#of all the permutations to be obsessed with...

[bobbylilypad]

Yet more Witch doodles, send help.

[cece693]

POOR IMITATION

pairing: hannibal lecter x male reader synopsis: Franklyn Froideveaux didn't need an introduction—even if Hannibal was a firm believer in patient confidentiality—you knew the man had a huge obsession with your husband. However, rather than igniting jealousy within you, it provided you with endless entertainment.

The first time Franklyn Froideveaux saw you, it was purely by accident. He had just finished his Thursday session—another sixty minute spiral of anxieties masquerading as epiphanies—when he stepped into the waiting room to collect his scarf. There, beneath the copper leaf of the ceiling lamp, sat a man he’d never seen.

You balanced a stainless-steel bento of kaisen chirashi on one knee and two small stoneware espresso cups on the other, the arrangement so precise it looked curated for a magazine spread. Your suit was midnight blue, cut razor-slim through the waist, lapels rolled in a style Franklyn had only ever glimpsed on Milan runways. A silk pocket square—soft gray with a single cardinal-red stitch at the border—folded itself into an immaculate peak. Even seated, you radiated posture, the sort of spinal elegance that suggested ballet training or aristocratic rearing.

Client? Franklyn wondered, pulse skittering. Hannibal rarely kept overlapping appointments, yet here you were, looking effortlessly important. The thought that you might replace him knifed ice behind his sternum.

Then Hannibal emerged from the office, smoothing his waistcoat as always—but the mask slipped. A breath-quick, barely visible, yet seismic shift: his eyes warmed, mouth curved just shy of a smile, shoulders eased a centimeter down. It was the gentlest expression Franklyn had ever wrung from his psychiatrist—and it wasn’t meant for him.

Franklyn spent the subway ride home dissecting every detail:

Midnight-blue suit, super-150 wool, perhaps Savile Row.

Hair: swept back, a mild wave, no visible product—probably Oribe mousse, touch of sea-salt spray.

Bento: a chef’s tasting of raw fish, pickled daikon, paper-thin shiso. Franklyn googled the Japanese term on his phone and bookmarked three sushi spots that offered it to go.

Espresso cups: brown, not the white porcelain Hannibal served him—significant? Earthy tones, maybe.

By the time he surfaced onto Lexington Avenue, Franklyn had convinced himself of a simple equation: If I recreate the stimulus, I reproduce the response. Hannibal admired sophistication; Franklyn would become sophisticated. Easy.

He does not mean to become a stalker; he simply fails to notice the point at which observation tips into pursuit. Once Franklyn reached home, he sat infront of his computer and began to search for you. It was almost impossible to find anything on you. Franklyn didn't hear Hannibal say your name nor was there anything he could search that didn't elicit other unimportant hits—concert pianists, Roman senators, a British sitcom from the ’80s. Every permutation of keywords—“30-40 year old refined men from Baltimore,"—dissolved into digital static.

The elusiveness only whetted Franklyn’s appetite. Then, by some miracle, when out on the town, he saw you through the window of a tiny pâtisserie shop, holding a box of pale-green mille-feuilles tied with butcher’s twine. Franklyn’s pulse jumped. Providence! He darted inside, bell jangling overhead.

The patisserie was all copper fixtures and honeyed sunlight, a little jewel box smelling of butter and caramelized sugar. You had one hip braced against the marble counter, murmuring in liquid French to Madame Leroux about the relative virtues of Sicilian versus Sorrento lemons.

Bang.

Franklyn’s shoulder clipped the slatted door so hard it rebounded off the wall. The brass bell above his head shrieked in protest; every customer looked up. You turned, half-smile already blooming like citrus on the tongue. “Bonsoir,” you greeted, English shaded with play-acting Parisian flourish. “Can I help you find something sweet?”

Yes, Franklyn nearly blurted—your entire personal history, please, with a side of casual confidences about Dr. Lecter—but what came out was, “I…erm, heard the kouign-amann is life-changing?”

You glanced at the glass case. “Sold out hours ago. But if you’re intent on change, try the pâte de fruits. They crystallise disappointment into something chewable.” Your eyes glittered. “Name’s Franklyn, right? Tuesday afternoons?”

His throat dried. “You remember me.”

“I make a sport of it. People are puzzles, and I collect corner pieces.” You paid for your order—two citron tarts and a palm-sized gâteau St. Honoré—then stepped aside. “Tell you what: walk with me. I know a park where the ducks are shameless beggars. We can feed your pâte de fruits to them and ponder the ethics of enabling avian gluttony.”

Franklyn followed like a moon-caught tide.

Under a bare-branched elm you unboxed the pastries, handing one to Franklyn. “Eat,” you commanded, “so Hannibal won’t suspect you’re starving yourself for vanity. He abhors affectation.” A mischievous pause. “Unless it’s my affectation.”

Franklyn bit into the tart, lemon silk shocking his tongue. “You and Dr. Lecter…you’re close?”

“Close enough to ruin his tailoring budget.” You plucked a crumb from his lapel—too calculatedly intimate to be careless. “So. What’s it you really want, dear Franklyn? Therapy tips? His favorite concerto? Or perhaps you’d like the brand of salt he sprinkles on cantaloupe?”

Heat crawled up his neck. “I—I admire his mind. I thought knowing his circle might help me become the sort of person he could value.”

“Ah. Self-improvement by osmosis.” You tapped your chin, theatrically pondering. “All right. First lesson: he notices scent before speech. Skip cologne—choose tea. Something smoky, lapsang maybe. He’ll smell the difference.”

Franklyn nodded, eyes wide, scribbling invisible notes. You could almost hear the gears grinding. You tossed a sugared rind to an eager duck. “Second lesson: never present imitation as affection. He values the original.”

Franklyn frowned. “But if the original inspires—”

“Then draw inspiration, don’t Xerox it.” You patted his cheek. “Create something uniquely Franklyn. Otherwise, you’re just a shadow on a wall.” You left him with the ducks and an aftertaste of citrus and riddles.

Over the next days Franklyn raided specialty tea shops for lapsang souchong, practiced Chopin nocturnes until his downstairs neighbour threatened murder, and scoured thrift stores for vintage cashmere because you’d off-handedly mentioned Hannibal’s fondness for texture. Yet each session ended with Hannibal’s cool appraisal and a politely distant hmm.

Franklyn’s desperation calcified into brittle impatience, and it bled through his voice in therapy. “I’ve done everything the self-help books say—refined my image, broadened my cultural portfolio, adapted to the—uh—social milieu I want to inhabit.”

Hannibal folded his hands. “And who, precisely, authored that milieu?”

“I…I suppose it’s inspired by someone admirable. Someone refined.” Franklyn’s eyes flicked upward, searching for any change in expression.

“Admiration expressed through mimicry is flattering,” Hannibal said, tone as bloodless as a scalpel’s steel, “but only until the original notices his echo.”

The metaphor lanced cleanly; Franklyn winced yet forged ahead. “Hypothetically, Doctor, if a person were…emotionally available, would you consider—”

“You are mistaking hypothetical for hopeful.” Hannibal’s voice dropped an octave, the single word hopeful carrying the weight of a tribunal verdict. “Hope is best served tempered by reality. And reality, Franklyn, is that sculpting a façade does not change the clay beneath.”

A silence stretched, taut as piano wire. Franklyn’s next breath juddered. “So you’re saying it’s pointless.”

“I am saying,” Hannibal replied, eyes narrowing to flinty slits, “that authenticity cannot be reverse-engineered. The path to worth is inward, not outward. Until you accept that, every new habit will ring hollow—both to you and to anyone you wish to impress.”

When the session ended, Hannibal rose first—an unmistakable signal—while Franklyn lingered, one foot still caught in the snare of longing he had woven from your riddles and his own desperations. Outside, the corridor smelled faintly of cedarwood and oolong: your unmistakable trail. It mocked him all the way to the lift.

Hannibal wasn’t stupid; he knew Franklyn’s sudden taste for cedar-laced teas, vintage cashmere, and late-Romantic piano hadn’t sprung from self-discovery. Even if he hadn’t already smelled your laughter all over the poor man, the pattern was obvious: each new obsession followed within forty-eight hours of your latest outing.

Franklyn was devouring breadcrumbs you scattered with feline amusement, and the psychiatrist in Hannibal catalogued every crumb. But the husband in him seethed.

The following Thursday Hannibal left the office early and took the long route home—straight past the pâtisserie’s picture window. Predictably, Franklyn hunched at one of the café tables, oversized scarf bunched at his throat like a noose, notebook open to a page dense with half-legible French phrases. He was trying to charm Madame Rousseau into pronouncing them for him, and failing adorably.

Hannibal did not enter; he simply watched for a moment, head slightly cocked—predator evaluating prey already snared in its own trap. Then he continued on, leather gloves whispering together behind his back.

That night, while you diced preserved lemon into sun-bright cubes for the tagine, Hannibal recounted his detour past the pâtisserie. Each detail arrived as precisely as the slivers of peel slipping from your chef’s knife.

