#that its impossible to actually be mad about it. also holy shit its crazy to be able to complain about the quality of top scars in an

[sangfielle]

when they add alternating pronouns and neopronouns and bigenderism to da5. this is how i win even bigger than da4 is already letting me win on the transgender front

[thefanficmonster]

Never Satisfied [Chapter 2]

Corpse Husband x Original Female Character

Warnings: Language

Collaboration between Vy & Ashens 🖤

“this chick is crazy...and I kinda dig it“

It’s been four days since the incident and he’s all but forgotten about it, removed it from his memory entirely as if girls hide from police in his car on a regular basis. 

Today is colder than usual, and his body has been quick to respond to the change, aching around the joints. Some days it’s impossible to move, feeling his clothes and sandpaper and housing spikes as joints. Thankfully, today isn’t that bad, the pain is rather manageable. Which checks out well for him, considering he has to do some cleaning around his apartment. His skin itched at the sight of the mess his living space has become over the last few weeks he hasn’t been bothered to pick up the strewn about items or wash the dishes in the sink. 

Standing in his living room, he turns in a circle, taking in the disaster that is surrounding him. His chest tightens, throat closing up due to the overwhelmingness of the work he has ahead of him while all he wants to do is hide in his room, under the blankets of his bed that is for sure not willing to offer him much comfort at the moment, seeing as how it too is a mess. 

Forget about that! He isn’t sure if his mind is telling him to forget the task he has at hand or the comfort he has in mind. Either way, he knows what the right thing to do is. It may give him anxiety, but it has to be done. 

He clenches his jaw and closes his eyes, taking deep measured breaths and exhaling slowly just like his doctor had instructed him to do, in hopes to ease the tension around his lungs. 

Calming down a bit, he finally decides to get on with it, starting with the smallest space he has to clean, hoping accomplishing a small victory would fuel his ambition to move onto the actual rooms with a lesser struggle. So, pulling on his favorite hoodie and a beanie over his black curls, he slips out of the front door and down the stairs of his apartment complex with a trash bag in hand. He may hate cleaning, but he hates messes more, therefore it’s an easy call to make. Easy when putting the two in comparison, a struggle when he actually has to get on with the process of cleaning. 

With a deep breath as a final ‘You got this’ before action, he unlocks his car doors and looks around its interior. He starts off with the junk in the front - first tending to the passenger seat where he finds a couple plastic bags and a few water bottles. He keeps the area around the driver’s seat clean as can be, so he skips that side. Unfortunately, now he has to turn to the nightmare that is the backseats. 

While it may be tame, compared to most, the three paper bags, five disposable coffee cups that he’d dropped to the floor are more than enough to annoy him. He also makes a frustrating find of a hoodie, a few shirts, a hat, and what appears to be a forgotten CVS bag of medication. Much to his dismay, there’s more: handfuls of old receipts that he is now shoving into the garbage bag he has in hand along with straw wrappers, a few stray cold fries dating back to God-knows-when. He sighs, somewhat relieved to see the backseat is doing a lot better now than it was a couple minutes ago, though it’s not even entirely clean just yet. Something catches his eye though - a choker that was probably covered by one of the clothing items he had found. He picks it up, turning it over in his hand. It’s made of soft leather with a gunmetal ”C” and a pentagram embossed on it. It has a leather braided cord on both ends to tie together and no price tag or brand to indicate its origin. He can’t remember buying this...but then again, retail therapy is a thing and it wouldn’t be the first time he forgot a purchase. He gives it one final once-over before shrugging and pocketing it. After collecting the headphones he’d also dumped in the back and retrieving a pair of boots from the trunk, he locks up his car and heads back into the building, mentally preparing himself for facing the terror of cleaning his apartment.

Returning to his place after tossing the trash in the dumpster along the way, Corpse locks the front door behind him and proceeds to drop the things he’s brought back near the front door. 

This defeats the purpose of cleaning up in the first place, Corpse. He scolds himself but that’s what it remains at - just a scold. He slips the hoodie off his torso, but pauses when the leather collar falls to the floor. Tossing the clothing item on a dining room chair behind him, he picks up the choker and, without as much as a second thought, places it around his throat just below his Adam’s apple The metal feels cool against his skin and as he ties the leather cords at the back of his neck the corners of his lips curve upwards just a little. 

I probably look stupid. He thinks to himself. Corpse tries not to look much at his own reflection, mostly because it’s a reminder of how little sleep he gets with the dark circles and worn out, exhausted eyes staring back at him whenever he looks. But when he catches a glimpse of himself in his peripheral on his way to piss, he admires his reflection, or more so the way the black leather stands out across his pale skin. He’s gotta admit, it looks pretty cool. Edgy. Very urban. Goth maybe? But he still prefers the chains he’s known to wear over chokers.

After doing his business, he starts heading toward his office with the intention of recording a new story for his channel if he manages to find a decent submission - and also to ignore the cleaning he still had to do eventually - when the sound of someone banging on the door of his neighbor’s apartment makes him jump, thinking the sound was coming from his door instead. Being the nosey bitch he is, he creeps to his door, listening to the muffled and almost completely incomprehensible voices from across the hall. The screaming match taking place is making him rather nervous and anxious and as much as he’d rather hide in his room and pretend he never heard or saw anything, he also doesn’t want the altercation to escalate into anything physical. 

“You fucking bailed on me!” An angry female shout dominates over the other voice, a male one, that’s quick to follow the previous example with the tone volume.

“You almost got caught, it's not my fault you screwed up!” It’s the male’s turn to shout, his words intriguing Corpse.

Got caught? Screwed up what?

“Fuck you! You don’t just ditch like that! That’s such a dick move!” 

Ditched? If it wasn’t for the ‘getting caught’ part I would’ve thought it was a flopped date?

“I wasn’t about to get arrested for your klepto ass! I’m done with your shit!” The male voice takes the upper hand again, and though the female attempts to speak, she’s promptly cut off by the male, “No! No, I said I’m fucking done! Get the fuck out of my apartment!” A loud bang that sounded remarkably like a chair being flipped over made Corpse jump again with his thoughts once again racing to try and make sense of the situation. 

Klepto? So she’s a thief. Great. He rolls his eyes, not that he needed a reminder that he lives in a bad neighborhood, but he sure got it. He inhales slowly, finally deciding to check the aftermath in the hallway. Again, it isn’t his business whatsoever, but he can’t rest easy until he knows there isn’t an injured person outside his door right now. He peeks out the peephole before unlocking the door and sticking his head out to see a long haired individual still standing in front of his neighbor’s door. They have their back turned to him and are getting prepared to start banging on the door once again. 

“Little scared-ass bitch! I’ll be back for my shit!” She screams, kicking the door to punctuate her point. 

This chick is absolutely nuts. Everything in his gut is telling him to turn around and go back inside but his brain’s less-rational side is convincing him to check on her. He carefully steps into the hallway, swallowing nervously as he reaches out to tap her shoulder. “Are um-...you okay?”

The girl whips around, a furious expression on her face. Corpse makes a pause, his eyes widening at the sight of that familiar face.

Holy shit, I know this girl. 

Standing in front of him is the girl who leaped into the backseat of his car only a few days ago. 

Shit! What are the odds? 

She’s wearing a pair of black skinny jeans and a cropped sweatshirt with the quote “Mercury’s in Gatorade or Some Shit” written in bold letters and a solar system around it, with a leather jacket on top. 

His mouth dries when he makes a realization... 

Oh fuck. She’s way prettier in the natural light instead of that ugly light I saw her in that night. 

“Oh hey! Parking lot guy! What are y-...is that my choker?” She interrupts herself, looking closer at the black leather on his pale skin, her brows furrowing. He’d forgotten he was even wearing it to be honest, but she seems to recognize it. “That’s my fucking choker, dude! I’ve been looking everywhere for it!” She reaches up seemingly with the intention of taking it off him, causing his whole body to freeze up.

Finally finding his senses, Corpse takes half a step back, eyes slightly widened, “Woah, hey! Easy there, I’m pretty sure I bought this.” He warns, hands hesitantly held out in front of himself to try and create some distance between them. 

She seems not to take the hint at his desire for personal space as she reaches out again, stepping closer. “No, I made it with my own two hands, man! It’s got a C on it for my name - Cora.” She says sharply to the point of anger that honestly frightens him a bit. 

He quickly unties the leather straps, removing it from his neck. However, he refuses to give it back so easily as he holds it up out of her reach. 

Maybe if it isn’t on me she won’t be all up in his personal space. Yeah, it’s a bit evil, but he didn’t care. Besides, part of him is still mad about the fact she used his car as a hiding spot, shooting his anxiety through the roof in the process. 

“I feel like you owe me for those fries you stole last time we saw each other. Make it up to me and I’ll give it back. If it’s even yours, that is...” He says, brows furrowing slightly and eyes narrowing as he takes another step back. “And, you know, for nearly getting me busted by the police for something I wasn’t even a part of.” 

Sure, he was talking but her eyes are wandering analyzing him: first the silver chains around his neck that glimmer in the light and his dark hair, strands dangling carelessly as a curtain over his face. 

He too finds himself admiring her, memorizing her features better in this light. She has olive skin and sports a little bit of a tan. Stray locks of wavy dark brown hair hang around her ears having come loose from her messy bun. She has earthy brown eyes with flecks of green that he can’t help but stare at, despite their current sharpness. Her right arm is decorated with a few small tattoos: a skull of some sort of animal that appears to be puking flowers; a small cartoon t-rex floating via many colorful balloons and a brain with a spiky spiral in the center of it. She has a single line drawn around her pinky finger on the hand of the other arm and the shadowy silhouette of a forest around her wrist. However, the one thing Corpse could see better than all of that, was she is pissed. 

“Gimme my fucking choker back! I paid you for those fries, it’s not my fault you spent them on douchebag lessons!” She snaps, hopping to try and grab his arm. 

She is pressed up against him now, a wave of perfume hitting him when she attempts another jump. He holds the choker higher, maybe even subconsciously, just enjoying the warm presence of another body for as long as possible - not that he’d admit that. 

Corpse’s brief content comes crashing down as he stumbles backwards when he feels something hard on his hip and her hands grabbing at the front of his shirt. 

“Wait-“ He tries to say, but is cut off when a good amount of weight pulls at his jeans. “Oh Fuck!” He rasps out, dropping the choker as he slams onto the floor. In the split second he spared to take a breath, his pants had been yanked down to his knees and his neck was crooked up against his door. He’s now lying on the floor as the girl hovers over him having landed with her hand on top of his head and one leg over his chest while the other is pinning his arm down.

While remaining unmoving under the girl, he takes a moment to let the previous five seconds sink in before replaying them in his mind:

This small woman, Cora she said her name was, had put the boot clad toes of her left foot into the pocket of his baggy jeans to use as a stepping stool. In turn, they were shoved down, effectively pantsing him and tearing the pocket before knocking them both to the floor. 

Corpse leans against his door, jeans still around his knees, hair a mess as he watches Cora stand up from where she’d practically tackled him and equip the choker. 

“Serves you right.” She sticks her tongue out, tying the piece of jewelry behind her neck. “Now get up before someone calls the cops, we both know what happens then.” She rolls her eyes and bends down, offering her hands to help him up after he situated his trousers.

“Ah-um...I-...” anxiety started reigning in his chest and head as he realized everything that had happened. He takes both her hands and she uses all her weight to pull him up. Her pull was so strong that when he stood up, he had to hold her tight to keep her from falling back. He stabilizes her, maybe a little too hard because her chest collides with his. He apologizes under his breath, releasing her hands quickly. “Don’t people buy dinner first before yanking off their pants?” He snorts, trying to make light of the situation and crossing his arms over his chest. “But then again, you stole my dinner.” 

“Are you insinuating I should take off my pants?” She asks with a smirk. 

Corpse nearly chokes on his own inhale, eyes wide as he quickly looks away.

Oh my god is she serious? “N-no!” He says, perhaps too quickly. Too loudly. His cheeks turned dark pink as he gapes at her for a moment before furrowing his brows again. He hunches his shoulders a little, doing his best to avoid those sharp hazel eyes. 

She’s pretty. Way too pretty for him and now she has him all flustered. This girl has way too much power over the agoraphobic anxiety bundle that is Corpse. 

“Oh so you’re insinuating that I should buy you dinner since I took off your pants?” She prompts, eyes narrowing with a delighted little smirk on her face. She has to be enjoying watching him squirm in embarrassment, otherwise, why would she keep asking questions like that? Of course she does. She is like every other girl in his life.

“I’m..-just...Forget it.” He mumbles, shrinking back away from her as he turns to go back inside the safety of his apartment. 

She’s probably making fun of me. Great, as if I didn’t have enough self-esteem issues already.

Before he could get inside, a hand grabs his shirt at the small of his back. “Hey, I’m just fucking with you, dude.” She says, giving the shirt’s fabric a tug. 

He turns and looks at her with wary eyes, wondering if she was trying to goad him into falling for her taunting again. But the ice in her gaze has melted and she gives him a crooked smile. “Lemme buy you dinner to pay you back. It’s the least I can do after you helped keep my ass out of jail.” She releases his shirt after a brief moment of reluctance and then offers her hand to him for a handshake. “Oh, I should introduce myself, officially this time. I’m Cora.” 

Corpse looks at her hand and carefully takes it. She has small hands and his long fingers practically engulfed hers as he shakes it lightly. He gives her his name in return and she smiles that light filled, beaming smile he remembers from the car. 

“Nice to, um- meet you, I guess.” He finds himself staring at her, unknowingly still holding her hand in his until she looks up and grins a little wider. 

“This seems like a roundabout way to hold my hand, bro. You could have just asked,you know.” She teases, but this time it felt okay, his embarrassment having faded slightly, but he still hurries to look away and release his hold on her. 

Corpse murmurs a quick apology, but before he could stick his hand back into the ripped pocket of his jeans, she takes hold of it again, tugging him forward. “Come on, lock your door. I’ll buy you something to eat. You drive though.” She lets go of his hand after a moment and, much to his surprise, he catches himself missing the warmth that it provided him while it was there. Turning, he ducked into his apartment to grab his hoodie and keys, feeling suddenly thankful he’d cleaned his car out.

Taglist: @vixenl  @fockingwhore

[c-c-cherry]

OOH I GOT A GOOD REQUEST,,,, How about Jonathan’s reaction to each of the jojos, and their jobros?

*Jonathan looking down at his absolutely fucked family tree, a single tear running down his cheek*

Listen...I always say that *insert literally any character* is the best parental figure but it's Jonathan hours which legally means I can call Jonathan best dad in this post regardless of anything I’ve said in the past about any other best dads.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

Lemme just implement my soft Jonathan headcanons first: 

-Soft man. The king of manly tears. Tears down toxic masculinity like a fucking bulldozer

-Knits AND crochets. He never had a mother growing up so when Erina came in with all these lovely, traditionally feminine skills, he wanted to learn ALL OF IT

-Arguably gives the best hugs out of every Jojo (Josuke is a pretty close second, though)

-Since this post is just an impossible dimensional pocket where anything can happen, him and Erina live in one of those old grandma cottage-houses with a comfy, old couch and tacky curtains and a really cute little garden

-Again, if this is a pocket dimension he’s definitely hosting the Joestar family reunion there

-Just one of those houses where everyone feels comfortable

-Is impossible to piss off (except if you do anything to the people he loves)

-Always speaks in a very soft, understanding voice even when he’s mad/disappointed

-The father figure all the Jojos wish they had

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

Part 2:

-You know that face you make when you watch someone you love do something insanely stupid but you’re still trying to keep positive because you know from experience that trying to stop them is futile?

-Just this constant, wincing smile?

-Yeah. That pretty much sums up Jonathan’s expression within any vicinity of Joseph Joestar

-He loves the man. He really does. But oh my god is he a dumbass

-Jonathan is the type of man to like,,,make bread and talk about his feelings but Joseph wants none of that shit and that’s ok,,,Jonathan can and will find another way to bond

-Regardless, he loves his Himbo grandson and the two of them end up talking about Erina and Speedwagon and a lil bit of Hamon too :3

-CAESAR on the other hand—Jonathan is so fucking happy to see a descendant of the Zeppeli’s continuing the whole Hamon thing and managing to be friends with Joseph

-Although Joseph never wants to talk about it outside of fighting, Jonathan and Caesar both share this tender love for the healing aspect of it :’)

-He teaches Caesar how to do stuff like grow/heal plants and flowers and Caesar ends up growing his own sunflowers in Jonathan’s backyard :)

-Smokey reminds him of Poco and he literally just wants to protect him with his whole heart hhhhhhhh

-Suzi Q also reminds him of Erina, but he still has no idea how she puts up with Joseph’s bullshit (and whenever she can’t decide what to wear, he always helps)

-He penalizes Lisa Lisa for being a fucking Hamon coach and also smoking cause like-

Part 3:

-Hgggghnn HEAR ME OUT but between him and Joseph, Jotaro arguably has more qualities of Jonathan including this wonderfully secret, sweet, sensitive side

-Jonathan grows flowers using Hamon and braids them into Star Plat’s hair (he has practice when doing it with Erina) :))))

-Joot claims to hate the bread that Jonathan bakes but if he DOES make it y’all know you’ll find him sitting there, eating it, and talking about his feelings like a good man should (but only if no one else is around)

-Arguably the only responsible father figure in his life and the only one who would scold him for literally going to jail

-Also apologizes profusely for not killing DIO the first time ;(

-Kakyoin is the kind of person you could just sit in silence with for hours doing shit like reading or painting or something and Father Jojo is loving the vibe

-YES JONATHAN WOULD HAVE A HOME GARDEN and every year he grows cherries for Kak >:)

-Pol is a bit extreme for him, but if he can handle Joseph then he can handle this man

-As rich, Victorian boys often did, he definitely studied french as a kid and can surprisingly hold a pretty good conversation

-Him and Avdol!!!! Feed his chickens together!! And engage in lovely, civil conversation :)))))

-Holy definitely inherited Jonathan and Erina’s sweet nature and she’s always down to compare knitting techniques with him :)

Part 4:

-Is it....is it safe to say that Jonathan just adopts all of Morioh?

-Ok but Josuke gets along with everybody (Rohan doesn’t count hgfjgh) so you already know he’d be up for some nice familial bonding (though he wouldn’t show it initially)

-I feel like he’d be hesitant at first because him and Joseph are already on weird terms and he doesn't wanna “intrude” on the Joestar family or anything like that

-But our man Jonathan is here to reassure him that he’s still a part of the family and his cute little grandma house door is always open for him when he needs it

-Jonathan would bake that bread and Josuke would be sittin’ on that couch pouring his heart out before that shit even comes out of the oven

-Josuke’s the biggest out of his friends so getting completely engulfed in a nice, warm, loving Jonathan hug is the best shit

-Like instant serotonin :)

-Crazy Diamond doesn’t have any hair so no stand braiding :( BuT Josuke will let his hair down sometimes and you already know master weaver Jonathan Joestar is braiding in some purple flowers and shit :)

-Okuyasu isn’t that smart academically, but our man has a big heart and that’s all Jonathan cares about

-Jonathan always makes soup for him whenever he’s down because Oku’s mama used to make him soup when he was sad too ;-;

-The two bond over losing a mother at a young age and never being close with their father and feeling unwanted growing up and its the sweetest shit

-Koichi would just,,,,stare in awe because between Jonathan, Joseph, and Jotaro he feels like a fucking ant (and is honestly kinda scared)

-The first time they meet, Jonathan tries to ruffle his hair and accidentally PUSHES THE BOY INTO THE CONCRETE and he feels so bad after, that he spends all night knitting him a new sweater

-He gives it to Koichi with apologetic tears in his eyes and Koichi fucking LOVES IT with all his heart

-Rohan is extremely intrigued by all of this shit and they two of them spend hours talking about Jonathan’s life

-Rohan ends up giving him a painting of Erina and now Jonathan sends him his favourite cookies on his birthday every year

-Also him and Tonio are real good buds and Tonio never yells at Jonathan for “eating impolitely” like George used to because he knows its just a sign that he loves his food :)

Part 5:

-What can I say? Both Jonathan and Giorno got a love for flowers and life, and that’s literally all they do together

-Like,,,their happiness is in one giant, contagious loop because when Jojo’s really happy, his Hamon will just make shit bloom everywhere and when Giogio is happy, his stand will go fucking bonkers and change shit into plants

-Ok but what if,,,they braided flowers into each other’s hair? :D

-Jonathan would bake the bread. Giorno would sit hesitantly on the couch. The moment this kid takes a bite with that GOOD jam he’s like “HAHA there goes my stoic front whoops-”

-Jonathan thought Giorno would get cold in the winter so he crocheted a heart the size of his tiddy window and gave it to him for Christmas

-As I said previously, him and Bruno would go fucking hard on tea parties and all that shit -Both are the obvious mom friend, it’s impossible for them not to get along

-Abba’s a little,,,iffy about him, but eventually grows on him the more Abbacchio actually starts warming up to Giorno (for whatever reason)

-Jonathan’s never really had to deal with teenagers that much (aside from when he was one himself,) so he really has no idea what the hell to do around Narancia and Mista because they’re so young and he feels like a fucking grandma around them

-But they’re always really sweet to him and ask if he wants to play COD but Jonathan has no idea why they could wanna play with a fish so he just smiles and laughs and hopes its a joke :’)

-When Trish wants her nails done, best jonadad is here to do it. She wants her hair done? Jonathan’s got that special brush that doesn’t hurt when you’re doing tangles. Hugs? Infinite hug supplier, babey. He’s really out here doing whatever it takes to keep best girl happy

-Fugo is,,,quiet,,,but he always comes over and eats the strawberries in his garden when they’re ready for harvest

-He even helps make them into jam :)

-He also teaches Fugo Hamon breathing techniques when he caught wind of his anger and it actually helps him a lot

-He considers everyone in that house his family too, and always invites them over for social events at his pocket dimension grandma house

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

Jonathan Joestar lives in my head rent free...

