#we will. we will talk about that. eventually.

[dilfosaur]

well i haven't spilled my guts on tumblr since i was in college but it's the platform that's felt The Most Mine thru the years, so

let's talk!

i've had a huge chip on my shoulder that i wanted off before the year ends. very bad professional experience to follow

so firstly to get ahead of the speculating, i'm not naming names or anything. some of you will puzzle out who i'm talking about, but please don't bother anyone especially not on my behalf. i've worked hard to distance myself from them the past few months. shit happens, especially when you're a dumb bitch (that's me!)

but also this person was someone i considered a close friend and it makes me uneasy to possibly direct backlash at them. "then why post about it" bc i did intermittent work for them for over a year. this is just about that. so hear me out

basically it started off fine. i initially did some commission work for good pay, then was invited to become more involved with their team. unfortunately as i became more involved with their operation it became more disorganized over time. projects started then forgotten, constantly shifting schedules, lapsing communication between roles, confusing financials, and often inconsistent if not late payments. during mid 2023 i was doing colorist work, sometimes on a one day turnaround (all while also preparing drawfee's summer merch launch). the payroll wasn't set up correctly so i wasn't paid for that work for over a year (more on that later), tho to be fair that was largely my own fault at first as i just didnt realize the payments didn't go thru lol

i always consider myself decently capable of separating friendship and coworker-ship; i run a company with 4 wonderful friends, going strong for almost 5 years. that didn't really work out in this case. by early this year our friendship was on the rocks; work issues fed into personal issues and vice versa. so as the rest of this shit plays out, we had just had our first "big fight" which i felt very bad about and added to all the upcoming tension

a huge point of friction was the fact that i really wanted to work with them to make a music video for one of their songs. i've always wanted a chance to make a music video, was confident in a concept i came up with, and even did some concept art for the idea. everyone insisted they loved the concept and that we should do it, but we kept pushing it back for various reasons. it ended up becoming a huge sticking point for my frustrations, which i tried to express productively. TLDR, we eventually got around to discussing it seriously around april.

i planned to ask for $4000 with negotiable add-on for the whole project, which was my Friend Discount price. i was offered a contract for $1000 flat rate, as they insisted that was the only budget they had for it.

don't ask me why i signed it lol. i didn't even counter offer

there was some girlmath to it: i wanted an extra 1k for a student scholarship i provide every spring and well, there it was. but if i had to guess, i saw it as something i just couldn't back down from any more. i caused these folks- my friends- a lot of problems bc i dug my heels in so deep to chase this project, so fuck it we ball

i had about 4 months to solo a 3 minute music video. they wanted it done in august so they could release it before summer ended, bc "it was a summer song". to be fair i was asked if i needed them to pay for anything extra like assistants (which i would have to find and manage) but i was so immediately overwhelmed that i didn't wanna slow down to wait on that process lol. there was very minimal communication other than brief progress check-ins every few weeks. i did everything for that project myself: the original concept, character designs, storyboards, layouts, backgrounds. i even did the editing/compositing for the final cut of the MV. the only favor i did myself was limiting the amount of it that was actually animated to simple loops and motions. hardly my best work but it was work still done

i did it all in between my full time job. i ended up having to take nearly a month away from most of my drawfee duties (with the support of the others) to make the august deadline. i only ever asked for a 3 day extension (notice given about a week in advance, around the same time i was given the final song file lol). i finished the music video at 6am on the final deadline and recorded drawfee the next day on 2 hours of sleep

but it was done, coolies. the team was very happy with the final product. honestly, without getting into it, those were a very emotionally taxing 4 months. on the professional side, i regretted agreeing to the project and especially for the dogshit rate they offered. i felt like a hypocrite- as someone who always wanted to advocate for younger artists demanding their worth in a world that's getting increasingly hostile toward creatives, i failed myself

so when i met with the manager to discuss the release plan, i told them to do whatever worked best for them as i only had one request: i wanted my credit removed from the project

tbh... like... lmao this dramatic bitch right!! but really, i decided that bad practices only breed worse business. friends or not, it was unprofessional of me to accept such a low paying job so i just didn't want my name used in association. everything felt so muddled to me and i was just really tired at this point

the manager was very understanding and then offered that i could be paid more. they said that their team "was surprised" i accepted their low rate and they would be happy to up the amount. this confused me as the initial budget seemed pretty set and at no point between april and august was i offered a better rate. i knew these guys weren't made of money. so, i declined. i didn't want to put anyone out of their means over work that was already done and agreed upon. but more importantly, i was over the whole thing and didn't want to prolong the project with a contract renegotiation. i just insisted my name be removed

they decided to use a pseudonym (which i was fine with) so they could create a story about a character who made the MV (this sounds really convoluted but i don't know how better to put it without getting specific, sorry). that way if people asked about the credit, they could speak comfortably about it without signaling that something went wrong behind the scenes. ok, kind of a silly narrative imo but whatevs. and maybe this is where i finally went truly wrong but. yolo i guess

i gave the name "D. Smithee", D as in dilfosaur and Smithee as in Alan Smithee. look it up for fun film trivia ig! was it passive aggressive of me to reference that in this context? yeah, honestly. but i thought it was kinda funny and really not that deep. if it was a problem, i have other real, non-cheeky pseudonyms i regularly use. the manager accepted it and all i had to do was wait for them to post the video and i could leave the whole experience behind me

a week later i received a message from the manager that my pseudonym had been denied by the rest of the team bc one of them got the reference. fair enough lol. however, they decided that rather than ask for a different name, the were going to make one up for me that they liked and would "fit the [story]", without asking me

and that! is when i finally snapped!

i was so tired of giving them concessions at this point and having a credit made up for me without any input from me felt genuinely violating and unethical. i started to Panic bc of how stressed i was, and asked for my overdue payments (aka the $500 still owed on the MV, and the colorist rate from a year prior that was never paid even tho i reported it in january) to be scheduled ASAP as i was leaving the work discord immediately

i finally told them off for exploiting me throughout the months while i kept trying to just be nice and finish my contact cleanly. in return i was told that it was unfair to say that as i agreed to everything- i accepted their cheap rate and denied further payment so that was all settled, and it was ok to change my credit without my consent bc i "said they could do whatever with the release". i called bullshit, ended the convo as kindly as i could, and cried lol. they agreed to ditch the pseudonym and just give no credit. that night was the last i heard from anyone on that team

and the real kicker?

august came and went. then september, october... and they never released the music video

and i don't know why, because i was never contacted about it. i've been removed from the picture entirely i guess. 4 months and boatloads of stress. just. up in smoke. i don't know what i expected honestly

it's hard to not take everything that happened personally and as done in bad faith. i really do, honestly. i've had plenty of shitty deals in my almost 10 year art career, but it hits different from people you saw as friends. but to the point of "why not keep it private", i have never felt so disrespected as a professional as i did this past year. i can toy with money and credits and other formalities all i want, but my work- my ideas, my labor, my effort- is still so important to me. i felt like the biggest idiot for doing so much work, pouring so much of myself into a piece for someone's use, for what has amounted to nothing

but more importantly i hated myself for undervaluing my work, even if initially i thought this person was a trusted friend. money is not really an issue for me- drawfee is my main job and i am fine and comfortable. it's so important to pay artists appropriately but i often undersell my own work bc i value the collaboration and passion between creatives more than the reward. i think a lot of artists tend to feel the same, and it often makes us easy to take advantage of. it's so difficult to find the balance between passion and making a fair living, and i think there's some shame within ourselves when artists choose to prioritize that passion

i wanted to finally get all this off my chest bc i was ashamed of every choice i made. things like this happen all the time i'm sure and hiding these mistakes only make it easier for it to happen to other people

tldr always value your work and protect your passion from people who just see it as a product. and don't give cheeky pseudonyms i guess lol

(and again pls don't bother anyone involved about this. a lot of chaos has left my life as i moved past all this, and this is me closing a door without opening new ones hopefully lol)

this shit was truly

so ass.

but i'm moving past it now

but on a nicer note. outside of all of this nonsense, i made lots of good memories this year. i'm truly so grateful to the many wonderful people in my life who keep me going even when i fuck up big time!

and thank you to all of you strangers who, despite everything, give me the time of day. especially if you read this whole thing. you're a real one :')

happy new year!

[dollishmehrayan]

# “IS IT NEW YEAR’S YET, I’M GETTIN’ BORED, SO CAN WE SKIP AHEAD?” ── .✦. ( a drabble of celebrating with batboys new years with batboys !! )

a/n: it’s 2025 oml, this year has been filled with ups and downs and many tears, many smiles, I wish that I live longer enough to enough plenty of years in peace, for 2025 my New Year’s resolution is to expand my interests && meet new people and friends and to be kind, understandable, happy, and positive and poetic !! Tags: (batboys x fem!reader)

© dollishmehrayan — ( all rights reserved to me. These works cannot be reposted, translated, or modified. Thank you for understanding dollies! )

DICK GRAYSON ── .✦

Dick insists on going out for New Year’s Eve. He loves the energy of the city and wants to celebrate with you in style.

He takes you to a rooftop party with the best view of Gotham’s fireworks. He’s that guy pulling you onto the dance floor and spinning you around until your cheeks hurt from smiling.

When the countdown begins, he gets super excited, holding your hands and hyping up the moment like, “This is it! Best year yet, babe!”, “it’s just new years dick calm down.”

At midnight, he gives you a movie-worthy kiss, dipping you slightly for dramatic effect.

After the party, you both grab late-night street food and walk around the city, talking about your hopes for the new year.

JASON TODD ── .✦

Jason prefers a quieter New Year’s Eve at home, but he doesn’t mind doing something small if it makes you happy.

He sets up a cozy evening with your favorite snacks, drinks, and a movie marathon. “This is better than overpriced parties and sweaty crowds, right?”

As the clock nears midnight, he’ll make a sarcastic comment like, “Think 2024 will be the year Gotham finally gets its act together?”

At midnight, he gives you a sweet kiss and mumbles, “Here’s to another year of putting up with me.

If you want to do something fun, he might take you to a rooftop to watch fireworks. He holds you close and pretends it’s just for warmth, but he’s smiling the whole time.

TIM DRAKE ── .✦

Tim’s ideal New Year’s involves a mix of productivity and relaxation. He plans a cute night in where you can both reflect on the past year and set goals for the new one.

He buys a journal or a vision board for the two of you to fill out together. “Okay, what’s your most unrealistic goal for this year? Let’s make it happen.”

He struggles to stay awake as midnight approaches, though. You catch him dozing off during a movie, and he grumbles when you wake him. “I’m not asleep I’m resting my eyes.”

At midnight, he kisses you softly and murmurs, “Thanks for making this year better.”

If you want to go out, he’ll humor you with a cute date to a low-key café or a small gathering with friends.

DAMIAN WAYNE ── .✦

Damian treats New Year’s as a time to improve himself. He’s not into big parties, but he’ll indulge your preferences to make you happy.

If you want to stay in, he sets up a fancy dinner for the two of you with candles and elegant dishes he helped Alfred prepare. “We’ll celebrate properly, without the chaos.”

He rolls his eyes at New Year’s resolutions but secretly sets a few for himself, especially involving you. “Fine. I resolve to… be more patient with you.” (You tease him for that.)

At midnight, he gives you a shy but heartfelt kiss and says, “I’m glad you’re in my life this year.”

If you convince him to watch fireworks, he’ll grumble about the noise but eventually relaxes when you lean against him.

BRUCE WAYNE ── .✦

Bruce makes New Year’s a classy affair. He takes you to a gala or hosts an elegant party at Wayne Manor.

He’s by your side the whole night, introducing you to important guests and making sure you feel like the most important person in the room.

At midnight, he’ll find a quiet corner to steal a private moment with you, giving you a soft, lingering kiss and whispering, “Thank you for making this year so much brighter.”

If you prefer something low-key, he’ll cancel all plans and spend the evening with you at home. You’ll share champagne by the fire, reminiscing about the past year.

He’s the type to surprise you with a meaningful gift at the stroke of midnight, like a bracelet engraved with the date or a key to the Manor if you don’t already live there.

[bunny-jpeg]

secret tattoos (vol. 1)

max verstappen

tags: smut/pwp, tattoos, established relationship, cowgirl position, tattoo worship, dirty talk

a/n: this was inspired by my want (need) for tattoos. but i think my gran would kill me if i came home with a tattoo so for now it'll just have to exist in my silly little fan fics <3

charles edition // lando edition // lewis edition // toto edition

you enjoyed your fair share of baggy t-shirts. your style was a lot more casual. usually an over-sized t-shirt with tighter pants. so max was used

it wasn't until he saw you undress for the first time, stripped away the layers of your clothes where he saw that on your upper bicep, near your shoulder. a tattoo, but not any tattoo.

a small one of nijntje

he stopped in his tracks as he watched you get the t-shirt over your head. he looked at you curiously when you turned to him and looked at him with confusion. you asked, "never seen breasts before, max?" you were in a sports bra.

"i didn't know you had a tattoo." he said as he pointed to it before he approached you. he reached out for your arm and looked at it. you looked down at the tattoo too.

"oh yeah, i got that like a week before we met." you laughed, "the little miffy." you turned your arms a little as you looked at it.

max smiled, "very cute. didn't know you liked nijntje." he looked at you while he still held your arm.

you replied, "i have for years. we used to have the books in the library at the elementary school i want to." your boyfriend of the part few months pulled you in a little closer. you held onto the front of his t-shirt and smiled, "it's how i learned where the netherlands was."

your chest pressed against his as he looked at you with a gentle smile. soon he kissed you on the lips and held you by the waist. there was a certain tenderness to it that made you blush a little harder.

when he pulled away you took him by the face and looked into his eyes, "i'm sorry i didn't tell you. i honestly thought you had already seen it."

