#also i apologize for any typos or incoherency

[micahulrichdraws]

Hey Micah, how were you able to find your audience I need a guide as an emerging artist. Thank you

I get this question a lot, and I think it's the result of how folks view audiences and art fundamentally. I'm typing this out on my lunch break real quick, so apologies for any incoherent rambling/typos. Long story short: your audience is everyone, make your art as accessible as possible, and artistic culture is a crab bucket. Short story long:

Audiences aren't pre-made: that is there's no preexisting fan club for what you're doing, until you've already created your art, put it out there, and left the folks who've seen it wanting more.

When I first started out, I put myself literally anywhere that I could, and linked back to my socials on every image possible. Mostly I just linked back to my Instagram, built a large following there, then branched out to other social media platforms. It's way easier to snowball success once you've had it, and it's the same for social media. Therefore, I decided to use my large Instagram following to help promote my art on Instagram, then promoted my Facebook (same parent company, so the risk of having organic reach throttled was low, and most people who have one have the other) then expanded onto Tumblr (super niche, but tightknit community) and Twitter (was good, now insanely hit or miss and slowly sinking). By targeting one social media platform at a time, it made it so that my marketing was controlled, and wasn't overwhelming.

As for where to put the art itself that links back to your socials, you want to sit around on content aggregation websites and put your work out there. Tons of professors/talking heads in the industry will tell you to put your work in gallerys/shows/art magazines/forums, and those people are insanely wrong. Your audience is the general public, and NOT OTHER ARTISTS. Other artists and your peers will find your work, because they're also on the internet looking at content aggregators, however the general public won't find your art easily in artistic spaces. Why? Because artistic spaces have absolutely ludicrous barriers of entry. Most spaces carry an assumed knowledge of the art, artistic culture, and artistic association. 99% of people haven't spent their time in art school, so they sure as shit ain't spending their time in a gallery that's open two hours a week. Which leads me to my next point: artists tend to have a ton of art already, aren't looking to buy art, meanwhile we live in capitalism so you need money to live, and living is insanely important to making art. The general public will give you actually useful feedback on your art: if a certain composition is a killer, then folks will be breaking down your door to get prints of it. If it sucks, you'll be made super aware. They don't typically have as much art and are looking to buy some.

Your target audience is everyone who sees your art.

Hope that helps!

[crucifiedfaerie]

Gibson Girl | Pt. 1 ༉₊˚✧

Kylo Ren x Fem!Reader

➴ Summary: After a run in with the Supreme Leader, he can't seem to get you out of his head- or leave you alone.

➴ Song: Gibson Girl - Ethel Cain

➴ Part Two | Part Three

➴ Word Count: 3.4k

➴ Warnings: 18+ MDNI, fem!reader, dom!kylo, kinda slowburn ??, kylo is kinda really manipulative, stalker!kylo, um he's right behind me isn't he?, the mask STAYS ON, how does he not get hot in there ??, mean!kylo to soft!kylo, alcohol plus unbalanced power dynamic so dubcon, SMUT (unprotected PiV sex, fingering, hitting, slight sadist!kylo, degrading, scratching, a teeny tiny bit of blood- nothing serious), fluff if you squint, angst if you squint harder, typos and me being illiterate probably

➴ Taglist: ( @enviedear )

A/N: i haven't written a fic in a good four years so apologies if my writing is a little rusty. my partner and i have been watching the starwars movies and the kylo ren brainrot is so real. i need him expeditiously !! i've also been reobsessed with ethel cain recently and gibson girl is sooo kylo coded so i was inspired to write. i really hope you like it, if the response to this is good i might consider making a part two possibly ?? i do have a few other fic ideas for kylo/ben that are stirring around in my brain sooo im excited to share those eventually

It seems as though you've seen the Supreme Leader around more times in the past two weeks than you ever had in the two years you've been working as a technician on the Finalizer. Like a shadow clad in metal and black leather, he seemed to follow you.

It started two weeks ago with an honest mistake. You had woken up late that morning. Rushing out of your chambers and down the hall, you turned the corner a little too quickly, fearing youd be late to work.

When you crashed into him, you thought you had run into durasteel, the way he didn't move an inch. You, however, bounced backwards, hitting the ground and sending the toolbox in your hands flying.

It wasn't until the air that was knocked from your lungs had returned that you realized this dark mass was not made of durasteel. Sitting on the floor, your eyes trailed from the boots in front of you up to the dark expressionless mask you knew only belonged to the most feared man in the galaxy. Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader of the First Order.

At this realization you scrambled to your feet, picking up your tools as you went and fervently apologizing. You did want to keep your head attached to your shoulders, after all.

"Supreme Leader- I- my apologies sir! I didn't see you th-"

Your string of incoherent apologies was cut short by him wordlessly lifting a gloved hand to silence you. With wide eyes you stared at him as he lowered his hand, bending down to pick up the wrench you had dropped on his boot in the commotion.

He placed it in the toolbox that shook as you tightly grasped it. As he pulled away the leather of his glove brushed against your bare hand, sending a chill down your spine.

He stood there, staring down at you. Past the near-blinding glint of the cold hallway lights bouncing off the dark metal of his mask, you could see your own mortified expression in the reflection of his visor. Your gaze flickered down to the hilt of the saber he kept on his hip and you winced at the mental image of that crimson colored plasma beam he could send shooting through your abdomen at any moment.

Oh gods, im done for. Any second now.

You were pulled from the morbid thoughts of your impending demise by his deep, modulated voice.

"Do not be late." He said sternly, not a speck of emotion behind his words.

You nodded quickly, "Yes Supreme Leader, I- thank you sir!"

You ran down the hall and as you turned the corner, for a split second you saw he had turned to face your direction. Despite that cold mask, you could feel his eyes on you, burning holes through it.

In the days that followed, he began to frequently make small appearances in your life and that feeling of a pair of mystery eyes on you became a familiar sensation. Whether you were eating in the cafeteria, working through a tangle of wires behind a control panel, or simply walking down a hallway, you'd feel your stomach drop. When you looked around there he would be, a creature in a mask, staring you down from afar. After averting your gaze, pretending you didn't notice him, he would continue on and disappear into the darkness of the Finalizer.

To say you were scared of him was an understatement. Was this just an elaborate plan to kill you for dropping your wrench on his foot last week? It couldn't be. If he wanted you dead he would have sliced you in half in the hallway, gods know he's done it to people before.

Fear wasnt the only thing he made you feel. As you knelt on the floor, trying to run a diagnostic test on the navigational software, your mind wandered to who could possibly be underneath that expressionless mask and modulated voice. Was he really the terrifying creature everyone rumored him to be? Or was there a real human under there? A human man with pretty eyes and rough hands from years of training. You let your mind wander to how they would feel in your-

Your thought was cut short by the hairs on the back of your neck standing straight up.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

When you turned around he was so close you jumped and dropped your datapad on the floor. The cracking noise made your heart sink. He was standing right behind you, looming over your small frame that was crouched on the ground. He stared down at you, his masked head tilted as if he were pondering something.

"Supreme Leader. W-what do I owe this pleasure?" You managed to choke out.

Kylo reached out a hand to you, and you obliged, your trembling hand dwarfed by his own. The stiff leather of his glove gripped you tightly, lifting you up to stand in front of him.

The modulator in his mask crackled as he spoke "No need to be so terrified, little star." He chuckled a bit but his usual sternness was still present. "I've only come to ask for you to join me in my quarters tonight..." He paused, "you intrigue me."

Your brain went foggy at the sweet nickname he gave you and it felt as though you might pass out at the thought of being invited to his room. Never had you seen Kylo Ren be so kind to anyone, so why you? Your face flushed with pink as you tried to find the right words to say.

"Intrigue you? Sir I can assure you there's nothing intriguing about me, I'm just a techn-"

"Nonsense." He leaned down to get eye level with you, his helmet inches from your face. "I expect you to be there tonight after lights out. When I want something I do not take no for an answer... and I always take what I want." His voice was dead serious but you could almost hear the smirk that was under his visor.

He released your hand from his tight grip and took a step back from you. With a swift turn, he walked down the hall, not giving you a chance to respond. You stood there stunned for a moment then sank down the durasteel wall, reeling from what just happened.

Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader of the First Order, wanted you in his quarters. Tonight. After lights out.

Later that night, as you were getting ready, you felt like you weren't even in your own body. When you looked at the clock and saw it was 10 minutes until lights out you thought you might throw up from nervousness.

What do you even wear to see the Supreme Leader in his quarters at midnight? Oh gods I'm gonna pass out.

When you were finally satisfied with how you looked, you took a deep breath and exited your chambers. The cold quiet of the flagship's hallways sent a shiver down your spine.

What am I doing? Why would he invite me here? I should just turn around and go back to my quarters.

Your legs felt like Andorian jelly as they moved you down the dark, secluded hallway towards the front of the Finalizer. You ask yourself so many questions as you attempt to suppress every nerve in your body. He was terrifying, but there was something alluring about him, something so... attractive. Something that made you feel like a small insect being lured into a spiders web. And you liked it?

Once you reached the end of the hallway, you realize it's a dead end. The tall, dark double doors enlaid with silver told you this was probably his door.

Do I knock?

Before you could even finish your thought, they opened, seemingly on their own.

The familiar crackle of his modified voice called out to you sternly, "Come in."

You obliged, taking a deep breath before you stepped into his quarters. The room was dimly lit, illuminated only by the warmth of the fireplace. As you looked around, his space was about what you expected it to be, minimalistic and decorated in hues of red and black, but grand enough for a Supreme Leader.

And there he was, sitting in a red lounge chair in front of the fireplace. You saw him pick something up off the coffee table before he stood and approached you.

"I can sense your nervousness, little star. Take this and come with me." Kylo handed you a glass of whiskey before taking your other hand and leading you back towards the fireplace, motioning for you to sit in the chair across from his.

As you sat, holding the glass in one hand and feeling the velvet cushion beneath you with the other you realized you hadn't said a word to him yet.

"Supreme Leader sir, its an honor to have been invited here by you. Your quarters are... magnificent."

He chuckled. "I'm glad you like it, but there's no need to bother with honorifics when you're here. You may call me Kylo."

"K-Kylo..." You tested out his name, unsure if he was being serious.

This has to be a dream. This cant be real. He can't be-

He nodded, speaking as he poured another glass of whiskey for himself. "I invited you here only to get to know each other. It would be rude of me to expect my guest to be so formal with me."

You felt your face get hot and you look at the floor illuminated by the fire. "Apologies if this is too forward... but how can we get to know each other if I dont even know what you look like?"

I shouldn't have said that. Surely he'll kill me for even asking. Stupid. Stupid.

He fell silent for a moment and stared at you. You internally panicked, thinking your forwardness had angered him.

You've really done it this time.

Kylo reached up and you heard a click followed by a quiet hiss emitted from his helmet. Pulling the helmet up slightly, he revealed the bottom half of his face, and oh gods was he beautiful. His dark locks fell down and brushed his jaw which looked as if it had been carved from marble, and you think you caught the beginnings of a scar lining it.

"Compromise." He flashed a dark smile before taking a sip from his glass. Kylo's unmodulated voice was smooth and deep, a sound you could find yourself getting used to hearing. You watched his Adam's apple move as he swallowed the dark liquor down.

After setting his glass back on the table, Kylo lowered his helmet and clicked it back into place.

"I haven't been able to get you out of my head since our run in. You interest me so much." He mused.

You sighed shakily. "I dont mean to disappoint you s- Kylo, but there isn't much that is interesting about me or my life. Especially here on the Finalizer, most of my days tend to be the same."

You had taken only a few sips of your drink but your head was already getting foggy.

He ignored what you said, seemingly more eager to tell you something he's been wanting to say for two weeks now. "Your mind is what intrigues me most. I can hear them, your thoughts, and they are so loud." You could almost hear the smirk on his face.

He what.

"You what?" You choke out, your face going bright red.

No. no no no.

He chuckled darkly. "No need to be embarrassed, little star. I enjoy listening to your thoughts of me. How late at night you think about my hands groping your body. How you fantasize about being immoral in a complete stranger's lap. How right now you're thinking about me hurting you..." He paused, "I cannot lie to you, my thoughts have been plagued with yours for weeks now. Thats why I invited you here, so I could show you everything you wish you had."

You tried to speak, but couldn't find the words. Your face was flushed with pink and the whiskey was starting to take its toll on your thinking skills.

He stood from his chair and stepped towards you, taking the glass from your hand and setting it down on the table next to his. Towering over you, he leant down closer to you. His gloved hand lightly trailed down your face and snaked it's way behind your neck, his fingers weaving through your hair. He tightened his grasp and pulled down, forcing you to look up at him.

"Tell me, sweet thing. Are you scared of me right now?" He already knew the answer but wanted to hear it.

You nodded, looking up at him with wide eyes. "Y-yes Kylo."

"Good." He said coldly. The tone of his voice changed, as if his sweetness earlier was simply a ruse to lure you in. He pulled you up by your hair to stand, and in one swift motion he had you thrown over his shoulder.

He carried you away down a dark hallway, the light from the fireplace growing dimmer and more distant as he took you deeper into his quarters.

Like a little insect caught in a spider's web.

Once he entered his room, Kylo threw you on his bed carelessly, nearly knocking the air from your lungs.

He immediately went to work on your clothes, pulling your shirt and pants off, almost ripping them in the process. You were left only in your underwear, writhing from the heat growing in your core.

Kylo admired your body, running his cold, leather clad hands along your thighs roughly, spreading your legs. He had been waiting for weeks to do this. The seam of his glove brushed across your clothed clit, causing you to let out a whine.

"Such a pretty voice... I want to hear more of it." He said sternly before pulling your underwear to the side and running two gloved fingers down your folds, coating them in your slick. You gasped at the contact.

Without warning Kylo pushed his fingers inside your entrance, curling his fingers upwards causing your back to arch. As he pumped his fingers into your cunt, he went to work on your clit with his thumb. His other hand snaked its way up your body, stopping once it was wrapped tightly around your neck.

Waves of pleasure washed over you as he stretched you out with his fingers. You felt your climax quickly approaching "Please- sir. Please m'gonna-"

He pulled his hand away and you groaned at how empty you now felt. You rubbed your legs together to get a little bit of friction, but were halted by the sharp sting of his hand coming down on your thigh. You let out a loud yelp.

"Needy little slut." He raised one hand and an invisible force spread your legs fully and froze your entire body in place, while his other hand worked to undo his belt. "You don't get to cum until I say you can, understand?"

You only whined in response. He slapped you hard and grabbed your face forcefully, leaning down closer to you, his visor millimeters from your face. "Say it. say it!"

"Mhmm yes sir I understand!" You whined loudly. Your face stung and you could taste copper.

He let go of your face and finished freeing his cock. You nearly pass out from the sight of it.

Oh gods help me, how is that supposed to fit?

He chuckled at your thought as he lined himself up at your entrance "Don't worry little star, we'll make it fit." He said evilly before pushing inside, watching you as your face contorted from the pain and pleasure of his cock splitting you open.

You nearly scream, letting out a choked whine as he bottomed out, pressing forcefully on that bundle of nerves deep inside you. You tried to adjust to his size but without any warning he withdrew himself before slamming back into you again.

His thrusts were erratic, unrelenting on that sensitive spot, hitting it with every snap of his hips.

"F-fuck... Kylo- you're gonna make m-me cum." You whined, feeling tears prick your eyes as you were reaching your breaking point.

He reached up and grabbed your throat, squeezing, which made your head feel lighter. "Shut the fuck up and hold it." He said coldly. It sounded like a whisper coming from the modulator of his mask.

He pounded into you with such power, and it sent shockwaves rippling through your body. You screamed as he thrusted into you, showing not a speck of mercy on your much smaller frame.

Kylo felt your walls twitching around him. "You wanna cum so bad don't you?" He cooed, feigning sympathy for you.

You nodded your head desperately.

"Beg for it then. Beg to cum on my cock and I might just let you." He growled.

"P-Please-" You whimpered, on the verge of tears.

"I said beg!" Kylo struck the side of your face again, harder this time.

"Please! Please let me cum Kylo!" You cried.

He let out a satisfied groan, gripping your hair and tugging to make you look up more. "Go ahead then, little star. Cum for me." You could hear the smirk behind his mask.

An invisible hand went to work on your clit as he continued to ram into you with unrelenting speed. This sent you over the edge, the tight feeling in your abdomen burst as a wave of euphoria washed over your body. You dug your nails into Kylo's back. Despite him being clothed, you know you did it hard enough to draw blood. You heard him wince but the raw pleasure he was inflicting on your body was too much for you to care about that.

