#we could talk about how will is almost directly referring to this moment in his own confession

[wibble-wobbegong]

What, in your opinion, is the strongest evidence that Mike realized his feelings for Will in season 2? (If you don’t mind reiterating this point, ik you’ve talked about this a bunch of times)

it’s the first time he ever separates will from everybody else in his life. people say he did that in 4x04, and he did, but it wasn’t the first time. when mike delivers his monologue, he looks at will and he says meeting him is the best thing he’s ever done. will is immediately separated from literally everything else in mike’s entire life, put into his own separate category, because he’s the best part of mike’s life.

in s1, mike made sure to tell dustin that he, lucas, and will were all his best friends. he’s now placing will away from them, because they aren’t the best part of mike’s life. will is, and will alone. he never even actually addresses will as just a friend in the monologue, only says that asking to be friends was the best thing he’s ever done, before completely separating will from every other friend he’s ever had INCLUDING el.

there’s a ton of reasons why the shed scene makes the most sense and this is barely anything, but it’s the strongest piece of evidence imo. if we’re taking the separation of will from everybody else as romantic, then we have to treat this scene with the same interpretation. mike has known will is different from everybody else for a long time now, and he realizes right around the time of the monologue (maybe a little before). it’s part of why, for the first time in the entire show, we see him push will away rather than pull him close at the snowball. mike was supposed to be with el, he couldn’t have those feelings for will, so he pushes him away. he does it and we see his dejection over it, but he did it anyway. mike was consciously trying to push will away as early as the snowball, and the only significant moment they had before that together was the shed scene. el came back literally right after, so he never had a chance at sorting that shit out before the expectancy to date el was present again.

[tongue-like-a-razor]

Hotter Than Texas | Part II

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x F!Reader

A/N: I'm so excited that y'all loved the first part! Thanks for your enthusiasm, you rock <3

Summary: Bradley Bradshaw is tasked with transporting a not-so-delicate package in the form of Jake Seresin's baby sister, who turns out to be Bradley's dream girl worst nightmare.

Aka it's a road trip, strap in.

CW: swearing, age gap (10 years)

WC: 2000+

Part I | Masterlist

“I’m getting hungry.”

Bradley glances at the restaurant sign as he passes it on the interstate, suppressing a sigh. He usually skips lunch on long trips so he can arrive at his destination before nightfall. “I’ll get off at the next exit,” he says.

“Will you?” you exclaim excitedly, as though he’s offered to catch and cook your next meal himself.

Bradley chuckles mildly. “Well, I’m not going to let you starve.”

“You’re so sweet,” you reply, and Bradley eyes you with a grin because he’s about eighty percent certain you’re being facetious.

“What’re are you in the mood for?” he asks as he gets on the off-ramp.

“Something greasy and very bad for my heart.”

Bradley lets out a small laugh. What’s bad for his heart is you sitting next to him being all cute for the next twenty hours straight.

He pulls into the lot of a little diner just off the highway and parks his car while you flip down your sun visor to glance at your reflection in the mirror. “How do I look?” you mutter, mostly to yourself.

Bradley tries not to examine you directly and instead just glances in your vicinity. “Better than the truckers, I bet,” he comments, noticing the row of semis at the back of the lot.

You give him an unimpressed look and then push open your door. “I sure hope they have French toast.”

“I thought you wanted something greasy,” Bradley says, walking around the front of the Bronco to join you.

“I want options,” you state, marching forth toward the front doors.

Bradley strides ahead and pulls the door open for you. He can’t say he isn’t looking forward to having a sit-down meal with you, like it’s a date or something. And, as much as he hates to admit it, he’s almost thrilled at the prospect of the other patrons assuming the two of you are a couple.

You walk through the open door and Bradley stalls for a moment, trying to clear his head. He shouldn’t even be thinking about that sort of nonsense. He and Hangman have enough issues without adding Bradley’s crush on his baby sister to the mix. They’ve just begun to mend their bumpy – to say the least – relationship, and Jake would sure as shit not appreciate his colleague developing feelings for his younger sibling.

“You comin’, sugar?” you call from inside.

Bradley, who’s clearly taken too long of a beat, glances at you in a bit of a daze. He’s sure you just called him ‘sugar’ and that has utterly thrown him. He enters after you and gives the hostess a look that he hopes might resemble a polite smile. But his face feels hot and numb at the same time, so he can’t be sure.

…

“I think I’ll get the pancakes,” you muse, flipping through the menu leisurely.

Bradley smiles at you when you’re not looking. “Want to share some things?”

You glance up at him happily. “Can we?”

Bradley chuckles. “Why not? I could go for a pancake. What else should we get?”

Your eyes light up and you instantly refer back to the menu. “Fried pickles.”

Bradley cringes but he’s still amused. “Those’ll go great with the pancakes.”

“I agree,” you respond without a hint of sarcasm. “Chili?” you continue. “Or tacos?”

“Why not both?” Bradley shrugs.

You give him a serious look. “That’s just crazy talk.”

Bradley laughs. “You’re right, what was I thinking?”

“I sort of want some pie, though.”

Bradley closes his menu and leans forward into the table. “I’ve already thought of that,” he mutters under his breath, as though he’s about to divulge a secret. You lean in too, your bright eyes blinking up at him eagerly. “We’ll get one for the road,” he whispers.

You gasp. “You’re a genius!”

Bradley chuckles, leaning back in his seat proudly. “I won’t deny that.”

…

When the server arrives to take your orders, you let Bradley do the talking, but chime in with little requests now and again; onions on the home fries, maple syrup for the bacon, sour cream in the chili. And Bradley can’t help but delight in the fact that, every time you think of something, you tap his hand that's resting on the table, ‘oohing’ with excitement.

Bradley eyes you with a smile once the server departs. “Maple syrup for the bacon?”

You wave a hand at him. “You’ll see.”

Bradley shakes his head with a smirk. “Not on my bacon.”

“Yeah, my brother warned me that you’re a bit of a square.”

Bradley raises his eyebrows and scoffs. “Your brother said what?”

You grin at him mischievously. “Don’t worry, I can make up my own mind.”

“Your brother warned me that you’re a bully,” Bradley replies, his smile only getting wider. “And, coming from Hangman, that’s saying something.”

You let out a peal of laughter so exuberant that several faces turn to look in your direction.

“Don’t worry,” he adds when your laughter partially subsides. “I can make up my own mind.”

“And?” you ask with soaring eyebrows. “Have you?”

Bradley hesitates for a moment and then decides to respond in a cheeky manner to avoid any awkwardness. “Not just yet,” he says with a chuckle.

You reach out and lightly smack his forearm. “Stop!”

“I’m joking,” Bradley concedes, grabbing your hand before you can strike him again. “It’s not like you’ve ever hit me to get your way,” he says pointedly.

You shake your head with a smirk and withdraw your hand.

…

“Everything was delicious,” you gush to the waitress as she clears the table. “We had such a wonderful time!”

“Glad to hear that, dear,” the waitress gives you a smile and then winks at Bradley, as though she’s in on some scheme with him.

Bradley furrows his eyebrows in amusement as she walks away and then digs into his pocket for his wallet. “My treat,” he says when you reach for your purse.

“No way!” you exclaim. “You’re already giving me a ride. The least I could do is feed you.”

“You don’t have to do anything. I’m happy to be your ride.”

“I insist,” you declare.

“I insist harder,” Bradley presses, laying down several bills onto the receipt tray.

You gaze at him pensively and finally slide your wallet back into your purse. “So, you’re stubborn,” you note.

“So, you’re observant,” he remarks.

You chuckle, shaking your head. “Thanks for lunch, Rooster.”

…

Back on the road, you offer Bradley a turn with the radio, muttering something about not wanting to be a bully by hogging the music. He can tell you’ve said it in jest, but he still wants to make sure he hasn’t offended you.

“You know I don’t think you’re a bully, right?” he says, glancing between your face and the road several times.

You eye him playfully. “Well, give it a minute.”

Bradley chuckles. “It’s getting dark,” he notes after a little while. He was hoping to get farther on the first day, but the prospect of maybe spending an extra day with you on the road doesn’t seem nearly as daunting as it might have in the morning. “Want to stop for the night?”

“I can drive if you want,” you offer.

Naturally, Bradley overthinks your response. He wonders if maybe you’ve had enough of him and would prefer to get to Texas as soon as possible. “No, no,” he responds. “I can drive. I just thought you might be tired.”

“From sitting?” you quip.

Bradley gives you a flat look. “It’s been a long day.”

You shrug. “It flew by.”

That sets his mind at ease somewhat. A day doesn’t fly by unless you’re having a good time. “I think we should stop,” he says.

“Alright,” you respond, “let’s stop.”

…

“You two lovebirds want the mountain or city view?” the hotel’s front desk clerk enquires with a beam.

Bradley is about to explain that the two of you will, in fact, require separate rooms because you are the absolute opposite of lovebirds, when you respond with, “Mountain, please.”

The clerk hands you a key and Bradley follows you down the hall mutely, with both of your suitcases in tow. He’s not about to dispute your decision to share a room, despite knowing that it’s exactly what he swore he’d avoid doing the moment he laid eyes on you.

You open the door and enter, holding it open for Bradley so that he can bring in the luggage. He sets it down gingerly by the door and straightens his back to look around. The are two double beds against the wall and a large window with a spectacular view of the Santa Catalina range.

You flop down on one of the beds with a contented sigh. “You know what, darlin’? I am tired.”

Bradley watches you climb further up the bed and rest your head on one of the pillows. He’s used to you calling him all sorts of terms of endearment at this point, but it still warms his heart each and every time you do. “No dinner tonight, sweetheart?” he responds, adopting your speaking style on a trial basis.

You lift your head from the pillow. “Let’s just order in?”

You seem unfazed by the fact that Bradley just called you sweetheart. Meanwhile, he’s nearly thrown up from the anxiety it’s caused him. He resolves not to call you that – or any other overly-friendly name – ever again. “Yeah, we can do that,” he responds casually. “Pizza?”

You nod. “With barbeque chicken.”

“You got it.”

…

“Did you always want to be an aviator?” you ask, taking a bit of pizza while dusting crumbs off the bedspread.

The two of you are sitting cross-legged atop one of the beds with the open pizza box between you. Bradley grabs another slice. “Pretty much.” He doesn’t really want to get into specifics, because that means being vulnerable, a state which Bradley does not much enjoy.

“Interesting.”

“What about you?” he asks. “What are you studying?”

“Math.”

Bradley nearly chokes. For some reason, he expected something less cerebral. “Are you going to be an accountant, or something?” he asks with a smirk.

You frown slightly. “I sure hope not.”

“Well, what do you want to be?”

“A good person,” you respond thoughtfully.

Bradley lowers his pizza and stares at you. “You are a good person,” he says hoarsely.

You shrug. “I have my days.”

“I mean, I don’t know you very well,” Bradley reasons. “But you seem great. Much better than your brother.”

You laugh and lower your gaze. “Aren’t you a sweetheart?” you say warmly.

Bradley can feel his heart pounding like a double bass drum. The only sweetheart in this room is you and he can hardly keep that to himself. To think that you might be doubting your own integrity is affecting Bradley on a near-physical level. “You’re a good person. Anybody who tells you otherwise is an idiot,” he states.

You smile, still looking downward. “Thanks.”

“You don’t need to thank me.”

You place your half-eaten slice of pizza back into the box and fall back into the pillows, sighing dramatically. “I’m stuffed!”

Bradley, who’s just taken his final bite, mutters around the crust in his mouth. “Me too.” He closes the pizza box and picks it up to set it onto the floor by the bed. Then, he moves to the other bed and lies down on his back with a weary exhale.

“Hey, Rooster,” you call from your bed.

“Hmm?”

“Are you a good pilot?”

Bradley turns onto his side to face you. “I think so.”

“My brother said you were just alright,” you say.

Bradley snorts and throws a pillow at you. You laugh and then stuff the pillow in between your knees. “Joke’s on you, I’m keeping this.”

Bradley adjusts his second pillow under his head and mutters, “You’re welcome.”

“Tomorrow you can choose what you want to listen to,” you say.

Bradley chuckles. What he wants to listen to more than anything is probably you.

“Hey, Rooster,” you say quietly.

“Hmm?”

“Is there any pie left?”

Read Part 3

Tag List

I’ll be tagging the rest in the comments shortly!

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[miirohs]

in the middle of the night [r.n.z]

pairing: OPLA!Roronoa Zoro x Reader wc: 1.0k cw: there is a reference to something that is canon in the series, as well as one piece spoilers an: damn thats crazy my drive suddenly came back after years of being gone anyways this was inspired by swim by chase atlantic and middle of the night by elle duhé. note that if the tension is not tension-ing its bc i cant write tension.

Zoro felt more lost around you than anyone else.

You were chaotic and proud, kicking up dust and blowing it to the wind, and yet he liked you. He wasn't sure if he was in denial or acceptance about it.

Though for someone so loud, He knew almost nothing about you and anyone who asked you would only receive a smile, teasing them with tiny pieces dangled over their head like bait.

It irked him a little, if he was going to be honest.

No matter how hard he seemed to slash his sword at the pitch black sky, you seemed to linger in the back of his mind.

He paused for a moment, huffing as he turned the blade in his hand. Trying to cut air didn't seem to help a single bit.

As he leaned against his sword, the atmosphere seemed to have shifted. The wind was slowly dying down, the sound of crashing waves being the only thing he could hear for a heartbeat or two. He could have even fell asleep leaning against his katana if he really tried.

"Fancy yourself a little midnight training?"

He whirled around, tip of the katana aimed directly at your throat. You sat on the railing behind him, hair ruffling in the wind as you watched him with an amused smirk.

His grip on the katana didn't waver, but he lowered the blade slightly, still watching you. "What do you want?" He muttered, tone gruff as he sheathed his katana.

"You're always so serious, Zoro," you complained, swinging your legs idly over the railing. "And you're not, so i guess that balances out," He said, arms crossed in front of his chest.

"The way you talk to me , i makes me think you really do hate me," you hummed, leaning forward on the rails, trying to close the space, "Do you though, Roronoa Zoro? Or are you avoiding me for some other reason."

