#returning to this blog after like 3 years of no posts to be petty

[saltyseasofcomplaints]

This probably sounds petty but I hope Hogwarts legacy flops and it's a buggy unplayable mess.

#anti harry potter #anti jk rowling #anti hogwarts legacy #returning to this blog after like 3 years of no posts to be petty

[foxgloveprincess]

Pairing: Andy Barber x Female Reader [Second Person Narrator]

Summary: You’re getting over your illness, but, then, there’s still Andy.

Word Count: 2,034

Attic Wives Anonymous Masterlist

Warnings: Dark, Dub Con (Cunnilingus, Vaginal Sex), Manhandling, Slapping, Biting, Scratching, mild Blood, implied Kidnapping, Basement Wife Trope, Possessiveness, Illness (recovery), Swearing/Cursing, Pet Names (honey, sweetheart, etc.). Minors do not interact (18+).

A/N: This has been sitting in my drafts for far too long. Hope ya’ll enjoy!

I love feedback, so go ahead and reblog if you want. However, I give no permission to copy, translate, rewrite or post my work on any third party website or app. Seeing my work posted anywhere beside my blog, my library blog, or my AO3 account (FoxglovePrincess) means it’s been stolen/plagiarized.

I don’t do tag lists, so follow @foxglovefics to sign up for notifications on my fics. 

This is unBeta’d, so all mistakes are my own.

Please DO NOT click ‘Keep Reading’ if you are not 18+ years of age or if you are uncomfortable with the pairing, themes, dynamics, or warnings. You are responsible for your own media consumption. Thank you!

“Your lymph nodes certainly seem to be doing better,” the doctor says, fingers gently prodding the sides of your neck. They retreat and he grabs a pen light from his pocket. “Let me see that throat, open wide, tongue out.”

You comply with the directions, letting him examine you. Rage filling your head as your eye catches the man standing in the corner with his arms crossed, keenly observant. 

“Your fever’s gone down, too?” 

“Yes,” you reply, “I’ve been a lot better the last few days.” 

The doctor smiles and presses the back of his hand to your forehead. “That’s good, very good.” After tucking away his light, he leans back in his chair to take a long look at the rest of you. “When’s the last time you had a pelvic exam?” 

“Oh.” Mildly stunned by the question, you can’t remember. Thinking hard, you begin to count back the weeks as best you can—captivity not entirely conducive with nailing down timelines. 

“Don’t even think about it, Rogers.” 

Andy steps out of the corner and puffs himself up in a challenge. Your eyes roll. Dr. Rogers stands, though, with his hands held up in surrender. 

“I’m just concerned about your wife’s health.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” Andy bites back. 

The doctor packs his few things back into his bag and stands. “Whatever you say, Barber.” A smirk plucks at his lips. “But she will need to be checked eventually.”

Andy gestures toward the door, following the doctor out. You sneak toward the door, waiting until it closes to press your cheek against it. Beep, click, click, click. Just like all the other times. 

You roll your neck back and wander around your room until you find your couch once again. Flopping back, you stare at the ceiling, raising your hand to look at the diamond ring sparkling on your finger. 3 carats, and brilliant. 

The door opens and closes once again, signaling Andy’s return to the room. You don’t acknowledge him. Consumed by thoughts as your ring glints down at you. 

His footsteps approach and his hand weaves with yours. You snarl. 

“Dr. Rogers said he’s pleased with your improvement,” he says while placing a kiss to the back of your hand. You hum. Fingers bend and flex, trying to wriggle away from his grip. “He’ll keep asking about the pelvic exam, though.”

“It’s important,” you reply. 

“That’s true.” Andy releases your hand only to cup your cheeks. “But Dr. Rogers has some particular tastes when it comes to his patients.” He smiles down at you. Your eye catches the silver of the ring on his left hand. “I’m glad I could spare you from that.” 

With little thought, you snap at the hand cradling your face. He doesn’t flinch. Letting your teeth sink into the meat of his thumb. 

He hisses and drops to his knees. Breathing heavy and watching you. Your nostrils flare with renewed rage—his delusions curtailing your petty acts of vengeance. It grits against your gnarled insides. Needing to cause pain, to punish him. 

Your teeth release his flesh, indented marks throbbing red on his skin. Not enough pressure to break it—this time. 

“God, honey,” Andy sighs. “You’re so strong.” From his position on his knees, he lifts so he might level your gazes and slant his lips to yours. 

His greedy kiss consumes you. You both fight. His bid for dominance easily bowing to your fury despite his urgent hunger. You nip at his lip until you taste blood and raise your hand to collar his throat. You shove him away with both your hand and your knee, placed against his chest to keep him at bay. 

He retreats but keeps his eyes on you. You stare back, wondering how you’ve got to this point. When before he seemed so eager to control you. To sit before you, now, more eager for your disdain, simply because a ring sits on your finger. 

Your hand darts out to grasp at his fluffy hair, tilting his head to the side at an uncomfortable angle. 

“You’re only like this now because I’m your wife, aren’t you?” 

He shudders at the question. Two words in particular. His eyes shine up at you, enamored. 

“And all before you were ready to push me around, treat me like I was scum beneath your foot.” You click your teeth and toss him away from you. 

He rocks back on his legs but doesn’t fall. “You wouldn’t have me before.” His eyes stay dropped to the floor. “I had to make you see that it would be better to marry me.” 

“By taking advantage of my weakened state and your strength, by threatening me,” you spit. 

“I’ve been better now,” he counters, “since you signed our marriage certificate and it’s been made official. I’ve been better, haven’t I?”

His chest heaves with deep breaths. The glint of desire in his eye still shines bright. He restrains himself as you think. The first few buttons of his shirt hang undone, showing a peek of his white undershirt. 

“But you still won’t let me out of here,” you accuse. 

“No.” 

Watching him watch you, wait for you, you think it might not be so bad. To have the plentiful opportunities to grind him down. Until he’s just like the husk you became down in that basement. Until he begs for your mercy. You sneer and cross your legs. 

“Fuck you,” you bite. “You stole me from my life on a whim.” You scoff and roll your eyes. “You don’t even care about me, just the idea you have of your perfect wife.” 

“You’re my perfect wife.” 

The slap rings loud in the quiet room. Both of you shocked by the impact of your hand against his cheek. 

Andy blinks, eyes blowing out with lust. You swallow down trepidation but keep the steely look of contempt on your face. You stand, towering over him. 

“You’re pathetic,” you say, every ounce of disdain and disgust lacing the words. 

A dark look, born of frustration rather than lust, washes over his features. He meets your eye with a scowl. 

“No, I’m not.” 

You scoff and turn away from him. Walking toward your bathroom, just to put a door between you and the electric current of hatred that tickles at your core. You’ve had enough. 

Your hand falls to the doorknob, turning it to unlatch the bathroom door, but hands land on you first. Spinning you and pinning your body to the wood. 

“Don’t walk away from me,” he demands, but through his bark, you see his desperation. Your eyes cleared from their fear to see the pitiful man to whom you’re legally bound. The challenge he sets stirring something more than hatred in you. 

“Fuck yo—”

He cuts you off with a kiss, hands grasping at the side of your head to keep you in place. You grab at the front of his shirt, clawing across his chest. Buttons pop open. More of his undershirt revealed. Your fingers bunch and tear at the fabric. A fight between you two. You grunt against his mouth, your kiss all teeth and tongue. Sloppy and frantic and combative. 

He trails his lips down your neck, lowering to his knees. Your hands sink into his hair, hoping to keep him from his goal. But once set on it, he won’t be deterred. He lunges for your thighs, slotting his shoulders between them and forcing you into a lean. 

He rips at your clothes, not in anger but passion. One moment too long to keep him from you. 

Standing bare from the waist down, you continue to push him away. Lifting your knee to knock him aside, but he simply clings to it. Under his strength, you’re pinned to the door and open before him to sup. 

“Andy,” you protest, hands pushing at his forehead, “jeez, just stop it.”

His tongue swipes through your folds. Your breath hitches and he hears it, the vibrations of his chuckle rolling against you. He peeks up from between your thighs. 

“I’m sorry, honey,” he says, not sorry at all, “I can’t help it.” Another swipe and flick to your clit. His fingers pet your folds, parting them for easier access to the most sensitive parts of you. “Let me make you feel good.” 

You can’t surrender now, not when he wants it. Even when he does that thing with his tongue that makes your toes curl and his beard scratches just right on your upper thighs. You grit your teeth. No, no way can you let him know how he affects you. His fingers and tongue work in tandem to bring you over the edge, your legs trembling under your weight and threatening to collapse. Your nails bite into his scalp. He flinches with the pain, but continues his pursuit again and again. 

His body and the door are all that keep you standing. Your legs jelly from the endorphin rush of multiple orgasms, flesh tender and overstimulated. Though, that does not mean your so-called husband is done with you. 

He tugs and pushes you to your bed, messing your sheets with the flop of your body. Rushing with the aftershocks of your high and boneless upon the sheets. 

While you languish in your sweat and the stickiness between your thighs, he strips. His button down and undershirt revealing the sculpted planes of his flesh. Kept up by a daily routine at the pool, his skin always smelling faintly of chlorine when he sees you in the evenings. Then his trousers. Pushed from his legs with his boxers to let his cock bob hard and leaking in the open air. 

Your lungs fill with air. Casting your gaze aside, refusing to give his delectable body one more moment of admiration. He knows how good he looks. You won’t pay him the compliment. 

“Come here, sweetheart,” he says, gathering you in his arms and positioning himself over you. Face to face. 

You huff a frustrated breath, but can’t find the strength to fight back. Not when you know how well his cock stretches you and makes you cum. It’s a perk you’ll be sore to miss once you get away from him. 

His cock slides in, too easily if anyone asked you. Then again, he made it his mission to have you cum on his tongue until you were dripping. You can’t entirely be blamed. 

The thrust of his hips fills you, a steady pace not too frantic or lazy. Just right to drag you to the edge of another climax. He moans in your ear, fingers digging into your hip and the bed’s duvet. 

Your muscles tense, waiting for that moment of release. Building and building inside you. Your nails sink into the skin of his back, scratching down. His hips jerk out of rhythm and he pants, stalling for a moment. 

“You can’t just do that to me, honey.” His eyes catch yours, adoration shining at you. “You gotta warn me if you wanna leave your mark. You know how much I love it.” 

You growl and glare, but he remains unfazed by it. He leans in to kiss you, a sweet peck accompanied by a dirty grind of his hips. You bite in response. Tasting blood on your tongue. His lip split beneath your teeth. 

He moans and bucks against you. Thrusting with need. You bite your own lip to stifle the moans of pleasure clawing up your throat. You break, shatter, keening a cry ripped from your chest. He cums a moment later with a shout and pulls out, splattering the folds of your sex with his spend. 

Your chests heave with your deep breaths, lungs expanding. Andy falls away from you and onto his back. Hand reaching up to comb through his hair. He licks his lip with a smirk. 

“You like marking me up, don’t you?” You don’t reply. Feigning the inability to form words. But, really, unsure whether the pleasure of punishing him mutates in the brief moments of bliss into something primal, claiming. It’s in these quiet moments of terror and receding pleasure where you wonder and dread.

#andy barber x reader #andy barber fanfic #andy barber fanfiction #dark #dark fic #kidnapping #tw kidnapping #yandere vibes #basement wife trope #attic wife trope #attic wives anonymous #dub con #tw dub con #18+ #minors dni

[wannab-urs]

Outtakes - Non-smut Vol 1

AO3 | Kofi | Main Masterlist | The Spreadsheet Masterlist | Vol 2

Hi friends! Sometimes we want fics that are SFW or we just want to make ourselves sad or we need a little pick me up. I'm here with a list of fics that have no (explicit) smut as of posting! They may have smutty thoughts or mild allusions to smut, but those are marked in the warnings!

I know, me, posting non-smut fics.... but they deserve love too! Note that while many of these are rated T, they are posted on blogs that are 18+ so MDNI <3

Summaries and tags are, in most cases, provided by the author - please be sure to read them as some of these fics may have content you do not wish to read.

Updated 2/22/2024

Whiskey, Dark and Deep - Jack - @prolix-yuy

Summary: In the short time you’ve known Jack Daniels, he’s disappointed you three times. Warnings: M, violence, blood, injuries, gunfights, so so so much yearning, full on cowboy tropes.

A bearable weight - Javi G - prolix-yuy

Summary: New Years Eve is the holiday of new beginnings, and you take a leap to see if Javi might be one of them. Story Warnings: T, plenty of sweetness, more ridiculousness because I can’t help myself, some lightly spicy kisses.

One Hundred and Fifty Seven - Din - @theidiotwhowritesthings

Summary: Din fakes his death for some reason. They leave reader behind thinking he’s dead. Months go by and he returns but reader is like super not okay. Say she’s been super into spice because then she can see Din when she’s high. Anyway, happy ending but loooots of angst please! Also, can it be a bit between him returning and reader being okay with him being back?” Warnings: angst with happy end, drug use, drug addiction, mentions of death, brief canon violence, self loathing, anxiety, self doubt, boba adopts reader b/c i couldn’t resist

Bullseye - Joel - @softlyspector

summary: You never learned how to shoot a gun, Joel insists on teaching you. warnings: tensionnnnn, flirting and ✨touching✨, fluff

In an instant - Joel - @mishasminion360

Summary: Happy Birthday, Joel Miller... Warnings: Um…..😳🙄 (ed. note: I hate to spoil the story, but since this list is intented to help people avoid triggers, I must; Major Character Death (reader), angst, loss of pregnancy)

It would be - Din - @fuckyeahdindjarin

Summary (aka prompt I gave myself): ‘It would be easier if you just married him.’ Warnings: angst, jealousy, fighting, pining, yearning, no use of Y/N

Just Keep Breathing - Javi P - @swiftispunk

Summary: javi finds it harder and harder to keep up with the more physical aspects of his job. reader offers him some love and words of comfort. warnings etc: BODY REPRESENTATION <3 (reader is described as having thicker thighs, a belly, and crow’s feet), smoking + smoking related health issues, hurt/comfort, back massages, fluff, angst, bein in ur 30s/40s, established relationship. probably bad spanish (please correct me). NO USE OF Y/N.

Every Pilot Needs a Wingman - Frankie - @kikis-writing-world

Summary: You have been pining quietly over your neighbor for months. He hasn’t noticed, but apparently his friend has… Warnings: Smutty thoughts - grey sweatpants should be their own warning. Fleeting mentions of masturbation and sex toys. Swearing. Santi gives the reader tips on how to impress/pick up Frankie, I don’t know if that might come off as shady or triggering to people so I want to mention that.

Bucket of Bolts - Din - @toxic-seduction

summary: The dad and the dog he didn't want but its Din Djarin and a BD unit. warnings: Din being mean to BD. Man is so petty its funny

A girl walks into a bookshop - Ezra - @oonajaeadira

Summary: Set a couple of years after the events of the film. Ezra owns a bookshop. You walk in. Warnings: The coziest, softest romance. They do work up to intimacy, but it is sequestered in it’s own chapter–the “Interlude”–which can be skipped without losing any of the story. 

Breathe Through It - Joel - @ezrasversion

Summary: you have a panic attack. Joel helps. Warnings: Descriptions of mental health conditions (namely PTSD, but can be read as any anxiety based disorder with panic attacks) / graphic description of a panic attack / some adult language/ references to past trauma (nothing explicitly described but inferred).

A kiss before dying and in death we combine - Joel - oonajaeadira

Summary: When Joel becomes infected, you make the decision not to leave him alone. Warnings: Blood and wounds. Bodily character death. Loss. Love that hurts. Sex of course, but blurred to the edges. Playing fast and loose with the cordyceps and how fast it grows.

102 - Frankie - @tieronecrush

summary: every week, you and frankie meet up at the same spot at the same time to catch-up and share a coffee. you’ve been his best friend for years. through thick and thin, always there. thing is, frankie’s been in love with you for nearly as long as he’s known you and hasn’t worked up the courage to tell you. warnings: no use of Y/N, post-film timeline, au where frankie doesn’t have a kid, use of pet names (solecita, mi mejor), high school level spanish (mostly swear words), unrequited love, self deprecation, alcohol use/drunkenness, smoking

Safe in my arms - Ezra - mishasminion360

Summary: Ezra harbors a secret hatred for his absent arm, but his feelings come to a head when his newly acquired handicap fails to do the one task he vowed never to fail in: keep you safe from harm. Warnings: Language; light angst; feelings of insecurity; body dysmorphia; brief allusions to smut; hurt/comfort; fluff.

Leave Off Your Wandering - Joel - oonajaeadira

Summary: An area native, long-term resident and shepherd in Jackson, you prefer quiet and isolation and the company of sheep. It seems this new resident Joel Miller and his young ward might share your interests. Warnings: M (possible canon violence and language. most likely non-explicit sex further down the line.) (ed. note; no smut as of chapter 2)

Peace - Joel - swiftispunk

summary: jackson era, post-tlou. you and joel discuss what it means to die. warnings: angst and fluff, discussions of death and dying, discussions of sex but nothing too explicit, age difference implied but not specified (joel is older than you but the number of years is not relevant), established relationship. NO USE OF Y/N.

This is me trying - Joel/Ellie platonic!! - swiftispunk

summary: jackson. a flashback on a film reel sparks a memory. joel tells ellie how it feels. warnings: angst, discussions of child loss, discussions of grief and death, ig fluff

Epiphany - Joel - @jksprincess10

Summary: Your new neighbor is a war veteran with a lot of scars. (1k words) Warnings: AU where Joel is in the military, age gap, PTSD, anxiety, insomnia, allusions to smut, suicidal thoughts, sad ending. Beware!! 

Significant - Din - softlyspector

Summary: Din has been calling you riduur for months. You finally find out what it means, and get a little more than you bargained for. Warnings: pining, absolute FOOLS in love, bit of grumpy x sunshine, lil angsty, possibly incorrect lore, fluff, lots of Mando'a (translations for the Mando'a at the end

A pile of cards - Javi P - @undercoverpena

summary: it’s become a tradition. he presents you with a birthday card so you can collect his words, while he collects the expressions you share as you read them. warnings: javi through the seasons, narcos season two/three spoilers. cute, fluff. happy ending.

Fire - Din - jksprincess10

Summary: None Warnings: fluff fluff fluff, mutual pining, idiots in love, this is pretty short, mando still has the crest, canon divergent.