"i would've remembered such a cute tattoo on such a cute girl." he chuckled before he kissed you once more. he then asked, "are there any other tattoos i should know about." he groped your ass and it made you moan. he chuckled lightly before he kissed you once more.

his hands got curious as they roamed your body. you moaned into the kiss before he broke it and led you to the bedroom, "i'm very curious about how you look. all of you." his hands were on the waistband of your yoga shorts.

you helped him out of his shirt and kissed the sharp line of his jaw then up his nose. he pulled the shorts down your thighs and you got them fully off. clothes were scattered everywhere by the time you two were nude and eventually you ended up straddling max's waist.

you braced your hands across his chest and rubbed yourself up against him. you were curious how come he hadn't seen the tattoo before, you two had sex.

"how did you not see the tattoo before?" you asked as you wet cunt rubbed against max's hard cock

he replied as he laced his fingers behind his head, "every time you had a shirt on. last time we did it you had my driver's jacket on. i guess i've never seen you without a shirt on."

you couldn't disagree with that, you were both often too wrapped up in lust to really focus on getting everything off. you tensed up and your toes curled as you seated yourself onto his cock. you could feel the shudder of want through your body as you started to move.

max tensed up for a moment as well and laid out under you as you rode him. you felt the heat in your gut as you moved, his cock hit against all the right areas. you felt the thump of pleasure in the drums of your ears as you moved against him.

"fuck." you panted as you moved against him. you could feel the rush of pleasure through your body as you rutted against him. you used his strong chest as leverage for your heavy thrusts. you could feel it all.

being with max was always pleasurable, he was a very giving lover. the type that some would fantasize about as if they didn't do that about him already. the heat bloomed in your cheeks when you caught max staring at you.

"you look nice with tattoos." he said as he reached for you and took a hold of your hips, "maybe you should get some more." his licked his lips, "something that reminds you of me." he said with heat in his tone.

you raked your nails down his chest and moved your hips, "oh yeah, like what?" you knew people had tattoos about your boyfriend. and you did think about it after you two got together.

"my number... a lion... my last name?"

you giggled, "your last name? i thought that was supposed to be on my passport, not on my skin." he felt him shuddered. you teased him with the idea of eventually getting married.

he groaned, "i'll think of something." his expression changed from the heightened pleasure as you continued to move against him. you took a hold of your shoulders and his grasp tightened on your hips. you two moved against one another and you felt the heated euphoria in your body. max felt the same as he rolled his hips against yours.

the idea of having max pick out a tattoo for you was hot. it was hot in a way that made your stomach jump as you continued to move against him. you felt the fire only grow in your stomach the more you fucked him. the more you near bounced on his cock with a sexual fever that you could deny yourself any further.

you were glad that max found your tattoo hot. that he thought the little stamp shaped tattoo with nijntje inside of it was beyond adorable. you raked his chest with your nails as the two of you moved. soon his chest was littered with marks fro your nails which only made him more aroused.

you two weren't going to last much longer. you felt the rush of pleasure through you as you picked up the pace. everything felt like fireworks in the back of your mind as you pace staggered. you continued to work him up and down until it all became too much. you panted, "i'm cumming." before you finished.

max felt a shudder of pleasure through his core as he held onto you a little tighter. he worked you up and down on his cock. you whined and your toes curled as you felt the heat in your gut grow. he knew he wasn't going to last much longer either. the two of you moved against one another as the pleasure took over him as well.

he gave it a few more thrusts before he spilled inside of you with a heated groan. you made him feel good all over in a way that made every nerve in his body feel alive in the best way possible.

you both slowed to a stop before you rested against max's chest for a moment before he wrapped his strong arms around you. you ended up on your side with max cuddled up against you, his lips against your skin.

"fuck, i want to pick your next tattoo." he said as he kissed you. you moaned into the kiss as he held you closer. with kisses like that you'd end up with a verstappen tattoo soon enough <3

nijntje tattoo

[peachfiend]

Coming from someone who's on the kind of other end of that spectrum, I definetly believe that

I was a kid with near textbook symptoms of adhd - i was the kid who WOULD NOT sit still in class, was bouncing off the walls like constantly, never had any real regard for my parents locations and would wander off all the time. However, I didnt get diagnosed until I was 15, because like most of my family is hyperactive as hell. I wondered why my mom never picked up on the fact that my brother is deeefinetly autistic, until I learned about my dad's obsessive interests and issues with interacting with others, and her brother's sensory issues and need for routine. Christmas is a time of strict routine family gatherings - parties with different sides of the family where we do the same things in the same place and eat the same meal every time.

My family is basically 100% neurodivergent, and to some extent we do mask (i cant count the number of times ive been socially exhausted at the table, but still - Ive almost always been able to eventually check out, and people understand. People understand when my dad and grandpa go to take a nap because they're done talking with people. Why my grandpa has to be dragged away from projects when its time for dinner because he's usually off doing some construction thing in the woods despite being in his late 70s.

I'm damn lucky. I know that. But i think it definetly goes to show that this shit runs in families

I see those "every family has that one cousin who's severely mentally ill", but considering how my mom once made me promise not to tell the extended family that I had attempted suicide a week before my cousin's confirmation party (like they literally picked me up from psych ward to attend it, I changed from hospital clothes to party clothes in a truck stop bathroom on our way there) because "it would just upset people for no reason", I'm starting to suspect that some families are 100% mentally ill but everyone's pressuring their kids to not show any symptoms in front of the big family in order to save face.

[quarterlifekitty]

heyy

okay i thought of this this morning and i can't get it off my mind(plus you're such an amazing writer, i just HAD to share.)

scent kink soap x reader when they're in the beginning stage of their relationship and kinks haven't really been discussed yet. reader is of course keeping herself super clean and borderline soapy smelling down there with all the body scrubs and such shes using(as anyone would when in a brand new relationship) and Johnny is starting to get fed up. everytime he goes down on reader all he can taste or smell is her fruity smelling soap and it frustrates him to all hell. i think it would eventually lead him to having to confess his nasty side to her.

We looooooooove the trope of being super insecure about something and finding someone who says “please stop hiding this because it’s my fetish and you fit into it perfectly”

I imagine in this scenario that you and Soap were friends before you started dating. Not so close as to know all of his kinks, but you’d been a little more unmade around him from time to time. No makeup, dressed in sleep clothes, needing to do laundry, probably could do with a shower. And he liked that. It was part of why he likes you— he liked your smell when you were like that.

So it’s a little agonizing for him when you tighten up your regiment when you start dating— not wanting to seem sloppy, downright terrified of being told you smell during an intimate moment. You keep yourself infuriatingly fresh, ironically, to please him. He wants to be smelling you, not whatever fruity lotion you’ve just applied. He misses it!!

And maybe you come back one day after a workout or hiking, something like that, and Johnny’s kissing you like he wants to start something. Because he does, he’s gagging for it. And you try to say hold on— let me shower first.

And he, like. Growls???? And blocks you from going to the bathroom. Telling you he wants you right here and now, exactly as you are. And eventually you’re a little desperate to get him to let you go, so you say something like “I probably, um, kinda smell— I was sweating a lot while I was out—“ and he can’t help but counter with “that’s exactly why I want ye right now, bonnie. Lemme smell her.”

And you’re a little horrified at how turned on it makes you when he says that— he’s talked dirty to you before, but it’s never come out of him sounding like that. So guttural and pent-up, so commanding. So what choice do you have but to let him have what he wants?

[slafastri28]

I Hope You're Doing Well - LN4

Note: I literally pulled this out my ass, but it just flowed!

Word Count: 2.2k (yes that is a lot for me) Warnings: Idk a lot of kissing at the end, little angst

“Hi Lando, it’s Y/N, I hope you’re doing well, I figure you are considering you just won the constructors championship, call me when you want to catch up, I miss you, okay bye,” you hung up the phone. You turned to face your parents along with Lando’s,

“Sorry kid,” your dad said rubbing your shoulder. The four sat you down in the middle of the F1 season telling you their concerns for their son, complaining of being homesick and lonely, which was not Lando at all. You had known each other as long as you could remember. Your parents all went to university together and forced you and Lando into a friendship like parents do with kids. It was awkward at first, but you were very social as a child, and hanging out with a boy a year older than you was cool to you, and if it made your parents happy you would do it. Despite being a year older than you, you were always the same height as Lando growing up. You fit perfectly in his kart, but he never trusted you to drive it. He was always on about traveling in Formula 1 eventually, and he was fine his first couple years but this year was different. 

“It’s alright, I wasn’t expecting an answer,” you gave the parents a half smile. You and Lando had lost touch after the first race of the year, after spending all of the winter together something shifted, but you didn’t know what you did to make him ignore you. You called him at the first sign of concern from his parents, but no answer, his parents even urged him to call you but they were rarely hearing from him as it was. Little did they know he would sit listening to the messages you left all the time thinking about home and being with you. 

Last winter your parents threw a big party, all their friends were there and of course Lando. There was no one else really your age there so you two find yourselves alone in your childhood bedroom sitting and talking. 

“I’m confident this year, we will perform better I know it,” he nodded.

“Well of course you will, and you are going to get that win, I just know it,” you smiled. 

“Yeah I hope, thanks for the belief,” he said.

“What are friends for,” that word friends hit Lando hard. He thought he had made so obvious these past few years about how he felt about you, but he was only a friend to you. The rest of that winter he was not his usual self leaving you questioning, he barely even said goodbye before he left for testing. You sat alone in your apartment finding yourself wanting to pick up the phone and ask him what you did wrong but you accepted he needed space. You soon felt something was missing as he didn’t call you after every race like he did last year, you missed seeing his smile, which you always thought was cute. Now without his constant presence, you discovered your true feelings for Lando. You sent him messages getting responses two days later, he wouldn’t take any of your calls due to being busy, but it was the time you would normally call last year, and you knew what was different. You began to leave messages when his parents went to see him. Each message started and ended the same way. 

“Hi Lando, it’s Y/N, I hope you’re doing well,” and ended with “I miss you,” or something along those lines. After his first win, you called,

“Hi Lan, it’s me, I hope you’re doing well, and celebrating this win, I’m so proud of you, I wish I could have been there, I miss you.” Your calls continued after each win he earned this year, each podium, each race he scored points, even in his worst races you still left messages, none being answered or getting a callback, making you long for him more. The season came to a close and there you were surrounded by the people near and dear to him leaving the same message again.

This winter he had not come back to visit his family yet, meaning you didn’t have that chance to see him in your time off from work. There you sat around the most important people in your life, as one was missing, holding back tears. His mother rushed out of the room picking up her phone and scolding her son in a message. You went to bed that night looking through the scrapbooks your Moms made of the two of you when you were younger, pictures of you hugging, your arms wrapped around each other's shoulders, pictures of you forcing a smile onto his face and him doing the same to you, so many memories. The books continued as the years went on, you at age 15 with a sign at one of his races and him hugging you after, your high school graduation, your college graduation, he was always there. Now this winter here you were alone a year from that night wishing he would come home. 

You woke up the next morning with a voice message lighting up your phone. You were stunned to see the contact picture, you and Lando as little kids. You put in your headphones and hesitated before pressing play on the message.

“Hi Y/N, it’s Lando, I hope you’re doing well, I am doing well, thank you for all your congratulations, I’m sorry I’ve ignored you this season, I will tell you more when I get home tomorrow, I miss you too, see you probably a few hours after you listen to this,” his voice was sincere and you could hear little cracks knowing he was upset. You could feel your heart racing, your mind was spiraling, what could he possibly have to say to me? This is going to be so awkward. What do I even say to him? Your thoughts were interrupted by a knock on your door. You quickly fixed your hair before pulling the blanket up over your pajamas hiding any possible embarrassment.

“Hey, sweetheart,” you heard your mom’s voice outside, “can I come in?” 

“Yes, come in,” you put the blanket down, “what is it?” Your Mom looked unusually happy for it being eight in the morning, she must have already had her coffee. 

“Lando’s flight arrives in an hour, and we are all going to surprise him at the airport, I know you’re upset with him, but please maybe it will change things,” her eyes were pleading, and after the message, you knew it would be the right thing to do. You hopped out of bed grabbing your morning coffee before changing. You conveniently lived close to the airport so an hour was plenty of time. As you stood with your two families in the terminal waiting you began to think again, you had seen him on social media, which was easier to bury your feelings, but in real life, you didn’t know what you would do. 

You watched the hallway, seeing several people go by, none were the faces you wanted to see. It had been a few more minutes since you were distracted by your phone, but you chose to look up at the perfect moment.

“Here he comes,” his mom exclaimed. You shoved your phone in your bag immediately, putting on a smile. He dropped his bag greeting first his parents, then your parents, and froze when he got to you. It was like time stopped, and no one else in the airport existed. He stretched out his arms as you rushed into them. He pulled you so close, you felt your feet lift off the ground.

“Oh Y/N, I’m so sorry, I’ve missed you so much,” he began to cry into you.

“Lando, Lando,” you sobbed feeling his warmth. The two of you pulled yourselves together as you made your way out to your cars.

