#the non frank version

[simplified-birds]

Simplified bird #40 - feral pigeon

( requested by @pavpavlova )

[bberry005]

gonna throw some thoughts out there about this preview from noah wyle's appearance on the late show (preview starts at 15 seconds and ends at 1 minute for those who want to watch) because the LAYERS just in that 45 second clip they showed us...god. this is really long btw that's why it's all under the cut.

starting with langdon saying "i could lose my medical license" like that combined with that he told dana about losing his job in the ep preview at the end of episode 14 shows so many signs of him trying to scale down the problem to something he can control. there's so many other implications (what this means for his family being a big one), and the one he can reach without totally freaking out is "i could lose my job and the medical license i've spent the last 12 years of my life working for", which is huge but not as vague as "what will abby say and what does it mean for my kids that their dad is addicted to drugs and what will my parents think and how do i get help and what kind of help is it" and the thousand other questions swirling in his head. losing his medical license isn't a small consequence by any means, but it's the only tangible one, which means that's what he's latching onto to feel more in control.

the second chance robby offers is a really good one, and i've seen a lot of people wondering why langdon won't take it. and tbh that's just because asking for help when you're in a crisis (addiction, mental health crisis, instability in your living situation, etc) is difficult even if you know you need it. like let's remember that langdon is the exact kind of person that's socialized to absolutely never ask for help. he probably thinks he can handle it himself, but also admitting that he needs the help means admitting that he is actually in a crisis, and that's scary. no one wants to admit that they're struggling with something that big, especially when the fallout will hurt so many other people.

so naturally, langdon deflects. he throws robby's "you need help" right back in his face, and let's face it, robby does need help. like we all know it, everyone in the show knows it, and langdon especially knows it. like "i'm not the only one who's a little fucked up here. why don't you look in the mirror?" that's just so good. robby wants to mentor langdon the same way adamson mentored him. hell, he even wrote langdon's rec letter for an incredibly selective teaching fellowship. they are mirrors of each other. langdon is potentially what robby was like as a resident, and if langdon doesn't learn how to ask for help, he will become exactly like robby is now. which, as we can all see, is not good.

and robby knows this. he knows he needs help, he knows that there's a culture in their profession about not asking for help and "do as i say and not as i do", but he's more than happy to ignore it. so he and langdon start throwing arguments at each other that hurt on a personal level. and the real kicker? robby is the one that throws the most personal jabs as a way to shove all his guilt and blame and betrayal onto langdon so robby doesn't have to feel it himself. yeah langdon went low (and somewhat illogical) with the breakdown and "don't blame me for what happened to you" comments, but robby went even lower. like "you just cause them [breakdowns] in other people" and "you let me down. you let everybody down"...ouch.

another thing is, there's no way robby didn't start seeing warning signs in langdon earlier. a couple people have already said this, but robby's been working in the ER for a little over 20 years. he knows how addiction works, what dozens if not hundreds of people act like when they're either high or going through withdrawals and everything in between. he just refused to see it. he didn't want to see it. robby wanted to believe that langdon was the version of himself that never messed up, and because of that he missed every single sign. other people didn't notice because they either assume langdon is just "like that", they respect him too much, they haven't known him long enough, or he's staying away from anyone who might notice (remember, langdon and mckay don't know each other well, and this might be intentional on his end. he doesn't want to be around anyone who will notice). but robby? he probably had a feeling deep down, ignored it because he didn't want to accept that someone as skilled as langdon could be struggling with something so severe, and now blames himself for it getting as bad as it did even though it's not his fault. like it's on no one but langdon that he kept using and ended up stealing, but if robby did notice, there is something to say for him not intervening sooner (i'm not gonna get into this because something tells me this debate would be like trying to dismantle an active bomb that only has 3 seconds left). robby, either consiously or subconsiously, put langdon on a pedestal, and because of that pedestal, he couldn't see the obvious signs that langdon was struggling that were right in front of his face.

langdon needs help. robby needs help. the difference is that if langdon didn't acknowledge somewhere deep down that he needs help, he wouldn't have kept trying to call robby and plead his case. he wouldn't be near tears telling dana that robby thinks he's a drug addict. robby continues to ignore what's wrong with him and continues to assume that he knows best despite constant evidence that the opposite is true. robby thinks he's beyond help and decided that he can keep going as he is, but he can mentor langdon to be his "second chance" in some way. he wants langdon to get help, but robby refuses to handle his own bullshit and quite literally stomps away like a child when he's called out on it. once again, he's exhibiting "do as i say, not as i do" behavior, which is not something he should want to model for residents or students. robby doesn't think he can be the one to fix this toxicity around asking for help in crisis, so he shoves it on langdon (or dana or collins or abbot or even whitaker at this point) so he can avoid it. robby needs langdon to hurt so he doesn't have to, and that's the part of this argument that makes me sick because it shows that for all of robby's talk about how "we're failing our boys" and that people need to be listened to and helped, he won't do the work to fix those issues himself once they start to effect him.

ANYWAY that's my analysis. if you read it all the way to the end you are amazing. langdon as someone robby is trying to mold into a better version of himself because langdon seemingly has everything robby could never have is my FAVORITE interpretation of what the hell is going on there btw. and it shows SO WELL in this clip.

[frnkiebby]

@abrandnewshadow ily. and i love that frimage bc its incredibly accurate. Is that frimage necessarily redacted? no. IS THE EDIT???? Probably just enough not to risk it on my NON redacted blog at least lmfao. If it’s not, and maybe it’s not, you are killing me. pls. his mouth is fucking obscene and i’m so here for it.

accept this as an apology/modified version of your ask~🎃

(if it makes you feel better, you’re not the first person to send me that edit and i told them the same thing. you likely know who you are you fucking gremlin)

[wellhungspeaker]

sometimes i feel a little weird doing fandom-y things for rhps (because ive never been in a fandom this small before also because it just feels a little weird sometimes) and ill doubt myself and think "does everything NEED a fandom?? scoffs" even though. im hyperfixated super crazy style.

but then i remember that i have no mouth and i must scream has a fandom and i realize that life (fandoms) finds a way and if there is at least one person who likes something, there's probably going to be fanfic about it and some kind of ship WILL be involved

[kingofdorkville]

anything michael buble has ever done was done better by someone else 60 years ago

face it, his voice is, as the kids say, mid

[killertoons]

Bro your art is so yummy😋😋😋😋😋🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Also, your Eddie Dear drag thing you made is so cool!🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑

THANK YOU!!! 🥰🥰🥰 Literally eat up cause I'm cooking in this KITCHEN!!! 🍴🧑‍🍳

I LOVE drawing Scarlett! Shes my little muse of sorts right now and any excuse to draw her is always a fun one!!!

I'm just glad people love her as much as I do, and I work to make sure she's truly representative of queens! Which isn't to talk smack on any other artist versions of drag Eddie, personally I love them all and I have a few favorites I wanna draw in the future!

In my early 20s I was in a production of Xanadu with 3 drag queens, a nearly gay cast- I was the youngest on the crew and absolutely new to the world of the LGBTQIA+ and couldn't explore more because of the environment I was in (Texas/ religious family and job). It's only now I've been able to explore more and made more friends who have the life experience to show me the life I've been missing out on!

(also plan on hitting my first pride festival at the same theater I learned from so yay! 🏳️‍🌈)

So drawing Scarlett reminds me of the queens I got to know and hear stories from, and gives me the key to learn more of the history I wasn't allowed to learn till recently.

It helps me feel at home with myself and the people I connect to, as I myself am a non binary Lesbian who wants to do drag!

I realized I dragged this conversation on (ahhh see what I did there👈🤭) so take this sketch of Scarlett and Frank dressed up and going on the town!

[kierongillen]

On Writing Team Books

A friend asks me about writing about team books, which reminds me I wrote an essay to a friend about it a while back, and put it in my newsletter. I figure I could put it on the tumblr for easier access. If you like this, I do stuff like this fairly often in the newsletter so sub.

I get the occasional mail from creator friends, asking me for advice on a topic. Last week, Alex Paknadel (he outed himself on twitter) asked me about writing team books, and I downloaded my brief thoughts to him. None of my thoughts are brief. Here’s an edited and slightly tidied version…

Right!

After I got the mail I wrote a list of five topics off the top of my head. I’m now going to go in and fill in some details beneath them. Fear the download.

1) Killing artists.

More than any other kind of book, the chance of breaking an artist on a team book is highest. You have a bunch of characters, which often do some stuff together. So you’re writing a 6 person team? That’s 6 people together. They’re in a fight? Maybe another 6 people against them.

So call your shots carefully when they’re together. Don’t call for shots of everyone in the same panel, unless you’re really giving it the space to land for the reader and you absolutely need it.

Worth noting sometimes you do: at least part of the team book is folks want to see a team doing the thing. That said, there’s exceptions to that…

2) Black Hole/Bad company . Probably Authority.

