#is that the official name for that universe. technically no. is that going to stop me from using that tag. no.

[nxghtstxne]

"you’re my best girl"

Warnings: None

Pairings: Leah Williamson x reader

Words: 946

The first time Leah saw that little smile and how you reached your hands up to try to cover up the almost obvious blush that had crawled onto your cheeks and nose, she was gone for.

Technically it was before you two had made it official, you were on a date at the arcade late on a Tuesday night, “Come on y/n, that was terrible!” She was stood to the side, watching while you attempted to beat her score at a shooting game, however, the feeling of her eyes on your every move was making you nervous, causing you to miss almost every target. You shot the girl a glare as you huffed and put the gun down, “Don’t laugh at me Lee, I'm trying but it’s hard with you staring..” You huffed but with a slight smirk at the end of your words, making the blonde laugh, making her way to stand behind you. She grabbed the gun before wrapping her arms around your body, her hands over yours on the fake gun. 

You tried hard to focus on the game but with Leah’s strong arms and face so close to yours, it made it almost impossible. The game over screen flashed on the screen as your name got higher up on the score list, landing just under Leahs. “See? There you go, much better my girl.” As soon as she had muttered those words in your ear, her hands long forgetting the gun and had moved to your waist, you felt the heat rush to your face and the butterflies all over your stomach. Leah had obviously noticed the colour change and let out a slightly husky giggle at how you moved your face in a pathetic attempt to hide. “Shut up!” Pushing her hands off of you and grabbing your drink you made your way over to find another game. That whole time you had missed the look on Leah's face, too busy trying to hide your own, you had missed the lovestruck look she had given you and how proud she was at the face that she had made you flustered. She was definitely going to do that again. 

The second time Leah remembered the way her heart swelled at how cute you looked when you got shy from her was when you were sat on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket while typing away on your laptop. Too busy with your university work to notice the taller girl walk in and lean over the back of the seat, head propped on her arms, her blue eyes watching the way you bit your lip as your fingers moved too fast for her to follow. Without realising it, her hand had reached up and her index finger had started to gently stroke across your cheek. The movement had caused you to stop typing, “What’re you doing?” You asked while trying, and failing, not to smile. 

Moving your laptop off of your lap, you faced her and the sight of her standing there, watching you with a soft look in her eyes, her finger still tracing over your cheek before moving down to your lips, had once again caused that heat to make its way to your face. You could tell by the way her eyes lit up, that you were blushing and you sighed at that, catching onto her love for causing it by this point; but also at how easy it was for her to make you blush. “Nothing, you jus’ looked so cute pretty girl..” You groaned and threw your head back at this. “I’m gonna get you back y’know? Just wait.” She laughed at this and made her way round to sit next to you, throwing her feet up onto the coffee table, quickly changing the channel and pulling your blanket partly over herself. “Sure you are.” 

Even when she wasn’t purposefully trying to make you blush, Leah still had her ways. During the most recent gym session the two of you took together, you were doing sets on the leg press, trying your hardest to finish the set of 10 with the most weight you’ve done yet. With every push you completed, you could hear Leah on the side giving you compliments, “Yes, good job baby! One more, you got this.” At first it was urging you on to push more, but after some time the pet names at every station and machine were starting to to affect you, sweetheart, my love, baby. 

Taking a water break, you made your way over to her, “My last few pushes on that weren’t that great, think I could have done more.” You muttered in between breaths, not quite as confident in your skills as she was. “What do you mean? They were great” 

“Maybe but I want to do better at it.” You pulled out your hair from the pony tail and re-did it as Leah finished up on the pull up bar. “Nah I think you’re already better, you’re my best girl, you’re all good!” Scoffing, you replied “Please, I'm your only girl Williamson.” Proud at yourself for not letting that name make you blush like it usually would, about to walk off to do something else, you felt a quick smack to your ass as Leah laughed, “Yeah you’re all mine.” And there it was, the blush that you tried so hard to not let creep up, you swore silently to yourself that the tall blonde would be the death of you, as she swore to herself that she would make you blush every day for the rest of your life together, it now becoming her favourite colour.

[featherandferns]

outdoor pool (fic)

jj maybank x fem!reader | part of the F.W.B universe, but can be read as a stand-alone too | a little sappy but hopefully not too much!

content warning: drink & drug use; sex (f and m receiving; semi-public); technically drink-driving

word count: 5k

blurb: Your latest 'date night' involves breaking into a Kook's back garden to swim around in their pool. After fooling around, JJ comes to a realisation.

Kook houses could be mistaken for castles when compared to most places on the Cut. Neatly kept shrubberies and bushes trimmed into ridiculous shapes. Fountains and water features, lit up in sparkly white and exciting red and blue. Obnoxious house names when numbers would easily do the same trick. But numbering was too common for the Kooks. They weren’t just another thing in the bunch; they’re the stand-out special. JJ takes them in as he walks down the dimly lit street, searching for you. You'd said to meet him on Basker Street (buried deep in one of the most prestigious Kook holiday neighbourhoods), and to bring some wine. He'd assumed there wasn't much a standard for the wine, grabbing the cheapest bottle he could find.

The sparsely spread streetlamps glare white on the concrete. When a silhouette of a girl, in a dress, comes into view, JJ smiles. He's pretty certain it's you - even more so when the figure waves - and picks up his pace.

“Hey,” JJ says.

“Hey,” you smile, sharing a brief kiss. The touch of your hand on his cheek is too fleeting – not that he’d ever say. “You found me.”

“What is this?”

“Date night,” you say. You spot the wine and grin, taking it to study the label. “You remembered.”

“Well, you only sent me ten texts to get some,” JJ sarcastically replies with a smile. You roll your eyes and go to dig about in his shorts for his pocketknife.

As you work the bottle open, you ask, “was it the most expensive one on the shelf?”

“Of course,” JJ says, as if insulted you would expect anything less. You glance up at him, bemused. At your struggling to open the wine, JJ takes it from you and does it himself. He fills the quiet (and blocks out your protests) by asking, “what’re we doing here, anyway? Property hunting?”

“It’s date night,” you repeat. Yeah, doesn’t help.

The cork pops out the bottle. JJ goes to toss it but you stop him, taking it and silently putting it in his pocket, a little embarrassed. It makes JJ smile though. The soft parts that you let him see, like your sentimentality, are like catching glimpses of shooting stars. He noticed about two weeks into officially dating you that you had an affinity for keepsakes. Pressed flowers from your walks; seashells from surf dates; the cut-out front of a condom packet, which you eventually confessed was from the first night you two spent, officially together. Whilst JJ had ragged you endlessly, he couldn’t deny that it was unexpectedly adorable.

You take his hand and intertwine your fingers, guiding him down the street. He swigs from the wine and passes it to you, taking a moment to take in the sight of you. Your dress fits snug around your waist, turning tight against your chest. Thin straps over each shoulder. It hangs loose and pretty, ending just before your knees. As you walk, the barely-there breeze from midnight makes it sway. Then he’s taking in the tiny beads threaded into your hair. Pink and blue and green. As you wiggle your fingers more comfortably into his hold, he feels the rings adorning your fingers against his skin, some rubbing against his own. One of them is his. A small token that he’d disguised as a ‘congratulations’ gift after a fight. When JJ had given it to you, he didn’t feel up to confessing that it was so you would have a piece of him. A silent marker that you were taken - taken by him. A symbol of his affection which he couldn’t quite put into words. Couldn’t bring himself to. But when you took it, you didn’t ask why extensively. You accepted his bullshit excuse and smiled, kissing him in thanks before slipping it on. It was too large for your fingers but fit well enough on your thumb. He often saw you play with it, as if perpetually checking it hadn’t fallen off.

“You look pretty, by the way,” he tells you. Smooth, Maybank. You’re a real Romeo.

 You look up at him and smile, almost bashful like he just recited prose in your honour. “Thanks. You don’t look too bad yourself, pretty boy.”

You reach up to press a kiss to his lips, then pull away and keep walking down the moonlit street.

JJ appreciates you. He appreciates the way you don’t push him when he’s not so good at the romance part of things. JJ can talk dirty; he could say the most disgusting things that would have a nun wanting to pull a Vincent Van Gogh. He knows how to touch you to have you trembling and begging, but when things get sentimental, he doesn’t always know how to act. He often brushes off compliments with a joke and disguise his own in some stupid tease. But you seemed to notice and understand. You let JJ do things for you – like open the bottle of wine – because at some point you clocked that acts of service were the best way for JJ to show his affection. He hadn’t figured that one out: Kie had, one day when she came to the chateau to find him working on your pushbike, unbeknownst to you. When JJ explained what he was doing and why (that you'd been complaining about the chain always coming off), Kiara took the mick out of him before casually telling him that his ‘love-language’ was acts of service. Whilst JJ had shrugged it off and told her to do one, he did think about it later that day, after he gave you back your bike (which you had, in all honesty, thought was stolen) and saw how your face lit up. Felt how you kissed him in gratitude. Felt how it made his heart lurch in a way that still felt unnatural.

You take the wine from JJ, pulling his thoughts back to reality. He watches as you take a long drink.

“Alright, what’s the plan for this date-night, then?” he asks.

“So, I’m at work the other day, right? And this waitress I work with has a bunch of friends who come here during the summers.”

“Is this gonna be a long story?”

“Shut up.”

JJ chuckles. He takes the wine and drinks, letting you continue.

“So she starts telling me that this girl’s family always leaves the same day, every year, a week before school starts up.”

JJ wants to groan at the reminder that school is just around the corner. Joy, oh, joy.

“So, there’s this big empty Kook house, right? I think, hm, that’s sort of interesting, but don’t deep it all that much. But then she starts telling me how they’ve been having problems with their security and that they were kinda reluctant to leave. They did anyway, after finding out they can get the stuff fixed on the twenty-seventh.”

JJ’s furrows his brows as he processes all the parts of your story. He looks down at you, passing the wine. You take a drink and then grin up at him, becoming giddy.

“So now I’m like: there’s a kook house with no security, no working cameras, and nobody home. Then, the pièce de résistance happens.”

JJ can’t help but mirror your grin, still a little sceptical. The two of you turn down a dark alley as your story begins to come to its climax.

“She starts telling me about this party this girl had there the other night and me (being the polite person that I am) asks to see some pictures. She starts showing me these garden party pics and I notice the biggest fuck-off pool you have ever seen.”

Another swig each of the wine. Your pace is beginning to slow.

“So, now I’m like: kook house; no security; no cameras; nobody home; huge pool; hot boyfriend.”

“Oh?” JJ prompts, smirking.

“And so I present to you…”

You come to a stop and detach your hold from his. Moving to stand in front of him, you gesture to a tall, black-painted fence grandly, as unveiling the latest Amazonian discovery.

“Date night!”

JJ nods, impressed, and holds the wine out to you in approval.

“So, our date night is basically breaking and entering into a Kook’s back garden to swim around in their pool?”

You shrug, as if innocent, and nod up at him. “Yeah, pretty much. Thoughts?”

The kiss he presses to your lips makes you laugh, but there’s no complaints as you melt against him, tugging him a smidge closer by his hands. “I think you’re like something out of my Goddamn dreams.”

“Cute,” you whisper against his lips. He tries to fight off his blush. Pulling away, you stand near the fence. “Give us a boost?”

“Yes, ma’am,” JJ mumbles.

Dumping the wine for a moment, JJ interlocks his fingers to form a makeshift step and boosts you up the fence on the count of three (shamelessly glancing up your skirt as you go). You grunt as you pull your body weight up and over. He hears the thump of your feet landing on the other side. The sight of your fingertips wiggling over the other side of the fence makes him laugh.

“Pass me the wine?”

JJ does as you ask and then he’s hoisting himself over the fence with a grunt. When he jumps down, you’re already wandering across the lawn. His eyes widen as he takes it all in.

There’s a bandstand – a bandstand­ – off to the side, alongside a lawn swing. On the patio (that looks power-jetted clean) sits a pristine table for eight, with the most high-end barbeque station set up behind. The windows of the downstairs are floor to ceiling; not one smudge or fleck of dirt in sight. He doesn’t bother to inspect the flower arrangements, but he’s sure that if he were to, there wouldn’t be one weed in sight, and not one leaf out of place.

The lights don’t seem to be motion censored because as you move towards the pool - likely searching for the button to get rid of the cover - nothing lights up. It’s only the leftover glow from the streetlights and the moonlight above that illuminate the yard and yourself.

As he watches you a moment and smiles. Calling you pretty was an understatement. Radiant might be a better match, as you smile to yourself whilst working back the cover. The dress and the hair and the detail of the wine is adorable, hinting at all the thought you’ve put into something that you seem to be trying to pass off as ‘incidental.’ Your affinity for petty crime, high sex drive and textbook rebellion nearly brings him to his knees. He wasn’t kidding when he said you were out of his dreams.

“You gonna come over or what?” you call.

“Keep your voice down, huh?” JJ says back, but does as he's told.

He takes the wine from the floor where you’ve ditched it and takes a few more swigs. The whir of mechanics is droning in the background as the pool cover peels back.

“Most of the houses round here are holiday spots,” you remind him. “I bet half of them are empty.”

“Imagine having two houses, huh?” JJ says, turning around to take in the house once more. White walls which look freshly painted...It’s definitely not the chateau or his piece-of-shit home, that’s for sure. “I’d get myself a boat house, I think. Just living on the water forever, you know?”

When he turns around to continue chewing your ear off, his words get stuck in his throat. You’re stripping out of your dress, stepping out of your shoes, until soon you’re standing in just your bralette and panties. As you toss the dress to the side of the grass, you look up at JJ and give a small laugh. Taking the wine, you ask, “you just gonna stand there or you gonna jump in?”

JJ grins, finding his thoughts, and he tugs off his t-shirt. He digs the phone and cork out of his pockets, adding them to the pile, then toes off his boots. He takes the bottle from your outstretched hand and, as soon as it’s in his hold, JJ’s smile twists into mischievous and he shoves you into the water by your shoulder. The small shriek you give out gets drowned out by the pool, making him laugh. When your head emerges, you’re raking your hair off your face.

“JJ! I didn’t wanna get my hair wet!” you cuss at him.

He rolls his eyes, takes another swig, ditches the bottle on the side, then cannonballs into the water. He hears the crash as he breaks through the surface mellow out by the weirdly soothing lull from being underwater. Swimming to the surface, he shakes his head like a dog trying to get dry. As water droplets spray at you, you keep complaining. The only way you get him to stop is by splashing him. That turns into a thing of its own, and by the end the two of you are thoroughly drenched and laughing your heads off.

When the commotion dies down – adrenaline still high in the veins – JJ treads water and looks at you. You’re watching him too, smiling in content, and then you make an adorable face as if to say, ‘not a bad idea, huh?’

JJ swims over, placing one hand on your waist to pull you nearer, and captures you in a soggy kiss. When you break apart, you begin swimming backwards with a small giggle. You move to float on your back and sigh at the sky of stars.

“Imagine living here and doing this anytime you like.”

“I can see how much I’ve got in the bank. Offer to buy it off them,” JJ suggests, swimming to the poolside to retrieve the wine and take another swig.  

“Considering your ‘bank’ is a piggy bank, I don’t know if we’ve got much of a shot,” you tell him.

JJ pushes himself up and out of the water. The stones aren’t cold on his feet; it’s a pleasantly warm night. He whistles for your attention and you move to tread water again. Your bralette is stuck tight to your skin from the wet, making it nearly see-through. Nipples hardening under the cool water, they push against the cotton. JJ tries to shove the dirty thoughts that come to the back of his head for later. He then puts on a show of standing to attention at the pool side, making you grin.

“And here we have JJ Maybank, diving for the Pogues of Kildare County. He’s been training for this day his whole life. Let’s see what he’s got,” you commentate in a deep, Kentucky-type voice.

JJ snorts at your antics before gathering himself. He limbers up, shamelessly and subtly flexes his muscles for your benefit, and then dives off the side, air whooshing past his ears. Before he hits the water, he hears a whistle and whoop from you, making him smile as he sinks under. Swimming over to your kicking legs, he comes to the surface about an arm’s length away. You cringe with a smile as he shakes his wet hair out of his face. Taking you by the waist, he pulls you closer. You’re at the shallow end now; JJ settles on his feet.

“What’s the mark, then?”

“Hm,” you pretend to think. Your arms loop around his shoulders and neck, and you float nearer so you can wrap yourself around him, nearly straddling him. “An eight?”

“Tough critic,” JJ complains weakly, grinning down at you.

You pretended to debate over his words, rocking your head from side to side, pursing your lips. “It might be possible to sway me.”

“Oh really?” he says. He leans down so his forehead bumps against yours.

You let out a low giggle. He watches your eyes look down to his lips, lashes coming close to kissing your cheeks. He lets his own gaze sink down. Your tongue darts out to wet your lips. “Yeah.”

JJ presses his lips to yours.

Kissing you feels like coming up for air after diving for hours, or seeing sunlight after a restless winter night. JJ never thought he could become the type of guy who would enjoy the same person forever; thought he would tire of their way of kissing and of their company, and they, in turn, would tire of him. But kissing you never got tiresome. It was like it was always new, and yet it was never changing. The small noises you made, so quiet that if he weren’t waiting to catch them, he never would. The habits you had formed: fingers tethering into his hair, nails scratching at his scalp, and the way JJ loved to tease his teeth against your lower lip.

As the two of you make out, JJ somehow pulls you closer. One of your hands gently brushes down his chest, over his muscles, and he feels as his body responds happily to your touch. The caress of your fingers, one by one, chasing down him. The slip of your leg, tugging you closer, grinding against him. His tongue sensually brushes against yours - one of his hands coming to cup your jaw and angle your head just-so – as the kiss turns licentious. You sigh against his lips, as if breathing new life into him, and JJ feels himself begin to harden. When his hand on your jaw slides down your neck, a brief thought makes him harder still: that his whole palm could wrap around your throat in the most delicious, delicate of ways. He brings it to cup at your breast, palming over the thin, soaked fabric of your bralette. JJ briefly pulls his mouth from yours.

There’s a split second where you let out a breathless moan, head tipping forward, and JJ smiles down at you through barely open eyes.

“Ever done it in a pool?”

You open your eyes, looking up at him. He feels as you grind against him, becoming needy for friction, and he lets his thumb tease at your hardening nipple. Small pants of pleasure slip past your lips as you reply, “can’t say that I have.”

“Wanna cross it off the bucket list, pretty girl?” he wonders, resting his forehead against yours once more.

JJ likes having the control. Of seeing you at his mercy, preening into his touch, whining and desperate and lax, and all for him. Makes him feel like a young God.

