#but it's already a behemoth

[chayannesegg]

honestly I think it’s kinda interesting how phil’s relationships with wilbur, tallulah, chayanne & tubbo are all reflecting back into his view of sunny tbh. like he has such complex delicate interwoven dynamics with all of them and it all gets thrown onto sunny, this poor kid who he loves in theory, but in practice is a stranger to him. 

like wilbur left tallulah in phil’s care and didn’t come back. even now way after he was initially supposed to, wilbur hasn’t returned (that one day aside). and phil, who had already taken on a big commitment watching tallulah, has been left permanently with two eggs in his sole care. and even though he loves tallulah and wil, and won’t want them out of his life, this is a stress for him. it’s a big undertaking for anyone, to care for two kids alone, but especially since tallulah required a lot of changes in his life.

for better or worse, in many ways phil sees chayanne as an extension of himself. they’re similar in a lot of ways, and often on the same page, and it means phil often struggles to catch up when chayanne’s emotions aren’t on the same page as him. we’ve seen this week, phil having such a hard time understanding the depth and breadth of chayanne’s grief. when he catches on, he usually does a good job empathising and talking it through, but when he doesn’t, he really doesn’t and it can be hard to watch. 

the same is NOT true for tallulah. he has, through hard work and practice, learnt how to identify her emotions. he had to. she needed it. she would have been miserable otherwise. she desperately needed asked for the emotional care and birthdays and consideration that chayanne would never ask for. and he’s good at it—tracking her moods, knowing what upsets her & what she cares about in a way that doesn’t come as naturally with chayanne (or sunny or tubbo or anyone else really expect maybe wilbur). but that took A LOT of time and effort, months of work, and I do think he’s a bit wary of the idea of having to do that again, even when it comes to people he loves like chayanne (or god forbid tubbo).

now tubbo is not wil. tubbo is not phil's son. but he’s still not dissimilar to wil in phil’s mind. whatever the backstory is, phil introduces tubbo to tallulah as an old friend of him and wil’s. he makes tubbo his kids’ godfather. he calls tubbo his boy. he looks out for him. but past those first few weeks, their relationship doesn’t progress. they mean a lot to each other bc of their pasts, but they don’t put any work into upkeeping their relationship and phil in particular doesn’t reflect at all on what how that changes their dynamic. and it does change it—this is clear in purgatory, with phil having zero trust in tubbo to protect chayanne and tallulah, and after, with tubbo endlessly poking at phil’s sore spots trying to illicit a reaction he’ll never receive. 

it's also clear in the way phil has no understanding of what’s going on with tubbo. if he’s struggling to grasp chay’s emotions, he’s not even touching what’s going on in tubbo’s head. tubbo’s death makes no sense to him. it’s sudden. it’s random. it’s illogical. it’s stupid. he wasn’t joking about having two lives? he still took a death bet with richas? he’s not come back? he can’t come back? he’s left phil with distraught kids for no reason with no warning. he doesn’t see the erratic suicidal behaviour, the unending depression, the desperation to be loved. he doesn’t want to see it. he doesn’t want something to be wrong with tubbo, but he also doesn’t even know how to see what’s wrong. he’s annoyed he’s having to deal with it and he desperately desperately wants to believe this is all happening for no reason.

bc at the forefront of phil’s mind is still his love for tubbo. of course, phil would drop everything to help tubbo (if he could recognize something was wrong). of course, he would care for sunny as his own. of course, he would make the same sacrifices he’s made for wil. and he assumes he’ll have to. he thought that sunny would now be under his care. that he’d have to figure out the logistics of a third egg to care for. with wilbur, phil was the only person who could ever have taken care of tallulah. the only person he trusted, the only person who knew tallulah enough. now this isn’t true for tubbo. it’s a genuinely illogical assumption for phil to make: three eggs would be a genuine burden on him; they've never spoken about it; there’s a long list of people who would tubbo expects for sunny before; and he doesn’t even know sunny well enough to name these people for her as comfort.

but still in the moment, alone with tubbo’s eggs and dealing with everything he left behind, phil can only think that the exact same thing that happened before will happen: he alone will be left to care for another scared hurt kid of someone he loves.

and here we come to sunny. a kid whose dad he loves. a kid whose dad he doesn’t understand. a kid whose dad is suddenly gone like his son is gone. a kid who would need him like his daughter needs him. a kid who his son needs to protect. a kid he cares for. a kid he can’t afford to care for, a kid he wasn’t expecting to care for, a kid he doesn’t know how to care for, a kid he would care for if he needed to, a kid he doesn’t know why he’s been left to care for. a kid who is somehow a reflection of all these people he loves but not someone he knows at all.

idk i think this tension comes out in the a lot of the comments phil makes of and to sunny. he doesn't know them well enough to distinguish them from his relationships with other people. and as long as no one challenges him on that, we'll continue to hear these misplaced comments from him, that come across so insensitively, even as he tries his best to genuinely help them and their dad.

#qsmp #qsmp philza #qsmp sunny #suicide #philza neg #qphil neg #i guess i'll tag out of an abundance of caution even if i don't intend this analysis meanly #that said he is absolutely being unfair to sunny and hurting her bc of this and he doesn't even realize #and won't realize unless someone else talks to him about it #lest sunny just snap at him some day which i do think is what we're currently headed to #fun fact: i intended to do more analysis of his actual comments but it got too long so instead you just get this :) #even tho i think this covers too much in too little time and could reference more canon events lmao #but it's already a behemoth #oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #also nothing is ever going to justify the 'maybe i won't look for your dad as hard' comment fuck him fr for that #cw wilbur soot #won't delete this but warning he's mentioned here

[nomazee]

enough to make me cry

blade is your only roommate, your only friend, and your only way home from this terrible party you found yourself in.

blade x gn reader — 3.3k — college & roommates au!, very americanized college experiences, frat parties, mentions of drinking & vomiting, could be read as platonic but there are definitely romantic undertones, feelings of inadequacy/being out of place, hurt/comfort, social anxiety, blade is probably ooc i'm gonna be so honest, mild kafka & reader friendship, erggg im probably missing something

notes: no i have to be so honest blade is probably completely out of character i have not played a single side quest with him in it but i just think he has reluctant roommate-to-best friend potential and i wanted to pour that into a fic,,, this is mostly unintelligible but i did proofread! love you all

—°+..｡*ﾟ｡*ﾟ+.*.｡.—

A warm hand rests on your shoulder, and the first thing that you think is Blade’s hands are supposed to be cold.

It’s really pathetic. You’re somewhere in a stupid frat house, the thrumming of music around you. There’s the flashing colors and sounds of Mario Kart on the TV, the smell of puke (probably yours) and corona lite, and a hand on your shoulders that you’ve discerned is not your roommate, Blade’s. 

