#also i find it funny how when it comes to concepts i immediately go back to using proper grammar 🐥

[hyun3hk3y]

Symbolism in "Portrait of Lady Edelgard Von Hresvelg"

This is something that I’ve usually never really felt comfortable doing. If you ever wonder why some artists are a bit more reluctant to actually *talk* about the “meaning” of their work, its because it strikes the same tenor as having to explain why a joke is funny.  If I have to actually lay it out for the viewer why certain decisions were made in the execution of a work of art, the magic of the whole experience may be lost.  Moreover, many artists avoid making definitive statements on their work because they do not wish to deprive viewers the opportunity to derive their own unique explanation. 

While I chiefly view myself as a fine artist, most of my artistic training was as an illustrator.  As an artist, this can lead to an interesting dichotomy when it comes to creating paintings.  During my studies, I was told that the job of an illustrator is to solve pictorial problems for people often by making pictures that tell a story or convey an idea.  Fine art’s definition, in contrast, tends to be more nebulous.  But I digress, on to the painting…

A number of people on reddit and Tumblr have remarked on the candle with the snuffed-out flame.  No interpretations on it have been offered, the mere presence of a candle with a smoldering wick is a strong enough implication.  However, this is one instance where I drew inspiration from art history so I believe it is worth elaborating on.  The animus for the candle originates in the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck.  Below is an image of the painting with the pertinent candle circled.

Art history scholars have a number of different readings about the candle’s presence, but the one I was taught in Art History is that the lit candle indicates the presence of the holy ghost or the watchful eye of God.  Three Houses draws from a number of religions for its world building, in the case of The Church of Serios, the developers took the majority of their cues from The Catholic Church.  If a lit candle would suggest Edelgard’s faith in the Goddess, then an extinguished one must imply Edelgard’s *loss* of faith. 

In addition to the extinguished candle, I would also like to direct viewers to the reflection of the candle in the polished wood table surface. In the reflection the candle is still burning very brightly, almost down to the base of the candelabra.

The purpose of this image is to recall a saying from old Taoism Philosophy in China: “The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”  Those who are familiar with Edelgard’s back story in Three Houses will find its relevance obvious.  I doubt I am the only one to make the allusion.

This brings me to the next major piece of symbolism I employed in the painting, the dagger and the drapery on the table.  The dagger’s significance should go without saying, but its application as a device will become more apparent after I explain the table cloth.  To put it succinctly, the majority of the dark shadow shapes made by the tablecloth are arranged to evoke the shape of the crest of flames.  Below is another visual to help illuminate this detail. 

The immediate implication here is the detail of Edelgard possessing the crest of flames.  As for why I decided to depict it in a more concealed way…When I first got the idea for this painting, the whole concept was that if a person saw this painting in a gallery, they would be looking at an actual artifact from Fodlan, one that created by an artist who actually lived there.  This is why the second row of the inscription reads “In the Imperial Year” on the left side and “1179” on the right.  This means the painting would have been completed just before Edelgard starts attending Gareg Mach, and long before the greater public would know she has the crest of flames.  How the artist came to know this would remain a mystery.  I like to imagine it as a detail that Fodlan’s historians would debate over for years after the game’s narrative.

There is also a second message that I have intended with the dagger’s placement cutting (heh) across the crest…Gripping the dagger over the crest of flames is a statement about what the path is that Edelgard will take, especially when the crest is examined as representing the Goddess Sothis.  In fact, there are two (technically three) lines of dialogue from Three Houses I had in mind for this symbolism.

That about sums it up!  I may do a couple more posts in the future where I show how the painting evolved from thumbnails, to studies to the finished image if theres interest in that sort of thing.

[baeshijima]

actor!au, where it's the kiss scene after a particularly emotional moment-slash-pre confession and you're expecting a chaste peck to stop your character mid-ramble (like the script says), only to find yourself at a loss by the hand curled around the back of your head, the other cradling your cheek, and his lips flush against yours.

it's feverish, desperate, and full of desire; everything the scripted kiss was not supposed to be, and most definitely not what you were prepared for. you couldn't even catch a glimpse of what the directors thought, for the hand against the back of your head prevents you from focusing on anything other than the man kissing you as though he means it — as though it wasn't all an act.

(after the episode aired, that one short scene went viral, comments about your unmatched chemistry both on-screen and behind-the-scenes now everywhere you look. interviews with the two of you reached millions within hours, all wanting a piece of the unmatched chemistry you both shared off-screen.)

(the masses spiralled even further after learning that scene was all ad-lib.)

(it came to no surprise to anyone that you both won the best couple award, instead fawning over your shared speech as that, too, went viral.)

[gay-dorito-dust]

Are your requests open? If not feel free to ignore this. If so you can also still ignore this but I wanted to ask, could you write how the batboys/batfam would react to a vigilante reader who left Gotham but came back a year or so later?

I don't know if you listen to Noah Kahan but maybe something along the lines of the song “Your Gonna Go Far”? It's just a good song that makes me think of them for some reason IDK 😂

Damian’s was a little angsty but eh. I held this ask off for long enough.

Dick would tease that the reason you came back was because you missed him too much, when in actuality it was more or less the opposite, he missed his fighting crime alongside his vigilante buddy.

‘Fuck off.’ You’d scoff and go to playfully push him, only for him to take it a step further and willingly fall from the rooftop you were hanging out on, and you immediately stood up. ‘Dick?’ You’d call as you peered over the ledge for him. ‘This isn’t funny!’ You shouted in attempt to hide the fact that you were incredibly fearful of the state you’d find him in.

However Dick reappears doing a handstand with a shit eating grin on his face as he used his hands to move towards you, much to your chagrin.

‘I’ll leave again.’ You threatened, crossing your arms over your chest.

‘No you won’t.’ Dick grunts as he got to his feet, still smiling as he got stepped close to you. ‘If you were hellbent on leaving Gotham forever then you wouldn’t have dared tempt the idea of coming back.’

As much as you hated to admit it but he was right, you wouldn’t leave again and even if you did originally want out of Gotham, there was too much work that had to be done here then anywhere else. You were more pretty much done with the whole leaving thing as that didn’t necessarily work out, considering just how fast you abandoned your original plan just to came back to Gotham.

‘I hate it when you’re right.’ You murmured under your breath as Dick chuckles, happy to have you back home, back to him and picking up where you both left off as though nothing had ever happened.

‘So that being all the time, right?’ He asks as he slings an arm over your shoulder, pulling you into his side as you made a face. ‘You’d fucking like for that was the case don’t you.’ You scoffed as you looked at him, one to see him looking back at you with a soft look in his eyes, which was something new even for you seeing as yours and Dick’s relationship consisted of witty back and forth and making lightheartedly fun out of each other.

‘Only if you stay long enough to admit it.’ He says without an ounce of his usual teasing as a silence befell you both as you stared at one another, wondering where life was going to take you now you were back in Gotham.

Jason

‘I was rooting for you to stay away.’ He said upon seeing you kick one of Penguin’s goons in the head.

You shrugged. ‘Hate to disappoint but the grass wasn’t greener on the other side.’ You told him, kicking the goon’s switchblade over the rooftop and into the streets below when noticing his hand itching towards it.

‘It must’ve been at least somewhat greener considering how long you stayed there before coming home.’ Jason sassed, joining in by kicking the goon in the ribs for good measure and you groaned. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still pissed at me for leaving are you?’

Jason scoffs. ‘Noooo, why would I be possibly mad at the fact that you had done it. You managed to escape Gotham and instead of staying out of Gotham and building yourself a future where coming back wasn’t an option, you came back?! Why?! What made you think that was a smart idea?!’ He exclaims and you dropped low to perform a sweeping kick to his feet -taking advantage of his irritation- knocking him flat on his back, grabbing the lapels of his brown jacket.

‘For you DUMBASS! I came back to Gotham for you! I wasn’t about to let you rot in this shit hole without at least knowing someone gave a shit about you! Is that such a fucking hard concept to grasp?!’ You yelled at him but just before you let go of his jacket, Jason was quick to catch your wrists in one of his hands and managed to pin you to the floor as he hovered over you. ‘I don’t believe I ever once asked you to do anything for me, other than staying out of Gotham once you found an outing for yourself.’ He said in a low voice.

‘You didn’t need to.’ You told him, easily envisioning the look of frustration Jason must have on his face under the red helmet. ‘That’s was all my own doing and I don’t regret any of it.’ You grunted. ‘Not even a little. I couldn’t afford to build a future out there because there was no future for me to build when I knew I had a better chance of doing that here with you than anywhere else.’

Jason sighed, ‘you’re insufferable.’ He huffed before letting you of your wrists and standing up to his feet as he holds a hand out to you to take.

‘And you’re still a dickhead.’ You retorted smiling as you eagerly grabbed his hand, allowing him to pull you up to your feet before bringing you into his arms, holding you tightly where you melted into his body warmth.

‘Your dickhead you mean.’ He murmurs against your head.

‘yeah, my dickhead.’ You smile, knowing that evening was going to be okay from here on out.

Damian

‘I thought you skipped town.’ Damian said as he sheathed his sword.

‘You don’t sound surprised to see me.’ You replied, putting away your twin batons on your back.

Damian shrugs before looking over at you. ‘Why should I be surprised, I did say on the day you left that you’d come back home sooner or later.’ He reminds you as you both over looked the city you both once swore to protect. ‘No one leaves Gotham for long, this city has a way of pulling people back in whether they liked it or not.’

You clenched your fists at your side out of frustration because you knew that he was right, he was always right and you hated it because when you had gotten out of Gotham, it didn’t feel as though you were needed as much to protect the streets. It made you realised that being born and raised in Gotham and learning go hone the skills required to survive had became a vital part of you, a part of you that you couldn’t escape no matter has far away you go from the vile city and make a name for yourself elsewhere.

It ended up not working out and soon you found yourself going back to the place you swore you’d never go back to.

‘You didn’t miss me? Not once?’ You asked all of a sudden.

‘No. You were barely on my mind as I was busy clearing the streets you left behind.’ Damian said but even you could tell that he was lying to himself somewhat.

‘Are you sure I didn’t come to mind? Not even when you’re standing in the locations we regularly rendezvous for missions?’ You asked again.

Damian remains silent this time. Of course he missed you, there wasn’t a day that went by where he didn’t resent you for leaving Gotham, for leaving him behind when you both swore to keep Gotham safe together. Admittedly he hated you for a brief time after you left, he tried to burn every memory he had of you to prove that his hatred and resentment towards you was true, and not as an act of heartbreak and abandonment.

However Damian found himself unable to keep that facade up after three month anniversary of your departure, where found himself on the very rooftop he was now, and ironically it was the very same rooftop where you told him you were leaving Gotham indefinitely; looking up to the stars and wishing for your health and well-being whether you were.

‘No.’ Damian snipped, leaving you in a very similar to the way you had left him long ago, alone and conflicted with emotions.

[m0llygunn]

friends with b(aby)enefits (eddie munson x fem!reader)

MONTH ONE: Just friends—what a silly concept. After your accident, Eddie's been a full-fledged comedian, ill-conceived jokes left and right... neither of you are laughing though when his 'comedy routine' comes back to bite the both of you in the ass.

cw: 18+!, mature language, smut, pinv sex (unprotected again smh), pet names, vomiting, a lot of pregnancy related topics, potentially dramatized pregnancy symptoms (for the plot obvi, also idk anything about pregnancy), mention of readers period, mention of birth control an: lots of minor time jumps/cuts but we get some eddie pov!!! wc: 8.3k+

0 / 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09 / 00

Arms wrapped around your waist from behind, both palms pressed flat to your belly.

“How are my girls doing today?”

Comically loud, heavily puckered kisses scattered over the top of your stomach, catching you by surprise— not at all expecting to be ambushed with facetious affection by your friend. 

Eddie thinks he’s a comedian. 

With about a month of his poor taste in jokes, he thinks he’s hilarious— and a self-proclaimed prophet because he 'just knows' that it's a baby girl. He's full of shit and you desperately try to not give him the benefit of finding his terrible jokes humorous. To your demise, from time to time, they get you.

His latest stunt was when he greeted you for your usual Friday get together. He swung the door open quick enough to stun you and immediately dropped to his knees. With a firm hold on your hips, he leaned in close to your belly, “Hi, baby girl. Did you miss daddy?” he cooed with big eyes and an even bigger smirk.

With a hand on his forehead, pushing him away, unfortunately you laughed, and unfortunately it feels like all of his jokes are coming back to bite the both of you in the ass. It’s hardly been 24 hours since the offending, but objectively funny joke, and neither of you are laughing now.

“Maybe you just ate something bad?” he offers with sheer, dumb, hope. “Or maybe it’s the flu?” he says, snapping his fingers together like he struck the gold mine of an idea.

Eddie can be as hopeful as he wants, but as you lower yourself down to the couch from vomiting your insides out in the bathroom, the panic in his eyes is evident.

“Maybe,” you reply dully, dropping your head to rest against the back of the couch. 

“Do you want to lay down? I can bring you to my bed?” he asks with concern lacing his words. 

“I’m—” you start, but with acid suddenly rising in your throat again, your eyes go wide and you jump from the couch with a renewed energy, just barely making it to the bathroom.

────────────

To put it plainly, you vomited two more times after. When you finally felt like you were done throwing up, with an empty stomach and a sore body, Eddie helped you to his bed and you slept off your spell of nausea. When you woke up a few hours later feeling a touch better, both of you decided the best choice would be to buy a pregnancy test. 

“Just to be safe, right?” he had said, eyes burning into you as you laid sprawled across his bed, feeling no longer nauseous, but instead like an empty shell of a person. “We should buy one, right?” he asked again, eyes growing wider in your silence. 

It felt like even moving your sight line to look at him took too much energy, but you met his gaze, and he nodded his head like he had made his own silent conclusion. 

“We’ll go after, okay?” he said, continuing his one-sided conversation. Standing from the edge of the bed he wiped his palms down the front of his thighs before straightening out and rubbing his hand down from his mouth to his chin. He nods a second time, doing what you assume is him coming to another silent conclusion. “I’ll get you crackers?” he continued, eyebrows raised. 

With your eyes locked on him, you swallowed the dryness in your mouth. You hadn’t done anything notable, hadn’t even attempted to answer him, but his face softened, mouth turning into a regretful frown. 

“Sorry you’re sick,” he said, bending down to pat your head, letting his thumb trace gently across your temple. It was a tender movement and you absorbed the warmth of his contact, letting your eyes blink shut. “I’ll get you water too, okay? Water and crackers and we’ll see how you feel after that.”

Eddie’s a lot of things, but nurturing and soft, and with high levels of compassion is not exactly how you would describe him. He can be those things, but principally, he’s more of an asshole— but one that you love enough to keep around, obviously. But an asshole, nonetheless. The last time you had the flu he laughed at you and made fun of the way you threw up, albeit, it was when you both were in your teens, but regardless, he was a dickhead about it— and most recently, when you had gotten a cold, he ceaseless made fun of your constant sneezing and the blazing red tone of your sore nose from blowing it so much, calling you Rudolf and asking how ‘Big Red’ was doing at this time of the year. Asshole.

Dichotomously to the Eddie you’ve known all these years, he grazes the backside of his knuckles across your cheek, rubbing them back and forth gently. It's painfully obvious he doesn’t do this often from the way his hand jerks, finger nearly poking you in the eye, but you appreciate the notion. You know you must really look awful if he’s managed to compose this much compassion for you. 

────────────

They say that nothing makes people more productive than the last minute. As the pharmacy's closing time approached, it was only then when either of you felt so inclined to even mention going to get the test.

