#truly don’t know what this looks like so we’ll see later if it goes in my actual art tag or not lmao

[sonic-adventure-3]

metal sonic doodle painting thing except it’s seven fucking am and i have a killer migraine and the white point on my phone and ipad is set to like -98 so i can’t see it and i also didn’t use reference and did this in like 20 mins and my eyes aren’t rlly focusing so i genuinely have no idea what it looks like

[corroded-hellfire]

Merry and Bright - Eddie Munson x Reader

An As You Wish story

Collaboration with the marshmallows to my hot chocolate @munson-blurbs 💝

Summary: It's Eliza's first Christmas, and even though she may not have a clue what's going on, the rest of the Munson family have fun introducing her to their traditions.

Note: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Festivus, and have a safe and cheerful whatever it is you celebrate!

Words: 4.3k

[As You Wish masterlist]

Eliza’s usual 6am feeding has you and Eddie awake before the boys on Christmas morning for the first time ever. Their 11-week-old sister has them beat for the earliest riser this holiday. 

Both of you sleepy-eyed as usual, you and Eddie slip into your daughter’s nursery and close the door behind you so her cries don’t wake her brothers. As soon as she sees you, she calms down because she knows the routine by now. You show up when she cries? Eliza gets food. 

You walk over and peer into her crib, Eddie stepping up behind you and slipping his arms around your waist and resting his chin on your shoulder. Eliza’s tears dry as she stares up at you and her father, her eyes wide like his. 

“Merry Christmas, Eliza,” Eddie says. 

“Happy first Christmas, sweetheart,” you echo. 

She clearly has no idea what you’re saying, but the way she’s looking at you makes you think that she’s thinking: Why are you just standing there smiling at me? Did you not hear the crying? Do you not know what time it is? Where is my food, lady?

You pick her up, clad in her green pajamas dotted with snowflakes and Santa Claus on them. The very same pajamas you, Eddie, Ryan, and Luke are all wearing. When you came up with the idea of matching family pajamas, you weren’t entirely serious until the boys backed you up. Whether they were truly into it or were just going along because they knew their dad would hate it, you have no idea. But Eddie grumbled and agreed, and once it’s just the two of you, declared that you are the only person in the whole world that he would do this for. 

Eddie goes to the window and pulls back the pink curtains with the white polka dots while you settle into the rocking chair with your baby. 

“Wow,” Eddie says as he looks outside. “It must’ve snowed the whole night. Everything is white.”

“Hear that, Eliza?” you coo as she begins to drink. “Your very first Christmas is a white Christmas. I think your brothers are going to have some fun outside later. Maybe we’ll go out and join them.”

Eddie looks over his shoulder at you. “Does she have enough clothes to layer up and go outside in this?”

“Enough clothes?” you ask with a chuckle. “Between the baby shower, Max and Nancy giving us some of their old baby clothes, and what we and the boys bought? I think she has enough layers to look like the Michelin Man.”

“Oh, but look at those rolls,” Eddie says in that baby-talk that’s pretty rare for him. He grins and kneels down next to the two of you in the rocker. “She already looks like the Michelin Man.”

There’s no denying Eliza’s rolls around her wrists and knees and ankles are absolutely the most adorable thing ever. And there is most definitely a long list of adorable things about Eliza. 

Once Eliza is done eating, you burp her—and she gives you one her father is quite proud of—and change her diaper, then you head out into the hallway and it’s time to wake the boys. 

Eddie walks into Luke’s room and heavily plops down on the mattress, making the ten-year-old bounce. He’s usually a pain to wake up in the morning, but Christmas is an exception. 

Luke rouses with a sleepy laugh and rubs at his eyes. “Present time?” he asks.

“I dunno,” Eddie casually replies, shrugging his shoulders as though the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “You think Santa came this year? I haven’t checked the tree yet.”

“And why wouldn’t he come?” you ask from the doorway, holding Eliza. Luke glances over at you and grins; you return his gesture in a silent I’ve got your back. 

Eddie, meanwhile, is dead set on provoking him. “Oh, come on,” he scoffs, “Luke had to have made the naughty list.”

Luke playfully lunges at his dad, who catches him and swings him over his own body to let his son land on the floor. 

“Nice try,” Eddie says. “But you’ll never beat me.”

When you let out a snort of laughter from where you’re standing, Eddie raises his eyebrows at you. 

You innocently raise your shoulders and walk across the hall to Ryan’s room. He’s a bit easier to wake up than his younger brother, though he’s started to fit the teenage stereotype of sleeping in late.  

“Oh my God, it snowed! A lot!” you hear Luke shout from his room, which makes you chuckle. “It’s like Antarctica!”

You can practically hear Eddie playfully rolling his eyes. “Yeah, bud. We’ll see a penguin waddle by in a sec.”

Ryan is already awake from all the chaos. He’s slightly grumpy from his unconventional wake-up call, but he smiles as soon as he stumbles into the hallway and scoops Eliza from your arms. 

“Merry Christmas, baby sis!” he coos. You notice that his pajamas barely reach his ankles even though you’d only bought them a few weeks ago. “You ready to see what Santa brought this year?”

As anticipated, Eliza says nothing, but you unanimously agree that she’s excited for presents. 

The five of you head to the family room to see multiple gift piles under the meticulously decorated tree. 

Luke points at the biggest pile near the front, blue eyes wide. “Who’s that for?”

“Eliza,” you tell him as you ruffle his curls. “Mostly from you and Ryan, I’d wager.” 

The boys had wanted to spoil their new sister with heaps of presents; you had to continually remind them that she’ll quickly grow out of any clothes and won’t be playing with toys for a few more months. Eddie had to keep reminding them that they were technically spending his money on the baby. He’d found it nearly impossible to say no to them, his heart swelling with pride that he’d raised such thoughtful—if not rambunctious—young men. 

Luke and Ryan get down on the floor, while you and Eddie sit down on the couch with the baby. 

“So, this is how we do it, Eliza,” Luke tells his sister, as if she will grasp any of what he’s saying. “Ryan picks up a present, reads who it’s to and from, then he gives it to me, and I give it to whoever’s it is.” It’s a tradition they’d started before Luke learned how to read, but it’s stuck throughout the years. 

Eliza lets out a few puffs of air that Luke takes as confirmation that she understands.  

“She gets me,” he says simply.

“Or,” Eddie teases, “she can’t tell which one of you is Ryan and which one of you is Luke in these ridiculous matching pajamas.” 

The four of you take turns opening Eliza’s presents for her. Each time a new one is opened you try to get her attention to show it to her, but she rarely cares. Eddie’s curls start to be more of interest to her than anything anyone else is doing. 

Whenever Luke or Ryan open them for her, they get really excited and hype their sister up about whatever it is that she got.

“Wow, Eliza! Look at this dress!” Luke says as he picks it up and shows her. “It has Princess Ariel on it! I bet you’re going to love the princesses.”

“Ooh, Eliza! Look at these!” Ryan shakes the oversized keyring with the pastel-colored plastic keys hanging from it. “You can drive Dad’s car with these.”

“I’d let her drive it before I let either of you two menaces behind the wheel.”

Eventually, Eliza’s pile is depleted, and the boys open their own presents. Ironically, they were more enthused for Eliza’s, though their new Game Boys are an absolute hit. There was eventually a gift that Eliza seemed to be enthralled with though. The only thing that really caught her attention was the shininess of a new watch that Eddie got from Luke. She wanted to put it directly in her mouth, but Eddie stopped her as Luke warned that he wasn’t sure if it was water proof or not. 

Once presents are done, Eddie cleans up the variety of wrapping paper while you dress Eliza in her Christmas candy cane outfit. This outfit Eddie picked out. It seemed only fair since you practically forced him into the pajamas. 

It’s nap time for Eliza, so you settle her down while the boys go through their new gifts. The clothes they received only got a once over while the toys and video games were more heavily scrutinized. 

After Luke makes his rounds through his toys, he notices how much snow has built up on the ground.

“Daaaaad!”

“Whaaaat?” Eddie mimics as he walks in the room.

Luke walks over and gives his dad an over the top smile—a telltale sign that he wants something.

“Wanna go play in the snoooow?”

Eddie pretends to consider the question even though he’s been waiting for one of the boys to ask all day. He’s still a kid at heart and has been dying to get out there and mess around. 

“I guess I could go for kicking your asses in a snowball fight.”

“Luke and I can take you, old man!” Ryan says.

“Two against one? Huh. Babe? Wanna come be on my team?”

“Sorry, hot stuff,” you say as you stroll in from the kitchen. “Then who would be here to get little Miss Eliza up from her nap and get her all bundled up for the snow?”

Eddie suddenly looks a bit more serious. “She’s going to have to have a lot of layers.”

“Really? Because I was going to bring her out in just her diaper.” You can’t help but chuckle at Eddie’s protectiveness and lean up to press a kiss to his lips. “Don’t worry. She’ll have so many layers she’ll look like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.”

The three men get all layered up and you get comfortable in a cozy chair near the window with a mug of hot chocolate to watch their shenanigans unfold. The boys go to one side of the yard and start making snowballs while Eddie goes to the other side. Your husband makes a little snow barrier that he can crouch behind before he starts making his snowball supply. 

“Teach these kids to call me old,” he mumbles to himself. 

Eddie quickly throws a snowball that hits the back of Luke’s head before he ducks back behind his wall. Eddie tries to control his laughter, but it keeps coming out in hot puffs of breath that he can see float away from his mouth.

“What the?!” Luke shouts, looking all around. “How’d he do that?”

Eddie chuckles to himself as he creates more ammunition. These amateurs. 

You look on in amusement as the three of them commence in all-out war. Eddie clearly gets the better of them, which you can tell he’s secretly proud of. Or not-so-secretly as he sticks his tongue out at them and taunts them. You’d swear you were the one in this relationship who is older by a decade, not him. 

After a while of running around, your sons and husband fall into a pile in the middle of the yard, obviously tired from so much exertion. You giggle as you watch them try and catch their breaths; Luke literally reaching up with his gloved hands to swipe at the condensation his huffing and puffing is causing. 

Luke is the first one up and starts tugging on his dad’s coat sleeve to pull him up too. Ryan is the next one up, then finally Eddie. It takes you a couple of minutes to figure out what they’re doing at first. It looks like they’re just moving piles of snow around with no rhyme or reason. 

Just as you’ve put together that they’re trying to build an igloo, you hear Eliza’s cries coming from her room. You get up from your warm cocoon on the chair and wander into Eliza’s nursery where she’s whining for attention.

“What’s all the fuss about?” you ask as you scoop her up. “It’s Christmas. Didn’t anyone tell you there’s no crying on Christmas?”

Eliza’s only response is a tiny sneeze that makes you giggle.

“God bless you. Now, let’s see how many layers of clothes we can put on you before you’re as good as bubble wrapped.”

When you open the back door, both you and your daughter bundled up tightly against the cold, the igloo looks like it had some architectural issues. Eddie pushes himself off the ground and comes over to the two of you. 

“Look at my girls. So cute in all your layers.” He presses a kiss to your nose, which gives you a shiver.  

“Your lips are freezing!” you exclaim, scrunching your face. 

“What do you expect?” Eddie asks with a laugh. “Igloo construction is very serious work that can only be done in these dire weather conditions.”

A few snowflakes fall onto Eliza’s pale pink coat, and she blinks at them in confusion before they melt away. 

“How is the construction crew doing?” you ask, nodding to the boys and their building, snow stuck to their gloves like Velcro. 

“Some structural problems,” Eddie shrugs. “Definitely inhabitable, but I don’t have the heart to break it to them.” He brushes his gloves onto his jacket and holds his arms out towards Eliza. “Come here, you.”

He takes her, snuggling her to his chest, and walks over to where the boys are working tirelessly. Crouching down, he lets Eliza’s legs hang down so her booted up little feet are on the snowy ground.  

“Hey, ‘Liza,” Luke chirps. “We’re making a house out of snow.”

“It’s not going too well,” Ryan adds under his breath. 

His brother scowls. “She doesn’t know that!” he hisses. 

Eliza’s eyes track the snowflakes falling down around her. 

“You like the snow, huh?” Eddie asks her, kissing the tiniest sliver of exposed forehead beneath her fuzzy hood. 

A chunk of the attempted igloo comes off in Ryan’s hands and he lets out a defeated sigh. “You wanna try some snow?” he asks Eliza just as you walk over to join them. He breaks off the snow into a small chunk and holds it up near Eliza’s lips. She only stares at it for a second before Eddie helps her lean in and she opens her mouth, just as she does when she’s trying to eat. 

The moment the coldness touches her lips, Eliza turns her head and curls her hands towards her face, making the rest of you laugh.

“Cold, huh?” Ryan chuckles, tossing aside the snow that Eliza hasn’t consumed. 

“All right,” Eddie says as he stands up, shifting his daughter in his arms. “I don’t know about you boys, but my butt is pretty numb. What do you say we head inside?”

Both boys whine, even though you can tell by their chattering teeth that they’re getting a bit cold themselves. 

“How’s hot chocolate sound?” you add.

That gets both boys up and headed towards the back door. Eddie walks ahead of you with Eliza, and you shuffle towards him so you can whisper in his ear. 

“If you can’t feel your ass, maybe I could feel it for you?” Your lips curl into a smirk. 

Eddie turns to face you. “Why, Mrs. Munson, how very naughty of you.” His kiss lingers in a way that tells you to expect a special gift the moment you two are truly alone. 

It takes a few minutes for everyone to peel off their wet clothes. Eddie and Ryan work on throwing the snow-soaked pants and socks into the dryer while you recruit Luke to help a freshly warmed Eliza into her swing in the living room so you can make hot chocolate. 

Luke buckles the straps over Eliza’s red and white outfit and turns the swing on the lowest setting. It gently sways her back and forth from left to right, which is usually her favorite thing in the world, but her tiny cries warn that she is not amused. 

“Hey, what’s the whining about?” Luke asks, frowning at his fussy sister. 

Eliza squeals and throws her little arms up as much as she’s able to as though purposely acting in defiance. 

Luke immediately springs into action. “No, no!” He scrambles for an idea. “Here, watch me, Eliza!”

He starts to do an overexaggerated jig in front of her and sings I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.

“I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do. I don't want a doll, no dinky Tinkertoy. I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoy!”

Eliza stops her crying and just stares at her older brother as he continues his impromptu performance. 

“I can see me now on Christmas morning, creeping down the stairs. Oh, what joy and what surprise. When I open up my eyes to see my hippo hero standing there!”

Watching the mini concert from the kitchen, you notice that Eliza is mesmerized by her brother; the look on her face reads, “what the hell are you doing?”, but you’re not going to question whatever it is that’s quieted her down—even if it means being subjected to one of the most irritating holiday songs in existence. 

“I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do. No crocodiles, or rhinoceroseses. I only like hippopotamuseses. And hippopotamuses like me too!”

Successfully distracted, the baby makes spit bubbles and flaps her arms. Luke feels that he’s done his job, and he gives a small bow. 

Luke finishes imagining the applause his baby sister so obviously wants to give him when Eddie comes into the living room carrying two mugs full of steaming hot chocolate.

“Hey, Timberlake. Here’s your drink.”

You and Ryan are right behind him as you carefully balance your own drinks, giggling at each other as you check on one another’s progress from the corner of your eyes. It’s almost a game to see if one of you will spill a few drops before the other.

