#the background as i work. which is what i used to do with shows and stuff in the ~before times of health and wellness~

[andavs]

I really wish Buck’s big arc last season had been the leadership thing that they started out with. The sperm donor and death arcs didn’t really go anywhere or change anything for him, when a leadership arc could’ve led to a lot of tangible growth.

It started off great, with Buck getting pissy about not being interim captain. It showed exactly why he shouldn’t be captain anytime soon: he acts on emotions first and logic second, especially when he perceives something to be a personal judgment against him. That isn’t the person you want leading a team, and Mr “I cannot handle anyone else getting hurt” is clearly not someone who’s comfortable sending other people into danger, which is part of being a captain.

But then it got completely dropped until the finale, which…didn’t really tie into leadership anyway. He just ran around saving everyone himself. He wasn't actually leading anyone or doing any kind of real, on scene coordinating like a captain would—Maddie did more of that than he did.

This arc could've continued all season in the background and involved the whole team, with Bobby giving Buck opportunities to take point and give him feedback. Chim could’ve talked about why he didn’t like being captain, Eddie could’ve talked about his experience as a staff sergeant in the military, Bobby’s early years as a captain, he could’ve talked to Hen who was chosen as interim captain. 

If he’d gotten actual, tangible feedback from the people around him, he could’ve gone through so much conscious development and growth that would affect every part of his life. He could’ve worked on taking a second before reacting to a situation to think it through, which is something that has repeatedly gotten him into trouble. He could’ve learned how hard it is to send the people you love and care about into danger, especially when one of those people disobeys orders and goes off half-cocked.

If we'd seen him spend all season learning that and then in the end he took command, actually acted as the IC, and coordinated with other houses to save his team, that would've felt more like an actual arc that impacted him, his life, and how he functions on the job.

Maybe he could’ve overlooked something that another captain caught to really drive home that he isn’t ready yet, but he would still have that knowledge and experience to use in the future, even if he isn’t captain anytime soon. We could see him coordinating or helping out where necessary. He could be Hen’s 2IC when she’s the captain. He could use those skills to problem solve in all areas and see the bigger picture, something he’s always struggled with.

I’m just annoyed that what could’ve been a great season backbone and a vehicle for the growth and maturity that Buck keeps missing got ignored for sperm donation and a death arc that didn’t lead to anything.

[nthspecialll]

I think we sometimes as a fandom tend to hyper-focus on certian characters' backgrounds simply because we like the character when in reality other characters who might not be as interesting has way better backstories, because no, Javier, Arthur and John are not the only ones with sad backstories

Like why does no one talk about what happened to Leopold's sister? Why does no one talk about young Lenny tracking down and killing folk? Why does no one talk about Javier actually in a way working for the government for a while and the reason why he killed that powerful military man? Why does no one talk about why Dutch is called Dutch and not by his actual first name? Why does no one talk about Bill's worst childhood fear coming true? Why does no one talk about both Swanson and Micah saving Dutch's life or that Tilly is also a murderer?

Anyways here is a full explanation of all the Van Der Linde gang members backstories.

Sean MacQuire

Sean Macquire and his father lived in Ireland possibly with more family but had to flee because the English (who were at the time in charge of ireland) were chasing them. They fled for their lives and they were in Boston for a month before his dad was shot in his sleep, showing the remaining Sean that there was truly no honor or shame in the world.

He was then sent to a reform school, which we all know was abusive and a living hell, so he ran, living as a low-life thief, he was a teenager, when he in a bar somewhere in West Elizabeth saw Dutch and Hosea and liked Dutch's watch. He followed the two into an alleyway and threatened them at gunpoint, however they laughed at him and told him to shoot, so he did, except the two others had noticed him first and took the bullets from his gun. Sean started crying, thinking they were going to kill him but instead of doing that they gave him a home, a place to belong.

Lenny Summers

Lenny's grandparents as well as parents were slaves and his mother was born on a cotton field and taken away from his grandmother, who hadn't even known she was pregnant, immediately. His grandmother was then told to simply get back to work.

After the civil war, the old overseer kept making advandages towards Lenny's grandmother, to a point that in the end she needed to kill him and just barely escaped being lynched. Lenny's mother never saw the grandmother again.

Lenny's mother later met Mr Summers who was an educated man and taught Lenny to both read and write, however wehn Lenny was 15, his dad was beaten to death by several drunk men. Lenny stole a gun, tracked and hunted down the men, shooting them and showing no remorse even years later.

Kieran Duffy

Kieran Duffy's father was an Irishman who came to America with a dream of farming. It was there that he met Kieran's mother and not long after having Kieran, they both passed due to Cholera and not shortly after that the stables that he worked at to support himself threw him out. He decided to join the army to support himself but it didn't last long before he quit due to it "not working out well."

After returning from the army, he fell into work with a bunch of unnamed outlaws, though they all passed away, leaving him alone once again.

At some point he ran into the O'Driscolls who gave him a choice, to ride with them or to get killed, esencially forcing him to join them and work as a stable hand for them, though he was at the bottom of the latter simply working with the horses before being kidnapped by Arthur Morgan and joining the Van Der Linde gang.

Leopold Strauss

Leopold Strauss was born into severe poverty in Austria and his family struggled heavily with food. By the time that Strauss was only twelve, his older brother was beating up nightwatch men for whatever cash and food scraps they had on them. By that time Strauss's father had already sold his younger sister Anna, by the age of nine, into bonded labour to be able to provide for the rest of the family.

When Stauss was seventeen he was sent with his uncle to the US due to health problems, however the hellish sight of Brooklyn gave Strauss's uncle a heart attack on the spot, leaving Strauss alone in a forgein country. To survive he began doing illegal money scams and after doing so for years Dutch picked him up.

Tilly Jackson

Tilly Jackson was the daughter of a slave and became an outlaw by the mere age of twelve, running with a gang called the Foreman brothers but after murdering the leaders cousin after he made advandages on her, she had to flee. She returned to her mothers workplace but found that she had already passed.

Later Tilly ran into Dutch Van Der Linde and as he was already taking care of John Marston and Arthur Morgan, he took her in, becoming just as much as a father figure to her as to the boys.

Micah Bell

Micah Bell was born directly into a life of crime as his father Micah Bell jr was a petty but ruthless and violent outlaw. Already when Micah was 17 him and his father were on run from the law as they had slid Jean and Roscoe Briggs throats and later hung them as well. His father was also his primary partner in crime, however he also seemed to have teamed up with his brother Amos a few times as well, however Amos regretted his past life and started a proper one with wife and children and threatened to kill Micah if he came close.

Micah had several partners in crime later in life, including Joe and Cleet who appears later in the game, as well as a fellow named Norman.

Micah runs into Dutch Van Der Linde in 1898 in a bar as Dutch is trying to sell some stolen goods, however the deal doesn’t work out and Micah steps in to help Dutch and save his life, earning a place in the gang.

Bill Williamson

Bill Williamson, also known as Marion Williamson, was born into an abusive family with a father who lost his mind to alchohol, even going to the point of mixing moonshine with whiskey. Watching this Bill always feared falling in love with liquor and suffering the same fate.

Bill always showed signs of being more of a troubled kid and being sent to a reform school did not stop him from building s solid criminal record as a kid.

Bill would later apply to the military and serve in the 15th infantry, fighting against the native americans before being dishonorably discharged for deviancy and attempted murder in 1892. For a year after he lived rough, truly falling in love with liqour and stealing from people om the side of the roads, one time being robbed himself by a "woman" (likely a cross dresser or genderqueer person).

In 1893 Bill tried to rob Dutch and got angry as the man simply laughed at him, however he calmed down as he was allowed a spot in the Van Der Linde gang.

Daniel "Dutch" Van Der Linde

Dutch's mother was an english woman named Greta and his father a dutch man who lived somewhere near Philadelphia who fought in the civil war and died, which is why Dutch hated southeners.

Dutch's nickname rumors to come from his father's desperate attempt at keeping touch with his ancerstory.

When he was 15, he left home due to troubles with his mother whom he never got along with and simply saw him as a disobedient and troubled kid. He wished for freedom above all so to gain this he started a life of crime and in mid 1870 met Hosea Matthews.

Hosea Matthews

Hosea was born in around 1844 and lived the majority of his earlier life in the mountians, growing to love fishing and hunting. His father was mostly absent, living a life of "sin and debauchery that would make an emperor blush." Hosea saw his dad only about three times in his life but loved him none the less.

He tried to make his way with comedy as a stage actor, however he turned to petty thieft, stealing from his audience and later others in town. He was caught by the sheif stealing a chicken and sentenced to be hanged. Luckiy for Hosea the town folk saw it as a punishment too cruel and a riot broke out which ended with someone shooting the noose around Hosea's neck, allowing him to flee.

Mid 1870 Hosea found Dutch sitting by a campfire and decided to rob him, however found that Dutch had already robbed him. Hosea feared for a moment for his life but it ended with the two of them laughing it off and teaming up.

Molly O'Shea

Molly O'Shea was born into a wealthy Irish family, set up to live a proper and educated life, however she quickly got bored and showed little interest in the life set up for her, so she ran off to America in search of adventure and excitment. At some point she ran into Dutch Van Der Linde and found an interest in him and his life style, only to later genuiently fall in love with him.

Arthur Morgan

Arthur Morgan was born to Beatrice and Lyle Morgan in northen US. His mother died in his early life and he never really got along with his father whom there are rumors was abusive. Lyle lived a life of petty crime and was arrested and executed. Arthur saw his father die and although not having the best relationship, Arthur kept his father's hat and picture.

In 1877 Arthur was 14 and a wild delinquent. He ran into Dutch and Hosea, being picked up and taken under their wing, taught not only the ways of crime but also skills like reading, writing, hunting and so on.

Uncle

Uncle was born in Ohio (insert Penelope Braithwaithe shutter) with the only family present being his parents who died when he was nine and an "uncle" named Jeb whom Uncle hints at being a pedofile.

After his parents death he was on his own and was forced to a new city where he had to care for himself, and from that time to the game start in 1899, we know he has been married at least twice.

Uncle tells many stories of his past such as going to Africa and being worthshipped like a god by the locals, however the truth of these stories are highly doubted due to his tendency to lie. He does tell stories of being a "one shot kid" in his younger days, the truth of these also being doubted, however it may have been his tricket into the Van Der Linde gang.

Susan Grimsaw

Along with Hosea, Dutch and Arthur Susan was one of the founding memebers of the Van Der Linde gang, having run into Dutch during a poker game where both he and she found interest in one another, causing the curious couple and their unruly son to stay in the area a bit longer, paying poker long into the night while Susan sat on Dutch's lap.

John Marston

Having gotten into a romantic relationship with Dutch, Susan was allowed to join the small group and even stayed when Dutch moved on to Annabelle, now serving as a form of housemother, making sure that people did their work, took properly care of themselves and made camp feel like home.

You can also hear Susan talking to Mary-Beth one time in camp, admitting that she had a husband once however he went to heaven.

John Marston was born in 1873 to an illiterate scottish father born on the boat to New York and a prositute mother who died during his birth. At first John lived with his father who constantly spoke of Scotland and his love for the country, however he was blinded in a bar fight south of Chicargo and later died when John was eight. The true cause of his father's death is unknown however John was told it was a barfight.

John spent a few years in an orphanage before running off and living on his own, at the mere age of eleven commiting his first murder by shooting a man, though he claims it was not his fault.

At the age of twelve John had been caught stealing from homesteaders who planned to have him hanged, however Dutch stepped in and took him under his wing.

Orville Swanson

Swanson used to wrok as a Clergyman but after indulging in the "earthly pleasures", being seduced by alchohol and sex, he lost his family, job and in the end faith, though he desperately tried to regain it.

At some point or another he fell in love with a woman named Margaret, though she was already married, so he simply added bigamy to the list of sins he had already commited. When the two of them were in San Fransisco, the law finally caught up wth them and while she fled onto a ship headed for Shanghai he was stuck and never saw her again.

Under unknown circomstances Swanson came to save Dutch's life and due to Dutch's debt to Swanson he was allowed to join the gang.

Mary-Beth Gaskill

Being a woman of good nature, Mary-Beth did not struggle getting close to her victims after having found herself needing to find a living in the streets. Due to her looks and personality she could with ease fool the richer men into thinking they were saving a poor maiden in need while her fingers slipped into their pockets.

It was through this that Mary-Beth got in trouble with not just the law but her victims as well. One night she had gotten a few foul men on her tail that she ran into the Van Der Linde gang who saved her and asked her to join them.

Charles Smith

Charles Smith was born to a Native Mother and a free African American father, all three of them living fairly happily with his mothets tripe together with a few other free men before the US army chased them away.

They continued to live together but a few years later Charles' mother was captured by the army, leading Charles' father to fall into alcoholism and a deep depression.

At the mere age of 13 Charles left his father and began to live on his own, becoming a supreme survivalist from an early age.

Some point during the late 1898 ran into the Van Der Linde gang in the Grizzlies and joined them.

Simon Pearson

Simon Pearson's family were whale hunters and although Pearson wished to follow in their footsteps it did not go that way due to the whale industry having lessened by the time that he got out of school. Having been forced to look for new employment options, Pearson joins the Navy where he even managed to get stranded for fifty days on a ship filled with plauge, watching his friends and coworkers slowly drop one by one.

After having returned from the Navy Pearson begins to struggle financially and takes a loan, however unable to pay it off loansharks comes after him and it is during one of these attempts at getting to Pearson that the Van Der Linde gang saves him and brings him to camp as a cook.

Abigail Marston

Abigail Marston, originally born Abigail Roberts, was orphaned at a young age and started roaming around bars, scraping whatever few coins she could take from folk before starting a work of prostitution, making an earning by selling her body and at some point running into Uncle at a bar who introduced her to the gang.

Now living with the gang, Abigail still worked as a prositute up until falling pregnant with Jack Marston by John Marston.

Josiah Trelawny

Josiah Trelawny was born in England though he has no memories of his life there, he later imigated to America where he starts working as a conman and trickster. It was during this line of work that he met yhe Van Der Linde gang and joined them bur with a special advandage as he, unlike the others, was allowed to appear and disappear as he pleased, always knowing when Dutch planned to cut him off and return with a big hit.

Josiah has a family living in Saint Denis concisting of a wife and two sons named Tarquin and Cornelius. Just as with the gang, he would disappear on them for months.

Karen Jones

Karen Jones lived as a scam artist in her early years and absolutely loved the outlaw lifestyle and hoped for a bit more which partly drove her to accept the Van Der Linde gang's invitation, hoping to achieve more.

Javier Escuella

Javier Escuella was born in Mexico to a drunkard father who worked for Allende' (a main antagonist in rdr1, a military man) uncle. When he was young he saw his own uncle as well as four other separate men get casterated and fed to pigs for simply suggesting fair wages for their work.

Javier moved on to become a violent and known bounty hunter and revolutionary, fighting against what he saw as a corupt system.

Javier ended up killing a powerful former military man for a woman that he loved, fearing for his loved ones life he fled to America where he knew no english and had no work or food, leaving him starving.

It was in America that he ran into Dutch as they both were trying to steal the same chickens. Dutch took Javier in, fed him, gave him a family and a life, leading Javuer to idiolize Dutch also for his revolutionary ideals.

At some unknown point someone attempted to kill Javier, leading to him having a prominent scar on his throat.

Sadie Alder

Sadie Alder grew up in a harsh envioment and from a very early age learned how to hunt and ride to care for herself, things that Jack Adler fell in love with. The two of them married september 1896, moving to a ranch in Ambarino where they had three happy years of marriage before the O'Driscolls arrived at their cabin.

[chillwildwave]

The Wishing Kingdom: Chapter 1: Our Story Starts

(The screen is blank for a few seconds, until a font that says “A few years later” appears, one that faded away, we get our first glimpse of the hamlet, in that area, there’s triangle-shaped roofs of each house staked onto cobblestone rocks in front of some swoopy trees as it’s built as a safe habitat for others to stay safe from the king and queen, then, we see some ragged-clothed people holding on to some laundry and some soil to create a fireplace for themselves to stay warm and to make some food from it as well.)

(Like this shot from The Last Unicorn except it’s showing the rest of the Hamlet.)

After 2 minutes of all that is going on, we get introduced to 12-year-old Asha as she is seen sleeping in her bedroom until the sunshine splashes on her face, waking herself up even though it was so early in the morning.