After Eddie got you your water and crackers, you started feeling much better, and feeling much better meant it was easy to pretend like nothing had happened. You both unhealthily and aggressively ignored your potential futures by acting like it was any regular Saturday evening. You talked about your upcoming work week, and watched the usually shitty reruns on TV. Eddie made some freezer-burnt chicken nuggets, you warmed up some soup, and it was boring and uneventful, but it was the most comforting that boring and uneventful could be. 

The sun began to set and it was like the ticking of Wayne's alarm clock on the coffee table beside you only got louder and louder as time went on. 

“S’almost eight,” Eddie had eventually mumbled. You swallowed, keeping your eyes on the TV as you found this particular old rerun episode of Mama’s Family to be the most interesting thing in the world, which is odd considering you usually change the channel whenever it's on. 

With both of you sitting at the couch, feet kicked up, resting side by side on the coffee table, Eddie moves his foot far enough to just barely knock yours— an attempt to pull your attention away from the screen.

“The show’s almost done,” you say, turning your head towards him but keeping your eyes on the TV.

“The pharmacy closes at eight.”

“I feel fine,” you shrug.

Moving your feet from the tabletop, Eddie copies you, putting his feet down on the floor, but he goes a step further, sitting up from the couch. He stands, facing you, but you keep your eyes on the TV, ignoring him fivefold. He props his hand on his hip, arm bent at the elbow, one foot tap away from looking like someone's mother. You ignore him tenfold. 

“You want to stay here while I go?”

“Go where?”

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” he laughs. You can hear the amusement in his voice. His hand drops from his hip and you look at him to see the smirk written across his face.

“Go where?” you double down. Huffing a laugh from his nose, he turns, opting to get himself ready, and begrudgingly, you do too. With your feet dragging through every step, you get in the car, and Eddie drives the two of you to the pharmacy. 

────────────

Under the bright, white fluorescent lights of aisle number eight, you and Eddie stare your potential future down. An unnerving amount of tests sit on the shelf at eye level, some with cute little daisy packaging, others looking sterile and pharmaceutical. 

“Why are there so many options?” Eddie asks, picking one up and flipping it to read the back. You look at the price tags and your mouth nearly drops to the floor. 

“Why are they so expensive?” you ask, taking the box out of his hand and putting it back on the shelf.

“Hey,” he objects, reaching out for it. “That one says response in twenty minutes.” 

“That one is, like, twice as much as that one,” you argue, pointing to another test.

“Yeah,” he says, grabbing the test from the shelf. “That one says a two hour response,” he continues, pointing at the exaggerated font on the front of the test in his hand, waving it in your face. “I’d rather be shitting my pants for twenty minutes than two hours.”

He’s acting normal, braggart and teasing, you can’t muster that same energy. Your stomach swirls and squeezes and does everything it shouldn’t do. Nerves or nausea, you’re not sure. A ceiling light flickers two aisles over and you can’t stand being here.

“Maybe…” you pause. Your hands start to turn clammy. “Maybe we shouldn’t get any,” you say, shifting in place. You turn to fully face Eddie, looking at him as he has a boxed test pulled close to his face, reading the side of it. “Maybe we should just go home.” 

Eddie turns to you, brows furrowed. “No— what? You just spent the whole day throwing up, we gotta get something,” he says, looking at you like you’re insane. The ceiling light flickers again and you definitely feel insane. 

It wasn’t the whole day, it was just the morning, you nearly object until you realize it doesn’t help your case. 

Bringing your hand to your mouth, you chew on the edge of your nail, distracting yourself from the tremble in your limbs. From left to right and back again, you flutter your sight over the different options. There’s too many. Too many and it’s overwhelming. 

“Hey,” Eddie says softly. The weight of his arm settles around your shoulder, pulling you so that your bicep meets the edge of his chest in a half hug. “Don’t be nervous,” he continues, in a low coo. You step inwards, turning the half hug into a full hug. Taking a deep breath, all you can muster is a short nod of your head. 

His arm moves from your shoulder, hand grazing down to your mid back. Focusing your attention on his touch, you take another deep breath, inhaling his familiar scent. Smoky, woodsy, and a contradicting sweetness from whatever shampoo that was probably the cheapest and on sale.

“We’ll be fine, remember? You probably just ate something bad.” he says. He rubs his hand up between your shoulder blades and back down. You want to believe him, you really do. 

“I’m scared,” you say quietly.

“Why?” he asks, voice just as small as yours. 

“It… it doesn’t feel like I ate something bad.” You swallow down the jagged edges of emotion that your voice gets stuck on. His hand, mid rub, pauses and you pull away enough to see him. His eyes glaze over with something you’re unsure of before he quickly blinks it back. 

“Well…” he swallows. “What does it feel like then?” he asks, brows turned upwards. He's nervous, you’re nervous, and the light flickers again, reminding you where you are. 

“Can we go home? Please.” Your nerves become far too jittery and it’s starting to turn into nausea again. Your stomach lurches and Eddie watches you for another moment, eyes searching yours until he nods, patting your back before pulling away.

“Yeah. I’ll just buy this one and we can go.” He takes your hand in his, twenty-minute-test in the other, and he guides you to the front of the store. 

────────────

“It’s almost nine now, so it’ll be ready at…”

“9:20,” you say when Eddie takes a concerning amount of time doing the math. The ride home was quiet. Being out of the fluorescence helped your nerves, and as you got further and further away from the pharmacy, and closer and closer to Eddie’s place, you started to feel normal again. 

“I knew that, I was just… thinking,” he responds. He sits up from where he was crouching in front of the dresser, using it as a table to put together the test. 

Decidedly, it was just nerves that had put you on edge, that’s it. The test is nothing but precautionary, just to rule out what could have made you sick. Eddie joins you, sitting on the edge of the bed. 

“Uh— before, we get a response,” he pauses, wringing his hands together. His eyes move down to his lap and your chest tightens. “I just want to say that whatever it is… I don’t regret what we did… and whatever it is, I’ll be there… for my girls.” 

He looks at you, his smirk widening by the second, and you can’t help the snort of laughter from escaping. Like every other ill-timed joke that he's pervasively told over the last month or so, he gets you, and you appreciate it this time as it lessens the gnawing feeling in your belly.

Despite the joke, when you really look at him, with his lips spread in a smile, his eyes swarm with the same trepidations that you feel. He’s a comedian but even the comedian is human. You try your hand at lightening the mood. 

“What if it’s not a girl?” you ask, playing along. He smiles, bumping his shoulder into yours as he huffs a breath from his nose. Shaking his head in an almost mirthful way you think you were successful until his demeanour drops into something serious. 

“What did you mean earlier?” he asks “When you said that it doesn’t feel like you ate something bad?”

“I just— I don't know. I just, I thought I had a feeling,” you explain. Eddie hums, eyes now set forward on the test. “I think I was just nervous, that’s all.” 

Twenty minutes has never felt longer. Eddie accepts your answer at face value but doesn’t do much to show it. He doesn't do much in general, and neither do you. At the ten minute mark, his hand found your knee. At the fifteen minute mark you were curled under his arm, resting your head on his chest as he rubbed up and down your arm. In the last minute, you had taken his hand in yours, playing with his fingers as you watched the seconds tick by on his Casio watch. 

21:19:59 turned to 21:20:00, and you turned to Eddie. Synchronously and in silence, you parted from each other. He stood and you sat. He moved to the dresser, and you held your breath. 

With his back facing you, you watch with unblinking eyes as he reaches for the instructions. Humming to himself, your lungs ache. You try to parse the meaning behind his tone, or vibration, or pitch — or anything that could give way to what he's seeing, but it’s far too vague. Taking a deep and vital breath, filling your choking lungs, you're just about to ask, mouth already open when he speaks.

“It says negative.”

“It says negative?” you parrot in disbelief.

“Negative.” Eddie firmly answers.

There’s no way. You should feel a weight lift from you, but, evident avoidance aside, that feeling is still there, stronger if anything.

“I…” you start, interrupting the loud beat of silence. “I’m not saying I want to be pregnant… but I think it’s wrong, Eddie.”

“Wrong? How could it be wrong?” he says, turning around to look at you. 

“I don’t know,” you shrug. “Aren’t they, like, only guaranteed to work like 95% of the time?”

“That’s still a lot of the time,” he says, copying your shrug.

“Yeah… but—” you shake your head, stopping yourself. This is what you wanted right? Why would you fight against the answer that you mostly hoped for? That you were already certain about in the car barely an hour ago. “Whatever. It’s probably right. I think… I think I’m just… tired.”

Eddie nods, agreeing with you. He turns enough to set the test down, abandoning cleanup for another time— gross, but when he asks you if you’re going to sleep over, you willingly ignore the unsanitary act of leaving a used pregnancy test to sit and simmer bacteria growth. 

“You gonna sleep here?”

“Can I?’

“Of course,” he laughs.

────────────

If it were a peaceful morning, you would have woken up to the warm, red tinted sun coming into Eddie’s room through the maroon coloured bed-sheet-turned-blinds. 

If it were a peaceful morning you would have woken up to shared warmth, his arm just barely tossed over your hip, hand resting in the dip of your waist. 

If it were a peaceful morning you would have been able to bask in the meaning of having him beside you— what it meant beyond just shared warmth, what it meant beyond friendship. 

If it were a peaceful morning, oh, if it were a peaceful morning…

If it were a peaceful morning, you wouldn’t have woken up to rising bile in your throat and your heart hammering in your chest. It's not a peaceful morning, it's a race against time. With your hand cupped to your mouth, ripping yourself from the shared tangled sheets, tripping your way to the bathroom over the crap on the floor, time almost wins. 

You made it by a stroke of luck with not a second to spare.

────────────

“It must be the flu,” you had croaked weakly. Eddie nodded, looking at you with tired eyes that had been startled awake by your fumbling and awful retching.

“Yeah, it’s definitely the flu.” It was not a whole hearted agreement, but there was no way any bad food would still be in your system. And with a negative pregnancy test, the flu is the only answer. Obviously.  

The next day, in the quietness of your apartment, you kept a preemptive bowl next to your bed, just in case.

Thank god you did because it was the worst it’s been yet, and with your temperamental luck, you would not have made it to the bathroom this time.

────────────

“Hello?” Eddie answered from the other end of the telephone line. 

Your untouched breakfast sits on the table as you stand in front of your wall-hanging phone, leaning against the counter to stop yourself from keeling over entirely. 

“It's me.” 

“Oh, hey, didn’t think I’d hear from you so early, what's up?” His near chipper attitude is grating and if you could strangle someone through the phone you might have muscled up the last of your strength and considered it. 

“I’m still sick.” If you sound as awful as you feel, and equally as annoyed, it's because you are every terrible emotion in the dictionary. You are the essence of a bad mood, a side effect of how sick you’ve been.

“Shit—” he cursed. “I have work in thirty but I can stop by after?”

“Yeah, you already told me you were working,” you snark, because obviously he has work. It’s Monday.

“Do you want me to stop by after?

“I'm just telling you that I’m still sick.”

The call lulls and you can hear a slight rustle from the other end.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Why are you sorry?”

“Because you’re sick and I feel bad,” he says, voice turning up like he's asking you if that is an alright answer. It’s not, and you twirl the phone cord between your fingers, distracting yourself from scoffing and saying something you know you’ll regret. 

The call lulls for another moment and he clears his throat, coughing right into the receiver. 

“Uh— aside from being sick… everything else okay?” he asks tentatively, pausing too frequently that it annoys you, even more so than you already are.

“I’m fine, I just feel like garbage.”

“Nothing else bothering you? I have a minute, we can talk?”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You’re— and don’t bite my head off— but you’re not on your period?”

“Why would you ask that?” You meet his stupidity with a harsh and rightfully deserved defensiveness. “Don’t you think I would tell you if I was? You know, all things considered.” 

His voice raises as he comes to his own defence. “Well, I just thought… 'cause you thought that maybe there was a chance that the test was wrong, but then we agreed it wasn’t and…”

“And?”

“And you’re in a bad mood.”

You hang up the phone and when it rings again, you let it. 

────────────

Eddie spent the whole day being eaten alive by his thoughts. You said you had a feeling, and Eddie knows you well enough to know you wouldn’t joke around about stuff like this. He would, he has, but you wouldn't.

Since the moment you told him that you weren’t on birth control, he had been thinking about it. Hypothetically, having a kid with you wouldn’t be the worst. He’d actually… like it… maybe? Would he say that to you? No, but it's not an awful thought.

Sure he made jokes out of it, but that was just his ill mannered way of accepting the fact that he kind of, maybe, potentially, would like having a kid with you… and being more than just friends. But he could never tell you that, so he made stupid, stupid jokes. 

But now that having a baby with you is less hypothetical, he’s fucking scared. Not because it’s with you, but because he might be having a fucking baby. That’s terrifying in and of itself. 

When you first started feeling sick, he let himself really believe for about an hour that maybe you had eaten something bad, but in his heart of hearts, he knew. There was no way. Four weeks and 3 days after he came inside you— not that he's keeping track of the days— and you’re suddenly experiencing ‘food poisoning’, even though you didn’t eat anything particularly abnormal or poison-like?

You’re pregnant. So fucking pregnant. There’s no way you’re not. 

“Hey, Bill. You have kids, right?” Eddie had asked as he sat down at the break table with one of his more favourable colleagues. 

Bill, more or less his mentor— or more eloquently put, the kind soul that's been helping him work his way up to being an actual mechanic and not just the guy who cleans and sweeps up after them like he’s been doing for the last year and a bit. He’s an older gentleman, doesn’t do much small talk, is in a permanent old man bad attitude, but he’s a good guy— reminds him of Wayne at times. Eddie trusts him enough, especially not to go talking about him around town. 

“Uh-huh. Grandkids too,” he answers, barely looking up from his newspaper. Eddie knew this of course, but he couldn't think of any other way to approach the topic. 

“Right, sorry,” Eddie apologizes, wringing his hands out of nervousness and dragging out the point of interrupting Bill’s lunch break.  

“You gonna be a father?” Bill asks bluntly.

Father? Eddie's familiar with a particular ‘F’ word, uses it way too fucking much in fact. Father, on the other hand, is an ‘f’ word that was barely in his vocabulary, he could go weeks without letting that word pass through his thoughts, let alone it being a descriptor of his very own character. 

Eddie’s eyes widen, mouth dropping open as his breath stutters like a kid getting caught red handed. “No.” he stumbles to answer. “Uh— maybe. I don’t know. We don’t know.”

“So what are you askin’?”

“Your girlfriend— uh, wife—”

“Wife,” Bill answers with an annoyed ring to it. 

“Right, your wife… What was she like when she got pregnant?” 

Bill shakes his head, ignoring the question. “Did she take a test? They have those now. Can buy ‘em at the store,” he gruffs.

“We did, but it was negative. She… she said they’re wrong sometimes though, and she thought that… she thought that maybe it was wrong?”

Bill sets down his newspaper, the edges of both his fists meeting the surface of the table top. He looks to Eddie, catching his flighty eye contact, giving him his full attention.

“Morning sickness?”

“She’s been sick the last couple of days.”

“Hormonal?”

“Hormonal?” Eddie asks, quirking a brow. Bill rolls his eyes, not unlike how Wayne has done time after time.

“Bad mood? Mood swings?”

“Kind of?”

“I won’t go into detail because I respect my wife,” Bill says, eyeing Eddie through slanted eyes. “Any changes that aren’t to do with her mood?” he asks, looking down the slope of his nose.

“Huh?” Eddie thinks hard, trying to decipher what Bill means. Bill gives Eddie an encouraging nod that quickly turns short-tempered.

“Her body? Any changes?” Bill grumps.

“Oh.” Eddie’s eyes go wide. “Uh— I don't know. She’s not really my girlfriend, we’re just friends.” 

