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sl-ut · 2 months ago

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PART ONE | the line

pairing: joel miller x fem!reader

description: joel’s new in jackson and tries to take his younger brother’s advice to fit in; keep your head low and work hard. however, while settling into his routine, he does exactly the opposite.

warnings: takes place between season one and two, unspecified age gap (joel is canon age/reader is mentioned to be mid-20s in beginning but the exact amount of time that’s passed is left to the imagination), reader has hair long enough to be braided, reader is a dv survivor, crazy exes, swearing, drinking, slight grumpy x sunshine but reader has layers she’s not just happy all the time, not a whole lot of joel x reader this chapter but it’s coming i swear.

words: 2.4K

date posted: 5/5/25

series masterlist | next part

Joel truly could not have asked for a better deal. He and Ellie were safe within the walls of Jackson, the Fireflies were gone and he’d made sure there was no one left in the hospital to follow them back, he’d found his brother after years apart, and he could finally sleep easy at night. He no longer had to worry about rolling onto his left side throughout the night (though, it was still a habit he’d failed to break when he settled out of survival mode), and he could actually prove to be useful to the community, something he hadn’t exactly shown much of in the past twenty-odd years aside from using brute force. Patrols kept him active, allowing him to maintain at least some of those survival instincts he’d relied on for so long, but it was the internal efforts that he surprisingly enjoyed the most. Plus, Tommy’s advice had seemed easy enough to follow; lay low and work hard. These people are welcoming, but you’ll still have to earn their respect.

Tommy and a few other men had already been in the process of reinforcing the walls around Jackson when he and Ellie had returned from Salt Lake, and it seemed that they’d been in the process of figuring out some other larger renovations around the city that Tommy had yet to get around to. But now that they had a spare contractor, Joel was able to take over a few projects at a time and the city was being fixed up at twice the pace that they had initially expected and earning Joel that respect quicker than he’d hoped.

Laying low had been pretty easy, too. Joel had earned their respect, sure, but he’d also rather stick to himself whenever he could. He went to work every morning, was friendly enough with the others–but made sure to upkeep his reputation as the town’s resident grump, and spend his evenings either with Ellie, Tommy, or on his own. In the first three weeks since they’d arrived there, he’d made no effort to interact with many of the others outside of work or to trade and only learned the names of no more than two dozen people.

Maria had finally taken a stand against this, insisting that Tommy and Joel each take the day off of their jobs so that Tommy could show his older brother around the city and properly introduce him to everyone. They’d made their rounds, bringing a list of errands made up by Maria to force them to go into a few places and interact with others, and Joel had been pleasantly surprised that he didn’t absolutely hate all of them–just a handful.

“See, I told you that you’d get along just fine. Doesn’t matter who they were before they came inside these walls, they got two options; play by our rules or get the fuck out.” Tommy told him as they exited the bakery, each carrying a large brown paper bag in their hands with a selection of baked goods, “These are good people who live here–well, most of ‘em anyway. You gotta be shittin’ me.”

Tommy veered off to the right, headed down a side street at a quick pace. Joel followed behind, brow furrowed as he followed close behind, “Tommy, wha–”

“Hey Elias,” he called out, catching the attention of a tall, wiry man, his shoulder-length hair tied back in a bun at the base of his skull and body holding a slight tremor under the layers of clothing he wore; it all seemed to be nicer than what most wore, leading Joel to assume that he was some sort of higher-up around the place (despite the fact that Jackson had been built on the prospect of communism), “You need something in there, man? Thought you were supposed to be in the clinic today.”

The man turned and glared at Tommy, jaw set as if he had already been expecting the confrontation. He placed his hands on his hips, narrowing his eyes at the pair of brothers as he shifted one hand to point towards one of the buildings just off of the main street, “That’s my wife in there, Tommy. I’m sick and tired of you people telling me where I can and can’t go around here. It’s none of your goddamn business.”

Tommy rolled his own eyes, “Is she, though? Last I recall, she doesn’t wanna be married to you anymore. So if you’re going in there just to bug her after she, Maria, and myself have told you to stay away, I think it is my business.”

“I’m not fuckin’ buggin’ her, Tommy,” the man sneered, closing the distance between them to shove his finger into his face, “you stop me from goin’ to my fuckin’ house, schedulin’ me on these godawful shifts in the fuckin’ clinic, who the fuck do you think you are?”

Tommy turned his face away in disgust, “Yeah, from the stink of you it would seem you’ve been workin’ hard all day, huh? C’mon man, you smell like you’ve been bathing in booze. Let’s not make a scene here, make it easier on all of us.”

“Yeah, and what are you gonna do about it?” He turned his gaze down and spat at Tommy’s feet, “thought we were all a bunch of commies now, huh? All of us being equals and whatnot?”

“We’re all equal until one of us lays hands on their wife, Elias. You know that.”

Joel felt a surge of rage through him at this. Initially, he thought that the man had just been a drunk who’d skipped out of work to come and beg for his wife to come back to him, but now there was no denying the fact that the man was nothing more than a dirtbag wife beater. Truthfully, Joel was mostly shocked due to the fact that Tommy would even allow someone like him to even continue staying there. He couldn’t even count the amount of times that Tommy had gotten in trouble for picking a fight with men who even looked at women the wrong way; he could hardly imagine his brother having any sympathy towards a man who actually beat his wife, even if the punishment was an inadvertent death sentence by exiling him from the city.

“It was none of your fuckin’ business to begin with. If that bitch hadn’t been running around on me then–”

“You and I both know that’s not true, man. She’s a good woman, and she’s made a whole lotta progress since she finally smartened up and left your ass.”

The man curled his lip in anger, but seemed to be backing down from the challenge, “Fuck this. That whore ain’t even worth it.”

He bumped both Tommy and Joel’s shoulders on his way past, but neither of the brothers made an effort to fight back against him, simply just glad that he had willingly left without forcing them to make a scene. Tommy stayed in his place for a moment, hands falling to his hips as he shook his head, finally turning back to his brother with an exasperated yet slightly sheepish expression.

“Do me a favour and keep this between you and me. Others know they’re split up but most don’t know why. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Joel scoffed, “You’re tellin’ me you’ve got good people here, and yet you’re harbourin’ a man who beats his wife.”

“Ex-wife,” Tommy corrected, “And it’s not like that. She left him, begged us to let him stay so long as he left her alone.”

“I don’t know what sounds more fuckin’ stupid, that she wanted him to stay, or that you let him.”

Tommy shook his head, “It’s not just up to me. We’ve got a council, and unless I told ‘em exactly what happened, they’re not willing to give the boot to anyone for just bein’ an asshole, especially when he’s the only fuckin’ doctor we have.”

“Anyone can take the first aid training, Tommy.”

“No, Joel, he’s a surgeon. He was a resident before shit went south, and there’s been a few times where things woulda cost us a lot of good people if it weren’t for him. I can tell you right now that if she came clean about what he–” Tommy paused, taking a short breath to better compose himself, “We’d have a majority vote, and she knows that. If I had it my way, I wouldn’t have let him go that night.”

He watched his brother closely; his teeth gritted together, brow furrowed, and eyes wide and glassy. Tommy had clearly been affected by what had transpired between that man–Elias and his wife, so much that he couldn’t even seem to think about it without losing it. Joel grunted in response, nodding his head slowly.

He couldn’t decide if he would have done the same thing in that situation, but then he thought back to Tommy’s words, I wouldn’t have let him go that night. Tommy had had his own hands on him, probably ready to kill him. Something about the situation made him sober up through the rage and make the decision to let the man go, to let him live. Joel knew he would not have had the same restraint if it had been him instead.

Over the next few days, he repeatedly cursed himself for not demanding that his brother tell him the woman’s name. He spent the days that followed in a state of constant discomfort, always glancing over his shoulder in public to watch for Elias around town, taking note of where he went, who he spoke to, and to what anyone had to say about him. He’d begun taking on a leadership role around town, people flocked to him for help, following his orders on patrols, and looked to him for answers. He wasn’t the one to make those decisions on his own–hell, his opinions did nothing but occasionally influence the council, but people seemed to trust that he had the town’s best interest at heart.

He’d been an official patrol captain for all of a week when Tommy met him in the stable early one morning, helping a young woman saddle up a dark chestnut coloured horse. She was bundled up in a thick wool sweater under a long green raincoat and a navy baseball cap over her neatly braided hair, ready to face whatever chill and rain early spring weather would throw their way.

“Mornin’ old man,” Tommy grinned, turning to nod at the woman next to him, introducing her to his brother, “she’s gonna be joining you on patrol. You know this route by heart now, and she’s only been out a handful of times.”

Joel turned his gaze back over to her, taking in her features. He’d seen her around town before; she seemed to have taken on a new job every day and he could never anticipate when or where he might spot her. They had exchanged smiles and polite greetings as they passed by, just as everyone else did, though they had yet to interact any further. She was the kind of pretty that made him often struggle to pull his gaze away when he spotted her in a crowd, but she was also just young enough that made him feel guilty for it. She couldn’t be any older than her mid-twenties, but like everyone in Jackson, she looked like she had seen her fair share of loss and hardship.

“Hi,” the woman beamed, holding her hand out to him eagerly, “I may be a rookie but I’m a pretty good shot so I think that makes up for it.”

Joel shook her hand gingerly, “Yeah, hopefully you won’t gotta put that to use. This route’s usually pretty clear of infected.”

“Great,” she nodded, “because I was lying. I’m just okay.”

Joel scoffed, glancing over at his brother who seemed unfazed by the woman’s behaviour but amused at Joel’s reaction. She was exactly the type of person that Joel worked to avoid; far too peppy and a tendency to ramble. From the moment that they had mounted their horses until the moment that they returned from patrol almost three hours later, she hardly let more than a few moments of silence pass before she would be asking a dozen more questions. But for some odd reason, Joel didn’t hate it as much as he thought he would.

It was sort of nice to have someone actually ask him about his day to day life without pressing too much into his past. He liked that she didn’t feel privy to his life before Jackson aside from asking where he was from and where he lived before Jackson. At some points, he was reminded of Ellie when they were travelling across the country in the way that she was able to come up with and ask such random questions off the top of his head, but it made patrol go by much faster than it usually did. And after, when she strutted off in the direction of the meal hall, he felt a flicker of regret for rejecting her invitation to join her.

He felt an almost instantaneous connection to the younger woman, but he could not help but notice the line in the sand between developing feelings for the world and feeling like a disgusting older man preying on a younger woman; the line between denying himself of what could lead to happiness he hadn’t felt in decades and throwing himself head first into it. She was kind when she spoke to him, but Joel was not the sort of man to mistake kindness for flirting, but there was some sort of familiarity in her eyes when they met with his own–an understanding, leading to that already thin line growing even thinner.

But what he hadn’t known at the time was that the moment they had set out on patrol that morning, he had started that dangerous walk along that narrow line, completely unsure of what side he was going to end up on.

#x reader #reader insert #imagines #joel miller x you #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller one shot #joel miller imagine #joel miller fic #joel x reader #joel miller smut #joel the last of us #joel miller x reader #joel miller

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thesiltverses · 11 months ago

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A very big thank you

I posted this on Patreon, but really wanted to share it here as well:

Post-show life begins

For a long while now I’ve been getting up at 4.30 or 5am, grabbing myself the first coffee of four, and then coming to sit at my desk.

I open up the assembly cut of the newest TSV episode.

I listen to it, I try and pin down which scenes I need to be going back over today. I try and push through the entire morning without a break because when the momentum stalls, that’s what kills your release schedule. (I also worry endlessly about just how much of my hair is falling out, and how spending 12 hours a day wearing headphones could be contributing to that.)

Today was different. I still woke up early - it’s a hard habit to shake off, and probably a useful one going forward. But I didn’t go to my desk, and I didn’t put my headphones on.

I went to the rocking chair we bought for our son when he comes, and I sat there - gently swaying and trying not to spill my coffee all over it, because for some reason it’s fucking beige - and looked out over the city skyline.

I slugged back my coffee surrounded by all the stuff we’ve panic-bought for the baby, and I got to take all of it in - washcloths and the changing table and romper suits - with a sudden focus and a clarity and a rising excitement that I really hadn’t allowed myself to feel until today, because until today the work was still unfinished and there was still much left to be done.

All at once I felt very free, and fully sated, and happy and proud for everything that’s coming next.

There’s so much to feel grateful for from the past three years of working on this show. But what’s probably going to sit with me the most is being able to arrive at that moment and those feelings today, - and we have all of you incredible people to thank for that.

Not just in terms of listenership or financial support, although that’s been truly invaluable and a lifeline for us that’s enabled us to actually make the show - but also your enthusiasm, your passion, your jokes and comments and everything that’s helped to keep us motivated and working on it.

So - with as much feeling as words can convey, thank you so, so much for everything.

What’s coming next, in rough order

#1: Parentdom is going to take over our lives for a while! I also want to write the final Patreon episode commentaries in the next few days, while I have the time and the clear memories. #2: The next thing we’ll organise will be the post-season Q&A (we’d also like to do some kind of off-camera cast party if we can make schedules work, just to say thank you to our amazing VAs and celebrate with them). Please do ask us questions! #3: We have long-unfinished commitments to the Patreon which I need to complete: the last two episodes of So Long, Good Luck, and rounding off Sid Wright’s story. As ever, huge thank-yous for your patience with these; they’ve just been impossible to polish off while also working on the main show so much. #4: Something I’ve been thinking about for a long time is the possibility of going back to Season 1 and redesigning it from scratch to try and bring it closer in style to S2 and S3. We have the raw audio files - some of the mic quality will just be rough no matter what, but we can certainly try. This is something I want to be conscientious and careful about; I very much want to respect the sound design work that’s already taken place, and ensure we’re not overriding anything. But I do know that the initial quality still sometimes puts new listeners off; we were learning a lot about direction and mastering from scratch, and our designers were working with limited budget and a total lack of plugins, so there’s simply a lot more we can achieve now. (This would also be a good opportunity for me to finally rework the transcripts, another fallen hurdle). #5: A few months back, we were contacted by a literary agent in NYC who was interested in us adapting the show into a series of novels. There’s a long road ahead to actually get published, but I'm thrilled to say that I have signed with them and I’m really excited to hopefully start work on the first book once I’ve settled into dad-dom. I’ll need to check what’s possible, but if it doesn’t interfere with any contract condition I’d obviously love to share excerpts on here as it’s written. #6: Then there’ll also be another larger audiodrama project - we’ve spoken about the different possibilities before! Excited to get started on our final choice.

Just one last word about endings

God, endings are scary. Because endings are impossible.