Looking to the side, you follow the hand (painted, manicured nails, definitely still not Blade’s), and it leads up to an arm up to a shoulder up to a face, and—oh. 

“You’re—” you pause, getting your words in order before you puke them up, “you’re Blade’s pretty lady friend?” It’s supposed to come out as a statement, but leans more to a question. She looks down, a bit of a teasing grin on her face, but her eyes are a little soft so you trust her. 

“Is that what he calls me?” she jokes.

“No, I’m— I came up with that.” If you had any dignity left in you, you’d be embarrassed to admit that to her. Unfortunately, you’re pretty sure that Kafka (the pretty lady friend in question) just held your hair back and wiped your face as you puked into a frat-house toilet, flushing your dignity away with your dinner. Your eyes burn with tears and mortification, and you pray that only Kafka saw your embarrassing mishaps.

“I called him to pick you up,” she tells you, already looking away from you and scanning the room as if looking for something, or someone. “I would take you home myself, but I’ve got some things to take care of. And I’m assuming you didn't bring your keys with you?” 

A quick pat-down of your pockets confirms that, yes, you somehow managed to leave your keys at home, the one personal necessity that you were supposed to bring besides your phone. Which, thankfully, you do at least have.

“Umm, the…” you mutter, tongue tangling uselessly as you try to find a way out of here without facing the impending doom of Blade’s aggravated scolding and his I told you so’s. 

A week ago, you went to him with an invite to this frat party and begged him to come with you, saying something like You don’t go out much, this is your chance! He’d adamantly refused, calling it a bad idea and rolling his eyes whenever you brought it up. But you were stubborn, and you wanted to have a fun college experience, so you forced him to drive you to the party with the promise of paying for his next gas payment and getting your own ride back home at the end of the night. 

“I can go,” you finally tell Kafka, mind stringing along memories and thoughts and alarm bells of get your ass home before you have to sit in an awful car ride with Blade, “It’s, like, a fifteen minute walk, don’t call him.” 

“It’s a little too late for that, kid,” Kafka drawls, amusement in her words. She’s smiling down at you, and you’re reminded of how small you feel. “He’s already on the way.” 

“No!” you protest, a little too loudly, but not loud enough to be heard over the thumping of music and bodies and voices. “It’s— Kafka, please, just tell him to turn around, I really don’t want him to deal with me today.” 

If you knew her even less, you’d misinterpret the twitch in her expression as concern—but you’re not too dumb, so you read it as amusement. “Trust me, he’s not going to have a problem with that. You’ll be fine.” 

Whatever that means. Kafka’s too cryptic for your liking, but you won’t complain. She wiped up your vomit from the dirty bathroom tiles and stayed with you to make sure you didn't get trampled, and she didn't complain about any of that. In a week, when you have enough strength to face her again, you’ll treat her to a good, expensive, flaky pastry. She seems like the kind of person who would love those. 

Her phone buzzes with a text notification, and she clicks her tongue, standing up and pulling you with her. Her hand is still warm, seeping through the sleeve of your shirt as she takes you by the forearm, gentle but guiding. Your stomach churns at the thought of seeing Blade, the thought of him seeing you like this. Freshly-puked-out with a nasty stomachache all because of a party that he told you not to go to. 

You hold back your protests as Kafka leads you through the still-crowded frat house. What time is it? Has nobody gotten bored yet, seriously? At least you didn't kill the mood by running to the bathroom and weeping into the toilet. It seems like nobody noticed, except for Kafka, and you don’t know if that should make you feel comforted or just more upset. 

The cool air of the night hits you as you step through the front door, eyes tracking your feet as you walk down the concrete steps. You see the silhouette of Blade’s ugly blue car in your peripheral vision, but you don’t want to look up in fear of seeing the disappointment on his face so soon. He’s going to rip you a new one, and then call you a slob and kick you out of the apartment and say I can’t have a party fiend living with me even though this was your first party ever, honest. 

You barely register that you’ve reached the passenger side of Blade’s car, only coming back to awareness when Kafka opens the door for you and starts nudging you into the seat. A really pathetic part of you wants to grab onto her arm and cry hard enough that she just relents and lets you walk home, but you’re already half into the passenger seat, looking everywhere but Blade. 

“Take care of them, won’t you, Bladie?” Kafka commands lightly, her hand leaving your arm as you get situated and buckled up in the car. Blade lets out a little huff in response and your stomach sinks. He’s already annoyed. 

The car ride to your apartment is only five minutes at this time of night. You just have to survive five minutes in silence and pray that he doesn’t tear into you and scold you like a disappointed parent. A glance at the clock on the car’s console confirms that it’s half past midnight. What the fuck. What were you even doing at the party for that long, besides vomiting and crying? 

The car rumbles, exhaust sputtering a little bit as Blade pulls out from the side of the street and drives slowly, carefully, as if not to rattle you, and you really just want him to speed up and throttle the car around so you feel more guilty about waking him up in the middle of the night to come pick you up. Blade goes to bed at eleven, the latest. You can’t imagine why Kafka thought it would be a good idea to call him, of all people, but then you remember that you kind of don’t have any other friends on campus. Your chest tightens at the thought. 

Blade makes some kind of sniffling noise, his way of trying to initiate some kind of conversation. There’s not even any music playing, because he always drives in dead silence because he’s abnormal, and on any other day you’d tease him about it like you always do. You see him turn his head to you in the corner of your eye, but you refuse to acknowledge him. You wish he’d just start scolding you, yelling at you or something. 

Tears prickle behind your eyes, painfully so, but your hands tighten around each other in your lap as you will yourself to not cry like a baby in front of your roommate. He lets out another sigh, but it doesn’t sound angry, just tired, and somehow that makes you feel worse. 

“What were you guys even drinking?” is his question of voice, and it’s the one question you didn't want him to ask, and you can’t help it when the tears spill over and you bring your hand up to wipe them away frantically, hiccuping a little bit as your gut churns. 

“What—” Blade stutters, and he never stutters, and you see him whip his head around to look at you, crying into your hands over a simple question, and you just want to leave the car and walk home like you told Kafka you would do. He pulls over to the side of some residential street. There’s a dog barking in a yard and wind chimes clinking together, and you think of your handmade bottle cap wind chime hung in the balcony of yours and Blade’s apartment, and it just makes you cry more. 

The car comes to a full stop. Blade puts it in park and turns completely to you. You spare a quick glance at him through the gaps between your fingers, and there’s something like worry on his face, which you’ve never seen before. His face is pinched, lips parted as if wanting to say something, but he can’t. He’s waiting for you. 

