#and probably typos because its 1 am

[adhd-merlin]

Merlin S1 rewatch: episode 4 🌼

4 episodes in, and our boys are already tripping all over themselves to die for each other. Insane.

I don't have many funny comments to make about this one. It's a solid episode.

Arthur is an incredibly brave and chivalrous knight, Merlin is an extremely powerful sorcerer, and Uther is an utter bastard. Characters effectively distilled to their essence.

random thoughts & comments

• For all that it's a silly family show, the sets and locations are so beautiful. Look at this!

• Nimueh is so gorgeous in her blue turban. I can't blame Merlin for the flirting.

• Her fake name is Cara (!). But spelled with a C. Caras/Karas are not to be trusted, I guess

• They were really going all in with the red & blue juxtaposition

• I love Arthur red studded jacket. Why did they deprive him of his fun little outfits in later seasons! He's even wearing jewellery!! Wtf is this necklace, btw

• Stupid question but how did Nimueh know Arthur would end up with the poisoned chalice?? She just put it in the box

• Well done Gaius for identifying the poison in 0.5 seconds. That's got to be some kind of record. Does he train for that? Does Camelot hold an annual speed poison-identification contest?

• Luckily Gaius’s book contains all the information needed to retrieve the flower required for the antidote – what it looks like, where to find it, what to expect when you get there. Top 10 restaurants in the area. It's all in there.

• I've missed Uther! He's a great character/antagonist. "I can't stand by and watch [Merlin] die." / "Then don't look." (!) Banger of a line. And Anthony is an amazing actor.

• After having watched the entire series, I feel like S1 Arthur comes across as more of a noble and good guy than in later seasons? I can't put my finger on why, exactly. Perhaps the way he stands up to Uther with no hesitation. I don’t know.

• I like that Arthur gets to defeat the Cockatrice all by himself. So often in the series it's just Merlin (literally) working his magic behind the scenes and Arthur taking all the credit, but in this episode he very much deserves to be called a hero.

• Speaking of which, the way Arthur just defeats that Cockatrice and then carries on like it was no big deal is kind of funny. (Like... he just threw a sword at it? And it died? Alright.)

• Nimueh is so bad at acting like an innocent damsel in distress. Definitely nothing at all sus about her situation. "Please help me, good sir! Why, yes, I do know where to find the flower you're after. Just follow me into this dark cave. No need to take your sword." Arthur are you dumb (don't answer that)

• Nimueh is like "it's not your destiny to die at my hand!" Mmkay if you know who's going to kill him what's this all for then 👀

• I LOVE Merlin guiding Arthur to safety with his magic. I've said it before but (ironically) there isn't enough magic in this series. I think this is perhaps the coolest act of magic we ever see Merlin perform. And even if the CGI is at times hilariously bad, this globe of light looks pretty cool. Quite powerful, both visually and symbolically (and also literally. Merlin’s not even conscious).

• Uther has done some truly fucked up things (both on screen and implied) but crushing the flower needed for the antidote is just so needlessly cruel that I still think of it as one of the worst things he's done.

• Gwen to the rescue <3 I know everyone goes on about how sweet and kind she is, but she can also be shrewd when the situation calls for it. She's good at thinking on her feet under pressure, and it's a trait that shows in other episodes.

• Arthur and Gwen cooperating to save Merlin – love to see it. (Arthur, that's your future wife! Look at him. He doesn't even know. He doesn’t know he'll turn into a complete simp for this woman.)

• Interesting that Gwen's first reaction to Gaius's "We might need to use magic to prepare the antidote" is "but we can't! it's forbidden!!" GIRL, THE BOY YOU FANCY YOURSELF IN LOVE WITH IS DYING. MAYBE CHILL. But I guess it says a lot about Uther's reign of terror that this was so unthinkable to her.

• If I remember right (and I might not), Gaius uses magic only 3 or 4 times in the entire series and always to save Merlin's life (or to save Alice, once). It's a fairly consistent trait throughout the series that he's actually quite reluctant to use magic (whether because he's vowed not to, or because it brings up unwanted memories. Or both). It's always a last resort. I know no one cares, I just find it interesting.

• GWEN AND MERLIN'S KISS! I wonder how Arthur would have reacted at finding out that Merlin kissed Gwen first. WE WERE DEPRIVED WE WERE ROBBED

• Why didn't Uther question the fact that Merlin survived?? First he's s all intent on letting him die to teach Arthur a lesson, then he goes "haha, well done son, you were right to defy me" (??) Did he find out about Gwen and Arthur’s subterfuge to get the flower to Gaius? He must have, I suppose, but he's remarkably chill about it (I'm surprised he didn't accuse Gaius of using sorcery to save Merlin)

• Something tells me we haven't seen the last of Nimueh yet. I don't know what. Just a feeling.

[panda-hammer]

Sanguinius – The Great Angel

What follows, is me, trying to put something in writing that has been ghosting in that noggin of mine for some time now about the nature of primarchs and astartes. This is based solely on the passages from C. Wraight's book "Sanguinius - The Great Angel".

Part 1 of 2 (or maybe 3)

Disclaimers:

this are my thoughts and opinions. I would love to hear other people's take on that book as well :)

citations are marked with "..."

Mistakes and typos are very likely.

After more or less finishing Sanguinius’ primarch book, I can say that a) Chris Wraight’s writing might not be to everybody’s liking (I am on the fence because the first half of the book was a bit slow and difficult to get into, but picked up in quality in the second half. Also, the German translation doesn’t do it any justice.) b) the book contains some of the best descriptions of Sanguinius (and by extension, Blood Angels), told through the eyes of a human narrator.

For once, these otherworldly beings are not described as simply “beautiful” ,,graceful” or “impossible to grasp” but as actual non-human and multifaceted entities that they are.

I have tried to find as many passages as possible in the book, which I believe describe the above better than I could ever put into words and divided them into three rough categories:

battle situations (the true might and essence of a primarch and his astartes)

outside of battle (the mask)

Sanguinius vs Horus (no Warmaster title for you, hawk boy)

BOOK SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT, so proceed at your own risk.

The first time the human narrator (whose name I can’t retain to save my life) sees Sanguinius fight, is on a planet that refused compliance to the Blood Angels (BA). They got exactly three opportunities to agree to the conditions set out by the imperium, and Sanguinius made it pretty clear, that there won’t be a fourth time. Already here, we can see that he is willing to negotiate BUT only on HIS terms and to get the outcome HE desires.

But back to the fight. Sanguinius is often depicted as a shining warrior angel, akin to St Michael who slays the dragon. Divine, just and noble even when delivering judgement upon his foes. I don’t think that this is the image that particular remembrancer (I will call him Bob from now on) will have in his mind for the rest of his days, when thinking about Sang:

“ As for him, for Sanguinius, I don’t know how long he’d been fighting. Probably for hours. Maybe days. His armour was no longer gold, but black and red, charred by the flames and stained by the blood he’d already let. Fully extended, his wings looked both magnificent and awful. Their pearlescent sheen had been replaced with a mess of blood and debris, accumulated from his descent into the cauldrons of combat. The structures around him were little more than a tangle of broken struts and spars, radiating out from him in a concave hemisphere, as if he’d crashed into them from above and created the blast wave on impact. He was surrounded by shattered bodies, all from the ranks of the enemy. […]  Sanguinius rose from the city’s wreckage with a single thrust of his bloodied wings, dripping gore and oil from the pinions, shedding broken scraps of enemy armour from the shining tip of his great spear, lashing out with movements so precise and so fast that even establishing cause and effect was hard. He was unhelmed. Amid all the lattice of energy weapons and flying projectiles, his face was exposed. Its beauty was marred now, masked with dirt and blood, the long hair matted. I got a lone, snatched sighting of his eyes, which were the most terrifying things I had ever seen. The expression in them was beyond anger. I don’t know if I even have a word for it – a kind of wild, cold frenzy, only barely held in check by the armour that encased him. He was radiant but terrible, resplendent but panic-inducing.”

Bob sees the primarch once again fight on Murder, where Sanguinius unleashes a carnage upon the enemies that killed his children.

“Revenge. It felt good. I liked it. […] I think he did, too. I could see him at the very apex of the advance, and for all that the Titans made my hands tremble, his actions were something else again. He soared and he dived, he plunged and he plummeted, all within and around that lattice of fire and plasma. The Legion was firing liberally, making the atmosphere ignite, and he just weaved his complex path through it all, trailing streamers of fire and smoke, a comet given its head, his spear like a star in the gloom, vicious and intense. They were already reeling, those creatures, those monsters, and to be faced by this, this, a son of the Emperor unleashed – it broke them. They screamed.

Alien screams, from alien gullets and alien mandibles, raised in a chorus of fear and horror. He’d been angry before. I’d seen it, and it had chilled me to the bone. This was different, though. They’d hurt his sons. My advice, such as it is, to any who might contemplate doing that. Don’t. Just don’t.”

And it’s not only the sheer brutality and cold fury that scares Bob, but also the in-humanity of it all. Not in the sense of “inhuman war crimes” type but in the sense of “H.P. Lovecraft’s eldritch horrors that are beyond human comprehension” type.

Sanguinius’ fighting style is simply beyond our comprehension and rationale, because he is too good, too fast, too everything (thanks to his premonition). Which is also noted upon in the book:

“Trying to catch how he did it – how he fought, how he killed – that was hard. Part of it was the speed, the manic velocity of every single movement, a fractured display in the flickering light that seemed more an act of sorcery than physics. Just as before, though, I glimpsed the impossibility in his movements. We are mortal, we make mistakes. We aim, we miss; we strive, we fail. He never missed. He never failed. And it turns out the human brain doesn’t process that very well. We start to try to recategorise it as something else – a machine at work, the operation of a chemical reaction, the effects of gravity. I could barely see any kinship with him at all, not just because he was better, but because he was other.”

Bob is not a happy camper, because it is at this moment that he realizes, how damn lucky we humans are that these abnormal beings are on our side (for now, hah!):

“I was close to tears myself, just from witnessing what a primarch could do when the fetters were off. […]  What had we made here? What had we let loose? He was on our side and I should have felt happy about that, but you couldn’t be, not watching what he did when he was given licence.”

Going a bit back in the book, the word “hyperhuman” is used to describe the Great Angel, and I admit, it fits perfectly. :

“To go up against Sanguinius was to be faced with a soul acting barely within the laws of time and space, something that bulged at the constraints of matter, that operated a hair’s width beyond the possible. It was superhuman. It was hyperhuman.”

And the worst (best) part is, Bob is the only non-combatant who sees all this atrocities happening, because he got special VIP ticket to the front lines from Sanguinius. Other remembrances, only get the full-blown propaganda material which they rely upon to create further wholesome propaganda, creating an image of the BA that is, simply said, family friendly and sanitized bs.

The thing is, that’s exactly what this Legion is going for: the propagation of a positive image of the BA.

They need it, because they know what they are and what they are hiding. Which is also the reason why Bob is the only exception to the rule of no remembrancers on the battlefield. If anyone else saw what the astartes and their dad was doing down there, they would be running away screaming.

The BA enjoy the carnage, the close combat, the slaughter but they also know that what they are doing is tabu for the great masses (not for their own sake, but for the sake of the image of the Crusade).

Long story short, I hope the above was a somewhat comprehensible mess of what I was trying to convey: primarchs are engineered, non-human entities that have more in common with Lovecraftian Old Gods than with us, wee baselines.

And we love them for it.

In part 2, I will go into more details of Sangunius person / character outside of battle.

P.S. Please, also don’t read this so-called “analysis” as anti-ship or anti-hcs. Thank you 😊

[katerina-marie]

The Uncertainty of Domesticity

Toji Fushiguro x Female Reader

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 of 3

Toji Fushiguro wasn’t afraid of much, though he definitely felt so when he became a widower in the same moment he became a father. Years later, he felt it again when you came along with the same hopes and dreams for a future he never thought he would experience again.

