#❝ | WOULD GIVE MY FIRST BORN FOR THIS! → ( wishlist. )

[nu-suave]

ASKING JJK MEN IF THEY WANT CHILDREN feat. nanami, choso, satoru, toji

word count: 1770

summary: you ask them if they want to start trying for kids. a/n: due to the nature of the fic, it is afab!reader. this was requested by my dearest friend <3 hi lana.

You’ve idly discussed the idea of having children with Nanami before, but always as a far away notion. It’s been something that will happen, one day, but that one day was some far flung, abstract thing that was always just there on the horizon. It starts lurking with you; one day, one day, one day. Would it be today? Tomorrow? A week? A month? A year? The idea becomes more compelling with time.

You bring it up one day after dinner. Your legs are thrown over his on the couch, scrolling on your phone. He’s got a book in hand, the other loosely rubbing circles on the skin of your ankle. A post comes up of a woman smiling at the camera as she makes her toddler’s meal for the day. You imagine yourself in that position; teeth gleaming, a fussy toddler resting in Kento’s arms, pressing a kiss to his mouth as you make lunch for the three of you. The question escapes you as naturally as breathing.

“Do you want to start trying for kids?”

His hand stills. “Pardon?”

“I’ve been thinking about it lately,” you say, heart picking up steadily, an innocuous rhythm in your chest. “About us having kids. What it’d be like. If I’m ready for it.”

“Are you?” He asks, tone soft and tentative. It’s familiar, the same way of speaking he adopts whenever he wants something and is trying to make it less obvious so as to not put pressure on you. It’s ridiculously reassuring. He’s always made it known that he wants to have kids of his own one day, that marriage and children is what he saw at the end of the road. He wanted to marry you, he wanted to have a child with you, and he wanted to settle down and take on a safer job to be there for it.

“I think so. I- I really want to, I think. It’s been on my mind a lot. The idea of having a child with you, raising them together, that kind of thing. We’d, um, probably have a second one a little after, right? To make sure the first isn’t lonely and has someone close in age to grow up with. I was wondering if you were ready for that, too.”

“I’ll have to take on more missions leading up to the birth,” Kento says. “When the child is first born, it’d be ideal to have a lot saved up so I wouldn’t have to work directly after you give birth.”

Your mouth splits into a wide smile. “Yeah? And we can get all those cute baby clothes? I’ll make a Pinterest board.”

“Of course.” He leans forward to kiss you. You’ll learn later that he’s been anticipating the question; he has a small list of baby clothes already on his phone, written beside a list of potential name ideas. He’s got books on childcare saved to his Amazon wishlist, has already been considering how to renovate the study into a nursery or if you’d keep the crib in your shared room. He’s been wanting this for a long time now, but he doesn’t say any of that yet - just pushes his head deep into your shoulder and breathes deeply, the future he’s been dreaming of suddenly resting right in the palm of his hand.

“Do you want to start trying for kids?”

Asking Choso this point blank out of nowhere isn’t your smartest idea. Choso is notoriously family-oriented. He loves Yuuji, adores just the idea of having brothers and is steadfast on being a good example and dedicated sibling. His adoration for family combined with the care and thought he dedicates to raising Yuuji right has you convinced he’ll be a good father. It isn’t hard to imagine, and coupled with your own want, you figure you can’t go wrong. What’s the worst he’ll do? Say no?

“You want to have a kid with me?” He repeats, soft and reverent and warm. He leans further into you from where he lies on top of you, head cradled against your collarbone as you’re sandwiched between him and the couch. With every breath, you ruffle the top of his hair.

“Yeah?” You ask, like that was ever a question. It wasn’t for the record - from the moment you and Choso started dating, you knew you were going to marry him. Once again, considering the fact that if he were a sim he’d have the traits of family-oriented, loyal, and cat lover, children were the natural progression. It was never a question of if with Choso. It was always when. If things go your way, the when will be now. “Of course I want to have kids with you. Why would you think otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” he breathes, “I didn’t think you’d want to have a kid with me. You really want to?”

“Duh.” You bite back a smile. “Do you?”

“Of course. I’ve–” he swallows. “Do you think I’d be a good dad?”

“The best,” you promise. “Just look at how you look after Yuuji. You care so much for him, how could it be any different for our child?”

Our child. He mouths the words against your skin. “I love you. I want to have kids with you. I couldn’t imagine anything better.”

“I love you too.” Your hand winds its way into his loose hair, resting lightly on the back of his neck. “And really? You can think of nothing better?”

“Yuuji will be excited to be an uncle,” he muses, “and I’ll be a dad. I’m going to raise them right.”

“Obviously. With you in their life, they’ll never go a day thinking they’re unloved.” Your nails dig into his skin, a warm smile pressing into the top of his head. Choso is right; you can’t imagine anything better, either.

“Satoru,” you start, voice soft with sleep. He stirs beside you, his hair a mess on the pillow and arms warm around you.

“Hm?” He replies, a slight rasp accompanying the sound.

“Do you want to start trying for kids?”

“Wha–” the sound that escapes him is small, confused, as he sits up slightly, dislodging your comfortable position cuddled up to him. He squints at you, bright blue eyes framed by his long white lashes, glazed slightly from his half-asleep state. “What did you say, baby?”

“Do you want to have a kid with me?” You repeat patiently, fondness rushing through you and settling just under your skin. “It’s been on my mind. Don’t you think it’d be nice to have a mini-me running around?”

“Mini-you? It’s way more likely to take after me.” He yawns, jaw clicking with the action. “It’d be cute. What brought this on?”

“I want to have kids,” you admit. “I really, really want to have them with you. You’re the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. Is it really so surprising I want to have a kid with you, too?”

“Nah, I just-” he rolls his shoulder, collapsing back into bed beside you. “I just wasn’t expecting it.” His hand, warm and soft, slides underneath your shirt to pull you closer, resting on the small of your back. “I’ve got the money to raise one. The higher-ups would be annoying about it - they’d want it to end up exactly like me.”

“Don’t call our future child an it,” you admonish, “and I trust you to keep them protected from that. I know you’re strong, but I trust you enough to raise them right. To never make them feel like they’re not good enough.”

“‘Course.” He watches you blearily, eyes half-lidded. His pupils are blown out like a cat, his every movement grace and agile, languid like a lounging cat in the sun. “When… when would you want to have a kid?”

“The near future would be nice,” you admit, shuffling closer to take your head under his chin.

“Now?”

“That’d be ideal.” He hums, pressing forward until he’s rolling you on his back. “I didn’t mean right now. It’s late, you have work in the morning.”

“Don’t care.” He settles his weight against you, legs twining with your own as his arms settle at your sides. “No time like the present. There’s no point in waiting around.”

“You’re insatiable,” you murmur fondly, hand moving to cup his cheek. “And ridiculous. So ridiculous.”

Toji, you’re a little nervous to ask. He already has Megumi, and you’ve seen how he is with him. Well-meaning, but to this day a little awkward - he spoils that kid rotten, cheers when Megumi takes his first steps, rubs his hair and pinches his cheeks every time Megumi babbles something vaguely intelligible. He tries his best, but he also disappears for days on a job. He looks at Megumi and sees his dead wife some days. Others, he watches his son and sees the child he could have been, if he’d been just a little luckier in the genetic category. Still, you want to know. “Hey, Toji?” You ask, using a fingertip to draw circles on his pec as your head rests so his heart beats beneath your ear. “Would you want to try for a kid with me?”

His grip on your waist tightens, fingers spasming as they dig into your skin. “You wanna have a kid with me?”

“Mm.” Your eyes droop shut, attempting to ignore the way your breath heaves from your lungs. “I know you have Megumi, but don’t you think it’d be nice for him to have a sibling? I’ve been thinking about it… how nice it’d be to have a baby girl or boy. He’d be such a doting older brother.”

“The kid can barely speak,” he snorts. “I’m not sure he even knows what a baby is.”

“Hush, you.” You scold. “Would you be open to having another kid?”

He’s silent for a long moment. As the seconds draw on, the circles you draw onto his skin grow quicker, a little more aggressive as your nerves build. “If it’s you, I’d have another.”

You pause, biting back a silly little smile. Considering you try to smother it in his shoulder, you doubt you did well hiding it. “Yeah? You’d have another kid, just for me?”

“Just for you, mama.”

You flick his shoulder. “Good. I’m glad.”

“You really thought I’d say no?”

“Don’t pull that with me. For a moment, I’m pretty sure you thought you would say no.”

He groans. “You’ve - what did that one friend say? - domesticated me. I’m a changed man.”

You laugh into his skin, a flattered giggle that sounds younger than you’d expected. “You’re so dumb, Toji.”

hi <3

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #nanami kento x reader #nanami x reader #kento nanami x reader #kento x reader #nanami x you #choso x reader #choso kamo x reader #kamo choso x reader #chousou x reader #chousou kamo x reader #kamo chousou x reader #gojo x reader #gojou x reader #gojo satoru x reader #satoru gojo x reader #gojou satoru x reader #satoru gojou x reader #gojo x you #gojou x you #toji x reader #toji fushiguro x reader #fushiguro toji x reader #toji x you #for lana <3

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

So, to follow up on this post that I just made that details my thoughts on the Taskmaster s18 lineup: Jack Dee, Rosie Jones, Emma Sidi, and Babatunde Aléshé...

I’m totally kidding! Obviously I’m totally kidding. Obviously. Obviously I was kidding in that entire post, suggesting that I give one fuck who those other four people are. It doesn't matter! Obviously in reality, seats 2-5 of Taskmaster s18 could be filled by Leo Kearse, Jim Davidson, Jordan Peterson, and Suella Braverman, and I’d still consider this to be a fantastic lineup.

Okay. Finally, after several weeks of losing my God damn mind, sitting on the spoilers and being good about not mentioning it (mostly…), I can say this. Finally.

Let’s talk Zaltzman.

First of all, let me set the scene. I've just finished my work for the day. I'm waiting in the break room while my co-worker files her stuff so we can close up the building together. I check my phone, because it's Taskmaster lineup spoiler day, and I've been waiting on confirmation.

I read the words and drop my phone in amazement, scrambling to catch it before it hits the ground. I look again, trying to make 100% sure I am reading this right, because I refuse to get my hopes up that high just to be disappointed. No, it says what I thought it said. I jump up, bang my fist against my chest and then into the air and then back again, mutter “fuck yes fucking right holy fuck” under my breath repeatedly, and then look around and am pleased to see my co-worker has not come into the room. And then I’m not allowed to post about it for several fucking weeks.

Andy was top of my wishlist. Possibly the number one person on it even if I could have literally anyone, including the people who definitely wouldn’t do it. He was definitely the number one person on my Taskmaster wishlist, out of the people who would possibly ever do it. But I wasn’t sure he belonged on that second list. Every time I’ve posted about a Taskmaster wishlist in the last couple of years, I’ve said of course Andy Zaltzman’s number one, but I know it won’t happen.

I know Taskmaster casts people who aren't already TV famous, but they're usually young. Taskmaster casts older people who are well established in a TV career, and young up-and-comers. Not people who turn 50 this year and did an episode of 8 Out of 10 Cats one time in 2008.

I mean, Andy Zaltzman isn’t completely obscure. It’s now been several years since he took over as host of The News Quiz, which I think is Radio 4’s flagship comedy program. The Bugle has been going for nearly 17 years and is quite successful. It’s not fair to imply that 2008 was his last TV credit; he was on Alternative Comedy Experience in 2013, where he had some chats with Stewart Lee that are among the most socially awkward things I’ve ever seen in my life. Sometimes they let him on TV in Australia. He did Matt Forde’s TV thing a few times. He does actually have a very successful career as a cricket statistician/commentator. He wrote for Bremner, Bird and Fortune in 2006. He’s doing fine. He's doing absolutely fine.

And he has an impressive stand-up career. He's done tours in the States, off the back of The Bugle's international success. He's performed in Asia off the back of his cricket commentating popularity. He's sold out big rooms to hordes of Bugle fans.

Taskmaster has cast lots of people who were less famous at the time of casting than Andy Zaltzman is now. They're just not usually Andy Zaltzman's age. But it doesn't matter, he's there now. So let me tell you about this man.

Andrew Zechariah Zaltzman was born on October 6, 1974. He grew up in Tumbridge Wells, Kent, a place he has described as so right-wing that they think you're a bit of a leftie if you only cast one Tory vote per general election. Raised by his father Zechariah "Zack" Zaltzman, who was a sculptor and a Lithuanian lapsed Jew who grew up in South Africa. Along with his sister Helen and brother Rick. I don't know his mother's name and it's probably fine to keep it that way, as I'm pretty sure Andy Zaltzman attracts a lot of fans like me, who have my combination of information-gathering autism and a good memory, that means I did not have to do any Googling to write that paragraph. I could have included the name of his school without Googling just because I've read his Wikipedia page so much, but I'll refrain from doing that.

To be fair, it's not some obscure piece of trivia to know his sister's name, because Helen Zaltzman is one of the only people in Britain who's had a podcast for longer than Andy. Podcasting was quite new when The Bugle started, but Helen started her podcast Answer Me This just before it. Helen Zaltzman's not technically a comedian, but she's quite comedy-adjacent, her podcasts are funny and she's been in plays at the Edinburgh Festival. Hangs out with comedians. Was friends with Josie Long at Oxford, so that's pretty cool. Used to be flatmates with comedy flatshare expert Matthew Crosby. Did an episode of ComComPod.

Anyway, after being raised with a future comedy-adjacent podcaster, Andy went to study Classics at Oxford University, where he also worked for the sports page of the student newspaper. It was here that he discovered his love of made-up bullshit, as he once wrote an entirely fictitious article about a game that never happened. When told they couldn't print it because it was libellous, Andy tried to argue that he hadn't libelled anyone because none of the people he wrote about in that article exist. Andy Zaltzman swears that story is true, and I think it probably is.

Andy Zaltzman did one stand-up gig at university that went very badly, then didn't do any stand-up for a bit, and then eventually did some more gigs that went less badly. Ended up in the finals of So You Think You’re Funny in 1999, where he lost to David O’Doherty (other finalists included Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard, and Josie Long, the latter of whom beat David O’Doherty in the BBC New Comedy Awards in the same year, a year of traded victories that they still amusingly and adorably reference on social media sometimes).

