#but they better not pounce on my culture.

[justagalwhowrites]

Halcyon - Ch. 10: People Might Think You Care About Me

You and Joel spend the holidays together. A continuation of Halcyon from the prologue through Ch. 9, a modern no outbreak AU TLOU fic found on Tumblr here.

Again, I'm here begging HBO to give me something to use for young Joel PLZ

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: Mention of dieting and diet culture. Modern No Outbreak AU, No use of Y/N, Slow burn, 18+ only, Minors DNI

Length: 5.8K

AO3 | Main Master List | Prologue | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

“I can’t believe my kid is going to like you better than me,” Joel said, sitting in the middle of the living room floor with a roll of wrapping paper spread out in front of him. “Scissors.” 

You handed them over before grabbing the tape, putting a piece on the tip of your finger before folding the paper around the box - a friendship bracelet kit - that you were wrapping for Sarah. 

“I mean, first of all, your kid already likes me more than she likes you,” you teased, turning the box to do the other side. “She has good taste…” 

“You’re the worst.” 

“Second,” you said, ignoring him. “It is a joint gift, you’re getting tons of cool dad points out of this.” 

“She’s gonna know it was your idea,” he said, adjusting the gift he was wrapping. “Hell, she’s gonna know that only one of us could have gotten tickets and it ain’t me.”

As if on cue, Swiftie - Sarah’s kitten - pounced on the box Joel was wrapping. 

“Yeah, this one knows, too,” he said, scooping her up with one large hand and setting her down. “I miss when she wanted Barbies. Shit was easier.” 

You laughed. 

“Be happy she’s excited about anything enough that she’s going to freak out over Taylor Swift tickets,” you said. “She’s about to be a disaffected teenager, enjoy it while it lasts.” 

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” he muttered, “She’s stubborn enough as it is.” 

“You’re in for it, Miller,” you said as your cat, Puck, climbed on your lap. You reached around him to finish taping the package you were wrapping. “She’s going to give you so much shit…” 

“What if she’s just like you, hm?” Joel teased. “Gonna have a nerd for a kid…” 

“Hey, I was a nerd who snuck out at night to go get drunk with the boneheaded jock,” you teased back. “You really want her to be just like me?” 

“Jesus, you’re right,” Joel shook his head, finishing wrapping his present. “I’ll have to keep her far away from anyone like me for the sake of us all.” 

You snorted and finished wrapping your own gift before scooping Puck into your arms, nuzzling into his fur and giving him a kiss on the head before settling with your back against your couch as you looked at the lights on the tree.

It was Christmas Eve, the first one in years you were spending without Gale and you’d never been more thankful for Joel. 

Last year, you and Gale were separated but you’d felt so alone that you’d texted him the afternoon of Christmas Eve and spent most of the night and next day in bed. You’d tricked yourself then, pretended there was a chance in hell of the two of you getting back together and things going back to the way they used to be. 

That hadn’t happened. You’d spent New Year’s Eve in bed, too. Except that time, you were alone. 

You’d been afraid that was going to happen for you this holiday season, too. You asked Anna what she had planned for Christmas, fully expecting her to want to spend the day together. She had other things in mind. 

“Honestly, ever since Mom died?” She’d shrugged. “I love using it as a day to just chill. Binge watch TV I’ve been meaning to catch up on, eat a pile of Chinese food, maybe take a bath… It’s pretty boring but I love it. And since I’ve got this little bundle on the way, I’m extra looking forward to it this year.” 

“Oh,” you forced a smile, trying to hide your disappointment. “No, that sounds great.” 

“Oh God,” she clamped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide for a moment. “Did you want to do something? I’m so sorry, I should have…” 

“”No,” you waved her off quickly. “No, you’re good! I don’t want to disrupt your plans…” 

“You can join if you want!” She said. “I mean, for everything but the bath part, that might be a little much now that we’re not kids anymore.” 

“No,” you said again. “You have fun! Tradition is tradition and you need the break. Maybe I’ll do the same.” 

You should have known that she would have her own way of doing things. You’d all but abandoned her during your marriage, sending perfunctory text messages and holiday cards and flying her up for a long weekend every year or so but, otherwise, you went weeks without talking. Of course she had Christmas plans that didn’t involve you. Why would she have any that did? 

Joel, however, had done what he’d always done since you’d moved back to Texas: Made room for you in his life. 

“Know you and Anna probably already got plans but,” he’d shrugged two weeks earlier. “If you don’t… want to spend Christmas with me n’Sarah? Tommy, too, assuming he doesn’t con his way into dinner at some girl’s house. S’OK if you don’t, just figured… I dunno…” 

You’d smiled, bigger than you’d really meant to. 

“You want me to spend Christmas with you?” 

“I want you to spend most days with me,” he shrugged. “But you know, we gotta go out in the world and make money and shit. Anyway, Christmas. You in? Could just move in until the New Year if you really wanted…” 

The last part wasn’t going to work with your obligation to go try to write a book once Christmas was through. But you had spent the last two nights at Joel’s, bringing Puck over to play with Sarah and Swiftie as the three of you watched Christmas movies and binged cookies. No papers to grade, no lawyers calling because your attorneys’ offices were closed, no pressure because you already had time set aside to write. You could really relax for the first time in what felt like an eternity and relaxing with Joel and Sarah was quickly becoming your favorite thing in the entire world. 

But all that relaxing had meant there was a small pile of presents that weren’t wrapped that needed to make it under the tree. It was Christmas Eve and time had run out. 

“You need to stop procrastinating,” you said, getting your egg nog that was now mostly liquor off the coffee table and taking a sip. “Can’t get away with that shit when you’re a business owner.” 

“Just watch me,” he teased. “Besides, you’re one to talk, you made any progress on that book?” 

“That’s what next week is for,” you said, giving the cat a kiss just as he started to get restless in your arms. You set him down. “Fingers crossed having nothing else to do will make me churn out the words.” 

“Wild to me that you make money from what’s in your head,” Joel came and sat next to you. “Not that I think you shouldn’t, if anyone should it’s you. Just that anyone does at all is insane.” 

“Well, I may not make money off it for long if I can’t write anything else,” you sighed. “Know what? Let’s not talk about next week. I want to live in this moment - the one where we don’t have any worries and the presents are all under the tree and Sarah is passed out - for a while longer yet.” 

Joel hummed in agreement and you leaned your head on his shoulder, sighing contentedly. You could smell his skin and cologne and there was still a little bacon scent from when he’d made breakfast for the three of you that morning. 

“Think she’ll have a good Christmas?” Joel asked quietly, the two of you watching the lights twinkle on his tree. 

“Hell yeah,” you smiled a little. “You really are an amazing Dad, Joel.” 

He scoffed. 

“I’m serious,” you peered up at him. “You’re lucky to have Sarah but she’s lucky as hell to have you, too. She’s going to love it.” 

“Speaking of parents… anything new in the Anna situation?” Joel asked cautiously. 

“It’s a girl,” you sighed. “But she seems to be keeping up with everything, thank God. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe this is the kick in the ass she’s been needing…” 

“Was for me,” Joel shrugged, making your head rise with his shoulder. 

You sighed again. 

“Just seems like an awful lot to put on a kid,” you said. “And you might have been young and dumb but you didn’t have the shit Anna’s got on her plate. It’s a bit of a different story with her.” 

“She might surprise you. But either way, we’ll make up a room for the little sucker here,” Joel said. “Just to be safe.” 

“Regardless, that’s next year Goldie and Joel’s problem,” you said. “And thank fuck for that.” 

“Yeah, fuck those two,” you could hear the smile on Joel’s voice. “Let’s put the wrapping paper away and go to bed, something about Santa and knowing when you’re sleeping and all that.”

You cleaned up the living room and tried not to pay attention to the nighttime routine you’d fallen into with Joel in the few days you’d been staying with him. You had your own sink in Joel’s bathroom, one that had your hair products and face wash lined up alongside it. You had your own side of the bed with your own nightstand where the book you’d been reading the last few days was nearing its end and waiting for you. If you thought about it too much, you’d miss it when it was gone. If you thought about it too much, it might seem like something you could keep.

Joel made his customary space at his side and you nestled into him, your head on his chest where you could hear his heart beat. His fingers trailed up and down your arm. 

“There are upsides to a kid, you know,” he said quietly. “Christmas morning is one of ‘em. Just wait.” 

You smiled a little. 

“Stop keeping me awake and we won’t have to wait long,” you said. 

Joel snorted. 

“Yeah yeah. Night Goldie.” 

“Night Joel.” 

Sarah came careening into Joel’s room before 7 a.m., slamming into the bed so hard that it made your teeth rattle. 

“Dad! Aunt Goldie!” She shook you both. “Wake up, it’s Christmas!” 

“Yeah, alright,” Joel groaned, taking his warm arm from its place around your shoulders. You groaned, too. “You stay here with Goldie while I go put the coffee pot on and get set up to record you…” 

Sarah groaned. 

“Seriously?” 

“Seriously,” he said. “Sit tight, five minutes.” 

You rolled onto your back and blinked the sleep from your eyes, Sarah bouncing impatiently on the bed. You lifted your head enough to look at her, curls sticking every which way, and you dropped back down onto the pillow with a groan. 

“You’re lucky you’re cute, kid,” you said. 

“Yeah, that’s what my dad says,” she said cheerfully and you could picture her smile as she did. 

“Alright, come on out,” Joel called from the living room. Sarah rocketed off the bed and you laughed as you got up yourself, trailing behind her and trying not to yawn. 

“Oh cool!” Sarah flopped down beside her stocking and started going through it as you got to the living room. Joel was sitting on the couch, his phone set up on a tripod in the corner and pointed at the tree. “These are those face mask things I said I wanted! And the headbands for soccer!” 

“I do pay attention now and then, baby girl,” Joel said, rubbing his eyes. 

“Don’t you mean Santa pays attention?” You asked, sitting next to him on the couch. Joel handed you a cup of coffee, made exactly how you liked it.

“I know Santa’s not real, Aunt Goldie,” Sarah rolled her eyes and gave you a look. “I’m 11, not a kid.” 

Joel snorted. 

“Sorry,” you said. “My mistake.” 

“Don’t spoil Santa for Goldie,” Joel said before reaching down on the ground next to him. “Speaking of which…” 

He handed you a fat stocking and you frowned a little as you took it. 

“You made me a stocking?” You asked, tears pinching at your throat. “No one’s made me a stocking since I was in high school…” 

“Then you’re real overdue,” he smiled a little and went back to watching Sarah as she unwrapped a chocolate Santa and stuffed the entire thing in her mouth. “Alright, let’s not eat all the candy in one sitting…” 

“But it’s Christmas!” She said, voice muffled around the chocolate. 

“Still gonna get sick,” he replied. 

You started unpacking the stocking, pulling two pairs of fuzzy socks out of the top. 

“Because your feet are always freezing,” he said, looking back at you. “Figured one pair for here, one for your house…” 

“Thank you,” you smiled, going back into the stocking. There was some of your favorite candy, one of the face masks Sarah had, a bottle of gold nail polish. 

“We can do a spa day!” She beamed. 

“We can,” you laughed, looking at Joel who just shrugged, a small smile on his face. 

At the bottom of the stocking was a chunky gold pen, thick plastic encasing glitter and you turned it over in your fingers, frowning for a moment at just how familiar it felt. 

“Saw one like the one you had when we were kids years ago,” Joel said. “Bought it on a whim, thought you might want it.” 

You wanted to say thank you but you couldn’t seem to make a sound, the words caught in your throat. Instead, you just threw your arms around his neck and he laughed a little when he caught you, his hand sliding over your side and around to your back. 

You stayed close to Joel and watched as Sarah tore through her presents, the envelope with the concert tickets safely in Joel’s possession. 

“Hey Sarah,” you said eventually. “Can you hand me that box under there that’s for your dad?” 

Joel frowned as Sarah got the box, setting it on the coffee table in front of Joel and hovering as he went to open it. 

“Didn’t need to get me anything,” he said. 

“Too damn bad,” you said. “Don’t get too excited, it’s nothing crazy.” 

He opened it. Inside were two shot glasses, leather wrapped with a monogrammed M burned into it. 

“I thought you needed some accessories for the flask,” you smiled. 

He laughed. 

“We gotta break these in,” he said, looking them over. “They even look like they match…” 

“May have gotten Tommy to send me pictures,” you said. “Keep going, one more thing in there.” 

He shifted the tissue paper before pulling out a cassette tape, frowning at it for a moment. 

“What…” 

“I know your stereo is old enough that it plays tapes,” you said, palm out. “Hand it over.” 

He laughed once but obeyed and you went to put the tape in, adjusting the volume so it wouldn’t be too loud. It crackled a bit at the start and then Joel’s voice - almost 20 years younger but still so familiar - filled the room.

“My name is Joel Miller,” he said. “I play guitar and sing, mostly rock, little country…” 

Joel gaped at the stereo before looking to you. 

