#equally destructive mind you

[meirimerens]

I've only now noticed Eva Yan's scars on your drawings of her, is there any story or headcanon behind them?

keeping it real babygirl [gender neutral] the story is that this woman canonically kills herself, canonically contemplates suicide, quite explicitly mentioning the method she intents on using to you (with implications that she has, at the very least, thought about it/thought it through before), and lives with broken mirrors so she cannot (/doesn't have to) see her face like i just think She Is Mentally Unwell. like as a long-term, enduring, persistent thing, She Is Mentally Unwell and the plague is just worsening her condition, while it didn't cause it. the storey/headcanon is that she is mentally ill, openly and canonically has self-destructive tendencies, so. the scars are here because she lives with a lil something something in her mind which drives her to plenty of destructive acts in ways big and small. ywkim

[sleepless-crows]

rick saying this is just wrong

[supercutszns]

bitter to the taste; luke castellan

series masterlist

wc + pairing: 5.5k, luke castellan x f!reader

synopsis: a sharp blade, a black eye, and (more than) two kisses.

warnings: this is even sluttier than the last one, language, sword fighting, sharp objects, blood/injuries, reader is still a horrible person and so is luke but he's also a loooser, making out, allusions/mentions of sex but no super explicit descriptions, kind of fluffy at the end

notes: i’m starting to hate this bc i think i’ve been staring at it too long sorry if this is not as good as pt.1 but i have plans for this series ok. also READER AND LUKE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE!!! THEIR RELATIONSHIP WILL NOT ALWAYS BE GOOD!!! THEY SUCK!! they are also not real but keep that in mind :) synopsis inspired by crush by ethel cain; designated song for this fic is unpunishable by ethel cain (i’ve got a whole chronological playlist for these freaks like it’s serious)

You’ve always had a taste for violence. And an equally powerful penchant for sloth. 

You prefer to watch the carnage, not participate. It satisfies something inside you that you know, if it wasn’t for your laziness, could cause something irrevocable. Who the hell has time for that?. You’d rather lie back and watch instead.

This flaw of yours is the only reason you haven’t stirred more trouble, you think. It’s the reason you never attend camp games or sparring lessons. Sometimes, when you do, a dark muscle flexes inside your heart to curl out of its slumber, forming a hunger you don’t have otherwise. The second it starts to pry you have to rear yourself back and tuck the monster in. Banish the need for something more.

You don’t want to feed it. You don’t know what happens if you do. So you let other people do the feeding for you.

Luke cuts through two dummy heads in one swoop. It’s fucking gorgeous. The moon reflects off his sword, a silver sheen casting his face when he’s in the right spot. His brows are set, eyes so dark they blend with the night. Every motion is ruthless. Satisfying. 

You don’t know how many times you’ve watched him like this. He called you out for it last night, but you’re sure he doesn’t know the half of it. The shadows are a sacred cloak to you, and you wait inside them until you want your presence known. 

Meet me tomorrow. 

It runs through your head like a broken record. You can still feel his breath on your lips and your neck is still tender—had to wear a sweater in the blazing heat to hide the marks. Since you were created you’ve accepted a universal truth about yourself: you don’t harbour affection for anyone or anything. There’s not a single thing you’ve felt drawn to or protective over but yourself. It’s solitary, yes, and lonely, yes, but that’s the way you’re supposed to be. 

But you think about last night. You think about the moments between the kisses and the rush. When he teased you against your ear. When his hand brushed a certain spot on your back and something much lighter fluttered inside of you. When you crawled into sleep and thought about him, those were the moments that struck you the strangest. 

His gaze pans over the treeline every once in a while, the anger diluted. Then it comes back twice as hard as he shreds another dummy to pieces. 

He’s waiting for you. Oh, this is rich! A better person would probably turn around and go spoon their offerings into the bonfire the second they understand what they’re doing is incredibly destructive. But who are we kidding? You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. 

So you take a step forward, slip out of the comfort of the dark, and the next time he looks to the treeline he knows you’re there. He can’t see you, but he knows. 

You wait. His strikes are less tenuous, much smoother. It almost makes you laugh. Some fucking showman he is. 

Eventually, he buries his blade in the dirt and wipes his brow. “Are you gonna come talk to me or are you gonna stare at me all night like an owl?”

You relish in the feeling of shedding the darkness, coming into the light of the moon. “Hi,” you say flatly, but there’s a tiny smile on his face when he sees you that almost puts you off. 

“Hello, rotten.” He tries to lean on the hilt of his sword but it isn’t quite tall enough so he stumbles. It’s so pathetic it almost makes you laugh. 

“Don’t call me that,” you grimace.

“Okay, back to heathen?”

“Don’t call me that either.”

“Well, you don’t seem too happy when people call you by your name so pick your poison here.” 

You don’t say anything, your mouth set in a scowl. “All right, both it is,” Luke shrugs.

He’s different from last night. Less impatient. You hope it’s not because he thinks he has you now—he’s got another thing coming. “I almost thought you weren’t gonna come,” he says with a crooked grin, neither bashful nor ashamed. 

You’ve made your way closer to him, the soft grass turning to dusty earth. “Don’t know why I did,” you mutter crassly. 

Having abandoned his sword, Luke chuckles wryly. “Yes, you do.”

That bitterness he hides from everyone else pierces through. He tilts your face up like he did yesterday, the press of his fingers beneath your chin almost burning you. You know he’s peering at the marks on your neck. 

“If you made me come here just to hook up with me you’re delusional,” you glare. 

“What, like that’s not why you’re here?” He pushes your face up a little higher, grinning a little when you add resistance. “I’m a gentleman, you know. I can be patient.”

This guy is full of fucking shit.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” you snipe. The only point of contact you have is his hand on your chin, but you’re a hair’s breadth away from having everything else. The air drifting between you is almost palpable, shrinking smaller and smaller like it’s terrified of being trapped between you.

He keeps your face still. He’s studying you, and you’re suddenly curious about what he sees. You remember all those looks you’d share at the dinner tables that made this happen in the first place. What did he see then? 

“You wanna fight?”

It takes you a second to react. “What?”

“You want to fight. Pick up a sword, let’s go.” He smiles as he finally lets you go, waltzing away from you to unbury his sword from the dirt. His touch permeates through your skin and you hate it. 

“What the fuck are you talking about? I can’t fight.”

“Sure you can,” he replies, grabbing another sword from the training rack. “You need to burn off a little steam.”

You laugh sharply. “And you think me waving a sword around is gonna do that?”

“Uh, yeah,” he grins. “It’s the method that lets us keep the most clothes on.” 

You glare at him. His smirk is a mile wide. The way your stomach is simmering almost makes you sick; it’s like gorging yourself on candy except this time the candy has a sword and maybe wants to fuck you. 

You just watch as he hands you his sword, and the moonlight glinting off the metal has you believing it’s not the kind used for training. “I’ll use the dull one,” he assures. “C’mon, heathen. I know you’ve used a sword before, they force us to.”

“I usually skip those classes.”

He laughs. You can’t tell if it’s at you or with you. “Of course you do.”

You don’t like following orders, but oh, what the hell. Luke knows something about you, just like you know something about him. You’re only a little curious about it. 

“Straighten your back,” is the first thing he says once you’ve taken your stance across from him. The blunt of his sword reaches out to tap your hip. 

You begrudgingly do as you’re told. He watches you mirthfully, and the press of his sword against you starts to feel like a substitute for his hand. All the closeness you’re hungry for, dampened by cold steel. It still makes you buzz. 

He gives you the barebones—the right grip, how to maneuver, the proper balance. But long gone is his easy disposition. The motor inside him that powered all those dummy beheadings and disembowelments is running again, except this time it’s for you. He wants a fight. This is his battlefield. All right, you’ll bite.

You start to spar with the skill of an overgrown toddler. The sword feels like an unnatural ligament hanging off your body. Luke is precise, convicting, far more enthusiastic than you. “You can do better than that,” he prods after your swords clash lazily for the billionth time. “Stop going easy.”

“You’re going easy,” you shoot back. 

“Yeah, but I’d really rather not. Come on.” 

There’s a moment of hesitation. You think about that dark thing you keep harboured. A muscle aching to be used. 

“Come on,” he says again, and he almost sounds pissed. “All of a sudden you’re playing nice? What are you afraid of?”

Something flares inside you. “Nothing!”

“Then pick up the sword and fight me.”

You huff and roll your eyes, but your next swing is far more inspired. Luke blocks it easily, but you don’t care. “There we go,” he nods. “Again.”

This is more than you bargained for when you decided to come see him. All you want is to make out with this hot, awful person and have him tell you hot, awful things about yourself you probably already know. Why do you have to fight to get it? 

He keeps provoking you no matter how hard you try. Your temper picks up the more you swing, discordant clangs bruising the air, but it’s still not enough. Luke doesn’t let up. Of course the one time you try to be nice, you’re not allowed to. On second thought, why are you reigning yourself in for Luke? The only other person in camp with a real, consuming viciousness? If anything you should hit him twice as hard, since he’s so sure he can take it. 

“No wonder you’re so angry all the time,” Luke heaves out, and it gives you a swell of satisfaction. “You don’t have a proper outlet. Maybe you’d be nicer if you didn’t sit around and complain all day.”

“Shut up,” you gnash your teeth. 

“Just saying, maybe you should do something about it.”

You’re getting lost in the rhythm of the swords, the adrenaline, the sweat passing the scar on his cheek. Every swing you think less and less, and that dark muscle flexes more and more. It feels like home to you. Like a good meal. Your bones ache and the world has darkened, but that rotten pit inside you cracks open in full bloom. 

Luke keeps egging you on but you can’t hear him. Not like he still needs to. You think you’re smiling, or huffing furiously, or both. The sharpness of the sword intrigues you. A million terrible things reflect off its blade and you imagine them, all at once, until you are out of your body and the black hole inside you has properly wedged itself open. 

Luke jabs at you and you bring your sword down with a vengeance. But it’s a little too low. You only notice when he drops his weapon to the side and staggers back.

The fog of violence falters. It fades almost completely when he hisses long and hard, eyes screwed shut, and you see the tear in his shirt. In his skin. 

“Shit,” you say. “Fuck.”

You don’t sound sorry, you don’t think you are sorry, especially when he laughs. It’s a wheezy one through his teeth as you come up to him, but a laugh nonetheless. “Knew you were going easy,” he remarks through a wince. 

You ignore him, looking down at the injury. A  gash across his abdomen. It’s bleeding a little, but not enough for it to drip. You did that. Just looking at the blood, you feel the bitter taste of it in your mouth, the reward a temporary hunger for carnage brought you. This is why you don’t play camp games. 

“I’ve got thick skin. I’m fine,” Luke says casually. “I’ve got a medical kit under that tree over there in case I beat myself up too bad.” He’s no longer scrunched in pain, and you’ve got a feeling he’s telling the truth. So you go fetch the kit where he said it was. You need to wrap that slash. Not because you’re sorry for him, but because looking at it makes you angry. 

You kneel and pop the lid of the small tin kit, covered in dirt. It’s mostly gauze and bandages. Rubbing alcohol too. “Just give me the gauze, that’s all I need,” Luke gestures. 

“Shut the fuck up, I’m doing it myself.” You’ve already torn off some gauze, sitting all the way up on your knees. 

“Most people just say sorry.”

“You pushed me,” you spit back, surprisingly forceful. Luke’s smile drops. You take a deep breath, adjusting yourself to get eye level with the injury. “I told you I don’t fight.”

You’re not sure what makes Luke give in, but he doesn’t say a word as you lift the hem of his torn shirt and he holds it up. There’s no proud remark about your eyes lingering on his stomach, or the hesitation in your hands. You stare at the wound. It really is shallow. Your thumb presses at the skin around it and he winces. “My bad,” you mutter. 

As you sterilize the cut and wrap the gauze around his torso, you try not to let your fingertips cling to the warmth on his skin. You try not to notice the other scars littered there, most faded to the point they should be impossible to pick up even in the sun. It’s obvious he’s staring at you. Your neck is crawling with warmth. But you don’t engage, you just wrap the gauze a few times and do your best not to notice the rise and fall beneath his muscles as he breathes. Then you fasten things neatly and put everything away so you can get up. Any second. Come on. 

“Good?” You ask instead, exhaling. 

“Good,” he affirms. He slides a hand under your forearm and gets you up. It stays there once you’re standing. The night stills. 

“I’m guessing you’re adding ‘attempted killer’ to your list of horrible qualities,” you go on to break the silence.

He holds your gaze unyieldingly. “I’d consider that a pro, actually.” 

You are entirely fed up with this drawn out evening, but you can’t bring yourself to speed anything up any more than stepping closer so your chests brush. “I will give you one, though,” he continues, craning down to your ear. You smell his skin and it sends you back to the position you were in yesterday. 

He finally kisses your jaw, just once, then your neck. You shiver. “You’re too tense.” Another kiss behind your ear. It’s not enough. “Do you even know how to have fun?���

“I don’t want to have fun,” you reply bitterly. I just want to make out with you, asshat.

Luke’s breath frosts over your face when he chuckles, but before he can get any further away you catch his mouth with yours. Almost instinctively his arm winds around you to pull you in closer, your hand looping through his curls. It's a relief, knowing last night wasn't some freak accident. This does feel good, actually, and it can happen. Everything you felt yesterday is only more urgent now, hungrier, and you're pretty sure the way you kiss him gives that away.

He indulges you, squeezing the base of your hips as his other hand thumbs across the marks on your neck. This is so fucking embarassing—you think you whine when he bites down on your bottom lip. You’ve never needed something this bad, you’ve never needed anything. But you press yourself as close to him as you can manage and his hand runs lower, slips against your inner thighs, and it’s difficult to worry about anything else. 

Until he pulls away. Like a dick. 

He doesn’t go far, his forehead pressed to yours, but you feel like pulling out all his hair. It’s a muddling mix of frustration and longing you’re starting to associate with him. “Dude,” you groan, an inner coil only starting to unwind begrudgingly compressing. 

“Let’s go for a swim,” he says. The enthusiasm is almost alarming. Almost makes him look younger.

You’re homicidal. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes, heathen. Let’s go for a swim, come on.”

He’s rubbing circles on your thigh, which only makes you want to strangle him. “But I—I don’t have my bathing suit,” you string out. 

The smile gets more boyish. “Wow, whatever shall we do?”

It’s another challenge. Another dare. And he knows what you want, fucking jerk. You’re going to kill him. 

“Fine,” you grunt, and the second the words leave your lips you’re pulled to the lake. 

It’s a warm, sticky evening, only made worse with the sweat and the half-assed kissing, so the water doesn’t seem all that bad. Unfortunately, you don’t like giving into demands. So you stare ghoulishly at your fingernails as Luke tosses off his ripped shirt and his shorts so he can plunge into the lake. “Aren’t you going to at least come in?” He asks, but you don’t look at him. 

“I don’t like swimming,” you lie. 

“At least your feet. It’s nice, I swear!”