“Just a friend you got pregnant?” Bill’s near-permanent-scowl breaks into a smile, lips turning at the corners in a sadistic way, eyes gleaming with taunting amusement. Eddie feels his palms start to sweat. 

“So you think she’s pregnant?”

“I think you’re up shits creek with a turd for a paddle, kid. Gettin’ a friend pregnant,” he scoffs, shaking his head as he laughs to himself. He fixes his newspaper back upright, picking up where he left off in the classifieds. 

“Well, we’re good friends. I— she… we—” Eddie thinks about telling him that it’s you— Bill knows of you. Eddie’s talked about you enough, but he bites his tongue for the same reason that he didn’t go to Wayne about this— it would be all, ‘just ask her out’, ‘quit pussyfootin’ ‘round it,’ but he doesn’t get it, he can’t just ask you out. He—

“You like her more than a friend.” Bill says, making Eddie freeze. He opens his mouth to speak, to deny, to confirm, to anything, but nothing comes out. “Oh you got it bad, huh?” Bill continues with a teasing smile.

“C’mon, it’s not—” Eddie tries to object but Bill sees right through it. 

“You love her?”

“I…” Eddie swallows, thinking over his answer. “I don’t know…maybe?”

“Well, you got an interesting journey ahead of yous if she really is pregnant,” he laughs again.

And with that entirely unhelpful conversation, Eddie spent the rest of the day not only ruminating on you being pregnant, but now, his feelings for you as well. 

────────────

After work he went straight home, showered, got redressed in sweats and the cleanest shirt he could find and beelined straight for your apartment. He made one quick stop at the pharmacy but quicker than even he anticipated, he was at your front door. 

He knocked, and then there you were, opening the door for him, not exactly smiling— but not looking angry either, or sick, which is a good start.

Greeting him with a quiet ‘hello’, you opened the door wider. He stepped into your apartment, and like he mentally rehearsed, he leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to your cheek. Before he could look at your reaction, he turned, hiding his face behind the curtain of his still damp hair, and kicked his shoes off. 

He’s just trying to get back on your good side. After this morning— your bad mood, and then him only making it worse by asking if you were on your period, which he knew you weren’t because you said that it's been weird since you stopped birth control but… yeah, he’s just trying to get on your good side, definitely not anything more than that. 

Clearing his throat and praying his cheeks aren’t as flushed as they feel, he tries to move on. “How’re you doing?” he asks. You spare him, and you don’t mention the kiss nor give him any weird reactions— which is good, right? You would tell him off if you didn’t want him to kiss you, right?

“I’m doing fine now,” you reply, turning to lead him to the kitchen. He follows behind, humming an acknowledgement. At your counter is a full, waiting dish that looks like and smells like spaghetti. You sit back in your seat, and he takes the one next to it, putting his brown shopping bag down in front of him. 

He watches you as you bring a forkful of your dinner to your mouth. “You’re eating, you must not be feeling sick anymore?”

“No, I stopped feeling sick around lunch and then I was starving,” you say through a second mouthful, swirling your third bite around the fork. 

“Nice,” he nods. Eddie’s not sure of much, not now, hardly ever, but you feeling better around lunch means you only felt sick in the morning, and you being sick in the mornings falls exactly under the conditions of morning sickness… and that means…

Swallowing down his thoughts in a thick gulp, he reaches for the pharmacy bag. “Well, I bought another test just in case,” he rushes out quickly, moving to take out the good part of his shopping haul to lessen the blow if the test somehow pisses you off. “—and I also bought you—”

“Liquorice! Oh my god and popcorn,” you say excitedly, interrupting him with the loud crinkles of you grabbing for the package of candy, quickly ripping it open. 

Eddie watches you closely, the way your eyes light up for some of your favourite foods. He was taking a risk, buying you snacks when he knew that you’ve been sick but it was that or flowers and flowers seemed a little too… forward?

Your reaction to the snacks though, it’s not abnormal, but it’s not exactly normal either… a bit too… ravenous? To be fair, you were sick and now you’re feeling better, maybe you are just extra hungry…. But then again, there's also your bad mood earlier and sure you felt like shit from being sick, but you were usually pretty happy whenever you talked to him. He wasn’t used to all of these… mood swings.

Symptom after symptom, his thoughts finally bubble out. “I think you should take the test again,” he says, interrupting you as you rip open the bag of popcorn. You pause and he holds his breath.

With a shrug, you resume your movements, reaching into the bag and grabbing a handful. “But I feel fine?” you say, waving Eddie off.

“I think… maybe just in case?”

“Here, sit down, I’ll get you some spaghetti,” you ignore him, standing from your seat. “It’s so good, I swear. This is my second plate full.” You grab a dish from the cupboard, serving some up from a pot on the stove top without waiting for a reply from Eddie— not that he had one, he was too stunned by your unconcerned mood to think of one. 

Adding a slice of garlic bread to the side of the dish, you place it down in front of him, quickly moving back to your own seat to dig into the popcorn and finish your own meal. 

“You didn’t go to work today?” he asks after mumbling a polite thank you.

“No, I called in. When I got the promo, I got like six extra sick days, plus vacation time, so I figured I might as well use them,” you shrug indifferently.

“Yeah,” Eddie nods, taking a quick glance at you before looking back to his plate of food, moving his fork around the plate absentmindedly. “Do you happen to have… better insurance with your job now?” he asks, attempting to match your aloofness.

You pause your fork before shoving it in your mouth, opting to turn to look at Eddie. He purposely avoids your eye contact, continuing to swirl his fork in his food.

“Why?”

“Just curious,” he shrugs. “Whenever I get my promo—” he pauses. “—if I get the promo, Coop gives out some shitty insurance plan. Was just wondering what you were getting these days,” he continues nervously.

“I have insurance.”

“Good.”

“Why’s it good?” you ask, squinting your eyes at him.

“Is it not good? You get sick, you don’t have to pay as much— I think that’s objectively good.”

“Fine,” you relent. You stare at him for another moment, but when you finally go back to your food, Eddie lets out a long breath that he was holding in before going back to his food.

He finishes his plate while lost in a daze of thoughts. There’s no way you weren’t pregnant. Absolutely no way. He doesn’t know much about pregnancy, that’s for sure, but this is checking off every single box in his very limited knowledge of symptoms. 

He only withdrew from his head when he felt you staring at him yet again. You had pushed your plate back on the counter, head resting in the palms of your hands as you watched him intently with a particular glint of something in your eyes, something that he’s only seen two other times.

“Hi?” he says shyly, cheeks tingeing pink. 

“You kissed me on the cheek when you came in,” you state.

“Yeah, I did,” he nods, cheeks deepening to crimson under your close watch. 

“Do you want to stay the night?” you ask, stretching your leg out under the counter, running your foot along his shin.

Eddie chokes on his food before looking at you with wide eyes. Elbow bent to cover his mouth as he clears his throat from his sputtering, his eyebrows raise high, hiding under his bangs as he works through your suggestion. 

“Like stay the night or just stay the night?” he asks, eyes burning into you out of shock. 

“I just kept thinking about before… and, you know…” you say, shrugging, hooking your foot around his calf.

“So like, stay the night?” he asks, eyes glimpsing down at your outstretched leg. 

With a sly smile, you nod your head making Eddie’s eyes grow even wider.

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m really sure.” 

Eddie takes a final bite of his food before pushing back in his chair. You excitedly stand, taking Eddie’s hand and leading him to your room. 

Maybe it’s a stupid thing to do when you’re both still up in arms about being pregnant, but Eddie would be a fool to say no to you. He physically couldn’t, has never had it in him. It doesn’t help that he really likes you and might potentially love you. And after all, he’s just a simple man. 

────────────

“Harder.” 

Your desirous voice echoing off of wallpapered bedroom walls, airy moans embellishing every thrust, Eddie does his best to give you what you want. Round two and countless of your orgasms later, you’re still begging Eddie to keep going.

Round one was fantastic. Sincerely earth shattering and left him winded and full heartedly wishing he took up track in his freshman year instead of smoking cigarettes. 

The night started with you riding him, insisting that he laid back, and who was he to say no to that? He watched you intently, grasping at your hips with each rise and fall, feeling the way your body nearly trembled over his own as you made yourself feel better and better. He was completely enamoured by the way your mouth rounded into a perfect oval, the way your eyes welled as you rose up and down, enjoying yourself truly and utterly. Then, when he took over, you were begging, whimpering, and moaning for him. He swore he had never came that hard in his life. 

With the long day of worrying and his stress induced sleepless nights wearing on him, he was nearly nodding off when you were on him for round two. It was exciting— you needing him like this, and his cock was kicking up again before he could process it. 

You came again, adding another tally to the growing tab of how many times you’ve come tonight. This time, you were on your hands and knees, back in a deep arch as he watched the recoil of your ass with each of his thrusts. 

The only thing on his mind was you. How you felt so perfect around his cock, how pretty you sounded whining and begging for him to keep going, how beautiful you are, and how badly he just wanted to keep making you feel good, but then it was like a switch flipped in his head. 

He heard it once, how pregnant women would sometimes get really horny. Insatiably horny— and you just kept asking for more, begging for him to keep going. You were cumming and still managing to ask him to keep going. He had never had sex like this before.

His skin that had grown damp throughout the night, covered in a permanent sheen of sweat, now drew dry, just like his mouth. His thighs burned, his calves begged for a break, his balls were aching from staving off his own release, and now there was very little uncertainty in his mind that you weren’t pregnant. 

Mid thrust, you clench around him, stealing his already stolen breath, pulling from his meandering thoughts. He refocuses his gaze on the bounce and jiggle of your ass and the sweet noises singing from your lips before letting his palms slide down the slope of your arched back, giving himself better leverage to keep going. 

There's no doubt in his mind that he can finish this round. Not only would he feel like an asshole if he tapped out now, but he would also feel like the biggest idiot because this has been it for him. This is the orbiting thought in his mind, the exact scenario that he conjures up in his imagination during his alone time. 

Swallowing thickly and taking an open mouth breath, he moves a hand from your back to wrap around your torso, finding your clit with his finger tips. “One more. Gonna give you one more, pretty girl,” he rasps, voice horse and ragged from his near panting. Your back arches even deeper, hips pressing back into his as you let out a wavered moan. 

“Feels so good, Eddie. Love your cock, feels so good,” you cry, taking heavy, moaning breaths between words, your voice staggering with each of his thrusts that push you further up into the mattress. 

“Mhm, know you love it, baby. Sucking me right in, n' so wet for me," Eddie says through exasperated breaths, words coming out babbled from his focus on not cumming as your walls squeeze him harder and harder.

“Want you to cum inside me again,” you whimper out. Eddie doesn’t answer, he just thrusts harder, rolling his hips against your backside, making you moan louder and giving you the last of every ounce of energy he has left in him.

When he feels your pussy start to flutter, tensing, and pulsating around him again, he knows you're close.

“Gonna cum for me, baby?” he breathes, voice only getting lower and more ragged from the absolute marathon of a night.

“Gonna cum, Eddie.” Your voice rises so high in volume that Eddie's certain your neighbours can hear. 

“Cum for me baby, wanna feel you squeeze my cock one last time tonight,” he grunts, starting to feel delusional with the way his head spins. He grips his free hand on your hip, pressing his fingers into your skin and grounding himself to you, trying to push away some of the daze to think clearly. 

Eddie feels your tightness pulling him in almost immediately. He holds off his own release for as long as he can, bringing you through your orgasm until he can’t take it anymore. He pulls out just in time for his own release, sending his cum spurting over your lower back as his chest practically explodes, burning lungs having all the air expelled from them in a wheeze as he stutters through his orgasm. 

After taking a few, long moments to catch his breath, he reaches for the same towel he used earlier, wiping you clean before falling to your side feeling absolutely exhausted.

“Wanted you to cum inside,” you say pitifully, cuddling closer to him.

“Can’t, you're not on birth control, we didn’t have a condom.”

“You did it before,” you pout. 

“Yeah.” Eddie says, exhaling deeply. 

Yeah and now he's 99.9% sure you’re pregnant. 

“It’s late, got work tomorrow,” Eddie says, eyes unwillingly fluttering closed as you push your way closer to him, pressing your bare chest to his, speckling gentle kisses along his neck.

“Are you sure?” you ask, pressing another kiss to his skin. He barely has the energy to respond and you deflate against him with a sigh.

“Baby,” he coos, frowning when he looks at your lower lip jetting out in a pout. As much as he’d love to keep going, he physically could not go for another round. His cock might let him despite it feeling nearly raw from all the friction, but his aching body definitely would not. “Let me just hold you, okay? We can cuddle,” he offers to try to fix your frown. It only works the slightest bit, relaxing the crinkle in between your brows.

He wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you into his hold. You let out a quiet whine at first, clearly upset, but you eventually relax into him, melding to his side. It’s not long before Eddie’s out cold, completely wiped clean of energy. 

────────────

You woke up, ripping yourself from Eddie’s grasp, hand over your mouth, rushing for the bathroom again. Eddie follows behind you, barely alert, but at your side, rubbing your back.

When you were certain everything inside your stomach was gone, you sat back, leaning against the edge of the tub.

“Think I should take that test.” 

“Yeah, I think so too.” 

────────────

With the anticipation of waiting another painstaking twenty minutes, you sit on the ledge of the tub in your bathroom, watching Eddie’s back as he tinkers with the test again. The tailbone pain from sitting on the ceramic edge is nothing compared to the swirling nausea growing from your nervousness.

He had sat with you for a few minutes like the last time, but got up halfway through to get you water. He dallyed in the kitchen for a few minutes, and it was far too casual for you, especially too casual for the dramatic dungeon master himself. It was almost unnerving. 

At the fifteen minute mark, he sat with you again, throwing an arm around your shoulder, and you couldn't help but nuzzle into him. If his casualness was him disguised his nervousness, he doesn’t let on. 

This time, at the twenty minute mark, his watch beeped the grating default Casio alarm, and with the chime of a button being pressed, he stands, turning his back to you as faces the vanity. You don’t follow him, you couldn’t at this point, you feel welded to the tub ledge. 

Unlike last time, he doesn’t look at the instructions. He doesn’t hum. He doesn’t make any noise, he just turns to you, his body blocking the test. You feel your heart rate pick up, but he doesn’t give anything away with facial expressions or body language. 

His mouth opens, he takes a breath, you hold yours once again. 

“Well…” he starts. “You were right.” His tone is flat and you blink, trying to clear your confusion.

“I was right?” 

“Yeah.” he shrugs. “About the last test being wrong.”

“No.” 

“Yup,” he affirms, putting a plosive pop at the end of the word. Too casual.

With your heart pounding in your chest, thumping miles in minutes, you couldn’t process this even if you wanted to, so you don’t. You deny it. 

“You’re lying,” you state, ending your words with a light huff of laughter. Surely, this is all a joke. Eddie’s a comedian, right? Ill-conceived jokes left and right over the last month, this has to be one of them.

He doesn’t smile. His eyes don’t light up. He doesn’t laugh. “Come look,” he says, beckoning you over with a tilt of his head. 

You sit up from the ledge of the tub, moving to stand next to Eddie at the counter. He pulls out the instructions, pointing to a diagram.

“If the liquid turns blue, that means pregnant."

You look at the test, not bothering to look where Eddie points. Blue liquid sits where any other colour should be.

“It’s blue,” you state.

“Pregnant.” 

Pregnant.

The moment is eerily still. In the movies this is where the happy couples jump with excitement. In TV shows, they call family and let them know their good news. In commercials, they celebrate. They hug, they smile, they cry happy tears together. 

Eddie’s your best friend, but you’re not a couple, this wasn’t planned. So you both stand in silence, staring at the positive test.

“What do we do?” you ask, swallowing the lump in your throat.

“We could go get something to eat? I can call out and we can rent a movie or something?”

