#i can't believe you made an entire account just to follow me

[galaxythreads]

hod to copy and paste this from reply bc it got to long.

yo. youre a great writer. i made this account to follow all other ao3 writers i love and adore, including you. and i read all your supernatural fics. started with your "homesick yet darling?." i read that one bc of the powers sam tag (a personal fave), and i simply had to read the rest. you just write your characters' pain and trauma so well. and realistic too. like of course they have problems and of course they dont want to talk about it and so of course they all suffer more than needed. like that is so real to the supernatural characters. and everytime i saw an update to that fic i got really excited and really scared bc my boys were in trouble and it just kept getting worse for them. you are really good at that progression. like it feels awful and it feels real. and i am not the biggest jack kline fan, but you made one with "omission lies and false truths." like hes just a kid, and no one tells him anything and so of course he has trauma. you make me see him in a different lens so whenever i see him on screen on rewatch im like baby boy is going through the horrors of family. :( i mean i knew that already, but you make me appreciate that more. also, i got my now-but-not-then-ex into fanfiction thru your fic "level seven." i also read your some of your loki fics. i just rly like sibling angst time and you do that so well. so like thx. appreciate you. thumbs up emoji here.

I am giving you an enormous hug and I think I owe you like at least half my self-esteem now. Thanks. Seriously. I don't really get asks about my SPN stuff and this was so good to hear. This entire ask is incredibly sweet and I really appreciate you taking the time to write this all out. thank you.

this gif is a little obnoxious but i'm not sorry

[iicehoon]

LEVEL UP | STREAMER!SOOBIN X READER

︶︶ ⊹ ︶︶︶⠀୨♡୧⠀︶︶︶ ⊹ ︶︶

"NO NO NO NO," you heard your boyfriend, Soobin, yell in despair.

Glancing at the Snoopy-themed clock, it read 2:30 AM, marking five hours since he started streaming. You recalled his excitement about being sponsored by the game, hoping for future offers if it goes well.

Rising from your spot on the shared bed, you crossed the dimly lit hall to quietly open the door to his room. He remained intensely focused on the screen, the soft clicks of his mechanical keyboard echoing as you entered. Frustrated sighs followed each demise of his character on screen.

"Chat, you don't understand," he started, setting aside his keyboard and mouse. "No username, I am not taking backseat gaming or any advice from you. The last time I did that, it made me restart the ENTIRE game."

You chuckled softly, watching your boyfriend ruffle his hair in frustration. His slouched shoulders hinted that he was nearing his breaking point and pretty ready to end the stream.

"Binnie," you called out, settling into the beanbag adjacent to his desk.

Soobin perked up instantly at the sound of his name, swiftly removing his earbuds as he rose to approach you. "When did you come in?" he asked, crouching down to your level. Leaning in, he planted a kiss on your lips before gently settling on top of you, eliciting a surprised yelp at his sudden weight.

"You've been at it for five hours, hun," you said, poking his side playfully until he squirmed and finally got up after the tenth poke.

"Come here, and I'll show you why," he motioned you over, patting his lap. His followers knew about you because he couldn't help but talk about you at times, and they have seen your face from the times you brought him snacks or a drink during his streams.

"Hi Chat," You smiled, bringing your face closer to his webcam and giving them a little wave when you settled on his lap.

"Okay," Soobin placed his chin on your shoulder and returned his hands to the keyboard and mouse. "Just watch and see why I just can't get past this stupid level."

You weren't as big of a gamer as Soobin, but you knew your way around from the games he played or even those you tried yourself from the days when he didn't want to be at his computer.

One of the perks of having a gamer boyfriend who was also a popular streamer was having access to his Steam account and his credits to buy games that piqued your interest, often discovered from TikTok.

Your eyes analyzed his movements, and you couldn't help but giggle when he dropped his head, hitting the back of your neck. "I don't understand why it's not working," he sighed in frustration.

"Well, it's because you're not hitting that when you're doing your runs," you explained, gently removing his hands from the setup in front of you. Slowly, you moved his character over to what you believed was the key element for him to pass this level. "See, it's breakable with that TNT sign on it."

You restarted the level and began to execute your run. As you played, Soobin's eyes moved back and forth between his main screen and your side profile, a lovestruck smile spreading across his face, just as his chat had claimed always happened whenever you were in his peripheral vision.

His smile widened as you cheered, successfully passing the level he had spent the majority of his time on. "Wait, babe, you're crazy good," he exclaimed, his jaw-dropping in amazement at the winning transition.

"I'm just better than you, Soobie boobie" you teased, twisting slightly to face him and sticking out your tongue.

He shook his head, laughing, and wrapped his arms tighter around your waist, giving you a quick peck on your cheek.

His joyful expression quickly shifted to one of furrowed eyebrows as he read his chat.

"Chat, she IS NOT replacing me," he groaned, "And stop asking if she's single. I'll literally make out with her right here, right now."

an | there is no specific game I'm referencing, I couldn't really think of one but if anyone has an idea, I can make it for another one!

[seventeenpins]

Can we perhaps have something where stepdad Joel makes reader squirt-😗

alskdfjal yes of course this is so perfect :))) thank u for the prompt 💕

practice makes perfect

pairing: stepdad!joel miller x f!reader

word count: 2.5k

summary: follow-up to bad girl. your mom decides to go out one night, leaving you and your stepdad at home alone together. feeling hurt and petty in response to his wife's cheating, he has no qualms with fucking you in your mom's bedroom. you make a mess.

warnings: okay lets go, a lot of fucking (so much fucking), stepcest, infidelity, oral sex (mentioned), unsafe piv, SQUIRTING, dirty talk, fingering, daddy kink, age difference (reader is late 20s, joel is mid-40s), a bit of dom/sub vibes, multiple orgasms, creampie -- let me know if i missed anything?

a/n: i am so completely blown away by the response to my first stepdad!joel fic -- thank you all so much for the comments and reblogs and messages, i fuckin cherish them all. as always, pls feel free to reach out. i hope you enjoy this instalment!

for the first week after joel walked in on you, you were half convinced your entire experience with him had been a fever dream. you hadn't seen all that much of him on account of a big project he's been grumbling about, something about a delayed material delivery that pushed him closer to a deadline than he'd prefer. you were busy yourself, too, going out with friends and spending long hours on some of your freelance work.

there were moments, though, that you'd catch one another and there'd be a glint of something in his eye.

one night, you, your mom, and joel are all sat at the table for a family dinner. your mom has drained her wine glass twice already, and is reaching for the bottle again as she tells you both, "i'm afraid i can't stay for long tonight, i just got a text from vera. sounds like she's having a bad night and needs a friend."

joel makes a sound like a snort that he follows up with a cough. "poor vera," he says, "she's been havin' an awful rough time lately, hasn't she? it's like she's inconsolable every other day."

"yes," your mom says, "she has been going through so much."

joel stares at her for a moment and you almost expect him to challenge her on it, but then he lets out a breath and smiles.

"you're such a good friend, baby," he tells her and she grins before turning back to her glass of wine and taking a big gulp. joel fixes you with a knowing stare and smirks. you both know she's not going to vera's.

after she finishes picking at her plate, she announces that she needs to get ready and dips out of the room.

"so, vera, huh?" you ask and joel snorts.

"can't believe your momma forgot she made me follow that woman on instagram months ago. according to her recent posts, she's currently travelling through iceland."

you roll your eyes and laugh, "seriously?" you ask, and joel nods.

"you'd think she'd be a better liar by this point," you say, and joel smiles but winces a little too.

it's not a game. you know it's not a game. just because you're used to your mother's antics doesn't mean it isn't new to joel, and he's only known for certain for a week that she's been unfaithful to him and that's gotta hurt. despite whatever's going on between you two, you know joel's heart is aching.

you're pretty sure you've just poured salt in the wound.

"i'm sorry, joel," you say, suddenly embarrassed, "i didn't mean to- i don't know. i didn't mean to make fun of it. i know you're dealing with... a lot."

joel shrugs and relaxes, "ah, it's alright sweetheart. just something i need to deal with. but you've done nothing wrong."

"okay," you say, and it's only then that you realise how close you've been leaning towards one another. at the sound of your mother's heels on the stairs, joel clears his throat and the two of you put more distance between yourselves.

your mother's voice carries down the hallway. "will you two be alright without me? i know you haven't had a chance to spend much time together."

"i'm sure we'll manage." you say, and joel smirks.

"she's a real good girl," he says, "'m lovin these opportunities to get to know her better."

"i'm glad to hear it," your mom says, and smiles between the two of you as you do your best not to choke.

"ya look great, baby," joel says, eyebrows raised as he looks your mom up and down. "cute dress. that makeup's gonna get ruined with your face masks, though, huh?"

she blushes and waves him off, "you know i like to get all get dolled up for my girls night," she says, "i can wipe the makeup off later."

"i'm sure you will," he says, and though you can hear the edge to it, you don't think your mom can. he presses a kiss to her cheek.

"i might be home late," she tells you both, "don't wait up!"

"no worries, baby," joel says, "in fact, if vera's having such a hard time, maybe you should make it a sleepover"

your mom grins and it's dazzling and heartbreaking. it's moments like this that you can see exactly why so many men have fallen in love with her. "that's a great idea, honey," she says, "i think i'll do just that! i'll see you both in the morning."

with a swish of her hair, your mom has left through the front door. joel groans, folding forward and resting his head in his hands, letting out a low "fucking jesus" before he sits back and composes himself. he lets out a deep sigh and then turns to look at you and shakes his head, closing his eyes, resigned.

you're not sure what's appropriate. you nearly reach out to deliver a comforting pat to his hand, but change your mind at the last moment, instead batting your hand out like a cat's paw and then recoiling.

joel's eyes weren't, apparently, closed. he sees your indecisive gesture, frowns, and gives you a look, before laughing. "you're okay, sweetheart," he says, his voice still tinged with the rumble of laughter, "it's all a lot to deal with. but i'm managing. and guess what?"

"what?" you ask.

"we've got a whole night to ourselves. just the two of us."

"oh yeah?" you ask, and you suddenly feel hot all over. joel's staring at you with such a darkness in his eyes that you're certain you're already wet.

"'f that's something you'd like, that is." joel smiles and it's almost unexpected the way he checks in with you, that he still has the capacity to focus on your needs. in his position, you might just be out to take what you could get, wholly and selfishly.

he's so... considerate. fuck he turns you on.

"i've got an idea," you say, and you take him by the hand and lead him upstairs.

you can feel his body stiffen when you stand in the doorway to your mother's bedroom. "you want me to fuck you in here?" he asks, and you can't parse his tone.

you're worried that you've gone too far, that despite the filthy way he fucked you only a few days ago, you've hit a barrier you should never have crossed, but you nod. before you can ask is it too much? he's growling "yes" and dragging you into the room.

he pulls you into a kiss, frenzied and feral, his teeth biting at you, nipping at your lips and cheeks, laving kisses down your throat. before you know it, you're both fully naked, clothes littered all over the floor of the room and joel's teeth are gently biting down on one of your nipples as he rocks his hips against yours.

"are you gonna let me take care of you? gonna let daddy take care of you?" he asks, "use your words."

"yes, daddy," you tell him.

"ya know," he tells you, running a hand down your sternum and resting between your breasts, feeling the rise and fall of your breathing, "there have been a few times i've gotten home late these past few days, and when i walked past your bedroom door i could swear i heard the sweetest little moans."

you blush and look away from him.

