#ching builds

[createacamillahect]

Camilla Hect who gets absurdly serious during sex roleplays but also has moments of breaking character and just beautifully snort-laughing

omg camilla snort laughing 🥺🥺🥺

She does an incredible amount of research for your role-playing. One time you were tied up as a captive on her pirate ship and she somehow threw in that pirates wore patches to help with light changes during raids, who knew.

Another time she was doctor and had to unbutton your shirt to slide her hands along your chest, she pronounced atherosclerosis with the ease of if she had been saying it in front of the mirror for a week.

Your favorite times are when her laughter bursts out of her like a gunshot and she starts crying she's laughing so hard. Her laughter is contagious and your cheeks warm and your heart feels like it could burst.

Like this time when she is Cleopatra and you are on your knees as her handmaiden. Her face is expressionless and her chin is tilted up, her head held in a regal posture. She straightens her leg and gently places it on your shoulder before she cracks. The snorts are always the loudest. You can never keep a straight face through them. They come in quick succession, and you shake harder with laughter with each one. You bury your face into her inner thigh, which causes her to laugh harder and she pulls you up into her arms. You hold her face in your hands as you keep laughing, feeling her laughter against your belly. You kiss her sloppily and feeling her laughter in your mouth.

[transitoryparentheses]

"The principal mechanical means of protecting an embankment against erosion is

a revetment of riprap or gabions."

[persimmonlions]

—

i am so fucking tired of non-asians speaking over asians — actually not even stopping to consider asian viewpoints — on this. stop undermining the work of sk & taiwanese political activists, hundreds of thousands of whom were jailed, died, or disappeared in the 40s–80s, when the us was, yknow, still supporting those autocratic govts.

taiwan is even more of a unique situation bc the autocratic govt was imported. taiwanese people had been agitating for greater political autonomy since 1947, just after the handover from japan when the kmt was still based on the mainland.

even into the 70s there was a huge social distinction b/w benshenren (the large majority of the population) and waishenren to the point intermarriage was hugely frowned upon. benshenren were not allowed to speak their own language at school (enforced by corporal punishment), were implicitly excluded from good jobs, etc. and ofc benshenren — not even wealthy landowners — were not represented in the govt at all.

a lot of the push towards democracy in taiwan came from benshenren, some working from the outside and some from the inside to eventually transition to democracy. and a lot of that was because the hundreds thousands of people who were locked up or had family who died wanted to change that. not, like, because anyone thinks the us was any good to taiwan (japan at least built taiwan railways and universities!)

[dcxdpdabbles]

DCXDP FIC IDEA: The Dauntless Matchmaker

Danny Fenton is short on cash. He has been short on cash almost all his adult life, but usually, he can pull through untill the last minute before breaking and asking his family for help.

It's a pain in a half trying to find a job that is flexible enough to accommodate his "Health" issues.

He needs time off to keep his agreement. See back when he was sixteen, he realized that the ghosts that had been bothering him were all trying to challenge him for his power.

At first he looked like easy prey- being new and all- but the more fights he won the more his reputation rose and that made the ghosts attack less frequently.

They just became harder since the big guns wanted a crack at him. Danny proposed that the fights be in neutral grounds- the ghost zone- since fights in Amity Park were ruining his haunt.

Haunt Rights were highly protected and respected in the Infinite Releams.

His adversaries agreed under the condition that Danny responded to the battles within two hours; otherwise, they would haunt him in the human world.

Ghost fighting in the Infinite Releams to keep the ghosts busy, and nowadays, only the strongest bothered him like a bi-weekly challenge from dead beings that don't understand scheduling.

It worked out.....until he couldn't explain why he was missing so often in the human world. With the help of some friendly ghosts, he was able to fake a diagnosis of some muscle disorder and has been living with the excuse that he would go MIA because of it. He missed a lot.

Often enough to have almost every job he's gotten to fire him.

This brings him to his current problem. Yes, Danny can argue that he has a disability but to do so would mean having someone look into it and realize it's not real.

So when Charlie from the Tea MadHouse tells him not to bother returning tomorrow after a four-day-long battle, he can only sigh and turn in his tea maker apron.

He might have to call his parents to ask for help on this month's rent. That's a bitter pill to swallow.

If only there was a job that he could do that had no problem with him taking multiple days off without notice.

"Pardon me. I need a moment of your time." a voice calls out. Danny twists around, turning his neck slightly downwards to meet the green-eyed stare of a young boy.

"I have a proposition for you. My elder brother requires a fake lover to fool our family butler into thinking that he has moved on from the heartbreak of his last disastrous relationship. Not that anyone could blame Dowd for ending things with Drake. In any case, seeing as I have witnessed your unemployment, I figured you would do well for the job."

Danny blinks "I'm sorry?"

The kid pulls out a wad of cash. Danny can practically hear the ca-ching sound surrounding the boy as he raises a brow.

He gapes as the youth slaps the cash into his hand without so much as a blink.

"Do we have an accord?" The boy asks while Danny slowly turns the money in his hand.

"Whatever you say, temporary in-law," He says after flipping through the bills only to realize it's a hundred-dollars. A quick count of how many he's been handed causes his eyes to almost pop out of thier socket.

It's more then enough for this month's rent-hell he has some left over for at least four months!

"Excellent, we are expected at dinner. If Drake acts surprised to see you merely tap the table six times, then four. He shall fall into line and build off our lie."

Danny scrambles after the kid, nodding to himself. "Six, then four. Got it. Ugh, does the dinner have a dress code?"

It sounds like it would since a young boy just gave out hundreds like it was nothing. Danny would feel bad showing up in an old pair of jeans and a faded t-shirt.

Maybe he has a formal shirt somewhere.

The boy's green eyes flickered to him, then his watch on his wrist. "An impressive observation. Pennyworth will not be impressed by a poorly dressed paramour. We have time to purchase a suit. Come along."

Danny has no idea how someone so small can walk so fast. He feels his breathing is coming in quick bursts, but the boy doesn't seem winded at all. He winces when the boy enters a well-known suit place that is very pricey. "Is this coming out of my pay?"

"No. This shall be covered by the company card," The strange child says, holding up a black card with a quick flick of his wrist. At the sight of it, two store attendants appear at their side, offering assistance. Danny has never seen such power.

"W-wait we have a company card?" He shutters, overwhelmed by the attendant pushing him into a changing room and a light blue suit in his arms.

"Yes. However, you have a limit on what can be spent with it. I shall review the details later regarding your medical, dental, and vision benefits."

"I GET DENTAL?!"

"Of course. America's ridiculous health programs will mistreat no employee of mine simply due to lack of funds. " The boy scoffed, sounding offended by the very idea.

Danny doesn't care how long he needs to pretend to be this boy's boyfriend, and he'll sign a contract right now.

_______________________________________

Damian waited for Fenton to finish trying on all the suits the personal sellers had pushed onto him. He personally thinks the light blue was the best but it doesn't hurt to try other options.

They need Fenton to look his best to woo Drake and get him to stop acting so pathetic.

Yes, Dowd had broken up with him for reasons Damian is unaware of, nor does he care enough to find them, but Drake has had plenty of people break up with him before and remain on good terms with him.

Just look at Brown.

Drake had also always bounced right back after the breakup, usually because he would get tied up in either work at Wayne Industries or Red Robin.

Yet, for some reason, unlike all the others, Dowd leaving has not only been messy it also threw Drake into a downwards spiral.

He has refused even to get dress- walking around in a bathrobe and fluffy slippers- eating ice cream and sobbing over photos of Dowd for hours on end. He taken a leave from Wayne Industries and mostly stayed on monitor duty as Red Robin.

At other times, he plays sad songs and watches romance movies with a dead look in his eyes. Usually there were crumbs of some unknown spicy chips all over his face too.

Really it was unseemly.

It's been four months of this, and Drake does not seem to be getting it together. Damian had researched online, and all of the articles indicate that he should have felt better by the third-month mark.

He would have left the fool well alone only Pennyworth is beginning to worry. And Damian refuses to let Pennyworth worry over something fixable.

His research showed that a "rebound" was highly recommended (if done correctly), in the healing process of a breakup. Drake refused to find one, so Damian assigned himself the task of finding one for him instead.

He considered Drake's past lovers' looks, interests, and personalities. Then creating a list of what was considered a good candidate he wandered around Gotham in search of someone who would be a perfect rebound.

His efforts led him to Tea MadHouse- a tea shop with a surprisingly good coffee menu- where Daniel Fenton worked. Over three weeks, Damian had watched him, categorizing the pros and cons that Drake would find within Fenton, and concluded that he would be perfect.

The fact Fenton has lost his job now only worked in his favor. He'll convince Drake that Fenton is a decoy for Pennyworth - since Drake was getting fed up with all the hovering- and he would never notice that the real target of this fake relationship would be Drake himself all along.

Fenton will woo him, sweep him off his feet, make him forget Dowd and ride off into the sunset with Drake none the wiser. It was full-proof.

Damian will make Drake rebound on Fenton, even if he has to throw the idiot at the other teen. He is getting awful tired of the concerned glances whenever Drake slumps his way into a room.

No other reason. He certainly didn't care about Drake that much nor did does he lay awake at night wondering how Drake is doing now that he does not have someone to hold him.

Drake doesn't sleep well alone.

"How do I look?" Fenton stepped out of the booth wearing the light blue suit. It made his eyes pop and framed his body well.

Yes, muscular. The body of a boxer. Drake will lose his mind over those biceps.

"Ravishing." He tells the nineteen-year-old. Damian barely bites back a smirk as Fenton flushed, painting a pretty picture. Drake enjoys talking his lovers up, and Fenton will do well to receive plenty of compliments. "Let us be off."

Drake won't know what hit him.

[deadghosy]

HAZBIN HOTEL X CAELUS! READER

prompt: you were found digging in their trash and they took you in

(I got covid😭 so me posting xreader will be kinda slow)

You were digging for some food ever since you fell from heaven because you kept fighting people over trash…I mean damn reader…

You fell with a blank look as you had a rotten banana in your mouth as you looked down to see pentagram city…so what did you do? You pulled out your fire sword and slash the ground to soften your fall which worked. You changed it to a bat for protection as you found a dumpster!

CHA-CHING✨ MORE TRASHHHH

You dig in the dumpster not hearing a person whistling. The person dropped the garbage bag shocked to see a….? Whatever you are digging in the dumpster. Your face was completely dirty as you lift it up to show you found a cool old watch.

Charlie didn’t know what to do. Are you homeless? Is what she thought as she takes you out the garbage as you blankly stare at her “•_•” “uhm sweetie are you okay?” “……” “not much of a talker huh…” you just stayed quiet as Charlie introduced herself and shook your hand bringing you to the hotel so you can have a place to stay.

I feel like you were a new angel and only stayed for like 1 month…(free trial ass shit…) and so when you didn’t act holy and proper. That’s why you mostly got kicked out

Vaggie will know you are an angel because of your angelic look and golden eyes as you just stand there minding your business. You tell her you fell because you fought over your treasure….your trash practically. So Vaggie tells you what happened to her and you hugged her making her feel safe about herself a bit.

You two have matching bracelets you made from an exercise Charlie did.

Okay I headcannon that Lucifer is already in the hotel living with his daughter. And he felt your presence and he would be like. “Fuck are you doing here”🤨 “I fought for my life.”

Vox one time put you on air with him because of your golden shining eyes….i think he was flirting with you as you ate some gift cookies he made for you…

Velvette tried to make you a model, but you kept wandering off somehow. Literally she got tired of you but never of your face as she at least posted you wearing some nice 2000 makeup

Carmilla had a gut feeling about you being an angel. She wanted to kill you but then you gave her a ring you found in a dumpster because you said she reminded you of your earth mother/parent. Yeah she wanted to adopt you

You help sir Pentious, or who you call penny for his project builds. You dig in dumpster’s, trash bins, and garbage dumps

Angel dust and you sometimes just be on your phones all the time which is obnoxious. But hey, I don’t make the rules. Being on your phone makes it seem like you don’t want to be talked to which is true.

Lucifer made you a duck as he notciced how lonely you are….(you don’t give a fuck, you only need trash as your friends) so Lucifer made you 20 ducks that are based on your favorite things or like idk just ducks

The egg boiz follow you around as you literally calling you the, “TRASH BOSS!” Not in a bad way more like in admiration as you give them stuff from the garbage.