A splash, like smoke moving through wind chimes. You look up and Luke has completely submerged, popping his head up closer to the mouth of the dock. “Please,” he says with such conviction your resolve turns to butter. Gods, what is happening to you? You still need that lobotomy! 

You sigh, roll your eyes, turn your back to him. “Fuck this,” you mutter under your breath. You undress to your undergarments and you’re not sure if you want Luke to be watching or not. The moon touches your bare skin and a chill trickles through you. 

You take a seat at the edge of the dock, knees tucked to your chest. Luke swims over for you right away. His hair is dripping against his skin, and you hate how beautiful it looks. The waterline is high tonight, almost ridiculously so, so he props his elbows up on the dock with no problem. “Come in,” he urges. 

“No.”

“Just your legs?”

“No.”

“Gods, I’ll make it worth it, just throw your damn legs in!” 

Your eyebrows shoot up. His face is stubbornly pink. Oh, so now he wants something. You take your time uncurling yourself and Luke wades away from the dock so you can put your feet in. The water goes up to your calves, and you shiver. “So fucking difficult,” he mutters, and your pulse flickers. 

“Sorry, what was that?” You let yourself grin for the first time all night. 

“Nothing,” he hums. This time when he comes to the dock, he wraps his hands around your calves. You’re pretty sure he can stand here because he stops treading. The warmth of the water seems to spread further, long past the threshold of your knees. 

He rests his chin just above your knee, water pooling on your skin. “Stop dripping on me,” you complain. 

“Sorry.” He fake pouts when he kisses the damp spot. You see, ever so faintly, a diabolic shift in his expression. He nudges your leg with the point of his nose, then kisses it, then starts to move it aside. “Feel bad about teasing you all night,” he murmurs, still with an edge. He presses more kisses on your legs. “I really did want to see you.”

The irony that he’s still teasing is not lost on you. You’re not loving how desperately warm you’re starting to feel. “Why’s that?” You lean back on your palms. 

“You’re a very interesting person,” he quips innocently. His hands are cupping the backs of your calves. He’s pulled you a lot closer to the water, and somehow you’ve just noticed. Another blistering kiss on the inside of your thigh. 

“You’re fucking evil,” you scathe. 

He looks up at you from between your legs. “You have literally done nothing but berate and injure me this whole evening.”

“Yeah, and right after I patch you up you jump in the water for shits. You’re playing infection roulette, Castellan.”

“See? You’re so mean.” He sighs, and in a move that almost surprises you to death, he hoists both your legs over his shoulders and they dangle into the river behind him. “And here I am anyway, making it up to you.”

You are suddenly illuminated on the purpose of this situation. Why Luke is between your legs. Your heart jolts. “Luke, you can’t be serious.” 

“Mmhm.” He leans forward to kiss right under your navel. 

You hate how much you want him to do it again, how your body burns, but you avert your eyes. “Someone’s gonna—someone’s gonna hear us.”

He snorts, “No they won’t. Either this or you come in the water with me. Or both. We’ll see.”

A huge smile cracks across your face before you push it back down. You’re going to spend a lot of time coming back to this moment, this night, wondering why. “What is wrong with you.”

It comes out like a compliment when it leaves you. You want to vanish. Luke chuckles, and something foreign to the both of you buzzes through the air. 

“Are you going to be nice?” He asks against your skin. 

“Are you going to be quick?”

His mouth finds your hip bones and yeah, why the hell would you say no to this? He nods, “Swear.” 

That’s all you need. You let your eyes slide shut and your head tilts towards the sky. Luke takes your permission and runs with it, pries you open with his mouth until the stars soak through the black of your eyelids. 

You discover pretty quickly neither of you are good at keeping promises. 

The next time you need Luke’s med kit, he’s already awake. 

It’s been happening more and more often. You lurking around camp past moonrise and finding Luke outside his cabin, going for a walk or a stretch or a … something with you. 

“Do you ever sleep?” You ask him sometimes between flurries of kisses with your back against a tree. 

“Could ask you the same thing, heathen,” he squeezes your hips and nips at your neck, but never answers the question. And neither do you, so you’re both okay with it. You’d hate to give up this feeling, but he doesn’t need to know that.

This is the first time in your punitive life you have felt alive. Like a person, with bones and flesh and soul, a real presence. Not a ghost of smoke and shadow. You are real. 

Fooling around makes you feel like an actual teenager. You’re young, you remember when Luke joins you in the dark. You’re having fun. His hands under your shirt and his mouth on your collarbone, the way he bites down and winces when you do something a little too well, when you string out his name and he rewards you for it. You’re both greedy, insatiable people, so there’s a push and pull only the two of you would ever be able to handle. And nobody has to know. Despite all the bruises, the sleepless nights, the swollen lips, all you and Luke share in the daylight are noxious looks, and that's only if he can find you. A perfect crime. Camp Half-Blood’s angel and the vice that lives in the shadows. But in the dark, it’s hard to tell which is which. 

“Luke,” you whisper. “Luke.”

“I’m up,” he grumbles, peering up at you. “You shouldn’t sneak into my cabin.” He was already sitting up in his bed when you slipped in, and he didn’t notice you were there till you were right in front of him.

“Worried someone will catch me? You should know better.” 

He follows you outside so you don’t wake the other campers. There’s a thrill knowing just one interaction between the two of you could ruin both your reputations forever. 

“What is it, heathen?” He asks as the door closes behind him. It’s so dark and your back is turned to him, but his voice is drenched in smugness. “You don’t usually want to put up with me more than once a night.”

“Don’t have a choice,” you mutter, staring out at the camp. You go to chew on your bottom lip, but you wince immediately. “Where’s your kit thingy? The one we used after I impaled you.” 

“You mean after you lightly grazed me?” 

“Just tell me where it is, Luke.”

Your sharpness could cut through any sleepy daze he possibly has. He’s silent behind you for a second. “Why?” He asks.

“Because I need it.”

His hand curls around your shoulder and before you can think to submerge yourself in darkness, he turns you around. When he sees you, his face breaks from something proud to something … you’re not sure you like. “Oh, heathen,” he murmurs. “What happened to you?”

You guess it’s a semi-appropriate reaction, although you expected at least a grimace. To put it lightly, your face looks gnarly as fuck. There’s a bruise on your cheekbone and your lip is split. But what really draws attention is the half-formed, garish black eye swelling up your right side. 

“Just the usual. Pissed someone off.” It hurts the skin on your lip that’s caked with blood. 

He rests his thumb on your unbruised cheek, but somehow it still stings. You know he can’t see much of you in the dark but he tries. The prolonged eye contact without the imminent promise of a kiss feels foreign. “You need to go to the Apollo cabin,” he concludes, brows pushed together. 

A laugh slips past your broken lips. “No fucking shot. They would not help me.”

“Why not?”

“Because one of their shit-eaters did this!”

The words take a moment to register. You see them filtering through Luke’s brain. He blinks absurdly. “An Apollo guy beat you up?”

“Not beat up. Just … tussled.”

“How much tussling earns you a black eye, exactly? From Apollo kids.”

“Gods, just tell me where your kit is so you can go back to fucking sleep.”

His fingertips inch around the back of your neck, thumb still against your face. “Already wasn’t sleeping. I might as well help you,” he shrugs. “I move the kit every once in a while so some other campers don’t ravage it.”

“I don’t need help.”

Luke opens his mouth, then sighs deeply. He takes a firm hold of your arm and starts to tug you along. “Hey, what—” you swat at his arm. 

“You’re ridiculous,” he huffs. “Come on.”

It’s strange. Luke’s never done you a favour before. At least not one like this. You’re disgruntled enough that you had to go ask him in the first place and now he’s dragging you around? “This isn’t such a big deal, Luke,” you badger. “I’m fine.”

“Sure, whatever. Wait right here.” He lets go of you and only then you realize you’re in front of the Apollo cabin. You grimace, and Luke must have noticed because he says, “Don’t worry, I’m just gonna go inside and grab some things. No one’s gonna jump you.”

You scowl at him, and he just laughs. A part of you hopes he hits his head on the way in. You hide anyway. 

It’s a few minutes of waiting in the oppressive summer heat, until Luke emerges from the cabin with his hands full. He looks around, hesitantly calling, “Heathen?” Then again. You move out of your hiding spot and he jogs over to greet you. 

“Nice haul,” you comment. There’s an ice pack, cotton pads, a few miscellaneous items. “How’d you get them?”

He smiles widely. “Everyone loves me, heathen. It’s not hard.”

“…So you stole them.”

“Yes, but only because I’m too tired to talk to people and I’m protesting for your sake,” he rattles off. “Now hold this ice pack before it gives me frostbite.”

The two of you make your way down to the docks again. It’s morphed into your usual meeting place, since the waves lapping at the shore mask when Luke gets a little too noisy just to piss you off. (At least that’s what he tells you.)

He’s stashed his little tin in a different tree this time. After he retrieves it he sets everything out like a chef preparing to make a meal out of gauze and rubbing alcohol. 

Your head has been throbbing for the past few hours. You’re not proud that you antagonized the wrong Apollo kid and got a shiner for it. You’re less proud that you came to Luke for help. Just like everyone else does.

“Come,” he gestures, tugging at the waistband of your pants. You scoot closer to him and swallow the weight of your pulse when he touches you. 

Luke slowly presses the ice pack to your black eye, letting you hold it. “What did you do to earn this, anyway?” He asks, head tilted to the side. 

You’re hissing because of the ice, half-consciously shifting into him. “The usual. Spat at him. Made fun of his daddy a little too much. Tripped him so he landed face-first in his offerings.”

“You did not,” Luke laments as he dots alcohol onto a cotton pad. 

“You’re allowed to say you’re proud of me, Saint Castellan. I won’t tell. You can be mean.” Your voice drips with irony, and you hope it bothers him. The flex in his jaw gives it away. 

“You’re always gonna be meaner,” is all he says back. “This is gonna hurt.”

It’s all the warning he gives before he presses the pad against your lip. The sting envelops you immediately, and your good eye squeezes shut. “Shit, ow!” 

“Stop moving your mouth.”

“Fuck,” you swear anyway. Your lip burns so hard you can feel it in your teeth. 

Luke holds your jaw with his other hand so you can’t shy away. “I’ll kiss it better,” he teases. “Almost done.”

You roll your eyes, but Luke takes the pad off a few moments later. “Serious question. How are you so awful to people all the time?”

A groan tears through your throat with such force your head tilts back. “Not you too! I don’t need a fucking reason, there is no reason. Why doesn’t anyone get that?” 

“I’m not asking why. I’m asking how.”

He’s oddly serious, the caress of his thumb on your cheek far slower. You hate it when people want a reason why you’re like this, just to help them sleep at night. But from the bags lining Luke’s eyes, sleep doesn’t seem to be on his radar. 

“I just don’t care,” you admit, shrugging. “I don’t care about any of them. I don’t care about what they can do to me. I don’t care about anything.”

“…What about the Gods?”

It makes you cock your head. “Huh?”

“You wouldn’t care about them, either?”

You think, but only about which words to use. “No,” you decide, “They don’t scare me. They’re nothing. What are they gonna do to me?”

Luke snorts, almost nervously. “Uh, punish you for saying that, for one.”

You turn back to him, ice pack leaving your eye as you gesture. “How? By killing me? Pecking out my eyeballs? Burning me alive? I’m telling you, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. It’s all just nothing to me. I’m fucking unpunishable, I’d like to see them try.” 

Huffing, you look back up at the firmament of stars. Luke says nothing. 

The grass rustles as he shifts, and his mouth ghosts over the bruise on your eye. “Unpunishable,” he murmurs, like he’s testing it out. Then he places an uncharacteristically gentle kiss just beneath your eye. And another just above. “We’ll see about that.”

You get that feeling again, the unbearable lightness in a place it shouldn’t be. Mixed with the poison lodged in your heart. 

Luke kisses you, still so delicate that you wonder if he’s been body-snatched. If anything, your bleeding lip feels soothed against his. His hands cradle your face with no ferocity at all. It seems wrong. 

“How do you feel?” He asks after pulling away, dark eyes nebulous and wide. The night usually sharpens his features. Now, they’ve been hushed.

“Um, better,” you reply. 

He hums, laying a slow trail of kisses on your jaw. “Did you at least get the other guy?” He asks between kisses. “Like, did you hurt him?”

“Not really,” you divulge, wondering if you should feel shame. 

“Why?” He’s made his way to your neck now, nudging your jaw up so he can kiss behind your ear. 

“I’m not a fighter.” And, without warning, for a reason you will never, ever be able to explain, your tongue adds, “I’m a killer.”

Your own brows furrow. Luke pauses for a moment, but knocks his nose against your neck. “Guess one of us has to be.”

There’s no more fooling around. No snappy insults, no feverish kisses, no hunger to be satiated. Luke just checks you over a few more times, hides his med kit, and you both get up to sleep. But his hand wraps around your wrist, far less firm than when he dragged you here. “Stay in my bunk, heathen,” he offers. “Leave in the morning.”

You think you’re making a mistake when you agree, but it doesn’t feel like one. 

The next day, after you’ve left Luke’s bunk, rumours float around camp that Luke Castellan accidentally butted some Apollo kid in the face with his sword during training. Caused a bloody, broken nose. Luke was very sorry, apologized profusely. 

But you know, by the way he takes you behind the stables that night, that he didn’t mean a single damn word.

luke taglist: @sunniskyies @apollos-calliope @lillycore @sunny747 @m00ng4z3r @pabkeh @thaliagracesgf @theadventuresofanartist @bonnie-tz

rotten taglist: @thaliagracesgf

leave a pm/comment/ask if you'd like to be added to a taglist :)

[brittle-doughie]

Since we had that story of Y/N Cookie wanting to keep the Ancients from going out and getting themselves killed up against Dark Enchantress Cookie, how about something similar with the Beasts?

>The Beasts get corrupted

>Y/N Cookie, not corrupted, tries to fight them, and fails

>cue them starting to die

>Beasts start panicking, completely overestimating how much Y/N Cookie could take

>Y/N Cookie, in their last moments, wishes they could’ve done more to help the Beasts not get corrupted before finally going

>Witch(es) stumble upon this scene, seeing their greatest cookie having been crumbled, along with whatever other carnage is around

>cue literally everything else

Being sealed away with the guilt of spilling jam from the cookie you all loved the most fresh on your mind? They are NOT gonna be doing so hot in there.

The Tale of the Forced Hand (The Five Beasts)

Witch’s Castle witches are pretty neat.

“The story begins when this very Silver Tree was only a small sapling…When the World of Desserts was at its infancy.”

“The Witches baked six Cookies to help them in their creation of the world.”

“..harness the radiance bestowed upon you for the betterment of this world…”

“And the six Cookies imbued with absolute powers walked Earthbread as almighty envoys of the Great Creators.”

“Knowledge, Volition, Compassion, Happiness, Change, and Solidarity.”

“The Dessert World bound by these Five Virtues was nothing short of paradise.”

Gingerbrave and Wizard Cookie chimed in with their responses.

