#drift can write!

[driftwoodmfb]

Writing a little happy end thing of @desultory-novice 's Apologies AU. I think my writing has come out a little messy, but it should still get the story across.

Part 1 out of 2(?) Context: This takes place after the main Apologies AU plot.

“A wish?” Marx gives Adeleine a quizzical look. 

“W-Well Kirby once mentioned Galactic Nova and how it could grant wishes…” She taps her index fingers together. “And you gained some of its powers, so I was wondering if–!”

Marx holds up a claw to Adeleine’s face. “Stop.”

“H-Huh!?”

“A Nova’s powers are dangerous.” He smirks “Especially in my hands. Besides, the Dreamland quartet would kill me if I got you hurt.” Marx turns to leave.

“Can you please, at least hear me out!?” She’s practically begging.

He doesn’t look back at Adeleine. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.” He snaps. “I can’t even grant wishes in the first place.” Marx leaves Adeleine alone. “What is she planning? . . . I should tell Mags.” He flies away.

Adeleine pulls out a small notebook and crosses off Marx’s name from a list. “I’m running out of options…” 

—

Several days go by and no one she talks to is able to help. Adeleine flips through many books in her room. Tears fall down on the pages. “There has to be something… something that can bring him back…”

Knock knock knock

“Adeleine?”

“Dedede?” Adeleine quickly wipes her tears with her sleeve.

“May I come in?”

“Yeah.”

Dedede opens the door. “Are you doing alright?”

“Yeah!” She forces a smile.

“You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m… not.” She buries her face into her sleeve.

He sits down next to her and pats her back. “I… I know ya haven’t been doin’ the best since findin’ out about ya brotha… I’m really sorry Adeleine. If there was anyway I could go back and-”

Adeleine chuckles. “I know, Dedede. You’ve already told me a thousand times.”

“Only a thousand? Looks like I’ve been slacking!”

They both giggle.

“Alright, Adeleine.” He gives her a kiss on her forehead. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, dad- I mean- Dedede!” Adeleine’s face goes red from embarrassment.

“Heheh, you can call me whatever you prefer.”

Adeleine nods slightly.

Dedede stands up. “I got to say goodnight to the other waddle dees.” He leaves her room. “Door open or closed?”

“Closed please.”

He closes the door. “I got her to smile and she called me dad! I’m better at this than I thought!” He does a little skip away.

Adeleine giggles to herself, having heard all of what Dedede just said. “I just hope he’ll forgive me after this.” She grabs a bag she packed earlier. “I have no other leads. This might be the only way to get Noir back… or at least make sure he’s truly no longer suffering.” She climbs out the window, only leaving a note behind.

“Please don’t worry about me. I’m going on a journey, but I will be back! I can’t tell you where though because I know you will try to drag me back or even help, but I want to do this on my own. I chose to do this and I don’t need protecting anymore! I made sure to pack more than enough supplies and I have my paintbrush if anything goes wrong. I’ll be back soon." — Adeleine

(I hope this can cheer up a little, Dess)

Edit: Part 2 is out!

[random-cockroach]

OKAY, ahah, have been rotating for some time ideas for the house in Snow bots au by Keferon, and after saw that half of characters are staff and so on I finally gave up. There are inside place for medics, separate home to live in for the staff (like constructicons) on the left side, where staff cars can stop in the garage all other cars stop in front. On the other side also livable houses + hot pool. Separate houses for warehouse and electricity. Separated houses to live in that are a bit in far in case someone doesn't like the hustle.

I wanted to doodle it out also because wanted to imagine how they can do crazy stuff more visibly, like sliding off the roof and falling down all these floors, breaking electricity, playing some kind of hide and seek, guessing who in which room stayed, coming together late at night on the first floor, getting into each other's room through balcony pffht

[stellewriites]

butch price x reader

cw: smut, pussy eating, fingering, bush huffing, mean price, mechanic price, freak reader, inferred as inexperienced reader (as a treat!)

thank u as always to the cloisters for cheering this series on and yapping away about butches to me. here’s the fourth & final piece of the butch love letters quadrilogy

you huffed and puffed as you paced back and forth in front of the smoking open bonnet of your shitheap car.

you were cursing your friend for convincing you to get the cutesy car over the scuffed up ford you’d seen on the secondhand marketplace the same day. that tin can wouldn’t have broken down on you unexpectedly like this; stuck in the middle of nowhere as the sun set with no reception to call triple a or even your dad for a bit of engine advice.

you’d opened the hood as soon as you’d pulled over but you had no clue what was wrong with it, just that it probably shouldn’t be smoking or hissing like that. you’d tried to take a look at the canister that was spitting bubbles at the cap but had forgotten the golden rule of Don’t Touch, Hot after you’d been driving. your fingers still ached a little from the burn.

one hand on your hip, you held your phone up with the other like it would help at all as you tried to call for help again. the hazard lights from your car were starting to become brighter than the natural light and the streetlights were dim and far apart, not offering much in lieu of the setting sun.

you really didn’t want to be stranded there for the night.

you’d ignored the cars that had passed earlier when you’d first pulled over, not expecting to need an extra hand when your paid-for car support would be arriving presumably swiftly after you called. and then when you’d realised it wouldn’t be so easy, you’d hoped that simply letting your car cool off a little would fix the issue enough to get you further down the road at least.

you’d sat behind the wheel once more and felt your stomach drop when the engine rolled; a mean, dry grinding noise coming from it instead of the usual purr.

you’d tried once more before pulling your keys free and glueing yourself back to your phone as your last hope. you knew there was no way you’d be able to walk for help, especially not with how long you’d waited and how dark it was quickly becoming.

short of a miracle, you’d be stuck there until someone passed by in the morning and could maybe tow your little fiat to the nearest garage.

the rumble of a bike had your spiralling thoughts stopping in their tracks and your head snapping up towards the road. you felt your eyes widen as the rider pulled over, stopping a little ways behind you.

they climbed off the impressive bike easily, thick thighs nudging it to stay in place as they nudged the kickstand in place, and removed their helmet.

you wondered for a moment if you’d managed to hallucinate the woman stood before you - a miracle after all - with her close cropped hair glittering with greys spattered throughout. you stared shamelessly at the clustering of them at the shaved sides, but wondered at the way the low light caught the peppering of them through the messy, longer trim on the top.

“what’s the problem?” the woman asked, her voice firm but light.

you swallowed thickly and dragged your eyes down to her face, not that it was a difficult task to look at her. she was gorgeous and you felt your knees knock as you watched her come closer.

her sarcastically cocked eyebrow reminded you that you’d not yet answered her and you cleared your throat before shyly shrugging.

“it just started smoking so i pulled over. couldn’t tell where it was coming from but the engine won’t start,” you said and stepped out of the way so she could have a look. her lips thinned as she carefully dug around inside. you felt the need to fill the sudden silence and stepped back to her side, your hip pressed to the car but still giving her enough space so you weren’t touching. “it had been hissing for a while before.”

“hissing?” she asked as she looked up at you, her hands veering towards the left at your confirmation.

“mhmm. for maybe the last mile or two,” you said sheepishly.

“you kept driving?” she asked with a tinge of judgment. you folded your arms in front of you as you felt the look wash over you.

“no lights came on the dash,” you said a little feebly.

she blinked slowly, as though processing what you’d said before turning back to the car.

you had the distinct feeling that she thought you were an idiot. you dug your fingers into your arms as you watched uselessly. maybe you were.

“y’radiators gotten too hot with no water, cracked the water tank. it’s no wonder the engine wouldn’t start, y’wont be able to drive it ‘til it’s fixed, could set the engine on fire,” she said as she pointed out the things she was talking about. she stood back up straight and turned to you as your heart sank.

“fuck,” you swore heartily and clenched your eyes shut. that sounded expensive.

“i know a local garage that can sort it for you, decent rates,” she offered, her voice a touch softer than it had been so far. “i can give you a lift too.”

you opened your eyes just in time to watch her nod to her bike and start walking.

“oh, i don’t know if i should leave my car here…”

“we’ll call up a service to collect it as soon as we’re in range, won’t get any signal out here,” she said and pulled out a spare helmet from the back of her bike as if it was already decided, you were just late to the game. she pulled her own on with practised ease and held out the other towards you with a tilt of the head.

you darted back to your car and grabbed your bag before turning off the hazards, locking the door and finally joining her. you introduced yourself and waited for her to do the same.

“you can call me price,” she said brusquely, not returning your smile.

not the friendly introduction you’d been hoping for, but you were grateful for a name to put to the face all the same.

price didn’t hesitate before pushing the helmet onto your head, knocking your chin up with her finger in order to clip the strap in place. you stood frozen as she straddled her bike, lost for a moment at the unexpected touch and not seeing the impatient nod of her head to the space behind her.

“haven’t got all night, love. are you getting on or not?” price snapped, eyes flinty as they stared you down beneath the open visor.

“right, yes, sorry,” you stuttered, scrambling to her side. you paused at the height of the bike, the length of your summer dress not allowing for much movement before you’d inevitably flash your saviour; but at the memory of her sharp look, you tried to balance yourself and quickly lift your leg over the seat.

you were conscious of your size and weight behind her as soon as your arse hit the leather, shuffling back to give her room. you ran hot at the best of times and you couldn’t imagine she’d like a heater pressed along her back for the ride ahead given how testy she’d been already.

balancing behind her without clinging on was tricky however, with your toes just scraping the ground to keep you in place. even with your grip on her jacket at her waist you didn’t feel particularly sturdy.

you saw more than heard her sigh as her shoulders lifted then dropped in front of you and then suddenly her strong hands were on your thick thighs as she tugged you forward, slotting you so you were cradling her hips flush against your own.

“you need to hold on tight,” she said plainly and tugged your arms around her sturdy middle, tightening your grip further with a scoff when you automatically loosened it once she’d let go. you clenched your hands together above her belt and finally it seemed you’d done something right as she set off, kicking the stand up and revving, checking the empty road as she pulled out.

your dress fluttered in the wind; never mind flashing her as you’d climbed on, you would definitely be giving her a show now if she had the mind to look down and back at you. but you were too busy to fuss with the flighty material, instead concentrating on staying attached as she took corners sharply, dipping and weaving and tilting the bike so you’d have to clench your legs tighter and tighter against hers.

every time your knees felt like they could touch the asphalt, you hid your face in her back as best you could with the bulky helmet hindering your way, but you could still feel the way her shoulders shook with a laugh. you were inclined to pretend it was just the rumble of the engine, but you were more than aware of the difference in vibrations at your core and although both had you squirming, you knew they weren’t one and the same.

the ride was short - a blessing and a curse - and soon you were pulling up to a garage; lights turned off and clearly closed for the evening.

you felt disappointment bloom as you stumbled off the bike but price didn’t let it linger. unlocking the garage door and pressing a button on the attached fob to send the shutter lifting. she pushed her bike inside and you followed without needing to be told.

you stood near the entrance as you watched her walk around, clearly familiar with the workshop. you let your gaze drift, taking in the few cars parked inside the sprawling space, hoods down and doors presumably locked while they weren’t being worked on, tools packed away at their stations not necessarily neatly but clearly with care.

a hand on your lower back had you jumping and you turned to see price at your side, ushering you further in until you were sat on a tall stool next to a workbench.

you noticed as she walked away that she’d taken off her jacket and your eyes caught on a tattoo on the outside of her bicep, a labrys. simple in its design, and clear in its message.

you tried not to stare too hard, but your eyes kept snapping back to trace the lines that made up the two headed axe, especially as she moved and her bicep bulged. your throat felt suspiciously dry all of a sudden.

you played with the little orange carabiner attached to your bag strap, your keys jingling softly in the silence of the garage.

price was at the other side of the room, head leant against her raised shoulder to keep her phone in place as she spoke into the receiver and wrote something down at the same time. you saw her frown and roll her eyes and bit your lip, heat pooling below your gut. you watched as she said something indistinct before hanging up and calling a new number.

you felt yourself grow fidgety and sat on your hands to keep yourself still, the solid wood seat sobering with how unforgiving it was against the back of your hands as your palms and fingers gripped the underside of your sweaty thighs.

price laughed across the room and you tuned back in to her conversation. “l

“sure, i owe you one nik. see you in a few then,” she said and hung up her phone, slipping it into a pocket. she turned to you and her lips twitched when she found you already watching her. “found someone that’s going to tow it tonight, just need to wait here to lock it inside safe and sound before the lads can work on it in the morning. shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours before he turns up.”

