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eff4freddie · 4 months ago

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After She Left | Twelve

Words: 5.5k Explicit - 18+

You start to forge something new, while still sometimes struggling to move on from Joel. Shauna continues to try and ingratiate herself into Joel and Ellie's life, this time hatching a plan that might just muscle you out of the way. None of that matters, though, when Ellie disappears from the streets of Jackson.

Chapter warnings: Some smut to break up the angst! Oral (f receiving), praise kink, dirty talk, fingering Minors DNI. Then right back to the angst, sorry folks, Shauna being a dick, depictions of panic attacks and anxiety

Eleven| Series Masterlist | Thirteen

If he could just reach into his eye socket and push hard at the point above his temple, he might be able to ease the blooming ache. Joel sighed, rubbing instead at his jaw, feeling the strain of the muscle travel up his face.

Shauna sat at his kitchen table, in his kitchen, with her elbows up on the wood.

‘I just think it would be good for us to get to know each other better,’ she said, and Joel sighed.

‘She’s doin’ well with Teach, Shauna. I ain’t gonna disrupt that.’

Joel watched as Shauna’s eye’s narrowed, just slightly, just enough to make her features appear harsh and hollowed out in the early morning light.

‘You don’t think I’m as smart as that schoolteacher?’ she asked, and he would have happily reached a spoon up to pop the eye right out of the socket if it would relieve some of the pressure accumulating in it.

‘I think you’re smart just fine, but it’s not about that…it’s about what Ellie wants. What’s right for Ellie.’

‘What about what’s right for me, Joel?’ she asked, without hesitation, without even stopping to pretend like she cared about the teenager currently sequestered to the garage. ‘Do you think I like feeling like I’m…not welcome in my own home?’

‘You’re perfectly welcome, Shauna. I gave you my bedroom…’

‘And Ellie ran out to the studio the second she could, and you won’t share a room with me…’

‘You know what that’s about,’ he said, dismissing her as he shuffled, uncomfortable, on his seat. Had these chairs always been so hard on his back? He suddenly couldn’t remember.

Shauna took a long, slow exhale. Joel swore he could hear the whistle of it sliding out of her nostrils. ‘I don’t ask for much, Joel,’ she said, lowly. ‘This would mean so much for me and Ellie. I want to feel like…I want her to feel like…we’re a family.’

Joel considered this for a moment. He thought of you, weary to the bone on your front porch the night of the dinner party, trying as hard as you could to be his friend. Maybe he had asked too much of you, already. Maybe he had asked more than enough.

‘Why can’t it be…something else?’ he asked, taking too long to think of something that Shauna could reasonably teach Ellie, and coming up empty handed. He stretched his leg out, rolling his hips to try and get some circulation back into the cramping muscle. ‘Maybe she could hang out at Town Council, see how things work around here in a more…diplomatic sense.’

Shauna rolled her eyes. ‘Like I get invited to the inner sanctum…’ she said, and Joel coughed.

‘Well, you ain’t technically on Council…’ he prompted.

‘Yet,’ she said.

Joel let this pass. He had let so much pass, he realised. Why would he stop now.

‘Joel it’s not like I can teach her to shoot, or to cook, let’s be honest.’ At this Joel smiled a little, and watched as Shauna’s shoulders dropped, mirroring his expression. ‘I feel useless most of the time around here, and especially with her. But you heard what Teach said the other night, she likes reading. I can read. I can talk to her about books and things.’

Joel considered this. He’d never been a big reader himself, more interested in getting his hands on things, taking things apart, building them back up again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for Ellie to have an extra brain to pick around the place.

‘We could fit it into her schedule,’ Shauna said. ‘It wouldn’t have to be that much more than what she’s doing already.’

‘How you figure?’ Joel asked.

‘Well, if she swaps out some of her time with Teach for time with me,’ Shauna said, smiling brightly.

A door, just over Joel’s shoulder, slammed. He turned, startled by the sudden noise. He checked his six but couldn’t see any obvious movement. Turning back to Shauna he saw her expression had hardened before she caught his eye again and smiled.

‘Must have been the wind,’ she said, getting up to close the kitchen window.

You stretched, your back arching up off the mattress like a cat in the sun. Letting out a slow groan, you felt the dull ache between your thighs.

‘Fuck…’ Jonah said, his head somewhere under the blanket, fingers probing at your core. You felt him pull your leg up, planting your foot underneath you so he could manoeuvre your hips further towards him. Still half asleep, you let him move you where he wanted.

‘Gonna lick you up til you cream,’ he said. ‘Cock’s so big and hard for you.’ You resisted the urge to cringe a little, the words sounding wrong coming from him somehow. Maybe they were the wrong ones. Maybe they didn’t suit him.

Reaching down, you pushed his face further into your cunt, effectively muting him with your folds. You felt his tongue lick a fat stripe up your seam, his fingers swift as he jammed them inside. You winced a little, shifting on the mattress to help him find the best angle.

It was…fine. You reached up to tweak your nipples, hoping to heighten the pleasure gathering at your core. Closing your eyes tight you tried to push the thoughts from your mind, homing in instead on the feel of Jonah’s tongue. If you bucked your hips a little you could shove him into a better position, but he seemed to take this as enthusiasm. He started to speed up, throwing off your rhythm.

‘Slow down,’ you instructed, resting one hand on his head and guiding him by the neck. He was a quick learner, at least. You could feel your brows furrow in concentration.

‘So wet, baby,’ Joel said from beside you. Your eyes flew open to discover the other side of the bed empty. You shook your head, trying to get him loose.

‘That’s good,’ you informed Jonah, pinching harder on your nipple. You heard a muffled moan from between your legs.

‘Look at you all spread out f’me,’ Joel huffed into your ear, the heat of his body scorching you as he lay beside you.

‘Don’t…’ you whimpered, trying to will him out of your mind, and snapped back to reality when you felt Jonah falter. ‘Don’t stop,’ you rushed, pushing your hips into his face.

Behind you now, bracketed by his legs and resting your head on his chest, Joel reached down your front and rubbed tight little circles at your breast. You could feel the warmth of his broad chest at your back, and you turned to tuck your nose into his neck. You could feel his pulse on your skin, hammering with the same tempo as his cock pulsing behind your thighs.

‘So beautiful, babygirl,’ he muttered, his voice gravelly from his want for you, and you shuddered, looking down your body to find Joel also between your legs, even while you lay warm and safe in his arms. He gazed up at you, tongue rolling in your cunt, as he whispered filth in your ear.

‘Love when ya come f’me,’ he said, ‘love makin’ ya feel so good ya can’t help yourself.’

You whimpered, grinding hard on Jonah’s face, the ache in your core now threatening to burn you up completely.

‘So good f’me, baby’ Joel praised and you keened, the Joel between your legs crooking his fingers to hit the spongey spot deep inside, the spot you now considered designated just for him.

‘M’gonna…’ you gasped, the sparks of electricity running hard and unwavering in your cunt.

‘That’s it, baby, let it happen…’ Joel encouraged, pausing only to nibble at your earlobe. ‘Let me have it, baby. Let me make you come.’

You felt your hips rock as you exploded, every nerve ending on fire as your orgasm rolled over you, your breath shuddering and catching in your chest.

‘Oh, fuck, Jo-nah,’ you corrected, just in time, as your vision went white behind your eyes, your body spasming in pleasure as you heard Joel chuckle behind you, gruff and self-satisfied.

‘Holy shit,’ you heard Jonah say, pulling back the covers to appraise you where you lay, spent and exhausted, spread out beneath him. You sighed, every muscle in your body loose and your thoughts blissfully empty for a few moments. It was only when you caught your breath that the guilt started to seep in.

You pushed your hair behind your ears, up to your elbows in cold water and homemade soap. You longed for the days of dish soap, the little bubbles popping over your skin. Instead, you scrubbed, scarring the surface of the pan just a little trying to free it of the bacon grease.

‘I could help with that, y’know,’ Jonah said from the table. You glanced over your shoulder at him.

‘It’s OK, I find it weirdly satisfying,’ you said, turning back to your task so you wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. You weren’t sure where Joel had come from – both of them – but you weren’t pleased they had intruded in your private moment with Jonah. If you were going to be friends with Joel that should never happen again, you told yourself, as well as whatever demon on your shoulder had launched itself into being that morning.

Part of you wanted to tell Jonah, just so that he knew what he was dealing with. You wondered if he’d stay, if he’d be weirded out and run for it. You wondered if you wanted him to fight for you, to try and take Joel on and win your hand like a princess, like a prize. Of course you didn’t, because that would be silly. Also, there would be nothing to fight.

‘Sweetheart?’ Jonah said, and you snapped back to attention, realising you’d nearly scrubbed a hole in the bottom of the pan.

‘Mmm?’ you said, turning around but suddenly finding yourself unable to meet his eyes. He stood from the table, coming closer to you, pulling you to him by the loop of your jeans.

‘I said, you keep feeding me like this you’re gonna make me too fat for patrols,’ he said, and you grinned, then, the ease at which he doled out compliments making something fizz and pop happily in your chest.

‘Maybe that’s the plan, have you all to myself,’ you said, matching his grin, as he leant over to kiss you, your sudsy hands resting on his shirt and leaving damp spots in their wake.

‘I got no complaints…’ he said, nipping at your bottom lip.

You swallowed down the morning, the weirdness of it catching a little at your throat, as you gazed up at him. He was a good guy. The rest you could work out.

‘I was thinking maybe after my shift-’ he started, but was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps and then, moments later, pounding at your door.

‘Teach!’ you heard Joel yell, and you were reacting to the blind panic in his voice before you’d even fully registered it, abandoning Jonah at the sink to run to your door. Wrenching it open you found him, wide-eyed and breathless, looking first at your face and then scanning over your shoulder past the door. ‘Is she with you?’ he gasped out, and you stared at him blankly for a second, feeling a weight drop heavy and concrete into your gut.

‘Who, Joel?’

‘Ellie, is she with you? Is she here?’ You could see the desperation in his eyes, the way they were starting to brim with tears. Behind him you saw Shauna trotting up the street to catch up.

‘No, I haven’t seen her in a few days, it’s the weekend…’

‘Fuck!’ he yelled, taking a step back to twist his hands up into his hair and tug. He turned to Shauna, now approaching your porch. ‘She’s not here!’ he nearly screeched, waves of distress rolling off him.

‘Hey, hey…’ you said, stepping out towards him and reaching up to rest a hand on his bicep, pulling you back around to face you. ‘Take a breath, Joel, then you can tell me what’s happened.’

You felt him shudder, sucking in air as you nodded at him, pantomiming deep breaths in the hope that he would follow you. His eyes stayed wild but he watched you, eventually matching his breaths to yours, until he had regained some sense of control.

‘She’s gone,’ he finally managed to say, his voice ragged. ‘We can’t find her.’

‘OK, where have you looked?’ you asked. Shauna climbed up the steps to your porch, coming forward to wrap her arm around Joel’s. You took a step back, releasing him to her.

‘We came right here,’ she said, tight-lipped.

‘Well, we can split up, try the mess hall, try the school. Maybe see if she’s with Dina?’

‘Dina?’ Shauna parroted, and you nodded.

‘They’re good friends,’ you supplied.

Joel was gathering himself, pulling his shoulders back and letting Shauna’s arm slip from him.

‘OK, OK…’ he was saying, and you could see that he his tremors were lessening.

‘We should find Tommy, get him to help look,’ you said. ‘She won’t have gone far, right?’

Joel raised his eyes to yours, the desperation and the sheer terror in them taking your breath away. You steeled yourself, painting a confident look on your face. ‘She won’t have gone far, Joel,’ you repeated. He nodded, borrowing some of your strength and tucking it under his ribcage.

‘Shauna, get Tommy,’ he instructed, not glancing over to look at her.

‘Joel, I can stay with you…’ she started but he grunted, shaking his head. You realised he had stepped closer to you.

‘Get Tommy, get Gollum and…’

‘I can help,’ Jonah said, from the doorway behind you. You saw Joel’s eyes fall on him, his mouth pulling tight in a grim line at the sight of him. You weren’t sure if Jonah had put pants on. You were determined not to look.

‘Run down and check with Billy, if she left, he would have seen her…’ you started.

‘You think he’d let her out there alone?’ Joel said, suddenly a mix of fury and panic. You put a steadying hand on his forearm.