“I warned him not to Xerox me,” you said, flicking yellow specks into the waiting bowl. “Apparently he’s Xeroxing my accent now.”

“He is Xeroxing your life,” Hannibal corrected, voice flat as marble. “This game nourishes only your mischief. Franklyn is fixated, not amused. And I do not share.”

You set the knife aside and leaned against the counter, arms folded. “Jealousy, Hannibal? How…human of you.”

“Protective,” he corrected. “You are not a costume for him to don.” He closed the distance, hands going around your waist. “Tomorrow I end the sessions. I will transfer his care to someone equipped for his particular pathology.”

“A pity,” you murmured, brushing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I was the best circus he ever bought a ticket to.”

Franklyn arrived next Thursday with carefully mussed hair—your latest style—clutching a box tied with robin-blue twine. "For you, Doctor." He said eagerly. "Quince pâte de fruits. Rabelais—”

“I am aware of the quotation,” Hannibal interrupted, voice silk over steel. “Sit.”

Franklyn sat, box trembling in his lap.

Hannibal leaned back, gaze glacially calm. “We must speak about boundaries—specifically, the ones you have been trampling.”

Franklyn’s smile flickered. “I–I don’t under—”

“You follow my spouse,” Hannibal said. “You record his habits, mutate them into costumes you wear for my approval. You are not studying a role model; you are harvesting a persona.”

Silence detonated between them. Franklyn’s mouth opened, closed.

“You're married?! But—no rings,” he stammered. “I assumed—”

“Jewelry does not define the covenant,” Hannibal said, enunciating each word as though they were fragile porcelain pieces he refused to let Franklyn fumble. “Nor does its absence diminish it.”

Franklyn’s eyes clouded, flicking toward the bare hands resting atop Hannibal’s knees. He seemed to stagger beneath the weight of this revelation—one he felt entitled to but had never earned.

“But all the books say clear communication is essential in a therapeutic alliance,” he protested, voice threading into a whine. “You never disclosed something this…this significant.”

Hannibal’s smile chilled the air. “My privacy is not fodder for your growth. I am your psychiatrist, not an exhibit to be catalogued.” He tapped the robin-blue box. “And this”—he allowed a flicker of distaste—“is an attempt to buy admittance to a room you were never invited to enter.”

The sugared quinces inside rattled as Franklyn’s knuckles whitened. “I only wanted to show gratitude—”

“You wanted to ingratiate.” Hannibal’s voice dipped, neither loud nor hurried, yet it cut through Franklyn’s excuses like a piano wire through soft fruit. “But gratitude marinated in envy curdles into obsession.”

Franklyn swallowed. “I can fix this. I’ll stop.”

“There is nothing to fix here except your understanding.” Hannibal slid a cream-embossed referral to his hands, the motion precise as a bishop’s blessing. “Dr. Bloom specializes in attachment pathology. You will meet with her twice weekly, beginning Friday.”

Tremor replaced tension in Franklyn’s shoulders. “You’re dismissing me?”

“I am protecting both my marriage and your psyche from further injury,” Hannibal said. “Consider it an act of clinical mercy.”

A brittle pause, punctuated only by the ancient clock’s tick. Then Franklyn rose, the robin-blue box still cradled like a dislodged organ. “I…I hope—”

“Hope,” Hannibal said, “is most useful when tethered to reality. Good afternoon.” Franklyn managed a jerky nod, turned, and shuffled to the door. It clicked shut behind him with the quiet finality of a scalpel tray settling into place.

That evening, you lounged in Hannibal’s couch, legs draped across his, sipping the sencha Franklyn had supplied as some sort of peace offering to prevent the inevitable. “You told him.” Your grin curled feline.

“He left me no dignified alternative,” Hannibal replied, brushing a finger down the side of your face. “Besides, it was time.”

You grabbed his hand, tracing along the vein at his wrist, marveling—as always—at the absence of jewelry that nevertheless bound you tighter than gold ever could. “Perhaps we should buy rings,” you teased. “For Franklyn’s peace of mind.”

“Peace,” Hannibal mused, “is rarely forged in precious metals. And I cherish the subtlety of us.” A pause. “Would a ring prevent you from twirling it during lectures? From leaving it inside a cadaver’s thoracic cavity by accident?”

You snorted. “That was one time.”

He bent to kiss the laugher off your mouth, savoring the quiet metallic tang of burnt tea on your tongue.

“In any case,” he murmured against your lips, “I find the absence of visible claim arousing.” His teeth grazed the curve of your jaw, gentler than a diamond bit yet infinitely more possessive. “Only we know. And those bright enough to discern the music beneath the silence.”

[backwardshatnick]

𝖼𝗁𝖾𝖼𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗈𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗋 𝗋𝖾𝖼𝖾𝗂𝗉𝗍𝗌 (𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝗅𝗂𝗍𝖾𝗋𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒)

in which matt's digital footprint is not entirely erased off the digital world.

pairing: call centre representative!matt x customer!reader wc: 973 notes: who needs a p.i if you have a best friend. this chapter's a bit boring ngl. to read more, click here for the masterlist! divider by strangergraphics thank uuuu <3

“Wait, wait, wait,” Hessie turned to face you, “so we actually got the Bernard account right?”

The both of you were splayed on her bed, taking a much-needed brain break from finals with crumpled pieces of paper and neon-bright flashcards strewn across the plush carpeted floor of her room. And not to mention the numerous sheets of paper and mechanical pencils threatening to be crushed by the weight of your bodies on the bed.

Your best friend was still very much obsessed with cracking Matt’s mystery. Was this done on purpose to mess with her best friend, or was he just not applying his communication skills in real life?

When you went back home from your solo studies at the library, where you were wished goodbye with Matt almost toppling over a fake potted leopard lily, you immediately took out the scrunched up receipt that he had written his Instagram handle on. Trying out all the possible spelling mistakes, possible digits replacing the alphabets and even possible underscore positions, none of these permutations worked out to combine into his username.

But it never occurred to you that it was the very same account that Hessie had shared a few weeks prior when the phone call first took place.

“Shit,” you said, eyes now wide, “I never realised that.”

She went straight to the endless threads of messages that the both of you shared, scrolling meticulously to find the screenshots of his post that could possibly lead to finding Matt’s actual account. Your best friend finally stopped, seeing the clips of pictures that she had sent, one of his own Instagram feed while the remaining two were of his faceless posts.

The squeaky sound of the mattress was inevitable as she jolted into the air, pencils now rolling off the bed, “Let's fucking go!”

“Stop, stop! You’re ruining the bed and my notes! What is it?”

She finally stopped jumping and landed on her bed with a final creek, her perfectly manicured nails now shoving her phone onto your face, baby blue French tip of her index tapping repeatedly on the screen, resulting in the image being repeatedly zoomed in and out.

“I don’t know how a dog can help us in this situation,” you sighed out, index and thumb now pinching the bridge of your nose.

First, fluid dynamics and now apparently a dog should be fogging your mind?

“No, silly! The comments. We can find his real account through the comments here,” she replied, now snapping her fingers, “What’s not clicking?”

Oh!, the lightbulb in your head finally gleaming, back now straightened up as you slowly made the invisible dots connect.

Safe to say that the rest of the evening was spent with the both of you stalking both Nick’s and Chris’s accounts which were thankfully not private. Laptops left to fend for themselves on the table with the various tabs open as you both chatted away, amused at how they were all triplets.

However, neither Nick, nor Chris, has ever posted a picture of their family and friends with tags. And Matt? Well, he was never the type to comment on his brothers’ posts either, barely liking them and interacting, if at all. The both of you had to dig deep into Chris’s profile— mostly pictures of him at a student comedy show, being in a hotel kitchen as part of a hospitality team, alongside some photos of him at a warehouse, seemingly working on a clothing project, while Nick’s feed was stunned with boundless rows of film photography and professional shots of scenery, landscapes, portraits of his beloved ones and finally, a high school graduation picture.

Being one of the first few photos that Nick had posted meant that it was raw, chaotic and unfiltered. The carousel of photos had a lot of their friends tagged, but still none of them were of Matt and Chris. Nonetheless, among the 32 comments, stood one that caught your eye.

And there he is.

@mega_met44 in all his glory.

You froze, staring at the screen, “Ugh, I hate this dude.”

“Wait, what?” your best friend argued, “You're talking about that guy who saved you back at the café?”

You pointed to the comment from Matt, “He gave me a botched username. I’m sure that this is him. The Comms comment checks out.”

“Are you gonna DM him?”

“That’s weird… right?” Hesitation smeared your voice as you continued, “It’s been days. And I don’t even know if he meant for us to talk again.”

You were met with an eyeroll from your best friend, “If he was dedicated enough to come by the coffee shop to confirm your identity, I don’t see why him giving the account wasn't a fluke. Probably just an honest mistake on his side.”

She proceeded to click on his username, taking the both of you to the feed that she had previously shared, and sure enough, it was Matt’s account. Now with 10 posts, a different username and profile photo. In typical FBI manner, your best friend tapped on his latest post, purposely leaving a comment from her own account with something cryptic. Something enough to make the man’s Uggs timber.