You both paused, and for the slightest moment you could have sworn you saw his eyes narrow slightly.

"Whatever. Anyways, I'm going back to bed," Zoro muttered quickly, turning his heel on you as you jumped down, light as a cat on its feet.

"Wait, Zoro. I have something to ask of you." He paused. You weren't just going to let him slip away just yet.

"What if we have a little duel? Just me and you." You said, traipsing to his side. "If you win i'll tell you whatever you want to know."

He stiffed up slightly and you grinned. You had him right where you wanted him. Bingo.

"Deal-" He muttered as you breathed a sigh of relief, holding out a hand. "But don't expect me to go easy."

You jumped, tumbling across the floor shocked by the sudden strike. Your hands reached for the sword behind you as you got up, leaning against the railing.

"You play dirty, Roronoa."

"We're not having an official match. After all, you're the one who wanted this," Zoro retorted, a menacing look on his face as you got up.

"You're right," you conceded, a smirk playing on your lips. "No official match. Just a little midnight sparring to lighten the mood"

He came for you again, but this time you were prepared, blade catching the moonlight as you struck him.

He managed to block, and from there you were stuck in a pas de deux.

Your swords continued to clang, and you continued to doge effortlessly, almost dancing on your feet as you got closer.

"Come on marimo, tell me this isn't all you have!" You said sing-songy, pushing him back once again.

It was obvious from the look on Zoro's face that he didn't expect the skill level you had from you. While you did gain a lot from watching him fight, this also wasn't your first rodeo.

As he swung for you again, you managed to hit his side with the spine, sending him back a foot or two.

"Oh you've done it now," He snapped, charging at you once again, "You just had to do that, didn't you?"

Out of nowhere, he striked harder, moving fast as you had seen him move in the field. You, for once, struggled against defending the blows, as he randomly disappeared and reappeared.

For a solid moment, his blade scrape against your eyebrow, and you stumbled. He managed to disarm you, forcing you back into the corner you had come slinking out of, sword to your throat.

You could feel the tip barely pressing against it as you breathed deeply, grinning.

"You got me," you conceded, your voice laced with a playful tone. "But you'll have to admit, that was a hell of a fight."

He grimaced, clutching his chest slightly as he watched you through hawk eyes.

"Where the hell did you get all that from? I didn't even think you knew how to hold a sword?" He hissed, pressing the katana a little deeper on accident.

The feeling of warmth trickling down your skin told you everything, and you reached up, holding the blade firmly into your hands. It dug into your skin, yet the smile never dropped off your face.

"I wasn't just a dancer. I use to be a pirate too." He pressed a little more, and you winced.

"I was... apart of the black cat pirates, three years ago. It was around the time Kahladore- or should i say, Kuro, went missing. I saw my chance and i ran." You whispered, watching him carefully. There was no telling what he would do with the information.

"Have you kept this a secret from all of us this whole time?" He gawked. You only blinked, taking time to process the question.

"Nami knows. She's the only one i told, except now i've told you too," You admitted, looking up at him through hooded eyes.

"How do i know you're not going to-"

"Betray you all? Do you think that lowly of me?" You refuted, pushing his blade away from your neck.

"Now let me ask you something, Roronoa Zoro? Do you like me?"

The silence seem to stretch on, thickening every moment you sat there. He didn't say anything, and you sighed. "Shame. I thought i might get something out of you, but i maybe i was wrong about it."

You sat up on the rails, arms outstretched as you leaned back, hair whipping wildly in the wind as you shut your eyes, "shame, it was a wonderful night."

A sudden yank back awoke you, a yelp escaping your mouth as you skidded and landed on him.

Wait.

You landed on him.

Your cheeks flushed as you scrambled back, at a loss for words.

"Uh... I'm- oh, i'm just going to go to bed-"

Zoro watched you with an amused glint in his eyes as you stammered out your intentions.

"Y/n."

"Yes?" You mumbled, burning feeling spreading to your ears as he called you back.

"Maybe i do like you."

"What?" You squawked.

"Maybe I have liked you," he repeated, his voice softer this time. You were sure if there was a little more light, you'd see a faint blush coloring his cheeks.

A smile spread across your face. "I just knew it."

"Don't rub it in." He grumbled, rolling his eyes as you sat up, gleeful.

"I won't," you replied with a mischievous grin, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "But I have to admit, it's nice to finally hear you say it."

Zoro shifted uncomfortably, his usual tough exterior momentarily cracked by his confession. "Yeah, well, don't make a big deal out of it."

You chuckled, warmth settling in as you got up from his side. "Of course not. This can just be our little secret."

He nodded, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Yeah, our secret."

As you climbed down the steps, you paused, turning around.

"Also, if you tell anyone about the fact that i can use swords, i will find you and duel you to the death."

"Sure you will."

"Will too."

"Will not."

"Will too."

[xoxochb]

⋆·˚ ༘ * if you get lonely, think of me only

warnings: major foreshadowing, more kissing at the end, vulgar language, I got lazy trying to end this because I’m awful at ending fics

pairing: percy jackson x daughter of hades and persephone

series master list

“what? I don’t- I thought he was with dad?”

nico shrugs

“okay, okay. well I need to change out of this, will you give me a moment?” you say referring to your wedding dress

your brother nods and closes the door behind him. you quickly change out of your wedding dress to your ‘casual’ dress. you give percy a sentimental look and a peck to his lips

“I’ll be back in a minute” another kiss and you’re off

for percy however, he doesn’t like that you left him- your boyfriend- for another man- your soon to be husband. would following you be too possessive? perhaps, but his jealousy got the best of him

your walk to the foyer was entirely nerve-wracking, many questions fill your mind. why was he here? how long would he be here? would the wedding be sooner than anticipated? was the wedding called off? was your father back?

when you catch sight of your soon-to-be husband- what was his name again? tristan? travis? triton? troy! you knew you would get it some day

he waits by the door and even as you were far enough that you could barely see him, his ocean scent was strong, almost suffocating when you stand directly beside him

“you wanted to see me?” you cross your arms

a smirk appears on his mouth “ah, yes. your father thought it would be a good idea for me to get to know my wife”

“what?”

“I suppose you don’t understand those words yet. talking to younger women is useless” he mutters, but his next words are back to normal volume “he wants me to get to know you”

“what the hell do you mean by that? we’re the same age are we not?”

“well yes… my last wife was much older though”

“your last wife? does my father know you were married before me?”

“of course he does”

you run your hands over your face as a way to relax “okay. that’s fine”

it’s not fine. you want to see him publicly executed

“so when are you free”

“never if it’s to see you”

“your father wouldn’t like the way you’re speaking to me”

“well forget him! I don’t give a shit what he thinks”

“I didn’t know princesses used such vulgar language”

“well they do”

silence

“well, seeing that this conversation is getting inappropriate for a married couple I’ll be in the parlor, come find me when you’ve matured”

he brushes past you, gone, get the ocean still lingers. you take one last look at your surroundings before walking back to your room

on percy’s side of things he hides behind a nearby pillar, close enough to see, too far to hear. however he can always tell the mood of the conversation by your demeanor, this time furious. he watches you attentively for absolutely anything, any small details at all. he doesn’t know this man, not at all, but when the pungent scent of the sea fills his senses he knows he doesn’t like him, and he has a legitimate reason this time. had your father purposely set you up with this boy?

when he sees you walk past the pillar he hid behind he swiftly- yet stealthily- rushes back to your room in an attempt to beat you there for a ‘Ive been here the whole time’ appearance

when he arrives at your room he flops down on your bed out of breath and you make your arrival only moments later

he sits up (‘act casual’ he reminds himself) “welcome back, princess. what’d he want to see you for?”

you roll your eyes at the reminder of your unbearable future husband “I don’t want to talk about it, he’s absolutely absurd. something’s off about him I swear”

he doesn’t ask any further questions. for one reason because he knows better than to anger a daughter of hades, and another: because he respects your wishes unlike your soon-to-be husband. regardless if both of those factors he hated you marrying another man. he deserved to be the one marrying you, not some idiot who doesn’t treat you right

you lay down beside percy in his propped up position. he takes advantage of this and places his lips on yours; passion and jealously-filled

“hate that you’re marrying another guy” he rasps against your lips “doesn’t deserve you”

he puts his free hand on your waist to pull you closer, because for him your bodies being any more than one inch apart is utterly preposterous. he puts one leg in between yours as the kisses get more heated. your hands tangle in his hair, pushing him almost impossibly closer to you. gods- your lips would be so swollen tomorrow morning

tag list: @itzmeme @lara20aral @saint-jaz-the-queer @leathesimp @pevenxie

[dreamwavesexploringreality]

Oh brother

Requested. Where a protective younger brother, who adores his sister, finds himself competing for her attention against her boyfriend, Chishiya.

----

"Chishiya, I’m really sorry. I know we had plans to meet at the café, but I have to go pick up Ethan from school. It seems he’s not feeling very well, and since my parents are busy, I have to go," Y/N said hurriedly over the phone while gathering her things from the library where she had been studying for the past few hours.

The finals week was approaching, and although she dedicated a lot of time to studying, she often found it nearly impossible to understand and memorize the material as quickly as her classmates. Fortunately, her boyfriend Chishiya, who was in his final year of medical school specializing in pediatric cardiac surgery, usually found enough time to explain those things that she struggled with. Y/N had always admired her boyfriend’s ability to be studying such a tough and complicated field while still making time to create unforgettable moments with her, like that day he showed up unexpectedly at the study room and dragged her out, almost by force, to go to the fair that had come to town. Even though he complained the whole time, despite it being his idea, referring to the childishness and simplicity of the games, she knew it was his way of showing affection, and she adored him for it.

"Don’t worry, I understand," Chishiya replied simply and clearly on the phone.

"Okay, okay. We’ll reschedule for another time, alright?" Y/N sighed as she hurried out of the building.

"Yes, don’t worry." He reiterated.

"Alright... I love you," she said as she hailed a taxi.

"I know," Chishiya laughed, and hung up the phone. Y/N sighed with a subtle smile as she looked at the dark screen of her phone.

"Good thing I love him," she muttered under her breath before giving the taxi driver Ethan’s school address.

Barely fifteen minutes passed when Y/N hurriedly got out of the vehicle and went into the school, where she saw her younger brother sitting on a chair, leaning forward and hugging his stomach with both arms. She immediately noticed his furrowed brow and a shadow of pain on his face. Next to the boy knelt a man, not much older than herself, who seemed to be trying to have a conversation with Ethan.

Y/N rushed to her brother’s side.

"Ethan, how are you feeling?" she asked, ignoring the man and kneeling down to her brother’s level.

"Y/N!" the boy said as soon as he saw his sister, throwing his arms around her neck and hugging her tightly.

"You must be Y/N, Ethan’s older sister. He can’t stop talking about you in class; he clearly admires you a lot," said the man, now standing and smiling while Y/N did her best to stand up with her brother still hanging from her neck.

"Oh yes, that’s me... And you are...?" she replied as she finally managed to stand up and set the boy on the ground.

"Ah, sorry for not introducing myself. My name is Kenji, I’m Ethan’s teacher," he explained as Ethan tugged on Y/N’s hand, urging her to leave the building.

"Ah, of course, I should have guessed. Well, I’m going to take Ethan home. He’s not feeling well, so I don’t think he should stay at school," said the girl, looking at her brother who was still trying to pull her away from Kenji.

"Yes, yes. That’s probably for the best. By the way, maybe you should give me your number… Just in case the boy feels unwell again. I had to call your parents, and it took quite a while for them to get in touch with you... Maybe next time I could call you directly." The man said while smiling friendly at the girl.

At that moment, a whimper of pain escaped from the boy’s mouth, who had let go of his sister’s arm to curl up on the floor, clutching his stomach and closing his eyes tightly.

"I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s time for that now. I’ll take him to the doctor," Y/N hurriedly said, picking up her brother in her arms and carrying him out of the school, leaving the teacher with his words hanging, frozen in place and regretting his failure in trying to flirt with the pretty girl.

On the one hand, it was fortunate that the family’s home was not very far from Ethan’s school. On the other hand, it was almost unfortunate that, for some strange reason, the boy seemed to have completely recovered and refused to walk on his own while playing with Y/N’s hair and excitedly explaining how the superhero from his favorite show had saved the world in the previous day’s episode.

"Ethan… Are you sure you don’t feel any pain? We can go to the doctor and make sure," she tried to say as the boy vigorously shook his head and continued talking with a grin plastered on his face.

Y/N sighed, well aware that her brother had tricked her once again…

When they reached the family home, Y/N was in for a surprise when she found her white-haired boyfriend sitting on the front step. He was wearing that familiar white jacket she liked so much and had his head down with the hood up and hands in his pockets.

Chishiya looked up when he heard footsteps nearby and the babbling of a small child. Although he knew she had gone to pick up the boy, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat disappointed to see the girl appear with that little human who, for some reason, had been determined to keep Y/N all to himself.

"Chishiya… What are you doing here?" Y/N’s surprise was clear; when she ended the call that morning, she hadn’t expected to hear from her boyfriend until the next day.

"I figured you wouldn’t return to the library; it’s a bit far. I thought we could have our café date here." He stood up while glancing quickly at the boy who had clung to his sister’s neck, looking at him with a furrowed brow and making a slight pout over her shoulder.

"Really? I didn’t expect this at all. It’s a great idea, and it’s lucky Ethan is already feeling better. Come on, come inside." Y/N said with a broad smile, opening the door and stepping aside to let Chishiya in. Her boyfriend never ceased to surprise her.

Ethan sighed heavily as his sister carefully pulled him away from her, and the moment his feet touched the ground, he threw himself on the floor with dramatic theatricality, moaning in pain and letting small tears roll down his cheeks. Y/N wondered when her brother had become such a good actor.

Chishiya, for his part, couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow and form an almost imperceptible smile on his face as he watched with amusement, leaning against the wall, at Ethan’s tantrum as he writhed on the floor eccentrically.

Y/N placed her hands on her temples, rubbing them gently as she tried to alleviate the pain caused by Ethan’s dramatic shrieks, and when Chishiya noticed that she was about to ask him to leave so she could take care of the boy, he decided to intervene.

