#u might be able to tell I’m Not American

[elliesmainhoe]

ellie would go crazy with the typical british accent mocking bruh

like if u were making breakfast, every morning she would hit you with a “tea and crumpets love” and ur just like 😐

she would also tell all her friends ur “bri-ish”

and if u was scottish she wouldn’t be able to mock you cus half the time she doesn’t know what ur saying (i’m scottish pls don’t come for me)

no she 100% does.

with an English partner, she is unbearable.

she's one of those Americans that constantly talks about the Boston tea party for fuck know why?

loves flexing that her partner has a swanky accent and when she gets drunk imitates a wobbly eng accent and starts yelling about 'puttin' the kettle on for a cuppa and a crumpet"

also thinks a crumpet is bread for some reason (I've seen a lot of Americans say that) when it's just. not. don't get me STARTED on scones.

If you're Scottish? just how did you manage to get Ellie to date you- she doesn't understand a word your saying /jk.

Scottish accents are actually quite easy to understand once you've been around them for a bit, so I think that there wouldn't be much trouble.

But when your angry? and the accent comes out in full force. she's shitting bricks. an angry Scottish accent is terrifying, because the dialect is ineligible and the pure passion is blood curdling on its own.

when she first meets you, unironically asks if you can play the bagpipes... she's a little stupid but she's hot so it makes up for it <3

..... might write some Headcanons on this.

[floatingcatacombs]

It’s the Tar Taking Over That Came Unexpected

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 2

Back when it was a frustratingly rare Wii exclusive, I braved a storm to hunt down a used copy of Xenoblade Chronicles, and it still surpassed my every expectation. So finally sinking my teeth into Xenoblade Chronicles X earlier this year felt right.

This was a Wii U game and it’s still nuts that this was a Wii U game. The only change I made when emulating it was bumping up the internal rendering resolution, and it’s crazy how good it still looks. The highest-fidelity games I play are FromSoft so my frame of reference is busted, but even still, it’s frequently breathtaking. Monolith Soft has always had a reputation for building impressive open worlds on underpowered hardware, and their first foray into HD might be their greatest feat. Or maybe I’m just easily impressed by pretty skies. Emulated at 1080p 60FPS, the experience really clicks, with snappy menus, fast loading times, and the ability to alt-tab to the map on the gamepad. For once I didn't feel like I was missing out at all by not playing on original hardware.  

After starting a new game you're immediately dumped into a character creation screen, which means I already have to navigate an old stupid censorship debate. See, there was a whole internet shitstorm back in 2015 when this game released stateside because the English version removed the bust slider from the character creator. This was the era of GamerGate and “localization versus translation” and Fire Emblem Fates taking out a waifu-touching minigame and everything surrounding Tokyo Mirage Sessions – things got really heated for a second! In hindsight, it was weird mixture of niche game publishers misreading their target audiences and hypervigilant right-wing provocateurs gearing up for larger culture wars, using titty games as a nexus for radicalizing nerds.

Things have cooled down a lot since then, as Japanese games generally release unaltered these days, rendering it a non-issue. When controversies do happen, it’s not in Nintendo's court anymore, it’s usually Valve removing Japanese visual novels from their store page in an act of laughable double standards. Anyways, thanks to the wonders of PC emulation and memory editors, I was able to restore the boob slider to Xenoblade Chronicles X, and valiantly used it to make my character flat.

XCX’s design sensibilities are a pretty sharp contrast from the direction the series went afterwards, instead dealing in guns, gritty sci-fi, and a more realistic color palette. The storms and forlorn mecha on the box art tell you all you need to know. It’s all very western, with the designers definitely taking cues from Halo and Mass Effect in a lot of places. The hub city is also based on Los Angeles, further cementing the American influence in everything but the mechas.

Ultimately, I think this all worked out well. The original Wii release of Xenoblade Chronicles isn’t particularly “anime”, after all. Its aesthetic sensibilities are closer to Final Fantasy X than, say, any given Tales. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and 3, as well as the Switch remake of the first game, hew much closer to games like Genshin in terms of colors and character proportions, but Xenoblade X takes the original’s artstyle and places it in a more serious context. I’m glad the series didn’t commit to this direction (it would have gotten bland fast), but it’s cool that we got it exactly once. Despite the more western stylings though, this is still fundamentally a niche anime game, much more so than the first Xenoblade. There’s titty armor and fanservice outfits as quest rewards, a young moe girl in the main cast, and the occasional pervy sidequest. A lot of the localization conflict may have been Nintendo attempting to clean up Xenoblade X in order to pitch it as a mainstream release at a time when the Wii U really needed a hit. While it’s a solid game, it was never going to be able to appeal to a very large audience.

Also, the story’s a bit of a mess. The tone is all over the place, with both comic relief and serious moments frequently failing to land. What starts off as a surprisingly grimdark sci-fi about the last remaining humans trying to survive on an alien planet as their crashed generation ship-city runs out of power quickly morphs into Star Wars levels of goofy aliens. Plot twist after plot twist ensues, defusing a lot of the tension because you know that they’re just going to pull something even crazier out next. Though the main story struggles, the emergent narrative of New Los Angeles is actually pretty good. A lot of the player’s side questing is dedicated to resolving interpersonal conflicts and helping make the city feel like a real home for everyone. Gradually, NLA begins taking on alien immigrants and the mutual fish-out-of-water situation between human and alien refugees leads to some funny moments and the occasional surprisingly thoughtful quest about cultural tolerance.

But for the most part, the story takes a backseat to exploring planet Mira. Through the gameplay loop I’ve come to understand Xenoblade X as something of a single-player MMO. The combat system is based around positioning, auto-attacks, skills that go on cooldown, and extremely customizable character classes. There’s a nightmarish amount of skill trees to keep track off, to the point where I’d forget about them alone until I was having trouble with a fight, and then remember an entire system I’d forgotten to take advantage of. There are item collections to fill out and side quests of all flavors and secret areas and difficult raid bosses yada yada yada…

Okay I can’t hold off from discussing the music any longer. The combat theme for Xenoblade X is the stuff of legends. Terrible, terrible legends.

Putting vocals in your RPG’s regular battle music is a bold move. You really have to make sure you knocked it out of the park, because singing is going to grate on the player far more quickly than any instrumental. Because of this, the battle themes of Persona 5, The World Ends With You, and Get In The Car, Loser! are all something of a flex. Black Tar is not that. I’m just going to link the song, because it really has to heard to be understood.

Xenoblade X’s battle theme starts off strong, the grim sci-fi tone clearly communicated through the moody synths. Soon enough the guitars come crashing in, giving way to a distinctly nu metal sound. That stylistic choice alone pissed people off in 2015, to which I say grow up, it’s great. But if you let the battle run on for 50 seconds, someone starts rapping.

Black Tar has some of the most nonsensical lyrics ever put to pen, delivered in the jankiest way possible, with words just kind of crammed in without any regard to flow. It’s not even a case of “non-proficient English speaker comes up with shoddy lyrics” as occasionally happens with Japanese songs. Every single word of this is an act of malicious fluency, and if I singled out all the lines I had questions about, I’d be here all day. Opening the first verse with “We’re stuck on a whole different planet” tricks the listener into thinking that the lyrics will to tie into the game’s events and setting, but this is a fool’s errand. The titular tar has no in-game corollary, so to make any sense of it you have to go metaphorical and claim that maybe it stands for losing your squadmates and giving up hope. That's still pretty flimsy! Maybe it really is just be about heroin.

Eventually though, we reach the chorus, and it’s actually a great hook! Except for the fact that it’s sung by a Japanese singer in English. The lyrics were clearly written with no regard for which syllables he’d have difficulty with, and making this guy utter the phrase “Black tar’lll” was an open act of cruelty.

In a 2015 interview, Black Tar rapper and lyricist David Whittaker brings up that the he wrote the words for his first video game song in about two hours, going for “just foolishness”. I imagine his work here was a similar situation.

It’s so, so easy to harp on Black Tar. Everyone did at release, and everyone who hasn’t played the game still does. The thing is, it’s impossible to keep that antagonism up when you’ve got an 80-hour game ahead of you where this is the standard battle theme the whole way through. For the sake of your own sanity, you have to learn to love Black Tar, and pretty much everyone who finishes the game comes around to it. Much to the chagrin of my girlfriend, I quote Black Tar constantly, with less of a sense of irony each time. Eventually, you too will find yourself shouting along with David Whittaker as he raps about being on a sea of dark matter. And of course, the instrumental was always a banger if you weren’t a coward. The theme for New LA also gets a lot of flak for its gibberish vocal samples and St. Anger snares, but I’ve always been a fan and think it holds up great as an endless-looping hub area theme. It’s so…. Sawano zeitgeisty.

The entire soundtrack is actually a Hiroyuki Sawano joint, and he does a pretty good job. It very much all sounds like the kind of music he’s known for, with the exception of the overworld themes, which instead try to mimic the compositions of the first Xenoblade Chronicles. Primordia’s theme is an excellent response to the first game’s Gaur Plain, with a more techy and ominous tone that nevertheless still evokes the sense of grand exploration ahead.

The edgy atmosphere, the washed out palette, the Sawano tunes….Xenoblade Chronicles X is extremely of its time, in a way that comes across as deeply charming 8 years later. It’s kind of terrifying that something can already be an early 2010s period piece! The Sawano music alone will shoot you back to the days of Kill La Kill and Aldnoah Zero, when Gen Urobuchi was absolutely everywhere and the default crap anime genre was magic school instead of isekai. The mere idea of early 2010s nostalgia sets off alarms in my head, but it’s definitely real, and will only become more of a thing in the next few years. Brace yourselves for the flow of time.

Last, but certainly not least, the mechas! They’re one of the main reasons I tried the game out in the first place. Giant robots are often part of Xenoblade worldbuilding, but they don’t really factor into the gameplay. X is the exception. From the first preview trailers to the title screen to their first step into New LA, the player is made to want a Skell. They’re so cute! The Skells were designed by Takayuki Yanase, one of the people who worked on Gundam 00, and I can see the similarities in the combination of curves and blocky elements. There’s quite a few mecha otaku who work at the NLA hangar out of love for the Skells. Most of them are women, a detail that made me really happy!

Adding even more to the player’s desire is the fact that Xenoblade X withholds Skells for a very long time. You have to make it more than halfway through the story and substantially explore the first three continents on foot before receiving your piloting license. And it’s Xenoblade, so these places are massive. Even with an extremely generous jump, you’ll run into countless clifftops out of reach. They really make you work for it, but at least the core gameplay loop of exploring to setting up waypoints and mining devices is a lot of fun on its own (I was curious if the plot would ever get around to problematizing the resource-extraction gameplay loop, but no dice).

party members next to the Skell for scale purposes

When you finally get a Skell about forty hours into the game, everything changes. One of the major challenges facing mecha games is getting the scale right –it’s pretty easy for the giant robot to feel human-sized if all the player is ever doing is piloting. Xenoblade X avoids this by making your human pace painfully clear before giving you a ten-meter robot to traverse those same landscapes. It’s night and day how much more quickly you can navigate. Skells are also wildly stronger than characters on the ground, and being able to take on behemoth creatures as well as pulverize the human-scale enemies you’ve been fighting all this time keeps the scale relevant. It provides a real power fantasy and makes them feel believable in-setting. Being able to get in and out of your Skell at will goes a long way towards making it truly feel like yours, and this mechanic also acts as something of an on-the-fly difficulty modifier for the remainder of the game. A few chapters later you get a flight pack for your Skell, and the world opens up all over again.

not pictured: the j-pop earworm that plays every time you start flying

After spending so much time hanging out with the mecha pervert mechanic girlies in the NLA hangar, the back half of Xenoblade Chronicles X finally lets you be one of the mecha pervert girlies. Customization is on the lighter side, as you can’t mix and match body parts like in Armored Core, but there’s still plenty of color customization and weapons fine-tuning to do. I totally fell in love with my robots, and that alone makes it a victory of a mecha game.

A new song plays during Skell combat, and it’s…. more verses of Black Tar!! There truly is no escape. The backing has more of an EDM sound to it, and the lyrics are even more laughable than before. “Shoot them with your guns” still gets me every time. And yet, I would be lying if I said I’ve never headbanged to the part about being stuck on a different planet. You learn to love these things.

So that’s Xenoblade X. It’s a weird-ass game, a real triumph but also absolutely the wrong thing for Nintendo to have to put out in 2015. It’s easily the most impressive Wii U exclusive and I’m glad Monolith Soft took this detour. You’d be disappointed in it if you went in with purely the expectation of a mecha game, but as a Xenoblade fan who’s been gradually falling deeper into mecha, it was a great genre blend. Xenoblade X’s servers will shut down next year, and while I didn’t partake in any of that (the multiplayer elements seem fairly minor anyways), it will be the end of an era for sure. Just in time to start fondly reminiscing.

[serenailith]

just wishing

for @dreamlingbingo

Square: d1, cybersex Rating: e Word Count: 7275 Ship(s): dream of the endless/hob gadling Warnings: none Additional Tags: alternate universe - human, overworked uni student!hob, sex cam worker!dream, sex work is real work, so much filth in this, dirty talk, sex toys, blowjobs, anal sex, gratuitous use of the word ‘beautiful’ Summary:

Hob never knew a simple weblink could change his entire life.

Link: on ao3 masterlist

Hob sighs and stares at the blinking cursor. It mocks him; really, it does. Each blink seems to say “You should be writing. You’re wasting time, Gadling.” And… It’s true. He should be writing. This paper won’t write itself, and if he doesn’t get it submitted by midnight, he’ll fail Medieval Literature, and then where will he be?

Slamming his laptop shut, he follows the action with slamming his forehead against his desk. His roommate scoffs and throws a licorice rope at his back.

“It can’t be that bad.”

“It’s worse. I haven’t been able to think a single thought that’s original.”

“Shouldn’t have looked at examples of past papers,” Matthew says, and Hob can hear the shrug in the American’s voice. “But anyway, I’m goin’ out. Got my eye on a real good-looking girl, and I think I might actually have a chance.”

Matthew drops the package of licorice on Hob’s desk, claps a hand on his shoulder, and wishes him well on his way out of their room. Hob waits until the door has clicked closed before smacking his forehead against his desk once again.

His cellphone dings beside his head, and Hob glowers at the device before unlocking it. It’s only a text from his mum, asking how his paper is coming along. He sighs and lies, tells her it is going incredibly well and will probably be his best one yet.

Once she is sufficiently mollified and has chided him for being awake so late, as if she isn’t awake just as late, she makes him swear to go to bed then signs her last text “Love, Mum xx”. Hob’s heart aches at the words. It’s been three weeks since he’s been home; work and schooling have taken up all of his time. He hates it—loathes, really—that he can’t see his family as often as he’d like, but he needs the money and he needs the education. So he resigns himself to reality and focuses on what needs to be done rather than the hopes he has that he can’t make come true.

Opening his laptop, Hob turns his attention back to his essay and struggles through the next three hundred and fifty words. It’s eerily similar to what he thinks pulling teeth might be like, and he can’t stop the sigh of relief when his cellphone vibrates once more.

Matthew: Not coming back tonight. Score! Dont do anything i wouldnt do. And make sure u clean ur mess ;)

Hob snorts and exits the message thread. Matthew is a crass bastard, but he’s grown on Hob like lichen on a tree. He’s a half-decent roommate and a better friend besides.

It gets the better of him, the silence of the room only broken by the occasional click of keys and the more frequent huff of annoyance. Hob wishes he could do what Matthew is—out drinking at a pub, evidently going home with someone—but no, Hob is forcing himself to focus on his studies.

Unfortunately, his attention span grows shorter while his frustration grows higher. Hob finally slams his laptop closed and groans, pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes. He lets out a long, steady stream of curse words until his head feels less like it’ll explode then breathes out slowly. Right. That’s enough for tonight.

Hob sighs and reaches for his cellphone. Maybe someone will be free for an hour or two. Three of his usual bedmates turn him down, citing their own studies, and the fourth doesn’t bother saying ‘no’. All he does is send a link. Hob frowns and stares at the letters.

On one hand, trusting unknown links is a bad idea. On the other, he trusts Malachi rather well. Unless Malachi was hacked…

Hob opens his laptop and types in the web address before he can overthink it more. The page takes a few seconds to load, but when it does, Hob nearly clicks out of the tab. As it is, he shoots a furtive look over his shoulder as if expecting Matthew to linger there as he normally does. But the room is empty. Matthew isn’t here.

Hob swallows harshly, squeezing his eyes closed, then turns back to the laptop. The page is still up, still set to what’s very obviously a porno site, and a banner is plastered over a video container, the words “Join now!” in a rather tasteful font. A box in the corner bears numbers, the counter rising steadily in droves. There’s no indication of what kind of porno Malachi sent, but—

Hob clicks the banner and swallows down his shame as he enters his credit card information. One try can’t hurt, right? The page reloads, and the banner is gone now. He watches as the camera suddenly flares to life a minute later and brings into focus a man against a dark background. Pinpricks of white litter the wall behind him, a veritable night sky brought to Earth and made touchable. But it’s the man who captures Hob’s attention most.

The man is gorgeous—mussed black hair, pale skin, and eyes so incredibly blue even through the screen. His kissable lips quirk into a small smile at whatever he sees on his end, and Hob realises he’s probably approving of the viewer count, which is well into the hundreds by now. The man’s gaze darts to his camera, and the breath is punched from Hob’s lungs at how it seems as if the man is looking at him, not the other viewers.

Perhaps that’s part of the ruse.

Shaking his head, Hob swallows thickly and reminds himself that this is the man’s job. He blows out a breath and closes his eyes. This is so stupid, he thinks. Why is he doing something like this? Sure, he’s been without sex for months, but is cybersex really going to make a difference? After all, it’s his own hand with or without the man currently stripping on-screen.

And what a beautiful sight. wetdream slowly, carefully pushes the straps of his lacy teddy from his shoulders; his gaze remains firmly on the camera, lips curving slightly as he lets the lingerie fall out of sight. His hands toy with the edge of his underwear, the lace accentuating the sharp lines of his hips. He teases, but he doesn’t remove them.

Someone posts Take them off, sweetheart, let us see what’s underneath. The man on-screen shakes his head, though he does push the hem down an inch, just enough to show off the slightest hint of a patch of black hair.

Hob inhales sharply at the sight. It’s nothing major, nothing revealing, but it’s enough to send heat through his blood. He slides a finger over the laptop’s trackpad, tapping it once the cursor hovers over the chat-box, and hesitates.

hobgoblin: you’re beautiful

As soon as he sends the message, he slaps a hand over his face. God, he’s a right idiot, isn’t he? No one wants to hear that, especially not when they’re working. But the man on the screen is reading the message, and he doesn’t look angry or uncomfortable. In fact, he looks… pleased? There’s a tint of pink to his cheeks, and Hob revels in the sight even as messages come pouring in, calling him a moron.

He ignores them and focuses on the man now on his knees in the middle of a bed. His legs are spread, the fabric of his underwear clearly straining against the stretch, and Hob’s mouth goes dry as the man undulates his hips. Though thin, wetdream has a great body. He’s lithe, beautiful, and almost ethereal as he practically fucks the air.

Hob can’t stop himself: He stands enough to shove down his joggers then takes himself in hand. He strokes slowly, reclining in his seat as much as possible, and watches wetdream finally—finally—remove his underwear. He turns his back to the camera, looks over his shoulder, and Hob groans at the sparkle between the man’s arsecheeks.

Wish that was my cock, someone writes, and Hob scowls before hiding the chat-box. It’s easier this way, easier to pretend he isn’t pathetic watching a sex worker perform for hundreds of other people. He can pretend it’s a private thing, as if he and wetdream are…

No, that’s stupid. Creepy, even.

So Hob forces aside those thoughts and watches wetdream remove the plug, reaching for something out of view. When he turns back to the camera, Hob sees the rather impressive dildo in his hand. And an equally impressive dick.

Hob stuffs his fist into his mouth and squeezes the root of his cock, anything to drag this out. Anything to keep watching wetdream fucking himself with the toy while nearly nine hundred people watch. There’s no sound, so Hob shamefully lets himself imagine what noises are falling from wetdream’s lips as he rolls his hips and takes the dildo in further. Would he let out breathy little sighs, or deep moans that tremble in his throat? Would he murmur his lover’s name, give directions in a love-laden voice?