“I didn't drink anything, Blade,” you sob, feeling miserable at the state of yourself, at how you went to a frat party with nobody you knew and just walked around like a lost child, too scared to drink or talk to anyone, too anxious to say a word. “Not even a shot, or a sip, nothing from the fridge. It was so stupid, you were right, okay? It was a stupid idea, and I shouldn’t have gone.” Your breath catches in your throat, and the car is dead quiet as Blade lets your words sink in. 

You try not to make so much noise when you cry, but you’re sniveling and wiping your face and wishing that he would just stop looking at you like that. You can still see the ruby-red of his eyes even when you can’t bear to look up at him, and it makes you so viscerally upset. 

Blade is beautiful, really, and it makes you so upset that he looks better than you right now despite him being dragged right out of bed by Kafka’s phone call with a request to pick you up just minutes ago. You, who spent hours selecting an outfit, just to feel inadequate and wholly ugly the minute you walked through the door. It felt like you were back in middle school, spending hours with your parents picking out an outfit to a school dance, looking through ties and pants and shoes, just to show up and feel both overdressed and underdressed, feel like a fool, feel like you just can’t look the way everyone else does. Like something is always a little wrong. 

“Kafka said that you got sick. You didn't drink anything? You’re sure?” 

“No,”  you confirm pitifully, wanting him to just drop the topic and drive the rest of the way home and never talk about this again. “I was just anxious, and I puked like an idiot. Kafka helped me, she was the only one that I knew at the party. I don’t know. I don’t remember anymore. I was just anxious.” 

He says your name, not unkindly, but with a prying tone that just makes a fresh wave of tears stream down your face in rivulets. “Why would you go if you didn't know anyone?” 

“I don't know!” you shout, heated with embarrassment. You’re acting like a child, throwing a tantrum and crying and shouting in Blade’s car. The seatbelt is too tight on you. You fiddle with it, pulling it from the juncture of your neck and shoulder and loosening it, scratching your bitten nails against the scratchy cloth and looking out of the car window so that you can avoid Blade’s awful, terrible, intrusive gaze. 

“I just wanted to be normal, or something. I don’t know anybody from any of my classes. I don’t talk to anyone from my major. And then I got the invite for the party somehow and I just thought it would be fun. I don’t know, Blade, I know I should’ve listened to you, I’m sorry.” 

“Stop,” he says firmly, fully turned to you now, as if he wants you to look back at him, to listen to whatever he’s going to say, and that’s the one thing you don’t want to do. You hate that he’s being kind. You wish he’d be sarcastic and mean and cruel, bite into you and feed off your self-pity. But he’s being nice, nice in the same way that he’s nice when he buys the right brand of milk for you (because the others make you sick, and the taste is different), or when he drives you places in his car when it’s raining so that you don’t have to take the buses everywhere, or when he comes home with your ridiculous coffee order that costs a hellacious amount of money with all of your substitutions and additions and flavorings. 

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he says resolutely, leaving no room for argument, “Just— I didn't know you were feeling like that. I would’ve gone with you if you told me you needed someone. I assumed you were going with a friend.” 

You don’t respond with I don’t have any friends, because you’re pretty sure that’s clear enough by now, and you don’t want to confirm what’s already been confirmed a million times over just from the way you act. The way you cling to yours and Blade’s apartment, the way you never spend a second longer than you need to in any of your classes, the way that sometimes, when Blade goes out for class or work, you sit on the couch in silence with your laptop out, doing your work for the week and checking the clock and taking naps so that you don’t have to feel so alone for so long. 

“You didn't want to go,” you say instead, “I wasn’t going to make you just because I’m— I don’t know.” 

“I would’ve gone for you,” he tells you, really tells you, with a force in his words, like he wants to drive the point into you with a stake, driven right through your heart. “I would do a lot of things if you asked. You just need to ask.” 

You don’t— you really don’t want to think about what that means. What he means. You rip your eyes away from the car window and turn to face him. He’s not too close. You almost wish he could be closer, but you would suffocate under the pressure in your stomach and behind your eyes. 

He shouldn’t say things like that, things like You just need to ask, because you’d ask for a lot if given the chance. You’d ask for him to come to parties with you, stay by your side, let you put a hand on his shoulder and guide him around another disgusting frat house as if you know what you’re doing. You’d ask him to sleep in the same bed as you some nights, just a foot away from each other, backs turned to each other but still close enough that you can feel the unnatural coldness that radiates off of Blade. 

You’d ask him to introduce you to Kafka and that other girl they hang out with, to say something stupid and funny like This is my abhorrent roommate, be nice to them, and that way you’d have more contacts in your phone that aren't just Blade and your parents and two old high school friends who you haven’t spoken to in a year. You’d ask him to be a lot more than just a plus-one to a party full of people you’ve never met. 

“I just want to go home,” you breathe out, a guilty confession burning your gums and leaving a sour taste in your mouth. “I’m sorry.” 

“Stop saying sorry,” he asserts for the second time tonight, making your lungs squeeze as you puff out a tired exhale. Blade turns back in his seat, taking the car out of park and heading back onto the road—driving slowly, yet again, avoiding cracks and potholes in the road. “You need to eat something. You’ll wake up with a hellish headache if you go to bed dehydrated.” 

“I don’t think that’s true.” 

“I said it, so it’s true,” he says petulantly, turning the car down into a road that’s definitely not in the direction of your apartment building. To your hidden delight, the glowing sign of a twenty-four-seven ice cream store comes into view, and you sit up just a little bit. Blade slows the car as he turns into the drive-thru, glancing at you with an eyebrow half-raised. 

“What do you want? I’ll order for you.” 

“I don’t have my wallet,” you admit, just a little bit embarrassed. “I didn't even bring my keys with me. Do you think they take Apple Pay?” 

A breathy laugh escapes him, and you catch sight of a dimple pressed into his cheek, and you want to press your thumb into it and look at his smile, just for a little longer. “Don’t be dumb. I’m paying,” he tells you, the same way he has every time he pays for your cafe drink, or when he comes home from work with your favorite, and says You’re broke enough without having to pay for these drinks, don’t pay me back in that snippy way he shows his care. 

You ask for a medium vanilla milkshake, with sprinkles, and he gets you a large instead, which you’re more than grateful for. He refuses to let you look at the receipt for the total cost, and hands you the milkshake with a comical severity that you often see in him. The sweet drink washes away any bitter taste left in your mouth, and you feel a little better, a little nicer in your haphazard party outfit and under Blade’s fleeting gaze. 

A deep sigh escapes you, one of relief, when the car finally parks at your apartment building. Blade puts a cold hand between your shoulder blades, unobtrusive and leading, and it’s a comforting contrast from the heat lingering on your skin from the party and the closed car. It feels right, more in-place than Kafka’s warm hands were when she wiped your face and kept you steady, though she was just as gentle. 

