#this makes a nice transition into september i think

[novelmonger]

Slowly coming to the realization that my mood is vastly improved when I'm able to keep the windows open for at least part of the day/night. It's finally gotten cool enough that I've been able to keep the windows open all night until 9 or 10 a.m. for the past couple days, and I just found myself so...cheerful. After weeks and weeks of oppressive heat and occasional rain that would just leave things muggy and miserable, this is so refreshing.

I'm sure it has something to do with how I grew up without AC, so except for in the winter, we had the windows open a lot. I basically grew up in a desert, so even at this time of year, we'd throw open the windows at night to let all the cool air in, then shut the place up during the day. Where I live now is a different situation - I'm sorry, I'm not going to not use AC when it's 105 degrees outside with 95% humidity. But I hadn't realized just how much something as simple as opening a window was affecting my mood.

I feel like a small part of me in the back of my head is just sitting quietly, watching the dappled sunlight under the trees and feeling the cool breeze in my hair - even while I'm concentrating on work or rushing around with various responsibilities.

Maybe that's the meaning of peace. Like how you can be joyful even when you're not happy, maybe this is what peace feels like in the midst of chaos.

#rambling into the void #this makes a nice transition into september i think #i'm a weirdo who often finds sunny days depressing and rainy days rejuvenating #but even though today was bright with blue skies and not a cloud to be seen i was actually cheerful every time i looked outside!

[monarchisms]

im merely curious because of what you mentioned previously, but what do you think is different between the watcher service vs dropout? i /do/ think there is one, but i can't put my finger on it

as of right now, there are two major differences in my eyes: legacy and diversity

the first point, i had to think on for longer because though i'm familiar with dropout because my friends are into their content, my own perspective is lacking. so, i did some minor research to fact check stuff

dropout, i feel, is an exception to the rule in regards to internet-based companies making their own website/streaming services. until recently, they have existed as collegehumor since fucking 1999. they have lots of prior experiences to reflect on, and a long-term audience that often gives them feedback they're receptive to. their older content staying on youtube alongside some new ongoing stuff still being uploaded there is a nice plus. ryan and shane got popular through unsolved comparatively much sooner in 2016, as did steven in that same year with worth it, watcher currently is only 4 years old, so their foundation is more shaky right now

what also helped alongside that was that the transition wasn't as jarring as watcher's announcement. their subscription price on launch in september 2018 was $3.99 a month up until december, when they eased into tiered subs, which must've helped a lot. afaik, watcher tv has no mobile app (yet?), and many fans outside the US are region-locked without a vpn or something similar. with watcher and dropout in its current day each being $5.99, this leads into...

the second point: diversity. dropout launched mobile versions of their service 3 months after the official launch. watcher is exclusive to one official platform, as mentioned before, but in my opinion, what hurts watcher the most is series diversity. they have like, one series going on for a few weeks or months before another starts, so if someone paid them the fee, it'd be for something they might not even be interested in. likely, they'd binge the series they enjoy and unsub until the next season comes out. dropout has the advantages of both legacy series under the collegehumor name readily available, and their unscripted ongoing series coming out concurrently with a fixed schedule so than something new would be coming out i think every weekday at this point. it's reall more bang for your buck

all of this is why i said watcher "wanted to be dropout so bad" yesterday. they've created Yet Another streaming service with a price and catalogue that doesn't justify its existence. this could've been a more focused patreon. this could've been a youtube membership. this could've been a secret third thing. this could've been anything else than what we got, and it would've had the potential to be better.

tl;dr- this is watcher right now:

#an economic recession doesn't help #but i wanted to focus on the stuff they can actively control :) #watcher #Anonymous #ask box 360 #send corrections etc etc

[tieronecrush]

I have a request but it’s also infideltiy so I understand if you ignore this lol.

I’ve been thinking lately about a scenario where reader and Joel have been separated since the outbreak for a few years, reader starts dating some guy in the QZ she’s at, joel shows up and they reunite. Joel really tries to stay away and respect her relationship but they’re both too emotional and horny to resist. I really do love passionate reuinion sex tho!!!!

thank you so much for your request lovely nonnie! i switched it up just a lil bit to make the reader the one who shows up with her bf to boston where joel already is - hope that’s okay!!

muscle memory

joel miller x f!reader

rating: E (18+ only, MDNI)

word count: 6.5k

summary: when you flee the baltimore QZ to head to boston with your boyfriend and others, the last person you expect to see is joel miller. you had mourned him for years, having thought your last partner was lost to you forever. when the two of you start smuggling together, more time around each other only seems to strengthen your connection - to the point where neither of you can manage the tension anymore.

warnings: NO USE OF Y/N, no age specified, use of pet names (‘bonny’, ‘little lamb’, ‘sugar’), infidelity, previous relationship, mentions of death/loss, some angsty angst, alcohol use, mentions of drug use, fingering, oral (f receiving), unprotected p in v, cockwarming, dirty talk, praise, mild breeding kink, possessive!joel, soft!dom joel

Boston is an upgrade from Baltimore. At least in the state you left it; the Baltimore QZ had finally succumbed to Firefly occupation and FEDRA was forced out. Not that it really mattered to you, but it was another reason to add to the list. The biggest reason for your caravan up north was that your smuggling lines and connections had dried up. Like, completely. Either people found better deals or died on their journeys outside of the walls of whatever QZ they were from. You mostly dealt with Washington and Philly, both having been radio silent for weeks by the time your smuggling group made the decision to move on. You were welcoming the change; sure, the means to get there was full of uncertainty and danger, but the group you were with and your boyfriend of a few months, Danny, made you feel the slightest bit more confident trekking through the decimated country.

It’s been a few weeks since you all officially transitioned into the Boston QZ, registered under FEDRA, and having gone through your quarantine. You all settled into your government-assigned homes, you living with Danny and others grouping up to attempt to make these shabby walls feel like home.

It was easy to be with Danny. You two had known each other for years, done tons of runs together, and developed a comfortable friendship. Your relationship was born out of convenience -- after hooking up one night when you both needed to be taken care of, you stayed together. It was nice to have companionship, but it certainly wasn’t love.

You haven’t felt that way since Joel.

Joel Miller. Your partner when the world went to shit.

The two of you were together for a couple of years, and you were planning to move in with him at the start of the new year - 2004. It was supposed to be your year. Moving in with the love of your life and his daughter that you loved as if she were your own, probably getting engaged or just eloping with him, maybe even talking about growing your little family.

You loved your life before. You mourned it for years after the outbreak happened, knowing you likely wouldn’t see any part of it again.

When Outbreak Day happened, you weren’t with Joel. You weren’t even in Austin. It was the week of your mom’s 60th birthday, and she had begged you to come up north for a visit. You were supposed to fly home on September 26th. You were supposed to surprise Joel for his own birthday.

And then your flight got canceled. Rebooked for the following day.

And everything changed.

But that was years ago, now it’s 2010. Family members were long gone, friends made along the way lost, too. You grieved as well as you could with the way the world moved now. Despite searching for any sign of Joel, or Sarah, or even his brother Tommy, you accepted your fate to be alone and settled in Baltimore.

And now, you were accepting the fate that your new home would be Boston. Seemed like a decent replacement in your mind, and hearing about the smuggling business here made you eager to get involved.

The small group that you traveled with had arranged a meeting with two of the more prolific runners in the city. You weren’t given any details besides a meeting place and time, so when that night came, you and Danny made your way into the dilapidated storage building along with your friends from Baltimore.

You glanced around at the place, attention turning to the small huffs of frustration coming from your boyfriend next to you. He was fiddling with the zipper on his jacket, the grooves stuck in the fabric. Nimble fingers worked it loose as you stood amongst everyone, Danny’s lips pressing to your hairline in a sweet thanks.

There is no way in whatever is holy, if there even is anything out there, that Joel is seeing who he thinks he’s seeing. They must be a figment of his imagination. It’s been seven years.

And then he hears that laugh. This stranger has a laugh that he would recognize anywhere.

That’s your laugh. That smile is yours, too. And when you turn towards him finally, his gaze fixed on you since you entered the room, he meets your eyes. Those eyes that made his heart sing whenever they shined with joy, made him shatter when they were filled with tears, made him completely head over heels for you.

And right now, they were making it all come rushing back. The heartbreak, the loss, the grief, the love.

A small gasp escapes your mouth when you recognize him. He was aging, that much he knew. Had some grays sprinkled into his brown hair, his beard was just as patchy as it had been before. He had harsher lines on his face, the world wearing him down much quicker than it would if the outbreak never happened — if he never knew what loss was like.

You’re taking inventory of all of his changes, and he notices similar ones in you. Your hair is longer, even pulled back he can tell it’s inches past where you normally would keep it. There’s the faintest wrinkles next to your eyes, soft smile lines near your lips. Signs that you stayed light in the world of darkness. That made the pain in his chest lessen just the smallest amount.

He keeps checking that you’re still there during the entire meeting. Tess does the talking, some grumbles of rules coming from him, but he’s thankful that she’s taken the lead ‘cause he doesn’t know if he could get more than a handful of words out at a time. With arms crossed over his chest, he pinches his bicep as he glances at you again, assuring himself that he isn’t dreaming or having a bad trip from those pills he takes.

The rest of the meeting goes by quickly, plans are made for the next few runs to integrate the newest additions. He stays back, hoping that you would do the same. There was no way that he wasn’t going to talk to you; he’d run after you if you left.

Luckily for him, you had understood the subliminal messages in the short bits of eye contact he made with you.

The guy that was with you stayed, too, but he stood near the exit while you stepped closer to Joel.

With you right in front of him, he gave himself another quick pinch before clearing his throat. Just when he was about to break the growing awkward tension in the stale air, he heard your voice crack.

“Hi.”

That’s all you say, and suddenly he can’t help the grin that quips up to the side. A hushed chuckle exhales through his mouth shortly, eyes locking with yours.

“Hey there, bonny.”

He watches your shoulders drop from their frigid position, uneasiness visibly relaxing after the greeting. He grins wider, dimple deepening in his cheek as his chest tightens from the gentle reaction he’s gotten out of you.

He still had the tiniest bit of his accent. Especially when he said that nickname. Short for bluebonnet, Texas’s wildflower, which is where the name originated from. Joel called you his wildflower, and when you asked him what kind of flower one night, he told you he only knew bluebonnets. Typical proud Texan man. Eventually, the moniker turned into ‘bonny’.

It’s a nickname you hadn’t heard since your last phone call with him, disappointment evident in his voice when you had to confess that your planned surprise wasn’t going to happen and that you would be home the next day to celebrate with him belatedly.

“‘S alright, bonny. Sarah’s already got something planned for the two of us. Promised her I’d pick up a cake on the way home from the site.”

Your stomach had toiled with anxiety that day from his sadness that you were going to be missing from his birthday and that he was just missing you. This time around, hearing that same nickname roused your nerves from the thrill that it zipped down your spine, the sound of his voice around the words tingling in your ears.

The two of you make introductions to your respective tag-alongs, Joel to Danny and you to Tess. Greetings were passed and conversation flowed, the two of you skating around your history with company present, only divulging necessary details. You two dated before. That was it. They didn’t need to know how long, how serious, how you mourned the loss of him and the life you two built together.

Ignoring the past in conversation was easy. Ignoring the physical pull you felt towards him was more of a challenge. Heat crawls up your back and settles on the nape of your neck, tongue poking out to wet your lips every few moments. Fingertips itch to touch his skin, to trace the lines on his palms, and to brush over the scar on the right side of his face. One he didn’t have with you, and you wanted to know what it was from.

You wanted to know a lot from him. What these last seven years looked like for him. Once the conversation died down naturally, you faced Joel and asked him gently the first of the two most pressing questions you wanted answered.

“Where’s Tommy? Guessin’ the two of you are still glued to each other like you were back then,” you tack on a light laugh to your query, feeling the rush of panic as you realize that these answers you were wanting might not be answers that you want to hear. A lump forms in your throat as you wait for his response, a tender look on your face.

“He’s, uh, he’s here still. Doesn’t run with us though, he’s been getting into shit with the Fireflies here. Drives me insane, but you know how he is.”

“Always a joiner,” the words roll off your tongue and you bite down on it, cursing yourself internally for making fun of his brother without really knowing how this Joel would respond.

Relief washes over you when he laughs, not a full one, but nevertheless, you got to see a sliver more of that smile that had you smitten.

“Got that right. Tommy always wants to be a hero,” he shakes his head back and forth, an adoring smirk on his face as his stare lengthens and his mind is taken to his younger brother for a moment.

With the news of Tommy, you were even more eager to ask your second question. It gripped your heart, tugging it nearly out of your chest. Your voice softened as you spoke to him, eyes involuntarily watering in anticipation.

“And Sarah?”

Silence. As if the words catch in his throat and start to choke him from the inside. His eyes widen in loss of oxygen, chest still as he holds his breath. He can’t look away from you, eyes quickly pacing to hold contact with yours. They communicate desperation, as if he wants so badly to explain, to tell you what happened to his daughter that you loved, but he can’t get the words out of his airway.

It tells you everything, that look. You hadn’t lost your ability to read Joel, and the realization completely demolishes the composure you were attempting to maintain. Closing the gap between you, you focus on Joel as you wrap your arms around his waist, tight and full of compassion. Your head rests on his chest, facing to the side. Everything else in the room falls away, muscle memory moving your hands in circles against his lower back in the way you remember he loved. He’s tense in your arms, his own wrapping around your shoulders hesitantly until he feels the comforting touch. Tautness breaks from him, resting more of his weight against you as his head dips down to rest his chin on you and his eyes close.

Yours close too, and just for that moment, you’re back in his kitchen, sticky summer morning air coating the room from the open screen door. Cartoons squeak from the TV in the other room, and the smell of Joel’s French toast wafts from it’s crisping on the stove.

Domestic bliss. What could’ve been.

That hug has tormented Joel for weeks. The first time he saw you, the first time he heard your voice, the first time he held you after he thought he never would again. And that one time has unearthed a hunger for more. A need for you. Doesn’t matter if he’s around you or not, he can’t stop thinking about you.

When you’re on runs with him, he has one eye on you at all times. When it’s a route without your boyfriend, he feels a bit bolder; touches linger on your back as he guides you through obstacles or around your arms as he holds you back to get ahead of you to clear a room.

