#and instead of boring people with a written introduction

[intramoon]

Celeste Orouke ⤷ wednesday's ex-fiancée, drew's aunt, violinist, sharp tongue, "blue-eyed devil"

[dolokhoded]

epic the musical can die by my blade i don't think there's anything actually wrong with i'm just abhorred by the amount of tenors and think everyone sounds like the vocal equivalent of an iphone face

[absurdthirst]

The Graduate {Professor!Pero Tovar x F!Reader}

Ratings: Explicit

Word Count: 15.9k

Warnings: Insults, rough sex, hate fucking, verbal sparring, power imbalance, age gap (everyone is legal), squirting, fingering, vaginal sex, oral sex (male receiving), slight exhibitionism, threat of being discovered, hurt feelings, angst

Comments: From the very first day in his class, you manage to piss Professor Tovar off. Thinking him antiquated as the history class he teaches. Verbally sparring with him until things turn physical in his office, you start hate fucking your professor every chance you get.

Co-written with @storiesofthefandomlovers

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|| MasterList || Pero Tovar MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

The moment that he saw you in his class, Pero Tovar knew you would be a pain in his ass. You’re obviously older, not the fresh faced idiots that he is used to teaching, there is almost a defiant glint in your eyes. “You have the wrong lecture hall.” He grunts. “This is the introduction to ancient civilizations.”

You frown, confused that the professor would assume you’re not in the right class. You hold up your phone with your schedule to show him that you are indeed in the right place. “Says I’m in the right room on here.” You point to the screen and he narrows his eyes, fumbling to put the glasses that are in his pocket onto his nose so he can make sure you’re right. 

“You look too old to be in here.” He hums and you scoff, “with respect, professor, it looks like you could have lived in one of the ancient civilisations you’re teaching about but I’m not rude enough to comment. I’ll take my seat.” You lower your phone and spin on your heel to take your seat in the front row.

Pero growls, not used to being challenged like this by his students and he doesn’t like the way his eyes drop to your ass for a brief second. Finding it to be a nice one before he whirls around and slaps his palm against the chalkboard. He had been asked to replace the board with the one that uses dry erase markers, but he refused. He hated the damn things. “This class will not be easy to pass.” He announces. “You don’t do the reading, you don’t pass. You don’t attend the lectures, you don’t pass.” He turns around the class. “Don’t pass, see if I care. I get paid whether or not you fail and waste your parent’s money.” It’s a practiced speech, repeated every new semester. “The books I require are available in the campus bookstore, but buy that shit from Amazon. It’s cheaper.”

You want to roll your eyes at his heavy handed threat of failure. Some professors like to bully in the first month so people withdraw from the class. You take your laptop out and he turns around to look at you just as you open it. “Pen and paper is preferred. You remember more if you write it down instead of typing it out.” He says, raising his eyebrows at you before he turns back to the board.

You don’t close the laptop, but you do call him an asshole under your breath. A few of the other students hear you and giggle. Making Pero pause again and turn around to glare at you before beginning to speak again. Making you roll your eyes as he starts outlining the course syllabus and telling everyone to take note of his office hours. “Jesus Christ.” You snort, finding him to be boorish and it’s a miracle he’s stayed employed by the school. His demeanor is horrible.

Pero doesn’t pause for anyone’s benefit as he outlines his expectations and the syllabus. When he turns back after writing everything on the board, the class looks half confused and half bored. He chuckles under his breath, knowing that half the class will be gone before the end of the month. He has to maintain his reputation as one of the toughest classes to pass. You close your laptop and Pero removes his glasses, dismissing the class with a grunt and a wave of his hand. You gather your things and stand up, walking over to him. “Is there anything online for the syllabus?” You ask and Pero snorts, picking up a piece from his desk and handing it to you. He typed up the syllabus on his typewriter and Xeroxed it to get copies. “Here you go.” He smirks slightly and you huff, taking the paper. “Welcome to Introduction to Ancient Civilizations.” He declares and you snort, “more like welcome to 1985.” You wave the typed paper and stride past him, making your way to your next lecture where technology is appreciated.

Pero hates you already. Scoffing as he looks down at his syllabus, several other students skitter by him and grab a paper. He doesn’t need to have his work online, there’s a better way to do it. He huffs as he looks at the roster for the class. You are going to be a pain in his ass and he’s hoping you are one of the ones that drops out.

**** 

It’s not an easy class to pass, that’s for sure. Professor Tovar is ruthless, allowing only typed and printed essays, quizzes are done by hand. Notes taken by hand. Your poor hand is exhausted. You know you’re the oldest student in his class. The classic return to school to finish your degree after your divorce story. Tovar hands you your paper back and you frown when you see “C” on the form. “Uh, what is this?” You demand, pointing at the paper.

Pero glances down at your paper and then back up to you. “I thought you were smart enough to understand that is your grade.” He snarks and a few of the students around you shift and cough to cover up an embarrassed laugh. “For future reference, I will mark the score you receive on the top of your paper in red, like this.” His tone is dripping with condescension, his attitude towards you not improving in the least when you sass him and give him snark every chance you get. It’s a fucking shame you’re attractive.

“I know it’s my grade. I’m questioning why it’s not an ‘A’” You ask and he snorts, remembering your paper more than most. “You cited the incorrect sources.” He almost smirks and you chuckle, reaching into your bag to pull out the book you need to return to the library. “That’s funny because the source I used is a book written by you.” You point at the book and his name on the front cover.

Pero rolls his eyes and flips over the paper to the reference page. “All your sources are websites.” He points to the online addresses. “I don’t accept those.” He knows what you are trying to do and it pisses him off. “Next time, if you have a problem with your deserved grade, speak to me during office hours.” He growls.

You clench your jaw, knowing his office hours are after your next class. You shake your head when he continues walking down the row to hand out the papers. He is infuriating. Your essay was good. Excellent really. It hit all the key points and you know half the kids are using Chat GPT to write their shit nowadays. You huff and gather your things to head to your next class, not looking back at him when you leave his lecture hall. After your next lecture is finished, you head to his office to protest your grade. Knocking on the door, he calls out for you to enter, and you storm in, paper in hand. “I demand to know why this paper got me a ‘C’.”

“Because the paper is worth a ‘C’.” He quips, barely looking up and dismissing you with a glance. “Anything else? I have a lot of other papers to grade.” He doesn’t care for you and has no interest in debating your pointless position of deserving a higher grade. He shuffles to another paper and starts to read while you stand over him.

You narrow your eyes at him, “I do not understand why online sources can’t be used when they are citing your book. I didn’t cite the page but the website. All the other professors allow it because they live in the 21st century.” You seethe, pointing at the sources at the bottom of your essay.

Pero slaps the pen down onto the desk, his chair scraping the floor as he shoots to his feet. “Because I don’t have time to check one thousand websites to make sure the little brats aren’t cheating.” He growls. “Putting in the work to research proper sources is good for you. Do some work for once.”

You shake your head, “maybe if you used technology you would find it easier to see if your students are cheating. There are programs that check sources and wording. You’d know that if you didn’t live in the dark ages.” You roll your eyes at him, “I mean, you’re older than me but I didn’t realize you’re that old.”

His brows lower and he curls his lip. “Not too much older.” He sneers. “Shouldn’t you be looking into your retirement packages rather than hounding my classroom?” He shoots back. “You are a little past your prime, eh?”

You gasp, rearing back from him, and you feel your stomach twist. “I - you’re a fucking asshole.” You hiss, uncaring if you get a bad grade or he targets you. He needs to be told.

“And you are a stuck up, know it all, bitch.” Pero growls back, leaning forward and glaring at you. “You should do us both a favor and drop my class.”

You glare at him, stepping closer to him, his eyes burning into you, and you don’t know who moves first. When you think about it later, you’ll say he made the first move but it’s hard to figure it out when your lips crash with his.

Pero Tovar has prided himself on never being inappropriate with a student. He’s made them cry, he’s made them angry but he’s never kissed one. You….you, he devours. Trying to establish dominance over your willfulness through sheer force as his tongue slides against yours and he swallows a gasp. Spinning you around and pinning you against his desk, pressing his hardening body against yours.

You moan unconsciously into his mouth. Despite him being an asshole as a professor, he’s a sexy man and you can’t help but lust after him. Those broad shoulders, dark eyes, and the scar on his cheek have you thinking about him late at night. Okay, so sometimes it’s thinking about his demise but sometimes it’s about him wrecking you on his desk. You are ashamed to admit it to yourself. You whimper into his mouth, shifting up onto his desk, papers flying everywhere as you kiss him back just as eager and hungry.

His hands slide down to your ass, squeezing it as he pushes your thighs open to step between them. Hungry and unable to think of anything but fucking the attitude right out of you, he slides a hand under your skirt to dive beneath your panties.

You gasp into his mouth when his fingers press against your clit through your panties. His teeth are crashing against yours until you tangle your fingers in his hair, keeping his head still. His glasses knock against your nose so you reach up to take them off, tossing them onto his desk before pressing your lips back to his. A moan vibrates against his lips when his fingers rub your clit.

Your moans are pretty and he’s desperate to hear more of them. Effectively putting your normally smart mouth to better use as he makes you submit to him. One hand squeezes your breast as he rubs your clit, twisting his wrist to press his thumb to the bundle of nerves before he pulls them away and starts to rip his belt open.

You should push him away, tell him no, but this energy between you fizzles and has you wet for him. The raw need between you is like nothing you’ve experienced before. His thumb against your clit has your fingers digging into his shoulders while he pulls his cock out. There’s no questions about birth control, no words as he pulls your panties aside and lines up. You close your eyes and take every inch with a gasp as he pushes into you in one thrust.

Pero hisses out your name, low and almost spitting it as he drives into you. Jaw clenched and holding onto you tight while your walls pulse around him. He's broken every rule he's set for himself and the school's faith in him, but he can't think about that. Not when you are so tight and hot around him. "Pain in my ass." He growls, pulling back to start hammering into you roughly.

You know that anyone could walk in the door right now and see you like this but you don’t care. You cry out and he lets go of your hip to cover your mouth. You reach up to grip his wrist, keeping his hand on your mouth as he starts to fuck you in earnest. It’s so good. The way he stretches you out is slightly painful but this gives way to the conflicting emotions you’ve had. The hatred and anger you’ve felt towards him warring with your attraction to him. This is the explosion of those feelings and he seems to be on the same page as the desk sways beneath you.

It’s fast and harsh, your body taking every thrust and your pussy gripping around him like a vice. It’s intoxicating and he leans in to press his lips to yours again after pulling his hand away. Knowing he would rather keep you quiet with his tongue than his hand. Grunting into your mouth as he continues to work in and out of your tight cunt. He would deny ever thinking about you with his hand around his cock, but he would definitely be thinking about this the next time he jerks off. 

You lift your thighs to wrap your legs around his hips, moaning into the kiss as your hands come up to tangle in his hair, pulling on the dark locks a little too hard. He hisses into your mouth and you smirk against his lips, loving his reaction. He’s infuriating and so sexy. A deadly combination. “Look at you, taking my cock like a good girl.” He coos against your jaw and your eyelashes flutter in bliss. “Fu-fuck you.” You choke out, walls gripping his cock as he pushes you closer to your orgasm.

“You are.” He grunts, his hips slapping against the desk painfully, but he doesn’t care. All he cares about is burying his cock inside you. “Fucking me like a needy little whore.” He chuckles. “Jumping your professor. Still won’t get you an ‘A’, no matter how tight your cunt is.”

You pull on his hair and he hisses again. “Don’t need you to increase my grade, just need you to - to do your fucking job.” You moan when he slides his hand down to rub your clit. “Yes. Just like that.” You pant, “and I - I didn’t jump you. You - you kissed me.” You defend yourself poorly, knowing you jumped at him with as much need. He’s been part of your nightly fantasies no matter how much you’d deny it.

Pero groans, too distracted by how you clench down around him to argue. You did jump him, desperate for his cock. So he’s going to make you cum, have you cream all over him and make your legs shake in pleasure. His fingers circle your clit in tight circles, keeping pace with the hard snaps of his hips. Groaning again as he feels your legs tighten around his hips. “Cum for me.” He demands.

You can’t deny him even if you tried. You gasp before you cry out, his mouth smothering his name as you clamp down on his cock. Your heels dig into his ass while you soak him and your hands slide down to his shoulders, trying to keep upright as he fucks you through your orgasm. “Oh God. Cu- cum for me. Safe.” You manage to choke out.

He pants, twitching violently inside you. Fingers digging into your hips as he holds you in place. Find the energy to increase his pace, barely keeping his hips from stuttering as he works himself closer. “Fuck.” He spits, biting his tongue to keep from rambling in Spanish as he is prone to do when he is fucking someone. He holds you tighter as his thrusts get sloppy. Grunting again as he pushes deep and paints your walls with hot spurts of his seed.

You keep your eyes open to watch him as he fills you up. His jaw clenched and his fingers digging into your hips. He looks feral and you fucking love it. He rocks himself through it, your cunt full of every drop of his cum, and you let him do it. “Holy shit.” You whisper, your senses returning as you realize what you just did. You fucked your professor.

Pero closes his eyes and sighs softly, pausing for a moment before he starts to pull out of you. Almost ashamed of what he’s done. He just fucked a student on his desk. He steps back and starts to quickly tucks his cock back into his pants.

You watch his demeanor change and you know it’s over so you pull your panties over the creamy mess he left between your thighs, shuffle off of his desk and tug your skirt back into place. “I- we shouldn’t have - we - shit.” You hiss, scrambling to grab your backpack from the floor.

Pero watches you go, frowning and feeling guilty when you rush out of his office. Sighing as he slowly moves to the door to close it behind you. He didn’t force you, but he can’t help but feel guilty.

****

When you arrive in his class the next day, you scurry to your seat, pulling out your notebook and you avoid looking at your professor as he writes on the board. His back muscles move under the thin white button down and you remember how they felt under your hands while he was inside of you. You stare at him until he spins around and you avert your eyes to the linoleum floor.

Pero glowers when you won’t even look at him. It makes him feel even worse about the fact that he had jerked off this morning thinking about how you had felt. He barks out the chapters he wants everyone to study and sits behind his desk, sulking.

You study the chapters he writes down, a sigh escaping your lips at the scowl on his face. You know you need to speak to him after class to address the elephant in the room. You can hardly concentrate on reading the pages in front of you, your eyes flicking up to look at Tovar every few seconds until he takes mercy on you and dismisses the class. You take your time, slowly putting your things away until everyone has left, and you approach him. "Do you, uh, want to discuss what happened yesterday?" You ask, glancing over your shoulder until you look at him again.

Pero clenches his jaw, stopping himself from being a sarcastic asshole. “We should.” He admits, wanting to hear from you that you regret it. He doesn’t, because he had felt a little softer towards you until you had avoided his gaze in the class today. “You go first.” He walks over to the door to shut it, leaving you alone in the lecture hall with no chance of someone overhearing.

You clear your throat and stand a little taller, refusing to crumble under his dark stare as he turns back towards you. “First of all, yesterday doesn’t change the fact that I think you’re a prick but - but I don’t regret it. I had a good time and I- I wouldn’t mind it happening again but only if - who am I kidding? You’re gonna say no.” You scoff, closing your eyes for a second as you remember why you’re back in school.

“You’re still a bitch, but I would fuck you again.” Pero snorts, almost relieved by your confession. “But we cannot do it in my office again.” He tells you. “Someone could have walked in and there would be trouble.” He tilts his head when you open your eyes, moth ajar in shock. “Perhaps your snotty attitude would improve with a regular orgasm.”

You huff and roll your eyes before you drag your gaze down his body, wondering what he looks like out of the smart trousers and button down shirt. "You want to come to my place?" You ask, "or I can come to yours?"

There’s a small smirk on his face as he appraises you. “I will come to your house.” He decides. “Make you feel better after you kick me out.” He snorts, knowing that after he makes you cum, you will send him on his way. “Such a shame such a nice ass is attached to a sour mouth.”

You scoff, "and such a nice dick is attached to, well, a dick." His chuckle makes your stomach twist and you hate how you want him even now. You walk over to his desk, grabbing a pen and a piece of paper. You make a show of bending over to write down your address for him and your phone number.

Pero watches your ass, grunting to himself as he swears it wiggles just a tiny amount. “You are a tease.” He’s not unhappy about that discovery, although his tone is gruff. “That will just make me fuck you harder.” He warns, chuckling to himself when you roll your eyes. “I wonder if you will be so sassy when I fuck your throat until you cry.”’

You smirk, turning around to walk over to him to hand the piece of paper over. “Maybe you’ll be nicer if you cum down my throat.” You counter, “or perhaps the best plan is to smother you with my pussy so you don’t say something to ruin this between us.” He takes the piece of paper and you step back, “seven tonight?” You ask, biting your lip.

He narrows his eyes at you, more amused than upset, but no one can really tell that. He’s got a face that makes most of the faculty avoid him and students fear him. It’s why your blatant sassy nature rubs him. “Seven.” He agrees, his voice raspy. “This time I want you naked. Not just pushing your panties to the side.”

“Yes sir.” You smirk, grabbing your books from the desk and you stride towards the door, unlocking it to exit into the hallway. You wink at him over your shoulder before you walk out of his lecture hall, inhaling deeply at the fact that you have started an affair with your professor. 

**** 

You exhale shakily, the clock reading ten to seven and you are wearing some sexy lingerie you haven’t worn before that was shoved in your dresser. Your dress is simple but short and you have a glass of wine in your hand to quell your nerves. Maybe he won’t show up. That would be the icing on the cake if he was messing with you.

Pero pulls into your apartment complex, calling himself an idiot as he parks. He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t fuck a student, but he damn sure shouldn’t fuck a student that he argues with nearly every fucking class you’ve attended so far. Still, he gets out of his car, the bottle of wine something that William had suggested when he rang his old friend to talk. The other man had laughed at him and told him to bring wine or chocolates. He wasn’t going to bring chocolates. This wasn’t that kind of a date. Finding your apartment door, he knocks, knowing he is a few minutes early.

You brush down your dress when you stand up, making your way to the front door, and you swing it open to see Pero standing there with a bottle of wine in his hand. “Hey.” You murmur, taking in his new button down and the jeans that make your mouth water.

“Hey.” He clenches his jaw, biting back a groan over how good you look. “This is for- whatever.” He holds out the bottle. “It’s a wine from my region.” He tells you, having taken the time to find one of his favorites to share with you. You won’t appreciate it, probably hate it, but he would have tried.

Your eyebrows raise at the bottle of wine in his hand, surprised at the gesture. You take it and inspect it for a second. “Rioja.” You hum, “very nice choice. You’re many things but I must admit I’m surprised to see you know your wine.” You step aside so he can walk into your apartment. “Do you want a glass of this? I have a bottle of Cabernet already opened.”

“Whatever you are drinking.” Pero won’t insist on you opening the bottle, not when you have a bottle already breathing. “Why do you think a man born and raised in Spain would not know good wine?” He asks, raising a brow. “My research has taken me all over the world.”

You walk into your kitchen and he follows you, “you seem more like a whiskey man.” You shrug one shoulder, setting his bottle down so you can grab a glass and fill it with the already opened wine. “To fucking in secret.” You toast, holding up your own glass when he takes his from your hand.

Pero snorts, smirking slightly. “To the taming of the shrew.” He grunts, enjoying the way you narrow your eyes at him. Even though he does not like being challenged in the classroom, he finds he likes your wicked tongue and your sharp wit. You aren’t the blockheaded inexperienced dolt like the others in the class.

You take a large sip of wine, setting your glass down after a moment to step closer to him. “You look good in jeans.” You confess, sliding your hands along his chest to play with the buttons of his shirt, “you look good in class. I usually sit there and think of ways to fuck you, after considering how to kill you.” You smirk, looking at him from under your eyelashes.