Blade all but tosses you onto the couch, claiming that it’s much too late for a shower and he’d rather not deal with you collapsing from exhaustion in the tub. You relent easily, the exhaustion of the night hitting you and soaking into your limbs. 

“I’ll let you sleep on the couch,” he says, and it’s a good and kind thing, because he knows that sometimes you hate your bedroom because it’s just too empty, and the constant sound filtering into the living room puts you at ease. He never lets you sleep on the couch, because it’s bad for your back, and he jokes about you developing adult onset scoliosis with the awful way you sleep. Letting you do it, just this once, is another one of his small mercies. 

The TV is on, humming at a low volume, and your legs are thrown across Blade’s lap. You’re shocked that he’s willing to fall asleep with you like this, but he’s kind, sarcastic and biting but kind all the same, as much as he loathes to admit it. It’s not too lonely, you decide, hearing the bottle cap wind chimes on your balcony clink together in dissonant harmonies. 

(There’s a missing text from a new contact on your phone when you wake up, coming from pretty lady friend, extending an invite to brunch in two days, and you kick your legs on the couch in giddy excitement, thinking about how you’ll rope Blade into coming with you, too.)

—°+..｡*ﾟ｡*ﾟ+.*.｡.—

taglist: @tragedy-of-commons

(pssst!!! send me a msg or fill out the form in my navi to be added to the taglist!!!)

#blade x reader #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #blade hsr x reader #hsr blade x reader #hsr ren x reader #thats his name right.......... #blade x you #hsr x you #honkai star rail x you #begging myself to write something under 1k next time #i miss when i had the ability to write short drabbles instead of behemoths #i say this as if i don't have a supernatural blade fic thats already 5k and not even halfway done #THATS the real behemoth #he's so out of character here forgive me #i just like his pretty face #me writing about a frat party when i have yet to even touch the vicinity of a party house

[oldkamelle]

Still accepting Ideas? If so, Spy asking advice on Sniper on how to tell Scout that he is his dad.

#tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #tf2 fanart #traditional art #traditional comic #pen doodles #oldart #mercs #(gently holds your hands) anon. what the fuck. /lh #this was such a behemoth of an idea cuz it raises so many questions?? #why would spy suddenly want to tell scout the truth given how he only chose to when scout was two seconds away from dying #(also. cant remember which comic this is but when spys about to drive off after scout begs him to take him as well #he only does so when scout mentions his ma so thats on my mind as well) #hes never shown like he feels the need to yknow #if spy decided to tell scout the truth why would he be asking for advice like wouldnt he want to keep it out of anyone elses business #(which fair enough wouldnt really happen given scout but eeh) #also he already did it good enough besides the cosplaying #and if spy for some reason was gonna ask for advice why would he go to sniper specifically #did i answer any of these questions in this mess? #the answer to that is the same as to 'do i have a good understanding of the characters' or 'do i have storytelling skills' #which is to say no #i also couldnt think of a way to make it funny to try and get away with that so i had to go with the more serious route so #anyway. sincerely hope its good enough anon (thumbs up)

[hajihiko]

I’m curious

What’s your opinion on the despair designs of the sdr2 cast and would you change anything about em?

i wrote soooomething about it somewhere, but mostly I'd stop making them all be >:) all the time. I think it'd be cooler if they retained more of their personalities or were notably opposite (in differing ways, and depending on how exactly they got that way)

(And Kaz gets a muzzle)

#Akane is already very spunky and energetic so she's apathetic and lethargic #Nekomaru is quiet and serious (how scary if you don't hear the behemoth coming) #Stuff like that. More differing personality stuff #I did 'designs' for the survivors as remnants! In quotes BC I didn't actually change the designs in each one #Just how they're shown I guess #not an art

[bas-writes]

with the new wave of fans coming from the live action one piece & having the topic of picking the manga/anime up I think one thing is not discussed enough

due to its length, One Piece is an over 25 years old piece of manga history

that's half of Oda's life, that's his evolution as an artist and as a human, from times when he was a barely known young mangaka with head filled with boy-ish ideas to times when he's a husband, a father, and one of the most influencing & best selling mangaka in industry's history. that's a manga as a genre evolution, over 25 years of history packed into a linear story. it started in fucking 90s, that's like ages, eons even, ago within the fast current of popculture.

you will see not only how the style & narration changes, you will see how Oda's life influenced his magnum opus, how manga market & condition of world-wide popculture shaped and influenced him as an artist.

you will see the worst and the best takes on trans characters in manga. you will see misogyny & fatphobia - and amazing female and fat characters. you will see asexual MC and heavy ace-coding of the story, and subversive takes on sexuality and female sexuality empowerment, and subtly yet clear-cut stance against SA - and at the same time jokes and fanservice based on harassment (fuck you, Sanji). you will see genius writing - and writing worth nothing more than a facepalm. you will see brilliance, and constraint, and exhaustion, and depression.

you will see how Oda meanders in the swamp of manga market, one of the most tight, oppressive & exploiting creative markets that modern society has spat out.

you will see how a strongly anarchist, anti-capitalism story gets dragged through capitalism lenses and turned into a product... and how one of the results of this process is the live action itself.

and yes, all of this is also a manga that will make you laugh at poop and dick jokes. and at some point there's an ass, walking independently from the rest of the body, and communicating with farts. it's an important part of one of story's crucial arcs.

#tl;dr whatever you think & know about it already: you are NOT ready #none of us was #and I feel a lot of people dislike/throw the manga away because they try to compare it to other titles #instead of treating it as its own unique story #& without taking under consideration what kind of multilayered behemoth it is #there is no other manga like one piece #'but X...' no believe me absolutely NOT #bas mumbles

[incorrectsibunaquotes]

I have a theory that the reason we as an audience feel like Sibuna in Season 3b are making monumentally stupid choices is because the show doesn’t actually spell out for us that the kids don’t have all the information we have. In fact, they are operating with less than half of our knowledge. (This is gonna be a longgggg post, so read under the cut if you dare)

On my latest rewatch of S3 for fanfic purposes, i found myself really struggling to justify why the hell Eddie couldn’t put two and two together with his vision of Patricia and the “traitor” in Sibuna. I was frustrated with him because to me it was incredibly obvious! Like who else could it possibly be?? But then, I rewatched it again with a closer eye and everything suddenly clicked:

We, the audience, are watching the action from a completely zoomed out angle. We’re not just following Sibuna, but we’re also following Team Evil. We know Robert is capturing Sinners and what a Sinner actually is, before Sibuna is even fully aware that they failed to stop the eclipse ceremony. The kids metaphorically tripped at the starting line.

