#that level was giving me so many problems and for absolutely no reason

[love-fireflysong]

I AM A PLATFORMING GOD!!!!!!

(...except not really cause I still need the 38 time trial relics for that coveted 106% 😭)

[weird-and-unwell]

“Autism isn’t a disability”, “it’s just a difference”.

I am of lower support needs. I hold down a (part time) job. I have travelled around my home country. I live alone.

At work they complain about my speech. I’m too quiet, they say, “barely audible” is the words used at my autism assessment. My voice is all monotone, and it needs to be more expressive. I get this complaint every week for a year straight, until my manager gives up. I don’t attend trainings because I forget and find it overwhelming anyways. My coworkers form friendships, and I watch them talk, wondering how they make it look so easy. I get a new manager, I tell her I find the work socials too overwhelming to attend. She tells me I can just say I don’t want to come. I don’t know how to tell her that I desperately want to, to be like the rest of my coworkers, instead of constantly being the one sat on the sidelines.

I come home, and I can hear my neighbours again. The niggling background noise messes with my head, and I meltdown; I throw myself on the floor, I hit my head on the ground repeatedly as I scream and cry, tear out my hair and scratch my arms and face. When I complain, people tell me that I just have to accept that neighbours make noise, that I should just ignore it, or block it out. I am the problem, the one overreacting. I put in earplugs and it hurts and I'm crying again. I wear headphones but I can't handle the noise for that long.

I have reminders set for everything. Every chore, no matter how big or small. My phone beeps at me, reminding me that I need to wash the dishes. If I don't go now, then tick the little box on my phone to say I did it, it won't get done. My home is almost always a mess despite this. It's not just chores either. I won't think to wash, dress myself, brush my teeth or hair, without those reminders. And unless someone actively prompts me to do so, I will do those tasks "wrong". I haven't changed my underwear in a month, and I'm currently aware that's a problem, but within the hour I'm going to forget all over again until I'm next prompted.

I can't sleep without medication - it's not unusual for autistic people to have messed up circadian rhythms. Without my medication it's hard to even tell when I'm awake and when I'm asleep. When I was younger and at school I slept through so many lessons, and when I have my mandatory breaks from my sleep meds I sleep through every alarm I set. I want to work full time some day, and I'm terrified of what my sleep issue will mean for me then.

I don't travel independently. I don't travel anywhere alone, always with someone or to someone. If to someone, I have assistance the whole way. I find it embarrassing sometimes. Yes, I have a job that requires a certain level of intelligence. No, I cannot get on a train by myself. If I am not shown To The Train, To My Seat, I will be unable to travel.

Last time I travelled, I was left alone at the station for ten minutes. I stayed rigid and sobbed the whole time. I was overwhelmed. It was too loud, I didn't know where I was or where I was meant to be going, and until the assistance person came back I couldn't do anything because for some reason I cannot understand it.

I spend a lot of time trying to explain to people that despite my relative competence, I am unable to do many things. Why can I understand high level maths but not how to get on a damn train? No fucking idea.

"Autism isn't a disability" most severely affects those with higher support needs, and this is absolutely not to take away from them. But for fucks sake, autism is disabling.

Maybe you personally are extremely lucky and just find you're a little "socially awkward", or just find some textures painful or nauseating. Maybe you would be fine with just a couple of adjustments.

But for a lot of us, even lower support needs autistics, it doesn't work like that. I will never sleep properly without medication. I still have the self-harming type of meltdowns as an adult, over things that are deemed as being "just part of life". I live alone but have daily visits from family - if I'm left fully alone I forget all the little daily things one is "meant" to do. I had speech therapy as a child to get me to the "barely audible" "mostly correct" speech. I don't mask, I'm not really sure how I would to begin with.

I'm not unhappy with being autistic. It's just who I am. Life would be easier if I were neurotypical, but I also wouldn't be me. I just wish those luckier than me could...stop saying it's all chill and not at all a disability.

Because yes, socially, I am "awkward". I obviously don't make eye contact - I stare down and to the side of whoever I speak to. People think it's weird or creepy or a sign of disinterest. My autism assessor wrote down about how I often use words and phrases that don't make sense to others, even though they make perfect sense to me. In my daily life this means I'm frequently misunderstood, and have to try explain what I mean, when what I mean is exactly what I said, and the true issue is that what I mean just doesn't make sense to others. I gesture, at times, but again, my gestures apparently don't make sense in relation to what I'm saying. I take things literally, I have almost no filter, and I can't explain how I go from topic to topic.

And yes, I do have sensory problems. Sometimes people, including others with sensory problems, tell me that "sometimes sensory issues have to be tolerated", and I wonder what they think of as being sensory issues. I'm sure they do struggle, but if I say I can't handle a touch, I mean you will need to forcefully hold it against me for me to touch it more than a second and it will make me meltdown. If I say "I can't eat that", I mean that I am unable to swallow it, that I will gag and choke and inevitably spit it back out, as much as I try. If I say I can't handle a noise, I mean I'm so close to a meltdown and my meltdowns are a problem for everyone around me.

But yes. Autism. Not a disability. Just a fun quirky difference.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Zuck’s gravity-defying metaverse money-pit

Tomorrow (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Think of everything that makes you miserable as being caught between two opposing, irresistible, irrefutable truths:

"Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops" (Stein's Law)

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (Keynes)

Both of these are true, even though they seemingly contradict one another, and no one embodies that contradiction more perfectly than Mark Zuckerberg.

Take the metaverse.

Zuck's "pivot" to a virtual world he ripped off from a quarter-century old cyberpunk novel (reminder: cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion) was born of desperation.

Zuck fancies himself an avatar of the Emperor Augustus (that's why he has that haircut) (no, really). The emperors of antiquity are infamous for getting all weepy when they run out of lands to conquer.

But the lachrymosity of emperors has little causal relationship to the anxieties of tech monopolists! Alexander weeps because he just loves a good conquest and when he finishes conquering the world, he's terminally bored. That's not Zuck's problem at all. When Zuck attains monopoly status, his company develops an autoimmune disorder, as his vicious princelings run out of enemies to destroy and begin to knife one another.

Any monopoly faces these destructive microincentives, but tech is exceptional here because tech has the realtime flexibility and speed that brick-and-mortar businesses can never match:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Sociopaths with tech monopolies are worse for the same reason that road-rage would be worse in a flying car: adding new capacity to indiscriminate self-destructive urges turns ordinary car crashes into low-level airburst warfare:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The flexibility of digital gives tech platforms so much latitude to break things in tiny increments. A tech platform is like a Jenga tower composed of infinitely divisible blocks. The Jenga players are the product managers and executives who have run out of the ability to grow by attracting new business thanks to their monopoly dominance. Now they compete with one another to increase the yield from their respective divisions by visiting pain upon the business customers and end users their platform connects. By tiny increments, they increase the product's cost, lower its reliability, and strip it of its utility and then charge rent to restore its functionality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/24/cursed-bigness/#incentives-matter

This is the terminal stage of enshittification, the unstoppable autocannibalism of platforms as they seek to harvest all the value created by business customers and end users, leaving the absolute minimum of residual value needed to keep both stuck to the platform. This is a brittle equilibrium, because the difference between "I hate this service but I just can't stop using it," and "Get me the fuck out of here" is razor-thin.

All it takes is one tiny push – a whistleblower, a livestreamed mass-shooting, a Cambridge Analytica – and people bolt for the doors. This triggers the final stage: the "pivot," which is a tech euphemism for "panic."

For Zuck, the pivot got real after a disappointing earnings call triggered a mass sell-off of Facebook stock, history's worst one-day value incineration, which lopped a quarter of a trillion dollars off the company's market cap:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/dramatic-stock-moves-of-2022-led-by-meta-dive-nordic-flash-crash

This was when the metaverse became the company's top priority.

Now, in my theory of enshittification, the step that follows the pivot is death: "Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Many people have asked me about the conspicuous non-death of Facebook! That's where I have to fall back on Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Facebook can't continue to annihilate value, alienate its workers, harm the public, hemorrhage money in support of a mediocrity's cherished folly forever. Can it?

Admittedly, it sure seems like it can. Facebook's metaverse pivot has thus far cost the company $46,500,000,000. That is: $46.5 billion. That's even more money than Uber torched, seeking to maintain the illusion that they will be able to create monopolies on both transport and the labor market for driving and recoup the billions the Saudi royal family let them use for the con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft

Don't worry: the Saudi royals are fine! They cashed out at the IPO, collecting a tidy profit at the expense of retail investors who assumed that a pile of shit as big as Uber must have a pony under it, somewhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

Uber has doubled the cost of rides and halved drivers' wages, using illegal gimmicks like "algorithmic wage discrimination" to squeeze a little more juice out of the nearly exhausted husks of its workforce:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But Stein's Law hasn't been repealed. Drivers can't drive for sub-subsistence wages. Do that long enough and they'll literally starve: that's what "subsistence" means. We lost a decade of transit investment thanks to the Uber con, at the same time as traditional taxi drivers were forced out of the industry. Uber can't be profitable and still pay a living wage, and the fantasy of self-driving cars as a means of zeroing out the wage-bill altogether remains stubbornly, lethally unworkable:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Which means we're at the point where you can get off a commuter train at a main station and find yourself stranded: no taxis at the taxi-queue, no busses due for an hour, and no Uber cars available unless you're willing to pay $95 for a ten-minute ride in a luxury SUV (why yes, this did happen to me recently, thanks for asking).

As more and more of us are exposed to these micro-crises, the political will to do something will increase. This can't go on forever. "Don't use commuter rail" isn't a viable option. "Walk three miles each way to the commuter rail station" isn't viable either. Neither is "Pay $95 for an Uber to get to the station." Something's gotta give…eventually.

"Eventually" is the key word here. Remember the corollary of Stein's Law: Keynes's maxim that "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Sure, anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, but that is no guarantee of a soft landing. You can't smoke two packs a day forever – but in the absence of smoking cessation, the eventual terminus of that habit is stage-four lung cancer. Keep hammering butts into your face and your last smoke will come out a crematorium chimney.

Zuckerberg hasn't merely blown a whole-ass Twitter on the metaverse with nothing to show for it – he's gotten richer while doing it! In the past year, his net worth increased by 130%, to $59 billion, thanks to an increase in Facebook's share-price, driven by investors who stubbornly remain irrational, keeping the Boy Emperor solvent long past any reasonable assessment of his performance.

What are these investors betting on? One possibility is that the rise and rise of Facebook's share-price represents a bet on technofeudalism. Since the Communist Manifesto, Marxists have been predicting the end of capitalism. That end seems to have come, but what followed capitalism wasn't socialism, it was the return of feudalism, an economic system where elites derive their wealth from rents, not profits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profit is the income you get from investing in capital – machinery, systems, plant – and then harvesting the surplus value created by workers who mobilize this capital. Capitalism produces massive returns for its winners – in the Manifesto's first chapter, Marx and Engels just geek out about how productive and dynamic this system is.

But capitalism is also a Red Queen's Race, where the winners have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. Capitalism drives competition, as other would-be winners pile into the sector, replicating the systems that the current winners are using and then improving on them. This is why the prophets of capitalist end-times like the FBI informant Peter Thiel say that "competition is for losers."

