#Virtual XI

[fierykitten2]

I m had an idea to make a playlist of three songs that I recently realised I really like (no Megadeth song because I couldn’t think of one I realised I like this much in the past few weeks)

I also realised they were the only songs on Turbo, Virtual XI and Mob Rules I’ve warmed up to so I made a bigger playlist where I can listen to the whole albums and hope they’re just as cool as Locked In, Futureal and The Mob Rules

[alexcita]

Ugh I’m 4 albums away from having all Maiden studio albums in vinyl. All I need are the Blaze Bayley albums No prayer for the dying and powerslave

[band-ranking-polls]

[thefairywithboots]

I actually don't care what anyone says, The Angel and the Gambler is a good song.

[animalb0y]

Eddie? 🤔

[jumbostickyrice]

Mhaura on Expert | By Maoshi Mizuta | Final Fantasy XI | Full Combo

[spw-art]

MY PREDICTIONS FOR EDDIE THE HEAD DBD COSMETICS WERE LITERALLY ALL CORRECT GRAAAAHHH

[uc1wa]

I know you're not here often anymore but I need to tell someone and you're my favourite, I'm watching jjk s2 and I'm dying at the symbolism in the scene where Geto meets the twins. The shadows and the candles and the twins themselves! I'm dead, I've died. I love it, I love papa Geto 😩😩😩

gege is actually so sick for this shit like😭?? woahhhhh we did not need to make everything depressing but here we go

[karotte2188]

○ Preparing for a big attack! ○

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

[angel-kyo]

Pay it no mind

Part XX

In which reader confesses their feelings to Gojo, but it seems these are not returned (maybe?).

Warnings: reader is on the receiving end of rejection (kinda), and the fact that I'm obsessed with unrequited love is a warning itself. Mentions of injuries, marriage, and... Huh, that's it.

Previous: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part IV, Part XV, Part XVI, Part XVII, Part XVIII, Part XIX

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

“Did you know [name] rejected a marriage proposal from the Zen'in?”

Satoru almost spat out the tea he was drinking upon hearing Ieiri’s words. Then he did his best to put on his nicest smile.

“And I thought you didn’t like cracking jokes, Shoko.” He laughed, but in reality, he could not find it funny.

“I wish I were joking,” she said taking her own cup to her lips.

Seriously, it’s not funny.

Why the Zen'in? Who among the Zen'in? Who was idiotic enough to…?

“I’m not sure of who exactly or why. All I gathered is mostly gossip,” Shoko went on, not allowing any more questions to form in Satoru’s mind. “But what I do know is that the rejection was not taken kindly.”

Of course, a rejection would not have been taken kindly by them, but it still puzzled Gojo, and by the look his friend had on her face, Shoko felt the same way. Was it even allowed to reject anyone from the Zen'in?

You did not come from a renowned sorcerers’ clan, for that reason you probably had no one who would fiercely push you into an arranged marriage, but it was also why it did not make sense that anyone related to the Zen'in had taken a special interest in you, someone who virtually had not a strong presence in the jujutsu world.

“When?” Satoru asked.

“Weeks ago, maybe more,” his companion stated.

Maybe around the time they started coming back with more wounds than explanations.

That led Shoko to the second half of her theory. Whoever you had made angry, had enough connections to keep stepping on your heels while you were out completing missions.

Shoko started digging into it after the last time you had come to her back from a battle. Your injuries had been bizarre for the simple routine mission you had told her you were going on that night, and after seeing the report of your mission, she noticed the curse you had fought had been misclassified. “That happens sometimes, it’s unfortunate it happened to them,” Ijichi had said, unaware that those misfortunes had been happening a lot with the missions assigned to you as of lately, as Shoko herself realized after looking at all reports from your missions of the last couple of months.

It could be someone from the higher-ups, but if I told that to Gojo, he might just go and kill them all.

Ieiri took a look at him. Judging by the thin line on his lips, he was in deep thought. Contrary to what Shoko had been expecting, she had surprised him, at least as much as one could surprise Gojo Satoru.

You did not tell him that either, huh, [name]?

“Don't think much of it,” Shoko said in an attempt to pull Gojo back to Earth, "[name] did not tell me anything, but if someone is holding a grudge and trying to do a number on them, I think...”

“I won’t let it happen,” Satoru’s voice sounded definitive. "I won't let anything happen to them."

I hope so, Shoko thought.

***

“Honey, I’m home!” Satoru cheerfully exclaimed upon crossing the door to your apartment.

You rolled your eyes in the kitchen. He had been doing that almost every evening when he came to visit you after work, and such visits had not been scarce either.

At this rate, the neighbors are really going to think he is living here.

“That smells good,” Satoru whispered in your ear, one of his arms already wrapping around your waist.