Luke plops down in the chair you had been sitting in while watching the boys outside and Ryan settles in on the loveseat. You take advantage of your husband sitting alone on the couch to cuddle up to his side. Eddie settles one arm over your shoulders and brings his Metallica mug to his lips with his other hand. Taking care to hold your “Meowy Christmas” mug dotted in adorable kittens in both of your hands, you rest your head on his shoulder. Your eyes admire the cup that Luke gave you last year for Christmas before they drift over to your daughter comfortably rocking in her swing. 

Her large eyes move from family member to family member, as if wondering what you’re all doing. You imagine her holding her own little mug-shaped bottle to join in with the rest of you and you let out a soft giggle at the thought.

“What, baby?” Eddie asks softly.

“Nothing,” you say with a shake of your head. “Just look at our little girl. Watching all of us.”

Eddie smiles when he looks over and his daughter’s gaze locks on his. He feels as if one more ounce of happiness was pumped into his heart it would explode. The room is still and quiet, but Eliza continues to look on as the four of you warm up by drinking the confectionary delight. 

By the time the four of you have emptied your mugs, Eliza is fast asleep in her swing. Eddie presses a kiss to your temple, and you take his empty cup as he rises to his feet. He walks over, slowly stops the rocking, and scoops Eliza up. She lets out a little sigh as Eddie resituates her in his arms; her classic sign of contentment when she knows she’s safe in her daddy’s care. He carries the sleeping infant into her room and lays her down in her crib. 

“Sweet dreams, sweet pea.”

An hour later, the buzzer rings. 

Wayne’s on the other side of the door, two pizza boxes in hand. Since Eliza is still so little and requires almost all of your energy, there isn’t a fancy meal this year, but no one seems to mind. 

The Munson patriarch sets the food on the table, opening the boxes to reveal pepperoni & green peppers atop each pie. “Christmas colors,” he announces proudly. 

Eddie pops a Christmas album into the CD player as you all gather around the table and eat. By some miracle, Luke and Ryan manage to take their slices without fighting over the bigger one, and you thank your lucky stars. 

No sooner do you sit down and lift your own slice to your lips, Eliza’s cry bleats through the baby monitor. You instinctively start to stand, but Wayne puts a gentle hand out to stop you. 

“I got it,” he assures you, walking into the room where Eliza lays in her crib. 

“You’re the cutest candy cane I’ve ever seen!” you hear him exclaim as he lifts her to carry her back out to the kitchen.

He takes his seat next to Luke, who holds his slice in the baby’s direction, a glob of sauce plopping onto the floor. 

“Eliza, you want some pizza?” He pretends to bring it to her mouth before he pulls back and cackles. “Aahh, just kidding!”

The tiny baby manages to stay awake for the entirety of dinner, but by the end of dessert, she’s starting to get cranky again. 

When it’s time to clear the table, Eddie stands up and stretches his arms high over his head. And so what if your gaze drifted to the pale expanse of his stomach that it showed? 

“Come on, men,” Eddie says. “Let’s get this place looking ship-shaped.”

“You sure you weren’t the one in the military?” Wayne asks with a husky laugh. He hands you the baby who is only getting fussier by the second.

“I think it’s time for some jammies,” you say as you hold her against your chest. Her whines and whimpers in return sound like a disagreement, so you can only imagine what her backtalk will be like when she can speak. 

“Not fair,” Luke says with a huff as you move to leave the dining room. You turn around and raise an eyebrow at him.

“What’s not fair?” you ask.

“You don’t have to clean,” he says as he picks up the bowl of mashed potatoes that is now so empty it looks as if it’s been licked clean. It wouldn’t surprise you if it was, honestly. 

“Do you want to try and get Miss Crankypants into her pajamas? Then to bed?” you ask.

“No,” Luke admits with a groan and brings the empty dishes into the kitchen.

“That’s what I thought,” you say to Eliza as you carry her down the hall to her room. 

It’s time for the annual tradition of watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas, but Eliza still hasn’t gone to sleep. You’re not sure how long you’ve been trying to soothe her to sleep, but it feels like it’s been hours. You tell the guys to start watching it without you as you start to walk throughout the house with your fussy daughter in your arms. The rocking motion of walking tends to have a calming effect on her. Hasn’t worked so far, but it’s worth another shot.

“Come on, sweetie,” you beg her. “You had a big day. You must be so tired.”

She continues her protests, so you hold her closer to your chest, her green elf pajamas soft in your hands. On your fourth lap of the house, you pass by the living room again but there’s music coming from the television this time.

Eliza stops her fussing at the sound. The scene ends and Eliza starts to act up again, so you take another lap around the house. Once more back at the living room, there’s music and again she calms down. 

“Hmm…” you hum to yourself.

Testing your theory, you sit at the edge of the couch and keep your firm hold on Eliza. The music continues as Eliza calms all the way down. This time, she’s calmed enough that you can sit back on the couch and enjoy the show with your family. Every time a scene with music comes on, Eliza gets happier and even gives you a smile that you’re pretty sure had nothing to do with gas.

“You like the music, huh?” you ask your daughter softly. 

“Making her daddy proud,” Eddie says, throwing a wink your way. 

Not much later, Eliza falls asleep, and it allows you to watch the rest of the program with your family. When it’s time for bed, the boys each get up and press a soft kiss to their sister’s forehead. Once they’ve gone to brush their teeth, you bring Eliza into her room, Eddie right behind you. You gently lay her down and Eddie snakes his arms around your waist from behind. Both of you look down at your daughter, her little pink lips parted as her chest moves up and down with her steady breathing. The soft downy hairs on her head are starting to get a curl to them and you smile at the thought of her having hair like your husband.

Eddie presses a kiss to your cheek and rests his chin on your shoulder so he can look down at the sleeping girl as well.

“We made a cute baby,” Eddie says softly.

“The cutest,” you agree. 

[junrenjun]

8:13 PM

lee jeno x reader

“These are so cute,” you mutter, lifting another one of the pictures off the table. The wedding is finally settling down a bit, a few people out on the dance floor while others talk amongst themselves at the tables. The rest of your tablemates have scattered around the room, leaving only you and Jeno. 

Your boyfriend has his arm wrapped around the back of your chair, gazing down at the picture in your hands. “Mhm,” he hums, “should save that to a Pinterest board for our wedding.” 

He says it so casually you almost choke on air. “Our wedding? You want to marry me?” you question. Now, you and Jeno have been dating for quite some time now. But not enough to truly, seriously talk about marriage. Nothing more than a few casual conversations about what the future could hold. Yet he says those words like you’re already engaged. 

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging his shoulders lightly. “You do want to get married, right?” He seems a little tentative now. Like he’s worried that he scared you off.

You’re quick to ease the tension. “Of course I want to get married. I just didn’t think you’d bring it up so nonchalantly like that.” 

He smiles back at you with that crinkle in his eyes you love so much. Removing his hand from the back of your chair, he reaches out to grab the picture from you. He looks down at it with admiration. “I can already think of the pictures we could use,” he admits. “Like that one of you sleeping in the laundry basket. That one is cute.”

You giggle at his statement. “Okay,” you concede. “But only if we get to include the one where you are blowing bubbles with that weird pinwheel hat on.” 

He sets the picture down, ruffling your hair a bit. “I think someone has had one too many of these,” he teases, pushing your champagne glass further away from you. You roll your eyes at him. 

Jeno goes to say something once again, but is interrupted by a tap on his shoulder. He turns around to see your little cousin, her eyes pointed bashfully toward the floor and rocking on her heels. “Hello Aria,” he says, provoking her to actually look at him. “Whatcha need?”

She looks at you hesitantly before looking back toward your boyfriend. “Can you…dance with me, Jeno?” she whispers. The question has you realizing that the song has now switched to something slower, a few couples adorning the dance floor. How cute, you think to yourself. 

“Of course,” he responds, grinning down at the girl. Before she knows it, Jeno is scooping her up, carrying her to the dance floor. You can hear her giggles fade as they reach the other side of the room. 

Taking a breath, you look back toward the table, grabbing your champagne glass and another picture. Your moment of peace doesn’t last long though, because someone plops down in the seat next to you less than a minute later. When you look up, you spot your grandmother. “It’s a shame you didn’t participate in the bouquet toss. I was hoping you two would be next,” she taunts, looking pointedly at you. 

You set the items down, opting to run your hands over your face in embarrassment. “Ah, grandma!” you complain. “You know we don’t believe in superstitious stuff like that. We’ll get there in our own time.” 

She nods in understanding, but still smirks. Leaning closer to you, she begins to whisper. “You two would make me some beautiful grandbabies.” 

Now you’re really blushing. Thoughts of having a mini Jeno running around your grandmother’s house flash through your mind. You try your best to push them away. “Seriously, amma?” you exclaim, though there’s no malice in your voice. 

She points across the room. You follow her movements to find Jeno with a bright smile on his face, Aria twirling around in his arms. He reaches down to brush a strand of hair out of her face. You can’t help but gaze longingly at the scene, wishing that it was a daughter of your own. Your grandmother calls your name once more and you turn back to look at her. “If the next wedding I attend isn’t yours, that boy is getting a serious talk from me,” she says smugly. Without another word, she scoots back in her chair, walking back toward her own table. 

You steal a glance at the bride and groom’s table. They’re lightly making conversation, her head resting against his shoulder. His arm is wrapped around her shoulder with his hand hanging down to brush comforting strokes down her arm. Maybe that could be you and Jeno sometime soon.

Startled out of your thoughts once again, you see your boyfriend plop down next to you. Your cousin is nowhere to be found, likely back with her parents once again. “What were you and your grandma talking about?” he asks. 

“Just about how she thinks you and I should be the next ones to be married. Said that we would make beautiful grandbabies.” you say, repeating her words with your own smirk.

It’s Jeno’s turn to blush, looking down at the floor. “We would,” he admits with a shy smile.

[hey-august]

I'll Be Your Whatever - Story Hiatus

Description: Life is full of all sorts of characters - some who come and go, and others that stay. After propelling yourself into a lie you can't (won't) take back, a certain pirate captain may have a reason to come by more often. (Story tag)

Alrighty, I would very very much like to come back to this fic one day, but I truly do not know when that will happen. I think the outline I put together took away some of the drive to write the actual story, but I still want to SO BADLY.

So this story doesn't remain unfinished for however long, I'm going to share the outline I put together using beat sheets and story arcs.

Tag list: @rorywritesjunk @ane5e @venulus @misadventures0fdes You asked to be included in the tag list for the story, so I'm also tagging you here. I'm sorry for dropping the story and this hiatus, but I hope knowing that the ending exists brings some peace!

For reference: CB = Captain Buggy, MC = Main Character (aka, you, the reader!) WC: ~1.4k

As a recap of the story so far, MC tried to get 2 overly flirtatious guys off her back by saying a stranger passing by was her boyfriend. That stranger was Buggy, of course lol. Trying to stay low and play the part, MC and CB kiss. They joke about CB continuing to be a boyfriend and MC mentions having a treasure chest. A few days later, CB shows up at MCs place with flowers and saying he'll agree to be her boyfriend if she promises him the treasure map.

Chapter 4

They go on a mini date, as a way for them to talk about the agreement - they talk about the timeline and how long to "date." They decide to go get lunch.

Hot dog lunch. Hint at CBs favorite food.

CB blows kisses to MC while she’s in line.

Contract: 

Don’t tell the truth -  a deal’s a deal

MC pays for food

Compliments for Buggy

Hold hands

Kissing? We’ll figure it out if we need to

Buggy has to stop by whenever he’s in town

Buggy goes to the town festival - MC tries to convince CB to agree to go to a town festival in a few weeks or whatever, long enough for dudebros to lose interest. Offers a treasure map.

"If I’m being totally honest, that sounds like my worst nightmare."

MC stands up to someone who tries to insult Buggy’s nose. Fiery. They have to leave wherever they were. CB is impressed by her spunk.

B Story - CB inviting MC to visit the ship. 

At some point CB invites her, a shadow passes over her face, he asks if she really dislikes the idea that much.

MC feels stuck to the small town and guilt about her dad missing those kinds of experiences. She looks at Buggy's eyes and sees the draw of the ocean in them. Whatever enticed Buggy and her dad to love the sea, is reflected in his eyes.

Chapter 5

Fun and Games - coming to the weekend market

Oh yeah, no he said he wasn’t able to make it. But! CB shows up unexpectedly. YN blows him a kiss and he catches it.

CB gets into a scuffle at the weekend market.

Rowdy customer, "how about I pay you in kisses, pretty thing? No? Whatever, this shit isn’t even that good."

“no one gets to treat you like that, you hear me? no one.”

They eat fresh donuts, “oh you have to try these, they’re my favorite,” MC dabs some powdered sugar off the corner of his mouth.

Test of love trope! Conducted by a new jewelry shop. Start easy - eye color, fave food, feed each other, draw each other, blindfold and guess their partners hands, winners get matching bracelets. This is their first kiss.

CB putting the bracelet on MC "This means you’re mine. That’s what you wanted, right?" She gets A LOT of butterflies.

Walking back, the pictures they drew of each other blow away and fall into a tide pool. MC wading through water to get the drawings.

He made the day so special and she doesn’t want this to ruin it.

The drawing / picture she made isn’t that bad, he actually kinda likes it himself. So MC gives it to him. He becomes more enamored with it when she goes to save it from the water.

Nearby sailors / pirates laugh at MC in the water (lighthearted), she calls back that it’s not like they don’t get dirty treasure hunting.

CB gets butterflies from her insistence and calling the papers treasure.

Piggy back ride home? Slightly spicy. It was like their skin was calling out for the other's gentle touch.

Chapter 6

Fun and Games cont - MC said she would see CB off the next day but she doesn’t show up because she’s sick from the previous night.

CB comes by, sees that she’s okay but sick. 

He leaves for a moment and comes back with some stuff to help her feel better. He also postponed shipping off until the next day.

She bashfully asks if he’ll stay a little longer. He stays until she falls asleep.

MC calls him pretty boy and he hecking likes it.

She wakes up the next day to a note telling her that he won’t be in the area for a while.

Chapter 7

Mini scene, MC notices that the dudebros seem to have moved on. They asked for a double/triple date, but MC deflects bc who knows when CB will be in town.

MC mentions this to CB in passing.

Midpoint - Next time, MC visits CBs ship. It’s a good visit. Overall a positive experience. There is some real-ness to life aboard the ship.

Cabaji shows unicycling, meet Mohji and Richie, CB shows off knife throwing (maybe a contest between him and Cabaji, CB wins and Cabaji says at least he’s better at unicycling)

Buggy helps rig the new sails

Pirates swap stories. Talking about what it was like adjusting to life on the ship, but how amazing it is. All the sights and experiences. She has stars in her eyes while listening. Her mind sketching images of what’s being described. She’s even comfortable talking about her dad.

How do you tell your fake bf that you're nervous near him because you're starting to fall for him?

MC likes seeing CBs swagger and how his crew adores him. CB puts his hand on her shoulder and kneads.

She stays overnight (one bed), CB doesn’t sleep.

Chapter 8

Bad Guys Close In - As MC leaves, she’s accosted by pirate thugs, who notice she’s been hanging around CB.

Maybe they think she’s a sex worker? Sugar baby? She tries to say that’s not it, then they think she must be something more special. They could probably get a ransom.

Chop chop Buggy comes in to save the day. Or CB throws a knife, trapping them. CB walks her back home, tries to make it seem light hearted, doesn’t want MC to be too afraid.

MC is a bit unphased since pirates are always visiting.

MC kisses CB goodbye on the cheek. “Could you try that again?” “Better?” “Yeah…”

Chapter 9

All is Lost - Break up because CB is afraid MC will become a target. CB breaks up with YN, afraid of putting her in danger.