If you’ve got a head canon idea, my ask box is always open!! <3

[cricketnationrise]

Wouldn’t it be Andoverly?

for day 6 of nurseyweek2021: friendship. also on AO3

_X_

Derek was pretty good at making friends. Usually. But he’d never been the new kid before. Elementary and middle school had been a breeze, his siblings paving the way for him with teachers, and Nursey’s willingness to share crayons worked in elementary school and hockey skills did the trick all through middle school.

Now though, he was all on his own.

His sisters had graduated years ago and Dan had skipped a grade, so he was gone. Derek had been counting on Dan being here more than he was willing to admit to his moms.

If he could just get through this first day of classes, he would be fine. He just had to make it to hockey practice. Derek could handle himself. He could. With a deep breath he left his dorm, ready to face the day. 

WHAM

Or he could just lay here forever.

“Sorry ‘bout that, you okay dude?”

Derek looks up from where he is sprawled on the floor to see a guy with a full mustache leaning over him, concern all over his face.

“Yeah, I think so,” Derek says, managing to sit up, rubbing his head.

“Oh shit, here, let me help you up man.”

Derek takes Mustache Guy’s hand, and is yanked up so powerfully that he almost goes down again.

“Thanks, I’m good now.”

“I really didn’t mean to plow into you like that. I’m glad I didn’t manage to damage your beauteous face. That would have been a real shame.”

“Thanks, I think. Um,” Derek didn’t know if Mustache Guy was hitting on him or just exuberant, so he went on as if the last part hadn’t been said, “Do you know where the Washington Building is?”

“Chyeah! I’m going there myself; we can walk together!”

“Awesome, thanks.”

“So you’re a freshman? Or a transfer? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” Mustache Guy says.

“Yeah,” Derek says, “A freshman.”

“That’s cool, man. You doing any sports? You’ve got serious muscle under that uniform.”

“Um, I play hockey. I got recruited actually.”

“HOLY SHIT DUDE! I’m on the team, too! Welcome, man! Defense, right? Call me Shitty – that’s my team nickname.”

Shitty is off like a shot, jabbering away about the team and how exciting it is that Derek’s there now, already talking about the schedule and fuck those Shattuck guys seriously, bro.

Derek interrupts the flood of information, “Your nickname is Shitty?” Derek asks, “How awful are the guys on the team if that’s your nickname?” he asks, aghast. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“Nah, its chill bro, I go by Shitty actually. My family are a giant bag of racist bigoted assholes and if they weren’t paying for me to go here and for college, I wouldn’t go home at all. But the name they gave me is truly awful. My initials are BS. Get it? It’s a giant fuck you to the jerks who tried to make me as conservative as them. Jokes on them, even the teachers call me Shitty, or Mr. Knight if they’re feeling formal. That might be a defense mechanism on their parts though, since I refuse to acknowledge my actual name.”

Derek is feeling cautiously optimistic about this guy after all that. No one who was that aware about his own family would be an asshole to him on purpose. He has a good feeling about this guy.

“Well then, hi Shitty, I’m Derek. Derek Nurse.”

“Oh hey, you must be Dan’s little brother! Good dude,” Derek smiled – at least people had liked Dan, that would help. “It’ll be weird not having him here for graduation. Nice to meet you. I’m gonna call you Nursey unless you have any objections,” Shitty says.

“Nope, I’m good,” Derek grins, “much better than my last nickname.”

“Let me guess, ‘Big D’,” says Shitty.

“Yup. Not a great amount of creativity in my middle school,” Derek says.

“Well, come on Nursey, don’t want you to be late on the first day! I’ll tell you all about the team on the way.”

Derek smiles to himself as he listens to Shitty talk as they walk towards a cluster of old brick buildings. Even if he doesn’t get close to the other guys on the team right away, it seems like Shitty’s already adopted him.

_X_

He was already regretting answering his phone.

“Nursey. Nursey Nursey Nursey Nursey Nur –”

“Oh my god what do you want, Shitty?!”

“Come play shinny with me and some of the guys! One of the townies’ dad built a rink in the backyard!”

“Alright! I’m in – give me five minutes to finish up this writing assignment.”

“Righteous! See you outside your door!”

_X_

Me: Can you come over?

Shitty: Of course dude

Want me to bring anything?

Something wrong?

Me: anxiety attack

red gatorade

Shitty: oh shit

omw

try to regulate your breathing till I get there

grab Tigger too

_X_

“What am I gonna do when you graduate, Shits?”

“What do you mean, bro? You’re gonna light it up, that’s what you’re gonna do!”

“Shitty…”

“I’m serious, man. You are mad talented on the ice, so you’ll probably be bumped up to second or even first line. Your poem was selected as a freshman for the school’s literary magazine. People are always asking me to bring you places – they want to hang out with you!”

“But you won’t be here. What if they don’t like me as much when you’re not around?”

“Impossible my dude. You’re great all by yourself and you’ll settle in in no time. Anyone who doesn’t like you when I’m not there aren’t smart by default. You’re a popular guy, you’ll have good friends after I graduate, I promise. And I’m always a phone call or text away.”

“Thanks, Shits.”

“Got your back, man. Now. Help me figure out where I’m going to college. Harvard, Yale, Samwell, Princeton, Brown. I need your pro/con skills. So far all I have is not New Jersey.”

“When you’re right you’re right. I’ll grab my fancy pens.”

_X_

“Nursey! Representing Andover on that Taddy Tour! What up, bro?”

Nursey whipped his head around at the shout of his name. There he was – Shitty hadn’t changed one bit. Well. His hair was longer since he didn’t have uniform requirements to meet.

“Heeey! Shitty! Knew I’d run into you eventually. Man, Samwell’s pretty sick.”

He was already planning on enrolling, but having Shitty here sealed the deal. Shitty had done so much to help Nursey feel comfortable at Andover three years ago. Nursey had missed him like crazy when he graduated, but they’d stayed in touch over the next few years. Shitty was always down to chat, but Nursey was really looking forward to hanging out with Shitty again in person.

The last three years at Andover hadn’t been bad – but there was always a presence that was palpably missing, at least to Nursey. Now that he was here, chilling with Shitty again, a weight came off his shoulders. Shitty’s got his back. Always.

[ginnyweasleywannabe]

Last Morning Alone

Written for Blackinnon Week 2021

This is the first fic I've ever written so I hope everyone likes it. I also haven't re-read or edited it because I just wanted to get something out there for the week so I do apologize for any mistakes or weird wordings. I have another blackinnon story for blackinnon week but this week has been unexpectedly busy so it might not get written during the actual week.

Last Morning Alone

Marlene was beautiful when she slept, or at least he thought so. Watching her sleep was one of his favorite things to do. The war had taken its toll on him and he didn’t sleep much so he was always up earlier than her. He would wake from his minimal sleep and turn to look down at her and just think “holy shit.” This morning was no different. If he had known it would be their last day and night alone together he night have done things differently, made love to her, made she knew how much she and she alone meant to him but he didn’t so he just watched with silent adoration.

Marlene hated that he watched her. She knew it wasn’t her best look. Marlene slept like a bear in winter, she always had. He used to tease her about falling asleep all over the castle. Sirius thought Marlene was beautiful when she slept. She looked so peaceful. Ok so maybe peaceful wasn’t the right word. She was sprawled out on her back, hands above her head, mouth wide open with a little drool. He was just happy she was sleeping, she had been having trouble the past few weeks. Marlene normally slept on her stomach, mouth closed and that’s when she was peaceful, undisturbed, like a bear in winter. But she could no longer sleep on her stomach, not with the rather large now bump that was holding his most precious little boy or girl. So she slept on her back mouth open with loud snores. A particularly loud and harsh snore pulled him from his inner monologue. She had woke herself up. Stretching her arms up and blinking a few times she came too, seeing Sirius watching her.

She hated that he watched her. She looked over and there he was just like any other morning, smiling that same stupid grin that she fell in love with. She wanted to be mad and fuss at him but she was really too tired and her back hurt. Besides it never worked because there was no real anger behind the words.

“Whatcha you looking at?”

“Some girl I brought home from a bar once and she just can’t take a hint, she just won’t leave”

Marlene let out a laugh at that. “Oh yeah, see I remember some guy practically begging me to go home with him, look where that got me” She said gesturing to the bump giggling.

Sirius rolled his eyes but reached over and pulled her closer. “Any day now you know”

“I know, believe me I literally can’t forget”

“Your back?”

Marlene just nodded and snuggled closer but Sirius was already starting to shift them so that she was sitting in front of him and he could rub he back.

These were the moments Marlene loved. Just the two of them, when he would do something so sweet without prompting. Had you asked her a few years ago if she ever saw womanizer playboy Sirius Black rubbing his wife’s back because their unborn child was making hard to sleep she would have laughed and hard. If you had asked her if she was going to be said wife she would had told you that was just impossible because she was never going to fall in love with Sirius Black. Although deep down she knew that was a lie, it had been a lie since second year but she would never admit that to anyone, not herself, and definitely not him.

“What do you want for breakfast, I think we might have some eggs” Sirius didn’t sound very confident in this statement.

“You know we’re about to have a kid, we really need to get better at stocking the pantry and stop ordering take-out”

“No” Sirius whined “This kid cant take Foo Lin’s from me, babes everyone says we have to stay true to who we are before the baby came. Look at James, He wouldn’t even get a beer with me last me week”

“Take-out and going to bars are two very different things, so I think your Foo Lin’s is safe. Besides James didn’t go out because the next morning was Harry’s first day at pre-school and you boys went out the week before.” Marlene looked back at him

“Well I’ll go check on the egg situation and you can just have a lie in” With a quick kiss, too short for his liking but he heard her stomach growl he was out the door. Returning just a few minutes later, a sheepish smile on his face.

“We’re out aren’t we?” Marlene groaned, she really was hungry.

“Bakery on 7th?”

The suggestion was music to her ears. Her whole face lit up. She hoped from the bed with a newfound energy and began waddling around to get ready to leave. Sirius just laughed at his wife’s antics. If you had asked him a few years ago if he would be a mix of excitement and nerves for a baby on the way, he would have laughed and hard. If you would have told him that the mother of his child would be spitfire Marlene McKinnon he would have called you crazy. Although he had known he was in love with her since the first moment he saw her talking to James on the platform September 1st before first year, before he knew what either of them would mean to him but he was never going to admit that to anyone but her.

He quickly dressed and helped her put on her shoes. A routine that perfected, her refusing to ask for help and attempting to reach down or bend them up to her and eventually pretending to get distracted with the paper and sit down while he would put them on without a word about it. After a satisfactory amount of time she would pretend she was done with the paper and walk to the door.

“Marlene…”

She had almost made it out the door

“Hmm” Marlene would hum pretending she didn’t know what he was about to say

“Don’t you think you’re forgetting something”

“Oh sorry babes!” She leaned gave him a hearty kiss hoping to distracted him from his original thought. It had almost worked, I mean who could blame him, his wife was hot if she wanted a snog he couldn’t refuse a pregnant women. It had almost worked. Almost.

Pulling away he softened his face “Marls…”

Huffing she reluctantly sighed out a “fineee” and held her arms up. Still as stubborn as always

Sirius began to bundle her up, a heavy coat, a scarf, and topping it off with a beanie and quick kiss to her forehead.

Rolling her eyes but still leaning her head in so he could kiss it she huffed once more as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and they exited the flat.

“You know you’re the one who keeps bring up how we shouldn’t change because of the baby and yet you treat me like I will break at the slightest chill. I’m a Scott for sakes, we can handle this London ‘fall’…. Weak city boys” Mumbling the last bit under her breath.

Sirius just listened and nodded knowing she wasn’t truly upset. I mean she was carrying precious cargo, she was precious cargo so yeah he was going to keep it up. They continued to walk to the bakery. It was a nice morning, not too cold and he had probably over done the layers but too late now.

They had entered warmth of the bakery. She was so happy to smell the blueberry muffins. Marlene kept rocking on her heels, antsy to order and get some food.

“Finally…” she mumbled and was quick to order her muffin and a coffee.

“Marlene…”

“Fine. Change the coffee to a decafe”

“Marlene…” She was eight months pregnant, he didn’t think he was being unreasonable.

“Foo Lin’s, Sirius. And its small” She turned around to pay with a satisfied smirk. Marlene knew the threat of no more take out would shut him right up.

They began the walk home, her happily munching on a muffin and his arm slung over her shoulder. As they rounded a corner he felt a splash. They stopped and he began inspecting himself wiping the wet area on the bottom of his pants

“Marlene, did you spill your coffee?” She had stopped a few feet behind him as he walked forward.

“Marlene?” He turned around expecting her to be crying. This had happened before, she would spill a drink or food and just burst into tears but he turned around and she was just standing there wide eyed and panicked.

“Sirius, that wasn’t my coffee…”

Sirius could see the wet all down her pants and it all clicked it was happening, it was really happening. He quickly closed the distance between them scooping her up and jogging as smoothly as possible to St. Mungo’s

Regulus Michael Black was born 13 hours later.

[nervous-young-unhuman]

good sunday

Next on Car Seat Headrest’s debut album is Good Sunday. This track brings a lot more to the table lyrically as to the previous (that being Tybee Island horse ghost), and is in fact musically, one of my favorite songs on the album. 1 is in my unprofessional opinion, a very raw album. Will can even be quoted on the album's bandcamp saying that if he had known anyone would have listened to the album, he would have never released it. This leads to a lot of interesting commentary from the perspective of a young man who is starting to become an adult, and the trials and tribulations that follow this. 

The song starts strong, opening with these lyrics. 

“Am I going mad?

I feel like walking into traffic

Oh shit I think I am

I need to learn how to be online”

This appears to be a look into Will's descent into “madness”, which is likely some form of mental struggle. He says he feels like walking into traffic, which further solidifies the idea that he is struggling mentally with an urge to do something to put himself in danger. This doesn’t have to mean suicide, but perhaps an urge to harm himself or let go of control. He follows by “snapping out of it” and claiming to be going crazy by having these sorts of intrusive thoughts. He says he needs to learn how to be online, maybe the past lyrics could be a struggle in dealing with having a social media presence, which, though not at the scale it is today, Will likely had at the time of the album’s release. 

“Jesus we love you

And we adore you

Spirit we love you

And we forgive you

Jesus we love you

And we adore you

Spirit we love you

And we destroy you”

Religion can have a million different themes in music. While Will did grow up in the Presbyterian church, he hasn’t spoken on his current personal religious beliefs, and I will not be speaking on behalf of him or speculating on the topic. I am only looking at this from the perspective of a 17 year old Will Toledo. Aside from this, Will did study religion academically. He minored in it along with a major in English at William and Mary. There isn’t much information or speculation online of a possible meaning to these lyrics. I don’t know a lot about religion personally, so my apologies if anything I state is incorrect. Of course it could have nothing to do with religion at all, only using Jesus as an example of one higher and holier than thyself. I do take interest in the change from “Spirit we love you and we forgive you” to “Spirit we love you and we destroy you.” This again can be taken as spirit in oneself, or a kind of Holy Spirit. It could also in some ways mock traditional hymns and songs traditionally sung in churches, which usually reflect the religions beliefs and have some kind of religious message. Or it’s some kind of warped way of getting to the top and then being destroyed by the people who brought you there . Loving Jesus but destroying the spirit, whether that be one that is holy or one’s personal spirit I’m unsure and urge you to decide for yourself, whatever means the most to you. That’s an important idea for all of these, I don’t want to come off and say that I’m right, these are just my interpretations as someone who enjoys Car Seat Headrest. 

Now we move to another verse. 

“Oh my god

No one wants to know what you’re saying ’til you’re speaking in code

(No one wants to know what you’re saying ’til you’re speaking in code) [reversed]

No one wants to know what you’re saying until you’re speaking in code”

I also really enjoy this lyric. Maybe it’s a way of saying nobody cares what you have to say until they don’t understand what you’re saying. When it becomes impossible to drown out the background noise we’re accustomed to, when it’s something we’ve never heard before, we take more time to stop and listen and perhaps try to understand. The use of a reversed lyric is also very interesting, maybe a way to grab the listeners attention and instantly prove his point, nobody cared to know what he was saying until it was said in a way that wasn’t understandable. This is something I think of as an interactive lyric, WIll isn’t just singing out what he thinks, he’s proving to you that he stands correct on the issue. 

The chorus of Jesus and the spirit is repeated 3 more times, except for the very last line. Traditionally it is “And we destroy you” which is still said, but in this set destroy you is reversed. Likely to refer to the previous verse. It’s an interesting way to maintain the theme in an album that quite honestly bounces all over the place (and not in a bad way, it’s really good chaos). 

The next part is what really grabbed my attention and is possibly the most memorable part of the song in my opinion. It’s a piece of spoken commentary and is read as follows. 

“Eugene Debs was the... socialist presidential candidate in the uh, election between him, Taft, Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt

Nobody told me that my earbuds were exposed to the elements”

I really love this line and I honestly have no idea why. It’s just some ramblings of a young Toledo, and I have no clue what it means or how it relates. I don’t want to try and pull a meaning out of it, I think it should be preserved in its natural state. The only information I could find on it was a small note on the Genius music page (which has now been viewed by a mighty 11 people!), which was only the word socialist highlighted with a note of “based.” Thank you for the laugh whoever you are. 

(And suddenly we’re driving across the ocean) [reversed]

The last line of the song is actually a sample from an earlier project of an even younger Toledo called Nervous Young Men. It’s taken from a song called AC, which details a bus ride he had taken. 

Next is a little on the actual musical elements of the song. It’s fairly monotone and moody, but enjoyable. The entire album was produced on Will’s laptop, which provides some interesting sounds. I don’t know how to describe the way I hear it, it's like stretching a rubber band as far as it will go then slowly returning it to normal. There’s nothing snappy and sharp about it, but it has its own curves which give it a really cool vibe overall. I know nothing about music production, I just like the sounds, and this album has a lot of them. I like the grain that the spoken part has, it reminds me of audio from an old family video camera, enough so to where I can picture this very camera. There’s a lot of really sick recording techniques and such and I wish I knew more about what they all meant, but alas I’ll just listen to them and enjoy what I hear. 

Thank you a lot for reading this, I hope you’re enjoying reading as much as I am enjoying writing.

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 28

catch me completely ignoring dark cybertron lmao

yeahhhh so I'm just gonna skip dark cybertron bc no thanks. I did read the tf wiki articles for the issues tho, which is more than I did in the past, so at least now I kinda know what happened, though I had to suffer thru reading about dark cybertron to learn stuff about it. yikes. reading ABOUT dark cybertron further enforced my decision to not actually read thru it

anyways. the best part of dark cybertron was when chromedome threw prowl off that cliff. that was baller lmfao

a 1 page recap of dark cybertron is about all I can handle. thank you

ooh, the 6 months later smash-cut, I fucking love itttt

nautica’s here!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy I love her. also brainstorm, and I love their friendship sm

hvbjdkhfbshdfj god I love them. they have such a fun dynamic 

everyone eavesdropping on a therapy session vhbhdjkhafbhkjsdf. hipaa laws mean nothing as usual 

the casual reveal of captain megatron, oh god 

the title fucking slaps, as usual. this is one of my favorites - ‘world, shut your mouth.’ great stuff, and a song title/reference to boot! and this being part 1: towards peace...chefs kiss

and then we flash back to 6 months earlier...yknow now that I'm rereading this, mtmte has a LOT of framing devices used - there's story-within-a-story, flashback/flash-forwards, storytelling with narration, etc...I love it

god hbvhjakdfbshjkdf rodimus saying ‘magic’ and then the little *magic = science rodimus doesn't understand HBGKJHSDBFKHJSDF my idiot boy ily

rodimus roasting prowl is my fav hbfjdkafshsbjkf ‘maybe the knights can help us find a cure for your personality’ ily sm

and then prowl agreeing w/rodimus a few panels later about megatron’s guilt...

optimus...don't you think that making yourself chief of justice is...maybe a bad idea...like, maybe there's a conflict of interests here...just a little bit of bias...a bit too much history, perhaps...

the fact that all the big roles in the trial were given to high-ranking autobots who were heavily involved in the war...I see that cybertrons justice system is as much of a farce as their medical ethics and patient confidentiality laws 

the ‘you BROKE the MATRIX’ panel is so good bjhkdhfbajskhdf

rodimus: LISTEN dad I just wanna resume my space cruise with my frat bro ship I have no interest in politics

psychiatrists HATE him! local former warlord refuses to recognize the validity of psychological analyzation of people’s actions

ravage casually breaking hipaa laws and chilling in megatron’s therapy session like >:3

I love rung...he’s so good at like, passive-aggressively cutting right to the heart of someone’s issues, and he’s so generally mild that you can’t even really get mad at him 

the sudden inclusion of megatron as a major character in mtmte is kinda jarring at first - mostly, for me at least, due in part because I didn't read dark cybertron so this is like, megatron’s introduction as a relevant character in general - but I feel like jro does a great job laying a lot of intrigue down from the very beginning w/his character - like, I already want to know more about what his whole deal is, even though we have, ostensibly, seen pretty much all of his story play out already 

rung name-dropping froid...i remember that made me lose my shit bc cmon. FROID....jesus christ

rung and megatron: holy shit! we’re suddenly being drawn in a 90s-esque sci-fi tron-looking retro-futuristic style!

interesting that megatron sought rung out, and not the other way around

RIPTIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my favorite sharkboy is HERE

CREWDITIONS...YES....

