Miko @mikoinajar - Tumblr Blog

A Wistful Garden

It happened like a late autumn flu, an unwanted fever taking hold like roots burrowing themselves in my dreary garden.

I did all to rid of them, pulling them by their roots, nipping flower buds before they could bloom, stomped on them until they bowed their heads.

I knew your garden, before I knew my own, your garden gate open to all. It was a bountiful view, pruned and taken care of by steady hands and kindness. Yet it mattered not, 'cause seeds had already been drizzled all over my garden's dusty earth and whilst there was no sun, and rain came and settled like snow, seddlings grew and later sprouted.

I kept looking away even as the flowers got ready to bloom, right until a breeze went through marrow and bone and ruffled the fauna of my garden.

It was but a wilted whisper of what if.

But I knew then, by earth and sun, moon and late night denials. I knew and there was nothing to be done.

So I opened my garden gate and asked you to step out of yours only but for a moment. And there we stood outside my garden, my gate finally left ajar. You saw the small flowers, buds soon to bloom, and I knew that you would not push the gate open, would never want to stroll through my garden.

You had your own after all, already blooming and beautiful.

So I said goodbye outside my garden gate and you smiled a little sadly. I felt no happiness seeing it, but it was a small comfort to know that our goodbye was bittersweet for both you and I, though our reasons were never to align.

My garden barely in bloom was never to bask in your sun, so was the truth.

You stayed for a moment to let me know that you understood before parting with a kindness that made me want to cry, to apologise for my growing garden, the one I never asked for. I walked back inside my garden, closing the gate, and did not look back even when I knew you too were walking away.

I looked at my flowers in early bloom, and saw your kindness in them all, and I thought to myself that my garden had chosen well.

Then I plucked all the flowers one by one by one, until they looked like a small piece of summer meadow in my hands.

I did not throw them away, instead I opened my gate once again, yours now so far away, and placed them there with kind hands yet to be wholly steady.

And there I let them scatter by the wind of late winter, and knew that by spring this unwanted flu would finally be over.

#something something needed to get it of my chest

fairybreadevangelist

NYI @ PIT, 9th October 2025, for @droumack

#absolutely love the length of his hair pls don't cut it Jo!!!#might be my favorite Jo gifs in a while

celbrini

[DROU] media day 18.09.2025 (x)

#such a cute fidgeter #also loving the tugging length of his hair #on another note ik he's mostly in blue but he really wears orange well #I might just snatch that color for a wip fic :) :) :)

fairybreadevangelist

ripped out of jo's bed to memorise drills 😞

#look at this rumpled baby chicken #he is mad cute in this #also this is me at 5 in the morning on my way to the bathroom right before walking into the door frame #i wish i had a Jo to kiss the bruise better but alas that's a Nate specific perk

Hey!!! I was reading Wrapped in Chiffon Lies all yesterday and was almost done with it when I fell asleep! I was towards the end right after Jo and Nate confess! Please humble author have mercy on me! I can't wait 6 weeks!!!! Is there any way!!! please!!

Oh gosh, I didn't think about that! So sorry! Let's see if we can figure something out over a dm :)

#ask miko

niche-n0thingness

The Jonathan Drouin Jimer (Primer)

Hi Isles fans. We don't go here (yet)! But we love your new beautiful left winger so much that we wanted to make this little primer about all the things you should know and love about Jo! Huge shout out to @droumack for spearheading this project, and everyone else in the SDB discord who contributed!! Without further ado--

#big applause to all who have contributed what a gift!#this is also just massively helpful as a writer #jonathan drouin #treat him the best isles!

kvetchinglyneurotic

unstoppable force (desire to write) vs immovable object (tired)

#it's an uphill battle at the moment #I've got some great W.I.Ps the energy just isn’t there

budgetmilk

postgame 26 apr '25

#are any words really needed?

pensherosjourney

early contender for best smile of the playoffs 🫶

#ugh the sunshine smile is everything to me #and the constant fidgeting is VERY endearing #I really should get back to my fic projects #darling boy deserves that

chasingrainbowsforever

“Northern Lights in Finland” ~ By iMike Graphics

#Everwinter au

samgirard

└ PREGAME RAW: NATHAN MACKINNON | col vs. mtl | 3.22.25

#first reblog since what feb?#yes of course it's nate and his shoulders

hi i'm here to haunt your inbox over your new masterpiece! i won't gush here because i gushed over on AO3 but in short - holy shit i loved it.

okay two questions right of the gates that my brain is burning with -

in your head, what is the backstory of mike/evan/brandon? like mike seems repulsed by evan but then......mourns him like crazy when he dies? so compelling, even as background OCs. but also fuck them fr i hate them so bad, glad they're dead

How were nate and jo separated for two years and where was Jo?

what is the Frontiers????

answer as few or as many of these as you'd like but please just know you made my brain explode with such a beautifully written AU

First of all, I'm stoked to hear you like the story! (And thank you for your comment on my fic!!!) I love being able to share something *I* had so much fun writing, and seeing others enjoy reading it is amazing :)

I’ve tried to answer you’re questions as thorough as I could, which means this is a VERY long answer, so, uh, buckle up?