Andy Zaltzman got in with Avalon management, and in 2000, he went back to Edinburgh as part of The Comedy Zone. Also in 2000, he supported Stewart Lee on a stand-up tour around the UK. A lot of the venues were not told that there would be a support act and couldn’t fit him in at the last minute, so essentially, it was less like doing tour support and more like Andy just followed Stewart Lee around the country for a few weeks. Stewart Lee got so exhausted by the effort of trying to hang out with someone as socially awkward as Andy Zaltzman that he quit stand-up for several years (that’s a joke, but he did actually quit – eventually going back to stand-up but never back to his agency – because he got frustrated with Avalon on that tour, largely because they kept doing things like failing to tell venues that he was bringing a support act). In 2005, Stewart Lee returned to stand-up, and shared a flat at the Edinburgh Festival with Andy Zaltzman that year. Across the next 15 years, Stewart Lee took several opportunities to marvel at how it was possible for one person to watch as much sport as Andy Zaltzman did, when on tour and in Edinburgh flats.

In 2001, Andy did his first full-length Edinburgh show, called Andy Zaltzman Versus the Dog of Doom, which got nominated for the Perrier Newcomer Award. It was mainly a solo show, and billed as a solo show, but it featured a few bits with a man he'd met on the stand-up circuit named John Oliver, who was performing in The Comedy Zone. In 2002, Andy went back to Edinburgh with a show called Andy Zaltzman Unveils the 2002 Catapult of Truth, which also featured bits of John Oliver. John did his debut solo hour that year as well, a show that Chortle’s Steve Bennett called “a fairly pointless concept, which is then tiresomely illustrated”. Clearly, John made the correct choice in deciding that in future years, he’d stick to the stuff with Zaltzman.

In 2003, Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver began writing more comedy together, and were both specifically interested in political comedy. They found this could be difficult on mixed bill gigs where the audience hadn’t come for political comedy, and wouldn’t take well to all the dating and travel mishap stories being interrupted by satire on the colonial immigration process. So they started a comedy night in London called Political Animal, where they would co-host with their own jointly-written political jokes, introducing other comedians who would do exclusively political material. This allowed them to perform to audiences who would get what they were expecting, and it led to them being chased off stage less often (okay, their stories about those years of terrible gigs only include one where they got literally chased off stage). Comedians who performed at Political Animal included Robert Newman, Al Murray, Stewart Lee, Jeremy Hardy, Daniel Kitson, Chris Addison, Frankie Boyle, Andrew Maxwell, Will Hodgson, and don’t worry about the other name on the list from which I've copied this (it was one of those Russells they have now, and by far the worst of the three, despite the other two’s flaws).

On these early Political Animal nights, Zaltzman and Oliver used to do a sketch in which they'd interact with God. If Daniel Kitson was part of the show that night, he'd join them for that sketch and Kitson would play the role of God, which is a little on the nose even for him.

They did Political Animal once a month in London for several years, and also took it to Edinburgh for quite a few years in a row. In 2005, they recorded a pilot for BBC Radio 4, a radio show that would broadcast highlights of each act in a Political Animal night, interspersed with little Zaltzman and Oliver sketches. This got picked up and ran for two seasons, ten episodes in total.

In Edinburgh 2003, Zaltzman and Oliver did Edinburgh and Beyond, a mixed bill with each other and Rob Deering. Some of Andy’s material from that show can be heard in the Radio 4 program 4 at the Fringe. It opens with “Are you all glad to be alive? About half of you. Good. Aren’t festivals fun?” Then he goes into a complex explanation of how King Harold threw the Battle of Hastings and he has proof. This also contains the earliest known recording of Andy Zaltzman's classic joke about how voters' commitment to apathy is a paradox.

Then he says the words: “There are more celebrities now than ever before, in the world. There are also more facts in the world than ever before, and that’s just one of them. There are more celebrities now, and if the current rate of the increase in celebrities now continues, then by the year 2052, celebrities will outnumber ordinary people. And if that continues then by 2142, 99% of the world’s population will be celebrities. At which point the market will implode, and all celebrities will be merged into one giant celebrity, known as God. And the process will start again from scratch. Only this time, God will make the differences between men and women even funnier, and comedians will be the most powerful race on Earth. And after a savage and brutal war between the observationalists and the surrealists, into the power vacuum will come the singing comedians, and the world’s only currency will be amusingly altered pop lyrics. So please, be careful.” And you can begin to see why audiences occasionally chased him off stages. I don’t know what John Oliver was doing with his portion of that shared 2003 bill. Probably some stuff about penguins, given what he was into at the time. He was also very busy ripping cows apart that year. 2003 was a big year for people giving John Oliver large facsimile animals that he did not want and making him deal with them.

In 2004, Zaltzman and Oliver decided to stop messing around with little sketches in each other's shows, and just do the joint stand-up hour that the world had been waiting for. They went to Edinburgh with a show called Zaltzman and Oliver’s Erm... It's About the World... I Think You'd Better Sit Down, which is a hell of a title. They filled in a questionnaire about it for the BBC, which is a lovely little relic. If you want to know what Zaltzman and Oliver were doing during the Edinburgh Festival in 2004:

What will you be doing with the other 23 hrs of the day? JO: I will assign around 8 of those hours for sleep. I'll try and eat three times, spaced out in the time remaining. I will insult my flatmate for a further 3 of those hours. And I will think about sport for the rest of the time. AZ: Table tennis.

(Note: I'm 95% sure the flatmate John Oliver was going to insult for three hours a day is Daniel Kitson.)

They took the show on tour the following year, including performing it one time in 2005 with someone recording the audio. They didn't do anything with that audio until about six years later, when they released it during a filler week for The Bugle. It contains many of their classic joint bits, like the immigration sketch and the state of political discourse sketch.

In 2005, they did another joint Edinburgh show, called John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman Issue a List of Demands and Await Your Response with Interest. Not big fans of titles that fit easily into blurbs. This show unfortunately has been lost to history, or at least, it had better be lost to history, because at this point I will be furious if it turns out Andy Zaltzman has a recording of it somewhere and has been holding out on us all this time (not really, please let me know if you have this, Andy, I would pay you money). Steve Bennett called it: "As a double act [Zaltzman and Oliver] bring out the best of Zaltzman’s towering intellect and Oliver’s  sneery cynicism, feeding off each other’s presence." Which is a pretty solid summary of their double act dynamic in general.

I know there are reviewers besides Steve Bennett, by the way. But Chortle, for all its other admin-related faults, does archive its reviews in a way that makes old ones easy to find, so it tends to be my go-to reference for times like this. I have read other old Zaltzman and Oliver reviews, and a lot of them can be basically summarized as "They have good, intelligent, and funny material, but God, those guys can be really annoying." Brian Logan called them "Better writers than performers", which is maybe technically true but also he can fuck off. We like the socially awkward lack of charisma, okay?

Anyway. Back on topic. While they were establishing their live double act, Zaltzman and Oliver also teamed up with their friend, the excellent comedian Chris Addison, to write a radio show called The Department. This is a fictional show set in a secret government department that secretly runs the entire world, and they spend each episode solving a different problem. It ran on BBC Radio 4 for three seasons and 14 episodes in total, from 2004 to 2006. It featured a bunch of old Zaltzman and Oliver stand-up bits, shoehorned expertly into the mouths of the characters. Zaltzman, Oliver, and Addison co-wrote it and played the three main characters (except Addison didn't write season 3 as he was busy with other projects, but he still did the voice acting), with the other major character being voiced by Matthew Holness, and Lucy Montgomery doing some additional voices (Matthew and Lucy were both in Cambridge Footlights with John Oliver a few years earlier).

They hoped The Department would translate to TV someday, but that didn't happen. Even as late as ten years later, Andy Zaltzman, according to one uncharacteristically vulnerable interview, was still holding out hope that it could someday get picked up as a TV sitcom. John Oliver, on the other hand, said years later that he looked back on The Department as something that wasn't any good. John is, in my accurate opinion, entirely wrong about that. There are some old Zaltzman and Oliver things that I can recognize were objectively not great comedy, I just like them as adorable historical relics. The Department is not like that. I think it was a really, really funny and well written show. It had good characters and dense jokes and I wish it had become more.

These were the glory years of Zaltzman and Oliver. The Department on the radio, joint stand-up shows, hosting mixed bill stuff at Political Animal. But that double act was just a small subset of a larger group called the Chocolate Milk Gang. The Chocolate Milk Gang was an international crime syndicate that sometimes organized soccer matches, to borrow a phrase from John Oliver (John was talking about FIFA when he said it, but it still applies). You can see one of these matches in The Greatest Video on All of YouTube, featuring a lot of comedians who are hard to recognize because it's got about 8 pixels per inch, but you can always pick out Andy with his curly red hair, and John Oliver as the only one wearing long pants instead of shorts. I'm definitely not going to go look at the building where they filmed that video when I go to London this summer. That would be a weird thing to do. I mean I can't confirm whether I'm going to do that, but I will say that one time on his radio show I heard Elis James say Crystal Palace isn't a tourist attraction, and I laughed and said "That's what you think."

Anyway, the Chocolate Milk Gang was actually a bunch of comedians who were all friends in the early 00s, they frequently appeared in each other's stand-up shows (and occasionally radio shows and things like that), told stories about each other on stage, played football on Tuesdays, shared mixed bills, ritualistically sacrificed cows together in the middle of the night, things like that. They got their name because they drank alcohol either not at all or not very much, and after late-night Edinburgh shows they'd go for milkshakes while other comedians were getting drunk, so some of those other comedians started calling them the Chocolate Milk Gang. Glenn Wool has been specifically credited with coining the term, Andrew Maxwell and Jason Byrne were also said to be involved. An absolute cunt who goes by David McSavage was a dick about it. Basically they were a bunch of nerds who got bullied by the Irish and Canadians (not really, they've said they were on friendly terms with those guys and it was friendly banter, except for David McSavage, who is genuinely a cunt). They go by other names sometimes. Stewart Lee apparently used to call them "The Hanging Around Guys".

Further information can be found in the weirdest fucking article I've ever read (on the subject of me knowing about reviewers besides just Steve Bennett - Jay Richardson, what were you fucking talking about?), but basically, they were known for differentiating themselves from a previous generation of showbiz shouty fancy comedians, by doing things like wearing t-shirts and listening to indie music and putting a modicum of creativity into their art and not being alcoholics. Membership lists for the Chocolate Milk Gang changes depending who you ask, but the main people involved, in general, were: Josie Long, John Oliver, Andy Zaltzman, Alun Cochrane, Russell Howard, David O'Doherty, Gavin Osborn, Demitri Martin, Flight of the Conchords. Taika Waititi - Cohen at the time - is sometimes mentioned in that mix. Isy Suttie was definitely around and fit the remit. And Daniel Kitson was their, according to those weird fucking articles about it, king.

To get that list of people, I've taken the name that Glenn Wool invented for people who got milkshakes in Edinburgh, and applied it to a slightly more general concept. Not everyone on that list got milkshakes in Edinburgh in 2002, but most did, and all were part of a larger group of nerds doing comedy who crossed over with each other personally and professionally in that era, which is generally what I mean when I say "Chocolate Milk Gang".

Andy largely ended up in this group because his writing and performing partner, John Oliver, was so close to the ringleader/king Daniel Kitson. John Oliver and Daniel Kitson had repeatedly described each other as best friends. John also brought in Gavin Osborn, his friend from school and/or youth theatre. Gavin was flatmates with John's girlfriend for a time. Basically, John Oliver tied all these people in his life together, and then he fucked off to America, leaving the rest of them behind to keep making stuff with each other. Which they did, but managing it without John in the middle clearly wasn't always their first choice. The number of Chocolate Milk Gang members who have performed art that I have heard on the subject of how it upset them when John Oliver left is... more than three. It's four. I'm thinking of four specific pieces of work right now, though to be fair one of them is just Andy Zaltzman shouting the words "Percy Primetime" at an audience (the others are a song about mix tapes, a show about an apartment that I'm definitely not going to go look at when I fly to London because Crystal Palace isn't a tourist attraction, and a song about a penguin). That's a lot, really. People really, really liked that guy.

Zaltzman and Kitson in particular were a funny combination; whenever they used to end up on stages (or in a radio studio) together, there would be this strong sense of "your best friend is my best friend but God, do we ever have nothing else in common". But they'd give performing together a go, even though Andy Zaltzman is the most socially awkward man in history and has chemistry with no one on Earth except John Oliver. Neither of them seem to "get" the other's comedy in any way, or find much crossover in what they found funny. They shared a flat together in Edinburgh in 2007, where they wrote a sketch for Late 'n' Live in which Andy would pretend to be Daniel Kitson's penis, so that's fun. Andy Zaltzman had a set of about four deliberately bad impressions, which seemed to be the only part of his act that Kitson found funny, but Kitson found them hilarious and made Andy do them every time they performed together.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm trying to tell this story chronologically, and I've moved right past what Andy Zaltzman has referred to as: “The day in June 2006 when [John Oliver] told me he wanted to do the Daily Show job in America instead of going with me to Edinburgh to talk to twenty-five people a day in a darkened room.”

At the time, Zaltzman and Oliver were in the process of writing their third joint stand-up hour, for Edinburgh 2006. This show had already been submitted to the festival, as evidenced by some screenshots of the 2006 Edinburgh program:

The 2006 Edinburgh program also advertised:

And it was the debut year for the Chocolate Milk Gang mixed bill Honourable Men of Art, also already in the program with John's name:

According to Andy Zaltzman, in June 2006, he learned three things very close together, on almost the same day. The first thing he learned is that the BBC had cancelled The Department. This radio show was the only consistent thing Andy had going in his career besides live stand-up. He was counting on The Department getting bigger and maybe picked up for TV, so losing it was a significant blow. The second thing he learned, at almost the same time, was that his wife was carrying their first child. And the third thing he learned was that John Oliver was going to move to America right before their Edinburgh run was set to begin. Andy Zaltzman has described June/July 2006 as not a particularly fun time (John Oliver, on the other hand, has described summer 2006 as the time he lost his radio show and thought his career was fucked, so it's a good thing The Daily Show job came along to save him, because otherwise he'd have ended up stuck in the career path he was on in England, which was terrible, it sure would suck to have to stay on that path).