‘we’re not allowed to take anyone who might remind rodimus of prowl’ vhbhjdkshfbhaskfd brutal

I love nautica so so much. a perfect autistic scientist after my own heart

I adore that nautica brought chromia along for moral support

hgvbjdakhfbhsj and then swerve saying that rodimus hates ‘trisyllabic names’ and nautica is like....but....‘rodimus’.....

and then nightbeat busts in to get all bbc sherlock on they asses hgbfhjadkfbjaskdf

WHY was perceptor at the crewditions if he was already part of the crew lmao

ooof, and then we have megatron flipping out when chromedome, a mnemosurgeon, shows up

also damn the autobots were rlly like okay so we wanna speed this trial up so lets just like, probe megatrons brain, that seems completely ethical, especially when you consider the history of shadowplay and stuff that our previous government had

I know important stuff is happening but megatron is holding a CUBE and I love CUBES so I'm distracted by that. C U B E

and then right after a scene where we see chromedome willing to perform mnemosurgery again - despite rewind’s like, dying wish for him not to - we hear that he’s been locked up in his room rewatching rewinds goodbye message over and over again :( I'm fucking depressed

I love nightbeat, he’s so funny and kind of an asshole

and then you see more missing letters behind them next panel...clearly nightbeat is right and there’s a mystery afoot...OR somebody is fucking with the ship’s lettering as a prank, which is a plot point I would absolutely buy

yeahhhh skids is right, chromedome is clearly Not dealing 

the dramatic graffiti on megatrons door...I wanna know who spray-painted ‘die’ everywhere like they're reaper overwatch

oh god. whirl vs megatron

really cool red lighting tho

GOD its so brutal, all the stuff megatron said about how he told the cons not to kill whirl...and doesn't that end up being false anyways? so he was just saying it to dig at whirl, which is awful

also I'm never over the fact that literally everyone - including megatron and whirl - blames whirl for ‘turning megatron violent,’ as if the entire Point isn't that whirl was a tool for a corrupt system, and if it wasn't whirl it would've just been someone else, and megatron turning away from pacifism was inevitable given the circumstances, AND also a choice on his part, so he really only has himself to blame for his OWN ACTIONS

bye bye whirls right arm, see you in lost light 

‘people never stop changing’ that IS something I say all the time...damn you warlord grandpa! how can you steal my philosophies?!

ohhh man and then rewind’s goodbye message being different....oooh

AUGH the fact that whirl was basically trying to goad megatron into killing him, just like he did in issue 1 w/cyclonus...It Hurts Man

also I do love the hint at who he’s talking to w/whirl shooting megatron with the bow and arrow earlier, and we know that atomizer is a fan of those

ok, but here’s where my philosophy diverges - megatron talks about throwing away his past and starting new, but I think that you have to learn from and build on your past...either way, megatron’s arc is one that I enjoy greatly from a character writing standpoint, and I'm excited to get it underway, especially w/how controversial it is lmao

big ole double-page spread...I like how you can pick out individual characters in the background crowd, which is crazy cause that's a LOT of people. also how come cosmos is so HUGE

phewwww 4.6 billion cybertronians died in the war, that’s INSANE. that's like, an incomprehensibly huge number. is there an estimate for their current population? I bet its not a lot. no wonder jro leaned into reproductive themes so much in mtmte/ll - of course the continuation of your species would be a concern for many if your numbers have been that greatly reduced

optimus w/his fancy tyrest-lookin crown

oughdajbfsbdf and the fact that megatron ALSO murdered 100 BILLION non-cybertronians...bruh. I feel like they maybe should've dialed those numbers back a little to allow his ‘redemption arc’ to run a little smoother lmao. but also I admire the commitment either way

and then we end w/megatron doing captain stuff, and seeing The Coffin...and we never did see rodimus in any of the flash-forward parts of this issue, did we???? I love how concerning that is. where's my BOY

also of course we gotta remember the warning from way back at the beginning of mtmte: ‘don't open the coffin’....

and so begins mtmte s2! man I love s2. I love mtmte in general lmao. s2 takes on the impossible w/the whole ‘megatron redemption arc’ thing, and I know that’s like, a divisive plot point and stuff, but from a writing standpoint I enjoyed it a lot...I think it was pretty much as well done as it could've been given the enormity of the task, and I thought it was a really interesting direction for the story to go in 

also espec if it’s true that hasbro was like ‘hey jro put megatron in your story and give him a redemption arc’ rather than jro like, planning/asking to do it 

anyways. I doubt ill talk much abt the disc horse(tm) here bc this is just for fun and also my own personal opinions and whatever, but I for one am excited to reexperience this stuff 

so yeah s2 off to a strong start with some wild shit already happening! cant wait to read more!

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Three Seasons in Wonderland

(Haymitch sleeps better holding Effie instead of a knife. Sensual content. NSFW depending on your sensitivities. — I hopped on board this ship quite late, like the white rabbit. Better late than never; this experience is a joy.)

*TAKE ME*

🐇 🎩

‘...Have I gone mad?’ ‘I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are...’ (L.C.)

***

*OPEN ME*

WINTER 🌧⚡️

‘...How long is forever? Sometimes just one second...’ (L.C.)

The first time he slept with her — with anyone — he was 47. Then it happened. Inadvertently... almost.

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” he told her.

“Why not?”

They’d been having sex on and off for 5 years, and she knew he would answer as he always did.

“I don’t sleep without holding my knife.”

“Keep holding ME instead...”

She was persuasive that night: clinging afterwards as he softened inside her, threading her fingers through his hair, taking his warnings on the tip of her tongue and swallowing them whole. In that moment of intoxicating sobriety, he fell asleep with her.

When he startled awake later, he thought her a courageous fool to be tangled up with him. Logic called him to go sleep on the couch, as usual, but the air was cold, and he told logic to wait. He wanted more of her.

His mind was too sleepy to tease out the fragrances — flowers, maybe vanilla. Tracing the handle of his knife was his usual routine. He obviously couldn’t do that without the knife, but his fingertips could sketch its length at the base of her spine, along her wrists, between her breasts.

Sliding down until his feet hung off the bed, he rested his forehead against her heartbeat and slung his arm over her hip. If she woke, he’d caress her in other places until she was ready for him to fuck her again, but he didn’t want to wake her. He wanted to feel her breathing. He wanted the fleeting feeling of safety that came to him on rare occasions.

In thundering stillness, he slipped down the rabbit hole and held her there in Wonderland. On the roof, rain tapped into nothingness. He’d walked through it, and she’d made him warm. For a second, anything beyond Effie ceased to be relevant.

‘...In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again...’ (L.C.)

Haymitch didn’t dare name the feeling. He just let his eyes close.

***

*DRINK ME*

SPRING 🐦💦

‘...At least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then...’ (L.C.)

The room was still dark when a Mockingjay called her awake. Another echoed, and a conversation between the two ensued. The geese started up next, searching for a breakfast of shoots and worms in thawed soil.

Haymitch slept through it all like the dead, even though he’d gone to bed relatively sober. His chin rested above her collarbone, and he breathed evenly against her neck. The sensations tickled, and she leaned into them instead of pulling away.

He shifted his hands on her arm, holding her like a child snuggles a blanket. Effie wriggled her toes in between his leg and the flannel sheets. She pulled at the covers which had slipped to his side of the bed.

His side of the bed. The thought was a novelty.

His warmth made her sleepy, but falling back to sleep was impossible with every bird in District 12 gathered outside the window and the first light of sunrise peeking through the curtains.

She’d brought those last year to replace the yellowed sheets which used to hang in the window. At first Haymitch had complained about her *gift* as controlling, but he must have liked the curtains since he didn’t take them down.

As much as she wanted coffee, she needed this more — this closeness of waking up with him beside her rather than on the couch. She covered his hands and tucked her fingers against his chest.

“Are you trying to freeze me to death,” he muttered, “Your hands and feet are like ice.”

“Well, they wouldn’t be if you hadn’t stolen the blankets — again.”

“You have them ALL”

“I just took them back!”

He stretched across her waist. The far side of her body was cold too, so he acquiesced to her version of the truth.

“Want me to warm you up?” he whispered into the crook of her neck, plucking kisses in between words.

She caressed low on his stomach, feeling fine hairs and scar tissue. The intimacy was tempting.

“Don’t touch my dick until your hands are warm.”

She chuckled and thought for a moment. “My mouth is warm... Do you want to feel it?”

He propped himself up on his elbow and brushed a thumb across her lips. Her hair was a tangled halo on the pillow. She was a soft mess, and, fuck yes, he wanted her mouth on him.

“Yeah, I wanna feel it.”

“I want to feel yours too. ...Shall we?”

“I sure as hell ain’t gonna say no to you sitting on my face and sucking my dick.”

Effie rolled her eyes. “Must you be so unromantic!”

“Romance is overrated.” He stroked the laugh lines on her cheeks. In the dim light he couldn’t see them, but he liked knowing that she was smiling and they were there.

She touched his chest. “I think you actually have more inside you than you care to admit.”

“I’ve got PLENTY inside me, sweetheart, but it’s not romance.”

The deep truth was she enjoyed him like crazy. She’d been thirsty so long for sleeping with him and waking up him. Now that this connection was accessible to her, work was in the Capitol and his life was here. His life was always going to be here.

‘...If you knew Time as well as I do,’ said the Hatter, ‘you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him...’ (L.C.)

Effie wasn’t sure what she wanted to do in time with this awareness.

***

*EAT ME*

SUMMER ☀️🔥

“...A dream is not reality but who’s to say which is which?...” (L.C.)

Midnight was as warm as high noon had been. Every window was open, yet the house was still filled with the day’s stagnation. A cotton nightie was the only thing separating Effie from the furnace that was Haymitch’s body. In sleep, he’d rolled onto her pillow and draped his arm and leg across her. His fingertips brushed low on her spine, which might have been erotic if not for the sweat beading up everywhere he touched.

She tried rolling onto her back with a plan to escape to the edge of the bed, but he was dead weight pinning her down. She tried rolling him off, but he just pulled her closer in an unconscious death grip — death by heat stroke, considering the way this was going.

“Haymitch...” she whispered, not wanting to startle him.

Irritated when he didn’t respond, she spoke louder. “Haymitch, I’m suffocating here.”

“Haymitch Abernathy!!”

In a dream he heard his mother’s voice, chastising him for running into the house and leaving the door open behind him. Still asleep, he mumbled her old words. “We don’t live in a barn.”

He was hard to wake after falling asleep drinking. Effie considered the possibilities: smacking him, pinching him, stroking his dick... The latter seemed like the safer way to try to wake up a man who sleeps with a knife when he’s not in bed with her.

She was not gentle about it, tugging him while describing the things she could do to him when he woke up. Like ring your neck!

Still asleep, he murmured, “Need you, Effie.”

“Then wake up, honey,” she told him.

“I love you.” The words came out so quietly in sleep that she wondered if she imagined them.

Holy shit. “What?” Reeling, she stilled her hand. She hadn’t imagined them.

Haymitch groaned, and finally woke up, disoriented at first, then aware of her fingers curled around him.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” He yawned. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“It’s hot. I need space, and I couldn’t wake you...” Her voice wavered. “So I thought... ” She was too choked up to keep talking.

He lifted his arm and leg off of her. She was sweating where his weight had been.

“Are you alright?”

You love me. She didn’t say it, because all at once she knew it was true. Maybe the reality was unconscious. Maybe it was a conscious truth which he kept silent. Tears gathered in her eyes and threatened to spill onto her cheeks. She held them in, because how would she explain them?

Having heard them in her voice, he touched beneath her eyes in the dark and was confused when her face was dry. She let go of him, sat up in bed, and stripped off her nightgown. He watched her silhouette framed by the open window behind her. A fleeting breeze on her skin chased away some of the sweltering.

“You can’t hold me so tight!” She was breaking open, and how could she explain? She loved him. She was in love with him, but those words were only for dreams.

“Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to. Guess I’ve just gotten used to this.” Sleeping without you is miserable now, he didn’t say. He sat up and slung his legs over the edge of the bed, facing away from her but not leaving.

She knelt behind him and gently kneaded the back of his neck. “Do you have any idea how much it means to me to sleep in this bed with you?”

“Yeah, I do.” His certainty surprised her since they hadn’t discussed it.

“This with you is like air for me.” She was crying now for sure. He didn’t need to touch her cheeks to know it. “...I also need to be able to actually breathe.”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I still think that I’ll wake up, and you’ll be dead. I don’t know how I’m ever not gonna think about that.”

She slid her hands down his chest and kissed the top of his head, his temple, the soft spot beside his ear. “We’ve been sleeping together for 7 months, and I’m still alive.”

He gripped her hands. She was part of his life. Confusing as hell, annoying as fuck, and so precious. You’re the best goddamn part. He’d known it for years. “I want you to stay alive.” I need you to stay alive.

“Come here.” She let go of his hands and lay back on the sheets.

There was too much running through his mind. “I don’t want to sleep.”

“Neither do I.”

He turned to see what he could of her in the dark. The moment was silver and otherworldly. “My ma called this ‘The Witching Hour.’ When I was a kid, it made me think of demons and shit.”

“Maybe that’s something parents say to convince their children to go to sleep long before midnight.”

“Could be.”

“My Nana called it ‘The Magic Hour.’ She’d say to me, ‘I miss the magic hour. My bones are too old to stay awake for it.’...”

Haymitch slid back into bed. Her stories of her great-grandmother were soothing.

“...When she talked about it, I wanted to stay awake to feel that magic too. ‘Your bones are still too young,” she’d say, ‘You’ll feel the magic when it’s your time.’”

Effie scooted closer, lying face to face with him on his pillow, close enough to feel his breath on her lips.

He was hesitant to touch her because of what happened before. “Is this your time to feel it?”

“Yes, honey. We’re in it.”

“I wanna kiss you.”

All that she was feeling poured into his mouth and over his body, and came flooding back as he fucked her in the feeling of stagnant fire and magic.

Her eyes closed afterward. “I’ll be alive in the morning. Do you trust me?”

He held her arm, and traced the tendons along her wrist instead of the handle of his knife. “I’m trying.”

‘...Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible...’ (L.C.)

Almost anything could happen for a moment, and what’s life if not a series of moments? Madness. Rain, song, and demons. Falling into the unconscious, and coming undone.

[terramythos]

uhhhh liveblog reactions of the newest october daye book, #14, a killing frost. don’t look @ me. don’t @ me. 

monumental spoilers for this book & the entire series 

-aw tybalt is taking toby's last name

-SUS AF looks at Patrick and Dianda. 👀 I knew there was a reason we established that Patrick very close to Simon before he went crazy and evil. I feel like that was in Once Broken Faith (#10)?

-LMAO I straight up forgot Rayseline exists.

-great to see sylvester's still a dick.

-still endlessly funny to me that Sylvester's Literal Evil Twin Simon replaced him as Toby's father figure and now sylvester's just like, some asshole who randomly shows up sometimes

-great to see Luna's still a bitch.

-great family

-well it's interesting from a purely academic perspective to see what happens to May when she's literally missing organs. Usually it's Toby!

-hi Simon

-Simon: *is evil*

Toby: you know what? This dude is way more trustworthy than Sylvester!

(She's... not wrong)

-Simon: *is evil*

Toby: come oooon simon you're a good guy cmoooon this is getting boring

-oh cool we're going on a road trip with evil!Simon, that cant possibly go wrong

-*shit goes super wrong like right away* ok

-toby calling may her sister constantly in this book awww

-walther shows up :D I love him

-yaaay the Luidaeg finally my absolute fave absolute queen

-toby: so I went on this big quest on my own and now Quentin is kidnapped and May got elf-shot. It seemed like a good idea at the time so me and/or simon wouldnt get caught in some weird magic contract with you

The Luidaeg: wow, you're a fucking idiot

Toby's narration: this hurt on a personal level because she can't lie so i knew she like REALLY meant it

-ok so theres this weird bit where we learn Stacy is ultra protective of her kids dating. There is some discussion about how that is super weird and doesn't make any sense to toby. Then some more discussion about how a lot of Stacy's past doesn't add up. Specifically, stacy's grandparents were purebloods (who hated her), which actually makes zero sense biologically considering how little fae blood Stacy has. Also worth considering, though not mentioned, TWO of stacy's children are powerful seers which makes no sense from what we know about thin blood in canon.

I think this *might* connect to my ongoing suspicions of Marcia as a character, who is a thinblooded changeling who consistently keeps showing up. Including in this book when she really didn't need to. At this point she has met multiple Firstborn and they initially seem alarmed/disturbed when they see her for no apparent reason. 14 books since her intro and we know nothing about her past or even her heritage, which is unheard of in this series. When that kind of info is obscured its always because there's a big twist associated with it. There is something going on there.

-speaking of. Um. Simon and Sylvester's bio mom was a human? Excuse me? What? Hello?

-sylvester refused to claim her as their legal mother so simon (angry about it) had to reject her too. A whole new layer to the "fuck Sylvester" cake and brings some interesting perspective to him stepping in as a paternal figure for toby, a homeless changeling? What the fuck, Sylvester?

-this is also one reason why not evil!Simon isn't a total asshole to Toby.

-anyway. Toby being turned into an otter and biting The Luidaeg was fucking funny

-wow, evening REALLY sucks.

-dang the tree thing is pretty creepy :( big fuckin yikes

-OK so toby's sacrificing her way home to keep Simon from doing more damage? I guess is the plan? Fuck?

-toby seems to know names of some Roane she's never met and I'm not sure if that's a mistake or not

-oh Quentin is big mad at Simon. Even if this all goes well a lot of people are gonna hate him. Also, he hurt Dean which is gonna piss Patrick and Dianda off

-though it was basically mind control so. SHRUG????

-god, fuck evening

-WAIT. Something was just implied that. wait... if that's where this is going I'm MAD.

- Toby: *takes on the curse*

Simon: *is suddenly not evil*

Simon: toby what the fuck no why did you do that :(((

-i like Simon 😬

-"apparently, the thought of Patrick being angry with him was even more distressing than I'd expected it to be. Interesting." UM. UMMMM. 👀👀👀👀👀

-seeing Toby briefly turn into her book 1 version was funny. Immediately pointing at tybalt, the literal love of her life, and screaming "you FUCKER". Ah, memories.

-ok. Ok yeah that's where this was going. Fuck me. Fuck.

-i am SO MAD. a fucking THROWAWAY LINE ...

-ok so officer Thornton is Oberon. That's cool. Ok.

I immediately went and skimmed the two books he was in and caught two instances of foreshadowing.

In Ashes of Honor (#6) when toby meets him she describes him as familiar in a generic way. Like, she recognizes his voice and face immediately but can't place it.. This is never brought up again. In the final chapter of this book he is described the same way, as generic yet strangely familiar. So. A closer reading might be in order to see how other fae behave around him. It's possible Toby has a stronger reaction since he's her grandfather (and is the perspective character.)

And yeah, the fucking THROWAWAY "lady, let alone" line from The Brightest Fell (#11). At the time that just seemed awkward, or I guess a gratuitous Tam Lin reference. Fuck me. Also explains how he didnt implode or die from being trapped in Annwn.

-and it makes sense there isnt much more than that because it seems "officer thornton" doesnt know he's oberon. Like it's basically the situation Simon was in??? There's a throwaway "why in the world was Oberon disguised as a human and couldn't remember anything?" line but it isn't explored, so I assume its addressed in a future book.

-(oh my god Riordan kept him as like. Some sick pet. For a YEAR. she didn't know he was the literal King of Faerie. Fucking hell.)

-his fucking name. Thornton. THORNton. Perfectly human character here hahahaha fuck off.

-and this makes the whole fucking series setup of "toby will be the one to find oberon" way more funny because. Man, mission fucking accomplished. 8 books ago.

-thematically makes sense that he returns in The Brightest Fell, too. Fuck me. fuck me! Bitter irony that Simon is given the impossible task/curse to find Oberon in that book and he was literally like, zonked out two rooms away

-list of "minor/background" characters in this series who later reveal themselves to be Huge Lore Gamechangers: Evening, The Luidaeg, May, August, Janet, and now FUCKING Oberon.

-an entire chapter of Simon apologizing to everyone

- holy fuck? Canon ot3???? Simon/Patrick/Dianda??? OT3? HELLO?????

-the October daye series has a fucking canon ot3 and they're getting married. Alright. Ok. Thanks seanan for my life

-"simon, amandine is just the worst and doesn't deserve you. Come marry me and my wife" is not where I was expecting this to go but like okay I am on board

-so the divorce happens and toby unsurprisingly picks Simon as her legal parent. But August does too. Amandine is pissed... I'm sure that'll be a whole Thing.

-THIS BOOK LITERALLY ENDS WITH SIMON AND PATRICK AND DIANDA GETTING MARRIED I'M

-"I now declare you husbands and wife" asdfhdkskxj

-well that book was a fucking ride. Holy christ. Toby accidentally found Oberon. That was sort of the big overarching thing. Not sure where the story goes from here. Theres some loose ends I already discussed and Evening is still a threat but yeah!

-ok we still have the novella "Shine In Pearl" which seems to be about Simon and Patrick and Dianda pre-series

-this is mostly VERY angsty (but well written) but 👀 at this novella mentioning Dawn as a character who exists outside of like, an offhand mention in the first book. Also referring to Riordan like she's not a minor background character

-calling tybalt an asshole too lol

-christ. Poor simon. Even more context of literally everyone screwing him over. :(( I'm glad it's better now.

[empressxmachina]

Patients Zero - iii. by Imperial-Radiance

~Also on Wattpad~

*gasp* *cough*

Oh, good god. What? I thought I was— But, how am I—? Didn’t I get—? Wait, where am I?

