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undead-supernova · 1 year ago

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HIGH TOLERANCE

Live Resin / Masterlist

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

warnings: gay disasters, Steve (derogatory), a bit of angst but that's a given for pining best friend!eddie so enter at your own risk, weed consumption (but what's new in a series about weed consumption)

pairings: modern!bestfriend!Eddie x fem!reader (both bisexual bitches)

plot: let's go sing some karaoke and feel like we're dying, shall we?

wc: 6k

p.s. I listened to "Watch" by Maisie Peters the entire time I wrote this and I just cannot for the life of me let The Good Witch go. Anyone else in a chokehold from that album? Anyways, here you go!

“For you, my good sir!” you exclaimed, feigning a British accent as you got down on one knee and presented Eddie with a joint like it was a sword. And it was an immediate scrape to your knee, your black crop top and miniskirt riding up. You tried to save yourself by planting your maroon Converse on the ground, but it was met with instant failure. Eddie chuckled, grabbing your arm to try and stabilize you before he continued the bit.

(Leave it to Eddie Munson to commit to a bit.)

“For me?” he asked, feigning a gasp as he threw his hand over his chest, his rings clinking together. “You shouldn’t have.”

You exaggerated a wink as you stood back up.

“Sure, I did.”

“Wha’da we got, Weirdo?”

You repeated what the guy at Jailbait Hemp told you. It was a THC-A pre-roll that was covered in live resin (which technically has a higher concentration level than just the THC-A alone). It burned differently than other joints, a glaze lining the paper to burn like honey.

Let it in slow and watch it go.

“She sure is a pretty one,” Eddie said, lightly running the pad of his pointer finger along the resin. It didn’t flake off or leave any residue on his finger. Incredible.

You smirked. “I know, right?”

“Kinda like you.”

You swallowed immediately, nearly choking as the spit went down wherever the wrong pipe was located.

Panic, panic, panic.

“Oh, whatever,” you said, waving him away. You distracted yourself with wiping the gravel off of the scrape on your knee that showed promise of blood but stayed put. The most embarrassing thing you could think of was having to ask someone for a Band-aid because you were too busy doing a bit with a joint to remember that you weren’t wearing pants. Eddie would love that a little too much and you weren’t about to give him the satisfaction.

“You’re right,” Eddie said with a nod, causing you to look back up. “Doesn’t come close to you, m’lady.” Without another word or time for you to even remotely process, he held out his hand and made obnoxious grabbing gestures. “Alright. Gimme, gimme. Wanna light her up.”

With shaky fingers, you handed it over. Eddie took his black Bic lighter and ran the flame back and forth against the twisted end of the paper. It took him two or three tries to keep it lit, but he finally got it, moving it around in circles to let it burn as evenly as it could. The air instantly thickened with the smell. But to be fair, you smelled weed wherever you went in Atlanta. Even on the highway somehow.

You could hear the music from Go Ask Mary from two blocks away, the bass of Madonna’s “Vogue” booming through the walls. It was almost time for karaoke to start and, to be honest, you were excited. Eddie had picked up some extra shifts at the car dealership and your shitty retail jobs at the Lenox Square mall had been draining. Especially when you were surrounded by stores like Chanel and Tiffany & Co. It was always your dream to work at a Sephora where all the pretentious rich people complained about needing a new Balenciaga bag before arguing with you when their sheer Tom Ford lipstick was out of stock.

This was the first time you’d seen Eddie in a week, despite him practically begging to come over at 2am to watch the first Lord of the Rings movie on a Monday. The extended edition to be exact, all three hours of Elijah Wood and Sean Astin being the most iconic couple of the fantasy realm. It was embarrassing to admit, but you nearly considered calling out just so you could.

Tonight, you couldn’t wait to let off some steam, especially with the person who made every day worth it. Eddie looked as he usually did with all his chains and rings and pretty face and attitude. It was disgustingly unfair that he could wear variations of the same outfit every time you saw him and somehow looked better and better every time.

“There you guys are,” Steve sighed as he and Robin walked over from the bar.

Steve was still in his suit, just without his tie and blazer. A few buttons of his white button down were popped with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Robin wore an oversized cotton button down, white with navy stripes and a loose navy tie. She looked like she was going to the beach for the day, even going so far as to wear jean shorts and checkerboard Vans.

“We should’ve known you were smoking,” Robin said, nose wrinkling before she pulled out her flask from her back pocket and took a few sips. “Did you know that one joint is, like, the equivalent of five cigarettes? I heard it on a podcast the other day and, believe me, that sounds bad. Like, really bad.”

“What else is new?” you joked, taking the joint from Eddie and filling your lungs with a few hearty drags. “At least we’re not vaping. That’s, what, the equivalent of a hundred cigarettes?”

Robin shook her head. “Actually, I read that a thousand-puff vape is the equivalent of five to six packs.” She paused, moving her fingers through the air as she solved the problem in her head. “So…about one-twenty?”

Eddie hummed, nodding. “Aren’t you glad I stopped smoking cigs six months ago?”

“Well, yes.”

“So smoking weed should be the least of your worries, Buckley.”

“You have a point. But honestly—"

“Rob!” Steve interrupted. “Rob, listen. I have exciting news.”

“What is it?” you asked.

“I’m getting the first round,” he said proudly. “I got a bonus at work.”

“Thanks, Steve,” you said, genuinely touched by the offer. “That’s awesome, though. You’re literally moving up in the world.”

“Bringing in the big bucks, this one,” Eddie teased with a big smile as he took the joint from you. “Always a generous giver.”

Steve glared at Robin. “She thinks I should quit.”

“No, I do not!” Robin argued. “I just think you’re in a weird environment with weird men—"

The high was already making its way through you, causing you to not-so-subtly stare at Eddie again. His eyes were trained on yours as Steve and Robin rattled on, entering some bickering fest that you were positive he wasn’t listening to. And the way he was looking at you… Well, it didn’t seem that platonic, did it?

His eyes were doing that thing again, that slow gaze down your body before reaching back up to your eyes. Your fingers inched just a little bit closer to his and you almost swore you could hear his rings again as they fluttered towards yours.

Robin cleared her throat, causing you to look back at her. She was eyeing you specifically, not even bothering to look at Eddie.

Could she see it? What did she know? Was there anything to know?

“Well, we’ll be inside,” she said, grabbing Steve’s arm. “Have fun with the extra cancer!”

Eddie chuckled. “Thanks, Buckley.”

You watched them walk away, right back in their little fight. It was nice to be around them again. Truly, it was. You didn’t have too many friends outside of Eddie, always working during the week and never truly finding time to go out unless Eddie dragged you along. You could engage in small talk with strangers at Go Ask Mary on the weekends, but it was different when you got home and found your phone void of anyone to tell those stories to. Zero messages, not even from your parents or your sister. No Instagram DMs of cute animals or Tumblr messages of photography and memes. Just a phone that looked more like a coffin full of wires than access to the whole world.

Except for Eddie.

As he turned back to you, he lifted the joint and let it hover just above your lips.

“Want some more?” he asked.

You looked up at him, nearly startled by how close he was to you. God, what was it about him? Maybe it was the dark color of his eyes, still illuminated in the warm sunset, nearly glazed over with a golden sheen. Maybe it was the way his hair was doing that thing after a fresh wash where the ends were slightly curlier than the rest. Or maybe it was the way his tips of his sneakers were meeting yours and the smell of tobacco and car air freshener was wafting off of him.

“Come on, you can’t deny you want it.”

“Um,” you stumbled. “Yeah. Yeah, I want it.”

“Yeah?”

Nodding, you felt his fingers grazing your mouth as he placed it in between your lips. You took a long, slow drag while your eyes never left his. You wanted to look away. Really, you did. If anything, the sparks settling in your stomach were starting to pop and sizzle unlike ever before.

You just couldn’t help yourself.

And if anything, he didn’t seem like he could either.

Tonight was going to be interesting.

The bar wasn’t very crowded, but that’s why you liked to go as a group during the week. Even if there weren’t many people looking to do karaoke on a Tuesday, it didn’t matter. There were four of you ready to tear up the fucking stage.

You went in rotation for solo performances, Robin singing “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac followed by you singing “Love Is a Stranger" by Eurythmics (despite it technically not being from the Eighties) followed by Eddie doing “The Stroke” by Billy Squire and finishing with Steve’s off-key rendition “Africa” by Toto.

When Steve returned from his noteworthy performance, the three of you congratulated him. He did a little bow before wiping the sweat off his forehead.

Eddie patted the table and said, “Alright, I’ll go get the next round.” As he was about to leave, he looked at you. “Still want a vodka Redbull?”

“Of course,” you said with a smile.

He gave you a quick wink. “Just checking, Weirdo.”

“Thanks.”

You turned back to Steve and Robin, watching Steve dab his face with a napkin. He was mostly definitely inching towards being drunk, always starting to turn red and sweaty whenever he was getting close. That, and he started to run his mouth.

“God, he’s dreamy,” Steve said, leaning his head in one hand. You followed his line of sight, all three of you watching Eddie walk to the bar. “It’s almost annoying how hot he is.”

Robin snorted. “Yeah, okay. Keep dreaming.”

Maybe it shouldn’t have stung the way it did. Anyone was allowed to find him hot. It didn’t mean anything. Just a bit of flattery, that’s all. But then it was like you couldn’t stop yourself and suddenly you were unable to keep yourself from asking the one thing you never ever should have.

“Do you have a crush on Eddie?”

You watched Steve laugh pitifully. “I mean, maybe?”

“Maybe? What does ‘maybe’ mean, Steve?” Robin asked.

“I mean, he’s hot, right? But I don’t know if he’d even go for me.” As he talked, he popped open another button of his shirt, showing off a bit of his wife beater and chest hair. “Like, okay, he’s just so pretty and he fixes cars and plays in a band? It’s cool as hell. But I don’t think we even have that much in common, so I don’t know. He likes metal, I like pop. He likes D&D and I like, uh, I don’t know? Poker? Anyways, I don’t even know what kind of guys he’s into. Do you know, Rob?”

Robin shrugged, meeting your eyes before saying, “I don’t know, Steve. Ever thought about asking him what his type is?”