He’s been trying, so desperately trying, to respect your relationship. Not that you mention him much, but you and Danny arrived in Boston, shacked up together, and have made no hints at that changing. For now.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s driven him to drink, added to the long list of things he needs to be inebriated or high to cope with.

This is how he ended up at the QZ speakeasy, a few blocks from his building which makes it an easy past-curfew destination. Sole occupant of the low, barrel table against the back wall, he pounds a whiskey back which quickly turns into three. A buzz has started in his body and his mind, a clear path to his ideal destination on the horizon. It was a shitty run today, mostly coming up dry and having to deny some trades. Plus, you weren’t with him.

When he’s waving the bartender for another glass, his eyes skate across the room and catch you standing at the top landing of the stairs that snake down to the warehouse basement bar, eagerness evident in your expression when you find him. Overprotective, he watches you bound down the stairs to make sure you get to whoever you’re meeting without any issues. He’d be more than happy to step in if someone got too close.

Focused on his self-appointed task, he doesn’t realize that you’re making your way over to him excitedly until you’re standing in front of his table, gesturing to the empty seat across from him that he offers to you.

Plopping down in the wooden chair, a goofy smile stretches across your face as the giddiness of being around him flickers in your stomach. You’d felt this jolt of energy being near him, thinking about him. It’d been like that for weeks since you saw him again and held him. It was a spark, and now your embers were slowly catching fire the more time you spent with Joel.

Greetings were exchanged, and him buying you a drink along with another for himself. Finger tracing around the lip of your glass, you glance up at him and attempt to make small talk if only to be able to hear his voice.

“So, how was the run today?”

“‘S fine. Pretty dry.” His response is clipped, mumbled out as he brings his drink up to his lips for a swig.

“Oh, really? That’s a shame. You got another one planned?” you keep your eyes on him, watching as he looks anywhere but at you. Around the table, across the room, even at his own boot.

“Yeah, got one next week.” Joel’s grumbling, deep crease between his brows as he sulks in his chair.

“Maybe I can join you on that one?” you propose, hoping that it gets his attention. Sure, you could be reading into it, but something told you that he enjoyed having you around as much as you enjoyed being around him. Brows raised in hopefully curiosity, anticipation swells your tongue in your mouth.

“Maybe.”

That’s it? That’s all he has to say?

Joel’s always been a man of few words, always crafting careful and thoughtful responses when you were together. But this? This is ridiculous. He clearly doesn’t want you around, his eyes darting as if to look for the fastest escape route. It stings, deflating your excitement. The chance of this encounter was the sole reason you went out tonight. Danny had fucked off to play poker or gamble away ration cards with some other guys he’d gotten buddy-buddy with, and it didn’t help that you two had been drifting further from each other over the last week. You weren’t sure how much longer this companionship would be worth it, and with Joel always around, it certainly was starting to blur some lines. He always made you feel better, even when he wasn’t trying. Except for tonight.

Your hurt boils into anger, and you scoff at him, arms crossing firmly in front of your chest.

“You keep acting like you’re looking for a chance to leave. If I’m keeping you here, feel free to go. I’ll drink by myself.”

Joel looks at you, his eyes softening. He opens his mouth, then shuts it, thinking about what he should say. You get annoyed by his lack of response, grabbing your drink off the table and slipping out of your chair to leave him there.

“Are you really that oblivious, bonny?”

You turn back, anger growing at the thought that he’s mocking you.

“Well, screw me for trying to make conversation with you, Joel. I guess I am oblivious ‘cause I thought we could be friends or, I don’t know, at least civil after all this time.”

“Bonny, I can’t be friends with you.”

He’s kicking you when you're down, clearly just being cruel.

“Why? What did I do?”

“I can’t be friends with you, ‘cause I want more than that.”

The honesty stuns you. Sure, you had felt that pull towards Joel again, but you didn’t know that he felt the same way or that he would act on it if he did. He gets up from his chair, taking a step closer to you before he continues.

“I looked for you, y’know? After everything. All I wanted was to have you back. I knew you’d know what I needed. And when I saw you again, I realized why I couldn’t stop looking. What I needed most was you.”

He stands close to you now, warm breaths intermingling with the other’s, humidity heating your cheeks while his eyes stay locked on you. Everything you’ve felt since Joel had been revived into your life suddenly becomes overwhelming; you can’t contain them, can’t compartmentalize them anymore. You reach for him, hand pressed over his heart, feeling the rushed beating pulsing under your touch.

His eyes look down slowly to his chest and then back up to you when you whisper, “Mine feels the same way when I see you.”

“Is that right? Can I feel for myself?”

You nod slowly, peeling your hand off of him only for him to catch it and hold it in his. Your voice is thick, “Maybe somewhere a little more private? Like your place?”

He looks confused for a second, brows knitting together before it dawns on him, pupils widening and darkening his eyes.

“Let’s get out of here, bonny.”

Keys jingle as he twists them in the lock, throwing the thin wooden door open after he pulls them out. He nods for you to step in ahead of him, taking a few paces into the apartment and surveying around. The door clicks behind you and the deadbolt slides into place, the sounds sending goosebumps across your skin at the prospect of being totally alone with Joel, no watchful eyes or possible interruptions.

Eyes continue to skate along the room, tiny details noted. Half-drunk whiskey bottle on the counter, small baggies of pills on the coffee table, other finds from his side occupation littering the space.

His weighted steps drag across the worn wooden floors at your back, the presence of him hanging behind you slowing your breaths in suspense. Saliva coats your mouth at the dryness of your thirst, hair standing off of your skin in waiting.

The first touch you feel is his fingers brushing against the back of your neck, sweeping the hair there off to one side and holding it there. Joel takes one step closer, chest pressing against your shoulder blades and crotch against the swell of your ass. The warmth radiating off of him sends a shiver down your spine, jolting against him briefly. Your breaths pause as you wait for his next move, eyes fluttering closed when his lips touch the nape of your neck in a ghostly kiss. A hand wraps around you, resting just over your breast to feel the rapid beating of your heart, the rhythm matching his own that you feel against your back. A placid gasp puffs from between your lips, snapping the taut tension between the two of you and sending a new urgency to his actions.

Palms encase your hips, spinning you around to face him and tugging you close to feel every curve pushed against him. His lips find yours in a hungry kiss, your own mouth opening in a sigh at the contact. Joel takes this as an opportunity to lick into your mouth, tongue dominating yours and swallowing every whimper that comes out of you.

Your own hands grip his shoulders, nails dragging against the fabric down to his biceps. Fingertips dig into the flexed muscles, steadying yourself as he starts to walk you backward throughout his place. He never leaves your lips, knowing the space with his eyes closed to lead you all the way back through the door to the small bedroom on the left side of the living space.

A whine escapes you when his mouth detaches from yours, working kisses along your jaw to the hollow under your ear, sucking at the space there. A groan rumbles from his chest when you let out a soft moan and hold his arms tighter, hips involuntarily jerking against his growing bulge.

Lust-blown eyes stare into yours as he stands up fully again, delicate touch brushing your cheek before his thumb nudges the scar that sits on your brow. The look in his eyes pains for half a second, and you finally speak up since leaving the speakeasy.

“‘S not a good story. Happened from a lamp falling onto my head when I was raiding around some suburban house. Just an accident. You wouldn’t have been able to stop it from being there.”

His gaze meets yours again, tugged away from the fibrous tissue on your face. The bulb in his throat bobs when he swallows, head moving side to side minutely.

His hand caresses your cheek, voice thick with his drawl when he softly responds, “You underestimate me, bonny.”

The words gloss your vision, quick blinks settling the emotion and clearing the picture of Joel in front of you again. Your heart constricts in your chest, attempting to imagine the amount of pain that he’s been through, but you can’t even begin to know.

Instead of dwelling on the moment, he presses one light, affectionate kiss to your lips before he takes a step back. He grips the hem of your shirt, brows quirking up in a silent question. You nod subtly, the permission allowing him to slowly tug the fabric over your head. He devours the newly exposed skin with his burning stare, compelled to bend down and trace his lips over every new mark he sees while his hands move across your curves to reacquaint himself with your new features. Wider hips, rougher skin, purply stretch marks veining your skin along with ropy paths where injuries had healed over.

Joints crack softly as he settles onto his knees in front of you, sending you into light giggles while he groans and presses his forehead against your lower tummy. He reaches around and playfully smacks your jean-covered ass, a fake scowl on his face when he looks up at you from his praying position.

“‘Nuff gigglin’ at me, you’re gonna feel this sore come morning.”

The threat of his words floods arousal between your thighs, bottom lip toyed between your teeth as you quiet down your laughter. Joel kisses your clothed thigh, fingers popping the button of your jeans and dragging the zipper before they hook in your waistband and tug the denim down your legs. Joel laughs lightly at your silence, eyes finding yours as his hands lift each of your feet one at a time to help you out of your pants.

“Thought that might get you excited, lil’ lamb. I know you’re gonna be such a good girl for me, aren’t ya?”

The wink that follows his drawl jolts your limbs and fingers twist into his locks as his open mouth exhales warm, humid air on your panty-covered mound. He presses his face against the fabric, inhaling deeply and moaning softly at the scent of you.

“Fuck, sugar, it’s still the same. Missed you so much. You think you still taste the same?” He directs the question up to your face, your head lulled down to meet his gaze. A smirk pulls at the corners of your mouth, mischief glittering in your eyes.

“Only one way to find out, baby.”

His amber eyes were pools of ink with how much they darkened, full of carnality. Large fingers smoothly strip you out of your panties, his figure coming to stand at his full height in front of you. Gripping your waist, he guides you back to sit on the edge of the mattress, lifting your legs by your thighs and easily maneuvering you toward the center.

Joel moves to climb onto the bed with you, but your soft sigh of frustration stops him.

“I wanna see you. ‘Specially if I’m completely naked, ‘s only fair that you are, too,” you gripe to him, bottom lip protruding only slightly in a pout. Joel considers for a moment, ultimately deciding that fair’s fair. He pulls his knee off of the mattress and makes quick work of undressing, his own clothes laying rumbled on the floor with yours.

Satisfied with his fulfillment of your request, your eyes completely devour his bare body as he moves to kneel on the mattress between your open legs. Fighting for survival has kept him fit, broad shoulders flexing as he lifts your legs at the crook of your knees to spread them further. His chest is firm, the rest of his torso softer just as it had always been. It was one of your favorite parts of him, the sight of it now taking you back to times cuddling him on the couch or in bed, head in his lap to press kisses against his tummy or resting your head there and being lulled to sleep. Your fingernails comb through the happy trail, pressing into the skin of his lower abdomen as you sit up to kiss him deeply. He moans quietly against your lips, your knees pressing into his stocky thighs, toes curling against the flexed muscles in his calves. Your arms settle around his neck, lips chasing his as he pulls back to look at you.

“I really did miss you, bonny. Couldn’t believe it when you were in front of me again. Still can’t really believe it right now.” His voice is breathy, eyes holding yours, moving back and forth minutely. One of his hands encompasses the left side of your face, the other moving down between your bodies, his frame bent over yours. Two fingers work circles into your clit, inhale catching in your throat while your legs tense from the feeling of his touch on you.

“M-Missed you, too. So much. I looked for you everywhere I went. Needed you again, I need you now.”

“‘M right here, lil’ lamb. Not going anywhere again. I’m gonna make you feel so good, just like I used to.”

His fingers working your clit slip through your wetness, pressing against your entrance to coax a moan out of you. He hooks them into you, pushed against your spongy walls in search for that spot he’d been all too familiar with. Like riding a bike, he fell right back into what you had loved from him before, knowing just how to work you up. His jaw dropped slightly as his eyes glued to where his fingers thrusted into you; he closed his mouth every so often to swallow the saliva flooding his mouth until he couldn’t wait another second to taste you again.

Joel folded over, legs scooting back on the bed to allow his head to sit between your thighs, tongue lapping against your clit feverishly and switching with his lips every so often to suck at the same spot.

The sounds leaving you at that point were wanton and lewd, mixing with the squelch of your wetness. You felt the familiar knot tightening in your stomach until it’s pulled loose, a loud gasp of his name while your nails dig into his shoulder and walls tighten around him.

He keeps his pace, mouth still attached to your core. He’s not going to let up without you saying something, and you can’t take another moment without him giving you what you want — what you need from him. Fingers tangled in his mussed hair, peeling him from between your thighs. He meets your eyes, lips and chin shining with dampness in the low light of the bedroom and fingers pulling out of you. Eyes blown into blackness at the sight of your pleasure, mouth opening to speak when you cut him off.

“More of that later, if you really want it. But I need you. Inside of me.”

Joel smirks devilishly, fingers coated in your come pushing between your lips and into your mouth for you to clean off.

“Just tastes so sweet, bonny. Can’t help but want seconds,” his hard cock twitches where it lays against your thigh at the feeling of your tongue sucking his fingers, “Better ask again nicely, lamb. Or else I’m not giving you anything.”

The smirk stays painted on his face, a huff of frustration as your hips jerk up to chase his hand that hover over you, desperate for more.

“Please, pretty please. I need you,” you beg, pleading in your eyes as you look through your lashes, dull nails scratching his skin.

“That’s my good girl. Kept your manners.” The wink he sends you flutters your walls around nothing, whimpering as he manipulates you into his desired position.

Joel straddles one of your thighs, bringing the other up to lay against his torso and rest on his shoulder. Your hips turn only slightly to the side in the position, opening your pelvis into a kindling heat. He spits in one of his palms, fingers of the same hand running shortly through your arousal and then mixing the fluids to coat the tender skin of his length. The head of him pushes into you deliciously measured, his motion pausing for you to adjust.

It only takes a moment before your body remembers, the muscles of your tight pussy molding around him once again. Your body feels the familiarity of him, the reactions it has are heightened from the comfort of his own body, focusing solely on how perfectly he fits inside of you.

“Damn, sugar, feel like your little pussy got even tighter. Feels so pefect around me, like she knows who’s about to fuck her just right,” his voice is coated with lust, jaw laxing with a guttural groan when he pushes further into you.

