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thewulf · 1 year

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Whatever The Hell This Is || Joel Miller

Summary: Reader and Joel butt heads a lot, they're both very sure of themselves. Tess has to be the mediator alot of the time... Read Rest Here

A/N: This was fun to write. Let me know if you liked it :)

Pairing: Joel Miller x Y/N

Word Count: 6,100+

“You’re so fucking annoying!” You whisper yelled to Joel giving him a less than friendly glare before heading off towards the exchange point in the restricted zone outside the QZ. You’d had it up to your head with him. This is why you hated going out with him.

“I didn’t ask you to come!” He shot back not bothering to keep his voice down like you attempted to just seconds before.

“Well neither did I! Tess invited both of us for fucks sake.” You didn’t bother turning around knowing he was sending daggers into your back.

“I’m not sure why I did.” Tess sighed knowing she had to mediate before one of you bit the others head off. She tolerated the both of you equally. Unfortunately for her the both of you had a problem with the other. It made trips like this interesting to say the least and why she avoided them at all costs, “You both act like toddlers every fucking time.”

You sighed slowing down a bit matching stride with your longtime friend, “I’m sorry Tess. I was going to play nice. The Joel had to go and open his mouth…”

“I was just suggesting another route!” He defended himself getting annoyed by you now. He was getting tired of you biting his head off every time he suggested something.

“You always question me! You never questions Tess’s decisions.” You challenged him raising your voice now. Joel always had a knack for getting under your skin. You lost your composure all too often around the stubborn man.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, both of you shut up. I’ll make the decisions. Yeah?” Tess’s eyes were wide as if she was punishing her own children.

Grumbling, you answered her, “Yeah fine, whatever.” You walked behind her keeping your eyes on her back and not on Joel’s who found his stride beside her. Figures, he got exactly what he wanted. He trusted Tess, never questioning her decisions. Tess was a natural leader and Joel fell right in line. He clearly didn’t feel the same about you. It felt like he picked a fight any time you were allowed to have a say. Sure, you were a few years younger, but you were here just like he was. You were a fighter and survivor just like he was.

Truthfully, you didn’t even hate the guy. You looked up to him just as much as you looked up to Tess. It always seemed like he had the problem with you though. Whatever the hell it was you would love to fix it. You even talked with Tess about it. She said she’d talk with Joel about it but had yet to get back to you just yet.

The walk continued in silence as both you and Joel were protesting. It wasn’t often the three of you all went out on a run. It was usually just either you and Tess or Tess and Joel. This was a big order though; she needed all hands-on deck for this one resulting in you and Joel joining together. You wished he could just see you as an equal, but you were afraid you’d never get there.

You were so in your own head you hardly heard Tess stop and sigh. Nearly running into Joel, you decided it’d be better to walk into the wall of the hallway building instead. He gave you a confused look when you saw you walk right into the wall. You tried to shrug it off, “What’s up Tess?” Whispering again you ignored Joel and his glare instead turning your attention back to her.

“Door’s blocked.” Her husky voice sounded tired, “Wasn’t last week. Dammit.”

Taking a look around you pointed up, “Can climb up and over. Looks like the building collapsed.”

Joel’s eyes snapped up surveying the scene of crumbling building before him, “No, that’s too dangerous.” Joel didn’t know a ton, but he knew buildings from his days before the outbreak. Being a contractor did sort of help with stuff like this.

“Come on.” You sighed dropping the rifle strap from your shoulder. You handed it to Tess who gave you a funny look. She surely wasn’t going to stop you, but it sounded like Joel was about to try, “It’s fine Joel. Somebody’s got to go.”

“What if it collapsed yesterday? It could still be unstable.” He looked around for a better option sighing when he came up short.

You shook your head offloading your backpack from your shoulders, “It’s fine. It’s had plenty of time to settle. It’s too late to turn around now anyway. It’ll take us another four hours to double back. We don’t have that kind of time.”

Joel frowned acknowledging what you had to say. He knew that you were right. It still didn’t make him happy though, “I’ll go then.” He offered up.

But your insecurities got the better of you, “Do you not trust me?” You let your frustrations out with a louder than necessary at that snap back.

Joel threw his head back biting his tongue. He trusted you. He just didn’t want to see you get hurt. He’d seen you almost get hurt too many times to count. It wasn’t always like you put yourself into precarious situations, but he’s had to save you one too many times. So, he made it his duty to protect you. You never seemed to take well to it. Always fighting back whenever he suggested something. Sure, he could’ve communicated with you, but he wasn’t the best with words. He knew he’d fuck it up more if he tried to explain himself, so he let you think the worst instead.

Shaking his head he answered, “I trust you.” He finally spoke after a long moment.

“Then I’m going.” Huffing you hoisted yourself up over the broken wall.

“You’re going to get hurt.” His frown deepened seeing you climb.

Standing you looked down at the two of them, “I’ll be fine. Plus, the opening over there is pretty narrow, I don’t think you’d fit Joel.”

He sighed, “Fine.” Leaning against the wall he gave Tess a look.

“Be careful Y/N.” Tess spoke out seeing the concern on his eyes. She knew there was something there. At least on his end. He’d never ever admit anything to her though. There was always something unspoken Tess noticed between the two of you. Two people couldn’t bicker like you did without feeling something.

“Yeah, yeah.” You shot her a smile before beginning your climb over to the hallway. Walking slowly, you took note of Joel’s concerns. You’d had the same ones. Fresh crumbles were always pretty dangerous, but you wanted to put on brave face. You had to be useful. Had to prove yourself to them.

It took you a lot longer than it normally would as you paced slowly trying to find an opening. There was always a way. Smiling when you saw light coming from a little further you made your way over to the narrow hole. You wouldn’t fit. Pulling a few rocks out of the way you knew you had to go slow, or it could collapse in on itself.

You heard it before you felt it. The rocks gave out below you sending you down to the hallway with rocks falling all around. Damn this was the absolute worst-case scenario. Covering your head, you waited for the sound to settle before releasing the grip you were holding over yourself.

It could’ve been worse. Much, much worse you decided as you threw the rock off your side surveying your surroundings. You could’ve been completely pinned by a rock, that would’ve sucked. You would’ve had to wait until one of them rescued you. That would have been so terribly embarrassing.

Feeling the adrenaline kick in you brushed your clothes back over your side. Standing up you looked down seeing the deep gash on your side and the blood that flowed down your side. It didn’t look great, but it wasn’t show stopping. Deciding to just let your clothes stop the bleeding you pressed your shirt back down to your side. Keeping pressure on your side you made your way to the door that was blocked by some rubble. Thankfully, nothing major.

“You, okay?” You heard Tess through the door, “We heard some noise on the other side of the door.”

“Yeah, rocks fell when I tried to find a way in. I’m all good though.” You partially lied. You were fine. That wasn’t a lie. Finally, you moved the rocks enough to open the door enough for them to slip through.

She surveyed you quickly before turning back to Joel, “Let’s go then. Can’t waste any more time.”

You nodded letting Joel go in front. You didn’t really want him to see you limping just yet. You were hoping the ore you walked the less you’d limp. Loosen the muscles as your mom had always told you. In the pre-outbreak world, she was a nurse at the local hospital. You always tried to remember her handy tricks. Thankfully Joel didn’t think much of your insistence for him to go first. He nodded his head and followed Tess down the long hallway.

You thought you were fine until you made it to the stairs. The adrenaline was wearing off and the up and down movement was killing your hip. You frowned looking down at your side seeing the blood seeping right through your shirt. Maybe the gash was a bit deeper than you initially thought it was. You didn’t really have an option other than to keep going so you placed your shirt back down onto your side covering the wound back up with the already bloody shirt. You thanked your lucky stars that Tess had antibiotic ointment at her place. Fedra was still good for something.

Joel noticed something was up when you weren’t on his tail. That was usually how you proved you were good enough. By always being right there. Trying your best to one up him. But when he turned and didn’t see you right behind him it concerned him a bit. He looked up the spiral staircase from which he had just walked down with Tess and saw you making your way down, slowly. It was too dark to make out your facial features so he couldn’t see if you were in pain, but he knew something was up.

Joel waved Tess on letting her know he was waiting on you. She gave Joel a brief nod of her head and a small smirk before vanishing off down the hallway. He positioned himself at the bottom of the staircase looking up, waiting for you.

You mildly panicked when you saw him at the bottom as you made the final turn. You fucking hated spiral staircases and this reminded you why. They sucked when you weren’t hurt but man, they gave you no mercy when you were injured. Trying your best to normally walk you descended down the final steps. You knew you failed to hide the twinge of pain that crossed your face though. You were never good at hiding facial expressions.

“What’s wrong?” Joel grumbled pulling you along with him. Casually taking your hand in his he made you keep his pace which was a little too fast for you at the moment.

“Nothing’s wrong. Why are you asking?” You were far too out of breath from climbing down the steps and Joel noticed it as you sucked a big breath in trying to stabilize yourself back out.

Joel dropped your hand as he stopped walking down the long dark hallway, “Cut the shit. What’s wrong?”

“I really don’t…”

“Y/N.” He hardly used your first name, and it took you by surprise every time he did. This time was no different. He was giving you a look he’d only reserved for Tess usually. One that made him seem so much softer than the Joel you were used to.

You sighed knowing he caught you. Lifting your hand from your side his eyes went wide seeing the blood nearly coat half the side of your shirt and pants. How had he not seen it?

“It looks worse than it is...”

He cut you off, “What happened? Was it the rocks? I told you to be careful!” He let out an exasperated groan studying your side. He didn’t ask for permission as he carefully peeled back the t-shirt that clung to your side sticky with blood. Dropping down to a knee he frowned noting that you’d probably need quite a few stithes. The cut ran deep along the side of your hip. It must’ve been incredibly painful to put any weight on it. He admired your ability to try and hide the pain from him.

“Well, actually Tess said to be careful.”

He didn’t stop the very quiet laugh that escaped his lips, “Yeah, well whatever. She told you to be careful. This is the opposite of careful.” He quickly shrugged off his backpack. Taking his flannel off he wrapped it around your side tying it tight making sure the wound would stop bleeding. He didn’t like how much blood he saw on your clothes. It was too much already. Anymore lost and you’d be fainting on them.

“Sorry.” You weren’t sure why you were apologizing. You had never apologized to the man before. Yet here you were at his mercy. All he had to do was a simple kind gesture and you were practically weak at the knees, “Thank you.” You brushed your hand over his flannel. You watched as he stood, placing his backpack straps back on his shoulders.

“Don’t mention it. Can you walk?” He asked, not taking his eyes from yours. Letting you take the lead this time.

“Yeah, I’m good.” You winced as you began back down the hallway.

Joel easily kept pace as you limped along. Sure, enough the longer you walked the less the limp was evident. Long pauses were just your enemy as this point. Finally, you made it out on the other side of the building. Tess was standing on the outside scouting for any infected. You could never be too sure. One day a route may be completely fine, the next it could be full of them. You’d seen it far too many times.

She spun back around once she heard the two of you exit from the building. She spotted Joel’s flannel around your waist before she saw the slight limp you were walking with. Raising an eyebrow, she waited until you made it next to her before speaking, “Care to explain?”

Shaking your head you answered her, “Not really.”

She snorted, “You never stop do you?”

“Want me to?” You smiled putting your weight on your good side. You knew this break was going to cause for a painful walk. Maybe you could just sit here while they went on the run. Who were you kidding? Joel would never let you. As annoyed as he always seemed to be with you, he was nothing short of protective. Always, he put your and Tess’s safety in front of his. For that you tried to be extra cautious. You were going at a turtle’s pace on the roof, it was quite unfortunate you’d managed to hurt yourself anyway. You hadn’t thought yourself as clumsy but maybe you were. You’d thought back on all the times Joel had saved you in the past fifteen years, as long as you’d known him. Maybe he had a point to make sure you were thinking things through, you’d had a knack for getting yourself into some rather precarious situations.

“Please don’t. Need some humor around here. He’s as dry as fucking hay.” Tess smiled at you, “Now tell me, what happened.”

It was easier to show than tell but Joel had tied you up tight and you didn’t care to have him redo it in front of Tess. You’d never hear the end of it from her. She’d already slowly started saying that Joel had feelings for you, but you shut her down every time. Truthfully, you’d love if Joel would have feelings for you, but you knew that’d never happen. The man was as cold as a stone wall. He’d shut himself down a long time ago.

“I lied a little earlier. I’m still good. But I hit a rock on my way down. Cut my side up pretty good.” You sighed not sure what else to say.

“She’ll need stitches.” Joel added in after you paused.

Tess frowned, “Can you still go on? I mean we can do this another day…”

“We’re almost there. I can carry stuff on my back still. I might not be as fast but let’s go.” You took off as fast as you can. Limp evident.

Joel hesitated but nodded to Tess as she waited for his thoughts. The two worked as a team to assess you every so often. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust you it’s just that you pushed yourself past your limits a little too often. They took it upon themselves to look out for you even if you didn’t notice.

“She’ll be fine. It looked like it was slowing down. I tied it up pretty good anyway. I can stitch it up when we’re back. No need to go to the hospital. No questions asked.” He whispered in Tess’s ear as he followed behind you.

She nodded following along. It didn’t take long for her to overpass you. Joel stayed behind making sure you were okay. Before you knew it you were at the rendezvous point in the middle of the decaying city. You took a seat on a broken stone as both Joel and Tess went inside for the trade.

Placing your elbows on your knees and your chin in your palms you took long deep breaths. The loss of blood was starting to get to your vision as you started to see black dots dancing in your line of sight. Shit. You knew it wasn’t good. Hopefully you could catch your breath before the two of the emerged with the traded goods.

You felt a hand on your shoulder sending you straight into a defensive stance, “Don’t do that!” Placing a hand over your chest you were almost thankful for the rush of adrenaline as it took your mind off the pain of your side.

“I’m sorry.” Joel’s eyes softened seeing your panicked expression, “Tess called your name a few times. Are you alright?” He took a step forward testing the waters.

You put your hands down, “Yeah sorry. Was just thinking.” You lied. Shooting them both a lazy smile you tossed him your empty bookbag, “Load it up then let’s go home.” The second smaller burst of adrenaline was wearing off as you stood there. This walk home was going to be a painful one. Especially thinking about how you had to walk up and over the courthouse safely.

He handed you back the heavy sack. It was a lot heavier than you were expecting and it almost slipped from your grip. You winced as you tossed the bag over your shoulders.

Joel noticed. He wasn’t planning on taking his eyes off of you. You were acting weird. He knew it was from the blood loss. He eyed your side and was satisfied to see that it wasn’t soaking through the flannel at the very least. It must have all just been catching up with your brain. As long as you stayed functional the group would be okay.

“Are you sure?” Joel asked so only you would hear, not Tess.

You nodded, “Yeah, for now at least.” You admitted as you saw those damn black dots start dancing in your vision again.

“Say something if you need to slow down, okay?” He stated more than asked. He wouldn’t even mind if he needed to carry you for a bit. He’d take cruel joy in doing so. Upset that you were hurt but thrilled he would have you so close. A catch 22.

“Okay.” You began your walk back. Slowly you moved. It became easier as you imagined relaxing on Tess’s couch instead of taking a three-mile trek back to the dingy apartments. Her couch was comfier than your bed. You’d spent far too many nights on her couch by ‘accident’ or so you’d say. Beds hadn’t been manufactured in what? Twenty years… they were less than stellar these days. Couches seemed to stay far more intact through the outbreak.

Seeing Joel so kind to you was throwing you off. You weren’t sure if it was genuine or not. All the two of you could seem to do for the last fifteen years is argue. You’d met Tess in the QZ working the graveyard shift moving trash around all those years ago. She was twenty-five-year-old woman trying to find her footing and you were… a mess. You were only fifteen on outbreak day. Being one of the lucky ones you escaped the madness with your older brother and dad. By the time you were eighteen your father had passed. Your brother didn’t make it much longer, killed in a gun fight the next year. Feeling hopeless and alone you jumped from job to job trying to find a purpose or a meaning in the hopeless world.

You ran into Tess not long after. Becoming partners with Tess made it so you were automatically linked to Joel fucking Miller. The man who was so freaking handsome but made your life a living hell. Joel Miller had mastered the art of getting under your skin. Questioning your every decision. Making you feel so utterly useless. You’d tried your best to ignore the man but being around Tess meant Joel was always following closely behind. Tess was too much of an advantage to cut out of your life. You just learned to live with Joel. Had it crossed your mind to actually talk to the man? Sure. But you were far too chicken to do so. You truly felt emotionally stunted as a fifteen your old. Your brain was stuck on the day the outbreak happened.

Joel noticed you started to slow down substantially after about a mile or so into the walk. At first, he slowed to keep pace with you. It got too much when he saw you starting to trip and stagger over your own feet. The two of you were eerily similar. Stubborn beyond belief. He knew you wouldn’t ask for help until your feet literally wouldn’t move forward anymore. So, he sped up a bit walking by your side, “Doing okay?” He asked raising his eyebrow and keeping his arm raised ready to catch you.

“Uh, yeah. A little tired.” You answered without looking up to him. A dirty filthy lie. Not really believing you had it in you to make it back you stared straight ahead. Your eyes were feeling far too heavy for how long you had left on the walk back.

“Here.” Joel ran his arm along your back lifting you slightly using his arm and shoulder to take some weight off your feet. This was easily the closest you’ve even been to him and if you weren’t currently feeling like you were about to pass out you were sure the closeness would have made you feel the same way.

“Thanks.” You mumbled feeling, quite literally, light on your feet as Joel took most of your weight from you. He must’ve noticed how bad you were really starting to feel when he pulled you into him completely. You weren’t even sure how the two of you were walking at this point or how he was holding onto you so assuredly at such an awkward angle.

Tess looked back slowing down seeing your state of near unconsciousness, “Is she going to make it?” She asked quietly hoping you wouldn’t hear.

Joel shook his head, “Don’t think so. Let’s keep moving.” He held you even tighter. You wanted to protest but he was right.

“Joel, I don’t…” Your breathing was becoming heavy. You knew what this meant. Those stupid black dots started dancing once more as you literally tripped over your feet.

“Y/N?” He asked stopping.

“I don’t feel so good.” You uttered out before the black dots consumed your vision entirely. Darkness took over before you knew it.

“Oh, good you’re awake.” Tess clapped her hands after seeing your eyes open bringing your attention right to her. Turns out either she or Joel were taking shifts watching you. Making sure you were still breathing, deciding it was far too risky to take you to the Fedra hospital. Too many incriminating questions would be asked.

“Hmm, yeah.” Finding your voice, you tried sitting up before Tess pushed you right back down into the couch. Pushing your shoulders down gently she shook her head back and forth.

“No moving. I just put 30 stitches in your side. You’re not ripping them out first thing.” She pointed her finger at you before turning her head and yelling towards the bedroom where Joel was probably napping.

“Joel, she’s awake!” She bellowed earning a grimace from you still trying to reorient yourself with your surroundings. It’s a bit startling to collapse in the restricted zone and wake but up in the QZ.

Tess smirked before turning her attention back to you, “You scared the shit out of him. I’ve never seen him like this before.”

Rolling your eyes, you turned away so she wouldn’t see the heat that rose to your cheeks, “How long was I out? Just a little blood loss.” Attempting to steer the conversation in your direction you should’ve known Tess wasn’t dropping it. What Tess wanted Tess got, you learned that early.

“A night. You’re actually up way sooner than I would’ve thought. Joel finally went to bed an hour ago. Stayed up alllllll night watching you.”

You sighed wanted to smother yourself with the pillow, “Okay great.”

She laughed, a hearty one, finding too much enjoyment out of this. In another world she could’ve seen herself with Joel. But that wasn’t her reality. Her reality was the two of you being idiots not admitting their actual feelings. Something that she had tried time and time and time again to get either of you to admit. But you were too similar. Too fucking stubborn. She was tired of it. The constant bickering and almost fights. How two people could be so similar and refuse to see eye to eye was baffling to her.

“Is that really all you’ve got to say?” She sat at your feet eyeing the door to the bedroom. He must’ve truly passed out because she was sure he was going to come barreling through the door the second you woke up.

Groaning you turned your back towards her, “What do you want me to say Tess?”

She shrugged, “Anything.”

“I did! I said, and I quote, ‘Okay, great.’” You smiled to yourself knowing just how much that probably pissed her off. Just as Joel had a knack for getting under your skin you’d mastered the art of pissing Tess off.

This time she sighed, “Look, I really haven’t seen him like that before. He was stressed. You may not ever want to admit it, but he has feelings for you. And I have the sneaking suspicion that you feel the same.”