He huffs, lifting a brow. “I’ve thought about putting you over my knee in the middle of the lecture.” He admits. “But now I don’t know if it’s to beat your ass or finger you.” His cock twitches in his jeans when you flick a finger over his nipple under the shirt. “Did you argue with me because you wanted to fuck me, bonita?”

You scoff, “absolutely not. I think your ways are antiquated at best. Other professors don’t make us use book references, they use a Dropbox for essays. They use computers.” You flick the buttons of his shirt open. “You act like an old man when you’re not.” You admire the golden skin beneath his shirt, caressing it, and you feel his heart thump under your palm.

“Some older ways are better.” Pero protests, his pulse jumping slightly and his cock starting to harden. “Teaches them to think for themselves. Not to accept the first webpage that gives them the information they want. Checking references.”

You scoff, “you think they won’t cheat anyway? They can look up book references online and find the textbook online. Maybe you need to get with the times. Maybe someone younger can help.” You coo, leaning in to kiss his jaw as you slide your hand down to cup his cock through his jeans.

Pero grunts, his cock twitching against your palm. “You aren’t that much younger than me.” He reminds you. “Believe it or not, I know how the internet works.”

You chuckle, stepping back from him to pick up your wine glass. It’s fun to tease him, noticing the furrow of his brow when you pull away. “I am the oldest one getting their degree. That’s for sure.” You snort and take a sip of your wine, “couldn’t find a job worth much more than minimum wage so I had to go back to school.”

He frowns for a moment. “Divorce?” He asks, not sure why you wouldn’t have had an established career, unless you were married and had kids. He glances around the apartment and doesn’t see any sign of kids.

You sigh, nodding, “yeah. I made the mistake of getting married to the guy I met in junior year. He was graduating and told me to drop out of school when we got married. He was from money. Old money. He was spoiled and his parents bought us a house. He had a trust fund so he didn’t care about work but he worked with his father and wanted me at his beck and call so I was a housewife. I would go to Pilates in the morning, decorate the house, cook dinner. God, it sounds boring now. Then one day. I found out that he was fucking his secretary. His young secretary…who he knocked up. She was having a boy so his family made him divorce me so they could have the next heir to the estate. Thank God we never had kids. The pre-nup I signed as a naive girl ensured I got nothing so here I am, back in school and trying to figure shit out.” You hate how pathetic and naive you sound, letting a man control your life like that, but you thought it was true love.

“It sounds like you married an idiot.” Pero snorts, shaking his head. He takes a sip of his wine and wonders if to miss your ex, the life you used to have. “He should have encouraged you to explore your passions. Not….yoga.” He rolls his eyes. “He wasn’t even that good in bed, was he?”

You snort, nodding, “how’d you guess? I wasn’t a virgin when I married him but I wasn’t experienced and he - I didn’t know any better. I don’t miss that life. It lacked purpose. I want to do something meaningful. I want to preserve history for the future generations.” You explain, “and have some good sex.”

Pero chuckles. “My class is a good start for the first, my cock for the second.” He jokes, taking another sip of the wine. “If you pass, you might be a good historian. You are smart if you would stop arguing and listen.”

“Thank you…I don’t take orders very well nowadays.” You confess, taking a sip of your wine. “So…what’s your story? I’m guessing there’s no wife. No kids? No tragically sad story?”

Pero snorts, shaking his head at your sarcasm but he shrugs slightly. “I was married.” He confesses as he stands in your kitchen. “We were young, like you - married in college though we both stayed in class.” It takes him back to a painful time and he scowls as he talks. “We were studying ancient China for our masters degrees. Both of us were fascinated by the legend of the Tao Tei.” He blows out a painful sigh. “Did you know there are still raiders in the most isolated regions of the foothills?” He asks rhetorically. “We were attacked, she was killed, my friend William and I barely survived - and I was left with the scar that makes so many cringe when they see me.” He points to his face.

Your jaw drops, "oh my God. I- Pero - that's - I'm so sorry." You choke, setting your wine glass down. You step towards him and swallow harshly, "that - that is tragically sad." You lift your hands as if to hug him before you change your mind, knowing he wouldn't want your comfort.

“It was a long time ago.” It’s disappointing when you don’t touch him. “None of the staff or students know.” He warns. “Just you.”

You nod, "I won't tell anyone. I- I am so sorry, Pero." You decide to bite the bullet, even if he pushes you away. You wrap your arms around his waist, "you are justified to be a miserable bastard."

“It was a long time ago.” He murmurs again, shifting into you and pulling you closer. He doesn’t mind the feel of your body close to his and your empathy is surprising. “William said that I need to stop living in the past, so he would like you busting my balls.”

You breathe in the peppery cologne he’s wearing, it suits him, and you caress his back. “Yeah, you definitely need to get with the times but I understand why you don’t want to move forward. Something tragic happened to you.” You reach up to cup his cheek, “how about we sit down with the wine?” You ask, knowing that he won’t want to keep talking about his trauma.

You’re being uncharacteristically sweet, or maybe this is how sweet you are when you aren’t butting heads with him. He nods and picks up his wine glass again. “I do not need to be drunk to fuck you again, though.” He promises, smirking slightly. “Even if you are a pain in my ass, I have thought about that interlude.”

You smirk, taking his hand to guide him over to your sofa. “Don’t mistake my momentary lapse of sweetness to be a white flag on our working relationship.” You inform him as you sit down on your sofa. “Now, you mentioned fucking…” You wink and lean in to kiss his jaw.

He huffs, disguising his laugh with the grunt and pulls you into his lap. Your wine almost sloshes over but you manage to keep from spilling it on him. “That is what I am here for, sí? He asks. “You asked me to come over to fuck you. You liked my cock when you were creaming all over it.”

“You seemed to enjoy it.” You grind down onto him, taking a sip of your wine and you lean in, gripping his jaw with your free hand to push his lips open so you can dribble the wine into his mouth before you press your lips to his.

It’s erotic, you feeding him the rich Cabernet, he groans as he swallows and he takes his time sweeping his tongue through your mouth to give you the taste back. Blindly setting his wine down to wrap his arms around you and help you rock on his hard cock as you grind slowly.

You moan into the kiss, setting your glass down on the table behind before you tangle your fingers in his hair. “You’re such an asshole.” You pant against his lips when he pinches your ass under your dress. “You love it.” He chuckles and you want to roll your eyes but his lips are back on yours.

You’re eager for him, pressing your body against his and he squeezes your ass before reaching for the hem of your dress. Breaking the kiss to pull it over your head and tossing it to the floor. Grunting in surprise at the lingerie underneath. It’s sexy and shows that you put some thought into the night. He palms your breast through the lacey cup of the bra and bites your lower lip. “Bonita.” He growls. “You want to impress me?” He chuckles.

You scoff, “as if. I wore this for myself.” You lie and he sees straight through you. “Of course you did.” He snorts and you huff, “it’s new. I’ve never worn it before.” You admit and reach out to work on the remaining buttons of his shirt, wanting to see all of him.

"It is pretty, but you don't need such things to be sexy." He admits, pinching your nipple through the fabric and reluctantly pulling away so you can drag his shirt down his shoulders. He wants to touch you, to make you cry out again - loud this time.

You caress his exposed skin, taking notice of the faded scars, and you lean in to kiss his collarbone, sliding your tongue along the skin and up his neck. You press kisses to his skin up to his pulse and you grind down onto the bulge in his pants. “Good to know. Gonna save me some money on panties.” You tease against his jaw.

He grunts, cock twitching against your core. "Then you won't bitch at me when I do this." He smirks as he grabs the sides of your panties and rips them apart, making it easier to pull them away from your wet cunt so he can touch you.

Your gasp echoes in your living room, and you moan when his fingers slide through your folds, “fuck. Thought about your fingers inside of me when you were writing on the board today.” You confess.

He chuckles, rubbing your clit with slow circles. “You did not pay attention to my lecture then.” He chides quietly, leaning in and biting down on your nipple sharply.

You grin against his jaw, “hard to pay attention when you’re so fucking boring to listen to.” You gasp when he pinches your clit. “You are such a bitch.” He hisses and you giggle, “you love it.”

He scoffs, but he doesn’t deny it. His wife had been a ball buster and he had loved her with everything he had. He slides his fingers up and curls them inside of you, smirking when you moan.

Grinding down onto his fingers, you moan his name and fumble to unbuckle his belt, reaching in to pull his cock out after flicking open the button. “Fuck. You’re so thick.” You coo, pumping his cock while his fingers curl inside of you.

He grunts against your jaw, his teeth scraping your skin. He loves the way you shiver, you’re responsive, sensitive to someone giving you pleasure. This is just sex, you find him attractive enough to fuck, and old enough - considering all your classmates are nearly ten years younger than you.

You pant when he curls his fingers just right, your grip on his cock loosening slightly, and you whimper his name when he presses his thumb to your clit. “Fuck yes, like that.” You moan, unafraid to voice what you want with him.

He takes your direction easily, focusing on the way you want him to touch you. As harsh as he is, as miserable as he can be, he wants the woman he fucks to enjoy herself. He pushes his fingers in to the knuckle and presses them against your spongy walls, seeking that perfect spot to make you see stars.

“Shit. Oh shit.” You cry out, your jaw dropping open and your eyes close as he works you higher on his thick digits. “Pero. I’m gonna - you’re gonna make me - fuckkkkk.” You practically vibrate as you cum on his fingers, eyes rolling back while you soak his digits.

Pero growls, leaning in to kiss along your neck, still thrusting his fingers against that spot as you cum. Greedy for all the gasping, whimpering moans you will give him. “That’s it, bonita.” He coos roughly. “Get nice and wet to take my cock.”

“Yes. Want to - God, want you to fuck me.” You whimper and he stills his fingers inside of you. “But first, I want to suck your cock.” You confess, reaching down to pull his fingers from inside of you and you shift to kneel between his legs. Reaching out to wrap your fingers around his cock, you pull the foreskin down and lean forward to wrap your lips around the head. Your eyes watching him as you kneel between his thighs.

He curses, low and fervently in Spanish. Practically hissing the words as your lips wrap around the sensitive head and he barely manages to keep from rocking his hips up into your mouth. “Hijo de puta.” He clenches his jaw tightly.

You want him to be wrecked by your mouth, to see him fall apart. You take him deeper, hollowing your cheeks as you suck his cock. Your hand rests on his knee and you bring it to his chest, caressing his skin as you love the way he curses.

Giving you another moan, his head rolls back, leaning against the sofa. Enjoying the way you put pressure around his cock. You are eager and he would make a rude comment but he’s smart enough to not want to get bit.

You bob your head a little faster, sucking his cock with enthusiasm. You want him to love this, to feel good. Even if you think he’s a prick, you want him to want you. You pump what you can’t swallow with your hand, letting your spit dribble down into the coarse hair at the base of his cock.

Pero groans your name, cupping the back of your head and panting softly. Your mouth is the perfect combination of heat and wetness, the pressure amazing. “Fuck, you are so good.”

You moan around him, loving the praise, and you pump his cock a little faster, swallowing around him after you push his cock down your throat. Breathing harshly through your nose, you try to not choke.

“You-“ Pero whimpers when you twist your wrist and grabs your chin. “You have to stop. I do not want to finish like this.” He pants, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths to calm himself down.

You pull off of his cock, spit coating your chin as you look up at him, and you smirk. “Don’t think you can last, professor?” You tease, wanting to rile him up. You lick your lips and caress his thighs, “I thought you had more stamina than that.”

“I thought you wanted me to fuck you?” He huffs, thighs tightening under the fabric of his jeans. “If not, I’ll cum down your throat.”

You roll your eyes, shifting to stand in front of him and you reach behind you to unclasp your bra. “I am messing with you, professor.” You tease, leaning over him to hover your lips over his. “Wanna fuck me here or my bed?”

“Bed.” He rasps out, believing that you deserve more than a hurried fuck on your couch. “Take me to your bedroom.”

You take his hand, helping him up from the sofa, and you guide him through your apartment to your bedroom. You turn to face him when you’re in the room, your hands caressing his chest and you push his pants down his legs. “Want you inside of me again.” You demand, watching him kick his shoes off along with his pants.

“Lay down on your bed and spread your thighs, bonita.” He orders, stripping off his underwear and wrapping his hand around his cock and jerking it slowly.

You follow his order, shifting to lay down on the bed. Resting your head on the pillows, you spread your legs as you watch him kneel on the bed, his fingers wrapped around his cock.

“You have such a pretty cunt.” He praises you. “You just need to be fucked regularly and you’ll be sweet, no?” He teases, smirking when you glare at him. “So I will fill you up again and then you can study while you drip my cum.”

Huffing as he shuffles closer to you, you reach down to rub your clit, “you made me cum in your office on your cock but how do I know that wasn’t a one off?” You raise your eyebrows as you look at him, “maybe you won’t get me off and I’ll need to be a bitch again.”

Pero smirks, amused by your taunts and he lifts your leg up to put it on his shoulder. “Don’t worry.” He grunts as he shuffles closer and presses the head of his cock to your wet entrance. “Here you’ll be able to scream my name.” With a sharp snap of his hips, he buries his cock in one thrust.

Your mouth falls open in a silent scream as he pushes deep inside of you, stretching you out. Your eyes closing until he growls, “keep your eyes on me.” You nod, struggling but managing to open your eyes. He starts to move inside of you and the angle has your chest heaving, “fuck, Tovar. That - that feels good.”

He huffs, wanting to point out that you had just challenged him. Told him that he might not make you cum. He has to prove you wrong. “You take it so well.” He hisses, twitching when you clench down around him. “So tight. Needed a good fuck, didn’t you? Those boys in your class couldn’t fuck you like you need, can they?”

You nod, mouth opens as a moan escapes your lips. “They are boys. They can’t satisfy me. I need a man. Someone who knows what they are doing. Is that you?” You challenge, squeezing your tits as he rocks into you. “You feel good inside of me but can you make me scream?”

His eyes are dark, lust filled as he rocks into you as he reaches down to pull your other leg up onto his hip and spreads his knees apart even more. “You’ll find out.” He promises. “How many times have you touched yourself thinking about me fucking you?” He demands.

You want to lie to him, want to tell him you’ve never imagined him while you touched yourself but you can’t lie when he looks at you like that. “A lot. From - from the first day. Imagined you fucking me on your desk in the lecture hall. In the chairs on the back row. Imagined you taking me in the hallway.” You admit, pinching your nipples until you let go of your tits, caressing his stomach as he pushes deep inside of you.

“Mierda.” Pero hisses, the sound whistling between his teeth. His hips rock forward a little harder. “You fought me because you wanted my cock? I could have given it to you sooner if you just told me. You didn’t have to go to such lengths.”

You giggle, “what can I say? I like riling you up. It’s sexy when you get pissed off. You thought I was a bitch so don’t act like you wanted me right off the bat. Did you jerk off thinking about me?” You ask, sliding your hand higher until you pinch his nipple.

Pero growls, his entire body lurching forward as he slams his hips into your ass again. “After.” He admits. “Jerked off when I woke up thinking about you. How you felt, sounded.” He groans when you clench down around him again in pleasure and he reaches down to rub your clit. “Fuck, you take me so well, bonita.”

You choke when he rubs your clit, hitting a spot inside of you at the same time that takes your breath away. “Fuck, Pero. You - you feel so good inside of me. Fucking hate how good you feel.” He thrusts deep again and you moan, “no. I love it. Keep going. Gonna make me cum like this.”

He chuckles darkly, slowing his hips down enough to make you whine and when you give him the sound he wants, he speeds up. Hammering into you harshly as he grunts from the effort

You cry out, your fingers digging into his upper arms as he bends you over, his cock hitting something deep and devastating inside of you. No one has fucked you like this. “Pero. Pero.” You almost thrash beneath him but he keeps you pinned down, “oh God. I - I’m gonna cum.” You admit breathlessly, “it’s - oh shit. I think I’m gonna pee.” You reveal and Pero chuckles, keeping his harsh pace. “Shitttt.” You squeal as you clamp down onto him, a gush of liquid squirting onto his lower stomach.

“Mierda, tan caliente.” Pero groans, slowing down his thrusts so he can feel your juices drip down. You squirted all over him and it makes him growl. “You soaked me, you little brat.” He huffs, proud of being able to make you do that. It’s obvious from the mortified expression in your face, you didn’t know your body could do that. “Do it again.” He orders, starting to rock his hips again.

You moan, feeling overstimulated and embarrassed but he seems to love it. His hips push against your ass and he grabs your leg from his hip, lifting it onto his shoulder to bend you over even more. "Oh fuck!" You cry, thighs starting to shake against his head as he rams into that same spot. "Pero. Oh fuck. That's - I'm gonna do it again." You pant, eyes clenching shut as you fall apart around his cock once more.

He groans your name, listening to the slick, sloppy sounds of your cunt and loving it. Feeling the splash of your juices soaking him even though he’s still not quite ready to cum. “That’s it, fuck, you’re so good at cumming for me.” He growls proudly. “Sleep like a baby tonight, eh?”

You nod, feeling lost in the sensations wrecking your body. "I want - want you to cum for me." You whine, hating how pathetic you sound and you'll cringe when you think back on it, but right now, you are lost in how good he's making you feel. "Want to wreck you. Let me - let me ride you." You demand, knowing you'll need a second to recover.

He doesn’t protest, he pulls out of you with a slight popping sound and lunges forward to press his lips to yours. Regardless of the animosity between you, it turns into raw sexual passion and he is quickly becoming addicted to it. Your legs fall and you push him back to roll him onto his back. Pero groans and reaches for you as you straddle his hips.

It's sloppy how you shift to sink down on his cock. Your hands sliding up his chest when you're fully seated on top of him. "Fuck. Feel even deeper like this." You moan, starting to grind on top of him. You surge forward to press your lips to his again, sliding your tongue against his.

His hands slide up your back and he holds you into place as you kiss him. He doesn’t take over, letting you command the experience right now. He groans into your mouth, flicking his tongue against yours.

Your fingers slide up to tangle in his hair, tilting his head so you can kiss along his neck, biting down on the skin before sucking a mark into his flesh as you rock on top of him. You want him to remember you were fucking him when he looks in the mirror

He almost rolls his eyes, but it feels too good to be too annoyed. Groaning quietly and twitching inside you as you slowly circle your hips. His hands slide up and down your back, gently rubbing and then down to your ass to squeeze.

You pick up the pace, leaning back so you can look at him, and you moan his name as he hits deeper inside of you. "Fuck yes." You moan, leaning back to brace your hands on his knees and you rock forward onto him, his eyes darting down to watch where he disappears inside of you.

Your tits start to bounce as you ride him. Making him look away from your cunt so he can stare at them and reach up to cup them after a minute. “You look so good on my cock.” He chokes out, squeezing your tits harshly.

"Good enough to break the rules." You chuckle breathlessly, moaning when he pinches your nipples playfully. You let go of his knee, sliding your hand down your stomach until you are rubbing your clit, walls fluttering around his cock.

​​Pero watches you again. “Good girl.” He rasps out, pinching your nipples again and tugging on them. “Make yourself cum again. You’re using my cock, aren’t you? Better than a toy? Or your fingers?”

You nod, "so much better." You confess, rubbing a little faster. "Fuck. I'm gonna - again. Shit!" You squeal, collapsing forward onto his chest as you start to orgasm once more on his cock. By now, you're exhausted but you want him to fill you up so you fight against your body, rocking onto him.

He wraps his arms around you and starts to move under you. Taking control now that he feels how boneless you are. Keeping his feet planted in the bed while he rocks up into you. “You want me to cum now, bonita?” He coos in your ear. “Fill that pretty cunt up so you can keep me inside you longer?”