And you shouldn’t have asked. Really, you shouldn’t. Because now you were here, sitting at a table while Steve moaned and groaned about his chances with Eddie, like it was some statistics problem. And then someone was doing an awful cover of “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper, the shrill sound mixing with Steve’s whining. And you? You were sulking.

You looked over and watched Eddie wait for your drinks at the bar, wondering if Steve had any chance and whether you were more likely to get the guy in the end. Surely there was a silver lining in there somewhere. You enjoyed metal music and even convinced Eddie to listen to other genres. You enjoyed listening to Eddie talk about Dungeons and Dragons and showed him board games you liked, like Catan. Relationships weren’t built off of just similarities and differences. Steve was wrong.

Right?

As if Eddie heard your thoughts, he caught your stare, his lips pulling back into a large grin as he waved and moved his hips a little bit along to the grating karaoke. You couldn’t help but laugh at how awkward he looked, in turn doing the worst arm wave in history. He immediately started laughing.

Eddie was looking at you, wasn’t he? Steve wasn’t even bothering to look at the object of his desire. He merely talked about the guy, putting his head in his hands and panicking as if Eddie wasn’t in the same room. But you were looking at Eddie and now you were in a makeshift dance battle, embarrassing yourself by doing an awful robot while he did that shopping cart move.

Could Steve have this kind of relationship with Eddie?

And what were the odds of you winning?

What were the odds of you losing?

After a good bit of chatter, Steve and Robin headed towards the other end of the bar to set up a game of darts. Eddie went along, but you decided to stay behind. He found it odd, asking if you were sure and you’d nodded, telling him that you wanted a moment to yourself.

But Eddie didn’t believe you. Not one bit. You’d started acting weird merely seconds after he came back with drinks. It was strange. One moment you were dancing with him across the room and the next your shoulders were slumped, falling out of any and all conversation. Even when he nudged you and tried to be playful, you seemed to pretend you didn’t notice. Instead, you focused on your straw and nodding along as if you were paying attention.

He knew you hadn’t. He knew there was something wrong and, of course, he wanted to respect your privacy but there had to be something else there. Had Robin let anything slip? Did Steve act like an asshole? Were you upset with him?

Robin and Steve were in the heat of a tie when Eddie finally decided to walk back over to you. He didn’t like seeing you so sad, so vulnerable. And with the addition of the high, he knew how scary that could feel. If something didn’t feel right, it could get extremely uncomfortable. And you couldn’t just be alone in that hole.

“Hey,” he said as he approached you. “Are you feeling okay?”

You put on one of the fakest smiles he’d ever seen before replying, “Yeah, I guess I’m just tired from work.”

Lie.

“Is the high getting you down?”

You shrugged. “A bit, yeah.”

“Um,” he said, gulping as he held out his palm. “Do you need to hold my hand?”

You looked down at his hand before looking back up.

“No, I think I’ll be okay. Thank you, though.”

“Yeah, sure. Sure,” he replied, placing his hand on top of the other.

He squeezed it to elicit something resembling comfort for the rejection he felt. It was like your hand was some kind of phantom feeling that made his chest ache with want. And that want was slowly but surely starting to burn.

“Well, uh.” He gulped. “I’m gonna get myself another beer. Want anything?”

You shook your head. “No, I’m okay.”

Eddie nodded before turning away.

“Hey, Eddie?”

He didn’t think he’d ever spun back around that quickly before.

“Yeah?”

You smiled weakly. “If you need me to drive your van back tonight, let me know. I don’t mind if you want to get a little drunk with Steve and Robin.”

And just like that, he died a little inside. Again.

“Will do, Weirdo.”

Steve was back on his bullshit.

“Oh my god, do you guys think I should try to sing with him? Get the sparks flying, you know?” He moved his head from side to side. “‘Do a little dance? Make a little love’?”

Robin smacked Steve’s arm. “You did not just do that.”

You let out a tiny sigh, looking away from his hopeful expression. Steve genuinely thought he’d cracked the code to Eddie’s heart. And you couldn’t blame him. Who wouldn’t want someone like Eddie?

But really, you wanted to put your head on the table and bang it over and over.

Over. And. Over.

Eddie had gone to get a third beer and Steve had wasted no time before bringing this shit back up. You were seriously starting to dislike him for the first time in three years. Three. Years. He was obnoxious when he was drunk, sure, but it was never like this.

Or maybe you just hadn’t paid attention until tonight.

You shook your head, desperately trying to get the feelings out of your body. The blunt was starting to get the best of you, fogging your brain while your limbs felt like they were vibrating. This was killing your high. No, it was more than that. It was magnifying all the feelings you once swore to be dormant.

You looked over to find Robin staring at you, her eyebrow quirked up. Noticeably, you might add. You and Robin weren’t that close—you were one of Eddie’s best friends to the rest of them. You had fun whenever the group would hang out, whether that be at Eddie’s shows or unwinding at Go Ask Mary, but you never truly hung out alone.

Steve, Robin, and Eddie had moved to Atlanta three years ago, after they wanted out of their small town in Indiana. Steve’s dad had gotten him a job at a big boy law firm in the heart of Downtown. It wasn’t the best way to get into the business, but it was the best way to get all of them out. To start over somewhere bigger, somewhere with more opportunities. Steve convinced them to save up for the summer before driving eight hours to their shitty new apartment. He swung Robin a waitressing gig at a nice restaurant he had a business lunch at—charmed the owner and everything. Eddie had worked at a local gay bar in Decatur and played there sometimes on metal or punk themed nights.

And here Robin was now, staring at you like she was trying to figure out how you were feeling, as if you’d ever be phased by Steve’s confession. Confessions. And she was making eye contact, all bold and unashamed. Like she was some freakishly keen hawk, two steps away from letting out a ca-caw. And if Steve paid just a fraction, just a millimeter of attention, he’d notice.

It was all quite unnerving.

“Don’t you think sparks would already be flying after years of knowing each other?” Robin asked, eyes flickering from Steve’s to yours and then back again. “I mean, I think you would know by now. If there was something between you.” She gestured over to you. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

What was her deal?

“Pfffft.”

A bit of Steve’s spit flew out and hit your cheek. You would’ve laughed three hours ago. Now? Now, you were seriously considering bashing his head against the table.

(It was a big night for head bashing.)

“Last call for karaoke!” one of the bartenders announced.

“Wish me luck!” Steve said to you and Robin before raising his hand. “I’ll do it!” he exclaimed loudly, pointing to Eddie who had just finished closing out his tab. “I’ll do it with that handsome man over there!”

Eddie looked surprised but shrugged, a pleasant smile reaching his lips. “Yeah, sure, Harrington. Show me what you got.”

As they moved towards the stage, you swallowed the words resting on your tongue.

I wanted to sing with Eddie tonight.

“I hope he doesn’t embarrass himself.”

You couldn’t look at Robin. You just couldn’t.

“What song did he pick?” you asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“‘Under Pressure’.”

Oh, fuck. You’d sung that in the car with Eddie plenty of times, always with a silent acknowledgement that whatever conversation you were having would cease and the volume was to be turned all the way up. You went for Freddie Mercury's part while Eddie took the lower octaves in David Bowie’s verses. Eddie sounded amazing when he sang it, confident with his range and feeding emotion into the song. And you melted. You just melted.

And when the song started and Eddie’s eyes drifted away from Steve and landed on you, well, you couldn’t help but feel seen. He thought about those times, too, didn't he? It was something you both held special. Right?

But Steve took Eddie’s hand and started trying to dance with him. Eddie laughed, trying to follow his complicated rhythm. Steve was stumbling and nearly fell of the stage, but Eddie caught him, stabilizing him. Just like he’d done with you in the parking lot.

Things were going downhill for you. And they were going down fast.

Eddie cleared his throat dramatically before starting the first verse. “Pressure, pushing down on me, pressing down on you. No man ask for.”

You let out a sigh at the sound of Eddie’s voice, all gravely and husky and soft all the same. It felt even better tonight with whatever was in this joint. You could feel it inside, like it was somehow spreading through you. There was a part of you that was sure you’d never get over it for as long as you lived.

Steve pulled Eddie closer, grabbing at his waist and slowly moving it down.

Oh my fucking god. Eddie knows what he’s doing, right? you asked yourself. Can he tell? Does he like this?

Eddie cleared his throat before belting, “It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about. Watching some good friends screaming—”

“Let me out!” Steve shouted.

They stumbled through a laugh at the ridiculousness, and you began to feel like you were slowly dying. Again.

“I’m…going to go to the bathroom,” Robin announced before scurrying off.

And you tried to keep your eyes off of them. Really, you did. You made yourself look around the room, scanning the face of a drag queen who was currently walking around and engaging in animated conversations with the few other people here. Her eyes were coated in pink glitter and tall eyelashes; nude lips perfectly lined and wrapped around the straw of a cocktail. She was absolutely gorgeous, as most Atlanta queens were. Plus, how could you ever look away from a drag queen? They were angels, truly. Archangels.

But it was Eddie’s singing that brought your attention back, as effortless as Bowie himself. Like there was nothing to it. Like he was always on the track to begin with.

You found yourself thinking about the night you met Eddie, right here in Go Ask Mary. It was the five-month anniversary of their official move to Atlanta, the three of them wanting to go out and celebrate not completely fucking up. They’d gotten out and they were doing pretty okay for themselves by the look of it.

And you? Well, you were a native to the south. Grew up in Tennessee, moved here when you saw the opportunity for college somewhere that wasn’t Tennessee. Found your way through college and realizing you were bisexual and, well, found Go Ask Mary. At the time, you came here with friends, but there was a period time after losing some of those friends where you preferred coming by yourself. It was an accepting atmosphere, one where everyone seemed friendly. You could have a six-minute conversation with a queer stranger and never speak again. But it would be fond and unforgettable. It would be transcendent.

You’d gone up and done a dramatic cover of “I Miss You” by Blink 182, mimicking the singer’s voice rather than being serious about it. A few people laughed—and Eddie was one of them. He’d even let out a few whoo!s and yeah!s. When you’d gotten off the stage, he approached you immediately and asked you if you could be best friends. You laughed at that, thinking then that neither of you were serious.

But then you’d spent the whole night talking and watching Robin and Steve perform.

And then they tapped out and decided to head home.

However, Eddie wanted to stay.

And you told him you could call him an Uber.