Hob comes too quickly but doesn’t move to clean up. Not until wetdream has come all over his own belly with twitching thighs and a blissed-out smile on his face.

The feed ends with wetdream’s face inches from the camera, a soft smile on his lips, and Hob rushing to rearrange his budget.

Thankfully, Matthew has found a young woman who doesn’t mind his… interesting mannerisms, so the next evening, he leaves the room immediately after his last class of the day. Hob waits for ten minutes to be sure his roommate is gone before he darts for his laptop and brings up the website again. He skims through the listings, trying to find—

There. wetdream.

He hurriedly clicks on “Join now!”

As he sits in his chair, counting the seconds until the cam starts, Hob realises he should feel ashamed for this. Not for supporting a sex worker. No, that would be stupid. Sex work is real work, and he’ll knock the lights out of anyone who says otherwise. No, he should feel ashamed for how desperate he’s acting. He’s had sex before. Hell, he’s even sexted before. This is only new in that it’s a complete stranger he’s watching. It’s almost like a porn video. No desperation needed.

But he’s never seen anyone in a porno look this beautiful, he thinks when wetdream comes into view. He’s wearing a corset and stockings, garters, and his eyes are rimmed with a thin line of black. His hair is still the same wild mess as it was last night, and Hob wonders if the strands are soft, would they feel like silk between his fingers?

He calls wetdream beautiful again just to see that subtle flush to his cheeks.

It takes two weeks before Hob has the courage to search the pricing tab of the website. He grimaces to himself at the cost listed. He can’t afford it, not if he wants to continue this thing called existing. Or at the very least, feeding himself. Sighing, he slumps in his seat and runs a hand over his face.

What is he even thinking? He’s already spent far too much on wetdream’s live-cams as it is. The only time he hasn’t spent money on the site is when wetdream isn’t listed. Which… hasn’t been often. Maybe three nights out of twelve.

“Fuck it, Matthew owes me a meal or two,” he grumbles before clicking on the link to apply for a private showing.

He only has to wait two hours for the email confirmation that payment has gone through and wetdream has availability for the following Saturday evening, a one-hour window from nine to ten. Hob sends back a message agreeing to the time then immediately begins planning on how to get Matthew out of the room for that hour. It should be simple enough—if his current girlfriend hasn’t broken up with him, she’ll keep him distracted. If she has, the promise of an opportunity to find another one might be sufficient.

Hob swallows and presses his fingertips to his eyelids. He’s being foolish, but damned if he can find it in him to change.

Three days has never felt so long. Hob could swear more than seventy-two hours has passed since he got the email, but nope. He’s gone from Wednesday night to Saturday, and nothing more.

As he’d predicted, Matthew is easy to get out of the room. Hob tells him about the secluded little courtyard on the other side of campus that he knows hardly anyone knows of, hints that maybe Matthew’s girlfriend would like to watch the stars for a while. Matthew is all too eager to disappear ten minutes before nine, and Hob lets out a breath of relief.

He hurries to log in on the website with the passcode the admins emailed him, and the page loads almost instantly. The feed is dark, disconnected. Hob chews on the edge of a fingernail as he watches the minutes tick past. Finally, at two minutes past nine o’clock, the video flickers to life.

wetdream wears what he wore the first time Hob ever watched his live-cam. The lacy teddy is just as Hob remembers it: dark as pitch, contrasting so beautifully to such pale skin, barely reaching a few inches past his hips. His underwear hardly conceals his half-hard cock. Hob wonders if wetdream was stroking himself in preparation.

Hob realises belatedly that he has no idea how this works. He hadn’t exactly asked the admins of the site, and there wasn’t anything listed in the FAQs. He bites down on his lower lip and lets his fingers tap out a message in the chat-box: What do I do?

wetdream’s head cocks as he reads the message, then he lets out what Hob can only imagine is a huff of laughter. Hob’s cheeks flare with heat, and he very nearly clicks out of the tab. Only the thought that he’d paid so much for this stops him. He doesn’t want to waste that amount of money. So he resigns himself to being a laughingstock—maybe wetdream will tell all his friends about the bloody idiot who can’t work a private sex show to save his life.

wetdream: Just tell me what you want me to do. I am all yours.

Hob… Hob can do that. He can tell wetdream what to do. But, then, the question remains: What the fuck does Hob want to see? He swallows and double-checks that Matthew hasn’t come back, that the door is still locked, then faces his laptop again.

hobgoblin: take off your top. i want to see you

wetdream does without hesitation; his fingers trail along his exposed skin, hook around the straps of his teddy, and he gazes directly into the camera as he pushes the straps down. The teddy slides down his lithe body until it vanishes from view. Hob blows out a breath at the expanse of smooth pale skin, the flat planes of muscle, the almost dainty lines carved to form this body. wetdream presses the tips of long fingers to his chin as he waits, and Hob could cry with how beautiful this man is.

He tells wetdream to remove his underwear, to get on the bed, to touch himself. wetdream moves quickly yet sensuously, stripping and leaving the camera where it is but bringing a tablet with him. Clearly, it’s meant so he can keep up with the chat. So he can obey Hob’s orders and fulfil his desires.

Once he’s situated on his knees in the middle of his bed, wetdream wraps a slender hand around his cock and gives it one long, slow stroke. Hob watches wetdream drag his nails down his bare chest, lines of pink left in their wake, before the hand splays over a sharp hipbone, dips down to fondle himself. wetdream’s tongue darts out to wet his lower lip, and Hob hesitantly types out another message.

hobgoblin: i want to see you open yourself up.

wetdream’s gaze darts to the tablet, a brow twitching, then he moves. When he comes back on-screen, he holds a bottle of lubricant. Hob watches with a dry mouth as wetdream coats his fingers. He turns until he’s side-on to the camera, lowers his chest so it rests on the mattress, and reaches behind himself. His lashes flutter closed, knees spreading slightly wider, and his wrist flexes as he clearly pushes his finger in further. He turns his head toward the camera, eyes opening to slits, and his lips curve the barest amount in the corners. His mouth drops open as his knuckles shift beneath his skin.

hobgoblin: just like that. you’re beautiful like this, did you know that? hobgoblin: so beautiful. hobgoblin: fuck yourself with your fingers for me, love.

Hob moans when wetdream does as commanded. He wishes he could be there, could hear what sounds spill from this man’s lips, could be the one opening him up until he’s begging for Hob’s cock. Hob doesn’t hesitate: He shoves down the band of his pyjama bottoms and takes himself firmly in hand. It’s harder to type one-handed, but he does it anyway.

hobgoblin: let me see your arse. let me see you nice and open.

wetdream moves again until he’s reclining against an impressive amount of pillows, legs spread, and Hob nearly swallows his tongue at the sight. He really, truly is open; it would be so easy to just push inside and fuck wetdream senseless. After a moment, wetdream’s fingers dive back into himself. The tablet still rests beside him, and he occasionally glances at the screen.

hobgoblin: do you wish it was me there? instead of just your fingers. do you wish it was my cock splitting you open? because i do.

wetdream nods, first slowly then more vigorously. Hob types out faster, love, that’s it, and God, does wetdream obey so beautifully. He obeys when Hob tells him to stroke himself, and Hob’s hand moves more quickly as wetdream fucks up into his own fist then back onto his fingers.

Can I come? wetdream mouths after a moment, eyes darkened and thighs trembling, and Hob has a helluva time typing yes.

“Come for me,” he groans though wetdream can’t hear, but that doesn’t matter: Ropes of cum stripe along wetdream’s belly only seconds later as his head falls back to expose his throat. Hob wants to bite it, to leave his mark so wetdream would never forget him.

The mental image is enough to send Hob over the edge himself.

hobgoblin: gorgeous

wetdream gives a shaky smile as he lies against his pillows, and Hob reaches for a tissue from the box beside him. To his surprise, he sees a message when he looks back at the screen.

wetdream: Do you want me to taste myself? hobgoblin: if you want to? i don’t have much of a preference in either direction.

That might change, he thinks as wetdream swipes a finger through the mess on his stomach. Hob’s heart skips a beat when wetdream sucks the cum from his fingertip, tongue wrapping around the digit as he stares into the camera as if challenging Hob. Hob’s cock gives a valiant twitch, but there’s nothing he can do about it.

He glances at the clock—it’s only been half an hour, and he’s already spent.

wetdream: You still have thirty-two minutes left. Is there anything else you would like? hobgoblin: no, you were wonderful. i enjoyed myself

wetdream grins before visibly tamping down on it. Shaking his head, he taps at the screen of his tablet.

wetdream: I am glad. wetdream: I enjoyed myself, as well. hobgoblin: thank you for a great time. good night, beautiful

wetdream comes closer to the camera, smiles once more, then the screen goes to the landing page. Hob slumps in his seat and runs his clean hand over his face. Well, that was… something.

There’s a partial refund on his credit card the next morning.

Unfortunately for Hob, the private show spawns something like an addiction. There’s an undeniably impossible-to-resist quality about wetdream that Hob can’t quite explain, not even to himself, so he doesn’t try. He merely adjusts his budget more and more, picking up extra shifts as often as he can to afford living expenses and the live-cams. As long as they don’t interfere with wetdream’s showings. He’s noticed a pattern to the cams, so he tries to schedule his life around them. It isn’t always possible to make it to one—he has to miss a handful over the next two months, between working and Matthew being in the room—but he tries.

He always makes sure to tell wetdream how beautiful he is.

Three months after Malachi sent the link, the term is over, and Hob is heading back home for the summer. His mum has been pestering him about it, and he’s missed his family fiercely. He hadn’t known just how much wetdream’s cams had been affecting his life until he checked the calendar just last week and realised he had only been back home twice a month since the cams started.

“Robbie!”

Hob grins and envelops his mother in a tight hug. She squeezes him once before stepping back. Frowning, Elizabeth runs her thumbs under his eyes.

“I’m fine, Mum.”

“You haven’t been sleeping well.”

No, I’m stupidly infatuated with a sex worker and can’t stop thinking about him. “You know how school is,” he says with a shrug before grabbing his bag. “Dad at home?”

He settles into his childhood bedroom with ease. It’s gone through some significant changes over the years. No longer filled with posters of cartoon characters or Formula 1 cars or toys meant for a seven-year-old little boy, the room suits him well enough now. He sets his bag on the floor by the wardrobe then sits on the bed.

He’s just begun thinking about wetdream—again—when a small form slams into his side. Hob chuckles as he pushes at his little sister’s shoulder until she backs away. Maggie beams before hugging him. Hob closes his eyes as he holds her close.

At only eleven years old, Margaret is the baby of the four children. She should be a spoiled princess, but she’s rather well-rounded and down to Earth. At the very least, there is little that Hob can complain about that isn’t typical younger sibling behaviour.

He presses a kiss to Maggie’s hair before releasing her. “What are you doing home already? Don’t you have school?”

“Mum said I can get out early today since you were coming home. Besides, it’s the last day anyway. We never do anything on the last day.”

“Fair enough.”

Hob sighs and stares at his sister. Her blonde hair has been plaited today, and her hazel eyes sparkle with delight as she sits beside him on his bed, grinning. There’s a small stain of chocolate on the collar of her uniform jumper.

Her gaze slides around the room before alighting on the guitar leaning against the far wall. “Oh, can you please play Black Bird?”

“Which version?”

“From the movie!”

Hob laughs and nods. If his baby sister wants a song, a song she will get. So once the instrument is in hand, he quickly wipes off the dust, tunes the strings, then begins to play.

Before he knows it, three weeks have gone by. He’s found a job in the library, so he spends his days helping patrons find books and makes small talk with everyone. It’s a lot like his job in the university bookstore but less stressful. He doesn’t have fellow students yelling at him because they’re late for class or the books are too expensive.

Hob’s favourite thing about being home, however, is spending time with his family. Fourteen-year-old Maxwell, Nicolette and Andrew at seventeen, and of course, Maggie. His parents. Even his neighbours who never really liked him but now think he’s an exemplary young man for attending uni and holding down a ‘respectable’ job.

‘Respectable’. What makes a job respectable, Hob wonders. Perhaps it’s that he’s not stripping or whoring himself out. Or running a cam service.

Cam service.

Hob swears to himself, startling his family at the dinner table. His mother admonishes him for his language, despite the fact that the twins curse just as often as he does, and Max and Maggie have heard far worse. But he doesn’t care. He’d completely forgotten. How?

He forces himself to eat his dinner at a normal pace, even helps clean up as an apology to his mum for swearing around his siblings. As soon as she shoos him away, Hob nearly sprints up the stairs to his old bedroom.

It’s Friday which means, if he’s held to the pattern, wetdream has a showing tonight. Right about… now, actually. Hob hurries to log into his account and skims the listings until he finds the name of the correct live-cam. Blowing out a breath of relief that his card hasn’t been declined, he locks his bedroom door then sits on his bed, leaning against the wall.

The video is dark still, and Hob chews on his thumbnail as he wonders what wetdream could possibly be doing to prepare. He’s already growing hard just with the mental images of all the possibilities. He could be stroking himself until he’s erect, opening himself up for a plug to keep him ready for toys.

Hob’s thoughts stutter as the feed begins. wetdream sits on his bed already, legs crossed and showing off the high heels and stockings he wears. The sheer, black corset he’s donned accentuates the straight lines of his body, and it would look awkward on anyone else. But on him, Hob thinks it’s the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen.

hobgoblin: hello beautiful

Hob has never witnessed anyone truly lighting up like this, not outside of Maggie on Christmas morning when their parents had given her a guinea pig. But wetdream does now. He doesn’t smile, his expression doesn’t change, but there’s something in his eyes that gives away his delight. Hob’s chest fills with a warmth he can’t describe. He’s the reason wetdream is so happy right now. He has to be.

Something about wetdream’s room is different. It takes Hob a moment to place it: He’s moved his bed. He’s moved his bed to make room for the silver pole in the centre of the room. A shiver slides down Hob’s spine at the thought of what’s to come.

Hob doesn’t send any messages while he watches wetdream work. And work wetdream does. He doesn’t strip this time, not really, but that’s fine. He’s gorgeous regardless as he undulates his hips against the pole, as he spins and nearly hovers off the floor, held firmly up by his thighs against the metal. Hob hides the chat-box when someone says it could be their pole that wetdream works.

Hob nearly comes to the sight of blue eyes staring directly into the camera and a kissable lower lip caught between teeth as wetdream plunges his hand between waist and lacy underwear. As he pulls his cock free. As he strokes himself teasingly, like he wants to put on one helluva show, and maybe he does. Hob lets himself imagine that it’s all for him. He comes a split second after wetdream does.

wetdream licks cum from his hand, and Hob wishes it was him doing it.

He’s just hovered over the X to close out of the tab, feed gone dark once more, when a chat-box pops up in the bottom of his screen.

wetdream: Tomorrow night, midnight. hobgoblin: ?? wetdream: You will see.

Hob raises a brow even as no further messages come in. Deciding to not ask more questions, he closes the tab and reaches for the tissues on his nightstand. He feels like a teenager again, going through puberty and too many tissues to be inconspicuous. He huffs out a laugh as he tosses the tissues into the bin under his desk.

━━━━━━━━━

It’s ten to midnight, and Hob is already logged in. Waiting. His heart races in his chest, and his palms have gone clammy. He repeatedly wipes them on his bare thighs; no point in wearing bottoms, is there, when he’s just going to shove them down in minutes?

A chat-box appears with two minutes to spare. All it contains is an invite link. There is no host information, just a site bot doing the work. Hob knows, though. He knows, so he clicks Accept without hesitation.

He isn’t disappointed: wetdream appears within seconds. The pole is nowhere to be found now, and the bed is back in its original position. He’s wearing the heels again, and Hob stifles a groan low in his throat at how they make wetdream’s legs look even longer. Other than the shoes, he’s completely nude. Hob watches him tap at the screen of his tablet as he settles in on the bed.

wetdream: I get one free credit to give per month. I chose you. hobgoblin: i’m flattered. thank you. wetdream: I have a request of you tonight, if you are amenable to that? hobgoblin: anything, beautiful wetdream: Tell me what you would do to me were you to be here. Tell me what you want of me. hobgoblin: gladly. lie back and let me see you. hobgoblin: god, you’re fucking beautiful. you listen so well.

Hob doesn’t mind that wetdream’s attention isn’t on him, it’s on the messages coming in on the tablet, as Hob tells every dirty fantasy he’s carried with him over the last four months. He’d kiss wetdream until they were both breathless, unable to speak. He’d suck wetdream’s cock until he was coming down Hob’s throat. Hob would bring wetdream to his knees and fuck his mouth before coming all over his face. He’d bend the gorgeous, perfect man over the nearest surface, open him up so slowly and gently, then fuck him until they were too exhausted to move anymore. He’d fuck him with the points of wetdream’s heels digging into his back, leaving bruises to remind Hob of their union.

Or maybe, maybe, Hob would let wetdream fuck him into the mattress. He has a feeling the man is hiding some serious strength in that slender body of his.

hobgoblin: play with your arse, love, beautiful one. come when you want, i’m watching.

wetdream nods rapidly, hand nearly a blur as he jerks himself off. He clenches his teeth, eyes squeezing closed, then his release is spilling free over his fist and abdomen. Some even manages to reach his chest.

It takes Hob an embarrassingly short amount of time to come after that.

You have a way with words, wetdream messages once he’s cleaned himself up, something he’s never done on camera before.

hobgoblin: only for you wetdream: You stayed away for quite some time. I hope all is well?

And is that… That’s apprehension, nervousness, on wetdream’s face. Hob groans at that before typing out yeah, everything is fine. sorry to make you worry. Something twists in wetdream’s expression, and he scowls at the screen.

wetdream: I did not worry. I was merely curious. wetdream: Have a good night, hobgoblin. hobgoblin: it’s hob.

The video cuts out but not before Hob sees wetdream mouthing his name to himself. Hob wipes away his mess then crawls into bed.

There is no live-cam the next week or the next. There is no live-cam until Hob is back at uni, six weeks after the free private show.

Hob still calls wetdream beautiful, but wetdream doesn’t seem to notice. Or care.

It’s almost Christmas by the time anything changes. Matthew refuses to leave the room, moping about being so far from home during the holidays, and Hob takes pity on the young man. He invites Matthew to spend Christmas with the Gadling family. Matthew grins and accepts cheerily; any sense of melancholy is gone now, as if a demon banished by an exorcism.

Andrew protests but finally concedes to giving up his room for Matthew, to sharing a bed with Maxwell. Hob, thankfully, gets his room to himself still. It’s bad enough sharing a room as a grown adult, but to share a bed? He’d rather sleep outside in the snow.

Hob waits until the others are in bed before locking his door and opening his laptop. He highly doubts wetdream would be hosting a showing tonight, so near to Christmas, but he wants to check anyway. A site bot has sent another message: Happy Christmas followed by a link.

Hob clicks.

wetdream: You were right. I was… concerned. I grew accustomed to you being in the viewer list, to your messages calling me beautiful.

Hob grins, shaking his head, and types back: you’re forgiven, beautiful.

wetdream: I thought perhaps I could show my remorse by giving you an early Christmas present. hobgoblin: far be it from me to turn down a gift ;)

wetdream smiles on camera, a shy little thing, before sitting back in his seat, showing more than just his head. He’s wearing a red negligee with a ribbon wrapped around his throat, tied in a bow beneath his chin. He chews on his bottom lip, and Hob realises with a start he’s wearing lipstick. Not much, just enough to give more colour, and he’s never wanted to kiss wetdream this much before.

His cock stirs, and he has to agree with the sentiment. This is—

hobgoblin: you are absolutely stunning, love, darling dream come true wetdream: Thank you, but just Dream is acceptable.

Dream. Fucking Hell, of course he’d want to be called Dream. And what a dream he is. Hob pinches himself to make sure this is real, that this is wetdream—Dream—baring himself as a present for Hob.

hobgoblin: it suits you. can i ask you to show me more of you?

Dream—God, fucking Dream—dips his chin and stands. The camera fills with the spread of sheer red and a half-hard cock in a thatch of black hair, then Dream steps back. Hob nods in approval at what he sees, the most perfect present he’s ever received, and types out a request for Dream to surprise him tonight. He wants to know how Dream would please him, by his own choices.

