#but they can fuck him

[truly-sincerely]

Dark Star Falling (8 of 9)

The room has marble walls with bronze embellishments lined with disorganized scroll racks. It is an unusual shape, not quite a trapezoid. Enver Gortash has never seen architecture quite like this. His best guess is Dwarvish.

“--I’m running along the outer ledge, trying to line up a shot on the Emperor when suddenly I am just horny as all get out.” He can hear Darling’s voice from the hallway outside, but all he can see in that direction is a sickly teal light.

A triangular table-like outcropping extends from the shortest wall and on it sits an embroidered cushion, and on top of that, a skull with all of the teeth removed except the very long, very pointed canines.

“Right that minute, in the middle of the fucking apocalypse, Haarlep is going at it in my body.”

Gortash looks down at himself and sees unfamiliar clothing but otherwise he seems to be fully intact. Of course the netherstone is gone.

“I’m sorry, darling,” that lilting, upper city voice replies.

“No, this is a funny story. I know you’ve got autonomy issues but it’s not as bad as that. I can still do things, it’s just kind of distracting. I get inappropriately horny in lots of situations unrelated to incubi.”

“I suppose that’s true. You are a freak,” he laughs.

Gortash sits up and immediately regrets it, but keeps going, swinging his legs over the side of the stone bed and overturning a metal tray with goblets and such.

“Anyway, that was when Gale hit him with a fireball and he went up like woomf, so–” Darling stops mid-sentence at the clatter.

“Have a nice chat, love.”

“Right. Yeah. You sure you don’t want to stick around?” Gortash doesn’t hear a response but Darling appears in the doorway alone. They don’t say anything as they walk to the table, pick up the skull, sit down on the pillow, and let the skull sit in their lap. Gortash feels lightheaded and nauseated, still trying to get his bearings.

“Where am I?” he croaks.

“The Tourmaline Depths, underneath the Szarr Palace,” Darling says, looking at him with an amount of concern that makes him deeply uncomfortable. They pick up a goblet from somewhere he can’t see, wiping it out with the hem of their shirt. “It’s been… about a day and a half.”

That’s right, he’d been in his office at Wyrm’s Rock Fortress. Darling had walked in the door with Minthara, a wizard with a Waterdhavian accent, and the high elf that had attended the coronation with them. The elf didn’t say anything during the meeting, but Gortash was confident that he was the owner of the upper city accent.

– – –

“It’s time I take matters into my own hands. We could have–”

Darling cuts in, “I’m gonna stop you right there. You need to hear this. I believe it’s too late to regain control of the brain.”

“Why in Bane’s name would I listen to anything you have to say? You destroyed my Steel Watch,” he’s trying to hide how much this hurts him personally, but the facade is cracking.

“They were controlled by tadpoles. When the brain breaks free it would’ve taken them with it. I couldn’t let that happen,” Darling pleads. They try not to sound like they’re pleading, but they aren’t sure if it’s working. Gortash starts to interrupt and Darling barrels over him, “I’m acting on your hypothesis, Enver. You voiced a concern to Ketheric that the energy of the Crown would cause the elder brain to metamorphose into something more difficult to control.”

“You couldn’t possibly know about that,” he says with uncertainty.

“Good ol’ Ketheric hid his private thoughts in the floorboards next to his thrice damned bed. When he wasn’t leaving them lying around for anyone to read, that is. He concluded that the solution was to consolidate the netherstones in a single wielder. You came to the same conclusion, tho your offer to share the stones with me was...” they trail off with a shrug.

“That’s precisely why I put the brain under the upper city.”

“Yes, I read your journal too. Something, something perfectly formed to concentrate the psionic force of the netherstones? And if we lose control it’ll be perfectly formed to concentrate the psionic force of a metamorphosed brain against us,” they pause, and glance back at their wizard. “I spoke to the brain at Moonrise. It knew my name. It called me kingmaker-returns-pawn (which would be a really good title for a ballad about me).”

“You’re not a pawn,” Gortash says, briefly forgetting that he’s furious with Darling.