“Something to eat?” you laugh. It’s positive and he’s thinking about eating?

“Yeah, you should try to eat something,” he shrugs, turning to look at you. 

“Eddie. I’m—” Pregnant, you go to say but the word dies on your tongue. “Why are you not freaking out?” you say, staring at him with wide eyes trying to understand how he’s not affected at all by this. You’ve known Eddie a long time and he’s not exactly the calm and collected type. 

“Well…” he shrugs. “When you said that you thought the first one was wrong, I trusted you more than the test. Believe me, I’ve been freaking out, but now… it’s, kind of, settled in already, I guess.”

“Settled in?” you say, jaw dropping in shock. It’s your body, you were mostly certain you were pregnant— in denial at times, yes, but you knew, yet having it confirmed is still shell-shocking. How has it already ‘settled in’ for him?

“Yeah,” he shrugs. “If you want to keep it, I’m happy. If not, I’ll support you.”

“Happy?” you say, bewildered. 

“Well… yeah. We’ve... we've been friends forever. A kid that’s part you and part me? That’s fucking awesome, how could I not be happy, y’know?” he says, moving backwards to sit on the ledge of the tub. He leans forward with his hands on his knees, watching you with eyes that are too calm. Too, too, too calm about this. 

In your quiet mental chaos, you take a final look at the blue liquid before moving to sit next to him. Your skin prickles with cold shivers but you feel hot all over, like there's a flame of nerves in your belly and a hot air balloon in your chest making each breath feel laboured. 

“I’m…” you stumble over your words. “I— pregnancy is so— Eddie,” you breathe out. Your eyes inevitably start to water.  

“Pregnancy is so Eddie?” he laughs before turning towards you, noticing your eyes turning glossy. His face drops immediately, features turning soft as his brows turning up in concern. “Hey,” he hushes. “It’s okay. We’ll be fine, remember? Everything will be fine,” he assures you, wrapping his arm around your shoulder again, bringing you closer to him in a hug. 

“I know, I just—” you force a breath in your lungs. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“You can cry, it's okay,” he says quietly, and unfortunately, each of his nearly-whistled, whispered consonants pulls out a wave of fresh tears from you. His hand rubs over your shoulder and your cheeks only grow damper. “It’s okay to cry,” he repeats and you press your face to the cotton of his shirt. He pulls you in tighter, rubbing your back in long, steady strokes. 

Eddie’s seen you cry more than a handful of times— more than several handfuls of times, but this is substantial— it just feels different. Different because you’re pregnant. You’re going to have a baby. A baby with Eddie. Your best friend Eddie. Eddie, who you’ve had sex with three times. Eddie, who you’ve known forever, who you’ve spent day after day with, as a friend. Friends. You’re pregnant. Holy shit. 

Your mind races and you divert your thoughts before you stray down that road. “It’s gonna be half you and half me,” you say, mostly to yourself, repeating his earlier sentiment. 

“Half you, half me,” he echoes. He presses a kiss to the top of your head and yeah, this is different— different because Eddie doesn’t kiss you on the top of your head. He doesn’t give you kisses on the cheek either. Eddie’s given you noogies, he’s butted foreheads with you, even flicked you on numerous occasions, all particularly during your shared middle school years, but kisses? Kisses are unheard off. What you guys have been doing lately is unheard of. 

“We had sex and now we’re having a baby,” you state plainly, trying to bring any coherency to the situation, desperately needed to hear the unheard of.

“We did and now we are,” Eddie laughs. 

“You came inside me and now there’s a baby in there,” you continue, hearing every syllable of your own voice.

“That’s—” Eddie laughs quietly again. “Yeah, that’s how it works.” 

“I had morning sickness.”

“Yes you did. And mood swings.”

Pause.

“No I didn’t!” you gasp, pulling back from Eddie to look at him with a scowl. 

“You kind of did,” he smiles, dimples set deep in his grin.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You were also insatiably horny. I was getting leg cramps all night because of you,” he says, bopping your nose, making you scrunch it. Asshole.

“I was not ‘insatiably horny,” you scoff, rolling your eyes.

“Well… if it’s any consolation, if you wanted to have sex again, I could cum in you now, ‘cause you can’t get any more pregnant than you already are,” Eddie says matter-of-factly, purposefully batting his lashes, playing up a faux coyness just to get a rise out of you. Such an asshole.

You respond by hitting him in the stomach, followed by pushing him until he almost falls into the tub, grabbing onto the shower curtain to stop himself. 

“Hey— hey, you were the one asking for it!” he defends, corners of his lips turned up in an untimely smirk. 

“I’m never having sex again,” you shriek, burying your face in your hands. 

“Well, let’s not make drastic choices right now,” he says amusedly, bringing you back in for a hug.

“I’m serious. Never again. Not with you, not with anybody. Ever.” 

“Let’s just get some fresh air, maybe we’ll start thinking straight about this,” he laughs, pulling you to stand up and guiding you out of the bathroom.

Pregnant.

tags: @princesatracionera @venuslayla23-blog @mastermindmiko @tlclick73 @yujyujj @josephquinnsfreckles @uselessnewt @animechick555 @prestinalove @sluggzillaa @daisyridleyss (if you want to be tagged for the next part I kindly ask that you please reblog!)

thank you for reading! <3

[romancefranaticstay]

☆.｡.:* Neighbor ☆.｡.:*

Neighbor!Jeongin x fem!reader

Category: fluff ❤

Warnings: ♥ None ♥ (but... maybe a little smut towards the end)

Note: A short story about some neighbor fluff, very romantic (in mine opinion), i hope you enjoy!

Xoxo

Rachel

You were wearing headphone's, jumping around with your music.

"I bring, I bring all the Drama-ma-ma-ma (hey, hey) I bring drama-ma-ma-ma (hey, hey) With my girls in the back"

You singed, making some little dance move's.

'나로 시작되는 drama (all that)'

You were heading towards your house when you saw a moving van. That's weird, you didn't move, did you? You snuck a little closer and saw a new family moving into the house next door.

You saw two people standing there, they were probably a couple. They looked quite old, maybe they had children. Oh! That would be so nice, to finally have friends in your neighborhood.

You went inside and grabbed a snack from the fridge. You didn't have much to do before school tomorrow, so you could finally get some rest and enjoy these beautiful spring days.

─── ❤ ── დ ── ❤ ───── ❤ ── დ ── ❤ ────── ❤ ── დ ── ❤

Eventually you started to get bored in your room. You went downstairs to your garden. Your garden was so beautiful, because all the sunlight always shone in your garden.

Beautiful, but a few clouds in the sky. The trees glistened in the sunlight, everything looked more beautiful than usual. Suddenly you heard a voice.

'안녕하세요, Hey.'

You looked around to see where the voice came from. You looked to your right and saw a boy leaning against the gate of your garden. He had black hair that fell slightly over his eyes.

"Hey."

"Do you live here?"

'No, I'm just sitting in their garden, sorry, I'm being sarcastic again. Yes, I live here.'

"So you're my new neighbor?"

'Ahh, so you are our new neighbors, welcome to the neighborhood by the way. It's very quiet here, so you're going to love it here.'

"I'm sure I'll like it here." he said under his breath.

"So, what are you doing?"

"I was actually listening to music."

'Can I listen in?'

"Of course, come."

He carefully opened the gate and approached you. When he came closer, you could observe his face better. He was actually very beautiful. He calmly took the headphones from your head and placed them near his ears.

"I know this song!"

'Really? What's it called then?'

'Let me think...

I'm a 퀸카 I'm a 퀸카 I'm a, I'm a, I'm a 퀸카 I'm a 퀸카 "

he started to sing. You laughed, he could actually sing very nicely.

"So you know it."

'Of course I know. Can I show you some songs?'

"Sure, go ahead."

He grabbed your phone and started typing something on Spotify. You recognized the lyrics immediately.

“Ahh, BTS run.

손 뻗어봤자 금세 깨버릴 꿈 (꿈, 꿈) 미칠 듯 달려도 또 제자리일 뿐 (뿐, 뿐)

그냥 날 태워줘, 그래, 더 밀쳐 내줘 이건 사랑에 미친 멍청이의 뜀박질 ..."

You both started laughing.

"Actually, I should be helping my parents, so... I'll see you later?"

'Yep, ofcourse.'

He waved and went out of sight. Finally someone to be friends with, or so you thought...

─── ❤ ── დ ── ❤ ───── ❤ ── დ ── ❤ ────── ❤ ── დ ── ❤

Every day you learned something new about him. He had a big brother and a little brother. He likes his personal space and he has some different tastes in music. His favorite colors are also Coral and Teal. He also has a lot of passion for music.

He told something about his friends, it doesn't mean that he has moved that he has to change schools. You've already heard of someone named Seungmin and Changbin. They sound very funny. He is the youngest of his group of friends.

You sat with him in his room, you lay on his bed.

"You know, I'd love to build a time machine and go back to the '90s."

'How so?' Jeongin asked.

"I just want to see how everything works there."

'Do you like the 90s concept?'

'Yes of course! The hair, the clothing style, the stuff, wow.'

'Yes, that's possible.'

'Which era do you find most interesting?'

'I don't really know, maybe just this time, because we live in the moment now. We live now and not in the past. We will never be able to live in the past, so why compare this time to the others?"

“Wow, very poetic Jeongin.”

'Am I wrong?'

"No, in a strange way it all makes a lot of sense."

"Let's change the subject."

"Okay sure, what do you want to talk about?"

'Maybe about love? Do you believe in soulmates?'

'Me? I don't know, sometimes I feel like there's one person for everyone. But sometimes I think that certain people just fit together because of certain interests. And you?'

'I don't know, I think so. I want to live with the idea that there is someone for me, who suits me exactly. Okay, maybe not exactly, but still.' 'Yes..'

"You know, this might sound really weird, but maybe I can try out my flirting techniques on you?"

"Sure, but don't think it'll work."

'Bet?'

"Okay bet."

He came next to you on the bed. He grabbed your hand with one hand and caressed your cheeks with the other.

"Do you think that'll work?"

"Shh, I wasn't ready yet."

He breathed deeply and started looking into your eyes.

“You always look like an angel Y/N.”

'Am I an angel? More like a devil.'

He rolled his eyes and turned back to you. He looked from your eyes to your lips and vice versa. He touched your lips with his thumb, your heart skipped a beat.

“These lips Y/N, these lips, the most beautiful thing.”

You couldn't say anything anymore, what could you say? Your hands slid to his hands. Even though he was so confident, his hands were a bit sweaty.

His face moved closer to yours and... he kissed your cheek softly.

'And? Good flirting techniques?' he says as you still hold his hands.

You cleared your throat.

'Yes, quite good, yes, I have heard better.'

'Are you sure?'

'Sure.' you avoided eye contact.

He turned your face so you were looking at him.

'A bad liar.'

Suddenly he pinned you down on the bed.

'And now?'

'Hmmm, it could be better.'

His eyes fell on your neck, he grinned. His mouth came closer to your neck, so close that you felt his warm breath on your so sensitive skin. His tongue made small circles on your neck, leaving small bites.

'And now?'

'It's better already.'

"I can always make it better."

His face came closer to yours, so close that you were about to kiss, but he only kissed your forehead.

Your puppy dog ​​eyes looked up at him. You wanted more... but not in a bad way. He wanted to leave again, but you didn't just let him go. You grabbed his face and pressed your lips together.

His eyes went wide, but he didn't back down. When your lips parted again, he just stared at you in surprise.

"How about that?" you said with a very big grin on your face.

You got up and went to his door.

“This was fun, I'll see you tomorrow. Same hour.”

You wanted to open the door but he stopped you.

"Do you think you'll leave now?"

He kissed you again and pushed you against the door a little. You felt his hands over your body, it couldn't be more romantic.

You looked down and saw that the bulge in his pants was big. He saw what you were looking at.

"Are you going to help me with this?"

'With pleasure.'

You said, leaving small kisses on his face.

─── ❤ ── დ ── ❤ ───── ❤ ── დ ── ❤ ────── ❤ ── დ ── ❤

[kaseyskat]

okay since they said that the san diego show is gonna be the only one Not recorded, i'll do my best to summarize the show for y'all!!!

-glenn's dad fact: the glenn close trio instagram (? i think?) is full of pictures of glenn standing next to a picture of the real glenn close

-darryl's dad fact: he and carol go to san diego very frequently because darryl likes the breweries and carol likes surfing! they have not "had sex" there once, but they HAVE made love (statements that made me cringe out loud)

-henry's dad fact: he and mercedes make a fake san diego burrito for themselves and the twins. it sounds awful.

-ron's dad fact: he thinks san diego is a type of eggo waffle

-the prompt that we rolled was called DADDY BABIES. the plotline? the dads (and paeden) went to the dimensional witch tilt toblerona to ask her to give them the strength of their youth back so they could find their kids. instead, tilt turned them into babies.

-the dads still have all of their memories of who they are as people and they can talk to themselves and to paeden (tilt does not understand them though, tilt only hears baby noises) but physically Being a baby affects their mental state just a bit

-ron wanted to stay a baby forever. henry tried to explain the concept of ageplay to him, darryl got confused thinking that ron just wanted to HAVE a baby like with samantha, henry had to explain fetishes

-during the baby section, henry is the most "adult" and ends up having to corral the others. darryl is a close second, but glenn and ron both Suffer Immensely

-while tilt is making. applesauce? the babies scheme on how to escape, involving an elaborate scheme in which henry uses mold earth on playdoh to make fake versions of themselves blue in the face and choking in a plastic bag and ron throwing his voice to sound like a baby crying. beth made the worst fake crying noise ever but then also gave us an INSANE dolphin noise when anthony called her out on it

-(also the dads had to roll object permanence to see if they thought tilt was gone forever when she was out of their line of sight. glenn failed this check very badly. darryl even played peekaboo with him to demonstrate object permanence and it failed. anthony made a horrible horrible joke that glenn's not a bad parent he just has bad object permanence even when it comes to nick)

-somehow this works? they trap tilt toblerona (glenn using illusory mind prison to make tilt think SHES the one choking on a plastic bag, henry casting stone wall on her to build a lego wall around her and effectively cask of amontillado-ing her) and then wander around the house looking for a way out.

-they realize they need tilt's key to escape, but first they watch an episode of bluey! henry is the only one who saved on a roll to Not be sucked into watching bluey and ends up unplugging the TV and going on a tangent about how screentime is bad

-(which is really fucking funny because he very explicitly says "lark and sparrow are well behaved because we set boundaries and have them play outside instead of using screens" and we all know how lark and sparrow are like. not???? not well behaved. henry im so sorry to break this to you but they are not well behaved-)

-anyways they get back to tilt, find and steal her key, and then open the door, promptly getting sucked through dimensions

-(darryl thinks for a second that he's in the rapture and tries to baptize himself in case his baby form isn't baptized. henry tries to help but goes on another tangent and they miss the opportunity)

-when they awaken, they find themselves now as teenagers in a classroom! and they see a GOTH PUNK SEEKER OF DARKNESS (phrases that made the entire crowd erupt in screaming, myself included)

-this time, darryl is the most stable of the dads! glenn coming in second, and then ron and henry were both. very teenager.

-darryl immediately offers to play ball with link. link is interested but ultimately gets shot down by tilt, who explains that they are in interdimensional detention forever

-glenn and taylor immediately bond over how cool they are

-scary asks ron if she can copy his math homework because he seems smart with a tie. ron agrees to let her but is very nervous about it (we later find out this is because he is not very good at math)

-teenage henry is a fucking delight yall. he sits there staring out the window at the trees and writing poetry (with long hair! long hair teenage hen is real!!!) about the trees and enjoying nature

-scary has to roll not to fall in love with him the second she finds out that he writes poetry (she fails)

-normal tries to bond with his grandfather. henry brushes him off entirely. its heartbreaking and also hilariously funny

-normal goes fucking apeshit yall. he gets so fed up of henry ignoring him and the others not talking to him and being trapped in this small room that he takes a crossbow and threatens tilt with it. she calls his bluff and he SHOOTS HER?