“Woah! Is it that time already, it’s gone fast than I can hardly imagine!” Asha stretches her arms while seated in her bed, she also got a small glimpse of her pet goat, Valentino with a piece of white cloth on his mouth persuading her to do her work.

“MAAAAAA” Valentino screeched with such enthusiasm.

“Hey there bud, ready to start the day?” She hops out of bed to touch his face as she gently takes the cloth out his mouth, not long after, we get to see Sakina and Sabino walking over to Asha’s side.

“Awww, our little Asha being a grown-up lass, isn’t she just so gentle?” Sabino touches her cheek playfully while he gives his hand to petting Valentino, Sakina joins in too before she is urged to say something as well.

“Yeah, you’re so right, dear, and she will always remain to be here with us for eternity.” She slowly looks at Asha, a slow orchestral background plays that is so loving and gentle before Asha speaks.

“Awww, thank you guys, I could’ve never asked for anything better, now, who’s ready for chores?” She got herself up and held up the white cloth as if she were one of those guards, almost leaving confusion on Valentino, Sakina and Sabino’s faces.

That is until Valentino started jumping around Asha with his paw gesturing the outside of the hamlet, being impatient, from that reaction, Sabino, Sakina and Asha look at each other before they shrugged, grabbed their equipment and opened the door to a brand new day, which leads to the first song!

Our Hamlet/ Our Rosas

In this opening musical number, it shows us what life is like between both worlds, the hidden hamlet which was made as a safe habitat for folks who want to be safe from the king and queen who held Rosas captive, it’s a bit like “Belle”, “Circle of Life” and “Steady as The Beating Drum”, it’s sort of like that but more of a welcome edition to the world.

(Before the song starts, Asha opens the cottage doors with Sabino and Sakina by her side as she grabs her basket to get her work done!)

(Asha)

The people have so much joy in the air,

They know a brand new day is here to stay,

It’s the same morning,

The town here is shining, whoops sorry!

(During the first line, we get a shot of a few people walking around and doing their work with smiles on their faces while Asha strolls around with her basket following every step, in the final line, she accidentally bumps into a young man who is just about to finish his laundry, as she runs off, he rolls his eyes and continues with what he is doing.)

Everyone’s got something,

On their mind that’s spinning,

Behind these roots and those leaves,

Lies a town I can’t leave!

(While Asha is singing the second line, she is seen jumping down on the stairs of each cottage simply made of rocks while observing the people around her, when she says the third line, she gestures the trees and spins around them as if this is her place of comfort.)

(Everyone)

Here inside this hamlet,

We grab the cloth and go,

The scrubbin, the washing,

Is all we have to hold,

Here inside this hamlet,

Our wishes stay aglow,

Who knows what miracles,

Have in store,

In our hamlet.

(With the chorus going in, we go into some townspeople telling others about the work and using their hard work as a purpose to keep their wishes glowing, in one shot, Leo is seen guarding one house whereas Dextrous sleeps on his shoulder, he wakes up suddenly to start guarding, in the final line, we than pan over to the kingdom of Rosas, where King Magnifico and Queen Amaya rule over their subjects.

A citizen of Rosas starts to sing as he is carrying a massive sack of royalty for the king and queen)

(Citizen 1)

With all this load left to hold, I might drain,

What if they find out, they might go insane!

(Citizen 2)

These broken wings of mine,

Yet when will they fly again?

(Both citizens are at the marketplace of Rosas when singing those lines, the first line is supposed to show how the people are forced to work tirelessly with no sleep in order to please the king and queen, and also, the line “these broken wings of mine, yet when will they fly again?” that citizen 2 is singing, the line is supposed to highlight how the citizens of Rosas are enslaved by Magnifico and Amaya’s power forcing them to do everything they say, but the question that is sung emphasises freedom for themselves so that they can pursue their own dreams of their own.)

(Both citizens)

It feels like death is holding on to me,

Just you wait for the day, we’d all be free!

(All citizens)

Right here in Rosas,

Where flowers stay bloomed,

Where a tragedy hits so deep,

Which made our home so bruised,

Right here in Rosas,

We’re holding onto our hopes,

Who knows what lies beneath this hoax,

Behind those heavy doors,

In our Rosas,

In our hamlet!

(In the last chorus, we get a massive set of choreography where the citizens are gathering around as they are dancing around the plaza, in one shot, you get a medium shot of a few people in rags being persuaded to dance along with the citizens, in another shot, some people dance around the statues of Magnifico and Amaya paired together, throughout this number, we get the idea that the Hamlet is a safe haven where they keep their wishes protected whereas Rosas is a literal dystopia where slavery is forced by the king and queen.)

After the number, the camera goes right back to the hamlet where Asha is just about to get her work finished.

There’s a point where she spots Dextrous humming the previous song whilst leaning against the cottage door, her hand rested on his shoulder while she suggests him to get on with his job.

“Eh, sorry miss, I’m just bothered at the moment, it’d be best if you leave me here to rest.” Dextrous replied as his eyes are half-closed like he was about to go to sleep.

“Oh, come on, doing your own work isn’t so bad after all.” She expressed while her hands grasped onto her basket of laundry where she was about to head to the river nearby, that is until Leo arrives with her sketchbook in his hand.

“Heh, looks like you forgot this! Now let’s see here, hmm…” He snoops over her pages (not in a mean way but more of a playful yet innocent way.) which only made Asha twitch her eye a bit, so she starts some banter while he still has her book.

“Been swearing, haven’t ya?”

“No, no I haven’t, I was only just filled with smoke, how can I not puff it all out?” Her sarcastic voice puts him off a bit but it doesn’t bother him.

“Heh, I didn’t know you can tell me how this got you to write like this?”

“Stop playing, Leo, it’s just my thoughts, and personally, it’s like everyone has a story.” She snatches the book of him while she rubs it with her apron, catching Leo and Dextrous aghast when she says that everyone has a story.

“Well, yeah, that is the truth.” She starts opening her sketchbook to show her some of her drawings with Leo and Dextrous. “This here is where I started my first drawing, I know it isn’t perfect like you guys would say it is.”

“Perfect?! Since when did I hear someone say perfect throughout their whole life?” Leo raised his eyebrow, he knew it was all a joke.

Asha’s eyes knitted the friends. “Um, dunno, it just came out of my head, the fact that it’s not really my best drawings…”

“Oh come on, we all love your drawings, imperfect or not.” Dextrous opened his eyes and expressed his true feelings to his trusted friend.

“Thanks… But, I feel like…” After Asha stutters on what is trying to come out of her mouth, we are shown that in a few pages of her messed up sketches and doodles to different types of constillations, gliding across the book as if its a first draft on her finished work,

(This is used to emphasise on how Asha has been willing to inspire people through her own work, she knows that sketching and writing her thoughts is her only strength and she has a fault for seeing the eyes of other people, but in terms of art style, she’s willing to improve as well.)

Leo and Dextrous were wide-mouthed after seeing her pages. “I see, it’s as deep as I could’ve imagined as well.”

“But no matter what happens, you don’t need to always say that you need time to finish with whatever you’re doing, what matters is that we’re here to support you, Asha, just remember that!” Leo’s words fuelled her heart which opened so wide with admiration.

“I mean, yeah, you are the one who fills the world with sunshine.” Dextrous replies as well. (There’s your first reference of the rewrite, Snow White right here, but this is used to describe how much Asha cares for her friends so much and they're willing to support her.)

“So you mean that whenever you’re turning black, I’m the one who completely changes your colour to make you brighter with my heart?” She questioned, she didn’t quite get it all at once.

“Yes, that’s what we mean.” Leo answered back.

Unfortunately, we hear Gilllia’s anger behind the cottage nearby, she is called by him but she walks over with her arms crossed and sat at the furthest pit of the cottage they were standing with.

“WHATS ALL THE FUSS ABOUT?! DIDNT MY DAY JUST CRUMBLE?! Her croaky voice caught everyone’s attention all of a sudden.

“Looks like someone got hit by the wrong ball over there!” Dextrous joked as he gestures right towards Gillia.

“Dextrous!” Leo scoffed and knudged him in the arm leaving him shocked.

“Anyway, what’s the point of showing these sketches and making them your life source, kind of a waste if you think about it.” She said more calmly but she still had that temper slipping through her veins.

“Oh Gilllia, it’s not that bad of a habit, unless you get bored of it like it’s the same thing, but you see here, this page looks off, can you see? Here?” Asha walks over to her and then gestures the page of a drawing of a hamlet citizen, (a concept art version if you want to put it correctly.)

It takes her a bit of time to figure out what is wrong with Asha’s drawing, she instead replies with, “There’s not a single thing I can point out, Asha, the drawing is actually quite good, since when did you get this sort of talent?”

“Taught it myself, you know, I was thinking I’d tell you guys since I’ve been curious about what wishes you’ll write for the stars.” The topic slowly changed as soon as Asha is sat between her friends whilst she is hesitant for their answers.

“To be honest, I don’t know what to wish for, but I’ve heard so many stories about the stars years ago.” This was Leo’s only answer he could come up with before Dextrous took his turn to answer.

“No matter how much I might’ve said this, I think I might wish to be more aware of my surroundings.” Dextrous looks down at his feet after that, “But I feel like I’m getting the hang of it, ya know?”

Gillia’s eyebrows transform into a distant frown when she was asked about what she wanted to wish for, but everyone else knew that her mouth was closed, maybe she isn't ready yet or she doesn't feel like talking about it with her other friends, even though they are the ones who she can trust.

“I guess she isn't ready yet, maybe we'll ask her at some point.” Dexterous patted on her shoulder and eyed right at Asha as she is about to pick her own laundry up from the basket.

“Yeah, but I feel like I also don't know what to wish for, making a wish is complicated because there are so many opportunities one person can hold, but does it really matter if we sit down with our head on the desk, we think about what drives us to pursue that wish?” Leo sighed while he slowly caught a glimpse of the morning sky. “When the stars come out, I hope they answer one’s call.”

“Don't worry, Leo, I’m sure they will come out someday, I know it, and it goes for all of you, when your wish is shown on a ribbon, the stars will listen closely and make sure to grant it as soon as possible!” Asha replied to Leo as his heart slowly began to warm up from her wisdom.

We then take a few seconds for the friend group to look at their hearts to make sure that their wishes are secured, meanwhile, Asha glanced at a castle not so far away and then looked back at where she was, until a voice appears…

“Asha! Time to go back home now!” The voice shouted from a distance.

From there, she starts to pack her laundry and before going straight away, she slowly starts saying goodbye to her friends and they wave back as she climbs up the rocks all the way back to her cottage.

*****************

Final Notes

This is the first chapter that I fully wrote to start off the story of “The Wishing Kingdom”, with the hamlet and Rosas song, I wanted to show you different sides of both worlds and how each person lives their regular life, what I also wanted to show you was the dynamic between Asha and her three friends with each of them supporting one another.

Forgot to mention that the montage of Asha’s drawings, I wanted to use that as a metaphor as to what Walt Disney truly meant when he wanted to create fairy tales into movies, like he did with Snow White, it's also a metaphor for animation as a whole, you know like teaching yourself the basic principles and how they inhabit life into characters and objects!

But don't worry, in Chapter 2, you will see Sakina, Sabino and Asha’s dynamic whilst also getting our first glimpse of the king and queen of Rosas and what they do for a living as well. But in that chapter alone, you will see that the wishes mean so much more to the Hamlet according to Sabino, so you will get more of him, so for now, stay tuned for more!

@annymation @uva124 @emillyverse @signed-sapphire @wings-of-sapphire @mythartist21 @rascalentertainments @oh-shtars @flicklikesstuff @ahomeinthestars-wishrewrite @frogcoven88 @ficsinhistory @synergysilhouette @tumblingdownthefoxden @kstarsarts @your-ne1ghbor @spectator-zee @rylxdreams @gracebethartacc @gracebeth3604 @hopeyarts @dangerousflowerpanda

[kirbybecomesastarwarrior]

Lady Celestine: Navigator of the Constellations:

The Forgotten Hero of Yore

The Merlyn of the KBASW (AU) & the love of Arthur's life.

Just to be clear Merlyn & Celestine are the same person it's just her disguise when she goes out.

For: @kirbyoctournament

Character Overview/Personality: She's the combination of Merlin from Disney's Sword & the Stone, Queen Eclipsa from SVTFW, Willy Wonka from (Wonka 2023 ), and Merlin from (the 2008 TV series).

She's an optimist... many of her peers mistake it for being naivety but in reality she's well aware of the darkness in the world... she sees it every day with her powers. Since seeing so many terrible things in the future she treasures the present and is always grateful for the things she enjoys in the now. (Also there's another reason for this....)

And finds the joy in the darkest of times...

She likes to be overly prepared... And tend to keep (*hoard) things they might need... Often tends to hold things she don't need. With Arthus side eying her "You really need to keep that."

"Don't look at me like that Wart... WE MAY NEED THIS HARPOON ONE DAY WHO KNOWS & YOU'LL THANK ME LATER !" *proceeds to carry bloody harpoon home... with Arthur facepalming himself*

They actually did end up using that harpoon 3 months later & Celestine rubbed it in Arthur's face for an entire week. This constant hoarding led her to the first iteration of the Dimensional Cape, which started as a dimensional bag to store all her stuff. (LMAO).

This brings me to Celestine's wisdom & sass: similar to Merlin (the series & Disney) is filled with cleverness & comebacks. When she's doing her diplomatic work and out and about she knows how to do it "gracefully."But when she transforms into Merlyn, she lets loose exactly how Merlin is when he becomes Dragoon. Has no filter and becomes a chaotic old man throwing shade left & right

She hates' cursing so as resulting in hilarious, nonsensical words to place them: Fiddle sticks, biscuits, sweet butter crumpets, etc ~

Her future sight has made her a very empathic person... knowing the suffering of others in her visions. Creating a very kind, caring individual who wants the best for everyone, for them to be happy.

Keep reading for extra content & lore: (Which include spoilers for KBASW so tread carefully!) Other than that please continue...

Lore related content: (If you just want a short read)

In Denial (Oldest lore)

What Kind of King's in My Blood (Background info)

Celestine is Merlyn: (Most Current lore)

And fair warning I low-key wrote a novel... but there's a special prize at the end if you read all of it. (Extended Lore)

Lady Celestine serves as a catalyst for the anime Kirby series...

Now Celestine can't predict the exact future... only show potential paths. But her powers can guide people to the outcome they want and the path that constantly changing.

Absolom made Celestine focus solely on her future vision and trained her personally... He tried to paint himself as this kind saintly father figure towards her... but in reality, wanted to monopolize her ability.

He tremendous amount of pressure on the poor girl...(Mother Gothel Style "Mother knows best) Believing the only thing that made her valuable was her future sight. And one more thing about Celestine... SHE HATED HER FUTURE VISION! She didn't just see the future... she experienced it! Feeling all the raw emotions of the scene.

However, Absolum would guilt-trip her: "Oh you don't want to let everyone down... you're the only one who can do this... you're so special... you can't disappoint everyone..:

Causing her to grit her teeth and bear with it... Absolum was like a father to her she couldn't say "No." Plus it's not like she could let them down... One day she had a terrible vision foreshadowing the demise of Shiver Star...

The people of Shiver Star were infected by Dark Matter's essence... Nightmare & his demons robbed them and stole all the planet's resources... while the people were possessed and had their life sources absorbed by Dark Matter.

Celestine immediately ran to the other Heroes of Yore & Absolum.... for this and assured the worried child they'd take care of this... "don't worry we'll use this information and take care of it."

And they didn't just take care of it... THEY MADE IT WORSE! Seeing an even more terrible vision appeared before her.

~

Celestine: Wait I thought you said you'd-

Absolum: Oh but my child we did you said that planet was a goner anyway... they were already possessed.... it would be so wasteful if all those resources would fall to Nightmare...

Sir Uther: We cleared out the planet before Nightmare did. And killed all of those who were going to be infected & spread it throughout the galaxy... we prevented the problem before it even happened...*gives a wicked smile*

Absolum: Yes we couldn't have done it without you *gives a wicked smile*

Celestine couldn't help but blame herself for the downfall of Shiver Star... A few hours later Celestine's warpstar cracked-

"No problem... I think," Absolum

To remedy the situation, Absolum tried to fame concern for her but in reality was keeping her in the temple to hide that she was "broken." She could still tell fortunes just at random, they just had to keep her near the temple and store them whenever they came to her.

Absolum was still reeling at how could this happen... he didn't want to expose his little mistake. (In truth he knew he was working too hard and put her to work earlier than most, because of her ability... CHILD LABOR AM I RIGHT?!.) It was still too valuable, they can't risk having her break some more...