“That’s not the point. It also said I made it–that I gave it everything. It’s blowing smoke up my skirt. I don’t like it. You should be deeply concerned that it has the will to screw with me. I didn’t ‘crawl back from my bloody disgrace’ by frolicking into traps (I’m usually the one who sets them) and I’m telling you that it’s hiding something.”

An awkward silence follows. Darling reaches towards him, but pauses and puts their hand back down at their side. His eyes dart around as he works the problem in his head. The wizard whispers something about trustworthiness in Darling’s ear.

“Faithful, to me,” Gortash commits to the decision, and the faithful all start advancing on Darling’s troupe. “I think I will hang your corpse in the Wide–the Archduke’s would-be assassin. The people will celebrate your fall, and my part in it. Your bones will be a souvenir of–”

– – –

And then nothing.

“That’s when Astarion shot you full of drow poison, Gale put you in a resilient sphere, we killed all of your guards, fed you a bunch of potions of sleep, Minthara (reluctantly) carried you, and we all jumped off the tower to a skiff we had waiting for us on the beach by Wyll’s old fishing spot,” Darling says, petting the skull in their lap as tho it’s a cat.

“So the brain has been destroyed,” he posits. “Or else you’re hiding in this moldering ruin from an army of mindflayers.”

“The first one, tho not before it turned all the tadpoles, so there are likely still hundreds of mindflayers wandering around the sword coast, but that’s not why we’re down here.”

“And you were right about its treachery?”

“About it being up to something? It gave me a whole monologue about sending you dreams so you’d put the astral prism into play which would give it the opportunity to rebel and there’s nothing I could do to stop it, et cetera, et cetera.”

Gortash puts his head in his hands. He was so sure he had covered all the angles but Darling being correct meant he’d failed months ago and had been digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself ever since. He can feel Bane’s disapproval like a fist clutching his heart and knows that if he died now he would be tortured for eternity for his failure. His cult is surely scattered, his holdings seized or destroyed, and his reputation obliterated. Darling could have killed him in Wyrm’s Rock. Should have killed him. He deserved death for such a complete and utter failure. What use is he to his god like this? Did he already know he had lost when he sic’d his guards on Darling?

Finally, looking up at Darling, he asks, “So what is this? What do you expect to happen here?”

Darling’s mouth shifts to the side and they say, “I was thinking we’d have a conversation that’ll become a fight that’ll become a fuck that’ll become an ultimatum.”

“I accept your premise but tell me the ultimatum now and I’ll answer it at the end,” he counter-offers with all the gravity of discussing lunch plans. 

“You have to renounce Bane,” Darling pauses, thinking. An ultimatum needs to come with consequences. Gortash waits for the rest, trying not to have an emotion about the beginning. “We can be whatever you want, but not in the name of a god, any god. If you insist on remaining with His cult then I’m going to turn you over to the Flaming Fist or the Watch–whatever’s left upstairs.”

“Whatever I want?”

Darling hesitates, realizing they’ve maybe left that clause a little too open-ended for someone who's spent as much time as Gortash has among devils. “I could add ‘within reason’, but what I’m hoping for is that, if you want to be with me, you’ll want something that’s compatible with what I want.”

He opens his mouth and then closes it again, frowns, and looks away thoughtfully. “I assume the tadpole is gone already and you have your elf… I don’t know what you want beyond that. I suppose that’s what the conversation is meant to be about.”

Darling is taken aback that he remembered what they had said on their first (no, second) visit almost a tenday ago. He always gives the impression that he’s only barely listening for what he wants to hear. But still, he’s so subdued. He had tried to kill them. Maybe destroying the steel watch really was too much of a betrayal. “Assuming you even want me, that is," Darling says, hesitantly.

First - Previous - Next

[fuhosh-i]

“Where’s the pathetic element?” Exactly Tom Hardy. Exactly.

(x)

[layton-heritage-posts]

DONALD TRUMP GOT SHOT AT!!!

Do you think Professor Layton took the shot or why are you sending me this???

