#also y'all never go with your first character design. I knew this but did it anyway and it was a mistake-

[adzy-drawz]

Swap AU doodles, I drew Pomni like once and then couldn't stop

plus this, the order of the images wouldn't fix themselves for some reason so just read it from right to left lmao-

[maddsmallow]

" "con, don't you ever fuckin' relax?"

"lieutenant, i'm a machine. i don't need to 'relax'."

"oh fuck you, come on, we're on break. loosen up a little or something. you can chill out from your fuckin' mission for the three minutes it'll take me to smoke this cigarette. and shut your mouth before you go telling me it isn't actually exactly three minutes on average to smoke a cigarette or whatever."

connie closes her mouth. a small addition to her list of missions to accomplish is made: try to appear "relaxed" to appease lieutenant anderson. a raise in friendship means an easier partner to work with, so connie carefully inspects the lieutenant's posture and does her best to replicate it. being a machine of plastic and metal certainly doesn't make it easy. "

hankcon, but gorls. did i base hank off of my butch lesbian manager at my old job at a sex toy store who was covered in spongebob tattoos? absolutely yes i did

mostly i just wanted to portray fem!hank as a Large Woman because i think there is a severe lack of that. broad with muscle hidden under fat, like the kind of woman who does shot put. so uh,,, ms trunchbull basically LMAO. deep voice, raspy from smoking and drinking, all that good stuff 😩👌 also peep the button on her jacket hehe

got some headcanons and stories for them under the cut!

-hank wears cargo shorts 100% of the time. no matter the weather or temperature. like, 'bill and ted at prom in shorts, but it's her at a dpd ceremony in cargo shorts' level. but not actually because i'm totally gonna draw her in a pantsuit later, totally not with connie on her hip in a slinky dress 👀

-also yes hank's shirt is a spongebob reference

-when people ask hank why she goes by hank and not her "real name," (which i like to headcanon is "henrietta") she always says, "oh it's actually a really funny story, i'll tell you later," and the later never comes lmao. or, if she does tell you, it's some made up wacky story that actually has nothing to do with giving herself the name hank. the real reason? she just likes it

-speaking of "henrietta," this story, 'if you know where to look' by ghost_teeth, works so fucking well with a lot of my headcanons about how their characters would be like genderbent! highly recommend it, and all their dbh stories honestly!

-connie has a compact gun (i asked my brother for examples and he said sig p365 or springfield hellcat, which i think work perfectly for this) holstered inside her jacket on the left side. also, i'm stealing this idea from this post (which basically almost has the same design for fem!connor (altho like, most designs for her are basically the same lmao)) but she also has a knife strapped to her thigh

-her skirt is actually made of some super high tech flexible and durable material, and she's got specific programming to make her balance crazy good, since she'll be running in heels. she's made to hunt and pursue deviants so obviously she needs to be able to run and jump. the outfit is only made to appear like a standard "business woman" to blend in with the humans she would be required to work with, but otherwise gives her everything/doesn't hold her back from doing what she needs to complete her mission. here's a bonus conversation i had with @extraordinaryandroid about it lmaoo:

-hank met connor-51 first for the ortiz case, but connie-52 (with 51's memories of course) came in the next day when it was announced they were to be officially paired to investigate deviants. cyberlife has their grubby lil hands in everything so of course they knew their RK800 unit would be paired with this lieutenant anderson before basically anyone else, and deemed that she'd get along better with a "female model" that she would find attractive. which of course has hank like WOW that's super weird and gross of y'all! and i fucking hate that it's working you pieces of shit at cyberlife !!!! but ofc connie's like "im a machine i dont even have a gender" all the while hank's sweatin major thirsty bullets

-at the cyberlife tower, connor-51 is the one to hold hank at gunpoint. how did he get hank to trust him? idk i haven't figured that out yet lmao, but the angst of connor-51 essentially taking the place of -60 from the game in the sense that he's clearly deviant in some capacity, in this context being that he feels connie stole the life he deserved (which he'd never admit) and now wants to suck up to cyberlife and be their best boi to feel important and special again and not knowing they'd just throw him away for the RK900 model, is very good imo. that was a very long sentence so i hope it made sense lmaoo. have i worked out all the details of how all that shit would work in a story? absolutely not, im too busy thinking about butch fem!hank making her robo girlfriend bluescreen in the bedroom 🤪

also if ur wondering wtf the background is, idk. my usual plain color gradient was too simple, but i did NOT want to put in the effort to do a whole ass real background, so i settled on something in between. meh, it's just them hagin' out behind the station on a smoke break ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

consider supporting me on ☕! ko -fi. com / maddsmallow (without spaces)

[ghostfrog28]

Y'all, Episode 6 may be my favorite episode, so far at least

holy shit, so much happened in this episode and I loved it so much! This is gonna be a long rant, so just warning ya!

The gang helping Thad study was such a nice part of the episode, I’m hoping Thad passes his exams and gets to be a doctor! Also, Lena teasing Ash about him talking like Denny’s and how they’ve been spending a lot of time together was really cute and funny. Can’t wait for their party night next episode!

The little conversation with Ash and Denny’s in the car was another one of their moments together that I just love seeing. Also, I’m wondering what the context was for Denny’s almost going into work with part of Ash’s uniform lol. And we got more from Brady which I loved to see! He’s one of my favorite side characters, and when Brady brought up that Denny’s is “always talking about” Ash, it’s like when you introduce a friend to your parents or siblings and they just flat out tell them you have a crush on them (Brady gives major older brother vibes) and I can just imagine Denny’s saying “Brady!” In the same whisper yell that Ash did to Lena lol

That phone call with the director lady was difficult to listen to. I was so happy that Ash got the part, but with everything happening? Who knows how that’s gonna work out! And Ash’s voice cracking while he was talking to Denny’s made me wanna cry 😢 Brady coming in with the big bro energy, asking if things are ok and him trusting Denny’s when she says that things are ‘fine’ was really sweet

Brady checking in again, love it. Poor Lin, girl was trying to sleep lol. Also, I like that she warned Denny’s that Lexi was there already because I can’t imagine what would happen if she just went up to the door and heard her in Ash’s room. I agree, she’s getting better but she does have some of her tactics that she’s still using, so I’m not completely over my hate for her, it’s getting there but not quite. Also:

Alexis: I deserve him, don’t I? Don’t I?

Sophie: you may think that, but he didn’t deserve what you did to him, neither did Thad.

5. Now we get to talk to him. Honestly, hearing some more of his pov of the relationship really put into perspective how bad it actually was. Like, Ash, babe, never telling your partner ‘no’ to something cannot end well for either person. Also, I like that we constantly are being his ‘therapist’ cuz honestly, he needs to talk about that emotion baggage he’s been dealing with.

6. the pancakes!! I loved this little callback to the first episode, I knew the moment Denny’s asked Brady to make something before she left to see Ash, that was what it was going to be! Also, the little play fight over both of them eating the food was really cute and funny!

7. THE CONFESSION! THE KISS!!! IT FINALLY HAPPENED AND I LOVED ALL OF IT! Him liking Denny’s since the beginning was so sweet, and all from a little gesture of Denny’s being nice, just because she wanted to! (Also, did they actually, do something or was it just kissing, cuz it sounded like there was a fade out but it could just be me hearing it weird) Them cuddling and watching the sunrise was so cute! I keep re listening to that part! Also, the phone call between Ash and Thad was adorable, just them giggling like a couple schoolgirls about a crush. In my mind, Sophie was just going “you guys are such dorks”

And, you already know I have more art for this!

This may be my favorite outfit and shirt design I’ve made so far, I loved this so much

But yeah, that’s all! Sorry this was a pretty long post and I was ranting for quite a bit, but I just love this series and these characters so much! The big art post is in the works, it’s getting there (slowly lol) but it’ll be worth it!

Can’t wait for what happens next!

bye!

[drvrslcense]

🌹 + a random word or a prompt and a character, and i'll write a very short blurb with those two things!

happy advanced birthday cloy!! ^^ ok so i just have this soft spot for jason,, and imagine going on a picnic with him like,, picking flowers with him :(( feeding each other dessert :(((( (i realized this really isnt a word prompt now is it....) anyways i hope you enjoy writing!! and again, advanced happy birthday <3

hiii loveee aaa ilysm tysm for joining my celebration <33 i made soo many jason fics today lol so here's one from the celebration! hope y'all enjoyy <33 also, happy birthday jason grace imyy bbyyy <33

Jason looked stunning in being bathed in sunlight.

There was something about the way the sunshine hits him this sunny afternoon. Maybe it was his brother, Apollo, giving him the spotlight. Or maybe it was just the way he simply looks handsome. Wearing a button-down shirt with the first button undone, his blond hair a mess from the warm ocean breeze. He was absolutely stunning, and there was no denying it.

Finding a quiet spot in Long Island Sound this afternoon proved quite the task as wherever they try to lay their picnic blanket, over-enthusiastic campers joined you and Jason, wanting to eat whatever you and Jason have prepared to eat. Luckily, Leo and the Stolls created a bit of a ruckus back at the arena, which made campers rush back to see what happened. You made a mental note to thank them later, as you and Jason found a spot under the palm trees and beside the swaying tickseeds and sea asters.

"What?" Jason asked you, a small laugh escaping his lips.

"Nothing." You shook your head with a smile before reaching out and wiping the chocolate from the corner of his lips.

"Better?" Jason grinned.

"Yeah."

Jason picked out a couple of strawberries from the strawberry fields, coating them with chocolate, while you brought a small cake for the date. It was quite romantic, really. Jason had Leo prepare some tacos for the both of you and made strawberry-coated chocolates, while you and Piper tried to bake a cake and failed before turning to Percy for a bit of help.

"Here, try this." You sliced a piece of cake into your paper plate.

"What's the cake for?" Jason asked, although his eyes twinkled like he knew what it's for.

"Happy birthday, babe," you told him, taking a piece of cake with your fork and feeding it to Jason.

"Wait, this is...really good," Jason said, his voice muffled by the mouthful of cake you've given him. "Who made this?"

"I did." You smiled proudly.

The cake was a beautiful blue velvet (Percy refused to make anything other than blue) with white buttercream frosting and a minimalistic design on top. By minimalistic, as in there was nothing written in it. Percy ran out of blue food coloring, and that was the only color he has, so you went with a nude top.

"Really?" Jason actually looked surprised. Baking isn't really your specialty. It was never in your favor. Once, you tried making blue cookies with Percy, but the cookies grew larger than the oven and you had to evacuate the big house for fear of the oven exploding.

"Well....I may have had help from Percy." You sheepishly smiled, which made Jason laugh. "Only a little though!"

"You mean, most of it?" Jason nodded towards the cake between the two of you.

"Yeah," You laughed. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Jason shrugged. "It's the thought."

Picking a loose sea aster from the bunch, you leaned forward to Jason. "Here. Happy Birthday."

"I love you," Jason blurted out, taking the flower from you. "Here, come here."

He grabbed a piece of chocolate-coated strawberries and leaned forward to give you some of it. Cupping his hand in front of your chin and under your mouth, he fed you the strawberry, throwing away the left-off piece that didn't fit in your mouth.

Before he moved away, you held his hand beside him, encouraging him not to move away. Once you swallowed the strawberry, you leaned forward, moving the cake away from the two of you before leaning in to capture his lips. Unbeknownst to him, as he leaned further into the kiss, your hand brushed some icing off of the cake, making you cup his face and wipe the icing on his cheeks.

"Y/N, what-." Jason pulled away from the kiss as you laughed. Realizing what just happened, you saw Jason's finger swipe a bit of icing from the cake, preparing to get back at you. "Okay, come here."

You leaned in, ready to accept the icing on your cheeks. Instead of wiping the icing all over your cheeks, Jason used his finger to draw a heart from the corner of your mouth to the side of your cheeks, and back to your lips.

"How do I look?" You smiled at him.

Jason's scar tugged up. "Beautiful."

"Well, you're not so bad yourself, Grace," you told him, pulling him into another kiss. This time without the icing.

join my july birthday celebrations!!

[larrythefloridaman]

Y'all like your deities with or without the shell?

Under the readmore is aaaaaaaaall color god observations and musings based on them, because I am studying to become the world's Premiere Chromatheologian and RGB Understander so under the cut is pretty much Oops! All Spoilers! up to the most recent episode of season 3.

Apparently Universal Color God Attributes:

Damage to their domain hurts them, but fixing the issue, or lashing out by using their powers destructively, can help them to repair the damage.