Thus, Celestine became a caged bird.

Uther felt that she was a failure unbecoming of a Hero of Yore and not deserving of her title. She can no longer do the ability properly and with her body always hurting how was she going to fight on the battlefield!

Along with that thought she be too emotional anyway... always trying to steer them to the future... the least amount of damage... HE WANTED PROGRESS! Often opting for the method that would get him results not caring about the collateral damage!

Icarus shares in Uther's sentiments, with the added notion that she got away with lazying around doing nothing. Just got to sit there waiting for the next prediction to come around. He & Uther were doing all the heavy lifting and she was still being treasured by Absolum... (he wasn't jealous of the attention or anything...)

Thus resulting in Icarus having the brilliant idea of sticking Celestine with all the political fairs (the paperwork). Which seemed like a good idea at the time (a decision they would all come to regret).

Unbeknownst to them... they had given Celestine all the diplomatic power in the galactic court. Managing to win over the galactic council with her charm and grace. Uther had always used his power to intimidate his ideals.

However, Celestine had a softer approach and was seen as far more likable in the... (this was before the council was corrupt and this was due to Celestine's influence...) Often resulting in the members to come to her for their problems. Uther couldn't beat her in this arena... being reminded all too well this was a political battle as well.

For Icarus, you see there was a... certain deal he wanted to part take in... a deal with Halacandra. Where did the GSA partner up with and believe that he could easily impress with his inventions... with their queen?! ( Minerva Mim - Magolor's great aunt)

What happened... the king was supposed to be here whys he spent an entire month sucking up to him who was this queen...

The queen was not impressed & ended up showing technology far greater than his... for the first time, Icarus was forced to eat humble pie... "How could this have, surely this is some sort of mistake shouldn't the king be here-"

"Oh he's dead... and unlike him, I'm not to be won over by pretty words and flattery now you offend me... why would I ever want to do business with a lowlife with you!"

Madam made sure to inform the GSA they would not be doing business with them & Absolum desperately wanted to get that deal. Then Celestine volunteered to remedy the situation & suggested inviting her here.

Absolum agrees seeing there is nothing to lose, Uther believes this was just a desperate attempt to try to be useful while Icarus is excitedly waiting for her to fail.

Meeting arrives Celestine takes care of everything personally and at the end of the day. Queen Minerva is all smiles and arrives with a contract, "Alright I've changed my mind, and I'll do the deal as long as I'm working with her."

Minerva wasn't interested in Icarus' inventions but Celestine's alchemic formulas were revolutionary. And just had to have her on their team.

Absolum was shocked and relieved... (maybe this girl had more than one use after all...) and was constantly praising her. And because of her connections with Minerva... she'll need a bodyguard now when she leaves the GSA base but what the why it was worth it.

And Icarus oh how badly he wanted to be part of the mixing pot, but he had to go through Celestine. Who was more than happy to reject his proposal and experiments. (Icarus never forgave her for this.)

She was becoming too influential now ... This resulted in Icarus scheming with Uther... to get rid of her.

Thus beginning the creations of the Ancients & the Halcandrans, with Celestine & Minerva leading the helm. Alongside Dairus Drosselmeyer (Minerva's right-hand man & Daroach's great uncle)... they created many of the legendary treasures... that were now scattered about the galaxy.

(These were kept secret from the GSA... Minerva knew the truth of the situation... for you see during the meeting she had hidden away Kirby's prediction not of him just defeating Nightmare, but the reawakening of Void Termina & Doomsday... and showed it to the Queen and she understood... that's the other reason why she said yes to her)

Minerva helps Celestine create the Kabu's across the galaxy and presents them as "safe houses for star warriors" but in reality, they were all preset guides to Kirby's prophecy.

And helped her create Triple Star... Thus the creating the vigilante Merlyn.... Her work as Merlyn didn't go unnoticed and the people of the galaxy started to recognize the hypocrisy of the GSA. Which made the Ancients & the other's blood boil.

This resulted in having Uther send in his send three of his best soldiers: Sir Nonsurat, Dame Morgan, and last but not least (you guessed it WART... I mean Sir Arthur.)

Kirby's prophecy spoke of "a match" to start the spark that would flame of a new era of peace...

Arthur- Match/ Meta Knight - Spark/Kirby - Flame

At the time she didn't know who it was; the prophecy was incredibly vague with which one it was. But she wasn't going to pass her knowledge to any of them without being sure. (She didn't want another Shiver Star incident to happen... not again...)

But know would she determine which one it would be... they all seemed the most unlikely candidates as "the match." How could she weed out which one... A TRAIL, A TEST, A GAME!

So like in tales of old, Celestine did these little tests of character... and would secretly tag along during missions. Giving them all a chance to see which one it would participate in... Giving them little riddles of the monster Nightmare would do. But she always gave them a choice... (bread crumbing) can't face anyone to change.

However, three of them all seem annoyed at this except for... Sir Arthur was the only one captivated and interested. It takes a while for Arthur to accept Merlyn's but only after the events of:

What Kind of King is in My Blood:

That makes him actively ask for Merlyn (Celestine to help him change) and pretty much becomes Celestine's partner in crime. And as to become a willing student... merely wishing not to become like his master (Sir Uther).

However, their little sparring match still happening, with the condition that he should win... Merlyn's not allowed to be called him Wart... (Needless to say she fought him twice as hard.)

(This post-Celestine is Merlyn:) It goes into more detail about their relationship here but... I added a few things.

Romantic feelings only start after that...

Basically, before they knew they were head-over-heals for each other their love could never be in reality. Not just because of their positions but something else...

After her warpstar broke... she received a terrible vision of her body eventually breaking and her disappearing into star dust. Foreseeing her early death...

She had initially accepted but after all the friends she made (and falling in love with Arthur) she did everything she could to stay longer for them... Celestine tried to keep herself together as long as she could, and managed to keep herself alive a little longer (than she was supposed to) but now she could feel it... she was running out of time.

How was she supposed to tell her everyone... Minerva would be devastated, who was going to help Darius (& Minerva) with his creations, who would protect her followers, and stop Uther & Icarus from making the galaxy into a wasteland...

And worst of all she'd leave Arthur all alone & heartbroken. Who's supposed to tease him now, make sure he doesn't do anything reckless, keep that ego in check, make sure he isn't a prat, to remind him to smile and enjoy life... to laugh... oh her poor little Wart...

No there must be another way...she couldn't tell any of her friends... she wasn't giving up yet... However, little did she know that was the least of her worries...

Celestine was always careful with hiding her connections with her alter-ego... and Arthur, but there was one person who did figure this out. Sir Nonsurat; after Arthur had saved "Merlyn" from his grasp he started to see a pattern.

Arthur had been an accomplice to Merlyn's along... "HOW DARE ARTHUR, I KNEW YOU NEVER DESERVED YOUR POSITION AND WITH THIS YOU WILL BE RUINED FOR SURE."

Thus, Celestine received numerous horrible visions (she got them all at once)... of Arthur being found guilty in a trial. And at the end of each, Arthur had refused to sell her out, remaining loyal to her, confessing his love for her, and dying. And then she saw her demise as well... her body finally breaking right after... poofing into stardust.

Being completely overwhelmed, she burst into tears. Desperately searching for a future where they could both live... (a future where she could be happy with him.) However, it was either that she & Arthur had escaped and her body would explode and Arthur would be captured (by the GSA) and executed right after for his desertion).

Celestine couldn't help but believe that she had destroyed Arthur's future all because she had gotten involved... (it was Shiver Star all over again.) Just like in the other futures... what could she possibly do...

Perhaps...she could solve one problem with another...

So, before the day Nonsurat was going to turn in his report of evidence... Celestine had stolen it away. And with the help of Darius, they manipulated the information to frame someone else...

Nonsurat was infuriated once he found his evidence to be stolen... But he didn't want to cause an uproar, so he demanded a completed search of every squadron. Under the pretext "there is a traitor among us, and they've stolen my documents..."

A complete search required every general to be accounted for. Nonsurat observed Arthur carefully only to find him especially giddy!?

Arthur: I do hope the search is finished soon... The sooner we finish here the sooner I can give Celestine this-

Kit Cosmo: Code red! Everyone needs to come to the Courtyard immediately! Were under attack!

Arthur: By who?!

Kit Cosmo: By... Lady Celestine...

~

(She had already known Icarus was trying to take her down... so using her Nonsurat's evidence, she had successfully framed herself... handing it in in the guise of one of Icarus' informants.)

With the information he had put together and received, Sir Icarus concocted a false trail that Celestine was leaking information and was secretly in cahoots... with Merlyn.

Since it was a trial that involved someone as high-ranking as her... she knew the trial would exclude a select few. And since she knew Nonsurat would warrant a search... she knew it would be the perfect thing to keep Arthur out of the trail.

Celestine: Well, if I am going to get locked away... I might as well make it worth the sentencing.

It was at this moment that Celestine unleashed her demonic owl (she had hidden away) and bit off his head Absolum; killing him instantly. (Madoka Magica style). Icarus tried to stop her but failed Celestine resulting in his wings being ripped off. And officially went on a rampage letting out all those years of unbridled rage & sorrow she had kept in.

Then she remembered quickly about Kirby's prediction... quickly she created her own army of Hydro Clones... to leave them all at bay.

She went into her lab and quarters and destroyed every piece of magical research and Alchemic formula. She wasn't going to let them benefit & use her research any longer and most importantly to keep Kirby's predictions... but one person who managed to get through the army... it was none other than Uther.

Uther: I always knew you were a little witch~

Celestine: That was a sham trial & you know it ... You forced my hand

Uther: You should; 've stayed in your place, someone weak as you, you are not worthy of your spot as a Hero of Yore-

Celestine: Well you are not worthy of your spot as leader! You never were and one day you'll fall you'll see *at that moment Celestine received another vision-*

At that moment Uther thought this was the perfect chance to lung at her but this backfired... he accidentally ended up seeing Celestine's vision too... And it visibly shook him to his core.

Being overwhelmed by the very visions that plague Celestine, (claiming before she was emotionally weak, was causing him to be paralyzed by fear...) It was a vision of his throne crumbling down& everything he built and it was being led by one astral... he couldn't make out the face... was... was it pink...

Celestine tried to pull away so he couldn't see the rest of the vision... and ended up striking his right eye to stop him... Uther was left frozen while Celestine could feel her body about to break and desperately made her escape... But as she stormed out...

Uther: Will make sure you're vision will not come to pass I will find that pink warrior if it's the last thing I do... And I'll- you'll die by my blade gah- *Still paralyzed because of the vision & couldn't get up

Celestine: Sorry Uther... but I'm afraid that honor won't go to you...*runs out to find Arthur* I've already selected my champion...

In the commotion, Arthur manages to find her, desperate he reaches, Celestine:

Arthur: We have to... you need to run-

Celestine: Graduation time Wart *sees a cast of other soldiers & on-looker watching* - Let's see what you're made of! Just treat it as one of our sparring matches and we'll be fine-

After all the losses in their sparing matches, Arthur manages to beat Celestine... "Well done, Arthur- you've finally done it, you've w-" * Visibly made starts break... and falls- and Arthur catches her

(Celestine pulls up a smokescreen so no one can see them... however, three people manage to sneak in)

Arthur: Celestine, what's happening to you-

Celestine: I've come to the end of my time- due to my condition my body was bound to break... I didn't mean to hide it... I really thought I could beat the odds... I'm sorry War- Oh I guess I can't call you Wart-

Arthur: NO! If that's the case you weren't in the best condition- *starts crying* I didn't really win-, you have to stay *sobs profusely* You have to stay and call me Wa-Wart!

Celestine: Figures *chuckles...* it takes you this long to finally admit you like the nickname ... Thank you Arthur you made my life short all the worthwhile... I hope you can forgive me

Arthur: There's nothing to forgive Cel- Celty, *cries* I love you, please there is always something... There's always, you told me that... You're the greatest mage in the galaxy... there's got to be...

Celestine: I surely hope that light of you doesn't get snuffed out *smiles warmly* it's going to be hard Wart but remember this...

Keep your eyes open and beware of the bad in the world... but also hold on to the good as well... you don't have to look, just know that it's there... it'll keep you from falling...

(the quote that Meta Knight said to Kirby originally came from Sir Arthur... that was told to me from Celestine...)

And even should you way your way I know you'll find it again... you'll always be a worthy king to me. I love you too Arthur... and I always will.... (*they share one passionate kiss*)

It was an Arthur had so longed for, but it was lace with so much sorrow and joy all at the same time....

Arthur: I don't wanna let you go-* Gets knocked out by Minerva...

She had informed Minerva before the trial (and of course was devastated but was willing to fulfill her last request). And who stood behind her were Darius & Kit the only three witnesses to what really happened. Kit realizes that Celestine is Merlyn... She then handed off and knocked out Arthur to Darius & Kit Cosmo.

And made sure they promised to paint Arthur as the hero who defeated her. And fled the scene and Minerva went to her best friend and hugged her one last time... and fled with the others.

When they had all left to safety... she lifted the smoke screen only to see a hoard of Ancients led by Uther try to arrest her. She flew into the air Celestine had her Gravity wicked moment... as her body finally was about to shatter into pieces.

Celestine: I curse you all, *putting one final spell cursing the Ancients* (basically she's the reason why they all disappeared)

As her body started to implode they mistook it to be a suicide bombing and she was planning to take them all down with her... thinking quick the Ancients Crystalized to prevent the explosion...

But in that moment she has one final vision of Arthur taking the seat as leader of the GSA. She smiles and says "I always you could do it Wart *starts cry* It's just too bad I'll never be able to see it in person".

Arthur woke up in the hospital wing hearing... Darius & Kit recount the story of the incident. With the way Kit & Darius spun it was Arthur who saved the day... (Arthur realized this was all part of Celestine's plan: to give him a title that would protect him even when she was gone...) Arthur * began to weep* with Kit trying to comfort him the best he could...

Making Arthur (to the Ancients) irreplaceable... being able to take down a Hero of Yore when they (Icarus & Uther) could not. Being extremely grateful (and needing a new holy figure), gave him the title of "Holy Knight," and said they owed him one favor...

(So basically he got credit for defeating the love of his life & took her place as the GSA's holy figure...)

So in summary:

Before being detained, she managed to rip off Icarus' wings, blind Uther in his right eye, and kill about 500 Ancients. And was trying to escape only to be stopped by Sir Arthur, who deafted her in battle. But tried to escape only to be cornered by the remaining soldiers... and seeing she had nowhere else to run...

Despite the efforts of the Ancients to paint her as wicked, people could not believe in the shame of a trial. Especially Minerva, when she heard this false slander on her best friend (she had enough of it)... she declared Halcandra's formal separation from the GSA. Cutting them from Halcandra's advanced technology caused an even bigger scandal. And had put her down to silence her as well... removing her from her.

(What happened to Darius... well that's a story for later)

Ruining their reputation even further... destroying the pristine image they had built up until now. And those who were at the trail were split in the middle... On one hand, it seemed like she had gone on a rampage because of her unfair judgment and merely reacted because she was pushed into the corner. On the other hand, she had always been hiding away her true nature & hatred for all of them, and once she had been found out... she unleashed all of it.

Were both true...

As a result, the Ancients tried to erase her from existence... from the galaxy, with only the remaining Ancients & the Heroes of Yore remembering her... Celestine had become forgotten.` Basically, she was described as (by the Ancients) the unspeakable third who tried to destroy them all & maliciously take them down with her. And she had to be erased...

However, this did not remedy the situation... Uther was still haunted by Celestine's vision he must hunt down the pink warrior... he will not have his reign end. Icarus was all too happy to take over the Halcandra projects... however, was always constantly reminded of being reduced to flightless astral and still hates her to this day.

While everyone had forgotten Celestine: they all remembered Merlyn. But even though, "Merlyn" had become a legend, many doubted the actual existence... of this supernatural being.

However, there was one person who managed to remember her... and that's where her story ends...

Or maybe not...

Her crystallization saved her preventing her from exploding... So she was still alive in there. They tried to hide her crystal in a cave and seal it off so no one would find her... Little did they know that the cave held one of the dark portals Morpho accidentally ending up in the underworld...

And guess who ends up accidentally winds up there.

BTW they got married in the Underworld

I actually planned this out to be a tragedy, but I ended up making them have a happy ending... (that I can't reveal just yet how it happens in the story)

BUT BEST BELIEVE OUR GIRL GETS EVERYTHING SHE DESERVES AND SITS ON THE THRONE WITH HER KING WHERE SHE BELONGS!