He's cold blooded so it takes more time to bleed.

His thrusts became sloppy and harder as he neared his own release. He had come completely undone, his emotionless façade gone as he whispered sweet nothings and strings of curse words through his mask.

"Fuck-" He said your name, lingering on it, drawing it out in a sickly sweet way. "Gods- your body- its so- I'm in love with it. Fuck."

A few thrusts later, Kylo buried himself inside you to the hilt one last time, bottoming out and groaning as he pumped your cunt full of his cum.

You felt his cock twitch inside you as he looked down at you, hands pressed into the bed on either side of your head and breathing heavily through his modulator.

Kylo pulled out as he stood up and you felt his cum leak out of you and down your thigh onto the bed. You watched as he tucked himself back into his trousers and redo his belt. He went into the refresher attached to his bedroom to retrieve a towel and you felt the bed dip when he returned.

He wiped his cum away gently with the towel and you yelped from the sudden overstimulation.

"Shhh" he cooed, still stern. "I'm only trying to help." Kylo threw the towel to the floor and sat on the bed, back leaning against the headboard. He pulled you closer to him so your head rested in his lap. You watched as he pulled his gloves off for the first time and you took a mental note of how strong his hands looked.

He ran his long fingers through your hair and you sighed, closing your eyes. "I could get used to this." You said sleepily.

The last thing you heard before you succumbed to sleep was, "Me too, little star." Even through the crackle of his modulator, it almost sounded like he was deep in thought.

When you awoke in his bed the next morning, Kylo was gone. As you rolled to the side of the bed, you could still smell him on his bedsheets.

On the bed next to you was a black box wrapped in red ribbon, with a note attached. You opened it and inside was a new datapad, with a fresh, uncracked screen. The note read: "Little star, apologies for the broken datapad. I expect you'll be here when I return later. -K.R."

You smiled as you sunk your head back into his pillows.

[sleepanonymous]

Okay so. I have so many people to respond to and I promise I will, just not tonight. I wanted to give a quick update about the ritual below the cut (because I know some people like going in not knowing the setlist.) Again, typing this all on my phone so my apologies for heavy typos and any incoherence.

As a preface I just got back to my hotel, showered quickly, absolutely fucking sobbed in the shower for like two minutes, and I’m now eating uncle ben’s ready rice straight out of the bag because I don't have a fork or spoon. If that doesn’t scream hot mess idk what would.

First things first: the security/staff at Arizona Financial Theatre are all amazing. Literal fucking angels. Two of them hung out with us in line all day, letting us go inside to use the bathroom and refill water bottles and the guys at the barricade were so friendly and chatty and also handed out water. Literally everyone was so helpful and friendly and nice and they deserve all the good things in life.

Second: Empire State Bastard really wasn’t clicking with me until I saw them live. They’re an absolute vibe live plus the drummer and bassist are both babes. The band were constantly thanking us for showing up early and listening to them (tbh the venue was only half full until about 10 minutes before Sleep Token went on). Literally seemed like such humble and chill dudes.

Third!!! I almost don’t even know what to say about Sleep Token. There’s sooo much I could literally rant for hours but I also need to sleep so I can drive to Albuquerque in the morning. I recorded 5ish songs I think? Mostly the TPWBYT songs but I did get the summoning too. No idea if the footage is any good but we’ll see tomorrow. I made it a point not to have my phone out after finding out the setlist because there was no way in hell I was missing TNDNBTG live while on barricade. Maybe I should preface this next bit with I one hundred thousand present realize this sounds delusional of me, but everyone on the barricade had their phones out and Vessel fucking focused on me because of it. He was singing one of my favorite sleep token songs directly to me! There’s literally nowhere else he could have been looking! he was on the edge of the stage looking straight down at me and we were pointing at each other and I’m fucking dying reliving it because I was singing so horribly and cringy back at him. Like I’m so sorry vessel but my life was changing in that moment. I became a new woman the second you pointed at me.

I kept my phone away for the first several songs tbh and he kept coming back to stand in front of me but never made such heavy eye/mask contact (until Euclid). I actually almost feel like I disappointed him when I did pull my phone out to start recording because he practically avoided me after that. its actually why I decided not to record Euclid, though I knew it was coming and it was the song’s debut. AND IT FUCKING WORKED!! He came back around and was singing to me again, same stance, same obvious eye contact except this time I was literally Ugly Crying™️ at him. Tears were streaming, I had one hand holding onto the barricade for dear life, and the other clamped tightly around my mouth ugly crying. Even my buddies and the security were concerned that’s how bad it was.

In all honesty I can’t pretend that it wasn’t “scripted” like the band hadn’t planned every move on stage beforehand. They first and foremost are performers and Vessel literally sings to every girl on the barricade right in front of him. But it also felt so special and I feel so bad for breaking down like I did 😅🤣😭😫🫠

Okay I need to stop ranting, I’ve been up for 20 hours and this is most likely incoherent anyway. I love all of you and I hope everyone who’s able to get barricade this tour gets to experience the same thing I did🖤🖤🖤

[writefightandflightclub]

I have to know if Santi and Frankie are awkward around each other after the events of Captain of the Team. Or if they’re friends with benefits now? Or only do the dirty when Will invites them over?

Please ignore if you don’t care to answer lol if you can’t tell I’m forever obsessed with this fic. 💙💙💙💙💙💙

Author’s note: Ozzie! Oh my goodness! I love this request! Thanks so much for sending this. I rly enjoyed exploring CotT more and I’d be so up for future blurbs stemming from that universe. For your request, I had a quick think about various ways it couldda feasibly gone down between these two in the aftermath of ALL THAT, and this was the first semi-plausible scenario that came to me. By no means definitive, as I can see it happening in a range of ways. I absolutely blitzed this in excitement also, so apologies if it’s incoherent / full of typos / OOC. The more I think about it the more convinced I am that Frankie is the perfect foil to all of Santi’s hang-ups and I love them together so much!

P.s. If you don’t know what the game Buckaroo is I’m so sorry and you’ll see why.

Summary: this blurb follows on after the events of my Triple Frontier poly! Fic, Captain of the Team (spoilers for that fic follow from here, stop reading if you’d rather read that first) which involves Will + Santiago + Frankie x reader, and Frankie x Santi.

Relationship: this fic focusses on Frankie x Santi, in the aftermath of Captain of the Team. Hints of Santi x reader also, in the present and also references to a past relationship. Refs to 4-way poly.

POV: Frankie’s POV

Warnings: sexual themes and smut references but no full smut. Everything else typical of my characterisation of these two. FEEL FREE TO CORRECT MY SPANISH. Sorry for any mistakes.

Solid ground: (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x Francisco “Catfish” Morales)

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

It’s unusual, Frankie notes, that Santi didn’t stand to hug him upon arrival, but he chooses not to address it.

Instead, Santi takes an exaggerated slurp of his coffee, via the inadequate little mouthpiece of the disposable cup. He then folds his arms tightly around himself, hands tucked under his pits and nipples visible beneath the fabric of his thin cotton tee. Either the bastard’s self-soothing because of this imminent conversation, Frankie surmises, or he’s cold. It’s not even cold, but Santiago thrives on warmth. Frankie could swear he’d even complained of feeling chilly in the tropics one time, with the midday sun blasting down on him and everything.

“You cold, hermano?” Frankie teases, settling his lanky legs astride his side of the picnic table. Taking his jacket off without thinking and tossing it over to Santiago.

The bastard’s face twists beneath the brim of his cap, and yet he still takes it, eagerly shoving his arms into the sleeves and tugging it around him.

After recent events, the sight of Santiago wearing his coat certainly hits different, in a way he isn’t prepared for, and it kills any good-natured, teasing chuckle which otherwise may have erupted in his throat.

“So,” Frankie begins. “What’s up?”

Frankie is, evidently, itching to get straight to business.

Santiago had convened this hang. A pre-work coffee in the park. One-on-one. Perfectly normal, under other circumstances; but under these circumstances, it all felt a little… clandestine.

“Nothing much,” Santi bristles. “What would be up?”

Frankie closes his eyes. Steels himself against Santiago’s typical knee-jerk responses. He gets this kinda way when emotions are involved. For all his confidence, he’s deeply insecure. Afraid of anything too real. Afraid of not being enough. Frankie’s learned this the hard way, from years of watching him spin-out in every single relationship so far. Having watched him self-sabotage. Witnessing him ending things before they’d even begun so that his partner could never hope to leave him first, for that’s always what he believed - to the depths of him - was coming.

Fuck. He’d done that with you, and oh boy, he’d loved you.

Loves you, in fact.

“Oh. I dunno,” Frankie says casually, taking an altogether more casual swig of the coffee Santi proffers, sliding the second cup across to Frankie with the back of his hand. Frankie tastes it, and it’s not lost on him that Santiago remembered his order. “Thought you might want to talk about how we fucked last week.”

Santiago looks thoroughly scandalised for a moment, and Frankie can’t help it when his mouth lilts up with a smile.

Shit. Did he really think that wouldn’t come up?

“Why would I wanna talk about that, huh?” Santi’s brow is heavy, face drawn down.

Great. He’s getting defensive; which sure as hell means he’s feeling vulnerable. He’s shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He’s taking an aggressive sip of his coffee again. It would be a little funny - if it wasn’t so desperately sad.

So many people have had so much love to give Santiago over the years, Frankie reflects, and yet bestowing it upon him has almost had to be done by stealth, every time. It’s sorta like playing Buckaroo, Frankie figures. (That game where you place pieces of luggage on a plastic donkey until the weight eventually trips the mechanism and back hoofs everything off?) Yeah. Exactly. It’s like waiting for Santiago to drop-kick your gently applied love to shit, because inevitably, he suddenly decides he’s over-encumbered by it. Worried that he can’t possibly bear the burden.

Frankie frowns. Actually, he doesn’t like to think about donkeys so much, he decides. Not after the fucking Lorea job.

Anyway.

Instead: “Hey,” he says soothingly, and Santiago’s eyes snap up to his, warm but toughened. “Don’t be weird. It’s okay.”

Frankie knows what he needs, right? Prides himself on it. Knows how to take care of this bastard better than anyone does. Always has. Has done it by stealth, mostly - though sometimes overtly. Hasn’t been drop-kicked too many times for it either. He’d seemed, over the years, to be able to get away with things other couldn’t. He’s always felt kinda special because of that.

Given that fact then, Frankie decides that maybe he can be slightly bolder. Reaches his hand out towards Santiago’s own, and places it right on top.

A hard swallow dips down Santiago’s throat, but he doesn’t pull it away. He’s drawn towards warmth, after all. Always seeking out a little heat.

Frankie feels a warm jug of honey tip itself through his middle as his skin makes contact with Santiago’s. Decides that he can afford to get a little bolder again. Circles his thumb into Santiago’s wrist, in a way that definitely crosses beyond merely “friendly”.

“You look good in my jacket, pendejo,” Frankie purrs, and he deeply enjoys the crimson heat which blooms across Santiago’s cheeks - in the moment before he snatches his hand away.

Frankie’s not usually a flirt. Wouldn’t normally push it. Can’t ordinarily get his words out, instead opting for the pine and then die approach. But, there’s something about Santiago which makes all of this unfamiliar territory feel eminently comfortable. He wants to do the same for him - to help him break new ground without freaking out - but he also doesn’t want to push it.

Doesn’t want to push him.

The man doesn’t react well to being pushed. He’s already halfway out of everything he’s in, and that makes him far too easy to topple.

Frankie wants more out of this, he knows that much. But it occurs to him then, in a moment of panic, that Santiago might not. Or, even worse, and far more likely; that he does want more, but that he’ll do everything in his power to avoid admitting it.

Santiago has gone to great lengths to avoid his feelings before, after all - and so many of his “solutions” have included a goddamn one-way plane ticket.

“Pope,” Frankie begins, looking outward across the park so as to avoid Santiago feeling too boxed in. A tactic he’s deployed many times before when he’s needed to have tricky words with him. “Maybe we should talk about this.”

He glances at Santi briefly - risks it - and sees the fat vein throbbing relentlessly in his forehead. Can imagine his whole body similarly pulsing. Seeing his visible agitation, Frankie gives him time, taking another very deliberate and drawn-out swig of his coffee. Laboriously pondering - with a thinly feigned interest - the activities of the golden lab fetching sticks across the way.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Santiago bites off after a while, and Frankie tries to obscure the way those words slice through him to his core. Now, he finds that he can’t look back at Santiago, albeit for completely different reasons than before.

Frankie takes a deep, calming breath. Avoids knee-jerk reactions. Tries to remember that this guy rarely says what he means. Starts to wonder, bitterly, if Santiago being so adept at knee-jerk reactions has cumulatively contributed to his joint problems; and then, he bites his lip to avoid saying that out-loud. Instead then, Frankie thinks. Pauses. Turns his body to face Santiago again and waits, until the man finally dares to peek up from under the brim of his cap. Only then does he speak what’s on his mind. Only then does he say what he needs to say, and, regardless of whether Santiago wants to hear it - he needs to. “I don’t regret anything,” Frankie says levelly. As clearly and calmly as possible. “Are you listening? I know what I felt in that room -with you- and I own it. I enjoyed what we did.” He lets the words bed down into Santiago. Knows that his cool, calm authority is just enough to command the space. Enough to avoid the little bastard interjecting before he is done. “I also value our friendship, and I don’t want to put that on the line. So… whatever you want from here goes, okay?”

Frankie genuinely thinks for a moment that he’s nailed it - but he should have known that his buddy wouldn’t be quite so easy to satisfy.

“Whatever I want from here?” Santiago openly scoffs.

“Yeah,” Frankie soothes, searching the other man’s turbulent brown eyes, expression soft and unblinking.

However, as he does so, Frankie suddenly has the awful, dawning feeling that -oh shit- he’s about to be drop-kicked.

“You know what I want from here? I think I want to leave this conversation,” Santi snipes. “This whole thing was clearly a fucking mistake.”

Frankie dares not ask whether Santiago means this conversation, or the whole damn thing. Frankie had been sincere, as per usual, when he’d said he regretted nothing, and pain flashes in his eyes and his gut at the notion Santiago might feel altogether differently.

Of course, though, he thinks. Of course Santiago can’t have a rational conversation about all of this. Has to fly off the handle before Frankie can possibly hope to establish what he truly feels.

So then, with a deep sigh, Frankie watches Santiago stand, the man apparently so in the habit of indulging his own bullshit that he can’t even stop for a fucking second.

“Cabrón,” Frankie says tiredly, standing too as he watches Santiago gather up his things, shoving the items angrily into his pockets.

Jesus.

Frankie suddenly has immense empathy for everything you’d had to deal with when you and Santiago had been together. He had a tendency towards the dramatic, that was for sure. He was also a stubborn bastard, determined to prove himself right. Even if that meant, ultimately, proving he wasn’t good enough for you after all by behaving that way.

Frankie grits his teeth, trying his best not to lose his temper - a rare thing for him as it was, but Santiago certainly testing his patience by being thoroughly infuriating. However, Frankie knows him well enough to know a reaction is exactly what he wants. A reaction so he can blame Frankie. A reaction so that he has an excuse to cut this short. So that he doesn’t actually have to deal with… whatever this is. With whatever he is feeling.

With a huff, then, Santiago next attempts to strip off Frankie’s kindly offered jacket and god; that’s the last straw to him. “Idiota. Eres un maldito burra,” Frankie growls - you’re a fucking donkey- and he strides right up to him, grabbing him squarely by the lapels and forcefully clasping the jacket shut before the bastard can wriggle himself - and his shapely boobs - out of it. “Would you just keep the damn jacket on,” Frankie spits. “There’s no need for you to be fucking cold.”

Frankie’s aggressively delivered kindness appears to shock Santi into submission and silence at least, his eyes going wide and his tongue quitting its wagging long enough to skim along his lower lip as slowly as spark along fuse. And, he does indeed halt his attempts to strip off. However, his nostrils do also flare in annoyance and he shrugs the taller man off of him, turning - dramatically - and marching directly towards his truck.

This dramatic exit leaves Frankie muttering under his breath, spitting expletives in all his tongues. His elbows cutting a sharp shape as he shoves one hand into the back pocket of his jeans, palm towards cheek, and the other palm slipping down his face in exasperation.

Jesus fucking christ.

Where did he go so wrong, huh? He knows this guy. Knows what he needs. Always has. Right? Unless the harsh truth of it is that, even after the impassioned melding of their bodies, Frankie actually doesn’t know Santiago half as well as he thinks.