“Is this that old demo tape we made when we were kids?” He asked. You laughed and nodded. “Holy… where the hell’d you find this thing?” 

“I kept one,” you shrugged. “Thought it might give you a nudge toward playing again.” 

The Joel on tape started playing and Sarah came and sat between the two of you on the couch, looking up at her dad. 

“So that’s you?” She asked. 

“Sure is,” he said. “Long time ago, I was closer to your age then than mine now.” 

“What’s it for?” She asked. 

“Well,” Joel looked over her head to you and smiled a little before looking back at his daughter. “I always liked playing, wanted to be a singer for a while. Goldie here talked me into making some demo tapes to give to places around here that had open mic nights so I could actually play for people. Worked, too. Had a few places I played pretty often for a bit in there thanks to that tape.” 

“Why’d you stop?” She frowned. “You were good.” 

Joel shrugged. 

“Bigger things to do,” he kissed the top of her head. “Though speaking of music… think there might be one more thing for you under the tree.” 

Sarah’s frown deepened and she went to look around, picking her way through wrapping paper and but not finding it. 

“There’s nothing over here, Dad,” she said. “Are you sure?” 

“Oh, right,” Joel said, giving you a wink and pulling the envelope out of the pocket of his pajama pants. “Here it is.” 

She jumped over some of the boxes scattered over the floor and took the envelope from him, her eyebrows knitting together as she read the writing on the front. 

“To the swiftest music fan?” She said, looking up from the envelope and at the two of you. 

You just shrugged. 

“Gonna have to open it, kiddo,” Joel said. 

She slipped her fingers below the seal and pulled out the card, two pieces of paper falling to the ground before she had a chance to read it. She picked them up and unfolded them, reading the first one. 

“It says we have a hotel room in Dallas?” She looked at Joel. 

“Gotta read the other paper, baby girl,” he said. “That’s the important one. And the one from Aunt Goldie.” 

She flipped to that page next and only held it for a moment before shrieking and throwing herself at you, knocking you back into the couch. 

“You got Eras Tour tickets?” She pulled back, half on top of you and half on the couch. You just laughed and nodded. “Oh my GOD, thank you thank you thank you, you’re the best! OH MY GOD!” 

“Well your dad is the one getting us there and making sure we have a place to stay,” you said. “So hug him, too.” 

“Thank you!” She threw herself at him, too, and he laughed, catching her and giving her a squeeze. “This is the best present ever, it’s going to be the best time, I can’t wait! We’re going to see Taylor Swift! Oh my GOD, I have to tell my friends!” 

She shot off to her room to get her phone and Joel laughed, looking over at you. 

“OK I don’t even care that she likes you better n’me now,” he said. “She’s that happy? Worth it.” 

“We’ll see how we feel after a few days wrangling her for the Taylor Swift concert,” you said, watching where she’d disappeared up the stairs. “But… yeah, definitely worth it.” 

“Hey,” Joel said, voice oddly earnest. You looked over at him. “Thanks for loving my kid.” 

You smiled a little. 

“She’s yours,” you said. “How could I not?” 

Tommy came over a few hours later, once the turkey was in the oven and the wrapping paper was cleaned up off the floor. He gave Sarah a five pound bag of Sour Patch Kids and said “don’t tell your dad” before kissing the top of her head as she scampered off to stash her hoard in her room. He greeted you with a hug with a tight squeeze on the end and you still couldn’t quite get used to just how adult he was. There was part of you that still saw him as the little kid who trailed after you and Joel, the one who sometimes begged to go to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard. Now, he was nearly as tall as his older brother, drinking a beer and talking to Joel about a woman named Maria he’d just started dating. It was an odd reminder of just how much time you’d lost with Joel, just how much had changed. 

The four of you had dinner - Tommy teasing Sarah more like a loving older brother than an uncle, making you smile - and, before too long, the day was done. 

Sarah insisted on listening to Taylor Swift while she got ready for bed and Joel read to her from an Artemis Fowl book, you eavesdropping on Joel doing the voices from your place in the living room while the cats curled up around you. 

A keen sense of belonging settled over you then, as you held a mug of cocoa in one hand and the other rested on the back of your large, orange cat. This, you thought, was where you belonged. In this space, in this time, alongside these people. 

How could you ever hope to find this anywhere else? How were you ever supposed to recover from this stubborn crush if Joel was the place you felt most like home? 

“You OK?” Joel asked, hovering toward the top of the stairs, his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. 

“Yeah,” you smiled and gave Puck a scratch and let yourself have the feeling. “I’m good.” 

You got up early the next morning, Joel barely awake enough to help carry your bags to the car. 

“See you New Year’s Eve,” he said, his hands in the pockets of his pajama pants and his hair in total disarray. “Better have that damn book done by then.” 

“Do you really think you can write an entire book in a week?” You asked, brows raised. 

“I dunno,” he said. “You’re the smart one, you tell me.” 

You rolled your eyes and he laughed a little. 

“Alright, I’m goin’ back to bed,” he said. “Text me when you get there, have fun being a genius.” 

“Hey,” you called to him as he made it halfway back up his walk. He turned to face you, frowning slightly. “Thanks. For being my friend.” 

An expression you couldn’t place passed over his face before he smiled a little. 

“Careful,” he said. “Talk like that enough, people might think you care about me and shit.” 

“Well, we can’t have that,” you said. “See you in a few days.” 

He watched you drive off and you made your way to the hill country and the cabin Stephanie had reserved for you. You’d insisted that it have extra bedrooms and a hot tub and were surprised that she hadn’t pushed back on it. 

“Whatever you need to get the job done, you’ve got it,” she said after sending you links to some cabins. “I’m just here to facilitate.” 

You stopped on the way for groceries, stocking up so you wouldn’t need to leave the house once you settled in. You went with most of your standbys for cooking for one and watching the careful diet you’d been on for years but then thought of Joel bringing you tamales and plying you with cookies over the last few days. Maybe he was right. Maybe you did need to live a little. You got the stuff to make the bagel sandwiches, too. 

The cabin was damn near idyllic, all stone and wood with huge windows looking out at the brush leading down to the lake in the backyard. The hot tub was set on the back porch, a fire pit in the yard and rocking chairs out front. The kitchen was large and reasonably well equipped and there were enough bedrooms that Joel, Tommy and Sarah could have their own when they all joined you for New Year’s Eve. There was even a desk set up near a window that overlooked the water and you set up your laptop and charger and got out your notebook with the pen from your Christmas stocking, arranging everything just so. 

“Alright,” you said to no one after you got the groceries put away and made yourself a cup of coffee before settling in at the desk to write. “Let’s do this.” 

And… you tried. You really, truly did. 

Day one, you got most of an outline done. Enough of one that you went to bed feeling somewhat accomplished and felt good treating yourself to a bagel sandwich in the morning. But then, when you sat down to work on the next part for day two, you weren’t sure you liked any of it anymore. You pressed on, anyway. Day three, you tried to write the first chapter and you made some decent progress, at least feeling like you were getting to know the characters a bit as you settled into the story. But, day four, you read what you’d written the day before and wanted to claw your way out of your skin. What were you doing? Why did you think you could do this at all? Had you ever made anything worthwhile on your own? Why would you suddenly be able to do it now? 

The text came through when you were taking a break for lunch, desperately avoiding the gnawing feeling of failure after days of accomplishing fuck all when you really had no excuse not to. You sighed and opened your texts, fully expecting from Joel or Anna or even Stephanie. 

It wasn’t. 

Hey Doll

You dropped your fork in shock and it clattered to your plate as you blinked at your phone in total shock. He was texting you. Why was he texting you? He hadn’t texted you in months, not since you’d left Rhode Island. Why now? Did you want to know? Could you resist knowing? 

Hi Gale

You propped your phone up against your half empty can of Diet Dr. Pepper and stared at the screen, waiting for the next shoe to drop. 

It didn’t take long. 

How’ve you been doing? 

Your hand shook as you replied. 

Alright. I like the new school. You?

He responded almost instantly. 

Not bad. Was just thinking about you. Miss you. 

You froze, your heart in your throat. 

He missed you. How could he just say that? The collapse of your marriage had been one of the most painful things you’d ever gone through, happening in slow motion as he pulled further and further away and you desperately tried to dig your nails in to keep him close. You’d all but begged for him to miss you for years and now he was just texting it to you out of the blue. How could he just say that? How could you pretend like it wasn’t what you wanted to hear? 

You went to his Facebook page and checked his relationship status, one of the upsides to being with an older man meaning that his social media presence was pretty limited. He was still listed as in a relationship with Carla, a woman he’d met in much the same way he’d met you. The thought made your stomach churn, that you’d been so easily replaced by the younger, thinner, prettier version who had been dropped on his desk, practically gift wrapped. 

You went back to the texts. 

How’s Carla? 

There was a longer pause that time. 

She’s not you. 

“Jesus,” you said, setting the phone down and closing your eyes for a moment. You tried to think, forcing yourself to be practical. This wasn’t the time or the place to be having this conversation. You couldn’t have this conversation, not when you’d just been sitting her wondering if you could do the only thing you’d ever felt like you were supposed to do without his help. 

I don’t want to talk about this now. I’m in the middle of working on my book. Maybe another time. 

You stared at the phone, waiting for him to respond. He never did. 

“Yeah, sure seems like you missed me,” you muttered, finishing your salad and cleaning up from lunch, settling back in at your desk to write for the afternoon, trying not to think about the very real possibility that your writing career had ended when your marriage did. 

“I’m losing my mind over here,” you said, breaking down and calling Joel on day five. “There’s only so much I can say to a wall, you know.” 

“We’re comin’ your way tomorrow,” he said. “Be praying for some peace and quiet once Sarah and Tommy are there, trust me. Still like pecan praline ice cream, yeah?” 

“Blue Bell?” You asked. 

“Course it’s Blue Bell,” you could hear him roll his eyes through the phone. “What kind of animal you take me for?” 

“Oh, my apologies…” 

“Anything else you can think of?” He asked. “I can always stop on the way, too, but it’s easier while I’m here.” 

“I still think it’s silly to buy ice cream an hour away and then drive it out here,” you said. 

“That’s what coolers are for,” he replied. “Stop finding shit to worry about. Just give the writing one more shot, see how far you get. Who knows, you might surprise yourself.” 

“Yeah,” you sighed, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you remembered your texts with Gale the day before. 

“Goldie,” Joel said, tone serious. “That all that’s on your mind?” 

“Stop trying to read my thoughts,” you said. 

“Tell me,” he said. “Or I’ll show up early and make you.” 

“That a threat?” 

“That’s a promise,” he said. “What’s goin’ on?” 

“Gale texted yesterday,” you said, fidgeting with the handle of your coffee mug, the coffee itself going cold an hour ago. 

“Gale?” Joel asked, tone sharp. “Fuckin’ Gale? The fuck did he want?” 

“I don’t know,” you sighed. “I’ll show you the texts when you get here, maybe you can translate them for me since he’s not making any damn sense.” 

“That asshole better not be making any trouble,” Joel said. “I will find him and kick his ass, Goldie, just say the word…” 

“I know you will,” you laughed a little. “But don’t worry about it right now. And I should let you go…” 

“Yeah, go write your book,” he teased. “Change the world and shit.” 

There was a knock at your front door and you frowned, staring at it. There was a window to the side of it but all you could see was a shadow. 

“Hey, Joel?” You said. “Hang on one second, there’s someone at my door.” 

“What?” He sounded serious now. “Were you expecting anyone?” 

“No,” you said quietly, approaching it slowly and trying to see through the frosted glass. You couldn’t make out who it was. “So just stay on the line and make sure I’m not axe murdered…” 

“Need me to come out there now?” He asked. “If you ain’t safe…” 

“I’m sure it’s fine,” you said, unlocking the deadbolt. “Probably just a neighbor, but…” 

You opened the door and peered out through the crack, phone clutched against your head. 

You still almost dropped it. 

“Hey Doll.” 

***

“Hi Gale.” 

Joel’s heart dropped. 

“Gale?” He said, pressing his phone tight against his head and trying not to yell in the middle of the line at the HEB. “Fucking Gale? He’s there?” 

“I have to go,” you said quickly. “Talk later.” 

You hung up before he had a chance to say goodbye. He tried calling you back but you ignored it. 

Joel stood there, staring at his cart for a moment, his head swimming. 

Was he freaking out because it was you and he didn’t want you alone at some romantic looking cabin with your ex-husband? Was it because he knew that you weren’t in a place to handle this right now? Was it because he knew - knew - that your ex was a goddamn predator? 

He’d bitten his tongue about that fact since you’d been back, that the man you’d married had been more than twice your age and you’d only been a legal adult for all of a month when he’d met you. It didn’t matter that it was you, that Joel had gone searching for you and found you there with him all those years ago, he’d want to beat the shit out of a man like that regardless of who it was. A man like that couldn’t be trusted. 

He especially couldn’t be trusted with you. 

Joel checked out as fast as he could, calling Tommy as he drove. 