"Hey Ethan, you know I’m a doctor, right? I usually carry some medications for emergencies… Want some?" Chishiya said with his arms crossed over his chest while approaching the child on the floor with slow, almost threatening steps.

The shrieks ceased immediately, and the boy looked up from his position at the older man standing defiantly before him. He remained silent as he watched Chishiya kneel to his level and stayed still while Chishiya stared at him intently. However, despite being motionless and silent, his eyes bore a contained hatred towards the man who had been occupying his sister’s time for the past few years. A pronounced smile appeared on Chishiya’s face.

"Although… Y/N told me you don’t like medicines. You say they taste awful… right? Well, it’s a good thing I also have an injection with me; I’m sure you’ll like this better, and it will make the pain go away quickly, won’t it?" Chishiya explained, smiling maliciously and pretending to search for something in his jacket.

This earned a sharp scream from the boy, who quickly scrambled to hide behind Y/N’s legs.

The girl couldn’t help but laugh at her boyfriend’s childishness. It was rare to see him acting so immaturely, a stark contrast to his usual personality.

"I don’t think it’s necessary, Chishiya," Y/N said, laughing. "I think Ethan is already feeling much better, right, sweetheart?"

The boy nodded with fervor while still hiding his face behind the girl’s legs. Chishiya stood up from his kneeling position, smiling with self-satisfaction. Yes, he had won this battle.

"Why don’t we watch something on TV? Would you like that, Ethan?" she asked, trying to detach her brother off her legs and bring him to the front. The boy stayed still for a moment and then nodded again, this time looking at his sister with puppy eyes.

Both Chishiya and Ethan sat on the couch while Y/N looked for the TV remote. Ethan made sure to keep as much distance as possible from the man, positioning himself strategically at the end of the couch and keeping a close eye on the older man, until Y/N sat down next to Chishiya, at which point Ethan scrambled over, almost desperately, clinging to her arm. Chishiya rolled his eyes while subtly letting his hand fall on the girl’s thigh.

"Well, what do you want to watch then?" she said lazily, seeming oblivious to the situation unfolding between the two boys and changing channels distractedly.

"Paw Patrol!" Ethan exclaimed excitedly.

Chishiya looked at the boy with boredom.

"Seriously?" the man said through clenched teeth.

"Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol!" the boy shouted enthusiastically while bouncing on the couch, still clinging to Y/N’s arm.

"Okay, okay..." Y/N laughed as she turned on the TV show.

Chishiya exhaled in frustration while Ethan settled on the couch with his eyes wide open and a big smile on his face. Yes, the boy had won this battle.

Suddenly, Chishiya felt Y/N snuggle up beside him, carefully resting her head on his shoulder and letting out a soft sigh.

"Thank you so much, 'Shiya," she whispered.

A smile of self-satisfaction formed on his lips. Yes, he had definitely been the winner.

© 2024 [@dreamwavesexploringreality]

[cb-writes-stuff]

I just had a thought.

What if “Scylla” is from Scylla’s perspective? Think about it. We hear Scylla singing in the beginning, but neither Odysseus nor the rest of the crew reacts. Because she’s watching them, they’re sailing through her lair.

“You know that we are the same.” … “You hide a reason for shame.” She’s observing Odysseus, seeing that he’s the leader, that he knows what’s up, and that he’s willing to make sacrifices.

“Leaving them feeling betrayed, breaking the bonds that you made,” … “There is no price we won’t pay.” She does horrible things to live, snatching men from passing ships and consuming them. “We both know what it takes to survive.” She had to cross lines and learn how to survive, and she recognizes the need for the same in Odysseus.

“We only care for ourselves.” She recognizes that all that matters is their own—for Scylla, that’s herself, and for Odysseus, that’s his family.

Here, the music recedes a bit, and Scylla sings the line differently than the others. She heard Odysseus give the order to light six torches, and what she’s only been assuming thus far is confirmed. “We’re lonely demons from hell.” Until this point, Scylla only sang in one voice, with one head, showing a human-like appearance. But now she sings in several voices with all her heads. She reflects what Odysseus did by giving that order, showing who she is “Deep down”—a monster—and bringing it to the surface.

As indicated by Eurylochus’s line, “Captain. Something approaches,” she starts approaching the ships. Before, no one noticed her; she observed unseen, hence why no one reacted to her singing. She then greets Odysseus almost politely, as one would a peer or an equal. “Hello.”

Odysseus shouts at the crew to “Row for your lives!” Scylla pursues, claiming the sacrifices one by one, as can be heard throughout her verse. She sees that Odysseus is running, failing to completely be the monster that he is. So, while she feasts, she tells him what it means to be a monster, but also gives him advice on how to live as a monster, how to live with himself.

“Drown in your sorrow and fears. Choke on your blood and your tears. Bleed ‘til you’ve run out of years.” Essentially, she’s saying “Go ahead, cry about it.” She says those things rhetorically, presenting them as options neither of them actually have, because “We must do what it takes to survive.” As monsters, they must survive. Giving up is not an option.

“Give up your honor and faith.” She stopped caring about right and wrong. She sees that Odysseus is a soldier with strong moral values, and that he must do the same and abandon those values. “Live out your life as a wraith.” Life is hardly worth living anymore, for her. But she’s come too far to simply let herself die. So she’s become an empty husk of herself, surviving for the sake of it. Odysseus will inevitably need to do the same. “Die in the blood where you bathe.” A reference to her transformation into her current state. The old Scylla died in that moment, leaving only the monster. War is sometimes called a “bloodbath”, and Scylla suggests that Odysseus has already killed so many that his journey could be considered one. He must undergo a similar transformation, letting the old Odysseus die (which he has not completely done yet) and embracing the new monster. She then reinforces the reason for doing these things: “We must do what it takes to survive.”

Finally, she talks to Odysseus directly. “We are the same you and, I.” Odysseus responds, harmonizing at “I”, meaning he can hear her. He can’t bear to admit what he is, since he still hasn’t fully become the monster he declared himself to be, which is why he doesn’t harmonize for the entire line.

I am such a nerd for this musical. Still, I don’t get everything right. Feel free to add anything or correct me in the comments.

[girlboybug]

Cinnamon Girl

"there's things i wanna say to you, but i'll just let you live."

or the one where joel has trouble explaining how he feels, but has no trouble in showing you. even if it means publicly.

what’s playing 🎧 : cinnamon girl by lana del rey

pairing : joel miller x female!reader

word count : 7k

CONTENT WARNINGS : SMUT, jealous!joel muahaha, blowjobs, facefucking, fingering, oral f!receiving, semi public sex, unprotected sex, manhandling, orgasm denial, dirty talk, breeding kink, creampie, multiple orgasms, mirror sex, slight dom/sub dynamics, slight spanking, allusions to handjobs, unspecified age gap, aftercare, joel is bad at words but you bet your ass he talks you through it ;)

TRIGGER WARNINGS : implied/references to fedra killing people, but it's mentioned for like two seconds, joel is very possessive, themes of co-dependency, violence, fighting, blood, if i miss anything that could be triggering pls lmk!!

a/n : this is a pt2 to Shades of Cool, but can be read as a stand alone fic! pls enjoy &lt;;3 @spacelatinos4life

there was no title to the relationship between you and joel. there didn’t need to be. a title describing what the two of you felt for the other person was unneeded, not when you two knew.

you were both sure a person couldn’t feel this way about another without it being mutual. there was no way feelings so strong, so potent, so mind, body, and soul consuming, could ever be one sided. 

that’s what you were able to remind yourself on a good day. 

joel isn’t the best at articulating himself, his thoughts and emotions get too heavy sometimes. but god, he felt so full of you that he didn’t know how to let the feelings overflow from his mouth and into words.

he let his actions do the talking, he let what he could do for you exist as proof of how he felt. but sometimes, you just needed to hear it directly from him, and he would oblige in the way he could. 

joel felt the hands of possession, obsession, and ownership find their way into a deathgrip over his being, something he wasn’t proud of and even tried to avoid, but there’s no avoiding the inevitable. it’s who he is. it’s who he will be, and everything that he is and will be is what you signed up for. 

but in this moment, a calmer feeling blankets over his shoulders while he sits on the side of the bed you two shared most nights. he watches you lay flat on your stomach, leg hiked up, mouth slightly agape, with just the tiniest bit of drool pooling from the corner of your lips.

he silences the laugh that escapes, not wanting to embarrass you or cut his gaze on you short. he likes these moments, where he can watch you be at peace. where nothing is wrong, nothing is dangerous or urgent, there’s no rush. it’s just you, and him, and you’re safe. 

his calloused fingers fall gently over your cheekbone, curling around your ear and trailing over the curve of your jawline. “c’mon baby, time to get up.” he whispers, and you stir, grumbling something grumpy, and he lets the sound back into his laugh.

“gotta get up little girl, we got things to do today.” he reminds, and you shake your head full of drowsiness. “no we don’t. lay back down with me, please?” even your words sound sleepy, but joel still shakes his head in the face of an irresistible offer.

he moves the covers off of your frame and you groan about the sudden coldness. he shushes you, i know baby i know, he kisses the side of your temple, pulling you up and out of bed, letting you cling onto him.

he picks you up, something you’re usually hesitant to let him do, too insecure about the weight he’d have to lift up, but he’s not a weak man, he can lift his girl.

you’re too tired to care, too comfortable with your arms hanging over his back, head in the crook of his neck and legs wrapped around his waist, almost drifting back to sleep in his arms. 

he carries you into the bathroom, setting you down on the counter. he likes taking care of you this way, being gentle with you like you deserve.

he brings a toothbrush to your lips and he brushes your teeth, staring back into the heavy sleep-ridden eyes looking up at him. your legs come around his waist, keeping him close to you. he chuckles to himself at the small actions you do, secretly loving your instinct to always be close.

he lets you spit into the sink and rinse your mouth out, and when you turn back to him, you’re more awake. he kisses your forehead, moving to the side to let you slip off the sink and land on your sock covered feet.

(those socks he promised that he'd get for you? he got them.)

you shift around behind him, leaning your cheek against his broad back, the strong, safe and reliable back you love, remaining a stable place to rest while he brushes his own teeth.

your arms wrap loosely around his waist, pressing a kiss to his clothed back. “love you so much,” you mouth to yourself, not daring to let a sound give life to your words. you want to tell him, want him to know the burning words that sear on your tongue, but again, you refrain. 

when he turns back to you, he leans against the sink, his hands resting on your hips. “mornin’” his official greeting to you, and you smile that pretty smile of yours, pushing up on your toes to be closer.

“good morning.” you kiss him and he returns it, holding you by the back of your head, his other hand inching its way down to your ass. he squeezes it, and you giggle in his mouth, pushing at his chest. 

he rolls his eyes with a smile, feigning disappointment at your shooing. he pats your bottom, motioning his head towards the kitchen. “made some coffee, want some?” you nod, leaning up to peck his lips appreciatively.

you race into the kitchen, hand still attached to his as he follows behind you, an amused look on his face at the sudden burst of energy that you were very void of just five minutes ago.��

you fall into your routine repeated like a sacred mantra. you sit at the table watching him make your mugs of coffee. during his last haul, he found a pink mug, pocketing it to bring home to you, and it quickly became one of your most prized possessions. 

he comes back to you, sitting in the chair he always does, sliding your mug to you. you clamber out your chair to sit in his lap, his hand resting over your thigh, keeping you safe and tucked away into him. your head finds its home in the warm pocket of his neck, sipping your sweet coffee in comfortable silence. 

–

he drops you off to your assigned work, street cleaning, before he has to go to his, burning the dead bodies that fedra has no issue creating every day. he holds your waist, pulling you in and kissing you a wordless bye, his hand lingering on your waist when he turns to leave. 

it took awhile for joel to show you affection in public, and it wasn’t because he was embarrassed, he was a grown man, and if anyone had a problem with him kissing his girl he’d gladly address that, so that wasn’t his hindrance. 

joel quite often overthinks himself into bouts of worry, and he found himself scared that if the wrong person saw you two together, saw how strongly he felt for you, you’d be taken from him.

joel was hardly ever scared anymore, there was nothing to fear. he had nothing to fear, it was just himself he had to worry about, and he could handle his own.

but now, he has you.

and with caring for someone as much as he does for you, comes the fear of losing them too, and he hates it, he's scared of it.

so for awhile, affections were scarce, even in private, too wound up in trying to not get too attached, but you tore down his walls, brick by brick, leaving him bare and vulnerable to you.

sometimes, you can still feel that blockage that holds him back, but it’s okay. you have all of time in itself to work through these things, together.

–

you came home before joel did, eager to see him, to be held by him, and talk about your day together. instead, you came home to an empty apartment.

you’re disappointed, joel’s face is the first thing you want to see after every hard day, his rich, southern voice veiled in a smooth gruffness welcoming you home was a reminder that life wasn’t all bad. 

you figured he was still busy, a habit of his from even before the outbreak, never went away.

that being the inability to turn down extra work. you wish he would, you wanted more of him, more of his time, more of his presence, his everything. 

while working earlier today, you were invited to the bar that had just been finished renovating, the invitation coming from a guy whose name you already forgot.

you were excited by the invite, you never really did much, and you thought it would be something nice to do with joel. but alas, he isn’t home to receive the news. 

you pull out a pad of paper, quickly scribbling a note for joel to read before washing the grime of the day off your skin.

you change into clothes you think are nicely suited for a bar, you’re not completely sure, considering you’ve never been inside one.

you think to yourself how you’re actually kind of impressed how people managed to do all of this under fedra’s nose, but you weren’t complaining, people inside the qz deserved a sense of normalcy in this lack of a community. 

it was a hefty walk away, which made sense, to have a bar up and running, it’d need to be tucked away from the hands ready to pluck anything semi decent away. 

when you were amidst your walk, joel shared your disappointment of coming home with no warm greeting.

he looks around, a frown etching itself over his features, before his glancing lands itself on your note. he inhales deeply, exhaling a loud, irritated huff. the last thing he wanted to do was be near a big group of people, sharing you, sharing your laugh, sharing your stupid jokes, sharing how beautiful you are with undeserving wandering eyes. 

he washes up, deciding to just let his hair air dry on the way to the bar. midst his walk, he feels his chest get tight with stress, imagining you on this trek so late at night, and on your own.

he makes a mental note to scold you for that when he sees you. 

