#and really help me work through my issues

[cupid-styles]

brat (sex columnist!harry x best friend!y/n)

in which y/n is best friends with harry, a sex columnist, who needs a little help answering a reader's question.

word count: 3k

content warnings: SMUT!!!! (mean dom/bratty sub dynamic, dirty talk, pussy spanking, paddling, sir kink, degradation, slight edging, fingering)

masterlist | talk to me

. . .

“You’re out of your mind.”

“I’m really not.”

“No, but you are.”

“It would be for work and work only—”

“I don’t care.”

Harry sighs as he lifts a hand to run it through his curly hair. The noisy puff of air is filled with unsaid annoyance and Y/N tries her best not to roll her eyes at her best friend’s stubbornness, instead focusing on toying with the bracelet around her wrist. Instead of replying, he quickly runs his fingertips over the trackpad on his laptop so it glows back to life. 

“Can you at least hear me out?” he asks, his tone teetering on a polite plea, “You know writing about sex is my job. How am I supposed to help this person out when I can’t even offer a fair answer?”

Y/N crosses her arms and shrugs and Harry wishes he could reach across the couch and push them to her sides. 

“What makes you think I have any experience being a sub, anyway?” she fires back, keeping her eyes glued on the TV in front of them.

They're currently binging the newest season of The Bachelor, but Harry was more so using the dialogue and Y/N’s periodic gasps as background noise. For the past year or so, he’s held down a job at an online publication as a sex columnist. He loves it — people write in anonymously, asking him questions about everything from premature ejaculation to open relationships. Under the pen name H.E. Bell, he gets paid to write lengthy, thoughtful responses, helping his readers with approaching whatever sexual issue they’re facing. And this week, his editor really wants him to address a particular question about a dominant and submissive relationship. 

The thing is, though, is the letter comes from a sub. And Harry’s a dom. 

A mean one, at that.

So while Y/N’s diving into a pint of her favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (Phish Food, obviously), and Harry’s trying his best — and miserably failing — to place himself in the shoes of his submissive reader, he knows what he has to do.

“I hate to tell you, but you scream submissive,” Harry replies, pushing his laptop off of the couch and onto the coffee table. “Don’t even try to deny it. Just… just hear me out. Please. My deadline’s tomorrow afternoon.”

Y/N lets out an irritated huff as she grabs the TV remote and presses pause. Silently, she sits back against the couch, facing her best friend, and shoots him a displeased expression; a wordless allowance to speak. 

“I’m a dom and I’ve literally always been that way. You’re a sub, through-and-through. This person is asking about situations pertaining to experience as a submissive, and I can’t really provide them with the advice that they’re looking for since I’ve never been in that headspace.”

Y/N shrugs carelessly. She’s unbothered by his frank analysis of her subordinate behavior — it’s not exactly surprising that Harry, the sex columnist, is able to identify a sub, dom, or switch from 10 miles away. But that doesn’t mean she has to get dragged into his research, or whatever the hell he was trying to play it off as.

“Why don’t you just skip the question, then?” Y/N asks. “If you don’t have the right resources to offer an answer—”

“My editor thinks it’ll bring in a lot of page views,” he says, his throat bobbing with a swallow. His eyebrows draw together some, creating a small worried wrinkle between them. “Listen, I’ll fuck off if you’re totally uncomfortable with helping me, but you’re my best friend and I don’t know who else I could ask with this short of a timeframe.”

She sighs and brings her knees up to her chest. 

“Fine. Read me the question.”

A grin breaks out on Harry’s face as he grabs his laptop. He taps on the trackpad a few times as he brings the email up on the screen, eyes scanning over his bright inbox. 

“Okay, here’s what they said,” he clears his throat and Y/N really does roll her eyes this time, “Dear H.E.— I’ve been in a sexual relationship with my dominant for three months. Up until now, we’ve clicked really well. The chemistry is great and we always mesh really well both during scenes and aftercare. But lately, I’m worried I’ve been a little too bratty. For context, I’m a bratty sub with an attitude, but my dom knew that going into this. I fear that they’ll grow tired of my nonsense and insistent disobedience, but when I’m in my subspace or engaging in a scene with them, it’s hard for me to pull away from it. What should I do? Do you have any advice for what I can do as a sub to best help my dom?”

Y/N’s plucking at her bottom lip as Harry glances up from his computer. Blinking, she thinks for a moment before crafting a response.

“Well, it sounds like the sub needs to communicate their feelings to their dom. There seems to be a lot of insecurity.” she says. He hums, nodding his head as he types a few words on his keyboard. 

“Yeah, that’s true,” he murmurs, “They said it’s hard for them not to be in that bratty headspace, though.”

She shrugs, “I mean, if you’re a bratty sub, you’re a bratty sub. That’s just who you are.”

“Do you think there are any punishments that would work, then?”

“You’re the dom, shouldn’t you be able to answer that question?”

“I guess,” he replies, running his palm over the short bit of facial hair that’s grown on his chin in the past few days. “Spanking, edging, overstimulation, types of shibari, I guess…”

Y/N’s thighs squeeze involuntarily.

“...I just don’t know what works best.” he finishes his sentence, halting the tapping of his fingertips over the keyboard. “What do you think?”

She forces a swallow to coat her dry throat. “It depends.” she pushes out.

“Well, what works for you?”

She thinks for a moment. It’s been a minute since she’s been in a proper dominant/submissive dynamic — the last few times she’s had sex have all been one night stands and quick flings, all of which don’t allow enough time to learn about hard limits, punishments, and safe words. Her brain has to float back to a year ago, when she was sleeping with Reese, a soft dom who tried his best to tame her bratty nature but came back empty every time. He was good — the sex was good, but she wanted — no, needed — more.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really had a dominant… achieve that, I guess,” she mumbles thoughtfully. “I mean, I know what I like, as far as punishments go. But it’s not really about what the submissive likes, is it?”

“No,” Harry agrees. He hums as he opens up a second tab and she watches as he types the words “punishments for submissives” into the search engine. She sniffles and attempts to disregard the way her core instantly clenches. 

He’s silent as he reads through a few lists, occasionally jotting down some notes into his Google doc. Y/N swallows noisily when he glances back up at her, this time prepared with an apparent list of proposed consequences. 

“Okay, can you just tell me which ones you think most submissives would be fine with?”

She nods.

“Withgoing underwear in public?”

“Mhm.”

“Pussy spanking?”

“Yeah.”

“Nipple wax play?”

“Depends on the sub’s pain tolerance, but um… yeah.”

“Paddling?”

“I actually haven’t done that one before.”

Harry’s eyebrows raise. 

“No?”

She shakes her head. “None of my doms have ever had one.”

“Doesn’t sound like they were proper doms, then.”

“They’ve all been on the softer side,” Y/N explains shyly. “But… yeah. I guess it’s always something I’ve wanted to try.”

“Is it?” 

She can tell by the way his eyes have darkened, that there’s something wicked stirring in that brain of his. She knows she can put a stop to this now if she wants — he’s her best friend and he wouldn’t care if she ended the conversation here and now. 

But she doesn’t.

Not for a second.

So instead she nods. And she’s completely unsurprised by the next sentence that falls from his lips.

“Do you want to try it now?”

By now, Y/N’s brain is all fuzzy and melty, so she doesn’t even think before she’s nodding her head eagerly. Harry chuckles and closes his laptop, shuffling onto his knees to lean forward and pluck at her bottom lip. A smirk curves at his mouth as she leans into his touch.

“Getting quite desperate on me, aren’t you?” he murmurs, cradling her cheek into his palm. “Get naked for me then and I’ll go get the paddle. No touching while I’m gone.”

Her stomach flips at the domineering tone in his voice. All too quickly, they’ve fallen into their most intimate roles, and Harry’s carrying himself to his bedroom as Y/N continues sitting there, all gooey-eyed and foggy. And maybe he should have expected it when he returns back to the living room a few moments later to see her sprawled out across the length of the couch, her bralette and underwear still on with her fingers tucked beneath the waistband of the fabric.

“Kitten,” Harry all but growls, making Y/N shiver at the pet name, “Are you already disobeying me?”

She hums as she watches him through half-lidded eyes, soft fingertips petting at her pearled clit. His eyes glimpse down at the tented material and he instantly sets the dark red paddle down on the carpeted floor, kneeling between her legs.

“What’s your color?” he breathes, locking a hand around her ankle. Her pussy quivers just from the simple grasp.

“Green,” she answers, “I’ll tell you if anything changes. Safe word is licorice.”

Harry nods, allowing his large hands to float up her legs. They reach the gusset of her sodden underwear and he clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, snapping the fabric against her swollen pussy.

“Take your hand out of your panties now and I won’t smack your pussy until she’s raw.”

Y/N doesn’t move. In fact, he thinks her circling fingers only quicken.

“I’ll give you one last warning,” he grits out, squeezing the flesh of her thighs, “I’m not a nice dominant. You won’t be able to walk if you keep going against me.”

But of course, her hand stays glued to the bundle of nerves. Instead, she breathes out a sultry response: “Think I could cum like this, having you watch me.”

In a moment, her cotton underwear is being ripped from her body and thrown aside. He’s swift in his movements as he collects her wrists in his palm, squeezing them harshly and throwing them up, high above her body. She gasps, noisy and wet.

“I don’t fuck around with brats like you for a reason.” 

The first spank he issues to her puffy pussy is quick and fleeting, hardly offering a lick of pain. He’s eager to find where her pain threshold lies; if she’s all talk or if she can take the full force of his large palm. By the time he lands the sixth one, her skin now reddening beneath his smacks, he thinks he’s found it and he admits, he’s relatively impressed. 

“Aw, did that one hurt?” Harry mocks, watching as her face twists in an expression of discomfort. “That’s because punishments are meant to be mean. You’re not supposed to enjoy them, little brat. You’ve had it too easy, hm?”

“H-haven’t,” she stutters out, wincing as he delivers a seventh, “I’m good, sir, I swear—”

“Oh, bull-fuckin’-shit,” he retorts. “You’re a silly little brat is what you are.”

“‘m not—”

Smack—

“You are.”

She whines until he reaches the tenth one. She’s a wiggly mess of sniffles and whimpers and he shushes her, brushing a thumb over her clit. She gasps lowly and he laughs.

“On your belly.”

This time, Y/N doesn’t defy him and Harry is admittedly surprised. She buries her face in the throw pillow and he rolls his eyes at the theatrics. Before picking the paddle up off the floor, his blunt fingertips scratch at her scalp, gentle and kind as they trail down to the nape of her neck. 

“What’s your color, kitten?” he asks softly, rubbing a docile palm over her bare ass.

“Green, sir.”

“Do you still want to try the paddle?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” he murmurs, “We’ll start with five and then see where you’re at. You know what to say if you want me to stop, right?”

