Y/N L/N stopped coming to meetings and parties after that. They were trying to hide her away, he reasoned. It made sense. It was probably what he would’ve done, if that was his situation. They would try to make it like the girl and her mother had never existed, and then she’d be quietly married off to someone like Noritoshi Kamo in the hopes that she’d strengthen their bloodline enough to make her entire measly existence worth something.

He found he missed her. She had been a pain, but she had reminded him of her mother in some way. And…and she was definitely annoying, but it had been kind of nice, having someone look at him the way she did, all awed and genuine, with no ulterior motives behind it. She didn’t really care that he was the head of his clan or the holder of the Six Eyes and Limitless. She thought he was cool just because he was himself.

☆彡

“Say, do you have any siblings?” Suguru said. It was an entirely random question, one Satoru thought he must’ve answered already, but then again, it wasn’t something that came up very often, so maybe that was why he was asking.

“Yeah, one,” Satoru said. “Little sister.”

“Really? I’m an only child,” Suguru said, a hint of jealousy entering his voice. “What’s she like?”

“Dunno,” Satoru said. “I haven’t seen her in years.”

☆彡

Maybe there was something to be said for the fact that when everything went wrong, he did not wish for his mother to come back. It was Mrs. L/N’s face he pictured, her in her youth, when his parents would leave him at the L/N manor for days on end. That bright-eyed woman, the only one who had ever cared about him, the singular person who treated him like a child instead of a god — he cried and he cried and he wished she was there to wipe away his tears and tell him it wasn’t his fault, tell him it was alright that he couldn’t save everyone, tell him she did not blame him for any of it.

His own mother had never loved him, anyways. To her, he was not Satoru but Gojo, as he was to everyone else. He did not resent his power, but everything else that came with it was like a poisoned barb in his skin, so painful that occasionally, he wished he had been born a L/N instead.

☆彡

Y/N L/N was to marry Noritoshi Kamo. He was not quite sure what the girl thought about it; to his knowledge, Noritoshi was kind and gentle and handsome, so there was no real reason for her to complain — besides the fact that she was being forced into it.

It seemed that that was enough. It was obvious to anyone with eyes (and Satoru had six of them, so imagine how obvious it was to him) that she was unhappy, and Noritoshi was no better. They were two children pretending to be in love for the sake of politics, and the sight was actually sickening. Especially because it was her, that girl he had known since her infancy, the one whose mother he loved like she was his own.

That was why he followed her out onto the balcony when she left after Naoya Zenin or some other such unimportant person made a crass comment about her relationship with her fiancé. He wasn’t sure what, exactly, he could say to make it better, but he wanted to say something. To give her some kind of agency, to free her before the chains that bound her mother wrapped around her as well. Because he understood, now, that it had never been poor little Y/N’s fault that Mrs. L/N had had to stop seeing him — it had been the clans, the L/Ns as a unit, who had reduced the woman to nothing but Y/N’s mother, and Y/N to nothing but a failure, and Satoru to nothing but a tool with which they could exorcise curses. And after all, tools were not supposed to need love, and failures were not supposed to need freedom, and mothers were not supposed to need anything.

Fuck that.

She was about to jump, or maybe not. Maybe she was just enjoying the night air and the distant fragrance of the nearby gardens and the stars hanging in the sky. He wasn’t sure, but his heart leapt in his throat at the thought of this girl, this Y/N L/N, dying. He did not want that. He did not want it to happen in that way.

“I won’t catch you if you fall, you know,” he said casually, conversationally, as easily as if he was talking about the weather. That was because it was a lie.

He definitely would.

#ummm uhhh i tried posting on here for once???#it was kind of nice honestly maybe i should do it more often #m1ckeyb3rry writes #pomegranate ink #jjk #satoru gojo & reader #reader insert

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saint-sebastian-coded · 11 months ago

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20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @mrv3000

1. how many works do you have on Ao3? 195

2. what's your total Ao3 word count? 403 068

3. what fandoms do you write for? percy jackson and the olympians, heroes of olympus, trials of apollo, kane chronicles, magnus chase and the gods of asgard, nevermoor, her royal highness, roots of chaos, x-men (films mostly but some comic bleedover), avatar the last airbender, the legend of korra, the kyoshi novels, marvel cinematic universe, bbc ghosts, a song of ice and fire, doctor who, the locked tomb, star wars (prequels mostly), spiderman comics, rosewood chronicles, derry girls, dc (vaguely, comics)

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

rot with all the burnouts in the cell (dc marvel crossover)

oh my brother, my brother, my brother (who have you become in the wake of all that's happened?) (star wars timetravel)

breezeblocks bricking up my heart (my take on a dadneto reveal)

water into wine (five times percy was the son of dionysus and one time he was the son of poseidon)

5. do you respond to comments? i do my best

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

that's relative and i have so many fics that this probably isn't accurate but by my own measure it's probably don't want to fight the tide (nevermoor fic, being immortal sucks)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

again that's relative but i'd say there's a million roads to rediscover (pjo/hoo five times jason missed his sister, and one time he saw her again)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

occasionally i get like smarmy comments like one on a certain fic that the timeline didn't line up (it did + i had page references + it was tagged canon divergence anyway) but not really

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

i have one so ig lesbian threesomes??

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

i write so many crossovers i love putting characters in situations. probably rot with all the burnouts in the cell since it involved a ton of drama

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i'm aware of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i think one of them but i can't remember which one. (technically this is studying) i'm trying to translate a few of my drabbles into scots gaelic

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

in part like it got started and then i got ghosted before anything else happened

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

the couple i've written the most about is a tie between morridence, fierrochase, and jadie, but i'd say i get the most feelings about ruegard

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Great the Roman is coming up to its third year anniversary this month and i only hit the halfway point a few months ago so we'll see

16. What are your writing strengths?

lesbians. probably emotional stuff if i'm being serious

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

plot. its part of the reason i only do oneshots about 1k-3k but i'd like to work on more big fics. part of the reason was i started a bunch back in 2021 and i'm still working on two of them

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

one of my fics has some dialogue in scots gaelic but i cannot remember for the life of me if its supposed to be 'S ann or 'S e form and its haunting me

19. First fandom you wrote for?

fun fact: i originally wrote on wattpad and published a fierrochase fic on the release day of the hammer of thor. it's called fierrochase and it Sucks but it might actually be the first one ever which is fun if not slightly haunting

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

well you don't know me. but i know you it's a asoiaf time travel fic from the pov of people who don't know. i feel like i really pushed myself with characterisation on it

tagging people who i think write fic @tragedykery @lesmiserablol @oh-hush-its-perfect @thebigqueer @aphrodititi @ethannku @speedytherandom

#my fic #thanks for the tag!

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monkey-network · 1 year ago

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Good Stuff: FLCL Grunge

or How Not to Grasp Why "Bottled Lightning" Exists

I'll preface this by saying that these recent "seasons" of Fooly Cooly have not ruined the original. That's like if you got a bottomless bag of tropical Skittles, every other minute you get a black Twizzler or flavorless candy corn piece thrown in that you aren't forced to eat but constantly get weirded out that they were in there in the first place. What is bad is that we're up to three sequels of FLCL & none of them even range to being on par with the original in terms of engaging memorability. I'm not the type to rag about X or Y being forgotten online days after it was just released, but it stings seeing a beloved anime have sequel series that everyone wants to forget because nobody asked for them. This isn't like Trigun Stampede where it got to have a newfound fanbase in spite of the backlash of diehards, we're on the 4th story and you might as well imagine the tumbleweeds. It doesn't help that the expectations didn't come with presentable execution... because Grunge was bad.