"uh-uh," he says, tipping your chin up, making you look at him, "were you thinkin' bout me?"

you nod. "yes daddy" it's the truth, after all.

"good girl," he smiles, "thank you for being honest with me. now i already know you're a dirty girl, what with all your naughty videos. and i know you're a fuckin' slut the way you spread your legs so easily for me."

"yes daddy," you echo.

"but what i don't know," he says, and his voice is velvet and dangerous, his pupils blown with hunger, "is just how many surfaces in this room i can bend you over and fuck you till you're so cock drunk you can't speak."

your eyebrows shoot up and your jaw drops.

"i ain't even started with you, honey," he smiles, and he drops to his knees.

it's a fucking marathon.

he eats you out at the foot of your mothers bed till you're panting, his lips glistening with your slick and he makes you feel so good you're certain you're gonna die.

then, your positions are reversed, joel trying his best to plant his feet into the carpet so he doesn't melt off the bed altogether, while you kneel before him. he fucks up into your throat, delighting in every vibration your moans and swallows provide.

soon, you're pressed up against the dresser, your fingers gripping onto the drawer handles as he fucks into your pussy from behind.

then against the bookshelf. the closet doors. there's a moment where joel gets closer than he'd like to coming and he has you grab onto the floor lamp as he eats your pussy again on bended knee, only this time you're standing up and trying your best not to crumple onto him when he makes you come a fourth and a fifth time.

you're starting to get overstimulated. no, you are overstimulated, but it's in the most oddly delicious way. joel has you folded over the foot of your mom's bed, your knees on an ottoman, the rest of you pressed against the mattress, fists groping at sheets, holding on for dear life.

it's a good angle, hell, it's the perfect angle. not only does it feel incredible, it helps prop your ass up to a height that allows joel's huge cock to fuck you deeper without too much more effort, gripping your hips as he pounds into you. the best part, though, is that you're both at the perfect angle to see yourselves in the full length mirror.

"jesus christ, baby," joel is saying, "you see how deep i am? feel how deep i am? pussy's so tight around this cock. can almost feel myself in here," he says, and presses two fingers against your tummy.

you moan, using every ounce of strength you have left to keep your ass in the air and take joel's cock so nicely.

"it feels so good, daddy," you sob, "it's so big, making me come so many times. fuck, i can feel it building- it feels so good, you make me feel so good-"

"yes, baby," he growls, "let go for me, let me feel you come stretched so pretty 'round daddy's dick."

"fuck, daddy," you whine, because you realise it's a different sensation that's been building and even though you know what it is, you've never quite reached an orgasm like this before. "i'm gonna come, daddy! i'm gonna fuckin come-"

"shit, baby," he says as he starts to feel hot wet spurts of liquid splashing out of you, "oh fuck, you gonna wet my cock with your cum?"

you're screaming now, so fucked out and overstimulated

"oh, shit honey, yes-" joel shouts, a man possessed, as he pulls his cock out from you and rubs furiously at your clit, moaning loudly as you gush all over his hand. "oh, i'm gonna need more of that," he groans, and you can't find words to argue. he fucks back into you, hitting that same spot, finding that same pressure.

"could fuckin drink this, baby," he says, "comin' all over my cock like the fuckin whore you are. look at us, baby, look in the mirror and don't you dare close your fucking eyes."

you obey. it's a struggle to get your eyes to even focus, but when you do, you're sent over the edge again and again and again.

the two of you look so fucking good, the jiggle of your ass, the angles of your bodies and the way you slot together, the tan of joel's arms, his muscles, his control, the silver of his hair.

his breathless mantra "good girl, good girl, fuckin' take it, such a good girl-," as you take everything he gives you and more.

he finds a rhythm for fucking every last drop out of you. he'll give you a few harsh, deep thrusts and then pull out and rub your pussy till you aren't gushing around him anymore. then he'll slap your pussy with the head of his cock, making you shudder before he stuffs it back in and builds you up again.

your thighs are drenched and the wetness down your legs is cooling. you've lost count of the number of times he's made you come like this, but finally, you're shaking so hard you can't bear it and his thrusts are getting staggered.

he's breathless when he manages to ask, "you want me to fill up this lil pussy? fill it full of daddy's cum?"

"yes, yes, yeesss-" you beg, and you watch your reflection as joel's hips stutter a final time and he lets out a strangled groan as he loses control and fucks his release into you.

the second after he comes, he collapses onto you but you're so weak and fuck-drunk you collapse, too. joel rolls off of you so you can breathe, but then both of you are laughing. you're disgusting, covered in sweat and spit and squirt and cum, but joel dips a finger into your pussy and then licks up the combination of juices.

seeing your awed expression, joel shrugs and then smiles, a little embarrassed. "just needed to taste ya like this," he says, and it's incredibly endearing.

after a few more minutes of laying around in messy, sticky comfort, joel gets up. and then- "shit".

"what's wrong?" you ask as you look up at him and he's- laughing?

you look down at what he's looking at -- the ottoman. you've drenched it entirely. it's at least three shades darker than it was to begin with, and reeks of sex.

"well," you say, "that's not ideal."

"guess i'll have to buy your momma a new one," he says, rubbing against his temples and barking out a short laugh. then he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to your lips, and one to your forehead.

"you go have a shower," he tells you, "i'll take care of this mess, and then let's get some snacks," he winks, and you smile.

he starts to back out of the room when you call to him, "so, mom's gonna be gone all night-" you start to say, tentative.

"you already askin' for round two?" he asks, incredulous.

"if we're calling all of that-" you gesture around the room, "round one? then yeah. i'm asking for round two."

"dirty girl," he laughs, "you're fuckin insatiable!"

"that's not a no-" you point out.

"no, it's not a no," he says. "let's refuel. rehydrate. and get right back to it."

[queerfables]

Why all the crowd scenes look the same, aka: Something is WRONG in Soho

I'm not even gonna tease and draw this out because it's so cool it doesn't need the fanfare. Ready?

Season 2 takes place over the course of 5 days. During that time, most of the passersby in Soho - maybe even all of them - stay exactly the same. It's the same people every day, wearing the exact same clothes, and they wander through the neighbourhood in paths that don't make any sense. You won't be able to unsee it. I can't believe it's taken us this long to realise.

Don't believe me? Rewatch the scene from 2x03, I Know Where I'm Going where Shax confronts Crowley outside the bookshop, appearing in a series of different guises. Pay attention to the people going past.

I've marked out five people you see on screen when Crowley first exits the bookshop at 39:37:

Numbers 1, 2 and 3 are following the path right. Number 4 follows the path left. Number 5 crosses the road.

Here the five people are again, at 40:19, when Crowley goes to return to the bookshop:

Number 5 is still visible in the distance, in the direction she walked in. This makes sense! But numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 are rounding the same corner they just passed. It's as though 1, 2 and 3 all decided to turn and head back the way they came just 40 seconds ago, and number 4 has circled the block to join them.

This on its own would be super weird, but they're not the only people to do that in this scene. The man in the purple sweater from the first picture crosses the road, then appears back next to the bookshop, then starts walking back the way he came again.

Here's the part that made me absolutely certain, though. At 40:05, a man wearing an orange hoodie with blue sleeves walks past Crowley, who is heading towards the bookshop entrance.

The camera cuts to a view from behind Crowley, and a moment later, at 40:08...

He reappears in front of Crowley and walks past him again.

It's such a distinctive outfit, there's no mistaking it. They are absolutely fucking with the background characters and they are absolutely doing it on purpose.

Your turn. There are at least three other characters in this scene who pass by multiple times. Watch it again and try to spot them.

This scene is really chaotic and obvious, but the phenomena I'm talking about is much bigger than just one scene. Let's go back to the first thing I said: the background characters don't change. All our leads do. Maggie and Nina wear distinctive outfits, clearly demarcating each new day. Even Crowley and Aziraphale, who in season 1 were like cartoon characters with wardrobes full of identical clothing, vary their looks. Crowley changes his (very subtly) each day; Aziraphale is less rigid on timing, but he has a few different coats that he switches between. The background characters, on the other hand, wear the same outfits every single day. They walk by on the street but they never actually seem to have a destination. They sit in the coffee shop or pub and don't eat or drink anything, and nearly everyone leaves together exactly on closing time. It's eerie.

For reference's sake, here's a rough timeline of season 2, with pictures of Maggie and Nina's outfits to show the passing of time. I had to outsource this section because my post was too image heavy, lol. The main point I wanted to make is that five days go by.

Five days, and all the same faces keep showing up in the background, and almost none of them change their clothes. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but there's no way it's an accident. It might, in fact, be a game changer. To me this is proof positive that something is not as it seems. I've been a massive Clue skeptic, adamant that I'd only be convinced by the most unambiguous evidence, and honestly? This is enough to move the dials. It's too big for me to ignore. Whatever grand explanation of Good Omens we come up with has to account for this. I don't have it yet, but my current working theories are that Crowley and Aziraphale are under some seriously heavy surveillance, that time warping is involved, or that reality itself is not what it seems.

It would take a really long time for me to go through all of the background characters who turn up over and over but I do want to show you what I'm talking about. To wrap up, then, I'm going to pick out some memorable characters and walk you through a few of their appearances through the week. I highly recommend looking out for this yourself on your next rewatch and seeing how many other characters you can recognise.

Yellow Skirt

The first person I kept coming back to as being not quite right. You probably remember her from the first episode - she's the one who waves and walks past Maggie and Nina the night they're locked in together. Incidentally, she's also Person Number 3 in the scene with Shax.

Day 1 (2x01 - 36:20):

Day 2 (2x02 - 42:03)

Day 3 (2x03 - 06:36)

Day 5 (2x06 - 30:00)

Coolest Leather Jacket In The World

It's not so easy to recognise people wearing lots of nondescript dark colours, but I love his hair and his jacket, so he stood out to me. I think there might be a lot more people who are wearing fairly nondescript clothes who I just can't recognise from episode to episode.

Day 2 (2x02 - 16:44)

Day 4 (2x04 - 41:20)

Day 5 (2x06 - 29:20)

Dressed In Mustard

Ms Mustard shows up everywhere. If you want to see what I mean about their paths not making sense, pay attention when she comes on screen, because she'll often show up a few times in succession and walk very purposefully to nowhere in particular. The thing that she is doing, essentially, is behaving like an extra in a tv show. Which of course she is, but you're supposed to make that invisible by not having the same person go back and forth in the same scene, or changing up their outfit each in-universe day to give the sense time is passing. Not doing that is a really deliberate choice.

Day 1 (2x01 - 22:37)

Day 2 (2x02 - 42:03)

Day 3 (2x03 - 01:49)

Day 3 (2x03 - 37:07)

Day 5 (2x06 - 29:59)

Swishy Dress

This character shows up a lot in the first episode. I've struggled to find her in later episodes, though. None of the characters seem to follow the same patterns or show up to equal extents each day, which makes me think this isn't a straightforward time loop. I haven't actually cross referenced character appearances to in world times, though. Possibly this is a project for someone who's more across the time-related shenanigans than me.

Day 1 (2x01 - 22:43)

Day 3 (2x03 - 07:01)

Yellow Vest

I've only seen this guy a handful of times, always around the French restaurant. I wonder if there's significance to that.