Honeyed - Joel - softlyspector

Summary: You hate being touched, but you might be willing to put aside your discomfort for a tattoo from Joel. Warnings: slow build, no outbreak tattoo!au, reader has issues with touch and is mostly touch adverse, tattoos and getting tattooed (the reader only has one tattoo that is described in any detail), description of a past abusive relationship and a bad experience getting tattooed, insecurity, anxiety, loneliness, implied undefined past trauma with men, Joel gets to have both his daughters in this, you can decide if this is game joel or show joel

The Art of Healing - Marcus Pike - @northernbluess

Summary: Marcus Pike was feeling lost—unfulfilled and unmoored. After a failed marriage, heartbreak courtesy of his ex-fiancée and relocating to D.C., Marcus knew that he needed more than the FBI. Seven years later, Marcus has traded in Special Agent for Doctor and is now a clinical psychologist specialising in art therapy. He combines his two loves of art and psychology, spurred on by his experience in art crimes, FBI psych courses and his own time in therapy. Josephine is referred to Dr Pike, having just been discharged from treatment for an eating disorder. While Dr Pike is fresh to his new career, he is knowledgeable, warm, kind and attentive. Over time, as she bares her soul to him, he falls for her and the bond between them ties both their heads in knots. As her therapist he knows it’s wrong but he begins to feel incapable of separating his feelings from his work. Before long neither can truly live without the other — if only she knew that. Warnings: (warnings will be specified in each individual chapter, however, please read these carefully) Art Therapist!Marcus Pike, eating disorder, therapy, mentions of disordered eating patterns, hurt/comfort, slow burn, lots of pining and tension, angst, age gap, strained familial relationships, so much softness and feelings, eventual smut (ed. note: no smut as of chapter 5 and worth the read up to that point)

The Man That I Love - Joel - @lumoverheaven

Summary: None (ed. note: Joel is an idiot who doesn't know what he has until he almost loses it). Warnings: None (ed. note: angst)

Not Strong Enough - Joel - @beskarandblasters

Summary: Fem!Reader and Joel are in an established relationship, having met shortly after the events in Kansas City. They’re living in Jackson, Wyoming together, post Salt Lake City with Ellie. Things are going well until an incident happens during patrol and Joel questions whether or not he’s good enough. Written in third person. Warnings: angst, feeling inadequate, canon types of violence, swearing, bar fight, Joel is an asshole :/

Halloween - Joel - beskarandblasters

Summary: You’re in a relationship with Joel and living with him and Ellie in Jackson, Wyoming. You met after their stop in Kansas City and started your relationship with Joel soon after. You stayed behind in Jackson when they left to find the Fireflies. When they came back from the events of Salt Lake City you noticed a change in Joel but whenever you question him he shuts down. Now it’s Halloween in Jackson and Joel has some confessions to make. Warnings: angst with a side of angst (I mean it’s Halloween what did you expect), Joel lying, swearing, drinking

Chinese Satellite - Joel - beskarandblasters

Summary: A look into your life after Joel dies and how you're coping Warnings: takes place after Joel goes golfing in the second game, nothing but pure angst, mentions of death, struggling with the ideas of religion, the afterlife, aliens and ghosts (I mean it's Chinese Satellite what did you expect), drinking, struggling with loss and grief, overexercising

Savior Complex - Joel - beskarandblasters

Summary: A few years after the events of Salt Lake City Joel finds the guilt of lying to Ellie eating him alive. The reader is torn between wanting to tell Ellie the truth but also making sure she gets to be a normal teenager. The reader finds herself struggling to keep the three of them afloat. Can be read as a standalone or a continuation of Halloween. Warnings: can be read as a gender neutral reader, angst with a side of angst, both Joel and reader suffer from savior complex lol, drinking, mentions of eating

Do You Love Me - Dieter - me

Summary: here is a fluffy (by my standards) little drabble in the A Ghost of You universe. Can be read standalone Warnings: There's just some kissing and no mentions of anything bad because I'd never do anything bad to D, would I?

Thunder Buddies - Joel - me

Summary: Joel comforting reader who is scared of thunderstorms Warnings: descriptions of a panic attack, Joel being adorable, cuddling, cuteness, a distinct lack of angst or smut - which is really weird coming from me.

Wash Day - Marcus P - @secretelephanttattoo

Summary: Some completely self-indulgent romantic fluff about Marcus Pike washing your hair. Warnings: none

Personal Best - Marcus P - secretelephanttattoo

Summary: This picture of Pedro holding a dog inspired me to write a fluffy meet-cute for Marcus Pike & Reader. I'm feeling 90s romantic comedy vibes, I don't know if I'll write anything more on this but we'll see if people like it. Warnings: none

Context and Perspective - Marcus M - @elvenmother

Summary: The newest member of the Heroics has gone missing and as one of the better-known Villains on the scene, you are blamed. Then your sidekick goes missing. You must go after the Heroic’s leader to try to get them back and clear your name. Warnings: Swearing, mentions of injuries, mentions of blood

A Very Furby Christmas - Joel - @proxima-writes

Summary: it’s christmas eve 1998 and joel miller thinks everything is perfect. well, until his brother admits he didn’t get sarah the one present she wanted - the furby. now, joel has to go out on christmas eve to find the year’s hottest toy that’s been sold out for months. turns out, you’re on the same mission. and you’ve both found the last furby in town. Warnings: pre-outbreak, no use of y/n, holiday/christmas fic, the last toy trope, no smut, age gap - not explicitly specified but joel is 31 and reader is mid-20s, the great miller gingerbread construction competition, operation get sarah miller a furby, some kissing.

The Haunting of Dieter Bravo - Dieter - @idolatrybarbie Summary: "ghosts aren't real, except when they are." Warnings: referenced substance abuse, mentions of alcohol, dieter is sober, one song-based joke (please get it plsplspls), reader is gender neutral, a good ol' haunting tale.

The Locksmith - The Thief - oonajaeadira

Summary: A Thief you’ve known for years and have conflicting feelings for brings you a gift. The gift is a not only a puzzle in itself, but part of a larger mystery, one only you can crack. Warnings: reader is an adult, reader is AFAB, no physical descriptions of reader

A Piece of Cake - Frankie - idolatrybarbie

Summary: It's been a long time since you've seen Frankie Morales. Warnings: Angst, discussion of addiction, mentions of cocaine, alcohol consumption, bowling

The Parents That Are Left - Joel - @frenchiereading

Summary: There weren't many patrol partners Joel Miller tolerated: his brother and Iris. On a cold January day, Joel pays her mother a visit and finds out you can bond over anything. Unfortunately. Warnings: canon-typical violence and language, heavy angst, talks/mentions/descriptions of death and dead bodies, heavy discussions/thoughts of feelings/grief/guilt, suicidal thoughts, alcohol consumption, Jackson-era Joel, no reader, no y/n, OFC, not a single ounce of romance

For the Love of Horror - Dieter - @coulsons-fullmetal-cellist

Summary: Dieter and you watch a scary movie. Warnings: No use of y/n, horror movies, euphemisms, fluff, suggestive language

Stages of Grief - Joel - @bonezone44

Summary: After a tense interaction with a family member who raised you when you were little, you spiral. Joel talks you through it. Warnings: Gender neutral reader, familial trauma, angst, grief, neglect, trauma, childhood emotional/physical abuse

The Riding Lesson - Jack - @bluestar22x

Summary: When you are hired at a ranch as a trail guide, the owner asks the foreman to teach you how to ride Western style. Warnings: Suggestive thoughts, sexual tension, equestrian terms

Frankie and Din - Frankie/Din - @avastrasposts

Summary: a one-shot with our favourite pilot, sweet Frankie and our favourite space boy, broody Din based on the line; "Go on then, space boy, fly this.” Warnings: none

Light Only Shows You Where the Shadow Are - Max Phillips - oonajaeadira

Summary: The only thing that can get rid of a minor jerk is a major jerk. Warnings: Non-consensual attention (not Max), stalker behavior (when there’s trouble, Max always seems to be watching from nearby), vampire violence.

It's always been you - Dieter - @alwaysmicado

Summary: After a year of dating Dieter Bravo, you are forced to face reality. All good things must come to an end, right? Warnings: angst, age gap (unspecified), swearing, brief mention of p in v sex, brief mention of disordered eating and suicide, mention of black eye, toxic relationship, drug use, reader's coping mechanisms are unhealthy

John Wayne - Joel - @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin

Summary: twenty years after the world ended, you find yourself face to face with Tommy Miller. The brother of the man who was your boyfriend at the time of the outbreak. Warnings: talk of attempted suicide, child loss, grief, angst

illicit affairs - Joel @chaotic-mystery

Summary: it’s my take on what illicit affairs means. Every time I listened to it I imagined Joel, specifically dbf Joel. I hope the swifties go *easy* on me and pls don’t say anything if you didn’t like it. Warnings: angst. And more angst. Swearing, forbidden relationship, arguing, fwb, alluded age gap but not specified. Use of nicknames (kid, baby……don’t look at me ok I didn’t do IT), reader is not physically described, no use of y/n.

Stay Close to Me - Jack - @alwaysbethewest

Summary: You're a rookie agent sent to work undercover with Jack as a married couple!Fake/undercover marriage! Statesman casefic! Warnings: A little romance, kissing, coarse language, very mild peril and hurt/comfort, and a splash of alcohol. Reader is a junior agent and has some muscle but otherwise no physical/age descriptions. As with any good Kingsman fic, my first step was to disregard half of canon, so this is either pre-movie or an AU.

To Know the Light - Din - @burntheedges

Summary: to go in the dark with a light is to know the light. Warnings: fluff, a teensy bit of angst, introspection, winter, food mention, reader has no description, gn!reader

O, Christmas Tree - Dieter - @covetyou

Summary: As PA to Dieter Bravo, you were used to the strange, unusual and downright weird. What you weren't used to was taking in a shipment of - what? And how many? Warnings: sex toys (so many butt plugs), Dieter being a menace to his PA, no smut, pure silliness.

In Fiction - Dieter - @sin-djarin

Summary: Dieter comes to bed. Warnings: Established relationship, mentions of self doubt, no physical description of reader, no dialogue, no use of y/n.

The Serpent Under It - Dave York - @brandyllyn

Summary: Dave is very good at his job Warnings: Canon typical violence. kinda dark yo, soulmate AU

I'll Leave a Light On For You - Max Phillips - oonajaeadira

Summary: Max has reservations when it comes to love, and for very good reasons. Warnings: Angst. Character death. Allusions to the atrocities of war and its lasting effects. Max is a vampire. Traumatic soul memory. Me assuming I know anything about French culture of the 1930s.

Cocoon - Joel - secretelephanttattoo

Summary: A short ode to Joel's coat. / a bath with Joel Warnings: Angst and intimacy. 1 reference to blood and allusion to canon typical violence (nothing is described)

Home - Frankie - @dancingtotuyo

Summary: Frankie always comes home to you. Warnings: fluff, angst, girl dad!frankie, recovering!Frankie, references to drug use, references to violence, trauma, healing.

Negotiations - Max Phillips - prolix-yuy

Summary: Max Phillips never found marketing to be all that helpful. Hell, running an ad on Facebook was easy enough. But then you walked in the door and he knew he had to have you, in all the ways he could. Warnings: T, descriptions of male and female bodies, some fantasizing and suggestive themes.

sweets for my sweet; sweets from my sweet - Ezra - @tinytinymenace

Summary: you are a cook at an exploration camp and one of the miners asks you about Earth and brings you a treat Warnings: Brief mentions of planet death (RIP Earth) and strained family dynamics but on balance this is soft.

Caught Kissing Santa - Dave York - @wildemaven

Summary: Alice saw you kissing Santa Claus Warnings: reader is married to Dave and stepmom to his kids, mentions of food and drinks, non-religious Christmas celebrations and Santa beliefs, alluding to sexy time but no smut, kissing, mentions reader is wearing pajama pants, fluff, soft Dave, one use of ‘good girl’.

Unwind - Dieter - @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin

Summary: Dieter helps you unwind when you get your period after an already long day. Warnings: established relationship, reader menstruates, drug use (marijuana), reference to past drug use, reference to bad horror movies, Dieter being our favorite trash panda, sweet, fluff, domesticity

One Night - Marcus P - secretelephantattoo

Summary: You get one night with Marcus Pike. Warnings: Implied/referenced smut but nothing is explicitly described. Smoking and alcohol. Angst because they only have one night together. Marcus is a flirty menace. House party nostalgia. Heavy petting in a stairwell

Lovesick - Joel - prolix-yuy

Summary: You've been greedy for Joel for too long. Warnings: descriptions of wound care and blood, allusions to dubcon due to drinking and drug use, no actual smut

---------------------------------

Happy Reading!

#fic recs #the spreadsheet digest #fanfiction recommendations #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro fics #pedro pascal character fanfiction #The spreadsheet Digest Outtakes

[davieswealthmanagement]

#1 For the Tax Record Keep Those Important Documents

For the Record Keep Those Important Documents Historically, The 1998 IRS Reform Act shifted the burden of proof from the taxpayer to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in certain situations. Does this mean that you can toss those records that have been taking up space in your office? Hardly. The rules will not apply if you cannot come up with the proper documentation. Here is a sample of some common records and how long they should be kept. You may keep these records in a condensed format (tape, computerized, etc.), but you will need to have the means necessary to reproduce a copy when called upon. See the points below to determine how long your documents should be saved: Keep Forever Audit reports of accountants. Capital stock records. Canceled checks for important payments (i.e., taxes, purchases of property, contracts). Contracts and leases in effect. Correspondence (legal and important matters only). Deeds, mortgages, and bills of sale. Financial statements. General and private ledgers. Insurance records, current accident reports, claims, policies, etc. Journals. Minute books of directors and stockholders, including by-laws and charter. Property records including costs, depreciation reserves, end-of-year trial balances, depreciation schedules, blueprints and plans, and property appraisals by outside appraisers. Tax returns and worksheets, revenue agents’ reports, and other documents relating to determination of income tax liability. Trade mark registrations. Keep At Least 7 Years Accident reports and claims (settled cases). Accounts payable ledgers and schedules. Accounts receivable ledgers and schedules. Canceled checks. Contracts and leases (expired). Expense analyses and distribution schedules. Inventories (products, materials, supplies). Invoices to customers. Invoices from vendors. Notes receivable ledgers and schedules. Payroll records and summaries, including payments to pensioners. Purchase orders (purchasing dept. copy). Sales records. Scrap and salvage records. Stock certificates (canceled). Subsidiary ledgers. Time books. Voucher registers and schedules. Vouchers for payments to vendors, employees, etc. (includes allowances and reimbursement of employees, officers for travel and entertainment expenses). Keep For 3 Years Correspondence (general). Employment applications and personnel records (after termination). Insurance policies (expired). Internal audit reports (minimum 3 years). Petty cash vouchers. Physical inventory tags. Keep For 1 Year Bank reconciliations and deposit slips. Correspondence (routing) with customers or vendors. Purchase orders (except purchasing department copy). Receiving sheets. Requisitions. Stockroom withdrawal forms. BOOK AN APPOINTMENT TODAY: https://calendly.com/tdwealth =========================================================== SEE ALL OUR LATEST BLOG POSTS: https://tdwealth.net/articles If you like the content, smash that like button! It tells YouTube you were here, and the Youtube algorithm will show the video to others who may be interested in content like this. So, please hit that LIKE button! Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChmBYECKIzlEBFDDDBu-UIg Contact me: [email protected] ==============  Get our FREE GUIDES  ================ Retirement Income: The Transition into Retirement: https://davieswealth.tdwealth.net/retirement-income-transition-into-retirement Beginner's Guide to Investing Basics: https://davieswealth.tdwealth.net/investing-basics LET’S GET SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaviesWealthManagement Twitter: https://twitter.com/TDWealthNet Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/daviesrthomas Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TdwealthNetWealthManagement Lat and Long 27.17404889406371, -80.24410438798957 Davies Wealth Management 684 SE Monterey Road Stuart, FL 34994 772-210-4031 https://TDWealth.Net     Read the full article

[kitcat992]

i’ve been ignoring cannon since civil war. endgame made my relationship with the MCU on thin ice, and NWH was the last straw.

there was still opportunity for irondad or avengers family after endgame, just a sprinkle, even if they couldn’t be together— pepper, rhodey, morgan, and peter together in scenes would have been amazing. grieving with other people who loved them as much as you do is one of the best way to heal! or peter taking up stark’s mantle … or something. someone like dr. strange helping out peter (strange…dad? dad strange?)

and then they had to go and wipe everyone’s minds. yeah, sorry, but that’s no bueno for me. i think i’m done with the mcu now. people just couldn’t get enough of the “classic spider-man” in other movies, comics, tv shows, and games and had to go and ruin tom hollands peter parker. none of my friends share this sentiment because i joined the mcu way after them, so they’re more attached to the “old plots” and refuse to see how maybe a new storyline is a good thing? especially if there’s already thousands of hours of content with classic spidey.

anyways, your blog is amazing and this is the first time I’ve seen people with the same opinions as me! i love your identity fics, I’ve been following them for over a year now! <3 they almost ruined other fanfic for me because after reading them nothing compared. :’) please ignore the people who say you’ve abandoned your fic. they obviously have no patience and have never waited years for an update to be grateful when an author posts :|

This is an amazing sentiment and I want the whole world to hear it.

Also, your friends being older MCU fans has nothing to do with this. I've been a Marvel fan since ages before the MCU and then since day 1 of the MCU. Sadly they've made far too many mistakes along the way to keep me as a fan. I keep giving them second chances but this is really the final straw for me. We had something new and original and finally took a step away from the "classic Spider-Man" (who I LOVE and ADORE, but as with all things I've grown tired of) and they decided that a couple whiny fanboys was enough to "return to form."

You notice how the MCU stopped being original and creative years ago? They follow the same movie formula, all the way down to the "serious moment/now insert joke" crap. The tone is always the same, the color grading is typically the same, the music is also very meh -- it's been this way for years.

Because they know it'll make money.

They make bank, no matter what.

