#they might've been really excited about it but now we're saying no we don't want this

[ahgasegotarmy116]

Still With You | A Jeon Jungkook Series | Chapter Seven

Summary: Jungkook introduces you to his Hyungs but his jealous streak comes out and shows you the worst of him Pairing : Luna (reader) x Jungkook and Jimin, f2l love triangle Word Count: 4.5k~ Warnings: JEALOUS JUNGKOOK like I mean jealous, possessive, territorial the whole nine yards (and it's pretty hot ngl lmaooo) which leads into an argument, explicit language (I think?) making out and all that stuff a/n: I have part one through eleven written already so I figured I would just post this to fill up some space until the next update for my other stories :) Start from the beginning

As Jungkook leads me towards his hyungs I feel myself getting a little anxious. I know I'm safe with Jungkook but I'm on edge nonetheless since I'm still not sure why we're here. The guys turn their backs and start walking towards the building behind them and we follow close behind.

Looking around I notice that this place almost looks like the bare bones of a warehouse but from the looks of it someone has been working on remodeling it. 

Once we get to the back Namjoon opens a door and leads us down a set of stairs onto what looks like a boardwalk. I knew we were getting close to the coast but I didn't realize we could get to a place like this so quickly. 

As we make our way down the boardwalk I take that time to look at all the little shops lined up on either side of us that have been long forgotten and start to imagine what this place might've looked like in its heyday.

Getting too lost in thought I feel myself trip on a loose board, and before I even have a chance to react I feel a pair of hands on my waist steadying me before I fall.

"Hey daydreamer, you alright?" Tae says with an amused smile. "Yeah, sorry" I say, quickly tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear that had fallen out of place. "You don't need to apologize" he says warmly "Just watch your step okay? Do you want to hold my hand just in case?" he offers. 

"No she's fine, I'll help her" Jungkook says coming out of nowhere and pulling me in by my waist from behind. With my back now up against his chest and his arm wrapped around my waist protectively I give Tae an awkward smile but I can see from his expression that he's clearly enjoying Jungkook's reaction. "Let me know if you change your mind" he says sending a not so subtle wink my way and giving Jungkook a devilish smile clearly taunting him. 

"What is this place?" I ask aloud in hopes to direct Jungkook's attention to something other than boring holes into the back of Tae's head. "It's an old boardwalk that my uncle just bought" Namjoon answers having overheard my question. 

"It used to be super popular back when he was younger but I guess people stopped coming once that new shopping mall opened up a couple of miles down the road. They ended up losing too much business so they finally closed up about 20 years ago, it's kind of been frozen in time ever since. He just started working on restoring it and he finally finished the arcade about a week ago, so I thought I would finally invite you guys to come and check it out!" he continues. He seems to be putting on a laid back act but I can tell he's really excited to show us.  

I look up at Jungkook with my back still pressed against his chest and notice that he hasn't made an effort to follow the guys into the arcade. "Is everything alright?" I say seeing his jaw clenching. "Jungkook" I say hoping to bring his attention back over to me. 

"Huh? What? What'd you say?" he says finally breaking out of that possessive headspace. "I asked you if everything was alright? You seem a bit tense" I say turning around to face him. "Everything's fine, it's just, I didn't like the way he was looking at you" he says finally admitting to his jealousy. 

"I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, from my perspective it seemed like he was trying to get a reaction out of you and you gave him exactly what he wanted" I say placing my hand on his arm.

"Kook I'm here with you. I came to meet your friends but I promise you, you have nothing to worry about" I say looking into his eyes trying to convey my sincerity. He looks away from mine and huffs, "Maybe it wasn't a good idea to introduce you guys".

"Aw come on they're harmless!" I say laughing at how moody he's been ever since we got here. "Plus Tae was just trying to make sure that I didn't fall" I say explaining the situation. "Yeah I know, I saw" he says looking back down at me. "So then why are you still upset?" I ask hoping to help him make sense of situation. 

"I didn't like the way he was touching you either" he says, continuing to justify his reaction. "Oh come on it wasn't that bad, see?" I say placing his hands where Tae had touched me. Looking back up at him I now realize what he meant, and feel my heart rate pick up under his gaze. 

"See" I say, clearing my throat, "It's nothing" I continue trying my best to convince him. He looks down at me and I can feel my skin burning up from the intensity of his stare, and then let out a small gasp as he quickly pulls me in by the waist.

"Now is it nothing?" he says into my ear in a tone that wakes up all of my sense. "Tae didn't do this" I respond in a breathless tone feeling the mood change drastically.

"Yeah, but he could've" he says continuing to speak directly into my ear, feeling his warm breath fanning my neck. He leans in closer and I soon feel his soft lips placing feather light kisses on my neck and now exposed shoulder. 

"Jungkook" I choke out trying to keep a level tone. "What if someone sees?" I continue once I realize he isn't stopping. "Good, because then they'll know who you belong to" he says stopping his kisses only long enough to respond. He increases the intensity of his actions and walks towards me placing my back up against the wall of the building behind me. 

I hiss slightly once I feel him start to bite and suck one spot, now realizing what he's doing. Before I'm given a chance to protest he crashes his lips against mine, swallowing the beginnings of an argument. 

The kiss is rough from the very start, feeling him kiss, bite and suck on my lips with more intensity than I've ever felt. I try to suppress a moan from coming out but it's impossible from the way he has my head spinning. 

Feeling myself running out of breath I press on his chest firmly and he pulls away from the kiss, resting his forehead against mine. Looking into his eyes and seeing the way he's looking at me makes it even harder to breathe let alone think and before I have a chance to say anything he whispers "Mine".

"Hey are you guys coming in or what?" Jin yells from the doorway. Jungkook takes a deep breath and calls out "Yeah we'll be there in a minute Hyung" not making efforts to move away from me just yet, but nonetheless Jin in turn retreats inside. 

"I don't want anyone else touching you like this. Do you understand?" He says firmly. "Jungkook I already told yo-" I start in protest still feeling breathless. "I don't care. I just want you to know that I don't want anyone else being this close to you" he says cutting me off and making his stance clear. 

"Okay" I respond, not really knowing what else to say. "But did you really have to give me a hickey to prove your point?" I question rolling my eyes at him.

"No, but it was a nice touch" he says with a smirk rubbing his thumb over the mark. "Oh so giving me swollen lips from making out wasn't gonna be enough for you?" I call after him as he walks away towards the arcade. "Nope" is all he bothers to say before opening the door and waiting for me to catch up. 

"You're insufferable" I say as I walk past him and he gives me a light slap on my ass in response. I glare at him but am cut off before I can even utter a word of scolding by Namjoon asking me to come and play a basketball game with him. Gladly accepting I take the first chance I have to escape Jungkook before giving it a second thought. 

"Have you played this game before?" he questions and then glances down at my neck where I can only assume is the place where Jungkook's mark has started to bloom.

"Uh yeah I have" respond shortly, turning away from him to place it out of his line of sight. He starts the game without any other questions and we keep going until the timer runs out. 

"Yes!" he says exclaims in victory. "Yah!" Jin exclaims, having seen the exchange. "Don't be rude, you challenged her to your favorite game so of course you won" he further scolds. "It's okay Jin, I'm not very good to begin with but it was still fun!" I say trying to lighten the mood. 

"Why don't you pick out a game and then we'll see who wins next" he says giving me a genuine smile which happens to be accompanied by two adorable dimples. "Sure! Best two out of three?" I propose excited for another chance at victory. "Best two out of three" he repeats in agreement. 

"I would propose to play a few more but my guess is that he won't let me keep you for that long" he continues, nodding his head towards Jungkook who has his eyes trained on the both of us. "He can get over himself" I say turning back towards Namjoon. 

"Now, what would you say to playing a round of Guitar Hero?" I ask excitedly. "I would say I should just accept defeat right away" he admits laughing at his lack of luck with said game. "Oh come on it'll be fun!" I say trying my best convince him to play. "Alright let's get this over with" he says shaking his head and laughing, knowing the future result.

"Man... you really do suck at this game Hyung" Tae says after watching the beating Namjoon just took from me. "Hey he tried his best" I say placing a hand on his shoulder trying my best to keep my composure.

"It's okay Luna you can laugh" he says giving me a painful smile. I can't help but break after being given permission and feel Tae joining right along side me as we laugh for a bit at Namjoon's clumsiness. 

"I'm sorry Namjoon" I say, still trying to calm down. "It's okay, and call me Joon okay? Namjoon sounds way too formal coming from you" he says playfully.

"Alright Joon" I start, complying with his request. "What should our tiebreaker game be?" I ask, feeling the tingling sensation of victory continue to run through my veins. "Hmm" he says looking around the room before laying his eyes on a particular spot. 

"Air hockey?" he suggests. I can see from his expression that he's trying to hide his confidence under an indifferent demeanor but what he doesn't know is that I haven't lost a game of air hockey in 7 years. Even Jungkook with his competitive spirt refuses to play with me anymore. "Sure, why not?" I respond following suit in trying to conceal my excitement.

Walking up to the table I look over at Jungkook and see he's still there watching me closely and I can see a smirk slowly growing on his lip. I don't make an effort to give him a reaction in return and turn back towards the table to grab a hold of the mallet. I feel the air turn on and notice that the puck comes out on Namjoon's side. 

"Why don't you start?" he says making moves to hand me the puck. "No that's okay, age before beauty" I say and hear the boys laugh at my response as they all seem to have drawn their attention towards our tiebreaker challenge. "This is gonna be good" I hear Tae whisper to Hobi but I try my best to not let our little audience psyche me out. 

Taking a deep breath I watch as Joon starts to place the puck on the table and sends it my way. I in turn send it back to him but bypass his mallet and hear the clinking sound signaling my first point.

All the guys react by laughing, cheering or teasing, but as the game continues I have yet to hear one voice during the entire match but I do my best to keep my head in the game nonetheless. 

Once the time clock is close to running out I hear the boys countdown from ten and then feel that same thrilling sensation of victory I've felt time and time again as they finally shout out zero.

I celebrate my victory for a second or two along with the guys but after taking a couple of steps back from the table I cut my cheers short as I feel myself hit a wall of muscle accompanied by arm slowly wrapping around my waist.

"Good job Noona" Jungkook says in a low voice fanning his breath against my neck again making me shiver at the unexpected contact. "How many wins in a row is that now?" he continues, speaking softly enough so I'm the only who can hear. "I-i've lost count" I stutter for a second and clear my throat immediately after. 

"I'd expect nothing less from my champion" he says as he rubs his nose into the side of my neck, taking a second to gently breathe in my scent before taking a step back making his hold a little less intimate. 

"Wow Luna! I had no idea you would be that good! I can see why Jungkook has always been so competitive being friends with someone like you" Hobi says with a big smile on his face. "Thanks! I think?" I say confused as to if I should take it as a compliment. 

"You're a worthy opponent Luna, I'll give you that" Joon says coming up to me and giving me a high five. "You too! Not gonna lie, it bruised my ego a bit losing the first game but I guess you could say it kickstarted my competitive nature" I laugh. 

"Thanks for asking me to play with you!" I continue, giving him a friendly smile. "Anytime" he responds reciprocating my smile. "Hey Hyung I think Jin Hyung is looking for you" Jungkook says while pulling me in closer. "Oh alright, I guess I'll go see what he wants then" he says and makes his way over to the man in question.

"You know you don't have to do this right?" I say turning around to face Jungkook who is still holding me. "Do what?" he says feigning innocence. "This" I say running one on my hands up his arm. "I always do this though" he says in defense. "Jungkook I already told you that I'm not interested in any of them" I say trying to reassure him yet again. 

"It's not you that I'm worried about, it's them" he says glancing over at his Hyungs, now surrounding Yoongi and Hobi while they compete in some sort of racing game. I don't bother to look at them for too long so as to not give him another reason to be jealous and continue on with our discussion. 

"What about them? They didn't do anything" I say confused, "We were just playing games, it's not like they hugged me or something. You made it very clear from the start that you didn't want that to happen" I say trying to explain away whatever he was worrying about. 

"You do realize that almost all of them were checking you out the whole time right? Especially when you were leaning over the table" he says sliding his hand down lower on my waist. "Jungkook it's whatever, don't let it bother you" I say trying my best to get him to drop it but he persists nonetheless. 

"But it does bother me Luna. I'm in love with you, and I know you haven't fully figured out how you feel about me so, I don't know, I can't help but feel insecure" he finally fully admits.

"Jungkook I'm sorry but I don't want to rush into something right now. Give me some time and I'll let you know soon okay?" I say in hopes to reassure him that I'm still thinking about us. He nods his head in response and leans in to kiss me and I turn my face to the side and make him place it on my cheek instead. 

"Time Kook" is all I say and pull away from him before he can pout any further.

Walking over to watch the madness that is this racing game unfold I feel someone take a hold of my hand. "Luna can I talk to you for a second?" Jin says as I turn and make eye contact with him. I politely slide my hand out of his grasp and nod my head yes, following him to the other side of the room so we can talk. 

"What's up?" I ask looking up and seeing his unreadable expression. "Is everything alright between you and Jungkook?" he questions straight away. "Yeah! Why wouldn't they be?" I question trying to figure out exactly what he's trying to ask me. 

"Well, ever since I saw you guys get out of Jungkook's car I noticed that things were really tense between the two of you. I know we just met, and I haven't really seen what your relationship with Jungkook is like normally, but I can tell that there's something going on" he continues doing his best to be considerate but also wanting to get some answers out of me. 

"I just want to make sure that you're feeling safe and comfortable around him. I know you guys have been friends for forever from what Jungkook has said but I just want you to know that if you ever need to talk or want me to talk to him just let me know" he finishes, fully explaining his motives. I'm taken aback by his maturity and observation of the dynamic that Jungkook and I have going on and am honestly touched by his concern. 

"Thank you Jin that really means a lot to me. Things are kind of rocky and uncertain between us right now but we'll get through it" I say trying to wrap things up neatly. "How long ago did he tell you he has feelings for you?" Jin says not wanting to drop the subject. 

My eyes widen realizing that Jin saw a lot more than I wanted him to when he came outside. "I- um-" I fumble for a second before settling on just telling him the truth. "Last night" I admit.

"And what did you say?" he prods further. "I told him that I needed time to figure things out. I just barely caught onto the fact that he might have feelings for me a few days ago so everything about our relationship has just switched up drastically and I just haven't had time to think about it all" I respond dropping my gaze to the floor. 

"You're scared of losing him aren't you?" he ask when he knows for a fact that he's right. I nod my head in response not really knowing how else to respond. "Luna, that boy is crazy about you! He's always thinking about you and bringing you up in any and every conversation he can. Not to mention how many times he's ditched us to go see you. Not that I'm complaining" he laughs trying to lighten the mood. 

"He would always tell us how much he likes you and would pout when you were taking too long to respond or had to cancel on him because of work. I highly doubt you would ever lose him even if you tried" he says smiling down at me. "

All I'm trying to say is that he loves you and cares for you a lot. If you want him to back off let me know and I'll talk to him. I know what it feels like to be put under pressure, especially when it comes to relationships so know that I'm here for you if you need anything" he finishes.

I thank Jin for his advice and make my way back over to the guys just in time to see Yoongi cross the finish line. Unfortunately for Hobi he comes in last, having somehow managed to get his car stuck going backwards off a cliff and can't seem to get it to respawn in time to catch up. 

While Hobi does his best to get Yoongi to give him a rematch I feel someone bumping their shoulder into mine and turn to see Tae looking down at me. We make eye contact and then see him turn his head over to another part of the arcade and makes his was over there. 

I turn back towards the group of guys trying to find Jungkook in the crowd and notice that he's finally taken his eyes off of me to talk to Namjoon. I take that as my chance and follow after him to see what exactly he's wanting to do. 

"Hey Luna" he says with a soft smile leaving me retuning his greeting and inquire as to why he's brought me over here. "I just wanted to see if you're having fun. You really killed it in that game against Namjoon hyung" he says with an amused smile. "Yeah it was really fun! I'm glad he asked me to play" I say truthfully turning my attention over to the other games in that area.

"Have you ever played this game?" he motions over to a Zombie Apocalypse simulator. He walks over towards it and I watch as he climbs inside the little two seater cubby that shows the war torn landscape on a big screen. I walk over to it and observe the setup. 

"I haven't. Is it scary?" I ask, apprehensive to trying out such an immersive game. "I don't really think so, you just gotta keep on telling yourself it's not real but also do your best to defend yourself. It's a delicate balance" he says with an encouraging tone. 

"You wanna try it out?" he offers, scooting away from me so I can sit next to him. "Sure" I say coming around to the idea after hearing his explanation. He pats the space next to him inviting me inside and hands me the gun that is directly in front of me once I get inside.

I mutter a quick thanks and feel myself getting a bit nervous from being this close to him but I do my best to focus on the task at hand. 

"You ready?" he asks making moves to set up the game. "Ready as I'll ever be" I say with a nervously. "You'll do great!" he says giving me a warm smile. He pulls the trigger after having chosen his gun and has me do the same. 

The pace starts off slow with a couple walkers here and there and soon escalates to more and more coming faster and faster. I flinch a bit seeing one having jumped on to the screen and do my best to get him off of me.

Tae aims his gun over onto my side of the screen to help me out and we quickly get it off and we continue on finishing the final round.

"Wow you're really good at this!" I say impressed with his skills. "You're not too bad yourself" he says bumping his shoulder against mine again making me smile at the friendly gesture. "Do you wanna play again?" he proposes the idea but I'm soon cut off by another voice. 

"Hey no fair! You can't keep her all to yourself! Luna why don't you come play with me? I'm sure you'll find it very... stimulating" Hobi says in a suggestive tone while leaning on the side of the game where I'm now held captive between the two of them. 

But yet again before I'm able to respond I see Hobi being pulled back and feel someone yanking me out by my forearm.

"Luna get your stuff we're leaving" Jungkook says dragging me towards the exit. "Jungkook hold on a second let me grab my bag!" I say trying to pull out of his grip. He loosens his grip on me just enough to place his hand in mine and have me lead him towards the spot I had left said bag. 

Once I do he pulls on my hand and leads us towards the exit yet again. I see the guys take notice and send me a questioning look, observing the situation and contemplating whether or not to intervene. "Bye Luna" is the last thing I hear before the door closes behind us. 

"Jungkook wait!" I say in protest waiting for him to listen to me yet he continues to pull me towards the building we had once come through.

"Jungkook STOP!" I yell at him finally being able to yank my hand out of his grip. "What?" he exclaims but does his best to keep his voice level. "What was that all about?" I say, finally given the chance to question his behavior. "I told you I didn't want them to be that close to you!" he says defending himself. 

"Tae and I were just playing a game and then Hobi came over seconds after we had finished our game. It's not my fault that he was trying to get closer to me. And if you had given me a chance to speak for myself I would've taken care of it" I continue, poking holes in his argument. 

"You shouldn't have been that close to Tae in the first place. I told you how it makes me feel when stuff like this happens" he continues trying to patch up his reasoning. 

"Jungkook you're not my boyfriend!" I say finally fed up with his controlling behavior, but immediately regret it as soon as the words left my mouth. Seeing the slight change in his already frustrated expression I know I've hit him where it hurts. "You're right, I'm not" he says and turns his back to continue down the path leaving me behind.

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[youunravelme]

to all the girls you loved before part 4

author's note: thank you so much for your patience, if i'm being honest, this part was really hard to write because of the hype last part got. i don't want to disappoint anyone and i think i let that fear dictate how long it took me to write this. BUT thank you all for all the love and kindness you showed me as you read this series, i'm so excited to keep writing because of you! again, if you asked to be tagged and you aren't listed below, chances are tumblr wouldn't let me. :(

pairing: single dad!mat barzal x reader

summary: being a nanny for rich people was probably the worst thing that ever happened to you, until you started working for mat.

warnings: children, rich people, very volatile/toxic relationship

day thirty-four

bile rose in the back of your throat.

was that the proper reaction to finding out that the guy your roommate had been fucking for the past month was your boyfriend? it didn't feel like an overreaction.

you headed back to your room, hands closed over your ears to drown out the moans and groans coming from across the hallway. you slammed your bedroom door and started grabbing shit out of drawers and throwing it into a duffle bag you found on your floor.

the moans stopped and through the thin walls, you could hear mumbling.