Your golden eyes shining in the night scaring husk as he didn’t even see you in his hind sight. Like he is a cat, but he didn’t even see you?!

You and alastor’s both eat weird things, like he is a cannibal….and for you..either trash or just normal weird food combos

Alastor would definitely try to get you to eat cannibal meat, but to be honest you can tell the difference between human and regular meat. You always know.

Niffty is the kind of person who would give you a trash flower crown, kinda like how she made a crown for Alastor ✨🦆

I headcannon your angelic/demon form to be a raccoon 💀

You send dumbass memes in the hazbin hotel gc…

You are quite the feral person tbh, but who didn’t know when you literally fought people for your damn trash.

You definitely had bit Valentino once as Angel dust brought you to a club and you were digging in trash to find something cool. But Valentino found you adorable in the face and wanted to make you a sex worker. And what did you do when he tried to hurt Angel?

YOU BIT HIS FUCKIN HAND ALMOST OFF AS ANGEL WAS TRYING TO PULL YOU OFF😭

Yeah..you definitely had blood dripping from your mouth when Angel dragged you out of the club

[katuschka]

Touch Starved Pups – One

Jake Kiszka x f!Reader x Josh Kiszka 4.011 words

Welcome to Part One of the story about what happens to two well-behaved, bored and horny romantics when a new feisty, worldly and hot social media manager enters the building...

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, intended for adult readers. Any resemblance to real persons is purely coincidental. Also, if you're under 18, go find some other entertainment elsewhere.

Warnings (are spoilers): expressive language, promiscuous behaviour, unprotected sex (or still rather just allusions to it , just setting the scene...), oral sex, handjob, kissing, twinfight, fistfight, angst, mockery, consensual teasing game that's borderline exploitative, slightly toxic behaviour...so, to sum it up, this is pure rock&roll filth, folks.

Also, if you like the story and want to get notifications for future updates, you can join the Taglist or see the Masterlist

Hooked? Read Part Two.

I know who I am when I'm alone

I'm something else when I see you

You don't understand, you should never know

How easy you are to need

Don't let me in with no intention to keep me

Jesus Christ, don't be kind to me

Honey, don't feed me, I will come back

Walking down the photo pit after all the other photographers cleared off is my favorite part of the day. Or night, to be more precise. That’s when I shine: strutting along, ready to capture all those best moments that make all you bitches go feral during AND after the show. This is my queendom. I make content for you lot. And I’m damn good at it.

How do I know that? The numbers just skyrocketed after I joined the team. Ka ching! All those poor things that came before me had no idea how to do their job. Tried to do some lifeless artsy shit that might be good for booklets and collectors’ crap that only collects dust, but not followers. They listened to what the band and their management wanted, but that’s not how it’s done. Nuh uh. I listen to you, my dudes. Your screeches, howls and cries. Some say that you’re crazy, but I know better. I’m here to observe what drives you crazy, and then I shall stir it up even more. When it comes to online content, the only thing that matters is what YOU want.

Make no mistake, I create art too. The crucial difference is that it’s not shit. Socials need candid eye candy and I’m here to provide it. 

I gotta admit, they make my job quite easy. All four of them do, but the twins are human masterpieces. Born pretty, they gradually learned that they could monetize it just as much as their respective talents. I didn’t need to come up with a strategy; it’s always been there for the taking. The fact that my predecessors have been mostly ignoring this is a mind-boggling mystery to me. Those guys know for sure that they ruin your panties. I just needed to know how.

So I rolled up my sleeves and went down to the barricade to do my research. Marketing’s no rocket science. Veni, vidi, vici. I just looked at them through your eyes and your own photos, and let me tell you – you bitches aren’t crazy, you are right! Yeah, I saw it too. And I get it. Some people in the team wanna keep pretending that it’s all about the music – which is surprisingly good, by the way – but that’s not what makes you sleep in the dirt and sit on a curb for days, and then again…and again. Those sons of bitches basically fuck on stage, looking very tasty while doing so. Especially Frodo and Patchybeard. Whether it’s a guitar, a mic stand or just plain air – they just shag it! Y’all look like you can feel it, and they’re very well aware. It strokes their egos, so they just keep adding fuel to the fire. The first time I saw that, I just stood there with my mouth wide open and just laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It was a fucking orgy! And then, when it was time to walk into their bright conference room and pretend to do some serious business for a change, I put on my super serious and super professional face, and I told them what needed to be done. 

Let’s just take your usual fangirl stuff and make it official. Sorry, not sorry. You crave it, so what. I keep the Facebook page artsy and businesslike for those gramps and music snobs that would go batshit crazy if they saw any more pictures with sweaty “jummies”, sparkling dicks and marshmallow balls; but anywhere else, it’s a party. 

Some of you keep wondering why they behave like such frenzied horndogs all the time. My lovelies, the explanation is pretty simple. It’s because they are! You wanna know if they are like that in real life? Yes, the answer is yes! It’s good for the show, sure thing, and they’re both true born professionals creating a breathtaking spectacle. “It’s all for you, bla bla bla!” But the truth is that they’re naturals, not really much different offstage. Lusty, filthy, bad. 

Just kidding. They’re sweethearts. Lust-driven, whiny pups that want to be played with. When the show is over, they both follow me backstage like the good boys that they are, wagging their tails at me enthusiastically. 

Ooops, what did I just say? Lemme put my fingers to my mouth and giggle like a coy lady that I’m not. Some of you already suspect it anyway, and it was collectively decided that you should hate me with passion. I guess now I’m famous, too. D’oh!

So, yeah… When I said that it was there for the taking, I forgot to mention that I also wanted to take it. Life on tour is lonely and stressful. I’m not immune to that either. Sex helps. That’s why the rockstars of yore kept fucking everything that dared to come close while they were all high as a kite. Because why not…well, apart from the fact that unlike good sex, drugs actually ruin lives. No, I’m not a fan. 

Times have changed and today’s musicians – and I’m not talking about all those wannabes with backing tracks – really need to work hard to earn their bread.They’re self-aware and sober (Take that with a pinch of salt…they’re sober while actually working.). Often homesick. Sure, some of them are still jerks or junkies. Or both. Not a fan of these either. I worked with some and it was a nightmare. 

But, when I joined the Greta Van Fleet team, I found a bunch of down-to-earth and touch starved homeboys, well aware of their power but hesitant to act upon it. That’s the difference between having a huge dick and being one. They’re – and now let me let out a sob or two for the dramatic effect – gentlemen! 

You know what a sweetheart with a huge dick is? That’s your dream come true. Believe me. That’s just something you want. I certainly did.

Not from the start, though. No. They treat the crew like friends and family, and as much as that was certainly a pleasant change, I wavered initially. They were all so kind and gentlemanly that I just decided to keep my friendly distance, thinking they really were such mama’s boys that they appeared to be…The impression didn’t last long. Soon I heard them making jokes and lewd comments when they thought no one was listening. Some of those comments were about my bouncy ass, too. 

Men, am I right? 

Alas, sweethearts’ dicks are still just dicks, and neglect will gradually take its toll. I could see right through their nervous ticks. 

Jake was the first one that fell into my snares. I didn’t really pursue it; I’m not a monster. Like I said, we were lonely and stressed, and so it just happened one fine day. He craved human contact, and I was there. Life is complicated, but certain things are still pretty simple. Thank god, or whatever supernatural entity you believe in. 

It was a lovely evening in his 2-storey hotel apartment. He often got those, because the others had this habit of gathering together in his room to discuss business – since it was his band – and to get shitfaced in the process. 

We were both sitting cross legged on his bed, both already pleasantly booze-soaked and shrouded in semi-darkness, the only source of light being the dimmed lamps in the main room. I had been giving him a lecture on the importance of a good online presence that evening. Or at least I was trying to do that… When the others got a bit too rowdy, we retreated to his bedroom to have some privacy.

When it comes to online shit, Jake’s the most difficult one. He doesn’t like it. Plain and simple. He had created this cute mask of a smooth and aloof poet slash ancient adventurer, behind which he hides, but you bitches don’t like that. You like watching him talking to his SG in front of thousands like she’s his obedient whore. See, there’s a certain discrepancy in that. I kinda understood where it was coming from, him being in his element onstage and all that shit, but I also needed him to understand my point.

And it was tough. He’s complicated. He likes to pretend to be a tough, mysterious guy, but deep down he’s just a shy and wide-eyed fawn that bounces when you say “boo”. Not always, mind. I learned that  the hard way once when I was leaving his room with scarlet imprints of his fingers on my thighs. However, drunk Jake is a meek and needy cutiepie. I could definitely use it to my advantage. So I poured us more drinks. 

“I dunno, s’not really me,” he countered after I tried to explain one more time. 

I showed him another one of the most recent videos. “Are you telling me this is not you?”

I grew really fond of his quiet “hahaha” every time he felt discomfited and flattered at the same time. Just like now. Stroking his chin with his finger, he shifted nervously and continued: “Well, yeah…uuum…you like this?” 

That was the moment when I knew I had him firmly in my grasp. Yeah, Jakey, I reeeeally like it. Let me just show you how much.

I seized my chance. We laughed and joked and flirted and all that shit. Talking about his desirable body parts that y’all take snapshots of soon turned to physical manifestations and before we knew it, his fly was open, his fat cock hard and out and firmly in my hand. I brushed my thumb gently over his pink and already leaking head before I wrapped my fingers around his shaft once again and started pumping him slowly. He just sat there and watched me with his lips parted, both mesmerized and taken aback by how quickly things escalated. I returned his stare, looking him firmly in the eye while I quickened my pace, and his breathy exhales turned to full-fledged, loud moans. I tried to shush him by forcing my other thumb in his mouth… and that only made it worse. There were still other people in the adjacent room and the door was open, but he just wouldn’t shut up! I had to grab his chin and stick my tongue in his mouth to keep him quiet. 

That sobered him up a bit. He didn’t want me to stop, he just wanted to regain control. Our tongues wrestled for a few seconds before he grabbed my cheeks and returned the kiss in such a manner that made my pussy spasm. I liked that, and we continued like that until he came all over my fingers a few minutes later. Thankfully, someone put some music on in the other room and it muffled his moans a bit, because my mouth could no longer contain them. He howled in it. It was hot.

You know, I’ve had the misfortune to cross paths with assholes who’d just throw me out after that, both satisfied and ashamed that my skills made them finish so quickly and unceremoniously, without fanfare and praises. Not Jake. He had to reciprocate AND prove himself at the same time. He’s vain, but in a good, gentlemanly way. 

After everyone else left, he just fucked my brains out. It surprised me how much he wanted to kiss, and not just my lips (either kind). His tongue was running marathons all over my body, and if I remember it correctly, I think I came five times that night. Not my record, but still a very impressive first-time. 

After that, he just kept crawling back to me, stopping me in empty hallways just to whisper obscene poems about my hungry pussy in my ear. Talking about how he’d feed me. 

He’s a sly one: the kind of a man that would run his fingertips gently down your spine in a room full of other people, while talking casually about fucking you raw, only for you to hear. I mean, that’s exactly what he did once or twice. I’m sure our “conversations” always looked completely innocent from a distance, with only Josh sometimes watching us with his lips pursed. Sometimes his eyes even narrowed a bit. That feisty chipmunk knew from the very start, and I thought I could spot jealousy in that piercing stare of his. I enjoyed that, just as much as Jake enjoyed making me wet in public, and calling it “retribution”. Honestly, I didn’t mind. Punish me as much as you want, baby, and keep using all those fancy words while doing so. Yeah. 

I’m a born provocateur, so I often just asked for more. Every time I saw him start licking his lips absentmindedly, I struck. In the end, it was always him who had to calm down, to keep it cool…to hide his hard dick. 

We both loved it. It was our little fight for dominance. We teased each other and then there would be a reward. 

It was a bit different with Josh. He’s a lover, not a fighter. He doesn’t need to fight for dominance and so he often rejects that role voluntarily.

At first I thought he wouldn’t be interested at all, even though his grabby hands landed on my bare skin more often than some would deem comfortable. But he’s like that with everyone! Including Bob, the chalice filler. It often doesn’t mean a thing. 

I knew it meant something when he almost grabbed my ass once. I tried to experiment with the same strategy I once used on Jake: using his own weapons against him, making him cross the friendly line.