That's Disney, for ya. 🙄

Anyway, love. Thank you SO much for your wonderfully kind and thoughtful comments! I love my Identity series and I can't wait to keep working on it. Pettiness and spite will fuel me to the end 😅

#anti mcu #antiendgame #marvel meta

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hey steph!! This might be a specific ask but could u like recommend me some fic thats like slow burn, unresolved sexual tension, and some bottomlock. And please please please let it be long so that it hits the sweet spot of satisfying your fic needs but also not stupidly long. Also I love your blog

Hi Lovely!!

AHHHH I’m glad you enjoy!! I try my best, LOL. 

AHH I’ve SO MANY slow burn fics, it’s ridiculous, and I do have separate lists for bottomlock, so I can direct you to those.... BUT I DON’T HAVE A LIST FOR MY U.S.T. FICS YES. So can I do that??? Please??? ANY EXCUSE TO START A NEW LIST :| Hee hee. Forgive me??? 

AND as per usual, all my fics are in word-count order, so you can start at the bottom and work your way up, hee hee. CHEERS!

As usual, add your own, friends!!

First, here’s the lists you asked for:

Love Confessions / Slow Burn / Dev. Rel. (Fluff Version)

Falling In Love / Slow Burn / Dev. Rel. || [MOBILE POST] (April 2019)

Platonics & Domestics Pt 2 / Hugs, Cuddles & Kisses Pt. 3 / Tooth-Rotting Fluff Pt. 5 / Love Confessions, Slow Burn & Dev. Rel. Pt. 2 / Established Relationship Pt. 3

Slow Burn / Dev. Rel. / Falling in Love Pt. 3 (Nov. 2019) 

Slow Burn / Dev Rel. Pt. 4 (Apr 2020)

Bottomlock (April 2019)

Bottomlock Pt 2

And now, check out my UST/URT list :)

UNRESOLVED SEXUAL / ROMANTIC TENSION

The Other Shoe by thewaitwasworthitlove - (NR, 1,053 w., 1 Ch. || Pining Sherlock, Angst, URT, Post-TSo3) - Sherlock realizes how deep in love he has fallen for John. Only Sherlock Holmes would manage to be more shattered than crystal dropped on concrete.

Clarity by socomessnow (thoughtfulwishing) (NR, 1,283 w., 1 Ch. || Post-HLV, POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Tarmac Scene, Stream of Consciousness, URT, First Person Present Tense, Implied/Referenced Drug Use) - During-and-post-HLV piece tracking Sherlock’s thought process from his phone call with Mycroft to his return to the airfield. Part 1 of Rifts

Untouchable by greengrapegaze (T, 1,368 w., 1 Ch. || Pre-S3, UST/URT, Oblivious John, Lonely Sherlock, Angst with Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Emotional Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock) – “He never would. Petty, childish, immature-bitter. Jealous. She had all that he wanted. All he could never have.” Part 1 of Steps to a Bittersweet Symphony

Love Hurts by Grac3 (T, 2,215 w., 1 Ch. || Magical Realism, Pining Sherlock, One-Sided Pining / URT, Sherlock / John Whump, Angst, Ambiguous Ending) – In a world where someone's physical injuries manifest themselves on the person who is in love with them, John didn't think that there would ever be anyone who was willing to risk falling in love with him - until he got shot on a case, and it didn't hurt. Unrequited Johnlock.

The Dance Lesson by bittergreens (G, 4,596 w., 1 Ch. || TSo3 Missing Scene, Dancing, Pining Sherlock, URT/UST, Romance, Angst, POV John) – Sherlock teaches John to dip. Part 1 of Goodnight, Vienna

There's Something Living in These Lines by teahigh (orphan_account) (M, 4,676 w., 1 Ch. || Mutual Pining, Love Letters, Angst, Mutual Pining, UST / URT, Dirty Talk) – Two men, complete opposites in almost every way, who speak only in letters and pages torn from books.

You Can't Always Get What You Want by hubblegleeflower (E, 4,804 w., 1 Ch. || Pining, Sexual Tension, UST / RST, First Time) – John wants. He always has, but now that he's living with Sherlock again, it's all he can do to hold it back. And Sherlock isn't helping...

Wasted Hours by songlin (E, 4,973 w., 1 Ch. || Omegaverse || O!John/A!Sherlock, Pining, UST, Angst & Porn) – John is respectful. John keeps his distance. He doesn’t look at Sherlock when Sherlock decides trousers are for dull people. He doesn’t breathe in and savor it when Sherlock flings himself onto the couch first thing in the morning, wafting alpha scent, dressing gown settling around him in a cloud of blue silk. He doesn’t linger when he’s piecing Sherlock back together after a fight, even though he’s half-dressed and beautiful and right there. He can ignore it. He can control it.

Captain John Watson, Genetics, and Other Crazy Things by cyerus (M, 5,581 w., 1 Ch. || Torchwood Crossover ||  Humour / Crack, Jealous Sherlock, Sexual Magnet John, Captain John, UST / RST, Three Continents Watson) – The explanation for John "Three Continents" Watson? Jack Harkness is his father. Sherlock doesn't know whether he's going to die from jealousy or sexual frustration first.

No Light, No Light (in your bright blue eyes) by orphan_account (G, 5,915 w., 1 Ch. || Angst, Pining, Songfic, Mutual Unrequited Love, Unresolved Tension, UST/URT) – Relates to both Sherlock's and John's feelings for each other and highlights select moments of hurt and inner turmoil starting from right before the fall all the way to HLV.

Drawstring by May_Shepard (E, 7,412 w., 1 Ch. || Post S3/TAB, Friends to Lovers, UST/RST, Fluff and Smut, Post-TAB, John POV, Sherlock’s Pyjamas, Rimming, Wanking) – John is bothered by Sherlock’s slowly-falling jim-jams… as in hot and bothered and he is trying to deal with a sexy dishevelled Sherlock while also keeping his pining in check.

High and Tight, Soft and Loose by cwb (E, 7,429 w., 1 Ch. || Jealous John, Miscommunications / Misunderstandings, First Kiss / Time, BAMF John, Insecure Sherlock, Clueless Sherlock, POV John, Embarrassed John, Adorable Sherlock, Junk Size, UST / RST) – John pressed the knuckle of his index finger against his mouth and sighed. “So, you're coiled like a spring and ready to be ... sprung?” “If you want to be pedestrian about it, yes.” “Like I said, you should do something about that.” “And like I said, pedestrian. What would you have me do? Take up jogging? Yoga? Oh! Unless you mean –” “I don't mean anything. Let’s drop it.”

Alone On the Water by Mad_Lori (G, 7,725 w., 1 Ch. || MCD, UST/URT, Angst, Euthanasia, Love Confessions) – Sherlock Holmes never expected to live a long life, but he never imagined that it would end like this.

All the Times Something ALMOST Happened by allonsys_girl (T, 9,049 w., 6 Ch. || POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Canon Compliant, Angst, Friendship/Love, UST) – John and Sherlock dancing around what they dance around in canon.

Someone I Love by hudders-and-hiddles (M, 10,002 w., 2 Ch. || Canon Compliant, HLV-Filler Fic, Pre-Slash, Jealous John, PIning Sherlock, Angst & Fluff, UST/URT, Dog Tags) – John gets married and Sherlock finds comfort in wearing John's identity tags around his wrist.

Ravish Me by amalnahurriyeh (E, 10,025 w., 1 Ch. || UST / RST, Makeup / Lipstick, Sympathetic Sally, Experiments, Pining John, First Kiss, Face Fucking / BJ’s, Cuddling) – Sherlock is experimenting with patterns of wear on lipstick in daily encounters. John is going to go insane.

Their Great Reward by BeautifulFiction (T, 10,095 w., 1 Ch. || UST, First Kiss, Fluff) – Boxing day, in John's opinions, is the worst day of the year. Christmas is over, the tree is wilting and stripped of gifts, and there's a week of dead-time until the clean slate of the new year. However the combination of a blizzard, a power-cut and Sherlock might just make it a day to remember.

The Five Stages of Mourning, Plus One by SunnyRea (T, 10,557 w., 1 Ch. || MCD, Pining / Grieving Sherlock, URT, Heavy Angst, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Drug Use, Graphic Death, Depression, Unhappy Ending) – Sherlock did not want this, did not want another stalemate with John in the middle, a gun in Jim's hand. This cannot have happened without a sign. There has to be something he missed anything which said today is the day I kill for real.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder by cypress_tree (E, 10,669 w., 1 Ch. || UST/RST, For an Experiment) – John helps Sherlock with an experiment: for an entire month, they are not allowed to touch each other and must remain at least one metre apart at all times.

I'm content as we are (but) by inqui (The_Circus) (E, 13,086 w., 1 Ch. || Jealous John, UST/RST, Pining, Victor Trevor, Minor Whump, First Kiss / Time, Misunderstandings) – In which John Watson sees something unusual, becomes jealous, and makes too much of a small thing as an old friend of Sherlock's shows up in the middle of a case.

Say For Me, Love by MirabileLectu (T, 13,147 w., 1 Ch. || UST, First Kiss, Drama, Pining John, Victor Trevor) – If you had asked John this morning what the result of his quiet afternoon at home would be, discovering a truth about Sherlock's past startling enough to shift the foundations of their friendship would not have been his first guess. So naturally, that was what was bound to happen.

Barricade by stitchy (M, 14,127 w., 1 Ch. || HLV Fix It, Friends to Lovers, Angst, Happy Ending, UST, Mary’s Not Nice, First Time, Pining Sherlock, Time Skip Filler, Drunkenness) – Sherlock has been struggling to keep his feelings at bay for everyone's sake. Part 1 of Barricade

Second Chance by SilentAuror (E, 15,816 w., 1 Ch. || Post-HLV, Post-Divorce, Friends to Lovers, UST, Romance) – Now that John's divorce has gone through and the dust is settling, Sherlock thinks that he would very much like to see if there is any possibility of moving their friendship in another direction. The only thing is, he has no idea how to go about doing that...

Anytime by SilentAuror (E, 17,995 w., 1 Ch. || UST, Porn With Feels, POV Sherlock, Romance, UST/URT, Happy Ending, Drunken Endeavours) – Sherlock blinks and attempts to focus. There is a little too much vodka in his veins at the moment and it’s having an unfortunate effect on his brain and retinas both. There are two Johns sitting across from him, and both of them are frowning at him. “You’re drunk,” the Johns tell him. Sherlock blinks some more. “Says the man with Mrs Hudson’s doily on his head.”

John Watson doesn't have a Boyfriend by naughtyspirit (E, 18,932 w., 7 Ch. || UST / URT, Fluff & Smut, Voyeurism, Masturbation) – John's date has gone very well. Sherlock requires tea. John wishes he hadn't resolved that their relationship was strictly hands off and isn't about to address it. Unless he has to. Smut, fluff and shower time for a naked John Watson.

For you, there's only me by shock_blanket (E, 19,557 w., 7 Ch. || Jealous Idiots, Virgin Sherlock, UST/RST, Pining, Miscommunication, First Kiss / Time, Insecure Sherlock, Masturbation) – Sherlock realizes he has fallen in love with John, but believes he is unlovable. Cue lots of pining and jealousy on Sherlock's part, followed by our favorite cuddly marksman making it all better. Because for Sherlock, there's only John.

Love Is by SilentAuror (E, 21,508 w., 1 Ch. || Angst, UST / URT, Post HLV, Romance) – At Mrs Hudson’s urging, Sherlock finally decides to tell John how he feels about him. Part 1 of Love Is

Brief Conversations with the Woman by May_Shepard (E, 21,906 w., 20 Ch. || Pining, Love Fairy Irene, Filler Fic, UST/URT, Drug Use, Clueless Sherlock, Relationship Advice, Angst w/ Happy Ending) – Sherlock has a puzzle to solve, and his name is John Watson.

Sonatina in G Minor by SilentAuror (E, 22,574 w., 1 Ch. || Case Fic, POV Sherlock, Angst, UST, Sherlock’s Violin, Post-S3, Romance) – John has come back to Baker Street, but Sherlock doesn't understand the strange tension between them, even after he begins teaching John to play the violin at John's request.

Knotted by naughtyspirit (E, 23,166 w., 4 Ch. || UST/URT, Cuddling, Sharing Body Heat, Confessions, Kissing, Masturbation, Frustration, BAMF!John) – John has to cancel a date because of Sherlock's case, which leads them to be tied up in a basement from which they have to escape. They get wet, get tied up close and John has to step up and save them. Because he's pretty. And hot. And just a little bit of a BAMF.

Hellfire by testosterone_tea (E, 28,596 w., 9 Ch. || Fantasy / Magic / Mages / Elementals AU || Mage Sherlock, Elemental John, Developing Relationship, Torture, Powerful / BAMF John, POV Alternating, Dark / Blood Magic, UST, First Kiss) – Sherlock is a Mage that gets involved with a case involving Dark Summoning rituals, leading him to John Watson, a man with Berserker blood. The only thing is, Berserkers have been extinct for centuries. And of course, nothing involving Mycroft and his interfering ways is ever simple. This time, even Sherlock may have bitten off more than he can chew.

That Partitioning of the Things of Youth by wearitcounts (E, 35,353 w., 7 Ch. || Humour and Angst, Post-TRF, Fake Relationship, UST / RST, Friends to Lovers, Jealous John) – Victor Trevor is in town, and nobody's happy.

The Case of the Vanishing Pants by SwissMiss (E, 44,025 w., 6 Ch. || Five and Ones, Post-TRF, Case Fic, UST, Homophobia, Friends to Lovers, Pining John, Showering Together, Couple for a Case, Sherlock’s Bum, Fantasies, Jealous Sherlock) – Five times John and Sherlock lost their pants in the course of a case.

Wars We Fought, Things We're Not by blueink3 (M, 55,204 w., 10 Ch. || Post S3 / Post TAB, Parentlock, Fluff & Angst, Kidnapping, Whump, Post-TAB, UST/URT, 3G, Mild Peril, Slow Burn, Couple for a Case, Protective Mycroft, Infant Death Pre-Story, Friends to Lovers) –  Five months after John's world has fallen apart, Mycroft sends the consulting detective and his doctor on a case that neither is prepared for.

A Hundred Crimson Sols by elldotsee (E, 55,536 w., 16 Ch. || Astronauts AU || Mars Exploration / Space Travel, Slow Burn, Shy Sherlock, Scientist Sherlock / Biomed Engineer John, Alternating POV, Mutual Pining, UST, Angst with Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injuries, Suicidal Ideation, Zero-G Sex) – Will Holmes is a chemical researcher recognized widely for his contributions to the new Mars exploration program. Thanks to his ground-breaking developments, the IMMC (International Mars Mission Corporation) is one step closer to Martian colonization. Will and his team of scientists are headed out on the first of three manned missions before the first group of settlers arrive. Three days before launch, one of the crew has to be replaced. Will panics because...new people. The replacement is of course one John Watson, biomedical engineer and space hottie who was pretty sure he had retired from actual space exploration and was now content to work in the nice, quiet research lab. Can the crew survive this TOTALLY ROUTINE trip? Will they be able to endure each other for the looooooong trip in close quarters? Gonna be a wild ride... prepare for blast off. Part 1 of SpaceBois go to Space

The Baker Street Nativity by SwissMiss (E, 99,662 w., 23 Ch. || Nativity! AU || Teacher Sherlock / TA John, Pining, Sherlock POV, UST, Angst, Christmas, Music/Song Fic, Anal / BJ’s, First Kiss / Time) – Fusion between Sherlock (BBC) and Nativity! (2009 movie starring Martin Freeman). Sherlock is a primary school teacher and John is assigned to be his classroom assistant. Together, they are charged with putting on the school's Nativity play. What could possibly go wrong? Part 1 of The Baker Street Nativity Verse

A Further Sea by i_ship_an_armada & ShinySherlock (E, 125,492 w., 23 Ch. || Historical Pirates AU || Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Doctor John / Pirate Captain Sherlock, Sailing, UST / RST, Masturbation, Action / Adventure, Mild Angst & Peril, Romance, Shaving, Molly/Janine, Bottomlock, Hand / Blow Jobs, Past Drug Use, Slow Burn, Mild Violence, Facial Shaving, Happy Ending) – Here be a tale of adventure for both body and soul, but beware if ye be not of stout heart, for this be piratelock, ya savvy? Luckless ship's surgeon John Watson takes a chance, and finds himself eye to eye with The Ghost, the scourge of the seven seas and a definite thorn in the side of the blaggard, James Moriarty. But when John finds there's more to this most cunning pirate than be meetin' the eye, he has to choose... is it a pirate's life for him?

The Adventure of the Silver Scars by tangledblue (NR [M], 142,458 w., 41 Ch. || S3 Fix-It, Post-HLV/ Post-TAB / Canon Compliant, Case Fic, No Baby, Angst, Humour, UST, Slow Burn, Angry John, Reconciliation, Not Nice Mary / Leaving Mary, Dependent Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Caretaker John, Fist Fights, It’s An Experiment, Virgin Sherlock, Dancing, Drugging, John Whump, Pet Names, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Scars) – It’s been thirteen months since Mary shot Sherlock and John finds he’s still pissed off about it. Sherlock had thought everything was settled: John and Mary, domestic bliss. But when John turns up at Baker Street with suitcases, the world’s only consulting detective might not be prepared for the consequences. A new case. Some old scores to settle. Certain danger. Concertos, waltzes, and whisky.

Midnight Blue Serenity by BeautifulFiction (E, 151,907 w., 19 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, Gay Bar / For a Case, Drugs, Pining, Case Fic, UST) – When Sherlock infiltrates a club in order to track down a serial killer, his altered appearance is enough to make John question his assumption that Sherlock is beyond his reach. However, is he the only one who appreciates his flatmate's charms, or is Sherlock at risk of becoming the next victim?

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #ust fics #urt fics #babyyoushouldseemeinacrown

[mcheang]

Nice to type back here Lila salt idea based on (if u saw) Zoey 101 anger management Lila sees a therapy about her lying and anger issues and jealousy of Mari and possesivness of Adrien and irrational hatred of LB after lashing out at Mari and Alya records live exposing herself. Search and watch the episode on dailymotion to get ideas then write

Lying management

When Alya demanded proof that Marinette could not provide, Tikki had been present. Then when Lila had started threatening Marinette...Tikki may have hit the record button and got the whole thing on the phone.

She was about to send it to Alya when Marinette got upset. She accidentally sent it to everyone on Marinette’s contact list, including Jagged, Nadja and Ms Busier (ok, she’s a lousy teacher and won’t do much), on her way out of the purse.