If they sustain enough damage, it can temporarily paralyze them and send them into a strengthened but 'exposed' state (chartreuse's spirit activation in the last fight of 19) and further damage after that will activate a failsafe, which is unique by domain but seemingly designed to give them the chance to balance things, but can get… very out of hand or backfire depending on circumstances. (see: cobalt’s failsafe sending mark's universe into a never-ending apocalyptic war because word of the cure for death became too widespread for the killing urge failsafe to affectively balance anything because every side could simply revive their fallen.)

Chartreuse's failsafe is something of a stopped time bubble quarantine where processes that require the passing of time cannot complete, allowing her the time to wear down the offending party to beat them to death or plan around finishing them.

Cobalt's is inciting war, the casualties serving to balance the scale. I'm not sure we know Crimson's yet- he's never taken enough direct damage without doing damage to compensate in order to trigger it, although i dont remember season one well enough to recall if any of the universe stuff in it tracks with the pattern bc season one is a bit fucky

Connected in a fashion that allows them to simply Sense the overall status of the others to some extent, although they don't know Why theyre in the state theyre in without asking (chartreuse [and by extension, folk, presumably on her information] confronting crimson via crimsonaut for pretending to be dead, Cobalt confronting both his siblings about how they are handling their duties improperly but not knowing about Folk. He knew about the constants deaths because hes a death god, duh, but he didnt use their names like crimson did, possibly implying they're erased upon death so thoroughly that only crimson and the constants can really recall a shattered constants' existence, not even the other guardians.)

Abilities of the guardians can be replicated by mortals through three apparent methods- through machines (dimensional bus, the time machine, presumably J0hn's part in Sephiroth's resurrection,) simply through advanced enough individual skill (Home MD curing death, potentially Dantoinette's universe portal travel, maybe Genwun's sped up time bubble that evolved them into Genfour? although that could very well have just been an illusion and theyre just like, a fuckin theater kid that was doing pretend character development for the Bit or something given GenFive turned out to be a zoroark) or through stealing some of the power of the relevant god (Dr. Order stealing Chartreuse's power, Dani maybe having stolen some of Crimson's when she beat his ass. Dani's one woman universal travel is like, wicked ambiguous)

Cobalt:

Can seemingly perceive or act through any living material. (The Tree. Cobalt instructed Larry to slap his hand on that tree, that shit glowed and he had a new deal tattoo without Cobalt ever having been physically present)

Can influence the resurrected by giving them a killing urge. Represented by an aberrant brainwave and a ringing in the undead's heads. This doesnt appear to be direct control- as the Grunk could clearly restrain himself from killing people that genuinely didn't deserve it (like nightly and cha cha, who WERE grunk event targets but not fatally so. Nagito was a crimson thing so it really doesn't count here. God poor grunk his life really is just a constant plaything in the hands of the gods huh) and Sephiroth very much had personal motivation to want to kill Folk. failsafe activates this ability on the scale of war.

Deals. The extent of what Cobalt can do with these is unclear but Iggy's god powers were taken from him as his part in the deal so what he can take isn't limited to physical things or things obviously related to his domain.

Weaknesses:

Deals. While this ability is impressive his preference for making deals for those that offend against his domain is potentially very exploitable- Larry's knowledge of the cure for death is, if word of it were to ever get out beyond Larry, wildly dangerous for this dimension, so technically the safest thing for the iron-fisted cobalt to do would be to nip the problem in the bud and get rid of him. But, fascinatingly, that wasn't even put on the table, the first thing Cobalt does is threaten J0hn, prompting Larry to make a deal. While Cobalt enforces death, he also doesn't like unnecessary death, and Larry demonstrably knows how to keep a secret for the good of the world even at great cost to himself and Cobalt is aware of this- easily clarifying to Larry the aberrant thing endangering the universe wasn't his timeloop business. So while he's clearly not letting his resurrection fuckery go unpunished, he's being pretty merciful when he doesn't have to be and from a strictly, brutally pragmatic perspective probably shouldn't be.

His control over the undead manifests as a ringing and an aberrant brainwave trackable by J0hn's equipment, and could probably therefore be accounted for and circumvented? J0hn has, wisely, largely sworn off fucking with people's brains after the sephiroth fiasco went So Wrong, So Very Wrong, Oh God Oh Fuck Someone Cool Almost Died, but if he hadn't, and if J0hn let his dislike for authority and keeping Larry safe outweigh reason like he let safety, spite and comedic value outweigh good ethical sense when reprogramming sephiroth, in theory Mr. 'hacked a time machine for breakfast?' could. y'know. probably do it. what is a god's authority to an anarchist, what better to challenge life and death than the cold and eternal machine, you get the point its a fun scenario

Olive Garden Breadsticks and Small Cute Dogs, apparently

Chartreuse's:

Time Clones: taps into parallel timelines to retrieve alternate versions of herself to utilize.

Time Travel: what it says on the tin. Travel to the past creates painful splits in the prime timeline, but through careful action and traveling back into the past, these can be weaved into a time loop. A split from the timeline is a wound, and a successful timeloop is the surgical scar it can become with attentive care, to use a medical metaphor. Carefully closed and healing. Keeping Folk here is essentially akin to chartreuse pulling out her stitches on the initial incision.

Time Stopping: creates a space wherein things that take time to complete cannot complete, where things can move, but everything within is in a perfect unchanging stasis until the bubble drops. This is the form her failsafe takes.

Timeline Creation: can create timelines from scratch.

Can fuse alternate timeline versions of the same individual to allow them to coexist. (Ryan's confirmed in the discord that Dantoinette experienced both failures in 20, because Chartreuse fused the two instances of her to save the post-raid instance from fading. Could... theoretically do this to Folk and save herself the pain, but while Folk and Therapuppy are the same person, there's seven years and untold amounts of difference deriving from the time and circumstance between them and the inherent cognitive dissonances that would result from attempting that would be wicked fucked up to inflict, and that's assuming there isn't some reason that it wouldn't be possible anyway. while the two Danis had like. A day or so's difference between them, so she could be safely fused with the only dissonant thing being that she remembers both being too slow to prevent order's time escape and beginning to dissipate post-raid, AND losing that fight to her pre-raid. RIP Dani, that perfectionism must be kicking her ass)

Weaknesses:

Unwilling to use her powers destructively in her pursuit of domain repair and thereby much easier to damage to the point of paralyzing her, making her particularly vulnerable to Power Theft

Morally Optimistic. At one point in 19, she briefly justifies Crimson's shitty evil actions to herself after experiencing for herself how Wack the kerfuffleverse is firsthand, ("and all he did was kill a couple people!" Chartreuse. Honey.) and when she fights Crimsonaut she seems to actually believe for a second that he's actually worried about her when Crimson asks if she's okay after he beats her. Additionally, as D+, she concerns herself with trying to understand doctor order's motive, and after Larry defeats Order, he makes a point of confirming she feels no remorse before making his request for what Chartreuse does with her, and appeals to the idea of letting Order fulfill her desire to be a god in a way which isn't a problem for anyone and Chartreuse is more than happy to oblige under these conditions after what Larry's done for everybody. Then immediately threatens to evaporate him for playfully teasing her about having a crush on folk. Fucked up a little bit

Crimson's:

Universe Shifting: Travel between universes.

Universe Correction: appears to replace an aberrant individual with the 'correct' version of themselves for that universe, presumably sending them back to their own. (Mario from super mario was universe corrected, but still seemingly exists in wario form as evidenced by smashup kerfuffle, and was simply temporarily replaced with his corrected universe counterpart. But like. The dimensional bus system is still active crimbo doing the Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me routine aint gonna work if they can come back with a shrug and bus fare. you're fighting the symptoms without treating the problem)

Universal Constants:

Three individuals per universe that serve as the pillars which stabilize said universe, created by absorbing red orbs Crimson creates. Becoming a constant grants power, but also makes the constant fragile, and death wipes them from the face of the multiverse, only crimson, those he's possessed and the other constants seemingly able to recall they ever existed, although some physical evidence is still left behind (Larry's record of Nagito's death, which is just as redacted as everything else relating to him but still is very much something Larry has. Kind of a Voidfish adventurezone type beat ironically enough? Taako really has seen all this shit before no wonder he peaced tf out)

To counterbalance the weaknesses the constants have, they have a sort of spidey-sense to alert them to danger, and an intrinsic bonded connection to their fellow constants, and additionally, Crimson apparently doesn't suffer any pain from the death of constants or the structural instability of a universe.

Possession: what it says on the tin! Seemingly can only be done with permission to living things- none of crimson's direct hosts seem to have entered that agreement unwillingly, Valentine lost a bet, Hamburger and Crimsonaut have been by all evidence intentional allies to Crimson- but electronics are fair game, as seen with The Guy's suit. Kinda curious how that rule applies to bitches that are half and half, like J0hn or the clonebot gang, as its unclear whether The Guy's suit was yoinkable without permission because it was mechanical or because its not sentient. could go either way but if it's the former that's potentially very frightening

Fusion: Two individuals from alternate universes can be fused into one shared body which can take on aspects of either depending on which is currently in control. (possibly allows someone who traveled into a given universe to become a fixed resident there without it being an issue for Crimson, whose job is to prevent interdimensional travel?) Monday Mark and possibly T.O.M. are our main examples.

Corruption:

Unpleasant As Hell and can even kill you instead of changing you if you cant handle it.

turns the corrupted individual into a twisted exaggeration of themself, allows them supernatural control over their shape, and makes them very difficult- if not impossible by traditional means- to kill, based on Garfield.

Subjects them to control by Crimson, but can be exorcised of this influence just like crimson's direct hosts can, although the supernatural changes to their physiology are seemingly permanent, judging from Shantae.

Notable Weaknesses:

Exorcism can be performed to free a possessed or corrupted individual of Crimson's influence. Its unclear how exorcism works/is learned in CPUK, but confirmed exorcists: dantoinette and yung papaya's snake dad, confirmed non-exorcists: folk

The universal constant orbs are physical objects so they are Very Stealable and they grant a power boost so theres literally an Incentive to beat his ass for anybody who wants to be strong and either doesnt know or doesn't care about the whole 'getting erased when you die' part

Crimson has lots of tools to create pawns, but all of them have drawbacks. Corruption could kill a potential pawn, possession generally seems to require permission, and he has no control over the constants' choices and actions

Manipulative bitch's highest stat is charisma and it shows. This motherfucker is selling snake oil. If he was mortal rather than a Whole Entire God he'd make an excellent ineffectual saturday morning cartoon supervillain and i think everyone, including him, would be happier for it, ngl

Something interesting ive realized that likely wasnt fully intentional, is that a lot of Dr. Order's creations, considering her motive, can kind of be sorted by a color god it appears to be a crude attempt at mimicking the abilities of. My Grunk is a poorly executed resurrection, the clonebot gang vs chartreuse's timeclones (this one deserves special mention because Chartreuse used this shitty attempted mimicry to her advantage with D+, very smart and ironic play, excellent job Treusy,) spirits are somewhat similar to universal constant orbs (orbs which can be absorbed to grant power, but which have physical repercussions- key differences being that spirits require activation and grow stronger while attuning to a user without being used, and having far less severe drawbacks, taking a heavy toll on the body, but only once they've worn off and without the risk of wiping yourself from the face of existence,) and she also augmented Perfect Spriteman and Larry, which kind of track as crude imitations of Crimson's corruption!

Garfield was an acerbic cat who loved food and hated mondays, now its an actively malicious ever-hungry amorphous entity whose only weakness is monday and whose only consistency in form is 'cat-like.'

Shantae was (to my extremely limited understanding of shantae,) a friendly heroic type who had to introduce herself often, and she became something akin to a biblically accurate angel that can *only* introduce herself.

The Grunks a tough but sweet and supportive single dad with stage presence and a tendency to fly off the handle when he or his family are slighted, and now he gets so hype in the audience when his son does well that he bursts into flames and ascends and we get random grunk events along with the associated murder charges when he gets mad and the target sucks enough that he doesn't hold himself back from killing them.

Perfect Spriteman and Larry fit the trend of exaggeration of already present traits- Spriteman fucking loves sprite and became something that only thinks about sprite, and Larry the Florida Man, characterized from minute one by unpredictability and who spent his first matches in the series pre-shapeshifter transformation staying alive keeping stocks for Shockingly Long even despite getting seventh, became literally physically random as well as developing the ability to regenerate, albeit with the ability to feel pain normally very much intact, unlike Garfield just... Soaking up damage like its nothing in his pursuit of Jon. The fact that Arbuckle legit defeated Garfield, even temporarily, is terrifyingly impressive honestly that dude is fucking built different for being so chronically bland

i dont think they're actually corrupted in any meaningful way we have to worry about, to be fully clear, Spriteman was cured with fucking antacids, i simply think they could be a fucked up attempt at making something that kind of seems like it from a functional standpoint, from the wannabe god doctor that brought us green clones whose only fundamental association with time was accelerated aging and who thought an actively rotting corpse thats just reanimated enough that it can throw hands was as good as curing death

[indefinitely-in-fandom-hell]

It’s Gaara Week! - just kidding, Gaara Week is in January - this is Gaara Weekly. So I heard the topic this time is:

“what Gaara would do together with Shinki if he had some time off” 

now that’s just wholesome, how could I not at least *attempt to* provide some headcanons?