I usually say I learned to write team books by a teenage exposure to ABC WARRIORS: THE BLACK HOLE and BAD COMPANY VOL 2: THE BEWILDERNESS. This is classic 2000AD hypercompression - both explicit team books told in 5-6 page chunks. How did they do it?

ABC Warriors primarily does it by having a team member be the narrator in each episode, and then rotating the narrator between episodes. So you are both introduced to each character, and also (because the narrators are so different) introduced to the perspective of the character who is speaking., This also means this constant reintroduction isn’t in any way boring, because the characters are all so individually warped. You want to know what a sadistic fuck like Blackblood makes about everyone, right?

BAD COMPANY goes the other way, and has a strong single narrator in the form of Danny Franks, and uses them as the perspective we explore the rest of the cast. Some stuff is almost explicitly Franks interviewing team members.

Both speak to an underlying truth – a big chunk of team books are about moving the pieces around in new combinations, and seeing what they do.

I mention Authority, but the first run dose some key basic things of modern team story books – this almost procedural mode was especially popular in the 00s, and is something of a break of the Classic American Superteam approach. Speaking broadly, it does very cleanly some things superteams have always done - you can see where it moves from separating the group (so all team members gets a chance to do cool shit) and then bringing them together (so you get to do the big team book money shots).

But also note that when they’re together in a non-violent scene, someone - usually Jenny - takes lead, and almost everyone else shuts up. You may view this as the Authority becoming a solo book with a supporting cast rather than a true team book when the story demands - that speaks to it being a plot-first book. There’s not really much for the team to debate about - they all know what they’re going to do (kick people in the head, save the world).

TL;DR: Go breakdown some of your faves. How do their stories work?

3) Spotlight time.

That’s the main thing, and what all the above do, in various ways. If it’s a team book, characters need to be able to be on panel and do their thing. That it’s being sold as a team book implies that’s the promise to some degree. When planning an issue ensuring everyone gets to do their cool thing for a moment is not a bad perspective to take.

(This is pretty close to running an RPG group, btw. If someone’s not done something for a while, it’s probably time to give them a chance to do something.)

The alternative - especially in a one off - is to make the issue explicitly about an individual. Like the Black Hole, maybe this is just a single character in the team, and about how they work in the team. Of course, the effects do overlap - like in Bad Company, having the story be from an individual’s perspective you get to show how the other people are viewed by them, and so how cool their cool thing may be.

4) Team book vs ensemble cast.

That links to the above - like, what is the book, really?

There’s team books which aren’t really teams - they’re actually ensemble casts. WicDiv was one of them. DIE is much more of a team book - it’s a literal party (with Ash as the main narrator, ala BAD company). Watchmen has one scene when there’s a team, and they’re not called The Watchmen – it is absolutely an ensemble cast. Hickman’s X-men isn’t a team - it’s an ensemble cast (to the level where I think it’s more of a permanent event, or even a social novel). My Journey into Mystery is abstractly a solo book, but at times it became an ensemble book - and even a SERIES of team books, because Loki was always having to put teams together to do stuff. My Uncanny X-men run was primarily an Authority-mode procedural team book, with Cyclops taking the Jenny position and everyone having lots of focus time to do their cool thing (though see later on the exceptions).

The core difference between Ensemble books and Team books is that in a team book “I want to see the people together doing their thing” is part of the promise.

5) Split the Party.

You ever seen Dan Harmon write about Community? Clearly the story circle, but there’s also the sense that most episodes are about dividing the cast into smaller pairs and threes, and exploring that dynamic. This is in a lot of sitcoms, and an approach that 100% crosses over into team books.

5-9 people in a team normally means 7 of them standing around in a blob, with 1 person taking the leader role, and maybe one other takes the person to argue against the leader. Who is arguing likely varies, but it’s normally who feels most strongly about a situation. I suddenly find myself thinking like a team book is a zoom call, and most people are just standing and listening.

So you need to split that up.

Split up a 6 team into two groups of three, and you’ve got proper potential for actual drama. Each scene can be about those people, and by changing up the people you group together, you get to show different aspects of the characters. The Uncanny Run had a core team of nine, which is ludicrous… and when the book isn’t doing the widescreen mode, you’ll see I split the team into 3 groups of 3, and I get to play with all kinds of dynamics.

This is what team books do best, I think – in that you’ve got no single element which “needs” to be there (As in if opposed to you having a group cast around a a daredevil or a batman, readers are still broadly pissed off when you don’t see anything of the lead character). You get to see what emerges from all these different combinations, and then being able to bring them together to do the core TEAM beat when you need that.

Think about the subtext of “Avengers Assemble”. It implies that the Avengers were apart.

[groverapologist]

deep dive on the PJO/HoO characters and language:

languages spoken:

percy: english, ancient greek, latin, spanish

annabeth: english, ancient greek, morse code

grover: english, zoolingualism

jason: english, latin

piper: english, ancient greek, french

leo: english, ancient greek, spanish, morse code

hazel: english, latin, french

frank: english, latin, french, mandarin

nico: english, italian, ancient greek

reyna: english, latin, spanish

some notes:

despite the high majority of characters in both PJO and HoO being multilingual, leo, hazel, frank, reyna, percy, and nico are the only characters to actively learn multiple spoken languages. the rest only know another language due to their godly parents, and their other language(s) is intrinsic.

out of the seven, 4/7 have actively learned more than one spoken language. annabeth, piper, and jason are the exceptions.

almost every character who has learned multiple spoken languages has done so from youth. leo learned spanish from his mother, frank learned mandarin from his family and french because he's canadian, hazel learned french in school, reyna learned spanish because she's puerto rican, and nico learned italian because he's italian.

the only canon exception is percy, who is taking dual-credit spanish in school in senior year.

out of the characters who learned more than one spoken language, only frank speaks languages from different language families (english/french + mandarin).

frank, hazel, and percy are said to not be fluent in the non-english languages they have learned. leo, reyna, and nico are all fluent in their non-english (learned) language.

hazel, frank, and piper speak with different french dialects. hazel speaks in louisiana french, frank in canadian french, and piper most probably in standard french. it's confirmed hazel and frank have a hard time speaking to one another in french.

percy does speak to horses, but it's implied not to be because he "speaks their language", like grover who is not understood by percy when he communicates with animals. it's more like some sort of automatic translator in percy's brain. he understands horses because he hears them speak in english in his head. same applies to him with marine animals.

out of these characters, only two are shown to know nonspoken languages, with annabeth and leo both knowing morse code. this is widely different from Magnus Chase, where the majority know a fictional form of sign language called Alf sign language.

frank communicates in different animal languages based on the animal he transforms to, but in his standard human form, he does not show signs of zoolingualism like grover does.

characters with confirmed dialects/accents:

hazel: louisiana french, no specified english dialect/accent

frank: canadian french, no specified english/mandarin dialect/accent

leo: mexican spanish, no specified english/mandarin dialect/accent

reyna: puerto rican spanish, no specified english dialect/accent

it can be assumed most characters with intrinsic abilities to speak a language would speak the standard version of said language, but that has not been confirmed.

[jonnywaistcoat]

Hi Jonny, if you don't mind I have a question about the TMA TTRPG! So I noticed that on the player's guide there's this guy, who my friends and I assumed is probably Jon. If it is him, is this a canon design, or more like some of the non-canon stuff that's in the merch?

So, I hope you don't mind if i use this ask to go a bit off on one. I'm not specifically dragging you (I'm actualy glad you asked, as I've thinking about posting on the topic), but all the discussion around the RPG art and how "official" or "canon" it might be is, to my mind, slightly silly.

First up, is it "official" art? I mean, yeah, its art for the officially licenced Magnus Archives RPG. This means Monte Cook Games have commissioned someone to do a beatiful illustration broadly based on some aspect, episode or character from the podcast and it goes in the book. But that's kinda all it means. "Official" is a legal distinction, not an artistic one. The fact that it's in an official product doesn't make it any less one artist's cool interpretation of a character that has only been vaguely described in audio.

Second, is it Jonathan Sims the Archivist? I mean, it's probably based on the idea of him, but it's certainly not set in stone. When we were first discussing art with MCG, we advised that character pictures be more vibes-based and not explicitly tied to specific people (ie. a portrait inspired by Tim wouldn't be captioned "This is Tim" and wouldn't be placed opposite a profile for Tim Stoker, archival assistant.) This was mainly because we wanted the artists to have plenty of freedom to interpret and not feel too tied down by the need to know everything about the podcast. But, to be frank, it was also because we know that there are a few fans out there that are kinda Not Chill about what they've personally decided these characters look like and can get a bit defensive over depictions that differ.