Even though CB dealt with those other pirates, that doesn’t mean there won’t be others 

He doesn’t want to put her in danger any longer. Besides, the guys she was avoiding seem to have moved on.

MC asks if he found someone else, something more fun, feels cruel because they don't really think that's what's happening.

I guess my expectations were too high.

Dark of the Night - MC storms back and hands off the map. "A deal’s a deal and I don’t want to be in debt to a pirate."

Wrapped around the map is her bracelet.

Chapter 10

Dark of the Night - Why does CB change his mind? - He reads a letter on the back of the map and realizes he should give it back to MC.

Break into Three - CB's waiting for her at the party. A deal’s a deal. He also gives back the map and leaves.

MC probably talking with the art shop owner:"He likes you, I can tell by how he looks at you." "How does he look at me?"

"You think he's really waiting for me?"

Finale - MC reads the note on the map and runs to the dock for CB. 

Note, from dad: “My dearest seashell, I thought being a pirate was how I could see the world, but then you came along and I saw the world through your eyes. Thank you for giving me the greatest gift anyone could ask for. I hope that one day, you find your key to the world.”

CBs not there? He’s by the wading pools, looking at the moon and drinking alone.

CB moping

How long do you think it’ll take for this to become a memory? Do you think you’ll forget about me?

They wanted to be touched, to be missed, to be loved. Was that too much to ask for?

He’s wearing both bracelets.

"Why did you come back?" "Because that belongs to you, it has your name on it."

"Bullshit, Buggy. You’re a pirate. A treasure hunter. Why did you really come back?"

"Why do you think?"

"You actually wanted to go to the festival?"

"That’s not what I want."

Anguished declaration of love - confessing love during a moment of angst

"I don’t want to stay here anymore. I want to leave. I want to draw the world you see."

MC is steadfast and waits for Buggy to respond. “I want that too.”

Big romantic kiss

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Do you want to?"

"Yes, you have no idea how much I've thought about this."

[cellarspider]

30/30 One last thing.

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We have come to the end of Prometheus. But depending on how you’re feeling about death of the author right now, it’s not. Not quite yet.

Because Ridley Scott had some things to say after Prometheus came out.

Two months after the movie's release, Ridley Scott gave an interview. Its original home has succumbed to link rot, but it’s still available in a couple places, in the Internet Archive and within the corporate acquisition mass that is Fandango, featuring a weird note of brand revisionism in the relabeling of the interviewer’s affiliation.

Now. Let’s begin by saying this: A movie is a movie. The things around a movie are not the movie. This seems obvious, but it’s to say that a single creative work can be viewed entirely free of outside context, and in most cases it’s best to assume that it will. If a director comes out later and tells people what their intent was, then that’s not part of the movie.

…But it can still sit in your brain for years, leaping out to ambush unsuspecting passers-by.

So! This interview. Ohhh, this interview. I’d forgotten most of it, because the final lines of it just knocked the top of my head clean off, so we’ll be discovering bits of this together.

We start from the end of the movie, with the interviewer asking about the openness of the ending to a sequel. Scott, among other things, said:

“I’d love to explore where the hell [Dr. Shaw] goes next and what does she do when she gets there, because if it is paradise, paradise can not be what you think it is. Paradise has a connotation of being extremely sinister and ominous.”

This came across well in the movie, though it was festooned with the random bit of organic bigotry from Shaw toward David. A short answer won’t capture everything, so I still have no idea if Scott intended for that to be so brayingly insensitive, this is the guy who was fine with Joel Edgerton as Ramses II. In any case, Paradise might be ominous, but Shaw’s not bringing along ideas that will improve it by any means.

This isn’t really the film we eventually got from Alien: Covenant. Is that bad? Honestly, I don’t know that either. Shaw as a character did not have a lot of depth in this movie. Noomi Rapace ended up playing her hurt very well by the end of it, but if that’s your standard of quality in horror acting, then Josh Stewart’s leading role in the grungy Saw-adjacent movie The Collector (2009) will serve you well.

I think they could have built something out of her character, but they didn’t. David is definitely the stand-out character from Prometheus, and they do at least focus on him quite a lot. But I’ve yet to watch Covenant, partly because the structure of it does not interest me. Also, because I’ve heard about what David does when he shows up on the new planet, and bad things happening to crowds are one thing that can make my brain wig out something awful.

Speaking of the Engineers, Scott speaks about their character:

“they’re such aggressive f**kers … and who wouldn’t describe them that way, considering their brilliance in making dreadful devices and weapons that would make our chemical warfare look ridiculous? So I always had it in there that the God-like creature that you will see actually is not so nice, and is certainly not God.” 

Again, we find ourselves at the casual gnosticism of the movie, in which the Engineers are kind of the demiurge in this context. Some christian-influenced people assume that if there is a true god, it must be omnibenevolent, and find the violent and threatening behavior depicted in the Old Testament to be at odds with their understanding of divinity. A lack of benevolence is seen as a sign that the figure depicted must be something else, something that may think that it is a god, but it is not truly, regardless of its role as a creator. Hence, the gnostic idea of the demiurge.

But Scott also seems to confirm my suspicion that he’s not aware he’s recreating gnostic cosmogony through Prometheus, because he doesn’t reach for any of the older sources or the language around him. He instead invokes a rather surface reading of Paradise Lost:

“ In a funny kind of way, if you look at the Engineers, they’re tall and elegant … they are dark angels. If you look at [John Milton’s] Paradise Lost, the guys who have the best time in the story are the dark angels, not God. He goes to all the best nightclubs, he’s better looking, and he gets all of the birds. [Laughs]”

Setting aside the fact that Paradise Lost ends with all the fallen angels having a bad time because God’s turned them into snakes, I will give Scott the tiniest bit of credit, there’s a bit of my brain that saw this and thought “this is a strong start”:

Scott eventually continues on the Engineers, and the sacrifice scene at the start:

“That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself.  If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.”

Scott is misremembering some things here, which is understandable given the off-the-cuff nature of the remark, but it’s still worth correcting. This is a misattribution of Aztec rituals that would involve the sacrifice of a “teixiptla” representative of a god (such as Xipe Totec, Tezcatlipoca, etc). The Inca didn’t carry out this ritual–they did engage in a human sacrifice ritual called qhapaq hucha, but its form and function was not the same. The Classical Maya also engaged in different human sacrifice rituals, but there was also an emphasis on non-fatal self-administered bloodletting–Maya nobility in particular were often depicted shedding their own blood for this purpose.

This also, to my memory, conflates stories of european human sacrifice rituals, where crop failures are sometimes linked to the sacrifice of kings, such as Dómaldr in the Ynglinga saga, and noted in the placement and treatment of certain bog bodies. The Aztecs did sacrifice to the god Tláloc for crop for good harvests, but the rituals involved were quite different.

It should be noted, of course, that Tláloc was later syncretized with the Christian god during the Spanish conquest, likely as a result of conceptually linking Tláloc’s sacrifices to the demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac. And, y’know, that conquest was concurrent with the Spanish Inquisition, and the wider religious belief that a heretical witch army was being organized by Satan to stand against God to forestall the Second Coming of Christ, with crop failures being the most feared result of their rituals.

I’ve added all these details not because I want to say Scott is bad for misattributing this stuff, people make mistakes. I have several hours’ access to the internet, Scott did not. However, it is worth noting: How we frame an idea can say a lot about how we conceive of it. Variations on these behaviors are found throughout history, and across cultures. Sacrifices and martyrs are powerful symbols still invoked in western culture today. There’s a potential wandering back and forth between appreciation and exoticization that Scott’s engaging in.

Then Scott says something that made me get up from my chair to find a book to shake at my computer.

“I always think about how often we attribute what has happened to either our invention or memory. A lot of ideas evolve from past histories, but when you look so far back, you wonder, Really? Is there really a connection there?”

Yes.

Yes there is. Ancient peoples weren’t stupid. Ancient peoples didn’t even necessarily have less information to work with than any one modern human, they just had different information that kept them alive and finding solutions to their problems, be it “I need to find food” or “how do I meaningfully participate in my culture’s artistic and governmental traditions, and should they even be followed at all?”

If you want a great and thorough examination of that, check out the book I gesticulated with.

Highly recommended. Graeber was an anthropologist and Wengrow is an archaeologist, and the two of them together are a force to be reckoned with. There are definitely subjects covered in this book that I’ve seen from different angles before, and I feel like their interpretation pulls in more context than I’d gotten previously. Especially pertinent to this, the first part of The Dawn of Everything is spent examining the origins of modern western thought on “primitive” cultures and their character and capacity, and then digging into what evidence we actually have on the subject.

But the movie does not, fundamentally, engage with cultures outside of westernized, christian thinking. Not to any serious extent, anyway. It has a certain worldview, and that’s fine. That can be explored intelligently, although we’ve seen that I think it squanders that chance. It’s fundamentally a christian-centric movie.

And despite Scott’s protestations in the interview that they toned it down, quite a few readers have already guessed how far Scott originally intended to go on that.

“But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, “Lets’ send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.” Guess what? They crucified him.”

Yes. Jesus of Nazareth was actually Jesus of Space.

This is why the movie says the Engineer corpse died about 2000 years ago. This is why they decided to destroy humanity. 

Presumably the original quote on the cross was “Father, forgive them, for they know not that we’ve got deadly black goo.” Engineer 23:34, I guess.

Now that the screams in the audience have hopefully settled down, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

Alright. So, this is bad. Let’s break down why, beyond the obvious questions about “why does nobody ever draw Jesus as bald, huge, and ripped.”

There’s a fake script circulating that actually has a decent interpretation of this: a human kid got zwooped up to be taught the ways of the Engineers, and sent back as an emissary. Why? Dunno. Also apparently the gospels that mention Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt with the baby Jesus were off the mark by a few lightyears.

This is laughable to christians, because “what if Jesus was an alien” is the sort of thing that twelve year olds come up with. It’s offensive if it’s taken seriously, because it says their literal god was actually a mortal critter from outer space. Ha! Your god is not all-powerful, or all-good. He’s not even All-Might.

But you know what’s almost worse? It implies that, sure, Christianity isn’t the inspired word of a deity. It also implies some level of exclusive factual accuracy to Jesus’ teachings, not shared with other religions. Jesus was a celestial emissary, endowed with the teachings that could save humanity, and his death doomed the Earth to the Last Judgment.

The Torah is insufficient, and all Rabbinic literature was produced following the rejection of the true way to salvation. The enlightenment of the Buddha counted for nothing, the Dao is not the way, Vishnu cannot defend or restore dharma, the Prophet Muhammad is only so valid as his acknowledgment of the Prophet Īsā ibn Maryam. 

All other faiths are superfluous under this premise. If people had just listened to Jesus and accepted him as their savior, everything would’ve been fine!

This is the one point of alien contact with western canon in the entire setting, after the deep prehistory of Skye. Every other literate culture that was contacted got the Engineers’ message wrong. Or they didn’t listen. Only christians got it right.

That’s incalculably bad. That’s not even counting the fact that the wall o’ artifacts that Shaw and Holloway presented included a notable oversight: the only two artifacts further from Europe than the Middle East are chronologically impossible, based on the movie’s own timeline. It implies the rest of the world was thrown in as an afterthought.

This whole Jesus thing is a piece, a big, jagged piece of why this movie drives me so far up the wall that I’m now residing on the ceiling. It’s not, as far as I can tell, actively malicious. It’s just dumb. It wasn’t thought through the way it should’ve been. If they wanted to do a movie like this, they should’ve gone all-in. Really dig into the implications of what they’ve done. 

And the movie seems wholly ignorant of it. There are basic questions presented to the audience, but there’s no deeper consideration that could make this respectful to anybody.

So, what are we left with?

A mess. A beautiful, stunted, confused mess that was poorly served by its script and lack of conviction.

The movie turned away from asking big questions, and focused instead on traditional horror. A genre that works best with good characterization to drive audience investment, but then it cut out most of the characterization, and what it left was scattershot. It gave us a flashback of Shaw’s childhood before we’d even really met her to understand why it was meaningful for her. The movie then failed to add any emotional weight to her.

The movie failed to give us characters with emotional weight or intelligence. It gave us a single, compelling character in David, driven largely by Michael Fassbender’s delivery and physical performance. It gave us a tactile, carefully constructed setting that was beautiful and often an accomplishment in filmmaking craft, but these spaces remained emotionally empty without a story that gave them meaning. It gave us the potential of something new, and then retreated to imitate the old.

I went into the theater in 2012 looking forward to a good film. I suppose this one has stuck with me more than a good film would have, but its primary value is as a flawed thing to critique, to learn from, and to put tooth marks on when the frustration gets to be too much.

Prometheus got one sort-of sequel in Alien: Covenant (2017), and it seems to have been abandoned. The first trailer for Alien: Romulus just came out the day I’m writing this, and it looks like it’s going to be just a monster movie.

If you want a good, modern Alien, play or watch Alien: Isolation (2014). Apparently its content was recut into a web series in 2019, though I can’t speak to the quality of that. For now, I’m done with the series. I’m not going to be rushing out to see anything new, because I don’t think it’s doing anything new. Prometheus could’ve been a chance to do that, but it failed.

Still. Writing this was fun, I will admit. My weird little obsession with this movie turned into a month and a half of writing and prepping this thing, totaling–Jesus E. Christ, over 82,000 words. I wish it could’ve been about something that hid more intellectual heft or careful thought than Prometheus did, but hey! There’s always next time.

And there will in all likelihood be a next time, as I’ve already started on another document. It won’t be for quite a while, though. This was a lot of fun, but a lot of work as well. I’ll be taking a break, and only releasing more stuff once I have it fully written ahead of time, as opposed to how I handled this one.

Thank you, brave readers, for making it this far. 

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Citations for alt-text rambles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%932024_Sundhn%C3%BAkur_eruptions#Eruptions

https://tubitv.com/movies/314320/the-collector 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dettifoss 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Magliabechiano 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollund_Man 

https://youtu.be/nT2ueyFrVgk 

https://www.deviantart.com/pretty--kittie/art/Prometheus-Engineer-407316113 

https://nebula.tv/videos/hellofutureme-is-netflixs-avatar-any-good 

Overflow Ramble 1

Hey, does anyone else remember Stephen Speilberg’s War of the Worlds (2005)? I saw that in the theater, and I cannot watch that thing again. Yes, I was younger, but the overall content of that movie absolutely shredded my nerves to pieces. Even though I’d grown up knowing the full H G Wells story and reading things like The Tripods book series as a kid, Spielberg managed to make a movie that felt so viscerally unpleasant to me that it gave me nightmares for years.

My main theory is this: You know in movies that the protagonist is almost certainly going to survive what happens, doubly so in War of the Worlds because it was goddamn Tom Cruise. But my brain did not treat Tom Cruise as my viewpoint character. Something in me says “well, I’m not Tom Cruise, I’m one of those other people around him, and they’re all gonna die horribly.” 

This tends to happen with me in disaster films and similar stuff like that. I have to be real certain I want to be there if I watch a kaiju movie, for example. I can do Godzilla (2014), but I’m not so sure about Godzilla Minus One (2023). Shin Godzilla (2016) is off the table.

Horror movies have to hit a balance of giving people a rickety feeling of potential safety they want to preserve, rather than letting them feel too safe or too screwed. Too far either way and you lose people, either to apathy or just pure bad vibes. The paradox of enjoyable horror is that it can’t scare you too much.