“amazing, thank you,” you said, gratefully smiling at her. you swallowed and gathered what confidence you had before speaking, putting on your best flirty tone, “i don’t know how to repay you for all of this.”

price paused for a moment and watched you closely, seeming to look for something in your face to decide how she’d respond even as amusement danced in her eyes.

“i’m going to check over a few cars, make sure they haven’t been getting lazy with the work here while i’ve been away,” she said finally, ignoring your clumsy almost-proposition. you scrunched your face in annoyance and regret once she’d walked off towards the key cabinet facing away from you, wanting to bury your face in your hands as it flushed hot in embarrassment but realising they’d gone a little numb when you slipped one out from beneath you.

you could still feel it as you curled your fingers, but it was almost distant, secondary.

an idea came to the forefront of your mind. you peeked up at price as she bent over the open hood of a stranger’s car, checking the notes one of her coworkers had left from the day before and you were suddenly flooded with a deep yearning. tumultuous and red hot, it stirred between your legs as you remembered price’s firm hold on your thighs and wrists and the feeling of her settled between your legs as she laughed and ordered you around.

you breathed in shakily and let your tingling hand rest on your knee, trailing it up the sensitive skin of your inner thigh slowly as you kept your eyes on price. the last thing you needed was her catching you even if the touches could be considered innocent so far.

watching to make sure she didn’t suddenly turn around to catch you also mean you could see the shift of her muscles and weight beneath her vest; a sight you’d never say no to and one that only caused your breath to hitch as you continued the trail to the hem of your dress.

you stopped and bit your lip, unsure if you wanted to continue. it wasn’t like you’d be able to get yourself off in the middle of the garage so it would only further frustrate you and the possibility of getting caught and having to awkwardly face price the next day to get your car back after it was fixed was mortifying enough to still your trembling fingers.

“looks like you’re not the only one with a cracked water tank,” price spoke up from her spot in front of the car. her hands were on her hips before she dragged one over her short hair, scratching at the freshly shaved base of her neck. “i’ll check to see if we have a few in stock, might make it a quicker fix for you if johnny already ordered some in for this one.”

you nodded even though she didn’t look at you and you pulled your other hand out from beneath your arse. your right hand hand gained its feeling back so you dropped it in your lap; the left however was fighting pins and needles as you ran it over your stomach to your chest, squeezing lightly at your breast as shame and excitement and lust flooded through your system like lightning. your eyes slipped closed for a second and even though it felt nothing like price’s confident, sturdy grip from earlier, you couldn’t help but picture it to be her as you grazed your thumb over your nipple with a firmer pressure.

“we’ve got a spare one in stock, so we just need to double check it’ll fit, but otherwise it should be good to go tomorrow unless something else comes up when gaz checks it over.” price’s voice jolted you out of your reverie too soon, having not heard her re-enter the room, and your hand flew down to join your other in your lap, your elbow smacking back harshly against the worktop and echoing in the large empty area.

price raised her eyebrows at you, her jaw falling slack for a moment, as she watched you try to hide your deep wince of pain. a second later she started to walk over to you.

her pale blue eyes were piercing as she kept eye contact with you. “you alright?”

“yep, fine. totally ok. uhm, why?” you tried to play it off casually, landing so far from nonchalant it had price’s worry slipping off her face.

her smirk grew. “y’just smacked your elbow so hard i could hear the bone rattle.”

“oh, sorry?” you apologised uselessly.

“no need, love,” she dismissed your apology quickly, eyes still lasered in on you. “it’s just… you’re looking a little hot and bothered.”

the mean tilt to her smirk didn’t help and you felt yourself fluster and sweat anew under her pinning gaze.

she took a step closer, reaching one hand out to skim across the bare skin of your leg, unknowingly tracing the same path your hand had before. your legs turned to jelly beneath her touch in a way they didn’t under your own and seemed to naturally fall open at the slightest pressure as she urged you to make room for her to step between them.

her fingers’ path stopped at the hem of your dress before she started to bunch it up, letting the material gather at her knuckles as the tips of her finger disappeared beneath while she revealed more soft skin to her greedy gaze.

“were y’committing the view to memory for when you get home and can get your hands on whatever little toy gets you off quickest?” she asked rhetorically, her tone light but words pointed as she watched for your reaction.

you bit back a gasp.

“i can give you what you want,” she offered, voice sweet and soft once more. enticing. “what you need. you don’t have to squeeze your thighs tight for a little relief as you watch me work.”

you flushed hot at the reveal that she’d noticed you all along and shivered as her fluttering touch continued its agonisingly slow path, diverting up to your hips and away from your drooling pussy at the last second. you whimpered.

“would you like that?”

you nodded eagerly, eyes hooded and mouth panting as you watched her hands at their stand still, your panties revealed with your dress hiked up so far, taut where it was caught beneath your arse. you lifted your head to stare at her chest in front of you and then looked up into her flinty eyes, nodding again dumbly. price tutted and you felt your clit throb.

“gotta hear the words, love.”

you flushed hot, head to toe, and mumbled a shy, “i’d like that.”

“mm what was that?” she asked, cocking her head and running her hands, palm flat, back down your legs to your knees, squeezing.

“i want you to touch me,” you said louder, bashful but growing desperate. “please?” you added belatedly.

“‘please’? so polite, love. bet you always get what you want speaking like that, looking like this.”

your eyes had begun to water, glistening as frustration and need overwhelmed you; you shook your head looking up at her.

“never— never done anything like this,” you admitted.

price laughed, tickled by your answer.

“oh, you don’t fuck your mechanic usually?” she asked, pretending to be shocked. “he must not be doing a good enough job on your little kia.”

you hummed, pitchy and unconvincing, eyes growing shifty and giving away that you meant you didn’t do any of it in general. that you weren’t exactly practiced. and price picked up on that immediately.

“oh.” she smiled meanly. “that’s not it, is it? no, i bet he’s floundering for your attention, but you’re just too nervous to give him what he wants, ey? don’t want your first time to be in a dirty garage, in the back seat of some other prick’s car while your mechanic fumbles around in your knickers.”

she’d bent down low to run her lips along your neck, kissing along your neck and leaving a delciate wet trail as she kitten licked across your racing pulse. you gasped when you felt her fingers finally trail over your cunt, the thin material of your panties barely hindering the electric feel of her touch before she pulled at the band and let it snap back against your skin.

“but i think getting dirty is part of the appeal for a girl like you, pretty as you are. you want to be manhandled and marked and ruined,” she whispered hotly, her breath tickling your neck. “nahh, must be that you’re just not interested in what’s been on offer before, hm?”

“he’s nice enough,” you admitted, clinging onto price’s shoulders, “but…”

“—but he’s not what you want,” she finished for you, raising her head from your neck to kiss along your cheek and hovering over your lips. “none of them are, are they? you want something else entirely.”

you leant forward to close the gap, hoping to finally get a taste of her but she pulled back. you chased her lips until she was stood back up straight, looming over you as embarrassment flooded through you again, but pleasantly.

“bet you’ve never been touched before; never had this pretty pussy licked open, spat on.” you felt your chest heave as she spoke bluntly, looking down at you, her hips began to subtly grind against yours. “have you ever even cum on someone else’s fingers?”

“i have,” you huffed at her assessment of you, but she only laughed at your petulant tone.

“no, you haven’t,” she insisted to further wind you up. “bet you’ve not even kissed another woman.”

your breath stuttered as she focused on your lips, licking her own.

“i want to kiss you,” you said bravely.

“that’s all you had to say.”

she dipped low, hands on the worktop either side of you, and licked her way past your gasping lips. you felt overwhelmed and fully explored as the tip of her tongue flicked at yours, saliva building in your mouth as you moaned wantonly and soaked up her quiet grunts in return. she tugged you up onto your feet and in between wet kisses and tight squeezes to your soft hips she led you towards her office in the back.

you made it to her desk with minimal tripping and no bumps on your way despite not having detached to see the way there. instead you’d clung on and trusted she wouldn’t lead you into a wall or car accidentally as she hurriedly felt up your sides to your breasts.

she encouraged you to sit on the edge of the desk and plucked at one of your nipples through the thin dress with a teasing grin.

“feel better than your own hand?” she asked and dropped to her knees before you could answer.

with rough movements price hiked up your dress to reveal your panties and leant forward without hesitation to latch on to your clit through the thin cotton, eager to get you squealing.

she laughed at the restless twitch of your hips in her hands and turned her head to snicker into the fold of your thigh and groin.

“you’re more fun than i thought a virgin would be,” she goaded, eyes heavy as they gazed up at you. you fell for the bait, scoffing down at her with a pout once more as your hand rose to her short hair and yanked what your could grasp to lead her back towards your drooling cunt. you winced when her teeth clashed against your core as she grinned into your panties, endlessly amused by your brash urges hidden behind a forced shy politeness.

price reached up and tugged the material aside to lick a broad stripe up your slit, humming low at your taste and the building slick that had been steadily leaking since she’d first frowned down at you in condescension in front of your car.

“needy an’ desperate,” she huffed before focusing back on task, kitten licking at your clit as you gasped and whined. it felt like you were on fire and you couldn’t help but push up onto her tongue with jerky little thrusts when she dipped low to your hole, desperate for her to keep berating and humiliating you.

she pulled back with a wet suck and a gasp, pushing two fingers into you with no resistance as she caught her breath and licked your arousal off her lips.

she stared up at you as you shook on her fingers, practically doing all the work as you rode her hand until she decided the pace wasn’t good enough and picked up where she’d let you take over.

“fucking hell,” she whispered and nipped at the fat of your thigh. you clenched down on her fingers with a groan.

“please, please, please,” you begged airily. price smiled as she looked you over, head to toe, before nodding benevolently and dipping down to lavish your clit with attention once more.

you felt your orgasm begin to peak and wave over you with a loud, unashamed moan as she curled her fingers just right inside you, the awkward angle of her wrist doing nothing to slow her down as she prolonged your pleasure until you slumped back. spent and exhausted.

“better than your own hand?” she asked cheekily once more and you nodded dazedly.

“uh huh,” you said, remembering she liked verbal answers, and lifted a tired thumbs up at her.

she snorted and took a hold of it, pulling you up just enough to get your hand down the front of her open jeans and into her own soaked underwear.

you moaned as she guided you to slip inside and you clenched your thighs around her as if it was your own pleasure as you slowly sunk in deep. price groaned low and long, curling over you and humping against the heel of your hand where it pressed against her clit.

you weren’t as confident or practiced in your movements from this angle but you did you best to pull out those dazed moans and hitched breaths from price when you moved your fingers and your palm a certain way, repeating until you got the reaction you wanted oh so desperately from her.

price was panting into your neck after a few minutes, the skin between you clammy and you echoed her moans back to her without thought.

“w-warm, so tight,” you stuttered into her ear as you felt her clench around your fingers, nearing her own orgasm as slick ran down past the webbing of your fingers.

your enthusiasm turned price on like nothing else and she shuddered at the next prod and rub of your fingers deep inside of her.

“fucking hell, love,” she swore breathlessly, a grin tugging at her lips as she pulled back to look at your fucked our expression. “got you pussy drunk in under ten minutes and we’ve not even fucked yet. that’s a record even f’me.”

you crooked your fingers and felt a deep satisfaction when price’s jaw dropped on a silent moan, eyelashes fluttering down at you.

you watched her in awe; the way her crows feet became pronounced as her eyes squinted and her brows pulled in in pleasure, the shape of her pretty parted lips as she trembled in your hands.

“i wanna taste,” you blurted out, voice cracking with how dry your throat had become.

you struggled to free your hand and push price back a step as she grumbled, but you got enough space to hop down off the desk and drop to your knees in front of her. you yanked at her jeans without fanfare, wiggled the waistband and her underwear down to her knees before going wide-eyed at the sight of her thick bush.

feeling the soft curls against your fingers was one thing…

you leant in with abandon and pressed your nose in tight, huffing open-mouthed against her mound. soaking in the sweat, slick scent of her and moaning weakly into the damp curls.

“jesus fucking christ.” price tipped her head back and silently thanked whoever was listening for the enthusiastic little freak she had at her feet. she didn’t deserve you, but she wasn’t going to pass up this golden opportunity either.

your hot breath had her thighs twitching where you rested your hands over her pants to keep her still, but her patience ran thin.