It happened during a soundcheck while I was showing him a preview of my next scheduled post. His weapon was right there, on full display, and I further accentuated it by a subtle, punny caption. It made him giggle and I winked at him. 

“So, you okay with this? I mean, it’s all over the internet anyway…”

“Dear sparrow, if I weren’t okay with this, you wouldn’t be able to take such a lovely picture of it.” His hand first landed on the small of my back familiarly, just like it always did, and as we talked about other pictures in the carousel, I felt his fingers move even lower until the tip of his pinkie slid under the hem of my pants. I cleared my throat ostentatiously and he drew his hand away quickly as if I had burned him. 

“You know, I should report you for harassment for this,” I said matter-of-factly, still looking at the screen, trying to look both cool and unphased, but the twitch in the corner of my mouth gave me away. A true master of reading such subtleties, he slapped his fingers with his other hand and grinned at me. “Naughty me. Can’t blame me. You just smell so nice, sparrow. What is that?” 

“Hypnotic Poison.”

“Right…” He licked his teeth in a vain attempt not to grin even more. To be hundred percent sure, he still asked me if I wasn’t mad. Sure I wasn’t. I had been waiting for this. 

We parted after that, minding our respective businesses, but all those fleeting glances he cast my way during the rest of the afternoon didn’t escape my attention. Later, just before the show, he cornered me in the bathroom, startling me. I almost poked my eye out with a mascara when I noticed him standing right behind me. “Jesus Fucking Christ on a stick, Josh!”

“Yeah, I’m all that.” It was obvious he wasn’t there to take a leak as he kept watching me watch him in the reflection and his eyes grew darker. I slowly turned around and ran my finger down the hem of his low neckline, even more slowly. Tentatively, almost. Never breaking eye contact and with his lips slightly parted, he let me go lower until I reached the zipper head and tugged at it playfully. 

“Black velvet really suits you, you know?” I teased.

“Yeah, I know.” 

Cheeky brat. You wanna play, baby? Let me show you how it’s done. I slipped the tips of my fingers under the hem of his cleavage until I found his left nipple and started running circles over it with my middle finger. His breath hitched and his eyes widened before he seemingly regained his composure and flashed me a sly smile. 

“So…ummm…you and Jake are…exclusive?”

“Wow, you’re pretty straightforward,” I laughed. “No, we’re not. Just having some fun. Why?” 

Why, indeed. He made it pretty clear why, and I let my tongue give him the answer he desired. After the show that very night, he knocked on my door with a shy smile plastered on his face after I opened it. I welcomed him in.

Josh never fought me. He always presented himself on a silver platter and let me do whatever I pleased. Then he repaid me when the payment was due. My initial impression of him being a pillow princess wasn’t completely off, but my god! The man can fuck! Never try to piss him off. Or you know what? DO try to piss him off, because it turns him to a jackhammer. 

I once called him a sissy and the wrath that poured down on me afterwards made me see stars. 

So that’s how it went. They both knew what was happening behind closed doors with the other one, and both were ok with that, as long as it didn’t interfere with their own plans. And that was just a matter of time. 

To tell you the truth, I did wonder what it would be like to have them both, so when the opportunity presented itself, I would be a fool not to encourage it. 

Every once in a while, there are shows where shit just happens and everything that can go wrong, does do wrong. It was one of those nights. Even back at the venue, right after the show, I saw how both their faces were twisted with tension, and maybe the best way to avoid even more trouble would have been to avoid them altogether. They weren’t the only people who had a rough night. I was exhausted, too. If I were a bit more responsible, I would have settled for a nice hot bath and a filthy book, but sadly, I’m a people pleaser. Also, nothing can calm me down better than the smell of male skin.

It was long past midnight when I heard a knock on my door. 

“It’s me, Bebe. Please, let me in.” 

That’s right. He gave me that nickname shortly after we started fucking, even though I teased him that he would never beat those allegation that way. 

If you guessed that I indeed did open the door, you’re right. He didn’t even wait for the invitation to enter this time. The stress was doing us no good. I could smell even more troubleon the horizon, but I ignored it.

“Jake, you can’t just storm inside like this. What if I had company?” It was no use to argue with him. No longer sober to begin with, he was already making himself at home and pouring himself another drink. 

“Please, Bebe, stop teasing. I need you! I promise you won’t regret it.”

“Well, tough luck! Josh asked first.”

“Oh no, no no no! It’s my turn, baby! You can’t do this to me. Tonight was hell. Call him and tell him that you’re mine.” I shot him a sharp look, so he added quickly: “... for the night. ” Well, that only made it worse. 

Funny how quickly they got accustomed to the fact that I was just within reach. I would have been offended if I weren’t aware of how insolently I played with them too. Still, I should have said no, but I’m just human. 

However, the whole situation was already a bit more complicated than that. “I can’t. He’s already here.” 

Jake cast me a confused look before he smiled sympathetically at my feeble attempt to get rid of him. “Where? Hiding in the closet?”

“No, he’s in the shower.”

He just stood there for a short while, contemplating something, before he grabbed my cheeks with both hands and whispered sultrily: “Please, love, just a blowjob then. Your mouth can do wonders, baby. I beg you.” Noticing that I wavered, he bent closer to whisper in my ear: “You can ride my face anytime you want. You know that.”

Again, I should have said no, but the said mouth already started watering when I noticed the rapidly growing bulge. Mentally, he was already hitting my tonsils. I was on my knees in seconds. I knew Josh usually took his time, so maybe it was manageable. And if not…well, surely there was a way to benefit from the hypothetical pickle, should it happen.

And it happened. I was deepthroating him with both his hands holding my head and his head tilted back, when we heard the door open.

“Jesus fuck, Jake!” 

The moment of surprise made me gag. Jake withdrew quickly and started tugging himself back in his pants, which wasn’t easy, given his current state. Josh, however, just stood there completely and unabashedly naked. “Get out!” he bellowed, completely forgetting that it was in fact MY room they were both in. 

“No,” Jake spat back.

They started barking at each other like berserk chihuahuas. I swear, I was seconds from throwing them BOTH out, dicks out and all. They could keep shouting at each other in the hall or even in the main lobby for all I cared, but the wicked creature in me wanted to see how this would escalate. And it escalated majestically. 

I hadn’t bothered to unpack my suitcase earlier that day. It just lay open on the floor with my purple vibrator placed haphazardly on top of my lingerie. Jake spotted it, bent down to retrieve it and before I could argue, he thrust it against Josh’s bare chest while his other hand patted his cheek: “Here, this should do. Now bugger off!” 

I think I stopped breathing for a second. They teased each other quite often, but this seemed downright mean, even to their standards. I think Jake realized it too, but it was too late. We both watched the flames that appeared behind Josh’s dilated pupils and before either of us could react, Josh started after him and pushed him against the wall. And so the party started. In a matter of mere seconds, Jake fist almost collided with Josh’s jaw. Thankfully, Frodo is quite nimble, so he ducked the blow and striked back, his knuckles colliding with Jake’s forearm. Watching them wrestle like that, fuming, limbs intertwined, I was almost sorry I had no popcorn at hand. It was a comical sight: Josh still completely naked, Jake barely tucked back in his jeans. 

Have you ever seen puppies fighting over a toy? That’s them. They were both so needy and neither one ready to give up. It was time to seize the opportunity, so I… started laughíng. Loudly and mockingly. They both let go of each other and turned their heads to the source of that offensive sound: me. 

I was sitting on the edge of my bed, leaning back on my arms and with my legs crossed, contemplating my next move. Realizing I had no panties under my punto tube dress, I decided to Basic Instinct them. Sure, nothing new, but men are simple creatures. A naked pussy is like the Moon they howl at. It’s always new. Moreover, the fact that they never saw me like this before together was surely a great bonding experience of its own. I watched their faces for more clues and grinned viciously when I saw exactly what I hoped for. See, they’re different in many ways including this. Jake licks his lips, while Josh clenches his jaw. I tutted at them, watching how they both raised their eyebrows in a silent question. 

“Guys! You both know very well that I got more than one hole.”

Hooked? Read Part Two.

@its-interesting-van-kleep @takenbythemadness @edgingthedarkness @writingcold @ignite-my-fire @jakekiszkasbuttsweat @fleet-of-fiction @lvnterninthenight @myownparadise96 @josh-iamyour-mama @jazzyfigz @sanguinebats @thewritingbeforesunrise @wetkleenex-gvf @lyndz2names @emojakekiszka @hollyco @lizzys-sunflower @fleetingjake @cheersdannyx2 @gvfstuddedmajesty @gvfmarge @dayumclarizzel @musicislove3389 @lipstickitty

[queers-gambit]

My Date With the President's Daughter

part one: Blue Bunny

prompt: your father finds out about Tangerine in the worst way during a charity gala before marauders try to rob it.

pairing: Tangerine x female!reader

fandom masterlist: Bullet Train

word count: 6.3k+

note: a little Disney Channel throwback in the title anyone?

warnings: use of Irish names that DO NOT dictate race, more Mafia antics, short smut / interrupted smut (you'll see), NSFW i think, mature content, cursing, chaos and violence, weapons: guns and knives, blood. dead bodies, reader's a Daddy's Girl, abrupt ending, slight angst, more hurt and comfort i guess, author still has no idea what this plot is - revoke her internet access.

The theme of the gala that night was inspired by the Palace of Versailles; regal, royal, glittering and so very, very gold. It was held at one of the most expensive hotels in the city, the entire building rented out in preparation with three different caterers and expensive bottles of alcohol being served. The gala was THE place to be - most people vying for an invitation, everyone who was anyone in attendance; dripping in designer clothes, shoes, and jewelry that sparkled in candlelight.

Every single year for the past 25 years, your legendary father hosted a large charity event that your mother was project manager of - meaning she chose the themes, decor, and the invite list. Only elite persons (both in the public and private eye) with deep pockets were invited, knowing they'd cut a large check if they wanted your father to stay out of their business territories. So, in honor of the richer-than-rich attendees, your mother used grand and golden decorations; creating a tastefully regal atmosphere for those who didn't actually have a drop of royal blood in their veins.

You father, Fallon, meaning "leader" in the ancient Celtic language, looked as handsome and dapper as ever; his tux dry cleaned, steamed, ironed, and tailored, paired with clean and shining dress shoes that had a bright red sole. His hair was slicked back, tattoos on his neck visible from the swept-back style.

Your mother, Maeve, whose name meant "she who rules", looked like she had just walked off a runway. Her dress hugged her slender and impressive figure, the material shimmering under the soft lighting. Her heels were high, hair pinned off her neck to show off bright diamond earrings that matched the thin chain of glittering gems around her collarbones, the sparkling tennis bracelet, and the absurdly large wedding ring on her finger. Her face was lightly painted with make-up, always a woman who didn't need much - if any at all. You prayed to age as gracefully as she.

Your brother, Oisín - pronounced [Oh - Sheen] - meant "little deer"; a cheeky but shy lad at the ripe age of 10. He wore a matching tux as your father, and had an emerald broach pinned on his lapel to indicate he belonged to your family. His au pair was supposed to be watching him so you could mingle with donors, but Oisín didn't stray from your side; a wee hand holding the material of your expensive dress on your hip to keep himself from getting lost.

The gala was crowded. Large event room stifling, requiring the air be turned on. Perfume assaulting the senses in a clash of scents.

The trademark "cha-ching" sound effect echoed in your mind as you shmoozed a few guests into their donations; impressing your brother by how easy you made it look. You thanked each donor with a pretty smile and fluttering lashes, floating around the room to meet other investors; giving them your family's charity's mission statement and explained where their money would go. Most of the people in this room were seedy criminals - similar to your father - and the other few were corrupt politicians who were nestled in the criminal's pockets.

By no means was the night boring, but this was work for you; all business, no pleasure.

The decor your mother chose had a lot of glittering gold details; a few imported busts and statues, an entire wall full of sculpted grass to mimic the Palace's own garden designs; artwork hung in thick, intricate frames, bright crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The event hall was specifically chosen for the floor-to-ceiling windows, sculpted shrubbery planted around the room; banquet tables covered in white cloth and chairs made of white plush - complimenting the detailed golden accents. It was gorgeous, you were impressed by your mother's attention to detail.