It strikes me as particularly strange to be having this discussion about art that's for a roleplying game book. Something that's explicitly and solely designed to give you the ability to play in your version of the Magnus universe. The idea that this is the thing where we'd for some reason try to immutably establish unchangable appearances for these characters would be pretty funny if some folks weren't taking it so seriously. Similarly ridiculous is the idea we could reasonably have said to MCG "We'd love for you to make a huge beautiful RPG book of our setting... Just make sure you don't depict any of the iconic characters or events from it!"

But... is it "canon"? Now, to my mind, this highlights a real weakness in a lot of fandom thinking around "canon", which is that it generally has no idea what to do with adaptations. All adaptation is interpretation, and relies on taking a work and letting new creatives (and sometimes the same ones) have a different take on it. Are the appearances of the Fellowship of the Ring in the LOTR movies "canon"? How much, if at all, does that matter? Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere was originaly a 90s BBC series made with a budget of 50 pence; is anyone who makes fanart of Mr Croup that doesn't look like the actor Hywel Bennet breaking canon? What about the novel that describes the character differently? Or the officially licenced Neverwhere comic where he looks like neither of them? Which is his "canon appearance"?

Canon is an inherently messy concept, and while it is useful for a creative team trying to keep continuity and consistency within a creative work, for thinking about anything beyond that it tends to be more hinderance than help.

Anyway, all this is to say that the above picture and all the others in the RPG are exactly as canon as every other picture you've ever seen of the Archivist.

[mariacallous]

American Jewish food is most typically defined as pastrami sandwiches, chocolate babka, or bagels and lox. But I am here to argue that the greatest American Jewish food may actually be the humble hot dog. No dish better embodies the totality of the American Jewish experience.

What’s that you say? You didn’t know that hot dogs were a Jewish food? Well, that’s part of the story, too.

Sausages of many varieties have existed since antiquity. The closest relatives of the hot dog are the frankfurter and the wiener, both American terms based on their cities of origin (Frankfurt and Vienna respectively). So what differentiates a hot dog from other sausages? The story begins in 19th century New York, with two German-Jewish immigrants.

In 1870, Charles Feltman sold Frankfurt-style pork-and-beef sausages out of a pushcart in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Sausages not being the neatest street food, Feltman inserted them into soft buns. This innovative sausage/bun combo grew to be known as a hot dog (though Feltman called them Coney Island Red Hots).

Two years later, Isaac Gellis opened a kosher butcher shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He soon began selling all-beef versions of German-style sausages. Beef hot dogs grew into an all-purpose replacement for pork products in kosher homes, leading to such classic dishes as Franks & Beans or split pea soup with hot dogs. Though unknown whether Gellis was the originator of this important shift, he certainly became one of the most successful purveyors.

Like American Jews, the hot dog was an immigrant itself that quickly changed and adapted to life in the U.S. As American Jewry further integrated into society, the hot dog followed.

In 1916, Polish-Jewish immigrant Nathan Handwerker opened a hotdog stand to compete with Charles Feltman, his former employer. Feltman’s had grown into a large sit-down restaurant, and Handwerker charged half the price by making his eatery a “grab joint.” (The term fast food hadn’t yet been invented, but it was arguably Handwerker who created that ultra-American culinary institution.)

Nathan’s Famous conquered the hot dog world. Like so many of his American Jewish contemporaries, Handwerker succeeded via entrepreneurship and hard work. His innovative marketing stunts included hiring people to eat his hot dogs while dressed as doctors, overcoming public fears about low-quality ingredients. While his all-beef dogs were not made with kosher meat, he called them “kosher-style,” thus underscoring that they contained no horse meat. Gross.

The “kosher-style” moniker was another American invention. American Jewish history, in part, is the story of a secular populace that embraced Jewish culture while rejecting traditional religious practices. All-beef hotdogs with Ashkenazi-style spicing, yet made from meat that was not traditionally slaughtered or “kosher”, sum up the new Judaism of Handwerker and his contemporaries.

Furthermore, American Jewry came of age alongside the industrial food industry. The hot dog also highlights the explosive growth of the kosher supervision industry (“industrial kashrut”).

Hebrew National began producing hot dogs in 1905. Their production methods met higher standards than were required by law, leading to their famous advertising slogan, “We Answer to a Higher Authority.”

While the majority of Americans may be surprised to hear this, Hebrew National’s self-supervised kosher-ness was not actually accepted by more stringent Orthodox and even Conservative Jews at the time. But non-Jews, believing kosher dogs were inherently better, became the company’s primary market. Eventually, Hebrew National received the more established Triangle-K kashrut supervision, convincing the Conservative Movement to accept their products. Most Orthodox Jews, however, still don’t accept these hot dogs as kosher.

But over the last quarter of the 20th century in America, the Orthodox community has gained prominence and their opinions, and food preferences, hold more weight in the food industry.

The community’s stricter kashrut demands and sizable purchasing power created a viable market, and glatt kosher hot dogs hit the scene. Abeles & Heymann, in business since 1954, was purchased in 1997 by current owner Seth Leavitt. Meeting the demands of the Orthodox community’s increasingly sophisticated palate, their hot dogs are gluten-free with no filler. Recently, they’ve begun producing a line of uncured sausages, and the first glatt hot dogs using collagen casing.

Glatt kosher dogs can now be purchased in nearly thirty different sports arenas and stadiums. American Jews have successfully integrated into their society more than any other in history. So too, the hot dog has transcended its humble New York Jewish immigrant roots to enter the pantheon of true American icons. So when you bite into your hot dog this summer, you are really getting a bite of American Jewish history, and the great American Jewish food.

[casstheasswrites]

NO SAINTS, NO SAVIOURS (5)

pairing: frank castle x reader (female)

summary: wrong place, wrong time. he saved her life, she patched him up. that should’ve been the end of it. some nights, you survive. others, you change.

trigger warnings: canon typical violence including blood and death. ptsd, trauma, eventual smut. at times, you get soft!frank. at others, he takes no prisoners. we love the duality of man <3

chapter length: 4.2k

authors note: in case you want more of this story faster, i've got nine chapters posted on my AO3 (linked below). just going to start double posting here on tumblr too :) i hope you enjoy and pls pls send me a message with your feedback or thoughts, if you have any! thanks a million.

archive of our own / feedback appreciated!

An hour or two later and the hospital had gone quiet. Visiting hours had come and gone, the emergency room had mostly cleared out, save for those with non-urgent ailments or injuries, and the nurses station was reduced to the in-between skeleton shift. You hang around, all the same, some inexplicable pull to those men in trauma room six at the end of the hall keeping you rooted here, unable to head home. You know you should go— should have gone long ago, really— but you simply can’t. Since your moment outside their room with Max, you’ve only caught sight of him in passing, while you moved from room to room, treating your other patients or checking on the men who had their unfortunate run-in with Frank earlier in the night.

Max and his partner take turns stationed outside and inside their room, but even when you are alone with him and checking their vitals, he doesn’t speak to you. Instead, he watches you, the weight of his eyes tracking your back as you move enough to tell you everything you need to know. It seems he still doesn’t know what to make of your words out in the hallway; like you’ve become more of a mystery to him, now, than you were before. And you were probably plenty mysterious then, too, given that the two of you had never spoken beyond the walls of your workplace.

The men cannot be transferred to NYPD holding cells until their imaging results come back, and those typically take a few hours, even at the best of times. After you’d managed to catch up to Dr. Murphy, he had come along to check on the patients with you, echoing your concerns about the man with the head injury. He’d been moved up the list for a CT scan, but now, you were playing the waiting game.

At the thought, you refreshed the digital medical chart system in front of you at the nurse’s station, watching as the pinwheel spun and spun, loading anything new that had come through. After a few more seconds, the pinwheel disappeared. Still no results from radiology. You breathed out a harsh exhale, teeth digging into your lower lip. For one reason or another, you felt this heavy weight settled on your chest, like you needed to get these men discharged and out of here as soon as possible. It was itching at the back of your scalp, but each time you lifted a hand to try and quell the sensation, it disappeared.

With a brief glance at the computer screen that displayed each of the vitals for your patients, you confirm everything is sound, and excuse yourself to the break room on the far side of the ER. One of the older nurses, a no-nonsense woman named Pam, promises to keep an eye on things while you refill your water bottle and grab a snack. You need the fuel to keep going; you already know you won’t be heading home now until those men are transferred out and someone else’s problem. As you follow the familiar route to the break room and your locker within it, your thoughts begin to wander. Questions stumble to the surface of your mind, replaying on an endless loop.

Why had Frank let these men go? Did he see them as something less than evil, perhaps a complicated version of innocent-adjacent? The man who Max had questioned had admitted to nothing more than being a driver; if that were true, then perhaps they hadn’t done enough to meet Frank’s threshold of good versus evil.

But if that were the case... why had he hurt them at all, rather than warning them off and letting them go? This was an abnormality, where the Punisher was concerned. A grey area you didn’t know how to navigate.

