#Lamp HBO

[thiefguard]

[julie-finlay]

the lamp hbo for the ask

thank you for knowing it would take me 6 years to answer and linking the source post xx

Lamp HBO

otp: ThiefGuardThiefGuardThiefGuard except sometimes it's absolutely ThiefTess

favourite canon pairing: still ThiefGuard :3 or for non-romantic then ThiefTeller

worst pairing ever: my flippant off-the-cuff answer was MagisTeller, but I accidentally read an untagged TagoNie fic once and it still wakes me up at night sometimes. or DescendNie ndjksnjk.

guilty pleasure pairing: definitely ThiefTess and I looove fics and meta exploring their backstory, but (don't bully me), I'm still interested in exactly what went down between Thief and Tago.

a pairing you want to see more: QUEENNIE ALWAYS ALWAYS

that pairing everyone likes but you’re like “lol no”: Does Tago x Reader count? lol. Again flippantly MagisTeller but I wouldn't say they're universally beloved.

favorite non-romantic pair: ThiefTeller have my whole whole whole whole heart <3

[actual-changeling]

-"Hello My Old Heart", The Oh Hellos (Ten Year Anniversary Version)

[ptvstvrrr]

Posting a scrap edit for the pookies (that I made a long time ago) today bc my power was out from 9 pm yesterday till 6 am this morning from a storm and I'm exhausted

[aut2imagineart]

Made this as a gift for my friend @ironbar36; Poison Ivy (Harley Quinn series version) as a genie who trapped Zatanna in her own magic hat. It was fun drawing her again as she's probably my favorite version of the character.

Poison Ivy (and Zatanna) belong to DC comics.

As always comments and critiques are welcome including what kind of content you want to see more of from me (speculative biology, character/creature design, genies, etc).

[0ynes]

It pains my heart thinking about the scene where Aemond goes after Lucerys. But at the same time I want to see what happens, so I hope the scene is not too dark. Please put the biggest full moon in that storm.

[softboyhader]

Thanks I hate it 🫠

[made-ofmemories]

Only at the recap and starting to think maybe watching this alone, in the dark, at 2am is a mistake

[thiefguard]

Bruise headcanons

Teller bruises at the slightest provocation. The smallest nibble spreads blue across his skin, like a raindrop into a pond. He enjoys the sensation of a wandering mouth, but not pain, so Nie's bites are restrained, the gentlest graze of teeth - even if she could eat him whole.

Jul bruises like a rainbow. Orange reminders of a misjudged blow sparring. A long purple scrape, earned crawling into a still-sealed vault. The green press of fingertips into a quivering thigh. The red blush of a hard kiss to the center of her throat.

Nie bruises dark and deep. She inflicts, is rarely the inflicted. But when a firm hand pins her into place, or a hungry mouth finds the sweet spot that makes her keen and moan, the memory lingers on her skin.

Tess's bruises dance beneath the surface of her skin. They curl sinuously, shifting position and changing shape. Twisting tendrils of distant pain take the form of symbols unknown to man.

Guard bruises and thinks nothing of it. Some in his position wear them like a badge of honour. He bandages, forgets. Once, soft fingertips traced the whorls of old scars and asked their stories. He would have told too, if only he could remember.

The Queen kept a reminder of her last night with Nie in the form of a dark bruise atop her breast. The mark persisted for weeks after the vanishing. Her thumb probed it in secret, pressing, aching, renewing. Its healing was another loss.

Princess is pampered, kept from any activity strenuous enough to inflict injury. She learns needlepoint and diplomacy and how to smile even when you want to scream. In the desert, chased by paladins, she falls from her horse. The bruises are vast, half her body blue and black. She has never felt more alive.

Descendant is a practitioner of pain. Her bites mark, her scratches linger, her bruises ache, straddling the precipice between pleasure and pain. Her recipients beg. To stop? Not to? Their words matter little, simply echo from the chamber walls.

Magister finds bruises unseemly. Should he ever be marked, he has tinctures on hand, can blend just the right ointment to lift the blemish. Teller watches him with mortar and pestle, tells him that in another life he might have been a Healer. Magister thinks that in another life, that's not the only thing that would be different.