Dream obeys because he always does. He opens himself up, fucks himself on the dildo from before, as he types out a wish that it was Hob filling him. That it was Hob who was stroking his dick and that Hob would leave bruises on his skin to remind him of everything wonderful. He promises he gives the best blowjobs of anyone he knows—he should know, there was a competition involved. He’d make Hob so happy if Hob were there.

hobgoblin: come for me, love. god, i’ve missed seeing you like this. just for me, aren’t you?

Dream taps something, then “Only for you” comes through Hob’s speakers, a low whine of a voice that sends a shiver down Hob’s spine. Breathless pants, and a broken “Only for you, Hob.”

Hob comes at the sound of his name falling from such beautiful, kissable lips.

“Dream, fuck, Dream,” Hob groans, cum dripping down his fist, and he watches as Dream reaches his own climax on-screen.

He hesitates as Dream cleans up, as Dream approaches the computer once more. Throwing caution to the wind, he hurriedly types his phone number into the chat-box and bites down on the edge of his thumbnail as Dream reads the message. His eyes widen, gaze darting to the camera, and Hob can hear the quickening of his breath.

“Hob…”

hobgoblin: you don’t have to use it. just wanted you to have it just in case you wanted to. happy early christmas, dream of mine.

Dream closes out of the live-cam without response.

━━━━━━━━━

Unknown Number: Are you busy?

Hob stares at the text. It’s Christmas morning, and he’s meant to be downstairs right now. But he has a feeling he knows who’s texting him two days after he gave them the number in the first place.

Hob: Not if this is who I think it is.

The maybe-mysterious texter sends back a photograph of a very familiar body. Hob’s gaze trails along the well-known stature, the valleys and curves of muscle and the fine delicacy of bones. He’s just lined his camera up to take a picture of his own when someone knocks on the door.

“C’mon, Robbie, Mum won’t let us open presents until you come down!”

“I’ll be right there, Mags.”

“You better, or I’m throwing all yours in the fireplace.”

Her footsteps stomp back down the stairs, and Hob laughs quietly before typing out a message.

Hob: Happy Christmas, Dream. I, unfortunately, have a little sister who’s threatening the very survival of my gifts if I don’t get downstairs now. Luckily, she can’t take you from me, can she? 😉 Dream: No. She cannot. Happy Christmas, Hob.

Somehow, his parents have scrounged up gifts for Matthew. Hob has a feeling they were originally meant to be for him, but he’s willing to give up a few presents if it means making his friend happy and feel included. After presents have been put away, there comes breakfast, and Matthew fits in perfectly. He’s on his best behaviour which is a side to him Hob never thought he’d see.

All in all, it’s a pleasant time that only exacerbates the buzzing joy in his veins that comes from having Dream.

He knows it isn’t real. That Dream doesn’t truly care for him. That Dream saying he was only Hob’s was meant to make Hob feel special, to make him willing to pay more money. But goddamn it, Hob wants to hold onto the charade just a while longer. He’ll face reality soon enough. Now is not the time.

He eventually sends a photo of himself to Dream. Might as well let the man see who he’s been giving free private shows to. Might as well show him what he’s getting if only he knew.

Two weeks after the start of term finds Hob roaming around the campus. He’s been attending this university for two years, and there is still so much he doesn’t know about it. Once his face is sufficiently, painfully numb, he ducks into the campus coffeeshop and joins the queue. He needs caffeine and heat. Now.

He turns with his latte in hand, coming to a stop at the sight of two people at the corner table. One is a dark-skinned woman with gold wire-rimmed glasses, wearing an impeccable peacoat and trousers. The other…

The other is clearly Dream.

Hob would recognise that hair anywhere. The pale skin, the blue eyes shining in the weak January sunlight. The woman glances over, frowns, then says something. Dream’s lips tug down, and he turns his head to follow her gaze. His eyes widen when they land on Hob. His lips move, but Hob can’t understand what he’s saying.

Hob approaches the table slowly, carefully, as if the earth will open up and swallow him whole. Instead, he reaches the table without issue, and he smiles down at Dream.

“Hi.”

Dream lets out a soft sigh, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, before he glances at his friend. “Lucienne, I’m afraid I must go.”

“Oh. Of course. I’ll phone you later.”

Dream merely nods, rising to his feet, and Hob moves aside so he can pass. Once outside and halfway down the block, Dream turns to him and opens his mouth. No words come, not for a long moment, then Hob interrupts.

“You’re more beautiful in person.”

Dream exhales sharply, fists the lapels of Hob’s jacket, and pushes him against the brick wall of a building. Hob barely gets out a sound of surprise before Dream is kissing him. Heat floods Hob’s veins, his skin, his entire being as he focuses on the taste of coffee and mint and Dream, oh fuck, is this really happening? He wraps his arms around Dream’s waist, tugs him in closer, and yes. This is real.

“I have been wanting to do that since Christmas,” Dream admits when he pulls away.

“I’ve been wanting to kiss you since the first time I saw you.” He pauses, leans forward to kiss Dream once more. “Come back to mine?”

Dream nods and lets Hob lead him away.

Thankfully, Matthew is at class by the time Hob unlocks the door. He shuts it quickly behind Dream, pinning the man between body and wood, and kisses him again. And again. He makes quick work of unbuttoning Dream’s long coat, of sliding his hand along the hard plane of Dream’s abdomen, to wrap around his hip.

“What do you want me to do?” Dream whispers, and Hob nips at his bottom lip. “Hob…”

“Let me see you, love. I need to see you.”

Dream doesn’t bother putting on a show as he strips down to nothing, leaving his clothes in a pile at his feet. Hob groans and drops to his knees, presses a soft kiss to the head of Dream’s cock. Beautiful, he whispers before taking it in his mouth.

Dream shouts, hand immediately burying in Hob’s hair, and that’s all it takes. Hob sucks and licks and swirls his tongue around the head, takes Dream in all the way to the root until his nose is buried in coarse hair. Swallows around the cock in the back of his throat until Dream comes with a bitten-off cry and quivering thighs.

Opening Dream up is a fucking glorious gift from Heaven. He whines so wonderfully, shoves down onto Hob’s fingers with wanton moans, obeys when Hob tells him to roll onto his belly. Arse on display, Dream shudders as Hob runs a hand along his flank, lets out a broken sound when Hob pushes in. And Hob could die with that sound. He does as he promised so long ago: He fucks Dream in alternating patterns, rough countered by tender, until Dream is panting and Hob’s arms tremble from holding himself up.

Someone knocks on the door. Matthew’s voice calls for Hob, “I forgot my key, open up.”

“Go the fuck away,” Hob grits out, sliding his hand beneath Dream’s body to grasp onto his cock.

Hob comes first, out of breath and satisfied as he spills into Dream with abandon. He presses a soft kiss to Dream’s shoulder, bites down on the smooth skin.

“Come for me, my dream. Let me feel you.”

Dream’s breath comes out in a shuddering sob, and he thrusts forward into Hob’s tight grip over and over, moving between fist to cock then back again. Hob bites down harder, soothing the spot with his tongue.

“Come,” he all but growls into the skin.

Dream does.

Hob pulls Dream to the side once he’s finished, holds him close out of the mess he’s made, and Dream exhales shakily. Hob runs a gentle hand along Dream’s stomach and kisses the curve of his neck.

“I know this is a bit backwards,” he murmurs as soon as he catches his breath again, “but have dinner with me.”

Dream hums in response, nodding slowly, and Hob realises he’s fallen asleep when there comes the sound of soft snores. Deciding class can wait for another day, he burrows his face into the back of Dream’s neck and lets himself drift away. He can deal with Matthew later.

(Matthew retaliates by telling Hob’s mother all about her son’s new boyfriend.)

[fictionkinfessions]

I feel kinda fake bc I see so many people talking about their kin memories and I DO have kin memories, but not visual ones. I don’t SEEING remember specific canon events (yet) but my memories are more like feelings, and senses other than sight. I remember how I felt on my birthday before it all went wrong and how excited I was, and I remember how it felt to just run around carefree.

When I saw the florida project, it just reminded me of being 5 and running around with a few friends and causing chaos. it wasn’t exactly like the movie (we never spat on anyone’s car or did anything to that level of disrespect) and i don’t remember anything visually, but I know. I know I’ve experienced that before and obviously, I would know if those were from my current life, but they aren’t, so where else could those feelings be from? I was never left unsupervised at that age here, but Jack, while I love him, wasn’t the best parental figure (in his defense, he wasn’t prepared to take care of me… at all. I know in canon, Peter moved away, but I’m not sure if that was the case in my memories. He might have stayed with us, but if I do get enough memories to be able to tell I’ll probably go here first thing lol)

I also remember the distinct taste of American candy, which is something I hadn’t tried till later in life here, so obviously, it wasn’t from this life that I’m getting confused. I want to reconnect with my family SO BAD, even if they’re not from my exact universe/timeline/wtvr, but I’m scared of just reaching out and being like “hey it’s me I’m kin with your dead sister from your past life do u want to be my friend”

- dee kennedy dsaf #🧣🎁⭐️ (rlly hope that specific emoji combo isn’t taken)

x

[johannacantsing]

ok I’ve been having more dental pain recently and my plan was to not have any more dental issues/emergencies for another two years (or more would be great) but ice hasn’t even stopped the pain some nights so obviously I’ve been freaking out bc I only trust one (1) dentist (I’ve had so many bad experiences and now I need to correct all the shit that was done to my mouth) and it’s a ~holistic~ dental office with like mercury free procedures and ceramic implants and all this shit so it’s like walking into the damn waiting room is eighty billion dollars so I was muscling thru the pain (tough guy) until I had (embarrassingly this was my actual plan) more money saved up from my new job that I’m applying for now in Korea AND getting a book deal so I’ll have some capital to put down so I won’t need (quoted 40k) to put the entire restoration on a loan bc 1 they’re gonna get all up in there and it’s probs gonna be some problem that makes it more expensive and 2 a lot of it does actually need to be or should be done at the same time for the best result which sucks the most ass ever PLUS my thought was the more my book deal is the less I need to take out bc personal loans have an insane interest rate 😭 and also I would put some in saving so that if I need help paying the loan each month then I would have something to pull

I did (and still am a little tbh) consider getting a personal loan for the whole restoration and then telling the lender that I won’t pay it back bc I don’t have the money and then it will go to collections and fall off my credit in seven years BUT since it’s such a big amount they’ll probably go after me for it so it’s almost definitely not worth it-I’m like 98% sure it’s a really bad idea but when I needed my first emergency tooth extraction I would have pulled it out myself if I had had pliers and I honestly to god thought about going to Home Depot during the day (good thing I didn’t bc I would have pulled the wrong tooth that will need to get pulled eventually so that part wouldn’t be too bad it just wouldn’t have fixed the excruciating pain and also I told my dentist that and apparently for molars if u don’t extract it correctly u can tear the fuck out of the gums and then u won’t be able to place an implant which is lowkey my main goal in life a little to get my mouth fixed so yewouch! that would have sucked if I ripped both out and couldn’t get implants. I think I might have been able to too which is fucking nuts. like the most desperate of times to be sure but if my dentist couldn’t have seen me on Monday I really might have 😅

I wandered-but the good news is it seems like there’s at least a few holistic dentists in Korea so I could at least get an extraction with the prep for an implant if needed (I’m gonna try to do a bunch more research and try to find a dentist that can do the implants the way my American dentist does them bc even if it’s more expensive compared to the titanium ones or whatever it’s still way cheaper than in America bc this country is a shithole in some ways and that’s maybe number one)

so I’m freaking out a lot less knowing I can get at least the basic extraction and shit done if I need to 😫

[ninyard]

i want to know ANYTHING and EVERYTHING about the andrew meets neil as stefan au

YES PLS OKAY

(holy shit this was supposed to be a HC ramble/snippets from the fic but uhhh….here’s a mini fic instead????? The actual fic I wrote isn’t even set back in California it’s set in PSU??? This was supposed to be short backstory!!!!!! Anyways lmk if u want the foxes stuff lol Enjoy <3)

Neil had natural looking ashy blonde with green eyes at the time, no older than 14 years old, going by the name Stefan Montgomery. Him and Mary ended up in a motel in Oakland for a couple weeks, regaining their footing after a close-call somewhere in Oregon.

Mary had hit Neil a gnarly heavy-handed blow after he forgot which name he was using in Eugene. Was it Sam? Or Dylan? Or had it been Joseph? A nice inch wide cut sat where his perfect court tattoo would sit, just on the turn of his cheekbone below the corner of his eye, bordered by a healing purple-brown bruise. Stefan was born on the border between California and oregon, stolen from a waiter at a pit stop diner, who didn’t let their coffee cups go empty as they mapped out where to go next.

He had met Andrew by chance; Stefan had been sitting on the bottom of the metal stairs that led up to the floor they were staying at. Mary was having a shower, dying her hair, becoming Georgia, perfect mother, a beautiful, average woman. He was people watching, looking at the cars pulling in and out of the car park, making up his own stories about who was who, what their names were and if they were worth stealing when they inevitably moved on. Andrew hung around the motel because just behind the building was an old, decrepit playground that’s should’ve been foreclosed years ago. Nobody ever used it, so it was a quiet place for him to be alone. He’d been walking through the parking lot after having just grabbed a chocolate bar or two from the vending machine when he stopped in front of Neil.

“What happened to your face?” It was quiet, barely a sentence, not big enough of a question to be intrusive or over-stepping.

“I’m a boxer.” That was the lie he’d been using for a few days. “I had a fight a couple days ago.”

You see, Stefan was a name Neil didn’t want to remember, like a bitter memory he forced himself to forget. It was just before Mary’s paranoia began to spiral even worse that it had already been. Stefan was keep your head down, we won’t be here long, give it a week, give it a week. Stefan was sleepless nights, watching his mother sat upright almost all night, eyes on the door, a knife under her pillow. Stefan was you don’t need friends, they’ll drag you down.

Mary didn’t know until the end that they’d been friends, Neil teaching Andrew the little boxing he knew, Andrew teaching Stefan how to keep yourself busy when you needed something to do. There was something about Andrew that made it impossible for him to stay away; he wasn’t a particularly happy kid, but the way he spoke, the way he cared about the fake life Neil had made up, the way he saw Stefan’s life as something he could never have.

“Have you ever thought about kissing a boy your age?” They’d been in Oakland for three weeks, and the two kids had made plans to meet every time Mary was occupied and Andrew was around. Neil didn’t really think to wonder why Andrew was always around. Didn’t he have a family who would miss him being gone all this time? Didn’t he have a home to go to?

“No,” Neil answered honestly. There wasn’t time for thoughts like that. Kisses weren’t signs of affection; kisses were lies, kisses were dangerous, kisses occupied a space in the mind that could be filled with run, run, run.

“Do you think it’s wrong?” Andrew had been swinging on the swing set, his feet dangling from the chipped plastic seat, the creaky chains holding him up. The question was loaded. Behind it was a conversation he’d had with his foster-mom, a slur from his foster-siblings, another hit from his foster-father.

“No,” that was an honest answer too. In his head his answer sounded like I’ve been told all kissing was wrong. But he couldn’t say that. Normal teenagers thought about kissing, and boyfriends, and girlfriends, and worried about how they looked in front of their crush. “Do you?”

“I don’t know.” His words were a sigh. Andrew trusted Stefan in this weird, out of character way. He’d never met anyone who’d been more interested to hear about his life than talk about their own. Of course, half of it was a half-truth, lies weaved into the story of Andrew.

Andrew was the first person who made Neil smile in a very long time. It was foreign hearing himself laugh, a sound reserved for fake interactions with strangers who couldn’t help but prying. Neil trusted him. His honest eyes often burning a hole in his face, on the days when Neil couldn’t bare eye contact. Andrew was a rock that Neil could feel himself becoming more and more attached to, more and more…attracted to? He didn’t know what that feeling felt like, but when he caught himself thinking about what a long hug from him would feel like, or a kiss on the forehead, the cheeks, the nose, the….

It was an impossible thought that Neil kept buried. Until Andrew had a bad day. Until Neil met him in the playground and he was sat underneath the slide, face buried in his knees that were pulled to his chest. Black hood pulled so far forward it almost covered the wet cheeks and puffy eyes he tried to hide. Stefan sat just across from him, the tips of their shoes not quite touching, but Neil rested his open palms on his shoes for Andrew to hold if he needed. He didn’t ask what was wrong.

“You’re my friend?” Andrew asked, half statement, half question. There was no hesitation in Neil’s “Of course.”

Andrew gently weeped, babbling on about wishing he could feel normal, or have a normal family. He wished he could understand himself. He wished he didn’t have to hurt so much. He’d looked up at Neil with his red eyes and wiped the tears from his face with the cuff of his sleeve. “Can I trust you?”

The statement hurt Neil far more than he thought it would. He hated that words spilled out of his mouth, his eyes stinging at the thought of saying what he really wanted to say. His mouth said “You can tell me anything,” when his brain said “I think Stefan dies in a week”.

Andrew told him about how he thought he was gay, and how embarrassed, alone, and ugly he felt to think that way. He didn’t know what normal feelings felt like. He didn’t know what it felt like to kiss someone he actually wanted to kiss. The statement hung in the air like a floating question. Did he…? Andrew had brushed away the thought almost as quickly as Neil did, but not without both their cheeks flushing pink at the unspoken idea. Neil watched as Andrew messed with the strings on his hoodie. Andrew cheered up after a little while, but when Neil realised how long he’d been gone for, he panicked. Instinctively, he pulled Andrew into a hug before running back to the motel room.

Stefan was bad memories, he’d always had to remind himself. Stefan was a mistake, a fuck-up, a vulnerability he would never, ever show again. Stefan was a slap across the face when he came back late. “Where the hell have you been?” Followed by a lie, then another, then another. Neil had only lied to his mother a handful of times in his life, but when it came to Andrew they seemed to slip out of his mouth at an alarming rate. The next time he seen Andrew, his swollen, burst lip barely hidden, Andrew had brushed his fingers across it and sarcastically asked if it was the product of another boxing match. Neil shushed him when he asked if his mother had done it. That was too personal. He was letting Andrew in too far and he was rotting Neil from the inside out. His hardened exterior fell away when he was around Andrew, and boy, was that dangerous. It shattered into a million pieces when they sat at at the top of the jungle-gym and Andrew asked so gently if he could kiss him.

No, no, no. The ghost of his mother’s hands in his hair told him to walk away. The phantom pain of a slap, and a hit, and a deafening lecture about his safety told him to stop letting Andrew in. He knew it was dangerous. He knew it, he knew it, he knew it. So why did his lips automatically curl around the word yes and his heart start pumping a hundred miles a minute? They looked each other in the eyes for a few seconds, minutes, hours, days, until they were both so close they couldn’t see each other anymore. It was only a peck, a playground kiss, but Neil’s stomach flipped. Andrew pulled away as quickly as he’d leaned in. He didn’t look at Neil for the rest of the hour they spent together, but Neil didn’t look at him. That wasn’t to say they each didn’t have to constantly fight a love-struck smile off their faces every few minutes.

Their meetings started to get less frequent after that. Andrew stopped showing up, but instead left little notes carved into the yellow plastic of the slide. ‘R u grossed out? -A’ was the first one he left after their moment’s kiss. All Neil wrote back was ‘Never’. The next time they seen each other in person they sat hidden again in the top of the jungle gym. Neil knew Mary was planning on them moving on in the following days. He couldn’t tell Andrew. Even the thought of it broke his heart. Regardless of the kiss, or kisses, they shared, Andrew had become the closest friend Neil had ever had. Neil had to remind himself more than once that everything Andrew thought he knew about Stefan was a fabrication. They spoke about sexuality again, hands brushing off each other, sometimes intertwined, sometimes resting on the others leg or arm. Andrew asked if Neil was gay, and his face fell when Neil said no, I don’t think so. It took him a moment to add on “I don’t know what I am”. They left kisses on each other’s lips that lingered for hours, for days. The more Neil let Andrew in, the harder it was for him to keep lying to his mother. She began to get suspicious of where he was going when she left him alone.