Frankie thinks on that for a moment, his hand sliding over his scruff.

But.. it just doesn’t sit right with him. Doesn’t sit right because… no. That can’t be right.

There isn’t anybody else who comes close to having Santiago figured out - expect maybe you - and he’s damn sure he can get to the bottom of this. Therefore, suddenly feeling confident again - and determined not to put up with this utter nonsense - Frankie does indeed figure it out. Realises exactly where he’d gone wrong.

Frankie hastens, chasing the man down at a jog until he’s caught up on his little-legged strides. Rounds on his truck, and, as Santiago reaches towards the door handle, he flips around to face Frankie, a disdainful expression on his face.

Frankie doesn’t even wait for whatever bullshit is about to come out of Santiago’s mouth. Instead, he slowly but commandingly walks forward, shoving Santiago back. Pinning his back firmly to the vehicle, pressing him there firmly with the full length of his body. Frankie’s palms press to the glass either side of Santiago’s head. Boxing him in.

Frankie confirms it as he watches Santiago’s pupils blow-out with desire. As he catches the hard swallow dipping down his neck.

Frankie knows exactly where he’d gone wrong now, for sure.

He’d made the mistake you simply can’t make with Santiago. Frankie saying “whatever you want” was the worst thing he could have done, he realises. Because if you leave this insecure bastard to fill in the gaps? He’ll assume you don’t want him at all. You can’t leave him to say it first, or he never will.

Therein lies the impossible contradiction of Santiago Garcia. Tell him you want him, and he’ll run away from your feelings. Don’t tell him you want him and he’ll damn sure run from his own. Somehow, the man is simultaneously both the cockiest and most insecure bastard Frankie has ever known.

Frankie, meanwhile, had never had an issue with committing. With naming what he wanted, no holds barred, and standing by it.

And so, Frankie decides, he must go a little further for Santiago. Make things just a little clearer for him.

“I’m gonna say something, okay?” Frankie rumbles, his hips pinning Santiago’s body in place, the sturdy warmth of him bleeding through denim. Frankie searches his eyes, and Santiago nods meekly. “I want you,” Frankie breathes gruffly up against Santiago’s neck. “Wanted you for years.” He kicks Santiago’s legs apart with his boot, slotting one thigh in between his and letting him feel the urgent bulge at his crotch press firmly up against him. Then, Frankie lets his soft lips travel, grazing them up the column of Santiago’s throat, feeling his pulse point thrum wildly against them. “Want you again.” Ghosting his warm mouth along the stubble at his jaw until his lips hover, an inch away from a kiss and Santiago moans, low and resonant, into the air for him. “You got that, idiota?” Frankie pulls back with satisfaction, upon seeing the cock-drunk haze taking over Santiago’s heavy-lidded eyes. “That more along the lines of what you needed to hear, huh?”

“Uh. Uh huh,” Santiago stutters, and Frankie’s eyes soften with a sudden fondness.

“Good.” He crooks his forefinger under that shapely chin. “Now. We can go back to exactly how it was if you want. That’s okay. But if you do want this to happen again? I’m in. Alright?”

“Uh. Uh huh,” he repeats dumbly, frotting himself against Frankie’s bulging arousal with a hard promise all his own, and now it is Frankie’s turn to stutter as a zip of pleasure throbs all the way down to his balls.

“W-Will’s having people over on Sunday,” Santiago offers, his hands moving to Frankie’s waistband, clamping down on his leather belt and dragging him closer.

Fuck. Frankie’s length is throbbing with how fucking eager Santiago is. With the memory of being buried deep inside of him, years of unspoken tension finally finding an outlet. With how easily he could open him up all over again and find his release.

“No,” Frankie revs, desire churning in the pit of him.

“No?”

“How about sooner?” Frankie rumbles, losing himself a little in the sensations. Coming undone with the proximity. The delicious smell of Santiago’s obnoxious cologne.

And, as if by magic, suddenly, when Frankie’s eyes flutter closed and he releases a thick groan from his throat as Santiago cants his hips up against him, all the man’s smugness comes rushing back - just as forcefully as the blood rushing towards Frankie’s increasingly proud length.

“Wow. I really do look that good in your jacket, huh?” The cocky bastard arcs a thick, suggestive eyebrow, his eyes half-lidded and far too sinful for a man who perpetually carries around a hold-all full of lapsed-Catholic guilt.

“Be careful,” Frankie scolds, and a shit-eating grin splits Santiago’s face, his proud chin jutting out in challenge.

This fucking brat.

“Yeah? Why?”

“Last time, I was easy on you. Next time, I don’t have to be.”

And, despite his brazen, bold words, Frankie dips then to plant the softest, lightest kiss on Santiago’s mouth, stubble grazing against scruff.

He hadn’t realised just how much he had been needing to do that. How much he’d been aching for his soft lips since they’d first collided. And, gaze dancing around Santiago’s pretty face, he feels a rush of affection for the man. A deep need to take care of him. To make him feel safe.

He says so, in different words. “I’m not letting you run, alright?” Frankie breathes, the hypothetical possibility of Santiago ever skipping out on him constricting in his chest. “Not from me. Not after a lifetime.” It pains him that even still, Santiago looks somewhat conflicted. “Believe me,” he reaches to cup his face, the gesture halfway between a buddy’s chastising, harmless slap, and a tender signal of affection. “I already know alllll your bull shit, and you know mine. This doesn’t have to be anything it’s not already. Nothing it hasn’t already been. Nothing’s changed. Okay?”

Santiago seems to ponder this. His mouth pressed into a thin line.

Frankie’s gone out on a limb here, and his heart is in his mouth waiting to find out if the bough under him is about to snap. If he’s about to come crashing down.

Santiago doesn’t say anything for a moment, his dark eyes animated with thoughts. Slightly glassy with emotion. But then, with a sharp intake of breath he dips forward, slanting his supple kiss against Frankie’s mouth. Catching Frankie’s lower lip between his teeth, and ever so deliberately skimming his tongue along it.

Fuck. When he does that, an impossibly bright heat rolls down Frankie’s spine.

“And what is it?” Santiago asks cautiously. “What is this, exactly?”

A valid question. Four of you in an indecipherable tangle, feelings cutting across all corners. Frankie doesn’t know about all that, but he does know something.

And so, Frankie looks Santiago in the eyes. Looks right through the layers - each and every one. Filters through the cheek, the smugness. The lust and the loyalty. The vulnerability; and, eventually, he reaches all the way to that oh so familiar friendship beating right at the heart of this. The thing that feels unshakeable. Feels like solid ground.

He smiles, because the answer’s easy.

“It’s… us.”

“Us,” Santiago repeats levelly, and jeez; Frankie is eminently pleased that the suggestion doesn’t get his hackles up. Doesn’t seem to make him want to run, or to drop-kick Frankie’s affections clean off of him like a bucking luggage-loaded ass.

Simply “us”.

And what’s so scary about that?

It’s not an unknown.

It’s nothing new.

It’s something which has proven itself, time and again. A million times over.

In the next moment then, Frankie pushes himself away from Santiago’s body, creating some space, and taking some pains to slow his ragged breaths. Easing off, before they both get a little too excited - right here and now. Creates some distance, to make sure that Santiago has just a little spare blood to his brain when he receives the next question.

“Think you can handle that?”

Santiago rolls his eyes. Back to his old tricks. “You know you don’t have to be quite so condescending, cabrón?”

Frankie simply smiles with satisfaction, a throaty chuckle sounding out.

Santiago smiles right back.

It feels good, Frankie thinks. Feels good to know that he does knows what Santiago needs after all. Always has.

Nothing has really changed.

Oh, except for…

Santiago leans forward to whisper in Frankie’s ear, hands resting on his shoulders, winding up to the bare skin at the nape of his neck. “By the way.” This man’s sandy voice against the shell of his ear licks sugar down his spine. “When you said ‘sooner’…?”

“Yeah,” Frankie agrees immediately, fishing his car keys out of his jeans and beeping the doors unlocked from all the way across the lot. “See you at your place in 5?”

Santiago laughs. Laughs because of how worked up Frankie’s apparently gotten himself. Laughs, maybe, he hopes, because of how beautiful it is to have found this.

Frankie looks back at him as he nods the affirmative, before preparing to climb into the driver’s side of his own vehicle.

Santiago looks so fucking smug, and oh boy.

Frankie’s fantasised about wiping that smirk off his buddy’s face for decades, and he can’t believe he got so lucky.

[t-dick-sapphic]

I’d be more than happy on my knees for you, I’d have my tongue on your cock as long as you’d like. 😘 I can’t help but imagine how you’d taste. The thought of you thrusting into my mouth mercilessly has me further wishing I was there. 😮‍💨

Ohhhh I love both ideas for how you’d finish. Using the same vibe that I did last night sounds so hot, but can’t say I’d complain at you coming undone with my mouth around your throbbing tdick. Feeling you press hard into me, holding me in place. I’m thinking about how much your cock would twitch if I moaned while you had me there…

I fucking love that you’re obsessed with the thought of me in the desperate state I was in last night. Lick and bite me wherever you desire— it wouldn’t take much for me to cry out. You haven’t listed a single thing that I wouldn’t come undone by. You commanding me to hump your thigh is perfection. God, I’d love to hear that filthy string of praises... I’d only be able to cry and moan in response.

And of course, fuck me for as long as you stand, even after I’m tired and cockdrunk. If you have the energy to keep going? By all means, have your way with me. Fuck me until I pass out. Make me your whore.

I noticed that post about wanting your partner to turn up the controls on that vibrator inside you… I can’t help but wonder if you’ve told her all about these horny messages I’ve sent you? How hard it’s made you. I hope she gets just as much enjoyment from the result of these messages as you are. 😉

(Also I see those tags on your response to my ask, I’m glad you enjoyed it so much that you’ll use it to get off often. I’ll be doing the same with that audio, I still can’t stop thinking about it. On another note hopefully everything I’ve said this far has been alright to say! If I ever cross a line at any given point don’t hesitate to say so.) -🌾

Okay apologies in advance for any typos or incoherent parts i'm really high, but i wanted to respond to this now because i just did something i think you'll enjoy hearing ;)

I read this ask just about an hour ago, when I'd already taken some edibles and was waiting for them to kick in. Went upstairs to shower when I was already getting high and by the time I was rinsing my hair I was fully high --

and suddenly so, so horny, because I remembered this ask as well as the previous image of you shaking in the shower, cum sliding down your inner thighs along with water droplets, fucking yourself with your toys and the memory of my voice. My cock was immediately hard.

my skin also gets extra sensitive when i'm high, so I stroked my chest and nipples; i also like to stroke along the edges of my top surgery scars, for whatever reason that area is as sensitive as where my nipples are

after a minute of stroking my chest and circling one finger under the head of my cock, imagining it was your tongue, i reached for the shower head. i took it off the wall and lowered it and angled it up to hit my tdick; as it hit my hard, sensitive cock in a steady pulse, I imagined you standing in your bathroom with your vibe.

i got so close to cumming there, but pulled the shower head away right before that could happen. i'm not even sure what made me decide to stop, to edge and tantalize myself this evening. but i decided i wanted to reply to your ask before i cum.

so here i am sitting on the couch, cock still throbbing (earlier i stretched my skirt taut over it and i swear i could see the tip pushing against the fabric, god i'd love for you to be here, for me to command you to slide your pants off, to come stand in front of me and turn around; then i'd put my hands on both your hips and guide you down onto my lap, so i could grind up into your ass, so that you can feel my tdick through the fabric of my skirt. --

Anyway let me actually respond to what you said in this ask lol.

fuck, i like knowing that you'd love to know how i taste. that you'd run your tongue up and down the length of my tdick, savoring it.

oh god the idea makes me feel a little desperate; i just realized i'm thrusting lightly upward into the front of my skirt, urgent for any sort of pressure on my cock.

these words in particular: "By all means, have your way with me. Fuck me until I pass out. Make me your whore." have me absolutely writhing with need. my cock gave quite the twitch reading that. Having you command me that, to tell me to make you my whore...it's so fucking hot. you're so fucking hot. i'm thinking back to when i was in the shower a bit ago, and i got to a phase of being high where when my eyes are closed i swear i can actually feel whatever it is i'm imagining; so for a moment there i was convinced you were actually in the shower with me. god my cock hasn't ached this hard in a while.

sorry this is so stream-of-consciousness but i just realized i'm still bucking my hips upwards into my skirt. fuck fuck fuck i can see the tip of my cock raising the fabric with each thrust.

during all of this, my lover is on the other side of the room, seemingly completely absorbed in what she's watching on her phone, utterly oblivious. but let me answer your wondering about whether she saw our messages to each other:

yes. last night i had gotten my lover high with edibles while staying sober myself, and then sent her some messages here on tumblr because whenever she gets high, she gets horny and logs on to see what i've left her. i included links to the first two messages from you, and audio post to you.

she did indeed greatly enjoy reading the filthy things i've said i'd do to you, the comments you've made making it clear how much you want me. how i've taken control of you, getting you to listen to porn in public, to fuck yourself to exhaustion.

once we had started fucking, i kept telling her about our latest messages. i told her about you imagining my fingers thrusting up into you, as i thrust my fingers into her.

after i told her about how i wrote about commanding you to hump my leg, she instructed me to hump her thigh while she took over fingering herself.

oh god, just stood up and i've soaked through the bottom of my skirt, into the couch cushion. that's so embarrassing. i'll have to clean that up tomorrow lmao

i'm going to go to bed now, and fantasize i'm climbing into your bed to make you my whore, to fuck you till you pass out. i'd love knowing you fall asleep tonight imagining that too.

____

(likewise, please let me know if anything i do or say crosses a boundary!

i feel like this response in particular might be extra horny, so tell me if it's too much!)

[hyperlexichypatia]

In your recent post about conservative talking points circulating in leftist spaces you mentioned the idea that "growing your own food is possible desirous and virtuous" I'm curious about this as a physically disabled person who grew up in a local agriculture heavy area, going to farmers markets and coops and the like with people who pushed this viewpoint HEAVILY, and now seeing (as a low-income disabled adult) how incredibly financially, physically, and time-exhaustive this way of life is for even having a few animals or just a garden, and how inaccessible this is to folks living in less rural areas this is for like everyone around me wondering if you'd be willing to discuss this more and the implications of it, maybe including the harm that it does? (I hope I'm not coming across as judgy or demanding here, I'm actually so happy to hear someone challenge this notion for the first time in my life)

Not judgey or demanding at all! Also, this reply got deleted three times while I was writing it, because my touchpad is borked, so apologies for any incoherence or missed proofreading or typos or general bad writing.

So the main problems with "grow your own food" ideology are related to the economy of scale. It's just much, much more efficient to have a few large farms with large farming equipment producing large quantities of crops than for each household to produce enough food to support itself, or even for every neighborhood/community/village to produce enough food to support itself. The shift from small to large scale farming has led to vast increases in crop output.

Of course, there are a lot of problems with large-scale farming as it is currently practiced. Workers are underpaid, overworked, often in horrible conditions. Equipment and pesticides and chemicals pollute. Shipping the products around the world takes fuel and carbon emissions. Farm animal living conditions are horrific. I'm not at all trying to deny or minimize the problems with large-scale industrial farming as it currently exists. But that does not mean that complete decentralization is a viable solution. On the contrary, fewer, larger farms can be more sustainable than more, smaller ones.

We definitely need some decentralization of farming, to reduce the energy expenditure of global crop shipping. A sustainable global food strategy has to include both large farms and small farms. But that is a far, far cry from complete decentralization to the household level or even the neighborhood/community level.

But I'm not an expert on agricultural policy. Frankly I don't know much about it at all. So I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about what I do know about: Food-moralizing culture. Because food-moralizing culture, not genuine well-meaning concern for the environment or farmhand working conditions, is the underpinning of "grow your own food" culture.

I say this because while there are environmental and labor problems with every industrial production of every necessary good, radical decentralization to the household level is not a widespread proposed solution (outside of like, fringe anarcho-primitivist subcultures) to other forms of problematic industrial production.

Like, industrial clothing production is atrocious! It needs to be radically changed! And almost everyone involved in advocacy for this necessary change is advocating different, better kinds of clothing factories. More worker control, fewer dangerous chemicals, more durable goods. With relatively few exceptions, most advocates are not advocating "Every individual household, all around the world, should spin, weave, and sew their own clothing."