[bbbbbbbbatman]

Bruce keeping a tighter and tighter lid on his identity around the Justice League because with each new person to reveal their identity he realizes that he has fucked far too high a percentage of his co workers as Bruce Wayne and he has to take this secret to his grave

[aristoteliancomplacency]

Guys.

Y’all.

I…

I just. I just… i have discovered something. And I have laughed too much. I have laughed every time I have tried to explain it to someone. I cannot get through this.

Look. Okay.

There are two things you need to know, here.

First: There’s a style of Greek pottery that was popular during the Hellenic period, for which most of the surviving examples are from southern Italy. We call them ‘fish plates’ because, well, they’re plates, and they’re decorated with fish (and other marine life).

Like this one, currently in the Met:

Or this one, currently in the Cleveland Museum of Art:

They’re very cool. We’re not 100% sure what they were for, because most of the surviving ones were found as grave goods, but that’s a different post.

The second thing you need to know is that when we (Classics/archaeology/whatever as a discipline) have a collection of artefacts, like vases, sculptures, paintings, etc. and we do not know the name of the artist, but we’re pretty sure one artist made X, Y and Z artefacts, we come up with a name for that artist. There are a whole bunch of things that could be the source for the name, e.g. where we found most of their work (The Dipylon Master) or the potter with whom they worked (the Amasis Painter), a favourite theme (The Athena Painter), the Museum that ended up with the most famous thing they did (The Berlin Painter) or a notable aspect of their style. Like, say, The Eyebrow Painter.

Guess what kind of pottery the Eyebrow Painter made?

[teddybeartoji]

18+ mdni; gn!reader

toji is okay with you not making eye-contact with him during sex because he knows that you're just overwhelmed, right? it's because he simply loves to feel your lips against his skin when you hide your face in the crook of his neck because that's how he knows he's taking good care of you, right?

fuck no.

those are not the only reasons.

if you look toji in the eyes while he's fucking you, he will cream his pants like a fucking teenager who's just seen a pair of tits for the first time.

when he has you on your back with your heels digging into his lower back and with your hands clawing at your back, his own arms barely supporting his body as he sinks into you; you look beautiful like this – a layer of sweat covers your body and he thinks about licking it all up, your bitten lips are parted and the sounds that spill from you cloud toji's mind like a drug. you're writhing and you're squirming, squeezing around his cock so tight that he feels like he's about to pass out.

and then... your eyes.

eyebrows scrunched together, you stare up at him and toji thinks he's going to die instead. tears brim in the corners while your pupils are blown wide, a mix of pleasure and adoration swimming in the dark orbs as he brings you closer and closer to another high. oh, he thinks you look like a fucking painting. like you belong in a museum.

the way you're looking at him is making his cock twitch inside you and that in turn makes you blink at him. you flutter your eyelashes while pressing your heels deeper into his back, silently begging for more.

"f-fuck..."

toji's head falls as he squeezes his own eyes shut. he feels like he's on fire. he feels like he's about to fucking explode. he's going to cum just because you're looking at him with nothing else but love in your eyes. he feels stupid for it – a little embarrassed that such a simple thing is getting to him so easily, but when he feels your hand on his jaw, cradling him like he's something that could break – the shame fades.

the combination of meeting your gaze once again, the care in them, and the love you offer him, makes the knot in his belly snap.

you caress his cheek as you hold your eyes on him, eager to watch him unfold in front of you. a fucked out smile makes its way to your lips and toji's heart skips a beat at the sight. he's never felt weaker, he's never felt more loved. oh, you're something alright.

he also can't handle your eyes whenever you're giving him head. he simply cannot do it. he does love watching you, he really fucking loves it – how you screw your eyes shut, your eyebrows furrowing as you concentrate on your breathing. how the drool pools in the corners of your mouth and how it dribbles down your chin. how your whole body twitches when you gag around him. how small your hand looks on him, how you massage his heavy balls. how pretty you look while doing it all – he's obsessed.

but the second you open your eyes and look back up at him... he's throwing his head back and hiding behind his arm. and while the view of his neck does get you to rub your own thighs together in want – it's not enough.

you want more.

taking your lips off his cock and ignoring the line of spit that connects you to it, you patiently wait for him to look at you. you even stop jerking him off, just resting your hand around his base. his dick twitches and another glob of pre-cum trickles from his tip.