How many serialised stories actually end in a way that’s received unequivocally well? People yelled at The Sopranos for its ambiguity and open-endedness. People criticised Breaking Bad for treating Walt too sympathetically at the end and relying on a generic mob of snarling Nazis to act as his final foe.

Endings are either too pat and neat, or too inconclusive to be satisfying, or too surreal and dreamlike, or they simply make what feels like the wrong choices for the characters we care about. We’re all caught in that barbed wire, creators and audience alike, weighed down by the baggage of what’s come before and we've already spent so much time anticipating the infinite possibilities of how it could all turn out - it’s like we can’t get free of the story that’s trying to end.

And the beautiful thing about these longform, iterative works is that they insist upon becoming completely ungovernable. No matter how much of a planner the creator claims to be, how much prepwork they carry out - they were never really in control. There’s spontaneity and surprises and dead ends and beautiful distractions that come spilling out along the way (I was baffled and delighted to learn that people really - at the end of the show, with such limited time to spare - wanted to find out what had happened to Eddie*).

So they can’t end. Not really. There’s too much wonderful mess in them to ever be reasonably disentangled.

And, of course, for every ending people remember with frustration or dissatisfaction, there’s another hundred endings that nobody remembers at all, because we lost our enthusiasm along the way and it feels better to keep going back to the start and avoiding the slow decline. (Who the fuck remembers how the umpteenth X-Files reboot ended? What increasingly tired post-modern antics was Alan Moore getting up to in the final League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books?). I really just didn’t want the show to end up in that latter category.

All of that probably sounds like I’m warding off criticism about the show's ending, but for me it’s actually been the opposite.

For an ending which is all about narrative dissatisfaction, and failed potential and missed opportunities, and how we need to come to terms with the lack of existential fairness and certainty and narrative control in our lives and keep ploughing forward all the same for as long as we possibly can, I’m massively stunned at just how positive the reception has been on here and elsewhere, and that’s something I’m actively having to process, because I think I was fearfully anticipating much more pushback.

But, look - the Eskew finale was originally quite poorly-received and then people came back around to it over time. So I’m not going to pat myself on the back too hard, because maybe it’ll ultimately be the opposite with this show, and that’s OK. For 200 years everyone was convinced King Lear was improved by having everyone survive at the end and get married. Endings take time to settle into their final condition.

For now, I am incredibly relieved that the ending we chose seems to have landed for most people, and I’m incredibly grateful for the lovely messages we’ve got about it and for the trust in us that you’ve all shown throughout the story.

So, yeah, let’s end with another thank you, because that’s what I feel so deeply and so forcefully at this point.

Thank you so much again, and speak soon.

Jon

*My take? We’ve established that the guy is in some kind of blue-collar job and has been pushed into constant overtime due to the reduced workforce. We’ve seen that the so-called ‘national holiday’ doesn’t actually rescue workers from their commitments. So I personally imagine that Eddie was working during the parade somewhere on the city outskirts, and is alive and well.

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evidence-based-activism · 1 year ago

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you’re still ignoring WHY the rates for men are so high, because women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes. Women abuse children more and initiate 70% of domestic violence, yet men are still portrayed as the villains. You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously. You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. and are very gender essentialist themselves. Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take.

Hi -

So, I'm going to answer this ask and the one that includes the bustle link that I expect was also sent by you? However, I'm not going to continue putting in this degree of effort (i.e., reading and researching the information you send) unless you start matching that effort. It will be difficult for you to do so in an ask (although I suppose you could try), so I suggest you reblog this post to further discuss.

So, on to the response:

---

No, there is not a significant reporting gap (at least, not one caused by sex).

You said "women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes", but there is no evidence that is the case. Let's take the crime data from two sources: the criminal victimization survey by the BJS [1] and the FBI crime data explorer [2]. These two sources are helpful for this discussion because the BJS attempts to determine total offenses including those not reported, while the FBI only looks at reported offenses.

For 2022 (rounding numbers) and looking at violent offenses (excluding homicide as the BJS report is interview based):

Male violent crime: 4,750,000 estimated by the BJS and 1,990,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 42% reporting rate

Female violent crime: 1,220,000 estimated by the BJS and 777,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 64% reporting rate

These numbers would suggest that more female offenders than male offenders are reported (i.e., a greater percent of female offenders, even though in absolute terms there are far fewer female offenders). However, there are some caveats to this data that makes me reluctant to state this conclusion:

The crime definitions between the BJS and FBI differ slightly. For example, I had to search through the "other crimes" for the FBI to find simple assault and several additional sexual assault categories to try and match the overall BJS "violent crime" statistic.

These stats are incident based not offender based. So, for example, if John commits 10 aggravated assaults and 5 of his victims report the assault to the police, 5 incidents are recorded in the system. Therefore, recidivism may or may not play a role in reporting rates.

I calculated the rate using the offender stats for individual offenders and "both male and female offender". Proportionally speaking a greater percent of female offenders are in the "both" category (23% vs 6%). Other statistics suggest more severe crimes are more likely to be reported to the police (e.g., 50% of aggravated assault is reported vs 37% of simple assault). If we make the assumption that violent crimes involving multiple offenders are more likely to be severe, then this could partially explain the disparity.

However, this point is essentially irrelevant, as the statistics previously discussed in the CDC report don't rely on reported crimes, they specifically interview representative samples in order to determine prevalence rates. (The difference between this data (and data in the BJS report) and the number of reported cases is how we know these crimes are under-reported.)

Just to drive the point home: the BJS study, which again, looks at both reported and unreported crime indicates:

Men take part in 84% of violent crimes and the only offender(s) in 79% of violent crimes (the stats for women are 21% and 17% respectively)

The offender-to-population ratio is 1.6 for men and 0.3 for women. That means the share of men in the "offender population" is 60% more than the share of men in the US population. The share of women offenders is 70% less than their share of the US population.

And before you send me another debunked myth: no men are not victimized more: the victim-to-offender population ratio for all violent crimes is 1.0 for both men and women.

I've also talked about how men don't under-report abuse (at least, not anymore than women do) in the past, so see this post for a couple more sources.

There's also no evidence that crimes committed by women get taken less seriously. However, it is true that when women do commit crimes, they tend to be less severe than the crimes committed by men (i.e., women commit more simple assault and aggravated assault). Given this, women's crimes may be taken "less seriously", but that's because the crimes are less serious, going by the accepted definitions of the crime. (And this is not my personal opinion! There is an actual "crime hierarchy" used in the American justice system that ranks crimes by degree of severity.)

In terms of legal consequences, women and men receive similar sentence lengths with one major caveat [3]. Caretakers of children, especially, young children, routinely received shorter sentences. Since women are more likely to be the primary caretaker of children, they'd be more likely to see this sentence reduction. However, this gap has been closing since the introduction of mandatory minimum sentencing. Some research suggests women may receive harsher sentences than men for "traditionally male crimes" [4].

Either way, crimes by women are clearly taken at least as "seriously" as crimes by men.

---

No women do not abuse children more.

You said "Women abuse children more", but this is an oft-repeated statement from terribly misinterpreted data.

The misconception comes from data from the child maltreatment report from the HHS [5]. This report looks at reports of child abuse and neglect. In it they found that 52% of victims had a female perpetrator and 47% had a male perpetrator. At first glance, this looks like women abuse more children (hence the wide-spread misinterpretation), however this neglects to take several things into consideration.

First, since about 51% of the population is female, even if we considered nothing else, these values would suggest parity in maltreatment (abuse + neglect) rates. Of course, even this interpretation is deeply flawed, but I thought it merited pointing out.

Second, and perhaps most important, these stats are not looking at incidence or even prevalence rates. This isn't a rate at all. For example, you may be tempted to interpret these as "52% of children in a women's care are abused" or "52% of women abuse children". These are, and I must stress this, completely incorrect interpretations. These stats say only that of child maltreatment (abuse+neglect) victims identified by CPS, 52% of them were maltreated by a women.

Next, these stats fail to take into account the fact that many more women are the primary caretaker of children. According to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), mothers spend 80% more time caring for children than fathers. This disparity widens even further when you exclude the "entertainment" categories like playing or reading to children (130% increase, or more than double) [6]. This matters because it provides some insight into how rates of abuse would be different. You need to adjust for time spent with children to get a meaningful rate. Another way to look at this is that despite mothers spending almost twice the amount of time around children as fathers, they account for the same number of perpetrators. This alone should tell you that a child is more likely to be safe in the company of a randomly selected woman than a randomly selected man.

In case you still aren't convinced however, the report also clarifies that the perpetrator sex varied widely by maltreatment type. Women were the perpetrator in 58.5% of neglect cases (vs 41%) and 70.5% of medical neglect cases (vs 29%). But men were the perpetrator in 49.5% of physical abuse cases (vs 49%), 89% of sexual abuse cases (vs 8%), and 59% of emotional abuse cases (vs 41%). While no form of child maltreatment is ever acceptable, I hope I don't need to explain how abuse (which "requires an action") is different from neglect (which "occurs from an inaction") and requires different responses.

Speaking of neglect: there is much discourse on how much of the neglect (and medical neglect) registered by CPS is "true neglect" and how much is a result of poverty. This is particularly relevant considering single mothers are much more likely to live in poverty than married couples or single fathers. Examples of this may include: a mother doesn't have enough money to buy food and pay for rent so she and her child eat very little until her next paycheck, a single mother can't miss work without being fired so she sends her sick child to school, a single mother can't pay for child care so she has to choose between leaving her child home alone or having an unfit adult (her own abusive parent? an unsuitable boyfriend?) watch her child. In all of these situations, something absolutely needs to be done to help the child, but it likely isn't the same something as a child who's being beaten or sexually abused by his father.

Other notes on neglect: even the relatively higher proportion of female perpetrators for neglect and medical neglect in this sample are well below parity when adjusted for time spent with the child. It’s also likely that men’s rates of neglect are likely severely under-reported here. Why? Because a neglect case is rarely (if ever) opened for absentee ("deadbeat") dads; it's also unclear how many men with non-primary custody are listed as perpetrators of neglect. (I ask you: if mothers are considered neglectful for failing to intervene on behalf of their child in abusive/neglectful situations, why aren't fathers?)

Other studies on child abuse perpetration (sadly no national reports) show:

Evaluations of child fatalities in Missouri over a 8-year period showed men inflicted 71% of fatal injuries on young children [8]

Evaluations of fatal and nonfatal abusive head trauma over a 12-year period at the Children's Hospital of Denver found 69% of the perpetrators were male (including 74% of the perpetrators of fatal head traumas) [9]

Data from conviction rates and victimization surveys suggest that 4-5% of adult, child sex offenders (as in child sex offenders who are adults) are female, meaning that 95-96% are male [10]

Altogether, this indicates that men are more likely to abuse a child in their care than women. Unsurprisingly, it’s safer for children to be around women than around men.

---

No, women do not initiate more domestic violence/commit the same amount of abuse.

You said "women ... initiate 70% of domestic violence". It took me a while to find a source for this statistic, but I eventually found out it comes from a poorly done study that unfortunately finds company with a number of other poorly done studies touted by MRAs and anti-feminists.

Before we address that study specifically: a brief history of the nonsense plaguing domestic violence research.

To be clear, this is not a new discussion, we (the general we) have been having this same discussion about whether there's gender parity in domestic violence for, oh, 50 years or so. It is, possibly not entirely, but certainly mostly the result of the "Conflict Tactics Scale" (CTS). Intended for use in family violence research, it has several methodological flaws which make its results ... let's go with unreliable.

I really thought I'd discussed the CTS before now ... but can't find anything on my blog. But there is this post which is a nice pictograph about this next topic, which I will loop into our discussion of the CTS.

So ... why is the CTS so unreliable? Because "domestic violence" is not a homogeneous phenomenon. If I asked someone to picture an abusive relationship they are almost certainly going to imagine an abusive man controlling his partner through intimidation, likely restricting her behavior, and possibly hitting or otherwise physically harming her. This "typical" dynamic is what we think of when we hear "domestic abuse/violence". (I'd argue that it's what we should think of when discussing domestic violence, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.)

Notably, what this doesn't include is the -- far more common -- case of situational violence. A "typical" example of situational violence is arguments that "gets out of hand" and end with one partner slapping/shoving/etc. the other (switching between perpetrator for different incidents) or two people who routinely get "nasty" (name calling, personal insults) to each other during arguments. There's no intimidation or controlling behavior and it doesn't escalate. It also is generally not associated with significant victim hardship (i.e., no/little increase in depression, anxiety, or PTSD; little fear or feeling unable to escape the relationship; no or few physical injuries; little or no economic hardship; etc.). It's also what's predominately being measured by the CTS.

This isn't to say that situational violence is "okay". It clearly isn't, no more than a bar fight or slapping a co-worker is okay. It is, however, far more comparable to these examples (bar fight, slapping a coworker, etc.) than it is to the standard conception of domestic violence (which itself is more comparable to being a prisoner of war [11]). Some people have tried to resolve this by renaming the standard conception to "intimate partner terrorism" or "domestic abuse with coercive control". I have ... mixed thoughts on this, so I'm going to leave it at this for now.

If you'd like to read more about this, Michael P. Johnson at PSU (who originally proposed this division back in the 1990s!) has written a book and also has numerous articles about the topic.

I have a lot of sources about the CTS/differences in violence perpetration rates, but this post is already very long and I plan to make a whole separate post about this at some point. So, I'm going to briefly summarize the points and give some references that would be particularly helpful.

So, the issues with CTS include:

Failure to include a full range of possible violent behaviors, including many that are almost always perpetrated by men, including: rape, murder, choking, and suffocation.

Failure to examine post-breakup/divorce time periods, despite post-separation being one of the most dangerous time periods for abused women (but, notably, not men).

Failure to examine context. This gets back at the paradigm I mentioned above: studies that do examine context have shown that the vast majority of coercive controlling violence (i.e., traditional abuse) is perpetrated by men and the vast majority of responsive violence (i.e., self-defense) is perpetrated by women.

Failure to examine the severity of the violence and/or violence impacts. Studies have also shown that women routinely receive the more severe injuries than men. That applies to both the injuries received from coercive controlling violence and from situational violence. Notably, men are rarely ever injured from responsive violence. Women also routinely report more severe psychological and social problems as a result of abuse.

Extremely poor phrasing of the questions. The CTS is unique in its false positive rate, as has been established by several other measures of violence. For example, simply adding the stem "Not including horseplay or joking around..." reduced the number of violent incidents reported and also showed higher rates of female victimization than male victimization.