Capitalism's "profits" stand in contrast to the feudalist's "rents." Rents are income you get from owning something that other people need to produce things. The capitalist owns the coffee-shop, but the feudalist owns the building. When a rival capitalist opens a superior coffee-shop and drives the old shop out of business, the capitalist loses, but the rentier wins. Now they can rent out an empty storefront in the neighborhood everyone's coming to because of that hot new cafe.

Feudal and manorial lords also made their fortunes by extracting surplus value from workers, but these rentiers don't care about owning the means of production. The peasant in the field pays for their own agricultural equipment and livestock – control over the means of production is necessary for worker liberation, but it's not sufficient. The worker's co-op that owns its factory can still find the value it produces bled off by the landlord who owns the land the factory sits on.

The jury's still out on whether American workers really see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but America's capitalists have a palpable, undeniable loathing for capitalism. The dream of an American "entrepreneur" is *PassiveIncome: money you get from owning something capitalists and/or workers use to create value. Digital technology creates exciting new possibilities for rent-extraction: a taxi-operator had to buy and maintain a car that someone else drove. Uber can offload this hassle onto its drivers and rent out access to the chokepoint it created between drivers and riders, charging all the traffic can bear. This is feudalism in the cloud – or as Yannis Varoufakis calls it, cloudalism.

In Varoufakis's Technofeudalism, he describes Amazon as a feudal venture. From a distance, Amazon seems like a bustling marketplace of manic capitalism, with sellers avidly competing to offer more variety and lower costs in a million independently operated storefronts. But closer inspection reveals that Amazon is a planned economy, not a market.

Every one of those storefronts pays rent to the same landlord – Amazon – which determines which goods can be offered for sale. Amazon sets pricing for those goods, and extracts 45-51% of every dollar those sellers make. Amazon even controls which goods are shelved at eye-height when you enter the store, and which ones are banished to a dusty storeroom in a distant sub-basement you'll never find:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

Zuck's metaverse is pure-play technofeudalism, Amazon taken to the logical extreme. It's easy to get distracted by the part of Zuck's vision that will convert us all into legless, sexless, heavily surveilled low-resolution cartoon characters. But the real action isn't this digitization of our fleshy wants and needs. Zuck didn't spend $46.5B to torment us.

The cruelty isn't the point of the metaverse.

The point of the metaverse is to rent us out to capitalists.

Zuck doesn't know why we would use the metaverse, but he believes that if he can convince capitalists that we all want to live there, that they'll invest the capital to figure out how to serve us there, and then he can extract rent from those capitalists and start earning "passive income." It's an Uber for Cyberpunk Dystopias play.

Zuck's done this before. Remember the "pivot to video?" Zuckerberg wanted to compete with Youtube, but he didn't want to invest in paying for video production. Videos are really expensive to produce and the median video gets zero views. So Zuck used his captive audience to trick publishers into financing his move into video. He fraudulently told publishers that videos were blowing up on Facebook, outperforming boring old text by vast margins.

Publishers borrowed billions and raised billions more in the capital markets, financing the total conversion of newsrooms from text to video and precipitating a mass extinction event for print journalists. Zuck kept the con alive by giving away (fewer) billions to some of those publishers, falsely claiming that their videos were generating fortunes in advertising revenue. These lucky, credulous publishers became judas goats for their industry, luring others into the con, the same way that the "lucky" guy a carny lets win a giant teddy-bear at the start of the day lures others into putting down $5 to see if they can sink three balls in a rigged peach-basket.

But when we stubbornly refused to watch videos on Facebook, Zuck stopped spreading around these convincer payouts, and precipitated a second mass-extinction event in news media, as the new generation of video journalists joined their predecessors in Facebook-driven unemployment. Given this history, it's surreal to see publishers continue to insist that Facebook is stealing their content, when it is so clearly stealing their money:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Metaverse is the new Pivot to Video. Zuckerberg is building a new world, which he will own, and he wants rent it to capitalists, who will compete with one another in just the way that Amazon's sellers compete. No matter who wins that competition, Zuckerberg will win. The prize for winning will be a rent increase, as Zuckerberg leverages the fact that your "successful" business relies on Facebook's metaverse to drain off all the value your workers have produced:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

This can't last forever, but how long until Zuck's reality distortion field runs out of battery? That's the $46.5B question.

The market can certainly remain irrational for a hell of a long time. But the market isn't the only force that regulates corporate outcomes. Regulators also regulate. Europe's GDPR is now seven years old, and it plainly outlaws Facebook's surveillance.

For nearly a decade, Facebook has pretended that this wasn't true, and they got away with it. Mostly, that's thanks to the fact that Ireland is a corporate crime-haven with a worse-than-useless Data Protection Commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Facebook has finally been dragged into EU federal jurisdiction, where it will face exterminatory fines if it continues to spy on Europeans:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/07/luck-of-the-irish/#schrems-revenge

In response, Facebook has rolled out a subscription version of its main service and its anticompetitive acquisition, Instagram:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/

For €10/month, Facebook will give you an ad-free experience across its service offerings (it's €13/month if you pay through an app, as Facebook recoups the 30% #AdTax rents that the feudal Google/Apple mobile duopoly extracts).

But this doesn't come close to satisfying Facebook's legal obligations under the GDPR. The GDPR doesn't ban ads, it bans spying. Facebook spies on every single internet user, all the time. The apps we use are built with "free" Facebook toolkits that extract rent from the capitalists who make them by harvesting our data as we use their apps. The web-pages we visit have embedded Facebook libraries that do the same thing for web publishers. Facebook buys our data from brokers. Facebook has so many ways of spying on us that there's almost certainly no way for Facebook to stop spying on you, without radically transforming it operation.

To comply with the GDPR, Facebook must halt surveillance advertising altogether. There's no way to square "spying on users" with "you can't surveil without explicit consent, and you can't punish people for refusing."

And of course, "not spying" isn't the same as "not advertising." "Contextual advertising" – where ads are placed based on the thing you're looking at, not who you are and what you do – is hundreds of years old. Context ads underperform surveillance ads by a slim margin – about 5% – but they're vastly more profitable for publishers. That's because surveillance ads are feudal, controlled by rentiers like Facebook, who own vast troves of the surveillance data needed to run these ads. Traditional ad intermediaries (agencies, brokers) took 10-15% out of the total advertising market. Ad-tech companies – the Google/Facebook duopoly – take 51% out of every ad dollar spent.

Eliminate surveillance ads and you torch their feudal estates. Facebook will always know more about someone reading a news article than the publisher – but the publisher will always know more about the article than Facebook does:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

There are rents under capitalism, just as there are profits under feudalism. The defining characteristic of a system is what happens when rents and profits come into conflict. If profits win – for example, if productive companies beat patent trolls, or if news publishers escape Facebook's rent-extraction – then the system is capitalist. If rents win – if investors continue to bet large on the metaverse as its losses pass $50 billion and head for the $100 billion mark – then the system is feudal.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. The question isn't whether the platforms will eventually become so enshittified that they die – the question is whether they will go down in an all-consuming fireball, or whether they'll go down in a controlled demolition that lets us evacuate the people they've trapped inside them first:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/09/let-the-platforms-burn/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/30/markets-remaining-irrational/#steins-law

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puente_de_las_cataratas_Victoria,_Zambia-Zimbabue,_2018-07-27,_DD_10.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[darqx]

HEEEY MACARENA (ALRIGHT!)

Here's some long overdue BP and HH asks :) I tend to combine the two since there's not as many as the RADs, so this starts with BP and then moves into HH/Gen qs.

BP

MUAH ~ (I actually doodled this some time last year for fun and whimsy, based on those long mouth kiss meme pics XD)

A very quick overview of these types!

Vescordem: Maneaters/cannibals, excessively tall and strong.

Aleores: Minor dealmakers (goods and services). Jaw can unhinge and has venomous bite.

Sollicio: Major dealmakers - soul stealing ability. Often very good looking, has ichor powers.

Voxter: Ability to project 'thoughts' into someone else's mind - you ever have an intrusive thought? Same concept. All have a unique mark across the top part of their face.

Caumacies: Maneaters/cannibals, very strong. Has a third eye which sees only in heat vision - rarely opened simultaneously with normal eyes.

Hmm M or MA15 i think 🤔

You know, i actually have an idea for a game that has nothing to do with anything I'm currently doing XD One day i'll actually have time to make it, maybe. But anyway currently my actual project is i'm planning on making a comic \o/

I AM PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE that i have thumbnailed like 70 pages of this bloody thing and i'm still only in the first quarter of the planned chapters lol OTL Once i finish thumbing the chapter I'm on I plan to go back and render the pages properly before starting to post them :D

...which should hopefully give me a buffer as i repeat the process for the next chapters |D

You know, the concept of my characs being comfort characs for someone will never get old for me. It just tickles me pink ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ This answer will have two levels to it.

It's fine to RP or ask blog with Rire - he's one of my more "known" characs thanks to BTD so as long as credit is given (and it's made clear I'm not running the blog so it's not canon) then it's cool.

I'd prefer if no ask/RP blogs are created for any of my other BP or HH characs, as they are not as known yet. This may be revisited once i actually get the BP comic out but for now it's a no, sorry! (Though, if you are RPing in like...a private Discord with other friends who know who the characs are then I'm a bit more lenient with that.)

The reason for the BP/HH level is that ages ago when I had started establishing my own characs more, I randomly happened to find a forum where someone was RPing as Izm and .D but no one else knew who the characs were and so they clearly thought the RPer was the original artist and creator. Said RPer was not dissuading anyone of that notion. That has stuck with me for forever because at the time i never anticipated that someone would...actually try and do that with an OC. Like, bro srsly?!

One pet peeve for everyone:

.D: Willfully stupid people

Izm: .D smoking. He could care less if anyone else smokes but .D is not allowed on his watch

Marcus: Having decisions made for him without his input

Zeke: "How's the weather up there?"

Wei Ren: When people think he can't understand English cos he has an accent and so they deliberately speak slower and louder

Geez Caleb why are you damn RUDE

Here's one i prepared earlier! 😌

I'm not sure why you included Marcus as a demon, he's a human lol.

HH/More Gen

There are clubs which are created by students but need approval from the adults to exist.

HH is one of the better boarding schools which generally turn out successful alumni. The "obvious problems" we see are not actually obvious lol.

He doesn't need such manipulations.

Thanks! I hope you are inspired to go forth and create stuff! :D

One of the only perks of being a prefect at HH, really :d

Absolutely not lol

↓

4. These types of qs are always amusing to me only because you guys expect me to know but i absolutely do not XDD. Do normal people actually have a fave animal?? I dont even have a fave animal!! Anyway offshoot aside sorry that i can't even randomly assign anything, but if you are interested here is what they might be AS animals lol.

They actually don't have names because they were randomly designed NPCs i drew as like, placeholders |D;

Not including Rire or Nurse Isla:

.D is asexual, Izm is bisexual, and everyone else is straight probably. Caleb and Desmond are violently straight (as in Des is like very 90s stoner bro adamantly vocal about being straight and Caleb will actually try and break your neck for insinuating anything).

I have some female characs but I dont draw them that often as they are more side characs in BP and HH. The ones ive's drawn at least once are Isla (who looks like this, also doodled above), Tish (Des's sister) and Kenzie and Kelly (Zeke's sisters).