When Joel finally starts a rhythm, slow and deep at first, your eyes roll back into your skull as your head presses hard into the mattress under you. The position brings him incredibly deep, and his size fills you nearly to the brim. It was a feeling you hadn’t felt since the last time you’d had him, his veins on his swollen cock carving the same paths along your insides to feel every detail of him.

“Feel so full, baby. Haven’t felt it since I had you last,” your voice is higher and breathier, toned in a whine.

“That’s right, bonny. Nobody makes you feel as good as I do, huh? Probably haven’t had a decent fuck for years, you poor thing.”

All you can do in response is moan, hands gripping his forearms that are the part of his nearest to you.

He fucks you like this for a good moment, moaning your name quietly before he huffs in frustration, completely pulling out of you. Immediately, you mewl at the loss, head shooting up to protest before he’s moving you to his will again.

“Just a second, sugar. Need to be able to kiss you and feel you all over. Being such a good girl for me, I promise you’re gonna love this.”

He still couldn’t be as deep and close to you as he needed to be in the previous position, so he manipulates your jellied limbs easily to be able to fully cover you with his body. His grip is on your knees, bending your one leg that was once between his thighs to move your calf to hook over his shoulder. Once both your legs are settled on his frame, he continues to stretch your hips by leaning over you, pinning your thighs back to your ribs. He’s completely opened your lower half, folding you back to the point where his tummy is resting against yours and his face is hovering over you. Muscles in your legs and hip flexors burn and spasm, but you can’t care for even a moment when Joel thrusts into you again. You’d never been in this position with him before, and your mind instantly clears of any thoughts besides how hard and deep Joel is fucking you, how you had never felt as full and complete as you did in that moment.

He chuckles as he watches you completely cock drunk, one hand leaving your leg. The large palm finds your lower abdomen, pressing against it as he locks his gaze in yours.

“Can you feel me right here, lil’ lamb? Feel me deep, pushing your belly?” His voice is sweetened sickeningly, the pride and amusement of being the one to give you this experience, to make you feel that full once again evident in the twinkle of his eyes and the sideways smirk on his face.

Chants of his name leave your mouth, your voice barely covering the sounds of his skin slapping against yours steadily.

With him inside of you, it was like two puzzle pieces joining together to finish the picture. The satisfaction of completion was there on all fronts, his rhythm frying your nerves and tightening that red hot coil in your core. With his body covering yours in this embrace, he keeps his mouth on you, heady kisses to your lips when you can take it and mouth biting or licking along your chin, jaw, and neck when you need to breathe.

His motions switch up in the next instant, pushed into you at the hilt as his hips circle to grind you on him. He makes tight figure eights, the act getting you to the point where he’s fucked you completely dumb. All you want in that moment is to feel his warm spend inside of you, watch his face contort from his own pleasure. You can tell he’s close the less he speaks and the more he pants, head falling to your shoulder and eyes closing as he focuses hard to keep pace.

“Come inside me, please. I want it,” your tone is urgent, spilling the words out before your orgasm blinds you white-hot, mind clear of everything except for the euphoric high Joel’s given you. Tightening around him, he moans loudly, thrusts becoming messy and stacatto as he chases his own peak.

“God, such a perfect girl for me. You gonna keep my come in you all night? Go back to your boyfriend tomorrow with it dripping out?”

All you can do is nod, cunt fluttering around him as it starts to work into overstimulation, the rub of his skin against your clit so pleasurable it’s getting painful. Your voice falters when a third orgasm pulses through you.

“Y-Yes, yes. I want you inside for as long as it’ll stay there. Pl-Please, baby.”

Your begging pushes Joel over the edge, hips stuttering as ropes of his warm spend fill you up. He starts to work into you again, fucking it deeper before he finishes.

The pair of you are sweaty, sticky messes; hair tangled, lips swollen, eyelids heavy in recovery. Joel stays inside of you, gently moving your legs down and his own arms wrapping under you to lay you on your side with him, lifting one of your legs to rest on his hip.

Soft, supple kisses are shared as the two of you drift in and out of consciousness, eventually falling asleep completely.

Blue tinted sunlight creeps into the sole window of Joel’s bedroom, the night sky fading into a lilac dawn. You’re studying Joel as he sleeps, long lashes grazing his cheeks, lips parted just enough to let some light snores escape. Your finger delicately traces the scar on his right temple, your featherlight touch causing his eyes to flutter open and find your gaze half awake.

Joel’s immediately in fight or flight mode, arm around your waist tightening as he holds you closer.

“You okay? Something happen?” His voice is hoarse from sleep, clearing his throat as the slight panic wakes his up more.

Gently, you rest your hand on his chest and shake your head with a tender smile.

“Everything’s fine, you can relax. I was just lookin’ at you before I have to go home.”

Joel deflates, brow creasing at the mention of you needing to leave, to go home to your equally shitty apartment and some guy that wasn’t him. Jealousy flicked in his chest, a confession sitting in his throat for a minute before he let it out.

“I really did mean it, y’know. I need you. Now that I’ve got you back in my life, I can’t let you go. You’re some of the only family I’ve got left, and I don’t think I could survive losing you again.” His voice is shaky, wet brown eyes locked with yours. You have rarely seen Joel this unguarded, even in your life before, without the hardness that had come with the constant threat to his survival hanging over his head. The words wrapped around your heart, squeezing tightly and ripping it out of your chest to give to him. Silence falls between the two of you as an understanding washes over you, relaxing your body as the memory of safety, comfort, and home ripples throughout every muscle. You tell him what you have felt since the moment you saw him again:

“I’m not going anywhere, Joel. Not without you.”

tagging the mutuals: @swiftispunk @joelsversion @johnwatsn @midnightswithdearkatytspb @pedrit0-pascalit0 @theelishad @undrthelights @ladamedusoif @ruinedbylanadelrey @thetriumphantpanda @pedgeitopascal @dinsdjrn @thepascalofus @pedgito @soaringcloud @somedayauthor @alloftheimagines @pr0ximamidnight @beskarandblasters @atinylittlepain @nicolethered @scrambledslut @lunapascal

#joel #joel miller #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #joel miller x yn #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfic #tlou fanfic #tlou fanfiction #me #writing

[macabr3-barbi3]

New Love, New Skin (Chapter 2)

banner made by my LOVE @fraugwinska 🩵🩷

A few months after Vincent's arrival in Hell, his relationship with Kora takes its first turn.

Chapter 1

Tags: fast burn lol; 69 (Sex Position); Blow Jobs; Cunnilingus; Baby's First Bluescreen lol

September 1958

Kora was running late from work, and Vincent was only a little worried about her.

He knew that she could handle herself, like he could, but that didn’t make the vague sense of unease any easier to stomach. He had come to care for her in his own way- they were friends now, easily better friends than any he had had when he was alive. She didn’t really want anything from him, never expected him to give up more than she would give him back. It was a change from his life that he was remembering more and more about every day- people that clung to him because they thought he could help get them further in their career, thought that he could do more for them than should have been expected. It was a nice change of pace but she was almost a little too doting, sometimes; always making sure that he got his fill before she took hers whether it was food, coffee, the next book that she wanted to read.

They had established a pretty regular routine in the eight months that he had been staying with her. She would leave the apartment early in the morning for a walk, coffee pot brewing before he awoke, and he would have some form of breakfast on his own before she returned and got ready for her courier duties, delivering postage and packages all over the two rings of Hell. The woman was Hell on wheels, her bike getting her most places faster than the shitty public transit system ever could with how often it was breaking down and getting held up by turf wars. The days that she worked that job he would wait to shower until after she left; when she had the morning off he would do it while she listened to the morning news and read in the living room. She usually got home at ten these days and would go work her second job at Viv’s from noon until ten, when she would come home with some version of leftovers and tales of shitty customers. Today was a rare day that she had off from Viv’s and it was approaching 11:30 with no sign of her, and the antsy, unsettling sense of something in his gut was persistent.

Vincent had gotten his own part-time job at the news station, even if he hated it. He felt like there was so much more that they could be doing, other markets that they could be capitalizing on, other kinds of shows they could be putting out to make more profit. For now though he was just a production assistant, running scripts and coffee. He would much rather spend his time at the apartment with Kora, but he felt it was fair that he contribute at least a little after all that she had done for him- letting him stay with her rent free for months now, making sure that he had clothes and food and such before he started going out into the world, filling him in on how things worked in Hell.

The front door finally bursts open and Kora rushes through it soaked head to toe in mud, her golden hair and fur a gross shade of blackish brown. “Fucking assholes,” she seethes, “you would think some of these Overlords have better things to do than douse women on the street with their shit cars.” She crosses the living area as quick as she can, dipping into the bathroom. “Sorry, Vincent, I can’t stay long- Viv asked me to cover a shift since Eris never showed so I’m gonna be out later than usual, she’s usually scheduled til 2…” Her voice is drowned out by the shower being turned on, the faint rustling of clothes that Vincent could hear fading out.

He was a little put out by the news- he had been looking forward to hanging out with her one night off from Viv’s, which was now a full blown second job instead of just a gig for extra cash. They had agreed to stick together and try to find a bigger place, two bedrooms instead of just the one so they both had their own space. He had been missing her, how close they had been for a good while before he said something stupid and ruined it.

Kora had been getting physically closer to him over the time he had been staying with her- the distance between them on the couch ever-dwindling; her feet propped on his lap or head slumped close to his shoulder while they listened to the radio and read together; her entering the bathroom to grab something while he was naked and showering. A physical kind of closeness that he had never shared with anyone before. He had thought she was coming onto him, when she crowded him against the counter where he was leaning one day to reach around him for something instead of asking him to move or to grab it for her.

“You know,” Vincent had said, his voice low and suave, “you keep getting close to me like this and I might start getting the wrong idea.” He had been sure, so sure that she would take the bait, admit that she wanted him. Push up onto her tiptoes to close the last couple of inches between their faces like he had been craving for weeks, since he had noticed with startling clarity that he was attracted to her, and could want more.

Instead she had blushed, whined in her throat, backed away from him. Kora muttered an apology and scampered off that day and hadn’t been any closer than two feet from him since. It was driving him mad- he jerked off in the shower more days than he didn’t, both for easy cleanup and since it was really the only place he could get any privacy. She had only walked in during that one time, and the sudden shock of hearing her “sorry, Vin, I need this real quick” had had him spilling into his hand with a barely concealed groan, covering it up by coughing hard and throwing her a thumbs up through the curtain with his unoccupied hand. Since she had stopped touching him, stopping coming into the bathroom, he was constantly hard, constantly frustrated. 

The bathroom door squeaks open, and when Vincent comes out of his head and looks down the hallway he nearly chokes on his tongue.

It’s quick, a few seconds at most, but Kora is crossing the hallway from the bathroom to her bedroom in nothing but a towel, wrapped around her body under the arms and falling to her thighs. High on her thighs. He lets his eyes flick from the hem of the towel down her shapely legs and strong calves, reveling in the sight of her skin. Back up to the curve of her breasts, pushed up slightly be her crossed arms holding the towel in place before she disappeared into the bedroom. This felt different from when she wore her oversized shirts to bed, even though they hardly covered much more; here and now, besides the towel, she was bare. He could see it in his mind, how easy it would be to remove the cover with a mere brush of his hand, have her naked before him-

He was half-hard, he realized with a start, his prick stirring in his pants at the thought, and he’s mortified, grabbing the blanket off the back of the couch and throwing it in a heap over his lap. Vincent had no qualms about masturbation, but he didn’t relish the thought of Kora witnessing his erection caused by an accidental peep show as she crossed the hallway.

Good timing, as she emerged from her bedroom in the next minute. “Gotta dash,” she tells him, throwing her hair up into a ponytail. “You should probably be sleeping by the time I come home but help yourself to the leftovers in the fridge for dinner!” And she’s gone as quickly as she had come, door slamming behind her and leaving Vincent in a state of arousal and longing.

He watches her go, unlocking her bike and giving him her usual wave before she takes off. He stays seated as he is for a moment, wrestling with his subconscious; to rub one out or let it go away on its own? He had already showered once today, he didn’t really need to have another one. But the memory of her towel-clad frame was fresh on his mind and far too tempting; the dark shadow the towel cast on the space between her thighs, the droplets of water that dripped from her hair and down the expanse of her back, face flushed from the heat. 