I'm honestly just waiting for Uzumaki at this point

It's ironic that while my reviews are about animated media, I don't really discuss the animation given my minimal expertise; I'm more of an emotional critic than a technical one. FLCL Grunge is the exception because it feels like a mess. It's like an enhanced PS1 game that looks graphically better than Berserk 2016 but has that same quality of stiff, choppy action and inconsistent blending of 2D imagery. You just wonder why this couldn't just be 2D? You would believe the CG studio responsible had this as their first-ever credit, but it's not as Montblanc's actual first feature had somehow better animation than this, and that was back in 2012. So either it was rushed or Production IG had no clue what they were going for. Worst aspect just has to be the rock humans because they can be so awkward to see and oh yeah, close but different topic.

Why are there Thing people?

Fooly Cooly I don't think anybody was ever in it for the lore. It was a miniseries where the pieces you could put together offered some sense while having open-ended questions. Even though the OG was far more grounded despite itself, I'm not against having aliens in these sequels because I'm all for things getting weird to spice up the purposeful mundanity. My only issue is the rock people are all we really have in this story when there could exist other species. It's a symptom of a larger problem these sequels have where things exist with none of the deserved flesh. Most enjoyed the OG more for the personal journey, not really piecing everything involving Medical Mechanica. With this, it just feels like they're trying to get Matpat's attention with all the stuff Haruko does with very surface-level backstories regarding the main characters. You know as much about what happened to Rockies as you do anything about Shin or Orinoko, which heavily pales in comparison to the previous three MCs. All this wrapped in an undercooked 3 episodes that is, and I'm not kidding...

Just a worse take of The Simpsons "Trilogy of Error"

One of my favorite story tropes is when everything takes place in one day, bonus points for interconnecting multiple stories into one. They do that here like in The Simpsons episode where everyone's involved in one crazy night. The problem again stems from that I barely care about the MCs enough and while there exists setup, you only get to know so much before it's over. It took episode 3 for me to give somewhat a fuck and even then they had to rush the climax all for a shitty reveal that it was a prequel this whole time. Giving Progressive its credit, at least we got time to grasp the characters. Any interconnected throughline is all for the climax which misses the point of the story structure. In the end, it felt like nothing. Whether it's a positive or not that it was only three episodes is debatable, but man...

Haruko was still hot. Take your pennies for a nickel

Making this review wasn't so much about disliking Grunge as it was about saying the original Fooly Cooly wasn't a fluke. To say that is like saying the unique animation structure of Into the Spiderverse was a fluke that couldn't be utilized well anywhere else post-release. I don't hate Grunge or think it's the worst anime ever, but this didn't subside the disenfranchisement that stemmed from an OVA that could work as an anthology. Something is only lightning in a bottle when you otherwise don't paint forgettable story elements with average to subpar imagery and have The Pillows carry every scene with their music. If this wasn't FLCL, it was a pretty underwhelming anime. As it is, it's another sequel that mistakes having ambition and familiarity for being engaging and resonating.

2 Out Of 5; An Erectile Dysfunctional Season

#flcl grunge #flcl #fooly cooly #adult swim #toonami #anime #reviews #Good Stuff

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artificialqueens · 1 year ago

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🏳️‍🌈 The Miracle of Living Pt.1 (Bianca Del Rio/BenDeLaCreme ig??) - Lita

In this world we're just beginning To understand the miracle of living

Hello everyone! Welcoe to the long-awaited prequel to the Bitney San Junipero AU that I technically started writing five years ago (???) but recently decided to try and breathe new life into and complete. In theory this can stand alone as its own story with a few vague references to Black Mirror future tech sprinkled in, but it's really just setup to the main fic that kind of got away from me. The story has gotten a complete overhaul, so if anyone from Ye Olden Days remembers it - please do stick around and read this new version, I promise it's better.

Massive thank you to @veronicasanders for giving me the kick up the ass required to get this story back off the ground, throwing her ideas at me, and being my Google when it comes to divorce court and the American college system. Love you mom - I hope this story is everything you'd dreamed of <3

Summary: Bianca is twenty-one, flunking college, and - thanks to a night of drunk bad decision-making - she's pregnant with her gay best friend's baby.

Los Angeles, California

January 17th, 2022

“BEN!”

Bianca’s furious voice rings out through the small apartment. She’s sitting on the toilet with her pajama pants and underwear around her ankles, willing the second blue line to disappear. If anything, it’s getting darker.

“Uh…yeah?” The reply comes from the other side of the bathroom door.

“I thought you said you wore a fucking condom!”

“I did!” Ben protests. Then, meek and cautious: “...It might have split.”

“It might have what?”

Two and a half months ago, Bianca and Ben had gone out drinking to commiserate the ends of their respective relationships - Ben had found out about his long-term boyfriend’s secret Grindr profile and dumped him, then Bianca’s longest-lasting FWB had called it quits with her less than a week later. When they got home, drunk and dumb and miserable, they’d started making out with each other on the couch - as a joke, just for something to do. And then, since they were shitfaced and apparently didn’t know any better, one ‘joke’ led to another, and they’d woken up naked in Ben’s bed. They had laughed it off the morning after, hunched at the kitchen table over alka-seltzer and black coffee - too much liquor, too many emotions. Shit happens.

And then tonight, Bianca had mentioned offhand that she was incredibly overdue her period, and suggested going out to buy a test half as a joke. Ben had gone along with it a little too willingly, and he’d been overly-energised and super fucking weird on the walk to the drugstore. Really, Bianca should have known something was up when he detoured via the liquor store across the street, and came back with two bottles of tequila.

“Ben, are you fucking kidding me?” Bianca says through her teeth.

“I was gonna tell you,” Ben replies, sounding flustered. “Is the door locked? Can I come in?”

Bianca wants to say no, but it was Ben’s curiosity about her vagina that got them here in the first place, so who cares about whether or not he sees her now? She reaches over to turn the lock. Ben shuffles into the room in his leopard-print boxers and an oversized pajama shirt, and perches on the edge of the bathtub, looking at the floor.

Part of Bianca wants to burst into tears - another part of her wants to scream until she throws up. Not now. Not fucking now - not like this. She’s twenty-one; Bianca doesn’t even know that she wants a goddamn kid at all, forget about one fathered by her gay best friend.

“Look, I didn’t notice until after we were done. And I didn’t want to freak you out - I figured it would probably be nothing, and then there was never a good time, and then you told me you were late and I…”

“You’re a faggot, we were hammered, we fucked because we thought it would be funny - if you knew that there was any chance whatsoever that you’d knocked me up, you should have fucking told me!” Bianca snarls through gritted teeth.

Ben doesn’t say anything for a moment. He doesn’t really react either. He just sits there and looks at her; composed, taking it in.

Bianca met Ben at a theater summer camp when they were sixteen. Ben had just moved from Seattle; he was about to start junior year at the private school across town. They led fundamentally different lives - Bianca had found herself seethingly jealous of him and his cakewalk of a fucking existence when she first met him, resolved that she had no other choice but to hate him on premise. But they’d been assigned as duet partners for the end-of-summer showcase and, faced with no other choice but to get along with him, she’d discovered that they were fucking made for each other. Ben didn’t mind that Bianca was kind of a bitch; he laughed at her jokes, he seemed to understand her. All three qualities she’d never experienced from other kids her age. One juvenile performance of Waltz for Eva and Che later, and she’d found an apparent friend for life.

And then, once high school drew to a close and Bianca was confronted head-on with the unblinking abyss of her future and its hopelessness, he’d offered her an exit route. He was freaked out by the idea of sharing a dorm with a stranger, so his dad had eventually relented after months of begging to privately rent an apartment - he just needed a roommate. She’d never expected that that offer would land her here.

“So, you’re pregnant?” He asks cautiously.

“Yeah - no shit, Sherlock.”

“Do you think you should take another one? To make sure or whatever?” Ben asks. Bianca presses the heel of her hand to her temple, still not breaking eye contact with the pregnancy test.