*side note: I have no idea how I ended up with this mess of a post but here you go*

So we know their hobbies: Gaara likes “battling” according to the second databook and by the time the third came around, he added “cultivating cacti” to the mix. Shinki likes both “gardening” and “embroidery” according to character trivia from Boruto. Makes sense that they would bond over tending to plants right? In fact, most would probably assume that Shinki adopted this hobby from his father. And while I do believe they get some rare father-son time tending to Gaara's cacti together - I don't know if that's what they would actually choose to do if they had a significant amount of free time.

If I was being realistic: They would probably spend their days off training.

_________________________ Yeah I hear you people in the back screaming “booo” - but this seems to be the most realistic scenario - to me at least. So let me explain:

His people and village always seem to be the priority for Gaara and Shinki is the future of Suna, not only as the Kazekage's heir but simply as part of the next generation who will take on leadership positions after the current decision-makers retire. There is not a single doubt in my mind that Gaara views mentoring future generations as one of his top priorities. Shinki wants to make his father proud and properly represent his family and village. He is hugely appreciative of any training time his busy father can spare for him - such an opportunity doesn't come every day. Both of them have very no-nonsense, goal-oriented personalities.

- So if Gaara had a couple of hours to spend however he wanted, he would invest them in the future of his village: Shinki. If Shinki had the chance to get some in-depth one-on-one training with his father, he would jump at the opportunity.

We know that Gaara, unlike Naruto with his son, has at least somewhat regularly been training Shinki in person. He has mentioned how he taught his son 'everything he knows' and Shinki actually training directly with his (very busy) father just makes sense: The two of them are the only people we know of with their kekkei genkai - and Gaara is the only one with abilities almost identical to Shinki's. It’s true that Gaara only knows the basics when it comes to iron sand - or rather, that was confirmed to be the case until at least the early blank period. But he would know next to every use of regular sand and that’s still more than any other jonin in suna. Of course, as the Kazekage, Gaara simply doesn't have the time to do the majority of Shinki's training - but I wouldn’t question that he's the one giving the crucial advice, reviewing his training progress and telling his son what abilities need more work.  

So if he has a little bit of time to spare - I have no doubt he would (and does) put most of it into training Shinki. And that includes days off. 

_________________________

.

.

.

But y'all didn't come for that - don't lie.

*enter Part 2: “But what if we talk about cats instead?”

We love these two (and the entire Sand-family for that matter) so naturally, we want to see them use their time off for anything BUT work or training. Gaara and Shinki are definitely the worst offenders here, they always seem like those people who would rather work on their duties than cut cake on their birthdays - Gaara more so because he seems very focused on always putting his own pleasure behind doing 'something useful to others' and Shinki because he's just beginning to realize the value of friendship. *Insert mlp meme here*

So for the sake of fun, we will just assume SOMETIMES Gaara decides that his son should do “normal activities” instead of training and ends up going somewhere with him. But where? If for some reason, Shinki were to accompany his father to another village for a diplomatic meeting, I think they would definitely walk around that village a bit and just take in the local culture: food, sights, and the like. Imagine the way Lee and Tenten showed Gaara and Kankuro around Konoha in episode 497 and had them try ramen for the first time - kind of like that. But this example also shows just how rarely Gaara seems to get time off during official visits: it took him being Kazekage for 4 years until he ate his first Ramen - but ok, if the war hadn’t been in the way I guess Naruto would have made him try it sooner. Now, if we are talking about “regular” time off, the place would definitely need to be in Suna - Gaara is important for the protection of his village so he can’t just leave whenever he wants.

I’m also going to assume that Gaara can walk around relatively freely without being bothered by crowds - if simply for the fact that we have seen him do so before, at least in other villages. Gaara strikes me as a character who could very much enjoy new experiences - there was once a time when most things “normal” people did were foreign to him and he had to go through a very steep learning curve after his first encounter with Naruto. I can see him trying new things when he gets the chance and also wanting to encourage Shinki to do the same - so long something falls not too far outside both of their comfort zones.

.

We established all the little details but no one has gone anywhere yet. So if we are going for something interesting: > how about we bring cats into this?

Gaara and Shinki strike me as having a lot of, for the lack of a better word, “cat-people energy” - were they aware of this before this fateful day? Probably not. Were they aware of it afterward? - you bet!

Gaara felt a bit confused when he heard that Suna would be hosting a big pet show for the first time in a few years *he had to sign the paperwork after all* - what was that again? People bring their cats and dogs to show them to visitors and a jury?

“Must be another unique way humans manage to be vain about their property” - the concept of placing much importance in the things one owns and how they reflect on you was something Gaara understood as a concept but never fancied.

He didn’t understand very well why visitors would want to see such a spectacle until Kankuro said something along the lines of “sometimes people just want to see animals do cute stuff I guess? You know how girls and kids are - show them a dog rolling over and they will go crazy - don’t worry too much about it, I’m also not much of a fan.”

On a second thought: “Oh but maybe Shinki likes that stuff? I mean he’s a kid - ..... although he doesn’t behave like one most of the time.”

- and with that comment, the deal was settled: there would be father-son bonding time scheduled and they would go observe cute animals!!

Shinki wasn’t very thrilled but what can you do - he wanted to train but was too well behaved and respected his father too much to object any of his decisions - no matter how strange some of them sounded.

In the end, none of them had high expectations for this trip but they went anyway because “At worst we have made a valuable experience” - Gaara

*Shinki didn’t dare question what could be “valuable” about this*

As it turned out, the date they picked for their visit was designated for cats of all breeds --

Of course, both Gaara and Shinki had seen cats before - from afar. No one in their family owned any animals - if you didn’t factor in the deer raised on the property of the Nara-clan.

But they had also HEARD about cats before

--------- mostly because Shukaku never seemed to miss an opportunity to insult them: “cats are the most useless creatures, it goes to show how stupid humans are for domesticating them” - “and you are sure you aren’t just saying this because kids always seem to mistake you for one?” -Kankuro would add

*Needless to say: Kankuro still enjoyed provoking people he really shouldn’t.* -------------

Well now the two shinobi were in front of one - their first close encounter with a feline - a big sand-colored persian with her owner, a friendly-looking old lady, standing next to her.

“Well I suppose they are quite endearing with their big eyes” -Gaara noted

Old lady: “Oh dear would you like to come closer? She really enjoys being pet behind her ears - she’s even calm with most strangers”

Gaara was a bit hesitant

When you’ve only ever heard bad things about cats and their temper you might think twice about petting them when you get the chance - at least until you take the courage to hold out your hand and they start purring like you are their best friend and they will love you forever.

Now, if anything gets Gaara - it’s being shown unconditional love and acceptance in unexpected places

yes apparently this does not exclude kitties

*holding out his hand while the cat is purring and meowing* Gaara : O.O Shinki, next to him: O.O Both of them internally: "ohhhh so THAT'S what all the fuss is about"

- Instant non-verbal agreement that cats are awesome

After that encounter, both might or might not have been extremely tempted to adopt a cat.

But since Gaara knew no one in this family had much time to spend at home - *and because he had this lingering sense that the cat might develop a taste for his succulents* - he had to resist.

This however wouldn’t mean that their next “family day” wasn’t already planned to be a trip to the local animal shelter. _________________________ Bonus:

eventually, Shukaku finds out about their trips and is NOT amused that they considered bringing one of “those things” home.

Yes- he’s still fuming from that one time he was carried by Shinki in his more “compact” form and a toddler pointed at them saying “oh your cat is so chubby! can I pet it? Pleeeeese!!” (*needless to say both Shinki and Gaara were mortified back then and hurried to get Shukaku away from the little girl before any casualties were to occur*)

He continues to sulk for at least a full month about this “betrayal”.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #368

“whatever doesn’t kill you, is gonna leave a scar”

Have you ever bought a YouTuber’s merch? My favorite shirt is the Day of the Dead design by Cloak, which is Markiplier's and jacksepticeye's clothing brand. Mom's friend/former co-worker also got me a Ninja Sex Party shirt because she knew I liked them. There are SO MANY YouTubers I wanna support by buying shirts. Do you think oatmeal tastes better when made with water or milk? Milk, 110%. Have you ever left a note in a library book? No. What time of day do you prefer to wash your hair? Morning. Has anyone ever spread lies about you? Yes. Have you ever taken a photograph with a celebrity? If so, did it turn out the way you wanted, or do you wish you could retake it? No. If you could move out of your home country permanently, would you? If so, where would you go? If it didn't mean being so very far from my family, I would love to move to Canada. Is there a celebrity that everyone else seems to love, but you find totally overrated? Why is it that you don’t like them? I legit don't know who's considered currently popular, and I especially don't know who they are as people. If you could volunteer for any charity, which one would you choose? Do you think it’s more important to help humans, or are animal and environmental charities equally important? Something relating to animals, and I think they're both equally important. Do you prefer holidays where you relax, or actually do things? I like a mix. Something chill, but you still do some stuff as a family. Do you think that after we die our spirit is still alive? Yes. Has anybody ever told you that you could be a model? Someone has mistaken me for a model in a picture I once took. It was one of the most flattering things I've ever heard, haha. Do you use different kinds of moisturizer for different body parts? ie. hand lotion for your hands, face cream for your face. Or do you just use one moisturizer for all body parts? Yes. Have you ever felt like you were someone’s rebound? No. Has anybody ever broken up with you over something really pathetic? What was it? Have you ever been dumped in a disrespectful way? (eg. through text, through a friend..) I have 100% been dumped in a very cowardly and disrespectful way; after dating Jason for nearly four years and being very serious, he broke up with me very abruptly over Facebook Messenger. His reason was valid, but at the same time, he NEVER talked to me about it. Apparently my depression was dragging him down. If he'd fucking communicated it, I would have explored new treatment options so goddamn fast. But no, he decided to snap his fingers and disappear. That's exactly WHY it was so traumatic, I think: it was so unexpected and sudden. Did you have a lot of role models as a kid? Animal enthusiasts like Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin for sure. Do you feel like anyone looks up to you? Why or why not? God no. I'm just... not someone to aspire to be like. What was the last thing you found offensive? I'm not sure. Who is the nicest person you know? My mom. Do you feel safe in your country? I feel safe in NC, rather. Like I don't expect an atom bomb or terrorist attack or something in this obscure area. In the U.S.A. itself, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. America is definitely not loved by every other country. Do you feel safe where you live? Not in this city, no. Have you been falsely diagnosed with something by a bad doctor? Yup. Did y'all know I apparently have ADHD? I know, shocking. Have you ever had a doctor refuse to treat you? No. Name the strangest game you’ve ever played (video game or real game): The first Silent Hill, probably. It took a lot of reading to get it. Do you know anyone who has been struck by lightning before? No. Which cartoon character would you want to keep as a pet? Does Stitch count? Or a Pokemon. Do you like marshmallows? Yes. What is your favorite flavor of candy cane? I really like the Jolly Rancher candy canes, I think they are? Have you ever fostered an animal? No. Do you still take hot showers when it’s hot out? Not as hot, but not cold except on very extreme occasions. When writing $ sign, do you draw one line through the S or two? Two. What animal have you always wanted as a pet but couldn’t have? I'm thankful that my parents were pretty open-minded to what pets I really wanted, but one I was never allowed to have was a ferret because of how messy and smelly they are. List three people you’ve had crushes on: Jason, Sara, and Sebastian were probably my biggest crushes. Have you ever thrown up from cramps? No, but god have I felt close. List three people you had a hard time forgiving. Jason, Colleen, and my dad. Who is the most spiritual person you know? Probably my sister's mother-in-law. Would you ever start a vlog? God no, I'd bore people to tears. Are your dreams coming true yet? I mean, I guess in some ways with my mental health. In my deepest depression, what I have now was a dream, even though current me is very discontent with it. Most of my dreams, though? No. Do you struggle with depression? I've been diagnosed with severe depression since 7th grade. Are you haunted by your past? A few things won't leave me alone. What medical conditions do you have? Just a lot. There are even more that are up for debate. I've talked about my diagnosed conditions enough. Do you use a Magic Bullet? No. What does your apron look like? I don’t have one. What are your favorite spicy foods? Hot Cheetos, Takis, hot wings, jalapeno pizza... Man, I love spicy food. Which do you like better: being an adult or being a kid? Being a kid. Were you excited to be a teenager on your thirteenth birthday? I had very mixed feelings. Did you feel insecure in high school? Shit, I still do. Would you ever be friends with someone who was suicidal? What the FUCK is this question? No fucking shit I would be. Someone being suicidal in no way affects who they are as a person. Who was the biggest bully in high school? I don't think there really was one. What was your favorite class in high school? Art. Would you rather have a daughter or a son? If I wanted kids, a daughter. Have you ever written to an advice columnist? No. Have you ever had a doctor not believe what you told him? Maybe? I did however have an employee at the ER the first time I went try to pry out of me that my self-mutilation was for attention, and it wasn't until I insisted about a dozen times that it wasn't that he believed me. It's odd looking back that I got REALLY attached to him during that stay, knowing now that it was absolutely horrible and extremely unhelpful for him to do that. If you’re female, would you feel uncomfortable having a male gynecologist? I would absolutely refuse to have a male one. Do you like Lisa Frank? Yeah, like can you talk about aesthetic. What gives you nightmares? Boy, I wish I could tell you, given how much I have them. Were you ever hospitalized as a child? No. Did you get senior pictures taken? No. What color is your bicycle? I don’t have one. Did you ever have to take home a fake baby in health class? No, thank fuck. Would you rather wear ivory or white on your wedding day? What color will your bridesmaids wear? I'd rather wear black. I think red will be the bridesmaids' color. Would you rather have a swimming pool or trampoline? I want a swimming pool so damn badly so I could exercise my legs without worrying about sweating, and I can stop and rest whenever I want, unlike going walking or something. I don't think my knees could handle a trampoline. Do you think babies are cute? Some, sure. But a lot, not really. Do you dream about the future a lot? Yeah. Do you think about your past a lot? Way too frequently. How good are you at living in the moment? I'm trying to get better at it. Have you ever questioned God’s existence? Yeah. Vanilla frosting or chocolate? Chocolate. What’s your favorite foreign cuisine? I've actually been exploring Italian pasta lately. I'm not a big fan of foreign food that I've tried, though. Have you ever moved to another state? No. Did you do anything productive today? No. .-. Can you say the alphabet backwards? No, actually. Do you like flowers? Of course; does anyone not? Have you ever thought you were gonna die? I didn't care if I did or didn't. What kind of mood are you in today? I was honestly really depressed through most of it. Just health stuff was really getting to me. I just woke up from what was honestly like a four-hour nap and I feel all right, I guess. What are you craving right now? I REALLY want Domino's jalapeno pizza. Is there anyone you would seriously punch right now if you had the chance? No. What is worse, physical or emotional pain? Definitely emotional. Have you ever walked in on somebody doing something… questionable? When Dad still lived with us, I think he might have been watching... you know... on TV when I came into my parents' room for something. Idk for sure though. I didn't ask, and I don't want to know. If you were to make videos on YouTube, what would they be of? Oh god, idk. I don't want to make any. What I'd have most fun with would be reptile education, but I 1.) have literally one snake, 2.) am not extremely educated on a good number of them and don't want to be misleading, and 3.) I would run outta content fast. So, leave it to Snake Discovery, haha. Posting pictures of yourself in a bathing suit on the internet - ok or not? Yes, it's okay????? If you're talking about me personally though, you won't see me dead in a bathing suit picture. Do you typically laugh when somebody falls down? No, I gasp and see if they're okay. What is the most disturbing movie you’ve ever watched? Paranormal Entity. The ending is... a lot. Your opinion of Katy Perry, please? I like a couple of her songs. If you could say anything to your Mom right now… what would it be? "Thank you for absolutely everything."