He stands with a growl and heads to the bathroom, his plan being to splash some cool water on his neck- he didn’t think doing it to his face would help much- and ignore the now prominent hardness in his pants. But as soon as he enters he’s struck by the overwhelming scent of her soap, soft and feminine, like almond and honey and something that was so distinctly Kora . Vincent is already bent over the sink, and he sees his eyes change when the smell registers, the pupils getting wider, the pixels that act as eyelids dropping as his screen tints pink. She had just been here not fifteen minutes before, rubbing at her naked body, possibly dipping her hand between those plush thighs-

Vincent hardly has his hand shoved down his pants and wrapped around his cock enough to manage a full stroke before he’s coming, Kora’s name leaving him with a gasp, grasping the porcelain of the sink hard enough to cause a hairline fracture.

~~~~~~~

He throws his soiled clothes in the hamper and changes, determined now to not think about Kora for the rest of the evening. No matter how lovely she had looked in nothing but her towel. How lovely she looked all the time, really, in whatever she was wearing-

No, Vincent. Fucking stop.

He reminds himself that she doesn’t want him- he had offered her an invitation and she declined it. But fuck, if only that was enough to stop himself from wanting her. He would have to move out eventually; he couldn’t just stay here, wanting her when she was within arms reach and never being able to have her.

He reads to distract himself, having finished what was currently out of the Narnia books and moving on to Kora’s Agatha Christie collection. They kept his brain busy enough that he went a couple hours without the thought of her crossing his mind, mostly- sometimes he would get a little flash of an image, like a screensaver, of her face, of her body wrapped in the towel or covered with one of those damn t-shirts she wears. He would glare at the wall for a moment to clear his thoughts and go back to the book, more and more frustrated every time it happened. 

He finally ends up more hungry than bored, so he does bust out the leftovers that she had mentioned, planning on having a light meal before turning in for the night. Apparently the part of his brain wired to his prick had other ideas though, since his thought process went ‘chicken legs > regular legs > Kora’s legs > wrapped around waist?’ and rerouted all of his blood between his own legs. 

“Fuckin’ christ,” he snarls at his traitorous body, appetite vanishing at his once again ridiculously persistent bodily urges. It had only been a few hours since the bathroom, since he had taken himself in hand to the fresh memory of Kora’s wet body; he hadn’t been insatiable like this when he was alive, he was positive. He throws the leftover container back into the fridge with a groan, looking at the clock that hung on the wall. 

It was only ten in the evening- in theory, he had time to jerk off a second time before Kora came home from her later shift, rid himself of the pulsing ache in his groin when he thought of her today. 

Vincent settles back into the couch, pulls his shirt off to catch the mess he was sure to make and fists his cock. If he was going to do this he would do it right this time- let himself savor the mental images of Kora instead of trying to banish them. His eyes close and he pictures her again in the hallway, in the towel, but she comes towards him this time, lets the towel drop to the floor as she approaches so he can see her in all of her glory. 

He imagines reaching for her, cupping the warmth of her cunt with his large hands and pressing a finger in, already wet and ready for him. She would whine like she had that day in the kitchen but it would be because she wanted him, was ready for him to spread her legs and have his way with her already. Vincent would tease her, let his free hand run over her body, pinch and kiss and lick at her skin and her breasts, leave a trail of little marks in his wake that would show the world that he had had her. She would buck her hips into his hand, desperate for him, say his name in that sweet voice of hers.

And he would indulge her- he would let her ride his fingers until she was dripping with desire, lick her essence from his hands before laying her out on her bed and sliding into her slick heat. She would clench around him so perfectly, he knew she would. And she would want it slow and sweet at first, until it was too much, until she was begging him to fuck her harder, faster, more , and he would give it to her however the fuck she wanted. He wanted to lose his mind at the feeling of her walls pulling him into her, wringing every drop of ecstasy from his body with a cry of his name-

“Vincent?”

“Kora,” he moans, before he recognizes that the voice in his head had actually come from the door of the apartment, that the woman he was fantasizing about was standing not five feet away from him, eyes wide and trained on where he was jerking his cock to the thought of her. Vincent wishes he could say he had any sense of self preservation- instead he groans in his throat and strokes back down himself, instead of taking his fucking hands off his dick.

He closes his eyes again, doesn’t want to see the disgust on her face when she kicks him out for being a goddamn pervert. “God, Kora I’m so-“ 

“Vin.” Her voice is closer, much closer than he would have anticipated, and when he opens his eyes again he almost dies a second time at the sight of her knelt on the ground before him, hands coming up to rest in his knees. “Were you… thinking of me?”

She doesn’t look upset about the prospect- if he’s reading her right, she’s intrigued. Interested. “Yes,” he murmurs, helpless to lie or deny or put his fucking prick away, still held in the light grip of his fist. “Fuck, you know I was, baby.”

She bites her lip, eyes flicking between his screen and the leaking head of his dick. “I- can I?” She asks, reaching her hand towards his, and he doesn’t even care that the way he nods is desperate, so eager to have her hands on him that he doesn’t care how stupid he looks, eyes closing since he’s sure the sight of it would be too much. 

Imagine his surprise when instead of her hand, a warm, wet mouth closes around the head of his cock. He swallows back a curse as his eyes fly open, taking in the image of Kora bent over into his lap, pulling off the tip to lick at the fluid that drips from his aching erection, eyes closed like she’s fucking savoring the taste of him. “Fuck me, that’s sexy,” he mutters, and Kora’s lashes flutter to look back up at him and take him in her mouth again, sucking lightly. Her tongue laps at the underside, traces the vein that she finds and makes him groan. His fingers clench at his side, fighting back the urge to twist them into her golden locks and pull ever so slightly. 

Was he so sensitive back on Earth? Vincent couldn’t remember ever having a mouth on him that felt so fucking good before, but whether that was a testament to Kora or his still-new demon anatomy he couldn’t tell. “God, Kora,” he groans, “so fucking good, you’ve no idea-“

Her tail swishes across the floor behind her, a whine vibrating in her throat that ripples down his length, makes him buck his hips up into the wet heat of her. “Sorry, sorry,” he’s quick to say, but she takes him further into her mouth anyway, claws digging into the fabric of his pants where they grip his knees. It’s fucking divine, the feeling of her throat when he bumps it with the head of his cock, and the pleasurable tension in his abdomen is tightening, threatening to snap when he notices that Kora’s hips are shifting, subtly grinding into the air like she’s subconsciously searching for friction- something that he’s suddenly desperate to give her. He wants to lick into her cunt while she takes him into her mouth as far as she can- he’d only done something similar a few times on Earth, certainly hadn’t done it since he had come to Hell. But he thinks he might just about die if he can’t taste her.

“Stop, Kora, wait,” Vincent mumbles, finally wrapping his fingers in her hair so he can pull her off of him.

Her eyes are glazed, flicking between his erection and his face, her own face flushed and panting. “Am I- did I do something wrong?” She asks quietly, her hands leaving his knees and moving like she means to pull back entirely until he shifts his grasp from her hair to the side of her face, cupping her cheek.

“No, doll,” he says, taking a moment to breathe and stroke his thumb over her cheekbone. “I’m just too close- and I want you to come, too. Can I taste you? We can- at the same time, you know?” He hopes she’s understanding what he means, prayers answered when she hesitates only a moment before nodding and standing, pulling him behind her to the bedroom.

~~~~~~~

Vincent strips Kora down slowly, relishes in the gradual exposure of her skin and fur, so much better than his fantasy of letting her towel fall from her body. He gets to watch her shiver as his claws trail over her limbs and down the plane of her stomach, suck in a breath when his fingers dip below the waistband of her pants to tug them off of her. The shaky whimper she lets out when he undoes the clasp of her bra and cups her breasts is going to live in his mind forever, he’s sure of it, and he can’t help bending down to meet her lips, licking into her mouth and moaning at the taste of himself.

She clutches at his shirt, fingers fumbling to get the buttons undone and off his body. She whines when he presses a finger between her slick folds, mindful of the sharpness of them now and as careful as he can be with it when he pushes into her and loses his breath at her tightness. “Please, Vincent,” she’s whispering into his mouth between delicious slides of their tongues against one another, trying to drag his pants the rest of the way off of him, and he thinks he would rather choke than not give her what she wants. He would never deny her anything if she asked him in that tone.

They discard the rest of their clothing, and there’s a brief moment of awkwardness from Kora when Vincent lays back on the bed and encourages her to crawl over his body. Her face flushes; “I’ve never done anything like this before,” she says, unmoving from the edge of the bed, and his cock aches with his need for her.

“I promise you it’s fine,” he reassures her, “and you’re going to love it. But we can stop, if you want to.” It might kill him not to get his tongue inside of her, but if she was uncomfortable he wouldn’t push the issue.

Her brow twists and she straightens her shoulders, climbing up onto the mattress on her knees and situating herself opposite him, her hair tickling his thighs where she’s bent over him, breath hot over his straining cock. “Like this?” She asks, looking down her body back at him with a shy smile, and with a groan he situates his hands on her skin and drags her hips down to his mouth.

When his tongue dips into her Kora cries out, and for one of the first times since getting to Hell he’s glad for his new form- the muscle in his mouth is long and flexible, strong. He didn’t really have a jaw; he could eat her out for hours and probably never get tired or sore, he realized, and the thought drives his hips up, head of his cock bumping against her cheek where her head has fallen forward. And the fucking taste of her is intoxicating, the slick moisture of her folds on his tongue sending whatever constituted as a brain for him reeling at it. 

Her mouth finally closes back around the head of his cock, moaning when his tongue pushes into her cunt and flicks against her walls. The muscles of her thighs are tensed around his head where she kneels, hips subtly grinding down onto his mouth and screen, her arousal dripping from her core as she whines around him, bobbing her head in time with his tongue thrusting into her and pulling back to lick and suck at her clit. “Fuck, Kora baby, that’s fucking perfect,” he mutters into her pussy, “taste so sweet- perfect- f-f- fuck-” Something seems to be happening to his vocal cords; a strange tightening of them in his throat that, while not painful, is making it harder for words to come out. It makes sense he wouldn’t have noticed this before- he wasn’t usually so vocal on the cusp of an orgasm. But he needed her to know that she was being perfect for him, and the words simply fell from his mouth.

Kora seemed to enjoy it if the faint quivering swishes of her tail were anything to go by, brushing against the parts of his screen that weren’t buried between her legs as she takes him deeper. Her claws dig into the skin of his leg on one side and her throat convulses around him when he hits the back of it, a sinfully good squeeze around him while her tongue works tirelessly at the underside. Her free hand comes up to cup the delicate skin that rests below his cock, massaging gently with her fingers in a way that makes him grunt, the pleasure making his head hazy with want.

He tilts his head up, pushes his screen as close to her as he can possibly get, grabs her tail to hold it out of the way while he works. He tightens his grip on the appendage’s base for a moment before releasing it, and he’s rewarded with Kora freezing in his arms for a split second and then trembling uncontrollably as she comes, her hoarse shout of his name muffled by Vincent’s cock. He bucks his hips up, can’t control the action, and when she gags he struggles to bring his pelvis back down to the mattress. He coaxes her through her orgasm with his tongue, flicking gently at her sensitive clit and cleaning up what he can reach of the mess she’s made between them. He runs his hand down the flank of her back, fur damp with sweat from the exertion of her pleasure, of holding herself up above him. “So perfect, baby,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her thigh and rolling them both to the side.

She gives an inquisitive moan when he pulls out of the sweet slickness of her mouth and repositions, crouched over her bare form with a hand slid under her head to twist into her hair, the other wrapping firmly around his cock. “God, Kora, I’m so close,” he breathes, impending release making his voice waver in the air between them, and she reaches down to lay her hand over his as he jerks himself, the taste of her still fresh on his tongue and the absolute vision of her spread beneath him. 

“Vin, please,” she pleads, bringing her unbusy hand up to grip at his bicep, her voice low and needy, and this is what sends him careening over the chasm into his release, vision going white with the force of it.

There’s a few blissful moments of nothing. Vincent feels like he’s floating, body non-corporeal and light.

When his vision returns he’s looking up at Kora, her expression concerned and teary-eyed, hair hanging over his screen like a curtain. Evidence of his orgasm splatters her chest and abdomen, fur streaked with it in a way that makes his brain fuzzy with a sort of possessive satisfaction. “Jesus Christ,” she whispers. “I thought you fucking died.”

“Huh?” His head is still a little blurry, reaching a hand up to cup her cheek. “Whadya mean?”

“Your screen went blank,” she says, and drops her head to his chest. “Just blinked right out, and you weren’t responding. I thought I- I thought you might have been hurt.”

“Oh. No, I’m fine. More than fucking fine.” He grins, shark teeth on proud display as he looks down at her, guides her head back up to look at him. “Must be something about the TV head getting overloaded. We’ll look into it so it doesn’t happen again, how’s that sound? Take it as a compliment this time.” She lays down beside him, head still resting on his chest and trying to calm her frantic breathing. He smoothes a hand down her hair, giving one of her ears a little scratch like his mom’s dog used to enjoy. “Really, I’m okay.”

She sighs, the exhale hot against his skin. “If you say so. Please let me know if anything starts to feel weird?”

“What are you, my nurse? I’ll be alright, don’t worry.” 

She’s quiet for a second and he thinks maybe he’s upset her until she says, “I was a nurse. Before Hell, I mean; just a general staff nurse, not anything crazy. But head injuries were always treated really seriously and I just- panicked, I guess.” She curls further into his wide, tail waving anxiously behind her. “Sorry.”

She hadn’t given him so much information about her life before Hell before- he figured she had done something in the medical field from the anatomy textbooks but this was the first time she had really been forthcoming with the information. “I’ll let you know if anything feels weird,” he promises her, and snakes a finger under her chin to tilt her face up to look at him. “Don’t apologize for, you know. Caring. Being you. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Her eyebrows scrunch and Vincent can’t resist the urge to tease her a bit. “Come on, where’s that post-orgasmic glow I was expecting? How’s a guy supposed to enjoy pillow talk with a pretty girl when she’s worried about the wrong head?”

She knocks her fist against said head but still laughs, the huff of her breath fanning across the expanse of his chest. “Idiot,” she says, but her tone is vaguely affectionate. “So, what do we do now?” She lets her fingers dance over the skin of his abdomen and his lower half twitches in interest.

If just one orgasm was enough to short circuit his head though, going for a second so soon was probably not the move. “We could shower,” he offers. “Though I suppose the pillow talk could still survive the blow to my ego. What made you come home early?”

Kora’s face pulls into a grimace. “Eris showed up- hours late, of course, but Viv said that since it wasn’t crazy busy I could go home at my normal time. Eris is great, of course, but her time management is just non-existent.” She gives him a sweet smile. “I take it you don’t usually touch yourself on the couch like that when I’m at work?”

“Not usually, no. But I-” His screen crackles with a faint static- his new brand of blushing, he supposed, which was only a bit embarrassing. “I might have noticed you stepping out of the shower in just your towel earlier. It might have made me a little crazy.”

Her laughter is a smooth, rumbling thing against his chest, almost more like a cat than a dog. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever get an inkling to try and seduce you on purpose,” she says, and then she’s rolling away from him, sat on the edge of the bed and stretching her muscles, the flex of them subtle and strong. “Speaking of showers though, I’m going to take one.” She looks at him over her shoulder, eyebrow cocked playfully. “You could join me, if you want? Save a little water.”

At the renewed thought of her wet and naked, his dick throbs with interest- but fuck, he needed to have some semblance of control over himself when it came to Kora. “Trust me, doll, I want ,” he says, and delights in the pink that rises to her cheeks. “But I think my body needs a bit of a break- don’t want to go dark on you again, especially not in a wet environment,” he adds, knocking lightly on the side of his head. “Maybe since it's not too late though we could watch the news? I was looking forward to hanging out with you today before you got called in to Viv’s, we could still do something else. I can give you all the gossip going on down at the station?”

Her eyes crinkle with her smile. “I would like that. I’ll be quick- you could throw some popcorn on the stove?”

“Do you insist on adding that sickeningly sweet shit to it?”