Overflow Ramble 2

I personally don’t think the tone of Fede Álvarez’s horror fits with what I’m looking for in an Alien movie. The xenomorph life cycle worked best and most subversively when it was deliberately targeted, to take the sexual/reproductive menace usually placed on female characters in horror and forced it onto a male character instead. Álvarez has historically played that trope straight instead. From a horror perspective, that’s boring to me. The xenomorphs also appear to be aggressive monsters here rather than animals, more like Aliens than Alien. Not my favorite interpretation.

And to be honest, when I saw the trailer, my first thought was “Oh, it’s Sevastopol Station.” The setting looks exactly like Alien: Isolation, and there’s not a chance the movie’s going to outshine Isolation. That game’s only narrative sin was a bit of slow pacing toward the ending. Romulus’ trailer makes me think it’s going to go too far in the other direction.

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[kibblbread]

TRANSFORMERS ONE FANFIC IDEA INCOMING!

Yeah it’s optimus x megatron, sorry not sorry i want to explore their relationship as lovers instead of friends/brothers because I’m a hopeless romantic although i may or may not do that eventually too???

Anyway this fic is being dubbed the Transformers one alternate timeline fic! You can look at the basic premise by clicking the embed link 🔗

You can call it whatever you want the nickname is mostly for me lol

Anyway here is more headcanons and basic outlining for my writing if anyone is interested. I know what its like to be in a small fandom with hardly any fic content for your personal otp 🙃 cries in redhood fandom

So lowkey I want there to be roles within the relationship, I just don’t want to type cast or define either Megatron or Optimus by assigning Top & Bottom. Like people they’re complex and often switch in accordance to what the other needs.

I noticed D16 throughout the movie was a bit more easily stressed and anxious while Orion usually tried to stay more level and optimistic. Pax truly is a good leader. However D16 definitely is also very capable of taking charge, especially when he starts getting fed up with a specific circumstance cough, cough. D16 is very emotional though, and allows that to fuel his motivation and in turn his actions as well.

In my fic I plan to make alt Megatron emotional too! He’s protective and a bit impatient but he’s happy with routine and the mundane of everyday. Also still a nerd and is actually very kind/gentle to not only Optimus but the citizens! Well, outside of the gladiator ring at least.. Megatron never truly gets used to younger bots idolizing him like he does a past Prime. Yes he does become a gladiator, kinda like in the tfp continuity but in this timeline he is still leader of the high-guard as it operates under Optimus Prime’s will. Think basically Cybertron’s army for lack of better terms!

Optimus does his best to be hands on as possible but thats kinda difficult as he is essentially Cybertrons assigned leader and protector. Most operations under his own orders go without the bot ever truly getting to be involved. However, he still takes just about any scrap of time he can to spend with Megatron. It’s pretty obvious to anyone that sees them interact that they’re whipped for one another lol.

Some kinda pivotal moments (spoilers ig??? They’re not too bad though i hope) 🤞🏾

A proposal from Optimus to alt Megatron. It’s pretty early in the fic, and will probably be after I’ve set the stage and done some world building.

Alt Megatron taking on an aircraft form for his transformation! It was just easier for him while leading High-Guard operations but his size, lol, the difference between them is so cute. I’m gonna have so much fun writing

Sentinel being marched through the mines like Megatron originally set out to do. Optimus wasn’t exactly happy about it but never questioned or interfered despite Sentinel’s pleading

Both Megatron’s being partial to holding grudges and indulging in rage. Although alt Megatron has trouble controlling other emotions as well, his mood is contagious for better and worse tbh. Both versions of their auras are captivating and fill any room no matter how big.

Canon Megatron trying to kill alt Optimus on sight because that boy ready to square up 🤭

Shockwave figuring out the switch situation and switching things back without even consulting anyone, spoiler alert — he fucks up

Megatron being disgustingly cute with either Optimus in either timeline because he’s dangerously persuasive and sincere

Yeah that’s really all i got for now. It’s very otp centric but obviously Ill flesh out the others to an extent later.. or not idk if I’ll complete this project or not. But it’s maybe gonna be around 10-15 chapters???

Wish me luck and we’ll see how it goes 😝

[missywritesfor7]

❤️‍🩹Lifeline | MYG❤️‍🩹

Synopsis: It’s long been controversial for idols to date, but idols dating each other can be really beautiful or a complete nightmare. When Yoongi's relationship with another idol is discovered, he decides maybe it’s time to break the taboo and show people it’s ok for idols to date. Instead, they find themselves caught in the midst of one media frenzy after another and struggle to keep their relationship as strong as it had been the past 2 years. Yoongi finds a self destructive way to cope, and it causes even more problems than it solves. As they fight for their relationship and their careers, they discover that sometimes, the only way to truly be free is to let go.

Pairing: idol!Yoongi x idol!OC

Warnings: nsfw, alcoholism, cheating, depression, anxiety, Yoongi goes through a bisexy ho phase, Yoongi is also in his alcoholic phase, post-military BTS

Previous chapter | Next chapter | Masterlist

Ch 35: Comeback

The guys hit the ground running as soon as their album is officially released to the world. They have a busy week of promoting which ends with their concert in Seoul. Two days later they’ll be on a flight to New York to kick off the first leg of their tour. Yoongi is excited and buzzing from a constant stream of caffeine. Hyeri is also excited because for the first time since she and Yoongi have been together she can finally attend one of their shows. Before he left for rehearsal he swept her off of her feet and gave her a passionate kiss then bounced out the door looking forward to seeing her face in the crowd later that night.

Before the show, Hyeri meets up with Yoongi’s parents and brother who are in town to see the show. They previously told Yoongi they weren’t sure they’d be able to be there, but with a little help from Hyeri they were able to make it happen. Yoongi has no idea, so their attendance will be a surprise when he finds Hyeri in the crowd and sees the rest of his family there next to her.

Being backstage before the show starts to make Yoongi realize just how much he had been relying on alcohol in the past. He found himself wandering around restlessly trying to figure out what to do with himself. In the past he’d simply have a drink, or a few, and somehow that was enough to pass the time. Now he’s sitting on the couch staring at the wall wondering what brand of paint was used.

“Hyung,” Namjoon says coming over and taking a seat next to Yoongi. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” Yoongi nods. Internally he breathes a sigh of relief thanking Namjoon for coming over and saving him from the standstill of time. “I’m just ready to get out there.”

“Yeah me too. I saw the mic Rainbow got you. You think anyone will notice it’s from her?” Namjoon jokes.

“Not unless you’ve been talking,” Yoongi chuckles.

“Of course not,” Namjoon smiles. “Your secret is safe as long as you want it to be.”

“Right,” he says returning a smile. “I’m not sure how much longer that will be though.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Yoongi sighs. “One minute I’m ready to tell everything, and the next I’m doubting myself. What if it causes problems for the rest of you? I can’t do anything to cause that.”

“Hyung we’re not kids anymore.” Namjoon looks at Yoongi with empathy. “We’ve dealt with worse and made it through. We want you to be happy, that’s all. If you want to announce it then we’ll support you the same as always.”

“Thanks, leader,” Yoongi chuckles. “What about Hyeri though? I don’t want this to ruin her.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine too. At this point I don’t think revealing this would be as bad as a lot of the other things that have gone around about her. If you both are really serious then you’ll have to do it eventually, right?”

“I know. She just seems to be on the fence still. One minute she’s excited about finally letting this secret go and the next she seems hesitant like she’s not sure. That’s why I’m so unsure.”

“See how she feels once the tour is over.”

Namjoon knows why Hyeri would be hesitant, the same reason he and the rest of the guys have been silently anxious about the tour. Trust takes time and if the tour goes smoothly without incident then the guys will no doubt feel much more at ease. Namjoon can only guess that Hyeri feels the same. Yoongi may have been clean and faithful so far, but the tour, the world tour will be the real test of Yoongi’s recovery.

Yoongi is no fool, he fully understands why Namjoon suggested he wait until after the tour. Hyeri knows her drama is set to premiere during the tour so she’s using that as her deadline. In her mind she truly wants to be free of this stupid secret that has caused so much heartache and pain, but she needs to feel like she can trust him just a little bit more before she finally throws caution to the wind.

Yoongi has been determined to prove himself since the moment he returned home from his 2 months in the woods. He’s trying to be patient, but it’s getting harder as each day passes. He wants to go out with her and love her openly without having to hide all the time. He typically doesn’t give much of his personal life away to the public, but he loves her so much that he can no longer contain it.

As if he weren’t already feeling impatient, during the first break during the concert that night when they all introduce themselves, he looks up and sees Hyeri. It’s as if she’s glowing like the brightest star in the sky. He’s ready to scream his love through the custom made microphone she gifted him in front of the entire crowd, but then he sees his mom sitting next to her. And his dad. And his brother. He bites his lip trying to remain composed. It’s much too early for him to start crying at the sight of his family in the crowd. His family he didn’t think was coming. His family and Hyeri. Hyeri is his family. His family.

By the time they reach their final ments at the end of the show, he’s about to burst at the seams. During his ment he wanted to tell everyone then, but he was able to refrain. Instead he mentioned that his family is in attendance and gave a very shy yet bold “I love you” to them making the crowd roar with endearment. Hyeri knows that was for her. He rarely expresses his love to his family openly and directly in such a way. Especially not in front of a stadium full of people. She smiles rubbing the necklace he bought her that’s draped around her neck and he smiles back.

The guys finish their last but not last song then head backstage to prepare for their encore set. So far the show has been incredible. Everyone is full of energy from the electric crowd and Yoongi is undoubtedly enthusiastic knowing Hyeri and his family are there. As he watches the screen backstage it seems the camera found Hyeri, and now everyone else in the crowd is just as enthusiastic as he is. She bows and waves shyly at the cheering crowd before the camera cuts to a few other celebrities in attendance. Yoongi has the biggest smile on his face when they make their way back to the stage.

Hyeri enjoyed herself more than she thought she would. This isn’t just her first time getting to see Yoongi in concert, but her first time seeing the whole group in concert. She was impressed and proud of them all, but especially her big brother Namjoon, and completely smitten and swept away by Yoongi. He looked happy and healthy and in his right mind. It’s such a relief for her.

After the show a staff member ushers Hyeri and Yoongi’s family backstage where the guys are greeting their other friends who were in attendance. With so many cameras backstage for various behind the scenes videos, Yoongi silently nods at Hyeri to follow him into another room. He can’t embrace her with so many cameras around, but he can’t contain himself either. He just wants to hug her and kiss her right now. As soon as they enter the room he shuts the door and pulls Hyeri into a close embrace.

“You don’t know how happy I am to see you,” he says giving her a long kiss.

“Your family is here too,” she chuckles returning his kiss.

“You’re my family too,” he smiles. “I’m happy to see all of you.”

“You were great out there. I’m really proud of you, Yoongi.”

“What?” He says suddenly feeling shy. “Why are you being so formal.”

“I’m not,” she laughs. “I guess it’s just habit whenever we’re not at home.”

“Right,” he says feeling that much closer to going out and kissing her in front of every camera and being over and done with this hiding. “How much longer until that changes?” He asks resting his forehead against hers.

“I told you-“

“I know what you told me.” He gives her a desperate kiss. “I know, Hyeri, but this is so hard.”

“You don’t think it’s hard for me too?” She asks returning his desperate kiss with one of her own.

“Sometimes I can’t tell.” He kisses her again and again pushing her backwards with each one until she’s pressed into the table against the wall.

“I need to know I can trust you,” she says linking her arms around his neck and connecting her lips to his once again. “I love you so fucking much,” she exasperates between kisses. “But I need to be able to trust you, Yoongi. That’s the hard part.” At this point she’s having a hard time speaking because they keep taking turns claiming each other’s tongues. The passion that had been building up all night is overflowing and neither of them can seem to stop it.

“I swear,” he says feeling more out of breath now from arousal than he felt during the entire concert. “I will prove you can trust me. I promise. You mean the world to me, I’ll never fuck that up again. I love you so fucking much.” Hyeri isn’t able to respond because their mouths collide once more and remain connected as they taste and feel the familiar newness of each other. His fingers grip her hips and her fingers find their way to his hair and give a light tug.

“I love you too,” she exhales into his mouth before sealing her words with another kiss. He’s got her nearly completely on top of the table and isn’t letting up.

Yoongi is bursting with vigor at the moment. With the great show and his loved ones in attendance, he can’t help himself. His fingers slide their way under her shirt and she sucks in a sharp breath from the chill of his touch on her back.

“Where’s Yoongi?” Someone can be heard asking outside the door. Yoongi and Hyeri slowly disconnect from one another hating the ill timed distraction for pulling them out of their bliss.

“You should go out there,” Hyeri says.

“Yeah I guess so,” he sighs. “Will you be awake when I get home?”

“I’ll make sure of it,” she smiles. “Go talk to your family and give the fans their behind the scenes content.”

“I’ll do that,” he chuckles.

He slowly and reluctantly walks out of the room into the backstage chaos of cameras, staff, guests, and for some reason a ferret. He greets everyone and as the majority of them are occupied, Hyeri slips out of the room and heads for the exit. She briefly makes eye contact with Namjoon across the room and gives him a nod and an apologetic look. She wanted to talk to him and congratulate him on a great show, but there’s far too many people pining for his attention. Namjoon simply nods back with a flash of his dimples and Hyeri takes off for the exit to head home.

Yoongi chatted with his family a bit, took photos for multiple outlets and social posts, and recorded a few group videos for YouTube. Afterwards they all go their separate ways until they meet up again for their flight in a couple of days.

Yoongi is delighted to see Hyeri is still awake just as she said she’d be when he gets home. He quickly washes up and crawls into bed next to her and wraps his arms around her tightly.

“I’m so glad you all came tonight,” Yoongi says kissing Hyeri’s forehead. “You gave me so much energy tonight.”

“Me or the 50 cups of coffee you drank?” She asks. When she returned home there was a package at their doorstep that contained many packs of instant coffee. Yoongi purchased them in bulk to take with him on tour. He completely forgot to mention it to Hyeri but he didn’t think it would be an issue.

“50?” He scoffs. “I only had 4 cups.”

“With how many espresso shots?”

“Irrelevant,” he chuckles.

“Very relevant,” she laughs. “I don’t want your heart to explode or something before you make it back to me.”

“I’m fine.”

“I mean it,” she says tapping his chest. “I’m happy you found something that gives you energy, I just worry about you. Your package was delivered and there’s enough coffee in there to last a year.”

“I want to make sure I don’t run out,” he shrugs.

“Babe,” she chuckles. “Be honest with me.”

“Always.”

“It’s something else, isn’t it?” She softly asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Has coffee…” she hesitates, but if she doesn’t get it out it’s only going to eat at her more once he’s on the road. “Become your new alcohol?” She gently caresses his cheek hoping that her question doesn’t cause him to shut down or feel attacked. “What’s on your mind?”

Yoongi tries to think of an answer, but he doesn’t have one that will keep him from having to admit how afraid he is. The fact that he’s been progressively drinking more and more coffee as a substitute for his previous addiction never crossed his mind, but with Hyeri’s question he immediately realized that’s what he had been doing.

“I’m-“ he hesitates. “I guess I’m scared.”

“Of what?” She asks feeling the pain in his admission.

“Everything. I feel like there’s so much riding on this comeback and tour that it needs to be perfect. My career, my relationships, everything is going to be impacted if I fuck this up and Hyeri I’m so fucking scared of fucking up.”

“How could you fuck up?” She asks. “I know you’re trying your best, I can see that. As long as you keep doing that then there’s no way you can fuck anything up.”