Cocky, he rubs you against him with a guiding hand on your ass. “Hm?”

But JJ forgets why he’s so drawn to you, sometimes. Forgets how you’re a little too much like him. It all comes racing back when he feels your hand slipping into his shorts, into his boxers, and you palm at him, hard under your touch. He gasps against your lips, confidence killed short. His eyes slip shut in pleasure, groaning as you start to give him a hand-job.

He can hear the smirk in your words as you ask, “do you?”

Maybe it’s the thrill of it all: of being with you, of sneaking into someone’s pool, of fucking in someone else’s back garden, where if anybody took a moment to glance out their back window, they could see the two of you…JJ’s sure he’s never felt this way. Never felt so raptured; so merciless.

JJ guides a hand to your panties, slipping his fingers under the cotton that’s pasted to your skin. You’re wet against his touch (a different sort of slick to the pool water) and he twitches in your hand at the feel of it. The battle for control fades away as the two of you simultaneously work at getting the other off, desperately chasing your own highs. JJ’s fingers work between your legs, pushing into you slowly, coaxing your thighs to part under his touch. He uses one hand to try and hold you up, but as you keep jacking him off, he feels his resolve breaking. At some point, he works to have you pressed against the pool wall. The water barely reaches the top of your shoulders and JJ’s chest is halfway exposed.

He's groaning, resting his chin on your shoulder, lost in feel of your smaller hand wrapped around him. Your head is slumped against his collarbones, breath hot and fanning on his chest. It’s as if it has been filled with lead and you can’t hold it up, collapsing against him as you pant and gently moan as JJ pumps his fingers in and out of you. In and out. Sometimes your pace falters on him, your hold stumbling when his thumb brushes against your clit, but you soon recover.

The two you know the other’s body well now. There’re no scars to hide and no insecurities to shun. No cellulite or stretch mark for you to be ashamed of, and no faded bruise and semi-healed cigarette burn for JJ to overthink. There’s only you and him, and the promise of pleasure and safety.

JJ feels himself getting close. You seem to know, somehow. Your fingers loop into the threads of his hair, coiling around like a snake, tugging him so his head is nearer to your lips. He’s almost whining, eyes clenched shut, rutting against your hold as he desperately chases his release. There’s a hot, wet breath on the edge of JJ’s ear as you sinfully whisper, “doing so good for me, baby. So good.”

He can’t help but come with a shudder, gasping out a moan, trembling against you. Your name falls into the mix and your hold on him doesn't cease. JJ takes a moment to catch his breath, ensuring he doesn’t stop fingering you. As the euphoric haze begins to fade, and he manages his eyes open, he feels your head once again on his chest. You’re whining too, pitch high and eager, the sounds short as you’re gasping his name as if in plea. He can feel you despairingly driving his fingers deeper, practically riding his hand, and he smirks against the skin of your shoulder. Kisses of fake nicety as he then goes to bite at your skin, never hard enough to break the surface. You moan, louder, sensitive like every nerve ending is on fire. Anybody could hear you. Anybody could see you fucking his fingers. JJ puts more focus to your clit, applying pressure as he rubs, and you seem newly driven. Your hands grab at his shoulders, forcing your body on his fingers harder. Deeper. JJ pulls back enough to look down at you, eyes hooded, and feels his spent dick twitch at the sight of you using him to find release. Mouth hung open, gasping and panting, eyes clenched shut as if it’s all incomprehensible. Something from his Goddamn dreams.

JJ uses his spare hand to gently push back your hair from your face, swiping a finger over the apple of your cheek.

“That’s it, baby,” he coaxes. He scissors his fingers, pushing against your walls. You’re close. He can feel it. He can hear it. The sloppily disturbance of the water from your movement is so obscenely filthy in the context of what’s happening. Anybody could see you. JJ presses more wet kisses to your neck, to your collarbone. Anywhere his lips can reach until they find home on yours. “Come on, baby. You can let go. Come on.”

Finally, the tether snaps. Your moan is shameless and loud, as if you’ve forgotten where you are. As if there’s nothing else that you need to know expect that JJ’s there, easing you through it all. He feels as your walls convulse around his fingers, pushing him out and pulling him in, and he pants through his arousal as he watches you come. Watches as your teeth sink into your lower lip. As your face shines hot. The pool water droplets shining on your skin. How you’re shaking under him. Watches as you ease your eyes open, meeting his gaze. Sees the unshed tears in your lash line from the pleasure. The bashful, thankful smile you barely manage to show. There’s the feeling of one of your hands on his wrist, gently but firmly easing his touch away, overstimulated. When you gasp as his fingers slip out of you, all too easy, you’re still staring into his eyes. JJ’s thoughts are mostly vacant except for a few, and all of them are about you.  

Your hand cups at his jaw so you can pull him into a kiss. It’s fleeting and sweet.

“If we ever win the lottery, we’re getting a pool,” you tell him.

JJ laughs, breathless. “Agreed.”

“Jesus. Pretty good date, huh?” you chuckle. JJ can’t help but kiss you again.

“Hell yeah.”

You both pull back enough to take the other in fully. JJ tucks himself back into his boxers, and you correct your underwear so the both of you are decent. You look around at the garden, as if remembering where you are.

“We should probably get out of here before we get caught,” you say. You don’t sound overly concerned though. JJ smiles.

“Think we might’ve blown our cover, somehow,” he agrees.

You roll your eyes, diffident. JJ swims backwards, extending a hand to bring you with him. Neither of you look down into the water. Instead, you both swim towards the deep end again, where your belongings had been ditched. The two of you climb out into the balmy one-in-the-morning air. JJ goes to your clothes – shoving his phone and the cork back into his shorts – and picks up your dress. The two of you swap the wine and dress, you having just taken a drink, and JJ takes a swig too.

“You ride your bike here?” you wonder as you pull on the dress. It seems to be a bit of a struggle against your wet skin.

“John B gave me a lift,” JJ replies. He pulls on his shirt. At your struggle to work up the straps, JJ walks over to help. “You walk?”

“Drove. I can give us a lift to the chateau. Told my parents I'd crash there tonight,” you say. JJ nods.

Once you’re dressed, you look up at him and smile. He's heart thuds painfully in his chest. He leans down to kiss you, chaste and tender. The two of you start back to the fence. JJ boosts you over, hands the wine, climbs over himself. You hold hands as you walk to your car. Sliding into the passenger side, JJ sighs against the seat. The wine’s now empty and he shoves the bottle under the back seat. You get behind the wheel and start up the engine. As the car blinks to life, coughing up a new lung in the process, the radio kicks in. It’s tuned into some crackly channel which is only just in service, playing mostly oldies and classics. The volume is low, just loud enough to tune out the concerning noise of the engine, and you reverse out of your spot and begin down the road.

JJ relaxes into the seat, crossing his ankles. There's one of his caps on the dashboard that he left the other day; taking it, he puts it on his head. JJ watches as you dig about in the centre console for your cigarettes. Holding one between your lips, you light it up with a flick of your lighter. You know JJ doesn’t mind you smoking in the car so you don’t bother cracking a window. He watches you take a drag, leaning one elbow on the window frame, finger cradling the cig, as you use the other to leisurely steer. The roads are dead. It’s dark and your headlights are on low. JJ glances out the side window to take in the starry night, looking past his reflection in the dark. Your fingers drum on the steering wheel as Rich Girl starts up. He hears as you hum along quietly, lazy as if unaware you are, and he smiles. His own fingers tap along to the beat on his thigh. Glancing over to you, he watches you change hands on the wheel (cigarette precariously propped between two fingers). He takes the chance to grab at the hand nearest him, pulling it to his lips to press kisses against your knuckles. Your eyes flit to him as he does, smiling sweetly, and you move to interlock your fingers with his.

“I don’t want summer to end,” JJ tells you, his voice low in confession.

“Me neither,” you reply.

The radio host starts lamely interrupting the end of the song, hyping up what’s to come next for the truck drivers and road trippers, driving in the dead of the night.

“What’s gonna happen with us, at school?” you wonder. There’s an anxiety to your voice.

JJ shrugs. He answers honestly. “I don’t know. But I’m not going anywhere.”

“You mean that, right? Like, you’re not just gonna dip?” you worry.

JJ frowns. “No. I’m not gonna dip.”

“Okay,” you say, finding a smile again. You nod, looking back to the road. “Okay.”

As the song comes to a close, a thought seems to flash in your mind and your head whips to look at him. “You know I’m not gonna dip either, right?”

JJ laughs, “Yeah, baby, I know.”

“Okay,” you say, chuckling. “Just wanted to check.”

Everything about the night is infinite. The pool and the wine and the sneaking. The fooling around and the tender moments after. And now, in the car, with the pair of you easily slipping between sentimental and sincere, carefree and young. He loves that he can do this with you. Loves how he can trust you to understand him; how you’re a little bossy and a little controlling, but how you also allow him to see the nostalgic, tender-hearted teenage girl beneath it all. The girl who keeps corks from five-dollar wine and collects napkins from breakfast diners. Loves how you feel safe enough with him to mess around in someone else’s back garden; to let him have you, all of you, nearly every night.

The words come to JJ, easy now. Obvious. The many layers of feelings that he had whenever he thought of you or whenever he was around you seem so easily condensed and summarised in that one word. He always thought it would be terrifying to feel it, and even more terrifying to say it. But with you, it isn’t. If anything, it’s easier. Simpler. It encapsulates all the things JJ likes about you, and even the things that aggravate him too.

“I love you.”

Your humming stops. You glance over to him, eyes a little wide. The brief wash of anxiety that drenches JJ passes quickly when he sees the corner of your lips twitch into a smile.

"Really?" you ask gently. Somewhat disbelieving. As if there could be any doubt in his mind. As if you weren't easy for JJ to fall in love with.

JJ smiles back. It might be the softest, sweetest smile he's ever had the pleasure to show someone. Only you. "Really."

When you giggle, it's quiet; teeth sinking into your lower lip. The moonlight washes over you. Looking back to the road, you continue smiling, giddy like a school girl after her first kiss. JJ can't help but watch you. Now that he's said it once, he wants to say it again and again. He won't though. Doesn't want to be too much, too fast. But then the silence stretches too long, making him antsy.

"Any chance you might feel the same way?" he tentatively asks, hating how desperate it sounds.

Your face shocks with realisation. Laughing, you look to him. "Oh shit! Yeah, I love you too."

JJ laughs along, shaking his head.

"Sorry. Just caught me off guard. Kinda forgot I had to reply," you confess, chuckling. Rolling his eyes, JJ squeezes your hand, still intertwined with his. He's pinned each and every hope on you; every wish for the future and every regret of the past. No matter what happens now, the two of you are forever tethered to this moment and to those words. To each other.

Your demeanour softens. Bringing his hand to your lips, you press a kiss to the skin. His knuckles are permanently scarred; having broken and healed over so many times. But so are yours. Same coin: different sides. When you repeat the phrase, it's as if you're passing a secret and whispering a prayer straight to God's ear.

"I love you."

[plant-acts]

Linked Universe College Theater AU

The amount of crazy stuff that goes on in my college theater program deserves to be immortalized with my favorite characters!

So here is what I think they would be like if they were Theater Majors with Time and Malon being their professors (plus some other fun characters at the end)!

--

Time: 46 | Technical Theater Director for the college | In the beginning, he was a simple high school theater teacher, but after seeing an opening at a small college he and his wife decided to apply! He has been teaching at the college for the past 6 years and essentially saved the program. He loves his job, but if he gets one more student named Link, he might burn the place down. His wife is the Artistic Director, Malon, and their son Twilight is his student.

Twilight: 22 | Technical Theater | His parents had him introduced to theater at a young age and he quickly learned that he enjoyed the technical aspect more than the acting side (like father like son). Even though Time insisted he could apply to any college, Twi chose to go to his parent's program. Within the theater, he leads the set-building crew. The man is crazy strong (a platform almost fell on Wild while he was working underneath it and with one hand, Twi caught the set, and with the other; he dragged Wild out). He is living with his parents until he graduates. After that, he hopes to open a summer stock theater in a nearby town.

Warriors: 21 |Performance Theater | Originally, after graduating high school he was going to go into the military, but plans changed after his grandmother passed. Now he is one of the newest performance majors! To be honest, he never saw himself on the stage until he was forced to go to a summer musical audition at the college with his younger stepbrother, Wind. To his surprise, he got a part and has been in love with it ever since! He can often be found helping with the costume department (everyone begs him to please stop trying to put them in scarves; the stage lights are too hot for it). He and his younger stepbrothers live in an apartment together.

Legend: 21 | Performance Theater | He has probably been doing theater longer than everyone else (besides Twilight, but they don’t count him because his parents are theater teachers). As a kid, his family signed him up for summer classes. Quickly, they found he had genuine talent, and he performed throughout high school. At one point, he was in an official production of Matilda, but he refuses to tell which it was. Expressing emotions has always been hard for him and theater is an outlet he can use to be anyone he wants (although sometimes he regrets the performance major choice, especially when he has to dye his hair pink for a role, and it stains). Although he's a performance major, he could give tech students a run for their money. He somehow knows everything (years of experience)! He lives in an apartment near campus with his roommates Ravio and Hyrule.

Sky: 20 | Performance Theater | The Dude was born for the stage. His first performance was in high school, and he has led in every show since. He just seems to shine and embody the character. His high school theater program was small, so it was a culture shock to see so many talented people at the college. Because of that, he struggles with self-doubt. He sometimes doesn’t believe he is good enough to be there. His girlfriend, Sun, is also a performance major at the college and does what she can to assure him he is crazy talented, just like the rest of them. He has the best singing voice out of everyone and is not afraid to do karaoke at the worst time. They live together in an apartment right next to Legend and Hyrule (all the apartments just happen to be in the same building on the same floor).

Hyrule: 20 | Technical Theater | Growing up, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to be. That was until he needed an art credit and joined the tech theater class! He has been in love with it ever since! He loves seeing a show come together and how everyone works as a team to make it happen. Usually, he is in charge of finding props in the maze that is the prop loft (seriously; it is a mess; they have lost Four back there a few times). If no one steps up to be a stage manager or assistant director for a show, he will gladly fill that spot. He lives with his roommates Legend and Ravio.

Wild: 20 | Technical Theater | Originally, he was going to be a performance major, but an accident in his first semester of college changed that. Now he has a cool scar on his face and the memory of a goldfish (to be honest it had always been comically bad, so nothing much changed there). He wasn’t going to let some bad luck stop his love of theater, so he changed majors and has been a menace to Time ever since (maybe he will go back to acting one day, who knows ;)). Whether it’s helping in any way possible, specifically building sets with Twilight, or assisting with costumes, he is always lending a hand. He is convinced OSHA does not apply to him (when does it ever apply in theater). One time, he put a ladder on an electric lift so he could fix a sign. The sign still ended up crooked. No one knows why, but he somehow has everything anyone could ever need in his tool belt. Nails? Check. Bobby Pins? Check. The secrets of the universe? Maybe? He lives with his partner Flora and support dog, Wolfie.

Four: 19 | Four is actually 4 different people. The quadruplets all applied to the same college and didn’t realize until they got their acceptance letters! For the longest time, everyone thought they were the same person (somehow the brothers never noticed that people believed this and just thought everyone was being weird when they said a second ago, they watched him leave through the opposite door). After everyone figured it out, they started wearing colored headbands so people could tell them apart (they absolutely have switched colors to mess with people or get out of doing a job). Everyone calls them Four as a joke, and because it is easier than trying to catch sight of the colored headbands. They live with their older brother Shadow, who is a technical theater major, but he works nights, and they don’t see each other on campus much.

Blue: Technical Theater | Hides on the catwalk after hanging lights and you won't know about it until he is screaming "HEADS" because he dropped his phone.

Green: Performance Theater | He has just kinda accepted the fact that if there is a young character, he will be typecast as them. It doesn't help that he looks androgynous and can play a man or woman.

Red: Performance Theater | If there was a most dramatic award he would get it. One time he got a paper cut and screamed so loud that Hyrule swears he felt the loft shake.

Vio: Technical Theater | He is the resident painter of the program, which means he is in charge of doing the shading for every. single. set. More than once he has stayed the night to finish painting a flat.

Wind: 18 | Technical/Performing Theater | He couldn't decide which he wanted to major in, so he dual majors (Malon and Time have a small fun competition to see if they can convince him to favor one over the other)! He lived in a small coastal town until his grandmother died. After that, he and his twin brother Spirit moved in with their stepbrother Warriors since they already planned to go to the same college. More than once, he has to be told to slow down his lines (totally not projecting here). He's absolutely convinced that the theater is haunted after he was locked in and heard crying from the loft. His favorite part of tech is drawing up a design for the set. He is the head of marketing and takes it very seriously. Although he is the youngest, he hates being treated like he doesn't know what is going on and people not letting him help on important projects. He's been doing theater since middle school and just wants to be a part of the team!

Other Characters!

Hylia: ??? | Head of Performing Arts | She has been working at the college for as long as anyone can remember. Kind, but can be quite strict with her employees and their students if they get out of line.

Gannon: ??? | College President | Not much to say about him, he never leaves his office. But before Time and Malon started teaching, he tried to shut down the theater department because there weren't enough students.

Malon: 47 | Artistic Director | She, Time, and Twilight live on a few acres of land given to her by her father. She loves to invite The Chain (the name she gave the group of Links who joined the program and became friends) over for game nights. More than once she has walked into her office to see one of the boys asleep in the corner, where she has a stack of pillows.

Beetle: 23 | ??? | Legit just some dude who really likes the college productions and goes to every show to support the program.

Shadow: 22 | Technical Theater | No one is quite sure if he even exists. Every time a prop breaks, they call his name, and in the blink of an eye; it is either fixed or gone. He runs the lights, but the glass of the tech booth is so dirty you can't see what he looks like (hence the nickname Shadow). Four insists that he is their older brother, but the believability of that differs from person to person.

Ravio: 21 | Business Sales | Legend and Hyrule's roommate. More than once, he has tried to sell things he "borrowed" from people back to their owners. It never works and he just plays it off as practice for his business class.

Flora: 20 | Mechanical Engineer | She lives with Wild and is half of his impulse control. She can get super focused on her studies and Wild will drag her to the theatre to get her out of the house (and prove that yes he does have a girlfriend, and no she is not made up)

Sun: 20 | Performance Theatre | In high school, she and Sky were cast as Audrey and Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors. She was so nervous about the Suddenly Seymour kiss that she was almost sick. Her and Sky laugh about it now because he was also super scared to kiss his crush.