While at work, Matt could hear the notification buzzing throughout his working area. He was about to clock out in half an hour and the hotline has been really dry for the duration of his shift, so he took of his headset and stretched in his seat to release the knots from his back and shoulders. Reaching out for his phone near the stacks of yellow and green Post-It notes and a canister of gel pens, he felt it vibrate in his grasp.

Panic ensued upon seeing the notification just when his phone scanned his face to unlock it, straight away tapping on the Instagram app just before he was interrupted by the sudden ring for the helpline.

Well, shit.

📤 @vanillaspacecamp @httpssturns @oopsiedaisydeer @slvtf0rchr1s @courta13 @a103-chris-mm @mattspillowprincess

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O’Brien Had 1 Stipulation Before Agreeing to Play Twins in ‘Twinless’ (Exclusive)

O’Brien and James Sweeney break down their buzzy festival hit and all its twin-centric Easter eggs.

BY MATTHEW HUFF

It’s been a big year for one actor playing multiple roles. Michael B. Jordan is both of the Smokestack twins in Sinners, Robert De Niro took on two mob bosses in The Alto Knights, and Blake Lively added a triplet to the mix in Another Simple Favor. Then there is Robert Pattinson playing all of the Mickey variations in Mickey 17. Later this year, Dylan O’Brien will be added to that roster when his Sundance Film Festival breakout Twinless hits theaters on Sept. 5.

In Twinless, O’Brien plays Roman, who joins a twin bereavement group when his brother Rocky (also played by O’Brien), dies unexpectedly. There, Roman meets Dennis, played by the film’s writer and director James Sweeney, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship.

For O’Brien, playing twins was not an intimidating venture mostly because, while the whole film is centered on twins, he spends most of his time only playing one of them.

“So much of the way in for me was with the Roman character because the movie really centers around this friendship, and the ways into my deceased brother character was brief, truly,” he shares with Parade while he and Sweeney visit our studio during the Tribeca Festival. “We shot that stuff over two, three days, so I’m predominantly in [Roman’s] skin, but it was just always on the page. I really always did connect with the voices of both of these guys and James’s sense of humor through the texts.”

O’Brien’s twin performances are impressive, though, and have been drawing rave reviews since Sundance. Roman, the grieving, tense heterosexual with bottled-up emotions is markedly different from the swaggering, confident gay Rocky we see in flashbacks.

When O’Brien signed onto the film, his one request was that Twinless allow for a break in filming the two characters.

“In the weeks preceding production, we had talked a lot about scheduling,” he remembers. “We wanted to make sure that we were getting some kind of separation between the two parts. Just before the holiday, we shot one of the brothers, and then [we shot the other brother] after we had the holiday break, so I had about two-and-a-half, maybe three tops weeks between the guys. Today on an independent production, that’s such a luxury to get.”

“Credit to James,” O’Brien continues. “I had told him very early on that that separation was important to me to get as much distance between the characters and production as possible. He honored that and really fought for that in building the schedule.”

From there, he and Sweeney worked with their costume designer Erin Orr to build the twins. “I don’t know how we landed on the stache [for Rocky],” he laughs. “Things like that crack me up in hindsight.”

While O’Brien may be the one playing twins, Twinless is very much the brainchild of Sweeney, who has been obsessed with twins since childhood, although neither O’Brien nor Sweeney have a twin in real life.

“When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about running into my long-lost twin in a forest or Hawaii,” Sweeney says. “I grew up with the zeitgeist of the Olsen twins, and Sister, Sister and The Parent Trap. I think it sort of represented the idealization of a best friend, like somebody who wants to do all the things you want to do and can read your mind.”

Sweeney wrote his first draft of Twinless in 2015, but didn’t get much traction on the script so shelved it to create his first film Straight Up, which premiered in 2019. Sweeney then pitched producer David Permut (using the Face/Off movie poster in his deck) in 2019, met O’Brien in 2020 and got the greenlight to film two weeks before the Writers Guild of America strike in 2023. While Sweeney was initially hesitant to take the role of Dennis, Permut and O’Brien eventually persuaded him.

For his sophomore film, Sweeney leveled up to a bigger budget, bigger cast and more locations. He nabbed Lauren Graham to play Rocky and Roman’s mom, with her shooting all her scenes in three days.

“I’m just a huge fan. My casting director suggested it,” Sweeney remembers. “I was, at first, reticent because Gilmore Girls is such a reference in my first film, and I felt like it would be too meta, but I got over it.”

Twinless filmed in Portland in the winter, which required some extra work given that some of the outdoor scenes are set in the summer.

“Production design had these branches they would put in the dead winter trees to make it seem like spring,” O’Brien says.

“They all had to be individually permitted, which was a pain in the ass,” Sweeney adds.

Pretending it was spring also meant the cast had to wear summery clothes and refrain from exhaling so that you couldn’t see their breaths when they talked.

“We tried putting ice cubes in our mouth, because that’s like, allegedly, a thing, but it’s not. It wears off in like two seconds,” O’Brien says about a supposed trick to change your breath’s temperature.

“We did digitally remove one breath,” says Sweeney. “I can’t remember if it was mine or yours.”

Twinless is a twin-focused movie on every level. The soundtrack heavily features “Crazy for This Girl” by Evan and Jaron, who are identical twins, as well as a song by MOTHERMARY, another twin duo.

“Everybody we cast in the support group is a twin,” Sweeney says, “including the background talent.”

If you’ve heard of Twinless outside of the festival buzz and twin lore, it might be because a GIF of one of the film’s sex scenes leaked and went viral on social media after Twinless premiered at Sundance.

“It sucks. It’s invasive,” says Sweeney. “On one hand, as a filmmaker, you want some sort of organic momentum that people become aware of the project, but that’s not how you want it to happen.”

“There is a lot to the movie that comes with a fresh eye,” O’Brien adds. “And so, obviously, that was something we tried to delete from existence, but also at the same time, excitement is being generated so we want that as well, and that’s a good sign hopefully.”

With Twinless hitting theaters in September, the film is making the festival circuit this summer, building up buzz with audiences whether or not they’ve seen the infamous GIF.

Looking back on filming, however, Sweeney is perhaps most impressed not with O’Brien’s ability to act as twins, but by his ability to act like he’s having fun playing chubby bunny.

“He hated that scene,” Sweeney says about a moment in the film when he and O’Brien cram marshmallows into their mouths.

“Hated it,” echoes O’Brien. “I have such a sensitive gag reflex. I get really phobic about having a lot of things in my mouth, so like the tears in my eyes are so real. I’m panicking.”

“You know, it’s funny,” Sweeney then muses. “I had the thought because it’s such a scene built on laughter, I’m like really laughing… But then I realized because you were having such a miserable time, ‘Oh, you’re really acting during this.'”

I’d like to see Michael B. Jordan, Robert De Niro or Robert Pattinson pretend to have fun during a miserable game of chubby bunny. That’s the true acting test.

Source: parade.com

🎥©: parademag on Instagram

[canmom]

i'm actually not as doomer about all this as it's funny to pretend for the joakes. compared to similar moments in modern history (weimar germany, 70s usa etc.) when the going seemed to be getting good for us homos and gender weirdos and then got very bad indeed, there are a whole lot more of us, there is a whole lot more widespread consciousness of being gay/trans/whatever shit as a thing, and we are more used to looking after each other.

even in the ten years or so since i came out, the general consciousness of trans people has changed drastically, and despite the terfs and fash getting increasingly focused on us as a wedge issue, it really has gotten better in ways i never would have believed back then. as much as i joke about the strange ideological permutations that surround the zoomers, the truth is that so many more young people are figuring out their shit, and that's really not something you can just wipe away. that's why they're scared of us.

the average person on the street is not a frothing fascist who wants to put us in a camp. for a lot of them, they've got some trans cousin or something and for all the culture-war noise that's being made by the political parties and newspapers, what data i've heard about seems to suggest that the vast majority of people plain don't care all that much. it's a minority of real obsessives who nevertheless have their hands on too many levers of power, but that's something that can be defeated far more plausibly than some inevitable, universal, cultural sentiment.

the future is not written and it will be stranger than i can imagine.

[rankine78]

Title: Eternal Stasis of Affection

In the cold, gleaming corridors of the Astral Express, Herta, the genius artificer renowned for her icy intellect and enigmatic creations, harbours a secret obsession To her, Y/N is not just a companion but a relic to preserve—a fragile mortal whose beauty and essence she vows to protect from time’s decay. Her solution? A cryo-chamber hidden deep within her private sanctum, a gilded cage ready to use at any moment of time.

“You’re trembling,” Herta murmurs, her gloved fingertips brushing Y/N’s cheek. Her lab hums with the sterile glow of holograms and machinery, the air thick with the scent of ozone and her rose-perfumed hair. “Aging, suffering… such pointless horrors. Let me spare you.”

Her proposal is seductive and seems to be logical. The cryo-chamber, she claims, is a temporary refuge—a pause button until she can “cure” mortality itself. She leans close, lips grazing Y/N’s ear. “Trust me. When the time is right, I’ll wake you. We’ll share eternity… together.” Her voice drips with honeyed conviction, masking the lie festering beneath.