Day 2 (2x02 - 41:06)

Day 4 (2x05 - 12:49)

Fuzzy Blue Coat

Another background character who shows up frequently. The blue doesn't stand out quite as much as the yellows and reds some characters wear, but it's very distinctive.

While we're getting a lot of shots of the street, it's worth noting that I'm pretty sure the vehicles we see are also just the same few cars repeating each day. A lot of them are in neutral silvers and monochrome, but there's a couple of blue cars, one red, and one black and white that I'm fairly sure I've seen over and over through the season.

Day 1 (2x01 - 22:45)

Day 2 (2x02 - 42:04)

Day 3 (2x03 - 02:00)

Day 5 (2x06 - 40:10)

Day 5 (2x06 - 48:56)

Day 5 (2x06 - 50:06)

One final note: Whatever this is, Nina's employee who you see in the background at the coffeeshop sometimes isn't affected by it. He's wearing different outfits each day. On the other hand, some of the other shopkeepers do seem affected. I'm fairly sure Mr Brown and Mrs Sandwich wear the same outfits a few different days, only changing because of Aziraphale at the ball.

And that's it! Thanks for reading and I hope your mind is blown as much as mine is.

EDIT:

Hey I don't mind anyone pointing out production reasons that this might be the case or disagreeing with my analysis (over-analysis, some might say 😉). Please be kind about it, though. I'm not ignorant of the practical limitations involved in film making, but some of these costumes were really distinctive in a way I thought might be intended to draw attention.

For those of you who do find this theory convincing, I feel I should mention that I was working under the assumption that this stuff would have taken a few days to film, even filming it all together. That would strongly suggest that the actors were deliberately costumed the exact same way over multiple days of shooting, which made me think it had to be purposeful. @coranax was kind enough to point out, though, that behind the scenes videos said the extras were filmed separately to the main actors because of Covid protocols. In that case, they could have done it in just one day and that weakens my confidence in its intentionality.

Finally, all of my points about the scene with Shax in 2x03 stand. That was not a case of accidental continuity errors, it was really elegantly choreographed to enhance the tension in the scene. I say that with confidence because the extras are doing exactly what Shax is doing: circling Crowley, appearing where he doesn't expect them, creating a whirlwind sense of being off balance and out of control. I think it's really cool and effective, whether there's a deeper meaning to it or not.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Yo! Good morning/evening, hope you are fine^^💝. I wanted to ask you a question but I was afraid that it may bother you or something (you know..that feeling when you are scared that you might disturb someone or being an unwelcome person) but yeah I will ask you since i was serious about your answer for some time now so I hope I'm not annoying you or something *feel free to answer only if you wish^^. You seem to know the characters pretty well, you are quite capable and great at reading and understanding them, one of the things I'm serious about is what do you think would make someone qualified enough to be with malleus? Do they have to be of the same species?certain Reputation, stature or traits?(sorry can't help it since I can't rest until I know everything about what interests me and figure it all out😅). Thanks for giving me some of your precious time I really like your blog, you're amazing💜

No worries, you’re not bothering me at all ^^ I love to talk about my hyperfixations www

Now, I know a lot of fans (particularly on the EN side) like to ship Malleus with their OC and especially with Yuu so I want to first make it clear that my response is NOT meant to invalidate those Malleus shippers. Whatever I say here is based on my own interpretation of canon lore (and let’s be real here, TWST won’t ever confirm if anyone is romantically interested in Yuu because it might not work with how some players view their own relationship with that character). In fanon, anyone can be with anyone, but in canon there are very specific in-universe rules and expectations laid out for Malleus so these are what I will be referring to.

I also want to emphasize that the final traits I discuss in this post do NOT reflect Malleus’s personal tastes or views. He has little say in what kind of an individual his spouse would be, so his own preferences are not speculated about or taken into account here. The traits I will be bringing up are based on what I believe the lore implies are the desirable traits for those marrying into the Draconia royal family.

We got it? Good 👍 Read more below the cut!!

Firstly, I’m completely disregarding the ideas of ���Malleus can love whoever he wants to love”, “Malleus can scare people into accepting who he loves”, and/or “Malleus can change the law so he can marry who he loves” (a la Sultan from Aladdin or through some other Disney magic or logic). Here’s why:

In general, those solutions for “high stakes issues” are too simple, and that has never been how Twisted Wonderland tackles complicated problems. Just look at every single OB boy’s backstory. They’re so complex that they aren’t totally resolved by the end of their books; these problems persist and are long term things each of them are working on addressing. This is also true of the politics TWST introduces to us; Leona for example explains how there is social pushback and resistance to the idea of infrastructure reform because the culture of the Sunset Savanna stresses harmony with nature. This has made it difficult for them to adopt new technologies because real politicians in their world have to seriously weigh their cultural values with their health and societal progress. The only time there are really easy solutions are in events or vignettes where the emotional stakes are not super high, but who Malleus marries is, in fact, super important since this will entirely change the life of a main character and his country.

With that first bullet point in mind… No, Malleus cannot love whoever he wants to love. Certainly, he may feel affection for another but he can never truly be with them. He is royalty and the only heir to the throne of Briar Valley. It follows that he is expected to marry for political reasons/to better his nation. This is a non-negotiable obligation for him.

Rather than saying, “Malleus cannot scare people into accepting who he loves”, I think it’s more accurate to say Malleus knows he probably shouldn’t. I mean, yes, he may be upset about his S/O not being accepted by his people but I feel that is discrediting a lot of the loyalty he has for his own country. As a kid he may have thrown tantrums when he was upset and potentially harmed staff, but as a 178 year old he has a much better understanding of decorum and maintaining it in spite of his own grudges. For example, even though he personally dislikes Leona he still commands Sebek to apologize to him because, at the end of the day, this could harm Briar Valley’s relationship with the Sunset Savanna. That’s not to say that Malleus can’t be petty (he definitely is)—but implying he would be petty toward basically his entire country just because they would disapprove of the one he loves?? (We know this would likely be true because Sebek’s parents faced similar backlash when they got together.) I feel like his own sense of awareness and responsibility for his country, crown, and people would override that. As an example, Malleus states that he has never been in a car before because the senate would be against it and often kept Malleus in the castle. Someone of his power could easily ignore them and sneak out and do whatever he wanted, yet the dialogue implies Malleus didn’t. He obeyed his political advisors even when he was younger and arguably much more immature. Malleus might not like certain decisions made about his life but it sounds like he ultimately complies with them.

Continuing from the previous point, let’s say for the sake of argument that Malleus does scare everyone into line. What about his public image and the mental health of his S/O? Maybe Malleus can frighten people to not talk out of turn to his face, but he cannot control what people whisper about him behind closed doors or to treat his S/O well or like they actually like them. Not only would they be alienated (away from their own home and forced to adapt to a new one) but they’d be treated oddly by others too. What kind of reputation is that for Malleus? To be a tyrant king who throws a hissy fit anytime someone talks about his partner in a way he doesn’t approve of? With a spouse who is not at their best mentally because of the constant ostracization? (This is similar to what Leona experienced in his childhood.) I don’t think Malleus would want to subject anyone to that kind of life, especially not one he loves. And again, this attitude would be the vast majority of his people. It’s not like it can be avoided or resolved in an easy manner, especially when the people of Briar Valley have proven to be against change.

Lastly, Malleus would not change the law so he can be with whoever he wants to. To begin with, I doubt this is a unilateral position the senate would approve of. But okay, let’s accept that Malleus is royalty so his power overrides the advisors’ power. So he effectively just changed a law for a very selfish and personal reason rather than changing something to actually benefit his people. That doesn’t feel in-character for him, not when Malleus seems to understand that it is the duty of those in higher status to help those below them rather than themselves (see: Riddle’s Suitor Suit vignettes. Malleus has acted selfish before, yes (who remembers Endless Halloween Night? His Dorm Uniform vignettes? I do.)—but never at the cost of changing the status quo of his country. (Book 7 is not included here because he’s in a very distressed emotional state then; this “new law” scenario posits that Malleus is in a normal state of mind.) This is a major change—change which Briar Valley, its people, and most importantly, Malleus, are not ready for. You think there wouldn’t be social pushback against this? From a society that has become complacent with its own way of life and is still isolated from the rest of the world? That Malleus, someone who struggles greatly with accepting life changes himself, could enact such a big change so easily? (On a more technical level, you don’t just pass a law and it instantly becomes tangible or real, there is a process of approval and then implementation.)

Additionally, it’s made clear in Ghost Marriage that “[Malleus] cannot enter into an engagement lightly”, which is why Sebek goes in his place. Eliza, the Ghost Bride, is royalty (er, albeit dead) but it seems that royal status is not enough to qualify as his partner. Maybe this is because she’s dead and doesn’t have anything of value for Briar Valley (no land, no people, no political power), but it could also mean that the partner has to be given the thumbs up by other parties.

All that being said, here are some of the conditions I think would have to be met for Malleus’s future spouse:

Has to be someone of equal or at least high status. This means they also have to be a royal or at least of nobility. This appears to be true of Malleus’s dad, who is referred to as a duke.

Because of how self-contained Briar Valley is + nocturnal fae having beef with diurnal fae, I imagine his partner would have to also be a nocturnal fae. This would also solve the MASSIVE lifespan difference between fae and non-fae because at least fae would be far closer to each other even if their lifespans fluctuate but subspecies.

Someone suited to rule by his side. Being married into any royal family is no joke—it comes with the expectation that you will contribute somehow, and the partner should be fully equipped to enter the world of politics with him.

Piggybacking off the last point, I think mental fortitude is also a prerequisite. This is because being a politician (navigating the social climate both within your country and outside of it, keeping your people and colleagues happy, maintaining public approval, managing laws, dealing with potential attempts on your life, etc.) can be very stressful and can hurt those who are faint of heart or not prepared for the responsibility. Leaders have to make tough calls at the drop of a hat, and they have to be ready for it.

Has a lot to offer in terms of benefits to Briar Valley as a country. This could be in terms of resources, connections, and/or political savvy. This appears to be true of Malleus’s dad, who acted as a diplomat for Briar Valley.

Vetting and formal approval from the senate. lmao good luck with that

Has to be able and willing to have a child. They at least need an heir to the throne to succeed Malleus. (However, knowing how exclusionary and conservative as heck the senators are, I doubt they would accept anything but a biological child 💀)

Preferably someone with powerful magic or is skilled at magic already so as to lessen the chance of “tainting” the bloodline with a weak mage or a non-mage.

I believe that Briar Valley would prefer someone with old fashioned values like them, not someone pushing for massive reform. They have a culture that is resistant to change and a history of fighting for resources with outsiders, so if Malleus’s new spouse tries to introduce a bunch of technology or open its borders to other countries (even if they have good intentions), the people + the senate may oppose them. His father is implied to be open-minded, but he at least understood that such change isn’t reasonable without time and effort dedicated to the endeavor.

All that being said 💦 I think that this topic is actually less about what Malleus as an individual wants and what his country, his people, and, yes, even his asshole senators, want. This is basically an arranged marriage situation so that their country can maintain power and relevance. It’s about the collective and what Malleus must do for their perceived security and prosperity.

[genericpuff]

Can you call Tina Belcher driving through a parking lot at an anxious snail's pace a driving "style"? So why do we try to use "style" as a defense for LO's pacing problems?