-at least, he tries. she catches the bolt and then tells him that if he's serious he needs to actually stab the bolt into her heart himself. he does. he's unhinged.

-tilt tries to explain her entire sob story backstory. darryl interrupts to boo her and call her a loser.

-glenn and taylor throw a desk out of the window to break it open. going out the window Will Kill You.

-ron paints the window like a slip and slide to try and trick tilt into going into it. it doesn't work. however two guards come in and it DOES work on one of the guards

-the other guard eventually gets physically thrown out of the window by taylor, who proudly declares that this will not affect him at all

-henry goes to talk to scary. scary gets excited, but then henry just asks if she thinks that teen darryl would go out with henry because even though he's "not henry's type", something about him is captivating. scary is heartbroken.

-darryl overhears this and rejects henry on the basis of him still dating carol! but offers to set henry up with carol's friends.

-glenn and taylor use awful fireworks to blind tilt, the other guard (that taylor kills), and normal since he was in range.

-scary tries to be bitter and calls henry out for being blind, but henry wasn't hit with the spell and immediately says some fakedeep shit about seeing more than most people do. it is insanely funny i cannot stress how funny teenage henry is

-link is now convinced that public schools were a mistake and he needs to leave Right Now. he rolls a nat 20 on taking the key, but uses it for himself to fucking dip. he just ditches them. he bolts for it. normal even tries to give him a high five and link completely goes NOPE.

-when nobody else has another form of escape, henry takes out his sketchbook? that apparently he always has as a teen? and uses summon creature to draw a boar and bring it to life. the boar smashes through the door and now they are saved!

-it is here that it is revealed this was all a dream but specifically a dream set pre-canon. darryl makes a comment about link being a narc. glenn tells taylor to never change because he's perfect exactly the way he is. scary tells ron that he sucks at math (and ron is very confused about scary's existence he doesn't know who she is).

-HENRY. tells normal to be the best version of himself. AND TO HELP HIM WITH THAT. he draws. TEENY. TO GIVE TO NORMAL AND INSPIRE HIM TO BE HIS BEST SELF. and that is how normal came up with teeny the teen as the mascot of teen high

-it was such a fun show, i'm so glad i got to attend! shame that it isn't being recorded

[gabessquishytum]

Dream attempting to punish World Pussy-Eating Champion Hob with oral sex is so funny to me. Hob intends to tell Dream eventually. Just, not yet. He's still having more fun with this than guilt over the deception.

Except, he doesn't get the chance to come clean.

Dream is with his (friend? sibling? someone he likes well enough to tolerate this sort of thing), and they start to tell the story of this guy they hooked up with a few times who ate them out better than anyone else before or since. And this guy LOVED doing it. So much, in fact, that they couldn't keep up with him. They felt a little bad about it, honestly, especially when he confessed that he'd NEVER had a lover who wanted as much as he wanted to give.

Dream is only half paying attention, until they drop this former hookup's name. And then? Dream has to leave. Immediately. There's somewhere he needs to be.

He shows up unannounced at Hob's flat and explains that he knows what Hob has been keeping from him, and Hob absolutely WILL be punished for this transgression (Dream isn't mad--he expects nothing less than this sort of behavior from his beloved brat--but he's not going to let something like this slide, either), but first? First, Hob is going to eat him out until HOB has had enough. It is a tragedy and a crime that no one has ever made PROPER use of that mouth.

Hob is hesitant at first. He's had lovers ask for this before, and none of them really understood what they were asking for. They'd all tapped out, and a few of them just ghosted him after. But he also wants to give Dream everything he asks for, and he can't deny he WANTS to eat Dream out until they're both sobbing. So he sets about eating Dream's pussy with all the enthusiasm and skill he's been holding back.

And that's how Dream discovers his hitherto unknown overstimulation kink. Which opens up a whole world of possibilities for Hob's punishment. Just as soon as Dream remembers how to speak in coherent sentences.

(Hob has to cancel his lectures the next day because there's no way he can give them with his tongue this sore from overuse, but he's honestly never been happier)

I'm so <33333 about this whole concept. And low-key emotional about Dream postponing Hob’s punishment so he can finally, finally sate his appetite for Dream’s pussy. That's love right there, baby. Make Hob feel proud of his incredible greed and skill for eating cunt. He should never ever have to hide his desire ever again.

I can fully imagine them going at it for hours. Dream is comfortably propped up in a throne of pillows, with Hob between his legs. And the first few orgasms are lovely, really. Dream can take it easily. He pets his hand through Hob’s hair, praises him, encourages him. It's only the beginning.

Hob wants to stay there until his fingers are wrinkled from being wet for so long. He wants to stay until his own mouth is dry and aching, until his lips are swollen and his nose is bruised. He wants to stay there until he passes out from exhaustion, with his tongue still buried in Dream’s pussy. He wants to give all that he has, to completely dedicate every bit of energy to Dream’s pleasure.

And Dream lets him. To be entirely fair, they both need to spend the next day in bed. Dream may not be attached to his physical form, but he's not sure he can actually stand up. Hob isn't doing much better, but he can't stop grinning.

Dream will have to come up with a punishment when he can find 2 braincells to rub together, but right now, all he wants to do is sip tea and give Hob lots and lots of cuddles. Safe to say, they will be doing it again.

[romanoffsbish]

I Still Can’t Fucking Breathe…

WandaNat x Fem!Reader

I Can’t Breathe

Requested 🥺 | Avoid this fic if you know you won’t fair well with “vivid” imagery

Warnings: Heavy on the past Self Harm/Current Temptations(Indulgences—ED/Physical stimuli—Cold Bath), Blood, Overall Numbness, Ideation. Ends happy, and this one shows the Reader saving themselves a bit 🥹 | 3,082 Words

Numb—A state of mind that is all consuming. Feeling anything at all is next to impossible. The thing about it too, is that it never goes away; it can be dulled, buried even, but in the silence it always finds a way to creep back in.

—————

For almost two years now you'd managed to evade its cold grasp, but after the fight you had with your girlfriends, and their disappearance immediately after for a month long mission, you find yourself back where you'd started. Thoughts of how the world would be brighter without you consume your mind whenever you have the energy to think, and when you don't all you can do is stare mindlessly at the door.

Everyday you lose more of your fight to stay, the lack of Natasha's comforting humming to put you to sleep has left you perpetually tired, and without Wanda's cooking you're starving. Pathetic is all you feel at the prospect of not being able to even exist without them here; it accompanies the numb well, because you cycle between fits of sobs, and dissociative episodes.

Two weeks of mindlessly existing went by in a blur, everyday you spent even more time in the bed, in unchanged clothes that reeked of musk. Trudging down the stairs had become a chore, one that seemed unnecessary when you knew the women you loved weren't coming back yet.

Your mind cruelly reminds you that it might even be permanent, flashes of their faces full of disappointment plague your mind all day long.

It's funny really—if only you could laugh...

You honestly can't remember why the three of you fought at all, it's all irrelevant now though. Nothing matters, no rational thought process is going to bring you out of your current spiral. Finding a cause for it will have no effect here... Natasha and Wanda's return is the only way you see this coming to an end, well, you also envision other ways but those come with a permanence that you're honestly unsure of.

Death has been a potential occurrence that you'd welcomed since your early adolescence. Memories of lying awake while your parents fought over God knows what echo in your mind as you ironically lay in this bed in total silence. A childhood spent fighting to survive breeding an adulthood where said concept was all but played out. Fighting everyday just to reach the end of your youth to find it doesn't get better. All you do now is scrape by with more burdens.

However, every time you feel those burdens weighing you down you remember that you had two people who were rooting for you to push back. Even with your doubts on if they still want you or not, a tiny part of you still holds onto hope that they do, and that's all that seems to be keeping you from the edge.

It'd been an entire sixteen hours since you last left your bed, every muscle in your body ached as you failed to utilize them, and there was also this really intense pressure on your bladder. Still, you generally found yourself unmoving, but then the air kicked on and you were aware of the stench you were apparently exuding.

Shockingly enough you were repulsed so badly by your own stench that you now found yourself standing still in the bathroom while the tap runs freezing cold water into the tub. Your lovers paid the bills, but in your mind you were undeserving of the hot water they funded. Cold water was a punishment you were worthy of, and so you entered the tub without a shiver; you didn't deserve to express your discomfort.

You watched the spout with an unwavering intensity, observing as the droplets of residual water fell about every forty five seconds. The minuscule sound of them rippling into the water reminding you of the way the crimson droplets of the past used to drip onto the tile flooring from your arms. Temptation is at its absolute precipice here, but then you start to see flashes of them with every single drip...

Drip...

The flash of crimson against a murky yellow tile fades from your mind fast. It's replaced by Wanda's smiling face and calm voice., "You're stronger than your thoughts are detka..."

Drip...

Your lip quivers as you see the oozing marks on your arms, too deep for your own patching up, you felt that familiarity; cold. When you blink you're quickly thrown into another memory. Natasha's arm is over your abdomen as she hums and smiles down at you, your attention slowly shifts to the opening door to see Wanda with a tray of food, and a wide grin; warmth.

Drip...

"Moya lyubov', I'm so proud of you.," Natasha cheers while placing soft lips to your faded scars before pulling you into a tight hug.

The last memory had felt so real, your wet body trembling as it imagined the pressure of a hug. Tears now befell your cheeks, but this time they were different as you now felt a glimpse of hope for the first time in two weeks. Their love was everything to you, and it was what guided you out of the cold tub, and what allowed your fingers to drop the untainted blade into a bin.

—

Natasha was thrashing about in the hotel bed, her mind wandering back to the night they left. Nothing felt right in her chest when she thinks of how sad you looked when they left in a huff. Angry words were muttered in the heat of the moment over shit that held no significance. Everyday that went by on this no contact mission led to a deepening sense of dread for the both of them. So much so that the top agent willing broke Shield protocols for you.

They tried to use a pay phone to call you, but you expectantly didn't answer, and they've been feeling even more uneasy ever since. Calling anyone else would've given themselves away, but now that she's staring at the ceiling of this dingy hotel room she reasons it would have been the smart thing to do regardless.

"I feel this tightness in my chest Natasha...," Wanda winces as she sits down beside her., "Something's wrong, and I'm not going to just ignore this and stay here two more weeks."

Natasha only nodded, hers was more akin to a deep pit in her stomach, but it was a definite sign that this mission was to be abandoned., "Let's go home.," she extended her hand out for her love, then guided her out to the incognito jet that was already holding their belongings.

—

It wasn't much—you knew that, but you were actually proud of yourself for being here at all.

Stood in the kitchen, dressed in Nat's sweats, and Wanda's oversized t-shirt you stared warily at the egg that was sizzling in the frying pan. Days had gone by since you last ate, so it was a daunting challenge to eat at all at this point. Fears of throwing it back up as your body is prone to retaliating against you in such ways consume your entire being leading you now to the safest bet you have—an unseasoned egg.

The crackling over the stove leaves your tired mind a bit preoccupied as the front door creaks open. Natasha enters first, followed quickly by the frantic witch who's heart momentarily settles at the sight of you cooking some food. The peace doesn't last long though when she fails to hear your thoughts, the emptiness in your head a frightening bout of deja vu.

Last time you were this calm they nearly lost you, and that wasn't a reality ever worth facing.

Natasha clued in to your state as well, her eyes roamed your body, taking notice of the way you had clearly thinned out in such a short time. Adding onto that the way you left your hair a sopping mess, and the lack of length on your nails she knew you'd been here suffering alone.

The women shared a moment of sorrowful eye contact, the witches lip trembling, but the former assassin shook her head—not now... Wanda nodded, then the pair made their way over to your rigid form, and as softly as she could Wanda laid her hand over your very own.

"Detka.," her word was a whisper that drew an audible whimper from your throat., "It's okay."

It wasn't really, you all knew that, but you all also knew that now that you're all together again that it would be fine eventually, and well quite frankly that had to count for something because if not, you were all left with nothing.

"Come here love, let me handle your hair...," Natasha coo'd in your ear as she gently guided you out of the kitchen and up to your room., "Sit down at the vanity for me please detka.," her voice was soft as ever so that she wouldn't startle you, she even smiled at you too for good measure, and though you couldn't return it just yet she saw the gratefulness within your orbs.

Natasha entered the bathroom with the intent to collect your brush, along with a variety of products for your hair and skin. The mess on the floor was overlooked completely as she rummaged around, but she stopped in her tracks when the lights reflected off something. Her hands trembled as she dropped the products in the sink before reaching for the trash can by the door., "Please, no, no, no..."

The truth became clear as she lifted the metal from the trash, a few tears fell from her eyes at the reality of what they were dealing with here. Thoughts of what could've become of you sends her tumbling to her knees, choking back her sobs because you didn't need more burdening, a tear falls atop the blade, and that's when she notices how easily it cascades off the metal.

The closer she observes the piece she realizes that there were no traces of blood on it, and no uncleaned stains along the tiles or sink either. It's enough to stop her tears, but the damage to her heart and psyche had already been done. The Russian rushes out of your joint bathroom, the need to be with you imminent, and when she finally reaches you she feels the need to hug you tightly, but she fears it might be too much too soon for you to handle.

Natasha set a hand on your shoulder, a clear yet non startling sign to you that she returned., "I'm going to blow dry your hair, then I'll put it up in a bun.," you shook your head., "Braids?," she tried again, and to her relief you nodded. The redhead went slowly, her hands gentle as they tousled through your wet locks, moving the hair around to aide the machine drying it.

After the hair was faintly damp she began to separate the strands meticulously, her eyes double focused as she caught ever tick of your face as she worked to tightly braid your hair. There was a ghost of a smile on your face when she scratched at your scalp affectionately, and her heart fluttered in her chest at the first sign of you coming back to them., "All done love."

"Detka, can I take your hoodie off please?," you looked at her warily, but eventually nodded., "Thank you.," she smiled softly at you even though her mind was screaming at her to hurry and make sure you were okay. At the sight of your unmarred skin she knew you were, her shoulders tension instantly eased up. Once you were slyly assessed Nat went into the hallway to collect her favorite hoodie from the dryer., "Arms up.," she gently commanded, and then she smiled when you groaned appreciatively.

"Now what?," she was shocked to hear your voice this soon, there was an obvious scratch to it from being inactive for several days, but it didn't effect the way she nearly burst into tears at hearing you speak., "Whatever you need.," the tears nearly won out though as she reached out to cup your cheek and you didn't evade her.

"C-can we please cuddle?," you looked at her with the most pitiful gaze, there was an air of embarrassment in them that left her a bit unsettled, but she still took your initiation of physical affection as a good sign that you were headed in the right direction., "Of course moya lyubov', sounds absolutely heavenly to me."

Natasha laid down first, pulling back the blanket she gave you all the autonomy here. Because though she was desperate to hold you, she also knew you were in a fragile headspace. She watched carefully as you slumped into a prominent dent in the mattress, her arms were now resting besides her body in wait for you. Without any words you used your hands to guide her flat onto her back, then after laying atop of her with your head over her chest you squeezed her arm., "Please hold me Natty."

Strong arms wrapped around your body in an instant, her hand was now resting over your head to hold you in place while she hummed along to your most favorite of her lullabies., "Sweet dreams pretty girl...," her hands never stopped rubbing calming circles into your back, and it wasn't long before you were snoring.