Content: JJK universe but no canon events / strangers & neighbors to lovers / medium burn idk / female reader and referred to as such but left descriptively vague / no y/n / out of character and soft Toji / single-father Toji / A little NSFW - brief mention/implication of vaginal sex so please avoid accordingly - but I can't write smut to save my life so it's not very explicit / Megumi-Mama/Mamaguro dies in childbirth and its mentioned once or twice / cutie pie child Megumi / fluff / slice of life / light angst from Toji's inner turmoil / discussions about having children / pregnancy and childbirth for reader / more notes below

WC: 9.2k (*nervous laughter*)

Notes:

Y'all....this thing is 9.2k words. It probably should've been split into another part, but I didn't and I'm just leaving it be. I'm sorry if it feels a bit "choppy?" I could've happily kept writing about all the little moments in between the parts shown, but I'm not sure if it ever would've ended at that point.

Also, I'm posting this at nearly 2:00 am my time because my end of week/upcoming weekend just got very busy and it's now or never, so please forgive any typos. I reread this chapter until I went crosseyed.

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Toji Fushiguro liked to consider himself capable of many things. 

He, as a single father, had raised his son from infancy into a fine six and a half year old.

He was a teacher, no matter how unwilling, and had successfully kept all his students alive thus far.

He was your partner, doting and caring of your every whim and utterly wrapped around your finger. 

So, when he and Megumi woke up from a late afternoon nap in the middle of the summer only to step into a puddle of water in front of their kitchen sink, Toji was adamant he was capable of repairing the situation, regardless of his lack of experience in such an area. He mopped up the water, gathered tools, and squeezed himself under the sink the best he could considering his size. At some point, Megumi must have run across the street to fetch you because your legs appeared in his limited field of vision followed by your smug grin as you bent down to check on him. 

Your eyes glittered in a way that was betelling of your mischievousness, and Toji grimaced. “Having fun?”

“Just hand me a wrench from the counter, please.” 

You did as Toji asked without comment, and began to fill the silence (and test Toji’s concentration) with chatter about plans for the weekend in between his intermittent string of curses when something went amiss. As an hour went by with little progress to show for it, you made yourself comfortable on the floor next to Toji’s feet while Megumi had since found something outside to occupy himself with. When you felt water begin to tickle your toes, you reached out your foot to nudge it against Toji’s calf. 

“I mean this in the kindest, least offensive way,” you told him, “but don’t you think it’s about time we call a plumber?” Somewhere under the sink, metal clanged and Toji barked out an expletive followed by a groan of pain. 

“No,” he insisted grouchily, and you watched as he used his legs to wedge himself further under the sink. “I think I almost got it.” 

Your answering hum was full of disbelief, but Toji paid it no mind, even if he could start to feel the coolness of water seeping into the cuff of his pants. If only he could reach one more inch…

His concentration was interrupted when Megumi’s scream of pain filtered in through the open windows. Toji lurched upwards out of sheer instinct and hit his head hard enough against the metal piping that he saw stars. Through the haze of pain and spots across his vision, he saw you dash out the door, and primal parental instinct forced Toji out of the cramped space so he could tend to his child’s cries. When he finally managed to stagger out the front door, you were on your knees on the concrete cradling a sobbing Megumi to your chest. His bike lay on its side just a step away, and from how his son’s left arm was sitting limply over his lap and already changing colors, Toji suspected a hospital trip was in order for what was clearly a broken bone. He approached and you looked up at him with eyes that were glassy with your own tears, your heart breaking for how badly the little boy was in pain. Toji brushed a quick hand over your cheek before crouching down to meet Megumi’s eyes. 

“Alright, Megs,” he coaxed, and the sight of his son’s face clenched in distress and wet with tears was a sight Toji would never get over, “we’ll get you up and to the doctor to start feeling better, okay?” Megumi didn’t react to his words, but when Toji reached out to scoop him into his arms, he wailed harder and tightened the good arm he had wrapped around your neck, burying his face deeper into your chest. Surprise fluttered over your face and then it turned apologetic towards Toji, but he shook his head, the shock of his son’s preference for you in this moment not nearly as important. Instead, Toji carefully helped you up while you held onto Megumi and led the two of you to the car with a protective arm wrapped around your shoulders. 

The evening at the hospital passed in a similar manner. You reclined in a bed with Megumi against your chest while a doctor looked at his arm and Toji filled out paperwork. You murmured in the boy’s ear and brushed his hair back in soothing movements to try and distract him from the pain. When a nurse came in with an IV kit in hand, you let Megumi cry into your neck while Toji helped hold his right arm still. Eventually, after he drifted off to sleep, you took a seat next to Toji on the right side of Megumi’s bed while the doctor set his arm and fixed a cast onto it. The entire time, the worried father remained ramrod straight with eyes fixed on every move the doctor made, and he had your hand clenched between the two of his on his lap. You leaned to the side to rest your head against his shoulder, and adoration tightened your chest when Toji let out an anxious huff before turning his head to press his lips to your forehead.

When the whole thing was said and done and the three of you were discharged once Megumi was awake enough, you rubbed a comforting hand over Toji’s back as he carried his son to the car. Once home, the two of you worked to get Megumi changed and ready for bed, a delicate task when having to take caution with the state of his arm. Thankfully, the edge was taken off by painkillers, and he dazedly chatted about the cool blue cast on his arm and how he couldn’t wait to show it off to Yuji. Toji promised to get him markers for him to draw on it with while you persuaded him to get under the blankets after assuring him you’d bake a giant batch of cookies tomorrow in reward for his bravery. 

Toji took the time to place Megumi’s favorite stuffed animals around him and tucked him further into the blankets. You read him a bedtime story while Toji lay stretched out next to the two of you, and by the end of it, Megumi’s eyes were drooping heavily and his mouth had fallen open just the slightest. You gently lifted Megumi’s broken arm up so that Toji could settle a pillow under it, and after bidding the boy goodnight, he got up so you could slide in next to him. He watched with a thudding heart as you scanned his son up and down with fretful eyes and let your hands flutter nervously about him. You pushed some of the hair away from Megumi’s forehead and leaned down carefully to place a gentle kiss between his brows. When you looked back at Toji with a sad, wobbly smile on your lips but a determined gleam in your eyes in order to be brave for the little boy in front of you, Toji realized in that moment that he had fallen in love with you, and in the same breath decided that he was going to marry you, nearly a year to the day he met you in the middle of a grocery store. 

And later, when the two of you lay exhausted under the blankets of his bed, Toji rolled over onto his side to mold every inch of himself against your back and nestled his chin into the crook of your shoulder so his lips could brush against your ear. 

“Marry me,” he whispered, not so much asking as he was pleading. You were already half asleep, but he felt the shake of your shoulders as quiet laughter blew out from your nose, and you threaded your fingers up through his from where they were draped over your hip. 

“Of course,” you breathed, and Toji tightened his arms around you. He left a kiss on the back of your neck and let his eyes slide shut as he basked in the warmth of your body and smell of your lotion and the incandescent joy in realizing that he’d never have to go another night without it—without you. 

“But ask me again later so I can see you properly down on one knee.” 

A week later, because Toji Fushiguro was powerless to anything you demanded of him, he did as you asked in the middle of his kitchen while you, him, and Megumi still lounged in your pajamas and were only halfway done making breakfast. His son clapped excitedly when you squealed out a ‘yes’ and Toji grinned with pride as you admired the simple gold band that adorned your finger. Satisfaction made his heart full and your smile soothed his soul, but eagerness had him marrying you in a government building just a couple days later.

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It wasn’t until Megumi’s seventh birthday that Toji realized stalling wasn’t going to work much longer. 

The months following your marriage had been busy with moving him and Megumi into your house across the street since it was bigger and didn’t hold the memories of a tragic past Toji was ready to move on from. The end of the summer had brought school for him and Megumi back into full swing, and two weeks into it Toji was ready to quit when all his students could focus on was the new ring on his left hand. Most of them were congratulatory in their teasing, but a few made jests about their disbelief that someone could bother marrying their grouch of a teacher, and while Toji had half a mind to bring you by just to shut them up, he decided it was kinder to not subject you to a particular white-haired menace. 

By the time the three of you got settled into the normalcy of being a new family, the year was already coming to a close and Megumi was turning seven. As requested, you had baked his son a double chocolate cake and covered the top in rainbow sprinkles. Toji had taken the time to pipe little swirls of frosting around the edges, though some were lopsided and varied in size (such small, precise tasks were simply too big of an ask for the size of his hands), but Megumi didn’t seem to care when the two of you placed it in front of him on the table, candles lit orange and reflecting off the wideness of his eyes. 

After singing and clapping, right as Megumi filled his cheeks with as much air as he could manage to blow his candles out in a single breath, you threw your hands out over them in an attempt to keep them aflame for just a moment longer.

“Wait, Megumi,” you gasped, yanking your hands back when the heat of the candles scorched a bit too close to your skin. Toji immediately gathered them into his to inspect your palms, but you shook them away, not minding his grumble as the brief sting faded. “You have to make a wish!” 

Megumi’s mouth dropped open into a perfect ‘o’ as he nodded vigorously. “Oh, yeah,” he chirped. “I forgot.” 

He immediately squeezed his eyes closed, and you and Toji watched in amusement as he scrunched up his nose and squirmed in his seat. You took the opportunity to snap a couple of pictures, and when he was done, Megumi’s eyes popped back open and he took in a great inhale before blowing out his candles all at once. You cheered while Toji ruffled his son’s hair, and Megumi looked quite proud of himself as you slid the cake towards you to cut him a piece worthy of being eaten on his birthday. Both of you chastised Toji when he kept insisting you make his piece bigger and bigger, almost so that he nearly had half the cake on his plate alone by the time it was all said and done. 

“Hey, Kid,” Toji said around a mouthful of cake while you pointedly took a polite bite of your own, “what did you wish for?” Megumi begrudgingly tore his attention from his cake, and you swatted at Toji’s arm from across the table. 

“You���re not supposed to ask!” you exclaimed, but he simply rolled his eyes and shook his head good naturedly before returning his focus back onto his plate. At the head of the table, Megumi stared at you with an all too knowing look for a fresh six year old and then set his sights on his father with an unimpressed quirk to his brow. 

“I wished for a baby brother or sister.” 

Toji promptly choked on the large bite of cake he had shoved into his mouth moments prior to Megumi’s unexpected declaration, and your lips parted in shock. Meanwhile, Megumi eyed the two of you expectedly as Toji hacked and coughed. You jumped from your chair to grab him a glass of water, then set it down next to him while rubbing a soothing hand between his shoulder blades. 

“Now, Megumi,” you began, not so much stern but intentionally practical, and he looked up at you with wide, attentive eyes, “babies, uhm, take their time getting here…” you trailed off and turned your head to your husband with an alarmed look on your face, but Toji was still working on regaining his breath and chugging his water and could only offer a shrug of his shoulders while he pursed his lips in defeat. 

You sighed and faced Megumi again with a weary smile. “Babies take their time getting here and that’s after their parents decide to have one. Any baby brother or sister will have to spend nine whole months growing in my belly before they arrive, so you’ll have to try and be real patient for us, okay?”

Megumi’s face fell dejectedly, and if Toji looked hard enough, there was a hint of disappointment on your features too. He watched as you playfully pinched at the boy’s cheeks and tempted him back into a happy mood with the hint of birthday gifts waiting for him in the living room. The whole exchange had guilt weighing heavy on Toji’s shoulders, and he had the bitter realization that it was his own fear—the one that lied solely in the scant possibility that you could meet the same fate as the only other woman he had ever loved—that caused the frown on yours and Megumi’s faces. 

In spite of that fear, Toji had promised you something, and in the six months since the two of you had been married, you hadn’t chastised him or given him grief when he pulled out at the last moment to spend himself across your stomach or back. You didn’t question him when he had a hard time meeting your eyes as he tore open a foil packet to remove the condom from inside. He knew your trust in him far surpassed whatever insecurities he wrestled with, but it didn’t make him feel less like a failure every time. 

So later that night, when Toji found himself above you and nestled in the warmth between your legs, he leaned into the security of your arms and sought reassurance in the taste of your lips as he came to his own end after ensuring yours. You ran your fingers down his back and whispered sweet nothings into his ear when the racing of his heart and trembling of his muscles could no longer be blamed on the energy he expended while pleasuring his wife.

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You suspected something was amiss a couple months later. Toji had brought home your favorite take-out for dinner, and while the first bite was as pleasant as usual, every one after tasted more and more like cardboard and settled uncomfortably in your stomach until your appetite was thoroughly gone. You questioned whether it was something more and that maybe your period wouldn’t appear in just a couple of days, but when Megumi began to complain of an upset stomach toward the end of the meal, you banished the thought out of your head. 

