#he's awful but he's also kind of soggy

[silvexus]

Thinking about how fandom tends to forget that powerful characters can be... gentle, yes, but also they can be a little pathetic. Specifically, Alex Mercer from Prototype. Yeah, he’s absurdly strong physically, but emotionally he’s a mess. He has no sense of internal purpose other than Find Information and Do Whatever Someone (Usually a Woman; Usually Dana) Tells Him To Do. The only thing he really has his own initiative for is hunting down Karen Parker after her betrayal and taking the FIREBREAK nuke out over the Atlantic. There’s really a solid chance that the more people and information he collects, he’ll eventually end up like WOPR’s series of tic-tac-toe games and just become paralysed because every move he could potentially make could bring Blackwatch back down on him and his sister. He’s the most power individual on the planet except maybe PARIAH and that means nothing because power means nothing when you are physically outnumbered. Maybe he has nothing to fear personally, but everyone around him? Vulnerable. And no one is strong enough for that. Not even ZEUS. Really. What could be worse than that? What could be better?

[ckret2]

On chapter 30 of The Writer Uses Misleading Graphics To Trick You Into Looking At This Fic About Human Bill Being The Shack's Prisoner: Summerween part 2! Bill wheedles Mabel into helping him make a costume. Mabel wheedles Bill into spilling some of his preciously-guarded secret backstory. Ford is kind of in awe.

Also there's like 4.5 drawings in this chapter. They're all very silly drawings.

####

Bill wouldn't tell Mabel what his costume was—"I want to see who can guess it"—but all it needed was a brown bedsheet, a long red wig, cardboard (to be drawn upon), and flip-flop sandals.

The bedsheet was the easiest to acquire. Dipper's barely-worn brown sandals were just slightly too big for Bill but Mabel helped tie them on with yarn. the shack's cardboard supplies were still depleted from making Bill's triangle mask, but they could make do with paper and popsicle sticks. Mabel didn't have a red wig but she did have a blonde wig and red markers. Since Bill was, by his own reporting, terrible at drawing, Mabel offered to do the fancy artwork if Bill did the tedious task of recoloring the wig. He claimed he'd feel like a mortician putting makeup on a car wreck victim, but nevertheless accepted the deal, and they settled in around the living room table to get to work.

"So just a bunch of houses, right?" Mabel asked, starting on the first drawing.

"Ancient Greek-looking houses," Bill said. "So, marble and columns. Don't think too hard about the details—this is a 21st century American costume holiday, not a historical reenactment. You can slap columns on anything and call it 'Greek' and every human in town will buy it."

"Do ancient Greek houses have chimneys?"

"No," Bill said. "But adding one would be funny."

Mabel considered that, weighed up the value of historical accuracy against entertainment value, and decided giving one house a chimney would be funny. She gave the whole house a thick black outline in marker, and pulled out crayons in black, white, and whale blue to quickly add some light shading to the marble. 

Mabel didn't think she'd ever seen Bill focus so hard or so quietly on anything the way he did on coloring that old wig red. He was giving it more attention than he did his own hair: while his golden locks were a tangled, uncombed, soggy mass shoved dismissively over his shoulders, he was dying the cheap wig (and his fingertips) strand by plastic strand with the bright-eyed morbid fascination of a third grader studying a pack of ants as they disassembled a bird's corpse.

This was the longest she'd been around Bill without conversation—usually, you couldn't even walk into a room without him immediately chattering at you like the motion-activated animatronics at the Summerween store. It was hard to think around him. Bill didn't give you room to think.

What did Mabel think about Bill?

He was right, she was still mad about the mall. No—mad wasn't the right word—mad was his word—she was scared. She'd never really stopped being scared of him, if she was honest with herself. But everything he'd done that day, from tricking her into trapping herself to reminding her of almost dying, had just reinforced why she should fear him.

But. She thought he felt bad about it. And she didn't think she'd ever seen him feel bad about anything before.

Maybe that meant her experiment was working. Maybe he was changing. Yeah, he was still scary—but he was Bill Cipher, he had a lot of scariness to work through. He was moving in the right direction, and she wanted to encourage that.

He hadn't apologized for the mall; but, since he'd tried to make up for it at the time, and that was a sort of apologetic action, Mabel decided she could tentatively forgive him for that day—provided he continued to improve. Put him on forgiveness probation. And that meant they were on friendly speaking terms again.

Which was good, because the quiet was starting to get uncomfortable. She surveyed her art for something they could talk about.

After a couple of as-historically-accurate-as-she-could-imagine houses, Mabel had started varying up the designs by redesigning houses she could remember off the top of her head with columns and white marble. She'd made a stately marble Mystery Shack, and a columned-covered doppelgänger of the house with the terraced yard across the street at home, and then she'd decided to make a Greek-ish version of her own home. "Hey Bill. Have you ever seen my house?"

"In person? No. But it came up from time to time in you kids' dreams, so whether I've seen it depends on how accurate you think your dreams are," he said. "It has less plants and more windows in your brother's dreams than in yours."

Mildly disturbing answer, but not disturbing in the direction she'd expected. "What! You mean you haven't haunted our neighborhood or anything? I don't believe it."

"Do you think I spend all my time stalking random humans? Don't flatter yourself."

"Well, seeing it in dreams isn't good enough!" Mabel pulled over a blank paper. It was hours until trick-or-treaters showed up, they had a little time to waste. "I'll draw it!"

"Wow, really?" Bill looked up from his wig. "You're not worried about letting the big bad triangle see your house?"

"Come on! You already know where I live, right?"

Bill immediately rattled off, "1337 Fairview Drive, Piedmont, California, on the northeast side of the street where it's less hilly."

"Exactly—you creep. So who cares if you know what it looks like, too?"

A square, sky blue house with two stories and a triangular roof; a big living room window on the left, a covered door on the right, three windows on the second floor, and a chimney. Mabel had drawn her home plenty of times—but doing it for a friend (?) was different from doing it for a teacher or a librarian, and she put extra effort into the rose bushes under the living room window. She added her and Dipper's smiling faces in the upstairs windows and Waddles's face downstairs in the living room.

"Waddles sleeps in the kitchen, but he basically owns half the yard to wallow in. This is my room, and here's Dipper's—I get three windows, but Dipper has the biggest window and a bigger room, so it's fair, no matter what he says—"

"Oh, you two have separate rooms now?" Bill was leaning halfway around the table and craning his neck to see the image right side up.

"Uh, yeah? Since we were ten?"

Loftily, Bill said, "I don't know how you'd expect me to know that. You both still dream about sharing a room."

Mabel paused and tried to remember how often she dreamed about Dipper in his new room. Sometimes she woke and was still disoriented to find her bed in the middle of the room instead of against one wall with Dipper's on the other side. "Huh."

She added a few more details—the front steps, the gate, the shingles. (Bill watched nervously as she pulled out the gray crayon to color the driveway—but she didn't notice how it had been tampered with.) She talked about her home, and in turn Bill told her weird things, like that Dipper often dreamed of monsters coming out of the fridge. When she finished, she autographed her name with a star on the "i" in Pines, offered it over grandly, and said, "Here, you can keep this!"

Bill accepted it without the customary effusive gratitude with which one ought to accept a generously-gifted original artwork from a 13-year-old prodigy. "What am I gonna do with it?"

"That's your problem!"

"Fair enough!" He checked his leggings for pockets and, when he didn't find any, set the page on the table by his elbow. 

Offering accepted. As Bill resumed coloring his wig, Mabel picked up another piece of paper and got to work on the next columned house. "What does your house look like?"

Bill stopped dead, looked straight at her, and said, "My what?"

What was weird about the question? "Your house! Or whatever you lived in before you came here. You came from somewhere before you tried to invade Earth, right? You didn't just pop out of somebody's dream."

Bill laughed. "Yeah I did!"

"Bill."

"4500 years ago the construction workers of Egypt had a shared nightmare about the immense tombs they'd spent the last century building—"

"Biiiill."

"—and when they awoke they found the combined psychic energy of their terror had spawned a sleep paralysis demon more powerful than Ra! So then I ate their souls—"

"Seriously, Bill."

"I'm being so serious right now."

Mabel rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine! I get it. You're embarrassed." She shook her head and returned to coloring.

She felt the combined spiritual energy of hundreds of imaginary Egyptian construction workers beating down on her face from Bill's eye. Like a laser. "'Embarrassed'?"

"Because you don't have a house," Mabel said. "I think it's okay, you don't need to be embarrassed! I don't think you're a loser or anything. It's just kind of sad—"

Bill snatched up a blank piece of paper. "You want a house? Fine! I'll show you a house." He grabbed up an orange crayon, muttering, "It'll put your stupid overpriced shed in California to shame— Where's the ruler—?" Mabel tried not to grin.

For several minutes, he was perfectly silent. Mabel glanced over to see him coloring with three crayons at once, only for him to shove a hand in her face and snap, "No peeking."

Mabel got through two more drawings before Bill slapped down his paper over Mabel's. "There! How about that?!"

She looked at the drawing, which Bill had helpfully labeled "Party Central!" in red crayon. A great stone pyramid so dark brown it was nearly black, with bricks outlined in brilliant gold and molten orange and fiery red, and a sharp multicolored X hovering above it—

Mabel gave Bill a flat look. "This isn't your house, this is your Torture Temple."

"The what? Hey, is that really what people are calling it?! It's not the Torture Temple, it's the Fearamid!"

Despite herself, Mabel burst out laughing. "You named it the 'Fearamid'?!"

"It's a pyramid and humans fear it! It's genius. Portmanteaus make great names."

"What's a portmanteau."

"It's a word made from the unholy Frankensteinian fusion of two other words. Like getting 'electrocute' from 'electricity' and 'execute'!"

"Or 'romcom'?"

"Yeah, or that."

Mabel considered the drawing. "If you want to scare less people, you could call this your Bill-ding."

"HA! Oh, I'm saving that."

"Anyway, this isn't where you live," Mabel said. "You were there for like a week tops!"

"Yeah, before your great-uncle killed me. I'd still be living there if it weren't for you jerks." He stuck out his tongue.

"Come on, Bill. I showed you my house. Draw where you grew up or something!"

"What's wrong with the Fearamid?"

Mabel crossed her arms. "Why don't you want me to see your real house?" She raised her eyebrows at him.

Bill opened his mouth to protest, but then stopped, a thoughtful look on his face. "Eh, you know what? Why not. If you're gonna be so ridiculous about such a silly thing." He pulled over another piece of paper. "But if I don't have enough time to finish coloring this wig, you have to help me."

"Fiiine." She returned to her own drawings as Bill got back to work.

After a long silence—longer than he'd taken to draw and color the Fearamid—he said, "Okay, done. Here." And he pushed over the paper with one dismissive finger.

She eagerly accepted the drawing—and frowned. There was nothing on the page except for a straight flat black line, interrupted by three line segments of bright blue and a cluster of red and green dashes. "What is this?"

"Where I grew up," Bill said, innocently, already back to coloring the wig. Mabel could see his mischievous smirk. "As seen from the front. Just like your drawing of your house. So we're even now."

Mabel's brows furrowed as she stared at the page in confusion. "What...?"

"You do know I'm from the second dimension, right? A universe that's flat like a piece of paper. I figured Sixer would've told you all about it by now." Bill picked up the drawing and held it between his and Mabel's faces, so that, viewed from the edge, all Mabel could see of the paper was a thin flat line. "What do you think the second dimension looks like to somebody in the second dimension?"

Mabel took the paper back, looked at the underwhelming flat line representing the front of Bill's house, and said, "I hate you." 

"We had the prettiest roses in the park," Bill said, pointing at the red dashes. "Crayon really doesn't do them justice."

"Shut uppp."

Bill laughed at her; but then, to her surprise, he said, "Okay, all right, I guess a big fancy 3D creature like you can't understand the nuances of two-dimensional sight. So, here." He flipped over the page. "Top down view."

The back of the page had what looked like a floorplan. A narrow room on the left, a large L-shaped room, a tiny room nestled into the L's top right corner, and a medium room on the right. Little shapes filled the rooms—furniture of some kind?—but she didn't see anything immediately recognizable like a top-down bed or table and chairs. Green and red spirals dangled off the bottom of the floorplan.

"I'm no Edward Bishop Bishop, but it gets the idea across," Bill said.

She studied all the strange little figures in fascination, looking for anything familiar. She pointed at a few shallow bowls filled with blue sticking out of the wall between the L-shaped room and the tiny room. "Are these sinks?"

"Hey, you're pretty sharp. Sinks and the tub." 

"So the little room's the bathroom."

"Right again." Bill pointed out the rooms on the floor plan. "Master bed's on the right, kitchen and living room in the middle—and you found the bathroom—and second bed's on the left. That was my room! The one with a million books," he pointed at a wall with countless tiny multicolored lines coming off of it. "I was a big reader as a kid. I've always been an intellectual."

"Who was in the other bedroom?"

"I never really went in there, who cares." Bill made a dismissive gesture. "I think there were some desks and stuff in there too, but I didn't bother to draw them since I never used them." He picked up a yellow and a black crayon and added on to the drawing, dexterously turning the crayons in his hand to switch between colors without setting either one down. "I spent most of my time in my room." He'd drawn a little yellow triangle with an eye. He picked up a red crayon to point an arrow at the triangle and label it "Me!" "I didn't even have to leave the room to see the TV. The perks of psychic powers!"

Mabel wondered which of the weird shapes was the TV; but before she could come to a decision, she was distracted by the scale of Bill drawn in his room. Maybe he'd just drawn himself big, but he seemed cramped in that narrow space. And he'd hardly have room to turn around in the bathroom without his corner smacking something. "It looks pretty small. Is that normal on your home world?"