It wasn't until an hour later that Wanda quietly entered your shared bedroom., "What is it?," the witch lifted the tray into her lovers eye line, while hers fell to your currently relaxed face., "How long has she been out for Nat?," the redhead murmured her response of an hour while moving to rouse you awake, but Wanda reached out to stop her so she could do it.

"My sweet girl, time to wake up for me please.," her arms wrapped around your body as you shifted ever so slightly, she lifted you from Nat's body and settled you in her lap instead., "I brought you lots of different options honey, we know you're scared, but please try to eat."

Natasha was sat before you with the tray, she playfully waved food before your face to feel it out, her eyes watched your face for the slightest bit of intrigue, and she found that the apple dipped in peanut butter and yogurt chips seemed to win you over., "Here love.," you softly munched on the snack while instinctively l settling deeper into Wanda's embrace, and missing the way the pair were staring at you.

"How about these cucumbers in ranch, hm?," you allowed her to feed this one to you, your heart soon fluttering back to life at the sight of her emotionally charged smile, and also at the feel of Wanda's soft lips against your hairline., "Can you eat a little more for me angel?," you nodded against her chest, then accepted a few more bites of the varying foods until you knew you'd reached your bodies ultimate limit.

As Natasha carried the tray down to the kitchen Wanda continued to hold you close, rocking you in an attempt to soothe your soul. It had even appeared to be working when she felt your breathes evening out, but then she heard you gasping, and it was near painful for her to see you breaking down so candidly.

"I-I'm sorry.," her entire body froze as you not only spoke, but you felt the need to apologize., "No, detka we're the sorry ones here. We not only yelled at you due to our misguided anger, but then we left you all alone without so much as an apology or even a bit of reassurance."

"You didn't deserve that my sweetest love.," her lips tenderly pressed against your tear soaked cheeks., "So please don't apologize to us.," she then laid you down in the middle of the bed., "Let us apologize to you instead, we'll make it up to you, I promise...," her forehead was now pressed to yours, and your heart was cracking as her tears mixed with yours on your cheeks.

"We will, and we just hope you'll forgive us.," Natasha softly adds as she enters the bed, and masterfully pulls the both of you closer to her., "You're our entire world detka, the most precious thing we've ever called ours, and we will never leave you alone like this ever again."

"Nat—.," Wanda kissed your lips to cut you off., "She means it detka, no more joint missions, the promise isn't a fable—it's the truth, because if anything were to happen to you we wouldn't survive Y/N.," her voice cracked, and a steady stream of her tears befell your cheeks again. "Losing you would be devastating for us detka."

"I-I'm not going anywhere.," you sounded so small, like a meek little worker bee trying to impress the queen, but there was also a small flash of determination in your eyes that was caught by the both of them as they adoringly looked at you., "I promise I'm here to stay."

"Thank you detka, for fighting to stay, we know it's hard, but we're so freaking proud of you.," Wanda's lips lovingly pressed to yours, she just needed to feel the familiar touch she desired., "So gosh damn proud love.," Natasha agreed before taking her own chance to kiss you.

Neither of them stayed on your lips for long, they didn't want to overwhelm you at all, but fortunately for them you seemed content with the affection as you sighed softly and smiled softly as you melted back into the mattress.

There was no overnight fix for you here, they both knew that come tomorrow you'll be back in a vulnerable state, but the only difference is they will be there for you when you awake numbed. Natasha will be there to rock you in the morning when you wake up crying, and again at night, as she sings to you for as long as you need to fall asleep, and Wanda will be your hands as she bathes you, and feeds you when you can't manage to do the tasks on your own.

They'll be there to love you back to life every day until being a person again comes naturally, because even just one moment of happiness with you is worth a hundred bad days to them.

—————

[yourhighness6]

NATLA Debrief: Episode 3 (by yours truly)

Hi again! If any of ya'll are interested here's episodes 1 and 2. Thank you to those who have been following these deranged, unorganized posts, especially @phoebester (Just an fyi this will be hella long, just like the other two)

First of all, the way they framed the opening resistence scene was genuinely so cool because I immediately thought back to the cold open for the first episode. The streets are so similar that's where my mind went RIGHT AWAY and if that is not good set design and filming I don't know what is.

The resistance scene was so powerful for so many reasons besides those small details, too. The concept of a resistance within the FN was never addressed at all within the cartoon and I can't express how glad I am that they added this. It just makes logical sense that some people would resist, especially while so many are dying in war, and it really serves to humanize the FN people in a way that's reminiscent of book 3 ATLA. Perfect way to expand on the source material and introduce core themes earlier in the show (M Nite should be taking notes).

It was also a perfect way to introduce both Ozai and Azula's characters. Ozai is this menacing figure stepping out of the shadows (quite literally), an almost larger than life villain who seems to have every move planned and everything calculated. He's brutal and efficient and we can see that. Azula is conniving and smart, the kind of girl who can fool anyone and come out on top, but is ultimately still a weapon under her father's control. You can tell from the moment Ozai mentions Zuko that she is the underdog, but she is determined that it will not stay that way, and she seems just terrifying enough to succeed. (also idc what anyone says Elizabeth Yu has mastered Azula's look and general vibe. I feel like the whole 'miscasting' debacle was a mix of fatphobia and being shown the wrong stills before the show came out. She looked sort of sweet and innocent in those but I get absolutely none of that from this scene)

Ugh the exposition was great and then they have to give us this. What the absolute hell did they do to my Katara? Like there was a whole ass episode in the cartoon devoted to her getting mad because she wasn't progressing as fast as Aang and then in this fucking adaptation the maddest she sounds is when she emotionlessly declares, "I don't get it" to convey mild frustration. I'm sorry Kiawentiio, you're acting is great but the writers clearly have no fucking idea how to put your emotional range to good use. The same problem was present in the last episode and I just don't see them being able to fix it significantly enough at this point, even if they have a desire to. Not to undermine that, but there were a couple good points in this scene: Aang mentions something about bending being "beyond thought" which gives bending a more spiritual aspect that I like, and Katara's PTSD is brought up again in an intelligent way, but still, that doesn't matter if they're going to completely butcher her character. (side note: when is Aang going to learn waterbending? they haven't shown him training at all and I'm getting worried)

This scene was fine or whatever but what in the absolute fuck is going on with Zuko and Zhao? Are they not going to do the agni kai? Like I know there's still animosity there but they were really just sitting there (semi)-calmly enjoying a cup of tea and demonstrating only mild dislike for each other. All I have to say is if they remove the agni kai altogether I'm gonna be so fucking pissed it'll bug me forever and I'll be fucking insufferable.

Also Zuko is so mean to Luitenient Jee for no reason. I know it's because his abuse makes him see any kind of comradery as weakness so it's a good detail if that's what they're going for but ngl I also find it a bit funny. Like what did he ever do to you? And Zhao taking three tries to pass his officer exam is so perfect too like what a fucking looser lmao.

Ba Sing Se looks beautiful. There's something so mystical about it, especially in the way Aang describes it as they walk up to the gate. It's this hub of culture and science and art, but it's also incredibly militaristic and so changed due to war it's almost unrecognizable to someone who was there a hundred years ago. The adaptation of cultures during times of change is something ATLA does so well and I'm glad to see that it's continuing in the LA.

AHH Katara was so awkward during this whole scene and I loved it. For one thing Sokka's commentary was absolutely hilarious but it's also this reminder that Katara has been relatively isolated from other children her age and her brain is like "cute boy flirt how" and its so fucking funny. It might not be the same Katara as the cartoon who is effortlessly comfortable wherever she goes but this is so much more realistic and if she's going to be a bit different this is probably the best thing for them to change (now keep the awkwardness and give her back her anger Netflix I'm begging you)

I am slightly concerned because it looks to me like they're trying to condense at least four episodes into one and I'm not sure if that's going to be a cohesive plotline or a complete mess or not but if handled carefully I think they might be able to pull it off.

Ooooh the explosion was super unexpected and totally cray cray thanks for keeping me on my toes. I'm assuming it was Jet that planted the bomb although I cannot for the life of me think why. Anyways Teo was adorable I'm adopting him.

Also I am so so so happy that they gave him a little more depth beyond just 'happy glider kid' and gave a bit more nuance to his character. Of COURSE kids who grew up in war are going to be desensitized to the bloodshed OF COURSE they're going to be a little vengeful and be thinking about ways to win the war OF COURSE Aang is going to be uncomfortable with that because he didn't grow up with that militaristic mindset even if he did loose everything OF COURSE that's not going to change the fact that kids grow up hearing about death and experiencing loss as extremely young children versus Aang being suddenly thrust into this responsibility and grief because he didn't grow up like that he grew up in peacetime it just makes sense. Good job Netflix this was wonderful this was perfect I loved it.

Okay don't get me wrong I love the way Aang wears his heart on his sleeve I love how their in-the-face storytelling makes a bit more sense with how open and emotional of a person he is it's just part of his character that was improved upon by the LA in my opinion but this is also just... such a misunderstanding of the group dynamic. Like why isn't Katara seeing these people and thinking "I can help with this I have to help with this" and Aang giving this speech to Sokka jumping on the bandwagon? I would even accept them seeing the destruction together and mutually deciding that they need to help the people there (this would probably be best as it allows us to see both character's compassion) or Aang saying something about it and Katara immediately being like "ur absolutely right" but of course they can't do that all we need is a lengthy speech from the protagonist while Katara stands there like robot girl. My mistake.

STOP because her mocking face is so fucking perfect I love Elizabeth Yu she's perfect. Anyway, I think that they're kind of... adjusting her trauma a bit? I mentioned earlier how I feel like she's shown as a little more scrappy and an underdog as opposed to perfectly calculating and not a hair out of place, but after this scene I feel the need to expand on that. In the cartoon, Azula's abuse from her father centers around his unattainably high expectations for her that eventually cause her ultimate breakdown and the conclusion to her devastating character arc. But in the LA, they're portraying her as less of a prodigy and more of a hard worker. She still has incredibly high expectations, but in this version, she never meets them all the time. Her brother is almost leveraged against her in a way. Even if she feels like she is the best and has the constant need to prove she is the best to her father, there's always going to be this nagging insecurity that she won't be good enough to measure up to her brother. She's not being told she's worthless like Zuko, but she's not reaching every goal like cartoon Azula, either. This also might explain why she has arrows. In the cartoon, weapons are viewed with disdain by firebenders, making Zuko using them so controversial, but Azula definetely doesn't seem to be hiding her talent for the bow and arrow and even if it was a her-sneaking-away-to-practice sort of situation that's not very in character and I don't think she would do that. I think in this version she probably has them because she's trying to find every possible way to prove herself to her father beyond just firebending, and mastering a weapon is a way to do that. I'm not sure how I feel about these changes but she is clearly a different character in this version than in the cartoon and moving forward I'm going to treat her as such. (I've noticed this a bit with all of the characters except possibly Sokka: they're different people. I think this actually might be intentional. [even so I still don't like their characterization of Katara her trauma hasn't changed very much to my knowledge she should still have the same core drives and character traits])

As well done as Azula was, there was relatively nothing in the Ty Lee and Mai department. They're just kind of existing, watching her train. Ty Lee is vaguely cheerful (and her costume is great btw) and Mai has one line about exploring the world that gives a bit of insight into her character and has a monotone voice. They're both clearly a little scared of Azula but that's basically it. Hopefully we get more on them soon.

Back in Ba Sing Se, I noticed a bit of a parallel between Teo and Katara. The Mechanist mentions that they lost his mother due to the war, which reminded me specifically of Katara. Throughout this scene, we see that Teo remembers his mother's philosophy and adopts it into his own mindset far more than his father's. Their situation is different because while Katara is arguing for compassion Teo is arguing for fighting back, but they are both fundamentally saying the same thing. It's not enough just to accept their lot in life and try to survive or fight, it's about the big picture, and about defending the things they love. While Katara and Teo both approach this subject from a very different front, the core idea is the same. It's also telling how they are dismissed initially as idealistic for their values when they are really upholding what their mothers stood for in their eyes: for Teo, a symbol of hope in her retellings of the stories of the avatar, and for Katara, a symbol of kindness in her reminders to remain empathetic despite the horrors of war. Make of this what you will, I just thought it was a nice little parallel.

Anyway, allow me to have a few words on the whole Jet thing (in bullet points because I don't have enough brain power to do this)

I'm glad Jet got his freedom fighters outfit. I was a bit worried when I saw what he was wearing in the first scene he was in because the fit is iconic, and so are the swords

God he's so fucking dramatic "they call me Jet" while the sun glints off his swords and he turns slightly for affect it was so funny I laughed out loud

He and Kia have no on-screen chemistry I'm sorry. Like even the fight scene was so awkward and every time they speak to each other they sound so stiff. They're good actors independently but whoever was watching their chemistry check (I'm assuming they had one pre-production but judging by this crap I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't) was either asleep or it was their first day because there is NOTHING there

What the hell did they do to the Freedom Fighters? They're so cheesy and the costumes are so bad (especially Smellerbee's). Like seriously that entire fight scene was so awkward idk what the hell happened there but it was nowhere near the quality of the rest of the episode so far

Overall, I'm not a huge fan. Also where is Sokka I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be there somewhere

Okay here's Sokka finally. Are they just taking him out of the Jet shenanigans entirely? I wouldn't be surprised considering how many episodes they had to condense but still I would have liked to see that. Oh well, I guess they had to have Katara do something in this episode instead of just stand around while her brother and Aang have huge plot points. Anyway, this scene was very interesting to me. Sokka and the Mechanist bonded in the og but not to this extent, and I honestly liked that they did something a bit deeper with it considering they don't have as much screentime to establish Sokka's daddy issues (for lack of a better word). Anywho the Mechanist mentioning that there are other career paths to take besides just being a warrior was super cool and I think we can glean a lot from it about Sokka's future character arc. Maybe in this version he doesn't perfectly live up to his dad's expectations and instead finds his own way? It was nice to see Hakoda proud of him in the original but if they go down this path I definitely won't be mad. It's interesting while staying true to the character, it's just a different direction.

The scene with Aang and Teo was cute. They're both good actors who play off of each other nicely, and Teo talking about how he doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps lends a bit of insight to the conversation the Mechanist had with Sokka. He probably mentioned Sokka's dad because he wondered if his parents were engineers too and maybe is looking for a bit of an apprentice since his son doesn't take after him as much. This is also another way Teo conflicts with the Mechanist's way of life and may be more similar to his mother.

The jetara scenes at the Freedom Fighter camp had a much better dynamic. I think the fight scene was probably just them figuring each other out as actors, it just sucks that it seeped into the final take. I confess I was a bit disappointed that the Freedom Fighters didn't live up in the trees, but I guess that would be a bit difficult to engineer. I also noticed how Jet repeated Teo's "if not us, then who?" statement, which is probably just your basic commentary on how the future generations are our hope blah blah blah. It's a major theme so I shouldn't be as disinterested as I am in it but as it stands I'm still not totally thrilled with the Jet plotline as a whole and I think that may be affecting it. I feel like Sokka should be here to add some variety and spice things up a bit it's kind of boring.

The last jetara scene was definitely the best yet. I can't get over how happy I was to hear Jet say his mother taught him to fight. So often we hear how dads or older brothers are teaching the women in their family to fight but here we have a canonically badass male character saying that an older female relative was the one who taught him. One of the major complaints I have from the cartoon was how for all its talk about women being able to fight and its supposed feminist message, there were no women of the older generation fighting at all except for Jun, who wasn't even a particularly moral character like all these older men. We do have to remember that the cartoon started production over twenty years ago so it is a product of its time, when feminist issues weren't very mainstream. Another factor that might have contributed to the lack of feminism in the original was the generational discrepancies; millennials were the first to have widely accepted equal educational opportunities in the US, and even though educational opportunities are still affected by sexism, college became the norm for both male and female students at that time. This isn't to say women older than millennials didn't go to college, but this is around the time women and men started to become relatively equal as of percentage seeking higher education. Basically, they were the first generation of women expected to have careers, and therefore the writer's minds were probably shaped alongside a similar number of female peers, but primarily by men. This could have contributed to the lack of older women, but as times changed, so to did the amount of older women in professional fields. This line is a reflection of that, and I hope we continue to see more badass older women and older warrior women and women in power as the LA continues.