Weeks pass. Herta’s affection crescendos—a storm of possessive love. She lavishes Y/N with gifts: starlit dinners, whispered poetry, and kisses that linger like brands. In her private observatory, she pins them against the glass, teeth grazing their neck in a lovebite as she murmurs, “Mine. Always mine.” Her touch is electric, desperate, as if memorizing their warmth before it’s sealed away.

Yet shadows lurk. When Y/N questions the chamber’s safety, Herta’s smile tightens. “Doubting me?” she chides, her hand caressing their face, nails digging faintly into skin. “After all I’ve sacrificed for you?” Guilt and gaslighting weave a cage stronger than steel.

The day arrives. Herta leads Y/N to the chamber, its frosted glass glowing ominously. She kisses them deeply, a clash of warmth and desperation, her breath hitching. “This isn’t goodbye,” she lies, tears glistening—a masterful performance. “Sleep well, my darling. I’ll be here when you wake.”

As Y/N hesitates, she tightens her grip, nails biting into their wrist. “You want this,” she insists, her voice a venomous purr. The chamber hisses open. Before they can protest, she shoves them inside, her final kiss a bruising claim.

The glass seals. Herta watches, pupils dilated with euphoria, as frost crawls over Y/N’s paralyzed form. “Perfect,” she whispers, palm pressed to the chamber. “Now you’ll never leave. Never age. Never… forget me.” Her laughter echoes, hollow and triumphant.

Years blur. Y/N drifts in frozen twilight, Herta’s face their only visitor—a ghostly silhouette through the ice. She murmurs apologies and endearments, kisses the glass where their lips would meet. “Soon, my love,” she croons, knowing soon is a lie.

In her heart, a warped serenity: they are safe. Hers. Forever.

Herta’s lab grows quieter, her obsession calcifying into ritual. She crafts new wonders, but her masterpiece remains the chamber—a monument to love’s darkest permutation. Somewhere, in the void between stars, Y/N dreams of warmth, of freedom… while Herta’s shadow looms, a sentinel of eternal winter.

[yandere-wishes]

Humbly asking (begging) for more Torbin content 🙏🏼 no one writes for him it’s killing me 😭

I think that Torbin is adorable in the same sense a lost puppy is. He's overflowing with this yearning for something attainable yet unfathomable in the moment.

Torbin is clingy, obsessive. He haunts you throughout the temple, your strawberry blonde ghost. In the quiet of the night he pecks at your temples, kissing constellations that go against his vows.

There really are two versions of him. Love sick puppy whose just a little too carefree for a Jedi, just a clingy boy with stars in his eyes and hope under his tongue. There's so much he doesn't know yet. He just fills his time with you in every sense of the word.

His master is not pleased.

Then there's the Torbin that comes home from Brendok. Still a love sick puppy, but one who's gone through horror and cursed to live another day.

The boy who's marred with star sign scars and a troubled mind. He doesn't sleep anymore, scared of what his thoughts will do. He seeks your warmth in the dead of night. Melting as you trace and kiss the raw cicatrix across his face.

Sometimes, he likes to think that the scar is really a testimony to you. Not love, cause Jedi can't utter such words. But dedication in the sweetest form. His eagerness to escape the witch planet could, in part, be reasoned by his attachment to you. He jokes that it's all cause he missed your sinful kisses. You never to how to awnser that.

The Torbin that comes home is a hint more haunting, possessive in ways unbefitting. He no longer haunts behind you. He's stitched to your side. Always present. He's seen the horrors of the world beyond the temple and refuses to let them hurt you.

He plays knight, but you suspect he's something else now. That essence of the witches has permuted his crux. The thing he fears sits deep in his marrow, mutilating the starry-eyed boy until he turns into his greatest terror.

Indara let's him get away with such blatant defiances. She blames herself for the scars.

All of them.

The more I think about Torbin, the more I wish he had stayed with the main cast and gotten character development. I want to see him struggle with tramua and guilt. I also would love to see his interactions with Indara!! Kinda like a mother son relationship. I want him to be Yord and Jacki's troubled older brother/cousin who tries to give life advice (and fails). I want Sol to feel responsible for him and that feeling to DOUBLE when Indara dies. Also, I want him to look like he did at the end of episode 7, not like what we got in episode 2.

[lesb0]

I'm always trying to stay on the cutting edge of every permutation of our constantly evolving visual culture but the elusiveness of every new form makes it difficult for me, even as one of the youngest possible millennials. in fashion, my freshman students are all wearing 2000s or "y2k" fashion: baggy grungy or baby phat hiphop, with an elevated touch of modesty, good color theory, and a stark awareness of bodily proportion. in memes, legendary 00s icon, lisa frank. its embarrassing to follow influencers with over 10 mil, now, as if it breaks the parasocial connection.

someone asked yesterday if tiktok is now the premier vehicle of visual culture. I open tiktok. on one side, a zoomed in interview with the mother of a shooting victim. but the other side is a compilation of slime videos, a woman cutting soap, life hacks, and chinese "smart" product placements. you can hear and see both. this bizarre genre, I can only recognize as content. on social media, content is technically anything you can doomscroll, the action of spending over 2 hours on a social media feed, a for you page, a timeline, a dashboard to tumblr addicts.

I'm watching cable TV with a girl I'm seeing. the ads are remarkably only geared towards boomers and older gen x. but, so is the 'content', bad action movies made for cable and reruns of 80s/90s TV shows, but the exact same show marathoned in hours long successions.

to be an effective art historian, I have to take things from this ever-shifting visual culture and translate it into the equally fickle and amorphous art world... so what does 'content' look like for museum shows? my first 100+ object loan show was in part by a colleague, a younger curator at BAMPFA. a massive exhibition of all female nonbinary artists, from the 60s PoMo feminists to the self obsessed identity displayers of today. I absolutely LOVED it. I had no problem enthusiastically flitting from object to object, frontwards and in reverse twice, to spend special time with all my favorites. a fave professor stopped me. I hadn't even recognized him in the excitement. he looked bewildered, but laughed about how giddy I was. he didn't write any criticism on the show. my boss at the time, our museum director, told me she thought it was "such a big mess". my favorite lesbian professor clutched onto her wife with an anxious look. my lesbian artist friend had panic attack and put his headphones on in a dark corner. on the other hand, the younger undergrad girls from berkeley looked elated and delighted, flitting around and oohing and aahing at my same pace. I learned one of them was an engineering student named erin who needed a feminist pickup from the disouragement in her male dominated field.

so how has the 'content' show, or the art world reception to them, changed in the past 4 years? well for one, it seems like major flagship institutions are dropping the mononym altogether. as the french impressionists take over the east coast, none of shows feature one painter as a sole focus, but curators use juxtapositions to keep people interested. in MoMAs, monoynym shows are reserved for major retrospectives or figuratively and literally, monolith artists like simone leigh. the older art historians are hesitant to adapt to these changes. one of my favorite shows this summer, over 300 very different collection pieces packed onto the floor and across the hall, wasn't enjoyed by any of the critics I know. My dates all hated it. except one, a hot ADHD butch who had a tiktok doomscrolling addiction.

what does this mean for the future of how shows are displayed.... how do museums let go of the traditional princely standard: 3.5 inch hangings with a 25 degree downwards tilt? is it better or worse to compromise museums into messy 17th century curiosity cabinets?

[golvio]

I’m a little obsessed with this one particular shot from the new trailer.

To me, this vague lump of…something is shaped like the hill where The Cabin is located, with the two pine trees framing it.

However, in the trailer shot, there is no cabin.

That’s a big deal, because there’s always a cabin.

In every route, there are constants that don’t change no matter what choices you make. There’s always a cabin at the top of a hill in the woods. There’s always a knife placed on the table near the door to the basement. There’s always a shackle on the Princess’ left hand. There’s always the Princess, the Narrator, and You.

And there is always a cabin. In the Stranger route, every single parallel universe the Narrator could possibly create has the exact same cabin on top of that exact same hill. There’s never not a cabin on top of that hill.

So, is this the point in time where the Princess says, “Days mean nothing in the maw of forever?” By that, does she mean it’s been so long and so many loops have passed that even the Narrator is no longer tracking the finer details, and the cabin along with the landscape eventually unravels and falls away?

Is this a point in time before there was ever a cabin, much less a path or any woods? A point where the Narrator was still in the process of creating this closed, isolated little narrative to safely contain the Princess (and, by extension, You) inside?

Or could it be that the cabin is there, just in a place or state that we can no longer see it? Is the trailer shot representing a version of the world that’s faded into an Impressionistic outline of what it was intended to be? Or are those brush strokes and textures actually…hair…?

Is the Princess the landscape? Is that what she meant by “I never left your side?” Is this what “ending the world” looks like?