“Doesn’t matter what either of us feel Tess.” It stung but you needed to get it out, “You don’t get to have feelings in this world. I can have all the fucking feelings in the world, and it doesn’t change a thing, Tess. You know it. I know it. And he certainly knows it!” You bit your lip to stop the word vomit that was about to come spewing out of your mouth.

Squeezing your calf, she waited until she got your attention again. Flicking your eyes up to her you listened to her every word. As much as you hated to admit it Tess was way more often right than she was wrong. That’s why you and Joel let her lead so often, it was her. She was built for this. You were too, just in a different role.

“You’re not going to want to hear me and that’s fine. It is what it is. I think you’re just deflecting. Just like he is. It’s fine. I get it. I do it too. He lost Sarah. You lost your mom, dad, and brother within a few years. I lost my fiancée. It’s hard to trust. It’s hard not to worry. But God dammit you’re only going to be here for so long. You could get bit tomorrow Y/N. Enjoy the time you have together.” She paused letting you take it in. She’s tried to get through to you in the past, but this was a different method she had yet to try, leveling it even.

It took you a moment to respond. Your back was facing the bedroom door, Tess facing the same direction. The both of you just looking at each other waiting for you to respond. Neither of you noticing Joel opened the door quietly listening in on the conversation. He knew it was wrong, but he wasn’t exactly making himself hidden either.

He might’ve heard the beginning of your conversation too. Tess had tried time and time again to convince him of your feelings, but he brushed it off. It didn’t make sense to him. Why would somebody so young and free want to be tied down with somebody old and ragged like him? He couldn’t do that to you. But in the process of pushing you away he hurt you in the worst way. He made you second guess yourself. And in this world that could’ve been a death sentence in itself. He had to make it right. One way or another.

“I don’t think it’s me Tess.” You sighed closing your eyes, “I promise I won’t start an argument but I’m certainly not ending one if it’s started. And Joel certainly starts a lot of them.” Joel frowned while crossing his arms over his chest. Was he really that combative with you? You sounded so defeated talking to her.

She let out another small laugh, “Fair, I’ll whip that old man into shape.”

“You’ll do what now?” He spoke up from behind the couch sending you both into a minor panic.

“Christ Joel!” She stood from her spot, “Glad you’re up. So, is Y/N.” Tess smiled sweetly as she walked over to you pushing you down at your shoulders once more, “What did I say? 30 stitches. Rest. Don’t move just yet. I’ll get you up later.” She scolded you before stepping away giving room for Joel.

“Fine, mom.” You rolled your eyes feeling utterly useless laying there.

“How are you feeling?” Joel asked stepping in front of Tess. Tess was right, he had been worried. Really worried. In all the years you’ve worked together none of you got seriously injured. Not enough to pass out on the job like that.

After you passed out Joel tossed you, and the backpack, over his shoulder for the walk home. The already heavy load got quite a bit heavier. He was exhausted when they made it back. But he could think about sleeping. Not when your side was bleeding like that. Not when he could lose you in the next few hours. He watched, and helped, as Tess stitched you up as best as she could. She decided she was going to do the stitching since she had steadier hands than Joels.

He'd protested over and over again about going to bed until the next afternoon when his eyes literally wouldn’t stay up. Tess let him sleep in her bed and promised she’d be watching over you. He knew the worst was over. If you weren’t going to make it, you’d be gone by now. So, he went to sleep. What felt like moments later he was awoken to Tess’s yell. It took him longer than it should’ve to reorient himself being thrown off by Tess’s bedroom. But when he did, he caught the conversation going on between the two of you, about him.

“Surprisingly okay.” You didn’t lie. Your side was aching, but it didn’t hurt, not yet anyway. It might hurt later when Tess put you on your feet.

“Yeah?” He took a step forward kneeling down, so he was more level with you knowing you didn’t have much mobility at the moment. Especially with your nurse being Tess the drill sergeant.

Your eyes really took in in his face. Fuck. Had you really looked at Joel before? He was so handsome. Even being nearly fifteen years older than you it didn’t seem to stop your brain from ogling him. You were going to have a word with Tess after this. Her stupid words got into your head. They let you go soft for the man.

“Yeah. I’d get up but Tess won’t let me.”

“Tess knows best.” Joel flashed you a rare smile.

“That’s right.” She chirped from the small kitchen. Walking out shortly after she put her shoes on while talking to the both of you, “I’m getting dinner for tonight. Anybody need anything?”

“I’m okay.” You spoke. Joel simply nodded letting her know he was good as well.

“Good. Wasn’t going to make a special stop anyway. See you two later.” She shot you a not-so-subtle wink before vanishing through the front door leaving you very alone with Joel fucking Miller. The man you had yet, in your fifteen years of knowing him, had a truly proper conversation with.

Joel still on a knee took a seat, leaning back on the couch as he sat on the floor, “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” You asked wanting to sit up, but you knew Joel wouldn’t let you either. The wrath of Tess was far worse than any nasty words you’d throw his way.

“Are you actually feeling, okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Really. I feel fine.” You looked up at the ceiling counting the water spots instead of looking at him. He was so damn close. Your heads could’ve been touching if you rolled onto your side to give him a proper once over.

“I’m sorry.” He too looked forward. It wasn’t easy for him admitting when he was wrong. When he heard how hurt you sounded earlier talking about him with Tess. He was learning that it was his way of deflecting.

Shaking your head, you were more confused than ever, “For what?”

“Always questioning you.”

It was so simple. Such a simple apology that made your heart soar, “You hear that conversation?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged trying to play whatever was happening off as coolly as he could.

“What do you say then?” You decided to be a little bolder than you would ever have dreamed of. Because why not? Maybe Tess had a point.

He took a moment considering his words this time, “I think you should enjoy the time you have left here.”

It felt like your heart literally stopped. Was he being serious? Was this him making his move? Could something actually be happening?

“You think?” You answered. You would’ve come up with some better response, but it felt like your brain was short circuiting.

He nodded his head, “I know Tess is right. She always is. I also know that I’m tired. I’m tired of always fighting with you. I’m tired of you hating me for it. I wish we could just start over and wash away the last fifteen years.” The man of few words spoke more honestly than he had in a long time. A lifetime.

You thought for a moment before coming up with a simple solution, “We don’t have to start over, but we can start fresh. How does that sound?” You said so quietly you didn’t know if he heard you or not.

He turned his entire body to you. Giving you his full attention “Are you being serious?”

You hummed in response mimicking him, turning your body completely towards him, “Sure, why not? It’s our world, we make the rules now.”

Another rare smile crossed his features as you listened to him laugh. God, you loved the sound of him laughing. You loved most of the things he did. He was a simple man with a very simple plan. Do what it takes to survive. His philosophy is why you’d made it so long.

“You’re right. It’s our world. I’m Joel. It’s going to be nice to get to know you.” You were beginning to think those smiles weren’t so rare. You just had to learn how to tap into him to get him to give you them.

“I’m Y/N. It’s nice to officially meet you Joel.” You couldn’t help the quiet giggle that left your mouth, “Here’s to figuring out whatever the hell this is.”

He nodded not dropping the smile, “To whatever the hell this is.”

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nightfurylover31 · 1 year

Text

Since the first part of @starrjoy's Pandora AU is reaching its climax, I decided to write something in between. With all that Sonic has lost he did end up gaining something very important. I hope this doesn't end up contradicting anything in the story, and that you all enjoy.

It had been some time since… that day. The guilt and grief still weighed heavily on Sonic like a thousand tons. His home, his people, his family… all gone. He was completely alone. And it was his fault. He finally got to see the world, but it cost him everything.

While traveling, Sonic eventually came across Dr. Robotnik, the scientist his mother told him about. The one whom had been threatening the other islands. Trapping animals in his machines, and using his robots to destroy the forests. It was all so wrong. Sonic made it his mission to stop this Robotnik. After what he had done, he felt he owed to it to everyone that was lost on Christmas Island, especially his family. Even a year after his first encounter with Robotnik, the pain in Sonic’s heart had not lessened. He tried masking it with humor and taunts, just laughing at most things to hide how he truly felt. But he felt incomplete, like nothing could ever fill the void he left upon himself.

He was resting under a tree on Westside Island. Sonic wrapped his arms around his crouched legs, hiding the tears that he could feel forming. He wanted to stop the hurt, but at the same time, he wanted to suffer for what he had done. If he had listened to his brother and sister, if he had just stopped and thought things through, none of this would have happened. Dora’s words still rung in his head. How he was supposedly some sort of destined hero. He was nothing more than a selfish idiot.

“What difference does it make?” Sonic finally spoke. He was alone, no one could hear him anyway. “Even if I do stop this Ro-butt-nik, it’s not going to bring everyone back. It’s not going to make things right. I wish I could—“

Sonic’s train of thought was lost when he heard voices. Something like laughter. He got up and peered out from behind the bushes. He saw three foxes, one smaller than the other two, and clearly being picked on.

“Stop it! Please!” the young one cried as one of the older kids pulled on his tail.

“Aw, is the little freak gonna cry?”

Sonic clenched his fists in frustration. How could anyone be that mean? He wanted to intervene, but…

No, he thought to himself. I’ll just make it worse. Like I do with everything else. I just bring bad things to others. He was about to turn around and walk away.

“Pull harder! Maybe it’ll come off!”

“NO!”

As if on instinct, Sonic ran right passed all three of them, knocking the two bigger kids over.

“What was that?!”

“I don’t know!”

Sonic zoomed back around, and glared at the duo. “It’s one thing to pick on someone, but two-on-one? And someone who’s younger than you?” He took a step forward. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s bullies.”

The two were shaking in fear, and then turned tail and ran. Not as fast as Sonic, but enough to get out of there. The blue hedgehog turned around, checking on the yellow fox. “You okay?” He asked.

“Y-yeah…” The young kit stared at him. Almost as if in amazement. “That was—“ But before he could continue, Sonic took off.

I can’t stick around. I can’t get close to others. I’d be just a burden to them.

When Sonic thought he was a good distance away, he made it back to his plane. That’s how he had been managing to get from island to island. He couldn’t stand the thought of going by boat. Being near the water. Not after…

“Wait!”

Sonic looked back and saw the fox from before. He was still a good few yards away, but he managed to find Sonic so fast. It almost looked like there was a propeller behind him.

How did he…? No one’s ever been able to keep up with me before!

The kit ran up to Sonic, stopping only to catch his breath. He was gasping deeply, obviously not used to running so much.

“How did you find…?” Sonic began to ask, but something caught his eye. He didn’t notice before from a distance. He began to inspect the fox and the surprising sight. “You… have two tails?”

The kid turned to his appendages, and nodded. “Yeah. That’s why those guys were picking on me.”

Sonic did a quick scan of the extra. “That’s… pretty cool! I’ve never seen anything like that!” Heck, Sonic was always fascinated by things that were different, but this took the cake. A fox with two tails! Way past cool!

“Really?” the young kit blushed. He clearly wasn’t used to compliments. “W-well it’s not as cool as you are. I’ve never seen anything move so fast. You were amazing!”

Sonic couldn’t help but chuckle. He smirked and brushed his nose. “It was nothing. I wasn’t even going that fast.”

“You mean you can run even faster than that? Really?!” The kid’s eyes seemed to grow twice their size.

“Oh, easily!” Sonic bragged. It was nice to be be able to show off a bit. But the ache in his heart suddenly started again. He shouldn’t stay.

“It’s been nice talking, and I’m glad I could help, but I have to get going. Just gotta fix my plane. You know where I can find a repair shop or something?” That was pretty much the reason Sonic stopped on the island in the first place. Something was up with the engine, maybe? He knew nothing about machines.

“Let me take a look.”

Sonic looked a bit confused by the fox’s words. He pulled out the toolbox Sonic kept under the seat, opened the panel, and started working.

“You can fix it?”

“Maybe. I’m pretty good with tools. I do stuff like this all the time.”

This kid was full of surprises. Sonic watched as he worked. He even seemed to be enjoying it. He went from the controls to the propellers, and then the engine. Giving the plane a full inspection. Sonic had never seen anyone who loved to fix machines since—

WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS STICKING YOUR NOSE INTO MY BUSINESS?!

Sonic felt his heart drop. That was the last thing he said to Manic. He never should have yelled. It was one of the things he regretted most. And now he’ll never be able to apologize. He’d never see his family again...

“Are you okay?” The voice suddenly brought Sonic back to his senses. Good thing too, he could feel his eyes starting to burn.

“Yeah, just lost in thought. You done already?”

“Yep. It’s pretty well maintained, but it’s important you pay attention to the equipment.”

“Man, two tails and a mechanic? Your folks must have their hands full with you,” Sonic joked.

However, that just seemed to make the fox’s ears droop. His tails became limp. “I…I don’t have any.”

Sonic’s eyes widened. “No parents? What about siblings? Friends? Anyone?” All were met with sad head shakes.

“Everyone in my village thinks my two tails are weird. I’m kind of on my own.”

With that, a new pain began to form in Sonic. This kid… was just like him. Different, and all alone in the world. Not only that, he was a lot younger. The hedgehog decided it would be better to be by himself, but he couldn’t leave this poor kid. But still…

After some thought, Sonic scratched the back of his head, and took a few steps closer. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Oh, uh I’m Miles Prower. But everyone calls me ‘Tails’.”

Sonic leaned to the side a bit to adjust his gaze. “Because of the extra tail?”

“Hehe, yeah.”

“Well Tails, I’m Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog. And if you can keep up, would you interested in going on an adventure?”

Tails stared in shock. “You mean it?!”

“As long as you don’t slow me down. Maybe help keep the plane in tiptop shape.”

“Yes! YES!” With that, his tails started spinning and spinning and… suddenly Tails was off the ground.

“Hold up! You can fly with those?!”

Tails turned around and slowly descended. “Uh, yeah. A little bit.”

Sonic smiled and held out his hand. “Tails, I have a feeling you and I are going to get along just fine.” Tails beamed and happily shook Sonic’s hand.

————————

The night sky couldn’t be more clear. Not a cloud in sight, far from any town, and the stars illuminated the area with only a sliver of moonlight. A perfect night for stargazing.

Sonic was relaxing, looking up and trying to find as many constellations as he could. He heard footsteps, but didn’t bother diverting his attention as Tails sat down beside him.

“See any shooting stars yet?” his little brother asked.

“Not yet, but the night’s still young.”

After so many crazy adventures lately, it was nice to kick back and take it easy. They sat for awhile, taking in the crickets and other night noises.

“Sonic, you remember the day we met?”

“That was years ago. What brought that up suddenly?”

“I don’t know. Just feeling nostalgic, I guess.”

At this point, Sonic pushed himself back on his hands for support and let out a light chuckle. “As if I could ever forget the best day of my life.”

"That's my line," Tails snickered a bit, and then continued. “You really saved me that day.”

“Those bullies were giving you a hard time, but ‘saved you’ seems like bit—“

“No, I mean how took me in. Everyone thought I was just some freak. You were the first person to believe in me. You inspired me to be a hero. To believe in myself. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Thank you, Sonic.”

“Careful, you’re going to make one of us start crying.” Sonic teased while flicking his pal’s nose. Tails started laughing at the jester, while Sonic just stared fondly.

You’re wrong there, buddy. You save me that day. That was the first time I felt genuinely happy in so long. That I could do something right. Thank you, Tails. For being my friend. For being my brother.

#sonic and tails #wholesome sonic and tails wednesday #pandora au #p!au #fanfic #sonic the hedgehog #miles tails prower

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bingwriterxo · 10 months

Note

reader and Nate running to the titanic museum to reserve tickets for everybody.

Tara and Eddie: haven’t even unbuckled there seat belts.

Tara walking in with readers mother: so this museum is just about the titanic? And it’s going to take…TWO HOURS???

Eddie beside her: oh that’s just the guided tour times. Lucky for us we don’t have a guide…strap in for three hour tar

while in the museum reader: oh my gosh Nate!! It’s Isidor’s straus pocket watch!!!”

Nate with titanic souvenirs in hand: where!!!

readers father talking to a tour guide on a other tour: so how much did that clock cost because I’ve been in the market for one for my wife’s and I anniversary

reader in the next room where they are playing my heart will go on.

“Tara!! Look they built the bow of the ship! Come hold me! I want to recreate rose and jacks momment!”

Tara Hiding behind Eddie:

reader being devious: fine…I guess even Connor couldn’t stomach it.

Tara sighing hard but steps aside to climb the recreation of the ships bow. Stands behind reader and does the pose.

Nate: takes a ton of picts

eddie: laughing his butt of

Tara: don’t show Sam this

😭😭😭

eddie immediately sends the photos to sam, because of course the boys have sam's number, and she immediately sends it in the groupchat with all of their friends

tara checks her phone later to see everyone (especially ethan) making memes out of the photo, and just starts grumbling to herself

#ask #museum tara

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sapporo-division · 5 months

Note

👪 for Yuki (Christmas is his birthday, isn’t it)

☃️ for Iwao

🎁 for Yoichi

~Happy Early Christmas :)

👪 Does your OC or their family invite a lot of people with them to celebrate it? Is their house filled with tons of relatives, cousins and other family members? Or do they keep the celebrations relatively low-key and only invite a few people? Or do they celebrate it by themselves?

“I tend to fly back to UK one week early to celebrate not only my birthday but also spent time with my family on holidays. All of my younger brothers and sisters were very excited to see me coming home every year. I even planning to bought many gifts as possible for them for their liking. Well there is one person I’m not looking forward to see… I do have other relatives from UK coming to our home for my birthday, as well. I knew myself I’ve done this before but it feels like such a long time to see familiar faces after staying in Japan.”

☃️ Does your OC enjoy the winter time? Do they like going outside and playing in the snow, building snowmen, having snowball fights, etc.? Or do they prefer to stay inside where its warm?

“Well I am a street magician so of course I enjoy going outside playing the snow on winter season. There are times I tend to play with the children at the nearest park doing bunch of fun activities with snowboarding, building snowman/small igloo and my favorite snowball fights! I’m always the one to be the elements of surprise of throwing snowballs at my dearest friends and no one knows I did it~ usually at Yoichi, it was the most entertaining 💗 Haah~ I really love that game so much. At the end of the day, I went straight back home and rest on my couch with drinking hot chocolate.”

🎁 Is there a particular gift that your OC wants this year? Are they hoping someone bought it for them? Have they worked hard to buy it themselves? Or are they hoping for a small miracle, and it will magically appear under the tree on Christmas morning?

“I-I’d like to think I’m the one who’d work my butt out earning much salary I have rather than waiting for someone to give me a present. It-I’s just that……I kind of feel bad for someone to buy me gifts for me that I wanted. You can say it costs…a lot of yen and yeah…I sound a bit selfish and impatient. F-for that question, I usually bought things in online shops. It’s way more easy than going out to mall of lots of people, especially on Black Friday. That was a nightmare……”

#hypmic #hypmic oc #hypnosis mic #hypnosis mic oc #oc division #sapporo division #polar knights #yuki kuraokami #iwao masuda #yoichi shujo #christmas ask game

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acemapleeh · 2 years

Text

Come Ashore for Rack and Ruin

Summary: In the midst of the Battle of the Somme, an ancient horror has decided to show its ugly face on the battlefield and Matthew is somewhere out in the fog. Alistair goes to find his nephew.

Characters: Scotland, Canada, France, England

Word Count: 5282

Warnings: Temporary Character Death, Graphic Description of Gore

Read on ao3

Late Summer of 1916, North-Central Somme, France

It felt like it didn’t even have to rain for the thick wool of Alistair’s kilt to be absolutely soaked and weigh an extra ton against his reddened, numbed thighs. The mud did a good enough job as well as the rain from days long gone still lingering deeply in the fibers.

It was a rare, silent evening and those were the ones that put Alistair on edge the most. Silent, apart from the moans of the plethora of wounded men, many of whom, Alistair would say have copped a blighty and should be on their way home. Gunfire had been shot earlier that day and the entirety of his Majesty’s empire of scattered corpses stretched across no man’s land and a thick fog was the only grave they were getting for the time being. He peered over the top of the trench, but it was as black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat. No one was certain what the Germans had in mind yet but men needed to be retrieved if any survivors had a chance at being saved.

Matthew was out there somewhere.

The lad was lucky that he hadn’t been found by Gilbert or his brat of a brother.

Alistair wasn’t entirely sure if that was the case though and his stomach lurched at the thought. Earlier in the evening, he had gotten into a shouting match with his youngest brother. ‘ Matthew’s a grown man and will make his way back if he knows what’s good for him and the Empire . I know him, he wouldn’t allow himself capture. ’ He knew he couldn’t rest until he was certain the boy was brought back to the safety of their hellhole of a home, whether that meant dragging his corpse back or knowing for sure he had to come up with a plan to rescue him from the enemy. The latter would mean having to get Arthur furtherly involved which he wanted to avoid at all costs.