“I feel like I’ll find a way somehow. This tour, it’s…the last one was so bad, I have so much to make up for. To you, the guys, the fans, all of you.”

“But you’re not alone this time,” she says gently. “You don’t have to suffer in silence, we all are here to support you. All you have to do is talk to us. Be honest, babe.”

“You…” his voice gets caught behind the knot forming in his throat.

“I know I let you down last time when I wasn’t speaking to you,” she continues. “And I’ll always be sorry for making you feel alone when you really needed someone. I promise I won’t do that again. But this time will be different because as long as you’re honest with me and I’m honest with you we can still support each other no matter how far apart we are.”

Yoongi nods still unable to make a sound. He feels silly for not talking to her about his fears sooner. He’d only spoken to Minho about these things, but talking to Hyeri and hearing her words of support is exactly the type of reassurance he needs. He pulls her into a tighter embrace and takes a deep breath releasing his anxieties through his exhale.

“I love you so much,” he whispers.

[2manythoughtz]

Damon Vs Stefan, But They’re Both Toxic

One of the most popular debates on the internet ever since the first season aired is: which Salvatore brother is the best love interest? But is it really up for discussion?

(before reading, this is only my opinion based on my knowledge of the series, I'm not trying to hate on the characters or the series)

Most movies and series have their fanbases discussing many topics which can lead to real divisions among fans. The hottest topic you can ever discuss with another fan is probably what’s the best ship (romantic couple) or love interest.

The biggest example is probably the Twilight Saga which has people still arguing whether the best love interest is Edward or Jacob.

Speaking of supernatural romance, The Vampire Diaries is still to this day one of the most popular TV series, with eight seasons and two spin-offs, it quickly became revolutionary.

Seeing how people still talk about it, I wanted to compare the Salvatore brothers and explain why they’re both terrible choices. To do so, I will focus on both of them singularly so that, even if you haven’t seen the series or you don’t remember it that well, you can understand my point of view.

Stefan

I’ve seen so many people arguing that Stefan is the best love interest because he’s “the good one” and his love for the protagonist, Elena Gilbert, is so pure. 

While I can see why one would think that he’s not as “evil” as his brother, I wouldn’t say that he is good. In fact, I think he’s just as bad as Damon on so many levels.

But let’s take it from the start. We meet Stefan immediately in the first episode, he’s portrayed as this mysterious, good-looking and emotionally unavailable guy who was extremely acclaimed in every 00s movie. He’s enrolling in the same High School as Elena, and we can see right there that he’s not like any other boy in that school.

In fact, he’s a vampire and he’s decided to study there just to meet Elena. Why, you would ask. Well, because Elena looks exactly like Stefan’s old lover Katherine. Funnily enough, a few seasons later we find out that Stefan never truly loved Katherine, they had their share of fun and he cared for her, but once he realized what she had done to him, he immediately resented her. 

Elena and Stefan fall in love and they help each other whenever something goes wrong, which happens very frequently. Because of that, they get separated and their love slowly fades away as they break up after a year together. 

Elena gets with Damon, but we’ll talk about that later, and Stefan has some up and downs before falling in love with Caroline. Their relationship is peculiar in a way, at first they both push each other away, then get together, then push each other away again and then get back together again. 

Spoiler alert: Stefan dies in the end as he decides that he wants to sacrifice himself to help Elena and Damon live a happy life together as they wanted. 

So, as you can see, he seems like a very gentle and honorable guy, but there’s more to be said about him. 

Stefan is a ripper, he can’t control himself around blood and ends up losing his humanity as he slaughters and eats every human along his path. He’s known for killing entire villages, spreading chaos and fear. Sure, one might excuse him because later on it’s revealed that he got that gene from his mother. 

But let’s put it this way. For Stefan blood is like alcohol for an alcoholic, they may not know what they’re doing when they’re drunk but that still doesn’t excuse their actions, the same goes for our vampire. 

Stefan is a hot mess as a vampire, he’s a ticking bomb and only has two regimes: he either feeds on animals, which results in him being way too weak, or he drinks blood and goes crazy.

Not to mention, the young Salvatore isn’t exactly an angel. He’s done many wrongdoings throughout the series but they’ve all been forgiven just because he’s Stefan and everyone likes him, only in the last season he finally realises everything that he has done once he becomes human, a big foreshadowing of his death in the end. 

He’s still manipulated and killed people because they were getting in his way, but maybe that doesn’t really count as toxic seeing as most characters in TVD do so without any problem. 

So let’s talk about his attitude throughout the 8 seasons. Stefan has had a few love interests after Elena broke up with him, that wasn’t necessarily his fault since he had been compelled by Niklaus to turn off his humanity, but even after regaining his humanity, he seems off and distant. 

After Elena, Stefan is confused and doesn’t really know what to do. But just as he was about to get over her, his brother gets sucked into another dimension (so much happens in TVD, so I hope you can keep up with me) and he decides to just leave everything behind and get a new life and a new girlfriend.

That doesn’t go too well since the girl dies soon after, he was never really into her and never opened up about anything with her. 

So later on he realizes that he’s in love with Caroline, what a surprise, but the two of them cannot be together yet. Once they actually become a thing (it takes a while), Stefan’s first love appears and Caroline is very jealous.

Does that stop Stefan from running away with his first love and having a relationship with her as soon as he’s in danger? Nope, he does leave Caroline without saying anything and spends years with his first lover. 

Not to mention, as soon as he gets back in town he gets dumped by the girl and he goes back to Caroline. She accepts but tells him that he can’t run away from her anymore.

He kind of runs away again? He proposes to her but he’s also wanted by the Devil to work for him, so he turns off his humanity and leaves Caroline… again. 

See a pattern here?

In the end, as I said, he sacrifices himself for Damon and Elena… right after marrying Caroline. 

Now, I’m not saying he’s the worst person in the whole series, but I must admit that his relationships were all very weird and superficial. He never really got in-depth about his feelings with anyone a part maybe from Elena. He always sacrificed himself for Elena, which was cool when they were together, but after breaking up my question is… why? He gave up on his brother when he thought he was dead, but never gave up on his ex-girlfriend? 

Let’s see it from Caroline’s point of view. Her boyfriend took his sweet time to realize that he liked her, he left with his first lover, proposed and then immediately un-proposed since he worked for the devil, he had a full debate about whether he should’ve married Caroline and after marrying her he basically kills himself for his ex… 

As I said, I don’t think he’s exactly good. I personally think that he’s very toxic in his ways, we just learn to ignore it throughout the series because he’s always painted as the best brother. But to be fair, even if he had stayed with Elena things wouldn’t have gone any better between his blood problems and tendencies to sacrifice himself for anything. 

Damon

Let’s talk about the older brother.

It’s fair to say that most people love Damon even if he’s the bad boy, or maybe they like him because of that. 

I honestly think that he’s had a big character development in the first 3/4 seasons, but after that, it got really boring and repetitive. At least, unlike Stefan, he learned to value himself and those around him. 

Damon is presented to us as this jerk and heartless older brother whose only goal in life is to torment Stefan for everything he’s done to him. That promise gets forgotten very quickly in the series, but that’s a different topic. 

I personally cannot stand Damon in the first 2 seasons. He’s so exaggerated in every way, he’s made out to be this big bully who kills without remorse and sleeps with everyone. 

He literally kills for no reason if not for fun, but everyone gets over it very easily, if not for a few times when they kind of point out to him that he’s not the best person ever, but what really ticked me off was the way he treated Vicky and Caroline.

Vicky’s death is something spoken about every season with her making an appearance every single time. So many things would’ve changed if she hadn’t died! And Caroline… well, I just felt sorry for all the abuse she had to endure and that everyone ignored once she became a vampire.

Can we also talk about the fact that Damon is like 25 (ignoring the fact that he's been alive/dead for 170-something years) and sleeping with Caroline who’s 17 while having a crush on Elena while she’s also 17? Yikes.

He’s very determined to find Katherine, his only true love who is later revealed to be a traitor and a liar. Everything Damon has done to get her back means nothing and the worst part is that Katherine has always been in love with Stefan and Stefan only. 

Once his love dream gets destroyed, he focuses on Elena full-time. He seems to be dependable on his love interest, meaning that he lives his life based on that only. 

And his personality doesn’t really change when he turns off his emotions so there’s not much to compare him to, if anything it just makes it worse because it means that he’s always so bloodthirsty and perverse in a sense. 

He doesn’t really have any relationships other than Elena and Katherine, he does hook up with many people throughout the series but it’s nothing more than sex most of the time, except for a few women he befriended.

The only good development he had was about caring for his friends other than his girlfriend. But that doesn’t cancel the fact that he was willing to kill and actually killed Elena and Stefan’s friends for nothing. But yeah, there isn’t much to say about Damon since his main problem is killing people here and there and his obsession with his love interest.

But even that doesn’t stop him from sleeping with other people while being deeply in love with Elena or Katherine, although this is a bigger problem in movies and series, cheating is so normalized that people don’t even think about it anymore. While one could discuss that he didn’t really cheat since Katherine was allegedly blocked under a church and Elena was asleep and couldn’t wake up. But is it really a good excuse? I mean, if his love for her was so deep that he wanted to become human and spend the rest of his life with her, shouldn’t he only want to sleep with her?

As per toxicity, in his relationships, he’s pretty stubborn and easily irascible. He’s Stefan’s opposite, so while he’s understanding and open to confrontation, Damon tends to think that his opinion is always correct and there is no other way until proven wrong, and even there he won’t admit that his idea wasn’t the best. I think it’s safe to say that he has some anger issues, every time he has an argument with someone or feels threatened he goes rogue and unleashes his anger on people. 

He’s not the nicest but as I said, that doesn’t mean much. He might not be as nice as Stefan but that doesn’t make him worse, to be honest. 

So in conclusion I don’t think that there’s a better choice, both brothers helped and ruined Elena's life in many ways. Both of them had this superhero complex and wanted to sacrifice themselves all the time, they could’ve just come up with another idea or something half of the time but they didn’t. And every time Elena got in trouble it was mostly because of them, because someone wanted to get revenge on what they did in the past or simply to hurt them and she was the perfect way to do so. I’m also pretty confused by the fact that they fell in love with Elena just because she looked like Katherine at first, Damon’s infatuation is plausible since he was head over heels for that woman, but Stefan? He never really loved her, so why approach Elena in the first place?

Like most stories with supernatural characters, vampires are not the healthiest partners. Stefan or Damon? That’s not an easy decision, but not because they’re both amazing people, although they did care for Elena till the end. They’re both toxic and difficult to deal with but maybe that’s exactly what made them so memorable and acclaimed by fans. No matter how cold and scary they could seem, they had a sweet side of them with the people they really cared about.

Which brother do you prefer? Let me know!

[alexanderlightweight]

@faejilly i mentioned that i'd only written half and so here is the other half, though there are bits of it scattered around tumblr seeing as other people have prompted more in this universe

hoarfrost kiss on lips aflame

so here it is and i hope you enjoy it and ty again for the prompt because i love where this verse has gone.

-

Magnus watches with delighted curiosity as Alexander writhes and pants and tries so hard to stay in place. The warm magic that Magnus is currently pressing into Alexander is melting the ice in his veins only for it to refreeze. It’s a continual battle and Alexander is panting from the intensity of his temperature rising and falling in such a rapid staccato.

Magnus’ name is gasped out, a hopefully, desperate plea that Magnus ignores to let his warm fingers run up the cold tendon of Alexander’s throat. Its spasms under his touch and Alexander whines and throws his head back into the pillows, arching up and pressing his throat more firmly into Magnus’ grip.

“Darling, stop it.” Magnus chides teasingly, “I’m doing a scientific experiment. We’ll have fun together later.” Even as he says it, he rubs his thumb in slow, meticulous circles over the bite he left high on Alexander’s throat. It takes but a tiny crook of his thumb and magic is imbued into it and Alexander moans and goes limp as his body melts.

It lasts for a moment and then Magnus can feel the angelic grace icing over the warmth of his magic, and he lets it win, for now.

“So many interesting things to discover.” Magnus murmurs as he pets over Alexander’s ribs and chases away the coolness with the tip-tap of his fingers wreathed in magic. “Whatever am I going to do, hmm? I don’t have enough time to focus on you how I’d like.” Magnus is completely serious, and he presses a kiss to Alexander’s brow, frowning as he realizes they don’t have time for him to see what Alexander’s body does in a magical bath.

“Magnus, we have plenty of time. We just need to take it slow.” Alexander reminds him of Magnus’ precious boy, completely forgetting how impatient Magnus can be.

“Yes, of course. We’ll take things slow.” Magnus repeats, letting his voice dip into a mocking agreement. “When should we slow things down, darling? When you’re already in my bed? How do you plan on taking things slow when I don’t plan on letting you go anywhere?”

Alexander looks up at him in surprise before a hint of panic enters his expression, “Magnus, you know I have to go back to the Institute, do you have any idea the kind of trouble those idiots can get into?”

“Yes, yes.” Magnus mutters and it’s with visible frustration that he leans down and kisses Alexander’s mouth. “You’re needed to wrangle the recruits the clave is sending through. Something about how one of them has an ego the size of Empire State Building?”

“He’s a fantastic soldier, but he doesn’t work well with others, and he forces his team to overcompensate for him. They have to watch his back while he doesn’t watch theirs. Imogen is hoping I can help figure out a way to make him understand teamwork.”

Alexander doesn’t sound particuarily hopeful himself, more tired than anything and Magnus has to remind himself that summoning a hoard of small demons to torment the recruits with will only add to alexander’s stress.

“One of these days.” Magnus threatens his boy, because if the clave doesn’t stop pulling Alexander away from him for inane reasons, Magnus is going to storm Alicante herself.

“One of these days.” Alexander agrees without hesitation, even going so far as to smile gently up at Magnus. “You have my blood, Magnus. I can’t be kept from you.”

Magnus clasps the small vial around his neck. There is a hollow quartz from an Edom volcano on a platinum chain and inside of it is a frozen gem formed from Alexander’s blood. Another vial rests in his vault for emergencies but Magnus was loathe to let all of it part from him.

“You can’t be.” Magnus agrees, because with Alexander’s blood and blessing he can never truly be kept from Magnus, not even over water. Because Alexander’s very blood is steeped with his inhumanity and the power in it makes it all the more incredible.

“Then it will be fine.” Alexander assures him and Magnus places a warm hand over Alexander’s slow beating, cool heart.

“And you’ll get the teas you need, so I have them here?” Magnus reminds his boy, because until Magnus can figure out what foods and magical fauna work the same as nephil ones, he’s taking no chances.

“Yes, I’ve already sent a message. They’ll have a bag ready for me to bring over with me on my next visit.

“We eat a lot of chocolate.” Alexander mentions thoughtfully, “and organ meat is a delicacy. The more intelligent the prey, the tastier the flesh is the belief.” Alexander hesitates and then he gives Magnus a very careful look. “Nephilim consider ourselves the highest standard of intelligence and instinct.”

Magnus considers what Alexander is saying and then he reaches out to rub a thumb over the edge of Alexander’s bottom teeth.

“So cannablism isn’t unheard of among your people.” Magnus can’t say he’s surprised, even if he is slightly shocked that Alexander is sharing such information with him.

“It’s not.” Alexander murmurs and he smiles a little, “the Circle opened itself up to becoming a ripe hunting ground for certain of our kind with particular tastes.”

Magnus lets out a titter, because this is delightfully hidden information and such a delicious secret at that.