“You know it.” With a wink she exits the bedroom, the rattling of the water through the pipes echoing through the bedroom a moment later. Heaving a sigh he sits up and gathers his clothing, pulling his boxers on and bringing everything to the living room to put in the bathroom hamper when Kora was finished. He washes his hands and gets the corn kernels out, throwing some onto a pan on the stove with some salt and a slab of butter. He can hear Kora singing softly to herself in the shower and feels the mouth on his screen quirk up on one side.

Kernels popping, he gets her little container of cinnamon and sugar out of the cabinet and splits the snack between two bowls, dumping some of the concoction on Kora’s portion when he hears the bathroom door open. He resists the temptation to glance down the hallway, instead switching the television in the living room on and switching to the evening news channel.

They’re just coming off commercial when Kora comes out of the bedroom, large t-shirt covering her frame and settling on the couch beside him, knees under her body to prop herself up a bit. But this time she’s not sitting a couple inches away like she had been the last couple weeks- their thighs are pressing together, close enough for him to feel her skin, to throw an arm over her shoulder if he wanted to. She takes her popcorn with a smile, laughing at the face he makes when she pops a couple pieces into her mouth. “You’ve never even tried it before,” she tells him, and throws a couple pieces into his bowl. “Give it a taste.”

Vincent sighs but still submits, tosses the pieces into his mouth along with a couple of his own. He has to admit that it’s good- a hint of salty with the sweet, its a tasty contrast in his mouth, as loathe as he is to give in to her. Instead of feeding her ego he simply grabs a handful from both of their bowls and swaps them so they both had a bit of each, and Kora’s laughter rings in his ears.

She listens to him rant about the newscaster for a bit- “fucking Richard , thinks he’s so goddamn cool because he gets to cover the late news when all of the interesting shit goes down. You think anyone would believe a word out of his shit mouth if they knew what I knew? This just in-” he lets a bit of old-timey static into his voice, a fun trick that he had learned, leaning forward like there’s a desk or a camera in front of him. “Big Shot Richard from Nine Rings News has been repeatedly spotted just begging for one of his PA’s to fuck him before the 3AM news flash, and cries like a little bitch when he tells him no!”  

She giggles, leaning further into his side to hide her face in his shoulder, and his heart thumps inside his chest. “You should get into news,” she tells him. “Richard is fine but you would really catch people’s attention I think- your head is even a TV, you’re just meant for people to watch you!”

He runs his hand down her spine even as he shakes his head. “I was a broadcaster on Earth,” he admits, honest with her like she had been with him earlier. “Worked at the news station like I do now but behind the desk- morning news though, not evening. I don’t know if I want to get back into that down here but maybe I’ll look into moving up the ranks. Ah fuck, here comes Joy Jagoff, you’re going to hate her-”

Hours pass, Vincent making Kora laugh with tales about the people at work, their popcorn supply dwindling, Kora’s head dropping fully against his shoulder when the late hour gets to her and she falls asleep on the couch with him. He debates moving her back to her own room, but decides against it- the temptation would be too strong, he thinks, to have her again, and despite how good that sounds he still figures he should give his body a rest.

Instead he repositions so he’s leaning back against his pillows, Kora held gently spread along the planes of his body. He pulls the blanket down from the back of the couch and covers the two of them, his screen blinking out while Joy Jagoff runs her mouth in the background, lulling him to sleep with the steady breathing of the woman sleeping on his chest.

#hazbin hotel #ao3 writer #ao3 fanfic #vox fanfiction #vox smut #vox hazbin hotel #GOLDENVISION #Kora (OC) #vox x oc #ily frau <3

[acaplaya-musings]

Voiceplay Visuals: Hoist The Colours

Oh boy, we're heading into the big ones now!

Hoist The Colours was uploaded on September 18, 2021, and features Jose Rosario Jr in his second collaboration with Voiceplay. This one stunned a lot of reactors (one of them, Dennis King of King Family Reacts, literally got up and left the room after the video was finished because he had been rendered speechless by it!), and the video currently sits at 4.6 million views (close to 4.7!) (EDIT/UPDATE: as of the night of the 8th of March, it's now at 4.7, close to 4.8!). So without further ado, let's get right into this one, and hope I don't have to start paying attention to my screenshot count!

Can you believe this was only Cesar's second (full-length) video as a full-time Voiceplay member? Because wow

(Also interestingly enough, Rick Underwood is credited with makeup in the video description (shoutout to Rick!) but no one is credited with costuming, so did everyone just acquire their outfits themselves or what?)

Geoff was in charge of the video creation for this one, as well as doing the arrangement, and he worked together with Eli for the lighting design, so big shoutout to Geoff! (And as always to Eli the lighting whiz)

OKAY a few things to talk about here

First of all, love the set design, it's like the Little Mermaid Medley but on steroids and more pirate themed! Also love the horn-playing skeleton on the left-hand side of the screen (took me a while to notice it ngl 😅)

And of course the outfits/costuming! I can't really think of a lot of things to say individually right now, but there was 100% a lot of thought and effort that went into the clothes (even if the description won't specify who acquired the clothes. I'm going to assume Geoff, since the overall video credit goes to him.)

Oh hey it's my blog banner/background, or close enough to it at least! (Hoist The Colours has a decent few very cool visual moments that are totally screencap-worthy, and of course that's what I'm here for - to point them out!)

Geoff may play the villain (or otherwise just-generally-creepy/spooky/scary guy) a lot in videos, but as of the last few years at least, Eli's often been looking like the one that you really don't wanna pick a fight with. (Also cool ring, and is that fake scar tissue on his head?)

This is a better shot of everyone's outfits actually. A few notes on everyone (except Eli, who I just talked about?)

Cesar: Very ghostly, especially with the cloudy contact lens in one eye. Love the white coat/jacket, and love the pop of colour with the red sash! Also what is he holding/shaking? I thought it was a set of old-fashioned keys, but it doesn't look like it.

Jose: The "captain" of this "motley crew", obviously. Cool coat, and love the sword.

Layne: Not too much going on with his outfit, relatively speaking, but I love the bit of eyeliner under his eyes, and the fake scar on his cheek! (Seriously Rick did a great job here, as he always does)

Geoff: Wearing at least two necklaces, and in true Geoff Castellucci fashion, he's got the top two buttons of his shirt undone (well, gotta show off those necklaces! 😉😁). ALSO, bonus thing that I literally only just realized after taking this screencap, is that Geoff has "VP" on his right arm, done in a way that makes it look like like scar tissue I believe.

That is seriously a very cool and very smooth transition. Who edited this? Was that Geoff too? (Also Crazy Eyes Layne!)

As I figured, one of the necklaces Geoff is wearing, the gold one, is for costume purposes, and the other one, the silver one with the diamond-shaped pendant, is the necklace from Kathy that Geoff basically never takes off (bless him <3 )

I think Cesar's holding old-fashioned shackles/handcuffs or something?

Hang on that skeleton on the left lost his little horn/trumpet and got stabbed?? 😅😂

Yeah Layne had fun in this one I can tell 😁 (also his vest is more detailed than first appears! Very nice!)

What a really freaking awesome shot/moment. In terms of "money shots", these two might in fact be two of the most awesome stills from any Voiceplay video ever (or so far, anyway).

He's got charisma, I'll give him that (also cool necklace!)

How are they just an independent acapella group that make YouTube videos that we can all watch for free? Like seriously, this is top tier stuff (both in terms of the video and the song cover itself), but this wasn't even Voiceplay at their peak! Voiceplay doesn't have a peak! They don't stick to a lane, they take "risks", they get creative, they will sing pretty much anything, and it works

Voiceplay says in the description "we may have gotten a little carried away with this one", but honestly would it really be Voiceplay if they didn't?

Anyway, I've got many more awesome videos ahead of me to write about, so stay tuned!

#voiceplay #acapella #hoist the colours #geoff castellucci #eli jacobson #layne stein #cesar de la rosa #jose rosario jr #acaplaya analysis #voiceplay visuals

[ddymarie]

1:25 am

"When met you in that hotel room I could tell that you were so bad news"

Waring: smut, oral sex ( m Receiving) interrupted sex

An: second chapter!!!

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

September 12th

Location: Hero Gala

I exited the car to be unwelcomingly greeted with flashes from cameras and phones, screams from fans , photographers and reporters.

" H/n Look over here! "

" look at little to the left... Perfect "

" are you having an affair with shindou?"

" arch you back further more out "

" how would you describe working with the former no. 1 hero endeavour "

" do you plan on taking any interns? "

" H/N "

I swear I'm gonna go deaf from all the noise. Trying my best to walk up the carpet to the stairs.

I wore an elegant black dress with chunky diamonds on my cleaveage that pushed my boobs up, tight enough to squeeze my figure making it known. The dressed shaped me nicely highlighting my abs and ass. I was accessoried with black sparkley gloves that were covered with millions of dollars worth of diamond bracelets all up my arm. Diamonds of all sizes. I wore a black 6 inch heel the underside being the a glittered black bottom with a dark red hue. I looked back once more with a closed eye smile. After that my vision was filled with nothing but white.

I turned back around carefully walking up the carpet covered stairs with one side of my dress in my hand as I held onto the railing. As I made it up the stairs unaware of a certain pair of Ruby eyes on me. I stopped and looked in the direction where my hero name came from.

It was a young blonded hair reporter wearing a red silky materialed dress.

" n/n, hello there im Victoria, I'm a reporter here on my internship. " she spoke up

" hello, " I looked at her before glancing at the camera while sipping my champagne I was handed.

" do you think... I- I can um, interview you? " she asked shyly

" oh, sure no problem I have time " I responded politely.

Her smile brightened

" how would you describe the transition from being a student to a hero? "

" well, it was pretty easy as a student I already felt like I was a pro hero. But um mentally I guess that means I was prepared. I was trained for this in U.A. they trained us heavier than we needed to be so everything was easy going for me. "

"As a intern I still feel nervous even talking to you. But any words to help encourage that mindset? " she asked

" yea mostly, stay ambitious , be competitive, always do your best, show out. But most importantly Breatheee.Also brand yourself. It'll definitely help with that big transition " I replied

" okay, favorite thing about your quirk ? " she looked curiously at me

" I glow after using it " I answer while shaping my face in a posing matter

" slay~, you look sexy as hell tonight what do you have on" she asked eyeing me up and down with a pleasant smile

" the dress is innovation of storenvy's black mermaid dress , the diamond on my cleaveage area was to highlight the dresses shape which is why it's curved in a little more in the center. The diamond decorated gloves were custome piece from Donatella Versaces ghetto fabulous collection. The shoes are from LV. Make up and body glitter done by the Mia jay herself " you beamed as you slid your hands down you slimmed waist where you curved .

" ahhh, I can't wait to get bigger,you are definitely an fashion icon this look will go down in history!! Now this hairr" she you looked hungry tryna get the deats on it

" yes the big look of tonight" you look up ( imagine this but more textured and longer like a fresh blow out)

" wow you look amazing but that's all I have tonight, good luck with your nominee's "

I thanked her before walking away heading towards my room mate and best friend alien queen/ mina ashido

While walking further into the building I looked around and made eye contact with a certain hero..

Dynamite...

Walking past him I awkwardly smiled and waved

I apporched mina and we both got to complimenting and gossiping. A few minutes later the lights dimmed 3 times alerting us that the award ceremony was about to start. So I headed next to my table which I was accompanied by Momo and Mina

" WELCOME ALL " shouted the man himself...

PRESENT MIC

" tonight will be a night to remember not just because of fashion"

*the camera panned to my table facing me and my girls *

" -but because of the nominations! " HE SHOUTED

*everyone cheered*

" now for our first nominee of tonight"* he opens and envelope*

" for the most influential hero... Congratulations Deku! " he announced

I saw Midoriya get up from his seat and accept his reward

" thank you so much this means a lot. " he started and continued on

About 5 minutes passes by when you get an reward.

" and for our next nominee of popularity.. Issss H/N! " the crowd roared as you got up trying not to trip, once you get to the stairs you pause tho looking around.

I need help up the stairs...

Denki aids you up the stairs

The crowd stared in awe

You held his arm as he guided you to the microphone

You whispered a thank you

"Oh, shit- oop. Oh my god. Um I don't know what to say. I'm impressed and thankful. I was a nominee alongside the top 3 and won, holy. This unbelievable. I'm also the first female hero to receive this award... " you said your final thanks and headed off stage

An hour or two passes when you are finally released with 3 trophies in your hand

I walk to the red carpet to take my final pictures and walk back to my Limosouine, just before the door is opened pro hero dynamite had approached me . He and I both chatted it up some and he asked for my which I gave to him, then entered the fancy car and head back to your hotel where you carefully got undressed and took off the wig

Only to be met with an text from who you now address as katsuki.

Katuski: we're in the same hotel right?

You:yeah, why?

Katuski: my manger left, come over

And just with that you exited your room in pj's room 306....305....304...303! You knocked on the door and right then and there both of your lips crashed into each other. Devouring each other, tongues battling for dominance.

Closing the door behind him with his foot he carries you to his bed sitting down with you on his lap. Hands reaching the hems on your shirt as you take it off . Taking your bra off. He's taking his tank top off along with his shorts. You do the same. You pull away from the kiss so you both could catch your breathes

" shit, I think we should slow down-" he started " shh, " you interrupted.

You climb off his lap putting your hair in a pony tail. You look up at him while in between his legs on your knees.

He nods " go ahead- " he started before he cut himself off with a groan. You had already gottten to work sucking his while massaging his ball sack. You moan at the stretch as you go down taking of only 5 inches in. He hit the back of your throat causing you to gag repeatedly. He pulled you off of him. Looking in his eyes with a smirk as you take him in again sloppily. His thick veiny dick covered in your saliva. You go down again licking his tip before sucking it in your mouth. Hollowing your cheeks as you go down further. His hands behind your head guiding you. Mouth shaping around his length as you deep throat him now with no problem. His moans are non stop and his groans are loud. Thrusting into your mouth at a steady and fast pace

" ah shit, ah~" he was about to cum

You remove your self from him and start stroking as you kiss him up and down his length while massaging his balls

" fuck" his eyes roll back at the sensation

Just then white squirted from his tip into you hair and forehead. Whiles he's Cumming you went from kissing his length to sucking his balls

He's stroking his own dick helping you help him ride his nut out. A few seconds later he's laided backwards on the bed as you clean your face scooping the access cum up with your fingers, before sitting over his wet length you look him in his eyes and lick your fingers and moan "more".