Hard: I’m on something hard. Hard, flat, slick, and cold. My back hates this. I’m guessing it’s a floor. But I feel grooves, not just one that takes up my entire hand. It almost feels… made for me. Impossible. My eyes; they’re closed. It’s dark, behind and in front of the lids. Yet, there’s a glow: a… soft one? Not the blinding white from before? It’s cool, still, but not as much somehow. I wait for a voice to give me any sort of insight of where I am, and all I get back is just the gentle hum of a… a… Wait, is that a fan? No, is that a heater? Even on the hottest days outside in the real world – real because this is a fantasy, still, especially if I’m alive – it never went past room temperature. I… I’m boiling like I’m stuck in an oven.

Oh, my god. Am I being cooked in here? No, screw that. I’ll accept going out in plenty of ways in this diminutive state, but I will not go out as someone’s di—!

Well, this is… new? I finally lift my back up and open my eyes, and I’ve found myself lost… and in pain. Holy crap! Everything hurts! Ugh. But that’s the least of my worries. I’m alive, somehow, for some reason. But, why, and why here, wherever here is?

Am I crazy? This sure looks like a living room: not very different from my one at home. There’s a sofa, a table, and works of art that admittedly caught my vision immediately. I’ve liked to think that I’m not a leech for moving media, so not seeing a television or the like here is pleasing. There are dimly lit LEDs as large as me, a rug across the ground over there as large as me, and an actual fan even larger than me. Sure, it nearly takes up a whole wall like a fireplace would, but the latter would be unconventional. It’s blowing out heat, so it must switch between hot and cold. The only thing missing is a collection of literature of varying genres, but I doubt printing that small is even possible. Besides that, it’s like it was made for me.

But that’s just it. That’s fucking weird. It’s made for me, and how small am I now?

I must be going insane. This can’t be real. This room can’t possibly be mine—Oh. Oh shit.

That’s a kitchen over there behind me. A real kitchen – well, as real as it can be with its counters and cabinets. But it’s the actual cooking stuff that made it real: the primitive tools in the corner for refrigeration and cooking – some solar funnel/pot thing, I think – and the bruised yet familiar food scraps from my past life stacked in a triad of pyramids next to them. Wait, past life? I say that like it’s been forever since I was… ambushed… by someone big enough to make a place like this if they’re careful.

I’ve got to get out of here. But what is here? First things first, I should probably get my ass off the floor: this uncomfortably perfectly-sized floor.

O-Okay. Up and at it. The floor isn’t an ocean anymore. Appliances don’t have as much of a chance of killing me now. If I go this way, then I can sit at this table right here and contemplate all the dumb stuff I did to get here… wherever here is, not to mention there are enough chairs to fit a whole family or a group of housemates. Housemates. AmI alone here? Why am I here? Why do I keep asking myself these questions rather than just looking for the answer?

I’m irrational. This is irrational, but I must make the most of it. No, screw it, do I even have a choice? Well, with all these grabbable, sharp things around, I guess the answer’s technically a ‘yes.’ But. I’m not that depressed. I’m not. Not *sigh* that depressed. I’ve fought this long for others’ lives before and my own at this level, so why stop now? It’s not like I’m not used to being like this. It’s just this current situation that’s new… and heaven knows how much I love surprises… and rambling. Where was I? Oh, right.

If I go that way, now, then I can go to a surprise upstairs with who-knows-what… or who-knows-who. Would they really bunk me with someone else? I wasn’t one for strangers at full size, so how would they think I’d manage one on this scale!? They’re the ones that are short-sighted, not me. Ugh, I can’t wait to deal with that possibility. Though, maybe I don’t have to.

There’s the door. Huh.

I know I just got out of some stasis a moment ago, but it only just occurred to me that all the windows are covered and presumably closed. There seems to be no light peeking out of anywhere, either, so either it’s still nighttime, or I’m enclosed somewhere cut off from the world. No, the latter’s always going to be true here, now that I think about it. I don’t know where here is, but I do know it sure isn’t out there. There’s no use in not verifying it, though.

I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised how what should be a small door doesn’t have a lock. Yet, it has a hinge – two of them? Okay. Am I too dumb for not checking the windows? No, just crazy, but I knew that already. What’s crazier, though, is how I’m simultaneously right and wrong upon opening this door.

This is a small house, and this sure doesn’t look like a lab, a ward, and especially not that basement. To be honest, I kind of expected there to be grass or an equivalent on the ground here. Ground. I say that like this place containing me isn’t on a freaking table right now. Well, to be fair, they brought in real grass, plants, and stuff for the diorama dwellings, so I guess it’s not that weird. But those were for hundreds if not thousands of people on several stations. This is just me… and a house for me… on a table.

A table in what looks like a… a bedroom? I mean, I think I can make out the mountainous shapes of a bed, nightstands sandwiching it, and I think a dresser across from them, but it’s freaking dark in here. I’m surprised I can see that far away. Those LEDs boxed in my walls shouldn’t be able to reach that far, even if their brightness was somehow magnified through the cracks between windows and the door, yet here they are. Despite that, there’s no denying I’m in some resting place for some giant somewhere. Somewhere.

I could be freaking anywhere, but where?

I do know one thing: it’s damn fine that I don’t have a fear of heights. That helped me back there with the commons, so it’ll help me here, too. But, god, damn it, that drop is large. I bet it was intentional, along with my placement here. With the back edge cut off by the wall and the front sharply opening to this no man’s land of a room, I don’t have many options of escape.

I hear a heater running like a radiator under a window on one side of this table, and I’d rather not get burnt to cinders today. I could test my luck descending the curtains, but I don’t think I’m in proper form to climb or slide down. The opposite side is blocked by a chair in the corner. Falling onto a cushion might not be a bad idea. Maybe there’s a vent I can get through behind there. Hmm.

Screw it. I’d rather risk seeing my maker than wait for them to come to me. Chair, it is. It seems like the only way to go. But, should I take a leap of faith or weigh my options? Eh, watch with my luck, and this room’s patron comes back in and throws something atop of me – maybe even themselves. A smudge on somebody’s ass: that’s not legacy worthy. At least if I’m up here for some time, then I can probably make it back in the house and use it for even a smidgen of protection.

Hopefully.

Huh. Should I be bothered by how my steps aren’t clicking across this surface? I mean, they never did in the basement, but there were plenty of people around causing noise and whatever. Here, I’m alone… at least for now. That should be calming, shouldn’t it? Alas, as I continue forward, the curve of what-now-looks-like-an-accent-chair crests over the horizon and—

Oh, curse me.

So, I was right in being worried about possibly being suffocated to no end in colossal clothing. But, of all of them, did it have to be scrubs? I’m no color aficionado, but I do think that’s how that health-centric blue is supposed to look in this lighting—er, lack of light, I should say. Of course, they’re not just any scrubs, either. Any sensible physician would know to discard of their scrubs in at least a hamper to be washed after use or just use a new pair. These look like cast-offs like mad.

I’d put money down on them being his. That monster brought me here, didn’t here? Then, me being here would make sense: I’m where he lives or, at least, stays so he can watch me like some project.

Looking back at this rather extravagant house for a subspecies like me, who knows how much other preparation has been done since he acquired me? Is he why I’m hurt like this? Speaking of hurt, wasn’t I beeping before, and that led to all of this? It’s stopped now, and so was I, but is replacing it with pain much better? If I run away, then how do I know that the beeping won’t restart and lead to an even greater demise?

I’m curious, though, considering he could’ve ended me earlier while I was presumably incapacitated if that were his goal. But what if he may have plans for me, instead? What if he’s planning for me to run away, and that’s why he’s away, probably watching from afar? The basement had cameras whether they wanted us to know they were there or not, and I bet there’s some in here, too, with night vision, thermals, and all that other fancy gobbledygook. Ugh, it’s dark and distant in here, but damn it, I’m going to find one if it’s the last thing I—

Are you kidding me?

Do not tell me that’s been him this whole time. Him, and he’s that? Well, that’s poetic as hell, isn’t it? He was going to take me out beforeall this crap started. Now, he’s going to do me in here, instead, screwing me sideways and 1-upping me even more so.

In my visual pursuits of a camera, the last thing I expected to find was an I.D. To surprise me even more, I recognized the face on it. I remember my first time seeing it.

I was on a lunch break, just reading in my journals about Match Day – how it had been the largest amounts of matches in history or whatever – and then Doc Adams suddenly broke the fun and excitement, coming in with a list of our future interns. One of them was him. If it had been just a few years prior, then I would’ve been excited. After all, there’s nothing wrong with more doctors, right? But, Adams, the louse, has… had been trying to get me out of the doctoring game since.

It’s because he knows that I’d be better at his job than him, and the supervisors at the system H.Q. have been telling us both this. I can’t help that I love – loved– helping people directly so much to not replace it with a tedious desk job, even if it looks over pretty much everyone else in the hospital. Thus, his solution was to put more and more people in our ranks to dilute the focus away from me. It worked for a while until someone had a symptom that they didn’t know how to treat, but I did.

Despite my knowledge, this new guy was perfection, though, and from across the ocean, no less. I bet Adams creamed his pants at him on the list: this—What’s his name again? Oh, yeah: this ‘Mikul Merchant’ or whatever. I wonder how many bribes Adams had to make to get him. But that doesn’t matter now, does it? The first day for the interns would’ve been months ago, and the kid and I are both here, apparently, with him ruining my life just as much if not more so than he would’ve been without this wretched disease.

Though, if he was already on this continent way before then, then he must’ve been excited, too. After all, I’m sure his home country has its own center like this where he could’ve been. Why was he here, and how in the world did he turn out to be a carrier, too?

Upon registration, everyone is given I.D.s, but rather than having the random number sequences and barcodes the others get until they’re rendered useless by dwindling heights to where they can’t carry the damn thing, carriers’ listings are just ‘zeroes’ with a Q.R. code. I’m positive that’s how that self-deprecating squad of bugs found me and put their emotions out on and into me. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one here, so why would they charge me rather than someone like him? Well, besides his youth, foreignness, and relative handsomeness that may correlate with them, unlike me, he’s a carrier of and might as well be immune to both strains.

Curse this minute minutia. Curse my imperfections. But, most importantly, screw this—!

*CLICK* God, no.

Before I can even blink, a beam of light blinds me, revealing the previously dark side of the room and thus allowing me to see that this isn’t just a bedroom but more like a hotel room. A vanity adjacent to a closed closet appears. It’s spanning across the wall opposite me, this table and chair, that house of mine, and the window. How I didn’t see the reflection of this house in the mirror beforehand is beside me. But, no other reflection aside from my own hasn’t yet come into view, which makes me wonder if this is genuinely that giant’s room.

I know I used to come across my team’s scrubs in my office on occasion, so who’s to say that a lead person isn’t just keeping subject/’Doctor’ Merchant’s clothing with them for testing or safekeeping? Though, I don’t think that just throwing them across a chair shows its direct importance or proper sanitation practices. Or, maybe there’s another type of experiment going on. Perhaps it’s just dealing with me and what I do in this new location? Either way, that doesn’t answer whose room this is or why—

Never mind. There, he is. I’m here with him. I should stop doubting myself. No, this is the one time I should challenge anything and everything I’ve ever known.

Emerging from what I assume is a bathroom, a lanky, lean embodiment of a supposed human comes through. Supposed. Humans aren’t meant to be that large. It’s almost godly – the glow of his mostly bare, solely-pants-wearing, towel-draping-necked form – but I’m not glorifying a monster, checking his face and onyx hair over the sink and counter like he hasn’t done anything wrong. His auburn skin with no marks in sight is so nourished like he’s been able to bathe sensibly and get proper sunlight. There’s not one eye bag or wrinkle like he’s never had a single stressor in his life: the pampered, pompous prick. I’d almost say he’s prettier in person, but beasts are never pretty.

If you’re here, then you should be under all the stresses. Yet, here you are, flouncing around almost naked like you aren’t contracted with and spreading disease! If that’s the case, then why the hell am I here, trapped with you—!?

You… You… You’ve got to be kidding me. I mean, it was only a matter of time, but… don’t fucking dare.

Before I can even comprehend it, his almond gaze snaps on me like a locked crosshair in a gun’s sight. I try freezing in place, but I’m sure the vanity lights are making my eyes glow like a beady animal’s, so it’s all in vain. Aside from that, I didn’t think he had even noticed me at first, but then he had squinted his eyes and cocked his head like an inquisitive dog trying to hear. Just to test my luck, he even acknowledges me… or whatever he thinks I am if he doesn’t know for sure for some reason,

“H-Huh?” He sounds so soft, almost… Nope, I’m not going to say that. There’s no way he actually cares. I… I’m nothing in comparison. He’s taken out souls larger and smaller than me, so what difference would I make? “Is something there?” See? ‘Something.’

I’m a thing now.

I almost thought he’d salivate for his new toy, treat, or whatever I am to him. He’s already been a predator in public upon thousands of eyes. How much craftier will he be, all alone? I’m not going to wait to find out. Even if that’s what he’s expecting me to do, I don’t care. It’s fight-or-flight, and the former is definitely out of the question.

“W-Wait!”

Like hell, I’m doing that.

[wetookanoath]

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but in the first postmortem the boys do, Ryan says that Shane once told him that he [Shane] wants his last words to be “Keep Rolling.” Do you think you could write a fic based on that? I feel like your writing would be perfect for that style fic. If you don’t want to, I understand. I love you ❤️❤️

Originally, this was two fics. One was the answer to this prompt that I started to write almost TWO years ago that then morphed into a parallel story to Like You Want To Be Loved from Ryan’s POV, and the other was a birthday gift for @mercury-skies (I’m so sorry I missed the date!), but then I realized both were pretty similar and said, “fuck it, canon divergence”. Which… is what this is, lol. In this Canon Divergence kinda AU thing, Shane has had Obi since he moved to LA.

Dear Soph, I hope you like this little thingy. I’m so sorry it took so long, I hope your birthday was as wonderful as you. I love you, you are one of the reasons I’m in this fandom still, and one of my best friends. I hope to have you in my life for a thousand years.

PS: It’s not a parallel story to LYWTBL.

(Read on AO3)

I’ll Stick With You, Baby, For A Thousand Years

If you asked Ryan, it all started in the Sallie House.

He had known Shane for almost two years before he asked him to be part of Unsolved. There was a certain amount of nervousness when he did so, and a sweet and almost shy smile on Shane’s face when he said yes without looking at him, pretending to not be excited. 

Ryan knew then it had been a good idea.

In that evil house, he confirmed this thought when he had ran out of the place with his blood rushing through his veins in hot waves, heart pounding crazy in his ears. He couldn’t hear anything but the million ways his brain had told him the demon inside the house was going to kill him if he kept messing with it in there, Shane’s juvenile laugh so far away now that Ryan wondered if he had imagined it.

At first, he also thought he was imagining the man coming out of the house in such a calm manner, it made Ryan feel even more uneasy. But his friend had approached him, asked if he was okay, and when he hadn’t gotten an answer, waited until Ryan was ready to look up at him a few seconds later.

“We have to get back inside, Ryan,” he had said and Ryan had shook his head no, no, no, never. “Look, I know you’re scared but this is our job now, man. We committed to this, we are gonna finish this together.”

“I don’t want to die…” he murmured. Shane chuckled but it didn’t really sound offensive to his ears. In a way, it made him feel a bit better that the man found all this so funny.

Shane was smiling, that was the trick that did it. He smiled at Ryan, bright and kind, finding Ryan’s fear endearing somehow and not shameful. His hands were on Ryan’s shoulders in a heartbeat, his face neutral as he spoke again.

“You are not gonna die, I won’t let that happen. None of us will.” He said. “You are already the bravest of us by deciding to walk in there earlier today, knowing that you believe in whatever could be there.”

“Are you admitting there’s a demon in the house?”

“I’m admitting nothing but the only truth we know for sure: you believe in it, it scares you, and yet you set foot there like a boss.” He smiled again, squeezing Ryan’s right shoulder. “In my book, you’ve already won against that bitch little girl.”

At the time, it had made him laugh. Ryan swallowed and nodded, readying himself to get back into the house when Shane’s hands cradled his face in his big hands. His heart stopped beating and for a second, Ryan wished Shane would kiss him.

The man looked at his face instead, as if searching for something Ryan wasn’t sure was in him. After a few seconds, he smirked.

“Let’s get back in there, little guy.” It was the first time he had called him that and it made Ryan want to listen to him forever. “Let’s finish this job.”

They had gone in there together, Shane behind him, ready to push him into the place if necessary but it wasn’t. Instead, Ryan had tried his best to not piss his pants and let Shane keep laughing in the face of danger like if he wasn’t scared for the soul of his friend.

Shane made things different, Ryan noticed, in a way he hasn’t witnessed before. 

Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t believe that made him brave in Ryan’s eyes, screaming and laughing at empty spaces Ryan thought were filled with evil they couldn’t see. But Shane looked back at him, the tender smile of earlier and Mexico City, and San Jose, and that afternoon at work when he had popped the question, so sweet on his lips, making his face kinder and Ryan had to blink back unknown tears.

“You really are scared, aren’t you?” Shane asked him later as they laid down on the floor.

He had gotten his sleeping bag closer to Shane and the man had laughed, allowing him this as he was allowing him so much lately. Ryan said nothing to his question, thinking it unnecessary when it was so obvious what was happening to him.

Many shadows were taking strange shapes, windows seemed to get darker, and Shane came into view still with all the lights off. Ryan looked at him as the man got closer to Ryan and laid on his side, looking at him.

“Give me,” he said. Ryan frowned and realized he was offering him his hand. Shane was asking for his. “Give me that hand.”

Hesitant, Ryan moved his hand until it was on Shane’s. The man grabbed it like if he was trying to warm it up, keeping it against his in a firm grip without interlocking their fingers or doing anything else, just holding it. Shane sighed, licking between his lips before squeezing Ryan’s hand.

“Nothing you think may be out there is real.” He murmured, Ryan was already aware this was something they were getting cut for the video. “Nothing out there can hurt you, I promise you that.”

“You can’t do that.”

The man smiled. “Don’t contradict me, Bergara, never underestimate my competitiveness.”

Ryan couldn’t help but giggle at that, both of them were certainly assholes when it came to competing against others and against each other. In a way, it was one of the first things that attracted him to Shane, the way he seemed to encourage him into competing with him to be the best new thing in the office. It was insufferable and oddly motivational.

“I’ll keep you safe and alive just so I can say I told you so.”

“I bet you would.”

Shane’s eyes closed, he was still smiling as sleepiness started to call him back into its arms. Ryan swallowed as he thought of leaving again. But as if sensing his thought, Shane squeezed his hand.

“You are safe with me, angel.”

Somehow, it gave him the courage to stay until past the witching hour. Shane had laughed at his inability to stay for the rest of the night but had put his hand on his thigh as they drove away from the house, looking at him with a soft smile.

“I’m proud of you,” he said, and it rang in Ryan’s ears for the rest of the night. He was unable to sleep, even in the comfort of their hotel room.

He thought there, as he tossed around the mattress and the sheets, that Shane was some kind of handsome he hadn’t noticed before. He was cute, always has been. Funny and caring, protective in a way.

And he also had a girlfriend.

**

“I got one.” Shane said.

“Shoot!”

“What post-apocalyptic world is the most interesting you’ve seen in a movie?”

Ryan took a deep breath, thinking of his answer as he drove. They were alone in the car, the rest of the crew had taken their own rental with the excuse of wanting to sleep, “the truth is that you two never shut up”, Mark had told them. And Ryan was actually kind of be grateful for it. He enjoyed these 20 Questions sessions more than he cared to admit.

“Maybe Mad Max? I mean, it would be bananas to live in that!” he answered, and Shane chuckled at it. “Ugh, you’re going to say something pretentious like The Matrix or Terminator.”

“What’s pretentious about Terminator?!” Shane kept laughing, his eyebrows high and face surprised.

They laughed together a few more seconds before Shane answered. “My answer is kind of obscure, actually.”

“Holy shit.”

“But that’s not how 20 Questions goes, Ryan.”

“Shit, I don’t give a fuck.” He frowned, then rolled his eyes when he saw Shane looking at him with that shitty grin of his. “Okay then, same question for you.”

There was a shift in the air and Ryan wasn’t sure what to make of it, but Shane was suddenly serious, looking to the road outside the window.

“Children of Men.”

An obscure future for sure. 

“Why?”

Shane smiled at him. “It’s my turn.”

“Oh, come on!”

The man giggled but cleared his throat before answering. “I think it’s something not so far away or impossible.” He said. “And I found it interesting, the way people reacted around the girl and her miraculous child.” Shane licked his lips and swallowed. “Hopeless world suddenly has hope in the form of a young lady and a baby…”

“I always thought it was kind of like the Jesus tale,” Ryan commented. “Mary was just a random young kid having the son of God, the hope that was promised.”

“Oh yeah, like obvious Christian imagery aside, it’s very interesting.”

Ryan sighed, the silence that followed felt oddly charged but none dared to break it. It felt sacred too, like if they had just shared something important and not just an opinion on a movie’s portrayal of the world after its end. 

“You were raised Christian, right?” Shane asked suddenly.

“Catholic,” he murmured. “Even went to a Catholic school, and Grandma Bergara made sure to remind me every Sunday why I shouldn’t wake up early that day. Church ain’t that fun.”

Shane said nothing for a few seconds, then asked: “You think believing in ghost has something to do with your faith?”

Ryan frowned, thinking about his answer again. It was his turn to ask, but Shane’s question tickled in his brain as he thought over his family, the exchange in cultures, all that spiritualism he had absorbed over the years.

He had been a non-believer of the supernatural in his early teens, but had faith. Ryan wasn’t sure if it was actually something he grew up to have or was something he had picked from his parents. Regardless, he wasn’t a religious person but he had faith.

“Maybe,” he finally said. “I have faith there’s something else after death. Sometimes souls don’t pass on and stay here.”

“What about demons and all that, Ryan?”