You wore a dress made of fine silk, the pretty green hue complimenting your skin tone; hair left down, pinned at the sides, showing off the dangling, expensive earrings your father gifted you on your 18th birthday. You, too, wore heels that forced you to walk taller and with calculated steps; rimmed eyes darting around to ensure there wasn't any shady business transpiring. But when surrounded by people who made their living by being sketchy, it was hard to clock each and every movement; being why your father had hired a very specific (and loyal) security service.

With several checks in hand, you visited your father's banker, a mute man named Bradley, and handed them over for safe keeping; your brother able to practice his sign language. Bradley was happy to reply, your entire family versed in multiple languages, and showed the young lad his process of collecting and documenting the donations. After tallying your new checks to the grand total, he used British Sign Language to inform you and Oisín of the updated tally generated so far.

"Why does Daddy need to do this?" The young lad asked, holding your hand tightly; not being a fan of social interactions - especially to this magnitude.

"To keep business moving squeaky clean," you answered softly, smiling at a few who passed you. "Money makes the world go 'round, don't it?"

He sighed, "Do we know all these people?"

"We do, they're Daddy's associates," you nodded, "and you best believe, they all know us. See, one day, you'll learn their names and what businesses they provide, how Daddy keeps them all employed."

Oisín looked uncomfortable, wondering, "Are they dangerous? Like the guys that came for Christmas?"

You came to a halt around the edge of the room, caressing his head while being careful not to muse his hair out of place. "They're all dangerous, in their own way, yes, lovie. But," you lowered into a squat so you could look your brother in his eyes, "you'll learn, Daddy's much more dangerous. So, we host events like this t'keep everyone happy and in line, you see? It's a power play."

He nodded, glancing around the room of adults. "Do I have to stay the whole time, though? Mommy said I could invite Darrel and Kevin - they're over there," he pointed towards one of the round tables, two of his classmates laughing with their mothers standing off to the side. "And I'm hungry!"

"Oh, you're a hungry lad, is it?" You smiled, watching his head bob. "Well then, in that case, we should feed you, huh? C'mon," you straightened and offered your hand, which he took gratefully. "We'll get yah fed, sweetums, and you can hang with your friends, yeah?"

"Daddy won't be mad?"

"No, I'll tell him you did really well tonight, helping me collect donations," you winked, leading him to one of the catering tables. You made up his plate with different options, carrying it to the table his friends, Darrel and Kevin, were sat at.

The boys - who looked adorably dapper in suits and bowties - greeted your brother happily; letting you set his plate down and greet the mothers kindly to thank them for their attendance that night.

"Oh, Miss!" Your brother's au pair, Lisa, hustled up to you, "I'm so sorry, I lost track - "

"No, no, 's fine, you're all right, deep breath, love," you assured, squeezing her upper arm. "Having a good night so far?"

"Oh, it's magical, Miss, innit?" She beamed, looking around in wonder. "Never been before despite working for your family all these years, I'm grateful for your mother's invitation tonight."

"Oh, we're very happy to host yah, sweetheart," you smiled. "But, uh, you mind keepin' an eye on Oisín for me? I've gotta work a bit more. He just wants t'hang with his friends, think he's a bit tired."

"Of course," she rushed.

"I'd wager you can take him t'bed after Daddy's speech, hmm? I know he'll want Oisín here for that, at the very least."

Lisa agreed, mingling with the other mothers as you pecked Oisín's head and told him to behave, that you were gonna go back to working the gala; which he at least acknowledged before being sucked back into a card game with Darrel. You didn't mind the blow off, liking the idea that he had as normal of a life as possible - a farfetched idea considering your father ran the bloody Irish Mafia and all. He's attended three different schools since he started his educational career, so you were content to leave him with his friends; letting boys be boys.

After making another deposit to Bradley, you visited one of the modern and unique glass bars (one of three stations) while feeling somewhat dejected by the night's missing guest. But speak (or think) of the Devil and He shall appear.

"You weren't kiddin' when you said your family goes all out for events like this. Jesus fuckin' Christ," a familiar, accented voice crooned; a body saddling up to the bar beside you. You first saw his hands clasped together on the bar, recognizing the golden rings and single bracelet, smirking as your eyes lifted to meet that of Aaron - or Tangerine.

"You're late," you mused, locking eyes with the bartender and holding up two fingers; indicating you now wanted two of the drinks you ordered, him nodding.

"Sorry 'bout that, love, yeah, no, Lem and I got caught up in somethin', had ta deal, then get cleaned up for yah. Figured you wouldn't want us walkin' in here with blood on us."

"You'd be right," you hummed, red painted lips stretching in amusement as you both casually leaned on the glass bartop with your forearms. "Doesn't matter, you're here now - thank God."

"That bad, huh?"

"Not like previous years," you admitted, sending a glance over your shoulder at the group of milling socialites. "Since Daddy inducted The Agency, some traction's picked up believe it or not. Seems like a lot of people like the idea of contract killers for hire and investing in the Black Market. Seems like you lot really up the ante, don't'cha?"

"Ah," he smirked, "you're welcome, then. Happy t'be of service."

"I'll only thank you when you make a donation to the cause."

"Yeah?" He smirked. "Well, you got anywhere private for me to write a check, then, love? Can't have anyone knowin' I'm charitable, got a reputation to uphold, know what I mean?" Then he leaned in real close, lips ghosted against your ear and making a shiver shoot down your spine, "C'mon, doll, 's been 3 weeks since I've seen yah."

"I know," you sighed, "but we've been busy tonight. Plus, Daddy would kill you - like, actually kill you - 'cause he's listed you specifically for me to stay away from."

"And yet, here you are, naughty girl, huh? Disobeying orders?" He smirked and put a space between you for the sake of appearances, two glasses of whiskey set before you. "Your Daddy's been preoccupied all night, love - don't think he'd even notice if we pop out for a bit. 'Fraid to admit but if I don't get you alone soon, I might actually lose my shit, darlin', honestly."

"Aaron, sweetheart, my family is hosting this event and we're responsible for collections," you deadpanned, but smirked, "'s a bit inappropriate to abandon such an important night by sneaking off."

"Can't tell me you're not tempted."

Now, you full-on grinned, "I didn't wear panties for a reason."

"You fuckin' tease," he growled over the rim of the crystal glass. When he tasted the whiskey, he hummed in shock, looking at the amber liquid, "Fuck me, that's nice."

"My family may or may not own several distilleries. You're drinking an exquisite, 15-year ol' whiskey, love." You took your own sip, casting another look around the room, finding your brother first, still with his friends before locating your parents. They were pleasantly distracted by an ambassador, making you grin at Tangerine, "C'mon."

"Hey?" He wondered, quickly setting his half-drank glass down as you snatched his free hand to quickly lead him away. He smirked and casted a look over his shoulder, instantly meeting Lemon's eyes - finding him laughing at the pair of you, toasting his drink at his brother in impression as if he knew what you two were up to.

Thanks to Thomas the Tank Engine, Lemon definitely knew what you two were doing - being excellent at reading people.

You lead your lover out of the event hall, checking up and down the empty hall and missing the way one of the security guards clocked your escape. You lead Tangerine into the large, private, unisex bathroom; shoving him against the closed door and instantly latching onto him in a deep kiss.

He was fully prepared, catching your hips; hissing a breath in through his nose, releasing a gentle moan out of sheer relief. When you pulled back, he grinned, "Got no idea how much I fuckin' missed yah, darlin'."

"Missed you more," you whispered in a rush, arms wrapping around his neck as he simultaneously began backing you up. It was a hungry kiss; heated, passionate, teeth clanking from impact, both attempting to make up for lost time. Ever in-sync, both your mouths opened to push your tongues against one another; exchanging saliva and the taste of expensive whiskey.

"C'mere," he panted after having backed you into the sink counter, seizing hold of your silken hips and hoisting you upwards. Your mouths were never far apart, joining together once more now that you were sat at a vantage point. Your hands shoved his navy blue suit jacket from his shoulders, it being set aside to the other end of the counter while you worked on his belt. "Never goin' this long again," he mumbled into your kiss, pushing the material of your dress up to let your legs spread wider in accommodation. Your lover rushed, "Jesus, fuck, feels like forever, don't it?"

You nodded as his hands pushed under the bunched material to grip the plush meat of your thighs; giving a gentle massage before sliding them higher until he met your bare hips. The cold counter bit into your exposed flesh.

"Oh, fuck me, you really didn't wear panties?" He groaned, glancing down as he lifted silk from your lap to catch a glimpse of your bare cunt - ready to greet him.

"Had a feelin' you'd show up, you just can't stay away, can yah?" You smirked, cheekily licking his lips as his belt clattered open. "Thought you'd might appreciate it," your chuckle was swallowed by his moan as the zipper of his trousers sounded almost shrilly to your over heightened senses. "Just need you close, so fuckin' close, please, missed you, baby - "

"No idea how much I've missed you, love, fuckin' hell," he rushed, reaching into his briefs the moment you had loosened the waistband of his tailored trousers to take hold of his cock. "This ain't gonna be nice an' easy, love, yeah? All right?" He checked, feeling you slide to the edge of the counter.

"Didn't think anything else," you grinned, gasping lightly when the head of his cock swept up and down your slit. "Plenty of time for that later, just need you fuckin' close - closer than close."

"Feel how fuckin' wet you are already? Goddamnit - "

"All for you, baby, c'mon, don't tease - "

In a single motion, Tangerine sheathed himself in your warmth, grinning in mischief, "Huh? Sayin' somethin', weren't yah, doll? Go 'head, finish your sentence, 'M listening."

You only chuckled, hands holding his neck and bicep in vice grips to keep yourself anchored as close as possible to him. "Three weeks without yah, and you wanna provoke me?" You whispered, feeling him begin to thrust in agonizing movements.

"Wouldn't be me if I didn't, huh?"

You chuckled breathlessly - gasping when, suddenly, the bathroom door burst open. You were facing that way, looking up from Tangerine's shoulder, only to discover your worst fear. "Holy shit! Daddy!?" You squeaked, Tangerine jolting and cursing in a hushed tone as he instantly yanked out of your wet warmth.

"Oh, you betta be fuckin' kiddin' me," your father seethed. "The fuck is goin' on here!? What the fuck are you goin'!? Who the fuck is that - is-is-is that who I think it is?" He growled, your lover fumbling to tuck himself away and pull his trousers back together - not moving from between your legs in an effort to preserve your modesty. But he had turned slightly to give your father a glimpse of his face, making your Daddy snarl, "Oh, bloody fuckin' hell! You serious? Fuckin' Tangerine, is it? You lost your mind, girl!?"

"Daddy, please," you warbled nervously, tears of anxiety gathering.

"Get the fuck out here - now! Boff of yah's!" He commanded in a roar, stepping out of the doorway.

"Oh, holy fuck," Aaron breathed, latching his belt and looking at you with wide eyes. "Well, was nice while this lasted, huh? Gonna miss yah, pretty girl - "

"The fuck are you - "

"He's gonna fuckin' kill me, sugar," Tangerine frowned, your dress falling gracefully into place when you slid off the counter. "Your father's gonna fuckin' kill me, Goddamnit," he pulled his suit jacket back on. "Think I can make it out that window?"

"He already knows it's you, runnin' now won't help," you sniffled, shaking your head and moving for the still-opened door. "You didn't think to fucking lock the door? Jesus fuck, Aaron..."

He followed after you, meeting your father in the empty hallway outside where the gala was in full-swing. He looked enraged, jaw clenched and wide eyes ablaze, looking the both of you over in disgust. "You out of your bloody mind you stupid girl? Huh?" He demanded, "I told you - very clearly - you weren't to fuckin' see him again."

"Daddy - "

"And this is how I find out? Huh? That my daughter doesn't respect my authority or listen to my words? How the fuck do you think people would react to that? They see you disobeying and get the idea to do the same."

"I'm not yours to command - "

"You're my daughter!" Fallon barked in anger, "My only fuckin' daughter, which means, you are, indeed, mine to command - just like everyone else in this fucking organization! You understand? My word is law - "

"This isn't just some petty fling, Daddy, that I'm engaged in to pass the time! I'm in love with him!" You blurted out, eyes widening when you heard your own words and watched your father's face fall.