“Red or licorice, sir.”

“Good girl.”

Since it’s her first time, he decides to ease her into it. He uses only a smidgen of his strength to smack the paddle against the thick of her cheek, watching as the wood ricochets. Her skin jiggles in response and he swallows, noting the way her nails already dig into the couch.

The second and third are just as light but he adds a bit more pressure to the fourth and fifth. When he’s finished, he rubs over the flush skin, slow and intentional.

“How was that?” he asks. 

“Good,” she replies, her voice slightly muffled from the pillow, “I can take more.”

A hand quickly finds its way to the back of her neck and her eyes instantly widen. He shifts her head, smushing her cheek into the soft fabric so her voice is no longer dulled. 

“Need to hear you loud and clear,” Harry says. “And now you’ll count for me.”

When the oak paddle makes contact with her ass for the sixth time, she grits her teeth but still calls out the number. She follows suit for the next five and, while it’s painful and harsh in the most uncomfortable of ways, she’d be lying if she said her skin didn’t feel like it was on fire. She’s burning for him, feeling her arousal leak down between the apex of her thighs with every last spank. 

“Good job, kitten,” Harry announces, dropping the paddle at the end of the set. “You did good, hm? Did the bratty girl learn her lesson?”

Y/N’s bottom lip juts out in a pout when his soft palms begin to soothe her aching bum. He instantly takes notice, wrinkling his eyebrows in confusion. 

“Can’t give you anymore tonight, kitten. It was only your first time.”

Instead of replying, she simply shakes her head.

“Use your words. I’m not a mindreader, brat.”

Swallowing, she lifts her head up slightly, only enough to give her a peek of Harry’s concerned expression. 

“W-wanna cum,” she mumbles, blinking at him, “Will you make me cum, sir?”

And instead of immediately getting what she wants, Harry does the unthinkable.

He rolls his eyes.

“You act like a slutty brat all night, begging to get paddled, and now you want me to make you cum?” 

She nods, ashamed and embarrassed.

“What the fuck makes you think you deserve that?”

“I-I took my spankings and paddlings without complaining. And I didn’t disobey you a-after that.”

“But you did defy me to begin with, didn’t you?” he pushes, weaving his hand into the hair at the back of her head. His fist tightens and he lifts her head so her neck cranes back. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now you want to cum.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But not only do you want to cum— you want me to make you cum.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine then,” he decides, sitting down and leaning back against the couch cushions. “Come here. Straddle me.”

She forces herself onto her knees and ignores the way her ass and pussy both sting from her punishments. Right now, all she can focus on is her buzzing clit and its need for attention. 

She does as she’s told and splits her thighs to fit his own legs between them. Almost instantly, he cups a hand beneath her mouth and glares at her expectantly. 

“Spit, brat. Are you dumb?”

She shakes her head, allowing saliva to pool behind her lips before spitting it into his palm. With his eyes staring into hers, he lowers his spit-slick hand down to her mound and pushes a finger inside of her. Immediately, she clenches around it, her eyes threatening to flutter shut.

“Keep them open,” he instructs, “Jesus, your cunt is already milking me.”

She swallows and forces herself to maintain eye contact with the man sitting before her. He’s merciless in his ministrations, especially when he nestles a second, then a third finger and curls them up to her most sensitive spot. Her hands form tight fists as she grinds against his hand, moaning loudly when his thumb reaches her clit. 

“What a desperate little pussy,” he murmurs, speeding up the tight circles over the swollen bundle of nerves, “You like getting stretched out, don’t you? Say it.”

“I-I love when you stretch me out, sir.”

“Of course you do,” he smirks viciously, “Is your cunt gonna cum like this?”

“Y-yes, sir—”

“Ask for permission first, kitty.”

“Please sir, can I cum? P-please?”

She’s whimpery and mewling as she bounces helplessly on his fingers, the ribbon in her lower stomach threatening to unravel at any given moment. He hums, stilling the digits inside of her.

“Hold it.”

“Sir—”

“Hold it, brat.”

Her pussy clenches around him but she does. She restrains herself until he finally allows the ribbon to come undone, a slew of whines and curses sounding from her plush lips as she does.

It feels like it goes on forever but when the pleasure finally ceases, she collapses into his chest. Harry gently pulls his fingers from her center and wraps an arm around her waist, giving it a gentle, loving squeeze. 

He lets her stay like that for a bit and, maybe selfishly, he enjoys having her limp, exhausted body so close to his. 

“Gotta clean you up and rub some salve on your bum,” he finally manages out, ducking down to whisper the words in her ear. 

Tiredly, she nuzzles her head against his shoulder. “Five more minutes?”

He swallows. 

He doesn’t think she’s in her subspace, but he knows she’s sleepy and fuzzy from the mix of pain and pleasure he just instilled on her body.

And so for that, he’ll give her five more minutes.

Six, if she’s lucky.

[reachartwork]

request for assistance

howdy everyone, it's your friendly neighborhood ms. reach here. let me lay down the situation.

as always, i detest e-begging but with my Job That Paid Well falling through, things have been getting tight - between my medical bills, my husband's medical bills, rent (INCREASED BY 50%!), and food, there's not really enough to keep things afloat more than paycheck to paycheck. my husband, as an immigrant, is not allowed to work yet, and won't be allowed for several months at the minimum.

slight problem! my husband's school just informed us that despite the account balance and payment history saying $0 (i.e all is paid off) on his school stuff, he actually owes about $1200 USD to the school. and classes start tomorrow.

i can pay this. BUT. i *can't* pay this and rent and medical bills and food. so without assistance one of these four, possibly more of these four, is gonna give. anything you could contribute would be helpful. if you need an incentive, send me proof of your donation and i'll make you some art based on your profile picture. anything helps, thanks.

another $400 would make things much smoother, and $700 would resolve the issues totally.

[cb97percent]

Aphrodisiacs · 「Touch」

➥ Massage Therapist!Minho x Client!Reader (f) — 3k

➥ The author chooses not to issue tags for everything that takes place in this work to preserve some element of surprise where applicable. By continuing, you accept to proceed at your own risk. Read full disclaimer here.

⚠ — Unintentionally sensual massage, stigmatophilia (piercing fetishism/mc has one).

➥ Lotus Massage & Healing is all the rage right now, and having a friend that works there has some perks.

“Okay, I have to ask,” you placed your coffee mug on the table, “What’s up with the rise of Lotus Healing lately? That place is fucking everywhere on social media.”

“A famous ASMR content creator visited us a couple of weeks ago, and ever since then we’ve been getting bookings like there’s no tomorrow,” Felix explained as if he was doing a newscast.

“The fuck? You’re getting rich because of tingles?”

“You haven’t seen what my boss looks like, have you?” he grinned and took his phone out. In a matter of seconds, you were looking at the About page of this high end spa’s website, and your jaw hit the floor.

“NO SHIT! This is him?!” you pointed at the zoomed in image of a ridiculously good looking man on the screen while scaring the passing waitress, “I really thought he was some ancient healing guru or something.”

“Well, he’s very much in his prime years as you can see.”

“I need this man to knead me immediately,” you pretended to wipe the drool from the corners of your mouth, “Does he do one of those happy ending things?”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous!” he scolded, seemingly offended, “Lee Minho is a legitimate god of massage therapy. He gets booked by stage performers a lot.”

“Oh, he’s a god alright and he looks like my salvation.” 

“Sorry to break it to you, but he’s not dating material, like at all. He’s so fucking stoic, not to mention highkey egocentric,” an utterly unamused expression climbed on his freckles, “I do get these intrusive thoughts of designing humbling experiences for him every now and then, but the pay is insanely good, so…”

“Can you blame him? If I looked like that, I would have confidence seizures, too.”

Felix’s face changed all of a sudden as if he was having a lightbulb moment. Being such close friends for the longest time, you knew a lot of unnecessarily intimate details about each other, but Felix also knew something about this Lee Minho. Something he casually divulged during some dude talk moment over drinks, but what was important here was that you happened to be in possession of his kryptonite. 

He couldn’t fucking believe this hadn’t occurred to him sooner.

“You know what, I actually have reason to believe he would like you,” he loudly slurped on his coffee.

“Because of ya girl’s infinite charms, why thank you,” you quipped with a pleased smile.

“Something like that,” he smirked in return, “Why don’t you make an appointment for when you’re free? I’ve been meaning to thank you for helping me move anyway.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for, but you’re the fucking man, Lix!”

You snatched his phone from him to check out the appointment schedule on the webpage, but damn, Felix wasn’t exaggerating when he said people were booking like there was no tomorrow.

“Jesus, how the fuck you don’t have anything available until December?!”

“Scratch the formalities. I’m your plug anyway,” he reached for his mug again, “I’ll hook you up with his custom therapy.”

“Custom therapy?”

“That’s the Lee Minho experience,” he winked and finished the rest of his coffee.

The following weekend, you made your way to Lotus Massage & Healing, very much looking forward to some me time being pampered by some man oozing sexiness. The location was in the heart of the city, and you could literally smell the simplistic extravagance of the place from the moment you walked through the door.

“Hi, I’m here for my 2 p.m. appointment?”

“Welcome to Lotus,” you were greeted by the god of massage therapy himself, “My name is Lee Minho. I’m the owner of the establishment.”

Oh, I know who you are, motherfucker, you wanted to say, but your usual antics weren’t exactly appropriate for your friend’s fancy workplace. Instead, you put on the good girl mask and politely smiled at him.

“I have you for custom therapy today, correct?”

You have me for whatever you want actually, the voice in your head commented on your behalf.

“Yes.”

It was hard to believe Minho was real for how good looking he was, but you understood what Felix meant when he was describing his boss. The man was polite, but he wasn’t smiling at all, causing you to wonder whether he was capable of feeling an emotion. Then again he had such an aloof serenity to him that it made perfect sense he was running a business like this.

“Please proceed to Room 3 and undress. I’ll be with you shortly.”

You thanked your prospective therapist and headed to the location you were given. The room looked like it was meant for relaxation. The walls were a very dark shade of brown, almost black, and the soft orange lights illuminating the place provided quite a nice contrast. Placed on a small table next to the massage bed, there were several wooden instruments as well as oil bottles in different sizes and straw-made decorations. Almost inaudible ambient sounds were playing in the background, and it smelled so good inside that the coziness quickly enveloped you. 

You removed all your clothes and put them in a closet, then lay facedown under the soft covers that looked like gray fleece blankets. The material felt so good on your skin. Shortly after, you heard the heavy wooden door open, and you caught a glimpse of Minho’s black scrubs to your left.

“I’ll be giving you a full body treatment today,” he started talking in whispers to let you know about his agenda, “If you’re uncomfortable at any point, please let me know.”