Furthermore, this is the first time in the show that the Sibunas have not had either the upper hand or were even on equal playing field with the adults. In Season 1, the Society was wholly unprepared for a bunch of adolescents to start foiling in their plans (bc why would they be prepared for that??), and Sibuna basically destroyed them due to adults underestimating their willingness to fuck around and find out. In Season 2, Victor/Vera and Sibuna were on equal ground; no one knew how to solve the tasks and it was a matter of a bunch of separate parties trying to figure it out before each other. They were all just throwing shit at the wall and hoping it stuck.

At the top of Season 3, we play a lot with both the S1 and S2 dynamics. At first, Sibuna is leagues and bounds ahead of the adults, and then they pretty quickly end up on the same footing. Then, in the second half of the season, that entire dynamic is flipped on its head, and it’s Sibuna who are wholly unprepared for the adults. I’ve talked about how the kids, especially our Sibuna veterans, got a little too comfortable with Victor and co’s ineptitude and cocky with their own intelligence… but that’s not even why they were so slow on the uptake.

None of the Sibunas even hear the word “Sinner” until they find that book in the secret room and read it while sitting on the stage. And the book does not explain at all what a Sinner actually is. It tells them that Ammut needs “the souls of five human sinners who embody the greatest flaws on mankind” and once she has five of them she can enter the human realm and cause lots of problems. Absolutely nowhere in the book does it ever say “Also, much like Robert, the soulless body of the Sinner is reawakened in service to the underworld.” The only other hint that could have possibly clued anyone in is “when your friends are not your friends”. But like, that clue was ages ago! Why would they even be thinking about that, when it had absolutely no bearing on their hunt for the secret room/answers up to that point? I cannot stress this enough, THEY HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE WHAT A SINNER IS! (I’m gonna repeat this sentence about 400 times in case you don’t get it now lol) Mind you, that atp in the timeline, this is approximately fifteen or so minutes before Denby captures Patricia.

But let’s rewind all the way back to when Team Evil devises a plan to kidnap Eddie. He’s in the crypt, right? It’s pretty evident to him that it was probably Denby, Victor, and/or Robert who trapped him here, but he’s got no real clue as to why. Of course, we all know that they’re planning on turning him into a Sinner, because we saw Victor get turned. But as far as Sibuna knows, Victor has never really been on their side, so all they think is that he’s being meaner than usual but of course he’s opposing them. That’s not strange.

Okay, so Eddie is stuck and distressed, but he’s not as panicked as he needs to be because nowhere in his mind does he think this could potentially end in what is essentially his death. Now, throw in the horrifying vision he has of Patricia getting dragged into a glowing sarcophagus. He still doesn’t know what a Sinner is, but he knows that whatever he just saw was really bad; it’s an incentive from the Osirian spirit (or the house, or the gods, or literally whatever) to actually try to get the hell out of there.

So we’re all sitting here watching going “Oh my god they’re gonna nab Patricia and make her evil! 😰” because we have context; Eddie has absolutely none. It’s also really important for later on that his vision ends when the sarcophagus door shuts. It’s framed as incredibly final, and for all Eddie knows, they’ve just stuffed Patricia in what he knows is a tiny cramped space and locked the door behind her. He thinks that at best they are going to kidnap her or, at worst, straight up kill her. Nothing in that vision indicates she’s walking out of there at all.

When Patricia ran off after the fake messages, Eddie is concerned for a lot of different reasons, but the two primary ones are the obvious “oh my god my girlfriend thinks I cheated on her what do I do???” and the other is “if she’s run off on her own, the adults could fulfill my vision!” But then she turns back up, which should be clear to us by now means that he thinks she’s safe. He’s waiting for her (for any of them) to disappear. But when none of them do, they think it’s fine. It’s not that Eddie doesn’t think Patricia is in danger of becoming a Sinner, he just doesn’t realize what that would actually look like.

Even when they’re all in the hallway morbidly joking about having to give up sinning, the language KT uses is telling of what they think being a Sinner means: “We don’t want to accidentally help out Team Evil [by sinning].” Of course, this statement works with the knowledge the audience has of everything, but if Sibuna actually knew what they were dealing with, KT would have said something more like “We don’t want to get captured/turned by Team Evil.” The jokes they’re making are still morbid, but because they think you just get put in the sarcophagus and that’s the end of it.

Let’s flash forward again to the phonograph getting smashed and Eddie’s second vision that prompts the witch hunt panic in the first place. The vision can be separated into three parts: 1) Eddie sees a hooded figure smash the phonograph (okay Sibuna already knows someone did it on purpose, not too crazy); 2) Robert approaches him creepily and has the mic-drop moment of “it was one of your little friends; you have a viper in your nest” (seriously what a raw line of dialogue… but also now Eddie is being told that there is a traitor. Pretty cut and dry); 3) he turns around and sees every other member of Sibuna mockingly throw up the Sibuna sign (uh oh!)

So here is where people (including me!) always got a little annoyed with Eddie for not doing the math. But upon several rewatches and actually listening to what everyone was saying, never once do any of the kids ever bring up the word “Sinner” during the entirety of this whodunnit arc. And that’s simply because it’s not even a thought that crosses their minds. The language they use is very telling: “traitor” and “betrayal” being the heavy hitters. If any of them actually had context for what was actually going on, the language they would be using would be more like “victim” or literally just “Sinner” as a noun. But they don’t, which is why they’re so hostile toward one another… and why KT was screwed from the moment Eddie had that vision.

Because the fact that they don’t know that a Sinner is an evil version of themselves (not just someone whose soul is being used as a power generator), means that on a subconscious level Fabian, Alfie, and even Eddie already assumed KT was guilty. And Sinner!Patricia knew that, and that’s why she was so easily able to pivot and pin it on her. KT was directly linked to Frobisher, and Fabian and Alfie had already been suspicious of her at the start of the season for other reasons. It’s why Fabian let Patricia help him with the finger printing in the first place: because he doesn’t believe it’s her. And Eddie would have no real reason to suspect Patricia for three reasons: 1) Because he’s in love with her; 2) Because he knows just how long Patricia (and Fabian, and Alfie) have been loyal to Sibuna and to each other; 3) Because he, like everyone else, was looking at this betrayal as a willing capitulation to the Team Evil.

The first time Sibuna becomes aware that a Sinner is an entity that they have to actually watch out for walking about (as opposed to just having to watch out becoming), is after KT and Harriet manage to escape Patricia in the Gatehouse. Harriet clearly knows what a Sinner is bc she has the presence of mind to actually explain (vaguely, of course, because she’s drugged to kingdom come) to KT what she’d just narrowly escaped.

And then when she confronts Sibuna and Patricia in the hallway after Miss Crocodile Tears is telling tales about KT trying to kidnap her, KT drops the bomb on the boys: “She was trying to make me a Sinner just like her!” Pause. Record scratch. Okay. Now everything they thought they knew about the situation is completely recontextualized as something much more sinister than what they initially thought. Because I’d always struggled with how cruel they were being to KT, especially if they thought it wasn’t her fault. But everything up until this point deeply suggests or rather expects us to understand that Sibuna only had two pieces of an 100 piece puzzle, and that them being mean to KT was because they thought she actually betrayed them.