“You are just looking for a free meal.” You laughed and looked at him. “Why don’t you set the table?”

He nodded and was quick to leave your side to do as requested.

As you sat to eat together, you could not help but smile at how domestic it felt to have Satoru dinning with you any other night, even if he would sometimes leave for work or to sleep at his own place, it felt as if he was installing himself in your life more intimately.

You both talked about your day, your students, and overall, what you would be up to the following day. However, Satoru had left out his conversation with Shoko form earlier. As much as he wanted to know the details of what happened with the Zen'ins and ask why you had not said a word to him about it, he did not want to push for an explanation yet.

Maybe you had been coerced into not talking about it, or maybe you were trying to keep everything still given that the child Satoru (often with your help) was kind of looking after was also related to the Zen'in clan, and that had created discord between them and the Gojo families in the past.

The more Satoru thought about it, the more it appeared to him that the Zen'ins were trying to bug him with the idea of a marriage. He had always considered you family after all, and of course he would never allow his family to fall into a Zen'in’s claws.

***

It was unfair.

It was unfair how good Satoru looked after a shower.

He had taken a quick shower after dinner and changed into the spare clothes he kept at your place.

You were sitting in the living room trying to watch TV, but the man that had just walked in and taken his seat next to you was distracting.

“Like what you see?” he asked without looking at you as he browsed the channels on your TV.

When had he grabbed the remote? And why had you not realized you were staring at him?

“I… Don’t be ridiculous.” You turned your reddened face away from him and stood up. “I’m taking a shower.”

Satoru smiled as he watched you march away. He knew he was good-looking as a fact, but what he truly enjoyed was having that effect on you. It was only fair in his opinion; after all, you had the same effect on him.

Satoru looked at the screen in front of him but did not feel like watching anything, so he turned it off and walked to your room.

He heard the water running when he passed by the bathroom door, and he assumed you were still in there, so he went right to your bed. He sat down and that was when he noticed the drawer of your bedside table had not been closed properly.

He had no intention of snooping, but the cover of the book inside caught his eye, so he took it.

Pride and Prejudice.

Satoru observed it. It was a used copy but in pretty good shaped. His first thought was that you must have obtained it from a secondhand store.

Why would they put the book in the drawer and not on the shelf with the rest of their collection, though?

Satoru knew you read a little bit of everything, but he did not know you were a fan of romance, let alone of Austen, but he would not have teased you for it... Or maybe just a little.

He opened the book on the first page and the hand-written dedication under the novel’s name seemed to answer his question as it read:

"My affections and wishes are unchanged." – I.H.

Satoru immediately knew whom those initials belonged to.

He closed the book and threw it back into your drawer as fast as if it had burned him.

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

Note: This part was initially going to be longer, but at some point, it got divided into two parts. Oh, well... I should get a breather for a couple weeks now that the semester is over, so hopefully I can upload that not too far away in the future.

Thanks for reading!

Next: Part XXI

@mavs-stuff @witchbybirth @crookedlyaddictedone-blog @tqd4455 @maybe-a-bi-witch @mo0nforme @maliakealoha @zacatecanaaaa @blushhpeachh @astriarose @missesgojosatoru @ba-ks @sukunasleftkneecap @songbirdlully @cole-silas @heijihattorisgf @chokesonspit @hersheyzzz @smolbeanzzz @luciledreamz @avidreadee123 @moonmalice @ratscandaler @sadmonke @allie-jay @username23345 @spin-garden @ashehateaccount @kayzens @blehtotheblehtothebleh @stellasloth @bloopsstuff @cheesemachine44 @tetsuski @rosellerinfrost @catowru @bi-narystars

[pervcoded]

dog eared and doubtful* multifandom series

You're only human.

And maybe in an ideal world that'd be enough. In an ideal world, people wouldn’t stare at your fleshy ears, or compare your eyes to that of prey, or pull and stretch your skin confused as to why you don’t have fur, scales or feathers, like the rest of them. 

You’re only human.

But they want more.

In Shibuya your kind is relegated to the outskirts of the city. You live in a flat by your lonesome, surrounded by more humans who’ve been ostracized from society, and a sliver of you wishes it was different.

The majority of you feels resigned to this way of life.

You’ve seen what hybrids can do. What they have done to your people. What they will continue to do.

They tend to ignore your kind for the most part. But there are sects of hybrid society that … vye, for you humans.