Every once in a blue moon i get an ask saying this but whenever i go to check nothing is wrong, so...nothing is wrong they do work |D; As the age old tech saying goes have you tried turning it off and on again? :d

Aren't those kind of things supposed to be...based on yourself??

[speirslore]

when you get hurt hcs [officers + roe]

a/n: requested <3 usually in my writing the reader is implied to be a part of easy company in a vague way bc i know ppl have different preferences but some of these include getting shot (not graphic or anything) so ig that implies they're on the front lines

lmk if you would like to be on my taglist! @ronsparky @bcon24 @blueberry-ovaries @1waveshortofashipwreck

[dick winters]

you hit your head prettyyyy hard, and you're out of it, probably definitely concussed

it happens right in front of dick and he tries really hard to keep calm

he wants to be strong and level-headed for you

shows more obvious affection then any of the men have ever seen from him; pets your hair, holds your hand, is always by your side

he immediately gets you a medic and transported to an aid station and doesn’t want to leave you

but when dick's back with easy, he gets uncharacteristically easily angry and frustrated...

he gets quiet and withdrawn and a little snappy with zelensky and nix... and they both immediately know why

whenever he can go see you, he's there.. he even gets behind on all his paperwork (but nix offers to help)

which dick is hesitant to accept for many reasons, he feels guilty, like he's not focusing on his duties but lew is always good at keeping the reports concise lol

very fragile with you, he isn't underestimating you but he just absolutely does not want to push you or hurt you

is a stickler for the rules, follows absolutely everything the doctor says

he has to wake you up every few hours and you keep insisting it’s unnecessary and dick is absolutely not having it

you try to get up and move around and all dick has to hear is the sheets moving and he just gives you that stare, a little bit like a disappointed mom, and you're right back laying down

he’s way more clingy than usual, wants to be by your side, subtly holding your hand

in that moment it definitely hits him how much he loves and cares about you... he hasn't really had time or space to process those feelings until now <3

[lewis nixon]

it does not look good at first

it's really scary for everyone there, you loose a lot of blood and lose consciousness

lew is not there when you're first shot in the leg and everyone is very glad that he didn't have to see it

but when he finds out... oh he is not keeping cool, is not pretending even a little bit to be okay

starts lashing out and snaps at the driver who's taking him to the hospital to drive faster, mad that they didn't tell him sooner, mad that you were injured, mad at the war, furious at absolutely everything

lew has to be monitored by dick not to go full self destruction mode and get incredibly drunk

he hates just sitting with the constant uncomfortable feeling and reminder that you're hurting

he will not leave your side at first when you’re sleeping a lot, on a lot of medicine, and out of it

one nurse does approach him when he's the only vistor in the hospital left, "sir, the visiting hours-"

he just looks up, obviously devastated, voice cracking, "i'm can't leave. you can drag me out but i'm not going, thanks."

they back off after that

does go through a phase where he hates going once you're more conscious because he kills him to see you like that and face this feels irrational guilt he feels for not being there

because he definitely has the tendency to avoid his problems and things that hurt him

but it hurts you too and you don't fully understand

you look up at dick and harry, slightly delirious from the morphine, tearing up, "does he not want to see me anymore?"

after that they do drag lew to see you and you just straight up tell him feeling guilty is pointless and not fair to himself (or you)

and then it's right back to not leaving your side and always trying to make you laugh or smile

[ron speirs]

okay so i love the angel of the company x speirs trope

by now he's the co of easy and your relationship is a widely known secret...

he assigns you and the group of other men to a patrol... it wasn't an overly risky or bad order, a standard order from sink

but you guys make contact and you're shot in the arm

it just absolutely wrecks him

the guys feel like he's just going to go across enemy lines and find the soldier that shot you himself

the rest of the guys are furious too because everyone just absolutely loves you

for a short time, he's mad at the other soldiers on the patrol and you have to reminder him they didn't do anything wrong

but ron is really just irrationally mad at himself for not being there, for not being psychic, he's just angry he somehow didn't stop this

ron is not controlling and not possessive and he knows you can hold your own but he feels responsible for taking care of you and making sure you're safe

even if he can't quite articulate all of those feelings yet

he doesn't understand all the emotions he feels and doesn't even have time to try to understand them

he listens so attentively to the doctors, he can recite everything they've said word for word

like with chuck, he demands the absolute best from the doctors

this incident shows his more compassionate side and the guys start to see how much he really cares about you... bc they're protective of you too!

you have to comfort him and his voice breaks

and he feels weak and he feels bad that you're comforting him and not the other way around

"i'm messing everything up, doing everything wrong," he says more to himself but you frown, eyebrows furrowed and everything

"you're so hard on yourself, ron. when it's not your fault, it was routine, you didn't shoot me. then i'd be really pissed." you smile and he smiles weakly... but he's on edge for a longgg time after this

[carwood lipton]

unfortunately you and lip just cannot catch a break

your leg gets injured while he has pneumonia

it's not a major injury but a bullet ricocheted off of a wall and slightly grazed you and you need a few days of staying off of it

lip really tries to be comforting

and wants to be there for you and he is!

but it's very hard for him, he just wants you to be okay so badly, even when he himself isn't okay

trying to lecture you about staying off of your leg and asking others for help but breaking out into a coughing fit and then you're trying to help him sit up and to go get some hot water for him

and then he's back to telling you to stop and starts hoarsely calling for luz

it's a MESS

but carwood is a natural caretaker and has been one for most of his life

it makes him hover sooo badly especially because since he's sick too he doesn't have a lot of work to keep him busy

but you're not complaining honestly, it's nice to have more private time and something of a break, even if you're both miserable

you get the special privilege of an actual private back bed room with a mattress and blankets

kind of a bonding experience

you just laugh because what the fuck

it's kind of romantic, first time in a longgg time in an actual bed together

you just go back and forth talking about your future and the life you want after the war

"i don't like this wallpaper," you murmur into his chest

he laughs and that turns into coughing again and you're just rubbing his back trying not to bend your leg... domestic bliss <3

[buck compton]

buck... does not take it well

he takes it extremely hard

like his reaction to joe and bill...

you have pneumonia and the peniciln you need isn't available in bastogne

and it's even worse that he finds out you're sick only a few hours after that and that you've been sick and struggling for the past few days

maybe his reaction would've been different earlier on in the war

but now, it just feels like a destructive domino effect that's sparing no one

it's obvious after all of his friends injuries and your pneumonia that he couldn't stay on the front line... his red bleary eyes and slightly trembling hands said enough

when he gets taken off the line, you're both in an aid station together for a few hours before you're both transferred to different hospital

so his presence is silent reassurance

you want so badly to comfort him but you're so sick and he doesn't want you to, he feels so guilty leaving you

but you hoarsely tell him he needs a break and to process what happened

you're feeling slightly better this day so that makes it a little better... but not that much

both of you have been through hell

but there is a light in the tunnel... or at least you feel that way

buck isn't on the front lines anymore and you both have a chance at a life together post-war

he does not want to leave you, it has to take a lot of malarkey's coaxing him and promising to update buck

[eugene roe]

gene can't decide if having medical knowledge makes it better or worse

and if being the medic and being the one to have their hands covered in the your blood, was better than leaving it in the hands of someone else

he decides it's awful... definitely worse

the very few hours he slept, it was just dreaming of your terrified face

and he wakes with a jolt and is completely miserable

and life just goes on...

a lot of pacing and murmuring

gene closes in on himself when he's upset and stressed, so he becomes even quieter than normal

and the other guys are worried like ??? do we need to intervene and lip just stops them, "leave him alone, he'll be okay."

prays for you a lot, gripping his rosary so tightly and the photo that he has of the two of you when you were still in england

when you both felt some semblance of normalcy

he can't abandon the company to stay with you full time at the aid station to his incredible frustration and disappointment

it's just hard for him to go on like everything's fine, it shatters whatever illusion he has of fairness and hope and safety

whenever someone else gets injured or they need supplies, he'll take any excuse to ride back to the aid station to see you

and if anyone else goes, they always see you and give gene an update

winters definitely notices and tries to give him opportunities to see you

likes watching you rest and sleep (because you definitely needed it, even before you got injured) in the sweetest, non-creepy way

gene loves to just sit with you, see you with his own eyes, and know for certain that you're okay

[herejusttosufferalong]

I have to get something off my chest - do I think that people should be hateful on SM towards Luke, absolutely not. The man doesn’t deserve any of the crap that I’ve seen come his way over the past two weeks. I do think he’s made some serious errors in judgement that hopefully he’s reflecting on. 

However, I absolutely hate the way certain people are making excuses for him online. He’s a grown man, and he should take responsibility for his actions or inactions. Fan service is a legit part of the job of a successful actor, take the feedback and improve. I’m frustrated with the way woman in particular make excuses for him just because he’s a man. If I hear one more “he’s got adhd…” as an excuse, I’ll scream. He himself has stated on more than one occasion that he didn’t want to be defined by his ADHD. 

I feel like if the situation was reversed and Nicola had a pap walk and stopped interacting with fans the day the premier launched, the same women wouldn’t have as much grace. We would get “oh she thinks she’s too good for the fandom…”

Stop treating men like children. 

"I feel like if the situation was reversed and Nicola had a pap walk and stopped interacting with fans the day the premier launched, the same women wouldn’t have as much grace."

Are there actual people out here who believe this?

Because we need to take a moment to be completely fuckin honest.

If the roles had been reversed and Luke just showed up with friends and Nic showed up with a rumored boyfriend and then she was papped leaving the party with said man, everyone would be congratulating her.

Folks would be clamoring to find out more about her respective partner and hyping her up for it.

They would have never have shit on her and made her feel like she needed a break from the fandom. They wouldn't be going to Luke's comments and taking up for him, while cursing her, as if he were somehow wounded by the "stunt" she pulled.

There are many reasons why Luke got the hate he did. The biggest reason is projection and it's not timing, as some like to claim.

Let's BFFR.

Insecure women projected past/current hurt from personal situations onto Luke, using the pap walk as a way of reaffirming their biases that at the end of the day he is just a typical man who does shitty things.

Nevermind the countless accounts of his actual character from the people who know him the best.

No.

These same crazies are going to let a photo dictate who he is, even though the context of events is still unclear.

From there they spew nothing but hate and vitriol in his SM comment section.

Then they have the fucking nerve to wonder why he isn't posting online more. Why there seems to be some disconnect from the fandom. Why he doesn’t interact even with Nic as much.

Can you imagine having the fuckin audacity?

Every little thing he does or doesn't do is under so much scrutiny and there is nothing really wrong with that. It's the received hate he gets from that scrutiny that is the problem.

There is plenty of things that Luke has done that give me pause but let's not act like the level of outrage would have been the same if the roles were reversed. It would have been next to nonexistent.

P.S. If you are one of the insecure women as mentioned above don't bother coming for me because I don't like you and I don't fucking care.

[butchpeace]

it is so insane to say that doctors shouldn’t practice gender reassignment surgeries, or that hrt shouldn’t be accessible, and not for transgender activism reasons either (though ignoring the enormous number of people that are happy with their transition is just willful ignorance). where do you draw the line on what adults can do with their bodies? do you ban all plastic surgeries? do you ban all the surgeries that require removing “healthy” body parts? Do you have any idea the amount of autonomy that strips cis women of? What about breast reductions? Oh, they can be removed because the woman’s back hurt? What is the level of hurt required, how do you decide which women’s backs are hurting enough and which aren’t? What about cis women who desire hysterectomies for a variety of reasons? how is removing my breast different from say, getting breast implants. do we ban breast implants, and then where do you draw the line? it’s such a non-nuanced way to see things.