“Tell me more?” Magnus asks, voice a low croon that draws Alexander to him like a flame lures in a moth. His boy reaches up and large, cool hands cup Magnus’ face and pull him down into a hungry kiss.

“What do you want to know?” Alexander asks him, like his boy doesn’t already know how greedy Magnus is for knowledge.

“Everything, darling.” Magnus whispers to him and he lets his words settle against Alexander’s cheek, “tell me all that you know, my love. Teach me all your secrets until I can hoard them myself.”

Alexander kisses him again for that and his lips are soft, for all that they’re cold and frosted tip of Alexander’s tongue makes Magnus’ shiver.

“Okay.”

[hugsandchaos]

Guys I just realized something

Remember how Eclipse wanted to turn the world into a food source?

And you know how Sonic Boom Shadow clearly doesn’t like people?

I’m not saying we combine it, I’m saying we give Boom Eclipse’s view of the world basically Modern/Mainstream Shadow’s view!

And this Boom Shadow has a soft spot for him. At first, it was a sort of self-given obligation. Shadow felt absolutely terrible that Eclipse so strongly believed that Shadow was the only thing he could actually call family because they share the same blood thanks to their father, who was very disappointed when Eclipse rebelled and…

We’ll get into details much later.

Anyways, so Shadow knows he’s not the best person. He doesn’t even consider himself a good person anymore because of his grown dislike for people. So for Eclipse to have seen how he acts and still think that he’s a much better person to call family than those he grew up with was like a missile that destroyed the walls Shadow put up around his heart with enough force to still hurt it once it got through them all.

For a moment, Shadow remembered the better times. He waited a bit to be sure that Eclipse wasn’t lying about any of it, but once he was, he made an unspoken promise to Eclipse to be the best big brother he could be and made it a mission to ensure that Black Doom would never hurt him again. (Eclipse heard Shadow’s mind when he came to that decision, but Shadow didn’t know that they could communicate telepathically at the time.)

From that moment on, many of Shadow’s decisions were made with Eclipse in mind. One example is Shadow could go for pretty much his whole life without food and water, and given his situation, he pretty much abandoned getting it. However, Eclipse and the Dark Arms needed food and water daily, and meat was their best food source. Eclipse didn’t like the idea of hurting people, though, so Shadow often had to look for other methods to getting meat than hunting.

Either that or he’d get fake meat healthy enough to pass as real meat. Eventually, the obligated feeling melted away into something much more genuine. I mean, it was genuine before, but now that he knows his brother better, it’s even stronger than before. He’s a surprisingly great brother and friend to Eclipse. This Shadow isn’t completely heartless, but most of his love and care is reserved for his brother.

Actually, you know what would be super sad? After becoming friends with Team Sonic and joining them, Black Doom appears for Eclipse and Shadow back to use them both. Team Sonic has no idea what’s going on and Eggman’s actually horrified that Black Doom intends to use their planet as a food source. Eclipse remembers his treatment before and really doesn’t want to go back. Shadow’s ready to defend his brother, and now, their new friends.

After a fight against another wave of Black Arms sent to kidnap Eclipse and Shadow, then slaughter everyone else, many of the members are tired and injured. It’s one of those really dark hours and they genuinely think that this is truly the end. They don’t know what to do.

Shadow’s never been more sure of what to do until that moment.

He takes off one of his inhibitor rings and puts it next to Eclipse, who’s still unconscious, but healing very well. He turns to everyone and says “When he wakes up, tell him I’m sorry. Tell him “He’s our father, but you’re my brother” .” and then he disappears.

Hours later, after Eclipse is awake, he sees the ring and frantically asks where Shadow is. When they tell him what he said and that he vanished, Eclipse freaks out like never before and rushes outside, screaming Shadow’s name and “no” over and over. Team Sonic goes with him to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. They can’t stop him because he keeps trying to control their minds so they’d let him.

When they reach the beach in their search for Shadow, there’s a huge explosion in the night sky as if from space. Soon, a golden glow falls from the explosion and into the ocean. Eclipse knows what it is. Or rather, who it is. Devastated and heartbroken, he drops to his knees and screams his brother’s name as loud as both his verbal and mental voices will allow.

Shadow went to the Comet, directly into the heart of the beast, took the chaos emeralds held inside, and removed the rest of his inhibitor rings. This time, there was no miraculous recovery.

[quaritching]

Some Avatar 3 thoughts and predictions!!

The new Na’vi

I absolutely adore the concept of fire Na’vi, however I’m truly hoping and praying that they don’t stick with the name “Ash people”. I mean, we don’t call the Metkayina the “Water people” so I really don’t see the point. It just sounds lame

Considering the Metkayina differed in color because of their environment, I believe the fire Na’vi will as well! We have no real reference as to what their environment really looks like, but I imagine they’d be a darker or purplish blue (red and blue = purple, wink wink), or maybe just a dull, greyish blue! I think purplish blue would look cooler and make more sense aesthetically, but since they’re dubbed the “Ash people” it does make me think they’ll be a greyish blue

I also think their eyes would be a slightly reddish shade of orange! Perhaps their tails would lack the tuft of hair on the tip and they’d sport short hair styles or tie their hair up and away so they don’t catch fire

James Cameron mentioned that instead of only seeing the “bad side” of the humans and the “good side” of the Na’vi, we’d actually see the “bad side” of the Na’vi as well! I don’t think this is an original thought, but I believe the fire Na’vi are supposed to be the “bad side”, that in this movie we’ll get more Na’vi vs Na’vi action instead of the Na’vi vs Human action that we’ve seen in the two previous movies

The Sullys and the Metkayina

I read somewhere that even with the introduction of a new Na’vi type, we’ll still see plenty of the new characters that were introduced in ATWOW! Safe to say we’ll still see the sully kids and the main Metkayina people that were introduced to us. I hope we get to see them a little more grown up! Especially little Tuk!

As we all know, Spider saved Quaritch at the very end and did not tell anyone about it. While he did not actually kill Neteyam (that was Lyle), Quaritch takes the blame in their eyes for even hunting Jake and endangering his family to begin with. Neytiri and Lo’ak are definitely going to be angry, I’m not so sure if Kiri and Jake are gonna try to defend him but the betrayal is gonna hit them all hard for sure. It’s gonna be hard on Lo’ak especially since he was the one who went back to save Spider and dragged Neteyam with him, and then he later gets shot when they all try to flee. Out of all of them Kiri would be the one most likely to come to his defense, but who knows! Very very interesting I think!

While I don’t truly see this happening, if they were to bring Neteyam back I would hope it’d be as a Tulkun. Since Na’vi are “born twice” and energy is taken and returned (he was returned to the sea specifically), I could see it happening, but I honestly hope he just stays dead. If he were to be revived his death would feel meaningless. Sorry Neteyam stans but you know it’s true lol

I think it’s pretty obvious that Grace’s pregnancy was a gift from Eywa, and that Kiri has no real father. Like I said before, energy is taken and returned. Grace did not take energy from Eywa, but she gave her energy, herself, to Eywa when she died during the transfer ceremony. I think Eywa was returning the energy and that created Kiri! I’m very excited for Kiri to explore more of her connection to Eywa and Pandora in the next movie as well

Colonel Miles Quaritch

The real question is, How does Quaritch fit into all this since we know that he’s alive at the end of the movie? Here are some of the ideas I’ve had:

He does not go back to the RDA immediately, and instead finds himself struggling to survive in the wilderness of Pandora OR he goes back to the RDA and because of his massive failure, they throw him out and he has to learn how to survive on Pandora. I don’t think the second option is really possible though, I think the RDA would just kill him rather than let him go if it ever were to come down to that considering how dangerous he is to them, especially if he were to pull a Jake Sully

Whether or not he goes through the 1st scenario, he stumbles upon the fire Na’vi and finds a way to bring that force with him to fight Jake Sully and whoever he has backing him up. Full on Na’vi vs Na’vi, one side led by Jake and the other led by Quaritch. Raw as hell.

Redemption arc baby!! (This is gonna be a big one so hang on tight)

As we’ve seen in ATWOW, Recom Quaritch is not the same as his human counterpart. Recom Quaritch is basically a Na’vi shell with the inserted memories and personality of the human Colonel, and it is stated multiple times that Quaritch is not him ( e.g. “I’m not that man, but I do have his memories” and “[Spider’s] not your son” ).

Besides the literal difference, there’s many small things that Recom Quaritch does in this movie that I believe human Quaritch never would’ve done or bothered with. Quaritch shows an interest in being more Na’vi in order to better understand the enemy, like learning the language for example. This is not necessary, spider is more than capable of translating anything for them so Quaritch never truly had to learn Na’vi, but he tried regardless.

When the recom squad gets to the village to question the people about Jake Sully’s whereabouts, he listens to Spider’s plea and does not shoot the Tsahik, or anyone for that matter. The old Quaritch absolutely would’ve shot her, but Recom Quaritch orders their homes to be burned instead. He still has a mission to fulfill and he still needs to leave a message. Yes, it’s still a horrible thing to do but it’s objectively better than murder, they can rebuild their home but they cannot bring the dead back to life. It’s a subtle difference but I think it’s a really important one considering how Quaritch was more than happy to kill the Na’vi and destroy Hometree in the first movie (he basically enjoyed it if we’re being honest).

This could be argued, but he looked uncomfortable imo when they began to hunt the Tulkun. Recom Quaritch is very open with his emotions in this movie, it’s very obvious when he feels triumphant (like bonding with his Ikran) or when he feels conflicted/upset/frightened (Seeing his skull, watching cam footage of his death, and seeing Neytiri’s arrows). During the hunt, you can very clearly see Scoresby enjoying every minute, a stark contrast to how uninterested/uncomfortable Quaritch seemed to be. He even asks Scoresby if the Tulkun ever fight back, purely out of curiosity I think, but I also think that maybe a small part of him hoped that they would fight back. He has his own Ikran, he bonds with it through tsaheylu and knows how it feels, and I’d like to believe that’s started to change the way he sees the wildlife on Pandora, tulkun included. They hunt the tulkun basically as a last resort anyway, it’s not like Quaritch wanted to hunt them in the first place, it’s just something that he believes has to be done in order to lure out Jake since interrogating the villages was not working.

Another notable thing is that he sacrifices his last bit of leverage (Kiri) the moment he thinks Spider may die. He cares about Spider so much that he’s willing to be at a disadvantage in completing his revenge mission, a mission that is the whole reason for his current existence. He’s also at a physical disadvantage the moment he lets Kiri go because then he has nothing stopping both Jake AND Neytiri from attacking him. Quaritch also seemed upset/annoyed with the interrogation Spider went through and very quickly shut down the machine, claiming he wanted to try a different approach. It’s very hard for me to believe human Quaritch would’ve made these same decisions, he really only cared about saving humanity. Recom Quaritch cares about Spider, he cares about being a good father to him.

Something else that I noticed that I believe could be argued as well is that Quaritch never actually wanted to kill the kids, and to him they were simply a way to get to Jake. He puts a gun to Lo’ak’s head and tells Jake he’ll let his son go if he comes forward, and if he doesn’t he’ll kill Lo’ak. Whether or not he kills Lo’ak is irrelevant, even if he shot him Jake would’ve still went after him for killing his son. But Quaritch doesn’t do that, he waits for Jake to stroll on up. Payakan interrupts that as we know, so everything goes to shit and the fighting begins. Later when Tsireya tries to free Tuk, Quaritch simply throws her in the water instead of actually causing any harm or killing her. Again, when he later uses the comm he threatens the lives of Kiri and Tuk, telling Jake the deal is still on and he’ll let his daughters go if he offers himself up. Why not just kill them? There’s no reason to keep them alive, the only difference is Jake offering himself up semi peacefully or Jake coming at him with the intent to kill. Either way he would’ve had Jake coming to him, and human Quaritch doesn’t really seem like the type of person to just let “prisoners” go. Again this could definitely be argued, this is probably my least solid point towards his redemption lol

I definitely believe there’s a lot of potential for there to be a redemption arc of some sort with him, I don’t think he’ll be some saint or anything but he could definitely be a more neutral or anti-hero type of character. Stephen Lang even said that Quaritch is going to go more Na’vi or something in the next movie so this kindaaa makes me think the redemption arc is the most viable. Unless that means he’ll team up with the fire Na’vi? I suppose we’ll just have to see 👀

The RDA

Because it’s been heavily hinted that the fire Na’vi are going to be the main threat instead of the humans, that raises the question of what exactly are the RDA going to do now? How are they relevant?

I believe they’re simply going to lie low during the 3rd movie, trying to recuperate and rebuild after the heavy losses they took. They lost a lot of people, basically all the recoms (Minus Quaritch and possibly Lyle and Mansk since their deaths were not seen on screen), and the whole SeaDragon ship with all of its materials and deployables at the bottom of the sea

They’ll probably be back for the 4th movie, since we know how persistent they are and how desperate they are to colonize Pandora to save the rest of humanity. General Ardmore didn’t get a lot of time to shine in ATWOW, but if the RDA returns in the 4th movie I imagine she’ll have a bigger role and could possibly be the main antagonist like Quaritch was in the first movie

[imminent-danger-came]

Anon chilling on the precipice of madness again, and I’m so glad you liked that last ask! Truly, there is much joy to be found in discussing how much we enjoy (*cough* are dealt immense emotional damage on a daily basis by *cough*) the monkey show. Also, since I apparently can’t stop bugging you, for clarity’s sake I’m going to call myself Unhinged Anon if I submit any future asks lol. 

As always you make excellent points, and I am very normal about you bringing up the ‘MK smiling at his reflection’ thing because the motif of reflections in this show (see also: S2E5, S3E4, some others I’m probably missing, and especially S4E1) doesn’t make me even the tiniest bit insane. Nope! Not at all. But this time, it’s actually something you said in the tags that launched my marbles into the stratosphere for me to never find, because now I can’t stop thinking about how badly I want, like… a Sandy spinoff series or something. 

And I don’t mean a lore-heavy, epic adventure rich in heavy themes and conflicts like we have in the main series, just with Sandy at the center instead of MK. I want Sandy's series to be almost exclusively season one-style laid back episodes. But the good kind of laid back episodes, you know? Stuff like S1E6&7, that a lot of people dismiss, especially on a first watch, as nothing more than filler but actually serve as a subtle expansion/exploration of characters (“I also summoned monster trees with my stress, so. Should I see a doctor? We’ll worry about that later” still haunts me) and dynamics hidden under the guise of a silly little adventure with funny jokes, great animation, and fairly low stakes. 

I want to see what an appointment with Sandy’s therapist looks like, or even just the shenanigans he gets up to during those episodes where he’s mysteriously absent and only Tang seems to notice. 

I want to see Sandy teach Tang how to make tea, and maybe nerd out about those theories Sandy mentioned having about the gang's whole deal with the OG Companions.

I want to see Sandy’s endless teddy bear energy clash with Red-wants to seem intimidating but will also grab his new friends warm milk if they ask-Son. 

I want to see Wukong forced to have an extended conversation with Sandy, or really anyone from the team that isn’t MK or actively yelling at him, and getting to really see how they work off of each other. 

I want to see the secret ‘how do we help our clearly not okay friend?’ talks Mei and Sandy have behind MK’s back whenever he starts acting weird, and all the gossip that goes on during the yoga sessions they start doing together after Mei gets the Samadhi fire. 

I want to see Sandy talking with the little girl that LBD possessed, especially since something kind of similar happened to him during season 4, and accidentally becoming her new (and favorite) giant blue uncle. 