"Yes. Yes. Please. Please cum. Wanna feel it. Wanna feel you inside of me." You beg, turning your head to press your lips to his, "please cum for me." You plead against his lips while he hammers up into you.

It doesn’t take long. He’s worn you out and that is what he wanted. Grunting and moaning, he works himself into you faster. Feeling the pleasure building up and he gives one final push, his cock painting your walls with hot spurts of cum.

You groan against his chin as he fills you up. You love the hot feel of his cum pressing against your womb, and you moan his name as he rocks himself through his climax. When he's done, you slump against him, kissing along his neck and collarbone.

Panting quietly, the two you lay together and Pero can’t find the strength to push you off of him. Enjoying the moment and sighing softly as he closes his eyes. Still holding you to him as his cock softens inside you

You don't move for a few moments, enjoying the feel of him beneath you, and you whimper when you shift off of him, mindful of his cum welling up inside of you. "Not too bad for an old professor." You tease, shifting to lay down beside him on your pillow.

Pero snorts, rolling his eyes as he looks up at the ceiling fan. “I did the best with what I was given.” He jokes dryly, his fingers brushing your thigh and he feels his heart rate slowing down. “Cardio is good for me, or so I hear.”

"Good for the heart." You hum, caressing his chest as you lean into him slightly. "How'd you get these scars?" You ask, "is that - are they from-?" You don't finish the question, not sure if he wants to answer it if they are from the time his wife was killed.

“No.” Pero shakes his head. “After Maya died, I was angry, vengeful.” He admits. “I did things that you wouldn’t think a professor would do. Until I remembered my wife would have wanted me to finish my degree. To live.”

You don’t ask him to elaborate, certain that it’s things that even your experienced ears would struggle to listen to. “I have no right to speak about what your wife would want but I know you are here and you are functioning. That’s more than most people can say even after that kind of trauma.” You murmur, watching his expressions as you shift to sit up on your elbow.

“What about you?” He asks. “You did not lose your husband like I lost my wife, but it might be worse.” He tells you. “He betrayed you. Made a lie of the vows he took, yet you are still strong.” He snorts. “Maybe too strong.”

You hum, reaching up to trace the length of his aquiline nose, “he betrayed me but he did me a favor. I wasn’t living. I was…I was going through the motions. Now, I get to choose what my life is. I get to be in control. I was so angry with him, upset and betrayed. But now? I thank him. I am free and able to do what I want.” You trace his lips, “my trauma is not like your trauma. I can tell you loved your wife. I didn’t love my husband. Not in the end.”

“You must have at one point.” He figures, wrinkling his nose slightly when you tap the tip of it. “It does not matter, she is gone.” He has grieved her, and he knows that the life he had planned with her will never happen. William likes to say that he is stuck in place, but there has never been a reason to really change.

“Even more reason to live for her then, no?” You ask, tapping his chin as you sit up from the bed. “I gotta clean up. I’m going to shower. You’re welcome to join or you can leave. Whatever you feel more comfortable doing.” You say, waddling slightly into your bathroom to avoid dripping his cum on the floor.

Pero feels guilty as he stands and walks over to his underwear and pants. “I should go.” He calls out as he starts to pull on his clothes, ignoring the little voice that is telling him to stay. You don’t really want him to, you are just being polite. This was an invitation for sex, not a relationship. “I have papers to grade.”

You try to not care that he’s leaving so soon. You know what he came here for and it wasn’t to have a movie night on the sofa and order take out. You grab your robe after you pee and clean up, finding him as he’s putting on his shoes. “I had a good time.” You say as you cross your arms, “maybe…maybe we can do it again.” You suggest, shrugging one shoulder.

You sound unsure, making Pero frown as he looks up from tying the laces. “You decide when you want me inside you again, bonita.” He reminds you. “Let me know.”

You nod, tying the robe around your body as he stands up. “I’ll see you in class.” You tell him, watching him get his jacket and you hate how fucking handsome he looks. This is just sex. He’s an asshole. That’s what you remind yourself of. He nods, “see you in class.” He grabs his car keys and opens your door, turning to look at you one last time before he closes it behind him. You sigh, rubbing your cheek, and you know this just got more complicated…and you need to change your sheets.

The next few weeks are much the same. Pero snarks and spits at you in the lecture hall, while you make his teaching life miserable. Only for him to come over nearly every night to fuck you into your mattress until you are worn out. He still doesn’t stay, but today he had found himself packing a small bag in case he decides to sleep in your bed.

You hear the doorbell ring and grin, not noticing it until you’re unlocking the door. When did you start to grin for Professor Tovar? You force your expression into a softer smile and open the door, “decided to allow my comment today slide or are you going to punish me, Professor?” You smirk, leaning against the door.

Pero snorts and sends you a glare that has no heat behind it. “Why do you always have to be a pain in my ass?” He huffs, shaking his head and grunting his thanks when you push the door open wider to let him in. “You’re sweet when I fuck you, but sour the rest of the time. Should I just have you sit on my cock during class?”

You smirk, “now that would be a sight for your students. What would they think of their scary professor? Reduced to groaning because of my pussy.” You cross your arms and turn to face him after shutting the door. “I still think I earned an ‘A’ on that last test.” You huff but ignore the way he glares at you as he steps into your apartment and sets his bag down. That makes you raise your eyebrows, “want me to cook breakfast after you fuck me all night long?”

“I deserve it.” He scoffs, rolling his eyes at your sass, although he secretly loves it. “I decided your wet sheets would feel better to sleep in after I make you squirt all over them again.” He declares, smirking slightly. You had bought an extra mattress protector after the last one failed under the constant fucking. “I like my bacon extra crispy and my coffee black.”

“And your whiskey neat.” You wink, walking over to your counter to grab the bottle of whiskey you keep for Pero in your apartment. You pour him a glass and stride over to hand it to him, grabbing your glass of wine. “And don’t worry, I got some spare sheets ready.” You wink, leaning in to kiss his jaw.

He hums and turns his head, pressing his lips to yours. It’s almost pathetic how his body immediately leaps to attention when he just smells the perfume that he has come to associate with you. “You should wear a skirt and no panties tomorrow.” He suggests with a smirk when he pulls back.

You giggle, nodding as you take a sip of your wine. “If you make me squirt again, it’s a deal.” You promise and he chuckles, “oh now that’s something I can deliver on.” You giggle, knowing he’s not wrong and you press your lips to his again, fumbling to set your wine glass down as you fall under his spell again. 

**** 

“Today, we are going to delve into Ancient Egypt.” Pero announces as he writes it down on the board and you bite your lip, watching his muscles move beneath his button down. You know the scratches you let on his skin are still visible beneath the material and that makes you clench your thighs together. When his gaze drifts back to the rows of students, you make a show of uncrossing and crossing your legs, letting him see that you fulfilled your promise.

His eyes narrow, the rest of the class believing that he is once again annoyed at you, but he’s really just focusing on the sight of your cunt. His gaze becomes predatory. “Do you have a problem?” He asks you, almost smirking when you snap your thighs closed when the entire class turns back to look at you. 

“Yeah.” You scoff. “I do.” 

Pero huffs and motions you forward. “Come down then.” He challenges. “You read the lecture and tell me where I’ve gotten it wrong.”

You roll your eyes and the students murmur in shock when you stand up and make your way up to the board. “You are starting in the wrong era. I think you need to teach from the end to the beginning to truly understand the fall of the Egyptians and their legacy in human history.”

“And who determines which beginning?” He challenges, waiting for you to step behind the podium. “Should we go back to the dinosaurs?”

You huff, “no. I mean we start with Cleopatra and Caesarion and end with Narmer. It would make sense to go from the end to the beginning to decide what the downfall of the Egyptian empire was.” You cross your arms, “but by all means, continue your lesson.”

Pero steps close to you, the class seemingly holding their breath and wondering if they are going to see Professor Tovar flip out on you. “If you think you can teach the class, give the lesson.” His hand slides up your skirt, hidden behind the podium and you, his fingers brushing your cunt.

You clear your throat, as if in warning to Pero, and to try to state your case. “Who here has heard about Cleopatra?” You ask, knowing that some might have not. Half the class raises their hands. “Okay, well, uh, oh.” You gasp when Pero’s fingers slide through your folds, rubbing your clit. “We - we should begin there. In, uh, 30 BC, Cleopatra died. Allegedly through suicide by- by a fatal bite from a venomous snake.”

“What kind of snake?” Pero demands, wanting you to shake in front of the class as he uses the time he has spent in your bed against you right now. It’s a turn on, knowing he is bringing you pleasure in front of all of them.

You try so hard to not close your eyes, or widen them when he pushes two thick digits into your pussy. He kicks at your ankle, spreading you wider and you lean against his podium a little more. “Either an asp or a - a cobra. Both are poetic. She - the cobra was associated with her favorite goddess, Isis. A cobra represents royalty. She - she wrote in her suicide note that she be buried by Antony.” You remember the books you’ve read over the years with as much effort as possible while Pero continues to finger you.

He listens to you, forgetting the rest of the class is even there as he continues to pump your fingers in and out of your tight cunt. He just hums, expecting you to continue as he does. Smirking to himself as your lips press together and you swallow a small sound.

“Cleopatra was the last a-actual Pharaoh. A queen. She had twins and her downfall came when - when Octavian - Octavian ordered the murder of Cleopatra and her maids, it provided her the space and opportunity to kill herself. He directed his guards to hunt down and kill Caesarion, Cleopatra’s teenage son with Caesar, to remove any question of the boy’s succeeding his mother on the throne.” You rush out what you were saying, “so to - to understand the Egyptian empire. You need to - oh God.” You choke when you’re close, “you need to understand it’s downfall and work back from- From there.” You grip the edges of the podium as you cum, closing your eyes for a second and biting the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from making a noise.

Pero scoffs as he works you through the last remaining moments of your orgasm. “Look down at my lecture, bonita.” He murmurs this too low for anyone else to hear you.

You look down at the notes in front of you, the timeline he has for the lecture and you fluster. He was going to work from the end to the beginning. You swallow harshly, cheeks flaming hot as he withdraws his fingers from inside of you, glistening with your cum. “It - it seems that is all I have to offer, unless you’d like me to take over your entire lecture.” You tell Pero, eyes burning into his as you turn your head to look at him.

Pero wrinkles his nose and shakes his head. “And have you stumbling and stuttering through my lecture?” He snorts and slips his fingers into his mouth to suck them clean, pulling them out with a pop. “You can take your seat.”

You stumble to your seat, some students laughing and thinking you’re embarrassed. Some watch in shock as you barely manage to sit down in your seat. Your eyes meet Pero’s as he adjusts his glasses and your throat is so dry. You know he’s standing behind the podium to hide his hard on and you cross your legs, squeezing your thighs together at the thought of him fucking you against his podium. He continues where you left off but you don’t hear a word of it. You linger after he finishes his lecture, taking your time to gather your things until everyone has left. You abandon your things as you stand up, striding across the room to wrap your arms around his neck and drag his face to yours so you can kiss him.

He had been expecting you to act, watching you as you stared off into space. You have been off in your own little world and daydreaming about what he had done to you in front of the entire class. He pulls you close, knowing he is taking a risk, but it’s worth it. It’s worth tasting you and feeling your passion.

You pull back after a second, your hands sliding down his chest and you look over at the door to make sure no one saw you. “I’m studying in the library after class. Need to make sure that I’m using book sources.” You inform him, letting him know you won’t be home if he plans to come over. “Maybe you can come and find me.” You slide your hand down to squeeze his cock through his pants, “and I can return the favor.”

Pero grunts, twitching under your touch but he smirks at you. “Study hard.” He snickers, knowing that he would be finding you. He steps away from you and straightens slightly. “Maybe I’ll let you look at my lecture before you get called to the front of the class tomorrow.” Shrugging slightly, he smirks again. “Or maybe you like being fingered in the front of the lecture hall.”

“You’re a bastard.” You huff at him, walking over to your desk to grab your things. “See you in the library later, Professor.” You walk towards the door and playfully lift your skirt over your ass to flash him before you leave the lecture hall, not looking back to see him curse and reach down to adjust himself. 

**** 

You bite your lip as you scan the row. It’s late, most people are gone and the librarian is on a break after you asked her too many times to help you locate the books you need. There’s no sign of Pero yet and you wonder if he decided to head home.

Waking through the aisles of the library, he’s searching for you. Absorbing the familiar smell of the books, he is relaxed here. Still spending hours on the weekend researching, although his own library at home rivals here for the books he sources. Researching another book that he is writing, although it’s slower coming now that he has been spending so many nights with you. Blowing out a frustrated breath when he doesn’t see you, he continues to the back of the library, only to find you on the last row. “Fuck, did you try to make it obvious?”

You shake your head when he appears, "no. I am trying to find a book for my paper and the librarian is on a break. I think she's tired of trying to help me find book sources." You raise your eyebrows at your professor before you try to find the book on the bottom shelf, kneeling down and you sense him shuffle over to you. You turn your head, looking up to see his crotch in your face, and you smirk when you discover the bulge in his pants.

Pero’s eyes are already dark, his cock hard before he had even walked into the damn library. “The blue spine.” He knows which book you are looking for just by the section you are in.

You turn your head back towards the shelf, quickly locating the book and you look up at him, "thanks...sir." You tease and he rolls his eyes. You set the book down and reach up to unbutton his pants, "let me show you how grateful I am." You coo and reach into his pants to pull his hard cock out. "My my my, Professor Tovar...what got you so hard?" You smirk before you grip his length, pulling the foreskin down so you can wrap your lips around the head of his cock.

Pero hisses softly, grabbing the edge of a shelf to hold on to. “Maybe because you’re a cock tease.” He grunts, keeping up the grumpy facade until he moans softly at the press of your tongue. “Fuck, you love sucking my cock, don’t you?”

You pull off of him, letting your spit dribble down onto his cock as you pump him in a fist, "you love me sucking your cock." You counter and his grunt makes you giggle softly. You lean in, taking him in your mouth again, this time a little deeper.

“Best way to - fuck, shut you up.” He groans, rocking his hips forward to follow your mouth as you pull back. “You don’t talk with your mouth full.” Your hand around the base squeezes him tight but he loves the grip you have on him.

You glare at him but it doesn't land the same when your mouth is full of his girth. You moan around him in protest but he grabs your neck, keeping you still as he rocks into your mouth. You love it when he uses you like this so you widen your jaw and keep your eyes on him as he grips the shelf.

It’s wrong, the two of you could be caught, but he doesn’t care. He takes whatever you give him and he has found that he wants to spend as much time with you as he can. He grunts quietly, watching you and he moves to cup your cheek as you take him deeper.

You moan around him, loving the way he caresses your cheek, and you hollow your eyes around him. He's so girthy, it's hard to not have a jaw ache after a while. You pull off of him to catch your breath and pump his cock, twisting your wrist to work him higher.

“Fuck, look at you.” Pero grunts down at you. “So cock hungry. You’re going to swallow every drop, aren’t you?” His eyes roll back when you twirl your tongue around the sensitive head and press it against the slit. “Fuck, you just need to be on your knees for me during class.”

You moan, taking him deeper again, and he twitches in your mouth. You know you don’t have much more time so you grab the back of his thighs, pushing him further down your throat and your eyes start to water as he stretches your throat, pressing against your gag reflex but you breathe harshly through your nose.

He bites off another curse, eyes fluttering closed and he leans his head back, exposing his throat to your gaze when you look up. About to cum, his fingers curl around your cheek and he chokes out your name, body tensing as he spills down your throat.

He hunches over you as he cums, hot seed hitting the back of your throat and you eagerly swallow every drop. You squeeze his thighs, encouraging him to rock himself through his orgasm, and he does. You work him for every drop, his cock pulsing on your tongue until he hisses and comes to a stop, pulling out of your mouth. You smirk as you look up at him, “surely that’s got to be worth some extra credit?”

Pero growls, rolling his eyes at your comment, but he’s dragging you up to press his lips to yours. Needing a kiss from you before he ever even tucks his cock away. A shuffle and a dropped book halfway across the room makes him pull away from you. “Are you going to stop being a pain in my ass?” He asks, zipping himself up and raising a brow. “I didn’t think so.”

You giggle, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand before you pick up the book from the floor. “I better get back to work.” You glance over his shoulder, “don’t want people knowing I kinda of don’t mind you.” You offer him a wink, knowing he likely has things to do like grading papers.

Pero snorts and nods. “I’ll see you later.” He promises, knowing that he will come back over to spend the night with you again. It’s become almost a habit, and you haven’t made a comment about him leaving his toothbrush in your bathroom. It’s been unspoken and he hasn’t pushed it.

**** 

You curl around Pero, the morning sun shining through your curtains and you kiss his chest before you shift away from him, deciding to make some coffee. “Gotta wake up, Professor.” You say as you reach for your robe.

Pero grunts, opening his eyes and hating that you’ve moved away from him. You are warm and he misses the feel of your body pressed against his. “Class is canceled.” He groans, reaching for you to pull you back to the bed, but you just slip out of his reach. “Fuck.”

You chuckle, “it’s not. You need to get up.” You playfully slap his chest, wrapping your robe around your body as you make your way into the kitchen to start the coffee machine and make some breakfast. Pero is soon coming into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes as he comes over to you to wrap his arms around your waist just as the doorbell sounds out.

You frown, but Pero figures it's just the neighbor who has been very curious about his presence here. He has told you that the man is interested in dating you, but you don't believe him. "I will get it." He tells you, patting your hip. Perhaps seeing Pero right out of your bed would discourage the man from his interest. He walks to the door and opens it, surprised to find not the neighbor, but a well dressed, handsome man who looks shocked to see Pero standing there. "Who are you?" Pero grunts, wondering who this man is and what he wants.

“Who are you?” The man counters and your eyes widen at the voice of your ex husband. “What the hell are you doing here?” You growl, stomping over to the front door. “I wanted to talk. Didn’t expect you to be fucking someone else already.”

Pero scowls at the other man and looks back at you, sensing you don't want your ex here. "You can call her." He grunts at him. "Leave and don't come back."

Your ex shakes his head, “who the hell are you?” He asks Pero who scoffs, “I work at her university.” Your ex chuckles, “oh. I see. Well, you haven’t seen the last of me.” He promises and steps away from the door, a warning look towards you. “She left me, by the way.” He spits at you and you snort, “smart girl.”

Pero closes the door and turns to you, watching as you stare off for a moment. He can tell you are rattled and he wonders if you still have feelings for him. "We should get ready." He reminds you.

You nod, swallowing harshly as you work on fixing the coffee and some breakfast for you and Pero. “Sorry about that. I didn’t expect - I - I never imagined he’d show up.”

“He knows where you live.” That part surprises Pero, figuring you wouldn’t have wanted that when you finalized the divorce. “Do you think he will come back?”

“I don’t know. I never - I never told him where I lived. He must’ve - shit - he must’ve found me.” You scoff, “he is a prick. Let’s get ready. We gotta get to class.” You tell him, leaning in to kiss him softly.

“Okay.” Pero doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t say anything else. Quickly eating breakfast and joining you in the shower to get ready for class. Once you are both ready, he guides you to your car, watchful for your ex. “See you in class, bonita.” He murmurs, wondering when he had become so protective over you. When he had fallen for you.

****

You look up from your desk as the dean of the college walks in after Pero just dismissed his class. You frown and the dean looks over at you, “I need to speak to you in my office. Both of you.” The dean declares to Pero who frowns but nods, gesturing for you both to follow the dean to his office.

Pero’s stomach twists unpleasantly and he scowls as he walks into the office and sits down in front of the desk, in the seats provided. He doesn’t appreciate being called onto the carpet, although he has a feeling he knows what this is about. “What? Did one of those brats complain that I was too harsh?” He demands. “You know I don’t coddle them.”