Tago sees bruises as a failure. Taking wounds is beneath him, inflicting them even more so. A bruise means blood still flows, means the vessels are ruptured but healing. Let his blows be swift, the deaths quick. Let him walk away with his hands clean.

[julie-finlay]

hey just checking in with mutuals

ur not one of these

TellerGenie shippers r u?

<3

lmaoooooo is anyone a TellerGenie shipper?? Is Teller? Is Genie?!?!! I think not :)

now

if the question was

am i one breath of desert wind away from becoming a Thieftess blog?

that would be a very different answer :')))))

[steveyockey]

While some of both Davis and Crawford’s work could arguably be described as camp (for the former, King Vidor’s Beyond the Forest; for the latter, later-era films such as Strait-Jacket and aspects of the wondrous Nicholas Ray film Johnny Guitar), that their entire careers and places within film history are defined as such does a disservice to their artistry. But they aren’t alone in representing what has become a troubling trend when it comes to women’s work. As camp entered the mainstream lexicon, especially after Susan Sontag’s landmark 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” the term has been increasingly tied to work featuring women who disregard societal norms. Camp is often improperly and broadly applied to pop culture that features highly emotional, bold, complex, cold, and so-called “unlikable” female characters. I’ve seen films and TV shows such as the witty masterwork All About Eve; the beguiling Mulholland Drive; the stylized yet heartwarming Jane the Virgin; Todd Haynes’s Patricia Highsmith adaptation Carol; the blistering biopic Jackie; the deliciously malevolent horror film Black Swan; Joss Whedon’s exploration of girlhood and horror, Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the landmark documentary Grey Gardens (which inspired the 2009 HBO film starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore); and even icons such as Beyoncé and Rihanna be described as camp. Look at any list of the best camp films and you’ll see an overwhelming number of works that feature women and don’t actually fit the label. Usually, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the film whose behind-the-scenes story provides Murphy’s launching pad for Feud, will be at the top of the list.

While camp need not be a pejorative, that hasn’t stopped it from being widely used as such. In effect, being labeled as camp can turn the boldest works about the interior lives of complex women into a curiosity, a joke, a punch line. The ease with which camp is applied to female-led films and shows of this ilk demonstrates that for all the (still-paltry) gains Hollywood has made for women in the decades since Davis and Crawford worked, our culture is still uncomfortable respecting women’s stories.

That major Hollywood icons such as Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford (and, more recently, Natalie Portman, thanks to Jackie) have been roped into this lineage isn’t surprising. Society doesn’t know what to do with women of this ilk without discrediting their very womanhood. Take artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s offensive description of Mae West in an essay on camp: “[She] played with androgyny to the degree that her final performance — her autopsy — was necessary to prove her biological femaleness.” In his 2013 essay “Why Is Camp So Obsessed with Women?”, J. Bryan Lowder expands on Sontag’s most well-known line: “It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman.’ To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role.” Lowder writes, “‘Woman,’ the concept within the quotation marks, is not the same thing, at all, as a real woman; the former is a mythology, a style, a set of conventions, taboos, and references, while the latter is a shifting, changeable, and ultimately indefinable living being. Of course, there may be some overlap.” But if all gender is a performance, where does the “real” woman begin? And why does the presence of camp hold more importance than the actual work and voices of actresses such as Crawford, who have come to be defined by it?

At times, camp can feel like a suffocating label. Its proponents often misconstrue the fact that recreating oneself as a character is not merely an aesthetic for women, but rather, for many, a matter of survival. Living in a culture that profoundly scorns ambition, autonomy, and independence in women, girls learn quickly the narrow parameters of femininity available to them. When they transcend these parameters, life can get even more difficult. Women often pick up and drop various forms of presentation in order to move through the world more easily. Performance as a woman — in terms of how one speaks, walks, talks, acts — can be a means of controlling one’s own narrative. Camp often limits this part of the discussion, focusing instead on the sheer thrill of watching larger-than-life female characters cut and snark their way across the screen. How these works speak to women, past and present, becomes a tertiary concern at best, and the work loses a bit of its importance in the process; it either comes to be regarded as niche or, if it still has mainstream prominence, as abject spectacle. In turn, the conversations around these works become less about the women at their centers and more about how those women are presented.

