#and i dont know where people get the idea that theyre together

[senseiwu]

"Whys lloyd nicer to harumi than his dad"

I think you just answered the question right there. His dad.

Meant to love and support and be there for him

But Lloyd's whole life has been marked by things his father has done. And then s8 onwards kicks it up a whole bunch of notches.

He doesn't have to accept any changes, after all his father has done.

He's also like a thousand/s of years old.

It's probably easier to think that someone around your age, who's only been doing bad things the past few years, who you know is hurt too, can change more. That might hurt less.

...there's also the whole thing of. Manipulation having lasting effects lmao

[chiimeramanticore]

[dreamyberry]

where i come from, 2022

[synonymroll648]

IF LORE UPDATES APPLIED TO PEOPLE I WOULDVE JUST GOTTEN ONE OF MY HAPPIEST LORE UPDATES TODAY

[moonstruckme]

Oooo darling!! Your latest TASM fic sparked and idea!

(Before that, hello lovely 🩷 i hope you're having the best spooky season!)

Big brother!Sirius coming to save some poor sod that upset his slytherin!sister (Regulus' twin). So you have the charming & fun Sirius; quiet & regal Regulus; loyal & volatile reader. And i imagine Sirius calls them his twin stars (because hes deffinately a huge sap).

Where wolfstar is in 7th year and has a great relationship with the twins (maybe theyre trying to become their legal guardians behind the scenes). He and Remus are in their dorm before Peter bursts in, breathless, only saying "y/n" before Sirius is off. He has no doubt to why you were put in 🐍, and god forbid someone actually hurt his baby sister.

On reader's side, someone made a snide comment about Remmy being a halfblood or ruining the Black legacy or something and reader gets pissed because shes actually quite fond of him.

Then whatever you decide love; maybe reader gets hurt; maybe she does the hurting; maybe Remus saves the day with his long legs; or Sirius might show people what growing up in the 'Noble house of Black' does to someone. And idk what Reggie is doing, i imagine he was making out with James and they come in at the last minute ("😱 james!! What have you done!? Youve DEFILED one of my precious stars!!! Let go of him!!!! NO, dont touch him, get away.")

Anyway bub, as always; dont feel pressured and take all the creative liberties youd like!! Love you lots darling x

Hi my lovely, thanks for requesting! I really need to get more creative than bloody noses but ugh they're just so classic

cw: blood

big brother!sirius + (as opposed to x, I guess?) little sister!reader ♡ 861 words

“You weren’t there!” you insist as Sirius stalks back and forth across the room, tapping his wand against his leg in a quick, restless beat. “He said—he—” You look at Remus, the boy’s eyebrows drawn together in concentration and concern as he presses a cloth under your nose, trying to stop the blood that’s already crusted down your chin. You decide to keep your mouth shut. 

Remus smiles wryly, and you know he suspects why you’ve chosen to go quiet. “It doesn’t matter what they said, love. I don’t need you getting in fights for me.”

“Who was it?” Sirius demands, for probably the fourth or fifth time. You’re losing count. 

“It’s already been hand—ah!” Remus murmurs an episky while you’re distracted, and you flinch, hands flying to your face as your septum snaps back into its proper place. “Fuck, could’a given me some warning.” 

“Sorry,” Remus says, and he looks like he means it, tilting your chin up to continue cleaning your face as you look at him with teary eyes. “Thought it might hurt less if you weren’t expecting it.” 

“How do you figure?” you ask him, somewhat miffed. 

“Back. On. Task.” Sirius claps his hands with each word, coming to a stop in front of you. “Who did this? Remus is my boyfriend, I have twice as much a right to defend his honor as you do, you—you fucking—squirt.” 

You sneer at the childish name, but you know your brother means to rile you. “I told you, I handled it. He won’t do it again.” 

“And he’s never going to touch you again either,” Sirius promises menacingly, squatting in front of you to look you in the eyes, “if you just tell me the fucker’s name.” 

“Alright, that’s enough,” Remus says, taking his boyfriend’s shoulder in a spindly hand, the touch both soothing and controlling as he pushes Sirius back from you. “Let’s just let her rest for a minute, yeah?” Sirius sputters in protest, but Remus moves in front of him, pressing his face into his boyfriends’ dark locks. You roll your eyes at the display, though a tiny part of you loves that your brother has someone who loves him this well. Once he quiets, Remus speaks in a low, soothing voice. “I know, I know, you won’t be deterred from your vengeance, but there’s time for that later. Let’s just calm down for now.” 

It’s a lovely prospect, but at that moment, the door opens to reveal Regulus and James, both looking somewhat ruffled. James stops short at seeing you all gathered in his dorm (Remus and Sirius, of course, have every right to be here, but you’d bet he and Reg were hoping for some privacy) and stands there blinking for a moment. Your twin’s blasé facade slips the moment he sees you with blood still crusted to your nostrils and tear tracks down your face. 

“What happened?” he asks, pushing past James and into the dorm. 

“She got into a fight,” Sirius says, outrage instantly rekindled, and Remus sighs in exasperated resignation, his work undone. “Someone said something about Moony, but she won’t tell who.” 

Now James looks upset too, eyes darting to Remus concernedly. “About Moony? When?” 

“Just now!” Sirius throws up his hands. “Ten minutes ago! Did either of you see anything?” 

James shakes his head, and despite Regulus’ blank expression, you catch the embarrassed shifting of his stance. “No,” James says, “we were, uh…we didn’t see anything.” 

“I bet I know who it was though,” Regulus offers, that traitorous scum. He’s just throwing you under the bus to take the heat off himself. 

It works; Sirius perks up. “Yeah? Who?”

“It doesn’t matter who,” you say, but Sirius cuts you off, facing your twin. 

“Who?” he asks. 

“It was the guy you were arguing with yesterday too, right?” Reg glances at you for confirmation, and you glare at him. Don’t you dare, your look says, but he nods and turns back to Sirius. “He’s your year, the one you guys call Sni—”

“Reg and James were coming in here to have sex!” you blurt. 

It’s a wonder Sirius doesn’t get whiplash from how fast he turns around. “What?” 

You nod, unable to feel guilty as Regulus gives you an appalled look from behind your older brother. “Mhm,” you say. “Their hair is all messed up, and look—their lips are swollen. Plus, they were surprised we were in here.” 

You do feel a tiny bit bad for James, whose dark skin blanches when Sirius turns on him. “James Potter, did you come in here to defile my brother?” 

James looks to Remus for help, but his friend only turns his palms up like Sorry, what can you do?. After a second, Regulus steps closer to him.

“Sirius, we—”

“Don’t touch him,” Sirius practically retches. He shakes his head, grabbing Regulus by the arm and all but dragging him from the room. “Alright, listen. You are going to tell me who was talking shit about Remus, and then we’re going to have an entirely separate conversation about boundaries.” He casts a noxious look back at James. “And I’ll deal with you later!” 

[ankiebitez]

Beelzebub Dating Headcanons

gender neutral reader

warning: mention of sex with other people, aphrodisiacs being used without one person knowing at first, some nsft so 18+

just some random hcs i have about being in a relationship with bell. might add more as i feel like it honestly. more under the cut

beelzebub:

he would probably just decide you're dating without ever saying anything to you about it. he would kidnap take you on a date wandering around to another one of his favorite places, and if someone asked if you're together he say yes instantly. full confidence, no hesitation or doubt, just say you're dating like its the most natural thing to him. whether you just accept it or ask about it is up to you, but he already made up his mind up it seems.

would probably be down for an open relationship. we already know he fucked that one dealer lady from the "where's beelzebub?" event and multiple people from the selfie card. unfortunately with his constant wondering, you're not always gonna be around the other when one of you is horny, so he doesn't mind a couple of one night stands here and there. he gets bored of them rather quickly though, especially since they're not you. if you ever decide you'd rather have him than some random demon of your choosing though, all you have to do is send him a message and there's a 100% chance he'll be at your door within a minute at most.

he's definitely the type of guy that will take you on the most random ass dates, they're always interesting and memorable too.

he still wanders around, but you'll notice that you see him more often at least. you're in gehenna? what a coincidence that he happened to be at one of the local pubs. you're in avisos? he was actually just on his way to one of his favorite restaurants. paradise lost? actually he happened to be there getting healed up after a surprise fight with an angel. etc.