“get to it then, love.”

you flicked your eyes up to look at her and she rested one hand on the back of your head, controlling and reassuring.

you started with little kitten licks, needing coaxing ever so into loosening your restraint despite the reckless way you’d just face planted her pussy moments prior. a firm hand or a sharp word would have you set right, you knew, so you continued as you were, trying to remember what you’d liked and copying it.

price didnt wait to see if you’d warm up on your own and used her other hand to tug at your jaw, prising your mouth open further and encouraging your tongue to wag out.

“tongue,” she ordered brusquely before grinding against your face. you got with the program and pointed your tongue so it slipped inside easier, gripping onto price’s arse and thighs as she rode you with little concern for your breathing.

you sucked and hummed against her, lapping at what you could reach when she adjusted her angle before continuing to use you. your nose pressed tight to her mound and caught on her clit on every other thrust up until price was moaning into the air above you, her orgasm quickly rising.

she pulled back and held you away with one hand while the other gave a few hard flicks to her clit. she got off with a broken moan, looking at your wet, messy face; arguably more fucked out than her own. her eyes caught on the hand you’d dropped to finger at your clenching hole again and she groaned, low and amused. fond.

with a breathless laugh, she tugged up her waistband back to her hips but left the jeans unzipped. she pushed her boot between your spread knees, beneath your hips and pushed down on your shoulders until you were resting over the tilted toe of her boot.

you were quick to get the idea and pulled your fingers free, thrusting to catch your clit against the unforgiving material until you came a second time, leaving a thick shine along her shoe when she pulled it back.

you panted against her hip, forehead resting against her just above her open waistband as you caught your breath with a giddy smile. you nibbled and sucked at her stomach as she pet the back of your head.

“don’t usually let girls mark me,” she said softly under her breath as she watched you. she rubbed at one of the the budding red marks you’d left near her zipper. “but I’m quite fond of you after that little performance. might keep ya.”

butch 141 masterlist

moodboard masterlist

[brainmuncher]

Visiting an old friend

The whole way to Bludhaven Danny kept on telling himself that surely he’d made a mistake. He knew he could be impulsive sometimes but flying to Bludhaven on a rumor? He felt like he was a teenager all over again.

It’d been some dumb article he’d found while trying to focus on editing the design of a Fenton battery. It was a Bludhaven paper he’d forgotten to unsubscribe to that sent him a breaking news email. He used to eat up those papers, glad to have any way to see how his old friend was doing, but now it just felt suffocating to remember. He’d almost deleted it without even opening it, but some nagging feeling told him he should open it. He never would've expected to open it to a new blurry photo of a figure in blue, soaring above on the rooftops.

He barely got a couple of sentences into the article claiming that Nightwing could be back before he shot out of his apartment. Ever since that day when he watched invisibly as his coffin was laid in the ground he searched for Dick’s ghost. But no ghost this new could control their appearance that well. Colors were some of the hardest to control after all. So Dick could be… he really could be…

After that, the rest of the flight was much more nerve-wracking. He hadn’t ever met the other bats, but he knew that they could have some interesting rouges. Some kind of convoluted plan might have been behind all of this. Maybe someone was impersonating him? Or maybe some other blue vigilante has taken up Bludhaven… Was one of Dicks siblings taking over the Nightwing name? That last one was quickly shot down though. He saw how distraught the group was, he doubted if they would’ve even been able to touch the suit without breaking inside.

So all that led him to now, standing outside Dicks apartment building. Before they lost touch this was the place Dick told him he could go if he ever needed help. And seeing the lit-up rooms from the outside, Danny knew that at least someone had to have been there.

For the sake of normality, Danny decided to take the stairs within the building to Dicks floor. It definitely wasn’t because he was nervous or anything… it had nothing to do with that at all. Although the stairs seemed to reach the top quicker than he expected. 

He walked up to the apartment number that he was told about. A snarky ‘This house has gone 0 days without a pun’ welcome mat sat outside the door. The joke actually helped Danny calm down a bit, breathing in a deep breath of the slightly dusty hallway air before letting it out again. Without further ado, he rapped his knuckles on the hardwood door. Internally he winced at the loud noise. It was much later at night than any normal person would be awake. If someone was here and had a good sleep schedule then Danny probably just woke them up.

A few minutes passed by before his hearing picked up movement in the apartment. One part of him jumped in excitement, while the other sank with anxiety. Was that Dick? Or was it one of his siblings? Damn, Danny should have gone through with this invisibly, that way if it is one of the siblings he won’t have to face them. But it was much too late for that now, he knew that there had to be at least one camera facing him right now. Maybe he can just pretend to be lost? But then why would he climb up so many floors just to ask for directions? He really should’ve thought this through…

Before he could sink any lower into his panic the door let out a click of a lock. Momentarily frozen, he watched as the door slithered open without so much as a creak. To his amazement, the Dick Grayson stood staring back. He looked tired and was dressed in comfortable civilian clothes, but it was Dick. Before anything could be said Dicks eyes went down to look into Danny’s. His eyebrows creased in confusion, no doubt surprised by the random visit.

“Danny?” Dick questioned, his voice sounding a bit rough around the edges.

Danny couldn’t help the disbelieving smile from creeping up on his face.

“Hey Dick,” He spoke, his grin never leaving his face. “I’ve really missed you.”

A small breathy laugh of shock left Dicks lips as he looked down at Danny. He loosened his stance at the door, seeming to relax now that he knew who was there. Danny couldn’t help but feel bad at the scare he must have given the other. 

“I hadn’t thought we’d be seeing each other again. It’s been…” 

Years, Danny finished in his head. We haven’t seen each other in years.

They initially met on the streets funnily enough. Danny had been on the run from the GIW and Dick had been freshly fired from Robin and kicked out of the manor. Not that either one knew that much of each other at first. Danny had been hiding in a warm corner of a building when Dick bumped into him trying to find a warm place to stay as well. Danny offered for him to stay, not seeing any danger in letting someone around his age stay with him. After that things got revealed slowly, like Dick realizing that Danny wasn’t just homeless, he was hiding. And Danny noticing the odd skills that Dick had and the way the other held himself back in other situations. Slowly their secrets were shared with each other… and they found that they didn’t mind.

Eventually, they drifted apart though. Jazz and his friends finally found a way to create him a safe identity and eventually, he enrolled himself in college, deciding to take a break from Phantom for a while. Dick ventured out and created the Titans, even forging a new hero identity for himself as Nightwing. They slowly just stopped talking to one another after that. Not out of malice or anything, but just because they got busy. Life took over. It was only when a life was taken away, that Danny frantically tried to find out what happened to his friend.

But now that he’s here in front of him… He’s noticing the same things he’d seen from when they were on the streets. Dick had bags under his eyes like he was watching the candle burn at both ends and doing nothing to stop it. His clothes weren’t just baggy, they were unwashed. There was a faint toothpaste drop on his shirt that had been attempted to be rubbed off… but to no avail. His hair was shiny with unwashed grease and grime. And his face… He didn’t look like he was eating enough.

Like a truck had hit him, Danny suddenly found himself much less happy than he was before. Something was wrong with his friend. And if the crystae around the grave that Nightwing was supposedly buried were any indication… then… 

Danny straightened his stance subconsciously. It seems like he was due a serious conversation with the other.

“Can I come in? I’d rather not have this kind of conversation in the hall,” Danny asked awkwardly, looking around himself as if there was another person that he could see.

To Danny's concern, Dick’s body tensed up at the prospect of letting him in. He swore he saw Dick grimace at that for a split moment before a plastered-on smile was on his face. Nonetheless, Dick opened the door with much less bravado than he would’ve years ago and waved him in.

“Welcome to my abode,” he tried to joke, but the tone felt forced.

Danny didn’t understand why the other had looked that way until he walked through the doorway. While he may be no Kryptonian with insane super everything, he did have enhanced senses. And every single one of those senses went off like a bomb when he walked into the apartment. There were dirty dishes and clothes haphazardly left around collecting mold and mildew. He could see a portion of the Nightwing suit stuffed into a corner like Dick had tried to hide it from his sight. There were more than a few bottles of soda and coffee mugs spread across the room, some carrying a scent that Danny could live without. Then there was a shattered photo face down on the side of the room, glass still spread around the frame like a horrific halo. 

But the worst was probably the energy of liminal surrounding the whole place. The emotional energy within it was heavy, grief and desperation covering every inch. Everything just screamed pain pain PAIN PAIN-

Danny had to close his eyes, steeling himself against immediately answering the cry. It went against his very core to go against the cry for help but he knew he’d only make things worse if he dived straight in. Dick wasn’t one to accept help easily. He’d shown that multiple times in his various rants about Bruce’s attempts to help as Robin. Instead, he had to go about this differently.

“Man, you almost outrank me in the messy department,” Danny tried to joke instead.

He turned to look at Dick who finished locking his apartment back up against intruders. Hopefully, his eyes weren’t glowing from the intense cries his core was trying to fight against. Dick seemed to attempt to go with the jab, his smile not looking all there.

“I doubt that. I'm not the one who lost his phone and found it in his shin,” Dick replied, settling himself further into the apartment. 

Danny scoffed, waving his hand in the air like he could physically wipe away the comment. Slowly they started to migrate to where the couch was. There were blankets and pillows at the end like Dick would fall asleep there. Judging by the open case files on the table in front of it, he didn't sleep on purpose. 

“I actually keep it in my arm now. Much more convenient,” Danny winked, hopping on the couch and letting himself bounce on the spring underneath. “Although I do keep everything else in my haunt. I can make little portals now!”

Without further notice, Danny opened one of the said portals with his hands. As he hoped, although in any other circumstance, he normally wouldn't, a group of blob ghosts were near his things. A couple of them filed through the gap, chirping up at him. However, that sense of play quickly left them as they felt the energy around the place. Silently they flew away, off to do what they do best. 

Danny saw a twitch of a real smile for a second on Dicks face. Although it was quickly shut down like a sour memory. Like he was trying to escape it, Dick joined him on the couch, sitting a whole cushion away. 

“Should I be worried about them?” Dick motioned his chin towards the silent blobs making their way into his things.

Danny waved them off, still playing into his old impulsivity. He wasn't nearly as bad as he was as a teenager, but Dick didn't have to know that yet. Dick gave a skeptical look at him, watching as one of the blob ghosts swallowed one of the dirty cups whole.

“They're like bottom feeders in a fish tank. At most, you'll just find less dirt around. At the least… you might gain a cuddle buddy,” Danny hummed, watching the same blob from before sneeze and drop a perfectly polished cup back out.

At that, Danny could see Dick turn to look at him in his peripheral vision. Turning to join him in looking right at one another he could see Dick staring at him. Dick held a look on his face that Danny couldn’t uncover. His eyes wandered over Danny’s face like he was searching for something. But the rest remained perfectly blank. It reminded Danny of when they were still teens, trying to see if they could trust one another. Dick had given a similar look then before he'd nodded and sat down to talk. Hopefully this time it'll be no different. 

Although, Danny doesn't know how to feel when Dicks face shuts down a little. He can feel the exhaustion in the air. Somehow he feels like he just failed whatever Dick was searching for.

“Danny, why are you really here?” Dick asked finally.

The question was so out of the blue, and the answer so obvious. Danny couldn’t help the way his head tilted in confusion, not understanding why such a thing had to be asked. This wasn’t at all how he had planned for their conversation to go. He had wanted to keep things light so that the emotions wouldn’t make Dick clam up… or lash out. His next words need to be chosen carefully…

“Because I was concerned. One of my good friends just came back from death and I needed to make sure you were ok. Dying isn't an easy thing to process,” Danny spoke carefully, his own experience trickling into his mind.

The words seemed to make Dick even more defensive. It was exactly the thing Danny had been trying to avoid. But despite everything his efforts still led him to this moment. Dick had his guard up, his eyes glaring into Danny’s core.

“Well I'm alive,” Dick spoke with terseness, “so why are you still here?”

“Because I care about you,” Danny reiterated, his confusion turning over into concern. “Dick, you died. That type of thing sticks with you. I'm not about to leave you to deal with that alone.”

Dick scoffed. He readjusted himself on the couch, sliding a bit farther from Danny. At this point, he was almost leaning on the edge. The physical representation of the distance between them hurt more than Danny was willing to admit. He hadn’t had Dick run from him before.

“Ignoring me for years is one hell of a way to show it,” Dick bit back.