I doubt it, you giggled to yourself inside. You heard the sound of him pumping oil into his palms, rubbing some up to his elbows, and then he established first skin-to-skin contact.

It was like a tornado made landfall.

Minho’s large and veiny hands felt oh so good on your skin, immediately causing you to exhale. Just a few minutes in, you already knew why he was dubbed the god of massage therapy. Slippery but precise movements of his fingers drawing abstract fractals on your back, undoing all the knots you didn’t even know you had, and weirdly enough… 

Arousing you without touching a single erogenous zone.

Sure, this wasn’t the kind of establishment where he fucked his clients, but just having him touch you however he wanted, and the awareness of being at a beautiful stranger’s complete mercy felt like the most oddly erotic experience of your life. Maybe it was the oils, maybe it was the dim lights, maybe it was simply the knowledge of Lee Minho running his hands on your naked body with the sole intention of making you feel good, who knew, but you were unintentionally clenching your jaw to stop yourself from making questionable sounds.

“Please don’t restrain yourself if it feels pleasurable. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” he spoke very softly, noticing the tenseness, “It just means you’re enjoying it.”

“I don’t want people to think something else is going on inside,” you admitted, kinda glad he wasn’t able to see your face, “It feels a bit too good.”

“Our walls are soundproof. Please be comfortable.”

Well… Since he asked...

His touch became firmer like he was encouraging you to let loose, and you couldn’t help the high note of a moan your sigh started with before receding into a mute breath. If you looked into his eyes at that moment, you would be able to see how satisfied he was with the reaction he elicited.

The moment you felt the flat surface of hot stones gliding on your back, Minho started properly pushing you into a comatose state of relaxation. You were wondering if death by massage was at all possible because it was that good. You were simply melting on that table, the sounds of delight you were making concerningly bordering on sexual gratification by the time he was done with your legs.

“Now turn around,” he whispered his instructions.

There was only one untouched zone left. You couldn’t dare open your eyes as Minho was working your torso, hands slithering all over you like a pair of snakes replacing the discomfort in your body with some poison of pleasure. Your anticipation inadvertently peaked when he finally reached your crotch. 

The room was so freaking silent that the slightest rustle was amplified in your ears sixfold. When he slowly removed the soft material covering you from the waist down, there was no mistake that Minho gulped.

The unexpected sight of a piece of minimalistic accessory adorning your pussy shocked his entire body like a bolt of lightning.

“Christina?” he nonchalantly asked.

“Hm?” you hummed a bit dazed, currently fighting the urge to fall asleep.

“Your piercing.”

“Wow, you namedropped,” you smiled stupidly, “You know your stuff, huh?”

“I’m an intimate jewelry aficionado,” he continued in whispers, “I don’t mean to be crass, but it makes you look even prettier.”

So this was what Felix meant when he said he had reason to believe Minho would like you. You as in your pussy. 

Aficionado my ass, you thought to yourself while internally laughing your ass off. Minho had a very obvious fetish he was normal about, but you still found it super flattering coming from a guy like him, the god of therapy or sex or who the fuck knows what else.

“Thank you very much,” you heaved a sigh through your smirk, “You can feel it if the fancy strikes.”

If the fancy strikes. 

Not only did Minho have complete tunnel vision on the titanium-plated jewelry, but he was also in the middle of a hardcore battle with his urges, chastising himself for being so fucking weak for something like this, not to mention utterly unprofessional. He was suffering from such a horrible case of acute onset desire that he was on the literal brink of throwing himself at you. 

Did issuing a trigger warning for extreme sexiness occur to you by any chance? 

Before soaking his hands in oil again, Minho maneuvered to slide his index and ring fingers down your labia, careful not to make contact with your clit for his own sanity even though both of you were longing for that touch. Your folds were already glistening with your arousal, making him heavily salivate with how much he was craving for it on his tongue. He discreetly stained the tip of his middle finger with you, then turned around to allegedly pump some oil in his palms whereas he just wanted to scratch an unbearable itch in his brain.

Not that he had any experience with narcotics, but he was convinced this was what heroin fiends felt like for how instantly addictive your taste was, and he was going to lose his mind if he couldn’t coat his tongue with your slick through and through.

He took a deep breath and started massaging your inner thighs first. It was a healing touch, but you couldn’t help how your body tensed up no matter how much you were trying to relax. Every time he got closer to your pussy, your breathing patterns changed, suddenly becoming much more frequent, then retreating to its basal rhythm again. It wasn’t long before the awareness hit—this feeling was uncannily similar to having a partner edge you for their own pleasure.

This wasn’t some tantric massage technique or anything anymore. He was legitimately playing with you, and you wanted him to get wetter, messier, just fuck the shit out of you on that table, and use you to satiate his own appetite.

But he wasn’t making a move. 

You didn’t know if it was against some mighty principle or if he just couldn’t find the courage to go through with it. You were trying to find the right words to tell him that you would keep this little secret between you two as long as you lived, that he had nothing to worry about, and that all you needed was his mouth on you, but your mind had stopped working some time ago. All you could process was Minho’s touch. His breathing. The way he kept subtly licking his lips and how his Adam’s apple bobbed every time he swallowed. You were so damn turned on that weren’t able to tell anymore if it was the pleasant-scented oils or your own slick covering you between your legs. Minho’s sharp sense of smell, on the other hand, was snitching on how he was able to get you this wet, which served as a phantom touch that stroked his ego and his cock at the same time.

And even though he had a completely expressionless façade, Minho’s professionalism still couldn’t stop him from getting embarrassingly hard, throbbing every time his fingers caressed your piercing. He was done with the session maybe five minutes ago, but he kept dragging it on to admire you just a little bit longer, and with each drop oozing out of you, he found himself contemplating harder. 

Was your taste worth risking his whole entire reputation and career for?

In the battle of logic versus lust, the latter had already declared a bloody triumph. All he needed to do was to take the loss with grace and surrender. 

So did you.

Minho’s ministrations came to a halt, and he was looking at your soaked cunt like he was in a trance, eyes glassy, pupils blown wide, lips parted and slightly panting. He brushed his thumb over your clit once, overcome with the urge to suck on it, and even though you were visibly clenching, he was just too stunned to act on it.

And you ran out of fucking patience.

“Do it,” you breathily uttered, leaving absolutely no room for any doubt or second thoughts.

One look into your eyes, and Minho’s entire train of thought immediately derailed. You shouldn’t have said that. You really shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t have looked at him with that much fire in your gaze. You shouldn’t have sounded like he was everything you ever desired. 

As if he was possessed, Minho pressed two fingers on your clit and started rubbing you. Your moans were getting more and more desperate, and it was just so fucking tempting. His eyes were examining your every move, how your body was reacting to him, how good he was making you feel, and he could only promise to make you feel better. You eventually couldn’t stand it anymore and propped up on your elbows.

“Taste me,” you firmly commanded looking dead into his eyes.

And he lost all control.

Was your taste worth risking his whole entire reputation and career for?

Yes. Yes, it was. It fucking was.

He sinisterly smiled at you in response, and you watched him lower his head and fucking finally give you what you were in dire need of. A single slow drag of his tongue from your entrance all the way up to your clit, punctuated with a soft suck.

“Never thought I would describe taste as pretty, but that’s what you taste like,” Minho spoke a bit more audibly than a whisper this time, “You taste as fucking pretty as your pussy.”

Then he immediately proceeded to ravage you, closing his entire mouth on your cunt. Just kissing, licking, and slurping on you so eagerly as though he was touch-starved for years. You may have said that half-jokingly, but turns out you were going to get your happy ending after all. Happy ending but it was in hell and you were forever burning in the fires of lust consuming you, bestowed with a climax every time you fucking blinked.

And that was the only right way to die. Between Minho’s perfectly plush lips.

You were already so on edge that you instinctively put your hands on his head, which prompted him to lock his arms on your thighs and bury himself deeper into you. You rode his beautiful face faster and faster and faster, hurrying to get your sweet release until you finally snapped, dissolving in his mouth and offering him the most intense notes of your essence. The afterglow of your orgasm slowly spread throughout your entire body, and combined with the already relaxed state you were in, you were almost on the brink of passing out. Minho came into your vision again with a tall glass of water, and you felt every single one of your cells being rejuvenated with the cool liquid rushing down your esophagus. With a pleased smile on his face, he left you by yourself to gather your wits and get dressed, and greeted you in the hallway after you emerged from Room 3.

“Satisfied with the service I presume?”

“Very much,” you reciprocated the curls at the corners of his mouth, “I would love to come in frequently, but I understand you’re quite booked.”

“I take after-hours appointments if you’re interested.”

“Do you now?”

You shared a silent look that lasted several seconds, your smiles still intact. Then Minho took out something that looked like a business card printed on matte black paper from his back pocket and handed it to you.

“This is my personal number. The private booking comes with a side benefit of a nice dinner,” he checked you out one last time from head to toe before leaving, “Call me.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Happy endings never felt so good.

「© 2021-2024, cb97percent · No translations, rewrites, or reposts permitted」

✉ Enjoyed this? It would be cool of you to reblog so that my work can reach more people.

[adora-but-ginger]

Aspersion

aspersion (noun): an attack on the reputation or integrity of someone or something; an accusation.

pairing: eventual spencer reid x gender neutral! reader

synopsis: in which spencer reid pushes a little too far

warnings: both spencer and the reader are assholes to each other a little, but it is justified! swearing (probs), typical cm violence and such, tension thicker than a cement wall

masterlist

word count: ~2.1k

a/n: hello and welcome to my first official criminal minds fic! all of the pieces in this anthology can most likely be read individually, but they will have connected themes throughout! please enjoy the first work in my "psych you out in the end" collection. want to be tagged? Let me know!

also casual reminder that this is glasses reid because i am gnawing at my enclosure over him

not proofread whoops

credit to gif owner!

It had been a long case. Five days in and little to no leads, yet a serial killer was still on the loose. This was your fourth case with the team now, most of which were still pretty apprehensive of your "psychological abilities." Penelope, who you've come to like the most, has been the kindest to you, even asking as far as for you to do her tarot. The rest of the team weren't as easygoing, but that wasn't the point right now.

It was of upmost importance to check out the latest crime scene, and you were paired with the hyper-suspicious Doctor Reid. He out of everyone trusted you the least, but now was the time to hopefully change that. He was a genius and you could read people, after all. You couldn't get a good read on him though, mostly because you two hadn't been around each other long enough to have more than a professional conversation. This was the first time it was the two of you, and you were going to make it count.

You could decipher anyone's aura, yet you were still a people pleaser. Ironic, almost.

"It looks like there was no forced entry, meaning that the unsub was someone they either knew or felt safe with." He darted his tongue between his lips after he spoke.