I want an episode of MK and Sandy hanging out. Just chilling on the boat, playing with Mo, going for a little walk around town until BOOM! Sandy brings MK to his unsuspecting therapist, who’s about to get the most interesting case of their career. And maybe, if we’re allowed a little angst, a discussion about how scary it is to be born with a lot of power that not only can, but will, hurt a lot of people if it isn't carefully controlled. About how they’ve tried, and failed, to avoid causing pain. About wanting to never cause pain, and how the futility of that sentiment almost outweighs the importance of trying anyways. 

And above all, I DEMAND a Pigsy-Sandy origin story! 

Anyways, this is basically just me edging ever closer to the brink of madness after you accidently inflicted No Thoughts, Only Sandy syndrome upon me with your last response. But, it's also an invitation to gush about Sandy some more, if you want, and also share anything you would want to see in a hypothetical Sandy show!

Unhinged Anon I got you, here's a motif post where I have every MK reflection in the whole show.

AND “I also summoned monster trees with my stress, so. Should I see a doctor? We’ll worry about that later” HAUNTS ME TOO. There's something about the way those shots are set up, cracking from blue to gold:

MK also becoming a "master of focus" in this ep, with focus becoming important later in episodes like 1x09 and 3x11/12 with Mei.

BUT ANON.

Imma use this ask as a spring board for one of my fav personal theories, which is this: OG Sandy, from the original jttw pilgrimage, is also our current day Sandy!

I'll probably throw this into an official theory post later, but for now I'll go into this theory underneath the cut:

First, let's start with 2x08 To Catch a Leaf, during which Sandy has several PTSD flashbacks:

So, the first one is some sort of battlefield, and the second one...

Is of Zhu Bajie?

Now, we know Pigsy has never worn an outfit like this based off of this comment in 4x05:

Pigsy: "Blue ain't really my color, but it beats looking like that monster, Zhu Ganglie."

-

The Pig Demon in that flashback from 2x08 HAS to be Zhu Bajie of the original jttw pilgrimage. But why would Sandy have a memory like that?

Next is the fact that while everyone else in 4x09 Roast of the Monkie Kids is compared to their past life, Sandy notably isn't.

Tang knows friendship, but unlike Tang Sanzang isn't studious.

Mei is bold and brave, but lacks Ao Lie's caution.

Pigsy like Zhu Bajie is stubborn, but he has the heart his predecessor originally lacked.

Yet this is all Subodhi has to say to Sandy:

Subdohi: "You have nothing more to learn my hilariously blue student! Another star for you!" Sandy: "Dooww thank you wise master!" Subodhi: "But! You're far too nice for your own good." Sandy: "Uh huh, you noticed!"

(4x09 Roast of the Monkie Kids)

-

It's exceedingly strange that in an episode where Subodhi breaks down everyone's character arcs, Sandy is told he's all good. He has nothing more to learn, and no more character development to go through.

Unless of course...Subodhi quite simply couldn't compare Sandy to his past life because there was no past life to compare him to.

Another detail in s4 that's always intrigued me is how Sandy is brought back to himself from Sha Wujing in 4x06.

Pigsy's heartfelt speech on the legacy of their past lives not defining their current one, or how they're not monsters, doesn't work. It's instead Mo offering Sandy wholehearted love that brings Sandy back:

Which, of course Sandy has a close bond with Mo, but Pigsy's speech wasn't anything to scoff at either:

Pigsy: "No. No! Just cause we look a certain way, cause our monster ancestors were, well, monsters, none of that matters! I won't let his legacy define mine, and neither should you! Your the strongest, the biggest, the bluest guy I know! But all you've ever used those muscles for is to help people in need—your friends. That don't sound like a monster to me." (4x06 Show Me the Monster)

As far as we know, that should have been the exact thing Sandy needed to be freed from his past life, and yet it wasn't.

That would be because, at least under the confines of this theory, the guy Pigsy is saying Sandy wasn't like was indeed who Sandy used to be. Yes, Sandy has far outgrown the person who fought to establish his own place in the world, learning that "hurting others isn't a measure of one's strength". But here's the thing, who you used to be matters. Unlike Pigsy's relationship with Zhu Bajie, Sandy's relationship with who he was in the past can't as easily be written off. It's still a part of him.

There are also certain other details. like the fact that Sandy knows his way to Flower Fruit Mountain in "A Hero is Born", or how he's so knowledgeable on ancient powerful remedies like the crimson jimson weed. Of course these details could be chalked up to plot convenience—which is by no means a flaw or complaint—but I've always wondered if there was anything more to it.

But, Sandy's more laid back reaction to most things has always intrigued me, and it would re-contextualize certain scenes like this one from 2x10 in a fun way:

Pigsy: "No! What could have been so important that you'd leave MK alone to face that- that thing! You're supposed to be his mentor-"

Sandy: "ENOUGH!" "I think we should give Mr. Monkey King, a chance to explain."

(2x10 This is the End!)

Of course with this theory comes a few questions, like why Sandy didn't meet the same fate as the other pilgrims, or why he wouldn't let Sun Wukong know he was alive, or why he would bother to pretend he wasn't the OG Sha Wujing at all. And honestly? I don't have an answer to these questions!

But what I do know is that Sandy's friends are greatly important to him-

Sandy: "Hurting others isn't a measure of one's strength—took me a really long time to realize that. As long as I'm doing something to help out a friend, I don't mind what it is! I just want to be there for 'em when they need me. Cause at the end of the day, helping my friends is more important than anything else in the world!" (2x08 To Catch a Leaf)

-and losing them would affect him greatly.

Whatever happened to the og jttw crew, that could very easily be the reason Sandy was "the most dangerous, deadly, rage filled warrior [Pigsy] ever [knew]". Based off of that 2x08 Zhu Bajie flashback, Sandy could very well have watched his friend die.

But, now that Sandy has his friends back in his life? Of course he's going to do whatever he can for them!

Which would include anything from making tea to breaking his vow to never fight again.

And please for the love of god give us a Pigsy - Sandy origin story. I'm begging. WHAT IS THEIR HISTORY MAN. WHY DID PIGSY KNOW HOW TO COMMIT A JAILBREAK.

[easypeasylindyvesey]

APRIL 2027- PART 22

We’re standing in front of JFK, trying to hail down a taxi, but I guess they’re incredibly busy today for whatever reason, or maybe they’re blind because they’ve driven past my raised hand. It’s 11:20. That’s it? It feels a lot later, probably because I’ve been up since 6. I contemplate about taking a nap later, but I’m not a huge nap person. I feel more tired if I take them. We’ll see how long my body can hold itself up.

Finally, after 20,000 years, I successfully pull over a taxi, and the trunk pops open. Jimmy and I make our way to place our luggage down and I slam the trunk shut. We crawl into the backseat and shut our side doors. Jimmy gives the taxi driver his address and off we go.

I’m able to point out vast differences between New York and Minnesota already. I forgot how horrible New York traffic is, let alone the city. It doesn’t matter what time you’re out. The streets are always going to be filled with cars and taxis and cyclists. Minnesota traffic was pretty quiet, pretty subdued, with the exception of the airport parking lot, but that’s different. It was a quiet state, I’ll say. There were little to no complaints about it. Now I have to readjust to it being loud, and not just in my mind. Everywhere. Great.

The ride is quiet. I’m saving my energy for a potential crash on my bed for the rest of the day. All I can think about is snuggling up in my bed with the blinds closed, with no one to disturb me. Chances are there’ll already be disruptions because he can’t read basic social cues, but hey! What do I know!

The taxi pulls into the apartment complex around 40 minutes later, stopping right in front of the entrance. Both of us thank the driver and we make our way out, retrieving our luggage from the trunk and walking into the front door. At this point, it feels like I’m home, but I know for a fact that I’m not. It’s temporary.

Jimmy and I drag our luggage and our tired selves to the elevator, waiting for the doors to open. We don’t say anything. I think we both have the same idea in mind of relaxing and wanting to get started. The doors open and we shuffle our way in, me pressing the ‘4’ button and they immediately close, going up floor by floor. This routine feels foreign. We were only in Minnesota for three full days, but I feel like I’m coming back from an extended vacation. I was not looking forward to unpacking, but at least I could put away my funeral outfit for a little bit. Hopefully.

I fumble in my purse and grab my key. Yes, I was able to get a key for the apartment. It feels odd. Again, I’m just a guest. I’m not going to need this for longer than a few months. I turn the key into the lock and the door pushes open. I take a minute to look around and observe everything in my vision. Nothing has moved. Nothing has changed. But it has.

The first thing I do is drag my things into my room, opening my closet, and placing them underneath the shelves. I do not have any time nor patience to deal with this. The motivation will come to me another day. With that thought, I shut the closet door and then shut my main door, changing out of my outfit. I throw on a teal crewneck and gray sweats, tossing my previous outfit onto the floor beside the TV. I still haven’t been able to drop by the condo and grab my laundry basket, so all of my clothes get loaded into Jimmy’s basket and then he goes down to the in-unit washer and dryer to complete the loads. That cannot be something that I put off getting much longer. There’s gonna be a day where I get my laundry back and there’ll be a pair of boxers with my bras. I’ll have to wonder if that was truly a mistake.

I open up my door and walk out into the kitchen. Jimmy hasn’t changed out of his clothes, but he’s taken off his shoes and left his suitcases by the entryway couch. “What are your plans for the rest of the day?” he asks.

“Sleep,” I answer. “That’s literally it.”

“Yeah, I’m probably gonna crash in a little bit. You hungry? We could have lunch now if you want.”

“Sounds good. What do you want?”

“I’ve still got some bagels from Sunday. I also have some chicken and potatoes, but the chicken has to be thawed first. Depends on how hungry you are.”

“How about we do the chicken and potatoes for dinner so that it’s already prepared by then?” I suggest.

He points a finger at me. “I like the way you think.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good brain.”

He scoffs, taking out 2 plain bagels from the fridge and placing them out on the island. He grabs a knife and cuts them both in half before placing them in the toaster, waiting for them to cook to a light golden brown.

While we wait, the words are on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow them. He’s in a decent mood right now. I’ll have him bask in it before I pull the trigger once again.

“You’re not gonna change?” I question, pointing to his sweatshirt.

“These are literally my pajamas,” he sarcastically argues. 

“Oh, I see,” I play along. “You’re not gonna sweat in that when you sleep?”

He shakes his head. “No. I usually keep my room cold. Oh, wait, that reminds me. There’s a thermostat located by the window, so you can adjust the temperature in your room to whatever you want. You can either live in Alaska or in the middle of the sun. The choice is yours.”

“Good to know,” I respond. “I know what I’m going for today.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Which one?”

I give him a mischievous look. “Cold.”

“Oh, like the freezer?” He jokes.

“No, like his body.”

I can’t tell if he looks stunned or impressed that I came up with that. “C’mon, Abb, what’s up with the dark humor?”

“What’s wrong with it? Better than screaming at 3:00AM.”

“See, now you’ve made it worse.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know, golden boy?”

I get him to crack a smile. “Alright, cut it out.”

“What, my heart?”

He puts his hand on his face and slides it down until it reaches his chin. “Lord help me,” he mutters.

The toaster sounds and he turns around, taking the bagels out and putting each one on their own plate. He takes the cream cheese out of the side door of the fridge and places it on the countertop, taking off the lid. The same knife he cut the bagels with is used for the spread. He lathers a good amount on each bagel slice before getting two paper plates from the cabinet, separating them and sliding one plate across to me. I pick up half of the bagel and fold it in half, taking a huge bite. The cream cheese oozes in my mouth, leaving me content. “Shit’s good,” I say with my mouth full of comfort.

Jimmy nods, licking his lips after getting some cream cheese stuck above them. “Couldn’t agree more. What’d you think of the flight?”

“Fine,” I admit. “I’m surprised you didn’t sit next to me, though.”

He looks from side to side before looking at me. “Well, since you admitted to me prior that I was pissing you off, I thought I’d do you a solid and leave you alone, at least for the flight.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t tell you what was pissing me off.”

“You don’t need to. I can see it on your face. Expressions don’t lie. Neither do the eyes.”

What is he, fucking Shakespeare?

He continues. “I know you’re angry about everything that happened, and rightfully so, but do you have any built-up anger from the past? Like, anything from the past month that you got upset at that maybe I don’t know about?”

I think about it. “No.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“What, that quick release of an answer wasn’t enough for you?”

“Not at all.”

I pretend to ponder. “I mean, not really. I just feel like I’m stuck in the same place. I need all of it to go away and then maybe it’ll start to settle down and not take over my everyday routine.”

“Well, I mean, technically, it’s over now,” he admits. “You got through the hard part. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Why would I be proud of any of that?”

He takes a breath. “I mean, you should be proud of your strength for holding yourself together. It’s not an easy thing to do in circumstances like these.”

“Okay, you know for a fact that I was not strong for the majority of that trip. I recall three moments of weakness, probably even more than that, but those had lower impact.”

“Abby, you’re not meant to act strong all the time. You’re allowed to be upset and sad and think that the world made a mistake in doing this, but it won’t hold you down forever. Okay? Both of our lives will never be the same, and unfortunately, not in a good way. Although, we are in control of how we choose to take that pain and channel it into something that’s less risky of a permanent regret. I think we should focus on that right now. You don’t need to have it figured out in a week, in a month, fuck it, even a year, if you wish. Take what you’re feeling now and release those feelings through something you won’t have to worry about ever leaving you.”

But he did.

I look at my half-eaten bagel and get up from my chair, reaching behind Jimmy to get a plastic Ziploc bag. I throw the rest of my bagel into the bag and close it tightly as I open the fridge and place it in the door. I’ll eat the rest of it later.

While in there, I grab a water bottle from the bottom drawer. “I’m gonna go hit the hay,” I tell Jimmy, walking to my room without looking at him first.

“If you need me, come get me,” he replies.

“I won’t,” I argue, shutting the door. I walk over to the bed and pull the duvet back, adjusting the pillows and moving them to one side of the bed. I take off my glasses and place them on the nightstand. I realize that I forgot to shut the curtains. I guess that I’ll be stuck on the left side of the bed for this entire nap.

[anastasiaskarsgard]

YES! Please continue the marquis x cop story. There is so much opportunity for angst. What was the story like from the readers POV? How did they find out he is the marquis?how does the marquis manage to convince the reader?

“So he just handed you his card and all it says is “the Marquis”? How do you even find these people?” Your best friend asked as she examined the aforementioned card. “We’ll call him! He was dressed nice and had a driver so at least he’s rich.”

You loved your best friend, but she was so reckless. She was the same age as you (27) yet she’d already been married four times. Rolling your eyes and snatching the card back, you threw it into the fire to kill the temptation, and save her from herself.

“WHAT?!?! You are no fun! There goes your castle. What if he is nobility or whatever? What if he spends his time and millions on making the world a better place? What if there’s a library or orphanage with his name on it?” With that your best friend mock fainted into a large chair.

Huffing out a sigh, you made your way over and poked her in the ribs. “I doubt he’d even remember. He gave me the card like 2 weeks ago.”

Eyes popping open, she groaned as though your words were physically painful, “I don’t know what’s worse, the fact you’ve been sitting on this that long, or the fact youre oblivious to how disgustingly gorgeous you are. Let’s go eat you silly woman.” Standing and taking your arm in hers, you both made your way to a fun new cafe, the papers couldn’t seem to shut up about.

1 week later

Even though today was your day off, for the past few months, you have been volunteering at the hospital. In spite of the fact that you were already a public servant,  you found joy in helping others. You felt like social media wasn’t as good as real people, especially in a nurturing setting.