Andy Zaltzman has even said that if it hadn't been for his marriage and having a kid on the way, he might have moved to New York with John to try to keep performing as a double act, since he didn't have enough of a career in Britain to be worth staying for, and all the success he'd had had come from the Zaltzman and Oliver partnership.

I see why Andy Zaltzman found that partnership and briefly considered whether it might be worth moving across an ocean to preserve it. They worked so well together. They got each other's style of comedy, they were similar enough to fit together but different in the right ways to complement each other. They had incredible chemistry together, of the type that Andy had with, as I've said, no one else in the world. Andy had had to start his own comedy night (Political Animal) just because his style was so offbeat that it didn't fit in on regular mixed bills and it annoyed audiences who hadn't come for that specific niche, and the Zaltzman/Oliver double act saved him from having to sell that niche by himself. He was, as he describes it, not excited to have to go back to doing it alone.

He was also not excited to have to turn their double act Edinburgh show into a solo show at the last minute. But he did it, going to Edinburgh 2006 and performing a show called Andy Zaltzman Detonates 70 Minutes of Unbridled Afternoon ("It's important work Zaltzman is doing, at least compared to most other comics, and deserves to be heard ­ if only he was a bit more fluid in its telling" - Steve Bennett, 2006). I guess it's a better title than Andy Zaltzman Goes By Himself to Edinburgh to Talk to Twenty-Five People a Day in a Darkened Room. In Edinburgh 2006, Andy also hosted Political Animal on his own, and turned up to Honourable Men of Art, where they occasionally had John Oliver via the best live video linkup technology 2006 had to offer.

After this, Andy Zaltzman spent a year performing on his own. In 2007 he performed at MICF for the first time, where one time he stayed up all night in a radio studio with Daniel Kitson, playing BBC sound effects and Boney M songs, and Daniel made him do his Marvin Gaye impression. He also went on the Triple M radio show Get This, and was very socially awkward. Then he won the Piece of Wood Award for having other comics vote his show the best one, so that's cool. Clearly he must have been doing something all right, in a year that he's since described in interviews as very rough overall.

And then he was approached by TimesOnline, a subdivision of The Times, to start a trans-Atlantic podcast. The idea was that John Oliver would go into a studio in New York City, and Andy Zaltzman would go into a studio in London, and they would talk to each other about the week's news, and someone would produce and edit it, and that would be a newfangled thing called a podcast. Like the thing that Andy's sister Helen had just started doing. Andy Zaltzman said yes because, in his words, he had "Jack K. Shit" else going on and it was a chance to reunite the double act that had been working for him. John Oliver said yes because, in his words, it is a treat to get to listen to Andy Zaltzman talk for an hour a week. I think John meant it when he said that, because John Oliver had a very good and very busy job as a writer and correspondent on The Daily Show at the time, in addition to a stand-up career in the States and an increasing schedule of events with major American comics, so it's not like he took the Bugle job because he needed the money or the profile boost. I think he really did consider it a treat to listen to Andy Zaltzman talk for an hour a week. And what a treat that is.

They set up a format in which they'd talk on the phone for a bit earlier in the week, to establish a list of topical subjects to cover. Then they'd go away and each write their own material on those subjects. Then on Fridays, they'd connect from their separate studios and discuss the subjects with their material ready. The best bits made it into their respective stand-up shows.

From the beginning, they both contributed a lot to the podcast, but Andy drove the dialogue and tended to come a little more prepared, as is reasonable, given that John Oliver had other shit going on. The Bugle ran in its original form from October 2007 to March 2016, and in that time, Andy Zaltzman turned over an incredible amount of material. It is honestly amazing how much new stuff he came up with every week. Yeah, he had some ideas and concepts that he re-used, and yeah, not 100% of it was solid gold. But a lot of it was very funny. Funny, dense comedy that was new every single week.

Andy Zaltzman is the most creative comedian I've ever heard. I mean, obviously I guess that depends on your definition of "creative", I've seen some comedy shows where it's so creative that I have no idea what's going on (these are called "clowning"). But within the parametres of just writing straightforward stand-up material, I have never heard anything as creative as Andy Zaltzman. He hits a topic from so many directions that no one else would think of. He reaches for absurd comparisons, turns of phrase that make me run back the recording because I could never catch all the meanings at once, five or six different jokes embedded into one sentence. The number of obscure references to history and/or sport and/or Greek mythology (he didn't study Classics for nothing) he can get into any paragraph is blinding. He's fucking amazing.

More than that, The Bugle with Zaltzman and Oliver was an amazing piece of media. It is incredible how they blended interactivity with tightly written material. Comedians riffing with each other is fun because it feels real and immediate and unrehearsed. Carefully written stuff is good because writing something with care gives comedians the time to make it funnier. The Bugle was Zaltzman and Oliver taking their jokes that they'd crafted to be as funny as possible, and using them as the basis for otherwise spontaneous interaction, so they got the best of both worlds. And it worked, every time, because they have the best chemistry I've ever heard in all of comedy. They were like athletes who could always tell where the other was going to end up, they could take their bit and make sure it would land in just the right spot to work with what the other person would have. Even though they didn't know exactly what the other person had, because they didn't write it together. But they knew each other so well that they could anticipate. It's amazing. It's a fucking amazing feat of comedy and it should be in some sort of hall of fame.

In 2008, Andy Zaltzman wrote a book. It's called Does Anything Eat Bankers? and it's a collection of absurd comedy mini-essays about the credit crunch. It's the most 2008 thing I've ever read. It made me laugh out loud a lot. It's available on eBay for insultingly cheap prices and is an excellent summary of Zaltzman's offbeat sense of humour.

From 2007-2014, Andy Zaltzman hosted Political Animal in Edinburgh every year. Usually on his own, though in 2011, John Oliver flew to Edinburgh and they did a few reunion Political Animal gigs, featuring Daniel Kitson reprising his role as God in their God sketch. Andy also kept up his Chocolate Milk Gang membership over those years, doing the Honourable Men of Art gig when it came back in 2008, appearing at some Kitson-compered Late 'n' Lives in the 00s, and at some Kitson-compered Chocolate Milk Gang reunion shows in later years (ZOCK, Fuckstorm 3000, Fuckstorm 3001). Andy did the impressions when Kitson told him to, even though by then he'd long dropped them from his regular act. Andy also performed new Edinburgh solo shows nearly every year from 2007 to 2019 (missing 2009, 2012, and 2015), usually with long convoluted titles in the style of Zaltzman and Oliver ("Life is convoluted, my comedy merely reflects that" - Andy Zaltzman).

In 2014, Andy started doing Satirist For Hire, a show he continued touring off and and on until 2022, in addition to his regular stand-up shows. In Satirist For Hire, the audience could write in with the date they were attending and a subject for Andy to satirize, and the show would consist of him satirizing audience-requested topics. It wasn't improv or anything, he'd get the topics in advance and write stuff about them, new stuff for every show. Which sounds like a ridiculous amount of work, but he was already doing that kind of thing for The Bugle, writing new stuff constantly. Some of these got recorded and released on filler weeks of The Bugle. Topics he got asked to satirize included all 721 Pokemon by name, the autumn equinox, the rebellion in Syria, and his own mother-in-law. He released a DVD of Satirist For Hire that was filmed in 2014, in which he performed the bespoke satire as well a "best of" his other old and new jokes, including some stuff that dates back to the Zaltzman and Oliver catalogue of the early 00s. It also has a DVD extra that's Andy just telling a weird story with no punchline, it's really annoyingly rambling and pointless, even for him. It's great.

During the original run of The Bugle, there were a lot of jokes in which John would tell a star-studded story about his life with celebrities in New York City, and Andy would say he'd had a good pastrami sandwich that week. There were slightly less funny parts at the end of the episodes, in which John would plug some big American event he was doing, and Andy would make a vague plea about small-time stand-up gigs that he couldn't sell. As The Bugle went on, Andy started doing slightly bigger stand-up gigs and sounding slightly less concerned about lack of tickets sold (due to him building up an audience of Bugle fans), though it still didn't look great when put next to John Oliver's projects.

Alongside this, Andy Zaltzman started getting jobs in the world of cricket as well. He was a massive, utterly obsessed cricket fan, made a lot of cricket references in his stand-up and on The Bugle, and at some point some people took notice and started inviting him to do cricket things. Spots on sports shows in which he'd analyze cricket. Cricket commentary. Collation of cricket stats. After several years of this, he started getting to travel for it, announcing on The Bugle that he'd be doing stand-up gigs in Bangladesh because he was going there anyway to attend cricket games and be paid to commentate on them. He doesn't have personal social media, but he does have a Twitter account that Tweets nothing but obscure cricket stats that he has personally worked out. What a weird guy, spending all his own time gathering information about one niche subject and then collating all the stuff from various sources and posting his findings on the internet. Nerd. You wouldn't catch me doing that.

Off the success of The Bugle, he started getting some other stuff. He was a regular host for a while on the Radio 4 panel show called 7 Day Sunday, where he worked with Chris Addison and Al Murray and Rebecca Front, I have frustratingly never been able to find episodes of that show. He got a Radio 4 mini-series called Andy Zaltzman’s History of the Third Millenium, which I have also never been able to find. He started appearing as a guest on The News Quiz somewhat regularly. He did that one episode of 8 Out of 10 Cats one time, and it was very awkward. Stewart Lee put him on Alternative Comedy Experience.

In 2008, John Oliver released a stand-up DVD called Terrifying Times. Andy flew to New York to appear in the recording of it. He came on stage a couple of times, for a few minutes each time, interacting with John so they could include some of their joint sketch material in the DVD. There's also a DVD extra that's a conversation between Zaltzman and Oliver, which is hilarious.

In 2012, Andy Zaltzman again went to New York, to perform some stand-up on John Oliver's New York Stand Up Show (along with Chocolate Milk Gang's David O'Doherty), a confusingly titled American television program with various comedians doing short sets compered by John Oliver. After years of relentlessly making fun of John on The Bugle for how he started saying "gotten" once he'd been in America for a bit, Andy got on American TV and immediately said the word "sports", which was adorable. He tried to fit in. It didn't really work and the crowd didn't know what to make of him, but he tried.

In the original run of The Bugle, Andy Zaltzman really honed his trademark style. It was marked by absurd analogies that treat any of the following like each other: sports, politics, Greek mythology, religion, current events, and occasionally a movie or something. He started doing "pun runs", where he'd spend several minutes doing one coherent monologue in which he'd make as many puns as possible themed around a single subject, usually while John Oliver screamed in agony in the background (you'd think it would stop being funny but it didn't, at one point he started using a little bell to mark each pun). Jokes with footnotes. Jokes where the joke is that the story is pointless. Everything he said carefully and tightly wrapped in at least 18 layers of irony. A running joke in which he'd introduce each Bugle episode by discussing something obscure that had happened in history on the day they were recording. So many cricket and snooker references.

An audio cryptic crossword that ran for the first thirty or so Bugle episodes, in which he'd read out a clue every week, but the clue wasn't to anything that made sense, it was just to some shit he'd made up in his head, and he never released a visual to accompany it. Yet it did work, some people at home actually solved it all and wrote it all out and it all fit together perfectly (that is how you do a crossword, Pemberton).

Massive truckloads of absurdity dumped with increasing urgency all over current events, as though he thought he could bury the dark realities under it. Zaltzman and Oliver's name for this absurdity was "bullshit"; it used to be a running joke that they'd advertise The Bugle by promising it would be completely free of facts, providing the best bullshit you've ever heard. Long, intricate bullshit that all ties together and keeps going just when you think there can't be any more to this story that Andy has entirely made up. Like the athletes he wrote about at university, no one can sue him for libel because they don't actually exist.

One time their producer Chris Skinner accused them of having an especially sweary Bugle, so far containing "twelve fucks and one cunt", and Andy said that's the Jewish view of the New Testament, and they (rightly) talked for like three years about how good a joke that was to come up with off the cuff. Andy's lapsed Jewish-ness is also a frequent topic of his jokes, usually how incredibly lapsed he is, being a massive fan of bacon sandwiches and one time his sister gave him an entire dead pig as a Christmas gift, a story that made it into a Daniel Kitson stand-up show as well as a lot of Bugle jokes about how in most cases that would be a hate crime.

There were also jokes throughout that Bugle run about John Oliver's increasingly high-profile career; Andy gave him the nickname Johnny Showbiz and cheerfully kept telling stories of pastrami sandwiches after John's stories about meeting Samuel L Jackson or whatever. I first listened to The Bugle a few months after I listened to the old Russell Howard/Jon Richardson BBC 6 Music shows, and those were basically an audio documentary of a friendship slowly cracking apart due to one party's jealousy of the other's increasing success (I mean, there were other issues too), so I found The Bugle an odd contrast at first. Because Andy made those jokes, but it sounded like there was absolutely no genuine jealousy behind them. If anything it went the other way, he seemed to vaguely pity John's weird hectic life, and John seemed to generally agree that this was too much celebrity and Andy was better off in his shed. I started wondering: how is Andy this okay with the disparity? Is he hiding the jealousy really well or is he made of stone?

A while into my the first listen-through of The Bugle, after wondering this for a few weeks, I came to the conclusion that the reason Andy Zaltzman sounded unbothered by John Oliver meeting Samuel L Jackson is that Andy Zaltzman truly, deep down to his core, did not want to meet Samuel L Jackson. That man was not impressed by anything in the world that's not a cricket stat or a bad pun, and he entirely meant it when he mercilessly mocked John for the embarrassing transgression of winning an Emmy. That wasn't masked bitterness, he just thought winning an Emmy was genuinely embarrassing. And John Oliver, once again, seemed to basically agree.

In 2011, there was the News of the World scandal, owned by News International, owned by The Times, which owned The Times of London, which owned TimeOnline, which funded The Bugle. Andy and John decided to really go after everyone behind the phone hacking scandal, for several weeks in a row. They didn't just talk about the shit journalists, they went for the entire system of tabloid press and its collusion with government, the people at the top of the both sides of that, everything that allowed this to happen. While doing this, they had a running joke in which they'd tap their mic and ask "Is this on?", implying that their overlords at The Times would cut their mic in retaliation for talking shit about Rupert Murdoch. Then The New York Times wrote an article about what they'd been doing, and they started to sound slightly more genuinely worried that this might get them in trouble.