“Why don’t you two ride together, you have some catching up to do,” his mom winked in your direction. The two of you did as you were told riding in the “kids' car” back to his parents’ home. You got home before them leaving you two some time after your silent car ride, both of you trying to keep it together. Once you got to their house, you made your way upstairs to his room. You watched him unpack his things before you noticed the stack of books next to the bed, the same ones you had looked at the night before. Something in your gut told you to open one, and it was right, it struck his attention.

“Wow look at us,” he said joining you sitting on his bed. 

“I know, we were so cute,” you laughed pointing at a picture of you two at Lando’s 9th birthday, you were blowing out his candle with him. 

“Still are,” he said softly, the look in his eyes showed he wanted to continue. You closed the book and took a good look at him, you saw pain in his body language, emotional pain. He was different than the Lando you saw the previous year. 

“Tell me what’s wrong,” you said resting your hand on his shoulder, “what did I do,” you thought back to last year knowing exactly what hurt him. 

“Y/N, hand me the book,” he pointed to the one from your high school years. You handed him the book and he began to frantically flip through it, finding one specific picture. You stared at it, then at him with a faint smile on your lips. 

“The dance,” you nodded looking ashamed. 

“That’s when it started Y/N, and ever since then I have loved you, I thought I made it obvious, but you only saw me as a friend, I couldn’t take it anymore, I was hurt, and didn’t want to waste my time,” his eyes stayed locked on the book. 

“Lan, I feel the same, it took me not having you present constantly to finally realize I have loved you,” you smiled. His eyes picked up from the book,

“All those messages were cries for you to call me so we could have this conversation, I started to think you moved on after the constant lack of response,” you sighed.

“I should have answered all those calls, I should have called back, I should have said something-” you cut him off pressing a kiss to his lips. His hands quickly found your face as yours found his hair, running your fingers through his curls. You both gasped for air after that, your foreheads resting against each other’s. Your hands moved slowly from his hair to his hands which remained on your face. He let go interlocking his fingers with yours as your hands moved to your lap.

“This, this is how it was meant to be,” he smiled, before kissing you once more. 

“So should we tell our parents, who definitely have their suspicions already,” you laughed. 

“Not yet,” he said laying down in his bed and pulling you along with him. You two lay there your head on his chest with your hands locked over your heart. You were at full joy in the moment, a moment that you didn’t know you needed until now. You flipped over laying on top of him. 

“So despite my horrible dancing that night, that’s when you knew,” you laughed running your fingers through his hair again. 

“I wasn’t much better,” he laughed, “despite your clumsiness, you still were beautiful,” he said grinning. You pressed another kiss to his lips as his arms found your back pulling you in tighter. You two continued, intensifying the kiss as you both lay now on your sides. His lips moved from your face, down to your jaw and eventually reached your neck, letting you sigh.

“Kids dinner!” your mom called from outside the door. Lando continued moving back up to your lips. 

“Lan,” you repeated whispering, pushing him away, “come on,” you smiled. 

“Just a few more,” he begged.

“Later,” your eyes showed promise. You fixed your hair in his full-length mirror where he stood behind you wrapping his arms around your shoulders.

“Come on,” you laughed opening the door. You two walked hand in hand downstairs meeting your families in the kitchen. They all turned to face the two of you standing there with intertwined fingers, both with red cheeks. The Dads gave nods of approval to Lando and the Moms squealed gesturing for you to both sit.

“Finally,” his mom clapped as you sat at the table.

“Come on give us a little kiss,” your mom added on. The Dads rolled their eyes but still watched. Lando pulled you in by your neck pressing a soft kiss to your lips. You heard your Dad’s whistle, you shot him a glare after the kiss ended. It was just like old times in the winter when you would have dinners, the conversation flowed naturally as you felt Lando’s smile beaming on his face. This was secretly what you always desired. 

[yuurei20]

Is sebek racist? Only a fun question, do not take seriously

Hello hello! Thank you so much for this question, I have been so excited to discuss Sebek's speech patterns since Book 7 reached EN~🥳

Silver says outright that Sebek can be prejudiced at times and Lilia states in the beginning of Book 7 that Sebek is the very picture of his grandfather, from the way he talks to the way he thinks.

We as the players do not realize how literally he means this comment until later in Book 7 when we meet Baul Zigvolt and realize that their speech patterns have a lot in common:

While maybe difficult to put across in the English-language adaptation of the game, Sebek has always spoken very old fashioned.

(Ace: "Okay grandpa, you gonna take her for a buggy ride next?")

He will occasionally say "this Sebek" in reference to himself, which Baul also does. (They are also both canonically quite loud, possibly another trait that Sebek adopted from Baul).

Sebek will also infamously refer to others using the 貴様 form of "you," which doesn't really exist outside of fiction and is such a rude form that it is practically a swear word. More here ->

Sebek uses it constantly, in everyday conversation.

And see Baul using it in Book 7 just all the time, with everyone except his superiors such as Lilia and Maleanor (there is even a time he becomes very angry and uses it with the senate).

Also like Baul, Sebek will switch to the extremely old-fashioned and formal "kiden" to refer to people who have impressed him. More here ->

Sebek's battle cry of "I'll swallow you whole" even seems to come from Baul!

And another thing Baul did in Book 7: refer to Sebek as human rather than by his name until Sebek earned his respect, which we have also seen happen between Sebek and Azul.

(In a Nightmare Before Christmas voiceline Sebek refers to Zero as a ghost and then a dog, eventually settling on his name, while he refers to Jack Skellington as "Bones." Is Sebek not just calling out humans, but referring to everyone by what they are rather than who they are?*)

(Does he simply yell human more than "dog," "ghost," etc., because humans are the species we have seen him interact with the most? It was confirmed in the novels that mermaids, beast-people, etc., are all referred to as "human" within the Twst universe, which has yet to be confirmed by the game but also has yet to be disproved.)

Sebek also refers to Grim as "dire beast."

There is a significant moment where he shifts to calling both Grim and the prefect by their names in Book 7, which the prefect even has the option of acknowledging aloud: "Whoa, you called me by my name?"

In a Harveston sub-plot Sebek even refuses to use an honorific with Epel's grandmother Marja until she proves herself worth of his respect.

Silver calls Sebek out on his inappropriate use of "kisama," while both Riddle and Sebek scold him for referring to people as "humans."

Whereas Epel's rude speech patterns can be explained by how it is a part of the dialect he was raised to speak and therefore he doesn't know any better (more here ->) Sebek is consciously and intentionally speaking down to others until they prove themselves worthy--is this something he learned from Baul?

Sebek says that Baul provided him with "an enriching education," but what exactly did that education entail?

Lilia expresses frustration with Sebek's inability to adapt to society, but canonically Sebek has only been outside of Briar Valley for 6 months, while he's been emulating his grandfather for 16 years.

Lilia says that Sebek has always been close to Baul and Jamil has a line of, "When admiration goes too far, the consequences can be dire."

I always assumed this was meant to be about Malleus, and while it still might be, is it also a reference to Sebek's devoted imitation of his beloved grandfather?

And we can go even deeper if we want, though this goes into theoretical territory:

Sebek was born after Briarland had already fallen to its invaders, but he was raised in a community where the war is still living memory.

Baul fought to protect his home against those who overran the land, exploited its resources, labeled him a monster, and drove them all into a fraction of their former territory.

He remembers what Briarland was before it the invasion, he fought to save it, he failed, and he survived to help put what was left of the country back together.

And then his daughter married someone who is potentially a direct descendent of the very invaders who had spent years killing anyone who looked like him and destroying everything he'd known (with even his native language possibly disappearing: Sebek says that speakers are "somewhat rare" in modern day, as the fae have generally adopted Common as their language of choice).

Sebek: "This has been weighing on me ever since we entered Lilia's dream. That my own father's distant ancestors may very well have been involved in all this too..."

And due to the long lifespans of the fae he isn't the only one with trauma and loss that feels both recent and personal.

Sebek and his siblings were not raised amongst the offspring of those who survived the war but the literal survivors themselves, unlike the humans to whom the wars are ancient history.

Sebek: "You must remember: from Lilia, Grandfather, and Malleus's perspectives...the Dawn Knight is not likely someone they consider to belong to the 'distant past.'"

While not confirmed in-game, it is not too wild to imagine that Sebek has chosen to ally himself with the survivors rather the invaders, and especially when he has been raised to idolize Malleus, whose own mother they killed not very long ago by fae standards.

While humans have been reproducing and dying at such a rapid pace that the current generation might not know that dragons are real, the same fae that managed to escape the slaughter are still there, and are now being met with the people born of those who stole their country but to whom there doesn't seem to be much significance to it all beyond a chapter in a history book.

And that might all be very well tied up in Sebek's use of "human"! (Disclaimer: this is all just a personal analysis and one of many possible explanations!)

Not only does it seem to be a speech pattern that Sebek has adopted directly from the grandfather he adores (and from Lilia and Malleus, who are also known to refer to non-fae as "humans" and whom he idolizes), but it may also be a reminder both to himself and to everyone around that while he may be two worlds in one, he does not approve of those that tore apart the community he grew up in, lest someone wrongfully assume that he agrees with the actions of his human ancestors.

Which would make it a form of self-preservation while growing up in a predominantly fae area.

Sebek's speech patterns and behaviors might be serving as a way for him to assert his loyalty to the fae, the people whom he admires, identifies with and was raised by, and distance himself from the humans who tried to eradicate them.

(If Sebek’s mother brought his father to Briar Valley from somewhere else (possibly Sunset Savanna) as has been implied, it’s possible Sebek’s human lineage isn’t tied to the invaders at all, but this is still vague.)

*Sebek refers to Sally as "Sally" throughout the Halloween event, using her name without an honorific but at least using it, much like he did with Marja. He also chastises Trey for failing to offer his hand to Sally and help her to her feet when she falls to the ground. Does Sebek possibly have a chivalrous side, not dissimilar to Leona? Memo: must check.

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

Happily Ever After

Summary: After losing the reader, Dean’s moved on with his life and made a home for himself with his new family so he’s more than surprised when he finds her in his house one night...

Pairing: Dean x reader

Word Count: 1,200ish

Warnings: language, mention of death

A/N: Enjoy!

____

“Hey,” you said, Dean freezing from where he stood in the kitchen. He turned around slowly, a formula bottle in one hand, a rag over his shoulder. “Been a hot minute. You uh, you look good. I like the beard.”

“Thanks. You’re dead,” he said. He dropped the bottle on the counter, grabbing a knife from the butcher block. You held up your hands, Dean over and on top of you, pushing you back against the wall. “Do not move.”

He sliced your arm and pulled you over to a cabinet, taking out a spray bottle and dousing your arm. He stared at you when nothing happened and suddenly he was picking you up into a squeezing hug. You laughed and he set you down, giving you a kiss.

“Daddy, Emily is crying,” said a little girl around four years old as she entered the kitchen. You both turned, Dean giving her a smile. 

“Okay, Piper,” said Dean. “Let’s get you back in bed.”

“Is that Y/N?” she asked as she looked at you. “I thought Daddy said you died.”

“Oh, no. You must have been confused,” said Dean, looking over to you when you heard a cry upstairs. “Y/N was away working was all. I’ll be right back.”

“So, you’re Piper?” you asked, the girl nodding and fixing her beer under her arm. “It’s pretty late. You want to head to bed?”

“You should hug daddy. He missed you,” she said.

“As soon as you’re in bed and Emily is taken care of, that is exactly what I’m gonna do,” you said.

“Okay. You carry me up?” she asked. You smiled and bent down, settling her on your hip. She put her head on your shoulder and was out like a light. You walked up the stairs, Dean rocking a baby in his arms in the hallway. He nodded towards a room and you put Piper to bed in it, Dean bouncing the baby gently back into the room across the hall. 

“She’s adorable,” you whispered.

“Want to hold her?” asked Dean, already putting her in your arms. She cooed and popped open and eye at you, quickly lolling her head back and snoring quietly. “Oh she’s smitten with you.”

You stared and he showed you how to put her down without waking her, Dean guiding you back down the hall and into a master bedroom.

“You really did it, went through with the adoption,” you said.

“It was our plan. I really wanted to be alone and miserable you know. I stayed at the bunker for a while,” he said. “Sam and Eileen were great. I just...I wanted you back but I promised I wouldn’t do something stupid so I didn’t. So I got angry and upset for a while. Drove around, wanted to get drunk, wanted to forget. Couldn’t do it though. I just kept hearing, you’re not supposed to drink when you’re upset. Your voice was in my head. Eventually, the pain faded some and I remember how we talked about a life after hunting. I went in looking for a baby when I found the girls.”

“Why’d you pick them?” you asked, sitting down on the bed.

“Parents died in a fire. Piper ran in and yelled at me that I couldn’t take her sister away from her. I could relate,” he chuckled. You patted the bed and he sat beside you, turning his head. “How are you here?”

“I woke up in a box and fell down to the floor. I didn’t take you for the fancy mausoleum type,” you said.

“I wanted someplace I could go talk to you,” he said. “Did you ever...hear anything when I was there?”

“I think so. It feels like a memory I can’t grab though. It’s like, I died at that cemetery and then I woke up. Everything’s okay down here, right?”

“As far as I know,” he said. “You just woke up out of the blue?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe you did something. I went to the bunker and then I came straight here,” you said.

“Sweetheart, I wanted to, I did. But I didn’t do this,” he said.

“I did,” said a voice out of the blue. You jumped and saw Adam, narrowing your eyes. “Michael at the moment.”

“You mean the dick,” you said.

“Once again, that was the other Michael that was a dick to you,” he sighed.