"Ah, I rarely spent time at home—it was just a place to sleep between speaking engagements," Bill said. "I was always on tour. Living the life of the rich and famous! Hotels, jet planes, and tour buses!"

Mabel shot him an irritated look. "You said this is where you grew up."

"This is where I grew up! I got an early start making my fortune. I was already famous by the time I was, uh..." he pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Developmentally, I think I would've been about equivalent to your age. Maybe a bit younger."

How much of all this was true? It didn't feel like a lie—and she couldn't see how he'd benefit from lying about any of it, except maybe claiming to be famous. So it probably had to be true. He'd actually made her a drawing of his house. Even after he'd complained about being so bad at art. She beamed at him. "Thanks, Bill. Your weird alien house is neat! I like the squiggly spiral flowers! Are they actually roses?"

"They were the flower that everyone mentions in poetry and that you have to bring home when your wife is mad, so, same basic function as roses," Bill said. "Fun fact, they grow in spirals so that they're pretty on the outside, but—"

####

"—but have more surface area to absorb sunlight on the inside," Mabel said, pointing at the flowers. "Alien biology! And the orange things are couches and the colorful box in front of them is his TV, and Bill says he could watch TV through the wall but he never really liked TV, he preferred live performances—maybe we should take him to a musical! And the little sideways cushions on the walls are their beds because gravity goes to the left because their house faces east—I have no idea why!—so, I guess that's their 'floor'? But if that's the 'floor,' Bill didn't explain why all his books were on the 'ceiling' without them falling off, and..." Mabel trailed off, giving Ford a concerned look. "Grunkle Ford? Are you okay?"

He was gaping at the drawing. "Wh—? Yes. Sorry. I'm just..." He shook his head in amazement. "I never even got that slippery eel to admit he has a calendar system, and you got the blueprints to his childhood home?"

Dipper said, "Yeah, this is amazing. How did you get this out of him?"

"Oh, I didn't do anything special," Mabel said casually. "Just drew our house and then suggested he was too scared to let me see his."

Dipper grimaced. "You showed him our house?"

"Don't worry about it! He already knows where we live."

"Of course," Ford said, taking a quick note in his journal. "Exploiting his ego. He's very proud; undermine that pride and he'll feel compelled to defend his honor." Ford had started goading Bill into giving away more than he meant to the same way. He wished he'd started doing it far earlier; but he'd spent so many years foolishly assuming Bill's pride was objective and justified that he sometimes forgot what an egomaniac Bill really was.

As Mabel had spoken, Ford had filled several pages with bullet-pointed half thoughts: dodges questions about the master bed—his parents' room?; no bed or bedroom for a sibling, he seems like an only child; "speaking engagements" is probably a euphemism, what was he doing to become a child celebrity; were his books his only childhood possessions or just the only thing he valued enough to draw; did he gain his "psychic powers" while amassing the power he needed to "liberate"/destroy his dimension? "Can I borrow this drawing to make a photocopy?"

"Sure! Don't forget the line on the back," Mabel said. "And you can copy the Fearamid, too! Did you know he named it the 'Fearamid'?"

"Oh yeah, I heard him call it that," Dipper said. "I think I recorded it in Journal 3?"

"I should've read that before we threw out all of Grunkle Ford's Bill stuff," Mabel sighed. She slid over the Fearamid drawing to Ford. "Bwop! He drew it tilting all weird to the left? He wasn't kidding when he said he's bad at drawing."

Ford studied the drawing and frowned. He lay his pen on the drawing to use like a makeshift ruler. "It's not 'skewed'—he drew the front face as a perfect equilateral triangle, and then extended a side on the right to turn it into a pyramid. It's poor perspective—there's no point of view from which one side would look like a perfect equilateral triangle and you could see another side, but..." He trailed off again as he made a note to himself about what this might mean about Bill's ability to perceive the third dimension and his artistic sensibilities.

"So he draws like Picasso!" Mabel concluded. "Oh! Bill mentioned a name when he gave me his house, he said he wasn't like Edward Bishop Bishop—and I remembered it because it sounds funny. Bishop-Bishop. Maybe he's another artist Bill likes? Or somebody who makes blueprints?"

"I'm sure I've heard that name. I think he was a mathematician?" Ford frowned. "I can't recall, though." He wrote down another note: Edward Bishop Bishop – mathematician/artist? Something to look up later.

Dipper glanced back and forth between Ford and Mabel as they talked, feeling his stomach sink at how excited they were and how easily they got along. First the mysterious disappearing crystal shop in Portland, now Mabel made this huge discovery about the guy Ford had spent years trying to learn about... Dipper swallowed hard and tried to tell himself he shouldn't feel jealous after he'd gotten Ford to himself for basically the past year. "I can't believe you found out all this."

Mabel immediately looked at him. "Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

Dipper winced. He'd realized a moment too late how he must have sounded. Quickly, he said, "I mean, it's great that you did! Finding out more information about him is great. But, like... investigating the paranormal is my thing. It's what I spent all last summer doing, and it's my dream job, and... and now, the biggest paranormal mystery in human history is in our house, and you're the one getting all the info out of him?"

"Well, yeah," Mabel said. "I'm our official Bill spy, remember? I'm the one who made friends with him."

"I know, I know." He shrugged jerkily. "I'm just... kind of disappointed that I'm not prying eons-old secrets out of an alien demon. You know?"

Ford had paused in his writing to listen to Dipper thoughtfully. "I understand. When you're exceptional at something, it can be... difficult to share the limelight," he said. "Not because you don't think anyone else deserves it. You just don't know if you'll ever get it back."

Dipper's face heated up—he didn't want Ford to think he was bad at sharing, of all things—but he mumbled, "Yeah, I guess." Ford patted his shoulder understandingly. 

"Aww," Mabel said. "Didn't you say that if we're running an experiment on being nice to Bill, you want to be in the control group?" She punched his arm. "Welcome to the control, bro!"

"Ow!" Dipper rubbed his arm and laughed weakly. "Yeah, okay, you're right. This is what I get."

Mabel said, "You should try talking to Bill! Maybe he'll tell you stuff too. He's really easy to talk to as long as you don't mind him sometimes saying creepy nightmare things."

"And as long as you're prepared for his mental tricks," Ford said.

"Yeah! Grunkle Ford's got a whole class for that," Mabel said. "He'll teach you about the BITE model! It's how cults sink their teeth into you!"

Dipper chuckled. "Sure. Maybe I will. We're gonna be at home handing out candy for a few hours, maybe I'll find an opportunity to interrogate him."

"You're not going trick-or-treating?" Ford asked.

"No," Mabel said, with an exaggerated sigh of disappointment.

Dipper elbowed her for her theatrics; they'd already agreed on what they'd do tonight. "We've got plans with friends. But we do get to wear matching costumes again."

"Creepy ghost children!"

"Ah," Ford said. "That explains your..." He gestured at them. They were wearing a suit and a dress, old-fashioned and gray, with tattered hems and dusty black dress shoes.

"Barty helped us put the outfits together," Dipper said.

"We still need to do our makeup," Mabel said. "What about you, Grunkle Ford? What are you doing for Summerween?"

"Ah." He glanced toward the ceiling ruefully, as though he could see The Enemy in the shack through the many layers of dirt above. Summerween had been one of the things he'd missed most about Gravity Falls; even during his years as a reclusive scientist in the woods, he'd usually taken off Summerween and Halloween to hand out candy to the children bold enough to visit his house.

But Bill's eagerness to participate had sucked the fun out of the day. The thought of celebrating Summerween in the same house as Bill felt too much like celebrating with him. "Nothing, I suppose. I was planning to stay down here." He gestured at his desk. "Continue my research."

"What are you working on right now?" Dipper asked.

Ford quickly said, "Nothing. Just—the same research," and was immediately hit with a pang of guilt. Remember what happened last summer when you tried to keep secrets about Bill out of embarrassment? Reluctantly, he said, "I've... split some research duties with Fiddleford. While I'm waiting to hear back from him, I'm looking into—some magical knowledge Bill revealed. To determine how much of it's true."

Dipper looked puzzled. "Revealed when?"

Mabel slammed her hands on Ford's desk. "Grunkle Ford, you can take a break from gathering intel on the enemy for one day! It's Summerween! Promise me you'll do something to celebrate before the day's over."

Ford let out a huff, but smiled. He wanted to do something. Surely he could come up with something that would let him avoid Bill? "All right, I promise. I won't invoke the Trickster's wrath tonight. Could you leave your costume makeup in the bathroom when you're finished? I'll find something to do with it."

"Perfect!" Mabel hugged him; then grabbed Dipper's hand. "C'mon, let's finish getting dressed. The trick-or-treaters will be here any minute!"

"Okay, okay." Dipper waved at Ford as Mabel dragged him to the elevator.

When they were gone, Ford turned back to the papers Mabel had given him. Bill's childhood home... Assuming he wasn't lying, at least. But an entire blueprint seemed like a complicated spur-of-the-moment fabrication even for him. If Bill was lying, it was a lie close to the truth.

It was strange to imagine Bill as a child with a bedroom full of books. Strange to imagine Bill as a child at all. What did a young triangle look like? He couldn't imagine anything different from how Bill always looked.

The floorplan did look small. Smaller even than the apartment over the pawn shop had been. Ford tried to remember what the homes he'd seen in Exwhylia had looked like...

He raised his head as something the kids had said registered. "Barty? Who's Barty?"

####

While Mabel was downstairs, Bill inspected her box of crayons.

The wrapper around the gray crayon was coming loose.

He took the glue stick they'd been using to reinforce the paper houses with popsicle sticks and carefully stuck the wrapper back on.

The house was too quiet without anyone around to talk to. He hated the quiet.

From the corner of the living room behind the table, when Bill leaned on the wall, shut his eyes, and listened closely, he could faintly hear the hidden elevator. He headed upstairs to stow the drawing of Mabel's house somewhere safe, and then went to the downstairs bathroom to finish dressing for Summerween.

####

(Y'all I worked hard on those fake crayon drawings. Anyway I know we're all collectively going insane today over the book news but if you took time out of your day to read this, I'd love to hear what y'all think!)

[munson-blurbs]

When Man Plans, God Laughs (Eddie Munson x Single Mom!Reader)

Summary: You're a single mom of two who recently moved back to your hometown of Hawkins, Indiana, after a nasty divorce. When your friends take you out for the night, you run into your high school crush: Eddie Munson. But are either of you satisfied with just a one-night stand?

Warnings: single motherhood, divorce, fluff, mentions of drugs/dealing

WC: 1.9k

Part One | Part Two

You're grateful that you didn't drink too much at the concert last night, because the following morning is hectic. Matthew insists on having milk with his cereal, then cries because it's soggy. While you attend to his tantrum, Grace takes it upon herself to grab the orange juice carton from the fridge, promptly dropping it and spilling it all over the kitchen floor. And when the word "shit" accidentally slips out of your mouth when you see the sticky mess forming, both kids decide to march around chanting it.

You clean up the kitchen, wipe down your messy children, and get them dressed for the day. They've been begging you to take them to the children's museum, so that's your plan. You're just finishing tying Grace's sneakers when the phone rings.

"Hello?" you huff into the receiver, scrambling to get out to the car before Matthew manages to undress himself.

"Hey, Y/N?" a familiar voice comes over the line. "It's Eddie. Munson," he clarifies, as if a different Eddie would be calling.

You crinkle your nose. "How did you get my number?" you ask, and you cringe at the interrogative note in your tone. "I mean, hi. But also, how did you get my number?""

Eddie laughs, not taking offense to any of it. "I hounded Starsky and Hutch until they broke and gave it to me."

"How nice of them," you mutter. "So, what's up?"

"Look," he starts, "I had a lot of fun last night. And I was hoping we could actually get to talk, catch up. Like a date, maybe?" His voice breaks at the end, nerves getting the best of him.

You smile weakly. "Eddie, that's really sweet," you tell him gently, keeping an eye on your munchkins, "but I'm not really looking to date right now."

"Is it because you have kids?" he blurts out, and you're taken aback.

"H-how did you know that I have kids?" It's a dumb question; Robin and Steve told him, obviously. "Never mind. Yes, it's because I have kids. Kids who are currently waiting for me to entertain them."

"So you're just never gonna date again?" he asks, but it's a genuine question; he's not accusing you of lying.

You exhale. "Maybe one day I will," you answer honestly. "But I...I don't think it's a good idea to be with someone who carries around a box full of mysterious illicit substances. Not really kid-friendly, y'know?"

"They're, uh, not all for me," he stammers.

You can't help but chortle at his statement. "Is the fact that you sell drugs supposed to make this better?" You notice Grace eyeing you curiously, so you lower your voice. "Look, I know you have to do whatever you can to make ends meet. I'm not judging you. But I also can't bring my kids into that kind of environment, y'know?"

There's a long pause on the other end of the line. "Yeah, no, I get it. Could we still...hang out? Like with Harrington and Buckley. Just as friends." Eddie bites his tongue to keep from babbling.

"Of course," you reply, breathing a sigh of relief. "I've gotta get going, but we'll talk soon."

"Bye, Y/N," he says, and you detect a hint of sadness in his voice. Maybe more than a hint. But you don't have time to ponder it, because Matthew is trying to fit through the spindles on the staircase. Why are kids so fast?

~

A few months later, you're holding Matthew's chubby little hand as you make your way through the library parking lot. Grace is in kindergarten full-time, so it's just you and your little man during the weekdays.

"Are you ready for Storybook Sing-a-longs?" you ask him excitedly. It was a new program that the library was offering to kids where a musician sang songs based on popular children's books. The best part was it was free. You'd signed him up right away.

The hum of a guitar being tuned floats past your ears as you enter the children's section. You're placing a fuzzy mat on the floor for you and Matthew to sit on, when you hear it:

"Hi there, tiny humans! I'm Eddie!"