Much of Baby Jane’s camp legacy comes down to how more recent audiences have interpreted Davis’s performance. She’s ferocious, frightening, and grotesque. But framing Davis’s performance as camp, as Murphy does, doesn’t take into account how dramatically acting has shifted over the course of film history. In some ways, camp has become a label used when modern audiences don’t quite understand older styles of acting. Modern actors privilege the remote, the cold, the detached. The more scenery-chewing performances that make the labor of acting visible — such as the transformative work that Jake Gyllenhaal did in Nightcrawler, or most of Christian Bale’s career — is typically the domain of men. (Or, at least, it’s only men who can get away with it without being called campy.) As Shonni Enelow writes in a marvelous piece for Film Comment, “[Jennifer] Lawrence’s characters in Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games don’t arrive at emotional release or revelation; rather than fight to express themselves, her characters fight not to. We can see the same kind of emotional retrenchment and wariness in a number of performances by the most popular young actors of the last several years.” Davis’s work as an actor was the antithesis of that; she painted in bold colors. Even her quietest moments brim with an intensity that cannot be denied.

[sixhours]

Postpartum

A one-shot set in the One Day at a Time universe. This probably won't make sense unless you've read that, but you do you.

Rating: Teen Series tags: The Last of Us, The Last of Us (HBO), Joel Miller x f!OFC, soft!Joel, no really super soft!Joel, mostly follows canon, angst, hurt/comfort, fluffy baby stuff, babyfic, postpartum depression-ish (not really, but could be triggering), ppd, hormones are wild y'all, breastfeeding is hard, mentions of Sarah and her being black so obviously leaning hard into the tv series and maybe racial themes if you squint? Word count: 1.8k

Notes: Sometimes I just can't get these characters out of my head.

You can also read Postpartum on AO3.

Joel wakes to the sound of crying, and not the baby’s this time. It’s Charlie, sitting up in bed with Anna at her breast, curled over the child’s nursing form and sobbing.

“Hey, whoa,” he rasps, sitting up and fumbling for the bedside lamp. “S’wrong?”

“She’s not getting enough,” she says through tears. “I don’t know…I just…it’s been three days and she needs to eat and there’s no letdown and I can barely squeeze anything out–”

“Hey, shh, s’okay,” he says. “Midwife said that’s normal, ‘member? Can take a few days for everythin’ to…uh…work.”

“But what if it doesn’t? What if I’m b-broken? What if she’s starving and she can’t tell us?”

He shakes his head, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and sliding over to tuck her under his arm, careful because she’s sore and tender everywhere.

“You’re not broken,” he says. “You’re just…tired. And–”

“If you say I’m hormonal I will hurt you,” she hisses, then her eyes go wide and apologetic in the dim light, lower lip quivering.

“I’m sorry,” she moans. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that–it’s these fucking hormones, isn’t it? Fuck.”

“S’alright, I know–”

“You don’t. You really don’t. Everything hurts and I’m wearing a goddamned diaper –and these fucking cloth pads are worthless, I think I’m leaking on the bed again–”

“S’why we put a towel down. It’ll wash out—”

“...and my vagina is fucking ruined . It’s g-g-grotesque.”

“Midwife said you didn’t even tear,” he says, biting down hard on his cheek to stifle a chuckle. “I’m sure your, uh…your…um y’know…is just fine.”

She doesn’t appear convinced, tears catching on her lashes and streaming down her cheeks.

“My nipples feel like they’re being rubbed with broken glass. She doesn’t even have fucking teeth yet, how can it hurt so much? And she’s not getting enough, I just know it–”

He swallows hard and rubs her back like when she was in labor, firm strokes at the base of her spine.

“I can’t do this,” she whimpers, rocking forward over the baby. “I can’t…I wanted this so bad and now I’m just going to fuck it up.”

Another sob and now the baby starts to fuss quietly. Salty tears drip from the end of Charlie’s nose and land on the shell of Anna’s tiny ear, catching in her hair, dribbling down her forehead.

“Oh, great, now I’m crying on her,” Charlie sniffs. “Take her, Joel, before I drown her, she’s gonna be soaked–”

“You’re not gonna fuck it up,” he murmurs, but he lets Charlie slide the baby into the crook of his free arm. He bounces Anna for a few seconds, watches her tiny hands and fingers flex, then relax. Soon she’s fast asleep, entirely unaware of the drama unfolding around her.