“Nope - that looks pretty positive to me,” Bianca shows it to him, wiping the mist of stress-sweat from her brow. Ben pulls a vaguely disgusted face. There’s a moment of pause - Bianca bites her lip, struggling to make sense of the messy cocktail of emotions swirling around inside her head.

“Are you okay?” Ben tries to take Bianca’s hand. It feels weirdly violating to have someone touching her while she’s sitting on the toilet. She swats him away.

“I think so. I need a little time to get my head around…everything.” Bianca grits her teeth.

All the scary new problems are dawning on her all at once, like she’s being descended on by a swarm of wasps. College. How to tell her parents. Hospital bills. College again. The apartment is too small for another person. She’ll probably be a shitty mother. Ben. Ben’s pending status as an absent father. She’s never changed a diaper before. College. Fucking college.

She’s currently scraping through year number four of her two-year community college program. Which, as it turns out, only takes two years if you aren’t working full-time to try and keep yourself fed and housed. Ben’s impending graduation from USC - full ride for a screenwriting major, family that gave a shit about him - made that feel even more grim.

This whole convoluted, stupid journey to something better had felt both never-ending and deeply hopeless for the last thirty-six months, and now the whole endeavor is decisively fucked. Even if she does make it to that prophesied something better - enough credits to earn her a spot in the fashion merchandising major she’d been declined acceptance to straight out of high school - there’s no way she can handle real college with a fucking screaming infant permanently attached to her. She can feel the dream crumbling in her hands.

Bianca makes a silent resolution that she’s not putting her own kid - who still feels very much like a hypothetical even though it very much isn’t - through the same shit. You’re eighteen now, you’re not our problem any more. It really didn’t help that every screaming argument with her mom in the leadup to her high school graduation had been silently spectated by her brother - in all his uneducated, unemployed, twenty-seven year old glory - from his position fossilized into the living room couch with his PlayStation controller in his hand. We’re not paying for you to stay in this house and fuck your life up - why her specifically?

Her desire not to be their problem had trailed her from NOLA to LA with Ben, and that was its own issue. She leaves on her terms and she’s abandoning her family, even though it was their sharp insistence that she got a job or an apartment or fucking something else that didn’t involve her living at home and taking up too much space that had pushed her in that direction in the first place. What the fuck was there for her at home anyway? Community college and shitty waitressing jobs? At least she could do the same shit against a prettier backdrop on the other side of the country.

Bianca realizes she’s staring dementedly at the test in her hand again. She sniffs, trying to blink away tears she hadn’t noticed forming.

“I really didn’t see being a single mom in my life plan,” she mutters - thinking out loud.

Except she had. In her bleaker moments - the ones in which she was seventeen and terrified of what would happen if she never got out of her hometown. She hadn’t had that nightmare since she and Ben had packed his car and left at the beginning of September four years ago.

“Who says you have to be a single mom?” Ben tilts his head, reaching a hand out for her again.

Bianca scoffs.

“What? No- Ben, I really don’t want to date you - one night was bad enough.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. But like…if you’re gonna go through with this, I’m not just leaving you by yourself to do it. Both of us did something dumb, and now we’re here - so, both of us should have to parent the consequence.”

There’s a quiet, sympathetic smile on Ben’s face. Bianca still wants to fucking kill him. She eyes him up, searching for any hints of deception or fake-niceness. Surprisingly, he passes the on-the-spot analysis.

“You’re just saying that so I stop being mad at you.”

“No! Anyway, I can’t let you raise it by yourself - I love you, but the world really, really doesn’t need two of you.”

“Ha-ha, go suck a dick,” Bianca rolls her eyes. She can’t help but crack a smile.

“If this is what happens when I try to go outside my comfort zone, then yeah, that’s what I’m sticking to.”

****

2nd May, 2022

“That was less excruciating than I thought it would be,” Bianca arches her back as she perches on the edge of the bed, stretching out. Her hair is still elaborately styled; what little of her makeup had survived the day still on her face.

She’d abandoned her dress on the floor the second that they got to their hotel room. She’s basically naked, which Ben seems perplexingly unbothered by; married, heterosexual life seems to have changed him quicker than she thought it would. It’s a relief, finally being alone with him. She’d have preferred to actually be alone, but after a day of forced smiles and overwhelm, he was better than nothing.

“Absolutely,” Ben nods, sitting down to untie his shoes. He’s still wearing his tux - his black curls are coiffed back from his face, and he’d almost pass for straight, were it not for his meticulously groomed eyebrows. “I mean, I could have done with maybe seventy percent less beer and sports talk from your dad - I was starting to think he was onto me.”

“I thought everyone knew there’s no home runs in football - that’s not a gay thing, you’re just dumb.”

The shotgun wedding hadn’t really been a part of the plan, but after Bianca’s mom had found out that she was pregnant, and then proceeded to call her non-stop for weeks in order to berate her for bringing shame on the family like it was the fucking 1800s, Ben had suggested it. Her mother’s bizarre and endlessly changing standards of behavior continue to baffle Bianca.

The decision to go ahead with it seemed a bit weird, but ‘weird’ had become a default preset of Bianca’s existence since January. Ben had thrown himself into the organization with immediate, over-the-top passion - opening up Pinterest and starting on the moodboard five minutes after Bianca had agreed to it. It had kept him entertained and out of the way, which was nice - he’d already started reading parenting books, and was being a little overbearing about prenatal vitamins and whether or not Bianca had made her birth plan yet.

Outside of picking out her dress, Bianca hadn’t really had to do or think about anything. Marrying a gay man had its perks. She’d had a brief reprieve from Ben’s preemptive helicopter parenting, which gave her more energy to focus on finding bigger apartments, since otherwise the kid would be sleeping in the closet, and trying to convince her job that no, four weeks definitely wasn’t enough maternity leave.

The wedding day had been quietly excruciating - her family, her mom specifically, engaging in that grim unspoken facade of keeping up appearances. Pretending that everything was completely fine and normal, denying any knowledge of Bianca’s pregnancy when asked about it. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so fucking normal for her. The atmosphere had been thorny, and Bianca had spent most of the day choking back alcohol-free prosecco and waiting for it to be over.

Ben’s family - who seemed confused but generally enthusiastic about the whole ordeal, probably only half-buying Ben’s assertion that he was actually bi and Bianca was definitely the one - seemed to like Bianca though, and that was refreshing. Some kind of normalcy in As Yet Unnamed Kid’s extended family was deeply necessary. They, and Ben himself, had been the only bearable part of the whole thing. Plus they’d fronted most of the expenses and organized the reception at their country club, which was a damn sight better than the social hall of the church that Bea’s family pretended to attend.

“Anyway, I’ve got proof that we’ve fucked at least once, so I don’t think anyone was super suspicious,” Ben continues as Bianca flops back onto the plush bed, letting out a heavy sigh. “How is she doing?”

“She’s fine - she let Mommy keep all of her food down today, so that’s something,” Bianca says.

She’s kind of starting to show now; although just to the point where she looks spectacularly bloated, rather than recognisably pregnant. They didn’t actually know what gender she was yet - but Bea had a feeling. Maybe it was more of a hope, actually; if it was a boy, Ben got to pick the name, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about calling it Raphael.

The kid had been a little bitch recently - whenever Bianca tried to complain about it, Ben would just laugh and remind her that she clearly took after her mom. After a lot of smugness about how she’d not had morning sickness at all, it hit her like a truck for some reason the moment she hit her second trimester. She’d spent the better part of the month before the wedding bent over a toilet bowl. Bianca is already pretty fucking sick of being pregnant, and she’s not even halfway done - she’s always tired, and her boobs hurt, and she misses comfortable sleep and coffee. She thought that nine months with no booze would be the hard part, but dragging herself through life without caffeine is proving to be the real kicker.