And then you stayed until closing, just talking. Nonstop. Like you were seeing an old friend for the first time in decades.

(Is there a joke in there somewhere about three disaster bisexuals and one tragic lesbian walking into a bar?)

“Is that your man?”

You looked behind you, noticing the queen from earlier standing with her hand on her hip as she tapped her acrylic nails along to the beat.

“Which one?” you asked.

“The crazy haired one over there with the wallet chain.”

You could feel your chest start to ache. “No, no. We’re best friends, but we’re not dating.” She let out a hum. You looked at her again, feeling hot all of a sudden. “Um, why? Why do you ask?”

A smirk formed on her lips as she touched your shoulder, leaning down to speak softly into your ear. “Baby, that man’s only looking at you.”

“He is?”

“Mhm.”

“Are you sure?”

The queen looked at you again, her eyebrow raising. “Oh, so you’re jealous of the other one?” She laughed as you gave a defeated shrug. “You ain’t been lookin’ hard, have you?”

“I’m not sure—"

“Honey,” she started, tapping your jaw. You looked back at her. “I know that look. But you ain’t gotta look hard to see what he feels for you.”

“Really?”

She patted the top of your head and stood up straight. “Girl, look harder. Oh, and don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.”

And then she was waving you a goodbye and walking away.

You looked back to the stage to watch Eddie. You didn’t know how to believe her. Couldn’t. He was right there, leaning in and sharing a microphone with Steve, their faces practically touching. Lopsided grins coming from the two as Eddie hit a high note perfectly and Steve butchered the harmony. Eddie’s voice was dark and angelic. Steve’s eyes were red and perhaps they were sparkling in the purple and blue neon lights. They were having fun.

They’d be a cute couple, a voice in your head said bitterly. And you can sit and watch and be okay with it. Swallow all your emotions like you always do. Let yourself fade into background noise as you watch someone take the spot you want the most. It’s normal at this point, isn’t it? You’re going to be that pathetic and weak, aren’t you?

You looked down at your drink, riddled with those incessant voices in your head telling you that you weren’t good enough. Because you weren’t as forward as Steve, or as brave as Eddie. You couldn’t just say the words or say anything at all. Eddie said everything he thought and made it clear how he felt. It was so simple for him.

Besides…where would the friendship go if Eddie rejected you? Would it remain firm, the foundation solidified enough to keep you where you were before? Or would it start moving away, returning less and less frequently before the inevitable crash?

And how could you ever fathom surviving the implosion?

Eddie began to belt the final chorus, leaving Steve in the dust while secretly trying to get your attention. Maybe he was trying to impress you with his strengthened vocals and (pathetically) wanted you to notice.

But you continued to look down at your drink, scowling and swirling your straw around. He wanted to know what the hell was going on, why you were acting so strange tonight. It’d started out so well when he picked you up, letting the music be the only thing moving you forward. Even in the parking lot, with the jokes and a longing look that felt like it lasted for hours. And now you were…well. Whatever you were.

And the song ended, alongside the minimal applause and stage lights being turned off.

Steve patted Eddie’s shoulder as they got off. Eddie nodded at him before turning towards your table.

But Steve pulled at his forearm.

“Munson, wait.”

Eddie looked back. “Yeah, dude. What’s up?”

Steve smiled and Eddie could tell that he was utterly drunk. It was one of Steve’s goofy smiles, always seeming cartoonish with the way his lips curved into a wave. Eddie always thought it was kinda weird how he did that. Even a little creepy.

“Listen, I’m just gonna come out and ask you a question.”

“Okay…” Eddie trailed, now facing Steve completely.

“Would you ever want to go on a date?”

Eddie’s eyes widened, scanning Steve’s face to try and see if any of this was a joke.

But there was no punchline. He was serious.

“Like, together?” he asked slowly.

Steve laughed, having to lean on a nearby table to stable himself. “Yeah! I don’t know, I just kinda thought we had some chemistry or something. I’m drunk so I can’t articulate it very well, but I’ve wanted to ask for a while.”

Eddie raised a hand to scratch along his stubble and thought about it. Had he really not noticed that Steve was into him? He thought he’d made it clear to Robin his affections for you. He’d just assumed she would tell Steve but, clearly, she hadn’t.

It was all Eddie ever talked about when him and Robin were alone, holed up in Eddie’s bedroom with a couple of beers and When Harry Met Sally playing on his TV. She told him over and over how he should just say something to you or even drop hints here and there. And to be fair, he thought he had. Even tonight with the joint in your mouth and the comment about it not being as pretty as you. And you’d just waved it off. Acted like it was nothing. Moved on so quickly and so suddenly.

But.

Well.

Was there such harm in saying yes to Steve? You certainly hadn’t said anything and maybe it would be good for him to explore something with someone who he knew for sure wanted him. It could be simple with him. Steve was fun to be around. He could be happy with him if it went anywhere. Because it could go somewhere…

Right?

He stared at Steve for some time before he responded.

You tried to leave with Robin and Steve, but Eddie pulled you towards his van instead. That meant two blocks of walking together and he didn’t waste any time before he started talking.

“Where are you going, Weirdo?” he asked, throwing an arm around your shoulders and pulling you into a side-hug. “You know you live closer to me.”

He was right. After Eddie had snagged his current job as a mechanic at a nice dealership, he’d gotten his own place so that he could have a space for himself. He really liked his alone time as much as he liked being around you or any of his other friends. One of the main reasons was because he needed complete silence when planning his campaigns and, well, Robin and Steve weren’t necessarily quiet people.

You chuckled, but it sounded forced. “Yeah, sorry. I guess I’m crossed or something,” you replied. “You’ve always had a higher tolerance than me.”

Eddie gave you a concerned look. “You okay?”

You nodded and tried to keep walking.

But he didn’t.

“You’re not holding my hand right now.”

His voice was soft, hardly above a whisper.

“Oh, I guess I just wasn’t thinking about it tonight.”

Or you’re not actually cross-faded, Eddie thought to himself. But he didn’t say anything, just bumped your shoulder with his and tried to bring the energy back. You hadn’t smiled since you’d all left and there was no way you’d leave tonight without one. So, he turned around and started walking backwards, shimmying his shoulders. He cracked the code, watching as you began to snort. Thank God.

“So, did you like my killer vocals?” he asked, his playful tone raising the energy back to its rightful place.

Until your smile faltered.

“Ohhhhhh, yeah,” you said, hardly sounding sarcastic or playful. And it certainly didn’t meet your eyes. “You and Steve looked like you were having fun.”

Eddie hesitated, wanting to tell you about Steve’s…proposition. Should he casually drop it into the conversation? Would tonight be the night that he admitted how he felt? Or would he continue to rely on you doing it?

“He asked me out,” Eddie said before he could think further, heart racing.

“What?”

“Yeah, right after we got offstage. Crazy, right?”

“What did you say?” you asked, stopping in your tracks. You were only across the street from his van now. Only twenty steps.

But you’d stopped.

So, Eddie did too.

“I told him I’d think about it,” he replied.

“And have you? Thought about it?”

He tried to read your expression, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

So, he pushed.

“I don’t know. Hadn’t thought of it before he said anything. I mean, it’s kinda out of nowhere…”

“Do you like him?” you whispered.

Eddie thought about lying, to try and elicit some form of jealousy from you so he could start the conversation. Gamble and see what happens. But he couldn’t lie to you like that. It wouldn’t be right. It’d just be shitty.

“Not really. Like, Steve’s pretty and all and he’s a really good friend or whatever. But I just haven’t really thought much about it and then suddenly there he was, poof, asking me out. And, I don’t know, I just thought it was a bit weird.”

You nodded along, looking away. “Yeah, that’s weird.”

Eddie couldn’t help himself. “Do you think I should say yes?”

“You’re asking me?” you asked, your eyebrows pinching together.

You looked…upset. Why did you look so upset at the question?

“Absolutely,” he said, nodding.

“Why do you want my opinion? I mean, you’ve known him longer.”

Eddie shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. I value your opinion or whatever.”

You scoffed. “I don’t think I should be the determining factor on who you should date.”

You have no fucking clue.

“And if I wanted you to be?”

The words left his lips before he could save himself and, God, his heart was banging on his flesh, like it was trying to escape. Like it wasn’t able to handle it any more in his wired brain.

You hesitated again.

“Well, I don’t know.” Before Eddie could ask again, you sighed. “Do what you want, Eddie. Just…be careful.”

He shut his mouth again and nodded.

“Yeah, alright. Sure.”

Eddie spent that night analyzing your hesitation. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe you were thinking about how stupid he was or, even worse, maybe you were just too scared to say anything. Like him.

Your lips had quivered slightly. You were holding back those words again, the ones that felt like they’d already been shared and were waved off by the time you spoke again. And it drove him absolutely crazy.

And instead of asking you, he texted Steve.

About that date… When and where?

#Eddie munson #Eddie Munson x you #Eddie munson fluff #Eddie munson angst #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x reader #best friend!eddie #modern!eddie munson #modern!eddie x reader #best friend!Eddie x reader #bisexual!Eddie x reader #bisexual!reader #high tolerance series

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pumpkinpie59 · 8 months ago

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ranking the tmnt shows based on plot writing, character writing, and what my preferences are:

first off, plot writing

6, tnm

idk what to put here.

5, 2012

it really sucks because its first season’s writing is unironically my favorite writing in the franchise. but then the show steadily gets messier and more inconsistent writing as it goes forward. especially in season 4. i wish i could defend it more but it is at the bottom for me. besides tnm ig

4, 87

i actually like the arcs in 87, but the thing with 87 is that … the plot isn’t the point! but i don’t consider that a flaw. the show is a comedy first, and it’s great at what it does. so yes, even if the plot episodes are pretty forgettable compared to the goofier episodes, it’s not the worst thing in the world. but it’s still number 4.

3, rise

rise is kinda weird because even tho most of the series is comedy filler like 87, it’s most known for its plot. but i think it earns that because sometimes the show will throw in episodes that foreshadow the big plot at the end of the season, and it handles it pretty well for the most part.

2, tales

i honestly really enjoyed the way the plots were set up in tales. since it’s pretty new, i won’t spoil it, but i think my only actual complaint was the framing devices they used. but otherwise it was pretty good.