Your head snaps up at the sound of his voice. No way. No fucking way. But it's him: Eddie Munson is sitting before you in a folding chair, long curls pulled back into a low bun. He's still got his signature rings and his ripped black jeans, but he's wearing a purple shirt that reads "Storybook Sing-a-longs."

"Jesus Christ," you murmur under your breath.

The mom next to you overhears your utterance. "I know, right?" she scoffs. "Who let him around children? He was such a freak in high school."

You shake your head. "That's not what I meant--" you start to say, but Eddie cuts you off.

"I need a volunteer to help me sing a song about wheels on the bus," he announces, eyes twinkling at the kids' excited faces. "Who knows that one and wants to sing with me?"

Matthew looks up at you, waiting for your approval. "Go on, Bubba," you encourage him. "You love The Wheels on the Bus!"

He jumps up waving his stubby arms in the arm, desperate to get Eddie's attention. When Eddie spots him, he motions the two of you over.

It takes him a moment to place who you are--your oversized t-shirt, mom jeans, sneakers, and barely-there swipe of mascara is a far cry from your skimpy concert outfit. But when he realizes, his face lights up.

"Who do we have here?" he asks, both to your son and to himself.

"I'm Matthew," the boy replies proudly, and it comes out as Mahh-chew. "And this is my mommy!"

Eddie's smile is so genuine that it hurts your heart. "Hi, Matthew and his mommy!" he says. "Matthew, do you know what the wheels on the bus do?"

"They go round and round!" Wound an' wound, he shrieks excitedly.

"That's right!" Eddie cheers, launching into the song. Matthew is singing and clapping along, doing all of the hand motions like you taught him. You sneak glances at Eddie, his fingers strumming gently, his voice energetic but soothing. It's a side of him you've never seen before.

You and Matthew scurry back to your mat at the end of the song, and it's time for another kid to have a turn. The next half hour is filled with lyrics about Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, and The Three Little Pigs. Matthew's eyes are wide the whole time, soaking in the music in wonderment.

You're putting away the mat, a half-asleep tot in your arms, when you feel a light tap on your shoulder.

"Hey," Eddie says softly. "I was hoping you'd be here."

You feel yourself blushing, and you hoist Matthew up a bit higher to cover your reddening cheeks. "Well, Matty and I never turn down a chance to sing Wheels on the Bus!" You tickle the boy's belly and he gives the sweetest giggle you've ever heard.

"You guys are pros. Gonna put me out of business!" Eddie teases. He glances at Matthew, then looks directly into your eyes. "Y/N, he's such a cute kid."

"Thanks," you grin, "but he's not gonna be cute if he doesn't get his nap soon."

"Can I walk you to your car?" Eddie asks sheepishly. "Is that okay?"

"Sure. Thank you." You can't bring yourself to meet his gaze, shyness suddenly overtaking you as well.

He grabs your bag from your hand. Your pace is slower than it would be if you weren't holding Matthew, but Eddie walks alongside you.

"I should, um...I should be thanking you, actually," he says suddenly.

"Me?"

"Yeah," he nods. "When we spoke on the phone? And you said that you couldn't be with me because of my...my job? You were right. I'd been meaning to stop doing that stuff, but I figured I could never amount to much more. The Munson name comes with a reputation, and it ain't pretty. I thought no one would ever give me a chance.

"And then I came by here to return a book and saw they were looking for a kids' entertainer, and I thought, I can do that. I think the librarians were shocked that I was serious about it, but once I started doing the animal impressions for 'Old MacDonald,' they realized it was the real deal."

You laugh. "You really nailed those. We were both impressed with the cow especially."

Eddie snorts. "What can I say? I had plenty of experience listening to an old cow in O'Donnell's class."

"Eddie!" you swat at his stomach playfully. "Don't teach my innocent son how to insult people."

"Sorry, sorry," he puts his hands up in defeat. "But, yeah. I just thought you should know."

You raise your eyebrows at him. "One night after a concert made you rethink your whole life?" you ask unbelievingly.

"Yes? I mean, Buckley kept telling me about her friend that was incredibly smart, funny, caring...the list went on and on. And then I met you, and you were, like, holy sh--sugar hot," he amends quickly.

"That's sweet," you say, biting your lower lip. "But most days, I look like this. Miniskirts are few and far between."

Eddie places a big hand on your cheek. "The sentiment still stands, sweetheart." He kisses your forehead, sending shivers down your spine. When you arrive at your car, he opens the back door so you can put a sleeping Matthew in his car seat.

"Thanks, Eddie," you whisper. You want to kiss him so badly, it hurts. "Hey, um, do you do children's birthday parties, by any chance?" You glance down at your son. "He turns three in a few weeks, and I need something to keep the kids entertained."

"I do now," he beams. "Any special requests?"

"You've gotta bust out that rendition of Old MacDonald, obviously," you tease. "How much do you charge?"

"Hmm," he pretends to think. "One...slice of birthday cake."

"I'm serious!" You put your hands on your hips. "Besides, you would get birthday cake anyway."

"Okay," he says nervously. "How about that date?" When you raise your eyebrows, he gives an exasperated sigh. "C'mon! I stopped dealing, I got a regular gig, Matthew already adores me. Just one date. And if it sucks, I'll leave you alone forever."

You consider it. One date couldn't hurt, right? It wasn't like you were marrying the guy. Clearly, you didn't fare well in the marriage department, anyway.

"One date," you agree, and Eddie pumps his fist in the air triumphantly. "After the party. If you bomb, the deal's off."

"Oof, no pressure or anything," he stumbles back dramatically. "But it's a deal." He sticks his hand out and you shake it, but he takes the opportunity to pull you in and kiss your lips. "Couldn't help myself," he mumbles into your mouth. You bring your hand to the back of his head and kiss him back harder, feeling body melt into his. You're snapped out of your trance by the sound of Matthew stirring.

"We've gotta get home," you apologize. "Call me later, around 4? I'll give you the party info."

Eddie nods. "Sounds great." He kisses your cheek before opening your door for you. "I'll talk to you then."

You wave goodbye as you back out of the spot, a smile plastered to your face.

So much for a one-night stand.

--

[nomerrynolife]

I just need to rant...

This episode my heart bleed for Night and from a mere dislike, I am now fully enraged with Day's and Night's mom.

looking down on other's because they're poor? Ma'am, your own son remembers that you used to begged for food after your husband ran off, get off your high horse.

if anything she should empathize with Mhok's situation, not feeling like a queen vetting and reviewing Mhok like some kind of a liability to the state. I can understand a mother wanting the best, but you obviously too busy to be home to realized that Day had started smiling and living like a normal person again.

if it wasn't for Mhok, ma'am your son probably has gone mental talking like a guppy coz the only friend he has is the fishes in the tank.

if she care a bit about Day at all, she should know how miserable Day is being locked up in a room for an entire year. Not learning how to bring Day back to society nor learning how to handle a blind person and treating him like everybody else, like a son he always has been. This reminds me of that scene in Moonlight Chicken, when Heart's mom had to rely on LiMing to translate coz she didn't even bother to learn sign language.

what rages me the most is that the mom also implied that Night is responsible for Day's condition. Ma'am please, your job is to make sure BOTH your son is taken care of, not drive a wedge between them! At the very least not make Night feel even guiltier, and that's also so that Night doesn't feel guilty and burdened to help Day. It's obvious that Night did try his best to help (letting Day go to Songkhla, slipping the new phone with his meal, changing the soggy noodle soup with Day)

Idk about anyone else, but favoritism among kids is not uncommon in South East Asia household (at the very least my country) so seeing that framed picture of Mom hugging ONLY Day makes my heart breaks further for Night. It shows that mom already favor Day to Night, and when the accident happen and she further blames Night I can only imagine how awful it is to be Night.

Night calling their long lost father to confide and pour his heart out because he has no one in the house to turn to... help me I'm crying.

even your blind son can see that favoritism bullshit you're pulling during the Christmas dinner, MA'AM I CANNOT HELD MY ANGER AND MY TEARS SEING NIGHT BROKE DOWN LIKE THAT.

Anyways, we'll see next episode if she redeem herself. I sure hope so. Night still got that rizz staring down on Porjai knowing her legs has turn jelly (well, at least I know I do) and not hesitating to be a father that stepped up, A MAN. I just know he's gonna be a great father since he's gonna pour all the love he didn't get to that child.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

One Little Word

Summary:

After their argument, Azula's Fire Warriors find her cold, drenched, and miserable.

It is a long, lonely walk from the spirit temple. Long, lonely, and rainy. Doubly so knowing that she has no one to go back to. Her shoes are already filling with water, her socks are soaked, and she can feel her feet wrinkling. It is, by all means, a terribly uncomfortable sensation. But she doesn’t stop walking. 

She can’t.

She hasn’t put enough distance between herself and that damnable temple. At any rate she has found footprints. 

Familiar footprints that take her to a clearing.

A clearing that has a few hastily set up tents and a small cooking fire that is blazing in defiance of the rain. Just as its makers had so blazingly defied her. They seem cheerful in spite of the abysmal weather. And Chiyou is there. So they had managed to rescue her after all. She supposes that she should respect them for that. 

They all support each other. 

They love and care about each other. 

They are never that happy when she is around. 

If the last few hours are to go by, it is all her own fault anyways. Most things are, even if she didn’t want to say it in front of that awful spirit. Even if she tries her hardest to keep those thoughts buried deep where they can’t hurt her anymore. 

She supposes that she could go talk to them. She isn’t sure that she should. They are probably better off without her. Their stance on her is clear enough. It is alright she doesn’t need them. She doesn’t. She swears that she doesn’t. 

In fact she doesn’t need anyone. 

The spirit told her that she was going to be alone and that is just fine by her. Nobody can hurt her that way. She can’t get attached to anybody if there is nobody to get attached to. 

A lump forms in her throat and she isn’t sure why. This should be a good thing. It should be reassuring to know for certain, to have decided to remain alone. And yet…

Azula doesn’t make a fire. 

She doesn’t set up her tent to build herself a shelter. 

She doesn’t like her thoughts so she makes a point of finding herself the muddiest puddle to sit in so that she can focus on the harshness of the night’s chill and the discomforts of her drenched clothing. And by Agni, it is terribly uncomfortable. She feels absolutely filthy and she can’t stop shivering. And there is a part of her that truly enjoys it.

She would rather feel uncomfortable and cold than all of those emotions threatening to burst through. 

Maybe she should just let them. It isn’t as though there is anyone around to see her break. She can cry in private where no one will call her weak.

She draws her hood up over her head and watches the rainwater bounce off of it. She is so, so very cold. Cold and growing hungry again. Even if she had food, she wouldn’t have the will to eat it. She is crashing again. Sinking low. And this time she isn’t certain that she will be able to pull herself out of it. The spirit has given her too much too think about. Too many things that are too much for her to handle. 

She doesn’t think that anyone would particularly miss her should she decide to curl up here and just…not get up. 

Just let the elements do to her what they will. 

Sometimes she feels like that. Father had taught her better than that. Father taught her many things. But he didn’t teach her how to be a person, let alone a likable kind person. The kind of person that can take a redemption when it is offered to her. 

That is what that was…right?

Father has also taught her that people who hurt her are doing it to help her. To make her stronger. Better. 

And yet here she is…

This is what father’s teachings have amounted to. She is so cold. She is so tired. She closes her eyes. Maybe the cold will whisk her away while she sleeps. Maybe that spirit will come back to save the world from her. If she is lucky she will be gone by the morning. Instinctively she shivers deeper into her cloak. Soggy as it is, it doesn’t provide much warmth at all, if any. 

She can’t tell if she is crying or if it is only the rain.

.oOo.

She wakes up to the sound of the rain that she had fallen asleep to. She swallows hard. She wasn’t supposed to wake up. She wasn’t supposed to but she did. But that doesn’t mean that she is going to get up. She will just lay here.

Here…

Here is not where she had been. 

Here is under a blanket. Her clothing is still sopping wet but the blanket takes the edge off of the cold. She flexes her fingers, gently rubbing them against the floor of the…she furrows her brows…the tent. 

She sits up and the blanket falls from her shoulders. She rubs her eyes. She can smell something cooking. Maybe some type of stew. Probably Ningka’s. Ningka is an awful cook but somehow her food always smells delicious.

“You’re finally awake.” Zirin comments. 

She shouldn’t be. She really shouldn’t…

“You…” she furrows her brows. “You actually brought me here?” 

“Agni! Yeah we’re angry but you didn’t think that we’d leave you to freeze or starve to death, did you?” Chiyou throws her hands up. 

The look on her face must have said it all because Zirin sighs. “We weren’t going to just leave you there.”

“But you are going to leave me.” And so they might as well have just left her where she lie. 

“Do you want us to?” Chiyou asks. “Because, last I checked, we were just a means to an end. We’re done with this, whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish.”

She thinks that she is done with it too. 

She is done with most things.

There isn’t really anywhere else for her to go. Nothing else for her to do. No one for her to hold out for. 

She supposes that this is the part where most people say that they just want to go home. Or that they just want things to go back to the way things used to be. But she doesn’t have a home. And things used to be terrifying. Even if no one realized it. Even if she hadn’t realized it either. 

So what can she say that she wants?

What is her goal? What is there to strive for when everything feels so empty and pointless. 

What does she want?

She just wants to be okay. 

She wants friends and family if the spirit is to be trusted in any capacity. 

But when she opens her mouth to answer Chiyou, the only thing that comes out is a small sob. And then another and another because she things that, at this point, even asking for those things is too much. And she doesn’t know how to ask for them anyways. 