“Well…” His hands were sweating on the steering wheel, Ryan swallowed before answering again. “If there’s good, there’s evil. One can’t exist without the other.” He repeated what his grandmother once told him. “Why are you asking me this?”

Shane looked at him as if he had been caught doing something wrong. His eyes were wide open and his eyebrows were up again. He recovered soon, clearing his throat and sitting straighter on his seat.

“Well, I don’t believe in any of that. I get curious.”

Ryan looked at him for a few seconds, then back at the road.

“So you’re saying, you don’t have faith?” Ryan asked, Shane blinked. “I mean, not like a religion or something. But, just faith that there may be more.”

“No, I guess I don’t,” he murmured.

There were a million other things Ryan wanted to ask him. Even after so many years, he still had so many questions for the man, and he hoped the roads never ended for them, for their little show to keep giving them excuses to leave town and experience all this together.

In that moment, though, Ryan changed the subject by keeping their previous game with more questions about movies and simpler, sillier things.

Shane’s words still echoed in his head as they kept going and the night approached with their arrival to the hotel. Tomorrow they would be working, but tonight they still had a few minutes to spare with each other, laying together on the same bed of their double room.

“I would really like to believe in something, you know?” Shane said, one arm over his forehead as he looked at the ceiling. “Wrap myself into it, find something beyond what is said and done.”

“Why?”

There was no answer for him, just Shane’s eyes piercing Ryan’s soul as he seemed to be looking for something on his face again. It was then that his free hand moved, fingers holding Ryan’s chin up as Shane kept watching.

“Because it’s terrifying to live in a world so still!” he suddenly said with enough goofiness to distract anyone from the grey shadow that had appeared over him. Ryan blinked a couple of times. “If there’s something else aside from the things we know, well, I gotta know too! Wouldn’t that be something?”

“Yeah.” Ryan answered after a pause. “I guess it would.”

The silence that followed made him think of Shane these past months they’ve spent together, travelling for their show and how it had become theirs after it had been his for what felt like an eternity. Make no mistake; Brent had been a good host, one of his best friends still. But the man was never as present as Shane seemed to be now, so involved and worried for it to be as perfect as possible.

Shane, the perfectionist. Going behind Ryan to edit better, giving him so many great ideas that Ryan didn’t know how else to credit him other than to name him co-parent of this little project that was becoming popular. He wondered for a moment where would Unsolved take them, if it was going to become a monster or an angel.

“I really wanna see a ghost, Ryan.” Shane said suddenly, making him look back to find Shane sitting on the bed. “You better prove me wrong.”

It felt like a promise.

“Oh, you’ll eat your words, sir,” he said, and Shane smiled at him. “You’re gonna kiss my ass soon, we are so gonna get something one of these days.”

They laughed together; it seemed like they were always laughing together about the same shit. Their laughter was bright and obscure, and sometimes it made other people wonder what was it. Maybe that was their own ghost, the thing only they could see.

Shane’s fingers caressed the tip of Ryan’s nose out of nowhere, and he blinked as he saw him wink and stand from the bed, walking towards the bathroom without saying any other words.

He had never seen him act this way with anyone else but his girlfriend. Ryan wondered if he was this open with his closer friends, if Ryan could consider himself one of them now. 

Back then, he wondered so many things that it felt like a never ending game of 20 Questions.

**

When Ryan first admitted he was in love, Shane was single and drunk in New Orleans.

Each city they visited fell into their laps in a way he had never experienced before, like each place had been waiting for them. Ryan knew it was in part because they cheated shamelessly and chose places were they could visit other touristy ends, have a good dinner with the crew, and sleep well when they weren’t covered in webs and dust.

But New Orleans had magic in the air, on its people, and around each corner.

They had partied with their crew and for the first time, Ryan felt like they were going to be friends forever. He had known these people for years now, but that night, when that they cheered together and promised each other another year of spooks and bad mornings, he just knew. 

Warm beer had never tasted so good.

By the time they made it to their room, they were drowned in laughter, trying to carry each other to their respective beds. They ended laying together on Shane’s, laughing at their inability to stand and walk, drunk out of their minds with Ryan pretended touching Shane wasn’t making him combust on the spot.

He remembered little bisexual Ryan watching his crush play football in high school, how he thought Rod had looked so good under the sun and he would never like anyone else ever. Not the way he had liked Rodrigo that summer when he was fourteen. Time made him braver, steps were given, confessions were made, hearts were broken, and time kept going by.

Now he was looking at Shane, kind and brilliant Shane, who was always smiling and looking out for him. Who was very available now, bathed in neon blue light with his cheeks and nose red, eyes closed before they finally opened and looked at Ryan.

Ryan wished he could take a picture of this. The way Shane was looking at him like there wasn’t anywhere else in the world he wanted to be and no one else in his life he wanted to be with. It made his heart suddenly turn, find a home in his crush that was no longer just a crush.

It couldn’t be. Not when Ryan was sure he would bare himself to this man and reveal his deepest secrets if he wanted, when he would sacrifice everything in exchange for just having Shane’s happiness and he would be grateful. Just like that, he blinked tears away, and he was in love.

His lips parted, but no words were spoken. Shane just looked at him, into his eyes, for what felt like forever, until his eyes started to move around his face as he so often did. Ryan licked his lips and Shane’s eyes were on them immediately.

“I wanna kiss you, angel.”

“Uh, okay.”

“I won’t,” he said. Ryan frowned and felt his heart tense. “We’re drunk, I don’t want to spoil our first kiss like that.”

“Oh.” And just like that, his heart was beating fast. Happy. “I wouldn’t mind…”

“I would. Big time.” He smiled. “It has to be perfect, Ry.” Shane said, putting one hand on Ryan’s cheek. “Like you.”

He wanted to cry, instead he chuckled and watched as Shane fell asleep with his hand on his face. He wasn’t sure when he had succumbed to dreams, but he woke up to Shane gone, from the bed and their room, and the sun burning his eyes like tears.

**

“Here’s a new one.” Ryan said as they drove to the theater. “Ideally speaking…”

“Mhm.” Shane exclaimed, listening.

“How would you like to die?”

“Ugh, getting dark already and we haven’t even eat anything,” the man said, making both of them laugh as he waited for an answer. “I guess asleep, right? We all want that, the less trouble the better.”

“Just asleep?”

“Sure.”

“No old age? Just any time is fine, laid down on the bed and pggghhh– dead.”

“What the fuck was that? Pgggh?” Shane laughed, Ryan smiled as he finally saw the mall building and the slightly small line to enter the parking lot. “Oh man, you already know the answer. Old age is fine, though I’ve been feeling fifty since I was fifteen.”

The car filled with laughs, and they stayed in comfortable silence while Ryan looked around the lot to park. He sighed, reminded himself to be cool, he didn’t need to scare off Shane already on their first non-official date. He wanted to ask him if this movie thing was in fact a date, or if he had dreamed what happened in New Orleans.

But ever since that night, Shane had been especially attentive with him. And Ryan was no liar, he well loved the coffee in the morning, the good night texts, Shane’s jacket around his shoulders when they walked around like a pair of old men in the afternoon. 

Yet, he didn’t have the guts or the will to deal with the answer being no. Ryan reminded silent.

“My turn,” Shane said when Ryan finally parked, he nodded and waited for the question. “What would you like your last words to be?”

“Oh boy.” His eyebrows moved on its own, already thinking of the answer for such a hard question.

“‘Oh boy’?” Shane’s own eyebrows went high, Ryan shook his head and the man laughed. “What? Are you going to be, like, killed by aliens or something?”

“Why aliens? You are watching The X Files again, don’t you?” he frowned, killing the engine as he looked at Shane, whose eyes had closed and become moons as he giggled like a child. “Fuck, I should have never told you about my crush on Mulder.”

“You like spooky boy!” 

“Oh my god, I’m on ninth grade again…”

“I was totally your type in ninth grade, though. A giant nerd.” He answered, the comment made Ryan’s heart beat faster.

“Jesus, that would be like– illegal, you know?” He reminded him. “I was a tiny child, you were a teen and a half!”

“Oh!” Shane seemed to remember. “Holy shit, I’m older!” His hand went to his mouth, he shook his head no and looked at him. “Christ, I’m glad we met as adults. Jesus.”

Ryan smiled at him and sighed before going back to the actual subject they were discussing previous to their latest branch in the conversation. “I think… I don’t know, man. I try not to think of me dying, it gives me… anxiety and stuff.”

“Uh, anxiety and stuff.” Shane repeated. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I think I will have to think about this one for a while and then I’ll get back to you.”

Shane smiled at him. He had unfasted the safety belt but hadn’t made any move to get out of the car. They still had a few minutes to spare, so Ryan said nothing and waited.

“I would like my last words to be something positive,” Shane said, and Ryan nodded, trying not to think of a world were Shane wasn’t there. “‘Keep going.’ Something like that.”

Ryan smiled again, his heart was feeling trapped inside his chest and he didn’t like the sensation. There were walls around him, caging him in the deep, dark and cold sea. If he kept thinking about it, about Shane dying, he would–

“I guess leaving this world on a positive note would be good,” Ryan said, hoping Shane wouldn’t notice the anxiety this small conversation had already given him. “Let’s go, big guy. I want to buy us the biggest popcorn they allow us to.”

Shane chuckled, opening his door and following him into the darkness of the parking lot, the noise of the city and the people walking around in their own private worlds. They walked side by side, the silence a bit forced. Ryan licked his lips, thinking of small conversation before he felt warm fingers on his.

Looking down at his hand, he saw Shane’s own taking it like he did a year ago in Kansas. Back then, he hadn’t interlocked their fingers as he was doing now, and it made Ryan look up at him to find him staring nervously at nothing in particular, front and nowhere else.

Ryan smiled, giving Shane’s hand a gentle squeeze. The silence felt warm even when his friend was too tall to hold hands like normal people do.

Normal was something he didn’t dare to be ever since he left college. It wasn’t what Ryan was, he guessed. And with Shane, he was just real.

**

He wasn’t sure when one date became many. Ryan wasn’t about to question it, though, he sure as hell was more than happy to keep going with Shane everywhere. 

The man took his hand, let him put an arm around his waist or interlock his arm to Shane’s while walking, and it all felt natural, like if they had been destined to be like this since before they met.

When he got that sappy, Ryan knew he needed to kiss Shane soon and call him his boyfriend sooner. Time had been nice to them and it was time for that payoff he had been waiting since New Orleans earlier that year.

**

Little after they started to film season 3 of Supernatural, things changed.

The rain had caught them on their way to Shane’s apartment building after they had found parking on the side. 

After the movies, they had gone to dinner and argued about Shane paying more than Ryan had on the cinema earlier the day. Ryan had lost the argument for the time being, but it didn’t matter if it let him see Shane smile, make him look all smug and charming. 

When they entered the lobby, the desk guy gave them a once over and sighed, making them laugh again before Ryan put on his tiptoes and ruffled Shane’s hair, drops going in all directions and making things worse. But the man smiled at him, sweet and open, looking so young it only made Ryan wish they could have this forever, that he could enjoy this man as he was for the longest time.

He kept thinking of a life like this, in which they got together to the same place after a long day of work. Where they could leave their shoes behind the fridge to dry them and their wet clothes spread around the bathroom to then wear comfy pants and old t-shirts, share a cozy bed that smelled of Shane and his chocolate shampoo.

“I can take the cou–”

“Nope,” Shane told him, pushing him in the direction of his bedroom. 

He also had a spare room. None of them mentioned it either.

Shane’s room was a world of its own. Like the rest of his apartment, it had movie posters here and there, books and toys, collection worthy items of shows and films he loved, and his silent cat Obi in the corner, hidden on his Amazon box where Ryan couldn’t reach him.

“He’ll come along, don’t worry,” Shane told him, patting the space at his side on the bed. “I’m not gonna bite you, Ry.”

“Jesus.” Ryan laughed, feeling his cheeks warmth. Once on the bed, he saw Obi peek out the box to watch them settle under the sheets together. “He’s watching us…”

“He’ll come later and sleep over my head. Maybe yours!”

“Uh…” Ryan blinked, hoping the shot he got for his allergies last week worked as it should. “Let’s hope you don’t have to drive me to the hospital in the middle of the night.”

“I can take him out, it’s no problem,” Shane assured him, frowning at the thought of Ryan’s allergies reacting bad around him. 

Ryan smiled at him. “It’s okay,” he said. “First, I got that damn shot and it better work because it actually hurt like a motherfucker. Two, it’s been years since I last reacted badly to being exposed to cat hair, so I don’t think it will be bad. If so, just a few sneezes. I can take those sneezes.”

“Are you sure?” Shane asked, still very serious, and so very close to Ryan’s face.

“Yeah. This is his house, I’m the visitor,” he answered, giving the same thought he always has regarding his dogs. Shane smiled at him this time, taking his chin with his fingers. 

“Shane?”

“You’ll be a good stepfather,” he murmured, Ryan swallowed visibly but only nodded. Shane’s fingers moved, his palm now over Ryan’s cheek and he leaned into it, sharing a smile with Shane. “I got it now.”

“What?”

“‘Keep rolling.’” he said. Ryan frowned and moved his head a little, trying to understand what the man was talking about. “What I would like my last words to be.”

“Oh.”

“No, hear me out.” He laid down, making Ryan lay at his side. His hand was still on his face, fingers caressing his cheek lovingly. 

Ryan didn’t had the heart to tell him he didn’t like this conversation, that he had forgotten all about it in the months they had been getting this close and wasn’t looking forward to being anxious on Shane’s bed when it was his first time here. But Shane looked happy as they were, smiling at Ryan as he caressed his cheek gently.

“I either become the next David Fincher,” Ryan laughed at that, knowing exactly where this was going. “Or die by a demon’s paw on location, and you better keep rolling.”

“God, don’t say that!” Ryan begged, feeling his throat close like that time months ago when they had first gone out and talked about this. “I would never let you die on location. Or ever.”

“You are not gonna let me die?” Shane smiled, his thumb caressed Ryan’s skin with care. It made Ryan sigh. “Do you plan on keeping me forever, Bergara?”

If there was a double meaning to this, Ryan took it, nodding without finding his voice to say something else. Maybe something romantic, confess his feelings and how he had them for so long. Instead, Shane’s forehead leaned on his and they shared the same air, his warm breath making Ryan want to close his eyes and lean into those lips.

“I’ll stick with you, you know,” Shane said. Ryan nodded again and this time, he closed the distance between them.

Shane wanted a perfect kiss, he had told him that in New Orleans months ago. If the two of them smelling of rain and Shane’s aftershave, nested on his sheets as his cat purred somewhere on the pillows over their heads wasn’t the perfection he was looking for, then Ryan was willing to spend the rest of his life searching for it as long as it let him kiss those lips.

He softly moved against Shane’s mouth as the man moaned between them, parting his lips to deepen the kiss. Both his hands were now on Ryan’s face, cradling it gently as they kissed ever so slowly, almost scared of somehow ruining the other, like the other was a precious crystal to be kept untouched.

But they were free to touch each other, and Ryan’s hands were reminded of this as he sank his fingers into Shane’s hair while his other hand traveled down his back, and up again, until it went to his waist and held him there to never let him go.

Their lips made a wet sound when they went apart, Ryan’s eyes still closed, unable to come back to a reality where he wasn’t tasting Shane’s mouth. The man’s soft laugh made him finally open his eyes and find him staring back at Ryan with that spark in his eyes, the same one he had seen so many times before, that many people were noticing in their videos and their Instagram posts.

“I guess that’s a yes?” Shane murmured, Ryan chuckled and rolled his eyes, pecking his lips one, two and three times before kissing him long again, more passionate this time. “Such a good kisser, I knew you were gonna rock my boat.”

“Oh, I’m rocking it. I’m rocking it alright. All night if I can.”

Shane’s smile widened, his face getting pink. “Keep rolling, angel.”

**

If Ryan was dreaming, he better never woke up. 

The morning after he spent the night at Shane’s, he woke up before the man. He watched him sleep for a few seconds, having to get out bed when Obi kept looking at him as if judging him for being a creep. Ryan gave it to the cat, he was maybe being weird, but Shane looked so peaceful and content, it was hard to look away.

He used the bathroom, dressed up in Shane’s button down from last night and his own boxers, and left the room for the kitchen, Obi right behind him, meowing his gratefulness as he ran to the little home office where Ryan knew his scratcher was.

Obi scratched at his toy, the sound filling the apartment in the early morning of the best weekend of Ryan’s life, and he decided right then that he could get used to this and be happy forever.

What had started so long ago felt like it was coming to a friendly end, a thing that initiated something else. Ryan supposed his grandma was right, and every ending, happy or sad, is just a new beginning and this one had left him with purple and reddish marks on his neck, hand prints on his hips, beard burns where only he could see and feel, and a happy smile on his face.

He sighed, very much aware of how he knew Shane’s kitchen as if it were his own, how Shane liked his coffee and what kind of breakfast he liked to have. 

Today was going to be a great morning, no matter what.

**

Ryan never thought people would pick up on his closeness with Shane by such small things like saying– okay, yeah. Maybe that wasn’t so common, right? To know what your friend wanted his last words to be? He blinked a couple of times, scrolling down the comments section of their first ever Q & A video for their Unsolved episodes.

This had been one of Shane’s strokes of genius, a small video answering questions and comments for each video they got out on Friday. It wasn’t strange at all that management had liked the idea and greenlight it for them to film every Monday to go online on Wednesday.

Looking at the comments, wondering what people would say of their newest addition, Ryan never thought he would encounter praise for their friendship, “they really are that close”, and well. He arched an eyebrow. He would expect so, seeing this was the man he was sleeping with now.

“Stop doing that to yourself,” he heard at his side, Ryan turned to see Shane still driving, looking in front instead of him. “I see you, stop torturing yourself with the comments sections. That’s a strange place and you know it.”

“I just wanted to know what they thought of the Post Mortem thing.”

“You can tell the intern to have a look at that.” He smiled, looking at Ryan for a few seconds before turning his eyes to the road again. 

Ryan sighed, leaning his head on the window as he watched Shane drive, an unusual image that felt like some sort of dream to him. One that came true, he noted. His reality couldn’t be happier now, even if they weren’t ready to put it everywhere on social media yet.

“They say we’re really close.”

“Well, seeing we have dick appointments with each other, I would hope so.”

He chuckled, their laughs echoing in the car before they sank into comfortable silence. 

That day had been actually good. They had gotten the green light on their idea to go to England, have some episodes of Unsolved over there, and enjoy vacations after. It meant not only another step on their growing show, but a step in their relationship.

Vacations with Shane to another country, now that they were together… boy, maybe the fact that they were such good friends before getting into each other’s skin the way they had done was a good thing. It took off some of the initial doubts and awkwardness, let him dive into domesticity and couple life as soon as possible.

“We are really close,” Shane said while they waited on a red light. Ryan looked at him. The man smiled when he looked back. “I don’t think anyone knows me like you do.”

“Oh, come on…” he said with a huge grin, face feeling warm. “I already suck your cock, no need to say those things.”

Shane chuckled and shook his head. “You little shit, I mean it!”

Ryan laughed, leaving his phone aside and looking as Shane’s face turned bright, his happy expression ever so beautiful on him, and it made Ryan feel proud to know he had put that face on him. He sighed as Shane drove again, closer to his apartment now.

“Ry?” he called him. Ryan looked back and waited. “When was the last time you were in your apartment?”

His face felt warmer. If he hadn’t blushed before, he sure was now.

“I, I can take a Lyft–”

“No, no.” Shane looked at him for a couple of seconds, then back to the road. “In fact, you don’t have to go back anymore if you don’t want to.” He said, Ryan’s eyes opened wide. “You know?”

“Shane…”

“I’m saying, come live with me. Us.” He said, smiling at him when they stopped on another red light. “I’m sure Obi would love to have you there officially.”

Ryan blinked a couple of times, heart pounding in his chest as he thought of his initial question. When was the last time he was in his own apartment? He couldn’t even remember. And he didn’t have to.

Looking up at Shane, Ryan nodded with a big smile.

“I would love to, big guy.”

“Great!”

The light turned green, and they kept going, closer to home.

**

“I’m just saying, people know I love you,” Shane said and Ryan looked at him immediately, eyes wide open. But the man kept scrolling down his Twitter feed, distracted. “I don’t think it would be a bad idea for us to just… Get out there and say it.”

“Shane,”

“I guess neither of us are out of the closet online, but it’s not like if we have been hiding all this time. Have we?” He finally put the phone down, looking at Ryan with a frown.

He blinked a couple of times, watching Shane act like if he hadn’t just drop a bomb on them with such simple words. It wasn’t even the ‘coming out online’ shit that was about to give him a headache, but the copious amount of times Ryan was to overthink Shane confirming he loved him that had left him mute.

Shane arched an eyebrow, looking behind him, then back at Ryan who was still pretty much in shock. He left his phone of the coffee table and cradle Ryan’s face as he often did.

“Ry?”

“You, you said–”

The man blinked, unaware of what was going on. He seemed to be thinking about it, probably going through their previous conversation to understand why Ryan was so still, so into his head to even talk.

Shane’s eyes widened and he looked about ready to panic for just a few seconds, but it was all replaced with a huge grin and that shine in his eyes that melted Ryan in the spot.

“People do know I love you.”

Ryan’s face felt warm, he wondered what color he was blushing. Shane kept smiling at him, caressing his cheeks before kissing him softly, the cat purring somewhere on Ryan’s back, probably rolling his eyes at them being like this once again in his presence, right in front of his whiskas. 

He wanted to yell at himself, so easily distracted from the moment with every thought that passed his head, every sound outside their bubble. Ryan was nervous, Shane chuckled against his lips after he barely responded, probably aware he was just… so anxious for nothing.