1, 03

every once in a while, the show would have a hiccup writing-wise, but overall i liked the flow of the arcs and stories it was trying to tell. out of all the tmnt shows, 03 was the best at juggling several arcs at once and committing to giving them closure (cough. unlike 2012-).

okay character writing rankings.

6, tnm

tbf this one has venus. and a pretty good donnie.

5, rise

this is so controversial i know. but i just get so frustrated with how the show handles leo and donnie’s writing specifically. they feel ooc half the time and there’s little consistency. and then raph and mikey (my favorites of the team) were sidelined a lot.

4, 2012

mikey has no character growth whatsoever and is an adhd stereotype. donnie’s development gets thrown to the background so you only notice it if you’re paying attention to him the entire time. leonardo gradually gets worse over the course of the series and we never see him get better. they couldn’t decide what to do with karai half the time. april’s arc got switched for a different one halfway through (i still love her tho). the only one with a decent arc is raph, and i still think it could’ve been better ://

3, 03

this is not a knock at 03. i just think that character growth wasn’t its priority. telling stories was. however we do occasionally see them go through arcs. most obvious is leo, but i also enjoy seeing raph get less hostile and trusting leo more over the course of the first season.

2, 87

you’d have to watch the whole show to see it, but there’s almost … an accidental ?? arc for each turtle??? raphael gets angrier up until it reaches typical raphael levels in red sky, donatello goes through ups and downs of wishing he was never mutated while still pursuing human-level knowledge, michelangelo early on in the show wished he was more human (he changes his mind after becoming human once, but the feeling lingers a bit sometimes), and leonardo goes through anxieties related to his team (he acts differently about being without them depending on the season). but even without considering development, their personalities are written fantastically and i love seeing how they interact with the world around them.

1, tales

this is suspect to change since we’ve only had a movie and a 12-episode show. but what i’ve seen so far, i’ve really liked. my only complaint is that donnie feels different in the show vs the movie ://

and ,,, my biases

6, rise

sorry.

5, tnm

guilty pleasure idk what to say. uh. venus de milo. and turtlelamb <33

4, tales

i liked it a lot! i just want more characters and world building. we’ll see where it goes in the future.

3, 03

i love many aspects of the show. it’s not quite as entertaining to me as the next to tho. idk why but my attention span just can’t handle too much of it.

2, 2012

i grew up with this one. does it suck? oh yeah for sure lmao. but it’s nostalgic and i like a lot of the characters. and season 1 particularly is amazing. sucks for the rest of the show tho lol. i will unashamedly bully it.

1, 87

wow. who would’ve— i mean. man. who could have possibly guessed— this one has lotus blossom so i’d say this one can’t be beat.

#pumpkin stuff #tmnt #just my opinions :p #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 1987 #tmnt 2003 #tottmnt #rottmnt #tmnt the next mutation #tmnttnm

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the-sprog · 10 days ago

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Now that I have some context for sonic lore, I've been browsing ao3 to see what else might interest me (I'm sorry but I'm not reading the entirety of the comics. Though I might take a look at silver appearances if there are any) and here's a list of reoccurring jokes I find funny every time without fail:

Shadow discovering Tails is in fact somewhere around 8 years old and not a fellow teenager

Shadow saying "I am the Ultimate Lifeform" (and yes always capitalized) when questioned about anything

Knuckles being characterized like Rock Lee or Maito Gai from Naruto ("I WILL PERFORM A THOUSAND PUSHUPS TO ATONE FOR MY GRAVE MISTAKE THAT HAS CAUSED YOU SO MUCH PAIN" kinda dialogue)

Sonic can't swim

Rouge making Shadow do something that kick-starts the plot (usually go to a party)

Mighty and Ray being missing (afai understand it's because they showed up in a game/comic/what have you ONCE and then never again)

Amy's hammer comes from cartoon hammerspace

Shadow, having been raised in a human space colony, keeps committing Mobian (and more importantly Hedgehog) faux passes

Silver may or may not be Sonic and/or Shadow's son, but it's not like HE's going to clear that up for them

(specific to the movie verse) Knuckles continuously pointing out that Shadow is the superior hedgehod

Shadow lives/is easily found in a cave

#me me post #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sonic fanfiction #knuckles the echidna #these are all the ones that com to mind rn

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devondeal · 6 days ago

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Ok now I am able to elaborate why I do not like Andor. Between work and just needing time to process, I couldn’t immediately find the words.

So if you don’t like looking at Andor negativity I suggest blocking the anti andor and andor criticism tags. That’s what I do when I don’t want to see negativity on something I enjoy (instead of bullying people in the comments).

So to start with, the dialogue in Andor takes up way too much time essentially repeating itself and inflates the scene by a lot. In fact the very first episode literally has maybe 4 scenes in the span of 50 minutes.

Now my attention span is pretty good. I like a good slow paced show but things still need to be happening. Andor fixates on one thing for the longest time and it’s part of what adds to the boring critique of the show.

The scene with the Krennic’s meeting for example, I pretty much figured out what it was going for pretty quick since, the Empire being evil, it’s not hard to see the kinda shit they’d pull just from a little context. But instead this whole thing stretches almost all the way to the end of the episode.

When the essentials needed were already in place. Introduce Ghor, Empire wants to mine it for a mineral needed for the Death Star, use propaganda to dehumanize the Ghormans so no one stands in the way.

Now I’m not saying quickly go through that and be done, I’m just saying it did not need to use up so much screen time through the use of repeptitive and tiresome dialogue.

Also, I find that Andor spends a lot of time on obstacles that really nothing to the plot such as the rebels that killed Cassian’s partner.

As to the almost rape scene, that just really should have come with a warning. If Order 66 scenes in Kenobi get a warning, then a rape scene definitely should. I get what people say in that it’s not something the Empire would be above. But here’s the thing, that is pretty obvious given if genocide and slavery are ok, then an imperial officer is likely to use his power in such a twisted way.

But Andor did what Andor does and spent a long time with a drawn out fight where we see Bix forced into positions that the officer was definitely going to take advantage of. I would have been fine with the implication of what was going to happen. He gets too close, she says no, a fight breaks out but it could have ended much sooner.

Andor just seems to thrive on gratuitous suffering and personally that just aint what I watch Star Wars for. It’s the character choices AFTER the suffering that make Star Wars what it is. A New Hope, the movie from 1977, made the Empire’s evil pretty fucking clear for me, as did all the movies since and other media.

Star Wars has always been about the choices you make in harsh circumstances. When Owen and Beru were killed, the focus was on Luke’s horror snd his choice to join the Rebellion snd become a Jedi.

When Alderaan was destroyed, the focus was on Leia’s commitment to end the Empire once snd for all.

In Empire, Han being tortured and Leia’s pain, the focus was on Luke because he had to choose what he would do from the visions.

The prequels were all about Anakin reacting to the pain and loss around him and what he chose to do about it.

The suffering itself was never the point of Star Wars. But Andor just really seems to focus on that more than anything. Poor Bix seems to exist to get tortured and sexually assaulted and send messages in a panic. Cassian seems to exist to grt stuck in situations where the people around him hinder his goals. He does eventually get shit done but only after a painful long time of the people around him deliberating and starting pointless fights. And don’t yall even about the Rebellion infighting, that can be done without spanning 3 to 4 whole fucking 50 min length eps.

I guess the reason why I enjoy Mon Mothma’s scenes is probably that there is the most movement and character work there. We see her struggle to send funds to the Rebellion, we see her reaction to how her family feels about her as she is focusing on creating a better galaxy for them.

The focus is on her CHOICES and how feels about them. She doesn’t always feel good about it. She puts her daughter in an arranged marriage in order to secure money for the Rebellion. This kills her inside because she knows it is wrong yet it’s for the greater good. She knows her friend has to die because he is a loose end so she lets Luthen do the dirty work and she hates herself for it and hence the dance scene where we see who she is becoming and how she hates it.

Believe or not, I’ve been accused of being elitist for enjoying her scenes the most 🙄 same with enjoying Dedra, I’ve been called fascist for that one (misspelled as fashist I believe 🤣)

Dedra is an enjoyable character because she wants to move the plot forward in the slowness and corruption of the Imperial bureaucracy. She is the typical loyal Imperial officer with no mind to financial obstacles. Syril is her pathetic counterpart. The whole dinner scene with his mother was genuinely very entertaining because this is the most direct the dialogue has ever been.

The show tends to do the little trick with dialogue where it talks about things without being direct and leave the audience to figure it out. Now this is effective at times but honestly when overused it just becomes repetitive because I have long figured out the direction of where the scene is headed and I’m just having to hear about it over and over again for the sake of it sounding intelligent and indirect.

Where this type of dialogue thrives is with the Mon Mothma scenes where she is in public and literally cannot speak about the Rebellion too openly.

But when it’s between just two characters like Cassian and Bix, it’s just tiring and long.

So yeah, I find the boring and very gratuitous. And before anyone comes for me saying “you knew what you were getting into”, dude, it’s fiction, I’m allowed to try something out and want to review it for myself. If you love the show then good for you, but I’m sick of being told that anyone who doesn’t like the show is stupid. I literally have a degree in writing, I’m going off of what I know down to the theory.

But you don’t even have to have that. If I think the show is bad, guess what? I’m not fucking brain dead. I have reasons for that. I’m sick of the superiority complex that the Andor fandom seems to be stuck in.

All of Star Wars is about making choices right and wrong. Fascism is one of the circumstances that the characters are put in. So is the corrupt Republic in the prequels. So is the terrorist like First Order in the sequels.

Pain and suffering are part of it. But it never needed to be gratuitous for me to see the sacrifices the characters have had to make. Maybe for some like the Andor fandom it does add by being as realistic as possible, but for others like myself and plenty more, we get it. Real life puts us through enough, I would rather not see the nitty gritty crap be made gratuitous. For me it comes off as trauma porn especially having been through sexual assault and watching that one scene. Implication would have been fine.

Plus Andor is genuinely not what a lot of people enjoy Star Wars for. Fantasy and mysticism is a huge part of the franchise and Andor doesn’t have that. Yet when people bring that up as a reason they don’t care about the show, the fandom hits us with “well they never marketed themselves that way”. But why should that matter? We’re not blaming the show being different, it’s just simply not what we enjoy Star Wars for. And that should be ok. People enjoy different things.