And if you read this long that you for reading! <3

[tohwitchesduels]

Pick a name

Testing here how the polls work now that I'm going to use them, plus I need to make some decisions so buckle up everybody.

So first things first, since I know I can add a poll at any placement, here's my first question: since I intend to add information on what each competitor is capable of in their respective duels (what spells they use, what mindset they have, what tools are allowed) should I put such information first and then poll would be underneath them or should poll be traditionally on top and following information hid under the cut so to speak.

Now, I want people to take into consideration background info FIRST before voting, especially since I have a feeling some people coming here may just jump to conclusions. While I don't doubt people's intuition or knowledge on where characters stand, there's also the fact that some folk may not always know the rules and would pick their faves based on bias, not their strength (I do intend to add disclaimers for this at the top which I feel would be a good solution though background info could cool people down too), plus some background info can also help even the odds at times or make people reconsider things. However, I know that usually polls in Tumblr appear first pretty much always and there would be a lot of info regarding what characters are and aren't capable of so I wonder if you would prefer for such info to indeed be under the cut or screw that and be it front or center.

The second thing is I can't also add multiple polls, outside from picking a battle name, you can also pick the background for my bracket template in the comments, just refer to the pictures with numbers (like number 1 is the first photo):

Heck, I can make it its own post or perhaps I would change backgrounds depending on the qualification rounds. Let me know in the notes

Explanations for each and how potentially the data stats/propaganda would look like in battles (the above detour could also serve as such):

Witches Battles! - Technically speaking, lore-wise it was all the Collector's idea to watch the most powerful teen witches clash and they did refer wrongly to witches duels as witches battles.

Battle Witches! - just a reference to the original idea meta-wise, which is Battle Bladers (if you know, you're a legend). plus rolling the tongue kinda nice if you ask me.

Witches Duels! - classical, but it's not my top pick as witches duels are a custom, so naming this tournament just witches duels feels weird as there is structure to those battles as organized events instead of just random battles. But I will understand if you prefer this name and this reference to the show.

Granted when usually highlighting characters I will use big headers, but there's no need for short explanations of the names here

So anyway, here's the update, a bracket will appear soon (once I make it) and battles shall be announced along with it. Now that I will have a spring break I will try to get into that. It will be a new pinned post (but I will post a link to the first post which explains ALL the rules along with a disclaimer explaining the basic ones) and I will be also adding character profiles. Now, those will always appear underneath each duel, but as I explained in the first post, there will be Battle Royals featuring at times 8/9 people and I don't want for posts to get too big so occasionally I will be just sending links to read, but as they're battle royals, by that point I think people will have memorized the general info and I will add only more unique one separately. It's also worth noting that profile posts will have all the information, while specific duels will have a specific set of information at times (like how they do with palismen for example) so I will also add links to them despite already giving long explanations. Plus I'm also open to adding new information regarding the capabilities of characters featured in battles, so let me know in notes or asks if I miss anything that can determine how could battles potentially turn out.

OK, I think that's all for now y'all.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[dandyshucks]

always forget how much fun i find lineless digital painting until i do it again, for some reason i always expect it to be hell but then i get started and it's like,,, oh wait this fucks actually

WIP under the cut if anyone is curious fsdjkl

~

this is about fifteen mins in, I did a simple sketched outline of the bulk shapes first and then blocked out the gist of everything with my paint brush, and I've just gone in and detailed the hands a bit (since they're a good starting place i think for figuring out lighting :3 <- has no idea what they're talking about)

[swampjawn]

Dungeon Meshi Episode 7 was super interesting from an adaptation standpoint - this'll be a little different from what I usually write about (though I do still talk about the animation in the full video).

Studio Trigger have never done a straight-up manga adaptation before - and led by Yoshihiro Miyajima, a big fan of the manga who pushed hard for the adaptation to get made, and who has never directed a full series before, it was unclear if they'd be able to find the right balance between a simple panel-for-panel recreation and making something that's completely different.

And in the first few episodes, you could really feel the tension between the influence of a cautious young creative with great respect for the source material, and a studio with a unique established visual style. It kinda seemed like they were ping-ponging willy-nillily between the two sides of that spectrum.

But this episode showed that Miyajima (and series writer Kimiko Ueno) can take 3 chapters, slice them up and rearrange them into a cohesive-feeling episode while taking into account the differences between screen and page, and using them to their advantage.

Starting with the way the water looks. This line from the manga describes a faint magical glow to the water in this lake and you can see that the cavern fades into darkness above, but Kui's illustration style doesn't really define lighting and shadows very much compared to the cel-drawing style of animation. So the animators took the opportunity to use the water as the light source, and make a whole episode that's lit almost entirely from below. It really gives an otherworldly feeling to this area.

Particularly when the Kelpie shows up, that under-lighting works wonders to define its anatomy within the relatively simple line art.

What do you do when you can't show the immense fuck-off scale of a monster with a beautiful full-page spread like this?

Well you use what you do have: the ability to move the camera instead. This is such a great way to communicate the scale of this thing, AND such a great way to show some of Senshi's anime-original butt-cheeks!

This is one of my favorite shots from this episode - this whole sequence is super hectic, cutting quickly from character to character, but they use tricks like this to keep you from getting confused. This is framed much like it is in the manga, but with the moving image, they're able to use the trajectory of the fish head in the background to lead your eye directly from Chilchuck, right to the point where Senshi pops up in the foreground and transition seamlessly from one character to another!

Now, it's not all good - I am a bit disappointed that they removed Marcille's own Senshi-style soap-making montage, which was the perfect visual representation of the culmination of the character development and understanding built between Senshi and Marcille.

It's a shame to see it go.

I get more into that, what else was cut, and much more in this video where I broke down the entire episode!

Check it out if you feel like it. If you don't, jump in a ditch, cover yourself in leaves and jump out at people as they walk by.

Thanks for reading!

[iicarused]

##most desired

y!vox x reader // y!alastor x reader // y!adam x reader

synopsis: two overlords and an angel who are insufferably in love with you. // she / her pronouns

beware: DARK THEMES // obsessive behaviour, heavy yandere aspects, stalking,

notes: the most y/n thing i ever made

you were one of the first overlords of hell that remained in the same rank to this day. everyone knew of you and dared not whisper your name in fear that you would come for them. they saw you in the streets or at downtown bars, sometimes at a corner table of ozzie’s. you were a mystery that preferred bringing misery.

little to no people knew of your background. it was swept under the rug to never be looked at again, and maybe lucifer helped with that. you were an angel before, way back when the rules were more strict and heaven was nothing more than a guarded kingdom.

“just one chance, y/n!” adam urged. “one date — that is all i ask for!”

you scoffed at his antics, growing used to his advances of being asked for your hand. “how many times do i have to say i’m not interested? i have work. get going before sera is on my ass.”

sera. your old boss and best friend — everything you worked towards was being at her level — instead came crashing down when you disagreed with the exterminations. adam watched you fall, but sera was the cause.

downstairs, lucifer helped cover it up. it was big talk around hell for quite some time until it was thrown under the rug and you could live in peace. while your power cannot compare to the rulers of hell, it comes close. you’re just careful of not showing that.

the radio demon always shown great interest in you — not that he knew you personally — but enjoyed your story like an old tale. while he isn’t sure which story is the real one, he enjoys the theories that you were just a hellborn that came up.

it was rosie who connected you both. she was a friend of yours, and one of the best cooks you’ve ever known.

“oh my stars! alastor! you have to come meet one of my good friends, you are going to love her!” rosie beckoned. “she is such a pumpkin and the cutest thing! oh, there she is! y/n!, over here sweet pea!” she strides towards your seated area.

you watched your friend gleefully place a hand on the man’s arm, her signature grin tugging at her lips. “this is alastor. alastor, this is y/n.”

it was nice to finally place a face to the name! he had a fondness to you from the start: sat with you at the small of your booth and chatted until nightfall, completely in awe of your welcoming personality.

but why wouldn’t you be welcoming? you are one of the main overlords, what is there to fear when nearly everyone is below you? alastor felt a sort of connection, a relation that you are no different than him.

his admiration only begins to grow from here and continues the more you interact. slowly, he becomes a part of your daily life and starts showing you off to the world that you are an “acquaintance.”

now it was no lie that your name started to spread around hell like a wildfire, especially to know your hiatus is officially over. back to the present of downtown bars and corner table at ozzie’s for dinner — your face was back up to being recognizable — and it was a wonderful change

it would not be until recent years when you would finally meet vox at an overlord meeting: his personality nearly matched yours. if not, then you both had a click that had you both in deep conversation right after.

you could imagine alastors dislike towards that interaction

“so you’re the big talk of hell, huh?” the host approached you with confidence inside and out. “my, what a pretty face! it’s practically made for television, how about we do something about that?” the moment brought your hand to shake his, vox brought you to his side with an arm over your shoulder as he walked you to your seat.

“what do you have in mind?” now, normally you don’t condone this behaviour — but he really piqued your interest. “it’s not like my face isn’t already noticed on the streets, for what reason does it need to be on billboards?”

“stunning features like yours should be shown off, and not just for the streets,” he emphasized. “here’s my card, we could talk more later, dear.”

alastor had a full front view of this interaction and a perfect angle of vox’s smug expression when he watched you tuck the card in your pocket.

now don’t get me wrong, adam has been watching.

he couldn’t let his sweetheart just go to hell like that! littered with sinners and demons and— you get the point. it was hard to recognize him with the mask he now wore, especially since he never made the effort to show himself to you.

what if you were angry at him? he seen your face fall when the topic of exterminating these wretched souls came up. he made a point to his angels that they do not touch a strand of your hair.

he can’t keep himself away from you though, not when there’s no bastards that are getting too cozy with you. his plans of coming back into your life needing to take a charge and fast.

coming down as he pleases to just see you, often keeping his mask on so no demon can see how he looks like. whisking you into the sky so you won’t be able to get away from him

he has your wings on display in heaven, don’t worry about it.

vox and alastor coming to find out someone from the heavens is coming to see you? this is by far the first time in history they will ever come into an agreement of something: no angel hands should ever touch your skin.

alastor makes it a point to constantly whisk you to the hotel, or sometimes his radio station to hide. “they won’t find you here, sweetheart! i’ll keep you safe.”

the way all three of them would become more and more possessive the more time you are with one or the other. you can’t say no, there is denial when wanting to just stay home alone. someone is always at your hip.

there is only so much time where you either kill one of them or they take you and hide forever: but forever isn’t long when adam has his angels searching for you each year.

“c’mon babe! we could go back up to heaven, i’ll pull some strings!” adam often confides.

“we could rule over hell with no one to undermine our power if we took the chance!” vox would persuade.

“we could hide forever and live however you desire if you just take my hand.” alastor chimes.

having these 3 men after you is something you do not want, especially when their obsession levels keep rising. at this rate, murder is an option. it’s only the matter of time.

[pearwaldorf]

I hate that you can't see a tweet thread anymore if you're not logged into Twitter (as a gesture of disrespect I refuse to call it by its rebranded name). Here is a copypasta of a thread from Dan Olson, a Canadian documentary filmmaker, expanding upon camera quality, the guilt trips Somerton used to goose his Patreon subscriptions, and how the best tools will never make up for lack of dedication or patience. I have added clarifications in [[double brackets]] where I feel it is necessary.

START OF THREAD

Okay, so, back in April I snapped at James in reply to a tweet that was linking to this video (which James has since delisted but not deleted) and I want to talk about the full context of that but I don't want to make a video, put your beatdown memes away. [[The video has since been deleted. I can see the title of the video is "Maybe the end (not an April Fool's Day thing".]]

The first bit of context is that I initially got keyed into James to fact-check his claims about indie filmmaking in Canada. As a filmmaker the entire Telos venture was immediately obvious as a juvenile fantasy dreamed up by someone with no idea how to make a movie.

Just wild claims about their plans that weren't worth debunking because they bordered Not Even Wrong. But in watching one of these pitch videos I noticed that he had a $4000 current-gen camera in the background as a prop, and that seemed both pretentious and weird.

You don't use your best camera as a prop, you use your second best camera as a prop. So being an obsessive weirdo I needed to know, and I watched his BTS stuff until I spotted his main rig, a $6000 camera with about $1000 in accessories.

Now, these in isolation are unremarkable because his Patreon at the time was bringing in ~$8000 per month, his channel was a full on Business business, and so investing in some professional equipment of that level is maybe a bit indulgent but justifiable.

What was weird is that he doesn't shoot multi-cam, doesn't shoot outdoors, doesn't shoot on location, and in a studio the two cameras kinda really step on each others' toes. Basically if you already have one and don't need a B cam there's no reason to get the other.

Again, on its own, this says nothing, it's just indicative of poor financial decisions, maybe impulsive purchasing, Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Biblical sins, but not crimes.

Paired with the constantly inflating fantasy scope of the Telos films it was clearly an expression of a very, very common bad filmmaker habit of "if I just get the right gear then my movie will basically make itself" Buying stuff because it feels like progress.

At the end of February he tweets "I want to start shooting anamorphic" and then three weeks later in March he posts the worst, out of focus, under-exposed "I just got a new lens!" video I've ever seen, showing off his trash-covered bedroom.

Based on what's available for his cameras and the lead time, that's enough time to get a Laowa Nanomorph or Sirui Saturn from B&H but not enough time to get a Great Joy from the UK or a Vazen from China. And with the flaring blah blah blah, $1300 lens.

Again, [gear acquisition syndrome] is not a crime and these lenses are budget options. Bit of a pointless impulse purchase since he only used it for the Showgirls video. But this is what he was doing just a few weeks before that above video came out: effortlessly impulse purchasing lenses.

James has (had?) a habit of regularly, aggressively driving viewers to Patreon by claiming that videos were getting demonetized. While tacky, it is something a lot of queer YouTubers have dealt with, so there's precedent there. But people were noticing he did it a lot.

Mid-March he humble brags about needing to work so hard to make 6 videos in April because he has over-booked sponsorships.

Then March 29th James posts this whole incel screed on Twitter about how sex work should be "subsidized as a mental health service."

[two image descriptions.

1. "For the majority of people sex (and human contact) can be imperative to a healthy state of mind. A kind and talented sex worker can make someone feel wanted for the first time in their life. I know sex workers who have pulled people back from suicide just by being there for them." 2. "Not only should (sex work) be legal, but it should be subsidized as a mental health service."]

He spends several days getting absolutely *roasted* for this, just dragged across the pavement and read for filth, and doubles down in the replies the whole way.

So this is the context immediately surrounding James waking up on Friday, and posts the above video and the below tweet.

[image description: "We just got the lowest Patreon payout we've gotten in well over a year. Like, a "maybe we need to rethink things" kind of amount... NOT an April Fools Day thing btw. But I don't know if we'll be making videos much longer."]

Now, this unfolds in kinda two directions. The first is that I'm convinced he was just lying about this income shock in the first place.

There's a million theoretical edge cases about what maybe happened and if maybe he just misunderstood the data or saw a glitch and panicked, maybe one of those happened, I don't believe it, I think he just lied because he was salty about getting dragged and felt owed a win.

A big tell to me is that he doesn't blame Patreon. He says he doesn't know what happened, but let's be real, Patreon screws up all the time, they're the first people anyone blames if anything confusing happens, just as a reflex action, even if it's completely not their fault.

The only reason to not blame Patreon is if you already know that it's not their fault and that any investigation on their part might reveal embarrassing details.

Instead he indirectly blames his viewers for not watching enough, not sharing enough, and not turning on auto-renew.

So regardless of the unknowable truth, this segues into the second, far more offensive direction of the messaging itself. "I don't know if we'll be making videos much longer." "Maybe the end" He explicitly framed this as an immediate existential threat to his channel.

In the video he is vague about everything, leaves a ton of hazy room for plausible deniability on how long the channel can keep going, but the messaging is "I need more patrons right this minute or my YouTube channel is over."

He repeatedly evokes all the "fun stuff" they had planned that would never see the light of day if this didn't turn around right away.

And his audience received this message loud and clear. Tons of people making far, far, far less than him left very heartfelt messages about digging a little deeper to subscribe or up their pledge or unsubscribe from other channels to move their pledge to his.

1200 new patrons in one day.

Since I simply don't believe the income shock was real in the first place that would put his post-"Maybe the end" Patreon income at around $10,000 per month. US. Add YouTube income, he's spent the last seven months making around $18,000 per month.