“This is weird,” Bianca muses, staring up at the ceiling.

“What’s weird?” Ben turns to look at her, eyes landing on and then immediately flashing away from her exposed tits.

“Try and think about it for like, slightly longer than you wanna think about it. You’re my husband, and I’m pregnant with your kid,” she says plainly. “In what universe was that ever something either of us would have wanted a year ago?"

“Okay, so maybe you’re kind of messy and annoying, and you talk with your mouth full like, all the time and it’s really gross, but I can think of worse people to spend the rest of my life with,” he shrugs. Bianca swats at him with a pillow.

“Thanks a lot.” She aims for pissed, but a smile cracks its way through. “Anyway, it’s not the rest of our lives - play pretend for a few years, then split up and go and live our truths or whatever once she moves out, like we agreed,” Bianca says. Ben nods knowingly.

That was another aspect of things that she was a little hesitant about. Ben had meant what he said about sticking around and raising the kid, but they’d always planned for something more like coparenting. They’d have the baby, and then grow the fuck up and get their own relationships and apartments and lives while splitting custody.

So, the sham marriage thing had interfered with that master plan quite a fucking lot. The situation had divulged into a years-long commitment to lying to people - no dating, since what was gonna happen when the kid started talking and blabbed to whatever set of grandparents about Daddy’s boyfriend? They were gonna be stuck living together for the foreseeable. So, even more keeping up of fucking appearances, which Bianca can’t stand doing it. But the ring on her finger is a glaring, expensive sign that she’s already committed.

They’d talked about it already; pretend to everyone, including the kid, that everything was entirely fine and normal until she was old enough to understand it, get a divorce in about eighteen years, and go their separate ways while continuing to be friends if they could still stand the sight of each other. Easy.

“Thinking about it like that just makes it sound worse,” Ben leans back to lie next to her, loosening his tie. “It’s gonna be fine. One step at a time.”

“Sure,” Bianca replies, distant.

“I mean,” Ben rolls over onto his side, lowering his eyelids into an expression that Bianca imagines is supposed to be seductive. “It is our wedding night - how about round two?”

“Ew - no, never.” Bianca cracks a smile, pushing him away. Ben laughs.

“Thank god, I barely got through saying that without puking.” He starts unbuttoning his shirt and glancing around the expansive bridal suite - still a mess from Bea getting ready that morning. “Do you want me to take the couch?”

Bianca thinks for a second.

“Nah - that doesn't feel fair. I’ve been averaging getting up to pee about ten times a night though, so you can look forward to that.” She looks down at her belly, putting both hands around her barely-noticeable bump. “I hope you know you’re already a gigantic pain in my ass, baby.”

****

September 29th, 2022

Ben had left to go and get coffee - which is probably a good thing, since Bianca was getting tired of looking at him. He’d been…way too intensely supportive, to an extent that she’d found a little smothering. But at least he’d been there. Throughout the last nine months, Bianca had been worried that he was eventually going to get sick of her shit and leave her to deal with it by herself. She’d given him no shortage of shit to get sick of.

The epidural hasn’t quite worn off yet; Bianca has no idea what sort of state her pussy is in, and she’s not sure she wants to know. She’s sweaty and exhausted, but she feels…good. For some reason.

Her water had broken that morning. Ben had been at work - fatherhood looming over him and in desperate need of something more secure than his old three shifts a week at TGI Fridays, he’d picked up a job doing data entry or some other boring crap in an office full of middle-aged straight women about two months ago. Apparently it had been hilarious to watch his reputation as the super fun token gay guy shatter in real time when he’d announced to his boss in front of most of his coworkers that he had to leave because his wife had just gone into labor.

Yeah, he’d been fucking insufferable with the constant ‘you’re doing amazing’s, but he was trying his best. Bea couldn’t exactly be mad at him - he’d just put up with eight hours of her screaming bloody murder and telling everyone who came near her to go fuck themselves. And she’s pretty sure she’d been gripping his hand so tightly she came close to breaking a couple of his fingers.

The room is quiet now. It’s bliss, compared to the chaos of the last few hours - the mad rush of doctors and nurses and blood and sweat and swearing. It’s getting dark outside, the glow of the city lights flickering through the thin curtains. There’s a plastic crib next to Bianca’s bed, with a pink label on its side. Adore Del Rio, 6lbs 3oz.

No matter how disgusting and tiring her day has been - and it was really tiring, and really, really fucking disgusting - a sense of enormous, beautiful calm had washed over Bianca when she held her daughter for the first time. Her daughter.

She’d never felt anything like this before, looking down at the tiny, squishy, pink bundle in her arms. She’s asleep now, wrapped in a blanket and held to Bea’s bare chest. She’s so…little, and so delicate, Bianca thinks as Adore - her fucking daughter - wriggles and murmurs, reaching up for her with one perfect, miniature hand. The delicate curls of her wispy brown hair, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest as Bianca holds her close - she can’t believe that she fucking made her. She’s so perfect, and so goddamn fucking small - and Bianca feels both blissfully zen, and absolutely ready to tear anybody who tries to take Adore away from her limb from limb.

She’s barely been here for an hour, and Bianca loves her more than she’s ever loved anything else before.

*****

March 18th, 2041

“Did you finish your homework last night?”

“Yes.” Adore, lacking in any semblance of enthusiasm, grunts from the kitchen table; pulling out one of her earbuds and looking at Bianca with a mix of indignation and fury.

“Then how come I’m getting emails from the school - again - about you not turning it in?” Bianca places the last clean plate on the dishrack and turns around, leaning against the counter and drying her wet hands on the ass of her jeans. That fails to elicit any form of response from her asshole teenager, and she tries again. “Come the fuck on, Dorey- it’s like you don’t even want to graduate.”

“Maybe I don’t?” She tilts her head, shit-eating grin on her face. That was a deliberate attempt at pissing her off - Bianca has gotten pretty good in recent years at telling those apart from Adore pissing her off without meaning to, and she tries not to let it. Even if her blood is already quietly simmering.

“Oh, you absolutely do if you wanna keep living in this house-”

“Leave her alone, Bea.” Ben laughs, sitting opposite from Adore, as he looks up from the article he’s reading on his tablet.

He only got home from work about an hour ago - most of Bianca’s days off fall on weekdays, so she’s been at home all day, doing pretty much nothing of note until Adore got home from school. They’d had a minor screaming match about the state of Adore’s room - Bianca had threatened to withhold phone privileges and her car keys until Adore relented, threw out the fifteen water bottles she’d been accumulating on her nightstand, and hid the rest of her mess in the closet. Fuck it, good enough.

They only seemed to either argue or ignore each other when Ben wasn’t home which was…just fucking great. It made Bianca feel totally awesome about herself. But Ben is back, order has been restored, and Bianca is cleaning up after dinner like nothing had happened.

“Whose side are you on?” Bianca replies, faux-shocked. “Fucking traitor.”

“Clearly mine, because I’m his favorite,” Adore smirks. You don’t know the fucking half of it, Dorey.

Bianca isn’t saying anything, but the way that Adore is looking at her tells her that she probably still looks mad. This recurring point of tension is getting several million miles up Bianca’s ass.

Adore’s latest thing, with her last months of high school on horizon, has been threatening not to go to college. She’d gotten her applications in by some fucking miracle, and by even further fucking miracle had been accepted for a songwriting major at some prestigious music school that Bianca couldn’t remember the name of - and was now adamant that she wasn’t going, in favour of driving around the country with the ‘band’ that her and her dumbass friends had formed last summer, playing gigs in basements and doing god-knows what else.