I mean I accept that some people enjoy the realism in Star Wars. I can’t really argue with a difference of pure preference. But it needs to go both ways. I’m sick of this hive mind mentality where because so many people love this show no one is allowed to criticize it at all and you’re dumb if you dont like it. Since when does popularity mean something is good??

Like i said, if you dont like seeing criticism thats ok, just block. Thats the grown up thing to do instead of hurling insults and refusing to acknowledge that different opinions exist even ones you dont like.

Anyway, I’m tired and need to go to my real life job but just needed to further explain myself since apparently I’m “braindead” for making a post that simply stated I didnt like what I saw without elaborating because god forbid the show is on a work night for me and I can’t really get into fiction analysis mode when I deal with people all day. I guess I’m not allowed to simply post my opinion and feelings without making a whole ass essay these days.

#anti andor #andor spoilers #andor criticism

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queen-erika-the-songful · 2 months ago

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First thoughts on Barbie & Teresa: Recipe for Friendship

(these are incoherent notes I took during my first watch through)

Okay, opening up by cooking tamales is interesting

The song is not interesting though

Abuela Carmen not having a written tamale recipe is so real. I only learned my Mom's enchilada recipe from watching her.

I like the mini tamale lesson. I hope that gets kids wanting to make their own.

Nikki and Brooklyn's hairstyles are great! I wish Malibu and especially Teresa got new hairstyles too.

Ooh, specific location alert! Abuela Carmen is from Zacatecas. That's actually really great that they put in a specific place instead of just "Mexico". Not that it would've been bad to just say "Mexico", but I like that they name an actual city.

I love the platter and apron being family heirlooms. I wonder if the platter is going to break.

Nikki spent Christmas with Teresa? I like that! Actual info on how Malibu's friends are friends to each other and not just her.

Mentioning the tamale-Christmas connection is awesome!

I actually really want to make tamales now.

Teresa and Abuela Carmen having random Spanish is slightly annoying but it comes with territory of having a bilingual Latin American character in media so I guess I'll deal with it. I mean at least she speaks Spanish.

Wait, Brooklyn's family still has their old house??They're paying for a house in NYC and LA at the same time??

Oh hi Emmie I forgot you were gonna be here.

This duet between the Barbies seems a bit time-waste-y. Like we don't need to know how good friends THEY are right now. This is Teresa's movie! Plus the song itself isn't that good. How is this the same team that gave us the SLA and BCBC soundtracks???

As nice as it is to see Emmie again I HATE this setup. We should not be following a "Barbie & Barbie Shenanigans" story. This should ONLY be about the Marisol's restaurant plot.

Was that....a pizza rat reference?

Still unsure why they wanted to put this in NYC. Maybe there will be a reason.

"Comida del Corazon". I kinda figured the name name would be something like that since Abuela Carmen kept talking about "making food from the heart".

I like Marisol calling Teresa "Teresita".

Nikki has yet another hobby: interior design. I mean on one hand she continues to be the most fleshed out of Malibu's friends, but on the other it's starting to feel like they just slap whatever hobby/talent fits the situation into her.

Oof. Emmie just volunteering Brooklyn for a dance role without actually asking is so not cool.

NO BROOKLYN YOU MADE A COMMITMENT!!

Malibu still has no backbone. Surprise, surprise.

Teresa why are you not furious at the Barbies?! You gave them a job and they didn't deliver.

UGH Brooklyn has no backbone either.

I just realized we're in NYC because of the Broadway thing.

OMG RAFA?! HEY!!

Another hollow song, but at least Rafa is here!!

TERESA PLEASE GET MAD.

Brooklyn you don't get to be mad!!!! How dare you?!?!

Again now it's all about the Barbies. Why are we wasting time from TERESA'S MOVIE to have a Barbie/Barbie falling out??

Wow, Malibu actually getting to be angry and even passive-aggressive?! God that is such a breath of fresh air.

I don't like Melanie's design but I can't articulate why. It just seems off somehow.

Emmie's advice isn't bad but it doesn't feel like it comes from the best place since, again, she basically forced Brooklyn into this role. I mean she's not wrong; it is better to concentrate on what you can control in the moment vs can't control, but Brooklyn shouldn't be in this position in the first place.

WE DO NOT NEED ANOTHER BARBIE/BARBIE DUET!!! I'm glad each Barbie is admitting her fault in the fight, but CAN WE GET BACK TO TERESA AND HER PROBLEMS??

Literally who cares about Brooklyn right now, Teresa? She bailed on you and did almost nothing to contribute to this incredibly important event in your family's life after promising to do so.

Teresa accidentally coming up with the last lyric seems appropriate considering it's SUPPOSED TO BE HER MOVIE.

Rafa should've had a bigger part in this.

Using Abuela's apron as design inspiration is very sweet.

AGAIN. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE BARBIE FIGHT.

The fact that Teresa spent the majority of her runtime trying to figure out this tamale recipe is very disappointing. We should've seen her doing other things for the restaurant too.

Awww that lesson that everyone's cooking isn't exactly the same is beautiful. I actually really love that.

The lyrics in this last song are clunky but at least the instrumental is better than the previous songs. And the chorus is actually a bit catchy.

Uh.....maybe idk how these things work, but how is Emmie's show going straight to Broadway after 1 preview? Maybe it's that popstar influence.

Okay I guess the ending with them all cooking together is kind of cute.

Yeah I knew this was only going to be half Teresa's movie and half Barbie/Barbie stuff. I hate being right sometimes.

Nice that they got a cultural consultant. Too bad their efforts were basically wasted.

Holy crap I just realized we know next to nothing about Marisol.

#barbie movies #barbie & teresa: recipe for friendship

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fixated-on-something · 9 months ago

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I think about the magicians too much so here are some of my favourite quotes

Silly ones

Julia and Quentin: DO WE NOT AMUUUUUSE?

Julia: We made up that dance and it was TERRIBLE!

Quentin: oh god

Julia: It was so.. white.. and BAD.

Penny: I like your sweater

Quentin: Are you saying that to be cruel?

Penny: No. I like your sweater, I saw no reason not to share

Quentin: Well then, shall we go fuck some shit up?

Penny: Yes.

Margo: Yes.

Eliot: Yes definitely. Definitely yes.

Penny: Agreed. Feelings are bullshit.

Alice: Is that a traveller thing?

Penny: It’s a hearing voices thing

Alice: Well at least it beats whatever you were snorting

Penny: Marginally.

Kady: Ok, Mindslut?

Quentin: I don’t know you EITHER, except that we just summoned a killer MOTHMAN from another WORLD!

Marina: Did you figure you wanted to learn magic at your blow dry last week?

Penny: You’re welcome. (Blows kiss)

Quentin: What does that mean????

Quentin: you really don’t have to try to make me feel better we basically just met

Eliot: Well, I bond fast. Time is an illusion…

Eliot: How about I find you, and I don’t say magic is real, but I do seduce you and so lift your spirits that life retains its sparkle for decades…

Quentin: …yeah that sounds nice thank you

Dream Alice: If you would shut up for 2 seconds this sex dream could pass the Bechtel test, Quentin

Eliot: Once one of them offered to blow me for a spell. It was barely worth it.

Quentin: Is someone being creepy on purpose?

Margo: that is…. Not super consistent with the books

Quentin (genuinely very distressed): no!!! It’s not!!!! And I find that devastating!!! ☹️

Quentin: You can’t possibly want to be a dick more than you want to live!

Eliot: Oh yes very pristine, it’s been taken over by a kiddy diddling mutant.

Penny: The hell are you drinking?

Alice: I don’t know- triple sec?

Penny: What did Quentin do.

Margo: So we are fucked without grease

Quentin: Sounds like us

Eliot: Must be a Monday. Onward to glory.

Penny: Whoa WHOA WE ARE NOT. NOT. Killing a U.S. senator. But we will commit a felony… almost as stupid.

Eliot: IHEREBYDECREE! Rulers… done gonna rumble.

Margo: Ps we still hate you, but it’s the 21st century it shouldn’t be this hard for a girl to get an evil demigod abortion.

Niffin Alice: what’s this bitch doing in my room?

Margo: By agreeing to marry a stranger on the spot?

Eliot: I did it!

Margo: That was different.

Eliot: You’re right. This would only really be equivalent if Ess was a girl, and you found pussy you know, interesting in a ‘sometimes you like Thai food’ kinda way and now it’s all Thai food forever TILL YOU DIE.

Eliot: Hooolyyy shit the walking plot twist returns

Penny: Hi I need something

Eliot: Shocker. Hey Fen look it’s Uncy Penny! That’s right, I knocked her up. No big deal.

Penny: Uh- congratulations?

Eliot: like I needed more people calling me daddy but yes, thanks, we’re… thrilled.

Eliot: I am in way over my head. I’m not even in control of which of my bodies is awake and my sexually aggressive wife- she could wake me up at any moment in Fillory and-

Fogg: There are certain student teacher boundaries which I prefer not to cross.

Penny: “Let’s go hunt the white lady?” People like me get SHOT for saying shit like that.

NOW THE HEART SHATTERING ONES

Eliot: Do you think it’s real?

Quentin: Some of the good parts have to be. At least I hope so.

Eliot: Things aren’t usually worth caring about

Margo: Eliot he’s gone. why are your torturing yourself?

Eliot: Because he’s gone. And it’s my fault. And of all the people in the world who don’t understand, somehow you top the list.

Quentin: Every book every movie… is about one special guy. The chosen. You know in real life, for every one guy there are a billion people who aren’t.

Margo: I'm a king. Not a goddamn princess. A king.

Julia: I think it’s because it happened. And there’s nothing… magic about it anymore.

Emily: I don’t blame myself. Except for when I first wake up… and when I go to bed, and all the time in between.

Then obviously any quite related to 3x05 and pretty much the entirety of The Mountain Of Ghosts

I missed a bunch and these are mostly season 1-2 because that’s when I was taking notes during my rewatch

#the magicians #fixated-on-magicians #quentin coldwater #eliot waugh #julia wicker #alice quinn #fen the magicians #penny adiyodi #quotes #henry fogg #margo hanson #spoilers #Emily greenstreet #kady orloff diaz

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skullunter · 3 months ago

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I have been tagged once again by @celestialboundx so… you know the drill 🫶

What’s the origin of your blog title?

well the user ‘skull’ is derived from my disc user ‘skullmaster’ which was one of my main ocs in 2020 still don’t know where the ‘unter’ part came from but… oh well lmao

• OTP(s) + ship names

… ahaaaa you know.