As a result, while Lila got upset by Adrien and Tiki was comforting Marinette, the akuma was confused as to where to go because there was so much rage and hurt everywhere.

Once Marinette’s class got the text; they were shocked by Lila’s admission and began to do real fact checking.

Hawkmoth decided to settle for Alya, the reporter whose pride was injured and angered on behalf of her Best Friend and blog’s reputation.

Ladybug and Chat Noir did manage to defeat Lady Wifi, but not before Lady Wifi made sure everyone could see the list of lies Lila made about celebrities.

And yes; Lady Wifi finally asked Ladybug it she and Lila were friends. Ladybug said no before telling Alya to release Lila.

As an afterthought, Lady Wifi had an epiphany on live tv. “Hey, since you obviously weren’t in Achu helping Prince Ali, where were you all this time while we were attending school?”

Since this matter was blown up, the school board has no choice but to get involved. Dupont has ruined its reputation for blindly believing Lila’s falsified documents and excuses.

Mrs Rossi is embarrassed and agrees that she had failed to keep her Daughter in check.

Lila should have been expelled for her actions but since she was already receiving tons of hate mail and lawsuits (Jagged made sure the liar who threatened his favourite designer would not get away with this), that seems excessive.

As a result, Lila will repeat the year, serve detention, and attend lying management therapy classes.

Considering Lila’s infamy, everybody in that class hates her and bullies her.

Lila tries to get herself out of there by claiming she is being bullied.

Miss Bustier is not around to plea leniency on her behalf. She had been fired for bias treatment.

The new principal agreed to give Lila a trial. If she can make it 2 whole weeks without lying, she will no longer attend lying management classes.

Hired to be her constant supervisor is Mrs Verity.

Marinette complains that Lila will get off more easily now because she is good at acting the innocent lamb.

Adrien is also torn about how to feel about this. On one hand, he dislikes Lila for threatening Marinette. On the other hand, he feels sorry for her pariah status.

Alya suggests they test to see if Lila really will keep to her promise to be truthful and good from now on.

1. Alya gets tough looking fans of Jagged Stone to ask Lila if she is the one their idol warned about. (Lila changed her appearance so those outside of class won’t recognise her). Lila reluctantly says yes in front of Mrs Vertity. The fans do NOT beat her up but call her a horrible being. Lila just gritted her teeth through it all.

2. Marinette trips, splattering food all over Lila. As people start to gather, Lila knows they are not on her side and Marinette is obviously lying on the floor. There is no way they will believe Marinette did that on purpose. So Lila forcedly offers to help Marinette stand up. People wonder if Lila tripped Marinette. But as Lila starts to suggest that Marinette was the petty one, she sees Mrs Verity and just simply states she didn’t do anything.

3. Lila is preparing for a history presentation. She was supposed to do research on one of the French kings, but since she actually had to do the work instead of plagarising it, she relied on Wikipedia, as confirmed by Markov. Alya edited that page to have history on some other king. When Lila made her presentation, the teacher called her out for not doing proper research and asked where she got the information from. Lila truthfully says Wikipedia. (Mrs Verity had seen the site logo and while disapproving of it as a research source, she didn’t think it was the only source and had said nothing before). The professor asked if that was it and Lila sulkily agrees. This causes investigation to be done about Lila’s previous papers and they are discovered to have been done with her classmates help. Lila’s grades dropped. Lila wants to lighten her classmates’ accusations but Mrs Verity again makes her stop

Worried Lila will get away with no lying therapy, Marinette comes up with a plan.

On the last day, Lila is forced to give a seemingly sincere public apology to Marinette. Mrs Verity congratulates her and leaves to tell the principal.

Marinette: I honestly didn’t think you could be truthful. See; this is how you are supposed to make friends.

Lila: oh shut up! You may have won the battle this time around, but I will get even with you. I’ll smear your reputation so bad you’ll have to change your name!

Lila stills at the sight of Marinette’s unconcerned expression...and the sound of clicking heels returning.

Mrs Verity: sigh; you were right Marinette, she was just waiting for me to leave.

Lila’s punishment is extended, she is forced to be an outcast everywhere as her classmates keep posting what her new appearance look like so nobody will be deceived by her. Everywhere Lila goes, people call her names and avoid her. Some shops even refuse to serve her because they are worried about what she will do.

Akumas do come but Lila is no longer a suitable target because she has been exposed and people are keeping a close watch on her (even in the bathroom!)

It gets to the point where Mrs Rossi has no choice but to send Lila to a rural boarding school in the middle of nowhere for naughty children.

#miraculous ladybug fanfic #miraculous ladybug fic #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction #ml fic #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #lila gets exposed #lila karma #lila is exposed #lila salt #ml salt fic #lila bashing #chameleon au

[empoweredsurvivor]

Dark Shit- Long post, but it's worth it.

Wow, how did we end up here? As cliché as that may sound, it's the fucking truth. First off I want to briefly summarize on who I am, then get into the trauma that molded me into the anxiety filled, yet empowered little bitch that I am today. I myself as well as others mentioned in this blog will remain anonymous, simply because I do not feel comfortable making that information public. So here we fucking go...

As I think about what to write in this portion about myself, the more I realize that all I see is this sad wounded little girl who so desperately wanted to feel loved and accepted. Although I did have that with certain loved ones, I wanted that validation from the wrong people. I wanted it from the people who couldn't even love themselves enough to get the help they so desperately needed, or enough sense to do so. Growing up I was always a chipper little shit, and cared so much for others. I'm still like that today, but so much so that I've become a pushover in a lack of better words. I'll stand up for those I love, but you ask me to stand up for myself and I cower with my tail tucked in-between my legs. I suffered from YEARS of abuse (in more ways than one) throughout my childhood, by more than one person. They are the reason I am in this mess, and before I piss anyone off, yes I acknowledge that I am capable of seeking help, and started doing so BEFORE I decided to make this Tumblr. I know it's their fault for making me feel this way, but it's my fault if I stay that way. I want to preface this by saying, I am no way shape or form shitty to any of the people I speak about, I have always been, and will always remain kind. After all, you never know what others are battling behind closed doors.

When I was 2 years old, my parents had gotten divorced, and it was a doozy to say the least. My parents would constantly bicker, and drag my brother and I in the middle by putting things into our heads knowing we would go to the other parent about said things. One person in particular, my father. Now I'm not saying my mother is excused in that department by any stretch of means, but she has suffered from the same abuse as we did by my father. My father was and is a very toxic person to be around. He would always scream and yell, over the simplest of things. If it's not his way, well you're shit out of luck my friend, because you will be on his shit-list. I remember getting into an argument with him a year or so ago, he was screaming and cussing at me over the phone, and I was so over it amongst he, my brother, and mother. I ended up yelling (he wouldn't hear you otherwise) at him saying "do not speak to me that way, I've done nothing to deserve this kind of treatment." He proceeded to yell, and the last thing he said was "fuck you" and hung up. After that I would refuse to speak to him, a couple days later he apologized. His apology went something like this "I'm sorry, you know how I get when I'm tired, I don't really mean what I say." WELL buddy, I will forever remember those two little words, that you should never say to your child. I will still live in fear that I'm fixing to get screamed at for standing the wrong way, or getting a hand raised as if you're going to beat me (which he has never laid a finger on me, thank god). Funny enough, the argument started because of my piece of shit brother, yeah I said that, and I'll say it again. PIECE OF SHIT BROTHER. I do not like calling him my brother, because of the things he's done to me. Yes, all of that sounds petty as all get out, but I think you'll change your mind as you continue on. My brother verbally, physically, and sexually abused me growing up. The sexual abuse started when he was between the ages of 13 and 16, and I was between 10 and 13. It happened over a course of 3 years, if my timing is correct. You see, when you've endured any type of abuse, you tend to push those traumas to back of the "filing cabinet" as I like to call it. Or at least that's what I did, little did I know that would later cause a multitude of mental health struggles, that I still continue to battle as I type this very blog. He violated me in more ways than one, first being he was very verbally abusive, calling me fat, ugly, pig, and the list goes on and on. Second, the physical abuse started, he would shoot me with his BB gun, punched me anywhere he pleased, threw things at me, and again the list goes on. Third, he sexually violated me as we previously discussed. He would tell me things such as "you're adopted so this isn't bad" or "this will make you look like this, if you let me do this." For YEARS I have felt as if it were my fault that he did those things to me, and I continue to struggle with this everyday. I have to tell myself that what he did to me was never about me, it was not my fault that he put his hands on me. It was more about the control he wanted over me, as if I were his puppet. SICK SICK SHIT.

All of this in return has made me resentful toward my mother. My mother and I are very close, but I'm hiding this deep dark secret (the sexual abuse) to protect her. She is wanting to place all of the blame on my father, for my brothers upbringing. Although she's right to some degree, there's also that saying again "its their fault for the way that you are, but it's your fault if you remain that way." I cannot stress that enough. Quite frankly I'm sick of a relationship with a piece of shit being forced upon me, but I digress. A couple of years ago, there was an accusation made about my brother by a family friend about him looking at her daughter the wrong way when she was using the restroom. Although the situation was dropped, I often wonder how much of it was true, for obvious reasons. My mother and I no longer speak to the person that made said accusations due to other reasons, but we brought that person up a couple of days ago . My mother proceeded to say "I can not let her back into my life after she made those accusations about my son when I was under the same roof." See, now I have a problem with that statement she had made. The abuse I endured was under her roof, her in the next room, with the door wide open, multiple times. She had no fucking clue what her son was doing to her daughter, we were not adopted, we have the same mother and father. BLOOD. Someone who was supposed to love and protect you. Instead he gave me mental scars that will always be there, they have yet to go away. When I bathe myself, or when I'm simply naked, I am reliving those terrible things that were done to me, on constant repeat in my head, that keep me questioning if I actually allowed that to happen to me. I have a hard time saying I had lost my virginity by my boyfriend before my husband, because he didn't take my virginity.. my brother did. THAT'S A HARD PILL TO SWOLLOW.

I am having to end this post a little sooner than intended, but believe me when I say, I have a lot more that needs to be said. For now, I'm going to go take care of my psyche as this has taken a toll on my mental wellbeing..

#gaslighting #harrassment #trauma #ptsdawareness #ptsd #ptsd problems #anxiety disorder #anxiety problems #depression recovery #mental illness #coping #mentalheathawareness #survivor #anonymous #childhood trauma #long reads #mental health #vent #tw #toxic parents #abuse #bad parenting #empoweredwoman #healing #therapy #mental wellness #mentally ill #mental disorder #mental help #self care

[hobidreams]

@petty-talkofthecharts-discord-members You people really have 0 idea how industry, market, major music awards and charts work and it shows. Sit down. People are streaming because they enjoy music. You consume the music by streaming. Stop portraying people as bots and rabid fans. You listened to BE? Sorry to break it to you that you streamed. It's not about breaking records, it's not about other acts, it's about giving back love to BTS. THE BOYS explicitly said, multiple times, on a national 1/6

under a cut cause multipart 

television, in US and Korea, that they want all BE songs to chart on Hot100. THEY said they want #1 BB debut w Korean song. THEY all said, multiple times, including last week, they want a Grammy. THEY all wept whole night after #1, Jimin literally cried until 4 AM on the timeline together with armys. THEY SAID in the skit, after expressing euphoria, "Hoba, don't you think this is what happiness is like?". THEY said in the skit, "This is the best gift of my life... what... what just happened" 2/6

We appreciate them and the comfort, happiness their music brings us and we want to make them happy in return. So we give them what makes them happy. By doing what makes us happy. Which is listening to their music. If you don't want to see BTS happy, if you don't want them to get the awards they want, don't be a pressed anti in other people's business and let armys do what they want. If you think BTS is inorganic, that's fine, whatever helps you sleep at night, but know that so are all your 3/6

faves whoever they are. Name one organic big western act. Don't be shy, baby, speak into the mic. And it's cute how you think the strategies are a new thing on the west and how it's tied to BTS and ??kpop?? somehow? Do a little research on the history of Billboard charts. Whole history. Not just the last decade. Although the last decade has plenty of gems, too. Come on, sweetie. And let's not even BEGIN to talk about payola and blacklisting and fucking bundles. DON'T FUCKING LET ME START ON 4/6

blacklisting and payola and western acts and other certain acts and all your precious organic gp-loved "critically-acclaimed" radio-loved faves. You don't wanna have that convo, you really, really don't. It's gonna get real embarrassing for all non-BTS real quick. The receipts are out there, honey. So maybe don't start convos about charts and music industry when you're absolutely oblivious about everything, including how much you don't know about anything. 5/6

Y'all pressed people need to stop disrespecting BTS. You come and say THAT after everything Joon said and expressed just recently? Seriously? I hope the fuck you're now spewing this on weverse or twitter where there's even a tiny possibility he can see it. I have 2 questions for you: how could you? Why do you hate him so much? 6/6

my dude. first of all i literally disagreed with the anon that said streaming is inorganic lol.

as i have said through my responses multiple times, i think STREAMING IS IMPORTANT AND VALID. i said streaming serves a lot of purposes and streaming gets artists growth. i literally said this at least 3x. i am not here to argue organic/inorganic. please don’t put words in my mouth. i did not say that any of the western acts are organic. i never said that they don’t have strategies to get their numbers higher. i said western artists have easier times getting radio play than our boys do because they compose music primarily in english and that’s absolutely not fair and xenophobic, and streaming is a way to combat that from our side. i was praising those who take the time to stream. i am literally saying its UNFAIR that our boys don’t get more chances to get heard on the radio.

the only point i am trying to make is that nobody is obligated to stream. my original post was made in response to many many tweets i saw that were straight up BASHING on those who dont stream, saying they’re not real fans or they don’t deserve to get decent concert tickets. there are MANY MANY ways of supporting BTS or any other artist you like, and that’s buying tickets. buying merch. buying albums. i don’t want anyone to feel guilty or bad because there are people telling them theyre not doing enough, when they are. the only obligations we have as fans is to enjoy the music. that IS streaming. the very definition of streaming is to listen to a song in real time. please take a look at my answers again. i’ll even quote one here:

we have a right to enjoy content however we want. if that means streaming to you, then yay! if that means listening once today and once tomorrow, yay!

i am trying to say that there should not be any bullying of people to stream. im no way am i discounting the importance of streaming. i am saying it should be something undertaken willingly.

(p.s. what? lol i can’t even fathom why you think i would dedicate nearly two years of my life to run a blog about a guy i ‘hate’?)

edit: also in case it isnt clear, ive been talking about mass-streaming. not just listening to the album. ive been talking about the culture that promotes people staying up and sacrificing sleep/health to stream.

#pls dont confuse anon comments with my own views #you say 'let armys do what they want' #which is funny #because thats literally what ive been saying in every ask ive gotten so far #i said as long as ur not hurting anyone #u can do whatever u want #🙃 #rain reply #dreamers

[norringtondeservestheworld]

In the past days, there was a poll on Twitter for the best Game of Thrones couple. The options were Jaime & Cersei, Daenerys & Jon Snow, Arya & Gendry and obviously Jaime & Brienne. I used Twitter just once on 2012 I think (that’s why after all this, I deleted it)?? but I decided to log to vote. Not that my vote was needed, since Braime was winning with the 65%.  Anyway, I noticed that every Braime comment got a replied by a Twincest shipper who, in a very mature way, posted photos with fishes that mock the Braime Kiss.

Moreover, a different Twincest shipper and a Braime one started to debate, the first claiming that Jaime loved Cersei and it’s canon and the second claiming he returned to her because of the child. And I decided to share my opinion, as diplomatically as possible, because I didn’t want argue. I just wanted to saywhat I thought. So, in a very respectful way, I explained my point of view. Here what I said.

When the poll ended with the victory of Jaime and Brienne, I started to get a lot of replies from a lot of Twincest shippers (probably pissed for Braime winning), but instead of comment what I said, they simply attacked me and insulted me. And the more I was nice and respectul, the more they were offensive. That’s why I posted some of the things I wrote. Because I want to prove that I have always been respectful and the only thing I was doing was explaining my point of view. Unlike them. Here what they said.

And when I bring them evidence that even Jaime and Cersei’s actors prefer Jaime and Brienne to Jaime and Cersei, they can’t stop insulting me, as If they are able to speak only using insults.

“Cyberbullying is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else.” Yes, I know it’s not a serious form of Cyberbullying since there weren’t threats of death like sometimes happens on these situations, but all of this happened in a couple of hours. I got like 3-4 replies from different bullies for every comment I made (there were that much and I read some comments not before the ending of all this) And the fact that they passed so quickly to insult someone in just few hours without a logical reason made me realize what was happening. So yeah, still Cyberbullying for me. You know, when I was younger and I was still going to school, some of my classmates mocked me all the time because I was a tomboy. I didn’t wear make up, I didn’t take care of my hair and my appearance as other girls did (and one of them told me that nobody would have wanted me) and one of my best friends was mocked too, because he got weight because of a tonsil operation he had. I didn’t consider it bullying at the time because I was naive, and because I thought it was my fault. They never passed a line and they never did anything of pshysical towards us, but they still hurted our feelings, because we both were more fragile. Now I am different person. I am matured. I’m still a tomboy who doesn’t wear make up, but I don’t care about other people’s opinion (except of the people I truly respect) so this behavior doesn't hurt me anymore. So when I read these insults towards me, I didn’t feel hurted. I was just.. confused? I simply didn’t understand how expressing an opinion would lead to this. At first, I thought I was wrong to comment in the first place, that I shouldn’t have done that, but then I thought “wait.. I did nothing wrong. All I did was sharing my point of view and I have always been respectful towards them. I never said a single word against them, while the only thing they did was insulting me instead of read what I wrote.” So these insults didn’t touched me. I am not perfect, but I am happy of who I am. I can look myself at the mirror without feeling ashamed. But as I said, I haven’t always been like this. If this happened years ago, probably I would be hurted. But now I am a different person, and probably the mocking at high school helped me and made me stronger enough to understand it. So I stopped paying attention to what they wrote to me refusing myself to read all the comments I didn’t see the first time and blocking them because I understood what was really happening and who was wrong in that situation. But what would have happened if there had been a younger and more easily influenced person in my place? Someone who can't stop reading and being deeply hurted by every comment? Someone who could start believing they deserve all this hatred? There are people out there more fragile and sadder than me because of something bad that is happening in their life and other problems, and these kind of bullying towards them could be very dangerous. PEOPLE DIE BECAUSE OF IT. It feels strange to talk about something so personal like my past on internet, but I wanted to say all of this, because we need to stop to confuse a simple childishness with Cyberbullying/bullying. 