“Hey, need you to do me a favor,” he said quickly. 

“You always need me to do you a favor,” Tommy said. “One of these days I’m gonna cash in.” 

“Yeah, who got you the only job besides the army you’ve kept longer than a week?” Joel asked. 

Tommy sighed. 

“Fine. What’s up?” 

“Need you to take Sarah tonight.” 

“Joel, come on!” 

“M’serious,” Joel said. “Goldie’s ex just showed up at the fucking cabin…” 

“Oh, not that fucking asshole from the funeral,” Tommy cut him off. 

“That’s the one,” Joel said. 

“Fuck that guy,” Tommy said. “He needs to stay the fuck away from her.” 

“Yeah, somethin’ tells me he ain’t gonna make that choice on his own,” Joel said. “So I need you to pick up Sarah and take her for the night. And bring me my shit tomorrow. I’ll text you the address where Sarah’s at, she’s at her friend’s playing right now, needs to be picked up about five…” 

“Yeah, I got it,” Tommy said. “Go save the day.” 

Joel drove as fast as he dared, not familiar enough with where cops liked to hide to go too fast. He pulled up in front of the cabin you’d sent him the information for a week and a half earlier. He’d have admired it, in another circumstance. He’d always wanted a place like this, someplace quiet where there was enough space to live a little, maybe hunt. A place where Sarah could run and play and get to know nature a little. 

But in that moment, he was too pissed to take it in. 

He grabbed a bag out of the trunk - pretense more than anything else - and stalked up to the door before knocking on it, his fist coming down in heavy thuds on the wood. 

You pulled open the door, a surprised look on your face and your ex-husband at your back. 

He looked just about the same as Joel remembered him from before. Tall but not as tall as him, a refined air about him that made Joel want to deck him, a smug look on his face. His hair was gray and his face was wrinkled and Joel fucking hated him. 

“Joel,” you said, staring at him. “What are you…” 

Joel did the only thing he could think to do, fucking Brad standing so close to you with a hand between your shoulder blades like he fucking owned you. 

“Missed you too much, baby,” he said, watching your eyes go a little wide at the word. “Couldn’t wait until tomorrow.” 

He reached out and cupped the hinge of your jaw, his fingers wrapping around the back of your neck and he tugged you closer, his heart beating so fast he was sure that your fucking ex could hear it. 

But he didn’t care. 

All he cared about was the way your lips felt on his when he kissed you. 

Next Chapter

A/N: I mean we can all agree, fuck Brad/Gale.

But also... his presence does get results.

THANKS FOR PUTTING UP WITH ME! Love you!

[dreaming-of-mossballs]

First Date..? - (Gepard x florist!reader)

Summary: Gepard, after becoming ill to the point of passing out, asked you to go on a tour of the Belobog History and Culture Museum with him. Today is that day!

▸ Genre(s): fluff, a sprinkling of angst

▸ Word Count: 5.5k

▸ Tags: Gepard x reader

▸ Warnings: food mentions, mentions of domestic abuse

A/N: MY LAST POST SHOWED IN THE TAGS!!!! It brought a ton of new people in <3 hello gepard fans, this is a part of my series! You can find more in the masterlist. (Or don’t. I try to make it so you can start wherever.)

the dividers are being stupid but i decided to keep them

MASTERLIST

Gepard, the heir to the Landau name and a sworn Silvermane Guard, wasn’t sure if he had ever felt this nervous in his life.

From his first interview as a cadet to the ceremony promoting him to the position of “Captain,” his heart had never beat as loudly as it did that day. It sent tremors through his chest that traveled all the way to his throat.

He stood resting an arm on the counter of the Neverwinter Workshop reception desk, paying no mind to his sister as she milled about, rummaging through drawers of tools and combing through filing cabinets.

A heavy sigh escaped the captain’s lips as he tapped his fingers apprehensively. All he could focus on was the antique clock on the wall taunting him as it tick, tick, ticked away. Closer and closer to the time he’d be meeting you.

Serval’s voice drew him out of the thoughts weighing his mind down.

“Earthwork should be good to go,” she said, hoisting the shield device slash guitar case onto the counter with a thump.

The bronze safety goggles resting precariously on the top of her head tumbled to the floor. Those would definitely cost a pretty penny.

“Let me know if the shield deployment acts up again, alright?”

Gepard took the procedural report from her and nodded. “You have my gratitude once again, sister. The guards should send you an invoice soon,”

Suddenly, the bell in the central plaza rang. Its sound sent shivers down his spine, which he tried to shake off by glancing absentmindedly out the window. This did not go unnoticed by his sister.

“You seem a little antsy today, Geppie. What’s messing with your rhythm?”

“Ah?” Gepard responded while tucking the yellow slip of paper into his pocket. “I merely have a few affairs that need attending to. The concern is appreciated, though,”

He straightened his collar, averting his eyes. She stared at him incredulously at this pathetically conspicuous act.

“You know?” she snorted. “You are possibly one of the worst liars on Jarilo-VI,”

She dropped her wrench on the desk carelessly, and he stiffened immediately.

“You never act this distant when it comes to affairs. In fact, most of the time you’re pretty quick to pass them off to me!” Serval shook a finger at him. “I’ve had my fair share of headaches, so you better fess up right now, little brother,” she hissed.

She stomped around the counter over the unfortunate pair of goggles and leaned in a good five or so inches away from his face. Gepard mustered all the will in his body to keep his lips straight and his facade up. “Ah— um,”

“Does this, in any way, shape or form, have to do with (Y/N)?” she barked.

“N-no, I…” His eyes flickered for a second at a pot of indigo flowers behind her. Serval, like her namesake, used this as an excuse to pounce.

“It does, doesn’t it? You broke eye contact!” She accused.

“Anyone would, in that situation!” He defended himself, clenching his jaw tightly. “You need to find better methods of interrogating people than that, sister,”

“Excuse you,” Serval snapped. “I’m just curious! We DO share a lot of friends, but (Y/N) is the only one I don’t work with.” She folded her arms.

Gepard ran a hand from his chin all the way to his hair with a groan. The last time they had squabbled like this, he hadn’t yet graduated from cadet school.

He cleared his throat. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about. As for (Y/N), I happen to be seeing them at the museum today. Are you satisfied with this information?”

His sister rolled her eyes at the biting remark and wiped a hand across her brow, smearing motor oil on her forehead. “Yeah. Fine. Don’t bother telling all the juicy details of how that came to be. They’d just be wasted on me!”

Gepard’s shoulders dropped in exasperation as he stared at her. “Why are you so invested in this, sister? You hardly give a single snowflake about my personal life. What changed?”

If looks could kill, Gepard would be six feet under.

“Hey. I’m trying to help you and your hopeless love life!” His sister nearly exploded with frustration. He quickly took a step back.

“Every time you two are in the same room, your face goes pink and you’re completely paralyzed,” she said, exasperated. “At this rate, you’ll grow old before your feelings reach them!”

She stuck a finger in her mouth with a gagging noise. Gepard blushed even harder.

“My feelings have nothing to do with you, sister,” he sputtered while simultaneously going over every single time you’ve happened to be in a room together in his head.

Serval stopped for a moment, her hackles seeming to fall. Her voice dropped an octave. “They do, actually,”

Serval sucked in a breath through her teeth.

“Y’know, Gepard… I’ve seen you go your entire life laying down everything you’ve ever had for Belobog. Isn’t it about time you pursue something— someone, that makes you happy?”

She paused, letting the words linger in his mind. Then she spoke again.

“Y’know, that you love,”

The air between them became thick with silence.

Serval sighed, leaning her back against the counter. Her little brother seemed to lack the words to respond.

“I’ve seen how you light up when you see them. And it hurts me seeing you stamp your feelings down each and every time,”

She searched in his eyes for any sign that her message was reaching him. But she did not find one.

“I’ve told you this before. Love isn’t something you can half-ass. You have to put your all into it—,” she twirled a pen around in her hand to blow off some steam. “—I don’t even care if you don’t want my help. I just want you to feel like you can confide in me, okay?”

She looked back at her brother, who was now staring at the floor, and smiled wistfully.

Well, Belobog wasn’t built in a day, after all.

Serval shrugged. “Anyways. You don’t have to listen to your big sis. I just think you should spend as much time with them before you’re sent away on another campaign.” Her tone became humorous. “Make sure you’re aaa-ll they think about when you’re gone,”

Gepard’s head shot up, his mouth going agape, and he quickly shut it.

“Why would I want to do that??”

“So you two can send each other looong letters about how much you love and miss each other, of course!” Serval chuckled teasingly, sticking her tongue out at her furiously blushing younger brother.

“They— they don’t feel that way about me,” he choked out.

She folded her arms at his defeated tone. “Maybe they don’t, but you two have chemistry!”

She slapped him on the shoulder heartily, which caused him to choke on the breath he was taking. “I can tell they care for you. And since when have Landaus been ones to give up?”

Gepard let out an exhale through his nose at the saying his sister would always repeat when they were kids.

“…never,”

“That’s right, little brother! Now, how long before your little date?”

He sighed again. “I’m going after I put my shield in the barracks,”

This time, it was Serval’s turn to freeze. “Right now?!” Her eyes burned holes into him.

“Yes, right now,”

She launched herself at him and dug her long nails into his shoulders. He stumbled backwards, trying to keep his balance. “NO. NO YOU CAN’T. NOT LIKE THAT,”

“Why is that?” Gepard blinked in surprise.

“You’re off duty today and you’re still in uniform? We’ve gotta get you tidied up,” she gasped.

“I sincerely doubt that they care—,” he started, remembering the time you showed up to a cafe with your gardening gloves on and dirt smudged on your face.

Serval bristled at him. He swallowed nervously.

He knew better than to keep talking.

His sister grabbed him harshly by the shoulder and yanked him out the door towards the estate.

Oh Aeons. This wasn’t going to be good.

❆ — ❆ — ❆

And finally, there you were. Gepard spotted you people watching as you waited outside of the Belobog History and Culture Museum, back rested on the handrail languidly, like a tourist.

You turned towards him with one hand gripping a pamphlet, the other shielding your eyes from the sun and—

Oh wow.

Why did he look like that?

He was taking long strides towards you, in an outfit that could only be described as way over-the-top. His hair was slicked back so you could see his forehead and (very strong) jawline, and he wore a brilliant white suit with silver accents that was most definitely meant for something more formal than a trip to the museum.

Additionally, he had on a long white cape that stopped at his ankles. With the bright sunlight shining down, it was blinding.

He looked like a foreign prince, from one of those novels Vaska liked to read. One woman’s jaw dropped as he passed by.

Oh, Aeons. Serval had definitely played a part in this one.

You, on the other hand, wore the same thing you always did. The green florist’s uniform coupled with a beret (which was rather charming, in your opinion). You shook yourself off and walked up to meet him.

“Hiya Captain!” You said as he approached.

Gepard felt something stab through his chest at the formal title, but he brushed it off.

“Glad to see you’re back in shape— and whoa, you look nice today.”

You looked him up and down keenly, and Gepard thought he felt his heart stop.

“Y-yes. I happened to have made a full recovery, thank you. Shall we go in?” He cringed inwardly at his inability to speak.

As much as he hated it, Serval was right. His heart was beating sixteenth notes as he looked at you. And no matter what he did, he couldn’t slow it down.

You nodded. But your eyes darted to the side for a second, showing a hint of uncertainty.

“Yeah! Um… Maybe lose the cape though?”

You gasped as you saw him quickly cover his face with his hand.

“N-not like it doesn’t look good on you! I was just thinking it might catch on the displays, y’know,”

“No, no. I get it.” Gepard let out a small groan, much like an arctic bear cub. “Serval insisted on dressing me up before I left. I should have told her not to.”

He grimaced, knowing all too well that it wouldn’t have made a difference either way. He then unclasped the cape and rolled it up into a tight ball, tucking it under his arm.

Whew. That was most definitely better. He looked less like a prince and more like your average rich noble. Although, if you were being honest, that wasn’t great either.

And so, he showed you into the museum with the hospitality of an attendee (he had worked there, after all). You felt like royalty. And Aeons, the lobby was absolutely perfect. It had an air of welcoming in it, and it smelled like history! Or dust. One of the two, you figured.

In true Underworld fashion, you waltzed up to the reception desk and immediately began making small talk. The blonde woman seemed startled but made nothing of it.

“How much for tickets?” You leaned your elbows on the counter. Her eyes landed on Gepard, who unbeknownst to you, was approaching from behind.

“Oh? Are you two here together?” She gasped. You whipped around, startled. “Volunteers are allowed to bring one guest for free. We appreciate your visit, Captain Gepard,”

She bowed her head respectfully and he nodded. He lightly placed a hand on your shoulder, which in turn, caused you to jump nearly half a foot in the air.

Great. Just great.

“Would you like to accompany me to the automaton section first?” He inquired. You weren’t certain, but you thought you heard a hint of shyness in his tone.