There's something about how Lore Olympus engrosses people within its weekly doses of H x P content and cliffhangers that makes people not realize just how long Lore Olympus takes to get to the point of, well, anything. Many plotlines are setup, and then go untouched for weeks, sometimes months at a time, before seeing any sort of progress, much less a resolution. In this, I'm going to actually give you time ranges on some of the more egregious payoffs and continuations of plotlines that were setup - some that are now resolved, others that have yet to see the light of day.

CONTENT WARNING: I will be discussing the SA plotline, and there will be spoilers for Episode 265. I will also be showing pictures of some rancid ass tattoos, I know that sounds random for what we're discussing, but trust me on this one, I have a point to make. Also there's a Junji Ito panel from The Enigma of Amigara Fault... yeah, that one.

LEUCE

Let's start with an easy one that's not exactly tied to the main plot. The Leuce plotline. She was first introduced in Episode 201 as a 'bargaining chip' from Zeus to Hades, in a misfired attempt to get Hades to call a truce over the embargo between the Underworld and Olympus.

At the time of this episode's release, by all accounts this seemed to be a cut and dry reference to Hades' first wife, Leuce, unfortunately reduced to a mail-order bride who Hades, of course, turns down, because he doesn't want the "I can't believe it's not butter" Persephone, he wants overpriced, tastes-the-same-but-costs-more-because-of-the-brand-name Persephone.

But then she came back, 36 episodes later - in real time, this was roughly 38 weeks for free-to-read users as the series went on a 2 week hiatus near the start of S3 - only to be used as a cliffhanger leading into a recycled Minthe plotline, in which she attempted to seduce Hades in Episode 238, only to be shot down for the second time.

If you're having a tough time wrapping your head around how long 36 weeks really is, that's nine months. If you got pregnant when Leuce was first revealed, you'd be entering the final window of pregnancy by the time she returned, assuming the baby didn't come pre-term.

Another 7 weeks later, enough time to actually get pregnant again following that first baby, we got the sudden continuation of that plot, with Persephone invading her home and filling it with barn animals, with a not-so-subtle threat to Leuce to stay away from her husband.

"But what about the text messages? Were they really from Hades?" Well, if you were someone reading this comic in real time, you wouldn't have this question answered for another SIX EPISODES - that's a month and a half in real time - and the answer would ultimately be "she made it up, she was 'manifesting', none of it's real, they should call her Deleuceional!" Six weeks for a nothingburger answer to wrap up a nothingburger sideplot, all in the pursuit to 'prove' for the 1275903729 time that Hades and Persephone are truly meant to be together.

EROS AND PSYCHE

This is a big one. The Eros x Psyche plotline was one of the most popular romance subplots, second only to Hades and Persephone, throughout the comic. And yet, despite people holding their breath to see what would become of the star-crossed lovers, a mortal and a god-

-readers in September 2021 would not find out how their recent skirmish with Apollo in Episode 171 would resolve itself until Episode 218, A YEAR AND TWO MONTHS - ROUGHLY 60 WEEKS AND A MIDSEASON HIATUS - LATER, and even then it would only show us Eros, who quickly summarizes what happened to him during the entire trial and Kronos arc that his anticipated romance storyline got sidelined for - he got married and now he has a child.

And it wouldn't be for ANOTHER six weeks that his wife and the mother of his child would actually show up, not alongside Eros, but Aphrodite and Hephaestus, in Episode 224.

What happened to her after finally having her 'true form' revealed to Eros? Well, that's not shown for another three weeks in Episode 227. During this a bunch of info about how Psyche got out of that sticky Apollo situation is dumped on us and we just have to go along with it as she becomes a goddess, not because she earned a place among the Olympians, but because Zeus needs her to spy on Apollo, which was actually shown one episode prior in 226.

So let's say you got knocked up again after that Leuce baby, when Eros and Psyche were shot out of the sky. Welp, in the time it took for Rachel to get around explaining what happened to the both of them, now you just had your second baby and for all we know, you could have gone for a third and already be well into or near the end of your first trimester, if you really wanted to get busy. You'd have a Dionysus, a Melinoe, and maybe even a Demophoon. Congratulations.

And speaking of Melinoe-

MELINOE

Turns out the interloper and the child in Tartarus were one and the same, or at least that's what I'm assuming, because otherwise that would mean there's some whole ass other baby to worry about that we haven't even been introduced to yet.

Melinoe, or "the child deity", was first established in Episode 218.

But as per LO tradition, the child would only mentioned in passing every now and then until finally being revealed as Melinoe in Episode 252, a whopping... THIRTY EIGHT FUCKING WEEKS LATER.

And that waiting is still ongoing as Melinoe is, of course, still trapped in Tartarus, with no end in sight. Since then, Hades and Persephone have gotten married, kidnapped a child, Persephone has terrorized a nymph and caused yet ANOTHER genocide, and they've resurrected a child that was suddenly revealed to be Demeter's. Thirty eight weeks and counting of dragging on a plotline that we're supposed to believe is dire while the characters do sweet fuck all.

What was the name of that other dream baby that Rachel referenced from some obscure non-legitimate source?

Riiiight, Brimos. Congrats, there's pregnancy number 4. But can we find a way to make a fifth happen?

KASSANDRA

We're first introduced to Kassandra, another implied victim of Apollo's, in Episode 226 when a photo of her is found on Apollo's pen drive which was conveniently left on the ground for Psyche to swipe.

In Episode 227, they theorize on how they could track down this mystery woman, using either Eros or Aphrodite's abilities to find her through the power of

✨love✨

How will that actually work though? Has anyone ever been in love with Kassandra, or has she ever been in love with anyone else?

Any bets on how long it would be until we'd get our answer?

Episode 251. The same episode where we're finally told about Leuce's delusions, we suddenly skip to the reveal of Kassandra being Apollo's personal oracle.

And it still doesn't end up answering our question as to how Kassandra was tracked down, by the way. Eros and Psyche sorta just conveniently find her at the same time Apollo happens to be there when he's getting her to deliver her big prophecy to him.

That's twenty four weeks, meaning you're now near the end of your second trimester with child #4. Whoever the child is remains to be seen but I'm sure Rachel will find a way to shoehorn another helpless baby into the plot for Hades and Persephone to rescue who we can use for this metaphor.

But none of these come close to the greatest unresolved plotline of them all, the one plotline that has outlasted even the main H x P plotline of Lore Olympus' story-

APOLLO

Or more specifically, the SA. Rachel has tried so hard to twist Apollo into a villain of Disney proportions, through his sudden involvement with Ouranos, while also using him as a mouthpiece for her own critics by having him literally dish out word-for-word the criticisms that have been made towards Rachel's writing of Persephone-

But the core foundation of his plotline goes all the way back to 2018, when he assaulted Persephone, a plotline that has yet to resolve itself or show any progression beyond Rachel's half-baked attempts at speedrunning Persephone's healing process, while Apollo is still at large and hasn't been brought to justice.

We've seen her in very poorly-written therapy where her assault was addressed once. We've seen her grapple with the potential consequences of the SA through a gynecologist scene that, as I've discussed before, does more harm than good in helping the discussion around women's sexual health. And of course, Rachel will pepper in vague references to the SA every now and then when she's bothered to remember that it's a plotline she wrote and still hasn't resolved:

And judging by how the story has been progressing, Rachel seems far more intent on simply using Apollo as a mouthpiece for criticism and a puppet for Ouranos rather than focusing on the bigger issues, all while Persephone has helped more people cope with the assault that happened to her rather than receiving help herself.

What's really telling is that despite half of the Olympians at this point knowing what Apollo did, not one of them even tries to convince Persephone to come forward, or say something themselves. Daphne has more than enough reason to come forward. Artemis, Hera, Eros, Hermes, and Hephaestus all know what he did, and yet none of them say a thing, even when those of them who haven't been conveniently shoehorned out of the plot are still in the same room as him-

The assault scene happened in August 2018. It's been five and a half years since it was established, and while there have been small efforts made to resolve it - from Hera and Hephaestus having the photos deleted to Persephone seeking therapy - there's less reason now than ever for it to not be addressed, especially with so much at stake. I could side with Persephone not wanting to say anything in the beginning, when he was blackmailing her with the photos and her TGOEM scholarship was on the line, but now that she's a Queen, rich, and married to Hades, living in the Underworld where he can't get to her, without any schooling or scholarship or job to worry about or the photos hanging over her head, it comes across as flat out irresponsible that not a single person thinks it's worth mentioning. Even the narrative itself seems to be trying to undo the SA entirely.

At this point, I'm not confident it will be mentioned at all, and that Apollo will be conveniently dealt with as a pawn of Ouranos rather than as a perpetrator of violence towards women.

A FINAL ANALYSIS OF LO'S PACING

There are certainly far more examples of this weekly edging happening throughout LO, but I hope the ones I provided get across the point I'm trying to make about its pacing.

Of course, none of these gaps in time are happening back-to-back-to-back. This is Lore Olympus' writing "style", if you can call it that - constantly bombard the reader with separate plot points so that they'll either not remember the ones that were left behind, or so that Rachel can buy herself time to get herself out of the corner she wrote herself into. It's the equivalent of clickbait, constantly grabbing your attention with shiny new things that will replace whatever you just saw in your brain, on a constantly repeating cycle. It's the writing process of inexperienced amateurs, like what you'd see in short stories written by fifth graders - "and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened", with no theme or overarching meaning tying them together; and if you were to ask them why a certain thing happens, especially if it logically doesn't make sense, the answer is just, "well, because it does." There's no rhyme or reason, they just thought it was cool.

And I say "style" because while fans of LO have definitely defended the story's pacing as just a writing style, the actual execution of what they're implying is painful to watch and not what any experienced writer would call a legitimate style. It's not uncommon at all in long-running series like this to jump from plotline to plotline, often times longform stories like these have to balance multiple side plots at once to keep things engaging and to bulk up the plot with more actual content.

But in most cases, the reader will expect the speed of a plot's resolution to be relative to its urgency. If a casual B plot with low stakes is introduced, it's not necessarily doing any harm if it just sits there for a bit before finally being resolved. After all, it's low stakes and no one is being hurt by it existing on the sidelines. It might feel a bit like pointless fluff, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with fluff and it can offer fun and relaxed reprieves from the overarching narrative, assuming you integrate them well so they're not drawing attention away from those more urgent plotlines at the worst possible times (looking at you, Stranger Things S2 Episode 7-)

But when even the high stakes plots are being hung out to dry and treated like distractions and fluff, it comes across less like a decisive writing "style" and more just directionless pantsing from an inexperienced writer who's gotten themselves in way too deep.

And that's what really separates Rachel's writing problems from "style". Style is decisive. Style is the act of referencing over a set period of time, crafting what you like and what you've learned into something new, with rounds and rounds of fine-tuning. Style is experience put into action.

And, while I don't typically like using my own work as a comparison, LORE | REKINDLED is meant to try and recapture the original magic of Lore Olympus' art style and writing foundations - and even then, you can still see the clear difference between Episodes 14 and 44, which use the same panel from the same scene, but look vastly different due to the improvement and refinement that's happened over time.

Same style, but different levels of experience and skill, which is to be expected after weeks and weeks of fine-tuning and deliberate practice.