You opened the combination lock of your assigned locker, pulling it open and rifling through your bag in search of the protein bar you’d packed that morning. The weapon you’d picked up all those weeks ago was not here with you; you’d never make it past the metal detectors in the hospital lobby with something like that. Instead, you’d tucked it beneath your bed, stored alongside your summer clothes and old shoes you didn’t wear as often anymore. It was an odd realization that a weapon capable of killing was beneath you every night while you slept, housed beside sandals and shoes with kitten heels. Finally, your fingertips landed on the familiar sensation of the bars wrapper and you pulled it free, making quick work of opening it before you took a bite.

Your thoughts had begun to spiral, the obsession within you taking over every second that passed. You knew it wasn’t healthy. Worse— you knew it wasn’t safe. But there was no fear here, in the quiet moments where you simply stood at your locker and pondered the why’s. There was only a desire to know more, to understand more, to find the answers you so desperately sought. Frank hadn’t wanted to tell you anything more than exactly what you needed to know that night.

What were the odds, then, that you could try and find some of those answers on your own?

In a few more bites, you finished the protein bar and slammed your locker shut. You tossed the wrapper into the trash and refilled your water bottle, pausing for only one more moment as you left the break room. Near the door that led back out onto the floor, there was a mirror affixed to one side of the wall. You caught a glimpse of yourself there, and the frown on your face only deepened at the sight. Beneath your eyes were deep bags, likely darker than they’d ever been; you’d stopped bothering with makeup a week or two ago, realizing that no amount of concealer was going to even out the darkness permanently embedded there.

But beyond the darkness beneath your eyes, you appeared normal. You looked like yourself. Dark hair pulled back in a long braid, a black headband holding the fly aways out of your face. You hadn’t noticed until now, but your scrubs hung looser than they used to. You were shrinking— and not just in size.

One of the lights behind you in the break room flickered, then, drawing your attention, and your stomach gave an uncomfortable twist.

You took that as your cue to move on and so you did, turning away from the mirror and stepping out of the breakroom. As you began down the hallway, clutching your freshly filled water bottle in your hand, you began to hear something familiar— it was the sound of a heartrate monitor letting out an alert. An alert that a patient was flatlining. Your steps quickened into a run, eyes flaring wide as you reached the empty nurse’s station. Where the hell was Pam?

Your head whipped towards the sound of the monitor, then, eyes falling to the end of the hallway, outside of trauma room six. Neither Max nor his partner were stationed outside the room as they should have been and the door was shut, no light bleeding from inside out into the hallway. That familiar sense of dread, the one that had become an unwanted passenger inside of you for these past few weeks, returned ten-fold. Your throat closed over. Something was very, very wrong. Your body wanted to freeze— but your feet were already moving. Your water bottle was forgotten at the nurse’s station, alongside any rational thought to alert someone, call for security, hit a panic button, anything. You were not operating on rational thought anymore. Now it was purely instinct in control.

Though the hallway had never felt longer, you reached the door to trauma room six in record time. The only sound you could hear beyond the racing of your heart was the incessant beeping of the monitor inside— the incessant reminder that someone was dying. That someone was likely already dead.

The door was pressed firmly shut and so you reached for the handle, pushing it open with no more than a moment of hesitation. As you stepped inside, you blinked a handful of times, trying to make sense of what laid before you; the lights had been switched off, the room bathed in darkness and a familiar scent had joined that of the antiseptic you’d used hours earlier to clean the men’s wounds— it was a metallic scent, one you knew too well.

Blood.

As you stepped further inside, one hand reaching blindly for the light switch on the wall to your left, your feet nearly fell out from beneath you as you slid on something wet and sticky. Anxiety ripped at the seams of your composure, a gentle squeak of surprise pressing past your lips as you reached back for the doorhandle to steady yourself. You caught yourself just in time, and as you did, your other hand found the light switch and turned it on. Your world was suddenly bathed in brightness, illuminating the room around you.

The first thing you saw was the blood. No wonder the scent of it had been so strong.

It was smeared across the linoleum floor in thick, uneven strokes. Even to your own eyes, you knew it was too much. Too much for anyone to survive. You followed the line of it a few more feet, your entire body beginning to tremble.

And then you saw him.

A broken sound caught in your throat, a scream that never made it past your lips.

Max was slumped against the wall, legs bent awkwardly, back bowed like he’d folded in on himself. His eyes were open— dark, unblinking. Unseeing. He was gone.

His hands rested in his lap, stained deep red. As if, in his final moments, he’d tried to stop the bleeding. Tried to hold himself together.

Tears blurred your vision. Your breath caught and your knees threatened to give out.

The high-pitched wail of the heart monitor dragged your focus toward the bed across the room, and for one suspended heartbeat, you forgot how to breathe.

Because you weren’t alone.

There was a hood pulled over the figure’s head, obscuring your line of sight to his face, and when your gaze dipped to the man who Max had questioned earlier in the night, you saw nothing but more blood. Crimson soaked the bedding and the pillow beneath his head, seemingly rushing from a long slash wound across his neck. A fresh one.

There was so much blood that it had begun to drip down onto the floor, creating a puddle near the side of the bed.

He, too, was gone.

The figure who had killed them both lifted his head, then, and you finally realized you hadn’t been able to see his face because he was wearing a mask. It obscured the entirety of what made him recognizable, the only thing left within sight were his eyes. From this distance, they appeared to be a cold, empty blue. A pit as bottomless as the depths of the ocean.

He didn’t rush in his movements; he simply stepped back from the bed slowly, methodically. Like he’d done this before— like he would do this again. Your heart lurched at the thought, because now, his sights were set on you. You stumbled backwards, sneakers sliding in the mess beneath your feet, nearly causing you to lose your footing again. This man was a killer, and in his hand, his weapon of choice— a long blade with a serrated edge, coated in the blood of the two men he’d already killed. You knew without hesitation that it was the type of weapon that would not only kill… but cause a whole lot of pain, too.

The gravity of the moment did not seem to dawn on you as it should have. Perhaps it was the weeks of immersing yourself in the Punisher’s world— the article upon article that you’d read, filled with graphic depictions of the types of people he often found himself at odds with. Or maybe it was because, deep down, you’d begun to lose some part of yourself… the part of yourself that had still had an ounce of spark left within her. A desire to keep on living.

The latter thought proved itself wrong— because as the man reached the end of the hospital bed that separated you two, your gaze flickered away from him, instead drawn to Max’s fallen body. The mere sight of him caused your stomach to roll with unease and nausea, but that’s not what had caused you to look down at him. Because there, as you followed the line of his belt, you spotted exactly what you’d been looking for.

What was that saying, again?

Never bring a knife to a gun fight.

You lunged towards Max’s body without a moment of hesitation, your knees sticking to the blood that pooled on the tile below. Your hands shook violently, in fact, your entire body trembled— your teeth clattered against each other, your chin wobbling as terror overcame every inch of you. But you didn’t want to die; you wouldn’t die, not like this. The words replayed over and over again in your mind, even as you heard the footsteps of the man approaching you grow closer.

He was overconfident, his movements were not nearly rushed enough. He didn’t think you were of any concern to him; an easy target to identify and eliminate. Rage burned a pathway through your midsection at the mere thought; you wanted nothing more than to prove him wrong.

You pushed Max’s arm out of the way and twisted your wrist, ripping the pistol free of his hip holster just as you caught sight of the shadow of the man rise above you, casting darkness over the wall before you. You shouted— raw, furious, terrified, and threw yourself backwards and away from Max’s body. As you slid backwards, you twisted at the waist, lifting the pistol out into the mere foot or two of space that separated you and the man who wished you dead.

Your fingers closed around the trigger and you didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate— your eyes pinched shut and you squeezed. Your entire body jolted with the momentum of the shot, your arms pitching in the direction of the ceiling. You’d never once shot a gun before, never once been at the helm of something so deadly and so dangerous. Your shoulder blades flared in protest, pain lashing down your right side. The sound of the heartrate monitor had finally ceased— but that made no sense. You hadn't switched it off. Your eyes slowly reopened, but you had to blink to clear your vision. Your ears rang. A pressure bloomed at your temples— sharp, hot, like a tension headache left untreated too long.

There was movement ahead of you. Your attacker was not dead. He had fallen to the floor a few feet away and as your eyes widened at the realization, you noticed that he was trying to hoist himself to his feet, though seemingly not with much luck. You’d wounded him, but he was not dead.

You bent your knees and began shoving yourself away, away, away, as quickly as you could, your arms trembling roughly, the gun rattling in your grasp. Your sneakers slid against the blood on the floor, causing you to slip once more. A curse spilled past your lips, involuntary. You did not want to shoot again; you couldn't bare the thought of doing that twice. Your sense of the moment was distorted, though— your vision still partially blurred, hearing fuzzy, the only real sound you could pinpoint was the screaming of your heart.