[the-acid-pear]

I wanna talk about my oc copper for a while since i figured it would be cool to let y'all know about him, since 1) he is not in my refsheet and 2) i used to mention him quite often back then. So let's start!

First of all, who the fuck is Copper? Well, Copper is one of my oldest AI Dungeon characters. He was made with the mystery detective prompt so he's just that, a detective living in Chicago. The reason he is not in refsheet is because he has literally no design! And you would think, Luly, but many of your ocs that are now in refsheet didn't have a design either! Which would be true, except for the fact i had at least VISUALIZED them, copper? Not at all. He's a very weird character so it's hard to have a mental image of how he looks, though he's white for sure lol

Now, let's get into something more interesting. What's Copper's lore?

Copper story is quite a messy one, but let's go from the start. He's a detective, he goes to a forest, and he finds a tortured agonizing young man on the floor. This last part wasn't made by the ai, it was an input i made after reading the setup was a forest.

You see, back then there was yet another oc of mine, this one nameless though, but let's call him Duke's friend. Duke's friend was my first straight up evil character who all he did was have sex and torture people. The forest event which i won't get on detail about was pretty funny to me personally, but also iconic, so i was not gonna miss a chance to link the two universes together.

But let's go back to Copper. Usually a detective's job is to stop criminals and help the victim, right? Well, problem was there. Copper struggled a lot to keep the victim alive or to stop the criminals. Due to this, i kept reverting the story (look up or try yourself ai dungeon to understand what i mean), which means i got barely any of the outcomes left, but following old messages i can tell i was getting pretty frustrated. Thing was, i just wanted a normal game, i did not want this stupid sociopath detective who kept trying to leave the crime scene and couldn't even properly stop 2 criminals he had in front of him.

But let's break this part down a little. Why sociopath? Well, Copper did and said many... Weird things. Ranging from saying trying RCP (and failing) felt good, or just seeing the victim, going "meh" and leaving without even trying to help, which he did multiple times.

Now let's break down why i think he's stupid. In one of the routes, he decided for some reason to hug the now dead guy, which caused the other detective walking up to the scene to think Copper was the criminal. There's also the fact that he tried to do RCP to a guy that was bleeding out, or that he tried to calm down the victim while holding (for some reason) a knife.

Not only that, there is a third characteristic that is elemental for Copper, and it is how sentient he is. Many times along his story i got deeply frustrated because he just wouldn't listen to me. No matter what i did, no matter what i typed, Copper didn't care. Copper did what Copper wanted. Remember when he threatened the victim with a knife? That was his doing. I never even mentioned a weapon. There also was a time where i tried to ask the victim twice if they were okay, and both times Copper answered instead, even when i was typing the command correctly.

But let's go back to the lore, shall we?

Truth is the whole tortured boy arc had to be scrapped. After i reverted the entire story multiple times i just, gave up. I knew Copper wouldn't do it. So i kept going. Currently, Copper's world has gone to shit, and he is now friends with the hitman that tried to kill him once. His brother also came back, and Copper isn't too happy about it.

Let's mention, however, other versions of Copper! Because if Copper is good at something is at being bad even outside his own story.

He, for example, was added in a different story i had, starring good ol' Samuel. When did Copper appear for the first time? Well, Samuel was in a forest, being actively harmed by some guy who he thought would help him (previously attacked by wolves, recurring theme in his life) when suddenly someone appeared, some ranger or similar. This was the perfect opportunity for me to have my second crossover with Copper (after all, his og appearance was a crossover too).

What was his first line, after walking in, seeing a criminal scene?

"Well, this is awkward."

And as if the ai knew this man from inside out, he tried to leave. (I successfully stopped him.)

In this story Copper also went back to his insane self and decided to tell Samuel a story to cheer him up, which basically was a deranged shaggy dog story about his dog cat sister pet zombie thing, that went on for a long time and made absolutely no sense, but did manage to distract Samuel for a while, so that was particularly nice of Copper.

Copper also appears in one of my boyfriend's stories, where a man who is looking for his wife's murderer hires him as a detective to work on the case. Unfortunately for the characters, Copper was oddly in character here too. But we love a brainless king, don't we? As a fun fact, this story ended revealing Copper was really the guy's dog, plus his wife was fine.

Let's mention some Copper trivia now!

I once joked with Blood that Copper's curse had begun since the very first moment i misspelled his name. In universe it would mean that his parents or the nurse did, though it's unknown whether he has real parents.

Copper tends to lie a lot and little is known about his past, other than the existence of his brother. This is most likely to his insanity, but Copper is a well known asshole.

He's bisexual since he mentioned having a wife in the past (plus kissed a woman in a discarded arc) and also kept trying to fuck the goddamn victim ffs.

Blood and I theorize Copper is like Mr Burns, if he is nice he will die. Partly confirmed since the moment Copper started being normal the entire universe collapse and he had a mental breakdown.

He probably has ADHD the way he just forgets about shit and ignores my commands is not normal.

I once tried to make Copper a robot, it unfortunately went to shit and he almost died.

As far as we know, Copper is my only AI Dungeon oc that has never had sex

[scalproie]

VERGIL

THANK YOU I LOVE YOU

So about the V-man/Daddy Long Legs/Deadbeat of the year/Blue Dante/Jack Frost Sr. himself:

favorite thing about them: I keep a list

Boss Fights (they are SO FUN!!!)

Coat

Hairstyle

His design in general really

His Sin Devil Trigger Form is pretty cool...

Voice

His simple yet complex character and development that I shan't go into details orherwise we'd be here all day

His son Nero

least favorite thing about them: I know this isn't the series' focus and honestly I don't want it to be cuz we're not here for that, plus if you're willing to reach, there are some justifications, but yeah, causing the death of all those people and getting off scot free wasn't very gucci

(I was gonna add that he did so twice but the first time he DID end up in a prickly situation (The Nelo Angelo stuff) because of his own hubris)

favorite line: HE'S GOT SO MANY THAT I LOVE ok ok ok because of the ironic potential if it comes back to bite him, I'm gonna go with

"Did some pesky fatherly love get in your way?" [Cue Curb Your Enthusiasm]

Close runner up is the "That Day..." speech and the Vergil Bratty Moments™ aka "Well I want yours too." and "If you want it, then you'll have to take it.".... also "Thank you Nero." is up there... there's so much more you have no idea.... "SHCUM!"...

brOTP: easy answer is Dante but this is like. The one (1) meaningful relationship confirmed he has in his life. Also they're already brothers and had a whole childhood AND game dedicated to them. Part of me want to say Griffon & co but I feel this is more a V thing even if I'm in the "V is literally just Vergil" group. So this is just wishful thinking but MAN I just really want more interactions between him and Nero, indulge me with more father and son bonding because I would argue this is the MOST interesting relationship to look into in future games and content. Another relationship I'd really wanna explore is Vergil with his daughter-in-law, once they're past all dmc5 events-related awkwardness. Vergil and Credo are lowkey similar so I get the vibe Kyrie would know how to handle the man, and I don't think they would make Vergil disrespect Kyrie because while we've never actually seen him interact casually with other people/humans, I think it'd be out of character and a dumb move.

OTP: Ok so Vergil is a very big comfort character o' mine so I project really hard on the man, and the aro/ace is jumping out so I really do not care and do not want to ship him with any character of the small cast, that's not why I love dmc in the first place. (ABSOLUTELY NOT a jab on OCs and self-shippers. Y'all do y'all <3). Romantic and/or sexual love is not the type of love I want to see him express... which I realize is super ironic and funny because this is the one (1) character in dmc we know for certain that had sexy times (congrats to the fortuna woman who got him in bed. You go girl).

nOTP: You'd think it'd be a given but an alarming amount of dmc fans are addicted to inc*st so... a big no to that. What the fuck. (They're literally twiiiins whyyy... and I don't care how many mental gymnastics you're doing this is still his fucking father....). Also like I said above I pretty much avoid any shippy or suggestive/nsfw stuff involving Vergil so.

random headcanon: Vergil doesn't need to sleep or eat because of that sweet sweet demon blood, but if he did, his go-to junk food would be hamburgers like we saw in VoV (Dante has pizza but we all knew that, and my hc for Nero is instant ramen/pasta). Additional hcs for Vergil is that he played the violin and he strikes me as the kind of guy who speak fluently latin, not modern italian, but the dead latin language (which would make for some funny interactions in Fortuna). Also Special Shout Out To Scottish Vergil.

unpopular opinion: Unsure of the popularity of that take but I'm glad him being Gilver got retconned. Unsure of the popularity of that take but ive seen a few people saying that they'll ruin Vergil by making him more "fun" by developping his character and to that I say "You want to keep Vergil boring???". I also personally do not care about the nature of the relationship between him and Nero's mother and I don't feel the need to find out more about that.

song i associate with them: THAT BEING SAID irony strikes again because a bunch of songs I associate with him are romantic. And italian. Anyway: "The Nexus" by Amaranthe; "Bottom Of The Deep Blue Sea" by Missio; "Cold Cold Man" by Saint Motel; "Il Volo" by Zucchero and "Vivo Per Lei" by Andrea Bocelli

favorite picture of them: choose your fighter

[unseelie-bitch]

Season 3 Episode 24: Detection of the Witches

Oop Baltor's mark just chilling

Oh it's just a creepy ass dream okay

"I am here but you must figure out how to get behind the curtain" realistic Faragonda

Oh she's FINALLY awake

Aww Flora's such a good friend

Bloom that plan relies on so many long shots

Oh woah her curtain dream room is real

Um why the fuck were they BOLTED DOWN to the chairs that's so sus

So Cloud Tower's right there - lmao can this man actually do any other kind of magic???