If you're lacking in your fundamentals, whether in art or writing, you can't equate that lack of skill to "style" because you're not choosing to be inexperienced, you just are. And that's okay! But to try and pass it off as 'style' implies that you're choosing to be inexperienced - when in reality, if you tried to put out anything beyond your skill level, you simply wouldn't be able to, because you haven't gained those skills yet. Like fifth graders writing short stories with the "and then this happened" model, "it's just my style" is often used as an excuse by young artists and writers who don't understand that style is not exclusively an end result of inexperience.

I'm gonna go on a tangent here, but there's this controversial but trendy style in tattooing called 'ignorant', and it's best defined as "tattooing badly on purpose".

These tattoos are regularly praised for their simplistic ingenuity and visual aesthetic but equally criticized for being the opposite of what many artists have worked to overcome - being "bad at art". After all, who would willingly pay for a bad-looking tattoo? It's because it's the style that's in demand. I would argue that it takes a lot of confidence and mastery of the craft to be purposefully bad at it and make it look good, as contradictory as that sounds.

As much as the lines may be wobbly and the anatomy poor, ignorant style tattoos are done purposefully by experienced artists who still know how to properly tattoo. As much as they may look like they were drawn by a middle schooler, they will still heal properly, the lines will hold up, and the client will not (or at least, should not) experience any excessive scarring or unhygienic practices as one would experience from an actual inexperienced artist-

In a genuinely poorly-done tattoo, the evidence of the inexperience is literally written all over the body. The skin swells, the ink bleeds out, the lines are inconsistent in their depth, and there's clear signs of trauma to the skin that will undoubtedly result in a poorly-healed tattoo (and that's not even getting into the larger health risks such as contracting blood diseases due to a poorly kept space). It's not hard to see the difference between a bad tattoo and a tattoo that's intentionally bad.

It's the age old saying in a different medium - only once you learn the rules can you properly break them.

Rachel never learned these rules in her writing and it's evident to anyone who knows these rules and is viewing LO through a critical lens - or in my case, experiencing it on a week to week basis. It's a regularly occurring problem in the medium of webcomics as a whole - thinking that knowing how to draw is enough, and that writing comes dead last, if at all. When in reality, comics are a marriage of art and writing, you can't simply do one really well and allow the other to drag behind. That's not to say there aren't comics that succeed at having bad art and good writing, if anything a well-written comic can save bad art-

But if you have a comic with good art and bad writing, that's when a comic opens itself up to harsher criticism. As much as art may be the visual forefront of comics, if you want to keep your audience along for the long road that stretches ahead, you need to have a strong foundation in writing, or at least, enough of a plan to ensure you're not driving in the dark. The art can be as gorgeous as you want it to be, but if the plot is weak, then no one will have any reason to check back in week to week.

And such is Lore Olympus' biggest weakness. Much of what we praise LO for back in its first season was simply its foundation. It's very easy to praise a story's writing when it hasn't had to payoff what it's setup. Having ideas is easy, and early LO is rife with good ideas - but many of those ideas have since fallen flat, even the ones you wouldn't expect.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, but actually executing them in a way that can be engaging from start to finish and resolve itself in a way that's satisfying is a whole other challenge that many creators, including Rachel, find themselves unable to tackle; and nothing is a greater example of that than LO's third season, which is now fumbling its plotlines that have failed to resolve themselves properly after 5 years, while introducing new ones that serve as mere distractions, as if they were a laser pointer aimed at a cat.

I hear the argument, "LO is a better story if you binge read it" a lot, which - while I can certainly understand in today's culture of content that's churned out to be binged - I still fail to see how it actually makes LO a better story. Binge-reading LO doesn't remove the pointless plotlines. It doesn't fix its blatant timeline problems, its retcons, or its inability to stay focused on one topic for more than 5 panels. All it really fixes is the waiting, the ritualistic toiling over each and every cliffhanger that caps off the weekly episodes just for them to either be resolved in the next week or left behind with no in-between. And while having all that waiting removed certainly makes the reading experience a lot smoother, it doesn't make the story or its writing better.

The relationship between a story's writing and how the audience experiences it shouldn't be overlooked. Many stories depend on how the audience experiences it within the mind to succeed and leave an impression.

Junji Ito utilizes the dreaded page turn to scare his audience, an effect that can only be truly gained and appreciated if you read his books in traditional print.

Marvel spent years meticulously building up its Avengers franchise, culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic event through Avengers: Endgame, which is truly the epitome of "you had to be there", because if you watch Avengers: Endgame in 2024 in your living room, you're likely not going to experience the same level of hype as audiences experiencing it in the theater in 2019.

The same can be said for James' Cameron's Avatar, which entranced audiences with its innovative motion capture CGI and immersive 3D effects, an experience that could only be lived to the fullest if you saw it in 3D in IMAX theaters back in 2009. Without that experience, most people in 2024 find the movie to be pretty generic and uninteresting, a reverse Pocahontas with blue people in space, but when it first released in IMAX theaters in 2009, it was a cultural and technological phenomenon due to how advanced it was in its VFX. I can't even share with you clips of it, because obviously it would just be proving my point to try and show you how groundbreaking Avatar was in theaters through a bad shaky cam Youtube upload of its IMAX release on Youtube, but let's just say that it wasn't uncommon for people to brag about how many times they'd gone back to watch the same movie just to feel what they felt from the first showing all over again.

All that's to say that while Lore Olympus may offer a 'better' reading experience when binge-read - regardless of whether or not it actually helps the story's pacing problems - the reality is that LO is still being written exclusively with the weekly format in mind, and its been very much to its detriment, both in the short-term and in the long-term. Readers are often left in the dark on plotlines for weeks at a time, Rachel loses track of what she has and hasn't addressed, and the extended waiting times trick readers into believing that weeks have passed in the comic's story, when in reality it's only been a day or two, sometimes as little as hours depending on the sequence; meanwhile, if you binge episodes that had those problems in hindsight, you'll likely be a lot more quick to notice how many plot beats are either retconned or abandoned entirely, because you don't have the weekly waiting times artificially inflating the pacing of the story and causing you to forget what was established weeks before, because when binged, those weeks are reduced to hours and minutes.

And worst of all, with the assumption that you're reading on a weekly basis - as it wants you to do - Rachel tries to pull clever stunts by matching up LO's episodes with real life dates and holidays, which often just makes the story beats feel rushed or random in their execution - because to the vast majority of readers who haven't caught on to this or are reading the episodes through the physical books, they are rushed and random, and they can't exactly explain why.

Binging these episodes doesn't solve the problem, if anything it exemplifies them because, as a shining example, Hades and Persephone suddenly get married right in the middle of an ongoing issue, which isn't exactly the best time to wrap up the story's main plotline. Since then readers have become less and less interested in their story, and can you blame them? By all accounts their story is over. Everything now just feels tacked on to give them something to do in a story they no longer fit into.

There's an episode behind the FastPass lock right now, Episode 265. It unlocks for free on February 17th, three days after Valentine's Day. Guess what episode it is?

Ah yes, the episode where Hades' initiates sex without consent with his wife who's suffering from panic attacks, who also happens to be a rape victim. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

I actually made this particular discovery while writing this essay, so that was a very unwelcome surprise, but it explains the sudden random shift from Persephone being so stressed over the ongoing situation that she's passed out to Hades just deciding for the both of them that now's the time to have sex. As much as the fans will defend this as a husband and wife's last chance at intimacy before diving into a dangerous situation, they'll also still conveniently forget - just like the narrative and Rachel herself - that Persephone is a rape victim, and Hades initiating sex with her after nearly having a panic attack isn't exactly a good look.

This is why our theories as to when LO ends are so firmly cemented in one specific time range, because the story's pacing and distractions seem only intent in one thing - getting the story to last until spring, when the series will most likely conclude. It's basically been all but confirmed by Rachel, from her stating the series would be ending in early 2024, to Inklore - an imprint that seems designed specifically for Rachel and LO - launching officially in spring of this year, undoubtedly just in time for Rachel to wrap up LO for good.

(and boy, do I have some words about Inklore and its plans for "Rachel Smythe Presents", but that's another essay entirely.)

At the end of the day, LO's pacing is equivalent to paint drying on the wall, but it relentlessly convinces us to keep watching because the paint is blue and pink and maybe, maybe it'll turn into a piece of art. But as is evident in the comment sections of the newest episodes, even the fans are starting to realize that paint will not magically turn into the final piece of art they've been waiting to see if the hand that wields it doesn't know what it's doing.

Though style may be gained as an accidental side effect of one's influences and experiences, what Lore Olympus' intent is remains to be seen, and the longer the story goes on, the blurrier whatever intent it could have becomes. Unless it somehow manages to pull off a twist of Attack on Titan proportions that thoroughly explains and ties together the plotlines that have been left in the rearview mirror, the vehicle that is LO will continue to trudge along at a snail's pace, until it inevitably either crosses the finish line or crashes - but by that point, anyone waiting for it could very well be gone, their good faith left behind at the starting line when there was still plenty of time to change its trajectory or stop.

Such a time is long, long gone.

[chokchokk]

2/2

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 [𝐢 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬] | choi san x fem!reader

PART THREE of : have your way with words, be my people pleaser 

“Be mine tonight, Y/N.”

𝚜𝚢𝚗𝚘𝚙𝚜𝚒𝚜: The hour is twisted. You’re not at a club, you’re not sober, but most importantly, you’re not with him. Will Seonghwa do? No, of course not.

But he leaves you no other chance.

“You’re so pathetic, it might actually be worth a try.”

𝚐𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: angst, smut

𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚞𝚜: 2nd half of PART THREE

𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝: 13.3k

𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐(𝚜): drug-use, drug abuse, alcohol, mdma (ecstasy, molly), vulgar language, just a lot of vulgarities and profanity, hate-fuck?, aggressive, teasing, cunnilingus, fingering, unprotected sex, sex with feelings but no love, sex with no respect, cumming inside; reader cant stop thinking about san, writer is a bit stoic, seonghwa is a hot bitch, hwa and writer are liars lmao

𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚛'𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎: the border looks that ugly on purpose btw not that you think otherwise LMAO

on ao3, this chapter is called “insanity” and i can’t promise it will be the only seonghwa-centred part throughout the series, but do please enjoy for the filth and angst of it all hehe!! <33 if you're asking “does san even make an appearance here?” i won’t tell you :P i know it's intimidating since there's just about like 10k build-up (because i'm a bitch LMAO) so if u wanna skip just find the second border i guessssssss

also, i really recommend listening to KLOUD's ESCAPE HALLOWEEN set (it's a soundcloud link) or any other hard tekno for the whole immersive experience lmao !!! <33

and also, thank you all very much for 100 followers and over 1000 notes ! ! ! wtf it's all happening so fast i can't catch up with yall....

𝚝𝚊𝚐-𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝: @brown88 : @svintsandghosts: @hanniebeesworld : @downbadreading : @shingsoluvely (kissing all of yall <33)

Didn’t Seonghwa say “club” or are you being some conservative narc flaking out?

You’re standing in front of a white, slightly burnt industrial building that is barely holding on by itself, and taking into account how many people are smoking around here, the likeliness that it will catch on fire again is not too low. You can’t believe that you’re going to meet Seonghwa inside here, let alone San, let alone anyone with a healthy sense for flight or fight, but here you are, walking up to the line with confident steps.