Everyone who is or was bullied/cyberbullied that now is reading this post, I want you to know that YOU MATTER. YOU ARE IMPORTANT. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF. It doesn’t matter what they say to you, it doesn’t matter if you answer them asking to stop or simply cry for hours, if you did nothing wrong towards them or you just been kind and respectful, YOU will always be the BETTER PERSON at the end of the day, and THEY will be the ones that one day they’ll have to deal with their actions. I never did nothing towards my classmates, but I still got mocked. I’ve been respectful on the internet towards other people and their opinion, but I still been cyberbullied. That’s why I did this post, with both my comments and their comments. To show you that not matter how respecful and nice you are, because bullies don’t want to have a debate with you. The only thing they want is hurt you because you are a better person than them. People who act that way are rotten inside. Don’t let their rot reach you.

Everyone who is a bully who acted on this way on the internet or in real life, towards a stranger or someone they know, that now is reading this post, you are a disgusting person for having fun mocking someone else and hurting real people. You think to be big and strong to insult someone hiding in your home behind your PC? The only thing you’ll get with this behaivour is infecting your soul and making your victims stronger. Oh, get the fuck off my blog. I don’t want you here. Oh, and I want to be clear. This isn’t about Twincest shippers being bad and Braime shippers being good. This is about garbage people harassing other people because they are that petty to be unable to deal with a different opinion and because they are empty inside. This post talked about them because it’s what happened to me. If we switch things and it was the Braime shippers being bullies against Twincest shippers, it would be disgusting in the same way. I have no problems with Twincest shippers. I have problems with Twincest shippers acting this way and bullying others. It doesn’t matter the ship. It doesn’t matter the topic.  DON’T. FUCKING. BULLY. PEOPLE.

#braime #jaime lannister #brienne of tarth #jaime x brienne #anti twincest #anti jaime x cersei #cyberbullying #anti cyberbullying

[familyvisionis2020]

Day 6 - The Drive Home

Today was the last day of tour. I wake up in the morning feeling guilty because I have a groggy memory of waking up around 8 to go to the bathroom, Paul was waiting to go, but when the person came out I just fronted him (a word I just now remember from elementary school, cut in line, but southern), used the bathroom and went back to bed. Rude. I am wiping the cold from my eye, taking in the undecorated walls of the apartment, and Jeremy comes from down the hall and says ‘Did you get the memo? Louisville cancelled. Tour’s over.” I said ‘fuck’ and processed it. I feel sad for Jeremy and John and Kabir because I know they wanted to play this last show in Kentucky. It’s not that I didn’t, but also for the last three months and for especially the last month I have been feeling a tremendous amount of anxiety about this tour, about feeling out-of-control, about being away from loved ones at home, about being available to show up for people in my life, about completing regular routines of hygiene and spirituality and task completion that make me feel boring and comfortable, both. Touring stirs up dredges of the tea leaves that I had let settle into a fine filmy sediment at the bottom of me. I manufactured a jello mold two years ago and poured myself into it: regular 9-5 in the legal field as a means and precursor to law school, then diligent study for 3 years, then a professional career, abandoning the party life, abandoning trespassing in abandoned buildings, abondoning the luxury of resentment and unproductive time, trying to cool and firm into something reliable, serviceable, dependable, available, a resource people could draw from for once, rather than a leech or slug. And when I go on tour I take that jello mold out of the fridge and it holds its shape but also it warms and the longer I’m out the more liquidy it gets and sloshes over the sides and so forth. So I’m ambivalent because I like what I have to offer to this band, I like the physical process of drumming and expressing myself in the context of music and being a member of a band, but also I feel like I’ve kind of chilled enough and it’s time to settle down. And I’m at a way different point in my life than the other guys in the band it seems like, for the most part. So anyways all this to contextualize the fact that the news of tour ending even earlier than early honestly makes me feel relieved, if not happy, and so then I work to temper that boosted mood for the sake of grim decorum befitting a tour taken before its time. 

All our stuff is locked in the venue from last night and we learn we won’t be able to pick it up until 1pm and so we have about 4 hours to kill in the apartment. Phillip puts on a pot of coffee that will turn out to be some of the wateriest on record, but still, a super kind gesture, and then he also puts on The Wire on HBO Go and we just settle in on the couch and watch for awhile. Some of the scenes are familiar, there’s something seductive about this show, and it brings me back to the precise moment of Summer of 2013 right before I moved to Philadelphia right after I got evicted from the squat/music venue I had been living in that winter and spring, I watched all episodes of The Wire on DVD on Matt Martin’s couch at 3 Pomroy and felt deeply depressed. It ranks up there with when I watched all released episodes of The Office in bed in the winter of 2009 after my girlfriend broke up with me, in terms of memorably devestating life phases offset by the amniotic fluid of full-series of TV. So we watch The Wire and I find myself not too inclined to sit and watch and I want to write so I sit at my laptop on the table nearby and write an email to a female (sorry) but I actually do and its purpose is to make her smile and bring some levity and play and purple prose to a moment in her life that, from how she tells it to me, is just so heavy, nightmares and waking horror and a future that feels like it hangs by a thread. so I’m glad to spend time showing up for her in this small way rather than watching The Wire, and also I write yesterday’s blog post, another activity that feels sort of like a pittance but also like: doing-writing is something I have been putting off, in phases and seasons, for my entire adult life, because to me nothing ever matters enough to write about, or if it does my perspective is deficient, or my research inadequate, or my skill incommensurate with the subject matter, or it won’t properly reflect my feelings, or any number of self-sabotaging excuses to not do this thing I so love doing, and love sharing. So for me, writing this blog is a very meaningful and special act of reclamation of a personal mode of expression that constitutes a break in my winter’s depression and what feels like a new phase of happiness, of believing-i-have-a-future, of feeling more authoratative and qualified to know and describe my own experience in a lifetime marred and dampened by dissociation, oblivion, amnesia, and fugue. So it feels like nourishment to get some paragraphs done and to move slow through my days, get them onto the page.

The Wire grows tiresome at some point and Jeremy fires up the PS4 and then the PS3 looking for games but none are multiplayer and so eventually he settles on Skyrim and starts from a new file. Me personally I love watching let’s plays and this is as good as TV. There was a moment last tour when we were in this strange small town in Connecticut called Torrington (the town all touring bands are required to go to, we also joked), in this town Jeremy was describing the sort of surrealness he experienced there and he said he felt like the townspeople in Torrington were like NPCs in a FPS RPG like Skyrim wherein you would go up to people and press A to talk, say ‘What news?” and that I thought was really funny then, I like his sense of humor. Really Kabir and Jeremy and Royal represent this sort of humor that is to me equal parts razor wit, cleverness, timing, accents, absurdity, and broad conceptual placticity, all for the most part very clean too, never or at least rarely blue (you’re gonna inevitably make a D’s nuts joke and that’s just that). And during happy times I am so grateful to be nearby this humor and during less happy times I get self conscious about how great their humor is and how I sometimes feel like I don’t measure up. But that feeling doesn’t weigh for long. Skyrim is fun to watch, it kills some time, we all take turns trying to kill wolves with swords before Jeremy finally does it, there’s a dragon, we loot corpses, discuss Bloodborne and Dark Souls and comparable games. A lot of the main media activity in this group is discussing how a given media relates to another media, Kabir and Jeremy and John know it seems like everything between the three of them when it comes to record labels, band narratives, artist’s hometowns, etc. So we play Skyrim for awhile, and then eventually it’s time to go to the venue and we drive back to The Salty Nut, load in all our gear, do a final sweep, and say our goodbyes and thankyous to Phillip. We return to the Bandido place one last time for one last round of free local Taco Bell which we absolutely scarf and are very vocally grateful to the people for giving it to us for free again, it’s clear they really put effort into being hospitable to touring bands here, at least through Phillip. His band, Thomas Function, was signed on Fat Possum Records, which also had bigger indie acts like Jay Reatard (who Phillip tells a story about him demanding $50,000 in cash for a show fee to feed his coke and heroin habit, Reatard died at age 29 from cocaine toxicity with alcohol also), The Black Keys, Andrew Bird, Wavves and Soccer Mommy, but which Kabir postulates has most of its success due to having signed octogenarian southern blues legends like R.L. Burnside and King Ernest and raking in royalties from what Kabir speculates is due to poor management of the estates of these dead leagends who each had more than a dozen children. It’s truly fascinating for me to hear how deep and complex the analysis of music these guys have is. When I feel insecure, which is often, I tend to veneer these sorts of expertises and shibboleths among music-heads as snobby, elitist, exclusionary, petty and asinine. But I think most of that comes from a fear that I lack the insight, cognitive absorbency, and passionate research skills to collate and catalog data about artists in the way these people do, the way my bandmates do. I feel inspired to take time to dig deeper into the musicans I love, to make them real to me, to get a sense of their story, their lived experience, for the sake of corroding the mediation between us somewhat, or at least polishing the media membrane. 

I volunteer to drive for the first half of what will end up being about a 10-hour drive back from Huntsville to Chapel Hill. We go to a Whole Foods in Huntsville upon Kabir’s insistence where I purchase a nootropic snakeoil energy affair in beverage form, Kabir gets hot coffee and a La Colombe Draft can of latte, Jeremy gets a kombucha made from yerba mate (“best of both worlds” he says), John black coffee as per, and Kabir also buys a slice of Tres Leches cake in a clear plastic to-go clamshell: “they can take away my tour, but they can’t take away my tres leches.” Later he’s eating it in the van and he accidentally spills some on himself and he says “shit…spilled some on myself. oh good, it was only one leche” which to me is so funny and perfect humor and just like kind of a paragon of the kind of joke I so treasure from this friend group. Another is when Jeremy and Kabir are recalling a favorite running joke from two tours ago, wherein they were in Philly, home to the famous Schuykill River (pronounced skoo-kill, at least when i lived there, at least around the non-indigenous people i knew), and while there they would affect this blaring Brooklyn accent, deployed heavily on this trip as well for basically any purpose, but back then they would say “UGH MY SKOYKL IS KILLING ME” like Schuykill was lombago or sciatica and also would say “YEAH LET ME GET A KWATA POUND OF SKOYKL ON RYE” like it was a deli meat, and they laughed and laughed. Also they liked doing rhyming jokes like last night there was a chair nearby the combo amp Tired Frontier was going to use for their set and Kabir goes ‘amp on the chair, tone everywhere’ and then I say ‘amp on the ground, makes a bad sound’ and then I tell Jeremy later how Kabir would put me in good spirits whenever I was describing to someone how my LSAT score is very competitive but my checkered past makes the acceptance process a little less than straightforward, and Kabir would see I was getting kinda down and anxious, and he would say ‘You gotta break the law before you make the law,’ and we all laugh and I love that, the function of humor as balm, salve. I want to wield my humor like that.

The drive back is fine, some sprinkles, nothing major, clear traffic for the most part, I feel like I have a good command of the van, keep it around 75 for most of the trip, feel smoth and confident switching lanes, passing, etc. We do another two NYT Wednesday classic crosswords together, Kabir is getting probably 40% of the clues, me maybe 30% Jeremy and John the other 30%, Kabir will just to YEAHHHHHHHH after getting a clue and I start doing that too after Jeremy says “X down, ‘on the table’ 15 letters,” and I say UPFORDISCUSSION after only a couple seconds and it fits and is correct and I feel like a damn genius and we’re all laughing and kind of praising each other half-jokingly for being strong beautiful geniuses who also we know songs. This is a great passtime and the drive flies by and before I know it we’re in Western NC just outside of Asheville and we make a stop to refuel the tank and get dinner. We decide on a Waffle House across the street, not wanting to venture too deep into Asheville for something healthier and better because of the time and money it would likely eat up, Kabir says that FEMA uses the closing of Waffle Houses as a bellweather to indicate the severity of a given natural disaster. We go inside, the waitress says ‘ya’ll aren’t from around here are you?’ in a way that I take to be hostile and I suggest that to the guys and they seem like maybe slightly offput but not very much and we decide not to abort and I later feel foolish because I think I am doing this thing where I become excessively vigilant or sensitive to a perceived slight to a friend who is brown for the putative purpose of interceding on their behalf against racism but what’s actually happening is if someone was racist to them they could just stand up for themselves and make their own call regarding their own comfort or lack thereof and I would do better to act less motivated by white guilt when avoidable. That passes, it’s fine, we eat hash browns and waffles and eggs and grits and toast and cover everything in tobasco and tip well and get back on the road, John takes over for the final stretch. 

I return a call from Marty and catch him up about tour being cancelled and we discuss our fears and hysteria and cancellations and reaction and so forth. Marty remarks that he is a gravedigger during the plague, which is the best possible job to have. It’s not a joke because he actually drives a backhoe working for a cemetary and digs actual graves, super weird and eminently punk/goth and kind of a curiosity but really perfect for the lead singer of one of the South’s premiere punk bands, especially after his being fired from the swish cafe he worked at in Richmond before that. I love Marty and catching up and it feels good to hear his voice. After I get off the phone it sort of becomes campfire spooky story time in the van with everyone proffering their take on the panic, market failure, the likelihood of Capitalism as a superstructure to require perpetual growth even at the peril or death of its working class, the superior response to covid that South Korea and Norway seem to have mounted, a lot of fear of financial insecurity. Eventually this digresses to talk of touring, and the guys discuss all manner of various routes throught the South, Midwest, Northeast, plains states, PNW, Mexico City, Jeremy says ‘I can get us a show in Colombia’ which he can, Argentina or Venezuela through a mutual friend, then Europe so long as the label foots the bill for the plane ticket, then Japan, setting up camp on Honshu would make it easy to hit TOkyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nagoya no problem, except where exactly are people playing shows? there’s gotta be somewhere all these Japanese Noise and Hardcore bands are getting gigs, and then from there of course it’s not hard to get to Australia, John knows a band there, and they go all around the world and this is stressing me out a little bit, only because I wonder about how much they think I would be involved or want to go on such a theoretical tour, and the answer is I don’t 100% know. Part of me wants to say this is my last tour, lean all the way in to law school and leave behind this chapter. Part of me feels like it’s better not to make a hard and fast statement like that because what if the economy collapses and for some reason school is a no-go but being in the band becomes the most plausible source of income or something. I get anxious and psych myself out and quiet down and feel foolish and wish to be home. I fantasize about my future life of stability, but I second guess myself because I just don’t know for sure how my life will be, and want to be careful to work toward the goals I think will be the most fulfilling, self-actualizing, spiritually nourishing, healthy for me; I also want to not forsake the friendships and bonds I’ve forged in these weird intimate moments in the van with the guys. I have the wherewithal to know that nobody is requiring me to make a decision right this second, and that as time passes it’s likely that the best course of action will be revealed one way or another if I can keep from panicking. So I watch videos of the 2019 Classic Tetris World Championships on my phone, eat two candy bars, watch videos of a streamer named Wumbotize play the latest Tetris game, Tetris Effect (2018, PS4, PC), and am pleasantly awed by how crazily far the skill curve of that game has shot up. I have some time ahead of me that is completely free, which is so nice. Before I know it I’m back home in my clean apartment which is tidy like a tetris field at the beginning of a new game and I get into my bed and lay down flat and if my bed is the well than the line of me clears and the well is clean, smooth, primed, for whatever falls tomorrow. 

[the-marvel-imagines-blog]

Madness | Chpt. 27

Chapter Title: “The Awakening”

Pairing: Loki x Original Female Character (Eva)

Word Count: 11,111

Warnings: All the angst, arguments, a little surprise

Name Pronunciations: Hjalmar: “He-all-mar” | Aaldir: “All-deer” | Ephinea: “Eh-fin-ee-uh”

Summary: Thor and Eva have conflicting views on how to handle the situation with Aurora, but Eva’s need to protect her daughter gets in the way of her happiness.

A/N: I’m sorry for the short hiatus I went on. I was in Boston for a bit for the Jonas Brothers concert on the 17th, and then life kind of spiraled out of control for me. I went through a fairly short depressive episode, which made it unbelievably difficult to write anything of acceptable quality. Once again, I’m sorry for suddenly disappearing, and I’m hoping to get back to posting once a week. Thank you all so, so, so much for reading <3

Tagged: @teddyboobear @alledeglyfunny @xletmetaste-yoursmilex @itsknife2meetu @mynameisyara @j-j-ehlby-writes @jillilama-blog (anyone who wants to be tagged can message me and ask. It’s not a problem at all)

He stood behind me in all his godly glory. I didn’t want to look at him. My arms were crossed over my chest as if I was an adolescent in a petty argument with her guardian, but this didn’t feel petty; I was hurt and felt betrayed. Thor knew how important it was that I stay away from Aurora. I made a promise to not even return to Earth unless the situation was dire or her life was in danger. Otherwise, I made an oath not to return for fear that I would see her. It was like a knife straight though my heart the moment our eyes met the previous week when I woke up. I was kept in the room and in the bed by Thor as Tony and Bruce continued to monitor me, making sure that I was in peak condition before they allowed me to leave. For over a week, I was forced to live in the same building as her, and every morning, I’d wake up with a dread unlike any other, terrified that she would come into the room, that she would look at me for a moment too long, and she would figure out the secret I kept from the universe.

Her.

While I was grateful for the gift Thor had given me-another chance at life-I was furious that this was the place he decided to bring me. Instead of forcibly taking me back to Asgard where Frigga would look after me, I was brought to the last place on Earth I wanted to be. I would’ve rather walked straight onto a battlefield alone with no armor and no weapons. It was a better fate than being forced to look upon the face that brought me so much joy and so much sorrow. Seeing her was like looking at the sun, but it only reminded me of how dark it truly was without her. She was the sip of fresh water in the desert that made you forget about the dry, unforgiving air. She was the cool breeze on a sweltering day that made you forget about the moisture on your upper lip whilst working in the garden. I resented the fact that she was a passing dream that would eventually give way to the nightmare. A life without her was darkness, and I wanted my eyes to adjust. However, each time I looked at her, my pupils would constrict to adjust to the light, and I’d forget about the darkness until I was thrown back into it, scrambling to see once more. Seeing her was like a breath of fresh air into lungs that were slowly filling with blood.