Zirin’s face softens. She expects the girl to give one of her eye rolls and her sarcastic, “you’re pathetic’s.” Instead she sighs and lifts Azula into her arms. Azula is quite limp and doesn’t have the energy to do anything. “Here, why don’t you eat something.” 

“I’m not hungry.” She manages to mumble. But her growling stomach says otherwise. 

Ningka pushes the bowl into her hands and for the longest time she only stares at it. 

“Maybe we should get her some dry clothes first?” One of the others asks. 

But why? Why would they do that? Why would they care? Why would they take the time to pat her dry and ring her hair out? Why would they offer her her clean clothes? Relatively clean anyhow. 

She couldn’t be bothered to help Chiyou so why wouldn’t they leave her to fend for herself. 

“Now eat your stew.” Zirin instructs. She gets as far as taking hold of the spoon and absently stirring at the stew. “Go on, it will warm you up. You’ve probably already caught a cold being out there for so long.” 

Azula shrugs. She wonders when they will get their things and go—after they see that she won’t die as soon as they do or as soon as they grow tired of her. She takes a bite but it is tasteless to her. 

“When are you going to leave me?” The spirit’s words won’t stop echoing in her ears. 

“Do you want to be alone?” Zirin asks. 

Azula shakes her head. 

“Then why do you just throw people out?” Chiyou demands.

It’s all that she knows how to do. Growing tired of the spoon, Azula brings the bowl to her lips. Zirin is right, it does warm her throat and belly rather pleasantly. But warmth never seems to last anymore. Maybe she throws people out so they can’t get rid of her first. She thinks that she might be the kind of person who other people find strange and unlikable. Mai had told her as much in the spirit temple. People leave her because of her. 

The fact of the matter is that she isn’t like these girls. These girls were put in that institution because their parents had been cruel and didn’t want to deal with values and morals that were at odds with their own. Azula herself? She thinks that she might be the real deal–the type of person that those places were built for. 

They probably know it too.

“Can you say something?” Chiyou asks.

“There’s nothing to say.” Azula replies. Nothing that will help. The Zuko that the spirit had manifested demanded that she ask for forgiveness. She had told it that she had no interest in doing so. But she doesn’t want Zirin and Chiyou and the others to hate her. She rather likes them even if she can’t say it very well. But they will laugh at her. They will throw it back in her face. 

“I think that there’s a lot to say.” Zirin frowns. “But one little word would suffice.” 

“Sorry?” She asks

“For what?” Chiyou asks eagerly.

“Zirin said one word would suffice.” Azula replies as stubbornly as she can muster. She can at least cling to one tiny scrap of her pride. It’s all that she has left.

“Yeah well…” Chiyou starts and Zirin nudges her. 

“Give her time, Chiyou. She needs some time.” 

Time and a whole lot of patience. 

“Finish your stew and then get some more rest, okay?” Zirin offers. “We can talk about things more when you’re feeling at least a little better.” 

Azula swallows.

They aren’t leaving her. 

“Okay.” She whispers. 

The spirit was wrong. Agni, she hopes that the spirit was wrong. Zirin helps her to her feet and Ningka picks up her blanket. She…she isn’t alone yet. They still want to be her friends.

[brighttears]

Dusk

Joel Miller x f!reader

No physical description, no use of y/n 

Summary:  Not long after you, Joel and Ellie arrive in Jackson. You and Joel are instantly drawn to each other, not able to get the other off your minds before you’ve even spoken.

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: mentions of drinking

A/n: my brain is soggy rn but here is the first chapter idec if it flops the second chapter is almost done i am seeing this one thru i have like a whole document for planning shit. this will be a slow burn btw

—

“these hands that kill, these hands that slaughter the marrow of life, these hands which are capable of so much tenderness, which is where love lies, i do not know how to contain these contradictions, within you, within us”

—

You don’t smile, don’t move your face at all, just kind of… observe him, head cocked, half hiding behind a post about thirty feet away from him in the Tipsy Bison. Usually, Joel would glare his glariest glare and it’d do the trick, but you don’t look like you’d even be phased, and you’re also making him nervous and self conscious and all he can think is don’t blush don’t blush don’t blush don’t blush. Not knowing how to handle this, Joel folds his arms, glances at you and then away, at the floor, clears his throat, shifts, and looks back up and past you as if he doesn't notice you at all. It’s a little creepy, but your shameless intensity intrigues him more than anything has in a long time. Also, you are fucking stunning. Joel tries to subtly puff his chest but then decides against it halfway through. In his peripheral, he may have seen the corner of your lip curl. When he turns to look, he only catches you eyeing him one more time as you turn and walk somewhere behind him, past the corner he leans against. He catches himself before rubbernecking and instead lets you disappear. 

Then Tommy comes up from the other side of him, startling Joel so much that he flinches and almost chokes. “God damn it, Tommy.”

His brother only laughs, nudging him with a knuckle in his shoulder. “Am I goin’ crazy or did that chick over there just make you blush?”

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” Joel grumbles, looking around to see who else may have caught him.

“Ah, come on. It’s cute.”

“Shut the fuck up Tommy.” he grumbles tongue-in-cheek, nudging his brother back. “Fuck do you want, anyway?” he smirks.

“Well, I came over to ask if you wanted a drink, but I can tell you her name if you want.”

“Whose name?” Joel very poorly feigns obliviousness and it makes Tommy laugh.

“Aw, come on. Look… I know you haven’t been here long, but,” he cocks his head until Joel looks back at him, “you can relax, you know,” he chuckles, but Joel isn’t amused. Tommy has had this talk with him a few times now and he does not like hearing it. ‘Relax’ sounds like such a ridiculous suggestion. When he’s mulled it over after past conversations, he only becomes more frustrated by the contradiction of his heart and gut—the pull of desire towards the concept of relaxation and the alarms going off at the same time. Joel has always felt intensely and it jabs at him as Tommy speaks. “I mean, we’ve got a bar, Joel, you can ask her out.” 

So that’s what he’s been getting at this time. Joel scoffs overdramatically. 

“Well, when Maria finds out about this she will be settin’ you up with her.” Tommy smirks.

“You will not tell Maria.” Joel snaps quietly, turning his body towards a still wildly smirking Tommy. He quickly tries to correct himself, “There’s nothin’ to tell.” but Tommy ignores it.

“Hey,” he shrugs his shoulders, “who says I’m tellin’ her? If she finds out she finds out.”

“Tommy, I swear to god…” Tommy cackles, Joel shakes his head and lets himself chuckle. Then Tommy leans on the wall next to his brother and they just appreciate each other's company. 

After a few moments of silence, Joel asks, trying to keep his voice casual, “What—what’d you say her name was again?” 

Tommy laughs again, “You’re just gonna have to go ask her yourself.” Joel gives him a mostly fake glare. “Aw, come on. Lemme pour ya’a drink, loverboy.”

“Loverboy?” Joel follows his brother to the bar.

—

A couple hours later, Joel sits at the edge of his bed, elbows resting on spread out knees, eyes closed and face resting on clasped hands like he’s praying. He’s more cursing himself though, trying desperately to tug at the flap that will roll the projector screen back up where images of you flick over it on a loop. 

He’s seen you a few times but has yet to make actual eye contact with you for more than two seconds. 

The first time he saw you you were eating alone at dinner, all the way across the room from him in the Bison. He stole glances, which was more like a diet stare, until you caught him. When he dared look back up, you were staring back at him while chewing. He did not look up from his plate again that night.

The next time he saw you you were on horseback, squinting against the sunset as you rode in from a patrol shift. Your rolling hips popped into his head and spooked him several times the next day. He definitely did not let the film roll at night. 

The last time he’d seen you before today you had caught him staring again at breakfast. After counting to ten, he looked back up, but you hadn’t looked away, barely containing a laugh with food in your mouth. Were you laughing at him? At the fact that he couldn’t stop looking at you? Were you making fun of him inside your head? It made Joel blush and he once again became very interested in the food on his plate for the rest of the meal. 

You are annoying the fuck out of Joel because you make him fucking blush, his mind wanders to you far too often throughout the day, and he is too fucking nervous to talk to you. He feels juvenile. He considers asking Maria to either put him on a shift with you or never put him on shift with you, but either way he’d be letting the cat out of the bag and she would never let it go, and then Ellie would find out and would never let him hear the end of it. 

It was in that moment, realizing he was just at the edge of losing sleep over you, that Joel knew he was fucked. 

— 

Before Joel and his little friend Ellie, you were the newest person to Jackson by far. Meaning, everyone was already all settled in and it left you feeling distanced and insecure. You still jump at every noise, hunch over your plate as if to protect from someone snatching it from under you, and are in general not very hospitable. It isn’t really anything against anyone, mostly just habits you’ve picked up from the road. The people here are nice, but that isn’t comforting these days; it can be more frightening than someone who’s upfront about being malicious because at least then you know what to expect. Arriving here, you didn't know what fuck was going on. You are so far removed. Some nights you pack up all of your belongings and consider taking a horse and bolting, but when you start thinking about where you’d go, you understand again why you hadn’t done it last time. It’s a bit nerve wracking here, but out there is walking around in a nightmare. 

Maria was the one who’d vouched for you when she and the rest of the horseback crew found you lying in the snow not far away from their settlement. You had collapsed from exhaustion, malnourished and lucky you still had all your toes when you woke up. You’re also lucky that they didn’t kick you right back out when you did wake up, since you’d basically trashed one of the rooms in their mini hospital in a wild panic. Despite that, Maria took a liking to you; she told you she liked your spirit and how gentle you were when some of the kids ran up to you—the shiny new toy—later that day while you were eating your first actual meal in the Bison. She and Tommy basically weaseled their way in from there and remain your only real friends, which you like. 

You saw Joel and Ellie ride in a couple months later and as soon as you got Tommy and Maria alone you questioned them about why they liked these two so much. Tommy told you that Joel is his brother who had come all the way from Boston to find him, having taken care of this kid, Ellie, the whole way there. You were impressed and wildly intrigued. 

What makes them stand out in your mind more is that you saw yourself in their eyes when they first rode into town—more than anything it was bewilderment. Because of this, no matter how curious, you know you’ll have to wait for them, like stray cats, to come up to you first. 

Ellie barely registered you though and you didn’t think Joel did either until you caught him staring. It was threatening until you noticed he was blushing. Then, it was fun, because you were making the big tough pretty boy blush without even smiling at him. 

You happened to be cleaning your saddle one day at the stables when Joel walked in with Tommy to grab horses for patrol. They weren’t having any kind of private conversation, just talking about the weather really, so you indulged yourself by inching a little closer to the doorframe to get a listen of his voice. Gruff, twanged, sweet. Tommy made him belly laugh, and that was the moment you knew you were fucked. 

[treedaddymcpuffpuff]

Flying/Dream to Believe (2 parter - part 2) (TW: mention of gore/fighting/rage/bullying)(mostly sfw)

@gea-chan96

Part two.

If there’s one place I absolutely hate with a passion, it’s the cafeteria. 

I’d rather be in gym class than here, sitting alone and pushing my soggy noodles around a styrofoam plate. Surrounded by loud, rowdy peers that sometimes feel the need to make fun of me. Something about food and chubby people just don’t mix, apparently, so I get a lot of “is that your fifth tray?” Or “slow down, Hoss.”

Understandably, after I rearranged Nate’s face, there has been less and less of that. Now I just get ignored a lot. Which is better, but still not great. 

Today, however, it’s different. Tommy and Leo plop down at my table like they’ve been sitting there the whole semester. 

“What are you doing?” I ask them, and I can’t help my dry, uninterested, downright bitchy tone. 

Tommy gives me this kicked puppy pout, which makes me feel really bad about my attitude problem that lingers from this morning when my family told me if I didn’t join gymnastics then I was taking a job at Uncle Vic’s antique store. 

I hate dolls, especially old porcelain ones. It would be a bad experience. 

Speaking of porcelain dolls, Stacy and Leah also take a seat at my table, which scares the shit out of me. Sure, I can punch a buff football guy in his mouth, but these two tiny gymnasts make me want to melt into the floor. 

Leah saddles up to Leo, rubbing his shoulder and being flirty. Stacy does the same thing to Tommy. I hope I’m hiding the disgusting scowl on my face at this display, but I highly doubt that I am.

“Hey, y/n,” Leah says, playing with Leo’s hair, “I heard you’re joining the gymnastics team?” 

Both of them give this melodic, chiming, grating laugh. Tinkerbell bitches. But, I realize something in that moment. I’m not afraid of Stacy and Leah; I’m afraid of what Stacy and Leah will make me angry enough to do to them. 

“My mom is making me,” I say. 

“No offense, but aren’t you a little large to do the stuff we do?” Stacy asks, placing a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. 

I look at him, expecting his face to be red and blushing, drooling like an idiot over Stacy - smitten and dumb, but Tommy, instead, is staring at me apologetically, like he feels bad?

I would have preferred the smitten look. Anger spikes my brain. I don’t need pity, I need revenge. “The stuff you do?” I don’t even recognize my own voice. It sounds more like something off Discovery Channel predator week. “You mean prance around putting everyone else down because you hate yourself and not even being that good at gymnastics in the first place? That the stuff you’re talking about, Stacy?” 

Her face puffs up like a blowfish, and I feel myself smiling - this sinister, numb curl of my lips that just happens on its own while she turns purple and furious. 

Aw, someone’s mad. 

“Listen, you fat bitch - “

“No. You listen, Leah.” I look back at Tommy, whose usually soft face is pulled into something kind of…. scary. “Y/n is actually pretty cool, and you’d know that if you stopped being a spoiled, bitchy princess for a few seconds of your miserable existence and just talked to her.”