if he finds anything he thinks you'll enjoy while wandering around, he'll buy it and give it to you next time he sees you. or even when he doesn't see you, he might just leave the gift somewhere he knows you'll find it. theyre almost always strange and random things..... but just think of it like a cat leaving a dead mouse at your door to show affection. weird, but strangely sweet.

would be open to the idea of having a threesome, but he's definitely going to tease the hell out of you and whoever the other person is. just hope that the other person is either into that kind of thing or has the same energy. imagine him bullying his cock inside you or using his mouth on you, asking who's doing a better job of pleasing you and smirking at the other when all you can do is moan in response.

would also be more open to the idea of having a threesome with bael, he trusts bael and they've definitely done some things together in the past so, it'll definitely be an interesting experience.

he would definitely cook for you, and it always tastes amazing too. you should know already to be aware of the side effects, though he would never include an ingredient that could harm you seriously. if you start feeling a little bit (really fucking horny) hot and bothered after eating his food....you already know who to blame. dont worry though, he plans to take care of it.

speaking of food, he would definitely be into food play. we already know he has no shame, so dont be surprised if he tells you he has a "special dessert" for you to enjoy, only to find his dick dipped in chocolate and sprinkles for you to lick off.

[actuallyprobablyafaerie]

pjo episode four parts that made me scream

Them starting with sally trying teach percy how to swim and percy being scared is fantastic for two reasons: number one, its a normal kid thing and number two it ties into later in the books when we find out percy has a fear of drowning. Its like hoe thalia has a fear of heights and kind of ties into the idea that forbidden children are often afraid of some part of their parents element. I love that theyre bringing in elements of that idea so early!!!

percy’s “can i ask a stupid question” and annabeths “are you trying to make me make fun of you” akdbdkbaaksbdkjsbakks shes so funny

I LOVE THAT THEY BRING UP PAN AND SPECIFICALLY TIE HIM TO MANIFEST DESTINY AND AMERICAS HISTORY OF KILLING ITS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE!!!! ITS IMPORTANT FUCKING HISTORY AND IM SO GLAD THE SHOW ACKNOWLEDGED IT

percy and annabeths little banter, percys stupid accent and then him collapsing on her. That and the scene where theyre talking on the train is the percabeth we deserve!!!!!! God i love them so much

ALSO going back to the scene where theyre talking in bed on the train i love how annabeth knows that grovers grumpy in the morning and percy doesnt. Grover was her protector once too!! (Like they said last episode) and theyve traveled together before!! He was annabeths friend before he was percys

ok everyones already said this but the parallels between annabeth and medusa?!!??? With medusa saying “i was you” last episode and now annabeth getting punished for something percy did ghe same was medusa was punished for something Poseidon did????? Absolutely insane i love it

also the fact that it hurt athenas pride specifically, much like how medusa mentioned the “pride of athena” in reference to annabeth last episode, which all ties back to the fact that hubris is annabeths fatal flaw and she gets it from her mother

THE CUT TO PERCY IN THE FOUNTAIN AND THEM SPLASHING WATER ON HIM AHSKSBJAHAJSJSB theyre so funny for that

Percy just looks like a wet rag this episode and its so well done you can even tell the makeup on his face was done to make him appear paler and sicklier and it works so well

ok PERCY PULLING ANNABETH INTO THE STAIRWELL AND SHUTTING THE DOOR???? Because hes loyal to a fault!!!! And theyre becoming friends!!!!!!!!! And he cares about her more in like a week than athena ever has and its shown to us so clearly in this episode!!!!!!

ONCE AGAIN LUKES MOTIVATIONS ARE GOING TO MAKE SO MUCH SENSE BY THE TIME WE GET TO THE END OF THIS AND WE DONT EVEN HAVE TO SPEND TIME WITH HIM TO UNDERSTAND THEM god this series is so well done

Also the chimeras design looks so cool i love it so much

AND WE FINALLY GET AN ANSWER AS TO HOW PERCY GOT IN THE RIVER FROM THE TOP OF THE ARCH!! (At least in the tv world, in the book world the arch might very well just be in a different spot lol)

Poseidon saves him!! Hes a better parent than athena is apparently

god the episode ending with percy breathing underwater is so good i was on the edge of my seat until the very end

OK LAST THING is that they are continuing the theme sally brings up about monsters not always looking like monsters and heroes not always looking like heroes so well!!! Echidna bringing it up and saying that to her, demigods are more dangerous was fantastic i love how dedicated they are to this

OK ACTUALLY THE LAST THING i love the dichotomy of different mothers in this episode. We start with sally and percy and immediately see how much they love each other and care about each other!!!! Then we get to echidna who cares about her children too by teaching them to hunt!!! And then we get athena who ducking punishes annabeth for something she didnt even do. And its like. That was a little monstrous athena. Im understanding why someone might want to kill their godly parent

GOD THIS SERIES IS SO GOOD

[royal-they]

something i feel like people do not talk about enough is how the empire strikes back was a major inspiration for season 4. bc thats like such byler proof idk what else to say like,

luke going off by himself to study to become a jedi with yoda. el going off by herself to get back her powers with brenner. confronting their pasts? their first huge losses? them both cutting their training short bc they have to go save their friends so everyone doesnt die? vecna being revealed to be henry similar to how vadar was revealed to be anakin? and of course their powers. you get the point. very similar arcs. and okay maybe im looking too much into this but han and leia feel so similar to will and mike to me. or even max and lucas a bit bc han is essentially put in a coma at the end of the movie like max but mainly byler.

like maybe im crazy but does this remind anyone else of this???

also like theres the whole weird ass love triangle with leia luke and han. and like leia and luke kiss before theyre separated and at the end theyre siblings and han and leia are together and idk. i dont see mike and el as siblings personally it’s more just the idea ig that luke was a way for leia to ignore her feelings for han.

“We need you.” “We need?” “Yes.” ”What about you?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What about us?” “We’re friends. We’re friends.”

the deflecting is just like weirdly similar. it’s just too similar to me at least to not mean something. especially when the duffer brothers empathized so many times how it inspired season fours ending. i just cant unsee it. el is so obviously luke to me and han and leias storyline where they have to break off and do a bunch of shenanigans trying to escape the empire and also help the resistance on their own is kind of like the cali crew trying to escape the government and help el and their friends back in hawkins. and will and mike are the center of that storyline.

it’s too many parallels. i dont know how im supposed sit here with this information just wondering wtf the writing room was doing and not combust.

[to6ge]

Aquarium date with various atsv men

Pairing :: earth 1610!Miles Morales, Miguel O’hara, Pavitr Prabhakar, Hobie Brown x Gn!reader !! ୨୧

Summary :: Going to the aquarium was one of your favorite things, so your boyfriend took you to the aquarium!

Gwen’s note :: Guys how tf do you make a text gradient colored.. anyways random idea I thought about at a 4 hour long drive back home, my phone is dying !!

— Earth 1610!Miles Morales

Miles, who was one of the sweetest boyfriend you could ever have—took you on a date to the aquarium because he knew you loved seeing little sea creatures just moving around in the water, you found it so adorable on how they just move so effortlessly. So here you both are, in an aquarium. You stared at a group of clown fishes moving around, your eyes lit up and Miles was just watching you. He found it really cute how your eyes lights up when you look at something that was cute,, he’d do anything to see you so happy like that—no,, he’d do anything to see you happy. Even if it meant burning a hole in his wallet. And when you look at the fishes, he will sketch you, just admiring the little fishies. <3

— Miguel O’hara

He thinks that it’s silly that you find little sea creatures just roaming around cute, he’s intrigued but at the same time amused by it. He’s mostly just happy to see you happy, he thinks that its cute, honestly. He’d wait for you, station to station till you’re fully satisfied. “You really like them, dont you, amor?” he asked,, “Theyre so cute, ofcourse I like them! Just take a look at them. Theyre beautiful!” you replied—“I think theyre nothing compared to your beauty, cariño,”

— Pavitr Prabhakar

God was this boy the best person that you have in your life, he (probably) also likes fishes so you both would always be like “This one is so cute, Pav!!” then Pav would be like “Yeah yeah!” but then he sees another fish and says, “No! This one's definitely cuter!” and it wouldnt stop till the end—speaking of the end, theres a souvenir shop at the end and there’s fishes you could buy, some matching keychains and some cute plushies. “Priyyyy, look, those fishes looks like us!” Pavitr was pointing at two goldfishes very close to each other, you just laughed at his silliness. But anyways, he gets both of you matching keychains, and drops you off to your house.