He was going to scout it out alone.

Securing his helmet on his matted red curls and kit firmly to his side, he climbed out of the ditch, his belly and out of regulation beard down in the detritus and rubble.

Matthew was always hard to find in these situations.

Time and time again, Alistair had memorized how to find his kin. He knew the scent of death they all emitted, what their face-down forms looked like in the dark, and the sounds they made as life rushed suddenly back into their flesh and bone.

His brother’s children though?

Even though he’d spent the most time with the young Canadian, he had only witnessed his death perhaps once or twice before and he couldn’t recall any useful details of how to go about locating his corpse.

Arthur smelt of the sea and rain-soaked woodland.

Dylan, a hedgerow in spring and driftwood.

Morgan of seaside morning dew and buttery furze.

Himself, blooming heather and an ocean storm.

Matthew smelt like... he wanted to say evergreen pine. He wanted to say he smelt like winter. But he knew that couldn’t be right. There was a lack of smell in the cold, on those freezing, white mornings before he went hunting or hiking; his eyes felt keener, ears on edge for the slightest of sounds.

The air felt heavy as he shifted through the scattered remains, feeling uneasy with every step until he eventually had to stop to get back into sorts.

Something was amiss in the deepest parts of the fog.

He spotted a shape in the dark and his grip tightened on the butt of his rifle. He would say the thing was at least fifty meters away if he wagered a guess. Squinting, he vaguely made out something large, something that appeared to be scraping in the mud. Just staring at it made him feel uneasy, and made him want to vomit up his sorry excuse for tea.

He risked firing a flare into the sky, praying the rest of the world was asleep for just these few moments. He had to know what he was dealing with; what he had to fight if it meant bringing his nephew to safety.

A dim red light briefly lit up the night.

His breath stuck in his throat.

It took every muscle fiber to keep his arm raised, to not drop the flaregun and bolt the other direction.

The thirty seconds the light burned felt like time had stretched. In it, Alistair could make out every detail of the foul beasty. He hadn’t seen one of them come on land in centuries and the last encounter hadn’t been an entirely pleasant one.

It was suddenly the autumn of 1722.

He was burning seaweed to help make fertilizer to treat the soil and feed his people.

The following day, the horses were foaming at the mouth, collapsing dead only two days late. All over Stronsay, it seemed to spread.

Then it was the barley. The last few weeks had been dry with little fog and suddenly mildew was growing on the carefully nurtured crop.

It all became dust by nightfall.

A half a year’s work of harvest gone in just four days of plague. The small island was turning on each other, demanding any who burned seaweed to pay for their sins, to appease the beast that walked their beaches in the moonlight.

Alistair felt as though the thing was taunting him as he sat awake at night as he nursed the open welt on his back.

They wouldn’t survive the winter at this rate.

Alistair pleaded with the Good Folk for rain, to keep the monster at bay. He knelt at the water’s edge in prayer, bargaining as the stars continued to shine above his head. Never in his years would he think he would have to ask for a storm for the Orkney Islands. The rain came down in buckets here, winter storms were always powerful and fierce.

This oddity interested the Fae, especially that of the like of the Finfolk.

They were an odd lot of amphibious, morose beings that took pleasure in abducting unsuspecting islanders, bringing them to their underwater home to become their spouses. But their magic was powerful so Alistair put up with their moody dispositions each summer they came to shore. They were hard to read and harder to please; their true purpose was almost never known until the very last moment.

They could control the weather as needed, and bring in the winter rain that his people were desperate for.

A bag of silver was all that was requested. Lord did he despise making deals with any sort of Fae but he was left very little choice on the matter. If a bag of silver trinkets was all they wanted, Alistair would do just that, knowing more could have easily been asked for.

The following night he waited, watching the skies and moon. The villagers were becoming furious, throwing out curses and stones alike as Alistair made his way to the nearest hill to see the horizon properly.

The glowing of stars brought no comfort or ease.

He stood rigid, arms crossed over his chest. He had to trust the Finfolk would keep their word even as the sound of galloping hooves echoed in the night.

It was the same that night as it was at this moment.

“Nuckelavee.”

The word felt like ash on his tongue.

The damn creature was massive, standing at least thirty meters tall. The eerie sheen of its pulsating, skinless body almost seemed to shimmer in the red glow of Alistair’s flare.

Part horse, part man, entirely demon and unnatural.

The hooves of the horselike monstrosity waded through the sea of corpses and mud, its movements too silent for a creature of its size. The gangly arms of the man’s torso, which was fused to the horse’s back, scraped alongside in the mud, scavenging. The head that was ten times larger than any man was lulling from side to side, black holes acting as eyes never seeming to focus on one thing or another but Alistair knew to never catch its gaze. The horse’s one giant eye of burning coal stared unblinking forward as it languidly continued its hunt.

He quickly pocketed his flare gun and fished out the cross he kept in his breast pocket. He uttered prayers and dug the little wooden pendant deep into the palm of his hand until an impression was made, having said its name aloud made him feel that his very soul was tainted.

He watched stiff and frozen as those long claws found an unlucky survivor. He couldn’t tell from this distance what side the boy had been fighting on but even if he was the enemy, he didn’t deserve his life ending at the hands of something so foul.

The only thing he cared to take note of was the hair was dark.

Alistair quickly pocketed the cross and covered his face, the black reek emitting from the damned thing’s arms was too foul for words. It made his eyes water and the taste of vomit hung in the back of his throat.

Its very breath caused plague, famine, and death and Alistair was kicking himself for neglecting his gas mask. Hell, he had no idea if it would protect him at all. He could only stand stiffly, mouth a tight line as the man was fed into the creature’s gaping mouth.

There was hardly even a scream.

He was gone.

Dead.

A fraction of a meal that could satisfy the creature’s hunger.

The man was lucky to have had a death from this beast be so quick.

Alistair had to leave.

Whatever survivors could have been out there would be dead by morning; whatever bodies could be found would look as though they’d died of glanders with foaming mouths and blistered ulcers.

His focus had to be on getting Matthew and himself back to base alive.

One hand quickly went to his flask for his rationed courage before he took the first step back.

This whole war had been full of mud and rain but it had been unfortunately dry for weeks. There was no hope that the tears of the heavens could drive the creature back to the sea as it came to his aid two centuries ago. The screams of that day still echoed in his mind; the human cries of man and the bellowing of the horse as it all melted away like a bad dream.

As the monster clutched another half-dead man, Alistair took more steps back, acutely aware of every sound he was making. There was another path back to camp, be it, a longer one but it was the safest option. Jerries he could fire his pistol at, the best he could do at a nuckelavee was pray.

What could you do when faced with a monster that was not quite a fae, not entirely a God, but a Nightmare somewhere in between?

The night was overall silent, his boots squelching in the mud was only a faint sound in his ears. The air smelt of mass decay; he was still sick to his stomach but he swallowed down the bile as it rose in his throat. One foot behind the other no matter how slow the progress, keeping his eyes both on and off the demonic fae was a full task in itself let alone the constant scanning for his fallen nephew.

Steadily he went, brushing his feet behind him to search for bodies to not trip over or barbed wire to tangle himself up in.

There was a break from the smell of decay and gunpowder.

Matthew didn’t fall anywhere special, he didn’t stand out amongst any of the other dead Canadian soldiers that Alistair finally stumbled across. His body lay upright and Alistair risked a precious second to push the lad’s goggles to his forehead to reveal glossed-over, grey-blue eyes staring towards the heavens; maybe the lingering spirit of Matthew could see it a little clearer now. Like everyone, he was covered in gore and mud. Alistair didn’t think the lad could be any quieter than he already was. Silent as a church mouse now quiet as a Catholic grave.

Alistair knelt quietly to look him over. Dead was certain though it didn’t appear as though he went down easy. There was blood under his fingernails, his knuckles bruised and equally bloodied, and a knife nearly within his grasp caked in crimson. The poor bastard was still using his Ross Rifle which lay nearby. He and his father had gotten into a colorful argument not long ago about how they were being replaced with British Lee-Enfields. Good hunting guns, cursed military weapons the lot of them. Even Alistair thought the boy was being stubbornly prideful.

There was a slew of scratches and holes across his ashen complexion and tears in his uniform. A particularly nasty gash ran across his throat and though Alistair couldn’t say for sure, he didn’t think that was what killed him and what brought him down nor did he think it was the oddly angled knee on the body that was all odd angles and corners.

Ach, heavens no. Matthew was just as feral as his father.

It was the bullet that was lodged somewhere between his eyes that ended him.

All of this could be treated later. He didn’t feel lucky enough to perform proper medical care out here in desolation while under pursuit; he pushed it enough as it was just being out here.

Alistair gave the courtesy of putting Matthew’s knee back in place before hoisting him up on his back. Honestly, the longer the lad stayed dead, the better.

That thing was standing between death and safety but he had to move forward, it wouldn’t do either of them good sitting out here till daybreak.

Another brief scream of terror before deafening silence and Alistair took that moment to start moving.

Six more steps while it ate the poor sod.

He heard here the crunching this time, could feel somewhere deep within his being of what made him Scotland that it was one of his own. A name came to him, a face, a glimpse of the life lost and what would be left behind.

He let out of steady breath and tightened his grip on the gangly dead weight. The only reason he knew he was trembling was the slight clattering of Matthew’s tags that hung over his shoulder.

For once, he was glad Matthew was dead.

All at once, Alistair felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand, matted hair uncovered by his helmet shifted in a breeze. His body felt chilled as though he had been dunked in a bath of ice water and suddenly he was staring into the hollowed eyes of the monster.

It grinned.

Matthew screamed a bubbling, wet sort of noise and flayed off Alistair’s back.

He scrambled to get him back on his shoulders, there being no way in hell the young thing could walk let alone run .

Out of the darkness, the beast charged and Alistair bolted.

He remembered the first time he laid eyes on the thing himself and he had thought the final Day of Judgement had come. He understood Matthew’s fright but he ignored every single whimper and sound of distress the other let out. A part of Alistair didn’t even care if he simply bled out and became dead weight again. It would be easier that way, easier to put another bullet in his head and haul him to safety.

Maybe the lad’s father wouldn’t hesitate on doing just that.

No- he knew Arthur loved him despite almost every choice he’d made in this fucking war that only worsened the faith and trust they had in him. Even he would hesitate before having to make the choice of ending any of his children’s lives. Alistair was not about to make his nephew more miserable than he already was, though perhaps, death was the less miserable option.

Over and over in his mind, he thought of all the times he’d spent in this part of the country with Francis, of all the times they held hands and walked along coastlines or through woodland. He knew the Somme River was somewhere but the darkness made it hard to remember the landscape he couldn’t feel.

He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, boots slipping but Alistair managed to regain his balance each time and kept running. The blood from Matthew’s neck was running down his own, making him feel sticky and even more uncomfortable than he already was. The fog looked like it was getting thicker and thicker, that if Alistair reached out with his knife he could cut right through it. He kept charging forward, even when the sounds of the horseman quieted.

The Sea Mither was supposed to keep these monsters under the depths of the sea though all it took was one bad, summer storm for them to come crawling out. Alistair longed for her presence. She brought in the warm spirit of summer and life to his seas and, most importantly, protection from Devils.

Maybe it was the war that lured them out. The rivers and seas polluted with the dead and metal remains of artillery were irresistible spots of human suffering. But to come from the Orkney Islands all the way to Northern France?

Alistair felt a twinge of guilt in his chest.

There was a whoosh just inches from his ear and he nearly stumbled over once more. He dared to take a look back.

The behemoth had flayed a clawed hand towards them and was readying to reach out with its second.

He prayed as he ran further and further, not sure for how much longer he could hold out and keep a reasonable distance away. Would it be easier to be caught? To wake up somewhere in his glens a new man? To get away from this war for however long that would take? To rid himself of the reminders of what made him more human than creature?

Matthew wouldn’t have that choice if Alistair decided to throw himself down.

Finally, he saw it.

The near-silent babbling of the Somme and the faintest glow of the feu follet were the greatest things that could bless his senses.

He pushed himself further, calves screaming in pain and throat beyond parched, he had to keep going.

Alistair didn’t care what temperature the water was, he wouldn’t have cared if it was the dead of winter and he would have likely frozen himself to death- anything was better than being captured at the claws of a Nuckalavee . He stood upright, breathing hard with the water lapping at his chest and nearly to his shoulders. He hoisted Matthew just a little higher and dug his feet into the bottom of the river. He savored the way it clung to his clothes, the way it smelled. None of it felt good. His kilt was heavy and rubbed his skin raw and the smell was rotten but all were better than the thing that had skidded to a halt just shy of the water’s edge.

The river would flow to the Channel, to the sea- but this water was fresh and free of salt.

They were safe, they would live .

The horse gave a snort like thunder and the skinless man unleashed a scream so horrendous that Alistair knew he would hear in his nightmares for months to come.

He stood frozen until the beast was a sight no longer, to which, he let out a hard breath and nearly collapsed further into the water. He was shaking terribly and it took far too long for his body to register that he wanted to leave the river and see if Matthew was still alive.

He took slow steps back, staring into the darkness to make sure the thing was truly gone before he turned around. He was breathing hard when he reached the other shore. Matthew felt like the heaviest thing in the world as he slowly knelt into the collection of river rocks that dug into his throbbing knees.

“Damn... thing jammed...I’m sorry- I’m so sorry,” Matthew shouldn’t be speaking but here he was apologizing and explaining himself, blood gushing out with every syllable. Apologizing for something that happened hours, or even longer, ago.

“Just hush yourself. I don’t want one word from you till I can’t see your fucking windpipe. For Christ’s sake just... save your breath.” He helped the young man lay properly on the riverbank, watching the visible wounds carefully for signs of healing. Alistair knew they weren’t truly safe here but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to rush back to the trenches and put all this behind him. He managed to find a clean cloth buried in his pack so he soaked one tip in the steadily flowing water. “Let’s clean you up a wee bit.” Gently he tended to Matthew’s wounds, murmuring soft promises of warmth and comfort. Matthew never rested or healed well in the cold and though it was a summer’s night, the loss of blood was enough that surely the lad felt as though winter had come for him. “Soon we’ll socht our den and be as cosh as hoggies in their pen.”

It got a smile out of the lad.

The two sat in silence for some time, waiting for hearts to relax and blood to trickle to a stop. At one point, Matthew’s eyes had closed again. A quick check for signs of life and he was hoisted onto Alistair’s back once again.

There were shouts and Alistair’s hand reflexively went for the pistol at his hip, aiming for the two figures approaching him in the fog.

“Put that blasted thing down! It’s only us!”

“To be fair, if it were I seeing you approach me mon cher , I would have already shot you.”

“You would miss and find yourself dead.”

“Enough!” Alistair shouted as loud as he dared, holstering his weapon and regripping Matthew’s thigh. “What the hell are the two of you doing out here?”

Arthur’s eyes had narrowed. “I could ask the same of you. I’ve been looking for you almost all night only to have your men inform me you decided to make a trip out into no man’s land.”

Alistair was about ready to shove Matthew’s limp form into his father’s arms. He nearly guffawed in disbelief. “Numpty-headed, fucking hackit old bastard- your son was left out there to rot! Said to yourself, ‘och, dinghy that cunt, he’ll be just right.’ did you?”

“I already told you that he would make his way back. He’s alive isn’t he?”

“Not when I fucking found him! You take one look at him and tell me he would have made his way back in one fucking piece!”

His heart was pounding again to where his chest hurt and he moved to shove past the two other nations when a hand on his shoulder stopped him, thin fingers gripping him lightly.

“How bad is he mon amour ?” Francis’s voice was the softest thing he’d heard in days. Up close, Alistair saw the extent of his fatigue. He should have been sleeping, not following his idiotic brother out into the darkness.

He chewed the inside of his cheek before speaking. “He might bleed out again before we get back, I don’t know. He’s been worse in this war.” He shot a dirty look at his brother. “The sooner we get back the better.”

Francis lead the way like a grey lady ethereally floating about a foggy moorland, before they left, he whispered once more in Alistair’s ear, “Glorious God, I protest to you, for you take away those I love; the same way you shaped Adam, protect him from the evil ties of the fire of Hell: let it burn him not, for this world misleads us.” A pause . “I heard it sung on the wind, a very old lament of grief. I feared the worst for you both.”

No one spoke the rest of the way to the familiar trench that had been home all summer and it wouldn’t be until after Matthew was safely deposited on a cot in medbay and seen to properly, did Alistair speak up.

“Why didn’t you tell me he could see them?” He was seated on the bed adjacent to his nephew’s, Francis at his side, while Arthur sat in a poorly put-together chair a short distance away. “Never thought that would be important information?”

“I knew he could as a child, I thought as he got older he lost the ability. He didn’t exactly talk to me about it.”

Alistair snorted. “Oh well, ain’t that the biggest mystery. The sensitive, dear lad doesn’t want to openly speak with his father who’s as emotionally available as a tree stump. No- I take it back. The trees listen to him just fine. You’re less available than a worm.”

“I could do without the sarcasm, thank you.” Arthur crossed his arms and leaned back in the creaking chair. He rocked back and forth as he collected his thoughts, drumming fingers over his forearm- ever the restless man that he was. “I saw the thing in your flare and we can only hope that your men didn’t see it. What the hell were you thinking firing that thing off? What if the Germans decided to do something about it? What if it went after your army instead of you?”

“You would have done the same. You know that there have been nasty creatures lurking about; as if the war itself wasn’t enough- they’re beasts from hell running amok. Have you heard what’s been prowling on the Eastern front? We aren’t the only ones with this problem. All of this-” He made a grand gesture with his arms spread. “Has been pissing off these old creatures, or at least, feeding them more than they’ve had for years. What do you think would happen if it caught us? If I hadn’t gone out there, Matthew very well could have been a victim. Gone- eaten. Missing for who the hell knows how long and his body would appear somewhere back in Canada. The lad’s messed up enough, you want him to have to go through a full reset on top of this crap?”

Arthur was quiet, shoulders that always seemed to be raised tensely slouched a little, but only those who could notice with a trained eye would catch it. Unfortunately, that would apply to the two men conscious in the room with him. “Why do you think I went out there after the pair of you? As soon as I saw that thing, I grabbed Francis and left running to find you.” He closed his eyes and let out a long breath.

“The rain might finally come,” Francis added, his shoulder faintly brushing Alistair’s in the dimly lit space. “It’ll make those terrible monsters flee and maybe end this damn stalemate. We need to get out of here before the storms really turn this place into a river of mud.”

Alistair sighed, the exhaustion of the night was finally catching up to him. He stood and gestured an accusing hand at Arthur. “If I even hear the lad trying to apologize to you, I will personally throw you over my shoulder, find one of those damned things and feed you to it myself.”

Matthew was as pale as the bedsheets but looked better than when Alistair had found him; he was going to be out of commission for at least a few days regardless of how well he was healing. Maybe he could try to convince him the monster was all part of a bad delusion brought on by blood loss and infection. Alistair wasn’t sure how much he would recall when he woke but it was certainly one of the last things he needed to remember.

Francis rose shortly after, brushing wrinkles from his coat as though it was a finely pressed suit. “We should all retire for the night- of what’s left of it at least. The sun will be up in a short while.” He placed a hand on Alistair’s chest. “Matthieu will be fine. He’s in good hands and recovers quite quickly in the grand scheme of things. He is young and strong; I did not give him a blessing from Mars for no reason.”

“As if you knew when he was a crying swaddle of soft cheeks and baby curls,” Arthur scoffed, rising from his chair. “If it helps you sleep and get you off my back, I won’t let the boy apologize. Now, if you can kindly step out of the way so I can return to my cot.”

The three left the medical space in silence, the creaking of the duckboards was a loud and unpleasant noise. As Arthur bustled out good nights and hurried away, Alistair leaned against one of the trench walls and pulled out the final cigarette in the pack he’d been holding onto for months.

He hadn’t realized his hands were trembling and struggling with the match until Francis had wrapped his hand around his. Carefully, the flame was lit and brought to the tip of the fag. Francis’s hands were steady as Alistair puffed out of a few clouds of smoke and the two stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark.

“Are you alright?”

The question hadn’t even crossed his mind. Was he? He hadn’t been hurt, thank the Lord, but his stomach still churned and he didn’t quite feel his whole self. The sounds of the demon echoed in his ears and the closing of his eyes sent flashes of its wicked features to his mind. His hands were clammy with sweat no matter how many times he attempted to wipe them on his coat. “Don’t waste your fret over me, I’m pure dead brilliant. I’m not the one who died.”

“You worry too much about him.”

“It feels like no one in the damn world does. He’s not even mine but what can you do when he got stuck with the two worst fathers around?”