The dean sighs and looks between you, “now, I know you know this isn’t about your class. This is what has been transpiring between you and your student.” The dean brings his gaze to you and you stare back, refusing to cower under his intensity.

Pero doesn’t say anything, just stares at the dean when he looks back over at him. “I received a call today.” He behinds, spreading his hands wide in apology. “My hands are tied. You know what is written in your contract.” Pero snorts and rolls his eyes, wanting to comment that you are a grown ass woman, but he doesn’t say a word. “You’re up for tenure, Pero.” The dean stresses, “and you’re sleeping with a student?”

You scoff, “I am a grown woman. A consenting adult. Why is this any of your business?” You ask and the dean huffs, “because it’s against our policy. Professor Tovar is up for tenure and if he is found to be violating the rules, then we have no choice but to fire him.” The dean says and you chuckle, “are you kidding me? Well it’s a good thing I’m not sleeping with him. I hate the man, honestly. I’m only taking his class to finish my degree. I have a year and a half left and I only took his class to finish what I came here for. I can assure you, I would never sleep with him. I hate him.” You declare, crossing your arms.

Your words pierce his heart, stabbing him until he feels like he’s bleeding. “Right.” He growls, shooting to his feet, his face twisted in anger. “You heard it. Can I go back to my work now?” He doesn’t wait for the dean to answer, just marches out of the office. The bastard can fire him if he doesn’t like it. Pero just has to get out of that room before he explodes.

You watch him go, forcing yourself to keep your face neutral as he leaves the room like a bat out of hell. “I suppose I shall have to take your word for it. If I see or hear of anything untoward, Professor Tovar is gone. Do you understand? And you will be removed from the school.” You nod, “yes sir.” You gather your bag and exhale shakily as you exit the room, deciding to head to your next class and find Pero in his office during his work hours. 

****

You knock on his door, hearing him call out for you to come in, and you step inside, shutting the door behind you. “You seem upset that I saved your ass.” You declare, seeing his scowl.

Pero shoots you a glare and then looks back down at his papers. “If you don’t have any questions about the lecture, I will have to ask you to leave.” He spits out. “It is not wise to be behind closed doors with a man you hate.” His hand nearly snaps the pen, he grips it so tight as he scrawls his notes in the margin. His heart aches and he wants to rage at you, but that would not be wise. He had always thought himself wise, until you come into his life and fucked him up. He’s in love with you, and you hate him.

You are speechless. Having expected him to understand that you lied to save his job and your position in the school. You swallow down the lump in your throat, tears stinging in your eyes but you refuse to let them fall. You nod and turn back towards the door, “of course, Professor Tovar. Have a good evening.” You step out of his office, the one that you’ve spent so much time with him in, and decide to go find the registrar to drop out of his class. Even if you fail it, it’s better than sitting there and knowing the man you love doesn’t love you back.

He continues to write, not stopping until he hears the click of the door as you release the handle and he sighs. Dropping his pen onto the desk and leaning back with a sigh as he rubs his eyes. “Fuck.” He hisses, his chin trembling dangerously until he clenches his jaw. Wishing that he had never opened that fucking door this morning.

****

Pero glances at your empty seat, the clock ticking above him, and he knows it’s too late for anyone to come in for this lecture. He sighs and turns back to the board, wondering if you’re sick or just skipping after what happened. He hasn’t spoken to you. You haven’t called or texted after you left his office and now, you’re missing. Your seat is empty and the space in Pero’s chest feels even emptier.

****

You sigh, pouring out a glass of wine. Today was exhausting and you hate that you let Pero get under your skin like this. You know he doesn’t feel the same way. It was obviously just sex for him. You shift to sit down on your sofa, staring blankly at the screen until your doorbell rings. You groan, wondering if it’s your ex husband coming back once more but when you answer the door, you’re surprised to see Pero standing on your doorstep.

“You missed class.” He glares at you and pushes the lecture notes towards you. “I don’t want you bitching when you fail the test because you didn’t know the material.” It’s a flimsy fucking excuse, but he needed to see you. He hadn’t slept last night, finding it nearly impossible when you weren’t curled up around him and sleeping on his chest.

You stare at him, “I- I am no longer in your class. I dropped it.” You tell him and he scoffs, “but then you’re going to get an automatic failure. It’s too late in the semester.” You shake your head, “I don’t care. I can’t sit there in the front row and watch you when I know that you don’t feel the same way that I feel about you. I know you can’t stand me, I know what we have is just…I don’t know- hate sex? Just please go. I don’t need you throwing this in my face. It’s done. We are done. You succeeded in getting me to drop your fucking class, Tovar.”

Pero hisses, reaching out and grabbing your arm and pulling you closer. “You hate me.” He growls in your face, sneering and trying to cover the hurt. “That’s how you feel. I’m supposed to be sorry that I love you? Is that it? Hate fucking is all you wanted? Fine.” He lets go of you and steps back. “Fail your class. Go back to your ex and live your unfulfilling life with boring sex.” He turns to walk away from your door, furious that he had told you how he feels. You will just use it against him.

“What the hell? You can’t just walk away after saying that shit!” You hiss at him, “and who the fuck said I was going back to my ex? God, you’re - you’re a prick.” You growl and Pero spins to face you.

“Of course I am.” Pero hisses. “You tell me everyday that I’m a prick. Of course I am. What more do you expect from me?” He demands, nearly deflating after he says that. Just staring at you. “Just- what do you want?” He asks helplessly, gesturing uselessly with his hands. “I would have quit, told them to go fuck themselves. Instead, you told them you hated me and would never sleep with me.” He frowns and sighs. “It’s not like you’ve told me things changed for you, so what am I supposed to think?”

You reach out to cup his cheeks, bringing his face to yours. “I don’t hate you. You’re a fucking asshole. A brilliant asshole who I - I love. I love you, Pero. I love how smart you are. I love how much you don’t give a shit about what people think of you. I love how fiercely loyal you are. I love you.” You choke, “I love you.”

This time, the kiss isn’t violent, but it is passionate. He lunges forward and presses his lips to yours, relief pouring off of him in waves as he gathers you in his arms and kicks the door closed behind him. He’s not leaving, he can’t leave. Moaning when you moan and letting his tongue sweep inside your mouth when you let him, Pero deepens the kiss, pouring all his emotions into it.

You stumble backwards towards your bedroom, Pero blindly reaching for the door handle and you feel your bed hit the back of your legs as he lifts you onto the bed. “You still - you haven’t responded.” You gasp when he kisses along your neck and his hands fumble with your shirt.

He growls, pulling back and rolling his eyes at you. “Are you always going to be a pain in my ass?” He huffs. “I love you. I couldn’t sleep last night because you weren’t snoring and drooling on my chest. I couldn’t hold you tight and feel your warmth.” He smirks when you roll your eyes and huff. “I love you, bonita. I don’t want to just fuck you, I- I never would have stayed or risked my job if it was just hate fucking.”

You grin, caressing his cheeks as he confesses how he feels. “I love you, Pero. God, you are - I don’t want to sleep apart from you. I don’t want to miss you like I did last night. I want you. I want to be with you. I don’t want to hate fuck, I want you to make love to me.” You demand, sliding your hands lower to begin working on unbuttoning his shirt.

“So demanding.” He scoffs, but he is shrugging out of his shirt as soon as you unbutton the last one and flinging it down. “I can’t believe you dropped the class.” He grunts. “I can fix it. I know the register, she likes me.” He promises, leaning in and nipping your chin before he kisses along your jaw.

You moan as he kisses you, “I don’t know if I can - they are gonna know and I don’t want you to lose your job, baby.” You reach down to unbutton his pants, “you been flirting with the register?” You tease, reaching in to pull his cock out of his pants.

Pero groans and twitches in your hand. “Job stability.” He jokes dryly. “A lot of students go to her because of me. I get a cake every Christmas.” He bats your hand away so he can push his pants down and kick them off, reaching for your leggings. “You graduate the class and then there’s nothing they can do. You won’t be my student.”

You lift your hips so he can drag your panties down and you sigh, “only a few more weeks until finals. Do you think we can make it to the end of the semester without risking everything?” You ask breathlessly as he slides his hand into your panties, making you moan when he starts to rub your clit.

“If they find out and fire me, so be it.” Pero growls, finding you wet and he loves how you always want him. “They will not look to your apartment, they dare not harass a student.”

You moan at both his touch and his words. The fact that he's still willing to risk it all for you has you bucking into his touch but he keeps you pinned to the bed. "Baby, I need - need you to fuck me." You plead, wanting more from him.

He leans down, pulling down your tank top and wrapping his lips around your nipple, shuffling between your thighs and lining up to sink into you. He pulls away from your nipple and kisses you as he slowly pushes inside your tight cunt.

"Fuck baby." You pant against his mouth, reaching down to grip the hem of your tank to pull it over your head, and you toss it on the floor. "Always feel so goddamn good inside of me." You whimper when he starts to slowly move inside of you.

“You feel good.” He moans, kissing along your neck. “So damn perfect around me.” He praises, twitching deep when you clench around him, squeezing him tight. He doesn’t speed up, wanting to take his time as he loves you this time.

“I love you.” You exhale shakily, closing your eyes as he kisses along your neck. “I love you so much baby.” You murmur, caressing his back as he moves over you. You swear you can feel his heart beating in his chest or it might be yours but you feel so connected to him.

“I love you too.” He groans, rocking into you at a slow pace. His arms are curling under you, pulling you closer and pressing you into the bed.

You moan his name as he rocks into you, in no rush to make you cum unlike the frantic fucking you’ve indulged in before. It doesn’t take long for him to work you up though, high on his love and the way you feel. You fall apart moments later, a moan escaping your lips as you cum around him.

Pero is quickly following you, groaning your name as he thrusts deep and shudders, overwhelmed by the force of his orgasm and your love. Closing his eyes, he turns and presses his lips to yours as he fills you. Only to stop rocking his hips and settle on top of you, panting softly.

You kiss him slowly, savoring how this feels, and he keeps his body pressing into yours. “Te amo.” He murmurs and you smile, “I love you too.” You keep your eyes closed as you take in the moment. 

****

“Congratulations to the graduating class!” The dean declares and you grin, throwing your hat up in the air as you grip your degree in your hand. You finally did it. You turn to face the crowd, searching for Pero’s face in the group of professors and you rush over to him, wrapping your arms around his neck to kiss him.

Pero chuckles as he wraps his arms around your waist and hauls you close. He’s garbed in his own cap and gown, having presented your degree to you by happenstance. There are murmurs around the two of you, but he couldn’t give a fuck less. You haven’t been his student since that first class that you had been in. He kisses you deeply and pulls back with a smirk. “You are still a pain in my ass.” He teases you, kissing your lips again. “But I’m proud of that and you.”

“Thank you, Professor Tovar.” You wink and he chuckles, “congratulations Mrs. Tovar. Now, shall we go celebrate your graduation?” He asks, knowing that his whole world has changed since you sat down in his class and sassed him. He wouldn’t change any of it, even if you’re still a pain in his ass. You lean in to kiss his jaw, “what do you say we go to your office for the last time?” You whisper and he groans, grateful for the gown he’s wearing. “Let’s go.” He grabs your hand and guides you through the crowd. You both know it won’t be the last time you fuck in his office. You’ll bring your husband his lunch on occasion, you’ll even end with dessert.

[sparrow-in-the-field]

Alright, I waited to share my thoughts/criticisms on severance s2 because tbh for a bit I thought I just wouldn't, but I keep thinking about the show, so I might as well!

Typical disclaimer that this is all just my opinion. I know some people loved this season, and I know others are more like me and preferred s1. And both of those takes are okay! Either way, it's just a fun show to talk about!

Alright a couple links and then I'll jump in:

Here were my thoughts on s1. It's one of my favorite seasons of any show ever. I wrote that post right before s2 aired, when I was still young and naive and hopeful about the next season lol.

This post by failchild is a far better written and organized post that sums up my main criticisms as well. I reference it a few times in my thoughts and highly recommend reading it.

Discussion under the cut because it's gonna be a long one!

I managed to bucket my criticisms into four categories, with examples in each. Let's just jump in!

Too many new characters, too few consequences

I'm not sure it was even a show that needed new characters, yet we got so many this season! Imo, the heart of the show was always the four in MDR (see my s1 post). In addition to them as the main group, you had Cobel, Milchick. Devon and Ricken. Gemma/Ms. Casey, of course. Burt and Felicia. A substantial and valuable cast! Adding one or two new characters, sure, it's bound to happen, but with only 1-2 new ones, they could be fleshed out and worked in to the main story in a way that felt organic and like they were complex characters. Not a single character that was added this season felt that way to me. They fell flat, and ultimately barely made a mark in the story. For instance:

Drummond. Who is this man??? I'm sorry who is he?? Why did he start showing up with virtually no introduction? I think he and Helena might be siblings because he called Jame father but tbh with the weird cult stuff that could just be what they call their leader so idk for sure?? Why couldn't they have given him a proper introduction. One line. "Hey Helena your [half, full, who cares] brother is back from [literally any other implied Lumon site]." Or "Alright MDR, this is Drummond, Grainer's replacement for security." Like!! I know feeding exposition through dialogue is boring sometimes, but I sure can still benefit from it when it's a brand spanking new character! And then beyond that, what was his personality? Brooding, I guess. What was his job? To be antagonistic, I guess. The creator of the show has said that Drummond cares about Helena above everyone else, but I sure as hell didn't know that! They made eye contact sometimes, as people do. They said words to each other in a meeting, like twice. And I'm supposed to understand they care about each other on a deeper level, from that?? If you want to make claims about your characters, then you have to show me in the actual show instead of mentioning it retroactively. And then Drummond died. So none of it matters anyway. He was written in to be a brooding henchman and he died and that was it. No understanding of his motivations, his background, even really his role in the company or the family. And now he's dead so it doesn't even matter. Not to mention that Mark S. literally had no idea who he was when they fought. They'd never met before. To me, it made the fight feel less significant, and more violence for the sake of violence.

Ms Huang. I want to love Ms Huang, and I suppose in a way I do!! But I wanted to understand her, I wanted to know her. All I know is she is a child doing the same internship that Cobel did. Her presence I appreciated and could pick up on its significance without the show blatantly telling me (having a child manager is a shield for violence, Lumon has always and continues to use child labor, etc.). But what about Ms Huang herself?? What are her motivations, what is her background? Any question she was asked, she dismissed. And where is she now? Oh that's right. Sent away. I genuinely believe we'll never see her again, because her story was a dead end. She was a kid in an internship and it ended. What more would there be for her next season? So yes, the child worker was a "whoa" moment and it tells us something new about the company, but she's another new character who comes and goes with no actual consequence to the plot or main characters.

Dr. Maur. I hate this man. Who the fuck is this man. I get that someone had to be down there working on Gemma (I would have appreciated a nod to Cobel though, like she at least had some involvement since she sent Ms. Casey to the testing floor in s1) but this character felt less like a person and more like a nearly cartoonish villain. Just the creepy man doing creepy experiments. And then in the end? Mark and Gemma escape, get in the elevator before he can catch them. No real confrontation; he's not even in the room when Mark finds Gemma. idk if we'll see him again next season, but frankly if we don't, it won't make a difference.

Fields. I also hate this man. This was one of the new characters I was actually anticipating! I expected him to potentially be a very interesting and involved character! But nope. He's in one episode, is a real fucking freak, and then is gone. Doesn't matter. His character had zero consequences on the Burt/Irving plot, and I seriously doubt we'll ever see him again (good).

Lorne. Okay I do have a soft spot for Lorne, she is precious and good! But she only showed up when convenient. She talked to Mark and Helly/na when they showed up, and she saved Mark from Drummond. Last season there was a huge running theme about the departments coming together; Burt/Irving was about more than their romance, it was this idea of workers joining together. But Lorne only saved Mark because she just so happened to be there when he was in trouble (their departments never sought each other out again after their encounter). And then Mark leaves. And she...takes Emeile back to the other goats? I guess? Maybe we'll see her again, especially if the innies really are going to rise up in a more significant way. But who knows for sure.

A lack of consequences for everyone, actually

It's staggering, how little had actual consequences in this season. So much that happened either in s1 or started to happen in s2 just... didn't matter. For instance:

Reintegration. Everyone's talked about this already so I'll keep it short. But it felt so exciting that Mark was reintegrating so early, and that first shot on him on the table at the end of ep3 got me so hyped!! Only for nothing to happen. By the finale, even the way Mark is talking about it sounds like he's not actually done it (wild that after "flooding the chip" he's still acting right as rein [able to get into physical fights in fact] and having no issues, meanwhile Petey was out here fighting for his life just to take a damn shower). It felt like Mark could have just been considering reintegration and nothing would have been different in the plot. "But we needed it for Gemma's episode!" Except we didn't? Nothing about that ep felt like reintegration as we've seen it. He honest to god could have just stared wistfully at a photo of his wife and they could have jumped into flashbacks that way.

Helena's YouTuber ass apology video and general lack of outside world response. This ties into the whole world feeling a lot smaller this season that failchild talked about, but it's really frustrating that the s1 finale essentially ended up having zero consequences. I feel like with as many people as were shown in s1 to protest severance or hate Lumon, at least some people in the outside world would be calling bullshit on Helena's excuse for what Helly said at the party. But what? She made the video and everyone was like "oh okay" and dropped it? I'm not saying this had to be a huge plot point, but like, idk. At least show me some protestors outside the property! Have the news on in the background, have Helena mention being annoyed at journalists asking her more questions! Just any acknowledgement that what Helly did at least made ripples, because that finale felt so huge when it came out. And the way the s2 treated it, essentially nothing was accomplished from an honestly incredible thing that Helly managed to pull off.

Milchick. Again, I think people have already talked about this a lot, so I'll keep it short, but. I so greatly wanted to learn more about Milchick this season. I wanted to know his backstory, his motivations, his dreams, anything. He had a bigger part this season, so I was hoping to see some form of character development, whether for the good or bad, I didn't care! Just something changing within him. But despite everything he faced, nothing changed? I guess he told Drummond to eat shit (which again, a weird lack of consequences he faced for that), but then was like "whelp, back to doing what I always do!" I guess I just went into this season wanting to understand Milchick more, and I still don't. He had the same outcome as s1, still essentially a henchmen trying to control innies. Except this time we got to see people be racist towards him. ...cool.

Ricken's storyline. Not much to say here other than Ricken played such an interesting role in s1, with his book inspiring the innies. They started to go somewhere with that but got bored I guess?? Anyway, hope him and Eleanor are doing okay lol.

The board???? So. What happened to the board. Remember when everyone reported to the board? When every vital decision seemed up to the board? When Cobel used to speak to them through Natalie. When, hell, in this very season, Mark plugged in that speaker and that's how he got his friends back!! Why did the board just like, completely disappear by the end of the show? The board wasn't in the back half of the season at all, let alone in the finale!! Supposedly the most important day in Lumon's history, and the board just?? isn't there?? Isn't even mentioned. I have no idea why they dropped this concept. There for awhile it was one of the more fun mysteries of the show, and now it's like it hardly even existed.

The core group is gone: Irv, my beloved, I'm so sorry

Again, this has been talked about a lot already, but just. Man I'm ngl sometimes I now get emotional over s1 clips because look how much those four used to mean to each other!! They were a family!! And now that's all gone and it's like the characters don't even care?

Irv. By far the biggest disappointment in this season for me personally was Irv's story. It's almost hard for me to talk about because it bothered me so much. You had an incredible character, with an amazing actor, and you said "eh. Send him away." And then everyone just went with it?? I thought for sure they were going to raise hell to bring him back; they'd do the work as four or they wouldn't do it at all!! But no, they just...had a weird funeral. And moved on. I really thought what Irv did for Helly was the set up, the first half, of a full circle moment for the two of them. Imagine how emotionally fulfilling their reunion would be?? Imagine how much it would have developed their relationship! It would have been so cool. But no, Irv is just gone, and honestly nearly forgotten in a way that feels almost like an insult to s1 imo.

