#goofballs and idiots of equal measure

[han-merlin]

Paolo Maldini's successors

The biological successor and the adoptive successor

[zeravmeta]

loses 10 years of my life and has 20 added in an endless loop thinking about how gintoki is always primarily described by his inhumanity first and foremost because for all that he is an idiot goofball he is also a survivor of one of the bloodiest massacres in his series ever since he was a child and even surrounded by family and friends he has no qualms whatsoever with all the blood on his hands and equally has no problem further spilling blood to protect what he loves <- primary indication of humanity in gintama is using a sword to protect vs using a sword to kill and the measure of ones soul (and even gain one) is in how they weild a sword

[kenzumekodma]

18+, minors & ageless blogs dni

pairing: hajime iwaizumi x fem!reader

wc: 2207

warnings: a/b/o dynamics, predator/prey kink, knotting, idiots to lovers, author has no idea what she’s doing but had fun doing it

find the rest of my kinktober masterlist here!

Watching your friends play fight, you think you have everything under control. You must have, after all, if you’d made it through three years of high school and then some with these four goofballs. Oikawa only has a week before he has to go back to Argentina, and at his insistence, you’ve all gathered for a camping trip like you’d always talked about having in school.

As Makki and Iwaizumi gang up on their former captain, Matsukawa helps you set up the tent, driving stakes into the earth. A shrill breeze sends a shiver down your spine. Almost instantly, the scent of the three men invades your senses, and you gulp, reality setting in that you’re alone in the forest with four alphas, and…

“You know the full moon’s tonight, right?” Mattsun murmurs to you. He must have picked up their heavy scent as well. “You brought them, right?” he checks with you. You nod, but grab your backpack and rifle through it, just to be sure. Shuffling your clothes and toiletries around, you search and search but come up empty handed. Not a single heat suppressant pill to be found. Mattsun raises an eyebrow. Noticing his concern, you rummage for a moment before forcing a look of relief across your features.

“Yup, got them!” you say brightly. Internally, however, the only thing on your mind is fuck fuck fuck what the fuck am I going to do I’m so fucking fucked. Mattsun shakes his head. You can’t quite tell if he doesn’t believe you, or doesn’t believe you didn’t triple check before leaving. Honestly, you can’t believe you didn’t check the calendar, the forecast, anything. You’ve got a few hours until sundown, though, and that’s more than enough time to formulate a plan, right? Right?

The sinking sun shines golden behind the trees, and the rising moon begins to cast silver down from above. Warmth flees with the sun and you find yourself getting chills. From his spot next to you, Iwaizumi bites the inside of his cheek. When he opens his mouth to speak, he tastes the metallic droplets dissipate along his tongue.

“Cold?” he asks.

“Yeah, yeah, a little. I should grab my jacket,” you say.

“Don’t bother. Here,” he lifts his sweater off with an easy movement and tosses it into your lap. Gratefulness and burning want cut into you in equal measures. It was your own secret that you’d been hopelessly pining after Hajime Iwaizumi since you were both 15 years old. You’d planned on confessing right after graduation, until he broke the news that he’d be moving halfway across the globe for university right before you could will the words to come out of your mouth.

“Thanks,” you mumble. Maybe it’s a good thing? At least if I’m covered in his scent, it’ll cover up my own a bit, right? Iwaizumi watches the gears turn in your head from the corner of his eye, and for a short moment, he’s not an alpha and you’re not an omega. He’s not a trainer for Olympic athletes and you’re not the independent woman doing your best and struggling your way through life one day at a time. He’s just Hajime, and you’re just you. Oikawa nudges Makki, discreetly pointing at Iwaizumi. Of fucking course those idiots had figured it out years ago. It’s been over a decade and they’re still acting like teenagers, smirking and waggling their eyebrows at him whenever he gets close to you.

After a while, though, things fade back to normal. The four men trading spooky stories at Mattsun’s insistence, roasting marshmallows, and… arguing? You missed the comment that started it, but the smell of their testosterone rising is unmistakable.

“I’m, uh, I’m gonna go and get another bag of marshmallows,” you say hurriedly and stalk off towards the tent. You look behind you, making sure they’re still all occupied, and take a couple of snacks with you to get through the night before making off for a safe distance away in the woods.

Half an hour of following what you could’ve sworn was the north star and you’re sure of it, you’re definitely lost. But you consider the bright side. You’re far enough away that the only thing you can smell around you is fresh air, the falling leaves -- really, Tooru, who plans a camping trip in October of all months? -- and Iwaizumi’s sweater. Allowing yourself one indulgence, you take a deep breath of the fabric, your scent and his entwining in your nostrils and addling your brain.