“So those six Cookies were the original owners of the Soul Jam?”

“Huh…Those “Six Virtues” are different from those of the Soul Jams. There’s six of them, yet only five today…”

“The Virtue of Compassion is what held the other Virtues so closely together, cherishing each of them equally as much.”

“Alas, for they and the perfect age were short-lived. Absolute power begets nothing but arrogance. It inevitably corrupts its wielder, bringing them to the most tragic of ends…A fate even the Witches were unable to foresee.”

“One by one, the Five, once regarded as saviors of the Cookie World, gradually turned to Darkness. And thus, the Five Virtues, too, became distorted, twisted…reduced to Deceit, Apathy, Sloth, Destruction, and Silence….”

Strawberry Cookie shuddered in worry at the mere mention of the fallen virtues.

“Deceit, Apathy, Sloth, Destruction, and Silence..that sounds really scary…

“Wait, what about the Virtue of Compassion? They weren’t evil too, were they?”

“The Virtue of Compassion was able to prevail against their descent into Darkness with their Soul Jam, whereas now the Five Beasts, the apostles of evil, began their dark crusade…”

“The Witches asked of Compassion to protect the Cookie World from the Beast Cookies, lending them what strength they could give.”

“Compassion fought bravely against the Beasts, blocking each of their blows and resisting their sickly whispers…But it was only a matter of time before Compassion slowly began to whittle…”

———————————————————————

“Come on, snap out of you all! This isn’t what you guys once were!”

“What’s the big deal, silly willy~ There isn’t anything wrong with dabbling yourself in a little bit of Darkness, you should try it with us!”

“No! This isn’t you! You were all my best friends! Come to your senses! Now!”

“It pains me to see you still cling onto false hope that you’re different than the rest of us, darling~ Can you just let go and become who you really are? For me~?”

“I can’t…I cannot forsake my oath to protect the Cookie World. You all know that! Cookies that want happy lives, don’t you want that?”

“They will all meet the same fate in the end, reduced to nothing…the futility of all this should be clear to you…”

“As if! It isn’t pointless to live life the way you want it to! It’s how you spend it and make the most of it!”

“They will all crumble in the end, so why not give them a little push! You’re starting to really aggravate me now, Y/N Cookie!”

“I won’t let you hurt them and I don’t want to hurt you all any more then I have to! Please, don’t do this…”

“……”

“Your silence says everything I need to hear from you. I tried…but I will put a stop you no matter if I’m reduced to bits!”

———————————————————————

“Woah….What happened to them?”

“The Virtue of Compassion fought for as long as they were able, their dough slowly whittling away with every blow that dealt to them. The Beasts have overestimated just how durable their former friend was…and they perished right in the middle of the circle….”

———————————————————————

“Ok, ya silly goose! You can stand right back up now! You put on a great show, let us give you a round of applause!”

“Darling, we know we haven’t hit you too hard. You can join us and we can all be together once more as Beasts…”

“Hmm…they don’t seem to be responding to us…”

“Hey, Y/N Cookie. Quit being soft and get up already, you’re..starting to worry me a bit here, you know.”

Silent Salt Cookie knelt down and placed their thumb on your wrist…jumping back when they feel nothing…

“Ahaha! Okay! This isn’t funny anymore, you softie! You win! Stand up on your two feet now! I’ll make you if you don’t!”

“D-Darling? P-Please get up. Look, I’m sorry for what I said earlier, I-WE just really wanted you to join us…”

“Burning Spice Cookie, just how hard were your strikes to their dough?

“D-Don’t put any type of blame on me! All of you were just as rough with them as I was!”

“….!”

The Beast Cookies rushed to their fallen friend in the center, clearly distraught on their faces…

“Y/N Cookie, if you don’t stop playing jokes with me right now, I’ll never forgive you!”

“Darling! Wake up! I-I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have hit you so hard! Please wake up! You have to! Don’t leave me alone!”

“It was pointless to try and stop us, Y/N Cookie. Yet…my heart cries and aches, why did you have to resist….please, wake up…”

“God DAMN IT. I-I went too far, I shouldn’t have been so brutal with my swings and now look at you, your dough..damaged and ruined….because of me….”

“….Hmph….”

Silent Salt just lowered their head to look at the ground, feeling nothing but shame and remorse for what they had done…for what they all had done….

“I wish…I could’ve done more for you all…I wished…that I had loved all of you more…to not…end up like this...”

“…..I’m sorry…..”

———————————————————————

“The Witches couldn’t bear to see what fate had befallen their creations, made even more distraught at the loss of their greatest creation among them all…they punished the Beasts by sealing them away deep within this land…”

“And planted the seed of the Silver Tree to ensure their evil power never sees the light of day again. Right where the Virtue of Compassion was laid to rest, so that at least a part of them can live on….From then on, this land where the Beasts were put to sleep, was called Beast Yeast.”

“The Witches then gathered the last vestiges of power bestowed upon the Beasts, untouched by their corruption. They further cleansed, purified it, and in the end…Soul Jam was created. The purest Soul Jam was meant to be earned by Cookies who had proven themselves worthy.”

“All, but Compassion. For their purity simply could not be remade again. The Witch who personally baked Compassion had locked herself away in grief after the loss of her cookie and took the knowledge of the recipe and baking of Compassion with her…”

“So, there can never be another cookie like Compassion?”

“It’s what they say, but all life powder returns to the earth. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility that the Virtue of Compassion may return in some form, someday…”

Everyone’s eyes turned to Y/N Cookie, who was casually eating some food offered to them by the Faeries.

“…..What?”

[gojossocks]

Anything For You

Sukuna x Reader genre: fluff, hurt/comfort summary: After a thousand years, Sukuna never thought that he'd find you again. Only this time, your goals have changed and you weren't the person he can rule the world with anymore. Would he give that up just for you? wc: 2.7K content: friends to lovers, lovesick sukuna, kinda ooc sukuna because of how lovesick he is, mutual pining. they were in a situationship for a thousand years, can you guys handle that?

“Sukuna, don’t you feel alone in the past thousand years? I mean, all you’ve wanted is to gain power and do other villain-y things. It’s pretty lame and sad in my opinion.” Yuuji, his vessel, says mindlessly as he chews on his food while he waits for Megumi and Nobara. 

“You insolent fool.” He sneered, a mouth forming on Yuuji’s cheeks. “I don’t mope around like you do. I was not alone either.” 

Contrary to popular belief, Sukuna wasn’t heartless as most people paint him out to be. In fact, during the Heian Era, Sukuna is always seen to be with a powerful sorcerer. 

There was you. The only person he sees as his equal. 

But after you were killed, your history with Sukuna was quickly forgetten as the men write history in their own perspective. You are a significant figure in history, yes– but you and Sukuna together were only briefly mentioned in the books. 

People have forgotten about how Sukuna, the King of Curses, have ruled the Jujutsu World with you by his side. 

In the bygone days of the Heian Period, You and Sukuna have a unique bond as you two had grown up together. You were the only one who witnessed how he rises up to be the King of Curses. You were a powerful sorcerer too in your own way, despite the lack of title. Your benevolent nature has gotten a lot of people to respect you. People were not intimidated by your power but by your wisdom. 

Despite your personality which is in contrast to Sukuna’s, it never became a hindrance between your bond. In fact, he seemed to like you more because of it. You taught him how to kill and destroy with purpose. and together, the two of you wreaked havoc on Earth. 

You were the first and last person who knows him inside and out, not even Uraume could compare. He even prefers your shitty cooking, for god’s sake. He feels weak in your presence. Sukuna kind of resents you for it, how you make him feel. How he’s willing to burn the entire world at your command. He’d kill anyone without batting an eye if you ask him to. You have him wrapped around your pretty fingers and you don’t even know it. 

He remembers going into the gardens of your shared home after a battle and you’d welcome him with open arms, hugging him with your little frame. You didn’t care about the blood on his clothes or how he reeks of death. You look at him with such kindness, as if he has done nothing wrong in this world. You held his hands with such gentleness, as if he has hasn’t covered his hands with so much blood. And you smile and crack jokes around him after terrorizing villages, you wrap bandages around his wounds even if he can heal it in a heartbeat. He loves being doted on by you. 

He was really good at keeping his emotions to himself unlike you who’d outwardly show how much you love him. He had a feeling that you knew of his affections slightly. After all, you were the only one allowed to touch Sukuna, to tease him and be alive after that. He chose not to tell you his feelings because he thought that he’d have all the time in the world to tell you. 

Well, he thought he did until he received the news that you were killed. 

Sukuna didn’t look at your corpse, refusing that seeing your cold lifeless body would be his last memory of you. After that was just endless rampage of destruction. In his mind, it was his way of avenging you. People have forgotten about you because of the amount of lives he had taken— his crimes outweighed any humanity he had left of him. 

It goes like that until he was defeated and sealed. Well, that was years ago but even now, all he thinks about is you. So much that he could still hear your laugh. 

“Really?” Yuuji exclaimed. “I think I should ask Gojo-sensei about—”

Yuuji’s rambling was cut off with a sound of laughter, which causes both him and the demon inside him to look where that voice comes from. 

That all too familiar voice that even after countless lifetimes, he would still recognize anywhere. Sukuna felt like his entire world stopped when he sees where that voice comes from. Everything seemed to blur as his entire attention is fixated on the woman. 

It was you, in the flesh. 

Or rather, someone who is an exact copy of you. 

He had found you! You had reincarnated as he hoped you would. You kept your promise and you’d see him again. 

You were walking and conversing beside Gojo Satoru as you approach Yuuji who stood up straight and looked at you with wide eyes. 

“Who might this be?” You gave the kid a playful smile. 

Sukuna was able to examine you up close as you walked closer to Yuuji. You were as beautiful as the day he lost you. You fit right into this modern period— you’re wearing a uniform similar to Gojo’s, but instead of pants, you were wearing a skirt and knee high boots. If someone were to tell Sukuna that he’d find you like this, fighting against him, he would have howled in laughter before killing that someone. 

“Yuuji Itadori, miss!” the young sorcerer said, exuding a bit too much enthusiasm. 

“So he is the vessel.” You acknowledged with a nod before sharing a look with Gojo Satoru. 

“This is Y/N Y/L/N! She’s a special grade sorcerer from Kyoto but will be transferring here to accommodate you. She doesn’t go to missions anymore just like I do so Y/N would be there whenever you need her.” Gojo explains, putting a hand on you and Yuuji’s shoulders. 

Yuuji’s eyes widened as he registered the significance of your name “Like the one in history books Y/N Y/L/N?” 

“I wish.” You quipped, inserting a playful note in your response. “It was nice meeting you. I’ve waited for you, you know.” Then you extended your hand toward Yuuji and as your fingers met his, Sukuna could feel the familiarity of your touch. You looked at Yuuji with so much intensity, as if you’re looking at the curse residing in him. Right at Sukuna. and he didn’t fail to notice the way your smile was gentler compared to the ones you’ve given the kid. 

It was for him.

You’ve seen him. 

“Well,” You let out a sigh when you’ve pulled away. “I better get going. I’m sorry to cut this short, Yuuji. I hope we’ll get to know more of each other. I heard you like rice bowls, I’ll treat you to my favorite restaurant in tokyo next week, yeah?” You pat the top of his head and Yuuji gives you a huge grin. 

Once you’ve left, Yuuji could finally notice Sukuna’s silence. He had been silent ever since you’ve arrived and Yuuji was about to tease him for it until Gojo spoke up. 

“It’s her if she wasn’t being obvious enough.” 

-.- 

In the week following his unexpected encounter with you, Sukuna’s demeanor underwent a subtle transformation. He was less mean to Yuuji and the snarky remarks had lessened. 

True to your promise, you spent time with Yuuji, fulfilling your role as a companion and mentor. However, your newfound indifference towards Sukuna fueled a frustration that within him. Did he merely imagine the spark of recognition in your eyes? Was it truly still you? 

He found out a lot about you during the time you spent with Yuuji as well as the information that Gojo discloses concerning you. It seems as though you have helped the Jujutsu World slowly gain back its glory just like back in the golden days. You’re a teacher too, and from what Gojo has mentioned, you’re still the same patient and kind person he fell in love with. 

Sukuna feels a twinge of jealousy at the mention of how you’re close with the white-haired sorcerer. He finds himself scoffing at the thought of you finally replacing him. It isn’t far from reality, you’re too likable for your own good anyway. You make it so easy to love you that Sukuna failed to notice that this disease has swallowed him whole and now he’s stuck, absolutely pining for you like an idiot. How dare you move on from him if that’s the case? 

He needed answers from you or else he’d go crazy. So he finds out where you live and he found out that you were living in the more peaceful side of Tokyo. It took him a while to get in control again and the moment he did, his feet carried him to you. 

Your house is beautiful, it looked like the mini version of the place that you once shared with Sukuna. He entered it quietly and to his surprise, you were no where to be found but then he catches a glimpse of you in the window overlooking the garden. 

Sukuna finds himself smiling as he reaches the garden. It had a variety of flowers and plants, the very ones you had planted with him years ago. You’re wearing a beautiful red plaid sundress and the modern age never looked so good in anyone but you. 

You were simply ethereal. 

You were too engrossed in watering your plants when he walks towards you. 

“Old habits hard for you, Y/N.” Sukuna spoke up, his voice devoid of any usual domineering tone that he uses to other humans. 

You turned to him, wide eyed. It was the first time you’ve seen him in ages. Sukuna’s still in the body of the young sorcerer that you frequently saw the past week but he looked like him—with his tattoos and demeanor. Your eyes are soon filled with tears and you shakily reached for him, engulfing him in a tight embrace. 

“Finally.” You choked out, burying your face to his chest. Sukuna carefully snakes his hands towards your back on instinct.  “It’s been so long. it was all worth it. I knew you’d come back.” 

He rests his chin on the top of your head. Sukuna’s voice turned hoarse as he spoke. “I thought you were killed I-” 

“I’m already here, Ryo.” You interrupted, pulling away to cup his cheek gently. Sukuna leaned in to the warmth of your touch, melting in an instant. “ I wasn’t. I was just sealed until I was let out by one of my dearest friends. I came to find you but you were already gone, so I waited.” 

“You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, Y/N.”  

“You were asleep for almost a thousand years. I was alive for most of it, clearly I missed you more.” 

“Well, I thought you were dead. Cut me some slack, doll.” Sukuna teased with a smirk. You bite your lip to stifle your smile, playfully nodding inagreement.

“Come with me.” He murmured, pulling away to press his lips against your forehead. “After I kill this brat, I can take control and we can finally change the world.” 

“By killing everyone in it?” You shakily asked. Sukuna thought that you were just shaken because of how glad you are to have him back. 

He gave you a smirk. “Well, that was my idea. You know how I am.” 

“Times have changed, Ryo.  I’m afraid that it has softened me. I’m not the person you used to imagine burning the world down with anymore.” You calmly admitted, meeting Sukuna’s intense gaze and you tried to calm him down by tracing circles on his arm but he didn’t look convinced in the slightest. 