"don't try to be considerate now!" you shouted. shuffling was heard on the other side of the wall before your door was pushed open, jason standing in a pair of boxers with hickeys all down his chest. natalie came in a second later dressed in one of jason's favorite shirts.

you would know, you used to wear it all the time until it went missing.

"you--" but natalie cut herself off. maybe it was the look on her face or the presence of the divine interfering on her behalf before you smacked her.

"where are you going?" jason asked.

"i'm not sure yet, but i'm not staying here any second longer." you stood to your full height with the duffle bag in your hand. as if a switch flipped, jason smirked and crossed his arms over his chest.

"you're not going anywhere."

you scoffed. "what?" because surely you heard wrong.

"did i stutter?"

this fucker.

"i'm leaving." you made a move towards the bedroom door, but his frame blocked it. "jason, i'm not fucking around."

"neither am i. we need to talk about this. and you're not going anywhere until we do."

"i think your moans said enough. now move."

"or what?" your phone rang and mat's contact picture lit up the screen. "of course it's him. why is he calling?" jason sneered.

you answered without acknowledging jason. "hello?"

"hey, you never texted me to say you got in alright. you okay?"

you looked between your roommate and soon-to-be ex boyfriend. "keep the car running, i'll be down in a few minutes."

a pause. "do i need to come up?"

"no, i'll be down in a few." your eyes never left jason's.

"stay on the phone," mat said.

"okay."

"tell mat to mind his business," jason said. "this is between us."

you kept the phone in your hand. "you can't tell me what to do. especially in an apartment where you don't pay rent."

he looked almost dumbfounded at your boldness, so you took advantage of that lack of awareness to shove your way past the both of them.

you made it to the living room before jason was shouting after you down the hallway. "we're not done here."

before you could stop yourself, you whipped around, filled with rage for what felt like the tenth time that night. "yes, we are. this relationship? over. this conversation? over."

in a flash, jason was in front of you, ripping the duffle bag out of your hands and tossing it down the hall, away from you.

and the realization hit you right as jason started screaming at expletives again.

fuck the bag, you needed to get out before he did something to you.

so you bolted, running towards the front door, flinging it open, and sprinting towards the stair case. if you had a clearer head, you might've waited for the elevator, but you wouldn't put it past jason to run out in the hallway with nothing but his boxers on.

you sprinted down the stairs, nearly slipping a few times, until you got outside.

mat immediately caught your eye and hung up the phone before jumping out of the car. "are you alright?" he asked. you couldn't speak, only nodded and let him open the car door for you.

not even the traffic sounds could fill the silence in the car.

from the corner of your eye, you could see mat glancing at you before turning his attention back to the road. "do you wanna talk about it?"

you tried to speak, but it was like the events of the night caught up to you. the words got stuck in your throat. "i--"

"i'm sorry," mat said. "i shouldn't have asked. let's get you back to my apartment and we'll sort things out there, okay?"

unable to say anything, you just nodded.

mat said before reaching over and clapping a hand on your knee. "it's gonna be okay. i'm not gonna let anything happen to you, alright?"

you nodded again.

mat took his hand back and for a moment, you contemplated reaching over for it, thankful for the way it grounded you even just briefly, but ultimately decided against it. you might not have a lot of friends, but you can guarantee you've never held their hands before.

the rest of the trip was spent in silence.

mat parked the car and immediately got out while you sat there to take a moment to breathe. he gently got ella out and slung the diaper bag over his shoulder before opening your door. "i'm all for taking a deep breath, but i would advise against it in a car at night."

you managed a weak chuckle through your tears and got out.

the doorman greeted the three of you with a small smile on his face as you walked into the lobby. he didn't ask any questions when he saw the tear tracks on your cheeks.

mat led you up to his apartment. he shuffled ella around in his arms to try to reach his keys, but when she started stirring he froze.

"would you get my keys out of my pocket?" he whispered.

you nodded solemnly before asking where his keys were.

"back left."

you carefully put your hand in his back left pocket, being sure not to touch any unsavory parts of him. when you retrieve his keys, you bypass his free hand entirely, choosing to unlock the door yourself.

mat followed behind you, shutting the door with his foot and locking it with his free hand. "i'm gonna put her down real quick. and then i'll get you something to change into."

"you don't have to--"

"i'd be a horrible friend if i made you sleep in jeans. it's no big deal, i promise."

and with that, he disappeared down the hallway while you stood in the living room processing what the hell had just happened. it seemed like the full weight of what had actually occurred just thirty minutes prior finally hit you like a tidal wave. there was no telling how long you stood there crying before being you were pulled into a firm chest.

"it's okay," mat said with a hand running up and down your back. "whatever happened is over now." he held you until your hiccuping cries stopped. you nodded against his chest before pulling away and wiping at your face. "i left the clothes on the guest bed if you wanna go get changed. the shower is free as well."

you mumbled a small thanks and headed down the hall.

on the bed was a pair of grey sweatpants; thankfully, with drawstrings, and a blue islanders tee shirt. you grabbed the items and headed to the bathroom, ready to wash away the events of the night.

as soon as the water was hot, you were undressing and stepping into the shower. just like all the other times you've showered, your mind was filled with reflections of the day. how jason screamed at you in public, how humiliated you felt, the sick feeling of coming home and finding his clothes strewn about, the nearly paralyzing fear of looking at him and realizing he was a completely different person now.

it all added up, the sly comments from your roommate, the emotional distance between you and jason, the accusing looks your roommate would give you whenever you so much as hugged him in front of her. when did it happen? how long had it been going on? was it revenge for how much time you were away and at mat's place working? was it--

wait.

you listened closely and heard talking vaguely over the fall of water from the shower. quickly, you turned off the shower when you heard the voices escalate. you dried off, pulling on mat's clothes with record speed before opening the bathroom door and letting the steam out.

almost immediately after, you were wishing you'd stayed in the bathroom.

because jason was at the door with a car seat in his hands, looking as furious as he was earlier in the evening.

"what the fuck?" he yelled as soon as he saw your form. "you slept with him already?"

"if you're asking if i took a page out of your book, the answer is no, jason." you walked into the living room and stood behind mat.

"why would i believe you? you're literally wearing his clothes!" he yelled, gesturing at your frame.

"i'm gonna tell you this once," mat started, voice low and dark. "lower your voice because if you wake my daughter, we're gonna have even more problems than we do right now."

"fuck off, barzal. this is between me and my girlfriend."

"ex," you said. "ex-girlfriend. we're done."

"what--"

"i don't know how you thought you could fuck natalie and maintain this relationship; but even if you didn't fuck my roommate, it would still be over because of the way you embarrassed me tonight."

"so you get revenge by slutting around--"

mat took half a step forward. "i would find a different word to use, if i were you."

"or what, barzal? you gonna fight me? i've seen the game you played against the rangers, i'm not impressed. you start shit but never finish it."

"kind of like our sex life," you mumbled before you could stop yourself.

fury washed over jason's face; you'd never seen a look so intense, but it looked right at home on him. jason took a step forward. "what did you say?" he asked darkly.

mat quickly shot his hand up and held jason where he was. "back up."

almost instantly, jason smacked the hand away. "you can't tell me what to do."

"i can when it's my home you're trying to barge into."

jason looked at him before turning his attention back to you. "you're gonna let him speak to me like this?" when you didn't say anything, he got angrier, which you didn't think was possible. he slammed his fist against the doorframe which had you flinching backwards and mat moving between the two of you.

"you have two options," mat said lowly. "either leave, or i call security and have you escorted out."

jason guffawed, if you could see him through mat, you might've seen the way he face relaxed, like he just realized he lost. you heard the thump of him dropping the car seat. "you're gonna regret this."

"have fun with what's-her-name," mat said before grabbing the car seat and shutting the door in jason's face.

the second the door locked, mat was dropping the car seat and pulling you into his chest. you weren't sure when you started crying and shaking again, this time you weren't sure if it was from anger or devastation.

"it's okay," he said. "it's over. you don't have to deal with him anymore." you nodded against his chest. "let's get you to bed and we can worry about everything else tomorrow, okay?" he pulled back just far enough to look you in the eye. "i need to hear you say it."

"okay," you whispered.

he looked satisfied enough to pull away and guide you down the hall where you knew your room would be.

your room.

when did you start thinking of it as that? you broke up with your boyfriend less than an hour ago and were not considering another bedroom (that hasn't been offered to you) as your own?

you yawned. it was too late to be doing deep dive contemplation, especially after the night you had.

mat stopped in front of your door, leaning on the doorframe like it was meant to hold him up. "i have practice tomorrow and then i'll be back and we can workout a time to get your things. does that sound okay?"

you nodded again. "thanks, mat."

"anytime."

you shut the door and stared at it for a moment. part of you wondered if mat was doing the same on the other side.

day thirty-five

you woke up without an alarm clock but your body was still tired. the exhaustion of the unveiled truth was a weight you weren't used to carrying.

gingerly, you rose from the bed and checked the time on your phone, relieved to see it was still early and that you hadn't inconvenienced mat by oversleeping.

mat.

he'd stuck up for you, let you sleep over, someone he hadn't really known but for a month. was he that kind or just naive?

you didn't have time to dwell on it.

you walked down the hall and into the living room when you heard music playing. there was no telling what could come from the bluetooth speaker when mat's phone was connected, this time it seemed to be some random pop song blasting through the kitchen. when you rounded the corner, you saw mat putting ingredients into a blender while ella bounced and flapped her arms around to the music in her high chair.

"morning!" mat said over his shoulder. "there's frozen waffles in the freezer if you want something for breakfast."

"they're not like...disgusting protein waffles, are they?" you asked.

mat stopped what he was doing and turned so he could smile at you properly. "nope, good ole unhealthy eggo waffles."

"i appreciate it." you made a move to walk towards the fridge when you stopped. "and for what it's worth, i'm sorry, about last night."

mat tilted his head like a confused golden retriever. "what did you do? if you pissed on the sheets, i have in unit laundry that will fix that problem."

you couldn't help it, a laugh burst straight from your chest and out of your mouth before you could stop it. if your eyes weren't squeezed shut from the laughing, you would've seen the soft smile adorning mat's face for getting that reaction.

"you know why," you said once you'd calmed down.

mat shrugged. "as far as i'm concerned, you didn't do anything wrong. that's all on him." he took two steps towards you, placing a hand on your shoulder. "and if it wasn't clear, you're welcome to stay as long as you need to."

the both of you stared at each other without saying a word, neither wanting to interrupt whatever peace was going on between the two of you.

ella took that opportunity though, to throw her apple sauce on the ground. the sound alone had you both snapping out of whatever trance you were in.

"well," mat said.

"yeah," you mumbled.

mat moved around you, squeezing your shoulder once. "i have to go get ready, but i should be back soon to help you get your stuff from your old place."

"mat, you don't have to--"

he kept walking. "sorry what was that? can't hear you!"

despite yourself, you smiled.

most of the morning went by without a hitch, you didn't even shed a tear! which you considered to be progress and maybe a sign that you weren't as torn up about your breakup as you should've been.

but you didn't have time to unpack that thought.

it wasn't until around 11 that you got a text from an unknown number that you were considering throwing your phone down the stairwell. but because curiosity got the better of you, you checked your phone anyway.

hey! this is sydney martin, we met last night. mat mentioned that you'd need help moving your stuff and i was offering my help as well at matt's.

below her text notification was one from mat.

hope you don't mind i passed your number along to sydney. my plan was to get tito to help me move your stuff, but we're both caught up doing interviews and press coverage until this afternoon. didn't think you'd want to chance running into him after a workday.

you texted sydney back first, finding it easier to set up times to leave and meet up at your old place than to reply to the thoughtfulness of mat's text.

hey sydney! you wrote. i would love all the help i can get, when would you two be able to meet me at my old apartment?

which is how you found yourself standing outside your old building with ella strapped to your chest, waiting for sydney and matt to arrive.

you heard your name being called and looked over your shoulder to see sydney and matt in workout clothes next to a....

uhaul?

in the city?

"hope you don't mind," sydney started. "mat said you had some stuff but we weren't sure how much, so my husband rented a truck just in case."

without even thinking about it, your eyes started tearing up. in one night, you'd lost pretty much the only people you had in the city, but had somehow gained two more in their absence.

"you didn't have to..." you trailed off.

matt, as if sensing the tears that were seconds away from leaking out of your eyes, took a step closer. "we've all been in shitty situations, no one should have to deal with it alone. besides any friend of my wife's is a friend of mine."

the very words left you giving him a watery smile. "thank you."

sydney approached you and wrapped you in a hug. "no need to thank us."

when you pulled away, the martins pretended they didn't see you wiping at your eyes.

"alright," you clapped. "it's gonna take some time, but hopefully with the three of us, we can get it done quickly."

the four of you headed inside with ella dozing off against your chest. matt followed behind you and sydney, carrying unopened cardboard boxes he had leaning against the truck.

"so i was thinking," matt said once you got to the front door of the apartment. "you and syd can pack up the boxes and i'll do the heavy lifting out to the truck, hopefully mat and tito will be done soon and they can help as well."

you and sydney nodded before heading back to your bedroom while matt played with ella in the living room.

"i asked him before we got here if he could give us some space," sydney explained once you were in your old bedroom.

"i appreciate it."

sydney started at your dresser and opened one box before neatly placing your clothes inside. "are you okay?"

you shrugged and started on the closet, tossing clothes inside the box without a care. "i'll be fine."

"mat didn't say much, if anything, if that's what you're worried about. i just saw how you were when what's-his-name was raging at the game yesterday."

you paused over a shirt that used to belong to him before tossing it aside. "he cheated on me with my roommate. and he wasn't happy when i tried to leave last night. tried to keep me here to 'talk about things.'"

sydney looked at you but didn't say anything for a moment. she let your words hang in the air like a foot poised over a landmine. "does mat know that?"

you shrugged. "he was on the phone with me for part of it but i don't know if he heard the near hostage attempt."

"did he come up the stairs and take care of things?" sydney asked, tone very serious. you didn't think it was possible for someone as joyful as her to look as grim as she did.

you shook your head. "no, he waited in the car."

"then he must not've heard, you would've known if he had." you weren't sure what face you were making but it must've been alarming because sydney quickly backtracked. "not that he'd get violent or anything! mat isn't scary, he's just..." she paused, as if searching for the right word. "...protective."

"i don't think that applies here, i've only known mat a month."

up until that point, you didn't know it was possible to hear an eye roll, but sydney somehow managed it. "oh please, like that matters here. anyone who meets you adores you. take me for example, i've only known you for twenty-four hours and i'd fight an overgrown man child for you." she reached over and placed a hand on top of yours. "everyone who meets you, loves you. it would be hard not to."

you nodded and went back to shoving clothes in boxes, too scared to look her in the eye just in case she saw the tears you were barely holding back.

an hour later, with most of your things in boxes, mat and tito showed up. ella, (who was sitting in your lap on the couch while matt martin continued to take boxes down to the truck, screamed and flapped her arms at the sight of her father and his best friend.

"ella bean!" tito called before beating mat over to you and scooping up the baby. mat didn't even attempt to conceal his annoyance, rolling his eyes before assessing the boxes littering the floor.

"is this all?" he asked.

you nodded. "syd and i have to sell my bed frame but other than that, we're good."

"we can bring it back to our apartment so you don't have to come back here."

you froze, and from the corner of your eye, you saw tito stop bouncing ella to look at the both of you while sydney found herself scrolling on her phone.

our apartment.

it hadn't even been twenty-four hours and he was already referring to the place as half yours.

it should've made you freak out, shut down.

but you were just relieved.

"i don't know if we'll have enough room," you said.

mat scoffed. "we'll make room. or martin, tito, and i will come back and grab it today. but you're not coming back here once we leave. not when your ex could show up at anytime."

you were still surprised that jason hadn't arrived. it seemed in his nature to hover, especially after he tried to hold you hostage last night.

"okay," you nodded.

he pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "i'll go talk to matt about making room and then we'll grab your bed frame." mat scooped up two boxes with ease and turned on his heel to go back down the stairs.

"i can help--"

but mat made a noise in the back of his throat. "sit down and chill." and left the room.

"that was considerate of him," sydney noted when she was sure he was out of earshot.

"which part?" tito commented. "when he referred to his place as yours? or the time where he denied your help so you could relax?"

"i'm sure mat does this for all the people in his life," you said.

tito scoffed. "when i was moving apartments, i asked for his help and he told me to 'fuck off and hire movers.'"

"i'm sure that has absolutely nothing to do with how close you two are and everything to do with you being a millionaire," sydney replied.

as if on cue, your phone rang, mat's first and last name filling up your screen. "hello?"

"tell beau to give ella to you and bring the rest of the boxes downstairs."

tito must've heard because he was groaning and walking ella over to you without saying a word.

"he's on his way down," you said.

"thanks," mat replied before hanging up.

the hard work was done by mid afternoon. and with the truck loaded up, none of you saw a reason to stay much longer. matt martin agreed to drive the truck back to the apartment you currently shared with mat. you'd ride with mat and tito (and subsequently ella) since you took the subway to your old place while syd drove her car.

as soon as you got back to your new place, the boys were unloading the truck while you and syd put ella down for a long overdue nap before taking a look at your room and trying to figure out where to put things.

"it doesn't all have to be done in one day," she said. "but the faster it's done, the easier it'll be for you to move on from this." you nodded to the sound of the boys dropping boxes in living room. "you're handling this remarkably well for someone who just ended a long term relationship."

you avoided looking at her, instead focusing on your bed spread. "things haven't been okay for awhile," you said like that was explanation enough.

it seemed to do the job for sydney because she didn't ask anymore questions.

not too long after everything was moved in, sydney, matt, and tito left with the promise of visiting soon. syd said she'd be by without any hesitation if you needed her.

you just smiled and accepted her hug. but as soon as the front door shut, your shoulders sagged and you fell into the couch like a rag doll.

if your eyes weren't laser focused on the floor, you would've seen mat's mouth open and shut a few times as if searching for the right words until he finally settled on some.

"you did it, one of the hardest parts is over."

you grunted. "what could be harder than this?"

mat fell into the couch beside you. "tomorrow, and the day after that, and the days that follow until you get used to him not being around anymore. and the sting of betrayal finally stops hurting."

you couldn't help yourself, you laughed.

"what?" he sat up. "i thought i was giving sage advice!"

your eyes met and you could see he wasn't offended, there was a gleam of humor in his eyes that reminded you of boys in elementary school who regularly got in trouble for the hijinks they pulled during the school day.

"'the sting of betrayal?' really mat? are you an author or a hockey player?"

"can't i be both?"

"i've seen you get hit in the head with pucks and hockey sticks before. keep it up and i don't think you'll have much of a brain to write anything."

you expected a laugh, but he looked at you like he'd seen you in a new light. "i didn't get hit at my last game."

"i know," you laughed. "i was there, or have the concussions you've gotten affected your memory?"

"you watched my previous games?"

oh.

would that be embarrassing to admit? that you'd gone back and watched him play a little? you didn't even know why, you just found yourself on youtube rabbit hole during one of ella's naps.

"i mean," you shrugged. "i uh, i watched some highlights and whatever youtube had available. i felt bad for not knowing anything about how you play, especially after you--"

"you don't have to explain anything to me," he interrupted. "i just, i'm shocked is all, in the best way possible."

maybe it was the look in his eyes, or the soft smile gracing his lips. or maybe it was the fact that he was the first single man you'd ever met who'd shown you unrelenting kindness without any expectation of sleeping with you that had you saying the words you said next.