Like I’d run off without my tour guide in a building this big, you thought, glancing up at the huge arching ceilings in the main area.

“Sure! You’d better give me a tour worth a five-star review, Captain,” you chuckled.

That seemed to flip a switch. “I’ll do my utmost,” he declared.

He glanced down at you as you laughed lightly at his fiercely determined demeanor, feeling his cheeks warm at the sound of your voice. And with that, you began your tour through the museum.

First you stopped at the side parlor, which housed numerous automatons borrowed from the Robot Settlement. The models were polished and the descriptions were lengthy, which made you beam with pride. They sure knew how to treat the robots right.

Next you made your way to the main hall. It had an abundance of artifacts in sturdy glass cabinets, and beautifully intricate paintings that stole your breath away.

Gepard made sure to narrate every piece you seemed even moderately interested in. He loved how your eyes seemed to sparkle when he’d quote something he’d read in a history book, giving you a taste of the delves of information he kept stored in his brain as a Belobogian noble.

If it were up to him, you’d have access to every archive on the face of Jarilo-VI.

And you, you loved how he’d get so absorbed in explaining things that the words seemed to pour out of his mouth as he pointed at the displays. Even with the hum of the Geomarrow heaters and the constant chatter of visitors, his voice was the only one you seemed to hear.

Such simple joy it brought you. Here, staring at the photograph of the Eversummer Florists together, and chatting as if you weren’t two whole worlds apart. Gepard’s eyes took in every detail, every flower and every ray of sunlight trickling in through the windows.

You tore your gaze away from his profile to stare at your leather shoes just for a moment. Something vague flapped at the corners of your mind, but now really wasn’t the time to try and sort it out, you told yourself.

“Why don’t we tour the projector room next?” Gepard said, leaning down to look you in the eyes intently. You felt your heart leap at his voice.

Boy, were you in deep.

You mustered a smile as best you could, hoping it wasn’t too stiff.

“Sure! Lead the way,”

You had never seen such a wonderful piece of technology before. You both sat down on the velvet benches, entranced by the images flickering across the canvas.

This time, it was Gepard’s turn to stare. He’d seen it all before in his days as a volunteer. But seeing you gazing in awe at the projection as the light reflected in your eyes. That was something new.

Sitting there, shoulder to shoulder. Like equals. Watching the same screen, seeing the same things. It made his heart flutter like nothing ever had.

❆ — ❆ — ❆

“Wow. I am wiped!” you exclaimed after departing from the museum. “That was a great tour. Do you accept tips, Mister Volunteer Guide?” You grinned at him and Gepard let out an amused huff.

“I simply repeated what they taught me in primary school,”

“Yeah?” You inquired. “It was super immersive, though. I think you’d make a great history teacher,”

He went almost entirely pink at the compliment.

You chuckled to yourself. It wasn’t hard to make him blush, you thought.

“And also, what’s a primary school?” You piped up.

“Oh?” He paused. “It’s the first school kids attend on the surface. They learn to read, write, and all the other various things required of them,”

“Really? I remember Natasha teaching us how to read and write, but then it was straight to the mines for us,” you pondered, reminiscing back on your childhood in the Great Mine.

Suddenly, Gepard’s shoulder crashed into yours, sending you reeling into the Geomarrow heater to your left with a loud bang. You hurriedly grabbed it before it crashed to the ground.

Interestingly enough, the cause of this confusion was a small but speedy child, who had rammed into Gepard’s right leg by accident.

The child with short umber hair didn’t look back once after knocking into you, shouting “sorry,” and continuing to sprint, as a gang of ten or more children trampled after him. Their footsteps echoed along the walls of the lower floor of the Administrative district, which amplified them until it really did sound like a herd of animals.

All of the kids were carrying flags and pinwheels, staple items for the upcoming Solwarm festival, but they were wearing clothes belonging to both the Overworld and the Underworld.

This sent a jolt of surprise to your core. They played together so easily, it was like the past few decades hadn’t even happened.

“Little rascals,” you snickered, pulling away from the bench and brushing yourself off. You both stood and watched the children barrel down the road, knocking unsuspecting grown-ups into the next week. At one point, they stopped in a wide-open area and began to kick around a beanbag, their laughter ringing like bells.

Gepard’s brows furrowed, a pensive look appearing on his face.

“What’s on your mind?” You tilted your head at him with a smile on your lips.

His thoughtful expression had to have been one of your favorites.

He returned your gaze from where he was staring at the children chattering, running, and playing without a care in the world. Gepard felt the pang of a familiar memory in his chest.

“I was just considering… how nice it is to see relationships between the Overworld and the Underworld lessening in tension.”

He sighed. “I know it may sound silly, but some used to discourage interactions between the two,”

The look in Gepard’s eyes became a little more distant. “My father, for instance,”

You looked at him questioningly as he drew in a deep breath.

“I remember he once threw a vase at me in a fit of anger, after discovering I’d been visiting a group of kids from the mines,”

He glanced at the ground, looking quite like a lost puppy. “I had never heard the stories that they were telling before, so I just… kept going back to listen,”

You felt your mouth fall slightly ajar. He kept speaking.

“Thankfully, I didn’t get hurt that day, but the only reason is because my sister stepped in order to protect me,”

Your eyes widened in shock. “How— how old were you?”

“I believe I was five at the time,” Gepard stated. Almost like it was nothing.

“I think that’s where I gained some of my resolve,” he continued. “My own sister stepped forward to protect me without a thought for her own safety. So I grew up wanting to be strong, like her,”

Gepard curled his hand into a fist, letting memories of his childhood wash over him in his usual manner of acceptance. But when he looked back at you, only a glimpse of your face could be seen. You stared at the ground silently, and he could very well tell that your fists and jaw were clenched tight.

Waves of frustration at the realization crashed over you and your breath went hot. You stared back up at him, tears brimming in your eyes.

“He threw… a vase at you?” You said.

Hurt leaked into your voice against your will and you felt your heart had snapped in two. It seemed like both he and Serval harbored animosity toward their father.

And now you knew why. There was no way this was a one-time thing.

“That’s— wow, I don’t know what to say, Gepard,”

The captain showed little to no reaction. He looked back at the plaza with a soft exhale. One that exuded both sadness and gradual adjustment.

“He’s… always been that way. The Landaus, well, they all have their own sort of stubbornness in their values. His just tended to come out more,” he said.

“Stubborn, maybe.” You chewed on your bottom lip. “But he had no right to throw something at you. That could’ve really hurt a small child,”

You remembered being trapped in a landslide as a kid, and another child had kicked you in the face trying to escape. You were sent tumbling down the canyon where you fractured your shoulder and leg.

But to live with someone who, at any moment, could snap and hurt you? That was something else entirely.

Communities in the Underworld were based on a mutual network of trust. You couldn’t imagine having no one to turn to when you were scared. You stifled a sob.

“If I’m being honest with myself,” Gepard said softly, resting a hand on his chin. “It’s stuck with me well into my adult years. I haven’t quite dispelled all the preconceptions I’ve been raised with,”

“It doesn’t seem like he would have give you much room to, anyways,” you commented. “I think you two have both grown up to be wonderful people, even though you’ve faced so many hardships,”

He nodded solemnly, taking each and every word to heart. “But now, seeing these children at play, it gives me hope for the future… That Belobog truly can heal,”

It was at this moment you remembered, the captain was a kid too at one point. Behind the stoic exterior and steadfast resolve, there was a child that laughed and cried. One that had his own internal struggles, besides leading an army and reporting directly to the Supreme Guardian.

His childhood must have really had an impact on him. How would he have been different, if he had grown up in a happier home, you wondered. Despite the pain, you smiled.

Out of the blue, an idea popped into your brain.

“You know what I think, Gepard?” You chirped. “I think you just might be right!”

In a fit driven by inspiration, you leaped onto the nearest cafe table, offering your hand to your startled companion. He took it and carefully stepped onto the steel chair to join you.

“Overworld. Underworld. Why should it matter?” You shrugged confidently. “We’re here already, aren’t we? Look at us!”

You beamed at him and spun around with your arms outstretched on the wooden surface.

Turning to face him, you took both of his hands in yours. They felt warm. A soft kind of happiness filled Gepard’s eyes as he slotted his fingers in between your own.

“That’s right, we are.” He smiled gently.

You stood there for a moment, ignoring all the passerby and also the confused waitress calling for the shop owner.

If only you could take this sliver of time and put it in your pocket. You both held your breath, hoping that if you didn’t move, you could stay there until the world stood still.

Your eyes trailed to Gepard’s cheeks, which still had a slight blush to them, (maybe from the cold), down to the silver clasps that held his jacket together.

Glancing back up at his kind eyes, you felt something inside you chipping its way out.

—love you.

Your eyes went as round as the shield coins they exchanged at the Eversummer Florist’s.

What?

Oh no— oh no. Hold on. I knew something was, um, off, but is my brain playing tricks on me?

Was I just caught up in the moment? Why did I even think that?

Gepard stared at you quizzically, unaware of the mental battlefield you had just gotten your left arm blown off in.

Your heart began to race faster than one of those antique cars they had at the museum. His hands still clasped yours tightly, even as you tried to drop them gently.

You let out a strangled sound from your throat that sounded like “huegh” while steam poured out of your ears.

“(Y/N)?” He said, confused but seemingly unfazed.

You turned towards the closest brick wall, still holding his hands. Your eyes darted around like a cat after a loud disturbance.

No. I cant keep lying to myself like this.

You braced yourself for the realization as best you could.

I’m… in love with Gepard.

It still wasn’t enough. The sky and the ground seemed to reverse that very second as everything went upside down.

Still holding his hands, the first round of mental gymnastics began. You felt almost dizzy as thoughts flooded your brain, so you looked at your shoes to combat it.

(His were there too so it didn’t help much.)

Thoughts like:

Have… I been in love with him this whole time?

And, When did it start? And why? And, Did he notice? What if I’ve been super duper obvious??

And last but not least, Oh, Qlipoth. Please preserve my sanity—,

You blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about—,”

You were lifting your head again in order to make your statement seem sincere when, something that was crazier than the time you decided to go crowd surfing on a line of robots, popped into your mind.

Kiss him. A part of you whispered internally.

Every muscle in your body froze.

Do it. You know you want to, the voice spoke again.

Your eyes travelled slightly downward to his lips. All you had to do was—

You yanked your hands away from his harshly, opting to stare at his chest instead of his face in shame.

Oh. My. AEONS. You grabbed your face with both hands. Did I think that? Did I just think that??

No. I don’t think I did, you consoled yourself hurriedly. I think Serval developed a device that projects thoughts into people’s heads, and I’m her test subject!

Gepard made a slight movement. A jerk of the head, which was nothing noteworthy now that you look back on it, but with everything going on at that moment, it was enough to set you off.

You yelped. Just like a snow fox.

The next few moments were a blur. You had taken a step backward without realizing you were on a table, and the surface was in fact, finite, and ended up toppling onto the cold stone ground behind you.

You narrowly missed a stack of crates, which would have definitely left a mark, had you landed on one of the edges.

Gepard had practically leaped off the table to check if you were okay, but the shopkeeper had appeared, waving his broom furiously at the both of you.

Your companion tried his best to placate the man but he wasn’t having it.

In a rush of adrenaline, you scrambled to your feet and took grabbed Gepard’s hand, making a quick dash around the corner.

Hopefully the man wouldn’t recognize him. With this particular outfit, you thought Gepard might stand a chance.

In a cruel twist of fate, you both ended up huffing and puffing in a narrow alleyway behind a drugstore. All that dotted the area was a dumpster and a few posters advertising a play that was five months out of season.

“I think we lost him,” you panted, and promptly dissolved into giggles. “Did you see his face? He was all like—,” you cut off, waving your arms around with a wacky expression.

You wheezed once more and doubled over to hold your stomach as cackling erupted from your throat. Gepard was resting against the wall as well, while his chest heaved with effort.

“Ohhh!” You said, raising your head once more. “Now I remember what I was saying— I wanted to thank you for showing me around so often. I hope I’m not being too much of a burden,” you chuckled to yourself.

Gepard pulled the cape out from where it had been caught between his legs before he responded.

“Not in the slightest, (Y/N). I’m always happy to be of assistance,” he responded.

You wiped fake sweat off your brow (even though you really were sweating). “Sweet. I’m gonna go grab a drink from the vending machine, if ya don’t mind. Want one?”

“I’d appreciate it,”

You ran to the vending machine while Gepard waited, keeping a lookout while his back was pressed against the wall. He was certain his jacket would need a fair amount of dry cleaning afterward. You bounded back with two Strawberry Svarog sodas in hand and popped them open.

Gepard threw his head back and drank heartily. He let out a satisfied sigh after drinking the last drop, while you clutched your bottle tightly after only drinking it halfway.

He was almost seen. You were struck with this thought.

You grimaced. There’s no way the higher ups at the fort would appreciate whatever tomfoolery you were dragging him into.

I shouldn’t let these feelings— no, myself, get in his way.