The actual literal Luddites did not advocate that. Their entire position was rooted in being specialized, skilled craftspeople in a society that already had specialization of labor!

(I realize that I am saying this on Tumblr, The Home Of Fringe Craftspeople [at least it's not Instagram], and should this post break containment, I will get a lot of responses of "Well actually my friends and I all spin our own wool" -- great, I love that for you! Sincerely, I hope everyone gets to practice the art/craft/creativity/etc that brings them joy! That's a niche hobby, not a large scale political movement actively opposed to food justice and disability justice the way the grow-your-own-food movement is.)

You don't see large-scale political movements for "Everyone should forge their own iron" or "Everyone should carve their own wood" or "Everyone should lay their own bricks." And these things would even be technically more feasible than "Everyone should grow their own food," because they're not reliant on things like weather and soil conditions, or quantities of land. You see some smaller scale things like the "maker movement" or "nobility of working with your hands," but they're as likely to be focused on repair and other kinds of manual labor than on completely individualized generation of product from scratch.

So why are we relentlessly propagandized to all grow our own food? Well, according to me, because of food-moralizing culture. The belief that there are virtuous food and unvirtuous foods, and virtuous and unvirtuous ways of eating. That there's some kind of moral virtue in laboring and suffering for your food, and that the purest virtue is in enjoying that suffering. This is where the ableism is a feature, not a bug. Advocates will openly say that their movement doesn't have to be disability-inclusive, because the point is that if everyone "grew their own food" and ate a "natural healthy diet," no one would be disabled.

I would at least respect the movement a little more if advocates framed it as a sacrifice, like "For the greater good, everyone must take up agriculture," instead of pretending that we're all supposed to enjoy it.

I would also respect it a little more if most of the people who advocated it actually did grow most of their own food. Farmers at least, as self-righteous about Agrarian Virtue as they can be, are doing actual food-growing work, and actually are aware of the intense difficulty and commitment involved in doing it. But most of the people -- at least from my anecdotal observation -- who promote and brag about "growing their own food" absolutely do not grow their own food. They supplement their groceries with some homegrown fare. Which is fine. But it is not agricultural self-sufficiency, by a long shot. They also, by and large, aren't saving any money by doing so. Which is also fine. What's not fine is using your hobby as an excuse to deny material resources to people who need them.

Like, in my analogy of a large-scale movement of an everyone-should-make-their-own-clothes-from-scratch movement, they would be the equivalent of people screaming about how no one should have access to off-the-rack clothes, they should make their own clothes from scratch, like we do! And then what most of the people saying that mean is that they buy off-the-rack clothes and attach their own buttons. You're not really doing it either.

And the thing is, I'm glad that some people truly enjoy agricultural labor! I wish agriculture were more accessible as a career to anyone who wanted to do it! Not only because I want everyone to be able to do the kind of work they enjoy, but, purely selfishly, I do need to eat food, so someone needs to grow it!

If we all want an economic system without exploitation or coercion, while still ensuring that all the necessary work still gets done, we have to actively support everyone's desire to contribute to society in whatever way best suits them! The world needs farmers, and the world also needs plumbers, electricians, teachers, writers, and lots of other jobs! But that requires being part of a society. It requires division and specialization of labor.

This answer is entirely too long. I'm sorry about that. I have a lot of feelings about how much I hate Food Culture.

[trickstarbrave]

I just had an au idea heavily inspired by Shamat and Riiju-lei….

Im half awake and on my phone btw pardon any typos or if it’s incoherent

Yknow Nerevarine becomes Nerevar and it’s the 4th era and all that. Except Nerevar and Voryn last left off on a really bad note. Voryn was already super corrupted by the heart but Nerevar thought he was at least semi-lucid. And Voryn had pretty harshly told Nerevar he hates him and never wants to see him again. That he’ll kill Nerevar himself to finally be free of him. And post killing dagoth ur this still fucks Nerevar up

He’s not evil Nerevar he just has. Bad ptsd from everything along w insomnia and psychosis (I have psychosis and I like writing characters with it) and he’s convinced that while he was madly in love w Voryn and tried to use that love to convince him out of the fight in the heart chamber… Voryn never really loved him. They were only friends for convenience on Voryn’s end and Voryn probably began to hate and resent him early on in the friendship but had to stay close bc Nerevar was king and could pose a threat if he let his real feelings show so he’d rather act like he enjoyed Nerevar’s company and subtly manipulated him just to survive

So when he finds Voryn’s reincarnation injured and low it’s… it gives him many mixed feelings. He’s happy to see Voryn’s face again, and also believes Voryn wouldn’t want Nerevar anywhere near him reincarnation or not. He feels guilty enjoying his reincarnation’s smile and laughter and sweet voice. But he tells himself over and over that it’s just for his sake, he would send the reincarnation somewhere else if he could but Nerevar is the best person to protect him at the moment. It’s just temporary and he’ll let the reincarnation now somewhere outside of Morrowind where he’ll actually be safe. He kept his distance enough that it’s not a super painful goodbye on the reincarnation’s heart, but he does wonder why he feels so cold and empty leaving. Nerevar wishes him good luck and sets him off to Skyrim

Where dragonborn shenanigans happen and alduin is slain. And then the gang goes to Solstheim where cult shit (outside miraak’s) happens and oops. Dagoth ur and Voryn Dagoth are both trying to get in that body. It’s a chaotic mess. Most of the cultists are dealt with but Neloth calls in Nerevar

And Nerevar. Well. He’s not happy to hear it at all but he comes running and does know the solution. He and Divayth were working on making sure dagoth ur never returns—Azura prophecized his reincarnation after all, and Nerevar interpreted in the most dire way possible assuming she meant dagoth ur and not Voryn. (To Nerevar of course she wouldn’t bother just telling him about Voryn coming back because it’s not like it concerns him. Voryn would want nothing to do with him, and hated him arguably more than the tribunal did. So she must be warning dagoth ur would be coming back)

The mask ritual is what they came up with to banish dagoth ur. But divayth warns him since he hypothesizes Voryn’s soul is completely bound to dagoth ur, a reincarnation choosing to banish dagoth ur will banish Voryn’s personality, memories, etc with it. He’ll truly never see Voryn again and won’t even have the chance to talk to him abt what happened and apologize. Nerevar says that’s definitely for the best, because as much as he wants it he doesn’t want to hurt Voryn either.

He would have done it on the reincarnation at the temple to be safe but his reincarnation seemed so sweet and lovely, he couldn’t bear the thought. The ritual is likely going to be painful and miserable and he didn’t do anything to deserve it, he didn’t choose to be Voryn’s reincarnation.

But he assures team dragonborn this is their best bet and if they encourage him he’ll be able to fight it off. He doesn’t tell them about his close relationship with Voryn or even that any bits of Voryn in him will also be banished because he doesn’t. Really think it’s relevant their friend is suffering trying to fight it off himself. And he’s in a bad way fluctuating rapidly from classic dagoth ur insults, screaming, confused screaming, and begging for Nerevar to help him—team dragonborn initially confused on who Nerevar is.

And the ritual is a success! Only it didn’t banish Voryn but instead made all of it surface in his mind and he’s out cold processing it for several days. It all seems to have worked though and he can’t sense dagoth ur’s influence on him in the slightest. Makes sure to get him all set up with healers. Though he still tries to keep his distance despite team dragonborn being like “hhhhhey db seemed to know you and kept calling for you to help what was that” and Nerevar laughs it off that he knew the man dagoth ur used to be as they were political allies for a time and basically coworkers AND he helped the reincarnation when he was injured one time so it probably all bled together. Hey he and divayth are going to be the only two ppl alive now who know there’s more to it than that his reincarnation doesn’t need to know how much bad blood there really was between them more than absolutely necessary. He’ll probably already be upset about dagoth ur and everything he doesn’t need to feel guilty about what Voryn said (and Nerevar does believe Voryn was probably in the right on that one). He does spill though that Voryn’s personality and memories will be gone AFTER the ritual is finished, but he tries to do that to reassure them that almost everything should be back to normal and they can forget this all every happened really

But uhhhhh yeah. Dragonborn wakes up with Voryn’s memories crying and demanding to go to morrowind to speak with Nerevar. Team dragonborn reassured him that Nerevar is already here on Solsthiem bc neloth called for him to help with the whole tribunal cult and weird possession shit. Lucien probably is like “he said he and your previous incarnation—well before dagoth ur—was your coworker of sorts. But that not to worry, your won’t remember anything from that man either!”

And the dragonborn has to deadpan “a little late for that. I remember everything” or smth along those lines. Just feeling absolutely awful for what he said to Nerevar before Nerevar was forced to kill him. And then gets told “he said you were political allies and coworkers” and has to go “COWORKERS?! WE WERE CLOSR FRIENDS FOR CENTURIES. THE CLOSEST OF FRIENDS. I TOLD HIM ALMOST EVERYTHING WHAT DO YOU MEAN COWORKERS?!?!” Before it dawns on him that ohhhhhh god neht actually thought this ritual would banish all of Voryn’s memories too and he’d never remember Nerevar again. But was willing to give that up to truly free him from dagoth ur’s influence like he couldn’t do so long ago. He’d rather lose his closest friend and the man he loved for a THIRD time than risk Voryn losing himself again.

[watery-melon-baller]

3, 7, and 40 for weekend and belos'

3. Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?

ooooh theres so many i would never touch. the first one that comes to mind is accidental pregnancy which like. i dont even write romance much. also hate student/teacher. uhh nonromance id go with. uh. i cannot think of anything rn lmao

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

ooooh id have to go with a snippet from a shera fic i did a while back. torn between two but ill go with the shorter one just because. not sure what counts as a snippet oops.

"Adora rolls her eyes, but stands up to join them. As she runs over, she knows that she’ll trip over her dress several times, and their clothes will all be covered in grass stains that will take forever to wash out. But Adora is here, in a future where there is no war to fight, where they can laugh freely and love and she doesn't feel selfish anymore for wanting a happy ending."

bad at explaining myself but like. its the potential of a happy ending, of not everything being perfect but it good, and thats worth living for. its a whole metaphor about feminity and wartime and accepting yourself. that its okay to be safe now, its okay to be soft and vulnerable and to start healing. apologies for being incoherent

40. Write an alternative ending to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one).

ohohohohhohho you know whats funny. i actually did have an alternate ending planned where hunter just. slept through the rebelllion and just woke up after it was over and was like "what the fuck." anyways i sat down and wrote this in a night (ive been saving the ask until it was finished so thats why im answering it late sorry!) so enjoy 2k words of that under the cut. apologies for typos i tried my best to read this over lmao. you can also read this on ao3 now yipee

Hunter stared at his clock, and scowled. Shit. He had 20 minutes until the coven head meeting!

He stood up, quickly scrambling for his notes.  He wanted to try and get there early, so he could figure out somewhat of a plan.

Flapjack lifted their head up, disrupted from their slumber. What is boy doing?

His foot slipped on a piece of paper, and he barely managed to catch himself on the edge of his desk. “I have a meeting! I need to go talk to the other coven heads, and-”

Have time! Should rest!

He scowled. “Flapjack, I don’t have time to rest! I need to prepare my notes! I still haven’t figure out what I’m going to say to Terra, or Adrian, or how to deal with the recent riots-”

Nap time! Boy too tired to think!

“You always say it’s nap time.”

Because boy is always tired!

He sighed, flopping back on his bed and letting the stack of papers in his arms scatter onto the floor. Flapjack did have a bit of a point. He had been staying up later and later, getting less sleep in favor of trying to take care of… well, everything.

He could get ready in ten minutes. It wouldn’t take long to teleport. Just closing his eyes for a few minutes surely wouldn’t hurt. And he wouldn’t actually fall asleep. He would just lay here!

“Just ten minutes. Then I have to go.”

Flapjack chirped. Nap! Nap!

“Not a nap, Flap,” He mumbled. “M just resting my eyes.”

He didn’t even realize he was falling asleep.

___

He woke up to the smell of smoke.

He shot up out of bed, head swiveling as he took stock of the room. Everything seemed to be in order, except-

“FLAPJACK!”

The bird had at some point moved inside his shirt. They peeked their head out, looking adorable as always, but Hunter wasn’t fooled.

He glared at them. “I said ten minutes.”

Boy needed nap!

He pointed at the window. “IT’S DARK OUTSIDE NOW! IT’S NIGHTTIME!”

Not that late. Sun just set. More like evening!

He dragged a hand down his face and groaned. “Flapjack. I missed the coven head meeting. The one thing I cannot, under any circumstances, miss.”

Flapjack did not look even remotely apologetic.

Hunter sighed, standing up and brushing back his hair. The smell of smoke was still lingering in the air, and he poked his head out the window, following the smell.

Ah. That might be a problem.

The area of the castle where Terra and Adrian had been fighting the other day looked even worse than before, mainly because it was on fire. Several scouts were running around in a panic, and if he listened closely, he could hear the faint sound of screaming.

Flapjack had moved to sit on his desk, and he slowly turned to glare at them. “Flapjack.”

They chirped.

“This is why we don’t skip coven head meetings! Look at what happened while I was asleep. The castle is on fire!” He sighed. 

Could be worse!

He flung his arms out, staring the bird down in frustration. “How could this be worse?!”

The Titan must have thought that was funny, because at that moment his door was slammed open with a war cry.

“GOLDEN GUARD!”

Something (someone?) charged through his door, and he screeched, barely avoiding their tackle. Whoever it was slammed into his wall, sending feathers flying everywhere. Why there were feathers, he didn’t know. Maybe they were because of the large wings that were almost smacking him in the face. 

Flapjack screeched, dive bombing the intruder, and Hunter quickly scrambled back, grabbing a heavy textbook detailing the criminal justice system and hurling it at their face. They shouted in pain, falling back onto the floor, and Hunter decided that was his cue to go.

He skidded out into the hallway, his slippers barely staying on his feet, while Flapjack circled nervously around his head. Behind him, he could hear the sound of the mystery attacker getting up, and he risked a glimpse behind him as Flapjack transformed into a staff.

“Golden Guard, kid, wait a second-”

Their voice sounded somewhat familiar, but he was too busy grabbing his staff. The last thing he saw before teleporting away into a haze of golden light was what looked to be some kind of harpy woman, heading straight for him.

He bounced across the castle, not having much of a destination in mind besides something that was away from the harpy lady. He materialized in a small room with dim lighting, and as he leaned against the brick walls he realized he was in the break room.

There were technically several break rooms scattered around the castle, but those were all empty storage closets scouts had converted into a break room in their free time with their own money. (Hunter may or may not have contributed to them with money from the castle treasury). This, however, was the official break room, the one all the coven heads used, and the one that the Emperor made somewhat of an attempt to maintain.

He hadn’t been here in a couple weeks, with the whole “accidentally killed my Uncle and now running the government from my bedroom” issue. Not much had changed since the last time he was here. The table was still stained, one of the chairs still had a wobbly leg, the sink was still dripping water because no one knew how to fix the leak, there were still a few spare coven cloaks lying in a pile on the floor, and the fridge still had several post-its about labeling your food properly and not letting it sit in the fridge for months and stink up the room.

The bulletin board, however, had a few changes. The ‘days since Kikimora tried to assassinate someone’ board had been reduced back to zero (last time he saw it it was at 11, which was a new record), and there were several notes stating that due to being understaffed, everyone would be getting extra shifts. Which was weird, because Hunter thought he was in charge of scheduling guard shifts, but he had handed off so many of his duties to Kikimora and random coven captains that he wasn’t sure anymore. Also, why had no one told him they were understaffed?

Someone had also brought in cookies, and there were still a few left. Yay! He grabbed one from the box, biting into it. 

“Want a piece? Its chocolate cricket flavor.” He broke off a small chunk, offering it to the palisman, who began gleefully pecking it. He finished eating the rest of the cookie, wandering over to the sink.

He smacked the faucet, hoping that maybe this time it would stop the leaking, but it did nothing. Like it did every time. He sighed, and turned towards the clawfee machine, turning it on. Next to the sink was a small collection of drying dishes, one of which included a mug that said ‘world’s best nephew’ in hot pink script.

“Hey Flapjack, I found my favorite mug!” He picked it up, thankfully finding it clean. He had been searching for that mug for weeks! Although, it seemed a bit inaccurate, with the whole ‘killed my uncle’ and ‘being a grimwalker of his brother’ thing. Nope, that was a problem for another time.

He shrugged, watching as the clawfee pot came to a boil. Flapjack was hopping around the table, pecking the various crumbs that had been left behind. Hunter should probably be stopping them, but he figured if Flapjack had survived this long with such little self preservation, they would probably be fine.