A couple of months later, for what both sides called unrelated reasons, TimesOnline fired John and Andy, pulling The Bugle's funding. In a Bugle episode in December 2011, they said this might be their last one, they were scrambling to find alternative funding sources but might have to just end the podcast. The tone in that episode made the discrepancies in their careers clear. John repeatedly emphasized how much he loved The Bugle and everything they'd built together, and how he'd like to save it. While Andy had a lot more genuine desperation in his voice as he again used the term "Jack K. Shit" to describe what else he had going on in his career, he actually needed to #SaveTheBugle. You can see that as well in how careful they both were. John and Andy both said they were dropped for apolitical reasons, just lack of funding. But John messed around a bit and implied that this may not be the whole truth, while Andy sounded less willing to possibly get them in more trouble. Years later, in a 2023 episode of the rebooted Bugle, the subject of The Times came up, and Andy offhandedly mentioned that The Bugle used to be funded by The Times, until they were dropped "suspiciously shortly after" they made a bunch of Rupert Murdoch jokes. This was the first time Andy had acknowledged a possible connection, and I liked that, like a sign that he'd finally achieved enough success independently so he could afford to talk like that a bit too.

I made a compilation of this situation a couple of years ago. Most of the Bugle bits in it are John Oliver's lines, because the compilation was meant to contrast John Oliver's running joke on Last Week Tonight where he'd talk shit about HBO's parent company AT&T, referring to them as "business daddy" and gloating about how he could do that without getting in trouble, with the time in 2011 when he went on The Bugle and talked shit about their business daddy and did in fact get in trouble. Andy had a lot of good jokes about Rupert Murdoch and The Times during those episodes, they mostly aren't in this compilation because they weren't as relevant to the Bugle-LWT John Oliver Versus Business Daddy narrative, but the compilation still tells the story. Also I illustrated it with a bunch of amusing old Zaltzman and Oliver pictures.

In early 2012, they came back and announced that they had managed to sell enough listener subscriptions to keep The Bugle going independently. The Bugle continues to run that way to this day, free to listen to but funded by optional listener subscriptions, no ads (aside from a short time in 2018 when they partnered with Radiotopia and Andy had to read out those mattress ads and stuff, and you could hear his soul sinking into the floor, luckily that didn't last long), just because they created a product that's good enough to be worth its audience paying for. It also gets funded by merch sales and things. They have hats and socks.

The Bugle ran for a couple more glorious years as an independent podcast fronted by Zaltzman and Oliver. Then in summer 2013, Jon Stewart went away to film a movie and John Oliver filled in as a guest host for The Daily Show. John Oliver would do a fantastic job fronting America's flagship topical comedy show all week, and then come on The Bugle on Friday and lament how badly it was going and how he couldn't wait to get back to the sidelines where he belonged. But after that, as he'd proven his abilities as a host, HBO offered John Oliver his own weekly show. In December 2013, John Oliver proceeded to have a breakdown, but still left The Daily Show to start Last Week Tonight.

As shown in the compilation I've just linked, which is entitled Johnny Showbiz Gets His Own Show and Has a Breakdown, they promised at the time that this would absolutely not affect The Bugle. They promised! Repeatedly. I mean, they sounded at the time like they were trying to convince themselves and each other as much as the listeners, but still, they promised.

They mostly kept that promise for about a year, taking a few more breaks than usual throughout 2014 to accommodate John's busier schedule, but I don't think The Bugle declined in quality when it did go out. And given how few weeks off they'd had since October 2007, even The Bugle with extra breaks was still a hell of a lot of comedy material for them to turn over. They took a break for the whole summer in 2014, their first time taking more than a couple of weeks off in a row, but came back with a great run of episodes in the fall.

Andy did mention to Stuart Goldsmith, in a 2014 interview, that he was hoping he might be able to be involved with Last Week Tonight in some way, at some point. It's not clear whether he ever mentioned this to John Oliver. Seems like the sort of thing he should have maybe mentioned to John Oliver, instead of saving it for an uncharacteristically vulnerable podcast interview. But maybe he did ask John Oliver for that and it just didn't work out. He doesn't say. It certainly didn't end up happening.

Then, throughout 2015, The Bugle died a slow and incredibly painful death. They kept doing filler episodes, in which Andy would explain that John was busy, but promise he'd be back next week. Then, often, nothing, not even a filler episode, for weeks. Before 2015, they always put out an episode every week, usually a new episode, but if they didn't have one, there would be filler: an outtakes show or a best-of show or some recordings of stand-up or something. One time the producer Chris Skinner strung together a whole filler episode by doing things like interviewing their friend Alun Cochrane (back when Alun Cochrane was cool, Alun Cochrane is now no longer cool). But in 2015, they began to hit the limit on the number of weeks in a row when they could do filler episodes, so they started just putting out fuck all.

John Oliver did turn up for Bugle episodes occasionally in 2015, but when he did, he sounded increasingly distracted and like his heart wasn't in it. Which is fair enough, because we now know that he spent 2015 trying to write and present a research-intensive weekly HBO show, as well as caring for his wife while she had a high-risk pregnancy. It's as good an excuse as I've ever heard to not be able to talk shit about Bashar al-Assad or the band LMFAO with Andy Zaltzman every week (also, you have to give John Oliver credit for the fact that he did The Bugle very well for years despite never actually needing it, and was just in it for the love of the game). But he probably should have just said that, rather than clearly telling Andy all the time that he'd be back soon, which we know he was doing because Andy sounded like he believed it when he relayed that message to the listeners, and then it kept not happening.

To be fair, Andy also should have called time on the podcast way earlier - at the very least announcing an extended break, if not just acknowledging that it's not going to work anymore and ending it. Instead, Andy kept coming back to introduce filler episodes and promise us John would be back soon. And every once in a while he'd do a frustrated new episode with a checked-out John Oliver. I listened to the worst of this period of The Bugle within a couple of days, and that was rough, hearing it all at once like that. Had me yelling at my phone, "Oh my God, stop it! Just put it out of its fucking misery! This is an ex-podcast! Stop nailing it to a perch and trying to sell it back to us!"

Andy mentioned the "Jack K. Shit else going on" thing a couple of times as a reason for why he kept trying, but I don't even think that was true anymore. He had a big stand-up audience garnered by the success of The Bugle. He had his cricket career. He had regular radio work. He didn't have some big TV career or anything, but he had enough to be getting on with. Enough so he did not have to be as desperate as he got about trying to keep a podcast going when it was clearly over.

I think he was scared to try to do his comedy career without basing it around bouncing stuff off John Oliver. As his comedy career did have a history of spectacularly not working when he wasn't working with John.

Throughout 2015, Andy's increasing frustration could be heard in his voice during intros for the podcast filler episodes, and in the recordings of his 2015 stand-up that got released as said filler. He developed a joke in which he'd ask the audience who's heard of John Oliver, find the one or two people who said no, and shout, "Fuck you Percy Primetime, everyone in this room has heard of me!" "Percy Primetime" was a nickname spat with quite a bit less affection than the old "Johnny Showbiz". For the record I don't think they had a real falling out or anything, but there was some genuine bitterness there for the first time after all those years of fame disparity, it finally became clear that Andy Zaltzman's not actually made of stone.

In early 2016, The Bugle came back with one full episode that was actually very good, John and Andy were both really into it. John Oliver apologized for the many jokes he'd made in previous years about how funny it would be if Donald Trump ran for president, and they announced that The Bugle would be continuing for the forseeable future, just going once a month instead of once a week, so they could stop with the filler stuff and be more realistic about what was possible around new schedules. Then two months later, they came back and admitted this was not, in fact, realistic, and John was leaving The Bugle. Andy announced his plan to reboot the podcast in the fall, with John Oliver replaced by a rotating series of co-hosts from around the world. Andy sounded fairly terrified of this prospect.

The last episode of the John Oliver-era Bugle was number 295, and for reasons that Andy Zaltzman finds funny, he made the first episode of the new era episode 4001. This came out on October 24, 2016, and featured Hari Kondabolu as the guest co-host. Hari's a New York comedian whom I assume was recommended by John Oliver, as I can't imagine how else he and Andy would have crossed paths, and they sure didn't sound like two people who had ever encountered each other before. It was fucking awkward. It didn't help that it was a couple of months before the Donald Trump election, so a pretty intense time to try to just jump back into topical comedy with a "get to know the rebooted podcast" episode.

Basically, if Andy Zaltzman feared that his offbeat niche humour would not work without the one comedian in the world who was tailor-made to fit into it... those fears were not alleviated in that first episode. Hari Kondabolu is awesome, he has since become one of my favourite Bugle guests and I've gotten into his own stand-up, but that first time, he had no fucking idea what to make of Andy, and not much of an idea of what he'd signed up for with The Bugle. Andy had no idea how to talk to anyone in the world who isn't John Oliver. It was weird.

Episode 4002 featured Nish Kumar, who came in and immediately shouted "Fuck you Chris!", which was a running joke from the John Oliver-era Bugle (referring to producer Chris Skinner, John and Andy and the listeners would affectionately say "fuck you" to Chris a lot for reasons that made sense at the time), an instant way to assure the audience that he knew exactly what he'd signed up for. Nish had been listening to The Bugle since it started when he was still doing student comedy, and as far as I can tell, he'd pretty much climbed the ranks of the comedy industry in the hopes of someday getting to touch the garment of his heroes Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver (he might have had one or two reasons besides that, but it was mainly that one). And he got his wish. He's now the second most frequent co-host of the Bugle 4000-series (after Alice Fraser), and one time he got to play football with John Oliver and they got into fights on the pitch.

The Bugle continued on shaky ground for the first 25 episodes or so, really for the first 50. Andy has said since that he knows those episodes were rough, that he'd got so comfortable in his familiar rapport with John Oliver that he just couldn't generate the same thing with people he didn't know as well, and he didn't know anyone as well as John. Though it clearly wasn't just about who he knew as well as John, but who he could comfortably work with as well as John (which was no one). Helen Zaltzman came on a few of those early episodes, and she was a fantastic guest, really funny and took Andy to task and held her own on every subject, but it is incredible how little chemistry Andy Zaltzman managed to have with his own sister. He brought in Anuvab Pal, a comedian from Mumbai whom Andy knew from his time covering cricket over there, they were friends in real life, but they often sounded like they'd never met before. The only person Andy sounded like he knew how to talk to at all was Nish, whom he'd known for a few years through stand-up by the time the Bugle 4000-series started. The Nish Kumar episodes were the best ones, especially early on, but it wasn't anywhere near the levels of Zaltzman and Oliver chemistry.

Andy has said in interviews since that he was struggling during that time, and that started occasionally making its way into the Bugle content, which previously had rarely been particularly personal. At the end of 2016, Andy Zaltzman did a year-in-review stand-up show (something he did every year for a while, a whole stand-up show written to only be performed one time to mark the end of the year), and (on the subject of reviewers who aren't Steve Bennett), Dominic Maxwell in The Times (fuck off, Times) wrote a review in which he called Andy "John Oliver's left-behind sidekick". Andy brought that up on The Bugle several times, citing the "sidekick" line with real bitterness, and rightly so. Partly because he has never been anyone's sidekick (except maybe Daniel Kitson's once in a while at old Late 'n' Live gigs), and partly because that was a solo stand-up show that was not affiliated with The Bugle and definitely had nothing to do with John Oliver, so he shouldn't have been put in John Oliver's shadow in a context like that. It was actually a 4-star review, Maxwell liked the show. But the review's first paragraph was:

Why has John Oliver become a star in America while his old partner in seemingly shambolic yet secretly serrated political satire, Andy Zaltzman, remains a cult comedian with a sideline as a cricket stats man? Is it because Zaltzman, with his receded Harpo Marx explosion of hair, is less telegenic than Oliver, with whom he co-hosted the podcast The Bugle until last year? Is it because, although he is every bit as grounded in reality as Oliver, Zaltzman is a more devotedly loopy joke-writer, so that he always adds his own twist of wry absurdism to our leaders’ already skewed logic?

Starting a four-star review with that is one hell of a backhanded compliment, no matter how positive you go on to be about the show itself. I assume that review was the main one - probably among plenty of other reviews that had built up Andy's resentment over time, but that Maxwell one was clearly the straw that broke his back - that led Andy to record this "interview with himself" to put in the "in the bin" section at the beginning of a Bugle episode in early 2017.

So the stone was starting to show serious cracks at that point. At one point in 2017, Andy plugged his upcoming run at MICF, saying it would be good to perform in Australia because his career could "flush down the toilet in the other direction" for a bit. Nish Kumar laughed way too hard at that, I remember saying to my phone, "Nish, stop! Can't you see he's having a breakdown? Stop laughing at that and give the man a hug!"

It was hard to listen to the most stoically-dedicated-to-irony-and-bullshit man I'd ever heard have a breakdown, but things eventually got steadier. Andy did some episodes from MCIF in Melbourne, and on Bugle episode 4023, in April 2017, he brought in Australian comedians Tom Ballard and Alice Fraser. Tom and Alice both became Bugle regulars, but Alice especially started doing it all the time. Alice, like Nish, told stories of how she'd been a dedicated listener to the original run of The Bugle since before she'd started stand-up, and you can see Andy's influence on her comedic style (you can see it in Nish's too - John and Andy both influencing Nish a lot, while Alice is a lot more like Andy than she is like John).

The inclusion of Alice Fraser changed the game for the rebooted Bugle, as she quickly became a very frequent presence, and Andy developed as good a rapport with her as he could have with almost anyone. There are some sweet moments in her early episodes when Alice would pull out some Zaltzman-esque puns or absurd analogies, and Andy would sound genuinely touched that someone else was into his weird niche humour. He immediately started including her in some bit parts of his stand-up shows too, whenever he was in Australia or she was in England.

The Bugle also got better once they started doing two guests at a time instead of just one. Andy has said since that at some point he realized he and John Oliver had good enough chemistry to carry an entire episode, but he couldn't manage that with anyone else. However, he could do it if there were three people, so the guests could interact with each other too, and the three different types of interactions could get them through the 40-45 minutes more easily. They also started doing Bugle live shows, which went well, got toured in England and even in America.