However, two days after while you were cooking that evening’s dinner, one whiff of the package of raw chicken you had just cut open had you violently gagging and running for the nearest bathroom while ignoring Megumi’s call of alarm when you passed him in the living room. Your knees hit tile as you retched into the bowl of the toilet, and you weren’t sure how much time had passed when you were finally able to lift your head. You trembled on your spot on the floor and felt more tired than you had been in weeks. Nausea made your head spin, and you wondered if you’d ever be able to look at chicken again the same way. Just the sheer thought of it had your mouth souring, and your repulsiveness for it went deep into your bones. 

When you finally caught your breath and were mostly confident you had emptied everything in your stomach, you pushed yourself off the floor and rinsed your mouth before exiting the bathroom. Megumi stood on the other side of the door with his lips turned down in concern and your phone in his hand. When he raised it up to you, Toji’s name was displayed at the top of an ongoing call. 

“Hey,” is all you said when you brought the phone to your ear. 

“Megumi called and said something was wrong with you. Are you okay?” Toji’s voice wasn’t panicked, but you sensed the worry in it, and you could imagine his face looked much like his son’s had moments ago. 

“I was making dinner a few minutes ago, and the smell of the raw chicken…” you had to trail off when just telling him what happened made you gag a little. You hadn’t yet stepped away from the doorway of the bathroom, but you weren’t in a hurry to have to go back in, so you took a few deep breaths until the feeling passed. Megumi hugged your leg as he gazed up at you in concern and you patted the top of his head in reassurance. 

“Ah,” Toji remarked.

“Yup.” 

Toji cleared his throat after a moment of quiet and then asked a question that sent nerves skittering down your spine. “Want me to pick up a test on the way home?” 

“Please.” 

Later that night, after Megumi was tucked in bed, the two of you waited anxiously as the timer on your phone counted down from three minutes. Two pregnancy tests lay face down on the counter. You nibbled on the skin of your cuticle while Toji bounced his knee from where he sat on the closed toilet lid. 

“I mean, it’s not as if we weren’t expecting this to happen,” you pointed out, shaking your hands in front of you in an attempt to dislodge the nervousness from your body, and Toji snorted. 

“Yeah, certainly not.” He wiggled his eyebrows flirtatiously, and the smirk that tugged at the scar on his lip made your cheeks flush hot, and you rolled your eyes at him. As the two of you continued to wait as the seconds on your phone seemed to crawl by, a thought popped into your head. 

“Is it as nerve-wracking the second time around? Or is it easier?” you asked him gently, and you saw Toji’s features soften as his eyes went nostalgic. He worked his mouth in contemplation—perhaps in recollection—and then shook his head. 

“No, it’s uh, just as shocking I’d say—at least for me.” He pushed off his knees and came to stand next to you. “I think it’ll be this way no matter how many times we do it.” The thought of one day doing this a second time had the breath rushing out of you, but you filed the image away for a future discussion. It wasn’t something you had the capacity to consider now, not while you were currently waiting to see if you were about to become a mother. 

The shrill noise from your phone that indicated the timer had run down made the two of you jump a foot in the air, and you looked to Toji with wide eyes. 

“Take that one?” you offered, pointing with a trembling finger to the test that would answer with words versus a combination of lines, and Toji was suddenly very grateful he grabbed two different kinds at the store. While he knew he could squint at a test and convince himself that an extra line may or may not be visible, he was almost a hundred percent positive he wouldn’t suddenly become illiterate and unable to distinguish between “pregnant” and “not pregnant.” 

He nodded, and at the same time, the two of you reached for each test on the counter and flipped them over close to your faces only for your jaws to drop simultaneously. You turned to each other, wide eyed and bewildered (as if you didn’t know what the two of you had been doing these last couple months) because “pregnant” and two dark lines could not be misunderstood. 

You brought your free hand up to your mouth to cover it as unabashed laughter poured from your lips, and Toji wrapped his arms around your shoulders to yank you into his chest. Joy spurred him into kissing you deeply, and the pure love and elation in your eyes when you pulled back was enough for Toji to feel the first stirrings of excitement at the prospect of having a child with you. 

It wasn’t until later in the night, in the dark of your shared bedroom with nothing but the evenness of your breathing to interrupt the noise in his head that Toji could admit to himself that the entirety of it terrified him.  

------------------------------

“That’s a baby?” Megumi’s voice was full of skepticism, and he eyed the ultrasound photo with disgruntled disbelief as you pointed at the grey and white blob in a sea of black. 

“Yes, Megumi,” you giggled, smiling at Toji over the little boy’s shoulder as the three of you sat cuddled in your bed, “that’s your sibling. They are very small right now, but next time they’ll look bigger and more like a baby.” 

He wasn’t appeased by your answer, and he crossed his arms with a little huff of disappointment that had Toji struggling to muffle his laughter. The two of you had just returned from your first doctor’s appointment and had decided to break the news to Megumi now that you had a picture to confirm it, and while he had taken it well, he clearly was expecting more. 

“How long till it gets here?” he asked, glancing up at you, but Toji replied first.

“Doctor said January. You’re gonna have to be patient, Megs.” Toji grinned at his son, but Megumi looked even more unenthused than before and glowered at his father. 

“Why’d you have to take so long to have a baby?” he muttered, and the words wiped the smile clean off Toji’s face as you shook with laughter. With a pained look on his face, Toji simply shoved a pillow playfully over Megumi’s head and tickled him in the ribs to distract him from the question at hand. 

You used the opportunity to burrow under the blankets as your eyes began to grow heavy. Nausea, fatigue, and a general feeling of being unwell had plagued you from the moment the pregnancy test had turned positive, and you hoped an afternoon in bed and watching movies would offer a reprieve. You had just begun to drift off when you heard Megumi ask for Toji’s attention. 

“Dad, where do babies come from?” 

------------------------------

“I don’t think there’s much in that book you have to worry about,” Toji told you on a night that found the two of you lounging in your room after Megumi went to sleep. He was lazily folding laundry from his perch at the foot of the bed. You were reclined back against the headboard with said book in your lap. One hand rested against the curve of your belly that had just started to protrude against the fabric of your clothes in the last week, and the other dog-eared every other page laden with information about pregnancy, childbirth, and newborns.

“Perhaps,” you said, setting the book down on your thighs, and the pointed look you gave him made it clear you didn’t feel the same, “but that’s easy for you to say—you’ve done this before.” 

A harsh laugh fell from Toji’s mouth before he had a chance to stop it, and he tossed a bundle of socks in his hand at the tower he had made of his folded boxers. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. We were barely surviving.” 

He watched as the pile of fabric warbled upon impact, and just as it began to tilt, you shot your foot out to brace it in place. When Toji looked up at you, frustration didn’t furrow your brow or pinch your nose. Instead, your smile was gentle and understanding.

“I know,” you said, voice soft, and it carried an undercurrent of reassurance. 

Toji released a deep breath and tilted up the scarred corner of his mouth in a way that he hoped looked contrite. He reached for the stack of his boxers and righted them so you could lower your leg back down. “I’m probably not the best person to get advice from anyway.” 

You tilted your head to the right, perplexed by his unusual self-deprecation. “I wouldn’t say so.” 

Toji just shrugged and continued fiddling with the last bits of laundry. 

“Sure, you’re a little rough around the edges.” 

“Can’t deny that,” he grumbled. 

“You can be a bit grumpy sometimes, and you have a history of giving in to questionable decisions and habits.” 

Toji shot you a withering look. “You really know how to kick a guy while he’s down.” 

“And,” you emphasized, holding up your hand to indicate that you weren’t finished, “you have a really tragic backstory that just makes the whole thing sad.” 

For once, Toji seemed to be struck speechless, stupefied by the bluntness of your words, and the bundle of socks he had been playing with rolled from his hand. 

“But,” you said, “there’s no one else I’d rather be doing this with than you, Toji.” Your husband, who had clearly been a bit rankled by the conversation, melted. The tension released from his shoulders and the puckered set of his lips smoothed out into a dopey grin as his countenance perked up.

“I love you too,” he teased, his tone light and easy, “even if you are something else.” 

You beamed at him as he got up to gather the laundry in his arms and set it in on the dresser in front of your bed, intending to deal with it tomorrow. He then flopped onto his stomach on the bed next to you, shaking the whole thing under his weight, and if the two of you hadn’t already thoroughly tested its limits, you’d worry about its ability to handle the size of him. The thought had your blood suddenly running hot and you rolled onto your side to nip at his ear when a different sensation in your lower half made you pause. 

For the last two weeks you had been feeling the tiny bubbles in your stomach and knew that your baby had gotten big enough for you to begin to take notice of its movement. However, this was the first time it felt significant enough to be noticed from the outside. You returned to your position on your back and pressed your hand lightly into the skin under your belly button. Nothing happened for a minute, and just as you were ready to give up, you felt the faintest hiccup against your palm. 

“Toji!” you blurted, and you urged yourself to stay still despite your excitement lest your little one move again and hide away. 

“You going to insult me again?” Toji’s voice was muffled from where his face was mushed into his pillow. 

“No,” you scoffed, wiggling your fingers at him even though he couldn’t see, “come here.” He groaned in protest but propped himself up on his elbows to shift onto his side nonetheless, and you snapped your hand out to grab his.

“What are you—,” 

“Shh!” You didn’t bother explaining as you covered his hand with yours and settled it onto your belly where yours had just been. His jaw shut with an audible click. You watched Toji’s expression carefully as you waited for another burst of movement, and even though you knew this wasn’t a foreign experience to him like it was to you, overwhelming joy filled you to your depths when his eyes glossed over with wonder as his child wiggled against his palm. He was quick to gather you to his chest with the arm that wasn’t draped over your hip and you tucked your head under his chin in an attempt to snuggle as close to him as you could manage. 

“Megumi’s going to get a kick out of that tomorrow—literally.” Toji’s voice was thick with emotion, as well as amusement at his own cleverness, and you swatted at his chest. But your laughter deceived you and Toji placed kisses all along the top of your head. 

------------------------------

Toji wondered if all the blood on the floor was retribution for the amount of it he had spilled in the years before. It pooled slowly, eating up the white of the tile and creeping closer until it stained the tip of his shoes. He was empty, void of anything really, and maybe this was the curse doomed to follow him. Loneliness, robbed of anyone precious to him, and instead of incandescent joy that should have taken over him at the sight of his newly born child, nothing except for seething rage and despair filled his mind. There was hatred for a family name that he had already tried to escape, a desire to soothe himself in all the previous vices that had once kept him occupied, and bewilderment that he was somehow in the same situation again.

It was all eerily similar, from the sudden rush of panicked movement in the room to the way he fell back into a cushioned chair, just barely conscious of the baby in his arms. The face of his late wife and yours flashed back and forth, superimposed onto each other as the two of you laid still with eyes closed and arms slackened at your sides. A shrill whine, a solid ringing filled his ears and silenced all other noise. 

Not again. Not again, not again, not ag—,

Years of discipline kept Toji from jolting into wakefulness, but he did suck in a mouthful of air when his eyes opened and took in the darkness of your bedroom. He wasn’t trapped in the sterile four walls of a hospital room, nor was he struck numb by the darkness of your blood. Instead, sweat stuck the sheets to the skin of his back, and above him the fan you always insisted be on spun quickly. The thought of you had his hand clambering across to your side of the bed, but when all that met his fingers was the unusual coolness of your pillow, he lurched upwards, flipped on his bedside lamp, and searched the room.

Rationality told Toji that you were probably fine, that you were in the bathroom or the living room and would be back any second. Rationality would tell him that there wasn’t any need for him to seek you out and confirm you were alive with his own eyes. But adrenaline, a tragic memory, and the nausea simmering in his gut drove him from bed and onto his feet, clad only in his boxers.

Toji was still a bit disoriented from his nightmare, and he tried to be extra mindful of his heavy footfalls as he passed the door of Megumi’s room. As he neared the end of the hallway, he heard the faintest plink of metal against glass and the racing of his heart slowed at the sound before ultimately returning to normal when saw you in the kitchen. 