• Favorite color

anything pastel idk what to tell you i love em all

• Favorite game

a game called Shadow of The Colossus it’s been my favorite ever since my dad introduced me to it when i was young really emotional charged narrative and the music still brings me to tears <33

• Song stuck in your head

ah. a ton… but right now it’s the slowed version of hexxedlove by karmadiesz 😭

• Weirdest habit/trait?

UHH SO MANY I’ll say prancing around the house with a drink in hand though just for now

• Hobbies

listening to the same playlist on spotify and drawing.. and writing now ig 😭

• If you work, what’s your profession?

unemployed individual. shocking ik

• If you could have any job you wish, what would it be?

I’ve never been super ambitious with my job goals but it has always been and still is a professional artist

• Something you’re good at

ehhh. art?? wouldn’t call myself good at it but it’s fun so hey

• Something you’re bad at

everything in regards to sports or a field where i have to physically exert myself

• Something you love

drawing ig, talking to people online about crazy plot lines and theories

• Something you could talk about for hours off the cuff

THE STUPID FUCKING NARRATIVE I’VE CREATED

• Something you hate

being ignored I don’t mean that as like in the clingy ‘text me back immediately’ nice guy kinda way but more like my presence has gone unacknowledged and underappreciated for too long kinda way

• Something you collect

i used to collect toys and plushies but i’ve kinda stopped here recently on that grind yeah yeah ik I’m too old but hey it’s fun to look at and remember my youth

• Something you forget

TO CHECK MY DISCORD NOTIFICATIONS LMAOOO

• What’s your love language?

ehhhhhh probably quality time idk i like when people decide out of their own volition that I’m somebody who’s worth talking to

• Favorite movie/show?

not sure about this one… sorry 💔

• Favorite food

idk man never really thought about it

• Favorite animals

polar bears because I’ve done a school project on them years ago and maybe horses too < used to be obsessed lol

• What were you like as a child?

very reserved and polite especially with adults I was always super polite to whoever I interacted with and would be this off the walls batshit insane lunatic at home… as my parents say

• Favorite subject in school

none lmao…. probably art again it used to be social studies

• Least favorite subject in school

MATH AND GYM LIKE PREV SAID

• What’s your best character trait?

i don’t appreciate this game’s need for any good qualities i have because you ain’t gonna find none probably patience i wanna hear different views and opinions on things without making a baseless assumption

• What’s your worst character trait?

jealousy/ envy it’s gotten the best of me in the past and it makes me physically grimace at old messages because of it

• If you could change any detail about your day, what would it be?

CAN IT PLEASE STOP BEING WINTER SO I CAN RUN OUTSIDE. PLEASE.

• If you could travel in time, who would you like to meet?

anybody from the distant past (heh) who hasn’t committed the worst act known to man seems really cool to interact with tbh

• Recommend one of your favorite fanfics (spread the love!)

oh there’s this one fic called ‘nearly ninety thousand feet’ on ao3 really really recommend it if you love gay stupid men <33

thank you celestial for the tag 🥳 I’m tagging @pitchforkhead, @thatfoxdog, @qwertyfingers, @hellkitepriest and anyone who sees this

#tag game #the jumps scare I got while seeing my own fanfic on prev lmaoooo #it’s going somewhere alright…

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snickerdoodlles · 1 year ago

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finally posting some background notes for red line fic under the cut !! i meant to do this [checks wrist] an embarrassingly long time ago, except i get shy talking about my writing hjgfjhfj. so!! reading thru red line here and dumping out some thoughts as we go!! for @the-cookie-of-doom <333

red line started with this post. (me, every time i say i'm not going to write something: *grabs clown nose*) i wanted a fic where Chay watched Kim fight because 1) Chay deserves this, ep14 bar fight my BELOVED, but also 2) Kim's put a lot of effort into sectioning parts of his life off from each other, so it's SUPER FUN from a writing perspective to throw them all together and watch him flounder.

planning out red line, it was either going to be Kim pov if it was pre-mafia reveal, or Chay pov post-reveal. both of which are really fun!! but i wound up going for a pre-reveal scenario mostly because this was supposed to be sHORT and a Chay pov didn't feel right without a reconciliation or a lot of setup otherwise. so Kim pov it was! then it was a little bit of rolling ideas around for why goons would be present period. i landed on Arthee's fuck-ups causing problems before Chay's first kidnapping mostly because i didn't want too many guns involved (there was just. no way Kim could've easily protected Chay in that without sending him away for real, which defeats the purpose) but i wound up really loving that premise and committing for a few other reasons:

Kim never brought any of the mafia into Chay's life in canon. all of the mafia bullshit Chay gets dragged thru is related to his own family being involved in the mafia (none of which Chay knows about!), which is very crunchy to me.

loan sharks breaking down Chay's door was his normal. like. i feel like this goes largely ignored by a lot of fandom, but Chay's normal is gang thugs destroying his stuff and him needing to patch up his loved ones. the fucking things that does to a kid.

i just really like Arthee as a plot device. he kinda got left off to the side by canon (which!! fair!! they were juggling a lot of balls there and i'm glad they dropped him in favor of other characters/plots), but you can also see how much i loved the "Chay gets kidnapped because of Arthee's debts" kimchay premises from the early fic days in here XD

writing Kim and Chay in a Tutoring Session, No Really, It Looks Like A Date But This Is Tutoring Honest date was ridiculously fun. i love putting boys in situations. but i also just??? really like them being friends??? well, flirty friends here, but it's so important to me how much Kim and Chay just like spending time together. they're two very lonely boys and i'm very happy they found each other <333

also, Kim telling himself he's not flirting while flirting and encouraging Chay to flirt with him. disaster boy <33333

i spent probably a silly amount of time thinking about what weapons to give Kim (originally, i wasn't going to give him any). i didn't want it to be knives because while that's very hot of him, knife fights are…very, very rough. far more like that one mission impossible movie than elliot from leverage or literally any other movie knife fight, and while patching up knife fight wounds is excellent, i already have that for a different WIP. i also just don't see Kim carrying outright weapons in with his university gear? maybe his first year, but not at the end of it, too much risk for things to go badly. hence, mace and brass knuckles-- the mace is one of those little keychain mace things you can buy in a pack (Kim's was a gift from a friend nearly a year prior, he was very startled and very confused by the offering lol). he got brass knuckles because i think Kim is all for something that helps minimize how hard/often he has to punch someone, but mainly because when i was looking at the keychain mace, i remembered those stupid 3D-printed keychain brass knuckles things also existed and amused myself thinking about how much they'd offend Kim. thanks to that thought train, Kim got a proper set to better break a dude's nose <3

Chay and Kim trying to shove the other behind them as the loan shark's thugs break down Chay's door still makes me laugh. i'm easy to please like that, i love that meme y'all.

Kim's running commentary on how stupid Gold Jim is was SO MUCH FUN to write. i like that Kim's irritation making Gold Jim comical didn't take away from how threatening the situation was either? like, obviously, it was less intense, that was the point, but i'm still really happy with how serious Kim feels through all of this because there is danger in the fact the idiots are looking for a fight, even if they haven't realized how outclassed they are yet.

also, i just really like the level of Kim's violence in his head. i like that it's just a stream of conscious he's not putting a lot of thought into. i just don't see Kim's relationship with violence as being a dramatic thing-- it's just that Kim's first thought any time he sees someone is how to break them, just incase.

Kim naming the thugs One thru Five was 100% for my writing convenience, i am SO delighted people loved that for him XD

Chay hitting a thug with the frying pan for interrupting his date was the first thing i knew would happen in this fic. Chay deserved to hit at least one(1) person with a frying pan in canon, so he got to do it twice here. Kim is DESPERATELY trying not to swoon, he's going to be so horny about this after the shock of everything wears off.

man, i cried a lot thru writing the action for this scene, but i'm really satisfied with how it came out actually!! WORTH IT

i am still ridiculously tickled by this particular "Oh" / Oh moment. KimChay making hearteyes at each other while the goons feel superfluous my beloved <333

Kim making a hot grunt sound while manhandling a guy twice his size into position for Chay to whack with his pan is going to fuel conservatively 83% of Chay's spank bank fantasies from here on btws.

writing Kim tell Gold Jim who he is was so much fun.

in that line of thought, if Kinn ever learned Kim threatened some thug with his name, he'd beam like a puppy. doubly-so if he realized the specific wording Kim used. his metaphorical tail would be wagging up a hurricane if he ever realized how much Kim associates him with safety and protection.

also very fun to me was Kim accidentally calling Chay his boyfriend and immediately swallowing his tongue about it. i didn't plan that, it just fell out of my brain like it did Kim's mouth and i went "okay!! we'll roll with this!!!"