Dylan also was very much in his own world this season and I can't decide if it's in character? Like yeah him getting to see Gretchen was huge and I get that, but just. Idk, he loved his MDR family too, so much so that he stayed behind for them in s1!! He was always involved, he always wanted to be involved!! But then Milchick, who he hated by the end of last season, says "hey buddy maybe stay quiet" and he just does?? Idk man, felt a little convenient.

And then Mark and Helly were just. Idk man I'm not making this about ships. I liked when they kissed in s1; it felt authentic. But then this season they ramped it up to 100 and I just. Sorry. It felt so fast to me. It felt like they disregarded everything around them for the sake of themselves and that doesn't feel reflective of the characters I knew in s1?

The Lumon (and Cold Harbor) of it all

Other people have talked about this too, but there were some questionable choices in my opinion about Mark's sudden over-importance to Lumon, and also Lumon at large felt less coherent to me this season.

Why does everyone have to be in on the conspiracy? I'm mostly talking about Burt here. Why was he was Lumon cronie? I really thought that Outie Burt and Irv's story would have been an interesting character-based story, about this premise of loving someone but them being with someone else. Maybe a tale as old as time for some, but I think through the lens of two older queer men, and with the innie versus outie dynamic, it could have been a really refreshing story? It didn't need to be about Lumon. Not everything in s1 was directly about Lumon (Mark's relationship with Devon and Ricken, Mark dating Alexa, his attempts to talk to Petey's daughter, etc.). The only spy was Cobel and it made sense given her job within Lumon. But Burt?? Mr. Fine Arts degree Burt?? Was also the hit driver during his off hours?? The Burt/Irv storyline could have gone about a thousand different directions, and that was just... not the one I wanted, frankly. And tbh with how little screen time it got and how abruptly it ended, I seriously wonder how dedicated to the storyline the writers were either.

Cold Harbor's sudden urgency. Failchild's post covers the flaws of Mark as suddenly the most important guy really well, so I won't get to into that exactly, but from the very first mention of Cold Harbor, I had my hackles up. Before, a huge theme of the show was MDR just doing the mysterious work. There were quarters to meet, but no ultimate goal or end point. Then in s2, all of the sudden everything is urgent, everything is superlative. This Has to get Done. It is the Most Important Thing Ever. If it happens, Gemma will Die and Mark/all of MDR will be Fired and will therefore also Die (which the internal logic of that from both a science and business perspective... sighs I won't get into it). Maybe this is a weird take, but I didn't need the Ms. Casey/Gemma story to have urgency; I didn't need her life to be on the line for me to want her out of there!! It just felt so jarring to go from s1 of "they're all doing this weird work that has existed for at least a few years with several different people who came and went from the team" to "all of this is for Mark and Gemma and that is all that matters for the entirety of Lumon, and after today it will all be Complete and Done Forever". Like...what?

Additionally, in s1, Petey's map says "people live down here". There's this fear that people, plural, don't get to have outies. Yet when we finally see Gemma in s2, she's alone in this gigantic hallway maze. There are 25 rooms all for her and her alone! Again, suddenly in s2 She is The One. The rest of the MDR files are?? Fake?? There... aren't multiple people trapped down there?? Lumon's whole success rests on her and Mark's shoulders alone?? IF IT ONLY WORKS WITH MARK AND GEMMA HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TURN IT INTO SOMETHING USEABLE FOR LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE??? Sorry, I got carried away...my point is, in s1 it felt like a different story. It felt like MDR would care because Ms. Casey was one of them and she potentially represented a greater, darker world of permanent innies. But that was completely forgotten in s2.

Another contradicting detail was the marching band. Don't get me wrong, it was fun watching Tillman lead a band, but...why is there a severed marching band? It just doesn't align with the original theme of the severed floor, which was about keeping innies separate and departments small, for doing mysterious and important work. What possible other roles could a marching band have fulfilled on the severed floor?

Possibly my favorite point that failchild brought up was the way s2 dropped the corporate satire theme from the show, when that was originally what made it such a refreshing concept. I think my points in this section all nod to that at their core. The cult-y Kier stuff was fun as undertones in s1, but it taking over has made it harder to understand (or take seriously tbh) Lumon's actual power and goals as a corporation at large.

In conclusion

Okay that was a lot of criticisms! lol whoops. Tbh I think the writers had a huge challenge to accomplish after s1; it's a tough premise that had set at a ridiculously high standard in s1. And I think them getting to do this season at all, after 3 years, was so exciting and fun to watch! I wish things had gone differently, but hey, that's just how watching TV goes sometimes. I'll still stick around for s3--who knows how that'll go! (Please bring Irv back, please make Gemma a main character, please do something new with Milchick).

If there's something I didn't touch on in this that you'd like my opinion on, or want me to elaborate on something I did say, feel free to send me an ask! I genuinely like talking about this show even if it accidentally came off as haterism lol.

[hyzelle]

ch. 1 — even if it’s not with me | l.hs

♡ pairing: heeseung x make-up artist!fem!reader

♡ genre/tags: fluff, crack, pet names, slow burn, reader & all members are in their early to mid 20s

♡ warnings: profanities

♡ featuring: ot7 enha

est. 19/03/2025 — chapter 1 wc ꒰ 1.5k ꒱

[+♡] a/n — as i've mentioned on the main post for EIINWM — i decided to rewrite the whole thing because i didn't like how it was written. and so, the previous posts have been removed. here's the new & improved version!! hope u’ll still love reading it as much as i love writing it. read the synopsis & keep up with updates here, ♡ EIINWM ♡. chapters are proofread to the best of my ability, so there might still be some mistakes. feedbacks are always welcomed, but any & all hates or disrespect will not be tolerated and you will be blocked. on that note, i hope u'll enjoy & love EIINWM ♡ ! give it some love, like & reblog. ♡

Y/N wasn't antisocial—she was selectively social.

She liked people just fine. She just liked them better in small doses.

Maybe it was the unnecessary drama, the passive-aggressive group chats, or the inevitable falling-outs over something stupid, but she'd been through enough to know that friendships? Exhausting. So, at some point, she'd just... stopped trying.

She had Jake, she had her work, and that was enough.

Or so she thought—because according to Jake, she had no life.

"Y/N, I love you, but you have no life," Jake announced, sprawled across her couch as he scrolled through his phone.

Y/N, lying on the floor because she was too tired to move, groaned. "I have a great life, actually. I work, I eat, I sleep. It's called balance."

"It's called boring," Jake deadpanned, throwing a pillow at her face. "Which is why I'm forcing you to meet my friends tonight."

Y/N peeked out from under the pillow. "Absolutely not."

Jake sat up, leveling her with a look. "You can't just spend your twenties working and rotting in bed, Y/N. You need friends. Real people."

"I have friends."

"Friend. A friend," Jake shot back. "I'm not counted."

Y/N groaned again. He wasn't going to let this go. He never let anything go.

"I'm just saying," Jake continued, flopping onto his stomach, "maybe you should meet people who actually make life fun. People who won't bring you bullshit or backstabbing drama. People who, I don't know, actually like you."

Y/N sighed, knowing she was this close to caving. "And you're sure these friends of yours aren't idiots?"

"Oh, they're absolute idiots," Jake said, grinning. "But they're your kind of idiots. You'll love them. Give it five minutes."

She exhaled heavily. "You're really not going to let me stay home, are you?"

Jake beamed. "Not a fucking chance."

Y/N sighed, pressing her palms against her face before grumbling, "Fine."

Jake whooped, jumping up from the couch. "I promise you won't regret it."

Y/N wasn't so sure about that.

Ikeu: tmr. 8pm. don't be late

Y/N: where am i going exactly?

Ikeu: avenue cafe, big booth in the back

Y/N: ok but like what if i don't show up

Ikeu: i will literally drag u here

Y/N: bold of u to assume i'd answer the door

Ikeu: bold of YOU to assume i wouldn't break in

Y/N: fair point

Ikeu: i know. wear something cute.

Y/N: ??????

Ikeu: nvm u always look cute ;)

Y/N: shut up

The Avenue Café was warm, dimly lit, and humming with the low buzz of conversation.

Y/N spotted Jake immediately—sprawled in the back booth, waving her down.

Then, as if sensing her hesitation, her phone buzzed.

Ikeu: i see u. don't even THINK about it.

Y/N exhaled sharply through her nose, rolling her eyes as she made her way over.

Jake grinned. "And there she is."

All six heads turned toward her. Y/N resisted the urge to kill Jake on sight.

"Be cool," Jake muttered under his breath, though it was mostly directed at his friends.

Y/N slid into the booth, offering a polite smile. "Hey."

She expected an awkward, stiff round of introductions.

Instead, Sunoo, the one with the sharpest outfit and perfectly styled hair, squinted at her like he was solving a complex equation. "Wait. How are you this pretty and friends with Jake?"

Y/N smirked, amused by him already. "A moment of weakness, clearly."

Sunghoon, who was annoyingly handsome in that effortlessly cool, probably too good at everything way, choked on his drink. "Nice, I like her already."

Jake groaned. "Can we introduce ourselves before you guys scare her off?"

The first to speak was Jay, who looked exactly like the kind of man who had his life together—sharp jawline, expensive watch, the type to argue about dividends over dinner. He smirked at her before introducing himself, "Jay. Finance."

Of course.

Then came Sunghoon, sharp-jawed and deadpan smooth. "Sunghoon. Skating coach. The best-looking one here."

"Debatable," Sunoo cut in smoothly. "Anyway—Sunoo. Fashion stylist. "

"Jungwon," the next one said, voice steady, presence calm, like he was the designated driver in this friend group. His dimple deepened as he smiled. "Dancer and choreographer."

Then came the youngest-looking one, who had troublemaker energy written all over him.

"Niki. Model. I work with my face."

Y/N huffed out a laugh. "That's gotta be exhausting."

"It is," Niki sighed dramatically.

And then, "Heeseung."

Her gaze flickered to the last one, seated at the far end of the booth.

Damn.

Tall. Sharp features. Stupidly good-looking.

But it wasn't just that.

It was the way he carried himself—quiet but not timid, observant but unreadable. He wasn't trying to grab attention, yet he held it effortlessly.

"Musician," he added, voice smooth but lowkey disinterested, like he wasn't used to introducing himself to people who didn't already know him.

Y/N tilted her head slightly. "Singer? Instrumentalist?"

Heeseung's lips barely curved. "Bit of everything."

Jay scoffed. "He's being modest. He's annoyingly good at all of it."

Heeseung just smirked, like he knew it was true but didn't feel the need to confirm it.

Something about him intrigued her.

Heeseung wasn't expecting this.

Jake had been talking about her for weeks, but Heeseung had tuned most of it out—figuring she was just another one of Jake's many social connections.

But Y/N? She was different.

She wasn't loud like Jake, but she wasn't reserved either. She had this effortless confidence, the kind that didn't try too hard but still left an impression.

And she was beautiful.

Not just in the obvious way—though, yeah, that too—but in the way she carried herself. The way she didn't hesitate to throw Jake's bullshit back at him.

Heeseung, who usually kept his thoughts to himself, found himself watching her more than he should.

And the problem was, every time she glanced his way, his first instinct was to look away.

The conversation flowed effortlessly, laughter filling the cozy café as the group bounced between topics.

At one point, Sunghoon leaned back, stirring his drink as he turned to Y/N. "So, Y/N, what do you do?"

Y/N raised a brow. "What, Jake didn't tell you?"

Jay smirked. "He did. Just wanted to hear it from you."

The way he said it—smooth, teasing, with just the right amount of curiosity—made it obvious he was flirting.

Y/N played along. "Well, I'm a makeup artist."

Heeseung, who had been mostly quiet, finally spoke. "So, do you mostly do editorial work, or—?"

Y/N turned her head toward him, a little surprised.

He had been listening?

She expected him to be the type who half-tuned out of conversations that didn't interest him—but his gaze was focused now, waiting for her answer.

"I do a bit of everything," she admitted. "Editorials, weddings, some celebrity gigs."

Heeseung nodded, clearly intrigued. "That's impressive."

Y/N raised a brow. "Coming from someone who, apparently, can write, produce, and perform—I'd say you're more impressive."

A smirk tugged at the corner of Heeseung's lips.

"She's got a point," Jay said.

Sunoo sighed dramatically. "And yet, he refuses to use that talent to get us into exclusive events."

"Because that's not how it works," Heeseung replied smoothly, taking a sip of his drink.

Sunghoon scoffed. "Says who?"

"Basic human decency?" Heeseung offered dryly.

Jungwon leaned back, amused. "Imagine having that much talent and still acting humble."

Jake nudged Y/N. "He pretends he doesn't care, but deep down, he loves it when people hype him up."

Heeseung rolled his eyes, but he didn't deny it.

Y/N, watching him, found herself curious.

The way he spoke—calm, measured, like he was always thinking before he talked—was completely different from Jake's carefree chaos. And yet, it wasn't like he was shy.

He observed more than he spoke. But when he did talk, his words carried weight.

Something about that made him... intriguing.

And maybe, a little attractive.

The conversation flowed effortlessly, the group's energy addictive in the way that made Y/N forget she'd only met them an hour ago. They were sharp, fast-paced, and unfiltered, the kind of people who made everything feel like an inside joke you wanted to be part of.

"Oh yeah—we still on for the beach next weekend?" Jay suddenly asked.

Sunghoon nodded. "Yeah. We were supposed to go last week, but Niki—"

"I was sick." Niki interrupted immediately.

Sunghoon gave him a look. "Yeah. You got food poisoning because you thought it'd be a good idea to eat a gas station sushi burrito at two in the morning."

Niki scoffed. "Okay, first of all? I was hungry. Second of all, it was half off."

Jay rolled his eyes. "Yeah okay, anyway—beach day, next weekend? Thought it'd be good to just relax, get some drinks, maybe play a game or two."

Jake, as if just remembering, turned to Y/N. "Wait. You should come."

Y/N blinked. "Me?"

"Oh yeah," Sunoo agreed immediately. "You should come."

She raised an eyebrow. "And why exactly would I do that?"

"Consider it your initiation," Jungwon replied, smirking.

Y/N took a slow sip of her drink. "And what exactly am I being initiated into?"

"The best decision of your life," Niki grinned.

Jake leaned back, grinning. "I mean... you did say you needed to have more of a life."

Y/N shot him a pointed look. "I never said that."

Jake smirked. "I implied it for you."

She exhaled, considering it. "... What's in it for me?"

Jay, amused, answered first. "A good time."

Niki smirked. "The privilege of seeing us shirtless."

Y/N scoffed. "Tempting."

And then, before anyone else could speak, Heeseung chimed in.

"You should come." His voice was low, even, like he wasn't trying to convince her—just stating a fact.

Y/N turned her head, catching his gaze. He didn't look away this time.

"... Fine," she said, feigning reluctance. "I'll come."

Sunoo cheered. "That's the spirit."

A second later, her phone buzzed with a notification.

Ikeu added you to OnlyFriends

She stared at the screen for a second before letting out a short laugh. Shaking her head, she smiled as she typed,

Y/N: hi losers

This might actually be fun.

♡ | next →

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©enhyzelle 2025. all rights reserved i am protected by copyright i do not give permission to translate or repost my works.

[lovemyromance]

I think objectively, it is very difficult to pull off writing a traditionally feminine woman in the fantasy genre.

Because fantasy used to be kind of a "guy" thing. It used to be exclusively written by men, for men. That's where we get the wizards, the warlocks, the damsel in distress tropes. The women characters existing for the sole purpose to be love interests or sexual objects or witches or cruel succubi.

The introduction of romantasy as a genre is a double edged sword. On one hand, it allowed for a whole new generation of women to join the industry, dip their toes into a genre that used to be predominately men. It drew in women with the romance element, and empowered them through a main character that was typically also a woman. She was strong, she was brave, and she kicked ass. We all wanted to be Daenerys, or even someone like Susan from Narnia. It was meant to be empowering.

But I say it is a double edged sword because I'm uncertain if it really had that desired effect.

Kicking ass and fighting in epic battles, being cunning and brave and clever - these were all qualities of a male MC in most fantasy novels. With romantasy, we see those traits in many FMCs now as well. And they are very popular. Violet, Feyre, Katniss, Aelin, etc. are all extremely popular female MCs. But why are they popular? What is it about them that really drew people in?

In other words, are they popular and so adored because now instead of the soft, feminine and grace women were typically known for - they have hardened, masculine traits instead?

Is that all it took for these FMCs to earn respect and admiration? Switch their knitting needles and gardening gloves out for crude humor and a sword?

I don't even know how to explain it. I understand there are women with those qualities and they feel validated by the change in pace in literature now having real characters, women who have a purpose outside sex and serving as the arm candy for some hero. I appreciate how amazing it is that women are now painted in a light that shows how capable and brave they are.

But I think, in the process of doing that, we went a little too far on the other extreme. Instead of showing how "Hey, women are also brave and strong and beautiful and bold and clever" we have gone all the way down to "If you're not a fighter, if you're not a kickass warrior - then you're weak. Then you're boring. Then you're unworthy."

We are looking at traditionally soft, feminine women the same way men used to look at the whole lot of us. We are considering them 'less than' because they don't have a sword in their hands, they aren't spitting and fighting back, so therefore they must be weak. They must be boring. They must be useless.

I think that's why I fight so hard for Elain. Why I want her desires to be heard. Why I protest when I see her wishes and wants and actions so adamantly ignored in this fandom. Why I get so annoyed when I see her callously referred to as "Gardner girl" and "the useless sister"

Because as an individual? I am nothing like Elain. I probably have more things in common with the likes of Kim Kardashain than I do with Elain Archeron. But I still fight tooth and nail for this fictional character because fighting for her is in some way a representation of fighting for those women who hold onto that femininity. The graceful way they act, the kindness, the compassion they show and spread in this world. All they want is peace.

And we need that in this world. If everyone were a fighter, we'd always be in some war. These types of people (not limited to only women) hold a different kind of strength. These are the types of women that hold a family together, that create a sense of safety and belonging, and bring a community together. They care, they nurture, and they grow.

And I'm so tired of people suddenly acting like that kind of strength pales in comparison to a traditional warrior carrying a sword and shield.

[ask-norman-alexander-lotf]

"Frankly, I always loved to interact and talk to people, and lately, I have been getting bored. So, ask me, talk to me.. I won't bite." - 🐍

Hello! Welcome to the Norman Alexander blog! This is where I talk, post, and discuss about topics relating to Norman Alexander, one of the deleted charatcters in Lord Of The Flies. He is part of our big project, The Character Archives, and is such a huge influence on the island when he was still written in the manuscripts.

This is also where we answer asks, questions, and sometimes even roleplay as Norman. He is such an underrated character, so please give him a shot! 💚🐍✝️

Want more information about Norman? You came to the right place, but check here first!

Now, for how the content of the blog itself ACTUALLY works, here are some things that can help you navigate through.

I decided that the posts are divided into tags since it might be much easier to look and see what is going on! Here are the tags that you might want to look at:

#norman-asks = for the usual answers for (usually) anon asks

#norman-lore = for additional content that are not yet placed/cannot fit in the archive

#norman-announcements = announcements from me (@msfisherot_)!

#norman-content = for other miscellaneous information about norman

#norman-reblog = reserved only for (very rare) reblogs from this blog specifically!

#norman-fanart = this is only for people who SPECIFICALLY have drawn norman alexander fanart! use this whatever you want!

Please be informed that there might be updates coming along as well, so things change a lot. I am usually pretty flexible and active all the time but don't expect much from me, I'm still human!