You two were completely different people, after all. He had a job and a reputation to hold down. You were just a florist.

Maybe they’ll fade with time. You hoped. I guess… I just have to hold on until then,

Because… because there’s no way he’d feel that way about me.

For a split second, it seemed like all of your happiness had leaked out of you and disappeared down the storm drain.

You quickly swallowed the feelings that had formed a hard lump in your throat. Hoping to clear up the silence, you whipped towards Gepard with false cheer, in hopes he wouldn’t notice your mood had dampened.

“So, Captain—,”

His lip stiffened. Again with the “captain?”

“Didja hear the news about the observatory?” You chattered, kind of absentmindedly. “They’ve finally been able to repair the main telescope, and soon it’ll be open for public use again!”

“Is that so? The last time I used that telescope, I was just a boy,” he replied, slightly shocked.

“Yep! I’ve seen the sky before, but I’ve never seen it, like… up close. You know?”

He smiled as you spread your arms grandly.

“Do the guards have a telescope?” You asked with a curious look in your eyes.

Gepard thought for a second, before he replied, “I imagine we did, many hundreds of years ago. But I think the Fragmentum threat posed too great a danger on the surface that—,”

He glanced up at the small patch of sky unobscured by the walls of the alleyway. It sparkled in his eyes.

“—we could no longer afford to pay attention to the sky,”

You joined him in gazing at the clouds.

What a world that would be.

❆ — ❆ — ❆

Bonus Scene 1

After the events that had transpired, and you both had gone home, Gepard was now focused on unbuttoning the seemly endless number of clasps on his coat.

This clasp in particular was incredibly frustrating. Every time he’d get ahold of it, it would slip out from between his fingers.

The captain was considering giving up and just wearing the gaudy thing forever when numerous alerts from Serval went off on his phone.

From: Serval at 15:19

Serval: geppie

Serval: geppie

Serval: geppie

Serval: hey

Serval: howd it go

You: Well, thank you.

The captain pinched the bridge of his nose irritably. Couldn’t she have waited at least an hour or so before barging in on his affairs?

His phone dinged once more.

I suppose that’s a no.

From: Serval at 15:20

Serval: is that all?

Serval: You’re totally leaving something out

Serval: oops. im being nosy again.

Serval: Call me if u wanna talk, ok?

Gepard sighed, debated for a moment what he’d rather do, then finally gave in and hit the “call” button.

[“Geppie! You called!”] Serval’s voice crackled to life through the speaker.

He could hear her smile radiating through the phone. The corners of his lips rose slightly, much to his own surprise.

“Indeed I did, sister,”

Bonus Scene 2

Back at the scene on top of the cafe table!

To keep his hands from trembling, Gepard stayed completely and utterly still.

Probably too still.

Your hands were warm, so warm. Although standing on top of a table at a random cafe wasn’t the most romantic setting, he felt like he could bring you into his embrace right then and there.

Never before had he felt so lacking in control of his own desires. Something seemed to be tugging at your thoughts, as you were looking around anxiously.

Could it be you didn’t want him to be spotted because his face was so well known? Gepard could only guess what kind of thoughts were bouncing around your brain.

He watched as you looked, back up from your shoes, to his sheepish face. Your eyes were more beautiful than the clearest ice crystals. Warmer, too. His gaze softened as he saw your eyes flick toward his lips.

And then Gepard did the unthinkable.

He leaned in closer.

❆ — ❆ — ❆

That choice did not end well for either of you.

After checking if you had hit your head and ducking into the nearest alleyway, Gepard wanted to strangle himself mentally.

Why? Why had he made such a stupid decision?

Out of all the choices, that was the most reckless one.

He really should have known better. At this rate, he risked losing your friendship because of his own selfish feelings.

The captain rested his back against the wall in shame as you ran to get drinks from a vending machine.

A man of his caliber shouldn’t be making such mistakes. He should get his act together and court you correctly, for the love of Qlipoth.

But Aeons, he could only ask himself:

What if he had waited a single second longer?

2024 - Dreaming-of-Mossballs - Do not repost/translate without my permission - NO AI

💙 THANKS FOR READINF I LOVE YOU 💙

[isthischopper]

hi thereee, i see ur requests are open and i’d like to request…!!!!

a (if you don’t feel comfortable doing fem, g/n is fine too!) fem!s/o who ate a devil fruit that makes her a long, curly-haired lion! it also gives her a tail and ears in human-beast, beast, or normal form! and it also gives her human form hair similar to killers (long, curly-ish? luscious, you get it)

but could i request that with shanks, or zoro? possibly both if you’d like! i’m fine with either tho<3 thank you and u have amazing works!

hi! i actually love this request, and while i’ve been pretty inactive, it keeps coming back into my mind!

i’ve written a choppy little story, broken into 4 small parts. i hope you enjoy!

⁀➷ Lone Pirate

⋆ Roronoa Zoro x fem!Reader

You frequent this bar, for better or worse, a beer. Simple, effective, tasty. The bar gets quiet when you're there, the other frequents knowing not to screw around with you. You use it to your advantage, but it is a little annoying; nobody ever talks to you other than the bartender.

To be fair, you're not so talkative either.

Most pirates are the creepy-kind. Weirdos with even weirder beards and less guts than their own beer belly. Meaning... why even give them a chance?

Only a few minutes pass after your arrival, and the bar's filling up. Groups of pirates, you assume, pile in, gnarling their order and sitting at a vacant wooden table.

A younger, more colourful, group sits adjacent to you.

You paid no mind, until some burly old man tried to pick a fight. He yelled in their faces, before smashing his beer on the bar, and, successfully covering you in the foamy-sticky substance. Truly, some people have no consideration for the innocent bystander.

"Can I help you??" you snap, shooting up from your bar stool.

"Are you with them?" he spits back, bending his neck just so you could smell his rotten breath.

…them?

Before you could reconsider, you're slamming him head-first on the hard wooden bar counter, knocking him out. The other pirates looked taken off guard; presumably not expecting that reaction out of you, the rest of the patrons silent.

You decide leaving now is your best option, before someone shows up to find their friend on the floor.

***

Months later, you find yourself in the Land of Wano.

You’d heard of Kaidou’s plans for New Onigashima while searching for another island to explore. Sure, you were considered a pirate, but you weren’t in it for fame or fortune; craving the experience of it all instead. You’d explored the country, familiarized yourself with the history and culture, and joined the side of the Straw Hats— the colourful group at the bar, you came to learn.

Now: buildings are flaming, fights are raging everywhere, and the sounds of explosions are ringing in the distance constantly.

You were running the flaming halls, searching rooms for anyone injured or caught in the fire. Somehow, wrapped up in the sounds of destruction all around you, a group of men working under Kaidou slipped your ears. They’d been following you, waiting for the perfect moment to group up and take you all at once.

Who you did notice, however, was a man sprinting in your direction from down the hall. Your hair nearly stood up on end, your body screaming at you to perform some type of defence. He was looking right through you (so you thought), swords drawn, teeth bared. He looked quite intimidating; save for the green hair.

Just before he reached you, his sword swiped against another just two inches shy of your left ear. The clash slicing some of your white-blonde hair clean off. But— you had already figured it out before a single curl hit the floor.

You couldn’t help to be glad he wasn’t aiming for your neck (because he most certainly would have had it).

You had ducked under the swords upon their impact, revolving on your heel to face the group of goons. The green-haired Straw Hat already had the first three handled, so you planted your foot and pounced on the next.

It was quick work, between the two of you.

“You broke his nose.”

You hadn’t even remembered touching a nose, to be honest. You frowned, looking at the pile of defeated men on the floor.

“Which one?”

He chuckles briefly in response to your question, sliding his swords back into their respective encasing. His arms flexing effortlessly (or, maybe on purpose).

“No, at the bar that day.” he pauses “That was you, right?”

“…Depends who’s asking.” you wink.

Deciding that standing around isn’t too beneficial to the current situation, he offers you to follow. You had clicked well, bantering between brawls and fighting together like how a puzzle piece fits.

His swords and your claws working in unison.

***

Later, when the crew is celebrating the defeat of Kaidou over a drink, you’re sitting alone and taking in the view. The green haired pirate joins you, his scent alerting you of his presence before he’d sat down next to you.

“We’ll be leaving soon, It would be a shame to not have your name.” he speaks quietly, sounding much different compared to the adrenaline-fed, raspy voice you heard earlier.

Of course you knew his name, thanks to the word of Wano. People were talking about the Straw Hats everywhere, it was hard to not hear. You hadn’t considered he’d want yours.

“Y/n. Leaving me here after all we’ve been through?” you chuckle.

Kicking back, he rests his back against a rock and tucks his arms behind his head. His eyes are closed, breathing steady, but alert and conscious.

“Things to do, places to be, Luffy says.” he jokes, letting a sigh out and stretching his sore neck.

You lounge back next to him, shoulders touching. Eyes closed, the atmosphere taking over your senses. It’s serene, almost, if you tune out the hollering and music of the celebration.

His body was warm, where it met yours. You could smell the smoke and blood remaining on his skin. You really would miss him, it’s a different type of feeling to have someone you work so well with.

Fighting together, you cleared paths easily. Bonnie and Clyde, almost. What you couldn’t catch Zoro did, and you had his back in the same way. You mutually agreed on a plan every time, without any communication; it came naturally— a rare occurrence.

“Do you have a crew?” he asks.

“Mmm-mm,” you hum “Just me.”

You weren’t sure of the real meaning of this question, but soon after his fingers found their way to discreetly brush on your thigh.

***

“Who’s Zoro with over there?” Jinbe quizzes to chopper, who works to bandage a few surface scrapes.

“She’s a lone pirate!” he deduces. “A Zoan user, really strong…” he trails off, concentrating on the task at hand.

Jinbe chuckles to himself, studying the girl. It seems Chopper is right; she has the ears and tail of a lion, not to mention her mane of curly hair. He heard she had retractable claws, too. He wonders her origin.

Though, things are too joyful to be so inquisitive. He trusts Zoro’s judgment.

“A lone pirate, you say?”

“Mm, yes,” chopper confirms, stepping back to admire his work and placing his hands on his hips.

“Why do you ask?”

Jinbe chuckles again, nodding his head in the direction of Zoro and the girl. He noticed their friendliness when Zoro had first joined her, something that wasn’t too easy to come by with the green haired fire-cracker.

Jinbe leans down to match Choppers height, a mischievous grin on his face.

“I’m not sure I have seen Zoro do that before.” he states.

The click of Chopper’s feet as he turns, and then the full body shock that elopes him is enough to have Jinbe holding back a hysterical cackle. Obviously Chopper hadn’t seen it happen either.

The two of you were met for a kiss when his eyes landed on you. Slow and sensual, causing the innocent little deer to blush a deep shade of red.

Zoro’s hand held your hip just above the ruffles on your shorts, and your palm bared his chest. You were still in the same relaxed position against the rock with your bodies rotated slightly to reach, eyes closed again.

“Zoro!!??? Whaa-!!!” squeals Chopper, gaining the attention of the others.

You blush pink, but Zoro’s smug smile says it all.

What an interesting match, Jinbe thinks.

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

[ofcowardiceandkings]

companion piece of young Link

AAHH i finally finished something :'D

i've uh had some very specific Thoughts about Zelda's childhood for a while now so its about time i put them to paper - this is actually round TWO since the original doodles are lost to ... somewhere ... i like these second editions better though so alls well that ends well

we're looking at ages around 4, 7 and 10 years old here touchin bugs in the dirt, archery practice, and playing a lyre ;w;

more detailed Thoughts under the cut 💙

iiitssss customary ranting about my BotW/TotK opinions tiiiimeeee welcome my darlingsss jfkdjfkd 💙

i had a much more solid idea about where i was going with Zelda than with Link but some of it is kinda abstract or weird lol

we know a fair amount about her upbringing in general, or can infer as much from Zelda's interactions with her father and what they and people around them wrote. she was clearly a smart and vivacious kid with a strong personality from the start, no matter how much you sort of squash that shit for the public face, repression etc. so yknow, her mother's death when she was 6, awful. her father's change in attitude especially in her teens, awful. being under public scrutiny her whole life, awful. restrictive structure of royal life, dull (i bet it bored Zelda to death at times no matter how strongly duty-oriented she is). having said that though, she got by and just by looking at her study, she clearly got stuff done to herself - you can take the kid away from the science but the science stays with the kid !!!

additionally, forgive me for mentioning ... timelines ... but in my humble onion, BotW/TotK serve as a Dragon-Break scenario which are SO far in the future from other entries that ALL timelines will inevitably converge and lead to that point, so it doesnt matter any more (i dont like extended Timeline theory, Nindooty doesnt like extended Timeline theory, the current writing team seem to want shot of it, let me be). being a history guy i also subscribe to leaning on the LEGEND aspect of 100 and 1000 year games of telephone, it makes things spicy. tradition is a strange thing, we do things we dont have much of a context for anymore, we're still living with the cultural hangovers of people living when mammoths were around and no thats not hyperbole lol its WILD. ive typed around the point enough lets get going

she was a bugs girl !!!! she still IS a bugs girl lmao but if our 16 year old girlie is gonna pounce on frogs apropos of nothing, that 4 year old girlie is gonna go catch bugs in the Royal Gardens and freak out her maids or escorts with them, good for her 💅

the other two are where my timeline thing comes in; the triforce is never mentioned by name, its just there in symbolism ?? something about the blood of the goddess ?? divine sealing powers ??? no one knows in the same vein, i like to think that its traditional for Hylian Princesses to learn archery and play a lyre or harp ... but no one remembers quite WHY ?? so Zelda does. the Priestess-Princess* role means the public is aware that Zelda had formal singing training, but its not really common knowledge outside of the Castle that the Royal Girls do THIS (no one knows why that part is important either, but it stays in the Castle). she might be a little out of practice now, but give that muscle memory enough time and she might be able to really surprise people.