Despite it being well into the middle of the night, you leaned back onto the kitchen counter with a bowl of cereal in your hands and a happy hum in the back of your throat. Your belly sat low between your hips, pulling taut the fabric of his shirt that served as your outfit of choice as of late, and the sight of it was a reminder that you were nearing the end of nine months now. Nervousness was a constant state Toji was in as your due date rapidly approached, and if he thought too hard about it, panic would shorten his breath and tunnel his vision, such as it was beginning to do in that moment. Thus, Toji wasn’t sure if he made a noise or if you just happened to notice him out of your peripheral vision when you turned your head to him, curiosity taking over your face. 

“Did I wake you?” you whispered, spooning one last bite of cereal into your mouth before setting it into the sink behind you. Toji shook his head and padded over to your side. He dropped his head to rest his cheek on your hair and trailed a hand down your stomach to spread his palm over the front of it. Satisfaction coursed through his veins when you let out a happy, weary sigh and leaned into his chest to rest your weight against him. 

Toji knew you were struggling. He knew your hips ached and it made walking a chore. He knew that your back only stopped hurting after he rubbed the muscles loose for half an hour and that everything including breathing had become difficult for you. The baby kicked you awake during the night, and if you weren’t tossing and turning in an attempt to get comfortable, you were up and going to the bathroom for the nth time. Toji did his best to dote on you in between his job, taking care of Megumi, and doing all the chores around the house. He certainly did want this to be all over for you so you could bask in the enjoyment of motherhood, but each day closer to your child’s birth spiked his anxiety exponentially higher, and he ashamedly wished he could ignore what was to come. 

“Would you like to go back to bed?” he asked, taking a step backwards. 

You nodded your head unwillingly. “I’m too uncomfortable to sleep right now. If I stay up and watch TV in bed will that bother you?” 

“No,” he replied immediately, and Toji was secretly glad he wouldn’t have to stare up at a dark ceiling, too afraid to close his eyes when all he wanted to do was bask in the warmth of your body and the steady rise and fall of your chest. 

The two of you made a slow walk back to your room, and Toji helped you into bed and shifted the pillows behind your back until you were as comfortable as can be in your given state. He scrubbed his hands over his face to rid his eyes of the tiredness that lingered behind them and then slid in next to you as you focused on flipping through channels on the TV. Toji snaked his right arm under the small of your back and wound his left across your lap so his hand could cup the side of your belly and then set the side of his face on the top of it. Your fingers came to scratch through his hair absentmindedly, and the relief that Toji felt from your touch and the quiet thump of your heart was nearly instantaneous. 

As minutes ticked by and most of the lingering tension from his nightmare had subsided, Toji still found himself tapping against the side of your stomach and pushing his fingers against it in an effort to get his child to respond to him. 

You reached an arm over his head to prod at the center of your belly yourself. “He’s been wiggling around a bunch throughout the day, but he might be right about here…” you trailed off just in time for Toji to feel a quick bump under his cheek. 

“I think you meant ‘she,’ isn’t that right?” he said with a smile. Only one of you was to be right about who your child was destined to be, but neither would know until they came out to meet you. 

“No, ‘he’ was correct, thank you very much.” Affection warmed his body and Toji pressed his fingers back into your skin so he could feel the movement again. The baby reciprocated his touch each time until Toji finally relented and figured you’d appreciate the break from being repeatedly poked and prodded. Your palm drifted down to cup his jaw and the swiping of your thumb over it was enough to lull him into the beginnings of sleep. He snuggled a bit closer into your side and let out a great exhale, recalling how you had once made a comment likening him to a large, lounging dog. Toji supposed he could understand what you meant. Really, at the end of the day, all he wanted to do was cling close to you and bask in the pleasure of your touch. 

While Toji knew that no amount of time he spent listening to your heartbeat or prompting his child into movement would prevent a cruel fate from bestowing you both should it be decided, he would let himself pretend if it meant keeping himself together enough to see it through. 

------------------------------

As a surprise to no one at all, childbirth was just as nerve wracking for Toji the second time around as it was the first. 

It didn’t help that he had been on pins and needles since your due date had come and gone, so when you stumbled out of bed and into the living room on the morning of the third day passed, your hand clutching your stomach and a harrowed expression on your face, Toji was coiled tight enough that he sprung into movement. He flung Megumi over his shoulder and was across the room at the same moment to grab the bags you kept at the ready by the front door. By the time you walked out, teetering between amusement at how your husband scurried about and uneasiness at the thought of what was about to happen to your body, Toji already had the car loaded and turned on. A few minutes later, you almost felt bad for Megumi when Toji stopped outside the Itadori’s house to practically throw him at Yuji’s dad—followed by his overnight bag—had the boy not already been hollering to his best friend about how he was about to get a new baby sibling. 

At the hospital, the terrible familiarity of the beige walls and speckled tile had Toji desperate to pace the room at how trapped he felt, but the desire to stay put next to your bedside and keep your hand in his won out. Labor could take hours, that he knew, and Toji spent every moment of it cycling his eyes between the baby’s heart monitor, your face, and the clock on the wall. Each time your expression would twist into a pained grimace, your hand would crush his and a potent cocktail of adrenaline, fear, and anticipation would send his heart racing. 

When the day turned into evening, just an hour before midnight, a doctor placed Toji Fushiguro’s second son onto your bare chest, much to his shock and delight. The noise in the room threatened to overwhelm him—the excited exclamations of the nurses, your panted gasps, the shrill crying of a newborn baby--but Toji wouldn’t let anything tear his focus from you. He stared at how wisps of your hair stuck to your temples in sweat, the red of your cheeks, how your eyes were full of tears and wonder and flicked back and forth between him and your child. Toji knew (how he wished he didn’t) that you could be fine in one instant and dead in the next, but for every minute that passed where you still breathed and your heart kept beating, he could feel the fear slowly trickle from his body. 

Once he was an hour old, Toji held his son for the first time as he sat next to you on your hospital bed. The baby had your nose and tufts of hair the same color as yours, and Toji realized with a sudden pain in his chest that he didn’t remember Megumi in his first couple hours. He couldn’t recall what it felt like to hold him for the first time, nor did he know how much he weighed just after birth. All the tiny details he assumed every parent would remember until the end of their days was overshadowed by a curtain of devastation, the death of his wife wiping it clean from his memory. 

So this time, when the room was quiet and he had you leaning against him, he studied every part of his newborn with rapt attention, determined to commit every detail to perfect recollection. And unlike before, in a moment he’ll always mourn, Toji felt peace and quiet and something indescribably blissful. 

------------------------------

It wasn’t so much that Toji forgot what it was like to have a newborn so much as he had completely blocked what could be considered some of the worst days of his life from his memory. He had been too sleep deprived to even properly grieve his wife and utterly shell shocked at the prospect of now being a widower and single dad. There had been no one to help, no one to encourage him when Megumi cried for two hours straight in the dead of night for a reason Toji couldn’t begin to figure out, no one to help him plan for a couple months down the line when his savings inevitably ran out and he’d have to figure out a safe, legal plan for employment or consider the risk of something illegal since it paid better. 

Yet two weeks into it, when Toji was just starting to discern the difference between Megumi’s wails of hunger and those of exhaustion, someone knocked on his door. He grumbled the whole way down the hall in fear that the sound would wake the baby he had just spent the last hour putting down, and also because he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten or let alone brushed his teeth. So, Toji figured he looked worse for wear when he swung the door open and glared at the man on the other side of it. He was middle aged and wore dark clothing and an even darker pair of sunglasses. He claimed he was an instructor at a school in the city and came to find him out when he heard that rumors began to swirl of Toji Zenin having a son. Toji had spat at him, snarling and enraged and cursing his old last name with vehemence, and he was all too ready to come to physical blows had his son not been sleeping just a few yards away. In the end, the man had just smiled and extended his hand with the promise of a job and to call him the next day. Toji had been wary, but he knew that pickiness wasn’t a luxury he could afford, and appeared at the gates of the school a week later with Megumi strapped to his chest. 

Things were a bit different now, that at least Toji could acknowledge, and the heavy exhaustion that threatened to wrench his eyes shut and made his hands clumsy as he refilled your water bottle didn’t feel so catastrophic this time around. He squinted at the clock on the wall and sighed wearily when he realized the night wasn’t yet halfway over and the two of you were already up for the sixth time. Five day old newborns apparently would wake up and eat more frequently than he could remember, and each and every time he insisted on getting up with you to tend to any needs you had while ensuring his son got the meal he demanded. With an extra snack in hand and a full bottle of water, Toji shuffled back to your shared bedroom and quietly closed the door behind him. 

“You fall asleep standing up at the counter again?” Your voice broke the silence and got a chuckle out of him as he fell onto the bed in a heap by your side. 

“Something like that,” he muttered, but thankfully you didn’t pry and instead gave him a grateful smile when he unwrapped your granola bar and held it up to your mouth since your hands were preoccupied with holding the infant to your chest. You munched on it slowly, and in between bites you would settle  your head back against the pillows and let your eyes flutter shut, trusting your husband to keep a dutiful watch on the two of you. Toji moved closer to you so he could gently rest his head against your shoulder and peered down at his son as he got his fill of milk. He rubbed a tiny foot in between his thumb and forefinger and grinned at the soft suckling noises he made, amazed at how differently things felt this time. Toji was stunned at how having a new child felt so much like the first time since he could actually slow down to process it all now. Maybe this time, when history didn’t repeat himself and he was at home with the people he loved, contentment would allow the memories to stay. 

------------------------------

It happened for the first time three weeks after your son was born. 

That particular Saturday was dreary and wet, but it made for a cozy atmosphere as the four of you lounged about after a late morning breakfast. Toji was putting away the last remaining dishes. The TV played a vintage cartoon on low volume and Megumi sat on the floor in front of your feet as he colored quietly in his notebook. You sat curled up in the corner of the sofa with your newborn nestled in the crook of your arm, and you watched him, utterly transfixed. As he slept, his nose would twitch and his bottom lip would jut forward. Every once and a while, a dainty grunt would escape his mouth and he would squirm and stretch and whimper just a little before going still again as he drifted back into deeper sleep. He let out a yawn that seemed to take over his entire little body, and in the next moment he was blinking up at you with unfocused eyes as his lips smacked together once or twice. The sight of it made your heart feel as though it could burst, and you wiggled your finger into his clenched hand just to feel him hold onto it. 

“Oh, hey, his eyes are open.” Toji’s voice caught you unaware, and you jolted a little at the suddenness of it. You glanced up at your husband from where he leaned against the arm of the couch to your right, and there was a soft smile on his face as he traced a finger gently down the apple of the baby’s cheek. The newborn’s eyes couldn’t hardly focus on his father’s face from how far it was, but it certainly seemed like he looked for Toji in the moment before his lashes fluttered and his eyes slid shut. 

Toji drank in the sight of you two. There was a blissful glow to your features that couldn’t be missed, even through the signs of exhaustion that still lingered from another night of caring for a new baby. You barely paid him any mind as you smoothed your palm over the wispy hairs on your son’s head, and Toji decided that he would give you another couple minutes before gently urging you to take some time away to shower and do your morning routine should you feel like it. He pushed himself off the arm of the couch and made a move to step around it and sit down when Megumi spoke up from the floor. 

“Mama?” 

Megumi’s voice was barely above a whisper, and it was heartbreakingly timid. The single word punched all the air from Toji’s lungs and he stumbled mid-stride, just barely steading himself lest he land in a heap on top of his eldest son. Megumi didn’t move from where he was hunched over his notebook, still coloring carefully onto the paper, but Toji could see the burning red of his ears and how his eyes flicked back to take stock of your reactions before they went back to what was in front of him.

When Toji whipped his head towards you, you were already looking up at him with a wide, helpless expression. You had never once pushed passed a boundary Toji had yet to lift when it came to how you handled your roll as Megumi’s stepmother, and he could see from the way your eyes searched his that you were waiting for his guidance, his acquiescence before you dared to respond back to the little boy who had just referred to you as his mother despite you technically not being such. 

To Toji’s endless gratitude, you had always treated his late wife with the utmost respect. While you almost always fielded Megumi’s questions about her to Toji, you didn’t hesitate to pull out photos of her when he asked, nor had you ever tried to erase her significance as Megumi’s mother over the time in which you had become a part of their family. 