"i'm really glad i met you."

his smile grew. "i'm really glad too."

taglist:

@nicoleloveshockey @thg02 @fallinallincurls @bbbbruins @random-readers-world @sydsxoxo @jhughesy @whenmypartysover @sunflowerhood @spencereidbasis @icanfsplel @avareadsthings @zegraswrites @calermakar @heyitsmeimdead @kashee-h @bordelhoe

[fountainpenguin]

Riddle watches New Wish - Post #31

The Battle of Big Wand

Part 5 of reacting to this episode (spoiler-free)!

And we're back! Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda have run off and Dev is eating his feelings through pudding.

Good to note Wanda says it's been weeks since Peri granted a wish. They're so stressed out...

Their son is dying!!! Their precious baby boy they were denied for thousands of years and have only had for about 22 years!! Whom they left behind to go on vacation through time for 10,000 years!!! oh no, he's got anxiety...

From a story standpoint, I like that Cosmo and Wanda aren't "just" in a cage, and even if they were freed, they wouldn't leave their dying son to interfere with the rest of the plot if they can help it. That works great.

Aw, Peri's mumbling about bringing Dev food from the cereal bar and that's the one thing he told his parents he was excited about at Dev's house. And Dev's affected... He's wobbling...

Dev recently turned 10 and he is dealing with really heavy situations.

I like his "Aha! There!" as he's looking for excuses about why he's not interested in saving Peri.

Dev: Always with Da Rules! Holding me back; keeping me from getting what I want!!

I wish Da Rules had been emphasized more in New Wish because we barely saw them and I really think the weight they carry would make this scene stronger, but I like it!

He is having a ROUGH day...

I don't personally love the art style for Dev's tears... I think it's a bit silly for the heaviness of the scene since it doesn't seem to be dripping off his face, just kinda going into the void... It looks more like light than water, but it has a unique aesthetic and I admire that.

Something something, Dale's tears in "Lost and Founder's Day" were huge gushing fountains as he had a breakdown and Dev has rivers...

Oh, I'd know THAT look anywhere... It's how Timmy looked in "Meet the OddParents" when he was losing Cosmo and Wanda and we got "It's okay, guys... It was worth it. I'll be fine. It's all good... IT'S NOT ALL GOOD; I'M NOT FINE; I'M GONNA MISS YOU!!"

Dev is holding it the flip together if he can mirror the devastation of Timmy torn from his fairy family after 51 years...

... especially since Dale's level of tears exist in this show:

Local billionaire forced into 7 years of underground child labor, starvation, and other abuses has a complete breakdown whenever he's at risk of losing what he has now, more at 11...

And the crown is OFF... Dev once again slipping away to work things through by himself. I expect no less than him seeking solitude when things are hard... It's definitely his pattern by now.

I... didn't know there was a key, so it pulled me out to try figuring out what that item he threw down was. I think it might've been a punchier moment if that had been a bigger deal, but that's nitpicky. Alas, Dev will not be jumping in the pit.

I think it would be funny if Dev panicked and jumped into the pit and then he couldn't get out, and Irep just left him there, so he's yelling for his dad and Dale's just standing there at the top, clearly Going Through It at the sight of "deep dark torture pit hole beneath the lid that swings open like a trapdoor." Dale's been okay so far, but I feel like seeing his lookalike son in The Torture Pit would definitely be a trigger for him... Not necessarily something that would kick him into gear to save Dev, but I think it'd spook him. -> I think the Anti-Fairies should push the cage lid shut after Dev jumps down so he's trapped and screaming for help, and that really snaps something in Dale :)

Wanda still taking shots at Dev, oh no. I... don't love that, actually? He's clearly going through stuff. Hmm...

Okay. I liked the show-don't-tell we had when Dev questioned Irep why the other Fairies were here (and not just "the usuals"). And I liked how he and Irep were arguing and his dad cut in to tell him to "listen to his business partner," leading Dev to protest that they're not partners if they don't listen, etc.

This feels off? It's both a tell instead of show (Wanda telling us "I think deep down, he has good in him," which we literally just saw and have regularly seen throughout the series since he started letting down his walls), and it's kinda victim-blamey tbh?

-> Maybe I'm wrong on that, but it just... surprises me to hear that from the mouth of someone who's been in the godparenting line of work for 50,000 years. She's clearly seen this kid has issues (as early as "Peace of Pizza" when Dev hugged Cosmo who was disguised as Dale and Wanda was disguised as the boot).

-> I get that he's currently taking over Fairy World and that her son is dying on the floor... I just expected more sympathy from her, especially since she's seen Dev at his best (joking around with Hazel) and Timmy caused both her and Cosmo back-up in the OG series multiple times by complete accident and/or Cosmo and Wanda's failure to communicate their needs. That might not be canon here, though... but even if it's not, she's seen Dev at his best when he's kind, playful, imaginative, and generous towards Hazel, so I'm just really surprised.

-> I think it throws me off because Dev just saved her son's life and instead of saying thank you, she's making a point of emphasizing that she doesn't think he's a good kid unless you delve incredibly deep inside him. Oof...

OG series Wanda (actual dialogue from "Playdate of Doom"): You have to learn how to forgive people after they try to destroy you! New Wish Wanda (emotionally): This kid actually sucks. We should spit on him.

To be fair, in my second post for this finale, I did say she tends to have a black and white view of things and I cited her bitterness towards Foop, even knowing he's a baby of a wildfire species who was raised in Abracatraz. She really seems to struggle with people having facets, which was interesting.

Come to think of it, she also did this with Blonda back in the day- She was either furious with her or apologetic and accepting, but then she went full savagery again. I guess it's just her thing.

??? She also totally ripped the gold stars off Poof's Good Baby chart when she thought he was acting out against Foop during their playdate, and she made Poof watch her do it, and she and Cosmo eventually took him all the way down to zero, and... that's kinda messed up, actually. He's a good boy :( Also, something something, Wanda forcing Poof to hug Foop after Poof made it very clear he wasn't comfortable with it, Wanda too afraid to stand up to her dad in "Talkin' Trash," something something...

I think during "Certifiable Super Sitter," Foop told Wanda he was sad that his parents had "moved away without leaving a forwarding address again" and he wanted to play with dogs and fire, and Wanda immediately wanted to handcuff him, then a moment later grabbed him by the collar and yelled at him... hey Wanda. what on earth. he's bein' vulnerable...

-> Wanda stop seeing people as only Good or Bad challenge (impossible).

Cosmo keeps cutting her off about it?? She sees the bad in Dev and Cosmo seems to see the good. That's interesting.

I'm glad Cosmo is once again reaching his magical back-up threshold sooner than Wanda. He did that in "The Same Game," and his magic drains way faster than hers or Poof's according to the meters in "Grow Up, Timmy Turner." It's kind of his thing (to me).

Oh, apparently my worldbuilding notes say male Fairies drain fast and hard because their bodies are designed to release a ton of magic during childbirth, so they can't hold it in well when it's being actively drained out of them.

Yeah, that tracks. Sorry, Poof.

HEY!! I was just joking when I said Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda were slipping off to canoodle and using "chasing Puppet Hazel" as an excuse, but why is Puppet Hazel here and they're not??

She gave them the slip and they really said "oh well; we tried. Time to snuggle" and this is why Irep hates them. sdfkl.

Peri is dying (This IS about him).

I like how they have to power the Big Wand with electricity kind of like how Jimmy Neutron had to rewire it back in Power Hour 1 (and forgot to plug it in).

Although, I do like how in "Crocker Shocker," Fairy World is powered by belief in Fairies... "Battle of Big Wand" AU where this episode goes exactly like "Crocker Shocker," which means Fairy World losing power also removes its ability to float, so it plunges towards Giant Bucket of Acid World and Dev has to do a total 180 halfway through his scheme to avoid a horrific death.

Actually, that's freakin' HILARIOUS. Maybe I'll write that. I just really want him and his dad to be scrambling to higher ground and freaking out. Stupid. I hate it. I need this so much.

?? I may be misremembering, but I think Wanda makes lemonade from Cosmo's sweat / dust again in this episode similar to "Nectar of the Odds" which is... hmm.

Y'know what, now that I think about it... We should never let the man who spent 7 years perfecting his skills of squeezing juice out of things get this close to Fairies. TERRIBLE idea.

[cnt'd - It would be wise to prepare yourself for Opinions (TM), and if that does not sound up your alley, no shame in that]

Ooh, there goes Hazel's rule-free wish! Restoring Fairy World to normal.

... Eh, it's not as funny as my secret hope that Hazel would be too anxious to use it and wish for something silly, but I was right with my "use it to save people when they're dying from magical back-up" theory. I'll take it.

Aw, Dev with his arm on his chair. He looks goofy for someone having a terrible day. He looks exhausted.

Mind-wiping the planet? NO! My Club Redheads Who Didn't Get Mindwiped!!

Oh my flippin' gee, it's a really, really good thing I didn't set Happy Peppy Gary up as under Pixie protection and therefore immune to mindwipes and then write a whole arc about him raging against Fairy World and hoarding all his remaining friends in this club!! It's a good thing I didn't do that!! Oh no...

It's a good thing I don't have to treat New Wish as canon in my 'fics if I don't want to. I think he's suffered enough. He would flip out. skldjf.

... Actually, I guess he's not on the planet during this part of the timeline... So he'd be fine even if he didn't have immunity. but the rest of the club is toast.

Cannot express enough how funny it is that this is the equivalent of Gary coming back with pizza and his entire world is on fire AGAIN... Jorgen stop mindwiping Gary's friends challenge... plz, no more...

They're okay!! Peri looks so tall. He's all grown up!

?? So... Huh. Hang on. Why is Peri okay? Dev didn't get involved. I thought he was dying from magical back-up because he hadn't granted any of Dev's wishes for weeks.

Can Wanda just Do That... Can she do that... That doesn't sound right.

Huh! I cannot believe I was on the right track (in my first theory post for this episode) when I said that the alt ending I thought was funny (but doubted would happen) involved Dev losing his memories and Peri, but how it would probably be a good thing for both him and Peri...

... I just thought he was going to start working things out with his dad (maybe with Dale realizing he messed up in hiring Vicky and regretting he wasn't there) and Dev might be deemed un-miserable, and... not so much because he outed magic to the world :'D

I had high hopes for you, Dev... Sorry, kiddo.

I'm so surprised. I genuinely didn't think we were going this direction?? Did... did we get any foreshadowing for this?

Fingers crossed this means more Daddy Issues episodes for Dev if we get more seasons, as I wouldn't want that resolved too fast considering how deep both their issues seem to go.

omg, is the window design behind him a copy of his game tablet?

But he's ready to face his punishment, taking accountability and accepting his consequences like a mature adult, even though he's young and broken...

... Uh, big yikes for Dev here being like "Well, maybe I deserve [to lose my caretaker and magical memories], Hazel." Big abuse cycle vibes... Uh-oh...

I hope we get a Season 2. I'd really like to see him work through this; it's a dark place to leave off ;;;

Wow. Is this really the route we're going? Dev's slipping towards "I deserve punishment and I'm going home without magic - or Peri - to live with my dad," and Hazel laughs in his face & tells him "Oh yeah, you definitely deserve it." ??

Holy cow, that's brutal. I write dark stuff all the time, but that gets to me for some reason?? Hazel, why would you say that?

Timmy "I forgive H.P. & Anti-Cosmo" Turner & Chloe "I forgive Kevin and Foop" Carmichael & Hazel "get wrecked" Wells. omfg?? I guess Timmy and Chloe making excuses for people who did bad things is also saying Something about them (which is Chloe's Thing in multiple episodes), so it's not necessarily good, but... I mean, H.P. and Anti-Cosmo did leave him alone after this point in the series apart from Anti-Cosmo kidnapping Cosmo while thinking he was kidnapping Timmy after Timmy downloaded critical life-changing info to his brain, and Foop became very fond of Chloe, so...

... Huh. I did not think I was this invested in Dev. Now I just feel... weird? Played.

Okay, so... First of all, kudos to Hazel for not throwing her morals away to chase a guy who wronged her. Respect. I said in an earlier post that I wanted boundary setting and... I guess I got it.

But... are we doing this? So, why didn't Jorgen mindwipe people after Dev became king of America? The news reporter clearly still remembered him. What's the plan if someone greets him as "former king" again? Surely he'll question that.

Why ?? is Foop still allowed to attend school in the main series despite harassing everyone, but Dev gets dunked on ?? Is it just because Foop lives in a world of microaggressions about how people don't expect him to be capable of being a good person because he's an Anti-Fairy? lmao??

It can't be that they're scared of Anti-Cosmo... School straight-up yoinked Foop's summer camp privileges.

- This is hilarious? iirc, Jorgen stopped erasing Crocker's memories after Season 7 because the benefit of him knowing (i.e. Fairies sucking power out of him) outweighed the benefit of him not knowing (which is why we get my favorite joke in Season 9 where Cosmo blatantly tells Crocker he's a fairy), but Jorgen took one look at Dev and said "Bad boy. Dangerous." -> Okay, I guess I'll just be normal about this :') - I feel like Dev would be really mad if he found out how all the other villains have gotten off easy in the past - I'm scratching my head, but the only villain I remember being punished this severely was Crocker, who suffered as a child despite doing nothing wrong (plus his multiple offenses as an adult, but he was trying to kill people) - Arguably the Anti-Fairies suffer by being locked up, so... I guess there's that. And yeah, I get that Norm doesn't like his lamp. - Okay, I guess Foop broke so hard that he developed an alt personality who sticks with him from his second appearance in Season 7 all the way through Season 10, but...

I know Dev took over Fairy World, but he clearly expressed remorse and saved Peri. So I feel weird about him going back to his dad, this time without a godparent to look after him...

... but it's horribly in character for how the Fairy Council - and Jorgen by extension - see their world. Their canon has literally always been "we use humans as a power source and dump them when they get scary," which is heavily implied to be the reason for the hard rule of leaving when they're adults, so idk what I expected...

Like, they booted Crocker to the curb and it literally wasn't Crocker's fault he lost Cosmo and Wanda as a kid. This is extremely in character for Fairy World.

Actually, I should be cautious about saying it's in character for Jorgen, who has huge issues about erasing memories and stress eats his feelings.

Huh. Y'know, this reminds me a lot of the first half of "Timmy's Secret Wish" when Poof and Foop get sent to the Hocus Poconos, but I love that scene; it's one of my favorites in the series. Maybe I'm anxious about this plot point because if there's no Season 2, this is Dev's finale. I feel pretty confident that if we had a Season 2 that builds on this, I'd like it more- It would be a step in his journey rather than the end. It just worries me to know they did this when there's no Season 2 confirmed, because that's a wild thing to drop on us in the final minutes when there's been no memory erasure foreshadowing in this episode (and not much in the series as a whole). Like... I straight-up did not see this coming. This is a total tone shift from the OG series where we had fluffier endings, so I... genuinely am caught off guard. I was not set up to expect this, even with the drama of "Lost and Founder's Day" and "Operation: Birthday Takeback." -> ?? Even with multiple days spent analyzing this episode as I liveblogged, I saw no foreshadowing for this... I don't think. I mean, sure, actions have consequences, but wowza. Maybe I'm just biased because I've been bingeing the OG series again while doing art and there are plenty of episodes that do a great job of foreshadowing (Ex: "Anti-Poof" depicting Foop sleepy and Poof taking naps before the climax where everyone sings a lullaby to put Foop to sleep). This... feels weird after days of analysis. I feel like I've been played? I did not see the set-up for this. Ah, well... can't win them all. I think I'll like this much more when there's a Season 2 that can build on this. But I'm very "Hmm" because throughout my liveblogs, a theme for me has been "I wish they'd emphasize Da Rules and consequences; I'm very unclear what New Wish's lore is" so I feel... irritated that this got dropped on us with so little foreshadowing. Alas... -> Tbh, maybe this is what Dev needs? (To not wonder if he's friends with Hazel only because "she wished for them to be?") A soft reset for him where he remembers their fun and fights without the magic might be a good move for his character to look inside himself and try to solve his problems without magic. but holy flip. holy wow, Hazel. omg, I think Timmy would be stunned if he met you. Hazel confirmed down to torment H.P. and Anti-Cosmo on international TV?? Hazel confirmed ready to dropkick baby Foop into a black hole because he's a bad little boy??

:o We never saw Hazel's mom (a therapist) work with Dev. Is that what we're setting up for Season 2? Because if that's true, I like that part.

?? I think Hazel is trying to communicate that actions have consequences, but her laughing and saying he deserves it just doesn't feel right to me. Dev (for all his many red flags) is one of the nicest bully characters I've ever seen; he clearly regretted snapping at her earlier in the season and apologized to her of his own choice.

He even came to his own conclusion in this episode that he didn't like what Irep was doing (hurting people), AND he realized his dad doesn't care for him and started working through that. No one had to carry him through that. His dad didn't have to monologue about not caring about his son. Dev put those pieces together himself.

If he'd been a harsh bully in front of the audience the whole time, I think this wouldn't feel so shocking, but considering what a loyal friend he's been to Hazel in the past (Ex: Willing to lure his dad's robots away from her & being friendly to her when she came to his birthday), this is a lot to take in right now.

I'm gonna have to sleep on this (and rewatch it without pausing; I've been working through this episode for days).

I feel bad for not loving this, but... ?? Wow. That's... a lot to take in.

So... we're losing Peri; is that right? That... kinda shocks me because we barely got any episodes of them together. Oof :( That's a super engaging dynamic... Just gone? Oh, my heart. I hope they get back together in a future season? I said earlier I liked the idea of Peri realizing he's not ready to godparent, but this doesn't give me that vibe. I wish we knew how Peri feels.

I like that Dev's taking accountability- something I remember him not doing back in "Lost in Fairy World" and stuff, and it does feel right that there would be severe consequences for his actions. I do think he admires Hazel a lot, but he needs to work on how he treats others- I agree I cannot in good conscience say he's "doing well" if we've only seen him be truly kind towards Hazel, and everyone else is unclear (and he bullied those kids in the past).

I understand why it's dangerous to allow him access to magic now that "taking over Fairy World" and "locking up and nearly killing his assigned fairy" are on his track record.

And I'm not really surprised that the Fairies, who are deeply concerned about their personal safety, are willing to take magic from him even if he has to go home miserable. I get it. but holy cow.

?? I think it makes me feel better to think about it in terms of "Yes, he'll go home miserable, but magic is a privilege, not a right". omg tho. holy flip. Actually, Fairy World did also erase Timmy's memories multiple times, both for worse and better things he did than this ("Timmy's Secret Wish" & rude clone in "Fairy Idol," which wasn't technically Timmy but they still dropped consequences on him). So... it is in character. tbh, this is incredibly funny?? It really shines a light on how Timmy's biggest strength was often said to be his imagination and creativity, and he showed this over and over. He'd dodge and weave and spin his little gears like mad, taking down the big players in the magical world left and right, and I honestly like how Chloe, Dev, and Hazel don't do that. -> Chloe managed to win Foop over because reaching out was her strength. But imagination was Timmy's. Timmy was a master at his craft. He worked hard on it. We regularly saw him take the time to think, plan, and outwit his antagonists... but the Fairies mopped the floor with Dev. omg?? that's hilarious? Dev didn't even try to argue his case, or make an effort to appeal to anybody? Incredible, actually. No notes. -> I... hope it's maturity and not learned helplessness. but... considering I said his pattern was that he kept withdrawing and relying on himself without reaching out to others for help... uh-oh..... I don't feel so good about where this is going for his mentality...

I think the Pixies should make a move on Dev and I'm not joking. The Fairies clearly don't want him and the Anti-Fairies have had their fun. I desperately want to see Dev ricochet between the entire magical world.

- World's biggest plot twist: Dev ends up fawned over by multiple species and we bring back the deleted scenes of magical dudes bugging Timmy in "Fairly Oddlympics"... Dev's now the one Anti-Cosmo bothers because he NEEDS to know if he's a good cowboy, and H.P. asks Dev if he's prettier in his dress than Jorgen and Anti-Cosmo are <3 - Seriously though, since Timmy used to play the role of breaking gridlocks when the three races argue (because he knew them all), I think Dev should do the same. Dev and his many weird uncles...