Bianca feels like she knows on some level that this is all talk; of course Adore is gonna graduate and go, she’s not stupid. But she’s been in the midst of a prolonged rebellious phase since she was about thirteen. Every time they fight about it, Bianca wants to shake Adore and tell her you’re gonna fucking do this because I couldn’t, stop being fucking ungrateful - but her failed aspirations aren’t Adore’s fault.

It just annoys her. Adore, in every possible way, has had an easier life than Bianca ever did and she struggles not to hate her for it. Her future is available to her on a silver goddamn platter, she’s looking for reasons to not take it, and for fucking what? Being cool?

Ben, against what had seemed like all odds when they were in their twenties, had really fallen upwards from the joint error that had changed the trajectory of both of their lives. That first ‘pay the bills’ office job doing whatever-the-fuck had unlocked Ben’s secret talent for playing corporate ball, and a little less than eighteen years later he was the CFO of an LGBT charity, and making what Bianca deemed to be a fucking stupid amount of money. Enough to afford their too-nice house in a too-nice neighborhood in West LA, and Adore’s too-nice performing arts high school.

Bianca had climbed about as far up the ladder as she’d been able to, but given that she was a college dropout with no real experience in anything else, the depressing non-failure of retail store management was about the best she could manage. It wore her down; the feeling of uselessness and guilt as she inhabited this existence that felt a million miles above her means.

“This is insane - have you guys read about this new Cookie Heaven thing they’re trialing?” Ben looks up again, breaking the frosty silence - Bianca disinterestedly flicking through her phone, Adore disinterestedly pretending to finish her homework. “Guys?”

Ben had been bizarrely fixated on this emergent technology for the last year or so - some shit about consciousness transfers and virtual afterlifes that Bianca didn’t understand and didn’t care to. It made her skin crawl, not that she had any idea why. Truly, the rate at which Cookies as a principle had been developed, outlawed, un-outlawed, given rights, made illegal again but only in certain situations - it felt like it dominated the news, and with every possible turn it got weirder. Their trajectory had felt like trying to find a point for something that had been invented pointlessly. Criminal justice, entertainment, smart home tech, medical advances, god knows what else - Bianca just thought they were a bit macabre.

“Nope, don’t want to. It’s creepy.” Bianca shudders, kicking off the process of shutting him up about it before he talks about it too much and gets under her skin. “Is this like that chick who died in that AR art thing at Burning Man and got stuck in the Cloud? Because that freaked me the fuck out.”

“Why? I think it’s really nice. According to this, they’ve been successful with people who’ve been uploaded prior to death, so now they’re looking at trialing it for long-term coma patients, end-of-life care, people with Alzheimer’s - it could be really promising.”

“Absolutely not - when I die, let me rest in fucking peace.” Bianca pulls a face. “Don't throw some gross little computer clone of me into a weird simulation and force me to live forever - it’s weird. I don’t like it."

“Bianca, Cookies aren’t just computers-”

“It’s messed up.”

Adore shuffles uncomfortably in her seat, pushing her earbuds in further. Bianca half-watches her, pursing her lips.

“I think it’s sweet. It says in the article that if this trial thing works, then they’re going to look at options for letting family members visit,” Ben says a little wistfully.

“Ah.” It takes a moment of thought, but Bianca feels like an asshole.

“Look, I just think that if something like that had been around thirty years ago, it would have been…” he stops, not sure how to finish his sentence. Ben’s mom died when he was ten, and that tragedy has been underpinning Adore’s entire adolescence; his constant anxiety over something happening to himself or Bianca, not wanting his daughter to have to suffer through the same lifelong, unshifting grief. “Think about Adore-”

“Yeah - maybe think about me enough to not have this conversation right in fucking front of me?” Adore bolts to her feet, her hands clasped at her sides. Her eyes look moist. Bianca half-opens her mouth, trying to say something, but no words make their way out. “This is freaking me out - stop it!”

She scrubs at her eyes furiously with a balled fist, storming out of the room and letting the door swing shut behind her with a thud.

“Dorey-” Ben calls out weakly after her.

“What the fuck was that?” Bianca walks around the table, slumping down into the seat Adore had just been occupying. She hears Adore’s bedroom door slam from upstairs.

“I dunno - I guess that got a little heavy? I mean, who wants to sit around and listen to their parents talking about what’s gonna happen when they die?” Ben looks uncomfortable, chewing at his bottom lip. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Yeah,” Bianca replies distantly, not really listening.

“I do mean it, though.” Ben says, leaning across the table - looking past Bianca’s folded arms and frosty expression. “If I’d had some way to still talk to my mom - even if it wasn’t fully real, even if it was just a simulation - I’d have wanted that. And I don’t think it’s fair that we should stop Adore from having that chance.”

“What, so I have to commit to being alive forever even when I don’t want to, for her benefit? I don’t think she even likes me anymore, Ben - she wouldn’t care.” Bianca sounds more morose than she wants to, but it’s true. She loves Adore, but god knows the kid is going out of her way to make that difficult.

“Believe me, she would.” Ben looks at her a little too seriously. “I’m just saying I think we should look into it.”

“Look into it all you want - I’m not doing it.”

“Seriously, Bea-” Ben is looking at her with puppy eyes and it’s making her feel nauseous. “For Adore?”

There’s loud music blasting upstairs, and Bianca is wondering if it’s Adore picking up an old habit of putting her speakers on when she’s crying, so that nobody can hear her. She wants to go and check on her, but she’s glaringly aware that any interference from her is perceived as a pending attack by Adore right now - how powerless she feels hurts. Bianca looks at the floor, picking at her cuticles.

“Fine.”

*****

August 4th, 2042

“So, I’m sure this isn’t gonna come as a shock to you, but your dad and I got a divorce.”

Adore’s eyes practically pop out of her head as she spits her coffee out. More of it gets on Bianca’s face than she would have liked.

“What?”

“I don’t think I left much room for interpretation there, Dorey,” Bianca grimaces, wiping secondhand iced latte off of her cheek with a napkin.

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Why the fuck did you get a divorce?” Adore looks sullen. Almost angry, actually.

Regardless of how different they’d seemed to become as she’d grown up, every so often Bianca was hit with a very, very strong reminder that Adore was her mother’s daughter. Calm and rational, per fucking usual.

She’d debated back and forth with Ben about who should tell her. They’d been dancing around the subject since June, when Adore had first come home for summer; practically rehearsing the conversation. Eventually they’d settled on Bianca - Ben had admitted himself that Bianca’s at times abrasive directness was the way forward. Adore didn’t hold well with people pussyfooting around her, and Ben was always a little too delicate with her feelings. He’d been the ideal Good Cop to Bianca’s bad one when Adore was little - but she was nineteen now, had moved out almost a year ago, and was as close to a real adult as she was realistically ever gonna be. She needed someone to be straight with her. And, well, out of the two of them, Bianca was probably the closest thing to straight. Even after nearly twenty years of marriage.

The split itself had been more than amicable, since years of planning had gone into it. The only slight point of contention had been, in the process of unpicking and rewriting both of their advanced directives, Ben had been pretty insistent on her keeping the part about San June-whatever-the-fuck - that weird Cookie Heaven thing which she’d hoped would just be a passing fad when Ben brought it up last spring, but had only gained more traction and more apparent success.

She’d tried to reason with him about Adore being a grown-up now, and how she’d made it through the last year without shuffling off this mortal coil, and so their respective deaths were probably a far-future issue that they shouldn’t be so worried about right now, but it hadn’t flown. Bianca had spent long enough in lawyers’ offices debating bullshit to have any useful argument left in her. She’d thought the divorce process would be less of a nightmare since it was agreed upon by both parties prior to the fucking wedding, but apparently she’d thought wrong.

“Because we…” Bianca sighs, facepalming. Adore has tears in her eyes. Shit, she really hadn’t been expecting this. “Because he’s gay, Adore.”