Since then, The Bugle has grown into a thing that is new and very different from its original form, but also very good. As of May 2024 they've just hit episode 4304, having recently passed the 295 episodes that Andy did with John Oliver. Its format has changed. People still turn up with pre-written stuff, but it's not the same perfectly choreographed/somehow improvised dance of tightly written material that it used to be. It's got a wider range of guests, more diverse topics, fewer insular in-jokes. Some other format changes too, like dropping the listener correspondence. But a lot of the guest co-hosts breathe new life into it, bring different perspectives and styles of humour, contribute more than the original version with only two people ever could. It's introduced me to lots of great comedians from various countries (well, mainly Britain and America and Australia, but a couple from India, a couple from Ireland, one I really like from NZ), I've gotten into a lot of people's stand-up because I liked them on The Bugle. They've also created spinoff podcasts, like The Gargle, hosted by Alice Fraser.

The Bugle 4000 has brought in a bunch of comedians from the younger generation, but also let Andy bring in some old friends. David O'Doherty and Josie Long of the Chocolate Milk Gang have done it a few times, they make top quality episodes. Mark Steel's been on a bunch of times, who used to do the earliest days of Political Animal and of course is a king of Radio 4 along with Andy. Mark and Andy are great together, you can hear how much they enjoy each other's company, to the point where part of me dreads the day when Andy decides to be nice to his buddy Mark and let Mark bring his son to work. I don't think they'd do that though, The Bugle has standards. No Elliot Steel, please.

A big highlight of Andy bringing back old friends is Chris Addison, who worked on The Department back in 2004-06. Addison stopped doing stand-up years ago as he got a bigger career in acting and directing and things like that, and he's said he loves doing The Bugle because it gives him a chance to write comedy material the way he doesn't anymore. And because it's the only time he does that, he's not throwing his scraps at a topical podcast while spreading ideas across multiple platforms. He's coming up with solid gold, and letting The Bugle have all of it. Every time he comes on, he does his homework so well beforehand that the other comedians, including Andy, have to raise their game to keep up.

As for Zaltzman himself, he had some shaky times for his comedy material in those early reboot days. He started seeming burned out from writing so much without getting anywhere, and was re-using a lot of concepts for a while. It wasn't bad, but he did stop innovating for a while after John Oliver disappeared. The absurd scenarios in his monologues got a bit by-the-numbers.

However, as The Bugle found its feet in the new era, Andy broke through that and started writing better than ever before. He, as they say in sports and video games, jumped levels. Suddenly came out of a plateau and immediately jumped to a much higher spot than one would expect, like the slow and steady escalation of talent suddenly caught up to him all at once. Like magic. That is one of my favourite things about sports, when an athlete suddenly jumps levels, like magic. Andy jumped levels a couple of times in the late 2010s, and it was so cool to listen to. A big part of it was the way he'd tie together lots of ideas at once instead of hitting them one at a time, the way he'd make connections that turned his monologues into more than the sum of their parts.

He really, really hit a stride in 2019, as the world went to shit around him, and he started incorporating a bit more genuine emotion than he ever had before. So many emotions, all of them various flavours of searing fury at the state of the government. At first the bits of emotion were added unexpectedly, like he was experimenting with it, but then he learned how to blend it seamlessly into his previous knack for absurd ironic bullshit, it was amazing and I think he was growing into one of the best comic writers there is.

I sort of have a theory about that, which unfortunately gets me into a sports analogy so I hope I can be indulged in that briefly. As a coach, I am very familiar with the phenomenon where two athletes work with almost no one but each other for years. In some ways it makes them much better than they could be otherwise, because they're constantly being challenged by someone who knows their style inside and out, so they have to constantly evolve in order to stay ahead of the other person figuring out how to counter what they do, pushing each other to higher levels of the sport. But in other ways, they often end up with big holes in their game, because they never learn to respond to anything their main training partner doesn't do.

I think that may have slightly happened with Zaltzman and Oliver. And more to Zaltzman than to Oliver, because John was doing all kinds of other things, writing for The Daily Show with lots of people who weren't Andy Zaltzman. While the main thing Andy did was write for The Bugle. Even in his solo stand-up career, most of his shows were the best bits of what he came up with for The Bugle, so they were still written first for the purpose of bouncing off John Oliver.

So much of the beauty in the original Bugle was the way John and Andy found each other so funny, they were writing to make each other laugh. But this meant Andy Zaltzman was restricted to material that would fit his established role in a double act. The role of being the intellectual one who comes at things sideways while John tackles them head-on. That role did not leave him space to experiment with things like genuine emotion, even in spots where that could make a routine stronger. I can think of a few Zaltzman routines from 2019 that wouldn't have worked on the original Bugle, not because they wouldn't make John Oliver laugh, but because they wouldn't really have complemented John's stuff in the right way. The original Bugle had a perfect balance of comedic styles, which was what made it great, but you can't go throwing curve balls at a balance.

So my theory is that, once Andy got away from being restricted to the perfectly chosen double act role, and he then got over his slump from when he was upset about losing the double act/possibly worried he couldn't do it on his own, he had a couple of levels that were ready to be jumped. The Bugle released a bunch of the recording from Andy Zaltzman's year-in-review stand-up show from the end of 2019, and it's incredible. The "best of" from an absolutely stellar Bugle year, taking the strongest bits from all those weeks he'd spent writing, and tying them around some structure. It's one of the best fucking things I've ever heard. Andy Zaltzman does everything at once in it.

In 2019, Miles Jupp left The News Quiz, a major topical comedy panel show on Radio 4 (I'm pretty sure it's the major comedy show on Radio 4). Angela Barnes, Nish Kumar, and Andy Zaltzman - three of The News Quiz's most frequent guests at the time - each spent some time guest hosting it, as they applied for the role of permanent host. Andy got the job. He mentioned this on The Bugle during the week before his first episodes of The News Quiz as permanent host, and did it with his usual flair for self-promotion, which is almost none, he just said it's happening. Fortunately Nish Kumar was on that Bugle episode with him, and Nish insisted on interrupting Andy to tell the listeners what a big deal The News Quiz is, that Andy won't brag about it but he got a huge job on a flagship show after years and years of smaller spots on radio shows and earning his place there, and it's really cool. It was adorable to hear Nish hyping up Andy for getting a job for which (Nish didn't mention this part) Nish Kumar had also applied.

In October 2022, John Oliver came back for a special Bugle 15th birthday episode, just him and Andy for half an hour, and it made me have to pull my hat down on the bus so people couldn't see that I had tears in my eyes from laughter (honestly, I should have anticipated that and not listened to it on the bus). It had been years since they'd worked together, and they mentioned during that episode that they hadn't seen each other in years and hadn't even had much contact since the end of The Bugle, but somehow they fell right back into the perfect rhythm. It's nice to know the magic's still there, even if they're not using it anymore.

So that pretty much brings you up to speed with where Andy Zaltzman's at now. For the last few years, his career has been hosting The Bugle in its expanded form that includes live shows sometimes, hosting The News Quiz, collating cricket stats and still doing lots of cricket-related work. He hasn't done a new Edinburgh hour since 2019, but he toured Satirist For Hire in 2022. He definitely can't describe his career with the term "Jack K. Shit going on" anymore.

Quick question, just asking for a friend - how many thousand words do you have to write before something goes from being "quite long for a Tumblr post" to "quite short for a biographical book"?

In fall 2023, Andy Zaltzman mentioned that he "might" have some new stand-up to announce soon. That surprised me, because to be honest, between The News Quiz and The Bugle and the cricket, he's fucking busy these days, and he must be making enough money to not need stand-up. He turns 50 this October. He's been slowing down the stand-up over the last few years, after about twenty years of doing it constantly. I thought he might be winding down that side of his career.

But suddenly, he's mentioning possible new stand-up in 2024. He mentioned it briefly in the fall and then didn't bring it up for so long that I started to think he must have changed his mind about it. But then, in spring 2024, he suddenly started talking about live gigs again. He booked some WIPs in May and June and plugged them on The Bugle. He slowly, with his usual level of self-promotional skills, barely admitted to the fact that he has a whole stand-up tour planned for November 2024. "November 2024?" I thought. "That seems odd. Andy rarely plans so far ahead, he's usually scrambling to plug gigs he forgot he has next week. And now, when I'd thought he might be leaving stand-up behind, he's planning an entire tour many months in advance. Why did he suddenly decide to do a whole big stand-up tour again, and once he did decide that, why did he plan it for so late in the year? I mean, I'm not complaining. More Zaltzman stand-up is great! But it's a break from his usual pattern."

That is what I thought, to myself, as I listened to his updates on The Bugle. And then I sat in the break room at work and I refreshed a page and saw the Taskmaster season 18 lineup and I jumped into the air and all became clear. He's capitalizing. Andy "No Commercial Promotion Skills Whatsoever" Zaltzman is going to capitalize on his fall 2024 Taskmaster bump in popularity by following it up with a tour. I'm so fucking pleased for him.

Guys. It's going to be so good. He's so good, you're all going to love him, I promise. Do you know what it will do to Taskmaster to have someone who can run circles around Alex Horne in the field of analyzing everything via obscure statistics? He's going to make Alex look like an amateur. He's going to have an explanation for every single thing that happens and none of the explanations will be rooted in any kind of reality but they will all make internal sense.

Oh God, people are going to have to talk about him. It is so funny to listen to people try to work out what to make of Andy Zaltzman, particularly if they're not in Andy's carefully curated niche of people whom he's decided he can manage to talk to. Ed Gamble is going to talk about Andy Zaltzman. 17 years after sharing a stage with Andy at Late 'n' Live where Andy declared Marek Larwood the most fuckable member of We Are Klang (he was incorrect, but not for the reasons Tumblr thinks, I would like to immediately apologize for saying that), Greg Davies will have to judge whatever absurd bullshit comes out of Andy's brain. There will be so many cricket references.

Have I mentioned that a cornerstone of Andy Zaltzman's comedy is turning everything into a sport? That's part of his absurd analogies, he analyzes everything as though it's sports. And I love people who analyze Taskmaster as though it's sports. Andy Zaltzman is going to go on Taskmaster and treat it like sports. Oh it's going to be so much fun!

I cannot wait. I cannot fucking wait. I've just realized he's going to have to plug Taskmaster on The Bugle. That'll be weird. Who's on TV now, Johnny Showbiz? I mean, still John, still very much John Oliver, but Andy as well now! You did it, Andy! It only took 17 years!

[imaginethathaikyuu]

literally anything with atsumu i love him and ur writing is always up to par so. i will be happy with anything. but a cute birthday themed piece could be fun perhaps

thank u so much i wrote this specifically for u and i managed to write a weirdly formatted atsumu centered fic that barely went over 1k words. we are so back

contains: fluff, mild childhood angst, a black eye, birthday cake word count: 1163 gender neutral reader x miya atsumu :p

-

October 5th, 1995 

Atsumu Miya is born. He’s gifted a bright flash of light, the sound of his own cries, and - seven minutes later - a brother. 

October 5th, 2003

There was a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner taped to the cabinets in the kitchen. The R was ripped nearly in half, and the colors were dull. 

It was the same one as last year, and the year before that. 

Atsumu walked through the threshold with his brother right next to him. Osamu knew how to say thank you in the right way to get the best hug from their mom. 

They were presented with one singular cupcake. 

“Why can’t we ever get our own?” 

The two boys sat too close at the kitchen table, the strawberry cake sat right in front of them. 

“You have to learn how to share, Atsumu.” 

He knew how to share. There was nothing left to learn.

One candle was mashed in the frosting. Mom lit the flame and Atsumu watched wax dripping onto his half as she sang their happy birthday song, and told them to make a wish. 

Atsumu and Osamu looked at each other, then blew at the candle at the exact same time. 

The cupcake was cut in half, and Atsumu’s stomach hurt before he could finish his. Osamu took it without being asked. 

But if they had each gotten their own, Atsumu would've had more to share with his brother. 

October 5th, 2010

Atsumu was fifteen and he knew everything. He was always right - never, ever wrong, and if anyone disagreed, they’d have to take it up directly with him. 

He knew how to run his mouth. Maybe it was what he was best at. He’d never lost an argument - until his fifteenth birthday. 

He’d gotten good at taking his aggression out in healthy ways - mostly in sports. But, sometimes, the words he spit couldn’t be left on the court. 

He would say what he wanted, and he didn’t care who heard or hurt. 

He didn’t know what he had coming to him. 

The entire team had already abandoned the gym, all but Atsumu and the shitty middle blocker who played like he didn’t know his position. 

Atsumu was outside stretching when his words hit his ears. “You’re a piece of shit, Miya.” 

“Oh my god - get in line, dude, you’re about the fifth person today to let me know.” 

“That many people wanna rip your head off? I wish one of them would teach you how to shut the fuck up.” 

“And I wish someone would teach you how to block the fuckin’ ball.” 

The guy didn’t reply. He took one step in Atsumu’s direction - he remembered hearing the crunch of gravel under the guy's foot. His shoulder moved with the step, and with it, the first real punch Atsumu had ever been thrown. 

And it hit. Hard. Ten times harder than any hits from Osamu. 

The guy’s fist collided with Atsumu’s cheek and then he walked away. Atsumu didn’t even have a chance to hit back - he was frozen in place, anyway. There was no fight in him. He was too surprised. 

A black eye wasn’t on his wishlist for his birthday, but it’s what he got. A lesson learned? Not so much. 

October 5th, 2019

He was another year older - so what. 

The only part of Atsumu’s birthday that he liked was giving his brother a stupidly expensive gift, because it gave him an excuse to gloat. 

Other than that? It was a day like any other. 

Birthdays were nowhere near special to him - especially his own. But it just so happened that on that specific birthday, he had his first date with you. 

And it didn’t even come up in conversation. Neither did his twin brother, or any of his volleyball stories he’d usually tell to impress a date. 

Atsumu found out that he didn’t need to impress you, and he hardly needed to talk about himself. 

He left that date feeling like he was friends with you, and maybe that wasn’t how he should feel after a date, but he was beaming. The hours with you at that hole in the wall bar didn’t feel like enough. 

He took that feeling and ran with it, and he hoped - he prayed - you’d follow him. 

October 5th, 2022

It’d been late nights for as long as Atsumu could remember. He’d come home and you’d already be in bed - if he was lucky, you’d wake up just long enough to tell him you love him. 