And some are kind. Not many, but some.

this is a series about hybrids. a universe in which the standard hybrid/human hierarchy is swapped, where fang and hoof and claw rule over tooth and nail. it's an open series, meaning there is no set amount of entries, and it'll be finished whenever i lose interest in the subject i suppose.

each fic is centered around a different hybrid x human dynamic, so although you don't change, 'you' is supposed to be a different person in every story. some readers may have more physical descriptions than others. some stories may be more safe for work and some may not, though virtually all will deal with themes of:

power imbalances feral & animal behaviors and human discrimination (by hybrids)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀chapter overview

chapter i. mitsuya chapter ii. sukuna chapter iii. yuuji chapter iv. uzui tengen chapter v. gyomei himejima chapter vi. kisaki chapter vii. luka chapter viii. ivan chapter ix. beam chapter x. makima chapter xi. kishibe chapter xii. oikawa chapter xiii. ushijima

.... with more to (potentially) be added.

all content written by me @ciematis is owned by me, and you are not allowed to repost or translate my works. don't put my shit into ai generators, don't steal my shit and put it on wattpad. thank you.

[thefairywithboots]

Blaze and Steve

[centrally-unplanned]

VOR: Hitler and Stalin

They are both S-tier, you can't touch the greats. The thing that set both of them apart is how much more radical they were then virtually everyone else around. The Nazi party was a rotating door of factional hanger-ons that Hitler brought into the room, used, and then dusted the moment they quaked or deviated. Time and again when cementing power other faction leaders went "surely, he won't-" and then the fucker did and put a bullet in their brain to make sure they got the message. He called the bluff of his military, his party ranks, and the governments of Britain and France on more than one occasion and annexed nations and stunned the world for his trouble. The guy fucking cheated death, more than once - he has no VOR because he cannot be replaced. He is certainly in the running for the most impactful political leader of all time, nothing is the same without him. Your feed is 80% discourse about the Gaza Strip today because of him, you live in his world.

Stalin is the same, and in particular what I want to emphasize is that the history of the USSR is not, at all, the history of dictatorship. Lenin was during the insurrection, but once it was a governing body he played that card way less, and by his death it was a full party oligarchy. And it would be that after Stalin too. That was the status quo and everyone pretty-much expected it to stay that way when Lenin died. We all rule together. Stalin had other ideas, and to make sure you understood his point he executed 700,000 political dissidents in three years. If you look at debates in the Soviet bodies in ~1925, its really obvious no one had this on their radar. Bukharin and Trotsky and Khalinin had no plan for this. Even people like Beria, specifically elevated by Stalin and widely hated at the start as bloody barbarians, would pivot-switch the moment Stalin died and start asking "what the fuck we were all doing exactly?" while emptying the gulags.

The USSR would have had totalitarian social structures, don't confuse me here. But the gap between Stalin & Xi Jinping is orders of magnitude, they aren't comparable. The USSR had many Xi Jinping's, it had many Lenin's. It only had one Stalin.

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

Make Me Write ask answered

162 📖 for @inell!

---

When they arrive at the fire station, Eddie is indeed in rough shape. Scratched, damp, and wearing a heating blanket. 

“Buck, why is my dad dressed like a baked potato?” Chris asks nervously when he sees him. 

Eddie is sitting in the back of an ambulance, looking a little sleepy. The other paramedic - the one that isn’t Chimney - is talking to him. 

“It’s keeping him warm,” Buck explains. “Why don’t you go see him? That’ll make him even warmer.”

“DAD!” Chris calls out, heeding Buck’s advice. He picks up his pace a little in Eddie’s direction. 

“CHRISTOPHER!” Eddie calls back once he sees him. He hops out of the ambulance, dropping the warming blanket, and runs across the engine bay floor towards his son. When he reaches him, he scoops him up into the biggest, tightest, most loving hug Buck has ever seen. Buck honestly feels a little choked up, watching it. 

He doesn’t want to intrude on their moment, so he hangs back, holding onto Christopher’s backpack. After a minute of this hug, of Eddie speaking quietly to his son, he finally looks in Buck’s direction. He sets Christopher down, strides over to where Buck is, and hugs him too. Just quick, with a clap on the back, but it’s still a hug. It catches Buck off-guard a little.

“Thank you,” Eddie says emphatically. “Thank you so much for taking care of him.”

“No problem, really,” Buck says when Eddie pulls away. “Chris kept me in line. Made sure I knew the right answers to American history. Really he did me a favor.”

Eddie’s smile in response is practically glowing. “I owe you one, man.”

“Hey, don’t mention it. Just glad you’re okay.” Buck says. “Is Carla good? I couldn’t reach her either.”

Eddie nods. “Her dad isn’t well. She was visiting him today.”

“Oh,” Buck replies. “That’s… That’s too bad.”

Eddie takes a deep breath. “Listen, man, can I buy you a beer sometime? As a thank you?”

Buck… Well, for some reason, even though it’s totally not necessary, Buck really likes the sound of that.

“Yeah,” Buck nods. “Yeah, that’d be great. My number should be in your phone from when I tried to call you.”