Probably.

He poured the clawfee into his mug, and moved to sit down in a chair. The good chair, not the one with the wobbly leg that made you rock back and forth every time you moved the slightest inch. 

He sighed, leaned back in his chair, and stared vacantly at the wall. “So,” he said calmly. “I think there might be a rebellion going on right now.”

Flapjack chirped anxiously. Hunter stared at the bird. “You know, this is why we don’t skip coven head meetings.”

He sipped on his clawfee, savoring the bitter taste. Oh, sweet caffeine, how he missed it. Having energy was fantastic.

“I should probably go out there and deal with that.”

Or don’t! Don’t risk yourself!

“Flapjack, I don’t think that's an option.”

Run away to woods! Can hunt for worms!

“I can’t eat worms! You can hunt all you want, I’ll forage for berries.”

Good plan!

Hunter groaned. “Terrible plan.” It wasn't like he had any ideas. He had been slowly preparing a runaway bag, but he had hoped he would have a few more weeks before he had to use it. This was his punishment for procrastinating. 

He stood up, taking a long swig of the coffee. “Okay, my stuff is in my room. Let’s see if we can try to sneak back there, and if anyone is still alive.” He looked down at himself, grimacing at his lack of armor. He was still in his PJS! 

Hesitantly, he lifted one of the coven scout cloaks from the pile on the floor, checking it over. There didn’t appear to be any visible stains, so he shrugged, putting it on.

Flapjack chirped, and fluttered on top of his head. Hunter sighed, but said nothing, pulling up his hood to cover the bird. He opened the door and hesitantly peeked his head out. There didn’t seem to be anyone, so he stepped out into the hallway, letting the door shut behind him.

Picking a random direction, he began walking, the only sound being his bunny slippers slapping against the tile. He nervously clutched his cloak, suddenly beginning to regret every decision he had ever made that had led him to this situation.

He rounded a corner to see a hallway that looked very much destroyed. A section of the ceiling had collapsed, and plants and abomination goo was everywhere. Several coven scouts were lying unconscious on the floor.

Hunter bit his lip, and with a start realized he was still holding his mug. There was still a little bit of clawfee in it, so he could throw it at someone and run if he needed to. The perfect weapon. What a plan.

He froze at the sound of footsteps, frantically looking for a place to hide. He slid behind a pile of rubble, hoping that he would just be mistaken for an unconscious scout.

The sound of footsteps grew closer, and then stopped. “I could have sworn I heard something over here,” a familiar voice muttered. Oh shit.

Hunter involuntarily flinched, shifting the rubble he was hiding behind with his movement.

“Over there!” Oh, he recognized that voice too, although it was only marginally better than the first one. Maybe if he stayed very very still, they wouldn’t notice him?

He yelped as abomination goo wrapped around his legs, dragging him out into the open and pinning his arms to his side. He scowled at the awkward angle his arm was held at, the clawfee slowly dripping out of his mug and onto the floor.

Darius crossed his arms, lifting an eyebrow at Hunter. “Ah, Little prince. You’re looking… unwell.”

Hunter, very maturely, stuck out his tongue, something that only caused Darius’s scowl to deepen.

Behind Darius, Luz cheerfully waved at him. “Hi Hunter! You kind of caught us at a bad time.” She turned down the hallway, cupping a hand to her mouth. “HEY GUYS, WE FOUND HUNTER! OVER HERE!” 

Darius winced at her yelling, rubbing his ears. Hunter wished he could do the same, because wow Luz could shout loud.

The two of them turned back to face him and he grimaced. “Uh, hi?” He said awkwardly. Maybe they would be nice and just kill him right away. Luz could probably convince them not to hurt Flapjack.

Luz shoved her hands in her pockets, grinning casually. “Hunter, my man! I’ve been looking for you! Sorry about the whole, uh, overthrowing the government thing.”

‘It’s fine,” He said, even though it was very much not fine. “It was already falling apart anyways.”

Darius stepped towards him, frowning. “About that, actually. We have quite a few questions to ask you, Golden Guard.”

Luz’s grin became just a bit more shaky. “Not bad questions! Just, uh, questions. It’ll be great!” She did not sound convinced of her own words. “It’s fine.”

Hunter sighed. He should have just stayed in bed. This was all Flapjack’s fault. He was never trusting that adorable little bird again, no matter how cute they were.

[kippentrash]

What's your favourite Tyrus scene and why?

…I feel like TJ right now “anything but that” DKSAJDLKSJA

Jk I’ll answer but oh god that’s a hard one when I’m already conflicted over what my favorite scenes are… like there are SO MANY GOOD TYRUS SCENES. Watch me change my mind as soon as I post this.

Ok my top 3 favorite Tyrus scenes are probably the hallway scene in “A Walker To Remember”,  swings 2.0 from “The New Girls”, or the bench scene from “We Were Here.” Do you care if I explain them all? Because I haven’t decided on a singular one. I’ll do it anyway under the cut because its… long LOL

Also if anyone wants to talk about their top 3 Tyrus scenes on here or wants to drop into my ask box to talk about their top 3 Tyrus scenes, be my guest! I’m curious about yall’s fav scenes too :3

1) The Hallway Scene

The hallway scene in “A Walker To Remember” is one of my favorite Tyrus scenes not necessarily because it was a romantic moment or a HUGE HISTORICAL moment in their relationship, but because it’s such a good scene for both of their characters individually. TJ opens up about his dyscalculia, Cyrus reassures him and is there for him.

For TJ, it’s him finding someone he’s comfortable enough to talk to about his dyscalculia and being reassured that “There’s NOTHING wrong with you.” (Which, if you couldn’t tell from my blog title, is one of my favorite quotes in the show.) It’s showing he’s comfortable enough with Cyrus to come out about something, and though it’s not about his sexuality, it’s still about something he’s extremely insecure about. But he’s being told by someone he trusts and someone he cares about that it’s okay, he can overcome it, and he doesn’t need to be ashamed. Though the swing scene 1.0 is the first time we see him let his guard down, this scene is the first time we see TJ COMPLETELY open up. And that made me happy. 

For Cyrus, it’s the first time as far as I can remember that we really see “therapist Cyrus” come into play. Yes, before that point both he and Buffy were there for Andi and Jonah in different occasions, but this is the first time I can think of where he’s talking to someone ALONE. Not only that, but this is the first time Cyrus really leaves his friends to seek TJ out when he’s feeling bad and the first time he really protects TJ from his friends when Andi suggests yelling at him with megaphones a little earlier. While before we know he likes TJ as a person from the muffin, swings, and bar mitzfah, this is the first time we actually got to see how much he CARES about TJ too by specifically going to make sure he’s okay and lend an ear.

And TJ sums up what Cyrus does for him best with the single phrase “You’re the one who really helped me.”

2) Swings 2.0

Okay I don’t think this one is as hard to explain why I like it. It’s probably the first TRULY romantically coded Tyrus scene. Not to say that the ones before weren’t romantic, but like. REALLY romantic. It’s hard to explain.

Scenes before were soft and cute and heartwarming and fun, but I think this was the first scene where it really… carried that amount of weight. It set up for the challah scene and golf cart flirting scene and the bench scene really well, but the sheer amount of feeling in this scene was the first Tyrus scene that really hit me with that second-hand embarrassment. I was honestly blushing by the end of it lmao.

Everything about this scene made me feel like it was really important and beautiful. From the cinematography to the acting to the parallels to the actual words spoken, everything about it was just breathtaking to me. First time it came out, I think I wrote a wholeass chunk about what I loved about it. But at this point it’s been awhile since I’ve actually watched it so… I’m at a loss for words. But the fact it was at “their spot”, the fact that it was the first real conflict BETWEEN the two of them, the fact that it truly showed that they were equals as they each stood their ground, the fact they looked each other dead in the eye while they bantered? And the fact that as soon as TJ took the step to break the bantering to show how much he really cared about Cyrus they both shared a soft smile and were able to be back on good terms without much more words needed? Breathtaking. All of it. Luke and Josh really had me on the edge of my seat the entire scene.

Plus how can I not love the fact where it really nailed in the fact that for TJ, Cyrus was truly “The only person he can talk to like this.”

3) The Bench Scene

So. So so so so SO. What do I have to say about this that hasn’t already been said. It’s the moment they became CANON. The FIRST canon gay couple in Disney Channel history. What more do I need to say?

But really, again. Similar to why I love the swings 2.0, the cinematography, the acting, and this time not necessarily the words spoken but the fact that they were able to say so much with so little words was beautiful. While the last two scenes reaffirmed how much impact their words have on each other, this scene instead was the one that acts as a reminder that sometimes the actions SCREAM above the words.

Seriously, the softness of both their voices, the tentative twitch of TJ’s hand as he tried to hold Cyrus’s, the way they went from hesitant to relieved when they interlaced their fingers? It was beautiful. You could actually feel the weight of their sighs and soft smiles at the end of it, drilling it home that this is it. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, the moment THEY’VE been waiting for. They finally knew for certain they weren’t alone in what they were feeling, and they didn’t even need to voice it. I just. I loved it.

Plus, the campfire in the background, the way they looked at each other, how comfortable they are able to be with one another and how they were able to be even MORE comfortable once their feelings were really out in the open? How could I not love this scene? Most romantic scene on Disney Channel as far as I’m concerned.

Sorry this was so long. I just… have so many feelings on not only Tyrus but the scenes LMFAO. I was thinking of doing a top 10 Andi Mack scenes post, but maybe I’ll just… type which scenes they are not why I love them. First time to cut it down to 10 though lol.

If you made it this far…. SUPER DUPER BROWNIE POINTS YAY! And the gift of Tyrus being canon. Not from me from Josh, Luke, Terri, and the rest of the cast and crew lol

This isnt in order btw i can’t decide the #1, 2, and 3 bw these yet

[yourultraarchive]

How would you create a design for your MHA oc? I was in the process of creating my Oc since November, and still can't get her design 😅 (I got her quirk and still in the process of her last name). I know the whole process when you create a MHA character.They're design has something to do with their Quirk and personality, but I can't figure out how to make it. I already imagined how it would look but when I illustrated it, it looked kinda bland especially the colors. I already researched on character design and what makes it good and fitting and got nothing 😅.

Hmm, that’s a bit of a situation isn’t it?

It sounds like you have a starting point--name, quirk, and personality. When you say “bland”, do you mean the personality doesn’t show through, or that the costume/hair/etc. are too plain? If the former is an issue, I think the thing with most character creators is that they do make up a story/backstory for characters to see how they fit in the world first, and doing that helps bring the character to life enough to give them a physical appearance. It’s kinda like reading a book or listening to a podcast, and becoming so invested in a character you can imagine what they look like and you really gotta draw fanart for it, y’know? In this case, it’s like becoming a fan of your own character--what moments in their story can you imagine that you really wanna bring to life with a drawing? For instance, they have a dramatic entrance: can you clearly imagine what their first appearance is when they’re first stepping into the classroom at UA, or the epic save they just pulled to help someone else out? Or is there a soft intimate moment between your character and their best friend that might showcase the expression and range you think they may have?

If your problem is more like, figuring out their hairdo or eye shape or hero costume or something? I mean, if something’s not working, just change it. Or give them multiple looks--anime characters may wear the same hairdo everyday but that’s a limitation of the media they’re in. In real life if someone doesn’t like their long hair, they cut it, or they could change from pigtails to ponytails every other day if they feel like it. Similar can be said of characters--if you don’t like how they look, maybe start fresh. If you’re dead set on a certain feature (like say, they definitely have pointy ears, or blue hair), you can probably build your character around that rather than trying to build a character and fitting those features in. (It sounds like a similar process, I know, but it’s the difference between “I want this character to have square glasses, but I think this boxy-looking man’s face shape doesn’t fit it quite right, so maybe this character might look better as a girl” and “I’ve designed this character and, oh right, I wanted him to have glasses, I guess I’ll just put those on even though they don’t go with the design I initially made”. I think anyway?)

The problem with colors can probably easily be fixed by playing around with palettes, though if you’re lacking inspiration I suggest maybe looking at posts or art guides with color palettes? You know, like those posts that are like “here’s 20 different sets of 5 colors, draw a picture using only 1 set”--you don’t have to do those challenges of course, but using the color palettes themselves might prove to be interesting since they’re kinda made to look good together, blending or contrasting or complimenting or whathaveyou.

I don’t know what else you might need help on?? But hopefully that helped.

-archivist

[moonhcnbin-blog]

hey i literally suck at intros but uh here we go. my name’s wren ( ren’s cool too, whatever floats your boat tbh. ) i’m twenty-one, he/him and currently trying and failing to get a film degree. most of the time i’m really into pre-plotting interactions and established relationships, however i’m p flexible when it comes to plotting n all that and i’ll most likely spam you with a whole lotta headcanons in-between memes and vines that remind me of our muses if we get a plot going bc i’m an annoying fucker. below i’ve listed some stats, a little background / list of nonsensical headcanons and some potential connections for hanbin so give this a like or hmu if you wanna plot. ♡

𝙏𝙇;𝘿𝙍 —

is  that  a  bird  or  a  plane  ?  nah  ,  it’s  just  MOON HANBIN  .  word  on  the  street  is  that  the  TWENTY  year  old  ,  CISMALE  ,  looks  an  awful  lot  like  LEE MINHO  ,  but  i  just  don’t  see  it  .  strangers  believe  them  to  be  ABRASIVE  and  PERFIDIOUS  ,  but  their  friends  will  tell  you  they’re  DEBONAIR  and  INSOUCIANT  . they associate themselves with neon lights at dawn, missed calls, feeling lonely at his own party & sleeping through morning lectures in a stranger's bed.

𝘗𝘙𝘖𝘍𝘐𝘓𝘌 — 

name: moon hanbin

birth date: 10 / 8 / 1998

age: twenty

starsign: leo

hometown: seoul, south korea

pronouns: he / him

height: 5′9

romantic orientation: demiromantic

sexual orientation: pansexual

occupation: law student

jung type: enfj

𝙃𝙀𝘼𝘿𝘾𝘼𝙉𝙊𝙉𝙎 —

— hanbin was born in seoul to a relatively wealthy family, though riches & vanity far outweighed warmth in the moon household, with parents that viewed their marriage only in the most basic of its definitions, merely a legally binding contract that would cause only more strife if broken. raised mostly by nannies and his parents’ staff, hanbin spent his formative years feeling a stranger in his own home, raised within a place that permeated endless indifference.

— needless to say, the concept of relationships built off of mutual love & respect was one that has appeared foreign to hanbin from an early age, the results of this loveless & spoiled upbringing resulting in the formation of a persona one wouldn’t be mistaken in describing as cold, sarcastic & arrogant, perfectly practiced to the point of reality in order to hide his true nature.

— homeschooled until high school, hanbin found somewhat of a new lease of life once tasting ( relative ) freedom for the first time, the lack of attention & validation found at home leading the boy to pursue such luxuries in his teenage years by winning his peers over with his practiced charm. though only a semblance of genuine friendship was to be found in the growing social circle hanbin had accumulated, the unconscious desire to be liked & admired driving the boy to hone a certain skill of deception, an exterior that only revealed a fraction of his true feelings, that people were collectables, projects and conveniently expendable.

— upon graduating high school with relative success & moving to daegu to pursue a degree in law handpicked for him by his father, the air of superiority & general distaste for the majority of people surrounding him followed hanbin, though over the years the skill of hiding such traits has become second nature to him & many that only knew him in passing would perhaps consider him a jovial, albeit distant, individual.

— with relative lack of interest in his degree, hanbin has pursued other methods of making his time away from home worthwhile, a regular partier & president of his college’s law society satiating the rebellious streak he never quite outgrew and the continued desire of shallow popularity and admiration.

— despite his dislike of many, hanbin cares for & enjoys the company of those few he considers his friends, being the closest to his true self with them as he is capable of after years of sculpting a version of himself most appealing, yet still maintaining a level of distance between them and his true personality & emotions; with an unconscious fear of romantic relationships & emotional vulnerability, hanbin has never before experienced a real relationship, opting for a more casual route & often being flippant toward other’s emotions in these situations.

— but still, the hollowness of temporary & surficial connections has left hanbin with a ceaseless lack of fulfilment that synthetic pleasures & carnal desires have long since satiated fully, the idea of finding something real, a real kind of happiness becoming more alluring with each passing day.