Climbing over him and lining him up with your entrance before sitting on him taking him in one go.

"Ohh~"

"Fuck- Y/n you are magical"

You began moving your hips In a Circle motion whining him. Realizing it wasnt doing much for you, you stood on your knees before bouncing on him driving him crazy

"Mmm~, you like tha-" you say only to be stopped by a knock at the door

Fuck!

You hurry off him wiping yourself down before pulling up your clothes back on. Katsuki does the dame

"Sir-" " I'M COMING DAMMIT! " he irrupted. Looking at you with sorry eyes

You didn't cum...

You hid in the closet by the door waiting for the person present to walk in. Just as they did you snuck out..

Damn near a week later and you haven't contacted him. Until..

On a Saturday night at 1:25 am 💋

Heyy yall

This is chapter 2 it's not a lot but I'm new here🤩🤩

This when they first ig "fuck"

Chapter 3 will be out later his week it's gonna be long starting from the ending of chapter 1

Feel free to send writing tips or small request 😗

#bakugo x black reader #bnha x you #bnha x fem!reader #bakugo smut #bakugou smut #bakugou katsuki #Spotify

[i-was-bouncing-on-the-moon]

It does bother me SU's timeline has a few contradictory moments. I mentioned a few in the tags of a reblog I just did, but I'll elaborate here.

In both Same Old World (Season 3 Episode 3) and Onion Gang (Season 4 Episode 7), Steven says it's transitioning from summer to fall. (Showing a leaf to Lapis that's going orange) (Recieving an orange leaf from Onion to signal that his summer friends are leaving). There's no other mention of seasons passing for the rest of season 3, but directly after Onion Gang, Gem Harvest does an unofficial Thanksgiving episode and then progresses to winter with Three Gems and a Baby.

This leads me to believe they just needed something to show Lapis Earth is always changing, and quickly thought of a leaf going orange. They could just have easily picked the weather suddenly changing. The rest of season 3 appears to happen during the summer, so it's my personal headcanon that leaf was an early anomaly.

The more irritating case of this for me would be the movie. The movie is confirmed to take place on May 21st, due to the Sadie Killer posters in the background. Now, I bet the designer didn't mean this to solidify anything, but since Steven is explicitly confirmed to be 16 during the movie, this means he's almost 17. Despite this, Future goes through a whole winter in Snow Day and apparently a whole school year at Little Homeschool, and in Growing Pains Steven's still somehow 16.

It doesn't add up. This could have been easily fixed by making him 17 and saying he had an offscreen birthday. I mean, starting SUF with Little Homeschool implies it's back to school time anyway, so late August, early September. Steven should have been 17 by the start of SUF to begin with. Then I'd believe the whole of SUF doesn't exactly take a year and he's either 17 or just turned 18 when he leaves (I mean, The Future is months after I Am My Monster so he could have had a birthday between them).

I think it would have been nice to make sure Steven was 18 or just about to become 18 when he left. The idea of a 16yo driving off and living alone on the open road makes me uncomfortable and feels a bit like irresponsible parenting on the Gems' and Greg's part.

I know this doesn't really matter but it does bother me it could have been fixed so easily!

#steven universe future #steven universe #su #stupidly specific gripes i have about my favorite show #i still love it tho

[lamonnaie]

bad buddy fandom getting-to-know-you meme!

Thanks for the tag @fiercynn !! This is a really lovely idea :)

note: i consider "fanworks" to pretty much everything people create related to a fandom, including but not limited to meta/analysis/discussion, gifs, fanvids/edits/fancams, filk, fanart, fanfic, fan food, fan crafts, etc. please include this note with the meme unless you have a different definition!

name and whatever you want to share about yourself hi i'm mars, i use she/her pronouns, i live in australia and i've been into thai/asian bl for a little over a year now. i mostly just lurk and mass rb on tumblr lol, but i'd definitely like to get to know more people !!

when did you watch bad buddy/join the fandom? I was actually trying to track down the exact date recently (i failed), but i watched it for the first time around mid-september 2022, ended up binging it in a day and been a part of the fandom since

favorite ship(s) patpran <3

favorite character(s) pat !! he's one of my favourite characters from any media ever. I just love how selfless he is and how he transforms through the show, and how bright he is but knows when to stand his ground. i could wax poetics about him fr <3

favorite episode(s) Whenever i watch/rewatch bad buddy i tend to binge it so i can never distinguish betweens episodes lol. In general, ep 12 is definitely one of my favs because i feel like it ties things up nicely and i like seeing them happy :) i can probably give a better answer for favourite scene...

favorite scene(s) ...which is why it's great that this is the next question!

In no particular order: the staircase proposal scene, the bus stop roleplaying scene, the post-curtain bench hand holding scene (specifically that one face pat/ohm makes which imo is the single most most heartbreaking frame in the entire show), the ep 12 post-credits scene (wait was it actually post-credits, i don't remember ajksdjf), the screaming on the rocks at the zero-waste village scene, and the rooftop kiss (ofc)

Basically i just like to see them happy (most of the time) :)

one thing you would change about the show if you could the whole making-it-up-to-wai arc was not it for me. WHY was pran the one apologising and going after him??? still makes me mad to this day, but i think i'd have a lot more animosity towards wai if ep 12 didn't exist (also all the wai redemption arcs in fanfics have made me warm up to him :P)

what are your some of your favorite fanworks made by other people? ahhh so many!! joy of stanning a show that's finished is that it stays going through fanworks, but also now there's too many that i absolutely adore to remember in the moment, sp here's some:

we both know you're my only dream (fic) by @fiercynn: one of my favourite fics ever that i constantly go back and reread whenever i'm having a bad day (or not)

yield strength (fic) by @dulosis: the physics analogies do something to my brain /pos

10 things i hate about you (fic) by @nobodynobodyno: this one's so cute and i reread it all the time

this fmv to tujh mein rab dikhta hai by @transpat: desi moots, iykyk. but fr this holds such a special place in my heart, the lyrics are so patpran and the editing and clip choice is just *chef's kiss*

this fmv to dandelions: IT'S SO GOOD. all the parallels, the dialogue overlaying is just perfect, and the TRANSITIONS (the one at 1:28 especially)

every single one of @hereforlou's art: i'm literally obsessed, i don't always see everything on my dash so i'll literally check their tumblr every couple days. is this stalker behaviour? possibly, but if you've seen their art i think you'd understand.

Also special mention to this one gifset of the staircase proposal scene which was my first ever exposure to bad buddy, it made me watch the show to begin with, but i didn't rb it when i first saw it so now it's lost to the times 😭😭

I have an insane amount of fanfic i wanted to put here but for the sake of length of this post, i restrained myself ajskdjf

(if you create fanworks) what are your favorite fanworks that you’ve made? i do not (yet 👀)

a song that makes you think of bbs (the ones in the show don’t count lol) pretty much every fmv/edit that i've rewatched a couple times set to a song will make me thing of bbs lol, so some are tujh mein rab dikhta hai and dandelions from above, emily by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler because of this amazing fic, and gorgeous by Taylor Swift because of this gorgeous edit (y'all please go watch it it's amazing).

idk anything else you want us to know? It's the perfect timing for this because these are my nails right now ):)

honestly not super sure who of my mutuals are bbs moots so i'm just gonna tag some people, feel free to ignore this if you've already been tagged/don't want to do it! :)

@nobodynobodyno @dropthedemiurge @justafriend-ql @cornflowershade @hometothecanyonmoon @7nessasaryevils

If you see this and you want to do it, this is is me tagging you as well !!

#bad buddy #bad buddy fandom meme #bad buddy the series #me #lamonnaie stuff

[robinofinashiro]

"every night and every morning, I fall over again and you don't even know it"

characters/fandom: kazutora / tokyo revengers

pronouns: she/her

note: hehehe this is the first time in almost half ayear that i've written something so if it's so shitty i am so sorry but i promise i'll get my shit together soon lol

"tooru, we don't hurt our friends, we use our nice touches!" you stated, giving the two year old a stern look, "now apologize to amy."

the boy, who albeit was the one who had their toy stolen, sighed and muttered an apology. you pulled your hair up into a clip and sighed in complaint of the heat. the weather was not agreeing with anyone and the arguments of the children about useless childhood things didn't make it any better.

the only thing keeping you above water was the fact that your shift ended in just a few minutes and you were off for the next few days. all you were looking forward too was sleeping in and laying in bed until you had to get up.

the skirt you were wearing was tugged on by a small boy. he was in the next door to yours. you crouched down and smiled at him, "hi keisuke, what's going on?" you asked, looking at him. he hugged your leg, giving you a shy look, "i'm tired," he murmured.

you giggled, grabbing him by the stubby legs and lifting him up to your hip, "this is why we sleep longer than just an hour, my love," you whispered he didn't respond as you checked off something on your clipboard.

as you were checking off kids that had gone home for the night, you saw a parent approaching. you knew it was keisuke's father and the dad that every girl in the daycare center declared that was the most weird from all the male parents.

he had long black hair with blond streaks and a tattoo on his neck that made your bosses cringe in disgust. you on the other didn't mind it. he seemed very nice to you every time he came to grab keisuke and never bothered your bosses even if he heard something about his own son. you pointed to keisuke who immediately jumped up in joy at the sight of his father.

kazutora smiled seeing the way you were with his son. that boy was his pride and joy and although he knew you taking care of him was your job, he couldn't help but smile at the way you cared for his son. kazutora knew how fucked up this world was and it didn't go very well at first when he had to put his son in daycare.

although prison changed him in the ten years he was in there, a part of him knew that entrusting some random stranger to care of his kid for eight hours while he working with chifuyu was harder than it seemed but when he first saw you and noticed that you were his teacher, he calmed down a bit. you seemed so sweet and very welcoming to keisuke despite the way his father looked.

"good afternoon! keisuke, why don't you go grab your jacket!" you asked as he slipped from your hands to get his things. "his teachers informed me that he had a great day although his nap wasn't very long. i think that four year old birthday is hitting him and his naps are getting shorter."

kazutora chuckled, "figures. he doesn't nap for long on the weekend," you rolled your eyes playfully as kazutora got distracted by a friend and was helping the girl build a puzzle, "he's such a great kid. he's been so helpful to the new student at the center and sat with him during the lunch period."

kazutora couldn't help but smile. keisuke was everything he wasn't as a child. he loved helping others, looked at the world with rose colored glasses, and in his mind, nothing out there was evil except for the bad guys on the show he watched everyday that he got home from school, "we do want to start talking about him transitioning to the preschool room. the start of the school year is coming up soon and he seems bright enough that we got permission from the district to move him up to the preschool room starting in September."

all kazutora did was smile as he finally got keisuke's attention, "well, have a good night and we'll see you tomorrow in the morning!" you told keisuke who now smiled and ran out the door.

you returned the smile to kazutora before returning your direction to your desk to finally start grabbing your things. you knew that a few of your friends wanted to go out for the night and although you were debating on going home and telling them work had drained you, you decided that maybe the bar across the street from their place didn't sound too bad as long as you got home before 3 am.

-

you had on an athletic skirt that all your friends told you looked like you were going golfing and a cropped tank top. you weren't in any mood to dress up as much as they did and you figured while all your friends wanted to find someone for the night, you weren't exactly there for that. all you wanted was a beer and maybe a dance.

all of you were congregated at a small table as you drank down your third beer of the night. the night was going smoothly until you realized that a VERY familiar face walked through the door. a friend of yours caught your sudden change of attitude and looked at you for an answer.

"that's a parent from my job. that's fucking kazutora hanemiya," you exclaimed. your friend asked what the big deal was but you grabbed her by the shoulders in panic, "im already kind of tipsy, what kind of teacher would i be if they saw me drunk? he could file some kind of complaint to my bosses!"

another one of your friends gave you an awkward look, "well, you might want to think of something and quick because he's coming up right behind you," you didn't even get a chance to think before you felt a tap on your shoulder.

"nice to see you again," kazutora said normally. all of your friends chatted quietly behind you making it obvious that they wanted to listen to the conversation, "hi! i didn't expect to see you here tonight! who has keisuke for the night?" kazutora murmured that a his friends wife had him.

"could i buy you a drink? it's the least i can do for approaching you so suddenly and for dealing with keisuke all day." you wanted to deny but kazutora was already walking to the bar, "save me," you murmured to your friends as they shook their heads no. a part of them would have liked to finally see you talking to guy that wasn't a friend or a student's parent.

you got to the bar as kazutora gave the bartender a look, it seemed like there was silent communication between them as he turned over to you.

"what are you drinking?" "could i have a reds apple ale? peach flavored?"

the bartender immediately got on the drink for the two of you as kazutora turned over to you, "don't gotta be so formal with me, ya know. we're out of your work setting and keisuke isn't here to be a nosey nelly," you laughed at the nickname.

"keisuke really does love involving himself in adult conversations. can't count how many times i've heard him playing with friends and stating things we've talked about," kazutora shook his head, "he's the same way with my friends' kids."

the conversation grew quiet as the bartender handed you your beer, "thank you so much for this. i know its kind of weird seeing your kids teacher in such a casual setting and i hope it doesn't make you feel any kind of way about me," you said suddenly. kazutora waved you off, "not at all. trust me, i've seen and done worse than this. i was hoping that i could ask you something."

your eyes fluttered in confusion.

"keisuke's having a birthday party and we'd love for you to be there," you smiled in relief, "of course! just send over the party information to me on my next day back! you also do have my number for emergencies but i wouldn't mind this one text."

kazutora nodded, "i'll make sure to send that over to you," he replied as he noticed your friends staring at the two of you, "why don't you and your friends come sit with me and my friend chifuyu, they seemed a bit scared that you're still over here with me."

kazutora knew that this birthday party was going to be the entry way for him to get to know you better. he always thought you were a cute little thing and now that keisuke's mother was out of the picture long enough for him to get comfortable with the idea of a new mom, he couldn't help but think that maybe keisuke wouldn't be so upset if he saw that it was you wrapped up in his fathers arms.

he looked over to you as you were talking to your friends. whatever it was that you were telling them was making you laugh making kazutora run his eyes all over you. now hopefully you also didn't mind becoming the step mom to keisuke if his plans worked out the way he wanted it too.