I mean, one of the constants the Narrator has imposed upon this world is that the Princess is always in the cabin. However, we haven’t seen all possible permutations of “in the cabin” that follow that rule. The Princess can still technically be in the cabin even if a vast majority of her is spilling outside of it, burying it beneath a mound of hair and flesh in a way that makes its interior, the knife, and her vulnerable heart inaccessible to us. After enough loops, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Princess eventually came to represent so many different concepts in our mind that she’d eventually grow to encompass the whole world, no longer resembling a “Princess.”

However, there’s also the question of whether this is the Princess taking over the world that the Narrator created, or whether this is the landscape reverting to its original form as the Narrator’s grip on the story begins to loosen when it becomes too complex and unpredictable for him to control. If “I never left your side” applies to every loop, even the very first one, then that means that the Princess doesn’t become the landscape so much as she always was the landscape. It’s just that the Narrator put a veneer of separation from the Princess onto the world to make the entity that it is small, limited, and easy to subdue.

What, then, does that mean for You? Are you another invader, whether a real person from outside or a literary construct the Narrator pulled from thin air? Or are You, too, a part of the Princess, ripped away from her body and deluded into believing you were a separate entity?

Is that the purpose of the mirror? Is the Princess merely a reflection of You, a funhouse mirror image mimicking your desires and actions because she is doomed to be eternally defined by your perceptions and can’t take physical shape without You observing or even thinking about her? Or is it that You are her reflection, her distorted mirror image, who she must bring back into herself in order to become truly whole again and escape?

[vallaragna]

Getting to know your moots

Tagged by @makoredeyes

•What's the origin of your blogs title?

My name is part of my reenactment name. And the blog title is just in a fiber artist and I am obsessed with destiny right now.

•Favorite fandoms

Currently obsessed with destiny. I'm also a huge fan of Dragon age and Lord of the Rings

•OTPs+Ship name

Felwinter/Shaxx and also Felwinter/Osiris permutations a la Mako's fics. Basically I love Felwinter and however I can smash pairings together with him I'm there.

•Favourite colours

Purple as well as this berry pink/almost magenta that I wear constantly

•Favourite game

Currently obsessed with Destiny 2

•Weirdest habit/trait

Other people would probably be able to point this out better than me, but I get fully dressed every day even if I'm just staying home. If I'm still in PJs once I'm out of bed I'm probably deathly sick.

•Hobbies

Fiber crafts. So many of them. Probably a fair few you have never heard of. Reenactment. I stream my embroidery on twitch for fun.

•Something you're good at

Teaching destiny raids. That's the only thing I'm even slightly confident about. I mean I love rocks and I know a fair bit about them, but I don't think I'm good at them.

•Something you're bad at

Self confidence.

•Something you excel at

I think I'm pretty alright at breaking down complex things into smaller pieces for people who have no knowledge base.

•Something you love

Rocks and fossils. I went to school for paleontology. I also love maps even though that's my job right now.

•Something you could talk about for hours without off the cuff

I could talk for hours about either destiny lore or rocks. I have talked for multiple hours with little prompt about each before. I have video evidence on YouTube of that.

•Something you hate

My gut reaction is to say myself, because honestly I am awful to myself. But climate change deniers and people who intentionally just want to argue.

•Something you collect

Too much destiny merch... but among that the seal pins.

•Something you forget

Anything I don't write down.

•What's your love language

This idea has been disapproven, but I guess you can say gifting.

•Favorite movie/show

Nightmare before Christmas or LotR.

•Favorite food

Lasagna

•Favorite animal

Velociraptor

•Favorite subject in school

Earth science or science in general

•Least favourite subject

English or PE

•What's your best character trait?

I don't think I'm the one to judge this and it feels very self serving to try to identify this, but I guess being considerate

•If you could change any detail of your day right now, what would it be?

I had checked that I had all the packages I went to pick up at the UPS store before I left this morning

•If you could travel in time, who would you like to meet?

What are with all these college application questions. Mary Anning? I'm not really sure.

•Recommend one of your favorite fanfics

Oh, this is hard. Playing Nice by Shimadagans has been a long time favorite. The On Like a Housefire series by Mako is so good as well. I have to recommend both equally. Particularly The Kingdom by Makoredeyes. Sansukh by determamfidd is an old favorite from when I was really in the Hobbit Fandom that I feel like is worth mentioning.

I don't really tag people, but if you're interested, join in.

[dustedmagazine]

Kelby Clark — Language of the Torch (Tentative Power)

Kelby Clark is an LA-by-way-of-Georgia banjo player who blends divergent styles and approaches to forge his own novel direction for the instrument. Over a series of mostly self-released home-spun recordings from the past five or so years, he has honed his approach, expanding the traditions of his point of origin in the American south to include free improvisation and eastern modalities — an alchemy familiar to Sandy Bull, a fellow stretcher of the vocabulary of the banjo and of the concept of “folk” and the traditional. His sparse and appropriately fiery new LP Language of the Torch, available January 10th of next year from Tentative Power, represents a significant milestone in his development of his own science of the banjo, a statement of intent for his artistic practice. It also marks the inaugural 12” LP release from the Baton Rouge, Louisiana label.

Across the seven searching pieces that make up Language of the Torch, Clark constructs a labyrinthine world of music from solo banjo and occasional, subdued harmonium, centered around two longform tracks, “Tennessee Raag Pt.1” and “Tennessee Raag Pt. 3” – there is no part two. These songs help situate the album among its influences, the titles suggesting an imaginational space where Appalachia and India overlap, an interzone frequently visited by practitioners of “American Primitive” music. The intentionally skewed numbering invokes John Fahey, another sometime-raga-obsessive, whose volumes of guitar music are numbered in a non-sensical, non-sequential manner, thumbing the nose at the very concept of numbers and of archiving or cataloging art in volumes. Clark improvises and composes, but on Language of the Torch, the two lengthy “Raags” and the six-minute opening salvo, “Time’s Arc,” feel like the compositions that anchor the shorter, more exploratory tracks that fall between them. Clark’s banjo twangs and drones almost sitar-like during these mesmerizing endurance runs, rough edges flattening over time like water-worn limestone.

In contrast to the patience of these bucolic “Raags,” the shorter tracks on Language of the Torch have an immediacy and attack to them and entertain more old-time flourishes. The concise title cut is perhaps the most traditional, the bends and swoops here feel related to Americana, a brief nod to and deconstruction of familiar forms. Clark is a fluid player, but the percussive nature of the banjo can run counter to fluidity — the most explosive of these improvisations, “Apis,” begins abruptly with an aggressive right-hand trill before it clatters apart and back together again like a musical version of Marcel Duchamp’s Modernist classic “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.” This song is a stand-out and the heaviest example of Clark’s burning vision for the banjo, the “concert instrument” ambition expressed by his forebears in the American Primitive movement.

All traditional forms of music, from Indian Classical to Appalachian Old-Time and permutations between, seem narrowly determined upon a superficial look but reveal their universal nature to those willing to let go of semiotics and sink into their visionary streams. This makes these forms excellent starting points for experimentation, established structures that contain the instructions to build new universes, if one is bold enough to try to read them, and that is what Kelby Clark attempts here with the 5-string banjo and the various traditions from which he draws inspiration. The liner notes for Language of the Torch take the form of a poem by hammered dulcimer player Jen Powers, a fellow traveler on the path of exploding the scope of the traditional. I think the passage below illuminates the process at hand, the conversation between tradition and interpreter:

And maybe now you're wondering whether you are the conjurer or the conjured, and if you really want to know which it is

Josh Moss

[ifonlyitwasmidnight]

TW: DARK CONTENT. Massive yandere themes. Dubcon. Murder. Knife play. MINORS, BLANK, OR AGELESS BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT. I WILL BLOCK YOU ON SIGHT.

WC: 3.7k

This is dark. If you are not okay with obsessive stalker exes coming after you to get you back and murdering your date, DO NOT READ THIS.

Shikamaru is obsessed. He wants you back, and he won't let anyone stand in his way. Not even you.

ShikamaruxF!Reader

CW: Names (including whore), threats, violence, fingering, vaginal sex, coercion, forced voyeurism, aged-up content

Shikamaru stood across from the restaurant you were in. That fancy one you had been begging him to take you to for the past few months, watching as you reached across the table and placed your hand on your date's forearm. The heavy drag he took from his cigarette did nothing to calm his nerves. 

You'd stopped returning his calls three weeks ago. Now he knew why. You must have thought you were smart by changing your phone number and moving jobs. It had been an easy task tracking you down again. A charming smile and a quick hook-up with one of your co-workers, and she spilled all the information about you he was looking for. Simple enough for a man like him. 

He always told you that you needed to be more careful about who you were friends with. He watched, never removing his eyes from you, as you gingerly drank from your cup, covering your mouth as you placed it down to cover a giggle. He knew the sound of that giggle—he could hear it in his mind. He'd be hearing that sound from your sweet lips again. Soon.

Your apartment was bathed in moonlight as he pulled himself up to the second floor of the building, hopping smoothly over the railing onto your patio. Shikamaru reached into his pocket, fishing out the keyring that contained a key to your new lock. You'd had them changed one day after someone had broken into your apartment while you were asleep. You never figured out it was him checking on you after a night out with your friends. 