Other than that, I did take my shipping goggles out during this scene at the "sunrise" bit, and it wasn't about jetara. I heard from other fans in the zutara tag that the "you rise with the moon, I rise with the sun" line was removed but I keep thinking about how Katara is legitimately drawing power from remembering the sun rising, a time when the opposite element, Zuko's element, becomes more powerful. I know I'm reaching, but while I mourn the loss of our beloved "you rise with the moon, I rise with the sun" I have to find a new version. Anyway I think we should call this sunrisegate lol

Also, the way Katara is extremely hesitant to talk about her trauma whereas Jet seems completely fine with being emotional and dumping out exactly what he was feeling may have been a device but it does remind me of something I read about how ppl with PTSD will often react very differently when sharing their trauma and the same is true for many other trauma induced disorders. It was probably unintentional but I still thought it was a nice detail.

Anyway on a less serious note Iroh and Zuko's dynamic is still top tier. I've seen a lot of people complaining about Iroh's character but I don't see anything wrong up to this point. I might be in for a shock in future episodes but I have genuinely no idea what they find so off putting. He's a great actor and the character has legitimately not changed. The line above was a bit undercut by the fact that he's standing in the middle of an enemy city with a cloth half wrapped around his face to keep part of his face from being seen, but I'm just gonna take it at face value (haha pun). I think the thing Zuko despises most is cowardice, and it affects his perception of the war in a huge way. He calls Aang a coward for escaping from prison because he was running away or whatever and I've never considered Zuko a particularly logical character but it's like... bruh he's outnumbered like fifty to one what he is gonna do? Anyway his definition of cowardice is directly tied to his honor and his perception of it in relation to his trauma and the way he held back in the agni kai and him perceiving that as cowardice maybe... Ya'll got me? This isn't fully formed because I obviously haven't seen this new rendition of the agni kai but I'm guessing the events are basically the same. Do with it what you will.

I skipped over the Azula and Zhao scene because I don't have any groundbreaking commentary except to say that I liked it. It ties Azula into the story nicely and gives Zhao something actually interesting about him (I don't hate him as much as I did in the cartoon so whenever he comes up on screen I just sort of yawn).

Anyway, it was nice to see Katara get a bit angry. I think this captured the gaang dynamic pretty well. Aang being relatively neutral/ quiet while the siblings argue and Katara gets twice as mad as Sokka. Also he may have had the last word but she had the last laugh:

Again, the sibling dynamic was really great but I didn't feel like Katara was carrying it as much as in previous episodes. Sokka actually played his part in making it interesting and realistic. I don't think this single argument is enough to redeem Katara's characterization in my eyes but at least we know now there is a little spark there.

AHH THE SCARF SCENE! Scarfgate was everything I could have asked for and more. Like why does he appear directly behind her like that unless he's trying to fight her? Why does he just let her go by like that? Why does he hold out his hand in the first place? Truly is the Watergate of our time it deserves that name. (also in the same episode as the whole sunrise thing? come on) I'm probably being baited but at least I'm enjoying it.

So I was right about the bombings! I can't believe all those cute little kids are terrorists but I couldn't believe it in the cartoon either so I guess that checks out. Either way I find the bombing far less forgivable than trying to take out the Mechanist. Innocent civilians were hurt and even though I know there was a real possibility that civilians could have been hurt in the attempted bombing for whatever reason it just seems... more brutal somehow. Like the first one was in the center of town, you know? Anyway terrorism is wrong I hope Jet finds his way.

(I was worried about how they were going to tie all the seemingly unrelated plotlines together but I think they pulled it off. Again my main problems were all concentrated around the Jet plotline but when the Mechanist was tied in it became a lot more interesting)

When I heard this I was like "son ur about to get ur ass kicked" but the funny part is he was kind of right. Like when neither of them were bending he was winning. I guess in all fairness he is a lot bigger than Aang but I don't feel like that was an accidental detail. Anyway, I think this fight scene was the most entertaining yet and so much better than jetara against the firebenders earlier. Maybe the affects for water are just worse than air and fire (it feels slower somehow) but I'm very partial to this fight. And that's saying something because I usually fast-forward through fight scenes or just kind of tune them out or barely watch, so you know it was really good.

I think the reason I liked it so much was that it was funny, honestly, not in the same way or to the same degree the cartoon was but I laughed out loud a couple times. For instance Zuko gets hit in the face three times in the span of ten seconds, once with a plate, once with a wicker basket, and once with his own little stick thing. Aang also put a basket over his head and some random ass lady started whacking him with a fan. Kudos to whoever choreographed that it was the best.

Also I liked how Sokka and Katara saved the day together. Cute sibling bonding excersize. And it ended on a cliffhanger with the characters separated! My favorite kind of cliffhanger! It definitely left me wanting more.

Anyway, to recap, things I didn't like:

No Zuko and Zhao agni kai

Mai and Ty Lee were just sort of there

Katara's characterization is still so-so

Jetara plot line was boring and chemistry was not the best

It was kind of a lot for one episode, even if they managed to do it well

Things I did like:

Opening scene

Azula characterization

Teo

The Mechanist plotline

Teo and Katara parallel

Katara DID actually seem a little bit more firey in this episode

SCARFGATE

Zuko and Aang fight scene

Surprisingly good handling of all those loose ends

Cliffhanger

Overall, I would give it a 9/10. That's the highest score I've given an episode so far and I'm standing by it. I know others might have a very different opinion on it since it was condensed so much and differed a lot from the cartoon, but I agreed with many of the changes they made. One thing I would urge everyone to remember is that these are different characters from the cartoon. They're going to act slightly different and have slightly different journys and that's okay. I think it is worth comparing to the original, as it is an adaptation, but we need to remember that an adaptation is not an exact replica, nor should it be. That in no way means that we should make allowances for anything we found negative or mediocre, but it is going to be different and change in it of itself isn't a bad thing. Anyway thank you guys so much for sticking with me! I'll probably have the next episode's debrief up by tomorrow.

[imari4444]

Imma ramble about a fan fic idea I had centered around the nameless bard. (Warning, a lot of text ramble)

Okay so Yknow how there’s a lot of fics where the nameless bard comes back to life?

When i first joined the genshin fandom i used to eat these fics up, but something that always upset me was the lack of nameless bard reincarnation fics (i think i came across one in my hours of internet searching). Let me ramble further here… to me, reincarnation and ‘resurrection’ are two completely different concepts.

Coming back to life; that person is still them, same memories, same face, taken right from death and brought back in the future.

Reincarnation however? New relationships, new face, new person, and sometimes the character doesn’t even remember there past life.

So before I wrote my current fic I use to play around with a fic idea that would have been nameless bard centric. The nameless bard or carmen as I call him would have been reborn in Mondstadt about 14-16 years before the Dvalin crisis. (Building relationship with the mond characters wayyy before venti even wakes up)

At first he’d have no recollection of his past life, just feelings and senses of Deja vu.

When his hair started growing out as a little kid he’d braid it in the way that felt right to him (his classic braids) and I had this funny scene in my head where an adult would coo at baby Carmen like “oh! Taking after Barbatos are we?!” And baby Carmen would feel so offended that he’d cut his hair short the following day. Yeah… drama (also when venti does arrive in Mondstadt… so much miscommunication )

Carmen immediately doesn’t trust Barbatos at all! Because seeing Barbatos face feels off, and the idea of a god ruling Mondstadt’ feels off, so being compared to him just makes him the pettiest kid ever.

Also to add spice to Carmen’s wounds I planned that he’d be a ward of the church like rosaria, and be an unwilling devote of Barbatos (rosaria is his role model of rebellion of course!)

Later in the fic he’d start to remember everything! And of course Barbatos just becomes even more suspicious ! Because he’s wearing his past face and for some reason Barbatos has the credit for aiding the rebellion even though Carmen was the leader and definitely doesn’t remember a winged god there.

But Carmen would ignore this in favor of finding out what happened to his family. Beginning the serching of trying to find out what happened to his friend and little brother venti when the stormterror Crisis begins.

I have more silly ideas with this AU, but I haven’t been able to write them since I’m focusing on Windwheel. However I have considered once I finish book one I could write this story (since it’ shouldn’t be too long -) before continues Windwheel but in case I didn’t, I wanted to share the main idea because it’s been in my head for years! I needed to write it somewhere!!!

In case I do ever write the full story in my head I think I’m going to call this non existent fic ‘A second chance at freedom,’ so… I can organize my tumblr tags… I like organizing sue me ;-;

[allastoredeer]

I just found some Hazbin Hotel leaks, pre-being pick up by A24 and, do you know we could have had an episode where Charlie meets all the Deadly Sins? We were absolutely robbed of a pretty good filler episodes before the big finale with heaven.

Here's link to the leaks: https://imgur.com/a/nCorcZq

In case the link doesn't work, you can also look at this tumblr post: https://www.tumblr.com/hellaverse-critical-confessions/727383242254204928/hello-the-pre-a24-leaks-anon-again-heres-link?source=share

I really hope they use some of this old concepts on the next season cause they seem quite funny and interesting. Those ideas could help flush the characters out a bit more and the worldbuilding. What do you think?

Me writing notes while reading the leaks:

OOOH HOO WE GOT SOME WONDERFUL CHARACTER INSIGHTS! Especially with Husk!

“Angel and Charlie drag Husk out to a carnival show to show him the not-so-sleazy side of life. This proves difficult with Husk being raised to know nothing but crime and no experience with innocent fun.”

Husk has no experience with innocent fun. He only knows the sleazy side of life T.T Also he has mob connections 👀That is good to know. I find that so, so interesting. It explains it grim outlook on life. Why he's hardly every smiling or having fun. I think one of the first times we actually see him smile is after fighting those shark demons with Angel Dust in "Masquerade."

Now that I'm thinking about it, he smiles a lot more after that. Or, at least from what I remember. I might need to rewatch the show (for the dozenth time, LMAO). But, that kind also goes to show how much this guy needs friends. Good relationships. Connections outside of crime, which is all he's known all his life.

I WANT HUSK TO HAVE PURE, DUMB FUN AND TO LAUGH AND SMILE AND IM SOBBING JUST THINKING ABOUT IT

Also love delving more into Vaggie too. How she's incredible responsible, but controlling. After reading through a few of the episode description about her, my personal headcanon/take is that she still has a bit of that "angels are superior" mindset in the way that when she challenges Maxine, she's quickly reminded of her own limits when she's defeated "very easily." It's like what Carmilla was saying in the show. The angels are arrogant in their fighting. They leave themselves open, they're brash, and uncoordinated because they're not used to fighting demons who can actually fight back.

As far as we've seen, all of their victims are regular demons. None of the Overlords. Well, except Carmilla that one time, and she'd taken down the Exorcists with relative ease because she knows how to fight, and she's powerful. Given that this is the first time an Exorcist has been killed, and the first time we hear about an Overlord being attacked during the Extermination, I assume not a lot of Exorcists come face to face with the Overlords.

So, this kind of brash arrogance still lingering in Vaggie, who see's a demon talking down to her and automatically challenges them to a fight, only to lose immediately. Then her falling back into her insecurities that if she's not able to protect/fight for something/someone, than she's useless (which is ANOTHER thing she's learned from her time as an Exorcist angel--if she's unable to fight for the cause, what use does she have?). It's like this double-edged sword, and I'm rahhhhhh I'm gnawing on it.

ALSO ALSO, getting not only one annual event held in Hell, but TWO! "Hells Weapons Exo," (which I like to think Vox co-hosts with Carmilla, as she is a weapons manufacturer, and Vox is the guy to go to if you're looking to sell/buy something. Also, Vox HAS to have a showmanship side of him. Like, a legitimate showy, entertainer side--which I also like to think is what brought him and Alastor together before their, uh, falling out.)

Their second event being "Challenge Day" where lower tiered demons can challenge higher tiered demons for control over souls? I interpreted this in two ways, 1) challenging a higher tiered demon for the souls they already own, or 2) challenging the person who owns your soul as a way to get it back - both of which I really like. It actually fits really well with some of the world-building I've been doing for the last few days, so I am eating it up.

ALSO THE FACT THAT THERE'S A ROYAL BALL HELD AFTER "CHALLENGE DAY." My RadioApple brain LATCHED onto that so quickly. Imagine Lucifer taking Alastor to the royal ball as his date T.T I wanna see them all dressed up fancy, and I want them to dance, and dsofslknjljblkjbj FUUUUUUCK

Thank you SO Much for sending me this! I am soaking up these lore pieces like a sponge.

It also mentions Angel and Charlie taking Husk to a carnival show, which makes me wonder if there are places like carnivals open in Pentagram City, or if it's similar to the traveling circus thing Blitz grew up in. Like, do hellborn demons who doing travelling circus/carnivals just go through all the rings, one-by-one, including the Pride Ring? That way the Sinners get to get in on it too? AH! I just love thinking about it.

Thank you thank you I am feasting so much right now.

(THIS ALSO MAKES ME SO UPSET ABOUT STUDIOS LIMITING SERIES DOWN TO 8-10 EPISODES A SEASON, WE COULD'VE GOTTEN SO MUCH CONTENT AND WORLD BUILDING IF THEY'D GIVEN VIVZIE AND HER TEAM A PROPER SEASON TO BUILD IT ALL UP AND GRRRRRRRR)

Oh, also, I just realized I didn't answer your original question about the Sins, GOD I wish we got that. I want to see Charlie interacting with all the Sins so badly. Though, I suppose with Amazon not really owning Hazbin Hotel, where all the Sin's have been showing up, I wonder if they'd be able to do an episode like at all.

I don't know. Things to think about.

But to sum up! Thank you so much for this! I know this answer kind of went on long LOL, but you have given me so much brain food and I am eternally grateful 🙏

[fatuismooches]

so i was thinking back to that post about pantalone getting the receipt of all the things dottore buys for fragile!reader. imagine pantalone, columbina, and maybe signora making elaborate plans to find out why on earth is dottore buying romance novels and tcg cards. their plans get increasingly ridiculous and the segments find it funny to see some of the most powerful people in teyvat kneeling on the ground and huddled up together, only the tops of their heads visible from behind the windows(or counter) of the lab. and when reader finds them while they're on their daily walk reader is all oh hey there :D

YESSSSS ily anon!! You know Pantalone would definitely get the others in on this... he is SELLING this story to them and gathering as much backup as he can (namely Columbina... I also hc she likes to make fun of Dottore lol) You can bet they are reading those romance novels to tease Dottore about later on lol (bina def recommends you some though)

The clones are having a field day with this whole situation. They can't blame the Harbingers though, you are so interesting and lovely... who wouldn't want to know you? Well, clearly their creator has a huge problem with the rest of the Fatui even knowing about their existence. He is adamant about them not speaking to you. Probably a mixture of it'll be a headache for him to deal with them *cough endless questions and teasing* and he's unsure if it'll cause stress to your health.

Dottore's lab is hella huge so on days you feel like being alone, you tend to go a good distance away from the center. So one day you see a few figures in the lab that you can't recognize you immediately get a bit on guard... and then you realize those are Dottore's co-workers, as he calls them. You sometimes caught a glimpse of them from far away, and Dottore always looked like was at this wit's end with them. Understandably you are rather excited to have some interaction with anyone that's not Dottore... and the Harbingers are just like 🧍‍♀️ when you start prattling on with them so causally

The funny part is that a while ago I began working on a fic with this same concept, called "The Doctor's Beloved" and I can say I have a lot of brainrot from it😭

Snippets from the fic:

The Fatui Harbingers were gathered together for a very important meeting. At least, that was what the ones who had bothered to come thought. Instead, they were greeted with that familiar, infuriating smile of the Ninth Harbinger.