“--Hey, hey, stop! That’s the last fucking marshmallow, Makki! You’re wasting it!” Oikawa pouts, back at the campsite.

“‘S not a big deal, y/n said she was going to get another bag. Right, y/n?” Makki counters. “Y/n?”

“That was half an hour ago, dumbass,” Iwaizumi says.

“Well? Should we look for her?” Makki asks.

“Of course we should,” Iwaizumi answers.

“I’ll go!” Oikawa pipes up.

“Like hell. You can’t control yourself around an omega well enough in the daytime. I’m not letting you go on a full fuckin’ moon, Shittykawa. You’re not any better, Makki. She’s got those suppressants, right? I can get her back no problem.”

“What about me?” Mattsun interjects, borderline offended at not even being considered.

“What way is north, Issei?” Iwaizumi deadpans.

“Shut the fuck up, why don’t you, Hajime,” he snarks.

“If I’m not back with her in an hour, start looking for us,” Iwaizumi says with finality, and he’s off.

It’s not long before he catches his own scent creating a path, meandering between trees. He breaks into a jog, his heart sprinting as his scent fades into yours. It’s stronger than usual, heady and intoxicating, and he lets out a growl as he realizes what’s happening.

“Fuckin’ really? Heat? You’re in heat? You’re fuckin’ kidding me,” he groans. “So much for the damned suppressants.” He picks up a surge of your scent and he realizes you must be near enough to hear him, to sense him, to smell him. He raises a hand to his neck, thumb grazing over his scent glands, going into overdrive as he feels the rush of adrenaline course through his body.

“Not far away, are ya? C’mon, don’t be shy. I don’t bite… hard,” he takes a shaky breath in, becoming still and calm in his concentration. This, this hunt, this is what he was born for, what he’s been longing for with you since the day you cheered for him louder than anyone else in the stands at the first volleyball game he invited you to more than a decade ago. Leaves rustle about thirty feet away from Iwaizumi and he picks up the surge again. He moves quickly and quietly towards where he’s sure you are.

“You’re getting off on this, huh? Don’t deny it, I can smell it on you from here, y/n. You wanna be my prey, huh? Want me to hunt you down and make you mine?” His lips curl, twisting into smirk and baring his teeth. He knows this isn’t the way he should be confessing to you, not when the only indication of your attraction is the fact you’re in heat. Would you react like this to Mattsun? Oikawa? Makki? Does it even matter, since he’s the only one here? His head whips around as a hitched breath comes from behind a tree another twenty feet away.

“You can run and you can hide, little girl. But the big, bad wolf is coming to get you,” he growls.

Taking his sweet time, he walks over to where he’s confident now that you haven’t moved from, if the little whimpers and moans are anything to go on. The sight that greets him sends a wave of warmth through his body. You’re flushed, whether from the chase, your heat, or some combination thereof, he doesn’t know. But you’re curled up in his sweater, and that stirs something in him deep in his core. The way you’re helplessly rubbing your thighs together, trying to keep from touching yourself because he knows you know that if you try to relieve the white hot need you’ll only make it worse.

“I-Iwa, go…” you mumble against your own will, but he only shakes his head. You sigh, conceding to him. “H-Haji, please, h-hurts, n-need it. Haji, please,” you whimper. “Help me.” Iwaizumi is on you in seconds, hands flying to your chest and your waist, lips a sloppy flurry against your own. He kisses down your neck and you keen, pushing your flesh against his bared teeth insistently.

“You know if I do that right now, you’re mine. You understand that, right? I don’t have to if you don’t want it. I can pull out, too…” The insecurity tugging at him is quickly quelled at your protests.

“No, no, do it, please,” you whine. “Wanted you for so long. P-please, wanna be yours, lemme be yours.”

Iwaizumi groans, feeling his hardening cock strain against his pants, and bite, marking you as his own, his mate. There’s no going back now.

You scramble to remove your jeans, but Hajime’s hands come down over yours, easing them off of you himself. You paw at the buckle of his belt and he chuckles at your eagerness. His heavy cock springs free a short moment later and you feel the warmth rise a degree in your body. He peels your panties off, sticky and wet with your slick, and takes a deep breath, moaning out loud at the thought that this beautiful mess is all for him, you’re all for him.

“Fuck me, Hajime,” you breathe.

He doesn’t need to be told twice, easing into you with as much restraint as he can muster. You suck him in so greedily, he swears he never wants to leave the warm home of your walls. Your whimpers and cries of desperation quickly melt into soft curses, begs for more, choked moans when he hits that spot just right inside you. You push your hips up to meet his, burying him to the hilt yourself.