“You’re still a dick,” you mumbled.

“This dick just brought you back to life so you could say thanks,” he said.

“Why would you do that?” asked Dean.

“Because I’m a sweetheart underneath it all,” said Michael. Dean rolled his eyes and Michael shrugged. “Your kids are gonna be important. They need a mother.”

“I thought the world was safe,” you said.

“It is. Your daughters are going to be involved in something...global, is all. It’s important that they have two parents as the grow. They’ll be important to society.”

“If you hurt my kids, I swear-” said Dean, Michael holding up a hand.

“You gotta learn to look on the bright side, buddy. Not everything is bad,” said Michael. “If you want to handle it on your own, I can take her back.”

“No!” you both said, Michael nodding.

“That’s what I thought. Nothing nefarious so scooch along,” said Michael before he disappeared.

“What’s going to happen you think?” you asked. 

“No idea,” said Dean. “It doesn’t sound like it’ll be bad. Maybe they’ll do something good?”

“I sure hope so,” you said. “Either way I’m glad I’m back.”

“Me too. Can I get you anything?” he asked, a soft smile playing on his lips.

“Can I take a shower? I feel gross,” you said.

“Of course. Right in there,” he said, pointing at a door.

“Do you want to join me? Not like that, just…” you said. He stood and guided you into the bathroom, flicking on the light. “Dean Winchester. Who knew you had some interior designer in you.”

“I know you wanted a bathroom like this. Wait til you see the house in the day. It’s what we always talked about.”

“I can’t wait, Winchester.”

“Me either, Winchester.”

Twenty minutes later you were curled up in the bed wearing Dean’s shirt, Dean tucked in close. You smiled and shut your eyes, Dean grabbing on a little hard before letting out a quiet breath.

“Not going anywhere, Dean,” you said.

“You promise?”

“I promise, Dean.”

“Sure you still want me?”

“I love you, you idiot. Yeah, I still want you.”

“Good,” he chuckled. “Sweetheart?”

“Yeah?”

“Love you,” he said, kissing your cheek.

“Love you too, De.”

_____

[luveline]

𝐰𝐲𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥

part one | chapter list

new visitors in Jackson inspire strong feelings, in both you and Joel. 

cw: super protective joel, all cards on the table slow burn, complicated everything, eventual scary joel, more cw to be added later

જ⁀➴　

The Tipsy Bison is intimate in its capacity. It’s not unlikely to let yourself in and be able to greet each person inside with familiarity —there’s Jesse at the bar talking to Astrid; there’s Eugene at the back with a battered old book; there’s Joel Miller and his rambunctious, not-so-little charge sharing a sandwich. You’re used to it. You’ve come to expect to see your community and nobody else, even the vaguely less familiar. 

S’why tonight sucks. 

“Is this really�� you know, is this a good idea?” 

Jesse is younger than you, but he’s nice enough. He can see you’re not comfortable in the crowd and he’s cordoned you off. “Apparently. Maria trusts him.” 

‘Him’ being Jonathan, a travelling tradesman from a small community of only twelve people. Five men, four women, three children. Maria knew the leader from a time before Jackson, and she trusts him enough to give him the secret of Jackson, which is a big deal. 

The idea of losing what you have here makes you feel nauseous. You have to trust Maria, is all, because she wouldn’t wanna lose it either. 

“Do we…” You squeeze your hands nervously without finishing Joel’s sentence. 

Jesse frowns at you. “Why don’t you go sit with Mr. Miller, if you’re so freaked?” 

Mr. Miller is his teasing. Somehow, someway, one of the kids (who don’t seem to be kids anymore) figured you out. It’s not a big deal, you’re not sure you’d even go so far as to call it a crush. It’s an appreciation. You like Joel. Like his nose, his brown eyes, his hands. You like how he stands against doorways and how sometimes, late at night, you’ll walk home and see him sitting on the porch with a candle at his feet. Ellie with him, alone, but always with a dinky acoustic guitar, strumming away quietly, picking at strings. He must learn by ear. You like the way he speaks to people. 

Don’t worry, he says, a smidge pissed. Or, genuine, Could you move, honey? 

That’s how you got caught. Joel called you ‘honey’ without meaning anything by it and you must’ve looked a shade too close to pleased. By the next day, Ellie herself was sidling up to you outside the stables to ask about your lil ole crush. “I can make myself scarce,” she’d said, rolling the words around in a way that hinted at their pre-rehearsal, even as she laughed. “Just tell me when.” 

You look down at your glass of gin. “What business do I have sitting with Joel Miller?” you ask lightly.

You’re not trying to convince Jesse —again, the kids know. You don’t care, so long as they keep it to themselves. Troubling Joel is the last thing you wanna do. He looks tired tonight. Long trip out with Tommy, maybe, or on pins like everybody else now that the bar is full of strangers. 

Said strangers give a raucous bubble of laughter. The electricity is a marvel, the booze a delight, and they sit entranced by the small roller TV, warmed by old malt whisky and the space heater under their table. A fire rips in the kitchen, crackling, and it’s enough to make you flinch. 

“I think I’m gonna head home,” you tell Jesse, not loving the sympathy lining his eyes and brows. 

“Don’t be a coward.” He’s joking, and he softens as he adds, “If that’ll make you feel better, sure. Go home.” 

“What’s that mean?” 

He shrugs. “Seriously. If you can’t handle it, don’t suffer.” 

It’s not your dream to spend the evening with the young ones, anyhow. You’d hoped Tommy would be sitting with Joel, ‘cos Tommy tries to set Joel up every now and then with the available ladies of the commune. And you, pretending it’s a joke you’re in on and not a real reason to sit, always laugh and sit and try your best to flirt, just a little. Joel was frosty to begin with, kinder now. Whenever he sees Tommy beckoning you over, you can’t help thinking that he’s relieved it’s you sitting down. His shoulders relax. 

You give him a last look, not longing but getting there. He’s nursing a dark glass sitting beside the sandy-haired man in charge of the laundromat. Keith, maybe. They’re not talking, frowning in sync as the table of tradesmen once again reaches a fever pitch. 

He turns to you, sensing your gaze. You offer an uneasy smile. Hadn’t meant to. The group of outsiders is making you feel sick. 

His frown stays in place, but his eyes change. They don’t soften, but they shift. His hand uncurls from his glass. 

“Hi.”

You feel your eyes move of their own accord as a man steps in front of your view. The lightbulb by the door flickers. You blink at this new stranger. 

He’s handsome, almost Clooney-like, Thin Red Line but gruff. He has a few strands of salt in his beard, but he’s not much older than you are, you’d wager. 

“Hey,” you say, a question mark suggested at the end. 

“I’m Jamie.” 

“Hi, Jamie.” 

He smiles lightly. “This is usually where you give your own name.” 

You think about turning then and there, a thread of you that knows you don’t have to go through anything that makes you uncomfortable, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. You give him your name against your wants, and he asks if he can buy you a drink. 

“It’s a commune,” you say, not sure if he’s kidding. “Drinks are free, so long as you don’t jerk Seth around.” 

“Right, of course they are. It’s a shame, I wouldn’t have minded.” 

You know this is where you’re supposed to say something obligingly forgiving: It’s okay, do you wanna sit down? But you’d rather not. 

It’s not like he really likes you. Clean intimacy is hard to come by. 

“Have you lived here long?” he asks. 

“Uh, couple years. Great years.” Should you try to sell it? You could spin a lie. Jackson is the worst and nobody should ever want to raid it. “Living in a commune is the hard part, there’s not much time to rest.” 

“Seems alright now.” 

He’s right. The evening’s are often your own to do as you like. “Not too bad,” you agree quietly. 

Jamie has cloudy blue eyes, light in the light and dark in the dark. He turns his head and seems fiercer than you’d expected him to be. Your mind is playing childish tricks. You’re too old for monsters, but he seems off, then. 

“I’m going home now. Nice to meet you,” you say. 

He frowns. It’s nothing like Joel’s. “Okay, yeah. Have a good night, sweetheart.” 

You rush out of the double doors of the Bison and skirt around the wall until you’re hidden. Jackson’s hardly ever dark, but there are shadows to retreat to when you’re not feeling right. You press yourself into an alcove, feel the chill of the stone behind you seeping into your back like water, frozen air kissing your cheeks. The cold isn’t in the wind, it’s everywhere, and after half a minute your nose feels like it’s hurting. A couple seconds later and the door is whipping open. 

Joel cuts right down the path toward your shared street. 

You rush after him, your shoes packing snow, alerting him to another presence. 

“Oh,” he says, whipping his head to yours. “What’re you doing standing out here?” 

“Nothing– wanted some air. You going home?” You wipe your cheek. “Can I walk with you?” 

“Hey, are you okay?” 

You sniffle. The change in temperature does it to you every time. Any transition from warm to cold makes your nose run like a faucet. “I’m tired.” 

Joel’s eyes dart inside. “What did that jackass want?” 

“Nothing. Asking me for a drink or something, I don’t know. I told him Seth and Cory make them.” You sniffle again, self-conscious as you rub your wet nose. 

“He upset you?” 

“No, no, it’s real cold, that’s all,” you rush out, trekking a bump of snow to stand beside him, the reality of his face closer and finer. You can feel the scratch of his scruff under your fingers without touching it. He has a scar on the left side of his cheek still red with newness. “How’d you get that?” You point to your own. 

“Pulled a nail out of a doorframe, I was standing too close.” 

“Did it hurt?” 

“Did it hurt?” he asks.

“Yeah.” 

“No, it’s hardly a scratch. What about you? He hurt you?” 

“Jamie?” 

“I don’t know his name. Did he?” 

You shake your head. Joel’s like this. He doesn’t smile for nothing, but he’s the first one to offer you a hand if you fall on your ass. ”Didn’t so much as touch me.” 

“So why’re you crying?” he asks. 

You’re lost. 

“If he touched you, said something to you, anything, I’ll take care of it,” he says firmly. “They aren’t here to do whatever they want, nobody gets to upset you, not here.” 

You wipe your eyes again. The cold, you think, is making you glossy-eyed and sad. Joel must’ve caught you looking earlier and figured you were asking for help. “You came out here looking for me?” you ask.

“You didn’t look happy.” 

“I’m not. I don’t like new people. Don’t like what might happen if they won’t keep Jackson a secret.” 

“Nobody’s gonna get you in here, honey.” He ducks his head, his hand judging your arm. “Alright?” Less sure of himself, he clasps your elbow. “Alright?” he asks again. 

“I’m okay. It’s just cold.”

“Warm ya’ up,” he mumbles, letting his hand slide behind your back. “Head home and stoke a fire, that’s what we’re gonna do.” 

“You don’t have to, Joel. I’m really fine, I am, it’s the sniffles–”

“‘M gonna take you home,” he says surely. “I’ll feel better if I can keep an eye on you now, ‘til you’re feeling alright.” 

You don’t know what to say, so you don’t say anything at all as he leads you down the snow-packed road from the Tipsy Bison to the neighbourhood street. In five minutes you’re at his door, he’s pushing it open, shouting down into the garage to see if Ellie’s home. He’s taking off his coat and tossing it over the bannister, hands open, expecting you to do the same. 

You shrug out of it and pass it over. He puts it with a hell of a lot more care beside his own. 

“C’mon,” he says quietly, “this way.” 

He stokes the embers in the fireplace. Throws a couple of logs in when they start to glow. Adds some scrap paper, a conservative splash of fire starter. The heat starts to nip your fingers, like a painful pinging you can’t shake. 

“What?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at your shaking hands. 

“Just hurting.” 

“Your hands?” He takes your wrists into his hands and holds the bottoms of your hands to his chest. “You gotta be careful. Frostbite don’t take long to set in.” 

“I don’t have frostbite, it’s ’cos it’s warm now, it’s– it’s like getting in the bath too soon.” 

Joel’s hardened, sure. But there isn’t one person living in Jackson now who doesn’t have at least one good thing to say about him. Joel fixed my front door, found my bike a new tire, took my kid for an hour when I felt like I was gonna explode.Youve heard the bad with the good, whispers of what he did before he got to Jackson, and the rumour of what he did after. Thing is, you can see past it. You’ve done cruel shit too. 

He doesn’t feel cruel as he rubs your fingers back to life. “What do you mean? Getting in the bath too soon?” he asks quietly.

“When it’s cold, and it’s always cold here, and I get into the bathtub as soon as I get home from the stables, it makes my hands do what they’re doing now…” You shudder as he presses them flat to his chest and covers them. “You’re gonna make it worse,” you murmur, tepid teasing. 

“The quicker you warm up, the quicker it goes away,” he says. He’s smiling, and his voice is all full of something sweet, like it’s rolling around in his mouth before he uses it. 

“I really don’t like these new people.” 

“Yeah, me neither. They won’t be here long, couple more days.” 

“That Jamie guy… I don’t know, guess I wasn’t as nice to him as I should’ve been, he didn’t want anything. Well–”

“He wanted something.” 

“I know that, but– it’s not a crime, is it? Doesn’t everybody want that?” 

“He’d be blind if he didn’t want it with you, honey,” Joel says. 

There’s that word again, tacked at the end of an implication that makes you go white hot. 

For once, he notices your reaction. “Shit,” he says, “sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t mean it like that. You’re beautiful.” He shakes his head. “Shit,” he says under his breath. 

“…Thank you, Joel.” He’s holding you awfully tight, really, saying this stuff. You’re grown. You know what it means; can’t pretend it away, can’t will or while it into an insecure maybe. He can’t want me, I’m me. But Joel wouldn’t do this to you if he didn’t feel something for you, even if all that something is is just thinking you’re beautiful. “I think you’re handsome, too, you know.” 