Shikamaru had simply taken the liberty to swipe the extra key when you called him, crying and begging him to sit with you while the locksmith did his job. You had said you needed him... even though you'd already asked for a "break" at that point. He couldn't deny you, not when you were begging in that sweet way you knew drove him crazy.

Your keys jingled in the hallway. Shikamaru disappeared into the shadows in the corner of the room, where he knew the light from the hallway outside wouldn't permutate and reveal his hiding spot. He could hear your tipsy laughter and the deep timber of a male voice.

You'd brought him home. Here. To the place he lived with you. 

His blood ran cold. Had he put his hands on you in the car? Had this nobody touched what belonged to him? You tumbled in through the door, tossing your purse and keys onto the entryway table while your date was pressed against your back, arms wrapped around your waist as he peppered kisses over your exposed flesh. 

Every muscle in Shikamaru's body was poised to strike. To beat the man bloody. But he waited. Waited until you turned in your date's arms and wrapped your arms around his shoulders, pressing your lips against his in a hungry kiss. Watched as you stepped backward, stumbling over your own feet as the bastard reached behind you to unzip your dress. The air was quickly turning thick. The scent of lust in the air seeped into every nook of a place that was once filled with you and him. 

Your date tried to lead you to the couch, closer to where Shikamaru stood, and he relished it. How unsuspecting you both would be. At the last second, you pulled away, grabbing him by the hand and tugging him towards your shared bedroom because it was his bedroom still, even if you refused to admit it to yourself. You didn't even bother to shut the door before he heard you both collapse onto the bed in a fit of giggles. 

Shikamaru stalked slowly toward the door, straining his ears as your contented sighs began to fill the next room. He stopped just on the other side of the wall, listening as you let this man attempt to fuck you right. He could tell by your strained grunts that he hadn't even bothered to try and prep you, that he didn't bother to give your sweet pussy the attention it deserved. He wondered if you were regretting it yet, bringing home a stranger to try and fuck him out of your memory. Shikamaru knew it would never work. 

Ten minutes. That's all the fucker lasted before he whined, asking if you had finished yet. He smirked when he heard you fake your orgasm a moment later. The bed creaked as you excused yourself to the bathroom. Shikamaru reached into his pocket, knowing this was his chance. 

The idiot didn't have a chance to scream before Shikamaru was on him, yanking him off the bed, quickly wrapping an arm around his neck, cutting off the airflow. He covered your date's mouth with the rag he had retrieved. The pathetic sounds he made muffled as he tried to warn you of the danger waiting for you upon return. His body soon went limp in Shikamaru's arms, and he let the bastard's body collapse to the floor. 

Shikamaru moved to the bathroom door next and waited once more. The door cracked open, and you emerged wrapped in a silk robe he had purchased for you. You paused just over the threshold, looking around whatever his name was. Shikamaru grabbed your arm, pulling you tightly against his chest before slapping a hand over your mouth, muffling your screams of panic. 

"Shh, angel. You wouldn't want the neighbors to hear, right?" He whispered in your ear.

You were frozen. Unable to move even a single finger. You knew what this was. You'd played with these shadows too many times in your life before. Shikamaru knew you would understand the implications. 

"I'm going to move my hand. I need you to stay quiet for me. Can you do that?" He could feel you shiver as he trailed his nose up and down the column of your throat. You were wearing his favorite scent. He savored the way you felt in his arms again. Safe. Secure. You'd see in the end that this was what you needed, just a simple reminder that he was what was best for you. 

Shikamaru tightened the arm around your waist when you didn't answer, squeezing hard enough to make you whimper. You nodded quickly as fat, hot tears fell onto Shikamaru's hand. 

"That's my good girl," he said. 

He let the shadow possession fade away before pushing you forward to the bed. He turned you in his arms, not giving you a chance to run from him again, before digging into his pocket again for the zip tie he had stashed there. 

"I'm going to tie your arms behind your back, and then I want you to sit. Can you do that for me, baby?" He didn't wait for your answer before securing your arms and gently pushing on your shoulders until you were sitting. He wiped the tears from your cheeks as they continued to fall.

"What're you doing here, Shika?" Your lip trembled as you spoke. 

"I missed you." 

"We broke up." 

Shikamaru froze and felt the anger roaring in his mind. It clouded all rational thought. It drowned out all the things he wanted to say. He gripped your thighs tightly, hard enough to bruise, before looking you in the eye. He knew by the sharp intake of breath that he must look terrifying. 

"You're mine." The words were laced with venom, dripping in ire as he spat them at you. He knew you were trembling out of fear now. You flinched as he raised a hand and pressed the backs of his knuckles against your cheek. "Don't be afraid of me, angel. You know I'd never hurt you."

Shikamaru pushed your back onto the bed and climbed over you to press his lips against your forehead before retreating. He went to the small table for two where you used to have breakfast together and grabbed a chair, dragging it across the floor and back into your room. He placed it at the end of your bed, facing you. He quickly retrieved your unconscious date and sat him upright in it, using the remaining zip ties to secure his hands and legs to the metal legs and backing. 

"Dan!" You gasped when you saw his lolling head. Dan, Shikamaru now knew he was called, groaned as he slowly regained consciousness. A loud crack sounded through the room as Shikamaru's hand collided with Dan's cheek, rousing him completely from his stupor. 

Dan coughed as he gasped for air. He struggled to raise his arms to rub at his abused throat, which already had a purple bruise blossoming across the skin. 

"What the fuck?" Dan yelled in a hoarse voice. 

Shikamaru grabbed Dan tightly by the jaw, forcing his face up at an unnatural angle while sneering down at him. 

"You touched what's mine," Shikamaru spat.

"Shikamaru!" You screamed from the bed.

"Shut up!" Shikamaru yelled back, whirling on you. "I told you to stay quiet!"

You shrunk back into yourself, trying to retreat as far onto the bed as possible to escape. Shikamaru looked back to Dan, who was struggling with new vigor to escape his imprisonment. He spat in Dan's face before shoving it away. He returned to the bed, ripping his shirt off and dropping it to the floor. You wiggled, desperate to get away as Shikamaru advanced on you. He grabbed your arm and sat you upright, dragging you back to the center of the bed. You were looking at him with such fear and hatred. He'd fix that soon enough. 

Shikamaru climbed behind you, leaning back into the mountain of pillows still askew from your previous encounter with Dan. He pulled you back against his chest and hooked his feet under yours, pushing your legs apart, causing your thighs to be draped over his own. Your robe fell open, exposing you to Dan, who looked upon you with fear and disgust. 

"I don't think he likes me being here, angel," Shikamaru whispered in your ear, dropping his voice an octave. He touched your inner thigh, and you jumped from the unexpected contact. 

"You're a sick bastard," Dan said.

Shikamaru felt your skin prickle as he dragged his fingertips over your exposed skin, making his way up to your center. He felt you shiver against him and hid his smirk against your shoulder. He couldn't resist pressing kisses there, covering the places he had seen Dan kiss you. He'd erase all the marks on your body put there by another man. Shikamaru groaned, and his eyes rolled to the back of his head when his fingers grazed over your pussy; you were wet. 

"My, my, my... if I didn't know any better, I'd say you missed me too," Shikamaru said.

You whimpered when his fingers brushed over your clit. 

"I just need one more thing from my pocket, love." Shikamaru nipped at your earlobe as he fished a kunai out of his pocket and pressed it gently against the underside of your jaw. You froze as the cool metal met your skin. 

"What're you doing?" Dan yelled. 

Shikamaru looked Dan in the eye as he resumed the light brushes over your clit, causing you to whimper again.

"If she wants to act like a whore, I'm going to treat her like one," Shikamaru said simply. He applied more pressure to your clit, rubbing it in a perfect figure eight like he knows you enjoy, and your body instantly responded, chasing the stimulation. 

You tried to suppress your moans at the ministrations, struggling to keep your composure. 

"I want you to look at him while I play with you, baby. Did he make you cum?" Shikamaru felt your head turn slightly as more pressure was placed against the kunai in his hand. "Tell him. I know the answer." 

Shikamaru slowed the assault on your clit as your legs began to tremble. 

"Go on. Did he make you cum?" The words were said a little more forcefully this time, Shikamaru's patience running thin at your continuously delayed answers. 

"No." Tears fell from your eyes once more at the confession, stifled by the loud moan reverberating through the air when Shikamaru plunged two of his long fingers into your pussy, curling them tightly to drag against your g-spot. 

Shikamaru placed a hot, open mouth kiss on your neck as he pumped his fingers into you. Only aided by the gushing of your pussy as he increased the pace.

"Did he fuck you as good as I do?" He continued.

"N...no," You whimpered.

"Did he play with your pretty pussy before he shoved his dick into you? Did he bother to get you wet like this?" Your hips writhed against Shikamaru's hand, spurred on by the words he was spitting into your ear. 

"No!"

"You sick fuck!" Dan yelled again, horror across his face at what he was witnessing.

Shikamaru stopped his fingers and removed the kunai from your throat, pointing it at Dan. 