I wish we could see Dev's eyes in this scene. I personally would've liked to see his eyes the whole finale because I think it really would've gotten to me and made it hurt.

I get that he usually wears them when he's being devious or sneaky or closed-off, but it does make him feel more distant. Which is probably the point since this is a children's show and you don't necessarily want him to be seen as "the good guy" to little kids, but I would've liked to see his eyes and connect with him more.

Hm. I guess I shouldn't be surprised this was his ending. I've been told by agents that "you can't have messy moral grays like [my writing] in middle grade," and it IS a kids' show... They probably can't write him behaving THIS badly and let it go unpunished. But... hm. I guess this tracks? Foop is a non-human baby whose evil is over-the-top (laser guns, nuclear warheads, black holes, boxes full of magical spiders), so it's probably okay to play with it and still let him stay in school. Maybe Dev can't be "too relatable" with bad behavior like that. I wonder if that's why they kept Irep's cube head? I know kids' shows generally opt for simplified protagonists and complex villains (often with facial hair) to make it easier for young kids to connect with the nice protag and harder to connect with the evil villain. Maybe Irep needed to be emphasized as non-human and that's also why Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Wanda, and Dale had mild behavior in this episode.

Ooh boy. I'd like to see a Season 2, though. This is one heckuva plot twist and cliffhanger to drop on us for a season finale? For a possible series finale??

AND! HE'S! DOWN!! Memory wiped! ... unless his shades saved him, which be really funny considering how Jorgen's wearing shades to protect his eyes and Hazel had her eyes closed.

I think shades are pretty standard across the series when memory wipes come into play?? I think Jorgen wore those when erasing Crocker's memory, playing into why Cosmo and Wanda (who didn't) also lost their memories of being Crocker's godparents. Is that what we're going for? That would be funny.

No good-bye with Peri? No taking off his shades? :(

Oof. It hurts to hear Hazel write Dev off as a jerk. He IS a bully; I'll give her that. I think he should have to fight uphill to win her over again, but Hazel's thing definitely seems to be blocking out people if she doesn't want to talk (Ex: closing off when she was upset she and her friends scored poorly on the friendship test, annoyed at Dev at the end of "Lost and Founder's Day" and then walking off without giving him the chance to explain, no on-screen decompression after the "Operation: Birthday Takeback" drama beyond her very quick "Dev, what are you on about? We're still friends even though I literally yelled at you and walked off" bit in "Battle of the Dimmsonian"), which is ?? ... I mean, that is a choice for a protagonist. Huh.

-> Can't stop thinking about how in "Battle of the Dimmsonian," Dev recontexualizes what happened by claiming they had an argument, even though we definitely saw Dev being quiet when talking while Hazel snapped at him and walking off without him getting to say his piece... Like, it's been haunting me ever since I saw that episode but I wasn't gonna say it, but now I'm... hmmmm..

When people yell at ME and I don't get the chance to speak, I don't consider it an argument. That happened not long before I watched this, in fact, and I consider it the other person being rude while I held my cool and waited for them to wind down their rant. I don't consider it an argument if it wasn't mutual bickering on some level.

I... I'm sure I'm overthinking it, and I'm maybe biased by that recent yelling experience, but since we KNOW Dev has issues about thinking he's not good enough to make / keep / deserve friends, it's hard not to read this as "Dev accidentally internalized the belief that he and Hazel blew up in a mutual fight." oh boy. I'm dying, squirtle...

-> btw, I think it's fine that Hazel walked away after "Lost and Founder's Day"; proud of her for doing that if that's what she felt was best. I do think she should've told Dev sooner that she was over the fight tho, considering he clearly didn't know and legit thought she broke off their friendship. And meanwhile Hazel was like "??? Friends can fight; it doesn't mean we stopped being friends."

Hilarious. Girl, he cannot read your mind. You KNOW you snapped at him. You KNOW you didn't tell him you were over it. You KNOW you two didn't talk until he approached you first even though you were at the museum from daylight to sunset and may have even had classes together. Super interesting dynamic (and Hazel is VERY justified in thinking Dev relapsed, called her a mean name, and mugged her)...

But also, she did not let him explain the part about how he wasn't part of his dad's brain-zapping scheme or that he saved her from robots with ill intentions by taking her hat and running off, we NEVER see him explain onscreen what actually happened so she might still think that now, and furthermore... oof.

- Fair judgment or textbook case for fundamental attribution error? You decide! (Again, Hazel is allowed to be annoyed... I am just Shook). Oh, that is an INTERESTING way to differentiate her from Timmy and Chloe... holy COW... - Actually tbf, Chloe backstabbed Timmy multiple times, sold out Mark's alien identity for extra credit, and she does hate Kevin's guts, but...

Cry... S1 Dev "Maybe I deserve this" Dimmadome vs. S1 Timmy "I did something bad and I don't deserve sleep" Turner forcing himself to stay awake multiple days... ruh-roh......

I'm probably reading this wrong, but this is setting off all my alarms...

Holy flip, Dev. I've never seen a more "Aliens Exist"-animatic-coded character in my life besides Dib, and I was gonna draw it with the Crockers. I have a new vision... Like this:

... Okay, I actually REALLY want this 'fic now :'D Dev and Dale go home and both hang out in Dale's lab puzzling over the weird notes about fairies someone left behind... Theorizing together... Ya Boix sparkling water cans all over the floor... Dev making progress while Dale is doing work business, then catching him up when he comes back... Youch.

Well, all righty!! Wow. I...... Huh.

The rest of my notes have been split into several subsequent posts. They're very long as they cover reactions to the rest of the finale (Yes, I was very confused to learn the thing I thought was Hazel's rule-free wish isn't her rule-free wish) and then I'll post my reflections on the series as a whole. Enjoy, and thanks for coming on this liveblog journey thus far! Not done just yet... Heads up- If you didn't like the dip into critique this post took, you may not want to see the upcoming posts for this liveblog series, which are both positivity and critique alongside comparisons to the OG series.

Also, if you're interested in a sideblog exclusively for my FOP worldbuilding, detailed character bios, 'fics, and fanart (without liveblogs or this type of critique), you may like my @riddledeep blog.

-> I just finished tidying it after hiatus- My new public announcement (pinned post) is queued for the day after this post goes out, and maybe you'll like it. I'm open to self-advertisement for people's FOP AUs / worldbuilding blogs or AO3 series to follow, so read that post for more info!

-> Here's the sideblog masterpost if you want to browse my character bios and worldbuilding posts.

Thanks again for reading my liveblogs!

[your-divine-ribs]

Smile for the Camera

Words: 3.5k

You’re too shy to make a sex tape with your bf Van // he has an alternative idea // SMUT ♥️

CATB Imagines Main Masterlist

The first time Van brings up recording the two of you having sex your immediate reaction is to laugh out loud, incredulous. You're ridiculously critical of photos and you can't even stand hearing the sound of your own voice played back to you, so the thought of capturing actual video footage of you both stark-bollock naked in the throes of passion makes your blood run cold.

The thing is, Van's a natural performer. You swear he was born to do it. As soon as he's up on stage and has all eyes on him he comes alive. And even though he'll sometimes appear a little awkward in front of cameras for interviews he's quite happy to be the centre of attention and he's definitely not shy. Not like you. In fact he's a bloody exhibitionist and has bags of confidence... and he'll get his kit off at the drop of a hat.

He's also very persuasive...

Just two weeks after he initially broaches the subject of making a sex tape with you, Mary and Bernie drop off several large cardboard boxes full of Van's childhood possessions, products of their attic clear-out. Van's happy to seal the boxes up straight away and put them in the garage but you're loathe to add to all the junk already stacked in there and besides, you're curious.

"Come on, don't be lazy, we may as well sort through them now. We can probably chuck most of it, it's probably all junk anyway." You lift back the cardboard flap of one of the boxes to peer inside, grimacing when you catch sight of a pair of battered old football boots that look like they've been worn into the ground. "Yuck, you can sort this one. I don't wanna be poking around in your stinky old shoes."

"That's a little piece of history right there babe," Van says as he delves into the box and holds the boots up proudly. "Won me very first footy tournament at John Bright's with these. I were 'man of the match' for the final, scored five goals! I remember it now, my PE teacher was dead proud of me. He was the only teacher at school who didn't have me pegged as a drop-out."

You scrunch up your nose as he waves the boots in your face. "Yeah, well you're not keeping them, history or not. They've been sitting around in your mum's loft for over fifteen years and we're trying to de-clutter remember?"

Van ignores you, his eyes lighting up as he drops the boots on to the floor, his attention taken by something else in the recesses of the huge box.

"Here's the medal!" He cries out, holding up a shiny gold disc on a length of blue ribbon, his face glowing with boyish excitement. "Ahh man I miss those days, played every day after school until band practice took over. I was really good ya know, reckon I might've got scouted by United if I'd've carried on."

You resist rolling your eyes, giggling at his enthusiasm, admiring the youthful exuberance the memories are invoking in him. He always looks so cute when he's like this. You spot the curve of a football peeking out from another box and you lunge for it, tossing it over to Van. "Heads up!"

He looks shocked but reacts quickly, stretching up to head the ball. He catches it on its descent, dropping it down to his feet, kicking it up to pass it between each foot with some fancy footwork which is, admittedly, quite impressive.

"Hey look at that love, I've still got it!"

"Very impressive, maybe you did go into the wrong career!" You chuckle.

"You can laugh! Reckon I would've definitely been a footballer if I didn't go into music. That's what I always used to say, right from when I were this high." He grins, a hand held up to his chest to demonstrate.

You recall a daft conversation the two of you had a few weeks back when you were reminiscing about your teenage aspirations and you can't resist teasing your boyfriend. "Oh really? Didn't you also say you wanted to be a pornstar?"

Van’s smile widens at this as he shoots you a cheeky wink. "Yeah well... you gotta go where ya talents lie, eh? What d'ya reckon? Dontcha think I'd be a natural?" He wiggles his hips suggestively, thrusting his pelvis forward.

You're both laughing then and you reach for a dog-eared teddy bear, launching it at Van's head. He ducks just in time.

“What was that for?"

"You're such a twat!" You laugh, shaking your head.

The afternoon stretches on and by the time you're down to the last box you're a little dusty and dishevelled but having a great time uncovering memories from Van's past, from well-worn and much-loved baby toys to embarrassing family photos to poems he'd composed for first loves in the back of school exercise books.

"I'll go and make us a cuppa," you offer and Van nods as he opens up the last box, but the immediate frown on his face makes you pause. "What is it?"

"Ahh nothing, just think me mam's given us the wrong box. This looks like all her old stuff." He reaches in and pulls out a handful of paper-back books which he quickly drops back in and you turn to make for the kitchen but then Van calls your name, stopping you in your tracks.

You whirl around quickly to see him holding up a small silvery coloured item and you narrow your eyes, trying to discern what it is but then the penny drops and you groan out loud, your hands automatically flying up to cover your face. It's an old-fashioned camcorder.

"You're not filming me are you?" You whine, hiding behind your hands. "You'd better not be recording. Put it away!"

Van chooses not to listen to your pleading, just moving closer, big shit-eating grin on his face. "C'mon love, smile for the camera. Don't hide that pretty face from me!"

"Seriously Van, I really hate being filmed, you know I do!"

He carries on advancing on you, undeterred, smiling at the image displayed on the small fold out screen whilst you peek at him from between your fingers. "Don't be mardy, c'mon. It’s only a bit of fun... and it's for our eyes only."

Maybe you are overreacting. You lower your hands to reveal a fake glare, hands on your hips. "It had better be, I look like a total mess right now."

"No ya don't," he's quick to reply, eyes leaving the screen to properly look at you. "You look gorgeous like usual... stunning. You always take my breath away."

You giggle shyly at his compliment, your cheeks warming automatically. Even though you and Van have been together for years he still evokes this reaction in you, immediately taking you back to when he pursued you doggedly for a first date for weeks. You'd thought he was all talk back then, a proper player. You thought he just turned on the charm for effect, not really meaning it, but when he finally wore you down and you accepted his invitation to a pint in your local you realised that this was just his way. He wore his heart on his sleeve and he made no apologies for that. You loved him for it.

"That's it, just keep smiling like that... beautiful," he urges, eyes glowing with fondness and adoration, his free hand gesticulating like he's directing you.

"This is so embarrassing!" You laugh, hands instinctively reaching up to brush through your hair self-consciously. "What is it with having a camera shoved in your face that makes you forget how to function normally?"

"You get used to it," he tells you. "You just need to be confident." He chuckles cheekily. "C'mon, work it baby!"

You're really laughing now and you decide to let lose and have some fun. Like he says it's for your eyes only... and you don't even have to watch the video back. You catch your bottom lip in your teeth, fixing Van with your best sultry gaze, flicking your hair back over your shoulder. "How's this?"

"Gorgeous," he murmurs, seemingly mesmerised. "You gonna put on a show for me love?"

Your gut clenches at his words, a mixture of excitement and unexpected arousal. When he looks at you in that way with all that hunger it does something to you, it makes you eager to please. You let your eyes drop to the camera lens, hands moving down your body to cup your breasts, brushing lightly over your curves. Your nipples peak under the flimsy material of your t-shirt, the contact making you squirm.

"Fuck Y/N... you're so hot," Van whispers reverently, his mouth slightly agape. You watch as his tongue flicks out to moisten his lips, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows thickly. His fingers flex on the screen as he angles it further down your body, taking all of you in. "Don't stop."

So you don't. Spurred on by the heady atmosphere that's descended on the room and the gleam of hunger in his eyes you let your hands travel further, gliding down over your hips as you sway them invitingly. Back up to grip the hem of your t-shirt as you raise it slowly, a teasing pace which Van follows with eager eyes. You can't believe what you're doing, playing up to the camera, half of you urging to let yourself go whilst the other half is still cringing. You just need to clear your mind, cast off your inhibitions along with your t-shirt, immerse yourself in the moment... but you can’t.

"Shit, sorry, I just can't do it," you mutter, letting your shirt fall back down to cover your hips, your cheeks glowing hotly. "I know you've been wanting to do something like this for ages but I just can't let myself go. 'M too bloody embarrassed. It's knowing the camera's there that does it."

You curse yourself internally, the embers of excitement swiftly extinguished as you see a flicker of disappoint cloud your boyfriend's features, but in typical Van style it doesn't linger. If you'd have blinked you'd have missed it.

"It's okay love, don't worry." He steps forwards until he's standing right in front of you. "I was only mucking around. Don't want you to do anything ya don't feel comfortable doing... but... hold on… I've just had an idea..." He pauses, a hopeful look in his eyes as he holds the camera out to you.

"What?" You ask cautiously, taking the camera. You know that look, you've seen it a million times before. Van usually wears it when he's trying to persuade you so do something that you're not sure of, but he just said...

"Just wanna try something, that's all," he says, interrupting your thoughts. "You trust me, don’t ya? Think you might like it..."

"Should I trust you?" You ask with a smirk. You're intrigued as he walks you back slowly until you feel the sofa hit the back of your legs. You'll be annoyed if Van wants to keep pushing his silly fantasy even though he knows you're not fully on board but it's really not like him to coerce you, and the fact that you're now holding the camera and therefore in control reassures you somewhat.

"Uh-huh," he murmurs, hands on your shoulders as he applies just enough pressure to show you that he wants you to sit. You comply, heart picking up a pace as you watch him sink down on to his knees on the floor, his eyes never leaving yours.

"Just sit back and relax," he smiles, hands brushing upwards along your outer thighs until he reaches your hips. "I know ya don't like the idea of being filmed, so why don't you film me instead?"

His hands slide inwards as he talks, fingers working on the button fly of your jeans, deftly unfastening them before you can even fully grasp on to what he's saying.

"But what do you... oh... oh right..." your brain finally catches up as Van starts tugging your jeans down your hips, your lacy underwear coming down with them.

They're at mid-thigh when he stops, looking up at you with those pretty blue eyes, full of hope again. "That's if ya want to..."

Shit, he has you wrapped around his little finger, he really does. Your gaze sinks down to his lips, those full pretty pink lips that are responsible for the most wickedly sinful things, and you find your resolve crumbling. If you're filming him from up here then you won't actually be on camera... well, part of you will be, but not your face. You're burning up at the thought of the parts of you that will be displayed, chanting a prayer of silent relief that you shaved your bikini line just that morning.

"I can't believe the shit you talk me into McCann," you grumble even though you're smiling, heart fluttering with excitement as you press 'record' and angle the little viewing screen downwards to watch Van settling in between your spread thighs, looking up at you like the frustratingly tempting devil that he is.

"Sorry baby," he purrs in that sweetly seductive drawl he uses when he's just about to fucking defile you. "I'll make it up to you... promise."

He's loving this, in his element under the camera's watchful gaze, looking up at you through the lens as he dips his head and licks a slow, ticklish stripe up your inner thigh.

"Shit," you breathe, every muscle in your body tensing in anticipation. You feel like you're watching a porno but the fact that it's Van down there and you're experiencing the sensations first hand just heightens everything.

He spends some time on your inner thighs... too long in your opinion... not that you're going to complain. He knows your body so well, how every calculated kiss will make you shiver, how every sharp nip of his teeth will make you hiss. You can already see the hickeys forming, small purplish bruises blooming like pretty violet flowers on your skin.

"Van," you breathe softly, your hips starting to shift impatiently as he gets closer to where you need him to be.

"What's up babe, d'ya want me to kiss ya here, hmm?" His breath fans over your burning skin, making you shudder.

You can barely get your words out, mumbling a quick "mhmmm" before a shaky whimper bubbles up from your throat, drenched in desperation. Fire rages in your cheeks as you realise how every little sound will likely be caught on film at this close range. That doesn't put you off though... it actually fires you up.

"Here?" He smirks up at the camera knowingly, lips just barely brushing your heat before he pulls away.

"Yeah, right there!" You blurt, resisting the urge to grab hold of his hair and buck your hips upwards, focusing instead on keeping your breathing steady, your palm feeling slick where you're gripping the camcorder. "Please..."

"Sweetheart, you don't need to beg."

His voice drips with honey just like the sweetness that's dripping between your thighs. You don't think you can take this teasing for another second but your prayers are answered as Van smiles up at the camera seductively before he buries his face between your legs and gets to work.

It's nothing short of heavenly. Your skin's littered with goosebumps, every little touch amplified, the tickle of his hair, the soft brush of his lips, the wet drag of his tongue as it pushes between your lips, parting your folds. When he flicks it over your clit for your first time you nearly hit the roof.

"That feel good?" He hums against your skin, circling your sweet spot with hot, wet strokes. You answer him with a ghastly moan that makes your skin crawl with humiliation but you can't help it, you're ready to fall apart on his tongue and he's only just getting started.

He can most likely tell you're already close by the trembling in your thighs and he immediately slows his pace to soft, teasing licks that have you whimpering, your body sinking further into the couch.

You can't take your eyes off the screen, your previous inhibitions swiftly falling away, the fact that you know that it's turning Van on so much just adding to your enjoyment. He's putting on the performance of his life down there, pulling all the tricks out of his arsenal, playing your body like a musical instrument that's singing sweetly for him with overwhelming pleasure. And far from it turning you off now, the thought that you're immortalising this moment in time just makes you even hotter.

"You taste so good... can't get enough of ya," he utters, pulling back so he can catch his breath, his fingers sliding through your folds, glistening with your wetness. He traces your entrance with a solitary finger before he pushes slowly inside, his lips returning to your clit to work their magic.

The sounds filling the room are filthy, your choked up moans, the wet sloppy sounds his tongue makes as he devours you, the lewd squelch of his finger pumping into you. You're so wet you can feel your slick dripping between your thighs and soaking into the fabric of the sofa. An errant thought flits through your mind about cleaning up the mess afterwards but it doesn't stick. You don't care. You're too far gone, surrendering to the bliss thrumming through your veins, fully submerged in it, drowning in it.

