#especially given that it would have to be offset by time changes lmao

[damnation-if]

Since Suchebh shifts forms every day and night, does one need to be attracted to both forms in order to pursue them? Or is the MC generally just assumed bi/pan? Also how do you pronounce their name? My brain keeps defaulting to Suckbeth, in a weird portmanteau of suck and Macbeth, which I think is probably wrong lol

i've been having a bit of trouble in regards to answering this for a while, mostly because some of it is something that i really can't answer For anybody. parts of it are easier though at least lol

there's a pronunciation guide here - i do think Suchebh would be amused by your particular idea of it even though it wouldn't make sense in-universe given that you're Hearing their name instead of seeing it written haha

secondly, the mc is never assumed to have any particular sexuality (as i think most mcs in most IFs aren't? that could be me not knowing about some where you're explicitly one thing or another though, i just haven't personally encountered a game like that i don't think). like it won't be Expected for any mc to have attraction for any RO, as that's (rightly, in my opinion) up to the player to decide 🤷

as for the part about whether one needs to be attracted to both of Suchebh's forms, i guess this one is mostly up to the player also? like if you suspend disbelief for a moment and pretend that there really was a person whose physical form changed every 12 hours in real life. would you feel comfortable being in a relationship with them if during half of the time you spent together you weren't attracted to them, if the transformation affects your level of attraction? the answer won't necessarily be no for everybody, but by the same token it won't be yes for everybody either.

if you're asking how They would feel about an mc who is explicitly not interested in them 50% of the time, i don't think it would have much of an effect on a casual sex level of relationship, but they wouldn't be keen on a more committed relationship under those circumstances... so i guess it depends on what you mean by "pursue."

i hope this helped answer your questions... even though i feel like maybe it might not have lol. sorry

[silksandcravats]

Can I request a fic where reader works with Flip and they go out to a bar after work together but the reader gets drunk and just tells flip how much of a crush they've got on him? (absolutely not based on the fact I did this last night with a close friend lmao help)

A/N: This is such a cute idea! I’m so sorry for how long it took me to answer this but I hope you enjoy! ps hope the confession went well! 

masterlist

Warnings: none that I’m aware of :)

It was rather crowded and rather noisy in the bar, although admittedly not half as bad as you had expected for a Friday night. The original plan had been for the whole department to go out together, to celebrate the closing of one hell of a case. You had been especially excited, given that it was the first big case that you had really been allowed to help out on. But one by one, they had all given their own excuses and it turned out you and Flip were the only two without plans on a Friday night under such short notice. 

‘’So,” you taking another sip from your second… or sixth cocktail, you had arrived at the bar before Flip, and in an effort to offset a potentially awkward evening, you had begun drinking like a madwoman. “They gonna bump you down the food chain now that you’ve been beaten out by a rookie?”

“Don’t go getting a big head, one solved case doesn’t make you a pro.” he rolled his eyes, casually working through his third beer. It was safe to say he was a lot less drunk than you.

“Oh come on,” you groaned, “Would it be so hard to admit I did a good job?”

“You did good rookie, you did good.” 

“Thank you.” you grinned in response, looking away. 

That was the second time tonight he had complimented you tonight. The first had been when he came in to see you sitting by yourself in a pretty little sundress that just happened to be in his favorite color. He couldn’t help but tell you how pretty you looked as he came to sit down next to you. Your cheeks had gone pink, but you quietly thanked him before quickly trying to change the subject, telling yourself he was just being polite, that’s all.

Flip tried to catch up with you as the night went on, but it soon became clear that he could take a lot more drink than you, and the drinks you had downed in rapid fashion before Flip showed up came back to bite you. It was until you giggled so hard at something he had said and practically slid off the chair that he stepped in. 

“Just water for her.” He said, intercepting your attempt to order another drink. You whip your head, furrowing your brows at him.