So, I think the first thing you'll have to have in mind is that Jo...isn’t a fully reliable narrator, since he sees the world through his lived experiences. Which is why I'm really happy that you felt that Mike seemed repulsed by Evan, because that's how Jo interpreted it. It’s how Jo would feel.

To understand the premise of the trio’s relationship, I’ll have to do a lore dump (I'll combine your question about the Frontiers because they correlate).

I'm not sure you took note of it because it can seem like a throwaway comment, but this: "You see, it's not the Strays Jo is scared of. It’s the packs." is really important. Packs are groups of ex-military, specifically from the last defense = the military bases along the border between the US and Canada.

You could label them all as deserters, but there are some differences in *how* they deserted. Some simply left before the fighting started or close thereafter because they’d rather save themselves. But! some did, in fact, fight for the greater good before they deserted (I have more lore on this). But simply put, they were left to die on the bases, and the bitterness of this makes some of them desert and seek out packs. Others, however, joined the Frontiers.

The Frontiers were specifically military personnel from the Fort, which would become the last standing military base. They start calling themselves the Frontiers after the old world collapses and continues to protect civilians from the undead. They took in soldiers from other bases, as well as civilians, and basically made a small society. In the beginning, they do want to do what’s best for the people, but as the years pass there’s a change in leadership and provisions dwindle down to nothing. It means that bad actors start popping up. These types of people *also* join packs when the Fort collapses.

So people/soldiers start offering to provide others with food/shelter/protection for the right price (this is Jo’s lived experience. He pays the price to keep Nate and him safe). The packs uses the same concept when they meet civilians that want protections, but they are just… more sharing, so to speak (there’s some more nuance to this), but it's obviously terrible for the people who are in no position to say no, unless they want to die.

So when Jo meets the trio, he is actually meeting a pack. I hinted that both Evan and Brandon were ex-military; they were from different bases and met for the first time when they joined the same pack (that was much bigger at that point).

There are some distinct difference between them: the most important being that Brandon deserted early on because he wanted to survive/didn't want to risk his life, while Evan, on the other hand, deserted very late when it became clear that his military base would fall to the undead, and the Ministry of Defense had abandoned them. It makes him deeply cynical. At his core, Evan isn’t a bad man, but when you’re together with terrible people, you often become one yourself. Evan has lost many of his principles and who he used to be.

That's also how Mike ends up knowing Brandon and Evan - they were in the same pack.

Mike is a pretty complicated character because he has done a lot to survive. He definitely has something akin to Stockholm syndrome, but I’ll say he was in a stronger position to choose which members he wanted to be with than many other civilians in the pack. He does view Evan and Brandon very differently.

Simply put, Mike despises Brandon; Evan, on the other hand… is more complicated. As I mentioned, Evan has more good in him than Brandon does, and that’s what Mike sees and experiences. Evan treats him like an equal, though their relationship is decidedly not.

If you remember, Evan points out to Jo that while they like to share, it will be nice to have one each. That’s Evan staking his claim on Mike. He wants Mike to himself, one of the reasons being that he cares about him -in a very selfish way- but also because he sees how Brandon treats him, and is trying to shield him in his own twisted way.

Mike’s interactions with Evan is described from Jo’s narrative, so it is naturally negative. If it’d been written from Mike’s point of view, it would have been a VERY different interaction.

When Mike grieves, it is much more complicated and nuanced, in a way Jo simply can’t relate to, and so the depiction of Mike grieving is simplified. The first reason for this is that Jo paid for security out of love to keep Nate and him safe. He didn’t like the protectors, hated them more like. He has no good memories about them and is disgusted throughout. So if that’s the extent of your relationship, then you obviously wouldn’t mourn/grieve them. Secondly, Jo does, as mentioned, what he has to because he loves Nate. He points out that when Nate dies, so will he. For Jo, mourning is for when you love someone, like family and friends, and mourning so deeply must mean you loved that person the most.

For Mike, though? It isn’t inherently love he feels for Evan, though perhaps they share a deformed kind. Evan was Mike’s best protector and the only one Mike wanted. For all his faults, Evan treated Mike with care and respect (yk, sort of). Evan sees Mike as an equal, a human being worth as much as himself, though he is selfish in his demands. In some ways, Mike isn’t just grieving Evan’s death. He is also grieving his own because without Evan, Mike knows he will die.

In regards to your second question about how long Nate and Jo have been apart, I think there’s a little misunderstanding. When Jo mentions that Mallow has passed, he means that Mallow did so two years before the apocalypse began. In my canon, Nate and Jo have been apart for about four months before Nate finds him. I don’t have a clear picture of the timeline for what Jo has done prior to this, but he’d been trying to get to his family…or well, find his family :(

I hope this answers your questions :) And thank you for the ask! Please know that you can always haunt my inbox!

#ask miko

When I promised myself that I'd just write a silly and fun 3k au at most, I really should have known better. I didn't sign up for this degree of angst, I wanted a fun silly sparkle fic with all the whimsy, and instead, I've got currently 7.5k of two traumatised individuals. I really hope that one tender explicit scene will make up for all the pain.

#I've started writing the comfort in this angst infested story #I'll have to edit it afterwards too wish me luck folks I'll need it