“Do you know I love you?” Shane asked, his voice sounding so soft, it made Ryan swallow.

“I… I don’t know…  I do now?”

Shane chuckled again, this time getting closer to Ryan’s face to kiss his forehead. Shane hugged him, letting Ryan lean his head on his shoulder. The vibrations of his laugh made him look up, clearing his throat before cradling Shane’s face. 

The man smiled at him.

“I love you,” Ryan murmured. “I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

“Mmm.” The man smiled. “I know.”

Ryan laughed, he could easily slap Shane for Han Solo-ing him, but there was just– his eyes and the way he was kissing him, how far they had come. Ryan kissed him softly, deepening the kiss as soon as he could, pushing the man to lay into the couch with him on top.

“Scoundrel.” 

Shane smiled, pecking his lips once before finally, finally saying: “I love you too, sweetheart.”

**

If you asked Ryan, things started in the Sallie House.

That night, his attraction to Shane made itself notice in the way Ryan’s heart kept beating fast as the man held his hand between them, laying on the floor as he tried to sleep again. He had taken the footage from the final cut of the video, never spoke about it with the man until years later, when they were more than friends and had started to live together.

Watching it now, how young they were and how much was ahead, it made him smile.

“We were so fucking obvious, holy shit.” Shane murmured at his side, looking through cut footage from many episodes of their show. “You think people will be like ‘we been knew’ when they see this?”

“I think half of the internet already has, Shane.” He conceded. It had been a hilarious couple of years with fans and homophobes alike saying the weirdest, sometimes amazing things on their every platform. “But I think it’s time, don’t you?”

“Ryan, why did you never tell me that you can see my hard on during Goatman’s Bridge?” Shane asked instead, serious with a shine in his eyes that made Ryan’s whole body shiver. “This is the kind of cut shit you should show me more often, angel.”

“You are into such weird shit…” Including him, Ryan wanted to add. Ryan bit his bottom lip, waiting for Shane to answer.

When it didn’t come, he looked up from the tiny video they were doing to “officially” announce their relationship. Shane wasn’t on his side of the bed, and when Ryan looked around to find him, the man had taken away his laptop and tugged at his heels to get him under his body.

“What are you doing, you weirdo?” Ryan asked between laughs, Shane winked at him.

“You know what else is mine aside from that bridge?”

“Oh my God. No, no, get out! We have work to do!”

“You.” He smirked. “You are mine, baby. Until death do us apart. And maaaaybe beyond, right? If your faith can guide us there.”

He felt his cheeks blush, Shane’s smile was too sweet for someone who was about to bone his boyfriend a second time that day. Ryan rolled his eyes, smiling at him when Shane brushed his crotch with his, already getting hard in his pants. 

“You are so fucking corny.” 

“Horny, baby. Horny.”

If you asked Ryan, this was the start of the golden years of their lives together.

***

**

*

[ddaengyoonmin]

Chapter one

Pairing: Jungkook x reader, eventual Ot7 x reader in later chapters

Genre: Angst, fluff, uhh maybe smut eventually??

Theme: Based kinda on sword art online a lot of similar ideas and themes kinda combining the idea of them trapped in the game, but the world is closer to ALFheim online

Word count: 2.1k+

Warnings: Swearing?..I swear a lot it can’t be contained. Giant Bees?? Not too much to warn about for this chapter but future chapters might get crazy

*check my master list for the prologue, I suggest reading it first*

Next -> Chapter 2

-------------------------------------------------------

A bright light shone in from a missing blind.  One of your bothersome, but too cute to be mad at cats must’ve broken it, you made a mental note to fix that later. It woke you up earlier than usual for a Friday, probably not a bad thing, you had a big day ahead of you.  Working from home had its advantages such as being able to create your own schedule.

You had set the day aside to mentally prepare for and then try out your dreaded birthday gift you had received just the day before.

The clock read 8:00 am. You sighed as you pulled yourself out of bed, startling the young calico cat who had been sleeping on your stomach throughout the night. “Sorry velvet” you mumble sleepily.  Though she should be used to the rude awakenings by now, given that you on the other hand had not gotten used to having a cuddly cat and always seemed to accidentally throw her off your lap in the mornings.   Your other cat Tiger always kept to herself and usually slept on the top of her cat tree or on a top shelf in one of your closets.

Last year when you bought your new apartment you had marveled at the spaciousness of the classy two bedroom layout.  You debated on turning that second bedroom into a room for Tiger to have all to herself, but decided that would only feed into your family’s idea you were becoming a crazy cat lady hermit. Instead it became your office, and today it was the room you decided you would try out the full dive gaming experience headset in.  You had a comfortable black leather office chair that you usually spent most of your days in while you worked on your designs.  You figured that would be fine to recline in while you went into the game.

After getting yourself a filling breakfast you fed Velvet and Tiger a little extra, not knowing how long you’d be in the game.  Part of you hoped that your mom would be satisfied if you just tried it for 30 minutes or so, then you could get back to the practical reality you preferred to live in. But you still wanted to be prepared in case the impossible happened and you actually enjoyed yourself.

You picked up the sleek looking packaging that held the headset and the game you had been given. You let out a sigh and looked over to your pets, “lets give this a shot huh?” you said, looking at them as if they could understand you.

When you arrived to your office you plopped down into your comfy chair and finally opened the packaging.  The headset was shiny and heavy, looking similar to a motorcycle helmet.  In the back by the base of the neck there was a long wire the same shade of silver as the rest of the headset.  You pulled out the instructions from the box and skimmed it over.  

“Internal battery, internal memory to store data, in game items, and achievements”

“Pre-programmed with Faerie Realm installed, no updates or installation required”

“To enter the game is simple, put on the headset and click the large button on the side of the headset and say the command ‘LINK START’”

You felt skeptical of this whole thing, but you reasoned that they wouldn’t sell it to the public if it was unsafe.

With one last see ya later to Tiger and Velvet you plugged in the headset and carefully placed it over your head.  It was a snug fit and there were straps to secure it underneath your chin.

A small wave of nervousness ran over you, you took a few deep breaths and put your pointer finger to the side of the headset and held the button. Loud and enunciated so as not to mess this up somehow, you said the command…

“LINK START”

Almost instantly, like falling asleep suddenly, everything went dark.  It only lasted a few seconds until you were standing in a bright, white, empty room with no doors or windows.  You looked to your left and right in a slight panic, you felt like you could hear some music start to play.

Then, catching you off guard a giant holographic screen projected onto the wall in front of you.

“Welcome new player!” A chipper voice rang out from the direction of the screen “It’s time to chose your fairy race, and dive into the world of Faerie Realm! Point your hand straight out fingers spread out to the screen and swipe to the right to scroll through the choices, make a fist for 10 seconds at the screen on the page of the Fairy race you choose and you will move on to the next step!”

On the screen an example character popped and you giggled at it.  It was an image of you, but not totally you.  Your hair was longer than in real life and it was dyed a turquoise shade of blue, you were wearing a tight royal blue and white dress that was much shorter than anything you’d ever worn before.

 You had to admit from a designers point of view, that it was pretty interesting how they’d managed to do that.  The thing that really caught your eye was that coming from behind your back was a pair of beautiful shimmering turquoise wings matching the hair, they were slightly transparent and had a light blue glow coming off of them. The title under this character “Water Fairy”

You scrolled over the other choices shortly, five options of fairy races each with different styles, perks and nerdy sounding stats you didn’t even bother to read. You were mostly focused on the look, and none stood out as much as the first you had seen and you settle on the Water Fairy, holding out a fist to the screen as it instructed.  

The next step you were prompted to complete was to choose a username.  You decide on “Velvet Tiger” in honor of your bestfriends at home. Once you held out your fist again to declare that you were sure of your name, the room turned dark again.  Next you felt like you were falling, falling falling, and the perky voice echoed around you “Have fun in Faerie Realm!!”

With a loud thud you felt yourself hit grass, strangely you felt no sort of pain from your fall, odd.

You picked yourself up from the ground and brushed the dirt off of what you now realized was the same blue dress from the screen.  You pull your now extremely long hair in front of your face to see it was indeed also the hair you had seen on yourself in the preview.  “Color me impressed” You chuckled aloud.

You started to look around to get a bearing on your surroundings.  “Umm...what exactly am I supposed to do?” You spoke aloud again, not sure if you were hoping someone would answer or that some sort of screen would pop up at your question.  But nothing happened.  

You were alone in the middle of the most perfect flowering field you’d ever seen in your life, it was beautiful, cream colored daisies scattered all around you.  It was sunny and bright and the temperature was perfect. You could feel a light breeze press on your cheek, you brought your hand up to your face.  “Woah…” you muttered.  It was crazy to think none of this was real.  

A noise suddenly snapped you out of your state of awe.  You cocked your head to the side slightly.  It was a humming noise getting louder and louder by the second.  

To your surprise and horror the objects in question made themselves visible.  “What the fuck!!!” You scream, and immediately start to book it in the opposite direction.

BEES? But not just regular bees, a swarm of GIANT bees about the size of your cats were headed straight towards you.  You found yourself screaming out a series of fucks and holy shits as you tried to outrun the swarm, they were catching up faster than you could run.  ‘Thanks mom, this is real fun’, you thought.  

You were about to get to a treeline that was up ahead when you tripped and fell flat on your face, you winced, not because it hurt, (you realized this game must not let you feel pain, which is nice), but because you were just embracing the fact that giant bees were about to be your ‘game over’ only 5 minutes into the game.

A loud POW sounded out right behind you and you covered your ears and buried your head into the ground.  A crackling noise like fireworks followed. And then...a beautiful sound.

“You okay miss?” A silvery voice spoke from above you.

You uncovered your ears and lifted your head up from your embarrassing position you had assumed when you thought your demise in this game was upon you.

What you saw when your eyes met the figure standing over you took your breath away.  You had to try and keep a straight face and contain your awe so as not to further embarrass yourself.  

The man standing over you looked like an angel covered in black.  He had on a tight fitting black shirt with a gray jacket that was styled fitting to the theme of this game draped over top, and tight black skinny jeans to go with.  From behind his back you could see a pair of shimmering translucent wings similar in design to yours but the color was a charcoal black.  

He extended a strong looking hand towards you, but you were still frozen in a combination of awe and embarrassment.  He retracted his hand, chuckled, and ran his fingers through his pitch black hair. You scurried to get up on your own  snapping out of your daze and standing eye to eye with the man you asume must’ve just saved your ass from the killer bees.

“Um, thank you” You nervously mumbled his way.  His eyes were kind as he met your gaze with a smile.  You had to force yourself to keep your eyes on his as they seemed compelled to trail over all of his body.  “You’re welcome” His smile grew bigger than it previously was.  “You’re lucky I got here when I did! They were gearing up for some power stings that definitely would’ve sent you to a black screen at your level”

“At….my level?” You said with confusion.  “Yeah, I can see your level right there” he pointed just to the left of your face.  You for the first time notice a small screen was there that had your username, level, health and an option for ‘menu’ listed.  “Oh..” you managed an awkward smile.  You realized you could see his too, ‘Kookie, level 10, full health’ listed on the screen hovering next to him.  

“I’ve been here since 12am when it opened” he said sheepishly running his hand through his hair again.  “Games are kinda my thing and when I heard this was coming out I wanted to get ahead right away...did you just get here or something?” He questioned.

“Yeah, literally just a few minutes ago” you laughed “That was about to be a real short run��� you winced at the not too distant memory. “I...uh..games aren’t really my thing”

He smirked at your comment “You don’t say?” he teased.  You stuck your tongue out at him, then immediately felt embarrassed.  Not totally sure what came over you to do that to a total stranger, but hey, it is just a game and he started it right? So you shook off the awkward feeling and decided to just go with it.  He laughed a full belly laugh at your action and shook his head “Ok, I like your style ma’m, so I’m gonna take pity on your and show you the ropes here” He spoke cockily.

“Oh? And what makes you think I need your help?” You tried to come back with, only eliciting further laughter from him. “You’re right,” he put his hands up in fake defeat “those bees were completely defenseless to your ‘duck and cover in the middle of a field’ fighting methods”

You pouted slightly at the mention of that embarrassing part of the incident that had just occurred you are hoping to just pretend didn’t happen.

“Fiiine” you sighed “I really don’t know what I’m doing here, but don't take me for some damsel in distress that's going to worship you as her hero now or anything like that”  His eyebrows raised high taken aback by your bluntness.  “Of course. I have no doubt you take care of yourself well in the real world, on first impressions you seem to be a strong, independent woman…I admire that in a lady” he assured in an honest and serious tone, but then He stopped and took a few steps closer to you standing so close it sent a shiver up your spine.  

He leaned in to your ear, tone changing from his previous statement into a more smooth and sultry whisper  “But this isn’t the real world...you’ve stepped into my world now.” He pulled away, a smirk on his face.

Your eyes widened.  What have you gotten yourself into…

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[xavantina]

I got my hands on a copy of the new Euroman for @idontfindyouthatinteresting, and I took the opportunity to translate some of the interview as well. I tried scanning the article, but my scanner is broken, so you’ll have to make due with iPhone pics of the photos until someone with a working scanner gets in the game.

Rest of the photos and the interview under the cut.

The interview itself was a monster of a thing with lots and lots of flowery descriptions of random scenery, so I cut it down to just the questions, though a few highlights of the rest include:

When he was knighted the Queen of Denmark told him she liked Flame and Citron and he was like ‘fuck yeah’.

He rolls up with his classic bedroom eyes, mismatched tracksuit, and worn sneakers, and just needs a smoke before they go in.

The reporter thinks it’s pointless for a hairdresser to style Mads’ hair because it’s amazing already.

Mads goes around introducing himself to everyone in the room with “Hi. My name is Mads.”

He speaks very fast in Danish.

Onward with the questions:

Q. You were an unknown dancer for ten years before you became an actor. In terms of staying grounded, has it been an advantage for you that you had your breakthrough at such a mature age?

A. Yes, I think so. I probably wouldn’t have had problems staying grounded even if I had been 20 years old. But I think it’s harder for a 17-year-old today, where you can have your breakthrough on a whole different platform and gain three million followers, or whatever the hell they have. It’s obvious that if everyone thinks you’re cool, and you’re told so a bit too often, then you start thinking ‘yeah, I am. I’m cool’. It’s easier to handle being recognized in the street when you’re 32, than when you’re 17. I think.

 Q. Your James Bond co-star Jesper Christensen has said that he can no longer enter a public space and just sit there observing, because everyone is always staring at him. He can no longer gain inspiration for his work from real life– from ‘ordinary people’ – like he used to. Do you feel the same way?

A. It’s a terrible loss. It’s not that I’ve always been preparing to be an actor, but I’ve always been curious. Even as a child, I would sit in different places and watch what was happening over there, human behavior, the way they looked and the way they walked. Always. And too often I started copying people when I saw them. I would sit just like them for a while, just to try how it felt. That’s over now. Whenever I’m out somewhere, 50 people are sitting around staring at me. Then I have to worry about scratching my nose, and there’s 40 camera phones in my face. Then I have to go to a different country.

Q. Don’t you get recognised abroad?

A. They know me around the world to various degrees. There are definitely many places where they don’t care at all, but James Bond, Star Wars, and Marvel movies, all of which I’ve starred in, have a great reach. The happy result of this is that people become curious about me as an actor, so I’m often stopped abroad because people know me from The Green Butchers or The Hunt. That’s super cool.

Q. Is it important for you to get recognition in the business? And do you?

A. A foreign colleague whom I have great respect for told me that he and three friends would sit down and watch the Pusher trilogy every weekend. That made me happy. Recognition from colleagues is important. Recognition from yourself is just much more important. You can get into a cycle where you go around constantly patting each other on the back because you need it so badly in my line of work. We’re judged all the time. It’s really hard, and so we probably have a tendency to praise each other more than we should. You should be happy when other people think what you’re doing is great, but you need to remember to consider what you think about it personally. ‘Was this what I wanted? Yes, okay, fine. Next time I might go in this direction instead.’ That’s important. And it’s the same if what people are saying about you sucks. There are many opinions out there. And if you start reading on social media you’ll never get to bed. You should stay away from that.

Q. Where do you find material and inspiration when you can’t go people-watching anymore? Do you have a memory bank you draw from?

A. Probably. I can also sit and watch people on screen, television and so on. But inspiration should primarily come from the script and the director. But I really miss sitting around and watching other people, and I certainly miss them not staring at me. I don’t try to hide though, I never wear a cap or anything. Sunglasses annoy the hell out of me, so I don’t use those at all. Luckily I‘m forgetful: I walk outside in the morning and don’t spend a second wondering how it’s going to be when I arrive somewhere – whether I’ll be recognized, I mean. That’s not just something I’m saying. I get in my car and drive somewhere and enter wherever I’m going, and don’t think about it at all. It’s not until people do this (Mads widens his eyes and turns his head) and do a double check that I’m reminded what it’s like. And that’s good, because otherwise I’d never leave the house.

Q. But you haven’t always been famous – in Hollywood you were a total unknown in the beginning. As the unknown from a small country did you have to work to earn the respect from people around you when you did your first foreign films?

A. I never consciously considered that I had to do something to make them listen to me. If I thought something could be done differently, I haven’t been afraid of going up to people and telling them. Obviously it’s not like it is in Denmark where I can just call Thomas Vinterberg up and say ‘hey, I just had an idea, won’t you come over?’ A Hollywood director on a big movie has maybe 30 actors on his list and everybody wants something from him, so the scale is different. But I still speak up, if there’s something wrong, and only if I’m serious about it. If I’m not serious about it, we just start working on whatever we’re doing.

Q. Are you treated differently on set now that you’re a bigger star?

A. Yes. I was very surprised with first time I was part of a large foreign production. We were on set, and I approached someone from the light-crew to ask about something. Then he looked down at the ground and didn’t answer. Turns out there had been this big name actor, whose name I can’t be bothered to mention, who had just done a movie with this crew, and the crew was under strict orders to never look this actor in the eyes. So there I was, a product of all this. Those were the kind of things I had to get used to. Luckily I found out that if I just focused on my work in the same way I usually did my surroundings would relax pretty quickly. They care more about things abroad than they do in Denmark. I’ve had some pretty weird experiences on foreign jobs. For example, I’m often assigned a so-called handler. Someone who meets me at the airport and helps with checking in and stuff like that. Which is fine, if you’re in Beijing and your have no idea where you’re going. But on foreign gigs I’ve also tried being a assigned a handler at Copenhagen Airport, who is supposed to follow me and help me. That’s pretty absurd, since I’ve checked in 2000 times before in Copenhagen and know how to do it. A handler is always dressed really nicely too, so everybody at the airport ends up staring at me even more. That’s a weird service.

Q. How about the treatment you receive from the other stars, or the business as a whole? How do you experience the hierarchy in Hollywood?

A. When I worked with Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange and with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale it was their first big films as well, so the hierarchy wasn’t crazy. I’ve been spared from meeting someone abroad who was a real hot shot or just tired of doing what they were doing. There are plenty of people with attitude, plenty of large personalities, but I’ve met very few proper divas who are impossible to work with. The few I have met have been here at home. It’s actually a myth, that this is a diva business. If you did an inquiry and compared us to bus drivers or doctors for example, I think actors would rate much lower than them on the diva-scale. We’re very conscious about not behaving like divas, so everyone tries to act natural. Nobody wants to be branded like that. And when one finally comes along, which obviously happens, then it’s so exciting, and it sounds like the whole business is infected with them. But holy shit, man, how many little kings in their little kingdoms have you met driving the 8 Line?

 Q. Your generation, which had its breakthrough 20-25 years ago, has taken up a lot of space back here at home and internationally. You’ve become…

A. You can say ‘old’. We’ve gotten bloody old.

Q. Has it only now become clear how much space you take up?

A. No. I think it was obvious from the beginning. We were a generation that grew up with a big fascination for certain foreign films. Many of us had Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola in common. There weren’t’ many Danish films we could relate to. [here follows a whole bit about Danish movie history that no one outside Denmark will care about, so I’m skipping it] We felt like we were living in the 50’s. We were watching foreign movies like ‘Taxi Driver’ and saying to each other ‘is this from 1975?’ What have we done in Denmark this year? It was crazy. Completely crazy. Obviously something had to be done. And it was. We grew in different directions but suddenly the gap wasn’t so wide… I mean, we were no longer being told what it was like to be a teenager by an 88 year old director. We were the same age and we communicated directly. Just like Scorsese and De Niro in the 70’s. Same age, let’s go, rock’n’roll. Obviously it’s hard for the next generation, who comes after us, to just change things as well. Because we did the right thing. So now they either have to copy that approach, or improve it, or come up with something completely new. It was easier for us, if I’m being honest. We said ‘Hey, have you seen this before?’ and people went ‘No, we haven’t. Cool!’ But we had to do it. And we were allowed to do it, first and foremost. Some things went wrong, some things went right. But it was really important.

 Q. You and your brother both seem like you’re very down to earth. Is that a result of growing up on Nørrebro?

A. Yes, I guess. No… Where the fuck did Pilou (Asbæk) grow up? He has some higher ‘a’s than I do, when he taaaaalks. But he’s damn well down to earth too. So I think it’s a Danish thing. If you try to rise a bit above other people, it won’t be very long until you’re pulled back down.

Q. Have you tried it?

A. No. As a Danish person it’s very hard to demand only to be served the yellow M&Ms without people laughing at you.

Q. Can’t it be limiting, that we’re like that? That everything has to be so down to earth.

Pause.