Today was your day working with the children. Once a month, the volunteers and some of the doctors and nurses were dressed up as various characters in their favorite stories. So far, you have been Tinker Bell, the goddess Aphrodite, and a mermaid. Today you are a princess and you are not sure where they got these costumes, but they were extremely realistic and detailed. You really felt like a friggin princess right now! your dress was an ice blue, sparkly, chiffon number with a fitted bodice that had your girls so mushed together, when you looked down, you could nearly rest your head on them. The voluminous layered skirt was going to require hypervigilance to avoid knocking things over, but was breathtakingly pretty with color shifting fabric and hand sewn beading down the train. There was even a navy blue, velvet cloak, that had fur trim that felt real.

“Here’s the finishing touch!” Michelle exclaimed as she burst into the break room. “Oh you really look like you’re royal! Can I put this on your head?” She asked, holding out a beautiful tiara.

“Wow! Yes! This dress is so amazing! The kids are going to love it. I can’t wait to see their faces!” You enthused. You truly were excited to see their reaction. Children always had the most pure reactions.

“Not only that, that mysterious benefactor that just paid for the new pediatric cancer wing will be here today! From what I hear it was totally out of the blue. They’ve been trying to get that built for years, scraping and begging and then this guy comes along and just pays for the whole thing! He’s from old money and royalty, so it probably doesn’t even register how important this is to us…” she mused, as she secured the tiara to her head.

“I’m sure even a prince realizes the impact. Probably has a sick child he is close to, that needs treatment and he actually has the means to make it happen.” You stated. “Not all the wealthy are out of touch.”

“Yes your majesty.” She giggled. “Now come on, the kids are beside themselves, there’s a few you’ll need to make personal appearances for.”

Making your way out into the main area where everyone had gathered, you dramatically swept into the room, as Michelle swept your cloak away and you barked out orders in your most imperious tone. The next hour flew by, and everyone agreed you’d made an excellent princess.

You were still having a lot of fun, but your comfort was beginning to faulter. The dress was gorgeous but you didn’t know how women wore these outfits everyday! You couldn’t quite breathe properly, it was quite heavy, and several parts of it were rubbing you raw.

“Shall we go see the remaining children together?”

Turning, you found Dr Rete holding out the list of children unable to leave their rooms out to you. Taking it from him, you scanned over the list as you attempted to think of a reason you could decline. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy, he was actually a catch by most people’s standards, but he gave you the creeps for some reason.

All the other women on the floor encouraged you to give the gorgeous doctor a chance, since he made his interest very obvious, but you just couldn’t get past your instincts. When your instincts told you to get away from something, you listened.

Unfortunately, nothing came to mind that wouldn’t seem rude so you smiled and welcomed him to accompany you. Luckily two other volunteers were with you to help keep your dress from knocking over, or hooking any expensive medical equipment.

You were nearly to the end of the list, when you saw him. The Marquis. He was standing at the end of the hall, dressed in an impeccable suit, surrounded by people. You wondered if he was the new donor.

You debated going and saying hello, but decided against it. It’s not like you knew him, and you’d never called. You doubted he even remember you. He’d most likely felt bad that you fell and never would of actually taken you to dinner. You knew you were attractive, but a man that looks like him, with that kind of money and pedigree, isn’t allowed to date some random girl he ran into.

Dr Rete was really trying to impress you. You’d found out he’d actually gotten off hours ago, and was strictly here to spend time with you. He was tall and good looking, and he hung on your every word like you were the most interesting woman alive… maybe you were wrong about him.

Suddenly, the little girl you were reading to, looked like she was so happy she was going to explode. “Princess! Your prince is here!” She exclaimed excitedly.

Turning to Dr. Rete, you frowned a bit before you caught yourself. “I suppose he…”

“No not him!” She interrupted. “Him!”

Turning around, your eyes met cool green ones smiling down at you. At a loss for words, you turned back around and continued reading.

For the remainder of the story, you could feel his presence, and could have cut the tension between the two males with a knife. When it came to the end, and you had to sing and do your little routine, you couldn’t bear to look at the Marquis. You weren’t about to sell this girl short though, so you gave it your all.

As you made your way out of the room, you nearly ran into the Marquis, but Dr. Rete was there to be a buffer between the two of you. You sounded amusing at the normally overly polite. Dr was quite stand offish with the Marquis.

“Will you go get me some ice water, Doctor? I am parched and wish to get to know our Princess here.” The Marquis asked with a certain edge in his tone.

You nearly thought he’d refuse, but the Marquis smile never wavered, so he finally conceded and you were semi alone with the gorgeous mysterious man. “So it’s nice to see you again. Sorry again.”

“Do not apologize, it was the best day of my life so far.” He stated matter of factly.

Smiling, you rolled your eyes, “flattery will get you everywhere.”

He cocked an eyebrow and did a quick scan up and down, “is that so?”

“Mind out of the gutter sir! I am a lady after all.” You said in your best scarlet O’Hara imitation.

Chuckling, he stepped closer, and took your hand, before kissing it with those full lips, and looking up into your eyes. “May I take you to dinner Princess?”

Your breath caught in your throat from the intensity in his eyes. Nodding your head, before you even realized what you were doing, you couldn’t help but smile brightly. You were going to go have dinner with the single most attractive person, you had ever seen in your life.

“Keep the outfit on. You look perfect.” He said, eyes sparkling.

You scoffed. “Even the tiara?”

“Especially the tiara. It once graced the empress of Russia, and I doubt she wore it as well as you.”

Your stomach dropped and eyes went wide. “It can’t possibly be real! That would make it worth-“

“Millions. But it’s good to get them out now and then. See them on a beauty, rather than rotting in a vault with all the rest.”

“This is yours? Are you a royal?” You asked astonishment clear on your face.

He chuckled, “no. My title is one of the lowest, but during the revolution, my family was able to avoid the cleansing by the peasants, and attain considerable wealth from those in higher stations, wishing to save their treasures from falling into those dirty hands.”

“So your family were scavengers or bandits?” You asked not caring if it came off offensive.

“No nothing so dark. Everything we were given was by the owners own accord. No force or deception. They just wished to live on in some way. For example, your tiara belonged to a duchess that could never have children, so she was cast aside by her husband who moved to the city with his mistress and they had several bastards. She lived in their estate, since most of the money they possessed had been hers. She adopted many children and was said to have been very happy until the day they came to retrieve her for trial. She had been warned they were coming and dressed all her children as servants. Two of them were killed attempting to rescue her. Her husband had been so unpleasant in her name, she was executed at his side, while his mistress watched from the crowd.”

“What a terrible story. And this was hers?”

“One of her many jewels. Their family had been jewelers for all the European aristocrats and royals. They also collected, which I am sure is how they attained that.” He said pointing at the tiara playfully.

You reached up to touch the priceless piece of jewelry, “do you think she’d be pleased it was used in this way?”

Nodding his head, he offered his hand. “Shall we go eat your grace?”

Giggling, you took his hand. “I can’t imagine where we could go with me dressed this way. Won’t you be embarrassed?”

“We can go wherever we please, and lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep.”

“What if I’m not a lion? Maybe I’m something else.”

Looking at you thoughtfully, the Marquis smiled slyly at you before stating, “I know exactly what you are.”

Maneuvering your dress into the backseat of the waiting Rolls Royce, you burst out laughing at the Marquis, peeking over the side of your gowns considerable skirts. “Are you comfortable over there?”

“It’s like I’m riding in a cloud.”

“So what animal am l?” You asked.

“Oh I will not tell you so easily. You must guess correctly.

Folding your arms you pouted a bit, unaware of the Marquis watching you with adoration. “Fine. You can keep your secrets.”

“Hn.”

[fruit-of-infidelity]

♱ DIABOLIK LOVERS: Haunted Dark Bridal ー Sakamaki Ryuuto | Heaven 01 ♱

⌜ Scene: Living Room ⌟

Yui: U-Uhm, Ryuuto-san?

I really don’t know about this…

( I can’t look anywhere but at my feet. If I do, I’m afraid I might… )

Ryuuto: How on earth do you expect to get any better at painting if you don’t practise?

What’s more… You should be grateful that I’m to be your muse tonight.

Yui: E-Even so, why do you have to be, you know…

Ryuuto: Naked?

Yui: ( D-Don’t say it so casually! )

( There’s no way he can expect me to paint seriously when he’s like this, right!? )

A-Aren’t you embarrassed, doing this…?

Ryuuto: Art is nothing to be embarrassed about.

If you don’t have a proper model for you to learn your anatomy from, you won’t be able to understand nearly as much as you should.

For example…

ー Ryuuto shifts to show some of his body off. ー

Notice how this muscle on the upper thigh here is far more prominent when I flex and turn this way? What’s more…

If I were to roll my hips forward, like this, itーー

Yui: ーーPlease, Ryuuto-san, at least cover your more private places!

Ryuuto: …Fufu, what a reaction.

If you cannot focus on this as merely art, you have no one else to blame but yourself. It’s your lewd mind, after all, that’s hindering you.

Yui: Lewd mind…!? It’s not that!

Ryuuto: Then, look at me, Pet. 

Yui: I-I…

( If I look, I might see a little too much! )

Ryuuto: Look.

━─┉┈◈ Selection ◈┈┉─━

　　❈  Look at him

Yui: ( Okay, Yui. If you keep your eyes straight ahead, on his… Everything should be fine. )

… …

Ryuuto: Very good. That wasn’t so difficult, was it?

Yui: ( E-Even out of my peripheral vision, I’m seeing more than I want! )

( Th-There’s no way I can keep this up! )

Uu… I can’t!

　　❈  Cover your eyes

Yui: ( Th-That’s… There’s just no way! )

I-I’m sorry, I can’t do that! Not while you’re totally naked!

Ryuuto: Fufu, so you’ve resorted to covering your eyes?

Yui: This way, I-I don’t have to worry about seeing too much!

( You could make this so much easier i-if you just covered yourself! )

━━─┉┈┈◈◉◈┈┈┉─━━

Ryuuto: Goodness me, Pet… You’re acting incredibly shy. You were far less bashful in the bedroom, last I remember.

What’s come over you all of a sudden?

Yui: Don’t b-bring that up here and now!

Ryuuto: All I am suggesting is that perhaps we ought to continue these paint lessons later tonight. Would you be far more confident, then?

Especially if you also stripped down, for our lessons.

Yui: R-Ryuuto-san…!

Ryuuto: I suppose that’s a “no”, then?

ー Ryuuto stands up from the couch. ー

In that case… Perhaps this ought to make it easier.

ー He comes closer. ー

Yui: ( I can hear him coming closer and closer… )

Wh-What are you doing?

Ryuuto: Try not to sound so suspicious of me. You don’t truly think I would do anything too rash, after all, do you?

Yui: If you say it with that tone, I don’t know if I can be so sure…

( I can feel him standing right in front of me… Oh dear, I’m feeling so hot! )

Ryuuto: If you aren’t to use your eyes… then use your hands, instead.

ー He grasps one of her hands. ー

Yui: What do you mean by that…!?

Ryuuto: Mm… I’ll direct you.

With these warm hands, can you feel myーー

Yui: …!!

( Something… hard, curved… )

( Wh-Where on earth am I touching!? )

ー She pulls away quickly. ー

Th-There’s no way I’m letting you lead me on touching your body like this!

ー There’s some rustling. ー

Ryuuto: Hmm… A-ha.

ー He finally returns to the couch. ー

That should do.

Look at me again, Pet. There should be little to complain about now.

Yui: …Alright, here goes nothing.

…!!

ー He is now covered from the waist down. ー

Ryuuto: Perhaps I threw you a little too far into the deep end.

For now, for us to lay down the foundation of the male figure, I’ll keep myself covered. We’ll simply work our way up from there.

Yui: Phew… That’s better…!

( Even if it’s only the bottom half of him covered with a towel like this, I feel like I’ll be able to pay attention much better now! )

( Saying it like that though, makes me sound like a pervert…! )

W-Wait a moment…! “Work our way up”?

O-One way or another, you’re saying you’ll still end up completely bare!?

Ryuuto: Precisely.

Now, where was I, regarding the male figure?

Yui: ( There’s just no getting out of this, is there? )

( Soon enough, I’m going to see Ryuuto-san completely naked when we have these sessions! As my model, of all things... )

( Uu… My cheeks won’t stop burning at the thought! )

✥ TO BE CONTINUED ✥

─────── ≪ °♛° ≫ ───────

←  [ ✥ Heaven Prologue ✥ ] ⎥ [ ✥ Heaven 02 ✥ ]  →

[avionvadion]

Love the recent chapter BTW. You write Link's POV really well! I hope we more character's POV besides just Ilia's! For a moment I forgot whether or not Link knew of Ilia's past wth her parents, but I suppose this chapter confirmed that he does. I already saw from some art how Sidon's reaction will be to meeting her parents, I still hope the bird-dads will to. But now I REALLY want to see how Link will handle it. Let's have TRUE Link hold the Master Sword up to Worst Link's neck!

Aldjksksks thank you!!! 🥰

Link knew since Chapter 13, after Retah told Iliana about Iliandra’s past. Considering we’re 33 chapters in, I don’t blame you for forgetting. 🤣 It’s a lot, lol. I have to constantly go back and reread chapters because I’m forgetting things.

Link knows, and he’s seen her have some pretty horrible trauma responses in certain situations- though if any truly stuck with him, I’d have to say the most vivid/painful one is when she broke down when she tried to pick up the wooden sword. It’s the first time he really saw her freak and understand why she was reacting that way.

Her break down when Emank yelled confused him, but this? He knew better now. He understands why. And it hurts.

Link wanted to teach her melee combat so she has some defense when she’s backed in a corner and can’t use her bow, but because of the Worst Link and all those years she spent fighting to not pick up a sword, to not be what her father wanted, even at a cost to herself, she was terrified. It was such a visceral reaction.

The time when she broke down in sheer relief when Dorephan promised to help is also another strong memory to Link, because it showed just how helpless and hopeless she had felt this entire time, believing no one would be willing to help her. That no one would believe her, or care enough to defend her and stand beside her to fight her abuser.

If Link ever meets the Worst Link, I feel like he would just… walk up and punch him. No introductions given.

He has the physical description, he knows what he looks like, and if Ilia is having a trauma response to seeing his face??? All the confirmation he needs really. His bestie/big sister figure is scared and her abuser is right there. Get wreckt, Wannabe Hero!

Low key, I’m tempted to have Ilia duel her father, win, and then have Link finish him off because he doesn’t want his blood on her hands. He’s haunted her enough, after all. And he knows the Yiga deaths hang heavy on her heart. But I also want the Zora to execute him??? Since Link and Iliana shouldn’t have to deal with that bastard if they can avoid it. Dorephan’s daddy mode showing, lol,

But we’ll see how it goes, lol. I’m very indecisive. Things aren’t set in stone until they’re actually written.

The bird dads watching the fight take place: O.o

They’re just gonna immediately swaddle our duo in feathers and hugs after the chaos.

…This got so long, oh gosh. I’m sorry. 🤣

WAIT IDEA THAT COMBINES ALL THREE

Ilia duels him, wins. Decides to let the Zora take care of him and turns away, as he isn’t *worth the time/effort*. Worst Link breaks free of the guards and attacks to kill, but Link intervenes with the Master Sword and slashes at him!

Worst Link realizes that Link is the hero he failed to be, and is dragged away by the Zora to be later executed. Boom. End scene.