Inconsistency with every other scale/measure used for determining prevalence rates of abuse! Hopefully it is obvious why this is an issue, but as an example: if I created a new measure for "depressive symptoms" and I found that it correlated very poorly with every other accepted measure of depressive symptoms then my new measure would be considered to have very poor "convergent validity". In non-politicized situations, my measure would likely never make it to the publishing stage, and would certainly fall out of use once this poor validity demonstrated by another study. Unfortunately, science is not immune to politics any more than the people conducting it are, as we can see with the survival of the CTS.

I gathered this information from a bunch of sources, but I've selected a few reviews (i.e., papers that "review" or condense many other papers into one) that would be helpful to you [12-16]. I recommend [12] in particular, although [13] touches on much of the same information and is much shorter. Ultimately, the CTS can, at most, be considered a measure of situational violence (and it's not even very good at that!).

---

So, finally, why is the 70% study [17] particularly bad?

All of the above problems with CTS apply, but in addition to all of that, they didn't just use the already flawed measure as it was ... no they, narrowed it down into 6 total questions. In total it asked about the respondent's perpetration of victimization of the following forms of violence: threatening with violence, pushing/shoving, throwing something, slapped, hit, kicked. They then "assessed" severity by asking a single question about injuries ("How often has partner had an injury, such as a sprain, bruise, or cut because of a fight with you?" and the corresponding victimization version.)

So, let's see ... failure to include predominately male forms of violence? Check. Further exclusion of even the existing items on the CTS that do examine this? Check! Failure to examine time past the relationship? Check. Failure to examine context? Check! Failure to examine severity of violence? Check. (Asking about a sprain or a bruise but not hospitalizations? broken bones? concussions?) Inconsistency with all other measures? Definitely!

Other problems with the study: they asked individuals to rate their perpetration and victimization, they did not examine their partners responses to such questions. This is a problem for a study like this, given that men tend to over-estimate their partners violence towards them and under-estimate their own violence towards their partner, and women do the opposite over-estimating their own violence and under-estimating their partners [12]. A note that a related problem has also shown up for the original CTS (i.e., if you asked both partners to complete the scale, their responses may agree on the "explaining a disagreement" item pair, but there was little if any agreement on the severe items like the "beating up" item pair).

To make a bad problem even worse: they condensed their multi-item (8-point) scales into binary (yes/no) categories and 3-item (low/medium/high) categories. This reduction in variance likely created artificially high rates for women and artificially low rates for men.

Hilariously (infuriatingly), they make it all the way through this data and then acknowledge that their study may not actually have examined domestic abuse at all! Instead it describes "common couple violence or situational violence", which, again, goes back to what the paradigm I introduced earlier. Of course, they don't revise their title or abstract to be less misleading ... that wouldn't be sensational enough.

Also, just to point this out: even this poorly designed, misleading study still showed "men were more likely to inflict an injury on a partner than ... women". So ... there you go. Even tipping the scales/design as far in favor of a "gender symmetry" result as they can possibly go, women still end up injured more than men.

---

So, for the rest of your ask:

"yet men are still portrayed as the villains"

well when 1 in 3 men around the world openly admit to abusing women, and they are the perpetrator of 90+% of homicides, and 10-67% of men openly admit to believing non-defensive physical and sexual violence against women is at least sometimes okay it's pretty easy to see why women can see them as the villain/enemy.

"You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously."

This is one of those cases where critical thinking skills are pretty important! Let me start you off:

Do I think that a social media post will garner a representative sample from which to draw conclusions? Or is more likely that people who agree with the post will comment on and re-blog it, spreading it more people who are more likely to agree with it?

Can I see the re-blog I'm making comments about (i.e., evidence-based-activism's re-blog?). If not, (hint: it's not in the re-blog viewer :)) is it possible that there are other hidden replies that are disagreeing with this post?

Maybe most importantly: do I need female-on-male or female-on-female violence to be as common as male-on-female and male-on-male violence in order to show compassion to those who do experience it? (Hint: you shouldn't!! Something doesn't need to be common to deserve sympathy and rare =/= excusable.)

In addition, this is touching on a pretty common issue with discourse these days -- the prioritization of "feeling" over "being". Someone (male or female) may feel safer around men, but statistically speaking they are safer around women. It's reasonable to respond to and accommodate people's feelings on an individual basis, it's not reasonable to base an ideology or policy around them.

"You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. ... Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take."

Similar to the last point ... views on social media are not representative of a population. Views that you, specifically, are seeing are not representative! If they were, then "well, I see more posts preemptively criticizing people for not including men than I see posts excluding men" (which is true, almost every post I read now-a-days includes caveats like "but men are abused too!! and women can be abusers!!") would have been a valid counter-argument to your ask. But see, I know that my experience on social media is not universal, and I should hope you can acknowledge the same of your own!

Also ... to be fair to all these unnamed "radfems", I'm guessing that you would consider my posts (like this response) to be an example of someone "saying this", which is very much not the case. I am acknowledging social trends and making reasonable generalizations to allow for communication about a complex topic (you know, the way people do for any and every topic ever), but I'm not claiming that no women is ever abusive or that no man has ever been abused. I'm guessing that these other posts are pretty similar (if less verbose).

side note, you also said: "radfems ... are very gender essentialist themselves".

Either you don't know what "gender essentialist" means or the people you are talking to/about are not radfems. I acknowledge that there are a number of people going around and saying they're radfems, but the nice thing about a political group like this is they have (at least some) defined beliefs.

So, for example, if someone went around saying they are a communist, but then when asked to describe their desired economic system, describes an economy based around the free market and decentralized production ... then they aren't a communist no matter what they call themselves. A command economy is a central tenant to communism, so much so that a desire to implement one/have one is intrinsic to being a communist.

In the same way, if someone is calling themselves a radfem, but supports the preservation of gender/gender roles or believes that femininity/masculinity is biologically innate ... then they aren't a radfem.

---

TL;DR:

Violent crimes for women and men are reported at similar rates.

Women and men are punished similarly for violent crimes (i.e., people do take crimes by women seriously).

Children are safer in the company of women than men. There is insufficient research to accurately describe perpetrator demographics of "minor" child abuse/neglect, but there is significant research indicating that men are the perpetrator of the the vast majority of severe injuries, fatal injuries, and sexual abuse.

Men commit the vast majority controlling domestic violence (the type of violence people think of when thinking about domestic violence); women's violence is predominately responsive. Women are also the recipients of the vast majority of injuries (minor and severe) and are the victim of almost all fatalities.

Social media posts are not representative studies.

Critical thinking skills are important!

And, everyone -- regardless of sex or any other demographic characteristic -- deserves compassion when harmed. It is still appropriate talk about trends and create policies that assist the majority of those harmed.

A reminder that I will expect a reasonable degree of engagement with this information if you plan to engage in further discussion! I'll answer the bustle link ask, but after that I'll simply delete asks that don't make a genuine attempt to think critically about this information. (Clarifying questions are okay to ask though :)).

---

References below the cut:

Criminal Victimization, 2022 | Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2022.

“National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Details Reported in the United States .” Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer, https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend.

Myrna S. Raeder Gender and Sentencing: Single Moms, Battered Women, and Other Sex-Based Anomalies in the Gender-Free World of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 20 Pepp. L. Rev. Iss. 3 (1993) Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/plr/vol20/iss3/1

https://web.archive.org/web/20240406064949/https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/jan/12/intimate-partner-violence-gender-gap-cyntoia-brown

Child Maltreatment 2022. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/report/child-maltreatment-2022.

“Average Hours per Day Parents Spent Caring for and Helping Household Children as Their Main Activity.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.htm.

Shrider, Emily A., Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-273, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, September 2021.

Schnitzer PG, Ewigman BG. Child deaths resulting from inflicted injuries: household risk factors and perpetrator characteristics. Pediatrics. 2005 Nov;116(5):e687-93. doi: 10.1542/peds.2005-0296. PMID: 16263983; PMCID: PMC1360186.

Starling SP, Holden JR, Jenny C. Abusive head trauma: the relationship of perpetrators to their victims. Pediatrics. 1995 Feb;95(2):259-62. PMID: 7838645.

McCartan, K. (Ed.). (2014). Responding to Sexual Offending. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137358134

Comparison Between Strategies Used on Prisoners of War and Battered Wives | Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/comparison-between-strategies-used-prisoners-war-and-battered-wives.

Michael S. Kimmel. (2001). Male Victims of Domestic Violence: A Substantive and Methodological Research Review. The Equality Committee of the Department of Education and Science. https://vawnet.org/material/male-victims-domestic-violence-substantive-and-methodological-research-review

Flood, M. (1999, July 10). Claims About Husband Battering [Contribution to Newspaper, Magazine or Website]. Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre Newsletter; Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/215068/

Walter DeKeseredy & Martin Schwartz. (1998). Measuring the Extent of Woman Abuse in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships: A Critique of the Conflict Tactics Scales. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/measuring-extent-woman-abuse-intimate-heterosexual-relationships-critique-conflict-tactics

Shamita Das Dasgupta. (2001). Towards an Understanding of Women’s Use of Non-Lethal Violence in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/towards-understanding-womens-use-non-lethal-violence-intimate-heterosexual-relationships

Whitaker, Daniel J., et al. “Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 97, no. 5, May 2007, pp. 941–47. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020.

#feminism #male violence

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biancasaidstfu · 7 months ago

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Hey hey y'all.

I have some things to point out.

Thank you to @biancadoes1 for talking this stuff over with me and encouraging me to share my thoughts. 🩷

1. Look at how crowded Jake's side of the table is while Nicola has allll that space. Jake's items are ALL over the edge.

2. See that orphaned spoon in Nic's pic? Now look at the bottom left corner of Jake's pic where what could well be a spoon is hanging off the edge. Definitely not a match.

3. Isn't the picture of Jake oddly angled and weirdly more close up than Nic's? His shoulder and arm are also cut off.

4. Most people taking a selfie at minimum center themself and don't oddly cut off just one side of them if they are the only subject.

5. Isn't Jake supposed to be pretty interested in photography? Why would an amateur go so avant garde on a restaurant selfie?

6. The pictures to me look like they could have been taken by someone tall and left handed. Jake's is close to him and a bit awkward for it. Nic's is further away but she is nicely framed and level, but clearly shorter than the person taking the photo while Jake is about the same height.

7. Who do we know that is left handed and a prominent figure in Nic's life?

8. Oh, did you know that opposite handedness couples (like my parents) gain the habit of sitting with their non dominant hands together to avoid elbow bumping while eating?

9. That also makes hand holding while eating easy.

10. Who really, really, really likes holding Nicola's hand? Give ya a hint: his initials are LN.

11. Ignore the knife reflection in Nic's pic. The only thing I can tell you it that it's not Jake. It's not the color of his shirt. It could be a ceiling fixture for all we can tell.

12. They posted the pictures at the same time! ... so what? Maybe the person who took them finally remembered to send them? Maybe Nic was like awh shite we should post those and texted Jake. We will never know. Chill about it.

All this leads me to be very close to certain that there was at least one other person at that table. And I find it pretty damned reasonable that it could have been Luke.

And if not Luke? I'm fine with it. But I really think there are too many signs pointing to this being a meal with at least three people to just assume it was only Nicola and Jake.

/takes a bow, exits stage left

You laid this out way better than I ever could have, friend!

Everyone give @greeneyessmize a round of applause 👏👏👏

#lukola #thoughts and opinions

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threeacttragedy · 8 months ago

Text

Entry 5 – The One About the Distorted Phone Screen that Sent Half the Fandom into the Ocean

I had no intention of writing about last week’s phone screen debacle, mainly because I found it obnoxious and a smidge infuriating. Not because I believed Jake to be on the phone screen but because people were SO QUICK TO BELIEVE it was Jake on the phone screen.

Honestly, I didn’t even need to see the “cleaned up” version of the picture because I would have sworn then – and would still swear now – it was Luke on the screen. White guy, dark hair, left hand touching his face (or, as it’s been suggested, removing sunglasses), signaling to me that the person in the photograph was left hand dominant. Add that in with all the information Luke and Nicola have laid out before us over the past three months (and, honestly, probably even before that) and there is no other answer: it’s Luke. The end, right? Nope, not even close. Like I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, we’re not allowed to have nice things.

The image comes from a video of Golda giving Nicola her WOTY award. People started taking screen grabs and dropping it into apps that claimed to clean up blurry images.

*Fun fact – I did this once to the picture of Nicola on the boat in Malta. I used three separate apps, in fact, and each time I got this frightening image of Nicola back. Do you remember the scene in Shrek where he picked up a frog and blew it into a balloon for Fiona? The frog’s eyes protruded out and his face was all puckered. That’s what I got back from these apps – a bulging-eyed monstrosity that looked nothing like Nicola. It was froggin’ weird (my Colin-Dad joke of the day), especially since, in the original image, you couldn’t even see her eyes as she appeared to be looking down at her phone.

Okay, back to what I was blabbing about…

People started adjusting the lighting on the screen grab of Nicola’s phone to extreme levels. And, there were even rumors flying around that people had superimposed Jake’s face on to the image and sent it out into the black abyss that is social media. I think I saw six different versions of the image within the first four hours of it dropping on X.

But, guess what, each time, I still saw Luke. Well, I take that back. One time, I swear I saw Johnny Bailey, which, if that had been true, I would have given Nicola a huge round of applause for being so hilariously catty about it all.

My advice, if you want to see the picture, pull it yourself. Go to YouTube, take a screen grab of it, and figure it out on your own. Do not put it through an app and don’t play with the lighting so much that it distorts the image. You may have noticed that I did not repost any of those images here. That was intentional. Form your own opinion about it.

Now that we have that out of the way – the part about me believing it was Luke on the phone screen and me suggesting you form your own opinion about it – I’ll move on to why I decided to write about this topic today.

It was because Luke did something yesterday that piqued my interest.

It wasn’t anything necessarily out of the ordinary. But, it also kind of was.

Simone Ashley posted to her grid yesterday a series of photographs. There’s nothing special here; she’s a beautiful woman putting her lovely image out into this world. It was the last picture in this slide deck that left me intrigued, though. It’s a picture of Simone – but, at the bottom left of the image, is a damn phone screen. Initially, I was a little confused by the image on the phone screen because it appeared to be Simone’s hands but also not Simone’s hands. What it was, is that the angle of the phone made the angle in which the image was depicted slightly different. Why not crop that phone out of it? Or, use a different image? Okay, whatever. I’m not sure I would have thought much of it – except Luke liked the post.

Why would this activate my little grey cells? Because it’s the first post of Simone’s in over a year that he has liked without Nicola also liking it. All throughout 2024, Luke has only liked the posts also liked by Nicola. Now, Nicola could very easily come back and like this post today or tomorrow or a week from now. She does like Simone’s posts frequently and, by Simone’s own words, Nicola and Simone are close. But, remember what I mentioned the other day. It’s the little changes that make people start giving the side eye. When taken collectively, Simone’s post, Luke’s like on the post, and the recent phone screen debacle seem, well, fucking connected in a damn funny way.