This time, when the attacker tried, he managed to stumble to his feet. He was unsteady, seemingly wounded, and as his figure rose above you, you caught sight of a bleeding wound on his left shoulder, blood pouring from it and causing the black of his shirt to darken and stick to his skin. The moment continues simply because you missed.

Your lip’s part and you scream— or try to. Your throat burned with the effort, but you can’t even hear your own voice. As the man stumbled a step towards you, you notice that his eyes have gone wild— they flash with a rage that burns so hot, you have no choice but to lift your trembling hands once more. Down the barrel of the gun you watch him approach, your index finger wrapping around the trigger again. You’ll do it again. You have to. The only choice here is him or you.

But instead, there is a flash that fills the room and you flinch as a hole suddenly appears in the center of the man’s forehead, blood instantly pouring from the wound and leaking down the length of his mask. He collapses backward, falling like a tree split clean through at the base. As his dead weight hit the floor, you flinched once more, aching shoulders rising towards your ears as you close in upon yourself. Your fingers are nearly locked in place, wrapped around the gun, and you settle it against one trembling knee.

Your lips are moving once more, whispering to yourself, as if somehow the words you cannot hear will calm the pounding of your heart.

“He’s dead,” you said, over and over again. An unending loop.

And as your gaze shifted from the man who had attacked you, instead turning to land on the lifeless body of Max, the words continued. Tears blurred your vision and you blinked hard, but it only made it worse. Grief swells inside you, sharp and hot— but it doesn’t come alone. Anger bubbled beneath your skin right alongside it, overtaking it with ease. Anger had always been easier for you.

You lifted one trembling hand— the one not still locked around the gun— and wipe at your cheeks. But the tears kept coming. They wouldn't stop.

You didn't know who you were crying for anymore. Him or you.

The ringing in your ears slowly began to fade; you only noticed because suddenly, you can hear the broken sound of your own voice��� cracked and strained from the screams you’d released in the moments that led you here. You pressed your lips together and bit down on the inside of your cheek, trying desperately to stop the tears that continue to fall. You grasped for whatever strength you can find, pulling from a tank you’d thought was long since emptied. Somehow, you find a little more.

After another beat or two, the tears began to slow. Then stop altogether.

And then a hand landed on your back— steady, gentle, a palm pressed between your shoulder blades.

You jolt at the contact, adrenaline flooding your system all over again. You twisted instinctively, momentarily forgetting that someone else had ended this for you.

As you turned, he lowered himself to your level, crouching just a foot away. Shock of dark hair and eyes, an outfit of only black, a vest with a white skull affixed to the front. Well worn combat boots, laced tightly, all the way to the top.

The mere sight of him broke whatever fragile resolve you'd managed to scrape together.

Your face crumples, eyebrows knitting together in pain. Your eyes slam shut as another round of tears begins to spill free.

“You did good,” he murmured, the tone of his voice so soft, you believe for a moment you’ve misheard him. But when you find the strength to wrench open your eyes, he is staring directly into them, and you find an assortment of amber flecks within the coffee colour of his irises.

The hand at your back slides to your shoulder, fingers curling just enough to anchor you— to remind you: you’re still here. You survived. You overcame.

The same could not be said for many others. At the thought, you turn your head once more, eyes wandering back to the fallen body of Max. Funny, kind, gentle Max. He deserved so much more than this; so much more than whatever story would be spun from the web of lies you were sure would come from this night. Your lips parted as if you intended to speak, say something, but no words came. What could you say? What would possibly be enough?

You'd denied it to yourself, but the truth was, he was your friend. And now he was dead.

“You can’t save everyone.” Frank said after another beat, capturing your attention all over again. You tore your eyes from Max and looked at the man in front of you instead, gaze tracing over the hard lines of his face, searching for something— answers, maybe— that weren’t there.

“What are you doing here?” you asked, voice barely more than a whisper.

“We don’t have time,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes met yours, then flicked down. He lifted a brow, the tilt of it asking a question. You followed his gaze, coming across the gun still clutched within your grasp. You hadn’t even realized you were still holding it. Your brow furrowed, asking a question of its own. Frank raised one hand slowly, motioning toward it. You nodded once and handed it over, your fingers still trembling— not just from the weight of the weapon, but from the weight of what you'd done with it.

He took it gently and flicked on the safety. Then tucked it behind him, likely into the waistband of his jeans. Without a word, he stood, and there was something so clinical about his movements— so calm and practiced. You couldn’t help but watch, in awe. As he rose, he reached down, his hand finding yours.

“Come on,” he said, giving you nothing more than a gentle pull before you were rising to your feet, too. “We have to go.”

“Go?” you echoed, your voice verging on incredulous. “Go where?”

“The other nurse managed to hit the panic button before he killed her,” he said in a rush, his eyes darting out into the hallway, seemingly on edge. You could sense the tension in his body, too. He wanted out of here— and he wanted out of here now. “This place is about to be swarming with cops. I can’t be here when that happens.”

Shock flickered through you, settling at your core like a heavy stone tossed into shallow water. Pam was dead, too. How many other victims might there be, tucked away at the end of a hallway, or concealed in a room with a closed door?

Frank still had one of your hands clutched in his own and he gave your arm a gentle tug, causing you to stumble forward a few steps.

“I can’t just leave, Frank,” you insisted, shaking your head, your lips beginning to quiver. “I’ve been clocked in all day; there’s a record of me being here.”

He went silent, then; and you watched as his lips pressed together so tightly, they began to turn white. His jaw worked and his hand fell from yours, instead lifting to run down the length of his face, a rough sigh filled with nothing but exasperation falling into the air between you.

“What do we do?” you prodded, eyebrows furrowing, the concern in your voice evident as you stared at him, searching for answers.

“Alright, alright,” Frank said through a tight breath— no anger, just tension. His hand curved along the length of his jaw, fingers digging into his skin as he walked you through the next steps, calm and still, just as you’d expect him to be. “You talk to them, only as long as you have to. Give a statement and be as honest as you can. I wasn’t here— you killed him on your own.”

You flinched at the implication— that you would offer that piece of information up, admit to taking this man’s life, though you hadn’t been the one to do it. You would have— you could have. But Frank had saved you from that fate.

This time.

“It was self defense,” he said, voice soft, reaching back out towards you, his hand returning to your shoulder in that gentle, grounded way of his. He had caught the look on your face— noticed how your entire body revolted at the thought of implicating yourself in such a way. You leaned into his touch, eyes falling shut for just a few beats of your heart. This was the only reprieve you would have and so you clung to it, for as long as you could. “They’ll offer you protective custody while they do the investigation… you’ll have to work your way out of that somehow. You’re smart, you can figure it out.”

You weren’t sure. But the way he looked at you— the intensity in his eyes— it made you believe he was. And that was enough.

Frank removed his hand from your shoulder and you instantly grew cold, missing the point of contact. His shoulders rose and he reached behind him, retrieving the one item you’d be happy to never see again for as long as you lived.

“Here,” he said, offering the weapon back to you. His mouth curved, faint— almost amused. “You’ll need this.”

You reached into the space between you and, with great hesitation, wrapped your fingers once more around the grip of the gun. You pulled it towards you, your gaze focused solely on the black metal of it, and then you rolled over the bottom of your scrub top and began to wipe all along the weapon, trying to erase any evidence that Frank had been here at all. When you’d finished, you lifted your gaze back to him, noting that he was watching you intently. His dark eyebrows were raised, almost like he was impressed that you’d thought to do such a thing.

You wanted to tell him that you'd watched plenty of shows and movies, knew a thing or two, but the words died at the back of your throat.

His eyes scanned the room once more, and when he seemed happy enough with the state of things, he gave you a short nod and began to back away. You stumbled forward, following him, words rising up your throat before you could stop.

“I need to see you, after…”

“I know. I’ll be waiting.”

After one more moment of delayed eye contact, he turned away and disappeared down the hallway and out of sight.

[autolenaphilia]

Tedd/Elliot is so endgame: the massive proof document

I’m a long-time Tedd/Elliot shipper, I have been since I first discovered EGS in the latter half of the 00s. A lot of it is probably explained by these panels:

And upon re-entering the fandom and re-reading, I’ve become convinced that Tedd/Elliot is endgame. Like I’m biased of course, but there is such a thing as fiction hinting at future story developments and foreshadowing, and oh boy are Tedd/Elliot foreshadowed. This post will have a read more otherwise this might turn into a “do you love the color of the sky”, except its Tedd/Elliot.

I had to literally stitch comics and panels together into collages to get this post past tumblr 30 image limit per post. And I’m sure I have forgotten some stuff, there is just so much.

The earlier Tedd/Elliot might be intended as jokes but the hints have felt more and more real, especially during the last 10 years or so of comics.