“all plastic surgeries should be banned!” what if somebody gets into a car accident and doctors have to reconstruct their face. Probably they can live without it, but are you saying they should? What if somebody breaks a nose, should the doctor do the absolute bare minimum to fix it instead of trying to give it the aspect it had before? What if a woman requires a mastectomy for medical reasons, and lately wants breast implants, should it be illegal for her to get those? besides, what is the level of illness required to perform a surgery that is outlawed? Do you think having to fight the law as well during something like breast cancer or similar would be of benefit to women? worth it if it means transgender people can’t get it either?

and don’t even get me started on hrt, because if you can’t prescribe those meds for a certain mental condition, what is the difference with any other medicine, especially psychomeds? That it has collateral effects? Guess what? Most of them do! That it shows on the body? What is the actual difference, that you can make a law out of, without any overlapping, between something working on your hormones to show a change in your physical appearance and something working on your hormones to show a change in your brain activity? What if a med that’s needed to cure whatever illness has certain effects on the body? I swear you people do not think.

I’ve thought about all of these things, over the 12 years I spent in the trans community and the 10 years I spent on hormones. I still came to the conclusion I did. Actually, going through it myself is what brought me to this belief and cemented my opinion.

HRT and gender surgeries are different from necessary medical treatments and procedures because they aren’t medically necessary. They are medically harmful across the board in every case, to varying degrees. Female bodies are not meant to have high levels of testosterone. It causes health problems. Same for males.

So in order to defend using HRT, they have to prove that the benefit outweighs the harm. How do they attempt to do that? By claiming that everyone will commit if they can’t transition.

And what basis do they have for that belief? Nothing scientific. The only way they could get that data is through a study that gives half the participants HRT and doesn’t give it to the other half, and compares how many people commit.

So right now, they’re just going on the assumption that transitioning helps our mental health better than any alternative mental healthcare treatment option would be able to. (And better than just leaving us alone.)

This is when most people bring up how trying to treat dysphoria in another way would be “conversion therapy”. Because they apparently aren’t aware that there’s a huge difference between using electric shock to try to change people’s sexuality, and using exploratory talk therapy to help dysphoric people work through the issues that caused them dysphoria in the first place.

Proper mental healthcare, medical education, feminist education, and teaching dysphoric people to connect with their body has the ability to get rid of their dysphoria. It worked for me and many others I’ve talked to who have detransitioned or desisted. And sometimes all it takes is just growing up for us to understand ourselves better and accept our bodies. But of course, that idea threatens the entire foundation of the trans movement, so it can’t be true. Right?

In my mind, it’s fucking dystopian that we have all these kids now who never even got the chance to grow up before having these decisions made for them. Being fed the idea that they’re trans, and the only way for them to be happy is to make drastic medical changes to their body, has a devastating affect on their mental health and leads them to medicalization they otherwise may not have needed.

As for elective procedures, yes I also oppose those. I think any surgeon who gives someone a potentially dangerous procedure, or a procedure with a high regret rate, should lose their license to practice.

It’s not “oppressive” to women to say I don’t agree with them getting cosmetic surgeries or electively getting their important reproductive organs removed. That’s fucking ridiculous, to call that “oppression”. The fact that women think they need these cosmetic surgeries is the real oppression.

Anything with a legitimate medical reason, breast reduction, or simple procedures to prevent pregnancy are exceptions to the rule because they legitimately improve quality of life.

I hope that helped you be able to follow my train of thought about all this, and understand better what I’m saying.

[ave661]

Hi! I’ve got to say I absolutely adore your art it’s impeccable and always leaves me either blushing or crying (I’ve seen the somewhat sadder or dad!character renders you’ve made and I did cry for no reason but I love them either way)

Anyway, I did read your pinned post but I’m not sure if this falls in your ‘okay’ category. Are you comfortable with us using the newer renders that have “Do Not Repost” on them? I use the old ones but lately it’s seems disrespectful if I do use the new ones because I’m not sure you are okay with me using those. Is it alright if I do use the new ones? Obviously I’ll give you credit, as always, but I want your permission first before I do so.

I hope this makes sense. Anyway, have a great day/night!😊

I've been thinking about changing the pinned post for about a month now and I've been postponing the answer to this question for a while to think it over and I came to the conclusion that I don't want my renders to be reposted in any way. Not only new ones, but also older.

If I could go back in time, I would add a huge "do not repost" watermarks from the very beggining on every render. Back then I didn't know how much some of them would blow up and who would use them in what way. I've never been in a fandom as a creator, so I learn something new with every mistake. Maybe I'm too trusting and for a long time I didn't expect that some people would sell fanart they found on the internet. People trace, sell, use without credits, remove my watermarks, edit with AI. Every new info about someone trying to sell them makes me want to give up and I really, really, really don't want that to happen. It's annoying to waste hours reporting thieves. That's why I started adding bigger and uglier watermarks and also posting less renders here and X. However, I'm still very active on Instagram and TikTok because the download option is disabled there which makes me feel more comfortable. I also post stuff on Patreon.

I love seeing my renders used in creative ways and inspiring you to do something, unfortunately every now and then I see them being used in… not so nice ways. Like adding a sw@stik@ to my Konig render, using my Dad series for pedo fics/bots or nsfw stuff that sometimes makes me a bit uncomfortable. But when I read comments that some people thought I MADE THEM because of the watermarks on them, it makes me… ughhhhh.

It really hurts me to say "no" when many of you are respectful, nice and give me credits, but there are also people who don't care and just want to use them for their own profits, not caring that someone spent long time on them.

There's also the problem with Pinterest. Even though I've never posted anything there, I've noticed that sometimes I see my art with all the info and links to my Tumblr blog. Honestly, I don't know how it works, but I don't want anything of mine there. Every time I see them, I report, but like I said, it wastes time that I could be using to create new stuff. So when someone reposts my renders here, it increases the chances of them getting on Pinterest = more stealing in the future.

Sorry I changed my mind on this, but when I saw HT recently selling my Ghost meme on their t-shirts, and then heard that the company that designed it apparently got approval from act!v!s!0n themselves, I was speechless. I guess "I thought they were official" has reached a new level.

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

I want you to know I respect your opinion and at the end of the day you can do whatever you want on your own page, which I love all the art you do. Your White Diamond AU is so remarkable I've added it to my own headcanon idea of Steven meeting his alternate selves.

With that said, why are you responding to posts or asks that talk about blatant shattering of other gems? Real SU fans don't immediately go "death to the enemy." Real SU fans understand that SU is about love, acceptance, second chances, and pacifism. I'll admit, there have been more idiots in the fandom since the show's end, but in my humble opinion, it's best to not give any of them attention, even if they are annoying.

Sorry if I sound rude, I just didn't get responding to that one ANONYMOUS comment.

It's not rude at all! And it's a great question! One I understand the reasoning of.

But I have my own reasoning for doing the things I do.

Mainly, I think that while ignoring SOME behaviors is definitely good.... talking about OTHER behaviors actively is the fastest and healthiest way to immunize the greater community against them.

Let me explain.

I've been in this fandom a long time now, and I agree with you - there's a solid possibility, a real chance that whoever sent that message is just a passing non-fan who decided to be weirdly edgy in my inbox. No big deal. It happens.

But in my experience, the SU fandom is.... wide and varied. There are people of all ages, and many opinions. It would be easier, of course, if the only 'true fans' were those who perfectly understood the show's themes. But to me, that veers dangerously close to a No True Scotsman type of thinking. The reality is that many different people watch SU. And while many of them do inherently agree with the message and understand the nuance, many more just watch the show because... they like the surface level graphics and cool fights and interesting worldbuilding. In fact, many of the show's fans are edgy teens (sorry edgy teens) who are in a life-stage where violence and being strong and cool and decisive in a morally black and white manner is the only way they can possibly imagine solving any problem. And... that's kinda the opposite of what SU teaches! But that's also the point. SU teaches those things on purpose.

And yeah, I can absolutely just ignore this part of the population. But ignoring a behavior does not actually make it go away 100% of the time. If a child in a supermarket comes up to you and starts smacking you with a wooden spoon from Aisle 4, then... sure... you can ignore them and see if their parent comes to get them, or they go away, especially if it's a very small child and they're not hurting you a lot.

But that's not the only option. You can ALSO opt to teach them - and any other spoon-wielding children watching - what COULD happen if they are crude or cruel to a stranger in public. Namely, you can snap 'stop it' and at the very least glare at that child. This is a lesson that will arguably teach them more about the interaction than a complete lack of reaction would.

Now, I'm not saying people who send me asks are all children and I'm doling out some moral lessons here. This is just a metaphor.

I'm simply a person in a social space (tumblr) who is driving my own blog. And while I DO ignore a very large part of cruel/rude asks I get (trust me, I do ignore many!) I sometimes also just post a reply to show what ELSE could happen if you say a borderline silly and arguably tonally inappropriate ask to a person. You could get replied to! In a sarcastic or snappy manner!

And maybe - just maybe - the other people reading my blog can learn something from the experience, and think 'ah, so doing it like THAT will maybe make people kinda annoyed, now I know and will not do that'.

I cannot deny that overall I agree with you, though. I don't think that these types of messages deserve attention on the regular. But I'd hope that my replies to these things are not really... regular. I ignore probably... 80% of these sort of things? I guess maybe it just feels like a lot less, since, well. The public ones are 100% of the ones you get to see!

[untoldstar]

Your writing is addictiveeeee. Can u do ur ocs reaction to being cheated on by reader? Im so down bad for jesse 😫 hes just a lil guy who wants to be loved! Sue me!

The yanderes reaction to you cheating on them

Thank you smmm🫶 but fr I’m down bad for Jesse as well even tho he’s a lil psycho🫠

I can make a part two for the rest of the oc’s if anyone’s interested I just usually go for these oc’s because they’re the most popular and seem like a common favorite.

warnings: obsessive behavior, stalking, yandere themes, murder, stealing appearance and changing appearance (not reader), nsfw content, imprisonment, keeping reader locked up.

find out more about these characters here.

Ava (yandere best friend)

She’d go off the rails. She’ll cry and sob her heart out. she won’t talk to anyone except for you. Her phone is filled with missed calls and worried messages from her family and friends. Everyone gets so worried they start showing up at her apartment door but she’s too busy crying into her pillow waiting for your call or to hear your sweet voice outside her door.

She’d take you back in a heartbeat. Just please please don’t leave her.

Even if you already moved on and decided to be with your partner she’s still stuck on you and obsessing over how to get you back.

She’d go over every detail of the physical traits of the bitch you cheated on her with and tries to match it. What did you even see in them? they’re nothing compared to her!

Doesn’t matter. She’ll do whatever it takes. She’ll go as far as dying her hair, getting new piercings if they had any, changing her makeup, changing her entire wardrobe.

You’re absolutely mortified when she shows up at your doorstep looking like your partners lost twin.

Theo (yandere boss)

All his past paranoia will come right up to the surface. He’s always wanted to lock you up so no one would look at you so. No one would breathe your air. He didn’t want anyone to have the pleasure of even looking at you.

And you’ve finally given him a reason.