— Hobie Brown

He would take you to those aquariums where you could pet some fish ( ideally sharks :3 ) because you kept on saying how much you loved fishes, so he wanted to make you happy. He gets really happy when you get happy, Hobie thinks its nice to see people happy—especially you! He practically melts when he sees your eyes light up when you see something you like, he just hides it. You guys would stop in the middle because theres a fish store, you said every fish there was really cute but youve been staring for this one particular fish for very, very, long and he knew what to do. He bought you that fish! You bought Hobie a cute plushie you knew he wouldn't like, but you knew that he’d treasure it forever anyways. In the end, you walked home together, coming home to your shared apartment with a fish, and a plushie.

Hello.. THE MIGUEL ONE WAS SO SHORT. I know. I hope I didd decent, I actually had lots of fun writing this, esp wrting the miles n pav one :(( I love all of them sm (⁠●⁠´⁠⌓⁠`⁠●⁠)

[mintiicinnamonii]

Hello! I saw that requests are open and I wanted to ask for a GN! Reader that has fangs and can turn into a snake (both a small one and a GIGANTIC ONEE (if you remember that big snake in episode 1 season 4 then atleast that big of a size)) and I want to see how Wukong, Mk, Macaque, Mei and Redson react their SO/partner being a little snake! It's alright if you don't do this request if you do thank you and have a fantastic day! (Or whatever timezone you're in rn)

notes: HOW DARE YOU HIT ME WITH THE S5 CARD- but i had fun with this one!

I’m Obssssessed With You

Macaque

hes pretty chill abt it

”oh theyre a hot snake hybrid nice”

but when you become baby snake, hes ready to tease you

poking your little face, treating you like a grumpy cat essentially

but then you hiss at him and hes like 😦

MORE TEASSINGGG!!!

you’re his little snake baby 100%

you get scary dog privileges! thanks macaque!!

sometimes you become a snake and just sit on his shoulder, and hes just used to it at this point

you two TOTALLY prank people by pretending you’re a real snake

Wukong

he makes 15000000 snake puns and you want to bite him

he sees you and is like “m-mommy??/d-daddy??”

he coddles you like a baby, definitely says “awww” and just hugs you >_<

cuddle sessions are just both of you making little animal sounds and curled up against each other

gives you lil pets and scritches

one time he caught you eating a rat and he was like “🫢”

you and the monkeys chill on the trees together (IKIK “mintii”mintii stop mentioning the monkeys whenever theres a wukong x reader” SHUT UP THEYRE CUTE)

MK

whenever you’re cold, he PANICS

hes like “OMGOMGOMG WHERES A BLANKET AAA”

failwife mk nation!!!

he doesnt know much about snakes but hey at least you aint a spider

his heart melts whenever you’re just curled up on his shoulder

he sometimes asks you random snake questions (ex: can you use heat vision like a real snake??)

Red Son

“hmmm interesting”

he expirements on you (w/ your consent, he mainly just observes and asks random more educated questions)

before you guys start dating, he definitely uses expirementing on you as an excuse to hang out with you

when you’re cold, he warms u up with his fire demon energy :3 (i hc that hes always warm)

when you become little snake climb on his shoulder hes just like “eh”

but when you become big snake and protect him??

“😳” - red son whenever you fight

always hot x always cold <33

possible ice and fire dynamic??

she will research about snakes to maximize your comfort like the secretly caring partner they are

rahhh i love her

Mei

POWER COUPLE!!

serpent couple goals

she has a pic of you in snake form sleeping on her phone

you and her play/tease together (i.e she reaches her finger into your mouth and pulls it away as you shut your mouth)

BABY TALK!!!

i dont have many ideas for this one im sorry 😞

[wszczebrzyszynie]

hello! i've seen you've mentioned the sibling relationship between przemek and lena in your last post and the topic seems really interesting. would you have some time to get into it more? or are there any already published posts of yours talking about them?

truth be told i dont remember what i talked about already on here exactly but im pretty sure this will be the first Przemek-Lena relationship mini essay to post. well either way as always its under the cut and thank you for being interested in my ocs 💐😊 if dns was real (a real piece of media not a real story) and for some reason started doing huge numbers i firmly believe Lena discourse would be the most divisive

Lena is at the beginning the only person in Przemeks life he gets to somewhat depend on; despite her being younger (Przemek is 17/18, and Lena is around 15), in his eyes she was an anchor to him of sorts, someone to hang out with, and, once he gets hired, someone to come back to. While both of them are very family-oriented in general, the relationship they have with one another was for the longest time most important to them, and went back to back with both their ages (theyre the closest in age compared to the rest of the family) and their closely shared experiences, compared again to their other siblings - after Przemeks accident, it was Lena who took care of him the most (their father has already passed away at that point, their mother wasnt exacty capable of doing that at that point in time (after which Przemek became her favourite of sorts; she latched onto caring for him after the worst has already passed, not out of malice, but more as a hm, compensation, and out of guilt). This post accident time is the most meaningful moment that formed their relationship going onwards, establishing Lena as a sort of... caretaker figure in his mind, someone who didnt leave him and who he could depend on. For Lena this wasnt exactly the case - while she wants her family to be able to depend on her, in her mind it was a more equal relationship, she saw Przemek as the same as her; they both had to navigate their family falling apart as young children, had to take care of themselves and of each other, having to mature too fast, lived through Przemeks accident together, and now got to go into life with all that baggage. They were never fully honest with each other, and never talked anything through, but they didnt have to, as the idea of their relationship they had in their heads was enough for them. This disonance is what sets the stage for Przemeks overarching arc

Him leaving to work in the palace was different for both of them. For Lena it was loosing a part of herself, the only person she thought could understand her, but she was willing to go through it knowing its for greater good. For Przemek it was a lot of regret and fear of other people, lacking the person he depended on. And while Lena, who now is deemed the dependable one for good, the most stable pillar in their family, stays the same at their family home, Przemek gets to change and grow after meeting new, often outcasted and strange people. They both start as tools to be used and be useful, but where Lena stays that way even in her brothers eyes to some extent, Przemek doesnt. In some way, the role he made Lena fit into in his head, was instead taken by Ryba, in a much clearer and reciprocated way. Przemeks unability to see Lenas struggles, him putting her on the pedestal, someone to save him, despite her still being a child, is mirroring the way their mother sees Przemek; something he recognizes she does, something that makes him into such a mess in the first place, but doesnt do so in himself and his treatment of Lena. With Ryba on his side this issue doesnt reappear - they start as strangers, in a vastly different enviroment, and even when they end up codependent on each other, its more similar to the way Lena saw Przemek, than the way Przemek depended on her. And, under Rybas influence (and Mikitas unbearable behaviour), Przemek gets to start mentally leaving his depressing family home

Its Przemeks slow change that starts triggering the rift between them; it esentially questions the before unquestioned status quo of the siblings relationship. Przemek leaves his home for a month, comes back for two days, and leaves again. And in those two days every time it feels like he comes back a different person. Hes not afraid anymore, or at least, not of the palace, but starts being anxious over his home. Hes more open about it, too, at least to Lena. He grows less reserved, more content and, generally, more happy. While in the beginning she is able to ignore it, after each visit she slowly realizes shes being left behind. To her, this is losing a part of her life that was constant, that she too could depend on; something that made everything less dull, someone she loved and who loved her, as cold and tough as that love often was. Shes becomes disgusted by her brother - to her, hes getting weak, hes selfish, and even if hes now happier, she wasnt allowed the same chance. Instead of now sharing their pain together, she is now completly alone, being abandoned by the only person she thought understood her. And this resentment is something that carries on even after he apologizes; she cannot fully forgiving him now that she knows they are not and were never the same. While it never was Przemeks full responsibility, he made her feel completly alone in a house she already was a ghost in, and all he can do now is work to become someone she could trust again; and all she can do is try to move on. She never sees him off when hes about to go back to work after that, always leaving first on her own terms