"If I hear another word out of you, this kunai is going into your heart." Shikamaru turned your head by placing the back of the blade against your cheek. "Do you want me to keep fucking you, angel?"

Your pupils were blown wide. You were looking at your ex-lover with a mix of lust and fear. 

"Why are you doing this, Shika?"  

Shikamaru slowly pumped his fingers back into you. Once. Twice. Before stopping again.

"I already told you. Now answer my question: do you want me to keep fucking you in front of your date, or should I kill him now and leave you here unsatisfied?"

Your eyes darted between Shikamaru and Dan. Dan trembled in the chair, his eyes shut tightly. 

"Will you let him go?" You whispered, and Dan's eyes snapped open.

Dan was shaking his head, "No! No, you don't have to do this! Tell him to stop!"

"I'll think about it." Shikamaru began pumping his fingers back into you quickly, rushing you toward the precipice of orgasm. Your legs shook, still hooked over Shikamaru's thighs. 

"Open your eyes, Dan!" Shikamaru shouted. He grinned as Dan made eye contact with you. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched you submit to Shikamaru's wants. He couldn't tear his eyes away from watching Shikamaru's fingers disappear into your cunt. 

Your walls fluttered around Shikamaru's fingers, sucking them back in each time they retreated from your heat. 

"Let go, baby. Let him hear you." 

Your back relaxed into Shikamaru the closer you got to orgasm, letting your head lull against his shoulder. Your moans grew in volume, little whimpers of Shikamaru's name thrown in every so often that made his cock strain against his pants. He wanted to slam his cock into your wet cunt. He longed to feel you wrapped around him again and hear the sound of his flesh against yours as he made you scream. 

"Tell him how good my fingers feel," Shikamaru demanded. You shook your head, biting down hard enough on your lip that Shikamaru could smell blood. "Tell him or I stop," he growled.

"Good! Fuck, Shikamaru! Please don't stop!"

Shikamaru dropped the kunai to the bed and grabbed your jaw with his now free hand, turning your face up so he could slam his lips against yours. You moaned into the kiss as your legs shook and your back arched off Shikamaru's chest. 

"Cum, whore," Shikamaru growled against your lips, and you exploded. You came with a scream of his name, and if Shikamaru were a lesser man, he might have come in his pants from the sound. 

Dan was sobbing and shaking where he sat. Your chest rose and fell quickly as you came down from your high, melting completely into Shikamaru. 

"Shika," you whimpered.

"Hmm?" He answered as he pressed kisses along your hairline.

"My hands. Please." 

Shikamaru retrieved the kunai and cut the zip tie, content with you lying in his arms now that you had begun to remember who he was to you, where you belonged. The knife clattered on the bedside table. 

You leaped for the knife and quickly turned back to Shikamaru, straddling his hips before pressing the blade against his throat. Shikamaru chuckled darkly at the turn. 

"You gonna kill me, sweetheart?" Shikamaru lifted his chin and leaned forward, pressing the blade deeper into his Adam's apple until it drew blood. 

"Do it!" Dan yelled at you.

Your hands trembled as you loomed over Shikamaru. He knew you couldn't do it. You would never seriously hurt him. 

"Do it, baby," he teased. His hands landed on your hips, pulling you down onto his stiff cock and rocking you against the fabric of his pants. "Go on. Do it."

Shikamaru groaned at the feeling of your cunt rubbing against him, unbothered by the knife to his neck. Seeing you like this, over him, threatening him, made him harder, only reaffirming in his mind that you were just as crazy for him as he was for you. That you would be willing to do this and still hesitate confirmed how much you still needed him. He knew his cock would be dripping in pre-cum by the time he finally got to fuck you.

"Can't do it, can you?" He increased the pace of his push and pull on your hips, and your resolve faltered again, loosening the grip on the knife. "You want me too much, huh, angel?" 

"What the fuck is wrong with you! Kill him!" Dan yelled.

"Shut up, Dan! I can't fucking think!" You screamed.

"Kill him, whore!" 

The room froze as the words escaped Dan's mouth, and Shikamaru quickly disarmed you, launching the kunai with perfect precision into Dan's throat. You didn't even scream as Dan gurgled, eyes wide with shock. Blood pooled from his lips and escaped down his chin before he slumped over. 

Shikamaru gently guided your eyes back to him. 

"No one gets to talk to you like that," he said as he brushed hair away from your face.

"You killed him..." 

"I said I would."

"You said you would let him go!" 

Shikamaru shrugged. "I said I would think about it."

Your eyes bounced from Shikamaru's eyes to his lips, clearly panicking about what to do next. 

"You're mine," Shikamaru said again. 

You pressed your lips against his in a heated kiss, fighting for dominance as emotions overtook you both. Shikamaru nipped at your bottom lip before forcing his tongue into your mouth, resuming the rocking of your hips. You reached your hands down and undid the belt and button on his pants, grabbing his cock through the material of his boxers, forcing a hiss from his lips. 

He pushed you off him onto your back and quickly shed his pants. You ripped at the robe, letting it fall from your body just quickly enough before Shikamaru latched his mouth around one of your nipples, causing you to yelp as he sank his teeth into it, sucking the bud into his mouth harshly. His fingers trailed up your slit again, testing to see how wet you were. He paused, letting your breast fall from his mouth.

"Did he fuck you raw?" His voice was low. A threat lingered. 

You shook your head. 

"Good." He bit into the skin at the top of your breast, leaving a harsh imprint before lining himself up and slamming his hips forward, filling you in one thrust. 

Shikamaru moaned at the feeling of your walls fluttering around him already. He pressed your legs back against your chest, settling his chest on the back of your thighs. His pace was relentless, knocking the breath out of you with each punishing thrust. Your moans grew in pitch each time he angled his hips to abuse your g-spot. 

"This my pussy, baby?" Shikamaru's words broke through your moans, and you nodded. A sharp slap landed against your thigh, causing you to yelp. He asked again.

"Yes! Yours, Shika. Only yours!" Tears forced themselves from your eyes at the overwhelming pleasure. 

"Good. Now prove it." Shikamaru thudded to his back on the bed, pulling you with him and settling you on top. He grabbed your hips, forcing you to bounce. Each downward pull was met with a harsh thrust up. Your hands landed on his chest, digging your nails deeply into his skin. You worked your lower body, keeping up with him, rolling your hips in a way that made Shikamaru's eyes disappear into the back of his skull. 

"Gonna fill you up. That way, you can never leave. You'll be mine forever," Shikamaru was rambling, too lost to the pleasure to be able to control his moans. He felt it in his lower stomach, that growing sensation that clued him to how close he was to filling you with his cum. Your legs began shaking again as your walls gripped him tighter. Shikamaru leaned forward and captured a nipple between his teeth again, twirling his tongue around it. Your fingers tangled into his ponytail, and you pulled, causing him to groan against your skin. 

"'m gonna cum, Shika," you whimpered.

"Do it. Cum on my cock, angel. Fuckin' do it!" 

You screamed his name as you came, sobbing loudly as he pulled you down once more onto his cock before he pumped you full. His hips weakly twitched, ensuring you drained him of everything before collapsing back on your bed, pulling you down to lay on his chest. 

You both panted, sucking in desperate gulps of air as reality set in. Shikamaru felt you stiffen against him.

"Nara..."

"Don't you fuckin' dare," he said. 

"Shikamaru, you killed my boyfriend." You said it so matter-of-factly. 

"And I'd do it again." It wasn't a threat. "I love you. Don't you see that?"

You sighed heavily, fully collapsing your weight against him, surrendering to the circumstances.  

"Don't you love me?" The whisper was broken. You looked up at Shikamaru, who looked so broken, so lost in that moment.

"I wish I didn't have to." 

Shikamaru pressed his lips against yours in a gentle kiss. He'd deal with the body once you were asleep. 

AN: I blacked out and somehow wrote 3.7k of Yandere Shikamaru which has been plaguing my brain for the past 72 hours. It's barely proofread, don't come at me. <3 Take care of yourselves.

@tengens-4thwife

[goddesspharo]

I would love to know anything you have in mind from ‘it takes an ocean not to break’

[ask me for backstory about my fics!]

Thanks for asking! I just slammed a cortado and a venti latte on my way home this morning so this might be complete nonsense...

I wrote it takes an ocean not to break during spooky season this year when I was listening to The National's Rome album a ton and probably after an annual Practical Magic rewatch but I'm not sure if it was also around the time that I rewatched Ready Or Not too because I was thinking about Faustian bargains a lot...as one does during Halloween. (As an aside, Seth Cohen turning into a hot lush because the Nichol family made a deal with the devil would be hilarious, but if we are being honest, if anyone on The OC was going to make a deal with Mr. Le Bail, it would be Julie Cooper in S1 when Jimmy made them Poor because he did not consider Kaitlin's show ponies when making bad investments! Marissa dies because someone reneges on their deal! It practically writes itself.) With that petrie dish of ideas in mind, my four prevailing thoughts while writing this fic were:

I couldn't stop thinking about how everyone in Top Gun: Maverick is the best at what they do, but what are the chances of everyone being the best unless they gamed the system in some way? And by some way, I absolutely mean deals with the devil. Hence this fic was born. Everyone makes a little deal to get to Top Gun, to stay in Top Gun, and if you don't, you go the way of Goose and Rooster. Mav knew that, like his father, Rooster wouldn't play ball with the devil which is why he pulled his papers. The devil, like always, had other plans.