Speaking of updates...

Hi! This is probably a temporary section I will insert in the introduction. If you haven't seen the particular announcement yet, Norman's character is currently being reinstated and reinterpreted! We are still trying our best to figure out how his character actually worked in the book.

We might post a few more about this, but if you ever notice that certain older posts don't match with the newer ones, it's because of that. Please understand that we are also slowly branching out of The Character Archives! Norman Alexander is still connected to the project, but when refering to the archive, please say The Norman Archives instead! We still accept TCA fanart personally, but yeah.. Thank you!

Norman Alexander is SUCH a wonderful character to deal with, and I think he is really underrated.

If you want to support the blog and archive, along with other projects pertaining him, please do so! Fanarts, fanfics, or even just interacting with us! We love it in here!

If you have any questions for us that you want to discuss privately, DM me at @msfisherot ! Just state what you want to talk about and we will respond to the best of our abilities!

Thank you! -🐟

[bibibbon]

Sukuna is a good villain analysis

Coming from someone who hates villains that are evil because they were born that way and with no other explanation. To be honest, out of all the villains in jjk I always found sukuna to be somewhat boring , he is well written but I just couldn't really see what people saw in him. I still think that kenjaku is way more interesting than him but I will say that due to the recent arc and chapters that my opinion of sukuna has significantly changed.

Sukuna is the abstract embodiment of nihilism (in a way). His character for the longest time has always been about destruction and chaos. Sukuna's first introduction consists of him saying that he is going to destroy absolutely everything and there is a heavy focus on him destroying the woman and children. He simply views then as little maggots that he can easily destroy with ease. We later learn the connection (I guess) he has to his mother which he doesn't regard her disrespectfully and his devoured twin whom he is shown to remember the presence of. Every time we meet him before shibuya his power is further emphasised and he is further demonised and built to be the big bad.

It is later in shibuya, during his fight with jogo that we get more to sukuna. In this fight sukuna brings out his CT of flames and jogo is surprised however, before sukuna kills jogo they share an interesting conversation. Sukuna recognises jogo's ideology and desires to be human and sukuna relates to it. He understands jogo's desires of taking humans place and ruling the world yet he views that view as foolish. This is where we learn that sukuna believes that being alone and having the power to destroy everything you care about is what makes one powerful. This can explain sukunas love for destruction and simple chaos. However, sukuna is incapable of understanding why he is talking to jogo, why does he even care for him in a way and instead of trying to understand he does exactly what he said to jogo that he should do and destroys/ fully burns jogo after calling him "strong". At this point both of these curses have experienced what it's like to be 'human' with emotions flowing through them that aren't negative but while one (jogo) questions it and tires to explore it the other (sukuna) rejects it and burns it all away.

There's also sukuna's relationship with his relatives especially itadori his nephew. Sukuna and itadori share completely different ideologies while sukuna believes in him being the strongest and destroying everything he cares for to stay that way yuji will believes that he is a simple cog in a system and tries to do everything to fulfill his role and protect others. Both are strong characters yet it is yujis drive and strong resolve that makes him so much more mentally stronger than sukuna and what irritates sukuna as yuji is claimed to be unbreakable in his views and passion. Yuji also makes sukuna question his own purpose and what he is here to achieve. Even though the two are strangely similar in many ways considering that yuji is a part of sukuna they're vastly different especially with their ideologies.

There's also the huge contrast between sukuna and his twin Jin itadori. Sukuna is strong, cold hearted and would put himself before anyone. Sukuna doesn't care for others and his existence is mainly him trying to satisfy himself and his needs while flaunting the immense power he carries. Yet from the little we have seen from Jin itadori he is is the polar opposite of sukuna. Jin itadori died for love, he was so blinded by grief that when kaori came back even though it was kenjaku he still loved her the same and he loved itadori more. It was stated that Jin really wanted to have a child and truly cared for itadori to the point he and itadoris grandpa got into fights about it. Jin from the moment we see him seems like a really nice and somewhat nerdy guy the complete opposite to his twin sukuna heck even their character designs are completely different with them only having the same colour hair and eyes (I think).

These twins are also juxtaposed to the zenin twins. Its stated that sukuna had to eat his twin to survive in the womb due to how poor their mother was. However, the only thing that sukuna got out of his twin was the physical characteristic and his CT while Jin's soul went through cycles before coming into he human realm again. This contrasts with eh zenin twins whom voluntary chose to join together and when she died Mai chose to take all the CE they both had while dying physically she joined her sister spiritually by becoming a sword. Maki and Mai will always be together and entwined by their souls. The sukuna and jin twins are only connected physically which could be why sukuna has 4 eyes and 4arms.

Sukunas own character design just shows that he is the embodiment of destruction and how he simply devours everything around him. When asked if sukuna ever feels lonely he literally says that he lives however he wants and that he can eat as much human flesh with all of them tasting different and filling him with different emotions. The closest thing that sukuna has to a friend is his loyal servant urauame and they only obey his orders while entertaining him. It's stated that the only reason sukuna keeps urauame around is due to their talent in cooking human meat, the same thing that gives him joy aka any real emotion.

There are then his other fights that focus on sukuna and his views on love and power. Yorozu's fight is an interesting one where we get more on sukunas cannibalism and how both of those characters view love as a means of destruction and death. Yorozu is happy that sukuna killed her and got to know more about her through that while sukuna is questioned on stuff that he views as pointless and meaningless like marriage. Yorozu sees the solitude that sukuna is surrounded by and think that he can understand her since she has faced similar yet they heavily clash with sukuna believing that to have power one must face the burden of solitude. In the end yorozu, does give sukuna a gift crafted by her which he actually takes and uses during the current battle. Yorozu's attempts to get to sukuna and to make him reciprocate his love all fail even when she makes a TRUE SPHERE. Something that has the largest surface area and can contaminate and touch everything yet sukuna leaves untouched by yorozu at all. I think it's interesting that yorozu's heart took a shape of a true sphere just to show how obsessed she is with sukuna and her desire to be with him.

Sukuna then fights with kashimo. Kashimo somewhat like jogo has an understanding of what it's like to be strong yet kashimo is sick of superficial interactions that the strong have to have with people that are inferior to them or want to challenge them. Kashimo asks sukuna if there is a way where he can be strong and surround himself with love sukuna says that this is selfish thinking considering his view that everything he cares for must be burnt for him to be strong. Kashimo isn't satisfied by only having strength but he also wants to experience simple things such as love, sukuna could of been similar to that long ago yet he gave up and has resorted to taking in all the destruction and enjoying himself from it. Kashimos fight with sukuna was more of a self discovery journey for the both of them and at the end they both come out on different sides.

After higumara's death there is a whole chapter about sukuna and he starts questioning his own life view. What has he been doing? Is it worth it? Where is the joy in what he used to do? And he is again faced with his complete opposite yuji. He is deep in thought and he feels empty, confused even he can't seem to understand why everyone is dedicating themselves to this belief, they're all united and strong yet he is alone and bored. Sukuna has done everything he has fought and killed but like kashimo said that caught up to him and now he is tired of it he wishes to experience the unity and stuff that the others fighting him are experiencing. Sukuna has no purpose but to destroy at this point but he has caused so much that him destroying over and over again has just been a mundane cycle.

Yet things start to change as the tides are against him and he may taste losing for the first time.

In conclusion, sukuna is an abstract and literal ideology of nihilism to a cerian extent and conveys the big bad villain trope in a fantastic way. I find him way more well written than AFO and muzan.

[quinnxey]

acolyte review (before season finale)

i was really interested in this show esp because its based in the high republic. this is the first time we've gotten a media recreation other than glimpses in jedi: survivor and I'm also pretty sure the kids show disney made was also based in the hr time period. but anyway - other than the books as well, this is the first live-action retelling of a hr story.

i feel like a lot of people didn't like it because of that, but it really hooked me in. I've always been pretty into the hr book series and have loved this idea of "before the chosen one" trope. in the acolyte, we're 100 years or so b4 anyone like obi-wan or anakin or luke have been born. its another really great setting up - plus, as an avid hr reader, it helped me visualize what was going on during that whole shebang

but so - during the start of the acolyte I was a little bit wary and a tad bored. i feel like they started with a fairly slow (if murder is slow) introduction to the story, but I really do understand why they did it like that. once shit hit the fan and we were getting jedi action (plus the dents of twins? alive?/whats going on? sort of thing) I was really starting to get interested. the characters in acolyte are SO well done - like honestly its kind of craz how good they're written. even the "good guys" have good writing, which can be hard to do for heroes when the villains usually have all the sweet ass storytelling.

i thought the force here was sooo well done. like this idea of osha not being able to use the force after some time - ESPECIALLY her using the excuse of "if you were a jedi" (or something along these lines) "you would know that the force gets weaker if you don't practice with it" like girl ok! and with qimir and him being like dude, no.

QIMIR! ok so i understand the whole reason people like him is because of his looks and the fact that he was naked (which I will get to) but I'm SOOO interested in his character arc. his manipulation tactics are honestly so believable that IM having a hard time trying to discern whether or not the jedi are good or bad. i think I've always been fairly pro-jedi esp with how the orig tri plays jedi out to be and how the hr books have all these really anti-jedi antigonists. I've always believed the jedi to be a good force of nature, and haven't really paid much mind to this idea of "what if". in the acolyte, it feels like. they're REAL people.

idk i feel like sometimes it gets hard to see the real people in jedi and not thin k they're just some servants of the light or whatever. for me, I feel like that also comes from the "no relationships" motto, which sort of defeats the whole "human/person" idea for me. i hate thinking jedi arent people and don't have faults, but with how a lot o the media portrays them, that's how I've felt for a really long time. in here, I felt like I was seeing real people in real situations. idk

with how sol was acting with osha ("do not confuse [her] emotions with your own") I was sooo in love with that. him not knowing whether or not its his emotions or the force pulling them together (because we all know the force puts padawan/master together when it knows they're a good fit) but still continuing. him choosing to SAVE OSHA INSTEAD OF MAE. and going on to say he "did his best" and "tried to save both of them" to osha and flicking the blame on mae by saying the fire was all her fault (which it was, but he deliberately didn't tell osha what "really" happened ((in the words of mae I suppose))) but this isn't me saying that sol is a bad person and should totally get stripped of his title or whatever - someone (not sure who) on here talked about how he was the only one out of all the jedi on the trip to actually go and do something about his guilt. he went and he trained osha to the best of his abilities, he trained younglings (telling them NOT to trust what they initially see, to keep searching for answers), and he went on trying to make good with mae even after he knew she was going to kill him.

but so on the dark side (plus I guess qimir being naked) I was really interested in this idea of jedi not being able to harm the unarmed. we see this happen with sol and aniseya, where she DOES technically look like shes about to go off and kill someone with her whole dust act, but she is STILL technically unarmed. sol goes and stabs her because he has no idea what is happening. cue 1st action. 2nd action is when we have the scene between sol and qimir where he almost attacks him while he's "unarmed" (pls I don't trust this man) but osha stops him. with OSHA, we see this happen when she sort of attacks qimir while he's unarmed - and not just unarmed, also litterllay butt naked. that's like the full ass definition of unarmed. it goes fully against jedi code - if she had killed him, she would have killed him unarmed and with no dignity, which no jedi would ever want to do. because she had the option to do it, he basically tested her - it was his way of seeing whether or not she was a "good" option for an apprentice. he prob would have taken her anyway, but with how it went with mae, he was defo being wary.

but him being a sith for me was pretty easy to see right off the bat, since he disappeared and then sith master just "appeared" I thought, oh yeah, that's qimir. but as the fighting went on and I went between the costume differences between him and feeble qimir, I thought, well...no?? it doesn't make sense. he doesn't look the same - and then it WAS HIM. but also I think this idea of osha becoming sith apprentence and mae becoming jedi apprentice would be so interesting. ying and yang but they switch lmao

but I'm supppeper excited for the season finale!!! my prediction is that osha accepts being qimirs apprentice, mae accepts being sol's apprentice (if that happens), and maybe/maybe not they find osha and qimir and qimir convinces osha to fight against her past master. idk. would love to see some kyber bleeding in s2. love!!

[castlebyersafterdark]

do you think steve will end the show single? (or dead, but I honestly feel like that’s boring now). or maybe a girl will look his way towards the end of the show? it’s very interesting what they’re doing with steve cause I genuinely have no idea. they have this really popular, hot character, and they COULD have written him a girlfriend by now, but instead they made his second love interest a lesbian and then have him pining after his first love interest who is in love with someone else? and then he has ambiguously bisexual flirtations with eddie if you believe in that

Honestly, I used to say that he was going to be when killed off because it was mentally almost like it felt inevitable, his role as the one time romantic lead turned action hero arc, protector of the younger kids, almost shielding having to kill off another main because I do feel one from his "age group" us going to die. Joyce and Hopper are surviving. The Party is surviving. The original "teen group" is at risk. Not a bloodbath - but someone.

So - I think Steve is too obvious, too easy, we gain little from his arc if he goes. I remember watching season 1 and thinking he was gonne die that season, but he kept hanging on all this time.

I also think... his meta place in the series would benefit from him ending the series single, with no random love interest at all. His character arc was always going to be working on himself and being there for others after his introduction as this mega popular character in canon. King Steve dethroned with no queen - he's just become one of the people. I think it's a more interesting ending for him to be facing some different journey in the end, every remaining character paired off. He doesn't need to be.

[smilesrobotlover]

skord skord?

Ah yes, another overhated Zelda game that is in my top three. I’ve played this game on the switch and I will say, it’s so much better than the Wii, so if you haven’t played it yet, try to play it on the switch.

Anyways this is one of the few video games that have made me cry. The story is so good and it makes me SUPER emotional. The Link is probably one of the few Links with so much personality poured into him, his relationship with Zelda is super sweet and fun, and the characters and world of skyloft is incredible. The side quests for gratitude crystals is not only wholesome but gets you closer with the residents, so it feels like an island where you grew up with these people. There’s so much to do in this game and I just… AGH I adore it to DEATH.

Groose is easily one of the best characters in Zelda with his incredible development. He’s so complex and insecure about himself and seeing him work through his issues in the game and become good friends with Link is so incredibly wholesome to me. Impa is a strict but sexy awesome character who’s entire story and character is insane to me.

And Fi… she is such an overhated character. Link in this story is super animated and full of personality meanwhile Fi is cold and distant, and these two complement each other so well. And even though she seems to lack personality, she has some moments here and there where she’s being a character, and those moments are amazing. Her saying goodbye to Link affected me more than Midna because you could just feel the bittersweetness. This character is with you through every game with the master sword. And despite not feeling emotions, Fi was happy with Link, and she truly cared about him, just like he cares about her. And I sob everytime. I love Fi she’s one of my favorite companions ever and I wish she wasn’t hated on so much because she doesn’t deserve it.

And let’s not forget Ghirahim, one of my fav characters of all time. He’s such a fascinating and well written villain who rivals Link perfectly! And most bosses in this game are relatively easy to me. But Ghirahim is one of the few bosses that is very hard. He’s not one of those villains that talk a lot of crap and then die in five seconds. He’s a challenge! You’re definitely inexperienced and he’s clearly just toying with you in the beginning! He actually works hard against you in this game instead of sitting around, and the final battle with him, he is truly giving his all, regretting not killing you in the beginning. When he said “what are you?” To Link after being defeated is INCREDIBLE. There was actually a character analysis about him and Groose so I really can’t talk about their characters without talking for five years lol. But yeah, Ghirahim is a GOOD character. And he actually succeeds in what he’s doing! He revives his master! That’s how you know that he’s a genuine threat! Gosh he’s so good

Now for the flaws, alas. The sky isn’t the best? The loftwings are underutilized (Link’s loftwing isn’t even named :/), the world is very small and limited (except for Lanayru, they put all their good ideas into there fr), and there’s a lot of fluff. Like hunting down the song of the hero is just unnecessary to me. Faron is an idiot for not trusting you despite saving her life, then Eldin is just, completely forgettable, and Lanayru is fine. I just don’t like the song of the hero part that much. But of course when you unlock it, that cut scene is incredible.

Another thing is Demise. He sucks. He’s such a boring character to me and he’s way too easy as a final boss fight. Like you see Ghirahim giving his all and then demise just dies immediately 💀💀 but the final boss is the most cinematic boss fight ever so that def is a plus. And I also don’t like the introduction of Hylia. She makes the lore so much more boring and confusing and I wish she didn’t exist. Same thing with demise. Having them there was… a choice that was made and doesn’t answer any questions about Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf. Heck, Ganondorf really shouldn’t be included with them. Sure he’s a reoccurring villain, but he’s the same guy everytime, he’s never reincarnated like Link and Zelda. Unless you want to count that as Ganon but I don’t like that whole idea. Idk, it complicates the lore a bit and I can understand why people didn’t like that.

But otherwise a fantastic game that impacted me SO much.

[brokendeathangel]

Have you read Tanjiro's Status chapter? (takes place Post-story)

HNGGGGGGG!

I want to write a 50 page essay regarding the bonus chapter of KnY because I have a lot of mixed feelings about it (mostly anger and disbelief) and kinda lowkey disappointed how the bonus chapter turns out. I thought the timeskip/next generation ending chapter was super bad but no! The bonus chapter actually surpasses it; which shocked me! I wish it didn't even exist.

But I'll just do a super short comment regarding the bonus chapter to avoid scaring people away. Lol!

xxxxxx SPOILER!!! DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED READING THE MANGA!!! xxxxxx

First of all, the bonus chapter did everyone dirty! Especially the main characters! Like seriously? Gotoge-sensei, do you hate your main characters so much?! The main characters don't have any future life plans at all after demon slaying except Zenitsu (which we all know right from his first introduction that he wants to get married and live a normal life). I mean, I can understand that it's hard to think of something up for Inosuke but for Tanjiro to not have any future plans at all after demon slaying? Your main hero? Seriously?! Also, the poor boy mentioned that he can't sell coals anymore in the long run because people are switching to electricity and ... that's it. We were left hanging on what happens to Tanjiro's future after that. Yes, he will later on marry Kanao but even then, we only know this fact because it was mentioned by Gotoge-sensei outside of the official comic! Also don't get me started on Tanjiro and Kanao pairing. It is so out of the left field (It's like Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley pairing all over again but even more random!). Tbh I think Tanjiro should've married Mitsuri or maybe even Shinobu instead of Kanao because they have more chemistry and character interaction (at least in the anime). Gotoge-sensei could've made Tanjiro/Kanao work by showing how they fall in love after their demon slaying days ended, but nope! It's just one page (if I'm not mistaken) of Tanjiro visiting Kanao for medical check up in the Bonus Chapter. How are the readers suppose to pick up on the fact that they're in love and will live happily ever after just based on that one page?! Both Tanjiro and Kanao deserves a better love story.

Moving on to Nezuko. My poor dear Nezuko. Even when she's turned into a human with free will once again... she has no character growth. She's just nice. That's it. Just a nice girl. A nice and hard working girl. She's so nice everyone! And helps her brother and her friends around the house. Wow, amazing! Gotoge-sensei should've written the Bonus Chapter based on Nezuko's perspective instead. Write about how she felt when she was a demon all those long years and the anger/sadness/trauma it caused her. Or if you want to go for a more positive story, write on how she overcame her trauma with the help of her brother and friends. Alas! Nezuko ends up being just The Typical Nice Shounen Girl Character in the end.

Next, Inosuke. First of all, I just want to mention that when I was first introduced to this character in the anime; I immediately thought that he has the best and interesting character design and personality. Sadly, he ends up being the most boring character out of the main three because Gotoge-sensei really doesn't know where to go with Inosuke. He's just a loud wild child and... that's it really. In the Bonus Chapter, he remains relatively unchanged even after all the tragedy he went through. I mean it's not a bad thing to remain the same person but personally, I think Gotoge-sensei could've pushed the character to become more than just a loud wild child. What a waste of good character design. Also, I think Inosuke and Nezuko should've been the end game. Yes! I went there.