–

“so,” the man in front of you takes a swig from his third beer. “you got a boyfriend?” he asks, and you get a little stiff, swirling the whiskey in your glass that you’ve been taking pained sips from, the bitter sharp taste was something you did not like. “i have someone,” you confirm, feeling warm at just the mere mention of joel. 

“but no boyfriend?” he pushes further and you laugh awkwardly, your eyes looking anywhere but him.

“doesn’t bother me if you do or don’t, we can still have fun either way,” he leans in closer, his hand gliding up the side of your arm. you inch back, moving away from his touch. “it’s… not something we label, but i do have someone, i’m sorry.” you’re trying to be polite, but he doesn’t bite. 

“no label? y’know honey, that’s just a man’s way of getting to have his cake and eat it.” he snickers, drinking from his beer. you bring your arms around yourself, feeling defensive. “what's that supposed to mean?” you question, eyes flickering all over him in search of an answer, starting to feel anxiety prickle at your skin. 

“when a man doesn’t label somethin’ it’s ‘cause there’s nothing to label, meanin’ he can do what he wants with you and have no obligations holdin’ him down, because there’s nothing there. he can go out and fuck who he wants, because he ain’t got a girl back home.” his words hit you like a gong, a sharp ache penetrating into your chest, twisting the knife and letting it gape open. 

“it… isn’t like that,” your voice is failing you, and it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself more than you are him. he laughs out of pity and you feel small, confidence being forcibly shrunken by his seeds of doubt. 

“then where is he? last i checked, you came here all by yourself.” he points out, and your shoulders nearly deflate.

“he’s just busy,” you mutter and he shakes his head holding out his hands with a cocky certainty. “tellin’ ya honey, he’s probably with another girl,” he draws patterns in the wrist of yours that’s holding your glass.

“so what’s the harm in comin’ home with me? we could be somethin’ official, i wouldn’t hide you, who’d wanna hide a pretty girl like you,” his persuasions elicit a sense of nausea from the depths of your stomach, and you back away into the wooden pane behind you, shaking your head. 

“there a problem here?” the voice you’ve been craving to hear all night finally finds you, and your head whips up. you breathe out a relieved, joel. 

“nah, she’s with me.” the man answers for you, and you shake your head, moving away from him to go to joel. “no, this is who i was talking about.” you introduce joel, and he doesn’t say a thing, just stares down at the man in front of him, a hard glare being shot into his skull. 

“so the guy stringing you along is this fuckin’ old man? you gotta be jokin,” and joel inches in, seconds away from bursting. “i suggest you watch your tone,” he warns, and the man sets his beer down, standing up straight now.

you tug on joel’s arm, trying to deescalate the situation, but he wants it to escalate, he wants to fucking hurt the guy in front of him. 

“yeah? and the fuck are you gonna do if i don’t?” joel doesn’t need to hear anything else, he leans down, making it a point to emphasize the height difference between the two, and you swallow a giggle at how the man reddens from embarrassment.

joel grips him by his collar, tugging him in close. “i’ll rip your fucking jaw straight off your skull.” he grits out, and you know he means what he says. 

“i’d like to see you try asshole.” 

you grab at joel’s arm again, let’s just go baby, please you don’t need to do this, you plead with him, but he’s gone deaf with a ringing rage, unable to come down from the anger inside him.

“cmon pussy, hit m-” joel’s fist rises and lands with a heavy, painful impact down into the side of the man’s jaw, and you wince at the sight. he stumbles and falls back into the wooden pane. 

the owner of the bar finally comes out, rushing to separate joel away from the man. “hey hey hey, that’s enough, break it up,” the man is lurching at joel and joel just stands proudly, unflinching at the threats spewing from the shorter man’s bloodied mouth.

 “i’m so so so sorry, we’ll go, i’m so sorry, i’ll take care of this.” you apologize up and down to the owner, and he sighs, dragging his fingers down the corners of his mouth.

“just get him out of my sight, i’ll take care of this one,” he nods to the man and you agree, leading joel away to the bathroom to cool down. 

“fine go ahead and leave with the old man who can’t even get his dick up!” he calls out after you, and you ignore it, but joel can’t.

his arm rips away from your hold, and he surges towards him, pushing past the owner and landing his fist hard into the same place he hit last time, grunting with pride when he hears something crack. everyone around you is frozen, mouths ajar in shock and fear. 

“get him out!” the owner yells, jabbing his thumb towards the back exit, and you nod quickly, frantically trying to pull joel off of the man. the people surrounding you hurriedly move aside to let you two pass. 

you usher joel into the restroom, locking the door behind you. “joel what the fuck?” the first time you’ve ever raised your voice at him was now, and he stares at you pacing in front of him.

normally, it excites you when joel is fast to your defense, it makes you feel like he cares, but this? this was stupid. this was an opportunity to do something fun and different together, and he most likely just got you two banned. 

but what was actually bothering you, were the things that the man said to you. his words continuously buzz around in your head like flies to a carcass.

“what were you doing with him?” his voice is steady, but you hear the anger laced underneath, you hear the silent upward trail of it leading into something else, and you pause to look at him.

“what?” you exhale and he steps forward, jaw clenching and shifting with a trembling indignation. “i said,” he grits out, sore and numb fist landing on the wall behind you. “what the fuck were you doing with him?” he repeats, louder, scarier. you flinch away from him, and he drops his fist, unfolding it by his side, a thrum of guilt strumming inside him at the fearful way you were looking at him. 

“he started talking to me, joel. it started off friendly, and then he began making advances towards me, which i shot down.” your eyes are watering, and you angrily wipe them away, upset that you were even crying.

“surprised you even care,” you mutter, already feeling regretful the second the words leave your mouth. he holds you by your chin, forcing you to look at him. “excuse me?” he questions, and you blink away the last few tears from your eyes nervously. 

“where were you?” you counter back, and joel raises a brow, folding his arms over his chest. “workin’. like i always am.” his eyes squint confusedly. “what’s this about?” 

the pipe that filtered out your frustrations just about burst, and you spurt out all the fears that the man made resurface inside you.

“i told you that all i wanted is to be with you, which is true, and it’s okay that you don’t wanna label whatever this is,” you move your hands between you two.

“and it’s okay that it’s hard for you to even hold my hand in public even though it hurts me, but what’s not okay is lying to me. i-if, if you’re f..fucking someone else i’d rather you just be honest with me.” tears are streaming down your cheeks now, and you’re barely able to speak through the sobs.

joel can’t say anything for a moment, he’s completely taken off guard from how much pain you seem to be in from the fears you’ve been keeping to yourself.

he moves closer to you, his hands on either side of your head when he speaks, leaving you nowhere else to look, but him. “listen to me,” he murmurs, swiping the new dewy drops of tears from your eyes. 

“there is no one else. s’just you. i..i don’t look at, think about, or talk to anyone for that matter, that isn’t you. i don’t got the time, effort, or desire, to be near someone that ain’t you. i didn’t even wanna come to this fuckin’ thing but i went because you’re here.” he points at the center of your chest, emphasizing his sentiments. 

“you wanna know what you are?” he breathes out against your lips. you nod, hands resting on his shoulders. “you, are mine.”  he speaks slowly, deeply, letting his words travel into the farthest places inside you, wanting what he says to resonate in you until it reaches your bones. 

you push yourself up as far as you can to reach his lips, pressing yourself to him. he kisses you hard, imprinting himself to you, holding you by the back of your neck.

he drinks in your moans, his hand on your ass keeping you right up against his crotch, bucking into you just that much, getting you to melt in his hold. 

you whimper in his mouth when he slides his tongue in, taking you in so roughly.

he can taste the whiskey on you, and he grunts, gripping at your ass before planting a hard smack over it. you yelp in his mouth but he doesn’t let you move away, instead, he pushes you into the wall, cradling your head with his hand when your back connects to the wall.

when you break apart for air, that's when he nudges at your shoulders, lowering you down to your knees. you obey, resting on your knees, looking up at him with those wide pretty eyes of yours. 

he caresses your cheek, smiling at the way you mold into his palm. “think i need you to show me you understand me when i say you’re mine.” his sonorous voice, thick in control and sternness lit a flame between your thighs, and you had no problem proving to him that you understood.

you unbuckle his pants, the bulge behind them intimidating you. it’s been awhile since you two have… done anything, mostly just resorting to his fingers buried inside you, and your hand wrapped around him while he fucks your palm.

you’ve never gotten around to doing this, and joel was nowhere near small, the word not even existing in his hemisphere, so this was most definitely going to be quite the feat. 

you fish him out his boxers, and you clench down on your teeth with nerves rattling through your being.

he's so thick in girth, you almost can't wrap your whole hand around him, the thought of him shoving himself in your mouth both excites you, and frightens you. but it's a good fear. 

it's a challenge. 

“wet your hand baby,” he instructs, and you listen, spitting in your palm, feeling warm at the way he says good, all drawn out and deep, it makes you all the more fervid to impress him, to make him feel good. 

you jerk him off, hands shaking, but you force yourself to keep them steady for him. you’re using two hands to touch him, a slick sound starting to fill the space around you, reminds of you of the act you’re committing, and it excites you. 

you lean forward, enveloping his tip between your lips, letting your hand glide further down while your lips trail along in suit, taking him in as deep as you can. 

he shudders out a wavering breath, holding you by the back of your head, not pushing, but instead following the way you bob up and down on his cock. 

you take him in further than you thought you could, the stretch of your lips around the thickness of him is a little uncomfortable, but the breathless groans pouring out of him from above you, make all the discomfort go away. 

he wants to praise you for being a quick learner, but the words stutter behind his thoughts, jumbling themselves up, the only thing he could think, and feel, was your hot, wet mouth sucking him off, his cock so deep down your throat, his balls were resting at your chin.

your saliva pooled around the corners of your mouth, and he wiped his thumb over it, swiping under your stretched bottom lip that was barely able to form around his shaft. 

he turns to the side, looking into the mirror that’s facing you both. the reflection glimmers back to joel, and the cinches in his chest and stomach suddenly get tighter.

he groans at the sight, it’s so fucking dirty, you on your knees, taking his cock as far as it can go, he thinks to himself how sweet his little girl is.

he can't take his eyes off of the vision playing out before him, it's too hypnotizing. 

he starts to fuck your mouth, throwing his head back when he hits the back of your throat, pulling a gag from you. he grits his teeth when you gag around him, the sound is so filthy, everything about this is, but he likes it.

he likes the feeling of fucking your poor mouth until your jaw goes sore, because whenever you talk, a little reminder of where he was will be there. 

he fixates on the way you’ve found yourself a rhythm, trying your hardest to go along with the way he’s guiding your mouth down his cock, letting him fuck your soft, pliant mouth.

he stares into the mirror, watching as you gag when he shoves his hips forward, grinding into the hot, slick hole your mouth acts as. 

your tongue supports the bottom of his shaft, licking the sensitive spot under the head of his cock, and his hips stutter.

he holds your head, pushing in and keeping still, watching you take him in.

“takin’ me down your throat so goddamn good, baby. bet that fuckin’ asshole wishes he could have you like this,” he’s losing himself in the haven of your mouth, the way your watery eyes look up at him, egging him on. 

“it’s only ever gonna be me, who fucks your mouth, i’m the only one who’s gonna have you on your knees, gagging around a cock, shit, around my cock,” he’s panting, rambling breathlessly in the peak of his pleasure, adding emphasis on every word with each thrust in your mouth without even thinking about it.

he pulls you off his cock, and you gasp, sputtering while you catch your breath. “repeat,” he orders, slapping the tip of his cock on your cheek. 

“you’re the only one who gets to fuck my mouth,” you rasp, your voice already sounding hoarse, and he chuckles darkly, nodding to himself with pride. 

he's putting your throat to good use. 

he slides back in your mouth, and your hands rest on his hips while you take him. “look at yourself, so fuckin dirty," he grunts under a low guise of a breath. your eyes drift to the side, and they widen. the sight is dirty in the truest form of the word, but you like it too, you like it more than you should. 

the thrusts into your mouth start to get faster, and you can barely keep up. “gonna let me cum in your mouth baby?” he breathes out, and you nod around him, unable to give verbal confirmation. “gonna take it all for me,” he pushes in deeper, “gonna swallow it all for me?” 

mhmm you moan around him, and that’s all he needs. he fucks into your mouth, hard and fast, before he stills, your teary eyes squeezing shut, trying your best to breathe through your nose.

“shit,” he pants, palm flat against the wall above your head while he cums.

his load is heavy when it goes down your throat, and when he slowly pulls out, he slaps the tip over your tongue, watching his cum drip onto it. he catches his breath while he pulls you up to your feet, keeping you steady when you wobble. 

your lips are plump, fat with soreness and he kisses them hard, bruising himself into you.

his hand finds its way between your thighs, he walks forward as he does so, pushing you up against the sink counter. he lowers himself down to you, and you watch with hooded eyes, watching as he lifts up the fabric of your long dress, bunching it up until he reaches your panties. 

his chest inflates with a proud sense of vainglory at the wet patch spreading over your underwear.

he traces over it, and you shiver, coiling into him. he kisses, he licks you through your underwear, mouthing over your cunt. he laps at you hungrily, not realizing how starved he was until he latched his mouth on you. 

his eyes shut when he tastes you, the way your perfect little clit rolled around on his tongue fueled his addiction to being buried in your cunt, your sweet drawls of cries enabling him further. he circles around your hole before pushing in, keeping your hip still with his free hand from wriggling away. 

he lets yourself fuck yourself on his finger, chuckling over your clit, his lips still wrapped around it when you tremble at the way he adds in a second finger.

you raise your leg, leaning on the counter, trying to spread yourself as far as you can for him. your hands fell to the back of his head, grinding into his mouth and fingers, head lolling backward into the mirror. 

your chest rises and falls with shaky gasps, his name falling from your bitten lips like it's the only word you know. joel joel joel. 

you’re rolling your hips into him desperately, and he takes it all in with stride, moaning into your soaked flesh.

a wet clicking sound echos around the bathroom, and you’re almost embarrassed, it’s just so loud, but you couldn’t help how wet he made you. his knuckles fill you up to the hilt, and you’re tearing up all over again, his crybaby, he’d call you, but he’s too focused on sucking your clit to say anything. 

his fingers feel overwhelming inside you, his tongue curling over your clit only making it worse, making you tug and pull at his hair, lifting your ass off the counter to push yourself deeper into his mouth.

he eats your cunt with a purpose, with a drive, but more than anything, he enjoys it. he can't get enough of how fucking good you taste, it turns him on to no end over how dirty it is, having his tongue flick over your pussy, his head between your thighs, trapping him in and nearly suffocating him inside you. 

but if he were to die, this is how he’d want to go out, by a lack of air supply from burying his tongue inside your cunt.

he feels you shaking, the roll of your hips has lost it’s rhythm and he looks up at you, head thrown against the mirror, lips agape and crying out his name, chest heaving, and wait, he can see your nipples hardening through your dress, and he wonders if you’ve even got a bra on. his cock twitches at the thought of it. 