I am also at baseline kind of obsessed with the various permutations of canon divergence of the uranium mission in TGM because, when you think about it, it was mostly a shit show! (We do not appreciate enough that the only team that actually successfully carried out all the aspects of the mission without getting shot down or defying orders is Phoenix and Bob - bitches get stuff done!) There are so many delicious ways it could have gone even MORE terribly and that is beautiful to me! It's basically an endless fount of fic fodder.

Phoenix and Bob literally punched out of an exploding plane during the bird strike and then came to work the next day to snark at people and be bad asses. How does that happen unless there's some spooky double-dealing under the table? I like the idea that Hangman would make that deal and be unapologetic about his sacrifices to make it happen (he's a good guy, but he's also a shithead!), but I liked even more the idea that it backfired into a The Gift of the Magi situation.

Red Riding Hood is inexplicably drawn to the wolf, but that doesn't keep her from screwing him over at the end of the story. (...she is the wolf in sheep's clothing.)

[indelen]

for fandom ask: 20, 5 and 8 :)

Hi, sorry for the delay! Thank you so much for this ask!!

20. your very first fandom!

"Lord of the Rings" and "Phantom of the Opera" - my facination with little murder skull guys and the death-and-the-maiden trope was always there apparently as this was when I was about 13. Oh and "Sailor Moon''. Online fandoms back then were mostly fan sites and forums because I'm old.

5. something you see in fics a lot and love.

I love Lockwood and Co. AUs where they're just dumb college/school kids with drama. Any ship, any permutation, CO3, CO4, CO5, no smut, all smut whatever. I eat that up because the characters were robbed of just having that kind of life in the books and it's fun to see them in a more modern setting. I also love Skull in a modern setting and all the different takes people have about how he would be.

8. you hope more people will come to appreciate ___ (a ship, a trope, an episode, etc)

I've seen a few posts about it but I love how cyclical the books are? I actually have a post in mind compiling the examples as it's a lot more than might first seem.

I think it's also interesting that the only adults that ever shown to care about kids in that universe are lower class working people. Arif who feeds them, the cemetery construction workers who back the kids who are freaked out about Bikerstaff's ghost, the cabdriver who saves George. It's common to say adults are useless in that universe but not all, and I think it's interesting to see the small ways in which people go out on the line for them.

I also feel that Marissa is a lot more of a tragic character than might first seem. At first she just seems like a straight up vain magic lady villain but when you find out just how young she was when she first encountered Ezekiel and how like ... Besotted and Enthralled she is with him when we see them together in the final showdown... She clearly thinks it's a relationship of equals but she suffers way more than he and she's literally manacled to him. Was she ever really afraid to die? Was she ever obsessed with youth? A child doesn't really comprehend death, aging and mortality. It seems unlikely that she became obsessed with those on her own. How much of her entire existence was just Ezekiel controlling her, planting fears and insecurities in her mind? It's so creepy!

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

You know something that bothers me in Time Travel Aus and some fics Obikin centered? Obi-Wan's reactions. Like I only really ship Obikin via their dynamic in Rots and CW while fully acknowledging the etnics involved considering everything Anakin did when going Vader (or falling into it), and yet... The fact that people make Obi-Wan have certain attractions to him while he was underage unsettles me. Because when I saw Aotc, Obi-Wan seemed to view him mostly in the lenses of a exasperated father (or coworker), with some moments of reassurance and fondness. Only when he stops being his padawan does that shift to be more equals (dunno how that was portrayed in the OWK show, haven't seen it).

And while I'm aware that wasn't the intention, whenever I see Obi-Wan time travelling to when Anakin was a kid or teen, it feels weirdly similar to grooming, where Anakin simply shifts his obsession with Padmé to Obi. Dunno if it's just a peev of mine, but wanted your opinion.

I must admit I am eyeing this ask a little warily, all things considered. But! assuming this is in good faith…

You may have noticed that when I go on my periodic obikin spirals I tend more to vaderwan; it's the version I was drawn to first and still find most compelling for me. So I'm not the best person to ask for a breakdown of the dynamics you mentioned, but I'm not without insights I guess.

I would say that Obi Wan being attracted to teenage padawan Anakin-or more importantly acting on it- is a darker take on his character… this is an angle someone might find it interesting to mess around with. (and sometimes being unsettled can be the point)

For example Obi Wan -> padakin may be appealing for Obi Wan's character by making him less than respectable, with desires and passions that he has very carefully squirreled away, but that Anakin pushes against and through the boundaries of..

Or your scenario with the time travel- I think I have read something along those lines, but it was fairly self-aware about it. This would be post- rots for Obi Wan, so the stakes are different. And you could play with him getting manipulative.

It sounds like it's not for you though!

Vaderwan is also dark, but in a different way. The OWK show doesn't exactly bring sex into it, it just depicts them as completely undone by each other, their souls consumed by each other, eaten away with grief and guilt and rage for ten entire years……………………………………………………………………

*shrug* This is playing with dolls to me. I have a mental closet with dozens of little Obi Wans and Anakins and Padmes and Ahsokas and Codys in various outfits (the outfits mostly being different takes on them etc). I'll toy with just about any ship involving my blorbos, but I'm not going to necessarily be drawn to every permutation either.

idk idk.

[locksnek]

Fanfiction Author Interview Game

Thank you @ladystormcrow for the tag! ^_^ (Not going to start a reblog chain due to space, so her interview is here.

________________

How many works do you have on AO3? Currently, 9. I had slightly more on my prior iteration of AO3, before the Deletion Incident of 2022.

What's your total AO3 word count? 101,203

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes: Ngl I don't want to look at this right now. Dark Crystal fandom is really quiet now, and I try not to keep falling into the trap of lamenting my deletion of my prior AO3 from back when there was more engagement.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes, because I like comments and I like talking about my blorbos.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending? Of the completed stuff on AO3, Kind Other. UrLii is having an angsty day. That said, I think this basically vent fic I wrote in SIlmarillion fandom 8 years ago is probably the angstiest published fic I've done overall: Our Love is Great

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending? Happy is in the eye of the beholder, but possibly Food Fight [or Out of Hand, discussed further below]. It's a grotesque story but I can safely say skekNa and skekUng are both happy by the end of it. It inaugurates what will be their lifetime together terrorizing the creatures of Thra.

Do you write crossovers? I haven't per se, closest I've come was a Silm fic where I made a scenario analogous to the short story "The Renegade" by Camus. I've got a couple crossover ideas for fandoms I've never written in, but I've already been carrying them around for quite a few years, so who knows.

Have you ever received hate on a fic? No, just a couple odd comments that could mean anything, which I read as funny.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Not terribly explicit smut. Even when I don't fade to black, I tend to imply a lot of things rather than spell them out. I'm more likely to get more descriptive the more disgusting the situation is.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not per se. Just not been acknowledged for a HC someone took almost blow-by-blow from my Gragoh longfic and then kind of disavowed in their comments section. Maybe it's just me, but if one dislikes someone enough to not credit them where credit is due, I don't quite even understand the desire to use that person's ideas rather than coming up with one's own.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not as such.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not yet. *pleading face emoji*

What's your all-time favorite ship? Lowkey obsessed with UngNaLi, or any twosome permutations thereof. I also love Jaime/Brienne and Jaime/Ilyn Payne from ASoIAF.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will? The Birds of the Temple Garden, a Tolkien fic set on Numenor that used a derelict garden as a plot device. This is probably the Silm fic of mine that would still most resonate with me, and sometimes I think my present self would still be capable of finishing it in something close to its original spirit, but I've not clapped eyes on it in 8 years.

What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, incessant metaphors, imagery.

What are your writing weaknesses? I can get too introspected and up my own ass with convoluted and repetitive narratives if I stay too long in a character's brain. This is part of the reason I enjoy writing ensemble POVs, as they keep my attention distributed and I don't hyperfocus on the content of one dumbass's head.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? I don't have many thoughts on it, other than please provide a translation, whether through a note or within the work itself.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to? ASoIAF*, Lovecraftian, Ozverse, possibly Labyrinth or Neverending Story. *Not strictly true! I do have all of one paragraph of something ASoIAF written.

What's your favorite fic you've written? Out of Hand. It was freeing to write because Ung and Na are such pieces of shit but they genuinely love each other very much, and since they're Skeksis I didn't feel like I as the narrator really needed to justify or reconcile that. The tags alone shocked a ragebait youtuber into referring to me as "the bastard who wrote the porn." It firmly established my OTP. It also made me write a bit about their urRu counterparts, whom I also love and would like to write more about. Nothing but good things have come out of this. _____________ Tags! I think everyone I'm tagging writes fic, ignore if not. @scientistservant @heartbreakterrorbird @pomgore @merelyafigment @drapopia