That night was different from the rest. 

That night, he would be coming home to - literally - an empty home. 

Finally, you and Atsumu had moved into the house of your dreams that was yours. But, for the time being, you were living out of boxes and waiting for furniture deliveries. 

He opened the door to a dark living room and an even darker hallway, and he didn’t bother turning any on lights to get to the kitchen. 

There was a shred of light there, coming from an old bulb above the stove. He looked around the empty room and what he found was out of place. 

There you were, sat on the floor. A chair was next to you, funnily enough, but it was taken by a round white cake. A handful of candles were stuck into the top. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, the same time you spoke. 

“There’s my birthday boy,” and your voice was all sleepy smiles. “Happy birthday. Happy anniversary.” 

He sat in front of you, right on the floor, not caring when his knees popped on the way down. 

“Did you stay up just to tell me that?” 

“What’s wrong with that?” 

You picked up the cake and presented it to him like you were proud of it, and the size of his grin matched yours. 

“How mad would you be if I just tipped this up,” and he tapped the bottom of the plate, “right into your face?” 

“Atsumu.” Every time you said his name like that, he laughed. “I would kill you.”

“On my birthday?” 

He watched you pout as you sat the cake down again. “Aren’t you going to say thank you?” 

“Thank you,” he said, like he was insisting. He wrapped his hands around your legs and scooted you closer to him. “Thank you, baby, this is so nice.” 

You hummed. “You’re welcome.” And you dipped your finger in the frosting on the cake, and Atsumu immediately caught your wrist when you moved it toward his face. 

“Don’t you dare.” 

You kept pushing, and he didn’t push back fast enough - your finger and the glob of frosting smushed right into his cheek. 

And you laughed loud enough to fill the empty rooms of your house, and Atsumu didn’t know how to tell you how in love he was. 

He had birthday cake for dinner that night, and it settled into a sugary stomach ache. It was the best October 5th he'd lived through so far.

-

got a request for a drabble? send it in, i might write it :)  

#YOOO WE'RE SO BACK #kris posted two days ago. im posting today. is the haikyuu fandom back in business #are we bringing the content back to the people #i say this as if the fandom is dead. which i dont know if it is. #its dead to me so long as i'm not writing fics like its my 9 to 5 #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu x reader #atsumu miya #atsumu miya x reader #miya atsumu #hq x reader #haikyuu one shot #drabbles #uhhh #i always feel like im not tagging enough things but i dont remember all the tags. whatever #now im gonna go write the steve harrington fic i started today that is so good and also the best idea ive ever had. in case anyone wondered

[grimmusings]

⭐ (because we don’t have enough already)

⭐ Oliver Queen (Arrowverse) + Clint Barton (Marvel): Oliver is a humorless dick (affectionate) so that personality difference alone would be entertaining, but he would have mad respect for Clint’s archery skill. I could probably spin AUs for these two forever: Ollie has just always been in the Marvel universe; Clint joins Team Arrow and helps him save Star City; Oliver is orphaned earlier and raised alongside Clint and his brother; shipwrecked together on Lian Yu; even just the two of them trying to one-up each other with practice shots. Team Archer. 🏹

⭐ Billy Hargrove (Stranger Things) + Bucky Barnes (Marvel): First of all, 80s Bucky would be hot af. Some guys were just meant to wear jeans and leather, I don't make the rules. Secondly, I can't help wondering how Billy's story would have gone differently if he had even one person over the age of twelve who gave a shit what happened to him or was there to help when he was possessed by the Mind Flayer. Bucky who escaped from Hydra a few decades earlier and hid out in Hawkins (who knows exactly how it feels to have someone in his head), full AU as fellow student/peer, DILF (we know age difference is not a factor for Billy)-- it could go so many ways!

⭐ Jerry Dandridge (Fright Night) + Matt Murdock (Marvel): I've never written him before, but I don't need a lot of encouragement to add horror muses to my list. I did a re-watch of Fright Night (Farrell version, the man was born to play a vampire) when I saw him on your wishlist, and I'd love to give him a try. I don't know why he picked Matt as the one who should suffer most (yummy Catholic boy idk), but vampire!Matt struggling with that guilt or a dark Murderdock verse where he has some hold over Jerry or they're working together… it practically writes itself.

#oliver queen #billy hargrove #jerry dandridge #defectivexfragmented #memes #ask #LISTEN #i could have a hundred threads with you #and i would still want more #we write the best things

[carbonateddelusion]

hey.

please consider buying me some steam games in exchange for art.

here are some examples. feel free to ask for more if these don't give you a good enough idea of my styles. also, please specify which style you'd prefer. the more realistic one (shown in the 2nd and 4th images) tends to cost more because it takes more time for me to make it look right.

(sorry for the long post, tumblr mobile won't let me add things below the cut.)

here's the link to my profile

check out my wishlist. the sales are taken into account when it comes to the art you get.

I want Games; they're organized from most desired downward. if you gift me one of these games, I'll give you art. PLEASE specify what you want.

$5 and below = headshot/bust sketch, uncolored

$6-10 = full-body sketch, uncolored OR headshot/bust, lined and colored

$11-15 = full-body, lined and colored OR two headshots/busts, lined and colored

$16-20 = two full-bodies lined and colored OR a sketch full-body in my less cartoony style

$21-25 = three full-body sketches in my less cartoony style OR three fullbodies lined and colored in my normal style OR a reference sheet with expressions and props (ask about this one!)

$26+ = idk, my first born? just kidding. if you actually buy me any of these I'll be willing to make SEVERAL pieces of art. we can negotiate it.

YES: OCs, canon characters, shipping, self-inserts, anime, furries, humans, monsters, complex designs (which will be simplified in the cartoony style!), animatronics, androids, DND, blood, simplified gore, nudity

NO: NSFW (maybe. ask. it depends.), fetishes, bigoted art, mechas, major changes to the image past the sketching phase (ask what counts!)

pricing is negotiable based on complexity. if you want something I haven't listed, ASK and I'll tell you the price. I'll also maybe do writing commissions if we're mutuals. ask me if you would prefer to pay in gift cards over steam games. check my steam game list/wishlist to make sure nobody has bought me the game you're planning to buy already.

#artist commisions #open commissions #taking commisions #commisions open #art commissions #oc commission #character commission #rox rumblings #me things #[flops on the ground] this is what happens when i do not sleep #original character commission

[smiletimeisrunningout]

the 100 wishlist:

-Marcus Kane: she thought the council rediscussed her pregnancy and still kept her in her cell even if it sorta proved her self-defense claim (you can't kill anyway but I assume there is a bit more leniency if you weren't trying to, you were protecting yourself, and you are pregnancy. At least enough not to be in solitary anymore, but as far as Emma is concerned she should have been freed) but he actually knew nothing of this because they were too busy with the Ark dying so there is a weird relationship right there, between the angry pregnant girl who is kinda giving him a pass while hating on all other people with power, and the guy who is trying to do better now on the ground and who later on is visibly !!! about Diyoza being pregnant ??

-a Bellamy to freak out with questions about his mom and then to freak out even more when he realizes why he's being asked these questions, he was working so hard to 'be better' and protect people and lead, what is he supposed to do with this time-ticking bomb

-all the interactions with Murphy to see what happens in an universe where someone is weirdly caring from beginning to end ?? John Murphy having a tiny blonde girl who finds a little too easy to kill who has his back (possible 'trapped in the bunker together' situation there with the added terror of her pregnancy advancing though) (also he can cook, it's canon, which means he'll have Emma's undying love for that alone)

-interactions with Emori who is now around a girl who would never shun her son even if he was born a mutant and does everything for his sake but doesn't judge Emori herself for her crime-lifestyle, and later on Emma actually tries to volunteer to save her from being experimented on, because she's sure she'll be left to die in Praimfaya anyway and is giving her son one more chance it if the nightblood experiment works and saving someone in the process

-Raven having someone who picks her first even if it's platonically ?? Raven getting this big sister bond and helping Emma out too, she hates asking for help but it's a bit different when it's very mutual

-if it's possible for a Jasper not to completely fall apart after Mount Weather because Emma is not staying too close to a constantly drunk depressed guy while 8-9 months pregnant, maybe not losing it completely because he gets to protect/help someone else (Emma), that same Jasper who started to feel a bit of a spark of life again when he bonded for five minutes with a girl in Luna's place, maybe gets to feel better when helping Emma with baby Henry and going with them all to space later on ?

-Spacekru being a weird family unit to baby Henry though, all the aunts and uncles he needs // if Henry is the bunker and Emma is in space they'd have to keep Emma from dying of heartbreak though

-Clarke finding someone who agrees with literally all of her choices except for the one of forgiving and sorta dating Lexa (never forgive! Never forget!) and regardless of which faction Emma belongs to Emma actually agreeing that Madi should have been left flameless, are you kidding.

-I actually want to write with an Abby and fix the relationship because I like Abby, but I think it would be terrible for the other rper if we don't know each other well because Emma would be an ass.hole for a while and refuse to be reasonable about not hating the adults

-all the other 100s

-the weirdness of 'oh no, it's not that I don't trust Lincoln because he's a grounder, I don't trust him because he's a man' and 'I can understand how a traumatized kid started shooting up a village of Grounders after being terrorized by Grounders all along, I will not excuse cheating' 'I may follow Jaha because Pike is going to kill us all but my god will I feed him to the water monsters if I get the chance'

#I think Emma's father will actually get along with Marcus and ditch Pike immediately #Emma's mother would try to push Emma to forgiveness and kindness again but she's a mama bear so watch out #but seriously Marcus & Bellamy would be hilarious interactions to me while I have no idea of where they'd go #John I'm a survivor Murphy having to deal with someone he doesn't need to manipulate and in fact his life is safer if he doesn't #Raven having her little bodyguard even in s1 & Emory dealing with 'okay someone who isn't John just tried to give her life for me wtf' #wishlist;

[metagalacticx]

scydia 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

When I started shipping them: honestly s06 but not seriously… but then this year very seriously

My thoughts: they are so!! scott and lydia, wow. okay so all of it makes me feel insane because the show set up both scallison and stydia from day one as like, the ideal couples. and i think scydia being borne from that friend group made a lot of sense. the way they were both targeted and terrorised by peter, the way the discovery and evolution of their powers paralleled each other’s throughout the show, and also the immense love both of them have for both allison and stiles is the foundation. and i just think it would be a very grounding experience for them both. and i also think that neither of them would call it dating. it’s the girl who sees death and the boy who feels he has to do everything he can to stop people from dying. they’re best friends. they grew to love each other. there was no spark at first sight. they just woke up one day and looked across the room and realised that’s the person whose hand they want in theirs, maybe forever. that’s the person they want by their side through it all. the person who’s seen them grow from less-than-ideal versions of themselves into people others look to for guidance and support. it’s scott knowing lydia’s been through hell and that she just wants to help save people, and it’s him taking her hand and saying if she gives him the time he’ll do something about it. it’s lydia knowing scott’s also been through hell, and taking his hand and believing that he’s going to do everything he can, and that she has someone to help her through anything that comes. it’s her knowing that the voices won’t stop but neither will scott.

What makes me happy about them: they care about each other so much and they’ve both grown throughout the show.

What makes me sad about them: they’re both suffering At All Times. but that’s also what makes me love them having each other and holding hands because of it

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: i don’t read it often so they can’t hurt me <3

Things I look for in fanfic: honestly just them being there for each other is enough

My wishlist: don’t attack me for this but if scydia had happened in place of scott/malia i would not have been mad at all.

Who I'd be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: scott -> kira lydia -> kira

My happily ever after for them: just them being hand-in-hand trying to save their friends, and also just being there for each other.

#asks #thank uuuu

[thesnowfelled]

𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒 …

𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄:  Landon Reese Kirby

𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄(𝐒):  Lan

𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄(𝐒):  Landon

𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄:  April 2nd, 2012

𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒:  8 pounds, 11 ounces   &  19 inches long  &  1:00 pm

𝐀𝐆𝐄:  21 years old

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑:  cis male

𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐒:   phoenix

𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐒:  he/him

𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐂 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍:  demiromantic

𝐒𝐄𝐗𝐔𝐀𝐋 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍:  bisexual

𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐒:  Aria Shahghasemi

𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐎𝐑 𝐋𝐄𝐅𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃:  right handed

𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐍:  none

𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌:  unsteady by x ambassadors

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐒: Highly selective. There must be plotting here for me to write him. He is open for interactions and shipping though.

𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐒…

I stop canon at 2x06 for all of my legacies characters.

Landon stays a phoenix.

Never melted into goo after sex with Hope Mikaelson nor would he if they went that way.

Didn’t get back together with Hope or Josie. This can be changed based off of the person I’m writing with.

Becomes a bartender at Rousseau's but only after 20 years of being out of college.

𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒 & 𝐄𝐗𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐒…

To  request to be a main or exclusive, please message me what muse interests you for this. We must either plot first or have been writing together on this blog or even a single muse blog that I ran in this past. We don’t have to have had anything written with our muses regarding the character though. The mains and exclusives on my carrd are  blog wide. This is a section per character.

Currently there are no mains or exclusives for this character.

𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘…

From the moment that Landon Kirby was born he was wishing for a anchor and a place to call home. Left on a doorstep of a local church with only a single image of the woman that gave birth to him and a name there wasn’t much connection there. Foster family after family came and left with a few promising hits but none never stayed past a few years if he was lucky at best. Landon can’t remember anything remarkable about his life until he was an adult.

Landon ages out of the system without a family besides a boy named Rafael Waithe. The two of them are the best of friends. The two of them get jobs and start to work to keep food on the table and the lights on. Life is tough but Rafael manages to get himself a girlfriend that he enjoys. Things are great for them even if it was mundane until Rafael is an accident and Landon has to give the news that Cassie didn’t make it. The unknown wolf spends the next month angry and things hit a head on the full moon.

Rafael’s former foster family, the ones that kept in contact with him and called him son,   suggest getting the help from a priest and thus Landon is there when the Salvatore College comes to the rescue. Landon finds a home with them after many ups and downs. Finding out where he came from and that he was just as special, the young male is now on a roll with immortality and the abilities of a phoenix

𝐀 𝐅𝐄𝐖 𝐖𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐒…

Add a few wishlist ideas here.