I wanted to see her, to hold her, to speak words of unconditional love to her, to tell her stories of her family, to fall asleep with her body curled up next to me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t want those things. It was dangerous for her to be a part of me, and as the butterflies twisted in my stomach and that familiar stir occured, I frowned. I was a monster, an abomination, a freak of nature. If what I had been told was true, if I truly was the person Death and Ezra claimed I was, I was walking on a fault line, and I would either work to bring about peace, or I would bring about death and destruction. She could be no part of that. She was pure and innocent and far too good for me. I had her love for a time, and in my moments of darkness, I thought of the way her hair smelled after she ran through the forest, and my heart would lighten. I thought of the way she would throw her arms around my waist, crashing into me as every ounce of love poured from her very soul into my own. I thought of how she would kiss my cheek almost every night before she fell asleep.

Thor huffed, our argument clearly only beginning. He was clearly upset that I was so adamant against being here, and I was irritated that he made the call for me to be brought here. My mere presence was liable to damage Aurora’s psyche and cause her to be even more unhappy. At least when I was absent, she lived in a type of blissful ignorance, much like Tony did when he was younger. He didn’t remember me, but when I returned-before I gave him his memories of me back-he would begin to piece together the familiarity we had with one another. I worried that if Aurora found out, if she was able to see through the veil I placed over her memories of me, I wouldn’t be able to walk away again, and that would be dangerous for her, “this was the only way to keep you alive,” he insisted, his voice conveying just how spent he was by my insistence that we never should have come here in the first place.

I glared back at him, “she’s here!” I hissed, unable to bring myself to say her name. It was a dull ache in my heart, a place I so desperately tried to tend to all this time we’ve been apart, but just when I thought I’d be able to breathe without her in my life, I was thrust back into a life with her, which reminded me that breathing without her would never be possible. I was caught between accepting love and putting that love at risk or refusing that love and living in the void of unhappiness for the rest of my existence. I wanted to be happy, and I wanted her to be happy, but I couldn’t have both. I was destined to lose no matter what.

“You’re her mother! You needed to live! I made the right call!” he growled, raising his voice without fear of anyone hearing us. He was growing angrier and angrier by the second, but he underestimated me. I was ready to fight. I was outraged that I was brought to the one place on Earth that I didn’t want to be. I was weak when I was near her, and he brought me straight to her. He made a decision that could cost me more than just my life, it could put her life in jeopardy as well, “if I had been in a similar situation, would you have let me die?” he asked, trying to prove his point.

I shook my head, grimacing as I turned around to catch his burning blue eyes, “that’s not-”

He cut me off, his voice even louder than before, “don’t even tell me it’s any different!” he boomed, catching me off guard. I winced at his words, surprised that he was taking such a dominant tone with me. He never did that before. Thor and I didn’t argue with each other often, and even when we did, it never got this heated; however, when Aurora was involved, he voiced his opinions and didn’t change them. He was intense when he spoke of her, and that was only amplified after I made my decision to give her to Tony. He fought me every step of the way, telling me that he would secure the dungeons even more than they already were, telling me that Loki would have no way of escaping, but he didn’t understand my goal. My goal was never to leave Aurora on Earth forever. I wanted to send her away until I managed to help bring back the Loki I knew and loved, the man who could be a spectacular father. Then, she would be brought back home, and we would be happy together. Instead, my plan-my life-fell apart the longer she was away from me, and Thor spoke of her less and less. When he did utter words about her, they were always ones of love and dedication, though.

“You know how I feel about you, Eva,” he murmured, his voice suddenly becoming sweet and tender as he closed the space between us with a few long strides. His right hand passed over the emptiness between us, and he stroked my cheek with the tips of his fingers. I wanted so desperately to lean into his touch, to lean into any touch. With Aurora so close, I yearned for Loki’s gentle arms to cradle me against him as I told him all the words I failed to convey before. Instead, I remained still, turning my focus to the blade of grass that was still tied to my finger. It was a reminder that things were moving in the direction I always dreamed they would, but it was yet another reminder that I was perhaps the worst thing for him. Thor’s voice disturbed my silent conflict, “you’ve always known how deep my love runs for you-how I still love you after everything. In another life, you would’ve been my princess, my betrothed, my love, but I’ve loved you on my own for a thousand years. I’ve listened to your laughter like it was a song sent by the old Gods, and I have appreciated you as if you were a goddess even before I knew the truth.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, fear overcoming me. He couldn’t know the truth. How could he know the truth? Odin. Why would he tell Thor, though? Of all the people to entrust with information like that, he trusted the man who could never hide anything from me? Did the Allfather want me to know? Did he want this to be information that broke me? Did he want me to give into the darkness that he feared within me? I didn’t know how to respond to Thor’s words, but he didn’t even look fazed by his own words, “my father finally told me of you, and by the way you speak, it’s clear that you know, too...the daughter of Death,” he continued, his voice trailing off, rendering me speechless. I didn’t know how to respond. I had two options: lie to him or stay silent, hence confirming his words. I chose the latter. He nodded his head, “I worshipped the ground you walked upon before I even knew what you were, and you expected me to sit there and accept that you were dead? I’ve lost you before, and I wasn’t about to lose you again,” he choked out, tears forming in his eyes as he recalled the day Aurora was brought into the world, the day I willingly gave my life for hers.

With no desire to speak of my lineage, especially not so openly when no one else was aware, I skirted over his revelation that he was no longer blind to who I was...what I was. Instead, I listened to the way his heart broke just a little more each second our eyes remained connected. Within him, there was a desire to stay on Midgard. I shook my head, sensing the conflict within him, too. He knew that Earth wasn’t the place we belonged. We were meant to help the Asgardians, not live amongst them, for our presence would only bring about more conflict for them. We couldn’t risk our wars straying away from Asgard and relocating to Midgard, “we can’t stay. You know that, right?” I asked, knowing that he was becoming more and more tied to the idea of staying. When it was just Loki and I, before the world knew of our existence, we could’ve made a life on Midgard and flown under the radar. Even after New York, we could find our own little corner of the world to hide. Thor, however, was the prince of Asgard, the heir to the throne. He was well known amongst the Midgardians, too. He couldn’t stay without risking the lives of the humans he wished to protect.

He frowned, stepping away from me, disconnecting his hand from my cheek. His arms crossed over his chest, and I could still feel the heavy conflict. He was looking for any and every reason to stay, and I could tell-even though he wouldn’t tell me his true reasoning-that it was mainly because of Aurora. She played a role in him wanting to remain on Midgard, and I knew that because it was the same desire I struggled with, “it would do you good to continue resting. You know that the moment you return to Asgard, you’ll pick right back up where you left off,” he noted, the argument being a good one. It was true that I wouldn’t take the time to rest when I returned to Midgard, but there were also many reasons for that. I had too much to accomplish, and I also had Harley and Kaia to care for in the meantime. There was a deadline on how soon the situation with Cul needed to be resolved. He shook his head, “I can’t risk that, not so soon after I got you back.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, turning back around to stare out the window, “it’s my decision. We don’t belong here,” I hissed, burying my emotions as my own reflection stared back at me, her green eyes filled with unforgiving judgement.

“Neither does she!” he boomed, his voice becoming even deeper. I loathed the fact that he was questioning my decision when it was the only right one for me to make. I hurt myself enough over the fact that I separated myself from my daughter, I didn’t need him to do the same. He continued as I stared at his reflection in the mirror, “she belongs with you. She belongs with her family. She’s lost everything. She’s lost herself. I would expect this from anyone else, but you know what it’s like to be abandoned,” he hissed, almost as if he was trying to dig a knife into my back.

As soon as he said those words, I saw the reflection of my eyes in the glass that overlooked the darkening city. The green was tainted by the color of a bleeding rose. A deep, velvety red took over the irises of my eyes, pushing aside all the green until it was the only color left. With every second of silence that passed, I felt my blood begin to boil, and the color in my eyes became more and more rich until it was almost glowing. I whipped around to face him, not even trying to fight back the anger that his words brought on. Instead, I fell into it, basking in the heat that rose up in my chest. His eyes widened as I narrowed mine at him in fury, “I never abandoned my daughter. Rethink your words, and speak again!” I demanded-a hefty command given to the prince by a commoner. But...I wasn’t a commoner. I had a claim to a throne I didn’t want, but the power I felt with that knowledge made it even harder to bite my tongue, so I didn’t.

“You left her!” he argued back, his blue irises sparking to life like the lightning that followed him wherever he went. Lightning lived in those veins, and when he was angry, there was a hint of it in his eyes.

“I did what was best for her!” I yelled, not caring who heard me. Even if Aurora heard me, she wouldn’t know I was talking about her. At that point, I didn’t care about the dangers of speaking too loudly or giving way to the rage within me. It was festering, and Thor was pulling it out of me little by little. I closed the space between us, grabbing the collar of his white t-shirt and pulling us closer together. I watched as my veins glowed with the same red that lingered in my irises, but I paid no mind to it. The anger was tearing away my cautious nature, giving way to someone far more feral and fearless. My voice lowered, “do you have any idea how hard that was for me?” I hissed, before witnessing the fear in Thor’s eyes. I had never seen it so prominent before, and he was never afraid of me. I let go of his shirt, the red disappearing from my hands. All it took was that small look of terror, and I realized that I was turning into the monster I couldn’t bear to live with. She was meant to come around when faced Thanos someday, or when I faced Cul. She was destruction incarnate, but that wasn’t who I chose to be. I refused to be the monster Odin believed I would become.

When Thor took a deep breath, I surmised that the green hue in my irises must’ve returned, fighting back the red. It was life and mercy fighting away death and destruction. It pained me to even look at him after what transpired, but our eyes connected as the hot tears filled mine. My voice was low and soft as to maintain control over my emotions and to not lose that control again, “do you have any idea how many nights I sat at the end of that bridge, asking Heimdall to tell me about her? It tore me apart each time, and all I wanted was to bring her home, so I stopped asking about the details. Instead, I just inquired about her health and safety. Do you know how many times I curled up in bed with my pillows and tried to pretend it was her? Do you know why I’ve fought so hard on behalf of your brother? Did you ever even stop to ask me why I did it in the first place?” I asked, trying to urge him to think about how ignorant he was to the situation. He didn’t know all he thought he did.

He shook his head, “no, but I know it’s because you were afraid that Loki would escape and hurt you,” he answered, which was only part of the reasoning.

“Do you know what would’ve hurt me more than anything else?” I asked before falling into a tense silence as he looked for an answer. Sensing that he wouldn’t come up with the right one, I answered my own question for him, “losing my child. I couldn’t be certain that he wasn’t crazed enough to do that if he escaped. I couldn’t risk her life on the chance that he wouldn’t hurt her.”

“I would’ve protected you,” he insisted.

“I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, especially not him!” I snapped, feeling that familiar heat rising up again. It was as if he was trying to misunderstand me. The anger and frustration quickly bled into sorrow, and tears began stinging my eyes, “I didn’t want to give anyone a reason to hurt Loki, and I couldn’t risk her life, either. I thought that if I sent her away, I could focus all my time on reaching out to Loki and helping him return to the man he used to be. Then, once he fled the darkness and returned to the light, I could bring her home. However, there was your father, too. With Loki’s newest crimes, her life would have been in even more danger if he discovered her existence, and I would’ve been forced to commit treason because if he tried to take her from me, there would’ve been a slaughter. It was the only choice I had,” I explained, my voice cracking as my emotions threatened to betray me like they had so often in the past weeks that we had been on Midgard. My emotions were heightened again, “she doesn’t belong anywhere near me, and with Ezra’s presence in Asgard, I don’t want her anywhere near me. I want her to be safe.”

“We could keep her safe,” he yelled in exasperation.

I shook my head, knowing that nothing would sway me into bringing her back to Asgard under the current circumstances, “that’s not good enough for me, though,” I murmured as the door to the room cracked open. Thor took no notice of it, but I watched as Tony entered the room, eyes filled with concern. It was obvious that he heard our argument and was coming to check on us. Thor and I didn’t fight like this...ever, so it was clear in the worry written all over Tony’s face that he was concerned for each of us. In that moment, he looked like a child watching his parents argue, but he had seen far worse.

Thor’s anger boiled up even more, “well, it’s better than casting her away and leaving her here. You’re her mother, and-”

I cut him off in frustration, “and you’re not her father!” I bellowed, the building trembling under the pressure of my voice.

He took a moment to steady himself, clearing the pain from his eyes, and I saw the words flit across the blue surface of the ocean before he even said them. Thor thought about them before he spoke them, which made their impact that much more painful. He narrowed those anger-filled, crystal blue eyes at me, “well, even if I was, it wouldn’t worry me anyway because I wouldn’t know of her,” he remarked, causing Tony to flinch on the other side of the room.

I remained composed, staring him down as the realization of his own words hit him. It was the lowest blow he could deal, and he dealt it. Part of me wished for more of his hurtful words, for I deserved them more than anyone else. Part of me wanted him to hurt me the way I know my lack of romantic affection hurt him. No one else deserved pain and suffering the way I did...not even Thanos himself. I failed the love of my life. If I fought harder, Loki wouldn’t have fallen from the Bifrost in the first place. If I fought harder, he would’ve seen the birth of our daughter, and we could’ve lived a happy life together. instead, everything spiraled out of control, and-like dominoes-each painful, sorrow-filled event followed the last. They were all connected to that one instance when I let Loki walk away from me in the garden before telling him that I was with child. Every moment of pain and suffering my love and our daughter experiences...it was all on me, so I silently wished for that pain to be thrust upon me. I yearned for mercy, but I knew what I deserved.

As Thor’s eyes filled with regret, I turned around to face the window once more, “leave,” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest as if I could physically fight back the tears that were so close to rising up and spilling down my cheeks.

“Eva, I’m so-”

I cut him off, “I don’t want to talk to you right now, and I’m done listening,” I growled, glaring at his reflection, “and if you ever insinuate that I don’t love my daughter again, you’ll be hard-pressed to make it through your next breath before you feel my wrath,” I threatened him, knowing that I couldn’t truly live up to that threat. I still loved Thor, but sometimes, that was where the most excruciating, intimate pain came from-from the ones we loved most. They were the ones we let close enough, the ones we trusted with daggers deep enough to tear through our hearts, but we trusted that they wouldn’t use them against us. Thor just did, “you’ll never understand what it’s like to willingly give up something you love so deeply for their own benefit.”

“I do...” he sighed, his voice thick with tears, “...because I did that with you.”

Then, there was an empty silence that filled the room. Thor’s footsteps over to the door cut through the deafening nothingness, sounding louder than usual. I continued to stare out the window, though, the clouds merging together to cover the sky in a thick blanket of darkness. The moment I heard the door close behind one of my closest friends, I allowed the tears to cascade down my cheeks. I never meant to hurt him, but my inability to choose him over Loki caused him more pain than anything else. The countless sacrifices he made for me never went unnoticed. My hand flew up to cover my mouth as I physically held in a sob. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. It felt like I was losing him, and it was my fault.

As soon as I began crying, I felt Tony’s presence behind me. My eyes locked with those in his reflection on the glass. I spun around, throwing my arms around his neck. I didn’t wish to speak ill of Thor, but I knew that even if I did, Tony would listen in silence until I cried myself to sleep. I didn’t wish to weep the way I was, but I knew that Tony would hold me through it. His arms wrapped around my waist, and he held me against his chest. I breathed him in, burying my face in his neck as I let my emotions run wild. I knew that Thor was cold because he loved Aurora so deeply. She was the last piece of his brother he had left, and he dumped every ounce of love he had into her. She was a shining star on his darkest night, and I knew that his intentions were good. I knew that all he wanted was to see a happy ending for the people he loved.

Before he could speak a single word, the fluttering in my abdomen returned, but that time around, it was a thousand times stronger than the last. My body jolted, and I tore myself away from Tony’s arms, feeling the sickness rise up within me. It was beginning. It was the awakening. I scrambled into the washroom, taking the time to hurriedly shut the door behind me. My knees connected with the solid marble floor right before I emptied the contents of my stomach into the bowl. I groaned, remembering how much I didn’t miss this part of it. Humans and Asgardians were similar in many aspects, but I always wished that this wasn’t one of them. Still, it was a reminder of what I was fighting for. It was an awakening, and it would be our new beginning.

Between the muffled heaves of my body trying to empty itself of all that I had eaten in the past few hours since I last got sick, I heard the door open, but I didn’t dare pull my head from the toilet bowl for fear that my stomach would betray me yet again. Instead, I left my head buried in the bowl, knowing exactly who entered the bathroom after me. Though I didn’t desire Tony’s company when I was in such a state, the supportive, loving energy that radiated from him made me feel much less alone in what was happening. After another wave of sickness, I pulled my head from the bowl to gasp for air, and Tony was ready with a towel. In an attempt to be close to me-even when the best place to be would’ve been as far away as possible-I watched as he lowered himself onto the floor beside me. I took the grey towel from him with a groan, “I’m sorry,” I apologized, reaching up to flush away the proof of my sickness.

He smirked, clearly slightly amused by the situation. It was in typical Tony fashion to make light of a serious situation. Even as a young boy, he would do the same thing. He once jumped off a swing as a child, and got a nasty cut on his upper arm. Instead of crying, he joked that he’d be able to tell people that he’d gone off to war, and this was one of many battle scars. He specifically asked for me to leave him with it when I insisted I heal him. By that point, though, he knew that it wasn’t so much a healing process as it was a transferral process, and I was aware of why he wanted to keep it. Instead of telling me that he didn’t want me to hurt myself by helping him, he covered up his pain with a joke and moved on. Our eyes connected, and his smile forced one of my own, “you know, it’s actually kind of refreshing to know that even gods and goddesses do this kind of thing, and it’s not just me after a night of bad decisions.”

“Well, I’m not a goddess, and we’re not as different from humans as you think,” I remarked, my stomach continuing to churn. From the look in his eyes, I knew that he was piecing it together, “you don’t have to sit here.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he nodded, “but you did,” he added, his eyes becoming wet with tears. We tried to move on quickly from what happened with Killian and the Extremis serum. He had been working diligently to find a cure for the serum, so there wasn’t much time to share many words about what transpired or what happened to the two of us. I didn’t want to force the conversation for fear that it would stir up some unpleasant emotions, so all he did after I woke up was sit with me in silence for the entire day. He held my hand and gazed at me like I was the only living thing in the universe. In that moment on the floor of the washroom, though, I saw some of those emotions rising up to greet him, “you were there for me during every dirty, disgusting, painful, and horrifying moment, and you were there for every grand, beautiful, exciting, and joyful one, too. You did it all because you loved me, and the fact that you...died for me tells me that the love never left even for a moment. I love you, too, Eva, and that’s why I’m gonna sit here.”