With all of this in mind, Eddie is not stupid for not figuring it out right away. In fact, without knowing what a Sinner actually is, it would be an insane leap to assume Patricia had anything to do with the phonograph.

I’ve basically talked myself and all of you in several circles, but the bottom line is the show didn’t do a fabulous job of telling us that Sibuna had no clue what they were up against. It’s easy for us to sit back and go “what the hell is wrong with them are they stupid?” because we have all the knowledge of what’s going on eons before they do. This is a far more charitable read of the characters’ choices and thought process, and the only way any of their actions make any sense. In fact, this is less of a theory and more of what is… literally canon, I guess

#live laugh love dramatic irony #Maybe you all already knew this and didn’t need this behemoth text post but yeah #or maybe you were like me and just like ‘oh they’re all a bit daft aren’t they?’ #tbh this makes everything about this arc way more sinister #anyway sorry that this is so rambly #I refuse to write real essays anymore I graduated leave me alone #house of anubis #tess rambles

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Fun fact:

Wally in his human form would be 5 ft while Barnaby would be 7 ft!

https://www.tumblr.com/partycoffin/689054531662888960/how-tall-is-barnaby-and-wally-in-the-pok%C3%A9mon-au

HOLY SHITTT WHY IS HE SO FUCKING TALL i mean good for him! but damn. he'd be able to like... step on Wally so easily.... he'd be just a lil bug in comparison.... a speck... Crushable....

#now im wondering if hes that tall.... and he seems to be the Shortest of the three giants.... #HOW FUCKIN TALL ARE POPPY & HOWDY????? #absolute behemoths the lot of em #rambles from the bog #fuck this is making me rethink the heights i listed for the human au #but... no... well.... #cause the part of me that Loves extreme height differences on all accounts is eating this up #and wants to Stick With It #but also i'd either have to make barnaby the tallest. or howdy & poppy are gonna be Too Damn Tall #cause in my mind poppy is the biggest and she's 6'5 already #but.... ugh.... Agh... Conflict In My Brain.... #and well Well #clown does say 'closer to 7' so.... who's to say barns isn't 6'8 or somethin in that range #i just Dont Know! #and wally's 'closer to 5' could easily make my Imagining of him as 5'2 plausible #hm....

[genopaint]

SOME NEW DRAGON GIRLS HAVE APPEARED!!!

A long while back (around 2019?) I made some alt designs for Green in different colors. And later I decided I really wanted to try and give them some genuine nice redesigns to match other dragons and be fleshed out more. This is my first attempt to actually do that! Green is a little more general dragon-esc and is meant to be Bahamut cause it's my favorite. But now Blue, Red, and Yellow are their own characters, all based on different dragons I draw a lot! I think they came out cute, I hope you like em too!

Now these are all just my first goes at these girls, I'm sure I'll give them more tries later. And just like Green, they can all be drawn differently every time! Because I just like that sort of thing lol. Not to mention they're just girlie versions of the main 4 dragons I draw.

Their personalities are probably something like:

Green - The regular girl, a bit of a clutz, but tries her best

Blue - The cool one, is always chill and friends with everyone! Also for some extra design context, Blue's horns aren't meant to be little sea slug antenna they're meant to be those little whiskers I always draw on Leviathan. Just didn't feel like giving her a mustache for personal reasons lol.

Red - The mean one, always acts tough and gets angry easily

Yellow - The silly one, really bubbly and fun! This one is of course Ziz and because of that she has wings!

Also all their height differences are intentional. From shortest to tallest: Red, Green, Blue, Yellow

Here's some of the earlier drawings of them! The first with all 4 is from 2019, and the other 2 are from 2020!

Similarly to Blue I did try to do a redesign in 2020 of Red... However, this was actually an accident cause I totally forgot about the alt colored Greens lol. But it's still neat to see what was in my brain at the time! Unlike Red and Blue, I've never tried to redesign Yellow before today. So I do hope you enjoy this first attempt at her!

I also have plans to do at least 4 more to finish the rainbow and to maybe have 4 girls for the evil dragons I made a while back (Nero, Caligula, Commodus, Tiamat) Idk when I'll get around to them but do keep an eye out if you liked these 4!

#character design #original character #dragon #dragons #dragoness #dragon girl #anthro #scalie #reptile #my stuff #oc #green #bahamut #behemoth #leviathan #ziz #i should probably have tags for those 4 already

[picory]

such a missed opportunity to add these early divine beast designs to the depths in totk. they would feel right at home in that deep dark gloomy area... i especially like the first and fourth ones

#IT WOULD'VE BEEN SO COOL !!!!!!!!! #just... seeing an otherwordly behemoth slowly walking in the distance in such a dark place would give me the chills in a good way #and hearing them make whale-like noises or something similar that echoes through the whole depths... #now would they be enemies you have to fight or simply peaceful creatures you can encounter like the dragons... #leaning towards the latter. link has too many giant beasts to fight in the depths already. no need to add to that pile #quacks

[xythlia]

can we peek at frat boy satoru 👀 pretty please

hehe I permit one peek at the draft :3

#its kind of a behemoth already its gonna need editing after i feel good with it #but this is from the beginning of the fic so far! #tw alcohol mention #tw cigarettes #𓏲 ࣪₊ 💭 \ inbox

[nyoomfruits]

when the estimated word count for my new fic is 25k+ but i am notorious for understimating my word counts.....

#for context: i estimated already home was going to be 15k. it ended up being 32k. so. you know #good lord #i will see you all at the end of next year when i will have finally finished this behemoth

[keets-writing-corner]

I FINALLY GOT CHAPTER 2 UP

Here's chapter 1 if anyone missed that one

gawd it took me so long I'm so sorry! In my defense it's double the length of chapter 1. Here's a little preview

It started with a boom that rivaled thunder. 

Lilith jumped awake in the dead of night, heart pounding. Around her, animals were chittering, panicked. There was an energy, a tension in the air. She couldn’t quite understand what it was or what was happening. She still could find no source of the noise that had awoken her. 

Another boom rattled the air, followed by actual thunder. Both were accompanied by blinding light from the sky above. The ground beneath her shook, and the plants rattled their leaves. 

Lilith stood and began to run. She could barely see what was going on through the canopy of the trees, but she was determined to figure out what was going on. Normally at night, she wouldn’t have been able to see anything. But with every crash, every shake, every boom, the sky lit up with different colors and illuminated her path. 

When she finally reached a clearing, her suspicions were confirmed but her questions remained unanswered. 