“I’m here now. You could drop your act. I can protect you now, you know.” 

“You don’t understand, dear.” you interjected, gently pushing a strand away from his face.  “We have different objectives now. You seek to take over the world and be feared forever. I seek to live out my days in peace until I decide to end it.” 

You must’ve noticed how Sukuna’s expression dropped at your words so you quickly clarified. “oh no, but don’t think I’d end my life after our interaction. In fact, I’ll live for a few more years until it will bore me to death. Literally. But there’s just so much to love and to do in this world, I’m afraid.” 

“Don’t you want to be with me? Have you grown tired of me?”  He demanded, his voice getting louder as he continues to talk.  You weren’t fazed in the slightest and it aggravates him even further. It used to comfort him, that you know him so well, but now the butterflies in his stomach makes him anxious more than anything else. 

You have always had the upper hand and he feels you cursing him the more you grant him your presence. 

He feels disregarded as you implicitly rejected him. 

“No.” You offered him a sweet smile, your eyes never leaving his. Sukuna thinks he might float with the way you’re looking at him right and his breath hitched once he hears you say the next words. “I love you, Ryo. In fact, I love you enough to know of your nature and I would be the last person who would stop you in achieving what you want. I wouldn’t be in your way but I couldn’t stay by your side anymore.”

Sukuna searched for a hint that indicates that you were lying and he found none. You had always been honest with him. He looks at you with a heartbroken expression but still trying to maintain his stoic face. He’s clearly hurt “Did our past mean nothing to you?” 

“I’ve done everything I could, Ryo. I’ve done everything for you. You know I did that all for you. Wasn’t that enough? Didn’t you feel my love for you in the slightest? You could kill me now, if you want. It’d be a pleasure to die by your hand.” Your eyes are once again brimmed with tears again yet you continued to smile as you trail your fingers over his cheek “I’m sorry but I’m tired of seeing red. Gojo must’ve told what I did, you must know my change of heart.” 

He did. 

Of course he did. 

He knew of what you did yet he still held on to the fact that he might be wrong. So is this really how it ends?  Sukuna enjoys destruction and killing. He loves being in power and he will not admit that if you weren’t alive, he’s probably murdering civillians in Shibuya right now. But after he’d gain control over Yuuji Itadori’s body, the only thing that he keeps thinking of is coming home to you. 

And what would the point be if you are not by his side? 

“Then I’ll stay with you.” He declared. 

A scoff escapes your lips and your bewildered expression makes him smirk even more. “You can’t be serious.” 

“I’ll just finish this and I’ll come back to you. None of this matters anymore. I’ll abandon all of it. For you.” 

You looked at him incredulously, your mouth agape. Sukuna wastes no time to finally pull you in a kiss.  

It was a gentle one at first and he pulls away slightly to see you pout, eliciting a chuckle from him, only to pull you back to a deeper, passionate kiss. Sukuna smiles into the kiss as a soft gasp escapes from you. 

He kisses you fervently, as if he needs your air to breathe. And as you run your hand through his hair, moaning to the kiss, he pulls you impossibly closer. 

He’s home. 

He returned to you 3 months later, in his original form. He entered your house with wounds and bruises, his body covered in blood once more. It was just like before, but this time, it feels so different. He had a soft look in his eyes and he feels like he’s floating on air now that he’s gone home to you. 

Just like before, you welcomed him with open arms. He lifted you and spinned you around, eliciting a squeal from you. When he puts you down, you peppered kisses to his face and hugged him really tight. 

“I love you.” Sukuna whispers, tucking your hair behind your ear before leaning in to kiss you gently. You smiled at his confession. There was a look in your eyes that you knew it all along. 

“It took you a millennium to say that.”

wanna read more?

a/n: i bet he still murders in his free time after being retired 😻

[misswynters]

Toxic Devotion

Jacaerys Velaryon x gn!reader

[warning: toxic relationship, yandere behavior, implied non-con touching, murder

[synopsis: You will do anything to protect jace and so does he. Getting rid of anyone who even looks at you wrong. It should be easy, right?

[note | pls don’t just like, reblog & give me feedback. i don’t want to get shadowbanned

The torches flickered along the walls of the narrow corridor, casting eerie shadows as you moved with purpose. Your blood was still boiling from the encounter, the venomous words of the your once handmaiden echoing in your mind.

"Bastard prince," she had hissed, her eyes filled with contempt. "Not fit to sit the throne, not fit to touch such noble blood like you."

Rage had surged within you, swift and deadly. Without a second thought, you had grabbed the nearest sharp object, a ceremonial dagger, and silenced her vile tongue forever. Now, as you made your way back to your chambers, the weight of your actions settled over you like a shroud, but you felt no remorse. You had done it for Jacaerys, and that was all that mattered. Nothing was more important to you than protecting his beautiful self from any harm. Pushing open the heavy door to your quarters, you were met with a sight that sent a cold shock through your veins.

Jacaerys stood over the lifeless body of your kingsguard, blood dripping from the blade in his hand. Your eyes widened, and you took a step back, but Jacaerys's gaze was fixed on you, a mix of protectiveness and ferocity in his eyes.

"He touched you," Jacaerys said, his voice low and dangerous. He was glaring at the body with disgust. "He had no right."

You looked down at the body, remembering how you had woken earlier to find the kingsguard in your bed, clearly drunk, his intentions unclear. You had been too disoriented to react, but Jacaerys had come in just moments later, his rage instant and deadly.

"He was in my bed when I woke," you whispered, the horror of the situation sinking in. "I didn't-"

"I know," Jacaerys interrupted, stepping closer to you. "I know you didn't invite him. But he dared to overstep, and he paid the price.”

You met his gaze, the intensity of his emotions matching your own. "I killed the handmaiden," you confessed, your voice barely above a whisper. "She called you a bastard, said terrible things about you."

A dark smile twisted Jacaerys's lips, and he reached out to cup your face in his bloodstained hand. "You did it for me," he said softly, his eyes gleaming with a twisted kind of pride. "Just as I did this for you."

The silence between you was heavy with the weight of your actions, but it was also charged with a dangerous kind of devotion. In that moment, you both understood that your love was a double-edged sword, cutting down anyone who dared to come between you.

"We're bound together," Jacaerys murmured, his thumb tracing your cheek. "By blood, fire, and death. No one can tear us apart."

You nodded, leaning into his touch, feeling a strange sense of solace in his words. "No one," you echoed. As Jacaerys pulled you into his embrace, you knew that your love was as destructive as it was passionate. But in this world of treachery and betrayal, it was the only thing you could trust. And so, with bodies lying in your wake and blood staining your hands, you clung to each other, bound by a love that was both your salvation and your damnation.

The storm raged outside, lightning illuminating the dark skies over Dragonstone. Inside your chambers, the atmosphere was equally charged. You and Jacaerys lay in bed, the events of the day replaying in your minds. His arm was draped possessively over your waist, his breath warm against your neck.

"I can still see the look in her eyes," you murmured, staring at the ceiling. "The fear, the hatred. It felt...satisfying to silence her."

Jacaerys tightened his hold on you, his voice a low growl. "They all think they can judge us. They don't understand what we have, the lengths we'll go to for each other."

You turned to face him, your fingers tracing the contours of his face. "They will learn. Anyone who dares to come between us will meet the same fate."

He captured your hand, pressing a kiss to your palm. "We are unstoppable, my love. Together, we will claim what is rightfully ours." The fire in his eyes mirrored your own, a shared madness that fueled your ambition. "Tomorrow, we must deal with the aftermath," you said, a hint of worry creeping into your voice. "Questions will be asked."

Jacaerys's expression hardened. "Let them ask. We'll have our answers ready. We protect each other, always."

A scream could be heard from a distance, another handmaiden must’ve founded the poor girl lying on your bed, lifeless. The sound of footsteps in the hallway made you both tense. Jacaerys sprang from the bed, moving silently to the door, his sword in hand. You followed, your heart pounding. A knock echoed through the room, and Jacaerys opened the door a fraction, revealing your most trusted servant.

"My lord, my lady," he whispered urgently. "The bodies have been discovered. The court is in an uproar." The servant was shaken up, nervously fidgeting his fingers. In fear of doing anything wrong and that also lead to his untimely demise.

Jacaerys glanced back at you, his eyes cold and calculating. "Well, i guess we don’t have much of a choice now do we."

You nodded, steeling yourself. "Let's face them, it can’t be that bad." You walked towards him reaching towards his hand, your eyes softly looking towards his, which were the opposite. Darker than they usually are.

Hand in hand, you stepped into the corridor, ready to confront whatever awaited you. The court might rage and whisper, but you and Jacaerys were a force of nature, bound by a love that was as fierce as it was toxic. And nothing, not even death, would come between you.

taglist: @benjicotblckwood

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity rips off its investors, too

I'm coming to DEFCON! TOMORROW (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

It's amazing how many of the scams that have devastated our economy and everyday people owe their success to the fact that we assume that rich people know what they're doing, so if they're doing something, it must be real.

Think of how many people lost everything by gambling on junk bonds, exotic mortgage derivatives, cryptocurrency and web3, because they saw that the largest financial institutions in the world were going all-in on these weird, incomprehensible bets.

Then there are the people who are convinced that online advertising is built around a mind-control ray, because tech companies claim that's what they have ("I am an evil dopamine-loop-hacking wizard and I can sell anything to anyone!"), and because huge, sober blue-chip companies hand billions to these soi dissant svengalis. Sure, online ads are a swamp of clickfraud and garbage, but would these super smart captains of industry spend so much on online advertising if it didn't work super-well?

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

From our worms'-eye-view here on the ground, it's easy to assume that rich people and the people who sell them stuff are all on the same side. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," right? If Facebook is tormenting you with surveillance advertising, it must be doing so on behalf of the surveillance advertisers, for whom Mark Zuckerberg has bottomless reservoirs of honest, forthright impulses.

The reality is simultaneously weirder, and obvious in hindsight. The reason Zuck is tormenting you is that he's a remorseless sociopath who doesn't care who he hurts. He rips off everyone he can rip off, and that includes advertisers, who have seen steady price-hikes and lower-fidelity targeting, even as ad-fraud has skyrocketed while Facebook draws down its anti-fraud spending:

https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/

This is not to say that Facebook advertisers have your best interests at heart, that they aren't engaged in active deception in order to better themselves at your expense. Rather, it's to say that there's no honor among thieves, and Zuck is an equal-opportunity predator. Moreover, both Zuck and his advertisers are credulous dolts, so the mere fact that they are pouring money into something (advertisers: FB ads; Zuck: metaverse) it doesn't follow that these are real or important or the coming thing.

For me, the Ur-example of "rich people are dumb, even when it comes to money" is the private equity sector. I've written a lot about PE, and how destructive it is to the real economy, from Toys R Us to pet grooming:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

How they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And how they actually created the death panels that Sarah Palin warned us about (it's OK, though: these death panels are run by the efficient private sector, not government bureaucrats):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

The devastating effect of private equity on the real economy is increasingly well understood, and a curious side-effect of this is that people assume that if PE is destroying their lives, they must be doing so on behalf of their investors, who are making bank.

But – like Zuck – PE bosses are just as happy to steal from their investors as they are to to steal from the workers and customers of the businesses they acquire on those investors' behalf. They swaddle this theft in performative complexity and specialized jargon, but when you strip all that away, you find more fraud.

All the misery that PE inflicts on workers, communities and customers are just a convincer in a Big Store con, a bid to make the scam seem credible. For a certain kind of investor, any economic activity that destroys communities and workers' livelihoods must be a good bet. This is the dynamic at work in the pitch of AI image-generator companies, who spend tens of billions on technology that there is no substantial market for:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter

AI image generators represent a high-profile, extremely visible example of "a job that AI can do." Nevermind that AI illustration went from a novelty to a tired cliche in less than a year. Even if you think that AI illustrations are a perfect substitute for commercial illustrations, that still won't come anywhere near making AI companies a profit. Add up the entire wage bill for every commercial illustrator in the world, hand it to Open AI, and you're not even gonna cover the kombucha budget for Open AI's staff kitchens.

Hell, all the wages of every commercial illustrator that ever lived won't pay back even a fraction of the money the AI companies spent on image generators. The pauperization of an entire class of creative workers is just a canned demo, a way to fool investors into thinking that there is a whole universe of similarly situated workers whose wages can be diverted to AI companies. This is the logic of small-time spammers, scaled up to the scale of the entire S&P 500. Smalltime spammers looked at AI and thought, "OK, I can generate as much botshit as I want on demand for free. Science fiction magazines pay $0.10/word. So if I generate a billion words, I'll get $100 million." But that's not how any of that works: sf magazines don't buy botshit, and even if they did, the entire market for short fiction adds up to what Sam Altman spends on a single designer t-shirt. The point of destroying these beloved, useful things isn't to make a lot of money by taking their markets – it's to convince dopey, panicked rich people to give you lots of money you can steal, because they think you can do this to every market and they don't want to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Take "divi recaps": after a private equity firm acquires a company (by borrowing money against its assets), it typically declares a "special dividend," emptying out the company's cash reserves and pocketing them. A "divi recap" is when PE then takes out another massive loan against the company's (remaining) assets and pockets that:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

All of this happens under an opaque cloud, thanks to the light-to-nonexistent disclosure rules for PE. A public company has to open its books for the SEC, its investors, and the world. PE is private – and so are its finances. It is absolutely routine for PE bosses to put their spouses, kids, and pals on the payroll and hand them millions for doing little to nothing, all at the expense of their investors:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/sec-set-to-lower-massive-boom-on-private-equity-industry.html

PE bosses charge huge fees to their investors – not merely the usual 2-and-20 (2% of the funds under management and 20% of any profits) – but also a wide variety of special one-off fees that pile to the sky. They also dip into their investors' funds to issue themselves massive loans that they use to make side-bets, without telling the investors about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#gary-gensler

PE investors are chickens ripe for the plucking: take "continuation funds," which allow PE bosses to soak the rich people and pension funds who supply them with billions:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/matt-levines-money-stuff-buyout-funds-buy-from-themselves

Remember 2-and-20? 2% of all the money you manage, every year, and 20% of all the profits. You'd think that these would be somewhat zero sum, right? If you use some of your investors' cash to buy a company, and then sell off that company for a profit, you get the 20%, but now the pot of money you're managing has gone down by the amount you used to buy the company, and so your 2% carry goes down, too.

But what if you sell your portfolio companies to yourself, using your investors' own money? When you do that, you continue to hold the company on your PE firm's books, meaning you continue to get the 2% carry, and you can pocket 20% of the sale price as a "profit":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

This is straight-up fraud, wrapped up in so much jargon that it can successfully masquerade as "financial engineering" ("financial engineering" is really just a euphemism for "fraud"). PE bosses keep coming up with new, exotic ways to steal from their investors. The latest scam is "tax receivable agreements":

https://archive.ph/RczJ9

On its face, this is a tax scam. When a company goes public, early investors generally hold stock in the original partnership or LLC; this company ends up holding a ton of shares in the new, public company. When they sell those non-public shares in the LLC, this creates a (potentially gigantic) tax credit.