For a second, the collective table just looks at him while he goes knives out and directs it all at Leah. She shrinks under his gaze. Stacy’s hand drops off his shoulder and she scoots away. Even I’m kind of.. what’s the word? Not scared, exactly. Thrilled? Yeah, I think that’s it. 

The chocolate lab is actually a rottweiler? What a turn of events. 

Leo is also looking at Tommy like he’s seeing him for the first time. 

Leah goes from scared to scowling. “I’d watch your mouth Tommy, or Mark will kick your ass.” 

“Go get him,” Tommy nods, “let’s see.” 

“Tommy,” I say his name, hoping to diffuse this. 

He turns to me, and I expect him to keep the scowl, but he trades it for a kind smile. “It’s cool, y/n, let me handle these jealous bitches.” The last word ends on a curled horn point as he flips around to pin Leah with his psycho glare again. 

“There a problem here, Tommy?” Right on cue, Mark steps up to our table like some kind of bouncer at club high school cafeteria. Jesus, not Prince Charming here, too. 

“I think you should teach him a lesson, Mark,” Stacy says, grabbing Mark’s hand and standing beside him like she’s the First Lady and we are mere peons.

I can’t help it that my eyes are rolling. 

“Yeah, there’s actually two problems,” Tommy tells Mark, also standing up to face him. And if I was mark, and mark was smart, personally I’d be a bit intimidated. Tommy’s got some height and bulk on him. 

However, Mark is failing four subjects for a reason - he puffs out his chest, and stands toe to toe with Tommy. 

Ugh, boys.

“Hey, you two.” Mr. Alan is walking towards our table, yelling and drawing the attention of the few people in the crowd we haven’t interested yet. 

And I was actually starting to like being ignored. 

“I suggest you boys agree to disagree before you both land yourselves in detention.”

Neither one of them even look at the teacher - they’re too busy staring one another down. 

Mr. Alan places a warning hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “Warneki, you hear me?” 

The little standoff breaks up, but something in the way that they maintain eye contact even after Mark sits down across the cafeteria tells me it isn’t over. 

“Hey,” I tell Tommy, “I don’t need your help, you know that?” 

Tommy shrugs, looking at his milk carton instead of me. “Too bad.”

I start to open my mouth to say something to him, but he’s already up out of his seat and slamming through the cafeteria doors. 

Leo sighs. “What crawled up his ass?” 

I don’t see Tommy for the rest of the day, and it’s making me feel like a total shitbag. What kind of ungrateful person says that to someone after they just defended them? 

Sure, to me it may have seemed like he was doing it out of pity, or to keep up appearances, but Tommy probably really did just want to defend his new friend. 

And now he’s going to hate me. Awesome. This just proves the fact that I’m hard to get along with. The report cards and my dad are right. 

Without Tommy, Leo and I don’t really have common ground, so we part ways awkwardly and don’t talk for the rest of the day. I’m isolated again because I can’t keep my fat mouth shut. Fantastic. 

It’s a cool autumn day on my walk home from school, and I have my hands shoved in my pockets to keep them warm. I try to stop thinking about the friendships I could’ve had, but maybe my loner facade has finally come to an end, because I am pretty upset. There’s this heavy feeling in my ribs that makes me understand the term ‘heartache’ more than I’d like to. 

I hear yelling from somewhere down the block. Sounds like a group of my classmates are antagonizing a fight. It makes sense - the shouts are coming from the old sugar plant, and that’s where people go for scheduled brawls. I punched Nate on the bus, because I don’t need plans, only my fists and rage. 

I’m surprised no one has called the cops on these idiots yet. Has to be a big fight by the sounds of it, and the surrounding neighborhood is a village for older folks, so the cops usually do break it up sooner rather than later. 

Tommy’s dad - one of the guys on the police force - got his arm broken last year when a kid tried to smash another kids head in and his foot accidentally landed on Mr. Warneki’s arm instead. I remember it was the only thing everyone could talk about at school the next day. 

Tommy. I sigh, kick a rock, hoping it will bring me some sense of peace like it does in the movies, but I just feel bad still. Wait. Tommy. Mark. The fight. 

I look down the street leading to the old building, trying to catch some of the words that the yelling voices are saying. Shit. Is Tommy fighting Mark? 

I book it as fast as I can, which isn’t very fast at all.

By the time I make it to the crowd, I have to shoulder through to the middle, where Tommy is sitting on top of Mark and hitting him in the face - that’s a lot of blood. I’m not thinking about anything but this idiot going to jail when I tackle him off of the smaller guy. 

He grabs me, too, and I fall on top of him, probably breaking his ribs and maybe his pointy pelvis while I’m at it. 

But he doesn’t seem broken. He looks up at me, sweaty and red faced and mad - at first. Then, his face gets calmer, and he smiles. “Oh, hey, y/n.” 

I don’t know what to say to him, so I roll off his body and land ass on ground, rubble digging through my jeans. 

He sits up, still smiling pleasantly at me as if I’m not a huge asshole. 

“I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else I can say.

“It’s fine,” Tommy says, waving me off. “I got it.” 

Mark is still lying on the ground, and I would think that he’s dead if it wasn’t for the low groans of pain rolling from his swollen lips. 

“Your dad’s gonna kill you, Tommy,” I tell him, looking away from the bloody scene. 

I’m wrong, his dad does worse. He takes him, in handcuffs, down to the station where the rest of the group are gathered for questioning. Apparently Mark is not here because an ambulance took him away. 

“He was crying like a bitch,” Amber says, making me cringe. Stacy and Leah are on the opposite side of the room, surprisingly not glaring or scowling at me. Not even looking my way at all. Strange. 

When Tommy walks in with his hands cuffed behind his back, his dad leading him through the crowd, he looks at me and gives me a big, toothy grin. 

I should think he’s a total idiot. I should be mad that he decided to play knight. I should be annoyed that he’s acting like he’s top dog. And I am all those things, but I’m also…. I’m flattered. I feel liked. I understand why he’s the usual hot topic of the girls in the locker room. I get why the popular crowd doesn’t pick on him. He’s actually a pretty good guy.

Man, I really hope he doesn’t go to Juvie or prison or something - that would suck for my conscience. 

It takes almost all evening for the cops to talk to each one of us. I decide to tell them about Mark and Tommy in the lunch room, hoping that will help the big idiot’s case a little bit. 

After I’m released, the sun is down and the heavy wind scatters colorful leaves across my shoes. 

“Hey, y/n.” I turn around to see Tommy sitting on a sidewalk bench. 

Oh, well, at least he’s free to go. I walk up and sit beside him. “You know,” I say, “you’re alright, Tommy.”

He giggles. “Well thanks. Same to you.” 

“How’d it feel to hit him?” I ask, kinda wishing it was me that got to do it.

“Felt like I understood why you liked punching Nate.” 

He makes me laugh. “Yeah. I am sorry, though. Are we still….. friends?” I keep telling myself that if he chooses to say no, I’ll be okay with it, but I feel my heart tearing at its seams already in anticipation of that. 

He looks confused. “What? Yeah, of course.”

I try to not smile so big at him. I really do. But, I’m actually delighted. “Oh, cool.”

His grin is worrying. I only have a second to wonder what the cheeky look is for until he’s pulling me under his arm and messing up my hair. “Aw, you thought you could get rid of me?” 

I roll my eyes, keep the smile that’s just getting bigger despite his gentle bullying, and grumble, “can you be anymore annoying?” 

“Absolutely.” 

[oc-tournaments]

ROUND THREE - MATCH 5

DANZYMYR MAENELD vs TAMARA

DANZYMYR MAENELD: @mitsubinyuri

TAMARA: @wokeuptraveledstraightintothesun

VOTE BASED ON THE INFORMATION BELOW CUT!!

Propaganda Content Warnings: Parental death for DANZYMYR, abandonment, experimenting and cult mentions for TAMARA.

DANZYMYR MAENELD:

PROPAGANDA: Danzymyr is a male Drow so already not off to a great start. His mother was like... standard evil drow matriarch. Because he was of high status he was treated a little better than other Drow males but still pretty damn terribly. His house, House Maeneld, was on the way out in terms of power and influence and due to the constant jockeying for status in Drow society his mom was intent to use him as a tool to further the house, as with all of his other siblings.

He went to school in Menzoberranzan to be a warrior, and while he was there, he met another student who he ended up becoming close with. This other student was a member of a much more influential house, and long story short his mother found out and wanted to use his closeness to this guy to infiltrate the house and do a whole lot of murder. He was kind of like okay! Sure!

But he lost his nerve right before reaching the place. He escaped to the surface instead, where shit was awful for him. The Drow's sunlight sensitivity made it so that he was in constant pain and most people didn't look too favorably upon him. Eventually, he took up a career as a monster hunter, gaining more and more begrudging respect until he eventually became an adventurer, and later, hero. All the while he's still traumatized from how he was raised and is deathly terrified of spiders.

Eventually he decides he needs to go back to confront his past, so he does. He returns to the house where he was raised and finds out that the guy he was "very good friends" with died anyway (due to his mother's intervention). He ends up killing his mother and actively enjoys it and that causes a big sense of shame.

Then he's sent to a magic prison where they get their minds probed by an aasimar for abstract visions of their psyche given in the form of song where he'll be judged innocent or guilty. He falls in love with a druid who has a crazy savior complex and is enforcing terrible restrictions on the other prisoners, and he's like "wait he's not that bad!" They make each other worse lol.

THEME SONG:

TAMARA:

PROPAGANDA: let’s see, lost her family at 7 years old (none of them died there was just a house fire where she was put inside an iron stove to “protect” her by her father (her father doesn’t like her can you tell) and they left her there (the rest of her family thought she’d left already)), (un)fortunately picked up by a guy who took her to a very ethical lab where she was healed! And then forced through many painful experiments. Also she was the executioner for a Lot of people later in the lab time and she’s not even 16 yet. So she escapes at age 16 and spends a year with her girlfriend just existing and processing (poorly) what she had to live through and trying to acclimate to life outside of The Lab. Then her girlfriend (who is a cyborg fun fact) got a virus and so she had to be decommissioned which was not a good time for Tamara.

Other physical details: One of the experiments was a test in how high someone’s empathy can get and. Tamara’s the highest Kyne (the one guy who loves experimenting on her) got. So she’s having a Time. She has lost sensation in her extremities, her bones are weak as Fuck due to being part bird (because of very little bone marrow and airy bones), and she just always looks soggy regardless. Also she’s trans

So she just can Not catch a break and she unfortunately gets exploited by her need for parental love and general guidance in her life and joins a cult :( Like can you see the fact that she just cannot stop being kicked while she is down. (I love her to bits and she is my favorite oc I promise)

THEME SONG:

[sass-squat]

I love your wing au so much!!! I like to imagine Wind, Four and the other smaller members of the chain like to huddle under the wings of the bigger boys for warmth and comfort.

Do you have any other headcanons of the boys in your wing au to share?

AHHHH!!! Thank you!!! I'm so glad you're enjoying it so far!!! But oh my god yes!!! They for sure cuddle and huddle under the bigger boys wings all the time! Some more willingly than others tho lol  😂

But of course! I ALWAYS have more headcanons to share I'm so glad that you asked!

Linked Universe Winged Au Headcanons:

Time - I briefly went over this in the Preening post I made a little while back, but Time is oftentimes kind of the "safety net" for the other boys. Whether it's helping them hide from the wrath of the other members of the group or simply staying awake through the night to make sure they rest, Time is always there to support and catch his boys whenever and however they need him. However, he very rarely is the one to initiate physical contact and prefers to simply wait for the others to come to him. This is because he can have a tendency to be a bit overbearing and overprotective, and after the incident with Wind, he's had to learn to step back a little and trust that his boys will come to him when they need him. Because of this, he only initiates contact when he deems it absolutely necessary. He's also got the biggest wings in the group by far which makes him perfect for cuddles and an excellent shield from the rest of the world for those hidden beneath them.

I also headcanon that he secretly really hates the rain. He may have the Song of Storms at his beck and call, but it turns out that giant, soggy wings combined with heavy armor isn't very pleasant to try to travel, fly, or fight with. However, despite his own general dislike of the rain, he does not hesitate to sacrifice himself and his wings to be an umbrella of sorts for others in the group, especially the younger ones.

He's also VERY good at climbing trees. The guy grew up in a magic forest with a giant tree for a dad of COURSE he's good at climbing trees. The first time he beat Wild in a race left the rest of the group in complete and utter awe. He may be the oldest of the Links, but he's still got plenty of tricks up his sleeves.

Twilight - Twilight is the ultimate big brother and no you cannot change my mind. However, this means that he does have the big brother tendency to give noogies whenever he hugs people and overall just abuses his larger size to flop all over the others. Basically imagine that scene with Nani in Lilo & Stitch where she falls on top of Lilo claiming that gravity was increasing on her. That scene combined with the energy from large dogs who are convinced that they are actually lap dogs. That's Twilight. He's got a lot of love to give and often makes great efforts to ensure that everyone gets it regardless of their protests or if they actually want it at the moment. However, even though he does tend to show his affection in sometimes sillier ways, he can be very serious and will not hesitate to either push the others out of harms way or literally pull them closer under his wings when needed. In other words, while he's a bit of an overgrown puppy at times, he's also got a powerful bite to match his bark.

As for random headcanons, I headcanon that whenever Twilight gets wet he has a subconscious tendency to shake out his hair and/or wings like a dog. Gone for a swim? Shake. Coming inside to get out of the rain? Shake. Someone threw a bucket of water at him? Shake. While overall a harmless quirk, it has resulted in a lot of laughing (Wild) and cursing (Legend) from the others. He always tries to claim that he does it because he's just trying to get an early start on preening and drying off (no one believes him).