A wave of annoyance hit Danny from the comment, but he instead closed his eyes and ignored it. Dick used to do this constantly when they were young. He'd use a healing mental wound to pick at to bring the other person away from his own hurt. Except Dick made the mistake of using it too many times on Danny in the past. He was old enough now to stop and learn from what he was trying.

Letting out a breath of air, Danny looked up into Dicks eyes. He could feel the pain all around him. The wails of someone touched by death echo all around. This wasn't something he could let go. No matter how much Dick tries to push him away, he isn’t going to go anywhere.

“Dick, I'm not asking you to tell me what happened… or even how you came back. I would know more than anyone how painful it can be to relive those memories. I'm just asking for you to let me stay and help you. You're not okay.”

If Danny's words made an impact on Dick, he sure as hell didn't show it. He looked away from Danny’s eyes, instead staring at something far off. His movements seemed almost robotic. Like there was some kind of memory playing in his head that Danny couldn’t see.

“Whoever said I died? I went undercover Danny. Nothing happened. Nothing to talk about.” Dick spoke with a scarily devoid tone of voice, almost like he was reciting someone else.

Danny couldn’t stop the scoff from coming out of his mouth. Dick looked his way again, seeming to be surprised at the action. As if he could simply lie his way out of death. Danny tried the denial shtick. You can only tell yourself it was nothing for so long before you realize that not breathing in your sleep is probably a sign. 

“Dick I saw your grave. I don't know the details because I wasn't exactly invited, but I saw the crystae flowers blooming around the dirt. Those only bloom around memorials for the dead,” Danny explained carefully, watching as Dick looked more and more like he'd panic. “Even now I can feel death's touch on you. Your place is soaked in liminal energy… I can feel that you're in pain.”

Danny was a little hesitant to reveal that last bit but knew that Dick would pick up on it eventually. Especially with Danny sticking around, that liminality would only get stronger. That's just how ectoplasm is. It won't stick onto a healthy person unless they've already been exposed to it. Depending on how long Dick had been dead, it might be more attracted to him.

Although now Danny couldn’t help but feel awful about it as he saw Dick flounder. He at least took his time in coming to terms with his death, he should've known an emotionally repressed bat wouldn't be able to handle it all at once. Danny tried to reach out a hand, as something for Dick to physically hold onto to stay in the present. But in a moment of fear, Dick slapped it away. He jumped up from his spot on the couch, never looking at the same spot for more than a couple of seconds. 

“Dick I'm sor-” Danny tried to apologize but Dick started to do a panicked angry rambling right over him. 

“No! It doesn't count. I didn’t die. My heart only stopped for a couple of minutes. I was fine. Everything is fine!” He tried to reason to himself, his pacing taking a hysterical turn.

Danny winced at that. It doesn't matter how long you die. Ectoplasm doesn't care about that, only that you have some kind of exposure to it. Even in the first seconds of death you already create the energy for ectoplasm in the body. How much was created, and how much was in the air already, is what determines if you become a ghost. It's a natural part of life.

“Dick please,” Danny began again, but was stopped by Dicks piercing stare.

“I didn't die, Danny. I didn't die because that would mean he was right and I can't-” 

Dick let out a noise somewhere between a gasp for air and a dry sob. It tore at Danny's core to hear but considering how Dicks reaction to the last time he tried to reach out went, he stayed in place. One of the blob ghosts must have felt his pain, rushing over and chirping into Dicks chest. It caught the other off guard long enough to stop and take a few ragged breaths of air. The blob continued its chirping assault of cuddling into Dicks chest while the other refused to look at Danny. But in that moment Danny couldn’t have felt any more thankful for the blobs and didn't mind if Dick needed a moment. So they sat there for a moment, Dick sitting in his emotions and Danny waiting for him to calm down. 

The air was charged with a tone of sorrow. It was the kind that Danny was all too familiar with. It was the kind that left you feeling that there was no chance for your life to be happy again. The kind where everything felt like it had fallen apart all around you with no hope of it being repaired. It tore at Danny’s heart that Dick of all people was left to feel this way. Where were all the people that should be here supporting him? Where was his family in all of this? Surely Danny can’t be the only one to see the pain Dick is in.

“How…”

Danny looked up at Dick who seemed to be at a loss of what to say. He wasn’t looking up at him at all, only absentmindedly playing with the blob curled against his chest. 

“How did you get over it?” Dick spoke again, now looking up at Danny with an unsure gaze. “How can you just go on with your life without it constantly playing in the back of your head?”

Danny pursed his lips, knowing that his answer wasn’t one that Dick would like. Just at the action alone, he could see the little hope in the other's eyes die out. He once again turned his head to the blob ghost. With a gentle hand, Dick pets the back of the ghost's body.

“I’ve never gotten over my death. With help from my friends and sisters, I was able to accept it and heal from it… but I can never forget it,” Danny spoke solemnly.

He couldn’t help but notice the way Dicks petting movements momentarily paused at the mention of his support. It sent an alarm of concern through Danny. While he was here he couldn't believe that things could get so bad around here. There was just too much time in the layers of sadness and grime for this to be new. So why hasn't anyone tried to stop it and help? There was a disturbing painting being made before his eyes. For the sake of the heroes on this planet, he sure hopes his suspicion is wrong.

“But I promise you, Dick, that this is not the end. It might not seem like it, but things will get better,” Danny promised, something he didn’t take lightly. “I will be here to do everything I can to help you heal.”

Dick didn’t say anything back for a long time. He simply played with the blob on his chest, flicking its tail side to side in between his fingers. The blob certainly didn’t seem to mind, blubbering little chirps to itself. Neither did Danny, who could see that this was a bit too much at once for Dick. 

“Are you still retired?” Dick asked eventually, looking up at Danny with a begging look.

It was one that Danny could recognize. One that was asking for them to try and pretend that nothing was wrong. To give him time to break away from reality and think things over with himself. So Danny let the conversation lead off. It would just be more damaging than helpful to continue on this path. So, conceding to Dicks wordless pleas, Danny let it go.

“Technically. But I wouldn’t mind going back out again if it means I can work with the great Nightwing,” Danny smiled, hoping to bring back the light atmosphere of before.

It seemed to work if the small smile that Dick gave was any indication. Danny hadn’t realized how happy he would be to see a real, albeit small, smile from the other again. Giving a last pat on the blob ghost's head, Dick walked over to where half of the Nightwing suit was discarded.

“Then I hope you still have your spirit,” Dick quipped back, stepping away towards a hallway. “Cause I won’t be going easy on you old man.”

Danny scoffed at the old nickname, jumping off the couch in fake offense. Although it was much too late to say anything about it before Dick scampered down the hall. He could hear a door open and close, signaling Dick is putting his suit on. Danny doesn’t envy the suit that Dick has to put on. Who would’ve thought that putting on a skin-tight suit might take someone a bit?

Luckily Danny didn’t have to even lift a finger. Letting out a breath he let the cold of his core take over, feeling a rush of weightlessness hit him. Knowing that he still had plenty of time to wait for Dick, Danny turned and opened another temporary portal. This time he had opened it directly to his keep, spotting Fright Knight in the distance.

“Frighty,” Danny called into the portal, half laughing to himself as the said knight nearly jumped. “I need a favor from you.”

After years of beating up multiple ghosts, quite a few of the citizens of the realms held respect for Danny. Honestly, it was refreshing to be able to just talk with half of the ghosts he used to fight. While he still held fights with them, cause it’s a form of affection apparently, things had cooled off for the most part. 

Which means it allowed Danny to get to know a lot of them better. This is how he found out that Fright Knight was cursed to serve the king. Thankfully with a little help from Jazz studying the books in Ghost Writers library and a surprisingly life-or-death adventure, Danny freed the ghost. This led to Fright Knight giving his servitude to Danny… which kinda undermines the whole point of the adventure in the first place but it wasn’t Danny’s place to judge.

“What can I do you for, Sir Phantom?” Fright Knight asked, getting closer to the portal and standing guard right outside it.

Oh yeah, and had he forgotten to mention the nickname? Yeah, it bothered Danny too. Although he’s learned that there's not much he can do to change it.

“There are some mortals I’d like to keep an eye on. They are the vigilantes of Gotham,” Danny proposed, making it a suggestion even though he knows Fright Knight will just do anything he says anyway. “Could you look over them for me?”

Fright Knight gave a deep bow before stepping through the portal. His extremely tall frame still absolutely dwarfed Danny in size. Which means it was kinda funny to watch him step through a portal that was sized for Danny's height. He's just so used to making a portal no bigger than that that he hadn’t even considered it.

“I would be honored,” The ghost replied, to which Danny nodded with a thankful smile.

“Thank you Frighty. I’ll check in with you every once in a while,”

And with those last words, Fright Knight nodded and disappeared. He tended to be less on the wordy side anyway.

Was it smart to send someone to spy on the bats? Probably not. But chances are, Dick isn’t going to say anything. Unfortunately, Dick had a mentality that he had to deal with things that are hurting him on his own. Whether from a sense of guilt or fear of not being enough, Dick would rather lead himself into the deep end than call for help. So to figure out why he’s been left so hauntingly alone, Danny is going to have to investigate. Thankfully just him going ghost had already scrambled Dicks security cameras, so the entire conversation wouldn’t be noticed.

The sound of a door closing took Danny out of his thoughts. He turned to the opening of the hallway, feeling himself smile at Dick. It’s been a very long time since he’s seen Dick in costume. The last time he saw the Nightwing suit in person it had honest-to-god tassels. He’s honestly really glad that Dick had changed the costume since then. This new suit in front of him was much more sleek. 

As he nodded to himself he could see Dick raising an eyebrow at him. He stood much more relaxed than before, a smile that didn't look entirely fake on his face.

“At least you’ve gained some sense of style after all this time,” Danny hummed, finding delight in Dicks scandalized gasp.

“I thought you loved the old costume!” Dick said, trying and failing to smother his amusement with an upset face.

Danny shrugged and folded his legs underneath him. It felt so easy to use his powers like this again. While he wasn’t exactly shy to use his powers normally, his range of them was muted in human form. As he hovered in place, he tilted his head teasingly at the other.

“Sorry, I was so busy staring at your chest that I missed what you were wearing,”

Dicks off guard laughter was the best thing Danny had heard in years.

[nevlartery]

18. Split

[ID: A black and white sketch of Jason Todd wiping blood off his mouth, his helmet broken on his face]

[edscuntyeyeshadow]

there are so many things i could say about this scene but i don’t think i could put it into words.

“you’re a monster, a plague, you defile beautiful things” haunts me. never getting over it.

“stede bonnet is not a human” ofmd writers please im on the floor i can’t move please stop

and stede saying “i think you’re right” with that face. god. Fuck. rhys darby and rory kinnear you talented bastards. i’m throwing my phone across the room. screaming into my pillow. reliving my trauma.

the way the homophobia in this scene is just barely subtextual??????????? it’s not even there but it is??? what the fuckkkkk. guys this show is so fucking good. did you know ofmd is a really fucking amazing beautiful show??????????????

[deathanddogs]

Sometimes I'll read a fic where Grantaire will be like a genuinely incredible partner or sweet or deeply kind etc and like yeah I'll eat that up but also I will be filled with a fervor to turn around and write him to be as aggravating as possible. I need it to be a miracle someone isn't instantly trying to choke him out when he opens his mouth. I should be saying "BRO SHUT THE FUCK UP" every time he has a line of dialogue. I want at least one person to have a flashing thought of killing him with their bare fists out of sheer annoyance. Like yeah this is my little guy but I need liking him to be a sport, gotta make it a full challenge.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The TTPD Deep Dive (Part ?)

It’s no secret that I have a lot of Thoughts about The Tortured Poets Department and it has lived rent-free in my head since it came out earlier this year. I’m absolutely blown away by how underneath the chaos, it’s actually an exceptionally cohesive story and is probably the closest to a concept album Taylor has ever done.

There are so many themes that have stood out to me over the last five months, and there’s one in particular that I think not only drives the entire album, but ties into previous albums to help deepen understanding of it.

This is it, my fangirl magnum opus, my months of posts consolidated into one place. This is also my disclaimer that this is just my interpretation of the album, and my summary of the story it tells, and I don’t pretend to have any special insight or authority. I’m not saying I’m correct at all, do not take any of this as fact, it’s just what it sounds like to me, and these are my silly not-so-little thoughts about it.

(Under a cut because it’s way too long and involves discussion many may not care for or be sick of.)