When you moan his name he gives it his all, his tongue flicking over your nub with perfect precision. A second finger slips inside to join the first and he thrusts them knuckle deep, curling them and twisting them to stroke your front wall in a way that makes you want to scream out loud.

"Oh my god..." you gasp. It makes your blood blaze, your back arching away from the chair as you push yourself further into his seeking mouth.

"C'mon baby, give it to me," he urges, groaning against your wetness, fingers pumping hard and fast and slick. "Come for me... I want it all."

You mewl as he pushes even deeper, fingers reaching a hidden spot that makes your body spasm. Your legs automatically go to clamp around his head but he shoots his hands out to push your thighs even further apart, opening you up for him.

You can barely catch your breath as you feel yourself unravelling, the very fabric of your being drenched in bliss, struggling to hold the camera steady as your whole body quakes. He purses his lips around your clit with a suckling motion and it's your final undoing.

"Ohhh FUCK!" You cry out as your climax tears through your body, an overwhelming rush of sensation that renders you senseless for a second, garbled profanities and whimpers falling from your lips. Van tenderly licks you through it, still not missing a beat, keyed up with determination to give you the best head of your life... either that or he's trying to kill you, you're not sure which. Your body goes taut and then suddenly slack, your head lolling back against the sofa as you gasp for breath and he finally breaks away, scattering a few soft kisses on your thighs as he draws back. He sits back on his haunches, slightly dazed but still grinning like the proverbial cat that got all the cream... and you guess he did... in more ways that one.

"Holy shit that was good," you pant, head falling forward, not even realising that you'd dropped the camcorder which lies discarded on the floor, temporarily forgotten.

"You... my love... are fucking unbelievable. Jesus, that was so hot!" He crawls up your body, planting kisses as he goes, your thighs, your hips, your belly as he rucks up your shirt, then your neck, your jaw and finally your lips where he kisses you deeply, the taste of you still on his tongue.

"Still can't believe we did that," you laugh softly as you break away and Van nuzzles into your neck, smiling against your skin. "I don't know if I'm gonna be able to watch it back though. Those sounds I was making..."

"That's the best bit!" Van interjects. "Don't think ya realise how hot yer sound when yer moaning and sighing and shit... almost had me coming in my pants I swear!"

You giggle at that, suddenly acutely aware that Van's not had his release yet, the hardness of his cock pressing into your thigh insistently where he's leaning over you. Your head swirls with thoughts, eager for more now you've broken the boundaries, wondering how far you dare take this, what other exhilarating fantasies you can unlock. You grab for the collar of his shirt, drawing him back to your lips, kissing him long and hard before you pull back, looking him boldly in the eye.

"You ready for round two?" You ask, loving the way his eyes widen with shock and excitement as his jaw falls slack. "’Cause I reckon the sequel might be even dirtier..."

[sapphorror]

so I don't necessarily have anything to *say* about it just yet but I find this moment very interesting because if there's one thing that's always been very central to Dib's characterization it's that he, like Zim, is driven primarily by ego—and more to the point, his sense of heroism is ultimately constructed in much the same way Zim's role as an invader is. It's a shallow fantasy he's crafted for himself to make living more bearable, and I would think that the opportunity to be hailed as an entire planet's chosen savior would be exactly the kind of thing he'd seize on. It's EXACTLY how he sees himself, or at least, how he wants to see himself.

And the really interesting thing is that we actually DO see exactly this happen later on in the same story, when he finally wins and it maybe just a little bit goes to his head. He's genuinely well-intentioned, and he wants to teach the Plim to rise up and save themselves rather than rely solely on him, but that's just it—his ultimate end goal as Defender of the Earth has always been to expose the truth and make people realize how blind they've been, but now that he's opened their eyes they can go forth and seize their own destiny, which just happens to look a lot like all the things Dib personally cares about. Perhaps ironically, his desired role is less hero than prophet, and maybe that's why he finds it so hard to swallow the notion of starring in someone else's pre-made narrative.

(And there's something to be said here, about how Zim, for all his unrepentant Zim-ness, might've actually gotten one thing a little bit right when he told Dib the Plim weren't suited to self-actualization—that they didn't want it. To Zim's view, of course, this only makes them exploitable and we're right back to him being horrible again, but I think there is something worth considering about the Plim's autonomy and that, faced with all the evidence and every means with which to save themselves, they still asked—literally asked—Dib to do it for them. Which begs the question—is Dib's continued insistence on developing the Plim's independence itself a kind of subjugation? How about his fixation on showing humankind something they so obviously don't want to see?)

... But you know the really funny part?

Dib ultimately rejects yet another heroic title that isn't to his liking, albeit much less surprisingly this time. Lesson unlearned.

Take this all with a grain of salt—I'm thinking out loud here and quite literally didn't expect to say any of this, but it's an aspect of Dib's character that interests me, and it was actually really unexpected and exciting to read a piece of canon material going into it. I think I'd like it if there'd been more emphasis on Dib's initial motives being largely the same as Zim's in essence—that is to say, feeding his ego and spiting the nemesis—since his ultimate epiphany is that all this time wasted on a petty popularity contest could've been spent actually, you know, being a hero, but the message still comes across and the core of the story being told is really solid. I'm going to be obsessed for weeks.

Also, Plab is everything to me. And I really do think it says something that the single faithful outlier among the Plim still thought Dib could maybe afford to cool it on the reclaiming-their-individuality bit. That's honestly more telling to me than the opinion of any crowd.

[kolour-me-kourt]

Chapter fifteen: sex ain’t better than love

Time really does heal wounds just not all of them. YN and Jayson have found themselves in a stronger healthier relationship.... Or so she thinks. She's tried her hardest to fully forgive him and honestly she has but she doesn't trust him yet fully that'll take more time. With her new budding friendship with Melo Jayson finally saw them together and he no longer was worried about it she was gonna step out but he was worried that she had something with Melo that she could never have with him again and that's friendship. The more they worked on it he felt better about the situation. Slowly becoming friends again had completely helped the relationship.

Right now they were meeting up for a lunch date. She came straight from work to see him. When she walked into the restaurant she saw LBG it had been the first time since the whole ordeal so yn wanted to apologize to her. It hurts different when you're the one being done wrong. So naturally when she saw her she walked right over to her table hoping it would turn her karma back positive.

"Hiiiii" "hey you have a mintue to talk in private" since the texts and videos had come out YN hadn't seen LBG Melo was 90% sure she was the one who leaked it so YN figured she knew about them for months "wussup? You came to confront me because I leaked the messages? And ruined your new relationship?" "Uh no I figured you did that but me and Jayson are better than ever actually I just wanted to apologize .... It was fake of me to be In your face and fucking Melo" "I guess we're even now .... Better than ever though? Did he not take the bait?" "Huh what are you talking about?"

"Me and Ella have been dming eachother and becoming friends for months so when I saw Jayson was gonna be in st.Louis with Nelly I let her know ... I knew he would have to fold.... Unless he just didn't tell you" She smirked feeling excited that she might've told YN she got cheated on  "trust and believe it's nothing about that man any other woman could tell me ... but like I said we good" be the bigger person YN thought "okay well so are we since we're even" "ight cool enjoy your lunch" "you do the same"

LBG walks off going back to her table YN walks a little further and sits down at the table with Jayson. "You look beautiful" "thank youuuu sorry ima little late" "uh what we're you talking to her for?" YN lifted an eyebrow "uh just wanted to apologize as a person who's been cheated on now.... Well I just wanted to apologize" "wow okay" "yeah she did say something interesting though" "what she say?" "She set you up to fuck Ella.... Well more so she told Ella where you would be and you fell for the trap so you were a pawn in a much bigger chest game .... Sad really" "... I'm sorry I thought we were moving pass this"

"no no no ... we were I mean we are but when it comes up what am I supposed to do?" "So you told her we're struggling" he sighs "hell tf no I don't care if we were in the trenches that's our business nobody else's especially somebody I dont like but .....are we struggling?" "I mean you don't trust me and that hurts" "that's something that has to be gained again I don't wanna say I don't... I also don't really wanna have this conversation in public... you know?" She smiled through the whole conversation but Jayson was noticeably upset. She reached for his hand across the table   "Nah I get it but we can talk later right?" "Of course" he smiled slightly

"I ordered some stuff already but you can order some more whatever you want" "oooou whatever I want daddy?" She laughed genuinely he was glad he could do that.... see the real glow come to her cheeks and her eyes glisten.... It had been a minute "yeah but don't make me go broke now" "we both know that's not gon happen" "hmm you gotta keep me on my shit so I know" "don't I always?" "You try but I'm stubborn" " glad you know" "oooh you got jokes" she laughed slightly

"just like you" "I did order your meal too and your drink ... so I hope you okay with that " "yes it's fine ... I was late " "you sure?" "Yeah you should know me by now" "you know that was one of the trust test on the list ..... that you refuse to read" YN rolled her eyes

"if I'm gonna build trust with you it's just gonna happen no therapist about to tell me to play a whole bunch of games to gain trust" "it's wild cause you the main one that hypes up therapy to everyone" "cause it's a great resource but you choose this guy and I don't like him" "why?" "He's clearly a fan and agrees with you all the time" "I'm doing this for us.... I don't think he does that" "and he's judge mental af" YN continued ranting completely ignoring everything Jayson had said he rolled his eyes "okay Bae you right I'm wrong" "don't do that I always want you to speak your mind" "so listen to me when I'm trying to speak" "sorry" she said softly

when Jayson spoke to her like that it turned her on. Sex after the infidelity had been completely different. He did all the same things that use to get her to her moment but she just couldn't cum with him anymore she found herself faking the orgasms which she vowed she would never do. She didn't wanna say the sex was bad because he would be effected by that and it would be hard to move on.

And honestly It wasn't that the sex was bad it was the fact that everytime she saw his dick she almost felt like it was contaminated. In the beginning of their relationship she absolutely loved having sex with him because she felt like he belong to her and after sharing Melo it felt great to have some ownership but two months ago everything changed. Did she enjoy the sex? A little bit Did she find herself having sex everytime he hinted towards it regardless if she was in the mood or not .... Yes cause now she felt like she had competition.

YN knows it's completely unhealthy for her to have these thoughts but she was coping so now ....in this moment actually being turned on by her man even in this incredibly intense situation she found joy because this was growth.

"I didn't mean to talk to you like that" he caught himself being too forceful she licked her lips. "Nah you needed too .... I'm all ears now" she looked him up and down slowly He smiled "are you looking at me how I think you looking at me?" "Jayson baby I'm trying to listen... focus" "uh you made me lose my train of thought .... If you don't like him we can find another one but this one specializes in relationships with athletes so that's why I chose him" "of course he does that's how he gets to meet all his favs" she jokes

the waiter starts to bring the food out and when YN sees her dish she smiles "this smells so gooood" "damn it look good too I should've got me that" she laughed "wanna try some?" "Yeah" he had ordered a white sauce pasta with red peppers chicken and Turkey bacon "well that's tooooooo damn bad" she smiled drinking some of her Moscato. "Oh damn alright" "I'm  playing bae let me try it first though" she puts some of the pasta on her fork eating it slowly "yeah nah this really good" she puts some on her fork extending it to Jayson. "We gon get two to go" Jayson spoke still tasting the food in his mouth  "for you?" "Yupp" she laughed "greedyyy"

"Can we get back to how you was just looking at me though ..... I ain't seen that look and heard that soft voice in a while.... Not that I'm complaining" "I didn't wanna fake it with you .... If I feel this way I feel this way" "you couldn't fake that look even if you tried it's little give away so I know my baby" "yeah ... you do" "so do you wanna...?" She smiled "finish my pasta? Yeah I wanna do that". He laughed "but after we leave here... and finish our talk do you wanna go have some sex you'll actually enjoy instead of faking it" she started choking because she didn't know that he knew he shook his head as she started drinking some of the water that was at the table

"You done with the dramatics bae?" She rolled her eyes "you caught me off guard ... why you think I was faking it?" "Like I said I l know you and I know how you feel when you cum and you haven't been feeling... like that no matter how hard I try" "my pussy?" She whispered he laughed "I meant you all of you physically and your energy ... watch your mouth" she smirked "my lack of orgasm doesn't mean I haven't been enjoying you ... cause I have... it's just different" "you didn't tell me though and anytime it came up you ensured me that you were fine" "you didn't tell me you knew.... Got me wasting energy" "you and your jokes"

"I'm serious" "oh yeah? How it's a waste of energy" "cause ...." He smirked "im waiting" " I was really trying to play it up ... ya know so that took energy" he laughed slightly "let me ask you something Fr though" "yeah?" "Did you fake everything for the past two months? Or was it just the ....big moment" "it still felt okay so like the reactions were real the moans were real but I just played it up a little" "is that the same reason you wasn't letting me .... Eat?" Her eyes got wide

"I ... just knew I wouldn't be able to ... so it would leave me frustrated and be a waste of everyones time " she whines a little bit "do you feel like I'm rushing you.... When I'm down there" "baby can we notttt" "sorry I'm just really interested in this conversation" "it's not proper dinner convo" "you right ... but this is being added to the conversation just so you know" "no..." "yes ...." "Jayson" "we not fuckin until I get to the bottom of this I can't stand the thought of not pleasing you" "Jayson it's fine" "it's not though that's one thing with you I got right from the beginning I knew you wasn't cumming but I thought you were at least enjoying it .... But that don't seem to be right either so can we please just talk about it so I can..." "yes sorry baby of course"

"how's your Merlot?" "Sweet" she said simply "you mad at me?" "No... I'm ready to go though" "tell me if you're mad" she smiled "I'm not mad I want to go... finish the talk and..." his smile became big "and what?" YN did the motion like she was sucking dick.

"You can do that here...." his voice was deep as he looked her up and down "Boy stop" the waiter stopped by "everything okay here?" "Yea sir can we actually get to go boxes and can you give us two more orders of what she had and then the check" "yes sure no problem" "I hope you know I'm eating one of those" "why when you didn't finish that one" "only cause we leaving...." "You a headache" "yourssss"

After twenty minutes they were on the outside of the restaurant. "You going straight home?" She asked Jayson "yeah why? You not?" "I am..." "then let's go" he walks her to her car and then gets in his own He waits for her to pull out and Then he does the same.

Soon enough they were back home parking their cars she waits for him to let her out of her car. "You was racing me?" He asked "I won so it don't matter😝" "I know one race you can beat me at .... Get yo ass in this house" he pulls her roughly making her laugh  "oooou" he opens the door and shutting it quickly picking her up he pins her against the walls kissing her deeply she moans

"We gotta talk first..." he says on her lips "Jayson that's not fair" she whines"pay back for letting me fuck you terribly this whole time" she pouts "baby your dick is so hard I can feel you" "you want me?" "Yes please" "what if you don't like it?" "I will...." "I wanna finish these conversations first though..." "fine ... put me down? So I can focus" "sit on my lap? So I can remember what I'm trying to do after this..." she smiles "yes that works" she kisses his lips over and over again as he takes her to sit on the couch.

"You're so strong baby" she says on his lips as she kisses all over his face " yeah I gotta be strong ... now listen to me" he spanks her ass she pulls away "yes sir?" She knew that was his weakness "You trying me baby" "I'm not trying you... what are we supposed to be talking about?" "Well for one why you didn't tell me about the sex not being good for you" "cause I quickly figured out it was a mental thing so I didn't wanna tell you and it was nothing you could do... it would only hurt your feelings"

"I still wanna know those things it's no point of me fucking you if you don't like it ... I hate that... which brings me to the next conversation the trust excerises and our therapist" "what about it" "we need to start doing them" "you ordered for me and I liked it..." "I wanna do more ..." "like what bae?" "Like what's on the list .... Compromise?" "Fine I'll try three of them with you but if I don't like them after that it's a dub" "fine that's fair.... I got one in my head I wanna try a little later you okay with that?"

"You came up with it?" "Yes..." "ummm yeah it's making me a little uneasy but yeah" "why uneasy?" "Naturally ... idk what it's gonna be so I'm nervous" he kissed her lips "don't be.... Now do you wanna change therapists?" "No we would have to start all the way over..." "but you don't like him" "So?.... He's not bad he just likes you more" "I don't think so" "it's okay Bae ... are we done now?" He smiled

"no the situation with LBG....if you felt embarrassed or mad or any of that I'm sorry cause once again I'm sorry that you have to deal with my actions" "I forgave you .... So I had to forgive you for all that comes with that....it didn't piss me off cause I did some fucked up things to her so she was vengeful that's on me we all made actions that turned into bigger issues so I get it" he kisses her slowly "so ... we good?" "Yesss"

"Lastly..." "Ughhh" she cuts him off he spanks her ass "ow!" She laughs "like I was saying .... Lastly you gon let me eat your pussy?? I don't care how long it takes bae.... Let me make you cum" she was speechless as he picks her kissing her and taking her to the bedroom she moans. "You gon let me ... huh?" "Yesss" hearing yes from her was exciting but also brought a lot of pressure at this point he hadn't made her cum in two months so this needed to be amazing for both of them she tried to relax and stay in the moment so it could be good. She starts to take her clothes off watching him do the same. He hovered over her body looking in her eyes "you ready?" "Yes" she kiss his lips

He starts kissing down her body "if you want me to stop I will" "Jayson .... I don't wanna" he stopped on her stomach kissing all over and then he spread her legs. He didn't lick or kiss her for a moment building up the anticipation. She arched her back "baby please?" He kisses her thighs she felt him smirking "you so wet and I haven't even touched you yet...." "Ughh" she continued to move her hips up to his face everytime he would back away until suddenly she finally felt his tongue making her drop her hips he pulls her closer to his face and continued to lick her center she moaned softly she smiled it felt good already.

"You want fingers?" "Yes" he slides two fingers deep inside of her as his mouth continued to lick suck and kiss. "Yes yes yes yesssssss" she grabbed on to the blankets and herself to try and calm down but it felt so good and it felt completely new again it had been too long. "Want me to stay like this? You like this?" "Yesss baby pleaseee" he smiled and that's exactly what he was talking about earlier some things you just completely can not fake. "I love you Jayson..... Jayson I love you" she said breathlessly spreading her legs wider because she was getting closer to her big moment. "Mmmmm Jay—-" he cuts her off looking up at her  "I love you too" He said quickly rushing back to her center she pouted

"I'm taking too long?" "No such thing what I tell you earlier? I meant that and I'm enjoying myself ... I promise just relax" "okay ... okay I'm relaxing" he kissed her thighs "so can I finish?" "Yes please?" He started back up making her immediately arch her back she didn't realize how close she was before. He grabs her legs with each of his hands spreading them apart as she got closer. "Keep them open for me please?" "Yesss" he squeezes her ass pulling her close to his mouth. Her hands immediately grab his head. "Ahhhhh" he started looking in her eyes he groaned into her sending vibrations through her body.

"Oooou ooooou" her legs started to shake she grabbed her breast "ahhhhhh" he continued to groan as she moaned loudly "baby baby babyyyyyyyyyy" "mmmhmm?" "I'm gonna ...." He never stopped what he was doing "baby please don't stop pleaseee" she continued to rock her hips back and forth against his face as she finally came "yes yes yesssss...fuckkk" she felt so good it's nothing like she had experienced since he wasn't able to make her cum. She hadn't even been able to make herself cum like this. And he never stopped.