Tetra:19 | Navy | Wind’s best friend from his hometown. They kept in touch even after he moved away. She is joining the Navy and the last summer before she left and he started college; they met up in person for the first time in months. They just hung out at the beach and talked like old times. They miss each other, so she tries to surprise him at his shows as much as she can.

Phantom: 18 | Psychology | Spirits best friend. She can and will talk your ear off about whatever new thing she is learning in class. She lives in an apartment with a few of her friends and invites Spirit to every girl's night (he has crush privileges and loves to gossip just as much as any of the gals)

Spirit: 18 | Civil Engineering | Wind's twin brother. He wants to work on building transportation routes between different cities (although the amount of work he has to do makes him wish he just went into fast food instead). He might not talk much, but his facial expressions can rival any of the actors.

Aryll: 13 | Middle School | Wind and Spirits younger sister. She moved in with her dad and stepmom after their grandma's death. She misses the beach but is happy to be making friends and learning about the city.

--

If you made it this far, please do not be afraid to ask questions in my ask box. I am dying to talk and write about this AU.

Please.

I beg.

(Also, I am pretty new to the loz and LU fandoms so if something feels off, or I missed some characters, tell me and I'll fix/talk about them!)

[ripeossis]

Free roaming gods in arknights are fucking hysterical. The chinese-equivalent pantheon god of painting is an extradimensional squatter. She'll show up and draw an entire room on your wall and live in it forever. That's kind of what she did. The residential weirdo shut-in from Engineering who routinely forgets to eat for several days called her 'some weirdo shut-in' in an official document. This tendency was partly a coping mechanism to the fact that her gf is in fact mortal and will die; their names are literally 'Dusk' and 'Dawn'. Girl deadass came in Doctor's room to sketch and insisted it's hers, being confronted with the fact that it's Doc's office, she went 'but what is personal property, really? Am I not also inhabiting this room, Participating In Labour? How are we fundamentally different?'

Nian technically represents metallurgy but constantly churns out shitty b-list movies and tempts people to play mahjong with her on their work shifts, this is partly a coping mechanism in response to the constant existential dread that herself and siblings will suffer ego death one day after being alive for centuries. Same. She's a mere professional squatter but I still love her.

Ling -allegedly- took a thousand (not projectiles) shots in a go in front of the entire Rhodes bar and spewed pure poetry. Just vandalises a random fucking wall with some archaic meters, tail dipped in ink, while making up songs at top lung capacity. Probably weekly. Everyone thought it was kinda rad and want her to stay - this is also by far the strongest reaction Rhodes Island has toward one of these goobers. She lounges around mountains all day looking at the moons or some crap, blood alcohol level perpetually minimum 200%, still insists to Doc she never got drunk her entire life. Her canon superpower is not giving a fuck and Dusk is concerned with the metaphysical consequences of her stop giving a fuck about the laws holding the universe together. She slew a dragon-god vestige by not really giving a fuck about it. Other than this she's a surprisingly well adjusted person, as opposed to the two giga failgods.

Kjera founded a nation in the mountains. Their culture is centered around her as a religion and the country is named after her. They think she's the best thing that happened before sliced bread and she's convinced it was an enormous blunder. Her public status and legal station is her pope's maid and both of them snuck off to some roving hospital as temp workers. There are currently two (2) other people in Terra who seem at all aware of this. Her pope is the person equivalent of a moderately lazy housecat and HG tried to hide they're in deep gay love but i suceeded a heroic int check and now know otherwise.

[void-ink-studios]

The Higher Ups in Wrath of the Wishmaster

So, just wanted to dump my brain worms here, and talk about the OC gods that just got introduced in the 3 part instalment of Wrath of the Wishmaster that I posted.

I'd like to introduce the Higher Ups. They're basically the upper management of the pantheon, only answering to The Boss themselves. Their power and rulings override pretty much everyone else, unless the Boss intervenes. They cannot be removed from reality, stripped of their titles, demoted, or even harmed.

You've already met one, the Organizer but there's two others: the Observer and the Judge! So, let's go through their deal one by one.

The Organizer

Let's start with the one y'all have officially met, the Organizer. As the name would imply, she is the goddess in charge of the organization, planning, and paperwork of the entire pantheon. She's the one to deal with write ups, complaints, requests, and record keeping. She has a file on pretty much everything to have ever lived in the multiverse, all perfectly sorted in an infinite records room. She's always super busy. She's also Orbo's direct supervisor, and by extension Scarab's. She's the one who sends the official orders for Auditors to go after rule breakers.

The Observer

The Observer is a rarely seen god, but he works closely with the Organizer. He is in charge of overseeing all activity across the multiverse, particularly with anyone powerful enough to jump between universes, and the other gods. He has seen everything that has ever happened (and rumor says ever will happen) in the multiverse. He hands off this information to the Organizer for storage, and is the primary source of information for sentencing cosmic crimes. He also is the one to confirm or reject complaints and write ups from the Organizer. He commands any and all gods responsible for gathering information within the cosmos.

The Judge

The Judge is the main authority of what is and isn't a cosmic crime. It is them who decides what punishments are delivered to what write ups, who does and does not belong in the Citadel, and is the one to mark individuals as cosmic threats. If someone is marked a target, the information is given to the Organizer to then give the order to Auditors. Of the higher ups, they're the one most often seen, both by mortals and by other gods. It is them you must plead your case to if you're demanding help or mercy from the gods. Unless the Boss intervenes, the Judge can grant or strip any of the lesser gods their title and immortality. They ultimately created the Citadel and the guardians. Not surprisingly, they were a bit salty after the whole Lich fiasco.

Other notes:

Some gods don't directly answer to one of these three. Gods like Prismo and the Cosmic Owl pretty much only answer to the Boss, as it's their power they're tapping into to grant wishes and make dreams prophetic.

All three of the Higher Ups are able to pass down punishment to gods if the transgression is not considered serious. For example, in the last part of Gala of the Gods, if Prismo and Scarab actually did major damage to the Judgement Hall, the Organizer would be sending them straight to the Judge.

Someone on AO3 suggested it and I liked it a lot so I'm including it: The Organizer was kind of Scarab's mentor figure. She was pretty much the only god he really spoke to as he transitioned from mortal to immortal. They stopped talking after Scarab lost his bid for Wishmaster to Prismo. He kind of blamed her for making him think he had a chance when literally everyone else was telling him to not even bother. More on that relationship in the next chapter.

The Observer is terrifying. No one but other Higher Ups talks to the Observer. Even other gods risk going mad by looking upon him.

The Judge is so tired of everyone's bullshit. So is the Organizer tbh. Get them some coffee, dammit.

Golb/Golbetty can technically be considered a Higher Up since their power overrides Prismo's, but Golb is kind of seperate from the cosmic hierarchy. They're a chaotic nightmare, on the same level as the Higher Ups, but not technically one of them.

[bihanspookies]

Kasiya

Name: Kasiya (Ka-sigh-ah)

Age: Unknown (prev timeline)/ 23 (current timeline mk1)

Birthplace: Garden of Lotós

Race: Deity

Birthday: March 19 (first day of spring)

Hair: Dark brown

Eyes: Amber (pure black when using her power)

Skin Tone: Caramel

Distinguishing Features: Looks like crows feet but it’s actually roots near her eyes that will increase in length the more she uses her power.

Languages: All

Height: 5’7

Build: Slim, some muscle but not much since her main fighting style is with plants. Can do basic hand to hand combat but can be overpowered.

Scars: None

Jewelry: one on each lobe, her pendant, arm bands.

Tattoos: None. Does however have roots in the center of her back.

Makeup: Soft colors when wearing makeup

Eyeshadow: gold/brown, shimmery

Lips: soft pinks and browns

Clothes: Dresses with darker shades (blue, green, brown), gold accents. Has a lot of Greek goddess inspo.

Family: Cetrion (Mother/Creator), Kronika (Technical grandmother)

Nicknames: Sweetheart (Kung Lao current timeline), Goddess, Divine One (Kung Lao prev timeline) Siya (Raiden current timeline)

Likes: Nature, animals (specifically frogs), tea, swimming

Dislikes: People disrespecting nature, Shinnok, Kronika, Cetrion (later)

Fighting Style: Not particularly any style, moves gracefully as if she’s dancing, most of her moves are long ranged due to her powers. Not very good at hand to hand, defends more than attacks prefers long distance.

Powers and Abilities: Botanokinesis, mushroom manipulation, Life Transference.

Personality: She is friendly and good hearted but also dedicated to her duty. She is also serious, mature, and not one to stray away from her responsibilities. She’s carefree at heart but unfortunately does not get many opportunities to showcase it due to her obligations.

History: Crafted from nature’s flora, Kasiya is a creation by Cetrion as a means to help souls cross from Earthrealm to the Heavens like Kharon does for the souls that go to the Netherrealm.

Kasiya has been a part of MK universe since the beginning but did not make an official appearance until the second timeline (MK9).

In MK9 she mainly watches the spectacle from the Garden of Lotós, speaking with Raiden when he seeks her help since The Elder Gods are doing nothing to stop Shao Kahn. At this time, she is still very loyal to Cetrion but starts to question her mother and Kronika’s behavior and attitude towards the events circulating.

When Kung Lao is killed, she is absolutely devastated but knows she cannot interfere due to her status as a deity and risk a severe punishment from Cetrion. She reluctantly continues to watch from her home, up until several of the Earthrealm Champions are killed by Sindel. She confronts Cetrion to put a stop to this before more lives are lost but again, Cetrion only silences her and says that they are Gods and cannot do anything until Shao Kahn breaks the rules of Mortal Kombat. The rest of the events unfold and Kasiya is left heartbroken and in an emotional turmoil. This is also when she starts to feel lost in who she is and where she starts her journey into becoming astray.

In MKX (before the 20 year timeskip), Kasiya speaks more with Raiden along with Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade. While she still hasn’t left her home yet, she does speak with them via her fytó stámnas (pitcher plant). Just like before, she attempts to tell Cetrion of her brother, Shinnok, and the chaos he is causing upon Earthrealm. Again she is disregarded, warned that if she were to continue speaking with Raiden or his champions, there would be dire consequences. Kasiya obeys long enough to get her mother off her back, returning to talking with Raiden and attempting to help him in any way she can from her home. Throughout the story she tries to speak with Revenant Kung Lao to get him to change and to stop working for Quan Chi (even though she knows his sorcery is nearly impossible to break.)

After Shinnok is defeated, she sees how the darkness starts to overtake Raiden, Kasiya trying one more desperate attempt to get her mother to speak with Kronika. She is brushed aside immediately, being told that everything is going the way it is supposed to by Kronika's hand.

MK11 is when Kasiya truly steps into action, knowing about Kronika’s place to restart time for The New Era. While she fears what this truly meant, there was a sliver of hope in her that she would be reunited with Kung Lao once again.

When the Outworld and Earthrealm champions arrive at the Koliseum, she does not interfere when the fight breaks out. When Raiden, Liu Kang, and Kung Lao leave to Earthrealm and are at the Special Forces, she makes the decision right then and there to go against her mother and Kronika. She shows up at the base, reuniting with Kung Lao and Liu Kang and also informing them of their revenant counterparts.

While the reunion was short lived, Kasiya informs them that she cannot join them on their journey to the Wu Shi Temple, saying that she will be returning to the Garden of Lotós to keep an eye on things from above. Throughout the story she informs Raiden and the others about what Kronika is doing, warning them to be careful and to proceed with caution.

Before the final battle, Cetrion confronts Kasiya and gives her one final chance to stop what she is doing and join her and Kronika. Kasiya refuses, claiming she wishes to fight alongside Earthrealm. A fight ensues and although she nearly loses her life, at the last second Cetrion spares her and captures her to take to Kronika’s Keep. There she forces Kasiya to assist with the hourglass, having her watch helplessly as Liu Kang fights the Revenants and then eventually Cetrion. She aids Liu Kang when he attempts to reason with her mother, saying that even she knows that what Kronika is doing is wrong. When that proves futile, Cetrion makes Kasiya sacrifice herself to Kronika, followed by herself after.

The final fight begins and when Liu Kang wins and is made The Keeper of Time, Liu Kang reverses time to bring Kasiya back, allowing her to choose her destiny. She opts to be with Kung Lao but also chooses to remain as the ferrywoman in the Garden of Lotós.

In Aftermath she retains her memories and everything relatively plays the same except prior to the final battle when Kasiya fights her mother, she wins. She leaves and joins the fight alongside Earthrealm, aiding Kung Lao on the ship he occupies.

When Shao Kahn throws him overboard, Kasiya does not hesitate to go after him. After realizing the extent of his injuries, she decides to give her life to him, realizing just how much she truly loves him. Kung Lao attempts to stop her, despite being weak and having no strength. As they share their final kiss, she passes in his arms, claiming that he has been her ‘greatest adventure’. He takes her empty pendant and the rest of the story plays as normal.

Prior to the events of MK1, Liu Kang gives Kasiya the life she always desired; to be free of her duties and to have a normal life. In MK1 she is reincarnated as a human, adopted by Madam Bo and waitressing at her restaurant where she is childhood friends with Raiden and Kung Lao.

Fun Facts:

— While Kharon is immortal, she is not. She wears a pendant around her neck that holds her life and if the magic inside is ever depleted fully or if the pendant breaks, she will die. Another thing to note is that unlike her mother Cetrion, if she were to die it would not be permanent.

— Kasiya and Kung Lao have always been together in one way or another, but it always ends with Kung Lao dying in every reincarnation/timeline. He never remembers her but she always remembers him since she has always been one but he’s been many versions. In MK9 their relationship is mainly off screen but it’s only until after his death when you learn that they were together.

— Just like the Sea of Blood in the Netherrealm, the Garden of Lotós is a place that can be accessed via portal. While not directly in Heaven, there are stairs and a sea a soul must cross in order to pass on.

— Because it is only accessible via portals, Kung Lao is given a special ring that allows him to come and go as he pleases.

— Their relationship is mostly a secret, those who only know are Raiden and Liu Kang (prev timelines). They are not officially together in MK1.

Thank you to @luna-di-fuoco and @malicedragoness for helping me with tidbits 🥺

[chickwiththepurpleguitar]

Song prompt: Close Behind by Noah Kahan

Check DMs for more details :)))

Sorry this took so long! I didn’t have an idea I liked enough for it, and then I recently got re-obsessed with this show, re-read my longfic, and suddenly had an idea :) It’s sad I hope that’s what you were hoping for :) Hope you enjoy!

Tw: mention of a suicide attempt.

This is sorta vaguely in my All Too Well series, but it should make sense even if you haven’t read it. When I eventually move this over to ao3 I probably won’t make it part of the official series, mostly cause I was too lazy to check my own continuity, but it’s definitely inspired by that series’s specific brand of canon divergence.

Tagging @felicitysmoaksx by request :)

“So you know I worry that you’re all I have to lose”

“I live my life in years to come to prepare myself for sorrow”

“I should change this way of thinking, that all my fears are facts of life”

—Close Behind by Noah Kahan

“Bobby always thought he wasn’t good enough, always thought he’d be forever on the outside, always thought Luke, Reggie, and Alex would wake up one day and decide they wanted to go back to just having each other and didn’t need Bobby anymore, and technically, in a twisted morbid sort of way, he was right.”

—i might be okay but i’m not fine at all

***

They have a band meeting.

Luke holds Julie’s hand, because he can, and stands before his boys (come on, Luke, two out of three of his boys) and says, “I wanna fix things with Bobby.”

Alex and Reggie look at each other, and then at him. Reggie says, “Okay, man! Whatever you need.”

Alex says, “Just, you know. Be careful about it, okay?”

Luke bounces a little on his toes, trying to redirect the anxious energy buzzing underneath his skin. He looks at Julie, who gives his hand a comforting squeeze, and then back at Alex and Reggie. “I need to stop jumping to conclusions. I don’t want to get back at him. I don’t want revenge. I just… I wanna understand what happened. Will you guys help me decide what to say?”

They settle around Julie’s dining room table with some snacks courtesy of Mr. Molina and a place set for Julie’s mom, as a sign of good luck. Julie pulls up Trevor Wilson’s Wikipedia page, and they get started.

The beginning is laughingly low in detail. Trevor Wilson was born in New York. Trevor Wilson relocated to Los Angeles at age 18. Trevor Wilson was discovered at an open mic at Ridley’s Bar on July 22, 1998.

“That’s—” Reggie starts to say.

“Yep!” Luke interrupts, hands gripping the edge of the table. “Keep going, Julie!”

“Despite not being native to the city,” Julie reads, “Wilson became a household name among Angelinos in the music industry as soon as his self-titled debut album was released in September ’98.”

“And that would be…”

“Our self-titled debut album,” Alex fills in, patting Reggie’s hand. “We know, Reg.”

Luke puts his head in his hands and lets out a long, muffled groan.

“It’s okay, hey, we knew this part already!” Julie rubs Luke’s arm comfortingly. “Do you wanna keep going?”

“No,” Luke says into his hands. “…Yes.”

He sighs and drops his hands back into his lap, just in time to see Julie, Alex, and Reggie exchange a look. Like they’re worried about him.

Maybe they should be.

Julie takes a breath and looks back at her phone. “His album got a bunch of hits. His second one… didn’t. He, um… oh, god, I remember this, I was like five or six and Trevor had this crazy mental breakdown on live TV. He, like, threw a desk and cried a bunch. Says here he chugged a whole bottle of tequila and told a reporter he just wanted to be loved.”

“Oh, wow,” Reggie says.

“Jeeeeez,” Alex murmurs.

Luke stares at Julie’s phone like it holds all the secrets of the universe. “Bobby got drunk?”

“Next couple paragraphs are all about his history with alcoholism,” Julie reports with a sympathetic wince. “And then he went into rehab in 2010, I remember that too, my mom told Carrie and me he was on a ‘business trip,’ but it was, like, all over the news.”

“Damn,” Alex says under his breath.

Reggie pouts. “Poor Bobby.”

Luke feels like there’s an ice cube steadily tracing a path through his bloodstream. “He, uh. Really had it rough, didn’t he?”

Julie reaches over to take his hand, but her eyes don’t stop scanning down her phone screen. A few scrolls later, and her face goes sickly pale.

Luke’s heart skips a beat. “Julie? What’s wrong?”

She clicks her phone off and lays it face down on the table. “Nothing!” she says in her high-pitched lying voice. “I think we’ve seen enough, don’t you? Trevor lost you guys, and obviously was going through it for a while, and no matter why he stole your songs, clearly he felt pretty guilty about it, so I think that’s a good enough start for a reconciliation! How about you start by apologizing for haunting him—”

“Julie,” Luke interrupts, unable to unsee that look on her face. “What’d the rest of that page say?”