However, as Toji had come to acknowledge, there was no denying that Megumi had come to see you in that way. Not so much as the woman who had birthed him (Toji had explained that to him in child-friendly terms) but in every other way a mother would be seen. Megumi had no tangible connection to his late wife, no emotional attachment to the idea of her that Toji hoped one day would blossom as understanding matured in his mind, but to hold that expectation to him now wasn’t fair. Toji knew, as you looked at his son with tears of adoration and love in your eyes, that you had been making space for Megumi in your heart for a very long time in preparation for this possible moment, and he figured that having the love of a mother in the land of the living didn’t take away from the one now gone. 

If nothing else, he supposed that Megumi would catch onto your shared habit eventually. Frequently did you and Toji refer to yourself as such when tending to the new little one. 

“Shhh, Mama’s here,” you’d murmur when he wailed out his discomfort while the four of you watched TV in the early afternoon. 

“Mama’s comin’, kid, I promise,” Toji would say when the baby would nuzzle into his chest in a search for milk when he and Megumi sat together on your bed while you showered at the end of the day.

So Toji swept a hand along your shoulder, capturing your attention, and his quivering smile paired well with the tear that trickled down your cheek when he nodded at you. Your hand swiped away the moisture from your skin and you cleared your throat.

“Yes, Megumi?” Your voice sounded a little thick and wet, but the boy spun around in astonished elation nonetheless, and his smile was so wide that Toji wondered if it stung the skin at all. Megumi jumped up to his feet but very cautiously approached you until he could rest his hands on your knees and stand on his tiptoes to try and look up at his baby brother. 

“Mama, can I hold him?” You giggled and nodded as you reached out your hand to caress Megumi’s chin, and he squirmed where he stood as excitement made him antsy. 

“Of course,” you told him. “Come sit next to me and your dad will sit on the other side to help you.” Toji felt his heart expand further than he thought possible when the two of you turned towards him with loving, expectant looks that spurred him into movement.

“Up you go, Megs,” he said, lifting his son up from under his arms so he could plop him down on the cushion next to you before taking a seat himself. He threw an arm along the back of the sofa so he could scootch in closer to you three. Once Megumi situated himself, you slowly transferred the sleeping infant to lay him in his brother’s lap, and Toji was there waiting with an open hand to help cup his head and neck. 

“He’s still so small,” Megumi said quietly—wondrously—but you and Toji laughed at how the baby was still too big for Megumi to fully cradle in his arms. 

“Don’t worry,” you said, “he’ll grow big before you know it, and then he’ll be ready to play all day with you.” Megumi offered you a small smile in response before he settled back to watching his little brother snooze in his arms. You propped your elbow on the back of the sofa so you could lean your head into your hand, and Toji stretched his fingers to swirl them against your arm. Your eyes met, still glimmering with the last remnants of joyful tears, and Toji was nearly overwhelmed by a surge of emotion as he took in the little family that the four of you made.

Fear had once hung like a heavy shadow over his hope for an idyllic future and his ability to experience it. Your smile and the small hands of his children were there to whisk it away. 

------------------------------

A little bonus:

Three years after the birth of your son, a daughter made her appearance nearly two weeks early, thrilling her eagerly awaiting older brothers. For all the work you did, she came out a near exact copy of her father, and Toji had no problem letting you know how proud he was about it as you laid propped up next to him in your hospital bed. 

“I’m telling you, there was a hint of green in them!” 

You rolled your eyes playfully as you watched Toji recline your daughter against his knees with her head cradled in his palms so you could both gaze at her, and she looked positively tiny in the breadth of his hands. 

“You know a baby’s eye color might shift from what it was at birth once they get a bit older. We can’t know for certain yet.” 

The words seemed to have no effect on your husband, and he simply dropped a kiss to your temple and murmured a soft “we’ll see,” into your ear. 

(To your surprise—and secret delight—Toji was right.)

------------------------------

Again, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who took the time to read this<3 I really just love giving tortured characters soft, happy endings, so I hope you enjoyed this endless rambling of fluffy fluff.

[tenthgrove]

Reverse Engineering the OIAR Tagging System

I'm not the first to theorise that the tagging system is important - this post is inspired by the person who noticed that Needles and Bonzo share both a CAT and an R tag.

This is an incomplete attempt to decode the entire system for theorising purposes. Unfortunately, I was not able to figure it out as thoroughly as I hoped but I'm sharing it here in hope others can make observations. Here is the table:

For those who want a better look, or cannot see the image due to screen-reader use, here is a google document with the same table: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wc4COCMHdwKz6N-KawvMOs4Y3k3W6Kq-NDhZ7brcRLg/edit?usp=sharing

So, my observations thus far:

CAT (probably short for categories)

There are four categories so far- 1, 2, 3 and 23.

Needles, both Bonzo statements and the very first statement are the only CAT 1s so far.

Needles and Bonzo are likely to be major recurring characters, so this could suggest the creature in the first statement (which to me gives distortion vibes) may also be.

Alternatively, CAT could suggest danger. Needles and Bonzo are serial killers, while the CAT 3 statements tend to refer to very old or contained objects, so perhaps these are less dangerous? The only gap in this theory is InkSoul being CAT 3, which makes little sense given their livestreaming. Unless... could InkSoul be dead?

Generally, but not absolutely, newer statements tend to be closer to CAT 1, and older statements closer to CAT 3. Bonzo and Needles both referred to statements taken days before the episode dropped. Again, this isn't an absolute rule and the first statement is again the odd one out.

What I absolutely cannot figure out is CAT 23. I thought it was a typo until I encountered it again for Ep 11. It clearly means something special. Unlike for the R system, I don't think it means between categories 2 and 3, because the statements we get are both quite important. We'll probably have to wait for more episodes to figure this one out.

R (probably short for rank)

This is the one I'm more sure about. I believe it indicates 'grades' of some measure, like school grades. A is best, B is after that, and so on.

I think AB and BC are borderline grades.

Ep 3 and 4 (plant boy and violin man) do not have an R tag. My working theory is that this indicates the statements are below a grade C.

So what does R actually grade? Again, it could be importance (assuming that isn't what CAT means), or usefulness to the institute, but then why is our known external Mr Bonzo only a B?

So far we have no rank As and only one rank AB - the Red Canary statement.

If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that the first rank A statement is going to be very big indeed.

Conclusion

I believe category and rank indicates any two out of the following: importance, danger, level of OIAR control, level of usefulness to OIAR, certainty of being true, amount of evidence. Ultimately, we need more statements to be sure.

For whatever two measures these systems represent, I am fairly certain that a category closer to one and a rank closer to A represents a better grade on that measure, with the exception of CAT 23 which I think is its own thing. The ultimate purpose of this post is to encourage people to pay attention to these tags more as I am certain they contain clues, and if anyone smarter than me can spot them as more episodes come out, then great.

PS: As I was just about to post this I had a sudden idea as to what CAT 23 *might* be. It could be dimensional cracks. This is clearly what's going on in the magnus institute (with the dice statement being exempt because it was taken before the institute burnt down) and it's possible the graveyard in Ep 11 also serves this function. This is pure speculation however.

[the-pen-pot]

Oooh fic writer asks! Would love to know your answers to 8 & 17 please 🙏

Ohhh, thank you, @hagstoned. Here you go! If anyone else is interested, questions are here:

#8 If you had to write a sequel to a fic, you’d write one for…

Hiraeth, probably. It was so plotty that I didn't give Merlin much chance to bring much modern back to Camelot (apart from some plumbing) and I'd love to have him show the others his memories of London and things. In fact I have loads of little ideas for extras to Hiraeth that would take place after the story. Just... no time in which to write them 🤣

#17 talk about your writing and editing process

Sit. Write 🤣 I'm a pantser. Planning is actively detrimental to my creative process. But more below the cut cos it got long:

So what basically happens is, Monday to Friday, I peel myself out of bed, get the first cup oif about eight cups of tea, and then I sit at my computer and write in the morning. This is normally 3-4 hours of writing, in which I manage maybe 3000 words (on a good day it's more, but that doesn't always happen.)

I use 4thewords, which means I gamify my writing. You beat monsters with your wordcount. It's quite good, because even on a bad day you can feel accomplished.

Editing is a five-ish read-through process, with one read through occuring per day (mostly). It's done on printed out copies because I cannot catch mistakes on-screen

Edit 1: Plot edit. Is the story going in the right direction? Am I happy enough with it? (perfection isn't the goal. We are aiming for "good enough" ebcause perfection is unobtainable.)

(It's after this edit that I post chapters in my drafts section on patreon)

When I'm happy with the plot I use an echo checker to highlight words, because sometimes I get one stuck in my head and repeat it five times in a chapter and it makes my writing look weird.

Edit 2: Grammar, punctuation. Hinky wording edit. I'm looking more at the technical aspect and trying to catch as many mistakes as possible ready for...

Edit 3: Print out chapter, mix up the pages so its all out of order. Start at the bottom of the page. Read the last paragraph forwards. Then the preceding one etc. This is the typos edit. It helps me catch missing words etc. It's a bastard. I hate it. I want to skip it every time, but I always end up catching things so I never do.

Edit 4: An all-over edit. Just a straight read-through to check it's as good as I'd like it to be. Look for typos I may have introduced in previous edits.

This is where I post "finished" chapters on Patreon.

Edit 5: Usually occurs a week after edit 4, with my current posting schedule. This is hte pre-AO3 edit. My brain's had time to forget it's seen these precise words in this precise order.

Read through one more time. Invariably find at least one more typo. Cry. Fix it.

Post on AO3

Despite all that, there will still be errors in chapters on AO3 which I will find, months or even years later, and be deeply ashamed of!

[ameliastash]

ok i am so done right now. lets just write down imaginary comebacks or mean things for a small portion of stuff they've (mainly mother) done to us that we wish we could say to them because thats healthier than slicing away. apologies for bad gra,mmar or typos because its kind of hard to focus since our mind is extremely foggy.//..

being laughed at by our mother for being weak JUST BECAUSE we couldn't pull a box bigger than the cell out of the cramped closet. okay first of all, MOTHER. i know damn well that you're not laughing at me for not being able to do that. its a fucking box filled with craft items and containters. not like your overgrown sea lion ass could do that yourself. you literaly have to ask us to do favors for you. "can you fill up my water bottle for me lili?? 🥺🥺🙏🙏, can you get me some socks 🧦😹😹😁" etc etc simple fucking favors. DO IT YOURSELF BITCH!!! GET UP FOR ONCE BECAUSE YOU ALWAYS TREAT US LIKE SHIT ON THE BOTTOM OF YOUR SHOE!!!!! I HATE YOU SO MUCH WEBFGWAIRUHRGEITG anyways!😁😁 hahahahahahahahha i love living ooohhhh i cant wait until we turn 18 so we can gtfo!!!1 only lets say uhh... 5 years left. yeah age reveal we're bodily 13 but that doesn't change anything. but it definitely did for our parents.

apparently we're not admirable anymore since we're a "stupid middle schooler!!!!" or "eww gen zalpha bitch". okay okay so lets get this straight. you hate us even more because we grew up and we finally have enough sentience to act our own way and have humor? oh what's that really repelling word? HUMOR. well that stuff got sucked out from us a long time ago. because god forbid that we actually be happy. and lets not forget how you yell at us for being too loud when in all honesty, you're the one who screams at us for no reason or just talks extremely loud on purpose. and then we cover our ears and youre like "ah! so fucking disrespectful!!!" like okay. i probably left out a lot of shit but who cares!!!

and last but not only, peeking at us in the shower and making comments about our body. now this onef baffles me every time. you say stuff like "you got a little pudge!" or mention shit about our hips or chest area for no reason! and the thing is, none of it is true. we look in the mirror and dont understand why she even mentioned those things in the first place. because we're at a normal weight. normal! we're 5"2 and 110 pounds. not a human meat sack like how you view us. look at yourself. <- rude if you think about it but atp i dont care because shes invading our privacy and i dont like it. then she's like "you walk in on me all the time!" well its not like i know that you're getting dressed. i just wanted to ask you something(s).

aaand this isnt even everything theyve done but its just all i could remember. plus i dont feel like typing every single thing that went wrong. i dont know where half of the memories go... anyways im just going to go to the bathroom anf maybe cry. or actually... i should go outside and catch prey for taquito. if not ill just do the other option. god this feels like a game. hey amelia! want to play a game! it has four options tehehehee!!!!1 you ugly cunt come over here! haha

[amelias-calamity-quintet]

Mark of a Hero | Post-Part 1 Q&A

First of all, thank y'all so much for the support on Mark of a Hero! This is the first fic I've actively been posting to AO3, I was/am previously on Wattpad when I was originally writing Goddess of Secrecy and MoaH, and the welcome here has been fantastic getting back into MoaH. Y'all are amazing. And here we are! Post part 1! So let's get into it.