So y'all just gonna leave Bloom behind... savage

Spell: reversed

Sorry Stella why did you just fly over to Bloom and press your back against her front while nuzzling her face with yours COME ON

"It's her enchantix that's the problem!" "It gives her an advantage" Icy, Darcy, I hate to break this to you but... you could barely beat her in season one when she had NO IDEA what she was doing

Oh god, really? You're giving them all a "disenchantix"? Good god that's almost as bad as gloomix

He's casting a spell from the misery dimension and I need to do some analysis here: Icy looks terrified. Like, eyes wide, mouth open, backing away, shoulders tense, terrified. But why? I mean sure, Baltor's been angry and we're seen his power but all three of the Trix keep flinching and reacting far more than they ever have before. Certainly some of this has got to originate from Darkar - when he turned on them and just took Icy out with one hit even though he knew they were powerless, it scared all of them and will have definatly left a psycological mark. And some of it will come from Baltor, both on and off screen, because we're seen him test spells out of the Trix (Opposite!Stormy) and they've seen him perfectly willing to let an entire race of subserviant mer-monsters die. I mean, all three of them were righrfully horrified about that at the time. But if you go back as far as season one, they all flinch and look so scared when they're caught by Faragonda or Griffin - even though the worst punishment we saw them recieve (before their expulsion) was a moderate scolding. So what happened to the Trix? Why are they so scared of authority figures? They're simultainiously drawn to and afraid of every big bad villain they meet, each less stable than the last. My theory is their parents started this cycle - we know they're decedents from the last witch coven (which I'm not sure fully matches up timeline-wise but that's for a different post) and they were clearly raised to take back the power their respective families have lost. How far did their parents go? We know they didn't know each other when they were kids, which is odd in itself - why not raise them together to strengthen their teamwork? Because if they cared for each other, if they knew they could rely on each other, they might rebel. I think the Trix were raised as weapons, and now both fear and crave the power they never had. Anyway, that was a long one. Back to the show

Oh shit they have new outfits... I LOVE THEM

Icy is calling Baltor out - he definately doesn't want to fight Bloom

"Even the thought of it is disrespectful. And something you will have to be severely punished for" jesus christ Baltor LEAVE THEM ALONE

Oh shit upgraded Trix are at Cloud Tower and they are READY to test out their new powers

"What's with the new goth outfit, Icy?" "This is!" Okay Bloom first of all there's way too much colour for that to be goth, second stop flirting with your rival like you directed that SPECIFICALLY at her even though they're all wearing practically identical outfits... also Icy got so mad that Bloom insutled her new clothes lmao

NOOOO BLOOM REBOUNDED ICY'S SPELL INTO DARCY AND STORMY AND THEY STARTED SHIVERING

The witches do not appear more powerful but okay we're just going to pretend they do

Sorry you knew a spell to freeze time? And you've just... NEVER used it before???? GUYS COME ON

And lol can't believe the Trix are just frozen now

Meanwhile Bloom is heading down a clearly sus passageway

Yes Bloom, float down into the bright firey light

Woah it's the OG witches!! That are CLEARLY each an ancestor of the Trix, A+ character design lads I love that

Oop they tellin her the truth

Shocker Baltor lied

Wait what they actually are alive??

Trix are still frozen

Oh they were faking lol

Also Icy why did you wink Bloom isn't here

Stella!!

She yeeted Darcy into Stormy lmao... love that everyone keeps using members of the Trix to hit other members of the Trix it's literally the BEST running joke

I really hope you didn't actually immediately get rid of the new Trix powers

Aww Griffy's happy

FARAGONDA CALLED HER GRIFFY AGAIN <3

Bloom that was such an ominous voice wtf

[thewheezingbubbledragon]

It Is Done

After a week and a half of working, designing, and occasionally shrieking bc y'all are amazing, I have completed the DC OCs aka us but like we fight bad guys instead of colds.

As always, click for better resolution and ask me in my DMs or in my asks if you can use the art before taking it. ALSOALSOALSO everyone I drew will get the transparent image file of their character!

INTRODUCING THE MAGNIFICENT MARVELOUS MINOR SUGAR RUSHES

INTRODUCING OUR MAIN CAST:

@theatreandcomicfreak aka The Hawklett (or Nightengale to the public) (maybe leader? Idk who would be in charge.)

And the alt. name:

This one was incredibly fun to work on and my favorite part was the chest plate / ragged detailing oj the cape/gloves. I dont know why the color scheme works but it does so imma just walk away and pretend I knew what I was doing.

NEXT UP:

@weird-pale-blonde-person aka Alacrity!

Hands down one of my favorite designs/poses of the whole lot. Probably because @weird-pale-blonde-person designed the suit herself (everyone go follow her shes amazing and I would die for her) and put hours of her life researching the backgrounds, powers, and names of every speedster character in the DCEU to make Alacrity a unique figure! Seriously girl youre insane and I love you

NEXT WE HAVE...:

@evil-elf16 aka Enyo!

One of the most difficult poses to sketch out. I spent like an hour trying different poses and styles to get it to work properly and OH BOY AM I HAPPY WITH HOW THIS TURNED OUT!!! Thank you a million times over for liking the Red Hood design it just sparked my creativity. This was one of the quickest outfit sketches I did aside from Alacrity's bc something just clicked when you said that. God himself was like '+25 to your next inspiration roll' and I just about died.

NEXT UP IS:

@myblacknightworld aka Cain!!

This pose took me the longest to finalize. I went through so many variations and eventually settled on one that was close enough to my original sketch to be frustrating but different enough to be good. Also handsdown one of my favorite outfits that I made. ALSO YOURE ONE OF MY FAVORITE PEOPLE ON THIS SITE I WOJLD DIE FOR YOU. Also, also, I realized it looked oddly like Hawkeye's outift and I cried inside but like.... I still love it okay?

YET ANOTHER ONE WHOOP:

@rogueinkglitch aka Crow Ranger!!

I hated the colors for the first hour of its existence, tweaked one (1) and was suddenly fine. This is what I signed up for when I decided to become an artist, isnt it? This one was SO FUN TO SKETCH bc the wings had SO MANY POSSIBILITIES to make the whole drawing seem more flowy!! I would never have thought up this design for a superhero alone and I love it to bits. (Also your face took so long to draw bc it had to be R I G HT DANGIT I REFUSE TO GET YOUR FACE WRONG YOU'RE TOO HANDSOME AIIGHT?!?!?) Also youre the ONLY boy here. It's amazing. Also one of the taller people?!??!

AND FINALLY:

C'est moi. @thewheezingbubbledragon aka Lady Ataraxia (Or Orchid to the public)

This one... Look I dont draw me often. This was a Struggle(tm) and 90% of this was on ghe fly BUT i finally got it done and i like this version MUCH better than the last one!! How much of a Struggle? I spent 2 hours working out a 3 color pallette and altered 2 of them, added 4 more, and didnt use one at all. I'm the tallest one here. It's amazing and hysterical. I'm almost 5'9" and not a single one of you is over 5'5". It's glorious.

(And hey if any of y'all are interested: I have an Instagram where I'll be posting these (with everybody's permission) as well as a million open commission slots! My instagram is @ commissionimpossible and I'll be opening a commissions tumblr in a few days, hence the @ signature in all the pictures. So yeah, if you like this and want to commission me: send me a DM and we can negotiate on prices, tiers etc! Or e-mail me at commission.impossible.official@gmail.com!!)

All in all one of the greatest projects i have EVER worked on and i met a bunch of beautiful, amazing, caring people. I would willingly die for all of them.

Here's a link to the original post that imspired it!! (I highly reccommend skimming through the notes if youre on a dryspell for inspiration. These people are hilarious, imaginative, and a pure blessing.)

Sorry if I didnt draw your character, I was kinda busy and I only had time for 5 (technically 6 since i didn't count myself bc I am veddy schtupid) but maybe at some point in the future i can do more? In any case THANK EVERYONE WHO LET ME DRAW THEIR CHARACTERS SO MUCH THIS WAS AN AMAZING EXERCISE IN DIFFERENT BODYTYPES, HAIRSTYLES, FACES, AND CHARACTER DESIGN!!!!!!!!!

[eggos-world]

Complainers (A MHA fanfic)

Midorya x Fem! Reader

(A/N : So this is my first fanfic EVER and I've really been into MHA for a while now and I LOVED reading all the fanfics, and I saw this particular ask to a blog if the reader had a writing quirk and how would Midorya and two other characters would react (I am so sorry I forgot the blog who wrote that) but I wanted to put my spin on it and make the reader be into slam poetry and let their tongue be their weapon. This particular poem is by Rudy Fransisco!! Not my original poem!! Hope y'all enjoy!)

When you write, it's like the whole world around you finally goes silent. You live out the daydreams in your own head feeling the words on the page a safe space. This was your quirk. Even if it didn't seem as great to be in combat fighting villains, at least it's something to fight your inner demons. That to you was enough.

Midorya was well use to the song and dance of getting you to snap out of your world when the bell rings, apologizing in advance. In truth he hates breaking your concentration, he knows full well that he hates the feeling being separated from writing his notes. But he knew you would sit there for hours on end just writing in your book, even if you finish it all in one go you wouldn't notice that you were writing on the desk. (And yes he had to get you out of there and insisted to clean it up for you). Even after all of this he still admired your quirk no less.

The bell had rung for lunch and everyone stood up and packed their books away and walked out one by one. You feel a tap on your shoulder not a minute later, and a familiar soft spoken voice breaks you from your concentration. " Hey, Y/N, I-Its time for lunch" He says with a smile and you close your book and packed it into your bag, walking with him side by side to the lunchroom.

"So what was today's story in your book?" He asked with a smile looking to you.

"Not a story today, I've been into poetry for a while. So I figured I might try something different. " You say smiling back.

"Woah, I didn't know you were into poetry. That seems really cool! What was it about? "

You were always so surprised that he was interested in your work. Since it was such a personal thing to you and you haven't really shown off your work due to self consciousness, he was always very supportive even from the beginning. Later on you realized that he also loved writing. That was one of the many things that formed a great friendship between you both, besides from your love of heroes and nerding out with each other of course!. You both carried out your conversation while getting your lunches. Sitting down on the table along with everyone else smiling and joking you all causally eat your meals. You pull out your notebook, sliding it over to Midorya to take a look after you promised him too. He smiles and opens to the bookmarked paged, but a soon as he does a hand flashes and snatches the book out of his hands.

"Please tell me you don't think your sorry excuse of a quirk would get you into the top ten!" Bakugou loudly exclaiming with a smug look.

Well shit.

While he was chuckling you were about to stand and get it back, but Midorya beat you to it trying to pry it off of his hands, but Bakugou only lifts it up higher. "What's your deal nerd? Trying to stick up for your little girlfriend?" He says chuckling louder.

"S-she's not my girlfriend kachan! Give back her book! It's not yours!" Midorya says with a blush forming on his face. But Bakugou shoves him away and faces you.

"What makes you think that writing fairytale lands and princesses would make you pro hero? That's not going to save you from the real world. What's going to happen if a villain comes in and starts destroying everything around you? You're gonna write him a love story with a happily ever after!? Give me a break! " He says with a laugh.

"Kachan! You need to stop this" Midorya says stepping back up to him. "Not everyone's quirk is perfect!"

"Heh! If you really think she could handle the world on her own-" He says before holding out the book "Let's give her a chance to prove me wrong! "

And just like that, your notebook, your work your safe haven was blown up to flames. Bits of burnt paper flown into the air, your book quickly into ashes. You didn't notice midorya quickly moving to get his water and put the fire out, your eyes was fixated on Bakugou. A smirk had formed on his face that made your heart sink into your stomach. A lump forming within your chest as you fought the urge to cry. He moved his arms and raised his eyebrows, waiting for you to make the next move. But you felt a hand around your arm.

"Y/N, you don't need this now. Let's just go-"

"No... " You say stepping up to Bakugou. Taking one last look at your destroyed book you turn your head back to him. "It's a shame, because the poem I was just writing... Was about you. " You say with a sad smile and a nod. He blinks back in surprise, his smirk growing larger than before. "That's not a good thing.. " You later say. Even though it was still in the works, even if you didnt get to finish it you felt your tongue burn. An unfamiliar sensation forming in your mouth. Usually you would feel it within your hand as you write, a soft glow transferring onto the words you'd write on the page. But now that feeling had made it's way from your throat and to your mouth.