Sky - Sky is an absolute MASTER when it comes to cuddling. No one can resist his charm and those that try often find themselves gently persuaded under his wings regardless. He's got very large, fluffy wings that make cuddling ideal and has a tendency to "scoop" the others under his wings. He also has a habit of treating everyone who comes to him as his, "baby birds" regardless of their age or size. While it is very cute to see younger members like Wind or Hyrule tucked under his wings, it does make for a very funny sight when he does it to Time or Warriors. On top of that, Sky is also well known for his "magic wings" that can make anyone fall asleep when huddled beneath them.

A silly little headcanon I have about Sky is that he oftentimes "fluffs up" whenever he wakes up or falls asleep. It usually makes his hair, wings, and overall appearance appear very disheveled and the others like to tease him for it, especially since he's one of the main Links who insists on preening the others.

He also really likes fish. No other explanation for it other than he never had the chance to try it before leaving Skyloft and is equally fascinated and horrified by all the different varieties.

Warriors - I headcanon that he's not actually a huge cuddler the majority of the time! However, he does secretly love it whenever Time silently pulls him under his wings. This is because I believe Warriors generally has a hard time asking for help due to his history as a military leader where any sign of weakness can risk causing doubt or disloyalty within troops. On top of that, he also has the, "I'm the hero" complex which means that he generally prefers to help and comfort others rather than ask for help or comfort in return. Because of this, he loves it when the others (especially Wind) come to him and tuck themselves into his side because he gets to feel needed while still secretly finding and receiving comfort in return. The rest of the group know this, so they often purposefully position themselves near him to subtly help him whenever they can tell he's especially stressed or upset.

I headcanon that Warriors is actually an excellent musician, especially when it comes to the violin. Everyone always talks about how Legend is an excellent musician, but I feel like no one considers the possibility of other members of the group also having musical talents. Also he's a momma's boy. You take one look at that man and tell me you DON'T think he was a momma's boy. In this essay I will-

Legend - Legend is a prickly little shit when it comes to cuddling. He generally pretends that he doesn't like it when in reality his inner child is SCREAMING for someone to look after him for a change. However, instead of confronting those emotions like a mature individual he usually chooses to project them onto the younger members of the group instead. He's been nicknamed the "broody hen" of the group for this behavior as it often results in him being especially prickly and almost possessive of the others, especially Hyrule and Wind. However, when he IS forcibly pulled under wing he has a tendency to essentially "burrow" like a rabbit into the other persons side. He does in fact, hate that he does this as it reminds him of his "cowardly bunny heart" but the others all secretly find it adorable.

Legend's handwriting is HORRIBLE. He may be able to SPEAK several languages, but writing them is a whole other story. I also headcanon that this is due in part to him developing some sort of hand tremor that started when he and his ship got blasted with lightning in Links Awakening. He's trained himself to not let it affect his fighting skills, but writing is ROUGH.

Hyrule - Hyrule absolutely soaks up physical affection like a sponge. He's basically been alone his entire life and has had countless monsters chasing him for his blood for the majority of his life let him have his rest and hugs. Because of this, he absolutely adores cuddling and being cuddled in return! However, even though he loves it when others comfort and preen him, he finds it a bit frustrating that the others don't often come to him for comfort in return. He knows that they (usually) won't hesitate to come to him whenever they need his magic for physical healing, but it does hurt his feelings a bit that they don't often come to him for emotional healing. He's a bit like Wind in that regard where he wishes that they would trust him more.

As for silly headcanons, I'm a firm believer that Hyrule would eat sidewalk chalk if given the opportunity. I can't exactly explain why, but I feel like he would because he believes that sidewalk chalk and Smarties taste the same.

Wild - Wild is a bit of a complicated case in the way that he will gratefully accept any and all hugs and cuddles, but rarely asks for them. Listen, the guy may be able to speak after losing all his memories but some more personal things like asking for help are still a work in progress. Because of this, he loves it when other people are able to read him and determine his needs simply from what they see. However, because he loves this so much he will sometimes purposefully act out or behave in such a way that he knows will get the others to fuss over him rather than simply ask for cuddles. This is usually expressed in his preening habits or his general rough housing and teasing with the other members of the group.

I headcanon that he occasionally dreams of his past life before the Calamity. He very rarely actually remembers what it is his brain was trying to show him, so it often leaves him more upset than before he went to sleep because he feels like a failure for, "forgetting them twice."

On a less angstier note, I also headcanon that he would be stupidly good at Legos. Like, you know those kids that would build everything EXCEPT what they were "supposed" to build with the sets they received? That's exactly how Wild would be.

Four - Four is NOT a big fan of physical affection despite the others many attempts. He's a very independent person and often feels overwhelmed or claustrophobic when the others try to pull him in too close. The rest of the group have found that the best way to show physical affection towards him is through pats on the back/shoulders and hair ruffles rather than the usual flurry of feathers and hands. However, Four does love cuddling when he's split into well...Four individuals. He's much more comfortable cuddling with his other counterparts (and shadow) so it's a big adjustment getting used to the rest of the group all also trying to get close. He is getting better though! Right now his favorites are Time and Warriors because they keep to themselves and don't ask any hard questions.

I headcanon that Four is just perpetually cold. This guy does NOT handle the cold well and always has frozen toes and hands. The others complain about this often because he likes to touch them with his frozen limbs. Time is the most frequent victim of this.

Wind - This guy LOVES any and all kinds of physical affection EXCEPT for preening. He finds a lot of comfort in others tucking him under their wings and looking out for him, but hates it when others underestimate or try to coddle him because of it. He also finds a lot of joy in being a source of comfort for the others because he loves feeling needed and getting opportunities to be a "big" brother makes him feel like a real hero. As a warning though, he does have a tendency to tackle his victims he wants to cuddle with and even occasionally succeeds in full on knocking them over. He also kicks in his sleep. Sky discovered this the hard way.

As for other headcanons, I saw someone who reblogged one of my polls said that he puffs his feathers up a lot to appear bigger or more intimidating because he's seen it work with Time and Twilight. So yes, he does do this it's canon now but it's not very effective.

I also headcanon that Wind tends to flap his wings repeatedly whenever he gets really excited! It is very cute but there have also been many causalities as a result of this.

Bonus:

Ravio - He LOVES physical affection and has quite literally broken down Legend's house and emotional walls. He also frequently mimics sounds and voices and yes he does use this to bother Legend. Legend no longer trusts the sound of knocking because he assumes it's just Ravio messing with him. The tax collectors trying to contact him were not amused.

[undeaddevildom]

The brothers at the laundomat ✌

Warning: Beel frewed up (vomit), none of them have any home training they are literally an enemy of the public.

Belphie and Satan had teamed up and put Mammon in the HOL washing machine because they were in the mood to cause a ruckus and lucifer was at a meeting, so they picked the next best target. A calculated (and successful) plan to cause Lucifer stress.

Now lucifer is juggling between ordering a new washing machine, shooing a soggy Mammon away from him while he tries to count his quarters, and trying to keep his brothers in line. While he's distracted he's mixing colors, drycleaning and hand wash only, delicates and bulky items. He's a mess.

Mammon is sticking his fingers underneath all of the washers and dryers and sighing and groaning pathetically when he gets nothing but dust or the occasional sticky goop. Someone stop him before he bursts a blood vessel he literally sounds constipated and he's making a scene. Throw some coins under there for his enrichment.

He's also being made to stand next to Lucifer after a while but not too close because no matter how hard Lucifer tries Mammon always gets some of his coins, even if he hasn't moved from his spot. He's like a freaky magnet or something. You know what. Go back to crawling under people like a roach and stop psychic attacking Lucifer's wallet.

Levi is trying so SO hard to focus on his game but ouh... swishy water...... maybe he has enough change on him for a spin.

What the fuck do you mean he can't get in. He's gotten into the HOL washer just fine wtf is the difference. Just because Mammon can't do it right doesn't mean Levi can't! So unfair.

Nevermind he didn't say anything- he hopes Lucifer didn't hear that. After the initial disappointment he's practically hypnotized by the washers spinning. Omg his sopping wet ruri chan plushy just flopped by... So mesmerizing :0!!

Satan has had his fill of mischief and it sitting politely with his book- wait. Where did his book go? He could've sworn he had it right next to him while he was loading the washer.

Wait.

Wait a fucking second.

Levi's groaning even louder than Mammon's dusty ass when a bunch of grey gunk blocks his view of the washer and Satan can only look over and stare in horror at the state of his book, which now has the consistency of oatmeal.

Satan's frozen in shock, which is good because if he wasn't Lucifer would have to pay more than just a handful of quarters in damages. Lucifer makes him and Belphie pick all the gunk out of the clothes by themselves as punishment for breaking their washer in the first place.

Asmo is a good boy who sat and scrolled on his phone for most of the trip, until he came across a photo shoot someone did in a laundromat, and thought it would be fun to recreate. However, he had just gotten his nails done, and tried to maneuver himself half into the dryer while half assedly holding onto the edge and slipped fully inside. Hey.. it's nice and toasty in here.. and these clothes are so soft and the fabric softener smells so good.. he goes back to scrolling on his phone in a cozy daze. So this is why Belphie falls asleep in here.

Beel is having a terrible time. He saw the soap dispensers and thought they were like the candy dispensers where you put a coin in and get a prize. Now Beel's not picky but this candy tastes an awful lot like soap. Like a lot like soap. The kind that makes his tummy hurt. All it takes is a sharp "Beelzebub." from Lucifer to make him spit it out.

Everywhere.

Any denizens that were in the laundromat had long since left at the sight of ALL of the avatars coming, so at least Beel didn't embarrass himself too badly. Lucifer made him sit next to him while Beel held his aching stomach. The saddest frown is on his face, and foam is still leaking out of his mouth. But is it really a mess if it's soap? 🤔

Belphie tuckered himself out before they even left the house. Shutting Mammon in their washing machine took a lot out of him, especially because Mammon put up a fight. Then, he tired himself out going all the way from the House of Lamentation to the laundromat. It's not his fault car rides make him sleepy.

He found himself nodding off while leaning against a dryer. When he opened his eyes he was curled up completely on top of the washer. He didn't even remember climbing up there but whatever.

He nodded off again and when he opened his eyes next, Satan was dragging him over to a washer dejectedly and telling him to help get the paper slop out. He began to help but ended up closing his eyes again, half listening to whatever Levi was nagging at them about being careful with his blorbo or whatever.

When he fully woke up he found himself back at the dryer he was sitting on earlier, face to face with Asmo, who was still inside. They started at each other for a good minute before Asmo huffed dramatically and climbed out. Belphie immediately took his place. Asmo went back to sitting by Lucifer on the opposite side of Beel because ewww...

Sheep Mc is hand wash ONLY. Do NOT put them in that fucking mashine.

[superluigiglitchy]

the Future Savers

Hope Spletzer (14) - Having been found as an egg in a dumpster by Tari, she's the adopted daughter of Tari and Meggy, tough and stubborn but also kind and compassionate, you can really tell she was raised by those two, her mom ended up giving her the goggles that were apart of her headgear and Hope cherishes these goggles greatly. Out of everyone in the group she's the one with the most military-grade training and the most understanding of what the resistance group did before they were destroyed by the virus's forces, she worries a lot despite how happy-go-lucky she is and is freshly traumatised by how her moms died in an effort to get the kids to the past via the time machine so theres that going on, she mains a Squitter with the Zipcaster kit but mains Splatanas sometimes too

Mariano Mario (10) - Genetically the child of Mario and Peach, he was created by Dr. E. Gadd after the death of Mario as a replacement Avatar to prevent the universe from immediately collapsing in on itself, smarter than his genetic father but still an idiot on his own right he's a sweet kid with a nack for adventure, he also seems to exhibit traits of both canon mario and avatar mario with how he's stupidly smart when he needs to be, he also disturbingly enough has control over demonic goop which easily bends to his will

Beanjamin Mario (10) - The son of Luigi and Prince Peasley some years into the Viralpocalypse, quick witted, noble with a dash of love for the theatrics, Beanjamin is the definition of a kind and noble prince, which often times places him smack dab into trouble when it comes to protecting the innocent and his friends

Hayato Bichitaru (20) - The adopted child of Saiko with a blazing temper, this cat is ready to pounce on any opposition! especially viruses, reckless, angry and tough as nails, Hayato Bichitaru is a cool cat through and through but under his rough skin is a soft heart of glistening gold that is loyal to his friends and family, saiko found him in a soggy old box 2 years into the Viralpocalypse during a patrol and decided to take the kid in, he greatly looks up to both his mom and Uncle Kaizo in his own way of course, he can easily play any intrument but much prefers his axe guitar

Todd Bobowski (18) - Bob's son who he created via mitosis of all things, is shockingly not anything like his father, extremely empathetic with a kind heart and an even gentler soul, he's a poet with a golden heart who also happens to have his father's knack for economics and buisness, he loves his dad but hates his attitude and awful gambling habits, he's not much of a fighter so the gang just leave the financial stuff to him

Axol Jr. (20) - All grown up and now having godly powers and inkweaver on his side, Axol Jr. aka AJ, is ready to rumble with the viruses... at a safe distance of course, cautious, shy and anxious AJ doesn't seem like much at first glance but he's the strongest person in the Past Savers but untrained, Melony unfortunately died early into the Viralpocalypse and dropped her mask which was how AJ ended up inheriting the god powers of the Diety Mask, he hopes dearly to prevent his mothers death despite there being a chance that if they do change the course of the future all of the Past Savers will potentially never exist

SMG7.5 (17) - the daughter of SMG4 and SMG3 and the group's leader, she's a paranoid wreck and far too uptight, having lost her father, SMG4 when she was only 7, she enjoys memes as much as her late father but can't bring herself to enjoy them as she once did, she is willing to do anything to prevent they're awful futre from happening, even if it means sacrificing her own life if the chance of ceasing to exist upon changing the timeline would occur

[whatamibutabutteredcroissant]

For Vague Angst Dialogue:

11 "They shouldn't treat you like that." with Fearne, if you please?