Adore’s eyes pop again. Bianca clamps a hand over her mouth before she gets a chance to cover her in overpriced coffee again.

“Daddy’s gay?” Adore blurts out as soon as she manages to swallow.

“Duh?” That just tumbles out of Bianca’s mouth without any real thought. “Are you really telling me that you never suspected anything?”

“No? I thought he was just like…I dunno, really into theater. Did you just find out? Holy shit, are you okay?” Adore reaches for Bianca’s hand a little frantically. Bianca laughs, shaking her head.

“Nope - I’ve always known. Dorey, I…” she sighs again, realizing how ridiculous this sounds. “Listen, when a gay man and a bisexual live together, and they get really, really drunk this one time…”

“Ohmigod, you’re bi?”

How unobservant is this fucking kid?

“Yeah - surprise. Now you know why we were so fucking chill about it when you cut all your hair off and started begging for a pair of Doc Martens when you were twelve,” Bianca says, chuckling.

A confused look washes over Adore’s face. “But I…you always seemed so in love.”

“We decided we were gonna get married and pretend to be normal so that we didn’t fuck you up,” Bianca shrugs. “Which clearly worked super well.”

Adore cracks a smile. It feels good to see her smile.

Since Adore moved out for college - miracle of fucking miracles - the rift between them that her teenage years had created seemed to fill itself in. Bianca felt closer to her; felt the warmth of her love without hesitation or denial for the first time in years. She was like a different person. Happy - blossoming into herself. She’d started posting her music on social media, and was getting enough buzz to land gigs here and there. And she hadn’t just stopped pushing Bianca away, but had started actively reaching out for her. She called her at least once every couple of days because she missed her; messaged her constantly. Just frivolous little updates about her days, or pictures of dogs that she’d seen - silly little shit. But it felt good.

She’d worried that it wouldn’t last. But Adore had come home for summer, and as it trailed to an end, there’d been no second coming of their years-long bitch-feud. Everything had been fucking glorious.

“Boo, you’re mean,” Adore says playfully.

“For the record, we were good at faking being in love because we both love you,” Bianca says, reaching out to take Adore’s hand. She’s bitten off two of her acrylics again - Bianca is a little suspicious about which two exactly, and briefly debates calling her out for it. Whatever - she’s an adult, she can do what she wants. But Bianca is taking her to get a manicure once they get done oversharing in the middle of this cafe, because it looks like shit. “That’s not gonna change. But you’re probably gonna end up with stepparents.”

Adore looks down. She’s always done this cute little smirky thing when she’s embarrassed - eyes fixed to the floor, quietly smiling to herself. Bianca loves it.

“Are you dating anyone right now?”

Bianca rolls her eyes.

“We’re not dating-dating. But yeah - her name is Katya, I met her online.”

“Is she hot?”

“None of your business - she’s too old for you anyway,” Bianca shoots Adore a warning look. “Your dad was on a date last night, too - some guy called Darius, apparently it went really well. But I’m gonna look into getting his room soundproofed.”

“Ewwww,” Adore clamps her hands over her ears, laughing. “You’re being gross. Stop being gross.”

“Don’t ask questions you’re not prepared to hear the answer to,” Bianca grins. “Are you good now? Or do you feel like spitting coffee all over me again? I really enjoyed it that first time.”

“Honestly? I always wondered why none of my friends’ parents had their own bedrooms,” Adore thinks out loud. Bianca shakes her head, chuckling.

“I love you so much, you fucking moron.”

Pride Challenge Points: 10,312

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greetings-humans · 1 year ago

Text

introductory post (includes some interaction boundaries, more details on me (ao3 acc, etc) & a dni under the cut)

yeah it's about time I made one of those ig (disclaimer: I'll edit this, if/when the need comes)

hello there! im deelay! you can call me dee, if you want! [btw if you know my irl name, not here you don't unless we're DM-ing]

gender is so weird tbh but please use they/she for me!

for details on what to use when talking to me or about me (like pronouns and gendered terms etc) you can go here

-im a young adult and that's like all imma say age-wise. however please take that into account when interacting with my blog! some of the reblogs/posts here might not be what I'd have been okay with seeing when I was like under 14 or something. so yknow. exercise some modicum of caution please.

-currently in uni, studying to get an english degree (every new thing I learn about teaching makes me want to yell at some of the teachers I've known/had, did they even study in uni? did they even keep in touch with pedagogical studies?? definitely not, form what I can tell)

-I'm technically a writer? like I write,,, supposedly lmao. like all the greats, the one thing I never seem to do is yknow write-

I write sometimes, let's say. and I'm also really interested in writing my own crime fiction novel one day. but that's for some day in the future lmao

-definitely a reader tho (yes ao3 and i are in a committed relationship)

-im also very very aroace, so like, blanket disclaimer, even if you might think I'm thirsting over a character, im really not and it makes me uncomfortable when others think so (and tell me that) so yeah lol

my interests and fandoms are. a lot. for example (and in no particular order):

the magnus archives: my first podcast! as of September 2024 I've started s4 and all I want is to relisten to really see how much everyone has changed in the span of 4 seasons🥺🥺 mind your spoilers, I don't always tag! and if you're in s1 frankly just persevere until halfway through s1 or s2 at least before interacting, there's a lot of spoilers for the setting going around because the actual explanation doesn't come until quite later even if u kinda figure some things out on your own

merlin (bbc): i was watchin s2 in August 2024! i finally decided to pick this up again and properly watch it! esp since i really wanna read The Once and Future Kings by tjmcharg & And like the cycle of the year, we begin again by katherynefromphilly and i can't do that if i watched the show lmao

DC (the bats, mostly)

windbreaker (satoru nii): im constantly reading the new manga chapters as they come out so beware spoilers! the anime is really cool too<33 talk to me about my children (sakura, tsubakino, umemiya, kaji, hiragi, suo) and all of the other children ofc anytime!

riordanverse (pjo, hoo, magnus chase, a little bit toa, pjo show [which was def better than the movies but needs more screen time to fix up the pacing and add more depth in the appropriate moments])

fullmetal alchemist brotherhood! (i used to have roy on my pfp, he's my favorite character! i also wanna write a huge character analysis essay on him but uni responsibilities mean that's very slow going). im collecting the hardcover editions of the manga slowly, and i plan on reading the manga properly as i buy them!

star wars (prequels, kotor, clone wars)

criminal minds: (im at early s14 as of July 2024, so mind your spoilers humans) (obsession gone dormant, watch me not think about cm for months at an end until like exam season or something)

jujutsu kaisen: lowkey refuse to finish s2 but I know what's happening by the end of it and I've given up on the storyline so spoil away, I'll just ignore you and live my life in my fanfic sandbox :)

yuri on ice is an old love of mine (ice adolescence😭😭 one day😭😭 oh one day😭😭 so that was a fucking joke, mappa count your days and also im stealing viktor you can't have him, im gonna write iceado WITHOUT YOU) (fuck you mappa, I urge all creative yoi fans that think they wanna try doing their own version of iceado to go ahead and give it a go!)

haikyuu!!: I'm all caught up, manga and anime-wise! also patiently waiting for the last (😭) movie that should've been a season but anyways they better not fuck this up too much- (update: battle of the garbage dumpster was wonderful even if they couldn't animate everything... it was just so short. I really hope someone decides to adapt it into a proper season at some point)

bungo stray dogs is also an old but semi-revived interest of mine (im pretty much up to date with the manga, just haven't read the light novels)

tian guan ci fu / heaven official's blessing (as of June 2024, I've finished s2 and tgcf is amazing it's wonderful, I've started book 1 and am currently procrastinating on reading it)

there's like. so much more

sooo muuuuch moooreeee

so I'll just let you figure the rest of it out

If you wanna see some of my thoughts without infinite scrolling, you can also search for the tag "deelay words".