And it's telling you to speak the fuck up.

You took a breath, looked him deep in the eye and let your mouth took the wheel.

"The following are true stories.

May 26th 2003 Aron Ralston was hiking, a boulder fell on his right hand. He waited four days, then amputated his arm with a pocket knife.

On New Year’s Eve, a woman was bungee jumping in Zimbabwe. The cord broke, she then fell into a river and had to swim back to land in crocodile infested waters with a broken collarbone.

Claire Champlin was smashed in the face by a five pound watermelon being propelled by a slingshot.

Matthew Brobst was hit by a javelin.

David Striegl was punched in the mouth. By a kangaroo.

The most amazing part about these stories is when asked about the experience they all smiled, shrugged, and said “I guess things could have been worse.”

So go ahead.

Tell me that you’re having a bad day.

Tell me about the traffic. Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a town house burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into 7:00 AM, and the crash totaled your happiness.

Tell me! Tell me!

Tell me, how blessed are we to have tragedies so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues?

You see, when Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted, she didn’t speak for forty eight hours. When my uncle was murdered, we had to send out a search party to find my father’s voice.

Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence have the exact same address!

When your day is a museum of disappointments hanging from events that were outside of your control, when you find yourself flailing in an ocean of “Why is this happening to me?”, when it feels like your guardian angel put in his two week notice two months ago and just decided not to tell you, when it feels like God is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone, when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life, remember that every year two million people die of dehydration so it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty, there’s water in the cup.

Drink it, and stop FUCKING complaining.

Muscle is created by repeatedly lifting things that have been designed to weigh us down. So when your shoulders feel heavy, stand up straight and lift your chin – call it exercise. When the world crumbles around you, you have to look at the wreckage and then build a new one out of the pieces that are still here.

Remember, you are still here.

The human heart beats approximately four thousand times per hour.

Each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy engraved with the words “You are still alive”...

You are still alive...

Act like it."

When you felt the sensation cool from your lips and the tip of your tongue, Bakugou's eyes were wide. His smirk had fallen. Silence filled around you, even from Midorya. Everyone has seen and heard the whole thing. Just as you were about to walk back to your table to grab your things and leave, you hear a slow clap. Then another. Then another. You turn your head to see everyone clapping and cheering. You smile a little. Bakugou steps back and walks off with a smack of his teeth.

"Tch, whatever weirdo.. " He mumbles under his breath.

You walked over to Midorya smiling and he quickly gives you a hug. "That was amazing! The way you kept firing words at kachan was incredible! I never seen him so speechless like that! " He pulls away with a smile and a blush.

"Oh hehe! It was nothing really" You say forming a blush yourself, looking away shyly.

"I'm really sorry about your notebook though. I could buy you another one and bring it to you tomorrow! "

"Oh no it's okay! I have extras at my house-"

"Nope! It's my treat." He smiles and the bell rings again, making everyone pack up and ready for the next class. Midorya grabs his bag and hands you yours. Making your way back into the building he stops you for a second. "Hey, speaking of treat, d-do you think we could both head out f-for some ice cream after school? " He says with a heavier blush and fiddles with his tie. He always did looked cute when he blushed. You smile and giggle a bit.

"I would love to.. "

(Woah hey! First fanfic done! Hope you all enjoyed that!! 🤣💕)

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Random scattered thoughts about D3 under the cut

*The fact that everyone has basically abandoned Audrey though......where goodness doesn't get better? More like 'we'll abandon you once your dumped by our king and also rub it in your face that you couldn't hold a prince like your mother could'- also Audrey knows about the love spell and WHY Mal did it, but if that's the, case then everyone knows and still doesn't care that Mal did that- like the one person with brain cells is Audrey and shes the villain of this movie.

*Queen of Mean is a bop though- its one of the only valid songs in this movie, but also with the evil laughter almost that could be heard BEFORE Audrey puts on the crown, it makes me wonder if they planned to have Audrey be possessed after all.

*One Kiss is literally just gay panic the song, no I don't take arguments its literally Evie in gay panic mode and its Disney having to do that one heterosexual song to remind us that no, only heterosexual couples are valid in this universe- also despite dating for three years, Evie struggles to tell Doug she loves him and even doesn't believe her true loves kiss wont work???? WOW- can we say, clearly goals to have a relationship where bae stalks you originally and you struggle to tell him you love him after three years of dating and after sharing a cottage with him?

*Night Falls is a cool song, but I love how as soon as Uma tries to lead, Mal gets bitchy and acts like she can lead a sword fight better then a pirate captain could- like, mal chill, your not queen yet.

*Mal as Hades daughter.......lemme just uh, stress that's the worst twist in history, literally over-powers Mal once more with now god blood- and Do What You Gotta Do is literally daddy issues the song, and despite having the same parenting as Maleficent with how he neglected Mal basically, Hades is somehow the better parent?? HOW?! Also its never showed how Mal learnt this information.....did Disney forget to write that in or- and of course, Mal must be the only VK of the core four with a good parent- cause of course, Mal must have everything as always.

*Audrey singing Happy Birthday while cursing the party and singing 'dear jane' while smiling evilly......can we just uh say, she at least got down with the aesthetic of being a villain?

*Oh yeah, speaking of villains- despite being promoted as villains, Hades does nothing basically besides drain Mal of her magic and all 'evil' scenes from trailer is just him doing random shit or good shit, while Uma is more of a anti-hero while Celia is kinda just there doing scamming and such- Audrey was the only accurate villain to promotion and even then she only got one trailer.

*My Once Upon A Time is literally Pity Me the song and Mal even sings at the end about reaching greatness and such- Jay, Evie, Carlos and Ben got stonned for this shit.

*Also yes, they literally stonned Ben, Carlos, Jay and Evie cause only Mal can take part in final fight.

*ALSO- MAL LIED- like, girl literally lied to her friends about the isle barrier and didn't tell them she was going to seal it up, and when confronted about it, she acts like she had no choice when she MADE the decision on her own and then after friends get stonned, she goes into pity song mode and doesn't suffer much consequences for the lie afterwards.

*Audrey saying to Mal though about the love spell and how its a touching story for the grandkids.......grandkids in the future felt that burn.

*Mal is cursed into a old hag and Ben into a beast......except Mals curse wears off under the barrier while Bens is soon enough fixed by Jane blasting enchanted lake at him- just......cant have true love fix curses like they do in the movies, nah, that means our couple being true love.

*Audrey nearly fucking dies- thanks plot for nearly killing the WOC princess.

*"Mal came through"- yeah, after planning to seal up the barrier and abandon every kid on the isle basically- but its okay they didn't know so its okay, TIME TO CELEBRATE MAL AGAIN-

*Lady Tremaine's character is fucking weird- in descendants 2 they say shes not a good grandma, but here she is?! Can Disney make up their mind on how the characters are written?!

*Celia and her relationship with her father though is precious, y'all can fight me on it.

*Mal literally saying she has to be queen of the isle as well- one, excuse you that's Uma's title and two, the isle IS apart of Auradon and is a PRISON, then again, descendants 2 forgot this detail when trying to act like being from a place where VKs are abused by their parents is something you cant ignore so why am I not surprised Descendants 3 is continuing that trend.

*Mal is drained of her magic but this isn't even explored cause she gets it back when Hades gives her the ember- so guess we cant even see Mal be forced to fight a battle without magic.

*Also Hades gives Mal the ember at the end for good- BUT WHAT WILL SHE DO WITH IT?! Its probably gonna go in the museum lol- so he basically lost his weapon as well.

*The Smee twins are also precious, and the fact that Smee cares about them is adorable- plus Smee is kinda accurate in design so.

*Jay being a big brother to all....precious- but also hes clearly gay for Gil sorry don't make the rules.

*Carlos and Jane must be protected from the plot.

*Evie's plot is good as well, but her whole 'struggling to say I love you to doug' is still bullshit plot.

*Doug is as boring as ever- next.

*Uma is a queen as always- her boys were so happy to see her again and she looked so happy to see them as well, let alone seeing the sun finally when the barrier fell at the end.

*Which brings me to uh, the ending.....THEY TORE DOWN THE BARRIER- like, the entire Isle is free now, not just the VKs but also villains- VILLAINS WHO IN FIRST MOVIE WANTED REVENGE- villains who will likely hurt their kids in Auradon still and villains who will likely not want to play peaceful and happy families- I thought Mal knew how villains worked, but she thinks villains will wanna play good guys? What happened to 'your parents cant reach you here' in film 1? NOW THEY CAN- Jasmine already fucking calling bullshit if Jafar thinks he can roam free.

*Hades at the end.......uggghhhh- Mal as his kid still makes no sense and never will and we get it, protective dad joke- WE GET IT- god, those jokes tire me sometimes.

*Disney really better not be acting like they deserve an award for that Hades and Mal twist- everyone saw it coming, you gave it away with Mal's hair and the teaser trailer- which is also never explained in D3 so lol.

*Disney: *doesn't have Lonnie being mentioned at all* Lonnie: "Am I a joke to you?"

*Chads weak as always- again, next.

*Audrey does get a apology finally but um, it took THREE YEARS to do so! Y'all asked for her revenge! Like, I love Ben but who the fuck says to a pissed off person that's about to curse you and your trying to talk them out of it, "I'll forgive you" like- DUDE NO-

*VK Day is still bullshit and that's just facts- also I love how they like I wish we could take you all- WHY. CANT. YOU?! You have power to take them all of it! But you DONT! In fact, Mal later decides to seal up the barrier at one point meaning she had to abandon the VKs there and even prevent Celia from seeing her dad again! So guess she forgot the VKs and was like 'yeah seal that fucker up cause Hades stole my magic'.

*Mal needing cheering in final fight......yayyy- I didn't need anymore reminders this was a Mal movie.

*Remember when HSM3 at least felt connected to the prior movies? D3 doesn't even FEEL connected- your expected to read books that may not stand a chance at getting mentioned- also had a entire different thing with Mal's dad but Disney erased that despite connecting the books each time they said to read a book before seeing the film- and in D3, a lot of shit just feels separate to the previous two- let alone the major time skip making it harder to connect- with Young Justice, while timeskips happen you still get hints at what happened inbetween those timeskips- but with D3? None is mentioned- so your left with this as the last movie and yeah, its just messy really.

*Well at least Huma won- we got one good ship in this movie at least- too bad its surrounded by a mess.

*Thank fuck there's no more descendants movies after this- sure, its sad and descendants still has a place with me- well with the aspects I like/the characters I like- but at the same time, a fourth descendants would be disrespectful to Cameron Boyce, the only Carlos really and of course, considering how messy D3 was and how Mal centred it became, a fourth movie really is not in the future- its sad I know, but at the same time, at least descendants can live on in fandom.

[venus-says]

Kamen Rider Wizard Episodes 36-51

Magic exists for those who believe in it.

A bit later than usual but here I'm with the closing post on Kamen Rider Wizard. Before I get to the end of the series itself let me make a few disclaimers.

As you can see in the title this is a review of the episodes 36-51 even though this show has 53 episodes. Well, the thing is that the final two episodes of this series are kinda like a TV crossover special that technically happens right after Wizard ended but it doesn't necessarily have a connection to the show. Of course, I could come here and say my thoughts on the thing, but this is a special to appeal to nostalgia, and even though they set some lore (or at least they try to), it wasn't something I was invested on because I don't know a huge part of the cast so all the tiny nostalgic bits that probably were a big selling point for long live fans don't appeal to me because I never experienced them and everything just looked like an overcrowded mess (I'm sorry) and this is why I'm keeping this one out.

Also, I usually comment on the solo movie of each series in this last post, however, I didn't have a lot to say about this movie, you know? Like, it was entertaining, seeing a world where everyone has magical powers was quite fun, but that's pretty much it. There wasn't anything special or very impressive that was worth nothing. I like the design of the villain, but I think he lost the coolness factor when it was revealed he was just another Phantom and not a crazy human craving for power. This movie didn't even have a special form, I think, yeah he uses the dragon while on his Infinity form and that's something that didn't happen in the show but it felt like more of the same rather than something unique. Seeing me talk like this may look like I disliked this movie, but it's not that, I enjoyed it, it just didn't felt special enough for me to dedicate more than just one paragraph for it.

With this out of the way, let's talk about the final stretch of Wizard.