Even still, Neil didn’t hear when Mary came into the playground the last time he seen Andrew. Andrew had his head rested on his shoulder, their hands intertwined and hidden between their outstretched legs. They’d been talking about something and nothing at the same time. Neil’s stomached bottomed out when he saw her brunette hair and tiny figure step around the rusted green fence. He let go of Andrew’s hand as quickly and as subtly as he could, but he knew it was no use. He didn’t know how long she’d been standing there. Andrew looked into Stefan’s green eyes as Neil stood up, searching, scared. Neil sent him a weak smile. This was the last time he would ever look into those hazel eyes, his light eyebrows furrowed as he watched Neil begin to walk away. Neil had nodded his way, and whispered a frightened ‘See you around’ before he walked over to join Mary. She grabbed his arm and pulled him towards their motel room, already mentally packing their bags. Not before she beat him harder than she ever had before. Neil expected it. But every blow reminded him of Andrew until Andrew was no longer gentle touches and honesty and kisses. Andrew was a kick to the back of the knees as he walked through the motel room door. Andrew was a slap, and another, and another. He was a screaming, crying, angry mother, shoving whatever belongings they owned into their single duffel bag. Andrew was leaving their key at reception at midnight and starting their journey to another town. Andrew wasn’t worth it. Andrew was the swollen ankle he walked on for miles. Andrew was Mary pulling roughly at his blonde hair to dye it black in some random gas station that night. He wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it. Neil left Stefan with Andrew in Oakland. He tried to leave the memories there too. Oh, how badly he tried.

The worst part was, Andrew didn’t know that was the last time he would ever see Stefan again. He waited every day for him to come back. Every day came and went and every day he never showed up. Neil didn’t know about that part, you see. Neil thought Andrew would forget about Stefan like a childhood crush, thrown away, moved on to the next cute boy who listened to him talk. They shared a thought, though, drilling the regret and shame into their minds. He wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it.

(Part 2)

[sortasirius]

“Despair” and Dean and Cas

Well well well, winning is my favorite thing.

As usual, this is going to be as long as hell. And fair warning, it’s extremely emotional.

So here it is, the thing that we have been barrelling towards for years, literally years.

Just want to point out this.  Also, I will NEVER allow someone to speak negatively about this writing group, EVER.

Team Free Dads starting off the episode is so sweet, so scary.  Cas’ calming, Dean’s fear, Sam’s desperation, really just hammering home how much they love Jack, how his pain is pain for them, how losing him is unbearable.

“I can’t stop this.  I’m coming apart.  I don’t want to hurt you.  Don’t let me hurt you.”

Oof.  If you’ve ever question whether Jack is a Winchester, this line should shut that shit down for you.

When I tell you I was PISSED when Billie sent Jack to the Empty to EXPLODE?????  PAIN.

“Yeah the Empty can’t come to earth, not without being summoned.”

Hello Bobo, clue number 1.

The fact that they only had Jack in limbo for like five seconds was great for my heart health, thank u very much Bobo.

Also Dean wielding Death’s scythe?????? KING?????

Man, Sam and Dean’s growth.  The way that they’re able to, idk, actually speak on how they feel without death looming or fear or pain.  It’s just a conversation, just an honest conversation of Dean admitting his mistakes, admitting how he felt.  Admitting that he fucked up, and Sam forgiving him for it.

CHARLIE AND HER GF CHARLIE AND HER GF CHARLIE AND HER GF

Also...hunters and their “dates.”  Two hunters who are happily together, who are happily fighting monsters.  Hm.  Sounds like a Saileen/Destiel parallel to me boys.

You ever wish Cas would look and the mirror and take the great advice he gives others?  Because I do.  He’s always tried to be “useful” for Sam and Dean, for Jack, always tried to make sure that he’s useful enough that they keep him around.  But what he doesn’t understand, what he’s never understood, is that they need him because of who he is, not because of what he contributes.

Remind y’all of anything?

And here we have Clue Number 2

And then, Sam’s realization.  Eileen.

Did I begin full tilt screaming no in my apartment when he said her name?  Who’s to say?

How can a lock screen cause me this much pain????

Okay but: Charlie loses Stevie, Sam loses Eileen.  Clue Number 3.

I feel like I don’t talk enough about how much Sam loves Eileen.  About how obvious it is that they are endgame, about how happy he is when he talks about her.  This just feels like a blow to the stomach, but we’ve barely even started.

Sam immediately shifting into protective leader mode?  He is the love of my life.

Dean’s simple nod, like it’s a given?  Enough to do me in right there.

This is another episode where it’s just so clear that Sam is the leader of the North American hunters.  Everyone knows him, everyone is willing to follow him.  He’s knowledgeable and kind and fair and just and an incredibly capable fighter.  Once again, I don’t believe his work on earth is done.

Can we also please talk about how FRIGHTENING IT WAS for Jack to kill that plant???  I don’t really have much of a comment on it because I was literally just like ?????

With Billie saying that it’s Chuck, the way that people were dusted, very similar to Becky and Amara, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised, especially with Donna getting taken off the board.  It’s like I said last week, I don’t buy that he’s taken himself off the board, he’s too invested in the unraveling of this story to take a step back.  He’s gotta break them before he can defeat them, that’s the only way.

And here we go, into one of the most painful and surreal things I will ever write about.

Dean’s speech.  His guilt, his regret.  The shame of not only trapping himself, but the pain, the horror of trapping Cas.

“I just lead us into another trap.  All because I, I couldn’t hurt Chuck.  Because I was angry and because I just needed something to kill, and because that’s all I know how to do.”

“Dean-”

“It was Chuck all along.  We never should have left Sam and Jack, we should be there with them now.  Everybody’s gonna die, Cas.  Everybody.  I can’t stop it.”

His narrative arc.  Tied up in a bow.

“She’s gonna get through that door.”

“I know.”

“And she’s gonna kill you and then she’s gonna kill me.  I’m sorry.”

Cas smiles.

Cas knows.  He knows what’ll get them out of this, and he knows that he would do anything in this Universe for Dean Winchester. The human man he fell for.

“When Jack was dying, I made a deal to save him.”

“You what?”

“The price was my life.  When I experienced a moment of true happiness, the Empty would be summoned and it would take me forever.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“I always wondered, ever since I took that burden, that curse, I’ve wondered what it could be, what my true happiness could even look like.  I never found an answer, because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have. 

“But I think I know, I think I know now...happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being.  It’s in just saying it.”

“What are you talking about, man?”

The most selfless thing Cas does in this, and he does a lot of selfless things, is to tell Dean Winchester how impossibly good he is.  To tell him that he is worthy, to tell him that he is adored.

“I know, I know how you see yourself, Dean.  You see yourself the same way our enemies see you.  You’re destructive and you’re angry and you’re broken and you’re daddy’s blunt instrument.  And you think that hate and anger, that’s what drives you, that’s who you are.  It’s not.  And everyone who knows you sees it, and everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love.  You raise your little brother for love, you fought for this whole world for love.  That is who you are.

“You’re the most caring man on earth.  You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.  You know, ever since we met, ever since I pulled you outta Hell...knowing you has changed me.

“Because you cared, I cared.  I cared about you, I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack, I cared about the whole world because of you. 

“You changed me, Dean.”

“Why does this sound like a goodbye?”

Dean’s greatest fear. His fear of those loving him leaving him. The terror of being alone.

“Because it is.

The head shake.  Don’t love me.  Don’t love me if it means you’ll leave me, don’t love me, everyone I love leaves me.  Don’t leave me.  Don’t love me.  Don’t leave me.

“Don’t do this, Cas.”

Just like I always thought.  One last look at Dean before the Empty takes him.

“Cas-”

“Goodbye Dean.”

And Dean is left, broken on the floor, unable to answer Sam’s calls, unable to do anything.  It doesn’t matter to him that Chuck has wiped everyone out, it doesn’t matter to him that Sam and Jack might need him.  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter, because the thing that mattered still hangs on his lips, still waiting to be said, and now he won’t get another chance to say it.

The fact that I am writing this, even with all my spec, with all my analysis of the writers’ room, of their text, of the way Dabb and co had approached this story, nothing could have ever prepared me for this.  Nothing could have prepared me for a three and a half minute, uninterrupted scene where Cas confesses not only that he loves Dean, but that he has always loved him.

I talk a lot about how these writers don’t get the credit they deserve.  Unfortunately, from most of this fandom, they never will.  We will likely never know the fights with the network they had, the steps backward they had to take, the way they had to beg and fight and claw to get this on the screen.  But they did it.  They did it for these characters, they did it for this dinosaur of a show, and yeah, they did it for us.

It was not easy, I can promise you, to get this greenlit.  They had to fight for this, they likely had to call in favors and make threats and quite literally put their careers on the line (you may scoff at that, but WB is a BIG company, especially in the TV/movie world) for this story.  This story of Dean and Cas, the man dragged out of Hell and the angel who fell for him.

I have tons more to say, and will likely have several more posts about this, but I want to leave all my babes who are worried that that was the end for Dean and Cas with some takeaways.

Sam is missing Eileen.  Dean is missing Cas.  That is no longer a fun subtextual parallel, that is it for them.  Their respective endgames are missing, and they will not know their peace until they get them back.  Chuck will not win.  That’s not the story being told, and right now?  He’s winning.  He’s broken them, left them with nothing, left them with an empty world and a hole in each of their hearts where their person (or angel) used to be.

Our show is going to end with “contentment.”  “Contentment” isn’t from Sam and Dean being filled with grief and hitting the open road.  It isn’t Sam getting Eileen back and leaving Dean with no one.  “Contentment” is Sam and Eileen, Dean and Cas.  Together.

[lazlolullaby]

2012 VS Human!2018 TMNT Concept - Two Households, Both Alike in Ninja-Awesomeness

A fusion of 2012 TMNT and RoTTMNT. Set in the 2012 universe with all the drama that entails.

In 03 there was a Mystic Foot Clan branch. 2012 didn’t have much mystic stuff. So I’m just splicing Lou Jitsu/Rottmnt boys in because hells yeah.

HUGE LORE UNDER THE CUT~

Basically, ROTTMNT Splinter was part of the Mystic side of the Foot Clan. In 2012, Every Single Foot Clan member was killed due to the feud. It was due to some serious luck and stealth that Oroku Sho, who married in, was able to save his daughter Atsuko and toddler grandson Daisuke (means “big help”. This was chosen to be said in the most sarcastic tone possible.). They trained him to be a fighter, to hold their Mystic techniques and traditions and overcome the Hamato Clan with supernatural-styled vengeance.

Atsuko was on the trail, trying to find weaknesses of the Hamato, but she was killed defending her family. Instead of taking that grief and hardening his resolve, it breaks Daisuke. It makes him look at his family history in a new light; as a never-ending cycle of violence. He sees himself as alone – and despite his grandfather’s resolve in saying that “justice and our ancestors are with you, you will succeed in destroying the Hamatos”, he is just one person VS a fully-prepared Clan.

So he slips. If it is his destiny, it will happen no matter what, right? He tells his grandfather that “acting is just a hobby, I have to do something with my life and farming is too boring.” There was a hot girl summer where Teenage Yoshi + Saki + Daisuke hung out. They all got parts as stunt extras on a martial arts movie. He confronts Patriarch Hamato, tells him in no uncertain terms that he is the last, will remain the last and concedes defeat.

Changes his name to Lou Bauza, (Westernized name order, named after his VA, which coincidentally sounds like “Bowser”, fitting as a sometimes enemy of Yoshi.) starts a film career in Japan, then moves to America. Flashforward 10-ish years and had an accident on “Hot Soup Forever”. Had to stop acting and currently has chronic pain and fatigue. Walks with a cane on bad days. He ended up doing at home translation work for video games. When his fame dried up, he realized he didn’t have anything to come home to.

His apartment complex said “no turtles, rats, dogs, or cats”, so. He decided he wanted a child and adopts the two year old Raymond. He’s a mixed African-Latino child, temperamental but with Lou’s patience he softens up. Lou’s accent makes his name sound like Raimundo, “rai” being is Japanese for “Thunder”. They live together happily for about a year.

Then Saki shows back up, tells him that the Foot Clan has been restored, the Hamatos have been vanquished. Join me with our Clan back in our Homeland, it’s your birthright.

Lou is – angry, worried, threatened by the fact that he left that life behind is coming back to pull him in. He convinces Saki that he’s been playing the long game and waiting for Saki to learn of his heritage.

Lou ends up convincing Saki to fund a Dance Academy as a front for the American Foot Clan. It’s a lie, but he’s able to pull it off whenever Saki calls or anyone checks up on him. Knowing the history of his family, how badly the Shredder title makes people vicious, he knows that his time is limited.

So Lou decides that, “Fine. I might die because of my family, but Rai doesn’t deserve to be alone.” so. More kids.

He got Ryan (African, autistic and semi-verbal – goes by Othello because heck yeck Shakespeare) and Justice (Japanese-Brazillian, Usually called by his nickname “Blue” because once he figured out his gender, he kept changing his name every two days) as a two for one, because Blue would “translate” for his “twin”.

Then Angelo (African-Latino) followed Blue home from preschool one day. Lou tried to find his parents but – yeah he’s an orphan too, and the kids already bonded so.

April follows Ryan home when they were ten and just when Lou was thinking it’s going to be another Angelo situation her parents show up. They’re very excited that she has friends. Cassandra Jones was once a Girl Scout rivalry, but they bonded over fighting and now they’re friends.

The Bauza family lives in the second floor above the dance academy. There’s noise coming from below all hours of the day, Lou has it muffled with carpets and rugs. Because Lou is convinced that the Shredder will come after his family, he subtly trains them in the arts of ninjutsu. As fun family games, because he doesn’t want to worry them and he doesn’t want them to resent him. Like ninja hide and go seek, the Lair games, mimicking Lou Jitsu movies, etc.

Lou has the Mystic Ability to convert ordinary objects into corresponding weapons. Like Karai and the Hamato Ninpo in 2018. At first he was proud of it, but eventually he thinks it to be curse. After many years of meditation and training, he was able to do the reverse, becoming able to convert weapons into ordinary objects.

Every weapon that Blue brought in Lou would take and change it. Steel fan into paper fan, rings into tambourines, a sword into an umbrella, an axe to a squeaky hammer, Sai into a spatula, ninja stars into glow in the dark stars, etc. As a reference to the 2003 Turtles – swords into toilet plungers, sai into spoons, bo staff into a broom, and nunchucks into toilet scrubbers.

Lou thought that the ability wouldn’t be passed on because he didn’t have any biological children. However, their strong bonds caused their own personal Mystic Abilities to show up in all of his kids. (including April and Cassandra.) Only Blue can do the weapon conversion, but he’s yet to learn how to change them back, matching 2012!Leo’s Healing Hands. Lou tries to impress on them that Ninja isn’t a valid career choice and to have back ups and other options.

Then 2012 rolls around. The Shredder shows up in New York. Shredder is not seeing the extreme lack of Foot Clan recruits in NYC because he’s focusing on the Hamato Clan being alive. He trusts Lou to run the Japanese branch of the Foot Clan while he “stamps out the survivors.”

Lou does not care that Yoshi might be alive and with a Clan. Lou sees his chance to end the cycle himself. So he subtly starts to run the Foot Clan into the ground through terrible management.

2012!Karai shows up and has a few hangouts with the Bauza boys. It becomes clear that they have different parental standards. The boys are torn between being afraid of her and wanting to protect her from her terrible Dad.

It becomes funny how much that Lou is destroying the Foot Clan when he’s supposed to be protecting it. It’s even funnier when Shredder doesn’t even notice, getting more and more angry with “some Turtles” that get into his way.

Shredder sends Lou to fight the Turtles. Lou panics because “Wow Yokai exist – oh no they’re the same age as my boys!” and he’s on the defensive. Thanks to his chronic fatigue, he nearly loses to the 2012 Turtles. Rai, Ryan, Blue, and Angelo show up to defend him, rushing out in their civilian clothes. They all pair up against their counterpart.

Ryan goes, “Purple’s my favorite color – let me do this!” and attacks Donatello. Their bo staffs are matching up, but Ryan has a little more technique, able to stay back and not allowing purple turtle to get hits in.

“Woah, you’re named Leo? Like – is that short for something? Leandro? Lorenzo? Leonidas?” Blue asks, their huge odachi clashing against the twin katanas.

“Leonardo.” the turtle spits out.

“Cool because I’ve been looking for a new name, and I don’t want repeats.” he turns and shouts to the paired off siblings, “Guess what~ I’m neon Leon~”

“Great but we need to get Pops outta here – Tell me you’re charged up!” Rai shouts over the din, sai twisting the tonfa out of his hands. Mystic energy wraps around his fist and pummels the red-banded turtle, knocking him to the wall.

Orange turtle and Angelo are sitting on the ground and trying to untangle their weapons. “Can you put your whole body in your shell?”, “Not without help.”

Anyway – the Bauza boys get away. Since Lou isn’t awake to get a bad boss punishment from Shredder, Rai gets a punch. Leon makes sure that he’s bandaged up. They’re also freaking out, realizing that “it’s not just a game” and “Pops was teaching them how to stay safe”.

Lou wakes up, hugs them, talks to them about their family. The cycle of violence, the fact that everything he’s been doing has been trying to end this. “While I wasn’t sure that the Hamato Clan would be coming back, I knew that the Shredder coming for us was very real.” The boys create their ninja outfits and dedicate themselves to getting better so they won’t have to go through this again.

The turtles go back to see Master Splinter. Splinter explains that the Mystic family was always a support to the Shredder. That their abilities were rival to the Hamato Clan’s own Healing Hands.

Lou learns that Rai took his punishment and starts to get really mad. With his kid’s help, they devise a plan. Because the Shredder is so focused on the Hamato Clan, he’ll make him listen by setting up an ambush.

Since Lou needs as much energy as possible, their last day before the ambush is filled with a movie marathon, naps and karaoke. If this is the last time that they’re a whole family, they’re going to enjoy it.

Big fight happens, Lou is able to chain up Shredder so he can have a face to face talk. “You don’t check up on me enough.”

The Hamato Clan shows up and he also chains them up.

Rai pops up. “Hang tight. Shreddy isn’t returning our calls, so we figure dangling his sworn enemies in front of him is a good way to make him listen.

“We’re about to have $500 worth of therapy for the low cost of a half-hour of your time.” Leon says

“We are both Foot Clan. But you know? There is a difference between us.”

“You lacked the drive to take down the Hamatos? Any discipline to raise your sons as warriors? You’re a disgrace to this family.”

“You had a family. You had the Hamato behind you. You had Yoshi beside you. And you still destroyed it.”

“They were Hamato!”

“Then they followed you into the Foot – without question!” Lou stomps his foot. “If I’m the only one who sees that – hypocrisy, then I suppose I’m the only one who’s done anything about it.”

Shredder is not paying attention. He’s looking at the Rat Yokai that just broke in. “Seriously?” he said. “I just confessed that I took down your entire Clan and you don’t even look at me?” He binds up Splinter. “I’ve got a limited time. I’ll set you both loose and you can chase each other, Mr. Rat.”

Shredder starts laughing. “Why are you turning your back to an enemy? That’s Hamato Yoshi.”

Lou stops. Blinks. Does a double take. Makes a joke about how Splinter still looks hot. There’s a chorus of “eewws” from the Bauza boys and Mikey.

“Alright, since you’re not paying attention – You never do.” he sighed. “You had a family. You’ve always had a Clan. Do you know how much I wanted that?”

April’s steel fan comes out and he converts it into a paper fan. “You! Stupid! Fool! You could have had a loving family, and you fight! You always do! You have brought both Clans to their end – and I don’t want any further part in it!” He turns to look between them. “I’m not letting you destroy my family with our feud. I will not pursue you or my clan’s vengeance. If you want to kill me for your sake, I will defend myself. This cycle ends with me.”

Anyway the 2018 boys disappear. There’s a fight, but it stops.

They only come back once in a while as background characters. Then they show up as extra fighters in Karai’s New Foot Clan. Lou doesn’t know. Lou will be pissed.

So in 2012 there were certain parallels. If Leo = Splinter (dutiful son), and Raphael = Shredder (angrily focused on the wrong thing), then Michelangelo = Lou Jitsu (has talent but doesn’t use it properly).

[wizkiddx]

Not sure if you are taking request at all but if you do, do you mind writing something about Harry agreeing to be the birth photographer at the birth of his niece (tom and reader’s daughter) 🥺🤍

this was so interesting!! personally I am way too self conscious to have a photographer when I *eventually* have a kid aha, but I hope this is what u were looking for x x p.s. coming at my brand w the white hearts :)

tomholland x reader

summary: harry gets terrified by toms request about the birth of his child, but the reader smoothes it over

Having just had a round of golf with Harry, Tom invited him back to yours for a cuppa and a catch up too. After all the years of living and travelling with Harry by his side, Harry in particular was massively important to TOm. Especially since he’d moved in with you, Tom constantly made a super special effort to spend as much time with him as possible. Harry had a key and had no quam with letting himself in uninvited. Though since he had walked in at *the wrong time* a bit too frequently, and then the announcement of your pregnancy - he had cut down the unexpected visits.