Francis let out a depressive little chuckle. “I haven’t been soft with him since he was ma petite souris. ” He took the cigarette from Alistair’s lips and let out a slow breath. The smoke smelt sweet for a brief moment. “I hadn’t even realized he was out there, I thought he was sulking about somewhere else.” He puffed out one more circle of smoke before passing it back to Alistair. “Thank you for retrieving him. Arthur was more worried than you think. You should have seen his face when he came to get me. I haven’t seen him like that since Ypres. Even still, I think these months of getting nowhere are driving him absolutely up the wall. He’s been pacing about like a man possessed and wearing the wood out. He could dig graves with all his back and forth.”

“It’ll be over soon. It has to be after all these deaths.”

There were men coughing a short distance away, a groan of agony a little way in the other direction.

“I don’t think you’re right Alistair, not in the slightest.” He sighed longingly and every bit of his age could be seen and felt even in the lack of light. “I can feel in my bones that we still have a very, very long way to go.”

#hws canada #hws scotland #hws france #hws england #hetalia #historical hetalia #ace writes #posting this fic a second time #also i edited the tumblr version on mobile so #sorry if it looks weird anywhere

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viking369 · 2 years

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Today's Episode of...

...Sorry Millennials, But There Are a Butt-Ton of us Boomers Who Know EXACTLY What You're up Against. I receive newsletters from a website called "Bon Appetit". It's pretty chi-chi, but it has some fun recipes, and it's free, so there it is. "Bon Appetit" has a series called "The Receipt", articles about what subscribers eat and how much it costs. Today the newsletter contained an article titled "How a 24-year-old Waitress Eats on $18K/Yr". I thought, "Oh, this is going to be good." And by "good" I meant "ungood". It did not disappoint. Or it completely disappointed, depending on POV. I'm not providing a link because: 1) the person who wrote this did so anonymously, so screw them; and 2) drivel like this does not deserve more of a platform than it already has.

The lady in question lives in Durham, North Carolina, and just received her masters in linguistics (Although she says she's still working on her thesis. There was a time when getting a masters before even finishing your thesis, let alone defending it, was a laughable proposition. Further evidence of the crapification of US education, even at a place like Duke.). She is looking for a job in her field, and is supporting herself by waitressing and teaching pottery.

Then she lists her expenses, and the red flags become unmissable. Her rent is $800. In a college town. How many people live in that apartment with her? Or does she live with her parents, and this is the token rent they charge? $76 for car insurance. Which means she doesn't have collision insurance, which means she doesn't have a lender's lien on her title, which means she paid cash for the car. Or somebody did. Or she's just driving one of her parents' cars, and she's paying Daddy a little toward insurance. I'm inclined toward this last option because her budget includes neither maintenance nor fuel.

Speaking of items omitted from her expenses, no health care. No health insurance. She's 24 and just graduated. Bets she's still on Mummy and Daddy's plan? No student loan payments either, not even a projection for them when they kick in in a couple of months. But she tips her hand here, admitting she has $15,000 in savings, the bulk of it being what's left over from what her parents gave her for school. JFC. And let's not forget her pottery teaching. No expenses listed for that. Not studio rental. Not equipment and supplies. Nothing. Which in all probability means Mummy has a pottery hobby, and daughter is free-riding on it.

Which means she isn't living on $18K. She's living on Mummy and Daddy, just like every other "successful" Millennial not engaged in overt criminal activity.

And now a message for my age cohort. Just shut your pie holes with the "Well if she can make it, other Millennials should too" stuff. Seriously, just STFU. If you can't see the parade of bullshit flags flying over articles like this, you don't get to have an opinion. You have no excuse. You're not as senile as the folks or as callow as the kids. You should be seeing this propaganda for what it is. Up your game.

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reddie-fangirl24 · 10 months

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This is the second part of a Friends/Losers Club Crossover that I uploaded back in January. I want to get back to writing Reddie stories. In the first chapter, Richie bought expensive boots but they are not comfortable at all. Enjoy the story!

Saturday night was the time for the Losers to hit up the town, going out to the best restaurants and sometimes getting kicked out of movies because they were being too loud. When that happened they’d end up at home making recipes for different drinks, like tasty margaritas. Oh, the drunk stories they had from these nights - if they could remember them.

Tonight, they attended Richie’s comedy show. He was hilarious as usual. However, Richie's exuberance had waned, replaced by an unbearable pain seeping through his feet. Despite the discomfort, he maintained a facade of normalcy, determined not to burden Eddie with his suffering.

For their usual Saturday night gathering. The Losers had chosen a local pub as their meeting spot after Richie’s show that night. They patiently waited for a table to become available.

“The audience sure loved the show tonight, Richie,” Stanley congratulated him as they hung back from the others. “How did you come up with that silly dance?”

“What?” Richie, struggling to conceal his agony, shifted uncomfortably as they stood outside waiting for a table. The pain intensified with each passing minute, as if the boots were slowly tightening around his feet, crushing his toes mercilessly. He stole a glance at Eddie, who was engaged in an animated conversation with Bill, his concern for Richie's well-being temporarily overshadowed by the evening's joviality.

“You were dancing on your toes, remember? The audience was laughing,” Stanley reminded him, starting to become a little suspicious by the strange way Richie was acting.

Seeking solace and advice, Richie discreetly leaned over to Stan, “That wasn’t a dance.” He slid down on the wall, trying in some way to take the pressure off his feet.

"Richie, what's going on? You look like you're about to keel over," Stan whispered, genuine worry in his eyes.

Richie grimaced, attempting to keep his voice steady. "It's these damn boots, Stan. They're killing me!"

“Then why are you wearing them?” Stanley raised his voice only to be shushed by Richie.

“‘Cause these things cost a butt ton and I already told Eddie how much I love them! He’s gonna chew me out for buying something I didn’t want! But I can’t take these boots anymore. Ow, they put needles in these boots, I swear!”

Stan's concern deepened as he observed Richie's struggle. "Rich, you can't keep this to yourself. You're in pain, and it's only going to get worse. You need to tell Eddie."

"I lied to Eddie. I won’t lie to him! If he finds out he’s going to be pissed at me!" Richie insisted, his voice tinged with stubbornness. “Plus, I don’t think the store will want these back.”

“Why not? Did you get blood inside them?” Stanley was trying to make a joke to lighten the mood.

“Um, that and Eddie and I already... you know while I was wearing them.”

Richie couldn't help but chuckle at the unintended innuendo, his pain momentarily forgotten, as Stanley rolled his eyes. "You could've stuck with the blood, man.

Just then Eddie approached them. “Hey guys, a table is available now. I’ve starving!” He took Richie’s hand and attempted to pull him along. Only once he stood up on his feet Richie had shooting pains in his feet, almost doubling over on the ground.

“Ow! Fuck!” Richie shouted miserably, getting everyone’s attention, The rest of the Losers started scrambling over, concern etched on their faces.

“What’s the matter, Richie?” Eddie asked, alarmed.

Trying to at least stand in the uncomfortable boots, Richie staged a fake smile. “Oh, you know, just got a cramp.”

“A cramp? A cramp, where? Cramps could be a sign that there’s something more serious,” Eddie interjected, his worry evident.

“Eds, Eds, I’m fine! Let’s just go and eat - God! Fuck! Who made these fucking things!” Richie took two more steps feeling a burning sensation around his heels and toes, scratching along his ankles. He grasped a nearby bench for support.

"Enough is enough, Richie," Stan declared, firmly gripping Richie's arm to steady him. "You're not fooling anyone. We're taking those boots off, now."

Eddie, sensing something was amiss, turned his attention from Stanley to his husband. “What’s going on, Richie?”

Reluctantly, Richie conceded, realizing he could no longer bear the agony. With Stan's support, he removed the cowboy boots, revealing raw, blistered sores etched upon his reddened feet. The sight was enough to make even Stan cringe in sympathy.

A mixture of relief and remorse washed over Richie's features. Relief at having freed himself from the source of his torment, but remorse for the repercussions of his impulsive purchase. His gaze fell upon Eddie, who stood beside them, his expression a blend of concern and frustration.

#Reddie #Friends #Friends Crossover #Reddie Fanfiction #Losers Club #Richie Tozier #Eddie Kaspbrak #Eddie Tozier #Stanley Uris #Crossover Fix

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ashleysmessyjourney · 2 years

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Oh, Shit! Part II

I wanted to clarify a few things with my accident yesterday.

I was distracted doing something on the computer and had been pretty gassy earlier that day so I didn't pay enough attention to what my body was signalling. I really didn't think I had to poop again because I had literally just messed my diaper not thirty minutes before. I wasn't even that wet and I don't like throwing away a diaper that's barely wet but it's what I had to do. I'm really grateful for those that sent me diapers because if I had to do this all on my own, I'd have to stop because the cost of diapers would be too expensive. I'm really glad that's not the case!

When the accident happened, I immediately doubted myself that it had happened because I thought I had already emptied myself out in my other diaper from earlier, but that familiar smell started seeping out of my diaper a couple minutes later. It was only a little bit of poop, but there was enough to feel when I got up to pat my butt to check.

I figured since I was already a little messy and that I had to change into another diaper anyway, I sat on my little dildo mount and pushed until I was certain I was empty. Before I got up, I used my vibrator to reward myself because I found it really hot to have a genuine accident. By using my vibrator, I'm working to associate messing with pleasure and it's been working well so far. I've been doing this for a while and I noticed that I got turned on when I first realized what had happened, proving that conditioning myself to love messing my diaper is working. The mess was so bad inside that after wiping, I still had to take a shower.

I think I might be growing a sensitivity to some food because my butt was saying that it had to poop for hours yesterday afternoon when in reality I didn't have to poop at all. You ever get that feeling? Not in your tummy, but in your gut. Made me feel really uncertain about if I was going to have to poop again the whole second half of yesterday so I stayed in just to be safe. I'm not sure what I could be sensitive to, but I think it might be cheese. That would surely suck because one of my favorite foods is nachos and I had made a little plate of nachos like an hour before this accident. I DID pile a ton of cheese on it, so I'm gonna stop using dairy products for a few days and see if I get any more upset tummies.

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the-firebird69 · 2 months

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Craftsmanship and Wood: Artisanal Redwood Coffee Table #woodworking #woo...

Here in Asia you see that this is for like a sushi small bar for two or three people and they get around they talk about it the lasers in the bases and the max and some reminder it's going all over Asia this man is going to be very famous he was doing the other ones for cutting boards and he's massively famous because it's redwood and our son doing this before and suggested he do it and he did and now he's in trouble so he needs help

Thor Freya

They're real pain in the butt but this guy is not really stupid and he's getting help and people love it it's a conversation piece they cost a bunch of money and they're worth it and our son wants to put one in giant walk but he wants to have an entire lawn bench a long bench and you sit down and you have your stir fry the big plate in front of you and and several little niches for sushi several for drinks and one for your hot towel and all for each person and have a second level up top for plates for you to pull over to you and for crying out loud that's a great idea it'd be a big log he says like like a 50 ft one and a 40 ft one and a 50 ft one I mean like you and with a big huge Skillet and a giant walk and everybody there will be eating the same thing and they'd be like two or three sushi making bars and this is awesome what an idea and we we can get this guy to build it so I'm going to see if you can if he wants to he hears the idea and he might start doing it and making giant wok. They don't say it like Saturday night live cuz it's really a white guy he says don't forget the big gong and I guess that would be for someone who meets the giant wokk challenge and maybe eating three plates and he says that's terrific and then you get a free dinner for four or something and the food is not too much to make but people come back and you can make the challenge I think three place is going to be huge he can probably do too right now or one and a half he says so they're saying this that's awesome play twenty dollars a plate for a giant walk and the stir fry that would be plus four sushi or sushanti when you get like three pieces each and he says that's intense and it would be something everybody on Earth will be going to think about it it's not really cheap so maybe drinks will be included cuz I can get a buffet and people like it but it's a great way to do it and he's thinking maybe $10 in the play would still be pretty big that's what the whole idea is you want to have a meal that's affordable and it's really a good idea might make it all you can eat buffet add five dollars for the giant walk because they'll be sushi and the giant wok and he says those are good ideas

Uriel and goddess wife what's true is the buffet has taken over and it's a great idea though to add a giant walk as a show

We like it but you have to have the barbecue too and you put the Korean barbecue in there and it will be intense this is a great idea to make a huge huge bench and you make the chairs out of redwood too but wow just imagine each person would have something like this and it'll be higher ends in Japan and food and you can drink the water I mean you have all this huge station like that but it would be out of one log I mean it would be intense intense you can even have a little separators like cut out of the log in the chair could be cut integral and the floor underneath would be like you'd be like inside the log almost you can definitely inside the log and you walk up and you come by like 6 in and you can sit down and the chair has a back on it I mean that would be so cool that and people would remember without a doubt people going to do a lot of stuff like that. Redwood houses I mean there's tons of that wood and he wants to make those chips the warcraft and really starcraft out of redwood and put gold on them and actually the epoxy would work and you can sell kits like that big ark in the movie that has that new Archie built it's like Evan Almighty no that's yeah that's the name of it I think

Poseidon and goddess wife

We're going to go in some of these ideas and make those kids for those those small ships really and they would have engines in them and really that would be a look they look like the starcraft ships and you can order them for different uses but really people need boats and chips and maybe for recreation but they start using them

Thor Freya

Olympus

He's used to the circus stuff and he likes doing it and we really have to get a bunch of stuff going he wants those bikes to work too though clown bike and this 803 motor and the 737 are perfect and they're they're great motors it would be perfect for the size bike looks like a fat boy and rhymes pretty good it's a little smaller but really it works some police bikes were like that

Hera

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oneprompt · 3 years

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Hi! May I have a headcanon for Ace, Coby and Corazon react to their female s/o who wears lingerie while sleeping? 👀💦💦

authors note: hello <3 my , what a delightful request! i hope you enjoy what i whipped up ;;

SOMEWHAT NSFW / OVERALL SUGGESTIVE CONTENT. do not read if it makes you uncomfortable <3

Coby x F! Reader , Reacting to Lingerie Headcanons

• Coby is excited but anxious to share a bed with you for the first time. I mean, who wouldn’t be? He knows its all just to sleep, yes... But he can’t stop having dirty thoughts plague his mind. He feels incredibly guilty over it! How dare he think of you in that manner...And those thoughts are definitely amplified when you walk into the room.

• The way the lingerie is snug around every curve of your body, the beautifully crafted lace covering only a bit of your body. Coby feels as if he’s going to faint any moment now! What were you wearing...? Had- had you also been thinking of lewd things?

• Coby does his best to not stare, nor make his interest in your body too apparent. So, essentially, he’s craned a whole 180 degrees, avoiding you at all costs. And if anything, that makes the situation worse, as you start getting close to him, asking what was wrong. Coby does his best to ignore the softness of your breasts against him, using all will power to not get ‘excited’.

• Its easy to read him through his motions. As soon as you notice Coby is getting aroused, you’re quick to tease him and give him affection. Coby can’t do anything but stammer and blush as you’re quick to be all over him, the straps of your lingerie slowly slipping down your shoulders from all the sudden movement you did. Coby tries to move, telling you that you two should sleep, stalling time by talking about how late it is. But you can tell Coby isn’t thinking of sleeping, with the help of a bulge peeking up from beneath the blankets.

• Once you point out the evident reaction Coby has to your clothing, he quickly covers his face, letting out soft whimpers and apologies. Coby feels awful for that..! He should be able to control himself, regardless of what you sleep in. Even after you quickly reassure your lover, he still feels guilty. Cobys heart is too big for his own good!

• You two end up not doing a whole lot of sleeping that night, the ribbons and lace of your lingerie far from the bed once you two wake up. Coby may have been hesitant before but he certainly doesn’t have any regrets after… But he won’t admit that! Too shy…

Corazon x F! Reader , Reacting to Lingerie Headcanons

• Cora can’t help but blush as he comes home to see you in lingerie. The way the mesh white lace and ribbons highlighted your frame made him feel all hot and bothered. Yet, he says hello as if he isn’t fighting animalistic lust that was rotting his brain. You always sleep in clothes like that! I mean, usually it’s just a plain bra and underwear… Tonight was different, then? Corazon couldn’t help but wonder.. were you trying to get a ride out of him?

• Corazon is quick to confirm his theory. With how clingy you’re being, hands running all over him, you clearly didn’t have sleeping in mind. But he’s not about to bluntly ask if you’re in the mood, no. He isn’t the type to be so upfront. Plus… part of him enjoyed seeing you try so hard at arousing him.

• He’ll make sure to be a bit teasing with you. But Corazon won’t do that so easily, he’ll play dumb. Wether it be speaking in a husky and attractive tone on ‘accident’ or his lips ‘accidentally’ hitting your neck when he hugs you. Cora likes when you make the first move and with how this situation is, you asking wouldn’t just be romantic but it’s be adorable. Corazon loves when you ask him for such a thing, he likes to service you at your own call.

• Once you finally ask for him and the sweet release of your own sexual frustration. Corazon is quick to cling to you, showering you in love and praise. You two don’t get a ton of alone time. So, every time you two act intimately, he’ll drag it out a whole lot, but in a good way! Corazon will kiss every inch of your body, covering your skin in his scarlet red lipstick, singing out loving praises.

• Prepare yourself for a night in a sea of love. Corazon is sure to be tender and loving aaall night. With how busy he always is with work, he’ll give you a whole lot of attention to make up for his missed presence.

• You remind yourself to buy more lingerie, preferably of more colours he likes. Such as pink and red. But you know in your heart, Corazon would adore any piece of clothing, as long as it was on you.

Ace x F! Reader , Reacting to Lingerie Headcanons

• Ace is certainly the most casual about it out of these three. I mean, man always walks around without a top on, he sees no shame in nudity or revealing nature. But regardless, doesn’t mean he doesn’t find bodies to be sexy, he just doesn’t get too flustered nor shocked when he sees you in such sexual underwear.

• He’s all over you in only a matter of seconds. Not in an embracing way, but he won’t hesitate to grope at you, whistling at the sight of your erotic choice in sleep wear. Ace will definitely compliment, but he won’t sugar coat it, he’ll be blunt about it. Definitely gives your butt a good pat, accompanied with a casual move of tongue, “Nice ass, babe.”

• Ace is quick to get down and dirty, not taking time to appreciate the silk clothing that wrapped up your curves tight like a present. He’s not interested in your underwear, more so what’s in them. Can you really blame him, though? On Christmas Day, do you just stare at the wrapping paper over the gift?

• But Ace isn’t careless, no! He’ll take everything off with care, letting his large hands slip off every stitch of fabric, unmasking your most sacred parts. It’s satisfying to tease you that way, being so painfully slow with undressing you… Maybe extra clothing is good for one thing and one thing only, teasing. Ace loves hearing you whine at how slow his hands work the clothing off.

• The night is certainly full of endless fun, round after round waits ahead for you! It’s almost a blur once you wake up, feeling so good you could swear such an experience was only existent in dreams…

• Once you ask Ace what he thought of your lingerie, he’ll look at you like you’re an idiot. “What lingerie?“ He asks only to be met with a light hearted punch and scolding. You didn’t spend over fifty berries for Ace to not even notice nor like it! What a moron….!

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violetsoju · 3 years

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airport

kuroo tetsurou · fluff · 2.2k

warning: slight suggestive theme, mild language, characters are aged-up

a/n: did i write this on impulse because i still can’t believe i was actually in this situation? maybe. did i write this as a manifestation of having a kuroo to bitch about and assure me? maybe too. did i get more encouraged to write this after reading a discussion in a server on bra sizes and brand recommendations a few days ago? maybe three.

“Kuroo, I’m serious. Stop laughing.”

A distinct cackling laughter from the speaker of your phone fills the four walls of your bathroom, along with a lazy lopsided grin flashing on the screen that’s perched on the wall mounted shelf next to the sink.

“But you’re making it so hard not to! Plus, you’re supposed to brush your teeth for two minutes, not talk and brush your teeth at the same time for two minutes.” Kuroo reasons, laughter turning into soft chuckles.

“Sorry babe, but I didn’t catch anything you said just now because you sounded like a fish blubbing underwater, except you’re blubbing white foam instead of bubbles.”

He finds it hard not to grin like a fool at your figure from his side of the screen, hands on your hips with a toothbrush stuffed in your puffed-up cheeks, hair pushed back with an elmo headband that he finds ugly yet cute because of the two ridiculously huge eyes dangling on top.

You mumble something yet inaudible while wiping away the drool of toothpaste dripping down the side of your mouth, a small pout dotting your lips.

“Rinse up and tell me from the top again once you’re done, alright?” Kuroo sighs, shaking his head adoringly as he manages to make out a ‘fine’ out of the string of muffled sounds from you.