I have seen creators scale back their capabilities to the bone purely to keep making videos for the love of just, like, making stuff even as their funding evaporated and they needed to go back to a desk job to cover their bills.

You'd have to be so outstandingly reckless with your finances as a channel that a one month spook leads immediately to "channel over, sorry about all the fun stuff we won't get to do with you, our patrons, specifically because you, our patrons, aren't giving us enough money"

And not a spook where you then spend a couple weeks crunching numbers. Oh no. A shock so violent where less than two hours later you're weeping on camera about the channel being over.

Three weeks later he brought a brand new Sony FX6v for $8000 CAD to add to his pile of cinema cameras despite the fact that he was, but scant moments earlier, in such a precarious position that a single bad month would kill his channel.

He stole your money, and for that I'm profoundly sad and angry. That's why I snapped at him in April. I'm sorry I couldn't give you the full context then, and I'm sorry if that anger upset you.

END OF THREAD

[a-b-riddle]

Part Four

Can't stop thinking about reader losing her cool.

"So we're closed, John." You said, trying to be cordial.

"Is that all you have to fucking say?" He practically growled before huffing. A humorless chuckle rumbling out of his chest. "I suppose not since you won't respond to any of us."

"Don't do that." You said taking a step back. Trying to create some distance between you and him. John would never physically hurt you. That much you knew.

"What?" He asked. His voice rising as he stepped closer to you. "Be angry that you pulled that shit and then left? Stopped talking to us. Changed your fucking locks. Last thing we even knew about you was that you got on a fucking plane and left. Even your friends wouldn't tell us anything besides that you were okay." "Which considering this came out of bloody nowhere, I find it highly unlikely that you are in any way 'okay'."

You took a deep breath. You wouldn't be intimidated. You wouldn't clam up. You wouldn't cry. You won't go back on your decision. You will be cordial and polite and not unleash everything you want to.

"I understand you might be upset, but it's for the best. It wasn't working out and I wanted to end on somewhat good terms. I would appreciate it if you lowered your voice and stopped speaking to me in that way." You could barely recognize your voice. It sounded so scripted. So robotic. But it was something you had been telling yourself. Excuses you had been telling yourself.

Because if you told yourself the truth. The picture you would paint would tell a different story. It wouldn't highlight the fact that John spoke to you like he was one of your men or that Johnny had the emotional capacity of a teaspoon. It wouldn't show what a flake Kyle was or that Simon was well and truly a mean-spirited person.

It would show how you weren't worth it. Four possible men. Four possibilities of happily ever after and none of them chose you. That no one ever did and no one ever would. You weren't worth it. You weren't loveable.

It wasn't right, but it was what the voices had been telling you late in the night. When you would crawl into your cold bed. The silence of the room not filled with John's steady breathing or the sound of Kyle's heartbeat as you laid you head on his chest. The absence of Johnny's occasional snoring or whatever Simon was watching playing in the background of your dreams.

In the void, all your dark thoughts came back at you.

"Upset?" He asked, his voice still louder than you would have liked. "An understatement considering the stunt you pulled."

"You think it was a stunt?"

"So Johnny thought with his dick and didn't plan things out. You should have told him instead of crying to Simon and then pulling this shit." "Christ, I knew you were still young, but I didn't take you for that immature."

"You know what?" "I'm done." "I am so fucking sick of making excuses for you all." "You want to act like I'm the immature one, John?" "You are 35-year-old man who cannot separate his work from his work like. You have continuously talked to and down to me like I am one of your men, only to turn around and always blame your shitty fucking attitude on work. I get that your job is stressful, but I did not sign up to be your verbal fucking punching bag."

"And this come and fucking go incident with Johnny. It has been a consistent issue with him coming over just to fuck. I've asked him for that last six months that 'hey, we've been seeing each other for a year and a half, I would love to meet your family' and suddenly the dates stop. He doesn't ask to see me until after 7 PM. He brings food occasionally, fucks me and leaves. Sometimes before I even wake up."

"And the only reason Kyle is the person I am the least pissed off with is because I haven't even seen him." You took a step closer, not noticing how the anger in John's eyes had softened. "I have not seen Kyle in weeks, to no fault of my own. I stopped reaching out to make dinner plans after the third time he canceled on a date night when I was either on my way or already at the restaurant."

"And Simon?" You scoffed. "Well, it doesn't really matter. After all, as he said I get mine. You all make me cum which is supposed to magically erase how shitty you've all been as partners. It's supposed to erase the nights I've cried myself to sleep debating on whether or not there was something wrong with me. How I'm not good enough to meet anyone else in your lives like some dirty fucking secret. How none of you can even bother to pencil me for a group dinner so I can tell you a publishing house picked up my book. How at some point you all stopped caring or maybe never did."

You took a breath. Blinking quickly to keep the tears at bay.

You wouldn't cry. You wouldn't cry.

"As Simon said it best, I should have known that spreading my legs wouldn’t end with one of you putting a ring on your finger.”

For once, John was silent. Unsure of what to say. An apology starting to form at the tip of his tongue before realizing 'sorry' wouldn't cut it. Not this time.

Had he really been that sharp with you? He knew that there were times he had gotten short, but he almost always apologized immediately after. If not at the very moment he took in your crest-fallen face, then definitely later. But he almost always told you he was sorry. Didn't he?

"So as I said," you swallowed down the lump in your throat. "I'm closed. We're done. Now get out." Your face held no sadness. Even though your eyes were nearly full to the brim with unshed tears, you weren't sad.

You were finally angry.

[badgertracksart]

Portfolio advice, from a lead who hires Concept Artists

(This was originally a twitter thread I wrote before the site self imolated, hense it's strange structure.) I wrote this after a weekend of portfolio reviews - 1. Like a maths exam, please please show your working. I want to see thumbs options, mid options and of course a final design.

2. Arrange your portfolio, I don't want to bounce about between subject matter and pipeline. Your portfolio's narrative should be as strong as your work... 3. Please make worlds that excite the viewer, make them want to go in and explore them, explain to them the interesting parts of the town, or the way the character's hat unfolds. How will this draw the viewer in? 4. As I've said before the majority of your project work is explanatory not mood, make sure your portfolio contains explanatory work. Explained here -

5. A lot of beautiful post apocolyptic paintings, , but 80% of realistic games and film, we just give the environment artists photo ref, they are capable artists in their own right. Different work in stylised where you do need to create rules for how things can be translated. 6. Production art contains call out sheets, material references and flat graphics. This doesn't have to be your final image, but it should support it.

7. Design characters on a swatch(es) of the environment they will be viewed in. Not on white. I make swatch backgrounds from screenshots, it avoids assumptions that damage readability. 8. Reverse of this, put people in your environments, show me the scale.

9. It's not a deal breaker for a review, but if you intend to get a job, please show me your work on a screen larger than a smartphone (print outs probably the cheapest option with the best battery life). 10. Please have your contact details clearly visible, and by that I mean email address, I will not pass your social media contact on, I cannot input your form into my tracking system. EMAIL ADDRESS emblazoned and bake it in, sometimes recruiters do funky stuff to pdfs

11. Your portfolio will never feel done, not to you anyway. You will have learnt from your latest pieces and want to apply it to older work. But we know art is a journey. Send your portfolio anyway. I've been in the industry 10+ years and my portfolio is still not 'finished'. 12. If you are applying to an environment centric Concept Art position then please vary your times of day! Golden hour is cool but show me some happy sunny days, looming overcast days, what about at night? Vary your weather too! Sunny snowy day? Rainy Spring day? Stormy night?

13. If you are applying for a character centric Concept Art role then please ensure your portfolio shows a variety of body types and ethnicities. 14. Designing characters for games? Please show back views and feet (!) Many potfolios contain only front views. This is a problem because:

You haven't shown you are considering the design from all angles.

In many games rear view is the main view.

Stop cropping feet.

15. If you are entry / graduating and looking at Portfolios to compare content and standard of yr own work too, look at hired grad/junior artists as opposed to seniors Seniors and leads often have old or personal work in their portfolio which isnt representative of the day job. 16a. Show clearly the intended use case for your Concept Art. Mention the game type in the description. Are these player character designs for a 3rd person adventure game? Then more back views please. Bonus points for diagetic ways of showing health / equipment / role etc.

16b. Are these designs for an FPS? Then really the player view of the gun needs to sell the player style/ choices, in an FPS your weapons are almost your character. Are these world designs? What's the view distance? For an RTS your shapes need to read from above & a distance. 16c. The lack of clarification means I am judging the design in isolation, which both harms the design (you might be considering the backview of a char as the main adventure character.) Or an NPC, their waist up expressions may be important for conveying exposition and mechanics.

16d. Concept art is not separate from gameplay, great concept art serves the game team before it is a good illustration.

17. Play games. A variety of games. Think about them. IMO to be a good concept artist you need to understand the common language & references used by your peers. Also understand the principles and common language your audience are used to. FPS design rules are v.diff from RTS.

18. There are many skills that are needed in concept art, please show them. For example: Graphic design - logos, liveries, typographic use etc. VFX concepts - Abilities, Ambience, motion concepts. Architectural knowledge - How buildings are built! & more but I'm out of space :O

[understandableparadox]

a comprehensive list of everything wrong with hazbin hotel.

quick note before i lose myself in madness, my standards for helluvaboss are non existent because its a free show on youtube. also i kinda like helluvaboss and i will indulge in any bias i damn well please.

oh and spoilers. i guess.

the greater narrative of the entire season is "White lady civilize inner city hoodlum". ex: The blind side. rich girl, affluent family yadda yadda.

the story is set up to be like amphibia, owl house, svtfoe, steven universe, that being starting as something episodic then transforming into story driven narrative. why? because we know the benefits and drawbacks, episodic starts allows us to wander the world, it allows us to understand the dynamics, we are not forced to reckon with anything because there is no deadline. characters are allowed to bloom and shine and the audience can actually get attached.

the source material is Vary Clearly formed from remnants of something out of a middle school edgelord narrative. the usage of transformation, the big spooky grins, the "and then i smile as my eyes glow and-"-isms which in most cases i don't mind because in some instances but in a vary Particular case its astoundingly annoying and that annoyance is like a mold, shit spreads quick.

the color Red. as a lover of homestuck cherubs and karkat and aradia, as someone who fucking loves the color red, it is so painful to say but holy shit tone it the fuck down, i know its hell but their are so many other colors that you can use, its everywhere, the streets, the air, the windows, the screens, the characters, i know the pride ring is represented with red but change up the palates every so often for backgrounds

the rush, this ties into the second point made but i think the story itself is rushed. we know everything way to early. i know way to much and it makes it hard to care about anything because im still trying to digest the last chunk of info. "oh ok, so they clear out hell once a year. oh hell has a heaven embassy? ok. oh that adam the angel, i though he wou- oh its every 6 months now. wait the exterminators die a lot? then why is everyone sca- people in hell already have weapons that can kill angels? w- oh we are in heaven now, ok ma- no one in heaven except for the elites know the exterminations occur? how do-" and its that, just this incessant rush to explain everything to you. notably that's just the god damn spark notes, we need to know everything about the characters now, every single bit of their story, their insecurities, what charlie needs to fix, how she can fix them, the major bad guys, everything. you are never allowed to dwell on a character because we need to rush towards something else. it almost feels like this should have been like... season three, it would have been a fantastic season three if you dropped the introductions honestly.

the concept of redemption. for a story of redemption to work you need to look at three things. What is there crime, Do they want to change, What is preventing them from changeing? there is only one single character that has a notable path of redemption, angel dust, but if you look through their story it feels off. What Exactly is he guilty of? he has sex, does drugs and drinks. his apparent nymphomania is tied to his sad backstory as someone forced into the sex industry so how is that their fault? then if you think about it you start to spiral and notice "hey why are most of these people in hell?" like sure some of them may deserve punishment but then you see the fucking dichotomy and its like "I was a inventor in england and died of the fucking plague, i may have made evil little contraption hoohoohoo" vs "I was a cannibal, a full on cannibal, i fucking killed people and ate them and then someone shot me". ONE OF THESE THINGS ARE A LITTLE MORE FUCKING EXTREME. i'm going to go fucking nuts, the thing they went to heaven with when presenting a case to angels on the idea that redemption and becoming a better person is actually real was angel dust not drinking at a party and not having sex with consenting adults and i want to go fucking insane. WHAT IS THE CRIME, WHO IS THROWING THE BOOK, WHAT DOES THE BOOK INTEL, ARE WE ON GOOD PLACE RULES?! half the cast dont Need redemption they need fucking help, and the other half of the cast do need redemption but they do not seek it making the point moot. sir pentious acts like he has the brain of a hyper intelligent toddler tossing about toys, its almost like he did his one bad thing of spying and then got caught, sank his little diddy about forgiveness and second chances and become a null point through out the rest of the series, sure their was Some weight to him sacrificing himself, he was a decently funny character and he had good moments but him popping up in heaven felt like a fore gone conclusion, he didn't deserve to be in hell so why do i care that he is suddenly in heaven? because its working on the concept the good place already made. no one actually deserves eternal punishment they just need help processing what makes them a dick, but instead of looking at all the parts of the afterlife that make it bad, inefficient and then creating and trying ideas to see if it work instead over a few seasons, we crash dick first into all the major plot points in regards to that and say "tada, we fixed it.".

having a sub-plot about sexual assault and its victims then having multiple sexual assault related gag ruins your point.

don't make a bunch of stereotypically jewish characters into cannibals, that was a big thing, really shouldn't have to say it.

if you are going to make a character black, make them black, you can say alastor was black but sweet seren-fucking-dippity that's not a black man.

pot meet kettle but yeah the cursing could be a little less liberal. maybe just blue hair or the pronouns, not both.

there is a very distinctive art deco/jazz aesthetic which normally i love but i feel as though it is not used to its full extent and in some cases really hurts the character design in and of itself.

this is a vary obvious bit but the story is a million times more interested in gay men then it is of lesbians, which culminates in this insane thing where the writers clearly have more talent or perhaps it would be more abt to say practice writing male gay pining then they are with lesbian pining. which i personally think is hilarious because i did not know you could min max fujoshi-ism that hard.

this next section is more to do with each character on a fundamental level, for the sake of brevity whatever there is left, i'm just doing ones with speaking roles.

13. Charlie:

(see what i mean about that red thing?)

as originally stated charlie fits rather comfortably into every white saviour narrative, though that seems to be part of her joke. though i'm not entirely sure how much of a joke it can be when its rewarded and expected to advance the plot.

her character design says nothing, it has the motif of old puppets or dolls, she wears something vaguely similar to service suits, her demonic form is just some extra horns.not to say every character needs to have their life on a clothes rack but some more snake and goat imagery would be nice

its not the chol design of charlie with snake hair, not an actual problem but its a problem to me, damn you @cholvoq for ruining my ability to look at any of the characters without wishing i was seeing your designs instead.

character wise aside from the white savoir bit, i'm having a bit of trouble understanding what the arc of the character is. she is shown to be naive, someone who doesn't understand how the world works but everytime she says something its something astoundingly clear like "people can actually get better". and its treated like someone demanded faygo in every water fountain. is the joke that the world around her to cynical or is so to naive? please pick one or the other.

now if you know me, you know i fucking hate overpowered characters with a blinding passion, one that would set alit the god damn abyss but in this one special instance, i feel like its warranted, she's the direct descendant of fucking God, she can swing her weight around a little, i mean god damn. she in so many instances looks like shes cowering so often, why would the daughter of lucifer get backed down by some rando pimp? why wasn't she the one to fight adam? sure you can say she is young but how young? her parents were there since pre-abrahamic times, most of the characters showed up in hell in the 1900s, some of them showed up in the 1600s, how old is charlie??? how long does it take for her to learn how to be strong? The story does not suffer if charlie is strong and knows she is strong. it can easily be a case of "i don't believe in violence to a weird degree". fit it into her apparent naivety about the world to believe that violence is never the answer even when dealing with a being that is unilaterally horrible and abusive and monstrous.

she ga- no im kidding, i do think her romance was waysided a bit, it would have been fine to have more scenes of them togather and in love you know?

14. Vaggie

why did you name the lesbian vaggie...? Don't do that maybe?

I like how her design is almost moth like but again i feel as though you could have amped that up.

she feels as though someone tried to combine undyne and pearl from steven universe, same story beats and design elements. it makes it hard to really distinguish her as a character.

i honestly dont have much to say about her. she is fine.

christ kill me, lets just get the big one out of the way

15. Alastor.

God Damn

where to start.