“You’re doin’ just fine,” he says, kissing the damp curl of hair at Charlie’s temple. “S’only been three days.”

“I’m so scared,” she whimpers. “How are we supposed to do this? The world is fucking over , and we’ve gone and–and brought a child into it. What the fuck were we thinking ?”

“We weren’t. We were really fuckin’ drunk,” he quips.

She glares up at him with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “You’re not helping.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles, biting back the urge to laugh as he redoubles his backrubbing efforts in a silent apology. “But…you’re doin’ so good. She’s safe. She’s healthy. Look–she’s snorin’.”

Indeed, Anna’s tiny sniffles have deepened into soft baby sighs that puff against Joel’s bare chest. He finds himself unable to look away, drawn into a trance by the subtle rise and fall of her ribs, the rapid pulse of her heart thrumming under her delicate skin.

“She’s perfect, see? You’re doin’ great. Could use a little more sleep is all.”

Charlie whimpers miserably and presses her face to his side. “She can’t sleep if she’s starving, Joel.”

“She’s not gonna starve. We’ll call the midwife in the morning. She said they have—what is it, donors? If you can’t—“

This elicits another wail from Charlie. “You mean if I’m broken .”

Shit.

“No, no, that’s not what I—I meant just to—I’m—fuck,” he grits out, decides he’s better off shutting up. Instead, he rocks his daughter in one arm and holds the mother of his child in the other, waiting out the storm.

“Was it like this with Sarah?” Charlie murmurs after a while, voice laden with exhaustion.

“A little,” he says, hesitating. “Her mom was a lot younger than you an’ she wasn’t…wasn’t ready. She was a kid herself, and I prob’ly wasn’t the best partner. Hell, I was only 22. S’not an excuse, but…y’know. S’what it was.”

He shifts uncomfortably, remembering the long nights, the fighting, the abrupt dissolution of his family’s future before it had even begun.

“Anyway, she uh…she couldn’t handle it. Left when Sarah was a few months old.”

Charlie makes a sound in the back of her throat, then reaches over, gently grasping one of Anna’s impossibly small feet, rubbing at her little toes until the baby spreads them wide and pushes against her fingertips.

“She’s so perfect, I’m worried I’ll…I’ll ruin her, somehow,” she whispers. “But I can’t imagine leaving her.”

He meets her eyes, the next word rolling tender from his lips, tightening his hold around her shoulders to emphasize the point.

“Exactly.”

They stay like this until her breathing slows, until they’re drifting in that liminal space of exhausted new parents. Charlie wipes at her eyes, lets out a drained sigh.

“I wish he could have met her,” she says, her words muffled against Joel’s chest. 

He . Her late husband, one of many ghosts that floats about the edges of their lives, caught in the periphery. Joel feels a twinge of something like envy, but it’s hard to be jealous of a dead man, so he brushes it aside.

“You’ve never told me his name, y’know,” he says instead.

“I didn’t? Oh,” she trails off. “It was Marcus.”

He rumbles an mmm in acknowledgment and rests his chin on the top of her head, marveling at how perfectly she fits there, wondering if he could fill that space for her someday.

“Sometimes I could swear I see him in her,” she continues. “Isn’t that silly?”

“I dunno,” he murmurs, swallowing hard. “Sometimes…I think I see Sarah in her, too.”

She blinks up at him. “Well…at least that makes sense .”

“Not as much as you’d think,” Joel sniffs, tracing a thumb down Anna’s cheek, lost in thought. “Sarah took after her mom…she was half black. Looked nothin’ like me.”

He regards their daughter–pale complexion, silver eyes, straight dark hair. But still, she’s in there; his Sarah, his baby girl. Something about the slope of her nose, the arch of her eyebrows, the curl of her thumb against her bottom lip.

“What was Sarah like?” Charlie murmurs sleepily, nestling further into the crook of his shoulder.

“Stubborn as hell,” he says immediately, the words pouring out before he can lose his courage. “An’ you don’t have to tell me she got that from me. Already know.”