She takes a deep breath, shifting in her seat, and looks all three of them in the eye in turn, hand still clutching Luke’s. And then she says, “A few years ago, right when Carrie and I stopped being friends… Trevor Wilson tried to kill himself.”

Luke makes a sound like all the air has been punched out of him. He closes his eyes, and the blackness, paired with the ringing in his ears, makes his friends around him seem to disappear.

Makes the world seem to disappear, leaving Luke with nothing but himself, and his memories of a Bobby who doesn’t exist anymore, and the painful truth of the life Trevor lived.

The songs don’t matter, in light of this, do they? The music doesn’t matter, the legacy doesn’t matter.

What matters is that they messed up. They assumed the worst, never bothered to get all the facts, haunted a man who’d been chased by ghosts his whole miserable life.

They may have lost the music of Sunset Curve. But Bobby lost them.

“So, uh.” Alex’s voice brings Luke’s focus back. He opens his eyes and realizes they’re all holding hands now, him and Julie and Alex and Reggie, one big band circle. One big family. Alex squeezes his hand. “We’re all gonna go apologize to Trevor now, right?”

“We have to,” Reggie adds. “His life has been so… sad.”

“Well, not anymore,” Luke promises. “He didn’t lose us, guys. All that sad stuff his brain told him— it was wrong. He is loved. And he’s not alone.”

Reggie nods. Julie smiles. Alex says, “Course he’s not alone. He’s getting us back.”

[maze-of-my-design]

persona fun facts :o? can be from any game!

totally not copy-pasted from dms FUN FACTS BRIGADE (also i cut it in half with a readmore bc its. a lot)

Ann is the tallest girl among the Phantom Thieves, santing at 5'5! (In my head she is taller than Ren but shh)

If you take the thieves to darts, the worst player in the gang is surprisingly not Morgana, but Sumire! Don't ask me how she's worse than a cat!

In P5 (including royal), Ann is the only romance option to directly say "I love you" to the protagonist without cutting herself off* (and, i'm half sure, she's one of the few direct kisses a protagonist receives in a persona game) and honestly? good for them ily ann im so gay for her *Sumire says it too, even before being romanced, but it's not a complete "i love you", per se. She stutters through her confession and Ren has to finish it for her because she's so flustered, which is pretty cute i'll be real but in terms of Saying it, it technically doesn't count.

Sho Minazuki (yknow, the guy from the arena games) was originally meant to be the protagonist for P5! This is massively implied in ending dialogue for the Arena games, as well as how similar the two look if you, like, dye his hair black. Also if you recall the original Femc for P5 with the neon red hair…

Sumire lives with her dad, that much is obvious, but the Royal artbook reveals she also lives with her grandma and her mother!

Among all the non-party-member confidants in P5 (including royal), only 5 find out Ren's identity as a Phantom Thief through something else other than a mementos request. These are Maruki, Yoshida, Sojiro, Mishima, and Sae

The Featherman series is a Power Rangers style anime that airs in the inner universe of the series. Contrary to what the Dancing games make us believe, There's always only 5 Feather soldiers that are part of the main crew: Pink Argus, Red Hawk, Black Condor, Yellow Owl, and Blue Swan. These names, however, are sometimes interchanged between "generations" of the show.

Actually lemme go on a tangent (you asked for fun facts you're GETTING fun facts) There are three generations of the Featherman show to date: OG Featherman (persona 2), Featherman R (Persona 3), and Featherman V (P4 and the Arena games). There's actually a change in the naming semantics every new generation of Featherman. For example, take this excerp from the wiki: "Red Eagle (from Featherman), Feather Hawk (from Featherman R and/or Neo Featherman), Feather Red (from Featherman V)" So in P2, the naming convention is "[Color] [Bird name]", in P3 it's "Feather [bird name]" and in P4 it's "Feather [color]"

Ok tangent over don't ask me how i know so much about a fictional series from a fictional game JSVGEFVR more fun facts

Sumire actually has the biggest amount of portrait sprite variations, since it includes her Kasumi and her Sumire sprites. She deserves it tbh, fashion icon

Another Sumire fact! Did you know Maruki "transformed" sumi into her sister on her birthday? I sure did! Fuck you Maruki!! Uninvited from MY birthday party for sure

Sumire, piror to the third semester, is only ever called by her last name, Yoshizawa, by everyone aside from Ren, Morgana and Futaba. This is a very a subtle way to show something's up with her and i gasped when i first found out about it.

Ok fine enough P5 facts have a P3 fact. It's kinda well known im pretty sure but Makoto Yuki's barrage of official names include, also, Sakuya Shiomi from the stageplay. Sakuya means "blossom" or "bloom". Hey do you recall that he dies in March 5th? yknow, when spring starts? Cherry trees. you get it

Back to P5, Tactica reveals that Haru used to indulge in chopping firewood when she was younger. Her dad didn't like that for her, but he never tried to stop her. This probably leads to her having an Axe as part of her Phantom Thief artillery.

Did you know Fuuka and Futaba actually become friends in the Dancing games? They sadly don't remain friends after losing their memories post-game but Fuuka knew her as Alibaba, and Futaba knew her as Lucia :) I hope they became friends online again

In the jazz jin in Royal, Futaba reveals that the retro console you use to play games was hers, and that she'd sold it to the shop in Yongen. Also apparently the busted laptop you buy there was Haru's! (fact also revealed in the Jazz Jin)

[elfecassepied]

I'm in my self indulgent art ear. Here is a MHA x The Umbrella Academy AU I never finished. Izuku is n°7 obviously, the poor quirkless sibling. They're all fucked up freaks with PTSD and bad coping mechanisms that love/hate each other your Honor.

PS: Michikage is human!Dark Shadow, she's Fumikage's twin sister.

Maybe I will continu it one day, but for now here some info dump I had about them:

-N°1, Icehot, "Shoto" ; quirk: temperature manipulation ; after a mission's accident he was save from a certain death by making him a cyborg, technically still working for the Shigaraki Company even if he's no longer in the Academy, studies the wild life of Antarctica

-N°2, Mindfreak, "Hitoshi" ; quirk: brainwashing via a vocal activation, often use the sentence "I heard saying" as a crutch to help him focusing his power ; was one of the first to leave the Academy, become a policeman to continue helping people, deliberately turns a blind eye to his sister's illegal activities

-N°3, Phantom Thief, "Neito" ; quirk: coping other quirks, later learn how to completely "download" someone's quirk ; was believed dead for 10 years after he disappeared during a mission, accidentally downloaded a space and time teleportation's quirk and got stuck into an apocalyptic future for 40 years, worked as a timetraveler hitman for the Commission for 17 years afterwards, learn to control the teleportation's quirk to go back to his family and save the world but messed up and his body return to 13 years old though his mind is still the one of an old man

-N°4, Earphone Jack, "Kyouka" ; quirk: soundwaves' manipulation ; one of the last to leave the Academy, tried to be a policewoman with Hitoshi for a while but got fired because she used her powers to hurt the guilties, became a vigilant with the occasional help of her brother or her ex-partner at the police station, Ochaco Uraraka

-N°5, Dark Shadow, "Michikage" ; quirk: transformation into a demonic shadow creature, she struggles to control herself in this form and often referred to it as an other person ; regarded dead after she was unable to return to her human form at the end of a mission and melted into shadows, still part conscious even if unable to get back to her true form, can sometimes manifest to her twin brother

-N°6, Tsukuyomi, "Fumikage" ; quirk: can create and control shadow monsters and do some short distances teleportation via the shadows, persists in referring to the shadows as another dimension and the shadow monsters as individual entities hard to control ; the first one to leave the Academy, developed a fear of his own powers and of the shadow dimension after the loss of his twin, sleep through day and live at night to avoid "falling into the shadows", caffeine and energy to drinks' addiction, sometimes can catch a grasp of Michikage but thinks he's hallucinating due to his sleep deprivation

-N°7, [classified], "Izuku" ; quirk: [classified], none ; used to train like his siblings with Father at a young age, stopped at 5 years old and was declared quirkless, can't remember what happened during these trainings, feeling outcasted by his family though was the last to leave the Academy after seeing what happened to Shoto, became a mathematics professor at university, got non officially disowned after writing and publishing the book My not so Heroic Academia

And oh yeah Regibitch is Musan Shigaraki (All for one), their mom is a robot version of Inko Midoriya and they have a multi-task butler who never show his face, his name is Kurogiri.

[lookedlikethebins]

dh2 launch in ta matty universe!!! he is SOOOO proud

[oops! this accidentally turned into a little bit of a blurb...]

OH you bet that ta matty is dh2's biggest and most obnoxiously proud fan (when he is not on campus and required to be "professional" lol). by the time of the announcement george is just so relieved that it's Posted and Live and Official he feels a bit exhausted the day of, meanwhile matty is so proud and thrilled, standing behind george and holding him by the shoulders as they both are scrolling through comments and responses to the post. matty stops george every time he sees a positive one (which is often) and makes sure to read it out loud to make sure george hears it. (and every time a comment is a heart emoji, matty just squeezes his shoulders...)

george had been thinking about the idea for a while: an official imprint not only for his own music but all the other guys too as they slowly shift from studio musicians to touring backing band to all that plus solo artists with solo endeavors and passions. by the time george starts being serious about it, starts getting in meetings with execs and lawyers and marketing, he and matty have been dating for almost a year. george always valued matty's creative opinion on things, even if he was coming from a completely different, non-musical world of expertise, but now that they were all but living together (and matty had let george see him during two finals seasons) george felt like things weren't right unless he had matty's input. final decisions were george's of course, but he knew it wouldn't just be his life going into the label. it would, technically... hopefully... be theirs. matty's smile and nod, or thumbs up while downing another cup of coffee, was all george ever needed.

george finds matty, draft logo designs in hand, sitting on the floor with his elbows resting on the coffee table, fingers holding his head up by the temples. george loiters at the edge of the rug, waiting for matty to turn a page or stop to sip his coffee, before interrupting. eventually matty looks up at george, pinkies lowering his glasses on his nose (and making george laugh--the desired effect, george learns) and asks what he needs; he's busy but never too busy for george.

george sits down on the couch beside matty and begins to spread the pages out on his lap--because there is no room on the table with all of matty's work. matty rests his chin on george's knee and looks at the designs with a bit of confusion before asking what exactly it is that he's looking at. george hadn't told matty about any of the logo or naming/branding ideas and had waited to show matty the most complete and finished product.... which was this. which was now. which was what matty was making such a confused face about.

matty takes one page (the one george liked the most but had put at the bottom of the pile on purpose) and places it over his open book on the table. george still hasn't answered him but george also knows sometimes matty asks questions to indicate that he's thinking, not that he wants anyone to tell him.

"does your label's name have... roman numerals?" matty asks, laughing. he turns to look at george over the top of his glasses. again.

"i thought it would be more dignified than the number. or spelling it out. all the extra letters and space--"

"dignified... you mean pretentious." matty turns back to the multi-colored logo. george had asked for muted primary and secondary colors. something basic but not childlike. simple but so it was easy to remember. colors george felt were familiar to everyone. colors he knew were familiar to him. found easily around the house...

"i-i think i have one that doesn't--"

"are you kidding? george, darling, i love it. love it." matty says. george looks up from the other designs (beginning to wrinkle in his clammy palms) to see matty grinning. beaming. grabbing george's arm to emphasize his approval, as if pressing the praise into his skin. "it looks very smart. very, very clever. and you're right, there is a dignity to it. a sort of... classical antiquity to it, almost. it's brilliant."

george laughs at the sincerity of matty's compliment. the utter and (george thinks) ridiculous joy matty is clearly fighting to restrain: there is an full, open mug of black coffee surrounded (and resting on) piles of crisp white pages--and one very excited boyfriend trying to climb out from under the coffee table, without spilling a drop, to wrap his arms around george.

[journey-to-the-attic]

That's for linking the role swap au I forgot about it but I loved it so much-

Now my only problem is where Zhaoxi should be placed in the AU, or if all, for the dads to romance. I had. Many thoughts on this (some more disastrous than others). Sorry in advance if this AU you were happy to be Zhaoxi free.

1. Least horrible (in my opinion) option. Zhaoxi was a creche teacher at the time and IK was one of his many kids to watch over. Probably blames himself partially on turning a blind eye to IK wandering around (not so much as turning but he was busy with many kids) and how that 'led' to her death (I doubt Diavolo or Mephistopheles willingly aired out the king's dirty laundry, so this is assuming no one knows the truth about IK's death). One day while mourning the death of IK (either he stopped being a creche teacher or he does it under false cheer), a newly arrived and brooding Lucifer runs across him and the two be sad old men together about the deaths of their loved ones (even if Lucifer's brothers are still with him, his sister is not and his brothers' dying still hurts too). Sad old men bond over being sad, then try to be happy despite the sad and help each other slowly heal. Only for Zhaoxi to spot demon IK later at the exchange and just frickin. Collapse. Watch out Devildom you might have another fallen angel soon.

2. True dad pairing. Sonno and Lucifer. Impossible and I refuse for all their sakes. I admit to touching on this in my thoughts (as Sonno, if I'm spelling his name right, is IK's creator and Father as an angel) but I refuse. I refuse.

3. *True* dad pairing. Solomon and Lucifer. Very weird in context to their relationship in the actual game/Jtta but Solomon in this AU has raised IK for x amount of years and possibly more closely falls into the Father category for IK. Possibly wouldn't work because Lucifer is religious figure turned angel in this AU so it can never be something official on the eyes of the Devildom masses (even if he fell I remember you mentioning that you doubted the demons would accept a fallen angel as King, would they accept a fallen angel as Queen?). Bonding over rascal IK and her antics with the brothers, Lucifer soon becomes the poster angel of angel-demon exchange program. Briefly thought if Solomon may have tried and failed to tempt Lucifer when the angel was a man but not sure. Could be a Thing where Lucifer's pride was not his downfall (at that moment) because his belief in his flock and brothers kept the tempting Solomon at bay. But also not the point of these thoughts so.

Sorry for the brain rot especially when you aren't on this AU specifically and there are other pairings besides Zhaolu I know but. Yeah.

Hi and have a nice day. Don't forget to hydrate.

okay this is not meant to be the takeaway, but i love the common thread that having a dadly connection to ik is enough to link a pair up

so re: scenario 1 - the swap goes human -> demon, ik is specifically demon-who's-a-fallen-angel, so technically zhao would be a demon - but if he just falls later in the timeline, this still fulfills the condition. though diavolo would have to have a really good reason to do that - which is assuming he hasn't straight-up banned exile as a punishment

(also, slight tangent, i gave myself this idea by saying "fulfill the condition": consider that this is an au within the universe itself. as in, this is an alternative timeline that is connected to the jtta one, in the same vein as all the universes in everything everywhere all at once or the spiderverse movies. idk where i'm going with this but the idea of some higher cosmic being playing dolls with these characters, making them suffer to fill some kind of story quota... which i'm now realising is basically just what we do every time we invent an au whoops. think the special ending(s) in pathologic)

actually this made me think of something: given sonno's very overbearing rule in all universes, i wonder if in this version of the celestial realm, the regular angels don't actually know that dissenters get exiled and fall, they straight up think they just die

i imagine diavolo knows from early on, and part of the reason it takes him so long to get the yikes and rebel is because his dad convinces him that exile is the kinder option over actual execution, so it's only once he's forced to banish a harmless fledgling that he fully registers that hey this is fucked up

re: scenario 2 - sonno and lucifer is so insane a concept, not least because it 1. could make lucifer diavolo's stepfather, and 2. in this au, could also make diavolo ik's stepbrother - and for these reasons it is so fucking funny (sonno is dead by the present of this au, but his remnants could always come back as the Big Bad of the whole story)

i feel like whatever solomon and lucifer have going on in scenario 3 could be this au's equivalent of solomon's constant "pact? pact?pact? pact? pact?¿", but solomon starts doing more of a "diplomatic partnership?diplomatic partnership?¿" thing sbjhdfbs

(also i know the 'least horrible' metric is probably in relation to the insanity of sonno/lucifer - but the way the precedent is set + order the scenarios are given in makes it sound like solomon/lucifer is the most horrible option lol)

[eskawrites]

EskaWrites AO3 masterlist

now that i have well over 175k words of fic up on ao3, i think that i can no longer claim this weird obsession with stranger things is just a fleeting thing. so! here’s a lil fic masterlist for myself and for anyone else who cares

one-shots

if i ever were to lose you (i’d surely lose myself)

“No—god, I just, I don’t care, okay? Forget about everything else—forget the kids, forget Robin, they’re not important right—you’re not even listening to me!” And she’s not. Her eyes are wide and she sits frozen, staring over his shoulder. Frustration spikes. He turns to follow her gaze, to see what the hell she’s looking at— —and he sees Robin.

or, Steve speaks without thinking, but words aren't the only thing that can hurt

-

you’re the reason that i’m hanging on

Max picks at the hem of her sleeve. “Did you see the clock?” It occurs to her, distantly, that Max is seeking comfort as much as she’s offering it. Robin feels something stir in her chest, and she thinks she should say something. Do something. She thinks she would normally know what. Now, she just doesn’t.

or, the obligatory Robin gets Vecna'd fic

-

the fallen leaves tell a story

"Say one day a Tarnished does take the throne. Say that you do. The smaller corners of the world will mean nothing to you, then, and neither will I.” “That doesn’t bother you?” “Why should it? I cannot change it, and it hardly affects me.” Nancy studies her for a long moment. “What’s your name?” “Robin,” says the woman. Nancy looks her over. Bright blue eyes. Freckles painted over her cheeks. Warm firelight making her glow. Robin.

or, the Elden Ring au that literally nobody asked for

-

May Chaos Take the World

She wonders, looking over the empty ruins of the village, if it’s worth it. If anything in this wretched world has ever been worth it.

Robin is.

Nancy calls her to the grace, her hands empty, no strength to give or to gain, and yet Robin comes anyway. She kneels beside Nancy, keeping her space but smiling at her all the same.

“What do you wish of me?” she asks.

“Stay,” breathes Nancy.