"Beg your pardon?" He seethed slowly. "Have you gone mental? Finally fuckin' lost it? Huh? You must be outta your Goddamn mind if you think you love this silly fuck! He doesn't love you back, Y/N, you're just a coveted prize because you're my daughter - it's a thrill to men like him! Women like you, you're just trophies! There's no authenticity - "

"With all due respect," Tangerine interrupted boldly with anger lacing his words, "but you've got it all wrong, sir. Your daughter is the most important person t'me - outside my bruva, of course. She's not a trophy to collect, she's not a dainty object for me to store onna shelf - she's not a notch on my belt. But you're right about one thing," his arm extended around your waist, "she is the most coveted prize - but that's because of who she is, not who her father is. She's my prize, yeah, because she's the end goal men search their whole lives for and for whatever reason, she fuckin' chose me. I consider it the greatest honor - "

"You got some fuckin' nerve, don't'cha?" Your father growled. "You know what, lad? Since it's evident my daughter doesn't take me seriously, maybe you'll be smart enough to heed my warning. You leave her the fuck alone or - "

"I can't do that, sir," Tan refused, "'cause like it or not, I'm mad for her. Absolutely stupid for her. I love your daughter past words, don't even think I've ever loved someone 'cause bein' with her feels so fuckin' different in comparison.

"That so?"

Tangerine nodded, other hand shoving into his pocket to toy with the cool metal of golden brass knuckles. "There's nobody in this world like your daughter, sir. Bein' in love with her is like euphoria, yeah? Makes me think back and realize how wrong I was about my feelings for anyone else 'cause of how I feel for her. I say there ain't no way I've ever loved anyone else 'cause I've never felt this way before - I've only felt this type of love with your daughter. Yeah? She's fuckin' everything to me, so, with respect, I can't stay away. I won't."

"Yeah? Yeah? Fuckin' fine. All right, sure, let's see if The Agency has anythin' t'say about this, huh? When I pull the plug on this deal, I'll be sure to tell your employers why and let them deal with you for ruining this business partnership."

"Daddy," you gasped, rushing when he turned for the event hall's doors, Aaron following swiftly. You caught the metal doors when your father yanked them open and strode into the room, doing your best to catch him before he did anything too rash. "Wait, wait, Daddy, please, just listen, listen to me - I didn't mean for this to happen!"

"Didn't mean for what? Me findin' yah fuckin' in the bathroom like a desperate whore?" He snarled over his shoulder, the thick crowd slowing him.

"Well, yes, but I also didn't mean to fall in love with him! All right? But you know better than all of us that it's not a choice, it just happens! Look at you and Mum - "

He rounded on you, Tan at your flank, opening his mouth to scold you when something caught his eye behind you. You didn't have time to question him as rapid shots filled the air, a telltale sign of an automatic gun being fired in the crowded room. You flinched slightly, Tangerine instantly grabbing your waist to cover your body with his; turning to locate the threat, only to discover a gaggle of men in all black wearing ski masks and duffel bags on their shoulders.

"Friends of yours?" Tan snipped at your father, keeping you low as the crowd shrieked in panic - all trying to escape, still being shot at. This caused the seedy individuals with guns to take a stand and shoot back at the intruders, creating mass confusion and limited advantages.

"Bruv!"

"Brian," Aaron panted, people bumping into one another as they panicked in a flood of bodies. He looked down at you and then to your father, Fallon, only to find blood blooming under his white button up. "Oh, fuck," his eyes widened, gunshots still sounding, "right, we gotta move - can deal with everything else later. Here, here, here," Tangerine plucked a cloth napkin from a nearby table and shoved it over your father's wound to help staunch the bleeding.

"They got the doors, mate," Lemon shook his head when you noticed your father's wound. Luckily, it didn't appear to be in a fatal location, his hand holding pressure as the security detail were being gunned down. "The fuck do we do now?" Lemon asked over shrill shrieks.

"What we do best," Tangerine answered, pushing your father into action and brandishing his gun. "Stay close - "

"I'm not leaving without my wife and son!" Your father growled.

"Lem!"

"On it," he agreed, disappearing into the swarm of people.

Your lover kept you close, shoving through the crowd to lead towards a set of heavy metal doors. Several men stepped in your way, Tan sneering, "Right, fuck this." He opened fire.

You squeaked in shock when a different body tackled Aaron from the side to knock him out of sight, your father keeping a hold on you as straggling bodies dropped around you. "There he is!" You heard over the confusion, locating a set of men surging towards you.

There was nowhere to go, leaving you to physically block your father in a bid to protect him - not needing to when Tangerine intercepted the two threats. He didn't have his gun anymore, lost in a stampede of feet on bloody marble floors, opting to use his fists and brute strength against the robbers. The brass knuckles helped.

You had to admit, it was the perfect night to attack considering how much money Bradley was keeping track of. Plus the fact that everyone's guard was down made tonight the perfect opportunity for marauders to act against your family.

However, in a sea of confusion, you were separated from your father's side; losing him amongst the people and feeling a tight hand seize your upper arm. "I got the daughter!" The man in a ski mask informed through the visible comms system. "Moving for the south wing, bring the van around t'the alley."

"Aaron!" You begged, trying to wrangle free but discovering your strength was nothing compared to the 6'3'' goon's. "Aaron! Aaron, please! Help!"

"Shut the fuck up," the man snapped, backhanding you and never releasing his grip. A single trickle of blood oozed from one nostril as the man's ring split your bottom lip. "Fuckin' move!" He barked at you in a thick accent, "Move, bitch, let's go!"

"What do you want!? Please, just - just tell me! I can give you whatever it is - please! Fucking let go!"

Another enemy joined you, sneering, "Oi! The fuck you doin'? Don't damage the goods, fuckin' idiot, we gotta keep her in decent shape for the ransom! Fallon ain't payin' if his daughter's been assaulted - "

But a gunshot boomed and the other man's body jolted before falling flat on his back - dead with a hole in his forehead. You tried to capitalize on your captor's shock, unsuccessful, feeling blood splatter on your back from a different fallen body. You saw your father under the wing of his security, his own gun being used in defense, begging, "Daddy! Daddy, help!"

The one night you don't ensure your thigh holster's filled, of course this happens!

Fallon was only able to watch as Tangerine fought his way up to you struggling in the bulky man's grip; impressed when one contract killer engaged another. "Oi!" Tan barked, "Hands off my girl, yah fuckin' lunatic!" He threw several punches, the goon forced to release you to defend himself. Fallon watched as Tangerine waited until you were freed and a step to the side before opening fire again - killing the man who dared touch you. He realized that Tangerine had waited until you were clear to take the shot - feeling impression plant in his gut. Yet there was no time to dwell as intruders circled him.

"Oh, my God!" You whimpered, bodies left in growing pools of blood; your dress dragging in the tacky substance to paint abstract swirls on the shining floor; trying to avoid being swept up in the streams of panicking people. Your name was barked, another hand grabbing you, but this time, it was Lemon - sprayed in enemy blood.

"C'mon, doll, I got'cha!" He promised, being engaged by another robber. You sobbed in shock when an arm caught you in a headlock and forcefully drug you backwards; heeled feet scrambling in an attempt to keep up and avoid falling over.

"Lemon! Please! Fuck's sake!"

Breathing was hard to do in a headlock, dancing black spots blurring your vision slowly and your heart hammering in fear. A machine gun sounded again. The bicep tightened, dramatically limiting air.

"Fuckin' get off her, arsehole!" Recognizing Aaron's voice was a sheer relief, gasping for air when the arm constricted around your neck released suddenly. However, the momentum made you stumble to the ground at the same time for the goon's dead body to drop right next to you. His wide, dead eyes stared unseeingly at you, forcing a shiver down your spine and for your stomach to knot.

"Jesus Christ, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God," you panted, scrambling when blood spread closer.

"C'mon, love, c'mere, c'mere," Tangerine grunted, hauling you to your feet and protectively keeping you to his side. Being in front of you now, you could note the blood on his button up, how the robber's own punches had bruised and bloodied his face; figuring you looked somewhat similar. "Right, listen please, need yah t'do somethin' for me, love," he kept a sharp eye out for other threats as he tugged up one of his trouser legs. He pulled out the gun strapped in the holster, handing it to you with the instruction, "Shoot first, answers later. Yeah? Hey?"

You nodded and accepted the weapon, unlocking the safety. "I have to find Mum and Oisín," you worried, men and women screaming as the brutal fight continued.

"Just stay close, love, 's fuckin' madhouse - FUCK!" He snapped, aiming and firing at a man racing for you two. "C'mon, we gotta move, gotta get you out of here - right to the fuck now - "

Your gun sounded, Tangerine watching another robber drop only feet away. He pushed you through the people, both with your heads on a swivel; working in tandem to clear the banquet hall of robbers and direct survivors to get out. Your curly-haired boyfriend held one of the robbers by the neck and repeatedly punching his face into a pulp after the other man had attempted to snatch you, too.

Nobody came remotely close to you again, not when Tangerine was on guard; protecting you, defending you, killing for you. The skin on his bare knuckles had split open, but Tangerine didn't even notice; he just moved on to the next threat.

Soon, the gunfire ceased, leaving a ringing in survivor's ears, and after a quick look around the room, Tangerine confirmed the threats were all eliminated - but so were several guests of the charity gala.

You gasped in guilt, hand slapping over your mouth when you nearly tripped over Lisa's body; bullet holes shredding her flesh.

"Bruv," Lemon panted, approaching the two of you and making Tan flinch. "Woah, hey, easy, 's just me," he held his hands up, your lover sighing in relief and keeping you sheltered behind him. "You two good?" Brian asked, sheen of sweat coating his skin.

"You hit, love? Hey?" Tangerine looked down at you, keeping one arm around you and his body at a protective angle. "Shit, your face - your fucking face, sweetheart, look at me, look at me, lemme see," he frowned, holstering his gun to take both your cheeks in his hands and look for other injury.

"I'm okay, promise I'm not hurt," you panted, hands trembling. "Are you two?"

"I'm good," he nodded, eyeing Lemon. "Yeah?"

"Good, yeah, I'm good," Brian confirmed, "but I got some bad news. Looks like they got the banker. I can't tell if they made off with the money or not."

"They couldn't've, we only accepted checks tonight," you explained. "No cash, no assets to steal."

"Take it that's not public knowledge," Lemon sighed. "Probably thought they could rob y'all blind in one move, thinkin' tonight would have cash donations."

You sniffled, "You seen my family?"

"Uh," Lemon looked around, nodding, "yeah, your dad's over there."

Peering around Tangerine's form, you located your father slowly stalking around the room; taking note of the dead bodies left behind, survivors clearing out into the hallways. Fallon made his way up to you three, your voice trembling, "Daddy? You all right? Where's Mum and Oisín?"

"They're safe, with the paramedics," he reported, instantly taking you in his embrace. "Ah, fuck, lost sight of yah in this mess, had me worried, girl."

"I'm sorry."

"Nah," he whispered, caressing the back of your head, "don't apologize, you ain't do nothin'." He took a breath, keeping you caressed to his shoulder, "Gotta admit, felt a helluva lot better knowin' your man had your six." You pulled back slowly, watching your father sigh and nod at the Twins, admitting, "Thank you for protectin' my daughter, don't know how t'repay yah."

"Wasn't nothin' to it, sir," Tangerine assured, adjusting his suit jacket, "just wanted to protect my woman."

"I saw," he nodded. "You boys okay?"

"Yes, sir," Lemon nodded, Tangerine doing the same.

"Very good... Then I think I owe you an apology," your father told Tan, shocking you - not knowing the last time you ever heard you father admit to an apology.

"Not necessary, sir, I understand," Tan deflected, skin glistening in a thin sheen of sweat, blood dabbed around from the robber's fists, "I'm just relieved your family's safe."

"No, listen, I was wrong," Fallon admitted, "sayin' all that shit to you - about you. You know, makin' my assumptions, goin' based on rumors. You've got a bit of a reputation, I was just tryna protect my daughter from gettin' her heart broke." He sighed, shaking his head, "Can protect her from damn near everything - except the complications of her own heart; the woes of a relationship."

"I understand, sir."

"But seein' you tonight, fightin' for her, fightin' to get back to her... I was wrong," Fallon sighed, offering his hand. When Tan shook it, your father offered, "For what it's worth, you've got my permission to... Continue whatever this is. Any lad willing t'put themselves in harms way for my girl is all right in my books."