Yes, it has made you very anxious that even the taxi-driver had no idea where he was heading. He promised to drive you back home if anything happened, so the taxi-hotline is on speed-dial— just in case— and you just thought, holy fuck, hopefully Seonghwa won't leave me alone here.

But once you’d seen the seemingly endless line of people, you knew you have arrived at the right place. Or at least something like the right place. It all seems off, this building in the middle of nowhere outside the city, but you told the driver the vague address and he found you this hidden ware- and clubhouse, both of you hesitating to confirm that this was the correct location.

Nothing here seems legal, smells legal, looks legal— oh well.

The only thing you can say with certainty is is that you are looking and smelling the best you have ever looked and smelled this entire semester, and even if you have no fucking clue who these people that are whistling at you are, you know you’ve done everything right tonight when they wave at you to join them. You just skipped a whole chunk of the line here, but nobody seems to mind it. What a democratic party, maybe it’s not all that foul play and people do appreciate good things, eh?

It’s not an exaggeration or empty self-boast: You, in your skin-tight, revealing black body-con dress, skin glowing under the harsh night-light, are absolutely ravishing. There are looks on you— uncountably many of them, and usually, you’d fold under their heavy gaze, but having taken a few shots of the cheap rum back at home, you reciprocate their curious eyes with a sleek, cheeky smile, down-right inviting them to bathe in your appearance.

While the group of people take in the presence of you, blurting out their first thoughts immediately upon thinking, your confidence only grows bigger. Thank god drunk people say the truth, because “damn, she’s hot” is the ego-boost you needed to face whatever awaits you in that cubic building.

“ARE YOU FUCKING READY?”, booms out of it and it seems like a voice sample that’s been altered that hellishly deep. The crowd outside cheers. They're not even a part of the shenanigans yet, but still, they’re screaming and already moving their body in anticipation, throwing funny looking candy (you’re very sure that’s molly) inside their mouths. They’re ready, but Y/N, are you? It is an honest question to ask yourself, and as you inhale the smell of people smoking the devil’s lettuce around you, you draw out how the night might progress for them.

You don’t know about San’s whereabouts, only that Seonghwa and him are going separately, which is a big plus if you want to fuck him today.

Uh-huh. Fuck Seonghwa. You’ve made it up in your mind because he just wouldn’t stop hinting at it in the car this morning. He is going to buy you drinks, going to show you his dancing, but most importantly, going to “make you enjoy yourself”, which of course, could just be wishful thinking from you iterating the conversation, but Seonghwa wouldn’t have bought the tickets for you for free if he wasn’t expecting some type of reward, would he?

At the minimum, the hinting painfully reminded you of the way you talked to San the very first days you first insinuated that he could stay over at your house and — oh, golly! — sleep there. Coming to think of it, your talk actually never worked, and it still ended up being San who made the first sexual move. You’re going to save Seonghwa from this embarrassment, and if not, you’re going to save yourself from your own embarrassment for if you do see San and his volleyball-“date” or whatever here.

Anyhow, at the maximum, you have a brain and are fully aware of the fact that people don’t “meet” at the club to just have a chat, whether it's him or San. People “meet” at the club to get crazy and fuck, and that’s exactly what you’re doing with Seonghwa — End of story. San is not going to write this chapter today. He won’t even end up in the epilogue, that’s how much you’re going to focus on Seonghwa. Go down. Get him on. Get on with him.

You bop your head a little bit to the deep bass that’s vibrating through the walls of the warehouse and the line is taking a painfully long time to move forward. You watch the people in your group chug down their self-mixed abominations and how they're throwing the remaining glass on the floor, whiffing their stimulants through their joints or gulping it down by tablets. Letting out a huff to exhale the sharp smell of weed, you try to become as detached as the ones around you, at the very least assimilate to their mood. You’re going to be with these people tonight, and just by putting one and one together, you get the feeling that it will be a long, ruthless evening. You can hear intoxicated screams leave the front door, the deep voice continuing to hype up their cheers.

It's all a hivemind of pure madness and … well, you're here for it, it seems like, no? Seonghwa is not going to be an exception, and you brace yourself to be meeting your date here.

Show you his dancing, he said…

You don’t know whether the DJ playing some extraordinary remixes or whatever to be deserving this much of screaming feedback, but it’s definitely music to get your mind lost to, you'll give this guy Mingi that; Splurging, ear-numbing beats and basses, inviting you to rock your body. You don’t hate the music, not at all. It just makes you question how Seonghwa was imagining to impress you. Here you are imagining body-rolls or whatnot, but this hard style techno isn't really the tune for that, is it? Okay, let's just say it's not music you'd turn on to get yourself into the mood on a Saturday night, that's what's there to it.

It’s ironical, really. Usually around this time you’d be fumbling around your phone on your couch to ask San if he’s free or not, and sometimes he is, but most of the time he’s not. Those days where he just comes over on your mark have been over long time. Now, he’ll either show up at your house unprecedented or ask you to show up at his house in an ungodly hour.

Huh, isn’t that one funny butterfly effect. You woke up early because of San's mistress and here you are, lining up to become Seonghwa's. Is this right? "I heard you were going to be at Mingi’s party. Meet me there." Even now, you’re trying to convince yourself that this contact name “volleyball” could be anyone, maybe even just a friend that is trying to link up at this not-so party-looking party. Hm, you think, would a friend text him so intimidatingly? San hates periods to end messages, it scares him. So no, not a friend. At least not a friend that knows him as much as you do. Someone he had a fight with, maybe? No, Choi San doesn’t have fights, he’s too avoidant of conflict for that. It has got to be someone that has once been close to him and a bit too close to your liking.

No, no, fuck no, let’s stop this, you murmur to yourself and wriggle down your dress so it covers your ass at least.

Fucking Seonghwa. That’s your one and only mission tonight, of course followed by having fun and getting all hell loose.

It will just be one night and it will either make you 1) want to stay with San, or 2) finally move on and agree that San is just a … friend with too many benefits. You have to convince yourself you’re not in love with San. You can’t be in love with San. Disregarding of how curious you are in meeting him here.

“Ticket,” the control-man orders around the people in front of you and you get out your phone out of your tiny bag for the ticket, when you see that Seonghwa has already messaged you.

Seonghwa (San’s roomie): I’ll be waiting at the bar for you by the way Seonghwa (San’s roomie): You have to walk up the stairs on the left when you enter Seonghwa (San's roomie): Excited to see you ;)

You have been guessing already that something was going to break tonight, but it might as well be those stairs Seonghwa is talking about. From the amount of people that are still waiting behind you, you hope that they’re not all trying to go the bar.

“Ticket, please,” the control-man repeats, but strangely enough, his tone is a bit friendlier to you for some reason. “Here you go,” you duplicate his kindliness and he nods, dropping his smile as soon as he moves on to the next guess. Strange.

You eye the buff guy, but the impatient crowd pushes you into the square door. In you go.

“GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP!”

Harsh red lights, laser and smoke hit your senses. (Though you can only be so sure that the last part is really planned for the show-experience.)

Maybe you underestimated the capabilities of a warehouse. It’s still not what you thought of when you heard "club", but it surely still gets your club-mind going. Ignoring the grimy looking walls that seem to crumble with every beat that’s drumming inside your ears, the pungent smell of cheap-ass perfume, artificial sweeteners and alcoholic beverages strike into your nose, blurring your sight for a short moment. There are no windows in this hell-hole, but that’s the concern for another hour.

This is only the beginning. So, let’s focus.

Left, stairs, go up, there’s the bar Seonghwa was messaging you about. It surprises you that you’re not being swarmed by more people trying to get drinks, but it makes sense, since so many of them have already drunk outside or taken other substances to get themselves prepared for the night. That’s the first thing.

Second thing; suprisingly, the stairs are actually kind of durable. You can physically feel the bass run through your veins as you grab the handrail, but maybe that’s just because of the cold metal. Nothing to worry about here, you exhale and make your way up.

Lastly, and most importantly, look at you, you’re smiling. That’s the biggest, best thing. The euphoria these people are screaming out is down-right infectious, isn’t it? Their daft, hypnotic cries are calling out to you on the dance floor, but you’re going to be there sooner or later, with the man that brought you here in the first place.

“Hey, Seonghwa.”

“Hey, Y/N, you—“

He was sitting on a barstool, admiring the flashing lights all throughout the warehouse through his sunglasses, when you put your hand on his barely clothed shoulder and make him turn around.

“Holy shit, Y/N.”

You grin. Of course Seonghwa wouldn’t disappoint with his reaction. He rips the sunglasses from his face immediately, gets up from his seat and embraces you with one arm, not daring to let one eye sway away from you, his tongue pushed to the surface of his mouth, as he suppresses his gleeful grin. He looks star-struck, the supernatural-looking lights surrounding him are only emphasising this sight. Otherworldly.

“Where have you been hiding that?”, he asks, commenting on your body as respectfully as he can. You know he can’t handle a lot of alcohol, so his marvel must be double the truth, right? Seonghwa isn’t a liar.

“I’ve not been hiding anything,” you scoff and Seonghwa laughs nervously.

“Y/N, you look… absolutely fantastic.”

“You don’t look to shabby yourself, Seonghwa,” you smile and muster the charcoal-haired man from bottom to top. It’s very out-of the ordinary, but honestly, you should have expected something like this after he invited you here. It goes without saying, you could have served him the same reaction to his outfit. The man who was wearing sportswear? He’s now wearing a black, nylon, baggy pant, with a distressed knitted top that barely serves as an excuse for clothing as it is not covering any of his body parts correctly— and even if you’d already gushed about his athletic figure this morning, you have not expected to be seeing Seonghwa’s abs and breast this exposed this early tonight. There is jewellery all around his outfit, just dangling from the fabric, but also his ear and hands, spiky and shiny, almost hazardous looking.

Damn, either you haven’t seen Seonghwa enough or this dude has been hiding more from you than you could account for. He looks as fashionable as much as he looks demonic, ready to sin with you, and that is the most meaningful compliment of the night.

“Thank you, I knew you’d like it.”

“Really? Me?”, you laugh, getting your hair out of your face, tugging it behind your ear.

“You have a strange taste,” Seonghwa smirks and while you puzzle together what he means, he signs something to the bartender with his ringed fingers.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m ordering us shots. Keeping my first promise.”

“With sign-language?”

Seonghwa smirks and sits down again, you following him to the same.

"I'm a friend of Mingi's, they know me around, that's all."

"Y'all are weird."

“That’s just our ways here.”

“Your ways? You sound like some pretentious club-kid,” you nag.

“What if I am, huh? Are you gonna leave, if I was?”, Seonghwa teases and is served a tray of four shots, coloured a dangerously unnatural purple colour. He slides a 10-dollar bill onto the counter and the bar-keeper takes it with no words spoken out loud, which gives Seonghwa the time to devote all his attention to you. It’s flattering how astounded he is by you, as if he hasn’t seen you pretty ever in his life. But then again, you can only do so much styling and make-up when San calls you at 10 PM, asking you to “hurry”.

“We’ll see how the night progresses,” you smirk, and grab the first shot. Seonghwa also takes one and slightly raises the small cup.

“I won’t disappoint you.”

Sweet — the taste of the shot.

All types of fruits and harsh, cheap liquour plunge into your mouth and melt on your tongue. It’s going to make your head hurt the next day, one hundred percent, but maybe it will be Seonghwa to get you some pills to soothe the ache.