Come one, come all, it's happening again (I'm thinking too hard about Taylor music)

The overarching theme in TTPD to me is: Grief. If you’re looking at TTPD as a story being told (instead of just as someone’s real life), the inciting incident of TTPD is loss, and the grief from that loss is what drives the narrator’s actions and the fallout, as well as unpacks those complicated feelings and how they apply to the her life in general. By the end of the standard album, it’s also about recovering from that pain, moving on from it and learning from it.

The loss specifically is the loss of the dream of having a family (with one’s partner). One thing that is abundantly clear both on the top line and under the surface in TTPD is how Taylor (as a person and as narrator) longed not only to for marriage but specifically parenthood, and the fear and then realization of losing that chance absolutely wrecked her— which is why the next lover’s (the conman's) wooing worked so well, because it preyed on that yearning. Yet that loss also dovetails into the grief of many things: of youth, of idealism, of relationships, of ideas, even of self, which causes almost a deconstruction of a belief system to piece one’s life back together by the end.

THE CONTEXT

TTPD weaves in the topics of marriage and motherhood both explicitly and in the subtext, in various forms and scenarios. The cheating husband in “Fortnight.” The wedding ring line in “TTPD” the song. “He saw forever so he smashed it up” in “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” All of “So Long, London.” Running away with her wild boy in “But Daddy I Love Him,” fantasizing about weddings and joking about babies. The imaginary rings in “Fresh Out The Slammer.” The cheating husband (again) and the friends who smell like weed or “little babies” in “Florida!!!” “You and I go from one kiss to getting married,” “Talking rings and talking cradles,” and “our field of dreams engulfed in fire” in “loml.” (And arguably: “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all.”) “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short,” in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.” They may not sound like much on their own, but they paint a picture about how the topics pervaded her thoughts and her writing, and in many cases express her desires, and her pain.

It’s something that goes back several albums when you pick up on context clues. You get the first hints on Reputation with “New Year’s Day,” and “you and me forevermore.” Then Lover is very forward with it: “Lover” is basically wedding vows, “Paper Rings” is very engagement-coded, “I Think He Knows” is cheeky but low-key “you better put a ring on it,” “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” has wedding/marriage imagery in the last verse. As a self-professed diaristic writer, it’s the type of stuff one presumably doesn’t put out there unless those conversations have already happened, and she was very excited about it at the time it was released.

Then the pandemic happens and folklore comes out, and while there is still happy love there (“invisible string”), there are also the first indications that something has happened to put a halt to whatever future she once dreamed of (“hoax,” “the lakes”) and that she’s trying to reassure herself and him that it can still happen even if she’s scared it might not (“peace”). Notably, as far as I can remember it’s the first time Taylor explicitly brings up the idea of family (with her partner) with “you know that I’d give you my wild, give you a child,” which stood out at the time because it’s so incredibly vulnerable, but it’s even more poignant when you really take in that the whole song is like a confession of her deepest worries, and this is her vowing to give him these things that she holds most sacred if he’ll let her. These are what she cherishes most dearly and wants to return in kind: her youth and commitment (my wild), the family she craves (a child), unconditional support (swing for the fences/sit in the trenches) and understanding/compassion (silence that only comes when two people know each other).

Evermore follows an even darker path, and suddenly the album explores relationships that end and grappling with loss. There are toxic relationships (“tolerate it”), dangerous marriages (“no body, no crime,” “ivy”), failing/broken relationships (“Coney Island,” “champagne problems,” “happiness,” “‘tis the damn season”), as well as grief (“Marjorie,” “evermore”). Even some of the happy songs have uncertainty in them: in “willow” she’s begging for him to take her lead, like she’s still trying to decipher him and ask him to commit; in “cowboy like me,” still a beautiful love song, she’s thinking, “this wasn’t supposed to work and we were supposed to bail on each other but we fell in love instead”; “evermore” is about the depths of severe depression (and more) with the love story being the one saving grace in her darkest hour. And it’s also notable that after all the “fiction” writing, shortly after this album she writes “Renegade” where she’s telling the subject: I’m ready to start the next phase of our life now, why aren’t you? Is it me you don’t want after all? It’s like there’s something telling her that this stall might not just be a stall.

Midnights is a jumble (in a good, but in hindsight, also sad way) with the “sleepless nights” concept, but it seems pretty clear now that the themes and events and relationships she was revisiting tied into a lot of what she was feeling in her present life. I wrote the cliff notes version awhile back, but she’s questioning so much of her life that’s reflected in past events and relationships. Am I actually always the problem? How did we lose sight of each other and what we had? We only seem to work when we block out everyone and everything else. Can we ever go back to when things were good? Why are you neglecting me? I once thought I was going to lose everything but you saved me in the nick of time, can that happen again? I chased my career, but did I give up my chance at having a family in the process? Nobody knows what I really suffer from behind closed doors and I’m all alone.

And so on, which in retrospect now that we have TTPD, is very much what she was grappling with in private while writing and releasing the album. The inspiration behind the songs may have been different events and muses, but regardless of their origins they all end up feeling too familiar, like she's seen this film before (ahem). We’re seeing her view of commitment change too, or rather how she writes about it: she’s not making the outright declarations of it like on Lover, or even the implied ones on folklore, nor is she talking of the dark side of it like evermore. For the most part it’s a return to the early days of some relationships, before things got hard, or the end of them when there was nothing left, and also pushing away the discussion of it altogether by the outside world. “Sweet Nothing” is a sweet slice of life, but even at that, it’s the peace of the home in conflict with the pressure of the outside world. Now that we have “You’re Losing Me,” which was written at the same time as the rest of the album, we can probably deduce that she was going back to the start because something happened that made her doubt the future.

THE SETUP

So much of Midnights directly ties into TTPD, and I said in the post I linked that it’s like Midnights is asking the questions that TTPD answers. But there’s one song in particular on Midnights that sticks out to me as being key in the broadest sense to understanding the state of mind that led to the events of TTPD, and that’s “Bigger Than The Whole Sky,” because the way it expresses grief is reflected in the theme of mourning a life built and the dreams along with it that are never realized in TTPD. There are several instances in TTPD that are basically variations of: “every single thing to come has turned into ashes,” and that’s what makes her snap, and leaves her vulnerable to someone who promises her those things when she’s bereaved at losing them in the first place. (In other words: “the deflation of our dreaming leaving me bereft and reeling.”) The song tells a story about how that loss of hope colours one’s entire mindset, and in some ways is a bridge to TTPD to understand what such a low point feels like.

I think that that grief, and most importantly losing hope for an imagined future in its wake, is fundamental to understanding TTPD on so many levels: both the decline with one partner that kept her hanging on then led her such a dark path, and why she fell for the conman's apparent bullshitting because it offered an express pass to what she was losing with her partner. And I also feel like it plays a part into the ruminating she’s doing all over Midnights, trying to make sense of where she finds herself when she’s writing the album, which directly leads to “You’re Losing Me.” Loss permeates so many of the stories on Midnights: of lovers, of innocence, of youth, of faith, of control, of life’s work, etc. “BTTWS” is just one of the ways in which it is expressed so fully, capturing that deep depression and subsequent extinction of faith in something that once felt assured and very much wanted. (Which is also mentioned in her writing process in the “Depression” playlist on Apple Music.)

If you understand why that feeling of loss in general across so many parts of life is so important to Midnights, then it illuminates so much about the “narrative” in TTPD too. If on Midnights she’s wrestling with the seeds of grief and loss (on multiple fronts), TTPD is her reckoning with it in its full form. “So Long, London” is the song that is the most explicit about it: How much sad did you think I had in me? How much tragedy? Just how low did you think I’d go before I’d have to go be free? You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof. It’s the sequel to “You’re Losing Me.” It’s, the air is thick with loss and indecision, I know my pain is such an imposition, I’m getting tired even for a phoenix, all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, I’ve got nothing left to believe unless you’re choosing me, my heart won’t start anymore, but from the other side of the break.

This is highly speculative, but if you follow the thread about the topic and the relationship as told from Rep through TTPD, in broad strokes it goes: young love with a serious connection (Rep) -> growing up and making life plans (Lover) -> something happens that delays those plans or makes them grind to a halt (folklore) -> serious doubts arise and cause a loss of faith in their future (evermore) -> struggling with the loss of that future and trying to make sense of the problems in a last ditch attempt to save the relationship (Midnights) -> fallout from that grief after the blowup of the relationship (TTPD). Understanding that progression of events (through the music) explains not only the storytelling side of TTPD (e.g. the jump from the partner to the conman) but also how the experiences/muses blend in the music, and how the music that on the surface is about the short-term relationship is really driven by the destruction of the long-term one.

Following the music, it’s IMO implied that Taylor (the narrator) was holding out for marriage and family with her partner, for years, and it seems like it was at one point a shared dream until something happened to pump the brakes, and seemingly on her partner’s end. And extrapolating further, given how the sorrow expressed in former albums bleeds into TTPD, it sounds like a plan that had been concrete in some form before it had fallen apart, and losing something that once felt so tangible is what drives her in her grief to find any kind of respite from the pain. Which is why the situation with the conman becomes so appealing as the one with the partner splinters further and further.

(If everything you’ve once touched is sick with sadness and you don’t want to be sad anymore, what are you left to do?)

THE STORY

So (one part of) the story kind of sounds like this from the standard album: the relationship with her partner as well as his mental health slowly deteriorate and he withdraws emotionally (“London,” “Fresh Out The Slammer”) and physically (again, “London,” and “Guilty As Sin?”) and takes his resentment out on her (“London” and arguably “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” even though I don't want to get into muse speculation here). As she sinks deeper into her own depression as a result, the weight of the failing relationship starts feeling like a cage— or a noose (“London,” “Guilty”), but coming to terms with the loss of their life together and the future they’d dreamed of was killing her (again, “London,” but also “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”).

Enter the conman who she reconnects with at the very point where this is coming to a head (knowing that IRL she reconnected with him around the time Midnights was being worked on) , and if you read between the lines, she confides some deeply personal things to him (“Down Bad” and “hostile takes overs”/“encounters closer and closer,” “Smallest Man” and the entire sleeper cell spy imagery which is one of my favourite things and I could write a whole essay about the meaning of it, “loml” and “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme”). Then after she’s confided these secrets to him, he insinuates himself back into her life (“Guilty,” “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man”) and sells her a dream that HE can give her all these things she hopes for (again, “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man,” “loml,” song “TTPD,” “Broken Heart”).

But the thing is, he only knows these are the things she wants because she’s revealed it to him, and presumably, told him that was what she was losing by staying with her partner. And instead of the normal response of, “that is really sad that your partner is not supporting you and you deserve to be treated better,” to a friend in growing distress, it seems like it was, “well I can give you all those things!!!! Right now!!!! Trust me!!!!” And worked on her until she believed it, and jumped at the chance at a precarious time in her life. And one thing I want to underscore is: Taylor has agency in the situation always, it’s not like she’s been kidnapped and brainwashed. (In fact, she implores on songs like “But Daddy” that SHE is in charge of her own choices, good or bad.) She chose to rekindle the friendship and then relationship, and she chose to eventually leave her long term relationship for another man, and she reiterates on the album that she owns this all. But it’s also: nothing exists in a vacuum, and she makes choices based on emotions and information she has at the time, which is why it gives so much whiplash.

THE ALBUM

When you look at it as, the situation with the conman only happens because of what happened with the partner first and that the appeal of the conman and the fantasy he sells her is a direct reaction to that, it makes the “swirliness” of the music make so much more sense. And for much of it, even many of the “conman” songs on the surface are really “partner” songs underneath.

Fortnight

A suburban gothic allegory about a broken marriage with a distant husband with a wandering eye, which makes the rekindled romance with the neighbor so appealing. She’s miserable caged in her stifling house because she’s been abandoned by her spouse, so the reappearance of this past love reignites the passion that’s dead at home.

TTPD

“So tell me, who else is gonna know me?” “I chose this cyclone with you.” I’m gonna kill myself if you ever leave. Everyone knows we’re crazy. She’s laying it out there that she’s already in a dangerous state of mind, and she’s actively putting herself in more danger by pursuing the conman. “At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding,” spells this whole thing out so clearly: whether it’s an actual event (likely) or a metaphor for the promise he makes to her, the reason why it makes her heart explode is because it’s the thing she’s been waiting for forever with no movement, and here this person comes in and slips it on her finger in an instant like it’s nothing. (And eventually, as we’ll come to know, it is absolutely nothing to him.) You mean it could have been this easy this whole time?! (Well, no. Not until a certain other suitor makes his appearance later.) It feels like she’s finally getting everything she wanted in the blink of an eye! How lucky! How convenient! What was that about the get-love-quick scheme you say? (Unsaid: the reason why this feels so urgent is because there’s a sense that time is running out in so many aspects of her life and not just the obvious. Which reappears later on.)