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐍𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍…

𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.  

𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬.  

𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬.

𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐬.  

𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬.  

𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬.  

𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞.

𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥.

#* … ( OOC : statistics. ) ⠀ › ⠀ signs her LETTERS with x’s and o’s

[eritvita]

My name is Celeste. I prefer she/they pronouns, and I’m 30.

because this is a sideblog, and because my main account is my personal, i will be selective in following. i’m a bit selective with whom i write, for my own peace of mind and creative connections. but just because i’m not following you, doesn’t mean i won’t write with you!

my discord is available to mutuals!

my character's spotify playlist is here.

WRITING

open starters are here.

my writing wishlist is here.

memes are here.

i am oc friendly. i am canon friendly. i am multifandom friendly. i do write with duplicates of the same character. i will write with self inserts!

this blog is multi-ship, multi-verse, and does not exercise exclusivity.

i do love to improvise, and i do love realistic drama, but i’d prefer out-of-character permission before anything gets way out of hand. i do control how my character acts and what he thinks and says, and wish for no forced motions or putting words in mouths.

if you reply to an in-character ask, i will make another text post: it’s easier on me. i don’t believe in reblog karma, nor will i get offended if you reblog a meme without sending one. i do reserve the right to not answer an ask if the inspiration doesn’t come.

the same goes for threads. if i get the feeling that we’re both going back and forth waiting for the other to contribute, or if it feels like i’m the only one pulling the weight, or if inspiration has flown the coop, i’ll probably drop it. we could always start something new; or, if you feel like a thread has been ignored without reason, tell me!

i have a very whimsical, formatted way of writing: i write in novella and multiple para. my preferred style is present-tense, third person. sometimes i’m dialogue-heavy. sometimes i use icons, and sometimes i don’t. sometimes a line of dialogue might seem confusing or mushed together for a lyrical word scramble, or my character tends to repeat things already mentioned/translated to him in a reply previous: this is purposeful, and part of a character quirk. i’m more than willing to translate ic babble out-of-character if it’s needed.

i am willing to rp on discord, but since my preferred style is via tumblr, this will only be with mutuals.

SHIPPING

this character flirts. he comments openly of physical, mental, and spiritual beauty, but that never means that I, the writer, am forcing a romantic/etc. relationship. i encourage any and all ic reactions that happen in result.

with shipping, i would like chemistry first and foremost. my character is romantic, but not enough to tie the knot immediately, at least without involved plotting. there will be smut on this blog, but everything is put under a ‘read more’ and will be tagged appropriately. i will not write smut or explicit themes with anyone under 20, & i will block minors.

i have no problem shipping with duplicate characters, or canon characters, so long as the relationship is solid. talk to me ooc! i’m sure we could figure something out.

this character’s past & current relationships are listed here.

GENERAL

i have a timeline on my verses page for the three Dragon Age games made by Bioware, in which the main verse of this character is borne. i have played all three games, and i am very diligent over yt playthroughs and thought-provoking meta. the timeline on my verses page does give yearly points over where my character has been, but they are not fixed points. a thread, or an ask, can completely commence whenever, wherever, all depending on the people involved.

this is a lore and irl magick-based blog, which will include blood and drugs and great, mystic topics, with questionable symbolism, nudity, and sexual situations. i will always tag anything not safe for work, but please tell me if i miss a trigger.

tagging as ’___ for ts’.

most icons are mine, some are by Desii; the icons with the photo-shopped ears are by Gale.

side image credit: -x-

text divider credit: -x-

#[ ooc. ]

[robotsandramblings]

so i'm in a Christmasy mood and wanted to just ramble about Christmas, so i found some ask games, picked my favourite questions, and answered them below, just for some festive fun! 😊🎄🤶

Favourite Christmas film? -- i think it's a tie between White Christmas and National Lampoon's Cmas Vacation

Favourite Christmas song? -- oooh i've got WAY too many favourites!!! it also depends a lot on who's singing it. i can tell you my LEAST favourite which is Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Cmas Is You", god how i loathe that song 🤮

Real tree, or artifical? -- a real tree, every year!! we've even started taking them from our own backyard, literally! (there's a forest on my mom's property.)

Favourite gift you've ever gotten? -- my Tamagotchi, back in the 90s when they were a big thing!! i still remember that moment! i had wanted one so bad, i opened it up immediately and ignored the rest lol

Do you have Christmas dinner? -- yes! every year we do the traditional north american style of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, veggies, etc.. Typically on the 25th.

Favourite food or treat? -- MINT CHOCOLATE EVERYTHING

Do you like Eggnog? -- yes! but only in small, infrequent doses. like not every day, and only half a cup at a time

Do you have any Christmas family traditions? -- not anything special or unusual, i don't think? we always open presents on Cmas Day, not Eve. and we always do stockings first. stockings are for smaller gifts and chocolate, maybe a clementine or two lol

Favorite Christmas tradition? -- decorating!!! and honestly, the variety of desserts/treats i get to indulge in 😋

Have you ever gone on a tropical or ski vacation during the Holidays? -- i could never do tropical. i need snow, i love snow, too much!! and well i hate skiing so that's also a no, lol. but i would be open to going to a winter chalet in general, and doing other stuff like snowshoeing, skating, sledding.

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? -- every year! born and raised in Ontario, Canada, up far north enough that we get lots of snow, and green christmases are extremely rare. so having no snow is very weird and depressing to me. thankfully we have a blanket of white for this year! 💖⛄

Your favourite thing about the holidays? -- everything about it, to me, is so beautiful. the music, the decorations, the tree, the snow, the lights, everything! it gives me such warm fuzzy feelings. 😊💕

more christmas Q&A below the cut!

Do you get excited for Christmas? -- VERY much so, i'm well known amongst family and friends for how much i love it 😁

What do you want for Christmas? -- my big ask this year was for $$ and gift cards towards an e-reader (specifically for e-books)

Do you make a list of what you’d like when people ask? -- yes; my immediate family and i run on 98% wishlists and 2% "i once heard you say you like this". i need to both give and receive wishlists because i like both giving and receiving exactly what is wanted. (surprises are nice too! sometimes lol)

Do like wrapping presents? Or are you a put it in a gift bag person? -- i LOVE wrapping presents!!!, and i will only use a gift bag if it's much easier than wrapping

Did you snoop for presents when you were a kid? -- honestly, never! but i did always feel my stocking to "see" what was inside. i still do that today lol

Is your tree topper an angel or a star? -- an angel

Do you have a favourite Christmas book from your childhood? -- YES, i still have my "I, Spy" Christmas book. i look through it every year, the pictures are amazing!!!

The song that instantly puts you in the Holiday spirit? -- Run Run Rudolph, or Here We Come A-Caroling

Is there a Christmas song that makes you emotional? -- uhhh, most of them, lmao. in a happy, it's-such-beautiful-music-i'm-literally-moved-to-tears kind of way. Silent Night is the easiet way to get me teary lol

Do you go to church at Christmas? -- yes, on the 24th, despite being atheist, because i was raised Christian and my family still is. and honestly, i still love the songs and hearing the choir sing them, so it's ok

What do you like to do on Christmas Eve? -- it depends on the weather and which aunts/uncles/cousins are available; sometimes we do finger foods & drinks w/family, sometimes we just sit at home and watch Cmas movies!

When do you wake up on Christmas morning? -- in recent years, our "timeline" has gotten more relaxed, so my mom let's me sleep in lol. but i try to be up by the time she comes back from church service (11:30).

What do you like to do on Christmas Day? -- sleep in, wait for my siblings & their partners to show up, do gifts together, lounge around, then we have family over for our big turkey dinner!

What do you like to do on Boxing Day? -- nothing lol! i am NOT a Boxing Day shopper, not in-person anyways. (might look for some tech deals online this year.) we typically sit around, read books, watch movies, eat leftovers, be VERY lazy 😁

thanks for reading this far!! i hope this has you thinking about your own Christmas traditions and such, and gets you into a festive mood!

((i took questions from these ask games: 1 2 3 4 ))

#christmas #R&Rpersonal #long post #full disclaimer: i am ABLE to enjoy christmas #because i have a very good relationship with my immediate and extended family #so i never have to stress about the family visiting aspect #for which i am very grateful #my heart goes out to anyone and everyone who has shitty family [members] they have to deal with #who make their holidays stressful and horrible #i think about you guys and i hope you find other ways to enjoy this time of year <3

[tyre4770]

Hi and welcome to my pinned post! This is lengthy, so buckle in! 💕

I'm Tyre 4770, or Wysteria. You may call me Wyst, Wys, Wystie, or Tyre(pronounced like Tire). I'm 26 from the USA, born on September 19th, 1997. My pronouns are They/Them! My personality type is INFP-T.

Hi! I'm Tyre 4770, or Wysteria. You may call me Wyst, Wys, Wystie, or Tyre(pronounced like Tire). I'm 26 from the USA, born on September 19th, 1997. My pronouns are They/Them! My personality type is INFP-T.I enjoy video games, anime, sleep, cooking, baking, reading, and more. I have 7 cats back home at my parents', and technically a dog now as well because of my roommates.I am Autistic with ADHD, ODD, IED, Severe Anxiety, Chronic Depression, Endometriosis, and other physical ailments.I am not stating these for sympathy, or anything of the sort - I'm just very open about my diagnosises and I'd rather people be aware of them when interacting with me. ♥

The games I play are:

-League of Legends (Pyke and Aurelion Sol ♥) -Destiny 2 -Final Fantasy XIV -Warframe -Minecraft -Halo - & more

My top 5 Anime:

-Tenchi Muyo -Saber Marionette J -Vandread -Magical Girl Raising Project -Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040

League of Legends Corner

Have you ever heard of Lazy Rift? Yes? Hi, I made that! No? It's a custom Summoner's Rift map for League of Legends. I also make recalls, loading screens, fonts, and I used to make "Chromas" or "recolors" for champions, that usually had particles included as well. You can find everything that's up to date, including Lazy Rift, over on the League of Legends Custom Skins button.

Custom skins are safe and NOT bannable, as long as they 1: do not give you an advantage, and 2: are not "skin hacks". Skin hacks are when you have a paid riot skin ported to the base skin. Do not do this.

On the rift, my top 3 are Aurelion Sol, Sona, and Pyke. I mostly play support these days with a dash of mid lane. I really enjoy playing ARAM over normals, but I've been playing more normals these days to get more practice with Pyke. :)♥

Willing to Duo ranked, play ARAM/Norms, or even play TFT. (Idk what I'm doing in TFT, but I like my Chonccy boy. I play for giggles and to see him go brrrrr.)

The story behind my username:

Tyre 4770 is an armor shader from the first Destiny game, and it can be obtained via Future War Cult rank-up packages. It was my first faction shader.

About 7 years ago, I happened to discover the Destiny twitter community, where people would make accounts for items, npcs, etc. I decided to join in on it, and saw that no one had taken Tyre 4770 yet. The name kinda stuck, and since then, I have been Tyre 4770!

You may find me everywhere online under Tyre 4770, Tyre_4770, Tyre4770, or Tyrex4770.

Links:

Twitter

https://twitter.com/Tyre_4770

TikTok

https://tiktok.com/tyre_4770

Throne.me Wishlist

My gender identity/pronouns/etc

Twitch

Ko-Fi

op.gg

League of Legends Custom Skins

Curious Cat

Destiny Profile

Spotify Playlists https://open.spotify.com/playlist/432WSkCvcVnGpYoiAFSUXy?si=beaa2f7cc01442a7 Main Playlist! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2QVqnSh1VHbtNJLkjlvfMc?si=b37999e2ad274569 Breakcore/Jungle/etc Playlist!

[notmuchofatail]

Wednesday, November 30 -- SWYNRP Character Wishlist: A list of 10+ characters you’d like to see in the RP (for you to play or someone else!)

1. Cash; I literally have his entire app written out (#Foxandthehound2foramerica - it’s been 2 years). I was going to pick this man up before he even had a skeleton. Cash has been a hovering entity for idk how long. It became an even deeper thought when someone mentioned b-coops as a perfect FC (and that’s my dude. I used to have a running joke of always having a Bcoops FC in my old RPs) However, I decided against Cash a) because I thought it would have been better to bring him in with a Reba and to link up their stories, and also because at the time, his story seemed a little too similar to Dodger’s. The second one...doesn’t exactly apply anymore. But.......I shouldn’t get another character. I LOVE HIM THOUGH. 

I’m begging you. Take him from me. TAKE HIM. Look I even made a little banner to show how much u should take him. Adopt him. JUST TAKE HIM. 

LOOK AT HIS FACE. LOOK AT BRADLEY COOPER (A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper specifically). LOOK. GET HIM AWAY FROM ME. 

2. Fawn; Another one I have the basis of an app written for. But we know my track record with women (aka for some reason I have none) so therefor SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD BRING THEM YEAH? C’mon. She’d be fun. She’d be great. We need Chaotic-Good energies in the house. 

3. ....Look - I’m still 100% saying someone should pick up Roger Rabbit - I just think it would be incredibly funny and I don’t think (?) we have a skeleton for him yet so like. World is your oyster. But imagine him being some kind of weird magic that allows him to fuck with the world kind of like a cartoon so he can have those over-exaggerated, cartoony, over the top moments, you know? 

4. Piglet: This is just me selfishly wanting more of the Hundred Acre crew on board. There’s only 3 of us. I think that the series is full of wonderful characters and Piglet is a perfect diverse character who I think would be a wonderful addition and like... be friends with greg pls. 

5. On that same token - I stopped doing this either out of choice or simply because I forgot but when I first started writing Greg, I’d force him to answer starters/be places because I gave him an NPC friend who was outgoing and friendly and did everything and dragged Gregory with. That friend was ‘Chris’. This was always a super lowkey NPC variant of Christopher Robin and so I think it would be delightful if someone brought the real Christopher Robin too. Obviously it also doesn’t have to do anything with the previous mentioned tidbit - but I just think he’d be a neat character. 

6. Iago. I loved Iago. I love everything about Iago; his skeleton drew me to him the second it was posted and I ended up getting him twice but... He’s too big of a potential baddie for me. I lovingly accept the supporting artist category - and therefore big villains don’t work well with me. Now, technically Iago is a support/side character but - we know damn well he wants the world. He’s the true brains of the operation. He knows what he wants and he’s a powerhouse with SUPER COOL MAGIC. Someone please get him. 