"Jayson .... Okay okay" she tries to push his head away "uh uh Im not done" "oh fuck oh fuckkk" he moves her hands pinning them down on her stomach "yesss baby yessss" "you still want me to move?" ".... Nooooo" he smirked taking one of his hands and moving it back in between her legs to slowly slide two fingers inside he kissed up her body. "That felt good huh?" "Y—es" "can't believe you been faking that for so long" "I'm sorry..." "I know." He tongue kisses her as his fingers continued to move upwards

"you'll cum for me like this?" "I want to bad" he smiled kissing her forehead "spread them legs wider" he smiled when she listen and his fingers felt so good to her "you dripping all on the bed ... all on my hand ..... just wet" she grabs his arm that's holding him up digging her nails in deep as she started to cum again. Her eyes closed "You squirting? Damn baby" next thing she knew he was back between her legs drinking from her fountain like he was the thirstiest man on earth. "ohhhhh fuckkkk" he kissed back up her body placing his fingers that was just inside her in her mouth she sucks them softly. He sticks them in the back of her throat making her gag

"you gon suck my dick?" She nods her head "what if I say no" he teases her "You won't tell me no" "why I won't?" "Cause I'm gonna do a good job"he kisses her lips adding tongue making her moan "get up and show me then" he kissed her lips one last time standing up she bit her lip siting up "you different you know that?" "Yeah I'm different now get yo sexy ass over here"

she finally scoots out of the bed walking over to him when she gets to him she kisses all over his chest softly rubbing her nails up and down his shaft. Then she kisses down his body until she gets on her knees. She smirks while looking up at him

"you trying to tease me huh?" He says

After a few kisses on his dick YN wets her mouth slowly spiting onto his dick getting it nice and wet Jayson pulls at her hair pulling her away "I asked you a question... answer me" "I'm not teasing" she starts stroking his dick he keeps pulling her head back "now you're teasing me Jayson"  "don't play with me baby.... Okay?" She bit her lip "what's gonna happen if I do?" "Nothing... just don't" "okay so let me start..." she pouts he lets her hair go and she immediately kissing his tip slowly placing it in her mouth his head immediately goes back she pulls him out of her mouth licking on the bottom of his shaft staring him in his eyes.

"Hit me with it" she moaned he smiled "say please" "Please"? he grabbed his dick hitting her right in the face with his dick he noticed her fingering herself as her mouth went back on his tip and her other hand started to stroke him again in perfect harmony moving down and up together "keep looking at me" he said softly "damn you so beautiful... that pussy so wet for me ain't it?" "Mmmmhmmm" "I need to feel you.... Let go back to the bed" she stoped "you sure ... that wasn't that long" "yeah I'm sure" he helps her up and then they walk over to the bed he pushes her down on her back...

"babyyy" she laughed "hmmm? You don't like a little bit of aggression?" "Yeah..." "yeah I know" she bit her lip  watching him intently wondering what was next he grabs his dick teasing her but also teasing himself. She wiggled as his tip continued to play between her folds up and down to her clit and then to her entrance painfully slow as she whined "please Jay?" She stared into his eyes and suddenly he was completely inside of her. He grabbed her boobs as he stroked slowly "yesss baby" "damn look at how you grippin me" he concentrated on his dick moving in and out of her which made her look too it was a beautiful site "I'm so wet" gasps  he grabs her hips switching up his tempo but it still felt amazing.

"Hold your legs ...." "Jayyyyy" she whined he hits her thigh pushing her legs back. "Now!" She holds her ankles "when I tell you to do something do it...stop playing with me" his thumb landed on her clit rubbing it just enough to make her say "I'm gonna cummm" "nah..." she smiled he leaned down to kiss her as they continued to moan in each others mouth. "Fuckkk" "shhh just kiss me" she kissed until she didn't have any more strength to because she was cuming. "Fuck" he groaned on her lips "squeezing me and you so damn tight .... Can't believe you thought you was faking this bae" "I'm so sorry" "nah I'm sorry" she tried to drop her legs that's when he promptly said no softly "no?" "We not done..." "oh....? can I rest them on your shoulder?" He smiled pulling out she looked at his dick wet from her still fully hard and wanting her

"you wanna be done?" "No..I was just—" "put it in the air for me okay?" She turns around sticking her ass in the air he watched her make the perfect arch. "Damn" he said softly and grabbed her hands putting them on her back holding them there and sliding in deeply "see I had to hold you .... You like to run when it's good"  "Jaysonnnnnnn" "hmm?" "I missed you" " I missed you too baby" his other hand comes around rubbing her clit "OHHHHHHHHHHHH" she started to cum "fuck you trying to push me out...keep your hands there" she holds her hands behind her back.

He puts his hands on either side of her head stroking deeply "throw it back on me" "ughhhhh" "yeah throw that shit back" she started to go too fast "slow down... you not even enjoying it when it's that fast " she continued going fast he slaps her ass "slow the fuck down" she listens going slower he grabs her hair pulling her up as he started to fuck her again. He chokes her a little bit making her smile "I love how you takin my dick right now" he kissed her cheek letting her rest back on the bed.

"Mmmmm" he said softly she knew that noise from anywhere he was about to cum. She tried to glance back to look at his face but then he went into overdrive making her lose her position. Her stomach now was flat on the bed and ass barely in the air but he didn't stop. "Bae you not being a good girl for me no more" YN whines as she starts to release "oh no warning?" "I'm so fuckin sorry" she moans into the sheet. "Bae you want me to cum?" "Pleaseeeee" "where you want it?" "Inside me Jay inside meeee" he smiled grabbing her hair and choke  her while her body remained on the bed he pulled her head close to him "where you want it?" "Inside me baby pleaseeee" she looked up at him as he groaned deeply

"pleaseee?" "Fuck I love the way you grippin me right now I want it to last forever" it's almost like he growled the sentence in her ear which turned her on more she notice him becoming weak as his hips went into over drive but also become sluggish and his eyes closed. "Baby I want it so deep in me please" she whined never has she begged for his orgasm so much but she needed it as much as he did right now. "Oh shit" he begins sucking on her neck "daddy don't stop" she felt him get tense and then release inside of her holding her as close as possible "mmmm"

He licks his fingers rubbing her clit "fuck Jaysonnnnn" "one last one for me baby while you keep me inside" her eyes were heavy as she started to grind against him "want me to stop?" "Nooo please" "please what?" "Don't stop don't .... Mmmmmm" "go head cum on me bae" she grinds slightly against his fingers "I'm .... So close.." she says softly his hand goes to her throat "so what you need?" "Squeeze it..." he didn't ask anymore questions he just squeezed her throat tight but not too tight as his other hand went into over drive on her clit making her cum almost immediately "ohhhh shit look at youuu drippin" he started to stroke again slowly and deeply

  "daddyyyy thank youuuuu" he started to cum again groaning in her ear softly "fuck" he slowly let her go she let herself relax laying on the bed fully he stands up looking down at her .... Legs still shaking He smiled he was proud. She lays on her side "come here.." "hmmm?" He walks closer to her lining himself up with her stomach "come up to my face I want a kiss" he walks closer leaning down to kiss her lips he stands up "anything else?" She licked her lips staring directly at his dick she slowly put him back in her mouth "damn baby" after she was content she pulled away

"just trying to clean you off" he leans down kissing her forehead "I love you" "I love you too.... Lay dat ass down" he laughed "why?"  "Why not?" "Cause I gotta pee" "me too and I'm laying down" "Get up" "your little deep voice worked one time now you wanna be talking to me crazy" "I better not hear nothing crazy come out your mouth for the next three days after that sex." YN laughed "so on day four I can talk shit again?"  She stands up walking past him to the bathroom "Shouldn't ever be talking to me like that..." he smacks her ass "ooouch" "I'm going to the other bathroom!" "okay then" he slides some shorts on going to her guest bathroom

YN pees brushes her teeth and then got in the shower about five minutes in her shower she felt a cold breeze from the shower door opening. "Can I come in?" "Mhmm" he drops his shorts coming into the shower with her

"I know I should just be happy that your legs are weak and we having this good moment but—-" YN cuts him off "—- baby please can we just live in this good moment it might continue to last you're trying to be twenty steps ahead in our relationship now and it just doesn't work like that... I love you ... we working this shit out that's all that matters the more we sit and analyze stuff the worse it's gonna get for me" "okay Bae I'm sorry" she looked at his face and couldn't help but smile "I want you to be able to get stuff off your chest but I also just don't wanna keep talking about the same things .... I truly believe we good" "alright then that's enough for me ... I promise" "did you tap out?" "Nah ... why" she turns around standing directly under the shower head rinsing the front of her body he grabs her hair making it into a pony tail standing directly behind her

"Wanna answer me?" She glances up "I was just asking" "from the way you standing I can tell your legs are weak .... I think you tapped out" "me? Never!" She smiled "so let me slide back in" "jaysonnnn" "prove me wrong..." "I can't cause you right" he kissed her forehead "thoughts so" "I know everything is a little crazy right now but.... I don't want you to leave" "I'm not we got time" "I mean ever..." he laughed slightly "baby .... You know that's not possible" " I do I'm just saying" "I'm sorry we can't be together all the time ... this long distance shit is for the birds"  Jayson turns around so YN could wash his back

"you thought about letting me meet Deuce ... and his mother"  "you think you ready for that" "it's not up to me" "nobody has ever met Deuce I've never even considered it but with you.... Shit" she grabs the shower head rinsing his back  

He turns around "you'll consider it?" "If you're ready he's older now I don't want him getting attached and then ..." "no I get it .... Ask your mom" he smiled "why?" "She knows things that I can't even explain and she knows you and Deuce so are you ready? Am I ready? And most importantly  is he ready? To meet someone I know I'm important to you and I love you you're important to me and I just think about the constant back and forth and long period of time when you're not here and it's because I can't go there when you have Deuce cause I haven't met him but if I do meet him I can come around more for the both of you"

"mostly for me right?" She laughed "was that some Jealousy I hear Jay?"

"Yeah definitely I want you to only be focused on me" "of course I am ... but isn't this getting serious" "it is .... So I would love for you two to have a bond but I don't know what that looks like cause once again he's never met anybody I was talking to or dating" "I'm not trying to force it Bae I'm just  .... That would solve this long distance problem and also I wanna meet his mom first" he smiled "that'll be interesting" "why?" "Y'all totally different" "yeah I'm cuter than her" "bae.." he says sternly

"my bad I'll be nice I just wanna meet her cause I don't wanna met deuce without meet her and getting the okay the last thing I wanna  do is start drama in your life surrounding your child so if you think that's gonna happen forget I even said anything" "close your eyes let me rinse your hair" "want me to turn away from you?" "Yeah so I can get that back of your head" she listens bracing her self on the wall as Jayson washed the conditioner out of her hair. "Let me think about it some more and then I'll get back to you ... how that sound?" "Like a plan" "good .... You so understanding" "I try"

"I love your wet hair... does something to me" she smiled "you like the curls" "yeah I do ..." "me too I wish when it dries I could keep it like this" "well at least I get the pleasure of seeing you like this." She turns standing on her tip toes asking for a kiss. "I love you" "I love you" "nah I don't think you understand baby I love you sooooooo damn much like so damn much it doesn't make sense in my head" he kisses her forehead "and I love you so much more than you could ever love me" "if you love me more than I love you that's wayyyyy too much" she smiled he shook his head "actually nah it's just enough" "let's get out the shower" "you can go ahead Bae I need five more minutes" "okayyyy" she leaves him in the shower after drying off she puts on one of T shirts that was too big for her and some cute lace panties then she goes to the kitchen to start fixing some spaghetti.

When he came out of the bathroom he wanted more of her. "Bae?" He yelled from upstairs "I'm in the kitchennnnn" when he walked into the kitchen he had no clothes on "bae!" She was completely shocked he walked over to her quickly sitting her on the counter kissing "what are you doing bae" "I want you badly" he continued kissing her spreading her legs he moved her panties to the side sliding inside her deeply. "Fuckkk I'm cooking bae" "it'll be fine YN" "...the ground beef is gonna burn" she said quietly "so I need to stop?" "Nooo ... I was just ughhh" she whined

"fuckk" he groaned in her ear as she shook "fuck Jayyyy" "sorry I even had to come at you like that but baby you look so damn good I'm so happy about us" "me too daddy me——ughhhh" "hmmm?" He smiled "your voice and then the way you .... Fuck why can't I finish a sentence" he laughed slightly "you still can say too much if I'm being honest" "mmfuck!!" she pouts as she gets closer "you feel so fuckin good yn" he says right on her lips "right there right there oh gosh Im About to..." "nah wait for me" "jayyy I can't" his forehead rested on hers watching her closely while her eyes remained closed he kept a nice grip on her booty

"bae hold it" he felt her walls begin to squeeze him tighter indicating that she was trying to listen she grabbed his back digging her nails "ahhhh ... daddyyyy I cantttt" "cum for me cum with me" he rubs her clit as he works on making them release together he continued to stroke inside of her until he was tapped out He kissed her lips and neck sucking softly "damn let me put some clothes on" he pulls out fixing her panties as YN sat there trying to catch her breath he smiled

"what's for dinner? I'm hungry" "spaghetti if my meat didn't burn" she said with a slight attitude he helps her down off the counter "let me go put on some clothes I'll be back" she bit her lip "okay" he smacks her ass walking away. YN begin making her sauce as Jayson walks back "you mad I fucked your like that?" "No the food will be fine so no .... And it felt good so.... but um can I ask what prompted that?" "Trust excerise wanted to be spontaneous and see if you would trust me enough to do it safely..." "well did I pass?" "With flying colors" she smiled looking back at him "mmm good" "food smell good" "thank you Bae" "can't wait to eat" "if the trust excerises we're gonna be like that you should've told me" she smiled "you didn't even read them Bae" "I know and I'm sorry" "mhm I know"

"Chile...." "What?" "Nothing Jay nothing" "that attitude coming back I see" "I'm in here fixing you dinner ..... what attitude?" "I appreciate that too" "mhm" "that attitude!... it's a little hint but it's still there what's up?" "What's up is nothing" he stand up walking behind her pulling her close "talk to me" she pushed her hips further on him melting into his body "oh Is that what you want?" He kissed her check whispering in her ear she moaned softly "I'm not doing anything until you tell me what you want" "Jayson" she whined "what?" He said sternly she glance up at him and then quickly looked back down pouring her sauce over the meat mixing it well

"you're being rough" "being rough how?" "Being aggressive..." she couldn't help but moan cause she could feel him poking through his shorts and her panties  "why you whining" "you know why" "nah I don't tell me" "I want more ...." "more what?" "You..." "me doing what ? Use your words" now that her meat was mixed throughly she turned it on low and turned her water up high so it can boil she turned around staring at him "nothing I guess.." "just cause I want to hear you say it? Cause I hope you know I'm not bluffin" "I know daddy ..." she smiled "oh so you want me to give in?"

He grabs her hand putting it in his pants so she could feel him "you see I'm ready .... You can feel I'm ready just tell me what you want" "I want you to eat it .... And I wanna get fucked over the island"  "why was that so hard to say?" He picks her up sitting her on the island moving her panties out of the way again she gasp "hmm? You not gon answer me?" "It's hard to say those things even when I want them I wish you would just ...ooooou" she stopped taking when she felt his lips wrap around her clit. He moves and starts placing light kisses on her thighs "finish that sentence you wish I would what?" "Just do what you think I want cause you're right" "so I'm a 100% right? all the time?" "you're very accurate when I'm trying to tell you something with my body"

his kisses started getting closer and closer to her center making her whine more "so why not just tell me..you could've been getting your pussy ate by now" "ughhhhh" "I ask you a question" "I don't know Jayson I don't know" "You gettin frustrated?" "a little" he smiled pulling her close to his taking one long lick she melted on his tongue "yessss" she loved the way his hands grabbed at her thighs keeping her close to his face she loved how when he started enjoying himself he would growl like he was hungry for more "you wanna cum on my face?" "y-e--e-e-esssss" her yes very broken which let Jayson know she was close he stands up helping her down

"bend over" she stared him in his eyes if she protested he was gonna fuck her but if she didn't he had no intentions on stoping his meal she bends over with no complaints and he places her leg on the island straight and then she felt his tongue on her clit one more time. "FUCKKKKK'' "mmmmm" she grabbed onto the other end of the island to keep her balance as she pushed her hips back onto his face "im...s---o ...clo--seeee" next thing he knew he felt her getting wetter as he struggled to continue to lick her up finally when was done he kissed up her body stopping at both butt checks and then her back sliding in deep. "fuck yes" he noticed

the leg he had placed on the island kept moving closer and closer to the edge  "keep you leg up there don't move that shit you hear me?" he grabbed her hair roughly when she didn't answer "You hear me baby?" "Yessss daddy I hear you fuck" "next time you want another round what you gon say?" "Fuck me daddy pleaseeee" "and If I say no?" ''you won't" he smiled laughing slightly "you right" he glanced at the stove noticing the water got a little louder they have solid three minutes before the water started to boil he kept a strong hold on her hair

"so damn wet look at my baby" "daddyyy" "cum for me? you wanna cum for me?" "yessss" "damn I love the way your ass moving on me right now..." he said lowly but she heard him so she begin smiling "Jay—- mmmm Jay right there" his eyes were closed because he had worked himself up and was so close he could taste it .... He wanted to make her cum again though so he reached around rubbing her clit which immediately made her move her hips forward "uh uh baby where you going take this dick" "fuckkkk fuck fuckkkkkkkk " she says as she releases all over him he smiles

"thank you" He says to remind her to say thank you "thank youuuu" "tell daddy thank you" "thank youuuu daddyyyy fuckk" "mmmm guess where I'm about to cum?" "Inside me" "mhmm that's where you want it?" "Yes yes yesss fuck" "shit" he groaned when he felt her squeezing her walls around him as he finally exploded inside of her her leg finally fell as she tried to get herself together once again he fixed her panties and the water started to boil

"fuck baby could you?" She ask Jayson "just put the noodles in?" "Yeah ... um please" he smiled fixing himself "yeah I gotchu" he poured the noodles in the pot and she still hadn't moved "you good bae?" He walked over to her face kissing her forehead "hmm?" He laughed "are you good?" "Yes I'm fine" she stands up fixing her shirt "I feel like...." "What?" "Nothing I don't wanna seem crazy" she reached under the cabinet grabbing Clorox wipes wiping down the island and the counter she was on earlier "you still want more?" she bit her lip. "yeah... is that crazy?" "it's not crazy but you gotta feed me first bae or im not gon be any more good" He laughed "okay bae lets get some food in you" 

she drained the water when the noodles were done and put him some noodles in his bowl and poured the sauce over "any cheese?" "Yeah exactly like yours" "oooop you wanna be like big daddy" YN laughed he shook his head "you ain't big nothing" "this ass is big" "your ass and that head the only big things on you" "you don't complain about this head when I'm giving it to you" she finally places his meal in front of him "you got jokes" "always, what you want to drink daddy?" "Mmm you catering to me? Some water is fine" "water it is" she grabbed him a bottle handing it to him and then fixed her food sitting across from him.

"What you drinking?" He asked her "this is lemonade" "oh damn can I have some?" "Out of my glass or you want your own cup?" "I don't wanna drink all of yours so yeah my own cup" "okay I'll get you some" she grabbed a glass putting him some ice in it and then poured him some lemonade handing it to him "anything else?" "Nah bae let's eat" she smiled sitting down after a quick prayer she watched him eat her food and then started eating herself "this good asf bae look at you catering to me" she smiled "I'm glad we back Fr.... Feels good"

[wayward-dreamer]

I've been seeing a lot of people saying they're not liking this season (I'm not talking about the extreme conservatives who are review bombing it because they didn't realise this show was making fun of them until now lol), which is totally fine. Everyone has their reasons which are valid, but I've honestly really been enjoying it so far.

I like the idea of everyone dealing with their pasts and how it's affecting their present, and then possibly how it'll affect them in the future. Some might say it feels disjointed or that we don't need to know all this stuff about their backgrounds, but I actually feel it's the opposite. I think anything you get to learn about them makes them more rounded characters, and gives us more insight which is always a good thing considering we only get 8 episodes a season.

Yes, some of it is a bit recycled i.e. Frenchie's past, Kimiko's as well. That said, this is the most we've explored with Frenchie's days of working for Little Nina, more than S3 when Nina was actually in the season. We're always told things about him, but this is the first time he's dealing with the consequences first hand with Colin, and I'm actually glad they've done that. I think the addition of this girl in Kimiko's storyline who is from Shining Light might've been better explored in S3 as a continuation from S2, but I think this a way of putting this storyline to bed before we get into the final push in S5.