‘No, not unless she spun him an amazing lie.’

This didn’t seem to carry the comfort you had hoped it would.

You split up, heading straight over to the school, calling her name as you went, before doubling back and checking Dina’s place. Dina hadn’t seen Ellie since the day before, and you felt the unease in your belly start to grow. You rounded back to the main street, hoping to meet up with Tommy or Joel at the mess hall. As you turned the corner, though, you saw commotion at the main gate and you took off running.

‘You can’t be fuckin’ serious!’ Tommy was yelling, his and Joel’s backs to you shielding the person he was yelling at. You looked to the top of the wall and saw it unoccupied. Your heart started to sink.

‘I was just gone a few minutes, maybe twenty, tops!’ you heard Billy defend, and by the time you had arrived on the scene you could see Joel was tremoring again, this time from out and out fury.

‘Why didn’t you call in a cover?’ he spat out, pacing up and down, clenching and flexing his fingers.

‘Ain’t no one on the roster,’ Billy said, and you felt something give, something structural in your bones.

‘Oh, I’m not on the roster,’ you said, quietly, and flinched as Joel turned, startled, not having realised you were there. You could feel tears welling up in your eyes as you avoided his gaze, staring hard at your boots. You braced for his admonishment.

‘Joel…’ Tommy said, but suddenly Joel’s broad palm was on your shoulder and you looked up, gasping.

‘This ain’t on you,’ Joel said, staring hard into your eyes. ‘Don’t think for one moment…fuck, Teach, I know you love her near as much as I do.’

You felt the tears start to fall, your throat closing over, as all you could do was nod.

‘M’sorry anyway,’ you muttered, and he shook his head at you.

‘Joel, we don’t have time,’ Tommy reminded him, and he snapped his head back towards his little brother.

‘Where’s Gollum? Where’s the patrols?’

‘They’re already out, but we radioed them, they’ll keep a look out.’

‘Which way where they headed? We should cover more ground,’ Tommy said. You kept glancing at Shauna, standing off to the side of the group, her eyes fixed on Joel.

‘Why would she leave?’ Billy asked, and you saw Shauna go pale before she appeared to rally.

‘Teenagers,’ she supplied, with a little smirk. You felt yourself glare at her, at her glibness, at the casual way she just threw out such a bullshit explanation, smiling as though Ellie wasn’t now in mortal danger. You almost felt guilty for the way you stared at her until you noticed Joel and Tommy’s expressions mirrored your own.

‘We gotta get moving, Joel,’ Tommy said, and you remembered, then, a little flare of a synapse still functioning in the panic.

‘The water caves!’ you yelled, turning to look for Jonah. ‘She asked us about the water caves. Fuck, where is he?’ You scanned the street and didn’t see him, turning to see if he was at the stables, turning back to the wall in an almost complete 360. You were dimly aware you must have looked like a somewhat deranged ballerina.

‘The what?’ Tommy asked.

‘She said, she said that Dina had said there’s a waterfall and that behind the waterfall there’s caves. She asked Jonah about it, but he hadn’t seen them. God, what if she’s gone to look for them?’

‘She doesn’t fuckin’ swim,’ Joel muttered, pacing again. ‘Jesus, Tommy, she could drown out there and we’d never fuckin’ find her.’

‘She said she thought they were upriver, about an hour or two’s ride. But Jonah said that they’d never seen them on patrols.’

Billy shook his head. ‘Never heard anything like it, but it’s possible…I mean, the river flows all the way down from the mountain.’

‘She’s not going to go that far,’ Shauna dismissed, waving her hand at you as if waving away the very idea. ‘There’s a town a couple of hours walk, I bet she’s gone there.’

‘Why would she go to a town?’ you asked, more than a little offended at the way you had been so summarily dismissed.

‘Maybe to find some friends,’ Shauna said, adding after a moment, ‘her own age.’

Your ears started ringing and you wondered if this woman could have such a singular effect on a person’s blood pressure. You glanced back at Joel, his head swivelling between Shauna, and Tommy, and you.

‘We should split up,’ Tommy said, and Joel blanched, turning to you.

‘If she’s in a town, there could be raiders,’ he said, quiet, eyebrows saddled as he looked to you for some kind of confirmation.

‘I don’t think she’s gone there, but I guess it’s possible,’ you said. ‘If she’s headed to the water caves, then she’ll just be following the river upstream.’

‘Not much up that way, no camps within the perimeter,’ Billy supplied.

‘I’ll take Shauna,’ you said, determined even as Joel started to shake his head. ‘That’s the easier run. You and Tommy, you need to head to the town, if there’s raiders you’ll need two good shots.’

Shauna scoffed, which the group collectively decided to ignore.

‘You sure about this, Teach?’ he asked. You weren’t. Not even a little bit. But you had no other choice; Ellie was out there, and she might have been hurt or scared or just plain angry, and you weren’t going to sit around and wait for someone else to bring her home.

Jonah wasn’t at the stables, and you still weren’t sure where he’d got to, but that didn’t stop you saddling up at lightning speed. Shauna trailed behind you, struggling to get the order right on the saddle, and you stopped what you were doing to secure her tack.

‘I just don’t see why a teenager would want to go to some wet, cold caves,’ she said to you, and you shrugged your shoulders.

‘You think she went to the mall?’

Shauna regarded you for a long moment, and you supposed it might have been intimidating had she not been completely dependent on you and your riding skills in that moment. Over your shoulder you heard Joel and Tommy saddle up and ride out.

‘You never wanted to head to the big smoke when you were her age?’ she asked, and you shrugged.

‘Sure, but that was before the world ended.’

‘Mmm’, she said.

‘Saddled up,’ you confirmed for her, swinging your leg into your stirrups and settling on top of your own horse. You could have waited to give Shauna a boost but all of a sudden you just weren’t feeling like it.

As she struggled to pull herself up, you heard a voice calling at the stable door.

‘Wait!’ he called, as Jonah appeared in front of you. He carried two rifles. ‘I got you these from the armoury, had a shit of a time signing them out but I told ‘em it was an emergency.’ He was sweating, his eyes bright, as he smiled up at you.

‘Thank you,’ you smiled down at him, reaching to pull both from his grasp.

‘Wait, don’t I get one?’ Shauna asked, and Jonah rolled his eyes at her.

‘You’re more likely to shoot your own ass off,’ he said, as you slung one over your back and let Jonah help you attach the second to your saddle for you. You snickered.

‘Go get your girl,’ he said to you, quiet enough that Shauna couldn’t hear. ‘Then come back safe.’ You nodded, gripping the reigns tight enough to turn your knuckles white.

At the gate Billy was back at his post, and you cantered to a stop at the threshold.

‘Joel and Tommy already left, a couple of minutes ahead,’ he reported.

‘They didn’t wait for us?’ Shauna asked.

‘Reckon they thought catching up with Ellie was more important,’ you said, pointedly.

‘You know where you’re headed?’ Billy asked you, and you nodded. ‘Follow the river North.’

‘It starts to get dark, you come turn round,’ he reminded you and you nodded at him.

‘I know, Billy,’ you said.

‘You got good eyes, kiddo, can’t lose them for your next shift.’

You realised then he was worried for you, that all the hours you’d spent staring silently into the distance together had endeared him to you in a way you hadn’t noticed or expected, and that if he’d told you to slide off your horse and let him give you a bearhug right there in the gate you would have done it.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ you said, trying to sound more confident than you felt.

‘I’ll see you first,’ Billy said, pulling the gate open just enough for you and Shauna to slip outside.

You would have been really happy to ride in silence. The river, once you found it, was calming enough that you felt you could finally take in a full breath. You scanned the ground looking for tracks and finding nothing. Beside you Shauna trotted along, struggling to meet the rhythm of her horse’s steps.

‘So how long were you in the QZ?’ she asked. You scanned the branches beside you, looking for any breaks at roughly teenager-height.

‘Best part of a decade,’ you said.

‘You must have done plenty of patrols, then,’ she said.

‘I mostly worked the wall. It’s what I did when I moved to Jackson.’

‘So, you’ve known Maria a while then?’

‘Yes, I guess I have.’

You hoped that was the end of the questioning, trying as you were to concentrate.

‘What do you think makes her tick?’ Shauna asked, and you had to try very hard not to roll your eyes.

‘I think she cares a lot about family, and the citizens of Jackson,’ you said, honestly but also with perhaps a slight edge. Shauna seemed not to notice.

‘She does so much for the town,’ Shauna continued, thoughtfully. ‘She could probably use a 2nd in Command, no?’

‘I feel like this is something you should ask her about,’ you muttered. A bend in the river up ahead caught your eye. ‘We need to get moving, we’re barely going above walking pace,’ you said.

‘I’m not that great a rider,’ Shauna said, stating the absolute obvious.

‘Never a better time to learn,’ you said, surging forward.

After the bend the river carried on over a rocky outcrop, and you slowed your horse down again to pick your way through the boulders.

‘Do you know what she was wearing this morning?’ you asked, and Shauna shrugged her shoulders.

‘Didn’t see her, so I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She keeps herself stashed away out back all day. Anti-social.’

You bit your tongue. Shauna was suddenly making you feel the same.

You scanned the riverbanks for anything unusual: footprints, a discarded backpack, clothing. If you were honest with yourself you weren’t really sure what you were looking for. You’d never had to track someone before, your role being more to stand in one spot and scan the horizon.

‘You two seem to get on like a house on fire,’ Shauna said, after a few moments of silence.

‘Ellie and I have grown close since I started tutoring her,’ you agreed, absentminded.

‘It’s like you two see eye to eye, or something. Like you’re…the same.’

You weren’t sure what she was getting at, only that she was getting at something, and you scanned the sentence for the insult but found it so buried it was impossible to decipher. You knew, though, that it was there.

‘I suppose we’ve been through similar things. We all have.’

You wondered, in the case of Shauna, whether this was true. The high-level officers in FEDRA, the ones fancy enough not to have to deal with actual people, or fight on the ground, tended to live comfortable lives. At least, until the uprising.

‘Still, it seems almost like…’

‘I think it would be good to concentrate,’ you said, quickly. The sun was high in the sky but as the colder weather set in there were less hours of it in a day. If the water caves really were more than three hours out, you had to make the best of the light.

You estimated you got a good 45 minutes of quiet before Shauna spoke again. The rocky outcrop had turned into outright rugged terrain, and you were struggling to follow the river as the bed grew steeper, the drops on either side more sheer. You were starting to worry about darkness, and if you’d have enough light to make your way back. You hadn’t anticipated the thickness of the brush. It would be easy to get turned around out here, to stumble on a slippery rock and snap your neck.

‘Oof, this is hard on the tush,’ Shauna complained, rubbing at her lower back. ‘I’ll have to get Joel to give me a massage when we get back.’

Ignoring that last comment completely, you found yourself agreeing with Shauna. The terrain was getting too hard to traverse on horseback, and you’d come far enough along that it would be almost just as hard on foot. The likelihood of Ellie getting this far without being seen, or without dropping something that would give you a clue as to her direction, was slim. You were facing the decision you’d been trying not to make for the last ten minutes.

‘I think we might have to go back,’ you said, and Shauna sighed.

‘I knew those cave things weren’t real,’ she said, and you turned on her, irritation finally overtaking you.

‘They could be, but we can’t fucking get there when you couldn’t ride in a carriage let alone on your own.’

Shauna stared at you. ‘Have you even been looking for tracks? Have you been watching the waterline?’ you asked, your voice rising.

‘Well, I could see you were doing that,’ she said, and you scoffed.

‘Why the fuck are you even here?’ you asked, the shock of Ellie’s disappearance suddenly blooming into anger in your bones. ‘Did you think you’d get to have a nice lil ride with Joel through the countryside? Planning to strap yourself to his back and rub your tits all over his shoulder blades so that maybe he’ll finally fuck you?’

You sucked in a breath, the air cold this far up close to the mountain. Shauna smirked, actually smirked, as you wavered in front of her.

‘Knew you weren’t sweet as pie,’ she said, like pushing you to breaking point had been her gameplan, like your outburst was her victory.

‘Fuck you, Shauna,’ you said, exhaustion overtaking you. ‘Turn back, we’ll double back the way we came.’

She continued to smirk, even as she led her horse to stumble along the riverbank. You felt the frustration give way to the little kernel of terror that you always tucked up tight in your chest cavity, fuelled by the irrefutable knowledge that after the end of the world everything that could possibly go wrong almost always would.