𝘾𝙊𝙉𝙉𝙀𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉𝙎 — ( note: these have been left purposefully vague / lacking in detail so there’s enough room for extra plotting and changing around the dynamic of the connection. ) 

— a best friend that knows hanbin better than anyone else, the only person that he truly trusts and cares for. maybe one side feels More Than Platonic™ feelings for the other but it’s unrequited because i love to hurt

— someone that sees through hanbin’s bullshit and they’re rivals of sorts. give me pettiness and constant trying to take the other down

— a bad influence to hanbin’s own bad influence, they either party too much or get involved in some risky business

— a hookup that gives hanbin a dose of his own medicine, leaves him on read and makes him feel like the one having to do all the work for once

— a step-sibling from his father’s second marriage, could be amicable-ish or resentful on one or both sides

— a dealer that hanbin strikes up an unlikely friendship with

— another student hanbin tutors although he finds the job increasingly tiresome and is lowkey tempted to just corrupt this other kid ( doesn’t have to be another law student i headcanon that hanbin would be ok at tutoring in most subjects except for math bc math is the devil )

— a roommate / flatmate, totally different personalities with totally different ways of living so there’s tension n shit

— an ex that hanbin left because he got scared of having feelings for once and totally ditched and yeah suffice to say it really didn’t end well and a lot was left unsaid ( this one really depends on the muse and plotting and yeah chemistry obviously )

[concubuck]

What happened after the succubus left? How did Al finally manage to, let's say, bring himself down to "normal"?

Instead of answering this normally I just wrote a fic bc that's more interesting. Follow up to this fic.

(It bears clarifying that the person who left wasn't a succubus. She's a normal human sex worker—just one that's had a few centuries of experience marketing specifically to succubi. She just does this for the money, not because she's got a succubus's biological need to fuck.)

This fic takes place several weeks after the last one, during which time Alastor's finally hauled himself outside to seek more extreme solutions and go to the doctor. I plan to write that scene later but tl;dr the doctor visit goes like "you say you're fucking? but you're STILL horny? damn bitch i dunno that's supposed to work, your bloodwork looks normal idk what's wrong 🤷"

I've only very loosely proofread this, so I apologize for any typos and/or incoherency.

✨💖 Alastor figures out how to orgasm 💖✨

Warnings for attempted & referenced sexual assault/rape, alcoholism, and horrendous hygiene (both personal & environmental).

###

Alastor didn't think he'd been sober for the last two weeks.

He hadn't drunk like this since the seventies, when the weight of Hell had been too heavy for him to bear, and he'd spent most of his time trying to artificially hasten the arrival of Armageddon via serial blackouts. With the dispassionate distance with which he could now scrutinize his former human life, he could tell now that he'd spent the seventies wanting to die.

He didn't want to die now, did he?

No, he didn't. Not after he'd fought so hard to live again. He just wanted to stop feeling like this. God, he'd give anything to stop feeling like this.

The short reprieves granted by whiskey dick were the only thing keeping him going. The reprieves were irregular—he'd been lied to about how much alcohol would dampen his libido. And they were impossible to really enjoy—by the time he was drunk enough to stop feeling his constant arousal, he was also too drunk to feel anything else. But any port in a storm.

He'd started making rare trips out of his temporary quarters; first to try to find solutions to his problem, then to ask for help. Today, on his way home from the doctor, he stopped in at a bar for the first time since he'd changed. He couldn't keep asking for extensions on his new succubus stipend forever. Soon he'd lose his free housing and his one source of income, and he'd have to make a choice: either he had to get a job, or he had to return to getting his food and lodgings the way he had for the last eighty-five years—by using the Radio Demon's reputation to terrify people into giving him what he wanted for free. One meant trying to get stable employment while too horny to function; the other meant returning to the limelight and letting all of Hell see he was too horny to function; and both meant he had to get used to being out in public again. If he was going to have to be horny in public anyway, a bar was as good a place as any to start.

So he found a dive, claimed a booth—letting the shadows and seats form a flimsy shield between his wretched body and any curious customers—and grimly got to work drinking himself into a stupor.

###

"You doing alright there, sweetheart?"

Alastor didn't register the fact that he was supposed to be "sweetheart" until somebody shook his shoulder. He swatted the hand away irritably and sat up; he hadn't even realized he'd laid his head down amongst his empty glasses. "What?" he croaked.

"You alright there?" the sinner repeated. He was some kind of mammalian sinner with a twitchy, nervous snout, a buzz cut, and a t-shirt displaying the Monopoly Man with a no doubt witty caption that Alastor couldn't focus on well enough to read.

"Fine. I'm just..." He couldn't think of any excuse that didn't sound pathetic. He was sure he looked pathetic; huddled up in a sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants like he was too sick to dress himself. He'd thought the loose pants would be more accommodating to his perpetual boner, but they really just gave it more room to tent up. They weren't even a matching set of sweats. He didn't even have shoes on. He rubbed his eyes and asked, "Am I being kicked out?

"No, no, sweetie. Nothing like that. I just wanted to make sure you're okay." The sinner spoke with the sort of soft baby tone used to soothe small skittish animals. "Maybe you need help home?

Not even blackout drunk would Alastor trust that line. He'd been in Hell too long.

His mental image of himself shifted from sickly invalid to sexy victim. He realized now how he really looked—a sex demon (translation: a being undeserving of humane treatment and designed only to fuck you), face flushed and forehead sweaty and eyes glazed with arousal, sitting awkwardly to accommodate his boner, too wasted to stay awake in the middle of the day, all alone. Easy prey. Cheap meat.

Did he care?

No.

So what if Mr. Monopoly wanted to use Alastor's body? Alastor didn't want to use it. If Alastor could let him take it off his hands permanently, he would. Mr. Monopoly could certainly borrow it.

"Sure." He slid out of the booth and got to his feet. The sinner had been practically bent double over Alastor, crowding him into his seat, one hand on the seat back and the other hand extended to help him up; but when Alastor stood, the sinner took a hasty step back, retracting his hand. Why? Because Alastor hadn't accepted the hand? Because the sinner hadn't expected his pretty drunk "sweetheart" to be so tall—or male? Because he'd recognized Alastor as the Radio Demon?

That was a problem for the sinner and his Uncle Pennybags shirt to deal with—but it certainly wasn't Alastor's problem. He was leaving, with or without company. He trudged toward the door, stumbling slightly on an uneven floorboard and clinging to the back of a booth seat for balance.

And then an arm slid around his waist to squeeze his hip, pulling him close to the sinner's side; even through Alastor's sweater, the arm felt so fleshy and human that he compulsively hitched up his shoulders and lifted his hands from revulsion at the mere possibility of brushing naked skin.

"Careful, sweetie. Don't want you getting hurt," Pennybags said, and Alastor was too tired to laugh at him. "You're in a bad shape, aren'cha?"

"I'm not that bad," Alastor insisted, noting distantly that the sinner's grip redirected Alastor's walk to force him to stumble over the sinner's feet and lean on the sinner for support.

"Maybe you should come home with me, so I can make sure nothing happens to you while you sober up," Mr. Monopoly went on, as if Alastor had never spoken. "It'd be a shame if something happened to you—especially pretty as you are." The hand on Alastor's hip slid down beneath the hem of his sweater to possessively squeeze one of Alastor's ass cheeks.

Something surged up from Alastor's groin into his chest—like an underground coal fire suddenly erupting into open air, dark mining shafts that had previously only belched dirty smelly smoke now erupting bright geysers of fire. 

He stopped and seized the sinner's shoulder, squeezing tight. He didn't understand why he wasn't ripping the offending arm from its socket.

The sinner tried to keep walking, and only stopped after a couple of tugs revealed that Alastor was rooted to the spot too securely to simply drag along. 

"You don't have anything to worry about," the sinner said warily. He'd tried to move his hand a little higher on Alastor's ass, to just below the small of his back, as if he'd only accidentally grabbed so low. "I'm not gonna let anybody hurt you, sweetheart."

Alastor let out a low, wry laugh that made the sinner tense up against him. "I'm not worried. Don't you concern yourself over me..." his gaze fell on the mascot on the sinner's shirt, "... Uncle Pennybags."

"Uncle what?" Apparently suspecting he'd somehow been duped, Monopoly Man's voice thickened with anger. "Hey, cuntcubus, I'm trying to do you a favor. I'm not about to pay for—"

The sudden slackening of Mr. Monopoly's interest was like a heavy curtain falling on Alastor's mind again, dousing the lights and smothering the air. Alastor wheeled around, grabbed both of Monopoly Man's shoulders, and leaned down into his face. "I do not want," he hissed, "your money."

Pennybags stared up at Alastor in alarm; and then, narrowing his eyes, he said, "Oh yeah? You want this?" Without warning, he slid his hand down Alastor's loose waistband, groping at the shaft that hadn't been flaccid since the last time Alastor chopped it off.

Alastor's knees buckled so dramatically that his height dropped to eye-level with the sinner. He let out a quiet gasp like the sound of a decommissioned radio station turning off for the last time. Alastor didn't remember dying, didn't remember how it had felt. Didn't remember the face of the man who'd shot him. He lost those memories when he lost his humanity. But the look in this sinner's eyes—hungry, lecherous, roving over Alastor's face and throat as if deciding where to bite first—surely that had to be similar to how his killer had looked at him. Surely dying had to feel like this: exhilarating.

"Oh, you like that, bitch?"

Alastor didn't know if he liked it. Certainly it wasn't a very good handjob; he'd had dozens of better ones, not even counting the thousands he'd given himself. But God—it teased at him, taunting him with the possibility of satisfying the craving that had been torturing him for almost half a year. Was that the same as "liking" it? Do you like water when you're thirsty?

He wasn't sober enough to care about the distinction. Instead of answering the question, he growled, "We don't need to go all the way back to your place, do we?"

A filthy leer stretched across the sinner's snout. Alastor felt his member throb in the sinner's grip.

###

They were in a cramped alleyway near the bar. Alastor's back was against a brick wall so rough that its friction on his sweatshirt was enough to keep him from sliding down to the filthy pavement even though Pennybags had Alastor's hooves lifted into the air. The narrow gap between two buildings reeked of years of alcoholic urine and overflowing dumpsters festering in Hell's heat. On the opposite wall, Alastor stared blankly at a mishmash of illegible graffiti, the only bit of which he could discern was two words stacked on top of each other reading "DAWG PISS". If someone bottled the alley's fragrance as a cologne, that was what it would be called.

He could hardly keep track of his surroundings.

There was an electrified shaft of pure gold shoved up his anus.

It sent fluttering sparks dancing through his stomach and bolts of lightning jolting up his spine. He swore it felt so good he almost passed out. All of it felt so good. The oily fingers peeling away his clothing and pawing at his hips and ass and thighs and kthumbing at his nipples. The hot, stinking breath panting on his bare skin and wheezing in his face. The lips and tongue lapping at his neck and shoulders and transferring the taste of Alastor's own unwashed sweat to his lips. The eyes roving across his naked flesh, invisible and yet blazing hot, like the Martian Heat-Ray that turns men into flame.

And then the violating instrument itself, humping up into Alastor's shithole, sweaty hairy balls slapping against Alastor's sweaty hairy ass—and it felt divine. It felt like God Himself descending from heaven to tell Alastor He personally forgave him for ripping the divinity out of his eternal soul, and then puckering up His Lips to plant a sweet, loving kiss right on the ring of Alastor's anal sphincter.

He could feel himself wailing in pleasure; he could hear snips of music playing, chaotic, discordant, only a couple of seconds at a time before switching to another song. He twisted his ankles together behind the sinner's ass and clawed at the back of his stupid Monopoly t-shirt, trying to pull him closer, pull him deeper. He wanted to suck in every last drop of his savior's ambrosial attention. He wanted to devour the sinner's hunger for him.

When Pennybags grunted in pain and muttered "Keep your claws to yourself, bitch," it was like a heavy had passed in front of the sun. The electricity shooting up from the shaft buried in him stopped, leaving him with the nauseating feeling that all he really had was a lump of spongy living meat stuck up his ass.

"Sorry," Alastor said, voice a breathless whisper, hardly discernible from white noise; he let go of Mr. Monopoly, flattening his hands on the brick wall.

"Better," Monopoly grunted, still disgruntled—but approving. The clouds parted. The sunshine returned. Alastor's backbone lit up like the neon signs on Lust's casino strip.

Alastor came so hard he slammed his head back against the brick wall.

His claws dug into the brick wall so hard that a couple snapped. His vision momentarily went black. When his sight cleared up enough for DAWG PISS to swim back into view, the sinner was still hammering his ass like an oil derrick digging for crude.

He came again.

"Shut up," the sinner hissed, clamping a hand over Alastor's mouth to try to silence his screams. "You noisy prick. Do you want the whole fuckin' street to hear us?"

He did, he did, he did. He moaned openly against the sinner's hand, feeling his cheeks grow damp as his tears were caught by the sinner's fingers.

"Oh, you like it that much?" the sinner panted. "Huh? Do you?"

Alastor could feel his nuts tightening again. The sinner was turned on because Alastor was turned on by him. Alastor knew this like a fact despite never being told: the same way he first recognized the smell of fear in someone's sweat; the same way he sometimes instantly knew his shot was fatal when he dropped a deer or man; the same way in Paris during the Great War he'd always known exactly which direction and how far the Eiffel Tower was even though he'd never touched a radio before and didn't even know yet that the Eiffel was a functional radio tower. He knew it like an instinct he didn't know he had. The sinner was turned on by the fact that Alastor into this. He was turned on by Alastor.

He tightened his thighs around the sinner's waist and answered his question with a frantic nod.

The sinner grunted and slammed hard into Alastor's ass.

Alastor saw stars. He'd never dreamed it could feel so good.

He wasn't sure if he came twice more or if was just one long orgasm. When it was over, he was leaning against the wall by himself, his buttocks pressed to the rough brick with a stranger's seed stuck between his ass cheeks, hands on knees, legs trembling, breath heaving, mind reeling. What happened? Why was it different?

It wasn't a great fuck. He'd had great fucks. He'd had the best fucks a desperate succubus with a lot of spare money could buy. But great fucks hadn't satisfied Alastor. This slob hadn't bothered to touch Alastor's dick once they were outside and if he'd ever hit Alastor's prostate it had been a lucky accident. There was nothing special about his dick. There was certainly nothing special about the person that the dick was attached to. It could have been anybody, Alastor was sure of that, and it wouldn't have made a difference.

So why did it make a difference?

"You oughta shave your ass," Pennybags said, buttoning his shorts. "Or get a bikini wax, shit. Nobody wants to fuck your hairy dingleberries."

He was finished? He was leaving? Already? That hadn't even been five minutes. Alastor was picking up stations that hadn't even completed a commercial break during the time they spent screwing.

"That's not all, is it?" Alastor had tasted something close to satisfaction for the first time since his rebirth. He wasn't ready to give it up. He wasn't satisfied yet. 

"What?" Pennybags gave him an irritated look. "You expect me to kiss you goodbye? Fuck." He looked down to see why his shorts weren't zipping (he'd gotten his shirt caught in the zipper teeth), and muttered, "I thought you were drunker." He turned away from Alastor to trudge back toward the street.

"Oh, I want a lot more than a kiss!" Alastor seized Mr. Monopoly's arm, yanked him back, and swung him hard against the alley wall. Half his studio audience groaned "oooh," like an audience watching a boxer get laid flat; the other half squealed with laughter like they'd just watched a Stooge mangle one of his two brothers.

The sinner gasped and coughed, trying to get back the breath Alastor had knocked out of him. "Wh—what—?"

Before he recovered enough to push himself up, Alastor shoved him back against the wall, one hand on each of the sinner's forearms to pin him in place, his knees jammed between the sinner's; gravity tilted sharply, pulling them both toward the wall as though it were the ground, with Alastor on top. At the feeling of the world rotating ninety degrees beneath him, the sinner spasmed like he was waking up from a dream of falling ; Alastor was close enough to him that the lank, greasy hair that had been draped on his shoulders now hung in the sinner's face.

"I said," Alastor repeated, "I want more than a kiss." His hands left the sinner's wrists, creeping up to seize his face roughly, in a parody of a tender hold, one of his broken claws running along his muzzle; but the shadow of his hands remained on the sinner's wrists, still pinning him in place. His shadow's chin jutted over Alastor's shoulder, tongue lolling out to drip smoky drool and lick hungrily at the sweat on Alastor's neck, panting silently.

Alastor went on, "After all, you were so eager to show me a good time—whether or not I wanted one. It's only polite to return the favor!" His audience's uncanny canned laughter echoed between the tight brick walls.