"is the safety on" was Chay holding himself back by the barest skin of his teeth. he is going to get his mouth on Kim asap but he is NOT going to let some stupid emergency room trip ruin their first kiss. meanwhile, Kim's about to enter an angst spiral, lmao. (in my head, there's a dent in the floorboards from where Chay threw his frying pan away. it's amazing it didn't shock them out of their kiss, but Chay is not to be deterred dammit!!)

u all know me and how much i love my kiss fic, but ending this one with Chay having an adrenaline crash was delightful to write, i'm gonna need to do this more often XD Chay's 100% of the mindset he's either going to be horny or cry, and he'd much prefer to be kissed, tyvm!! unfortunately for him, i prefer tears. also, Kim keeps trying to use his mouth for pesky things like words, it is very unproductive towards Chay's current goal >:T

speaking of Chay's wild emotions-- i very much do not see Chay liking violence for violence's sake. he's had enough of people throwing their weight around him for a lifetime. he does, however, have the biggest thing for a hot boy coming to protect him, esp if the boy is Wik shaped. don't tell me Wik was part of Chay's gay revelation and tell me he DIDN'T have so many fantasies of Wik protecting him from the shitty loan sharks.

that said tho! reality =/= fantasy. Chay was terrified Kim was going to get hurt because of him, half his adrenaline crash was just worry for Kim :(

i'm not sure what to say about this next bit transitioning to the ending of this fic except that it was definitely the trickiest and the longest to write. Chay's drilling Kim for answers because Porsche has been absent for months, but Chay's not upset with Kim. (Kim's the one here with him! he's the one answering Chay's questions!) i wrote myself into a corner a few times with dialogue that was too accusatory for what i wanted. but also, this was the part when i was like "oh!! i know what the summary should be!!" because six thugs have nothing on the intimidation factor of Chay Has Questions XD

Kim saying he can go and Chay going "why tho????" made me laugh out loud writing this. i love Chay's terrible priorities so much. you will never be able to convince me that Chay wasn't 100% ready to accept Kim as part of the mafia so long as Kim cared about him, this boy is so ride-or-die for his whole two(2) important people. Kim trying to convince mr. obstinate he doesn't want him is even more futile than Kim trying to deny himself what he wants. esp as Chay calls Kim out for all his flirting <3

on a more serious note tho, i really like how Chay comes across during this part of the story. it's kinda like Kim's violence thing-- i see the core of Chay being very, very lonely. he really only has his brother in the world, who's not able to be home too much due to circumstance, and now isn't home at all. and then here comes Kim, reaching out to Chay and asking all about him and just plain being a friend to him-- of course Chay latched on. of course he's going to cling if he thinks Kim likes him back. he's too lonely not to.

Kim's little whispered "stay" was my driving force every time i got stuck on this fic, i love when Kim tries to tell himself all the reasons he's not allowed to want something and then ask for it anyways. that's what we in the business call character growth XD

to wrap up this very messy fic ramble, some lines i really, really love in this fic:

Kim's never wished for a gun before. Kim doesn’t like guns. They’re too fast. Too clean.

hehehe

Gold Jim chuckles menacingly. It’s like he’s following a theatre script. Kim’s going to break every bone in his body before he sets him on fire and applauds.

i'm not sure if anyone noticed??? but the specific items of torture are based on theatre/performance idioms-- "break a leg" and "you're on fire"-- hence Kim applauding at the end.

Kim reminding himself not to scare Chay by killing the idiots, light maiming ONLY

cleaning up blood is so annoying, anyone with a period can concur 😭

Chay stands over Three, wielding a frying pan with two hands and looking just as surprised with himself as the rest of them.

i'm just. so, so fond for the image of Chay staring with complete surprise between his frying pan and a guy he just gave a concussion. he just did that! he just did that???

“How’s that going for you?” Chay asks, warm and soft where he’s still pressed up against Kim, “Felt a lot like tutoring to me.”

listen. LISTEN. Kim's investiagation excuses to hang out with a cute boy he likes are so cute. Chay agrees with me. we are both so correct for this. Chay's going to tease Kim so much about this but also encourage it past this point, he loves Kim being obsessed with him too <3

#fic: red line #i'd clean this up except im feeling v sick rn hgjfj #so!! messy thought rambles it is!!#hope u like friend <33333 #kinnporsche #kimchay

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talenlee · 11 months ago

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Disney's Conversion Therapy Story

There are too many possible titles for this article. You know, Did you notice the gender conversion therapy story in this movie, or that one disney movie nobody watched has some messed up stuff in it or ongoing continuation of Talen Lee’s beefing with Disney corporation every Pride Month. It’s such a shocking thing to see in a story because it requires a really breathless thoughtlessness to commit to doing it, you see.

Okay, first of all, our pieces in places. This is about the 2005, Disney for-the-family, all-ages 3d animated movie called Chicken Little. It ‘starred’ and we’ll use that term generously, Zach Braff, and Severals Others. It’s a story about uh, well ostensibly it’s the retelling of the story of Chicken Little, from Aesop’s Fables, but in this case, that would speak too highly of it. The story of Chicken Little isn’t important here because, as with so many Disney stories, the supposed narrative it’s building off is kinda just a branding thing for Disney to smear its capitalist merchandisable grundle over.

But before I go on, I’m going to talk about some really awful ways women are treated and a bad thing that happens in this movie that I cannot help but compare to and therefore need to provide a Content Warning For Conversion Therapy. The specific kind of Gender Compliance therapy – if you’ve ever been in the kind of school environment where a girl comes home to find all of her clothes changed in her wardrobe or a boy who has their dad take away their pink toys away without talking about it? That kinda thing. Like, the people who are so homophobic that the gender line needs to be enforced through proactive bullying. Oh and Spoiler Warning for Chicken Little but you shouldn’t care.

Alright, the first thing you need to know about in this story is the character of Foxy Loxy. She is uh… let’s generously say, based on the way this movie stylises bodies, let’s say she’s a ‘Fox’ of some variety. Her design is much more of like, well, Foxy Boxy, but you know, whatever, it’s fine, she’s Foxy Loxy. In this movie, she’s presented as a tomboy and a bully, a force of conflict in Chicken Little’s life, by being… well, she’s mean to him, but not in a meaningful way? like she’s unreasonable in how she treats him, she yells at him when he’s in the way, but also there’s no adult in this movie who tells her that that’s bad to do.

Not even Chicken Little’s dad.

Anyway, Foxy Loxy is the antagonist of the first half of this disjointed mess of the movie. Antagonist is a bit overstating it, she’s a bully and she’s mean to Chicken Little but she’s not actually instrumental to the plot of the story. When the time comes to bully Chicken Little over the major event of the story, she’s mean to him in the crowd of every other person in the town being mean to him.

There was a bigger role for this character in the original version of the story, where Chicken Little was a girl in a summer camp and the tension was about fearing that Foxy Loxy was the ‘real’ enemy with the realisation that she wasn’t and Chicken Little’s anxiety needed to be put at war with her need to trust.

Okay, so, Foxy Loxy. Tomboy. Semi-important bully.

Second piece in this story is Runt of the Litter. For this conversation the many sins of Runt of the Litter don’t actually apply. This character is awful, in the way that he is comprised of dreadful Fat Character stereotype rules. He’s emotional, he’s physically useless, he’s cowardly, he’s feminine in his behaviours and interests and he provides resistance against Chicken Little only when he’s doing the things that we, the audience, want Chicken Little to actually do. Runt of the Litter is The Load and we have to take the narrative’s word for it that he is Chicken Little’s best friend, because without that imposition you might imagine that Runt of the Litter is kind of an enemy the story has to overcome.

Runt of the Litter sucks.

It’s intentional, too – the story thinks it’s hilarious that a big fat guy is like this, and how he’s like, he’s called runt of the litter, but he’s actually huge! But he’s wrong somehow, he’s failed somehow, and that’s tied to the ways he behaves and chooses to be.

Now, as for the event:

At the end of the story, all the characters in town have been (temporarily) kidnapped from their homes by aliens. The reason doesn’t matter, it’s all a misunderstanding. The point is, everyone is teleported out of alien containment and into their homes. Everyone is fine, except one individual who is shown as being transported back ‘wrong.’ One of the aliens, who is voiced by Patrick Warburton and is Cop Coded, shows up and explains that they’re sorry, they messed up when they were returning Foxy Loxy to her original state.

How’d they mess up?

Well, Foxy Loxy, who, I need to remind you here is a child, is shown having been teleported back with a scrambled brain that makes her want to be a pretty, highly feminine girl with an interest in… girly things and Not The Things She Was Into. She has a tiny umbrella, a fitted dress to her new look, and Pollyanna curls. And the cop then tells our heroes that hey, they know this is wrong and they are about to change her back to who she was.

Runt of the Litter runs up and interrupts and goes ‘no no no, don’t change her back, she’s perfect now!’ And then, just because he said so, the aliens leave her this way, no adult intervenes, nobody stands up for the integrity of Foxy Loxy’s identity, and she remains this way. Now, she’s into show tunes. We know, because the ending credits of the movie are about showing her and Runt of the Litter singing and dancing and grooving along together. They’re the best of friends now, finally a friend he has who he can share his love of showtunes with and all it took was a cop scrambling her brain and then choosing not to fix it.

You may think oh, this is about dramatic punishment, this is about her being made to address her cruelty to him, that maybe she bullied him about something and now he knows this is her excuse to express something about herself she’s been hiding! That this invocation of a medical intervention to make a tomboyish girl present as something else that is literally enforced by brain altering technology, that’s being done because of something set up in the story priory to this point that justifies it, and this girl has some how done something to deserve this change to her life and mind.

Nah.

This is the first time Runt of the Litter has ever spoken to Foxy Loxy.

This is a summary of points Fox and I discuss at length on our podcast The Disney Animated Canonball episode Something, Chicken Little.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media

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redhoodinternaldialectical · 3 months ago

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3. What are your top three most commonly used tags on AO3?

10. Is there a character or ship you'd love to write for, but haven't yet?

and 31. What fic meant the most to you to write?

-mel 💜

A wild @melodyatlas appears :3 !

Oooh let's see...

S&M, Humor, Fluff <- yeah that tracks!

The only reason "crack taken seriously" isn't on there is bc I decided that the coke was being taken too seriously to be labeled coke in the first place lol, but 99% of my stuff starts with a goofy non-sense premise that I proceed to take way too fucking seriously heheh

10.

If we're counting stuff that I've only kinda outlined and never published, then JaySteph, I've been wanting to write a specific story for them called Four and Twenty Blackbirds for a while now - but like since I have written some of that out I'm not sure I should count it, yaknow?

Other than that, though, idk, I might like to write a Boostle fic! That is really the pairing that got me into writing and comics as a whole, so like, idk it'd be nice to revisit that and give something back someday

31.

Falling Into the Night (not to be confused by the three other AO3 works sharing the same title lol)

Holy shit did this fic genuinely change my life. Like, writing it down and sharing bits of it is basically the reason I have a good relationship with my Father and the capacity to process my own feelings??

It's also finished, even though it isn't done, and I deleted what little I published off of AO3 years ago.

The plot is far from complete, I never got further than a certain point with it, and I lost my favorite scene of Jason walking through shoulder high grass in the wind up to the hill to visit a mausoleum to speak to himself and the stone - but it's still done. It did what it needed to do, and I'm done processing what it was written to process. It's not done for all intents and purposes, but for my own it is.

It's also possibly the world's most spectacularly bizarre soulmate AU???