"Yeah, but aren't people in this neighborhood generally trusting? I think we should focus more on what he took." There was something itching at you about this scene, something that felt off.

You were a professional profiler, but you could just sense people's inner selves and auras--auras helped direct you into a person's mind and feelings. It varied per person and you weren't the best at explaining it, but you could tell a lot about someone if they even walked past you.

"Are you saying that the door might have been unlocked?"

"I'm saying it's a possibility."

Reid without a glance in your direction shook his head. "You know that's a very unlikely scenario, statistically women will secure their home much more than men, especially if they're living alone. Research also shows that when someone is under the impression that they can hold more than average strength either physically or mentally, they act out in irrational ways." He shrugged his eyebrows before murmuring quietly. "Like joining the FBI."

Did he just insult you? "Excuse me? Reid I'm just saying that we should shift our focus. Gideon said you had trust issues, but he didn't explain their severity." Had he really tried to undermine you in a way that he thought you wouldn't notice?

"Gideon makes decisions that could end up hurting the team more than helping them sometimes."

Okay now that was a diss. Wasn't he the one who hired Reid, too? You had dealt with people like this before, and you weren't going to let him get to you. "Let's just finish up and go meet up with everyone else."

--

The unsub was found and arrested two days later. Ironically, he was entering through unlocked doors, a detail that you were sure Reid was not too happy with when he found out. You were all on the jet ride home now, and would be here for the next few hours. This was the farthest case from Quantico yet, meaning the team finally had time to interrogate and learn more about you. Something that Emily and Derek were jumping at.

"Can you read my mind?"

"Can you tell what I want for dinner?"

"Can you tell when it's going to rain?"

They had both sat down across from you simultaneously, overwhelming you art first.

"Okay hold on." You threw your hands out slightly as a cue for them to stop. "Kind of, no, and yes--I check the weather station."

"Huh." Emily scrunched up her face, another question brewing. "So how does this psychic-ness work?"

You took a deep breath before starting. "I can just read you. Yes, like a profiler reads you, but also more than that. Profilers can only see the outside, but I can see the inside as well."

"Prove it." Derek crossed his arms. "Inside profile me."

Now that was a choice of words.

You held a finger up. "I will only if you promise to never say that phrase to me again."

He looked to Prentiss before a smile broke out. "Looks like they've got jokes, too."

A quiet laugh escaped you before continuing. "That I do. What do you want to know, Morgan?"

"My deepest-darkest secret." He said it in a joking manner, but you shook your head none the same.

"You don't want me to share that."

"I guess I don't. What do you really have for me, though?"

You took a second to really look at him, to see what he was hiding behind that smile--you were going to keep it light of course. You could look farther if you wanted, but the farther back you went the vaguer your readings were. "When were you going to tell everyone that you like Britney Spears?"

And just like that, you knew the two of them believed you now. Because the price on Derek Morgan's face was one that you wish you had a photo of. Emily's jaw dropped, eyes widening. "You refused to listen to her with me last week, traitor!"

Derek's mouth was also agape--he was flabbergasted. Eyebrows raised, he shook his head. "Fine, I believe you. Say no more. Please." His reaction made you chuckle, and it was all fun and games until Reid strode over, taking the seat next to you.

"You know, almost every public claiming psychic is usually a scammer or a fake. In fact--"

A groan escaped you. "Seriously? This again?"

"Yes! It was an incredibly irrational choice on Gideon to--"

The upbeat mood quickly dissipated, your temper going along with it. "Listen Reid, I don't need to explain myself to you. But, out of the kindness of my heart, I'm going to say this once." Emily and Derek''s eyes were bouncing between the two of you. "I don't announce it publicly, hence why "that is"psychic" is not my legal title. Second, I'm good at what I do, that's why I'm here. Believe me or not, but I can see right through you and your defenses."

The air took a tone that you didn't quite appreciate now, but he started this.

"You don't know a thing about me, in-in fact you don't know a thing about anyone, much less who I am." Annoyance was seeping through his words, and you were getting tired of his passive-aggressiveness. "You show up here being a so-called 'psychic'," his fingers went into air quotes at your title. "Yet you haven't done anything besides getting a confession out of one individual? Sounds like someone doesn't know how to handle being around actual profilers."

You wanted to slap the guy. But here you were again, taking the high road. "I'm too tired for this. If you want to doubt what I can do, fine. It's nothing I haven't dealt with before." You clenched your jaw and took a couple deep breaths to control your oncoming frustration. The conversation was over now, there was nothing left for him to say. How dare he insult your profiling skills too? How dare he--

"How have you been able to get this far lying?"

It was the straw on the camel's back, that line. He wouldn't drop it, and now he was going to face the consequences. You inched your head slowly to face his own, steadying your breaths even more, so you could make sure your words wouldn't get you fired this early on.

You looked into his eyes, really looking into him. The emotions he gave off, the way he held himself, his aura. If he was going to bash you for days in hopes of getting a response, he won. He was probably expecting you to give a grandiose speech on how you don't know what you're doing or how you just have really lucky guesses, but if there was one thing that you learned from people like him, it was that if they keep striking low, you strike lower.

Screw the high road, screw him undermining your talent, and screw people like him that thought they could get away with thinking their actions didn't have consequences.

You really saw him then, squinting slightly as you looked him up and down in the seat, the team around you remaining quiet as to remain listening to the rising tif. You could see right through him, see that he had some real parental issues, but had a overshadowing amount of loneliness surrounding his self, his mind, his body. It was vague, but it was there, and there is all you needed.

You leaned back as if to get comfortable, maintaining your eye contact. "When was the last time someone you cared about actually stayed in your life, Spencer?" You spoke nonchalantly, like you were discussing the weather.

You could feel the tangible tension that thrummed through the air from the two across from you at your words, and you knew you hit home. As to solidify your unanswered question, you saw a tiny twitch in his eyelid that responded more than any words could.

"Um Morgan? I think JJ called our names. We should go." Emily nudged the man and nodded to the back of the jet.

"What? No one has said anything. You're losing it, Prentiss."

"Derek, we're going." Her eyes went between you and Spencer to drive the point, and he finally picked it up after a second.

"Oh. Oh. Yeah, yeah I agree. JJ?" He called out. "We're coming!"

It was just the two of you now.

He broke eye contact with you after your words, and you moved in towards him as you lowered your voice to a whisper. "I see you for your inner workings, Reid. There's a reason I am good at what I do, and it is because I see you for how you see yourself. You do not want to make an enemy out of me."

His voice was caught in his throat for a second, mouth dropping slightly. He cleared his throat momentarily. "Are you threatening me?" Clear avoidance of your statement.

"No, Reid, I'm offering an olive branch. I suggest you take it." His silence prompted you further. "Besides your consistent digs at me, you're really good at what you do. Your brain quite literally runs a mile a minute, and my brain can see that. I am trying my best to chalk this all up to me being new, but I am really not appreciating all of this heat, it is extremely frustrating. You have your methods, I have mine. I'll give you some time to decide whether to accept this olive branch or not, but we would offer this team much more if you used those smarts of yours alongside mine, not against." Your chest was heaving slightly as the fire in your eyes blazed, but he finally got the message. "This will be the only time I'm offering this up." You turned away from him, needing a break.

You heard him shuffle and leave the seat next to you as you watched the clouds whiz by in the jet. It really sucked that he was cute too. All the adorable ones had to get you riled up, didn't they?

You felt a brief weight lift off of your shoulders as you heard Gideon speak to everyone on the plane about having the weekend off. Thank goodness.

--

That Monday you waltzed into the bullpen, a nice pep to your step after a break from everything. Iced drink in your hand, you set down your bag as you prepped yourself for the onslaught of paperwork awaiting you.

You had just gotten comfortable when you felt a tap on your shoulder and a familiar clear of a throat.

You swiveled in your chair, facing the tall man. "'Yes?"

"The oldest olive tree is known to be anywhere between two thousand to four thousand years old, but the specific age is currently being studied."

You took a sip of your drink as you looked up at him in confusion. "Good morning to you as well?"

He clenched his jaw quickly before continuing. "I''m saying yes. I accept the branch. It doesn't make sense to me and you infuriate me a little bit, but I want to work on it."

For the first time, but certainly not the last, you genuinely smiled at him.

And maybe he was losing all touches with reality, because he could feel his heart skip.

--

taglist: @alllriseabove @kitty-kei

[nipuni]

Hey, Nipuni! First off, I want to say that i love your work sooosoooo much and i can’t even truly describe the impact it’s had on me. You’re an inspiration to me!! No matter what your interest is in i will always be a fan. I was really curious and wanted to ask, i think you’ve talked about it a looong time ago but, how long do you reckon it takes your to do your fully painted illustrations these days?? and how long do you wait before posting it, assuming you aren’t sure if you’re satisfied with it. I’ve just been struggling with overworking my art and feeling like it’s not ever ready to post so i was curious. 😟

Hello!! I'm so late to reply I'm so sorry!! Thank you so much for the kind words!! to hear that my work can have such a positive impact on someone is the greatest compliment truly 😭❤️ and thank you for sticking through all my interest hopping too haha

These days it takes me anywhere from 2 to 9 hours most of the time, non consecutive if I can help it, and I usually sleep on them at least one night before I share them. But I've held on for over a month to some just because I didn't think they looked quite right, so I keep coming back to them every now and then and do some small tweaking until I reluctantly post them either out of frustration or exhaustion haha I don't have the patience or the attention span to work on the same thing for very long to be honest, so I've adapted 😆

The truth I like to remind myself of is that once I share something all my focus shifts to my next idea every time so whether I could have done better or not doesn't matter once it is out of my hands. I can always do better on the next one, there is just the comfort of letting go and a fresh start.

I've struggled with overworking pieces to death a lot too. It stems from anxiety really so it's a matter of building confidence, the point at which art is ready to be shared is arbitrary after all. You can convey a message or idea just as effectively through the roughest of sketches to the most detailed oil painting, the rest of the work is mostly towards aesthetic value.

On the technical side of things, when you grow frustrated with a piece to the point where you start to resent it is a good indicator that you need a different course of action. Sometimes bringing in new references can help you find the issue, sometimes the problem is structural and buried under piles of unnecessary detail and you have to go back and redo or remove something you were reluctant to, and sometimes the best thing you can do is to let go and come back to it with fresh eyes when you have learned more. As for studies, working from big to small, training for speed and on a time limit has helped me. Anyway I think I've started rambling, I hope any of this helps!! Remember that art at any stage is better than no art at all!!

[drdemonprince]

I recently finished reading your book Unlearning Shame, and I absolutely loved it. I found the conceptual framework of Internalized Shame and your techniques for it so very helpful, especially when most ideas of mental health (anxiety and depression, trauma, etc.) have seemed insufficient and useless to me.