He has you cooped up in his mansion with no way of getting out. You’re always watched and monitored. Most of the week he’s working from home to be around you. Clothing you, feeding you, bathing you. He won’t let you out of your sight for a single second.

And every time you ask about your partner he’d smile softly and tell you to not worry about them. They don’t mean anything to you anymore.

Because they’re not here anymore.

Warner (rich yandere)

He can never be angry with you. No never~

But he will give you the punishment you deserve.

And he has certain methods for punishment like having you tied up to his bed and leaving you all alone in a dark lonely room with a vibrator strapped to your cunt.

You’re not truly alone of course, he’s always watching you with the cameras he set up.

Howw else is he supposed to stop the vibrator right when you’re about to cum?

Other than making you struggle for his forgiveness he also has to keep you busy while he gets rid of your little problem. He’s hurt people for you before and certainly has killed them but he’s never gotten to this level of cold blooded torture.

He spills their blood while in a trance like state, he’s absolutely drenched in their blood and the scene is gruesome enough to have his body guards who have seen many similar things while working with him not withstand this particular scene.

But you won’t know any of it, you don’t have to. They’re a distant memory by the time he’s back home in brand new clothes and looking as sharp as ever. Some of that rage is still simmering under that cool exterior though so he’s not quite finished with you yet.

Yandere bully

You’re not even in a relationship the guy tortures you on a daily basis! but he saw you get all blushy and smiling while another guy was teasing you in the hallway.

You never blush when he messes you what the fuck is that about?

That’s as good as cheating in his delusional mind.

He starts clinging to you everyday even more than before. Scowling and glaring at any guy who passes you by like a guard dog. You’re too focused on his asshole behavior to notice that you haven’t even seen the guy since.

You’ve heard students around you murmuring about a student who’s been in such a bad accident that he can’t even walk anymore. So many broken bones, swollen flesh, he might have even gotten a brain injury. Poor thing can’t even come to school anymore.

You never made the dots…

bonus! Yandere tentacle monster

Nom.

Let’s not forget this guy is an actual monster the second that guy gets on top of you on the bed he has already devoured him.

He walks toward you with an icy expression while wiping the blood off his mouth not paying any mind to your mortified expressions.

“You could’ve of at least brought a proper meal pet. That tasted absolutely terrible. I’d much rather eat you instead~”

the person reader cheated with knowing they’re absolutely fucked no matter who the oc is:

[charlesswife]

Una Noche En Mónaco ii

Mateo Con Una T (Mateo with one t)

unem masterlist

pairing: charles leclerc x latina! reader

summary: after a one night stand between you and charles, he continues on with his formula one career. until two months later, you come back claiming to be pregnant with his child.

warning: bad writing, charles is a bit of an asshole at first, google translate because i dont speak french, teen pregnancy, english isnt my first language so there might be some grammatical error.

a/n: THANK YOU FOR ALL THE LOVE AND SUPPORT YOU GUYS HAVE SHOWN IN THE FIRST EPISODE! It makes me so happy to know that you guys really liked it. I really have sooooo many ideas and twist for this book, like you guys have no idea, so always expect the unexpected hehehe

Just to clarify y/l/n is your last name. This is your story so I didn't want to give reader a last name.

second A/N: for some reason i can't write chapters on my phone because the letters are black. I have it in dark mode but i didnt have that problem before. does anyone else have that problem?

gif is not mine!

May 2018 

Charles Leclerc was a gentleman. That's how I remember him. The way he took care of me after the several rounds of sex we had. He is definitely the kind of man I don't ever want to forget. He was very sweet and caring. 

But he was only a one-night stand. I don't really know him, as him. The fact that I have to tell him I'm pregnant with his child absolutely terrifies me. I wish my parents were here. If they were, I don't think I would be in this situation. 

Charles sent me the address where he was staying at. As I got closer to the place, I realized it was the same place where I woke up. Is this his apartment? 

Steph left me at the doorstep. I needed her as moral support, just in case things didn't go as planned. 

"Go," Steph said as she hugged me. "I'll be waiting in the car, don't worry. If he does anything, we'll sue him. You have the money for it" 

Money wasn't a problem for me. I just wanted him to be there, I'm scared and I don't want to do this alone. I know Steph is here for me, but it is not her responsibility at all, it is mine and his. 

I took a long breath and rang the bell. Steph went back to the car and after a few minutes, Charles opened the door. 

He had such a bright smile on his face. "Oh, cara mia," he pulled me into his apartment and then close the door. He grabbed my face with both of his hands and try to kiss me but I pushed him slightly by his chess. His thick brows frowned a bit and then he asked, "What's wrong?"

I looked at him in the eyes and said. "We need to talk" 

February 2023 

I walked to my bookstore with Mateo in hand. Steph was the first one to greet us. 

"Auntie!" Mateo let go of my hand and ran to my best friend. 

"Maty!" Steph got down to the level of my kid and hugged him. "Uff, why are you getting so big, huh? How is my favorite godson doing?" 

Mateo laughed. "I'm your only godson, tia" (aunt) 

"How would you know, Alexander Jules?"

"Mommy told me, and Mommy would never lie," he pointed at me. "Verdad, mami?" (right, Mommy?) he looked back at me. 

"Si, mi amor (yes, my love)" I nodded at him. "Stay with your tia (aunt) while I check stuff in the store, okay? And don't forget to pick up a book" I told him, to which he nodded. 

Mateo Alexander Jules Y/l/n is four and one quarter. He likes to remind people of that. He is the most educated boy I know, and I'm not saying that just because I'm his mother, but because it's the truth. I have seen other kids and they are horrible, ungrateful brats. I hate kids. Except for my son. I want to think I did a good job raising him. He looks a lot like Charles. From the eyes' color and shape to the dimples to the hair, to the lips. 

I walked around the store, checking books that needed to be restocked and putting some books back in place. I went to the cafe and got my regular iced coffee. 

I walked around again until I got to my favorite section. Murder & Mysteries. In there, I saw a lady. Probably in her mid-50s. Blonde hair, she was dressed casually. She was looking around at the books. Picking one up, reading the back, and then putting the book back on the shelf. 

"Do you need any help?" I asked her. 

She turned around and looked at me up and down. "Oh, dear. I thought I was alone. You work here?" 

"Something like that," This answer seemed to confuse her. "Is there anything I could help you with?" 

She turned her sight to the books again. "Well, I'm trying to find a good mystery book but none of them catches my eye. I'm looking for something similar to Alexander Y/l/n or Perla Campos. They are my favorite authors" 

I stared at her for a second. What are the odds? I looked back at the bookshelf until I found the book I was looking for. "This one should do."

She looked at the cover and asked "The Seven and 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle?" 

"It's not as near as good as what Alexander Y/l/n and Perla Campos used to write, but if you like their books, I'm sure you'll like this one," I explained as I see her read the back of the book. "Another option would be 'The Secret Inheritance' by Cassandra Matthew." (lmao idk if that book is real) 

I handed her the book and she took it gladly. She read the back and then looked at me. "These are very good suggestions! Thank you, dear. What's your name?" 

"Y/n," I told her. 

"Nice to meet you, I'm Pascale" 

August 2018 

Pregnancy wasn't easy. I never thought I would cry so much in the span of 5 minutes just because I ran out of my favorite gelato. 

Today was my fifth visit to the doctor, and I was nervous as hell. I am more bigger than a regular pregnant woman, it has me fearing for my baby's life or even mine. 

"Okay, Y/n. You know the drill. Lay down, and lift your shirt up. As always the gel is cold" Dr. Williams said. She is always so gentle with me. Maybe she pities me. 

"I have concerns," I told her. She looked at me as she was putting on the gel. "My belly looks bigger than normal, is that okay?"

"It depends, in most cases, yes. It means the baby is healthy. But let's take a look" She moved her sight to the machine. The image of my baby appears immediately in the sonogram. She moved the transducer to another spot on my belly and I could see her eyes widen a bit. She was going on up and down in the same area. "I think I have a better answer to your question." She looked at me and said, "You're having twins" 

February 2023 

"Mami, can I read Nancy Drew?" Mateo came running to me as he showed me the first book in the series. 

I looked at the book and say "I don't think so, love. It might be too much for you. This is for bigger kids" 

"But I am a big kid!" The old lady, Pascale, laughed. 

"This is your son?" she asked.

I nodded with a smile. Mateo looked at Pascale and stayed quiet. He knew it was rude to interrupt conversations. He got behind me, hiding.

Pascale tilted her head for a moment, narrowed her eyes a bit, and murmured "He kind of looks like... never mind. What's your name, little boy?" 

He looked at me for a second. "Answer her, baby. It's rude to not answer to elders" I told him.

"I'm Mateo with one T" he lifted one finger.

This made Pascale laugh again. "Nice to meet you, Mateo with one T" 

"Why don't you take the book to Tia and tell her I say to check it out" Mateo nodded and ran towards the register, he stopped for a second and came back walking. 

"Goodbye," He said to Pascale while giving her a little waving and then walking back to the register. 

"He looks like a bundle of joy," Pascale said as she sees Mateo walk away. 

"He is," I agreed. "Is there anything else I can help with?" 

"No, that's all. Thank you for the help. I'm ready to check out." 

We walked to the register and started the process to check her out. I did the usual routine. I asked if she had an account with us, which she didn't, but she decided to get one. 

"Okay, Pascale. What's your last name?"

"You can just put an L," I did as she told me. As I was checking out her books, she said "This is such a pretty bookstore. I have never been here before." 

"Thank you," I said. 

"She's the owner," Steph spoke as she was playing hands with my son, who shushed her for butting in the conversation. 

Pascale looked at me with wide eyes. I laughed at her reaction. She inserted her card and paid. I put her books in a bag and grabbed one of the coupons. "Here is a ten-percent coupon to use on your next visit!" 

"I will definitely come back. I need to tell you if I like the books or not." 

"Oh boy," I laughed.

"I might even bring one of my sons with me" Oh boy... This isn't the first time a mother has try to set me up with their kids. 

"Please do!" Steph yelled. Mateo put his small hands in her mouth and murmured a small 'no tia, don't talk'. 

"See you next time, Pascale" 

"Bye Y/n," She walked to the entrance as she passed my boy, she turned and say "Goodbye, Mateo with one T" 

"Bye-bye." 

After she left the store, Steph turned to me. "She didn't say goodbye to me. How rude?" 

"Jesus Christ, Steph. Why would you tell her that?" I elongated the a in 'that'. 

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

I know I left you guys with open scenes between the first and third scenes but everything is for a reason!!! I might do Charles POV on the next one!!! Trust the process guys, things are going to get sooo good.

If you guys don't know (just in case) Pascale is Charles' mother.

Please let me know what you think of it. I would really appreciate any type of comment, whether is your opinion or just anything! It would def motivate me to keep going. I would really appreciate if you guys like and repost as well! So other people can be aware of this story.