“You’re annoying.” you did your best not to slur. He let out a hum in response, amused at your sudden change in mood. He nodded as thanks to the bartender who had just sat your water down, then pushed the glass directly in front of you.

“Drink,” he commanded you, taking another sip from his own beer.

“You’re also bossy.” you continued, but opted to be compliant, wrapping your lips around the straw, soothing a thirst you hadn’t realised you’d developed. “I guess it’s a good thing I like you huh?” you added between sips. This time your words elicited a bigger response. Flip’s eyes went wide and he nearly choked on his drink, turning to look at you.

“y/n you don’t mean that.” He said quickly, but wasn’t clear which of you he was trying to convince.

“Oh calm down detective,” you giggled, swirling your straw, “I already know you don’t like me back. It’s no big deal.”

“Now what makes you say that?” he says, frowning at you.

“I mean you’ve made it pretty obvious.” you shrug, staring at the gloss that was chipping off the edges of the wooden bar. “I dropped plenty of hints for a while, learned how you like your coffee, left mugs on your desk for you all the time, got really close to you when we were both looking at a file, that kind of thing. One of the girls up front would always poke at me for making it too obvious, but you never said anything.” 

Flip half expected glossy eyes when you finally looked up at him, but for some reason your casual face and sense of indifference towards the situation actually made him sadder. You had already made up your mind he doesn’t like you back and you’d come to terms with it. Of course he noticed how you acted around him, but he was busy spending all his time convincing himself you didn’t really mean anything by it. After all, don’t you always notice all the little things about a person when you’ve got a crush?

“I think the booze is making you say things you don’t mean sweetheart.” He joked softly, trying to lighten the situation.

“Not really.” you hummed, “I’m sure I’ll wake up tomorrow regretting spilling my guts to you but that doesn’t mean I don’t mean it. Drunk words, sober thoughts y’know.”

“I don’t think you’ll regret it.” He mused. Your lipstick had began to smear across your face sightless from the way you had sloppily missed your straw a few times, but you were so drunk you didn’t seem to realise. So Flip took care of it, folding over the napkin his drink had been sitting on and dipping the corner into your water. His free hand moved to your jaw, fingers nearly reaching the back of your neck, and moving your pretty face up slightly so he could dab away the color before it could stain. You look at him with big eyes, still confused by his words, but don’t ask about it.

-----

You woke up the next morning to the phone ringing. Morning wasn’t the right word, seeing as it was nearly one in the afternoon. Your head was pounding and you groaned rolling over, covering your ears with a pillow, ready to just let it ring. When the offensive noise finally ceased you flopped onto your back again and a strange sense of remorse started to pool in your stomach, if only you could remember why…

Your thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing again. This time you conceded, grumbling as you moved the edge of the bed, pulling yourself to the edge of the bed and picking up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Morning sleeping beauty, how’s the hangover?” The sound of his voice brought a smile on your face as you twirled the phone cord around your fingers mindlessly. Suddenly happy for the wakeup call.

“Flip! Funny you called, I was just wondering, do you have any idea how I got home last night?” 

He laughed softly at your lack of memory regarding last night’s events before he answered. Flip went on to explain everything from the night before, how you had gone a little hard on the drinking and eventually when the bar closed he had taken you home, he intentionally left out your little confession, wanting to keep that to himself. Once you were up to speed he then went on to ask you out on a proper date that night, even going as far as to ask you to wear the same pretty dress from the night before. 

[rat-apologist]

A Semi-In depth Review of Anna Todd’s After

So I’ve been seeing the trailer for the movie adaptation of this book every five seconds on my Instagram feed, and as a proud dyslexic unwilling to sit down and read it, I listened to the audiobook.

Again, these are all my opinions, if you don’t agree that’s okay.