Another hour’s ride and you were back to the slightly more forgiving trail that made up the perimeter of Jackson. You felt something heavy and unmovable in your gut, something that whispered to you that you had wasted time on a hunch that had turned out to be nothing, that had separated you from Joel and from safety, all on the basis of a two-minute conversation in your kitchen weeks ago. You pushed it away as best you could, instead choosing to focus on the blind panic that if she hadn’t followed the river you had no idea which way she’d gone.

You could feel that you were having trouble breathing all the way in, as if you worried that if you took in too much air, expanded your chest too far out, the horrors of Ellie’s disappearance would fill the space left open.

‘That’s the turn off to the town,’ Shauna said, motioning with her head to a fork in the road ahead of you.

‘I thought that was back West,’ you said, and she shook her head at you.

‘There are two paths, this one’s further out but it comes around the back way. It’s not so out in the open.’

You considered this for a moment, the realisation breaking like the dawn on a clear morning.

‘You travelled it to get to Jackson, didn’t you?’ you asked, and Shauna suddenly went uncharacteristically quiet.

‘You came from the town,’ you said, simply, the pieces falling into place around you. ‘You know exactly who’s in the town, exactly what’s there, and you think Ellie went there because you know what might draw her to it.’

Shauna again said nothing. You drew your horse to a stop at the turnoff.

‘What did you tell her?’ you asked. You knew Shauna wouldn’t carry on back to Jackson without you. With your horse unmoving you were essentially trapping her in the conversation.

‘She asked me once, what it was like before I came to Jackson,’ Shauna said, her defences up nearly as high as her shoulders.

‘What did you tell her?’ you asked, again.

‘I wanted to sound impressive,’ Shauna said, and this time you could see that she was actually being honest, that she was admitting to something real. ‘I thought…I knew that she and Joel had travelled across the country to get to Jackson, that she had seen so much…’

‘What did you tell her, Shauna?’ you asked, your patience running thin.

‘I told her there was another town, just an hour or two ride from Jackson. That it was bigger than Jackson, that they….that they….’

‘That they what, Shauna?’ you asked.

‘That they train kids as young as fourteen in weapons and combat, and let them go on patrol.’

You swore, loud and all the way to the tops of the trees.

‘What’s really there, Shauna?’ you asked, when you could hear yourself think over the blood rushing in your ears.

‘It’s mostly abandoned,’ she said. ‘Sometimes raiders come through.’ She still looked like she was avoiding something, still not able to look you in the eye.

‘Tell me the bit you don’t want to tell me,’ you said. She turned her face to the sky, as if there would be any relief in it.

‘Steven and Wren and I…we stayed there a few weeks. A couple of other groups were camping out, too.’

You waited for the other shoe to drop, for the world to shift on its axis. Around you the wind turned cold, the light starting to wane in the late afternoon.

‘We left when one of them…one of the other campers. They went out to check for supplies and came back late…’ she shuddered, swallowing hard. ‘By the morning, their whole camp…’

She couldn’t go on, couldn’t say the word, but you didn’t need her to. You turned your eyes to the road leading down to the town, to Ellie, and to Joel.

‘Infected,’ you said, saying what Shauna would never have the strength to.

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@vickie5446

@kaseyconnour

@orcasoul

@missladym1981

@spacesoutdaydreamer

@tangled-tumbler-blog-blog

@fancyyoouu

@anoverwhelmingdin

@millersamour

@delicatetrashtree

@wand-erer5

@somedayheaven

@maryrhodalouandted

@casssiopeia

@wand-erer5

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #joel miller x you #pedro pascal #joel miller fanfic #joel miller smut #pedro pascal characters fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction #pedro pascal fic

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 6 months ago

Note

Oh? Crewel-sensei! Are you actually joining us in class today? - Kalim, beaming

Zzzzz- h-huh? Did I miss... Trein-sensei's class...? - Silver, sleepy

If he doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will.

Crewel warily surveyed the classroom. Each group of students had been presented with a cage full of mice. The assignment for the day: to command the mice to execute a trick of one's choosing. They scampered around on their tiny feet, clawing at their confinement and chorusing in soft squeaks.

A few brave students had already taken to freeing the mice, to varying degrees of success. Some rodents had escaped and now skittered across the floors while being chased down. Others, aggravated, had clawed or bitten their students, sending them to the nurse’s office.

Class 2-A may as well be an unkept dog kennel, Crewel grumbled to himself.

“I’m participating today to brush up on Animal Languages,” he explained bluntly. “Pardon the intrusion. Please do not let my presence distract you from your learning.”

“Hahah, of course not! Make yourself home, cuz my classroom is your classroom!” Kalim chirped. “Since we’re in the same group, let’s do our best to help each other out.”

“Agreed.” Silver nodded. “We’re honored to be working with you, Crewel-sensei.”

They’re good boys—but let’s see whether their technical abilities are on par with their kind-heartedness.

"Lead the charge. I will stand by and support your vision.”

“Let’s have the mice dress up and have a parade!” Kalim immediately suggested. His entire face lit up with determination. “Maybe some of them could be horses pulling a little toy carriage, and other mice could ride the carriage.”

“That’s far too complex for your level of skill!” Crewel pointed out. “Start simpler. Instructing them to do a single thing is enough to fulfill the requirements. For dogs… ‘sit’ and ‘stay’ are common first commands. Extrapolate that thinking to mice. The vocabulary should also be within your reach.”

There was a long pause. Then Silver spoke up.

“So… we could ask them to sit or to stay?”

“Do not so blatantly superimpose the orders for dogs onto a different animal!” Crewel snapped. “Are you still half asleep?!”

“He might be! Hey, Silver.” Kalim nudged his classmate (whose head was beginning to loll) on the arm. The knight startled—but his eyelids still fluttered, threatening to shut. “Stick with us! We need you awake for this, buddy.”

“Ngh… I’m sorry, I’m trying… I’m trying so hard, but… I don’t think I can… hold… it off…………….. Zzzzz…”

Silver drifted off, slouching forward in his seat. Kalim grasped onto his shoulders, keeping him upright.

“Wh-Whoa…! Don’t worry, Silver! I’ve gotcha!!”

Crewel facepalmed. “… This is quickly devolving into a disaster.”

"I'll say!" Kalim agreed. "How's Silver going to nap well without a pillow and a blanket? A desk and chair are really uncomfortable to sleep on."

"That's what you're concerned about?"

"Hmm? Yeah. Did you mean something else, sensei?"

"You'll be receiving a zero on this assignment from old Trein if you don't come up with something," Crewel lectured him as he removed the lid from their box of mice. "Find a way to wake Silver up this instant!"

"Aaah, what should I do...? I feel bad waking him up when he's having a good dream... Are you sure we can't just make Silver as comfortable as we can?"

"YES, I AM SURE."

As Crewel and Kalim clashed, the mice were frenzied. They had collected in one corner of the box in one massive wriggling heap, spilling out onto the counter like liquid when Crewel tipped the container over. They darted in front of Silver in frantic rows, then compressed their small, furry bodies together, forming something resembling a pillow.

"What the..."

"Oh!" Kalim brightened with realization. "Did you guys want to help out? That's so nice of you!"

He was met with a sea of excitable squeaking.

"Gahahah! I don't get it, but thanks a ton! Silver appreciates it too. I'll lay him down now, okay?"

Crewel watched, jaw hanging open, as Kalim gently placed Silver upon the bed of lab rodents. It was like a scene right out of a fairy tale. Kalim, the prince. Silver, the princess. And the mice? Their animal companions that saved the day.

Footsteps approached from behind.

"Asim, how does your group fare?" Trein inquired. "I hope you were not too heavily relying on Crewel-sensei's expertise to get by."

"No, sir! We're just making sure Silver gets proper rest in." Kalim gestured to his snoozing peer. "See?"

Trein took note of the pillow of mice, his brows creasing in confusion. "... Well, it's certainly an unconventional 'trick' you've shown me, but I suppose I will allow it. It's a creative solution for the task."

"Wait, really? Cool, thanks!!'

Crewel blinked.

Just what am I looking at here? Did these two just pass by failing to use any of the course's teachings in the assignment?!

"... Unbelievable." He shook his head in disbelief.

These pups are truly something else.

#twisted wonderland #twst #Kalim Al-Asim #Divus Crewel #twst interactions #twisted wonderland interactions #Silver #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #It's Raining Crows and Dogs #Mozus Trein

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bonny-kookoo · 2 years ago

Text

Jungkook: Sugar & Spice (Spoiled)

In which Jungkook might be spoiling you a lot- but he's also more than capable of reminding you of your manners if his love gets to your head.

Tags/Warnings: Raccoon Hybrid!Reader x Idol!Jungkook, established relationship, opposites attract because I love that concept, are you tired of my hybrid stories yet because I'm not, fluff, romance, smut, jealous koo, slice of life, ddlg themes

Chapter length: short

Other content: Intro, calm

━━━━━━━━━━.~°♡°~.━━━━━━━━━━━

"Don't you think he's.. babying her a bit too much? I mean, she's technically not even that much younger than him.." Namjoon wonders to Seokjin next to him, everyone on break right now after practice.

Both he and his older bandmate are currently watching the youngest Idol of the group lay on his back in the middle of the dance hall they use to practice in, the singer uncaring of any eyes on him as he has you laid out on his stomach, playing around with your ears.

"Even if he does, it's not our business." Seokjin shrugs, setting his water bottle down. "He's old enough to make those choices, and she seems more than happy with the way he treats her." The oldest singer responds, smiling as Jungkook adjusts your collar around your neck, fingers turning the identification marks to look at them fondly.

"I know.." Namjoon sighs. "I just- I don't know. It's still a little odd seeing him bring her along so much. I guess I never really saw them interact so much." He explains, and Jin nods.

The oldest had looked after you multiple times throughout the years Jungkook has had you- So to him, there's nothing odd about seeing you around the singer. He's gotten used to it, knows you and him and most of all your relationship fairly well- but what Namjoon said is true. Only recently has the singer decided to openly bring you along to schedules and meetings, considering that the management had revealed you to the public in a controlled manner. Now that there's nothing to fear anymore when it comes to Jungkook's Livestreams for example, he's clearly more than eager to have you around as much as he can now.

But while he, and Jin, and Taehyung all know you very well, and know how you both act and behave around one another, to the rest of the band, it's still very much a new sight.

Jungkook however doesn't notice the glances and stares at all it seems, as he wraps his arms around your middle, your body heavy but not uncomfortable on top of his own. "You wanna take a bath together when we come home later?" He wonders, watching how you rest the side of your head now on his chest.

"Hmhm." You hum affirmative, making him chuckle.

"You tired?" He asks, and you nod again, stretching your legs a little. "So all you're doing when I'm at work is napping? What a lazy bear, sleeping while I work my ass off!" He teases, fingers suddenly attacking your sides, making you squeak in surprise. He can hear some staff and Seokjin laugh in the background as you roll away from him playfully, leading to the Idol crawling after you, catching you easily as he pulls you in, hugging you tightly.

"Alright you two, lets get back to work." Jin claps, making Jungkook audibly whine, but comply- albeit not without teasingly smacking your butt as you get up to walk away from him back to your spot at the side. Taehyung gently pets your head as he walks past you, and the others also share some glances with you before they continue to work on their choreography.

It's later that they see a more relaxed and mature side of the youngest, as he carefully carries you to the car, completely in control and aware of everything- from the obvious like your jacket and bag, to the more smaller details like the fact that he needs to wake you up in the car or you'll get a headache later.

And later, back home and away from prying eyes, Jungkook relaxes with you in his arms, warm and tired after some rather heated bath time. "Jungkookie?" You wonder, mumbled more or less into his chest, as he hums. "Do you think I bother the others at work?" You ask, and he shrugs.

"Don't think so." He answers, voice already a bit raspy from his tiredness. "You're not in the way for all I know. And I like having you around me more these days." He tells you, pressing a kiss to the side of your face. "Don't worry about that, alright?" He tells you, and you nod.

"You think they like me?" You ask, yawning and making him laugh.

"Not as much as I do." He says, tangling his legs with yours. "Cause I love you most." He hums.

"Maybe I love you more though?" You ask, and he playfully turns to bite at your neck, making you laugh.