And do you listen to him completely? Of course not. So he rests his left cheek on his palms, humming to the bits of information you try to squeeze in without accidentally swallowing tap water while cleansing your face.

The white tiles in the background shift to cream walls shakily, along with the shuffling sounds of room slippers against the wooden flooring. “Then as we were walking towards the karaoke place, I somehow fell behind the rest and ended up beside him. And guess what happened?”

“He confessed to you?” He jokes, oblivious to where this is heading, yet.

“God, I’d rather that happen.” You take a seat in front of your study desk filled with skincare products tucked on the side, placing your phone against the wall. “Instead, he called out to me, which I turn to him and find him looking at my boobs, saying ‘oh, its nothing’,”

Kuroo visibly flinches a little, eyebrows furrowed in disgust, eyes widening slightly, like he just tasted a sip of milk that has gone bad. “Excuse me?”

“He was looking at my boobs, Kuroo. My boobs. Shamelessly. Saying ‘oh, its nothing’. What the heck?” You mentally thank yourself for not opening the cover of the toner in your hand, to save the mess you would have made from all the expressive hand gestures.

“And you were wearing your usual tank top, right?” He smacks his lips together, as if trying to get rid of the bad aftertaste.

“Yeah, the usual square neck rib knit tank top that I always wear.” He tilts his head to the side, eyebrows knitted in confusion. Your wardrobe of tops flashing through his head. “The one that you don’t understand why I own a several pieces in different colours. That one.” A long ‘oh’ resonates through the speakers, the particular top emerging from the sea of clothing.

Kuroo processes the image for a few seconds. “That’s not revealing at all.”

“Exactly! It’s like the most basic thing? There’s tons of girls out there who wear the similar thing as me too.” You tap your toner onto your face with your hands. “And I was even wearing a jacket on top of it? It’s not like I was fully exposed or something. But even if I didn’t have my jacket on, I don’t see how it’s taken as a sign to stare brazenly like that. I wear whatever the heck I want to make myself feel and look good, not for someone else to ogle at, unable to keep their raging hormones in check.”

He hums in agreement. “What did you do or say to him then?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what made me so pissed at that moment either.” You sigh, reaching out for your wash-off mugwort mask. “I snapped at him, telling him that when he talks to girls, he should be looking at them in the eye, not at their boobs.”

“That’s my girl.” Kuroo flashes his signature cheshire-grin. “What did he say then?”

Your lips purse together, recalling the situation. “I don’t think he even heard me. Partly because you know how I rush through words like I’m rapping when I’m mad.”

“Told you to apply for that rap competition show on tv.”

“Kuroo.” Your glare earns an apology and light-hearted chuckles. “Another reason why I don’t think he heard me was because he actually had the balls to sit next to me during the karaoke session.” His eyebrows arch at the statement. “To which I dragged Mizuki to sit next to me and he got pushed to the side with the other guys.”

He huffs through his nose with a tinge of frustration, fingers running through his dishevelled hair. “How old is he again?”

“20, I think. But still, that’s no excuse for being so disrespectful towards girls and women. He’s already a full-grown adult for crying out loud.” You set the timer to 15 minutes on your phone, shuffling to your bed. “Out of all the boys I’ve met that are of his age or back when we were his age, I’ve never met such a disrespectful guy. In this area of discussion, I mean.”

“You mean you haven’t met such a horny monkey before.” Kuroo summarises. You snort at his remark, making yourself comfortable under the covers while waiting for the mask to work its magic.

“So you’re mad that he looked at your boobs.”

You place your phone between your folded knees, slouching against the bed frame. “Of course I am. It’s a violation against my body. How the fuck does he think he’s entitled to look at someone blatantly like that? Imagine someone staring at your dick like its nothing.”

The stupid cocky smirk appears on screen again. “Not gonna lie, but I would be proud. Or amused.”

“Freak.” You scoff, scrunching your nose at his reply.

His amber eyes gleam under the dim lights through the screen. “You sure you’re not mad at anything else?” He prods, not letting you off the hook.

“I guess I’m so mad because I never expected this to happen to me. I mean, look at me. What’s there to look at when I’m basically as flat as an airport?” You gesture to your breasts, ignoring his ‘you’re exaggerating’ interjection. “I would understand if he was staring at someone voluptuous or well-blossomed. But what’s the point of staring at a wall so flat there’s no cracks or dents in between?”

Kuroo’s sharp yet soft features settle into a knowing look. “So there is something else that you’re mad at.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “That is?”

“You’re upset that your boobs are small.”

Your eyes take a 360-degree turn, huffing exasperatedly. “I’m not. I’m happy with the way they are.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I am.”

His firm discerning expression in the 10-second-long stare off has you heaving a long sigh in defeat. “I mean, there are times which I wish they would be just a little bigger…” You hesitantly admit, biting the inside of your lips. “So I don’t have to rely on push-up bras that much. And they would look nicer in wireless bras… Or in deep v neck cuts… Or plunge dresses…”

“Babe, they’re perfect with the way they are now.” Kuroo’s words doesn’t come out as pity or consolation; it’s filled with raw honesty and sincerity.

You glance down at the soft flesh beneath your oversized t-shirt that once belonged to Kuroo. “I know, but sometimes you can’t help but want more, right?”

“I understand, it’s natural.” He nods in acknowledgment. “But we have to be grateful with what we have, don’t we?”

A soft smile tugs the corner of his lips at the sight of your pout. “You’re right. Why did I get myself so worked up just because of one horny monkey when I have such an amazing and supportive boyfriend?” His lips curl up with a little more pride at you remembering and reusing his little remark.

“At your service, always. And ever ready to chase off any horny monkeys in sight.” He places his hands to his eyebrows as a salute dramatically, earning a hearty laugh from you.

“Question time. On the bright side, don’t you save more on bras because they require lesser fabric than bigger sizes? Less fabric, less production cost?”

“If only it were like that, Kuroo. You know what, we’re going bra shopping for our next date.”

“May I be granted the honour of choosing the fine piece of garment?” He places his hand over his right chest.

You hold onto your imaginary ruffled dress in the air, dropping into a mid-curtsy. “If I have the honourable chance to be blessed by your gracious kindness to pay for it, be my guest.”

“Of course, m’lady.” He bows curtly, giving you a flirtatious wink.

You giggle at his sappiness. “Okay my turn. Aren’t you jealous that you don’t have the chance to hold them like other boyfriends do for their busty girlfriends when their boobs swell and get sore during their periods?”

He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but the glint in his eyes says otherwise. “It’s not like that’s the only time I get to touch them.” He wiggles his eyebrows at you suggestively.

“Pervert.” You gasp, covering your breasts with your arms.

The timer on your phone beeps, signaling it’s time for you to wash off your mask.

“Didn’t take you to be a boob person. Thought you were more of a butt person.” You place your phone back on the wall mounted shelf in the bathroom, turning on the tap water to run.

“I’m neither. Because I’m a you person, your person. A person that loves you as a whole, not by parts.” You swear you can see him giving you that smug grin of his with your face submerged with water, washing off the remaining residue.

“You know, maybe God deliberately blessed you with a lesser amount in this aspect.” His voice echoes through the speakers.

You reach out to your face towel hanging next to the sink and place gentle pats on your face. “And why is that?”

“Because God knew that you’d be unstoppable if you were blessed in all aspects. I mean, look at you. You’re already slaying it despite your fun-sized boobs.”

You nearly choke on your own saliva from the fits of laughter at his comment. “What the hell, Kuroo. No one calls a C cup and below fun-sized.”

“If people call those below the height of 160cm fun-sized, I don’t see why I can’t do the same with breast sizes.” He reasons with a nonchalant face.

“Fine, fun-sized boobs they are.” You give in, switching off the bathroom lights. “Your drop-dead gorgeous kick-ass girlfriend has fun-sized boobs.”

“And I love it. That’s what makes her special too.” He adds, face full-on smitten with love.

“Shut up, cheesy conman.” You chuckle softly, your face a mirror image of his.

“Well, you chose one yourself. No refunds.” The coolness of your moisturizer helps soothe the warmth blossoming across your cheeks, but not the warmth spreading throughout your chest like a cosy fireplace on a cold winter day.

【☾】

Zero and one digits flash on the top right of the screen, signalling it’s way past your bedtime. You’ve been on the phone with Kuroo for close to two hours, no wonder you feel yourself drifting to sleep each second. Kuroo senses it too, from the way your eyes twitch and lose focus.

“Alright, last question before we wrap up for today. When are you hanging out with them again?” He asks, stifling a yawn.

You let out a yawn as well, stretching your arm over your head, popping a few bones. “I don’t know, but I may skip if he’s tagging along.”

“Nope, we’re going together. Me and you.” Kuroo states matter-of-factly with droopy eyes.

You rub your eyes that has been lidded with sleep. “What if you’re busy on that day like today?”

“Then I’ll just clear my schedule for the day. Gotta show the lil boy who owns this airport.” His deep voice croaking through the speakers of your phone.

“Airport?” You question, confused at his statement, wondering if sleep has started to take over your sense of hearing.

“Airport.” He gestures at his tiddies sleepily.

“Kuroo…” Your distressed groan doesn’t stop him from his babble.

“Gotta show to him that it’s a private one too, not some public area that’s available to any common folk like him. Right, babe?”

a/n: in Chinese, there’s a saying of calling flat chested girls or girls with small boobs as 飞机场, which means airport because the airport runway is flat. so it’s like one’s chest is so flat that it can run the plane lmao. all sizes are precious, don’t get me wrong. this is purely for entertainment purposes

shoutout to @moonboohoo for being my irl Mizuki that day ily ❤️

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#kuroo tetsurou x you #kuroo tetsurou x y/n #kuroo tetsurou x reader #kuroo tetsurou #kuroo x y/n #kuroo x reader #kuroo x you #kuroo fluff #kuroo tetsurou fluff #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu oneshot #hq imagines #dont worry guys im not bothered by the incident anymore #i just thought it would be funny to write about #small tiddy gang unite #and i finally have a piece thats not over 3k words omg #mini achievement unlocked 🔓

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lifewithdavefarts · 3 years

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DaveFarts - Episode 4 “Post Gym Gas” [Episode List] The showers at Dave’s gym are once again out of order so he shows up at Tim’s house to take a shower. This time, however, he’s not in a rush, so he can spend a bit more quality time with his best friend… With some help from the gassy effects of his fiber bars…

Unlike the other stories, this one is told from Dave’s POV.

Post-Gym Gas

“Man… thanks again, Tim.” I said, showing up in his bedroom wearing only a pair of boxers.

Yes, only a pair of underwear. Tim’s gay? He finds this attractive?

Who cares. That’s how I act when I’m around our other straight friends and I’m not going to treat Tim “unnaturally”, or like he’s some kind of of sick person, just because he thinks he’s making me uncomfortable. Heck: he probably got a boner right now. Big. Fucking. Deal. I’ll just take that as a compliment.

“Those idiots at the gym again messed everything up. Maybe I should go to a different one.”

I grabbed the towel that Tim gave me earlier and pressed it on the rest of my body as I still felt a bit too wet. I then checked my phone, answering a couple of texts from my girlfriend Dana and put on my pair of black gym shorts (they’re not really ‘shorts’ actually as they almost go below my knees when I get up). I remain bare-chested as it’s not really a cold evening and I don’t want to sweat again: I just took a shower!

As usual, I felt my stomach rumble a bit. “Fucking fiber bars again!” I thought. I ripped like eight long farts under the shower, but I still feel bloated. Is the gym working? I’m eating tons of those bars and I just can’t see the point. Well, at least they sure make Tim happy.

Yeah… Tim, my great, disgusting best friend. Can’t believe he likes this stuff.

Look at him, trying to read his books, in silence. He’s already as red as a tomato. I wonder when he’ll understand that he doesn’t have to feel so embarrassed about this stuff, not around me at least.

Speaking of which, I think I got one ready…

I couldn’t hide my smirk as I slowly got up and walked towards my friend sitting behind his desk. I was literally towering him. Tiny, short Tim: must defend at all costs!

I don’t know how this stuff works, but I hope he’s enjoying it.

And, honestly, I think it’s hilarious, and I’m always glad to share a few good laughs with him.

“Dude. I think I got a big one for ya.” I simply said.

I turned around, chuckling a bit, pointing his butt at his face. I leaned a bit and I felt his defenseless head brushing against the fabric of my gym shorts. I already started to laugh. I’m a worthless immature, but I thought that was hilarious. I pushed a bit and the fart came out naturally, as big as my usual blasts. I made sure that my ass was still brushing against my friend’s face: I need to make clear that I’m perfectly comfortable with his fetish.

The fart vibrated violently through my shorts right in his face.

Eight seconds. Man! I’m so talented. Fucking fibers though.

I turned around to check whether my friend survived to that, and his hilarious smile confirmed that he was alive and well (and probably aroused too, but that’s a problem I can’t take care of). I bursted into a laugh, I couldn’t’ help it.

“Told ya it was big!”

He nodded at me and smiled.

As long he’s comfortable around me it’s great.

We still spend an incredible amount of time together and, to be honest, nothing really changed.

But sometimes Tim acts a bit too awkward, so I just make him understand (every. single. time.) that there’s no reason to act all weird around me. Dude, I’m like your brother, you can trust me! I trust you, that’s for sure!

Man, I’m pretty sure he wishes more face-farts right now.

I wonder if he will ever have the guts to ask me directly. He knows I’m a proud farter, I’ve always been.

Gotta admit that the funniest part about all of this is how much of a dork Tim is, seriously.

If he wasn’t gay, pretty sure some girl out there would have considered him adorable.

To me, however, it was a mixture of annoying and hilarious.

I felt my belly hurt a bit; fiber bars were still messing up with my stomach. I finally put on a black undershirt and sat again on my friend’s bed. I’ll leave in a couple of minutes though, gotta a lot of stuff to work on back at home.

“Dave…”

Apparently, Tim just grew a pair.

I saw him turning red, into a stuttering pile of awkwardness.

I pretended to have no idea of what he was going to tell me and I tried not to laugh at him.

“I’d hate to make you uncomfortable but…”

I checked my phone, not even looking at him, if that made him more comfortable.

“But since you seem so open-minded about it I was wondering… nah never mind!”

I chuckled a bit. “What?” I asked, knowing exactly what he was going to say.

“It’s just that I don’t want you to think that I want to be your friend because of…”

“…because of my farts?” I simply said, cutting him off.

He almost fell from his chair and quickly stood up, nervous as usual.

“Tim, I know you’re not an asshole. If you were, I wouldn’t be here.” I stated.

Let me tell you the truth: I knew that Tim loved my farts and most of all loved the fact that I didn’t care at all about his fetish. And that’s it. He was my friend before realizing his fetish, since middle school.

Tim always says “Oh Dave! He’s so great. Always looking out for me!”, but that’s because he’s an insecure little shit.

The truth is that Tim has always been the one looking out for me. He’s always been there, for reasons that I don’t really want to explain, but let’s just say that sometimes it was pretty serious family stuff.

He’s not an asshole: he’s the opposite of that.

I know he considers me “the” best of the friends.

Let me tell you that I consider myself lucky to have a friend like him.

It’s hard to believe, I know, since he’s so weak and awkward, while I’m stronger and all this bullshit, but trust me.

This “best friend” thing goes both ways. He’s my bro.

“Were you going to ask me for a fart?” I asked, with a smirk.

His reaction was priceless.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just too… gay I guess.” he tried to say, faking a chuckle, trying to *not* sound embarrassed, completely terrified.

It’s not like this came out of nowhere though.

I did “help” somehow, not only with my continuous face-farting.

I even send him random fart videos on WhatsApp. That must be painful for him.

“That’s not what friends are for. You’re already doing so much for me. You’re being so supportive, more than I could have ever hoped, and I’m not only talking about… well… this” he said, too embarrassed to pronounce the word 'fart’ apparently. “I’m not in the position to ask for this stuff. Sorry.”

That was too easy.

I nodded and then, with a deft movement, gently kicked his ankle, making him trip on his own bed. His head landed right next to my sagging (in shorts) butt and I didn’t even need to move.

“There. Now you’re in the position to ask.” I chuckled.

He was, quite literally, in the *right* position: I could sit on his face in a moment.

I laughed so much at him, but I wanted to laugh with him.

I simply stared at my gay friend and smiled, finding his teary, embarrassed eyes a bit too hilarious maybe. I finally lifted my butt, and put it above his defenseless face. I didn’t sit directly on him: my ass was hovering above him, only inches away from his nose. I then started to fart, as I usually do.

Fiber bars were an incredible fuel. The blast almost ripped my pants. Even I could feel the wind being fired right in my friend’s face. Disgusting. Disgustingly hilarious. I bursted again into a laugh and I sat directly on his head as the fart kept going. One of my best of that day, that’s for sure. I think it lasted around 9 seconds.

Pretty sure he loved it.

“Smells great, does it?” and I lost it, laughing again like an immature jerk, despite being in my 20s.

Tim was dazed, startled and sat next to me.

I patted his shoulder in a friendly manner and he turned to me, finally laughing too.

“Gotta go now, bro.” I said, it was getting too late. “See ya tomorrow. I’m expecting you to join us this weekend. We’re having a surprise party for Lucy.”

“Of course! I already texted Greg. He’s got a new car and can pick both of us, so we can drink as much as we want!” he replied, with a rare smirk.

You smooth little fucker.

You act all awkward around me, but you’re still a party-animal.

So proud of you, bro.

“Finally! That’s the Tim I want to hear!” I said, heading downstairs. “See ya tomorrow then…”

Outside of the house, in his front yard, I then ripped one last, long, rumbling fart.

Fucking fibers!

I guess this one is literally on the house, Tim.

End of Episode 4

#fart story #eproctophilia #fartkink #davefarts2 #gayfart #malefarts

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agent-bumblebee · 2 years

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With 2021 ending, here are a ton of movies that I forgot to review cuz I am lazy and busy:

Free Guy:

Genuinely surprised, this movie was just a butt load of fun, the acting was good, it had a simple and easy to understand story, and overall was just a really fun movie.

Granted there were some jokes that don’t land, but overall still find it fun.

7.5/10

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings:

This movie got me hyped, mainly because of how different it was going to be, and lets just say it didn’t disappoint.

Let’s start with the obvious one, the action is very nice, truly a nice change of pace from your typical MCU action.

They really went for a more Jackie Chan/ Bruce Lee kind of action, which I did appreciate.

But aside from the action, the characters were well developed and interesting, especially the main villain, this movie has a killer soundtrack, and overall was really good and fun.

Definitely one of the more better MCU solo films out there since Guardians Of The Galaxy.

9/10

Venom: Let There Be Carnage:

Now, when I first saw Venom like 3 years ago, I thought it was alright, it had it’s ups and it’s downs, but still thought it was alright.

As for it’s sequel…. Let’s just say that my thoughts on the first Venom didn’t change.

Again, this films had it’s ups and it’s downs.

First, it did improve everything about the first film, though in a much lesser sense, like some of the character interactions (mostly with Eddie Brock and Venom) were somewhat better than before (even if I thought it was also good in the first movie), and I like Woody Harrelson’s role as Cletus Cassidy A.K.A. Carnage, plus some of the action was nice, and pretty wild (such as the final battle) and that’s it.

But there were some issues, like Carnage’s origin was a bit weird, and just felt strange, some of the dialogue was also a bit weird, like some of the jokes, and also there were some moments were the acting were kinda cringe, but that’s pretty much it.

Overall, it was alright, not bad, but not good either.

5/10

The Matrix Resurrections:

Now before I had to watch the movie, I had to watch the OG trilogy, since while I do know about The Matrix, I don’t know that much about it’s lore, and some of the characters (well not the main ones, just some of the secondary ones).

And when I finally watched it, well much like what I thought with Venom 2, I thought it was alright.

Again not bad, but not good either.

First of all, it was nice to see a ton of comebacks and references to the OG trilogy, even if there were some changes, both Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss nailed it as both Neo and Trinity, I thought some of the changes I thought was interesting, and speaking of comebacks, it was nice to see a bunch of old characters return (like Niobe, The Merovingian, and Sati from Revolutions).

But that doesn’t come with a ton of issues:

For instance, the new Morpheus and Agent Smith are again a really good concept, but it felt unnecessary, and they could have just swapped them out, like maybe create a bunch of new characters, like what you did with characters like The Analyst, or Bugs.

Like I understand why they want to do it, but it felt so unnecessary.

And while the callbacks and references are appreciated, it does come at a cost when your bringing back a franchise that hasn’t been alive since 2003.