Kinda? Maybe?

I swear, I’m becoming one of those people who now plays Six Degrees to Lukola. What have I become?!

But, hey, let’s keep playing this game because, you have to admit, it IS kind of fun to speculate.

On November 10, Netflix UK dropped a post to its grid captioned “ME AND WHO???? [red heart]” The first slide in the deck is of Colin and Penelope’s wedding kiss – the one where Luke had his eyes open – and there is a red heart drawn between their chests (awe, their hearts). The remaining seven slides also include kissing couples but the red heart is drawn around their heads. The Luke and Nicola (like how I used Luke and Nicola, not Colin and Penelope this time?) picture stands out in this deck. It’s the first slide and the red heart is different than the others. And, what about that caption: “ME AND WHO????” Well, it's definitely NOT Nicola and Jake.

Is it a bit too far down the Delulu Rabbit Hole to believe Netflix would be in on a dig about “Who’s on Nicola’s phone screen?”

Perhaps.

But, remember this is also the same parent company that dropped “Nicola and Luke’s Cutest Moments” on August 28 (via Bridgerton Netflix IG), right smack dab in the middle of the Jake Festival Pap Disaster. Do you remember that? The fandom was bouncing all over the place. New festival pictures of Nicola and Jake had dropped the day before. Shondaland had also dropped a “Friends to Lovers” story that seemed oddly like Luke and Nicola. Melissa Dezarate dropped old Luke and Nicola pictures on her IG stories. Then, on August 28, Bridgerton Netflix dropped its “Cutest Moments,” and Melissa Dezarate shared more Luke and Nicola pictures on her IG stories. The “Cutest Moments,” pretty much entirely on its own (the rest was just extra frosting), turned our day right side up again. I salute you, Netflix.

Are we burrowing deeper into the Rabbit Hole? Meh. Let’s keep going.

Also on November 10, we had Dougie posting a mirror / elevator selfie to his grid with the caption, “I know it’s out of focus don’t tell me that.” Maybe he means something, maybe he doesn’t. Any ways, Jake liked this post. Now, I will admit, in the beginning of this Jake Side Story Extravaganza, I wasn’t keen on Dougie. He seemed aggressive on X – especially after those New York pap pictures dropped – but then I realized that his annoyance might be due to the narratives being spread about Jake, i.e., that he was being “hard launched” with Nicola. Recall that within a few hours of the Jake London Pap Disaster, Dougie posted to his stories an image of Jake looking at his phone with the “Mike/Sully Face Swap” meme superimposed over Jake’s face. If you research what this meme means, you’ll find that it is similar to a face-palm reaction or used for “overly ironic situations that leave you confused and perplexed.” Kind of funny, right? You’re welcome to take Dougie however you please, but over the past few weeks, I’ve become rather fond of him. He seems like a mischievous bloke, which is right up my alley.

I always have this feeling that the USS Lukola is surrounded by people who, after the ship hits a rogue wave, help to steer it back on course. The “people” come in the form of Nicola and Luke; cast, crew and friends; interviewers with their old edited-out snippets; and Netflix & Co. I’m sure I’m failing to name someone.

I shall wrap this post up with a quote from Jonathan Van Ness – who, by the way, is one of the most entertainingly funny and intelligent humans to watch. Earlier this week, JVN posted to his IG stories and Tiktok about “bobs.” With JVN, I never really know if he is being serious with what he puts out there or if we’re expected to read between the lines. Regardless, his comment was impactful to me:

“All this shit is just someone on Tiktok decided this was going to be the new name and tried to make that a trend. And that’s cool and that’s great and I love that. I just don’t want y’all getting confused. You know what I’m saying? This is just another variation of a bob.”

Take that as you please.

#lukola #nicola coughlan #luke newton #my opinion #my thoughts #speculation only

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4ranghaes · 6 months ago

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i absolutely love the way you write about bnd and how well done ur ot5 post are 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

this being said if you’re comfortable i’d love to see your thoughts on how bnd would send nudes/what type of nudes they send and how they’d be about it!! even what type of nudes they’d ask for. whatever you’re up to writing!!

take care of yourself <33

bnd sending and receiving nudes! ੈ✩‧₊˚

ot5 bnd x reader [smut, fem!reader]

a/n - okay i know a lot of these aren’t NUDES but i wanted to add visual references without putting dicks on your tl😭 and these are nicer to receive from boys than cock and ball pics anyway… also i didn’t add reference pics for sending cause i didnt want to limit body type/skin colour for reader !

warnings - NSFW PICTURES UNDER CUT!!!!!! MDNI!!!!

sungho🎀

sending - so originally, i thought about teasing photos taken in the mirror, revealing stomach and v-line but now, after looking, i think sungho would revel in sending you pics like this, showing off his body he’s so proud of and works so hard on, especially taken at or straight after the gym… however, i would say i think he’d still send v-line pics (not pictured) just like how he posts mirror selfies, you can see everything from his beautiful face to his slim stomach, happy trail leading down to his pubic hair, leading to the base of his dick and nothing more. ughhh omg i need him

receiving - sungho’s so sweet he’d never want to pressure you into sending nudes, even though he loves receiving them. seriously he’d never ask for them, any nudes sent are completely of your own free will. having said that, you’ve come to figure out what he likes and doesn’t like, and what he likes is thigh pics. panties, lingerie and BOWS WRAPPED ROUND YOUR THIGHS! he loves when you’re kneeling, thighs and stomach included in the pic. he also would love the classic mirror selfie in underwear, doesn’t matter if it’s fancy or not - he just loves seeing you on display for him.

riwoo🦦🍡

sending - absolutely inspired by the photos posted after the new years video… i think riwoo would generally be quite shy about sending nudes, and a sexting convo would usually be started by you, him only initiating when he’s on tour and so, so lonely. but he sends you little laying down pics, pants hanging low, waist on show because he knows how much you love them. i also think (not shown) he’d send full dick pics, just at a downward angle holding his hard length in his hand, simple but he has a pretty dick yk, has to use it to his advantage. one time, after begging and pleading you even got him to send one with a ribbon tied round the end.

receiving - once again riwoo on the whole is just super shy about nudes, so much like sungho, any nudes sent is your idea and usually catches him completely off guard, even if he’s alone on tour, he’s still hiding his phone, staring like he’s not allowed to, like he’s doing something wrong. if you forced him to have an opinion though, the ones where you’re fully clothed, either holding your tits, or your nipples visible through the material, or cleavage poking out the top. anything to do with your boobs, while you’re still dressed he loves… feels like he can perv, even though you’re already his completely.

jaehyun🪻🐕

sending - there’s no rhyme or reason to when myungjae sends you nudes, he’s so horny most of the time, you’ll be sat at your desk in the middle of the day and you’ll receive a 5 minute long video of him masturbating, beginning to end. he’s not discriminatory about the photos/videos he sends. i chose these two references just cause they reminded me of him… in the first, the fashion and the earphones, it just has his vibe - and i think he’d absolutely send you pictures of marks you left on his body throughout the day, different to the way taesan does it though, he’s not showing off, he’s pouting, trying to gain your sympathy. with the second, it’ll be his first day off in ages, he’d send you pics he’d taken during sex until you’re finally receiving pics of his hard cock, turned on by his own doing - and eventually a moaning audio…

receiving - he’d LOVE when you match his freak and send videos of yourself beginning to end masturbating and unlike riwoo and sungho, myungjae absolutely would and DOES ask again and again for you to send pics and vids… he does this normally which you appease with boob or lingerie pics, the usual basics. but when he’s on tour, he’s begging more and more desperately, you like to treat him. videos either masturbating or teasing yourself, begging him by name to come home and let you cum - even if he’s not usually a dom, he loves the illusion of the videos, it’s his own personal porn…

taesan🎸🐈‍⬛

sending - wound photos!!!!! i’ve spoken about this on other people’s blogs but i go insane for masochist taesan, whether that’s sub or dom i think he’d love being scratched, marked up, slapped and more, and afterwards he’d love to send you photos of the wounds. the photo below’s a bit tame but i couldn’t find any i liked… he’d take some straight after sex, when bloods coming from his lip and his back and shoulders, and his body’s bruised and swollen, but he’d continue to take them through the week, giving you updates on your artwork <3 also, like the second photo, you’d go a while no updates and then he’d send just photos of his bare, unmarked skin, basically begging you to come and mark him up. on the more nsfw side, he’d also send moaning audios as he stroked his cock, maybe when he’s in the studio alone, and he’s stressed, he enjoys rubbing one out and sometimes, he doesn’t want to be quite so alone…

receiving - taesan would be one who wouldn’t ask explicitly for photos, but if he sends one, it’s only natural for his girlfriend to send one back, right? (also if you’re the one to send the nudes unprompted, just know the sex afterwards will be a punishment, no matter how much he liked them). he loves when you do the same back to him, sending him updates on marks and cuts he left on your body, bruises on your thighs, hand marks all over, and even if you’re not one for pain like taesan is, he loves leaving hickies up your boobs and neck, and he wants updates on those too. apart from that, lingerie pics are the best for him. he wants to see whenever you get a new pair, modelled immediately over text, or even when you find an old pair at the back of your drawer while cleaning out. or, it’s laundry day and you have no other options. whatever the occasion, he just wants to make sure he’s included.

leehan🪸🐠

sending - leehan, like with most other things in life, is obviously unusual, but also very casual in his attitude. he’d love sending pics like the first one just completely unprompted - no prior conversation happening and you reply like …‘how dare you’… he loves teasing you like that. because of course you’re horny now, look at your boyfriend! he usually does that when he’s just bored, not horny. but when he’s horny, he’ll send pics like the second, cute photos disguising his bulge or his bare torso underneath. i also think on a real nsfw note, he’d enjoy sending videos of his face as he jerks off, he loves how it’s teasing you as if testing whether you know the face or not beforehand, because you open what you think is just a handsome video of your boyfriend - before you notice the slick sounds in the background and the low moans starting to escape his mouth…

receiving - he’d love to see videos or audios the same way he sends them, and he’d be shameless in asking for them - special requests and all. ofc leehan wouldn’t always be knowledgable to the fact that they’re coming though - for those ones, he loves just photos of your body in underwear, not lingerie, simple underwear. lingerie feels too stuffy, underwear feels like all the times he’s about to fuck you, just seconds before… specifically he loves mirror selfies when you’re sitting, high waisted panties framing your tummy, or kneeling in the same way. he loves receiving these unprompted, and he’s shameless at looking at them too, in the middle of the practise room, full brightness, sat next to the other members.

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zosan-secondchances · 6 months ago

Text

The Pirate King of the North: Part 11

With Initial Concepts of Sanji's Skypiea Outfit

Main Themes: V̴i̵l̴l̸a̶i̸n̷ ̴S̵a̴n̴j̵i̷, Alternate Universe, Zosan Ship

Warning: Long post ahead and some One Piece spoilers. Contains strong language and explicit content.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 (Special) | 19

Law asked to play judge in the first round so he can properly gauge what he's up against. Sanji gladly entertained this to keep him interested and took the step forward to make the first move of their little game.

He positions himself ten metres away from a nearby tree that's angled over the edge of the riverbank. After warming up a couple of times by jumping on the spot, he runs up to it, extends the claws of his gauntlet then begins to use all fours to gradually increase his speed as he clambered up, twisting around the trunk several times, defying gravity, before leaping off the very top–his movements barely seen but the trail of stripped leaves and bark that he leaves behind. Mid-air, he does a series of impressive twirls and flips before landing flawlessly with a roll on the other side of the river. Standing upright, he takes a small bow then raises a hand to gesture over Zoro to take his turn in a challenging way.

Law claps slowly. The sound echoes across. He's not looking too impressed.

The swordsman cups a hand over his mouth and shouts.

Zoro

BOO! SEEN IT!

Sanji

ACK–! I was trying to show Law an example of what we can do!

Law

It's pretty standard even for you.

I'll give you basic points for ordinary.

Sanji gasps sharply. He throws a hand over his cheek like he'd just been slapped in the face, feeling offended.

Sanji

B–BASIC?!

Let's see you do better then, moss for brains!

“Standard”.... “Ordinary”....

The blonde grumbles the last couple of words grumpily as he kicks pebbles and sticks on the ground.

Zoro smirks at his reaction then calmly approaches a different tree. This one, unsurprisingly, has long vines dangling over it. He begins to climb it without a rush.

Law

Oh, here we go….

Sanji

What's with him and swinging…?

When the swordsman reaches the topmost branch that he can stand on, he reaches for a thick vine hanging in front of him and gives it a couple of strong tugs to test its durability. Confident it can take his weight, he clears his throat and grips the vine with both hands.

Sanji and Law both look at the swordsman in anticipation, expecting that he'll do something extraordinary given that the man had wanted to swing since the moment they arrived on the island.

After a pregnant pause, Zoro leaps off the branch, bellowing out loud booming noises projected from the back of his throat. There was nothing fancy in his swing. It was all just long guttural singing that echoed through the jungle. When he finally lets go and lands in front of Sanji, he looks absolutely pleased with himself, placing his hands on his hips.

Sanji

That's… that's it?

Zoro

Told ya it was good.

Sanji

After all that, that's all you got?

Law teleports, appearing in an instant between them.

Law

Zoro takes the round.

Sanji

WHAT?!?

Zoro

Hah!

Sanji

But why?!

Law

Points for… the unexpected.

Sanji throws his hands up in the air in frustration as Zoro raises a clenched fist in the air in victory.

—

They trudge through a particularly lush terrain. Zoro walked ahead, slicing long shrubs and leaves out of the way as the two followed behind him. Law has a snobbish look on his face.

Law

Not a good start, Pirate King-ya. Are you sure you played this game before?

It was Sanji's turn to look like he wanted to smack the man in the head. He takes a long drag of his smoke to compose himself before stomping on the leftover cigarette butt.

Zoro

I've seen him do crazy shit but that was just sad.

The blonde snaps and grabs the swordsman at the back of his collar to pull him face to face.

Sanji

Cocky shitty swordsman aren't you? You're supposed to be supportive of me!

Zoro didn't look surprised, fully remembering that Sanji has a certain temper whenever his ego gets damaged. He shrugs his shoulders.

Zoro

Hey, you set the stakes high. I can't let either one of you take advantage of my Warlord status.

And if you know Traffy, he has a certain love for spontaneity.

Still feeling pissed, Sanji lets go of the man. He walks ahead and lights another smoke.

Sanji

What does that even mean?