He transfers both of your hands to one of his, the other coming up behind his neck in a show of bashfulness you aren’t sure is real or not. “Ellie mighta let something slip about that.” 

“What sort of something?” 

“Said you might like me. You know.” 

What were you thinking, back at the Bison? It’s not a crush, it’s worse, you’re totally fucked because he’s looking at you like he wants to lean in and kiss you, and he’s solid enough to do it, to take you by the shoulders and tip your head to the side with a nudge of his nicely shaped nose, he could kiss you sick. 

Joel Miller, you think, frowning at him softly, please don’t mess me up. 

“Took you long enough to find out,” you say. 

“You think I didn’t notice? I was waiting on you to come clean.” 

“And this has nothing to do with Jamie?” you ask, heart popping under your ribs in a panic that you might actually like feeling. 

“Of course it has to do with Jamie, j’s not all of it.” He ducks his gaze. “I don’t like seeing you like that, all antsy, and I really don’t like seeing you crying.” 

“I wasn’t crying,” you say with a soft laugh, sure you’re about to be kissed, “I was cold.” 

He lets go of your hand and begins rubbing twin lines up and down your arms. “Shit,” he says, potty mouth, “I was doing something about that. Let me get you a blanket. I got a huge one up in the bedroom, you stay here.” 

Leaving you blinking next to the crackling fire. Unkissed, and without an invitation. 

“You want a cup of coffee?” he calls from the stairs, looking down at you, wearing an expression you can’t decipher. “You go on and help yourself, honey.” 

You nod at him until he carries on upstairs. Coffee is the last thing on your mind, but you find your way into Joel’s shining kitchen and warm the coffee pot, pouring a brew in a ceramic mug, the scratch-owl drawn on its side bumpy to the touch.

You get to thinking. You’d wanted to be kissed, but what if Joel actually kisses you, big hands on your face, weight between your legs? He’s bringing down that big blanket to cover you up, both of you, ‘cos even with the fire it’s too cold to get undressed without one–

“You alright?” Joel asks when he returns, a throw blanket slung over his shoulder. “You look jittery.” 

You swallow roughly and wave a shy hand. Just the coffee, you explain. 

[amourquinn]

( short fic ) 𝐀𝐒 𝐈𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐒

pairing : quinn x fem!reader wc. 1.3k

genre : fluff and a little bit of angst, childhood friends to lovers no warnings

summary : you and quinn reconnect after years of silence during a summer evening at his family’s house, navigating awkwardness and unresolved feelings…

the warm summer air was alive with the sound of cicadas and the faint hum of conversation drifting through the hughes’ backyard. the evening sun cast a golden glow over the lake behind their house, and the familiar scent of grilled food lingered in the air. it had been years since you’d set foot here, but the nostalgia hit you like a wave.

you tugged nervously at the hem of your sundress, watching as your parents exchanged pleasantries with jim and ellen hughes. they were as welcoming as ever, their smiles warm and genuine as they ushered everyone into the house.

and then you saw him.

quinn.

his brown hair was slightly tousled, and his quiet demeanor hadn’t changed much. but the boy you once knew had grown up. he stood a few feet away, talking to his brothers, his posture slightly stiff when his eyes flickered to you. you felt a pang in your chest as memories of your childhood friendship came rushing back—bike rides, movie marathons, and endless summer days spent together.

but those days felt like a lifetime ago.

you hadn’t spoken in years, not since life pulled you in different directions. he went off to chase his hockey dreams, and you stayed behind, caught up in your own world. the distance had been unintentional at first, but eventually, it became the norm.

quinn’s mom, ellen, had invited you and your parents over for dinner, much to your surprise. she’d been adamant, saying how much she missed your family and how wonderful it would be to “reconnect”.

“y/n!” ellen’s voice broke through your thoughts. “it’s so good to see you, sweetheart.”

you smiled and gave her a quick hug, trying to shake off the awkwardness.

“it’s good to see you too, mrs. hughes.”

her gaze darted between you and quinn. “you and quinn used to be inseparable. you’ll have to catch up tonight!”

you glanced at quinn, who gave you a small, polite smile before quickly turning back to his brothers.

yeah, this was going to be awkward.

⋆˙⟡

dinner was a mix of laughter and awkward silences. jack and luke tried their best to fill the gaps, cracking jokes and sharing stories, but you couldn’t ignore the tension between you and quinn. he was polite but distant, and you found yourself retreating into your shell.

after dinner, everyone dispersed—jack and luke headed into town, your parents stayed inside with jim and ellen, and you found yourself wandering toward the lake. the water was calm, reflecting the pink and orange hues of the setting sun.

“hey.”

you turned to see quinn standing a few feet away, his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts.

“hey,” you replied softly.

for a moment, neither of you spoke. the only sound was the gentle lapping of the water against the shore.

“mind if i join you?” he asked.

“sure.”

he stepped closer, standing beside you as you both stared out at the lake. the silence between you was heavy, but it wasn’t unbearable.

“i didn’t think you’d come tonight,” he admitted after a while.

you glanced at him. “why not?”

he shrugged, his gaze fixed on the water. “it’s been a long time. i figured… i don’t know, maybe you wouldn’t want to see me.”

his honesty caught you off guard. “i thought the same about you,” you admitted.

he looked at you then, his blue eyes searching yours. “i didn’t mean for us to stop talking, you know. life just… got in the way.”

you nodded. “yeah. same here.”

another silence settled over you, but this time it felt lighter.

“do you remember what we used to do down here?” he asked, a small smile tugging at his lips.

you couldn’t help but smile back. “skipping rocks?”

“exactly.”

without another word, he bent down and picked up a flat, smooth stone, testing its weight in his hand before flicking it across the water. it skipped four times before sinking.

“not bad,” you teased, crouching down to find your own stone.

you took your time choosing the perfect one, then threw it with practiced precision. it skipped five times before disappearing beneath the surface.

“show-off,” quinn muttered, but there was a playful glint in his eyes.

for the next few minutes, you fell into an easy rhythm, laughing and teasing each other as you tried to outdo one another. it felt like old times, as if the years of distance between you had melted away.

when you finally ran out of good skipping stones, you both sat down on the dock, your legs dangling over the edge. the sky had darkened, and the stars began to emerge, twinkling against the velvety blackness.

“it’s beautiful out here,” you said, leaning back on your hands.

“yeah, it is,” he replied, his voice soft.

he hesitated, as if debating whether to say what was on his mind. finally, he sighed and looked away, focusing on the rippling water.

“i’ve been thinking about this for years,” he began. “why we stopped talking. why i let it happen. i think… i was scared.”

“scared?” you echoed, your brows furrowing.

he nodded, his jaw tightening. “when i left for vancouver, i told myself i’d keep in touch with you. but then hockey got busy, everything got busy, and every time i thought about reaching out… i felt like i was too far removed from your life. like i didn’t belong in it anymore.”

your chest ached at his words. “quinn, you always belonged in my life. you’re the one who decided you didn’t.”

he winced, but he didn’t deny it. “i know. and i’m sorry. it wasn’t just hockey, though. i think… i was afraid you didn’t need me anymore. you seemed so happy, so independent. and me? i was just trying to keep my head above water, trying to live up to everyone’s expectations. it felt easier to let the distance grow than risk finding out i wasn’t as important to you as you were to me.”

you stared at him, your heart breaking for the boy you once knew and the man sitting in front of you now. “quinn, i thought the same thing about you. i figured you had this incredible life and i’d just be… a distraction. someone from your past you didn’t have room for anymore.”

he turned to face you fully, his blue eyes filled with regret. “you were never just someone from my past, y/n. you were… everything. you still are.”

tears pricked your eyes, but you blinked them away. “then why didn’t you fight for this? for us?”

he swallowed hard, his voice cracking as he replied, “because i didn’t think i deserved it.”

your breath hitched, and you reached out to take his hand in yours. “you deserved it. you deserved everything. i wish you’d just let me be there for you.”

“i’m trying now,” he said softly. “i don’t want to mess this up again.”

“you won’t,” you promised, your voice steady despite the lump in your throat.

he leaned in then, his movements slow and deliberate, giving you plenty of time to pull away. but you didn’t. instead, you closed the gap, your lips meeting his in a gentle, lingering kiss.

it was soft and sweet, filled with all the unspoken words and emotions you’d both kept buried for years.

when you finally pulled away, his forehead rested against yours, his breath warm against your skin.

“is this okay?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

you smiled, your heart swelling with a mix of relief and happiness. “more than okay.”

you stayed there for a while, holding hands and sharing quiet kisses under the starry sky, as if no time had passed at all. it was as if the universe had given you a second chance, and you weren’t going to waste it.

some things were worth waiting for.

© amourquinn

[gffa]

I'm still trying to navigate my way through the absolute avalanche of Arcane fic, but I am here to scream at everyone about the fics I've loved so far and try to drag a few more of you down into this hellpit of feelings with me. It's nice down here, I promise! Totally normal and with soooo many hinges, nothing off a single hinge here!

JAYVIK RECS:

✦ To love is to risk the soul's quiet by Disguised_Bird, jayce/viktor, NSFW, 32.7k     When an anomaly suddenly transports an older, scarred version of Jayce into the Jayce of Viktor's timeline, the two must navigate the strange collision of past and future while grappling with feelings neither fully understands. As they work late into the night to find a way to send Jayce back, tension turns into intimacy, pushing Viktor to confront vulnerabilities he has spent a lifetime burying.

✦ Say My Name by Acryllic, jayce/viktor, NSFW, eventually post-canon, 77.2k wip     “Tell me now if you don’t want this.” He stroked Viktor’s bottom lip with his thumb, “Keep saying my name if you do.”

✦ This ain't goodbye no more, it just began by SirCumference, jayce/viktor, NSFW, 7.1k     After he and Viktor save the world, Jayce wakes up in his old bed on the day it all started. Things are different, this time.

✦ first times, second goodbyes by tragicperformer, jayce/viktor, NSFW, post-canon, 1.6k     “What do you mean pull out?” He teases, the corners of his lips quirking up into a stupid, dopey grin. “I have separation anxiety.” “Yes, I know,” Viktor intones. “We were just discussing this. It is why I’m currently visiting you, rather than focusing on my duties back in the commune.” “Yeah. And when I pull out, you’re going to leave again,” Jayce rationalizes. Not entirely incorrect. “Just a few minutes. Please, Vik? Let me pretend for a little longer.”

✦ The Threads of Our Mind by Darling_Pigeon, jayce/viktor, post-canon, 3k     Snapshot of Jayce and Viktor’s new life of exploration after the finale: Viktor helps Jayce adjust to his brace, but they discover they may be connected in another, strangely magical way.

✦ Time For Space by yurikazen, jayce/viktor, NSFW, post-canon, 6.6k     First, there’s a wave of blinding light, tearing through the cosmos like a free-falling comet. Then, Jayce opens his eyes to find a smooth, unfamiliar ceiling above his head. (Jayce dies, holding Viktor close to him, yet death is just another beginning.)

✦ two left feet by ChiliCheeseCornDog, jayce/viktor, 4k     Jayce rises from his seat, face set with a soft smile, and holds out his right hand with the palm facing up. “Let me teach you how.” The pause is long and unrelenting. “You are joking,” Viktor manages to say. or: Jayce teaches Viktor how to dance, Piltover-style.

✦ destabilise by antiparticular, jayce/viktor, 3.6k     Jayce was naked and in Viktor's bed. Don't get him wrong - Viktor had dreamed of this happening, both literally and on slow days in the lab when he was feeling particularly self-indulgent, but for it to manifest outside of his overactive imagination? He was half tempted to pinch himself to check he'd actually awoken. Why was Jayce Talis in Viktor's bed? And more pressingly, why did Viktor not remember?

✦ Run It Back Again by Withercrown, jayce/viktor & vander/silco & cast, 18.9k wip     Sometimes there's nothing you can do except scrap the whole experiment and start over. The worst possible outcome becomes an opportunity for a new beginning. Viktor and Jayce, estranged enemies in a brutal war, go back to the start - and then earlier than that. The key to their salvation ends up being an undercity brat named Silco. He's not quite the person they remember.

✦ Electric Desires by abisbookcase, jayce/viktor, NSFW, 1.2k     Viktor gets an important phone call in the middle of sex, and Jayce keeps fucking him roughly, trying to make him slip up while he talks.

✦ Between gears and parties by chaosheadspace, jayce/viktor, 3.6k     "Why do you think it is so hard for people like me to get a footing here?" Viktor asks. "Aside from the obvious classism, of course. I'll tell you. Bureaucracy. Do you know how difficult it is to even find a place to live without a last name up here?” Or: Jayce wants to save his partner some trouble and gets them married on paper.

ZAUNDADS RECS:

✦ Take Me Like You Mean It by Anonymous, vander/silco, NSFW, 2k     Young! Silco and Vander have sex in the alleyway behind the last drop after closing.

✦ Mr Eye of Zaun by limeta, vander/silco & jinx & vi & cast, 28.8k wip     Mylo and Claggor would say there’s nothing that scares Vi. She can dish out punches and evade danger better than anyone. She’s their fearless leader, always ready to take them on a job and back without losing anyone. It’s that level of assurance that they have in her, that confidence she exudes, that makes them trust and believe in her. But they’re wrong. Powder knows there’s something that scares Vi. And that’s because it scares Vander. Or: Silco reads the letter Vander left in the mines and sticks around as a boogeyman in the Last Drop.