7. Similarly - It’d be cool if someone got Camilo. I have nothing to do with the Madrigals but like Iago, I just think mimicry is some of the coolest magic. Camilo is actually like....... my compromise in theory because he’s everything I want in Iago (aka the cool powers) but without the big character energy that always knocks me with Iago. I also love a sarcastic fuck mama’s boy. I won’t do it though - no. 

8. Give me the baby; 

9. Do we seriously not have any Lilo & Stitch characters?? What are we DOING. Doesn’t someone feel so inclined to get Stitch!? (okay I know some of you are traumatized but we can REBRAND. We can MOVE ON). Wouldn’t stitch be a fantastic little demon monster (not literally) to run around Swynlake? I mean please... imagine them vs most Swynlake disasters. 

10. Pascal - please. While I don’t have the trio of characters that all had tattoos and the two of them that were tattoo junkies that would have severely benefitted from this - Gregory still has tattoos (and may or may not be working towards an entire sleeve slowly but surely but you didn’t hear it from me) and c’mon. I have ONCE AGAIN BEEN ASKING FOR YEARS. 

#bdrpwrimo #bdrpwrimolauren #this list gets more unhinged every year I feel

[wistcrias-arch2]

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #454545}

tag drop : ooc . 

#❝ DOES SHE EVER SHUT UP? → ( ooc. ) #❝ I’M PROBABLY SLEEPING RN → ( queue. ) #❝ SOMETIMES I DON’T TOTALLY SUCK → ( self-promo. ) #❝ STAY WOKE → ( psa. ) #❝ THANK THE STARS FOR YOUR EXISTENCE → ( promo. ) #❝ SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME... → ( about me. ) #❝ A BLESSING FROM THE GODS → ( resources. ) #❝ INTERACTIONS → ( texts. ) #❝ INTERACTIONS → ( threads. ) #❝ WRITING FUEL → ( soundtrack. ) #❝ RAINBOWS ON THE HORIZON → ( positivity. ) #❝ CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL → ( saved. ) #❝ WOULD GIVE MY FIRST BORN FOR THIS! → ( wishlist. ) #❝ SPECIFY MUSE PLEASE AND THANKS! → ( prompts. )

[arch-wistcrias]

ooc tag drop. 

#❝ | I’M PROBABLY SLEEPING RN → ( queue. ) #❝ | DOES SHE EVER SHUT UP? → ( ooc. ) #❝ | SOMETIMES I DON’T TOTALLY SUCK → ( self-promo. ) #❝ | STAY WOKE → ( psa. ) #❝ | THANK THE STARS FOR YOUR EXISTENCE → ( promo. ) #❝ | SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME... → ( about me. ) #❝ | A BLESSING FROM THE GODS → ( resources. ) #❝ | CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL → ( saved. ) #❝ | WOULD GIVE MY FIRST BORN FOR THIS! → ( wishlist. ) #❝ | SPECIFY MUSE PLEASE AND THANKS! → ( prompts. ) #❝ | INTERACTIONS → ( threads. ) #❝ | GOOD SHIT → ( likes. ) #❝ | INTERACTIONS → ( texts. ) #❝ | RAINBOWS ON THE HORIZON → ( positivity. ) #❝ | WRITING FUEL. → ( soundtrack. )

[limunette]

Hello lovely folks ❣️ so the anniversary of the day I came to this earth with this meat suit & strange but loving soul is coming closer. It shall be on the 30th.

If by chance you would feel inclined to want to give me a present, you can do so by:

•Paypal

• Amazon wishlist

•Etsy giftcard

Of course, please only do so if you are able too, i know times are incredibly difficult even more so lately. If you aren't able to, please know that you are still awesome & freaking amazing! I appreciate any gift, even if it's in the form of you sending positive energy my way. That already means alot to me.

For my birthday, please also consider:

• Joining the Discord

I really want to hit a goal and if i hit it on my birthday, that would make me so very happy.. {Why join the discord? } So we may walk together in this spiritual journey ❤️You will receive 10% off all readings by joining. You will receive free readings, lessons and other premium content.

More importantly, to be part of a community of like minded people where we can chat about our spiritual experiences and share resources. (witchcraft, divination, astral, energy work, astrology and so much more!). To build friendships and a sense of familiarity and hope. I would love you to be part of it.❤️

•Offering a sacrifice and your first born

•Sending me a nice ask before or on that day 💕

Thank you for reading this. Please consider reblogging and sharing 🥺

#free divination #tarot #divination #free tarot #witches #divination service

[bts-reveries]

wishlist

characters: Yoongi x OC!Sohyun and Hana [ft. Yuna and Hoseok, mentions Huimang, Hana’s friends, and Taehyung(the group as well)]

genre: family and fluff

request: [anon] Hi there! My suggestion for the drabble series is maybe Hana puts down getting a baby brother/sister on her birthday wish list, and neither she nor Yoongi knows that Sohyun is already pregnant, so Sohyun gets to surprise her husband and daughter? 💛

a/n: hana is turning eight here (WEIRD.) i know it’s a big age gap, but she turned four in daddy diaries and she was seven by the end of the tmbmil series asdfghjkl this is assuming jungkook and rina got married right after taeyang was born and yoongi proposed right after their wedding and then got married in a few months and then hana’s birthday rolls around after and sohyun is already pregnant by then : D also my sister and i are seven years apart so it’s not tHaT bad~

➳➳➳➳➳➳➳

Hana’s birthday was nearing and it was always a special time for the couple. 

Not only is it almost their daughter’s special day, but also the anniversary of the first time they met and the anniversary of the bakery’s opening. 

Hana was only three when she came crashing into the grand opening of 24/7 Heaven, meeting Sohyun for the very first time. She was looking for the perfect birthday cake then. Now, four years later, the bakery owner became Hana’s mom and the wife of her dad. Yoongi and Sohyun got married not too long ago. 

He proposed to her in the most perfect way actually.

A cake, made by him and Hana, with the words ‘will you marry me’ written on top. 

So it was a special time. It’s their first meet-aversary as a married couple. The bakery was having an event for it’s fourth birthday. And of course, it was the start of getting Hana’s wishlist checked off.

As always, she had the general wishes.

As she got older, they started to change more and more. 

“Have you done your list yet?” Yoongi asks his daughter, peeking into her room. Hana scrambles out of her bed, where she was reading a book, and goes over to her desk.

“I finished it last night, I forgot to give it to you,” she said, pulling out the list from under her other books. “Here you go daddy. Do you and mommy need any help for the bakery’s fourth birthday by the way?” Yoongi was happy to know that as she grew up, she got sweeter and sweeter. 

Maybe it’s the effects of being in a bakery almost 24/7.

“Yes, mommy and I will need help later, but we’ll call you out then. For now, mommy and I will be looking at this,” he says, holding the list up. Hana smiles up at her dad, giving him an ‘okay’ sign. 

Yoongi turns and walks out the door, already scanning the list. 

“Why do you have that look on your face?” Sohyun asks her husband, watching him frown at Hana’s wishlist. Sohyun was on her laptop on the couch, ordering last minute party supplies for Hana’s birthday.

“She wants to invite boys from her class,” Yoongi says, looking up at his wife who starts to laugh at him. 

“Let me see,” she says, reaching out her hand for the paper. Yoongi hands it to her as he sits next to her. 

“It says: invite friends.” She turns to Yoongi with one eyebrow raised. “It didn’t specify whether it was all girls, all boys, or both.”

“Assuming it’s both, I’m sure her boyfriend is in there. She wouldn’t just write ‘invite Taeoh’,” he huffs. 

“Even if it did, you’d still invite him because it’s on your princess’ wishlist,” Sohyun says, knowing she was right. 

“I guess. Let’s look through it and see if we can get some done today. I’ll ask her for the names and make the invitations later.”

“Sounds good. Now let’s see,” Sohyun says, humming as she goes down the list. “Typical Hana, a lot of this is her general wishes. Party, perfect cake, all her friends and family~”

“There’s a back side!” Hana yells from her room. Both her parents look up, turning the paper around and their eyes widen. 

“Baby brother (or sister! That’s okay too)” 

“Hmm,” Yoongi says. “Well that’s a hard one.” Sohyun laughs nervously.

Little did they know.

That’s already one check done off of the list. 

It wasn’t too long ago that Sohyun found out that she was expecting. She figured that it would be perfect to announce it to both Yoongi and Hana on the night of her birthday. Once everyone’s gone and right when Hana thinks the presents have stopped coming.

- hana’s birthday -

“Is that the kid?” Hoseok asks, watching a little boy hand Hana a gift. Yoongi glares at them.

“Mhm,” he says. 

“Thank you Taeoh,” Hana says, taking the gift her friend was giving her. Boyfriend as Yoongi says. 

Hoseok laughs at his hyung, but that smile quickly drops when he sees his own daughter standing next to her boyfriend. Huimang and Hana take taekwondo together and share the same friends. Which is why her ‘boyfriend’ was also at Hana’s party. 

“You boys okay?” Sohyun asks, raising an eyebrow at the two. They both look away from their daughters. 

“Fine, why do you ask?” Yoongi says, giving her a close lip smile. Sohyun laughs at the both of them, turning to look at their daughters.

“They’re just kids, don’t worry,” she says. “It’s just a baby crush.”

“Speaking of babies,” Hoseok says, suddenly remembering what Yoongi had told the boys previously. He mentioned to them about Hana’s birthday wishlist. About how this might be the first year he fails giving her everything. 

Well, until the boys reminded him that four years ago when Hana wrote mommy on her list and he ended up breaking up with Sohyun.

That was something.

“What are you two telling Hana,” Hoseok says with a small laugh. “Should’ve told her to give you the wishlist 9 months ago.”

Yoongi sighs. “I know, I should’ve expected it. She’s been asking for one for so long.”

“I’m sure she’ll be understanding,” Sohyun says, trying hard to conceal her smile. She was pretty excited for the party to be over so she can spend some quality time with her family.

-

“Hey!” Yuna calls, rushing over to Sohyun and giving her a hug. “You’re telling them today, right?” She whispers, glancing down at her stomach. Yuna knew about Sohyun being pregnant.

Actually, all the girls did.

Only because Sohyun threw up at their mommy hangout and the girls had a feeling and told her to take a pregnancy test. 

It was Sohyun’s first test and she was nervous. So of course the girls all helped her out and taught her how to use one. It ended with all of them screaming three minutes later and Sohyun sobbing with tears of joy.

“Yes, tonight right before her birthday ends,” Sohyun answers. “I’m like 95% excited and 5% nervous.”

“Ah!! I’m so excited, tell us everything after,” Yuna says, holding onto Sohyun's arms tightly. Sohyun laughs, nodding her head.

“I will, definitely.”

-

“So, did you enjoy your birthday?” Yoongi asks Hana, laying in her bed. No matter how old she turns, Yoongi promised to give her birthday cuddles before she slept. Hana cuddles into her dad’s side. 

“Yeah, it was fun,” Hana says sleepily. It was nearing midnight, just about 10 minutes before. The group had stayed longer than everyone else (of course). Hana played with her cousins and was given extra hugs and kisses from her aunt and uncles before they left. Even Taehyung was crying, not wanting to let her go because, in his exact words: ‘Aigoo, you guys growing up is making me feel so old, I'm so sad. How are you already eight?’

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to check off everything on your list,” Yoongi tells her, rubbing her arm. He hugged her tightly, pressing his cheek to her head. As much as he just wanted to fulfill all of her wishes, he wanted Hana to have a sibling as much as she wanted one. 

“It’s okay, I still loved everything you gave me. I’d be happy with anything,” Hana tells him, looking up at her dad with a smile on her face. Yoongi pouts, raising his hand up to caress her cheeks. 

“How are you the sweetest girl ever?”

“Knock knock,” Sohyun says, peeking her head into the room. “Can I join?” The two smile up at her, motioning for her to come in. Sohyun reveals herself,  holding a cupcake with a lit candle on top. 

“Oh?” Hana says, sitting up in surprise. She smiles widely as she stares at the cupcake. 

“Another candle to blow?” Yoongi asks. His wife nods, careful sitting beside her daughter. 

“Your birthday ends in like 5 minutes. Is there one thing you really wanted today that you didn’t get?” Sohyun asks Hana. She knew what wish she would make. Hana looks up at her and nods. 

“Okay make the wish then,” Sohyun says. Hana closes her eyes, intertwining her fingers in front of her.

She whispers quietly.

“I wish I could have a little brother or sister.”

It was just loud enough for her parents to hear. Yoongi looks up at Sohyun as Hana blows the candle. 

“Done?” Sohyun asks. Hana nods and Sohyun puts the cupcake on her side table, turning back to her two loves. 

“So that completes everything from the list right?” Sohyun says, looking back at the two. Both Yoongi and Hana looked at her confused. 

“Oh didn’t I tell you two?” Sohyun says with a smile that she could no longer contain. “I’m pregnant.”

Yoongi’s eyes grew big and Hana smiled so wide, her cheeks turned pink. 

“Mommy you’re pregnant?” Hana repeats, putting her hand gently on her mom’s tummy. Sohyun nods, putting her hand over hers. She looks up at Yoongi and laughs.

“Are you okay, hun?” She says, reaching out and pushing his hair back. 

Yoongi’s face broke into a smile.

“Are you serious? Are you really pregnant?” Yoongi asks, hesitantly putting his hand on her tummy as well. 

“Yeah, I found out about three weeks ago,” Sohyun laughs. “I figured I’d surprise you two before midnight.” 

“You did it, you completed my wishes,” Hana laughs, leaning onto her mom and hugging her tightly. Yoongi couldn’t stop smiling as he joined in the hug, wrapping his arms tightly around his two girls. 

At that moment, the clock struck 12 and Hana’s birthday was over. 

They couldn’t help but think that at this time, next year, there'll be another person included in this hug. 

#bts-reveries #bts #bts x reader #bts x you #bts x oc #bts drabble #bts fluff #bts family #bts au #bts dad au #dad bts au #yoongi x reader #yoongi x you #yoongi x oc #yoongi drabble #yoongi fluff #yoongi au #yoongi dad au #dad yoongi au #life goes on #requests