A TRA hustle involves tracking down these LLC shareholders and convincing them to sign off on dumping the LLC's shares, which generates a huge tax credit for the public company. The hustler offers to split these credits with the LLC holders.

All of this is especially attractive to PE bosses, who often take a company private, do a bunch of "financial engineering" and then take it public again, leaving the PE firm as the owner of those LLC shares that can be converted to a TRA and a huge windfall – which the PE bosses pocket, because they (not their investors) are holding those credits.

This scam is really doing big numbers. KKR – the monsters who killed Toys R Us – just diverted $650 million in TRA loot, prompting a lawsuit from Steamfitters union pension fund, which had handed these jerks millions of its members' money to gamble with:

https://archive.ph/kqQvI

This highlights another very weird aspect of the PE scam: they are absolutely dependent on pension funds. To add insult to injury, PE funds are notorious union-busters – they use union money to buy companies and destroy their unions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/05/mr-gotcha/#no-ethical-consumption-under-capitalism

People who try to understand the PE business model often give up, because it seems to make no sense, leading many to assume that they're too unsophisticated to grasp the complex financials here. For example, PE is absolutely dependent on massive loans as a way of looting its businesses, but it also often defaults on those loans. Why do banks and investors keep making huge loans to PE deadbeats? Because – like the PE fund investors – they are credulous dolts.

The reason PE seems like a scam is that it is a scam. It is a fractal scam – every part of it is a scam. You might have heard about the "carried interest" tax loophole that allows PE bosses to avoid billions in taxes on the money they steal from their investors, creditors, workers and customers. Most people assume "carried interest" has something to do with "interest" on a loan. Nope: "carried interest" is a 16th century nautical tax rule designed for mercantalist sea-captains who had an "interest" in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

But rich people and other "sophisticated investors" (like pension fund investment managers) are no smarter than the rest of us. They are herd animals. When they see other rich people piling into some scheme or asset class, they rush to join them, which makes the asset price go up, which makes them think they're smart (until the inevitable rug-pull). When one plute jumps off the Empire State Building, the rest of them jump, too.

Which is why there's more money flooding into PE than at any time in history, $2.62T in "dry powder," handed over to greedy, thieving PE bosses in a poker game where everyone is the sucker at the table:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/08/sucker-at-the-table/#clucks-definance

[aft3rhrs]

— heaven ღ

pairing: jungkook x reader

genre: romance

warnings: yandere, allusions to kidnapping, stockholm syndrome, mentions of reader getting locked up, a tiny (👌) bit of angst, possessiveness, corruption kink, rough sex, choking, praise, humiliation, dirty talk, hair pulling, implied big!dick jk 💁‍♀️, he's a simp, creampie, some aftercare & lots of kisses, still messed up tho lmao I'm sorry <3

It never seemed heaven would be so dark. A room draped in shadows, the door carefully locked. Not even a glint of moonlight broke through the drawn curtains; complete isolation from the world down below.

Even if Jungkook turned on the lights, you wouldn't have been able to see much; not with your face pressed into the mattress rocking beneath your knees. The headboard banged against the wall rhythmically, the sound mingling with each slap of his balls against you, thrusts deep and hard, stretching you out to your limits.

You could feel his chest pressing down onto your back, skin warm and sweaty. His hand remained on your head, lips glued to your ear. The sounds spilling out of them made your head spin, drool seeping into the sheets by your open mouth.

"Always such a good girl for me," he whispered, hot and low. His fingers tangled in your hair, giving it a tender pull. "Fuck me back." His free hand squeezed your hip, encouraging you to move. "Come on, baby. Fuck me back."

Your pussy clenched, muffled whines growing louder. Mindlessly, your hips moved with Jungkook's guidance, numb to anything but the searing pleasure of his cock spearing through you.

"Yeah— fuuck—" the soft groans turned deeper, your little hole soaked and so fucking desperate; just the way he liked it. Just as desperate for him as he was for you.

He grit his teeth, trying to hold a little longer, abdomen tensing against you.

"I love you," he gasped, "tell me what you want, baby. I'll give you anything you want."

A hiss escaped him when he felt you tighten again, signaling that you knew exactly what he meant, and your pretty, little head was no less depraved than his own. That only spurred him on, made his hips snap against your ass faster, sloppier, sweat shining on his temple.

He wasn't expecting you to be coherent and provide an answer to his question; it was like he just wanted to establish dominance, mark his claim, driven by the sadistic instincts that flickered to life in him in the raw dark, like stars. Equally charming and destructive.

"Gonna," he breathed, the slaps of skin against skin harsh and relentless, "gonna come on my cock, you pathetic whore? You're so good for me. You know you're mine, only mine, and this little pussy knows it too. Always so fucking wet for me."

It seemed more like taunting than a simple reminder; he was trying to get under your skin. As if he didn't already make a home within your ribcage. As if he hasn't infested your bloodstream the first time he had kissed you. The filthy words messed with your mind, made your hole pulse around him harder with each thrust.

"Mm, fuck, fuck, ah, why so quiet tonight?" He moaned into your ear, gently slipping his hand around your neck. He gave it a firm squeeze, immediately getting one back on his cock, throbbing and slippery as it pounded into you. "Come all over me, kitten, don't hold back."

You whimpered, your thighs shaking under his, teeth biting into your lower lip, hard. Didn't he fuck your brains out in the last three months? There should have been no thoughts left there at all, and yet something seemed to be wrong, like some semblance of doubt was keeping you hostage tonight. Didn't he do a good job getting rid of that? Jaw tensing, he choked you harder, snapping his hips forward faster.

"I said be a good girl and come for me," he gritted.

He was desperately close himself, his cock hot and swollen, spurting precum as it rubbed against your walls.

"Fucking come for me," Jungkook groaned. "This was supposed to be a celebration. Stop holding back. Do you want me to bring you back down to the fucking basement?"

You gasped, but he could barely hear it over his ragged breathing; how tightly his veiny hand enveloped your frail neck didn't help. However, he could still feel you, especially on his sensitive cock.

"Oh... oh, fuck, are you—"

You quivered around it, so tight his movements stuttered, white spots dancing around his vision at the sensation.

"Did you just come? You want me to keep you like a fucking pet, baby? Oh god, yeah—"

A burst of warmth spilled inside you, your skin tingling and head fuzzy with the limited oxygen his grip on you provided. You shuddered under him, moaning as he fucked his cum deep into your abused cunt. You could feel him all the way in your stomach, his groans loud as kept twitching inside you. Oh, he liked this; how much he corrupted you, how hard you came at the thought of him owning you. He liked it, because he came hard as well, hand loosening around your throat as his hips stilled, last, few spurts of hot seed shooting into you.

You tried to catch your breath, soft kisses trailed along your shoulder slowly bringing you back down from your high. You felt warm, satiated, full; you felt Jungkook's lips quirking in a satisfied smile against your skin, too, his cheek resting on your neck.

"Good girl," he whispered. "So good. I love you."

"I love you," you sighed, eyes slipping shut.

Jungkook hummed.

"Finally got your voice back?" He brushed your hair to the side, exposing more of your skin, his lips pressing into your cheek. "Should I be concerned, baby? Do you want me to stay a little longer?"

You shook your head. Any other time, Jungkook would have cleaned you up, especially before going anywhere. Tonight, though, he wanted you just like this. Naked, in his bed, with his cum dripping out of you while you drifted off. You didn't seem to mind either, heartbeat and breathing steadying as he started getting dressed.

You were almost asleep by the time he crouched down by the bed, the touch of his lips on yours making you stir.

"You know this is just for show, right?"

His question was soft, eyebrows furrowed. No matter how strong, it looked like not even Jungkook could escape some monsters — something like doubt, something like fear. Everything only felt amplified when it came to you.

"Yeah," you whispered. "Promise."

Perhaps three months ago his words would have hurt; but there was no wound anymore, only scars, and his gentle fingers ghosting over them.

Your soft reply smoothed out the frantic, worried fabrics of his soul, the image of you lying there, in his room, glowing; surrounded by his scent and his sheets, so domestic. It was everything he ever needed. His sacred place.

He sighed, contented, pressing the next kiss onto your forehead.

"Good. Mm, then rest. Just stay here and look pretty, my love. I'll collect your ransom and be right back."

He brushed his knuckles along your flushed cheek, dark, hooded eyes boring into yours.

"Can I have another kiss for good luck?"

A pleased hum left him when you leaned in, lips pouty and swollen, ready to be kissed more and more, and how could he ever not want to do just that?

He held your face with an inked hand, and a black mask in the other.

Heaven was a pricey thing to uphold; the church would know. And not that Jungkook didn't already have enough to spoil you, but all angels were painted in gold, weren't they?

"Night, baby," he murmured lovingly.

His voice never led you astray, lulling you to sleep, helping you land safely in the arms of the mellow abyss behind your eyelids. He kissed both.

"Gonna be back real soon."

You didn't get to hear that promise, but he didn't mind. In a few hours, he'll be holding you in his arms. All angels were shimmering gold, to match the golden gates; his angel deserved the same.

In the end, there was nothing wrong with a man of faith collecting donations for the purposes of worship. Right?

[fairuzfan]

Hey, I've read your post reply on the ask about the Standing together movement, and there you mentioned that it's incorrect to separate Palestinians and Jews and create a false dichotomy when speaking about liberating Palestine and anti-occupation movement. Could you please elaborate on that? It's a very interesting take that I haven't heard before yet.

So I generally don't understand why we are separating "Palestinian" and "Jews" with no potential for overlap between the two. By separating them, this implies, fundamentally, that there can be no Jewish Palestinians which... is not true. Just even historically, Jewish Palestinians exist and continue to exist.

Why are they mutually exclusive terms within their mission statement when they wish to "stand together"? And I'm not saying this in a condescending manner, I'm saying this because I know there are Palestinians who live in Israel who insist on being referred to as Palestinian. They won't let their Palestinian identity be erased under any circumstances. But they're the only group at risk of having that happen to them. Jewish people are not at risk of having their Jewishness erased for being Palestinian. So how can it be "standing together" when you acknowledge that there is a divide, societally, between perceptions of identity where one is at risk of total destruction by another and you, yourself, do not risk anything?

Where do Jewish Palestinians fall in this dichotomy, exactly? Does that mean no Palestinian will be able to convert to Judiasm without giving up their Palestinian identity? Are Jewish people just innately separated from Palestinians as a whole? If so, what is the thing that categorizes "Palestinian" in their eyes? Is it their religion? Well it can't be, because Palestinians have a diverse array of religions and like I said, people who identity as Palestinian and Jewish exist and are at risk of having their "Palestinian" erased in favor of their "Jewish" one.

Is it their ethnicity? Also can't be, because there is a vast array of ethnicities within Palestinian society. Unless they mean Palestinian=Arab, which is erasure. It erases Armenian Palestinians who play an integral part in Palestinian culture, for example.

So like what is the separation exactly? How are these mutually exclusive categories and how are we defining them? Unless, which is the reason that underlies all this, you mean to say that there is a difference between people who are Palestinians and people are Jewish innately in some unidentifiable manner?

Now, many Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship are not really subject to equal rights lol. And those rights are taken away *because* they are Palestinian. You have to acknowledge that. So when we say "Jewish and Palestinian" in a mission statement where you intend to """solve""" inequality, you're already setting that distinction in your mind that there is an actual difference between these people. So it's problematic in that vein.

But also, the group doesn't address the systematic abuses Palestinians face for YEARS, even before the Likud government. You can't erase that and attribute it to Netanyahu only. You have to address that the very system of Israel was founded on the mass expulsion and erasure of Palestinians, that includes Palestinian Jews.

But again, we have this dichotomy of "Jewish" and "Palestinian," setting into motion that "Palestinian" is somehow an identity that is separate from "Jewish." And through what definitions are we imposing that difference? Through... race science? Through cultural differences? Well, again, what about people who have cultural overlaps. Like if a nonJewish Palestinian marries a Jewish person who is not Palestinian and their child is growing up with both cultures? What does that mean for them? What does that mean for the two people who got married? And even Jewish Palestinians, are they having to give up their Palestinian side for marrying someone Jewish? Won't that cause further inequality within our groups? Isn't this separation just a nicer worded version of segregation in that way?

We have to acknowledge that it is within the state of Israel's interests, at their core, to separate these two identities. So by playing into this narrative, we're continuing the very colonization of history as they try to rewrite the past, implying that Jewish Palestinians especially were not considered a part of Palestinian culture and werent allowed to partake in it.

And it's just, to me, very racist to assume that there can't be overlap between these two types of people. It's happened in Palestine for centuries. But when Balfour comes in and is like "here you go, Jewish people of European cultural heritage, here is your homeland, nevermind the other people who have customs and traditions here, just do whatever you want and get out of Europe," everyone just nods their head like yeah that's reasonable. They didn't even try to learn Palestinian culture and life they just kicked us out. I'd argue that Palestinians would have welcomed Jewish immigrants who sought a safe homeland, so long as they didn't kick us out and enact nearly a century of violence. Palestine is the holy land for a reason! This land is the convergence of faiths and ideas and culture in such a unique way. Labeling it "Palestine" emphasizes that Palestinians are diverse and allow for an overlap of identities!

Essentially, when you try to separate groups of people like this, particularly when the separation of "Palestinians" (or more commonly referred to as "arabs" in Israeli society. Even our identities are erased to homogenize us) and "Jews," it makes it seem like Palestinians are fundamentally anti-jewish and antisemitic. And historically, just doesn't even make any sense.

[billford-dump]

Simple Misunderstanding

Finally, after nearly two decades, he’s back. Not home, not nearly home, but back in the nightmare realm. Back with Bill.

He’d tried to hate the demon for so long, to resent him for the betrayal, for using him, for tossing him out like a broken toy, but he found that he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he could never hate him. It was a constant, open wound, the knowledge of just how much in love he had been, only to be tricked, and to add insult to injury he couldn’t bring himself to do more than feel grief for what he lost. He didn’t hold a hint of anger for what had happened, and for years that feeling of loss was a constant companion.