However, there was one thing that kind of bugged me the whole way through reading it. Your primary focus was the shame people face as part of marginalization, but often, this too felt insufficient for me. Like, I do face a lot of this flavor of shame: I'm an autistic trans woman, feeling like I'm cringey or childish or creepy or obscene or whatever are things that bug me daily, and restrict a lot of my freedom.

However, a lot of the shame I deal with stems from some kind of awful things I've done in the past, and this is perhaps the loneliest and most difficult kind of shame I deal with. To be fair, I think a lot of this has been very closely linked to my marginalization: people would interpret genuine mistakes of mine as signs I was some awful, manipulative predator, and quickly oust me from their friend groups as a result. If I had been an allistic cis man I would have faced far gentler behavior, or at least far more people would have justified the shit I did.

Regardless, very little in the book dealt with shame tied to guilt and wrongdoing. I remember there was mostly just this one tantalizing line about how even previous members of neonazi groups can benefit from speaking shame, but other than that, I didn't see much.

So my question here is, do you know how to deal with the shame of doing something really bad, and facing the consequences?

Thank you for asking, I'm glad you liked the book!

There are answers for you throughout the book, I think. Arguably, many of the examples of shame I outline involve feeling regret or shame over one's actions. People who do not recycle "enough" and feel profound shame and anxiety about it are people who have done something "wrong," in their minds. So are people who have repeated internalized transphobic/racist/fatphobic/etc messages to other people who share the same identities as them. These people's actions are systemically caused, and they are suffering from those same systemic forces that provoked them to take actions they feel bad about.

You aren't any more morally culpable than any of them, and you aren't qualitatively different from them -- even if you are likely telling yourself that what you did is so much "worse" and so much less justified.

You can find much of the advice that I apply to people who feel ashamed about an experience (a rape survivor, say), apply equally to you as someone who might have done something you view as "wrong." You can also look to the material in chapters 7 and 8 about finding grace and perspective for others who have done wrong to us, and apply much of that yourself. A person must be held in community before they can be held accountable, for example. Understanding the circumstances that contributed to your behavior is important, which it sounds like you've already done some work on, as is contemplating the needs you were attempting to meet with your actions, and the social supports you currently still need in order to move forward.

If someone has taken actions that go against even their own morals and they feel profoundly ashamed about it, I'd say they are generally still in a state of far-reaching systemic shame that goes far deeper and requires far more healing and support than just addressing the morality of their own actions. There's usually a lot of shame about one's identities, deprivation one is facing, fears of abandonment and attachment insecurities, and other major issues going on. Because a person wouldn't just violate their own moral precepts for no good reason.

No one wants to feel that they are a horrible person according to their own personal standards of goodness. A person's actions always make sense within their own context, and so when someone does something "wrong," either they have done something that they do not actually believe to be wrong, but fear societal judgement for, or they have been pushed to the brink by extreme distress, deprivation, abuse, indoctrination, political repression, exclusion, or likely a combination of those things.

I hope this is making sense. If you feel ashamed of something you have done, you need the exact same healing, safe vulnerability, social support, and trust as someone who is ashamed about something over which they have no control. There is no difference, you are no more deserving of that shame, and shame still will not prevent you from changing your behavior for the better. You can believe wholly that your actions in the past were wrong, and uphold your current values in the present, without deserving to feel any more shame about it.

[intellectual6666]

I have some things to talk about, which I felt and saw after I got my CBSE 10th results.

Everyone takes credit. Like relatives who for the whole year kept saying, "our children also gave boards, why are they (my parents) acting like it's such a big thing?", "they are showing as if only they have work and they are busy, we are useless na", came to say, "she is our daughter/granddaughter, that's why she excelled in her exams." I do have a lot of respect for them and yes, I love them a lot too and also you can take credits of it, due to their ashirvad I was able to excel in the exams but why act like they are "only" reason I got good marks in it ? I would like to give 50% credits to my parents and the rest to me and my God. There was also a time when my father was not able to give the monthly fees of my school for 3 months, but he managed to keep me in a English medium private school by working his ass off. My mother left her social life, didn't even go to ISKCON (her favourite place) so that she can keep her full attention on me. We went through so much financial issues in 2022 and 2023 (first half) but my parents didn't let my education sacrifice. I, didn't take any tuitions so that I do not put extra burden on them (another reason I didn't take tuition coz I prefer self study more than tuitions). Me, who got so stressed because of my class 10 boards that by the time my exams were near my mental health worsened. I was getting suicidal thoughts and got introduced to new health problems which still haunt me, hypertension and palpitation. But still, I worked hard, my closest friends helped me, my parents helped me and most importantly Krishna ji, Ganesh ji, Radharani ji and Mahadev helped me. My struggle was totally mine and no one fought the war inside me other than me. So before taking the whole credit, atleast for once one should think about the people who really worked hard.

Second, this comparison shit kills one inside. No, I didn't compare myself to anyone as my parents never taught me that nor they ever compared me to anyone. Basically me and my maternal uncle's daughter are really close. And she is quite average in her studies. But trust me she is an amazing dancer, singer and artist. I envy her because of the great acting skills she have. But according to that typical thoughts, her parents always compare her with me and try to demean her, on the thing that she is not much good in studies and I'm comparatively good in it. Her results came out some days ago, as she used to study in an ICSE school and to be honest, she did amazing. Getting such marks is not so easy in ICSE board. Yesterday her mother kept comparing her with me and made her feel insecure and bad. Like why ? What do you get by hurting a child ? Why the actual fuck can't you ever be satisfied with whatever she got ? Praise her, tell her she is amazing, bring some confidence in her instead of making her feel so insecure that she starts to kill her feelings for everyone. Please freaking stop that. My mother, as usual a boss lady, replied her so sassily that my sissy ran to her and hugged her for 15 minutes straight. All of my closest friends got above 90% and I got below it, but God my parents didn't think about that for even once. They kept praising me.

So this was a rant post and you can totally ignore it if you want. Sorry for writing such a long ass thing, I had a lot to burst out.

And also sorry if there's any spelling mistake.

Congratulations to all the 10thies and 12thies for acing your exams. Everyone did amazing. I'm proud of you.

[kingofthering]

Read @flyingfabio's thoughts on her weekend in Le Mans and realized it could be nice for me to give mine as well. Also going to go under a read more for the sanity of everyone's dash.

context/overall things

This was my second MotoGP race weekend and my second time in Le Mans. Last year I went alone with a grandstand ticket (Zarco GS) that I bought in January kind of an on a whim. In October I had access to the presales for 2024 and I got two VIP tickets (Club Grand Prix to be exact), one of which I gifted to my dad for Christmas.

These were a hefty price (650 euros) and if I were to do it again, I would go for one of the other VIP ticket packages (probably Sunday lodge/box [can't find the right translation but the things above the garages] for 500 euros). I do realize that it's a lot of money but I'm in a place in my life where I can save money every month and afford to splurge on things like this occasionally, so, yeah. And I think that overall, the experience was worth it.

This was my first time being alone with my dad and traveling with him for 4 days. I love my dad but he's had a lot of health issues in the past years and he's done a lot of work to be better physically but he's still a little diminished now and can't walk as fast as I can and needs to take breaks every now and then. I will admit that this wasn't always easy to manage because of my excitement and my lack of patience at times but we had a good time overall. I was also stressed because I needed things to go well and I didn't sleep much (and didn't eat much because of the stress) so my dad ended up having to take care of me on Saturday night but we both survived in the end.

I will say, even if you have a GS ticket or even a GA one, a weekend in Le Mans has so much to offer that I think people should really attend if they have the chance to. In addition to the usual MotoGP/Moto2/Moto3, you also get MotoE and the Rookies Cup which means that there is always something happening on track (pretty much). The fanzone events with the riders are really nice (I didn't attend this year but I had a really good time in 2023) and the Mechanical Show on Saturday is pretty cool as well.

One thing that I will also always give to Le Mans is the access to the circuit. You have the tramway (that runs through the whole city) arriving 150 meters away from the East gate of the circuit. There are a lot of people riding the trams but it was okay, I even found the organization of Sunday afternoon pretty great (while I was stressed of being too late at the train station and I sure wasn't).

The sound of the bikes at the start might be my new favorite thing in the world. I will say, please if you come to a race weekend, have stuff to protect your ears (earplugs or headphones), you will need them (they do sell them at the track if you forget).

I knew from Thursday already that we were going to break the attendance record. The number of people on track on Thursday and Friday already were insane. Le Mans has always been a popular GP (duh, it was holding the attendance record already) but Wednesday and Thursday being holidays in France (and a lot of people not working on Friday as a consequence) definitely helped.

VIP things

Access to the stands' building : This was my favorite thing in the ticket. I could have done with just that (and the paddock visit). This building is the one right above the garages so you got the pit lane on one side (and a lot of seats you sit in in the 4th floor to overlook the circuit, the pit lane, the podium) and the paddock on the other side. You essentially get to watch things happening in the paddock and people working there and it's so interesting. When you're on the 1st floor, you have gates that riders come up to sometimes to interact with fans. This was quite eye-opening to me on how much riders interact with fans throughout the weekend (and that we don't get to see when we're at home). The one that I saw interacting the most with fans throughout my days there was definitely Marc (he's so loved but he gives so much back honestly). On the 2nd floor you had the media room where they do their rounds of media and if you were there at the right time, you could interact with the riders when they were going up or down from media center. Most of them stopped from autographs and photos all the times I was there (Thursday afternoon for the press conferences, Friday afternoon after PR, Saturday afternoon after the sprint).

Paddock tour/visit : maybe my favorite part that I want to replicate so badly. I had to pick a time among offered slots and I chose the 10:30-13:00 on Friday because I didn't want to be missing any important sessions. You're basically free to roam the paddock as you want during your time slot and I saw so many familiar faces, it was insane, even non-riders like Massimo Rivola or Jack Appleyard (from the MotoGP broadcast). The first rider I talked to was Cele and at first I wasn't sure I had recognized him and I didn't want to run so I walked fast to get him before he went into the VR46 motorhome and god, I was so awkward at first (sorry Cele) and he couldn't hear me well because the MotoGP bikes were doing FP1 at the time but I did ask him about his collarbone (and he said he was fine) and told him I was hoping we could see him back soon. He seemed shy as well but very sweet. I also got to talk to (and take photos with) Fermin, Manuel (Gonzalez) and David Alonso. After my brain remembered how to speak Spanish I congratulated David for his best rookie title last season and told him I was betting on him for this season (and wishing him luck). He was really sweet as well. On the MotoGP side, I waited an hour in front of Yamaha's side to see Fabio (also got to see Rinsy first) and well, I did see Fabio from very up close but things were very chaotic and people behind were pushing and that wasn't exactly fun but, well. In the meantime, my dad got to talk to Bezz and he told me he seemed like a very nice and funny guy (more on that story here) and I will say I got a little jealous of that. Overall a really cool experience.