"Are you talking back at me right now, you brat?" He growls, and you simply nuzzle back into his neck, clearly submissive at his tone of voice. "Now sleep, we can be lazy tomorrow all we want." He reminds you, and you nod, letting yourself fall asleep with his hand lazily running over your back-

only stopping when he himself starts to dream alongside you as well.

#bts imagine #bts fanfic #bts fic #daddy jungkook #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook imagine #jungkook x reader #bts jungkook imagine #bts jungkook x reader

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athena-studios · 7 months ago

Text

ָ࣪ 𓏲⋆.ָ࣪ 𓏲⋆.ָ࣪ 𓏲⋆.

'Tis the damn season

ted nivison x singlemom! reader

synopsis: you and Ted hook up one night, him taking your virginity, he leaves the next morning with no note or goodbye. a month later you find out your pregnant with his baby, so you do everything you can to protect it. a year later, you and Ted see each other on the street, seeing your daughter and wanting to be a part of her life.

word count: 1.2k

tw: small descriptions of smut(in the conext of ted and y/n recalling their night, not anything to graphic), mentions of reader not being able to sleep very well

a/n: hi! i started working on this yesterday and now I'm really proud of it, it's my baby now. lmk if a part 2 is wanted!

the hospital room filled with cries of a baby. your baby, your daughter, dorothea. You and Ted's daughter. then it hits you. He doesn't know. Ted doesn't know he's a father. and you don't know how to contact him. the last you saw of him was 9 months ago, in your bed, both of you naked. it was a one night stand you didn't want to happen. but when you found out you were pregnant, everything changed.

That was 3 months ago. Now you were out on the streets, walking around with a bag of baking supplies in one hand, Dorothea, or Thea as you'd like to call her, on the other. when you walked to the other side of the street towards a café, you heard your name being called.

"y/n?" no. no no no. Why was he here? He's not supposed to be here, you weren't supposed to see him!

you whip your head to the sound of the all too familiar voice. "...hi, Ted." you reply blatantly as you adjust Thea on your hip.

he looks at you with a slight smile, before realizing that you have a baby in hand.

a baby...is it his? he doesn't know. might as well ask.

"Is it...is it mine?" he asks with hesitation blended into his voice while he scratches the back of his neck in nervousness.

"what if i told you she is?" you answer, getting slightly defensive.

and Ted looks stunned. like he had just seen a ghost. Can you blame him? He just found out he's a father! I mean, you technically can blame him 'cause he left you that morning without anything to go by.

“oh…uhm, well then did you maybe wanna…have some coffee with me? Y'know…t-talk about it?” Ted talks with a soothing voice, almost as if you would break if he went a decibel over.

you nod at his offer, walking into the café with him and sitting down on one of the more excluded booths in the corner. you situate Thea on your lap as Ted sits across from you, avoiding eye contact.

“What's her name?” He asks, still hesitant.

“Dorothea, but I call her Thea most of the time.” you answer his question in an emotionless voice before an uncomfortable silence overtakes the two of you.

“so…I wanted to start by saying I'm sorry—” you cut him off.

“sorry for what? sorry for leaving me alone after you took my virginity?” you were angry. you told him that night that you were a virgin, just to leave you with your overthinking ass.

“y/n, please, I'm sorry. I know sorry doesn't cut it, but I will do anything to make it up to you. I wanna be part of our daughter's life.” Ted pleads, and he means it. he would buy everything in the world for you and Thea if it meant you would even just think about forgiving him.

“Ted…I tried, I really tried. i tried to look for you, i went back to the bar to ask if anybody knew you, but nobody did.” your eyes well with tears, but you refuse to let them fall. no way were you crying in front of this man.

“Please, if you could just let me be a part of her life that would be enough. or i could give you child support, how much do you need?—” he starts listing off things that could possibly help you, eventually making your head hurt.

“fine.”

“fine…?”

“Yes, Ted. fine, I'll let you be part of her life. we can co-parent, but don't think I've forgiven you.” and at that, he smiles. a big smile, a grin from ear to ear.

“y/n, you don't know how much this means to me. Thank you so much, I promise I'll try my best.”

you let out a tight smile, maybe this could actually be helpful. Y'know, lesson those sleepless nights of yours. “You can start by giving me your number so I can contact you.”

Ted proceeds to give you his number, still saying thank you. “Ted, shut up before I change my mind.” and at that, he shuts his mouth, also stopping the headache about to form, giving you peace.

Obviously, that peace is quickly disturbed when Thea starts thrashing around on your lap. “shh, Thea it's ok, you're fine mama's here.” you cradle her in your arms. “Can we move outside? Thea's getting a little cranky.”

“Of course, I'll grab her baby bag.” Ted speaks and wraps his hands around the handle of the bag. He follows you outside of the café and into the street.

you try calming her down, but she won't. you know she's hungry, but she already drank the bottle you bought for her. so you have to nurse her. and to nurse her, you have to be in private.

“Ted, I am so sorry and you can decline if you want, but Thea's hungry and she already had the bottle we bought with us. I'm gonna have to nurse her back home, can you come with us?” you offer. Ted notices the worried look on your face as you speak, also noticing the faint eyebags under your eyes.

“I don't mind at all. I can come with you, it's fine. I can drive you?” he grabs his keys from his pocket after you give a thankful nod.

quickly driving and giving him the directions to your apartment building, you finally arrive.

“take your shoes off when you enter. It's pretty small, I know. but it's the only thing I can afford right now.” you inform Ted and walk into the familiarity of your small home.

you sit on the couch, Ted sitting down and placing the Baby bag next to the two of you. you pull your shirt and your bra up before Thea latches on to your breast.

Ted stares. remembering the way the swell of your breasts felt that night, now it's bigger, fuller.

half an hour later, you've already set Thea on her crib asleep. You're now in the living room with Ted, talking about how you two were gonna do this.

“So, I could come by every other day, I'd text you first, and help you out with Thea or anything. my number is always free for you to call if you need anything, and I'll be giving you money every week for Thea, rent, anything you might need it for.” Ted repeats back everything you two had discussed since you had put Thea to sleep.

“yep, and I still haven't forgiven you. so don't think of this as anything.” you look up at his eyes, seeing the familiar glint in them from a year ago.

“don't worry, I've got it controlled.”

you lean back down on the couch closing your eyes. “Ugh, I need a nap and shower.”

“then go have a shower, take a nap, relax, do whatever you need and want to do. I'll be right here, and i can clean up for you.” Ted grins and stands up.

“Ted, are you sure? you don't have to do all of this suddenly just because you're a dad now.” you stand up as well, nervousness fillig your system.

“y/n, I'm doing this because i want to do this. not because I feel forced to or anything.”

“Thank you, this means way more than you can imagine.” you smile, tears welling up in your eyes.

“don't worry. you can take it as us starting over.” he hugs you as you sniffle.

maybe this isn't so bad after all…

part 2?

#athena writes #ted nivison x reader #ted nivison #ted nivison x you #ted nivison x single mom reader #girl dad ted #chuckle sandwich #chuckle sammy #mcytblr #mcyt

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lunarleonardo · 3 months ago

Note

Just saw art that inspired this thought for an au. I think I've seen some shippy fics floating around for it that take place outside of killing games but not for inside the killing games so idk if it's been done before.

Basically, an au where shuichi can see and hear ghosts (which canonically exist in danganronpa). He's seen ghosts for as long as he can remember and uses that ability to his advantage in investigations (and helps the ghosts move on). He pretends he doesn't think ghosts exist due to the never ending therapy and drugs his parents would try to get his "delusions" to stop as a child. So whenever the question "do you believe in ghosts?" comes up he's like "they're obviously not real, if they were we would have proof by now."

Of course he hides this from everyone in the killing game because they'd think he's insane or being deeply disrespectful to their dead classmates. He's used to getting the attention of ghosts and prompting to follow him to speak with them alone, usually by looking right at them (hard to deny eye contact) and using subtle body language. Part of the reason he wears his hat is to avoid looking at ghost strangers.

As an excuse for writing reasons, ghosts do not remember the moments leading up to their death very clearly, so Rantaro would not remember how exactly he died. Which leads to Kaede's execution happening again. Hoshi would remember the plan but not the moment of death, he would keep it from shuichi though for kirumi to succeed. Angie and Tenko would harass shuichi a lot. Miu... she'd be so mad her plan didn't work and shuichi would take the brunt of her anger, there's no she's helping him. No clue what kokichi would do, I doubt he'd know what to do either since he fully expected to be dead dead without anyone figuring out.

None of the ghosts move on until the killing game is over. Shuichi never reveals to anyone living that he sees their ghost classmates. Kokichi might catch on to something weird going on with Shuichi but Shuichi would never admit it even if he guesses correctly. Well, correctly enough, he might think shuichi believes he sees ghosts but kokichi doesn't actually believe in ghosts. "That's not funny, I don't see ghosts- I'm not delusional. Leave me alone." <- man who will see ghost kokichi during chapter 5. It would probably piss off kokichi so much to see shuichi (and probably a couple other ghosts) stare at him after they find the press and know that his plan is screwed from the start.

The ghosts hangout in shuichi's room because he has a tiny shrine + incense out to deter mean spirits. In this case, mean spirits would be the really annoying dead monocubs. The ghosts usually hang in his room or follow him, they miss the set up for killings. Shuichi never really gets a break to be alone.

Things that tether ghosts to the world are probably special items, places, and people. His classmates would probably be very uncomfortable sticking to where they died so they stick to shuichi and his room (technically the little shrine + incense) instead.

"It's so peaceful looking at the stars isn't it shuichi?" "sure is..." <- man who is currently subject to the yammering of several ghosts.

- @blorboindulgence

Ahh, ghost-seeing aus!! I wrote one of those in my oneshot docs once (⁠*⁠´⁠ω⁠｀⁠*⁠) This poor kid was probably forced onto so much medication he needed to be :{ that can reallly mess with your head,,. Poor guy. You cant fix something that doesnt need fixing (⁠｡⁠•́⁠︿⁠•̀⁠｡⁠)

I cant imagine what the 5th trial was like lmfao. Would Shuichi pretend not to know who was dead and who was alive the whole time for the sake of Kokichis plan? Shuichi has the power to steer the trial in the wrong direction, so if Kokichi told him the basics of it... Oh I wonder how that would go. Cant imagine how awkward that would've been xD

Oh actually!! Would Kokichi remember Maki shooting him? He might faintly recall someone coming into the hangar after Kaito attacked him, but probably not much else after that (⁠个⁠_⁠个⁠) man if I was Kokichi and that shit happened to me you would've seen me on the news. or whatever ghosts have.. probably haunted radios i dunno

#blorboindulgence asks #ive actually written multiple “shuichi sees dead people AHH” fics before #one of them is called world ender... oh man that one was a wild ride

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ryosei-hime · 2 years ago

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Moxxie’s Abused Body Language

Obligatory disclaimer: This is my interpretation of the subject at hand. Nothing I say within should be taken as an attempt to state what is and is not canon. If your views or interpretation differ, this is not an attack on you personally or those who interpret things differently from me.

So, with that out of the way, this post’s focus is primarily on Moxxie’s character and how the Spindlehorse crew managed to convey a lot about his childhood abuse through the use of body language in season 2, episode 3.

It’s very easy to see that Moxxie begins to show signs of fear from the moment he realizes where they are. He becomes physically and vocally distressed to the point that he actively fights getting out of the helicopter before Blitz pushes him out. He’s literally shaking here.

Even Millie’s presence isn’t comforting him. In fact, he becomes even more nervous when Crimson takes her hand and watches them very carefully. He knows what Crim is capable of and he knows he won’t hesitate to hurt Millie. Neither being a woman nor technically family is enough to stop him.

A lot of Moxxie’s body language during the introduction of Crim is very obvious. He hunches a lot. He has a lot of darting eyes and fiddling motions. He becomes quieter and more withdrawn than usual. He’s noticeably uncomfortable the entire time.

Even Blitz picks up on it. Once they’re inside, he’s much more subdued than usual throughout the rest of the night and seems to be focusing on assessing the situation.

And, of course, you can see that Millie knows something is wrong from all this as well. She’s in tune with her husband’s feelings. In the scene where Blitz and Crim are talking, Millie’s eyes follow Moxxie’s as they dart, looking where he’s looking to track the source of his distress.