I wasn't very happy with how this show ended its second arc, and I was very scared to see how this ending would go. And while I still have my problems, I still liked it quite a lot despite them. I think one of the biggest strengths of this part was in the emotional part, while some of the emotional moments didn't really click with me, I could see what they were going for and I could appreciate and understand even though I personally didn't connect with the situations. I also like that this part focused a lot on Haruto which was extremely necessary to me seeing how emotionally driven the finale was and if they didn't have given him this much attention it wouldn't have worked as well as it did.

Of course, thanks to this focus other characters lost a lot of their screen time, which in some cases was beneficial but in others, it was a flaw. For example, y'all know I don't like Kousuke and he had only two major evens where he got the spotlight only for himself, and while in the first one it worked in the second (where he saves the city by "sacrificing" himself) it didn't feel right seeing how overlooked he was during these episodes. You know, if you gonna make one of your characters do something SO BIG you should at least give him more chances to shine before.

Another thing that I fell like it was compromised was the plot resolving the 3 additional wizards. But in this case, this is totally more like a flaw of the show for lacking on better planning rather than just focusing more on Haruto during this period. I think that if they knew they wanted to end this series with 4 wizards (Beast and Wiseman not included) to be able to complete the ritual this was a concept that should've been introduced WAY EARLIER and we should've seen the other three wizards falling into Wiseman's hands way sooner. Like, the last wizard was introduced six episodes before the show ended and the finale arc was 4 episodes long so you can see how this was very overlooked, and the fact they gave them generic designs was also very sad especially because I was SO EXCITED to see Mayu as a Rider to go there and beat Medusa, but not even that she was able to do, I think this the most disappointing aspect of this third act because they could've done so much cool stuff with them and they barely scratched the surface with this concept.

Also one last let down, the way the revelation that Koyomi was Wiseman's daughter, the reveal that she was a vessel for the Philosopher's Stone, and the "reveal" that the White Wizard was the villain were all very lackluster. I think that they had put out more clues than they should to make that reveal be any impactful to anyone that would stop for 2 minutes to think about it. Like, at the moment Koyomi said she was concerned because she was running out of mana too quickly I knew she was related to the Philosopher's Stone somehow. And let's not forget that it was pretty early when the show showed the viewers that Wiseman and the White Wizard were the same person so when it was revealed to our main characters it didn't feel like a big moment how they expected it to be. Though I guess this could've been just my experience because I was frustrated that it wasn't Mayu who dealt the final blow on Medusa. Now that I think of it, it was pretty obvious that Wiseman would betray Medusa at some point so that's another thing that kinda weakened that moment.

I know it seems that I absolutely despised this ending seeing how much I wrote on these bad points, but I swear that's not the case. These are (a lot of) small details that without a doubt could've been worked better, but the final product we got was also pretty good, it's just that I don't know how to put out the things I liked, you know? Because it's not a bunch of specific points is more or less the overall construction that leads to the end. Because I don't think there was any specific moment, besides Mayu coming back, in between episodes 36 and 47 that felt like a major highlight to me, yes we had Haruto's backstory, yes we had new riders showing up, and of course, we had the whole discovering things arc and all of that, but none of it really stand out.

But all those episodes were equally good and enjoyable and they all constructed the atmosphere that leads to the finale, that while I think it could've been resolved more quickly it was still an ending that got me really invested in it. I was impressed that Kousuke sacrificed himself to save the whole city, I liked how Gremlin ended up being the final villain, I'm still stunned by that scene where Gremlin killed Fueki because I was really not expecting that to happen, and many other great moments in those final four episodes that were an amazing pay-off for the series.

But I think the thing I liked the most is that the show was bold enough to not bring Koyomi back after she had finally died. I know they ended on a note where they could bring her back in a future appearance, but I feel like that it's kinda okay, it's a bit selfish from Haruto's side because it was pretty clear Koyomi was ready to go but I feel like it's better than pull a Phillip and banalize her death and the impact that had on Haruto at that moment. I was really scared that the show would revert her death somehow and ruin this pretty good ending, and seeing that they didn't do it was a relief and I was glad that I could close the book on this series on a very positive note.

Wizard wasn't as wild of a journey, but this doesn't mean it wasn't bold on its decisions and its overall story. Coming from a very bad experience I had with Fourze, Wizard was a good series to refresh my interest in keep doing these reviews. And while I don't agree with a lot of decisions the show made, especially during the second act, it was great to watch Kamen Rider again and just have a good time. I'm really excited to get to Gaim and a huge part of it is how happy I felt by reaching the end of this series. I hope I can meet y'all during my journey with Gaim as well. See ya~

[polar-stars]

O, Q and R plz :3

O: How do you begin a story--with the plot, or the characters?

Characters in 9 out of 10 situations ! Most of the time I design or think off characters and then attempt to build a plot around them. 

Exception are fanfics of course, as there are already characters provided, so to speak. 

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

Yeah, plenty of original stuff actually ! It’s mostly just things that I planned when a lot younger and that now that I am looking back on it, just don’t make a lot sense ;w;

One of those is a story called “Jurassic School”, which is kinda about a few humans having their DNA mixed with the DNA of dinosaurs (?) Yeah, it’s just as weird as it sounds. And in the end, I didn’t really find a way to make this premise truly work ahdhdh But honestly, I still really like the characters ! (I, once again, came up with the characters first)

I also have scraps of a discarded scene from “Shokugeki no Kimiko” that found on my phone and will put under a read-more if anyone’s interested. It’s what I first intended to be the beginning of Chapter 9 ! 

Originally it began with Takumi and Ikumi having a scene (despite the fact that I never wrote an end to it ahdhdhf) and when Kimiko went to attend gardening work, it was originally Chieko she met up with instead of Yasu. I changed it, to have Chieko still having to clean up her room because I thought that was more fitting. 

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

;w;

Yes, but I am massively too shy to name them because they’re great and amazing and I don’t want to put myself into comparison with them. 

Thanks for the ask ^^ and here’s some deleted scraps:

The morning sun shone trough the window, filling the room with a warm light.In the air there hung the fragrance of tomatoes, basils and cooked eggs. Soft footsteps could be heard climbing up the stairs, with absolute determination to make no noise whatsoever. They came nearer and nearer, till finally a blonde man was standing on the doorway. His blue eyes searched the room and didn't took long to stop at the comfortable bed standing right in the middle. 

-

Right about to go downstairs, Chieko stopped in her walk as she heard Kimiko's footsteps and turned around. "Kimiko-cchi!" She then called out happily, while adjusting her glasses like ever so often. Kimiko's quiet response was a surprised expression about the unexpected encounter. She hurried her steps to reach the petite, young girl, who immediately said. "Good Morning." "Good Morning, Chieko-Chan." The two started walking downstairs together, while Kimiko questioned. "You're up already? I thought that only Hiroshi-Kun and me have field work duties." "Oh, I usually awake at that time. I've got to go and feed my animals."  Chieko informed. "Ah, okay!"Kimiko looked at the short girl beside her a little closer, without her noticing. Since she was going into the animal stall, Chieko did not wore one of the knee-long skirts, Kimiko saw her so often in, but knee-long shorts. She also wore a jacket, instead of the usual blue cardigan. Chieko's glasses once again slid down her nose again and like it was instinct, Chieko immediately pushed them upwards with her middle finger. It's not like Kimiko had not seen her do this before, in fact it was a very common movement for Chieko, but after yesterday something was different.She looks so much like..."You came home pretty late yesterday." Chieko had suddenly turned her face back to Kimiko, which brought Kimiko out of her thoughts immediately. "Y...Yeah!" She stuttered, overwhelmed.  She probably should stop comparing her classmates to the faces from a photoalbum she gotintroduced to yesterday. There was no way around it and Kimiko pretty much knew who everyone's parent was now. She was just surprised that out of all the thousands of students within the 115th Generation she got introduced to those Reborn Jewels. Whatever, she would ask each of them about their infamous parents when she felt it was the right time. So, she hoped that the bespectacled girl next to her would distract her. Chieko had focused her sight on the front again, but that hasn't stopped her from talking. "...And you really just found yesterday, that your brother is in the Elite Ten?"Great of course the distraction had to be the infamous brother of Kimiko's. She suppressed a grunt, to not sound needlessly mean to Chieko and only nodded. "He never mentioned it at home, I never asked anything about Totsuki either to be fair...You probably figured."Before Chieko could ask anything else, Kimiko switched the topic herself. "Well, whatever...What matters it that I know it now, so well..... What kind of animals do you actually raise, Chieko-chan?" "Hm? Oh well, here on Polar Star we have ducks, chickens and rabbits...So if you ever need some game..."By now the two had by reached the door of the dormitory and exited into the cold outside. As the sun hasn't gone up yet, it was still dark and chilly. Morning dusk hung in the air and the birds were still asleep."....you can ask me! I can defiantly organise some. Not just ducks, chickens and rabbits by the wa- Oh hey, look! It's Yasu."  The tall fellow was just returning from his morning work, holding a chainsaw and wearing a stoic expression, which lightened up as he saw the two girls. "Good Morning, you two!" He raised a hand and used it to pat Chieko's black head as he was near enough. "Mornin' Ibusaki!" Kimiko smiled back, while Chieko rather grunted her greeting, slightly irritated from the heavy hand on her head. "Good Morning." "So you voluntarily wake up early as well, Ibusaki?" Kimiko asked her other dormmate, trying to distract herself from comparing him to one of the photos in the album. But yes, Yasu Ibusaki was without a doubt a Reborn Jewel as well...Just like all her classmates from Polar Star. "The sooner you awake, the more you have from the day, no?" Yasu responded. "Very philosophical." Chieko murmured, before turning to Kimiko. "He usually starts the day with making his smoke wood and is probably on the way to his private workshop now, Hm?" Yasu gave a nod, which resulted in Kimiko whistling impressed. "Y'all really are self made guys, huh? Raising animals, own smoke wood and workshop...that field." The two exchanged looks, before Chieko happily chirped. "You could say that, I guess." And Yasu informed. "Growing your own ingredients is part of Polar Star's ideologies." "It really sounds very interesting." Kimiko smiled, a little nervously. Hopefully she would be able to contribute as well. She had never grown her own animals. "Oh Chi-Chan, now don't start running your mouth so early in the morning." Yasu calmly interjected and shot a concerned look, at least it seemed so, to the transfer student. "She's unstoppable as soon as she starts."Chieko crossed her arms. "Excuse me?" Kimiko couldn't help but to chuckle. She had to admit that her dormmates were, despite their oddities, were truly enjoyable company. She looked excusingly to Chieko. "In all honesty, I'd love to hear but I still gotta get to the field, you know?"Chieko clapped her hands together. "Oh yes, of course! Come on, Kimiko-cchi, I'll show you the fields..! Yasu, have you seen Tadokoro already?" "Yeah, he's working on the fields." "Perfect! Alright, let's go then, Kimiko-cchi!" Another soft giggle from Kimiko. "Okay, Okay Chieko-Chan." "Oh and about Polar Star's history, the short version will do." Chieko smiled at Kimiko and stuck out her tongue towards Yasu afterwards. He responded with padding her head once again. "See you at breakfast, Chi-chan." He began to walking again and murmured to Kimiko. "But remember that I warned you, Yukihira." "See ya later, Ibusaki." Kimiko grinned. He gave a soft smirk back and waved, before turning away and walking towards the dormitory.

[kylorengarbagedump]

Little Bird: Chapter 37

Read on AO3. Part 36 here. Part 38 here.

Summary: There are only so many ways you can deliver news.

Words: 2700

Warnings: dystopia

Characters: Kylo Ren x Handmaid!Reader

A/N: I really didn't think I'd get a chapter out today, but I did, so yay!? Sorry it's a bit short (I remember when 2000 words was normal for me!), but I must be on my bullshit, as always.

Thank you very much to everyone who reached out. I had a shitty week this week, and I anticipate things in the next few weeks will not be super great. If there is a week where an update is missed, I hope you can understand.

I love y'all very much, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! <3

Beyond the sheet, the doctor’s shadow worked in silence, collecting instruments to soon be used to pry and expose your pomegranate flesh. Your monthly exam would never feel routine--prior to the collapse of society, they’d already been unpleasant. But now, separated from the provider by gossamer cloth, scrutinized in anonymity while metal objects cracked you wide, they crushed you in revulsion. The doctor whirled on his stool between your legs, air whispering over your bare skin. You swallowed.

A squeaking, clacking, and the cold metal of the speculum parted your labia and pierced your entrance. You held your breath, willing away the tears that pricked your sight--you’d always cried at this part, even before it became obligatory--drifting to your mind until he was finished. 