✦ let fall the world by perfidiousalbion, vander/silco, nsfw, 4.2k     Or: before it all went wrong, Silco and Vander had something good.

✦ The Lives of Others by Lilbaebloo, vander/silco & ekko & benzo, NSFW, 5.1k     Ekko drops an emotional grenade on Silco and Vander when he brings up their fated night at the river thirteen years earlier. The plunge into the past reminds them both of how far they've come, together and apart, and what they have to keep living for.

✦ The Shore From Which I Fell by ClutchHedonist, vander/silco, NSFW, 1.2k     “I knew you still had it in you.” Silco’s mouth tastes of ash. His tongue, tacky and dry with the suffocating weight of it, threatens to stick to the roof of his mouth as his lips fall shut. He does his best to swallow past the whisper of bruising already blossoming in his throat where Vander’s broad hand has yet again left its mark.

✦ Night Business by spicedrobot, vander/silco, NSFW, rough sex, 2.6k     The rulers of Zaun play a game.

✦ While the world turns around by Blue_Daddys_Girl, vander/silco & jinx & benzo, 8.9k     In a chance meeting Vander sees Silco for the first time since the fateful day he's come to regret so deeply. Silco has changed—they both have. Vander can't stop thinking about him.

TIMEBOMB RECS:

✦ Little Crow by shroomyystar, ekko/jinx, 2.1k     There’s a monster under his bed.

✦ Let's Give It One Last Try by the_whole_shebang, ekko/jinx, post-canon, 12.3k     The war is finally over, and Ekko is finally home, but an old friend has one more favor to ask of him. Jinx found the strength to walk away, but something told her not to let go just yet. Maybe if Vi and Ekko hadn't given up on her yet, then she wouldn't either. Plus, thanks to Ekko, she was starting to think that the past wasn't as set in stone as she though it was.

✦ Let Me Try by Blue_Daddys_Girl, ekko/jinx, post-canon, 4.3k     Ekko walks away from the final battle in a daze after learning that Jinx is dead. Or: An alternate ending to the show, in which she isn't, no matter what Vi believes.

SOMETIMES THE SHIPS AREN'T THE POINT RECS:

✦ wait 'til your sister sees where you've been by QwahaXahn, vi & jinx & cast, post-canon, 12.9k     OR: Jinx falls. The bomb explodes. Everything goes white. ...And Vi wakes up in a different world.

✦ was it the worst you'd never know by Anonymous, jinx & silco, 2.2k     “Fix him,” she demands, voice barely decipherable through the breaking and raspiness from crying. Gentle, gentle, as gentle as Singed knows how to be, which is not very. Jinx will have no qualms killing him if he steps wrong. “He is… very far gone.” And indeed he is. His chest does not rise, and his eyes are vacant. He is gone. “FIX. HIM.” aka jinx refuses to let her father die and brings him to singed. it goes better than expected

✦ Six Weeks Since by argonautoida, jinx & viktor, 2.1k     Six weeks after Silco died, Jinx finally makes a friend.

[somanyquestions-featuringanxiety]

…we listen and we don’t judge (my second time doing this)

One time when I was six or so a friend of mine wanted to talk boys with me, and I had absolutely zero interest in boys, or romance at all. When she asked me if there were any boys I was interested in, and wouldn’t take no for an answer, I eventually told her about how lovely my slightly older cousin was (he is lovely), because he’s the only boy I didn’t think was gross, stupid or annoying. She then proceeded to tell every single adult at the party that I had a crush on my cousin, WHICH I DID NOT

Anyway, open tags!

We listen and we don't judge

When I was 7, me and my friends saved a fish from drowning

(Tag your moots)

@literallylink--who-tf-is-ravioli @sunlights-daughter @protagaster @somereaderinblue @fronzie @notesbyaphrodite

[dickgraysonsptsd]

dick grayson, money, and control

i am so obsessed with dick's relationship with money... the more post-crisis comics i read the more i believe that dick sees offers of money, especially from the rich or powerful, as an attempt to exert control over him. in part because bruce, intentionally or not, had dick in a position where dick was entirely dependent on him for housing and money for most of his life, and has directly used giving or taking away resources to punish or control dick before.

disclaimer: i'm using a LOT of chuck dixon comics here because of his heavy involvement in building out dick's personal history in the 90s/00s. as a reminder chuck dixon is an alt-right homophobic qanon creep and deserves no respect

early days as robin

in robin (1992) annual #4 (dixon's version of the dick's origin story), dick is taken in by bruce but almost immediately feels out of place and unwanted in bruce's home. he thinks of himself as bruce's "christmas puppy" and is certain that as soon as his parents' killer is caught, bruce will send him back:

dick doesn't feel any sense of permanence in bruce's life early on. that's understandable given the multiple traumas he's been through, and the impermanence itself isn't what i want to focus on here—for our purposes, the way dick's sense of instability is framed here is as an adopted pet. a christmas puppy. an animal, an impulse buy.

even at age 8, dick understands there's a massive gulf in power between himself and bruce—bruce has a giant home, while dick doesn't see the manor as "home" because he's always expecting to be sent back into the system. bruce is the person adopting a puppy, while dick is the puppy. their power imbalance is implicitly tied to bruce's immense wealth and dick's complete lack of status outside of being bruce's ward.

in robin: year one #3 (also by dixon), leslie and dick talk about how bruce doesn't mind giving handouts, but neither of them want to go to him for them:

Leslie: That's why I had you come to General for tests. They have equipment I just can't afford yet. And I'm not about to go to Bruce for another handout Dick: He wouldn't mind. Leslie: That doesn't make it any easier. Dick: Yeah. I know what you mean.

leslie says another handout, meaning that bruce has already funded her here, and dick too has received financial support from bruce as robin and as his ward. but they both don't want to go back for more money, despite knowing that bruce "wouldn't mind"—there's a deeper issue here than whether or not bruce minds it or can afford it. it's not "easy" for leslie or dick to accept bruce's money, even though it's easy for bruce to give it.

to me, this means dick still doesn't see his new level of wealth (or, more accurately, his new access to bruce's level of wealth) as a normal, secure part of his life. i don't know if he ever really does, though eventually he'll come to rely on a line of credit from bruce in his teen titan days.

the firing (nightwing: year one version)

in nightwing (1996) #101, the first issue of dixon's nightwing: year one arc, bruce fires dick as robin. in #102, dick goes to clark for advice, and clark is shocked at the news:

Clark: How can he fire you? Dick: He said, "you're fired." Clark: It's not a job. Dick: It is to Bruce. His cave. His car. His rules. He pays the bills, Clark. And in his eyes I screwed up.

i think we can trace some of dick's intense dislike for taking money from the rich to this version of the firing—in dick's eyes, by accepting bruce's cave, car, and money to pay the bills, dick gave bruce the power to then take those things away from him. bruce was able to fire dick from robin because bruce's resources enabled robin. if dick had been funding robin himself, if it had been dick's cave and car, bruce couldn't have taken it away from him. (when he later moves to blüdhaven, dick takes the first possible opportunity to establish a lair in his apartment and build his own car, rebuilding these resources on his own terms.)

notably, at the end of the actual firing issue (#101), bruce orders dick to leave behind the new robin suit alfred made for him, connecting the firing directly to bruce taking back something given to dick:

here dick gets a very memorable lesson that gifts of financial support and equipment—or workplace resources, if you look at it from the "robin is a job" perspective that bruce takes in this story—can be given with good intentions, but later used as leverage to punish and control.

moving to blüdhaven

nightwing (1996) #3 by chuck dixon was written years before dixon wrote nightwing: year one (above), so it's not totally consistent with it, but dixon was clearly already thinking about dick's relationship with bruce's money when he wrote dick moving to blüdhaven:

Operator: I'm not showing a credit history, Mr. Grayson. Date of birth? A man your age and there's nothing on my screen. You'll need to send us a certified check for one thousand dollars before we can approve electrical service. Dick: I'll get one to you this afternoon.

Dick: Everyone wants cash because Dick Grayson doesn't exist. I guess they're right. Seems like I hardly know him. Kory or Alfred always handled this stuff for me. And for years I've had to rely on a line of credit paid for by Bruce. Seems like I've been on fast forward since the night my parents died.

dick moves to blüdhaven without a credit history and without any financial records in his name at all, as far as i can tell. "dick grayson doesn't exist." he's been reliant on other people financially, either to manage his money or for the money itself, and now he's establishing independence as a solo operation by starting to handle all of that himself. and he's establishing that independence as dick grayson, not just as nightwing.

(also, "on fast forward since the night my parents died"—really juicy to me that dick's lack of financial independence gets linked to how quickly he grows up after his parents' deaths!!)

soon dick gets a job bartending and grins thinking about "the look on bruce's face":

Dick: I actually have a job. Can't wait to see the look on Bruce's face.

which is a fun moment of "just moved out of my parent's place and i finally got my first job!!" freedom to me (though he's been out of the manor for years at this point).

dick and team funding

we now jump forward to 2003. in titans/young justice: graduation day #1, megacorp optitron offers a massive amount of funding to the titans and young justice. dick is immediately skeptical and assumes that optitron will gradually start to use their financial leverage over the titans to "[get] us fighting their own little wars"—it's clear that he's tying together receiving money with being controlled.

Roy: Think of what we could accomplish— Dick: With a gigantic pile of money? No thanks. It begins with them just funding us. Then they've got us fighting their own little wars. I'm sure there's some land rights issue in Asia that they'd love for us to tackle.

donna makes it clear that she's well aware of dick's feelings about the rich, and implies that his bias against them is affecting his decisions around optitron:

Donna: You have a chip on your shoulder about the rich. That and corporations. Dick: What do you mean by that? Donna: What do you think I mean by that?

and all that evidence of dick's view of money-as-control aside... dick wasn't wrong to be skeptical about ulterior motives!! in outsiders (2003) #21, it's revealed that the offer of funding from optitron in titans/young justice: graduation day was at bruce's behest:

so the entire funding offer in graduation day was part of an elaborate deception by bruce to pay for dick's team without letting dick find out about it. bruce later says he meant well by doing this, but dick is so angry about it that there's clearly a deeper issue here for dick:

Narration: And those who know [that Optitron is owned by Batman] are having a very hard time buying the "hands-off approach." Dick: I'll kill him. Roy: Settle down. Dick: Don't tell me to settle down, Roy. He did this again. He always does this.

"he did this again. he always does this." 👀👀👀

in one of my favorite scenes ever, dick confronts bruce in an explosive rage about his ownership of optitron and specifically calls out bruce being deceptive and manipulative (outsiders [2003] #21):

Dick: What exactly is your compulsion, your burning desire to deceive, lie, and manipulate the only people who give a good god damn about you!?

you should really read this issue if you haven't, it's amazing!! i can't summarize the complex weird conversation bruce and dick have here, it has so many layers, but the point is that dick IMMEDIATELY and VERY EMOTIONALLY takes bruce forcing his money on dick('s team) as bruce being a manipulative control freak.

and like, yeah, we know dick can and does overreact to bruce, but the way he overreacts to bruce here... i am immediately connecting this on the red string board in my mind back to bruce firing dick and dick establishing independence from him in nightwing (1996)!! dick worked hard for that independence!! and then bruce made dick take his money even though dick didn't want to, even though dick has these well-established issues around bruce's money, and he brewed up this whole deception around it because he knew dick didn't want it!! of COURSE dick sees that as bruce being willfully a huge fucking controlling bastard to him!!! GOD!!!!!

[777heavengirl]

the one with the telephone

sirius black x reader ! - 2,450 words masterlist bags masterlist A/N: i have ZERO impulse control- enjoy!!! also i am sorry in advance my beta reader told me i was evil

Sirius Black was, contrary to popular belief, a patient man. It was a trait that was overshadowed by quick quips and even brasher decision-making. But when he needed to be. He was.

As the two of you fell back into the cloying domestic tendencies you once had, he could feel the desperation prick at his skin, like electricity coursing through his veins.

He was getting antsy, the need to have you closer than ever, to feel your lips on his, to hold you, it was all getting too much.

“What time are you coming back lovely?” He settled on embracing the fact that you had to work, he’d get that sorted out eventually. 

Someday he’d convince you. 

You rolled your eyes when he told you this fact. At least he was honest.

“Five dummy- I told you this already-” You walked over to the corner of the kitchen where he stood, and poured coffee into the cup in his hand. You stifled a yawn as you spoke. 

“Oi-” he was quick, so quick you could feel the coffee slosh violently around the pot as he pulled you by your waist. His head rested on your shoulder, long hair tickling your neck, his fingers dug into your sides enough to make you reflex away but his hold didn’t let you. "Dont call me stupid-”

“I didn’t call you stupid- there is a clear difference” You gave him a toothy smile, teasing. He couldn't help but stare at your face, the soft curve of your lip, the mound of your cheeks. Your eyes met briefly, and you tried to swallow the small gasp that threatened to leave your lip.

A beat of silence. He just smiled at you softly.

You pursed your lips in a fake scold “I gotta go stupid- let me go”

He groaned, but his hold on your waist loosened enough for you to start moving away.

“Good morning you two-” Remus walked through the door and you and Sirius let out a chorus of Morning’s. “How are we feeling this fine day?” A small smirk played on his lips as he rounded the corner of your kitchen, plucking the cup of coffee from Sirius’s hand, the boy’s protest falling on deaf ears, and pressing a kiss to the top of your head. 