[yonpote]

mr. pote please explain shoe ig story for the ignorant (me)

not much to explain other than. dan posted an instagram story of their shoes pressed together

ok i guess ill share a LITTLE context. around late january to early february 2023 was when dan was having a mini-break from touring for philly's bday before he had to hit the road for the non-uk european shows. the thing is, there were kind of a lot of complications happening wrt tickets, especially problems surrounding the iceland show, which dan had hyped up as where he was going to end the tour, and pj even mentioned on stream that he and sophie would possibly meet dan and phil there and have essentially a double date holiday! the day before the Shoe Pic, dan had announced that the iceland show was cancelled. he posted the cancellation on his story in icelandic, here is the english translation:

Sorry for the frozen people. Couldn't bring this show to your island this trip, that's all I can say for now. It's on my bucket list to be with you one day. I'll see you then.

he then posted an ig story where he seemed to be out on a walk that was quite self-deprecating on the fact that no one takes him seriously "in life, business, or the industry." it was just a bummer day for dan. so a few twitter phannies (back when there was a Little peace) thought to make an encouraging hashtag for dan, #weloveyoudan to show some appreciation for him when he really seemed to need it! (this also spawned an in-joke hashtag my good friend @editingz0ne made, #giveamazingphilnukes, that phil tweeted about 💀)

so the next day, when dnp had both posted while at an apex legends esports competition thing, we all kinda inferred that this was a lil date, possibly as another phil bday present (still his bday week) or as a lil gift to cheer dan up, or both! and then. he posted the fuckin shoe pic.

listen. idk how to explain it. it just. felt like something so weirdly intimate? like, no idea what the context is, other than theyre sitting in the back of a cab and took a photo of their shoes pressed together. and like one is clearly phil's shoe and the other clearly dan's shoe, and i assume theyre the same shoe size (do not tell me wikifeet ppl i dont need to know) and so they just. fit perfectly together. and all this was after the harrowing previous day, and after all that dan just decided to let us in on this picture that is so silly and not really anything and yet feels so personal? its like when we hear their alien language in the texting vids, or that they get fries every saturday and call it "fry-day". like its not a bit its not playing up a dynamic for a camera its just. THEM! its just them!!!!!!!! anyway thank you for coming to my ted talk on the dan and phil shoe photo taken on february 5th, 2023 by dan howell.

[blacklegsanjiii]

First of all im so sorry for the long askbut!! New parent idea 💥💥 i present to you: King

Now hear me out, you might be thinking ‘really??? King from wano the bird guy?? Why tf’ but my good sir there are multiple reasons

1. Fire! King is from a race called lurarians (he’s infact the last of his people because theyre world wide known as beautiful because of their white hair, dark skin and beautiful black wings) lurarians are also known to be able to set themselves on fire! So that fits prettyyy well with sanji

So if we take pt 1 with us and expand it...

2. Test subject ✨ we all know Sanji is judge 3rd expiriment and also that vegapunk has made the seraphims of the warlords combined with kings lurarian DNA to make very strong clones. Judge and vegapunk were also in a science group together so they might have some shared notes and materials...

So that brings me to the parent King au...

What if vegapunk and judge kept in touch and decided to keep King in germas dungeon for the foreseeable future because its very well guarded etc etc so he is essentially both vegapunk and judges labrat

And when judge is busy with Sora and Reiju he notices that while reiju hasnt failed his expectations for power, he can always do better so with the quadruplets he also decides to mix kings lurarian DNA in for even stronger child soldiers (so 1234ji have 3 bio parents lmao)

Maybe this alters their appearance also a bit? (Mini baby wings 🥺 that they hide becausd its a weakness maybe 124ji got them amputated later in life while sanji ofcourse kept his hidden)

But anyway canon continues and sanji gets thrown into the dungeon with his mask... Here he meets a huge winged man. First days maybe weeks they dont really talk but sanji is a child and starts talking to king because he's lonely

They startbonding and in the next almost year that sanji is stuck there they really learn to love each other and sanji shows king his baby wings and king just decides 'yup thats my kid' teaches him to groom and how to fold/hide them without being in to much pain

But then vegapunk and judge fight and split up, king was originally vegapunks labrat so he is also taken from sanji.

Canon continues with them both respectively escaping,king tried to find sanji but couldnt bc germa is very stealthy and nobody knows where they are so he joins kaido etc etc

And then they meet again in wano.

Thoughts :0?

I had to double check King's age to make sure this is plausible and yeah, he's 47. He can fully adopt Sanji. I support this fully, fire boys unite! Also imagine Heterochromia!Sanji, one blue eye and one red.

King who is Vegapunks labrat being experimented on for a good while before Reiju and the quads come along, hell, even before Sora coming along. Captured as a teenager and being held captive and tortured for years. Eventually he's locked in the dungeon and left there to rot even after Vegapunk leaves to focus on other things but leaves him in Germa. No one really interacts with the Lunarian except to bring him food and water to keep him alive in case they do decide they want to do something with him again. What it could be he doesn't know what more they could do.

Judge however has gotten married and had a daughter already but notices her flaws and while she's not a full failure, he could do better. So he infuses the Lunarians DNA with those of his coming sons, despite his wife taking that poison she won't be able to do much to get rid of that at least. He can deal with the other failures she causes later but right now he's unworried. Even when the children come, the third one is wrong, he's blond instead of darkhaired, he's easily bruised. Unfortunate really. He had high hopes for that one particularly, for the stealth instead of brute force the others were for.

He sees the wings and knows he still at least has the Lunarian DNA, he might still have some use. Maybe.

He's not and it's clear by the time Sanji is six. Weak and crying and frail compared to his siblings. He has a full range of emotions which even Reiju doesn't have. Disgusted Judge throws him in the dungeon, a metal cover his head and unconcerned if he dies down there, Sanji screaming and crying for him to come back. Apologizing to his father over and over again as if it will change anything. It doesn't. He's trapped alone in the cell but there's someone down here with him. There's a man, tall with white hair and black wings like he has, only a few years older than his mother. He's telling Sanji to quiet down, no one will come get him. Sanji can't stop crying so he apologizes and sits in the back of his cell. King gives his real name to the kid, introduces himself as Alber to the boy, he is a boy after all, small and frail and so utterly broken and too young to be there. He knows what it's like to be a failure after all. It takes all of a day for King to see the small black wings the kid has. His wings are in awful condition: Bald spots, cuts, bruises, broken feathers. King remembers what that was like, the uncomfortable feeling and itching, those wings are from Lunarians though, so this kid has his DNA or there's another Lunarian here possibly. Both are bad options, no one should be forced to live as he has. No one.

They're together for a year and some change and in that time 124ji find out about Sanji and King almost burns the little princes for what they're doing. They have wings as well, atrophied and unworked like his are. He can only stretch his so far in this cramped cell. He hears the crunch of bones in the younger's cell. He throws fire at them once and is doused in water unforgivingly. They're incredibly close, King hasn't told the boy this where his wings come from and Sanji asks if he's where his red eye comes from and King says probably, albeit he's confused about that, he's only seen the blue one.

He teaches Sanji how to preen and hide his wings more comfortably and for protection. King tells him they will be his pride and joy and he will be able to fly with them. Sanji says he hopes so. They've been together for a year and some change when they take King away from Sanji. They tranquilize him and the last thing King hears is Sanji screaming and begging for them not to take him. He wakes up to Vegapunk telling him it's time to continue their work. King stays for a year, working on getting his wings back to functioning, preening and carrying for them. Then he escapes. It's a mess getting out but he needs to get out. Needs to find Sanji, his son. He will find his son.

So he breaks out and goes hunting for Germa but hears the kids saying Sanji better be dead since he's out of the dungeon, which means he escaped. As relieved as that makes him it means he has more searching to do. He looks and looks for years and years. He doesn't find him though and ends up in Wano under Kaido, working his way up to becoming an All Star. He hides who he is and decides he'll wait, maybe Sanji will pass by.

Sanji on the other hand is going through canon mostly normally, I think having King there would partially impact how he views woman but also for as much flirting as he does he doesn't actually sleep with anyone. Zeff found out he has wings while on the rock because he's crying about how fucked they are. Zeff is staring at the black wings attached to this kid and helps him hide them when they're saved, threatens the doctor to keep quiet.