Lastly, my beloved Zenitsu. (Warning! I will be super biased here because I love my Zenitsu ok?) You would think that I should be really happy and pleased that the Bonus Chapter story actually revolves more around him. But no, I am actually angry that the Bonus Chapter focuses on him at the expense of destroying his previous character growth. WTF GOTOGE-SENSEI WHY YOU DO THIS?! I'm mad that he reverted back to his old personality after all the hardship, hardwork and trauma he went through. I mean sure, Zenitsu was suppose to be the comedic relief character (aside from Inosuke) but I think he no longer matches that role in the end; especially not after experiencing a life changing tragedy. Plus, wasn't it his goal to be a better person than before? Shouldn't that be Zenitsu's happy ending (besides marrying Nezuko)? Nope! Gotoge-sensei basically whacked Zenitsu back to the starting point in the Bonus Chapter. Come on man! The dude just killed his step brother and lost his grandpa; pretty sure a person would definitely grew leaps and bounds in terms of maturity after that (or breakdown...). But nope, Zenitsu is just a silly crybaby again. Back to square one. I tried to rationalize that perhaps due to all the trauma and tragedy he faced, he reverted back to his old lazy and crybaby personality but then, that would make Tanjiro look bad because in the Bonus Chapter Tanjiro was (in my opinion) very harsh on Zenitsu. He basically confronts Zenitsu; telling him he needs to grow up and start acting like a man if he wants to get married. To stop whining about the leg pains he still feels and to stop writing nonsense stories. Remember, the Bonus Chapter happens a few months after they defeated Muzan. Zenitsu has just experienced the craziest shit ever (i.e. killed his step brother, lost his beloved grandpa, watched his comrades die, watched his best friend Tanjiro died and later turned into a demon and witnessed his future wife Nezuko being hurt by his turned demon best friend). I don't think Zenitsu even had the time to process and heal from all the traumas he went through and here comes stoic Tanjiro; basically just flat out telling him to grow up and stop being useless which is so out of character of him. Yes, Tanjiro can be blunt sometimes but he's not cruel. I dunno, maybe Tanjiro is also not over his horrible traumas and is lashing out on Zenitsu but then again this would also be out of character. So yeah, it's bad writing all around. Yishhhh...

Also, I think Zenitsu should've end up with Kanao. Yes, I went there too! Lol!

Ok, I'm definitely gonna stop here. I could go on and on but... it's almost 2.00 am and I have work tomorrow. Lol! ;w;

Actually, I have another interpretation on why Tanjiro is super harsh towards Zenitsu in the Bonus Chapter but it has a more Tanjiro x Zenitsu flavour to it. More like, a conspiracy theory that actually Gotoge-sensei wanted Tanjiro x Zenitsu to be the end game but can't because of shounen anime reasons. If you guys want to hear my crazy theory just lemme know. Hehehehehehe hahahahaha!

[darchildre]

Because I don't know what to do with myself if at least one of the books I'm reading isn't a weird old book that people mostly don't read anymore, I picked up The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers today. Which is a British spy/invasion literature novel from 1903 about espionage adventures on a yacht, written by a dude who later spent time smuggling guns to Ireland on his yacht during the Irish Civil War and was eventually executed by firing squad. So, y'know, the introduction was already pretty wild.

I have only read the first chapter proper so far but you guys, the first chapter is so funny. The narrator, Carruthers, works for the Foreign Office in a very junior position and the whole first chapter is about how he had nobly decided to stay at work in London during the dead season when all his friends had gone to house parties in the country. He had fantasized about how all his friends would miss him so much and feel so bad for him but be so impressed by his dedication to his work. But instead it turns out they are all very busy having fun at house parties, and maybe the girl he liked has gotten engaged to someone else (this is addressed very obliquely), and no one seems to miss him at all! London in September is terrible and boring, and his clubs are closed, and he went to a terrible music hall performance and had to sit next to a depressed drunk woman with a baby - everything is awful. And nothing the least bit interesting is happening at his job! It's so awful that when Carruthers gets a letter from a guy he vaguely knew in college (and always thought was boring) asking him to come on a frankly terrible-sounding boat trip, he agrees. Not because he actually wants to go but because he's so bored, and he can convince himself that he's being noble again because Boring Guy is all alone on the boat trip and therefore needs him, and also maybe now people will miss him.

He is completely ridiculous and I love him. I can't wait for this weird goober to get mixed up in spy shenanigans.

[ofdemonsandangels]

What's the best adaptation of Berserk? Looking at the content, not the visuals. It's been a while since I watched the 2016 film adaptation and I could be wrong, but isn't this the most accurate film adaptation of the arc? Yes, there is a changed third episode, but the script for this episode was written by Miura. I've heard many times people complain not only about the visuals, but also about the story. They say he's boring, but isn't that because Berserk himself became a little… boring after the Golden Age? Many people praise the plot of the 1997 anime, although it is essentially fan fiction and not an accurate adaptation. They usually say that the 1997 anime comes first, the movies come second, and the 2016 anime comes third. I think it's exactly the opposite (anime 2016-movies-anime 1997) because isn't the 2016 film adaptation the most accurate adaptation of some Berserk arc? Why is the 2016 anime so bad apart from the visuals? I'm interested to hear your opinion <3

Thanks for the ask anon! It's been a while since I've gotten some asks in my inbox so I'm very happy to answer this.

Truth be told, I'm not really a fan of any of the adaptations. I don't like how the word 'masterpiece' is thrown around when it comes to praising the series, but when talking about its adaptations, I've referred to it as an "unadaptable masterpiece" more than once. I don't think that any of the Berserk adaptations have truly and decently adapted the girth that is the Golden Age, and by extension, the Conviction arc.

With the 1997 anime, it's the most accurate in regards to its adaptation to the Golden Age but I find the pacing to be extremely slow at times. With that being said, I applaud it for adapting all of the important Griffith scenes (such as the Genon flashback and the Tombstone of Flames) because those are some of my favorite parts of the Golden Age and it's unfortunately the only adaptation to contain those scenes. The soundtrack is great, the 90's nostalgia is there, and it was a good first crack at such a heavy arc. Decent, but not good.

It gets complicated for me with the ova trilogy because I do think they're good when it comes to portraying Guts and Griffith's relationship as a heart-wrenching, avoidable tragedy. The iconic "Do I need a reason?" line? The way that Guts and Griffith's eyes just absolutely soften when they see each other from across the ballroom? I fold every time. Which is why I get so angry when I remember that SO MUCH had been cut. These movies were the introduction to Berserk for a whole lot of people and more often than not, the only adaptation of Berserk they'll ever watch. So many uninformed and brain cell melting takes and opinions come out of this and it makes me so upset because so much of what was cut is incredibly important to understanding Griffith. But the important Griffith scenes aside, Charlotte's presence was cut down significantly too. Granted it would've been super uncomfortable and downright disturbing to watch her father assault her, but the lodestone scene was a very nice moment between her and Casca. And it would've at least given her character a lot more depth. Also speaking of Casca, why the fuck is she whitewashed??? Don't give me that shit about "the lighting" either. She's clearly lighter, appearing much more tan than brown. I've already voiced my criticisms about Casca's character before but her being whitewashed in the most popular and well known adaption doesn't sit right with me.

And lastly, the 2016 anime. Frankly, I don't like it at all. I find the animation to be way too off-putting for me to even make it through a single episode, and just like the ova trilogy, a lot has been cut. It left out the Lost Children arc for God's sake! That's my second favorite arc in the entire series. Although maybe it's good that Jill and Rosine weren't subjected to an adaptation unworthy of them. The 2016 anime feels like a very hasty summary of the Conviction arc instead of an actual adaptation, which is a shame because Conviction is an arc that's detrimental to how everyone's post-Eclipse arcs are established. You asked if it's the most accurate adaptation of a Berserk arc, but it's not. Far from it. It's the least accurate by a long shot. If you're going into it after watching the 1997 anime and the ova trilogy, you're going to be extremely confused.

Overall, my ranking of the three adaptations goes like this: the ova trilogy, the 1997 anime, and then the 2016 anime. This isn't to say that anyone's preference for one adaptation is valid. We all love this dark and crazy world created by Miura afterall.

[gerudospiriit]

🔥🔥

Salt, Spice, and Everything Controversial || Open!

[*Leans into the mic* Making Ganondorf hot doesn't make him a good character in TotK. In fact, he is very sloppily written and SUPER boring because they once again have continued the trend of just making him evil for the sake of evil instead of keeping the idea of him having motive and care for his people introduced in Wind Waker and, arguably, OoT to a very subtle degree. And TotK would have been a PRIME opportunity to showcase the more complex villain they STARTED to flesh out in previous incarnations and they just. Didn't. Instead, the substituted making him attractive for substance and it's a DISGRACE.

The Gerudo deserve better. Not enough people talk about how the Gerudo are basically a joke in BotW/TotK and it really bothers me. Granted, at their introduction they weren't handled well, but they didn't feel like a damn joke, either. I mean...damn they can't even handle the Yiga Clan r u kitten me? And don't get me started about the shit I've ranted about a million times with how not only were they made obsessed with getting married, but how they also made that a rite of passage. I literally die. Little girls should be able to look up to the Gerudo for their strength, independence, and resilience, not fed a sexist, ultra conservative narrative that all that matters in life for girls and women is finding a husband to serve.]

[vvatchword]

Reading BioShock: Rapture (Part 4: Going Down)

<- Part 3: The Prologue's Prologue || Back to the Beginning || Part 5: Three Old Men Jerking Their Milk Sticks ->

This section covers the end of the prologue and part of Chapter 1, the introduction of Bill McDonagh.

I created a tag called “vv reading” if you want to block it. I had a nightmare of cluttering up the BioShock tag with nitpicky grouchy bullshit. Let’s not pull a BioShock: Infinite hatewank, right? If you like this book, blessings upon thee—but begone. I don’t want to rain on your parade.

I think I’ve gotten past the foundational part, so hopefully only like… five more of these. (Note from Future Me: you stupid asshole.) Again, I’m not doing this solely to be an ass, I’m doing this for my own personal research, and the only way I can get through it is by complaining. I’m also doing this because I have a friend who hates this book as much as I do and wants to see me rip its spine out through its throat.

For I hate BioShock: Rapture. I hate it so much. Every time I think it’s about to settle into a comfortable rhythm, it flips over and does something no one but an alien from another planet would think to do.

That said, it’s not boring-bad, it’s just insulting. Sometimes it grows so uniquely fucked that I find it fascinating—in the same way you’d find roadkill fascinating. What was it supposed to be? What did it do? How did it get here? Where was this part supposed to go? Everything is just so wrong. Let’s poke it with a stick.

How was author John Shirley giving confident interview after confident interview with people who loved his work? I mean, with interviewers who called him a Renaissance Man? Who are these people? How much and what do they actually read?

I’m telling you what: I am clearly not half as confident as I need to be. I could write circles around this man. I have written roughly 22 novels that looked very like this one, and I kicked each and every one of them into an endless pit. Maybe I should have been beating down publisher doors with that shit. Here, take my deranged Twilight rewrite. The plot is broken, the protag pisses herself, and a werewolf gets eaten alive. I described fucking a vampire as riding an ice pop. Maybe I could have won a fucking Bram Stoker Award.

I am no longer rolling eggs. I am lobbing them. Inshallah they are hard-boiled.

Prologue’s End

To sum up the rest of the prologue: Andrew Ryan thinks about how cool it would be to build Rapture and then flashbacks to his childhood during/after the Russian Civil War.

That’s right: 1945 Andrew Ryan has already thought of Rapture. He knows exactly what he wants to do. The blueprints are literally on his desk with the photos of nuclear holocaust. This is stated in the Prologue and it’s over in a handful of pages.

Can anyone say “anticlimactic”?

I wanted to hear about how he got the idea. The idea of building an entire city underneath the ocean is weird, okay? I want to know how Ryan decided on a city of likeminded individuals instead of fucking off to an island by himself. I want to see who he mingles with and how they impact him, I want to see what he interprets as a friendship, and I want to peer in on his enemies.

All we’ve seen are the signs of what hurts Ryan, and we can’t confirm whether or not his fears are warranted.

What exactly inspired Ryan to take this dramatic act of self-harm? For it is self-harm: it is the destruction of all he has ever worked for. He is a canonical cheapskate, and it’s for very good psychological reasons.

What makes a PTSD-ravaged cheapskate spend? What makes a libertarian offer his labor and dreams up for other people to touch? It’s got to be insane and dramatic. And, my siblings in hell, if I’m about anything, it’s drama.

Instead, we start in media res. And it’s the worst kind: it’s a summary of all the things we should have read about, but didn’t.

Here’s a list of undisclosed events that produced Rapture according to the prologue alone:

Andrew Ryan’s philosophy and how it evolved over time

The birth of Rapture’s concept

Choosing Rapture’s name

Why build Rapture under the ocean?

Why a city?

Why invite other people?

Meeting the architects of Wales & Wales

Choosing Wales & Wales

Trusting Wales & Wales to draft the blueprints, and all the creative, financial, and logistical decisions that entails

Government bad (specifically, how it is bad). Experience with the Soviets is not enough—Ryan spent a long time in the United States. How was he failed by the USA specifically? “Taxes bad” are also not enough. I mean very specifically. I mean the events and major players, not “vaguely referenced Titans lurking somewhere on another plane of existence.”

Society bad (and how it is bad). Specific events. Specific people. Specifically.

Each of these questions should be answered explicitly. Many of them require more than one chapter. Some of them require the entire book. Show your answers. Through writing. Through chapters. Chapters and chapters and chapters and chapters and

Manprose

The flashback to Babby Ryan is fine. The prose is awkward—its flow is shitty, almost emotionless, and lurches from sentence to sentence like a Frankenstein—but on the whole: fine. There are some nice images in here of people waiting for a train and a great image of the train itself.

His father’s breath steams in the air… the train steams as it approaches, a big dark shape hulking toward them through the grayness, a single lantern above the cow-catcher projecting a rain-scratched cone into the mist.

This is pretty great! It draws a comparison between father and train and it is a distinct picture of a place and time—you can feel and see this scene perfectly.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t continue. It’s a little island of relief in a sea of clunky manprose.

“Manprose” is a word I use for literature written by men—usually Silent Generation and Boomers. It is typified by dry, almost journalistic phrasing—spare, clean, only as many words as you need and no more. Geometric and literal similes, metaphors, and adjectives are used, and only as necessary—no flowery prose or flights of fancy or appeals to an ideal. Emotional vulnerability and interpersonal intimacy are subdued or completely absent. Emotional excess is often a signal that a character is untrustworthy, weak, gay, a child, or a woman. Lauded qualities are stoicism, silence, sacrifice, suffering, physical strength, traditional values, and technical capability.

Themes revolve around war and/or struggling against nature, societal ills, broken systems (often new ones), and “untamed” alien cultures. Most characters are men—specifically white, heterosexual, cissexual men; almost none are women (or otherwise). This contrast grows especially obvious when crowds and strangers are discussed—because all bit characters tend to be the author’s idea of The Standard Man in different costumes. When women are written, they are usually by stereotype and for utility’s sake, often as tools of the plot or objects of romantic or sexual desire. Male characters will have every role under the sun; female characters will fall into a strict hierarchy of acceptable female pastimes and traits. Women are sometimes so sidelined that there might be accidental homoerotic undertones.

Yeah, being a woman in manprose is generally not great. Femininity is there to be derided and fucked. If you’re fuckable and pretty, you’re a grade-A woman. On the other end of the spectrum, wives often don’t understand their husbands—often to such a point that you’re not even sure why the characters are in a relationship to begin with.

I haven’t mentioned the nonbinary part of the spectrum because that shit never comes up. I can only think of one example, and it’s for symbolism’s sake (A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, 1920). The gender binary was overwhelmingly the only way that Western culture saw anything for hundreds of years. Thus, for the purposes of this essay, I’m going to talk about women in an outdated, limited sense, because that’s the way manprose refers to them.

I’d call the works of Ernest Hemingway, Orson Scott Card, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, and Frank Herbert “manprose.” Ayn Rand writes something close to manprose. (Her women are too equal to men to qualify.) I don’t count HP Lovecraft because he talks too damn much. He’s too invested and passionate and obvious about what impassions him. That said, a lot of Lovecraft’s friends write manprose.

My theory is this: men from the Silent and Boomer generations—and men from similar backgrounds, usually conservative and poverty-stricken ones—were often punished for exhibiting emotion at young ages. “Boys don’t cry” was used even during my childhood (the 80s and 90s). Men from these cultures mock each other for showing feelings or preferences with too much vivacity. Friendships with other men appear careful and surface-level from a female perspective, while relationships with women (usually in maternal or romantic roles) often take care of their emotional needs. These men might have entirely different “gendered” worlds—those of their wives and those of their male cohorts.

Such men often strike me as myopic and socially stunted, for something about their upbringing has made them incapable of empathizing with other people’s needs and wants—perhaps because being emotionally vulnerable means revealing oneself, and in a masculine social setting, any vulnerability is an invitation to attack. In other words, what you don’t practice, you don’t understand.

The fear of “cringe” is male-coded to me for this reason. Don’t show what you love, whatever you do. Don’t show what you feel, or someone will use it against you. Become a white wall, for to give someone what you love is to give them a weapon. Toxic masculinity is a power-play dynamic that nobody signed up for. It’s a product of traumatized societies and traumatized people. It’s the product of children under attack by those they love and trust.

This particular behavior is not as prevalent anymore—thank god, we are finally allowing men to safely experience their feelings, and I think that men are becoming more cognizant of how being all clammed up and hypervigilant isn’t psychologically healthy.

Look here, friend. If someone’s making fun of you for enjoying your life, you kick that motherfucker to the curb. Literally fight them if you have to. I don’t care if you like Thomas the Fucking Tank Engine at the age of 58 or write the world’s most unhinged fanfiction about My Little Pony. Protect your goddamn happy place. It’s the place that keeps you sane, and in the end, when you are alone, can be the difference between life and death.

All of this considered, manprose is not always a bad thing. Like any style, it can work quite well, and it’s an interesting view into the writer’s psyche and culture. Its treatment of women is not always great, but it’s also not always bad. The fairest thing you can say is that it’s a gradient.

TL;DR

Shirley reads like manprose to me. There’s not much emotion. Descriptions are usually spare. Most of his scenes are just images and don’t have a lot of emotional oomph—they’re moving images outside of static human beings, and when human beings exhibit emotion, it tends to be matter-of-fact. Most characters are stereotypes of the flattest and most embarrassing sort. Female background characters are rare and the three speaking parts I’ve seen (up to Chapter 3) occupy stereotypical roles and behave stereotypically. They fell into the Wife/Mother and Whore dichotomy, which is typical of manprose.

I’m a little nervous about what I’m about to see, but it’s early yet, and two of the characters were small ones. Most of the bit characters we see—such as sailors—would have been solely male at this time.

At this point, I’m holding my breath, because this story could go any kind of way.

I’m Just a Poor Boy (1918-1923)

Oddly, there is no year or place given for this flashback sequence.

Oh why am I saying “oddly” we all know why

I can’t give you much in the way of historical perspective. It’s been a minute since I’ve read about the Russian Civil War. All I can tell you for sure is this:

The Bolshevik Revolution was a huge fucking mess. The entire Russian Civil War was a huge fucking mess. Any attempt of mine to condense it into a paragraph would be criminal. However, I think it’s pretty safe to say that this section would occur anywhere from 1918-1923. I’d have to do some extra research about the revolution and Minsk to be very sure, because the Reds took power in a chaotic, fragmentary way.