#anime #anime imagines #anime imagine #tokrev #tokyorev #tokyo revengers imagine #tokyo revengers #tokrev x reader #tokrev imagine #kazutora hanemiya #kazutora imagine #kazutora x reader

[reliabledragon]

Hi! I’m genuinely curious, why is Seattle a bad place to live? I’ve thought about moving there at one point, until I realized I wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Ah, well, I should probably clarify that I don't think it's, like, an inherently bad place or anything. It was just a really bad fit for me, so being stuck there for several years really sucked. Basically, it boiled down to a few things:

Making Friends: Seattle is so notoriously unfriendly that the "Seattle Freeze" even has its own Wikipedia page. People will be plenty nice to you, but most have no interest in actually becoming friends, and it takes ages to build a social network there.

Lack of Diversity: In this case meaning the cultural sense, not the racial one. (It is racially homogenous as well, but I'm not really qualified to open that can of worms.) Seattle basically does like, three things: extreme outdoor activities, substances, and computer stuff. ("Substances" here meaning things like weed, but also beer, coffee, etc.) So if you want to go skiing every day, climb mountains, smoke weed, drink artisanal beer, play video games, or found a startup, it's a good place for that. However, if you want to do anything else then you are going to be fighting against Seattle every inch of the way.

The Dating Scene: Again, Seattle does some things very well here — it's probably the best dating market in the country if you're poly! But again, the monoculture means that if you're Seattle's kind of person then you're going to have the time of your life, but if you aren't, then you will simply be screwed. And I wasn't, so I spent three years basically unable to find anyone to seriously date. (I will grant that part of this could have been a me problem, but I certainly had far less difficulty both in SF before and NYC after.)

Urban Design: Maybe this is a personal one, but Seattle is in this really awkward middle ground, where it absolutely sucks to have a car in the city, but it also absolutely sucks not to have one. It's my least favorite city in the US that I've ever driven in, but it's also a pretty rotten experience trying to get around town on the bus or (very limited) light rail system. I'd much rather live somewhere with functional public transit, but if that's not possible then I'd at least like my mandatory car usage not to feel like I'm turning the ignition key in a Saw trap.

Distance: Unless your friends and family are in the PNW, you're probably going to want to leave occasionally to see other people, and Seattle is really very far away from everything other than Portland and Vancouver. Perhaps this isn't the biggest issue on this list, but combined with the Seattle Freeze, it can make the city intensely lonely. And combined with the weather, it makes it even harder to get away when the sky starts feeling oppressive in the winter. And speaking of winter...

Climate: This is a big one, and one that I think you can't really understand until you live there. Or at least, I certainly didn't grasp the implications beforehand. Everyone knows Seattle as a "rainy city", but it's one thing to hear about it and another to live it. The thing about Seattle is that it's both accurate to say that it always rains, or to say that it never rains. It's not like most of the country, where you have rainstorms and then times when it isn't raining. No, not in Seattle. In Seattle is drizzles, constantly. From September until June, every time you step outside, it's just... Damp. And cloudy. Once the clouds come in the Fall, you will not see the sun for nine months. The sky is just a bright gray mass hovering oppressively overhead, not dim enough be properly melancholy, not bright enough to be cheerful. It just looms, vaguely too bright to look at, no matter which direction you look. For most of your life in Seattle, you live in hollow light and hollow rain.

Despite all that, I really do think Seattle is a great fit for a lot of people, but it's hard to know if you're one of those people before you move there, and the penalty if you're wrong can be a pretty terrible living experience. My response on that poll was playing along with the "city hate group" thing they were asking about a little bit, but I really did have a very bad time there. It might well be a great fit for you, I know it is for a lot of my friends who live there! I would just advise anyone thinking of moving there to make sure they understand what they're signing up for, because it's easy to get taken in by the aesthetic and not realize what sort of place it is, and what sort of person you need to be to enjoy it.

Thanks for the ask! I'm always happy to talk about cities. :)

#my posts

[carrickbender]

Sonntag seiben

1. September in the PNW means harvesting and putting in things for the winter that give hope that, at some point, we will see the sun again and taste the sweet goodness of the gifts of nature. This year is special because another generation of our family gets to decide their fate as either pickers or non-pickers. I've always been a picker since I was probably a bit older than Henry; My grandmere and I would dutifully pick the tiny delicious huckleberries right on the border of Idaho and Montana, and one of our favourite patches was yards away from where one of her relatives surveyed in the state lines of Montana(plot twist: it's backwards). My mom, on the other hand, was born a non-picker who often loved finding a nice shady spot with a book. Thankfully, as she and I were both raised as only children, she has become a picker because berries won't pick themselves and blackberries are awful to pick. And Buggy was such a trooper: he started off picking berries but then he just wanted to eat berries even double fisting them. Tradition can be so delicious.

2. I finished my 2 weeks at Medline on Saturday, and they were absolutely good people for whom to work. And on Tuesday, I start with a municipal organization in emergency mitigation services, which should be a good job. Its a serious pay cut from Cosmo, but I cant wait any longer. And with graduation looming for me at CWU and my MBA application submitted, my options are expanding by the day. I refuse to be blind to the silver lining to my loss of my job at Cosmo, and I am open to the lessons that the universe is teaching me.

3. So for a long time I couldn't wrap my head around affirmations, but now that I'm doing them, I feel different. I think maybe, just maybe, the reset has begun and I'm looking at how I reclaim grace. To all who helped: much love.

4. To all of you who do online tutoring, what do you think of it? I have some expertise, and I think I could parlay it into a little more income and use it for the benefit of others. Thoughts?

5. We find out this week what sort of pre-k/transitional kindergarten programme Buggy will be in this fall. And, cool thing: H was also accepted into our local college and is going to be finishing her degree in Chemical dependency counseling. Her sobriety not withstanding, she is so smart and if she wouldn't have had her oldest son so young she could have done anything. She was studying to become a nurse when "life" and a few other things got in the way, and I think how much of a loss it was, truly. So having her go back to school is truly making sure the smartest person in this house gets to use that amazing brain for good of others and not just making good stuff like the boule in the picture.

6. Jimmy Buffet and Bill Richardson, on the same day? I got to meet Bill and hear him speak, and he was truly a champion for the forgotten and unjustly imprisoned. And Jimmy... I heard so many stories of him playing the Elbow room in Dutch Harbour and Tony's in Kodiak that, turns out were all true. While he might have been seen as a brand, some of his lyrics really hit my old broken down ass self pretty hard. And like his lyric said,

"I hope you're enjoying the scenery

I know that it's pretty up there

We can go hiking on Tuesday

With you I'd walk anywhere

California has worn me quite thin

I just can't wait to see you again"

Peace be with them...

7. The agates and the quartz glass are from a local beach, and 3 generations of hands have touched them. 3...Somewhere, my father figure is proud and glad it took(and that his great grandson loves rocks and getting dirty, just like him).

If you are still reading this, don't labour tomorrow. Rest. Relax. It's been a hard 9 months, and judging by our mountain ash bushes here, it's going to be a long miserable winter. Many blessings yall, and be kind to yourselves and take a moment. If my stubborn ass can finally say, and mean it, "I love the person I am becoming", you can too.

Much love!!!!

#me #this is my life #singer songwriter #dadlife #exhausted #henry adam #washington state #in repair #blackberries #huckleberries #daniel hickey

[thislovintime]

A look at Peter Tork, multi-instrumentalist:

“[Peter’s] really a genius, a prolific musician — he plays about seven instruments.” - Micky Dolenz, Record Mirror, February 11, 1967

"A friend of the family, Tom Glazer, a folk singer, is the one who started it all for me. He gave me my ukulele. I had been taking piano lessons but when I got the uke, I found I could go plunk, plunk, and it was a sound I really dug. My mother wanted me to keep studying the piano, but I couldn’t make that plunk-plunk sound on it even after practicing. Knowing the piano helped a lot, though. I played other instruments too, like the French horn. I played that as a senior in high school in Connecticut and in a university band." - Peter Tork, Seventeen, August 1967

"[As a performer in the early to mid-'60s, Peter] was utterly solo. And he was, he was fantastic. He was so good. It was wonderful." - James Lee Stanley, Tales of the Road Warriors, March 2019 (x)

Q: “Is it true that Micky Dolenz didn’t want to play the drums? He had never touched a drumstick before in his life?” Peter Tork: “I don’t know about that, and, and it certainly isn’t true that he didn’t want to, he just didn’t know how to. I taught him his first drum lick. (imitates lick) You know, like that. ‘Okay, Micky, you hit it here, and you let it up with your foot, you close your foot, and you hit it again.’ (laughs)” - GOLD 104.5, 1999

Q: “Your first instrument was piano. So, were you comfortable when asked to play bass?” Peter Tork: “Yes, piano came first at age nine, and I think by age 13 came guitar. In the early 1960s, what you did as a guitar player was play folk music. One of the ways you played it was to perform a thing called Travis Picking. 
A guy named Merle Travis pretty much created that alternating thumb with syncopated finger picking on top, which meant you had to know the location of your bass notes. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom bom, boom bom, boom bom, boom – that kind of thing you knew if you were playing guitar. As it happens, the bass guitar is the bottom four strings of an acoustic guitar dropped an octave. My fingers pretty much fell into place picking up a guitar, and it was essentially the easiest transition in the world for me. I hardly even noticed I was picking up a different instrument. So yeah, it’s always been pretty interesting and easy. I’ve always enjoyed playing bass.” Q: “You were actually the first Monkee to appear musically on the group’s self-titled debut album, released in October 1966. How did that happen?” PT: “There was a guitar section at that point – five guitar players. And I was like fourth out of the five guitars. I didn’t have a big contribution by any means. It was just actually Mike being nice to me. He was in charge of his songs. There were four tracks produced by Michael on the first two albums, and I played guitar on three – ‘Papa Gene’s Blues,’ ‘Sweet Young Thing,’ and ‘Mary, Mary.’” - Pop Culture Examiner, November 1, 2011

Q: “Peter, you play various instruments. Do you prefer to play keyboards to banjo?” PT: “Depends. I think that primarily, the thing about the banjo is that it plays one kind of music only. The piano is of course much more widely — if I had, if I could have a keyboard but no banjo or the other way around, I would of course keep the keyboard, just because you can play rock and roll and folk and melodies and improvise. It’s the instrument I’m most familiar with, it’s the one I trained on, and harmonically, it’s the one that falls most readily under my hands. And I think that would be, that would be it. The banjo is of course wonderful in its own way and you can do things on the banjo that no other instrument is capable of. I’d like to, I’d like to go on having what I’ve got, which is essentially both and then some, of course, guitar and French horn and harmonica and bass and all the others that I play on or play at. But for one instrument only, of course the keyboards.” - Headquarters radio, September 1989 (x)

"You know who was good? Peter Tork was an amazing multi-instrumentalist. I had no idea!" - Roger Bechirian (producer, Pool It!), Tape Op, July/August 2012 (x)

"I guess I’m still just a young hippie-folkie-rocker at heart, learning to play the blues.” - Peter Tork, Los Angeles Times, June 22, 2013 (x)

"I enjoy playing Johann Sebastian Bach [on piano] for a hobby, just to take my mind into different places." - Peter Tork, Medium, August 2017

And, to select some video footage to accompany this post, here's Peter... in 33 ⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee; live in Chicago in August 1988; live in 1997; Peter and Shoe Suede Blues (and early show); and playing the organ at Detroit's Fox Theatre.

#Peter Tork #Tork quotes #60s Tork #10s Tork #The Monkees #Monkees #Michael Nesmith #Micky Dolenz #Davy Jones #long read #<3 #<333 #Peter deserved better #celebrating Peter Tork multi-instrumentalist #1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #1990s #2000s #2010s #Tork banjo #1966 #1967 #2010 #2016 #Seventeen Magazine #Headquarters Radio #Los Angeles Times #Record Mirror

[sea-saur]

gender rant under the cut

ok here's the thing i've been on t for a little over a year now and i had top surgery back in september of '22 so like i'm cooking right im a little guy in an incubator and my voice has changed for sure and my bottom growth is growing and im getting more hair in places etc etc so like things are happening right. but i'm also 5'2" and have a big ole ass and while my voice has changed it isn't changed enough to pass and while yes i have more body hair plenty of cis girls have more body hair than me and like basically i'm getting on and off dysphoria for not passing. i don't even WANT to pass as a cis man, i just want to NOT be read immediately as a girl. you know? and frankly i'm happy with the body hair and bottom growth and it'd be nice if my fat redistribution kicked in a little more but i'm comfortable with my weight etc etc like....frankly i think it's mostly the voice. the voice and the face. like if my face looked more boyish and my voice sounded more boyish i think the rest of my body would coast cause i've seen enough chubby guys of various shapes to not really feel that self conscious about my body. it's the face and voice that sell it.

and the other thing is like....i have this thing where it's like 'i don't pass as a boy therefore i'm not one' when i don't put that requirement on any other queer person but for ME living it mentally? it's hard to put together the 'i walk around and am read as a girl, and i was raised as a girl, and hell i frankly WAS a girl up until my 20's like that's a part of who i am and im not ashamed of that, i love child me she is important to who i am as a person and frankly i'm grateful to be trans in that way, i think growing up a girl can make me a better guy" (and yeah there's a lot of privilege to be able to say i love being trans, i'm in a large city and work in an industry where queerness is accepted and often celebrated so like. i know. i'm really very very lucky and im extremely grateful for that) but mentally, it's hard for me to even see myself as a transmasc person when i don't SEE it physically, AND because my insides are still me. like i'm still me. and i didn't grow up as feeling like a boy in a girls body. i'm still some kind of nonbinary, still very queer in general, like being bi puts an interesting spin on this too since i have never been and don't associate my personal self with lesbian spaces, or gay men spaces, i sort of float in any queer generalities that people are into. but yeah, never really clicked with lesbian specific environments. i love lesbians but im just not one.