Anyone who has been raised in an abusive home recognizes certain tones when used by their abusers. We can hear that tone when Crim says “Moxxie, I raised you better than that.” This is a warning tone. This is a threat to get back in line and know your place before they put you in it. Moxxie obeys this underlying command quickly, habitually falling back into appeasing his abuser to avoid his wrath.

I believe he does this not only due to his own trauma reaction but also in an attempt to keep Millie and Blitz safe. If he sets off his father, he knows both of them would come to his defense and that could lead to them facing the same fate as his mother. I personally believe Moxxie is well aware that her attempts to help him as a child resulted in her murder, and he would do anything to avoid the same fate for Millie.

However, we all have our limits, things we can’t help but stand up for even in the face of abuse. You can see that Moxxie cares a lot about his identity as a bisexual because he actually speaks up against his father’s past treatment of his relationship with Chaz despite the potential costs. He’s indignant that Crim would spend so long making him miserable for who he is only to turn around and pretend to accept queerness just for the sake of money when he wouldn’t make that effort for the sake of Moxxie himself. It’s clearly a very sore spot for him.

But the minute things turn to guilt tripping about abandoning the family, Moxxie sinks down into his seat in shame. Familial duty and obligation like this is something that’s hard to shake as a child of abuse. No matter how much you understand on a logical level that you don’t owe the people who hurt you just because they gave you life, it sticks with you. And when you add the mafia and its sense of duty on top of this, it’s gotta be staggering.

So, Moxxie is immediately obedient when Crim decides everyone will be sleeping there that night. He’s been successfully put back in his place with fear and guilt. Hoping that if he can just get through this ceremony without causing a stir, he can leave in peace and never be bothered again as he’s been promised. He’s so convinced he can give his father what he wants and make him go away, that he’s a little caught off guard when called back to continue the altercation.

And then Crim hits him.

I want to take a moment to talk about the surprise on his face here. One might think this means that Moxxie wasn’t heavily physically abused as a child, because the blow surprised him. But I don’t believe that’s true. Even when you’ve become used to being hit, you still react to sudden strikes this way. Especially if your abuser is one that’s hard to read. Crim strikes me as the quiet until he’s not kind and it’s hard to predict when that kind of abuser will strike. It’s also likely been years since Moxxie has had to deal with anyone hitting him in a domestic situation. So, of course he’s shocked by the sudden blow. But we’ll come back to that.

Panic begins to set in as Moxxie realizes, as far as he’s concerned, he can’t possibly concede to his father’s demands to marry Chaz. An instinct to do whatever needs to be done to appease the abuser has kicked in. He wants to give Crim what he’s asking for but can’t. And he knows being his son doesn’t mean he’s safe from his wrath.

Again, even in this moment, he speaks up for his bisexuality. And this is obviously an old argument that’s just become tiring at this point for the both of them. They slog through it like a well worn groove. But Crim doesn’t have the patience to run that track for long right now because money’s on the line.

He’s not playing this game with Moxxie anymore and Moxxie will be made to know it. Crim reminds him what he’s capable of.

The first thing shown in the flashback sets up how Crim feels about Moxxie’s relationship with his mother. He thinks she’s making him weak by seeing to his needs (cutting his food) and not demanding he do things for himself. She’s actively standing in the way of him preparing Moxxie for the life he’s chosen for him.

In my opinion, he does think he’s doing what is best for Moxxie considering the world he’s growing up in and the path Crim has chosen for him. Abusive parents often do in these situations. Each time his mother stands in the way of preparing Moxxie for that life, Crim sees it as both a disobedience towards him (which is already unacceptable) and a hindrance to his progeny, a source of pride in his world. He can’t have a weak son or it’ll reflect poorly on him with his associates.

So, of course the only thing to be done to save his own pride and his son’s life as Crim has planned it, is to remove this obstacle and get back to teaching his son to man up and become what’s expected of him - which is, of course, to become a carbon copy of Crim. And I feel like their designs being so similar really helps to underscore this desire of Crim’s whether or not that was done intentionally.

We see evidence of physical abuse toward his mother during the flashback. In my opinion, she’s likely protecting Moxxie from suffering it himself as mother’s can sometimes manage to do in these situations by taking on even more abuse of their own. So, it’s possible there was very little to no physical abuse for Moxxie until his mother was gone.

But it’s shown onscreen that Crim has no problem hitting Moxxie even as a child. As far as I’m concerned, this is when Moxxie’s physical abuse from his father likely starts in earnest. But Moxxie probably learns that as long as he obeys him, he can avoid this abuse. So, I believe he would have been able to decrease the amount of abuse he received in time by being more obedient.

I wanna take an aside for a moment to back up - or maybe better to say go forward - to his past with Chaz. In that flashback, Moxxie is shown being painted nude and his body has no white marks. One might question whether or not he actually received physical abuse based on this fact but to me it has no bearing on the issue.

For one, smart abusers often try to find ways to do so that don’t leave marks. And Crim is the head of a mafia family. If he were to go around openly beating his kid, it would reflect poorly on him. Not because anyone in the organization would care about the actual abuse. But because it would make him look brutish and stupid for allowing it to be seen by everyone. That sort of leader just doesn’t last long and can be a danger to the longevity of the organization itself.

For two, imps get white marks from more extreme injuries such as gunshot wounds and broken arms. It seems that the skin has to be broken or theoretically burned to leave an actual mark. At least from the evidence we’ve seen so far.

Given these two points, whether or not Moxxie was physically abused doesn’t really hinge on how many white marks he has on his body as far as I’m concerned. We’ve seen plenty of imps take blunt force trauma that didn’t leave them covered in white.

If I were to speculate on the trajectory of his experience with abuse overall, he likely received none to very little as a child before his mother’s death, a lot after her death with it decreasing as he learned to obey and avoid triggering his father, and barely any as a young adult.

I believe that reaching that time of almost no instances of abuse once he’d become what his father wanted possibly left him a little more comfortable than he could have otherwise been during the first part of this episode.

And yes even with all the fear and nervousness that I’ve pointed out, I do think there was a sense of security in the possibility that he could appease Crim in the end. Now Crim is telling him in no uncertain terms that he will kill them all if he doesn’t get what he wants.

He knows this isn’t an empty threat. Those who suffer abuse at the hands of their family know the difference between warnings and promises.

I don’t think I really need to go over this scene. Moxxie is disgusted as he should be.

But this whole circus clown of a come on, definitely leaves him worse off once Chaz is ejected. The terrible price he has to pay to protect his loved ones has been thrust into his face, as it were, immediately, giving him no time to process first.

Once he does get some time alone to think about his situation, he has something of a breakthrough. I really appreciate the growl in this scene because I don’t think we very often hear Moxxie growl. We usually get hisses from him instead it seems. And I think it helps portray the depth of his anger over what his father is demanding of him.

As far as Moxxie knows, his father has promised that all he has to do is marry Chaz. He wasn’t told he had to stay. So it would be easy to just comply and leave. That’s the safe route. But doing so would, presumably, violate vows he’s made to Millie. It would compromise the integrity of his relationship with and devotion to her.

This is important enough to Moxxie to fight for. Scrolling through his pictures of Millie not only made this clear to him, but I think it also helped to remind him that he left once before. He can leave again. He doesn’t have to be pulled back into the life that he worked so hard to escape. He doesn’t have to compromise what he wants from life to appease his abuser anymore.

This is a very brief moment but it’s also a very important and powerful one if you know what you’re looking at. It’s so, so easy for abusive family to cause regression when they manage to wiggle back into your life for one reason or another. Family reunions, funerals, weddings. They will take those moments to grab you by the ankles and start pulling you under again.

And that’s when the consequences and stakes aren’t even this high. But Moxxie won’t let himself be dragged back down and I really appreciate they gave him that moment no matter how brief.

And even though they don’t go through his thought process for you to see that, you hear it in his speech the next day when he stands up to his father. I honestly appreciate that Moxxie threatens Crim the way he does here. It not only shows he’s regained confidence in himself and his skills, but he’s also speaking Crim’s language now. He’s putting himself on equal footing with him, insinuating he’s as much of a threat as Crim is to Moxxie.

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of this moment: that having Moxxie zapped and forced into the wedding regardless makes his standing up to his father fall flat. And I would agree with that a little but for the fact that there’s still time to bring that confrontation back around to completion. As season two and Helluva Boss as a show is still ongoing, there are plenty of episodes left for Moxxie to follow through with his threats and support this breakthrough with actions. Crim is clearly coming back, after all.

I also think, however, that having that moment at all is still very important to character development. Simply because there was no physicality to back it up, doesn’t mean the emotional journey that led to it was entirely worthless. Moxxie still had very important character development here. When he left the first time, he simply disappeared and did not confront his father. But now he has. And that makes a big difference.

When he returns to his life, it’ll be with a different mindset and a different kind of confidence. He’s no longer running from his father, hiding from his duties, or obscuring parts of himself from his loved ones. He’s truly stood up and taken his life fully into his hands. And now there are parts of himself he can share with Millie that he couldn’t before. This can only bring them closer and make their marriage more intimate.

In the same way, he now has a point of connection with Blitz over their daddy issues, which brings them closer to fulfilling that true friendship Truth Seekers hinted at. One step at a time, Moxxie and Blitz come closer to understanding one another.

All in all, I loved this episode. It does a good job of handling the subject of abuse and associated tragic backstory without sensationalizing or downplaying it, both of which are extremely easy to do in a comedy-drama mash-up. But I personally feel like they managed to hit the sweet spot between the two.

#Helluva Boss #moxxie helluva boss

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canmom · 8 months ago

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l'aventure de canmom à annecy - épisode deux: XR

so I'm going to abandon all semblance of chronological order at this point.

just like last year there was an VR room operating on a morning booking system - each thing had two headsets and a signup sheet. I didn't get to try every one but I did get most of them. enough that the volunteers noticed me coming back every day x3

^ some random people immersed in the Wired

this is easily the longest annecy post so far... so please read on for a big old discussion of the unique difficulties faced by VR film as a medium, and how this year's annecy films meet them... or more often don't.

so annecy's vr films section is for essentially linear vr projects (i refuse to write "experiences") that can be watched/played in less than an hour. i don't know if that's a hard rule but that's how long all the ones here were!

let's get the technical stuff out of the way: the Quest 2/3 was by far the headset of choice. some ran natively, some were PCVR with a wire connecting to a computer, and some were 360° videos which played back on the headset with 3dof tracking. some had a degree of interactivity, up to about a 'walking simulator' level. the average runtime was between 20m and an hour.

the preamble: on the limitations of VR

the big question I have with XR movies is basically... how well does it actually use the medium? like, is it doing anything that wouldn't work better as a flatscreen game or a film?

this might seem like a high bar to clear, like why shouldn't it be in VR - but VR is uncomfortable, the headset is expensive etc etc, and that's before even the formal stuff I'm about to get into. so that's 'why not'. and also, this is a new medium, I want to see what unique features it has to offer!