*this is part of the Japanese translation, at least in Kass' final song Zelda is referred to as an term roughly meaning Priestess-Princess - which makes total sense to me

ohhh my god i talked a lot okay i just love my gorl fhjdkfjdk

actual footage of me explaining my shit and going way long

[md-confessions]

So from my last post I mentioned a guy called Zack and the mod asked who he was and bro, I FUCKING DESPISE ZACK!!

Ik he's a background character that everyone forgot exists but stick with me, like, dude he's so unfunny, literally, like his entire character is that a big fucking gooner and he's horny for the Dissasembly Drones and other stuff.

In the pilot he has one line of dialogue, after V kicks Thad's ass he looks at V, whistles something and says "honestly, I would" and Thad gives him a "really?" Look before Uzi and N appear. This joke straight up kinda messed with the pacing of the scene for no reason other than a "hey guys look, our robots are hot" it adds jackshit and is so forgettable.

In Cabin Fever he's slightly better, he has like two scenes and in the first one he tries to flirt with V and fails miserably because she ignores him (and also he calls himself a "man of culture") and in the second while Solver Uzi is killing a bunch of her classmates, Zack looks at her and goes "to be honest, I woul-" before Uzi pounces and kills him. Literally the first joke was kinda funny until that dumbass man of culture thing Hentai addicts call themselves, and the second scene was just a rehash of the one in the pilot but with Solver Uzi instead of V.

Thank God they killed his ass off, tbh I think the fandom hated him SO much they all collectively agreed to say Zack didn't exist.

Zack was so annoying the fandom forgot he existed and good for them.

heads-up: sometimes i can't tell if stuff like this is actually real! clarification is much appreciated.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Concerned About Bad Faith Readers

Anonymous asked: Hello, I’m the anon who asked about the bad-faith readers. I'm also concerned about my own worldview or lived experiences not being the same as the bad-faith readers and them pouncing on me for that, which is something I’ve seen online. I’m an Indian Muslim who grew up in a very urban and progressive family, and my experiences with life and especially my religion are very different compared to many other Indians or Muslims (Indian or not), to say nothing about non-Muslim British/American readers who form a large part of the English-language readership. If I create a character based on my own experiences or relationship with my faith, my concern is that people would accuse me of “representing Muslims badly” or “not including X experience” or “not including Y group” in my writing because they’ve seen it in their country. But I’m not from that country and I’ve not had those experiences, so it’s not necessarily something that would be a part of my character’s story if they’re based on me. So that’s something that I’ve been concerned about. Thank you!

[Ask edited for length]

Bad faith readers go into books looking for something to hate or criticize. Their complaints can't be qualified by concerns about representation based on different lived experiences or differing worldviews. They're there only to tear a book and author down.

Bad faith readers don't choose random targets. They typically go after authors who run afoul of the reading community due to bad behavior. For example: poor response to being called out for representation issues, showing up in review spaces, arguing with or complaining about reviews/reviewers, or perpetuating harmful beliefs. If you're not out there doing those things, you have little to worry about from bad faith readers.

This is quite different from readers who take issue with your representation because it falls short of their lived experience, excludes or minimizes important representation, or is harmful in some way. This is not "bad faith." It's a qualified concern coming from someone with a different background who is demanding better representation. Without these voices, readers wouldn't have made the strides it has. And there's still so much more work to do, so these voices are just as important now as ever before.

In Anon's particular situation: consider why other Muslims might see your portrayal as bad representation. Is there anything you could do to clarify that this isn't misrepresentation but representation of a different experience? Consider why people might be concerned that you've left out X experience. Is there a reasonable expectation that this experience should be represented in your story? (For example: If I'm setting my story in a real world neighborhood in a real world city, and that neighborhood has long been populated by immigrants from a particular country, and they have been fighting gentrification for the past decade, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge and include this group of people and their fight against gentrification in my story.) Consider why people might be concerned that you left out Y group... is there a legitimate reason why people might expect Y group to be represented? (For example: If I'm writing a story that takes place in a small Louisiana town, I'm not going to feel bad for not having a character from the Scandinavian Sámi culture, because it's not reasonable to expect Sámi representation in a story based in Louisiana. However, if I'm writing a story that takes place in Arctic Europe in an area where there's a large Sámi population, there's now a reasonable expectation for Sámi representation in my story.) If the reader doesn't have a reasonable expectation for you to include X experience or Y group, don't worry about it. Just make sure your story is reflective of the real world and the time, place, and people of your setting.

At the end of the day, it really isn't possible to write a perfect book that pleases every reader, but we can try. Here are some things you can do to help minimize concerns about your representation and to avoid running afoul of trouble if you inadvertently make a mistake or fall short:

1 - Look at your story and consider how your lived experiences, privilege, colonial mindsets, preferences, and biases impact your representation of a character or situation and how that could potentially be harmful to readers from different backgrounds than yours. What can you change to be more inclusive or avoid anything harmful?

2 - Employ beta readers and sensitivity readers from a variety of relevant backgrounds to help improve representation and minimize harm.

3 - Stay out of review spaces. Reviews are for readers, not for authors. If you do see a review or rating that you disagree with, do not reply or otherwise comment. Do not message the reviewer. Do not complain about the review or rating on social media. Not even in a way that you think is subtle or veiled. Just do not comment. It isn't there for you.

4 - Avoid "hot takes," "unpopular opinion," and other knee-jerk reaction type posts on social media as you're far more likely to say something that's harmful in ways you don't realize. Instead, just as an exercise for self-improvement, write the thought down and analyze it... consider the ways in which your background, experiences, privilege, and biases might be blinding you to ways in which this mindset is unkind or harmful.

5 - If you're called out for representation issues, listen to what people are saying and learn from it. Apologize. Vow to educate yourself and commit to do better.

I hope that helps! ♥

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[aibidil]

Second obviously to the real harm done to trans people, what pisses me off so much about jkr's trans hatred is that she functionally put the brakes on nuanced discussions of gender in public spaces. Instead of talking about how gender is a long con and trying to conceptualize how we'd think differently about gender if we lived in a different kind of society (absent misogyny and other oppressions, where socialization happened differently, or in a world where gender isn't the primary organizing principle, or in a world where butler's heterosexual matrix didn't apply), we HAVE to instead talk about nothing but the very important fact that trans people have a right to exist. We have to do that because nothing could be more important than that. But the way this has hijacked our ability to have discussions and share insights is wild. My friends who teach Gender Studies in colleges report that they can't engage the material as deeply because everyone in the room is either spouting or refuting terf bs. We know that terfs and fascists are watching and ready to pounce with jkr talking points, and any nuanced discussion will be immediately derailed and useless.

And this is a strategy of the right. One they plan for and one they take advantage of opportunistically. They know that the free flow of information and knowledge favors leftist, anti-oppressive aims. They know they're better off arguing about drug crimes than anti-blackness, abortion rights than the poor treatment/pay/health of mothers, gay marriage than true acceptance of a range of divergent sexualities, causes of autism than the mistreatment of ND people in school and the workplace, welfare queens than intractable poverty, the legality of all-ages drag shows than how certain visible genders are rendered as criminal, whether trans people should exist than the deep social/cultural roots of transphobia.

And to some extent, we have to answer these deflections—because they're important. But it pisses me off. Maybe we can try to remember that yes, they can deflect and regress the discourse, but we can see that rhetorical move and resist it in the spaces where it's possible to.

What that requires us to do on the left, if we want to do that effectively, is to be really clear about what we're not arguing about ("The starting point of what I'm saying is that trans people exist and are oppressed and we're all against that oppression; that's not part of my argument at all because I know we agree on that...") The difficult thing about this is that it's so much easier to do this in person rather than online. Social media favors quick posts and replies and favors gotchas. And for so many queer communities, our connection comes not from local spaces but from online ones. I'm not sure what I think all of this means, other than that we need to be aware of the dynamics and do what we can to guard against them.

[kellterntempest]

Some Stobotnik subnautica AU thoughts today :))

Leviathan!Stone starts visiting Robotnik's base habitat more and more often, bringing Robotnik rare minerals and pieces from hidden architect structures. Ion cubes, architect artifacts, magnetite, rubies, diamonds, and even reaper bones.

To locate and bring each artifact proves he has impressive knowledge of each region of the ocean, which is very attractive in his culture. The more traveled and knowledgeable you are of the world, surviving in the most dangerous waters and bringing back something to show for it, the better mate you will be for migration and nesting.

And Stone thinks he's being so direct and obvious with his gifts, but really the cultural significance is just not landing, and Robotnik has no idea. He doesn't register the intention, he's just pleased to get rare resources for nothing.

"Excellent, just what I needed! You know what's hilarious? After dealing with all those human leeches assigned to me, you're possibly the best assistant I've ever had."

Stone thinks that "assistant" is a human term of endearment, and he trills with happiness to be finally praised. He pounces on Robotnik, licking his face and head all over with his big tongue (Much to Robotnik's startled surprise)

After barely sliding away from the rather slimy affections of his 18 ft long, nearly two ton leviathan companion, Robotnik demands that Stone show him where he found everything, so he can harvest more of the resources for his future rocket blueprint.

Stone guides him to all the known locations of hidden architect structures he knows of. Robotnik quickly figures out how to activate the island-to-island and facility teleportation portals, and the discovery changes everything, making his research so much easier. Robotnik would have discovered them on his own, of course! But it would have taken him much longer.

After the exciting breakthrough discovery of the portals, Robotnik allows Stone to give him physical affection. "Alright, fine–" he grumbles, but he is not so reluctant this time. "You may lick my head. Once. But don't touch the stache."

[batboyblog]

LOUISVILLE — She wanted to hear Henry’s voice again. So she went to her son’s room on an overcast February day and started digging through the boxes he left behind, looking for something he’d written to give her guidance.

Henry Berg-Brousseau always knew what to say.

Eight years had passed since he’d told Kentucky lawmakers how it felt, at 16, to be the only transgender student at his high school. Eight weeks had passed since he’d killed himself, at 24, at his Northern Virginia apartment.

It was Henry who’d inspired his mother, Karen Berg, to run for Kentucky’s state Senate, helping her win a seat in an overwhelmingly Republican legislature now contemplating a pile of anti-trans bills.

All morning long, the doctor turned Democratic lawmaker had been pacing around her Louisville house, trying to figure out what she could say to stop them.

“Don’t shake. Don’t cry. Don’t let your voice waver,” Karen, 61, muttered to herself as she did the laundry. “Short and sweet is better.”

Henry, who’d worked as a press secretary for a major LGBTQ advocacy group, often reminded her to speak in sound bites, to repeat phrases so listeners could absorb the message.

But would the people with power in Frankfort pay attention?

It was an election year in Kentucky, and amid America’s widening cultural rifts, Republicans were pouncing on gender identity issues. Already, almost a dozen new anti-trans laws had been proposed in Kentucky: censoring books on gender, barring doctors from providing hormone therapy to trans teens, banning them from certain restrooms and locker rooms.

Five days earlier, a senator running for lieutenant governor had stood a few feet from Karen and introduced legislation to allow teachers to use students’ birth names and pronouns against their wishes. He was greeted with thunderous applause from colleagues.

Karen, one of just six Democrats in the Senate, couldn’t believe it.

Now she headed down to the basement and sat among the 30 boxes that had arrived from Henry’s apartment in Arlington.

“I keep searching for his smell, but I can’t find it,” she said, rooting through his old shirts.

She found herself returning to his childhood bedroom.

“God, I could use his advice right now,” she said quietly, as she leafed through his high school yearbooks.

It was in ninth grade — when Henry came out as transgender to his classmates — that the cruelty and isolation peaked. Parents Karen had known for more than a decade called to say they didn’t want Henry talking to their kids anymore. Bullies hacked his Tumblr blog and repeatedly sent him messages telling him to kill himself. The first of several suicide attempts followed soon after.

From one crate, she pulled a thick stack of binders from Henry’s time at George Washington University in D.C.

“These must’ve been from his classes when he came home during covid,” she said. As she flipped through them, the neatly penciled handwriting on one college-ruled page jumped out at her.