… If he wasn’t San’s god-damned roommate.

Or he could stay at your home. It’s been a while since another man than him has slept in your bed, and maybe it’s long overdue.

“Let’s hurry up, I wanna dance with you,” you gulp down the sugary liquid and Seonghwa chuckles.

“We’ve got enough time, Y/N. Let’s savour this one together.”

Sweet — The spark in his eyes, his flawless skin, perfectly plump lips— holy fucking shit. Seonghwa is fucking breathtaking.

“Y/N?”, Seonghwa asks and you see that he’s already moved on to the second shot, waiting for you to move on.

“I didn’t know you had that kind of sexy stare in you,” your alcohol blurts out for you and in the meanwhile, you grab the next shot glass.

“Sexy stare?”, Seonghwa asks and grins.

“Screw you! You know what I’m talking about,” you hiss and show him your tongue to offend him, but Seonghwa just tilts his head, raising the glass to your face.

“Loveshot?”, he asks and for a moment, you don’t know whether he’s joking or not. Maybe you’re just feeling weird because a male has said the word “love” in your proximity. (The only man in your life who's a candidate in hearing that word avoids it like a disease.)

“Only if you mean it,” you purr seductively, lick your lips, and praise to fucking god he’s taking the hint. Seonghwa leans in and crosses your arms around, the cold rim of his drink suddenly resting at your lip.

“That’s not how loveshots work,” you notify, but you still mirror him and place your glass under his lips.

“Do you care?”

“No.”

Seonghwa chuckles and with one movement of his hand, the second shot is flowing down your oesophagus. It’s cold, starkly contrasting the humid conditions in the warehouse, but it’s just enough to get your senses rolling again.

You don’t even care that you made Seonghwa miss half the drink, his alcohol tolerance will give him just the right kick from the first shot. Also he doesn’t protest at all, when you hop from your seat to finally get the evening going.

“Let’s go now!”, you order him around and he gladly obeys. “Lead the way,” he says, putting his hands on your shoulder, which he hopefully won't be able to keep there for long, as you both strut down the stairs and into the crowd.

The massive crowd is crazy, and it’s ever-growing.

“What is this place?”, you ask Seonghwa, as he’s being pushed against your back by the people on the way to the dancefloor and Seonghwa has the perfect opportunity to grab you by your hips to not lose you, but frustatingly enough, he doesn’t. His hands leave your shoulders and Seonghwa just tries to manoeuvre to you.

“I wouldn’t be able to tell you,” Seonghwa answers honestly and you look for a free place to roam and dance. People are trying to get as close to the DJ as possible, but once those are gone, there’s actually some space you can use— you just have to get there.

“You come here often?”, you ask, leaning backwards for your voice to hit his skin. You'll be hoarse by the end of the night.

“I’ve only went twice. San went to every single set of Mingi, though!”

“Really? San goes here frequently?”

“Yeah! Does that shock you?”

“Of course it does.” You stop, turn around and Seonghwa’s hands stay in place in his pants, as you talk to him. “This, all of this, doesn’t seem like San at all.”

“Hmm, I know what you’re getting at. But that’s just our boy, eh?”

You stare into his eyes and search for some type of playfulness, but Seonghwa means his words. This is where San roams— is roaming right now, maybe— and it, all of it, just fucking confuses you. This is not the "party" you would have expected to see that man in, and if that wasn't bad enough, he's apparently a regular. You hope you’re not pushing some kind of innocent image onto him, but despite the alcohol that's heating up your cheeks and making you dumber every talking second, you’re seriously puzzled. That he’s never invited you is questionable already, but is “that San for you”? You don't know.

Wiggling your hips, you try to retrace history to the very moment you had met shy little San at the seminar, up until now, where he’s grown three times his size and you feel like he's some type of fucking mystery that is impossible for you to solve. Nerd? Hopeless romantic? Hard to get? Playboy? San may act like he’s open-minded, but he’s the most secretive guy you’ve seen. Not like Seonghwa, who, mind you, is still looking at you with the most intense fuck-me eyes, that it’s actually eating you up.

“Let’s stop talking about San.”

“Why?”, Seonghwa asks, obliviously, eyes turning back to normal.

“Because it’s us here! You and I, Seonghwa and Y/N. If they drank a loveshot together, they should act like it, don't ya think, huh?” you grunt, already slurring your words. You start to move your body according to the heavy beat, tits jerking out to the front, arms waving like they have a life on their own. Seonghwa smiles and accordingly begins to step his feet where yours aren’t; your bodies are annoyingly close, but still not touching at all.

“How do you mean that, Y/N?”, he asks and you slap his revealed shoulder with the back of your hand to stop his teasing. “I thought you wanted to show me your dancing, Seonghwa!”, you whine and he laughs at your comment.

But Seonghwa doesn’t say anything after that, which gets on your nerves even more and in response, you turn your body slightly away while swaying your hips from side to side.

“You know what you said,” you hiss and he probably can’t hear you because the DJ is transitioning to a track with even more bass penetrating your ears.

You scurry your body to the beat and catch the gaze of someone in the crowd, who’s noticed you for the same reasons Seonghwa can’t keep his eyes away from you. The stranger is drilling his gaze up and down your chiselled body, licking his lips. Feeling playful, you make a suggestive expression towards him in return of the attention, winking at him. The male immediately makes his way to you.

"You do molly?”, he asks into your ear and you see that he’s got two skittles with cartoonish hearts and smileys drawn on them. That’s Adam. You never did him before, but you surely have heard of him, your friends have had him, your friends have loved him, your friends had painful break-ups with him. Merciless adam, MDMA.

You look back at Seonghwa who’s still dancing next to you, acting like he's not watching this whole situation go down, putting on his sunglasses again, and pushing it up his nose bridge. It sucks. His skin under the top is teasing you to look at it, and it feels so unusual to be longing for him, like you can't comprehend he's not... the other one.

So, though you do hesitate for a short second, you take two of the heart-painted ones and smile at the stranger, who sounds rotten from inside out, voice raspy and hoarse.

“Are you alone?”, he asks into your ear and while you think of answer, you muster Seonghwa, whose eyes you cannot track anymore, since the black cubic shades are hiding his prettiest possession. Is he still looking at you? Watching the sky? Who knows. Only he knows.

“Maybe?”, you answer and rotate your head to the stranger’s direction. You don’t care for this man, not at all, but what you do care for is Seonghwa’s reaction. Bouncing your ass up and down against the stranger's baggy jeans like the grand girl you are, he gets his hand at your waist and tries to pull you over his place, but, there he is, Seonghwa to come save the night.

“Fuck off, she's taken.”

He pushes the male away with his elbow and the grip immediately loosens up. “Hey, hey, dude, don’t hit me. Sorry, dude.” Seonghwa is visibly taller than him, and apparently that’s enough for the poor guy to get intimidated by his sunglassed face and disappear into the crowd with quick feet.

“YOU WANNA PLAY?”, the artificially deepened voice echoes through the warehouse and you stare into what you can make out from Seonghwa’s eyes with an earnest frown. You’ve felt unnecessarily angsty and frustrated the whole day since you saw that message on San’s phone, and this is the guy who’s going to hold responsibility for it, better with his whole fucking devotion now.

“What was that?”, you tease Seonghwa, who’s finally getting his hands out of his pockets and pulling you closer to him by your wrist. You can’t exactly read his expression since he’s covered his face still, but that actually makes it feel a lot better. There's something off about him, like Seonghwa is a stranger, like you’re not doing it for him, but rather… yourself. You're doing this because it makes you feel good, not the other way around. That's empowering.

“Whatever you want it to be, Y/N.”

“Stop tip-toeing around it! Are you going to fuck me or not? ‘Cause there’s more of those guys everywhere here,” your alcohol spits again and Seonghwa pants.

“Well, shit,” he laughs and finally glides into your waist with his arms. “That was direct.”

“I can flirt with you, but not under these fucking conditions,” you growl, intoxicated, recycling gritty air in your lungs, moving your sticky body to the beat and occasionally grinding against Seonghwa’s lower body with your legs from the front. "I can flirt and fuck you," he hums and frames his hands around your hips, connecting himself to you.

“Do you do molly, Seonghwa?”, you grin, the two pills waiting to be popped in inside your hand.

Seonghwa takes a look at the capsules, and you wait for his answer, as he appears to investigate them. Does he know what he's looking for? Apparently yes, as he pushes up his sunglasses and rubs the corners of his lips with two of his fingers, “Gimme.”

He picks it up from your flattened hand, and you would’ve loved to share it like a love-shot again, but before you could request it, Seonghwa has gulped it down. Not his first rodeo, you assume, and follow his suit.

Good thing that your throat hasn't dried out yet and the pill glides down your throat with your saliva. It's not going to take long until the jubilation of the alcohol you've consumed meets the ecstatic effect of molly, and you bite your lip with a grin. "Never thought I'd be doing drugs with you, Seonghwa," you purr and Seonghwa shrugs with a huff, “I thought you’d never even consider it.” Seonghwa exhales in the heat of it all, pulling you closer.

“What? Because of San?”

“Of course because of San,” Seonghwa cackles and puts his pointy chin in between the space of your collarbone and neck, so that his voice is hitting the spot of your hickey. “You know he’s here somewhere, right?”

“Yeah, but the probability that we’ll see him is like zero, so that’s not my concern.”

“You’d be concerned if he saw us, though?”, Seonghwa asks, loose-tongued, murmuring against your neck. He’s definitely fully gotten drunk, his body heavily weighing into yours, as he gets one arm up and around your head; his hand is tangled into your scalp without a caution of messing up your hairstyle. You finding out what the molly will do to him is only a matter of time.

“Are you asking if I’m committed to him?”

Seonghwa licks his lips, “accidentally” getting your skin with his tongue. It takes you aback a bit and you whine, your eyes dozing off for a short moment. You can still taste the remains of the shot at the back of your cheeks and it's the only thing you can sense correctly. Everything else is either fogged or slowly disappearing, or becoming even harsher like the red laser lights that you fear are going to pierce through you.

“No, I’m not asking whether you’re committed,” Seonghwa answers, leaning into your skin even more, “I know you guys aren’t in a relationship. Or, you know, at least he isn’t committed.”

“WANNA GET NASTY?”

It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. Even when you’re feeling very seduced because he is trying to get the same moaning reaction out of you by licking your sensitive spot and it’s working, you don’t want to be reminded that San doesn’t care for you as much as you do for him. Sure, that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth, isn’t it? You’re not the one living in the same space as San, Seonghwa is.

“Huh? Does he sleep with a lot of women?”, you ask him out of morbid curiosity, acting tough, as Seonghwa works deeper into your neck, getting the skin to soften for him.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Fuck you! Don’t protect me!”

“Ask him yourself,” he lisps, his sharp tongue grazing against your hickey, teasing your pettiness.

“I deserve to know.”

Seonghwa is the one rolling his eyes now, sighing, “You can be such an annoying brat, Y/N. How does San keep up with you?”

You try to yank your head back to show your discontent with his choice of words, but Seonghwa has you deep in his grip and puts you in place.

“You were the one who didn’t want to talk about San,” he lulls into your ear, stroking your hair to calm you down. Sure, that sounds reasonable, but still not an excuse to call you an “annoying brat”.