I'm sure I've said this before, but despite on the face of it being more 'inmersive' than traditional flatscreen games or films, VR is actually a pretty restrictive medium! compared to flatscreen games with their many 'buttons', you are very limited in the possible interactions. your main interaction is to 'pick up' and 'hold' objects, but this is close enough to actual physical interaction to highlight how much it isn't. what it actually means is that you position your hand or controller in a trigger and press a grab button or pinch your fingers, at which point the object snaps to your hand and moves weightlessly with it.

you also can't accelerate the pov too much without causing motion sickness, etc etc.

ok, what about film? well, compared to film, the big big thing VR lacks is the frame of the camera. you can't cut, you can't frame a subject, you don't have long shots or closeups, you can't even rely on the player/viewer looking in the direction of an interesting thing.

since movement is also tricky in VR due to the motion sickness problem, you're also limited in your ability to steer the viewer to interesting sights with Valve-style 'vistas' using the level architecture. it's not impossible - Valve themselves have their familiar vistas in HL Alyx - but it's something that depends on the player being able to move through a large space, so it doesn't fit these kinds of movie-like project so well. otherwise you can draw attention to a direction using various means, like visual effects that converge on a spot, or just keeping most of the action in the same area.

what you can also do, closer to camerawork, is move the viewer's point of view, and shrink or enlarge their surroundings. the language of VR 'shots' is still far from defined, but we have a few recurring ones: standing in a normal sized room, the giant's view in a tiny city, the floating perspective looking down on a diorama, the ant's eye view inside something regular sized.

how about theatre, which also has most of these limitations? well, compared to being in person with a real human being, you're limited by the capabilities of realtime animation systems and the rendering tech available on the device. you're looking at the character in a slightly fuzzy low resolution and unless you have AAA money which noone in VR does, you're a bit limited in the 'acting' you can pull off. this may change if the apple vision pro gets popular - apple already have a 'gertie the dinosaur' style demo where a very detailed dinosaur emerges from a portal - but it's definitely out of reach of most teams working on the Quest.

so compared to all these other media, what does XR offer?

compared to film and theatre, there is the game aspect of agency: a story feels different if you are the one doing it. so most VR narrative games have characters interact with the player somehow, though this introduces the problem of how to write the player into a story without feeling like you're railroading them or that they're superfluous to the real story.

it's very easy to undercut this sense of agency by having an amount that's not zero but still too small, e.g. if it just feels like the player is touching a button that lights up then you wonder why they even bothered.

the role that most games put the (vaguely defined) player character in is 'terrifying violence doer'. this is a fairly easy role to write around, and it gives the player a lot of control of the 'how' while letting the writer control the 'what' and 'where' and 'why'. similarly if the player's role is something like 'puzzle solver'. but for a purely narrative presentation, these roles don't exist.

still, this is the idea that a lot of VR rests on: an 'immersive experience' which puts the player into the story.

the other big thing that VR has is the joy of experiencing visual effects in 3D. particles, trails, transforming geometric shapes etc are cool on a flat screen and even cooler in stereo vision where you can move your head around. another benefit is spatial audio by default - something that is gradually coming to games but provided 'for free' by vr consoles.

in the land of games, you also have incredibly precise position and direction input... as long as it's in arm's length of the player. the most successful genres of VR games (so far) use this: a lot of shooting games, and some games that let you interact with physics objects, offer 3D jigsaw puzzles, or simulate sports to provide some real exercise. it can be really good for rhythm games as beat saber demonstrates.

VR is also really for social games like VRChat - similar to MMOs but with the benefits of more complex tracking in lieu of canned animations.

but... none of these fit the form of a predictable 15-50 minute narrative sequence! they're not films! so the VR films category at annecy is a tough problem to crack.

last year, the VR project that most impressed me was one that put you in the seat of a novice spotter in a bomber in the second world war. this was a great fit for a lot of reasons. you are in a vehicle so you have no reason to move from seated; the scenario is full of loud scary sounds that can make full use of spatial audio; your 'character' is well-defined but also doesn't have much reason to speak within the scenario. this had a small amount of interaction (by pointing your head) which you could actually fail, making it a bit closer to a game, and also giving you reason to play close attention to the bombed out cityscape below you. it did a fantastic job of capturing the tension of a dangerous air mission, the pilot character interacting with you was compelling, and overall it really benefited from being in VR.

this year's films

sadly nothing I saw this year comes close to that. but still, some are interesting, so let's go through them!

My favourite this year was probably Flow - completely unrelated to the movie in the main competition, though they share the trait of being completely wordless, conveying their story simply through imagery and music.

Flow's big trick is a very cool visual effect where characters and objects are conveyed the trails left behind by little particles, causing them to appear ghostlike . At first you're just flying through a cityscape, passing various people on the street and in the subway, with the particle trails conveying the breaths of the passengers; gradually a storm brews, the trails becoming the wind that tears at everything.

I believe this was a prerendered film, with only 3dof tracking - i think i saw some compression artefacts at some point. So it's less technically impressive than if they managed to do it realtime but it does make full use of the power this gives to render loads of particles and move rapidly through different scenes. it was also an effect that benefitted from the ability to put you in the middle of it - something that would not work as well on a flat screen.

But it also benefitted a lot from being more film-like. It has an original soundtrack, and progresses without input from the player. There's no awkward 'player' character to write around, no space you stand about in. The film can simply unfold and let you appreciate it. In this case, no interaction is better than bad interaction.

My Inner Ear Quartet from Japan did not do anything particularly novel with the medium, but to my mind it had by far the most compelling story. It tells of a young, introverted boy who habitually digs in the dirt for objects that other people would consider trash. The title refers to a string quartet which he hears when he cries, imagined to be in his inner ear; also there is a pair of tiny shrimp which he saw grow in a net.

The first half is narrated by a man who turns out to be the boy grown up, now a hearing aid salesman. While the boy abandons his box of treasures, as an adult he returns to collecting and documenting abandoned objects as a kind of urban explorer.

The geometry here is stylised in a kind of rough, children's drawing way. I think this could have been pushed further with more complex shaders but it works. For the most part, you're watching as an invisible observer seated on a floating chair. At certain points, the viewpoint is taken inside the boy's ear, or into the tin of treasures, where you can grab the objects and get the boy's brief, poetic description of each one.

I liked this story because it had substance, but left enough up to interpretation to be engaging. By showing the treasures to us with the descriptions we get to understand why they might be significant to the boy. It plays well with the classic anime theme of objects as vessels for emotional significance. I think it would have worked just as well on a flat screen, but I enjoyed my time with it.

Now the rest...

The Age of the Monster had some things going for it, but honestly I think this one shouldn't have been in VR. It's basically a film about how bad we're fucking up the planet, putting us in the house of a man who works in the nuclear industry in the 70s up to a future where the cooling towers lie in ruins. The 'monster' is a giant anthro catfish, seen first as a B-movie monster and dream vision and finally as a real kaiju scale creature in the final future scene.

We're told about the economic circumstances that led to the man getting this job, and his relief at working in nuclear during the oil crisis; we're told about the infamous repressed oil industry report about how climate change is gonna be a thing; we're told about the man's fraught relationship with his radical daughter who is furious about his extractivist ways. Then we get a collapse and humans learn to take the force of nature more seriously, i forget the exact phrasing they used.

The main problem is? These are mostly things you are told, by voiceover. There is some environmental storytelling in the evolution of the house but not enough to convey much without the v/o. the film does not seem to have the confidence in its imagery to show us what it's trying to say.

I feel like the film's vision of the post-collapse future, with flocks of birds flying over a wide river and collapsed overgrown cooling towers, is a huge missed opportunity. Here's an opportunity to apply some true visual imagination of how humans might live in a climate changed future... but nah, giant catfish kaiju just kinda hanging out there.

The environmental message is generally a stance I sympathise with, but the film doesn't make a good case for it on a propaganda level. We see the cooling towers outside the window and eventually the house, flooded, but it does little to make the collapse narrative emotionally compelling - and I question a little the choice to make it nuclear focused in a film about climate change. It's probably based on an actual guy, right? Maybe someone's parent? But... despite putting us in his shoes i don't really feel like i understand him very well.

Does this seem harsh? I know full well how involved vr dev is, and even simple things can take weeks. But i also want someone to make the most of this medium. To make something as compelling as the best short films on the main screens.

Gargoyle Doyle tells another 'skipping though time' story, depicting a gargoyle on an 800 year old church from its construction through to demolition. I would compare this one perhaps to a puppet theatre - it certainly stands out in terms of character animation, with Doyle played by Jason Isaacs as a classic grumpy old British theatre guy, his foyle foil a goofy statue of monk acting as a drainpipe with a penchant for puns.

I didn't get to watch this one in full, since I got to sub in for someone who left early (thanks to the volunteer who took pity on me when it was fully booked lol). So I didn't see the full arc of this. What I saw was... definitely edutainment material, but pretty well done. The player is cast as a visitor to a future museum and nature reserve built on the site of the church. It seems like this was originally shown in a real museum in Venice, with the 'in the museum' sections portrayed in mixed reality; obvs this wouldn't work at Annecy so they have these virtual too.

The narrative as a whole seems a tad self congratulatory and pat, with Doyle learning a valuable lesson about not being a cunt to his only friends as he's resurrected in the museum, and it doesn't do a whole lot with the VR framing, but taking it as an educational puppet show, it works pretty well - the voice performances are good and the jokes, while a little predictable, work for the kid-friendly style it's going for. I'm not sure it really needed to be 40 minutes long, but I can see they wanted to go maximalist for a proof of concept like this. It is kinda limited by the rendering capabilities of the Quest, the lack of shadows in particular, and could definitely benefit from some baked lighting given the relatively static scenes, but I give it a lot of credit for the character animation and VA.

Apparently the jury liked this one too because it won the competition!

Nana Lou has been in development a few years apparently, casting the player in the role of a psychopomp spirit whose role is to ease the passing of a woman dying of a stroke. Visually, this is one of the best looking, with elaborate forest scenes and strong environment design.

What I really like about this one is its use, at times, of a diorama-like presentation where the player looks down on tiny characters in a room. This is a concept I've wanted to try in VR for a while, and it's cool to see someone do it.

I found the kind of spiritual aspect of the story a lot more underwhelming. The player is accompanied by two other spirits who explain everything that's going on and point out the significance of all the imagery. The player is informed they have an important role, but they don't have a name and can't talk back, and the only interaction is to grab floating photos to initiate flashbacks.

I wish this film had had the confidence to trust in its acting and visual storytelling. While Nana Lou's life is a bit too lacking in serious conflict to make the premise work, it would still be far more interesting and compelling with the frame story largely trimmed. You could still cast the player as a psychopomp but you don't need to have a greek chorus telling them what to click on!

The actual story concerns Lou's relationship with her daughter, who became estranged when she quit university to raise her child, instead of staying on as Lou thought she should. This caused them to spend decades estranged. Finding out this story frees up the daughter's spirit as well, and the penultimate scene has her speak to Lou and make up.

There's definitely something to work with there, but the main delivery mechanism is rather ponderous narration triggered by interacting with objects, with the dramatic scenes largely having taken place off screen. Like The Age of the Monster, it suffers a severe telling-not-showing problem.

It's a shame because there are nice touches here. When you are beside Lou's bed in the hospital, your touch leaves a glow effect which is very evocative. The acting is solid, though the script undermines it a bit.

I don't think narration is evil - evidently, Yuri and I used it in our film, it's a very efficient way to convey information - but I do think it requires a lot of thought put into style and rhythm.

Spots of Light... ok. This one tells the story of an Israeli soldier who lost his sight in the Lebanon war, and later regained it temporarily through surgery. Given my general feelings about the Israeli military (presently carrying out a genocide), I was definitely not disposed to like this one. Nevertheless, it was the only one free so I decided to give it a shot.

This is one of those films where you interview someone and then put an animation to it. So this guy tells you what it was like to be blind and then not blind to see his family briefly, and it's illustrated with various images. And (if i remember right) some parts are on tvs showing video (and if you're using vr to embed a flat screen what is even the point??). When he's blind, everything disappears except vague outlines suggested by small points of light.

Ultimately this is a film about blindness, not the war (of course, meaning this is a person who could leave the war behind - though not to make light of the cruelty of conscription). Making a film about the experience of blindness in a purely visual medium is a choice all right, and I don't feel like this film expressed anything unexpected about it - he was sad to lose his sight, glad to see his family, depressed to lose it again but ultimately at peace. Which is conveyed, of course, primarily by narration.

So yeah this one didn't do much for me!

Stay Alive My Son, now. Agh. This one was... this one was a mess.

So this one is about the Cambodian genocide, right. It's based on a memoir by a survivor of the genocide, Pin Yathay, who became separated from his wife and son while fleeing the Khmer Rouge.

The way this is presented is essentially a walking simulator that takes you through a dungeon-like environment full of skeletons. Every so often you encounter 3D films - filmed with some kind of depth camera - showing actors playing out scenes from the life of the family. There is also a frame story where you visit Pin Yathay in his modern day house, where he sees a digital reconstruction of how his son might look as an adult

This one is difficult to review because it was severely marred by technical issues with the spatial audio, which caused the sound to cut out when you turned your head the wrong way or moved it to the wrong place. It would probably be less of a rough experience if the audio worked as intended. Nevertheless, I have plenty of reservations with the way the story is told as well.

It seems the director of the VR experience (fine! I'll write experience, there isn't a better noun for this kind of thing that sits between game and film) met Pin Yathay, there's video of her speaking to him at the end, but he had pretty minimal creative input beyond providing inspiration through his memoir. So this is a Greek/US interpretation of the Cambodian genocide. The narrative it tells is basically: Yathay and his family are living a pretty idyllic life, then the Khmer Rouge happens, seemingly not for any particular reason. Yathay and his family are evacuated and then put to hard labour growing rice; eventually, their son is put to work too, so fearing for his life, they flee into the jungle.