“Perfect,” Eddie smiles. 

x.

It’s way too much fun. 

Buck meets Eddie at a sports bar. They grab beers. Watch a game. It’s probably the most fun Buck’s had in a while. Without work or a kid in between them, they connect as just people. And it turns out, they connect pretty well. They have a similar sense or humor and like a lot of the same things. Eddie listens when Buck goes on accidental tangents about subjects he finds interesting. Buck is genuinely delighted with stories about Christopher. They just sort of… Mesh?

By the end of the night, they’re making plans to hang out again, and Buck’s stomach can’t quite shake a fluttery, swooping feeling. Something that he’s only really felt before… Well, on dates. 

Which is strange for Buck because, well… Eddie is a man? And Buck didn’t know that another man could make him feel that way. 

Which probably means… Something. 

xi.

Buck and Eddie manage to hang out two more times by themselves, and once with Christopher, even, before the world shuts down. And Buck goes from the exciting thrill of a new friend/maybe crush to working alone in an empty library, filling online orders, and putting them in sterile pickup areas, with nothing at all to look forward to. 

It’s awful. It’s depressing. Buck genuinely struggles to get out of bed in the morning for the entire month of April. 

His sister is pregnant, and she can’t even stay with Chimney because of the risk. She’s alone. Buck’s alone. Everyone is boxed off from each other. 

They keep in contact. Eddie and Buck. Text. Social media. Buck does a few virtual homework help sessions with Chris out of working hours. But it’s weird. It’s like they almost had a friendship or something, and it just kind of gets stalled. 

All the nothingness means Buck has time. On and off work. He has nothing but time. It reminds him of the early years of his undergrad, where the coursework wasn’t challenging or interesting enough to keep his mind busy. He’d had to find ways to fill the time. Partying. Drinking. Sex. Working out. Those had been his options, then. Apart from working out, he doesn’t want to replicate the rest in a global pandemic. Which means Buck is left with way more hours to fill than even in undergrad. 

And he’s a librarian. So… One of the things he does to avoid going crazy? He reads. He researches. He learns. And one of the things he starts going all in on learning about? Human sexuality and attraction. Because the distance from Eddie doesn’t make Buck stop thinking about him. Doesn’t quell the curiosity, the thinking. The excitement each time a notification from Eddie lights up his phone. So Buck researches, and he tries to figure himself out. 

So, in the middle of a pandemic, where everyone is quarantined, and Buck is completely alone, he discovers he’s bisexual. Stellar timing. Really great work. Had he uncovered this little tidbit of identity earlier in his life? Maybe he’d be quarantining with a boyfriend or a husband or something cool like that. Since he’s historically fumbled all the women in his life. Who is he kidding? He’ll probably be the same with dudes. But until proven otherwise, he imagines he’ll be very smooth.

So. Bisexual. Alone in his studio apartment. Living through an unprecedented global emergency. Kind of thirsting over a man he won’t be able to see for months, and who he doesn’t even know is queer, so probably has no chance with. 

Buck is frustrated. 

He learns to cook. He buys a variety of plants. Tries and fails to learn to draw. Impulse adopts a cat; a Burmese he renames Begonia. Her previous name was Princess and to be honest she is way too relaxed for that designation. 

Nothing makes the sense of restlessness building in his chest go away. 

xii.

It’s late summer by the time he and Eddie can hang out again. At a distance. Outside, on a hike. Masks on if they get any closer. Eddie has a higher chance of infection on his job, and Buck wants to be safe. 

They fall back into their easy pattern of conversation and humor. It’s like whatever paused between them at the beginning of the year picks right back up without any issue. And Buck is relieved. Relieved and excited. Like they’re pointed towards a direction he hasn’t seen before, but is desperate to discover.

Buck tells Eddie all about the ever-changing library policies regarding the virus. Eddie tells Buck about childcare struggles. 

“With Carla caring for her dad full time, and my Abuela back in Texas, it’s been insane,” he admits. 

“And no aftercare programs at the library,” Buck says. 

“Or anywhere,” Eddie says. 

“Man, that’s rough. I’m sorry.”

“It’s… Well, single parenting is never easy. But global catastrophe certainly adds to it.”

“Hey, if-if I can help…” Buck offers, a little aimlessly. 

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Is the library open to visitors yet?”

“Well, no,” Buck admits. “Soon, hopefully? But I mean, I can ask the head librarian - Janine - if he can, uh, sneak in. Masked up, of course.” “I mean, if he could. That’d be really helpful. He could do class from there, right?” Eddie asks. ”Only if it wouldn’t put you out!”

[jd-mp3]

put in the tags your answers because I wanna see!!

(I added the big 6 and then the other 3 were still pretty involved in the history but only for 2/3 albums so I included their start & end albums!)