“Oh my God,” she whispered as she made out the first words on the page.

“What am I living for?” it read. “Why? What is keeping me?”

Underneath, her son had written out in tidy columns across two pages the apparent pros and cons of killing himself.

“I can’t,” Karen said, struggling to breathe. “I didn’t expect this. I’m not ready.”

She laid the pages down.

She thought about the hour-long drive to Frankfort the next morning and the eight-week legislative session still ahead. She thought about the fellow state senators she planned to plead with in private. And about the floor speech she was still composing to persuade them to back away from more anti-transgender laws — for her sake, for the sake of her son, for the sake of others like him.

“If they’re going to pass these bills,” she said, “I want them to see me and my dead child and know that they are killing other Henrys out there.”

Continue

every single line of this is heart breaking.

[mable-stitchpunk]

Were the kingdoms in AFE/AFGC based on any country or culture? Or were they more generic medieval european fantasy

Actually, yes! But they were kept a little on the vague side as well, with some taking inspiration from more than one country and others a little more fantasy than reality.

Acalathoy itself was based off of Germany- specifically the portions of the country that are marshy or wetlands. Some of the buildings are loosely described to resemble medieval German dwellings and the country itself, Durchnässt, is German for 'wet' or 'soaked'.

Olaylark, in contrast, was sort of to have it be the idealized sort of fantasy kingdom, if you get my drift. It's full of passages and pretty architecture, but is somewhat detached from its own location. Olaylark is secluded within its walls while Acalathoy is at the mercy of its heartland. XD

That being said, Olaylark was framed to be in an area that is on the edge of a ocean like the Mediterranean. Filomena herself was an ethnicity that was stylized to match- being based off of Greek, but not given a name as, you know, Greece doesn't exist there.

Though the one that took the most inspiration was Perlosophes, the City of Mages. Despite the name, Perlosophes was built with a mixture of ancient Persia and Babylon (specifically the ancient wonder the Babylon Gardens) in mind. Especially the Babylon Gardens, really. There's been plenty of debate on if they really existed but the idea about them always fascinated me.

But that being said again, I didn't make the culture to similar to real life. Largely because I didn't want to end up portraying a culture I do not fully understand in a questionable way. So, the locations are more inspired by those real-life locals, but the actual locations themselves were more fantasy oriented.

One of the things I thought was kinda cool was that the word magus can mean sorcerer OR a member of a caste in ancient Persia. You better believe I pounced on that!

[misano17]

I’ve had this idea rattling around my head for a bit:

poly Eden little mermaid au.

Jun is the little mermaid.

(Long text post ahead)

Hiyori is his bestie and potential future boyfriend lmao. He’s also one of the sea witches attendants, so ehe.

Ibara is also one of the sea witches attendants.

Nagisa is the sea witch.

There is no prince.

So Jun really doesn’t want to be a mermaid, mfer met some gamer guys by the shore one day and decided he fucking hated being a fish man. Ya know, ostracized for associating with humans, infatuated with humans culture in a society that shuns it and also eats humans, not fun for Jun.

His only real friend under the water is Hiyori. Sad for Jun tbh, really sucks buddy.

Anyways Nagisa is getting kind of jealous of this Sazanami guy that’s hanging around his Tomoe. + Hiyori hears Jun’s plight and recommends that Jun gets help from the sea witch.

This combination will not end well for Jun.

So Jun goes to sea(haha) the witch.

(Nagisa and Ibara discuss their little evil scheme beforehand, without Hiyori cuz lying and keeping stuff from your partners is really cool guys I swear.)

Nagisa hides his form from Jun during their deal cuz it factors into his evil little scheme.

Anyways the deal is that Jun must find his true love in three months and get them to kiss him before his time is up, or he will turn to sea foam. Not looking good for a guy that plays league. True love for a gamer, haha, very funny Nagisa. It would have been more merciful to just rip his pancreas out and turn it into mince meat.

(Also no mermaid form for him during this time, once he surfaces he will lose his tail and his ability to breath underwater)

Jun surfaces by the beach house his gamer friends have been chilling in and calls out to them. Natsume, Sora, and Makoto are pretty fucking psyched to be able to let Jun play on a home console now instead of a handheld. (RIP to the Xbox they managed to drag onto that beach with 18 extension cords and a small television, it fucking rained about five minutes after and that bitch got fried)

Also Jun has one of those Barbie movie necklaces, it has like three pearls on it. The pearls are each a different color, one’s white, one’s light green, and the other is magenta. HUH I WONDER WHAT THOSE COLORS MEAN. Jun just thinks it’s an ugly necklace <//3 but when he tries to take it off it feels like lightning is shooting through his extremities and his nerves are being put in a tub of boiling water, so he leaves it on. His gamer friends think it’s a countdown cuz like “Oh, three months”. Natsume thinks otherwise.

Natsume is so fucking smart. Love him for that.

Anyways Jun doesn’t really know how to look for his soulmate or whatever so he just doesn’t <//3 he legit goes “Well, living up here with my real friends for three months is better than living down there miserable for the next seventy years, so I’d rather die here with you guys.” And his friends are understandably sad about this but they accept his words.

Hiyori, who was listening from the little porch next to the beach house cuz ehe, this house is on the goddamn water front, gets real fucking pissed, cuz like “excuse me, real friends?” And “Wait, did Jun just say he is going to die? That is not the deal Nagisa and I agreed to give him, I will not stand for this.”

So he calls out to Jun when his gamer friends leave the house for the day (The house is like their queer little man cave and summer hangout spot but it’s got a kitchen and a few bedrooms so they let Jun crash there.)

As soon as he has Jun alone he is fucking pouncing.

Mfer gives himself legs and struts right up to Jun, who is just trying to enjoy a nice dinner of, whatever it is that Sora left for him. (Hiyori is a sea witches attendant so he has a bit of magic, just enough to change his own form)

Anyways they have a talk and Hiyori really doesn’t get anywhere but they do agree to keep hanging out for Jun’s last three months even though Hiyori is super pissed about it.

After they hang out and Hiyori tries human foods and decides he fucking hates them they share a tender moment and Jun comes to a few realizations about where his soulmate might be but decides not to voice it, Hiyori goes back to the sea.

Nagisa is in for the verbal berating of his life. Holy fucking shit.

After Hiyori’s trounces Nagisa’s evil plan in the market place of ideas (He convinces no one, least of all Nagisa to stop his plan and instead spurs Nagisa on to send Ibara to drive a wedge between Hiyori and Jun)

So, this does not go and Nagisa intended.

First of all Ibara’s meddling doesn’t work.

Hiyori and Jun end up kissing after Jun shows Hiyori around the human town and Jun jokes that this is like a date, and Hiyori decides now would be a great time to see how kissing another man feels when there isn’t water between his lips. The green pearl starts glowing.

Jun is like, “wait, holy shit, does this mean I’m a full human now, I got my true loves kiss :):)”

So Hiyori uses his magic to check, and “Oh, uhm, you’re still a mermaid.”

“What?”

“The seal isn’t complete, you have more than one soulmate.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Jun is not pleased.

Ibara does not know all of this.

So Hiyori kind of sort of tricks him into thinking that Jun hasn’t received a kiss yet, and makes Ibara act rashly, cuz Hiyori knows that Ibara takes any information he is given and formulates plans off of it.

So Hiyori uses the fact that he seems possessive to make it seem like he’d be really upset if someone else kissed Jun or stole his first kiss.

Ibara ends up spending time with Jun to try and make the whole thing seem realistic cuz he’s gonna “Steal Jun from his true love and make him lose the deal”

Bitch catches feelings, Jun also catches feelings, two of the pearls are now glowing.

Jun has two boyfriends now, and so does Hiyori, and so does Ibara. Their communication is on point.

Anyways, Nagisa gets involved.

I’ll continue this more later, I’ve already got all of it in my head I just need to get other stuff done tonight.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Sherman

Published: May 8, 2023

On May 7, 2023 a new documentary series by the filmmaker Michael Nayna, titled The Reformers, premiers on Substack (Part 1 is free, the additional 3 parts are paywalled). It's worth watching. The series is about the Sokal Squared hoaxed papers that revealed the hallow obscurantism of grievance studies. Here’s the description and trailer:

Skeptic magazine revealed the first Sokal Squared hoax paper, titled “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct: A Sokal-Style Hoax on Gender Studies.” The original paper is full of academic balderdash. For example:

We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity.

And:

We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.

And:

Inasmuch as masculinity is essentially performative, so too is the conceptual penis. The penis, in the words of Judith Butler, “can only be understood through reference to what is barred from the signifier within the domain of corporeal legibility” (Butler, 1993). The penis should not be understood as an honest expression of the performer’s intent should it be presented in a performance of masculinity or hypermasculinity. Thus, the isomorphism between the conceptual penis and what’s referred to throughout discursive feminist literature as “toxic hypermasculinity,” is one defined upon a vector of male cultural machismo braggadocio, with the conceptual penis playing the roles of subject, object, and verb of action.

In their exposé the authors of the hoaxed paper, James Lindsey and Peter Boghossian, offer two reasons for their hoax: (1) the pretentious nonsense that often passes for scholarship in postmodernism studies, and (2) the lax standards of some peer-reviewed journals. Critics of the hoax pounced on the second, claiming that the journal that published their nonsensical paper, Cogent Social Science, is a lowered-tiered journal and therefore the hoax was a failure. My motivation for publishing the exposé focused on the first problem. To me, it wouldn’t have mattered if the hoax were published in the Annals of Improbable Research, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, or even the Onion. The point, for me, is not to fool journal editors, but to expose scholarship that passes for cogent argumentation in support of a thesis that is, in fact, what Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, and their colleagues call “pseudo-profound bullshit.”

Bullshit, they write, is language “constructed to impress upon the reader some sense of profundity at the expense of a clear exposition of meaning or truth.” Bullshit is meant to impress through obfuscation; that is, to say something that sounds profound but may be nonsense. It may not be nonsense, but if you can’t tell the difference then, to quote Strother Martin’s character from the 1967 Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke, “what we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Compare, for example, any of the passages from the “Conceptual Penis” hoax to the abstract for the 2016 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Progress in Human Geography titled “Glaciers, Gender, and Science”:

Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers—particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge—remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

When this paper was published I thought it was a hoax, so I contacted the University of Oregon, the institution of the paper’s authors, and confirmed it was real. And this is just one of countless examples, posted daily on Twitter @RealPeerReview and retweeted all over the Internet to the amusement of readers who cannot decipher what most of these articles are even about, much less comprehend their arguments and gain value from their conclusions.

What matters to me is the truth about reality (lower t and lower r), which science is best equipped to determine. Ever since the 1980s there has been a movement afoot in academia in which postmodernism has encroached on some of biology, much of social science (especially cultural anthropology), and most of history, literature, and the humanities, in which the claim is made that there is no truth to be determined because there is no reality to study. Nearly everything—from race and gender to genes and brains—is socially constructed and linguistically determined by our narratives. And the more obfuscating those narratives are about these socially constructed non-realities, the better. This is the very opposite of how science should be conducted and communicated, and it is, in part, why we are currently witnessing the campus madness involving student protests—and even violence—when their unscientific postmodern unreal worldviews collide with the reality of contradictory facts and opposing viewpoints. It’s time we put a stop to the lunacy and demand critical thinking and clear communication.

The Morality of Hoaxes

The beauty and power of a well-executed hoax is that it reveals deeper truths not only about both the victims of the hoax and the hoaxers themselves, but about human nature and the foibles of our belief systems.

Decades of careful and extensive research into cognition and the psychology of how beliefs are formed reveals that none of us simply gather facts and draw conclusions from them in an inductive process. What happens is that most of us most of the time arrive at our beliefs for a host of psychological and social reasons have little or nothing to do with logic, reason, empiricism, or data. Most of our beliefs are shaped by our parents, our siblings, our peer groups, our teachers, our mentors, our professional colleagues, and by the culture at large. We form and hold those beliefs because they provide emotional comfort, because they fit well with our life styles or career choices, or because they work within the larger context of our family dynamics or social network. Then we build back into those beliefs reasons for why we hold them. This process is driven by two well-known cognitive biases: the hindsight bias, where once an event has happened or a belief is formed it is easy to look back and reconstruct not only how it happened or was formed, but also why it had to be that way and not some other way; and the confirmation bias,, in which we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence.

Given this state of our cognitive limitations, it should not surprise us that a movement arose in the 1980s that is variously described as postmodernism, deconstructionism, or cognitive relativism. Going far beyond cognitive psychology and leaning heavily on Marxist notions of cultural and class determinism, this academic movement came to believe that there are no privileged truths, no objective reality to be discovered, and no belief, idea, hypothesis, or theory that is closer to the truth than any other. In time, the movement spilled out of lit-crit English departments into the history and philosophy of science, as professional philosophers and historians, swept up in a paroxysm of postmodern deconstruction, proffered a view of science as a relativistic game played by European white males in a reductionistic frenzy of hermeneutical hegemony, hell bent on suppressing the masses beneath the thumb of dialectical scientism and technocracy. Yes, some of them actually talk like that, and one really did call Newton’s Principia a “rape manual.”