The Cambodian genocide is - obviously! - one of the worst atrocities of the whole bloody 20th century, and the circumstances surrounding it are worth reading about (though pretty unremittingly bleak). But you won't learn much about, say, cold war geopolitical alignment, Prince Sihanouk, the absolutely horrific civil war, the different ideologies in play in the Marxist milieu that influenced Pol Pot, or the spillover from Vietnam and the massive bombing by the Americans here which helped put the Khmer Rouge in power. You definitely won't learn much about the Cambodia that existed before the war. Instead, you're mostly traversing a dungeon that could come from any horror game, shining your torch on the things you're told to in order to unlock another segment of narration from (the actor playing) Yathay. It is, in pretty literal terms, a tour of atrocities.

Unfortunately the '3D film of actors' conceit doesn't really work because... even audio issues aside, the acting is pretty unconvincing. For some reason - perhaps that subtitles are tricky in VR - the dialogue is in accented English rather than Cambodian, and it's pretty quickly evident that they just have one guy in the role of 'Khmer Rouge soldier' and the lines he's given are kinda awkward. The horror game aesthetics of the environments and the amateur actors and costumes all clash pretty badly. The 3D filming is also kind of jank, only really working if you're fairly close to the camera position, so you aren't really free to move too far even if the audio didn't crap out.

The basic feelings it's trying to explore - the horror of living through a genocide, separation from a child, guilt for abandoning him, not knowing if he's alive or dead - is definitely worth depicting, but honestly this would have been far far better expressed as a 10-20 minute film than a slow 55 minute VR walking sim. The more abstract bits toward the end with paper plane imagery and a Buddhist temple (where you have to put a block in a slot to unlock a door) also feel too jank and videogamey to really have much impact, though by that point I had been wrestling with the audio for nearly an hour so I wasn't in the most receptive mood.

But all the execution flaws aside, that leaves the question of what even is the right way to portray a genocide artistically? This approach is very abstract, reducing the events to dislocated symbols - propaganda posters, the tree against which children were dashed - which perhaps might reflect how fragmented memory becomes, but seems to be wasting the potential of VR to establish you in a place. But then, I guess rice fields are harder to render than enclosed dark rooms.

Speaking of rendering, this was PCVR, so your torch casts shadows and it has other features that would be hard on realtime. But the lack of ambient light and general harshness of the materials adds to the 'horror game' feel.

There is something here about how genocides become associated with certain images. For Cambodia, it is primarily phrases like 'killing fields' and the stacked skulls in the genocide memorials such as Choeung Ek - few people know the name of the memorial in the west, but I think everyone who's heard of the genocide has seen the big stack of skulls. I imagine this is what all the skeletons in this experience are supposed to call to mind: they're representatives of the many ways people died. The problem that this kind of environmental storytelling has long ago been made kind of camp by videogames. A photo of a stack of real skeletons still has power to disturb, but less so a low poly 3D skeleton.

Should it have tried for a realism? The idea of trying to realistically simulate the experience of living in Cambodia though the genocide is kind of ghoulish, and I'm glad they didn't take that approach. But the 'tour of images' approach falls flat. I think The Most Precious of Cargoes elsewhere in the festival makes a stronger case for how to approach a topic like a genocide in a consciously constructed way, but it also has the ability to be in dialogue with a lot of other films made about the Holocaust. There is less in English about the Cambodian genocide - the viewer can't even be assumed to know what happened.

Overall, I think it would be possible to make a much stronger film about the genocide in Cambodia. But I'm not sure what that film would look like. I did learn one thing from this story, which is that there is a reality show in Cambodia which shows survivors of the genocide being reunited with their families. Not much is made of this here, it's something of a background detail. What would it be like to grow up in the shadow of an event like that? I wish the film had been willing to portray more of modern Cambodia - and I hope at some point someone in Cambodia will have a film at this festival, in VR or not, which can talk about it all from the first person.

Is there a good way to try to answer the curiosity of people who live safely in rich countries about what it is like to go through an actual genocide... using a Meta Quest 2 VR headset that costs a few hundred quid? I don't really know, but this film could have done with being a bit more reflective, I feel. So it goes.

the others

there were three films I couldn't see - The Imaginary Friend, Oto's Planet and Emperor. If I get some other chance to try them I'll write about them too!

Overall I felt a bit disappointed with the VR this year, but also I kind of want to put my money where my mouth is and try my hand at making this kind of thing. I do have the technical knowledge at least!

If you read all this, thank you.

#l'aventure de canmom à annecy #annecy 2024

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lookingforyn · 2 months ago

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Hi!!! Can I request a Kaito and Rantaro x reader (separate) where Reader has a date for the upcoming prom and Kaito/Rantaro has a crush on them but found out they have a date then when prom happens they are not seen with a date. Can this be in modern AU

Awww this sounds so sweet I love this idea!! 🤍🤍🤍

Kaito Mamota and Rantaro Amami X reader who already had a date to the prom

SFW, requested, fluff, hurt/comfort, one shot, romantic relationship but not dating, gender neutral pronouns, non killing game au.

━━━━━━━━ ★ ━━━━━━━━

Kaito Mamota

“Hey Y/N!” Kaito yelled across the cafeteria running over to you in that big goofy smile you know too well. “There are people trying to eat you know!” You say with a giggle “I don’t remember being allowed to eat in the library.” He sat down his cheerful energy igniting a warm feeling in your chest. “So Y/N tomorrow’s the big day you said you were still lo-“ “TAKA ASKED ME OUT!!” …really? Kaito was taken back but was quick enough not to let them know. “That’s great! How did it happen?” You took a sip of your water not wanting to look him in the eyes it felt to awkward telling your guy friend about you love life, yea that’s what was bugging you about him. “Well he knew I didn’t have anyone to go with so he volunteered.” As the ultimate moral compass it only sounds like he’s doing it from the kindness of his heart. “Well I’m glad you got someone to go with I’ll see you two on the dance floor!”

The lights were twinkling at the music was flooding the gym. Kaito rolled in with Maki and Shuichi deciding that taking your friends was way more rewarding than forcing yourself to slow dance with someone you don’t feel comfortable even holding hands with. “Kaito there they are.” Shuichi pointed out showing him a Y/N he never thought he would be able to get his eyes on. There star striking… where’s Taka? Kaito with his smile walked over to you but this time it didn’t do anything. “Y/N what’s wrong?” “He meant well.” You said your head hanging low in embarrassment. “Did he stand you up? I never thought he’d be the type to do that.” You grabbed his hand and brought him outside of the gym Kaito flustered by your touch but needing to stay strong to support you. You stopped by the trophy case still looking at your shoes. “He said being the moral compass he wanted to be nice but he couldn’t lie to me as well. He said he wasn’t straight and really wanted to dance with one of his guy friends but he didn’t want me to feel bad going to the prom on my own so…” Well that explains a lot. “Wow I never knew that… hey I have a solution that can make everyone happy but only if your ok with it.” You looked up flustered and confused. “Taka can find the guy he wants to dance with and I don’t technically have a date so… may I take you to the prom?” No he’s not just a guy friend to me. Finally it’s happening. “I’d love that. Hey can we go somewhere else first before heading back to the gym? I want to see something with you.”

After leading Kaito you found your way up on the school roof the endless array of stars dancing in the black night sky. “Kai-“ “May I have this dance?” You blushed as he gave you his hand his eyes locked on yours admiring every detail with worship. “Yes you may.”

Rantaro Amami

“We both know Kokichi is only taking them cause he has something up his sleeve.” Rantaro complained to Kaede as she examined his closet for the right suit for tonight. “It’s their choice and maybe Kokichi actually found someone he can be vulnerable with you know? Someone he can be himself around without sabotaging the relationship.” Rantaro rolled his eyes in disbelief. “I just know they can do better then-“ “No you want to take them to prom and you got too chicken to say anything.” Kaede grabbed the last of his suit turning her attention now to the three bottles of cologne to choose from. “I wasn’t afraid I just don’t want to make Y/N uncomfortable I have to be there for them and if I mess anything up not only they won’t want me as a partner but as a friend.” A dark blue bottle of liquid was tossed onto Rantaros lap playfully. “You’d be surprised on the outcome, now let’s get going before the gym gets packed.”

The doors swig open the sight of confetti dresses the gym floor and some heads of unlucky students. “Do you see Y/N?!” Rantaro raised his voice the bass of the speakers making it nearly impossible for anyone to hear him if they weren’t basically tied at the hip. “No I‘ll ch-“ with that you walked right passed Kaede your hands covering your face making sure no one could see how pathetic you looked. “I’ll meet you outside the gym let me find them!” Rantaro hurried to catch up with you dodging packs of people and strung up balloons. “Y/N wait up!” Rantaro caught up to you grabbing your hand in the middle of the hallway to see what was wrong. “Hey hey what happened?” He noticed the torn attire a sticky green substance covering it head to toe “I don’t want to talk about it.” You said trying not to burst into tears. I should have asked them “Come with me.” Rantaro said taking your hand this time with you trying to catch up to him as he looked like a man on a mission. “Where are we going?” You said in distress and confusion “Getting you cleaned up and then something I should have done a while ago.”

After Rantaro returning you to your dorm to get dressed Kaede came over to give you something else to wear for the night the fabric leaving you breathless. A knock on the door interrupted your attempt to calm your nerves the dread of the possibility Kokichi could be standing outside with another “practical joke”did not help your anxiety but with great courage you opened the door. “Rantaro-“ He was holding a single rose thanks to the schools green house his stance telling you he was serious with what he was about to say “Y/N will you be my date to the prom? I should have asked you this the minute I heard the announcement.” You blushed walking out of your dorm and closing the door behind you. “Rantaro will you be my date… in general?” You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear that a kiss on your cheek was enough of a yes for the both of you.

#danganronpa x y/n #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa x reader #danganronpa fanfiction #danganronpa headcanons #danganronpa #send requests #requests are open #x reader #y/n #danganronpa kaito #danganronpa rantaro #rantaro amami #rantaro x reader #kaito momota #kaito x reader

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 2 years ago

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AITA for accidentally causing a falling out in our friend group?

I (19) made some friends in college. One of these was J (19M). Throughout the year, small issues built up with him. Notably him constantly (albeit not maliciously) misgendering me. However, he has only known me to go by they/them pronouns since we met, so I don’t see why after nearly a year of knowing him he still couldn’t get them right.

As well as him having very aggressive body language while having conversations/arguments, which always made me very uncomfortable, but he never actually did anything, so I thought it was fine.

The turning point was one night when we were all hanging out, me and my friend M (19F) were talking about how unfair it is that guys can take their shirts off when it’s super hot outside and somehow it got to us talking about how boobs are technically secondary sexual characteristics and shouldn’t even be sexualized by society as much as they are.

J argued with us. The actual opinion on this argument is not important here nor what makes anyone the asshole, but essentially it boiled down to me saying that, if it was hot enough, I personally don’t think it should be wrong for me to be shirtless. He then told me to prove it by taking off my shirt. I said no. There were five other people in the room with us who would not consent to that and it wasn’t hot in the room.

After I explicitly said no to taking off my shirt, he doubled down. Said if I didn’t take it off my argument had no holding and that he was right, which made me uncomfortable. I didn’t feel like I needed to strip in my friend’s dorm to prove a point for a disagreement that really wasn't that serious and I didn't like that he pressured me to after I said no the first time. I can’t remember what I said in response, but the disagreement ended there thanks to the show we were all about to watch starting. However, it made me very uncomfortable for the rest of the night.

Later that night, we went out to get some food like we usually do and sat around in a circle talking. Two of my friends went up to get more food while the other three were having their own conversation which led to J and I talking.

Now, some context: I’m autistic and I have sensory issues which make it difficult for me to eat food. There have been times when I’ve gone the whole day without eating, or maybe even multiple without, and I often stick to foods that are "safe" and won’t make me feel sick (most aren’t very nutritional/healthy).

I'm very aware of my difficulty eating and how unhealthy it is. I had been going back to my house every weekend in order to eat something other than the college food and even bought some vitamins to try and keep myself from getting severely malnourished.

That being said, I didn’t get a chance to eat much that day, and going out with them was my first genuine meal. After eating a meatball sub I got, M gave me her leftover grapes and I offhandedly said to J “I think these are the healthiest thing I’ve ate today.”