"alastor is mixed race" mixed with fucking what? concrete? there is not a single black feature on that creature, now im not saying you have to make him a png of louie armstrong but it wouldn't hurt to add a curl to the hair maybe? make it a tiny bit more wavy? Something? a crumb i beg of thee?

his symbolism is all over the god damn place, native american monsters (you know the one), voodoo, radio, puppets, stitches, circuses??? and Tentacles i guess. two of those are from closed religions so if you dumped those you would actually get a more concise character focused on the concept of vox populi as a means of societal control and influence as we see in his first song. but again that gets drowned out repeatedly by all the other random toy box bits shoved into him.

tumblr sexy man bait

he serves no purpose in the story. he does spooky stuff, pretends to do things and then goes back to sitting around looking spooky. i understand that his motif is supposed to be aloof mastermind but maybe have him do more mastermindy things? if you remove most of alastors scenes, bar the songs, it doesn't change all to much. husk and nifity can still be at the hotel, they could be looking for outs in their contracts the same as angel dust. hell it even helps with the one scene where he dose some spooky shit, asking charlie for a favor in exchange for his help in the fight with the angels instead of asking him about angel weapons which should have remained a strictly vaggie scene.

his presence in a way delegitimize the story, as I noted in in the section regarding redemption, the three parts are "what is the crime, do they want to change, what is stopping them?" and alastor kinda just spits in the face of that. he is a serial killer cannibal that has no qualms about how evil he is and apparently must continue being evil due to being under the control under someone legitimately called the Root Of All Evil. show him take a slight interest in the idea that maybe shit for him could be better, make him Want Change at the bare fucking minimum or dont have him at the hotel.

his stupid little fucking horns, big shot the troll liker wants characters to have big fucking horns, make them noticeable or dont have them.

he looks more like a dog boy, which could have been an interesting thing with the collar motif but fuck me i guess.

personal pet peeve but i fucking hate characters that have a million plus powers, stick to a set number, be creative.

im getting more petty as i go on so last point: he could have been in less episodes, he didn't need to be in dad beat dad, that should have been just a lucifer and charlie episode. inverse the red and black and i think he would be fucking great color wise, his body type is the same as ten different characters, he isnt radio enough, aside from the voice and and staff if you told me he was the fucking Cat Demon i would have been just as convinced.

16. Angel Dust

what the fuck, gay spider? its hard to actully articulate all the thoughts i have on angel dust, not in the sense that he is a deeply thought provoking character but in the fact that there is not much meat on the bones.

all around i think angel dust is kinda middling. he has a decent enough romance with husk, he has a decent enough story line that revolves around battling addiction and removing yourself from an abuser (which the story tries to brand as "Redemption???")

I dont like that most of his jokes would qualify as sexual harassment, i don't mind him being sexual as a character but continuing on when clearly someone doesn't like the jokes hurts the character.

not a critique but he is pink, which honestly ill fucking take at point, as long as its not more fucking red.

i think his design is an improvement over some of the old vivzie designs but it feels like it could have done with going a few more rounds of design changes.

same thing with alastor, charlie and vaggie, there is not enough of the animal that they are supposed to be. You could have told me angel dust was a fucking bee or something and i would have had to believe you. nothing about angel dust initially says spider, hell he dosent even have enough limps to be a fucking spider.

17. Carmilla carmine

are... are you supposed to be a rabbit...?

Big Yoai Hands

ballet fighting style, could have been cool, wish she fought more like sanji or chun li.

A single mom that works to hard, who loves her kids and never stops-

her song was decent, not great, decent. it feels as though the actress has experience singing but not in the way they tried to make her sing during her two songs. they have a obvious mexican influence, honestly just let her sing in spanish in the english dub. go listen to the spanish dub, "out for love" sounds great in spanish.

i wish i had more thoughts on them, fucking rip.

18. cherri bomb

that's not a punk aesthetic that's 2010s alt

decent character, they showed up once or twice i guess, no real thoughts.

19. egg boiz

absolutely perfect, i have not notes on them, these are perfect creatures.

20. Emily

im so fucking happy to see a singular blue character

does the naive dreamer bit better then charlie

We really shouldnt have seen her until the end of season two or middle of three.

good contrast with the other angels on screen.

Wait she is supposed to be black??? Where???

21. Husk

keith david you absolute delight, Why on gods green earth did they only give you one singing part?

one of the few charecters where its clear husk is a cat, i do like the kinda... marquee design, he is a magic cat, thats neat. i still think you can toss the wings and eyebrows and still have just as good of a charecter.

has a deeply intresting story of someone who died as a nobody, became the fat cat of hell and then was forced back to the bottom by their own vices, not used at fucking all.

huge potential, little pay off.

22. lillith

I know nothing about her except she ditched her kid and husband to vacation in heaven and i think thats kinda funny.

alot of werid things floating around her, again she shouldnt have been shown in the show at all until next season.

23. lucifer morningstar

no notes, funniest charecter, did a song based on friend like me.

few notes: i do like the idea that the immortal symbol of pride is a constant emotional wreckage constantly seeking approval through grand showmanship and manic energy that threatens to take over anything they touch.

would have liked more snake stuff on him, maybe some more goat things like horns.

that is such a stupid fucking staff lmao.

24. Adam.

alex brightman you absolute fucking delight, you should have had more songs.

I wish his design was more focused on the idea of him being a glam rock wash up

I fucking hate his mask

We shouldn't have met him until the end of the season.

25. Niffty

again she is supposed to be a bug or cockroach but nothing about her points to that.

token straight

keeps rocketing back and fourth between sexulization and infantilization

you had kimiko glenn but didnt give her a single fucking song?

26. Sir Pentious

the secret season one redeemed.

the pilot version of him felt more like someone that could do a season one redemption arc, a megalomaniac constantly attempting territory grabs, there is something you can work with, actual character flaws to work through.

essentially a child after the first episode.

actually a snake which i appreciate.

no where near steampunky enough.

27. the villians of the show dont make much sense, each one feels like they should be season long deals on their own instead of a bunch of team rocket esque idiots that show up on occasion, do a bad thing and then leave.

28. Valentino

gOD THERE IS SO MUCH RED

only a moth some of the time.

sucks as a villain, maybe they need more screen time to show why they suck in a more substantial way aside from being told that he sucks.

it is interesting that angel dust is only under his magical control when in the studio, it shows that angel dust has to make a conscious choice to return, which in turn can be made to show how abusers can draw back their victims. I do not think it was done well in this circumstance as it shows him to be cartoonishly evil, constantly flying back and fourth between sweet and utter psycho, there is no actual reason for angel dust to ever actually go back to the studio, he just does so every so often.

29. Vox

legit who cares? the only thing about him that is in any way substantial is all the dope ass fan art we get.

propaganda machine angle that is not explored at all, just hinted at. no actual barring on the story whatsoever.

why didn't he try to do the same shit as alastor by the way? he knows its bad if alastor gets in good with charlie so shouldn't it be a ass kissing race?

same body shape as literally every other male character.

tumblr sexy man version of pyrocynicals fursona.

30. Valvette

the actual poster child of the shows huge problem of "Show me, don't tell me".

apparently the glue that holds the villains together. never shown.

apparently the one that makes the love potions that valentino is famous for. had to learn about that in the fuckin wiki trivias

we know so much about her from things outside of the show.

was there to call carmilla a coward, that's her plot contribution. she shows up every now and again but its never anything substantial and serves to more around take up run time for people We Don't Need To Know Yet.

im not trying to be mean, animation is animation, we need smaller studios to have success in the industry so that other indie studios can have that success, felling a tree makes it easier for others to follow. showing that its possible to number brain rot exacs helps all animators.

but this show has so much bullshit attached to it, it has so much fucking potential that it fries my brain with unyielding frustration.

this took a bit to write, im tired, thanks for reading.

[moon-rivr]

hear me out, we already know Miguel is probably touch-starved, but imagine him being really touch-starved. Maybe the reader is a baker or smth so she's naturally sweet (wink wink nudge nudge) and maybe just a little chubby. Miguel is always shy about asking readers for small things, like kisses and hugs, but she's really nice about it.

One day, Miguel has had a bad day and goes over to the reader's house for cuddles and is very grumpy about it, which makes reader kinda surprised and flustered to see how demanding he is about it. But as he's cuddling with her, he is very touchy per se and won't stop kneading parts of reader's thighs and shmoobis, which makes her really flustered but she doesn't want to ruin Miguel's moment

this could be smutty but fluff and the end because Miguel deserves a little sweetness in his life

sweetest bite

pairing: miguel o’hara x chubby fem reader

contents: thigh fucking, nipple play, mating press, miguel being a munch (as per usual), oral (m), improper use of frosting, aftercare(ish)

author’s note: i’m so behind on requests i’m so sorry, i promise i’ll get to work on them 😭 i hope you still enjoy this though. trying sum new with the whole layout so lmk your thots 🥸

word count: 6.8k (yeah idk how to explain this one chief)

You were the sweetest thing miguel allowed himself to indulge in. Well, you and your pastries. He'd gotten so used to sacrificing his happiness for the better of the multiverse, of sacrificing everything that he had to give just to make sure that it stayed intact. But, he couldn't stay away from the little baker that set shop on 11th street in Nueva York.

"You should go and visit this little shop I found a couple days ago. The empanadas are to die for," Jess had told him after the last batch at the HQ hadn't been up to par with his standards. He wasn't expecting much out of his visit, the most he was hoping for was decent replacement for the botched empanadas and a cup of coffee. After all, Jess had never strayed him in the wrong direction in terms of food.

The scent of cinnamon and a pinch of vanilla filled up his nostrils as he walked into the shop, the aroma providing a homely feeling. It didn't compare to the other shops scattered around the city, the ones who smelt like stale bread and probably had rats scattering around in this back. Every single space from the shop looked clean, the white floors beneath his feet almost showing his reflection.

No, this was one was nice. From the peonies that you had on a vase at the front desk to the sheer decoration of the walls, a couple paintings scattered across the pink and white walls. Nothing looked out of place, everything seemed to coordinate perfectly. The lofi music playing in the background only added to the atmosphere, putting him in a more relaxed mood than he originally was. His jaw unclenched and his muscles were slack, a sense of calmness rushing through him.

The people inside also seemed to have a silent understanding that the atmosphere was supposed to be relaxing, conversations exchanged in light whispers. It was a nice change of pace from the usual bustling streets of Nueva York, almost like a place where time seemed to stop completely. A place that was an escape from the city, a safe haven of sorts. It provided him with a sense of normalcy he wasn't even aware that he wanted.

He normally didn't spend time appreciating the aesthetic of a place given how busy his schedule was, but he could see the appeal of this little shop. He almost regretted not finding this shop earlier, it provided with more relaxation than he'd ever find at the empty tables of the HQ cafeteria. There was nobody here that knew him, nobody there to avoid his presence or criticize his actions. Everyone just regarded him like he was one of their own, continuing on with their conversations.

What Jess had failed to mention to him before he came here is that the owner would be so enthralling. You weren't doing much apart from tapping something into the register yet you still managed to capture his attention. He wanted to look away to avoid coming off as a creep but his eyes seemed to defy his brain's instructions, keeping his attention solely for you. The chatter in the background died to a low hum as he watched you hand a paper bag to the man in front of you.

"How's your wife and kids?" He couldn't help but be taken aback when the question slipped from your lips, surprised at the gesture. Most of the people in Nueva York were so consumed in their own lives that they didn't bother to remember much about anybody else, much less ask any questions that didn't serve them an individual gain. Even with his enhanced hearing, all he could focus was on what you were saying like a siren luring him in.

He could tell from the little smile on your face that the man was engaging in the conversation, your hands struggling to keep up as you talked with him. He'd overheard you mention something about packing in a few extra cookies for the kids, his heart swelling at a gesture that wasn't even meant for him. You and the man kept talking for about another minute before he told you goodbye and you waved at him as he departed the shop. Miguel was next in line, but he felt his feet stuck to the ground like quicksand.

He was so enticed by the sight of you, the way your eyes illuminated under the white lights. Lighting that would normally make someone appear sickly only seemed to accentuate your features out to him even more. "Next, please," your voice came out like sheer honey to his ears, snapping him out of the trance he was in. He took two steps forward, coming up to the register. He'd spent so much of time simply just looking at you that he hadn't even bothered to look over the menu. You didn't annoyed at him for holding up the line, your finger tapping against the marble countertop as you waited for his decision.

"I'll get two of your conchas and three of your empanadas with a hot roast coffee," he finally spoke up after a while, looking over from the menu to you. "You want the empanadas made out of flour or corn?" You inquired after typing the order into the register. "I’ll get corn, please," he pulled out his wallet as he spoke, handing you much more than the amount showing up on the screen. You tried to give him back the change, but it only ended up in the pink tip jar you had set next to the register.

"Can I get a name for your order, please?" You asked him before he had the chance to walk away, his footsteps coming to a stop before he turned over to face you. "Miguel," he responded before he finally stepped away, leaving you feeling flustered and confused. The way his voice sounded to your ears was something out of pure sin, a part of you wanting to indulge in that as much as possible. But you refused to make a big deal out of the mildly handsome customer, refused to make a big deal out of the fleeting glances he shot your way and the way he also seemed to feel a spark between the two of you when your hands touched.

You could feel his stare as you kneaded the dough, but you didn't seem to mind it all that much. It seemed more like he was analyzing you, the way that you moved rather than something predatory. You had a small radio set up in the back to liven up the mood while you were baking, your hips swaying to the rhythm of the salsa song playing. You hummed along to the beat, setting the pan in the oven. You leaned against the counter as you waited, all the other goods pretty much set for another couple hours.

"Miguel!" You called out, watching as he got off the spot he was leaning on and walked over to you. He thanked you once you handed him the paper bag, his fingertips almost seeming to purposely want to touch yours this time around. Nope. Not gonna make a big deal out it. You forced yourself to look away from him as he stepped away from the counter, plastering a smile on your face as you greeted the next customer coming in. Greta. You'd taken the time to learn these people's names and learn what it is that they tended to get just to give them a sense of being seen.

The first bite of the concha had been delectable, a low moan escaping from his lips as he savored the taste of the warm cinnamon and vanilla blending together. He hadn't had a concha like this one since he took a business trip to Mexico. While Nueva York was quickly adjusting to fit the needs of the diversifying population, it didn't mean that every restaurant provided that taste of home he was longing for. Most of them just felt like a cheap replacement of the real thing, the taste usually bland and lacking seasoning.

But now he had an entirely different dilemma on his hands. a part of him wanted to eat the concha slowly, savor every bite of the treat while the other part of him wanted to scarf it down as quickly as he could. Eventually he lost the battle against his self control, eating the two conchas and one of the empanadas. Every part of this evening had surpassed his expectations, the empanadas being more than 'decent.' He would normally be more careful in the way that he ate, but now, crumbs were making their way down his black shirt and to his pants. Yet, he could seem to care less.

"How'd you like the treats? I haven't seen you around before so I'm assuming it's your first time," You asked him as he stepped up to the register, your head tilting back slightly to look at the man in the eyes. The afternoon sunlight coming from the door accentuated his eyes, almost making them look like a melting pot of rubies. While your shop was met with various different people everyday at almost every hour, you knew that you couldn't forget him even if you tried. His name still rang like a melody throughout your head.

"Liked them so much i'm planning on buying another concha," he told you, sliding one hand into the pocket of his pants to take his wallet out. "I'm glad you liked them so much. That'll be two dollars," you told him, taking the money from him and setting it in the cash register. You waved at him as he left, convincing yourself that the look back he gave after stepping out of the shop hadn't been for you. Even if you really wished that it would've been. All you could do was just hope that he would come back again soon.

Going back to work had proven to be more of a struggle than he originally thought, His mind replaying the small moments between the two of you. Your hand grazing against his as you handed him the cup of coffee. The smile that seemed to be just a little bit wider when directed towards him. He could still feel his hand tingling from the spot where you'd touched him, your touch electrifying him every way possible.

"For fuck's sake," he muttered to himself as he opened up one of the files on the monitors, the words blurring together despite his best efforts to maintain his focus. He felt like a fool, being in his 30s and obsessing over somebody in this manner like he was a school boy. Despite the fact that he felt like a fool, he couldn't help the smile that threatened to overcome his features at just the mere thought of seeing you again in that little pink apron. All he could do was munch on the extra concha that he'd bought, his mind constantly wandering back to you.