Here is a quick, spoiler free plot synopsis for those who want/need it: Being moved from Wattpad into the real world of publishing, After follows a girl named Tessa, who simultaneously has the mentality of a five year old and an old man from the 1800’s. She is eighteen years old and is going to college to be an English major. Tessa loves control, planning, and books. She's an introvert at heart, and “not like other girls” (i.e. dresses conservatively, is a virgin (the books words, not mine)). She has a shitty mom and a nice, preppy, boyfriend who is still in high school, and her life is completely planned out. That’s all turned upside down when the poster child for emotional abuse named Harden (harry styles) waltzes into her life during a frat party her first week of college. Your typical Wattpad/teen movie drama ensues.

(the actual review under the cut)

This review is chock full of spoilers for Anna Todd’s book After. If you want a good idea of what I thought about this book without any spoilers I’ll just say this: I can really honestly say I was never bored while listening to this book. However, that is not necessarily a good thing. Often times I was just too much in awe of the clunky writing and truly evil supposedly “redeemable” characters to be bored. On a one to five star scale, I’d probably give it a two. More on that later.

Here are the things I liked:

(this one is only applicable to the audiobook) the narrator was amazing, her voice acting was very appropriate (though she did tend to drop accents sometimes- but that is forgiven because of how otherwise amazing her line delivery was- especially considering the quality of the dialogue).

Landon and Dakota were my favorite characters, and even though they had no personalities beyond what they meant to Tess and how they interacted with Harden (Hardin? Again, I listened to the audiobook I’ve got no idea how to spell that lmao) they still made the book better to listen to.

Despite the repetition of plot/narrative structures I can happily say again that I was never really bored.

Okay moving on to more mixed-bag feelings:

So the last chapter was from Harden’s perspective, and I thought that was an interesting idea. Learning what one character thinks, especially since our protagonist is, how you say, a little bad at reading/interacting with other human people. However the execution left something to be desired for me. It quite literally was just the exact same scene we just saw from the previous chapter, but from Hardens perspective instead of Tess’s. Which was just ended up being unnecessarily repetitive at times.

I liked how Tessa tried to be less judgmental throughout the book, however her growth is very, very limited.

I liked the fact that they mentioned they used condoms in pretty much every sex scene, and that most of the time clear verbal consent/clear nonverbal consent was given for the sexual stuff. That does not happen often in books, especially in fan fiction from what I understand.

I like that Tess does stand up for herself, while I could sometimes see myself comparing her to Bella Swan considering how much of her personality does kind of revolve around her relationship with Harden, she certainly was more vocal about her feelings. And boy, did she have a lot of feelings.

Moving on to the things I didn’t like, this is probably going to be a mix on writing, characters, and plot points so bear with me. (I’m saving my many thoughts on the twist for last)

Okay so a big number one is the biggest plot driver, the love story. So, I feel like it goes without saying, but the main relationship is SUPER unhealthy. Harden constantly stalks, manipulates, and bullies Tess throughout the whole book. He is pretty much abusive, using her caring for him to his own advantage and then dropping her when it suits him. Plus his hyper-sexualization of her “virtue” is really really nasty. Tess pretty much cries in every interaction they have together, and even acknowledges how toxic their relationship is, and yet I’m supposed to root for them? Hmm… I don’t think so

The near constant slut shaming and girl hate in this book bothers me, especially when it’s mixed with the hints of “I’m not like other girls” from Tess

The character descriptions kinda weird me out considering how much Harden is described like Harry Styles, like literally a tumblr punk edit of Harry Styles

The dialogue is… bad. To all the writers out there (myself included) make sure you read your dialogue out loud to see if it sounds natural, that way if your Wattpad fanfiction ever does get published, and your book is adapted into audiobook, you’ll avoid a situation like this one. Because, especially listening to it, the dialogue in this book is really really bad. Honest to god it sounds like robots imitating humans are talking to each other, only they’re trying to convince the other robots that they are humans. For some reason Anna Todd avoided using contractions for most of the book, making the characters sound unnatural and completely out of their predefined characters. Why would these college students not use words like “it’s” “we’ll” and “we’re”? It is truly astonishing, and it makes the few uses of contractions really distracting. Normally I don’t give a shit about grammar since I don’t really understand grammar, and normally grammatical errors aren’t that obvious when listening on audio, but the dialogue was seriously that bad.