Prompt Ok, so, confession time... I may have been a little dumb and reblogged some prompts because I liked them, and forgot that they're for ask games. However, I cannot stop thinking about this prompt and I've been looking for a reason to get back into writing. So, thank you so much for the ask, and I hope I can do it some kind of justice! (However it may be awful kdlakjhdlajsh) This ficlet is set in the hotel room in Yios. Also, hope it's ok that I don't write the exact line into this. <3

"Can any of y'all smell burnin'?"

Fearne could, in fact, smell burning. Fearne could also feel burning. But just as she was about to leap out of bed, there was a hoarse scream, and a splash, and then in place of the fiery heat licking up her left side there was the icy shock of a cold glass of water.

"Take that, you little bastard hellspawn!" cried the tremulous voice of one Mr. Chetney Pock O'Pea.

"Chet!" squealed Fearne, shooting bolt upright and clutching a screeching, soggy and very displeased Little Mister to her chest "Why would you do that? He was just trying to make himself all nice and cozy!"

"Cozy? That creature attempts arson on a daily basis, Fearne! How long d'you think it's gonna be 'til he actually kills one of us?" Chetney questioned, his normally adoring gaze replaced with one of a very pissed-off and sleep-deprived old man.

"Rheaaahk!" retorted Mister.

"Awwww, my poor baby boy!" cooed Fearne, her attention immediately diverted "It's okay bubba, Mommy's got you, she's not gonna let the nasty little man hurt you anymore. He doesn't get to yell at you like that.". Mister draped himself over her shoulder with a foul glance at his attacker, and a few more disgruntled chatters. "There we go. All safe and snuggly". Fearne looked up from her position on the bed to see the rest of the Hells watching her, unimpressed but not sure how far to take the matter. A flash of worry crossed her mind. What if they tried to make her sleep separately from Mister? What if they tried to make her get rid of him? He was her only little piece of home, her constant throughout all of her travels and uncertainty. Without him, she would feel so vulnerable, so out of place, so-

Orym's tiny hand brushed her shoulder. "It's okay, Fearnie. I think he's learned his lesson for tonight. How about we find him some sort of heatproof blanket tomorrow? That's the joy of being in a city. They've got a fix for every problem, you know.". Fearne's jaw unclenched at her best friend's steady voice, and she was once again reminded of how grateful she was for the ever-calm and rational presence of Orym.

"Okay." she whispered, and stroked the soft (but slightly damp) fur of her beloved fire monkey.

The rest of the group made noises of agreement, and started getting comfortable again in their respective cuddle piles. Laudna wistfully stroked Pâté, before nodding at Fearne, and Imogen put a hand on Laudna's shoulder in understanding. Ashton grunted in acknowledgement before turning their back to everyone, and Letters gave a last nervous glance around the room before powering off once more. Relief and gratitude flooded into her bones at the immediate acceptance from her team.

"Sorry for throwing water at you, Fearne." said Chetney, a shadow of guilt on his wizened face.

"No, that's okay, Chet. Thanks for not letting me burn to death." replied Fearne. She laid down and offered him her arms, and drifted back to sleep with Chetney as a little spoon, Orym in the bend of her knee, Little Mister in the crook of her neck, and the knowledge that no matter the problem, her little family would always help her find a solution. Even if there was some impromptu baths, arguments and chaos along the way.

[talenlee]

Keitaro Urashima

Keitaro Urashima

The conversation around representation is often a thing that involves talking about the very real ways in which the people who see themselves unrepresented in media, or only ever represented in a negative way, can have negative consequences, even to the extent of them inducing PTSD experiences in particularly long-exposure. The way that trans people, people of colour (and we’re going to go in on that when it comes to anime some day), ace people, and – you know, everyone outside of the rudimentary accepted dominant hierarchy get to be represented. But there’s another element of representation where the stories you absorb can often give you a symbiotic relationship to an image of who you are and who you can be, and this can show up in the way that a lot of guys, particularly guys in my general category of unremarkable basic dudes who like anime and felt lonely in their teenage years, thought that being a creepy drip was, y’know, understandable.

And there’s no patient zero here, this is all fluid exchanges of the gas that is culture, I’m not trying to pretend that this is one person’s fault, but there was definitely a person who I think I can point to as a very reasonable exemplar of a trend that kicked off and is still showing up in anime culture to this very day.

I refer to the crappy mediocre dude that is Keitaro Urashima.

I’ve been thinking about Love Hina a lot recently, for some reason. I once mentioned this venerable procession in the ecosystem of the harem anime genre when I talked about Tenchi Muyo, the first anime Star Wars, But Only Kinda.

Don’t worry, I’m not doing a story pile on Love Hina. That’s a big ask and it would require me to rewatch Love Hina and then reread the manga (which is honestly, pretty better). Plus, looking at Love Hina as a whole is challenging in its own way what with the weird racism and the awful characteristics of the women in the series and also the way that the story bifurcates and the whole characteristics of the world itself rather than just focusing on Keitaro and the kind of dude he chooses to be, or rather, doesn’t choose to be.

If you’re not familiar, Keitaro is the protagonist of the early 00s harem anime, Love Hina, remarkable mostly in that it was successful and seemingly set up a trope style for romantic anime of its genre since then. If you’re mad about Rent-A-Girlfriend right now, I think you can trace the genealogy of that now to the soggy, pathetic wet babyman shoes of Keitaro Urashima, even if we know a lot less about how much wanking Keitaro does.

Keitaro, at the start of the series, is described as a ronin, a term used for a university student who isn’t in university, someone who failed their first entrance exams. In Keitaro’s case, he failed his first entrance exam and his second entrance exam, all while aiming for the most prestigious university in Tokyo, the University of Tokyo (Tokyo daigaku, abbreviated todai in venacular). His parents decide that two years of trying to get into a university and pointedly not having a job sucks, so they kick him out and direct him to go spend time with his grandmother, who has a job for him. She takes him on as the caretaker for an apartment building she owns, where he needs to ‘maintain’ the building (but also, pointedly, not manage it, that’s done by his cousin-aunt (it’s weird, don’t worry about it (oh no we’re in multiple parenthesis help this is going to look antisemetic if I end it badly)) Haruka (phew)). Now he’s in charge of ‘caretaking’ for this building in which a bunch of girls aged 14 to 19 live, and he’s told what to do, in terms of repairing things, all while he continues his studies in an attempt to get into Todai.

This job is pretty wild when you consider that in addition to being a full time live-in job that gives him a place to live and food to eat while he studies, and is also in a super sweet Onsen but also puts him in the immediate proximity of a gaggle of extremely attractive girls he is ostensibly likely to wind up in a relationship with, as long as he can spend some time interrupting the way he keeps winding up touching them inappropriately accidentally. And I mean that, this is a universe bent around a corkscrew shape to ensure that if somehow Keitaro can grab a boob when he’s trying to interact with literally anything else then yes, that boy is going to wind up grabbing a boob. This challenge gets made more complicated when some of the characters are too young to have meaningfully large boobs for the grabbing but they find other ways for him to sexually harrass the children (but accidentally). Then they hit him and that’s all okay.

See, back when he was a little babby kid, a girl and he promised each other they’d get into Todai together and fall in love and be happy forever after (or whatever), and that promise is why he’s trying so hard to get into this university. This moment is super important to the telling of the story, because this moment is also the first time and last time in the entire narrative of Love Hina in which Keitaro Urashima commits to a course of action rather than falling dick-first into every single other part of his life at the behest of other people who are sick and tired of seeing him being a big pathetic slop who suffers so much and struggles to contend with a reality that is handing him his life on a platter.

This guy gave me and so many dudes like me so many bad ideas about how to be a dude. If you look at the show and disengage from the framing of the comedy beats, where Keitaro is hilariously and comically unlucky (something I’ve been thinking about for other reasons lately), and you start thinking about how life is like for the girls living in this house, where you can just randomly get your tit honked or your towel dropped by a schlubby guy that the show somehow describes at first as unattractive and then eventually as ‘quite handsome actually,’ who got the job because he’s the failgrandson of the building’s owner and the cousin-nephew of the manager and he’s kind of useless at doing the things that constitute his job.

Keitaro spends a lot of time feeling bad about his life, about how terrible and pathetic his life is because That Feel When No GF, and how hard it was to pursue his goal of getting into uni to re-meet with his promise girl. This is the fundamental dramatic arc of this series: Ya Boy, Keitaro, as he tries to find love, and the way that non-stop coincidence follows this boy around. For example, did you know that the girl of his promise might be one of the girls at the apartment complex? And how then another girl who might also be the promise girl stumbles in and finds him and she just happens to be like the other one but really nice as opposed to really PRONE TO RESPONDING BADLY TO HAVING HER TITS RANDOMLY GRABBED?

You need to understand just how common the gimmick of ‘Keitaro gets hit for doing something perverted that isn’t his fault’ in this series. Like, if you were in this universe and didn’t see the buildup and you kept seeing this dude winding up in these situations, you wouldn’t fucking believe him anyway.

What this meant is that there’s this whole story about a lonely boy who is doing his best and isn’t hot and doesn’t have any natural advantages as he responds to a non-stop barrage of abuse from an unreasonable world that will hurt him so much for no good reason. It’s also the story about a cute boy who never explains himself or acts to prevent and protect himself from the appearance of problems and literally failed his way into a full-time job with extremely nondemanding requirements and eventually through sheer engine of coincidence winds up finding true love and also having five different girls of a variety of types crushing on him.

It is a pitiful story, where Keitaro benefits from overwhelming privilege and support, and it, I think, taught a lot of people in that era that the way you made a likable boy character in a romantic story was to make someone wretched so the audience could not possibly be anything but sympathetic to them. You don’t need a drive or an interest or a focus or things you care about or do with your free time, you don’t need to have things you like to do. What matters is being sad about being lonely and you can build the scenario out from that.

Going back and looking at anime I watched before Love Hina came out, and then the anime that came out afterwards I’m kind of shocked to see how many of those earlier anime are full of characters who have like, really notable opinions and preferences? They are people who are trying to do things, not just having things happen to them. And that can be a problem when you start to think of these characters as not just characters but also the kinds of things that say, isolated people think of as a template for how to be. Keitaro, if you fell into this emotional groove at the wrong time, told a lot of guys a really awful way to be a guy.

That’s not what I wanted to talk about though.

Did you know that Love Hina is set in the same universe as Negima? Like the last trailing part of the Love Hina story, after we grapple with the whole adopted-sister incest angle oh yeah that’s a thing too, it’s weird, don’t worry about it, not doing parenthesis joke again, it comes up that yeah, this is a universe with weird stuff in it. Keitaro is able to take the galactic beatings because he’s probably an immortal.

Weird, huh?

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media #Anime

[cantankerouscatfish]

sometimes work involves:

the usual: coworker, in a silly voice: “do you have any red roses??” other coworker, surrounded by red rose arrangements: “no, not a one. :( ”

having help at the wrapping table is SO NICE. T_T today’s help was T. he is very fast! and willing to cart things around. which is nice bc me & A started the day with a case of Soggy Knee. it gets all swollen and gross and your leg feels like it’s gonna separate into 2 pieces. but after you stand a while, it’s fine. until then, it’s nice to be able to depend on someone else for all the footwork lmao

oh but bc T was at the wrapping table, no one remembered to check the hoophouse. the sun was out all day. it was 80 degrees in there. OOPS. pansy soup. they opened the walls. it’s fine.

me crawling under the wrapping table, over top the wooden cart/bin full of newspapers, looking for a certain kind of box leftover from christmas that fell behind everything. all that was visible from the work area was my lower legs. Ro walked by, towards the bathrooms, and said “don’t think you can hide under there! if we can’t find you, that’s the first place I’ll look!!” “aw MAN. :( ” so then I finished wrapping the thing I’d been working on, and moved on to restocking the shelves of empty vases for the florists, located on the other side of the walkway from the wrapping able. this involved kneeling on the ground in the funny little shelf nook to open the vase boxes. Ro walked back towards the work area, startled when she saw me, and was like, “I TOLD YOU. stop trying to hide!!” I threw a ball of rolled-up tape at her. it missed. :( :(

there was some kind of network issue??? so there were only 3 incoming orders in the printer this morning... and then suddenly like 20 came in all at once in the late morning, and we all had to rush to get stuff ready in time. @_@

“it’s ‘bonsai,’ not ‘banzai.’ ‘bonsai’ is trees. ‘banzai’ is what you say before you cut someone’s head off.” “oh, right. okay.”

subs and cookies for dinner. 🎉

the greenhouse workroom has been converted into a walk-in cooler. it’s really neat that it works so well!! idk where we would have put everything otherwise. there’s a lot of arrangements. but also. going from boiler room -> BIG COLD AREA -> sunny greenhouse is like. whuh. temperature swings.

[eternitas]

17 and 24 of that ask game for Sanji, Hayato and Xiao uvu

This Ask meme

17. What's a book, movie, or show you think [character] would like?

Sanji

Very obvious answer? Anything to do with cooking. He breaths cooking. But he is also a majour softy and slight pervert so I can see him have some guilty pleasure movies that involve a lot of romance and soft erotica. I am not very versed in ANY of these things, but I could see Sanji enjoying Titanic and Moulin Rouge. I also think he would love Food Wars for not just the cooking, but the over the top orgasmic depiction of how good food can taste.