Down Bad

“Did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” sets the scene for this euphoric experience in the moment that starts to feel violating once the dust settles (which is then followed up in “Smallest Man” and the spy mission on her). The bridge spells out how he weaselled his way into her life, preyed upon (intentionally or not) her emotional state, sold her a dream and then vanished, without the benefit of hindsight yet we see later in the album.

The alien abduction metaphor is pretty brilliant, because it shows both how she was desperate to escape the place she found herself in, and how much it screwed her brain to then be left stranded when the affair was over. “[I loved your] hostile takeovers, encounters closer and closer,” is so evocative because it details how the situation came to be: his overtures under the guise of friendship blurred lines until he made her an offer that she eventually couldn’t refuse (hostile takeovers) as he infiltrated her life more and more intimately. The sad thing is that the song has parallels to how her relationship with the partner started too in earlier albums, in that they ran away to live in their own bubble (or planet) only for him to metaphorically abandon her as the years went on. (Oven, meet microwave.)

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Being continually emotionally broken down by a person who knows he’s hurting you but still acts the way he does. (The original voice memo version makes this even clearer and it’s rather heartbreaking.) “He saw forever so he smashed it up,” speaks to the loss of a future the person became scared of, and the original lyrics (“he saw forever so he blew it up”) somehow cut even deeper to me because it feels so much more intentional.

Also in the original version, “he was my best friend and that was the worst part,” also speaks not only to the loss of an entire partnership in the wake of this hurt, but also to the feelings of betrayal that the person you trust so deeply has the ability to hurt you in this way too, and how it’s a one-two punch of not only losing the relationship but also your closest confidant. (It’s like the sequel to “Renegade” and the missiles firing to me.) Again, there are shades of both/many situations in the song, pointing to an unfortunate pattern in some ways. The situation in “My Boy” is part of why she was so low, and why the “get love quick scheme” was so appealing later on. And it dovetails nicely into…

So Long, London

The most explicitly “partner” song that puts a coda on “You’re Losing Me,” and is Track 5 because it’s the emotional underpinning of how she got to where she was, and drives the events of the rest of the album. It spells everything out: He withdrew, she tried to fix it for both of them, eventually even that stopped working, he was oblivious to or minimized how badly she was suffering and his (in)actions couldn’t reassure her, he wouldn’t move forward on their future plans and stewed in his own struggles, she was spiralling out of control trying to hang on and ultimately felt like she was going to die if she didn’t leave.

But Daddy I Love Him

Like a direct reaction to “So Long, London” in that she breaks free from the death of one relationship and throws herself with reckless abandon to the next, fuck the haters. How dare you judge me, when the relationship you think I should have stayed in was killing me? (Dutiful daughter all the plans were laid. All you want is gray for me.) Fuck all of you, I’m going to choose whoever I want! (So what if I have a baby with HIM, huh?! I tried doing it the proper way and look where that got me so now we're back to square one) It’s again her imagining how wonderful and freeing this “wild boy” is going to be for her, and how wrong she’ll prove everyone. THIS TIME she definitely got it right. So what if she has to run away! So what if she scandalizes the whole town! They don’t know what she really wants or needs anyway! She’s the only one of her (hee-hee-hee) and she’s the only who gets to decides how this goes. (Because: she longs for control in a situation she’ll eventually realize she has little of it in, which we’ll find out is a recurring theme in her life.)

Fresh Out The Slammer

Also spells out what happened with the partner in the first verse and the pre-choruses, which is what makes the conman so appealing as the imagined jailbreak. The bitter loneliness vs. the sultry passion she builds up in her head as she awaits her release from prison is key to understanding the two sides of the story in the album. There’s this whole outlaw imagery (which is also carried through in “I Can Fix Him”), but it’s contrasted in the end with her and her reunited lover sitting on park swings like children with “imaginary rings” — because “Ain't no way I'm gonna screw up now that I know what's at stake.” What’s at stake is lasting love and the promises that come with it (marriage/family) that are precious and time-sensitive. The imaginary rings are both a nod to the youthful dreams of her and her new/old lover, but also has a double meaning to me because those promises aren’t built on anything together; they're made up, intangible. (They’re no more concrete than the plans that went up in smoke with the partner.) Like with most of the conman situation, it’s all a fantasy in her head that has yet to happen, and as we find out later in the album, reality ends up leaving much to be desired.

Florida!!!

Broadly speaking, it’s running away from your problems and wanting to disappear from your life. (But again: the life she’s disappearing from is the cheating husband she may or may not be feeding to the swamp-- another miserable marriage.) What kind of flies under the radar though is the “I don’t want to exist,” line, which points to her dire state of mind that led her to fleeing to that metaphorical timeshare down in Destin. In many ways about cheating death.

Guilty As Sin

Yes it’s the “masturbation song,” but again the nuance is that she’s left to pleasure herself because her partner has abandoned her emotionally and even physically, i.e. “my boredom’s bone deep.” To be blunt: they aren’t even intimate anymore, so she starts fantasizing about the guy she used to have chemistry with who’s reentered her life and is making moves on her. And realizing that she’s now finding release in another man (albeit imaginary) breaks her even as it reinvigorates her because she finally understands that the relationship she’s in is effectively dead. (“Am I allowed to cry?”)

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me

This isn’t about relationships, but about society and its reaction to them in a general sense. But again, she’s left to stew in all this anger and hurt as she’s been abandoned at home, then abandoned by public opinion, and the public attack on her is part of the origin as well as the end of that story. The trauma inflicted upon her detailed in the song is the reason why she felt trapped in the first place, which led to the decisions she’s made and habits she’s leaned on ever since.

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

This is one of the few songs that is the most completely conman-coded, and shows when the delusion finally breaks at the end of the song. She spends the whole song being like, “no really, I alone can make him better! You’ll see! I know he’s gross, but he’s mine! It’ll be fine I swear! You don’t know anything! Uuuuuum hmm wait actually what the fuck—“

Loml

Oof. THE song. Again the surface reading is about the “conman” who comes in and sells her the lie, but the pain is because all the dreams she writes about are HER dreams and implied that they were the dreams she built with her partner that the conman sold back to her. I could do a deeper dive on this but most of the song is applicable to both relationships, which not only shows the “swirliness” of her writing, but also how they both ultimately did the same thing to her in different shades.

The bridge and the last chorus are kind of fundamental to understanding it all, and her ending it with “you’re the loss of my life” is about, among other things, how falling for this trap blew up the life she built and dreamed of for good. (I could talk about this one forever.) “You shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles” to “Our field of dreams engulfed in fire” is a hell of a line and progression, and again, indicative of what the real driving force behind the whole album is. The shit-talking is because he took her dreams (of marriage and children) and hyped it back up to her tenfold whether in a moment of his own delusion or for more nefarious reasons — much like how the man prior kept promising these things but never followed through, which left her vulnerable to someone who appeared to offer them enthusiastically. The field of dreams isn’t just the one with the conman, it’s the one with the longterm relationship she’d built the dream with in the first place, because the conman’s actions are part of the reason the LTR went up in smoke. (Not the reason for the rift, but the consequence of the final break.) And THAT is why it’s the loss of her life, so completely.

When she says “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,” IMO it’s not just the fake future that the conman lures her into, but also (and perhaps mainly) the once-real one she had with her partner and the loss of which that made her susceptible to falling for the con in the first place. There’s honestly so much between the lines in this song that covers every theme and speaks to the grief of seeing the life she imagined slip away, slowly by the first man then annihilated by the second.

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

The juxtaposition of “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short” and “He said he’d love me for all time, but that time was quite short” sums it up to me (and parallels “loml”), because they are two different situations, but they cut her just the same. In the first, “that life” IMO was the life they’d built with the dreams that went along with it and it was too short because he never followed through, and in the second, the “time” was quite short because it was the frenzy of the whirlwind romance that fizzled as quickly as it began. The life that was too short led to the time that was quite short.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

This is definitely THE conman song. The rage, the shame, the violation, it’s all in there. But the key to it is the bridge and the espionage imagery woven through it. A honeypot scheme is when spies target a mark and seduce them to gain their trust and their privileged information for their homeland. So her likening him to a sleeper cell spy who set her up just to mine her deepest secrets and use them against her is a heavy, loaded statement. And implied: that valuable information she unknowingly held were her longings of marriage and family (the aforementioned shit-talking about rings and cradles she never got to have), and more importantly, those dreams preceded him reentering her life and then beginning his mission on her.

The insinuation then is: she confesses these are her deepest wishes which are now seemingly unattainable in her current situation (e.g. with her partner) -> he convinces her HE will give them to her and make the dreams she pines for come true -> she falls for him and blows up her life to make it happen -> he gets what he wants (thrill of the chase/sex/the idea of her/whatever his intent was) -> he abandons her when he gets what he wants, or rather it isn’t what he wants or can handle -> she’s left a) all alone b) with dreams unfulfilled c) with no answers d) feeling used at having her most sacred wishes used against her.

Again, the song is unquestionably about the way the conman absolutely destroyed her, but he was able to do that because there was this thing she wanted more than anything, that was dying in her previous relationship, that he was able to prey upon to seduce her, then discarded her and her dreams as soon as it was inconvenient for him while absolutely hollowing her inside out. (And again: the devastating thing is that this also applies to other relationships she’s written about, in different ways.)

The Alchemy

Not about either the partner or the conman directly, but it (loosely) touches on her finding herself after the whole oven-to-microwave experience and opening herself up to life and love again. #GoodForHer

Clara Bow

This isn’t about the romantic relationships on the surface, but it is about how damaging the entertainment industry and public life are on women, and how women are only valued for their beauty as commodities until they can be discarded and destroyed in the process. Which I think plays into the circumstances that led her to make the decisions that she did years ago, and why she makes the ones she does now. (But also, being valued for physical traits and appeal for the male gaze brings us to…)

The Manuscript

The “original sin” that kicks off all of this. Again, at first light this isn’t about the partner or the conman, but the person it is about is the reason why she has made all the decisions she has ever since in relationships (and that’s Mr. Plaid Shirt Days from “All Too Well”). The realization that her first serious adult relationship is what cemented these patterns, and this view of herself and her worthiness in relationships, is profoundly sad. An older man who valued her for being so mature for her age and implying that the mature activities ahem associated with that were the performance benchmarks in her ability to carry a relationship, only to leave her, was earth shattering. She placed her faith in this person, but then the way he treated her changed her view of love and of herself.

She took his innuendo about “pushing strollers” as a sign of potential commitment, whereas he ultimately meant it as foreplay, and she was too young and naive to know the difference. So not only did she learn from that that this man (and men) didn’t view commitment and family the way she did and that it was something to be toyed with, but she also learned that her value to them among other things was sex. Imagine being an idealistic 20 year old and your boyfriend ten years your senior tells you, “if the sex is anywhere near as good as our dates have been, we’re going to be making babies before you know it,” (e.g. this is relationship is serious) and then he dumps you: does that imply that the sex was not in fact that good? (E.g. that you’re not worthy after all?)

No, obviously from this side of life, it’s because he was a commitment-phobic playboy, even if he did love her, but she couldn’t have known that at 20 and instead internalized that shame. But, it did send her on a path of how she approached sex and love and relationships for over a decade afterwards. And her coming to the realization that that first act of (perhaps unintentional) manipulation is what informed her actions thereafter helped her break the pattern. Her worth to men is not just sex, she has value and her hopes and dreams have value, she doesn’t have to change into a different person to please anyone, because if that is what they want, they won’t ever want her anyway.

It’s been described here on Tumblr by people more eloquent and astute than I as a song that encapsulates the album as this: one did it slow (partner), one did it fast (conman), and one did it first (first love)— and that is haunting. After years of men minimizing her dreams and desires, if not outright using them against her, she’s finally at the point where she can let it all go and move on for good. (There’s a whole other tangent about consent and shame and manipulation, but that’s an entirely different kind of discussion. But it is so devastatingly contrasted with “you said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine, and that made me want to die.”)