Another tag of mine is "deelay's tbr" (which stands for "to be referenced") which you'll find at posts that really make me Think™ and that I want to keep in mind when I do anything creative with the characters involved.

When interacting with my blog, if you want to avoid spoilers at all costs, I suggest blocking the fandom tag because what you consider spoilers might not be what I consider spoilers if we're at different arcs of whatever that media is.

That said, I'd also appreciate it if you gave me a heads up on spoilers in any asks.

if you're here for any of my fics then well.

if you're here for pjo, um. those fics are truly discontinued/on indefinite hiatus. that hasn't changed. I watched the show and I'm actually reading pjo fics again from time to time so if I get inspired enough and manage to plan out a decent fic out of Percy Jackson Revealed,,,, then maybe there shall be a fic. But!!! I have no idea what the ending is gonna be, and without an ending I'm doing nothing because the chances of me dropping the fic (again) would be higher than my anxiety during exam season (aka very very high)

if you're here for the man behind neal caffrey tho!! hi, there. I am working on that sequel, don't worry. it's just long (im at like 7k or so iirc? and im not even halfway through yet) and I'm also working on uni and this other writing project I have going on. feel free to send me an ask with any questions or comments or whatever. august 2024 update: this project is very slow going tbh! i think i need to recalibrate some of my plans because it's so tiring to keep writing some of the stuff I've planned for. white collar crime cases are more tedious than expected. im also like on and off working on a double homicide case fic for criminal minds (that I think I'll rework to become an original thing) and it's coming out much more easily😭

unnamed grishaverse project: yeah so, I have a project going with my friend noel @fifteenth-entity, we're fixing the darkling! this fic will take place like around 50-100 years pre-alina, and will feature the darkling doing darkling things while that generation's most prominent grisha (aka a bunch of queers) also do things that may or may not affect the darkling. and his views. and personality. there may or may not be character development in the works. (there is, he gets better). this fic is canon divergent before canon even happens. the entire plot of shadow and bone will be eventually reworked. (also, no darklina, no darkling romance, in general, this boy needs to get mentally healthy first and foremost and I'm also writing him as aroace sooo) [for more info on this just search "unnamed grishaverse project", it's the tag I've used in like the only post about this. do feel free to send me an ask about this tho!!]

ice adolescence-esque fic: mappa fucked up majorly with canceling iceado and im supremely annoyed, mad, and upset. it just so happens that I was in the middle of my yoi renaissance era when the news came out so with my obsession going strong, I really wanted to try doing something with iceado. this is not going to be a very linear story, im going around and about in different points in time. the first narrative follows viktor at 17ish deciding to try to ratify the quad flip and it includes some insight on his friends and family (who are OCs, im not sorry, his backstory is so barren, i had to!) and on how he ended up so alone by the time yoi was happening. the second narrative is post-yoi viktor coming back to russia ft yuuri, yuri & yakov. this is not a russian gov-positive fic. russian culture is very interesting and some russians are wonderful people —diversity is a thing, after all— but to be perfectly clear, fuck the russian government and everyone supporting their actions. what they're doing is inhumane. [posts about this project will be tagged as "dee's iceado"! ]

Another thing: If you have a genuine, not malicious or mean-spirited, question, feel free to send me an ask. Keep it chill, though! if you try to pick a fight i will delete the ask for the first time, but on strike 2, you're blocked.

i like to think that I'm open to discourse on some topics but not if you're starting out all aggressively cause if you're aggressive, I will be defensive (while privately having a panic attack) and we're not gonna get anywhere. Not that I can't get aggressive sometimes when I'm annoyed/offended or sth, like I'm not perfect but this is a general rule of a thumb yknow. Try not to be aggressive. or prepare for an aggressive conversation if you are.

so. once again for the people in the back

If you're here to pick a fight with me then gtfo please.

I don't like fighting, it makes me anxious, so save us both the trouble and be as civil as you can be if you have a disagreement with me. don't forget to check my dni tho. I'm not gonna sit around having basic arguments about my rights to queerness as an aroace person or some stupid shit like that.

that said, unless I'm literally at your post saying shit you disagree with. don't come at me. literally block me. it's fine. I quite literally do not mind or care. like, if you saw my post or reblog and decided I suck then just block me will you?

Moreover, if you ever want fic recs for a fandom I'm in, you're definitely welcome to send me an ask! but if you don't feel like talking, anything I will ever tell you is straight from my ao3 bookmarks. sooo, feel free to hunt around those! [in case the link isn't working for you, my ao3 username is Justice_not_Revenge]

ao3 disclaimer: anything before 2021 is not necessarily something I claim. So like don't think I'm into this thing or that I'm passionate about this ship just because in 2019 I bookmarked 100 fics with it, people tend to grow and change so yeah.

some generic DNIs

if you're anti-lgbtq+ in any way (cmon im queer myself this one should be obvious)

if you support AI art or AIs stealing fic content (if you're the type to use other people's OCs in character.ai with no permission, then like go away and don't you dare touch my OCs without talking to me and getting my explicit permission first)

racists, ableists, sexists/misogynists, incest shippers, pro-shippers, etc

literally anyone who thinks violating someone's concent is nice and fun and quirky

okay that's all! thank youuu-

#introductory post #dni #btw im treating my dni like a fucking contract which is why it's a bit weirdly detailed #im just covering at least a lot of my bases #i don't wanna leave a lot of loopholes there and all #you can tell from this that I'm a) a very organized person and b) a very anxious person lol #it's ye good old perfectionistic tendencies rising up even for an tumblr intro post #did i get an A in tumblr intro posts 🥺🥺🥺 (/j)

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winterssystem · 2 years ago

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WAIT WHAT THE PREQUEL IS TECHNICALLY A SEQUEL?? I need to watch the prequel ig wtf

I honestly feel bad for the people who stopped watching Supernatural and consuming Supernatural related content bc the experience knowing everything about that hell show and the actor drama and now the prequel that’s technically a sequel is so unmatched I love being clinically insane

#spn #supernatural #the winchesters

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fallinginreversefanblog · 2 months ago

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Falling In Reverse live in Denver/CO, 9/23

After St. Louis/MO, Denver, Colorado followed. Falling In Reverse had a day off, and then they hit the JunkYard on Sep 23rd, 2024. Just like those from St. Louis, the Denver crowd also said they have never experienced a more brilliant, intense and energic show than Ronnie's before.

Via Instagram

As y'all can ee on the pictures and videos, Ronnie was still keeping the Saraya action figure in his pants pocket, all time during the show. There had been a lot of footage made. Ronnie's stage wear remained the comfy one, with a shift cap compared to the Emo Cowboy one.

Via Ronnie's Instagram account

You can see an incredible total view of the stage and the crowd by @cjgaskey, the band photographer. Ronnie Radke shared the pictures both above and below the video.

youtube

There are a lot of other videos on YouTube since, now I brought you "Prequel" and "Voices In My Head".

Sime more pictures, this time with Ronnie:

Via Instagram

In the song "Watch The World Burn" Ronnie kept the sweet introducing words about the "Ronnie Radke's Cult" which he started in St. Louis ❤️ (you can watch the full 5m song in a separate post)

youtube

This time the crowd selfie was let to be posted by Marc Okubo, new guitarist of FIR. I can already say it out loud, the band (and Ronnie) seem to have undertaken this member change by now. No one else posted it, so I had to share this overwrittenm low res IG story version.

Via Marc's Instagram stories (exp.)

Since the Denver show was over, we came to know by Ronnie's announcement that Phoenix/AZ has been postponed to October 15th. Ronnie said in an IG video (I posted separately) that they had technical difficuties, which most probably means that due to the extreme heats in Arizona (>110°) FIR couldn't have used fire in the performance. Ronnie said they're gonna return with a full quality show in October, right following Aftershock.