Honestly, some of the scenes in it are still powerful and delightfully invocative even on their own - and, ya'know what, go ahead and have the first couple scenes and maybe I'll end up reposting the rest of the damn thing too sooner or later

Warnings for body horror that was written by a profoundly unwell teenager who had read basically zero comics other than nu52 Red Hood and the Outlaws lmao

A baby, swaddled in something blue. They would have been cute except for the fact that instead of eyes some one seemed to have drilled tiny holes out of their skull. Each one was slightly larger than their little eye sockets should have been. Jason thought that filling the holes with darkness would have been a mercy. As it was, he could see every bit of skull and viscera that lined the rough cut-outs. They didn’t bleed much either and that was horrible too. He wouldn’t be able to articulate why it bothered him so much until he was years older but it all seemed so much more real without the excess that would have accompanied a Halloween decoration or horror movie.

He knew in the very pit of his soul that the baby was watching him. It seemed content, almost happy.

4-year-old Jason Todd woke up like a man being dragged behind a horse. He clutched, trembled, and cried until exhaustion brought him back to reluctant sleep. The baby writhed in silent laughter when he returned.

At 14 Jason was a proud, grade C-, delinquent hoodlum in an under-funded public school. He had all but begged Bruce to let him come here and not an upper crust private school. The way Jason saw it, schools weren't much more than brain washing, regardless of how rich they were. He’d either get taught to sit down and shut up in disgustingly sanitized white florescent halls, or he’d get taught to sit down and shut up in the comfort of a gutter where everyone knew what kind of scam they were in. Besides, he figured that if he could only barely get through a gala without committing arson, then spending every day with a bunch of snobs would drive him straight to supervillainy. So, during school he sat in desks and made them his by carving cool S marks and dicks into them. Then he went home and learned calculus, bio-chemistry, forensics, acrobatics, pyrotechnics, anatomy, and martial arts from Bruce and Dick at break neck speed.

He was currently in health class doing his level best to tune out a slide show about "Soul Mates, and how to find them!! :D ". The font was inevitably comic sans. The colour scheme was obviously supposed to evoke thoughts of joy, but accomplished that about as well as a hamburger made with moose-shit.

Jason absently mused, "It's pink-on-yellow lies are hollow, and scorch the retinas of its audience." He filed that line away with all the other cool lines he would never write because he absolutely refused to become some edgy emo loser who wrote angst poetry. It was bad enough that he lived with a guy who regularly got accused of being a vampire.

There were always rumors surrounding their strange little family, and to be honest, Bruce deliberately cultivated a sort of urban legend status. The latest version of the vampire rumor held that Batman was using his dark powers to summon fiendish and colourful Imps. It was an unfortunately reasonable conclusion, all things considered. The batclan knew better, of course, and so their hairbrained rumors were much more nuanced. Every member had long ago concluded that if anyone around the manor was a vampire, it was Alfred Pennyworth.

Batwoman had tasked Jason with gathering evidence of Alfred's ‘true nature’. He was pretty sure she didn't expect him to find anything, and it was just a way to hone his detective skills. Vampire hunting was way more fun than reading endless cold case files though, so he took it without complaining and resolved to give it his best effort lest someone decide he had too much idle time.

Speaking of that, he had heard Alfred and Batman talking the other day. Bruce had turned to him and said, "It feels like we've always been old." And then Alfred made that funny little hmph sound of gentlemanly displeasure and replied, "Speak for yourself, Sir. I've always been a youthful man at heart." It was still only circumstantial but-

"Jason!"

"Huh, what?"

"Jason, can you tell us what this presentation was all about?"

Jason rolled his eyes and replied completely deadpan, "Everybody meets their one true love in prissy little fairy tale dreams and if we ever look at anyone else The Devil will eat our slutty asses."

He took a very long smoke break on his way to the administrator's office.

Honestly, Jason already knew that thing slowly growing up in his dreams was his soulmate, and that stung more than he would ever admit. He wondered what having an abomination for an “other half” said about his half. Did it mean he was going to end up lovesick, addicted and dead like his mother? Did it mean he was going to end up a puppy kicking piece of shit like his father? Was he, deep down, just as horrifying as it was? He ended up chewing on these thoughts like a swollen tongue that grew more inflamed every time he bit it until it filled his mouth and every move he made scrapped painfully against it.

During a brief lull in his ruminations he realized that he’d absentmindedly bitten through the end of his cigarette. He spit it out, grimaced at the bitter taste, lit a fresh one, and kept on walking.

Soulmates are only supposed to meet in dreams when both of them are asleep, but that thing never seemed to dream. He was convinced by this point that it didn’t even exist outside his head. It just perched in the corner of his mind and watched and stared and looked with its empty gaping holes.

Eventually, his smoke break took him all the way back to the manor.

"Hey, how's it goin'?" Jason gave a wave to the butler as he strode across the hall.

"It’s a fine day, young Sir. I daresay you couldn't have picked better for your afternoon stroll. Though, I must ask after your reasons for taking it when you should have been in school."

"How do you do that?! " He was certain he had been out of sight of the manor while he waited for the bus to roll by.

"I am the caretaker of three generations of over dedicated, self-taught ninjas, Master Jason. I have had no choice but to out-match my wards. Now, enough stalling. What happened?"

"We had a stupid fuuh-uurducken presentation on soul mates and it was so useless. Like, the health teacher doesn’t even care and it just kept talking on and on about how perfect and normal you have to be. And it’s totally useless! Because it’s not like they’re saying anything we haven’t heard a million times before, and they’re getting most of it wrong too! Like they took a whole 30 fuggin minutes to do some nasty comparison about a girl being like a chewed piece of gum and how nasty they’d be and how a soulmate wouldn’t want their love being gum as though humans are fucking pieces of gum! And I know that frickin coach tells kids their dreams aren’t real if they don’t perfectly match what hers were like, and- and- I mean it’s screwed up and I told them so and obviously they sent me to the administrator’s office, ain’t no way I’m gonna talk to that bi-ugh!” He shook his head and shrugged in tight, closed off movements, “Whatever. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Am I grounded or not?”

Alfred put his hand on Jason's shoulder and gave him the gentlest look his titanium reinforced upper lip allowed for. "You have a wonderful moral passion young Sir. Foul language, undignified as it may be, does not change the fact that you were only standing up for what is right. Go get some rest, dinner will be ready in a few hours, and you'll need your strength for tonight's patrol."

"Thanks, Alfred."

"Of course, Master Jason."

As he flopped down onto the comfiest couch in the living room, black, guilty bile rose at the back of his throat. It felt wrong to be called ‘Master Jason’, same way his old neighbor Rosa had said ‘Sir’ to the man whose house she cleaned. Jason could still remember how that man had fired her when she got too sick to clean. Rosa had decided to just let the sickness take her rather than leave her daughter with nearly a million dollars in debt. He never learned what she was sick with, but he knows her daughter makes a half decent living working as a maid.

He wanted to hope that Bruce wouldn’t ever do that to Alfred. That Alfred means more to him than Rosa had to her employer. But as a dozen other suffering friends and family who worked serving others cascaded through his mind he found himself incapable of imagining a happy ending to Alfred’s life. Or his own for that matter.

It took far longer than Jason wanted for sleep to pour those thoughts out of his head.

He knew that sleep had finally overtaken him when, once again, Jason found himself in the dreamscape that held only him and his soulmate. The space held no indication that it was anything other than infinite empty void, but Jason knew, in the certainty of dreams, that it had a shifting, hidden geometry. One of the few constants was the distance between him and it.

That distance was measured in: three small steps, five seconds of sprinting, one scream, four bouts of being dragged by the ankle as his mind fought between the standing dream and lying body. Two more small steps.

Maybe that meant something? Maybe it was bullshit.

He stayed still, and just stared into the nothingness. Looking into absolute blackness was much easier than looking at it. He could tell it wasn't a baby anymore. It just wore a baby's swaddle and skin and fat, and the head didn't fit right anymore. It was like the skull just kept growing even though the rest of it had stopped.

The way this space screwed with his vision didn't help either. The problem was, Jason and it weren't illuminated, or even glowing. They were just perfectly visible; utterly without shadow. The subtle wrongness of that just made everything worse.

Suddenly, every fiber of his being tried to pull itself inwards at the disgusting sound of fingers being bent until they snapped. That wasn't supposed to happen, it wasn't supposed to move, WHOSE FINGERS-

He whipped his head around to face his 'other half'.

The eyeless baby wearer had managed to pull its tiny arms out of the swaddling and was now moving it’s fingers like a nefarious villain in a cartoon. It was still watching him. The little fingers crackled, bending right bending wrong *SNAP* bending right bending wrong *SNAP* out of sync and mesmerizing.

Jason screamed. It just seemed like the thing to do, really.

He watched, transfixed, as the fingers stopped, and its right hand reached over to the left fingers and tugged. The flesh slipped off smoothly, like a satin glove that was just a bit too big. There were no bones underneath. Only a loose structure of needles in almost the same shape one expects bones to be in.

Those needles looked so dainty. Pin, sewing, hypodermic, all moving with a grace that didn't fit. They were, of course, far, far too long to have fit in the little sleeves of its baby coat. With the very tips of the needles, it delicately pulled the flesh off its other arm. Same easy glide to remove. Same needle bones beneath.

For the first time since it had appeared Jason felt it's gaze shift off of him to look at it's new hands. The relief of regaining some small privacy washed through him while the disorientation of losing a life-long constant punched him in the gut. Under its gaze he had felt raw and exposed, scorched by its constant unceasing gaze. Now he thought that maybe that constant watching was all that had been keeping him upright and there was a gut-wrenching sensation of being dropped from an obscenely high cliff.

He hardly noticed that it had lowered its fingers down to the surface of the dreamscape until it started moving towards him. It definitely wasn't walking on its new fingers. It was more like the little baby body was a balloon bobbing on the end of needle covered strings. Rather than supporting its weight, the hands were tugging it along as they crawled across the floor.

As it began to explore the empty space anew, it seemed unable to decide whether it wanted to look at its novel and silvery limbs, or return to looking at Jason. This was obviously a time of wonder and excitement for it.

His last thought before waking up was, "It's like the world's most sick, fucked up chicken."

#thank you for the ask!#and I hope twas an enjoyable read :3 #damian's tomfoolery

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