THE SUMMATION

This is just my interpretation of it, but in going through the standard album, it feels pretty clear how cohesive the album is about a story of love and loss and grief, then reckoning with what caused it all in the first place that set a person on this path. It’s a formative experience at a young age that was traumatic and led to certain coping mechanisms and a shaping of one’s self-perception, as well as the reaction to external pressures that try to dictate behaviours and influence how one feels one deserves out of love which makes it harder to know when one absolutely deserves more and better. And leaves one struggling to cope with loss when there isn’t anything else to hold onto. Then in light of one’s life blowing up, learning to find oneself in the aftermath all over again.

On another tangent that is somewhat related to the theme of loss, the way she writes about the two main muses on the standard album also ties into how the situations converged to create absolute carnage on her emotional and mental well-being. With one situation, she’s talking about a concrete life that crumbles under the weight of their struggles; with the other, the entire thing is a fantasy that she builds up in her head, and when it comes to fruition it falls far, far short.

If you look at the “microwave” (conman) relationship, you realize that almost everything she writes about it happens before it actually becomes reality, and it’s mostly her imagining how great it’ll be, but with few exceptions, when she writes about what actually occurred, it doesn’t even come close to living up to her expectations. “Fortnight” is an imagined future where she escapes to Florida and his touch finally starts her stalled engine (ahem). “TTPD” is perhaps the most positive retelling of their time together, but even that implies he was better off stoned and when he sobered up he succumbed to his demons all over again, and more importantly she conveys how she also is in extreme distress, barely concealed by the veneer of being infatuated with him. (E.g. saying to that she’ll kill herself if he ever leaves her — the implication is that she is absolutely serious about it when she “felt seen.”) And that the warning bells are going off in her head, but she feels like this person is the only one she can be with (because they’re equally fucked up and the chaos he brings into her life makes her feel alive when she felt so close to death).

“Down Bad” is the most explicit about being in love, but she’s also left completely confused and disoriented by him disappearing, wondering if any of it was real and the seeds of violation creep into her consciousness (“did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” “Waking up in blood.”). “But Daddy” is her imagining she can tell everyone to fuck off for telling her what to do with her life. “Fresh Out The Slammer” is her fantasizing about this man while feeling trapped in her relationship — but never in the song is she actually reunited with him; she’s using him as the projection of all the things she’ll make right after being wronged by her partner. “Guilty As Sin?” Is very obviously about her fantasizing about sleeping with him, but again it’s such a minefield for her because it hasn’t happened yet; they’ve only just reconnected. “I Can Fix Him” is the only song other than “TTPD” that shows them actually together, and it’s the one where she keeps saying, essentially, “I know he’s gross but I can rehabilitate him into an upstanding person, trust me,” until the mic drop at the end of the song where it finally hits her that no, she can’t, because this is who he is, not the person she’s built him up to be.

“Loml” is when it all comes crashing down, and the song emphasizes everything he did and told her, e.g. that she’s the love of his life, but she doesn’t return the sentiment in the song about their time together. Because now that it’s past tense, she knows it wasn’t actually love. (And says as much in the album epilogue poem.) “Broken Heart” is her reeling in the aftermath, but again, it’s “he said,” not “I loved.” And then there’s “The Smallest Man,” where she eviscerates him: he also pursued an idea of her but didn’t care much for the real her in front of him (who else is gonna know me?), he love bombed her only to hurt her (crushing her dreams), he was constantly stoned (and not just in the funny munchies kind of way), and he wasn’t even a good lover (despite the fantasy she’d created before). That last point is especially striking because she spent albums singing about the importance of and pleasure in (sexual) intimacy in the relationship with her partner (sometimes to both their own detriment) and how it was at times the only way they could connect, but in this case, the idea she hyped up and acted on in her head about this lover never panned out in practice. She spells it out in the epilogue: it wasn’t a love affair, it was a mutual manic phase.

In contrast, there’s a lot more tangible action in the “oven” (partner) parts of the album, showing how hard she tried to make the relationship work in real life instead of just in her head. All of “So Long, London” is her detailing how she tried to break through to him and support him, even when he rejected it and pushed her away, thinking she could carry them both until they ultimately sank, but she did it because she “loved this place for so long.” (The place? Not just the city, but the home and perhaps most importantly, him.) In “Slammer” she stayed with him even as things disintegrated for “one hour of sunshine.” (E.g. holding onto the rarer good times even as they were fewer and further between, hoping things would eventually turn around.) And like in “London,” she held on despite people in her life pleading with her that it was hurting her. (Which is also echoed in “Slammer.”) In “Guilty” her boredom is “bone deep” because the passion that once drove their relationship (and papered over their problems) has finally gone out too, so there’s nothing left to hold onto, leading to her fantasizing about the new suitor, which makes her realize her relationship has passed the point of no return. “Loml” is about the conman on the surface, but the undercurrent of all the things she says about him is that he was co-opting the dreams that she was clinging onto for dear life in the previous relationship, which is why the con is so painful; the field of dreams he sets ablaze isn’t just the fake painting he sold to her, but the original artifact (her life with her partner) too.

All the physical and emotional labour she puts into the relationship with her partner ends up reflected in the fantasizing she does in the one with the conman, which is why it is so confusing in the moment and so lethal when he leaves her without any answers. She wants to get married and start a family with her partner which keeps getting stalled; the conman mock-proposes which makes her think he’s immediately serious (“TTPD,” “loml”). She feels caged by having to hide with her partner and shrink herself; the conman promises he’ll stand by her side publicly and let her shine (“Smallest Man”). She sinks into a deep depression in her loneliness as the relationship with her partner careens off a cliff; the conman convinces her they’re meant for each other in a them-against-the-world way (“Down Bad”). The intimacy (in all senses of the word) in her relationship with her partner fizzles; the conman stokes the fire by sending her secret messages and reigniting passion (“Guilty”). She spent years trying to help her partner to no avail; the conman makes her think she has the power to reform him (“loml”). She feels misunderstood by her partner; the conman acts like he’s the (only) one who truly gets her (“TTPD,” “loml”).

In short: there’s nothing that the conman does or says that isn’t a direct response to what her partner did first, and it’s even worse because the conman knew how much her partner’s actions hurt her and he used that privileged information to paint a picture of what he could give her, but in doing so in some ways aimed at her heart with even deadlier accuracy. (I’ve likened it to him borrowing someone else’s life for his own joyride, until he crashes the rental car and flees the scene.) It’s why in the aftermath, the difference in emotions are so different: she feels nothing but rage and violation towards the conman for getting in her head and using her, whereas her feelings towards her partner are more complicated. There’s anger (at her lost youth and being taken for granted), but there’s also sorrow (at their lost life and future), disappointment (that he never could step up the way he’d promised or she’d needed), even compassion (towards his struggles) and a tiny measure of appreciation (for the good times they did share).

When you look at the bigger picture, the story the album paints is just so painfully normal. You have two people (Taylor and her partner) who once loved each other deeply, and despite warning signs early on telling them they have fundamentally different needs and ways of living their lives they fight like hell to make it work (the epilogue) until those warning signs become grenades that destroy their home (“My Boy,” “London,” “Slammer,” arguably “loml”). Having already been through at least one rough patch/break/breakup that she felt almost destroyed her (harkening back to Midnights on “You’re Losing Me,” “The Great War” and “Hits Different”), the final and fatal downward spiral of the relationship (“YLM,” “London”) and the grief over losing that future sends her into a tailspin, just at the time where a flame from the past (the conman) reenters her life and tells her all the things she’s been longing to hear and feel (“TTPD,” “Down Bad,” “Guilty,” “loml”) and, crucially, missing from the relationship that was once her entire life.

So in her panic, she falls prey to the (empty) promises of the past lover (“loml,” “Smallest Man”) and decides he’s actually what will save her from the free fall, because the alternative (that she will end up in a situation she doesn’t think she can survive) is too painful to bear. When she finally acts on these circumstances (leaves her partner/runs to the conman), she snaps, acting on pure emotion and adrenaline (“But Daddy”), but before she knows it, the new lover abandons her, and she’s left to reckon with the fallout of the episode and process everything that has happened (“Down Bad,” “loml”) — with the conman, with her partner, with the choices made in her adult life personally and professionally which leads her back to the moment she feels set her down that road at the start.

The TL;DR of this unintentionally long essay is that the reason the conman affair was so serious was precisely because it was meant to fulfill the promise of what was her life with her partner. To me, a large part of the story is that she projected that life onto the conman (or he projected her life back to her for his own purposes) because she wasn’t ready to deal with that massive grief and the life raft he offered felt like the only alternative to an even darker end. Whether the conman actually believed what he told her, or he went along with it or encouraged it because it served his purpose, we’ll never know, just like we’ll never know the finer details of what went on (nor should we). But no matter what, the album is just an extreme deep dive into all the ways grief can consume us, and whether it’s a long, drawn-out death or a sudden, inexplicable one, it can turn a person’s life into such a trainwreck that they act in ways unfathomable to even them, let alone the people around them. It can also unleash repressed trauma and mental illness that can crater your sense of self. And when those situations are compounded? It makes for a nearly impossible type of breakdown to unpack. (Which is why you might need a 31 song album to process it.)

[ghostinthegallery]

This scene wouldn't leave my head, so congrats it's the world's problem now.

In which Ratchet has a graveside chat with Wing, aka the dead guy that fixed his husband for him.

“I want to be very clear.” Ratchet placed the small cup full of engex at the base of the stone plinth. “I don't believe in ghosts or spirits or any of that nonsense. When we die, we die. That’s it. No Primus or Guiding Hand or cushy afterlife and definitely no looking out for the living. Got it?”

The grave did not respond, which was good. It was what Ratchet expected. He sat down, legs crossed, careful not to crush any of the shimmering blue flowers beneath him. 

“I'm just on the fragging necroworld, and I'm not above respecting the local customs.”

Sunlight warmed his back plating as he settled into place. It was a nice day. Most days on the necroworld were nice, when nobody was trying to kill them. Not a place Ratchet would want to stay long term, but it made for a decent rest stop. Even with all the reminders of how fragile life was. The death flowers and the graves.

Carved into this grave was simply the name Wing.

“He really wanted to find you, when he found out what this place was.” Ratchet said. “Drift, I mean. Or Deadlock, you might've called him that. Got all excited at the idea of visiting. You’re one of the only things in his past he'll talk much about.”

He stared at the engex he'd offered, then pulled a flask out of his subspace. No sense making the ghost—who did not exist—drink alone.

“Since he probably never mentioned me, I'm Ratchet. Medic. Drift's conjunx, but that’s a recent development.”

Had he seriously just introduced himself to a rock? Maybe he'd gotten knocked in the helm and forgotten about it and this was all processor damage. Still, it felt right to speak, so he did. Not like anyone else was around.

“I saved his life once, a long time ago. He stood out to me. To this day, I don't understand why, but maybe you saw it too. Maybe you saw something in him that made you want to help. Sounds like you did a lot for him. Probably more than me, if we're being honest. I got him back on his feet, but after that…” Ratchet sighed. “He was still poor as scrap. He still watched enforcers shoot his friend. He was still angry.”

The image of Drift walking away from the clinic, off to sell his frame to anyone who wanted to use it made Ratchet's tank feel sour. It worsened when he thought about what was actually going on at those clinics. He wondered what he would have done if he'd known.  

“It sounds like I have you to blame for all Drift's spectralist nonsense. So frag you for that. It's annoying as hell,” he continued, eager to change the subject. “Yeah, it helped him sort through things. Even I can admit that. When he's not using religion to hide from his problems, it…it gives him some comfort. Still killed a lot of good bots, but hey, he’s in good company.”

Ratchet had no desire to hunt down Drift’s statue and see how many of the necrobot’s death flowers surrounded it. Or how many surrounded his own statue, for that matter. 

“War’s over, and we’ve all got to move on somehow. Frankly, he’s doing better than most. Brave, resourceful, too self-sacrificing for his own good. You fixed him up nice.” Ratchet studied his flask. “And I get all the benefits. Doesn’t seem fair but, thanks. I guess.”

He sighed and adjusted his position. “He feels real guilty about what happened to you. Thinks you'd still be alive if you hadn't helped him. Maybe he's right. Who knows? But you don't sound like the kind of person that would regret helping someone. You sound better than that.”