"I appreciate that," Tangerine sniffled, meeting your eye and smirking slightly. "Your daughter means a lot t'me, swear I won't make yah regret givin' us your approval."

Fallon sighed, nodding, "Yeah, all right, good. 'Cause she's precious to me, you know? I'll fuckin' gut you if you hurt her."

"I believe it," Tan sighed, a single twinge of nervousness to his tone, "but you don't gotta worry, sir, right, 'cause last thing I want is t'hurt the woman I love. She's precious to me, too."

"Right, good, uh, well... Thank you, both, for helping tonight. Would've been a fuckin' bloodbath without yah."

You frowned, gazing around the marble floors, "Still a bloodbath, ain't it? Half our men are dead, several investors... Daddy, who the fuck were these men?"

"That's what I'm gonna find out," he growled, his surviving personnel taking note of the event-room-turned-battlefield, slowly starting to move bodies. Little known fact: the hotel had an industrial size furnace in the boiler room - somewhere your father could burn bodies without the police being tipped off.

"Th-They said something about a ransom," you told the trio in a trembling tone, "about ransoming me back to you, Daddy. Said you wouldn't pay if I was injured, so they shouldn't rough me up."

"Hey," Tan whispered, pulling you into his side securely, "don't gotta worry 'bout that - know there's nowhere for anyone to hide you that I wouldn't find."

Fallon actually liked that sentiment, watching you nod and for your lover to hold you securely and placing a kiss to your forehead. So, he asked, knowing the answer, "Can I trust you to take care of my daughter, lad?"

"Absolutely."

"Don't make me regret this."

"Not in this lifetime, sir."

"Good. I'll find you lot in the mornin', get gone."

After a brief reunion with your mother and brother, learning they were uninjured and safe, you boyfriend finally opened the door to the hotel room you two had been assigned. Lemon was right next door, and when you entered, your luggage was left on the bed for you both. It was quiet as you both cleaned up and prepared for bed; silent tears trickling down your cheeks, mind replaying the night's events over and over and over... Like a never ending nightmare.

In the shower, you sat on the floor with arms tight around your knees, Tangerine sitting with you as warm water cascaded; cocooning steam around you. Blood washed off in waves of pink, circling the drain; your boyfriend gently massaging your body with a washcloth, discovering a scattering of injury - some still open and weeping. He was forced to blink back tears when your neck revealed a significant bruise; considering it a reminder of his failure to protect you, not knowing you felt the direct opposite and knew, if he hadn't been there, things would've been much, much worse.

When you joined Aaron in bed, the silence continued. Your heads laid on plush, stark white pillows; on your sides to stare at one another with hands clasped together between you. No words were needed, no explanation or thanks necessary, neither feeling the need to speak on what happened that night. Tangerine let go of your one hand, slowly reaching out to caress your cheek and jaw, fingertip tracing soft lines; shuffling closer to rest his cut forehead on yours.

In the dark of the room, over the sounds of the humming air conditioner unit, Tangerine whispered, "I love you, doll."

"I love you, too, Aaron. Thank you for... You know, tonight... All you did."

"You being safe, in my arms, is enough thanks."

"I-I'm glad you were here."

He nodded in agreement, "So am I. Don't know what I'd of done if I wasn't - if I had t'hear about this later... If they had succeeded in snatching you. Might not have been able to forgive myself."

"Good thing we don't have to know." Your eyes danced between his, admitting, "I don't think I want t'go without you, love. I don't think I feel secure unless you're with me."

"Yeah?" He smirked slightly, "That your way of sayin' you wanna spend more time with me?"

"Might be my way of sayin' I wanna spend all my time with you," you whispered, tears glazing your eyes. "And Daddy approves, so we don't have to sneak around anymore, right?"

"Right, get yah all t'myself," Tan agreed softly. "We'll talk in the morning, sweetheart, yeah?" He stretched slightly to peck your lips, encouraging, "Get some rest, Bunny. 'S been a helluva night."

Tangerine made you feel safe, he protected you and killed for you - so while you were unsure how sleep would find you when your mind was plagued with replaying chaotic memories from that evening, you let yourself relax.

requesting rules and masterlist

Bullet Train masterlist

[reasonsforhope]

"[There is] fantastic news for species conservation after new populations of the gorgeous ‘Skywalker’ gibbon, known to science for only 6 years, were recently found living in the politically chaotic nation of Myanmar.

Also called the hoolock gibbon, this dainty vocalist was first described in 2017 living in the extreme south of China on a mountain in Yunnan. Classified as Endangered by the IUCN, the population was estimated to number a paltry 150 individuals, but others were believed to live in Myanmar.

Even before the recent military junta usurped the president and plunged the country into civil war, Myanmar [was a difficult place to conduct field studies, especially extensive or ongoing ones, due to ongoing conflict.]

[Although they are] now in open revolt against the military junta, [the Myanmar states of Shan and Kachin] were nevertheless destinations for an intrepid team of scientists from the Nature Conservation Society Myanmar, Fauna & Flora International–Myanmar Programme, the IUCN’s ape specialist group, and field researchers from universities in England, China, and the US.

Together, they conducted acoustic surveys, collected non-invasive DNA sampling, and took photographs for morphological identification at six sites in Kachin State and three sites in Shan State. With the help of the Myanmar conservationists, the team also interviewed locals dwelling in rural forested areas, small conservation programs, and timber companies about the frequency of sightings and the hunting pressure.

Population estimates of unknown quality and scientific rigor conducted in 2013 suggested there might be 65,000 hoolock gibbons in Myanmar, but the matter became much more complicated after the classification of the Skywalker gibbon as a separate species from the eastern hoolock gibbon—where before they were confused as the same.

“We were able to genetically identify 44 new groups of Skywalker gibbons in Myanmar,” said senior author Tierra Smiley Evans, research faculty at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and contributing author. “This is a huge resource and success story for Myanmar.”

These gibbons sing to each other at dawn for around 22 minutes, and consume 36 different plant species; choosing fruit first, and flowers later. They seldom sleep in the same tree two nights in a row to avoid predation, and can’t swim so are often confined to territories by river systems.

The team that discovered them in China in 2017 loved Star Wars, and called them tianxing which is Chinese pinyin for “heaven movement;” a nod not only to their favorite sci-fi franchise, but also to China’s ancient history. In the famous Book of Change [aka the I Ching] of the Zhou Dynasty [1046 BCE to 265 BCE], a divination poem refers to gibbons specifically, and uses tianxing as a verb to describe their movements.

The interviews were a source of great data for the scientists. For starters, nearly all individuals in both the Kachin and Shan states could identify a Skywalker gibbon by sight and by playback of its singing, lending the exercise a good degree of reliability...

“Biologists did not believe Skywalker gibbons could live in the small remaining patches in Southern Shan State before we started this project,” Pyae Phyo Aung, executive director of Nature Conservation Society Myanmar, told the UC Davis press.

“I am delighted with our field team members who have done an excellent job, within a short period of time, building community trust for further conservation actions. This area is degraded forest. It is really important for Myanmar and China to consider extending conservation approaches for the Skywalker gibbon to this new geographic area.”

Nearly 32,000 square kilometers, or around 8 million acres of forestland in Eastern Myanmar are suitable gibbon habitat, and while existing forest reserves like Paung Taung and Mae Nei Laung are quite large, they remain unprotected. For this reason, the survey team recommended they remain considered ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List until habitat protections improve."

-via Good News Network, February 21, 2024

[purplealmonds]

The Wuxing Elements in Relation to Eye Colors in Mononoke

Universally across all cultures, eyes are windows to the soul, yes?

Spoilers regarding to the analysis of new lore below the cut:

Wuxing, or 五行 in Chinese, translates literally "five movements" refers to the interactions between the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The methods of I Ching divinations with its complex bagua (八卦) trigrams and hexagrams build its foundations upon these movements. Here's the diagram illustrating how the elements relate to one another:

Let's examine the wuxing diagram, specifically the color its elements corresponding to the eye colors of Anime-Kusu, Hyper, Movie-Kusu, and Shingi.

Anime-Kusu's eyes are blue, which aligns with 木 - wood. It has a symbiotic generative cycle - 相生 - with 火 - fire, which aligns with Hyper's eye color. The simple metaphor here is that you cannot create fire without wood to kindle it. This makes sense, since Hyper's form is modeled after Kusu.

However, if this relation is left unchecked, it can become a destructive reverse-generative cycle - 相洩/相泄 - where wood is burned by fire. The fire-aligned exorcism sword Ri/Li - 離- serves as both bridge and barrier between Anime-Kusu and Hyper. Hyper's fire element feeds on Kusu's wood element, but can only be released under specific conditions (the exorcism ritual).

Movie-Kusu's eyes are yellow, which aligns with earth - 土. Similar to above, earth has a generative cycle with metal - 金, which, what do you know? Aligns with Shingi's white eye color! The earth-aligned sword Kun - 坤- serves as an intermediary between the two of them. Interesting, right? :D

Now let's to delve into headcanon territory that anime-Kusu and movie-Kusu have a mentor-mentee relationship. Anime-Kusu could have an inter-regulating relationship with movie-Kusu where wood stabilizes earth (thus preventing it from eroding).

Alternatively, if they are somehow at odds with each other, earth can also rot wood. From a meta level, this could represent how Kamiya replaced Sakurai as movie-Kusu's voice actor. Ouch.

We actually see a similar relationship between Hyper and Shingi, in which fire (Hyper) refines/shapes metal (Shingi).

There's an added complexity where Hyper's pupils are uniquely gold/yellow, which may give him an even deeper connection with metal-aligned Shingi because gold technically a metal and 金 also means gold in Chinese. Since they are divine beings, I think it's appropriate they have this level of depth in their relationship.

(Hyper's pupil color can also be interpreted as yellow, which matches earth-aligned movie-Kusu with his yellow irises!)

Another common thread between the two divine beings is that their sclera are both black, which represents water - 水. Water dampens/regulates fire (Hyper) and rusts metal (Shingi).

I believe this represents the represents the exorcism sword's power to confine/limit both Hyper and Shingi's powers until the time comes to unleash them. This is visually symbolized by the black schlera surrounding/containing their colored irises.

Shingi seems to have the shorter end of the stick since metal corrosion is a more potent type of destruction, which may explain his more human-like appearance compared to Hyper's otherworldly one. That...probably doesn't bode well with his upcoming battle with the karakasa.

[horreurscopes]

does it happen to anyone else that you're writing and the words are flowing and you're getting ideas for what's next and it's FUN and you're even getting the occasional line that makes you go Damn Im Good but also, at the same time, you're being plagued by this anxiety like you want this to be over stat, your muscle memory urging you to find a distraction. what gives. im also Just getting back into my writing habit so im very very rusty and end up tapping out around 800 words even if i don't Have to Stop or feel like i don't know what comes next. is it just a subconscious fear or being Bad or like lack of practice similar to how you have to build a reading habit if your brain is hijacked by phone feelgood chemicals. actually it might be that. alphasmart doesn't go ka-ching! with Internet Approval Points. anyway anyone relates

[teddie-bear420]

CHARLIE AND VIVA

The princess of hell and her trusty knight are on a mission to save sinners souls!

Doodles and rambles under the cut, and I mean like walls of text

be aware I make shit up a lot, I was very high on drugs and gay sex

Welcome to the show I’ve made in my head, ok where to begin? I guess with how boring I find Charlie nd vaggie in the show proper, I like them, they just don’t have any real spice to them. Charlie is a just a girl, she has no real friends and just surrounds herself with others problems. Check out the beginning of episode four, husk just says that out loud, we saw it once with angel dust and then they totally drop it for the rest of the show. I wanted to see Charlie fail and get back up again, but we don’t see that! Idk maybe I want more out of the text but I hated to see Charlie act like a baby, not a young woman, I makes me so mad that she isn’t really friends with anyone, no fun dynamics, Charlie kinda just looks at her guests and ‘employees’ but she never sees them. I mean like give me some bff moments with Charlie, she has no friends, she a loser baby!

Vaggie is the best better at making friends, and enemies honestly she is the second protagonist. I hated her until I saw her fuck ass bob. I fell in love

Ok so I made a prequel hazbin design that I just fell in love with, here she is. Ok so girls is bugs, vaggie is a moth and lute is a mantis, they grew up together in heaven. Being raised to be an exorcist was pretty sweet except for the military indoctrination!