“you close baby?” he asks you, his words pressing themselves right on your clit, and you whimper, nodding. he presses a wet, sloppy kiss to your cunt before rising back to his tall stature.

you blink through heavy lids, looking at him pleadingly. “why?” you mumble sadly, and he flips you around, pulling you into him with your ass right up against his cock.

he kisses the back of your neck, resting his chin on your shoulder. 

“you’re gonna cum when i’m inside you.” he aligns himself with your hole, pushing in with one thrust, holding you by your hips to keep you from stumbling forward from his harsh movements. 

he has to slowly inch himself a little further, a little gentler, to get himself fully sheathed in you.

it has been a minute, since he’s had you like this, he thinks to himself. he tugs down the front of your dress, growling to himself when your tits fall out, perched up from the bunched material under them. he pinches at your nipples, slapping at the underside of them. 

“no bra? that for me baby or were you planning on showin’ them to someone else?” he grits out, starting to fuck you hard, finding himself getting angry at the image of someone getting to see something that belongs to him, that belongs in his palms. 

you shake your head, bouncing forward with each hard thrust he fucked into you with, gripping onto the counter in front of you.

“n-no, no, joel, just for you,” your head rolled back onto his shoulder, but he was fast to grab you by the back of your neck, keeping your head forward.

“look at yourself, and look at who’s fucking you.” he whispers in your ear, his beard tickling at your neck when he speaks, the command in his voice making you shiver. 

you struggle to keep your eyes open, but he kept you in place, making sure you were watching yourself get impaled over and over again by the thick length of his cock.

“no one else, is gonna get to be in your pussy like this, understand?” he reminds you of a fact that you don’t need to be reminded of, because never in a million years would you ever let someone have you the way joel does. but you’d be far from truthful if you said you didn’t like hearing him, and feeling him, fuck you as a reminder of who owns you. 

“yes, yes joel yes,” you cry, nails raking at the counter. he nips at your neck, his beard leaving a tingly trail over each inch of skin it touches.

the ‘pap pap pap’ from how soaked your cunt is and from how hard he’s thrusting into you bounces off the walls, and you hope dearly that none of the patrons can hear you.

joel seems to read your mind, because he inches near your ear, gruff groans floating all around you. “y’think he can hear us, can hear you gettin’ fucked?” you mewl at his words, never used to how dirty he can be, and you nod dumbly.

“yeah?” he mocks you, but you don’t care, not when you can feel the fat head of his cock rubbing over that little spot in you so good that it almost hurts from how intense it is.

his fingers find your clit, and he rubs those tight circles over it, watching you squeal from the shock of pleasure. 

you try to push him away, it was too good and too much all at once, your poor sensitive cunt could only take so much. but you’re not going anywhere, he pulls you in closer, shoves himself in deeper, rubs harder, fucks you faster. 

your entire self succumbs to joel, and you take it, it’s all you can do. you watch as your whole body jerks forward with each hard thrust joel delivers, and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever felt, being able to see your chest bounce, his wandering hands all over you, squeezing, groping in places that have never been touched before by anyone but him. 

your eyes fall to the way his long fingers rub over your clit, and it makes you clench around him.

he tilts his head to the side, resting his chin atop your shoulder, joining you in the voyeurism. 

he pushes himself in you, eyes locking onto yours in the mirror, grunting in your ear, plucking your skin into goosebumps in the process.

“these, are mine,” he fondles your chest, and you nod willfully, arching your back into him when he squeezes them. “this,” he raises his hand and spanks the fat of your ass, hard, kissing your shoulder blade when you cry out, running his palm over the sore skin. “is mine,” 

his hand cups your cunt, and he shoves himself the deepest he’s been in, and your mouth falls open, a sob leaving past it at the intrusion. “this, is mine.” he fucks you hard and you cry his name, hands clawing desperately all over the sink. 

“s’your’s joel, its all yours,” you hiccup through a series of cries. he feels pleased by your answer.

he has an endless amount of pride of getting to have you, the prettiest, sweetest girl, with the tightest cunt he’s ever had, who was so happy, and so proud to be his. 

“please, please, can i cum joel? been so good, n’ i need it so bad, can i please?” you’re pleading with him so earnestly, so needy, he couldn’t deny you even if he wanted to.

“go ahead baby,” he grants you the permission to let go, and it’s the push into your rippling orgasm you needed. you grip at his wrist that’s rubbing your clit, squirming around in his clutch, panting and chanting his name, his favorite sound from you. 

your body buzzes with burning tips of hot pleasure pointedly traveling all throughout your limbs, washing you clean with joel. 

“so good, babygirl, feel fuckin’ perfect wrapped around me,” he places hard frantic kisses all along your shoulder, pounding into you now spasmodically, unable to keep a steady flow in fluidity of his thrusts, his own orgasm was tiding over him, the waves threatening to crash and soak him whole. 

“who’s fucking cunt is this?” he groans forcefully in your ear. “y-your’s, joel, s’all yours,” you whimper, head back against him, your moans falling directly into his ear.

he grunts a sound so palpable, so thick, it makes you whine. he shoves himself in rapidly, before slowing down, pushing in all the way, shuddering out lowly, his head resting beside yours when he cums. 

he fucks you slowly, savoring the way you grip onto him, with how stuffed and full you are of him, and his cum. 

he pulls out, trying to be gentle, remembering how unpleasant it was for you last time he pulled out.

he turns you around, adjusts your dress back over your chest, leaning forward to place a soft kiss this time, to your lips.

before he puts your dress back down, he lifts it up, looking at your poor abused cunt. he watches his cum leak out of you, and he inhales sharply at the sight. 

he pushes it back in, shoving his fingers inside you, and you whimper, grabbing onto his wrist. he quickly puts your underwear back on, looking with a cocky gaze at his slick immediately dampening your panties. 

he wipes his fingers with the paper towels behind you, tossing it in the trashcan. he rests his palms on either side of you, and you wrap your arms around his neck, catching your breath. “let’s go home, okay?” you whisper, and he nods, moving his hands back up to your waist to squeeze lovingly.

he holds your hand, interlacing your fingers, guiding you out the restroom. 

when you near the exit, the man is stood outside, cigarette in hand, smoking while wincing from the throbbing pain in his jaw.

joel wants to laugh, but he refrains for your sake. you avoid eye contact with him, keeping close to joel, arms wrapped around his toned strong one, but joel isn’t as polite as you. 

he makes it a point to ram his shoulder against the other man’s, leaning down to whisper in his ear. “she just finished gettin' my dick up .” he watches with amusement when his mouth parts in shock, anger and jealousy constricting his chest. joel pulls you along, ignoring his yells after him.

there are only a few things that joel finds joy in. you, coffee, and the occasional pettiness. and he seems to have indulged in all three of them today.

– 

you two made it back to joel’s, walking in a light silence. you shuffle inside, making a b-line into his bed. he locks the door shut before kicking off his boots. he disappears into the bathroom, grabbing a small towel and wetting it. he comes back to you, parting your legs. 

he removes your underwear, sliding it down and letting it hit the floor. he’s gentle while he cleans you up, aware of how sensitive you must be. you watch with wide, adoring pupils, the three words that live on your tongue aching to come out. 

he undoes your boots, pulling them off and tossing it where his pair sits. he holds your ankle, his thumb drawing over the bone.

“i’m sorry… about tonight,” you apologize softly.

he shakes his head, scooting closer to sit next to you. “you don’t need to be sweetheart, i...agh, i,” he runs a hand through his hair tiredly. 

“i should be. i didn’t mean to make a scene, i’ll try to talk to the owner and settle things so that if you wanna go back, you won’t get kicked out.” your eyebrows pull together in sympathy. “if we both can’t go then i don’t wanna go,” you murmur, sitting up to drape yourself over him. 

your fingers run along his jaw, feeling the coarse stubble from his beard.

he holds your wrist, turning his cheek to kiss your palm. he shifts around, his forehead resting on your temple while he kisses the apple of your cheek. “let’s get you changed,” he says gently, and you say nothing, just holding onto his hand until you reach his fingertips when he walks to get you a change of clothes. 

he returns with one of his flannels, and a pair of boxers he accidentally shrunk in the wash.

he kneels in front of you, unbuttoning the top buttons of your dress. there we go, he murmurs when you sit up for a moment, allowing him to pull the rest of the fabric from the dress you were sitting on.

he undresses you, and you hold yourself while he unfolds his shirt. he puts it over your head, pulling it down and smiling to himself at the way it hangs off you. 

he readies the leg holes of the boxers at your feet, pulling it up and over your hips, running his hands over your soft skin before he pulls the shirt back down to cover you up. he sheds off his jacket, ridding himself of his clothes until he’s left in a wife beater and his boxers. 

you scoot to the side of his bed, lifting the cover while patiently waiting for him to join you. 

naturally, of course he does. he opens his arms for you, and you curl up in his hold, warm and safe, wrapped up between two strong arms.

you bury yourself in his chest, his scent lulling you into a hazy relaxed state. “joel?” you whisper. “yeah?” he returns, and you close your eyes, nervously fisting at his wife beater.

“i … you know…i...you.” you huff in frustration with yourself, and he stays quiet for awhile, unsure of what you mean before it clicks.

“i know.” you feel the tears about to break through the closed curtains of your lashes, trying to ready yourself for the rejection about to hit. ”i do too, sweetheart. i do too.” and suddenly, you’re letting go of the breath you didn’t even realize you were holding onto. 

relief rinses through you, a shining confirmation that you weren’t the only one who felt this way. you were nowhere near alone in that. and now you knew, which is all you ever wanted. 

your heart just about soars in your chest, and you have to swallow back the squeals of excitement that want to come out.

you’re still nervous to say it, but it’s okay, this is okay. joel knows what you’re saying, and you know what he is as well. and that’s all you two needed. 

“by the way,” he adds, pulling you away from your thoughts. you look up from his chest, resting your forehead on his chin. “what’s up?” 

“don’t you go walkin’ on your own that far like that again you hear me?” he chides you and you laugh, rolling your eyes. “alright joel.”

he grumbles, kissing your hairline. “mean it, goddamnit.” you're laughing into the quiet night air and he feels at peace, feels like he can breathe when he hears that soft, happy sound from you.

"baby?" he murmurs, and you kiss his collarbone, humming a sleepy, yes?

"i ain't the most...articulate man, but i just. i want you to know i care. an-and i think of you all the time, even when you're right there beside me, i'm thinkin' about what might be goin' on in that little head of your's, an' when i'm workin' my mind drifts back to you, like it's clockwork." his voice is traveling on a low steady path of smooth warmth, but there's nervousness between the gaps of his words.

he knows he doesn't say how he feels as often as he should, or at all for that matter, but he knows being reminded is important, so he tries, he tries for you.

you raise your head from the safety of his chest, eyes watery and he chuckles, gently grazing your waterline clean of them. "why're you cryin' little girl?" he asks below a whisper.

you hold his wrist, leaning into his caress while you sniffle. "i...i love you so much joel, i love you i love you, i love you. you don't have to say it back, it's okay, but i just have to say it. i love you," you laughed through your sniffling, and he stares at you, his heart growing larger than it has in years, and he almost wants to cry with you.

he leans forward, his hand resting on the side of your neck, his thumb tracing over your jaw. "i love you." he whispers back, a few cracks of sound breaking in from the nerves of finally admitting it, and you squeal, leaping out of his hold to lay on top of him.

you straddle his waist, cupping his face in your hands, his beard tickling at your palms when you lean down and smother him with kisses. mwah mwah mwah is all he can hear through his laughter at your bursting affection.

"alright baby, alright," he chuckles, keeping you steady by your hips. "say it again, please?' you ask softly, eager to hear those perfect, sweet words one more time.

you rest your hands on his chest, leaning forward to listen. he runs his hands up your thighs, tilting his head as he looks at you. "i love you, baby."

[nekropsii]

Atomic Ask Bomb 3!!

We got a shorter one this time around! I hope everyone's evening is going well!

Content Warning: Long-ish, Discussions of Ableism + Queerphobia, Weird Cronus Moment™.

Same. I'd read a fanventure about that, I think.

Like, I don't personally believe WV would be allergic to being a mentor or something of a father figure, but I do have to wonder the level to which he was wigged out by the way that Dave and Karkat treat him, because Dave in particular imprints on him in a way that is... Kind of strange.

The later portions of Homestuck really baby WV. It's upsetting.

------

Easy. The actual things wrong with them.

A lot of the discourse surrounding them is fabricated, or has such poor priorities it might as well be fabricated. Most critical conversations about them surrounds things people just made up over the course of years of mythologizing their #Problematicness.

For Example: Most of the discourse surrounding why Horuss had problematic writing had to do with how he was "Bad Otherkin Representation", when the real issue was the fact that Hussie was conflating Being Otherkin with having a Dissociative Disorder, and in turn saying both of them are the exact same level of Fake And Gay for the exact same reason, because to Hussie they were the same thing. To this day, people get startled every time I point out that Horuss is canonically a System despite him bringing it up just as regularly as he does being Therian. Those are totally wack priorities.