Tears filled my eyes as he spoke. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if my younger self would’ve believed me if I told her what her future had in store for her. If I had the ability to go back and tell her all that she would experience, all the love she would receive, would she believe me? Would she trust that all the pain would be worth it? Would she still make those painstaking decisions to get to where I was in that very moment? Would she have made different choices that lead her down a less painful path? All I knew was that in that very moment on the floor, I was lucky. The people that I loved were safe for the time being, and I was in the presence of one of the most extraordinary people I’d ever met. As fate would have it, though, another wave of sickness kept me from speaking similar words of love into Tony’s soul as he did mine. I buried my head in the bowl once more and heaved, groaning once the wave passed over me. Pulling my head from the toilet bowl once more, I flushed the contents and moved my hair from my face. Luckily, it remained untouched. As I tried to collect myself, the question Tony asked made me freeze, “how long have you known?”

He knew.

The gentle thrumming of my heart stopped on a dime, and my breath caught in my throat. My eyes locked with his, and I searched them, seeing that there was no ounce of lightheartedness in him. He wasn’t joking with me or even offering up the question as a way to lighten the mood. He was asking me the question in all seriousness. It shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did, what with Tony and I being as close as we were. We had a spiritual connection to one another, and his ability to read me like an open book was nothing new. Because I wasn’t ready to start speaking of it aloud just yet, my mouth fell open as I searched for any other explanation aside from the truth itself. While Life spoke to me, insisting that I was ready, I was afraid of the end of this road. I had just taken in Harley and Kaia, and Loki had finally asked me to be his. So much was happening, and the end of the road was tainted by what happened with Aurora. Ezra and Cul still posed a massive threat to my home and myself. In turn, they posed a massive threat to my love and my children, both alive and unborn.

“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” he asked, nonchalantly. He knew the truth as well as I did, but he was just recently able to piece it together. I had been piecing it together since Life spoke to me, whispering words of loving encouragement right to my soul. The very essence of the universe was on my side, but I was still uncertain. Before I could open my mouth to speak again, a smirk played on Tony’s lips as his eyes scanned my body. There hadn’t been any physical changes yet, but they would start happening soon just like they did before. This time, I was more sensitive to the change within me, though, so I was aware of what was happening as it was happening. Looking for the right words to say in order to deter Tony from the truth that he already knew, he cocked his head to the side, snickering, “don’t try to lie to me, sweetheart, that’s my forte, not yours. Besides, I can see right through you. Just talk to me.”

I nodded my head in response to his first question. It was true. He knew of the awakening that I was ill prepared for, “I felt the change the morning I returned from Asgard. That night, Loki and I-”

He cut me off, holding up a hand as if it could somehow stop my words, “whoa, I already know where babies come from, so you don’t have to overshare,” he teased me, a playful grin forming on his lips. It caused the laughter that bubbled up in my chest and spilled from my lips. I leaned forward and gave him a gentle, playful push as his eyes filled with that sparkle that I missed each time it died away. When he was a child, that little twinkle in his eyes was there almost constantly, but the more of life he witnessed, the more cruelty he saw, the more that spark died away. When he spoke of Aurora, when he looked at me, when I told him about Loki, those little moments brought about that twinkle once more, and it was as if my life fell back into place. He cleared his throat, his eyes still bursting with life at the excitement of another little life that he could shower with love and affection. In the short period of time that he had Aurora, he treated her like the little queen of his existence, and I wondered how beautiful of a father he would be. His voice interrupted my inner thoughts, “besides, to feel that you’re pregnant the morning after...that’s impossible.”

“It should be, but I don’t know how else to explain it,” I remarked, finally able to sit up as my stomach stopped churning. I was nervous to eat anything else, but I was hungry without a single clue of what I wanted. I leaned back against the counter, resting my hand on my abdomen, “it’s like this little spark just ignited that morning, almost like my life essence split in two, and it joined together with Loki’s to create a new one. I don’t know how to put it into words, but I knew almost immediately what had happened,” I explained, the warmth of that moment still spreading through my veins. This familiar journey made it that much harder to stay away from Aurora, but it made me that much more passionate about ending the conflict with Cul and Ezra. I would have my daughter back before I welcomed her sibling into the world.

Tony slid himself across the floor until he sat right in front of me. He grasped my hands in his own, giving them a gentle squeeze, “stay in New York,” he insisted, his eyes filling with a hope that I would be forced to break. I wasn’t meant to stay, not without Loki. I wasn’t meant to be anywhere without him. Sensing the conflict in my eyes, he continued with even more resolve. He could sooner move a mountain with his bear hands before he could sway me in this. I couldn’t stay, but I allowed him to continue, “let me look after you while you go through this process. Thor told me what happened last time. You should be monitored. Give Bruce and I just a little more time to reverse the effects of the extremis...please,” he begged, tears filling his eyes as he spoke. The last time we were split up from each other, I died, and I knew how difficult that was for him to come to terms with. He didn’t want to be away from me again.

“I have matters to tend to in Asgard,” I replied, making my voice as soft and delicate as I possibly could. I knew that my words would break his heart and spirits, so I was gentle with how I spoke them. In my mind, I was looking for any possible way to go about the coming months without hurting anyone. The only way this could work out for everyone involved would be if Ezra and Cul were dealt with, taking them out of the picture completely. Then, there wouldn’t be an outside force threatening my family or myself. After that, Loki and I could escape to Midgard with Harley and Kaia to reunite with our daughter, and we could live peacefully amongst the Midgardians as we continued to build our family. While the odds wouldn’t be in my favor for that outcome, I wanted that fairytale happy ending, and I would make it happen. Even if it didn’t happen for me, I would see to it that it happened for my children and my love. I continued speaking, “Loki missed the birth of our first child. He will not miss the birth of our second one. I don’t care what steps I need to take to get him out of those dungeons, he is my beloved, and he belongs with me. I will tear the palace apart if it means he leaves with me,” I added, the anger boiling up within me. I watched as the veins in my hands began to glow that vibrant red, and the way Tony’s eyes widened let me know that my eyes had also taken on that familiar color. I smirked, feeling the power surging through me, “besides...that castle belonged to my father long before it belonged to Odin.”

*Aurora’s POV*

She didn’t like me.

It was clear in the way she had me shooed away every time I even ventured near her room. She wouldn’t make eye contact with me or speak to me. If Clint was so adamant that there wasn’t a hateful bone in her body, I would have presumed that she hated me; however, the first time I said that, Clint and Natasha both jumped to her defense, telling me that it wasn’t in her nature to harbor hatred for anyone. I trusted that they knew her better than I did, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that she didn’t seem to be as partial to me as everyone else. She was nothing like the stories Tony and Steve told me about. They talked about her all the time, but they never mentioned how closed off and isolated she was. She had been at the tower for nearly three weeks, and she had only spoken a single word to me. She was warm and inviting to everyone else from what I could tell, but it was a different story when I was involved.

Still, I wanted to learn about her. I wanted to know who she was like the others did. There was a reason why she was regarded as the Mother of the Earth or the Mother of Mankind. There was a reason why she was placed on a pedestal by the people of Earth, and I wanted to know what that reason was. I wanted to know about her, every little detail. The moment I first saw her the day we arrived, it was like the world made sense. My world began to burst with color. She was someone I was meant to find, almost as if every question in the universe remained unanswered until the moment we met. Every other moment in my life paled in comparison to that one. She was the very breath in my lungs, the sun that warmed my skin, the answer to every question, the lyrics to every song, the eloquent words on every blank page, the very beat of my-once empty-heart, the life that flowed around me. She was all of it.

I was desperate to get close to her, to hear her voice in every moment of silence, to feel the way the warmth would overcome me the moment she touched me. It felt as if I had been running for as long as I could remember, and she was my finish line. While she didn’t seem too interested in getting to know me, it didn’t stop me from forcing my presence in her life when I could. It took a lot of sneaking, but I was able to work my way past Clint, Natasha, and Steve-the ones who would usually steer me away from Eva’s room-and I’d maneuver my way into the brightened room just long enough to bombard her with questions that went unanswered. Thor and Bruce never tried stopping me, and Tony was too preoccupied with his work to pay much attention to what I was doing. He was attentive, but I could sense that he was drowning. He was overworking himself, and that would soon become a problem, so I made a not to intervene.

With Tony having recently left Eva’s room, though, after her confrontation with Thor, it seemed like the best opportunity to slip in. I felt bad for her after I heard the two Asgardians fighting. I was glad it ended peacefully, though. The last time Asgardians fought amongst themselves on Earth, they laid waste to a huge portion of the city, but I understood that it was also a war that Loki decided to wage against humanity. No one spoke of him much, but when they did, they tried to dance around what happened. I despised him. I couldn’t remember it happening-so much of my life was lost to me-but what I learned was horrific. He nearly killed all the people I held so near and dear to my heart, people I couldn’t imagine a life without. He would’ve murdered them, and that was unforgivable to me. I hoped that whatever Asgardian law they had would be cruel to him after what transpired in New York, but I couldn’t say anything of that nature without the room going completely silent and everyone getting uncomfortable, so I kept it to myself.

Making sure that Natasha, Clint, and Steve were nowhere in close vicinity to Eva’s room, I snuck up to the door and pushed it open, quietly stepping inside. My eyes connected with her immediately. She was standing before the large glass wall, staring out at the darkened sky as the rain continued to pour down. I’d never seen anything like it. It had been cloudy and raining almost constantly after she arrived. Tony told me stories about her, how nature seemed to change around her depending on her mood or physical state. He was poetic when he spoke her name, and I watched as the very heart within him danced to life when he gazed at her. She was beautiful, even in her sorrow, which she seemed to live in. Her emerald green eyes, which mirrored the color of mine, searched the outside world for the answers to questions I did not know. The very soul within me ached when I realized that I was unable to help her, that even should I offer my help to the goddess at the window, she would not speak a word to me.

She didn’t even turn to acknowledge my presence in the room, and I watched as her eyes remained fixed on the thick clouds in the sky. The only piece of acknowledgement I received was the light shift of weight from one foot to the other that she did when her ears perked up. She was aware of my presence, and that was the best I could get from her. I made myself comfortable in the room that smelled like her. The scent was comfortable...almost familiar. She smelled of spring, of freshness. Tony once called her the embodiment of nature and life. She was everything new and everything old. Her soul was that of the world we tread upon and the one that gave life to the universe. The room itself was like walking into a forest, but there was a hint of sweetness, too. It was such a familiar smell, one that was locked in the back of my mind. The flash of a memory raced past me, almost too fast for me to see it. I was running through a meadow with a tree with red and white flowers as the leaves positioned at the center of the clearing. There was a woman too far away to recognize, and the moment I tried to decipher who it was, the memory slipped away from me, almost as if I awoke from a dream and into this new one wherein she existed and stood so close to me.

The mere sight of her filled me with this sense of longing, like she was home for me. I wondered if everyone who met her had the same unexplainable connection. Everyone else in the tower seemed partial to her, even taking into consideration her fight with Thor. He still seemed pained by it, almost like arguing with her brought him physical discomfort. He was lucky that he gave up when he did, though, because I was one booming voice away from walking into the room and fighting on her behalf. Clearly, there wouldn’t have been much I could’ve done as a mere human stepping into the metaphorical ring with two other Asgardians, but his loathful tone stung everyone who was close enough to hear it, which was...everyone. I stayed just close enough to the room to hear her melodic voice bite back at him but far enough away that I couldn’t discern what either of them were saying. If Clint had his way, I would’ve been removed from the building completely, but Steve casually glanced the other way when I snuck closer and closer to her room. That was all I wanted: to be closer.

I closed the space between us, resigning myself to sit on the chair that I made my home while she was still asleep. Countless hours were spent in that chair, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest or the way the light hit her sun-kissed skin. For a week, I found ways to sneak into her room just to be in her presence. It was similar to the warmth of the sun on my skin. I felt rejuvenated. Being close to her was like being...home. I knew so little about her other than what was said about her, but it was like my soul and her soul were forged into one from the very beginning of the universe. I knew that wherever she was...that was where I was meant to be. Pulling my knees up to my chest, resting my feet on the chair, I hugged my legs close, thinking of anything to say this time that would get her to open up. Tony made a remark once that she was old-fashioned, that her and I had that in common. He prided himself on building up a massive library, and he seemed to collect works that were of a more sophisticated taste. He kept a lot of the classics, but he had a soft spot for Shakespeare and Charlotte Brontë. I read constantly, spending most of my time among the books he collected. Hoping that it would be the thing that connected us, I thought of one of my favorite Shakespearean lines, one from Romeo and Juliet, a play that-upon its completion-left me devastated for weeks. Interrupting the silence, I took a deep breath, hoping that this would be the moment she finally let me in, “amen, amen. But come what sorrow can-”

She cut me off, a voice more beautiful than those of a choir of angels speaking directly to me, “it cannot countervail the exchange of joy that one short minue gives me in her sight. Do thou but close our hands with holy words, then love-devouring death do what he dare; it is enough I may but call her mine,” she finished the quote with ease. She was clearly well-versed when it came to Shakespeare, which caught me off guard, but it also gave me hope that this would be the tie that bound us together.

She still didn’t turn to face me, but I couldn’t help the pride that swelled in my chest. I broke through to her, “I didn’t think Asgardians knew Shakespeare,” I remarked, praying that this would be the start to a long, never-ending conversation. For a moment, I dreamed of staying up into the early hours of the morning, talking to her about our favorite books, asking her questions about her home, hearing her answers on that velvety smooth voice, cascading from her lips with the grace of a trained dancer. I dreamed of having her look me in the eyes like she did on the day she first woke up. I dreamed of having her look at me with the same unconditional love she had for the others.

After a moment of prolonged silence, her voice cut through it like a knife through butter, seemingly filling my soul with its majestic beauty, “my love used to quote Shakespeare to me often. He and I would sit beneath the ever-watchful stars above Asgard, and he would whisper my favorite sonnets to me. Shakespeare wrote the words, but my love spoke them directly into my heart,” she mused, a smile overcoming her lips as I watched her reflection intently. Every word, every pause to take a breath, every dip in her voice as she spoke left me entranced by her, but her smile was otherworldly.

I shrugged, hoping that she would say more but understanding that she may have needed a push, “he had good taste. Shakespeare is my favorite,” I explained, opening up to her as I had been doing almost constantly since she arrived. Most of the time, I spoke and she stood there quietly, not saying a single word back to me. The moment I opened up to her again, though, her smile fell, and our eyes locked in the reflection for a moment that passed us by so quickly. She hurriedly looked away, and silence befell us again. It couldn’t be over, not when it just started, “can you tell me about him?” I asked, yearning to get just a little bit more from her. Steve told me once that there were instances where it was better to never get the taste for something at all because then you’d never miss its sweetness. This was one of those circumstances, and I wondered if he was talking about her all along. He seemed to be partial to her in a way that he wasn’t with anyone else. He was just as enthralled by her as everyone else seemed to be, but he looked at her like she was some long lost love.

When the silence quickly became uncomfortable between us, I desperately tried to fix the damage that my previous question had caused, “nevermind, sorry. It’s not my business,” I cleared my throat, glancing around the room as if the blank walls would tell me what to say next, “so, Tony’s still working on the serum to counteract the extremis, and he said it should only take a few more days, so...if you do feel the need to just talk or...whatever, just let me know. I’m usually right in the living room, or I’m down in Tony’s workshop with him. We’d also love to have you for our Friday movie night. Tomorrow, it’s my choice, but if you want to join us, I’ll let you have my pick. It’s the last one before Clint leaves, and I told him he could have my pick, but he doesn’t want it,” I explained, running a hand through my hair that I hadn’t bothered to braid back. It was untameable that morning, so I left it alone, becoming frustrated with it quickly, “we’re still working on catching Steve up on what he’s missed, so I’m a bit clueless. It’s a lot of fun, though. We turn the living room into a fort, and we all sit in our pajamas with some popcorn and cookies that Bruce bakes. They usually come out a little strange, but we grin and bear it because he’s proud of them; though, they’ve gotten better since Natasha started helping. It’s an open invitation. We start at 8:30 because Tony wants me in bed no later than 11, but you don’t have a bedtime, so any time should work for you.”

Nothing.

She didn’t say a single word to me. It was as if my words fell on deaf ears. While it frustrated me, it hurt me more than anything. I felt like a pest, like just a waste of space. What was so wrong with me? What had I done wrong? I didn’t want her to form a bond with me out of pity-something I always suspected of the people at the tower-but I just wanted her to give me a chance to prove myself. The moment the door opened and Natasha appeared in the room, though, was the moment I understood just how unwanted I was by Eva. She turned to the redheaded beauty and smiled, greeting her with a friendly attitude, causing my heavy heart to sink straight into the chair beneath me. My body took over, sensing that my heart no longer knew what was best for it, and in a desperate attempt to save my heart from itself, I ran out of the room with tears in my eyes and a dull ache coursing throughout my entire body. It felt like I was losing something I never had in the first place. Eva wasn’t mine. She was nothing to me, so why did I feel so devastated when she placed herself just out of my reach?

I avoided the arms of Steve and Clint who both tried to catch me as I ran past them. I knew the two men well enough to know that they would plant themselves right outside my door until I caved and let them in or at least talked to them. They worried about me; aside from saving the world, it was what they were best known for. Once I reached my room, I pushed the door open before slamming it behind me, locking it just as quickly. Living with Tony, I knew there was no use locking the doors because Jarvis always kept an eye on me and kept Tony updated on my well-being. When I would get frustrated, I knew that it was easier to just talk to him about what was on my mind. Living with Steve was similar. I knew that a lock wouldn’t keep him from holding me through whatever hell I was experiencing. There was no covering up the fact that the man would’ve busted through the lock in order to get to me, but he gave me my space when I was desiring it. In this situation, I wasn’t so sure how the space would work out. I wanted space, but I didn’t need it. I needed to feel close, but I needed that closeness with Eva. Of all people, my soul chose the one just out of reach.