"toji?"

your voice is as sweet as ever and he knows it's a trap. he grumbles back at you in hopes of convincing you to continue, but he's wrong. merely giving his base a squeeze, you watch how the older man buck his hips into your fist.

"look at me."

he won't, he won't, he won't. you're evil, you're awful, you wish to torture him until he dies. this is how it all ends for him. he won't.

"please..."

his balls twitch and his his body burns. he needs to cum so fucking bad but he hates looking like an actual old man, who can't keep his shit together.

"look at me, baby."

it's more of a demand now and he can't resist you. he never has and he never will. whatever you say goes – if you tell him to jump off a damn cliff, he will do so. if you want to break him just like you're doing right this moment, then so be it. he's all yours.

his arm falls from in front of his face and his green eyes crack open to the most glorious sight in the world. you look completely fucked out and your hair is a mess, your lips and your chin are all covered in spit and he thinks of you as an angel of some sort.

you give him a smile and his hips buck into your fist again, but you don't tease him for it – you want him to feel good. so you press a kiss to his sticky tip as you hold his lust-filled gaze and it's enough for him to blow his load all over your gorgeous face.

you lap at his tip like a kitten, collecting the few drops that threaten to escape while still pumping him with your one hand and massaging his balls with the other. toji grips the sheets below with both his hands – his fingers tug at the material so hard that they almost rip but neither of you care.

you worshipping his cock, or better yet worshipping him, is baffling to him. but he's not complaining. you take him into your mouth again, eyes still on his, you wrap your lips wrap around his tip and push him into overstimulation.

curses tumble from his scarred lips like they're the only words he knows and you can't help but smile while still having him him in your mouth. you're covered in his cum and now you're fucking grinning up at him – he really does think he's about to pass away. there's no way this is real, that you're not something his mind conjured up to plague him with. your hands feel godly and your mouth feels so fucking warm. no, this is it – he's officially dying.

taking your lips off of him with a pop, your smile widens even more as you give him an 'ahhh!' as if you've just had the best meal of your life and toji doesn't waste a second before pushing off the bed.

"fuck, come here."

his knees hit the floor with a thud as he lunges at you like a starved beast. he grabs your cheeks and pulls you toward him, smashing his lips to yours in a desperate kiss. he needs to feel you, he needs to taste you. he needs to love you.

he needs to give you his all.

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[et-in-arkadia]

this is such incredible advice for creating any kind of art i have to put it over here to remind myself

[cubbyhole-for-flea-bee]

Macaque spent the whole season Big-Damn-Hero-ing and was NOT happy about it xD

[mr-malumm]

Morning routine of local TV star

[brainrotcharacters]

the easy grip on the knife. the leg over the seat. the hand over the other seat. the sassy "come get it" move. you know the bitch is smiling behind that mask even as he said the line.

[bajaja-blast]

you dislike Luke Castellan because he disagreed with an oppressive government system and actually took action to change the abusive ways him and his peers have been forced to follow for millennia.

I dislike Luke Castellan because in the Titans Curse he manipulated Annabeth, who he raised as his little sister, into holding up the sky, the FUCKING sky, for over 20 hours and had the audacity to walk away as though he was completely apathetic towards it while she begged and pleaded with him to help her.

we are not the same.

[ewwww-what]

Ugh. Literally just let her go home???

[yesokayiknow]

i know we won't but GOD i hope he never tells her he's an alien i hope we have a whole series of ruby thinking he's just a time travelling human until he gets hurt and is like ohhhhhh ruby love can you check my pulses and she's like check your fucking what now

[golyadkin]

it's because i wouldn't let you kill the bounty hunter isn't it

[bixels]

Learning that fans hated Applejack and called her "boring" is crazyyy to me because I genuinely, unironically believe AJ's the most complex character in the main six.