------

...That's scary... I don't even have words...

------

LOL. The Lost Weeaboos was a Grade A bit. Thank you Aranea, very cool.

Honestly, I don't even count Cronus as a "facade character", because it's not like he's making any efforts to hide jack shit. It's been... Interesting, watching several people refer to "his facade" lately, when, like... What are they talking about, honestly? He's pretty bold-faced about his whole deal. This isn't really a Dave situation where you could be capable of falling for it when you're younger, because Cronus couldn't be doing a worse job at "hiding" how awful he is. He's not even trying, because he knows he can get away with it. What are the other Alphas gonna do? Leave?

Hope you're having a good time!! The Alpha Trolls may be a Trash Heap, but they are my Trash Heap.

------

There comes a point where it's almost comedic how unaware people are of it... Like, what do you mean you know he's a Horse Therian but not that he's a System? He literally calls himself the Host of a System and talks about Switching. IN THOSE TERMS. He's not even obfuscating it by using some esoteric Troll terminology, he is LITERALLY using the words "Host", "System", and "Switching".

It's painful. I know this is a moment befitting of an XKCD comic, but... Jeez. You'd think these things would both be on the same level of common knowledge, considering how they're traits that are directly related to each other and given equal amounts of screen time, but nope!

Unfortunately, it is a situation where this is relevant. Sad!

------

All characters will become AroSpec and/or ASpec with the help of my Beam Attack.

... Except for Cronus. It's just not funny when it's him. Due to The Themes. It's not fun to headcanon a character as any minority when a huge part of their character is that they pretend to be minorities for Pity Points to eventually cash in for Sex. Ew. Making him literally anything other than Just Cronus plays directly into so many vile Queer stereotypes it's insane. Those are stereotypes that have gotten people actually genuinely killed. Just... Ew. Gross.

------

[mermaidsirennikita]

frustrating levels of discourse continue happening on twt ugh https://x.com/lara_e_brown/status/1839303817256645101

Lol yeah, I've honestly just given up on reading takes like that because once you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.

It's an extremely shallow reading, using things like "pale", which you can in fact be while having a darker complexion, with both examples relating less to a physical appearance and more to his aspect in the moment (his face is "white" because he's scared; he's "pale and effeminate" because he's in a wan and weakened state). And I say "both" because you tend to come up with faaaar fewer examples of the text relating Heathcliff as pale than... not.

I also find it funny that this user uses Heathcliff marrying Isabella as an example of why he MUST be white, when Heathcliff and Isabella literally run away together because nobody wants them to be together, PARTICULARLY her brother, and this rips the Linton family asunder. Almost as if.......... it was............... breaking a taboo......................

Like, yeah! 18th century Yorkshire wouldn't have accepted that marriage. And if there's one thing we know about Heathcliff—if it's not accepted, he's not gonna do it.

One of the entire points of his character is that he lives against law and taboo and societal norms (while at the same time being deeply aware of the fact that his existence doesn't gel with them). In that thread, that user references the Byronic hero, with the name drawing from Lord Byron and his own literary fascinations. Byron was obsessed with taboo, lived to break them (most famously the taboo of sleeping with people of the same sex, and probably the taboo of incest as well... COME TO MY TED TALK TO DISCUSS HOW THAT COULD RELATE TO HEATHCLIFF, ALSO). One of the reasons why more recent scholarship (and I don't even mean super recent) surrounding Wuthering Heights has come to terms with the interpretation of Heathcliff as a man of color is that he does embody the taboo even more.

And obviously... some taboos (the incest one) exist for a reason. But the book also seems interested in questioning how much we really gain by treating someone (someone like Heathcliff) as other and wrong simply for existing. Again, we go into the cycle of abuse.

I also find it rather belittling of people to refer to general 18th and 19th century values when discussing how people "would have" seen Heathcliff, or interpreted the text. Because, for one thing—yeah! A lot of contemporary readers did not in fact Get It. Perhaps in part because they did have the biases that people like that user seem to believe would have prevented the author from exploring Heathcliff as a man of color.

... But if Emily Bronte thought exactly as the detractors of her novel (who condemned it as wicked and aberrant) did, she never would have written the book, I think. Who's to say, though? It's difficult for EITHER side to make leaps about what Emily knew or thought, because she is someone who didn't live very long, has been portrayed as an eccentric (and perhaps even maligned by Elizabeth Gaskell's portrayal of her) and definitely had something of an offbeat upbringing. We just don't have much directly from HER. So it's a bit rich to me to make assumptions about the kind of limited worldview she may have had on topics like race, when we really do not have a lot of definitive information about her worldview, but DO know that the book she wrote, which some theorize to be about a man of color, REALLY upset some conventional readers.

Like... why would you contextualize that book within a purely conventional reading when the entire reason why Wuthering Heights matters is that it defies convention?

I do shy away from using the word "canonical" to describe Heathcliff's race, because while I know what people mean when they say it (and I'm sure I've said it at some point) it's just a word choice that people like that user will latch on to. Like I've said before, there is no way to prove with 100% certainty Heathcliff's race either way. Which isn't to say that you have to do so to state that he's a man of color. It's just the kind of pedantic strategy people will use in threads like these.

And I'll notice, too, that she omits Nelly's line wherein she speculates that Heathcliff's mother could be Chinese or Indian. I mean, what's her take on that specificity combined with the lascar speculation? No mention of Liverpool relating to people... not... from America or Spain...?

I do worry sometimes that people see someone's major concentration (say, if someone has a BA in English or something, which for the record I don't) and go "Damn, that's end-all, be-all" A) it's not, there's more to research than getting a degree B) you could also use literal wikipedia footnotes to kickstart your own deeper dive into this, there are tons of people who've made careers discussing books like WH debating the issue C) having a degree of any level never kicks your bias.

To go back to my own degree... I knew old art historians who saw nothing gay at all in Michelangelo's work. You can know a lot about a lot, and it doesn't mean you have an open mind.

I think anyone can read WH, do some research about the era and Emily, and drawn their own conclusions. And you are just going to have to make your conclusions based on your own assessment. There is no smoking gun here, and there never will be because the smoking gun would be a living Emily Bronte willingly telling you what she meant.

And I didn't read Heathcliff as a person of color from the jump, for the record. I was thirteen when I read that book for the first time; I'm white; I picked that book in the context of it being a Great English Classic, and as far as I knew, those were all about white people. Because... that's what you were taught about WH at the time, at least where I was.

But when I was first introduced to that interpretation some time later, it was a literal "OH!" moment. Because like... yeah. There isn't a smoking gun for Dorian Gray's sexuality (and yes, we know a lot more about Oscar Wilde than we do about Emily Bronte; but the absence of knowledge of Emily's interests and attitudes doesn't mean we can assume she DIDN'T have an interest in writing Heathcliff as a person of color) but The Picture of Dorian Gray makes way more sense when you interpret his queerness for what it is. Wuthering Heights makes way more sense when you interpret Heathcliff's race for what it is.

[pulim-v]

Okay I see no reason not to post this rn other than inactivity (and I can always tag people so eh)

Oh also relevant disclaimer this might be weird but the feathers on a bird's head are referred to as "hair" in fgcc. Don't ask me why idk either.

Fern's Crush: a Foggy Glasses and Corroded Copper Scene

"Via... we need to talk." Fern said, startling Via with her sudden appearance.

"What's up, Fern? Everything alright?" Octavia said, looking directly at Fern as she took note of his appearance.

Fern looked... messy. His hair was ruffled, her face feathers intensely ruffled, forehead glittering with sweat and chest quickly moving with his rapid breaths.

Fern took a step forward, entering Octavia's dorm room, and she directed him to the bed next to her. As she sat down, Octavia turned off her computer screen, took off her earphones, and directed her gaze to Fern again, waiting to see what she would say.

It took him a few moments, as he sat there silently, still seeming extremely nervous, but eventually he started talking:

"I... I think I have a crush on Spark. I don't know how long it's been, I just know the other day they hugged me and I started blushing and I can't stop thinking about them, and oh gosh what do I do, Via? Please help me, I don't know what having a crush is like, what if they reject me?"

"Oh," Octavia said, startled, "is that it? Like, just that?" She twirled a part of her hair with her finger, pondering on what she'd say to help.

"What do you mean "just that"? I'm freaking out over here!"

"Yeah, sorry about that", Octavia chuckled, "it's just that... can't you just confess to them? I get that it's new to you, but that just sounds like the best option".

"I don't know, it's complicated!" Fern started running his hands through his hair, exasperated "Like, what if they reject me? What if they don't want to talk to me ever again?"

"Okay, let's calm down a bit." Octavia said as she grabbed Fern's hands and pulled them down, placing them on Fern's lap. "Let's just try to imagine what could happen." She said, holding up a hand so she could count. "One: Spark doesn't reject you, everything turns out fine, and you two start dating. Two: Spark does reject you, you move on, you two remain as friends. Three: Spark does reject you and doesn't want to be friends, you move on, I give them a piece of my mind and you go back to being friends."

"It's not that simple," Fern scoffed. "you cant just force us to be friends like that!"

"Yeah, but Spark would have been a terrible person if they stopped being friends with you over this." Fern started to intervene, but Octavia held a finger out, asking him to wait until she was done talking. "Besides, it's better to actually ask them out than to pretend like you don't like them, that just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen"

"That's easy for you to say, Mrs. "I'm clearly in love with Dew but won't do anything about it"!" Fern almost shouted, getting up slightly from the bed.

Octavia felt her face getting warmer. She started to get nervous, so she reached out to her hair to start fidgeting with it, forgetting that it was untied. She took a few locks of hair in her hands and started messing with them, thinking of what to say. Meanwhile, Fern was still exasperated, but seemingly shrunk back into the bed.

"I'm sorry, that was uncalled for" he said, looking away from his friend.

"Was it that obvious?" Octavia furrowed her eyebrows and bit her cheek, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to calm her down.

Fern chuckled. "Via, you're the least expressive person I know, and your face still turns bright red whenever they talk to you"

Octavia's face started to get even warmer, at which point she buried it in her hands and averted Fern's gaze, looking at the black screen of her computer. She took note of her own reflection in it: her face had a bit of sweat in it, her hair was messier than usual, and even through the tinted screen her snout was visibly reddened. She slowly took a breath, turned back towards Fern, and replied:

"I don't know... that's different... it would be really awkward, I don't want to sacrifice the friendship we have."

"That's what I'm saying with regards to Spark! They're my crush, yeah, but they're also my first friend... I can't afford to mess it up with them." Fern said, her voice clearly strained.

"I... I don't know Fern, I think I understand what you mean a little bit more now. Gosh, I'm a real hypocrite, huh? I'm really sorry for that"

"No need to apologize, I'm just too pathetic to actually take your advice to heart," Fern chuckled and extended their arms, "can I..."

Octavia hugged Fern, running her large hands through his soft hair. She felt his hands grab her back, touching the thin fabric of the simple dress she was wearing. The two stayed in there for a few seconds, with Octavia feeling Fern's heartbeat slow down and his movements get subtler. At one point, she heard a chuckle.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing", Fern said, "it's just that now that I think of it, aren't we both just kinda... pathetic? It's stupid, we don't even have the guts to do something as simple as confessing a crush"

"Hey! Don't say that!" Octavia broke free from the hug, looking directly at Fern. She quickly let her gaze wander, though, contemplating his words. "Yeah... I guess we are..."

"Thanks for this, Via" Fern said, pulling her back into the hug and letting his head rest on her shoulder.

"No problem, Fern" Octavia said, lost in thought as she let her hand run through Fern's hair.

[linkspooky]

hi Spooky! I just read your meta about Gojo's motivation in the fight and you brought up interesting points.

I thought Gojo was fighting in a way that he's trying to save Megumi, because if Gojo is really trying to eliminate Sukuna for good he would go for the most fatal blow, the brain, he knows that Sukuna can still come back even without heart (lungs and liver)... so I thought Gojo is probably trying to weaken Sukuna to "make room" for Megumi. Even if his facade is "carefree", at first he already warned Sukuna that he won't hold back, he seemed worried when he realized that Megumi is the one that got hit by UV. But now I'm worried about his character growth, is it like he's decreasing? or at least he's not showing something better than the Gojo who killed Toji - teen Gojo; what happened to the Gojo that claims to protect his students' youth and who is supposed to be the "good guy" in this fight...

I still think Gojo is fighting with the belief he can revive Megumi after he takes down Sukuna, but I agree with you anon his attitude towards the fight shows his lack of growth after Toji. Not only does Gojo reference Toji a couple of times like the battle is still fresh on his mind but his emotional state resembles the way he was when he fought Toji post-awakening as the "strongest." It wasn't just a happy-go-lucky facade at that point Gojo stated in his internal narration he wasn't fighting to avenge Riko: it really was just about defeating Toji and using his newfound power to reach his full potential.

It's understandable Gojo reacted that way in the moment though. He's seventeen, and it's probably alienating to have that much power thrust on your shoulders at seventeen. However, Gojo shows a clear lack of progress since that battle. Eleven years have passed since the battle with Toji, and Gojo's kind of trapped there mentally. He's still fighting for the same reasons he fought against Toji. Those lines could be applied to how he feels via Sukuna's possession of Megumi.

"Right now I'm not angry for you. Nor do I feel vengeful toward anyone. Right now, it's just that everything feels right."

Word of god supports this: Gege was asked directly if Gojo matured after the battle with Toji, and Gege explained instead of maturing he left the decision making up to Geto.

This is pretty consistent with Gojo and Geto's foiling with one another. Geto tends to be a deeply self-reflective character almost to a fault. While I'd argue that while Gojo is known by the fandom as the more selfish one, he is oddly someone who doesn't self reflect at all.

We know far more about Geto's internal world and how he sees things because of his internal narration. Honestly, if you compare the short time he's a focus character in Hidden Inventory to the entire rest of the manga Gojo receives a lot less internal dialogue. When Gojo does have internal narration it's almost always just him strategizing for a fight. He doesn't have the same richly developed internal world that Geto has because he doesn't really think or reflect on those things. When he does give insight to himself and his belief it's almost always himself talking aloud to other people.