"Fuck," the sinner wheezed. "You're the—the—the Radio—" His stuttering attempt to name Alastor was drowned out by a louder, wicked laugh from the studio audience.

"Just figured it out?" he cooed, fumbling with the button of the sinner's pants. "I would have thought the fact that I play radio stations would have been a bigger clue." His shadow humped eagerly at Alastor's own ass, the semi-corporeal dick using the sinner's seed as lubricant. Alastor arched his back, groaning, pressing his ass against the shadow and his chest against the sinner.

"I thought—fuckin'—you had a phone in your pocket and we were bumping the skip button—?"

Alastor laughed darkly. "How creative." He leaned back to squint drunkenly at the sinner's shorts, trying to figure out why the fly wasn't unzipping. (The sinner's shirt was still caught in the zipper teeth.) With a sigh, he yanked the shorts down to the sinner's calves. 

The sinner used the opportunity to try to clamp his knees together.

"Careful, sweetie," Alastor chided. "Don't want you getting hurt." A couple more enthralled shades slunk out of the shadows, each seizing the sinner's knees and pulling them wide apart. Alastor grabbed his own cock to stroke it back to full hardness—noting in delight that for a moment it had only been half erect. "You don't have anything to worry about." Relying on his own seed to act as a lubricant, grinning triumphantly at the sinner's terrified face—oh, how he'd missed terrifying people!—he rubbed the head beneath the sinner's balls and then rutted experimentally between his ass cheeks.

Something was wrong. It felt like nothing.

No, it was so much worse than nothing: it simply felt like the absence of whatever had been right. That uncurtaining of his mind, the sunlight, the electricity, the taste of divinity. And in the absence of what felt right, everything awful about sex that had been buried bubbled back up. The nausea, the exposure, the vulnerability; his skin crawling so hard it felt like it would squirm off of him and wriggle into the dumpster like a skin-shaped blanket of maggots; the hyperawareness of the proximity of his taint to a stranger's taint, like the way food poisoning cuts your awareness of the world down to a single, interminable, inescapable second of agony.

Food poisoning. That phrase stuck in his mind. Food poisoning. He jerked his hips back.

Maybe he had to keep bottoming? He grabbed the sinner's flaccid cock. Trying to keep a grip on it felt like trying to scoop a slurry of melted flesh out of the acid bath that had melted it. Alastor jerked his hand back, stumbling backward into proper gravity in his haste to get away from the sinner.

Now that Alastor wasn't actively attempting to satiate his needs, his shadow—possessed of the same frenzied appetite but too stupid to know what wouldn't satisfy it—tried to twist around Alastor and reach for the sinner itself.

Alastor seized the shadow roughly and dragging it away from its target, hissing, "Stop it." There was no point. He knew from experience that trying to power through his revulsion wouldn't make any sparks fly. This felt no different from his every other attempt to drag a sinner into some dark alley and take whatever it was he needed. It was gone.

Recognizing the momentary escape route, the sinner tried to push off the wall and, when that didn't fix gravity, scrambled on hands and knees down the wall toward the ground. When he escaped the radius of Alastor's magic back into normal gravity, he slipped off the wall and fell shoulder-first to the ground with a yelp, then scrambled back upright to run.

Alastor allowed his worthless prey to flee, watching despairingly as the sinner stumbled over his own shorts and disappeared around the corner into the street. God, he'd been so close to satisfaction, he knew it, he'd been so close. What had been different?

His shadow despondently pawed at Alastor's groin. Alastor wrenched its hands off, snarling at its empty face until he'd wrestled it back into laying against the wall and passively mimicking Alastor's movements. And then he slumped against the wall as well, too despondent himself to even bother pulling his sweatpants back up.

What had been different? What had been happening when Alastor came (God, the best orgasms of Alastor's life)? What had he been thinking about?

He'd been thinking—he'd realized that Pennybags was turned on by the fact that Alastor was turned on by him. It was a laughable thought—Alastor was struggling to figure out what he had been turned on by, but it sure as hell wasn't that grotesque underdressed fool.

But just remembering his realization made his member twitch again. 

Chase it. The sinner was more turned on when Alastor was "attracted" to him. He'd been attracted to Alastor—(Alastor's hand slid down to stroke himself off)—and that meant... that meant... what?

And then, it had all fallen apart when Alastor had looked in his eyes and saw—no longer attraction—fear.

Alastor was turned on when the sinner was attracted to him.

Everything, everything he'd fucked and been fucked by so far—hands and toys and shadows and tentacles and whores and victims—was at best indifferent to him, at worst terrified. Nothing he'd touched so far had wanted him—until now.

His head swam, dizzy with alcohol and arousal. Another thin rope of seed spurted from his tip at just the thought of that: wanted, wanted, wanted him. Wanted him. Watching Alastor hungrily, gaze and hands roving over his body, like he was the only meal that could satiate the stranger's strange appetite, desiring his body like a starving beast desires a piece of hot, juicy, fresh, fleshy meat—

Alastor came hard again, crumpling to his knees, crying out—and this time there was nobody to muffle his cries. He screamed louder, voice echoing and raw with distortion, thighs spread and hips pumping into his fist, imagining windows overhead opening and heads poking out and passers-by peering in from the street and focusing on him like a pack of wolves circling an injured deer, and he keened louder, as if calling the predators in to feast on him, and he understood then the instincts of the cat yowling in heat.

And then the orgasm faded. He was alone; nobody had seen him. Thank God. He dropped to sit on the filthy ground and slumped against the wall, too exhausted to care about what rubbish he was planting his ass on, moaning as he tried to catch his breath.

He was satisfied.

It felt like a fever had broken. His mind was clear. His cock was going soft in his grip. He was soft. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like. He marveled admiringly at how much smaller his member was when it was off-duty; had he seen it like that since he'd become a succubus? It was over. He was done. He was free. He let out a hysterical, wheezing, relieved laugh.

Something stirring low in his stomach told him it wouldn't last long.

And next time, he wouldn't be satisfied by imagining being watched.

[sparklingpax]

We return to another episode of Kuni rambles incoherently on tumblr with a phone at 18%

Alternately titled, someone take my phone the f r ag away from me

Ok. I apologize if someone else has come up with this idea first and this is therefore a pale comparison to the original idea, but um, here goes. 

I want an au (?? Might have a different name based on what I'm talking about Actually, but brain Fried so I can't remember) where optimus gets to talk to his youngest self--to Orion Pax :0

Note: the times it mentions Optimus is like. from Op’s pov? Since Orion never learns his name?? If that makes sense?? Sorry this is so confusing aa a a--

so anyway Sorry for typos and grammar stuff, I'm typing this on my phone as it slowly dies Hfkdjsj hH 😳

///

Orion is pulled from his study books at the sound of footsteps.

A shadow is cast over him.

Wonder and disbelief spark in his gaze as he stares up at the rather grand figure before him.

This mech--plating a nearly exact match to his own in the red, blue, and silver coloring--seems to possess an air about him that is...neither true confidence, nor uncertain existence.

At the very least, it seems he knows who he is, and his purpose in this world. Something Orion is still working on.

Silence rests between them.

Optimus, meanwhile, feels an overwhelming sense of yearning.

Seeing Orion--seeing himself--he wishes he could go back to those days.

The simpler days of youthful naivety towards life.

When Cybertron still thrived under golden days and the silvery illumination of the moons at night.

When the buildings stood tall and beautiful and untouched.

When he could never have known the awful sight of a corpse at the end of his own sword, or the unnatural cries a bot makes as it is brutally murdered next to you, and you can do nothing but continue to fend for your own life...

"You are...studying for a quarterly exam?" Optimus asks, leaning closer to see the book. He recognizes the cover and feels a twinge in his spark.

He remembers the book.

...And that he never enjoyed Chemistry much.

"...I am.....but...how did you know?" Orion stands slowly to meet the gaze of the mech standing over his desk. His gaze turns to light worry and confusion.

Orion is acutely aware of a feeling in his spark that...a lot about this mech feels familiar.

Somehow even...intimately.

"A-actually...um...."

He stammers in the silence, fishing desperately for the words to use that would ask his question, yet still be polite.

After all, 'are you related to me?' is definitely an awkward--perhaps intrusive--question to ask a complete stranger...

Optimus continues to regard the young bot, slightly amused.

He knows what Orion is hoping to ask, but also that it would be hard to ask a question like that upfront, at least when he was a younger mech.

"Orion Pax," Optimus says, placing his servos on his hips.

"Y-yes?"

"Be careful not to stay up too late with that book. Tests require knowledge, but they also require one to be awake to take them...and sleep--"

"--helps a processor function, yes..." the smaller mech sighs, frustrated. He's heard that one before, but his mind isn't thinking about that at the moment.

Alright, so he knows my name, too. But...I've never met him? There's absolutely no way he doesn't know me somehow... but how could I possibly--

"Orion?"

He jolts at his name, almost blurting the question before pulling himself back.

The mech standing over his desk gives the gentlest of smiles and rests a firm servo on Orion's shoulder.

"I know what you are going to ask, Orion."

"You...do?"

"And I will tell you as much as I can."

What is he, inside my head now?

But he receives an answer that shocks him more than that would.

"I....am you, Orion, and beneath my title and age from my timeline....I am still you," he pauses, beginning to look a little sad now.

Orion blinks a few times, absolutely shocked.

"....but you're so....tall..." Is all he manages to murmur before realizing what he just said and instantly feeling heat rush to his face.

Optimus tightens his jaw as he doesn't wish to embarrass the archivist any further by laughing.

I was less careful with my thoughts and emotions once. If only I still knew how...

"I am a Prime, and I am fighting a war."

"A war?" Orion frowns in thought.

There's hasn't been a war since the revolution against the Quintesson oppressors.

What need had Cybertron to fight again?

"Is it an invasion of Cybertron to come? Or a resources conflict?"

And me? Fighting in that war? But...I fail every self-defense practice with Megatronus, at that's true no matter how hard I try...

Optimus feels his chest grow heavy as he remembers the pain Megatron's anger alone had caused him after the council of Halogen.

The guilt, regret, frustration at his friend's obstinance, fear, sadness...

He realizes quickly that he can't possibly unload the heavier truth to Orion--to himself--all over again.

He can't...bring himself to tell Orion that his closest friend and mentor would be the leading force in a centuries-long, gritty, bleak and somewhat horribly hopeless war against him and his cause.

So he instead offers a rather sad smile, and chooses not to answer the question.

"Orion, hear my words, even if you don’t understand them at present. No matter what happens or who around you turns for the darker path, you must never lose your spark, hope, or your character."

"My spark....and character?" He echoes, distantly. "Hope?"

"Indeed," Optimus affirms, feeling an uneasiness of his own. 

The light in his eyes has dulled, yet they also maintain a grim light to them.

One that tells Orion that this mech has seen things he wished never to have seen, and never to see again. 

A grief so strong it....scares him.

Orion feels a wave of uneasiness wash over his whole body.

Something very dark is somewhere in the future...and now he has something to do with it?

And...it involves him becoming bigger, taller, stronger? Learning to fight...to kill, maybe? 

To kill means to take a life. To end it. 

Orion swallows, at last processing the other part of what the mech had told him.

He had to become a Prime??

"I--but I couldn't...not in any dream could I..." He trails off, feeling almost too much at once. 

I cannot kill. 

Optimus senses the turmoil he's set in the younger mech and feels guilty immediately.

"Do not worry," he consoles him, reaching for his smaller servos. He then looks Orion in the eye, knowing the firmness will settle his mind. "My being here alone may be enough to stop what might happen to you, to this planet..."

Orion indeed beings to feel the pounding in his spark settle just a little.

A war would mean all kinds of devastation he couldn't begin to imagine...but this mech was from another timeline.

Perhaps we...are destined for another future.

"Above all, know that if you never lose yourself, then....whatever you become will be just as true as that," he tells him. The words are weighted with something profound. 

The archivist knows in his spark that it will be a long time before he can grasp that emotion, but he is fine with that. 

Orion blinks at him, feeling a new wave of mixed emotions he can't define. He feels himself tense as he tries to control it.

But the mech's hand reaches to his arm.

He nods encouragingly, and Orion just knows the Prime doesn't want him to pent up his emotions.

"In my eyes, Orion, you have always been a prime..."

Optimus draws back at last and slowly begins to leave.

It must be time for him to go...

Orion stands at his desk, staring, a forearm still raised.

"...Or so I am told by those around me..."

The mech adds with a mild chuckle before finally leaving the room.

Orion continues to stare at the now empty doorway ahead of him.

Was that even real?

Himself?

From another future?

And yet...there is that feeling in his spark...the gut instinct telling him to trust in what this mech had been saying, that it was all real...

He plops back into his seat, staring at the ceiling.

He is too lost in thought to try and get back into his late-night studying.

And then it sinks in.

I never asked him his name!!

He deflates a little and facepalms.

Orion, you dumbaft....

///

Nhjdjdjs I hate this, writing skils have left the chat 

bye ;w;

[mullets]

rating nct/wayv based off what kind of texters they would be

taeil: 3/10. not exactly a dry texter but he takes at least five business days to reply and when he does its to start a new conversation & completely ignores the first message u sent him

johnny: 5/10 similar to taeil he takes ages to reply even though u know he's online but he gets bonus points bc he sends u music and movie recommendations that u actually end up liking

taeyong: 6/10 takes a little while to reply but when he does he spams ur phone and proceeds to go MIA again. would totally send u pictures of random stuff he found that he thinks you'd like

yuta: 4/10 sends u weird cursed images that he found on twitter but other than that he has u muted

kun: 10/10 sends u good morning texts and asks how ur day went. would remind u to bring an umbrella on cloudy days. overall v sweet even though he kind of texts like a middle aged parent

doyoung: 6/10. uses proper grammar and capital letters & gets annoyed when u spam him but always the first person to wish u on ur birthday

ten: 7/10 fun texter and always has something interesting to say but always replies at ungodly hours. lowkey would be the type to make a new gc without adding u & you'll never find out

jaehyun: -6/10. replies to paragraph long texts with 'k.' has read receipts turned off and uses 'oh i didn't see ur text' as an excuse to never text back. is online in the group chat once a year only to mute it again

sicheng: -1/10. leaves u on read with read receipts turned off & is a dry texter on purpose bc he doesn't want to make convo

jungwoo: 7/10 uses emojis like 🚋♨️🌀 that should make no sense given the context but surprising do & also has a scary big meme collection

yukhei: 9/10 sends u tiktoks through whatsapp even tho he could have just send it to u on the tiktok app itself & would send u tons of videos w cute animals. -1 point for sending u memes he stole from kalesalad

mark: 7/10. types HAHAHAA or hahah and uses 😄😅😊 unironically. texts back surprisingly fast and sends u these when its a holiday u celebrate

dejun: 5/10 judges u when u send him obscure memes and doesn't get any of the short forms u use. doesn't text back after 10pm

hendery: 6/10. would start a conversation and suddenly go offline for a few days and pick it up like he was never gone & u go along w it. has an extensive collection of deep fried memes that could rival jungwoo's

renjun: 8/10 knows all the fun drama & would text u even though u both r in the same room. always the one who gets blue ticked in group chats

jeno: 9/10 u text him & immediately he calls u cuz he 'prefers talking on the line'. doesn't understand any of ur meme references but is too nice to say anything abt it. would apologize for replying late

haechan: 2/10. sends u a picture of a trash can he saw with the caption 'lol thats u'. thinks chile is pronounced as chilly and uses it even though he doesn't know what it means. a billion typos to the extent its almost incoherent

jaemin: -3/10 leaves u on read with read receipts on

yangyang: 1/10. none of his memes are cropped properly and u can literally see the ig page he took the took a screenshot of. his most recent emojis look like this 😂🤣😏😎

chenle: 0/10 doesn't have ur number saved and reports u as spam when u text him

jisung: 8/10. texts back almost instantly & its easy to keep a convo with. the only person thats like a normal texter even tho he uses the 🥺 emoji excessively

[drowning-in-daiya]

K so I’m absolutely Weak for William and there’s an insane lack of written content for him and the Black Clover fandom as a whole. So I’ve decided to grace the internet with my absolute shit writing for the first time in 5 years for some crap attempts at fluff. These were originally written with an OC (who has 20 whole pages of profile wow I need to stop) but I’ve made it into a reader insert the best I could. I kept the third person pronouns though just because I’m lazy and tired sorry I personally don’t enjoy reading that myself but again laziness wins. There are most definitely typos and I apologize in advance but I hope fellow fans enjoy these entirely self-indulgent piece! If anyone can even find this rip also tumblr formatting is a pain and i was in physical pain editing this

Note: (s/e/c) stands for secondary eye color. Sorry again if it doesn’t fit how you’re reading it :(

Another note: because this was based on an oc, there are some details (not many, like two I think) that are specific to her and don’t take into account different skin tones or eye color. Again I apologize for leaving them in, but I loved the flow the sentences and couldn’t really find a way that sounded just as good to me. If I ever write more, I’ll try to be more considerate with details like this.