And eventually it was too much. He was tired of running, tired of pretending, tired of everything, and he gave up. He went right back to Bill. (He was beautiful. Ageless. Perfect.) Ford was greeted with open arms, with an enormous eye crinkled in a smile, with an apology from a being who had taken this long to realize why Ford had been upset at his so-called “betrayal”. (Flawless golden symmetry.) Things like Bill, they don't think the way mortals do, with their mayfly lifespans. When he had told Ford they would change the world, he meant real change. Not minor alterations in the culture of one species on one little speck of dust. When he told Ford he had chosen him, it was true. He'd had his eye on Ford since the day he stepped into Gravity Falls, only staying back out of politeness until he was summoned. Of course he had inspired other mortals throughout the centuries, how else would he have laid the groundwork for a portal to even be possible? (Divine geometry.) He doubted, at first. Of course he did. No matter how much he had wanted to return, how tired he was of fighting, the idea that he had put himself through so much pain because of a cultural misunderstanding was…  (Unending alien knowledge wrapped in that simple, familiar shape.) But Bill somehow convinced him. It took time of course, effort and evidence and seeing for himself, over and over again, how differently Bill's mind worked and how he, the all-seeing, all-knowing eye, really hadn't known. Ford was an ant (small, unimportant, abstract) who had become a favored pet (important, beloved, mine), nearly an equal. And he would be an equal if he could just take that last step. (Every inch the Muse he had claimed to be.) The saying goes that if you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em. And Ford did. Cosmic fire burning in his veins and a whole spectrum of unseen colors and sounds and perceptions that bombarded his new senses. Screams of agony as the power he was given destroyed him, because the birth of a god is a destructive thing. (Every inch the demon he'd always been.) When his brother opened the portal, they changed the world together.

[otkuhotgirl]

─── 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐍𝐈𝐀 .

# with trafalgar water d. law.

despite the overextended manner with which law behaved, and the fatigue that crept into his soul due to his tendencies of avoiding a decent rest, sleep could not find him in the slightest. when his insomnia lurked around the corner, law could always count on your mouth to tire him out.

⎰ & smut (mdni!) gn!reader. oral (male!receiving). deepthroating. praise kink. no y/n used.

W.C: 2K.

the incessant ticking of the obstinate clock on the wall had the opposite effect of what was meant to be soothing. law had quit on writing the reports that dwelled on his mind, finding that his grip on the pen was unusually harsh — and enough to split it in two. law wasn’t against the vision of black ink on his skin — the tattoos on his body were enough proof of that — yet, when the ink that stained his palm was born from the destruction of one quite expensive and favored pen, pleased was the last adjective he’d use.

he scrubbed his eyes with the cleaner fingers, shutting them with a sense of bubbling rage born from intrinsic exhaustion. the strained muscles of his back began to ache an hour ago. he failed to concentrate on even the smallest of details, his synapses so lethargic he’d probably end up writing their instead of there in his paper. law clenched his jaw; stressed, sleep-deprived, and frustrated.

bepo had knocked on his door ten minutes prior — for the fifth time that night — with the same advice prepared. law’s answer remained equal, empty promises and meaningless deadlines that he had no intention on following. it was but a matter of time until the navigator pulled out his secret weapon, or that was, at least, how you were called under that context.

law sent a piercing gaze towards the closed door, fidgeting and quietly begging for your intervention, as though a religious fool who placed his trust on the force of manifestations. he thought of seeking you out himself, hours prior. yet, during instances drawn to his duties, law was but a rooted tree lost amidst a vexing fog, incapable of moving even one miserable inch; hence the urge to have you. his refugee; his medicine. the surgeon of death — more than a billion-worth bounty hovering over his head —, had succumbed to both the plague and blessing of love. with his head nearing the table’s surface, a weary sigh past his lips, law pictured your face and found that he would have fallen victim to such a feeling a thousand times over, so long as that meant claiming you his.

he heard the scratch of the door against the ground, and perked up upon the knowledge of, at last, having you in his office — for no other crewmate was allowed to barge in without a warning knock.

you walked towards him — slowly —, your hips swaying, malice-filled eyes. law felt but a prey under the gaze of its hunter; one left with a sense of gratitude upon the approach of the searing and delicious taste of death’s kiss.

you sat on the edge of his desk, careful as not to meddle with his papers, and softly removed his hat to caress the disheveled locks of black hair. law surrendered to your touch, sighing with relief.

“it’s getting late,” you stated, drawing circles on his cheek. law intertwined his fingers with your own, pressing his lips to the back of your hand.

“can’t sleep,” he answered, chasing your scent; drowning his nose on the skin of your wrist.

law glanced up at you, enamored. you tilted your head to the side, gears turning as you deconstructed his sentence and stance, figuring the innuendo underneath. there were moments in which his restlessness was a product of his past. from the plague, to the death of cora-san, nightmares hunted him down as though starved beasts aiming at a dying creature. however, in other instances — such as the current one — law was but too overworked to fall asleep. whatever the context of the disease, the cure remained the same: your touch.

you moved to the back of his chair, massaging his shoulders. law relaxed, leaning his head back with a low groan. your lips hovered above his jaw, the tip of your tongue darting out to lick a stripe on his skin. your fingers lost themselves under the fabric of his coat, re-drawing the patterns of the tattoo on his chest.

“and how should i cure your problem, doctor? hands or mouth?”

law breathed out heavily upon the hearing of his title, sounding oh-so-sinfully on your tongue. he cleared his throat. “mouth. doctor’s orders.”

you hummed. law watched through half-lidded eyes as you knelt and crawled under the table, the brief sight of your ass enough to harden his neglected cock. he unzipped his pants, not having the patience for the teasing you, for sure, had in mind.

“getting hasty?” you teased, and law moved in his chair, pressing his crotch closer to where — he guessed — your face was.

“get on with it,” he bit back, searching for the back of your head.

when law did find it, he froze. under his palm was the familiar texture of his hat. the thought of having you wear it, with your face stuffed with his cock, made him desperate. a shambles followed-in-suit to a room, and the desk that had once hidden you from his glance was moved to the other side of the office, papers and pens and books falling over. law ignored the sound and the chaos, forcing your face against his covered erection, eyes trailed to that damned hat.

you pushed his underwear enough to free his cock from its cuffs; your hand gripping it before it had the chance to meet his abdomen. law all but shuddered, one hand gripping his chair as the other bruised the skin of your nape. your movements were slow at first. your thumb rolled over the tip and smeared his pre-cum over his shaft, causing his hips to buckle ever-so-slightly. before law could repeat his command, you moved forward, licking the essence coating his tip and encasing it in your mouth. law gasped, keeping his palm on your head and gritting his teeth at the warmth of your tongue.

“shit,” he cursed, biting the inside of his mouth to avoid louder noises, tasting the metal of blood.

your eyes narrowed, and he could see the resolve in them; the utter determination to tear him in pieces. you sucked, savoring the salty taste before beginning to slide down; another hand clawing down a clothed thigh. law huffed at the sight of you. your eyes had rolled with pleasure when you swallowed him down to the base, his hat secured on your head. with a jolt of overwhelming desire, law rolled his hips up to make you gag.

your head moved on its own, a futile attempt to free itself and retreat. he pushed it back, forcing your nose to brush against his pubes, witnessing the tears pooling in your eyes.

“you can take me,” he stated, hissing for a second at the swirling of your tongue. “you always do— ngh. take me so well, love.”

you hummed, relaxing for a second. law’s glance met yours, and his grip laxed at last, allowing you to take over. you popped off his tip with a gasp, mouth open, briefly regaining the lost air. your hand jerked his shaft, replaced by a sudden lick that traveled from the base to the head in one long stripe. you teased him with the sight of your cock against your hanging tongue; allowing his eyes the grace of his pre-cum latched on the warm muscle.

law trembled, his chest heaving at the swirling movements around his tip. “so gorgeous, make me wanna stuff you so bad, love.”

a whimper spilled from your lips before claiming his shaft yet again. law buckled his hips mid-shout, reprimanding himself for the sound. your hand gripped one of his balls, and the settled pace — with the bobbing of your head —, had him gasping.

he shoved himself down your throat, gripping the edge of his hat. saliva dripped down your opened mouth; hollowed cheeks increasing the pressure around his cock.

“that’s it,” he moaned, rolling his hips as his tip hit the back of your throat.

law felt the muffled whimper around his shaft, transfixed on the sight of your stuffed cheeks; the watery eyes that stared back into his. the room was filled with the erotic, borderline sinful, sounds of your gags; the constant bobbing of your head coating his cock with saliva. law buckled his hips, and your nails dug on his thigh, fingers tugging at the fabric of his pants as you audibly choked. with a harsh grip, he pulled your head back, giving you a few, precious seconds to breathe.

“look at you,” he voiced out in awe. “willing to empty your lungs for the sake of my pleasure.”

law guided his cock closer, fingers curling under his hat and nails digging into your head. “open up, love. just like that.”

your tongue darted out, and he slapped your cheeks with his tip, struggling to drown the urge to cum at the sound of your whimpers; the sight of you, following the movements of his cock with desperate-filled eyes, as though you could not wait to take him again. law placed himself at the entrance of your awaiting mouth, breathing out a moan.

“so pretty like that, all fucked up,” he mused, groaning once your lips claimed him yet again. “fuck, that mouth was made for me.”

the responding moan resonated around him, and law arched his back against the chair, feeling hot under the layers of his coat. his head latched itself on the back of your throat, and the harsh grip on his balls had him on edge. law’s voice sounded pathetic to his own ears when your tongue teased the underside of his dick, his movements growing hectic.

“i’m gonna cum,” he warned through a grunt, struggling to keep his eyes open and glued to your face.

you let out a muffled whimper, begging for it; your mouth nothing but a ruthless lover, swallowing him whole, yet demanding more. his hat fell from your head, and law lost his sense of self, whimpering at his release; his cum painting your throat white, stealing the breath from your lungs. law held you there, spasming with weakened and hectic thrusts throughout his orgasm, crumbling down to ruins as he bore witness to droplets of his essence escaping past the gaps of your stretched lips.

“let me see,” he mumbled, exhausted at the expanse of his own height.

with a teasing, edging suck, you pulled your head back with a pop. a stripe of saliva and cum connected his tip to your lips, and when you opened your mouth to spare him a sight of your whitened tongue, law’s fingers weakly gripped your chin, beckoning you closer.

dried blood lingered on the inside of his mouth, and mingled with the taste of his own seed. his teeth clashed against yours. a meek note of the coffee he drank priorly settled in between. yet, it was one of the best kisses he ever had.

“thank you,” law mumbled, an exhausted and dangling man nearing the edge of a lethal cliff. a soaring feather that remained tethered to the earth as a consequence of your tender grip.

you hummed, pressing a loving kiss to his cheek while zipping his pants. “cured enough to sleep, doctor?”

he smiled — enamored; sweet —, the particular showcase of teeth, born from the devotion directed towards you. the spark on his chest whose light was born from your mere presence. his hat clung to your figure, and law had half the mind to use his devil-fruit to teleport the both of you to his bed, before crumbling against the mattress, blindly searching for your chest.

law pressed his thigh against your core, lazily motioning for you to rub yourself against the fabric. a small giggle echoed through the walls, a sound he wished to steal and seal; a selfish shell of a man who had no desire to share a single thing related to his lover whatsoever.

“there’s no need for that. sleep,” you whispered, caressing his hair. law hugged your waist; drowned his face in your chest.

“want you to feel good,” law insisted, sleep-drunk, drooling on your bare flesh.

“too tired,” you voiced out matter-of-factly. whether he was the subject of such a statement or not, he failed to tell. law fell under the influence of slumber the second thereafter, sheltered in the confines of a loving dome whose barriers were sealed from the looming insomnia outside.

— 🐈‍⬛ : IT’S FUCKING LAW STUPID FRIDAY LET’S GO.

[animeyanderelover]

Hiii, I don't see much of Jujutsu Kaisen so that's what I'll be requesting:

1. Happy deathday (Gojo, sukuna, nanami, Mahito, the 1st years)

2. Their reaction to s/o being able to nullify their ability (Gojo, sukuna, Mahito)

You can add other characters you'd like and think might be interesting.

Tw: Yandere themes, toxic relationship, possessive behavior, obsession, delusional behavior, manipulation, gaslighting, clinginess, paranoia, controlling behavior, sadism, isolation

S/o can nullify their abilities

Ryomen Sukuna

🗾I can see his s/o very well being assigned to Yuji as soon as the boy has swallowed Sukuna’s finger. The King of Curses himself doesn’t do much besides cackling over you as he sees you as nothing more but a mere babysitter. It has definitely happened that his mouth has popped up on Itadori’s face, tauntingly questioning you about what you hope to do once he actually gains control. You never appear shaken though, always fairly calm and composed as you reply to him before Yuji slaps the mouth shut and apologizes to you. Sukuna is always watching and he definitely observes your confident exterior which does elicit his curiosity. What exactly can you do? What are your abilities? He wants to test you, to see if you are only bark and no bite or if you can stand for your words. Yuji’s naïve wish to protect people is exploited for Sukuna’s own use and soon he snatches the chance to gain control of Yuji whilst he is in your presence. He is fully prepared to kill you if you don’t prove yourself.

🗾Only that the situation never escalates to a battle as all you do is touch him and seal his powers away, forcing him back inside Yuji’s mind. You don’t want to risk any unnecessary destruction. So you just brush him off as nothing? Who do you think you are? It’s a rare humiliation Sukuna has to suffer on that day as you aren’t even willing to fight him and label it as unneeded. He’s seething, his words from that day on filled with a lot more spite but you always reply with an equal amount of sass and snarl. He really has to work on that mouth on yours. As infuriated as he is though, he can’t deny that there isn’t a spark of attraction within this all though. He definitely has to put you in your place but your unique ability to cancel someone else’s technique is, even if quite plain-looking, definitely the ultimate counter against anyone. You’d definitely be useful in his later schemes to help him to regain all of his fingers and to get his original body back.

🗾The verbal banter between the two of you keeps going on as both of you essentially see who can deliver the heavier blow with their insults. A part of Sukuna is definitely yearning for a chance to get another chance to fight you physically but for now he has to be satisfied with this. He can’t deny it though, he is enjoying this by now quite a lot. He’ll tolerate this bratty and rebellious behavior of yours for as long as he is stuck inside the boy’s mind. As soon as Uraume has revealed themself, Sukuna is ordering his servant to keep a special eye on you for as long as he still hasn’t regained a body over which he has full control. You absolutely can’t die now that he has gotten so incredibly interested in you. As much as he would love to search for you right now and get his rematch, he feels his control slowly fading away. There is a sadistic grin on his face though as he takes one final glance at the havoc he has caused in Shibuya. He can’t wait to see your reaction of despair, knowing that it was your job to prevent something like this from happening.

Gojo Satoru

🩵He has always had a particular interest in you. Although you are a low-ranked sorcerer, there has always been something that has made Gojo’s day that much more delightful. Is it your frustrated facade whenever he is teasing the living daylight out of you? Is it the way you pout whenever you feel a bit neglected? Whatever it is, Gojo is absolutely obsessed about it and just can’t stop himself from always following you around. He is the worst attention-seeker possible and he either annoys you to have you focus on him or he is being more considerate and buys you expensive presents to gain your attention and maybe even some praise and a kiss out of gratitude. Honestly, he wouldn’t have minded if it would have stayed that way. But then you just had to develop this Domain Expansion of yours, didn’t you? An ability that completely eradicates all Cursed Energy within except your own, that drains the energy of all foreign living beings within and only strengthens you in return. Suddenly your popularity breaks through the roof.