When will MoaH continue?

Part 2 - Farona will start releasing February 4th with a full release week to get y'all started. I'll leave you with the new MoaH blurb at the bottom of this post as a teaser.

So you really mean it's 9 books long?

Yes, I really mean it's 9 books long. Plus a possible prequel, but I can't talk about that until book 3 is starting to release. You'll understand.

What are the odds you finish a 9 book series?

Considering that, as this is going out, I have just begun book 4 having written everything post the first 23 chapters as of coming back in May '24, pretty good. I will say support goes a long way to boosting those odds. Kudos, hits, bookmarks, visible support that people are enjoying my work enough to recommend it to other people/let me know. A big part I'm writing this for me, but I do also like to watch numbers go up and it gives me a lot of motivation when I hit milestones. And I'm a storyteller! I like to know people are listening, you know?

If you're looking for an easy comment thread I'm always interested in reading, I love people diving into theorycrafting and I've left a number of threads for y'all to explore. Easy one here, you all obviously know Farona is book 2 now, but what do you think the order of adventure the rest of the series will be and why? Let me know in the comments and reblogs of this post, or drop it in my ask box!

Will the release schedule stay the same/two chapters a week?

Very likely it will remain 2 chapters a week with the occasional week long release. Right now, the upload schedule gives me a good buffer to get ahead on MoaH without a lot of pressure to write on a "schedule." If I need to take a break, I have a backlog to fall back on. Staying ahead of it serves as its own kind of motivation. It may eventually speed up, but for now, I don't want to get ahead of myself and then fall behind on that backlog. And when I eventually get around to going back to do beta reading/second round edits, it means less chapters will be released having not had that pass. You can see more about my editing process below.

Is Ambrose really a normal old man?

Yes, of course, he's a normal old man.

What do you think of fanworks of MoaH?

Give.

No, but seriously, it's the biggest compliment to hear MoaH has inspired people. That I've already gotten fanart and fanfics of my fanfic is crazy to me. I have resources for most of the cast, and I will absolutely answer any questions y'all have (barring future spoilers). I'm happy to keep it in my folder too if you don't want to post it and cherish it forever on my own.

But to resupport the "how likely am I to finish the book" one of my early readers sent me fanart just like a week ago of the main cast and I cracked out 50k in three days for them because I was so motivated after to finish the arc and book 3 after. Food for thought.

What does your editing process look like?

So my editing process has three general stages: my pass, early readers, and then heavy edits/beta readers. Let's break that down.

First, my pass. This is my writing and editing MoaH on my own. Heavy edits can be a huge momentum killer for me and fic writing for me is primarily a hobby, so this is a pass of light edits for most typos, grammar, and easy worldbuilding catches. All chapters of MoaH get this.

Next is early readers/early book club. This is a process I have open on the Expanding Hyrule Discord if folks are interested (though probably not very many more folks), but it is a slightly more extensive version of the first pass: questions about overall story structure, pacing, and any glaring plot holes, but not really heavy edits. My early readers (shout outs again to @doubtfulloser and @the--voided) get the arcs as I finish writing them, and then give me feedback while I press on with the next arc. And I call it early book club because in big part it's getting to talk to someone about what's actively being written while chapters are so far ahead from what's releasing. They're wrapping up with book 3 right now!

Last, is heavy edits/beta readers. I would like to, eventually, go back through MoaH as I plan to with GoS with a fine tooth comb and really iron it out. But, like I said, heavy edits kill my momentum and I need to get this series drafted first as a whole before I can go back to refine. And a half decent first draft with the chance of support to finish the rest is better than squirreling this story away to myself while I get lost in perfectionism to make it the best thing ever. Right? This process will begin when all of MoaH is written, at current pace, probably when book 3 is releasing. This is also part of why I want the buffer, few chapters that will release without all three passes.

What can I expect from the rest of MoaH?

More adventure, more magic, more monsters! Part 1 ends with the massive quest of traveling seven new nations and tackling their dungeons. But much like entry into the Temple of Inverted Time, this will not be such a simple task. New friends and foes await on the path ahead!

There is also, rest assured, a long-term relationship left to build between our recently proclaimed love birds. More Zelink straight ahead as these two learn to balance their romance between the distance and the responsibility of their new titles. Along with exploring the mysteries of Link's already established party members as the quest tests their friendships! Saddiqah and Ambrose are along for the ride as well.

What would you recommend to tide me over to read while I wait on MoaH?

Oh man, first, big recommendation to anything in @expanding-hyrule if you're looking for more original legend stories like MoaH. I have read a lot of the lists or been recommended on the rest, and I guarantee you'll find something you like in there. Currently something like 50 works on AO3 already, plus some FFN works and some great comics and art projects to check out linked in the art archive on the blog too. And we're looking for more!

If you're looking for more from me, might I recommend diving into the story of the Hero of the Convergence and this Link's Shade with Goddess of Secrecy? This work is complete and being imported over from Wattpad in small bursts every week. While you don't need to read it to understand MoaH, they do share some connected lore, largely in minor nods and references but also in some worldbuilding notes, like the Horned Goddess. Kind of a OoT to TP/WW kind of connection. And maybe some hints on our favorite normal old man buried in there. It also happens to be sitting in Wattpad's top 20 or so most read LoZ fics, so I'm a little proud of it even if it's due some revisions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mark of a Hero (Updates on Tuesdays & Fridays, 2 of 9)

A new champion draws the Master Sword, and the legend begins anew. But the door beneath the Temple of Time remains sealed, lest the Hero can open it once more. Link Sayre, Saddiqah El Amin, and Ambrose head west to Hyrule's forested neighbor, Farona, to seek out the first of the Sealing Stones. But perhaps their quest is not as secret as they'd like to believe.

[4saken4gotten]

Head Canons For Dante From Devil May Cry

I think about Dante way too much so I thought I would share my thoughts on some head canons of my own. Especially since the fandom for me gets so fucking dryyyyyyy Like please, I need more content or I'm going to spontaneously combust and not even in a hot and sexy way. (Or it still will be I just wont feel like it, but looking like hell on wheels is the goal!) yes that was a Heathers reference don't come at me Am I cringe? Yes. Am I free? Yes. These are my SFW head canons for him! If I get to it I can make my NSFW head canons as well but we'll see about that. Gender Neutral Reader Pairing. For my bitches, bros and fellow nonbinary hoes. (My certification in making head canons is as follows: I have played DMC 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I've read all the novels, and read 3 different fan translations of the novels we don't have official English translations for. I've watched the animated series at least 12 times and I've listened to all of the audio drama CD's. I have canon reasons for all my head canons but some of them are just little silly things because I brain rot. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.) I apologize in advanced for any typos and grammar mistakes and or just not making sense. I am dyslexic and autistic so I have a weird way of explaining things and will misspell basic words sometimes but I promise to do my best.

He's a big dork and his favorite thing to do is make his S/O laugh. Filling their soul with light is his favorite thing to do. teehee So he says the stupidest jokes to make them double over in laughter.

This is a bit of a double edged sword however since he uses humor and sarcasm as a major crutch / coping mechanism. He can be serious when the situation calls for it, but most of the time he doesn't want situations and mishaps to weigh on himself or those around him too heavily.

He's HELLA broke. So he'd take full advantage of free things to do like spending the night under the stars in a park after hours. Something that feels like "We aren't supposed to be out here!" but isn't really harmful / breaking the law.

I think he has some sort of collection of some sort. I think he collects seashells because they remind him of more serene times in his childhood. Probably hand sized conches or perhaps sand dollars (because its the only 'dollars' Lady cant swindle out of him ;u;)

Will die on the hill of pizza being a "balanced meal" insisting that it has all the important food groups therefore pizza is healthier than media wants people to think.

Despite his habits of leaving his pizza boxes about and letting Patty clean up after him- his own personal hygiene is actually really important to him. He always makes sure to take a shower after he gets back from every mission.

He honestly cant stand the scent of demon blood on him, it makes him a little anxious because it takes him back to the night of the fire / attack every time. (babyyyy boyyyyyyyyyyyy)

His love language is physical touch (giving) and acts of service (receiving). When he gets more comfortable with you, he's got some part of him touching you at all times: a thigh pressed against yours, a gentle hand around your shoulders or the small of your back, insistent on you laying on his shoulder or in his lap if you're tired. He'll be super appreciative of you organizing things when his mind gets too jumbled or he's just brooding.

I'm sick of people calling him lazy. I don't think he doesn't clean up because he doesn't want to- I think he's just overwhelmed most of the time / overstimulated to do anything if he's not in battle.

I strongly feel like he has some sort of ADHD, Depression and CPTSD due to his trauma. (Losing / killing his brother several times, his mother being killed, his father up and disappearing one day, losing his found family repeatedly: Grue, Nell, Jessica... etc)

He'd probably be super understanding of a neurodivergent s/o and be more than happy to "parallel play" in the shop. He reads his magazines on the couch with you while you read a book. Or he'll try to get some semblance of work done at his desk on the occasion while you watch your favorite tv show.

[sparklingpax]

HEADMASTER JUNIORS IN THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY MUSIC VIDEO

!!!!!!!!!!!!! I KNOWWWW I SAW FIRST THING WAKING UP TODAY I LITERALLY FLIPPED TF OUTTT 😭😭😭‼️‼️‼️ LIKE NOT ONE BUT MULTIPLE MASTERFORCE REFERENCES IN 2024.....WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE FR 😭💗💗💞❤️✨‼️🔥🫶✨

wait I'm gonna take fhis opportunity to gush about the video its 1 am im only half awake there will probably be typos sorrY

..

Genuinely would have been ecstatic with just a god ginrai in the bg and I honestly didn't even expect as much but man oh MAN did they give us so much more than that 🥳🥳

oh but lemme say ginrai SLAYEDDD HE LOOKED SO AMAZING AND COOL I was literally squealing "YES GO MY SILLY GOOOO" like the Dork that I am when he was out there doin the exkaiser sword pose w the others 🫶🫶🫶🫶 EEEEEE

and also!!! Let us NOT forget ofc all the other TF series and leaders and characters and such getting their time in the spotlight and the MANY little references to all kinds of stuff everywhere and.....!!!!!! Like I have so much respect for that video 🥹 it's such a detailed, wonderful tribute to everything transformers has been, is, and continues to be. Themes of connections literal and metaphorical and the power and beautythat comes from it. UFFF and Everything was so pretty and wonderful to look at and (⁠ﾉ⁠≧⁠∇⁠≦⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠ ⁠ﾐ⁠ ⁠┻⁠━⁠┻!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Very happy with it <3333

and also Yes I did have the thought It would have been cool to see the Pretenders (😭) but I also understand its probably hard enough to tastefully fit in all thr characters they did (and plus! Masterforce Mentioned At All is such a huge W youre not hearing Complaints from me 🫡) and also y'know what. maybe. maybe that was for the best because I might have simply combusted into fucking flames if they did that. Like you all think I'm annoying about those guys NOW but if I saw them animated all pretty and shape andshiny and sharp like that.........or.GOD if they had put their human forms in there...........I would need to be restrained is all I'll say

AND y'know what too it actually also fuels me with even MORE willpower than I already have to work for and eventually finish this illustration degree, somehow hopefully make it to a position where I too can make masterforce references in 4k except OFFICIAL and also have the opportunity to be insufferable about my blorbo of all time and space <333333 stupid silly ass dream of mine that may never happen but mark my WORDS if I get even the slightest opportunity y'all.....I want to do a masterforce centric project someday. Like a real one. Something for the world to see at large. I want to do something with it I really really feel like I could......,! I would achieve one of my few life goals/dreams fr......

GOSH ok anyway sorry I went on for quite a while there and then started derailing the topic at hand SORRYY 😭😭😭 but yea man I love transformers I love being a fan of this franchise I love how many thousands of characters and all the stories and universes and stuff there is and how crazy and cool it all is and that it's been a part of my life for most of my life and it's the reason I'm an artist and god that video will have me emotional for a long ass time *wails* good NIGHT 😭🫶❤️❤️🫶💖✨‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

(-kuni 🫣)

[akiology]

In the Dead of the Night || Part 2

You are married to two of the most infamous information brokers in Tokyo.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Word Count: 885 Pairing: Akira Kurusu x Reader x Goro Akechi Note: sorry this took so long!! thank u to everyone reading tho :) also i need to replace my keyboard switches, so tell me if there are any typos! have a nice day everyone !!