Exhibit A:1 Canonical Alternate universes

Whenever there is an AU of EGS, it’s pretty much a rule if we meet alternates of both Tedd and Elliot, they are a romantic couple. It’s like they are destined to be together.

The first one is a canonical one. Some of the earliest hints of Tedd/Elliot came with https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2002-07-23 in which it’s revealed that Beta Tedd and Elliot’s female alternate that universe are a couple:

“Incidentally, I like creating scenarios in which it's implied that Elliot and Tedd could very easily be dating each other given different circumstances, so I hope you do, to.” – Dan Shive in the commentary to the above comic.

The other canonical universe we see alternates of Tedd and Elliot in is Magus’s universe. Magus calls his version of Tedd, Terra, “A friend” but you can certainly read into his wistful memory of her, maybe he’s just missing his friend, maybe it’s something more:

Exhibit A:2: The non-canon AUs

Other than that… there are numerous non-canonical AUs in EGS:NP where alternates of Tedd/Elliot end up in a romantic relationship. Like it’s non-canonical but the recurring nature of this certainly implies things.

There’s the Blank check for Weirdness AU from 2004

Or the Oblivious Hand-waving AU from 2008.

It’s really a tradition at this point for silly EGS:NP non-canon stuff. The NP comics are currently in an arc re-telling Cinderella where Tedd is Cinderella and Elliot is the prince. And as Dan Shive admits it’s something the author loves:

Exhibit B: they canonically are attracted to each other

Tedd/Elliot are sexually attracted to each other. This is undeniable canonical fact. You could reasonably argue for Tedd/Elliot not being an endgame ship, that this attraction won’t lead to a relationship, but you’ll be outright ignoring canon if you denied this attraction exists.

Exhibit B:1: Elliot’s attraction to Tedd

Elliot’s attraction to Tedd has been obvious since at least 2003, and his denials have been increasingly portrayed as rooted in a kind of internalized homophobia (since he finds Tedd attractive even when Tedd is in a male body). Ellen has embraced being bisexual since the start, and sharing Elliot’s memories, has talked to Elliot about his attraction to Tedd multiple times.

The first time was in February 2003, at the end of the Sister arc:

And they did it again, 14 years later, in part 15 of the Sister 3 arc in May 2017, in which Elliot finally accepts being bisexual and doesn’t argue with Ellen when she brings up Tedd as an attractive boy.

Elliot’s subconscious was being obvious even earlier, as this dream from part 7 of the Identity Arc back in December 2013 proves:

(If only he had remembered this dream, we might not still be waiting on the ship becoming real 11 years and 6 months later.)

Since that conversation with Ellen, Elliot has been even more obvious about being attracted to Tedd. Like in Tedd’s little haircut saga in the Layers storyline from May-June 2023. (we’ll get back to this storyline, it’s very shippy) Elliot gets very frank about how cute and good-looking Tedd is.

Ellen and Elliot then get into another conversation about their shared attraction to Tedd, which mirrors the one from 2003. Keep in mind that “just thinking about baseball” is a running gag in the comic for unconvincingly denying having sexy thoughts.

Later in November 2023 in part 4 of Layers, we get Elliot thinking Tedd is “way too cute.” More on that little saga in a bit.

Exhibit B:2: Tedd’s attraction to Elliot

And what about Tedd then?

Unlike Elliot, Tedd doesn’t have a clone sister with his memories to call him out like Ellen does to Elliot. But it’s undeniably there.

This bit from February 2014, during the Identity arc is telling. And sure, Tedd is a transformation fetishist, so he is interested in the act of transformation itself, but I don’t think his choice of subject for his transformation fantasy here is completely arbitrary. Like I don’t think he would fantasize in this way about a random person they are not attracted to. Sarah even imagines Tedd/elliot in response

And there is this subtle moment from Sister 3: Part 10 from February 2017, where Tedd is clearly attracted to Elliot in boymode. (So much for their claim back in 2005 that they are not bisexual.)

Even stronger is Tedd’s reaction to Elliot transforming into a girl at the party in the Reflections storyline in January 2020. And this bit I think nails a large part of the appeal with Tedd/Elliot. They have similar things going on gender-wise, and the potential for nb4nb kinship here is strong.

And Tedd’s expression here in this moment from the Blanket NP arc from September 2021 speaks volumes

There is also this moment from The “Nanase and Her Fox” NP arc (February 2024) Dan Shive even points it out in the commentary for the following comic, Tedd didn’t have to imagine Elliot in undersized clothing, but they did anyway.

Finally, let’s go back to the page where Elliot thinks about how Tedd is “way too cute”, back to Layers Part 4 (November 2023) Now, Tedd seeing through Elliot’s shirt isn’t actually any kind of shipfuel, because as Elliot points out, Tedd wasn’t trying to do that.

But the whole conversation that follows certainly is. Tedd just admits it: “Elliot’s very attractive” And they both blush.

Exhibit B:3: The whole fricking “Superhero Science” Arc

This NP storyline deserves a section all of its own, because oh my god just read it, it’s pure Tedd/Elliot shipfuel. Elliot literally enters the story with Tedd resting her head on his lap.

And sure they dismiss it as casual platonic cuddling. But there is obviously a lot more going on.

Tedd is obviously horny for Elliot transforming into Cheerleadra, and for Elliot in that form. And then Elliot lands on top of Tedd. Elliot flirts with Tedd, and they both imagine making out.

And this storyline is canon, or at least possibly canon. And the feelings shown in the story are definitely canon as Dan Shive explains in the commentary:

“As for the eternal question of how canon this all is, my answer has to be "for the time being, it's possible". The reason it has to be that is that this would be a future event, and I can't be 100% certain whether this exact scenario will fit. It's a "we can't really know until the main timeline catches up" sort of thing.

I will say, however, that there's every reason this could be canon, and if for some logical reason it can't be, I plot to re-establish the feelings shown in this storyline.”

And the main feelings shown is that Elliot and Tedd want to make out.

Exhibit C: The other characters have noticed. Seriously most of them seem to realize Tedd/Elliot is real.

In response to this ship, one might ask “but what about Grace? And the answer is that Grace is already probably a Tedd/Elliot shipper. Like there is this moment from the Reflections arc, (september 2020), where Grace and Sarah due to a magic door mirror accident have been transformed to look like Tedd and Elliot respectively.

(This is of course also a major Grace/Sarah moment, fueling the popular Tedd/Grace/Sarah OT3 ship. And that feels totally compatible with Tedd/Elliot. This couple is only part of the puzzle and the solution to that puzzle I suspect is that most of the main cast will be involved in some kind of complicated polyamourous arrangement.)

And that Reflections bit is not the first time Grace is having a Tedd/Elliot shipping moment. I already shared the Blanket arc bit above. And much earlier, in Identity Part 5 (November 2013) we get this page, where Grace goes full fujoshi for them. She says the fantasy “just” involves her transformed into Elliot, but the fantasy is still super-telling of her desires.

Ashley is not as openly supportive, but because she can see the obvious, she does notice what Tedd and Elliot has going on, and even gets jealous of Tedd. Like when Elliot gets very protective of Tedd in the little argument with Diane about magic, in the Reflections arc (June 2020). She both notices and gets jealous

There is also the bit in the Layers arc during Tedd’s haircut saga where Tedd and Elliot hold hands. It’s a very shippy moment and Ashley clearly recognizes this.

(Also Grace’s openness to polyamory is unknown, as is that of Ashley, but it wouldn’t be surprising. It’s not exactly the weirdest thing these two girls are into)

Their girlfriends are not the only characters who notice the obvious energy between Tedd and Elliot.

Susan was of course characteristically blunt about it way back in Grace’s Birthday party arc (August 2005)

(seriously, 2005 Susan. You are right about everything as always, Tedd is very transfem and Elliot is very horny for them, but you really didn’t have to say it like that)

And since Diane shares Susan’s brains, she has noticed as well:

(Dan Shive’s commentary for this scene talks about how Tedd and Elliot’s “date” will be “a couple of gal pals hanging out”, like come on.)

Even Tedd’s dad Edward seems to suspect Tedd/Elliot. At the start of the Balance arc, April 2021, Edward compares Tedd and Elliot to Tara and Andrea, griffins who are a lesbian married couple (they are indeed similar). And then wonders outright at an intimate Tedd/Elliot moment:

I guess, congrats on your future son/daughter in-law, Edward.

And the defense rests

Hope you enjoyed this tour into my rarepair shipping madness. I’ll leave you with this sketchbook by Dan Shive:

[steviebbboi]

Stevie BB 200 Followers Celebration Writing Challenge!