“You? Stubborn?” Charlie says, and he can feel her smiling against him.

“Yeah, yeah,” he smirks. “When Sarah was about three, she threw a fit in the store. Wanted…somethin’ or other, I dunno. A toy, prob’ly. Wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I had to drag her outta there kickin’ and screamin’.

“Except…she doesn’t really look like my kid, y’know? So she had the whole store convinced I was tryin’ to kidnap her, and they got security askin’ me questions, and she doesn’t understand, just keeps…keeps cryin’ and holdin’ on to me–”

He breaks off, surprised at the clarity of the memory; his flailing, sobbing kid in his arms as the security guard grilled him, the creeping shame and anger at being singled out, him and his girl against the world. A lump lodges itself in his throat and he blinks back tears.

“Got us outta there as fast as I could,” he says. “God…haven’t thought about that in forever.”

“That’s…awful.”

He shrugs. “Losin’ Sarah was awful. The rest was just…life.”

“You don’t talk about her,” Charlie whispers.

“S’hard, but…this helps,” he murmurs, stroking Anna’s dark hair, ducking his head to place a gentle kiss to her crown.

“Anyway,” he sighs, a deep, shuddering breath as he brings himself back to the flour-sack weight of the baby girl in his arms, the warm comfort of Charlie’s shoulder against his ribs. 

“All that to say…I get it. Hell, sometimes I catch myself thinkin’ Ellie has my eyes,” he chuckles. “Makes no fuckin’ sense…but maybe it don’t have to.”

Charlie shifts, rests her head against his chest, slurring her words slightly. “Mmmm…she does, though, doesn’t she?”

“Sure, let’s say she does. And this li’l one has…Marcus’ smile or ears or somethin’, maybe. He’s part of you…so he’s part of her, too.”

“Maybe,” she murmurs, yawning. Soon her breathing is slow and even, her body relaxed and pliant against his.

He allows himself the luxury of staring, struck by the way Charlie’s dark lashes fan over her cheeks, the mirror image of Anna’s.

Within minutes, they’re both asleep in his arms.

“Joel…Joel, wake up. I think–”

Charlie’s voice is soft and calm, no longer frantic, her words nuzzling gently against the dim reaches of his brain. He’s vaguely aware of the weight of the baby being lifted from his chest. He blinks, stretching, neck and shoulders tight where he’s dozed off against the headboard. The light is still on and a soft early morning dawn filters through the bedroom window.

He watches with heavy eyes as Charlie puts the baby to her breast, watches Anna’s little mouth eagerly searching for the nipple, bobbing against it greedily before latching on, drawing a soft hiss from her mother at the initial sting.

The baby makes deep, wet suckling sounds and tiny, satisfied grunts, making him think of a piglet. He smiles groggily and cups her soft little head in the palm of his hand, watching frothy bubbles of milk gather at the corner of her lips as she eats and eats and eats.

“Joel, look…”

Charlie’s trying to show him something but he’s too tired, too sleep-deprived to understand until he feels her hand guiding his, placing it on her swollen breast the way she used to place it on her stomach. The flesh underneath is tight and full and definitely not broken.

He kisses her crown and breathes her in, all lavender and powder and milk, still cradling the baby’s head in his hand as he drifts off to sleep.

[talesfrommedinastation]

My redneck neighbor Doug's predictions for The Bad Batch: Season 3

Well, the poll's in, kids: looks like we're getting a whole bunch of Doug-isms for the next while!

I did take a request from @amalthiaph, because heck, it made me wonder, too!

I texted Doug while I was waiting at the airport. Sure enough, Winter Storm Doug arrived with a whole bunch of texts on the finale season of Daddy Warcrimes 'n Friends.

Here's what Doug thinks will happen in Season 3 of The Bad Batch:

Daddy Warcrimes will learn what happened to Ryan-from-Accounting and spend a whole episode sobbing about it.

Ryan-from-Accounting comes back as Space Gandalf. Don’t know what Space Gandalf will be, but it’ll be him.

Stepsister Beth and Little Orphan Blondie will team up and save everyone in Jimmy-the-Scientist's lava lamps.

We will find out what’s in the lava lamps.