“Where’s Pete?”

“At his nan’s” Remus settled on one of your stools, tall back hunching slightly as he sipped his coffee. “Poor lad always comes back with indigestion- she feeds him too much apparently-”

“Ah yes” you smiled, suppressing a giggle “I’m sure he’s mighty upset about that”

“Imagine the amount of food that woman has to be making- fucking vacuum that man” Sirius barked out, a laugh falling from all of your lips. 

“Well I gotta get going, otherwise I’ll be late- bye Rem-” you ruffled his light hair, the strands sticking in all directions as you shook his head slightly, the tall boy hummed in a sort of goodbye, “goodbye stupid- see you tonight-” 

“Yeah yeah-” Sirius sauntered over to meet you by the door, “don’t be late- you said five, not a minute later yeah?” He pressed a tender kiss to your cheek, soft and slow enough to make your breath hitch, he leaned on the open door, his hand under your jaw. “good luck at work love-”

You stuttered a small thank you and bye as you went through the door, Sirius closing it behind you. You could feel the heat crawl up your neck, small jitters running through your limbs.

There was no time to think about that now. You focused on the back alley of the office, eyes closed as the air twisted and turned, sucking you in and spitting you back out. 

“What in the bloody hell was that Pads?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about Moons-” Sirius locked the door behind him, padding over to the kitchen and pouring a second cup of coffee “I don't appreciate the theft of my coffee by the way-”

“Come off it- you were basically about to jump each other” Remus retorted with a roll of his eyes. Sirius stopped, groaning into his hands. “How many times have we had this conversation Padfoot?”

“Many,” he said, voice muffled by his hands

“Exactly-” Remus rolled his eyes, taking the last swing of his coffee “You need to do it- I promise she feels the same” Sirius groaned into his hands again.

-

It was hard, although you didn’t dislike the job you got, answering the phone to muggles that pressed and pressed about trips and airplanes, and tickets to all sorts of transportation and places. It was hard, and it was tiring. It felt somehow worse than that, it felt futile. 

It had nothing to do with your life anymore, you may live in muggle London, but it did not change the fact that your life had revolved and had continued to do so around magic. It was a different world, different people, different needs and wants and lifestyles. 

You wondered how much more of this you could take as you bid farewell to the other girls on your shift, a tight smile on your lips.

You swore you might’ve ripped the door to the small travel office off its hinges as you walked out at exactly 5 p.m. Quickly apparating from the back alley directly into your room, the gush of air and twisting through space making your head spin as you stood in the middle of your room. You were quick to drop your bag on your bed, and swung your door open, calling out to Sirius

“I know I’m like two minutes late- no need to wail”

“You promised-” You heard him huff as you walked through the door, eyes landing on Sirius as he lounged on the couch, cheek pressed against the cushion. “Welcome home baby-”

You could feel your stomach do flips at the new nickname, it was cloying and far too endearing. You could feel the heat under your skin. 

“Were you sleeping? You bum-” Sirius rubbed his eyes and stretched, feet kicking off the blanket that had been haphazardly covering him onto the floor.

“And so what if I was? Hm? Is it such a crime?” He retorted, and you laughed as you approached, his arm extending to grab your hand. He pressed a chaste kiss on your knuckles. 

“No- just awfully lazy of you Black- I worked like a dog day and night for you to sit here and do nothing?” you tskd repeatedly “You make a horrid housewife-”

He laughed and pulled your hand, hard enough to bring you down on top of him. Both of his arms enveloped you, rolling onto his side so you were facing each other on your sides. Your arm settled and stretched out, and he was quick to lay his head on it. The tight space of the couch made you wonder if he was halfway out so you brought him closer, breaths intermingling, heat radiating from your skin. Your legs tangled together.

“Didn’t know we were playing house-” Despite the tease, and the slight smirk that played on his lips, his words were a mere whisper “Just because I don’t work I gotta cook and clean? Awfully stereotypical of you love- didn’t expect it from you” 

“Oh please- what else would you do all day?”

“Mhm, so what I hear is that you do wanna play house with me?” 

You rolled your eyes at him, but the closeness didn’t let you retort back- words caught in your throat. You were so aware of his hands, the way they squeezed you closer and fingers traced spirals on the exposed skin of your hip that you failed to notice the moment when his face got, impossibly, closer.

You didn't think you had ever been this close. Your foreheads finally pressed against each other.

It was easy to fall into this closeness, as new as exciting as it felt, it was still easy.

“Sirius-” You felt breathless

“Yes love?” Your eyes met his striking grey ones. He hummed in question when you didn’t answer, tongue flickering out to wet his bottom lip. He swallowed thickly. 

“I love you” You knew he knew that. But this time, you hoped he’d understand-

“Thank Godric-” His lips finally touched yours, softly, experimentally. It started as a breathless kiss, one that made your head spin and the tips of your fingers tingle. It quickly grew into something more- the way he held you impossibly tight, hands digging into your hips, thumbs pressing circles into your lower stomach. Your fingers intertwined with his hair as he dragged you on top of him, but he never dared to break the kiss. Lips moving against each other, the slip of tongue, the gasps that left your mouth when he kissed you harder. 

He felt frantic, the same desperation that had haunted him for years poured out of him with every squeeze and kiss and bite. He could feel the ghost of a smile on your lips as he kissed you, and his own lips soon mirrored it.

The phone rang. 

Loud and ringing in the far corner of the kitchen. You finally parted to look up at it, the little red light blinking at the incoming call.

“I’m going to kill them-” Sirius groaned as you sat up, you laughed as you pecked his lips and his neck cranked tightly to look at it too. You both stared at the machine until it stopped ringing, a laugh ripping from you as he brought you back down, hands holding your cheeks, lips immediately slotting against yours. 

He thinks he could get lost in your lips forever. 

But he heard it again. 

A groan reverberated through his chest as the phone started ringing once more. You got off of him, legs wobbly and clumsy as you stood up, his hand clutched yours pulling at it slightly.

The phone kept on ringing.

“Please tell me you’re going to unplug the bloody thing-”

“Sirius we have to answer-”

“No we don’t,”

“What if something’s happened hm?” the phone rang out

“They can do without us love-” 

“You’re going to feel terrible if something wrong and we were sitting here… you know” The phone stopped ringing, and Sirius’s plump lips broke into a wolfish grin. You ignored the excitement at the pit of your stomach.

You turned to look at the phone as he pulled you closer again

“No I don't know,” he smirked, and you squirmed under his gaze “Pray do tell— we were sitting here doing what?”

“You’re horrible Black,” You stopped next to the couch, his lips pressed against your hand and he tried pulling you down again. “You’re going to feel terrible if it’s James and we’re sitting here…” he raised his eyebrow “snogging” 

Sirius barked out a laugh and you could feel a deep blush fight to make its way up to your cheeks.

The phone’s ringing started up again.

“Bloody hell! Just go pick it up” he stood up now too, laughing incredulously as he followed you to the phone. He wrapped his arms around your torso as you picked up the receiver. 

“Hello?”

“Where were you?” Your dad’s voice broke through the static, angry and loud. Sirius laid his head on your shoulder, lips pressing kisses the stretch of your neck. His hands went under the wrinkled white button-up to squeeze at your sides. He fought the urge to explore further and you tried your best not to giggle.

“I just got back from work- what happened?”

“If I call you answer-”

“Jesus dad-” you let out a breathless giggle, as Sirius placed a kiss behind your ear. “I was just busy, can you just tell me what's wrong? There’s some stuff I need to… get to”

“Did you decide yet?” 

“Decide what Dad?” Sirius pressed up against you more, a kiss on your cheek as your dad’s voice cut through again

“If you’re moving out” Sirius froze in his tracks, all movement seizing. The echo from the phone was low, but he could nevertheless hear the words “I already told you, I have a guy that is renting this apartment close to us-” You could feel your heart in your throat.

“Godric- No Dad-”

“You aren’t thinking things through y/n”

“I’m not moving out Dad- I’ve told you this multiple times”

“You told me that you would think about it-”

“Okay well I have- I thought about it and I would rather stay here, I’m happy here” Sirius’s hold loosened, and hot tears gathered in your eyes. “I’m not going anywhere” You grabbed his arm as it fell away from your torso, his hand clutched yours instinctively. “I really don’t want to talk about this anymore Dad-”

“You’re making the wrong choice-”

“No dad,” You turned now, Sirius stood a mere two feet away, staring blankly at you. Tears threatened to fall from your eyes. “I just can’t- I have to go-” You quickly hung the phone up, not letting him get another word in. 

“Sirius-”

“You wanted to move out?”

“No-” you sighed, the knot that formed in your throat quickly tightening until it felt sore “he keeps telling me I should-”

“How could you not have told me-”

“Told you what Sirius? I got a job and you freaked out— Imagine if I told you that my father wanted me to get out of here because he has some twisted idea of what I should be doing with my life” You tried your best to get the words out without crying.

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, sighing in defeat. 

“I can’t believe you”

“Oh please-” your lip wobbled, tears started falling from your eyes, dotting your cheeks. “You’re one to talk- you’ve had a foot in the door the entire time we’ve lived here”, you said, the words biting even to your ears. 

He still held onto your hand.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He said as he finally turned to look you in the eye, the hurt that flashed in his eyes quickly replaced with shame as he saw your tears.

“You’ve never unpacked your trunk, Sirius! It’s been sitting there- practically packed for two years, and I- Merlin I can’t believe you’re upset about the fact that my father- not even me wanted me to move when you’re the one that’s been basically ready to go-” the tears flowed freely, and the unmeasurable weight of the anxiety over him leaving, the one you carried with you every day since you moved in, finally washed over you like waves. 

Each of you squeezed your hands harder, grabbing onto each other despite the sting of your words.

“It’s the fact that I’ve spent the past two years thinking I’ll wake up to you walking out the door with your bags”

taglist ; @thatlittlered @giuli-in-earth @notsolong-pause @niceonejames7 @caspiankingofnarnia @ilovejamespottersomuch @bmyva1entine @lanadelreykt @froggiedragon @stanzie @theendofthematerialgworl @featherlightfairysworld @plk-18 @coldthinghairdobakery

[questionablecuttlefish]

Okay Fine Let's Talk Timebomb and Season Two.

I do want to talk about this because I have a Lot of thoughts and feelings and it has been building up and building up, not only based on what's happening in other social spaces, but what people keep bringing into mine despite my best efforts to avoid it.

This isn't any kind of hatepost, I don't think I could hate Ekko or the ship if I tried, I just want to explain my very mixed feelings about the whole thing.

My likely-to-be-very unpopular take on Season Two's Timebomb romance is that it left me feeling uneasy and uncomfortable.

Not with what was in the show itself, I feel like that was perfect. Powder and Ekko sold me completely. They made me feel things. I even liked how Ekko and Jinx's story ended. I think it was beautiful, poignant, perfect...

...until.

'The Discourse' since, the way the fan culture has exploded around it, and particularly some of the creators' commentary on it, has made me sour on the whole thing.

It feels like I'm suddenly part of an increasingly small subset of people who saw what they did with S2 Timebomb and applied our media literacy to what was on our screens and got something very different to what the fandom consensus seems to be.

For context, I semi-shipped TB before this. Though I've always been Team Lightcannon, I had a lot of respect for timebomb, I understood it, I had read a few very good fics, I was just in the space of "Jinx has hurt Ekko too much for him to ever fully forgive her for murdering his friends, they might come to an understanding, and there will always be a silent undercurrent of love beneath the hurt, they may fight together on the same side again someday, but whatever bond they had as kids is broken and they can't go back, and both know it."

I respected, and still do, people who shipped them romantically, but I've always seen them as a broken childhood friendship being a much more interesting dynamic, and being hot for each other lessening that to an extent and not really adding anything to it.

All of his interactions with Jinx in season one are violent; she murders five Firelights point-blank in front of him in her intro scene, and Ekko reacts particularly upset to the pink-haired girl, Eve or Eva, whom Jinx shoots in the back. It's clear this isn't even the first time she's fought them. We don't know how many of Ekko's found family she's put on the Memorial Wall or how close he was with any of them.

Ekko is clearly convinced that "Powder" is gone, and the person who replaced her is a cold-blooded killer who can't be reasoned with. Leading to the Bridge confrontation, and this:

This is the first time Ekko catches a glimpse of "Powder", yes, but more importantly, this is the first moment he recognizes Jinx's humanity. He's hurting her, killing her, and he can't do it.

....and she knows he can't do it.

So, to save him the weight, she pulls a grenade, with the intent to kill them both, foreshadowing quite neatly where Ekko/Jinx (but not Ekko/Powder) is going to go in S2.

Fast forwarding from Season One here, Ekko disappears for 2/3rds of the second season, completely offscreen.

When we catch up with him he's woken up in the S2E7 AU; the Powder Timeline.

Here's where I start to get a little confused by the fandom take. Because, you know, I've seen enough Star Trek and Stargate and Supernatural and Batman the Animated Series and Quantum Leap to know exactly what this is.

This is the 'bottle episode', this is the 'Perfect World' trope, where the protagonists find themselves in an alternate universe - or trapped in a dream - or they've died or think they've died and this is their 'heaven' - where they have everything they ever wanted.

This is familiar storytelling and E2 follows a familiar pattern, the protagonist struggles to adapt to the surreal new circumstances, they are seduced by the illusion, particularly falling in love with someone in the Perfect World, but eventually, they start noticing something incongruous - something isn't quite right - (In this case, it's Vi's death, and Powder holding back her genius and hiding her grief to be support girl for others) - that reveals the Perfect World to be not as perfect as it seems.