“I, Pantalone, call this Fatui meeting to order.”

--

Columbina spoke up, draped over Arlecchino’s shoulder. “Ah~, I’ve seen them before. But I can never get a good glimpse of their face… they always cover their face with a veil, just like how the doctor never takes his mask off. I wonder how they look…”

“Dottore’s actually spending research funds on this [Name]?” Childe gaped. “That crazy guy hardly ever thinks about anything else besides his beloved research.”

“Perhaps there is a person who shares that spot with him,” a new voice joined the conversation. Pulcinella had now entered the room.

--

“I mean what I said.”

“So you’re saying that…” one voice began.

“This [Name] person…” another continued.

“Is Dottore’s lover?!” an exclamation echoed from a few throughout the room.

[saintsenara]

I’m obsessed with your unhinged ship opinions! They’ve really gotten me thinking about interesting combinations which is such a fun activity for the subway

My submissions:

- Narcissa Malfoy/Petunia Dursley

- Voldemort/Molly Weasley

- Nagini/Crookshanks

- Walburga Black/Barty Crouch Sr.

ahhh, thank you so much @epigaea-repens - light of my life and producer of the finest piece of fan art i've ever seen - i'm genuinely delighted to discover that somebody other than me gets something out of doing these.

narcissa malfoy/petunia dursley

i'm oddly partial to a bit of draco/dudley - entirely because the idea of vernon trying to out-pompous lucius is funny to me, as is the fact that they'd clearly both think harry would care and harry's actual response would be 'who's draco?' - and i have to confess myself partial to this too.

narcissa's narrative mirror is molly weasley - both of these women share a certain fierceness [and, especially, a fierceness and strength one might not expect of them at first glance], but they also share a certain disconnection from the rest of their family, and an undercurrent of loneliness can be detected in their characterisation.

this is present in the way petunia is written too - the implication of canon is both that she's married "up" in terms of social class and that vernon is quite a bit older than her.

[and her fandom reception is a victim, i think, of the aging up of the adult cast of the films - petunia is, at most, twenty-four when lily dies. like her sister, she marries and has children young, even by the social standards of 1970s/1980s britain, and having to take on harry changes the trajectory of her life when it's only just started - i am absolutely wedded to the idea, for example, that harry being placed in her care means that she gives up a plan to have a second biological child.]

she is, of course, also confined in a prison which is directly of her own making - the bland domesticity of her perfect little house, all of which is an artifice constructed so she doesn't have to admit how deeply she once longed to be magic. narcissa experiences the same - i always read her as someone who leans heavily on the gendered conventions of the wizarding world as a way of coping with how utterly both of her sisters defied them, and as being someone who is very concerned with keeping up appearances [hence why her wildness and desperation when she goes to see snape in half-blood prince is so shocking]. i think you can imagine that she runs malfoy manor to have the same nothing-wrong-here vibe as number four privet drive, and i think you can do something very interesting indeed with the idea of two women who live behind masks being forced to drop them when they find each other.

lord voldemort/molly weasley

does, in fact, exist, in the form of a story i will recommend to everyone - come slowly, eden by paimpont - which, like all the best rare-pair fics, takes two implausible characters and creates a genuinely meaningful love story between them, through a lovely character study of molly and her ability to notice when people [and, especially, when people who are very much in want of a mother] are hungry.

nagini/crookshanks

i had to look up crookshanks' gender for this - which is a wild thing to say on a weekday afternoon - so that i could confirm... flopping. nagini's a lesbian, crookshanks misunderstood when she said she liked pussy.

it's fine in the end, though. nagini's got something happening with one of the malfoys' peahens, and crookshanks can go back either to the enemies-to-lovers thing he's got going on with mrs norris or to the soulmates thing he's got going on with sirius.

walburga black/barty crouch sr.

i am completely obsessed with this concept, i don't even think it can be considered a crack ship, and i would like to see it written immediately.

debilitating grief at the son you thought you knew disappearing - whether literally or metaphorically? delicious.

[alygator77]

I came back to apologize for my previous ask about the smut in M&M. Not about the question, but the delivery.

Reading it in retrospect, it sounds terribly abrasive, abrupt, and rude. That was not my intention. I’m actually quite embarrassed that I typed it out the way I did. Very disrespectful, and I am sorry.

I’m also a single mother, AND a business owner, who happens to read a lot. And as a matter of fact, I do write my own fics.

When I came across yours, I was immediately enamored by it, especially because I had never seen anything like it. I LOVE the entire concept. Its creative and extremely relatable. Especially for people like me. I realize I should have led with that.

I felt very strongly that you needed to know I truly wasn’t trying to be an asshole when I asked. The delivery was awful though, and since I wrote it in the middle of the night when I was already tired and my brain was looking for smut (lol but not really funny), I projected that in a bad way.🤦🏼‍♀️ I truly regret it.

In an attempt at an explanation, I saw most of what I said as a joke, i.e. “Good God. If they moved any slower, they'd be going backwards ... Sorry ijs...” I remember actually laughing when I typed that.

It wasn’t meant to be an insult, but more rhetoric or hyperbole. I wasn’t careful with my expression, so I apologize for that, too.

All of that being said, I also just happen to be a straightforward person, but I wasn’t angry at all when I wrote it.

When I said “Why not omit the smut altogether?”, I was actually wondering why you didn’t just choose to just make it fluff instead (though you can do what you choose). As I read it, it didn’t feel like it was even mandatory, especially considering the dynamic between them, and how it was clear he had strong feelings for her from the beginning, even when they worked together.

I also admit that with the tags, I had an expectation of more, which is where the mess that came out of me originated, but I was absolutely not expecting it for every chapter.

I don't agree with adding too much, adding it in every chapter, or that the only thing that matters is sex. His character really is objectified a lot, and all of that can dilute a story very quickly or even ruin it.

My question was more geared towards gaining an understanding of why you chose the route you did. Which was a far better way of asking than the way I did, and there’s no excuse for that.

I hope you continue to write great stories, and again, I SINCERELY apologize for my insensitivity.

Firstly, I would like to say I really appreciate you reaching back out to me — I was pleasantly surprised to read this and it makes me SO happy to know that there are people like you on the internet, capable of addressing a misunderstanding in a respectful and thoughtful way. You being willing to send me this says a lot about who you are as a person, so seriously, thank you.

No hard feelings on my end, all is forgiven. I can completely see where you were coming from and I also relate — there have been many times in my life where I’ve said something and it came out different than what I intended. It happens love.

When I said “Why not omit the smut altogether?”, I was actually wondering why you didn’t just choose to just make it fluff instead (though you can do what you choose). As I read it, it didn’t feel like it was even mandatory, especially considering the dynamic between them, and how it was clear he had strong feelings for her from the beginning, even when they worked together.

I will happily go ahead and answer this question! There are two answers to it.

The first answer is that I will not omit the smut altogether simply because… I like sex? 🤷‍♀️ Idk, it’s a simple answer really, lol 😅 But I think to put it in perspective, I like sex in a different way most people consume on this platform. I am demisexual — so I have to have that close emotional bond with someone before I find them remotely attractive. When it comes to writing smut (and sometimes even reading it), this really plays a big part to both my inspiration and my comfort level.

Secondly, I’ll address what you said regarding the characters in the story, specifically relating to the comment about how the smut wasn’t mandatory. 

Personally, I do think the smut scene in ch 3 was relevant to the story bc it gave readers an insight into Satoru’s feelings/perspective. While yes, Satoru was drawn to reader in the beginning, he didn’t understand his own feelings, and there were walls he built up around his heart (you get a glimpse of this when he talks to reader about how he never wanted to get married; it was after their courthouse ceremony in ch 2).

Also, most of the interactions between him and reader were subtly intimate in chs 1-2… he really did not start acting more bold until after the smut scene in ch 3 (ie, he tries to kiss her in the supply room and in the kitchen). Basically, his walls did not come down until they shared that first kiss, because it solidified his own feelings for her. He mentions this to reader when they share their second kiss in ch 6.

If you listen to the song on my playlist for mhm called “Cardiac Arrest” by Bad Suns, it really speaks to the image I had of Satoru while writing the scene during/after their kiss in ch 2.

The moving too fast thing plays into readers character. She was cheated on by naoya (also naoya is just a prick lol), so of course trust is not something she is going to give lightly. I did not feel comfortable having the smut continue in ch 6 bc it felt like their relationship would regress — reader wasn’t honest with satoru yet yk? It would’ve felt super hypocritical for her to preach about how important trust is to her, but then not deliver it herself. putting myself in satoru’s position, I would feel pretty hurt if immediately after I fucked someone for the first time, they suddenly decide to tell me a secret they were hiding from me? 🙂‍↕️ Again... idk, that could be just me though, bc as I said, emotional bonds are big when it comes to physical intimacy for me.

Anyways, I hope this gave you some perspective to my own thought process and answered your question love.

As a fellow mom myself, just wanna say, you single moms are literal super heroes 🥺 Sending you love bc it is NOT easy. Thanks for reading my story and apologizing 🫶🏻

-aly💕

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Well that Champion of Champions episode was great. Ridiculously funny from start to finish, and all the tasks were top quality (maybe apart from the studio task, but even that wasn’t bad). I thought every contestant had at least a few really memorable moments.

I love the way the COC episodes get to be celebrations of Taskmaster as a whole. They can’t really do that in the regular episodes, because they’re playing to a studio audience that hasn’t seen the previous episodes from that season, so they try not to call back to too much stuff they haven’t seen. And they’re trying to appeal to casual TV viewers who might not have seen previous seasons, so there aren’t too many references to that either. But I guess they figure that anyone watching Champion of Champions has seen the preceding stuff, and they make it full of references.

I loved bringing back the bandstand from the early seasons, and this was the perfect time for it. I wouldn’t want them to do that in any of the regular episodes, for the same reason why I think Alex is right to say they won’t reuse old tasks – too easy to slip down the road to capitalizing on nostalgia and stop being original. Seeing the new, increasingly elaborate task location is a fun part of all the new seasons, I wouldn’t want to give that up. But bringing back the site of some of the greatest, establishing early Taskmaster moments for a one-off special was perfect.

And then they got in lots of ways to bring back old seasons. Kiell referencing the banana task. Dara’s outfit being a tribute to all of season 14. Ramsey’s name coming up on Sophie Duker’s signs. The comment about proposing to Alex Horne like in season 12. And obviously the constant mentions of Mae Martin. I like how they did that. That they didn’t try to be slick TV and pretend that everything had gone exactly according to plan and this is how the lineup was meant to be; roasting Kiell for an entire episode was much more fun than that.

I think I also agree with what Ed Gamble said on the podcast, that this may be the first time there’s been a Champion of Champions that makes total sense. Let’s be honest, Josh Widdicombe was quite good at Taskmaster but not the best player out of all 25 from the first five seasons (I think that might have been Noel Fielding, but then he chose to mess around and stop being competitive in COC1). And I also agree with Ed Gamble’s assessment that Richard Herring was competent in only one episode of Taskmaster, and it was COC2. That’s what happens when you only have one episode instead of taking the winner from an aggregate. And when you add a Golden Snitch studio task to it. But Dara O’Brien might be the most competent person to play in seasons 11-15, so that’s nice to see him as a Champion of Champions.

So there was a lot to enjoy about the episode for its place in the larger Taskmaster lore, but it was also just enormous fun as a one-off. That’s the other thing that’s fun about the COC episodes – it is cool to see an episode where everyone’s actually trying and no one’s particularly bad at it and everyone brings something interesting to the table.

Alex immediately going way too hard and way too personal when Sophie asked him to insult her. Sarah Kendall clapping for like half the episode and not realizing she was wearing a watch. Dara completing an entire task without even standing up by popping elastics off his head. Morgana remembering that season 12 task where she popped all those ice cubes in her offer and roundly outdoing herself with paint. Dragging the Greg statue across the ground. Sarah Kendall just being furious for the entire episode. Kiell not even bothering to try to find Alex. Kiell getting roasted all episode for the embarrassing flaw of not being Mae Martin. Sophie calling out Greg. Dara's wig montage. Sarah Kendall being absolutely furious. Did I mention that enough? God, I’d missed Sarah Kendall being furious.

Do Something Stupid was a brilliant task concept. I’m glad that stealing things from other versions is a loophole in Alex’s stance against reusing tasks, and I’m glad they found a way to make it broadcastable (though of course we all salute Guy and Urzilla for the lost task that the NZ producers are too cowardly to show us).

Hats off to the new champion. Hats, and wigs off to the new champion.

[just-orbiting-you]

https://x.com/jmnpromise/status/1820402605258052036

https://x.com/jmnpromise/status/1820403462762602618

Any new explanations and excuses ? 🎤 or you pretend not seeing this ask so you can continue to gaslight followers and yourself thinking Jkk is real ? Weren't you all celebrating WHO being gender neutral earlier ? Now Jimin himself said asking HER out as Slowdance meaning. Also you all said Rebirth is most personal song, turns out it's him falling in love with his crush which again is a girl who he's inviting for a dance in next song. And both songs are written by him.. Let it go already guys.. Jikook isn't real nor JM is with a man. He's throwing at your face at this moment that he's searching for A GIRL, A HER. While you misunderstands his message and bends his words to fit your non existent gay ship narrative.

i know you’re baiting me and probably have sent this to multiple other accts. but yeah i will explain! thanks for the opportunity!

In this post, i wrote about how in minimoni music, jimin made it very clear to me that MUSE is a concept album. his experiences of falling in love on this album are not true to his own experiences OR he doesn’t want us to think as such.

and you could say im making excuses because i like jikook all you want, but i am taking that from an artistic point of view. jimin explaining his process jn developing the messages of the songs felt similar to how jungkook chose the songs for golden. love is a universal emotion, let’s sing about that. jimin used love as a metaphor here, if you can’t comprehend the idea that art is transformative to the human experience, then im sorry.

i’d say probably 75% of music written these days is not directly autobiographical anymore. even when you’re writing about yourself, you twist things that might sound better written in different ways, etc. i find it hard to pair every word written by an artist back to their personal life. some artists are very clear about it, like jimin on face and yoongi’s solo work, but other times things are not so 1 to 1.

for the usage of “her,” there is NO way in HELL that jimin could use a “he/him” pronouns in a song if he truly is queer. i believe him to be so, and even then him singing about a girl does not erase his queerness. but his status and culture prevent him HEAVILY from referring to anyone else. like wake up seriously!!! and i find it funny that no one talks about how the rest of the songs on the album don’t use pronouns! everyone immediately focused on who!

plus jimin got extremely embarrassed in those clips talking about the romance theme of the album, and i just feel like he either doesn’t want to connect himself to it or feels uncomfortable with thr narrative. something is up in how he is acting.

finally, i will say that who being the final song leaves us with the notion that this person (whether jimin or not) hasn’t found a true love. they’ve been searching and dreaming, but nothing has come to them. even if you want to tie it back to jimin, he says this about who.

he said a similar thing in minimoni music about using who at the end to convey that he is ultimately left with an empty feeling, questioning when he will feel excited about life again. all of the previous track feeling upbeat, happy, and full of love end with who, a song without definitive confirmation that this person has found love.

i already have a hard time determining the reality of jikook’s relationship, i don’t like to blindly convince myself they’re real. still though, i find a lot of jimin’s thoughts on muse fall out of range for jimin’s romantic experiences. muse is not about himself directly.