Toaster Strudel, Daddy Rambo, and Julio will find Damn-It-Jared* and take turns beating him with a tire iron they found in the trunk of the HMS Search Warrant. 

Houma-BBQ-Bitch will be killed by either Daddy Rambo or The Sons of Robocop**. Maybe Little Orphan Blondie, who knows.  

The freaky aliens running the mall on the ocean will attempt to rise up. They’ll get shot. 

Jimmy-the-Scientist will accidentally quote that robot cowboy show on HBO. 

Church Lady will use voodoo magic to resurrect her boyfriend, Sassy Park Ranger.

Nevermind. Church Lady will run into Ryan-from-Accounting-Who-Is-Now-Space-Gandalf and it’ll be written as sweet but it’ll come across as awkward. 

There will be mech suits. Maybe not, but I want mech suits, damn it! 

Princess Leia’s dad will show up with the Sonic Special.

Sonic Special will get zapped by the Emperor. 

The Emperor will show up and giggle. Why, hell if I know. 

Darth Vader shows up and mopes around before killing a bunch of people. 

The Sons of Robocop will start to be evil, but then be good, but then do evil things for good reasons. Daddy Warcrimes will follow suit.

*= Damn-It-Jared is Saw Guerrera. “We had this shitty new engineer that cost us half a million in bungled supplies and kept grabbing the CEO's executive assistant even when she told him to eff off. He was such a pain in the ass and this dope looks and talks just like him. Every time we saw his face we’d all say ‘DAMN IT, JARED!’ and that’s his name."

**= Scorch and the gang.

[aut2imagineart]

Since doing Genie Ivy as a gift for @ironbar36, I felt inspired to do solo pieces of Harley Quinn and Catwoman as genies. First up is Harley. She is really fun to draw and in general I really like the designs they use in the Harley Quinn Show. Not to mention I go some of the biggest laughs from that series.

Harley Quinn belongs to DC comics.

As always comments and critiques are welcome.

[peterparkersnose]

Christmas Vibes

pairing: Joel Miller x fem!reader

word count: 1.3k

warnings: nostalgia, age gap, horrible attempt to capture joel’s accent (fuck), just christmas fluff :)

a/n this kicks off my joel stories in preperation for tlou show on hbo max starting jan 15! enjoy and have a happy holidays. please tell me you understand the vibe aspect (triangle, purple, thursday, the number 4, blueberry pie) bc if not i am just really undiagnosed. 

summary Joel tries to make Christmas special for Y/N once again

masterlist

join the tag list

read time: 4 mins 59 seconds

“It’s snowing,” you sighed, looking at your reflection in your window. The street lamp lights outside were plagued with the falling snow.

“Never liked winter,” Joel shuttered, taking off his jeans. You heard his belt clank as it hit the hamper. “Really? Not even Christmas?” you asked, playing with a strand of your hair with your gaze still locked outside.

“Sarah always loved it. I liked seeing her happy so I tolerated it.” Joel sighed. You could see the reflection of his flannel pajama pants in the window. You were touched that he mentioned Sarah. He rarely did. Even if you slept in the same room with that eerie photo of the two of them together staring at you, you never dared pushing the subject.

“What did she like?” you asked, testing the waters. “Hmm,” Joel thought. “When she was real young she loved Santa. Her grandpa would come around every year dressed up as ‘em. I’ll never forget her face every year when he would come.”

You nodded, not sure what to say. “I miss Christmas.” you sighed, sitting down next to Joel in the bed. “How many did you get? Before…”

“12.” you sighed. “My mom would always go out and cut us down a tree. I sometimes think about the smell of a real tree. It’s much different when the tree is in the woods versus your living room. I miss it. Every time it gets cold like this, my memories come back and it makes me hate this damned broken world even more.” you sighed, laying down on your back and staring at the ceiling.

“We always had fake trees,” Joel commented, flicking off the lamp. He was unsure on how to respond to you, so he tried to take your mind off the bitterness of the memories.

“You give fake tree vibes.” you told Joel, reaching for his hand in the sheets. “How can one give fake tree vibes?” “You just do.” “Explain?” he asked, grabbing your hand tightly “There’s no explanation. Just like how Maria gives off former yoga teacher vibes,”

He stopped and thought for a moment. “Well I’ll be damned, she really do.” “Told ya.” “Go to sleep,” he sighed. “She most definitely had a pixie cut when the world wasn’t shit,” you added.