The sky above her was in turmoil. The clouds churned and danced around each other, trying to crush each other and melting into each other. They tugged and pulled, ripped and teared away at each other. Lights would flash from behind them with their deafening booms. It looked like the end of days. 

The only experience Lilith had that was even remotely akin to this was light rain, but mostly only because it’d be cloudy with distant thunder. This-... This was something else completely.

Lilith watched transfixed. Hoping maybe at some point it would let up or fade. But it wouldn’t. At most there would be a longer stretch of seconds between the next flash of light than other times, but it never waned. 

Soon, the battle of the sky stretched into the daytime, distorting the colors of the sunrise around it to a violent red before eventually giving way to day. The clouds remained dark, and heavy, sometimes even black at times. 

Lilith had hoped that during the day it would make more sense, or be less frightening. Instead, what she saw was only worse. 

“Lilith!” a voice called to her, and she turned. Eve was beckoning her, “Come on! I know you don’t like Adam much, but don’t be alone in this!” 

Lilith glanced at the sky one last time before running over to Eve. 

Eve was right. As annoying as Adam was, being alone with that chaos reigning above her would be worse. It seemed however, whatever it was that was happening, was also rattling Adam. For once, he took on a more protective role over the two women, trying to comfort them. 

They spent the day together eating the fruits of Eden, and sitting together looking at the sky. 

When the sun started to set, the sky was still rumbling and booming. The lights distorted the clouds into monstrous shapes before immediately destroying them and then creating more shapes.

“What in Eden’s name is going on??” Adam hissed under his breath. “Is this going to last all night too?” 

It did. 

None of them got much sleep. 

It lasted all throughout the next day as well. And the next night, and the day after that. 

It never rained, and the wind only minorly picked up, as if down below on Eden was completely separate to what was happening above. Lilith eventually grew weary of Adam once again and broke off to be by herself. Clearly, whatever was happening wasn’t about to hurt her. 

Finally, after seven days and seven nights, when the dawn was breaking through the thickness of night, there was a sickening sound that started off as a crackle but devolved into a rattle as a single light flared in the sky and then jortled across it. 

The sky went quiet as that single light began to fall, a smaller piece of it broke off and went on its own trail. 

Lilith could only watch in morbid fascination as the streak of light fell, and when it hit the earth, the ground itself shook, rippling out in waves as if it had turned liquid. 

Lilith grabbed onto a tree for stability as all the animals screeched around her. 

Then it settled. 

The ground no longer shook.

The sky was silent and still. 

Looking up at it however, in the exact trace of the light, the edges of the clouds had been ripped apart, and the sunrise was making it glow an angry red. The air was uncomfortably chilly. It felt as if something had been irrevocably changed.

___________________

And here's the link again for the full thing

#hazbin hotel #Lucifer #lucifer morningstar #Lucilith #lilith morningstar #Eve #Adam #Fan fiction #ugh why did my brain decide that his fan fic neede behemoth chapters??? #I'm so tired #imma do some stuff this week before continuing on the next one #good news is that the next one has already been started #as aforementioned in other posts #I work out of order #anyways #please enjoy chapter 2 #it is 30k words #you guys have no idea how long it took me to upload #cuz of formatting issues #I had to redo a lot of formatting BY HAND in AO3 #but that's not what took a while #no no #see I'm also an artist #and my hand has a quirky habit of #ctrl+z #whenever something happens that I didn't want #AO3 would freeze every time I did that #accidentally or intentionally #and I'd have to exit out of the tab and reupload the chapter #and also redo all the formatting I did previously from scratch

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

okay so i'm gonna try to finish a ball of this sport weight behemoth this weekend (maybe), and THEN i'm gonna cast on a shawl as a Gift for a March Birthday :) AND hopefully it'll be a ~writing weekend~!!!

#text #personal #writing #lucius #aw #its not actually aw but thats the tag im most likely to search lol #knitting #idk how many balls this sport weight behemoth is gonna take actually #if i get through this second one i can lay the whole thing out and compare though (hence why i wanna get there) #and the shawl is just one (1) stash ball!! #trying hard to knit through the stash this year #I've already been to the yarn store ONCE without buying anything 😌 #(there are a couple colors i need in small volume but i didnt buy extra shit lol) #knitting project is called: 'hello darkness my old friend' #its perf lol

[ongreenergrasses]

DRAFT TWO DONE

#.txt #the behemoth #YEEHAW GIRLS anyway it’s been a batshit insane night and this story is going to live in my bones by the time i’m through with the next draft #like it doesn’t already live in my bones. idk man ik if i tell manyfacedmirror about the plot of this he’ll look at me and go. so this has #been living inside you since 2012 huh. and I’ll be like MAYBE SO #in another legendary manyfacedmirror moment btw. this is my best friend of 13 years. our friendship is a teenager. anyway I said hey bestie #manyfacedmirror I have written 150k and before I could say ANYTHING ELSE he was like well I know who that’s about. I was read for FILTH

[inkblackorchid]

Seriously. Now I'm getting ideas for prequel fics before To Bloom or To Wilt and stuff to bridge the timeskip between Chase the Sunlight and You Have A Mirror????

Sigh.

Into the fic idea backlog they go, I guess.

#I must not start multiple WIPs. #Multiple WIPs are the progress-killer. #etc #as if my 5ds fic idea backlog isn't already a behemoth of its own #at this rate I'll still be writing 5ds fic when I hit 40 #which. you know. I wouldn't complain about tbh #I just wanna get stuff done too sometimes #orchid rambles #fic writing woes

[cbk1000]

Hey, so since I’m a lying liar who still hasn’t posted this fic, here’s another preview.

Then there was the dreadful scene with Mrs Brown, who had them out for a look at an elderly horse, in an elderly barn. Those venerable ancients, all three of them, were standing together, with the backs all bent by time or wind, when Merlin turned the truck into the drive, and got out, still taunting Arthur for his superior taste in music; which at least was nothing to do with Gwaine. They got out the kit, put on their wellies, and jogged up to meet her, before she could go limping down the drive, and would have to go limping back up it. She seemed to be in more agony than the horse, who had rearranged his weight to coddle his left front foot, and said, before Merlin had even opened his mouth, thereby breaking some kind of land speed record, “He won’t put his foot down. Do you think there’s anything terribly wrong with it?”

“Well, we’ll just take a look,” Merlin said, and put down the bag, and calling out to the horse, “All right, sir, let’s have a look,” picked up the hoof. He was bent over it only a moment. “It’s thrush.” 

“What’s that? He’s not dying is he, poor dear?” she asked, sounding as if it would have killed her herself.