Backstory-wise, she was born into a family of famers/blue collar workers who helped found the town she lives in. She grew up a habitual liar until she had the bad habit traumatized outta her. She lost both her parents and was orphaned at a young age, having to step up as her baby sister's mother figure. She's the only person in the main gang who's experienced this level of loss and grief (A Royal Problem reveals that AJ dreams about memories of being held by her parents as a baby). She moved to Manhattan to live with her wealthy family members, only to realize she'll never fit in or be accepted, even amongst her own family. The earlier seasons imply she and her family had money problems too (In The Ticket Master, AJ wants to go to the gala to earn money to buy new farm equipment and afford hip surgery for her grandma).

Personality-wise, she's a total people-pleaser/steamroller (with an occasional savior complex) who places her self worth on her independence and usefulness for other people, causing her to become a complete workaholic. In Applebuck Season, AJ stops taking care of herself because of her obsessive responsibilities for others and becomes completely dysfunctional. In Apple Family Reunion, AJ has a tearful breakdown because in she thinks she dishonored her family and tarnished her reputation as a potential leader –– an expectation and anxiety that's directly tied to her deceased parents, as shown in the episode's ending scene. In The Last Roundup, AJ abandons her family and friends out of shame because believes she failed them by not earning 1st place in a rodeo competition. She completely spirals emotionally when she isn't able to fulfill her duties toward others. Her need to be the best manifests in intense pride and competitiveness when others challenge her. And when her pride's broken, she cowers and physically hides herself.

Moreover, it's strongly implied that AJ has a deep-seated anger. The comics explore her ranting outbursts more. EQG also obviously has AJ yelling at and insulting Rarity in a jealous fit just to hurt her feelings (with a line that I could write a whole dissection on). And I'm certain I read in a post somewhere that in a Gameloft event, AJ's negative traits are listed as anger.

Subtextually, a lot of these flaws and anxieties can be (retroactively) linked to her parents' death, forcing her to grow up too quickly to become the adult/caregiver of the family (especially after her big brother becomes semiverbal). Notice how throughout the series, she's constantly acting as the "mom friend" of the group (despite everything, she manages to be the most emotionally mature of the bunch). Notice how AJ'll switch to a quieter, calmer tone when her friends are panicking and use soothing prompts and questions to talk them through their emotions/problems; something she'd definitely pick up while raising a child. Same with her stoicism and reluctance at crying or releasing emotions (something Pinkie explicitly points out). She also had a childhood relationship with Rara (which, if you were to give a queer reading, could easy be interpreted as her first 'aha' crush), who eventually left her life. (Interestingly enough, AJ also has an angry outburst with Rara for the same exact reasons as with EQG Rarity; jealous, upset that someone else is using and changing her). It's not hard to imagine an AJ with separation anxiety stemming from her mother and childhood friend/crush leaving. I'm also not above reading into AJ's relationship with her little sister (Y'all ever think about how AB never got to know her parents, even though she shares her father's colors and her mother's curly hair?).

AJ's stubbornness is a symptom of growing up too quickly as well. Who else to play with your baby sister when your brother goes nonverbal (not to discount Big Mac's role in raising AB)? Who else to wake up in the middle of the night to care for your crying baby sister when your grandma needs her rest? When you need to be 100% all the time for your family, you tend to become hard-stuck with a sense of moral superiority. You know what's best because you have to be your best because if you're aren't your best, then everything'll inevitably fall apart and it'll be your fault. And if you don't know what's best –– if you've been wrong the whole time –– that means you haven't been your best, which means you've failed the people who rely on you, which means you can't fulfill your role in the family/society, which makes you worthless . We've seen time and time again how this compulsive need to be right for the sake of others becomes self-destructive (Apple Family Reunion, Sound of Silence, all competitions against RD). We've seen in The Last Roundup how, when no longer at her best, AJ would rather remove herself from her community than confront them because she no longer feels of use to them.

But I guess it is kinda weird that AJ has "masculine" traits and isn't interested in men at all. It's totally justified that an aggressively straight, misogynistic male fandom would characterize her as a "boring background character." /s

At the time of writing this, it's 4:46AM.