To her delight, to her dismay, Robin does.

or, another elden ring au no one asked for

-

screaming in the dark (i howl when we’re apart)

When Eddie asked what everyone was doing on Halloween, Nancy was prepared to hate whatever he had planned. At best she’d be indifferent, sitting around with the kids because they need even teams or something. Instead, she finds herself increasingly intrigued as Eddie continues to spin his tale. It helps that Robin keeps squirming beside her—crossing and uncrossing her legs, fingers tapping or twisting with the endless energy that buzzes through her constantly—and every motion seems to put her a little bit closer to Nancy.

or, the party plays Werewolf; game or reality, Nancy doesn't like the idea of losing Robin

-

if you wanted, you could do no harm

She stops for gas at the station on the edge of town, the one that technically isn’t even in Hawkins, even though it serves as the universal indicator that you’re officially too far into rural small town America. There’s no one there as she fills the tank, no one there as she digs around the passenger seat for a road map she already knows she was stupid enough to forget, no one there when she growls under her breath and marches inside to buy one.

But when she turns around, map in her hand and a water bottle tucked beneath her arm, Robin Buckley is glaring at her.

-

love like love’s no loss

“You’re getting that look on your face again.”

“What look?”

“Your ‘I’m planning something impulsive’ look.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Nancy. Please tell me you’re not planning on going out into the freezing cold just to check on Robin.”

or, Nancy goes out into the freezing cold just to check on Robin

-

warm my bones and fill my glass

Robin finds her upstairs, in her room, curled up at the foot of the bed and staring numbly at the wall.

“Can I join you?” she asks quietly. “My character died to gnolls, so it got pretty boring pretty quick down there.”

Nancy doesn’t really nod, but she doesn’t say no, either. Robin sits down beside her, and they exist together in silence for a while.

or, Nancy doesn't have people. She only hurts them. Robin keeps showing up anyway.

-

sweetest submission, drinking it in

(smut/pwp) (posted anonymously)

Robin responded by taking Nancy’s wrists and slowly pulling them over her head. Nancy tilted her chin up as if in defiance. She could see Robin’s shadow hovering over her through the blindfold. The mattress dipped beside her, causing her to slide just slightly into Robin’s knees. Nancy sucked in a breath, part of her hoping that Robin would shift to straddle her, to use her warm weight to hold Nancy down as she— “Are you worked up already?” Robin asked, a low chuckle in her voice. - in which Nancy has a very, very good night

-

Raise Dead series

Raise Dead

(warning: major character death)

“Okay,” Jonathan cuts in. “Can one of you explain what exactly you’re talking about?” “Raise Dead is a fifth level cleric spell that allows the caster to restore life to a humanoid creature,” Dustin reels off. “Wait, El can do that?” Steve turns to El. “You can do that?” El looks scared. “I don’t know.” “We’ll never know unless we try, and El’s definitely a powerful enough caster to—” “This isn’t your stupid game,” Nancy snaps.

or, Robin dies, the group falls apart, and the kids never know when to quit

-

what could’ve been, would’ve been

It’s not all Robin’s fault, of course. Nancy doesn’t really spend that much time with them, and when she does, she usually keeps her thoughts to herself. So, despite the fact that Robin has been introduced to Hawkins’s own brand of hell now, Nancy finds that it’s easy to keep the distance between them. But there are times when Robin will lean over and whisper some sarcastic commentary for only Nancy to hear, and there are times when it will make Nancy laugh—genuinely, unexpectedly laugh. And there are times when Robin will grin at that, looking almost proud of herself.

or, the months leading up to March 1986

-

i’m with you (that’s where i’ll stay)

Robin sleeps like…well, like the dead. It unnerves Steve, who more than once has taken her hand and pressed his fingers to her pulse just to make sure she’s still there. Robin is never this still, not even in sleep. He’s long since lost count of the number of times he’s woken up to the covers pulled away and tangled around Robin, or to her legs kicking gently against his, or to her having moved from his side to the edge of the bed and back again. Robin turns, she rolls, she twists and she tangles but the one thing she never does is stay still. Asleep in the hospital bed, pale and drowning in the starch white of her gown and the bedsheets, she barely even breathes.

or, coming back to life is easier with your friends around you

-

thriving in the apocalypse series

(works listed here in timeline order, but you can go to the series page to find them in the order they were posted! it’ll make sense either way)

-

as empires crumble and cathedrals flatten (in my heart)

Robin’s eyes are heavy when they meet hers. Nancy hears an accusation in her own voice. You saw this. You knew this would happen. You didn’t stop it.

or, the author is obsessed with Nancy's visions of the end of the world

-

cast some light and you’ll be alright

Everyone else has someone. Everyone else has been caught in the aftermath. But Nancy—she pushes Jonathan toward Will, knowing he needs it more. And she puts makeup over the dark spots beneath her eyes. And she isn’t noticed by anyone.

or, nightmares in the wake of Vecna's victory

-

soldier (on better things, your heart is hung)

“Does this count as littering?” Robin asks, nodding toward the cans. Nancy rolls her eyes. “We’ll clean them up.” “Okay.” Nancy bites back her smile and pulls out her revolver. She catches the way Robin tenses, but she pretends not to notice as she looks over the weapon.

or, Nancy chooses a successor

-

i found a way (i found a way to reappear)

It’s not her conversation. It’s not her friendship. It’s not her house, or even her friend’s house. Nancy is your friend, she reminds herself. But Nancy isn’t here right now, either. And besides, Nancy has only ever been her friend at the end of the world. When there are mysteries to solve, and monsters to fight, and nightmares to talk about, Nancy is her friend. She thinks Nancy might be her friend other times, too, but it’s a theory that hasn’t been proven yet, and there’s a part of her that’s terrified of pushing her luck.

or, movie night at the Wheeler's house

-

but your hand’s wet with sweat, and your head needs a rest

Robin looks over her shoulder. She can hear the boys grumbling in the bathroom, and then a peal of laughter. She looks back at Nancy and nods. They’re okay. Nancy’s expression softens. Slowly, she sits back down, and her friends immediately absorb her in their conversation. Still, her eyes flick back up to Robin again, a small smile in her gaze.

or, 4 times Robin sticks up for the party, +1 time Nancy sticks up for Robin

-

all the comfort invested in my soul

Nancy's smile fades. “We can’t just go swimming to go swimming?” “At eight o’clock on a school night?” “School’s a joke these days anyway.” “Nancy.” Nancy frowns out the windshield. “It’s…stupid.” “Try me.”

or, Nancy faces a fear with Robin at her side

-

breakfast for dinner

“What are you two up to tonight?” “Probably just heading home,” Max says with a shrug. El shifts beside her, a small frown pulling at her features. Robin twirls her keys around her finger, thinking. “Are you interested in a little field trip? I gotta get groceries on my way home.”

or, girls' night with Robin and Max and El

-

made a family from people you found

“Will,” she says softly, then waits for him to look up at her again. “Do you want to tell me more, or do you want me to talk?” He looks torn between fleeing and crying. “I don’t—I don’t know how to talk about it.”

or, the Will and Robin coming out scene we deserve

-

i don’t wanna live like this (but i don’t wanna die)

She’s not stupid. She knows it happens. Has spent too many late nights in Hawkins’s library poring over the books and newspaper clippings everyone else steers clear of to not know that it happens.

It just…doesn’t happen here.

Stupid, she thinks. Of course it happens here. If supernatural monsters can run rampant in Hawkins, homophobic killers can exist in the next town over.

or, sometimes, Robin still feels so alone

-

when love became an act of defiance

Robin doesn’t know what’s worse: being on patrol when they run into something, or knowing that she could very well sleep through disaster on someone else’s night. Going with Steve makes it easier, but going with one of the kids makes it harder. Tonight, with Steve driving them to the trailer park and Will sitting in the backseat, Robin feels like she’s one bad scare away from losing her mind.

or, Robin finally snaps

-

i looked around in a blood-soaked gown

She hasn’t been in the running for valedictorian since sophomore year, and there’s no way anyone in Hawkins High would vote her for class president, but somehow her mother was still delusional enough to expect some incredible achievement from her once graduation rolled around. I’m alive, Robin thinks. How’s that for an achievement?

or, the Hawkins High School Graduation Ceremony, 1986

-

even in darkness i’m smiling (i know that fear is a good thing)

Back in the car, Max flips her knife open and shut, open and shut. “I want a flamethrower,” she says. “You want to give Steve a heart attack?” Robin asks. Max catches her gaze in the rear view mirror and grins.

or, Nancy, Robin, and Max patrol Hawkins late at night

-

love will not break your heart

Robin's been so full of anger lately, of fear, of all these emotions that Nancy sees like a reflection, and others, feelings she doesn’t quite understand, but wants to ease the burden of all the same. And Steve has been fretting over Robin the last couple of weeks. Of course he would do something nice for her like this. But it doesn’t make sense for them to not tell anyone they were going.

And there it is, the fifth red flag: Steve lied.

or, Nancy gets the answer to a months-long question

-

paint me in trust, i’ll be your best friend

Robin is avoiding her.

Well, no—that sounds drastic. Robin still smiles when she sees Nancy walk into a room. She still laughs whenever Nancy says something sarcastic or rolls her eyes at one of the kids. She even makes sure Nancy knows when and where movie nights are, and even votes to postpone when Nancy can’t make it to one.

But she won’t let Nancy touch her.

or, Robin Buckley, through Nancy's eyes

-

i know i may not look like much (just another screaming speck of dust)

She huffs—a sharp, frustrated exhale—and threads her fingers through her hair. She keeps her hand there, pinning the annoying strands in place, and digs her nails into her scalp angrily. Nancy has been angry a lot lately.

or, Nancy Wheeler deserves to rage

-

let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear

Nancy is supposed to be back in town after months away, a week full of finals in the books, already thinking about next semester’s schedule and her plan to get more articles published in the paper. Instead, she’s spent the last few months patrolling the woods and falling in love.

or, a cozy night around the fire

-

celebrity fake dating au

this story that we found ourselves in

(warning: misogyny and sexual harassment, substance abuse, addiction)

Three days later, they find a magazine on their doorstep. Steve flips it open to a picture of him kissing her cheek beneath tall, bold letters:

FANTASY ROMANCE ALIVE AND WELL

Stuck to the page is a crinkled post-it note and Jonathan’s handwriting: thanks for the tip—wishing you both the best.

Robin sinks into the kitchen chair. It’s official. She’s in a relationship with Steve Harrington.

or, the Robin-centric celebrity fake dating au

-

now i am a heart with a head on my shoulders

“Look, I…” Max pauses. She tilts her head back, looking up at the ceiling as if searching for something, then drops it again and levels her gaze—surprisingly bright, full of a fire that she’s never been on the direct receiving end of—at Nancy. ��I want to be a little better about this than I was with Steve, but I think we still need to talk.” Nancy’s thoughts race, then freeze. Her heart sinks a little. “Oh.”

or, Max and Nancy have a talk

-

our hearts know deeper seasons than our memories

“I love you.” Robin keeps breathing. It’s not loud, but it’s so much more than what she’s grown used to. Her apartment has been mostly silent since May. It’s been empty since Mike stormed in a few weeks ago, the magazine with Robin’s interview rolled up in his hand, only to find her sitting at the kitchen table with tears in her eyes, already reading it. Nancy has been so alone for so long—was ready to be alone forever in penance for what she did. But she’s not. Robin is here, somehow, despite all the times Nancy pushed her away or let her go. “I’m so in love with you, Robin Buckley.”

or, the celebrity fake dating au, Nancy's POV

-

flayed!robin au

the devil’s after both of us

“Robin?” Steve asks, still trying to approach her. Robin shakes her head. She’s so pale. A bead of sweat trails down from her hairline. There’s a cruel light in her eyes that Nancy has never seen before—has never even thought Robin capable of.

Because Robin’s eyes aren’t cruel. They’re warm, and usually crinkled in a smile, or at least some level of mischief. Even when she’s angry, her eyes are bright, not dull and cold like they are now.

They’re also, Nancy realizes, usually blue. But now they’re dark, too dark, nearly black.

Nancy is so, so stupid.

or, the flayed!robin au

-

karen gets vecna’d au

you’re not much, goodness knows

“It’s about your mother.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Nancy asks sharply.

But she knows. As Powell sighs again, looking helplessly down at his feet for an explanation he doesn’t have, she knows. As Steve looks anxiously between them—as behind her, Max peeks around the corner and starts walking closer—she knows.

or, the Karen gets vecna'd fic

-

lethal company au

degenerate stars (you’re in deep)

(warning: major character death)

The Company doesn’t hire people for their brains. From what little Nancy could gather in her research before applying, the Company doesn’t pay too much to who they hire at all. Bodies are bodies. And though records are suspiciously sparse, she has a feeling the bodies pile up fast.

So, as annoying as Dustin is over the radio, he stays on the ship. Nancy looks Robin and Steve over quickly, hoping they can handle themselves out in the field. At least for as long as Nancy needs to get to the bottom of this.

or, the Lethal Company au

[sweetfirebird]

A Suitable Bodyguard

(a semi-official pimping post)

Do you enjoy quiet warrior types there to protect tiny and somewhat naive (and feral) nerds?

Do you like anime type protagonists with brightly colored hair, fangs, and perhaps a secret or two?

How about a fantasy backdrop with swords and armor and outside politics and the fae?

A Suitable Bodyguard might be the nonsense for you!

This is technically a prequel to A Suitable Consort (For the King and His Husband) as it is set about ten years before that story. Which makes this a whole universe now, but I don't have a name for it. So {insert shrug emoji} However, this story is m/m not m/m/m. :)

For nearly twenty years, noble families have torn the country apart battling for the throne. Until now, the Tialttyrin have avoided the chaos, since no other nobles will risk offending the mysterious, powerful fae by attacking their favorites. But as the violence encroaches into the Tialttyrin’s green valley, continued peace might require action. Or so Zelli, the family’s youngest and most fae member, believes.

Sheltered and inexperienced, Zelli resolves to save the valley and his family even if it means sneaking away to act on his own. He stops only to ask his family’s sworn guard Tahlen’s opinion on the matter. Thoughtful and reserved despite his young age, Tahlen has experience with the war going on outside the valley, as well as the respect of the other guards and the ear of the leader of the Tialttyrin. He surprises Zelli by agreeing something has to be done and that Zelli is the one to do it, but insists that if Zelli goes, Tahlen must go with him.

Tahlen is oath-bound to protect Zelli with his body and his life, but that oath says nothing about accompanying Zelli on a forbidden journey, or offering countless acts of service to the smallest and most useless member of the Tialttyrin family.

Zelli has no idea what to make of that and little time to think on it. His fae blood has started to act up in the most embarrassing ways, dangers from outside are creeping in like the fog the valley is known for, and the confusing stirring in his heart when Tahlen is near seems to be getting stronger.

As Zelli glimpses the warmth beneath Tahlen’s stony exterior, he grows closer to understanding his own feelings and how far he will go to keep Tahlen’s sacrifice from ever being necessary. It will take all of his quick thinking and generous nature, as well as some help from the unseen fae, but Zelli of the Tialttyrin will protect his people, his family, and above all, Tahlen.

As of right now it's up for pre-order on Smashwords and Amazon (and through other places like Kobo and Apple usually within a few days).

A Suitable Bodyguard

Out April 22nd!

[pastel-rights]

Do you have any favorite sona designs?

... actually, I do have my biases towards different sona designs, yeah. Especially since I've drawn so many of them and I just have a collection of the official council-approved sonas. I can name a few under the cut~

Let's see... this IS in a somewhat particular order tbh? Not least favorite bias to most favorite bias but... I DO have my favorite sonas, both lore-wise and design-wise. You'll see as I get further down that I DO say "so and so is my third/second/most favorite" or whatever but the beginning bit is just. YOU. you know. Well, that's enough of that, let's actually get into this, huh.

I think the first sona I want to mention is Blackwail actually! ( Originally designed by @paperbcy )

Blackwail is Yuu's sona, and I've always had a certain affinity towards their sona, even if I didn't get the chance to draw them a ton. I loved their purple and red color palette a lot, and they were always just really delightful to draw in any capacity. They were always just... a lot of fun. And their different AU variants were always so silly, especially Whitewail and Doodlewail...

Of course, I can't talk about Blackwail without mentioning their right-hand protagonist, Nerissa! Nerissa isn't a sona technically speaking, but rather, she is an in-universe character Blackwail created! And ough she's so pretty I'm SKJEDFNKSJDFNKSJDNF /j

I think a good shoutout here would be their hospital variants? I like them a ton, but... not so MUCH they get their own spot. But they are very pretty variant designs and I do feel they are worth the mention.

...

I think the next sona worth mentioning is Pins' two personas!! Personally, me? I love the Eel Sona, she's always been my favorite out of the two sonas, so I'll mostly be talking about her. ( Originally designed by @one0p1nk )

Miss Eel is just sO PRETTY. I love her. Mwah. I want to give her a kiss (on the cheek) (respectfully) (and with permission)

Okay so enough of that, but I just really love what Miss Eel has going on with her palette and design... I really love those purples and the pops of white and pink. I also just love the butler-like vibes Miss Eel has going on, and the characterization of Miss Eel is just sooo good. Pins usually goes with the pink version of her sons (Miss Vampire) and usually that's the version you will see me draw most times but let it be KNOWN Miss Eel has a special place in my heart.

Miss Eel doesn't have a ton of lore unfortunately so she won kind of based on aesthetic appeal (and dream world shenanigans) over some other options inside my folder of sonas... hehe...

...

The next one is going to be... Linzer! ( Originally designed by yours truly )

I love myself a bad bitch with red hair I won't even lie to you.

Linzer makes her way onto this list for a few reasons. Design-wise, she's mostly neutral colors with this pretty red color for her hair. Lore-wise, she's an author who's responsible for stories such as "The Emerald Masquerade", "The Theatre of Darkness", and "The DECORA Incident" to name a few. She's supposed to be the version of me who runs Essence and AU lore!

I don't know what it is in particular that I adore about Linzer specifically, I just kind of enjoy Linzer as a whole in general, more than some of the other sonas. She's also just a bad bitch in general so. bonus points!!

...

This one might come as a surprise to you guys but... I think Satoru and Nihil are my third favorite sonas...??????

Especially if you know the beef I have outwardly with Satoru himself and how MEAN he is to my poor poor wife... He's actually really chill and fun behind closed doors. And he's really funny (he needs to stop calling me babygirl though /j) and I think this sona just captures their vibes really well... a little too well actually... it's giving "silly little freak" actually. I also like his secondary form a ton, ngl??? His secondary form technically has a different name but that's for later (not EVER /j)

As for Nihil, unfortunately, those two are kind of just "do not separate" coded. I really like Nihil lore wise and design wise, which is why she's so high up among the several dozen sonas. You might think these two are new, and you'd be. half wrong??? Satoru is new, yeah, but Nihil has been around for a while now, she just finally got herself officially drawn alongside Satoru.

Enter: The Boundary Walker.