Zeff helps Sanji rehab them before Baratie opens and after it does he lets the boy fly to his heart's content. Patty and Carne will save him if he falls in the water, he can still swim but his wings are not made for water. Is he still amazing at it? 100% but like, he's not a duck or a penguin. He's part Lunarian. He wears coats like the vice admirals and admirals do. Off his shoulders to hide his wings, to keep them safe as he goes about his day. He doesn't really over heat thanks to his Lunarian traits but when he gets cold, it's so fucking cold to him.

When he joins the crew everyone thinks he's kind of prissy with the full suit+extra jacket thing he has but...he's illegal. He's an illegal race and if he gets found out he's fucked. Drum island is when Luffy and Nami find out. Sanji is begging for Kureha and Chopper to not tell anyone which they assure they won't. Kureha does tell him he's lucky he only broke his back and not his wings. Chopper says they're in desperate need of preening and Sanji admits he hasn't done it since he left the Baratie because he didn't want to get caught. He mumbles it all of course but Nami and Luffy are looking at the black monstrous wings as they unfurl and Chopper is amazed at them. They're huge. He has to have a ten/fifteen foot wingspan(if not more but anime logic) and Luffy asks how you preen wings and Chopper shows him despite Sanji insisting he can do it himself. It's too late and Chopper and Luffy are preening a wing and it feels good. Zeff didn't even preen him, not unless Sanji asked and Sanji was too proud to ask normally. Even Nami touches them and is surprised how soft they are.

They leave with Chopper and make it off Drum island and to Alabasta and meet Ace. Sanji is fine in the heat, he's in so many layers though it concerns everyone but he waves them off. He's sworn Nami and Chopper to secrecy but not Luffy because he bought his silence with meat. Sanji is so lucky he didn't inherit more traits from Alber because that cigar marine is tailing them and here and if it wasn't for these covers over his wings h would put to death immediately. Even as they take Alabasta back he doesn't uncover his wings. Not until they leave again and Nami is getting upset with him saying they need preened and that she'll do it while he's on watch. Nico Robin has joined the crew and he doesn't trust her that much and he'd rather not trouble Nami at all but she basically throws him to his knees and starts preening. If Sanji moves to help she threatens to raise his debt which he doesn't understand.

Robin probably knows but no one has else finds out until post TS. He can sill sky walk, he still learned it and to keep his secret. But no one else knows, not until WCI/Wano. Sanji notices his brothers wings are gone and Sanji is the only one left with them. The black wings he cannot cover with his red cape so at least one is always showing as well as his red eye. It has wigged some of his crew out until he showed both eyes at the same time and Robin called him interesting in the way she does some poneglyphs or rituals she reads about.

It made his stomach turn. Just as it is now as he's being called interesting again and Pudding is saying their kids have wings like he does. Big Mom says she thought Lunarians are extinct and Judge says they are. The quadruplets are only infused with the DNA, not actually Lunarian. Sanji wants to vomit.

He'd claim to be an illegal race than to be a Vinsmoke. So during the escape he claims it. He flies and it's awkward so it's a combination of sky walking and flying. Carrying Luffy and Nami to safety. His bounty skyrockets as they head to Wano. It's higher than Zoro's as Nami preens his wings and Luffy coming to help after he's had a nap and some food that Sanji made. He's wanted dead or alive with Vinsmoke as his last name unfortunately and being Lunarian added to his list of crimes.

Everyone seeing his wings in Wano is new and he asks everyone not to touch them. Zoro is confused because the fuck cook? I'm your rival? And Sanji shrugs because he doesn't know what else to do. Then fights keep happening. He uses the raid suit a couple of times, the second time is the worst. He's fighting Alber, he's sure of it. He's so fucking sure but he's drilled through buildings and he's certain Alber is going to kill him for this.

Maybe after the raid Sanji finds a moment alone before Zoro and Luffy wake up. Maybe King the Wild Fire finds him and they talk and catch up. Maybe King preens his son's wings like he always wanted to. Maybe King joins the crew.

Maybe King went to the East Blue, found the Baratie, met Zeff. They would bond over the Eggplant. Sanji's second place in the bounties. When he gets to Egghead he has no sympathy for Vegapunk, he does for Kuma and Bonney but for what he's done to his family? Never. He will never forgive him.

[philtstone]

24. Showing up injured at their friend/mentor’s house: for shawn? :)

[emerges from writing this fic bloody and beaten and on the verge of collapse] ill explore karen vicks character in an overly complicated post-episode missing scene fic or die trying! set immediately post "right turn or left for dead". i genuinely dont know if im happy with this but i also cant figure out how to fix it. actually, it would have probably been easier to write if i was willing to rewatch the episodes its based on. which i am not, because i am a sensitive little soul. so i winged it. i think there are like 10 different ideas that crop up and theyre all equally fascinating as character threads but i have no idea if i tied them together in an even remotely coherent way. also, WOULD she say that??? i had to call my brother twice to ask. this is what yall get for sending me actually interesting prompts, huh

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Henry’s voice said on the phone. “I’ll send Shawn over with them on his way out. He's going in your direction, anyway.”

In her short tenure as the junior detective to Henry Spencer’s lieutenant, Karen Vick observed two things:

First, that he was a far more clever strategist than most people gave him credit for. Despite the ongoing wreckage of his impending divorce and a kid who was slipping through his fingers as everyone looked on, Karen didn’t agree with the other junior detectives’ impression of him as a smash-the-door-down old school hard ass with thinning hair and a worst attitude. The man played four dimensional chess right out of a bonafide Star Trek episode. When he really wanted something done, Henry Spencer could bullshit and bluff and battle plan with the pros, and half the time you’d get too caught up in the blustering misdirect to realize his game was intricately thought out three steps in advance.

It was how they caught the Shorttown Killer, and also how they got that idiot Trembley at the mayor’s office to finally replace their coffee maker. Karen went home to her then-boyfriend, now-husband, and, right before bed, pulled out an old school workbook and took notes.

The second thing was that Henry Spencer loved his son. 

Not a lot has changed since then, Karen thinks, staring down the weirdness that she now faces through her open front door.

“… Oh — Mr. Spencer,” Karen says, because it’s rude not to greet your employees when they show up at your home outside of work hours, and are also your old friend-slash-colleague’s kid. “Hello. Thanks for — bringing these over.”

“Dad said it was urgent,” Shawn says.

Urgent isn’t quite how Karen would describe it, but hearing through the grapevine that your department might be facing an audit sometime in the next quarter does light a fire under the proverbial ass. Karen would rather bend a few rules and make sure the last year’s i’s and t’s are dotted and crossed right than leave her detectives vulnerable to the whims of a mayoral stooge. 

In general, Karen prides herself on caring about the people under her command just enough that it inspires genuine friendship and loyalty. The just is important. Care needs tempering – it’s important to pull back, press pause, keep certain lines uncrossed. It’s especially important if you want to be successful as a woman in an authority position where lives are often on the line. 

What she’s saying is that she tries to make it none of her business what her employees get up to in their spare time. She really genuinely does. She’s shut O’Hara down gently midway through the twelfth sweetly-frazzled attempt to overshare about her dating life (or her efforts to befriend her next-door neighbor, or the endearing personality quirks of her last cat – rest in peace, Triscuit, you will be missed –) enough times to be well-versed in the art of I Won’t Ask, You Won’t Tell, But You’ll Probably Know I Care Anyway.

An invaluable rapport to maintain. In any situation, Karen thinks, but especially when you’re a person who regularly hires and works alongside Shawn Spencer.

She’s not sure whether what she’s looking at right now makes her want to second guess or double down on her usual policy. 

“Special delivery,” Shawn adds, like everything is super normal.

Karen narrows her eyes. She glances behind them into the quiet residential street.

“Shawn,” she says.

“Yes, Chief?”

“You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“Ha,” he says, half rolling his eyes to accompany a weird aborted grin. “No. Even I don’t think riding a motorcycle with a concussion is a good idea. What if someone who wasn’t me got hurt? That’s — that would be no good, then you’d have to arrest me. Wouldn’t that be a huge bummer for the whole team, Chief? Gus would cry. And my dad wouldn’t let me take his truck.”