Pit lane visit : I thought we couldn't do it at the supposed time and in the end, we were able to enter the pit lane around 11:40, after quali. Honestly, seeing the bikes from up close like this is so cool. Like, shit, they're so pretty it's insane. Also, I feel like the garages look much bigger on TV? It was quite cool to see. I saw Mav coming back to his garage and start his debrief with his team. Also saw Bezz in his box and I saw Mig, who I didn't get to talk to but love even more now anyway. After about 10-15 minutes we had to leave so that was quite short but cool anyway. I know they did a pit lane visit open to everyone on Thursday but there were so many people, it seemed a little scary (but probably worth it if you're ready to queue early and throw some elbows around if needed).

Club Grand Prix access : the box was on the main straight. It was quite comfortable and I will say that the access to easy bathroom and free drinks was quite nice. I didn't eat much because of the state of my stomach but people were complimenting the food. Oh and having screens in there was quite practical. As I said earlier, it's not the ticket I would book again. I was a little frustrated by the fact we were not in the open air and it took away from the race experience for me. (Still amazing for a lot of people and my dad really appreciated the comfort but I know I personally would have been better in the stands' building.)

My experience is subjective because of the times I was there but like I said before, I saw a lot of Marc taking time for fans (one time he couldn't go up to a little kid but he sent JL to give him a slider), saw Maverick a bunch of times as well, Rinsy too. I heard people say that Johann was also taking a lot of time for the fans. I saw Jack give his cap (fully unprompted) to a little kid on Saturday on his way down from media. The only time I saw Pedro he didn't have time for the fans and most people I've heard were saying that he never seemed to really be engaging with people (but I talked with a guy who fully understood it as "it can't be easy for him getting all that attention all of a sudden"). He sure got a lot of appreciation from the public in the stands, though. Bezz spent a lot of time to sign everybody's stuff on Saturday. Alex (Marquez) was the last one to go to media and I asked him for a photo right before he got in for a media and he said "two minutes" and came back 10 minutes later and immediately came to me for the photo and was super sweet about it. I already had a good experience with Alex last year and I was really happy to have another one this year as well.

the racing

I will say, I definitely need to watch the sprint and the race calmly because I'm so confused about what happened when. Like obviously I remember the last lap battle between Marc & Pecco and I remember Pecco's retirement in the sprint (even filmed him coming back to the pits) but hm, yeah, things are a big mess in my head. Moto2 was eh (filmed Tony getting to his box and being not so happy when talking to his team) and Moto3 was pretty entertaining.

People were so happy with Fabio got directly to Q2 and I was as well. Quali was fun to watch as well. I'm just sad I didn't get to see practice starts in front of me but the real starts were cool too.

We see them on TV but the sheer amount of people that are on the grid before races is insane. And the way everyone immediately starts running from the pits when the guys leave for the sighting lap? So impressive to watch. I honestly could have spent my weekend watching teams work, it was so interesting to me.

[antichilde]

margin of error: part 1

satoru gojo x fem reader, 1.7k words mdni

in which satoru gojo makes a bet

contents: student teacher!gojo, student!reader, no curses, college au, slight age difference (gojo is 20, you are a couple years older), disinterested reader, he falls first, no smut (for now)

notes: loosely based on worth the wait — i just can’t let go of teaching assistant!gojo. i’ve never posted a multi-chapter fic on tumblr so we’ll see how this goes, but comments/asks are always appreciated. (image citation)

Gojo watches you from his place at one of the bio lab’s big slate tables. He’s been grading papers for about an hour, looking up every now and then when his peripheral vision catches you reaching for the top shelf. Your shorts keep riding up on the slope of your thighs, though you don’t seem particularly bothered by it. And if he’s being honest, he’s not either.

“You know,” he says, breaking the silence. “You’re supposed to wear long pants in here.”

You don’t even turn to look at him. “You’re only telling me this now?”

He shrugs, though he knows you can’t see. “It was a welcome distraction.”

His voice is pure flirtation. This is where most people would blush, maybe fix their clothing just enough to stay enticing. He’s used that line before, and he’s pretty confident it’ll work on you as well.

It doesn’t. You go back to ignoring him and Gojo frowns. He really is distracted now. A couple papers later he stands and stretches, making sure to let the hem of his shirt ride up.

“Need any help with that?” he asks, and you look up from your work.

“Don’t you have more papers to grade?”

Ignoring your question, Gojo moves to take a look at the experiment and is surprised to see that you clearly have no idea what you’re doing. Hm. Maybe he is having an influence on you after all.

“You’re doing it wrong,” he says, tilting his head towards the vials in front of you.

“I’ll figure it out.”

He laughs. “I don’t doubt it. But you’ve already redone it a couple times and I don’t think Yaga will be happy if you waste any more materials.”

For a moment don’t reply, leaning against the table and looking at him with a completely unreadable expression.

“Alright,” you say at last, stepping aside and gesturing to the experiment. “Show me where I’m going wrong.”

“Sure. I’ll need your measurements first.”

You reach for your notebook, passing it to him. Either you’re completely oblivious to the double entendre or you’re electing to ignore it. He tosses a couple more lines your way as he walks you through the lab, but it’s like flirting with a brick wall. Nothing. No response.

By the time you’re finished he’s thoroughly frustrated. This is only amplified when you shoo him back to his work, rinsing your materials and artfully dodging his attempts to strike up a conversation. At the end of the evening he’s left with a stack of ungraded papers and nothing to show for it.

“Maybe she’s just not into you.”

Geto doesn’t even look up from his Switch, unmoved by Gojo’s story.

“That’s impossible. Everyone’s into me,” Gojo says, pacing back and forth. “Maybe she’s not into guys. Or she’s got a boyfriend or something… Though that’s never been an issue before.”

“No, she likes guys.” Geto tries to hide a smile as his friend’s eyes snap to him. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend either.”

“And how do you know that, Suguru?”

He shrugs. “We’re in the same advisory. I thought you knew.”

Gojo had not, in fact, known that and now he feels a little silly because Geto mentions his advisory’s group chat quite often.

Collapsing onto Geto’s bed, he stares up at the ceiling. “You get along with your advisory unnaturally well. I don’t know anyone else who actually keeps in touch with theirs.”

“You know Nanami,” Geto says, his voice level even as he frantically mashes the A button. “And Utahime. And Haibara. And—“

“Okay, okay, let me amend my statement: I don’t know anyone outside of your advisory that actually keeps in touch with theirs. The only person I talk to from mine is Shoko.”

“Classic STEM majors. Can’t even draft a text.”

Gojo rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s see how much you and your liberal arts degree are making five years from now.”

After a moment of contemplation, he adds: “Think you can put in a good word for me in your group chat?”

“No, most of them know you too well.”

“You’re so mean to me.” Gojo rolls so he’s facing the wall. “It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s another lab period this week.”

You’re back in the bio lab with him. It’s like déjà-vu, except this time you’re wearing clothing that adheres to safety guidelines. It’s actually worse like this— fuck, you look good in those jeans. This must be some kind of karmic punishment for hitting on you last time, but Gojo has never been one to consider signs from the universe.

“Do you need any help?” he asks, leaning against your table. Your look of concentration is just too cute.

“Yes,” you say. “Shoko walked me through the experiment before she left, but I must’ve missed something.”

“Can I see your notes?” he asks, and wordlessly you push them across the table, turning your attention back to your work before he can dazzle you with a smile. He squints at your handwriting through his glasses. Everything looks alright on paper, but he can see that something’s off about the actual results.

“I think your labels might be mixed up. I’ll grab you a couple pH strips.”

You glance up at him, as if you’re surprised that he’s actually helping you, and he takes the opportunity to finally shoot you that smile. The effect is negligible.

After testing each sample and confirming that yes, the labels had been mixed up, you go right back to ignoring him. Gojo makes the tactical decision to retreat and wait until the experiment is finished before he tries to talk to you again.

“You’re friends with Suguru Geto, right?” he asks, helping you clear away your materials.

“Mm-hm. Do you know him too?”

“Yeah, we actually live together.”

You perk up at that. “You must be Gojo then?”

He stops midway through shelving a beaker, glancing over at you. “Did you… not know my name until now?”

“Was I supposed to?”

Ouch. Well, that certainly knocks his ego down a couple pegs.

“I’ve been your TA for almost a month.”

And you’re apparently on a first name basis with Shoko, he doesn’t add. He knows it’ll just sound petulant.

You shut the cabinet you’d been arranging, turning to lean against the slate counter.

“Maybe I should’ve paid more attention. It’s nice to be able to connect a face to the name. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Good things, right?”

You don’t reply, just return to your table to pack up your notebooks.

“She didn’t even know my name!” Gojo’s back in Geto’s room, pacing around. “How the hell did she not know it? It’s not like there’s a million teaching assistants for that class— just me and Shoko!”

Geto yawns, not bothering to cover his mouth. “Maybe she just doesn’t care.”

“I bet she’s just playing hard to get. Trying to keep me interested.”

“Yeah, and it’s clearly working. Really, Satoru— she’s not the sort of person who plays games like that. Also she said you’re not her type.”

He stops dead in his tracks. “What? When?!”

Geto pulls out his phone, unlocking it and opening Instagram. He scrolls back a ways and tosses the phone to Gojo. “Read it and weep.”

thegirlreadingthis99: Sorry guys I’m going to be late to dinner. I had to stay late to finish a lab and got held up

yu_haibara: Everything alright?

suguroo: If it makes you feel better Utahime will probably be late too so…

iori.hime: 🖕🖕🖕

thegirlreadingthis99: (@ yu_haibara) I’m okay. Just annoyed. One of the teaching assistants kept hitting on me while I was trying to focus

yu_haibara: Ew I’m so sorry

iori.hime: Death penalty

knanami73: (@ suguroo) 👀

suguroo: Was he cute?

thegirlreadingthis99: Yeah I guess. Not really my type though

thegirlreadingthis99: I’d pick Shoko over him any day

knanami73: (@ suguroo) 🫢

iori.hime: Why do you keep doing that

suguroo: (@ thegirlreadingthis99) Me too

“Whatever. This proves nothing,” Gojo says, shutting off the phone and tossing it onto the bed. “Except that she said I’m cute.”

Geto shoots him a look of disbelief. “That’s what you’re choosing to focus on?”

Shrugging, Gojo deposits himself onto Geto’s desk chair and leans back. Truth be told he’s kind of pissed. Not at Suguru, obviously, but at the fact that you genuinely seemed uninterested.