Much like what Space Jam 2 did, the references just felt forced and they pretty much tell that “Hey remember when this or this or this happened”

Like yea it was nice to see clips from the previous films, but you at least gotta keep it authentic with it.

Also the ending just felt incomplete, like I wasn’t satisfied, I was just left with a sense of: “oh… ok then.”

While yes it was pretty sweet that Neo and Trinity reunited, but it felt just weird and a little bit rushed, it could have been better and more emotional in my opinion.

Overall, the movie itself was just alright, and it honestly could have been worse.

5/10

Spider-Man: No Way Home (SPOILERS):

And to cap off the year, I got to watch No Way Home, and let’s just say, it was everything I ever wanted.

Obviously if you haven’t seen it yet, it will have a ton, and I mean A TON of spoilers, so I urge you to see it if you haven’t.

But for those who have…. Let’s keep on going.

First and foremost, I love the throwbacks and references from the previous Spider-Man movies, which while what I did say for both Space Jam 2 and Matrix Resurrections (earlier) would have been contradicting, here it felt authentic and doesn’t disrupt the flow of the whole story.

It doesn’t just constantly remind you that “Hey remember when this happened?” But instead it felt like it was apart of the movie, and just doesn’t feel out of place.

The villains were probably handled well as well, each of them had pretty good reasons, and were not just there to be either overshadowed or to have a minimal amount of screen time, instead their presence felt perfectly balanced and not too distracting.

And speaking of which, I guess it’s to talk about the biggest part of the whole movie……

Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man’s appearance.

Which had me shrieking like a little girl, and had me clapping, as well as everyone in the theater.

And man, was it nice to see them again, they were all great, and seeing all three of the Spider-people come together in one movie.

But besides all that, there is one thing I do wanna talk about with this movie, and that is how the entire movie felt like a huge rollercoaster to me.

The movie felt like it was stabbing me through the heart, it had a ton of emotion and heart in it.

Like we see some really emotional scenes, such as the death of Aunt May, when I saw that, I was just trying not to cry because, man it felt like I was speared in the heart.

On top of that there is this really inspirational and somewhat emotional scene, of both Tobey Magyars and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man, talking to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man about how it sucks to lose someone you love.

And the ending…. MY GOD THE ENDING WAS SOOOOO PAINFUL THAT MY HEART FELT LIKE IT WAS JUST SHATTERED INTO PIECES.

I’d never thought I would get that much emotional in a Spider-Man movie since TASM 2.

Overall this movie was amazing, and made my heart shatter to a million broken pieces.

9.5/10

And with that, those are my reviews of the movies that I had watched this year.

And let’s just say, it was a fun ride.

Getting to see some good movies was fun, but there were some that were ok, or not that good.

It was a busy year, and I hope 2022 has some pretty good movies to.

Happy New Year!

#movie review #free guy #shang chi #marvel #the matrix #the matrix resurrections #venom let there be carnage #venom 2 #sony marvel #mcu #spider man no way home #spider man #mcu spiderman

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littleabriel-blog · 3 years

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My Problem with Loki

Loki is a character beloved by many people. He has been for a decade now, although some people who read comics before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a thing were fans of him long before the first Thor came out. Over the years since his appearance in that movie the character has gone through a lot of changes, evolving from a villain to an anti-hero both in the MCU and in the comics, the latter even killing off his original incarnation to reincarnate him in a younger body resembling Tom Hiddleston in the hopes that the comics could capitalize on his popularity in order to sell more books. That move, unfortunately, did not bear fruit, with Loki’s solo series being canceled after only five issues. However, Loki remained popular in the movies, so much so that when he was killed off in Infinity War, people were pissed.

As a result of his enduring popularity, Kevin Feige and company decided to give Loki his own solo series on Disney+ when the decision was made to create a string of MCU tie-in shows to supplement the movies, and boost subscription numbers to Disney’s new streaming service. Fans of the character rejoiced. Finally, our favorite character was going to be in the spotlight, and not be merely a supporting character for Thor and hopefully not a butt monkey for the Avengers like he was in the third act of the movie of the same name. WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier had previously had well-received and successful debuts on that same platform, and it was hoped that Loki would do the same. Loki turned out to be the most successful of the Disney+ MCU shows that have come out so far, scoring highest in the ratings. As of this writing, it holds a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.5 on IMDb.

Those numbers, however, don’t reflect the entire audience and there were a lot of people who were not altogether happy with the product we received. Many people who had been hardcore fans of Loki since Tom Hiddleston first put on the horned helmet were not pleased, myself included.

The show wasn’t all bad. It did set up the multiverse, introduced Kang, introduced Mobius. The special effects were outstanding, a lot of the gags were hilarious, and we did get some character development from Loki before the spotlight fell away from him and he became all about panting after the real main character...more on that in a few.

So many things, however, were wrong.

If you liked the show, thought it was perfect, and were a fan of the romance, that’s perfectly fine. There is no such thing as a wrong opinion on a work of fiction. Everyone has their interpretations, everyone has their likes and dislikes, and there is nothing wrong with liking the show. There is also nothing wrong with not liking the show. This is a concept that people on both sides of the debate fail to understand, and I have witnessed flame wars, harassment from individuals on both sides, harassment of creators on social media from both sides, and various bits of biphobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other assorted types of phobias on display. I have seen people accuse people who have different opinions on the show than them of “not being a true Loki fan” and stating that people who have certain interpretations of the character don’t “truly know Loki”.

I’m not here to do that, and I assure you, if you liked the show, that’s fine. You’re allowed to. I’m allowed to not like it, and I’m allowed to explained why I didn’t like it just as you’re allowed to explain why you did. As long as both of us are being respectful, expressing an opinion is good. There is expressing an opinion and offering constructive criticism, however, and then there is namecalling, trolling, and having a tantrum and accusing someone of being “aggressive” when they don’t share the same opinion you do.

There is a huge difference between saying “I find the character of Sylvie to be problematic, and here is why” and “I think fans of Sylvie are sick and need therapy”, and people need to learn the difference between the two. Unfortunately, you have people who have become very protective of their favorite characters and tend to take any criticism leveled at said characters personally. It’s basically “You don’t like them? Well then you don’t like me, and since you don’t like me, I don’t like you.” Which is, frankly, a dangerous mentality to have. We are talking about fictional characters, not real people, and there is no need to jump to the defense of someone who does not exist. It is those people who tend to demonstrate that they have unstable personalities and immaturity, and they are the ones I have started blocking on Twitter because, being an adult woman, I don’t have the patience to deal with immature nonsense like that.

So, if you read this and then decide you want to hunt me down to give me a piece of your mind, tell me that I’m not a “true” fan of Loki, and accuse me of whatever, don’t bother. This piece isn’t here for that. It’s here because I wanted to compile my thoughts and feelings in a way that would better for me to articulate. It’s more or less a venting mechanism, purely for my benefit. If someone else gets something out of it, fine. If the creators of the show happen to see it, which is very unlikely because A) I’m not exactly going to push it onto them on their social media to get them to read it and B) they already get bombarded with tons of opinions on the show on a daily basis and aren’t going to care about one more voice added to the mix, even one who has basically compiled a novel, then alright.

And it is a novel, because I have a lot to say about Loki. I have been a huge fan of the character since long before Tom Hiddleston began playing him. My first encounter with Marvel’s Loki came in the form of the X-Men comics, specifically The Asgardian Wars run. It’s available in trade, and you should check it out. I read that run when I was around 10 years old, and I enjoyed Loki as the bad guy in the two stories that make up the collection. The first has him creating a special wish fountain that has a monkey’s paw effect in that it imbues mortals with special gifts and powers, and has the potential to make Earth a better place, but at the cost of killing every magical person and being on Earth. The X-Men and Alpha Flight find out about this after a plane piloted by the wife of one of the X-Men happens to crash in the general location the fountain is located. The two teams go to investigate, Shaman and Snowbird who are both magical beings begin dying, it’s discovered Loki created the fountain in order to score brownie points with The Ones Who Sit Above In Shadow (a pantheon of deities who are basically the Gods to the Asgardians), and after a lengthy battle Loki is defeated, he shuts down the fountain under pressure from The Ones, and slinks back to Asgard with tail between his legs.

In the second story, set after the heroes of Earth had helped Asgard defeat Surtur, Loki’s attention is caught by Storm, who at the time was depowered. He kidnaps her and brings her to Asgard intending to use her to replace Thor as the Goddess of the Storm, and use her as a pawn to, what else, conquer Asgard and seize the throne.

I really enjoyed Loki then, and felt sorry that he never appeared in any other X-Men story, not even in an issue of the New Mutants, and that team boasted an actual Valkyrie (Danielle Moonstar) as one of its members. I was a kid at the time and read pretty much exclusively X-Men since those were the books my father purchased for me. I never felt right about asking him for other books since we were a family with money struggles and I didn’t want to be more of a burden by requesting Thor or Avengers comics--that, and I just didn’t find Thor or the Avengers all that interesting at the time, a sentiment shared by a lot of people until the first Iron Man made us actually care about Tony Stark. I wouldn’t have an opportunity to start reading more comics featuring Loki until I was an adult and able to visit comic book stores on my own. I read several runs that featured him as a character, including Ragnarok, the Broxton, OK run where Loki first appeared as a woman, Dark Reign, and finally Siege. I also went back and read Walt Simonson’s legendary run on The Mighty Thor, which I highly recommend.

Suffice it to say, I’ve been a fan of the character for a long time, and in fact when Tom Hiddleston was cast in the role for Thor, I remember thinking that he was too young. But then I figured it was Hollywood, of course they’re going to deage Loki so that he appears closer in age to his adopted brother in contrast to the comics pre-Siege where Loki was often drawn to look like he was as old as Odin and therefore could be Thor’s uncle or even father as opposed to brother.

Over the years I grew to enjoy the MCU’s version of the character, enjoy Tom Hiddleston in the role, and like most other people was greatly saddened by his death in Infinity War. Like other fans, I looked forward to his solo series and had high hopes for it. Hopes that were, unfortunately, dashed.

It Was Rushed

In the MCU, it took Loki years to go from troubled young god, to villain, to ambivalent ally, to anti-hero, to hero. Literally, years. Months had passed between the end of Thor and the beginning of Avengers during which Loki endured who-knows-what at the hands of Thanos. We don’t know exactly what still. The Loki series didn’t answer that, I guess because they didn’t want to devote precious screentime to an interesting backstory for what was supposed to be the main character when they could focus on something else instead. That something else will be elaborated on.

In Episode 1, Loki is still the villain from Avengers, something he would have remained as into The Dark World. It would take him being in Asgard’s prisons for a year and then him accidentally getting his adopted mother Frigga killed in order for him to begin to do a heel-face turn. From this, we can clearly see that a transition from ax-crazy bad guy to anti-hero is not going to happen overnight. For this person I shall call Ragnarok Loki, it was a process that took time. He suffered a complete mental breakdown while in Asgard’s prison, a fragile emotional state that was compounded by the anger and massive guilt he felt at Frigga’s death.

Even after that, he still hadn’t completely abandoned his villainous ways. At the end of The Dark World we find out that after faking his supposed death earlier in the movie, Loki has assumed Odin’s form and taken his place on Asgard’s throne. In Ragnarok, Loki is still sitting on the throne in Odin’s form, and shows no indication at all that he feels any remorse for giving his adopted father amnesia, stripping away his magic, and abandoning him on Earth to whatever fate he might meet. Loki remains a selfish bastard throughout Ragnarok until the third act, after Thor had treated him to a taste of his own medicine by sticking a taser on him and then giving him a speech about becoming predictable and complacent.

Loki’s arc was one that spanned four movies and six years, since in-universe there were a couple of years between The Dark World and Ragnarok. That meant that his character development took actual time and was realistic. It was one of the things that drew people to the character, the fact that he had a very relatable and believable redemption arc.

Compare that to Episode 1. In less than a day he goes from being the Loki that we saw in Avengers, batshit crazy, selfish, callous, and untrusting, to making personal confessions to a man he had just met only a couple hours previously and agreeing to help the organization that had arrested, stripped, imprisoned, tried, and almost executed him.

What?

I will give the show this: In Episode 2, he shows that he’s still up to his old tricks when he feeds Mobius and the agents all that horsecrap about how a Loki works in the Ren Faire tent, and then revealing that he plans to take over the TVA when he confronts his variant in the futuristic Wal-Mart. The weeping confession to Mobius, that I can’t really get over. How do you go from haughty, arrogant, and “trust is for children and dogs”, to “I don’t enjoy hurting people” in just a couple of hours? The show never indicated that it was a manipulation tactic on Loki’s part. Instead, we were basically told to believe that they became friends just that fast. That emotionally stunted and closed-off Loki made a connection with another person in a matter of hours. Makes sense. Don’t get me wrong, I like Mobius and feel he makes a good foil for Loki. I hope to see more of him in the future. I just have a tough time finding their friendship all that believable.

This would not be the only relationship in the show that happened too fast that we were forced to just buy, which leads me to Sylvie.

She’s the variant that the TVA had been hunting, that Mobius recruited Loki to help capture. And while I normally hate it when people ascribe a certain label onto a new female character because reasons (ones that are usually misogynistic), I think it fits rather well in Sylvie’s case.

Enter The Mary Sue

Mary Sue is a term that gets thrown around a lot. To sum up the meaning in very simple terms, it refers to a character who is too perfect to be believable. Mary Sues are often author-self inserts in fiction, they’re usually the love interest for at least one male hero and it’s usually the male hero the author will admit to having a crush on, their scenes usually are presented much more descriptively than those of the other characters, the story will revolve around them often at the expense of the development and plots for the other characters of the story, and they’re presented as beautiful, powerful, intelligent, beautiful, special, strong, beautiful, and desirable. Yes, beautiful is on the list more than once, and it’s deliberate.

The term comes from an old Star Trek parody fanfic, and while it is usually applied to original characters in fan fiction, the term has been used to describe characters in canon media as well. Some examples of characters who have been described as Mary Sues would include Bella from the Twilight books, Felicity from the show Arrow, Jaenelle Angelline from Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewel novels, Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood, Rey from the last Star Wars trilogy, and Jean Grey from the X-Men comics. Note I do not necessarily agree that those characters are Mary Sues, I have merely heard these characters referred to as Mary Sues, and when I look at them objectively I can kind of see where the accusations come from. Some other terms that can apply are Creator’s Pet and of course Author Self-Insert. Not all Mary Sues are Author Self-Inserts, but a lot of them are. Also, not all characters who can be labeled Mary Sues are female, though they often are. The male version of a Mary Sue is called a Marty Stu, and a couple of characters I’ve seen get ascribed that label include Harry Potter, Daemon Sadi from Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewel novels, Edward from Twilight, and Red Hulk from Marvel Comics. Even Batman and Wolverine haven’t been immune from the Marty Stu stamp, although you can argue that it does apply in their cases especially depending on who’s writing them. Sometimes it is painfully obvious they are author self-inserts...the aforementioned Bella is a good example. Others, you can only speculate on. And while there are theories going around that Sylvie is someone’s self-insert, we don’t have definitive proof of that.

There are good arguments, however, for her being labeled a Mary Sue and Creator’s Pet.

First are her powers. In the show we are told that Sylvie taught herself magic, especially her ability to “enchant”, the power to get into the minds of others and manipulate them. The fact that she taught herself would indicate that her education and skill in using magic should be lacking, right? She should not be as good as, say, someone who learned magic from his foster mother who herself was taught by Asgardian witches?

Yet in the show, Sylvie not only runs circles around Loki magically wise, she even teaches him a few tricks. This is startlingly in contrast to the comics. Loki’s Sylvie is partially based on the character Sylvie Lushton from the Young Avengers, a bad guy who was once a normal girl whom Loki imbued with powers before his death at the hands of the Sentry during the events of 2010’s Siege storyline. In the comics, Loki not only gave Sylvie her powers, but he was the one who taught her how to use them. Now, of course things in the MCU are not going to follow the way things are in the comics. MCU Loki is nowhere near as old as comics Loki and has so far not demonstrated the ability to give other beings powers. And MCU Sylvie is a composite of Sylvie Lushton and Lady Loki, which is also problematic, but we’ll get to that.

But the point is that Sylvie had no training. Her magic is some improvised slapped-together stuff that at best she picked up here and there and at worst she just pulled out of her ass. Now, knowing that, we’re supposed to buy that she can mop the floor magically wise with someone who was formally trained by a sorceress? And that furthermore, she can school him as well?

To make up for her lack of experience and knowledge, Loki is nerfed. Power wise and intellectually wise, he is nerfed. In Thor and Avengers Loki is smart, well-spoken, and a master manipulator. At one point he is able to turn all of the Avengers against one another, and while his magic has never been anywhere near the level it was at in the comics pre-Siege (after his resurrection, he was powered down and is currently nowhere near the powerhouse he had been prior to 2011) he was able to pull off some impressive displays of skill nonetheless. Shape shifting, illusion casting, it was a good repertoire.

In Episode 3, however...well, he does use teleportation to some impressive affect during his fight with Sylvie, but he still doesn’t get the upperhand. And he should. Loki is a better trained fighter, better trained in sorcery, and realistically should have at the least managed to incapacitate his variant. He doesn’t however, because the moment he meets Sylvie his IQ drops about 20 points. He falls easily for her tricks, makes laughable plans, gets drunk and draws too much attention when he knows that is a bad idea, and manages to get them both stuck on a moon that will soon be dust courtesy of the rogue planet about to crash into it. Loki has made some blunders in the various MCU movies he’s been in, mostly due to his own arrogance and tendency to underestimate his foes, but he’s not that stupid. In fact, in The Dark World he screams at Thor and calls him an idiot for drawing attention to themselves by hijacking an elven ship and crashing into every column and statue within a fifty-foot radius.

Where exactly is that smart, calculating, more careful Loki we know from the films? He’s been transformed and dumbed down, in an attempt to prop Sylvie up. It’s a tired trope, making the male character a dumbass in order to make the female character look good. Well, I should say male-presenting and female-presenting characters in this case, but their supposed gender fluidity really is not represented well and it’s completely contradicted later on, but we’ll get to that.

Anyway, making the male character stupid in order to make the female character look better by comparison is not empowering. It’s insulting. It implies that women are not smart or capable enough to meet men on equal footing, that the only way we can shine is not by virtue of our own strengths, but merely by making us look better than the men.

She doesn’t just outshine Loki intellectually and power wise, she outshines him period. The show from Episode 3 on becomes about Sylvie. She is the show’s main focus, and Loki? He’s relegated to the role of supporting character in the series that’s named after him. Supporting character, and love interest. From Episode 3 on, the show might as well be called Sylvie.

Now, some people will say that since Sylvie is a Loki, the show was indeed focusing on Loki. The problem is, the show is very inconsistent as to whether or not Sylvie really is a Loki or a different person entirely. I will explain more later, but the writers seem to change Sylvie’s identity to suit whatever narrative they want to present to the audience, including the pre-Pixar Disney romance they foist upon us.

The Romance, and why some find it gross

One major characteristic of the Mary Sue is that she always draws the romantic and sexual interest of the main male character, who may or may not be a Marty Stu himself. Oftentimes he’s not, and Loki does not fit the criteria of a Marty Stu by any stretch of the imagination. These romances always happen fast with little to no buildup. There is no what writers of romance call “slow burn”, it’s just throw Mary at the male character, hook them up, and get the audience to buy it. Basically, it’s reminiscent of the romance stories in the Classical Era Disney animated films. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella all fall madly in love with their princes within minutes of meeting them. There’s no getting to know each other, there is no preamble, there is no slow courtship, no real drama to speak of. It’s basically Love At First Sight or True Love. This trend continues even into the Disney Renaissance. In The Little Mermaid, Ariel is willing to make a deal with a witch to give up her fins for a prince she hasn’t even spoken to yet. He doesn’t even know she exists, and she leaves her home and family behind, gives up her voice, all for a mere shot at hooking up with him.

That’s not love, that’s lust. That’s hormones overruling your brain, and it’s an insulting trope, one that feminists have railed against for years. Disney has made a little progress. The movie Frozen took the mickey out of the Love At First Sight/True Love trope with the song “Love Is An Open Door” and the prince Anna wanting to marry turning out to be a major sleazebag who just wants to use her, but we still only have three Disney princesses (Elsa, Moana, and Merida) who have never had love interests and two (Anna and Rapunzel) whose love stories come close to being slow burns, out of 12 official Princesses. There’s still a long way to go, and boy is there a major step backwards in Loki.

In Episode 3, Loki fights Sylvie and they end up on Lamentis 1. Sylvie spends a good portion of the time insulting and trying to kill Loki, and Loki finds himself having to defend himself from her. That changes once they get on the train going to the Arc. After sneaking aboard the train using a disguise and a flimsy story, the two Lokis sit in a booth, where Loki proceeds to drink champagne. It is then that, out of nowhere, the conversation shifts from how Sylvie learned her powers to the topic of love.