Coincidentally, if you want to see a first-hand experience of the years following the Russian Civil War, read Ayn Rand’s We the Living. It’s a dramatized version of her experience and it is fascinating. You don’t have to be terribly wary; Rand became a worse writer as she aged, and We the Living is her best offering. It’s from before she stuck her whole head up her ass.

A little off-topic, but I hate how Shirley’s Ryan calls the Bolsheviks “Bolshies.” Andrew Ryan is proper as hell. He calls them “Bolsheviks” and every time he does he rolls the word out with so much tangible hatred that a bird explodes.

In any case.

Young Andrew Ryan, his father, and his aunt and uncle are running from the Reds. The aunt and uncle beg for help. Ryan and his father only have enough to save themselves. In the end, Ryan and his father board the train to safety while soldiers kill the aunt and uncle just outside. It's a reminder that you don’t have to outrun the bear if you shove your friend down first.

Since I smelled manprose, I paid special attention to any mention of women. Ryan’s aunt is painted as pathetic—her standout trait is that she flails around like Kermit the frog—but she has more color than her husband, who just kind of exists. I’m pretty sure this was an accident—the side effect of paying attention to the woman’s emotional state while ignoring the man’s. The only other female character is a bit part in the background—a woman trying to lift someone’s spirits. All male characters are typified by their work (a man selling tea, for example).

This is also where I realized Shirley was trying to write prose that is reflective of its POV characters. Andrew Ryan is a child, so Shirley doesn’t use large words and the prose is simplistic. This is fine. At least Shirley tried. I suspect this sequence was written first. I can’t tell you why. Maybe because I felt something.

I became more aware of Shirley’s style as I went, noting his constant ugly run-ons and hatred of commas. Run-ons aren’t always wrong. Many competent writers use them for various reasons, often for stylistic flair. But that’s not what’s going on here. There’s no art or rhythm. These are just lists.

I suspect that Shirley writes like me (she said through gritted teeth). I have this quirk where I will write an entire paragraph without verbs or subjects because I’m so busy describing something. Unfortunately, this usually doesn’t work long-term; the end result is awkward and ugly and excessive, and the flow and rhythm is all wonky, and I’ve lost the point somewhere in the second prepositional phrase. I always have to come back and fix it.

He never went back to fix it.

This is because he won the Bram Stoker Award. Once you win the Bram Stoker Award you become perfect. That’s why everyone longs for one of their own. That’s why there are legends of the travails of writers struggling to be seen by its legendary panel.

Is that award even still a thing or

Chapter 1

There’s a quote shared right before Chapter 1.

The parasite hates three things: free markets, free will, and free men. —Andrew Ryan

This is very nice, but… why is this here? Isn’t writing Andrew Ryan your job now? Why not work this into the prose somehow?

Back in 2011, every time I tried to get into this story, the quotes would knock me out of it because I would remember how powerful Andrew Ryan was in-game. Then the prose would kick in and I would suffer a violent physical rejection, like: “’Tis not HE. This be but crude conjecture!” (Because I’m a time traveler. from hell)

On the first page of the prologue, the year is explicitly given. Context clues make it unequivocally clear the prologue occurs in 1945. Unless Western history is utterly alien to you, you have an idea of when the USA flattened Nagasaki and Hiroshima. (This is when I sullenly recall that this was probably written for the lowest-common denominator, aka people who failed their history classes.)

And this is what Shirley does on Chapter 1.

Almost a year later…

Like it’s a TV show and there’s a title card.

I hate everything about this. This is a book! It is literature! The time could be worked into the narrative itself. Even if you didn’t, the year is literally already up there! Under the setting! Do you think I cannot add, sir? Do you think my memory is garbage? Well you’re right but it’s not THAT bad.

The black ballpoint pen is me from 2011. No, I don’t remember why I drew a >:3. Yes, that's part of why the page is embarrassing. The “p11” refers to the first page of the prologue. (Chapter 1 is on page 25.) For reference, I have the first-edition paperback. (Wait. Are there more printings than this? Tell me they didn’t print this more than once.)

The number in the margin is where I started numbering the shoehorned British slang. I would call it “cockney” but I have absolutely no faith in Shirley’s capabilities. I choose to believe this opinion by UK reviewer Joe Martin, who noted: “Bill McDonagh, Ryan's lead engineer and the sympathetic underdog of the novel, has so many unbelievable English archaisms shoved into his mouth that he ends up looking like a parody of himself.”

And why stop there? Almost every single character speaks like this. Dialogue has been funneled through stereotypes and dim memories of film noirs. Nobody feels real. Nothing feels grounded.

I think if there’s anything a writer should take from reading BioShock: Rapture, it’s to go find videos of someone speaking a regional dialect and note, when written out, how much English just… sounds exactly as you expect it to. Regional affectations are far more subtle than a bunch of oddball words. There are mannerisms, colloquialisms, unique phrasings, social and cultural expectations, and word meanings and pronunciations that are only slightly different. In addition to this, there are differences between individuals, and everyone speaks English differently depending on who they’re talking to.

Long story short, I’d expect for McDonagh to speak to Andrew Ryan cleanly. He might insert more particles and fewer contractions. It might be easy to miss that he’s a low-class Brit from text alone.

Of course, you can go too far in the other direction and create a different kind of inaccuracy. In UK author David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, there is a section set during the second Iraq War with an Oklahoman Marine as an antagonist. The words Mitchell put in that kid’s mouth were unbelievable—not only because they were so proper and intelligent, but because he got the culture completely wrong.

You can’t win is what I’m saying.

Should you not try? Well… also no. Nobody will like you either way but they’ll like you less if you just didn’t give a fuck. Just try. At least you might make someone laugh, and that’s pretty special, too. Now they feel better about themselves at your expense. That’s something. You don’t know about it so nobody’s hurt on the whole. Entertainment’s only sin is being a boring son of a bitch.

RIP My Brain

We begin Chapter 1 from the perspective of Bill McDonagh, who is heading up an elevator to the ritzy Manhattan apartment of one Andrew Ryan.

Bill McDonagh was riding an elevator up to the top of the Andrew Ryan Arms—but he felt like he was sinking under the sea.

.

.

.

?

?

???????????????????????????

This is as much a non-sequitur as it looks. This is the first sentence. There is no description before or after it to suggest how going up in an elevator feels like going down in an elevator… into the sea…?

This is where my brain locked up and I had to leave for an entire week because I don’t have the capacity to understand a) how this got past any kind of editing process, b) why Shirley wrote it this way, and c) what this is attempting to communicate. I came back to the book twice and both times was hit by this deep revulsion that said: Go. Go and touch grass. Swear at that live oak. Outside in the sunlight. Swear at god and feel pain while aphids jizz all over your car.

I mean. I get that Shirley wanted symbolism and foreshadowing. By meeting Andrew Ryan you sink under the weight of the ocean, sure. Problem being, nothing in the prose suggests the sea. Other problem being, that direction shit is giving me an aneurysm.

Are we going to talk about how symbolism works now. Am I really going to try and

We Are Going to Talk about How Symbolism Works Now

Symbolism in English literature is a huge subject and I am not that well-versed in it. Like tension, this is not something I have often put words to. Lord knows there is an entire world of literary criticism out there I have neglected by simply running into books face-first while screaming. In other words, we can think of this as a mutual learning experience.

Here goes. Pour one out for me. In my eye. In my fucking face

A symbol stands for something else. That’s it.

This is vague out of necessity: almost anything in-story can be a symbol, and a symbol can represent anything you want. A symbol can be a word, a phrase, a chapter, a character, an item, a setting, a plot point—yes, an entire event! You name it, it can be turned into shorthand for something else. Usually that “something else” is a larger theme or an invisible quality.

You can, in effect, tell multiple stories simultaneously, one layered on top of the other.

BioShock does this very successfully. On top of the story of a sleeper agent being used as an assassin is the spiritual gnostic journey of ascension. This spiritual journey is simultaneously one for Jack Wynand and for the player. The physical world of Rapture represents Andrew Ryan’s body, Objectivism, the Earth as a whole, and the physical realm (as juxtaposed against a spiritual or unattainable ideal). On top of the spiritual gnostic journey is meta commentary on how FPS’ narratives are limited by their natures: all you can do is kill, and all you have control over is how you kill. The game’s infrastructure and narrative is unalterable by the player.

Additional elements symbolize BioShock’s larger theme: how trauma causes toxic feedback loops. The Little Sisters and Jack symbolize the traumatized-of-the-future, while Dr. Yi Suchong and Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum symbolize the traumatized-of-the-past. The message—the theme of BioShock as a whole—is that trauma does not necessarily make you a better person. Sometimes trauma just hurts you. Worst of all, trauma can turn you into a monster. All of these characters have been severed from their pasts, their families, and their cultures, and because they cannot remember, they are destined to visit their agonies on future generations. In Jack’s case, he’s already started.

Let’s try something a little simpler, because that’s pretty heavy, and BioShock becomes a maze of alternate meanings so fast and so intricately that it can be mind-boggling.

A common symbol for “truth” is “light”—the “Eureka” moment, if you will. So a character might step into the sun, or light a fire, or switch on a lamp, but they aren’t just experiencing light—they are also comprehending the truth. Plato’s allegory of the cave uses this symbol: individuals stuck in the cave do not understand the true nature of reality, while someone who has stepped into the sun can. All of this said, not every element in a story is a symbol. Half of the art of reading symbolism is knowing what is and isn’t symbolic. This involves looking for commonalities and patterns and is too large a subject to discuss here. (Authorial intent not required. That’s right: symbolism can be accidental. Enjoy.)

Symbolism in BioShock: Rapture

So far, there have been a handful of awkward, artless attempts at foreshadowing through symbolism. One is from the prologue. Here, Andrew Ryan throws the photos of nuclear destruction across his desk:

The city lights were caught on [the photos’] glossy surface, as if somehow the thrusting boldness of the New York skyline had itself destroyed Hiroshima.

This one is awkward, but at least it makes sense. It’s also literal—Shirley tells you exactly what he means.

Of course, there’s an artistic reading here that is also pretty cool: the New York skyline is evocative of Rapture’s. Rapture’s fate is told in Hiroshima’s ruins; even in its fetal state, Rapture has already failed, and will perish because it is built on faulty logic; Rapture exists in an eternal state, both built and decayed; the seeds that will cause World War III are already planted in Andrew Ryan, and he will take them down himself.

Builder and Built. Destroyer and Destroyed. A circle’s points meet.

I have no idea how much Shirley may have meant, but I suspect it’s a happy little accident.

This one didn’t get my hackles up. This one made sense. It’s graceless and obvious, but it belongs here. First, there’s the close association between Rapture and the city of New York. They look similar; they’re built on similar foundations; they’re extremely American, with all of the flaws America has, and were born from similar urges. New York was a famous harbor for immigrants, as Rapture itself will be.

Similarly, there is blood on both their hands—some the natural outcomes of human society (all societies sacrifice someone), some from their rapacious roots, some because capitalism.

Secondly, New York is one of the most important cities in the United States, if not the world. It’s more an economic and cultural powerhouse than a military one, but there’s a certain delectable edge in using an economic and cultural setting here. It is largely for economic and cultural reasons that Rapture is founded. It is for economic and cultural reasons that it descends into anarchy.

With all of this in mind, let’s revisit that fucking sentence that I wish I could shoot 300 times with a gun. For context, I will include the sentence that follows it. It’s the first sentence of the chapter, so nothing precedes it.

Vivisecting a Shitty Simile

Bill McDonagh was riding an elevator up to the top of the Andrew Ryan Arms—but he felt like he was sinking under the sea. He was toting a box of pipe fittings in one hand, tool kit in the other.

First of all, what’s the purpose of this simile?

There are several possibilities. The first is foreshadowing Bill McDonagh’s entrance into Rapture.

The second is the foreshadowing of an unstoppable tragedy: Bill McDonagh falls into Andrew Ryan’s sway and, in effect, his grave.

The third is to conflate Andrew Ryan and Rapture—Rapture as an extension of Andrew Ryan’s body.

Finally, there’s a larger concept at play. I told you that Rapture lingers in an eternal state. I am not just saying that because it’s artsy (although it is). I’m telling you that because it’s based on a spiritual and philosophical premise—that the physical world exists alongside the spiritual one, and that the physical world is an imperfect copy of that spiritual ideal. According to the narrative, Rapture was born broken because it was fabricated from half-truths. It could never attain perfection; it fell for the lies of the worm. Now it exists in a state of undeath, as it were—a punishment for attempting a physical perfection instead of a spiritual one.

So it’s obvious from context clues what Shirley meant to say. Unfortunately, it fails completely.

There are two senseless parts here.

What about any of this makes you think of the sea?

What about going up made McDonagh feel like he was going down?

We Saw No Sea

Symbols need to be set up. You can’t just trust that readers will make the connection. There are multiple ways to do this.

You might imply qualities that the deep ocean specifically possesses: depth, darkness, sea creatures, water, pressure, coldness, extremes. You might display the sea’s qualities literally in some way—perhaps the elevator opens up and there’s a grille with fish on it or the walls are aquariums or there are dark windows that don’t look out onto anything. You might use words and figurative speech that invoke the ocean, such as “dive” or “drown.” For example, Ryan’s cold mien or the pressure of working for one of the most powerful people in the country.

Whatever you do, you should include several elements of the deep sea to drive home what you’re trying to invoke. There are ways to do this subtly—perhaps stretch them throughout a chapter or scene, or imply similarities through whole sentences or paragraphs as opposed to singular words—but if you want to make it stand out, you can be artless as balls. Who’s going to stop you?

Shirley follows that sentence with a description of McDonagh’s tools. So the answer to that question is “yourself.”

A Is Not B

Ask any schoolchild what the opposite of “up” is. They will say “Down!” So how did a sentence that says “going up is like going down” pop into existence?

I suspect that Shirley is referring to a peculiar sensation where you lose sense of which direction your elevator car is moving. However, you can’t trust that the reader understands that right away—this is far from a universal experience. For this concept to work, it has to be explicitly described.

I also don’t know if that’s what Shirley meant. Maybe he thought he was being artsy—that he was inverting the meanings so that right-side up is wrong-side down, or that McDonagh was passing into some kind of unreality (BioShock qualifies as magical realism). If so, Shirley didn’t set up for this meaning. This sentence is flat, technical, describes a physical action being taken in a physical world, and does not imply that “up” and “down” mean anything other than “up” and “down.”

Moreover, as this is a simile, it doesn’t imply an exact or specific experience. It implies a similar experience. It literally implies that “up” is similar to “down.” In what way? That both imply movement?

I assure you that nobody in the whole world has read this sentence with this kind of depth because they are sane and have meaningful things to do with their lives, and the fact I am attempting to make sense of it at all is to imply that I accept this work in good faith (I do not).

Which leads to the following paragraph that I actually typed with my own two hands:

How the actual hell is going up like going down? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but “up” and “down” are not relative except in space and bizarro-land.

The real question is: How did this happen? How did anyone think this was okay? Did John Shirley fight for this stupid line? Does this imply that there wasn’t an editor? I’ve noticed a ton of typos—mostly incorrect capitalization—and I’m only in Chapter 4. Take a little pride in your work, jesus christ.

The only major theme I’ve noticed in this whole stupid story is traits canceling each other out and the strangulation of any kind of meaningful tension at every possible moment. So this nonsense sentence is fitting and follows a pattern, but it’s also the kind of pattern that makes me go insane. This is like… non-Euclidean geometry. Non-Euclidean English? Oh god. Just typing that phrase made me 20 times dumber than I already am.

This book represents an eternal and unchanging present where things just exist and nothing means anything and everything simultaneously. I hate it and I am fascinated to an equal extent. This book was born in the deepest voids of extrastellar space to amuse Azathoth.

Shut Up Shut Up

I don’t care about that sentence anymore. Let’s move on.

They had looked at him with only the faintest interest when he’d walked into the Feeben, Leiber, and Quiffe Engineering Firm.

Oh. Oh I’m not laughing at that.

It’s funny how sometimes I see a nasty joke and I’m like huhu, u guys and me will get along great, but in this case the chapter started with “Almost a year later…” and a sentence that is so bad that I inaugurated a folder in my Writing Chest called “Worst Writing.”

See

My friend Salty, who also hates this book, told me that this kind of writing is typical, so I decided to turn it into a text file of its very own. This is where I will go for schadenfreude.

Bill heard them say it, through the door, after they’d dismissed him. “Another limey grease monkey…”

“Limey” is ancient-ass British slang for “Englishman.” Just one problem: the people who said it are explicitly New Yorkers and turned McDonagh down for an engineering job because of his accent. So is the speaker a judgmental American using slang from another continent (nani?), a British person being classist (while committing the same verbal sins lol), or McDonagh casually recounting the memory to the reader with a personal twist, the way he might to strangers at a bar?

All of these are wrong. I’m not sure I have the energy to tackle them.

Just kidding! Snobby indignation gives me superpowers!

The first two choices’ failures are self-explanatory. That last one is probably what Shirley intended. Remember, he’s writing prose that sounds like what his characters would say. He probably thinks putting quotation marks around the sentence implies that it is said and thus an opinion. This is correct. What is incorrect is the outcome: it’s unclear who has said it. The reader’s first thought, as they whip through sentences with the speed of a furious marmot, is that the interviewers explicitly stated this.

Shirley is writing third-person limited. In other words, he’s writing like a journalistic godlet from just outside Bill McDonagh. We’re limited to McDonagh’s viewpoint—we can see inside McDonagh, but we can’t see what the New Yorkers are really thinking or feeling. All we can see is how they act and speak.

Moreover, there are two levels here: Bill McDonagh’s opinions and observations, which may or may not be accurate, and the prose, which serves as a more neutral touchstone. The prose is more neutral in practice because the reader has to have some sense of what bedrock reality is. I say “more” because there’s always a bias toward the POV character in third-person limited.

I think of the bedrock reality as a faint thread running through a narrative. There’s what happened—this real, tactile event—and there’s how it is interpreted, and multiple viewpoints with multiple readings all fractaling out.

What I’m saying here is that I expect for the prose to tell me the truth about what certain characters actually said. I should not have to ask if an event actually happened or not… unless, of course, that’s the intent. And I don’t think it is, given the prose’s general style.

For clarification, you can have questionable realities in fiction. First-person is this way by default. But this is third-person limited, and it’s not particularly clever. Therefore, this is a fuck-up.

Also: “Another limey grease monkey”? They’re being inundated with British engineers? That’s a problem you can have?

I hate this book.

In Conclusion

I had to stop here. I’m not done telling you how I hate Chapter 1. I thought I could cover Chapters 1 and 2 here. That’s how goddamn optimistic I was. But I keep finding weird shit, and I have to ask myself over and over: “Wait, why does this annoy me? Is there a reason or am I mistaking my preferences for rules?”

This project is enlightening for me in a way I never expected. I keep having to ask what I think quality prose looks like. That’s a valuable exercise in itself. See, I’m terribly limited: I don’t know all the proper lit crit terms, I don’t study theory—I picked all of this up in the wild, and it’s to my detriment. How the hell do I research any of this? I feel like there’s a vast ocean of knowledge and I am stuck on dry land, examining a pipette. I have passed a certain threshold where most advice for creative writers is useless to me. I don’t really know where to start.

But just having to put my ideals and experiences into words, and being able to identify why certain elements bother me, is an extremely valuable exercise. So… this isn’t useless, and getting sassy has a purpose.

Long story short: if you know anything about more advanced writing advice, or books on literary criticism that might be good starting points, send me a line lol

Next time I’m gonna talk shit about Frank Fontaine because hoo boy it is embarrassing

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