Howdy lads~ exciting news to share:

I just reached a 200 follower count on Tumblr 🎉🎉🎉

I kinda can't believe it? Writing is indeed good for my soul. Interacting with y'all on here has helped me with my mental and emotional wellness due to just finding such great community on here. Thank you for giving me the space to write and for following along/supporting in my writing journey 💖

With that spiel spoken, I wanted to host a writing challenge in celebration of this milestone! *squealing because i'm so excited to host*

Stevie BB 200 Followers Celebration Writing Challenge Masterlist

*you'll find all writing submissions and writing requests (answered) at the link above*

You could participate by sending in either:

✨ writing request via my Asks (💙)

and/or

✨ writing submissions (💥).

General Rules:

the challenge will start October 1st until the end of November (flexible on late entries for submissions only💥; let's say till mid-December or so).

I'll read/write for Chris Evans characters, Henry Cavill Characters, and Charlie Hunnam characters [and Bucky Barnes specifically lol] (these are my preferences but if there are other characters that you'd like to bring in, just ask me)!

for writing requests 💙, i will only be accepting requests (2 max/person; pls do not send more than 2 asks!) until the end of November.

for writing submissions 💥, go wild! submit as many as you like!

you can do both (send in a writing request 💙 AND send in a writing submission(s)💥) if you want to; rules still apply for the requests though.

use at least one prompt within your request 💙/submissions💥 from the lists below (but def. go crazy if you wanna use more than one! you don't have to claim any prompts).

works can be inclusive! poc, gender neutral, neurodivergencies, mid size/plus size/curvy readers are encouraged!

No word limits but please use a 'read more' after 200 words

Works can be part of an existing series but must be able to stand on their own

tag me @steviebbboi and use the tags #bbboi200celebration and #steviebbboiwritingchallenge in your entry so i can read/reblog your work! (If I somehow lose sight of your submission, please remind me and I'll take a look at it right away ☺️)

Most important one: Have fun!

How To Play:

✨ You must be 18+ to participate in this challenge!

✨ Choose one (or multiple 😏) BB's:

Chris Evans Characters

Steve Rogers/Captain America

Ransom Drysdale

Ari Levinson

Frank Adler

Curtis Everett

Andy Barber

Hayden/Harvard Hottie

Nick Gant

Jake Jensen

Johnny Storm

Lloyd Hansen

Henry Cavill Characters

Clark Kent

Napoleon Solo

Geralt of Rivia

August Walker

Charlie Hunnam Characters

Jax Teller

Raymond Smith *extra brownie pts if you write about him omg*

King Arthur

Sebastian Stan

Bucky Barnes [he's all by himself im so sorry lmfao 🥹]

✨ Choose one (or more) of the following prompts:

*if you don't want to write smut, you don't have to choose anything from the kinks prompt! feel free to only use the following two prompts :)

soft dom!BB

clothes/naked ratio

size kink

slow and deep 👀

breeding kink (non-pregnancy version)

somnophilia

free use

cockwarming

belly bulge

Squirting

consensual non-con

consensual dub-con

cumeating

creampie

anal/or dp

possessive/or protective manhandling!BB

oral sex

orgasm delay

dumbification

daddy/princess kink

overstimulation

sex pollen

prone bone

cockdrunk

threesome (BB/Reader/BB)

ass/pussy spanking

mild degradation

body worshipping

quickie/don't get caught (public sex, threats of exhibitionism, etc.) 😏

Grouchybb! who is only soft with you

Married and loyal!spouse

A/B/O

lumberjack!bb who is a teddy bear on the inside tho

mob AU

biker AU

soulmate AU

mutual pining/idiots in love

childhood besties to lovers

reformed playboy

professor AU

supernatural/mythical (gods, sirens, werewolves, witches, vampires, ghosts, oh my!)

frenemies to lovers

fwb to lovers

locked in AU/forced proximity

medieval AU

fake dating/relationship

sharing one bed

polar opposites attract

break up and make up

spy AU

meet cute

cowboy AU

gentle recluse!BB

brothers best friend!BB

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Yes, take it, slut"

"It's not that big of a deal."

"God, why do you always do this"

"You're impossible."

"Then I guess we gotta be quiet, huh?"

"We're trapped."

"Shh, you wouldn't want anyone to hear, or do you?"

"You're taking me so well, baby"

"Good girl" *for fem readers; adjust accordingly!*

"Tsk, uh-uh, c'mere, honey"

"You always feel so good around me, baby"

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Here, let me help you."

"Yeah, are you a cockhungry slut, now?"

"I hardly think that that's necessary."

"Don't be a brat, baby."

"Aw, does it feel good right there?"

"I'm sorry!"

"What do you want from me?!"

"I didn't mean to!"

"What do you think you're doing here?"

"Nope. Again."

"Don't worry, I got you."

"Just stay still, there you go."

"Just one more, I promise."

"C'mon, don't you wanna be good?"

"Stay over there!"

"You better hurry up, baby."

"Thaaaat's it, you're doing so well, honey."

"Uhm, I'm not sure that's going to work."

"Please, I'll beg, please!"

"Be honest."

"Be careful there, darlin'."

"Are you okay?"

"Are you sure you wanna go there?"

Scenarios? Any! Go. Wild.

✨ I love reading/writing angst w/HEA, soft dark (nothing too dark though), fluff and SMUT (as you can see w/the many many kinks).

no incest (stepcest is ok if tasteful lol), no infidelity, no watersports, no murder, no gore. if you're unsure if a trope is appropriate, ask me!

if im ever uncomfy with writing something, i will lyk and we can talk more about it to see if we could work with it!

feel free to ask any questions!

i think i got everything!

Have the best time, laddies~ thanks for celebrating with me!

All are welcome to join in the fun! ❣️

Tagging a few mutuals who may be interested but no pressure bbs:

@bigtreefest @mercurial-chuckles @stargazingfangirl18 @yenzys-lucky-charm

@sweater-daddiesdumbdork @buckets-and-trees @hotdamnhunnam @laurfilijames

@autumnrose40 @eloquentlytired @misscherry-26 @stellar-solar-flare

@darsynia @navybrat817

[wallys-left-eyeball]

ok after two (edit: 3.5) hours i am finally done viewing what i THINK is the whole update. my thoughts and a few significant things i noticed!!!!! (spoilers obviously)

disclaimer: i’m a crazy welcome home fan but my memory is literally so bad, so please point out if i’m digging deep into some detail that’s been there since last update or however long ago 💀 eddie’s my fav for a reason bless (this mess)

🍎 they publicly executed wally in the town square :( no but seriously what. so far he is removed from the main page’s opening graphic, main page’s bottom banner, and welcome home page’s top drawing (which has been renamed to “_and_barnaby”

🍎 on that note, on the neighborhood page, wally’s canvas is gone and he is no longer looking at us. on top of that, the button to leave says “go back” and his “that’s the most!” audio was replaced with a freaky distorted phone ringing.

🍎 this could be something i just hadn’t noticed before, but remember when the old stickers page had that one gif that, when you opened it, would rotate between the characters’ eyes faster and faster until it would linger on wally’s eyes? that gif is completely normal now. it still lingers on wally’s eyes, but the gif doesn’t become distorted or move quicker anymore. once again seems like wally getting his main character energy wiped

• i just realized i’ve been essentially listing things abt this update but that’s not what i’m here to do!!!! go look at it for yourself!!!!!

🍎 but yeah. i’m very deeply worried about him. did anyone else notice that in this update he sounds kind of dead? except in the radio, where he sounded like…. as alive and cheerful as ever? weird….

🍎 edit 2: creds to @/citrineaura for leading me to /ringring... oh my god wally :( i feel SO bad for him AAAUGHHH... i still can't tell if he is talking to us as the viewers or talking to W

🍎 edit 2: stole this from @/citrineaura as well but i 100% see how it could entirely be the whrp silencing wally and even being behind playfellow. why would the staff do that to him if they didn't have some kind of sinister plan????

🏠 oh but on the note of wally being slowly scrubbed from the website, home is cleaned up too. the black goop is replaced with a paint splatter, and the black spiral behind home is replaced with a cutesy little scribble. makes me wonder if home is behind all this

🏠 edit 2: i no longer believe home is behind this just because of /ringring. wally seemed too friendly with home lolz

🏠 home’s gif on the neighborhood page is now called “seeyoutogether”

🦋 way less deep of a detail but frank’s got lil eyelashes now :3 my non-binary king

🌸 the cards on floriography all have different flowers on them. i’m not a flower nerd and i’m too lazy to deal with flower language but i’m sure some nerd is gonna post “🤓☝️erm well this flower means frank is gonna die” or something so. lmk when that happens!!

🌸 edit: thank you to @/capribornio for giving me da links to the deep stuff 🙏 but WOW that was. wow i was really tearing up there. so moving and so so sad and so relatable </3 i don’t even know what she’s yapping about but whatever it is is incredibly relatable

🌸 edit: to me it sounds like. julie’s switching between a human and a puppet consciousness???? i don’t really know how to describe it, but it doesn’t really seem like she’d just be masking with a super strenuous voice like that, like that takes WORK. idk!!!!!