“You’re gonna be the fuckin’ death of me,” he mumbles against your lips.

He rolls his hips, angling them up to catch you where you need it most. Reaching your hand between your bodies, you roll your puffy, needy bud between your fingers. A growl catches in Hajime’s throat and he bites down, sinking his teeth into the junction of your neck and shoulder. He makes sure he leaves his mark on you. It’s not enough for you to clench and milk him for all he’s worth, it’s not enough for you to be swathed in his scent, he needs every alpha within a mile to know you belong to him.

“H-Haji-” you moan, kneading your own chest through the fabric of his sweater. He drags the cotton up your body, hungrily latching his lips onto one of your nipples. Your breath hitches, mewling out his name as if it’s the sweetest candy money can buy. You feel the base of his cock swelling and nudging against your folds as you draw closer and closer to your climax.

“P-please, w-want it, want your knot. Haji please,” you wail. He’s never been able to deny you anything and he’s not about to start now, not when he has you right where he’s always wanted you. He pushes his swollen knot past your tight entrance. The absolute blissful feeling of being so full, like you never knew you were incomplete until now, drives you hurtling head first into your orgasm. You moan and cry and cling to Hajime like he’s the only solid thing in this world. Quickly following you into your haze, he spills his seed inside you, locking your bodies together whether he means to or not.

“I, uh, suppose I should tell you,” you start, looking away from him as you come down from your high, waiting for his swelling to subside. “I’ve, I’ve kind of been in love with you since we were kids,” you mumble out quickly. He catches your chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing you to look at him.

“Hey. I’ve wanted to kiss you since we were fifteen. You’ve been the first thing I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of at night for nearly half my life. I’m not apologizing for this if you’re not,” he says. You shake your head.

“‘M not apologizing, not at all.”

“Good,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to the tip of your nose. He eases himself out of you and helps you dress yourself quietly. “Legs are sore, huh?” he chuckles as you try to stand up. You swat at him lightly, unable to keep the smile off your face.

“Shut up and carry me, will you?”

And he does just that. He can when he walks back into the perimeter of your campsite he’s just barely made it within his hour time frame. The worried expressions on your friends’ faces quickly turn to teasing, waggling their eyebrows at the two of you, when they catch sight of the bites littered over your scent glands. With a smirk, Mattsun speaks.

“Took you fuckin’ long enough.”

[abyssal-drain]

7

That wasn't half so bad as we thought it'd be.

She didn't pry, she actually suggested we take it slowly at first - 'my own pace,' she claimed - but like I told her, MY pace is basically never, and Zeraia isn't wrong, this ain't healthy. If it comes up in combat - why it would is irrelevant - if I snap in a volatile place, people could get hurt. People who don't deserve it, people who might need protecting.

I did a foolish thing to occupy myself - to distract myself from that chattering terror inside my skull. I'd built this up into a Calamity, and it wasn't - but it felt like one, all the same.

I've always liked magic, always imagined what it would be like to wield the power of the gods themselves. Magic is how spoken transcend their fragile existences, and I have nowhere near enough of it.

When I was a kit, the rare times I didn't dream myself a hero, being strong for those who can't, I saw the near-groveling respect showered upon the padjal, and I heard the whispers of their power, and a part of me anted that, too. Those dreams were crushed early, though: my aether's never been particularly strong.

I'm good at listening, though. Spending a few months mute does that - I didn't much care for being silenced, but you can learn more with your mouth closed and your ears open, than the other way around.

Kaito knows that. I wonder if he knows that I see how reluctant he is to open up - I wonder if he knows that's part of why I'm so open with what I care to share, is partly because if I keep picking at him, keep talking just to talk, I'll get him to let slip more of the man, and less of the mask.

He plays the fool to hide the cracks and bleeding - and he plays it well. Most folk probably wouldn't have met, even in passing, the bitter Doman boy. They wouldn't guess at how deep his rage can go, because he's a goofball who takes naps in the library, submerged in books.

I listened to the blackness, like Jacques taught me to, breathing slow and even, with my mind open to any thought that came. Pick it up, examine it, set it aside - what good would empty do, if you're trying to learn? So I listened, and in the silence, the darkness whispers. It's so hard to hear, but I'm getting better as I work at it, like any skill. It pointed out - we know a trick, to turn spilled blood into aether, and it doesn't matter overmuch whose blood it is. Given the blackblood 'style' - to hit and get hit in equal measure - it's a useful talent to turn pain into power, and one I learned early.