Via Instagram

This way the next show will be the one and only greatest, LOS ANGELES/CA, on Sep 26th, held in the KIA FORUM, literally a 19K capacity stadium headlining!!! ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

#Youtube

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ashe-hallow · 4 years ago

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#I finished my short story #except for like the very end #I just don't know how to handle it #like technically it's a prequel for BotP #But it has spoilers ig so I wouldn't be able to release it until after like book 4 #I think I'm gonna have to end it in a way that's kind of vague #so that it can stand on its own #even though it's not meant to

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thats-it-im-fallingdown · 2 years ago

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I’ve finally reached season 7 of the clone wars. it’s been an awesome ride! here are my thoughts as a first time watcher of all things prequel-era. after this, I’ll watch revenge of the sith (yes, for the first time. yes i live under a rock. no there is no room for anyone else. find your own.) and Star Wars rebels, and I’ll have finally watched all of the main Star Wars stuff!

Ahsoka’s walkabout arc

-i love the martez sisters. i have an older sister myself, and while our dynamic is pretty different, they didn’t do too bad at capturing the feel of sister duos.

-español subtitles, my beloved. it is so good to have you back in my arms after being without you for season 6. I missed you more than you will ever know. you may not be a perfect translation of the audio, but i love you flaws and all

-I’m definitely skewed from coming to this straight after crystal crisis on Utapau, but the animation is really improved. Rafa’s hair actually moves and people’s lips move more naturally.

-I’m glad that ahsoka left that tube top behind. i hated how impractical her clothes looked in the early seasons

-I’ve reblogged a post about this a bit ago, but i wanted to say this myself. the way the jedi have taken the reputation hit for the senate is interesting to see from the perspective of your average citizen of coruscant. To trace, the war is just life getting harder for her and her sister. she wants to escape to the stars— but that’s where the fighting is happening. and the burden of blame shouldn’t fall so heavily upon the jedi. the Jedi order and it’s principles are themselves victims of the war.

-seeing Bo katan make an appearance was surprising, but ig she had to come back in eventually

-ahsoka’s plan in the final episode was so satisfying to watch. usually saying one thing to an enemy and another to a friend dialogue is super obvious, but it was done well here imo

-how could maul almost see her through the hologram? usually you only see other people, not their surroundings on the other end

-it’s really unlikely, but perhaps leaving her bike with them means the martez sisters will make another appearance. star wars loves cameos, i think it’s reasonable for me to hold out hope

The bad batch story reels

-I’m fond of the design of Anaxes. crunchy, crunchy glass. and a sky so pretty it was hard to focus on the dogfighting

-the way the bad batch pointedly makes fun of “regs” is interesting to me. it isn’t super mean spirited, but it’s biting and frequent enough to make me wonder how clones are perceived by civilians, and how they see themselves. from the clone bar on coruscant, we know there’s some, though admittedly little (because wartime) interaction with civilians who aren’t inhabiting the planets they fight on. you know philosophers in the gffa would be having a field day with the ethics of cloning soldiers. see, there’s some things in this universe you have to write off because of context— like the padawans technically being child soldiers. we can write that off because it’s a show that includes children in its target audience, and kids deserve to see themselves going on adventures. but this isn’t the case with clones. pong krell, for one. the famous “we’re clones sir, we’re meant to be expendable” among other lines, make it clear the essential humanity (lack of a better word) of the clones is in question by the inhabitants of the in-universe. in a roundabout way, I’m suggesting it’s possible the bad batch’s jabs at “regs” come from a place insecurity about their own individuality as much as it does a reaction to being shunned for not fitting in with their brothers. since they’re mutated, different, they have biological proximity to naturally born people. they’re similar to their progenitor, jango fett, but very distinct in personality and appearance, like how I’m similar and distinct from my parents.

-man, i don’t get why people rag on mace windu so much. he’s a generally good dude and a cool character. he’s firmly lawful good, which can be boring when it’s played wrong. windu is not played wrong. his character works, and i like the episodes where he’s gotten more screen time, and this is one of them.

-no disrespect if you like them, but i am. not sold on the bad batch. maybe things are different in the bad batch show, but here, they don’t feel like complete characters. like, this is a fine foundation for a four (five after echo joins) man band, but you’ve got to put those guys back in the oven they aren’t done yet. as I’ve rambled about above, I’m not averse to the concept of mutated clones because there’s some really neat potential to explore how clones and non-clones view one another and each other. the 100% success rate thing is pretty corny even for Star Wars, but i also don’t think tbb undermines the regular clones individualities, provided there’s some follow up on that how-does-clone-prejudice-work thing. what i am averse to is changing their facial features (mainly tech, but also crosshair) to be more typically white, like thinner noses, in an attempt to make them more visually distinct. the other aspects of their designs, physical and character-wise, make them plenty distinct. let them look like Morrison dammit! this is why I’m probably not going to watch tbb show. it was hard enough to sit through a four episode arc with them, i don’t think i can make it through a whole season.

-oo, foreshadowing anakin’s fall to the dark side when he kills trench. i love a good tragedy

-obi wan definitely knows padme and anakin are boning, right? who doesn’t know that they’re a couple at this point, honestly. and the ones who don’t should be able to figure it out pretty quick when padme’s pregnant and the father is ~unknown~ cmon.

Siege of Mandalore arc

-man hang on a minute. i need a minute alright

-i see potential for a short that follows what bo-katan and ahsoka have gotten up to in between oba dias and the siege. they’ve clearly gotten to know each other a little, and while it makes sense that we don’t waste any time on their relationship, it could be cool to see how their partnership developed. would also have the benefit of filling out how Bo-katan has progressed as a character.

-maul is so obsessed with obi wan and kenobi just.. doesn’t care all that much about his arch nemesis. yeah I killed him once, it didn’t stick. have fun fighting him ahsoka!

-you really don’t notice how much a character has grown on you until you realize you care about them deeply even when they have plot armor huh? yeah, ahsoka and rex have entrenched themselves in my heart.

-now, I only know revenge of the sith from cultural osmosis, but that’s enough to not only understand what’s going on off screen at the same time, but to effectively be in darth maul’s place. everything is falling to pieces and nobody but you can see it yet. the jedi, the republic, the separatists, all of it

-this arc got allll the crunchy visual effects. breaking glass, embers, smoke, the works. wish they didn’t make maul’s lightsaber bizarrely skinny

-I especially loved maul and ahsoka together in this. they parallel each other in a way that I hasn’t noticed before, how they’re both apprentices who failed (from a certain pov) in a way that saved themselves

-maul’s dialogue and voice acting is mwah mwah. he’s gentlemanly without being aristocratic, or becoming a cliche mob boss kind of character

-katee sackoff is truly perfect as bo katan, and I’m not just saying that because I had a crush on Starbuck in battlestar galactica. i cant imagine a better (voice) actress for the role

-hello, ursa wren. how have you been holding up among the hordes of aggressively blond blue eyed whites? there surely must be better ways to add Viking influence that aren’t making the mandalorians look like Swedish racists

-ahsoka technically isn’t a jedi, but in this arc it’s really obvious that she had the skill to be a jedi knight. she would’ve become one if she hadn’t left the order. her skill at adapting under high pressure and at combat (she’s a match for maul himself!) don’t let you forget that she is well past being at padawan level

-i’m sure i violated so many viewing guides by watching this before revenge of the sith but it worked out fine, so •_•

-the painted helmets….

-hey, hey. don’t cry. Fives saved rex and ahsoka, okay? think about that. his death wasn’t a complete waste in the end at least

-I’m looking forward to seeing what rex gets up to after this. i know he shows up in rebels, ahsoka too, which will also be interesting to watch

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