Not really my type.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? There are three universally acknowledged facts about Satoru Gojo: he’s beautiful, he’s charming, and he’s good at everything. How could someone not want him? It’s baffling.

He tips the chair back until it’s balanced on two legs, staring at a crack in Geto’s ceiling. “…I can make this work.”

“Hm?” Geto asks, looking up. He’s texting, and Gojo can’t help but wonder if it’s the advisory chat again. “Make what work?”

“I bet that I can get her to fall for me.” His gaze flickers over to his friend, searching his expression. “Unless of course you want her?”

With a sigh, Geto turns his phone off and meets Gojo’s eyes. He looks tired. Or maybe just resigned. “No, I do not. We’re strictly friends. And for the record I don’t like the way that question was phrased.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Women are objectified, I get it,” Gojo says, pretending to gag. “People objectify me too and I’ve never had a problem with it.”

He’s just trying to get a reaction, but Geto doesn’t take the bait. They’ve had this conversation before and it never ends well.

“I’m not going to stop you. She’s an adult and can look after herself, but I really don’t think this is going to end how you want it to.”

“Is that a challenge?” Gojo asks, turning his attention back to the ceiling.

“No.” Geto gets to his feet and stretches his arms above his head. “Now get out of my room, I’m going to sleep.”

thegirlreadingthis99: (@ suguroo) So when were you planning on telling me that Gojo is my TA for bio

yu_haibara: WAIT

yu_haibara: GOJO AS IN SATORU GOJO??

suguroo: The one and only

iori.hime: This is perfect I finally have an excuse to kill him

knanami73: 😔

thegirlreadingthis99: (@ knanami73) You fucking knew didn’t you

knanami73: 🫥

iori.hime: STOP DOING THAT

[2smolbeans]

Another yandere thought I had before going to bed:

I remember reading a concept from a yandere blog here on tumblr about a company/organization for yandere's to aid them when they are pursuing their darling. So after remembering it, a thought popped up in my head.

What if there was a company/organization that helped the darling's escape their tormentors?

Like imagine:

You look in amazement as the video starts to play, your eyes sparkling as the advertisement begins to play. Immediately, the voice of a woman is heard as the advertisement starts..

.

.

Advertiser:"Hi there! You must be in need of help if you're seeing this! Given that you followed the specific instructions to find this program, I want to welcome you! Now..I want to ask you this.."

Advertiser: "Are you someone who has a pesky little admirer that just can't seem to be shaken off? Perhaps their crush on you has begun to take a disturbing turn for the worse.."

Advertiser: "Murder, stalking, threats, power imbalances, attempted kidnapping, forced marriage contracts, and more! Anything you've found yourself caught in thanks to this admirer! Here at 'A Helping Friend', we can give you a hand!"

Advertiser: "Our help includes..Faking your death, a new identity, exterminating the pesky 'vermin' out of your life, and whatever ideas you and one our specialized coordinators who you will be paired with can think of!"

Advertiser: "For the cheap and gracious price of $360, we could offer our services to you! And don't you worry, every cent of what you've paid us will go into helping another person who is in the same exact position as you!"

Advertiser: "Trust me, I was once in your shoes. I know what it's like to fear every day for your life, to stay awake at night- and wonder if the worst was to come. But ever since I faced my fears and contacted 'A Helping Friend', I was able to live my life again! And I know you'll be able to as well."

Advertiser: "So please. Call this number and we'll promise to help you out as soon as possible! And if money is an issue, it won't be for us."

Advertiser: "So call now at ***-****-****! Trust me, whenever you're in need, 'A Helping Friend' is what you need'!"

Near the end of the video, the number is plastered bold on the screen as the small text is written at the bottom, letting you know that all your information and data are secure and anonymous. You write down the number in a rush, scrambling to get a pen and paper as you look at your phone. Getting the number, you let out a shaky sigh as you stare repeatedly at the number on the paper and the one at the screen - making sure you got it correctly.

.

.

.

A/N: I'll definitely dabble more onto this thought/concept in the future. Also, as I post this, I am currently looking for the og poster of the yan company helper fic that I read from. Like I am SCROLLING through my likes and account looking for it - so if anyone knows who the writer is, can you let me know please 😭

I would really like to reblog their work and credit them for the idea I had based on it--

_______________________

[karasucatt]

HELLO! Big fan of your Lion Narinder. Any lion behaviour to expect from him? Love your artstyle. What species of Lamb is yours? How do you depict the Lamb, the way you play them, or your idea for fanart? Do you have any outfits reference for those two? Will Narinder ever grow out his mane again? How does the modern AU of them pan out? Does Narinder get released from his chains? What are their favourite weapons and curses? Does Narinder have any side effect from being chained? I got inspired to make one of my Narinders a lion because of you as well, after @bluecheems lion Narinder.

Have a good month come to you and eat your meals regularly.

YES YES THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME A CHANCE TO RANT WITH SO MANY QUESTIONS

Any lion behaviour to expect from him?

Once Nari starts getting comfy he will nuzzle the Lamb a lot more, both in greeting but also in an affectionate way. He also roars on occasion!! Mainly on missions or when the Lamb takes him on Crusades and they loose him lol. He’ll groom the Lamb as well, commenting about how dirty they get during crusades and that he could spend his time doing something more productive(The Lamb knows he’s just being difficult. Every time they return Naris waiting to clean them up before they show themselves fully to the cult)

What species of Lamb is yours? How do you depict the Lamb, the way you play them, or your idea for fanart?

The closest I can get to answering the first question is actually a goat! The way I draw my lamb is heavily inspired by the Dreamurr family(specifically Asriel) so really they’re more like a goat with fluffy hair lol. As for how I depict them, well I love me a good codependent relationship turned two assholes learning how to heal.

My lamb sees themselves as the faithful servant to TOWW at first so they don’t speak(unless it’s to Nojular to announce to the others or during sermons), keep their wool short, and focus only on crusades and keeping the cult stable. It’s once they defeat Kallamar that they start opening up. The crown speaking to them gave them a new boost of confidence(and a tad bit of inanity) so they began speaking more, directing the cult, and focusing on their relationship with their followers more then crusading. With the indoctrination of the cults brand new Therapist(No one asked Focalor to do it they just took up the job themselves), the Lamb was able to work through a lot of their issues.

Now with Nari in the cult, they’ve started their ascension into godhood. This takes a big toll on their mental state, causing more murder episodes and mood swings. Nari knows how bad the ascension process can fuck someone up so he’s helping where he can. The Lamb appreciates it a lot.

Will Narinder ever grow out his mane again?

Nari actually likes it short!! The Lamb asks him this same question all the time and Narinder always says he likes it short. Though he does grow out parts just so the Lamb can braid and decorate it.

How does the modern AU of them pan out? Does Narinder get released from his chains?

I have comics and things planned for the Modern AU so stay tuned for those!! I can say that Nari does get released from his chains by the Lamb on accident. Now he has to learn how to live among mortals and the Lamb is marching straight to their Professor to try and learn more about the formerly sealed god.

What are their favourite weapons and curses?

I generally don’t use curses actually!! I prefer things with high speed and high damage so my best answer is that I like Swords!(I despise guns and hammers they so slow for my lambs nimble ass)

Does Narinder have any side effect from being chained?

He has PTSD from the imprisoning battle and gets the phantom feeling of chains on his wrists from time to time. While he likes his alone time he’ll actually cling to the Lamb once he’s spent more time in the cult. He’s terrified of being alone even if he won’t admit it.

Thank you so so soooo much for this long ask I really wanted to info dump lol! I do have my own outfit designs for them and I’ll leave them below(the Lamb is based off of when they first save Leshy from purgatory. The more recent design you see is based off of when all four bishops have been saved. I’ll make a proper reference for it one day lol)

[rederiswrites]

So ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and fibromyalgia are two syndromes (collections of symptoms often found together, with unknown causative mechanisms) with largely overlapping symptoms. They're currently classified as different diagnoses, but there are plenty of people who aren't convinced that they're actually different things. The biggest diagnostic difference seems to be whether the pain or the fatigue is the biggest problem.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who, like me, couldn't possibly say which of those is ruining my life more. I, like many, fulfill all the diagnostic criteria for both. I have the specific patterns of pain and inflammation characteristic of fibro, but I also have the postural orthostatic problems (Stand Up Feel Real Bad disorder) and extreme fatigue of ME/CFS. There's no test; diagnosis is an inherently subjective thing.

This is just gonna keep being about medical problems, so have a cut.

I also have problems that may be related or may be separate or may be part of the constellation of physical issues associated with ADHD, like loose tendons that lead to terrible core strength and janky joints. So while generally the pain spots for fibromyalgia are considered to have no actual material cause, I am pretty sure that my right hip and shoulder are in fact fucked up, and fibro is just making it experientially worse. I've also got a rib that spends more than half its time in just slightly the wrong goddamn place. I have multiple friends who have hypermobility problems that make mine look like a papercut, but combining them with fibro isn't a lot of fun.

A few months back, at my bestie's prompting and with his help, I started eating keto, which is essentially just restricting carbohydrates so harshly that they represent less than 20% (or less than 10%, this seems to be bioindividual) of your diet, at which point your body begins building energy transport molecules out of fat (ketones) instead of glucose. This has a history of treating several conditions (originally, seizures, but now also diabetes and inflammatory conditions), well before it became popular for weight loss.

It was an experiment. Believe me, I have mixed feelings about the fact that it worked. At first, it worked really, really well. I went from mostly bedbound to up and working full days outside. I've started to hit diminishing returns and having to nap more often, but it's still a radical improvement. I just forget how bad it was too fast. I hate how fast we forget how far we've come.

I haven't talking about it though, because I am so conflicted about restrictive diets as a thing. This started as an experiment, and as an experiment I could sell myself on no apples no potatoes no rice no crackers no no no no etc for a few weeks. After a few weeks I could decide whether it was worth it. And now here we are and it works.

But I've gone through So Much food restriction, starting when Phantom was two and we discovered that gluten fucks us both up. Then the Boy was sensitive to so many things as a baby that I cut out the entire Top Eight allergens (let's see, can I remember? Milk, eggs, peanuts, gluten, corn, soy, uhh....others...) for a year while he was nursing. Once you've cut wheat AND eggs AND corn out there is almost no commercial product you can eat and you have to prepare everything from scratch. With a toddler and a baby. I was literally starving. I used a calorie tracker for a while and found that I was nearly a thousand calories short per day, on average. I could barely think.

It's become a huge depression trigger for me. I tell people that my last major depressive episode was triggered by not being able to eat dairy, and I'm not kidding. I'm struggling with it now, too. Most of the time I'm good, but still, despite medication, I get very low and I just want to be able to fucking eat something tasty and comforting and EASY. I just want...cheese and crackers. A whole piece of fruit. A baked potato. Rice with my stir fry. But then I eat too much fucking watermelon and I can tell the difference in my wellbeing the next day.