Miguel hadn't attempted to be in a relationship after finding his ex and his father sleeping together, the experience being enough to traumatize him for this lifetime and the next. He'd given up on being a romantic, of going through the motions of learning what a woman's favorite color was and gifting her flowers that ended up wilting by the hour. He'd engaged in a few hookups from time to time, though he only ended up feeling like an asshole afterwards. They expected his call back, only to have their text not even go through. But.. he wasn't interested in you for that.

Sure, he could admit it to himself that you were probably one of the most beautiful women he's laid eyes on. The way your hips moved in the shop was hypnotic, the small movement making all sorts of domestic thoughts run through his head. But he wanted to know what it was that made you tick, what made you laugh, what it is that made you cry. He didn't see you as a prize to gain, but rather as something that he wanted to treasure. Someone that he could see himself coming home to after a long day of work.

The week following his first visit, he'd been buried under mountains of work. Whether it be misplaced files, a sudden surge of anomalies popping up, or just the daily Spider-Man activities that he was tasked with. He'd been looking for a spare opportunity to go back into your shop, maybe ask for your number this time around, but that opportunity usually got shot down with the amount of work he had due. He'd only managed to get a couple glimpses of you when he happened to swing by your store a couple times, his memory saving the moment like an sd card.

He'd managed to get a few moments to himself on a Friday, leaving immediately to go to your bakery before he got stopped by one of the members. He'd barely had one interaction with you and he was already starting to feel depraved having to go a couple days without talking to you. The bell placed on top of the door announced his arrival as he came in, your attention shifting from the counter you were restocking over to the door. You looked as beautiful as every time he's had the pleasure of seeing you.

"Thought you might've found another bakery to go to, Miguel. After you complimented my conchas too," you spoke first, giving him a teasing smile as he approached the counter. "There's no other bakery that would be able to size up to this one. I just got busy with work is all," he knew that you were just teasing him, but he still wanted to explain himself to you. Though he wasn't sure if you'd even thought about him that much. but surely you had, since you noted his absence. He was struggling the same as you were not to let these little gestures go to his head.

"Do you want what you got last time?" You asked him, his heartbeat thundering against his own ears. It was like you were trying to kill him now. He could understand why so many people came to your bakery now, for that feeling of being seen by you. Of getting that sense of meaning something to someone, well at least enough for you to remember their order. "Make it three conchas instead of two this time, please," he responded, once again giving you way much more than the amount had totaled out to be before going to wait for his order.

All he knew was that he had to have more than the complimentary conversation with you, but he couldn't figure out how to approach it. "The shop isn't too busy, what would you say to having a cup of coffee with me?" He mustered up the courage to ask you, his gaze almost burning into your soul as he waited for an answer. He hoped that he wouldn't push you away with this sudden offer, hoping that it hadn't been too forward on his part. He'd meant for it as a friendly outing for you to relax a while, but he wouldn't be able to deny the fact that he was already thinking of how to ask you on a date.

You looked around the shop to find that it was indeed empty, only a couple people talking amongst themselves left. Even if someone walked in, you had another employee that would be able to assist them. "Sure, let me just go hang up my apron and I’ll go join you," you finally spoke up after taking a couple seconds to consider, turning around to mask the excitement threatening to overcome your body. You slid off your apron and set it to the side, getting yourself a cup of coffee before walking over to the booth Miguel was sitting at. It almost felt ridiculous to admit to yourself that you were able to now find him in every room that he stepped in with ease.

"How long have you been a baker for?" He asked you after taking a bite of his concha, wiping away the crumbs that lingered onto his white shirt. "I've been baking for some time now, since I was in like middle school? I used to practice with an easy bake oven when I was younger before evolving into actually edible things," you shared with him, your eyes practically lighting up at the prospect of getting to talk about something that meant a lot to you. Conversation flowed easily enough between the two of you, an exchange of questions being asked from both sides.

You looked up over to the door when you heard the bell ringing, the second wave of customers walking in. As much as you would've liked to continue talking with him, you knew that your one employee wouldn't be able to handle the rush by themselves. "It was lovely talking to you. but I have to get going back to work," you stood up from the table as you spoke, grabbing the empty cup of coffee. Before you got the chance to walk away though, Miguel wrapped his arm around your wrist. Not tight enough for it to hurt, but certainty enough for it to make you stop in your tracks.

"I want to go on a date with you. I'd really like to keep talking with you, if that's something you wanted," he told you, his grip around your wrist loosening before eventually letting go. You grabbed a napkin from the corner of the table and a pen from your pocket, hastily scribbling out your number on it. "Just text me and we can work something out. I want to keep talking to you too," you responded before you went back to work, though your mind wasn't too much on the baked goods as much as it was on Miguel for the rest of the evening.

Your first date with Miguel was something that you'd never forget, the way he looked over at you every time you had something to share about yourself or the way that he let some of his walls down to let you pass through. But the way that his lips felt against yours was the most memorable part of the evening, your apartment lights just illuminating enough for you to make out the shape of his face. Every date following that one was a moment of absolute bliss, time seeming to stop whenever you two were together.

You were at the dining table when he came back from work, your brows furrowed in concentration as you mixed the bowl in your hands. The sweet aroma of vanilla reminded him that he was home again. The light at the end of a tunnel. it almost got him out of the mood that he was in. Almost. The exhaustion and annoyance from the day managed to maintain their claws on him, his footsteps trudging up the stairs as he went to change. He deactivated his suit, pulling a pair of grey sweatpants and a black tee over himself before going back downstairs.

You'd heard the door open but you were surprised to find that Miguel didn't bother to greet you the same way he used to. 'Cariño, ya llegue,' he'd say after a long day at work, (honey i’m home) Usually taking a seat across from you at the dining table just to hear you talk about your day. You figured that he just needed some space, that he'd come to you if he wanted that sense of intimacy from you again. You busied yourself with mixing in the dry ingredients along with the wet ones, almost ready to put the batter in the oven.

"Missed you so bad, hermosura," you heard from behind you, large arms wrapping around your stomach while his head rested on your shoulder. You were about to tell him that the sentiment was mutual when you felt his hands making their way up to your breasts, kneading them in his hands. He let out a contented sigh as he felt your body mold underneath his hands, having you turn into putty at just the smallest touch. He'd never been this touchy with you before, well he'd never been the one to start off this type of contact.

As much as he liked the feeling of your lips molding against his, the feeling of having your body pressed against him with every hug that he gave you, he never asked for it. He was just.. too shy to even try to start it off. He figured that it would come off as something weird, that his inexperience towards having intimate moments would be shed into the light. He knew that you wouldn't make fun of him for that, but a part of him couldn't help but be wary. He usually just tended to wait until you came up to him, wrapping your arms around him as you sought out for the comfort that only he could provide.

You felt your body being ignited into flames from the way he was touching, your body a manual that he had read thousands of times before. He knew everything that would turn your little head off to anything other than him. You didn't want to stop him now that he was feeling comfortable enough to initiate contact with you, but you'd almost mixed in a spoonful of salt rather than sugar. You willed yourself to finish up with the batter, your hands shaking as you brought the electric mixer down to the bowl.

"Miguel, lemme focus on finishing up with this batch and we can do whatever you want after that," you tried to negotiate with him, the plea landing on deaf ears as his hands travelled down to the expanse of your ass. Your back was arching instinctively, reacting solely to his commands. Sometimes it felt like he had more control of your body than you ever did, every little thing that he did serving a purpose to arouse you even further. He squeezed gently, his hands coming up to rest on your hips as he nestled his head into the crook of your shoulder.

"Don't let me interrupt you. Sigue con tus pastelitos e ignora mis caricias," his voice dropped about an octave as he spoke, his lips dangerously close to your ear. (keep at it with your cupcakes and ignore my caresses) Surely he must've known that what he was telling you to do was pointless. He knew the effect that he had on your body, knows the effect that he's having on you at this moment. You let out a small sigh of relief once the batter had finished mixing in, pouring it in slowly into the pan. You stepped off to the side, putting the pan inside the oven before turning to face Miguel.

"Let me just have your thighs, I won't ask for more," he murmured, his hands coming down to your thighs while his thumbs rubbed small circles on them. At your approval, he went over and sat down at the dining table, his legs spreading to give you access to sit down. He looked like a king sitting down on his throne, his large thighs taking up most of the space on the chair. Almost like he demanded respect. His thighs flexed with every movement, your legs moving on their own accord to get closer to him.

"You have approximately," you started off, your eyes shifting over to the small clock on the kitchen counter, "ten minutes." He let out a small chuckle, lifting his hips up to slide his sweatpants just underneath his balls. He'd made it a habit of going commando underneath his suit, the habit following into his daily attire as well. His cock was already starting to leak precum onto his stomach despite the fact you two hadn't done anything too extreme yet. "That's okay. I only needed nine anyways."

You sat down in between his legs, squeezing your thighs together while the tip of his cock prodded at the underside of your legs. You felt the chair creaking underneath you as he thrusted his hips into your thighs. "Would've done this sooner if I would've known it felt this good. Love your thighs so much, mami," despite the fact that he tried to keep up with his dominant persona, he would do anything if it meant he got to have you like this again.

His hands travelled up his your shirt, rolling your nipples in between his fingers. Your back was flush against his chest as your mouth slightly opened, heavy breaths escaping from your lips. His slick coated the insides of your thighs, wetting them in his essence. Your hand went down to where the tip of his cock was poking through, your thumb rubbing small circles alongside the tip.

"Close your legs a little more for me mami."

"Yeah, just like that," he managed to get out through labored breaths, your thighs squeezing his cock in a similar way that your pussy would. You felt his mouth making its way down your throat, nibbling on the sensitive spots that would have you squirming. His touch was everywhere except for where you needed him the most, your desperation towards the situation growing even further. For someone who'd only agreed to thigh fucking, you seemed to be regretting it already.

You felt your slick leaking down from your folds down to the thin material of your panties, one of your hands reaching down to alleviate the tension building inside you. You hadn't even managed to make it to the waistband before Miguel was already pulling your fingers away, holding it with his other hand. "So greedy. Only I'm allowed to please that little pussy, remember," he warned you, though his voice carried no actual sense of danger to it given how needy he sounded. He made it a point to be the only one to please you, not your own fingers and certainly not anybody else's fingers.

He was rutting into your thighs at an erratic pace, no sense of stability as he felt his balls start to tighten up with every second that your warm thighs enveloped him. That was until he heard the loud 'RING' from the countertop. "No te pares. I'm almost there," he tried to speak over the sound of the timer's ring but you were already standing up by the time he'd finished speaking. (don’t stand up) You wiped away the sweat that accumulated on your forehead, taking a couple deep breaths to get your breathing back to normal.  "What happened to only needing nine minutes?"

He let out a small huff as he pulled his sweatpants back on, staying seated at the dinner table. Miguel wanted nothing more than to take you right now, but he was willing to be patient for a couple more minutes. You bent over to take the cupcakes out of the oven, the scent of vanilla hitting your nose instantly. You almost jumped at the feeling of miguel's hands rubbing your ass through your panties if it hadn't been for the fact you had a hot pan in your hands. You placed the pan down, taking the cupcakes out of it and setting them on a plate to get them ready for the frosting portion.

"Ah fuck," you trembled out as you felt Miguel's breath fan against your wet cunt, your pussy clenching around nothing at the sensation. "Already so wet and I haven't even touched her yet," he murmured, spreading your folds with two of his fingers. He let a globe of spit trail from your ass down to your cunt, feeling his cock strain against his sweatpants. He could feel your clit pulsing underneath his fingertips, your body betraying you when you said you wanted to wait. You wanted this as much as he did. If not, maybe even more.

You pushed your hips back onto his face as he pushed his tongue into your wet cunt, feeling your slick coat every single one of his tastebuds at the contact. He knew how proud you were of the baked goods you made, but none of them would ever compare to the taste of your essence. The frosting on the cupcakes started to come out lopsided as you tried to squeeze it on, your hands shaking every time you tried to bring the pipe up to them. "Don't stop," you moaned out, eventually just giving up on the task of trying to keep frosting the cupcakes. The perfectionist in you couldn't stand seeing the sight of the uneven plaster of frosting.

Miguel ate out your cunt like he was a starving man, the task messy as he spat into it and pushed his tongue inside you. Your slick mixed with his spit, the taste of you almost making him delirious. You gripped the countertop tightly, your eyes fluttered shut as you basked in everything that Miguel was giving you. His tongue swirled around your clit in small circles, the sudden stimulation having your toes curling and your eyes seeing stars. You turned around to look at him, your slick coating majority of his chin while some of it dribbled down to his shirt. His eyes were tightly shut as he focused on the task at hand, almost seeming more into it than you were.

You brought your hand up to his hair, tugging at the roots as you pushed him closed to your pussy. He'd vocalized before about how much he liked the mixture of pain and pleasure, a moan vibrating into your cunt as a response. You felt yourself getting closer to that climax, Miguel’s tongue continuing its motions on your clit while his thick fingers opened you up to take his cock later on. You let out an exasperated sigh when you felt him pull away from you just as you were about to cum, though that was quickly shut down when he pressed his lips onto yours.

You got down on your knees, wet kisses marking his tan skin as you made your way down his stomach. You looked over at him, the sight in front of you truly something to behold. His head was lolled back, half-lidded eyes as he met your gaze. His chest heaved with every breath that he took, growing heavier as he felt your lips starting to make their way down his happy trail. He'd stopped bothering to shave it after noticing how much you liked it, the way you licked your lips every time his sweatpants clung a little too low on his hips.

Though his cock was twitching with need right in front of you, painfully erect, you decided to take your time. You kissed his inner thighs, occasionally marking him the same way he'd do to you. Your fingernails raked their way down his thighs, the muscles tensing underneath your touch. You wanted to tease him just as much as he'd teased you earlier, wanting some type of comeback after your ruined orgasm. You delivered a couple more kisses before making your way to his cock, pressing a kiss on the reddened tip.

“Hand me that bag of frosting, please," your voice came out uncharacteristically seductive to your own ears. You'd grown so used to being the sweet girl at the bakery that you hadn't expected yourself to even be a seductress. Miguel reached over to grab the pipe with vanilla frosting inside, handing it over to you. You squirted a little bit of the frosting onto his shaft, setting the pipe aside before leaning in. Your mouth wrapped around his cock, your tongue licking the stripe of frosting up before pulling away. "Think you're gonna kill me, little minx."

Miguel's hands went down to the sides of your head as you took him in your throat, soft moans escaping from his lips. Spit dribbled down the side of his shaft, your hand wrapping around it as you worked it up and down. Though your hand was smaller than his, he enjoyed the feeling of having you jerk him off. Your touch felt more delicate than his own, which tended to be a series of harsh thrusts just to get a quick orgasm. Your mouth came down to his cock again, taking him in much deeper than last time.

Your hand wrapped around the base of his cock to make up for what your mouth couldn't reach, both working in tandem. Your cheeks hollowed as you tried to take him in deeper, willing the muscles in your throat to relax while you did so. "That's it, taking me so well. Nadie me lo chupa mejor que tu," he praised you as you bobbed your head up and down his cock, spit dribbling from the corners of your mouth.

As much as he wanted to cum inside your mouth and see the way that you struggled to sometimes keep his heavy load inside, he wanted nothing more than to cum inside your pussy beforehand. He pulled you off as the height of his peak, watching your eyes flicker over to his in confusion. You were pretty sure you were doing everything that he wanted you to do from his reactions, the way his moans just so freely escaped from his mouth.

"You didn't do anything wrong. just want to cum inside you before anything else," he assured you after seeing the expression of your face, helping you up from the floor. He wiped away the precum mixed in with your spit from the corner of your mouth with his thumb, holding it against your lips. He watched as your tongue darted out before enveloping his finger into your mouth. The way your tongue wrapped around it was heavenly, your eyes shutting as you cleaned off his finger.

Miguel went over to the sink and ran a paper towel under cold water, cleaning any remnants of the frosting that might've been left behind. The last thing the both of you needed was for you to get a UTI as a result from this encounter. He came back over to you, kissing your cheek and muttering some apology about the cupcakes. Not that you cared about them anyways, all you could think about was Miguel having his way with you. He grabbed your hand and intertwined with his, leading you out of the kitchen and out into the living room.

Miguel led you over to the couch, raising your knees up to your chest. You placed your hands underneath your legs, watching as Miguel gave himself a couple languid strokes before slowly pushing his cock inside. "Fuck, you're so tight," he groaned out as he felt your walls fluttering against him, your cunt stretching to adjust to him. Your mouth was parted in a 'o' shape as he pushed his cock even further, your wetness coating his shaft with every delicious inch that he pushed inside.