🌸 i kind of interpreted that as if she was grieving someone. maybe feeling guilty for someone’s lost life? but it could also be not that deep, and maybe something terrible will happen to her if she doesn’t make all the flowers bloom

🌿 jonesy joyful green cool version of red guy dhmis

🌼 god frank and julie were my fav duo before but NOWWWW. literally wlw and mlm solidarity i love them SO MUCH……. my fav icons ever

💻 the logo(s) have less mold than before on them… still mold there!! but idk it looks like it healed a little bit

💻 i’m genuinely SO BAD at args but there doesn’t seem to be any outright hidden links/websites this time around? spoil it for me in the comments if there is but idk…. even awayfrompryingeyes is down which makes me think maybe W (the curator of it) got caught? or something happened to them?

💻 edit 3: clown posted that awayfrompryingeyes was back up so i had 2 hop on.... tbh i have nothing to say about it other than that i think wally could be the one sending all this info to W and also oh my god did they actually drink the bottle of joy. jesus

• edit 3: to end this on a stupid note: this is so niche but when i saw the bottle of joy i immediately thought of we happy few because the game also has bottles of joy LMFAO

i think that’s all i wanted to talk about (other than some sillies i’m posting separately)!! obviously i didn’t cover all of it, these r just some thoughts i had while going through it all :D ugh such a STUNNING update as always!!! frank and julie’s vas COOOOOKED with this one….. literally so adorable and expressive UGH fantastic update as always <333

edit 4: i posted a couple resources: brightened toybox photo / hidden frank photo (with my theories)

[get-your-revenge]

hello! please read post <3

welcome!

on this blog you can ask things to any three cheers for sweet revenge and the black parade characters, BUT with a twist! this is based on my au :D

how the au works:

the demolition woman is Illi Mcmillin grown up,

the demolition man is Phillip Lero (inoverse/my au frank iero) grown up

the realm of the black parade is called the paper kingdom and it is an in between of heaven and hell in the afterlife, its a place for people who dont fit into the category of good or bad

when illi died in the gunfight she went to the paper kingdom

Milli went to war with Phillip and died and went to the paper kingdom as well (nvm I scrapped this idea, disregard 💔)

Illi and Milli (inoverse/my au mikey) are both vampires

Phillip is a border collie therian, not entirely important to the au but i love that hc so i put it here <3

helena is the mcmillin siblings mother and also a vampire (duh)

since the members of the black parade (band) are unnamed, i call them by what their place in the band is (ex: gerard = parade leader, vocalist/frontman, ray = lead guitarist, etc)

Illi murdered the devil but you can still ask him stuff

not much changed about the fabulous killjoys in this au other than the existence of a funpoison love child so erm.... *embarrassment* (I FEEL CRINGE OKAY 😭😭😭)

I also added my killjoysona (demolition widow, or just widow) to this for shits and giggles lol, she's an alien from Jupiter that crashed onto earth (coincidentally right in front of the killjoys diner) and decided to live their part time, she also has some time to my hesitant alien au, but I'm not gonna add that here (may change my mind idk)

u can send asks to either the adult killjoys or their teen selves, u can also send asks to adult girlie and rocket queen (oc, TOTALLY not the love child I just mentioned) (this prolly woulda fit better in the next section ↓ but oh well)

how the asks work:

you can ask questions to any specific era of the characters (adult, teen, afterlife, ect. but not childhood bc thats not established in the au) but if you do pls make it clear which one!

you can ask literally anything, im not going to bother with a do not ask list. anything i find i do not want to answer will not be answered

you can also ask things about the au or the characters to mod (which is me!)

characters:

Phillip Lero (inoverse, demo man and paper kingdom au)

Illi Mcmillin (inoverse, demo woman, and paper kingdom au)

Milli Mcmillin (inoverse, adult,and paper kingdom au)

Ray Romance (inoverse and adult au)

the devil (three cheers)

any member of the black parade (the band)

mother war (tbp)

fear and regret (tbp)

the quintuplets of grief (tbp) (my ocs)

pepe/death (tbp)

either or both of the i dont love you lovers (tbp)

helena (three cheers and paper kingdom au) (yes the whole gang went there😭)

the secretary (tbp)

the nurse (tbp)

party poison (danger days)

fun ghoul (danger days)

jet star (danger days)

kobra kid (danger days)

the girl/missle kid/motorbaby (danger days)

Rocket queen/lola (danger days, oc, not hesitant alien lola, funpoison love child, heh)

demolition widow (danger days, my killjoysona :3)

and any other characters i may come up with! (may also add draag when i find out how to fit his stank ass into my au lmao)

tag system:

#get your revenge! / all posts

#asks for *character name* / the character(s) being questioned

#no bitchez lmao / non ask posts

#mod comes out of her cave / mod posts

about the mod!:

u can call me axl, zero, helena, or lo/lolo! u can use any version of those tho lol

my pronouns R she/they he (im genderfluid! ^^)

my main blog is @literallyjonathandavis

there's a little bit of stuff abt my au (s) on this blog @axl-gets-creative so check out my nasterlists for some more details!

if ur confused abt anything pls let me know!

thanks for reading <3

[sapphicscholar]

Hacks 4.07 Thoughts

As always, thoughts below the cut to hide any spoilers!

Centering the episode around questions of faith and ritual on the one hand felt a little tonally odd, but also let the show to do a different kind of character exploration and communicate some things quietly for those in the know. For the non-Catholics, baptism is the first sacrament (a sacrament of initiation), and it represents both a rebirth (the cleansing away of original sin) and an entry into a new community/new structure of familial ties. Obviously those Catholic elements aren’t named explicitly in the episode, and the extent to which they register depends upon the familiarity of viewers with the Catholic tradition, but it was a nice way to quietly mark the watery rebirth of Deborah and Ava’s relationship—itself a cleansing (albeit, less wholly) of the wrongs that have been calcifying between them—as well as a way for the episode to talk about what it means for DJ to want something different for her child. We see her stand up for herself in a major way, and even though it becomes clear that it’s profit not faith that’s driving her (much more in character let’s be honest), I think there is something to what she sees in Aiden’s family. It’s not the Catholicism of it all (I PROMISE YOU THAT lmao), but it is a way of orienting themselves around each other that leaves DJ wanting more and better for her son than what she feels she got. And I think the choice of Ava as a godmother (even tho the Church would absolutely not have allowed it as a spur of the moment thing—you gotta prove you’re a practicing Catholic and all!) was a really lovely moment of growth and maturity from DJ.

As an outsider, DJ knows that there’s this version of her mother that Ava has drawn out from the soft, hopeful places Deborah walled off right around the time DJ would have been forming deep memories, but DJ also knows she’ll never be able to give that version of Deborah to AJ because it’s a version she knows of without knowing herself – a very faithful kind of believing without seeing, if you will. And much as she’s willing to wrench Deborah into the sanctuary and threaten to go low or no contact if she ruins something for AJ—an act of harshness born of love—she’s also willing to gift her son a version of her mother that she herself can’t quite access (at least not yet, maybe not ever). Ava can’t give AJ math lessons, let alone the intended role of spiritual guidance, but she can give him the version of Deborah at her best—the version she might have been had Frank and Kathy not done what they did.

Anyway, pivoting away from the Catholic of it all (a sentence I never thought I’d type in a Hacks recap!), the car conversation was obviously beautiful on its own terms, but it was also a nice way to get Deborah thinking about legacy, about belief, about what it is and was (bc it surely wasn’t faith in any higher power) that gave Deborah the strength to keep going—and how she’s going to make her show, her legacy, into the kind of thing that actually reflects who she is and what she values. Because we know that’s going to be what finally lets them succeed.

A couple quick delights: the stairwell scene, my beloved – we’ve been waiting for this, and it’s just as fun and sweet (without being saccharine) as I had hoped it would be <3

Even thought it was brief, I loved seeing Marcus - he seems so happy, and that's everything I wanted for him

Ava's book present is 100% the vibe I bring to the function (the function being all children's birthday parties)

But ya know I can't end without some kind of more critical note: I know a lot of the cast and creators talked about Julianne Nicholson as their favorite character this season, but I’m growing tired fast – don’t get me wrong, she can be fun to see, but at this point, it’s pretty clear she’s just here to give Jimmy and Kayla more to do on screen to justify the shift in narrative focus to include them as more major players (more on that in my ep. 8 notes), and it’s just…falling flat. Were this a 22-episode season kind of show, it might be different, but even with the slight increase to 10 episodes, this is a tight ship to run if you want believable character arcs scaled to the point JPL seem to want to exist at, and stuff like Dance Mom makes it baggy while taking away room for what we need to see