Zoro and Law follow him. The swordsman sheaths his sword, yawns then rests his hands at the back of his head.

Zoro

I mean, I wasn't too surprised when Luffy told me he's seeing him. At first, I thought it was just a once off–

Law

Zoro-ya!

Zoro

What? Was it supposed to be a secret?

Sure made that clear when you made out drunk in the middle of The Sunny–

Law

Enough already!

Sanji spins, walking backwards. His face lit up.

Sanji

No–tell me more! Traffy, I rarely hear anything about you and the Straw Hat!

Law pockets his hands, looking smaller with his hunched shoulders while grumbling to himself. There’s a tint of pink in his ears.

Sanji

Trafalgar D. Water Law…

Law

WHAT?

Sanji

You’re in love!

Zoro grins widely.

Law

ACK–

Sanji mirrored the swordsman’s smile. He teasingly prods.

Sanji

So…? Tell us how it happened….

Law

No.

Zoro

But he is, though.

Law

Shut up or I’ll slice your head off and keep it in a bag for the rest of the trip.

Sanji

Ohohoho! You’re cute when you’re defensive.

Zoro

Careful, the first time I met Traffy, I saw him behead a bunch of Marines. Left them alive too.

Sanji

Huh! What a useful power.

Sanji turns around to walk forwards. He dips his head down so his face is hidden behind his fringe, nursing the cigarette between his lips.

Sanji

Still, I don’t think you should be ashamed when you’re in love with someone.

Zoro and Law quietly observe him, detecting some sadness in his tone of voice. The swordsman considers his statement very carefully, suddenly having doubts if the man shares the same feelings as he does, or if there’s something that he did wrong.

Law

I have a feeling you’ll like him.

The blonde’s head tilts slightly towards him, listening closely.

Law

He…has this…effect on people. Even animals. He brightens up the room wherever he goes….

There is a moment of silence as the other two process that comment.

Zoro

I miss him too, Traffy.

Law averts his gaze to the side, trying to hide a smile and the ever reddening state of his face.

Sanji

I’d like to meet him one day. I keep hearing good things about the guy.

Zoro

He’s one of a kind. You’d know it when you see him.

After this, if you like, I can–

Sanji suddenly stops. He holds his arm out, signalling everyone to halt.

Law follows his instruction but Zoro accidentally bumps into his back.

Law

What is it?

Sanji

I believe I found our next obstacle.

Come on then! And be careful where you step.

The blonde steps aside and pulls back the shrubs to give way for the two to walk through. When they do, they find themselves on a cliffside with a rickety old bridge in front of them that connects their end of the island to the next. It’s barely holding itself together with most of the planks already rotted from weather and age.

Zoro

Huh. I knew we’d been ascending but I didn’t realise how high up we were already.

Sanji gives one of the support ropes a shake. The bridge wobbles, causing certain planks across the span of the bridge to give away and fall into the White Sea far below.

Law

Zoro-ya, you and me. Let’s do this.

Sanji

So keen! What’s got you all fired up?

Zoro

He’s just sore because he’s still shy about the whole Luffy thing.

Law

Am not!

I’ll kick your ass. You’ll see.

Sanji

Hold on, I want to watch from that side.

The blonde takes off his shoes and jumps on the rope that he’d been shaking. Effortlessly, he balances himself with one leg with his other raised up to his chest. He begins walking on the bridge with ease, still smoking his cigarette with one hand and holding his shoes with the other. He spreads out his arms now and then to shift his weight when gusts of wind cause the bridge to wobble slightly.

Zoro and Law watch his nerve-wrecking tightrope act as he makes his way over the White Sea. Both watching him nervously but also in silent amazement. Feeling that he had eyes on him, Sanji stops on his tracks and turns.

Sanji

What?

Zoro

How are you doing that?

Law

You remind me of one of those circus acts.

Sanji scoffs at that and breathes out smoke. He looked almost angry at the topic mentioned.

Sanji

I was part of one, when I was younger. I was taken in by a pirate troupe before they sold me to…you know what? I-it’s a long story.

I’ll meet you on the other side!

Sanji sounded like he didn't mean to reveal those details out loud. He spins and continues his way across.

Zoro and Law share a look, intrigued by the hint of the blonde's not very well known past which clearly caused a sudden shift in the man's demeanour. The swordsman continued to eye him, but now, more worriedly. He makes a point to make sure he checks in on him later as he knew he didn’t like talking about his history surrounding his life as a slave. He wonders if talking about Luffy had somehow triggered memories.

When Sanji gets to the other side, he vaults down on land and gives them a wave, signalling to go.

Law

So, Zoro-ya?

You did win the last round after all. Do you want to go first?

Zoro

No, I… I need to think.

Law

Don’t hurt yourself.

Zoro

Tch.

Law flicks his wrist and casts his Room ability.

Law

Tact!

Zoro jumps back to give the man some space, fully aware of what comes next.

The ground directly beneath the doctor floats up, shaped like a miniature island enough to hold his weight. It parts itself away from the main earth to carry him midair. Adjacent to the extracted ground, more mini islands pop up and begin to follow the one he’s standing on. They begin to spin around him as he flies towards the other side of the cliff.

The swordsman watches Law make an impressive show of his flight to Sanji. He should be focused on thinking of different ways that he could win the round so he can get two points ahead of everyone. Instead, he finds that he has his mind set on something else.

When he sees Law finish with a spectacular landing with his Tact ability, Zoro walks behind the nearest and tallest tree he could find. With one smooth swipe of Wado, the tree tips forward. The tall end of it crashes loudly on the other side, creating his very own bridge. He jumps up and speedily walks through.

On the other side, he’s met with Sanji’s bright blue eyes and wide grin–a sight that will never get old in his opinion.

Sanji

Again, with the little-to-no-effort attempt? You realise that I like it when people make a show of–mmph!

Zoro wraps a hand around the blonde’s hair and the other around the small of his back, yanking him into a sudden kiss. He tips the man backwards, lowering him towards the ground. He didn’t hesitate to push his tongue into the man’s mouth to pleasure him, causing surprised moans from the blonde in reaction. Sanji wraps his arms around his neck while his leg hooks around his back.

Law

OH, COME ON! THIS IS NOT FAIR!

Law spins around swiftly, walking the opposite direction to avoid seeing the couple in action.

The swordsman pulls back to look at Sanji eye to eye. He receives fluttering eyelids and a flustered face in return. The blonde reaches out to caress his face tenderly as they breathe in each other’s air for a moment. Right there and then, Zoro felt the utmost need to confess his love to him but decided against it because of the doctor’s presence. He wants him to know. He needs him to know.

The blonde giggles and licks his lips seductively.

Sanji

Aren’t you full of surprises today?

I believe I’ve reached a verdict….

Zoro straightens them both up. Sanji runs his hands over his open robe, fixing the crumpled fabric, then takes a step back.

Sanji

Law wins the round.

Law turns back rapidly. Zoro’s mouth is agape.

Zoro and Law

EHH?!?

Sanji shrugs, raising his hands as if to surrender.

Sanji

You made a great point earlier–the stakes are high. I can’t be biased just because we’re fucking. And I did say that I like it when people make a show of things. And Law's was just flashier. Nice try, but you can’t buy me like that.

Zoro felt hurt. Not because he didn’t win the round but because it didn't sound like he made much of an impact judging on the blonde’s tone of voice. He now has more doubts if his feelings for the man are reciprocated or felt at all. He considers the fact that the blonde is still allied with Doflamingo. Sanji had made it clear that they have had prior history together but he’s never specifically stated where they stand or what his intentions are with the other Warlord since getting together with him. He remembers Niji’s warning to him that he’s just a phase, making him even more worried.

Speechless, he watches the blonde walk off to the dirt path ahead.

—

They approach a waterfall in front of them. While they see a safer way around by following the path, Zoro suggests that they climb it instead as their next obstacle. The other two agreed and named him the next judge for the round.

Law

Think you can handle this, basic man?

Sanji lights up a cigarette and takes a long drag of smoke before exhaling.

Sanji

Tch. Bring it, mediocre doctor.

Zoro speedily runs up the rockface until he reaches the top of the waterfall so he could watch from above. He peeks over the edge and gives the two contenders a wave to signal them to go.

Law doesn't give the blonde a chance to make the first move. He takes a deep breath, then withdraws his sword and slices a nearby boulder at its base, detaching it from the ground. Following his swing, he swipes his blade upwards, slicing the boulder into smaller pieces and sending them up high. An aura of blue surrounds the area almost immediately, in which the doctor begins to make a series of teleportation and aerobatic jump maneuvers to climb his way up–zigzagging in the air, swapping places with the stones that he'd sent flying. At the very tip of the cliff, he lands gracefully on his feet, exhaling the air he'd been holding in his lungs. He gives Zoro a casual tip of his hat, making everything that he's just done look effortless.

Zoro nods back and raises an impressed brow as if to say “not bad”.

Out of nowhere, the grounds start shaking, and a giant Sky Shark bursts out from downstream the waterfall. Zoro and Law had to jump back to avoid the eventual drop as the giant creature lands in a huge crash by the riverbank. It raises its head up in the sky, roaring an earthshaking cry before it collapses dead on the ground in front of the two. Sanji pulls out his bloody claws from the back of its head and straightens up, his face full of pride from the successful hunt. Law presumed that he'd controlled the shark’s movements using its nervous system to swim up the cloud stream somehow.

Zoro looks between Sanji and Law, unsure with the decision. A sweatdrop flows down his brow. After some hesitation, he opens his mouth to say something but gets interrupted.

Sanji

Who's hungry? I believe it's dinner time.

Zoro and Law blink at him, then gaze towards the sky. They'd been so focused on the game that they didn't even realise the time. The sun is a couple of hours away from sinking.

Law

SHIT!

Law shuffles through his coat pockets in panic. He pulls out the Skypiea map and scans through it, his eyes shifting left and right rapidly. He lets out a pained groan and slaps his forehead, almost knocking his cap off his head.

Law

Fuck! We've been going the wrong way for at least three hours!!!

Zoro

…I think we're having way too much fun with this.

Sanji hops down from the shark's head and gives that devilish smile of his.

Sanji

But you are… having fun…aren't you?

Zoro takes his time admiring the man's features before smirking back at him.

Zoro

I don't know about Tra-guy, but I am.

Law crosses his arms. Sanji can't help but notice that he's slightly pouting.

Law

I can't say I'm not, I suppose.

Sanji grins at them playfully.

—

Sanji cringes at the way Zoro gutted the giant Sky Shark. Granted, they had limited tools to prepare a proper meal, bringing only what’s necessary that can be used for multiple purposes. One of them is apparently the man’s katana which he thought was overkill. He’d at least hoped that the man would be more efficient with pulling the meat out of the creature.

Zoro had used his swords to cut it open like a mad brute he is. He jerks his sword from its flesh, causing its guts to messily splatter on the ground. Afterwards, he turns his attention to the fins, slicing them clean off before tossing them aside out of his way. Before they fall onto the ground, Sanji catches them one by one.

Sanji

Err…Marimo, you know we can use these right?

Zoro

Hah? But the big chunk of meat isn't in them.

Sanji

While the body should give us enough to last us for at least a week, we can use these to stretch it longer, maybe even another week. These still have some good stuff in it.

Zoro

That’s good–I didn’t know that. Why don’t you prep those for cooking then? I’ll keep at this.

The swordsman begins to slice the shark’s skin open with his katana, tearing the perfect meat that Sanji knew was inside them.

Sanji

H-hey! I uh…why don't we just trade jobs and find us some firewood instead hmm? Maybe set up the fire too while you’re at it.

Zoro

But I got a big sword. This is a big fish.

The blonde carefully lays the giant fins on a pile of large leaves that he had put aside earlier. He rummages through his pack to pull out a leather scroll containing various kitchen knives that he'd borrowed from the Polar Tang. He spreads it out on their makeshift table.

Sanji

I got it covered.

Impressed and surprised with his collection, Zoro follows his instructions and walks off. The sound of trees being felled is heard from a distance.

Law returns to their dedicated campsite with an armful of various herbs and crops. He drops them unceremoniously next to the shark fins. Sanji recognises most of them, much to his relief, but some look alien to him.

Sanji

Thanks. Uh… are those edible?

Law

Most of them. Some I need for medicinal purposes.

Sanji

Why did you mix it all in–?

Law

Is this good to go?

The doctor grabs one of the fins he’s set aside and settles himself on the makeshift table. He begins to cover the meat with some of the herbs he'd collected but the blonde notices that some of the weird-looking ones had been mixed up.

Sanji

They still need to be peeled and cleaned–AHH! DON'T!

D-doctor…why don't you fetch us some water instead?

Law

Hah? Why don’t you do it? I'm already in the middle of this.

Sanji

You're butchering it…. Just–just–

Zoro

Oi, Traffy! I just got a fire going!

Law

Perfect. Let's get to it.

Law grabs a random stick from the ground and skewers the fin messily, bits of loose meat and herbs fall off on the ground. He walks towards Zoro but then a hand grabs onto his coat and pulls him back.

Sanji

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Seriously, how are you two still alive?!

Zoro and Law

Hah?!

Law

It's just food.

Sanji

Not in that state, it's not!

What's this–? Traffy, did you shove an entire garlic inside it?!

Zoro

I thought you don't give a shit about good food?

Sanji

I care about it being edible!

Sanji yanks the doctor backwards and swipes the skewered fin off his hands.

Sanji

You–get some water. And come back with some more of those vegetables but DON’T just dump them all in a mixed pile with your doctor crap. Sort them out!

And you–clean up this mess! Don't you go camping? If we leave food out it'll attract unwanted creatures while we sleep!

Zoro

Why do I get to clean?

Sanji

You make the mess, you clean it up!

Zoro and Law watch the grumpy man take charge of the whole thing, effectively shooing them away from their made up kitchen station.

—

By nightfall they settled around the fire to feed themselves with Sanji's cooking. They also have extra food that the blonde has portioned and set aside which should last them a couple of weeks. Upon realising that they have to pack them up and carry them for the road, Zoro clears his bag to make way for the food. He starts pulling out bottles of booze that he'd stolen from the Polar Tang which Law wasn't too happy with.

Sanji

Nothing goes to waste.

After giving Law his portion, he winks at Zoro as he hands him his bowl of stir-fry Sky Shark with rice and native produce. Grabbing a bowl for himself, he settles himself next to the swordsman by the fire.

Sanji

The same goes with the booze. We better drink it all up.

Zoro

You read my mind.

Zoro leans over and kisses his cheek lightly.

Zoro

Thanks for the meal, Curlybrows.

Sanji

It's nothing.