And his response to me saying this was “You are so strange. You’re aware of how unhealthy you are, yet you never change.”

For the record, he doesn't know the specifics of my difficulties with eating. I’ve only vaguely mentioned it’s hard for me to eat and that I’m not able to eat a lot without feeling sick. Still, it felt really insensitive, very out of nowhere as we weren't having a serious conversation at all, and hurt my feelings. I got visibly upset at this and responded with a very bitter “Yeah” and immediately dropped the subject because it's not something I enjoy talking about. (This was also not the first time he has made comments about my self-care habits in such a way and while I believe he says them with good intentions I have stated multiple times it makes me feel worse).

I didn’t want to make a big deal out of nothing, so I texted my friends after we all headed back to our dorms about what happened. Both him telling me to take off my shirt and the comment on my eating and asked if I was making a big deal out of it by being uncomfortable and upset. They told me that both things were extremely rude (and that the shirt thing was technically sexual harassment, though I don’t want to call it that) and that I was justified in being uncomfortable. They then mentioned that they had their own issues with J being a little too aggressive in the past that they had brushed aside, but they felt that what happened to me justified talking to him about his behavior.

We tried our best to avoid an argument. We just wanted to have a civil conversation about it as we all genuinely care about him. But when I confronted him about my issues and H brought up the problems she had been having (which consisted of him being too aggressive, guilt tripping the others when he was told to back off, and not respecting her privacy in her dorm) he got very defensive. It escalated into an argument between H and J that escalated to H deciding to cut ties with him due to him refusing to listen.

A few hours later, J sent me and H a genuine apology, which we accepted. I thought things were fine between us, although there was lingering discomfort as there would be with most big arguments. When the semester ended he sent us all messages that he didn’t feel welcome in the group and that he thought it was better to cut ties permanently and wished us all well.

I kind of feel like it’s my fault and that I caused unnecessary drama without meaning to.

AITA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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nerdthatsiriuslylovesteaxx · 1 year ago

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Helpless part 9 guyssss (honestly surprised I've gotten this far without giving up)

"How's he doing?"

"He woke up today, turns out he had a broken rib and I didn't fucking realise."

"Will, he almost died. You were panicking, you helped him in the end, don't beat yourself up."

"It's a fucking broken rib not a paper cut."

"I know and normally I would be scolding you over it but this is a different situation, anyway any progress?"

"Well I mean he didn't threaten to kill me when I touched him and he talked to me so that's something I think...?"

"See he doesn't hate you!" She says punching him in the shoulder lightly,

"He's so fucking hot, how the Hades is someone allowed to be that hot?"

"Damn Solace, you're more obsessed than I thought."

"No shit. Also how do I get past the 'I won't kill you but I don't like you very much' stage?

"Try to talk to him, make him play 20 questions with you? Then he can interrogate you while you interrogate him, but also have few skips. He's gone through a lot, you don't want to force him to answer if he doesn't feel comfortable."

"Thanks for the advice Anni-Annabeth." He catches himself before using the nickname, he knows it's the one Luke always used.

"No problem Will, I wish you the best of luck in not getting killed."

"Hopefully I won't need it." he sighed with a smile before walking off to join his siblings. Annabeth smiled to herself, this would be entertaining. It was honestly painful to watch them pining over each other like this much while being so clueless about the other, it took all of her willpower to not lock them in a room together until they kissed.

---

"Morning Death boy." Will smiled as Nico got up,

"So creative, how long did it take for you to think of that?"

"Would you prefer Neeks? Or Doom and Gloom?"

"You are a child, Sunshine."

"Wow Nico di Angelo has discovered nicknames; anyways how do you feel?" It still surprised Nico how quickly Will could go from joking around to very much serious,

"I'm fine."

"Do you think you can eat anything?" Nico shook his head, as Will checked his pulse and breathing before taking out the IV needle. "Neeks I'm gonna take a blood sample, we need to see if the underworldly things have any other effects." Nico nodded but Will noticed the uncomfort on his face, he decided not to point it out but made a mental note. Nico didn't flinch at the needle but he looked like he was re-living something, Will didn't ask but wished he knew. "You feel alright to get up?"

"Yeah,"

"Great we're going outside, you need sunlight."Nico muttered something under his breath not loud enough for Will to hear.

"Aren't I on infirmary arrest?"

"Technically no, but it's either stay in the infirmary or have a healer with you at all times right now."

"Amazing," Nico grumbled following Will outside towards the edge of the forest.

***

________

Okay, so this part's a bit short but the next paragraph is really long and I didn't want to split it in half.

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fountainpenguin · 6 months ago

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What do fairies eat

Fairies love eating plants! Lots of veggies and salads, plus random plants and leaves. It's a nod to both their insect DNA and the fact that a lot of Fairies shapeshift into animals, so some people think it's rude to offer guests animals to eat.

That said, small mammals are popular foods. There's a lot of bird-eating in my 'fics because, uh... birds don't fall off the edge of the clouds :')

Larger game such as deer do exist, but they're usually on Plane 7 (the Wanderplains) and the characters I write don't go there often (It's where Cosmo went when told to "get lost" in "Fairly Odd Baby").

?? I guess unicorns are technically game animals, but Fairies definitely don't hunt them for cultural reasons akin to Da Rules. Anti-Fairies don't have an issue with it, though... although in "Not All the Same," Anti-Wanda told Anti-Cosmo he looked more ruffled than a fruit bat on a unicorn's carcass, so take that as you will.

Binky and Jorgen indulged on a lot of sweet treats when they were disguised as humans in the "Swim" Prompt.

Anti-Fairies, who struggle growing nutritious plants in their world, eat a lot of meat, especially birds. The animals they can hunt aren't great since the leaves don't grow well without the sun, but they'll eat whatever they can get (Ex: Anti-Wanda's roadkill critter cake).

Prior the War of the Angels, the Anti-Fairies relied on the magical bottomless cauldron of the Dagda, which could spawn food, but Anti-Cosmo lost it during the war.

Fairies tend to eat fast and get out while Anti-Fairies settle in for large, long meals. A lot of Anti-Fairies struggle to get enough food (especially since their species doesn't need food to live, so sometimes people just skip meals and grow steadily weaker). The polite thing to do is offer food to a guest if you have enough to spare.

This is one of the things H.P. finds annoying... Anti-Cosmo (and his predecessor) always give him food when he visits, and their meals take forever.

It's worth noting that Anti-Fairies drink a lot of wine and Fairies drink a lot of water or milk. Canonically, Fairies get drunk/hungover from candy and soda ("Power Pals"), which I've always interpreted as sugar and carbonation, so these societies prefer low-sugar drinks as opposed to juice.

The "Shadow" Prompt depicts Hiccup (Foop's alternate personality) going to lunch with Anti-Wanda at a traditional Anti-Fairy dining establishment, where we see hints of their food-serving culture (youth deferring to elders, so Hiccup is taken aback when Anti-Wanda offers him the last scone against protocol).

We also learn there's a tradition that the High Countess, in honor of the very first High Countess who was paralyzed and fed by her partner, isn't allowed to touch certain foods with "hands, magic, or utensils" and is supposed to be fed by close kin, and no one can eat until she's done. Anti-Wanda is uncomfortable with all that attention and pressure, so she dodges that custom by eating with her feet.

Foop & Hiccup think their mum is so dang smart... They really look up to her and it's important to me <3

Pixies eat soy, plus a lot of grains like oatmeal and cereal. However, all pixies are deathly allergic to honeywheat (because they're clones of H.P.); there's an upcoming scene in Origin of the Pixies where Anti-Cosmo is mad at him and serves him honeywheat rolls at a special banquet. H.P. catches on and screws him over by going to eat the roll anyway, so Anti-Cosmo lunges forward in a panic to save his life... and is forced to admit to everyone he just tried to poison his friend.

The anti-pixies are based on fruit bats, so they eat a lot of fruit. I'm pretty sure there's a gingerbread cave near them ("Clash With the Anti-World"), but I forget right now if I have that next to the Pixies or anti-pixies in my worldbuilding.

The common fairy subspecies share their biology with dragonflies, which are carnivores. They have to eat meat, which Cosmo's great at doing!

From his teen years up, Poof punishes himself by cutting meat out of his diet as much as he can without dying. It's not healthy for him, but he started doing it after crashing Cosmo's car in "Repeat;" I love this scene:

"Hey, Poofster. Come out where I can see you. You know I'm no good at hide-and-seek." Poof slunk around the desk, and Cosmo drank him in for the first time. His whole face had brightened pinker than a plum. He clenched Dusty's wand between both hands, knees curled almost to his chest. Where had Dusty gone off to, even? Odd. With slow beats of his wings, he drifted over to where Cosmo floated above the tile. "I'm not really sure what happened here, but I'm kind of broken up about this, Poof. Darla was handmade and perfect. Replacing her parts year past year was super expensive for me. Now she'll have to be a magical car, and that's gonna cause a lot of problems on magical roads. We'll have to pay extra fees because of that and get extra license restrictions now. We can't drive her some places in the cloudlands, even to her favorite mountain spots. And never, ever take her to the lakes. How are you gonna fix it?" "I'm sorry! I won't drink your chocolate milk again for a century. I won't hang out with friends and I'll do all my homework and I'll do my exercises and shower every day and I'll never ask for extra curfew time for the rest of my life! And… and I'll give up eating meat forever! Even pepperoni!" Cosmo's eyebrows lifted. That seemed a little harsh, even if he had crashed the car. But when Poof ducked his head, he said, "Gee. Well, I guess I have no choice except to forgive you if stop snitching my chocolate milk. But how did this happen? I thought you were going to practice, so why were you in Serentip?" "It was an accident! S-someone ran right on in front of me, and I had to spin the car so I wouldn't hit them." Pause. That hadn't been in the report. Cosmo glanced sideways at the three fairies behind the desk, who all averted their eyes and pretended to be working again. "And… you ended up in Serentip on… accident." "Dad." Poof lowered his voice to something like a hiss. "This is embarrassing… Can we talk about this somewhere else?" But the paperwork. Even Fairy paperwork had its sluggish annoyances, and he had no pixie here to lend a hand. Cosmo massaged the small space between his eyes. Maybe he shouldn't have. After all, they were still in public and Poof had already asked he tone it down… but when the thought struck him, he couldn't choke it back. "Are you okay? Were you… buying peppermint?" "No! No way, Dad! I don't take mint; I'm a good kid." Poof's eyes filled with wetness, their saltiness stinging the energy field like dandelions whapping window glass. "It was just an accident!"

In "Approval," Foop complimented Poof for bringing "quality refreshments" to the school dance they were setting up, remarking that he'd thought Poof would bring something "weird" since he doesn't eat meat. In that Prompt, we find out Foop is ALSO censoring his meat-eating, but it's because he's embarrassed to let on to his betrothed that he likes chicken nuggets, so he eats salad instead.

And we learned that Fairies use magical bubbles instead of plastic or styrofoam for their to-go orders :)

Also, apparently I have Anti-Cosmo down in my notes as a French fry lover to parallel Cosmo's potato skin allergy (and because A.C. thinks salt is tasty). I think he and Hazel would really bond over that.

- Anti-Cosmo's actually vegan in my 'fics because Cosmo likes meat so much. He tends to push this on people around him, especially Foop, which Foop has issues with. Anti-Cosmo's wedding band is made of a non-leather material and he got excited in "Health Bars" when he was gifted a scarf that harmed no animals. - Fun fact, the silver-haired anti-habetrot who gifted him that scarf is Anti-Coriander (Foop's future betrothed), but this was when she was still a stranger. She's also the anti-habetrot who was monitoring Anti-Wanda's vitals in "You'll Never Know," also pre-betrothal. She's always been there...

What do Anti-Fairies eat?

Eating habits of each magical race

Social Ladder (Food weaknesses for all 35 Fairy subspecies)

#Fairly OddParents #FOP Poof #FOP Cosmo #FAIRIES!#ridwriting #Dragonfly parents #Purple hippie dragonfly #Nerdy blue fruit bat #Cilantro princess #130 Prompts #Sighs lightly. Tumblr's update to the new format wrecked the spacing of so many old posts. I should really try fixing the sideblog #but Take-Forever Day.......#asks #The bat with the hat #I'm wasp dad trash #We're Pixies!#Bat cube and associates #The best bat queen #Alternate bat prince

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