Leaning my back against the wall beside the door, I slid down it just as quickly as the tears slid down my cheeks. I wiped them away with one hand as my free arm wrapped around my knees, keeping them hugged against my chest. No matter how quickly I wiped the tears away, they were relentless. I bit my bottom lip, holding back a sob that threatened to give away just how devastated I was. Beyond the door, though, I could feel the comforting presence of Steve and Clint. Natasha wouldn’t have been far behind them, and if Bruce and Tony knew what was going on, no one could’ve stopped them from busting down the door as they attempted to comfort me, “talk to me, sweetheart. What’s going on?” Clint asked, his voice slightly muffled by the wall that separated us.

I ran my fingers through my hair, anger boiling up within me at the current situation. I wasn’t angry at Eva, though. I was angry at myself. There was clearly something wrong with me. I gripped the roots of my hair, pulling just enough to allow me the physical pain that acted as a momentary release of the emotional burden I had been carrying around for as long as I could remember, “Eva hates me! She hates me, and I’m a pest!” I yelled, wishing that the constant yearning to be closer to her would just die away. I wished to be able to cut it out because if it were possible, I would’ve done so in a heartbeat, but it was impossible to cut out ones own soul.

“She doesn’t hate you. There’s not a single hateful bone in her body. It’s just...hard for her to let people in,” Clint tried to explain away her behavior. It was clear that she didn’t want me. No one truly did. I was meant to be alone. My parents didn’t want me. Eva didn’t want me. I was sure that if I gave the rest of them a chance, they’d leave me soon enough. I was damaged goods. I had no name, no past, and I wished not to have a future in that moment as well. The thought was fleeting, but it frightened me nonetheless.

I bit my quivering bottom lip, sniffling as I fought back the tears, “she has no problem letting the rest of you in.”

There was a momentary silence, and I heard the nearly silent shift of Steve’s weight from one foot to the other. The two men would do with me exactly as they did with Eva. They would sit outside my door if they couldn’t be in the room with me. I’d found Steve more than once sleeping against the wall right outside her bedroom door on the one night he couldn’t sleep in the chair right beside her bed. That night, the chair was taken up by Eva’s father, Aaldir, who I had met. He looked at me for a long time, almost like he had seen a ghost, his face going pale as his dark brown eyes widened. I could see the universe in them as he looked at me. Once he collected himself, he bowed his head to me before brushing past me to speak in private with Thor. Steve slept right outside Eva’s door that night, and I brought two blankets: one for him and one for myself. I stayed on that floor in that very spot every single night, hoping-wishing that she’d invite me in, hoping that she would open up the door and allow me into a heart I yearned to hold only a piece of. The silence was followed by Steve’s calming voice, “you remind her of someone from her past, someone she loved more than anything else. When she sees you, she remembers all the pain that came with it. She’s been hurt more than most. Life hasn’t been kind to her, Aurora; you should be the first person to understand that.”

There was another near silence, and I listened intently as the two men stepped away from my door. Their soft voices-low enough so I couldn’t make out what they were saying-seeped into the room through the crack at the bottom of the door. Natasha’s voice was amongst the two deeper ones, and I smiled at her dedication to me. They were all family to me, but Natasha understood me in a way that the others couldn’t. It didn’t take long for their voices to fall silent, and a few knocks sounded on my door, “can I come in?” Nat asked in her raspy voice that often sung Russian lullabies to me as I fell asleep. She would stroke my hair back and sing, but they weren’t the songs that were in my heart. Instead, I was left trying to figure out the melodies on my own as her voice lulled me to sleep.

I closed my eyes, focusing on the lock on the door. I imagined it turning. Just as I imagined it, I listened to the metal lock unlatch itself, allowing Natasha access to my room. Over time, I began to discover things about myself, things that I didn’t dare speak of to anyone else, things that I kept hidden away. No one else needed to know about these unimportant occurrences because it would only worry those who worried about me enough for a thousand lifetimes. As soon as the door unlocked, Nat pushed the door open just enough to slip inside before closing it behind her, “hi,” she whispered, her voice like a single ray of light shining through the storm of my darkest thoughts. Without another word said, she leaned back against the wall and slid down to sit right next to me, draping her arm around my shoulders the moment she reached the floor.

I leaned into her warmth. The woman who was seen as an assassin was nothing of the sort in my eyes. She was powerful-a force to be reckoned with-but gentle when the situation called for that. I nestled into her, but I still felt like something was missing. Eva. She was that missing puzzle piece. I didn’t know why the universe brought us together, but it did. She was what I was looking for. She was the person I needed to feel whole. No matter if I ever found my parents or not, she was the one I needed most. It was as unconscious a thought as breathing. We didn’t think of it, we just did it. I didn’t have to think about why I needed her to know that I did, in fact, need her. I buried my face into Nat’s neck as the tears wet her warm skin, “I just want someone to choose me!”

She stroked my hair back, her fingers never once tugging at the wild waves, “we chose you,” she reminded me, her voice thick with unshed tears. She buried her emotions until she was alone. I heard her cry in the room with Eva one day, but when I saw her, she was just as stoic as usual. Those feelings-the heavy ones-weren’t ones she wanted to share.

“No, you guys were stuck with me,” I argued, shaking my head at the notion that anyone, especially people like Tony and Steve could bring themselves to love someone like me. I was unlovable...unwanted.

“Is that what you think this is? That we’re stuck with you?” she asked, as if my question somehow offended her. She wasn’t easily offended, so I knew that the damage my words had done was serious. Still, I was certain that my words were no less than truthful, so I nodded in response. Looking up at her, I saw that tears welled up in her eyes. She tried to blink them back, but in doing so, I watched as they fell. I did that. I caused that. I was the water that found its way into a rock and cracked it open from the inside. I ruined things. I destroyed things. She cleared her throat, collecting herself enough to look back down at me, our eyes meeting with mutual love for one another. She forced a smile, “well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we didn’t choose what happened when we all first met you. We didn’t choose how deeply in love we fell with you. What we did choose, however, was to let you into our little world, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we never once regretted that. It was the greatest decision of my life to let you into my world, to let you see me for what I am instead of the monster other people see me as. I’m not afraid to tell you that you’re wrong about us being stuck with you. You’re a gift.”

I nodded my head, allowing the tears to overcome me again as I lost myself in her embrace, “why does it hurt so much, then? Why does it feel like this? Why can’t I just accept that she doesn’t care?”

“Because you love so deeply. Those who love the most are also the ones who suffer the most. She’s guarded, but she wasn’t always that way. I’ve heard stories of the girl she used to be before the universe pulled the rug out from under her,” she explained, looking for the right words to help me understand the mysterious Asgardian better; however, it seemed as if she was dancing around a clearer description of events. She was choosing every word meticulously. There was something I wasn’t being told, and I was going to find out what it was, “Eva is the only person I know who loved so deeply it cost her everything...even herself.”

#loki #loki imagine #marvel #tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston imagine #loki x ofc #marvel mcu #imagine #mcu imagine #mcu fanfic #mcu fanfiction #marvel imagine #marvel fanfiction #fanfiction #marvel fanfic #fanfic #marvel fic #ofc #oc #madness #thor #black widow #iron man #tony stark #avengers #hawkeye #endgame #avengers endgame #natasha romanoff #clint barton

[madagascar-bound-stuff]

LA - Honolulu

Day 1

 We proceeded, the halt and the lame … Jim and I raced in our “his and hers” wheelchairs to our departure gate. Neither broken knee, sprained wrist nor mild concussion kept us from our appointed cruise!  My knee and wrist braces only detracted slightly from my fresh highlights and newly painted nails for the big occasion. Courtney had arranged wheelchairs and bulkhead seating for us so the trip went pretty smoothly. Then, arriving portside, we checked in and Jim, “sort of” took control of my wheelchair. We went careening past people on the block long zig-zag downhill ramp leading to the ship. He could barely hang on as our forward momentum had him moving faster than I have seen him move in at least a decade! On the uphill sections we had various people dashing to assist us as he faltered and I had visions of wheelchair tracks across his forehead as I slid backwards into the sea. We ricocheted my bad leg off elevator doors twice, hit a railing once and rammed my protruding leg into several people’s luggage before arriving safely at our cabin ... but we were aboard! We were both so exhausted we barely limped our way through the boat drill then headed straight back to the room. Too tired to go to dinner, Jim called room service several times always getting a busy signal. He hung up, looked pathetically at me and said, “Please don’t make me go get us food”. We decided to at least have a celebratory drink on the balcony as we sailed away but I had unloaded all the beer and wine out of the refrigerator to make room for his meds. I rummaged in my purse and found a mini bag of semi-stale peanuts with an expiration date of October 2019 and decided that would have to suffice until breakfast. We didn’t even finish the whole package; we were both too tired to chew... and so ended day one of our cruise to Madagascar and points beyond.

  Day 2

 Day two dawned ... eventually. I think I was too tired to sleep plus when unpacking I probably put some weight on “the leg” from time to time juggling both armloads of clothes and the ship’s roll. Today’s challenges are the petty, potty problems. My walker will not fit through the bathroom door. I know you are probably saying, “just turn it sideways.” Well, there is about an eight inch step up into the bathroom ... for those lucky enough to have never been attached to a walker ... sideways and steps don’t work. Now on the upside, just one step is doable leaving the walker outside the door in the entryway ... and once inside, who needs it? In this mini-bathroom you can easily stand on one foot in the middle of the room and just spin to reach the sink, potty or towels, never having to take a step! The shower stall does require you to hop over a small lip. However, the shower stall being only about two foot by two foot, I figure about a week aboard ship, semi-immobile, with nothing to do but eat I will have fattened up enough to just wedged myself in, thus eliminating any chance of a fall. This moving around on one leg thing is a workout. I think by the time this brace comes off, my right leg will look like the sculptured leg of a Russian gymnast. Of course my left leg may look like a string of cooked spaghetti with a knot at the knee.

 Day 3

 Jim’s wheelchair navigation has inspired me to attempt the “long” trek to food on my walker today. I felt that otherwise, no wall would go un-gouged and no toe aboard would remain unscathed. Jim, busy trying to maneuver the wheelchair, never seemed to notice people scurrying backwards, sideways or jumping straight up trying to keep their shins and toes out of harm’s way. Thus motivated, I made it “all the way” to the buffet in high rolling seas this morning … upright and on one leg. Between the absolutely crystalline weather today and making it to the chow line on my own, my mental health has greatly improved. We ate breakfast with a couple from Miami yesterday who told a story about their last cruise with a wheelchair. He said they had seas like today and his wife lost her balance and let go of his wheelchair to catch herself. The wheelchair went flying down the deck gaining speed and was grabbed at the last moment by a passing jogger just before hitting the railing.  He had visions of being flung spread eagle overboard into the sea.   Cute story to tell a lady in a wheelchair on rough seas being pushed about by a guy with a cane … perhaps that was part of my incentive to move to the walker today!

  Day 4

 Jim joined the choir. He did this on our last Princess world cruise because he was impressed with the choir director. Amazingly enough it’s the same guy. I asked about the make-up of the choir, he said, “Mostly old people”. Mostly? I have yet to see anyone onboard that wasn’t north of social security benefits by a good five years, us included. I was just curious if many men participated. Today’s mid-day announcement declared that there was to be clear sailing starting this afternoon and most of tomorrow then we would be hitting high seas. Batten down any heavy objects, secure loose articles etc. Now crossing the Drake Passage we had 40 foot swells and I don’t remember them giving us those instructions.  Barf bags have already appeared in every elevator and on every staircase.  Luckily, neither of us is prone to “mal de mare” so it could be fun.

 Day 5

We are five days into the journey … our main interest while at sea, food. Let me explain how this works. I hop my way to the elevator with the grace of a drunken kangaroo then it is up and out to the buffet. Once there, I capture the nearest seat.  Since I can’t manage the walker and carrying a tray at the same time sweet Jim goes through the line at the far end of the dining area and graciously returns with his selections.  Now I have eaten with this guy for twenty years … today he selected, especially for me, cauliflower, green peppers with cheese, and a cooked cabbage salad.  Now I admit that I don’t know what his options were but about anyone reading this would know me well enough to skip the veggies and bring me something fried, with a dinner roll and a chocolate chip cookie! And yes, I did appreciate his efforts, I am just saying, I am eating so little that I may still be able to rattle around in the aforementioned shower stall after all. I know you’re thinking “wouldn’t the dining room be easier than the buffet?” Yes, yes it would. However there is about a ten or twelve foot stretch with a gradient into the dining room. We found out during the boat drill that Jim can’t push me up that incline in my wheelchair. Alternately, I fear I might just slide down that slope with my wheeled walker. I think today however, I am sufficiently motivated to make my own food selections that I will attempt a run up pork chop hill for lunch.  Hopefully, we will just break bread together and nothing else.

Day 6

Well, that was a tempest in a teapot. I expected to get a good story or two out of the “high seas”. There were some pretty good swells but the captain slowed the ship and we just sort of floated over the swells and down though the troughs, really not bad at all. We were able to bar “hop” and get a drink or two and listen to some music and stay mostly upright the whole evening.  Lunch also turned out to be uneventful. I hopped/rolled up and down the ramp, no problem. I was so excited to be able pick and choose on my own food that I ordered every carb on the menu from bread to pasta to apple pie ala mode to make up for the lost calories. We have yet to see any land six days into the voyage.  I asked Jim, “What day of the week is this anyway?” He looked around a minute then picked up his almost empty medicine box with the days of the week labeled and replied, “Must be Saturday”. Oh how far we have fallen when we are keeping track of the days of the week by our pill boxes. Tomorrow land ho - Honolulu!

Day 7

Honolulu is probably my least favorite port in Hawaii but there is land and cell service … I don’t know which I have missed more. I think the feeling was shared by my fellow passengers as the gangplank was barely secured before people poured from this ship like water over Niagara Falls. Our last visit here, upon disembarking, people broke into three distinct lines … those taking tours, those taking the shuttle to Hilo Hattie’s at the mall and those catching the free bus to Walmart. I can tell you the Walmart line rated a picture. I haven’t seen a line like that since the Rolling Stones hit town. Jim is making a wine and toothpaste run into the city while I stay aboard and try to set up and post this blog while I have internet service. If you’re reading this then I was successful!

#travel

[regiqoa]

Hello, I’m back

Hello, everyone. Y’all missed me? :3 I missed you guys, too, very much! Now, now, after a complete one-year hiatus I’m pretty sure I owe you all an explanation, don’t I? Well, here goes:

After getting into Discourse™ with some pretty mean people, I had to quit for a moment and wait for the dust to come down. I planned to come back after 2 months but that unexpectedly turned into more after I found out about a very horribly mean call-out post about me. That made me incredibly upset, not only because of the harassment that resulted from its existence I had to endure (which made me close my inbox and limit my messages) but also because (get ready) NONE of the things on it written about me were true! This person was spreading bad rumors and fake news about me and labeling me as a person to avoid. I made a vow with my friend @asa-de-ouro that I’d come back only when I felt it’d be a good time to post the first chapter of the long awaited fanfic The Shape Of Bugs, the Guzma x Reader The Shape Of Water AU I’m working on. But people still kept believing the post so I thought “It’s my burden, I must handle it myself” but the problem was never that simple. According to my friend (and her friends from the self-insert community), my reputation was legitimately putting her and the community in danger because I was being labeled as a bad person. Do you all know what this all means? It means I suffered through ONE WHOLE YEAR of pure anxiety, insomnia and fear that the love my friend had for me was dubious, that my reputation was ruined, that I’d never EVER have an audience and that I was legit putting people in danger. All because of something I said that was taken out of context and an EXTREMELY long time ago such that it’s not even remotely relevant anymore. The call-out post in question (by a person whose name I will not disclose) was calling me a “white supremacist, classist whore who thinks men can’t be raped”. Now, little question for you people who have been following me all those 5+ years I’ve been on Tumblr: WHEN have I said men can’t be raped? How can I be a white supremacist if one of my best friends is a black woman? I dare any of you to look for ANY of this in my blog, I really do. Look for it, because you won’t find any of the sort. YOU are choosing to believe those lies, YOU are choosing to jump to conclusions and act like you know me when I’m pretty sure you don’t have the SLIGHTEST idea about who I am. This brings me to my next point, which is: Guys, Call-Out Culture needs to END. It really does. I mean, just how cowardly and selfish do you have be to feel the need to make a post about a person you don’t even know? How awful do you have to be to spread bad rumors and lies about a person just because you disagree with them? Call me a prude but that’s just horribly petty. It also means you’re a low-key attention seeker. Clinging to the past is not healthy, especially in situations like this! There are real people with feelings and issues behind the screen and what you say might hurt them a LOT. I mean, how many suicides have we had resultant from harassment, in and offline? How would your faces be like if you found out I committed suicide? If you tell me you'd be happy, or worse, CELEBRATE that I was dead (and yes, that HAS happened and I was witness to one)... Honey, I'm incredibly sorry to say this but you are the biggest piece of shit in existence, I won't even bother explaining why. What I said in the past DOES NOT represent me and I owe nothing to you. I went through copious amounts of harassment and bullying in my life and I absolutely refuse to go through that again. Also, friendly reminder that cyberbullying is ILLEGAL, you can get legit ARRESTED for pulling stunts like that.

For the people going through what I did, guys, a little piece of advice: Directioned harassment is not allowed on Tumblr. If you find out about a call-out post, either directioned to you or another person, report the OP immediately, that's precisely what the report button is there for. Make sure they get comeuppance for their actions, make your voice heard, don't let them get away with that. That being said, anybody who comes harassing and calling me names and refusing to believe this will get blocked and reported.

It is with those words and my return that I announce that I will not be getting into Discourse™ anymore, ever again. It's bad, it's toxic and it's straight-up dangerous, sometimes. From now on, I will dedicate this blog to positivity, self-insert stuff, my fanfics and my art, written or drawn. I'll still reblog things I agree with but you won't hear anything from me ever again. It's what I think is for the best, hope each and every one of you understand. Also, feel free to reblog this, I will appreciate it a lot if my voice gets heard.

Well, I sure am glad to be back but this “no more adult content” policy is terrible and this new look is hideous.

Also… (Please check my next post ;3)

#rant #comeback #return #hiatus ends here #call out culture