A. It’s funny, because we’re different than the Swedish. They have a whole different way of engaging with their stars. The Swedish are down to earth too. But when Swedish actors sit down to talk like this, like I’m doing now, and a journalist enters the room, that they start (Mads straightens and adopt a somber tone) speaking like this. And the things they say become great philosophy. They also start to move (he waves his arm theatrically) like they were on stage at the Royal Theatre. When I see that I think ‘what the fuck just happened?’. The Swedish write with great reverence about their stars as well. They have a huge amount of respect for what they give us. Swedish stars have a whole different status in society than we do in Denmark. They like putting things up on a pedestal, and they’re allowed to do that in a totally different way then we are. You can’t do that here. And thank God for that. But you can also say, that in Denmark you don’t always respect people for what they can do. Sometimes people will go ‘Fuck man, I can do what Caroline Wozniacki does. She’s the worst I’ve ever seen.’ Okay? I mean, it’s nice that we’re down to earth in Denmark. But it’s grotesque to say that ‘What Wozniacki does, I can do just as well.’

 So that’s how I spent the last five hours of my life...

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Interview Analysis

alright i’ve been sitting on this for FAR too long. let’s get s t a r t e d

Danny Homan: Yeah, so uh. The Calypso Twins have managed to create a cult called the Children of the Vault and in doing so they’ve kind of done something that people thought was impossible on Pandora. They unified the Bandit clans, y’know, You saw in Borderlands 2 the bandit clans were just a disparate group of maniacs who were mostly just killing each other if they weren’t being killed by you or by Hyperion. But the Calypso Twins have done the impossible and they’ve unified the bandits in pursuit of the Vault and they’ve kind of organized them and made them kind of like follow their every beck and call. It’s kind of a strange phenomenon that we’ve never really seen in the Borderlands universe and, uh, as you maybe saw with the video there’s a lot of new fun to be had with a cult of bandits. They don’t always kind of obey, right?

Tell us something we don’t know, right? Mostly just wanna talk about “they’ve unified the bandits in pursuit of the Vault”. Despite the fact we know there’s more than 1 Vault in bl3, he says ‘The’ Vault. I have talked about this before, but I’ll go over it quickly here. I think the Twins have knowledge about a Vault they really want- something called the “Great Vault”. I think it’s the red Vault we see in their stained glass portraits, the Vault we see on their black and white mural. I think they’ve basically formed a religion, not just around themselves, but this Vault as well. Probably by promising these bandits that the Vault will bring them back towards a more stable existence with a supply of food/money/guns. I imagine Tyreen has some bullshit excuse for not bringing them directly to the big boy, probably like ‘we need to harness the power of the other Vaults first before we can face that one’.

I personally thought that maybe the cult was formed after the twins had already opened the red Vault, but that wouldn’t make sense of them leading the cultists to it. Unless the Great Vault is not the red Vault we see in their art. Also possible... 

Moving on

Danny Homan: I mean, Handsome Jack is amazing, y’know, what can you say? And I think the answer is that you don’t try to mimic something that got past success, you try to create something different and new and just as a writer, the Calypso Twins are a hell of a lot of fun. I mean, you have this sibling dynamic, which I don’t know if you have any brothers or sisters but like for those of us that do, you understand that kind of crazy close relationship that’s like, quasi-competitive, quasi-cooperative and, throughout the course of the game they just, their relationship and how it kind of changes and warps is I think just really exciting and really entertaining.

So, one of the main reasons I think Ty and Troy are gonna end up trying to kill each other. Besides the fact they’re also villains. 

Idk, even in some of the trailer shots Troy doesn’t seem happy around Tyreen. (He might just have resting bitch anxiety face tho lmao.) Despite that, you can see that when they shake forearms when Lily lost her powers, Troy pulls away from her grip pretty roughly. And I know we all want them to have a strong sibling dynamic, especially with how the Hammerlock sibs are, but bottom line is that these guys are the villains. They’re competing against Handsome Jack in the eyes of the players- the guy who killed Bloodwing and Roland and made Tiny Tina cry. They’re gonna have to do some pretty despicable things, and betraying someone who trusted you like a sibling does would definitely do it for me. No forgiveness there.

I do think it’s interesting that he mentions competitiveness and being cooperative. From what we know rn I can see the whole cooperative thing being that Troy is the brains behind the whole operation while Tyreen is the muscle. Tyreen keeps Troy alive and Troy helps her run the cult. I have no idea what the competitiveness is but I’m really hoping it’s going to relate to being streamers with views and shit. “Hey, Ty, 13 bandits sacrificed themselves for me in the past hour alone.” [Ty looks up, covered in blood] “Oh, that’s cute. I’m at 48, nerd, get on my level.” “You killing them doesn’t count.” “... Nobody will know the difference, shut up.”

Danny Homan: Yeah, I mean. Again, you know it kind of all goes back to the fact that they don’t quite look like bandits, there’s something kind of strange going on there. I don’t want to spoil too much of it but no, when you head to Pandora there’s...the greatest underused resources are the bandits themselves, right? They’re an army that were prisoners that were left by the corporations, they’ve kind of become the worst versions of themselves, and the Calypso Twins are smart, they’re savvy, right? They saw this opportunity to maybe galvanize the bandits into a cult and create an army of their own, and the Livescreams, and Let’s Flays, and these kinds of things; they’re a way of amping up their followers and kind of creating this cult machine that kind of attracts more and more followers. It increases their strength.

holy shit okay there’s a lot here and y’all know what I’m about to say: “Holy fuck I hope this is hinting they’re related to Atlas somehow”

okay now that we’ve gotten that out of the way:

“They don’t quite look like bandits” With their coats and Troy’s super high-tech implants, yeah, they certainly look like corporate assholes sent to ‘masquerade’ as bandit leaders. I could see them ending up being Maliwan and/or getting ganked by Maliwan halfway through then Katagawa ends up being the big ol baddie, especially with his VA’s tweet. (But I’m still not letting the Atlas thing die. Not yet :3c)

They could also simply be from a richer family name, I guess? We know Typhon got a shitload of money from Atlas to give them the Vault key/Vault location, so it's possible they’re doing all this to continue/rekindle the family tradition of Vault hunting and then decided to be super efficient about it.

Related to that is the line “When you head to Pandora” which makes me think the Calypsos are off-worlders who came to Pandora specifically because they knew they’d be able to start their cult there. A planet where there have been 2 Vaults already opened? You’re saying there’s a Vault Key already on world? All the people there are crazed after their corporations left them to die? AND they were worshipping the Firehawk/Sirens for a while? This sounds like the perfect place!

Danny Homan: Sure. I mean, part of it is in the name, the Children of the Vault right? There’s this belief that the Vaults are inherently theirs. They own the Vaults, maybe that it’s their birthright for example. A lot of it really goes back to the fact that the bandits were mistreated, they were left by Dahl Corporation, and they’ve kind of been left ot their own devices on Pandora just to survive the best they can and so the Calypso Twins come along and they recognize that thing: people need a purpose, even if it’s a terrible, maniacal, murder-soaked purpose, people need something to believe in and they need people to believe in them and that’s kind of what the Calypsos have provided. They’ve kind of gone “oh bandits, everyone calls you animals, everyone calls you trash... but we see there’s something, there’s something in you, there’s something we can elevate your murder to. Murder in our name.”

hoooo this is a doozy

So the idea that the cultists are the true owners of the Vaults. I mean, it makes sense. The owner of Dahl didn’t come down and excavate and find all this shit by himself, the workers did. They’re the real owners of these Vaults. They were the ones who put in the work, not whatever big man stepped over them and took the rewards. 

What I don’t understand is ‘it’s their birthright’ in reference to the bandits. I guess we could go metaphorical and say ‘birthright’ as in their new life as a bandit, but... that feels weird. I think this stuff is actually a reference to the twins just as much as its a reference to the Pandoran bandits. (coughAtlascough) I mean, if the twins have some sort of connections to the Vaults like everyone and their mother is theorizing (be it corporation, their ancestor being Typhon, them being Vault monsters/aliens/demons/whatever), then it makes sense that Vaults would be their ‘birthright’. Like, logically. “My dad/grandfather/whatever found the first Vault ever so, technically, they’re mine by blood!” “I’ve been looking for these Vaults for longer than you’ve been alive, human, they’re mine!” “I was created to find/open/help fight the monster inside these Vaults, so they’re mine!” etc etc. 

The whole “people need a purpose, people need something to believe in, they need people to believe in them” uh, yeah, I think that’s about the twins just as much as it is about the bandits. I’m wondering if they’re telling the bandits they’re going to help save the universe by following the cult. By telling them, yeah, murder in our name, we’re gods, this is what the universe needs. This is going to bring justice to you for what the corporations did. etc

Danny Homan: Pandora is one of a kind. It’s this place where insanity seems to be kind of the de facto personality trait that someone needs to survive. Whether you’re a hero or a villain. When you take that aspect of Pandora, how do you bring it to the other planets in the borderlands, right? I think for me that comes down to the fact that the borderlands have kind of been this staging ground for different corporations, it’s like the wild west. It’s a gold rush kind of area. Every place you go has its kind of own different brand of insanity. Madness and insanity and this fact that this is kind of a dark galaxy, right? It’s a place where the governments have fallen, and corporations have kind of taken their place. They’re basically arms dealers with some new-yous and some other technology kind of thrown in so wherever you go in the Borderlands universe there’s that kind of unifying factor of: humanity hasn’t done so great, and there’s only a few people that are what you would call [decent].

Not really much I have to say here, although I do think it’s interesting he mentions New-Us considering they’re not canon and it’s been stated several times that they aren’t by both word of god and by some 'non-canon' posters in TPS. I wonder what that’s supposed to mean. God, I hope they don’t decide to make them canon this game. That would destroy literally all tension story-wise.

Danny Homan: Promethea is rad. It’s the home of Atlas Corporation, it was the site of some of the first Eridian discoveries, so Atlas Corporation discovered Eridian ruins and that was kind of what sparked the borderlands kind of wild west trip to Pandora. There’s just some fun stuff, we’ve never experienced this kind of city in the Borderlands franchise, we had an opportunity in Borderlands 2 but the city is rad, there’s so much fun humour with service bots that you might have seen from the videos. Playing in the city gives you that other side: you have Pandora, you have the wild west, and then you have “what’s insane about a city?” Pretty much everything.

Ah Promethea. Mostly stuff here we already know, tho I have a few questions. 

First, lemme copy and paste something I posted in the dev questions and answers for the bl discord server: is that Eridium growing out of the ground on Promethea and if so does that confirm the Vault there was already opened? And if that is true then does that mean that Gortys was wrong when she said she was created as Atlas's last ditch attempt to open a Vault, or was the Vault on Promethea not opened by Atlas (she references Hyperion opening the 1st Pandoran Vault so we know she was in production still after "those Hyperion guys" open a Vault so it's not like her info is out of date regarding Promethea)? If that's so, did Typhon open it even though he said he sold the key/location to Atlas? Also why is nobody mining Promethea's purple rocks when Pandora was clearly very lucrative for Hyperion? Was Atlas keeping the Eridium secret on Promethea so they could do tests and shit like Hyperion did on Pandora a few years later? Tell me your secrets!!! And if the Vault did open on Promethea, why is there no Eridium scar??)

yeah, lots of questions for Promethea. And one more: are the swamp lands we see in the trailers apart of that planet? I was under the assumption they are because of the way Promethea is described in BL1, plus the outskirts of the city definitely have that swampy feel, but we don’t actually see any of that. Tho Typhon does say: “... Quazmarian Quarry and I fell through some brittle rock” so maybe the other bits of Promethea are more rocky than I originally believed. I do think we’re going to visit that area. I mean, that’s where the Vault supposedly is, according to ya boy Typhon, so...

u can see from orbit a significant portion of it definitely does have city lights around. though we can’t actually see which parts are land and which are water, so who’s to say for sure. And, to be fair, the lights seem to be changing/wavering so I would even so far to say that it’s some sort of shield (to keep the rocks in orbit from smashing into cities constantly and/or prevent Maliwan attacks)... but that’s just a guess.

Danny Homan: The siege moustache, yeah. Funny side story: part of the reason he has a moustache is because of me. I was going through a very strange social experiment and I was just curious how my co-workers would react if I grew a moustache, and it was a very fascinating week of people - when you grow a moustache people just come up to you and insult you, which is kind of a fascinating thing. When we were thinking about Promethea and Rhys, he’s besieged by Maliwan Corporation and he’s kind of been pushed back into one little area. We thought: “okay, well what is he gonna do to kind of rally his troops and make them believe him?” And it’s a siege moustache.

well at least he’s not the Calypso twins, rallying people and making them believe in their leader because of murder so he’s got that going for him. Excited to see just how many more people insult Rhys over the course of the game. I am fucking ecstatic to see what Fiona is going to say.

Danny Homan: Yeah, Handsome Jack is dead.

god bless Danny Homan

seriously, I hope they don’t bring back AI Jack as a way to subvert this. I really really hope they don’t. Let the character RIP. Bringing him back is only going to beat a dead gift horse in the mouth. or whatever

Danny Homan: I don’t want to spoil anything at this moment, you might learn a little more at E3. Man, Tales is such an amazing game, I don’t know, I just love it. Telltale did such an incredible job and all of those characters are just fascinating. Whether its Rhys or Vaughan or Fiona, and yeah, who knows.

I’m hoping it’s Vaughn. I love Vaughn. But confirmation that Fiona is okay and alive and everything would be great, too. Only a few more days, y’all. We can do it

Danny Homan: You know, you’ve gotta write for the person who’s never played the game before and doesn’t know what Pandora is, doesn’t know what a Claptrap is, right? We write for - we had to kind of straddle that line between people who have played every game in the franchise and people who are just experiencing it for the first time. What you quickly learn is that insanity is kind of the rule of law. Claptrap at the beginning of the first missions says, you blow something up and he goes, “Relax, on Pandora it’s really super weird if something's not exploding!” And that’s how we onboard players. Because when you hear that line and you go “okay, that’s a weird thing. Explosions are just par for the course on Pandora.”

this does make me a little worried that the storyline won’t be as in-depth as we’re all hoping it is. I mean i know I get a little crazy with the theories bc i live my life in the wiki, but people new to the series would be like “whu?? huh????”

and i mean, not that i’m saying you shouldn’t play the game if you don’t have at least a little bit of lore knowledge, but I’m really hoping BL3 will fill in the huge gaps we need and if they have to cut things because they won’t make sense to newcomers of the series, that’ll make me sad. i’m talking stuff like revisiting things from TPS, the Destroyer from BL1, etc, etc. I hope they at least have some cutscenes explaining previous events like the beginning of bl2. Although it’d be a lot more difficult cuz the story in bl1 is pretty fuckin simple lol and now they have to summarize 4 games for someone who’s never played them before. ouch.

Danny Homan: You work on - we have quite a few writers and we kind of work on all of the missions together. We kind of have missions that we start with, and characters that we shepherd, but it’s a pretty highly collaborative environment. We have a writers room, we punch up stuff, we play our missions. I’ve always loved Ellie, I just think Ellie is one of the most amazing characters and it’s been such a pleasure to be able to write for her. I’m a southerner at heart, so I’ve been able to sneak in a few: “squish squish Jellyfish” and “in a while crocodile” kind of stuff...

I’m happy Ellie is apparently having a bigger impact in this game than the previous one. Most of her side quests are great and tbh unlike most npcs I don’t get quite as annoyed when I’m going my 50th playthrough and have to do the Ellie stuff. I’m glad she was the one to inherit the Catch-A-Ride stations and not Janey. It seems right

>Would you say that there’s a favourite character [of yours] of the new ones that you have? Danny Homan: Well, we haven’t met all of them yet so it’s kind of hard to weigh in on that. >That’s fair. Danny Homan: I’m excited about the new characters. Borderlands is awesome because there’s so many characters from this franchise and they’re all really rad and fun to work with. As a writer, being able to create new characters is good.

Confirmed we’re going to be seeing more characters than the twins, Lorelei, and Nope girl. And you can bet your ass I’m trusting NONE of them until the game is over lmao

>Are we going to see the final unknown Siren in this story? Danny Homan: *sighs* You’re gonna have to wait and find out, man. >Are new Sirens created when old ones die? Danny Homan: These are all great questions. You might find out some of that in this game. Who knows? >Can existing people become Sirens? Danny Homan: Um, that’s an interesting question. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that someone can become a Siren. It’s not a de facto X-Men kind of thing. There’s some different conditions that kind of arise. Yeah, Sirens are unique and I feel like we like to keep it a little amorphous. What we like the most is when fans kind of create their own myths and stories about how this kind of stuff happens. As a writer we try not to definitively say one thing because there’s a lot possible.

Okaaay so there’s a lot here.

To start, when Danny is like “iunno man, wait and see” I wanna say that’s almost a guaranteed ‘yes’. I mean, like, if it were the case that it wasn’t going to happen, he could’ve just been like “no, sorry, that doesn’t happen”.

(proof, the next interaction is: >Are we going to see Scooper in this story? Danny Homan: I don’t think so.

Additionally:

>How many tea parties with Tina do we get in Borderlands 3? Danny Homan: *laughs* You’re going to have to wait and see. >There’s a lot of wait and sees going on. Danny Homan: We don’t want to spoil anything!)

So theorizing for the 1st 2 questions?

Final Unknown Siren: we know Steele, Amara, Tyreen, Lilith, Maya, and Angel. Steele died 12 years ago, meaning the ‘final unknown siren’ has to be at most 12. Angel’s dead, too, but the other Siren would be 7, so I don’t think we’ll be meeting her. She’s most likely the mystery mask girl we see in the MoM, and we all have our theories regarding her.

are New Sirens created when Old Sirens die? Well... we kinda already knew that in general, but I get what the interviewer is actually trying to ask. Are Sirens we know going to die in this game? I’m gonna say yeah. I think either Lorelei or Nope girl (Little Blue) are going to get Siren powers one way or another. I wouldn’t be surprised if Maya/Lilith don’t make it through this one. I want to say Lilith will die, since she’s been in almost all the games, but Maya is apparently training some little girl, so she is in the path of d a n g e r. Maybe they’ll both die. Who knows!

As for the “can existing people become Sirens”. I’m gonna say yeah. I think Danny leaves his answer supre vague for a reason. We know Tyreen has the ability to steal Siren powers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she (or Troy) has the power to gift stolen powers. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the red Vault we see the twins at in their art gave them their ‘Siren’ powers. Maybe a corporation finally found a way to create artificial Sirens (Atlas, I wouldn’t be surprised w/ Troy’s red tattoos and Maliwan has an entire area called ‘Archives’ with a Vault symbol on the door and what look like Siren tattoos sprawled across a building. We also gotta consider Hyperion’s eridium testing... not that they could ever do it, but maybe another corporation could have built off that?) 

In the comics it's shown Lilith gets her tattoos after an older Siren dies in front of her, but maybe Sirens are chosen when they are born and they get their tattoos later in life when their powers are unlocked (by another Siren dying/losing their powers/whatever). We do see a pic of Angel on Jack’s desk without tattoos, so that is plausible, tho people have also mentioned he could’ve photoshopped her tattoos out so nobody would question him.

Anyway. Yeah, there’s probably a lot of ways a person can become a Siren. 

>How much time has passed between BL2 and BL3 narratively? Danny Homan: Roughly the time since BL2 launched, so it’s been about seven years. >So just chronologically accurate to the development time. Danny Homan: Yeah, absolutely.

Shoutout to that one person with the Odyssey theory about how the time between bl2 and bl3 would be 7 years to match development time. right on the mark, my man. People who quote Randy saying it’s about 5 years: claptrap confirms it’s 7 years during his Clapslist board quest activation.

>Is there one Vault Hunter in particular that’s returning that you’re excited for people to see - now that we’re kind of talking about how we can’t talk about a lot of the new ones, is there a returning one you’re particularly excited about? Danny Homan: For Borderlands 2 I played as Maya and we saw her on the ship. She was always my favorite, I love Sirens in general. She’s a great character.

Not much to say here, Maya looks fantastic in bl3 tho. God she looks badass as fuck. Hope she takes over if/when Lilith dies lmao

>Speaking of the ship, it’s interesting that we’re getting this homebase dynamic that’s a spaceship. Are there any pop culture properties that you kind of borrowed from when designing that? I got Firefly-esque vibes when I was watching the presentation. Danny Homan: Yeah, there’s similar kinds of franchises that kind of quasi-sci-fi-west. What I love about Sanctuary [3] is that it is a spaceship but it’s got band-aids on it, you know? It’s a Borderlands spaceship so it’s got broken parts of the ship and it’s kind of got its own charm. It feels very lived-in. So as you walk around you see stairs that have been broken, you see an exhaust pipe that someone has put tin foil over, right? It’s very kitbash put together.

More reasons I’m of the theory that Sanctuary-III has been in operation for longer than BL3. Unfortunately, probably not the case, but I want to believe! We do see those screenshots in the trailer of the ship being infested by rat-like aliens, so I’m sure there will be a quest or two to clean those out. My question is if that happens before we get the ship (we must clean out the ship in order for Ellie to work it and get it in orbit) or it happens while we’re already in-flight and the rats got in through a shuttle ship/fast travel/whatever. Or, alternatively, the infested one we see is a totally different ship and we’re going in for parts/some reason. Like a ship AI or something. that’d be cool. I wonder if Sanc-III has a ship AI... I miss Felicity...

>How much work went into designing the ship’s atmosphere? It feels like a lot of the NPCs had things to say. Is there a lot of writing that goes into that as well? Danny Homan: Yeah, we’ve got a lot of NPCs on board. Our goal as writers is to make it feel like a living breathing place, right? So we spend so much time traveling around the ship being like “what would I want to comment on? That exhaust pipe is leading to nowhere. Let’s comment on that.”

I would not be surprised if we end up collecting NPCs from every planet we visit. We already see Promethea Citizens on board during the Sanc-III demo (which let to me questioning the timeline of that demo, I stand by my theory that it happens after we go to Promethea and after we visit the Monastery planet- that’s why Tannis has the dino corpse (Promethea) and Maya is on-board (Monastery). But, then again, maybe the swamp planet isn’t Promethea. Kinda think it is though. We’ll find out and I’ll update things accordingly.)