And the hero has to choose to go home, because he realizes that this isn't real, it doesn't belong to him, he doesn't belong here.

Which is exactly what happens with Ekko in E7.

Which brings is to AU!Powder and Jinx.

And here's where I really start to struggle with the seeming consensus that the romance between Ekko/Powder automatically leads to Ekko/Jinx, like you can just transfer the one to the other.

I'm sorry, fam, I thought my basic media literacy was telling me that this girl:

Is not the same person as this girl:

....and I am not getting into any debate about "Jinx" vs "Powder" as identities within our current Jinx. I'm talking about Powder in the E7 AU.

AU!Powder is literally a different human being.

She may have been the same person up until the explosion in Jayce's laboratory, but from that fork in the timeline, she becomes a FUNDAMENTALLY different person to Jinx, shaped by different experiences, different relationships, different life events.

Powder's physicality with Ekko, as you can see in those GIFs, the casual intimacy, the clear affection, the way she touches him, looks at him, her awareness of him in her space, is so utterly opposite to the way Jinx interacts with him that if anything, it nailed home to me how savagely absent this kind of feeling is from his relationship with Jinx.

Powder loves Ekko. She leans on him, snuggles into him, touches his hands, dances with him, kisses him.

Jinx cares so little about him she barely makes eye contact and would casually kill him without blinking.

And I thought that was the point.

I really thought that was the whole point of E7. Being in the perfect world, getting his perfect love story with his perfect Powder, the girl Jinx could have been, but can never be, drove home for Ekko that his feelings for Jinx, both romantic and resentful, were tangled up in his illusions of "Powder", and it took living those illusions as a physical reality for Ekko to see his mistake.

To be true to himself, and true to her, Ekko had to let that go and go home.

To face his world's Jinx, and be there for her in her darkest moment, even if it meant giving up the love he'd found with Powder, a love that belonged to a different Ekko, for someone who could never love him back.

To me that was Ekko's most heroic moment, an act of selfless sacrifice. But that's what it was - a sacrifice.

Meanwhile, Season Two Jinx is not aware of any of this. The last time she saw Ekko was on the bridge where she nearly killed him, and for all we know she might have thought she succeeded.

She never talks about, thinks about, refers to, or even has scribble-nightmares about Ekko, not even once.

Season Two Jinx is, instead, having a love story of her own.

And Isha was and is a PUZZLE to me. Because she's more plot device than character, she isn't necessary except as a way to give Jinx a villain-to-hero arc and a way to reconnect to her humanity.

But she could have been Ekko.

If they really, really wanted us to have Timebomb Canon, instead of confining the entire arc to a bottle episode in an alternate timeline with a literally, physically different girl, they could easily have given all of Isha's considerable screentime to an Ekko and Jinx romance.

I'm sure Amanda Overton would have been on board with that. But that's not what we got. It's almost like reading two different fix-it-fanfics for the same character, put into the same show and running in parallel.

I'm not crazy, this is what's happening for Ekko in s2;

While this is happening for Jinx at the same time.

But Jinx's love story, too, ends with a tragic sacrifice.

And here's where the two stories finally intersect.

When Jinx is in her darkest moment, her absolute rock bottom, Ekko comes back into her life, a miracle, impossible, a Boy Savior.

But she's still ready to kill him.

Because she didn't dance with Ekko. She didn't invent a time machine with him. She didn't sit and watch the city lights with him and share a tender kiss and a heartfelt gift.

That was Powder.

Jinx and Ekko are resuming right where they left off on the bridge, right back to "I pull this pin and we both blow up".

They've both loved and lost, but their stories are absolutely unknown to each other. Ekko Doesn't Know About Isha. Jinx Doesn't Know About Powder.

It's only when Jinx (a genius, a reminder here) sees monkeys of her own design inside the Z-drive - recognizes her own handiwork, but knows SHE didn't make those - that, I think, sheer curiosity stirs her out of her darkness.

She has to know what that was about. She hesitates, just long enough for Ekko to speak. And, though offscreen, he tells her his story, and maybe she tells him hers.

And it's enough, just enough, to set Jinx back on her Redemption Arc, to become the hero Isha always saw in her.

Maybe even the hero Vi and Ekko saw in her, too. Her new costume is full of references to all of the people in her life who never gave up on her.

(side note, the yellow stars and crowns puzzle me, though - they're quite prominent, but who are THEY for? Isha? Maybe? Yellow isn't a color associated with anyone in Jinx's life, but that crown's identical to the one she scribbled on Demacia in Fortiche's map, is... this a very subtle future Lightcannon tease? Nah. I'm not that crazy.)

I mean her costume is also almost literally both a Fishbones and a Fiddlesticks cosplay, with her hair as Fiddle's tongue, so take from that what you will.

It's clear Jinx and Ekko war painted each other for the battle, but the Firelights are also similarly painted up, and (with Linke even confirming this) there really wasn't time to develop anything else, guys.

And I am, honestly, fundamentally angry at anyone who would suggest that, even if she'd been in any space to want it, our boy Ekko, one of the most genuinely good men in recent fiction let alone in Arcane, would take advantage of a girl he just talked out of suicide.

Moving on. During the battle, Ekko is knocked out and lying not far from Jinx. She doesn't even look at him, she leaps up to defend Vi instead.

And that's their final interaction on the show.

Instead of returning to Ekko, Jinx chooses one final act of sacrifice.

Ekko's final shot of the show is this.

He's sitting, alone, burning a mourning paper, where he sat with AU!Powder - where he and AU!Powder kissed - a place that has no significance to himself and Jinx, whatsoever.

It's little wonder who he's thinking about here, and which name he's burning on that paper. The girl he truly loved and lost.

For all he knows, Jinx is dead. But it's not only her he's mourning.

Or maybe he does know, or suspect, she's alive.

But either way, he's making one final act of sacrifice, too, with that paper burning into the breeze.

He's letting her go.

He's choosing his own story.

He's staying where he belongs.

Jinx may have become a symbol of the revolution, but it's Ekko who is, and always will be, the true hero of Zaun.

And this is Jinx's final shot.

Because let's face it, we all know she's on that airship.

She's "breaking the cycle". She's "walking away". She knows that Jinx has left too many scars on the people she still loves - on Vi, on Ekko, on the cities of Piltover and Zaun - for her to pick up the pieces.

She knows that if she's going to find out what "Jinx" might stand for now, she has to go very far away from everything and everyone. She has to leave it all behind and find something new.

Maybe even someone new?

And ultimately, that's why I feel the Timebomb we got was perfect, they shouldn't touch it, they shouldn't try to force it to be "Endgame", not because it couldn't have worked, but because that's the opposite of the story they told.

For the rest of my analysis, lol, this got a bit long but i have FEELINGS.

Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't buy Jinx and Ekko as a love story if they had actually told that love story. But they didn't. It had no screen time. They have less interactions in S2, maybe even in both seasons added up, than Vi and Loris. Let that sink in a bit.

We know it's Amanda's favorite ship, so she may have intended more, and may even actually give us all more at some point, but please, dear god, let's stop pretending they fucked or kissed or even held hands offscreen.

That's honestly a bit insulting to both of these characters, to insist hell or high water that this very important milestone in their relationship happened, but they just didn't even bother to depict it. That an entire love story (because it would be a whole one, remember, Ekko and Powder had a romance but Jinx did not experience any of that, she and Ekko are back at Square One) would just be cut for time.

They both deserve better than that.

Let's stop pretending there was some grand, horny, Forever Love story with 60 minutes of cut footage, all of it timebomb content, somehow left on the cutting room floor of an animated show where every single frame has to be deliberately hand painted.

Because if in some insane universe they had written, storyboarded, voice acted and animated an entire 60 minute additional timebomb storyline and then cut it from the show, that would itself be a searing indictment of the quality of the storytelling in that imagined arc, but that's not what happened. Anyone who knows how filmmaking works would shoot this one down, and the showrunners already have, so let's leave it behind.

I know Timebomb blew up hard, and I get it, but what we got on the screen is not confirmation that there is any relationship at all between Ekko and Current Timeline Jinx. If anything, Ekko and Powder's beautiful romance only highlighted the tragic 'never to be' of Ekko and Jinx.

And it's absolutely fine to look at the art book, look at the creator comments, and imagine what could have been. Draw the fan art, write the fanfic, imagine the what-ifs and the fix-its, those are all beautiful and valid expressions and deserve their space.

But don't go insisting it's "the canon" and going after the shippers of other ships for these characters as "not canon" or somehow offensive for existing, especially toward one particular ship that, yes, has been around much longer than timebomb, is uncool.

I think this is mostly people who are New From Arcane, it's Baby's First Ship and they don't know how to share space. The timebomb fans I knew pre-season two didn't do this, at least not often enough for me to notice or care.

But I'll just say to them, if a Timebomb follow up happens and they actually tell a good love story for Ekko and Jinx, I will accept it. Grudgingly, because I think Lux/Jinx is an untold, untapped story full of incredible character dynamics that would complete Jinx's story in ways that as much as I love Ekko, he's too tied to her past, he can't.

But I love Ekko, and I love Jinx, and I will accept it.

But I'll also say to them, if the followup doesn't eventuate, if things take a turn they don't expect, if Jinx's airship is heading for Demacia, maybe they'll have to experience just a taste of what it's been like for Lightcannon fans for ten long years.

And maybe that's healthy. Maybe that's okay. Maybe our endgames don't need to be 'canon' to have value and that's a lesson we should learn.

Maybe there's a new Light on her horizon, and that's okay too. Maybe Ekko won't be alone forever. Don't forget - until Arcane - his story had nothing to do with Jinx, and there was a whole lot of it.

More with the Firelights, maybe bring in the original Lost Children of Zaun from his old stories, his inventions, his parents, all could yet be in his future. Who knows? He might find a way back to AU!Powder - or she might rebuild what they worked on together, and come to him, no matter what butterfly effects that could set in motion...

But if Jinx is heading for a Light on her horizon, maybe Ekko might Explore some of his possibilities. Find a new Spark of connection. Just saying. Jinx isn't his only ship, either 😌

And it is okay for people to move on, and let go. Maybe, for two characters whose themes are letting go of the past, living in the moment, redefining their identities, and moving on, that's what their story should be.

[quarterlifekitty]

Can we pretty please have König with the secret baby trope?

/)/)

( . .)

( づ♡

I offer a little bunny as a bribe [I really hope it works and doesn’t end up misshapen lol]

Bunny looks good to me…. I accept

So in this, I imagine that you were something of a friends with benefits to him. While it wasn’t a sugaring situation, he did insist upon treating you to a nice dinner whenever you met up. When he’d come home on leave, he’d reach out, you’d meet up and fuck, and eventually he’d ship back out and the cycle repeated.

Truthfully, he’d been planning on trying to make things less casual for a long time. He’s not the kind of person who can fuck someone repeatedly and not fall in love, as much as he tried to be when this began. He decided that on his next leave, he would tell you.

He didn’t expect his next leave to be as far away as it turned out to be. While he is within his rights as a mercenary to decline extending his time on the job, he often doesn’t. He’s a workaholic and one of the small number of people at KorTac with no family to speak of, so he often takes on the burden staying on longer when needed. The time gets away from him. He’s gone longer than a year.

He comes back, anxious about where he stands with you. What you had hadn’t exactly been exclusive, and it’s hard to believe that you wouldn’t have been snapped up in that time away. To him, there can be no shortage of other men in your life that are crazy about you.

He contacts you. You tell him that you’re not really in a position to meet up with him, and you don’t really know if you ever will be again, honestly. His hands are sweating and his fingers fuck up on the keyboard all the time, so he just decides to call. Ask you what he’s done, if there’s someone else, if you know that he’s madly in love—

Not thirty seconds into the phone call, just barely past the niceties and pleasant greetings, when all of those questions are on the tip of his tongue— he hears crying. A baby crying. You tell him hurriedly that you’ll have to call him back. He decides he just can’t wait that long. He goes to your place.

You answer the door with a baby in a sling around you, tucked up to your chest, markedly more calm than it had been over the phone. Red hair. Your expression is a little tightened, like you hadn’t really wanted to see him at the door.

“As you can see, I’m not really able to attend a dick appointment right now.”

Fuck, is that what it was? You thought he just wanted sex?

A Quick look at your apartment tells him there isn’t anyone else. No men’s shoes by the door. Photos on the wall are just you and your friends— no partner in sight. It’s also kind of a mess. If there was a man in your life, he deserved to have his head beat in for leaving you to deal with all of this alone all day.

Then comes the quick mental math.

“That’s not what I want. Let me come in, schatz. Let me talk to you.”

It breaks his heart to see how reticent you are to let him in. It’s part and parcel with how tired you look.

“Look, if you’re wondering— yes, he’s yours, biologically.” Well, that clarification at the end stings a little. “But it was my choice to keep him, so I don’t expect anything from you. If this feels like an obligation to you, I’d prefer if we just cut things off here.”

The words that follow spill from his mouth uncontrollably.

“I don’t just want him— I want you. I want the both of you. I want it to be us,” he nearly babbles, hoping what he says is even halfway coherent.

“You’re all I think of when I’m away. I cannot lie and say I’d imagined the… the order of events would be this way. But I’d thought of it— with you. Please let me in, and… and let me meet him properly, ja?”

There are tears in his eyes when his son holding his finger for the first time, not ten minutes later.