@mac-daddy-210 @infinite-wanders @rbrsavage @itsyogurlkel @bbygrlllllll  @nerdreader @imnotcryingyouare1 @killerangel88 @obx-mylove-things-blog @triorion @daniellarogers @insssanemind @bosinclairsgf @rb-danny @shyshva @booksobsess @ogfangirl @ravenqueen27 @masonspulisic @yunnie-f1 @simxican @ushygushybaby @graceverstappen11 @maximoff-xmen @severenswife @ferraribabe @pjofics @harrysdimple05 @mloyer @teti-menchon0604 @imagineadream @reidsworld @heavengirls111 @scentedskydreamer @christianpulisic10 @formulas-bitch @topguncultleader @hc-dutch @moonclaine @miureiz @tall-tanned-tattoo @madisontaxarn @bisexualbith  

For some reason, it's not letting me tag some of you so people make sure your tag is correct. I want everyone to get the notification and this is beyond me.

[ovaruling]

i know everyone’s tired of me talking abt this but bc i’m on the subject now—once more on cosmetic surgery complications: let me clarify what i mean when i have said in the past “it’s rarely if ever a matter of ‘if’”—when you see “after” pictures on a cosmetic surgeon’s website, do you ever see ones that are “2 years after,” “5 years after,” “10 years after”? how often have you seen or spoken to a woman 20 years after her cosmetic surgery? do you think the surgeons do?

no. you know why? because, unless you’re getting more surgery, you stop mattering to that surgeon after your last post-op appointment. they do not give a shit about your long-term results. when you call in 2 years later, wondering why you’re experiencing xyz difficulty—guess how much they’re going to care? at most, if they even TAKE your call, they’ll tell you to go see your primary care provider.

most people have no way of knowing when their surgery is going to start causing problems. it might be a year. it might be 2. it might be 5. it might be 10. it might be 15. it could be 30. but trust me, you do not undergo major traumatic surgery to your body and get away with absolutely zero consequences.

i’m tired of people thinking they’ve got an argument when they tell me, “but EYE had xyz surgery, and i’m fine!”

tell that to the women en masse removing their breast implants due to complications that didn’t arise until years later. tell that to the women who are trying to remove gluteal implants and reverse gluteal injections because 5 years later and they’re showing signs of inflammation and infection (Blac Chyna, most recently). to women like me who’ve had nerve damage and spinal damage and muscle damage and infections and autoimmune conditions develop out of thin air after having that last post-op appointment.

i think a large number of we women who have had major cosmetic surgery are mentally unwell to begin with—or else we wouldn’t have gotten surgeries. but what i want to focus on is that we have grown up, as girls, being taught to ignore our discomfort, to minimize our pain, to get over our illnesses. i cannot in good conscience discount this phenomenon when i take into account why it is that YOUR surgery went so perfectly.

are you really recovered? or are you just ignoring the side-effects? did you already make up your mind that you’d bear the hardships of major surgery for the visual you wanted?

have you ever actually taken a moment to think about what you went through to have this surgery? have you forced yourself to adapt to the discomforts, just brushing them off as understandable collateral for something far more valuable to you (how you look)? how did the anesthesia affect you? how long were you on the table? how did your body respond to being given what it thinks is a mortally deep wound for no reason? how much pain medication did you need after? could you go to the bathroom by yourself? could you walk? how’s your scar tissue? is it still there, years later? what about your scars? have you lost sensation at the surgical site? is it still numb, years later? can you brace your core anymore? can you lift your arms above your head? how long? can you twist at the waist? what about your organs? did they suffer strain? what about your circulation? and can you draw in a truly deep breath after your breast surgery? how’s your oxygen intake after your elective rhinoplasty? or after your breast augmentation? have you felt any tingling numbness or dead zones or back pain after your BBL? or have you even thought about that? about any of this? stomach- and side-sleepers who’ve gotten breast augmentations, are you feeling rested these days?

how many of us have brainwashed ourselves into thinking we aren’t experiencing any unusual level of pain? how many women have died because of their practiced ability to shrug off extreme inflammation as “regular wear and tear”?

and you’re trying to tell me there’s NO chance of you or your tiktok faves having suffered even 1% of a change to your health after undergoing a major surgery?

no one knows it better than i do. you can lie to everyone else who’s never had cosmetic surgery, but you can’t lie to me. i know what you went through. and you don’t have to lie just to preserve your integrity.

i know women go through hell for this. and if they have, they need to pay attention to their bodies and watch for signs of long-term damage. or else you are also going to risk waking up one day and going, “hm. weird that i can’t feel my clitoris anymore. wonder why. it’s not like anything’s ever happened to—oh, wait.”

no one tells you what it all looks like 5-10+ years down the road. all you’re thinking about is the next year, at most. you aren’t thinking about lifelong consequences. you aren’t thinking about being 60, telling your doctor you had a tummy tuck when you were 27 or extreme liposuction at 18. you aren’t thinking about it. and that’s my whole fucking point, because neither was i.

[bitchesgetriches]

Bitches, I've got a doozy of a story for you! I work at a manufacturing facility with lots of locations nationwide and internationally. Our field is competitive with several other companies, many of which also have facilities in the same area. My company also notoriously underpays its workers as far as the local work goes (can't speak for other locations, cuz I don't know).

Well, back in April, the whole top echelon (president, CEO, etc) came to speak to us in a company-wide meeting. The CEO talked about the growth of the company, blah blah blah. At the end, they asked if anyone had any questions, and when no one else did, I stood up.

I've been following you Bitches for years, and this particular day had been absolute hell on a personal level from the word go, so at this point, my give a damn was broken beyond repair. I looked the CEO dead in the eye and told him the reason the company has such a problem with retention (he *just* mentioned it) is because we're by far the lowest-paid company in the area. I also told him that the way it usually works is that we hire someone, they get a little experience, then they leave to the competition for a drastic increase in pay. (You can only imagine how loud 300-400 production workers are, let me tell you!)

Well, the CEO gave what sounded like a bunch of corporate political waffling, so no one expected anything to come of it.

BUT WAIT!

Last week, on the same day I started in a new position (with a hefty raise), everyone got letters stating how much their pay was increasing! And the starting pay jumped up significantly to compete with the other companies nearby!

It felt really good to be able to tip the dominoes to help everyone out. 😊

OH MY FUCKING STARS AND STRIPES!

You are a beacon of light, an explosion of goodness. You just did something HUGE for everyone you work with... AND somehow the company as well?!?! We're unbelievably proud of you.

Never doubt that you can make a difference, bitchlings. By stating an uncomfortable truth, this baby bitch just improved the lives of every single person they work with AND helped their employer with worker retention. You've changed your community and industry for the better and we're just over the moon with pride.

1 Easy Way All Allies Can Help Close the Gender and Racial Pay Gap 

If you found this helpful, give us a tip!

[brw]

It baffles the mind to me how people will insist Ben Percy's Beast is right and correct and is the natural end version of Hank and that since day one he was always going to end up like that, not just because it implies absolutely nobody has actually read Hank in any pre-Bendis comic ever, but also because Evil Hank as Percy writes him makes everyone look massively incompetent, and I'm not even talking about just X-Force, I mean the entire larger X-Men community.

Emma Frost. World class telepath. Repeatedly is shown to not have that many qualms about digging into people's minds if they're hiding something from her. Confronts Hank at least once directly, and yet did not actually care enough to do anything other than act huffy when confronted with his actions. At most, she was pissed at him ruining her party. You can torture whoever you want, old buddy, but causing an inconvenience at my party? Now I'm mad.

Jean Grey. Even greater telepath. Was on X-Force herself, even, and also does not have many holdups about tearing down people's walls if the needs be. We even see her do just that, but her problem is him keeping things from her, and not the actual content of most of his actions. And after she leaves, she just seems to plug her fingers in her ears and go lalalala? The stuff at the Hellfire Gala, keeping Wolverine as clones, she doesn't care, she's too busy X-Mening.

Wolverine. Epic cool warrior guy who is supposed to be the best there is, whose talents Hank clearly admires enough to clone repeatedly to do his bidding, who is simultaneously a lone wolf and also the guy everyone wants to have on their team, who is the only guy who can see through Hank or whatever. Not competent enough to kill one big blue furry man who has spent the last 5 years at a desk job. That completely alludes him.

Domino has luck based powers that are supposed to help her in any situation, but I guess getting rid of evil blue man is too much to ask. Couldn't even get a bucket propped up under an open door. "He was always like this, he was always evil" she insists, but after learning he's controlling a small nation with plant people at the Hellfire Gala she still busts out the Cha Cha Slide with him on the dance floor.

I guess neither Jean nor Logan bothered to tell Scott his old friend was committing war crimes, because he doesn't seem to know or to give a fuck.

Kitty and Kurt know enough to joke about it, but do they actually confront him? Does anyone care enough to actually try to put a stop to it directly, if they're all seemingly convinced he's beyond help and fundamentally evil? No, they've got other shit going on. No time to care about Hank making a future where he is God-King, we gotta stop Sinister doing that same thing, but I guess when Hank does it, who gives a shit.

Quinten Quire is an omega level telepath who apparently nobody thought to say "hey man, can you use those Phoenix-level abilities to get Beast to stop killing people?". He was too busy giving himself a bigger dick in resurrection protocols, I guess.

I could go on, but point is, I genuinely don't know how you insist that era made so much sense and was the perfect version of Hank and everyone was simply too naive to see that this was who he always was, because it makes everyone look like an incompetent moron! They can't kill one fat blue furry man??? He hasn't done field work in years! And yet that's too much to ask! The only reason he died was because he was in gay love with some fuckass actor from New Jersey. It's deeply embarrassing for everyone involved if that's the reality of things, and I have no idea why you want all of your favourite characters to be incompetent dipshits who think "Wow, isn't Hank evil?" and then refuse to actually do anything about it.

And all this could have been averted if Hank was, you know, Hank. Hank isn't charming and cultured and well-read and funny and polite because he's a good person, those are his innate traits, and as we see with Dark Beast, they can twist in the opposite direction. That would literally be all it would take. I mean a lot of things would still suck, but at the very least, it would make everyone's inability to do anything a little more understandable, and allow things to feel tragic, like that Hank becoming increasingly evil and separated from his ethics is a loss and one we all mourn, instead of the insistence that he was always going to turn out that way.

Emma walks in to try and set things right with Hank, but gets distracted by good conversation and jokes and the same man who treated her as a member of the X-Men when she first joined and not as a heartless monster, who built her piece by piece back together when people were joking that finding out her murderer would be too much work, because everyone wanted her dead. It's hard to connect the evil actions she's heard Hank doing with the kind and charming and personable man in front of her, who matches her intellectually and well and truly respects her, and so she accepts that things are either exaggerated or that Hank will ultimately come back into himself, and that she can trust him not to disrupt her party.

Just a few little moments like that would have gone so far. An evil Hank McCoy is ultimately still Hank, and should still be funny and dropping Aristotle quotes and Shakespeare and being a good friend, because those are not traits exclusively to moral people, and it would make everyone's seeming incompetence a little easier to swallow. It's harder to see the evil actions that Hank is doing for what they are, when he's making you laugh so hard your belly aches or pondering intellectual questions with you, rather than just repeatedly saying "I'M THE BASTARD YOU NEED" before making a torture station in outer space.

There's so many ways this entire arc could have, at the very least, had some intrigue and actual character work to explore, the ways Hank has always used a larger than life persona to deflect and hide, and how that could become increasingly warped if you're dead set on having him be evil, and make the whole thing feel less like a character assassination and more of a tragedy. Hank McCoy becoming evil should hurt. It should feel like a great loss that someone who had been so kind and empathetic and nurturing became increasingly amoral and evil and even sadistic, and all the characters involved should feel that loss, and that even could be why they struggle to actually do anything for so long; they're so loyal to the Hank that once was, they can't see the Hank that is.