Kylo Ren had been gone for 18 days, and in his absence, Gilead had drawn from your veins, a vampire of systemic proportions bleeding you not of life, but of the will to live itself. Without his presence, his power, his capability to extract you from bondage, you’d sunk into it like a tarpit, thick sticky ooze edging ever-closer to your throat. Sutures now removed, antibiotics completed, your days consisted of waking, walking, waiting, and, more than once, weeping, before wishing yourself into a witless slumber. Not that you were surprised. After all, before you’d fucked him in secrecy the first time, you’d asked yourself, what was life without living? 

As it turned out: pretty fucking awful. 

Pain lit up your spine when the doctor dug at your cervix for a swab--you winced, and the exam room door opened.

“Hey, we’re running behind, you do you want me to grab the next one, or--”

“No, no,” your doctor replied. “I’m almost done with this one. Did you get the urinalysis back?”

“Uh, no, sorry, I haven’t checked. I can go do it now.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Oh, hey.” Then he swiveled away--leaving you gaping, a red tunnel open for observation. “Did you hear what the director said this morning?”

The other man hummed in thought. “Something about Commander Pryde. I didn’t really care.”

You stared into the ceiling, hands folded over your stomach, tears stinging again while your thighs began to tremble. Privacy and respect hadn’t been afforded to you in three years; you had long been designated a womb buried in a hunk of meat. But something about having your cervix on display like the Hope Diamond was particularly nauseating. Your stomach groaned in humiliation.

“Yeah. Anyone who’s even spoken with Pryde in the last month is getting rounded up.”

Breath stalled. There was no way the doctor knew who you were--the sheet separating you ensured that. Dread iced over your chest.

“Shit,” the other man replied. “Really? Damn.” A pause, clanging of instruments. “Just questioning, right?”

“For now.” The doctor grumbled. “I just had the tenaculum. What the hell?”

“Isn’t it right over there?”

“Oh, right, yeah.” Wheels squeaked across the floor. “Anyway, it’s just a new round of Ren’s bullshit.” He sighed, scooching between your legs again. Something sharp and cold pinched you--you bit your lip. “Dissenters this, threats to Gilead that. I wouldn’t worry about it. Unless--”

A snort. “I hate the both of ‘em.” The man sighed. “You’d think that fixing the birthrate should be their top priority, the way things are going.” 

The doctor grumbled, and something pinched you like talons, shooting pain up your spine. “Yeah. Well. If Ren has his way, half the people in this country are gonna end up dead.”

Your heart was tumbling into a canyon. In the time without him, your belief in your Commander’s defection had dimmed. You’d believed initially that his motivation for Pryde’s capture was revenge--something undesirable, but still understandable--but the longer his campaign went on, the more you realized that there would be nothing that would convince him to release his stranglehold on his position. A gnawing despair within you whispered that whatever Kylo Ren felt for you, he felt it one hundredfold for power and control; convincing him to leave it behind would not only be improbable, but impossible. Yet, as you considered betraying what little affection he might have, sorrow shredded you. The thought of his capture, trial, possible execution--

More tears. You couldn’t stomach the thought of him not here, of being torn from him, of his existence in the past tense. And you also couldn’t sacrifice your freedom for his sins. 

The release of the speculum tugged you back to the exam, and you sniffled, clearing your throat. You’d missed the rest of the conversation.

“Whatever happens, at least we won’t be out of a job. They’ll always need someone to make sure the breeding stock is healthy.” A pause, as if to acknowledge that, yes, you were still in the room. “No offense, of course.”

Bile burned your tongue. You said nothing. 

“Shit, that reminds me,” said the other man. “I’ll go check the urinalysis.”

“Thanks.” 

The door shut. Without warning, latex fingers pushed inside of you, another hand pressing down on your belly. The inspection went on for seconds longer than you thought it should, his fingers curling, as if he was languishing there, reveling in the sensation of feeling your uterus. For a blink, every thought surrounding your Commander’s desertion of Gilead fled your mind, consumed by a venomous desire that he might catch this doctor in the act and crack his skull on the pearly tile, spray his blood, stain the grout. And then the intrusion was over, and your fury dissipated, the ache for retribution hollowing in your heart. 

It wouldn’t have mattered, really, if he had been standing in the room when it had happened--the doctor was no anomaly, but a functioning cog in Kylo Ren’s machine. As long as you both remained in clutches of his own creation, he would spend eternity defending you from its design. Even if you could be an exception, other women would suffer in forced silence. And even if he could mould it to your liking, it would still mean he preferred you to exist in subjugation instead of liberation.

Hope had been a security blanket almost three weeks ago, thick and warm around your shoulders while he’d bathed you with gentle hands. Now it clung in tatters to your ribs, the tiny scraps fluttering like tissue with every gust of reality.

The door opened again. 

“Hey,” the man said. “Got the results.”

A snap of rubber as the doctor removed his gloves. “And?”

“Look for yourself.”

Shuffling paper stifled the sad knock of your pulse in your ears. Perhaps you knew, and had always known, that Kylo might never come to agree with your perspective. You just frequently forgot to acknowledge that it would mean letting him go. Forever. 

“Hey! Okay!” A warm palm slapped your thigh, and you squeaked. “We got another one!”

When no one responded, you realized he had been speaking to you. About a result. A urinalysis. Another one...

You couldn’t speak. Or breathe. Oh--

“You’re pregnant!” 

Like a geyser, it burst from you--your sorrow, your fear, your disgust, your absolute joy--and poured in rivers down your cheeks, your hands clapping over your face. There was no one coherent thought that could be plucked from your mind, just a constant tornado of horrific exhilaration, a celebratory mourning that within you, a tangible testament to you and your Commander’s connection beat and pulsed and flourished with life, growing veins like vines and limbs like wings. 

His child--your child--a physical entity you could nourish in the wake of his reluctance, an unalterable legacy inside of your womb, one that you, if you were to be denied all else, could adore. Your child, but also his child, descendant to a despondent devil, progeny to a preserver of your own imprisonment. A child that, if born into the realm of its father’s regency, would never know normality, or maybe even you--at all. A heaving sob cracked through, and you shivered, trembling with terrified bliss.

The doctor slapped your thigh again. “Don’t stress!” he said. “According to the chart here, you’re about six weeks along. There’s still a chance for disruption. So I’d stay relaxed, all right?” 

Swallowing, you creaked out a noise of assent. There wasn’t a word you could bear to say. 

After the doctor left, you slipped back into your red dress and wings--despite Kylo’s words weeks earlier, you had been provided no other options after he’d left, and you suspected he’d meant for you to only be out of uniform in his presence, regardless. You were escorted by an armed nurse out of the clinic, where a Knight--still masked, no cloak, just in tactical gear--was waiting by the black SUV you’d seen a few of them in before. Averting your gaze, you climbed into the back and buckled in. The vehicle started, you coasted through the parking lot, and onto the road.

For the first time in several days, the sun was out--though it would need more than an afternoon to evaporate the muggy air that had accumulated in its absence. You gazed into the stark, cloudless sky, placing your hands on your belly, as if you could commune with the little being inside of you, know it before it knew you. A question, awful and exciting, lingered in your mind  as you imagined telling Kylo the news, but no answer revealed itself. You replayed the scenario over and over again, practicing it on your tongue--I’m pregnant--digging deep for his reaction. But it was useless, as initially unknowable as anything else about him. Anxiety constricted your heart, a dam about to crumble behind your eyes.

The Knight turned a corner, and you jostled in the backseat. There couldn’t have been much intimacy between them all. But still.

“How do you think the Commander would respond…” You swallowed again--hesitation kept wadding in your throat. “How do you think he’d respond to a pregnancy?”

Long, sweltering seconds ticked by without a word. Balling your hands in your lap, your palms slipped, heartbeat thumped in your clasped thumbs. You’d never heard a Knight say a word, before--you weren’t sure why you were expecting one to answer you. Lava licked at your neck, dripping down your spine, your teeth tearing at your cheeks. 

“Whatever it is,” the Knight said, shattering expectation, “anything in comparison will look like apathy.”

A rush of interminable origin raced your flesh, flushing hot in your blood. That was about as accurate as you could expect. And unsatisfying as you could predict.

When you arrived at home and stepped out of the vehicle, another realization crested over you. Johana. Though your relationship had settled into an uneasy truce since the day the Commander had left, the words she spared you had been few and far between. You knew that your pregnancy was possibly her only dream, but combined with the uncharted territory of her husband’s intentions, you worried it would become her nightmare. 

At the same time, perhaps these worries were unfounded--the threats Kylo would face by disrupting his Wife’s right to your child might be too great for him to risk his power. His concessions had been minor and in relative secrecy, affecting only his relationship with you--everything else had the secondary benefit of securing his reign. He’d said plenty, but how much had he meant? After overhearing the discussion in the exam room, you were fairly certain that if made to choose between Gilead and you, you’d lose.

You followed the Knight into the house, relieved to cross into central air. Taking a few slow steps, you drew a deep breath.

“Ms. Johana!” You paused, listening for a response. You heard none. “Ms. Johana?”

She wasn’t in the house--that meant she was likely out in the yard. In the heat. Sighing, you trudged through the halls through the back door, squinting as light smacked your face. In the weeks since Kylo’s departure, the garden had been cleared and mostly restored at Johana’s behest--the grass gleamed gold, summer flowers replanted in over-saturated swirls of color. You hopped over the stones, turning the words on your tongue, hoping to make them real in your mouth.

I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. I’m--

“Ofkylo.”

You stalled, recognizing the moniker as yours, resentful of its familiarity to your ears. Beyond one of the hedges was Johana, prying open a birdfeeder. Heat--though whether it was from the sun or your fear, you didn’t know--sizzled the nape of your neck. You steeled your jaw, grabbing your skirts and tromping through the trimmed lawn in her direction.

“What are you doing out here?” There was a bag of mixed seed at her feet, her sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she wiped the feeder clean with a rag. “I thought you just left for your exam.”

“I did. I’m back,” you said. “I was, um. Looking for you.”

“Oh.” She flipped the top in her little hands, scrubbing it clean, too. “Well, that’s fine. What’s going on? They didn’t find out about the gunshot, right?”

You shook your head. “Oh, no no. That’s fine.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m tired of lying for your benefit. The antibiotics weren’t--”

“I know, Ms. Johana,” you sighed. “So…” The words were so simple, but so difficult to say. “The exam went well.”

She nodded, digging into the seed, scooping a helping. “Uh-huh.”

There was nothing that would make this any less nerve-wracking. You inflated your chest, and let it go. “I’m pregnant.”

Johana stopped, like she’d been shot herself, staring into the ground. The seed fell from her palms and spilled over her shoes. She rose, gaze drifting from your feet, to your hands, to your face, her chin shaking. A smile was threatening to explode across her lips.

“Wait.” She exhaled. “Really?”

Wagging your arms in admission, you nodded. “Yup.”

A human springtrap, she squealed, launching into you and wrapping you in a tight, bony hug. You wheezed from her strength--she squeezed you, pinning your limbs to your sides as she wriggled you like a toy. 

“Yes!” She jumped up and down, still holding you. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“Yes,” you repeated. “It’s, um, it’s true!”

Johana released you, erupting with elation. “This is amazing!” she said. “Lord, I’m going to have to go see everyone. Yes, we’ll have to have a party.” She clapped her hands and hugged you again. “Can you let the Marthas know to clean this up? I have to get going.” A playful, devious smirk twisted her mouth as she skipped into the house, congratulating herself. “Oh, they’re going to be so jealous! I’m pregnant!”

You stood, staring down at your belly. It wasn’t obvious, yet--but it wouldn’t be long. The thought of Johana preening, presiding over your stomach like it was her work paralyzed your heart. Had it been any other Commander, any other household, you might have even been relieved to incubate your ticket out of the Colonies, but now, you felt only panic. You didn’t want to give this baby up to her--a desire you never would have anticipated.

But then, none of this had been anything you had the ability to anticipate. A Handmaid was not supposed fuck her Commander outside of the Ceremony, or kiss him, or wake up in his embrace. A Handmaid was not supposed to yearn for her Commander, feel comfort from his  voice, find companionship in his presence, or feel grateful for his brutality and strength. A Handmaid was not supposed to plan her Commander’s downfall, or plan his escape, and especially not plan his future with her in it.

A Handmaid was not supposed to fall in love with her Commander. But you were a Handmaid. And it was too late.

You left the empty birdfeeder and the bag of seed, slinking up the stairs, creeping back to your room. Throat, chest, face tight, you laid in bed, palms planted on your stomach, and breathed. Shutting your eyes, you hoped for the hundred-thousandth time in three years you would wake up in a different world--a world where the father of your child was not your legal owner, a world where another woman was not claiming it as hers, a world where you opened your eyes and you were not alone, and you were free, and you were truly, deservedly loved.

If you fell asleep, you didn’t know--the next thing you recalled was the familiar rumble of the Audi’s engine, dying as it rolled into the driveway.