Karen stares at him. Shawn stares at the ground.

“I got a cab,” he says.

“And you are … taking another cab – home?”

Shawn looks quite suddenly like he’s going to be sick.

“Sure,” he says. 

Shawn looks terrible. Bruised face, bags under his eyes, and a weird frenetic energy twitching in his limbs that doesn’t pair well with his general air of exhaustion. He’s holding his shoulders stiffly and can barely meet her eye. His t-shirt and sweatpants are rumpled, like he slept in them, even though it’s too early in the evening for Henry to have woken him up to send him here, and when he thrusts the promised files out into the air toward her, abrupt and, admittedly, Shawn-like, he only just hides the awkward wince that immediately overtakes his left side.

The last couple days have been a bit of a whirlwind, so Karen can’t say she necessarily blames herself for not looking more closely. 

Even so.

Slowly, Karen reaches forward and divests him of the case files. They slip a little bit, because Karen can’t seem to stop peering shrewdly at Shawn’s face while she does it, and on instinct he reaches forward to stop the stack from toppling. 

It does help, but the autopilot he moves on makes it harder to mask what is to Karen’s eyes a very obvious flinch. 

“Alright,” is all he says. “Well, good to see you. Time to head back to the old hay stack.”

Like a needle in a haystack and time to hit the hay, Karen supplies needlessly in her own head. Aloud, she says, in many ways against her better judgment, 

“Mr. Spencer, are you okay?”

Shawn sways on the spot for a second, one fist clenched, mouth half open. For a strange moment, Karen gets the impression that he’s trying really hard not to say the wrong thing.

“... As rain,” he finally manages, then nods to himself like he achieved some great feat. “Okay. Well –”

“Did something happen to your shoulder?” 

“What? No!” Shawn’s eyes flutter closed and he shakes his head, “I’m – fine, Chief. It’s not – I mean, I’m – normal, fine. Fine in a normal way.”

“That’s not something an individual who’s fine in a normal way would say,” Karen says. 

“Uh, is it not! It is. I would know, because I am that individual. It’s – I was – there’s just mild – pfft … stab wound – or something, who would even …”

Is Shawn broken? is the unhelpful thought that pops into Karen’s head. She’s never heard an attempt to bullshit collapse so quickly into pathetic nothingness before – certainly not from Shawn.

Perhaps even more than his father, the kid’s a pro.

And then the rest of the sentence catches up with her.

“A mild stab wound?”

Oh boy. She watches Shawn’s eyes widen with the panic that proceeds an unquestionable blunder.

“Chief –” 

“In.”

“Chief, I really, really don’t think –”

“Inside my house. Now.”

He’s certainly uncoordinated enough that he doesn’t put up much of a fight. Karen herds him  through the door as firmly as possible and leads them in a beeline past Richard’s office toward the bathroom, ignoring the reedy stream of consciousness that spills out of Shawn’s mouth as they go.

“Oh, hey, woah, it’s been like forever since I was in here. Did you redecorate? I swear that lamp wasn’t there the last time we visited. It could be the tacos I had earlier, but I’m sensing a distinct neo-modern Chinese aesthetic going on here, Chief, which calls to mind the merits of cultural appreciation in suburban home decor – hey, is that your husband’s office? Can I meet him? Is he home? That man is a true enigma to us, Chief, and it’s leading me to believe that he must possess all the facial and personality qualities of the pop superstar Mr. Pitbull Worldwide –”

Richard is home, actually, and Karen needs to alert him to the fact that they have an unexpected house guest, so, ignoring Shawn completely, she calls out,

“Honey? Shawn Spencer’s here for a couple minutes about a work thing! I’ll go up to put Iris to bed in a second!” in the finely-honed There Are Many Layers Of Complicated To This secret married tone that Richard should probably be able to catch through the closed office door. 

“Alright,” floats out her husband’s pleasant voice. “Tell him hi from me.”

Perfect. There’s about a ninety-three percent chance he understood.

They make it to the bathroom, only stumbling slightly. Shawn says,

“-- or The Rock. Does your husband look like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson? I really think that would make so many things about the Chief Vick family make sense –”

Karen closes the bathroom door with a snap and crosses her arms.

“Sit,” she says, in a voice that even he knows brooks no argument.

Shawn does. He looks – well, beyond uncomfortable, and more than a little bit miserable, and probably closer to completely dissociating than either of them are prepared for. Karen wonders belatedly if he's gotten any sleep at all in the last forty-eight hours.

“I’m assuming you have not been to the hospital.”

He gives her a baleful look, like he really expected better of her. She only just stops herself from rolling her eyes in response. And there’s that huge goose egg on his forehead, too. What, exactly, he got up to in between Carlton’s wedding reception and oh-eight-hundred hours this morning Karen has no idea, but he looks like someone’s run him through the world’s most aggressive industrial tumble dry cycle and spat him mercilessly back out. 

Or maybe over with a truck.

Sending a silent prayer to the universe that Iris never hit puberty and remains a sweet-tempered six-year-old forever, Karen gets to business.

“Well, I had to at least ask. Shawn. Does it need stitches?” He mumbles the answer the first time, and then looks beyond startled when she grabs him under the chin so he’ll look her in the eye. “Listen. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you’re going to tell me the truth. Got it?”

Shawn grimaces so hard at her words it’s almost a flinch. 

“No,” he says finally, clearly enough that she hears him. Karen raises an eyebrow. “No, I don’t think it needs stitches,” he articulates, but doesn’t meet her eye.

“Hm. Alright. I have gauze and tape in the medicine cabinet. Can I … is it alright if I pull up the sleeve of your t-shirt?”

Released from her hold, he groans and presses his face into one palm. “Chief –”

“I don’t really know what you expected, coming here! It’s not like I’m any less of a hardass than your father.”

“Yeah, but I can bitch back at my dad,” Shawn says, sounding like he’s finally realizing the magnitude of his mistake. Karen smiles grimly.

“Tough. Now pull your shirt up while I get the first aid kit.”

While Shawn proceeds to wrestle awkwardly with his t-shirt in a muted shuffle against the toilet seat, Karen rummages efficiently through the cabinet and eyes him through the bathroom mirror. He seems oddly reluctant to expose himself. In fact, in a stark contrast to his usual insistence on making his presence and contributions as obtrusively obvious as possible, Shawn seems intent on shrinking into the aforementioned Asian-flavored floral wallpaper (which does need an update, unfortunately) with all the equanimity of an anxious chameleon. Karen feels her eyebrows crease. Taking the first aid kit in hand, she brings it over and deposits it into his arms, ignoring his small startle.

“How about you hold that,” Karen says. Shawn does, against his chest, like a pillow. She walks around him and surveys the damage, antiseptic gauze in hand.

He wasn’t lying about the severity, at least. It’s a shallow thing, already mostly congealed, and has only stained his shirt in a small smattering spot of crusty brown blood.

Karen swabs at it with the alcohol using light careful fingers.

“Ow, ow ow ah –”

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s hardly a life-threatening injury.”

“Super insightful, Chief,” Shawn snaps, as genuinely sarcastic as he’s probably ever been with her, “never thought of that myself. Totally the reason why I just had to go to the hospital.”

He doesn’t pull away, but she can feel the tension radiating through his back. She blinks, one eyebrow crawling up her forehead. 

Alright then. So that’s how it’s going to be. 

“I’m assuming your father doesn’t know about this,” she says.

Shawn grunts, noncommittal. Huh. Maybe he does know, then, and has just been disallowed from doing anything about it right now.

She tosses the first used antiseptic wipe into the trash.

Goddamn four dimensional chess.

She supposes she’s never been bad at the game. She may as well work her way backwards through the moves: Guster, the most obvious node in Shawn’s turn-to-in-a-crisis-system, would never voluntarily abandon his friend in a time of need, so Karen assumes that whatever this is has either already included his support or not been made known to Gus at all yet. Henry’s likely exhausted his own usefulness in the situation, and Detective O’Hara is …

Karen has to work very hard for her hands not to pause in a way that gives away her hard-earned mental sleuthing. A bad feeling wholly unrelated to her ill-advised hangover of the day before begins to bloom at the back of her gut.