“Well, if left too long, it can lame a horse, but it won’t kill them. Although if he’s not vaccinated against tetanus, that can get in through a damaged frog.” She gave him a blank look. “Thrush is a bacterial infection that eats away at the tissue of the frog, so if it damages it too severely, it leaves the horse vulnerable to other infections.”

“Oh dear. What’s this business about a frog? Nasty, invasive buggers.”

Merlin’s face looked like Arthur’s felt. “Erm. First horse, I’m guessing?”

“Oh, yes. He was a neighbour’s, and they were going to pack him off to the slaughterhouse, can you believe that, so I said, ‘You will not, I’ve a lovely barn for him right here’ and I talked them round from murdering the poor old chap, and here he is. We’re getting on, the pair of us, a couple of old buggers seeing out our last years together. Just like a big dog he is, lovely, honestly, aren’t you, love?” she asked the horse, who butted his head against her hand. “He’s the most perfect gentleman there ever was, and they were going to murder him without human feeling! I don’t believe this world we’re living in.”

Arthur scratched his nose. He had housed enough horses of other owners to know that people viewed their animals rather like they viewed their children; little respectful darlings who had never gone or spoken awry, because of the simple qualification that they were theirs: and so if they had appeared to have done wrong, it was because of some flawed perception in the mistaken perceiver. If she had called him a dog, it was very likely he was a demon: and they would have to cut the bad tissue out of his hoof, and wash it down with treatment, a practice discouraged by even the most genuinely gentlemanly of equines. He looked sideways at Merlin, who he found was looking sideways at him. They both had that natural perception of accomplished horsemen, and knew looking at the presently placid figure it was shortly to be one of strife. He had let Merlin pick up the hoof without any protest; but whether he would consent to beyond that was still to be seen.

It was Arthur’s job to keep the horse from killing Merlin, which he did by letting the fellow get a good sniff at him, and talking to him in a low voice, in the hopes of earning his esteem; he had handled his share of unruly horses undergoing procedures they did not care to be part of, and decided to start with a neck twitch, after they had led him into his stall, where he would have less room to manoeuver, and Merlin could work, hopefully, in relative safety. He grabbed a roll of loose flesh on the neck, and squeezed it, getting a surprised look in return: but no other sign of upheaval. 

“Maybe you should pick out his hoof,” Merlin said, getting out his instruments, and rolling up his sleeves. “If he kicks you in the head, it won’t make any difference.”

“Oh right, because your head is the one at greater risk.”

Merlin eyed him as he picked up the hoof once more, and tucked the horse’s leg between his own. “If I die, tell your sister I’m sorry I couldn’t be her first victim for the insurance money. It would have been great, up till she killed me.”

Arthur rolled his eyes.

Then the horse, sensing this was to be a different thing altogether, jerked the hoof in Merlin’s hands, and thrust the whole body straight up, almost a kind of levitation, whilst Merlin clung to the hoof, and Arthur clung to the halter, pushing into the huge body as it tried to swing round on Merlin, and their observer said in abject delight, “Oh, he’s like a young man again! I’ve never seen him move like that.”

“Right, it’s a bloody miracle,” Arthur said through his teeth. He was putting his whole weight into his task. He was between Merlin, scraping determinedly at the hoof, and Merlin, smashed to bits on the stall wall. 

“Where are you lads from?” she asked, leaning on the stall door whilst he fended off the horse’s teeth. “I’m from Manchester, myself. I can’t place your accent, young man,” she said, to whom he did not know; and not waiting for the unknown young man to state his origins, began to expound upon hers. The horse tried to rear; and Arthur, holding the halter with everything he was, inserted a strained, “Mm hmm” where she obviously expected one to be; and Merlin, restraining a truly incalculable number of curses, said, “Oh yeah, lovely country up there” whilst he was retrieving the solution, which he did by leaping sideways, to get out of the way of the hoof he had abandoned, flinging himself against the side of the stall as Arthur pushed the horse away from him, and the horse, robbed of his victim, bit Arthur instead.

Fucking fuck fuck cunt, said Arthur’s brain; whilst his mouth was the inviolable stalwart of chivalry. “Lovely, yeah,” it said to the woman, whilst her precious goblin was standing on his foot, and she was asking whether he wasn’t the dearest old dear of existence.

“Now you’ll be coming in for tea; I want to hear all about you,” she said, and left them, after listening to Merlin’s instructions on cleaning the hoof, to gather their equipment and meet her in a sitting room which looked to their exhausted bodies a kind of Promised Land: and into which they heaved themselves, having cleaned themselves as well as they could with a water bottle and bad language. She gave them little frail teacups on saucers, which looked absurd in Merlin’s large battered hand, and laid on the table a startling array of biscuits, saying as she did so, “You eat as much as you like; I’d have you for supper as well, if I didn’t know you two were hard-working young lads who needed to get on with their day. And tell me, how did you meet, and don’t worry, I always vote for the Liberal Democrats, so you don’t need to worry about anything here, I may be old, but I’m not old-fashioned. Lovely, the pair of you.”

“Erm. Well. Arthur runs a breeding farm. My uncle has a veterinarian practice and he’s getting on, so I’ve come down to take over the field work that’s harder on him. We kind of transitioned from client-vet to assistant-vet.”

Arthur had stiffened on the sofa. He did not know how she had spotted what were his seething but subtle feelings; but she had clocked them, and was about to innocently out them.

“Oh, no, that’s not nearly as romantic as I’d hoped--”

“I think we had better get on to Freya’s, hadn’t we?” Arthur asked, something he had never before suggested with such (or any) enthusiasm. Merlin looked at him. Then he looked at Mrs Brown, and went horrifically pale.

“Oh. Oh, no, we’re like, you know--professional partners. Not partners partners. We’re not--yeah. Arthur’s--and I’m not. Interested in that sort of thing. With him. That’s--we’re friends. He’s more like--a brother. You know. Yeah. Erm. It’s--professional. Our. Partnership.”

“Why didn’t you just say, ‘Oh, not that horrid old toe rag’ and be done with it?” Arthur asked as they returned to the truck, not through his teeth, though it might have sounded that way.

“Well, what the hell did you want me to say? She thought we were fucking, for some reason. I can’t have something like that following me round.”

“Right, you wouldn’t want to sully your heretofore impeccable reputation for madness with good taste,” Arthur snapped. He did not slam the door of the truck after he had got in; but he did think about having been reduced to the non-sexual realm of family, and shut it with enthusiasm. “Your brother.”

#honestly i've been pissing about while i finish up the social media fic #because i'm just not sure about posting another wip #even though i have a ton written for this already #and it's close to done #i'm going to work on this some more this week #and see where i'm at by the end #and also where i'm at with the next chapter of book of merthur #which is pretty close to being done #and then decide it i want to start editing this behemoth #well i DON'T want to start editing it lmao #merthur #fic #writing #preview