“Where does your mind come up with these things?” Joel chuckled. “Ellie and I had a very intense conversation about it on patrol a few days ago. Just like how Tommy gives off cinnamon raisin bread vibes.”

“Stop that,” Joel insisted, shuffling in bed. “It’s too accurate. Freakin’ me out.”

“Maybe she has a dragonfly tattoo too. Somewhere special where only Tommy knows. Very yoga teacher-ish.”

“Go to bed Y/N.” Joel huffed, slamming his eyes shut.

Joel didn’t even know why he was doing this. He didn’t even like Christmas when the world was still normal.

But he liked you sure of a hell lot more than he hated Christmas.

His back ached as he dragged the tree through the gates of Jackson. He had picked out the greenest tree he could find and cut it down. The horse would have been useless with a close to 120 pound tree (he estimated).

“Need some help?” Tommy chuckled, arms crossed amused watching his brother lug in a tree. “S’pose I could,” he hissed at him, dragging the stem of the tree against the dirt ground. “All this for a woman?” Tommy asked, lifting the muddy end of the tree. “Your tellin’ me you wouldn’t do this for Maria?” “Maria wouldn’t want it,” “Well if she did?”

Tommy paused for a second to think. “Hell no,”

The tree barely fit in the door to your house. Joel cringed at all the needles he was going to have to pick up after this.

“Got her in?” Tommy asked, entering the house with the end of the tree still in his grips.

Tommy saw the makeshift tree holder and set the tree in the metal hole. Joel propped it up, holding the tree up for Tommy to bolt the tree to the metal plate.

The two of them now out of breathe took a step back to see the enormous tree.

“I think you may have underestimated the size of your house, big brother.” Tommy said, patting Joel on the back.

Joel’s eyes were glued to the top of the tree pressed against the ceiling and jutting outward.

His arms were crossed with one hand rubbing his brow. “She’s gonna hate it,” he muttered. “I think it’s rather cute. Quirky if you ask me. She likes that shit, don’t she?” Tommy re assured his brother.

“Should I cut it?” Joel asked. “Nah. You went out and did the dirty work. If she doesn’t appreciate it, she doesn’t deserve it. I always got a lighter if you need it.” he suggested.

Joel swept the needles up from the ground in preparation of your return. You had spent the day distracted by Ellie. The kids were having a winter festival down in the square and you two were volunteering.

Joel most definitely owed Ellie one after this.

He found the red and green blankets from storage and placed them on the couch. Holiday decorations were rare to find (minus halloween) and he was trying his best.

He was in the middle of fluffing the pillows when he heard the old door creek open.

A sudden gasp came from you as your hand clasped over your mouth. “What is this?” you asked, a smile widening on your face.

“I know it ain’t perfect, I didn’t measure right but it’s…”

“Joel, it’s perfect.” you insisted, wrapping your hands around the man who was cowering in embarrassment. “It’s too tall, the tree ain’t right.”

“Shh,” you shushed him, wrapping an arm around his rib cage. “I love it,” you muffled into his chest.

“Oh!” you said, suddenly realizing what you had done that day.

You and Ellie had made strings of snowflakes all day with the kids.

The white paper cut outs strung perfectly around the tree.

“Careful there,” Joel said, balancing you as you stood on your tippy toes to reach the top. “Ready?” he asked.

“Ready for-”

Joel hoisted you up by your waist erupting a squeal from you. “Joel!” you laughed, squirming in his reach.

“String…‘em,” he demanded with his raspy voice, struggling holding you in his grip. As you strung the paper around the branches, needles dropped down. Specifically on Joel.

“What are you doing?” you asked after hearing the noise of Joel spitting. “Them damn needles- in my face.” he grunted, finally letting you down.

A tiny laugh came from you as you faced him once again. “What’s so funny?” he asked. You carefully plucked the stray needles out of his bushy eyebrows, making sure they didn’t fall in his eyes. “All better now,” you smiled, kissing him on the cheek.