Law

Yes, thank you, Mr. Prince-ya. It’s much appreciated.

Sanji

What, are you going to give me a kiss too?

I don’t think Marimo would appreciate that.

Law

Go to hell.

Sitting at the opposite side of the fire, Law takes a bite and audibly groans out loud in pleasure, causing the two to look at him curiously.

The doctor notices them staring and closes his eyes, trying to ignore them.

Law

What? It's good.

Zoro blinks at that and takes a bite himself. He pauses for a second as his eye widens. Suddenly, he begins to chow down on the food as fast as he can.

Zoro

YO ROIGHT! ISH SHO GOOD!!!

Sanji

Slow down or else you'll choke–

The swordsman does. He repeatedly punches his chest to clear out the blockage. Sanji gives his back a couple of good whacks, causing the man to cough. Finally, Zoro takes a big gulp and downs the rest with the help of his drink.

When they finished their meals and each had at least a couple of bottles of booze to themselves, they sat around the fire to unwind, fully satisfied from their fill of food and tipsy from all the drinking. Zoro was first to spill his thoughts from his loosened tongue.

Zoro

You lied to me.

Sanji blows smoke from his lungs then tosses the spent cigarette into the fire. He looks at him curiously.

Sanji

What about? I personally thought that I've been good recently.

Zoro tilts his head slightly towards him.

Zoro

You have. But I thought you told me one time that you don't give a shit about good food?

That was one of the best meals I've ever had.

Law

I agree. Seems like there's a lot we don't know about you, Mr. Prince-ya.

Sanji's face goes red from the flattery. He hugs his knees to his chest and rests his chin on them. He sighs.

Sanji

When I was young, I used to cook for my sick mother. It was around the time when my father had just locked me away. I kept begging the guards to bring me recipe books and ingredients to cook with. Some of the kind ones obliged. I really wanted to get good at it. Maybe, I thought, it would help heal her somehow…. That's when I read about the All Blue. I uh…even wanted to find it. It was a childish dream.

The blonde takes a swill from his bottle. He smacks his lips then leans back with a hand on the ground behind him for support, looking up to the clear skies above them.

Sanji

When she died, I tried to keep it up to get some semblance of joy out of…something. But being in isolation for so long and having my siblings beat me down for trying, it just led to nothing good…I don't know…. Over time, I lost interest, along with my will to live. I think the old me died right there and then, in that old dark cell where my father kept me. Along with any dreams I had.

Eventually, because I stopped asking the guards to bring me anything, I was forgotten. Starved. I had to go without any food for months before someone would remember and bring me their scraps out of pity.

Sanji gestures at the pile of food that they had bundled up sitting near their packs.

Sanji

So yeah, I don't give a shit about good food. But I won't let any go to waste in my watch. There's so much you can do to even the smallest parts of an ingredient.

Zoro and Law look at him sadly. The doctor sighs, then stretches his legs on the ground outwards, trying to warm his feet in front of the fire.

Law

Well, I thought your food was delicious. What you learned from those recipe books must have stuck with you. Clearly you have a natural talent for it. Imagine what you can do now if you get back to it…if that's something you want to do that is.

Sanji doesn't look at him, but he gives his statement a long good thought.

Sanji

Thanks…Traffy.

Zoro gazes between the two of them. He stretches his arm out with an open palm, asking if he can share some of Sanji's drink. The blonde obliges and hands the bottle over. The swordsman gratefully takes and drinks from it. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before staring up at the sky, watching a couple of falling stars fly by.

Zoro

Kuina.

Sanji and Law look at him curiously.

Zoro

She was my goal. She's one of the reasons why I wanted to be the world's greatest swordsman.

We both made a promise to each other…but one day, she just suddenly passed. Some unfortunate accident with a flight of steps. It happens, I suppose. But now I carry our shared dream with me, and I intend to fulfill it, no matter what it takes.

Sanji

She sounds special to you. Is that why you're so keen on defeating Mihawk?

Zoro chuckles lightly.

Zoro

Yes, partly. But then…you happened.

Sanji

Oh…but–

Zoro

You're not a swordsman, I know. But defeating you became my goal. How can I top Mihawk when I can't even beat you?

The blonde looks down at the fire, thinking hard. He's unsure on what can be done to rectify this, or what to do with the information that Zoro had thought of him in this way for so many years without him knowing. He certainly doesn't want to get back to their old ways just so the man can fulfil his dreams.

Law

Have you tried to face Mihawk recently, Zoro-ya? Surely fighting the Pirate King of the North for a couple of decades would have given you a lot more experience than just your normal training regimen.

Zoro's brows shoot up at that realisation.

Zoro

No…. I haven't challenged him since I was nineteen.

…Why didn't I think of that?

Sanji lays down on the ground, resting his hands behind his head.

Sanji

I'm not saying that you're better than me in a fight…but you did kill me that one time. If not for my siblings, I would have been a goner for good.

The swordsman laughs out loud. He slaps his forehead with a hand as he leant backwards.

Zoro

That's true! I have beaten you!!!

Sanji

That was one round! We had many more battles afterwards. Don't let it go to your huge moss head!

Zoro

Uh-huh. How does it feel to have the silver medal?

Sanji

Shut up. Keep that up and I'll show you who's really on top here.

Zoro stops laughing but smirks at the man. Sanji returns his smile with his own.

Zoro

Don't make promises you can't keep.

Sanji

Guess I'll just have to show you….

The swordsman leans over and plants a soft kiss on the corner of his lips, lingering there for a moment as they both take in each other's breaths.

Law rolls his eyes and looks away. It seems like there's going to be more of this and the day is barely out. At the corner of his eye, he sees the bottle being offered to him by the swordsman. Reluctantly, he takes it.

The doctor looks down at the bottom of the bottle through its mouth. He purses his lips, hesitant to talk. After a while, he takes a swill and hugs his knees to his chest. He stares sorrowfully at the campfire in front of them as he speaks weakly.

Law

I think Cora-san is well and truly dead.

Sanji sits up and both him and the swordsman look at him in disbelief.

Law keeps his gaze averted, feeling ashamed. From his coat pockets, he pulls out the stack of letters that he'd collected throughout his journey prior to the two joining him.

Law

I don't know when and how…but he left all these for me to find. I'm guessing it's whenever he was away from home while he was still undercover. I think he left me these as a gift. Like he's trying to show me something.

I…I didn't want to admit it to anyone else. I haven't told the rest of my crew either. I was afraid no one would want to come along if they knew the truth.

Zoro looked shocked but Sanji wore an impassive face. He waits until he sees Law looks at him eye to eye before he speaks.

Sanji

How do you know he's truly dead? What if he's waiting for you right at the end?

Law

I saw his corpse, Mr. Prince-ya.

I wanted to believe that it was possible for him to be alive when I first found his letters…but I just kept remembering his dead body right before my eyes….

He looks down at the tattoos on his hand.

Law

My knowledge as a trained surgeon only solidified the fact that there was no way for him to survive all that.

Sanji sighs, but doesn't prod any further. Instead, he resides in returning his gaze to the stars above.

Sanji

I'm sorry. That must have been hard.

Zoro

I agree. That's rough, Traffy.

Law

Wait, you two aren't mad or upset? You're not just going to bail from all this?

Zoro

I agreed to come along because we're friends. And I intend to stick around. Plus I know that I won't hear the end of it from Luffy if I don't help.

So…what's keeping you, Curls?

Sanji raises his brows at the two of them, feeling surprised at being questioned.

Sanji

If you had told me all this earlier, I may have left, that much is true.

Law

And…now?

The blonde smiles at the doctor then scoops out Zoro's hand and places a kiss on the palm of his hand. The swordsman's eye softens as they hold hands.

Sanji

Unfortunately for you, I’ve grown fond of you lot. Guess you're stuck with me for a while.

Suddenly, all of Zoro's doubts from earlier in the day washed away, almost like there was no trace of it. He'd never been more sure about what he wants for the rest of his life.

Sanji shifts on his side and props himself on his elbow, resting his cheek on the palm of his hand.

Sanji

So, Marimo-kun? Your final verdict for this round?

Law blinks dumbfoundedly at that, then his eyes widen and mouth drops open at the slow realisation.

Law

THE FOOD AND ALL THIS WAS PART OF YOUR STUNT, YOU BASTARD?!

Zoro grins widely.

Zoro

Curls wins this round by a long shot. Sorry, Traffy.

Sanji laughs heartily.

—

The dim light from the campfire shone through Zoro and Sanji's shared tent. It was dark but they had just enough light for them to see their silhouettes.

The swordsman loomed over the other on their sheets, pounding hard into him at a slow pace.

Sanji arches his back and tries to move his own hips. He grips the sheets behind his head to get a better angle.

Sanji

M-Marimo…I need–ah–I need…more–

The swordsman indulges him and thrusts faster, pulling the man's hip upwards as he pushes down to penetrate deeper. He hears the man under him let out a stifled moan from the new angle.

Zoro

Fuck…you're so tight. You fit me so well….

His movements become erratic as he approaches his peak.

With desperate eyes and a flushed face, Sanji speaks through broken breaths.

Sanji

Ah–I want you to…f-fill me up…and m-make a mess of me...

Zoro groans at that. He pulls out suddenly to flip the man onto his stomach and pin him to the ground. He grabs his hips up to reinsert himself in one smooth motion.

Sanji

AHH! R–right there!! Fuck!

The swordsman starts a brutal unrelenting thrusts to give Sanji exactly what he asked for.

Repeatedly feeling Zoro hit his sweet spot and the friction of his own dick on the ground quickly takes Sanji over the edge. His eyes roll at the back of his head in pure bliss and, with a cry, he spills over their sheets. The swordsman follows almost immediately, filling him with a generous load.

They both take a moment to catch their breaths and recover from the high. With a grunt, Zoro pulls out and collapses next to his companion. He buries his face into the other's blonde hair to nuzzle the back of his neck with his nose, not seeming to get enough of his scent.

Sanji reaches out behind him to grab the swordsman's hand. He brings it over his shoulder to plant a kiss on his hand.

Sanji

For the record…I liked your swinging earlier today.

Zoro chuckles at that.

Zoro

Yeah? I'm glad you enjoyed the show.

Sanji

And then the way you suddenly kissed me after that other, poor attempt of a stunt–was so hot.

Being showered with compliments left the swordsman speechless. Instead of speaking, he wraps his arms around the blonde's waist to pull him in a tight embrace, smooching the back of his head in appreciation. He kicks himself for having any sort of doubts about the man earlier in the day.

After a short rest, Sanji turns his head to face Zoro. He gives a light peck on his nose, his fingers slide up to play with his earrings.

Sanji

Think you can handle round three?

He starts pecking him under his jaw, moving his way down. He gives him a small bite at the nook of his neck.

Zoro chuckles lightly, still trying to catch his breath as he gets pushed to lay on his back.

Zoro

In a moment. You drive me crazy, do you know that?

Sanji lets out a pleasurable moan in response and mounts him, giving him a barrage of kisses from his neck down to his chest, earning him a deep sigh in satisfaction.

Zoro

Fuck, you're gorgeous.

The swordsman cups his face and pulls him up gently to get a proper look at him, then slides his hands up and down the man's front, eyeing him up and down.

Mouth agape, Sanji grinds his dick over the other's already growing semi.

Zoro

F-fuck…

Zoro props himself on an elbow then sits up to wrap his arms around the blonde's waist. He buries his face on his neck, under the cover of his disheveled hair. He takes a long whiff of his scent as he slides his hands up and down his back.

Sanji

Sorry, I can't wait. I just can't get enough of you.

Sanji tilts his head to claim his mouth. His hands travel up to tangle his fingers in his hair. He pulls him closer to deepen the kiss.

Zoro groans out loud as his mouth gets penetrated and explored with the blonde's experienced tongue. He welcomes him, leaving his mouth agape as the other makes a mess out of him.

They stay like this for a while until Sanji pulls himself to look at the swordsman who tips slightly forward to follow the momentum, craving for more.

Sanji

What's on your mind?

Zoro

Hmm?

Zoro's eye flutters open, looking into the other’s wide diluted blue eyes.

Sanji

You've got something in your mind…. I can tell. Are you okay?

Zoro

I…y-yeah….

Sanji caresses his face with the back of his hand.

Sanji

You know, we don't have to go for another round if you don't feel like it. You know that you can say no, right?

Zoro

No, no, I do want to. It's just….

Zoro leans forwards until their foreheads touch together.

Zoro

I'm just thinking how much you mean to me. And how much I've fallen for you. I'm crazy for you, and I hope you know that. I don't want to ever let you go.

Sanji's eyebrows shoot up, then his expression softens, feeling his face go red. He gives him a warm smile.

Sanji

Zoro… you know that I lo–

Out of nowhere, blood bursts out of the blonde’s nose, spilling over Zoro’s chest. It continues to twinkle down his chin.

Sanji

Not again!

Sanji pinches the bridge of his nose and tilts his head back as he lifts himself off the swordsman to sit back on his heels.

Zoro

Hold on, let me get my old robe.

Sanji

Don’t be silly. It’ll stain. I’ll grab some rags from outside.

There's something that I've always wanted to tell you too…. Don't go anywhere.

Sanji gives him one final wink before grabbing his cloak and wraps himself in it.

Zoro smiles sweetly at that, feeling excited especially after getting a hint of what the blonde had wanted to say.

Zoro

A-alright. I’ll be here.

The blonde gives his hand a reassuring squeeze then steps out into the chill of the night.

He makes his way past their campfire towards their packs where he finds the old cloth that he had in mind. He cleans his face quickly with it before grabbing a fresh one for Zoro. He spins to return to their shared tent but comes to a halt when he feels a tingle at the back of his neck.

His observation haki kicked in but he wasn’t fast enough, only just managing to raise his arms just in time to stop sharp strings wrap around his neck. They coil around his wrists, binding them.

Sanji

ZO–!

A hand from behind covers his mouth and he disappears from the campsite in an instant, leaving a small trail of leaves twisting upwards.

Sanji didn’t return to their tent that night. No sounds can be heard but the crackling of fire.

----------

There are no visible scars on Sanji's body in the concept art as I wanted to focus on the overall shapes of the outfit designs. I haven't picked a variant to go with yet but maybe I'll have something ready by next chapter!

#pirate king of the north #villain sanji #vinsmoke sanji #roronoa zoro #trafalgar d water law #zosan #lawlu #opfanart #op fanfic #sanji concept art #skypiea outfit #shimotsuki kuina #donquixote rosinante #corazon one piece #sanzo #sanji x zoro #concept art #fanart

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casscainmainly · 2 months ago

Text

Recap of Cass Cain Tumblr's 2025 (So Far)

January 20th-26th: Cass Cain Week 2025!!! A wonderful glorious week of art, fics, and other beautiful Cass-centric posts.