Hughie's arc is killing me, and Jack Quaid is absolutely crushing it. Annie's arc is great with her having to grapple with what's happened in the past and reconcile it with everything she's trying to do right now. Homelander is more frightening than ever, which I didn't think was possible but it is. Episode 4 is the peak (so far) of how scary and downright mean he can be. And his absolute delight in the face of that is disturbingly fantastic. Also the revelation that he's basically psychologically programmed to need and crave love is genius. That just makes him human, which is the one thing he hates to the point of wanting Ryan to hate that part of himself too. Brilliant. I also think Butcher's story carries a lot of weight despite being subdued, but it makes sense for what he's going through. And A-TRAIN HOLY SHIT. I think they're handling this road to redemption really well, and I think I'm one of the few people that don't think he's gonna die this season, which might just mean I'm delulu but whatever lol

Other seasons have had one central plot which have split into seperate arcs, but this one has a lot of arcs which are going to converge into one central plot soon I feel, which I think is just another way to do it and keep everyone on their toes. I like that the tone is a little darker this time, because they're building towards the end, not just of S4 but S5 too. I think it works for this season to set up the next and last, because we have more time to work with. So it's more like 16 episodes towards the series end, rather than 8, if that makes sense.

So let's see where this all goes, I'm really excited to see how everything unfolds!!

[hypersomniagame]

HYPERSOMNIA MAY DEV LOG : “COOKIN' IN THE KITCHEN”

Hi! For all of you who follow HYPERSOMNIA, you should already know what the gist is here yada yada yada,

if you don't know what this is or are confused on what hypersomnia is read the other dev logs i've said this like every time lol

Hey! Hi! Hello! Welcome to the dev log!

I'd like to apologize about last month, I was going through a big block on development and I got practically nothing done. I've also been focusing on real life stuff which has been strange!

OK! So, first things first. Some of you might've seen on our Twitter, the new trailer is DONE! It's been "finished" for a few weeks now but I went back and made some small edits and now I can fully say it's complete!

I'm insanely happy with how this one came out. I went all out on it and I think you guys will agree when it releases that it just completely blows all our other trailers right out of the water. From music, to editing, to visuals, presentation, everything.

I'm more than excited to show you guys this trailer, and hopefully you all will be able to see it soon! It'll be premiering in this years MOTHER DIRECT (as always lol), so be ready for that! Tons of great fangames and indies are gonna be shown off, along with other MOTHER projects, so if you're interested I highly suggest you keep up with M4E.

Now, onto a more direct game update!

As of right now, the demo is about 50% playable!

This month has been almost exclusively eventing and scripting for the game. That 50% doesn't mean the demo is halfway finished, but it means that we're halfway there to getting the demo playable from start to finish. There's still a lot I gotta do, but eventing is the biggest hurdle for me currently, so it should only be up from here.

Also,

Pigeonville got a bit of a makeover recently! I wanted to make the town look a bit more lively and urban, so I took the time to redo and add a few different buildings. I'm really happy with how it changed the look of the town, and I hope to use this as a base for other areas going forward.

This didn't come without some challenge though. Both the game's prologue and first chapter take place in Pigeonville, and because so many different events are used between the 2 sections, I've had PV split between 2 maps, one for the prologue and the other for chapter 1.

I initially did these edits on the CH1 version of the map, but while porting them to the PL version, I managed to completely screw up almost all the events in the prologue. So while it didn't have to be completely rescripted, I did have to do some playtesting for like a week just to make sure I caught everything that broke.

-

Speaking of bugs, there's been a bit of bug-squashing going on this month. My friend Muffins (Who helps write for the game) and I both sat down and tried to just play through what we have so far, and it was an experience to say the least. The game was NOT this broken in March, so playing through it just showed me so much stuff that broke, and some of it was absolutely hilarious.

I didn't record any of it though! Which is a shame! I'd totally post a montage or something of just the absolute funniest glitches we encountered but I guess it's for another time.

And that's all for this month! Sorry it's not much, but I figured it'd be better to give some sort of update then just oddly go silent. Things will most likely pick up during the mid-summer months, I'll have more stuff to talk about, these logs will be longer like they were back in January and we'll all be home on time for Jay Leno.

It's a bit hard to talk about scripting stuff out for the game since I only can talk about so much before I start spoiling stuff. Will June be better? Will there even be a log in June? Will I survive the summer heat? Only time can tell. And the weather man.

If this is your first log you're reading, or even your first time seeing ANYTHING relating to HYPERSOMNIA, I got a whole bunch of links for you to check out if you wanna know more about me and my stupid little game.

TWITTER

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[septembersghost]

What do you think of the idea that this was PR for SNTV so that everyone would be paying attention to the Nash shows?

oof. okay, first of all, and this isn't aimed at you anon, but everyone has gotten way too comfortable using the term "PR" inappropriately, to the point where it's meaningless, because you get people online saying everything they see ever is PR when that's simply not the case and a lot of things are just...humans living life who happen to do so in the public eye. but the whole point of the concept there is some benefit. this is not an instance where there's benefit of publicity - trolling potential aside, because that would serve a different purpose - all eyes are already on her.

she knows fans pay attention to the shows every week (even the ones like me who aren't viewing the livestreams! i read along with the updates as they happen but haven't watched, others might check in the next day due to time zones or busy schedules, and so on), no matter what we all know what happens and what surprise songs she plays and what she might've said, and we know very quickly. every entertainment and music outlet is paying attention. an album announcement would make spectacular noise and immediately be reported no matter what.

furthermore, stoking romance/personal rumors, if anything, takes *away* from the announcement, it doesn't add to it - hence the internet being in a dither about matty rather than only being focused on excitement over SNTV. why on earth would she intentionally court speculation and rumor that distracts from an important project? moreover, why with someone who undeniably would be controversial and cause anger/annoyance? how does that help her? (answer: it's irrelevant to her if she likes him.) i'd be slightly inclined to think it was a silly joke for the sake of 1989 TV and a potential collab if she'd announced that album instead, but everything about the optics, especially given very recent events and history, has such overwhelming negative downsides with really no upsides as far as press and reactions go. so PR for SNTV specifically makes very little sense to me, versus her being in a do-whatever-i-want-with-whoever-i-want moment (which, let's be real, is not out of character).

it's either a (perhaps ill-timed and unclear) bit of shenanigans between chaotic friends or it's...whatever it is, and we're going to be living with that rebound reality for a bit. he took a very long trip to get to a hometown show for her...we're gonna have to face what that means, particularly after not seeing the person we thought we should have seen on opening night. i didn't want to read into that absence before, but unfortunately information is now what it is. (me @ mr. bowery: you should've been there! you should've burst through the door with that, "baby, i'm right here" smile!)

the announcement of SNTV would've happened last night no matter what, i'd lay odds she's had that planned for the first night of nashville for quite a while. the matty of it all is a wrinkle, not a boost. the only thing i hope is that it doesn't have any negative ramifications for her (not necessarily in the press, but in her personal life. having fun is fine, i just don't want her to be hurt anymore than what's already happened, you know?).

ultimately, what we all have to remember is that boundary - we don't know her directly. we have no say or influence over her decisions or personal life. that doesn't mean we have to like them, but we have zero input into her making those choices. all we can continue to do is what we already do, support her artistry, wish her the best, and cherish her music.

[prettyflyshyguy]

Happy April 1st, I have no new joke but here's a really good old one.

Buckle up.

Alright. Can't remember if I posted much about this before, but at my old job I produced this videogame. It was pretty cool!! It was set in the future, you're a super soldier who piloted remote robot drones called Espire.

(Violent little robot Sooty, my beloved. The shotgun pump in the trailer is still my favorite bit.)

I had my fingers in just about every pie that made up this game, and it was extremely cool getting to work with the team. April fools rolled around, game hadn't released just yet, we were finalising into the certification phase.

Every friday we had something called 'demo friday' where the team would show off something they worked on that week and we'd celebrate. It was charming to let everyone have a chance to show off their contributions, from every department in the company. I never really showed off anything because the spreadsheets I worked with, everyone already saw cause I would run around showing people every day as part of my job.

So on this fatefull, April 1st Friday, I asked to show the team something special. I pulled up a powerpoint presentation and add-libbed a new game concept pitch.

I pitched Espire to Love, a robot dating simulator, to a room full of 25 odd videogame developers.

Now as you may or may not have noticed, I don't often dabble in romance as a genre. I've barely touched dating sims and I'd never mentioned them before at work.

"From Dreamy daddies to anime girls, KFC's the colonel and even dinosaurs, there's an incredible range of options in the dating sim genre" I said with a straight face infront of a room full of people who were crying with laughter. I was barely holding myself together.

No one was prepared for the fake screenshots.

Still remember how hard some of them laughed when I pulled these slides up. I packed a lot of in-jokes into these that I won't explain - I wanted this to hit hard and hit home for the people I'd spent two + years working with.

People loved it, I made my friends laugh, it was good. And then upon being told "Hey you should send this to the publisher!"

That's exactly what I did.

The response from our assigned reps at Tripwire (YES, THAT TRIPWIRE) said they loved it, and they too were asking themselves the question "why not!" the whole way through.

But this story doesn't end there, oh no.

Fast forward a year. The game is released, we're hectic busy working on post release content, I'm cooking up the next stage of the joke.

Unfortunately, it never came to fruition due to time and stress. But here's what it was going to be:

We'd had our community clammoring for merch - so I wanted to pitch something bold, new and exciting, and the kind of thing that'd make us stand out.

Body pillows.

Would have been incredible. Might've made someone faint.

The robots were called Bean and Sooty during development so yes. I was going to deadass say "The bean bag and the sooty sack" (I mean what I say)

Unfortunately I didn't make it in time, and then double unfortunately, I lost my job when the studio had to significantly downsize.

But that never stops me from posting a good bit. You all know I'm a committed freak.

Fast forward a bit more and I'm trying to learn how to make my own games! So I download RenPy since it's a good starting point. It's designed more for VN's, so to find my feet I figured I should make as VN right?

I didn't want to make to make new assets, as the point was me learning to code. What to do..... what to do....

Full circle babeeeeyyyyy

And that's where we're at today! Long post I know, but I'm real proud of this joke. I love a good laugh that hits you at home, that's just honest fun. Huge shoutout to my old co-workers for listening to my original presentation, their laughter filled my heart and I was fucking terrified at the time, it was worth the joke.

It became a running gag in the office - we were playing Jackbox for a work party and it was one of those question and submitted answer games, and without any input from me the team had made the question "What would the for the sequel to Espire to Love be?"

and the options were "Espire to Live" and "Espire to death"

Anyway, I hope you only have charming and well considered April fools jokes today - designed for you to laugh at as much as the person making the joke. That's the best joke. Peace out.

[multi-lefaiye]

WIP Intro but make it AITA

tagged by @jezifster <3 this seemed like a very silly tag game and i am very excited to take part!

with no pressure to any of y'all, i'll go ahead and tag: @albatris @wherearetheplants @funky-writer-man @nicola-writes @skitzo-kero @from-midnight-with-love aaaaand anybody who wants to give this a shot (mind is going a lil blank on who to tag sdfjkl)! if you do, please feel free to tag me b/c i wanna see :D

anyway this is based on CUDAAS, but uhhh i won't say who is who <3

AITA for getting my ex fired?

Okay, so I (1500, NB) got my ex (2500 NB) fired last week, and I didn't think it would be as big a deal as it is and I'm starting to feel really bad about it.

For some backstory, my ex and I broke up 250 years ago, so it's not a big deal at all. We broke up on completely mutual terms and there's no hard feelings either way. I mean, I'll admit I was a little jealous when they started seeing this new person (??? NB), but that's NOT why I got them fired.

The problem is that their new partner is clouding their judgment. He's someone we're supposed to work together to kill to protect the world, but ever since they started dating him they've started talking about working together and that all this fighting is pointless. Clearly, there's a conflict of interest here. I tried talking to them about my concerns and they said that I don't know what I'm talking about!

I decided to talk to our boss (??? M) about it, because I thought that maybe if they were demoted or something then they'd understand that they can't just do whatever they want. We were created for ONE purpose and one purpose only, and we can't just stop because of some stupid romance.

But I guess our boss was a lot more mad about it than I thought he'd be because he COMPLETELY fired them in a really fucked up way and now they've been completely exiled from our community. And he said that since I reported them, I can have their job, so I guess I got a promotion out of it.

I'm just really worried because I haven't seen them or their new partner and apparently if I DO see them I'm supposed to kill them, and I didn't want THAT to happen. I was just doing what I was supposed to, but I feel like I might've ruined their life and I feel really, really bad. But they were the one going against orders, so if I hadn't done it then someone else probably would've.

AITA?

[saltqueer]

Ask Game Answers

Last song: The Dogs of Rotterdam by The Barons of Tang

Colour: yeah agreed, deep rich greens are great

Media: Yeah fatt is great, go read the manga for dungeon meshi it's so damn good. Go watch Scavenger's Reign. Read The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison. These are more recs than what I'm currently enjoying ah well.

Flavour: Sweet

I've forgotten the rest so have new questions.

What kind of animal are you picking/stuck with as a familiar if you became a witch?

Do you have a garden? How does it grow?

If you got shrunk down teeny tiny and became a teeny tiny cowboy, what bug are your riding off into the teeny tiny sunset?

Do you have any good hats?

What can you do that most people cant?

witch familiar: i don't have a pet right now, i think i would go for the classic cat. i like big fluffy grey ones

garden: yes! there are two vegetable garden plots here. the growing environment is very different from where i grew up, so there's still a lot of learning to do.

there's a couple peach trees that do well, im excited to make pickled green peaches in a couple months! i think this year they'll all be dill or spicy dill. they went really fast, and the other batch i made still has barely gotten touched. there's also a goji berry bush that's very productive. last year i had to stop picking bc i was getting overwhelmed with processing them. we just used the last of them this week, in a ham and bean soup, so I'll be a little more diligent about picking them next year. there's also a couple apple trees, but they do super poorly. i think they have some kind of blight? but idk. they are really small and never put out many leaves. and like two apples max. there's also a pear tree, last year the pears it made were all tiny? OH and chestnut trees. usually the squirrels get to them all first, but last year might've been a mast year, if chinese chestnuts do that?? we had a ton of extras. unfortunately we didn't eat them fast enough, and they're gross and dry now. if it happens again ill make sure we give more of them away

we usually grow lots of tomatoes and basil that do super well. there's also peas, but the rabbits get to them despite our best efforts, so they don't produce a whole lot. we're trying to figure out onions, but i think the soil needs to be softer before they'll be able to do well. its very clay-y. and my dad keeps planting garlic in the spring, even though you're supposed to plant it in the fall. so it never makes it. and my mom keeps planting lettuce, even though it never gets more than a couple leaves and they're always bitter. i think its a waste of time and spacd, especially since she doesn't ever change anything about how she grows it?? just goes oh well that was disappointing. guess I'll do the same thing next year. and it's not like people can't grow lettuce here for some reason, the community farm that food not bombs works with grown BEAUTIFUL heads of lettuce. im also biased here btwn my mom and my dad and their plants they won't change husbandry for bc i like garlic and think it's worth it to make a simple change, but i don't think it's possible to make lettuce taste good. we also usually grow carrots, last year the first planting got too hot and turned bitter, but the second round of them were totally sweet and delicious!! last year we used the second plot to grow buckwheat and it did really badly, we barely got back as many groats as we planted. but it was so fun to watch it grow. there's also a small herb mound that has sage and thyme growing on it. they do well, but my mom never uses them ????? she says its too much bother to leave the kitchen and go get them. i want her to plant rosemary there too, but i haven't managed to get it to happen. we also have an aloe that we keep indoors. i want it to get really big so the leaves are worth it to process for food, but my mom wants it to stay tiiiny. and that's plants!

tiny cowboy: i had to think really hard about this one. probably some sort of weevil? they look cool as hell

hats: OH BOY DO I. i have three hats that are very cool cause i made them! i also have hats that i made but aren't cool, so im not just being egotistical fbfjsjsnan

first up, this stocking cap!

its made of cheap polyester yarn, but the colors are super fun. its also a little too big bc i didn't bother with a gauge swatch, but its pretty much fine

second up, this balaclava!

its made of wool yarn that i handspun with my drop spindles. i picked the colors after sangfielle. and i knitted it, obviously. i wear it to work every day, since i commute on my bike and work outside. i don't usually lay it out like this, so its cool to see how it's stretched out and shaped itself with age (look up #sangfiyarn if you want to see what it looked like originally!)

and, finally, this hat!!

i wore it last night but i can't find it now :/ it'll reappear soon tho for sure. not only is it totally gorgeous, i had to reverse engineer the pattern from peoples process pics on ravelry!! the designer is totally uncontactable. i spent like two months trying to get in touch with her so i could give her $6 for it but nothing came of it. also, the technique this uses creates a wonderful double thick layer of fabric, so its super warm. the yarn is hand dyed, i got it off etsy from a lady who lives in colorado and dyes yarn inspired by colors in nature around her. the green really does feel like a pine forest

special abilities: math. hand spinning yarn. reverse engineer a complicated crochet pattern from pictures. look out my window and see the woods. embroidery? i can do the back of your throat french R. i ride a bike 16 miles every day (e-bike, im not that good at biking anymore). i can truthfully say i've lived in 6 us states. i know how to make twine out of stinging nettle fiber, but im not very good at it. i can say i rode my bike 100 miles in a day twice as a kid, and 50 miles in a day a few times. ive also gone over 50mph on a bike. i used to own a bike frame that was one of 11 or so in the world, but i lost it when i was homeless. does writing in cursive count as something most people can't do nowadays? i know how to dye yarn with goldenrod. i can weave, a little bit sort of. i understand how to construct a fire for optimal cooking something on a stick. i know that the best fire cooking on a stick happens over coals, not over flames (ive spent so much time carefully building bonfires with flames areas and coals areas and then watching people cook hot dogs and marshmallows over the flames 😭😭😭 and then they're like ugh the outside of my hotdog is burnt and the inside is still cold. bro the coals are RIGHT THERE)

[sugiwa]

IM FOAMING AT THE MOUTH FROM THIS NEW CHAPTER

everything i could have possibly wanted was here:

penny leveling up, showing her against tashigi and smoker and then immediately after showing her against garp and sengoku INSANE SUGIWA INSANE, her skipping over garp because she’s sentimental <3 and (maybe) she doesn’t want to taint the memory of playful innocence with garp and luffy, mentioning roci, HER LAUGHING, (“Of course, I’m a Bard. I’ve always been one!”), the named attacks!!

“But she also knew something that Shanks often struggled with. They were in the midst of becoming legends too.” SCREAMS

the thought of reading everyone’s reactions to the events of this chapter I CANT WAIT

buggy is tagged in the story but he’s the only character w haven’t had an encounter with yet, is he going to play a major part in penny’s story?

also, we see penny grasp her conquerors but is her devil fruit still unawakened?

is this the point where penny makes a name for herself independent from Shanks? will she now be Bard Penny and no long Akahime?

okay i’ve talked enough. thank you for the new chapter, it’s amazing and i’m so excited to see what this means for penny going forward.

Okay, I'm going to put this under a read-more tab cause my reply is very long!

Hahaha, I contemplated making Penny depressed for a bit and went back and forth here, but I was like, nah, Penny's going to have the time of her life after this. The Navy's going to try and drag her down, but she's going to hold steady. I'm excited for the next chapter cause we have some pretty shocking events. We do see Penny begin to voice some of her grief, but there's a bigger break coming that allows the Straw Hats to step in and that'll be fun.

I think no matter how hard she tries to be otherwise, Penny very very much is the sentimental type and sometimes that sentiment gets in the way of common sense (but also if she attacked Garp, she might've been in Impel Down right now). Sengoku was 100% not expecting to hear Rocinante's name and Penny took a huge gamble with it, which we've seen her do before and kinda shock people with their own past. It's going to be fun to see the moment where that completely and utterly works against her 😂😂

Named attacks--so far, we've gotten one, which was the one she used against Big Mom and we'll come back to that one much later cause I didn't actually show you guys what it does.