“So, I actually wanted to ask you something.”

“This does not sound good” Harry furrowed his eyebrows together, looking suspiciously at his brother as he poured the kettle into the two matching ‘Brothers Trust’ mugs.

“Since when? I only ever ask you to do good things?”

“We both absolutely know that is not true.” Harry deadpanned, pointing to the palm of his right hand which carried a large scar. Scar in question had been sustained during one of Tom’s incredibly ‘good’ aka stupid ideas.

“Right fair… I’ll allow that.” He receeded, placing the two mugs onto the counter in front of Harry. All it took was one look at the pale brown colour for Harry to turn his nose up, shooting Tom a look as though he’d just murdered a puppy. The elder of the two sighed, knowing exactly what his brothers snobbiness was about.

“Seriously?”

“It’s not your fault your awful at this, some people just aren’t born with it.” With a sarky pat on the back Harry rounded the counter, pouring the freshly brewed but slightly too milky tea down the drain - before flicking the kettle on to make his own brew… properly this time.

Tom knew his brother well enough to know not to argue or protest, instead perching on the counter as he watched Harry work his ‘magic’.

“But seriously me and Y/n have been talking about the birth cos you know, it’s not too far away now.” This was true, you were now only 3 weeks from your due date - but going by the size of you, you were ready to pop. Quite literally, you didn't know how much longer you could last.

“I’d be concerned if you weren’t mate.”

“Well yeh and I basically um …  had the idea to get a photographer for the birth right? It’s quite an American thing but I don’t want to forget anything and I’m sure it’s gonna be magical.” In response, Harry slowly turned around, empty mug in hand and eyes fierce.

“Are you fucking stupid?!”

To be fair to Harry, that had pretty much been your reaction when Tom first suggested it - word for word. He’d got the idea from one of the crew he’d filmed his most recent projects with, the guy had been raving about how beautiful it was and once he’d shown the pictures to Tom - he had to agree. Eventually Tom had worn you down to it and actually the idea of being able to save the moment you met your kid for the first time didn’t sound too bad. You had firmly set the boundaries of no photos of your ‘labour face’ and absolutely nothing from the ‘other end of the bed.’

The worry for both of you, as it always was given Tom’s reputation, was privacy. Especially the birth of your child, having a stranger there had you straight refusing, even a friend seemed still a little invasive. It was only when Tom had remembered he had a brother (who you were also incredibly close to) who was handy with a camera. Even if he had no experience with this particular type of photography, Harry was a pretty safe pair of hands for a camera in any situation. God knows he’s had enough practice at it.

“No hear me out, Y/n agreed too-“

“Of course this was your idea! So she’s totally fine with me staring at her fanny through a camera lens?”

“Harry” That was a warning tone, which the frizzy haired boy chose to completely ignore.

“No I-I mean, you want me to stare at your finances bits? Isn’t that some sort of weird incsest?”

“Shut the fuck up about Y/n’s body. You OBVIOUSLY wouldn’t be taking photos of that end, more like when the baby gets handed to us you know?”

“When its covered in gunk that came out of Y/n?”

“I’m pretty sure they clean it-“

“Not properly!”

Thankfully perhaps, the conversation was interrupted by the kettle clicking off, the water coming to a boil. With a huff Harry turned round, pouring and then stirring the tea as Tom watched his back from a distance. Neither spoke till after Harry finished, returning the milk to the fridge and then leaning against the counter top.

“Look I get it if you dont want to but your the only one Y/n trusts to do it and it means a lot to me.”

“Y/n wants me to stare at her fanny?!”

“No calm down you div. But you are the only one she trusts to be in the room when our first child is born. Will you just think about it?”

Harry opened his mouth to reply, probably protest, but before he could the front door opened and you called through the house.

“Tom? I’m home!” And becasue the boy was whipped he instantly trotted to the front door giving you a peck on your lips. He murmured to you that Harry was there, his lips moving against yours and you nodded with a small smile. You knew, instantly, that Tom in all his idiocy hadn’t handled it well.

“Would you mind getting all the shopping from car? Pregnant and all, so I’m not allowed to lift a finger.” You cocked your head, laughing as he rolled his eyes with a nod.

“I’m excited for when you can't play that card.”

“But then I’ll be the women who pushed a baby out for you… the mother of your child.”  Winking, you then quickly moved through the house before he could protest, just knowing he was pulling a pouty face as he watched you sway away.

Once in the kitchen you saw Harry nursing his mug like it was the last drink on earth, hunched over it from where he was sitting on a stool on the breakfast bar.

“ You lose at golf?” Opening the conversation, Harry instantly shot his head up, looking slightly terrified to see you.

“Wha- no, no I didn’t actually.”

“Tom asked you huh?” He nodded, seemingly not wanting to commit with words. “I had exactly the same face when he first told me. It’s weird right?”

“Yeh no shit.”

“He’s really keen on it though, I mean he’s like an excited puppy about the whole birth.”

“But you want it too?”

“Sort of. What I do want is for him to be happy though. And I’m fairly certain he’s gonna be terrified throughout the whole birth while I won’t be in a position to help himl.”

“You’ll probably have other stuff on your mind to be fair.” You laughed, at that, nodding in agreement with him.

“Just a little. I did think though, who is a person who I can trust to look after him too during that... and even I draw a line at your dad… Look if you don't want to, I totally get it and I can’t promise that I won’t be screaming at you during if you do. But it would comfort me to know you were there, with or without the bloody camera.”

“Seriously?” Rather than exclaiming it, Harry whispered in shock, not expecting this sort of a revelation.

“Course H! You're my little brother too.”

“I might pass out.”

“So will your brother, at least he won’t be on his own then.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Thnakyouthankyouthankyou!” You squealed, running over to hug him from the back, arms round his shoulders as he squirmed on the stool.

It was at this point Tom walked back in after unloading the ridiculous amount of baby clothes shopping you had done. Big strong Tom had to take 2 trips up and down the stairs to the nursery. Of course, all it took was a few words from you and Harry was falling at your feat. He was hardly surprised. Annoyingly you seemed to have this power over all the Hollands. They never stood a chance.

It wasn’t till later than evening, long since Harry had left and the dishwasher had been put on after Tom had made a mess cooking you dinner. Only then did your phone ping with a text message from Sam.

Sam H

‘I dont know what you’ve done to Harry but I’m scared, he’s binge watching one born every minute.’

Immediately you cracked up, knowing that it was his nervous energy and need to ‘be prepared’. Tom, who was lying behind you on the sofa whilst his hands caressing your stomach, jerked his head up intrigued as the what the ‘ding’ was. You showed him and he snorted in laughter too, whilst nuzzling his nose into your neck.

“How did you bring him round by the way?”

“Oh you know, I’ve got all of you wrapped round my little finger when I want.”

“That you do… do you think I should be worried?”

“Nah your just all softies.” Laughing softly, you pulled his arms tighter around you, wiggling back into him a bit more.”

“You didn’t tell him about the godparent thing though?”

“Course not… we can give him a separate heart attack about that.”

[incorrect-missionimpossible]

Uh I don't know if you're still taking prompts but I'm dying to read something where Ethan finds out Benji has tattoos (just likes Simon's) and Ethan is all ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡(ӦｖӦ｡) I even have some fanart in my blog or at Instagram @ biablioteca xoxo

hi!! thank you for the prompt :D this took me a while to answer, my apologies for that hhhhhhhh. the fanart is here if anyone wants to check it out, it's really good!!

without further ado, the fic, 1448 words long. enjoy!!

read on ao3!!

[---]

tattoos [that i didn't know you had]

“Hey,” Benji whispers. Ethan tilts his head towards Benji, acknowledging him. They’re curled up in the back of a van with Jane; Will’s driving and Ilsa’s sitting next to him. Jane is asleep on Ethan’s shoulder, the white bandages around her leg bright in the dim light of the van. They’re returning from a mission, a long, exhausting one and it required all of Ethan’s team, excluding Luther, who was on his honeymoon.

“I think I’ve been shot,” Benji tells Ethan quietly, and Ethan jerks up, all thoughts of sleep forgotten. Jane groans as he dislodges her.  

“What?” Ethan hisses. “Benji-”

Benji understands. “Bullet went through me. I’m bleeding quite a lot. Um, it was numb, but not anymore. I’ve got a cloth bunched up against it.”

Ethan knocks on the sliding door between the storage and driver’s seat. “Will,” he says loudly. Ilsa slides the door open and pokes her head through.

“What?”

“Benji’s been shot. Drive faster.”

Ilsa’s eyes widen; she’s clearly too tired to police her emotions. She nods and a moment later, the van moves faster with a screech.

---

Benji’s almost passed out by the time they reach the safe house. Ilsa helps her girlfriend limp inside the house, while Will rushes inside to get the first aid kit ready. Ethan half carries Benji, stumbling through the cold night air into the house as lights flicker on inside.

Jane’s collapsed on a chair, her face pale and sweaty. Her bandages need changing, and Ilsa notes Ethan’s glance at them before grabbing a pile of bandages and handing Jane a flask of whiskey she downs in a gulp.

Ethan winces as Benji moves away the bloody cloth he’d been clutching to his side, revealing his bloody flannel. It’s soaked through.

“How did it take you so long to tell me about this,” Ethan asks, concealing his anger.

Benji shrugs. “Jane was shot. Her wound was more lethal. Forgot about mine.”

“You forgot- how did you-” Ethan runs a hand through his hair, frustrated beyond measure. How did Benji just, forget about his fucking gunshot wound. Ethan wants to punch something.

Will enters the living room, carrying a tray with needles, thread, scissors and alcohol. “Remove your flannel,” he says testily. He looks harried, in a way Will rarely does.

Benji looks up at Ethan, and Ethan, helpless in the face of his eyes, removes the flannel gently. He blinks in surprise at what it reveals, Benji has tattoos.

Ethan stares at them as Will stitches Benji up, Benji’s hand crushing his. They twine around Benji’s left shoulder and the top of his arm, not going beyond where a shirt would. They’re designs Ethan can’t quite make out, but they’re gorgeous. There’s another on Benji’s collarbone, surrounding the delicate bone. It’s partially covered by Benji’s tank top, and Ethan shocks himself with how much he wants to see the rest of it, and any other tattoos Benji might be hiding.

“Done,” Will interrupts Ethan’s train of thought, and Benji lets go of Ethan’s hand, his head falling back, exposing the long line of his neck.

“Fuck,” he breathes out, and Ethan lets out a chuckle. “I’m never getting shot again.”

“I think that would be a bit difficult, with our line of work,” Will says, amused. He lets out a yawn, and so does Benji.

“Bed?” Ethan asks softly. Benji nods. Will takes his leave, heading up to the room he’s claimed as his own. Ilsa waves at them before picking up Jane, who’s too tired to protest, and climbing up the stairs.

Ethan presumes they’re heading to the second bedroom. He smiles at Ilsa and moves to the sofa, pulling it out and working on turning it to a bed. “I didn’t know you had tattoos,” he starts, keeping his voice as casual as he can.

Benji starts. “These little things?”

Ethan wouldn’t call them little, exactly, they cover Benji’s shoulder and collarbone, and there’s another one on Benji’s right arm. “Yeah.”

“I got them at Oxford,” Benji says, a light smile dancing on his face. “Stupid dare. Asked the artist to do them so they’d be covered by my t-shirts. Looks like he did his job pretty well, huh? The best spy in the IMF didn’t know I had tattoos.”

Ethan grins at Benji, enjoying the twinkle in his eyes. “Not my fault I’ve never seen you in anything but geeky shirts and flannels.”

“You just had to ask,” Benji says, careless as anything, before turning bright red. “I- not that I would just undress for anyone, I mean, like, it’s-”

Ethan pats Benji’s shoulder. “Benj,” he says warmly, and Benji stutters to a stop.

“Thanks,” Benji says, relaxing.

Ethan helps Benji up and into the bed, before sliding in next to him. “I think they’re cool,” he whispers.

A flush overtakes Benji’s face. “Thanks,” he replies, sounding pleased.

Ethan offers him a small smile, before leaning over to flick off the lights.

---

The second time Ethan sees Benji’s tattoos, they’re on a mission slash vacation in Costa Rica. Ethan’s team had been sent to track the movements of an American on the CIA’s Most Wanted list, but he’d left before they could catch him. The hotel they’d booked was for a week, and Ethan managed to coerce the IMF into allowing them to stay and make use of the money that went into the mission.

Jane and Ilsa had their own room, of course, and Will claimed a single for himself. Ethan and Benji had a double to themselves, with two queen sized beds.

“Heaven,” Benji groans, from his bed. He’s sprawled out on it, his shirt riding up a little, revealing a sliver of skin. Ethan swallows and looks away.

“I’m going to hit the beach,” he tells Benji, who makes some grunting noises, not moving from where he looks like he’s trying to bury himself in his bed.

Ethan chuckles and shakes his head, fond, before heading to the bathroom to change and gather his things. He leaves Benji, who’s curled up in a little ball on the bed, to his own devices, and thinks he deserves some sun and a good hour or two with his paperback.

---

Ethan’s about 40 pages into his book when he sees Benji. His eyes widen, and his mouth drops a little, because, well, wow.

Benji’s shirtless, and he’s built [which isn’t a shock, really; Ethan’s always been able to see the lines of his lean body under his tighter t-shirts], but it’s the tattoos that take his breath away.

They cover his entire torso and chest, curving around the muscles carefully. Ethan is pretty sure the tattoos are vines, and they look stunning in the sunlight, enhancing Benji’s build. Ethan is up and moving towards Benji without a second thought, and Benji grins at him.

“Hey,” he says, once Ethan is in earshot. Ethan doesn’t say anything, and Benji’s smile turns a little bemused. Ethan stops once he’s close enough to Benji that if he took one more step and leant forward a little-

Anyways.

His hands flutter around Benji’s skin, not touching, just, hovering. “Little?” Ethan breathes in disbelief.

Benji realizes Ethan’s looking at his tattoos. “Oh. Yeah. Those ones happened later. Took me about five sessions to get it done. Extraordinarily painful.”

Ethan exhales slowly. “Can I-” he moves his hands jerkily. He’s just understood how close to Benji he’s standing.

“Yeah,” Benji nods, studying Ethan with a small frown on his face.

Ethan touches the beginning of the first vine with a finger, and when Benji doesn’t say anything, he continues, tracing the path of the twining plant around Benji’s body. He’s careful, avoiding the scars and bruises. Ethan ends up on the design on his collarbone, and he looks up, into Benji’s eyes.

He can’t read them; he doesn’t know what Benji is going to do or say. Ethan moves to step back, but Benji whispers “Ethan,” and he stops.

Benji slides a hand under his chin [their height difference makes it easier for him to do that,] and tilts Ethan’s head up a little.

Ethan gives in to his impulses. He leans in, and presses his lips to Benji’s.

Benji kisses back immediately, sliding his hands around Ethan’s waist and closing the tiny distance between their bodies. Ethan gets a hand on Benji’s cheek and another pressed on his chest

Later, Ethan will trace the tattoos again, Benji will tell him the stories of how he got them, and Ethan will place a light kiss to all of them. They’ll share a queen-sized bed.

But for now, they stay there, kissing deeply, the sun burning the back of Ethan’s neck.

[---]

yes i KNOW the ending isnt very great hjfhkjshdsjk but here u go anyways :)

thanks for reading!!

[archaneanscribe]

Finally Taking the Trip to Jupiter

Vague spoilers for MGS4. Also xtremely fucking sad fair warning lol

“Snake... Dave?” Hal immediately corrected himself upon entering the room. The veteran’s (finally they could use that term, with there truly being no fights left to fight) request to drop the codenames they had maintained for nearly a decade had been a little sudden, but entirely understandable, “We think we’ve found a place to stay, for the moment. A nice house, close enough to a town that Sunny can go to school in, but far enough ouy most folks will leave us alone.”

David simply nodded- taking a deep breath that would normally be an intake of smoke into his lungs, but he was sincere in his declaration of quitting. Even if it wasn’t for very long, he could do that much for Sunny and Hal, after all this time. The tech wiz stood awkwardly in the doorframe, posture so closed in on himself David would see the gangly nerd he once was before he had started spending more time eating and moving around than seated in front of a computer.

He still did plenty of that, but years on the run had shifted the ratio considerably until just recently.

“Out with it, Hal,” he croaked out in a voice that was becoming increasingly unfamiliar to both of them. This seemed to shock his companion out of his own thoughts, and he finally moved closer.

“Ah, well, you see- what do you want for your last name, Dave? You know I’ll be formalizing Sunny’s adoption, which means we’ll finally be obtaining,” emphasis was put on the word, because in reality it meant forging, “papers for her, and I thought you’d probably be in need of some too. We can use whatever is on your birth certificate, but if you want to pick something out yourself...”

A smile formed under Dave’s mustache.

“I already know what I’m using.”

Hal perked up, “You do? What is it?”

With the same simple, to the point gruffness he would never quite be rid of, the one legendary soldier answered in a single word.

“Emmerich.”

All sounds except the Nomad’s machinery working overtime on her last voyage and David’s unfortunately heavy breathing ceased for an eternally long moment, Hal’s face journeying between every emotion he possessed. Tears pooled at the corners of his eyes, and his attempt to stifle his sniffles failed.

He probably wouldn’t have admitted it at the beginning, but something David had always loved about Hal was his ability to keep crying. No matter the hardships he faced, the traumas, the evils and cruelties he bore witness too, he didn’t run out of tears. His compassion was a well that ran deep, and those tears were just a result of it overflowing.

“Dave...of, of course,” his expression betrayed some amusement past the waterworks, “Do you want me to list you as my brother, or-”

“You know exactly what it’s going to say, Hal.”

They both laughed now, such different sounds than it was just a year ago even. David had been sitting on the edge of the bed, and Hal had been across the room, but that distance closed as Hal kneeled on the floor, placing his hands on David’s knees. It was a gesture that David had previously classified as pitying, but he knew better, now. 

It wasn’t for his comfort at all.

“Thank you, David.”

David had half a mind to ask what it was like to kiss an old man with a mustache, but they didn’t have the time for jokes like that anymore, so he just closed his eyes and enjoyed it.

---

The eyeroll David had given when Hal told him the name of the town they’d be living in was named Jupiter was so legendary it surpassed his previous exploits with ease. But, despite how silly it was, he couldn’t deny the warmth in his chest. 

They’d gotten their trip to Jupiter, just a little late.

Jupiter, Washington, was as small as a small mountain town got. It didn’t even have an elementary school for Sunny to attend (she was bussed to the neighboring, larger town). Most residents were the descendants of the people who had first lived there, so their new faces stuck out for awhile, but they eventually concluded what was essentially the truth, albeit missing some key details, and moved on- they were just two retirees, hoping to live out what was left of the older one’s life in peace with their orphaned granddaughter, nothing exciting.

Hal laughed at how huffy David had gotten at the granddaughter comments.

For the first month, their time there was peaceful. Content. Happy.

The second month, David starting being able to spend less and less time out of bed.

In the third month, he took Hal aside.

“You should stop sleeping in the same bed as me.”

His husband was a genius, he knew exactly why, but he still asked anyway.

“Don’t make me say it.” 

That he didn’t want Hal to wake up one sunny spring morning cuddling a corpse.

Tears were shed, as they always were, but he complied nonetheless. All of David’s belongings were transferred to the guest bedroom (Hal had tried to convince him to stay in the master bedroom, it was more comfortable, but David was adamant- that was where Hal would be staying in the future, and he didn’t want his ghost lingering in the air whenever he slept).

On the first day of the fourth month, right after sending Sunny off to school, Hal told him they were getting a dog for her.

“She loves those chickens, and I thought she might like another pet.”

“Or is it to replace me?” he asked, morbid mirth nearly buried under the pure gravel that had become his voice, “Seems to fit perfectly.”

Hal’s eyes, sad and weary, seemed to want nothing to do with this conversation, but he participated for his partner’s sake, “How so?”

“It’ll bark at strangers, bite the hand that feeds, and just generally be a pain in your ass.”