March 5th: Batgirl #5 drops and StephCass nation goes wild.

March 9th: Tumblr user @mysteriousbeetle posts 'what if cassandra cain was cassandra plane', thus starting an entire day of Cass pun posts.

March 26th: Tate Brombal AMA and WFA StephCass sistergate happen one after the other.

April 15th: StephCass lose round 1 of the wlwdcchampionship. What follows is a glorious week of StephCass posting.

April 23rd: Batgirl #7 preview drops and StephCass nation goes wild.

April 25th: StephCass and DinahBabs go head to head in a sudden death poll for the wlwdcchampionship. StephCass initially trails far behind, but StephCass nation works hard and eventually pushes them ahead!!

April 26th: StephCass loses the poll by .1%.

Clearly April was a time for us... let's see what the rest of the year has in store for Cass nation!!!

#cassandra cain #stephcass #idk what to tag this as i just remembered how much happened this year already #never a dull moment in tumblr cass nation

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fiamat12 · 3 months ago

Note

Legal Anon back by Fia's request. Fia asked that I clarify several aspects of a proper NDA.

1. Length of the NDA- Non disclosure agreements have a length of time they last depending on the nature of the relationship and confidential information or both. Standard NDAs are 2-5 yrs. but others can last decades to a lifetime. The duration refers to the amount of time the person who signs it is required to stay silent on the matter (s). It does not refer to how long the person whose information is being concealed will need to continue to meet demands. Even when the demands are met, the person who signed the agreement is required to stay silent until the agreed upon date (usually several years). That's why you have tell all books long after there is public interest in a subject.

2. Obligations- what has become known as Luke's obligations are what is called a consideration legally. A consideration is what Luke offered to Antonia for her to sign the NDA. A consideration can be money, favors or anything of value including a promise, or an action. In Luke's case, it is believed he offered Antonia publicity to help her career. This type of consideration takes time to execute, so it was likely set to occur over several months. He has taken her to a number of celebrity events, provided social media support to attract traffic to her profile and facilitated press articles centered on her industry skills. I've discussed in other Asks how I believe the stipulations were extended beyond their initial end date, which can happen if a contract is renegotiated.

3-PR relationships. A PR relationship and a PR relationship as part of an NDA are distinctly different. A standard PR relationship is to generate media attention or promote a project, or to hide bad press and divert negative attention. It could be a one day stunt, a couple month dating situation or a longer term contract. The terms are typically flexible and one or both parties have an option to end it. A PR relationship as part of an NDA is a favor to the person being silenced. It is usually short term, lasting until the promised favors are given. The goal is to prevent the person from spreading untimely or unseemly information as opposed to covering up existing bad press. There is usually no project to promote rather, one person's image being elevated. The terms are typically rigid.

4- The Sohos NDAs. Signing an NDA after a breach of privacy issue, in this case after the Sorrento trip is unlikely. Luke would have needed to offer a consideration ahead of time where he agreed to pay for the vacation or give other favors in exchange for them not posting his location in real time or keeping his privacy as part of an NDA stipulation. It is not something he could impose on them afterwards for "bad behavior". His best option would be a breach of privacy lawsuit, and suing all your friends is costly, excessive and not the way to keep friends. His next best option is to get new friends.

Hope this is helpful! Thanks for letting me join in on the discourse. Hope to see Luke and Nicola together soon ❤️

Thank you! You covered it all. Just to add, I think if L could've paid A off, he would have. With that, I don't believe this 2nd round of obligations will last as long as the 1st, and we'll see Lukola at the Baftas 🥰

As for the length of the NDA, my guess is at least through the S4 release & rating periods. I think Lukola wanted to get out from under being the S3 leads and then the season after, there's always still attention on the former leads... but the more time goes on, the less important it will be, and people will forget A - as if people other than the fandom know who she is anyway 🤭

#let's get this done

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7goodangel · 4 months ago

Note

I'm writing an alternate version of PJ and I want to add the Skelinktons to the story, so i have the following questions:

1: Skelinktons can come in different shapes and colors, such as different builds, heights, different facial features, and different color palettes?

2: How are they produced or born? I must assume that it is asexually.

3: What is their origin? Why do they exist?

4: Do they eat art materials like PJ? In case they don't eat that, what is their diet?

That's all, sorry for my poor English, i'm just learning the language, i look forward to your reply! ✨

Yep - they come in different shapes, colors, heights, weights, physical builds, etcetera etcetera etcetera. I had designed two skelinktons before (never posted them), one which was fully warm colors and the other all cool colors. So anything is possible for colors and the combinations of sizing! It sometimes tends to line up with where they were formed though, but not all of the time! ~

Skelinktons are always formed where there's a lot of condensed, high amount of magic in one area over a span of time. The longer it takes for the skelinkton to form, the more stable their form is… most of the time. Certain types of traits just naturally make a form less stable, like any amount of the Determination trait is present in their soul, then their body is usually less stable even if it takes them years to form initially. The magic can be naturally in the area or can be a forced amount of magic onto ink or paint. The soul is pretty much solidified ink that has harden with magic… like in the way diamonds are formed with enough heat and pressure. Which actually leads into the next question… ~

Their origin is tricky. I never really thought of a good way to organically have them come to be in PJ's whole story since his creation is outside of the usual. What I have for now is that in a world where either magic just is a common thing or an AU where it's after the pacifist ending in Undertale (in a distant future), there was a shipping facility that was creating and storing specially magic infused ink and/or paint, didn't store it properly when making a batch (or had a bad batch that they just… pushed off into a corner and didn't monitor it) and… a few skelinktons were born from that. Took a few months to even notice something weird was happening, and not much of a commotion was made until they were fully formed (though, like PJ, most skelinktons are fully formed by the time they would hit toddler age, between 3 and 5). This first batch would be very tiny… the tallest one would probably reach to 2 feet (around 61 cm) if they were properly fed and cared. But after news would break out about this, there would be several places that would try their hand at creating them too. Maybe at some point in the future when the first round of skelinktons want their own kids, they would also try to replicate the way they were born and the rest would be history. But that's just me trying to think of a way this could work - so not sure how good of an explanation of that is really! XD (That all could be a bad idea for all I know! So for your story you can get creative on how skelinktons were formed in your world!) ~

All skelinktons that I would make can only eat art materials like crayons, marker ink, paints, etc etc. However, like how there's limitless possitiblities for AUs out there, there could be skelinktons out there that can digest other types of foods - because there are AU varients of PJ out there that can eat normal food too!

But gosh - I'm so shocked that you would love to add other skelinktons to your story! Thank you for the questions and I hope you have a great day! (Also your English in this ask is good!!)

#7rambles #skelinkton info #(I truly rambled in this case gosh I am sorry!)#If you need me to clarify anything let me know!!!#Cause gosh I just did a text dump of info there XD

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sl-ut · 2 months ago

Note

Can you please do a Jesse x Miller Reader smut where Joel and Tommy catch them and Ellie comes in like 😨 then starts mocking them THANK YOUUU🫶

the thing

omg i’ve had this request in my inbox for like two years :’(( so sorry but i’ve been really digging the actor for jesse in the show so here we are! it’s not specific to the show so you can imagine it as live action or game jesse! i also went kinda off track from the request but has similar vibes only it's tommy teasing them and not ellie. also there's no real smut but i would def be open to doing a part two with some!

pairing: jesse (tlou) x fem!miller!reader

description: jackson was not a very big place, so why did it take so long for them to connect?

warnings: slightly nsfw towards the end but no smut, swearing, slight au but it doesn’t really change anything (joel and ellie don’t interact in this but in my mind it’s important that they have made up), reader is referenced to not fit into jesse’s clothes but there’s no indication of whether its too big or too small so that’s up to your imagination, alcohol and weed use, mentions of violence and r’s shitty ex but neither actually appear.

words: 4.8K

date posted: 6/5/25

Jesse found himself tapping his foot repeatedly against the pavement, eyes flickering down to check the faltering watch on his wrist, always a minute behind no matter how many times he rewound it. Oh well, he was one of the few in Jackson who had the luxury of owning a watch while everyone else relied on wall clocks alone. Still, no matter how slow the moving hands of his watch were, the girl was now at least ten minutes late.

“Good afternoon,” her voice chirped as she rounded the corner with an easy grin on her face and her preferred horse following in tow, expression betraying absolutely no remorse for her tardiness, “you ready?”

“I was ready ten minutes ago,” he told her, rolling his eyes, “you know, when we were supposed to head out? What’s your excuse this time?”

The girl scoffed, “I was in the bakery all morning, you know how Penny gets–you don’t leave ‘til she says so.”

His head tilted to the side for a moment; as far as her past excuses went, this was probably the most believable, especially since he caught a whiff of warm cinnamon as she came to stand next to him.

“Alright,” he nodded, “I’ll let you off this time. Let’s just get moving, we’re already behind schedule.”

“Sir, yes sir,” she saluted him, turning to climb atop her horse with ease.

Until recently, the girl was not someone that Jesse would have considered a friend. He knew her from around town, of course, and they generally ran in the same circle (which was basically just a group of people within a three year age range), but they had only spoken a handful of times prior to being assigned to patrol together. He’d actually been the first to make her feel welcome within the younger crowd in Jackson when she’d first arrived, but she soon started dating a boy named Keegan, who Jesse particularly did not like, while he had started hanging out with Ellie and Dina more once he and Dina had started dating.

Now that they had been spending more time together a few times per week, Jesse wondered how they hadn’t hit it off from the beginning. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t initially attracted to her, as he’d always thought she was very pretty, and she was impossibly easy to talk to. His only flaw was the fact that he had given her space after she had arrived bruised and battered and clearly so clearly mentally drained by whatever she had faced out in the wild, though it had been for that very reason that she became so easily attached to Keegan. He was the first one that she had felt personally close to when she arrived in town, which had translated to a lingering sense of protection, even when he wasn’t always the nicest to her.

The patrol had gone relatively easily, coming across only a small handful of infected along the way, which the pair of them were able to take out within seconds of spotting them, and they had been able to make up for lost time. Conversation flowed easily between the pair–random questions, town gossip, and just about anything that either of them could think of.

“Are you going to the thing tomorrow night?”

“The thing?” Jesse hummed teasingly, “Which thing?”

“I mean, it is the only thing going on tomorrow night,” she joked, “you know, the thing!”

“Oh, that thing,” Jesse snorted, “the one at the Bison? Tomorrow night at seven o’clock sharp?”

She giggled, “Yes, that thing at that specific time and place. Are you going?”

Jesse shrugged, “Dunno. I was gonna go, but I think Dina is and we haven’t really been on the best terms lately. I feel like I’d just be looking for trouble.”

“Oh shit, I feel like every time I hear about you two it’s something different.”

Jesse watched her from the corner of his eye for a moment, eyes following the sunlit glow as it traced her features. He sighed, “Yeah, well…I don’t even know what to say about that. I care about Dina, a lot, but I don’t know if I see this going on for much longer. I feel like I need someone a little more mature, less prone to drama, and she needs someone that…”

“Doesn’t have a stick up their ass 24/7?”

His head whirled to the side, catching her beaming face as she fought back a laugh at his own shocked expression, “Excuse me? Don’t make me report you to Tommy for insubordination.”

She scoffed, “Oh please, like he’s gonna do anything.”

“You’re right about that,” Jesse rolled his eyes, “I’d probably get in more trouble for it than you would, kiss ass.”

“I am not a kiss ass!” She argued, “He just loves me more than he loves you. Maybe you just need to try harder.”

“Maybe I just need to be related to him. That worked out easily enough for you, didn’t it?”

Those who had any sort of personal connection with Tommy Miller had heard tell of his older brother, the one who hadn’t been the same since the end of civilization and had been his inspiration to branch out from the QZ and seek some sort of better life, whether that would be with the Fireflies or not. The last he’d seen him was back in the Boston QZ months before he had even arrived in Jackson. No one would have expected him to ever hear of him again, let alone for the older Miller to turn up at Jackson’s gates with two young girls at his side.

They had all made their own impacts on the community. Joel had become a trusted councilmember and quickly became someone that people saw as a strong leader, while Ellie had become known for her fiery temper and headstrong attitude. The third member of their party, however, had become a central figure in Jackson’s social scene, quickly becoming popular among the younger crowd while also making an effort to maintain familiarity with as many other members of the community as possible. She was often responsible for the parties that took place and seasonal celebrations, often being seen as a goody-two-shoes to most while also having a tendency to party with her inner circle. Jesse often wondered how she had the energy to do it all, and he was not the only one who found it so surprising to discover that the girl made of sunshine was the daughter of Jackson’s resident grump himself, Joel Miller.

She didn’t answer him, huffing quietly as she rolled her eyes. She was not angry with him, not truly, but it was difficult to not feel irked by his comment considering that some around town often criticized her father and uncle for giving her and Ellie special treatment. Of course, they felt more of an attachment to the two young girls, as would anyone else for their own children, but she did not feel that either of them let her off any easier than anyone else when she landed herself into trouble.

“You’re going with Keegan, I assume?” Jesse asked, suddenly self conscious by her silence, “To the thing, I mean.”

She snorted a laugh, “You assumed wrong. We broke up two weeks ago.”

“Oh,” he swallowed, unsure of how to proceed. He’d never heard her sound so annoyed in the entire time that he had known her, “Sorry to hear.”

“It’s fine. I just realized one day that he treated me like shit. I’m over it. Though, I’m surprised you didn’t already know. Last I heard he’s been spreading it around town faster than the clap.”

Jesse choked out a laugh, “Don’t tell me…”

“A rumour I heard after we broke up,” she chuckled, “but he’s apparently shacked up with Emily, Theresa, and Melissa since then, so it’s not out of the question. Honestly, doc says I didn’t show any signs so I don’t really care.”

“Fair,” he nodded, “so are you still going?”

“Dunno, I guess I am the one who planned it…” she thought for a moment before a small smirk appeared on her face, “I’ll go if you do. We can drink and endure the presence of our exes together.”

Jesse sighed, “That’s a hard bargain you’re driving.”

“Some call me a businesswoman by heart,” she shrugged, “what do you say?”

He turned his gaze back to her, feeling a small stutter in his chest as their eyes met. She offered him a soft smile, melting his weak attempt at playing cool away until he found himself relenting, agreeing to attend the thing together despite his innate desire to avoid his ex-girlfriend at all costs. The grin that split her face made his limbs feel like jelly and brought a scarlet flush up the nape of his neck and across his cheeks. They continued on in silence, only sharing a few more words throughout the rest of their patrol route until the gates of Jackson came back into view.