You wake up, earlier than usual. The moon is still shining in all its glory. On your left is Goro. He was sleeping on his back, with a face mask on. However, his hand is intertwined with yours. On your right is Akira, who is completely entangled with you. He is snoring a bit, and it is honestly adorable.

You turn to your right, where the bedside table was, and see that it is currently 4:35 am. Still early, and you probably have time to prepare breakfast.

You sit up, well atleast try to, but Akira keeps you on your back.

"Don't leave me..." he says, sounding as if he was about to cry if you actually did. He tightens his grip on your waist, and tries to pull you as close to him as he can. Goro, turns a bit on his side just enough to face you but not so much that his mask will be ruined, puts an arm over your stomach just below Akira's grip. He mumbled something incoherent.

"I am just gonna make breakfast," you try to comfort the men beside you. Goro grumbled, Akira whined.

You decide to accept your fate, after all it's not like this is a bad place to be stuck in. It is the best place, actually. Your husbands are always out because of various 'businesses' and meetings they have to do. While they never explain the nitty-gritty of their work, you know how dangerous it is.

Every time they go out, you always say a silent prayer. While you may not be a believer, you hope that there is someone listening. You hope that someone out there, if such person, entity, or creature exist, they protect your husbands and let them go home in one piece.

You remember, years ago, when you first met them.

/./

"You know this is the third month, right?"

"I know, I just need more time!"

"Well, I don't have it! Get out! I am running a business, and you are bankrupting me!" Your landlord shouts from behind the closed door, rattling the locked doorknob. You are visibly shaking as you try to get as many clothes and items you can get, and you can feel tears welling up behind your eyes.

CRASH! The sound of the door being forcibly opened will forever be ingrained in your memories. "GET OUT!" he grabbed your arm, and is practically shoving you outside the door.

You had nowhere to go.

You do not have contact with any of your family members, and you do not have any close friends to ask help from.

It was just you.

You walk down the street, with no destination in mind. You are hoping that something will fall from the sky, perhaps money. Money is preferred. Instead, you see a bar, and decided that the smartest thing to do with your remaining money was to drink.

When you entered, jazz music was playing. The lights were dimmed, and there were a decent amount of people. You quickly sat down in one of the tables near the entrance, a little isolated from the rest of the people.

"Ahem," you look up to see a buff man looking down at you. "Why are you alone there, you little thing?"

Another man joins him, "Why don't you let us accompany you, sweet cheeks?"

You shake your head in disagreement, "No thank you."

"Eh? You think you were giving us a choice?"

"Sorry, not happening. A pretty little thing like you should not be left alone."

They start getting too close for comfort, but paused when they felt someone grabbing them.

"They said no." And when they turned around, you were met with the most gorgeous men you have ever seen.

Who would've thought that those gorgeous men would eventually be called your husbands?

/./

You were pulled out of your thoughts with the sound of Akira's 'work' phone ringing. Goro quickly stood up and removed his face mask, while Akira just stirred as if it was the first alarm and he could sleep for five minutes more. You try to shake him, signaling to answer the phone. Goro slapped his leg, and Akira finally stood up from that.

He finally answers, and his eyes dart between you and Goro. Akira reaches for your hand and squeezes it, a silent "sorry" being passed from him to you. It seems like it is time for 'work'.

"Got it," is the only things he utters throughout the duration of the call, and finally ends it.

"My angel, I," he starts but you are quick to comfort him. You give him a quick kiss on the lips and gave him a smile. "It's alright. Just please be safe."

"Of course," he smiles, and nuzzles your nose, "I am going home to you. Always."

Goro clears his throat, "What about me bunny?"

Akira sticks his tongue out, and pulls you close to him. Goro scoffed and crawls toward you, stopping until your faces are just inches apart. You give him a kiss, as well. "Please come home safe and sound."

Goro gave a small smile, "Anything for you, my sweetheart."

After a quick change of clothes, they are out the door.

One more time, you clasp your hands together and say a silent prayer.

[see-arcane]

Do you have any writing tips that work for you?

I acknowledge that the first draft's probably going to suck.

There are probably holes in it and the same sentence repeated ten times and enough typos to make the dictionary gain enough sentience to cry in despair. That's fine. That's how first drafts are supposed to be. Future drafts exist to fix that. me @ me: Do Not Worry About the First Draft.

If I don't have to write in cold blood, I do not do it.

Unless I'm writing something on the clock for a job, I am writing for me, me, me. Scribbling is my hobby. My beloved terrible sandbox to play in. If I am not having fun building X Sandcastle, I pivot to Y Sandcastle. Because sometimes it's not always a matter of, 'Oh, you just want to get through the boring part to get to this neat scene!' Sometimes a story just loses its flavor in the moment. And if I'm not having a good time with it, oftentimes I'm writing garbage I'll end up deleting anyway. Not worth throwing that time away. No Fun? No Write.

I get inspired! (positive)

Reading or watching something with the Vibes I want for my current project gets my brain battery going. Sometimes I'll even catch myself going into 'parrot mode' to break through a writer's block by going, "Well, if it was happening in X Universe and using X Style of storytelling, what would it sound like?' And then I'm off.

I get inspired. (spite. loathing. hatred and bile unending.)

Being inspired to make something new in the footsteps of your most beloved storytellers: uwu🌸

Being inspired to make literally anything without inhibition, be it a story or a bowel movement, because either one would be a step up from the flaming legacy of horseshit inflicted on you by a Particular Piece of Media: owo 🔪

I can't stop. I can't stop.

I have two Word documents open right now. I have ten notebooks in use. I cannot go one (1) day without writing unless I am physically paralyzed with illness or pain, and even then I am thinking of Things I Will Write once I'm upright. My Muse is the most giving one around, but said giving is hitting like a waterfall and I am perpetually flattened into the Earth's crust by the sheer abundance of WRITE WRITE WRITE blasting into my head at all hours.

But on that note, one of the best things for my writing?

Forcing myself not to write.

Seriously.

Taking a break that involves Absolutely No Creation of Text is vital. Reading. Drawing. Watching a new movie. Making a meal that takes more effort than 'dumping some Cheerios and an apple in a bowl to eat next to the computer/notebook.' It all helps me unplug and not go insane with making scene after scene after scene. Writer Brain needs to cool off with Non-Writing things or it'll catch on fire*.

*Read: Lead to full burnout on a story that I genuinely wanted to work on. What a waste.

[thescrapwitch]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you @grey-gazania and @dreamingthroughthenoise for tagging me! Sorry for the very late reply!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

Currently, I have 63 works, though a few of them are on-going multichapter ones. If I narrowed it down to only complete fics, it would be 58. 

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

501,530 words!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently the Silmarillion has me in a chokehold and I am having SO MUCH FUN putting tragic elves into all sorts of situations. There’s a lot of free space and flexibility in its canon which is fun to play around in, and so many AU possibilities. Before that I wrote for Linked Universe/Legend of Zelda, which had a large cast of characters whose found family/friendship dynamics had me hooked. 

(we shall not speak of what I wrote during my Fanficion.net days, back when I was very small and very terrible at writing 😛)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Looking at all my fics, my Linked Universe ones have the most: Rescue Mission, Malevolence, Bad Joke, Untitled Goose Fic, and Weatherworn Heart. 

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! I adore comments and go back and reread them often, so I try to at least say thank you to people who’ve left one after reading my fics. 

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

This is a tough one! I have a few Hurt/No Comfort ones (all focusing on poor Maedhros). I’ll go with Despair Like Poison, in which I find a way to make the beginning of the Silmarillion EVEN WORSE. Its based on a Tumblr post I made (which I now can't find????), and I might continue it, once I figure out exactly how dark/angsty I want it to get!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Probably Rest for the Weary and the Damned, the final fic in the main storyline for my Maglor is an Eldritch Horror series. After many problems, everyone gets to be together and live happily ever after, including everyone’s favorite eldritch monster.  

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, but I don’t tend to write a lot of romance/ship-focused fics, so that could be why.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No, not my thing to write. 

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Crossovers aren’t really my thing to write either. 

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have! It's always such an honor when someone asks if they can translate my fic. 

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, though I do get a lot of inspiration from comments and side-discussions. Untitled Goose Fic happened because of a Discord discussion, and Trial of Crablor Feanorion was written because of a commentor’s remark about animal trials.  

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Silvergifting can be so much fun and so messed up and I love writing it. 

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

My poor Legend of Zelda 1920s AU fic is crying at me from the depths of my WIP pile. I am so sorry. One day, maybe, I will return to it, but I have so many other things that I want to write…

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, story structure, and weird stuff. Eldritch monsters, sentient houses that speak to you in nightmares, crabs who were once elves, dreamy-not-entirely-sane narration; those I feel like I can do well. 

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Description! Specifically, description used to set up a place, to make the world around the characters feel more textured and real. I am trying to get better at it. 

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I have enough typos writing in English, I do not have the confidence to try and write in anything else. The Tolkien fandom has a lot of languages and I’m always in awe of the people who can include them so well into their work.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Megaman.EXE, way way back in the early days of Fanfiction.net, all of which has now been thankfully eaten by the internet. 

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

I say it every time someone asks, but it has to be The Haunting of Imladris. That fic was a gift: it gave me a world to flesh out for my eldritch!Maglor series, it gave me confidence to write horror (which I’d never done before) and it gave me Lindir. I will always adore and be grateful to it.

Tagging: @camille-lachenille @thelordofgifs @searchingforserendipity25 @sallysavestheday @lordgrimwing @eilinelsghost @chthonion @gardensofthemoon and anyone else who wants to join in!

[drjoneslabratory]

The Splatoon rant The franchise that won't leave my brain alone: 1 the biggest nitpick/issue I have with this franchise.

(Before you read, this is my opinion and this is just me rambling. Don't take it too seriously, I didn't as there are probably typos and grammar issues but ill fix it later as its lunchtime here and I am hungry.)

Anyways...

Splatoon is one of those franchises where it has something so strong that I can't stop thinking about it/draw ocs/write AU lore for it. I haven't touched it in ages as Its still in a box and I have drift. But I still think about it/listen to music, consume fancontent and still read the lore and think of the gameplay.

For years I had this Splatoon fps game I always wanted to play. I have thought about it, and drawn ocs/enemies/bosses/factions/guns for over seven years. (I am soon to show this wacky fandom one day)

Ever since playing Splatoon 2, the squid-to-kid ink mechanic has fascinated me. It's on the same level as the gravity gun/portal gun and the grappling hook/titans from Titanfall in terms of creative innovation in the shooter genre. Despite me having issues with the campaign and story etc. There is nothing like it (foam stars don't count) The multiplayer (of all games), is the most fun I had with a multiplayer pvp game since Titanfall 2 and I think one of the few multiplayer PVP shooter games that is casual and non-competitive focused. And more importantly not a gritty tactical mil-sim/cod clone or generic "not overwatch/Fortnite clone number 10000" It's its own thing, and it does it really well.

Everything is unlockable in the game, there are no microtransactions. No season passes and once in a while simple updates keep it fresh. and not make it repetitive for a concept that seems it be a trap for boring repetitive gameplay.

There are DLCS, but they are worth the price for the content you get. Octo Expansion/Side orders are full-on expansion packs.

Splatoon brings me back to a time when shooter games were focused on simple fun and had a gameplay loop that people wanted to spend hours on.

Splatoon Proved to me (personally) that those games are still possible. And maybe the issue with modern AAA gaming is that Gamers have unrealistic expectations and developers and publishers trying to find new ways of laundering money/investment to appease stockholders.