But all that is lost when the only character suggesting that something else might be to blame is Colossus, who immediately gets shut down as being ridiculous and silly, and everyone else stands and nods that Hank is really evil now, and isn't that a shame, and maybe he was always like this, but are we actually gonna do anything about it? Nah, we got a party to throw, we gotta get our fancy dresses on.

The entire thing is so unbelievably infuriating, because all it would have taken for someone to actually not even like Hank, but just want to be consistent with prior characterisation and have him be fun. A villainous Hank should ultimately be fun. That's probably the main reason why Dark Beast has endured for so long; he is fun to see and be around. He's a fun character to see on your page. That's what Hank needed. But I guess Sinister was taking that place so instead we got blue Kissinger and it is genuinely such a travesty that this dogshit is celebrated by comic fans who throw up in their mouths if you suggest reading an Avengers comic to broaden their horizons.

[munson-blurbs]

Hi there Bug! May I request one where Eddie and FemReader are in a committed relationship and Eddie’s breeding kink has been full on big time in overdrive because he really wants a kid and the more sex the better! Plus it’s around the holidays and they keep looking at baby stuff and Santa stuff etc which for some reason is making it worse But femreader finds out she can’t have any kids for whatever reason and is convinced Eddie will leave her because of it so heartbreakingly she tells him what’s going on and tells him if he wants to go and be with someone who can give him kids she would understand? Not being able to have kids myself and giving away little things I had gotten for the someday that never will come made me think of this one. (And No, I am not sad anymore about it- it just lets me help care for the little lost sheepies who don’t have anyone really. ) Thank you 💖

I hope I did your request justice. Thank you, from a little lost sheepie, for looking out for us 💚

Warnings: smut (18+ only, minors DNI), breeding kink, infertility, mentions of abortion, angst, hurt/comfort

WC: 3.1k

Dividers from @firefly-graphics

The First Christmas 

The Starcourt Mall around Christmas time was always a nightmare, packed wall-to-wall with busy, irritated shoppers. You were one of them; your husband was too busy pointing out every item he wanted to notice your misery. 

“Babe, check out that leather jacket!”

“That notebook with the dragon on the front would be perfect for writing lyrics.”

“Holy shit! A collector’s edition of the new Metallica album!”

After years of dating and a few more being married, you’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring him when you need to. But when he drags you towards his next find, you can’t help but pay attention. 

“Maybe we could get this?” It’s a thick, hardbound book of lullabies and bedtime stories. Drawings of barnyard animals adorn the cover. Eddie runs his forefinger over it gently, caressing it while deep in thought.

“Don’t you think it’s a little below your reading level?” you tease, threading your fingers through his free ones. 

Eddie gives you a wanting look, deep brown eyes meeting yours. His expression is completely sincere. “I want a baby,” he states plainly, as though he’s simply asking for a bag of potato chips at the grocery store.

“Okay, Eds,” you snort, rolling your eyes. “Maybe Santa will leave one under the tree for you this year.”

“I’m serious.”

You sigh, tucking his hair behind his ear. “Can we have this discussion, like, not in the middle of the mall?” you whisper.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” he asks, unable to disguise the excitement in his voice. A hopeful grin stretches across his face.

“It’s a ‘maybe,’” you tell him, but there’s already a buzzing feeling in your stomach. You’ve been waiting for him to bring up the subject of kids. Of the two of you, he had been the most resistant to parenthood. It wasn’t an issue of liking or disliking children; Eddie had plenty of experience being a babysitter (well, co-babysitter with Steve Harrington) to his gaggle of misfits during his high school years. The problem was Eddie’s confidence in himself to be a good parent. No matter how many times you reassured him that he wouldn’t be like his own dad, or that your kid would absolutely adore him, he’d remained hesitant.

But now here he is, in a Borders bookstore, damn near begging you for a baby.

Eddie refrains from talking about it for the remainder of your shopping trip, save for when you passed by Santa’s Workshop. He’d taken one look at the kids running around joyfully and murmured, “that could be us with Baby Munson next year.”

The moment you close the car door, Eddie looks at you, beaming. “So,” he starts, rubbing your thigh, “can we talk now?”

“Since when are you ready for a baby?” you question, glancing over your shoulder as you pull out from the parking spot. “I’m not complaining, but I don’t wanna get my hopes up just for you to change your mind.”

Your husband pauses before he speaks; you know from experience that this is a rare occurrence. “This might sound dumb,” he chews on a fingernail while he speaks, “but when I saw that book, I could just picture reading it to a little baby. Our little baby,” he amends. “And I’m still scared, but I–I think I can do this. With you. Feel like I can do anything with you, sweetheart.”

“So, when do you want to start trying?” you ask coyly, though you have an idea of how he will respond.

“As soon as we get home,” he affirms, and you laugh at his intensity and at your correct prediction. “If it wouldn’t cause a wreck, I’d start right fuckin’ now.”

You grip his left hand with your right. “We’re really gonna do this?” 

He squeezes your hand back, and there’s a slight tremble to it. “Let’s start our little metal family.”

As soon as you get through the door of your apartment, Eddie is weaving his hands through your hair and kisses you deeply. 

“Eds, the presents,” you manage, but he just drops them by the couch before picking you up and carrying you to the bedroom. 

“Don’t care about ‘em,” he mutters, plopping you on the bed with a gentle thump. “Just need you.” His tongue parts your lips as he climbs on top of you, knee nudging against your sex through your jeans. “You have no fuckin’ idea how badly I need you.” 

You trace your fingers over the obvious bulge straining against his zipper. “I think I have a clue,” you murmur, giggling when he moans at your touch. “Sensitive, are we?”

“Sweetheart,” Eddie says, pulling your shirt over your head and unclasping your bra, “you just gave me permission to give you a baby. What did you expect?”

You press your lips to his exposed collarbone before undressing him. “Want your baby, Eddie,” you whisper into his skin. Your fingers toy with his belt buckle and pants button until they’re both undone. 

His strong hands slide beneath your panties; you can feel him grin as he glides his fingers along your folds. “Y’got this wet thinkin’ about me filling you up?” he teases, and you can only nod your response. “Ready for me to cum in you over and over until you’re pregnant with my baby?”

“P-Please,” you stammer, and in an instant, you’re taking him in. His thick cock stretches you in a familiar way. You hiss at the pressure, his thrusts speeding up as he lets himself get deeper inside you. 

“You’re s’fuckin’ gorgeous, babe,” Eddie muses. “Can’t wait to see how beautiful you look, all round ‘cause you’re having my kid.” He gives you an incredulous look. “I just remembered—your tits are gonna get huge, fuck.” As if to emphasize his point, he sucks a bruise just below your left nipple. 

You whimper as he grows even harder, tip rutting against your g-spot and pushing you towards your own release. “Gonna cum,” you choke out. You clench around him as you finish, crying out his name while digging your nails into his back. 

“Good girl,” he praises you, which only turns you on more. “I c-can’t hold out; y’feel too good.” He spills into you with a groan, using his softening length to push everything in. “Gotta make sure it takes, y’know?” He kisses your cheek as you both come down from the high. 

“If it doesn’t, we just get to keep trying,” you smile, catching your breath. At the time, it doesn’t seem like a bad thing. 

The Second Christmas

You didn’t get pregnant that first month. Unsurprising; it rarely happened that quickly. You were disappointed when your period came, but you and Eddie had no problem having copious amounts of sex. 

But after ten months without success, you decided to consult a doctor. “Maybe there’s, like, medicine I can take to help,” you’d told Eddie before you left. Still, a bad feeling gnawed at your insides as you’d said it; a feeling that was only confirmed by the doctor’s news. 

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Munson,” she’d said. “It looks like you don’t have any viable eggs.” 

She’d droned on about genetic issues, but your head was swimming. It all boiled down to one outcome: infertility. Not giving Eddie the baby he wanted so badly. Not becoming a mom. 

You’d practically collapsed into his arms when you came home, apologizing profusely without offering context. 

“Baby, baby, what happened?” His own eyes filled with tears, as they often did when you’d cry. “What did the doctor say?”

After slowing your sobs, you’d repeated what you’d been told. “‘M so sorry,” you choked out. “I understand if you don’t wanna be with me…if you wanna be with someone who can get pregnant.”

Eddie’s eyes widened. “Absolutely not,” he shook his head, pulling you to his chest for a tight hug. “No, baby. ‘S only you. We can…we’ll figure something out.” A tear slipped down his cheek, though he’d tried to wipe it away before you noticed. “Maybe we were meant to look out for our little sheep, rather than have ones of our own.” But he didn’t believe it, not really. 

And now it’s Christmas again. You pulled on a red sweater dress and ran a comb through your hair. The platter of cookies you’d made yesterday was wrapped and ready to bring to Nancy and Jonathan’s house. 

“Eds? Good to go?” you call out, frowning when you don’t get a response. “Hello?” You pad out into the living room, finding him standing in front of your bookcase, looking forlornly at the book of nursery rhymes he’d bought this time last year. 

“Sorry,” he clears his throat and blinks his red-rimmed eyes. “I was kinda hopin’ for a Christmas miracle.”

“Me, too,” you admit, wrapping your arms around him. You could stay like this forever, safe in his grasp. 

“Y’gonna be okay today?” Eddie asks, offering a weak smile. “With, y’know…”

You knew. It has been on your mind every day since Thanksgiving. All of Eddie’s little sheep, now in their senior year of college, were back in Hawkins for the holiday. Everyone was chattering about career plans and graduation vacations. Well, everyone except for Max. 

“You all right?” you’d asked her, concern written all over your face. 

She’d quickly dragged you into the other room, away from everyone else. “Please don’t be mad at me,” she’d begged. 

“Max, you’re like my little sister. Even if I got mad at you, I can’t stay mad at you for long.” You gave her a smile, but it faltered at her words. 

“I’m pregnant,” Max blurted out. “I-I hooked up with someone when I first got back to school because I was really upset about breaking up with Lucas, and I was stupid and—and now I’m pregnant. And I was afraid to tell you because I know you…” she trailed off, not needing to finish her sentence. “I understand if you hate me.”

You were stunned into silence. “I don’t hate you,” you whispered. She barreled into you for a hug as you asked, “do you know what you wanna do?”

Max looked up at you with misted eyes. “I waited too long for an abortion,” she explained sheepishly. “Guess I was kinda in denial.”

You’d nodded, knowing all too well how easily it was to ignore the obvious. “Whatever choice you make, I know it’ll be the right one.”

That night, you’d curled up into Eddie’s chest and cried. Cried for Max, facing a daunting decision. Cried for you, trying so hard to have a baby with no success. Cried for the situation, that some people could get exactly what other people want, even when they don’t want it themselves. 

You knew you’d be seeing Max again on Christmas, and now that day has arrived. It would be hard to look at her little bump, but she needed you now more than ever. You could suck it up for a few hours. 

��How’re you feeling?” you ask her, attempting a genuine smile. 

“Better now that I’m in the second trimester,” she started. “Not as nauseous.”

You swallow a lump in your throat. You’d risk nausea every day for the rest of your life if it meant having a baby, but you push on. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“Can I…can I talk to you and Eddie for a sec?” Her eyes flit between the two of you. “It’s important.”