Buggy and Penny will meet and it'll go down about as well as you can imagine. Penny has a very loving view of what she considers Shanks' best friend and Buggy just is not fucking expecting it. He's going to play his own part and we'll see more of him than you expect especially in the time skip 👀

So, I'd say Penny's strength with Haki lies primarily in Conqueror's, though she knows the other forms too, she doesn't really have to use it a lot especially in Paradise. She's slowly building herself back up to full strength, which will be needed as we get closer to Sabaody and Ace's execution. If she had remained on Marineford for much longer, she would've 100% fallen to Sengoku and Garp which is why she made a quick and necessary escape after a flashy show of power 😂

As for her Devil Fruit, it's not awakened. And we're going to see that there's moments when Penny kinda contradicts herself about it. She's actually the one who named it the Kopi Kopi no Mi because that was the easiest frame of reference she had as a kid for what it did. And as we know from the first chapter, it's not actually named in the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia, but as Doffy revealed, it's a fruit that the world government is very interested. And this comes to down to a theme that we've seen crop up in One Piece time and time again which is: scarcity of resources. We've seen wars because of it, the Celestial Dragon's greed and most recently their panic over the lost food stores. And Penny's fruit kinda solves all that with a touch of a hand.

As for the name Bard Penny--I still have a big reveal planned. I don't think Sengoku or the Navy necessarily want this spilling out right after she's attacked them, but they won't tie her to Shanks anymore, because this has now officially gone beyond him. We won't see the Akahime title nor her other one used past this point.

Thank you so so much for reading and dropping in my inbox!!

[cannibalcoyote]

Balto's Sister Ch.1: The Big Race

Ch.2

"3 mile marker!" Balto exclaims in excitement as he pulls Boris up onto the railing of the balcony we've climbed onto.

_______

Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Luko, I'm a wolf/ husky mix like my brother Balto. I have black fur, and two white patches on my face, one above each eye.

I live in Nome, Alaska with Balto, the whole town seems to hate him because he's part wolf. I don't live with my brother though, he lives too far away, so I live in the town, usually with my friend Jenna, or under a building; no one knows that Balto and I are siblings though, probably because of how different we look.

_______

"Come on Boris, we can cut around the back and watch the end of the race!" I hear Balto voice in excitement as he ignores Boris' complaining.

We both proceed to jump from balcony to balcony until we reach a clothes line, to which I choose to travel by ground whilst Balto continues via buildings. I've never really liked traveling on the ground, but it's safer than whatever the heck Balto does.

Anyways, I jump off the balcony into the fresh, powdery snow, and take off down the alley, dodging the trash on both sides until I see the crowds of people who have gathered around to watch the end of the race. I can hear the sound of a sled team's paw steps eating up the ground as they sprint at full speed to the finish line; I see a flare going off, and someone shouting it's the two mile mark.

Now I'm really excited, I weave through the crowd quickly as I want to see if a different team will win this time; all the other races, Steele always wins, and I'd like to see some change. Of course this is mainly because Steele and his group are always mean to Balto, and that really gets to me most of the time while Balto on the other hand manages to keep his anger in check.

I continue through the crowds and soon spot my favorite human, Rosie, and she's with Jenna. I jump in happiness as I practically bound over to them in joy; they're the only two that don't hold it against me that I'm a wolf, and for that I will always be grateful.

However as I get closer I see two other dogs that both hate me, and they made it clear that they didn't like me when I first met them; so as I try to slowly sink away back into the shadows, Jenna spots me, and barks out,

"Hey Luko! Want to join me, Rosie just got a new sled!" I look over, swallowing my irritation towards the other two dogs, striding over to Jenna with confidence. As soon as I reach them the other two look at me in slight disgust and quickly say a goodbye to Jenna before walking off. I shake my head in annoyance, but I quickly calm down since we're in public.

"Thank God you came to see the race, If you hadn't, I might've been stuck with those two for the rest of the day!" Jenna states in relief as she looks over to me.

"Yah, I'm just glad I spotted you, you looked like you were about to die of annoyance when you were with them." I bark back as I let out a little laugh at the end of my sentence.

"Hey, where's Balto, usually you two always watch the race together?" Jenna voices her confusion as she looks around to see if she missed him.

"Oh, I don't like Balto's method of traveling, so I split off and went my own way." I explain as we sit in an open area near the fence blocking off the street for the racers.

Just as we sit down, we hear the racers make the last turn, I hear Rosie tell us to stay, and as I look down I see Steele once again leading the race. I sigh in annoyance, until I see my brother down the line of the crowd, it seems like he's got a crush on Jenna.

I simply smirked at the thought of seeing him even try to talk to Jenna, it almost made me laugh out loud, he'd try and act tough, but I know he's so shy and sensitive sometimes.

Rosie hurries back, breaking my line of thoughts as she hugs Jenna, she notices I'm here and gives me a hug as well as she says that she's happy I'm here, and that maybe she can get her dad to allow me to join her sled team with Jenna.

As soon as she's done, she immediately turns her attention back to the race and waves her hat in the air as she cheers in Steele, but as she does this her hat gets picked up by a strong gust of wind, and blows straight into the middle of the race track.

I'm looking over as Rosie tries to get her hat, but she is quickly held back by Jenna. I'm about to make a leap for the hat, but I already see Balto in action.

Balto is sprinting after the team, and he catches up pretty quickly seeing as he is already beside Steele; I'm hoping Steele doesn't hurt Balto, but I also can't wait to see if Balto manages to get the hat. I'm soon set at ease as I see Balto have a burst of speed, grab the hat, and slide off to the other side safely.

I visibly relax my tensed muscles as Balto makes his way to us sheepishly with the hat in his jaws. I shake my head and smirk as he drops the hat down and gets bombarded by a hug from Rosie. I hear everybody cheering for Steele, but I ignore it, well, I ignore it till I look over and hear Steele's owner say,

"I don't know, do you think maybe Steele's losing his edge?" I practically almost burst out laughing as I saw how angry that made Steel. He looks like he's about to tear his owner apart; that is until he hears Rosie congratulating Balto on getting her hat.

I see Rosie beginning to put the sled gear on Balto until her father swoops over and grabs her away from him, as well as kicking some snow at Balto as he says for her to stay away from him, and that he's part wolf and might bite her. I can visibly see that he's hurt from the fathers actions, and I would be too. I glare at her father and have to hold back a growl at him. Rosie looks over to me and then back at her father saying,

"See, now you've hurt both of their feelings!" Her father looks at me, and then back at Rosie,

"Listen sweetie, I don't fully trust Luko either, and that's why I always want Jenna with you when she's around. Not to mention Balto is part wolf, he might bite you honey." He picks up the sled and starts walking away as Rosie follows. I begin to follow them, or at least until Steele blocks my path.

"So, you girls enjoy the race." He questions as his tongue glides obnoxiously across his large teeth after finishing his sentence. I walk next to Jenna as she replies. I don't hear her though since I was looking back to see Balto looking even more hurt.

"Hey Jenna, I'm going to go catch up with Balto." I state as I turn around, only to be blocked by Steele.

"You didn't answer my question." He states as he continues to block me. I'm getting annoyed now, so I jump over him with ease, and then start to speedily stride over to Balto.

"So, how're you doing?" I know it's a stupid question, but I had to see if he was alright.

"Oh, I'm doing fine, I got yelled at because I'm part wolf, and then Steele swoops back in and steals Jenna away from me, again!" He explains sarcastically as we continue down an alley-way where Boris then joins us. Boris looks as though he is about to say something, but seems at a loss for words, as am I.

We hear Rosie though, and that quickly perks Balto up as he races through the alley, only to slide right up against Jenna, their noses practically touching. Rosie calls her, and as she looks to them I watch Balto speedily sprint back through the fence and hide. I shake my head as I see him walk out in disappointment after Jenna runs to her people.

"Balto, there's somethings I can't teach you, I'm goose not Cupid." Boris states in exasperation as we walk back through the alley.

Ch.2

[nycmess]

tw drugs + overdose mentions

Now that we've unbanned the Flavr fans, this feels like an appropriate time to talk about Summer Sounds! The two week long festival wrapped up in a loud and public fight between Daphne Dulay and Felix Kelly. We had quite a few festival goers dm us to tell us that they'd initially seemed to be talking like normal. While others who were standing a bit closer let us know that things were antagonistic from the start.

part one.

The actual details of the fight itself are muddied with various answers. Some say that they were arguing about the edited phone call, Leda, and others say they were arguing about Flavr as a whole and Koda. It seems like they must've covered a wide range of topics in their argument. The two apparently began full-on screaming on each other. We've gotten dms about them saying the following: Daphne treating Felix like shit, Felix wanting to remain angry, Daphne calling Felix "pathetic", Daphne not paying attention to Lauren (or anyone else for that matter), Felix referring to himself as evil, their alleged hookup, an essay describing everything Daphne did wrong, and Felix calling Daphne a cunt.

Things became particularly heated when Daphne shouted that he worked at a 'glorified fucking crackhouse'. Reporters say at that point that Felix "dragged" her way and they continued a screaming crying (on Daphne's part) argument. Daphne shouted that he was a 'fucking asshole' and Felix called her a 'cunt'. More names and insults were swapped back and forth. The argument ended with Felix's hand on her arm and reporters say that Daphne slapped him.

Yikes!

part two.

Remembering Sunday fans noticed something particularly interesting about the argument between Felix and Daphne. At one point, Felix mentioned something about "Koda's detour". A few minutes later, near the end of the conversation, Felix said something about Daphne not paying enough attention to "Laury" for things not to get so bad, her marriage crumbling, etc.

Daphne shouted that she "didn't know how to fix it", asked Felix how she could fix it, and said that she "didn't know how to do it when Koda was on drugs", and that she didn't know how to do it when Felix was on drugs. After that was when she made the comment about the 'glorified crack house'.

There has always been a lot of mystery surrounding the divorce of Koda and Daphne. All RS and Daphne fans got were a vague statement about differences and moving on, but it looks like we might've found out answer. It looks like Koda here was deep on drugs during his marriage. Can we guess? Cocaine? Heroin? Something worse? How exciting! We'll update fans on anything else we can put together about Koda's problem. Despite the was, we're a little suspicious. Some twitter users have pointed out that he did seem a little off during his Summer Sounds performance. This leads us to believe that he isn't exactly sober. Well, we all know that Koda's twin, Dylan, died from an overdose.. They are identical, after all. If he did continue to use after the death of Dylan..well. We don't exactly know what to say about that.

We wish we could say we're surprised, but... we're really not.

[bunymart]

💿How far we've come...💿

Hey, everyone! CEO fruitpop here, and I must say, what a wonderful first 2 months year it's been for BUNYMART! We've been online for only a little while, and we already have 6 Twitter followers, 1 non-staff Discord member, and even 1 Tumblr follower. Wow! About are progress, we managed to release a whole 13 designs on our Redbubble shop (half of which are just variants of our logo but its ok less of that this year). In this post, I just want to write a little about each of our designs, what our plans are for the coming year, and what 'buny' means to us. Also, this is the first time I've spoken through an official BUNYMART account. Hello! :) Usually it's our social media person, but if I let them write this, you'd have a headache by now.

Here's the first design we ever released. Err, first six designs we ever released. Our first six designs were just color variants of our logo, as I said before. But the colors are so pretty! I think that justifies it :) For this design, we wanted to go for a kind of supermarket logo look (duh), but we also wanted to make it uniquely buny. I'll talk more about what it means to be BUNY later, but the font we chose for the bottom is N SimSun, which is a very buny font. You also might've noticed the Wingdings on the top. Why are these here? Becuase they're extremely BUNY! And then, of course, there's the little buny in the middle, makin' a face at you. How sweet :) They look so excited!

The image I'm using here is actually the image we used for our logo sticker pack design, which we began selling a couple of weeks ago. We actually started selling these individually in May, but we BUNYMART didn't really become active until around November, which we released our second (seventh?) design.

What you are looking at now could be thought of as the herald of BUNYMART's real beginning. This design, our "Drink! 'It's good!'" sticker, was what we opened our Twitter with, and was what really kicked off BUNYMART. For this design, we wanted to make something that looked like it could be on a soda can, or on an ad for some kind of drink, or just something that said, "Relax! Have a drink! :)" The buny is also winking, because I think that makes them kind of resemble Pac-Man in some older artwork, and I like Pac-Man. Something else about this design, there was a goddamn stupid shitty stray pixel at like .0001% opacity in the bottom right corner that fucked the design up on Redbubble, but I didn't notice until it was uploaded. One thing I like about this design is that it's the first instance of the kind of digital-paint-mess pattern you can see in the background. This will return in a later design, but our next design was...

BUNY RADIO! Kind of like the last design, this one is also supposed to evoke a fun feeling. Y'know, just kinda hangin' out, havin' fun. Lots of bright/pastel colors in this one, although I guess that's been true for all of them. Something you might have noticed, although I'm sure it's very faint and subtle, is that while none of these design have strictly adhered to the aesthetic, the imagery used is somewhat reminiscent of vaporwave. Here's the thing, and again, we'll touch on this later, while 'vaporwave' and 'buny' aren't interchangeable by any means, the two terms share a lot of overlap. The logo is supposed to evoke a supermarket or mall feel, here we have a cassette radio player, etc. Something to look out for in later designs :)

We also see some Wingdings again, a staple of BUNYMART designs. While I don't have many details about it right now, I do know that Wingdings are very prevalent in BUNYLAND (the place where bunys live). Also, I'm really happy with the little music notes on the left :)

Our next set of designs were really something, and were actually part of our first sticker pack. These are the P3RS, a pretty funny play on words. It's funny because we came up with it, and we're funny :) The joke isn't entirely obvious so I'll explain: there's a pear, and a pair of cherries. Pear and pair, both pronounced the same way. And that 'air' sound is represented like this: ɛr. So, you could say that they are both pɛrs, and since ɛ kind of looks like a 3, together, they're the P3R duo!

I was VERY happy with these designs and all of their elements. The little labels/paint strokes, the shine of the leaves, the coordination of the colors, all of it. Very good design :) I actually have the cherries on my Nintendo Switch, the pear on my 3DS, the cherries again on my journal, and one of the labels somewhere else.

This is Big Head. Not much to say about them, they're just a little silly. Big olllll' thinker. Funny enough, this design was actually the first to not feature text of any kind. This is also the second design to feature a regular buny, rather than an object with a buny face.

This was actually our last design of the year. Now, you might be thinking, "What the goddamn shit? You said 13, bumble fuck!" That's right, I did say 13, and I meant it too. As I said earlier, half of our designs this year were just the individual logo color variants, and the P3RS actually served as three separate designs on the Redbubble (pear, cherry, and P3R pack). If you count them all up, there ARE 13 designs here. Take THAT.

What else happened this year?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we opened a Discord, a Twitter, and a Tumblr (obviously). The Discord came first, and we called it THE BUNY ZONE :) Besides our staff, there's only one person in there right now, but it would be really cool if you joined too :) I'll come back to it later, but one thing that this whole BUNYMART thing is about is building a community. After the Discord came the Twitter, where our social media person spits out a bunch of random bullshit about once a day. About a third of it is nonsense and a mess of symbols and fonts, but what's legible is pretty fun to read :) Here's a recent quote from our Twitter:

"alright……. WHOS THE 𝙁𝙐 ͶͶ¥ 𝙁𝙐𝘾𝙆 𝕎ℍ𝕆 𝙀𝙓𝙋𝙄𝙍𝙀𝘿 ϻY 𝙇𝙀𝙁 𝙏𝙊𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙎？？！!!?!!?？!?？¡！?！¡!？！？？!？¿?！!!?？？?¿!？!?！？!?!?¿¿?!？！？？!!??(｀皿´＃)(｀皿´＃)(｀皿´＃)(｀皿´＃)"

Cool, right? I think so. And about 5 other people think so too. If you want more of that, see our about page here on Tumblr. You can find all of our links there (Twitter, Discord, etc.)

After Twitter, we opened this Tumblr account, which mainly just reblogs pictures that we find particularly buny. It's still pretty new, so there isn't much to say about it at the moment.

But that isn't all we've done this year, nonono! We also released BUNYJAMS (volume 1), our buny-themed Spotify playlist!

I'll keep this brief, since our social media person posted an announcement about this, but as a Christmas gift to you all, we released a playlist of very buny songs, which sits at roughly 3 hours and 40 minutes. That might not be very long for a Spotify playlist, but hey, we only started building it in November. A new BUNYJAMS playlist will be released every Christmas (hopefully) in the coming years, so just think about how long volume 2 will be! Here's a hint, it's already longer than volume 1!

Also, we wanted to release the cover art you see as a design before 2023, but that didn't happen. Whoops.

Now, I want to talk about the meaning of 'buny'.

What is buny?

To me, it's a little hard to describe, but I'll try my best. First, I'll talk about it strictly as an aesthetic.

As I said, buny has a lot of overlap with vaporwave, but more specifically, it shares a lot of aspects with Frutiger Aero, y2kcore (kinda), and whatever you'd call what the Wii and DS had going on (wiicore?). Even more specifically, the last one. When I think about BUNYMART, I feel like I'm clicking through Wii channels, or messing with the settings on my 3DS. It's a very specific feel that's very specific to older (but not too old) Nintendo things. It also shares some aspects with an webcore, and also dreamcore to an extent. Hopefully it will be less fuzzy as BUNYMART evolves, but for a better understanding, look at our reblogs and listen to BUNYJAMS.

Even though I've described it as an aesthetic, I like to think 'buny' can be described in a broader sense, almost just like a feeling that's evoked by specific things. One thing that comes to mind specifically for me for some reason is watering a little houseplant. Just caring for this little wonder of nature to watch it grow feels very buny to me. However, in a general sense, buny is (in a very specific way) fun, safety, and niceness.

I mentioned earlier that one of my goals with BUNYMART is to create a community. There's a reason for this. Although BUNYMART is this fun and silly thing, I'm well aware of the atrocities of life. Every day, there are things that we have to hide from, things that we have to bear, things that we have to protect ourselves from, and so on. There are these bad things, and there are bad people. Often, the 'things' that we're dealing with are people. Maybe one 'thing' today was being harassed for some reason or another. Maybe another 'thing' yesterday was something an ill-equipped parent did or said. Maybe another 'thing' was just observing people talk about so many horrible things as if they were perfectly normal and okay, when they are anything but that. I want BUNYMART to be a kind of haven to come to to be away from all of that. I want to make a safe space for people to come to and know that everyone in that space is good. To come to and know that they are safe with any person they meet. That's the kind of community I want to cultivate with BUNYMART. That's what buny is to me, and that's what I want to give to the people who happen across our little project.

So, what's next?

Well, our plans are very fluid as of right now. Obviously, a new BUNYJAMS is coming next Christmas, but at some point in the not-distant future, we want to open the BUNYMART Instagram and YouTube. We just... kinda have to come up with unique content for those platforms and ways to post consistently. We already have an idea of what we want to happen, but making it happen is pretty difficult with all of our other business things that we have to take care of. They are coming, though, don't worry.

Another thing we want to do starting this spring is release seasonal season-themed design collections. I won't give too much away right now, but for each of the four seasons, we want to do a bunch of themed works and have them as a collection. We want to try to do this for every year from now on, but we'll probably skip like a year every 2 years. Oh well.

I guess the only other thing that comes to mind is more community things once there actually is a community. I don't know what those things will be like, but I know that they will be fun :) Maybe we'll have parties? Sure.

I think that's everything I wanted to say. If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading :) I spent probably two hours on this, so I hope it was worth your time. If you want to get in touch with me, you'll probably want to message the BUNYMART account and ask for fruitpop, or check out the Discord and contact me there. I'm not logged into my own account on any of my devices, so if you message my Tumblr, I likely won't see it for a while. Sorry :( All I have left to say is thanks for reading, thanks for checking out BUNYMART, and let's all look forward to a fanTASTIC 2023 :))

Thank you.

-fruitpop