Which neatly dovetails into my next topic re: Gojo's tendency to mask his true emotions under a light-hearted facade. I think it's inarguable he does that, Gojo was acting happy-go-lucky in front of his students about five minutes after killing Geto. Geto commented in the beach scene in Okinawa that Gojo goofing around on the beach was his way of being considerate to Amanai, and that while pretending to be carefree he'd been exhausting himself keeping the limiitless active for days not even sleeping. Gojo even downplays the burden of that in front of Geto, the one person he allows himself to be vulernable with.

However, I don't think Gojo's tendency to mask his true emotions is because he's crying on the inside during his fight with Megumi and at some point he's going to have an emotional breakdown over it. That interpretation I think comes from the fandom's tendency to woobify Gojo because they want to make him a more relatable and easy to understand character when Gojo is supposed to be alienating and off-putting.

He's an exploration of what being the strongest would due to a person's mind, and how much that would alienate a person from the people around him. Gojo's defined by his inability to relate to others, especially the people he finds as weak so it only makes sense he'd process his emotions in a way that's different from most people.

If people learn and grow and change by their interaction with others, then Gojo who's very cursed technique itself makes it so nobody can ever touch him unless he wants them too does not interact with others and therefore does not change.

It's interesting if you look at things from a budhhist perspective, because there are heavy themes of budhism present in the text of JJK itself. Let's say that Gojo attained enlightenment at seventeen. If he's already enlightened then why would he need to grow any more past that point? The ultimate goal of budhism is to escape the cycle of karma entirely, so from that perspective Gojo untethering himself from the world and earthly concerns and other people is his ideal endpoint.

On the other hand Gojo is like a person living in the world - he eats takeout, goes out drinking with his friends, has a job, pays his taxes. He didn't escape life and worldly concerns, because life went on, he's still living in the world and eleven years has passed since the moment he "attained enlightenment."

If he's already enlightened then he shouldn't need to grow, but considering hes still living in the world you need to grow and change with the world and people around you otherwise you're going to be left behind.

From what we've seen in canon Gojo changed a little bit. His ideals changed in the fact he adopted Geto's sense of responsibility and judgement of good and evil. He also witnessed Geto's fall and lost his friendship which is clearly what influences his current beliefs on wanting to protect the childhood of sorcerers, and that there's something rotten about the Jujutsu Society surrounding him.

I don't mean to say that every change in Gojo's life comes from Geto, but rather Gojo's current sense of beliefs are based around what happened to him in his youth. He wants to protect children because his youth was ruined. If Geto never fell and became a curse user would Gojo see anything wrong with the current system worth rebelling over?

Put better in another better meta here.

Still, my point is that... Gojo simply never cared enough about things like ideology. [...] He tried to internalize Geto’s original values of protecting the weak since he could sense some merit to them, finding joy in entertaining Riko and later his students, but he completely missed the reasoning behind those values. This is why he spouted all those things about not saving/reaching Geto (without having attempted it in the first place) and about becoming a teacher to prevent young sorcerers from missing out on their youth (immediately going to indoctrinate young Megumi into their messed up system as a pretext of saving him from the Zenins. [...] The only way he can empathize with them is by remembering what he himself enjoyed in his youth, that being companionship with his bff and his growing power. And when some of them don’t show interest in that (like poor fucking Megumi) Gojo is simply not interested in exploring alternatives.  To him, it’s not a question of ‘why’, it never was.

Gojo is extreemly self-oriented in all the good and bad that entails. Good because it makes him an extremely strong, and self confident individual that allows him to pursue those ideals (and his ideals are still pretty good) bad because he easily loses sight of other people's feelings.

A gojo who truly changed after the fight with Toji would have reached out to Megumi in an attempt to break the cycle that started with the Zen'ins abuse of TOji. A true example of being the bigger man by going out of his way to help the son of a man who in a lot of ways caused permanent damage to his life and the people around him.

However, that's blatantly not what Gojo did. Once again we have Word of God on this.

Gojo hasn't matured past his mindset of seeing people in terms of "strong and weak" and as a natural extension of that he tends to treat the same kids he's trying to help as assets so he's not living up to his desire to be the responsible adult in their lives. Because he's not really an adult. His growth stopped in the fight with Toji.

Gojo's solution to the problem of Jujutsu Society's use of child soldiers and treating children as expendable is... to create stronger child soldiers. I don't think Gojo does this maliciously, it's just he has no self-awareness whatsoever. He is Jujutsu Society's ideal and constantly praised as such and because of that can't see the flaws in his own ideology and actions. That's also the way Gojo was raised, pushed to be the strongest and to build his entire life and self-worth around being the strongest he can be. People who lack self-awareness tend to unsconiously recreate the circumstances under which they were raised because it's familiar to them. Do unto others what was done unto you.

To return to my original topic though Gojo has a tendency to make his true emotions but I don't think it's done because he's secretly crying on the inside.

I think Gojo's complete lack of reaction to Nanami's death was his genuine reaction. He's not putting on a brave face or anything. He probably does care that Nanami died, but this is just how Gojo processes his emotions. I also think there's a couple of times where Gojo is disturbed during the fight against Megumi such as when Sukuna used Megumi as a shield for the limitless, but at the same time he's clearly having the time of his life with this fight.

I don't think he's faking that. He shouldn't really be enjoying this battle because there are simply more important things right now than whether or not Gojo finally gets to have fun in a fight and be challenged against someone who's his equal - but apparently Gojo didn't get that memo.

Gojo is probably masking his emotions to some extent, but there's a difference between text (what is stated) and subtext (what is not stated and instead relies on reader interpretation). Gojo visibly enjoying himself in the fight is direct text. Gojo announces out loud that he has no problem beating up Megumi, the narration tells us that Gojo is feeling deeply satisfied with this fight.

While characters do sometimes hide their feelings and lie, and narrators are sometimes reliable, subtext is still an interpretation and it doesn't trump what is directly stated by the work.

The text has already told us directly that number one Gojo doesn't feel any hesitation to fight Megumi, and number two Gojo's first priority is winning and his second priority is worrying about Megumi.

Anything that contradicts that is fandom interpretation of the text. I don't think Gege is trying to pull a fast one or unreliable narrator trick here. Gege has always been blatantly honest about Gojo's flaws as a character, hence why I constantly cite his responses in interviews.

I think it's Gege's intention here to show us how Gojo's priorities are eschewed. You can make an argument that Gojo has to worry about defeating Sukuna first above everything else because of utiliarian reasons. If he loses here then everyone else dies. He may have to sacrifice Megumi to stop Sukuna from killing anyone else.

However, those utilitarian reasons are in direct opposition to Gojo's ideals. Gojo wants to create a world where children aren't sacrificed for the common good. In Gojo's ideals chidlren shouldn't be sarificed for adults, but rather it's adults who should protect children so they can live out their youths. If Gojo fails to protect Megumi here he's going back on everything he supposedly stands for.

So while you can make an argument pragmatically Gojo has to worry about winning the fight first. Idealistically he should be fighting to save Megumi, not to win against Sukuna. However, he's not doing that. By having him care more about the fight itself then Megumi, it shows that Gojo's pragmatism often is in conflict with his own idealism. Which is something we've always known about his character. He wants to help kids but at the same time he's using them as tools to further his own agenda.

Again a lot of Gojo's flaws arise from his own lack of self-awareness. Gojo does conceal his own emotions a lot, but I don't think he's hiding a crying child inside. Instead it's more like he's so alienated from both the people around him and his own emotions that he can't process them or self reflect.

Gojo is blind in a lot of ways, like it's made clear by Shoko that Gojo's isolation doesn't just come from being the strongest. There are people around him actively trying to connect with him and Gojo just kind of ignores them because he's too caught up in the idea that only someone like Geto who was as strong as he was could ever understand him.

Gojo doesn't show his own emotions or make deep emotional connections with others because he probably doesn't understand those emotions himself. He's not only alienated himself from the people around him, but he's alienated himself from his own feelings to such an extent that even when he does care it's difficult for him to show it.

[kradogsrats]

Thinking about this scene, because lbr it just kind of loops in my brain constantly so there's probably a 70% chance I'm thinking about it at any given moment.

It's easy to make the assumption that everything in Viren's dream is connected to him healing Soren, because it's a convenient place to point to and say "obviously that is where everything went wrong." It's definitely a pivotal moment in his life, and deservedly has a lot of screen time in this sequence. In some ways, it is lurking beneath all the other scenes.

But it doesn't seem to be what Kpp'Ar is talking about at any point here, like:

I always knew you'd go far. But I didn't know how far you'd go to get there.

Everything going on in Kpp'Ar's dialog—"eager student," "elegant finery," "overcome the disadvantages of your upbringing," "I always knew you'd go far"—is about ambition. Not morality or necessity, just a pure skewer of you've never done anything for anyone but yourself, and you know it.

Viren, as is the theme(tm), protests, "I had no choice. I did what I had to do," to which Kpp'Ar, again, absolutely drags him:

You made the choice you've always made. The one that gives you power.

Which, like... you could twist this to be about Soren, and start asking questions about exactly what power Viren stood to gain from healing him—my money would be on the Staff of Ziard—but I actually don't think that's at all what this is about.

This scene in Viren's dream also cuts almost directly into the Twin Peaks scene, in which Viren is king, and which itself culminates in the battered and bloody crown, i.e. his death.

So I think there's a couple things going on, here: 1) the Kpp'Ar scene (and the Twin Peaks scene, but I'll talk about that some other time) is actually referring to everything Viren did that culminated in the events of s1-s3, and 2) we as viewers are being primed by that to look at his other choices in the same critical way.

Now, you'd have to be pretty oblivious to have watched all of s1-s3 hearing Viren's constant refrain that he's doing everything he does for the sake of humanity's future, etc. etc., and been like "oh yeah, that seems totally legit." So we're basically being explicitly told here something that we already knew: everything that Viren has done, he did on some level to secure or consolidate power for himself. Some of those choices are a lot more obvious than others, but pretty much all of them circle back to power, control, and/or the "narrative of strength."

Having framed all of Viren's choices that way—particularly after he has denied that they were choices—we are being implicitly asked to consider his choice to do anything to save his son within the same framework. Was it something he had to do? Was it worth it?

For some viewers, this is the first time they are encountering the revelation that Viren saved Soren from a fatal illness during his childhood. It's a choice that is very easy to sympathize with, and one that we the deep fandom have discussed to death—seeing it for the first time, a viewer is likely to be sympathetic, or automatically believe it was justifiable. In starting with the scene with Kpp'Ar and reminding viewers of all Viren's other choices, their motivations, and their consequences, the sequence is asking us to consider this critical choice, sympathetic as it is, in that context. It's similar to the way we are asked to consider Harrow's choice regarding the Magma Titan, though much less explicit.

So, then... what's up with this?

Viren's immediate response to Kpp'Ar's statement that his choices have always been about power is the first callback to his little mantra:

I've always done what protects my family. However dangerous. However vile.

Why does he say this, when literally nothing in this scene has been about family? Well, first of all, it's another priming device for linking Viren's s1-s3 actions with his healing Soren. It's also a fun little callback for those of us whose reaction to it first being dropped in s4 was "HOLY SHIT it's the thing he said to Kpp'Ar!" in that here he is, saying it to Kpp'Ar again. But we also get told exactly why, a couple scenes later:

We have Harrow—specifically Harrow in the context of his death, the inciting event of Viren's s1-s3 spiral—linked to Viren's concept of family, and his willingness to do anything in that context, in what is a kind of hilarious contrast with, y'know, literally everything Viren did after Harrow's death.

So, as with the rest of the sequence, it's all about Viren framing himself as having no choice while he makes the absolute worst choice possible at every turn.

[all-pacas]

i’ve been thinking a lot about how intimate house makes first names, especially because even as these people get into romantic relationships with each other they tend to still call each other by their last names, idk it just compels me

no no i get you, names absolutely fascinate me in general. terms of address, who calls who what -- all of it.

i actually think house does this well, compared to some shows i've seen. like i remember watching Bones back in the day and it vaguely bothering me that people got married and still were only on surname basis, like, that's just weird. meanwhile, cameron and chase for example actually do consistently call one another by their first names* in personal settings; only at work or around others do they use their surnames.

(* that said i still refuse to believe chase actually calls himself robert. rob? sure. robbie? absolutely.)

and the show does this other times as well: wilson tends to switch between "lisa" and "cuddy" depending on if he's talking directly to her or not. foreman switches to "remy" once he and 13 start dating; 13 herself is kind of fun because she actually starts introducing herself as "dr. hadley" or "remy" after a certain point, but folks like taub/house/chase never call her anything but thirteen.

there's also some times the show makes fun of the surname-only thing: cameron has that whole wonderful episode in s1 where she decides to try calling the team by their given names; when foreman's chummy mentor drops by and calls him "eric," house starts sarcastically doing the same; and there's an episode in s8 where the patient's mother (a doctor) refers to foreman as "eric" as well, which makes chase sarcastically jump on the bandwagon. which sort of implies that in universe they all find using given names too intimate or too casual -- cameron can call chase "robert," but only because they're sleeping together; chase and foreman have known one another for almost a decade and would never.

and then you get house, who very pointedly uses surnames: he only calls wilson "jimmy" to tease him, for example, but then we have stacy, whose last name we never even know. first names are intimate, and not just anyone gets to use them: using them "inappropriately" is subject for mocking and teasing. there's a lovely moment in s4 where amber calls house "greg," and then clarifies she can because they're equals now: it's sort of treated as a shocking thing, like she's being transgressive. and in a real way she is. again, the only person to consistently call house by name is stacy. or his mother. names are intimacy. house absolutely could call wilson or cuddy by their first names; you could argue it's even appropriate for him to do so with his team (like how teacher student relationships work -- house is technically a teacher). but it's intimate. and he won't.

[theflyindutchwoman]

You think you'll ever have kids? Uh, honestly? I, uh, thought I would've had some by now. Isabel and I, we made all these plans -- pop out three kids, watch them grow up, have kids of their own. But… Things don't always work out. Which is why you think I should make contingency plans.

| ANATOMY OF A SCENE - CHENFORD EDITION 4.05 - A.C.H.