In 1996 the New York University physicist and mathematician Alan Sokal put an end to this intellectual masturbation with one of the greatest hoaxes in academic history. Sokal penned a nonsensical article entitled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” choc-a-block full of postmodern phrases and deconstructionist tropes interspersed with scientific jargon, and submitted it to the journal Social Text, one of two leading publications frequented by fashionably obtuse academics. One sentence from the article, plucked randomly from the text, reads as follows:

It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical “reality”, no less than social “reality”, is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific “knowledge”, far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities.

Sokal’s article was accepted for publication (as “real”, whatever that means in postmodernism), and upon release Sokal revealed it was all a hoax, and did so, deliciously, in the chief competitor of Social Text, the journal Dissent. Sokal called it a nonsense parody, but because most of what passes for postmodernism is nonsense and indistinguishable from parody, the editors of Social Text could not tell the difference! Q.E.D.

Subsequently, Sokal published a comprehensive book-length explanation, Beyond the Hoax, that provides readers with an annotated edition of the original article (explaining how he came up with each and every meaningless phrase!), the subsequent article in Dissent in which he explained himself to the disgruntled readers of Social Text, and a number of subsequent articles and essays he wrote in the decade since the hoax in which he elaborated on the problems inherent in postmodern philosophy of science. The golden nugget within this longish book—worth the price of admission by itself—is the annotated parody. For example, explaining the above passage, divided up into the semi-colon phrases, Sokal writes (with ellipses denoting the phrase explanations):

This statement is, of course, absurd, but it reflects several conceits of “postmodern” theoretical writing. First of all, reality (even physical reality) has become in certain circles a no-no concept, which must be placed in scare quotes. … This assertion is a commonplace (dare I say a cliché) in radical-social-constructivist writing about science. Like most clichés, it contains a grain of truth but greatly exaggerates the case. Above all, it fails to make the crucial distinction between actual knowledge (i.e. rationally justified true belief) and purported knowledge. … The theory-ladenness of observations goes back at least to physicist-philosopher Pierre Duhem in 1894; it poses problems for the most naïve falsifiability theories but by no means undercuts the epistemic claims of science. … This statement is silly, but it strikes the right emotional chords: against “privilege” (especially scientists’ privilege) and in favor of the “counter-hegemonic”, the “dissident”, and the “marginalized”. … Note, finally, that the four assertions contained in this sentence are at the very least debatable (if not downright absurd); certainly some argument in their favor ought to be required. But the editors of Social Text were happy to publish an article in which these assertions are taken for granted. Apparently in certain circles nowadays these assertions are taken for granted.

Hoaxes are one of the most powerful tools of instruction and edification ever created because they reveal a weakness in human cognition involving gullibility and self-deception. As long as no one is hurt in the process and the reveal in the end is complete and honest, hoaxes are a form of magic.

Magicians, for example, intentionally deceive their audiences, but as long as they are not claiming to use paranormal or supernatural powers (so-called “real magic”), magic can be one of the best tools for understanding how the mind works by revealing how easily it is tricked. From a scientist’s and skeptic’s perspective, magicians like Penn and Teller are effective because they not only deceive their audiences, they often also reveal how the tricks are done in order to make a deeper point about deception, self-deception, and honesty. A properly executed hoax can be as entertaining and educational as a good magic show.

Moral objections to hoaxes should be reasonably considered, of course, but as long as no one is hurt in the process and the hoax is revealed in the end and shown to be executed with good intentions to make a deeper point, there is nothing unethical or immoral about hoaxing, and in fact the beauty and power of a well-executed hoax is that it reveals deeper truths not only about both the victims of the hoax and the hoaxers themselves, but about human nature and the foibles of our belief systems.

Why do people fall for such hoaxes? The hindsight bias and the confirmation bias. Once you believe that science holds no privileged position in the search for truth, and that it is just another way of knowing, it is easy to pull out of such hoaxed articles additional evidence that supports your belief. It is a very human process, and since science is conducted by very real humans, isn’t it subject to these same cognitive biases? Yes, except for one thing: the built-in process known as the scientific method.

There is progress in science, and some views really are superior to others, regardless of the color, gender, or country of origin of the scientist holding that view. Despite the fact that scientific data are “theory laden,” science is truly different than art, music, religion, and other forms of human “knowing” because it has a self-correcting mechanism built into it. If you don’t catch the flaws in your theory, the slant in your bias, or the distortion in your preferences, someone else will, usually with great glee and in a public forum, for example, a competing journal! Scientists may be biased, but science itself, for all its flaws, is still the best system ever devised for understanding how the world works.

==

It's enlightening, but also disturbing, to see the nonsensical academic shibboleths that we're surrounded by today are unchanged from Sokal's hoax almost 30 years ago when he spotted the problem.

They've been concocting buzzword-laden nonsense, peddling intellectual fraud as wisdom, and inventing fake credentials through bogus journals - aka "idea laundering" - for no less than that long.

[manyofnine]

You know how fucking insidious it is, that most of the shit i get ads vor are either meal kits or meal replacements?

"i got a busy schedule" "sometimes i forget to eat" "after a long day at work i got no energy to shop for groceries let alone cook them" "it only takes 2 minutes, 10, half an hour!" "sent directly to your doorstep" "i know the grind, the stress, would rather do anything else but concern myself with what to make for dinner" "for your lunch on the go!" "healthy" "protein plus Version" "lactose, gluten, animal free" "i always have it on me" "this way i don't have to go to the hassle" "got my mind free for more important things"

Food. They don't want to sell us food anymore but meal plans and diets and ways to shorten our interactions with it.

You know what Culture is?

It's 5 things:

Community (which they tell you to get on their highly curated Social Media sites, let the Algorithm decide when you see your friends!)

Clothes (which they already got us to give up upon so completely. You can't discern german from french from American from japanese if they all follow the same fast fashion trends)

Language (which they too are trying to overtake, everything is English, everything is pc, everything is polite, everything is "scrubbed clean for the advertisers" of course it's never going to go completely, but if i talk to my peers in my mother tongue, two thirds of the words spilling from my tongue are going to me english or anglizised)

Entertainment, meaning: Art, Music, Theater the stuff we watch and listen to, the stories we see. (which they too are trying to conform, sell for my convenience, easily reprodusable at little cost for them, blockbusters and AI-shit, industry plants and funny ad singles, everything is out to sell me shit and if my favorite podcast or youtube person tells me the same 5 selling points to the same fucking company one more time, i swear to fucking God-)

And Food.

They take everything away from us. They want us to be uniform. Fit in one of 5 labels, best yet fit in all of them. So they can market to us, so that i buy the same shit, spend my evenings the same way, talk about the same issues and never vear from the script.

Free up the time i would normally use to make a decision about who to meet, what to wear, what to say, what to watch or listen to, what eat to make more money, strive for a more productive life, be the best version of myself????! What the fucking hell?

Fuck you corporation. You might speak in my friends voice, you might look like a person i trust, you might say you have my best interests at heart, but i am eternally trying to get rid of all of you. Fuck you.

And that too is what they want, because i am amgry with no way to channel the anger. Only way i can direct it is against myself.

I don't know who is behind this drift, far too many people have found "market holes and niches" far too many people pounced on the opportunity to make quick buck out of the misery of the everyday worker, far too many want the money i earned, promising me that i shall feel a connection, a bit of relief, freedom, time for myself, a good feeling at giving to a good cause or person. Promising me, if i just made a bit more, if i was just that bit better, as a person, as a productive member of society, i would deserve the time that i so selfishly take for myself every evening when i cook, every long phone call that i lie on my bed, every moment where i do not cunsume content mindlessly.

They've long since taken any connection i might have had to my home, now i just need to conform.

That's why conservatives gain strength, to push us all down, to make sure we follow the invisible rules of society because if you don't conform you can't be labeled, can't be put away, you will stick out and rebel or refuse and we don't want that, do we?

Fuck everything, i wanna burn the system to the ground!

[always-is-always]

Sometimes there are people in our fandom who are downright rabid.  It’s toxic behavior, and I don’t get how people can so easily be that way towards total strangers.  There is a hyper-protection mechanism that kicks in and people literally attack others without a second thought.  All in the name of protecting one or all of the guys (BTS), when many times they don’t understand fully what the situation or question is.  We have seen it over and over again, especially when crossing language, culture, and religious boundaries.  

I recently was pounced on by a couple of people who didn’t like a question I asked.  I naively asked, as that is my nature when I don’t understand something.  Sometimes I will look online for answers, and sometimes I’ll go directly to ARMY.  When it is related to cultural matters, I have very little understanding as I am from the West.  I don’t have any direct connections with anyone in South Korea.  (Thanks to discovering BTS, I have taken time to read about their homeland, and attempt to learn.)  

BTS is literally my first step into the world of KPop.  Prior to them, my musical life was one filled with multiple genres, including Classical (I’m a trained musician), African, Native American, Native Sami, Pop, Rock, and New Age...  A big hodge-podge of musical tastes and experiences.  KPop was totally new.  I had zero experience in the world of the fandoms, I didn’t know what “shipping” was, had never heard of combining names (Jikook, VMin, HopeMin, etc. etc).  It took me a long minute to finally figure that one out....  lol...

I joined this platform a year ago, and all I did for the last 12 months is cruise through a handful of accounts that are focused on clear and true information.  Accounts that don’t twist and fight and create lots of negativity.  There’s enough of that in this world, and in ARMY.  

I’m older ARMY, like way older.  Lots of life experience, lots of travel in other lands, lots of friends who grew up speaking other languages, believing in God a different way, and who have taught me how to look at myself, question my beliefs, and to work hard to be a better Human every day.  Always a Student, in a Human Body.  

As we navigate into the coming time when the guys are enlisting and serving, it’s important to remember that we as ARMY have a common ground to stand upon.  That common ground is our mutual support and love for Jin, Yoongi, Namjoon, Hobi, Jimin, Tae, and Jungkook.  There is no room for toxicity, negativity, and the attacking of other ARMY’s, in that space.  The guys would NOT want it.  It’s the classic “agree to disagree”, during difficult times, when people of very different beliefs, backgrounds, and awarenesses come together for a common purpose.  It’s important that ARMY stands strong, and in peace with one another.  

I hope that we as ARMY can help to uplift one another, through the next two years.  I hope that we can be compassionate and empathetic with one another.  Truth is, one never truly knows what another is going through in life.  Sometimes, that kind word can make all of the difference for someone.  

Sending Love and Peace to everyone.  God Bless.

[chronomaza]

Got around to remaking my boy Irushiva so he's more accurate to how I see him in my head. I think it's fair to say he's a fully fledged OC now, and I'm definitely using him and his species for something writing related

Speaking of! As a bonus, here's some normal members of his species below the cut and a little bit of info about them:

An updated version of the Xorkistries! Now for some info about them, since I've expanded on them quite a bit:

They're a species of omnivorous, social, and highly territorial/aggressive, intelligent creatures from another galaxy. Their home planet, Xenarith, is an extremely hostile environment thanks to an event a billion or so years prior that caused their planet fall out of it's normal orbit and into a much closer one around their star. This, of course, caused a mass extinction event, and all surviving life is primarily active around dusk/night/dawn, 100% intersex, and either evolved extreme hypercarnivorism or omivorism and a ton of natural defences. The xorkistri, of course, evolved the ladder. The spikes on their back are used to keep predators from pouncing on them, as well as impaling them, the spikes on their tail are used like a powerful mace, the frills on their neck are used to detect subtle changes in temperature and vibrations, as well as communication, but can also be used to intimidate predators. The rest is rather self explanatory (however I should note, they're supposed to have two thumbs on their hands, too.) Because of all this, they developed a very military orientated culture and see any other life as a potential threat to their species since they don't know any better- everything on their planet is actively trying to kill them 24/7- and most things are a lot more dangerous than them. However, within their species, they form extremely close knit groups, and are very loyal to one another. I can't say what role Irushiva has in his species yet though, that's a secret for now.

[dearjohns]

i stand by my previous statements.... taylor being more accessible to her fans, while great, ruined the culture of the "fandom".

it's just a competition now of who can be the loudest. it was ALWAYS better when people were simply posting with no expectation of reward or recognition. and those people still exist. it was and is genuine.

it is extremely obvious now when "theories" and "i love you" posts are contrived and overdone simply because the creator/poster wants a like from TN/taylor or a chance to meet her (which of course we'd all love, but for us shy-er folks or grown people who have been here since 2011 but now have full time jobs, i can't be posting tiktoks dressed up as taylor begging for attention).

it's exhausting for people who have simply loved and appreciated her music from day one. i'm sure a lot of it is genuine, but some of it is so obvious that these people probably hated taylor in 2016, saw an opportunity now and pounced on it.