Hayato

Obvious answer? Cryptid fanatic. Doesn't even matter if the movie/show/book is good. He WILL engage with it, even if just to say afterwards that it SUCKS. I personally see him def more into horror that is on the supernatural side and less horror that goes into splatter or gore territory like Saw or-- whatever other slasher film there is, I personally do not watch much horror. Since he is also incredibly intelligent I can see him be REALLY into crime thrillers, but only the super technical and bizare ones that are hard for some others to read. I can also see him be into extremely accurate mafia novels. If he reads a mafia related book and it gets something terribly wrong he stops IMMIDEATLY. One movie that especially fascinates him and the book it is based on is 'I heared you paint houses'. I think he is a biiit of a fan of Scorcese, tho he does also have his opinions (TM)

Xiao

I think there is ONLY an obvious answer? Xiao is REALLY into chinese mythology and Wu Xia Stories. He isn't someone who engages a lot with shows or movies, but he does read enough especially theoretic books about different martial arts. Fiction isn't exactly his thing unless it's historic novels set in ancient China. Or the usual classics. He actually also has a bit of a soft spot for poems and books that are juste purely wholesome. Stories about someone making it out of the darkness or just the beauty of mundanity. Nothing overly melodramatic. Maybe that means he would like some Ghibli movies? Jury out on that one.

24. What's your favourite thing about [character]?

Oh boy here we go

Sanji

wet boy soggy cat baby pathetic manlet. Need I say more? I won't go into spoilers, but Sanji is both incredibly infuriating and beloved to me. I just love when he is caught up in a situation, where he just ends up showing his true colors. How soft and kind he can be, how much he cares about others even those he might not particularly like much or strangers. He is ready to lay his life on the line EVEN IF HE SAYS HE DOESN'T CARE OH BOY DOES HE CARE!!!! Especially the Wano Kuni Arc has made me adore him so much. Whole Cake Island broke me into pieces but Wano Kuni showed both his worst and his best sides. Also who doesn't love a man that can cook? The way he just LIGHTS UP when he gets to talk cooking or about his dream of finding the All Blue! *chefs kiss* (pun intended I am absolutely kissing that chef, icky smoke be damned)

Hayato

The fuck do you mean like? This bitch is the bane of my existance and i hate him and his stupid face with his aweful green eyes and the dumb smile he is capable of making. Oh and don't get me started on his aweful obsession with UFOs and cryptids wow what a loser, what an absolute cringefail, it's not like I enjoy his damn progress as a character from a selfcentered obsessive idiot to a more open cooperative jerk that actually trusts people and relies on them, oh gods are you crazy nah get that away from me. Bitch is so smart it's infuriating I loathe how intelligent and truly innovative he is, god his brightness is so annoying!

I do love his cat tho c:

Xiao

Love of my life one of the most misunderstood and MISINTERPRETED characters in all of Genshin yes you heared me FIGHT ME!

Look. Xiao is dear to my heart. I know I say it was Kaeya who got me into Genshin, but nah we all know that is a lie, yes he was the character that piqued my interest, but before the game was out the Genshin website already had some mini profiles on some characters and Xiao also had one. I made one look at the guy and said "that one". He is an abuse victim that was enslaved and forced to do horrendous things, knowing nothing but savagery and violence until he was saved, swearing unwavering loyalty to his savior who gave him his current name. And his life just kept being full of violence, as he became a Yaksha, cleansing and protecting Liyue through slaughter. This guy has probably MILLENIA of karmic debt accumilated, he was a GENERAL in a war, he faught alongside a myriad of other Yakshas and-- in the end he became the only survivor. Xiao is the LAST Yaksha, he is the only one remaining, he keeps his comrades and friends memory close to him, he saw them perish and fall to their karmic debt and after it all he became someone who kept fighting for Liyues safety in pure solitude, because GUESS WHAT he can't even get close to mortals. His strong karmic debt causes others harm, so he naturally isolated himself and accepted this fate. Sacrifice is something Xiao sees as natural and unavoidable, bitch is DEPRESSED and absolutely unsocial. He just has no social skills whatsoever and human customs confuse him. It's not maliciousness, it's actual confusion and mostly ignorance that leads to him being mostly misunderstood. He needs patience and a lot of understanding. So many people just write him off as some edgeboy, being rude and arrogant- when in actuallity boy just doesn't know how to deal with people. deep down he is a soft soul. FOR FUCKS SAKE his namecard says QUOTE

He longs for a day to come when he will wear the mask and dance — not to conquer demons, but to the tune of that flute amid a sea of flowers.

HE WANTS TO DANCE IN A SEA OF FLOWERS WHILE FLUTE MUSIC PLAYS I AM SORRY HOW CAN ANYONE SAY THIS GUY IS EDGY WHEN HE IS A FOCKING MARSHMALLOW DEEP DOWN

He lost so much, he believed to find his end by being alone forever until he succumbs to his karmic debt-- and yet he tries SO HARD

From watching the Lantern rites Xiao lantern from just outside the city, to watching the fireworks on the roof of wang shu inn, to COMING INTO THE CITY TO DINE WITH OTHER PEOPLE, TO ACTUALLY RELEASING A XIAO LANTERN WITH THE TRAVELER HIMSELF!!!! Even in his letters he says that he is starting to be more casual with the other adepti, he joined the fucking Poetry Festival-- I am losing my mind at this guy he is genuinely so fucking pillowy soft deep down, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE SWITCH THE VOICES TO CN AND HEAR KINSEN IN ALL HIS GLORY CONVEY XIAOS CHARACTER!

(I am sorry but whatever the english voice director told his VA was absolute bullshit fight me on this.)

I am very normal about this guy

Other canon things that make me lose my marbles

The fact that the moment Xiao and the traveler first meat a track plays in the background that is called Lovers Oath

You can bait Xiao into coming somewhere or participate in something when you say the traveler will be there

During the Chasm Storyline he first wanted to keep the others away saying that to keep them safe and Yanfei USES THE TRAVELER TRICK to get Xiao to IMMIDEATLY join their gang.

Usually special dishes are food that is prepared by the characters themself. Sweet Dream, Xiaos Specialty dish is something the traveler makes for him

He???? eats or at least ATE dreams???? He says almond tofu tastes like sweet dreams???? thats where the special dish got its name from???? hello?????

when a traveling pilgrim came to the mountain as Ganyu and Xiao were training he did NOT want to deal with a mortal and basically told Ganyu her next training task is to deal with that guy before he skidaddled. Pro move to escape social interactions

when saving everyone from the chasm he sacrificed himself to ensure everyone else makes it to the surface. Daddy dearest ofc saved him but he was SO ready to let this be his end. I am glad it wasn't

from what I can tell his illuminated beast form is a bird, not like cloud retainer however and the fact there is a CHONK BIRB XIAO PLUSHY has me wheezing.

especially in early game crystalflies are hard to catch. Xiaos first birthday letter included 10 crystal cores, the item that drops when you catch crystalflies, a very valuable resource for crafting condensed resin. He also admits that he kind of didn't intend to catch that many and that he believes they would look cute in the travelers hair

he is strongly implied if not outright confirmed to be in chronic pain from his karmic debt. Pls save my boy

I might be a bit off on some of these but I am at LEAST 89% sure these are true facts.

[casspurrjoybell-29]

Healing Ties - Chapter 18 - Part 2

*Warning Adult Content*

"Thanks for cleaning me up. Now, I'll need to go get the bag before we continue. I feel like it might distract from the moment a little if I'm naked when I bring you in."

Fanner nodded.

"Okay."

"Do you want to come with me or stay here? I can get it quicker on my own but I'll understand if you're not too keen on being left alone again."

"Um... is it okay if I come with you?"

"I wouldn't have made the offer if it wasn't okay. That would be an awful trap."

"Oh, um, yeah. I suppose so."

Yore walked up the bank and offered Fanner a hand to help him up.

"But I imagine you've been treated badly quite a lot, so things that seem petty and cruel to me might be normal to you."

"I spent almost my entire life in a training facility. Everything was a test."

Fanner was standing at the top of the bank at Yore's side now but Yore didn't let go of his hand.

"That must have been rough."

Fanner looked down at their linked hands and gave Yore's a gentle squeeze.

"No, not at all. We were given everything we needed and nobody ever hurt us."

"Were you happy?"

"No," Fanner said.

He didn't even need to think about that one.

"Emotional hardship can be just as bad as physical hardship. Hell, much worse sometimes. If I had to choose between letting someone break my legs and spending a day chained up in a dark tunnel, I guess I'd have to make myself some crutches."

Fanner placed his other hand over the top of Yore's as well and held on.

"Maybe, I guess. I really don't like being hurt."

"I don't think it's really that different. Maybe if I'd been hurt in the same way you've been hurt, which I really don't know much about but I can piece a few things together, maybe then I'd feel the same way. It's all just different kinds of trauma."

Fanner swallowed thickly.

His eyes were still aimed at their hands.

"It's not fair that you got hurt so badly. You're such a good person."

"Thank you but also yes. It's not fair. Bad things didn't happen to you because you deserved it. Good things also happen to people who don't deserve them. You just have to take what life gives you and try to work towards wherever you want to be in life."

"I feel like..." Fanner hesitated. "I think the only thing I really want is to be okay."

"You'll get there," Yore assured him. "I'd say you already are okay, in the sense that you're safe and you'll be taken care of from here on out but I know there's more to it than that. You've been through something big. Heck, in a sense your whole life has been one big struggle. That doesn't just go away and become fine the second you're somewhere safe."

Fanner nodded.

He looked like he might cry again.

"Okay, let's..." Yore started to say and then he paused and looked up into the trees.

He could hear something moving around.

"Cookie, I know that's you. I know what you sound like now. You can't fool me twice."

Cookie leapt down from a nearby tree, landing gracelessly, the large bag she was carrying in her mouth sending her toppling forward.

Their bag.

"Oh, you got the bag for us. Thank you?"

"Do we have any snacks we can give her?" Fanner asked. "She likes to eat... things. Anything."

"Just some old biscuits. I left them because our water leaked on the bag and they got all soggy."

Cookie opened her dark, empty maw of a mouth as wide as she could, which was wider than Yore was entirely comfortable with and then just held it open until Yore let go of Fanner's hands, got out the bag of biscuits and put one in.

She swallowed it whole and then took the rest of the bag from Yore and swallowed that as well, bag included.

"Hmm," was all Yore could think to say to that. "Well, all right. Shall we keep going?"

They were a bit behind schedule now but Yore was still confident they could reach the mage settlement before dark.

It didn't really matter if they didn't since this area no longer held an active vampire nest but he wasn't sure how Fanner would feel about travelling in the dark after everything that had happened.

It was another hour of walking before they reached the start of Yore's territory.

He hadn't seen or heard Cookie in a while but he suspected she was still following them.

"This is where my people live," Yore explained, patting the wooden post that served as a marker. "We'll cut across to save time but I won't take you into our settlement today."

"Am I allowed to be here?" Fanner asked. "I won't get in trouble if someone sees us, will I?"

"You're with me. Of course you're allowed. But more generally speaking, we're allies. There are certain expectations like that you won't hunt on or otherwise use our land without explicit permission but it's not like you have to be afraid of accidentally crossing the border because it'll cause a huge incident or someone will attack you or anything. Most likely someone will notice you and come and see if you need any help."

"Okay. And... you live next to us?"

"No, that's the centaurs. They can seem a bit imposing at first but they've been allies to the mages from the start. The mage camp is to the east of the centaurs and we're north of the centaurs."

Fanner nodded but from the distant look in his eyes Yore got the feeling he wasn't quite taking it all in.

"Don't worry about it. There'll be people to help you and show you around for as long as you need it."

"Okay," Fanner said but he still looked worried.

Yore really wished he knew what to say to assure Fanner it really would be okay but perhaps that was just something he'd have to see for himself.

Yore heard the sound of paws running across bare earth long before he saw a pale grey wolf emerge from between the trees.

He gave her a nod as she shifted.

"Good afternoon, Kiana."

"Your mother's worried about you," was the first thing Kiana said once she was standing on two feet. "You're days late."

"I know. I was delayed but I'm fine."

She glanced over him but seemed to decide not to comment on the superficial but very obvious cuts on the side of his face and his neck.

She looked at Fanner instead.

"Who's that?"

"Just someone I'm taking back to the mages. Tell my mother I'll be home as soon as I'm done with that. Also, we'll need a party to deal with a rock golem. We encountered one on the path. I led it back into the swamp but you know how they are."

"They do tend to wander. Okay, I'll get things moving on that for you."

Without further conversation, she shifted again and dashed back into the woods.

"Who was that?" Fanner whispered, like he wasn't quite sure she couldn't still hear him.

Which was fair.

Their hearing was quite a bit better than his, though she was far away enough away that it wasn't a concern.

"Kiana. She's my, uh... cousin?"

Not that that really mattered.

Some of the members of his pack were related to him closely enough to trace, some weren't and it didn't make a whole lot of difference for the most part.

They were all family.

"Oh," Fanner said.

He didn't sound satisfied with the answer.

"My mother leads the pack, so she'll go and consult with her about the rock golem. Kiana's mostly a scout and a trapper."

"Oh, okay. What are you?"

"Whatever I need to be."

Which was a cop out of an answer and not entirely true but this really wasn't the time to explain everything to Fanner.

Though, if he were truly honest, his reluctance wasn't just about not wanting to scare or confuse Fanner.

He was mostly just enjoying this mini vacation from his normal life and wanted to maintain the separation until he'd completed his task and brought Fanner safely to the mages.

They made it through the rest of the pack's territory without another interruption.

Yore stopped Fanner at the post that marked the territory's south eastern corner.

"Are you ready for this?"

"No, but..." Fanner shrugged.

Yore offered him a sympathetic smile.

"It's hard but waiting won't fix that."

Fanner nodded. He took a deep breath in and let it out.

"Okay. Let's do this."