Wonderful lute convo here

So vaggie is now in hell and is saved by Charlie, who believes that vag is a sinner. Eventually they get together romantically and start working on the happy hotel project, then they get angle dust as a guest. You know the deal, but how did vag get with Charlie? Who asked who out? I love how loyal vaggie is to Charlie but WHY is she so loyal? I think because Charlie wanted to ask about vaggies life and she took the opportunity to become a new person !

I think having char be the ray of sunshine in such a violent place attracts the lost and broken to her is cool. Vaggie tells ridiculous lies about her human life like being ran over by a horse. And being a pirate captain. Vaggies colors go from green to purple, aesthetic goes from Joan of arc lesbian to a captain Ching Shih lesbian yknow what I mean?

Charlie is taken in with this eccentric woman and befriends her. And also when Charlie and vaggie start to get closer char gifts her the red ribbon that vaggie wears all the time. The pink red is Charlies color and it sticks to all of her friends! Like when angel and Charlie get really close she gifts him the hot pink gloves and he wears them for the duration of the show. (I’ll write about that in another post lol)

MY CHARLIE loves to feed people food she’s made, so she just keeps feeding vaggie and the she starts to beef up, buff 5’4 vaggie lets gooooo. They cook food together and help sinners together. I forgot to mention that Charlie in my perfect world does actual charity work, she works down at the soup kitchen and cleans up the parks and gives people work, Charlie is just constantly busy and never gives herself a day off. Vaggie does her best to help while constantly working on her prodigious.

These girls also work at the local theater! They do a lot of dress up! And i really liked the idea that Charlie is astanged from her dad and is no contact with him. So she isn’t some princess that’s throwing money at the poor. She builds her own motel for the happy hotel project so that when it is destroyed they can build the hotel proper and have an actual emotional impact.

A little comic I sketched of out, Charlie was calling her dad for help with the hotel but he completely shuts her down and calls her idea dumb, I liked when Lucifer was a shitty dad that called Charlie a failure, instead of some sad loser who forgets to call his daughter, like I have a shitty dad and he tore down lots of my ideas and then is confused when I don’t talk to him.

Like idk how there are so many characters with daddy issues but they all are poorly written…

What else is there? Ermmm, I suppose I like Charlie as a demon that looks the most human out of the cast, like sure she has clown makeup as skin but giving her round ears and a demon tail looks super cute. And in the first few episodes Charlie hides her tail and uses it as a belt, and as a show of faith she reveals her tail to the hazbin gang!

[goldenamaranthe-blog]

Based on that post about Charlie is magically turned into a kid. The staff are arguing and Alastor makes his usual snide comments about Vaggie, and Little Charlie kicks his shin and says "Don't be mean to the pwetty lady!"

Oh! That is absolutely precious!!! Yes! Yes! and Triple Yes!

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Vaggie: Lucifer, I'm serious! We need to figure out why Charlie is a toddler. The Princess of Hell can't go from looking like she's in her twenties to being two!

Kid Charlie: (pausing in her headbutt game with Razzle to shout) I'm fwee! (gets headbutted by Razzle and sprawls out on the floor)

Vaggie: Oh, I'm sorry, Charlie. (to Lucifer) A Three Year Old! (swipes her arms in a cutting motion) And I am NOT being labelled as a pedophile because my girlfriend turned into a literal child!

Lucifer: (recording Charlie playing with Razzle with an almost manic amount of giggles) Awwwww, do we have to??? Look how ADORABLE she is!!!

Kid Charlie: (tired of playing headbutts, climbs onto Razzle's back and rides him across the floor) Onward, Razzle!!! To da castle!!!

Razzle: Bap-Baa-Baa-BAAAAAAAP!!! (charges and sprints around the lobby, occasionally jumping and using his wings to stay airborne a little longer)

Vaggie: (heart melts and ovaries pulse before she shakes off the rose colored glasses and growls at Lucifer) Yes, Lucifer. We have to.

Lucifer: (pouting) Awwww.... Alright....

Alastor: (shadows in from nowhere) I heard Lucifer sigh in dismay. What did I miss? (sees Charlie riding Razzle's back and quriks an eyebrow) Well, this is an interesting turn of events.

Vaggie: (groans) Charlie randomly turned into a three year old. We're trying to figure out how to turn her back.

Alastor: (grin widens and turns more menacing) And who will be watching her in that time?

Lucifer: Uh, I literally raised her once already. I think I can manage watching her for a few days while we figure out what's going on.

Vaggie: No offense, Sir, but I think you should put your efforts into figuring out how to turn Charlie back. You have the most magic experience out of all of us.

Lucifer: (Morningstar Puppy Eyes and whimpers like a kicked puppy)

Vaggie: (after building an immunity due to living with Charlie for three years) No. You're working on finding a cure.

Lucifer: (huffs) Fine. (adjusts his hat sassily) You've just fallen from Awesome Future Daughter-In-Law to Moderate Future Daughter-In-Law.

Vaggie: (rolls her eyes) I'll go with you to that rubber duck expo next week if you can figure out how to turn Charlie back.

Lucifer: With the fluffy duckie jam-jams?!

Vaggie: Ugh! Yes! With the duckie pajamas! But you have to get Charlie turned back before then.

Lucifer: Deal! Ho! (does the CA-CHING arm move) I'll have this figured out by the end of the day! Best! Future! Daughter-In-Law! EVER!!! (poofs away in red and gold glitter)

Alastor: Well, now that we have that settled. I'll take young Charlie until then.

Vaggie: The fuck you are!!!

Alastor: Oh? And were you going to watch her? I happen to be wonderful with children!

Vaggie: I've managed to do just fine so far?

Kid Charlie & Razzle: (accidentally ram into the couch) Ow..../ Baaaa...

Alastor: Ah, yes. The epitome of maternal instinct... Or should I say, the poster child for contraception? Leave the nurturing to the professionals, darling, unless you're aiming for 'World's Worst Babysitter' award.

Vaggie: (growls as her eyes glow and her bow turns into horns)

Kid Charlie: (hears the jab, sees Vaggie being super pissed and the self-conscious of her capabilities swirling underneath her bravado, and growls as she runs on all fours towards Allastor; dutifully headbutting him in the shin with her horns) BAAAAAAAP!!!!

Alastor: Ouch! My shin!

Kid Charlie: (stomps Alastor's ankle for good measure)

Alastor: Gah! My fucking ankle!

Kid Charlie: (stomps her foot and points at Alastor with a surprising air of authority) Don't be mean to the pwetty lady!!! (turns to Vaggie as her horns disappear and makes grabby motions) Uppies, Ms. Pwetty Lady, pweeeease?

Vaggie: Pfft! (stops the bout of laughter bubbling in her chest and picks up Charlie, cradling her on her hip) Yeah, Alastor. Be nice to the pwetty lady. And you shouldn't be swearing in front of children. (turns to Charlie) Thank you, sweetie. (kisses Charlie's cheek in a maternal way)

Kid Charlie: Tehehehehehehe! (continues to giggle and blush while acting bashful and hiding her face)

[radical-revolution]

When flowing water...meets with obstacles on its path, a blockage in its journey, it pauses. It increases in volume and strength, filling up in front of the obstacle and eventually spilling past it...

Do not turn and run, for there is nowhere worthwhile for you to go. Do not attempt to push ahead into the danger... emulate the example of the water: Pause and build up your strength until the obstacle no longer represents a blockage.

— Thomas F. Cleary, I Ching: The Book of Change

[lmk-oc-competition]

LMK OC COMPETITION - ROUND 2

click to see full image

Yin and Yang belongs to @tacoelmo

Yue belongs to @kirbysdreamlands

Learn more about them below the cut!

Yin and Yang

Yin and Yang was created by Zou Yan, an alchemist who named the way of a school teaching as their first mentions was from a poem of cosmic harmony from a verse of Shin Ching, a 6th century BCE collection of poems.  Before, Yin and Yang were mentioned again.  Some people believe Yin and Yang were born from the chaos when the universe was first created and believed to exist in harmony in the center of the earth.  After [unknown] BCE, Yin and Yang finally obtained a form they can have after many centuries of alignments building up now, depending on those alignments to keep their form stable. 

Yue:

this is my sweetheart of a LMK OC, Yue! They’re a jumpy, finicky young baker who works with their adopted moms’ shop “The Burrow,” a bakery and sweets shop who specializes in moon cakes! What they lack on self-confidence, they make up for in being a huge sweetheart, sensitive but loyal and caring to their friends to a fault.

They’re also the kid between Chang’e and Hou Yi, kept a secret away from the Celestial Realm, and gifted to their moms after praying for a child, both parties wishing for them to have a normal and kind life on Earth.

The powers (and horrors) catch up eventually though. They're my sweet cheese, my good time bun! 🐇

[gatheringbones]

shannon perez-darby, from the secret joy of accountability: self-accountability as a building block for change, from the revolution starts at home, edited by ching-in chen, jai dulani, & leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha, 2011

[secretgamergirl]

How a Computer Works - Part 2 (Logic and Memory)

For those coming in late, I am writing a text-only explainer of how a computer works, starting from the absolute basics of running a current through various electronic components. We covered that much, and the reasons I'm doing this, back in part 1, where we also sort of left off on a glib little cliffhanger about how once you have logic gates, you're there, right? Well the thing of it is, getting to a point where you can easily make all the basic logic gates actually was really huge, historically, because the next big step to making a computer was already handled by weird math nerds hundreds of years before the physical hardware to make a computer was properly available.

As far back as 1705, math nerds were publishing papers on binary math. That was based on nerding out over the I Ching if you really want to trace things back, and the first time anyone really sat down and tried to build purely mechanical computers was back in the 1800s they had this all figured out to the point where I'm looking at a diagram from Ada Lovelace in 1842 that definitely covers more than I'm going to get to here. So, let's start catching up there. First though, as always, I have to remind you this blog is basically my job right now, and I'm dependent on some percentage of the people reading these posts to go throw me some money on patreon to continue to be alive, so I can write stuff like this.

Logic Gates

We talked earlier about the actual physical components needed to physically build a computer, at least of the sorts we've been using for the past hundred years or so. But really, all you need to make a computer is logic gates, a way to plug values in them, and a way for them to show some sort of output. We're doing that with clever tricks to make conditional electrical connections, but you can use anything, really. Clockwork, falling water, migratory crabs stepping on pressure plates, groups of people agreeing to poke each other's shoulders, or just mathing it all out on paper. All you really need is a consistent way to set up all the fundamental logic gates... and math nerds will note that there's a couple you can build all the others from if you're in a real bind.

So let's go over them again real quick. All of these take two inputs and give an output. We can call those inputs "on or off" "flowing or still" "yes or no" "true or false" or of course the popular "1 or 0." In terms of a computer, as we build them, the first option for the inputs is "if I follow the electrons getting pulled this way all the way down, I'm going to hit a big relatively positive charge" and our output is going to (hopefully) lead towards a big negative charge so we'll have a complete circuit and lights will like and all that. Again, we are going to just ignore how the actual movement of electrons is totally doing the opposite of what we're calling "input" and "output" here. You could build logic components where things really move the way that makes intuitive sense but... we didn't, and we're stuck with that.

So the first and easiest gate we have is the OR gate. An OR gate takes its two inputs, and it's looking for at least one that's on/yes/true/1 whatever you want to call it, and if it has that, it's going to pass it along as it's output. So like, we've got two wires coming in, if either or both is connected to a positive charge, we're passing that connection along, maybe through an LED so it can light up and she how cool we are on the way to a negative charge, but if neither connects to a positive, we're not lighting our light, so, we're passing along off/no/false/0. Simple. Gonna stick to just saying 1 and 0 past here for reasons of laziness. So, 0+0=0, 1+0=1, etc. But maybe we don't use + because that gets confusing with actual addition. So we'll just say 0 or 0 outputs 0. 1 or 0 outputs 1. 0 or 1 outputs 1. 1 or 1 outputs 1.

Then we've got AND gates. Here we pass along our 1 or whatever you want to call it if and only if both our inputs are 1. Just one or the other isn't going to cut it, it's gotta be both. 0&0 outputs 0. 1&0 outputs 0. 0&1 outputs 0. 1&1 outputs 1.