Heaviness settled over Ratchet's shoulders as he said, “I don't regret saving him either. I never have, even when Deadlock was a name autobots whispered in the same tone as necrobot. And considering how things turned out,” he chuckled. “I don’t know if that makes me a hypocrite. I’m happier with him. Less tired. He just feels right.” Ratchet added, “Probably don’t have to explain that to you.”

The strangeness of this one-sided conversation hit him again, but not harshly. It was an easy way to unload his thoughts. Like a waking defrag. 

“The swords were a nice touch.” A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. Drift looked good wielding those blades of his. Ratchet didn't mind the view when he trained. Didn't mind it in the slightest.

“He still carries your greatsword. Doesn't use it much, but it's always on his back.” Ratchet took another pull from his flask. “Been hearing some of the other bots say he should fight a duel with Cyclonus and his big greatsword which even I think is a bit sacrilegious, but—”

“There you are.”

Ratchet started then turned towards the familiar voice. Drift, footsteps annoyingly silent, approached from behind. His expression morphed from inquisitive to shocked when he got close enough to read the stone’s inscription.

“You found him,” Drift said softly.

Ratchet nodded and moved aside so Drift could kneel. Drift’s EM field was wild with conflicting emotions. Surprise, happiness, and grief mingled together, and he made no attempt to hide them. 

“I was about to come get you,” Ratchet said, which was technically true. He fully intended to bring Drift to his friend’s grave. After he was done with whatever this was.

Drift’s optics settled on the cup of engex. He smirked.

“Is that an offering?” He gasped with exaggerated shock. “A committed skeptic, bringing a gift to a ghost? Ratchet, is that you or some sort of mimic?”

Ratchet grabbed the finger Drift poked against his chest. “I didn’t want to get slag from you for being disrespectful.” 

His spark jumped as Drift pressed his hand into Ratchet’s and intertwined their fingers. Then, to Ratchet’s shock, Drift swiped the engex cup and downed it in one gulp.

“What was that?” he demanded, surprised at his own offense.

“Wing never drank engex,” Drift said. “He always gave it to me whenever mechs brought him anything. The Crystal City stuff was so diluted I couldn’t even get a buzz, but it took the edge off.”

“Ah.” Ratchet nodded. “Guess you two had an understanding.”

Drift nodded and let his frame lean into Ratchet’s. Silence settled over them. Ratchet ran his thumb over the back of Drift's hand while the latter grew contemplative. His face fell, melancholy overtaking his field. 

“I wish you two could have met,” Drift said. “He would have liked you.”

“I doubt that.” Ratchet replied. “But I’d have liked to meet him anyway.”

A breeze caught the flowers, like ripples over water. Ratchet didn’t interrupt when Drift shut off his optics and took a meditative intake. They stayed like that for a long time, hand in hand, while Drift steadied his field and Ratchet watched and took the occasional sip from his flask. He’d learned to savor quiet moments like this. They didn’t come often.

Drift’s optics brightened and he said, “Is there anyone here you want to see?”

Ratchet waved his free hand. “I get enough trouble dealing with the living. Don't need to invite the dead to cause problems too.”

“So you won’t come and visit Gasket with me?” Drift pouted.

Ratchet groaned. “I didn’t say that.”

With a smile that made Ratchet's internals melt, Drift helped him up. He then paused and offered a spectralist sign to Wing’s grave. 

“Farewell,” he said. “And thank you for everything.”

As Drift pulled Ratchet away, Ratchet dipped his chin towards the plinth and muttered his own nearly silent,

“Thanks.”

[buddiedaydreamer911]

me when i find a fic i want to read for the plot, but the writing isn’t how i like it

(ex. no “”, no indentation, no punctuation, no proper grammar, all lower caps, etc)

[driftwoodmfb]

Hahah! I'm back at it! My version of a happy ending @desultory-novice 's Apologies AU! Part 1 here!

Part 2/4

The portal to the New World is still open and much more stable, thanks to Elfilin. Adeleine takes a deep breath before entering the portal. Although time works differently in this world, it's night there too. “Luckyyyy, this makes sneaking around easier!” Adeleine is taking any positives to calm her nerves. 

Waddle Dee Town has expanded quite a bit since Kirby’s adventure here. It looks very different from the photos Kirby showed Adeleine. Opening up her map, she sees it was drawn up by some of the waddle dees using an old map they found depicting the New World’s former glory as a base. The one spot they didn’t really map out was… the Discovery Lab. Most of the waddle dees aren’t ready to go back there… She closes the map and heads towards the Natural Plains.

The gravel road turns to dirt and grass. Some of the building are being fixed up, turning them into a mixture of architect reminiscent of her original planet and the starry houses seeing in Dream Land. “Huh.” She stopped and stared. “It’s a bit like me… When did I stop seeing Shiver Star as my home? Dream Land, all of Popstar even has been my home for so long now.” She shakes her head. “This isn’t why I’m here.” With a new look of determination, she marches on.

Less and less buildings. The ground crunches under her shoes, sand! She reaches the Everybay Coast. The sun is starting to rise, reflecting beautiful colors onto the water. Adeleine runs out to the water. She dips her hand in the water; it’s not too cold. “Well it would be quicker to swim then to go around.” She jumps in. Squishies and blippers splash around. “I guess some of you preferred it here to Popstar, heehee.” 

A shadow appears in the water under her. “Ah–!” A gnawcodile splashes out of the water. “An alligator!?” She reaches for her paint brush. 

“Grrr…”

She points her brush at it. “... Oh! You’re part of the Beast Pack, right?”

The gnawcodile seems to nod. It motioned for Adeleine to get on.

“Are you offering me a ride? Thank you!” Adeleine hops on and they speed off.

“W-Whoa!” They sped by the sore line and weaved through currents, but eventually it stops at land. Adeleine hops off. “Thank you! This saved me so much time.” She waves goodbye as gnawcodile leaves. After a little more of a trek, she made it Wondaria Remains.

“Oh! This reminds me of that theme park Noir used to take me… I remembered he said mom and dad wanted to take us there before it closed…” She pauses. “I wish I remembered them better… I wish I asked Noir about them more often…” “If this works, then I still can. Please, let this work.”

The tile walkway has been washed and polished. A big stature with some mascot looking dogs, many planets, and a rocket looks to have a fresh coat of paint. There’s a nest on the top of the rocket with a white duck and some ducklings in it. “Awww.”

She walks up the stairs, a sign with a big “COMING SOON” posted on it in Popstarien. She then sees a peep board “‘Wish you were here’... Heh… If Noir was here, I would’ve asked for us to take a picture together. He would complain, ‘Come on, this is too cutesy for me.’ ‘But there’s two spots, I can’t do it alone!’ ‘Fine, fine, but next time it’s going to be you and Raquelle who’–” … “Raquelle…” Adeleine proceeds forward.

The waddle dees have been fixing up Wondaria. Adeleine has to step around loose cords and tools used for fixing up the rides. “Looks like Merry Magoland is going to have competition soon.” Some familiar Magoland stickers catch her eyes. “Or not.”

Many caution, ‘do not enter’ and ‘coming soon’ signs litter the rest Wondaria. Adeline decides it’s best to not poke around more than needed.

“Finally! The exit gates!” They are still a bit rusty, but luckily they open with little resistance. A cold breeze blows by. “A- A- CHOO!” She sniffles and pulls out the map. “Looks like I’m close to Winter Horns.”

She presses forward until reaching the snow. “A perfect blank canvas.” A few paintings later, Adeleine is bundled up, ready to take on the coldest of cold.

[random-cockroach]

A large burning canvas could be seen in the distance.

The neat fingers, full of small dents from the friction of the sword handle, caught a small flame, which immediately went out from faint pressure.

There was silence, a living silence, one of those that strains with its sound. A warm wind heated his battered, but carefully polished armor.

"You want to say something"

"I want" Blurr answered, turning sharply to the dark silhouette behind him that was quietly watching him until now. He clenched his fist with a grinding sound, where the spark died out, and demonstratively opened it towards the darkness. "And this is how you are paid for making the world freer! This is what remains of your legacy, and you react as if it doesn’t concern you at all!"

"It does not concern me anymore" the figure answered him calmly.

"Shockwave, stop!"

"Is that an order?"

"It's a request” His angry expression made it clear that this request was an obligation. “I just don't recognize you for these few months." His hand shook slightly with anger. Black smoke seeped through the cracks in his armor.

"I don't recognize myself for even longer time." Blurr visibly trembled at these words, realizing where the dialogue was leading. Shockwave slowly approached, his long, deformed fingers, three times longer than one of Blurr's fingers, carefully reached out to his hand and wrapped his palms in his huge paws, kneeling down to be on the same level with him. "Blurr, I-"

Blurr turned his head away so as not to see one piercing, but such a swampy dim light of his terrifying eye, which had become more precious to him than his weekly knightly brigandage. "Shut up. It's too early, we haven't agreed on when exactly to do this"

The dull mass of metal, which was only a tangible casing, after some hope of catching at least a spark of doubt, only lowered its head heavily. The crackling of the fire continued to be heard around. The soot reached them, gifting them with at least some warm light among the shades of cold before dying. Realization, regret, reluctance were not reflected in the knight's optics. His armor, always proudly looking into the face of danger, now reflected only the cowardly lights of the fire from behind. Despite this, he did not remove his hand from the strong lock until the blades themselves parted. Shockwave disappeared. Disappeared as he had done for the past few months.

Blurr turned back to the burning wall. From afar were heard screams, squeals, grinding, clanking. The column of fire did not subside, as if it was fed by fuel from secret reserves. It had been burning like that for hours, as if to show the greatness of this building over others that would have left only a column of smoke long ago.

Shockwave's last school of dark magic was burning out, as was the will of its creator to live.

[theoldspark]

My IDW au in a nutshell

IDW au where Optimus ends up in the Lost Light and gets his own life changing adventure.

IDW au post-canon where Optimus learns to see himself as more than a sacrifice for the freedom and peace of others.

IDW au where Optimus and Rodimus actually get to become close friends and bond over their similarities.

IDW au where people appreciate Optimus and aren't afraid to show they care about him as their friend.

IDW au where Optimus gets to retire and gets his happy ending without needing to die.

Additional to previous point, IDW au where Optimus suicidal tendencies get properly addressed and he starts to heal and learns to prioritize his needs.

IDW au where Megop gets an eventual happy ending (after a tedious slow-burn because four million years of pinning wasn't enough for them).

IDW au where the LL still gets to have silly adventures and nobody dies (except for the people who are already dead).

IDW au where characters get to reflect, learn and grow together because Op is not the only one fucked up in the group.

IDW au where I push every character to have deep conversations despite their stubbornness to avoid too serious emotions.

In short:

Just an AU where Optimus gets to be genuinely happy for once because I really need it and I can't take the tragedy that is canon anymore.

[sesamestreep]

sexy himbo jock interpretations of James Tiberius Kirk are silly and do a disservice to the character for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that it fundamentally ignores all the times in canon when Kirk is faced with a scientific discovery or oddity and you can see the effort it takes for him not to clap and skip with excitement. like in ‘the devil in the dark’ when Spock posits that they might be dealing with a silicon based life form and McCoy’s like “but that’s impossible!” and Kirk literally crosses the room to flirt talk excitedly with Spock about the prospect and how it could work! and what it would mean!

What I’m saying is, Kirk’s gotta be smart and a huge dork because how else could he pull a bad autistic bitch like Spock?

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

My brain came up with a situation™

Enjoy?

So, Jespers playing with Wylans hair and notices a scar just behind his hairline. He asks how he got it and Wylan explains that shortly after his Mother died (but didnt die) he was really unwell with the flu and had a massive fever

He was walking down the hall towards his room to rest and his Father started talking to him so he was stood there for a while trying to listen when he eventually passes out

He smacks his head open on the floor and instead of helping him his Father just walks around him…

Wylan eventually comes to, alone on the floor with blood all down his face

Although Jan didnt cause the injury the complete lack of care and concern has Jesper fuming. Like imagine just stepping over your severely unwell, unconscious 8/9 year old as he bleeds on the floor… (all for the “crime” of not being able to read)

Wyalns just like ‘I did say you weren’t going to like this story!’

Anyway do with this what you will

[incorrect-clannibal]

Clarice: If the multiverse theory is true, then there's a universe where it isn't. Hannibal: The multiverse theory doesn't cover paradoxical situations. Clarice: Except in the universe where it does. Ardelia: I'm having an aneurysm.