He dismounted his horse once they were inside, offering a hand up to the girl as she did the same. He was glad that the weather had been warmer that day, meaning that he had gone without gloves for patrol and he was able to feel the warmth of her hand against his own calloused flesh. They walked side by side as they led their horses back to the stables, occasionally bumping shoulders and sharing small smiles before they met Tommy and Maria at the gate of the stables.

“Hey kiddos,” Tommy greeted them both, leaning against the stable door as they filed in one-by-one, “how’d things go?”

Jesse began a review of their patrol, what they saw, what they didn’t see, how many infected they’d taken out, what sort of changes in the landscape they might have noticed, while Maria moved over to help the younger woman unsaddle and brush her horse. He could overhear a few words and giggles from the next stall over where the two women discussed the event taking place later that evening. Finally, she appeared next to Tommy to interrupt his report.

“I gotta head to help set up for tonight, but did you want to just meet at my place and go together? I was gonna go a bit early if that’s okay.”

Jesse’s ears burned at the look of surprise on Tommy’s face, his large brown eyes flickering between the young man and his niece, “Uh, yeah sounds good.”

“Great! See you later, then.”

Maria took her place as she disappeared out of the stables, sharing a look of amusement with her husband as they turned their attention back to the young man before them who seemed to wish he could shrink into the floor beneath him.

“Something you wanna tell us?” Maria asked with a grin. She was a no nonsense woman for the most part, but she couldn’t help the entertainment she found in the love lives of Jackson’s young people.

“Uh,” Jesse hesitated, “no. We–uh, we’re just going to the thing tonight.”

Tommy let out a deep chuckle at the discomfort on the younger man’s face, “I see. And I assume you asked Joel’s permission before you asked his daughter to the thing?”

“She asked me,” Jesse argued, “I wasn’t really expecting it.”

“So you’re telling me you only accepted because you didn’t wanna hurt her feelings?” The older man crossed his arms over his chest with mock aggression.

“No!” Jesse blurted, “I just didn’t know she saw me like that.”

“Mhm,” Tommy hummed, stifling a laugh, “Well I suggest you head over and have a conversation with Joel about this before he finds out through someone else, AKA me.”

Maria swatted his arm, “Give him a break, Tommy. She’s a big girl now, she can take care of herself.”

“Oh I don’t doubt that, I’m looking out for Jesse here. Not sure if he’ll be able to take care of himself if Joel walks into the party tonight and catches this one pawing at his daughter.”

Jesse sputtered in response, his usually cool facade completely broken under the pressure placed by the girl’s uncle, especially now when he considered that the pressure would be applied tenfold when Joel found out that he was now pursuing his daughter. He and Joel had been close ever since he had arrived in Jackson, and especially since he had started hanging out with Ellie, but his relationship with Dina had been famously unstable and he didn’t want Joel to suspect that it might be the same way if Jesse were to start dating his daughter. So, as soon as he was able to escape the clutches of Tommy Miller, he set out in the direction of Joel’s “office”, which was one of the older and uninhabited homes in town that he used as a headquarters for the construction crew he and Tommy had assembled.

Joel seemed surprised when Jesse began his speel, explaining how he genuinely cared about the girl, and that it may seem soon after their respective breakups but it felt right in the moment, and finally ending it by giving Joel his permission to hurt him if he did anything wrong. Joel was silent for a few beats, watching Jesse through narrowed eyes before he took into a roaring laugh, fist slamming down on the table as he took in the nervous state of the normally confident young man.

“Well,” Joel cleared his throat as he composed himself, “I can tell you I wasn’t expecting that today.”

“So…” Jesse shifted uncomfortably, “is this a good sign or…”

“Listen,” Joel sighed, “I’ve come to learn that she’s not gonna listen to me when it comes to these things, but I do appreciate this. You’ve already got a step up from that ass-hat Keegan, but that’s not saying much. Oh, and if you hurt her, I’m not gonna be asking permission before I lay hands on you. Understood?”

Jesse gulped, but his nerves began to lessen, “Yes, sir.”

That night, Jesse found himself climbing the front steps to Joel Miller’s house at six-thirty on the dot, a small smile finding its way onto his face as he found his date seated on a patio chair with a book in her lap. She turned her face up to offer him a similar expression as he greeted her, sliding a piece of folded paper between the pages of her book to save her place before setting it aside.

“Hey,” she greeted in return, standing up to meet him halfway, “you’re right on time. You trying to impress me, or something?”

“Something like that,” he shrugged, eyes taking in her patch-work sundress and dark brown boots, “you look nice–pretty, I mean.”

She glanced down at her dress, smiling bashfully, “thanks. Hey, can I ask you something before we go?”

He nodded, “Yeah, sure.”

“Is this a date?” She blurted, wringing her fingers together nervously, “I mean, I didn’t mean for it to be, but then my dad said you came to ask his permission to take me out, and then I realized that I sort of want it to be, but I didn’t want to assume anything because I’m the one who asked you, and–”

Jesse wanted the earth to swallow him whole. This entire time, he’d been shocked but elated that she had asked him out, especially considering that he didn’t think it was likely that he was going to muster up the courage to ask her on his own, only to discover that she had only asked him as friends?

“Oh god,” Jesse groaned, “oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make things weird between us. I just thought, since we were talking about Keegan and Dina and then you asked me that maybe–holy shit, I’m an idiot.”

The girl grasped his forearm tightly, regaining his attention from the physical touch, “No, no, I just… I didn’t know you saw me that way. I do like you, Jesse, I just think I didn’t want to admit it until I knew you liked me too.”

His heart continued to race, only now for an entirely different reason, “Well, I do. A lot.”

She grinned at him, leaning up to press a gentle kiss to his cheek, “Well I like you too. A lot.”

The pair stepped closer to one another, his eyes falling to her lips as his cheek burned from the affection. She tilted her face upward, an invitation for him to invade her space even further, which he had no issue in obliging as he dipped down to meet her in a soft, curious kiss. It was only a peck, and then another, and then another before their lips met in a solid, proper embrace, each of them gaining familiarity with one another as his hands slid around her back, bunching in the fabric of her dress as he pulling her even closer, her own running through his silky black hair.

The sound of a throat being cleared forced them apart, their hands flying off of one another in seconds as they turned to find the source of the noise, finding both Miller brothers at the foot of the stairs, one wearing a deep frown while the other could barely contain his laughter behind a shit-eating grin.

“Jesse,” Joel grumbled, climbing up the step slowly before he turned to square himself up to the younger man, “glad to see you found your way. Now if you don’t mind taking this off of my porch–and never let me see that again.”

“Dad.”

Joel turned his stern stare to his daughter, raising his eyebrows at her before pressing a kiss to her temple, “I mean it. Don’t need to see this meathead pawing at you all the time.”

“Leave ‘em alone, Joel,” Tommy chortled, “we’ve just gotta get you set up now. Lots of single ladies around Jackson.”

Joel snorted, turning on his heel and entering his home without another word. Leave it to him to flee at the first mention of his dating life. Tommy patted Jesse on the back, pausing to kiss his niece on the head as well before he followed his brother inside with a teasing farewell to the young couple.

They stood there for a moment, each of them bathing in the embarrassment of being caught making out by her father and uncle before she turned back to him, breaking the silence.

“He doesn’t think you’re a meathead, if it’s any consolation. He really likes you.”

“I think that was before I was dating his daughter.”

She tilted her head in confusion, “Do I have a sister I don’t know about?”

“Uh…” Jesse stammered, “not dating, I just meant–”

She laughed, punching him on the arm as she pushed past him and slipped down the steps. She glanced over her shoulder as she called back to him, “I’m messing with you. You don’t gotta ask me anything just yet, but don’t let me catch you looking at other girls.”

Jesse breathed out a laugh. The Miller family would be the death of him, that much he was sure of. He jogged to catch up with her, allowing her to slip her fingers through his own as she dragged him off in the direction of the Tipsy Bison.

Just over an hour later, the bar was filled to the brim, laughter and chatter echoing around the building over the sound of the folk music being played by the small ensemble off to the side. Jesse leaned against the bar, eyes scanning the crowd in search of his date. He’d gotten sucked into helping Seth with loading crates of liquor into the building, reluctantly leaving her side for only twenty minutes and now he had completely lost sight of her in the crowd.

“Looking for someone?”

Jesse turned his head to the side, finding his ex-girlfriend leaning onto the bar next to him with a glass of whiskey in her hand, “Oh, hey.”

“Hey,” she narrowed her eyes at him, “so, are you looking for someone?”

He shrugged, “and what if I am?”

“Then I would like to hear it from you,” she stated, “look, I get it, we’re broken up. Just be honest with me.”

He sighed, but nodded his head as he finally spoke the girl's name, “We’re here together.”

Her eyebrows rose instinctively, but quickly dropped into their natural position, “Can’t say I’m that surprised. I always knew you liked her.”

“Dina,” he groaned, but she cut him off.

“I’m not looking to start anything,” she told him, “at first, I figured we’d get back together, we always do. But, we honestly should have broken up a long time ago. I’ll always care about you, but I’m happy that you’re happy.”

He was surprised by this, considering that his ex-girlfriend had always taken rejection poorly and usually found a way to turn situations in her favour, but she would have had to have been blind to ignore the glaring issues that they had endured in their relationship, “Thanks, Dina. It means a lot. But maybe now that we’re over, you could give Ellie a chance. She’s been into you for as long as I can remember.”

Dina turned her attention to where Ellie was laughing with Maria across the bar, a small smile growing on her lips, “You think so?”

“God, she’s definitely considered killing me just to get to you,” he joked, “don’t rush into it if you’re not ready, but keep it in mind.”

She flushed, nodding her head as she placed her hand over his on the bar for a moment, squeezing it one final time before she pushed away from the bar and headed off in the direction of Ellie, eagerly pulling her away from Maria and onto the dancefloor.

“What did she want?”

He turned his gaze back to where Dina had previously stood, finding the narrowed gaze of the girl he’d previously been in search of, “Nothing, she was just asking about you.”

“Really?” She crossed her arms, “That’s it?”

“Why?” He smirked, turning his body to face her, “You jealous?”

She shrugged, “Should I be?”

“No,” he leaned closer, taking her hand in his, “she said she was happy for me, and I told her to go talk to Ellie.”

She glanced over, finding the two smiling girls on the dancefloor as her expression softened, “Oh. Yeah, Els has been mooning over her for years.”

“I know,” he laughed, “just like you have been for me.”

She turned to him with a growing grin on her face, “Oh please, you’re the one who asked my dad for permission to take me to a public function.”

“Oh don’t remind me,” he dropped his forehead to her shoulder to hide his embarrassment, “I thought he was gonna mount my head on his wall.”

“He still might,” she shrugged, “just depends on how long it takes you to get me a drink.”

He stood back to his full height, an easy smile finding its way across his features, “Yes, ma’am.”

After three drinks and a quick trip outside to take advantage of Jesse’s harvest from Eugene’s stash, the pair found themselves twirling around the dancefloor for hours on end before they finally bid their farewells, giggling their way down the torch-lit streets of Jackson hand-in-hand. His heart thrummed in his chest everytime he glanced over at her, already finding her wide, glossy eyes staring up at him as they walked.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” she asked, a soft twinkle in her eyes as she rested her head onto his shoulder. He maneuvered his arm to wrap around her shoulders without ever letting go of her hand, now interlocked and resting against her collarbone. “I’d say we could go to my place, but I think it’s too early on for my dad to catch you sneaking out.”

He laughed as he pivoted their direction to head towards his own lodgings, a small apartment above the seamstress’s place, “Yeah, I’d like to keep my head for a little longer.”

“I would like you to, too.”

Jesse’s apartment was fairly bare, furnished with just the basics, but decorated just enough to make it feel like his. He shared it, of course, with another guy a few years younger than them, but he had yet to return from the party and if things went well with the girl he’d been dancing with all night, Jesse was hopeful that he wouldn’t be back until morning.

“Wanna watch a movie?” Jesse nodded to the small box TV in the corner, then to the small shelf containing a handful of VHS tapes, “choices are limited but I think we have a little bit of everything. I think we even have a chick-flick around here somewhere.”

She nodded silently as he guided her to his room, fishing around for a baggy t-shirt and shorts for her to change into before leaving her to change. He set the movie up, selecting one that was just interesting enough that it was watchable, but just boring enough that neither of them would be opposed to missing out on parts of it. He popped one of the windows near the ratty old couch open, digging out a bag of hastily rolled joints and his trusty lighter, leaning back on the couch as he waited for her to emerge from his room.

She looked cute in his shirt, though he was surprised when his eyes were met with her bare legs up to her thighs, having foregone the shorts that he had set aside for her. She smiled bashfully as she settled into the couch next to him, “The shorts didn’t fit. This is okay, though, I think it covers enough.”

He shrugged, taking a slow drag from the joint, “You look cute in my clothes.”

She snuggled into his side, accepting the joint as he offered it to her and turned her gaze to the TV, “what’d you pick?”

He held the VHS sleeve up, “Dude, Where’s My Car?. It’s alright, I’ve seen it a few times.”

“Never heard of it,” she spoke as a puff of smoke escaped her lips, handing the joint back over to him, “but sounds okay to me. At this point I just keep watching Star Wars over and over. We have two of them, and they’re set like twenty years apart so I have no idea what’s actually going on.”

The movie was easily forgotten. At first, they had sat in silence while passing the joint back and forth before dazed conversations took over. She laughed at almost everything he said, snuggling closer and closer until he was entirely reclined against the armrest with her curled into his chest. Her chin rested against his pec as they spoke, giggling at one another as an easy silence took over, their eyes meeting as the mood in the room shifted.

Her eyes flickered from his down to his round lips, watching in anticipation as he ran his tongue across his bottom lip nervously before she scooched herself forward until she could comfortably press her lips to his. It wasn’t rushed or heated in the beginning, instead falling into a slow, but slightly messy rhythm as her hands came up to take hold of his dark hair while his own slid across the expanse of her back, one settling on the curve of her spine while the other gripped the back of her thigh to hike it further up against his waist.

She let out a small whine against his lips, pulling away for a moment to focus her attention to trailing her lips across his cheek, over his jaw, and down his neck. A low grumble rolled through his chest at this, her name falling from his lips with a quiet moan.

“We don’t have to–” his hands gripped her waist tighter as he struggled to keep his composure.

She returned to his lips, pressing one more long kiss to them before pulling back with a wicked grin splitting her face.

“Take me to bed, Jesse,” she whispered.

And who was he to deny her?

#x reader #reader insert #imagines #tlou fanfiction #tlou jesse #jesse x reader #tlou jesse x reader

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