The pacing was bad, that’s kinda all I have to say. It was generally too quick during plot development but then took a screeching halt for each fight/sex scene (of which there are many)

The repetition of certain words/phrases really got annoying. Everyone's always screaming, biting on their lip, or smirking. Harden is rude, as Tessa mentioned about eight million times, and Tessa finds his dirty talk arousing. We know this, because Todd uses those phrases about a billion times a chapter.

The sex scenes kind of grossed me out. I’m (in general) fine with sex, but the way the sex scenes were written seriously ucked me out. These college kids avoid using words like “penis” “dick” “pussy” etc. and use really really juvenile words like “down there” and “length”. Maybe this is a fanfiction thing, and I’ll admit that I have not read essentially any fanfiction, but it is truly a disturbing way to write sex. Especially since Tessa is written to have the experience and understanding of sex as like a child, not even understand what an orgasm is and unwilling to say words like penis or vagina, something our loverboy Harden is super attracted to, by the by.

I hate that this book uses “girl almost gets assaulted so man can come in and valiantly protect her” trope. It is super gross and I hate it. That’s kind of all I can say, the use of women's pain so that men can get some amount of redemption is awful.

More on Harden: I am sick of the “violent, broken man that I promise I can fix!” trope. It is used to justify and excuse abuse and I hate it. Tess is honestly scared of him several times in the book and it’s played as a personality quirk of his? Like everyone just accepts that’s how he is? I know for the most part we aren’t supposed to “like” him for the first part of the book, but it’s obvious that the author wants us to root for him and Tessa in some capacity. Especially with the inclusion of his perspective at the end, which in a way is exactly the kind of manipulation that he is into so idk. Also he is possessive despite the fact that they weren’t dating, and he is very clear he does not date. That’s already abuse, but of course there is more. On top of that he is cruel, and pretty stuck-up throughout the book- making him pretty much insufferable to me. And all of this shit just gets worse once the twist is introduced, and no amount of his whining from his chapter could at all change that.

The rest of the characters are all either boring, or the worst people you could ever meet. Tess’s mom, Molly, Jace, all really terrible to offset the horror of Harden. To almost justify what he does- because comparatively he doesn’t seem as bad (up until the twist).

The twist. Dear god the twist. So, as it goes it isn’t an extremely inspired twist. I’ve seen it done before in a similar way (I’m looking at you, Ten Things I Hate About You). For those who are wondering: the big twist is that Harden only really pursued Tess in the beginning because after she revealed she is a virgin at a party early on in the book he makes a pricey bet with Zed (another side character only used to add ~drama~ to Tessa and Harden’s relationship) to see who can take her virginity. All of the subsequent bullying, possessiveness, manipulation, etc. were all a ploy to have sex with her before Zed could. I feel like it goes without saying that that’s disgusting, but let me tell you exactly why: at least if he was actually interested in her at first his weird behavior could possibly be passed off as hormones (I wouldn’t like it, but I’d understand it  more if you’d try to make that argument), but the fact that it was all for a bet not only makes his disgusting actions worse, but makes the fact that he supposedly falls in love with her so much more annoying. Plus, the fact that he literally tries to trap Tessa in a lease so she can’t leave him, and tries to bribe his friends into silence really shows how little he actually cares about Tessa and her thoughts and feelings.  

So, why two stars? Honestly, because I was entertained (for lack of a better word) by this book. Maybe if I actually read it and not just listened to the audiobook it my rating would be lower, maybe if there was just one more sex scene to slow down the pace I would have been more bored. Who knows, but I was entertained. Sometimes by how terrible the dialogue is, by how astonishing the characters decisions were, sometimes by the actual plot. It’s like watching a shitty soap opera, it’s not good by any means, but it certainly keeps your attention.