(seriously am I the only one who is concerned with hearing new articles about the alleged "Most expensive game ever produced every once and awhile, there is no way that is sustainable, especially with these live service games that keep popping up like fruit flies and then die, or showing signs of decay)

The thing, I think bothers me most about Splatoon, is that, I really, I mean this, don't like the single-player campaigns, more particularly the Main Octo-trooper enemies you fight in every goddamn game. Because they are just so... boring and not fun (To me at least). It pains me, really fucking does as Splatoon is capable of having fun Enimies (the Octoling soldiers (though I think have issues, but they are a solid starting point I wish they expanded on) and Salmonoids (god they are so fucking awesome) and whatever the robo fish bots are called in side order)

My main issue with the octo-troopers is that

Boring that most Octo troopers just kinda stand there and then move around. acting more like turrets than soldiers

not really threatening/poor readability of what you are fighting, I am not saying their being goofy is bad, in fact, the weirdness of Splatoon enemies (all of them) is what I think makes it unique, and what it is, but I feel like there comes A point where they are just "Too Goofy" and I think it can hinder combat encounters and can confuse the player on what enemy you are fighting. An example of Good/bad execution of this is

The Octosniper and Commander are my examples of "Goofy done right" and "threatening enemy you need to pay attention to" They fire their guns out of their mouth and have "out there" proportions and designs, One has cool sunglasses the other a peeping eye. but I also get the idea, that these are trained soldiers who were trained to shoot to kill and won't hold back. So I have to be careful around them or I am a goner.

For goofy done wrong, I think I can make the argument that I think the Octobomber and rocket Octotrooper enemies are A prime example.

I fucking hate these assholes, I moved them around Poorly to prove a point that, I can't tell which one is which from afar and often mistake one for another. doesn't help one has a more powerful attack and takes up more hitpoints. The only thing that separates them is easily missable and I think lazily done addition to their helicopter helmet.

Now back to the examples.

Most don't really use the main gimmick of the games (squid-to-kid ink mechanic The Octostamps and Squee-Gs don't count) What I mean is how the ink mechanic can affect combat encounters and I think (As far as I remember) only a few really "take advantage" of Splatoon gimmicks, I really like the shielded octo-troopers as they capture gimmick you are using ink as your main projectile type. you can blind them and have them freak out giving you an easy shot. The octopods glitch out and fly back causing an explosion of your own ink if defeated, creating huge ink puddles. Octodivers try to flank you by hiding in their own ink.

Most feel like obstacles then actual enemies The Tentakooks are a good example, mostly just item holders and nothing really else. Same with octo ballers. Most just try to cover large areas of ink with their own, which isn't bad, but feels like most enemies, most don't really do much.

Don't feel like A real army or "Bad guys" (I get its lore point, but from a gameplay view, They feel so incompetent compared to the Octoling soldiers and bosses heck I question why Mr Grizz would choose them over the Salmonoids (I, am glad I am not alone with being disappointed with Splatoon 3 campaign)

(this one is gonna rustle some jimmies, but don't take this the wrong way) The fact is all the Octoling soldiers you fight, use the same model and they all look the same and have no differences. I get it everyone loves the lesbian child soldiers but I think it wouldn't hurt if there was a male model (and there was a male model originally) or at least had different skin tones. (at first, I thought they were all clones, but apparently, they are all different people, I am sorry but I find it hard to believe Marina, agent 8, and Acht were in the same army when they all look the same no matter what rank, including 8 if you make yours a guy and not white) But the fact some have different weapons with different combat styles the elite's only difference is their black hair with seaweed.

I am sorry but when I am shooting trying not to die, I don't know which Octoling is holding which, and the fact it's third person really handicaps my focus. At least the elites have glowing green seaweed but if you removed that, you couldn't tell which one is the elite. I am trying my best to not come across as "There needs to be more boys, girls are icky" but I wish there was more diversity/readability for the Octoling soldiers, I really wish they were the main enemies you fought. If I were to do it. Id make them a mesh between the elites from halo or HECU from black mesa and Zombie Marines from doom the Gunners from fallout 4. There is this mod I have for Black Mesa that adds female/more diverse HECU soldiers. its random every time, but it makes combat/readability so much better. If I am in a combat section with them, I can now easily tell witch ones witch, who is holding witch weapon, witch one is coming to get me and how do I respond.

The elites and Marines from Doom are the perfect example of a "Readability" Zombie marines have a rifle and are slow firing meant to pepper you, the Sargent/shotgun zombies are the upper class meant to keep you aware as one shot at low health and your dead, The chain gunners are the beefy "wake up call" as they have a repeating hit scan attack causing players to be aware of how they move in a area and giving them a target to kill before the other demons. For the new ones "The shock troopers" in the recent expansion "Legacy of Rust" are An upgrade from regular Marines having a plasma rifle attack that they can spam blocking areas and keeping people focused. The gunners from Fallout 4 are not really that special they are just reskinned raiders with a military gimmick, but they provide a good example of the thing Fallout 4 I Like, make every human enemy you fight have a rank/variation, and each gunner though having a template/variation, you feel like you are fighting a skilled solider of that rank and they are unique/different enough, you feel like you're not fighting the same enemy over and over again.

The elites are so barebones and simple, but so effective, in CE, the upper-ranked elites are just a color swap with a weapon change at the top.

This a good video on the topic as it does it better than I can ever do I know these are not the types of games, I assume most splat fans play (I'll provide links and context later on if anyone is interested)

I know that this is a Nintendo game and demographics blah blah blah I'll I'm asking for is little more creativity and I wish that the single-player campaign was given more attention and life as the multiplayer I really think the default campaigns are just not really fun to be honest.

I don't wanna say it's bad or mediocre, as when they have their high points and when you fight the bosses the campaigns start to shine. I say this as a Galaxy fan, but I don't like how they're just islands and feel more like tutorials than actual levels and feel more like cut levels from Mario Galaxy than its own thing.

I am not trying to bring up lore or anything as this is going on long enough and I have a lot to say about the lore.

If you read this far, thank you, know, this is my opinion, and you're not invalid for thinking otherwise, I am just a nerd who likes shooter games and I really like Splatoon, and I feel like it can be even better than it is!

[champmorado]

chick hicks and jackson storm probably have the world's driest text conversations ever

chick just sends "OK..." "👍" "GOOD job. !" "HAha..." and other middle-aged man things like that. he spices it up sometimes with an incoherent rant full of typos and capitalization errors sent at 1:00 am and really bad jokes

storm never uses capital letters or emojis or emoticons. he always ends his texts with a period because he knows its intimidating to some ppl. all youre gonna get from him is "lol." "ok." "gn." and sometimes a vaguely funny meme that he stole from discord

[rhapsodomancer]

it's been a wild couple of weeks

So I left my job at the university in February, right? And then I got a job that I started in early March.

What I didn't know is that the company I was contracted to that was contracted by Toyota to run their IT support was in the middle of an RFP process and re-bidding for their contract, which they lost. Toyota wanted to consolidate all of its IT needs into a single vendor, which makes sense, because they had contracts with like three different ones across the company. Like, helpdesk and tier 2 were two separate ones, and tier 3/CATIA/Delmia support was being done by like two firms by itself

I was like, it's fine, I'll apply for my job within the new company because we'll get priority, but I went home on Friday, May 26th and as soon as I got home, my... I don't know what his position or title was, but he was my manager at the company that was managing my contract? And said that all subcontractors at the Toyota site were being let go. It was basically like, sorry, we'll let you know if anything else comes up, good luck.

Thankfully I had just gotten paid, plus my state tax return, plus I got a check from my car insurance company to cover some minor damages (that I am not super worried about because really, it's just some scuffed paint) so my bills for the month could be paid, but... I had to walk into the meat grinder of the job market.

There must be someone looking out for me, because I had an interview last week for a job that I applied for like a month ago that sounded amazing - basically a 1:1 to my job at the university, a nonprofit that does healthcare research, hybrid, a reasonable driving distance from my house (like ten minutes actually).

They called last week and set up an interview, and I ended up having three interviews in one day. I felt like I was on ANTM on the day where they do the go-sees. I didn't expect to hear anything until this week, so I basically lost my mind with anxiety all of yesterday, but then I had an email with someone from HR wanting to do a 30-minute followup. I was like, alright, that's weird, but that's probably a good sign, right?

He scheduled it for 1:30 and for some reason in my mind, I transposed it to 2:30 (likely because my in-person panel interview with them was at 2:30 last Thursday). He sent me an email asking if I was still available. I panicked and apologized profusely, but he said it was fine, and then offered me the job.

I was ecstatic! And then he sent me my offer letter and the salary on it like... I knew it had to be a typo. It was well into six figures; pretty much what you'd expect the average pay to be for a systems administrator or data engineer, not my position. But I signed and returned the offer anyway.

Then he called me and said that it was indeed a typo, and that if I still wanted the job at the revised (much lower)(but still incredibly respectable) salary, to which, I said yes. Like, it's crazy. It might not be much in the grand scheme but it is still ten grand over what the university was paying me! Or maybe more! But, either way.

It's been a good day.

[iguessitsjustme]

Deep Night Ep 5 Thoughts

Oops. Got distracted by Stardew Valley and also the return of my headache. Here’s hoping the meds kick in soon. But also I got the Stray Kids merch I ordered! Now I’m living in my new hoodie. Anyway it’s time for Deep Night 5: Rae Blogs Live. Wait no that one is too easy. Deep Night 5: Jealousy Dive. Yeah that one sounds right:

Who is hiring these unfluencers to talk shit when the police come? That’s a typo but I’m keeping it. Cause there’s no way they’re not in on it

I don’t know what Freya pays Dai but it is not enough. 

I don’t think I talked about the opening vocals when I liveblogged episode 4. So here’s me gushing about how absolutely fucking amazing they are. I do not think this would be an easy song to sing. It sounds easy but that’s because of the sheer talent and skill its being performed with. Like, I’m a passably decent singer. I can carry a tune. I am not the most impressive vocalist in the world but I have had multiple people ask me if I sing professionally or as a hobby somewhere. I would not be able to perform this song without HOURS of practice. Vocals are also an instrument that requires practice and technique and I am just so damn impressed with these vocals. I think the song itself is okay, but the singer does so much. The singer is actively carrying the melody and I cannot. I’ll stop talking about this now but if you want my thoughts on how the opening fits the show, let me know. Cause I do have some thoughts there but I think I should probably actually continue watching now

Freya and unnamed gorgeous woman are so cute. What is her name? I need to know for reasons. 

Unrelated to anything but I am having an excellent hair day and I am annoyed that only I will see it. 

Seiji. You can love both of them. I promise. It’s okay. They’re gonna fall in love with each other too. I don’t know if they actually do in the show but don’t worry about that. Semantics. You’ll all be in love.

Ken can be the one that tucks them both into bed at night. 

I need Khem to apologize to Wela so bad. He very clearly actually feels bad and wants to apologize.

Honestly, I don’t think I could say no to Khem’s face. I mean just look at how cute he is

Awww he apologized. Now make it a good one.

I love them????

Now boys. You’re on the roof. Not even gonna lay down a towel or nothing?

Ooohhhh here comes his mother. Oh she got distracted. Seems Wela knows his mother well. But still. The roof? Boys. 

Khem is very good at apologizing. It’s because he thinks about how his words and actions have hurt the people he loves. And he cares more about not hurting them than he does about being right. And I think he will not make the same mistakes twice. 

Obsessed with this. More please. 

Khem and his mom are so cute. 

I’m sure someone else has talked about Khem giving Wela his watch and how that was so good for both of them. Khem can lay a small inconspicuous claim on Wela and when Wela is working he can use it to show Khem that he’s thinking of him so no need to get jealous. Its beautiful and brilliant. 

My man don’t do drugs in the bathroom. This isn’t the club for that.

Of course the cops showed up. Good for Khem knowing someone hired that man to do drugs. 

Honestly are the cops not bored?

I know what pink milk is. But what is red soda?

Is Ken gonna rat them out? Trying to make Seiji number 1? Got bad news about who Khem is and how his mom already knows. But I still see how that could be an issue. 

I mean, Seiji makes a good point. These issues did start when Khem started. It’s not his fault and it’s obvious who it is but he has no way to know that. 

Ken’s a bitch. I actually don’t like him. There was no reason for him to do that.

Yeah somehow I knew Seiji wouldn’t like that.

Get him Seiji. Get im.

I am so surprised that that woman showed up with the cops. Shocked I tell ya. Picking my jaw up off the floor. 

Time to watch episode 6 I guess. I don’t really care about this plotline but I’ll watch it anyway. But only after this commercial break (I caved and subscribed to dropout so i can watch game changer so that is what i will be doing for a minute between these episodes)