Why? Why would you bring that up in conversation with someone who was doing her best to kill you a couple hours prior?

Then Loki makes things worse by asking Sylvie if she has a beau waiting for her. Why? It doesn’t make sense. The two of you are at each other’s throats, she’s done her best to kill you, neither of you trusts the other, and, completely out of left field, you decide to basically ask “So...are you single?”

Now, enemies to lovers is a trope that can work when done right. Typically, it’s a very subtle, slow progression that the audience witnesses over time in a novel, movie or television series. Weeks and even months will go by in the narrative during which the two people go from wanting each other dead to developing feelings for one another. There’s usually a “will they, won’t they period” that lasts for some time that’s full of teases and flirting before the couple does hook up and gives the audience the resolution. Done in this way, enemies to lovers can work.

This...this is not the right way to do enemies to lovers. Within a couple of hours Loki and Sylvie go from hatred and doing their damnedest to stabbing one another in the backs, to having a connection that causes a nexus event?

By the way, that nexus event makes no sense. In Episode 2, it is established that it is impossible to create a nexus event in an apocalypse. It is why Sylvie was able to avoid capture by the TVA for so long. In fact, just minutes prior to the two of them almost dying in Episode 4, Sylvie flat-out says that she figured out that she needed to hide in apocalypses because she discovered she didn’t create a nexus event when she hid in them.

Now the two of them are able to create a nexus event in the midst of an apocalypse? Why? Their “connection” isn’t going to lead to any consequences...they were about to die. No one else need never have known about the “moment” the two of them shared. It’s very confusing and the only purpose it really serves is to paint Loki and Sylvie as soulmates, which doesn’t make sense in the context of the show. The concept of soulmates is that for every person, there is someone out there they are predestined to be with. Loki is a show that, at the core of it, is about rejecting predestination and embracing free will. In that context, the idea of soulmates is ludicrous and contradictory to the message that we make our own destiny. This is why True Love is unrealistic, and I hate to break it to you romantics out there, but Love At First sight does not exist.

Infatuation At First Sight exists, but that is not Love, no matter what your hormones are telling you. Love takes time to evolve, and it takes work to maintain. It sure as hell doesn’t happen after less than 12 hours of knowing each other, during which a huge chunk of time was devoted to trying to manipulate, outsmart, and murder the person you’re supposedly in love with. No one falls in love in less than 12 hours, period, unless it’s a Classical Era Disney animated movie. They basically turned Loki into a big Disney Romance trope. I have a very hard time buying that Loki, who we have established is emotionally stunted and closed off, would form a love connection in just a few hours, especially with someone who was doing her best to murder him in that timespan.

That is not the only reason this relationship is problematic. The term “Selfcest” has been thrown around, and a lot of defenders of this particular ship claim that the term was very recently made up in social media for the sole purpose of badmouthing this particular romance. That is not the case. Selfcest is a term that has existed among fiction writers for years, it’s just that more people have recently become aware of it thanks to this show. The trope has been used and referred to in various works of fiction, especially in fantasy and science fiction where cloning, alternative universes, and magic occur. A lot of the insults I get from people who can’t stand that I don’t like the romance basically go along the lines of saying selfcest doesn’t exist. No, it doesn’t...in reality. But this isn’t reality, is it? It’s fiction. It’s a fictional world where such a thing could be possible, and even in works where it’s not possible it’s often alluded to.

In A Song Of Ice And Fire, we have the infamous twincest relationship going on between Cersei and Jamie Lannister, and it is heavily implied that sleeping with her brother is the closest that Cersei can get to banging herself and that is why she does it. Jamie is basically everything she feels she should have been and was denied due to being born a woman. In fact, in later books when he reunites with her after having been away from King’s Landing for over a year, during which time he’s grown a beard and shaved his head, Cersei no longer finds him as attractive since they no longer look as much alike.

And with advances in cloning, selfcest might be possible in the future. We already have sex robots, and people with money are capable of making those robots look like themselves. There is nothing stopping them from doing it.

Knowing all of this, the argument of “selfcest doesn’t exist!” falls flat. And it especially falls flat when you’re referring to a fictional universe where a large purple man once killed off half the population of said universe with a snap of his fingers, where scientists turn into giant green monsters, the Norse gods not only exist but regularly interact with people on Earth, and there’s such a thing as a Sorcerer Supreme.

As I have said, the show has been rather inconsistent in stating what exactly Sylvie’s identity is. One moment, we are told Sylvie is a Loki and that she and Loki are the same person. Mobius says it, Kang says it multiple times, Judge Renslayer says it, the director and the writers state it in interviews. But then in the next breath, they contradict it by saying that she’s not a Loki, she’s Sylvie and a different person.

You can’t have it both ways. Which is it? Either she’s a Loki, or she’s not. The narrative is very confusing and it changes depending on how they want us to see Sylvie, especially in relation to her romance with Loki. It’s so much easier to avoid the selfcest/incest accusations when you can say they are different people. But then they say they’re the same person. Make up your minds!

Since the show first established that Sylvie is a Loki, I’m going with that. Especially since we saw a bit of her backstory. She grew up in Asgard as a member of the royal family, which means she had Odin as a father, Frigga as mother, and Thor as brother. She may or may not have the same DNA as Loki. We never got confirmation either way, and there are people who argue that they don’t to which I have to ask: How do you know? The show never tells us! “Oh, well, there’s Alligator Loki, are you going to say he has the same DNA as well?” Well, we are never told how exactly Alligator Loki came to be. Is he actually an alligator, or is he Loki who somehow got permanently stuck when he shapeshifted? People tend to forget that he can do that. Ragnarok established that he can turn into a snake, and a deleted scene actually had the childhood story go that Loki turned into a rug to cover a hole in the ground and then dumped Thor into it. There is the scene where Doctor Strange drops Loki through a portal, and Thor is left poking at a business card, and it is clear that for a moment he thinks that Loki turned into that. We know Loki can shapeshift, so Alligator Loki can very well have the same DNA. We just don’t know, because the show never explains it for the same reason the show cut out the scenes with Throg fighting Loki...to devote more screentime to Sylki.

Even if they don’t have the same DNA, it’s still established that they are the same person, they have the same family, they’re both the God/dess of Mischief, and even Sylvie herself acknowledges that she is a Loki despite the fact that she changed her name. So selfcest very much applies here, and a good argument can be made that selfcest is the ultimate in incest...after all, there isn’t anyone else you’re more related to than yourself. It is very understandable, therefore, that a lot of people would be very, very uncomfortable with such a relationship. Having the same DNA would merely be the icing on the very gross cake.

Furthermore, just because selfcest does not exist in reality does not mean someone can’t find the concept distasteful. “It’s not real!” “It’s just fiction!” Yes, and people are allowed to have their own feelings and opinions on fiction. If they find the idea of selfcest hard to stomach, that’s their prerogative and you really have no right to tell them they are wrong for feeling that way. They should not have to justify to anyone why they feel that way either. No one owes you an explanation for why they find real world incest or cannibalism distasteful, so they don’t owe you an explanation for this.

“Well, of course Loki would fall for himself...he’s a narcissist!” Is he though? Is he really? Having dealt with my fair share of narcissists in my life, I have to wonder if the fans who say that, along with the writers, know what a narcissist really is.

Is Loki a narcissist?

Bringing up Cersei Lannister again, the novels she appears in establishes that she is an extreme narcissist. She sleeps with her twin brother because it’s the closest she can come to sleeping with herself, and she desires to do that because she is a narcissist. A narcissist is someone whose personality is defined by an inflated sense of self-importance, troubled relationships, lack of empathy for others, and an excessive deep-seated need for attention and admiration. It’s a very simplistic definition, and there are plenty of YouTube videos devoted to delving into narcissists into more depth, as well as videos on how to cope with the aftermath of abuse at the hands of narcissists. Narcissists are so devoted to themselves that they ignore the needs and the feelings of those in their lives, which often results in abusive behavior. There are entire support groups that exist for victims of narcissists.

At first glance, one can see why some might consider Loki a narcissist. He does engage in some pretty selfish behavior, he goes to great lengths to get attention, his relationships to his family are indeed fraught with drama, and he seems to have a pretty overinflated ego. He even goes so far as to write a play featuring himself as the central character, and build a giant golden statue of himself after taking over Asgard in the guise of Odin. But really, is his ego truly that big? Or he is overcompensating for his self-hatred and self-disgust?

Loki suffered quite the emotional blow when he found out his true heritage, a revelation that shook him to his very core. Of course, his relationship with his father suffered as a result...the man lied to him for his entire life. Their relationship really was not that great even before that since Odin found it easier to relate to Thor, who was more like him in personality, than to Loki, who was more cerebral and quieter. Loki’s relationship to Frigga fared much better. He’s quick to forgive her involvement in covering up the truth about his parentage, and it is obvious that they are close. Even his relationship with Thor prior to the events of the movie is not all that bad, the two brothers are affectionate and playful, and when Loki interrupts Thor’s coronation, it’s not just for the sake of creating trouble, but to postpone Thor taking the crown for another little while because he is not fit to rule. At the time Thor had yet to go through his character development arc on Earth and he was still an overly arrogant, bloodthirsty, elitist douchebag, so Loki really had a good point.

A true narcissist would have done what Loki did just for the sake of making life difficult for Thor. Also, he would have done it because he wanted the throne. Loki states repeatedly that he never wanted to rule. A true narcissist would have been all smiles about taking the throne instead of being reluctant about it as Loki was when Frigga handed him Gungnir.

Throughout the films, and in the first episode of the series, we see that Loki does indeed love his family and is capable of feeling guilt over the things that he does to them, intentionally or not. Narcissists typically don’t feel remorse. As far as they are concerned, they are perfect and can do no wrong, so they have nothing to feel bad about. If they hurt you, it’s because you deserved it. You shouldn’t have provoked their ire.

Loki feels bad for getting Frigga killed, and then later on Odin. Then he is in tears when Odin dies, and later at the mere thought of never seeing Thor again when the two brothers talk in an elevator on Sakaar. Those are not the actions of someone who is incapable of loving anyone but himself, as I’ve seen so many people claim about him. And the fact that he sacrificed himself to save his brother also kind of kills the whole “narcissist” narrative.

In Episode 1, Loki breaks down and confesses to Mobius that he doesn’t like hurting people. He does it because it’s part of the façade, and admits that he sees himself as weak. A few episodes later, he admits to a memory illusion Sif that he craves attention “because I’m a narcissist” and admits to being afraid of being alone. That is far more self-reflection than a typical narcissist is capable of in my experience. As I said, narcissists tend to think they are perfect. A true narcissist would never admit to having any flaws, and sure as hell would never admit that they are a narcissist. As far as the true narcissist is concerned, if you find them flawed in any way, that’s on you. The narcissist has no need for self-reflection because they honestly see nothing wrong with themselves, and believe that they don’t need to change...it’s everyone else who does.

A good real-life example from my past is a former friend I’ll call D. D was a self-proclaimed brat who was quite proud of the fact that she could be difficult to be in a relationship with and tended to go through men like tissue paper. She was demanding, self-centered, extremely jealous, manipulative, and prone to wild mood swings. She could and did go from zero to insane at the drop of a hat. In the time I knew her, she left a string of burnt guys behind, and according to her it was because they just weren’t man enough to handle her. She also left behind a string of broken former friends, to the point where there really needed to be a support group for former friends of D who suddenly had her turn them into Public Enemy Number 1 when they either started taking attention away from D, or...well, that was it really. As I said, she was a very jealous person and had a chronic need to be the center of attention, especially if there were men around. Anyway, instead of working on herself to become less self-involved, self-absorbed, and more empathetic, she double downed on her abrasiveness and constant need for attention until she finally wore the poor man down and he either ghosted her or outright dumped her. She never broke up with them, preferring to keep them around for as long as they were willing in order to toy with them as a cat does with a mouse. I tried to talk to her about her horrible behavior, but instead of taking my constructive criticism and maybe using it to make some needed changes, she completely turned on me and did her best to make my life hell until I finally cut her out of it. I learned two things: Narcissists don’t want help because they don’t feel they need it and they are never going to change as a result, and never, ever try to confront a narcissist. It’ll only end badly.

A more famous example? Former US President Donald Trump. I won’t get into that, because really all you need to do is perform a quick Google search to see what all he’s done and witness his narcissism on full display. But really, place him side by side with Loki. Do you see any similarities at all? Maybe on the surface, but when you go deeper...no. Loki is not a narcissist. He’s capable of deep self-reflection, owns his faults, is capable of loving others, and feels remorse. I would argue that anyone who says he is a narcissist, either does not know the character, or hasn’t ever actually dealt with a narcissist in real life, to which I can only say: Lucky you.

I honestly would argue that calling Loki a narcissist is actually doing a disservice to victims of abuse from actual narcissists.

What about Sylvie? Well, in contrast to Loki who does show remorse while Mobius is playing that “This Is Your Life” reel for him, Sylvie shows no remorse or regret. She knows that the TVA agents she kills are as much victims as she is. They are innocent variants who were kidnapped from Earth and forced to work for the TVA after having their memories wiped. She knows this, yet the first time we see her she burns a bunch of TVA agents alive, and she just stands there watching as they scream in agony. In the next episode she says right out that she’s “having some fun” while possessing the body of C-90 and murdering more agents. She is not at all sorry about doing what she did, and we’re supposed to be understanding since she was kidnapped as a child. Okay, but the entire TVA didn’t do that. The agents she kills didn’t personally kidnap her. The only one we see who was directly involved in that is Renslayer. Sylvie “did what she had to do”, fine. But she doesn’t feel bad about it, at all. The flashback to her as a child takes great pains to try to show us what a good person she is when she cries out “Help him!” as another prisoner is being beaten, but I guess she grew out of it.

We don’t know if Sylvie has any other narcissistic traits besides lack of remorse because, well, the show really doesn’t do much to show her personality. Other than killing people, trying to kill Loki, and then flirting with Loki, we just don’t really see much to her. It’s another trait of a Mary Sue. Mary Sues often have bland, one-dimensional personalities. After all, their only purpose is usually to serve as love interests for one or more male characters. Mary Sues break the “show, don’t tell” rule by having the other characters verbally inform us about their traits, usually while singing their praises, but we don’t actually see those traits in the Mary Sue herself.

Loki calls Sylvie “amazing”, but how amazing is she, really? She kills people she knows are victims, she endangers the timeline just to sneak into the TVA, and then she kills Kang despite knowing that there is a very good chance that doing so could unleash something far, far worse than him. Then again, it doesn’t have to make sense when you’re pushing an unwanted and unasked for romance on an audience who was expecting a scifi show, not a romance.

I have spoken in a few places about this. Romance is fine, but in a show that blatantly places itself in the scifi genre, it really should only be the background, not center stage. When I expressed this opinion, I got accused of being dismissive of an essential part of the human experience. Well, first of all, congratulations: You just invalidated the existence of people on the asexual and aromantic spectrums, not to mention people who are celibate by choice. Second, that is why we have the romance genre. To tell stories centered around romance. I like romance, I read romance novels, and I sometimes write romantic fiction. But there are some places where it just is not appropriate.

There are people who say that adding romance makes things more interesting. Nope, in those cases it’s just a smokescreen, something used to hide plot holes and distract us from just how empty the story really is. Writers like to say that if you need a romance to make things more interesting, then you really don’t have much of a story in the first place. And sadly, Loki does have some plot holes. The nexus event on Lamentis is a good example, and the romance is definitely used to distract us from that. People were so focused on “oh wow, they’re having a moment, they’re soulmates!” that they didn’t think “waitaminute...didn’t they say that nexus events can’t occur in apocalypses?”

We really did not need a romance in Loki. Period. It was unnecessary, it was distracting, a lot of people found it disturbing, and it actively hurt a marginalized group.

Loki Is A Queer Icon!...maybe

I am not going to say that the relationship between Loki and Sylvie is not a bisexual one. A bisexual relationship is a bisexual relationship regardless of whether or not the person the bisexual person is with is the opposite sex. Saying otherwise is biphobic. Biphobic people in both the straight and the queer communities have been excluding bisexual people who happen to be in opposite sex relationships for years because apparently one stops being bisexual once they get into a relationship with someone of the opposite sex. This is horseshit. I’ve been in relationships with CIS men, did I stop being attracted to other men, women, nonbinary, genderfluid, agender, and other genderqueer people? No. No, I didn’t, because while I was entangled, I was not dead. Heterosexual people don’t stop being attracted to other members of the opposite sex when they are in relationships, it’s no different with queer people.

So, stop saying that Loki and Sylvie are not a bisexual relationship. You’re not doing us any favors at all, and in fact you’re only helping the biphobes who want to kick us out of Pride and other queer spaces for daring to date members of the opposite sex.

I will address the “Bit of both” line however. In Episode 3, Loki has that response to Sylvie’s questioning about whether there had been any would-be princesses or princes in his life. Again, a conversation that comes out of nowhere. She stated outright that she didn’t trust him, clearly wanted him dead, and now she’s asking if he’s single. Whatever.

Anyway, people went nuts when Loki answered “A bit of both”. It was confirmation that Loki was bisexual, it was celebrated on social media...and it is really biphobic and Kate Herron, who is bisexual herself, really should have known better.

Biphobic people have long tried to sow division between the bi and trans communities (unsurprisingly, biphobia and transphobia tend to go hand-in-hand) by saying that the concept of being bisexual is transphobic. “Bi” means two, ergo bisexual people are only attracted to two genders, specifically CIS men and CIS women. It never occurs to anyone that the “two genders” a bisexual person could be attracted to could be, say, women (and yes, I include trans women in that, since they are in fact women, get over it) and non-binary people, or agender and gender-fluid people, it’s always CIS men and CIS women. This despite the fact that the definition of bisexual has been “attraction to more than one gender” since long before the Bisexual Manifesto was put out in 1990.

Some people have tried to remedy this by adopting the moniker of “pansexual” instead, which A) is basically reinforcing what biphobes are saying about bisexuals and creating even more division and B) doesn’t just mean “attraction to trans people as well, I’m not transphobic, I promise!” “Pansexual” is not interchangeable with “bisexual”. Pansexual is attraction to all genders. Bisexual means attraction to more than one gender, but not necessarily to all genders. You can have a bisexual person, for instance, who is attracted to all genders except for men. If you are attracted to more than one gender, but not to all genders, you are bisexual, and labeling yourself pansexual is lying and basically caving in to the biphobes.

I’m not trying to police what people call themselves...if you want to use the two terms interchangeably, if you want to call yourself bisexual, or pansexual, it’s fine. But just evaluate the reasons why. Are you calling yourself pansexual because you really think you can be, or are you just calling yourself that out of fear of being labeled transphobic? The latter, in my opinion, is not a really good reason, and it only helps deliver the biphobic message that bisexual people are transphobic.

So, by saying “a bit of both”, Loki is really helping to reinforce that biphobic assertion that bisexual people are attracted just to CIS men and CIS women. It’s disappointing, but it is Disney so I suppose that is the best we can expect for now. It just shows that Disney really has a long way to go.

What’s more problematic is the supposed genderfluid representation. Now, I am a CIS woman. As such, I feel unqualified to really say that the representation is shitty and fluidphobic. However, if I’m not qualified to say that it is, then Kate Herron and the writers are unqualified to say that it isn’t. Rule of thumb: If members of a marginalized group are telling you that you did a poor job of representing them and that you are being transphobic or fluidphobic, instead of ignoring and dismissing their concerns like a good portion of the population already does, it’s a really good idea to listen to what they are saying and learn how you can do better.

There have been some genderfluid and trans people who expressed that they liked the show, and good for them. But I have seen a lot of very valid criticisms and concerns from genderfluid and trans people about the representation on the show, and I think they really should be listened to. Kate, you and I are queer, but we are still CIS women. Ergo, we have no say in whether or not the way you attempted to present Loki’s gender fluidity is transphobic. If genderfluid people say it’s fluidphobic or trans people say it’s transphobic, then it is indeed fluidphobic/transphobic. To say otherwise is gaslighting a marginalized community who already faces gaslighting on a daily basis.

I will touch on a couple of things.