(William x reader)

Fluff

Word count: 1,555

Warnings: None

Shoulder Pillow

A time before either realizes their feelings; or when (y/n) falls asleep on William’s shoulder (Takes place a few months into the two turning seventeen)

“William.”

“Yes, (y/n)?” He smiles slightly but doesn’t lift his eyes from the book in his hands. He knows that tone; slightly pitchy with the end syllable drawn out. His suspicion is confirmed when she throws her head back and sighs.

“I’m bored.” Keeping her head back she slants her eyes towards his figure, taking in his relaxed form, the way one hand is lightly gripping one edge of the book while the other cradles the spine. She notices the small smile on his face when her eyes flicker up and lightly huffs. His smile grows slightly when he finally looks up to see the pout curving her lips downward.

“Do you want to do something else?” he asks. Her eyes find his again; (e/c) with bits of (s/e/c) speckled at the bottom meeting bright purple. He notes how much darker they are now in the back of his mind, deciding he would ask later if everything is alright.

She’s torn and doesn’t answer for a minute. While reading is fun and William’s presence provides a warm comfort she hasn’t felt in some time, it’s getting hard to focus and she’s getting antsy. It doesn’t help that she’s running on about two hours of sleep won after a hard battle against her insomnia and nightmares. He follows his first question with another before she can land on an answer.

“Would you like me to read to you? I can start over if you want.”

Badump.

Ignoring the swell in her chest (because honestly she can’t spare enough energy to think about what that could mean) she nods and scoots closer on the couch to look on with him as he flips to the first page. His voice is even and more soothing than usual, and within minutes she feels her eyelids drooping.

When was the last time someone read to me like this? Maybe three- no… four years ago? Ahh his voice is so nice.

Her head dips forward slightly and she jerks back, widening her eyes and staring intently at the words. William spares a quick glance but keeps reading, another smile beginning to spread across his face when he feels her breaths start to even out again. He doesn’t expect to feel the weight of her head or smell the citrus scent of her shampoo a few minutes later and cuts off midsentence. A warm blush is already darkening his cheeks under the mask, so when he looks down and sees her relaxed face smooshed against his shoulder, mouth slightly open with light snores escaping, his heart skips several beats. He stares a few seconds more, memorizing the way her lashes cast shadows across her cheeks and the steady rise and fall of her chest, before going back to reading out loud.

He’s just reached page 20 when she wakes up, just slightly refreshed but with an odd ache in her neck. It takes a few seconds for her groggy mind to take in exactly what her face is pressing against, and a few more seconds to properly react. Apologies begin to pour out in a jumbled mess; her eyes are bouncing anywhere but his face (completely missing his grin), freezing only once she catches sight of the dark spot on his shoulder. Impossibly more heat rushes through her body as she begins apologizing for not only using his shoulder as a pillow but drooling on him on top of that.  

He lets her carry on till she can find nothing else to beg forgiveness for; in the lull during which she tries to catch her breath, he places his hand on her head, ruffling her hair a bit before saying: “It’s fine. You were tired right?”

It takes a few seconds for the question to register, but she nods her head once it does and raises her eyes to his. She takes in the smile, heart skipping another beat (seriously what is wrong with me today??), relief washing through her that he’s not looking at her in disgust. They both sit like that seemingly frozen in that position for another five seconds before he takes his hand away. She can’t see it, but another blush is spreading across his cheeks at the realization that he held his hand there for too long trying to imitate her comforting habit. They continue to stare at each other awkwardly, neither knowing what to say now, until the clock in the common area rings out. 

She stands abruptly, quickly spouting off an excuse that she’ll be late for a meeting with so-and-so and that she’d better head off now.

“I can read to you again whenever you’re tired, (y/n). I didn’t mind being your pillow for the afternoon,” he calls out when the door’s halfway closed behind her. It slams shut before she can respond, not that she could have with the way her mind and heart were racing at the unusual and rather brazen comment from her fellow knight.

Ahh seriously what is this?!?

When He Knew

Seeing William without his mask for the first time; or when William realizes he likes you (Two weeks after the shoulder pillow incident) 

“He’s late.” 

“Yeah, no shit genius. He’s probably on his way right now.” The other knight throws a glare before going back to staring out the window. The foot tapping grew old five seconds after he started, but now the attitude directed towards William is giving you a new reason to dread the two-day mission. It’d be a lie if you said you weren’t worried, though. In the three years you’d known him, William was never late, instead almost always showing up a few minutes early. This realization causes you to think of the worst possibilities, ignoring the more probable answer that he had overslept or gotten wrapped up in something else. 

Dead. He’s definitely gotta be dead. Or maybe he caught something and is laying helpless in bed? Or did intruders somehow manage to sneak in and now he’s all tied up and- Taking a deep breath to calm down, you decide to give him another five minutes before heading over to check on him. A minute passes in silence and you’re pushing off the wall, mumbling incoherently something about going to fetch him. A tiny part of your brain is still somewhat rational and begs the other parts to slow down and think for a second. 

But I am thinking and I think he’s got to be dead or near death since he’s more than twenty minutes late! You reach his room in record speed and hesitate for a second. Should I at least knock? If he’s dead he won’t hear it; but even if he’s alive he may be unable to answer back. A thud sounds from the other side of the door and your brain switches to automatic. 

Eyes are already scanning for threats or a slumped body when the door slams open; instead of either, though, they catch sight of a frozen, maskless William staring back at you, half in horror, half in fright. It feels like hours tick by as you two stare at each other; You glance over every part of his face, vaguely taking in the scar that spans the top half, but more enthralled by all of the emotion you can see now. His eyes are even more enchanting fully visible (are they even brighter than before?? No no no... probably not…but maybe?); his nose that was already the cutest form of elegance you’ve ever seen fits perfectly with the rest of his face. And the hair it’s- 

It’s only five seconds of intense staring as you try to memorize the pure beauty that is bare faced William before snapping out of it and offering your excuse. “I thought you were dead and came to check on you.” Straight faced, eyes locked on his, said with total seriousness. 

He can’t tell if he wants to laugh or cry, and if he does cry if it’ll be from embarrassment or joy. There’s no change in how you’re looking at him, the tone of voice you’re speaking to him in. Brutally honest (y/n) who never fails to let others know how you feel no matter how it might hurt the other person. The girl who told him his mask was tacky and he could do better upon their second meeting. The one who almost got into a fistfight with another knight that made an offhanded remark about the same mask. (y/n)! His heart is still racing for a completely different reason now. All the pieces are linking together and he knows. The stuttering heart, breathless laughs, warm and tingly feeling throughout his body; it all makes sense because some part of him knew all along. You’re rambling speaking again, red painting your cheeks (adorable he thinks), but he doesn’t hear any of it. He’s still staring when you finally stop; one heartbeat…two heartbeats…you turn on your heel on the third and shout out another apology (this one he hears) for the intrusion, and tell him to hurry up or you’d leave him behind. His body relaxes once the door closes and he stares at the mask in his hands. He briefly wonders what kind of expression you saw on his face, why you looked so flustered (it definitely wasn’t because she’s attracted to me that’s for sure), and most importantly, how he’ll act around you now that he knows he’s in love.

[duncandriver]

Dave the teacher, or the short story as a kind-of lesson.

I.

One of the reasons to read David Foster Wallace’s writing is to confront the paradoxes redolent of his fin de siècle age. How to be acutely aware of everything, like a boy on the end of a diving board, when the glut of media trains you in passivity; how to be a morally passionate, passionately moral adult when all experience confirms you to be a child and a victim; how to have a second voice inside your head. We might draw a comparison to these paradoxes by considering some of the maddening contradictions that plague teachers and teaching: how can you assess students against a fixed mean and still teach in such a way that the quality of their work improves over time? Why must it be the students you want to help the least who need your help the most? Isn’t it strangely sad that the best teachers do their job so well their students no longer need them?

If problems like these can be thrown into relief against each other, it shouldn’t surprise that David Foster Wallace’s teaching was also replete with paradox and contradiction. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the campus reputation he developed as a ‘hard-ass’ while at the same time being valued by students for his deeply caring, empathetic approach. Read any of his course syllabi and you’ll see imperative commands such as, “don’t be late … your deadlines are obligations to twelve other adults'' and “work that appears sloppy or semiliterate will not be accepted for credit: you’ll have to redo the piece and turn it back in, and there will be a grade penalty — a really severe one if it happens more than once”. Look at what his students said about him on the nefarious “Rate My Professors” site: comments like “he is tough as shit and can hurt students’ feelings” abound. To be fair, these are probably written by those who had axes to grind, but a longer, more considered anecdote written after Wallace’s death vindicates such voices:

“He did say a nice thing or two, but the felt effect of the class was still a fusillade of criticisms I couldn’t respond to, personal criticisms, since I’d written a personal essay. The class was like a bad dream in which you heard the worst things people thought about you, doubly bad because the students and professor’s intelligence made these thoughts feel true. My writing was turgid, my ideas were incoherent, my argument was impossible to follow. My style was inconsistent, my grammar was sloppy and incompetent. My sentences showed no humanity … I went to his office hours the next afternoon. When I apologized for the typos, he pointed at me and said, ‘Never fail to proofread something you turn in to me,’ to which I nodded as convincingly as I could. He worried that he hadn’t gotten through to me, and, confused, he asked, ‘I mean, did you cry?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Good. I would’ve cried … I don’t feel bad for you,’ he said…”

I have taught in secondary and tertiary contexts for nearly fifteen years, and I can’t imagine saying such things to a student, or getting away with saying them. To be fair to Wallace, neither can I imagine dedicating myself to the welfare of students quite as much as Wallace seems to have done, feeling for and with them to quite the same extent. If we can turn over the paradoxical coin we’re examining to its other side, we might consider comments like “[his] kindness is still unbelievable to me”, “I’ve never had a prof. put so much effort towards a student’s learning” or, to glance at how the anecdote above resolves,

“ ‘I don’t feel bad for you,’ he said, and he looked me in the eyes a little uneasily as he paused and slowed his speech and unfurled his right hand as if to offer me something. ‘But, I feel for you’—a gesture of empathy … He expressed some of the most meaningful things he said to me in some of his sentences most likely to seem meaningless … ‘I feel for you.’”

That Wallace could flip on a dime between the apparently callous and the deeply caring is extraordinary. Even more extraordinary is the fact that these two attitudes appear to have been bound up in the same impulse. Consider the letter Wallace wrote to Jonathan Franzen in which he called his students “infants … you almost have to cradle their heads to help their necks support the skull’s weight”. The comparison might be sarcastic, a snipe about the ignorance or naiveté of kids these days. Look at the metaphor he’s chosen, however: infants who need to be cradled and supported by him – casting himself in the role of parent reveals as much about Wallace’s caring side as his critical one, and the paradox is that both could be present in the one metaphor.

Another – arguably minor – contradiction is Wallace’s demand for academic rigour and personal dedication when studying rather ‘light’ works of popular fiction. One former student points out that to get into his courses, “you had to audition” by submitting samples of your own work and that, if selected for a coveted spot, the “workshops required intensive critical thinking” and “demanded allegiance … to language itself”. When contemplating such demands, a student who mentally prepared for intricate dissections of the post-modern canon might be surprised to find Jackie Collins and Stephen King nestling snugly against The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on Wallace’s reading lists.

Something else that strikes me as disparate is the way Wallace’s carefully studied eccentricities were matched by genuine anxiety and aloofness when interacting with students. Like many exciting teachers, he appears to have cultivated an appealing classroom persona, a consciously-assumed “alacrity of carriage” (to borrow one of his phrases). He set many rules on paper and then bent them in practice, his tobacco-chewing, bandana-wearing aspect belying the grammar Nazi and literary giant of reputation. Idiosyncrasies like carrying work in a Care Bears folder or instructing students to place an apple on his desk demonstrate the impish humour of someone masterfully in control of their aspect and choosing to make it fun and ironic.

Behind or beneath this performance, however, was a man who clearly found the social element of classes difficult. Despite what Sally Foster-Wallace says about her son feeling “a bit guilty … accepting a salary for doing something he so enjoyed”, we should remember we’re talking about someone who actively sought to do less and less of it throughout his career. Of course, he may have been trying to focus his time and energy on writing, but one suspects that part of the motivation behind accepting posts that required him to teach less was an anxiety he felt towards a job he was manifestly good at. The essence of this contradiction is captured well in this observation by D. T. Max: “He was happy to extend office hours for as long as students wanted, but if he bumped into them on the street he hardly acknowledged them.”

Wallace’s complex anxiety leads directly to the last paradox of his teaching that this first post considers: the way his pedagogy worked towards the goal of each student’s autonomy while at the same time being rooted in an almost religious devotion to social interaction, empathy and the prioritisation of the other over the self. Some of the ways in which Wallace could be stern are adumbrated above (the jabbing, emphatic finger reminding students of their personal obligations; the deeply personal essays that engendered deeply personal criticism).  What could be more isolating than having his critical gaze turn on you? What could possibly encourage deeper reflection (or obsessional self-doubt)? Another anecdote from a former student is revealing of this point:

“I called to ask his advice, ostensibly about what the life of a writer is like—though what I really wanted was an easy answer to what I should do with my own life. I wanted him to give me some sort of commandment to go forth and be a writer. I paced around my parents’ house, talking nervously, trying to keep up with him, vainly trying to impress him. He refused to give me the validation and satisfaction I wanted.”

Wallace’s refusal is interesting: an empathetic approach might have been to reassure the student that doubts about one’s direction in life are universal; he could have shared some of the darker episodes from his past to reveal how even a colossus of literature was plagued by the same insecurities and uncertainties that his criticism induced. His refusal of validation, however, suggests that he thought the student needed to forge his own path, suffer a few long dark nights of the soul without looking over his shoulder to see if other writers had a better time of it. This is what it means to say that Wallace’s teaching worked towards the goal of each student’s autonomy.

Isn’t it strange, then, that so many of Wallace’s teaching materials emphasise the signal importance of interaction, connection, a sharing or giving of oneself, even a sublimation of the ‘self’ before the ‘other’? As much as Wallace encouraged students to stand on their own trembling feet, he seems to have been determined to burst the bubble of solipsism that formed around the bookish individual. He’d say things in class like, “If you’re more interested in what you’re saying than the person listening to you is, you’re the definition of a boring person” and “you’ll improve as a writer not just by writing a lot and receiving detailed criticism but also by becoming a more sophisticated and articulate critic of other writers’ work”. Such pronouncements are ways of reminding the budding writer to get out of their own head and think about what life is like for someone else. We could complicate this point further by recognising that they also tended to be delivered in such a way as to provoke self-consciousness (consider how many times ‘you’ and ‘you’re’ appear in the examples above). A well-known instruction from Wallace’s “Creative Nonfiction” course syllabus is a fine example of this:

“In the grown-up world, creative nonfiction is not expressive writing but rather communicative writing [ Wallace’s italics]. And an axiom of communicative writing is that the reader does not automatically care about you (the writer), nor does she find you fascinating as a person, nor does she feel a deep natural interest in the same things that interest you.” 

It is paradoxical that so clear an injunction to think about the other, to communicate by valuing the reader’s time more than your own, should also throw so harshly interrogative a spotlight on the self, demanding the soul-searching eradication of every writerly indulgence. The message is something like, “take a good, hard look at yourself … and stop being so self-obsessed.” 

To adapt a statement quoted earlier, we might frame our analysis this way: Wallace revealed some of the most meaningful and mercurial aspects of writing, reading, teaching and learning in a series of contradictory instructions like those sketched here, contradictions that appear to point to deep truths about human experience even as our examination of them reveals Gordian-knot problems that tangle the more we try to untie them. In the hands of a lesser writer and teacher, they might remain such, but in Wallace’s unfurling, offering hands these contradictions also reveal a complimentary aspect: what they unfurl to reveal is a model for how writers should write and teachers should teach; what they offer is a way of living a self-aware but unselfconscious life. It is to the resolution of these paradoxes, or their complementary aspect, that the focus of this piece will shift in the second post in this series.