“I’m surprised your not covered in sap,” you commented, sitting down on your comfy couch in Joel’s arms. You handed him his cup of coffee. “Showered ‘for you got home,”

“What if I wanted you covered in sap?” you asked, staring up at the tree. “What?” Joel asked, confused. “So I could have washed it off of ya.”

Joel sucked his teeth. “It’s a damn shame,” he sighed, taking a sip of his coffee.

“And you brought this in all by yourself?” you asked, grabbing Joel’s bicep. “Mhm,” he lied, taking Tommy’s credit. “My strong man,” you said, folding closer into his body.

“Thank you, Joel.” you sighed, remembering the previous night. “It’s just like old times.” “Well, I’m glad you like it,” he whispered, kissing the top of your head.

“It gives off Christmas vibes,” Joel said, very proud of himself. “Yes Joel, sure. It gives Christmas vibes.” You chuckled, enamored at his attempt to understand your humor.

“Just like how Ellie gives off the vibe that she can only wear red socks on a Friday.”

“Stop that shit already,”

“And how when the world wasn’t like this, Tommy probably had shit credit.”

“He did,” Joel laughed. “Stop it now, your still freaking me out.”

“You brought it up!”

“Yeah, because it was funny when I did it.”

“Yes Joel. Hilarious.”

-

tag list: @dani5216 @uwiuwi @alohastyles-x @samanthacookieone @maddieinnit0 @alexxavicry

[justaboot]

I’ve never been so interested in a HBO au until now 👀

I doth beseech thee to graciously bestow upon me a greater abundance of knowledge pertaining to the subject of HBODT, in the form of an infodump or fanfic

the boys were born early in a pitch black cave system.

infodump incoming a month and a half before the boys were supposed to be born, Donald and Scrooge go deep-diving in an underground city. Apparently a luck demon was wreaking havoc on its citizens, and Scrooge and Donald go down to capture it, but things go south fast. They'd all but padlocked Della to the couch at home with Gladstone as a babysitter, but when they don't come home, she dragged his ass all the way out there and goes after them. They rescue them with great dramatic flair, capture the demon, (Gladstone was very clever about it, and Donald was furious), but in all the mess, della goes into premature labor. They get about halfway out of the caves before they can't go any farther, it's pitch black, they've got half a canteen of water, no supplies, no drugs, a dying oil lamp, and one uncle who paid attention in lamaze class. Multiples are all but impossible to deliver naturally, they get tangled, they can't all turn down, they don't work. They've got nothing to do but try.

Huey's the only one already head-down. It's impossible, it's a miracle, and gladstone's a thousand percent sure its him, but they make it through his birth.

The other two aren't as lucky. They're not coming, there's too much blood, one of them is kicking too hard in the womb, della's losing strength. There's discussion of c-sections. Huey's not breathing right.

Scrooge slips away. He draws out the demon, ready to deal. He'll release her again, on the condition they all make it out of here, safe and healthy.

She's not interested. Grant four lives for the freedom he took from her? No, she wants more. She wants his.

Fine.

She lays out two dice on the stone. Luck demon. Let him roll for how many years he'll have left. Won't total more than twelve. He rolls, but she won't let him see the result.

Then she's gone. Miraculously, luckily, the boys are born fine, Huey's breath stabilizes, Della's got the best story she'll ever have, Gladstone's on cloud nine because there's no way that wasn't his luck, Donald's suspicious, and no one can believe they actually made it home.

Scrooge tells no one. He has no idea how many years he rolled, but he's got at least two years to find a loophole.

Then the Spear happens. Everyone leaves. His health starts declining, but its slow, and he's retired anyway. He wonders if he even cares anymore. Bentina's the only one who notices, and he tells her to shove it or leave.

Then the kids come back. Donald just thinks he's changed, grown older and bitterer and slightly slower. He takes pills, now, because he's just old. The kids and audience don't realize that some of the adventures are looking for cures to impossible illnesses, curse breaking, loopholes. He's started searching again behind the scenes.

Season 2, the kids and audience figure out somethings wrong when he starts looking for a cure in earnest. It comes to a head, and he comes clean about what happened, and why. It's been eleven years. He rolled two six sided dice. It couldn't have totaled more than twelve.

I don't know how or why, but I think Magica cures it in the end. because that'd be cool. You can figure it out.

anyway.