In many ways, this scene illustrates perfectly how Tim and Lucy's relationship blossoms and matures in season 04. With her being his aide, it would have been so easy to fall into a trap where their bond would at best remain stagnant, at worse reverse back to their old TO/subordinate dynamic… But it hasn't… Something has changed between them emotionally after that hug, even if they don't fully realise it. Even if it is subtle… They're somehow more at ease than before. Closer. Like partners, despite their difference in ranks… Like equals, as indicated by Lucy's presence behind the wheels, a rare occurrence.

Now this is far from the first time they talk about their personal life in the shop… That's actually the foundation of their relationship. What has started as a need for Tim to justify himself, to explain his actions to Lucy as they impacted her directly, has grown progressively into something more organic, more natural. She made him feel safe to share his feelings, his past with her and in return, he started to drop his walls. To heal. This is a continuation of that… Only deeper. Talking about the future he once envisaged, the dreams he had of having children… His dad… The way he says he's 'living proof that some people should not be parents'… There's something extremely vulnerable in opening up about these subjects. And he does it freely now, without much hesitation or reluctance. Lucy's glance at him displays perfectly their shorthand, how well they know each other. She doesn't have the full picture yet, but she knows enough to understand to what he is referring. His face when she asks him if he thinks he'll ever have kids… He's completely caught off-guard. That he doesn't dismiss or deflect her question shows how much he has changed and grown. How much more laid back he now is, especially with her. Thanks to her. And the fact that he looks at her while answering… He's not hiding from her, despite the nature of the question. He could have simply answered her vaguely, but instead, he decides to share a piece of himself, giving her a far more personal answer than she probably expected. Talking about Isabel and the dreams they had… This is extremely intimate. They've come a long way since he said : 'I'm married, Officer Chen, and this isn't something you and I talk about'.

And this is so amazing to hear him mention grandchildren. It makes Lucy's casual remark about having grandkids on their second date even more significant. This is a direct callback to his dream, a way of telling him that they share the same one and they could have it together now… And it makes her gesture even more special because he looks quite resigned here, the regrets all over his face. Almost as if he feels that this has passed him by… But this is a good segue to why he was encouraging her to go ahead with the process of freezing her eggs, as an insurance. At the time, it almost felt like he wasn't being supportive or rather, not understanding of her outrage. But he wasn't taking her Mom's side as much as he was simply speaking from his personal experience and offering her a different perspective. He simply doesn't want her to live with that regret, like he does.

And here they are now… talking about kids and grandkids, joking freely about this future. But to get there, they had to start with these little moments. That's how they built their beautiful relationship.

[bylrlve]

403-404 thoughts

(Prev post here)

Murray’s prophecy of the kids playing too much Nintendo, eating too much junk food, smoking some ganja, pounding some beers, and experimenting sexually is actually eerily accurate. Nintendo, as @gayofthefae brilliantly observed, has been equated to the Nina project. Eating junk food? The boys presumably survived on the (quickly cold) pizzas and the sodas Argyle delivered to their house - and if they stopped at gas stations… these boys would have little to no money on their persons, so junk is all they could really afford, one assumes. Smoking ganja? Jon and Argyle. Pounding beers? Not the Cali gang, but Lucas did.

Experimenting sexually? No one has sex during s4 - Jopper makeout but that’s hardly experimenting, and certainly not for adults, and he was specifically talking about the kids. None of them are in the mood for it, naturally, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is foreshadowing… something between a certain pair of boys. It couod be a cheeky reference to Will growing into his sexuality but, and forgive my crudeness here, right-hand solo sex doesn’t really fit, especially since he was talking about Jonathan, El, Mike, and Will as a group, implying a plural. In fact, this scene takes place directly after El and Mike fight, and after she is arrested. Experimenting is a very loaded word…

Never fails to get me how Mike just threw her last letter into the trash - it had already been explained that he may not see her for months, and here he is, treating her last missive to him with such disrespect. This attitude isn’t even new - he crumpled up and tossed aside the letter she’d painstakingly written and drawn rainbow designs on in the opening minutes. Meanwhile… there are Funko Pops of him proudly showing off the new painting Will made for him.

“You’re packed already?” “Yeah, I mean, I never really unpacked.” is the most blatantly subtext-ridden thing to come out of Mike’s mouth all season, and it’s the biggest piece of in-verse proof that he was fronting hard during 402 - and that was the lovey-doviest he was with El.

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate Mike saying that home isn’t home without Will? Fuck the monologue, that is the most romantic thing Mike says all season.

@bylertruth3r made the above video, showing the eerily similarity between the Byler 404 reunion and a scene in 13 Reasons Why - and this scene was originally scripted as Mike coming up to Will kneeling oj the ground, meaning it was conceived as them being much closer together.

I don’t think we appreciate, enough, that Mike monologued to Will in this scene. Not only are Jasons’s ily to Chrissy at the pep rally, Jancy’s ilys, Argyle and Eden’s LAFS, Max’s saving herself from Vecna with flashbacks, and Dustin’s ILY to Eddie all contrasts to the Mike monologue sequence in 409… but this is, too. Here are Mike’s three big monologues lain out:

"El? I don't know if you can hear this, but... but if you can, I want you to know I'm here, okay? I'm right here. And... I love you. El, do you hear me? I love you. I'm sorry I don't say it more. I... It's not because I'm scared of you. I'm not. I've never felt that way. Never. But I am scared that one day you'll realize you don't need me anymore. And I thought if I said how I felt, it would somehow make that day hurt more. But the truth is, El, I don't know how to live without you. I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods. You were wearing that yellow Benny's Burgers T-shirt. And it was so big it almost swallowed you whole. And I knew right then and there, in that moment, that I loved you. And I've loved you every day since. I love you on your good days. I love you on your bad days. I love you with your powers, I love you without your powers. I love you for exactly who you are. You're my superhero. And... I can't lose you. Okay? Do you hear me? I can't lose you. You can do anything. You can fly. You can move mountains. I believe that. I really do. But right now, you just have to fight. Okay? El. Do you hear me? You need to fight! You have to fight. Fight!” Tearing up, not crying.

“Do you remember the first day that we met? It was… it was the first day of kindergarten. I knew nobody. I had no friends. And I just felt so alone, and so scared, but… I saw you on the swings, and you were alone too,. You were just swinging by yourself. And I just walked up to you, and I asked. I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes. You said yes. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“Hey also, about the last few days… No, no, no. You didn’t deserve anything. Listen, the truth is… the last year has been weird, you know. And I mean, Max and Lucas and Dustin… they’re great, they’re great, itd just… it’s Hawkins. It’s not the same without you. And I feel like I was worrying too much about El, and I don’t know. I feel like I… lost you, or something. I have no idea what’s going to happen next. But whatever it is, I think we should work together. I think it’ll be easier if we’re a team. Best friends. Cool.”

Some quick observations:

1 and 2 occur under near-identical circumstances - El and Will are under Vecna’s control and he’s trying to give them strength. 3 is entirely unprompted. The first occurs under a level of duress similar to that of a gun being held to El’s head, as gayofthefae observes here

The rain fight is all over the s4 bedroom scene, and it’s very clearly on both of their minds. Mike has spent the past nine months addressing every criticism of Will’s - he’s friends with Dusfin, he’s playing D&as, he only kissed El when she initiated, and broke it quickly, and he even got angry at Lucas for prioritising others over the Party - although his complaint, unlike Will’s, was irrational and unfair. He relapsed at the airport and roller rink by trying to be normal, but this scene is him course-correcting for that. Mike’s calling himself a self-pitying idiot and thanking Will for being sensible is likelt not only referring to the earlier scene in Will’s room, but to the S3 and 402 fights. If that is the intention, it makes one wonder what Mike was self-pitying about in the latter. @howtobecomeadragon discusses it in-depth here

Right from my very first watch, the proposal imagery in the s2 speech - ‘I walked up to you, and I asked. I asked if you wanted to be my _, and you said yes… you said yes. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.’ - jumped out at me. M*levens regularly theorise that the series will end with Mike and El either getting married, or engaged, citing that Lucas line from s1 as foreshadowing - but we see in s3 that Mike relies on Lucas to push him through every stage of the apology, while he doesn’t with Will, and we see bouquet imagery subverted with that gift of flowers at the airport (see below).

TOO MUCH? Mike spent the s3-4 break backsliding in the whole ‘say ILY to El’ plot… but did address the problems Will had with him. Not only that… he came to the conclusion that he worried too much about El? Specifically because he lost Will as a result? I said in the previous post that Bylers don’t talk enough about “Who… who said that I didn’t?” We definitely don’t talk enough about the anti-m*leven implications of this line, because they’re bonkers. Mike worries a lot about El when she’s away at Nina, but at home he’s distinctly distant from her -

while only drawing closer to Will

This is how he looked at Will during the 404 monologue btw: (gif credit to @palettehao and gayofthefae)

Lastly, I’ll finish this analysis post by swinging back to 402, and to the fact that Mike picking that bouquet? It doesn’t make much sense, timeline-wise. In fact, I honestly can’t figure out when he picked them.

Mike only says, on March 22, that he picked them ‘in Hawkins’ before launching into a nervous, distracting spiel about picking 70:30 purple to yellow, only maybe he picked too much yellow*, etc.

On the morning of March 21 he was still in his underwear reading over a letter to El, and was delayed going to with. He had classes at school, and was preoccupied during lunch bargaining with Eddie, bargaining wi5 various students, and finally bargaining with Erica. Between school and Hellfire he could plausibly have picked them, but that would have required cycling across town and back, when Nancy drove him to school - he didn’t have his bike at school. He also had nowhere to put them, except the backpack that presumably had school supplies in it - those flowers would not have looked so fresh had he shoved them in a backpack. Dustin also doesn’t mention him being gone prior to Hellfire. After hellfire, he went home to be there by 9 - he had to have done, otherwise he wouldn’t have been allowed on the flight.

His flight was at 6:30 and Indiana -> Cali takes 4 hrs 10 minutes. He would have been awake from very early in the morning with Karen, gathering his stuff, and then driving to the airport with adequate time to check-in and board the plane. There isn’t a hope in hell of Karen letting him randomly cycle across town in the dark for an undetermined length of time just to pick some fucking flowers, lmao. There is a strong chance, however, that Karen, the romantic, let him buy flowers and a pen in the Indianapolis airport before boarding the flight. Maybe she even purchased them.

The kicker? The bouquet of flowers had a fancy, polished-looking greeting card attached, one professionally made.

There is something deliciously meta about those flowers. M*levens have adopted yellow and purple as a symbol of the relationship - even though Mike only wore those colours to please her when he was being ‘hokey’ and a ‘knock-off’, to quote Argyle and the costume designer. I’m not even sure El truly favours those colours, as she doesn’t wear them much and doesn’t have any notable items in those colours. For all we know, she was asked if she had any favourite colours and simply picked two that came to mind.

What’s more, it seems very likely that Mike simply lied to her about putting in the effort of getting them himself, and instead relied on something pre-made and commercial. It isn’t impossible that he picked them, however (though the timing is a mystery) - we are shown at the end of the season that the field outside Hopper’s cabin has very similar flowers. But those… well… those have their own implications

*talk about subtext lmao…

To finish, I want to share a delicious finding from @sapphicjopper on twitter from last may - the working name for st4 was Tareco. There’s a song called Tareco & Mariola, all about a girl who knows her lover isn’t right for her, who knows that she doesn’t need him, and who is leaving him - ‘it’s not you who will give me the spring, the beautiful flowers I dreamed of in summer’. It’s reminiscent of the opera Nina - about a woman waiting for her lover, not accepting that he won’t return and be how she desperately wants him to be.

[samobservessonic]

Today’s oneshot is from the Kitching & Elson dream team and-

…Oh, this story is excellent. I know this one. I almost don’t even want to talk about it and just tell you all to go read it yourselves, but that’s not what this blog is here for

So, the premise of this story is that a young mobian kid has been sneaking into an abandoned building to meet up with his friend, a Roller badnik. Now, I’m sure you can guess how this’ll go, but let’s press on

I love the framing of this. The heroic character of Sonic is presented in a somewhat sinister way in that second panel to represent that he does pose a threat to this one kid, just by doing what he always does to protect the world. And how easily Smokey lies to him in order to protect his friend. It’s a great setup

These guys are also here

Sonic tells the kid to run, but instead of being relieved that Sonic’s here to save him from the dangerous trooper robots, Smokey is scared that Sonic will destroy the Roller badnik if he finds it

Sure enough, Sonic sees the badnik and instantly wants to protect Smokey from it. Why would he think any different?

A wayward trooper finds them and the Roller badnik tries to hide Smokey inside its shell to protect him, which does look pretty bad from Sonic’s POV

It’s sometimes mentioned about Kitching that he preferred to use Sonic 2 references in the comic, so I kind of like that the one time he specifically uses a Sonic 1 badnik in a story is to make a point of this being an older version that won’t be much trouble for Sonic to take down

Sonic’s day just got weirder as his worldview is brought into question by this kid being such good friends with a badnik that he’d lay down his life to protect it

Now this is interesting. We skip to the next day and for the first time, we see some troopers just talking to a mobian. So far, we’ve only seen them used to attack people and round them up to be turned into badniks, so I didn’t consider that there are just people living amongst these badniks and going about their everyday lives, so long as Robotnik doesn’t want to turn them into badniks at that exact moment

But don’t worry! Problem’s solved and the badnik’s dead! So much for friendship amirite?

…Nah, just kidding! The badnik is fine and can even talk! I like that in this outcome you don’t hear directly how Sonic responded to the situation, you just know that he left these two alone. It’s a great way to use the minimal page count to your advantage and add an air of intrigue to the story You never see these two again, but you don’t really need to. This story does what it sets out to do and that’s that. It’s definitely one that I feel I could give to any random Sonic fan to read without needing any other knowledge of the rest of the series. And yes, you can nitpick the whole “Wait, isn’t there a person inside that badnik?” thing, like people did with Belle’s Motobud, but that really isn’t the point of this short and sweet story. It's one that I think has stood the test of time very well