“You have really small hands, Chief.”

Shawn’s voice is notably more subdued than before.

“Do I?” 

“They’re like … little kangaroo hands. Like the mom kangaroo from Whinnie the Pooh.”

“Didn’t you know?” Karen says, not unkindly. “They’re given out at the hospital when all first-time moms leave with their baby.”

He lets out a tired little laugh, more boyish than he probably means it to be, and in spite of herself Karen feels her heart clench. She isn’t blind. In all her last seven years as the leader of their chaotic little precinct, she has never seen Juliet O’Hara look as ill as she did yesterday morning. The usually sweet-faced young woman had all the pallor of a Victorian ghost, and stood so far away from Shawn in any given room that to an unassuming observer he might have had the plague.

There are only a handful of things, Karen thinks, that could have invited that particular evolution in their dynamic. She rips the surgical tape from its canister a little bit more harshly than is strictly necessary and fights the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

“So,” she says conversationally, laying the tape down in neat, gentle little strips, trying not to pinch the wound too tightly. “Any fun plans for the evening?”

Shawn sniffs. She can see him gripping his hands together over his knee from where she stands above him.

“Um, yeah, uh –” he clears his throat, “you know me, Chief. We’re working our way through a Robert Guillame marathon, which means some good old fashioned Benson, running commentary on the quality of that child acting, naturally.”

“Naturally.” 

“Then Gus and I were gonna hit up the new, the new chili cheese joint up by Hermosa, you know – they’re doing sliders –”

“Chili cheese sliders?” Karen hums, contemplative.

“Buy ‘em by the pound,” Shawn agrees. “Then I was thinking of getting a tattoo, maybe a belly button piercing, I’ve been really – really needing a change – would you let Iris get one, if she asked?”

“A tattoo?” Karen clarifies, cutting off the next piece of tape. The skin around the cut is warm to her touch but Shawn’s arms have goosepimpled. The hair at the back of his head sticks up unstyled, like he slept weirdly and couldn’t be bothered to fix it come morning.

“Of a marmoset. That’s what I’m thinking. With distinctly effeminate vibes.”

“Well, Dick hates marmosets. So I’d probably encourage her toward something else. Perhaps a sea lion.”

“Like Shabby.” The nervous note has bled into his legs again, and his earlier subdued tone has gone back to sounding strained. “Yeah, that’ll – that could be it.”

“All in one night, huh?” Karen says.

“I –” Shawn doesn’t even hiss when she presses down with a cotton gauze to cover the last of the thickened blood. His legs are properly jittering again. “I was – yeah, y-you know me, Chief, total night owl.”

“Shawn?”

“Yeah?”

“What about going home?”

Silence. Shawn doesn’t answer for a moment long and pregnant enough that Karen wonders if her question will be ignored entirely. 

Then,

“Chief,” he says finally, in an awful, tiny little voice, “I really, really fucked up.”

Finally, her hands do falter in their ministrations; as emotionally exuberant as Shawn often is, she doesn’t think she’s ever actually heard him close to tears. For a horrible moment she wonders if Shawn Spencer will suddenly start crying atop her toilet seat for reasons neither of them are capable of discussing honestly. Then she wonders if her horror makes her a terrible boss.

Boss – mother – person.

Oh, dear.

She sets down the surgical tape and lays a ginger palm over the newly-bandaged gouge in his shoulder. It’ll probably scar, but not at all badly. She doesn’t like to think about the far more obvious one just below, puckering in a violent yet unassuming divot. Another narrow miss for Henry’s boy. 

At this point there are so many of them to count, Karen has to question the statistical likelihood of the whole thing. Becoming a mathematical anomaly is, Karen can attest with confidence, not exactly the future the Lieutenant Spencer she knew dreamed of for his increasingly unmanageable teenager. 

Doing what he loved, on the other hand – absolutely. Being with a person he loved, even more so. Karen grits her teeth at the irritating web she’s spent the last six years constructing around herself and wonders if this evening right here is some kind of cosmic karma for leaving Iris in the care of nannies for the first three years of her life.

That sounds like the kind of thing those horrible parenting magazines and Karen’s mother-in-law would claim, anyway.

“Shawn,” she says slowly, because she has to at least knock this possibility off the list before risking her career in an attempt to mediate her detectives’ love lives, “did you … you weren’t – unfaithful, were you?”

“What?!” 

Shawn yanks his shoulder away and whirls around to face her with such a look of horrified betrayal on his face that it’s almost comical. 

“No!” 

Thank fucking God, Karen thinks. Aloud, she says,

“Well, I’m sorry, I had to at least ask!”

“No! No! What the hell, Chief!”

“Oh would you be quiet! I’m gathering my evidence here!”

“How could I – I would never – you’d even think that I could –”

“I know! Shawn, for God’s sake –” He’s scrambled to his feet in the cramped bathroom space, glaring, and has probably messed up all that surgical tape in the process. The half open first aid kit and his crumpled shirt press lopsided against his front and her garbage can is now full of oxidizing bits of cotton. Karen officially gives in to the urge to press her palms against her forehead. “I had to ask!” she repeats finally. “You and I both know you’re not gonna give me much else to work with, and you sounded so – so sad!” 

Shawn barks out a hysterical little laugh. Karen almost growls in frustration. 

“I am not going to risk all the very hard-earned rules I have in place without knowing for sure that my instincts aren’t wrong. Is that so hard to appreciate?”

Does it count as sound police work when the framework for your investigation is an unacknowledged lie? Karen doesn’t really know. Probably there’s another math metaphor to be made in there (you screwed your proof from the very beginning, maybe, Richard the professor would definitely have thoughts), or just a straight up joke. How to solve a case that’s cold before it ever has the chance to go live; a cover-up if she ever saw one. Unlikely that O’Hara will peep a word, and things will be a true mess for a few weeks, if she can’t make an educated guess about it. And no one will be explaining anything to Carlton, either …

Right before their goddamn audit, Karen thinks, aggrieved. She wonders if Henry considered this in his calculus. Send Shawn over, have her deal with him. Offer a huge unspoken you’re gonna be walking into a shitstorm tomorrow canary for her perennially chaotic mess of a coal mine. 

She can’t help but feel begrudgingly grateful, but that doesn’t mean she and he won’t be having words about this later.   

“Jesus, Karen,” Shawn mutters, pressing his face back into his free hand. Karen shakes her head and squares her shoulders.

“Well then! Back to the issue. You fucked up.”

“You know what? I can’t talk about this with you.”

“Oh, Mr. Spencer, I assure you I am more than well aware.”

Shawn blinks at her between his fingers, looking genuinely confused for the first time since he showed up at her door. 

Karen does not bother to clear up his confusion; it’s better this way, anyhow.

“Will you be sleeping at Gus’s place or your father’s?” she asks, crossing her arms.

“I’m – I don’t –” Shawn doesn’t meet her eye. The earlier thread of anxiety is back. “I wasn’t …”

So, neither. 

“Put your shirt back on,” she says. “We’re relocating to the living room.”

“Chief –”

“That was an order, Mr. Spencer.”

The living room is as quiet and mundane as it was an hour ago. It’s past Iris’s bedtime – she’ll have to go up, and soon at that. Karen seats her guest, retrieves a mug and a bag of chamomile from the kitchen, and removes the fluffy throw blanket from the basket behind the couch on her way back in. He’s deflated completely by the time the tea and blanket are set in front of him. Small and exhausted. Caught. It’s a horrible way to think about it. But she can’t avoid the hundred yard stare – Karen has seen it one too many times in people only just realizing they’re about to go away for life.

“Shawn,” she says, firm as she can make it. “Drink the tea. You’re dehydrated.”

“I’m … what?”

“Your lips are dry. You shouldn’t be dehydrated with a concussion.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Karen suddenly wonders if he’s going to get up and leave. She has experience with these things – she knows a runner when she sees one.

“I might as well have,” Shawn finally whispers.

She doesn’t catch it the first time. “What?”

“I – I might as well ha – Chief, I …” Deep shuddering breaths. He’s finally shutting down, she realizes. She can’t send him back out like this; Henry would give her the stink eye for a month.

Goddamn Spencers and their goddamn irritating overcomplicated lives.