He loved looking down at you in this position, at how your face contorted into one of pleasure as the sting from the stretch settled in. The way that your tits bounced in sync with every single one of his punishing thrusts. He loved every single part of you, even the parts that you found yourself complaining about at times. He wanted to drill into your head that you were desire embodied, that nobody would be able to compare to the way that you do. No one was even close to comparing to you in his eyes.

Your body was basically bent in half as you laid there to take every single inch that he had to offer, the tip of his cock bulging against your tummy. "Feel how deep I am in you, mami?" He murmured, pressing his hand down where he was at before retreating his cock in one swift motion. The loss was quickly replaced when he thrusted back inside you, relishing the feeling of your walls clenching around him like a vice.

His heavy balls smacked against your ass with every thrust that he made, the sound of skin slapping echoing through the otherwise empty apartment. The loud squelch of your essence coating his cock added onto the symphony of sounds, moans escaping from the two of you as he started to get deeper with his thrusts. You felt filled up to the brim, yet it almost felt like you weren't getting enough. The desire you felt for Miguel wasn't something that was easily satiated, if anything it only grew more with the attention that he was giving you.

The hand that wasn't holding your legs came over to his arm, gripping it tightly for some kind of thing to tether you down to the moment. Your pussy clamped around him a vice, prompting him closer to his orgasm. He prolonged it as long as he could, reciting useless science facts inside of his head. An octopus has three hearts. Though his stamina was high enough to get hard after his orgasm, he didn't want to ruin the moment between the two of you by cumming prematurely.

One of his hands went down to your clit, stimulating the bundle of nerves between his thumb and pointer finger. He rubbed small circles on it, his speed matching the rhythm of his thrusts. Your nails dug into his forearm the harder that his thrusts got, the pain only serving to accentuate his pleasure. "Fuck. Pussy's practically milking me," he uttered, his voice coming out in a groan at the way you were squeezing around him.

Your legs dropped down from your chest, wrapping around his legs as you held him close to you. If he'd even fathomed the idea of pulling out beforehand, the idea was quickly removed from the forefront of his brain the moment you did that. "Cum in me, please," your voice came out whiny as you felt yourself getting closer to that release, your toes curling from every rub being given to your clit. "Cum with me."

His hand enveloped yours as he slid in and out of you with ease, his pace having no rhythm now that he was approaching his orgasm. His thrusts were erratic as he worked the two of you towards that cliff, his fingers gripping yours tightly as if you were a lifeline. Warm ropes of cum shot up your cunt, your walls coated in white up to the brim. His orgasm had prompted your own, your eyes rolling to the back of your head as you creamed over his shaft.

Your release mixed with his to form a creamy ring around the base of his cock, some of the liquid leaking out from your cunt. He stuffed it back in with the tip of his cock to the best of his ability, a moan escaping from your throat at the feeling of him sliding in once more. While you could usually match his stamina pretty well, it'd been days since you'd last had sex with him. You were starting to feel worn out from the physical strain he'd put your body through. You wouldn’t change this feeling of euphoria for anything else though.

Miguel slid his softening cock out of your cunt slowly, careful not to overstimulate you in the process. He leaned over and pressed a kiss on your forehead, wiping away the sweat from your forehead. "You did so good for me, lindura," he whispered in your ear, stroking your thighs in soft circles before standing up from the couch. "Stay there and I'll come back with some clothes."

You looked over at him and gave him a nod, your body falling limp on the couch as you felt an ache forming on your legs. You closed your eyes for a second, or what you'd assumed was a second, only to open them to see Miguel standing over you with a pair of pajama shirts and one of his t-shirts. "Try to sit up for me. You don't have to anything," he reassured you, getting to work on cleaning you up before dressing you after you'd sat up.

The two of you sat on the couch with a cheesy romance movie the two of you weren't watching, each holding a cupcake. His hand wrapped around your shoulders, holding you close to his body as his hand lazily drew circles on the side of your stomach. "I see why you liked that thing with the frosting. It's pretty sweet," he noted after taking a bite from his cupcake, leaning over to grab some that was sitting on your nose for a while. You let out a small contented laugh, poking the side of his cheek. There was no other place that you'd rather be other than his arms at this moment.

taglist 🫶🏼: @yougavemeyourheartyouknow @lazyjellyfish300 @pxtched @nympholove @ifiwasaguybrickedup @yournextbimbogf @nixinluv02

[wcters]

𝟳 𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗨𝗧𝗘𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗬/𝗡 𝗕𝗘𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗖𝗨𝗧𝗘

pairing: matt sturniolo x fem!reader

word count: 2.5k

summary: a video that someone put together of moments where you and matt where being cute

warnings/notes: established relationship, swearing, pda, i’m trying to be inclusive so please let me know what i can do that i haven’t done already!

In the beginning, you could say you were kept a secret, but only because you didn’t want to be in the public that early in your relationship. Besides that, your and Matt’s relationship was never kept hidden. Matt loved you and liked to show you off, but you weren’t a social media person. You were fine with being in the background of things and posted on his social media, but you wanted your private life to stay private. You knew what you were getting into when you decided to date an influencer, and you had no problem with it as long as he respected your wishes, and he did.

You didn’t even know he was an influencer when you met, not being on TikTok a lot. You were working ━━ and still are ━━ at a clothing store in LA when you first bumped into each other ━━ quite literally. You were coming out of the back when he backed up into you. You both apologized and went back to what you were doing. You asked your co-worker if she knew who he was because you thought he was attractive. She told you he had been there a couple times before but didn’t know his name. When you were ringing him through, you gave him his receipt. He grabbed it, wrote something on it, and handed it back to you. Low and behold, it had his phone number and name on it.

Ever since then, you two had been . . . You. You immediately kicked it off, going on dates and hanging out, finding out about how he was a triplet ━━ you assumed after seeing the three of them in the store ━━ and finding out he was famous. You used that word, he denied and told you he wouldn’t call it that making you laugh. You had moved to LA for school, and told him that you wanted your private life to stay private if you got together . . . And it did.

You did end up being in the background of videos and livestreams, posted online, and you did feature in a podcast episode, but you never expected videos or compilations of you or matt, let alone just you, so you were surprised when you saw a video titled 7 minutes of Y/n and Matt being cute. You have to admit you smiled and took a screenshot, planning to show Matt when you next saw him. You would wait if you weren’t impatient . . . But you were. He could watch it later. You hadn’t really had a clue as to what would be in it. You didn’t really pay attention to clips of you or you Matt. You had Matt as your boyfriend to experience those moments.

The first series of clips to show up was the many times you had walked in to Matt’s room while he was streaming, and not realizing until you stopped looking at your phone and saw him looking at you. This was always followed by your voice off camera apologizing and him replying with ‘it’s alright babe. You need me to get off?’ He always asked you that when you walked in, not wanting to put the stream over you, and he never did. If you said no, you’d either lie down in his bed and go on your phone or head out to the couch to watch a movie. If you said yes ━━ which you rarely did unless you had a bad day ━━ he would immediately end his stream with a quick goodbye and his attention was on you in an instant.

There were multiple times where you had to help the boys with something for a video. Whether it was setting something up, figuring something out, etc. you were always there. Sometimes it was off camera, sometimes Nick would cut it out, but this time it wasn’t. You remembered them filming this video, being over there when it happened to help if needed and make sure nothing bad happened (them burning another house down).

The three of them had managed to get it out of the box and bag and get it into the right position, but not how to get some of the poles in. “Maybe we should ask Y/n?” Chris suggested as he held up the tent. “No, we don’t need to.” Matt shut down the question as he fiddled with the metal pole. The oldest and youngest were caught looking at each other before they both yelled ‘Y/n!’ You were seen running in, panic in your eyes before you realized nothing bad had happened. “You scared the shit out of me,” you told them, half scolding them, “either way, what’s up?”

“We need help.” Nick smiled, holding up the tent. “You don’t know how to set up a tent?” “We do, it’s just a bit more confusing inside.” Chris answered. “I had nothing to do with this.” Matt butted in, hands up in defense. “Alright. Back up.” You noticed why Nick maybe kept it in as you watched the clip. You were instructing Nick and Chris who were holding up the tent as Matt was gathering more poles. When you asked him to pass you one, you kissed him on the cheek as a thank you forgetting you were on camera. After that, Matt had looked at you like you hung the moon and the stars. To Nick and Chris, you did as you had help them set this whole thing up. To Matt . . . He was just admiring his girlfriend.

After you had gotten together, it became second nature for him to let you know if he was coming up behind you. His hands would grab your waist while he made his passed you. It was seen in the background of multiple TikToks. You didn’t really notice it happening after the first few times because it had become so normal for you, but clips of these motions had made it into the video. You didn’t think those were caught on camera . . . But you didn’t really mind. You thought maybe part of it was because of you how you met, but you really didn’t know, and you’ve never asked.

The next clip was one you’d never forget. When Nick and Chris asked you to help them prank Matt . . . How could you say no? You would never be involved if it was something bad, and this one wasn’t. You knew about Matt’s “crush” on Liam Neeson ━━ having had an idea before he ever admitted it by the amount of times you watched movies and Liam Neeson just happened to be in it ━━ and almost laughed when they told you the idea.

They had asked you to distract him for a long enough time that they could set up all of the pictures, blankets, etc. You wouldn’t say this to Matt’s face, but his room was a little boring - he had the same black pillows and comforter. Without any of your stuff that you had “left” in the room, you were worried about what it would look like. When it got closer to the time that you would be heading back to the house, you had started to get excited. Matt had noticed this and asked what was up, so you had to play it cool . . . You aren’t good at that and you ended up texted Nick and Chris saying something along the lines of ‘he knows somethings up, I don’t have a poker face.” Either way, he didn’t have a clue what was happening.

Your and Matt’s footsteps could be heard through the camera as you made your way toward the door. Matt had texted his brothers and when they didn’t answer, tried to FaceTime them. That’s what could be seen when Matt opened his bedroom door with you behind him smiling. “Oh . . . my god.” Matt spoke, shock on his face. Chris and Nick laughed in response. “This is the prank?” He asked them, “Liam Neeson all over my bedroom is the prank?” The boys nodded. “Wait - Were you in on this?” Matt asked as he turned to you walking toward him and into the room. “‘Maybe.” You shrugged. “I knew something was up,” he wrapped his arms around you as you walked, “you were acting weird.” “I don’t have a good poker face!”

Matt continued to look around the room before Chris turned his camera to face you. “How do you feel about this?” “Well, it’s just a little more Liam Neeson than normal, but it spices’s his room up a little bit more.” “Totally.” Nick agreed.

You had a habit of leaving your things with Matt. Most of the time, it was due to the lack of much needed pockets in women’s pants. When you didn’t ━━ or forgot to ━━ bring a purse, you’d ask him to throw a chapstick or a hair tie into his pocket or wallet. Other times, you were just too lazy to carry something and didn’t want to stick it in your bra.

You also tended to get Matt little keychains to hang on his backpack or car keys. Most of the keychains were from when you went back to Canada to visit your family and bought him something, but you also liked to thrift them too. He would always take them and immediately put them on something. It was his way of silently showing that your his girlfriend and that he loves you, and the things you do for him. Giving him things was your way of saying he’s yours too.

When they posted the TikTok of guess who’s is who, you expected them to only do their things because it was about them, but you were surprised when you saw little bits of you in there. A Canada keychain hanging on his car keys and backpack, a hair tie with his jewelry, and chapstick with his skincare. The comments were flooded with people talking and mentioning you, knowing which one was Matt’s stuff. You smiled when you saw this being featured, and your comment that said ‘girlfriend duties”.

When you had featured on the Cut the Camera Podcast, you had mentioned the Let’s Trip and Versus tour and how you and Matt had to do long distance for a bit. You went to a few of their shows - being flied out per Matt’s request ━━ but because fn your job, you couldn’t be with them the full time. When they were on tour, it felt like you and Matt never saw each other, but in reality you two spoke almost all the time. To some people, Matt could be described as clingy, but you were too . . . And you didn’t mind that about each other.

You never knew that your FaceTime’s were ever caught in camera, but they were in this video, so you guess they were. The boys had done vlogs on the bus, as well as TikTok’s, and this video showed Matt talking to his phone that showed a blurry you. You didn’t even spot that. You could hear you and Matt talking, but too quietly to make out what you were talking about. Long distance was always hard for you and Matt, but you made it work. You would be stupid not to.

When the boys travelled for videos, you usually didn’t go. Not that you didn’t want to, but you had a job in LA and couldn’t be travelling all the time. But when Matt, Nick and Chris asked you to come with them to Texas to shoot a video for Sam and Colby and tour the city, you said yes. You’ve been to a couple of states in the U.S. and thought ‘why not?’ to visiting Texas. Plus, Matt had talked about that amazing thrift store they went to while on your and you were a sucker for vintage.

You didn’t feature in the Sam and Colby video ━━ besides little bits of you in the background ━━ and offered to film if they needed someone to. Matt was scared, and wanted you there. Nick had gushed to you about him wanting to do the Estes method, and you and him wanted you to witness it. You did, however, feature in the Texas vlog the triplets put out on their channel - being seen in the background. But this clip was a specific one from the video.

You were used to the cold, having grown up in Canada, and handled it pretty well. But one night when you went out for Italian, you didn’t dress well enough for the weather. You didn’t think Texas would be that cold . . . But you assumed wrong. While Nick and Chris were talking to the camera, you were in the background shivering with Matt beside you. You were in a long sleeve, vest, and sweatpants. Your legs were warm, you upper body? Not so much.

“You alright?” Matt asked you, moving behind you to wrap his arms around you. “Yeah, a little cold. But it’s fine.” You replied, leaning into him. Matt was like a walking heater. “You sure? You want to switch jackets?” He leaned his chin on your head, swaying you back and fourth. “I’m alright, but thank you. You’re too sweet.” Your conversation wasn’t heard by the camera, but your movements were. Matt could be seen moving his hands up and down your arms and holding your hand as you walked into the place.

You and Matt had similar, but different music tastes. You would recommend each other songs and made playlists, as well as a playlist you both shared with music you both liked. You two would listen to this constantly; while hanging out, in the car, baking and cooking, just doing regular tasks. Matt had given you some guilty pleasure songs, and you had given him some . . . Though he would have never admitted it to anyone besides you. That was until the truth or eat video.

“What is your guiltiest pleasure song and when was the last time you listened to and got into the groove?” Nick asked Matt. He paused, a couple songs immediately popping into his head. “I got to check,” he said as he took out his phone and opened your shared playlist. “This is one that Y/n showed me one time and she loves it.” Matt clicked the song and it started to play. “That sounds like Y/n,” Chris nodded as Nick agreed. “Yeah, that would be my guilty pleasure song. It’s one of her favourite songs so it’s on a lot.”

You remembered seeing a lot of top comments on the video taking about it and seeing the clip a couple times on TikTok with the comments being the same. The next clip after that one was an Instagram story you posted of you two in the car, Matt driving and lip-syncing to the song. Everyone had freaked out over that.

People would also freak out when you would wear his clothes. You had a habit of doing that, you lived oversized and Matt has Great style. TikTok’s and Instagram stories of you wearing a sweater or sweatpants that people recognized were Matt’s were also littered through the video as well. And moments of him slipping a sweater on you or turning you around to see if it was his.

A lot of the moments included in the compilation were just regular things that couples did . . . But you loved the video. You liked it, and sent it to Matt over text with the message ‘people must really like us’. Safe to say, the person who had made it freaked out.

[yepthatsacowalright]

"There are situations in life where we find ourselves holding our breath, and getting the fists clenched, or the shoulders come up, or the jaw gets tight. It actually isn't doing anything for anyone, that tension. As soon as you notice tension - in jaws, shoulder, neck, hands, belly, those are kind of key places - as soon as you notice it, why not just let it go, and then see what happens? Actually you can deal with situations of stress much better in a state of relaxation than in a state of tension. It's no good relaxing in a relaxing atmosphere - I mean, yes, it's nice to relax in a relaxing atmosphere - but that's not what the relaxation awareness is about. We're discovering relaxation through noticing unnecessary tension, discovering how to let that tension go, so that when things get tough we can stay relaxed. And you're relaxing in order to do something, so the tension that gets held in tense muscles redirects... If that emotional content stays in the holding muscles it's doing nobody any good. It's pointless. So you might as well relax and then see what happens." - Kristin Linklater, Freeing the Natural Voice with Kristin Linklater on The 21st Century Creative podcast