🩵Suddenly Gojo’s perception of you changes as well. It is a development he doesn’t want to accept. You were supposed to only be this adorable sorcerer he knew about and paid attention to. You weren’t supposed to be the center of attention, be it good or bad. You weren’t supposed to be like him. He knows that the stronger and unique one’s powers are, the more likely they are to be targeted by those who fear such strength. Even if he has no proof for it, Gojo’s paranoia suddenly appears. What if you are really targeted by someone? What if you are killed by someone? The change in atmosphere when he is around you is palpable as he is a lot more rigid and his blue eyes are always darting around as if he fears that someone or something will come for your life at any moment. For a little while this is all he mainly thinks about as he tries to butter up to you by telling you about the experiences he has had as a child to justify his overly clingy behavior. It isn’t long until he has another realization though. Your abilities would even render his powers useless.

🩵Gojo’s identity has always tied into being the strongest, about being the one who no one can beat. Now you exist though. Now you are there and can eradicate his abilities. What does that make him then? Is he even himself if he isn’t the strongest? A part of Satoru is tempted to ask you to show him your Domain Expansion in the little hope that your powers won’t work on him. The other part of him is too frightened to do so as he doesn’t want his belief up until now to be destroyed. Who is he if he isn’t the one everyone has always thought him to be? The man is terrified, terrified as he realizes that the one person who could most likely kill him is you. That isn’t who you were supposed to be. You were supposed to be only his. Desperation and bitterness collide with each other as Gojo wishes that you would have just stayed that overlooked and weak sorcerer you used to be. You don’t need any Domain Expansion. You don’t even need to be a sorcerer. You only need him. Satoru will help you to realize this.

Mahito

🔷Mahito has always been carefree and goofy even whilst committing atrocities by toying around with humans. He has always gotten a good laugh out of Yuji’s moral lessons, about the boy’s anger whenever he transfigured and killed humans. It has always been fun and that is largely because so far Mahito has never been seriously beaten. Until he crosses paths with you. A freelancer of a sorcerer who isn’t really working for the Jujutsu society. It isn’t his first time that he has fought against a sorcerer and in hindsight his mistake was taunting you even whilst you weren’t willing to fight him. Of course he will never blame it on himself that he pushed you over your limit until you ran out of patience. Soon he is crying and screaming as he tries to scramble away from you yet without any success as he is in your Domain Expansion. Quivering pupils look at you as you calmly walk over, your fists stained in his blood as you look at him with chilling disregard. He isn’t even worth killing.

🔷Mahito is unable to live with the humiliation you give him on that day. Never before has he been on the weak side before, never before has he been on the side that suffers. That’s why he is unable to process it all. He’s deeply scarred after that encounter with you. Partially he is utterly and partially he yearns for revenge, traumatized as he can’t and won’t accept how you treated him on that day as if he was the disposable toy. Mahito initially becomes more obsessed with the thought of forcing you to cower on all four in front of him. He needs to correct his view on the world that has been shattered ever since you cursed his life. His body is still far too terrified to get close to you so the curse starts stalking you from a safe distance and he hates how his body always freezes in fear and panic if your head turns around, petrified that you might have sensed him. He hates what he has become of you, petty hatred all directed against you for this humiliation he had to endure because of you. Mahito wants to see you suffer even more than he did.

🔷Hatred soon gradually weakens with time though as Mahito starts getting interested in you. Initial plans to kill closed ones of you fail as he soon comes to realize that you are a true lone wolf. Your life is lonely and isolated from others as you like to keep to yourself. Why is that? Is there a deeper lying fear? Or does nobody like you? It is almost as if Mahito is actively trying to find something to pity you for all to boost his own sense of superiority and confidence. You really don’t seem to have anybody in your life and suddenly he is very adamant to keep it that way. Someone like you doesn’t deserve anyone and he even takes it a step further by interfering to the point where other sorcerers start distrusting you. He wants to see you lonely. He wants to find a way to break you because only then can he feel whole again. Don’t worry though. He’ll gladly keep you as soon as he has found out how to completely take away your abilities. He’s sure that you’ll be at your cutest when you’re at your weakest and most vulnerable point.

[nayatarot777]

the positive karma that you have coming in 2024

• pile one •

your energy during this past year (2023):

this year has been all about completing cycles and life lessons. related to what and who you give your energy to. you’ve had to learn how to stand on your boundaries when it comes to giving and receiving your time, money, and effort. there may have been a lot of people who were coming to you for a lot of help, using you as a pillar of strength for themselves. and while you may have been happy to do this, you realised that the give and take between you and these people were not equal. perhaps it wasn’t even a purposeful thing on their part, but they didn’t even have enough energy to give to themselves so there was never going to be a time when they could repay your energy back to you. this lesson has been learned and completed now.

there are also decisions that you’ve made that you’ve decided to just throw yourself into. options were available to you (particularly when it comes to creative projects or hobbies) and you decided to take a leap of faith when going after whatever options were available to you. i feel like you realised that staying stagnant was actually harming you so you forced yourself into a state of action in order to transform your life or yourself in some way.

there’s a lot of success that you’ve experienced as a result of this. a lot of support for whatever you’re working on too. there’s a lot of fire energy here so the action that you were giving to things and people that left you drained has now been redirected to what you’re working on, with a lot of motivation and inspiration, and you’ve gained followers or supporters of your work along the way. i’m hearing that this is a very loyal group of people who want to continuously support you too. you might’ve had to deal with indecision on this path, wondering if you were working the “right way” or if this would be profitable for you in some way - but it is. these supporters aren’t leaving, even when you take a break to question whether or not you should switch up your path.

your energy in 2024:

you’re going to be a lot more focused and serious in 2024 - especially in relation to a stable and happy life. you’re going to be experiencing the destruction of self-limiting beliefs and negative thought patterns. you could go in and out of these things, but your mind is going to be a lot more stable and focused on what you’re achieving this year. there’s pretty much nothing that can influence the way that you think and what you believe about the life that you’re building for yourself. for some of you specifically, you’ll be focusing on moving into a new home. and whatever home you move into, it’ll be a very happy one. whether you’re moving into this by yourself or with someone else.

you’re also going to be more focused on celebrating your achievements which may be something that you neglected doing before. there’s a lot of happy times here, thanks to some sort of teamwork. this is teamwork either between you and a friend or partner, or teamwork between you and your guides. this could even be a business partner. either way, your hard work and efforts will manifest a lot of positivity and happiness for you. i’m also seeing fast communication when it comes to collaboration that will involve a lot of learning from others and/or teaching other people a valuable skillset too. and this will bring finances to you. especially if any of you are doing any type of life/spiritual coaching work or you’re aiming to do a work project with a group of people.

you’ll be attracting a lot of financial abundance as well as physical stability. things won’t be so uncertain when it comes to your practical life. you’ve been in the energy of financial lack and poverty but by the end of the year, you’ll be more than comfortable and emotionally fulfilled. i mean, you have the queen of pentacles clarified by the ten of cups for the end of the year. it can’t get much better than that 😂

and i’m hearing that this is because you kept yourself in the energy of receiving finances and stability even when your external reality didn’t reflect that. i feel like a lot of you are experiencing lack but you’re still spiritually abundant. this is what you call trusting in your manifestations.

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• pile two •

your energy during this past year (2023):

your energy this year was centred around communication, your thought processes, your stability, and receiving financial abundance. at the beginning of the year, you were learning how to look for opportunities to go towards that would’ve helped you in laying down a stable foundation for yourself financially. and you were learning ways to practically ground the visionary ideas that were coming to you. there has been a lot of studying, learning, and practice of a skillset that you’ve successfully developed - perhaps with the help of other people’s skills through studying their work.

you’ve learned to listen to the guidance that spirit/your spirit guides have been trying to give you. you’ve maybe even learned how to have a wider perspective of your opportunities available to you or just about what’s achievable in life in general. there’s something here about your development in your work triggering other people. you may or may not have known this at the time, but it seems like some people in the same field as you felt as though your work was higher quality than their’s. this is the energy of starting something new, joining a workplace or a community of people, and knocking any competition out of the water. even if you weren’t competing with anyone - people felt the need to compete with you 👀. but there was no competition. again, you may or may not know this. i feel like most of you don’t because you’re just minding your business and directing your focus to working on your craft. and that’s why you’re succeeding more than these people. because they don’t mind their damn business, always in competition with people. you do mind your business. and you’re in competition with nobody but yourself. period 💅🏾

by the end of 2023, you’ve MAJORLY developed your communication skills as well as the skills required for your work. and your ability to attract financial abundance too. you’ve gone from the page of swords + the page of coins to the queen of swords + the queen of coins. and this is extremely fast development. you may be someone who usually develops quickly but this isn’t the usual for people. especially when it comes to the physical realm (coin/pentacle energy). that’s the slowest moving energy within the universe that we live in and you’ve managed to develop that energy within a year. doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like you’ve done anything much in terms of your work or your business or whatever this is. you’ve done A LOT. give yourself props.

your energy in 2024:

the first card out for your energy in 2024 is the four of coins. financial stability. feeling financially comfortable and having all of your needs met. not having to worry about money because you know that you have enough. your spirit guides are coming through heavily with this energy. you might be someone who’s extremely giving, constantly wanting to give to those around you. but your spirit guides are protecting your money. they’re protecting your money in general for sure, but specifically from people who may want to just take from you monetarily. there’s also a message to keep your financial state as PRIVATE as you possible can. i’m seeing that some of you have scorpio or pluto in the 2nd house. keep your money private to protect it from evil eye. your guides are protecting it from the influence of negative energy anyway, but i’m hearing that they’d rather not have to defend it more than necessary 😂. they want to focus on helping you to stack your money up, not waste their energy on evil-eyeing, jealous bitches who are secretly hating. so try to keep this is private as possible. especially from family if you have toxic family members who you may feel (or know) would rather you not do better for yourself. but in 2024, you’re financially comfortable and stable.

there’s also something about major responsibility given to you. the responsibility of being a leader or teacher in a spiritual group, or just in a workplace. i’m mainly picking up on religion, philosophy, or a structure that people come to for spiritual guidance and help. your spiritual beliefs are also solidifying themselves. you’re gaining some type of spiritual knowledge that’s going to become a closely-followed belief for you. some of you might also start going to a church, a mosque, synagogue, etc. just a religious or spiritual place of worship. and here is where you’re going to find a major opportunity for yourself. the hierophant and the high priestess has both come out in this part of the reading for you. this is a divine counterpart. i’m really feeling like a lot of you will be exploring traditional beliefs and religions and seeing the hidden, occult knowledge within it. so, for example, if you begin to read the bible, then this is where the knowledge from religion will come from - but not in the typical way. you’ll be able to see the metaphysical and occultist knowledge that’s interwoven into these traditional texts. how scripture is spellwork, manifestation techniques, how jesus was an occultist himself, etc. that’s just one example. and i’m hearing that spirit will be giving you valuable knowledge through downloads through traditional scripture and text.

you’re finding a lot of pure, genuine love for your work. this love is coming from you towards what you do, but also from other people who love what you do too. there’s a lot of communication of genuine love from those who enjoy your work and how you help them with it. there may be a pause towards the end of the year in relation to your work, but this will be an intentional pause made by you to just enjoy the fruits of your labour as well as seeing what’s beyond the horizon for your work too. perhaps even where you’d like to start to invest money in terms of assets, property, etc. there is going to be a lot of love expressed to you for your work, for your spiritual knowledge and leadership, etc. and i feel like you may have felt like this was lacking in 2023, but 2024 is the year that love for your work is flowing.

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• pile three •

your energy during this past year (2023):

you guys were dealing with a lot of deception, lies, gaslighting even. a lot of mental manipulation and illusions being thrown at you. this stagnated your mental space and your intuition. you didn’t know what to believe nor what to think and it’s almost like you couldn’t find a way out of it. even if you protected yourself from the source of this confusion and manipulation, it still affected your mind and put you in the energy of mentally being stuck. going back and forth between 2 perceptions of this person or this situation. questioning your own intuition. there’s something about not being able to rely on what you physically see with your physical eyes and having to rely on your third-eye - which was still fucked with because i’m seeing that you struggled to even trust in your intuition thanks to whatever this deceitful energy was.

gradually, you balanced out your mind and recognised the truth about this person or this thing. even if the physical world wasn’t reflecting what you knew intuitively about this, it seems like you settled on trusting what you know and not what you were physically shown in this situation. there’s also an energy of blocking communication with someone who was very deceitful. and you decided that you did the correct thing, after a long period of going back and forth about whether or not you were correct about this person. you were. they might’ve tried to communicate with you again but you shut that shit down and your guides are wanting me to tell you that you successfully passed the karmic lesson with this person. you were successful in putting into practice a lesson that your guides have been wanting you to learn, so now you have a lot of recognition for that in the spirit realm.

this whole situation was very burdensome for you to deal with. this person was burdensome, but you’ve laid the burdens down to rest. you’ve gained more stability in your self-assurance in your intuition and your self esteem. there’s a completion in relation to a lesson with these two things. the lesson of putting yourself first, not burdening yourself with other people’s problems, and trusting your intuition about people when something feels off. you’ve stepped into emperor energy as a result of this. taking lead of your life and protecting and defending yourself when necessary.

your energy in 2024:

this year, you’re having some sort of awakening in relation to your creativity, sensuality (your physical appearance specifically), and even your sexuality or sexual needs for some of you. everything related to what brings you joy and what makes you feel comfortable. and i feel like this is a result of finally learning to focus on yourself in order to ask yourself what you want for yourself. there’s going to be a lot of love that you have towards a new beginning in your physical life - especially money and luxuries. and you’re also finding a lot of support (mainly from your guides) when finding these things. you’re almost at the end of a very long, drawn out journey - but there’s one more major thing that you have to realise about life itself before this journey can come to a completion. this journey has a lot to do with self-worth and knowing what you deserve.

there’s a lot of energy related to manifestation here (as you are recognising something about creation). this realisation is about the emotions that you feel towards the physical realm. feeling like there’s something valuable to attract or to find in every situation that you’re in. this is what will bring you success and perhaps even recognition in your creative projects. especially if you’re self employed or if you’re planning to start a side-hustle. this year, you’re learning that your feelings towards life plays a part in the opportunities for financial abundance or just practical stability in general that are presented to you. you’re listening more to the feelings of happiness and joy and paying more attention to where they come from. because where your genuine happiness comes from is where you can create and manifest easiest.

the overall energy of your 2024 is the wheel of fortune, which is extremely fitting. it’s a card about the wheel turning in your favour, and life becoming the complete opposite of what it was before. you’ve been through it in 2023, with all types of rumination and stress and anxiety. but 2024 is about following the path of joy and what actually makes you happy - again, putting yourself first instead of weighing yourself down with burdens from other people who aren’t worth it. i’m also hearing that there’s “strength in numbers”. the more you follow this path, the greater the number of spirit guides (and people who will support you with your passions) will increase. there’s a lot of support for you throughout 2024 because you’re finally supporting yourself instead of prioritising supporting others instead. again, your feelings about life will determine what you attract. you feel like you deserve support and recognition (which is why you’re giving those things to yourself now), so that’s what will manifest in your physical reality too. “as within, so without”. funnily enough, i’ve just googled the actual meaning of that phrase and here’s what it says:

“The second part of the quote, “As within, so without,” suggests that our external reality is a reflection of our internal reality. What we think and feel inside of ourselves is manifested in our external circumstances and experiences.”

which sums up this whole reading. ain’t that crazy? 😂 this awakening is happening within you and your understanding of your own creative abilities regarding life in general and how they work for you. a spiritual wakening fr 💀

be proud of yourself, because this internal awareness wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t CHOOSE to do the work (especially shadow work) in the first place. you chose not to stay stagnant despite seeing no way out of your stagnancy this past year - instead of deciding to fall into a victim complex 👏🏾

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[the-virgoperspective]

Part 2

Mars is one of the most important planets in a composite chart. In the composite chart, this planet represents a bond’s action and drive, a sexual one and ego-driven one. Mars is considered a malefic planet that comes with challenge no matter which house it is placed in. It can show you where the challenges can lie and what it will take to overcome them and bear the powerful fruits of a developed Mars. Mars can also show how you approach individuality as one and where your expression lies within a relationship. It is very important to review the sign placement and other planets and/or luminaries aspecting Mars, as this will give you a more detailed description of how they will affect the expression of this planet.