>Any one specific narrative beat that you can talk about that you’re really excited for fans to experience in Borderlands 3? Danny Homan: I really like the moment where we first meet the Calypso Twins face-to-hologram. Tyreen says “you’re my most loyal follower you just don’t know it yet” and there’s a lot kind of packed into that line. The Calypso Twins have this kind of strange arrogance where they presume you’re just going to be another one of their followers. There’s some interesting ways that kind of plays out.

asefdrtadfs there’s so much here holy shit. Homan confirming “You’re my most loyal follower, Vault thief, you just don’t know it yet” is super important. I 100% believe the twins know exactly what they’re doing and have an inside man and are letting all this play out. I would also not be surprised if they have a way to see the future ala mystery masked girl’s siren power, but I may be reading into things too much there lol

I also think it's interesting he says “we first meet the Calypso Twins face-to-Hologram”. I wonder what that says for my “the room after Shiv is somewhere we’re going to get info on the sun smashers stealing the key from the RC” theory. Might mean the twins are doing a broadcast on TV to all their cultists, or maybe Mouthpiece is broadcasting. Wouldn’t even be surprised if they’re livestreaming their murder of the HBC people (we find all those corpses, after all). Could explain why Ty says “did you come all this way just to see me? didn’t know you were such a super-fan. well, too bad, you missed the show!”

>Is that going to crop up in the narrative - them trying to kind of pull the player over? Danny Homan: That and also just that kind of sense that entertainers always kind of feel like everyone should be watching them. Everyone should be paying attention to them. >That’s an interesting beat. Danny Homan: Part of the fun of the Calypso Twins is that they are entertainers, right? They’re entertaining you and they’re entertaining the bandits. That’s why the cult exists. They’re kind of - they’re doing terrible things in the name of their cult.

I love this so much. It would be super interesting if we end up teaming up with them at some point to beat a badder enemy (Maliwan, Vault Monsters, Seraphs, Eridians) whatever it may be. Would be really cool if the Watcher pushes for us to join up with them (ALL the Vault Hunters we can get). I wonder if they’ll have quests like Jack (when he asks us to kill ourselves) but instead they ask us to do weird shit on camera for their ECHOnet channel. I’m sure Gearbox will find a way to make it all appear morally gray in the end anyway lol

Actually, where IS the Watcher..? I hope she doesn’t die in Commander Lilith... Maybe she went back to the Eridian homeworld. Oh that’d be interesting. she comes back later on in the game to lead us there/deliver news or smth...

[bruhnushka]

perfect storm [pt 2] (ruby martinez x reader x cesar diaz)

PART 1 | PART 2 | 

request : n/a

summary : a little more is revealed to you about the current situations of the gang.

warnings : flirting, cussing, violence

pronouns : she/her

tag list: @shippingfangurl (comment to be added)

a/n : as u know I’m bad w deadlines so pleaseasdfsdfhdskjH DONT BULLY ME INTO WRITING IT FASTER  P L E A S E  remember last time??? I literally stopped writing in general for like a year. 

ruby darted his eyes across the room to the door to make sure it was shut completely. you rolled your eyes.

“what, is there a gang war happening?” you joked. you sat up and leaned in with a serious tone, “wait is there a gang war, because I swear to god Spooky got me fucked up if Cesars in it like a bitch is about to throw some motherfuckin hands-” 

“what? no” ruby scrunched his nose. “you're tripping. like mad tripping. theres just some tension between our gang. I was tryna inform you on it before you accidentally initiated an ACTUAL war.” he emphasized the actual with a large hand gesture which smacked you in the boob. “oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, I'm sorry shit don't kill me fuck”.

you burst out laughing while holding your boobs from bouncing everywhere, and looked up at Ruby with tears in your eyes. “I'm fucking- ruby, are you still a virgin?” you got out through short chuckles.

“I am a man of god- and I will save myself for marriage!” he huffed. “and you? still a pure dove amongst a sky full of crows?” 

“first of all ruby- what the FUCK are you talking about. also, you really thought that by now id still be a virgin? you're the one mad tripping. have you seen my banging body??” you joked, and both you and ruby were laughing. Cesar peeked in through a small crack in the door and Ruby saw him, immediately throwing a pillow at him and shrieking his name.

“IM GOING IM LEAVING GOD!” Cesar groaned, the door shutting on his finger by just a centimeter. 

“ok- so heres the tea.” “spill.”  “so monse went to some summer camp for like writing and shit right? so after she leaves, Cesar pulls some wack ass shit and says that he banged her right before she left, but we later find out that he only said that to claim her, which he did ONLY to protect her from Spooky.” 

“are you sure it was only?” 

“what” “what if they're like... a thing”

“no. impossible. they would Never. theyd tell me first. its like major betrayal.”

“sure... but I'm not buying it. they seem to be a little too close to be just friends...” “but they've always been like that??” ruby started to panic.

“my point exactly” you looked at ruby. you both stared at each other for a solid ten seconds then suddenly could not stop laughing. 

“SHUSH!! WHATS ALL THAT BULLA???” you heard Mrs. Martinez yell, and you both quieted down. 

“anyways... thats all there is to it. any further complication arise, feel free to contact me at THIS number exactly” he proceeds to write his phone number, which you already had, on your arm.  “thanks I guess?” you chuckle, and hug Ruby tight, making sure to make him ever so slightly uncomfortable with your boobs. He clears his throat then scuttles away making you laugh softly. Then Cesar appears. He closes the door behind you and makes eye contact with a serious expression.  “we need to talk about-” “id rather not.” you cut him off. you didn't want to remember those events. you knew he'd continue to pry so you had to think quick. “I uh- I have a boyfriend” 

Cesar quirked a brow and looked at you. “lil y/n/n? a boyfriend huh?” he laughed. 

“don't look at me like that. I've dated more guys than you think.” you say, “and more girls than you will ever”. Cesar jokingly frowns, but then it quickly deepens into a real one. 

“so... who is this mystery man?” he asks, leaning against the doorframe, trying to appear nonchalant at the new information. 

“right now, were keeping it on the down low, you feel? trying to stop any drama from happening.” 

“uh-uh” “don't act all sarcastic. its not like you and monse are any different.” you shoot back, earning a panicked expression. 

“how did you-does ruby? I mean, thats crazy, we would never-” “cut the crap Cesar, its so fucking obvious. And no, Ruby doesn't know, nor does Jamal, but again, its so fucking obvious. Its bound to happen” “can you promise me that you won't tell anyone. look- it won't do our friend group any good ok? Please, just give me and monse some time to figure things out.” he says, looking at you with eyes full of worry.  “ok, ok fine. as long as we don't talk about what happened and you don't ask questions about my boyfriend.” “why are both yall so secretive anyways...���  “uhh...” shit, you thought, come up with something fast, “he's from a rival gang down by the bay. if anyone found out, it could be bad news for me and him. He isn't allowed to date or even touch anyone in another gang, and since I've already been jumped in for the Santos-” “you what? when? why did Spooky never tell me this?” “He didn't want you to worry I guess. Last summer.” 

“no. not during- was that what it was?” “yeah, I guess they took it lighter on me since im a girl. it was either get jumped in or do some strip dance on Spooky, to which even he freakin objected. so I decided to just get jumped in you know?” 

“holy shit” “yeah. so shut your mouth and leave me alone to talk with my boyfriend.” you laugh, and walked out the door, taking a deep breath in. you opened you phone, went to favorites, and pressed call. 

the line rung for a while. 

“hey y/n, whats up?” “hey babe- I need a favor. promise you won't freak the fuck out!” 

“uhhhh... ok sure.” “I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend”

TO BE CONTINUED!!!

we love drama don't we sisters!!! anyways its the usual, comment to be tagged in upcoming chapter, and don't forget to like and reblog, you know a bitch loves that attention.

[metalandmagi]

December End of the Year Media Madness!

It’s a new month and a new year! And what a crazy month it was what with Tumblr imploding and all. But I’ll still throw this on here just because I’ll be on this site until it literally boots me out. But I do have a twitter now…@metalandmagi where I’m also barely active at all.

Anyway, why make top 10 lists for the entire year when I can just ramble about all the media I consumed this month? There’s only a marginal amount of holiday things on here by my standards!

November media

Movies!

Give me some credit there’s only four Christmas movies on here.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: A documentary about Mr. Rogers starting with the birth of the television show to his death. This is the fluffiest most heartwarming thing I could have possibly picked to watch on Christmas, and I encourage everyone, even people who hate documentaries and/or never grew up with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, to watch it. There’s a lot of important messages about acceptance, dealing with tragedy, and mental health that people can learn from and feel good about. Not to mention how he completely revolutionized children’s television. So yeah, he was awesome.10/10

Spider-man Into the Spider-verse: When a rip between dimensions is opened, a bunch of different spider themed superheroes from every comic fan’s wet dreams all get together to close it. Guys I’m not that big of a Spider-man fan, but dang this movie was a ton of fun. I came for the amazing visual effects and stayed for the amazing...everything else. The music, the performances, and the story were all top notch. Also I now have a new favorite Nick Cage role. If you thought the trailer made the animation look interesting, it was just the tip of the iceberg because it is the most visually interesting movie I’ve seen in the last three years. I strongly suggest any fan of animation...or even any fan of great stories and movies in general go see it even if you’re not that big on Spider-Man. Now I’m demanding a Spider-verse Aunt May movie because I have so many questions! And the post credits scene was the best out of any Marvel movie. Period. 10,000/10

The Wiz (2015 musical): I should start making a section for musicals or plays instead of just lumping it in with the movies. It’s the Wizard of Oz...but cool. I’ve never seen any iteration of The Wiz and it seems like I’m constantly hearing about it. So I watched the 2015 version of the 1975 Broadway musical that NBC aired. And yeah it’s good. There were some great performances. But I wasn’t very impressed with the songs themselves, and it’s not really the same without a dog along for the ride, but whatever. 7.5/10

Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle: The surprisingly fun reboot/sequel thing of Jumanji where four teenagers get stuck in a video game that follows every “stuck in a video game” trope you can imagine but actually does it well. It’s a sweet, funny romp through the jungle with some great comedic performances. I really don’t have much to say about it except that this movie is better than it has any right to be. 8/10

The Christmas Chronicles: Two children stow away on Kurt Russell’s, I mean Santa’s sleigh and go on a dangerous, balls to the wall adventure throughout Chicago trying to save Christmas or something. After everyone started talking about how crazy this Netflix movie is I had to watch it to verify if it is indeed as wild as they said. And yes...yes it is. It is so laughably ridiculous and questionable that it’s impossible to actually hate. The elves are some unholy mixture of minions and gremlins, one of the children is a literal felon that no one is concerned about, and Kurt Russell is super into the role but has some sort of thing about fat-shaming Santa. I just...have so many questions! But it was certainly a trip, so I’d have to recommend it just so you too can witness the insanity. -10 “savvy, straight-talking St. Nicks”/10

Arthur Christmas: No, it’s not a Christmas special related to the aardvark cartoon! This is the 2011 animated movie that no one remembers exists. Santa’s clumsy but enthusiastic son Arthur must deliver a forgotten present in less than two hours while the rest of his family deals with some Arrested Development style family drama. This is by far the most underrated Christmas movie of all time; even I didn’t realize it was actually good until I watched it for the first time in 2016! The fun road-trip style plot and the entertaining characters were victims of bad marketing. Arthur is hilariously endearing, and there was so much heart and effort put into it that I can find new things to notice every time I watch it. Not to mention the amazingly animated opening spy sequence! And also Mrs. Claus is secretly a total badass and Bryony the elf is the coolest female character in a Christmas movie ever. The movie’s message of old vs new is nothing we haven’t seen before, but I really don’t care because at the heart of it all, it’s about making people happy on Christmas. If you’re like me and just assumed this movie would suck...or didn’t know it exists, please give it a chance. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth seeing. 9/10

Neo Yokio Pink Christmas: Yes, it’s the Christmas special for Neo Yokio. No I cannot accurately describe it with mere words. There’s a rich bachelor gift exchange, demon possession, and pompous French aunts slinging insults at each other. It is unironically my favorite holiday episode of a show ever, and to me it’s the best Christmas special ever made. I thought I was prepared for the absolute bat-shit ride I would go on, but no...I wasn’t even close. At this point I don’t know if it’s written like this on purpose or if some divine twist of fate made the executives believe this is truly brilliant television. Either way, it is a masterpiece in its own right. There’s even a somewhat intriguing plot and a message about gift giving and capitalism under all the crazy! If you haven’t jumped down the rabbit hole yet, I implore you to watch the insanity that is Neo Yokio and follow it up with Pink Christmas because it will truly make your holiday season. 100,000 demon DNA drugs out of 100,000!

Die Hard: Nothing says Christmas like terrorists taking over a skyscraper and Bruce Willis having to take them all down by himself. Yeah...so I’ve never seen Die Hard before, but this is one of those movies that is so famous that I felt like I’d already absorbed everything important through cultural osmosis. And even though it’s pretty good, I would have liked it better if I didn’t know what was going to happen. My only real complaint is that I think it goes on way too long. More than anything it just made me sad to remember that Alan Rickman is gone. And it bothers me so much that John McClane goes through this building that’s under construction WITHOUT SHOES! 8/10

Books!

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis: The 4th/6th book in the Chronicles of Narnia, in which Eustace Scrubb and his classmate Jill Pole go to the underworld to find King Caspian’s long lost son. Even though my children- the Pevensies aren’t in it, I actually think this book is my favorite of the series so far. Jill and Eustace are both sassy enough to play off each other, Puddleglum absolutely hilarious, and the book actually has a clear cut plot! It reads much more like a Greek myth than a children’s fairy tale since there aren’t nearly as many of Lewis’s trademark author interjections, and you know...it’s a literal journey to the underworld. And can I just say that it’s super refreshing to have an author write two main characters WITH ZERO ROMANTIC INTENTIONS! Especially since they’re freaking children! Now I just wish Disney had continued the movies even more! 9/10

Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare: I’m going to do this with only minor spoilers. It’s the final book in The Dark Artifices trilogy. Will Emma and Julian break the parabatai bond? Will the reflection of the modern day American government- I mean the Cohort/ the Clave fuck up the relationships between Shadowhunters and Downworlders forever? You’ll have to suffer like the rest of us to find out! In my opinion, 99% of this book is amazing, but in the last 50 pages there are some...bullshit ways of solving problems. Like everything that went down with the Cohort in Idris. Not to mention we’ve been so invested in the parabatai curse and how Julian and Emma’s bond would go down and...let’s just say the resolution was way too easy. And if you thought Clare’s other finales were jam packed, you ain't seen nothin’ yet. My copy is 880 pages and there was still more stuff that I wanted to happen...like any sort of scene between Dru and Ash...or an ending between Kit and Ty that doesn’t make me want to cry (the Wicked Powers is going to be brutal). But the rest of that 99% is mind-blowing! There’s so much good I can say that it mostly outranks anything I didn’t like...I mean we finally got a Malec wedding and a proper polyamorous relationship for the Angel’s sake! It may be my least favorite of her finales by default but it was still a fun ride! 9/10

TV shows!

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018): An elite soldier finds a sword that can transform her into a super buff magical girl who helps princesses take down the forces of evil. It’s a reboot of the 1980s cartoon, and holy crap it’s AMAZING! I have a whole new group of children to adopt, each episode is entertaining in its own way, and there’s so...many...good...ships! And it gives Steven Universe a run for its money with the care that went into making every character a different kind of warrior, which I love because the cast is 99% female. My only real complaint is that I never warmed up to Catra because she wasn’t particularly sympathetic to me from the beginning. But I understand why some people love her. If you love well crafted adventurous character driven cartoons and haven’t watched it yet WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?  10/10

Nailed It Holiday: Yes, my favorite baking show (and by that I mean the only baking show I watch) has a holiday season out on Netflix, in which newbie bakers are tasked with making incredibly professional desserts with a very short time limit. And whoever makes the best treat gets 10,000 dollars. I’ve talked about this show before in my June media madness, and I don’t know what it is but I’m so addicted to it. 10/10

Brooklyn nine-nine (season 5): Come on we all know the cop sitcom. It’s the best sitcom. Just in general it’s the best. Great characters that subvert expectations, great humor, and a lot of heart. I’ve known that this show is supposed to be amazing for years, but I only started watching it a few months ago. And since I couldn’t find season 5 anywhere...I got a Hulu subscription just to watch it before season 6 comes out. That’s how good this show is. 10/10

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 2): Our favorite underdog comedian is back, and she’s slowly gaining popularity and doing...stuff. Like going on tour. And hanging out with Zachary Levi. Yes, this season is great, but my problem with this series is that every character aside from Midge and Susie are the fucking worst, especially the parents. Midge’s parents suck, Joel’s parents suck, Midge and Joel are appropriately neglectful parents for the time period...I could go on. And it’s not even in a funny way; like it’s just disgusting to watch these power dynamics. Not to mention how old the comedic bits for the parents get (how many times can we hear about Joel needing to date or Midge needing to get married?!) Yes, I realize that we’re supposed to be annoyed AND YES I realize that this is a product of culture and how society was, but none of the parents have any redeeming qualities. In episode one, we’re led to believe that Midge’s parents will grow and change through the season and they never do! At least there are moments where Joel can kind of be redeeming and expand on his actual character before he reverts back to being an asshole. Anyway, my thoughts are pretty much the same as the first season. It’s funny and interesting to watch, but it can be ridiculously frustrating when you hate almost all the characters!  8/10

Fuller House (season 4): Yes I do watch the ridiculous Netflix reboot of Full House. And yes, it is absolutely terrible! I really really hate it! But will I stop watching it? Let’s just say you can pry this pile of garbage from my cold dead hands. I don’t know if I’d call this a guilty pleasure or a hate watch type of show... it’s certainly not so bad it’s good territory like Neo Yokio...but Full House was pretty much my entire childhood. And yes, the original show is also not great. I loved it as a kid, and it was my first real exposure to a non-traditional family in live action, but yeah it doesn’t age well. What I’m trying to say is...I have no good reason for watching this.

I don’t mean to say that there’s nothing good about it, especially this season. They really back off on the more cringe-worthy catch phrases, Stephanie being aware of how stupid the writing is and constantly pointing it out is actually funny, their Christmas episode was surprisingly genuine, and they impressed me by actually make two female characters try and work through their difficulties instead of pitting them against each other for laughs. It has its moments, just like the original but definitely not enough to make up for the worst of it. Maybe this generation of children will like it the way lots of my generation used to like Full House...but yeah it’s awful, I hate it so much. -1 missing Tanner child out of 3

Voltron Legendary Defender (season 8) SPOILERS: It’s the final season of Netflix’s Voltron, and boy it was...something. I didn’t want to make this a big rant/defense of the show...but I feel like I have to highlight some things because this fandom is a shithole that refuses to see the good in anything.

There is so much good and so much...not good I can say about it, so here’s a couple things. I know this show didn’t go the direction anyone wanted, but that doesn’t make it bad. In addition to the stunning fight scenes and music, the performances this season were just amazing! I literally wanted to cry every other episode even though sometimes I didn’t know why the fuck something was happening. I don’t know how I feel about Honerva’s plan. I understand her motivation, but I was constantly questioning how we got from point A to point B... so yeah the plot and writing could be...weird at times. Also everyone seemed to have super pointy chins this season...

Spoiler alert: Not many of us wanted Lance and Allura to happen, but I truly believe it wasn’t done in a half assed way. At the very least, I appreciate that they had a genuine bond that developed over so many seasons. BECAUSE YES IT DID! Anyone who says they had no development or that it felt forced never paid attention. I wanted it to stay platonic; I wanted Klance to happen, but...I can’t be too mad at the writers because they at least tried. I still believe that Klance was endgame and the creators were forced to change the outcome of the show later on. AND YES LANCE DID GET A CHARACTER ARC! It may not have been the one we wanted to see, but I’m baffled that people think Lance living with his family, surrounded by people he loves-which is what he wanted all along- is not a happy ending. I just wish his relationship with Keith wasn’t pretty much ignored all season. But I believe Allura is his past that taught him to genuinely love and Keith is his future who will make Lance his “first choice”. And I’m not even gonna try to explain how I feel about Shiro and Allura’s endings because everything I feel is so complicated and layered. There is good and there is bad.

TLDR: This show teaches us that we’re stronger together, and I think the “fandom” completely missed the point because they do nothing but tear others down and refuse to look at things from other perspectives. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO NOT LIKE IT, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE AWAY OTHER PEOPLE’S ENJOYMENT AND BE A DICK ABOUT IT. It may not have been everything I wanted, but I’m glad I went on this ride. Besides, there are canonically infinite realities so there’s got to be a reality where all your dreams for the show come true. As a season, I’d say it’s a 7.5/10.

Honorable Mentions

I watched Avengers: Infinity War again. And yes it’s still great.

I’m watching Superstore because when another sitcom comes on before The Good Place, why not? Also since I finished season 5 of Brooklyn 99 I had to use my Hulu subscription for something.

Camp Camp has a holiday episode...so naturally I watched it...several times. Please watch Camp Camp.

Hellsing Ultimate Abridged finally ended, and I feel obligated to shout this out because, hey when you put out one episode a year it’s a big accomplishment to finish it!

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is finally here!!!!!!!!!!!

ALL THE WINTER ANIME IS ENDING!!! They were all so amazing! So shout out to Iroduku-The world in colors, Bloom into You, Hinomaru Sumo, Dakaichi, Banana Fish, Jingai no Yomen, Golden Kamuy, Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san, Tsurune, AND RUN WITH THE WIND even though they’re not finished yet.