BUT i was raised a girl, so i feel COMFORTABLE around women, often times more than men. queer people in general of any gender are number 1, but ya know. the gist is coming off of a gig the last month that was very queer coded in the musical we were doing, and being surrounded by queer women making lesbian jokes, i felt...simultaneously left out (no one was leaving me out, to be clear, i mean within my own personal identity crisis lol) and also too included. i don't know. a lot of it is in my head, people are often good about my pronouns and frankly i don't KNOW how my usual colleagues see me as a person, if they have to work harder to reframe their interpretation of me away from "girl" and into "transmasc person" since i worked with a number of them before i started medically transitioning. thankfully i always read as a queer person haha. i have that going for me, which does feel very affirming.

idk. even my own apartment decor gives me dysphoria sometimes, which drives me crazy!! i like my apartment decor! I keep trying to do little things to "masc" it up, neutralize it a little, even tho i love all the things i've put in my home. i need new curtains.

there's nothing more to do about it right now i guess, besides try and take more active steps toward my legal name change, and potentially switching from t gel to injections, but that scares me because i'm afraid of doing it wrong and hurting myself. the gel is safer that way. and the dose is daily so i think it gives are more consistent level throughout the week. i also don't know exactly how much i want to pass as "just some guy" even tho this entire rant is literally about that. i think that my fear is that i look cis/straight, which frankly idk that i ever even would based on how i am as a person, so idk why i'm worried about it. basically, i want to stop feeling like i'm 'pretending' to be transmasc. cause sometimes it feels like it's all a lie and im actually just a girl who doesn't want to be a girl but is stuck as one. especially since i don't want to be a cis guy either. i also don't want to lose my ties to my past - i don't connect with womanhood, but i don't want to lose the "sisterhood" for lack of a better term? But also really want to be part of the queer "brotherhood" that i feel like i can't be based on where i am as a person? idk i feel a lot of the time that when im in my own home, im just a little goosey guy. the second i leave my apartment and im percieved, i'm a masculine woman to the world. and even tho masculine women are the fucking shit, im just not that!! and so. dysphoria.

#transmasc #gender rant #it's really train of thought under there #basically a diary entry lol like i needed to get this out #like why do i still feel like a girl in my head!! #it drives me crazy! #fuck!

[cryptic-rainfall]

So I've been putting together this playlist (shameless plug for my playlist here) in response to my phone getting stolen a year ago, which triggered probably the worst, most intense depressive episode I've ever had. Like I was standing on the edge of a cliff bad. Making a playlist to "commemorate" that time you were super depressed doesn't really sound like a good idea, but I've been trying to use it as a way to work through the trauma of it all. Mostly it's songs that I heard on the radio on the drive to and from work, plus a couple songs I heard on repeat to stave off the insanity. There's a lot of Marina and Green Day on there because I have those on CD, easy to turn on without having to think about what I wanna listen to.

Anyways, I thought very long and hard about including Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends on the playlist, because of how well it captures the feeling of grief. I ultimately decided against adding it, a little because my bad depressive episode started when September ended, ironically, but mostly because I didn't want to compare the loss of a cellular phone with the loss of a close family member (I know that grief exists for many things and you can grieve deeply and heavily for objects or your own life even without death or someone close to you dying, but it still felt disrespectful).

However, I do wanna talk about how accurately I think Wake Me Up When September Ends depicts grief (because over-analysis of music is what I do for fun for some reason, and dealing with grief has been a big Thing for me this past year in general). The song starts off with soft guitar, soft vocals, and not many instruments. Grief starts quiet sometimes, like the processing time? I think it's also important to note that the song that comes right before this one in the album (Side note: Green Day is incredibly good at constructing albums, the way they sequence and connect their songs in an album is phenomenal, that is it's own post entirely however.) is Letterbomb, which is very upbeat, and the contrast in tempo and lack of instruments that comes at the start of Wake Me Up When September Ends makes you just sort of sit in the quiet that the song starts with. Sit with the grief.

And the whole first verse has that soft guitar and quiet lack of background instruments. I'm not gonna go crazy over lyrics, I'm sure a million people have more to say on it than me, but I do love the themes and imagery. "The innocent can never last" - no one can remain free from grief. "Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars" - idk I just really love this. You don't see stars when it rains, and the slight disconnect draws me deeper into the imagery here. "Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are" - I also really love the imagery of soaking in grief, drenched is really such a great word choice here. And then "becoming who we are," this idea I think is a hard one to come to terms with when it comes to grief or bad things in general. That grief is a part of you. All your experiences go into you, into this process of you becoming yourself. That process never stops, and it's especially hard when grief or loss change you, but also other things will change you too. Bittersweet. "As my memory rests, but never forgets what I lost" - I think it's interesting here that it's the memory that rests, not the person who passed. You don't forget your loss, but your memory of it rests.

After the first verse, the instrumentals pick up a bit and the second verse is very similar to the first vocally, but the instrumentals are more intense. Grief isn't always quiet, a lone tear running down your face. When you really start to process it, it gets intense. I also love the contrast of spring and summer, and then the end of September, nice little touch.

After the second verse there is a longer instrumental bit, the music swells, and then pulls back to the soft guitar, transitioning us to the third verse, which is literally like the first few lines of the first verse with two notable differences: 1) instrumentals come in bringing the intensity up after the first line, 2) instead of 7 years, 20 years has gone so fast. Whenever a song does a repeat line but changes one (1) word, it literally drives me crazy, that shit is so good. I still grieve about things from when I was a kid and sometimes it blindsights me, like why am I crying about a friend I haven't seen since I was 8. It also really brings out the "gone so fast" aspect, by the end of the song we've gone from 7 years to 20 years.

I didn't talk about the title lyric from the song, "wake me up when September ends," because that's pretty well documented I think (for those that don't know, Billie Joe Armstrong wanted sleep through September after his father died). It is a very good line in the song though, grief is like that. It wasn't until Halloween/Nov. 1 of last year that I felt ok for even a moment. Grieving periods are obviously different per person but it was nearly exactly a month for me, when the first rains came, that I had a moment that wasn't agony.

Very last note, this song transitions beautifully to the next song, Homecoming, it puts you in this morose moment which is a great place to start the next song, tone-wise. I have no ending so :3

#grief #depression #music analysis #green day #as much as I want to. I'm not proofreading this shit #here: have what should be a journal entry + naive music analysis #this would be like a 15 year old's video essay #this isn't a jab at video essays made by 15 year olds btw #if I had the mindset I did at 15 and wanted to attach this to my voice/face then this would absolutely be a video essay #anyone concerned about the first paragraph in particular: I better now #still working through grief and Other Stuff but like. I'm not constantly in misery the way I was a year ago

[drst]

House update

I am... still buying a house!

I am... still utterly terrified!

But I just found out my rent was going to go up over $200 a month if I stayed, which has helped.

So for those unfamiliar, the very rough outline of this process is find the place, make an offer, offer gets accepted, 8 billion administrative things you have to complete, then the closing happens. I’m in the 8 billion section right now. *sobs*

When you write a contract to make an offer to buy a house, you can ask for contingencies, which are basically how you get out of the contract without any penalties.

Inspection is the most common one, which makes sense. Most people get their homes looking nice when they go on sale, but there can be a lot of stuff wrong that isn’t visible immediately, so you (the buyer) pay for a home inspector to check the place over (mine cost about $600). It takes 2-3 hours, and you should be there for this along with your agent, but not the owner or their agent. You get a written report and have a certain number of days to nope out of the process if anything gets found you don’t like.

If you go ahead, you may have to get the property appraised, which is another contingency where the sale can halt. I have to say this is one thing that feels a bit like a scam. There are regulations on home inspectors and licensing and stuff that mean they have to have a level of knowledge and training but appraisals are murkier. But the home has to appraise near the amount of money you are offering for it, otherwise your mortgage may not go through, or the rates may change.

I’ve gotten through both of those things so I am basically locked in on my end. I’m buying this place, no take backs on my side.

But there’s also a financing contingency on me, which means if I can’t get the mortgage, the seller can bail on the sale and I lose the deposit money. I had gotten pre-approval from a mortgage broker (which I strongly recommend, because my mortgage company has sent me a detailed sheet with every place I seriously considered buying that spelled out the interest rate, monthly payment, fees, closing costs, etc. that gave me a much better idea of what I was looking at, money-wise. Also having a pre-approval letter, while not a guarantee of anything, shows you had your shit together and someone already checked into your finances and they think you’re likely to get a mortgage for X amount of money. If you’re in a market where buying is competitive the way it’s been the last couple of years, this can make you more attractive to sellers who don’t want to see the sale fall apart and have to start over) and I am 99% sure it’ll be fine but it’s not done until the underwriting gets done and everything is approved.

I’m working on getting home owners insurance, which I thought was going to be easy, but has turned out to be annoying. I hope to get that resolved tomorrow. Also I need to stop assuming any step in this process will go smoothly and revert to my natural pessimism.

I also had to take a first time home buyer’s course online FOR THE THIRD TIME. *scream* I get making people go through these, but I already did it twice!

This actually timed out great for me, assuming the closing happens as scheduled next month. Due to how mortgages work, the closing in mid-September means my first mortgage payment will be due at the beginning of November, and my last full rent payment on my apartment will be in October, so I get a smooth transition and don’t have to pay both at the same time. I also have about 5 weeks from when I get the keys to when I’ll move in to address the stuff in the inspection that has to be addressed before I want to live there.

Sadly there’s a bunch of boring plumbing and pest control stuff I have to deal with before I get to think solely about paint colors. I am already thinking about paint colors, of course, because THERE WILL BE NO NEUTRALS IN MY HOUSE DAMN IT. I HAVE BEEN LIVING IN RENTAL SPACES WITH BORING ASS NEUTRAL COLORED WALLS FOR 25 YEARS but there’s a lot of other tedious stuff I have to address too.

And I’m trying hard not to think too much about the money that is going to be flying out of my hands over the next few months. I’ve been saving for this for 5 years, specifically for this period of time, but having been close to broke for a good portion of my adult life, it’s frightening to think of losing those carefully hoarded pennies for anything.

#adventures in home buying

[honeyblve]

i had a huge milestone happen yesterday in my health journey and i wanted to vent and document it for myself, kind of like a journal entry, because this is the end of a chapter and beginning of another for me. its kind of a selfish post that nobody else will probably care about but i think it will be nice to have to look back on. im not sure if adding trigger warnings to this post is needed but im going to add them just incase anyone takes the time to read this if you do read this i appreciate it sm.

tw: injury, mistreatment from doctors, mental health issues, su*cide

for the past year ive been dealing with a serious back injury that has wreaked havoc on my life. i had to quit my job and was basically bed ridden for months. its effected my mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing in such a horrible and traumatic way. i've seen numerous doctors and tried multiple types of possible solutions with no resolve in my pain, been rejected by a doctor for surgery due to my body type (dont even get me started on that bs. it was fully a him problem and not a me problem), and essentially lost all quality of life. at one point i was so exhausted and overstimulated from all the pain that i didnt see any point in living if the rest of my life was going to be consumed with an unimaginable and unbearable amount of pain. i spent many nights crying myself to sleep, feeling very isolated and alone, taking insane amounts of medicine for a small amount of relief, unable to rest due to pain, and missed out on some very important moments in my life and others around me lives as well. i graduated college earlier this year after 5 years of working full time, going to college full time, and dealing with health issues on top of it and was unable to walk across the stage and celebrate my hard work all because of this injury. i bottled up a lot of the stress and sadness i was experiencing because i didnt want to add another thing on to the list of problems to figure out for myself or my family. which in turn caused me to start having major issues with anxiety and depression. a year in my life that was meant for growth, transition, and finding my footing as a proper adult was completely overtaken. to say it was a hard year is such an understatement but truly the only way i can really put it.

yesterday, i saw a new specialist and was finally approved for surgery after being turned down by another specialist back in september ‘22. a surgery that takes 45 minutes and will almost instantly relieve any pain im experiencing. a surgery that i was told would usually be suggested 6 weeks into experiencing symptoms a year and two months after i started experiencing symptoms. for the first time i was shown my mri results that i had done 9 months ago and explained just how severe the injury in my back is. my jaw was on the floor at how horrible it was. i could finally understand what was happening inside my body. it helped my brain justify everything that ive been experiencing and proved to myself that i wasnt crazy. when i was asked if i wanted to move forward with the surgery it was the first time that i felt like i wasnt just being observed and passed along for someone else to make the decision for me. i finally felt like i was given the opportunity to speak for myself and make a decision for my own body. i wasnt seen based only on my outer appearance or a number on a scale. i was seen as a human being who is experiencing pain 24/7 for over 400 days and needed help. finally my advocacy for myself worked and a doctor is on my side. when he left the room i immediately started sobbing and felt like i could breathe for the first time in what felt like forever.

looking back i think in many ways this year was meant for internal growth. there were a lot of things i had to learn about myself and begin to change. either through therapy or by opening up to family and friends. so even though it was not necessarily growth in the literal world, i grew up a lot within myself. for some reason in all of my circumstances i always feel the need to learn something. maybe its just blind optimism. whatever it is though it helps me put one foot in front of the other. what i learned through all of this is valuing myself and knowing my self worth. i learned how to advocate for myself and not take no for an answer. i learned how strong i am in multiple areas of my life. but i also learned how to accept help and know that i cant do everything by myself. and that doesnt mean that i'm weak.

if anyone reads this i hope that you know its so important to learn to advocate for your wellbeing and dont allow anyone to mistreat you, use you, or demand that you meet their expectations before being treated as a human being. its okay to take a step back and take care of yourself. and when it comes to doctors and medicine, trust. your. body. it knows when something is wrong. doctors are just people and sometimes dont know wtf theyre talking about. they are not all-knowing deities. they dont live in your body. not agreeing with them is not against the law. it is okay to seek out care from someone else. and if you feel stuck with someone who is not listening to you or who doesnt see you as a human being, there are doctors out there that truly love what they do and want to help you. they dont see you as a statistic or a box to check off on a long list of things to do for the day. they truly want to see you thrive and be healthy. sometimes it just takes a little work to find them.

anyways this was much longer than i expected it to be. if you read this far down i am so grateful that you took some time to read this post. it means a lot. and if future me reads this, i hope i've continued to learn how to value myself in all circumstances and not take any of lifes bs.

#gracie’s ramblings #lifes a bitch #personal post #mental health #health #life update