First, in Episode 5, Loki asks a bunch of his variants if they have ever encountered a female version of themselves, a question that is met with varying levels of incredulousness and even disgust. If Loki was truly genderfluid, this question wouldn’t have been asked. Genderfluid means the person shifts genders along the spectrum. Loki does this in the comics. Comicbook Loki switches between masculine and feminine presenting on the drop of a dime, especially in his current incarnation. Loki in the MCU we are told is also genderfluid, and should also be able to hop along the gender spectrum on a whim. There should not be a “female variant” therefore, since they are all the same gender. There could be a female presenting variant, but that is not the same thing. They would still be all genderfluid in that case. Also, Sylvie’s nexus event would not have been “being born the Goddess of Mischief”. Okay, the show never actually says that is the nexus event that led to her being arrested, but it heavily implies it. If Sylvie is a Loki, and as a Loki is genderfluid, her being the “Goddess” of Mischief should never have been an issue since they can change genders anyway.

Second, making Lady Loki a separate person is problematic. A lot of genderfluid people felt that this move invalidated their identity by basically showing that the same person cannot indeed be different genders along the spectrum. I don’t feel I’m totally qualified to really get into this. I will just say that if you’re going to write a genderfluid character, maybe at least get an actual genderfluid person to advise in the writing room.

Third, there is a transphobic movement called trans exclusionary radical feminism. You might have heard of it. Unfortunately, it is a very widespread movement that has done a lot of harm to the trans community, successfully blocking funding to organizations that help trans people, blocking laws that would benefit trans people, and the movement includes celebrities like Graham Linehan and JK Rowling.

One of the weapons they like to use against trans women is the concept of “autogynephilia”. It is basically the sexual fetish of becoming aroused from thinking of oneself as a woman. Many, many of these transphobic “feminists” love to say that trans women are merely men who have this particular sexual fetish.

It’s bullshit of course. Maybe there is a small segment of the male population that has that fetish, but trans women are not included in that. For trans women, things like dressing as women, changing their names, having state and federal issued IDs that say they are female, and being able to use the restrooms and change rooms that match the gender they actually are as opposed to the one they were assigned at birth is not a matter of sexual arousal. It’s a matter of making their external realities match their internal ones. It’s a matter of validation of their identities as women. Sexual gratification has nothing to do with it.

Now, Loki is not trans, but genderfluid people do tend to fall under the trans umbrella. We have Loki, a supposedly genderfluid individual and masculine presenting, falling head over heels in love with a feminine presenting version of himself. Maybe it’s just me, but it just seems like a form of autogynephilia to me.

Way to go, Kate...you just gave the TERFs more ammo.

One more note: At one point, Kate tweeted a list of the different Loki emojis, and “jokingly” included #FiretruckLoki with an emoji of a firetruck. Kate, you do realize that a “joke” transphobes love to harp on is that they can identify as an attack helicopter, right?

It’s his way of learning self-love!

That is not how you learn self-love.

First, the people who are making this argument often contradict themselves by then saying that Sylvie is a different person. Again, make up your minds. Either Sylvie is the same person as Loki, or she’s not. You can’t have it both ways, and you can’t continue to change the narrative to fit whatever it is you want to shove down the audience’s throats.

Second, romantic love and self-love are two different things entirely. Loki isn’t feeling self-love with Sylvie, he’s feeling romantic love. That’s not learning self-love. That's narcissism, and it’s character regression in his case. He’s supposed to be evolving past being a self-centered, egotistical shitweasel, and falling in love with a variant of himself makes him, as Mobius put it, “a seismic narcissist”. It’s not character development.

Third, this argument tends to come in the same breath as saying that Loki is a narcissist so of course he would fall for a variant of himself. If Loki is a narcissist though, why would he need to learn self-love? Narcissists already love themselves, that is the very definition of the word. If Loki needs to learn self-love, that would imply that he actually hates himself, which is the opposite of narcissism. Again, the writers and the fans who make these arguments when they feel the need to defend this relationship need to make up their minds. Either he’s a narcissist and therefore already loves himself too much, or he hates himself and needs to learn to love himself. It’s once again changing the narrative to fill a plothole.

Fourth, the whole learning self-love and trust narrative is completely thrown out the window in Episode 6 when Sylvie decides to toy with Loki’s emotions, using his feelings for her against him by kissing him as a distraction so she could grab Kang’s temp pad and toss Loki back to the TVA. To Sylvie, her revenge was more important than the bond she had with him. The move basically set Loki’s progress back several steps. What little progress he made anyway.

TL:DR, is there hope for Season 2?

Whew, this went on for a while, didn’t it? Told you I had a lot to say.

As I have said, if you liked the first season of Loki and think I am completely full of shit, that’s fine and it’s your prerogative. More power to you.

But, and this is a huge but, that does not give you the right to harass and bully people who did not like it.

I have witnessed horrible things from both sides of the now split Loki fandom on social media. Harassment and even death threats towards the creators. Telling people who don’t like the Loki and Sylvie relationship that they need to drink bleach. Homophobic attacks. Gatekeeping.

There’s constructive criticism and sharing your opinions, and then there is...this.

Both sides need to chill.

Anyway.

Even though Kate Herron has left the show, Michael Waldron is still the showrunner and as such I am not altogether optimistic for Season 2. I would like to see more emphasis on Loki himself for that season. Yes, it’s a novel thought, wanting a show that is called Loki to actually be about Loki, but here we are.

I would like to see actual character development in Loki rather than the old “true love transforms bad boy and conquers all” trope. There is a reason Disney has started to abandon that trope in their animated movies. They’ve been getting dragged about it for decades.

If Sylvie must return, there needs to be some actual consistency surrounding her character. The show needs to decide if she is a Loki or not and stick with whichever one they decide. And seriously, no more romance. Frankly, after what she pulled in Episode 6, I will be severely disappointed if the writers have Loki crawling back to her. That would make him pathetic, and Loki deserves better.

Really, Loki does not need a romance, period. He’s too emotionally immature, he has a lot of character growth to go through, and a romance would do nothing but be a distraction and an impediment to that growth. Anyone who got married too young can confirm that it is important to learn more about yourself and figure yourself out before you even think of getting involved with another person, who should not be your whole world. The Loki and Sylvie romance was reminding me of Classic Disney in another not-good way in that the two of them, especially on Loki’s side, were starting to revolve around one another and that does not make for a healthy relationship. Again, turning Loki into a Disney Prince (or, seeing as how he’s supposed to be genderfluid, Princess). Stop it.

Again, the romance was a smokescreen. It was a distraction from just how thin the plot was. Please, for the love of G-d, give more focus to the actual plot.

Do some research and talk to some psychologists for healthy ways Loki can “learn self-love" and develop as a character. If Ragnarok Loki can do it without relying on a romance with a variant with himself, then surely TVA Loki can pull it off.

Speaking of talking to people, listen to the concerns of the trans and genderfluid fans. Listen, talk to them, maybe get a couple in the writer’s room. CIS people should not write genderfluid people, and this season is a good example of why.

Please remember that Loki is not an idiot. Yes, he has pulled some fast ones and hasn’t been the greatest planner, but he is not downright stupid like he was in season 1.

And...really that’s all I have. As I have said, this thesis really wasn’t about making suggestions to the creators because I seriously doubt they will ever even see this. This was more less me screaming into the void, venting because I was that upset about what I saw as character assassination happening to one of my favorite characters. Keeping all of this in was proving to be bad for my blood pressure.

I am attached to the character, have been for years. Loki is just one character in the MCU who I love, who I want to see done right. I had been looking forward to his solo series for a very long time, and the disappointment I felt was something that I just couldn’t keep in. I kept my mouth shut when they killed off Tony Stark for no reason other than that Ronnie Downey, Jr. didn't want to renew his contract. I didn’t say anything at the Russo Brothers’ “happy ending” for Steve Rogers, even though I feel it made no sense and is a massive plot hole.

What they did to Loki, however...I couldn’t keep silent.

#loki series negativity #anti sylki

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monkey-network · 3 years

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The Odyssey of Spongebob Squarepants

A lot can happen as you grow up. Your tastes will change, you will have more responsibilities, and unless you can literally live under a rock, you can’t turn things back for yourself. So... after over 20 years, when the time keeps going in spite of yourself, does your past evolve and how should you feel about it? Spongebob Squarepants is a show so many have noted as the greatest of all time, but has grown to not be wholly beloved as its later years have not been as well received as it’s golden era. But I’m one to think: how has Spongebob evolved over time? What of this show makes it the greatest in my eyes despite thinking more about those vaunted first three seasons with its movie? Well, let’s roll back...

Back to the Past, To Remember Episodes that Sucked Ass

Despite what some may say, I don’t believe season 4 and 5 was where Spongebob started losing its mojo. There were definitely stinkers like Good Neighbors and Driven to Tears but the good ones definitely outweighed the bad. Not like the quality Golden Era didn’t have its duds, I really don’t like I’m With Stupid, Party Pooper Pants, and Spongeguard on Duty. Season 6 is where I say things surely falter, where for a good amount of time more episodes became unpleasant in retrospect. I noticed it’s more season 6 through 8 that people really take issue with. The Splinter, Boating Buddies, Pet Sitter Pat, the many we call the worst are some good time after the first movie. The first movie came out in 2004, season 6 was spring 2008 so it’s fair to say we had a grace period.

But it begs the bucking question: why did Spongebob stop being good? Numerous people have tried wrapping their heads around the decline citing reasons from flanderization, creative fallout and changes. Emplemon believed in his Spongebob video that the spirit of what connected the show to adults was severed due to merely become a cartoon for children, especially when Spongebob and Squidward’s dichotomy as adults was broken in later seasons. But you know what? I think I truly have the answer. It’s not so much production wise, but it certainly explains the many differing bad episodes that many have covered. It explains why I don’t like Sponge on the Run but we’ll get to that later. But a truth I’ve noticed, remembering and looking at Spongebob in its seperated eras is one I haven’t seen anybody talk about when it comes to why it could be considered bad:

The Plot Drives the Characters Too Much

The greatest episodes of Spongebob, I’m talking Band Geeks, Pizza Delivery, Ripped Pants, Chocolate w/ Nuts, Karate Choppers, etc., don’t have the premise take over the characters. Meanwhile the worst episodes always have the plot push the characters in noticeably different directions because it demands it. Spongebob is strictly a character based cartoon, and when you have episodes that, while can appear fitting on paper, force the cast to be somebody they’re not, people aren’t gonna be on board. Take the episode A Pal for Gary where Spongebob gets Gary a new pet that dangerously hates other pets only for him to be completely ignorant of Gary’s pleas and blames him in the end for banishing the monstrous Puffy Fluffy away. Reasonably, Spongebob is very much the asshole but unfortunately has to or else the plot would need to be seriously reworked. We can chock it up to poor direction but this is indeed a common occurrence for when Spongebob gets bad, not just in post first movie era. I’m With Stupid is a great classic era example where yeah, Patrick becomes an ignorant jerk but on paper, it works with the plot of him trying to please his parents. It does the job at the visible cost of the characters. We generally say the characters are bad but I’ve hardly seen people say the plots are bad like Family Guy where, despite also being character focused, the plots they have can go off the rails in favor of trying to get laughs and the sake of a status quo. The highlight of this problem lies with the coined ‘Squidward Torture Porn’

Squidward Tentacles can be a jerk. A real cynic, a character that’ll gladly try to bring down Spongebob’s childlike wonder in favor of giving him a dose of reality. The most memorable episodes of him are where him and Spongebob are in the same situation but have their clash of outlooks, with Squidward ultimately understanding Spongebob’s POV enough to have a moment of genuine happiness or a modest bit of karma. He’s indeed the most important character because adults grow to see where he’s coming from but at the same time wants to be on Spongebob’s side. The best provide Squidward the chance to understand differently and potentially enjoy a new perspective. The worst punishes him for simply wanting to live.

The plots of the worst Squidward episodes have Spongebob and/or Patrick actively antagonize Squidward because on paper, it makes sense to make someone like Squidward the punching bag like Elmer Fudd to Bugs Bunny or an egotistical asshole to the Warner Siblings from Animaniacs. But in the effort to do so, they never give Squidward the chance to fight back. It’s like they took the whole “No One Wants to be a Squidward” line and utilized that to make him the go to for misery based comedy without giving him any upside. Cephalopod Lodge, Good Neighbors, Choir Boys are stories designed around Spongebob ruining Squid’s life because... what? He doesn’t want Spongebob to be around every time of day? As a child, it can be some fun just seeing Squid get punished but for an adult, it can definitely be a turn-off. Some people see themselves in Squidward, for better or worse, so what’s it to them when Squidward is basically forced to suffer for no reason other than the plot demands it? Later stories give Squidward far more of a break, even some successes, but the idea of making him the butt of life’s joke is still leftover from the episodes that called for him to casually suffer.

The worst plots of the show can be the safest, the simplest, and pretty predictable because unlike the best where the characters are just allowed to make things happen, the story has to contain the characters in a way that’s fitting to who they can be but notably sacrifices who they were before. Why they got made is very up in the air, I’d have to listen to a ton of commentary to potentially pick that apart and I don’t have that much time.

But it doesn’t the change the fact that the plots were never what made Spongebob good. And it doesn’t mean all those bad episodes make for bad seasons either. We could say there was a decline but that would mean giving up on the show merely because it lost it’s footing with more bad episodes than good for a few seasons. Because I believe 4 to 5 years after season 6, things got back on track even if things weren’t exactly the same.

Return to Form, Change in Energy

I don’t believe that Stephen Hillenburg’s departure was what proposed the decline, I’d say the show never really declined, just had some real potholes within three particular seasons. But I say it’s clear that the direction of the show shifted because you gotta understand, with or without Stephen the show has to be unique, has to have fresh ideas in the midst of potential competition despite being the most popular of the network. Even the trusted of Hillenburg’s team might’ve figured Spongebob couldn’t make lightning strike so rough patches might be expected. This is where Spongebob’s 2nd film, Sponge Out Of Water comes in.

I wasn’t as into this film with my first watch. I know it wouldn’t compare to the first film, but things felt segmented to where it hardly felt like a structured movie. Going back to it again, it kinda showed how Spongebob was going to evolve as a series. A lot of Sponge Out of Water lies in the characters getting into a more chaotic adventure than before. Spongey’s dream sequence, the whole Mad Max apocalypse, inter-dimensional dolphins, really told that the show post 2nd film would follow in its footsteps both in the stories and in animation.

It’s to say the golden era of Spongebob was more... grounded with itself. The charm of the characters was what made the plots unpredictable in nature but mostly not to a visible extent. Idiot Box, one of the greatest episodes, literally have moments where we see nothing but a box but the episode’s carried by the performances. Modern Spongebob, post 2nd movie, started to run all over the place. That’s not a bad thing but clearly a change of pace. I think it’s befitting to say the modern era got more cartoon-y where it’s way more expressive and the plots themselves go in unpredictable places in a way that all feels refreshing. It’s not the same as before, but well enough in it’s own time. It’s like Teen Titans ‘03 vs Teen Titans GO! The two have their clearly different tones but they’re appealing in their own way, only Spongebob isn’t trying to poke fun at its older audience like a snarky ass motherfu-

That is the thing as well that I haven’t seen many people consider when it comes to the modern era: it always tries to be fun. I can say an episode’s bad, but there are times where a bad Spongebob episode was enjoyable at least. It isn’t like modern Simpsons where you could tell they’ve been running out of steam and you’d just wish it died. It feels like the staff were given some time and space to make Spongebob back into as intended, even when most moments aren’t as strong or memorable as before. It can appear as just another cartoon for children but it never felt like it wasn’t Spongebob anymore, especially after the 2nd film and with Stephen Hillenburg’s consulting return. Unfortunately, only after a few more years is where say Spongebob’s going in a direction that I’m admittedly not fond off. It isn’t on par with The Simpsons, but it’s not as comfortable a fate.

A Spongebob Cinematic Universe

I enjoyed Sponge on the Run, but I don’t like it what it stands for. Many say it’s a poor backdoor for the spin-off Kamp Koral and I can’t help but agree. I’m not speaking for Stephen’s behalf nor will I shame everyone who comes to love this mini-series when it comes out, but I can definitely see where he was coming from with his abstain of spin-offs. Spongebob is a show that works, always worked, on its own. It has many characters that, to this day, they’re bouncing with to create new adventures and jokes. Now, I’m actually okay with giving some spin-offs revolving around the other characters; a show for Squidward would be hype as all hell.

But Kamp Koral, by extension Sponge on the Run, feels less like a creator’s passion and more like a marketed decision. The fact that they scrapped a potential alien cat invasion movie all for a visually pleasing yet heavily derivative story tells quite a bit. It’s a movie that, compared to the previous, is just hitting certain beats; the plot again driving the characters instead of the other way around which leads to really off-putting moments. There’s fun to be had, but it feels superficial. And while I don’t think this’ll affect the next generation of Spongebob, the most recent episodes are good, but I have a bad feeling that it’ll be morphed into something Stephen genuinely didn’t want for the series and they do it because regardless of what the fans don’t want, they truly own the show now.

I was okay with Spongebob having its merchandise and a Broadway musical because the show helped make them work. After seeing SCOOB! and countless talks of making cinematic universes thanks not only to the MCU but stuff like Spider-Verse and Lego Movie though, it’s starting to feel more like an corporate sanctioned omen that I fear too much becoming a reality. But really, it begs one more question...

What Do I See in Spongebob?

I’ve said this when talking about the 1st Spongebob movie: “[It] works so well was because, speaking for adults, it is about embracing the you that you love as opposed to trying to be someone you aren't. You can grow up for taking that journey, but you don't have to be grown up all the time.” Even with its not so great history, Spongebob personally never comes off as a show that’s lost its identity. If there’s anything learned from the likes of Steven Universe and Family Guy, yeah, it’s that bad episodes or changes in tone doesn’t make for a buried series. Vast majority will definitely notice the difference between classic and modern Spongebob, but I don’t believe they’ll say it isn’t Spongebob anymore. I keep bringing it up, but it doesn’t feel like the Simpsons where you notice the burnout, the age of its existence in the late late seasons. Not that Viacom/Nickelodeon won’t hesitate the same fate because they can be fucking scum, but otherwise the show has run out of steam yet.

What mostly concerns me though is that the charm of the show falls by the wayside with trying to expand it outside the show. Bog down the love by making unnecessary spin-offs that try to do what fanworks like the Spongebob Anime do for the hell of it in order to retain that all age appeal. They’ll feel like memes that age horrifically the moment it’s trending on Twitter. Again I don’t wanna speak over Stephen Hillenburg’s behalf but it feels like Nickelodeon gets potentially too ambitious with something that should be simple enough at the same time. We got some good hype back thanks to the Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated, but that only could boost our spirits so far this year.

To me, Spongebob was certainly a game changer and now, while still popular, it is very much among the crowd. It’s not a show we’re worrying about compared to stuff like Infinity Train, Glitch Techs, the Animaniacs reboot, Primal, shows that are continually changing the metagame in what people want for a cartoon. We might notice stand out moments and we’ll continue making memes, but it’s fair to say we aren’t as invested in Spongebob socially as back then when, as I remember, new episodes or specials felt like an event and it was considered the best out here in our friend circles. Now when we say it’s the best, it’s asterisked. Many love Spongebob Squarepants, but notably aren’t too keen with all of it nowadays.

But to truly conclude, I say for everyone who reads all of this, 1st thank you, and secondly to give modern Spongebob a chance. I can’t recommend Sponge On the Run but these later seasons (nine to recently) actually feel like the show cleaned up itself after many touted that bad episode era was what made Spongebob fall. I don’t believe the show’s fallen because I shouldn’t have expected this show to be flawless. Not every episode’s a hit, but there is not only still good variety but episodes that feel right at home. Mimic Madness, Boo-kini Bottom, Squid Noir, Moving Bubble Bass, One Trick Sponge, and any episode with Plankton are actual joys to see and rewatch if I’m in the mood. The episode premieres are all over the place nowadays but it feels like the crew are given their time at least. And I think this is the path is where I’m content with about Spongebob: it just gets to be a cartoon.

I see so many people try to prop up shows as more than meets the eye. I mention Infinity Train and Steven Universe as the new game changers but I hardly see people just recommend shows that are simple, clean, knows what they are without trying to be anything more premise wise. We just get some quality entertainment with characters we’ve come to know, just for the sake of it. We get a cartoon in its bare essence. Spongebob gets to do its thing like it always has these past 20 years and I’m grateful for that. I’ve seen a variety of shows, but Spongebob always felt like a show worth sticking with even when I feel I’ve “outgrown” it. Not because I want to regress in growth, but as an adult I see now why Spongebob worked so well as it did and why it’s worth sticking with. Even after everything, the show’s made it it’s sole passage to provide us the core reason why we love Spongebob: the show always wanted to love itself for what it was as Spongebob Squarepants always loved to be himself.

And there will never ever be another show like it.

#spongebob squarepants #spongebob #sb #sbsp #stephen hillenburg #nickelodeon #cartoons #animation #analysis #meta #reviews #long post #Good Stuff

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