That's Nihil's title! She's present in a lot of AUs and concepts (as well as the world where my ocs all originate from), but always on the outside, looking in. She's a record keeper and the main manifestation of an entity known as "The Nihility", which is where her name originates from.

and like, the lore these two have is it's own whole thing that also kind of got them all the way up here but that isn't what you came to hear so.

...

Okay so. Don't be mad. But my second favorite sona... isn't just one. But rather, everyone from the Halloween sona set. But if I had to choose just one, then.......... these two. Specifically, Joe. (The one on the left side in purple)

Simply put... these two are the highest up here because they are based on video game hackers! The purple and green color schemes the two of them has going on has always been one of my favorite schemes, but Joe in specific is based on a galaxy, and galaxies are one of my favorite things in the world to color...

I also just really love the asymmetry in the design, it's all over their design. I also think Klai's complimenting design just really adds to Joe's Halloween design?? Joe's design in a mix of light colors with a pop of neon purple, while Klai's is more the opposite, dark and neon with a pop of light green and white. Alongside these, they both have the other's signature color somewhere in their design and. God, I love it when designs compliment each other heheh.

As for them lore wise... chaotic hackers... chaotic hackers for life... look at them... this IS favoritism at its finest...

Joe and Klai just have really nice base sonas in GENERAL anyways so... I simply put a trick or treat spin on them and if Halloween isn't my favorite holiday <3

...

oh we're at number one already??? wow. damn.

so you might be wondering HOW did I get all the way up here to my number one, my FAVORITE sona, the sona to SLAY all other sonas... without even ONE of my wife's several sonas appearing??? It's baffling, I know!

Do I just not love my wife enough? Have I BETRAYED MY MUSE.

...

no lmao

Tae has so many really nice and really pretty sonas, like Tama, Tazai, Jason and more. And honestly, it was kind of hard to choose just one Tae sona since, there's so many and they're all so pretty...

And I hate to disappoint everyone by saying that it isn't Tazai and Yabel taking the number one spot.

It's surprising, yeah. From the amount of stuff I've drawn of them to their complete character lore to just how much I love Tazai (for better or for. worse.) and while he's quite far up there... I could never fully say he was my favorite sona. Not just of Tae's but out of everyone total.

And yeah, Yabel is a really fun sona both lore-wise and to draw but she was never my favorite of my own sonas either. But still I can't deny the facts those two would always be the most well-known and most popular sonas I've ever created and I probably ever WILL create.

Everyone knows their name, their faces, their personalities, and who they are as sonas. As people.

They are well known and well-loved for a reason.

......... but they aren't my favorite. Sorry if you bet money on them even appearing in this list /j

But, uh. my favorite sona of all time is actually someone I hate drawing lmao. Funnily enough. There isn't anything wrong with his design per say, I just struggled with it a lot... so it always put me a little off of drawing him again.

I've drawn this sona a total of... one time... (well technically twice because I JUST drew him today specifically for this ask when I realized I didn't have ANY other art of him... but that doesn't really count to me) which speaks to the testimony of whatever the FUCK he's got going on lmao. Every sona on this list has been drawn at least three times (with the Halloween sonas being an exception) so to only be drawn once... seemed a little dramatic for the number one spot...

Insert, the number one spot and the pain in my ass.

this guy.

...

yeah. /lh

There's a multitude of reasons I gave him this top spot... but if I had to give just one right now... it's something many of the others here on this list kind of lack to be honest?

... I just think he's silly! He's just generally (hehe, general) a lot of fun no matter what situation he is in, and he just has a really sweet and pleasant personality??? Like... he's just a guy. Everyone else has so MANY thoughts behind their eyes...

but this is just the look of a man who loves his wife

Everything about this sona (he doesn't technically have a name...) is just... really soft. He looks as sweet and soft as he actually is and he's just. really pleasant to look at????

I kind of just want to give him a kiss on the cheek he's so pretty. aaaaaaa.

He's always got this soft, almost dream-like expression that you just don't get with most sonas. Like, it isn't JUST tae sonas, no it's ALL of my sonas.

I don't know what it is, I can't really explain it without getting into the lore and the aus and his secondary variant and this post is already super long so you'll just have to take him as IS.

[yoinkschief]

totally random question man have you heard about this thing called the markiplier cinematic universe (mcu for short)

I'm going literally obliterate you I know where you live (I'm currently entering in you coordinates to the president's nuke)

I wanna try and say this shit without getting wildly off topic and I'm praying that Tumblr doesn't have a word cap but also low key hoping it does to put an end to this because I'm not sure I have a stopping point, but be warned, underneath the cut is my LONGEST rant yet

Starting with some background knowledge of "the birth" or Darkiplier versus "the birth" of Wilford Warfstache

Darkiplier was truly born from an internet meme of edgy people seeing people like Markiplier and Jacksepticeye and such making "edgy jokes" and "acting deranged" because at the time on youtube that was seen as funny and comical (similar but not the same as when Pink Guy was around and people thought he was the height of comedy at the time but the skit being retired by the creator because "it's not funny anymore, get over it", except Mark brought it a different life rather than killing off the character entirely, instead of retiring the character he gave it meaning, think like how you make an edgelord OC as a kid but later think of a really good backstory for it and end up revamping the entire OC instead something not even remotely related anymore)

So the community latched onto that idea and started calling him "DARK iplier" because we as human are incredibly creative

I say, knowing "markiplier" is just Mark and Multiplier combined

Which brings me to how Wilford Warfstache was created, actually

Wilford was created for the express purpose of things like "The Slenderman Interview" and "Wilford Plays: Slender" (warning: very early YT jokes that wouldn't fly today lol), he was created to do funny skits for games Mark would play as Mark's reason for naming his channel "Mark Multiplier" is because he wanted to make skits of the characters in the games he would play, making his channel a half gaming channel and a half skit channel which was honestly ingenius ingenuity, he had the fortune of taking a chance with two genres that ended up being VERY successful on early youtube and that is one of the biggest reasons why his channel is so big today

which is also just incredibly insane to think about that he has managed to have very little if not any controversies within his channel and community, at least not any GENUINE concerns he hasn't already alleviated

And for the most that's all these characters were: completely separate parts of Mark's channels where are Darkiplier would only appear in Mark's more "edgier" videos and Wilford purely in skits

That is until his video "Don't Blink", whic was also featured in his much later series: "A Date with Markiplier" where we see Darkiplier in his own video rather than some edgy joke made online and his first "official" appearance and is around the time when people began to refer to the different personas Mark had online as his "egos"

In the video we see Dark slowly fade in to the dark background of the picture that's posted on screen (and this is why I get kinda upset when Lixian, Mark's editor, is attributed to the image alternation horror of Mark's series as this has ALWAYS been a staple of Mark's channel - Lixian fucking hits it out of the park with his editorial and atristry stills, don't get me wrong, he's a true artist when it comes to that kind of horror, but he didn't create it on Mark's channel, it's always been a thing and you can always tell who is new to the channel with this)

But we don't see much of Dark's actual attire and how he looks anymore than he's a one to one comparison of Mark just a creepier, edgier version of him, I mean, he doesn't even get his iconic grayscale self yet ! "Don't Move" is technically the first time we see that but I don't count it since the entire video is in grayscale, I would kinda attribute the first "Dark is in Graysclae" sighting to the "October of Terror" video he did explaining his charity event but I wouldn't say it's officially attributed to him then, I think it was more of a "putting him in grayscale brings out the drastic lighting contrast and makes it look spooky" versus it actually being apart of his character design, because I don't think Dark was "officially" introduced until "Mr. Kitty Saves the World" where he actively brings up Darkiplier as an entity and not just him being edgy to get views (but also is being edgy to get views lol)

But what I find interesting is in that video it says "Containment Breach" which is because this was roughly a year after Mark started playing SCP: Containment Breach and suggests that Darkiplier was originally supposed to be an SCP !! That's super fucking cool to me that Dark went from being edgelord to being an SCP to being "I'm super tortured but like mentally and physically my body can't even stay in one piece" (which is funny cause Antisepticeye, which yes I'm bringing up cause they're intertwined just by the nature of Mark and Jack being friends and their egos happening at the same time and in tandem with each other thanks to the "Darkiplier VS. Antisepticeye" video, went from being edgelord jokes to I'm fucked up an evil to SCP but different flavor,, which like yeah it's a joke video and is seen widely as noncanonical but it still applies to how they are connected if just by similarities between them)

But within the community, Darkiplier isn't officially an ego or real character until "Best Friends Forever", which is widely hypothesized or accepted to be Dark in the video because, again, edgelord humor, though in my eyes it's not until "relax" is released that Darkiplier is officially considered a character because this video shows that he is a different entitiy than Mark and he's also given an official outfit,,, plus it's his 14MIL milestone so I figured this would be the perfect time to canonicize Darkiplier as an official Markiplier Ego :)

I also think this was another video featured in ADwM (A Date with Markiplier) if I remember correctly

The "relax" video is also when we see him trying to torture Mark and not just other people or being generally edgy and this later is Dark's main character plot point is to kill or hurt Mark (specifically "Actor" Mark, or otherwise Mark's characterization on screen, the character seperate from the creator,,, which is why I now have grown away from Septiplier (DO NOT ASK I WAS FUCKING ELEVEN) because "Actor Mark" is the characterization of Markiplier in my eyes, and that man does not deserve to be in any relationship, I like seeing him blue balled for all of eternity thank you) so that in my eyes is the best point of "yes Dark is an actual character now"

But this video is also why I don't think the earlier installments of Dark being in grayscale are when that officially becomes a character trait, as in later episodes after the previously mentioned with that characteristic are just heavily saturated photos or clips of Mark and aren't grayscaled, it's not until his ADwM series that Dark is oficially attributed this trait as whenever he's seen onscreen and the screen (and later just himself) switches to grayscale

Now, the introduction of Wilford Warfstache is wildly different but is the last Ego I'll be giving a timeline of (at least a very detailed one) because all the others are usually one off or are more recently added into the series and only show up fully fleshed out when they're first mentioned so I don't have to do a deep archive dive for them lol

Wilford, like I said earlier, was always a character, always supposed to be seen as such at the very least, and isn't just some "silly voice Mark sometimes does" but is definitely where his voice comes from, as it seems vastly different for the purpose of trying to differinciate the two of them and why it's a lot easier to do so versus how it was with Darkiplier as Dark and Mark, until more recently, sounded - and even looked - very much the same

Wilford is first seen in his Amnesia Series, the video of which I can't QUITE remember and I'm not about to search the entire fucking series just to figure out which one was his first appearance, but one of the earliest times he's name dropped is in "Amnesia: Rain - Part 6", but even then he's fully kitted out with his pink mustache and all (I think this video was supposed to be an April Fools video, but that's too on brand for Wilford Warfstache for me to think it wasn't more than just "it would be funny teehee", it definitely was but I feel like Mark was also thinkin "it would also be perfect to show off this kooky character" because like I said, Wilford was low-key planned from the beginning of Mark's channel,,, not specifically but his concept was)

But me personally I wouldn't see him as an official character until "The Warfstache Affair" which is one of the funniest fucking videos to me, even to this day and is such a silly video all on it's own, but this is his first appearance in my heart of hearts because, like Dark's need to torture Mark, this becomes one of Wilford's key character plot points later down the line

And when I say that Mark truly turns these characters from funny skit plot points to full fledged, series bingeworthy characters you want to see have a happy ending, I MEAN IT

His love for the creative process and writing shows through in his "official" series or skits, in his "official" MCU, it's literally insane. You can tell he loves these characters and truly wants to write a story and is the sole reason I think that, bias aside for the nostalgia and special place in my heart that FNaF has on me, Mark's Iron Lung movie is going to be SO MUCH BETTER than ANYTHING the FNaF movie could do

I love FNaF's storyline (and it's crazy how long it took me to mention FNaF in a MARKIPLIER related rant but it was bount to happen) and I think it's incredibly intricate, and it's very similar to Mark's MCU where it started off simple but get deeper as it gains more traction, where it's different is Scott Cawthon rushed a lot of his games and whatnot due to popularity, because of the fear that if he didn't pump it out fast enough it would lose traction and he'd lose his fame, whereas Mark not only had the security of that not happening, he also does not care if it did happen - he doesn't do these skits to appease people, he does them because he enjoys it, something's he's said a hundred times by now. Yes, because of the support he has he's able to make the story look very good, but fans or no fans the story would be the same, it would just look a lot different

Back to the timeline of events in the MCU, we don't techincally see the other Egos "introduced" or "canonicized" until "Markiplier TV", which even that can be argued due to both the irrelevantness and obvious of how one off of characters they were as well as Cyndago's unfortunate attempt at ending his own life and Mark taking it upon himself to not continue the characters he created so as to not disrespect Cyndago's legacy or "take away" those characters from him

But this is the first time we see Wilford and Darkiplier actually interact with each other, and is where that "Darkstache" ship REALLY took off

It's hard to say is people really shipped it beforehand, and if they did it was definintely considered a crackship or rarepair due to that exact fact of these characters never interacting up until Markiplier TV

I will always hold Markiplier TV in my heart, I remember frothing at the mouth when it came out and it was 100% what got me so autistically attached to Markiplier, I mean besides FNaF, but that was more of a "I can't wait to come home from school and watch my favorite YouTuber!" thing, and MTV (which yes I see the joke in that) was more of "OH MY GOD IF HE DOESN'T EXPLAIN WHAT THIS MEANS AND WHY DARK ONLY USES A NICKNAME ON WILFORD I'M GOING TO CLAW OFF MY SKIN OH MY GODDDDDDD"

Which by the way that happens, he calls him "Will" and that's NEVER EXPLAINED ???? I DON'T THINK ??? But this is the only person he refers to in any endearing way

(side note I wanted to add: intro to MTV has a Lantern reference in there,,, I know you (Shran, the person who asked this) is the only one who will understand that joke, but if you ever end up watching it: timestamp: 0:16, truly a blink and you'll miss it moment tho)

Also this series is the introduction to a character who later becomes canon: The Jim Twins,, though we're not sure if it stops at just twins as the joke is like all of the news anchors, castors, camera men, weather men, etc. are all named Jim,,, and because they occur again as an easter egg in "Who Killed Markiplier?" (not directly in,, but there was a website you could go to when WKM was airing and you could see them post extra, joking, content that also lowkey gave hints to the story but didn't directly interfere with the actual show so you didn't need to watch it) that I think made them canon as they're shown to be on set at the same time as canon characters (because ALL of WKM is canon, unlike MTV)

Also also MTV is where the popular headcanon that Wilford cries bubbles comes from ! (I can't not bring my other hyperfixations into this - Tom has a similarly popular headcanon where his tears are either black and/or smell/taste like pineapple juice)

MTV is 100% where I get my "random noises" stim that I do, by the way, where I just do the tune of songs I know with wildly incorrect words,,, and now that I think about is probably why I'm able to so clearly remember my friend's meme parody of "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" but every other word is rat: "I Rat Sins Not Tragedies"

Fucking hell Middle School was a different time I'm not sad to be gone from it

In other news the gag joke of Wilford casually pulling out a gun and shooting someone with it kills me every fucking time (literally I'm currently dead on the floor unmoving he's shot me sendf an damnbuclance)

Anyway back to the actual plot of MCU, this is also where we get the actual first introduction of Wilford's character trait of being beyond the screen he's played on, as he's seen manipulating text on screen shown to not really be "all there" for lack of a better term, being an enigma who doesn't understand the concept of death, and personally that was why I originally started the enjoy their character dynamic because it made sense to me that Dark would want to befriend someone who didn't care for murder when he wanted Mark to die so obviously Wilford is the natural choice, but I didn't think for Wilford to have such a FUCKING MESSED UP REASON BEHIND IT MARK I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU MADE ME WANNA THROW HANDS WITH A FICTIONAL VERSION OF YUOR PERSONIFIED EGO I'M GOING TO RIP YOU APART !!! I WOULD NOT LIKE TO APOLOGIZE !!! I STICK BY IT !!!!!!