I will be using the writings of Robert Hand from his novel “Planets In Composite: Analyzing Human Relations” to describe the meaning and significance of Mars in each composite house. Enjoy! xoo

7H Composite Mars

Mars in the seventh house of the composite chart can indicate that the two of you have a great sense of common purpose. On the other hand, it can mean a total conflict of purpose to the point that you are clearly enemies rather than friends or lovers. Either you will feel that your energies are infinitely better expressed by being together rather than apart, or you will be in an extreme state of conflict with each other. Which way your relationship will work depends to a great extent upon finding a way to express yourselves together, discovering something that you can do together. The seventh is the house of partners and of open enemies. Even at the very worst you will know exactly where you stand with each other.

It is also possible, of course, for these two effects to occur together. This creates a love-hate relationship in which your feelings toward each other oscillate rapidly between loving and hating.

The presence of Mars in this house indicates that the ego-energies within this relationship are very strong. In this situation it is not always easy for one of you to accede to the other’s wishes. Here the martyr game that characterizes so many relationships-with one of you always conceding grudgingly to the other-will not work.

This position requires that the two of you be on an equal footing. Any attempt to place yourself over your partner will make a very tense situation. Give each other plenty of room to find fulfillment within the relationship and also to find something that you can work for together. Then this position of Mars will be a help rather than a hindrance.

8H Composite Mars

Composite Mars in the eighth house indicates that in this relationship the two of you express your egos in a way that forces you to look for new insights into the nature of your ways of living. The eighth house of the horoscope is very complex. It is the house of transformation and of the psychological energies that underlie any major changes within the self. As each of you encounters the other, you will be challenged, not necessarily in a destructive way, but in a way that will make growth necessary.

The eighth house also represents regeneration, and Mars in this house can create a great deal of sexual energy for regeneration of the self through creation of another person. In this relationship, sex will be very important and may even become a vehicle for transforming both of you.

This is the house of joint resources, which makes it very important to a relationship. In some cases there may be conflict between you about money or property. To avoid this problem you both must learn to back down and make sure that petty expressions of the ego are not getting in the way of the relationship. Try not to become too involved with your possessions. If you identify with them too strongly, they will become a source of problems.

9H Composite Mars

Composite Mars in the ninth, the house of the higher mind and long journeys, indicates a strong involvement with ideas, beliefs, and philosophies of life in this relationship. That is, your beliefs are very important to each of you, and being together makes them even more so. If your ideas and attitudes toward life are compatible, you will work very hard together to protect them, and you will try to convince others of the rightness of what you are doing.

If your attitudes are not compatible, you will waste a lot of energy trying to convince each other of them, causing much conflict in the process. The universe is actually large enough to encompass both sets of ideas, as well as the beliefs of those whom you disagree with. But the two of you probably do not realize this, feeling that if other people’s beliefs are true, yours cannot be, and vice versa. You are likely to react to opposition almost as if your lives were in danger. Be careful of this and try to expand your views so that they can encompass those of other people.

This placement of Mars may also indicate that the two of you will do some work together that involves traveling over long distances. Or it can mean working together in some academic or intellectual field.

10H Composite Mars

Mars in the tenth house of the composite chart means that the energy of Mars must be successfully expressed through this relationship, or there is likely to be trouble. The tenth is the house of the ego’s most complete expression, symbolizing what you must do in order to evolve in life. In a composite chart, the tenth house has to do with how well each of you can express your life purpose within the relationship. With Mars in this house, the issue of ego-drives will be even more important than in most relationships.

You must allow each other plenty of room to follow your own paths. It would not be a good idea for one of you to sacrifice your goals in life to order to allow your partner to pursue his or her objectives. Eventually that course of action would become a sore point that could disrupt the relationship. Each of you must be allowed to do your own thing while you are together. Obviously it will be helpful if you have similar ideas about what you wish to do with your lives. Whatever your ambitions, they will be an issue in this relationship.

If you can agree on this issue, the energy of the tenth-house Mars will serve you in good stead. You will approach business or any other joint activity very aggressively and energetically. The results should be excellent. However, take care not to let these energies get out of hand, because they could generate a great deal of opposition from others that would be harmful to your best interests.

11H Composite Mars

Composite Mars in the eleventh house indicates that the two of you will enjoy working with other people in groups. It is an indication that you will derive more satisfaction from your work and energies if you feel that what you are doing is part of a greater whole. Together you will identify with various group projects, movements, and other situations in which the individual ego is subordinated to group expression. It is easier for both of you to completely express your personal energies through your relationship this way.

This position may also indicate that you will try to dominate your friends or associates, which will make matters rather difficult for the two of you. No matter where Mars is located in the chart, you must be careful how you handle its energies so that they do not cause strife and arguments with others.

The eleventh house is also the house of your ideals and hopes in life. Mars in this position indicates that the two of you will work very hard to attain whatever you want out of life. Consequently it is very important that you have similar or at least complementary goals in life. Otherwise, disagreements on this issue are likely to be a great source of conflict.

12H Composite Mars

Composite Mars in the twelfth house makes it absolutely imperative that that two of you understand exactly what you want from this relationship and each other. You must arrive at a conscious understanding and agreement. In most relationships, agreements are made tacitly, not formally stated or written down. But for the two do you it might be very profitable to write out an agreement. By doing so you may discover that you have included all kinds of demands that you never thought you would ask for. If you don’t make the demands explicit, you can be sure that every time one of them is broken it will cause a conflict, even though neither of you will understand exactly why.

The literal meaning of Mars in the twelfth house might be stated as unconscious forms of ego expression. The twelfth house is not really unconscious, but it often indicates signals that you are sending out into the world very strongly but not acknowledging. Whether or not you acknowledge them, you will have to live with the consequences.

It is just the same with a relationship; the twelfth-house Mars signifies that you are putting into the relationship sources of conflict that could weaken it badly. Even worse, it would be very unclear why the problems exist. If you do not make an effort to find out what you really expect of each other, it will be difficult to ascertain why you are having conflicts. You may find that if you verbalize your wants, they will be full of contradictions, double-binds, and contract arrangements that can’t be fulfilled. Only if you take the trouble to examine your expectations closely will it be possible to understand what you really want from each other and whether your needs can be met.

part 1

☌ animated divider by @adornedwithlight ☌

[tenebrius-excellium]

Thinking about how Hiccup had zero problems with killing the Red Death in the first movie. Reminds me of how surprised I was that every movie and show afterwards chose to characterize him as this sort of 'naive pacifist' guy. Hiccup was NEVER that. At least first movie Hiccup wasn't, so I keep being surprised they went there.

Viggo said at the end of Rtte that Hiccup taught him to respect dragons as equals, I believe? But that means that there are hateful dragons. Revengeful dragons. Harmful dragons. Asshole dragons. Which means that not every dragon should live, if they are that kind of smart and capable of attacking humans again and again.

If they have a personality, they can be like orcas, who sink ships for fun. They can have destructive feuds with each other. They can be like cats knocking glasses off of counters and like roosters having it in for someone in particular. If dragons are equal to humans, then they cannot be trained to do humans' bidding because they are above that. They can only be genuinely befriended. A dragon will choose to lower its innate dragon-ness - the wild and dangerous ability to roast you with a single breath - and act docile for you if it likes you. Sort of like a crow? But a dragon is not a pet, at least that's not how I understood the Httyd dragons. Which means, that if it comes down to it - Hiccup versing a dragon that is standing between him and the humans he loves - a dragon who won't be talked down, who won't be persuaded to be peaceful, a dragon who greedily insists on its power in a situation that endangers Hiccup's loved ones - I think Hiccup totally would still choose to kill that dragon. Somehow, this confrontation was avoided throughout all the rest of Httyd.

Thinking about this specifically in the context of wasps being on my mind. This summer, I decided that I'm not going to be afraid of wasps anymore. And so when watching them as they steal my breakfast from me, I find that they, too, just want to eat because they just discovered a delicious feast. They don't want to sting me, they are only interested in having a bite of my delicious marmalade as well. Now, when trying to handle them, wasps are going to be wasps. So I've simply got to finish my breakfast as long as there is only 1 wasp buddy around. As soon as buddy goes flying off to tell his friends about the party he found, I leave and take my stuff with me. That is how I avoid getting myriades of wasps all over my food. That is how I avoid getting stung out of irritation. That is how no wasps get killed.

By respecting the nature of who wasps are. By assuming that wasps are going to be wasps. Now, I can still say that I shared my breakfast with an animal. Cycle of life. Isn't that wonderful.

But if a wasp starts invading my space too much, selfishly annoying me again and again despite getting its share of the cake, that wasp is going to get GONE. And I believe that dragons of intelligence should be treated with the same courtesy. Og Hiccup did that.

Og Hiccup is just the best. He's very perfect.

[astroariska]

ASTROLOGY OBSERVATION [Chapter 5] ✨ - The North Node Version

North node represent the new growth we are heading into. So it's very normal if you feel like you are uncomfortable to do everything related your north node chart.

But when you did it, your life starts to change

Once a Virgo north node started to get their fruits smoothies instead of wine, slow cooked meals instead of takeouts and having their schedule wrapped with yoga and pilates ... I swear it's DONE for y'all!

Virgo North Node need to carefully pick wisely who are worth their help. Because sometimes, people go through shit as their own consequences and yet feels like victimized????

I just want you to know that your Scorpio North Node friends is actually wishing changes in their life. They want change. They know that things supposed to change in order to grow. But what all they get is sometimes annihilation, destruction and even violence and that's not a pleasurable change for them.

Stop telling Scorpio North Node to let it go. They don't need them. Start to ask Scorpio North Node what can they do from the ashes. Transformation is the real fear of this placement. They had no idea if it will work or not and most time, they will feel the sorrow of having no idea is their adaptation to the new things is going to be painful or not.

This is the most underated documentary for Leo North Node. But i think Leo North Node is never about fame and get famous. It's more about strength and in general. Most people forget that Leo is a sign that represent fortitude and only highlighting the part of being "famous" and "taking the center stage" which is not true.

Leo North Node people learn to use all of their mental, physicological and soul power to cope with whatever life has thrown to them. They need to understand they have fight for their right instead giving it away to people (and this is when the fame and luxury come from, from finding what's already yours)

Pisces North Node and the art of letting go. It's not like they are holding into things that makes them uncomfortable. But it's learning that sometimes you can't fix what was broken from the first time. That life is imperfect, flawless and sometimes vague in it's own way and what they need to do is; just keep swimming.

Also, this north node need more sleep than other people. Sleep is the way they will gain productivity and mental clarity. Enough sleep provides them power to do the right things everyday.

Sagittarius North Node and the faith. It's not like they need to stick into one religion. But it's more like they need to hold the higher moral code and standard over a shortcut. Of course, you will outsmart anything. But this life calls your integrity and your morality as human being. Life ask your wisdom. So always be wise.

Sagittarius North Node is also a placeement that speak the law of assumtion and the law of attraction. So, positive mindset is needed because things will manifest easily with positive mind.

Aries North Node, y'all so angry. But what if i told you that life demands your action and not your insight? This is the north node that ask you to be the first who doing the impossible, the first who doing the things that nobody did it in the first place. You know what you need to do, so it takes courage to turn the table.

Aries North Node also have a knack to relieve after ... yes, cursing. Cuss some bomb and shit till it feels easy and lightweight again.

Taurus North Node. This is the most bitter north node that i've encountered because this north node is about self dignity and respect. They need to uproot themselves from what people has taught them to act and start building the strong boundaries and foundation for their own life.

No, Taurus North Node. This is not your time to be the biggest enemy of yourself. Because how people treat you, depends on how you TREAT YOURSELF.

Gemini North Node and equality. They are the type who need to understand that their difference and diversity doesn't mean that someone is in higher or lower class. So treat people equal and treat yourself as equal too. Treat the waitress over the restaurant the same respect like you treat the politician on their office.

Also Gemini North Node. STOP FIGHTING WITH YOUR NEIGBOURS AND BROTHERS/SISTERS. They will unlock you some good things in the future. So stay your COOL.

Capricorn North Node's pressure. In this lifetime, life wants you to be the authority figure of your own, so it's understable that you'll disappointing some people who love you and taken care of you. In turns, you'll see that sometimes loves and cares is form of emotional manipulation to prevent you from the growth you need. Don't get easily swayed by the fake love.

With the most respect. Get your shit together, Capricorn North Node. People tend to manipulate you because they can take adventage from you and rob something from you. Don't let them mess your kindness as a weakness.

Aquarius North Node need to take off some privilege they have in this lifetime and be the one who's responsible for greater duty. Responsibility and duty is unavoidable in this lifetime so make sure you handle them with care and love for humanity (people around you). You can't expect life is pleasure because only through the struggle, you'll understand how pleasure is priceless.

I will give some warning for you, Aquarius North Node. If you still feeding your ego, you'll become the public enemy. I've seen this placement falls down and rise up because their community is wishing them to. Make sure that people only wishing you the best so you could manifest easily.

Libra North Node need for the partnership in this lifetime has nothing to do with being in relationship. But being in the middle of the change. Most people in this north node will make the most life changing decision and partnership helps them to keep relate into the change they have made. Relationship happens when you are in the commitment in the change with someone who willing to helps you through thin and thick. So choosing the right partner means choosing the right person to change and evolve together.

No, Cancer North Node. Being in control and having your guard up doesn't mean success. Success to you is a sense of security to feel whatever you want to feel and everytime you want to feel. Your job, your salary and your social status doesn't define you. It's your warmth, present and personality that roots you deep for who you are that matters the most.

RELEASE YOUR JOB IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY AND UNDERPAID, CANCER NORTH NODE. DROP IT until they found that YOU ARE WORTH THEIR RESPECT.