So, the idea was basically that we'd open a small cut - nowhere vital - and burn the blood for magic. Simple enough, something we've actually done before. I never got why mages do the inside of their hands - hells, I saw Ken do it. There's tendons and muscles you don't want to cut there! The back of the arm's good, and it'll bleed as much as you need if you squeeze your hand, without bleeding too much 'coz you hit something vital.

There's all sorts of books in the Pearl's library, and I found a basic primer on thaumaturgy - it looks to have been written for a gifted child, about my speed given that I'm not even a novice. So I read about half of it, and one of the lessons was to call a little flame. Just a little one, but then Kaito woke up and it startled me. I didn't realize he was even in the library, he sleeps like the dead! Who even does that - that can't have been comfortable.

The flame grew a bit wild in my hands, before dying - it ate up more aether than I'd care to admit, more than that trick actually yielded. At least I'd read the part about how to stop the spell once I was done, or it could've been a serious problem. Kaito wasn't impressed at all, next thing to called me a bloody idiot - but I'd done it, like I wanted, and there was no damage to myself or the books. I checked, later.

Well - no damage isn't quite accurate.

I did have to cut my arm open for the power, after all.

[hottytoddynews]

Big mistake.

To use an overused term, “Yuuge.”

The Trump administration has suckered the media into allowing itself to become the story.

Big mistake.

Every president, every congressman, every Mississippi official, every mayor, every town councilman and more than a few litter commissioners have lamented not getting a fair shake in the press, some more often than others. The well-tested response by journalists has been to admit errors, when made, then refocus on the issue at hand, which is never the press. Never.

It’s not difficult to see how the press has been unable to avoid the vortex created by a shoot from the lip candidate, now president. Donald Trump didn’t follow the script. He was outed as a bully and a boor. He committed career-ending error after career-ending error, was exposed as fabricating facts time after time, and he got elected anyway.

Does the mass media lean left? Yes, that is also well-established through the decades. Conservatives, almost by definition, are happy with the status quo. They are not boat-rockers.

Journalists ask questions about society, about policy. How did things get this way? Can there be changes? We turn over rocks, read labels, probe. We ask people to look in the mirror and decide if they like what they see. People who think everything is peachy are not attracted to this line of work.

But it’s equally true that people who do what I do are not elected, licensed or authorized. The security guard at the shopping center has earned more certificates than any of us. And like the security guard, most of us live paycheck-to-paycheck and at the whim of corporate chiefs who ask themselves all day every day whether they can get along without us.

Our job — and we really like it — is to gather information we think is useful and relevant and relay it to you. It is a value proposition. If you don’t get value, you stop sharing your most precious asset, your time, with us. We are not now and have never been respected.

Go back several years — back when Trump was just another billionaire with bad hair — and Gallup surveys already ranked “journalist” low in ethics and honesty. How low? We were just ahead of lawyers, well ahead of governors and light years ahead of members of Congress, but lagged then and lag now behind many fields, including bankers, chiropractors and police officers. If we did not give ourselves awards, no one else would.

Media people being media people, we don’t hold each other up to scrutiny very often. In that way, we are like lawmakers who always say “very good friend” or “esteemed colleague” when speaking of other lawmakers instead of “absolute goofball” or “lazy idiot.”

The media has many shortcomings, including “playing to the narrative.” By any measure other than the Electoral College, Trump should not be president. So the current narrative is he will not be a good president, and there’s a lot of focus on his flaws.

His response is to state, flatly and repeatedly, that it’s all lies. And instead of reacting as media folk have in the past by nodding, smiling and sticking to the reporting the story, media folks are trying to justify their existence.

It could be said that journalists have brought a lot of this on ourselves by failing to do the leg work and fact-finding. We’ve let the blanks be filled in with stereotypes or, worse, statistics.

Also, there’s all-to-frequent reliance on interviewees who are experts in sounding as if they are saying something when they really aren’t. Sadly, some news organizations feel their job is done by allowing people on either side of an issue to have equal opportunity to spew empty verbiage. It’s not.

So, is there a cure?

Yes, and it’s kind of like training a puppy to paper. The powerful — including the president — love (and need) the ink and airtime the media provide. New rule: Stop interviewing those who have nothing to say.

If the president or any other public official spends 75 minutes of a 77-minute press conference attacking the media, mention it — but spend time and energy focused on what was said in the other two minutes.

Stop trying to one-up the president. Stop trying to earn respect. Understand that what people want from us is facts, context, perspective. Remember we are not the story; we are the storyteller.

History also shows that duplicitous folks who wind up in positions of public leadership usually fall on their own swords.

That’s how freedom of expression works, and it its greatest value.

Charlie Mitchell is a Mississippi journalist. Write to him at cmitchell43@yahoo.com.

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