Despite himself Hal did laugh, not entirely bitter, “We’ll train it better than that.”

“Don’t train it too well. Won’t remind you enough of me.”

Fifth month, they had a dog. Rex, a joke on two layers- a name so common it was funny, and a reminder of one man’s shame that he’d never quite shake off. Not a husky, because while that would please David, they’d be keeping it long term and that level of energy just wouldn’t suit their needs. Rex was an adolescent Golden Retriever. 

The dog of the American dream.

Almost like he could tell David wouldn’t be around long enough to justify getting attached, Rex mostly ignored him. The feeling was mutual. 

Sunny loved them both dearly, and that was enough.

---

They had been there half a year, and Sunny made them breakfast. Her specialty, eggs fried to methodical perfection, toast just a little browner than anyone would like, maple sausage microwaved for ten seconds more than the instructions said just to make sure they were thoroughly cooked, and a glass of pulpless orange juice tucked precariously into the crook of her arm as she carried the meal to Uncle Dave’s bedroom.

It was two minutes after Hal watched Sunny depart from the kitchen that he heard a loud crash, glass and ceramic shattering, followed by Rex’s insistent barking and whining. He was on his feet and rushed to the scene, fearing the worst and finding exactly that.

“Oh, Sunny... Sunny...”

“U-Uncle H-Hal,” she barely managed through her cries. Rex, to his credit, ignored the food on the ground and nuzzled at her face, whining, confused and upset by the noises of unparalleled distress his beloved human was emitting. Stifling his own grief, Hal went over to the young girl and pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly.

He didn’t do a great job at holding that grief in after all.

“Sunny, Sunny, Sunny... I’m so sorry... I should have checked up on him when I woke up... It’s okay, Sunny...”

“H-He’s d-d-dead. J-Just,” her stutter was exacerbated by her choking sobs, “J-Just l-like my m-mother.”

The downside of having such a bright child was that you couldn’t shield them from life’s harsh realities that easily. There was no convincing Sunny that Uncle Dave was with the birds in the clouds, or any other such comforting tale. 

He was dead and gone, and she knew that.

---

The gravestone read:

               David Emmerich

       Beloved father and husband.

All three of those titles were ones he had only worn for six months, but he had worn them with honor.•

[bigballofstress]

Pickpocket Part 3(Avengers x Child!Reader)

Description: You have been allowed to stay in the Avengers Tower, but your trials aren’t quite over yet. You still have one major hurdle you’re going to have to get over if you want to make this thing permanent.

To @sweetpeaflower01 and to anyone else who wanted to be tagged in this, I’m sorry I don’t have your usernames! It’s been a while since I’ve been on here!

A few weeks later, I woke up to the sun shining on my face through a nearby window.

“Good morning to you, too, kid.” I turned to see Tony, still lying in the bed beside me with his hand placed gently over mine.  He had spent every night since I’d arrived in there with me except for one, which had immediately resulted in a nightmare, with my screams waking up the entire tower.  “You think you’re ok to get up?  We’ve got someone who wants to meet you.”

Immediately, my entire body tensed, and I could feel myself pale.  My vision went blurry, my heart hammering frantically in my chest.  “Hey, hey, it’s ok, kid, I’ve got you.  Nothing’s gonna happen to you, I promise,” Tony spoke gently, his tone even as though he was attempting to sooth a wild animal.  I nodded slowly, doing my best to calm my heart.  He had promised me.  He promised they wouldn’t send me back.  I’m not sure why, but I trusted Tony.

Tony helped me to my feet, but my knees were shaking too much.  Slowly, he scooped me up into his arms, careful not to move to quickly and frighten me, and wrapped his arms around my back.  His arms were still so warm.  

“Ah, miss (Y/N), I presume.” I lifted my head from Tony’s shoulder to see the rest of the Avengers surrounding a large African American man in a black trench coat with a patch over his eye that was grinning back at me.  My heart almost stopped as I stared back at him, fear clawing mercilessly at my chest.  He reminded me of Nat in how he regarded me with nothing more than cold, merciless calculations; except, unlike Nat, he didn’t have that small spark of empathy.  Instead, there was excitement -- greed almost.  I made my decision then and there.  I didn’t like this man.

“I’ve got a question for you, kid.  How exactly did someone like you manage to steal from four of Earth’s mightiest heroes?” he asked, glancing me up and down.

I didn’t want to answer.  I didn’t want anything to do with this man.  

“It’s ok, just answer the question,” Tony nodded reassuringly.  I could feel his worried eyes on me, trying to grab my attention, but I refused to take my eyes off of the newcomer for a single second.  Still, I didn’t want to go against Tony.

“I have small hands,” I said slowly.  “And I know how to read people.”

“What do you mean read people?” Steve asked.  “What does any of that have to do with stealing a wallet?”

“It has everything to do with stealing a wallet,” I responded monotonously, still stubbornly refusing to drop my gaze from the man.  “Reading people helps you pick a mark -- someone with their guard down who isn’t expecting to actually be targeted.  More than that, though, reading people is what actually lets me get away.  With Steve, I was sweet and innocent, but with Tony, I was sarcastic but pitiable.  If I had been the opposite, Steve would have been more annoyed and therefore more aware of what I was doing, and Tony would have been less distracted.”

“You figured all of that out by talking to them for a few seconds?” Nat asked, taking a small step forward as she surveyed my curiously.  I nodded silently.

“Show me,” the man said.  Finally, I tore my eyes away from him to glance at Tony for confirmation.  He nodded back, gently setting me down.  I grabbed his hand instead.

“Who do you want me to mark?” I asked softly.

“Try Natasha,” he smirked, crossing his arms.  I glanced over at the redheaded woman and frowned.  “Something wrong?” he asked.

“I would never mark her,” I responded, glaring up in annoyance at the confidence in his tone.  “She is guarded and always in a stance to protect her vital points.  Someone like that is too aware of their surroundings not to notice a pickpocket.”

“Do your best anyways,” he smirked.

I grit my teeth in frustration and turned to Nat.  As I looked over at her, an idea slowly began to form.  I smirked inwardly.  It was perfect for dealing with this man.  Sunglasses, a phone, a watch, a ring, a swiss army knife, and a custom pen.  If I did everything perfectly, not to mention getting a bit lucky, I might be able to grab everything.

I squeezed Tony’s hand to draw his attention to it as I pressed my body into his slightly so that I could grab his sunglasses, which were hooked onto his pocket. “Fine,” I growled.  “But don’t blame me when it doesn’t work.  Now move out of the way.”  I grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him backwards, using that split second to simultaneously put Tony’s glasses on my head and slip my hand into the man’s opposite pocket and pull out his phone, flicking it upwards into the overly-large sleeve.  I took a deep breath and approached Nat, tucking my hands, and the phone with them, into my pockets.  I flicked my eyes carefully over her, looking for any loose item that I could grab.  Finally, I noticed that I could just barely see the edge of a few dollar bills in her back pocket.  It wouldn’t be easy, and I would have to stay in front of her the entire time to avoid her suspicion, but it wasn’t impossible.

“Excuse me, miss?” I asked softly, glancing up at her with wide eyes.

“Yeah?” She responded, lifting a brow.

“I-I was wondering if you had any food,” I croaked, allowing my body to shrink in on itself so it would look even smaller.

“Sorry, kid, I don’t have any on me,” she shook her head slightly, furrowing her brows.

“Ok, I understand, thank you,” I muttered softly.  “I’m sorry to bother you.  My mommy says bothering grown-ups is bad.  I-I don’t have the belt with me.  But I’m sure I can find a stick,”  I offered quickly, as if to try and placate her.  I stumbled to the side a bit, pretending to look for a stick.  I forced my toes to catch on my other shoe, falling right in front of Steve’s feet.  “I-I’m so sorry, sir,” I winced, making sure not to meet his eyes.  I took his outstretched hand and pulled myself up, wrapping one hand around his wrist, where I slipped off his watch.  “T-thank you so m-much,” I gushed, my voice shaking ever so slightly as I brushed the nonexistent dirt from his shirt.  Quickly, I put his watch onto my own wrist while his attention was focused on his shirt.

Nat frowned slightly at this.  “Your mommy, did she hurt you?” she brought my attention back to her, studying my face carefully.

I glanced back at her, before quickly looking back down to avoid eye contact.  I knew what I had to do -- that I had to tell the truth if I had any hope of doing this.  So, I forced myself to remember the face of my old caretaker.  “O-only if I’ve been really bad,” I shook my head slightly.  “A-and only if she’s at home.”  My voice had gone hoarse, tears building up in the backs of my eyes.  It was easy to cry when I thought about that terrible woman.

“How often is she not at home?” Nat asked.

“N-not that o-often,” I shook my head again.  “I-I think she just f-forgets sometimes.  She’ll come home soon, though.  She’s almost never gone for more than two weeks,” I smiled up at her softly, wrapping my arms around my torso to accentuate how small my waist was as well as provide a sense of insecurity and fear.

Nat frowned slightly, falling silent for a moment.  Finally, she looked up at the man and said, “Alright, I believe her.  I’d probably go take her to get some food then call the cops.  I’d imagine you’d be long gone before they arrive?” She added with a slight chuckle.

“Really?” I asked, my face lighting up in a wide smile.  “Thank you!” I gasped, wrapping my arms around her torso.  She immediately tensed, and I took the opportunity to grab the few bills, tucking them into my opposite sleeve.  “U-um, sorry,” I stuttered and quickly released her, my face growing red.  I stumbled backwards and straight into the arms of Thor.  I grabbed his hand in my own as though in an effort to keep my balance as he righted me gently.  I thanked him softly and slipped my hand out of his grip, taking the beautiful golden ring from his finger in the process.

“How would you escape, though?” Nat asked.  “I wouldn’t think you’d want to go to the police.”

“O-oh, well, it’s not too hard,” I smiled slightly.  “I just need to lose you in the crowd.  I would probably do something like this.”  I walked forward, and slipped between Clint and Bruce, using both hands to grab the swiss army knife from Clint’s pocket and a gorgeous custom pen that was clipped to Bruce’s.  “Then, once I’m out of your sight, I’d start running-”

“It was a good scam, kid,” the man cut in.  “But I thought I asked you to pickpocket her.”

I whipped back around to face him, suddenly feeling vulnerable again with all of the adults surrounding me.  “You’re right, I’m sorry; you asked me to pickpocket only her,” I hissed, my teeth grinding together.  “But I thought you wanted me to show you what I could do.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” he frowned, narrowing his eyes.

“As long as I’m not seen as a threat, I can steal from anyone,” I said, walking up to Tony and handing back his sunglasses.  “And I would do anything to keep myself from being seen as a threat.”  I took the watch off my wrist and handed it back to Steve.  “Everyone has something that brings their guard down.” I pulled the ring from my finger and handed it back to Thor.  “And whether they acknowledge it or not, they all want to see the good in people,” I pulled the swiss army knife and custom pen from my pockets, handing them back to Clint and Bruce.  “They all want to see me as some innocent little kid,” I returned Nat’s money to her.  “Even you,” I held out the man’s phone, staring up at him in defiance.

Every one of them stared at me in pure, unadulterated shock.  All of them, that is, except for Tony, who grinned and welcomed me back into his side, wrapping a strong arm around my shoulders.  Finally, the man chuckled a bit and snatched his phone back from me.  “Not bad, miss (Y/N), not bad at all.  Natasha, from now on, you’re training her to be a new agent.”

My eyes widened, and I frowned, subconsciously shrinking further into Tony’s side.  He squeezed my shoulder gently.

“Hey, Thor, why don’t you take (Y/N) for some poptarts.  She hasn’t had breakfast yet,” Tony said with a small smile.

“I’m not hungry,” I frowned.

“Just go with him for now, ok, kid?  Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this.”  I blinked up at Tony and frowned before nodding slowly, allowing the large blonde god to take my hand and lead me out of the room, away from the rest of the adults.

As soon as the door closed, I turned to the god with wide, pleading eyes.  “Mr. Thor, could you pretty please toast the poptarts for me?” I asked sweetly, gazing up at him.

“Of course, young lady (Y/N),” Thor grinned and ruffled my hair, moving towards the cabinets.  As soon as his back was turned, I pressed my ear to the door, concentrating on trying to hear what was going on in there.

“Did you really think I’d let you make her an agent?” I heard Tony snap.

“I didn’t think you had a choice,” the man from earlier responded casually.  “The girl’s got a gift, Stark.  She could help us.”

“She’s just a kid!  I brought you here to give you a heads up that she’d be staying with us, not to give you a potential recruit.”

“Look, it’s very simple, Stark.  Either you allow her to start training, or I deem her a threat to the team.  I will inform the police of the location of a criminal and unsupervised child.”

“So what?!  I’ll just adopt her!”

“Adoption takes a long time, Tony, especially for someone with a criminal record and a history of alcohol abuse.  Do you really want to send her back to an orphanage while you go through all of that, if you’re even granted custody at all?”

Oh, god.  This couldn’t be happening.  I couldn’t be going back.  He promised me I wouldn’t go back!  I stumbled backwards, barely making it a few steps before my knees gave out and I was sent crashing to the ground.  

“Lady (Y/N)!” Thor shouted, rushing over, but I could barely hear him over the deafening sound of my heartbeat and the blood rushing through my ears.  I could feel the tears streaming down my face and the burning in my chest from my hyperventilating breaths.  I curled up tightly, my muscles shaking from how tense they were.  I couldn’t go back there -- I wouldn’t!  Tony promised me I would never go back again!

“(Y/N)?” The familiar voice cut through the haze.  Immediately, I reached out and clawed at the air, trying to find him, but with blur of tears in my eyes, I couldn’t see him anywhere.  Suddenly, my head was resting against a chest, a pair of arms holding me tight and close.  “It’s ok, just breath with me.  Focus on me, ok?  In and out.”  I forced myself to breath in with him, struggling to slow it down like he said.  Slowly but surely, my breathing evened out, until finally, it had returned to normal.

As the panic slowly faded away, I could feel the energy drain from my body, and I nestled further into Tony’s embrace.  He stroked my back gently, murmuring comforting words into my ear.

“Tony?” I didn’t even open my eyes as I whispered softly, my voice still thick and shaking.  My hands gripped his shirt tightly, afraid that if I let go for more than a second, he would disappear.  “Do I have to go back?” 

“Never,” Tony answered immediately, his voice firm.  “I’m not letting you go anywhere.”

“Ok,” I whispered back, relaxing slightly.  Tony pulled me even closer, and I let out a soft sigh, my muscles slowly relaxing.  My hands released the shirt’s material, falling numbly into my lap.

Just before my exhausted body quickly slipped back into unconsciousness, I was barely able to make out a few words from Tony.  “Fine.  You win.”

“She’ll start training tomorrow.”

- - -

That was about four years ago. Since that day, Natasha had been training me constantly in different fighting techniques, target practice, the works. Of course, the lying and deception I’d already had down pat. Originally the plan was for me to be homeschooled, but Tony had thrown an absolute fit when he’d heard that, and considering I wasn’t exactly lacking in the mental department, we settled on just a bit of extra tutoring from Bruce every day after school.

Fury’s interest in me never went away. Because I had been so malnourished as a kid, I ended up being way too small for my age. To Fury’s absolute delight, this meant that I was more than capable of squeezing through the smallest of spaces. In other words, thanks to my size, training, and natural intelligence I was absolutely perfect for covert missions focusing on gathering information.

Tony had been absolutely furious when I’d been called on for my first mission. He’d screamed at Fury nonstop for three days until, finally, he was assured both that Nat would be with me the entire time and that he would be allowed to have a direct connection to my earpiece. He couldn’t decide whether he was thankful or disappointed that my first mission went perfectly. Of course he was happy I came back completely unharmed, but his fear that I would be forced into more and more missions due to my overwhelming success was only proven right at every turn. Still, he was always in my ear, talking me through the every single mission I ever went on.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t exactly a normal teenager. Still, that being said, I don’t think I would want it any other way.

Except maybe for the Fury part. Nothing would make me happier than seeing that man get what’s coming to him. But I could worry about that later. For now, I’d just spend my time grateful that I was blessed with the best dad in the world.

[novelconcepts]

Jamie & Dani short prompt- Online Dating au meeting online and being from bad past relationship. Thank u

This is probably a bad idea. It is, isn’t it? Almost certainly.

Why is she here?

Dani Clayton has been playing this particular set of thoughts--bad idea, terrible idea, why would you do this?--on repeat for three days. Ever since setting up that dating profile. Ever since realizing there isn’t much use in setting up a dating profile if you’re not going to use it. 

Oh, it’s all fun and games, building the thing. Find a photo that accentuates all the best parts of your face--Dani, after an hour of careful consideration, wound up going with one that accentuated her hair, more than anything, but she suspects the same idea counts. Then, the profile. What do you like? Teaching, long walks, new experiences, bad coffee. What don’t you like? 

Men, she’d thought, and snorted aloud into her wine before settling on: Deep water, accordion music, expectations, being called Danielle. 

A little more flourish, tipsy keystrokes, a casually-framed short-version of her life. Perfect. And then...well, then you hit the publish button, don’t you? You decide, for better or worse, to jump off this diving board and see just how far you can stand to swim before the energy gives out on you.

The faces appearing before her hadn’t been bad, certainly. Pretty, most of them. Interesting, a few. Still, she hadn’t swiped right on any--once or twice, because she’d forgotten which way meant yes please, but mostly because no one seemed quite...right. Which, she’d thought, was silly. The whole point of an app like this is to cast as many nets as possible and see what comes up. The whole point is to have fun. 

But every time she’d hovered over a promising image, a woman who likes dogs, or plays the violin, or goes rock-climbing in her spare time, she’d thought of him. Eddie. Who had taken one yes to a single date, and tried to make a whole life with her out of it. 

Eddie, who had taken her two decades to pull away from. 

What if the women here were the same? Not Eddie, exactly, but--presumptive. What if they believed a swipe-right was as good as a marriage proposal? What if she got bound up in conversation, and then a date, and then a relationship with someone else who just didn’t fit right?

Left. Left. Left. 

And then: the mistake.

She hadn’t meant to swipe right. Exactly. She hadn’t planned, maybe is the better way of putting it, on swiping right. She’d only wanted to look at the woman’s profile a little longer. Only wanted to inspect the facets this woman had put out on display with almost resigned simplicity. 

Some people, Dani had by now realized, wrote poetry and paragraphs to describe themselves. 

Jamie Taylor had bullet points.

“Gardener. English. Likes: Plants. Stories. Tea. Dislikes: Bullshit.”

The end. That had been quite literally the sum of it. Gardener. English. No bullshit.

But the picture, somehow, Dani hadn’t been able to look away from. Not because of carefully-arranged lighting, not because of a curated model-clean image--but because the woman appeared to have posted the photo almost under duress. It came in profile, as though someone else had done the job, her head turned toward the camera as if interrupted. Her hands were buried in a flower pot. Her clothes were simple--a tank top, a silver chain resting against the jut of collarbones, a pair of worn-looking jeans with holes in the knees. Her eyes--some fascinating color Dani couldn’t quite place--looked somewhere between amused and irritated. 

She looked real. 

Stupid, Dani thinks now--because that was probably the idea, wasn’t it? This woman, Jamie, had planned to look exactly this way. Real. Vexed at the idea of putting herself out there. Reluctantly available. 

It was a ploy, certainly--but one that seems to be working, because not only did Dani accidentally-not-accidentally swipe right, she found herself texting the woman. For hours. She’d expected much less, had figured this Jamie person would be as brief in text as she had been in bio, but...

Jamie had talked to her. Willingly. Teasingly, with more humor than truth, maybe, but with no sign at all that she was sick of Dani’s questions, bad jokes, nervous assessment that I really don’t do this, I honestly don’t get it. 

I don’t, either, Jamie had replied, and that had felt like enough of a reason to keep testing the waters. Enough of a reason to keep the conversation going back and forth, back and forth, until nearly two in the morning.

Shit, she’d said. I need to be at work in four hours. 

Shame, Jamie had replied, her tone already searingly familiar over text. Own your own business, make your own hours. Far wiser approach. 

I’ll make a note of it for when I found an elementary school, Dani had replied, laughing. She hadn’t said she’d already been in bed for an hour, the phone resting on the pillow beside her head so she wouldn’t miss the buzz of a new message. It had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, with wine-warmed blood and the happy haze of good conversation. Jamie made her laugh. Jamie put her at ease. Jamie might not have been real, but she felt real, and that was good. 