Karen pushes the tea directly into his hands and tilts her chin so she can meet Shawn’s eye. He’s still lucid enough that she doesn’t think he’ll start hyperventilating, but now that the outrage and adrenaline has worn off, the symptoms of shock are pretty hard to miss. “Shawn,” she says again, and wills for him to understand.

“What if she – what if I never –” He can’t get the full sentence out. He looks at her, eyes wide and terrified.

Life sentence, Karen thinks again. The messy stack of files Shawn brought over sits almost unimportantly on the coffee table between them and a memory comes to her, unbidden, of words penned carefully in the corner of a modified police report that she pulled the minute the door closed on the McCallum case seven years ago. 

Date: May 4th, 1995. Reporting Officer, Spencer, Lt. H. Perpetrator a caucasian male, brown hair, five foot nine, insists on wearing those stupid earrings just to spite me. What the hell do you want me to write here, Chief? Spent two hours in the fucking principal’s office convincing them not to expel him one month off from graduation. All that effort, and I still booked the kid. It’s gonna follow him for life, and it’s gonna be me that did it to him. For life. You think he’ll ever forgive me? He’s the greatest thing in my pathetic little world and he keeps breaking my heart, and I can’t even properly accept that it’s my fault. 

How’s that for a fucking crime.

She needs to go put her daughter to bed. It’s the thought that keeps running through her head, oddly enough, like a strange antidote to the impotent anger and heartbreak and frustration she’s feeling for the people under her care.

With all the notes she took in that little workbook, she still let herself become complicit in the painstaking, convoluted resolution of Henry’s mistakes without accounting for all the variables.  

Richard’s footsteps sound muffled in the next room; he’s made his way upstairs in Karen’s absence. She needs to go. She wants to hear the soft and sleepy love you Mama that with her unpredictable hours and regular long nights isn’t nearly routine enough.

“Shawn,” she says evenly. “Do you love her?”

It’s hard to reconcile the smarmy kid who tried to barter with her for twelve hundred a day with the devastated young man sitting on the couch in front of her.

“Chief …” he starts, barely above a whisper.

“Good. Then she’ll see that. Detective O’Hara is a smart and observant woman. What she chooses to do next is her decision, but … you might be – well, comforted by the fact that she’ll know that – truth.”

Shawn stares at her. The tea steams in front of him, cooling in increments. She takes a deep breath and gets to her feet, patting his uninjured shoulder brusquely. 

“I have to go check on Iris. When I come back down, I can drive you to the Psych office.”

Iris is fast asleep when she gets there. A library book lays open face down over her stomach, and her soft brown hair fans out against the pillow, silhouetted by the soft glow of the unicorn nightlight in the wall above her. Karen turns off the bedside lamp, tucks her daughter in, and kisses her forehead. Just before she leaves, she hears it: murmured, half-awake.

“Love you, Mama.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Karen goes back to her living room, car keys in hand. She’s planned her next move in the driver’s seat enough times throughout her career that it shouldn’t be too hard. 

[olvitier]

Sorry its so late buf i am in an Edling mood tonight and I will never stop thinking about the idea of how theyre the epitome of right person wrong time.

(obviously in a context of like fandom shenannigans where canon events arent 100% set in stone like edling arent canon but also idc !! they are to me! im ignoring it let me be insane) ANYWAY

Even if they wanted to be together post promised day Ling has all the responsibilities of Xing and his clan and Edward would never hold him back from that for a second. Im of the opinion that brotherhood Edward feels a lot of guilt for wanting love from the people around him particularly those he sees as good (winry, alphonse, etc) especially if hes done things hes perceived as hurting them (maes’ death, the transmutation, etc etc). Which is why I think Edward connects with Ling so well cayse he doesnt carry the weight of a lot if his past mistakes, and then when the stone happens its like goddamn it i roped this guy into my shit again. Like i dont know Edward doesnt really dedicate himself so fully to people outside of winry and ed a lot so its interesting like!!

He cares about a lot of people like the majority of the allied cast and we see him be openly affectionate towards Nina and Hughes pre their deaths but I think Ling is the only person hes ever decided to stick with WITHOUT alphonse? I may be wrong but the whole sure Ill stay with you and trust my brother and Winry to stay safe and follow you around the outskirts of the east for a week till the promised day to protect my new friend is so??? what?? huh???

But anyone my point is post promised day Edward cant really ever see a future with Ling because of all the responsibility Ling holds outside of him and its veyr tragic imo like especially because in a different scenario if Ling didnt have those responsibilities and Edward wasn’t so dedicated to the people around him to a fault of never thinking about his own desires I think they could have the possibility of a future.

Like I have read a lot of fanfiction abiut Ed traveling to Xing and living with him there but?? I realistically cant see him ever doing that just solely because Edward is not the type of person to settle down! like its my one and only criticism of the fma manga is that I cannot see Edward ever being satisfied with a simple life? Like even in Fma 03 which is my favourite interpretation of Edwards character once he gets stranded in our world he learns?? Rocket Science?? For the chance to get back to Amestris but he doesnt really seem to take that goal all that seriously especially considered Alfons ends up getting involved in a lot more aircraft projects than Edward like Edwsrd genuinely enjoys learning!!

Im pretty sure he was the one who dragged Alphonse into Hoenhiems office when they were kids after he left, probably to Al’s reluctance of if they were allowed in there, and started ripping through all of his old books just to learn. Edward never stops and it gets so bad that he never stops to even consider himself constantly worrying about getting his brother back or improving the states of others lives especially when! ya know! the whole country is at stake!!

So in a circumstance post promised day where Ed decides what he wants to do (my personal favourite interpretation is either an alchemical researcher outside of directly performing alchemy, ie revolutionizing the circle matrixes and discovering nee combinations or becoming a professor of some kind) I dont think he would give that up to settle again. And obviously Ling cant exactly up and leave being Emperor unless he decides he doesnt want to, im not the most knowledgable on Lings characterization so I wont speak there but!

They have so much fun together and compliment each other and genuinely care about each other so much but their happiness and fulfillment as people to themselves and others make it so its nearly impossible they would ever realistically end up together and its really doomed and tragic!! idk i think about it a lot.

[throwbacktears]

people on here really don't like re-contextualizing midnights as a breakup album but. with "hits different", with the news of their breakup, and now finally "youre losing me", it just. it makes so much sense as a break-up album. and even if we didnt consider it as one at the time, i dont think there's anything wrong with coming to see it as one now. looking at it at all at face value, it just makes sense. even if some people might not want to hear that.

taylor has always said midnights is an album about choices - the ones we treasure, the ones we regret, the ones we mull over until the early morning.

lavender haze, given all that we now know, was clearly about taylor trying to keep her head in the clouds -- blissful ignorance -- a la "lavendar haze" -- when its apprarent theres a big elephant in the room. i always found it interesting that whenever she referred to her and joe's relationship, she fixated a lot on when they first got together, and he was there for her when no one else was. its almost like that was her anchor and justification to stay with him anyway, despite the (now-implied) emotional neglect that was actually going on, despite the multiple breaks they've supposedly have had to take over the course of their relationship. she just wants to stay in that time period where everything was perfect, when everything was still rosy, in that "lavendar haze".

bejeweled -- the idea that, even though someone wants to keep her a secret, and dim her light in the process, it wont stop her from shining, and she cant help it. and if theyre not willing to let her shine, something has got to give. the idea of her being kept to the basement, by this person, when she just wants "the penthouse of your heart".

the same themes in bejeweled of doing all the extra credit, just to get graded on a curve, to youre losing me, where "i give all my best me's, my endless empathy, and all i did was bleed"

maybe calling midnights a breakup album is too reductive, since not all the songs refer to her and joe's relationship, and thus not every song is a breakup song. but to call midnights anything other than, at the very least, a melancholic, relationships-on-the-rocks (re: theme of staying up until midnight over decisions), break-up adjacent album, where its clear something has got to give, despite the good that they had - especially given the context we have now - is amiss.

like the wisdom that comes with looking back at her re-recordings with new eyes and revisiting those times knowing what she knows now, she also uses the theme of midnights to ponder her then-current problems. such as: do i have to lose the person that i love most, because nothing they are doing, and everything they have been doing, is not enough anymore?