Then we've got the oddball of XOR, or exclusive or. If it wasn't a bunch of STEM people naming these we'd probably say like, "either" vs. "and/or" but this is for when we want exactly one of our inputs to be 1, not both. So, 0 xor 0 outputs 0. 1 xor 0 outputs 1. 0 xor 1 outputs 1. 1 xor 1 outputs 0.

Then we've got the evil twins of those, NOR, NAND, and XNOR. These give the exact opposite outputs their N-less cousins do. 0 nor 0 outputs 1. 1 nor 0 outputs 0. 0 nor 1 outputs 0. 1 nor 1 outputs 0. NAND outputs a 1 any time it isn't getting two 1s. XNOR is particularly badly named since it's outputting a 1 if and only if its inputs are the same as each other and "SAME" would both make more sense and have the same number of characters, but conventions are what they are.

Anyway, point is, if we can construct these six things and string them together, we have all our bases covered on every sort of behavior we could possibly want in terms of taking two inputs and spitting out an output, but the only immediately obvious use case there is if you want to hook multiple light switches up to control a single bulb in various ways and really screw with people trying to figure out what's up when they enter a room and flip a switch, right?

Well, we could also throw some diodes in and branch off from each switch into multiple gates controlling multiple lights with different switch combinations with each bulb following different logic. Especially when you remember that we can use the output of any given gate as the input to another, but what about something actually useful?

The Incredible Power of the S-R Latch

So... here's an actually useful thing we can do. We can store a value for later by looping it in with itself. Check it out, they call this sucker a set-reset, or S-R Latch, and all we need is to take two NOR gates, branch a wire off the output of each, and cross that over to be an input of the other NOR gate. So gate A is taking what we're going to call our Set wire as one input, and gate B's output as the other, and gate 2's going to take what we're going to call our Reset wire, and the output from gate 1. So uh, what does that do?

Well, let's do the math here. If we're just feeding 0s into S and R, then gate A is getting a 0 and let's say, for now, a 0. It's a NOR gate, so feeding in two 0s outputs a 1. So... gate B is getting a 0 from R, and 1 from gate A, so yeah, it was in fact putting out a 0. Hooray, that guess was right, nothing funky's going on here.

Now just for kicks, let's hold down a button for a second to connect to something and make S a 1. OK, NOR gate A now has a 1 and a 0, so it's outputting a 0... and gate B is taking that 0 and the 0 it had from R, so, it's a 1 now, and that 1 goes back to gate A, so gate A has two 1s, which doesn't change how it's putting out a 0 so, no further changes to keep track of there.

Well cool, let me just let go of this button then. Oh well NOW instead of getting a 1 and a 1, NOR gate A is getting a 0 and a 1... but whatever, it's still outputting 0. It's gonna keep outputting a 0 unless it has two 1s after all, that's what a NOR gate does, and uh... huh. It's kinda stuck now isn't it. Doesn't matter if S is a 0 or a 1, gate A is stuck outputting a 0 and gate B is stuck outputting a 1! Gate B is the output we care about here if that wasn't clear. We've rigged it up so that yeah, if there's ever a point where S gets pulled positive/set true/set to 1/turns on, that output gets stuck as the same, and the only way to get it back to a 0 is to go and put a 1 into R. The whole thing's symmetrical so we shouldn't have to step through all this. A ends up outputting 1, so B ends up outputting 0, and R no longer matters.

Well that's all pretty cool, but hey, just to be thorough, what happens if we put a 1 on both S and R at the same time? Well, if A was outputting 1 B gets two 1s, so it outputs a 0 to A, so that's a 1 and 0 for A so it gives B a 0 so B gives A a 1 so A gives B a 0 so... oh we broke it didn't we! In pure logic land this is some sort of paradox. In real life there aren't really any 0s and 1s just wires at different charges and components that don't work right when those aren't steadily in certain ranges so... it resolves SOMEHOW but uh... let's maybe avoid this whole situation.

The S-R latch sucks! Let's make a D flip-flop!

Well one simple thing we can do is have another input wire in the mix, we call it Enable, and we AND it with S and R before we send them into the latch so a 1 can only get in there if we give it the green light. That seems like a good sort of design to use with everything we do with these gates actually. When a wire's going towards a cool setup let's AND it with an enable signal that has to have a 1 or else it's going to stay giving a 0, keep it from getting up to anything. Maybe more than one enabler even.

You know what else would be nice though? If we didn't need two to send a 1 down one wire to store a 1, and a 1 down another to store a 0. If we're doing this whole Enable signal thing and making sure nothing happens otherwise, what if we just like, branched off our set wire, ran that through an inverter, and put that into R? That'd just make it so we can have some sort of Data line with whatever value on it, and whenever we turn on Enable it gets stored, right? Now it's a D latch.

Plus we're never going to have a 1 on both of those inputs, right? Well see, this is one of those situations where we have to deal with the whole perfect logic of 0s and 1s thing doesn't quit fit with reality. It takes SOME time for that inverter to invert (and technically some time for signals to travel along these wires, but less when there aren't neat components). So turns out if you have a wire branch out, send one end through an inverter, then plug both into say an AND gate, every time you change what's on that wire there's going to be this super short little burst of a 1 coming out of that AND. That's very inconvenient for us right now, but it's a cool hacky trick to have in our pocket if we ever want to time something to just do something real quick at the very moment the voltage on a wire shifts from low to high.

We can pull the same sort of trick with a capacitor then a resistor going to a low. Also I should never say "at the very moment." There's values on all these components and mathematical relationships, and when you're really building these things and needing precision timing (because with a computer we want things happening in a very specific order, but VERY FAST) you need to actually do that math. And you know, it's actually very handy for out purposes of avoiding that 1 on both inputs issue if we do something like that, so OK, new design from the top here just for a clean visualization:

We've got a line with our clock signal (I'll get to that in a moment). We run that through the capacitor-resistor-to-negative setup to get this quick little pulse every time the clock line ticks up to positive. Now we split that out to AND gates A and B. We've also got a Data line, it's gonna have whatever. We also split that off, one line going to gate A, the other going through an inverter and into gate B. AND gate A's output goes into an input for NOR gate A, along with the output from NOR gate B. AND gate B's output goes into NOR gate B along with NOR gate A's output. You can wrap all that up in a little box now and so long as we remember to make changes to that data line out of sink with the rising edge of our clock signal, this all works super great. Change the data, pulse the clock, data gets latched in to our new thing we're calling a D flip-flop. We've got a wire coming out the other end from NOR gate B's output that's just gonna hold whatever value until the next time the clock pulses and we check our input again, and we can use AND gates to skip the check if we don't want to read a new value in, or don't want to send that new value off somewhere else.

What's this about a clock?

OK, so, we want our computer to do stuff. Our computer can really only ever do one thing at a time, because the only thing it can really do is latch values into setups like we have above and messing with two inputs being positive can make logic gates go screwy. So like we already did with the D flip-flop we can totally time things along the rising and falling edges of a charge flipping constantly between high and low values, and time everything off that. And we don't even need to do any extra work for that because it JUST SO HAPPENS that smart people worked this all out before any of your fancy transistors were even a thing and the electricity comes right out of your wall in this neat sine wave pattern that peaks 50 or 60 times a second depending what part of the world you're in on the assumption that any electronics that need any sort of timing can work with that.

And I mean that actually is true but screw that we're building a computer. We rig something up to convert that to DC and then we pump that into a chunk of quartz or something. See there's this thing called the piezoelectric effect where the structure of certain kinds of crystals makes them change shape when you run electricity through them then snap back and release it. So you grow a quartz crystal exactly how you want it and lock it up in a little box and run electricity through it, and it'll start twitching away in there at a speed dependent on the voltage, and you just hook in another wire and you get these nice steady alternating high low pulses. Or something close enough to that anyway.

And we're "reading values in" and "passing them along" how?

So we talked about enable lines before right? Like with our D flip-flop there, where we ended up only committing changes to what was latched in when there was a clock pulse? It's easy enough to just have more AND gates for more conditions. Like let's say for the sake of argument and convenient numbers we set up, oh, 8 of those D flip-flops. They each have their own data line, they're sharing a clock, and we're throwing another AND in on the clock line to a shared Read Enable line. We have a 0 there, nothing's going to happen. We have a 1, things will happen when the clock pulses, specifically we latch in whatever's on the data line. Now let's also have an Output Enable line, and we'll AND that in with the output of every flip-flop, and in the interest of being lazy, let's have each flip-flop's output just loop back and connect to it's own data input line... maybe have some diodes in there so it's a one way loop, we probably have some in here but you know, best practices.

Anyway let's take some really really long and we'll call these our bus lines. Each of our 8 data line connects to a bus line. Elsewhere in the computer, anywhere else we're going to have data sitting around in fact, those also connect to these 8 bus lines. We might have a set of 8 flip-flops to hold some set of data for just a little bit, or for a long time, or connected to some switches or buttons, or just some LEDs or other kind of output, whatever. Everything connects to the bus, and everything has enable lines to pull in whatever values are on the bus and to push out whatever onto the bus. We definitely don't want have more than one thing trying to push stuff out at a time, we also definitely want to do that whole pull-down resistor thing to make sure everything on the bus defaults to 0 if we aren't feeding in a 1, and we probably don't want to be reading from the bus at the exact moment the data on it is changing as a best practices thing, ideally, but oh, quick sidetrack there.

Let's say we have some a clump of these flipflops, we call that register A, we have another we call register B, and we build some little module that treats what's in both of those like an 8 bit number and adds them together, we call the output of that our sum register. And say we get lazy, we leave the sum register's output enabled, A's input enabled, and we've just go 00000001 stored in B. Now every time the clock pulses and updates our math function, the sum increases by 1, feeds right back into A, and the whole thing ends up counting up at the speed of the clock. There's simpler ways to make something count up, but, hey it's a thing you can do. And a thing you probably don't want to do, so don't leave those pins enabled all over.

In fact, if you really wanted to be safe, you'd maybe want to just like put a pull-down on every enable line and have them all lead to a big control zone where you're just sitting there holding a live positive wire in your hand and touching it to whatever one thing you want enabled at a time. Seems like a pain though.

Why not use an addressing system?

OK, so how about this? What if we organize everything so we've got like, our big longterm memory area, and we have a bunch of these registers of a flip-flop for every line on the bus, and then instead of a simple enable pin for each register, we have a unique little access code for each? Let's have oh... 4 dedicated data lines just for managing these, right? So one of these is oh, memory address 1001. So we just have lines carrying those values, and we XNOR those with our address lookup lines, then we AND all those together, and use THAT for our enable.

I already covered how XNOR makes way more sense if we just call it SAME instead, right? We're only going to pass a 1 to the set of ANDs at the end if we've got a 1 and we're getting another 1, or we've got a 0 and we're getting another 0, and if we pass a single 0 to the ANDs, they clam up and don't enable things, but if we pass the whole value, we're in.

We can use a similar address coding thing to activate cool little function models too. Like that thing I mentioned in the tangent for doing addition? We have some operation code to enable to output on whatever memory register has a number we care about and make register A in that math module read it in. Another to plug a value into B. Another to output the sum to some memory address we want to store it in. We can set it up so these get checked for if someone sets toggle switches corresponding to the code and locks it in with an enable button, or hey, we can set up one of those big blocks of addressed memory, lay the whole sequence of actions we want out in that in sequential addresses, and then just have some function that adds 1 to itself every clock cycle as a line counter, and enable the outputs of our program counter to dump out those stored commands out to our opcode and memory address lines when their number gets called at the deli, as it were. Hey, make one of the commands write to the program stepper and it can even skip around.

And... there you go. That's how a computer works. There's more stuff I could, and probably could cover, like how to rig up a program counter and an addition module and maybe some sort of real output display. Not to mention how to actually, practically, compress all of this into a reasonable space so you don't just have a few thousand transistors soldered together in a giant tangle with the nightmare of keeping contacts from touching. I'll probably get to at least some of that in some future part 3. In the meantime, I learned most of what I'm sharing here by actually for real building my own computer using a kit and series of instructional videos from eater.net which is just the homepage of some cool guy who, yeah, posts long explainer videos on this stuff and sells electronics kits you can follow along with. I don't have any advertising deal going here or anything, he's just genuinely a good extra source of info for getting your head around this stuff. And again, if you thought this was a cool read or you're just feeling generous, throw me a little money maybe?

CONTINUED IN PART 3