Better than anything she’d felt in years, if she was honest with herself. 

Still, when the next day had come and gone with no message, she’d thought, Fair enough. Jamie had been good virtual company for one night. It was more than she’d expected to get out of this app.

Far more than she’d expected, particularly when Thursday night rolled around and her phone buzzed.

Teacher, yeah? No school on Saturday?

Correct, Dani had replied, as amused by the out-of-left-field text as she was irritated with how her stomach had flipped over upon receiving it. You have figured out the complexity of the American school system. 

I am a genius, Jamie sent back, followed quickly by: Drinks tomorrow night? 

Drinks. A thing that people do. A thing that adult people do for date reasons. 

She isn’t real, she’d thought, even as her thumb was punching back: How’s 8? Miller’s?

A mistake. Definitely a mistake. Because the app had been a lark, and the conversation had been too easy, and the fact that she can’t quite pick out the colors in Jamie’s eyes from a single photo is making her crazier than she’d like to admit. 

A mistake, saying yes. A mistake, suggesting the local pub-like establishment around the corner, whose beer-and-burger specials had kept her fed on too many evenings spent working late. A mistake, because once this goes south--as it’s absolutely bound to, as everything Eddie-shaped always has--she’s going to lose her favorite hangout in the deal, too.

And yet: here she is. Standing at the door, wondering if the outfit chosen for the evening festivities--tight jeans, pink blouse, hoop earrings--is too much or not nearly enough. 

What am I doing here?

Maybe, she thinks with mingled alarm and hope, she won’t even have showed up. Maybe it’s all part of the ruse: look approachable, look human and normal, look a little too beautiful in the most grounded way possible--then, cheerfully, invite a woman to drinks and just don’t show. A fun story for whoever comes next. Can you believe she thought I’d want to meet her after one night of texting?

“Dani?” 

English, Dani thinks with a sudden rush of heat. Right. Somehow, she hadn’t quite been prepared for the accent, which--coming out of this woman, draped with languid ease at a table--is truly a little more than Dani thinks she can handle just now. The accent, combined with the mess of curls dragged back from her face, and a dress sense that manages to be both casual and deeply attractive at the same time, is...

“Jamie,” she says, her voice a little lower, a little more hoarse, than is truly necessary. The woman pushes up from her seat, a small-framed figure in a black button-down, suspenders, ripped jeans. She’s pressing a hand toward Dani, offering a firm shake as though they are business partners, not an off-the-cuff bad idea of a date. “You look--”

“Never been here before,” Jamie says, almost apologetically. She gestures for Dani to sit before dropping back down in a sprawl that implies exactly the opposite of what her mouth is insisting. “Wasn’t sure about the, ah, dress code.”

“You--you did fine,” Dani tells her, wishing suddenly she’d gone for a dress. Or a  different human body altogether. She feels too tightly-strung, too anxious for the easy smile on Jamie’s lips. “Um. You’re very. In person.”

“Very,” Jamie repeats, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. “Is very American for wish I’d gone left, after all?”

“No. No. Absolutely not. That.” Bit too forceful, she suspects, judging by the smile spreading into a grin. “No, it’s just--your picture didn’t--tell me you’d be so...”

“Clean?” Jamie suggests innocently. She raises her hands, wiggling her fingers in a small wave. “Scrub up fine, when I need to. Seemed to call for it.”

“And you...sure did answer,” Dani says stupidly. “The. Call, I mean. I’m sorry, I really don’t do this often.”

Something seems to soften in Jamie, her smile less teasing as she leans across the table. “Hey, no worries here. Same person you were talking to the other night.”

Dani nods, embarrassed, and flags down a server. Drinks ordered, she draws in a deep breath.

“I mean, I haven’t done this in years. Or. Ever, I guess.”

“A first date?” Jamie asks. When Dani doesn’t answer, she adds in a knowing tone, “A date with a woman?”

“Both,” Dani says honestly. “My last relationship was--well, I mean, we were engaged--”

Jamie whistles under her breath, reaching up to scratch her head. “Blimey. What happened?”

“He’s...him.” It’s too much to go into on a first date, too much to explain, even though talking to Jamie over text had been so dangerously easy. “My best friend growing up, but that was...growing up.”

Jamie nods thoughtfully, tilting her chin in thanks when the server deposits two full pint glasses and a basket of fries on the table. “Rough time, sounds like. I can relate. My last relationship also did not go well.”

“Was he also a man who thought you’d be all too happy to quit your job and take care of a bunch of babies?” Dani asks, perhaps a little too bitterly for the occasion. Jamie flashes another grin, sipping her drink.

“She was a woman who thought I’d be all too happy to take the fall when she got busted for possession.”

Dani gapes. “Oh. Oh--I didn’t know--I’m so--”

Jamie shrugs. “She wasn’t wrong. I was nineteen, and deeply stupid. Live and learn, as the poets say.”

“Which poets?” Dani asks, smiling a little. Jamie’s brow furrows.

“John...Lennon, possibly? Hard to say. Anyway, relationships are a chore and a half, but the greatest people in the world tell me thirty is too old to play musical bedframes, so. Here we are.”

No bullshit, thinks Dani approvingly. For what little she’d put into her profile, Jamie evidently hadn’t been lying about that.

“You haven’t been in a relationship since you were nineteen?”

“In my mind, I was still in the relationship at twenty-four, when they let me out. She didn’t agree. Found out she’d been married two years, by then.” Something darkens in Jamie’s eyes for a moment. She sighs. “Like I said. Not my finest. But I am, as they say, a shining beacon of reform these days.”

“Now, when you say they,” Dani teases, grinning. Jamie nods decisively. 

“John Lennon. Definitively.”

There it is, thinks Dani, watching Jamie pop a fry into her mouth. There, the easy roll of conversation from the other night. As though they’ve known each other forever. As though two people who have thus far failed irrevocably at relationships make a perfect match.

Easy, she thinks. Don’t go wild, now. 

“So,” she says, when the comfortable silence between them has grown a bit too comfortable for the setting, “who are the greatest people in the world? The ones who tell you thirty is too old for...did you say musical bedframes?”

Jamie laughs. The ring of it curls gently around Dani’s head like a soft hand, a sound she’ll find herself replaying later with a skipping heart. 

“Not many willing to put up with a grump of my caliber, but Hannah and Owen fight the good fight. So long as I at least pretend to try.”

“Let me guess. They set up the account for you?”

Jamie makes a sort of gesture in the air with the hand not holding her glass. “Threatened to bury me in puns and children, respectively, if I kept putting it off. Owen’s still grumpy about the photo choice.”

“I liked it,” Dani says without thinking. Jamie raises an eyebrow.

“Well, you did swipe as much. Mind if I ask why?”

Walked into this one. Still, she doesn’t mind as much as she probably should, not with the genuine curiosity in Jamie’s eyes. “You looked--don’t laugh.”

“No promises,” Jamie says, but with the gentle tone of one who knows exactly how much to tease before it’ll hurt. The idea warms Dani in a way she’s not quite ready to look at yet.

“You looked real,” Dani says. “Like you weren’t going to play games, or waste anyone’s time. Like you just wanted to be happy in peace.”

“That is,” Jamie says, holding out a fry for Dani to take, “sort of the idea, yeah.”

There’s an almost puzzled cast to her smile, like she didn’t entirely expect this answer, and is pleased by it at the same time. That same sense from the photo sweeps over Dani now--that this woman is authentic, even if she’s not always shiny, that she’s kind even if not entirely clean. That she doesn’t have any interest in muddled expectation or living a comfortable lie.

“And me?” Dani asks. She doesn’t entirely mean to--but she’s sure, in asking, that Jamie will answer. Jamie is unlike anyone else she’s ever met, the first person she’s ever known to meet each question head-on. 

“Honestly?”

Dani nods. Jamie seems to consider it, turning it over in her head as she twists a fry between her fingers like a cigarette. 

“All of it.”

“That’s,” Dani begins to laugh, “that’s not--”

“No,” Jamie says, and she isn’t smiling, exactly. Her eyes have a sort of shine Dani likes very much, but there is no hint of teasing in them now. “Really. All of it. You’re...very pretty, and that’s--but the way you described yourself. Like you didn’t care to be anyone in particular. You like new experiences, and bad coffee. You hate being called Danielle. I...I wanted to know why.”

“It’s not my name,” Dani says simply. Jamie gives a brief laugh, her hand moving across the table to lightly brush Dani’s fingertips. 

“I wanted to know why all of it. Why do you like bad coffee--”

“It’s the only kind I know how to make,” Dani says automatically. “Just sort of leaned into it.”

“--and teaching--”

“I want to make a difference,” Dani says. 

“--and where you most like to go on those long walks--”

“Anywhere I can breathe,” Dani says. Her fingers are hesitant, tracing the tips of Jamie’s. There’s something electric about this, about barely touching, about barely knowing someone and still wanting to give them neatly-packaged secrets shaped like the mundane. 

Jamie is smiling. “See, that. I like that. All of it.”

It’s nothing, Dani thinks reflexively. A collection of details. A sparse approximation of a life. Eddie knows all of this, and then some, and never matched up to knowing her.

But this woman, leaning across the table with one hand outstretched, looks so different. Watches her with steady interest. Is listening to every word Dani says, though the bar is growing crowded around them, and soon, conversation will become a task instead of a gift.

“Would you,” Dani says, feeling certain that some mistakes are not as bad as they seem, “like to take one of those walks?”

“Tonight?” 

“Yeah. Tonight.” Emboldened by the smile, by the curl falling into Jamie’s eyes, by the knowledge that she still can’t quite make out what color those eyes are, Dani takes her hand. It’s so easy, she thinks she could do it even without looking. “Right now.”

No bullshit, she thinks. No expectations. Just Jamie looking at her like she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing. Dani can’t blame her. This isn’t at all what she’d thought she was getting, walking in tonight. 

But there’s something about it--something about the feeling that she’s been here before, or should be here forever, or will always find her way back to a woman who looks at her just like this--that almost makes her feel brave. Almost makes her feel wonderful. She rises from the table, laying cash beneath her half-empty glass, and feels a pleasant jolt in her chest when Jamie follows without another word.

If this a mistake, she thinks as they step out into the brisk evening air, it’s one she’s hungry to make. 

[awhst-alt]

I HAD THE BEST BYLER DREAM LAST NIGHT AND I REALLY WANNA SHARE IT WITH YOU ALL

it's so long (literally 2k words) so im gonna put it under the cut haha <3

so basically this would take place after mike and will start dating or something, idk exactly the time frame (i picture them being like 18 or something and this is the summer before college) and will goes to this summer arts program for like 2/3 months (i dunno how long american summer is but something like that) and its all the way far from home so there is dorms and stuff and he's "not in hawkins anymore" (no pun intended)

mike and will decide after will finishes his school they'd go to college together (cuz they're gonna be comic book artists together bc thats boyfriend shit) so throughout these months he's practically just waiting for will (<333333)

so one specific scene i remember from my dream involved will and mike getting off the bus to the school and then they hug and then mike grabs wills hand and brings him behind the bus and then he gives will a biggg kiss bc he won't be able to kiss him for 3 months. then they say they love each other and will gives him another quick kiss and is like "two kisses". they agree they'd call each other every day.

so will goes inside and mike goes back on the bus and goes home.

and basically the whole day is a whirl, until the end of it, in which mike is sitting in the kitchen near the phone waiting for like 3 hours for will to call, and will doesn't end up calling.

AND THEN IT GETS SPICYYYYY

so meanwhile at the arts program will asks like the front desk or something if he can call mike and they say phone is offlimits and they don't let him call mike

so then will goes to sleep and he's paranoid that he thinks mike is gonna hate him or something like that

mk than the next day in class there is this girl (they didn't reveal her name in the dream, ill call her stella) so stella is basically looking at will the entire class but will doesn't know it

so when they exit the class stella's like "hi" and will says "hi"

then stella says "i like your painting."

will is like rlly weirded out so he goes "thanks?"

"i um- hope this doesn't sound weird but i have no friends, do you want to be mine?"

"sure"

and then end of scene (this does not sound like a normal conversation but it's my dream so it doesn't have to make sense"

so BACK AT HAWKINS mike is still sleeping even tho it's like 3 pm because yk depressed boyfriend shit but then the PHONE RINGS and mike gets out of bed frantically and goes to the phone and he picks it up and is like "will?" and then it answers "it's el, idiot"

i feel like this is important for context but el speaks english very well now and hoppers back and she lives with hopper and not the byers anymore. ANYWAYS

el says "how's will?"

mike says "idk he didn't call"

"he didn't?"

"no, he didn't"

"okay. well maybe he will call later"

"yeah mb"

"wanna come over"

"ok"

so mike hangs up and gets changed and goes to el's house bc they r a couple o' besties and when he gets there it's like a therapy sessions bc mike usally talks to will every single day and he can't for like 3 months (unless will calls, but he's not going to) so he accepts he's gonna be depressed for 3 months and he's just talking to el about how he's gonna miss him so much and no be able to see his face and that shit

so el's like "well do u wanna do something to take ur mind off of him"

and mike's like "no im not gonna replace will" (I SCREAMED IN MY DREAM SRSLY)

but than el says "okay. guess im gonna go to the mall by myself" (ig starcourt is rebuilt by now)

and than mike bolts up and is like "fine"

"we can by something for will"

"okay yay"

so then they go to starcourt yasss!!

anyways back at the art school will is having lunch and stella is with he friends (even tho she said she doesn't have any friends) and one of her friends is like "omg did you see _____ he's so hot"

and another friend says "YESS! but ____ is cuter"

"what abt u stella? who do u have ur eyes on"

she says "byers" BUT NOOOOOOO WILL IS MIKES MAN

and they say "ew that kid who came back to life"

she says "yea. but he's cute, and shy, and once i wrap them around my finger i can get them to do anything"

so then she goes to sit down next to will at lunch

"hi will"

"hi"

"hru"

"im good"

"okay. good." and she gets upset because will goes ask how she is but she keeps her urging rage inside. and than they have this weird conversation and will is uncomfortable the whole time bc shes all like flirting with him and will is seeing someone obvi

but then she puts a hand on will's shoulder and he's shaking and then says something (idk what it is it wasn't explaining in my dream) then will stands up and runs to the bathroom. so he's just sitting in the stalls crying.

okay back at starcourt this part wasn't shown in my dream but im just gonna make up that mike and el go looking around starcourt for something for will (sort of like the mike/lucas/will montage where they were looking for stuff for el) and then i guess they find something for will and i don't have the slightest idea what they could have got for him BUT THEY GOT HIM SOMETHING GOOD

so mike's all happy but they'res still that depression inside of him lol

so fast forward a week, it really isn't explained but ill just make up that will still hasn't called mike, and he's super sad and all sleeping in but decides to look through his good ol binder full of will's drawings and in the arts school will and stella have a few more interactions im sure which are still very uncomfortable

okay so it's lunch again in the cafeteria and somehow will and stella are talking again but somehow it ends in stella kissing will and will like pulls away immediatley and is like "what is wrong with you!?"

and she says "what?"

"i'm seeing someone!"

"oh i uh- i didn't know."

the whole cafeteria is staring at them

so will's freaking out almost on the verge of a panic attack "idk what to do, he's gonna hate me and-"

"he?"

will has the look on his face like shit shit shit oh fuck no

"you're gay?"

"i-"

and will runs off once again. and everyone in the whole cafeteria knows that he's day and ofc with everybody being homophobic will knows it's not good at all bc everyone's gonna bully him

so then the next day he goes to class and the teacher is like "does anyone care to tell me where ___ is?" (it would be like a math question like 'where x is' but in art idkkk) and then the teacher calls on "will? can you tell me where ___ is?" and they'res a pause and then the teacher says "or perhaps you'd want to find your boyfriend instead?" (giving me anne with an e vibes prolly cuz i did a rewatch last weekend but i won't explain more in case some people haven't watched it but) anyways will stands up from his seat, everyone is looking at him, and he's shaking and so concerned but then he goes "fuck. you" badass will yeaaaa thats my boy

so then he runs out of the classroom and out of the school in a really cool montage way but then he realizes he's like 2 hours away from home but he runs and runs and he goes to a random bustop (it's not even garanteed if it takes him to hawkins but whatever) he gets on and tries to go back to hawkins.

and soon enough, he gets there, and immediatley goes to the wheelers because he needs to see mike and apologize for everything. so he's at the wheelers, and rings the doorbell, realizing he's still in his uniform lol but karen answers and mike is upstairs in his room sulking (i picture it would be 8 pm by now) so will asks for mike and karen calls mike. mike groans obviously because he doesn't know it's his boy, but he comes down, karen gets out of the way and as soon as he sees will they have a really big hug and it's super sweet and my heart UFHEIOSKA

mike says his usual "are you okay?" and mike is still confused as shit but will says "i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry" and mike says "you don't have to be sorry for anyrhing" but will says "ill explain"

so then they go to will's room, side-by-side on his bed and will starts explaining everything

(this is mostly improvised by me but it's still pretty similar to the dream)

"i hated it."

"the school?"

"yeah. there was no you, (mike blushes lmao), everything was terrible, i felt so lonely, they didn't let me call you-"

"what?"

"they said the phone was off limits. i wanted to talk to you so bad and i thought you'd hate me"

"i could never hate you, will, even if i tried." will smiles

"and then there was this girl, and she hit on me and i didn't know what to do bc i'd be the face of the school if i told her i was dating you and was gay and today she kissed me"

"WHAT"

"im sorry im sorry i didn't kiss back and i was so scared bc i never was in a relationship before and i was so scared it was considered cheating-"

and mike LAUGHSS

"what? mike? what's wrong?"

"if you don't do anything back, it's not considerd 'cheating'"

"oh. good. are you mad at me?"

"what? no! no never!" so mike opens his arms and says "come here" so will and mike hug or something like that and then mike says "do you need me to beat her up?"

and will says "you can't even beat eggs. besides, your noodle arms wouldn't be able to do harm to even a fly"

so mike laughs and says "i'm glad your home"

so will blurts "i cursed out a teacher"

"you? cursing?"

"yes."

"might have to start calling you a bad boy now"

will just smiles and says "i love you"

and mike says "i love you too"

AND THEN END AND IM SO PROUD OF MYSELF BC I LOVE THIS DREAM LIKE I CAN'T BELIEVE MY BRAIN THOUGHT OF THIS BUT IM OBSESSED

ALSO ONCE I FINISH WYBMFFAE ILL PROBABLY WRITE THIS INTO A FULL BLOWN FIC BUT AHIHFUSAH

edit: i have no idea what mike did with the present him and el bought for will but i guess they ended up giving it to him lol

[marzipanandminutiae]

you asked and I am desperate for an excuse to happy to deliver! presenting A Point-By-Point Takedown of This BS Doll Article By Some Lady Calling Herself A Professional Antiques Appraiser

so she starts off with a random story about how she was in a warehouse doing appraisals and a dresser started glowing, and when she looked in the dresser the source of the glow was an antique doll. this convinced her that dolls “carry the energy of wicked little girls.” but not all of them! anyway now she’s scared of dolls. but not really. but yes, really

...okay then

she then shares a doll one E.H. sent her photos of for appraisal

(Pretty! French fashion doll, I’d say maybe a Barrois or an early Bru, late 1860s.  You can tell by the distinctive “cobalt blue” eyes, that deep sapphire shade that only appears in the earliest era of FFs. Wig looks original, almost certainly mohair, and she has some sort of blouse or gown on that seems antique from the look of the lace. Could be a modern-made garment with antique materials. She’d probably fetch over $1,000 at auction unless there's some REALLY bad damage elsewhere on her person.)

EH’s one doll has a fabulous body that points to its age as 3rd quarter 19th century, because the body is made of fine-grained hand stitched leather. So what follows is a rough explanation of how you can determine if your doll is OLD, and that of course influences value – to an extent. The older dolls that are valuable are ALSO rare. And by the 1890’s dolls really were NOT rare.