Also I think it's very funny that MTV canonicized that Santa is, in fact, still dead from when Wilford killed him in I think a charity live stream ?? I may be getting my memory mixed up but I think for one of Mark's Christmas Chairty Livestreams he had Wilford kill Santa Claus as a milestone reward ?? I'm not quite sure but I have a very vivid memory of Santa with his face blurred out for "security reasons" being suddenly executed by Wilford as like an interview thing,, but that could've been made afterwards as a joke reference to this clip lol, either way Santa is canonically murdered and Christmas is ruined forever by Wilford and I think that's fucking hilarious

For those who watched MTV or are watching it after this rant to see what I'm talking about let me explain every ego shown in the boardroom scene of this video and it's got nothing to do with me wanting to flex my obscure knowledge I have of Markiplier's channel:

Wilford and Dark don't count I've talked about them before

Googleiplier (Seen with in a blue shirt with the Google logo on it): comes from a skit done with Matthias called "Google IRL" in which Google comes out with an android version of Google Home to help with every day assistance, but what Matthias fails to know is that Google IRL is actually incredibly evil and is trying to kill Matthias

Ed Edgar (cowboy with the world's least flattering mullet,,, and that's saying something): Cyndago's character from the "Ed Edgar's Adoptallott's Baby Bulk Buy", where he tries to sell his son

Bim Trimmer (other guy in the suit also yes his name is a joke on Bum Trimmer): Another one of Cyndago's characters from the "Hire My Ass!" skit where Bim brutally murders and cannibalizes his contests (surprisingly unsurprisingly a fan favorite character)

Silver Shepherd (the alien looking motherfucker): Yet another one of Cyndago's characters from the "Super Infidelity" skit, where you can assume what happens; superhero marital affairs (this character is not be confused with how Jacksepticeye's Jackie-Boy Man came into creation, that was from a superhero maker (? ish) game)

Dr. Iplier: Heavily debated if it's Cyndago's character since it was posted to Mark's channel, I'll call him a Cyndago character since it's under the pretense of being a "Cyndago Original", even though people say he comes back in "In Space with Markiplier", he kinda really doesn't because that's Porniplier (LET ME EXPLAIN- PLEASE I TALK ABOUT HIM MORE LATER), but he gets first introduced in the skit "Worst News Doctor" with the same running joke as seen in MTV of "I'm sorry but... you're dying" to the most mundane of ailments

The Host (the guy with the bloody bandaged around his eyes): One of my favorite Cyndago skit characters, he comes from "Danger in Fiction", a skit parody of "Stranger Than Fiction" (at least the name is,,, I haven't actually seen Stranger Than Fiction lol), where he's first introduced as "The Author" (insert Gravity Falls joke here)

King of the Squirrels (Guy who runs in with peanut butter smeared on his face): Joke ego who came around in the same vein of Tiny Box Tim but instead it was introduced somewhere in Mark's "Don't Starve" playthrough, again, not watching the entire series again to remember where he first mentions him

The canonicity of the TV show though is flimsy at best as there is a Septiplier joke where he's begging to be killed and like 90% of the heads of the table are Cyndago's characters, but I think it is important to bring up because this, in my eyes, is the start of Markiplier actually trying to give his characters some depth to them and wanting to explore them more than JUST skits, or at the very least this is the last time they're seen in skits and treated as just egos and not seperate characters

When we ACTUALLY see the timeline somewhat officially begin is in "A Date with Markiplier"

Yes it technically airs before Markiplier TV but it didn't really have Wilford in it, and I wanted to get that last Wilford knowledge out there because Markiplier TV marks where the skit Timeline ends and the for realsies time line begins, the reason ADwM comes after this despite airing before it is because it technically wasn't supposed to be canon, and only became canon once "A Heist with Markiplier" come out because this is when Mark creates his "Adventures with Markiplier" series, canonicizing ADwM

With that out of the way, ADwM is where we see a lot more of Dark's character specifically, because again this is kinda not super canonical but more canonical than MTV, as it was made as a Valentine's Day joke post (Fun fact: The whole "Movie" portion of the date where we see Mark do a one man play is to make up for all of his broken "Markiplier Promises" to Ethan CrankGamePlays/Ethan Nestor and Tyler Apocalypto_12) but it IS the first time we get introduce to "Actor Mark" as a seperate character who becomes very important later on in the timeline with the next installment:

Who Killed Markiplier

My precious

My Favorite

Right after In Space but we'll get to that

Speaking of Reoccuring Characters introduced in ADwM: The Chef !! He comes back in WKM AND A Heist ! I fucking love this guy

Okay before I continue I need to preface something:

This is not where the actual timeline technically begins,,, it really begins with In Space but to explain that I need to explain this first because... by technicality this entire series? Like the entirity of the canonical MCU? Time loop. Thank you Mark for making me want to [REDACTED]

For the ease of me not jumbling shit together, I'm going to give a brief synopsis of every Chapter of WKM,,, I have no idea what I'm gonna do for Heist and Space but we'll see

Chapter 1

Another Lantern Reference at 0:14

We enter the fray as Y/N or better known as the District Attorney (DA for short), as we see on our invitation letter, meeting our main characters:

William J. Barnum, "The Colonel"

Damien Doom, "The Mayor"

Abe, "The Detective", and

Mark, "The Actor" and "The Victim"

Other noteable characters are:

The Chef and The Butler, played by Robert Rexx and Tyler Schneid respectively (Side note again: Why is every butler ever in the history of forever always gay?)

The time period in which this is set in is the 1920's, no specific date I don't think, but the 20s no less, (because of the time period you're offered a seltzer with cocaine in it to help subside your headache, I fucking love Mark's humor jesus)

The reason we're all gathered in the manor is because the Mark Iplier (Canon Last Name I believe) has invited us all to a celebratory party at his manor, in which we are all to get absolutely shitfaced and party, during which we have the most banging music playing in the background, we learn our beloved Mayor is King of the Keg, we get the first tease that William and Abe have history and don't rather like each other, at least in a one sided manner as Barnum playfully puts Abe in a headlock and Abe is NOT having it, we see William has violent tendencies trying to swing at the Butler now acting as bartender, William is also seen playing Russian Roulette, before we pass out in bed at 1:30 AM before waking up seven hours later only to find that our beloved friend, Mark, has died. But not only died - but has been MURDERED ! So says the detective

Thanks to a convenient lightning storm trapping everyone inside the house, which also seems to only strike anytime someone says the word "murder", Abe take it upon himself to take charge with you as his assistant and quarantines everyone inside the house until he can figure out what happened, and after rectally taking the corpse's body temperature Abe is able to determine Mark was murder just as you went to bed: 1:30 AM.

Later we see Damien and William fighting, Damien suspecting William of being the one who murdered Mark or at least being suspicious of him as they've had prior disagreements and seem to hate each other, though William swears he didn't do it and instead suggests Mark slipped and fell because he's a dumb idiot

It's also revealed that the Chef's "Little Buddy" is actually a security camera and has recorded the entire night, showing that Abe and Mark talked earlier, discussing the fact that Abe was invited to do background checks on Mark's staff conveniently at the same time as when the murder took place,,, hmm,,, at 1:13 AM, seven minutes before the murder

And then suddenly, we end on Abe announcing that the body had just suddenly disappeared

Also I'd love to add the bonus contents of what happened on the WKM website but it was taken down like shortly after the last chapter of the series aired, so I can't exactly give a play by play of what happened. Just know like how I said earlier it's just the Jim Twins being goofy (I vividly remember them playing with a oujia board rug going "S-U-B-S-C-R-I-B-E-T-O-M-A-R-K-I-P-L-I-E-R" which is still really funny to me but that's basically all the substance they gave,,, save for giving up a better look at the manor layout and rooms we didn't get to see much of in the official chapters) but like I said they're very inconsequential the main story so there's no harm other than me having one less thing to talk about which at this point is doing more good than anything

Chapter 2

We reiterate that the body's moved, seemingly on it's own, as we have the house residents find out one by one in the same (or at least roughly the same) order as they found out that the body was dead. Also William is revealed to believe in zombies (it IS the 20s) and also makes a "The Most Dangerous Game" reference (it IS the 20s,,, also in the outfit he was wearing it and who his character is it was bound to happen) before offering to kill Actor!Mark again if he truly is a zombie and justifies it with "well back in the war"

After Abe makes his nth homoerotic joke of the series he poses the question of: why? What's the killer's motive ? What do they gain from Actor being dead ? He reiterates that we were all invited here for a celebration but it was never specified what kind of celebration, not even Mark's grand "what we're celebrating" speech he didn't actually explain what they were celebrating, just that it wasn't about any in particular or himself which, obviously at this point, was a lie because he's dead so he was always going to be the main event

We also get that, after Abe probing Actor's ass, he found out that not only was he stabbed 37 times, Actor was also poisoned, beaten, strangled, drowned and shot - in that order. This is my favorite thing about this entire series because I remember making a ton of theories about this and what this meant because there's no way the killer did that in one night and it heavily suggested that Mark had died multiple times, on account of the fact that he was "drowned" and then later "shot" but the corpse we see is dry and isn't asphyxiated at all like he would be if he were strangled or drowned

And then my theories were blown out of the water when In Space came out so fuck me I guess

To be fair they weren't totally solid and at best were headcanons lol

Back to the main events of the story: we're introduced to Actor's room which is a MESS, truly it looks like a hurricane went through it, and as much as it seems like that would be the place he died within a struggle, Abe quickly dismisses that and urges us to continue looking when we find that he has multiple pictures frames of the friends in vairous amounts... First it's the three of them: Mark, William and Damien. They all seem super happy and in the photo they're laughing and causing a rukus. next there's suddenly four of them: Mark, William, Damien and Celine (I will get to her later), and they look less happy, well, for the most part. Damien and William and standing like the man emoji and it could be because William came back from war is like whoo boy do I have trauma and Damien could getting a little more stressed with mayoral duties but it's never quite clear, all we know is that Damien and William are straight faced whereas Celine and Mark and Celine are chatting it up like old friends. Continuing we see a third photo of just Damien and Mark together, Damien looking like he's giving his best customer service smile and Mark maybe looks anxious ? It's hard to tell, there's a glare on the glass of the frame for most of the shot

However, the last one we see is turned over and the glass is smashed, revealing a picture of William alone.

But the scene continues and William reveals that Mark has quite the amount of enemies, it's not just him who has a mysterious gripe with the bitch before Damien pulls us away to discuss who the murderer might be, instead bringing to the metaphorical magnifying glass to the Detective who we've been following around

Throughout the entire series we have fingers pointed at Abe and William the most, William with his violent tendencies and hatred for the victim, and Abe for the fact we know the least about him (within the immediate friendgroup but because he's also just kind of a reclusive guy)

Before he can continue with eluding to the idea that maybe there was one more person among them we hear a gunshot and glass break, revealing Abe and the Colonel pointing guns at each other and screaming. We hear that William was trying to use Abe for target practice as they are accusing each other of being the murderer, making their way to the door where we get a late arrival:

Celine.

Chapter 3

I said I'd get to her and I've gotten to her

Whoo

Fucking

Nelly

Listen before I continue this I will say I have a bias cause I AM HER BIGGEST HATER I HATE HER FUCKKKK

As an actress, she played phenomincally, Pamela Horton does a fantastic job playing her

As a character, beautifully written, I enjoy occult like characters and her title as "The Seer" is perfect, brings that mist of supernatural and mystery that surrounds Mark's untimely death wonderfully

As a person

As someone I could meet on the streets

I want to [REDACTED] until [REDACTED] so that she [REDACTED] and I won't stop until [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] or so help me.

That aside let's actually get the synopsis/play by play

The house guests fill Celine in on what happened and the fact that Mark's dead, but also she is the first person to bring up the fact that the lightning strikes everytime someone says the word "murder", what passed as a running gag is now pulled into question for possibly being supernatural as she proclaims it to be "powerful dark magic" for lightning to strike EVERYTIME someone says the word "murder"

Also William canonically was sucked into the board game Jumanji so via the pipeline he's connected to Dwayne the Rock Johnson which I think is pretty funny

Celine then proposes that they all hold a seance to speak with Mark beyond the grave to get an answer as to why this is all happening where she shuts down Abe and the Butler makes another gay ass remark to us before Celine proclaims we're trustworthy and have a "far greater part to play" which is hella suspicious, thank you Celine, and everyone pretty much agrees with the Detective that it's suspicious that Celine suddenly wants to take us on alone to get more answers and take the investigation further. Well, everyone except William.

Simp.

But it doesn't matter cause we end up going with her anywhere where Damien tries to talk to her about this and offer comfort but also wonders what she's doing getting mixed up with the muder, but the way he phrases it: "I just didn't think you were the type to get mixed up with all this" makes me think that he's actually talking about the occult and medium stuff she's been doing or at least suddenly announces that she's doing, where she argues that there's more to this world that he could ever understand and then continues to run off with us to seperate room of the house

There we see her lay out tarot cards and whatnot before making a "Series of Unfortunate Events" joke, and before anyone asks I don't think the layout of her cards and what cards are where means anything - I know in Tarot that that's like SUPER IMPORTANT but I do not think Mark poured hours of research into tarot for this one scene. But also because there's a magic eight ball there, as a joke yeah, but I mean c'mon

Shockingly enough though, as we're sitting in the room with Celine we start to have visions about what's happening, what's happened, and what's about to happen, or the past present and future, so she asks us to draw it down where we meet our second late arriving gueststar:

The Groundskeeper.

But she doesn't seem pleased with our answer and orders us to go back into our visions before she's interrupted by Abe and Damien where Damien seems very concerned with her affiliation with the occult and the fact she's become very volatile before Abe rushes us out and leaved Damien to try and calm down Celine

The Chef reveals that the Groundskeeper, previously thought to only work on weekends, actually has been living on the grounds secretly, so naturally they go to him to investigate where he was during the murder - except they get interrupted by the only reason he'd ever go into that house after he says "You'd better pray to god that that reason never comes to pass" before it happens, all of them rushing inside to see red and blue light shining onto Celine with the most ominous Debbie Ryan smirk known to man before they close the door on her

Chapter 4 - The Final Chapter

We see the groundskeeper lock the door to the room Celine and Damien were both last seen in before William runs in asking where Celine is where the groundskeeper explains that "she's gone, and so is everyone else"

PAUSE

I feel it's important to note that in order to keep true to the timeline as we are OFFICIALLY in the timeline now, I have to talk about "DAMIEN", because as Mark explains, DAMIEN, although premiering after the WKM series, does happen DURING it, specifically after Celine and Damien disappear, but before we see them again later (which I will be explaining later after this cause duh in my Chapter 4 analysis)

We open in on being stuck in a dead winter, trees barren and their roots buried deep under snow, following the sound of a tree getting hacked into, before finally crackling and falling to the floor where we see a heavily breathing Mayor Damien, hair long and dressed in a thick winter coat

After he's done sledding his chopped down logs back to a cabin and chopping them into fire wood we see Celine in the house with him where they start bickering and this is where we see just how truly different their personalities are:

"I saw a flower today, shouldn't be long before Spring is here"

"OR there's still a few more weeks of Winter and that flower will die COLD and ALONE."

There's more bickering, mainly from Celine's side, before she goes out hunting for food now that Damien's back home but there is a moment of tenderness before she leaves, where she asks if he really did see a flower where he says "yes, a little pink one... though it's probably dead by now" and she wishes for him to get some rest

Just as we see Damien head to bed, we watch the window panes freeze and the screen glitch, watching Damien's body from the outside of the window before the next morning starts and we see the pink flower again

If you wanna know it's a Sweet William and that is the loudest part of this entire series as Damien goes "Huh... Well you don't die easily, do you?"

And we begin to hear the echoes of "Wilford Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache"

I'M NOT GONNA PAUSE IT AGAIN I PROMISE

Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache, while heard in DAMIEN , doesn't technically happen until AFTER Chapter 4 of WKM is done, Wilford is just a fucking enigma to time and space so he's heard throughout the echoes of time

Also DAMIEN was shot after Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache so they had the audio lol

But according to the timeline WMLW doesn't happen until AFTER the events of WKM and DAMIEN happened DURING the events of WKM so, continuining on

Damien continues to hear the voices of Abe and Wilford peaking through the vast forest, growing confused, concerned and anxious before he just decided to keep on chopping, chalking it up to "just another day in the life of me" I guess

As Damien comes inside for the second day, we hear Celine say the same line of "Don't slam the door, Damien" and Damien continues the similarities with proclaiming how he saw a flower and it "shouldn't be long until Spring" before he trails off, realizing he said the same thing yesterday

He mutters along with Celine as she says the same line as she did yesterday, furthering the notion that they've been through this before, so he breaks the chain with Celine like how the voice broke the chain with him, claiming he heard a voice today which instantly gets Celine on edge before she says she's going out "hunting" again, with a much different tone

Instead of going to sleep right after Celine leaves like he did last time, Damien stays up long enough to watch as the window panes freeze over, a voice whispering Damien's name before he jerks his head to the left, noticing a mirror on the wall to his left, noting how he can't see himself in the reflection of it, and when he manges to make out the outline of himself in the mirror, it reveals itself to be a rotting version, telling him that it's time to wake up (directly opposing what Celine's been telling him to do: go to sleep)

When he opens his eyes again he's back in the woods, confused on how he got there - he was just in his cabin and now he's in the middle of the woods where he hears Celine calling for him

In distress, he immediately runs after the voice, trying to find his sister only for the snow to get thicker and the wind to get stronger, like it's actively trying to keep him from his sister as they keep yelling for each other

He makes it to a frozen lake when the voice stops calling for him, noticing foot prints on a lake he's never seen before leading to a bright light in the lake where he reaches into a hole, fishing Celine out of the lake where he sees that face again that he saw in the mirror with the words taunting "it's not fair, is it?"

The corpse ends up grabbing Damien and tries pulling him while we watch the ice crack and break beneath him, images of a Sweet William and various skulls flash on screen before Damien gives a distorted scream, falling into the black abyss of the frozen lake's water

When Damien regains his bearings, we're in a dark void where we see none other than the man himself:

Mark

He taunts Damien and how hard it was to find him, telling him that he's only come to apologize to him where Damien wonders if he even ever knew him, but manages to slowly bring back his memory of what happened, remembering that it's Actor standing before him and everything he's done

Side note, the line "Celine really did a number on you didn't she?" solidifies my earlier comment on Celine wanting Damien to go to sleep whereas Mark is trying to get him to wake up, wanting Damien to stay in the loop

He also makes a joke about "knowing [Mark] as well as he knows [himself]" which is a joke about how he's snatched Damien's body and is now living in it - hence how we see him in the same Tuxedo Damien wore at the party with his cane, except for the fact it's red now instead of black

Mark continues to explain how this kind of went downhill and not how he wanted it to go, that yes this WAS planned from the beginning by him but as the events unfolded it didn't go according to plan, "right people point the finger at the wrong people" as he puts it "mistakes were made"

Also it's eluded that Actor made a deal with the devil to make sure Celine didn't "go around breaking anyone else's heart", but it's not explicitly said, just that he made a deal to make sure that it didn't happen, we're not sure if it's with a supernatural force but we can assume that it is based off everything that's happened

Mark continues his speech about how every "good story needs a villain and a hero", suggesting that he thinks himself of the hero in this story and he needs a vindictive villain to fight against, someone to root for their downfall by the audience, and honestly the scene is beautiful, beautifully written, beautifully preformed, beautifully drawn which yes, by the way, DAMIEN was drawn as an Animatic style video, not live action like how the rest of Mark's content is for the MCU, but oh my gOD it's so beautiful

And in a terrifying scene, we see Damien slowly suffocating as he realizes that he's actually been dead the whole time before Celine breaks past the barrier Mark had put up (the frozen lake, they're beneath it) and ends up killing Actor, seeing his face contort into the Comedy Mask as he's blown away like ash

A third Lantern reference when Damien goes "I'm so sick of being a pawn in other people's games" as he begs Celine to explain what the hell just happened, truly at his wit's end with all of this but she denies it, she claims that everything she's done she's done for Damien, that this whole state of constant repitition was to keep Damien safe and secure but now Actor's come and torn it all apart

There's a really tender moment between Celine and Damien where they talk about how Celine doesn't need to basically give up her life to protect Damien's, that she doesn't need to spend the rest of her life trying to fix the mistakes she's made, where he offers his hand to help her

And she agrees,

On the condition that he "makes sure that bastard stays dead."