Food becomes a minefield. Every meal becomes a struggle. You question every bite, every symptom. At least once a day the whole thing is just too annoying and I decide to just not eat, because fuck it. I dunno if it reaches eating disorder levels, but it's certainly maladaptive. I hate that I've gotten here because what you eat actually DOES matter. it's like the question of how you talk yourself out of anxiety when the world is objectively falling apart.

But I can do the things I love. I owe all this garden progress to not having had a glass of juice or a bowl of pasta in four months. Not to mention the abrupt cessation of all my dermatitis problems, frequent "silent" heartburn, a ton of digestive problems, migraines, most headaches, and more. "Nothing is worth risking depression" but is it though?

I'm holding on to the hope that these changes will allow me to heal. That I'll be able to make long-term progress, as many people say they have, and reintroduce restricted foods gradually. That I'll be able to cement the opportunity diet gave me with regular movement and conditioning and slowly claw my way up the spiral.

But on days when I feel like shit anyway, and I can't have some fucking chips about it....yeah. It's not great.

[notlikearegularmom-blog]

I love you, Star Wars. It’s ruining my life. 

I resurrected my long-dormant Tumblr to write 2k words on my complicated feelings about the Bad Batch series finale, and I feel better now.  

I love Star Wars. I love this show. Earlier in the season, I went shot-by-shot on how great this series is when it’s on its game. 

Considered in a vacuum, that final episode is great. The sequence on Tantiss is tense and thrilling. The visuals, as always, are top tier. The epilogue hits the right emotional notes... and it all fell flat for me. 

I think my harshest, but most concise, critique is this: The season went in circles on stuff that ended up being irrelevant and ran out of time to tee up the emotional payoff. 

I’m aware I’m in the minority. If you loved this, I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong to love it. I’m glad people loved it; I wanted to love it. This show remains one of my favorite recent Star Wars things, and the fact that the ending didn’t land doesn’t change that. 

I’m genuinely bummed that this didn’t work for me, but here’s why it didn’t. 

The storytelling fails to get us where we need to be for that ending – and there are two main reasons for that: 

Structural issues with the season-long plot arc that have downstream effects on characterization and themes. 

An over-reliance on misdirection to create tension. 

Big time spoilers ahead, obviously.

Structure 

For the first two seasons, the show is episodic – you get these tight little two- or three-episode arcs but there’s never a season-long plot. For the final season, they set up a central story around the show’s mythology (Tantiss). All the action should lead to that end, even if we get some one-off episodes along the way. That’s something they hadn’t done before, and I was really looking forward to it. It’s ambitious to switch things up, and I like it when shows take risks. 

Setting up the mytharc 

The actual plot progression when we get there, though, is weird. No one loves a hunt for a MacGuffin more than I do – you often get some of your best character moments in those stories – but you have to eventually find the MacGuffin, or your audience starts to wonder where things are going. 

It takes nine episodes to get to a significant plot reveal. That’s more than half a season of not giving the audience information – not teasing partial clues, just not giving. And the main thing the characters find is something the audience already knows (what’s an m-count), even if the characters don’t*. The big problem is that there are no breadcrumbs leading to the next part of the story, and I started to get concerned that it was because the central plot wasn’t going anywhere. 

* I find that really hard to believe. In TPM, Qui-Gon tests Anakin’s m-count on his iPhone. There’s an app for that.  

The story arc 

Two-thirds of the way through the season, the arc laps itself and circles back to where we started. 

It’s a decision that could make sense – the basic premise of the show is Omega daddy-daughter bonding with these guys while helping them do their missions.  

You can’t entirely blow that up in the final season. You still need some episodes of exactly that, and that’s why she returns to them early in the action.  

But once she gets taken to Tantiss (again) we basically just do the arc over — and we’ve already had mini versions of that exact arc in both seasons 1 and 2. We’ve been here before and it doesn’t really show us anything new – and, for it to work, it should. 

This is all too bad because individual episodes are fantastic: 1 and 3, and 10 and 11 are all no notes amazing. Episodes 5-7 form a really effective short arc, and 9 has some of my favorite visual moments in the entire series in it. 

But episodes often felt like they’d been written in isolation – excellent by themselves, but they don’t do the thing they need to do: introduce the next progression in the mytharc. 

That isolation also seems to mess with some key characterization. 

Character 

Everyone feels a little inconsistent from episode to episode, but it’s especially noticeable with Crosshair because this is his season. 

Episode 7 Crosshair and Episode 14 Crosshair feel like different guys, both of whom aren’t quite the same character as Episode 15 Crosshair. 

In 14, Rampart says something to Crosshair like “people like us are only ever loyal to ourselves” and he responds, “I’ve changed.” But that’s never been his character’s central struggle. He’s incredibly loyal with deep values even when they’re badly misguided and THAT is his problem and has been for three seasons. He did war crimes out of a belief in something larger than himself. He’s a good candidate for the chip because he’s inherently loyal. They say that explicitly early on in the show.

And sure, maybe Rampart is projecting his own experience onto Crosshair – but then why does he accept that framing and respond like it’s true? And we get a foreshadowing moment like this tension is going to come to a head – but then these two are never in the same scene again and the question about Crosshair’s loyalty never comes back up. 

Also in 14, there’s an exchange where he tells Wrecker that he ‘owes’ Omega for not leaving him behind on Tantiss and essentially that’s why he’s there. 

But my dude has been openly established as loving Omega even more fiercely than the others, all the more for being late to it, since like a third of the way into the season. Putting us back in a place where he’s pretending that he doesn’t care as much about her as he does ignores like nine episodes of character growth.  

This was the point where I started wondering if they’d written the final two episodes first, and then backfilled the rest of the season. 

In 15, he’s willing to throw his own life away for everyone else, and that’s much more in line with the rest of his arc. But... 

This would be a really affecting line, but it kind of comes out of nowhere. I think it’s a moment to create tension: if their team as an idea – and the thing the whole show is centered around – is dead, maybe they’re also individually going to die? Probably, because they end this scene with a visibly injured Wrecker saying ‘we all know the risks.’ But up to this point we’ve gotten nothing about how Crosshair felt about Tech – or even more broadly about their team being irrevocably changed by their experiences. He literally never talks about it, even in scenes where it would have made sense to talk about it. 

(This would have been the perfect time to tee this up.) 

He avoided talking about it so thoroughly that I thought we’d get a watershed emotional moment at some point, like late in the third act of the season. Add 45 seconds of meaningful dialogue to Episode 12 (it’s barely 20 minutes and the shortest of the season, so there was definitely time), then this all falls into place and that Episode 15 line lands perfectly. 

(This is the scene, right here. It’s even nicely framed for it.) 

And I’m just not sure how to feel about the fact that they resolved Crosshair’s PTSD arc by... removing the outward symptom of his trauma. 

Misdirection 

They spent a lot of time on misdirection in order to create tension, like a whole lot. So much so that there’s not enough time spent laying the groundwork for the ending we get. 

These are the main teases: 

Omega is probably Force-sensitive, and that will have big implications. 

I love Ventress but there’s no reason for her to be here. The problems and questions she introduces don’t end up being relevant. ‘Can you grow to your full potential without giving up the people you love?’ But Omega doesn’t end up faced with that hard choice. 

No one ends up facing hard choices – like, have we earned our rest now or do we keep fighting? That’s a really compelling question — but the characters never have that conversation on screen. The choice just sort of happens to them in the space of like 10 seconds, right at the end. They’re not even active participants in it. 

No one is safe; everyone might die. 

Not a bad choice at all for a final season. But we go from ‘you’ll never grow with these guys holding you back’ at the midpoint to ‘you have to live because she needs you’ in the finale with no stops in between. It feels like Episode 15 is the conclusion of a different season than the one we’d been watching — and I think I would have really liked that season. 

CX-2 is someone significant. 

Even if a reveal is a non-reveal, you should still, uh, reveal it. 

The other guys, though, look badass and are cool af, and we should have gotten more than seven minutes from their first introduction to them dying en masse in the dark (in a sequence where it was hard to keep track of who was who). 

If it doesn’t matter who CX-2 is, what were these guys being held back for? 

There are a bunch of smaller moments as well that seem to be leading the story in a direction, never to be addressed again. You know that saying about how if you introduce a gun in the first act of a play, it needs to go off by the third? 

That one’s a literal gun, which is funny — but there are several plot elements that just appear and then disappear. 

Focus  

In the final season of something, you really feel that ticking clock. Where and how the story spends its time feels more urgent, and I thought the choices here were odd. 

We get a few side plots and character cameos that feel like filler, which is probably to be expected. But I think the best example of what I’m talking about is this: 

The comedy villain from season one gets nearly 35 minutes of screen time down the stretch, while Wrecker, a main character whose fate we care deeply about, gets maybe half that.  

And, sure, Rampart’s death was satisfying because that guy is the worst. But I honestly don’t know why they brought him back and chose to spend so much time on him. 

Justice for Wrecker, in general. He gets nothing to do. Echo has more impact on the plot (and possibly more dialogue), and he’s only in a third of the episodes. 

And to be clear, I would be fine spending time on things like past characters if the story had really hit the other beats along the way, but what we get feels unfocused. 

Is the main theme of the season redemption? Loyalty? Self-determination? Letting go of who you thought you were supposed to be? Ultimately, it’s none of those things because it tries, at different times, in different episodes, to be all of them — sometimes in contradictory ways. 

And with that… 

I’m being really hard on something I love here, but... I wouldn’t give this much thought to something mid. I care because it’s really good, even if, ultimately, I feel like the execution could have been better.  

(I went with The Tortured Poets Department for the musical joke in the title, because it’s topical — but Never Let Me Down Again was sitting right there.) 

[madame-mongoose]

I wish mental health services were more easily accessible and certain mental illnesses weren't still demonized in the field

[dawnthefluffyduck]

hey that's not supposed to be out there (uploaded wrong version at first haha whoops)

[wolfxe]

idk what it is about the way dungeon meshi portrays relationships but it feels so unique to me

i like all of the ships and also want none of them to be canon. it's fun to imagine literally all of them, but it's just as fun to examine the platonic relationships and what they mean

it's so refreshing to see marcille & laios' friendship but i totally get why people ship them. marcille & falin's devotion to each other is amazing to explore in any context. chilchuck & laios, laios & kabru, senshi & chilchuck, even toshiro & falin. literally every character dynamic no matter the romance/lack of it is so interesting to me

it really felt like a breath of fresh air getting into something where the relationships between characters felt both real and substantial the way they are, but also capable of being expanded upon and played with without feeling like they're betraying the main themes/ideas. man i love dungeon meshi