You wave Eddie over, who’s listening to Steve ramble about a new car he’s thinking of buying. He nods at you gratefully. “What’s up?”

“Max has something to tell us,” you say, and his face blanches. Sometimes you forget how your infertility also impacts him; seeing Max pregnant wasn’t easy for Eddie, either. 

“Sh-sure, yeah,” he mumbles, and the three of you duck into the guest bedroom. 

“I’ve been thinking. A lot.” Max fidgets, tugging on a strand of her red hair. “And I realized that, as much as I already love this baby, I’m not ready to be a parent.” She takes a deep breath and blinks back tears. “But you two are.”

You sit forward. “Max, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying—well, asking, really—if you would maybe think about adopting it.” She finally allows her eyes to meet yours. 

“Oh my God,” you manage, grabbing her hand. “Are you serious?”

She nods. “I want to be a forensic psychologist. Help solve crimes and keep people safe. But I know I can’t do that if I have a baby. At least, not right now,” she adds. “But I was really anxious about placing him or her for adoption with random strangers. Maybe it sounds silly, because I wouldn’t be the one raising the kid, but I couldn’t stop worrying about it.

“And then after I talked to you on Thanksgiving, I felt a little better. I didn’t have an answer yet, but just…just talking to you made me feel better. And I realized that whenever life got tough for me, I turned to you guys.” She gives you and Eddie a small smile. “And it was, like, why didn’t I think of this before? You’d be the best parents. You’ve already had plenty of practice with all of us.”

Eddie looks at you, slack-jawed. “You would do that for us?” he asks Max. “You really want us to adopt the baby?”

“Absolutely,” she confirms. “I know we have to get lawyers and all that stuff—”

“We’d cover that,” you jump in. “And we can help with doctor’s appointments, too.”

Max pulls you both in for a hug. “I’m still scared,” she admits, “but this makes it a little less scary.” 

It’ll be a long road ahead, you know this for sure, but the three of you take a collective sigh of relief. Maybe you and Eddie have gotten your Christmas miracle after all. 

The Third Christmas

“Nance, where do you want the green beans?” you call over your shoulder as you pull the casserole from the oven. 

“You can put them on the table; should be space for them,” she answers, thinly slicing the ham. “I’m almost done with this, and we can sit down to eat.”

Gripping the dish with the oven mitts, you walk into the dining room and place it down. “Dinner’ll be ready soon!” you tell the other guests. 

Hopper flashes you a thumbs-up. “El was just initiating Katie into the adopted daughter’s club,” he murmurs to you. “I heard her saying that they’re both extra special because they were specifically chosen by their parents.”

“She’s not wrong,” you laugh. “Although El’s powers help with that whole ‘extra special’ deal.” You look around the room. “Where are they now?”

“Diaper change,” El says as she passes by. “Eddie took her to Nancy and Jonathan’s room.”

You nod gratefully, walking over and lightly rapping on the door. “Is it safe for Mommy to come in, or is it a toxic waste zone?”

“You’re clear!” Eddie calls back. You hear the diaper bag zip up, accompanied by the sound of baby giggles. “This just in: Katie thinks zippers are the funniest things in the world.”

You bend down and scoop her up in your arms. “That’s only because she hasn’t heard any of your fantastic dad jokes.” Your body fills with warmth when your daughter rests her chubby little cheek on your chest. Your daughter. You still can’t get over it even though she’s nearly seven months old. Max gave birth a week after her graduation, and after fifteen hours of labor, a six pound five ounce Katie Munson was born. Once you found out that Max’s middle name was Katherine, you knew exactly what your baby girl would be called. You’d been worried that you wouldn’t bond since she’d spent the last nine months in a womb that wasn’t yours, but you’d felt an overpowering love from the moment the nurse placed her in your waiting arms.

Watching Eddie get to be a dad was nothing short of amazing. The way he peppers her face with kisses, or wakes up for middle of the night feedings, or picks out her clothes. Sometimes, he juts out his lower lip and holds up a tiny dress, cooing, “I didn’t even know they made clothes this little!”

“Let’s go get some food,” you say to your husband, bouncing Katie on your hip. You walk out of the room just as Max is walking out of the bathroom. Her face lights up when she spots Katie.

“Hi, Katie-girl!” she exclaims, reaching out to hold her. “Can Auntie Max get a hug?” You hand her over, watching Max inhale sharply.

You place your palm on her back. “You okay? If it’s…if it’s too much to see her…”

“No, no,” she reassures you. “I mean, it’s hard, but…I know I made the right decision.” She starts making funny faces at Katie. “Look at you with your red hair! It’s a blessing and a curse.”

“I can’t wait until she’s old enough to understand what her Auntie Max did for her…for us,” Eddie ruffles her hair as though she’s still fifteen years old instead of twenty-two. “We seriously cannot thank you enough, Red. You…you made us a family.”

The four of you are silent, absorbing all the love that flows between you, until Katie starts babbling and sends you all into a fit of laughter. “She says, ‘it’s time to eat!’” you joke.

And after a long day at Nancy and Jonathan’s, you finally arrive home. You try not to wake Katie when you take her out of her carseat, but she stirs and starts to wail. Muttering a swear word under your breath, you try rocking her back to sleep, but she keeps crying.

“C’mere,” Eddie says, lifting her from your arms. “I know what she wants.” He walks over to the bookshelf and plucks the book of nursery rhymes that he'd bought at the mall two years ago. He sits Katie on his lap, a big hand on her pudgy tummy. “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,” he starts, speaking in singsong, “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.” He raises his eyebrows and gasps dramatically. “Oh, no! What’s gonna happen to Humpty Dumpty?” You smile as he finishes the rhyme, Katie now fully enthralled in the story. Her cries have completely subsided.

Maybe this wasn’t how you intended to become a mom, but now, you can’t imagine life any other way.

--

[whateverisbeautiful]

♥️ Ranking Richonne

#20: I Don't Have A Problem (S3E12)

Clear. 🤩 One of The Walking Dead's best episodes for many reasons, but especially for the beautiful seeds it planted between Rick and Michonne. The fence is where their lives became interlocked, and Clear is the start of where their hearts became interlocked. And in this scene right here, Richonne became absolutely inevitable...

This whole episode is something special, and I love Rick and Michonne's every interaction, with an honorable mention to their “the mat said welcome” scene. 😋 From the moment they met, these two had some romantic tension brewing, and it nearly boils over in this scene that just had to make the top 20.

Rick has brought Carl on his first run and decided to bring Michonne along to help and to see what she’s about. It'll forever be telling to me that Rick felt comfortable enough to have Michonne on this run alone with him and his kid.

Despite some arguing that Rick was strictly skeptical of Michonne during this era of their relationship, I think the fact that he brought her out here to his former neighborhood and then, even more, let Michonne go out unsupervised on a crib run with Carl showed that there was some level of trust here that I don't think Rick would give to just anybody. Like while Rick initially tried to fight how drawn he was to Michonne in season 3, his behavior with her still painted a clear picture that to him...

And Michonne shows both Rick and Carl just how special she is and proves that she’s the real deal in all aspects throughout the episode. Especially in this scene here. 

So what I love about this scene is that in a moment where Rick is feeling visibly frustrated and disappointed, Michonne’s regal calm spirit practically tames his defensive energy. He asks if she has a problem with the new approach they have to take, despite her showing no signs of having an issue. And Rick asking this will just always make me amused because no one got him hot and bothered quite like Michonne just existing.

Like she was silent for a literal second, but that was enough to evoke a reaction from him. And Andy, to me, found the perfect way to ask where it was defensive without sounding overtly challenging or particularly offputting.

And then Danai just makes all the right choices in this scene cuz Michonne knows that she doesn’t need to match that testy energy. Instead, she turns slowly and looks right at Rick and sets the tone by gently saying, “No Rick, I don’t have a problem.” 👏🏽👑

Something about even just her saying his name has some weight to it. And I love that this is the approach she takes. This is genuinely me every time I hear Michonne perfectly deliver that line...

Michonne had been a bit quieter and apart from the group prior, and this line is her elegant offering to let Rick know she isn’t his opponent and wants to help - that she isn’t a problem and doesn’t have a problem, not with his approach, or just doesn’t have a problem in general that he has to worry about.

And then to make that verbal offering of her alliance even more physical, Michonne hands Rick the lone bullet she picked up. Rick takes it and the way they focus on their hands again feels like it’s an important exchange. It’s like their first peace offering. And it’s one of the first of many things Michonne and Rick will hand each other, including a very special pack of mints that parallels this scene a bit. 😊

I love that Carl is visible in this scene and noting this exchange between his dad and the woman who will become his mom and his best friend. Carl knew something was up here and that something was different about this. He was still skeptical of Michonne at this point, but I think it was at this moment he began to tell that Michonne has some sort of unique impact on his dad. 

This scene is also special because this is Rick in the freshest stage of being a single dad. He has to raise his son, who went through the trauma of having to put down his mom, and he also has a newborn to take care of, who he knows is actually Lori and Shane’s baby. And he has to deal with all this madness with the Governor. The weight of the world was on Rick's shoulders, and you see him really frustrated that the lack of guns at the station is yet another L. But Michonne is just so calm about it which is the energy he truly needs in his life. 

She just asked if there’s a new solution cuz she only envisions winning. Even just when hearing Rick earlier explain how he was the police in this small town and there are other places to check and all that you can tell that he’s used to being second-guessed and challenged by people, and having to prove himself...But Michonne isn’t other people. She gets him, and she’s not rattled by their situation, so he doesn’t have to prove himself.

I also love how, even as they speak, it’s tense but not harsh. There’s just always this passion pulsating between them, even as strangers.

There’s so much power in the fact that Michonne wasn’t hostile back, but rather calm, collected, and compassionate. The way she looks at him here just says she sees Rick in a deeper way than most. Even that early in their relationship, she understood him.

So even with Rick bugging out, it doesn’t intimidate her or put her off, Michonne gets it and she handles it beautifully. If Rick and Carl didn’t know they were rocking with a queen before then, they knew now.

And y’all, I know Rick knew they were with someone special because of his reaction after this exchange.

Rick’s reaction to Michonne after she hands him the bullet and looks right in his eyes with that soft knowing expression before walking away is the cherry on top of this golden scene because homeboy looks like he’s been fully enchanted. Like Rick's whole energy is giving...

Rick pockets the bullet and takes a whole moment to collect himself after the way Michonne looked at him. His look up to the sky was a 'dang, can Lori see me falling for another woman in just a few short days?' look. #DirectMindQuote 😂

Rick and Michonne felt a spark right then and there. I know it. And no characters would have an exchange like this unless it was a seed toward something romantic growing. 

Even deeper than that, I love that this moment was an insight into so much of what makes Rick and Michonne's relationship special. They can speak to each other and reach each other in any state. They can be a calming presence. They can enchant each other. They are so clearly the exact type of person the other needs in their life. They have such a unique and positive influence on each other, and this was the beginning of many moments that show that. 

I love that it was this moment that had even Danai wondering if Rick and Michonne were endgame and that it was then confirmed that for Gimple, Richonne really was in the works during this episode. I mean after an exchange like this, the road to Rick and Michonne falling in love was pretty much guaranteed. 

So I love seeing Rick and Michonne in this early stage, especially knowing they will go on to become beloved family to each other in the fullest sense. #Husband&Wife 😌