Before they're swallowed up by the lake flooding in from the cracks Actor made on their "world", and as the water gushes out of the door is sweeps away the endless Winter and shows the blades of grass fighting to stay alive beneath the blankets of snow, and the countless amount of tress Damien has chopped down in the time he's lived there

After the credits roll we're left with a bonus clip of Damien stepping out from the destroyed house, where there was once snow now the earth burns under his boots before he walks off screen

This video was actually cut for time by the way, there was supposed to be a whole nother day where we see the Sweet William blossoming again to give the sense of repetitiveness and endlessness

But I think that Wilford's cry out in the abyss along with the Sweet William is what broke him from the limbo cycle and was why they were able to break free

UNPAUSE

After this, everyone begins to leave, quitting their jobs and imploring the others to take their leaves as well but William swears against it, threatening to kill everyone unwilling to die with the friend's he just lost in this house

Abe follows after the Colonel because of his threat where we're left alone to have the screen ominously loses it's hue along with the song in the background distorting before we hear a heartbeat and a whisper asking for help that sounds awfully familiar hmm (I'm like 90% sure it's Celine's voice)

We begin to hear distorted talk about "Madness" and how it's "stealing your best friend's wife" before we continue to hear distorted versions of Mark's speech to us in the first Chapter and voice lines from the rest of the cast as we walk around the manor, lead to a room we've yet to enter where we see our screen go back to normal

In the room we find that this filled with news letters of a "Safari gone wrong" with William at the forefront of it as well as a cork coard of red string and loose ends.

Important stuff to note from this room:

A paper filled with the word "colonel" messily scribbled all over it

A layout picture of the house

The aforementioned "Safari Gone Wrong" Magazine cover

^ the top line of this also asks is Mayor Damien is secretly a demon in disguise

Stickynotes saying "DON'T TRUST" "THE SEER"

Not important but I think it's funny: Picture of William with a sticky note saying "Not Marriage Material"

Multiple News headlines proclaiming Mark's death (but previously to this, obviously)

A typewriter filled with speculation against the colonel before it too gets chaotic

After we have a run through of the room we see William walk into the room and is immediately put off by it, exclaiming that Abe's been keeping tabs on us, but mostly it's just him and Celine, we're ambivelant to this, but it suggests that because Abe and him were good friends, he probably was hired as a private investigator on Celine for the express purpose of finding out if she's having an affair on him, hence why he's been keeping tabs on mostly William and Celine (they've had an affair on each other as earlier stated with the voice saying that "madness is cheating with your Bestie's wife" and the fact that Colonel's first worry is Celine which is odd as he's seen tender to her but willing to deck anyone else over less than she's done)

After finding out this knowledge, William blames Abe for this and believes that this was a ploy to ruin him, that Abe had set him up from the beginning where he clearly begins to spiral and he begins searching for Abe to kill him getting increasingly more and more violent until he ends up accidentally shooting Abe right in the chest, and soon after you meet the same fate as you try to calm him down, falling off the balcony

As the screen fades to black we hear that heartbeat again and we suddenly see Mark's dead body once more, signfiying that this is after the events of "DAMIEN", that is until the body of Mark looks gaunt, or at least shift to look like Darkiplier saying "It's not fair, is it?"

We're met with Damien and Celine in their red and blue forms where they explain what happened in DAMIEN (briefly, anyway) that Actor had trapped them in this state of limbo or some inbetween where they were stuck doing the same day over and over with seeminly no difference where Celine breaks that she thought it was the house causing it but it was actually Mark and Damien explains that Actor is walking around in Damien's body

The two of them propose that everyone in this odd state of liminal nothingness can escape the same way Mark did before suddenly we wake up, assumably back in our own body

This is where we get my most gut wrenching scene I HATE YOU MARKIPLIER WHY DO YOU THIS TO ME

We see William sitting in a chair by where our body once was, coat and hat gone while he's anxiously clutching Damien's cane and we see William go from spiraling to downright mad as he convinces himself that he didn't kill you, obviously he wouldn't he cherishes your friendship, and begins to believe - genuinely believe that death does not exist, that there is no such thing and that everyone in the manor was playing some big prank on him, going around calling his friends' names while we stop to look at ourselves in the mirror only to find that we have become Darkiplier

I want this motherfucker dead, I want a ten paragraph apology for the way he changed my brain chemistry because of this how DARE he

But I do I like this series so much because it was my Umbrella Academy before Umbrella Academy was a thing, you know ? And is wildly better because the only incest being shipped is in the dark side of the fandom and not the canonicity of the show, but it has that same feeling of "We only get together for weddings and funerals", because to be frank, no one know why they're here, just that they're celebrating. Before this party they were all estranged from each other with few exceptions and with various reasons

For a good explanation, Damien's line:

"Then again, I'm not exactly sure as to what we're supposed ot be celebrating here. I mean it's good to have the gang back together, but... out of the blue like this seems... anyway,"

LIKE THAT'S NOT SUSPICIOUS AS HELL ???

Also, I feel it's important to note that in Mark's "Who Killed Markiplier" playlist on youtube he does add the bloopers but also "DAMIEN" and "Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache" which I find very interesting but I think it's just because it's similar to the WKM series rather than the Adventures with Markiplier series even though they do tie in together

Fun fact about Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache before I get into it: The name of it was originally gonna just be "Wilford Warfstache" in the same vein of DAMIEN is called just Damien's name, BUT when Abe's actor gives the somewhat improved line of "Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache" Mark changed the title name to that cause he thought it better fit :)

This part of the WKM series is what inspired me to (eventually) write a mock script for a noir crime show surrounding Detective Abe, it was me and my partner joking about it on call together and then I got too much brainrot about it and ended up developing a plotline for three seasons that I need to write out eventually

With that aside, the video opens with Abe who we last saw shot by William, giving an internal monologue as he longing looks out the window with a cigarette in his mouth and Abe's first line already super gay so I'm waiting for the day Mark just goes "yeah Abe likes men" cause he's already confirmed Wilford is Pansexual I NEED ABE TO BE GAY PLEASE MARK

Ahem

Anyway

The monologue is pretty long, it's the entire intro to the video, and it's just a bunch of gay euphamisms and suggestive comments that Abe says as if he's unaware of the interpretations of it which I think is peak old noir films joke, and failing to stab the cork board multiple times - which wasn't planned, by the way, but was really really funny

Also Abe's suggested to be Jewish with the line "just like the clown at my bar mitzvah, I knew he was trouble from the moment I laid eyes on him", which is actually really cool ! Birthday clown terror is an obvious joke but the subtle change from birthday to bar mitzvah is nice, especially since Abe is a character from the 20s and it's easy to just write everyone as white and christian because, well, it's the 20s America, and I like when the cast is diverse (again, Wilford is canonically Pansexual which we were all waiting for with his pink and yellow ensemble, I love that "In Space With Markiplier" confirmed it with Mark explaining that the pink, yellow and blue lights seen in the secret Wilford scene wasn't accidental :))) !! )

Another fun fact: small budget films don't have to be poorly made ! Mark was getting a lot of praise from how the car Abe "drives" looks super realistic and people were wondering how he was doing that it really just came down to good editing and lightly shaking the car, literally they just were jostling the car from it's hood and it cave the illusion of driving on uneven roads which, if you've ever driven a car in america, is every road

As Abe's tobacco of choice keeps changing from cigarette to cigar to vape sticks, he explains how Wilford had gone through multiple aliases (later it's confirmed that he's sticking to Wilford Warfstache, obviously) but no matter how many times he's changed his name he would always fall back his usual dancing, fighting, flirting, and dancing - which brings us to where Abe finds him, the Moonlight Rollerway which is the most 80s fucking club ever

The scene also changes from noir black and white to bright, saturated colors as we see Wilford come onto screen with bopping funk music and a shiny pink shirt and matching afro as Abe gives the line that changes history "Wilford. Motherlovin'. Warfstache." and my brain literally explodes and I'm suddenly obsessed with Wilford for like months after the video comes out it's abysmal

Also, more pink, blue and yellow lights :) and yeah I know that pink and yellow are gonna go with blue because that's how triangles work but like, this motherfucker has been screaming pansexual since "The Ned Affair" which that video still makes me laugh and I kinda miss that outfit,, the entire video is gay jokes and as a gay person it's so funny

Back to WMLW, Abe disperses the party in order to get Wilford off stage and ends up accidentally shooting some electrical box I don't care for the proper term off, causing the music to stop and the saturation of the area to slightly dull as Wilford's dance comes to a stop and no one appreciates Abe's destruction of property when it killed the boogie

As Abe orders Wilford onto the ground, he claims to not remember who Abe was, asking for his name and failing to recall it multiple times while we see a second Wilford appear in the background, despite the fact that Abe is currently talking to the other one (yet another fun fact: the Wilford we see in the background of this disappears behind some tinsil curtains and we find out that this is actually connected to In Space, the room we see him again in directly connected to that which, holy fucking shit Mark what the hell these were produced like so long apart from each other,,, I mean I suppose they were written closely at the same time but what the butt man)

As Wilford claims he's never killed anyone, trying to get a sip out of martini glass he pulled literally out of the air, Abe tazes him and throws him into the back of his seat where we find out that Wilford, ever the enigma, can not only hear Abe's inner monologue but can internally comment on it as well, the both of them having an internal conversation much to Abe's shock and confusion - also Wilford continues to try to get a drink from his glass but never is able to :(

in Abe's panic he tazes Wilford again and next time we see them it's in the detective's office, Wilford bound to a chair in a cartoonish manner while he interrogates him, and it's when he accuses him for the murders he's commited and shows him red string board from Who Killed Markiplier that we see Wilford finally realize who he's talking to as he goes ".... A-.. Abe... Abe! Abe it's been years - how are you? How are you doing? How's the family?" and Abe loses it on Wilford, blaming him for everything that's gone wrong in his life in his pursuit to chase down Wilford (It's hilarious that this aired before my Lupin III hyperfixation because this is literally Zenigata and Lupin III, it's crazy, this video is literally why I had that obsession and it's insane to me - it all leads back to Markiplier, my pipeline is fucking linear at this point)

Wilford basically ignores Abe as he manages to get free from his binds as he refuses the law of nature and physics, staring at the wall with pictures and news paper clippings pinned about, and Wilford begins reminicing about the past and his sorrows - also he makes a joke about how Celine would "carve his heart out" which I think is a parallel to how Actor Mark said the same thing to Damien with a VERY different undertone

Also, we're getting close to the territory of where my absolutely infuriating hatred for how good Mark is at storytelling and leading us on and how well he knows his fanbase so fair warning to that, like how the screen has a rubberband glitch with a frame - ONCE, THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE FILM and it's when he's talking to Abe about how his memories tend to get jumbled and fuzzy from all the years and also probably the fact that space and time don't affect him properly anymore

But also Wilford starts to bring up memories, dismissing Abe's doubting or misremembering as things that "probably haven't happened yet", again, this man transends space and time I CAN'T

AUGHHHH

Wilford is an enigma and I love him for it he's chaotic whimsical

Later Abe, in a jumpscare as Wilford is suddenly in front of him shoots Wilford but it has absolutely no affect on him - we don't even see a gun shot wound or hole on his shirt as he gentle silences the gun and kisses it like it's some poor child, pushing it down to continue talking to a very terrifed Abe who's now questioning everything he knows and believed to be true

Wilford starts explaining absurdism to Abe as he starts questioning reality, the detective blowing up at him again for practically ruining his life but Wilford starts asking Abe about their history - about how long he's been chasing him, how Wilford got away in the past, what their closest encounters were, and as Abe can't seem pin point any specific time besides the time of the WKM party, Wilford dawns on him that "no one can survive a bullet to the heart" and it all seems to click

And in the most infuriating scene of my life, Wilford offers Abe a release, a way to enjoy his life, as figures appear behind him, all adorned in a white mask with a pink mustache on it

I

It

That

WHOOOO

I must've watched that scene a HUNDRED TIMES BY NOW - and Mark keeps teasing it !! In Space did a small thing with it and even in the stream Mark did of explaining WMLW HE SAID NOTHING ABOUT THIS ??? WHY IS HE KEEPING THIS SO TIGHT TO HIS CHEST I'M GONNA EXPLODE

Fuck the FNaF timeline THIS IS MORE CONFUSING IT MAKES ME SO

AUUGHH

[REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED]

Anyway, the video ends with Abe shrugging, giving in and dancing to the end credits music as the color is saturated once again, the cast partying and dancing together with the credits rolling

God fucking damn do I love Markiplier

I wanna try and sum up my different autistic obsessions with the different characters cause I love Darkiplier and Wilford in very different ways

Dark I love in the way of "I want to intimatey know your character so badly that if someone were to ask me how does Dark feel about bowling? I could give a three hour powerpoint presentation on why I think he would enjoy it"

Wilford I love in the way of "FUCKING SCRIMBLO !!!!!1!!!1!!111! THE AUTISM !!1!!1!1!!11!111!1! OH MY GOD !!1111!!!1 FUCK I'M GONNA RIP YOU INTO A MILLION PIECES I LOVE YOU SO MUCH RAAAAAAAAAAH"

Personal headcanons birthed from this series:

Because Celine dabbles in the occult and The groundskeeper had swore never to go into the manor save for one reason and that reason being suggestively demonic or otherwise supernatural on top of the fact that Damien was questioned to secretly be a demon, I believe Dark, having Damien and Celine's soul within one body, might be some demonic force, whether it be a demonic ritual that created Dark or Dark being a different demon entirely, my personal headcanon/theory (kinda ?) is that Dark is a demon or demonic source

More specifically, I mentioned a while back that Tom is a demon of Wrath, well I believe Dark to not only be a demon of Pride, but the demon of pride

But this is more than a headcanon than a theory so I don't think anyone'll bite into this more than me lol

EDIT: The video where Santa has the blurred face did come from a charity livestream ! it came way after MTV though, roughly like two years after during the "Stand Up To Cancer" Livestream as one of many milestone reward skits

EDIT 2: Remember how I said I was gonna talk about Porniplier later? Cut due to time, I cannot go any further than three days to write this my autism may be insane but even it has it's limits

[fixfoxnox]

It’s been a while since we’ve had sito headcanons!!! Have there been any additions to the world building of sito since the last time???

There have been a couple of things! Or at least more things that I can kinda comfortably mention lol:

So we officially have Price being in love with Nikolai now, however they aren't together (yet) they just pine and literally everyone around them knows

Price no longer got his hat from Alex in universe, instead he got it from Nikolai which we will learn more about in the NikPrice one-shot (still working on it, its gonna be so long 😭)

You guys get some stuff on Price's sister now that I've officially started building her (thank you therapist is laswell's wife anon)

Her name is Josephine Laswell (Price), she took Laswell's last name while they were married.

She's an on base therapist who typically does short term sessions with people, and usually they are sessions that the soldiers specifically sign up for, not ones they are forced into

However, Price knows that a lot of times therapists will just sign through the papers for the military members far too quickly, and he wanted to make sure Roach was okay so he asked his sister to take him on as a patient since he knew she would actually fully make sure he was okay before sending him back into the field.

She only goes by her first name on base, it was a request from both Price and Laswell who didn't want her getting caught up in their work if something happened. Because of that her name tags only ever say "Dr. Jo" or "Dr. Josephine"

Price calls her Josie as a nickname and Laswell calls her Pheenie as a nickname

Soap definitely doesn't tell his family when he brings Ghost and Roach home with him for the first time

Like he talks to his family at least once a week on a big family video call, and straight up sometimes Ghost and Roach will just be chilling in the background so they assume that Soap has told his family

Then they go home with him and meet them for the first time and Soap's mom is like "John why didn't you tell us you had boyfriends!!!"

Then its just a big jumble of Scottish words as the entire family start like jumping on Soap who is returning with just as much energy

Then suddenly it just stops and Mama MacTavish is like "anyways, you two both come inside its so nice to meet you, here let me give you a hug"

Also Roach definitely thinks he is the youngest out of their trio until Soap finally admits (gets caught) about lying about his age and Roach finds out that he and Soap are actually the same age and he legit gets so excited about it just because now when Soap tries to pull the "older and wiser" card he gets to throw it back in his face

Was thinking about Roach's first life again and particularly his childhood and thought I'd give some more on that plus a fun behind the scenes

When Roach thinks about that memory from when he was a child of his dad throwing him into the river, he remembers the location. A long dirt Roach through the woods leading to a little river with a bridge and highway above it

Fun facts, I actually used a place that my family used to go when I was younger as inspiration for the place. So the place where Roach got thrown into the river is technically real and exists in Arkansas lmao

I think Roach, in his first life, because he spend so much time trying to get out of his house to get away from his parents spent a lot of time in the woods around his house

Spending time in the woods meant getting use to all sorts of critters/creatures as well as getting good at spotting things like snakes so that he could avoid him

That being said he was definitely the type of southern kid/teen who would go outside for like five minutes then come back up to the house with a snake in one hand and a possum in the other lmao

He's never mentioned that he really isn't afraid of any animals to the 141 before

Jackson knows because he definitely watched Roach pick up enough random ass snakes/rats/whatever else during their time on Griggs squad. Point is, Roach has no fear

The 141 discover this bit by bit

They're tracking through the woods toward one of their objectives and suddenly Roach rushes forward and grabs Price, pulling him to a stop

The whole team are confused/lowkey annoyed until Roach steps forward and picks up the snake that Price was about to step on

A rat ends up running into the break room on base. Gaz freaks tf out and refuses to get off of the couch. Roach walks in and within like two minutes is carrying the rat outside in his hands

Just little things like this that the 141 eventually have to get used to because it's just part of Roach's charm lmao

Roach's first kiss in his first life was with the son of his church's homophobic ass preacher. They would sneak away from after church activities and into the woods to "hang out" which for two repressed teenage gays really just meant making out

Roach genuinely thought he was going to marry that guy and their relationship lasted until Roach decided he was going to leave. He asked him to leave with him

He said no because he was too afraid to tell his parents yet. Roach never held it against him, but their relationship ended and Roach never saw him again after he left

The same boy did exist in his new life, but Roach stayed clear of him because of Simon/the mental age difference

Currently, both Ghost and Price have both had glimpses of their first life through dreams

I've mentioned Jackson having struggles with sudden loud noises and flashes of light due to his first life, but I think he also has issues with planes/aircrafts because of the memory of the crash

Jackson is also a southern boy, thinking from like Louisiana. He can kinda turn his accent on and off, but most of the time it onlycomes out when he's passionate/in the middle of sex. He can also speak Louisiana French

Honestly my idea of what Jackson looks like changes every two seconds he's like a chameleon so he has like no in universe appearance yet dkfnfn

His sense of style however? Stylish man to say the least

Like somehow always looks put together, even in sweatpants and a tee shirt. It kinda pisses Gaz off sometimes, but most of the time he's just like "God damn my boyfriend is hot."

Headcanon that Gaz loves spicy foods and assumes that Jackson can't take any spice so he puts some in his food at one point to prank him

He's terrible surprised when Jackson just eats the food with no issue. Jackson has to be like "babe I've literally grown up eating Cajun food have you never had Cajun food" and then he makes Gaz something with a lot of spice and Gaz is the one who ends up not able to handle it sjfbjfndjdj

Cajun! Jackson my beloved