Couple of issues with this. first of all, kid leather bodies can be seen on dolls as far back as the 1820s and as late in time as the early 1920s. the typical French fashion bodies were fairly distinctive,  but just saying that the material determines the age isn’t correct. or if it is, it’s not a very precise dating

also like...what even is the last sentence? dolls weren’t rare in the 1890s. dolls weren’t rare in the 1860s. dolls can be made out of literally anything, at any price point, and have been present in almost every culture in human history. dolls, as a broad category, have never been inherently rare

if she’s saying dolls from the 1890s are not considered rare by today’s standards...oh honey, meet my dear friend the Simon and Halbig 1159

(This doll is c. 1900. This doll fetched $1,800 at auction. What was that about age determining value, again?)

also maybe Google “German art character dolls.” friendly suggestion

Another fact about doll valuation is that the best antique dolls are not replicas of children, but are replicas of fabulously well-dressed young women.

this is so ridiculous I laughed out loud. there is no single “best” type of antique doll. some people will pay top dollar for Kewpies, others for 1880s child dolls, others still for first-issue Barbies. there are examples that are the rarest in their class of doll, sure, but no one class dominates across the board. it’s one thing to say a certain type is your favorite and another to say it’s the Best(TM) as a professional appraiser

My favorite fashionable young lady dolls, French or German, have leather bodies made of kid leather, stuffed with cork or sawdust. When you check the bodies, look for tight stitching at the joints, because, if the arms and legs are meant to move, they must be compress seamed. That makes sense because with the stuffing, a moved joint will pop open if not sewn correctly. Look for another overlay of leather at the joint called a gusset, which indicates greater value. Only the legs, the body, and the top of the arms and shoulders will be made of leather. The arms will be creamy porcelain or bisque, or sometimes a wood pulp combination composite material. You will notice the head and shoulder plate fits in a U-curve around the shoulders, which are leather and affixed expertly.

couple of things

1. not all FFs have the bisque lower arms- that’s a rarity point, not the norm. most with leather bodies have leather arms, too.

(This is my Jeanette. She has leather arms. Guess she’s not really a French fashion doll, then, despite her markings, face painting, face mold, body construction, eye type, and literally everything else about her!)

2. this describes most reproduction FFs out there, and many bodies used for German child dolls later on. so unless you’re planning to give people other things to look for, not entirely helpful

oh but wait! here are the other things to look for! let’s venture

The best French Fashion dolls wear the latest styles and little girls never played with them. Wealthy fashionistas in the 3rd quarter of the 19th century collected them.

remember, all that contemporary hand-wringing about little girls being corrupted by their fashionable “Paris dolls” was planted by Big Children(TM). #wakeupsheeple #thetruthisoutthere

These come in the finest white leather bodies with a nice bust line and quite wide hips, as we know as the style for the shapely ladies of the 1870 and 1880’s.

...who’s going to tell her leather bodies are definitely not the finest

can it be me

can it be me with my Charlotte, who has one of the rarest wooden body types that I’m still not sure how I got for such a (relative) steal

can it be us, perched on the end of her bed, at midnight

The hairstyles of real human hair will also be ‘period’, and some will have real gem jewelry. These weren’t meant as toys for a middle class little girl. These were expensive and can sell today for a couple thousand dollars in perfect shape. Surprisingly the leather has withstood time if well preserved.

as I said earlier, for French fashions, mohair (wool from an angora goat) was a WAY more common wig material than human hair. sometimes the hair will be down, not in a “period” style, because it was meant to be played with and styled by the child owner

real gem jewelry DID exist for these dolls, but most of what you’re likely to find is of rhinestones and gilt. that was much more common, as you’d expect

a middle-class little girl, if she was very lucky, might be able to count one middling or lower-range French lady among her dolls. they were expensive, but, well, middle-class girls often have one American Girl doll today, right? these dolls ranged in price from AG-level to “this was bought for a young princess and has that real gem jewelry mentioned above”

her price assessment is accurate for the majority of FFs, with outliers on either end ranging from “got really lucky with a seller who didn’t know what they had” to “a museum bought this doll because not even the richest collectors could afford to.” but...well, just keep that “couple of thousand dollars” figure in your mind for later

Let’s compare this leather-bodied doll with another cheaper type of body. In the late 19th century a ball-jointed body could be made of a wood pulp composition material, or even Papiermâché with little hinges of wood at the joints. Of course, since these bodies are wood based, they’re painted, and you’ll find the ghastly colors, as the once flesh tones turn to green or olive.

remember that doll from 1900 I showed you? 

she has a jointed composition body

$1,800

I do not feel any further comment is necessary at this juncture

(leather bodies came to be considered something of a budget option when the jointed compo bodies came into common use, because they couldn’t be posed and took less work/expense to make)

Finally, let’s think about the heads, if we dare.

oh bite me

Most heads are made of a porcelain type of material, and in this case, the porcelain is usually white with a painted ON skin tone. If the head is Bisque, bisque is material that will take a color or stain into itself and is often not painted nor glazed. The porcelain heads are more prized.

okay kids

porcelain is a type of very fine, translucent ceramic. it can be made matte, often called bisque, or shiny and glossy, often called china

(this stylish miss by Francois Gaultier is of matte bisque, the most common type of porcelain finish used for French fashion dolls. she’s also rocking the baby bangs look, and kudos to her for that)

(this early girl by Rohmer, on the other hand, has a glossy, shiny china head. note again the cobalt-blue eyes, another clue to her age. this is rarer than matte bisque for French fashions, though German glazed china dolls with molded hair could be quite commonplace depending on many factors like size, body type, hairstyle, etc.)

complicating everything further, a lot of older and even contemporary sources can use “bisque,” “porcelain,” and “china” interchangeably. context is key. but in modern terms, that’s sort of the breakdown

ding dong this blogger is wrong

You’ll see what I mean when I say dolls are sometimes too lifelike for my taste–or my nightmares. Notice the toes on EH’s doll. Pretty obsessive. The value is unknown until I find the maker of the doll, but a rough estimate might be $600, because the outfit seems original.

stitched toes are normal on kid-bodied French fashions in the most common size range (14″-17″). also

(The actual picture provided)

THIS gives you nightmares? really? I have Many Questions

also remember that valuation from earlier? a couple of thousand dollars? yeah. now she comes back with $600

depending on size, condition, and costume intricacy, I’ve seldom seen a doll of this type sell for less than $1,700 at auction (source: the online catalogue of past auctions at Theriault’s, the premier doll auction house in the U.S., and also personal experience)

and that’s a problem because the doll’s owner is PAYING for this “appraiser’s” services. they’re PAYING for an accurate idea of what they have and what it’s worth, whether for selling or insurance purposes. even if it’s just out of personal curiosity, you shouldn’t be swindled for a slew of misinformation and half-truths capped off by a wildly inaccurate dollar value

also the Creepy Doll stuff is massively unprofessional

Marzi out

[transsexualhamlet]

asmr i psychoanalyze hide for fun

a lot of these are just stupid headcanons but a lot are also how i feel that’s just the way he is so

I know no one will read this it’s so very long but hello he’s my comfort character

(the words are under the cut bc THERE ARE SO MANY WORDS)

thoughts: It’s funny because most of the characters that I really love are just fucking idiots. So stupid. No thoughts head empty. And like at first glance you’d think the same with Hide, he’s got the look of a real dumbass, but he’s actually a really smart person? He just kind of, hides it. He did say he was like allergic to books once (it’s the adhd, king) but that doesn’t change the fact that he emotionally is actually a very intelligent person. It’s something he’s humble about because I don’t believe he really identifies with the intellectual crowd or sees himself as particularly above average, he just finds it easy to understand things. And he doesn’t ever use it for his own advantage even when it would be totally fine to do so, he pretty much always uses it to help other people and I think he believes if he used his strengths to help himself it would be, like, selfish. Which is a problem of his.

gemder n brand of gay: A lot of people in yonder Fandom like to see kaneki as bi and hide as gay but nah fam you’re off. Honestly I do not care about his Date With Rize in the slightest, that man is a homosexual. Hide is the bi one. (it’s not like this is a requirement or anything lmao i am just Saying also i’m bi and i’m projecting) I can also say with confidence that date with Rize was the only date Kaneki’s ever been on and he was definitely lying to himself. (i just, don’t know how you could look at Haise specifically and for one second think he has ever seen a boob) Hide’s the one who’s probably dated people before and he actually knows what’s attractive, he probably just doesn’t discuss that a lot with Kaneki since the bitch is Closeted and hide knows this. It’s funny because Hide canonically has two dads. Like I think that kind of explains him tbh. Bitch has good parents??? He’s the only one but we love him for it. U know Kaneki spent more of his life at Hide’s house than his own.

And as to gender, like obviously hide’s a guy, but i think he’s one of the few cisgenders who could like... tell you why. He’s well versed in those kinds of issues and has just thought about it a lot I guess? He’s comfortable in his skin and with a conventionally masculine appearance but he could tell you what Boy TM means other than yo macho man dude bro guy

personality type- ENFP-T: I took the fucking test for him and it was like... so easy. Took me ten minutes. 

basically what this means is it just calls him out as a fucken loud ass sunshine boy who has very many emotion and cares way too much about his friend

love how this part of the description describes kaneki and hide perfectly

biggest strength: he’s so good at helping people?? Like I can honestly say if some random person started rambling about their relationship issues to him I’d give him 10 minutes before he had a perfect solution, he had the person crying and being comforted in just the right way. He’s the perfect medium of confident and caring and he’s not just a fucking ray of sunshine on accident, he’s like, mob psycho 100 style actively working to be nice and compassionate. He’s very aware of how his actions affect people and he always knows just the right thing to say, what to do, when to just let things go or when to say them. And Hide will forgive, literally anything, even if someone does something really shitty to him he’ll realize it’s the product of like, unresolved mental issues or something and seek to fix it instead of cutting the person off. It’s... really good for everyone around him. But well,,, not great for him, see below.

biggest weakness: bitch does nOT leave room for himself. Although he is generally a confident person and isn’t very insecure, he knows he’s giving too much of himself and simply ‘pretend i do not see it but in reality i do’. He’s never put himself first and feels more worthy when he makes someone else happy, and it’s really not that visible but it can take a pretty big toll on him. He’ll feel anger and frustration for his problems but eventually he will end up blaming himself for anything that goes wrong and will just resolve to Try Harder. (which, mood) He does problem solve well and he tries to come up with the best solutions to issues but the fact is he just does not prioritize his own happiness within those solutions. He gives too much and it’s fucking killing him.

what he likes most about himself: Although he does have issues obviously, I don’t see Hide as someone who has particularly low esteem of himself. I think he pretty much thinks he has himself figured out and therefore other people’s problems come first. He generally does, think fondly of himself, because most of the time he can fix people’s problems so he’s yknow, a good person. I think he likes his ability to enjoy life and live in the moment, and he likes his connections and friendships with other people. He values emotional connection and he likes that he can easily create and enjoy good vibes. He loves being the one who everyone just... goes to for a good time.

favorite things: I think I heard somewhere that he enjoys dumb american bands without really understanding what they’re saying which seems very on brand for him, but I’m gonna perscribe him some other stuff too. Obviously he likes bright colors and comic books, and places where he can have fun with other people. He generally likes college, even though it’s like, school, and unlike kaneki he actually had a good childhood and he enjoys the places he spent time and formed good memories, he has Nostalgia TM (see unbelievable by owl city hmmm he vibes to that he was born in 1996 or something right i can’t google things) he also just really likes to just, fix other people’s problems but we’ve covered that. 

what he’s doing right and what he’s doing wrong: Hide is doing his best. He’s no less flawed than any of the other characters in tokyo ghoul, it’s just that his strategies tend to involve 100% less murder. Ok no, let me rephrase that, Hide is flawed, but i meant like emotionally, he’s not a war criminal like everyone else. He may seem at first glance like, just, perfect? Sorry for being a simp lmao but I feel like from the outside he’s just got it all together right? He knows what he’s doing and he’s super nice and helpful and smart and humble and just doesn’t have any visible flaws? He... tends to hide any evidence that he would ever be struggling. And that’s not very sexy of him. He feels it would be a burden on others to show pain or ever say he can’t take something on (if someone asked him to do something he’d do it even if he was already mentally at capacity etc) and that’s something he needs to work on. The good thing is that if they got to a point where after Kaneki’s Character Development they got to just... like, be happy and not be separated and everything Kaneki would be good for him because he compliments that. Hide helps him because he needs a lot of like, mental counseling lmao but now that Kaneki’s gone through a lot of that his eyes have been opened more to the fact that Hide hides his problems from Kaneki so if they could just bE HAPPY this is an issue that could be resolved

insecurities: I think Hide kind of believes he’s not allowed to be sad. Cause it’s like, not his job. He’s the source of happiness for everyone else, supposed to have everything together so he can fix everyone else’s problems. he’s not allowed to be in pain or feel bad for himself even though he knows “Boys Can Cry” it’s like, yes boys can cry, not me tho haha lmao it’s not about his masculinity it’s just he’s like “yeah but kaneki’s had it worse” so like if he finds himself in a bad place, he feels inadequate and like... fundametally broken. and it’s. Like. I felt that but also like king that’s not how it works

goal in life: I think he wouldn’t really be able to answer that question. What the truth would be is that he probably wants to do something grand and important that helps a lot of people and kind of changes the world. But he might not really think of it that way, since he’s usually focused more on smaller more isolated issues and he has no idea what he wants to do as a career. He admires activists and people who put themselves at risk but it probably makes him feel inferior that someone else is Doing Something About This Big Problem and he’s just sitting there riding around on his bisexual bike and being in college. (I’d like to say he’s probably changed majors at least a few times,,, that man was like “oh yeah lmao i’m gonna be a comic book artist” but someone said something about how he’s a good therapist and he’s like “brb kinshift i am now a psychology major” lmao.) (hello i am projecting but i’m right) He sees a tumblr post about some issue somewhere and he hyperfixates on it for days until he sees another post about something worse it’s an issue. But I think what he ended up doing was what he wanted to, even if he never recieved any recognition for it the internal sense that he was doing something Right TM in the eyes of history would probably make him cry

how he was raised: I can’t really say much to this because there’s barely any canon on this and the canon that does exist I have completely ignored other than the fact that he has two dads. Bro tbh? He didn’t need any tragic emo backstory I think he had a great childhood. Honestly he’s probably a rich kid. Not super rich but he’s not struggling man. Not gonna lie to you I think the only reason he went to Kamii was because he wanted to be at the same college as Kaneki who probably got a scholarship. Hide, didn’t. (it’s not like he’s not intelligent but I don’t really think that his grades are his biggest priority, the only time he ever pays attention in class is to give kaneki the answers when he’s gone) 

What irks me about the random lore drop in the last chapter about him having a CCG dad that died or whatever- it kind of ruins the whole point for me. Personally I choose to believe he had nothing whatsoever to do with ghouls or the ccg before all that happened to Kaneki. He probably had correct opinions on them, but only like, in theory, it’s like straight people that are like “yeah ofc gay ppl valid” but they’ve never really had any personal experience with any. So when he gets involved in that- the fact is that the only reason he was... was bc of kaneki. It was never more complicated than that to me. YKNOW, SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST, NICE, OK? 

And I think for me that the fact that he could actively choose to be nice and be aware of all these problems when he’s practically got every advantage in life is a lot more important. He didn’t have to be poor or have a dead parent or have a shitty childhood for him to be really genuinely good. I don’t think he’s ever been bullied or anything, but he can still be aware that it sucks to be bullied. I think he was just... raised right. I think his dads are probably pretty fucking baller for him to be such a bro. They taught him the right shit.

General philosophy: Hide is one of the only people in the series for whom the dynamics of right and wrong are not hard to understand. He’s never been required to pick up a weapon or actually truly fight in the CCG, he’s never been really mean to anyone. Of course I can say he’s probably decked a few ppl that made fun of Kaneki in middle school, but haven’t we all. The thing is that though he’s never suffered at the hands of others, everything that’s hurt him he’s gone in fully consenting to it- he can still understand and forgive what everyone else has done. Like bro he’s the literal only one around who’s not like a literal war criminal, but he’s not going to think he’s better because of it, because he understands that if he had been in their circumstances he couldn’t say how he would have turned out. 

That’s why I think it’s so important that he never really had a bad childhood- he’s not better than them for turning out without any blood on his hands, because he was never required to. And he knows that and he goes through every day with all these people who have and is conscious of it. He can’t ever say he’s incapable of hurting other people, because he would have said that about Kaneki before all of it happened. So he’s quite politically correct compared to Kaneki and the others but he doesn’t see things that way.

relationship bullshit: i mean bro i know this is a serious post about like psychological and emotional things but i felt the need to discuss whY does everyone write hide as a bottom I mean like sure he’d bottom if his partner was a top but this is simply not the case with kaneki look at him. Hide. Service top. I rest my case. The man’s the biggest switch ever but when he’s a top he’s a nice top. I think Kaneki needs that to be perfectly honest. He really likes to take care of people. Also kind of off topic but his love language is quality time he just wants to play video games wit da homies and he might fall in love a bit

I find it genuinely funny how much i cannot get away from the tentacle porn on the god forsaken archive of our own just looking at the tags i already know it’s so out of character haitoheoihesdsdsa and don’t get me started on the vore

how kaneki sees him vs how he actually is: One of the biggest problems in kaneki and hide’s relationship is how in the beginning, Kaneki didn’t really understand at all that Hide could be hiding anything from him. Kaneki’s not good at picking up clues like that in general, but the fact that he was hiding so much himself didn’t help at all. Hide gives off the vibe of someone who has no inhibitions and shows every side of himself without hesitation, and Kaneki really does idolize that. He didn’t realize that Hide could possibly be suffering or imperfect compared to his vision. He sees Hide as practically an angel, and that’s exactly how Hide wants Kaneki to see him, because he doesn’t want to burden Kaneki with his own problems since he believes they’re not as important and they would make Kaneki sad. Kaneki knew Hide wasn’t as oblivious as he seemed, but he didn’t really understand what that meant until too late. The good thing about Kaneki’s character development though is that it then helps Kaneki understand that Hide was suffering because of him and he didn’t want Hide to hide it anymore (lmao). If they’d only executed that point well that could have been really good but well that’s what fanfic is for

how he sees kaneki vs how kaneki actually is: This one’s a lot more difficult, because well. Hide’s very good at knowing exactly how people are in their hearts, compared to Kaneki. But there are definitely some things that he’s not super up on. He wasn’t around for a lot of Kaneki’s development, so most of the time I think he still believes Kaneki doesn’t want to see his pain, which is, simply incorrect, Kaneki would obviously not be happy to hear it but it would tear him up inside to realize he’s been oblivious to it the whole time. He’s grown a lot more mature since he spent most of his time with Hide, and I really think Hide could benefit from being able to open up to Kaneki the way he is now. And well. I think his biggest misconception has to be that Kaneki enjoyed women lmao

the most him thing i’ve ever done: listening to a happy upbeat song and visibly bopping while also uncontrollably sobbing

miscellaneous headcanons: 

-he’s a morning person lmao. Motherfucker gets up at 6 AM and Kaneki is like PL EA SE NO

-what he finds attractive is like. twinks and girls with hair in colors that don’t exist and ppl who don’t know what gender is

-He likes Imagine Dragons lmao you can see by the next point

-his coping mechanisms are mostly music and other people tbh he’s like “oh i am having emotions? disgusting” *goes to a party*

-he plays dnd and he mains a warlock i don’t make the rules

-he doesn’t look like someone who would do that shit but he probably knows how to use tarot cards

-idk how but that motherfucker is so neurodivergent i can smell the hyperempathy on him look at that man he has so much adhd

-he’s fully aware that his fashion sense is terrible and continues to wear more and more ridiculous clothes to piss kaneki off

-this man has tungle dot fuck. Look at him. His url is probably something along the lines of my ao3 username lmao

-he can see the forbidden shrimp colors smh

-this bitch likes mob psycho 100 and the promised neverland, kaneki keeps telling him to watch death note and he’s just like n   o hhsdfhhfdshdfshdfs he probably kins tpn emma

-he doesn’t know how to drive lmao he bikes everywhere and he lives in tokyo

-i am once again thinking about how he was in a play with kaneki and kaneki was the main character and he was the spicy side character that’s not a headcanon just. that

songs that are, him: 

-Stand By You (Rachel Platten)

-Luck (American Authors)

-Love (Imagine Dragons)

-If I Lose Myself (One Republic)

-Stardust (New Politics)

-Secrets (also one republic)

-Flaws (Bastille)

-100 Bad Days (AJR)

-I Lived (another one republic lmao)

-Battle Scars (Paradise Fears)

-Rise Up (Imagine Dragons)

yeah he definitely listens to this shit lmao