You take a wild guess about why Seonghwa isn’t just giving you the answer and argue, “I can still be curious, can’t I? San is not committed, you say? Why? Does he get more bitches than you?”

“He tried to get back with his ex.”

Bingo!

Wait, no. What the fuck?

“Huh, when?”, you ask, and irritatingly enough, Seonghwa has begun biting and licking into your neck at the one spot you can’t stop exhaling sweet noises for him. “Seonghwa, you better fuu-huucking answer.”

“Yesterday,” he murmurs against your skin and ding, ding, ding; things make a lot of sense now.

“No, you’re kidding,” you scoff, and push him away with all your strength. With a numbed mind, Seonghwa tumbles back and laughs, “Hey, it’s no big deal, he called you immediately after it didn’t work out.“

“Seonghwa, are you listening to yourself?”

“WANNA GET FUCKING CRAZY?”

“I’m saying it all like it happened, Y/N. San tried to win her back by inviting her to an expensive dinner, but then she flunked out right in the end, when he invited her back home. And, when he came home alone with a boner, San contacted you.”

“You're lying. Don't lie, Seonghwa, lying is a sin," your splur, but once his words have met your brain, it all just becomes chaos inside. It feels like marbles are rolling down inside your head and nothing is making sense, it’s all going nowhere and everywhere with this information. What are you supposed to feel like? Betrayed? There has never been a promise. Sad? You were going to fuck Seonghwa, you're not the most truthful, either.

“Come on, Y/N. You knew it the second San slammed you against that wall at 11 PM, didn’t you?” Seonghwa glides his thumb over your neck and grins, confirming the evidence of yesterday’s night. The roughful sucking of San could barely be covered up by concealer, and you probably sweated it away already.

“He— he said he was stressed.”

“Because of uni? Don’t lie to yourself, Y/N~”, the male purrs. Amidst of it all, Seonghwa is strangely still moving his body calculated to the beat, hitting each one of the drums with his shoulders, all while he hushes behind you to brainwash you with a whiskery voice. “It’s still San we’re talking about.”

You huff perplexedly and are too flabbergasted by his harsh words to not be affected by Seonghwa’s talking and let him hug you tightly again. He’s almost putting you into a headlock of consolation, or something that would have been great if it had been, indeed, consolation. (It is not. He’s almost choking you with his forearm and the way his hand is pushing into your scalp, nothing about this position is in any way soothing.)

“Tell me something, Seonghwa,” you gutter, since the thought has been recoiling rounds in your head forever and curiosity will always kill the cat. “… is she from his volleyball team?”

“No,” he answers and for some reason, this is a lot worse, “she isn’t, but— wait, how do you know about the girl from his volleyball team?”

You don’t answer. For the sake of your heart, you do not answer. You’re still moving, but you’re moving silently, staring into the humorously wild lasers that are teasing you just like he is.

Seonghwa gasps and cups your chin, his thumb meeting your lip, mushing the lower half of your face, trying to turn your face towards his direction, but you resist him. But who are you fooling. Seonghwa doesn't even need to see your expression to ask you, in an almost utterly disappointed whiny tone, "Nooo, Y/N, do you seriously check his phone?”

“I’m gonna punch you in your pretty fuck-face if you keep whining like that, Hwa.”

“Feisty and flattering, and a new nickname too! It must be my birthday,” Seonghwa chuckles and suddenly begins to nibble your earlobe, warm breath from his nose hitting the skin as he pants throughout his dancing. The alcohol is boiling inside you, being churned by the molly, and the crushing disillusionment is slowly into flaming, enraging, hateful desire. It has all gotta go somewhere, and for now, all you can do it talk with this scorching tone that is only going to turn into even more fuming, “How long has San been pining for his fucking ex?”

“For as long as I can remember," Seonghwa answers, seemingly not aware of the severity of this situation, "Middle of the second semester? Exam-season?”

“Nooo,” you scoff and can’t believe what you’re hearing. You don’t even need to calculate what time Seonghwa is talking about, it is engraved deeply into your memories. The same fucking exam season, when you were seeing San every afternoon and evening. You were right fucking there. He knew— you, on the other hand, not so much.

But you should have known.

“Well, yeah,” Seonghwa grins and is running his hands low to your stomach, almost touching your pelvis to get you worked up even more.

Should have known that you weren’t supposed to fall for San.

Angel faces hide the guts of devils’, and right now, your insides are over-cooking with the question "what the fuck were you thinking?" That he’d come around? Like no man in your life has ever come around? That San was the one? No, that San was going to believe that you were the one? 'Well, yeah', he should have, because you are the fucking one. You did so much for him, you could have done so much more for him, and it frustrates you.

“What are you grinning for, you motherfucker?”, you ask, as you peek over and see that Seonghwa has lowered his sunglasses and staring into your empty eyes, searching for a sign of life. You asked, but you don't really need the answer, the picture is drawn perfectly in front of you. Seonghwa is smirking for the same reasons he’s telling you all of this; it’s pretty clear.

“I like it when you’re bossy,” he chuckles, having become more than ‘a bit cocky’ with you, “unlike San. He hates that, right? He’s so weak-hearted, how can he—“

“You’re his friend, Seonghwa,” you insist and grit your teeth, pushing up his sunglasses again with your two fingers, poking into the middle of the lens to make it greasy.

“Friends can say things about each other!”, he giggles gullibly, and scrunches his face together.

All you can say is that Seonghwa sounds and looks moronic in those square sunglasses, senseless and boozed out of his mind, but in the short moment he licks his sharp canine teeth, you suppose that this is exactly how you need him to be.

“You listen to everything, don’t you?”, you ask him, giving into his touch, pushing your back profile so close to him, that there is no touchable space left between you two. Ass pressed against his pelvic area, you breathe heavily into his face that’s glued to your temple. “Every single night I come over to fuck your roommate?”

“Noise-cancelling can only do so much, and your sound is addicting,” Seonghwa pouts— babbling his truths like it’s water falling out of his mouth— and when you see his pink lip shine under the flashing lights, your mind disorients. He is still the pretty boy that says pretty words, even when he's probably faking all of it; he is getting your insides all fuzzy, and you are still being lured in by him, but not for the reasons Seonghwa would enjoy them to.

You’re chasing the feeling of his comfort and you know it. You’re chasing after the man that won’t leave you alone. Or no, you are alone— so fucking lonely because of him even— but you don’t want to be alone, you don’t want him to leave you alone.

San.

San.

Fuck. San.

The feeling of drowning in San’s praise, in his words, inside his bedroom, muffled by his sheets, it hunts you, it makes you feel watched, and it makes you feel like you’re hungry for something you can’t digest. Every word he has said to you is written in your memories in special font, and even though he is out of sight, San will always stay in your mind. Does he do it on purpose? Leave marks, with both words and his lips? To profit off of your yearning? To make himself feel better? To own something? To feel proud? Does he say it that loud on purpose, too? To make his roommate hear him? To make his roommate feel bad in order to feel good?

Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe San doesn't know Seonghwa is listening at all, maybe he doesn't care about any of it.

"Your pretty sounds," Seonghwa repeats himself, his face pressed against your cheek and you roll your eyes at his lips grazing your skin, his heavy breath from his nose warming it up.

These two men are woven by the same needle, knitted with the same material for they say surprisingly similar things and act surprisingly same, but for some reason, it does not feel the same. It is not the same. It should be the same. It should be the fucking same, fuck! You’re going to explode. The way that your head is spinning, your hips swinging, music ringing— people screeching, feet stomping— everything is happening around and inside you. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, livid. Brain, guts, uterus, livid. Let’s not talk about your heart or else we have to start over again. Just forget about your heart and think about the things that are of use tonight. What can you focus on? You can focus on your body glowing hot, but you could also focus on Seonghwa, whose baggy pants is rubbing against your thin minidress. It’s Seonghwa that you wanted, right? Or was it Seonghwa you were supposed to want, because he is the one that wants you back? — No, fuck, let's re-roll, quickly; Seonghwa is grinding against you right now, from behind, and that's exactly what you imagined, wasn't it? Under these lights, under this influence, this is what you wanted, wasn't it?

With the state of your mind, you can not agree with anything; your thoughts sound foreign and it's not your voice speaking, when you grind your ass back. It also doesn't feel like it's your eyes that you're seeing with; Seonghwa’s smile behind of you is becoming blurry and there’s just one more face that’s slowly appearing from the front-ends of your head. There’s a catch though; what you’re seeing is not the soft face you usually cup with your delicate hands and observe in awe when he sleeps, it’s not the face that lights up when he sees you enter through his front door, it's a face that's reading a text message from his fucking ex in the morning and immediately forgets that you're next to him, available as available can be.

It is actually going to make you puke, right here and there. All your emotions, all your ambitions, all of your fucking dreams. Who is San to you? What is he? You’ve known him for what, a year? — Okay fuck, that’s actually more than you thought, but still, it’s not like San and you have met up in any way that wasn’t purely sexual during all the time you knew him. Know him. You don’t know San. You don’t know shit about him. What are you— San and you? What are you going to be? Boyfriend, girlfriend? Has a nice ring to it, but fuck no, right? There are too many girls, right? Which is why you wanted to get yourself another man too, right?

“Come on, Y/N, forget him.”

While you have alcohol and molly inside you, singing two different songs of lust and desire, Seonghwa is moving his legs according to yours and pressing himself more against you. He’s one sadistic dipshit if Seonghwa thinks you could forget any of what you just went through just by moaning into your ear, but you're going with it.

You can't feel a lot right now, except that Seonghwa’s bulge perfectly fits in the space of your ass, rubbing up and down between the two circular shapes, getting himself more erected with every passing beat.

This whole situation is so fucked up and messy.

But, add one more: You are fucked up and messy. The music is building up loudly and people are shaking their bodies next to you, dancing in the high they've reached long time ago, eyes having lost any sign of concentration or sobriety, and you came here to contemplate whether you’re going to have a one-night-stand to prove a point, mixing drugs to get it on faster. You feel quicker, no, you are quick, rushing from one thought to another like you’re fleeing from your inner voices, both the devil and angel. They’re useless in this situation, they have too much reason.

And you don't need any reasons to think you're in the right to fuck him. Seonghwa’s hands are on your abdomen and gently massaging the skin, making you feel like he thinks you’re valuable, but you both know that this dance you’re holding right now barely cost you anything but 10 dollars in cash.

The red lasers haven’t stopped. They are pointing upwards or downwards for you, but you guess, from the way you’re watching Seonghwa’s lips right now, there’s only one way down. There has always been only one way down.

San chooses an ex over you? Then you’ll choose his dumb fucking roommate over him. Two can play this game, and even if he’s had the lead, you’re going to make your play. Is it going to hurt him? You don’t know. Maybe it won’t. But at least it will be over, right? At least this fucking thing will be over.

“Kiss me, Seonghwa.”

“You serious? I thought San was all up your mind right now.”

“Oh my fucking god, just do it before I take it back.”

“LET’S GET FUCKING INSANE”

Seonghwa doesn’t let you ask twice. While people all around you are turning up to the beat-drop, he pulls your chin up and clashes his lips against yours. His teeth clank against you lip and there's a short, piercing pain there, but Seonghwa's high chuckle blows it away. It’s a violent kiss, but mind-numbing enough so maybe you can forget why you decided to kiss him in the first place. While your lips are working against each other, his hand is sliding down to your groin and it's dangerously close to the seam of your tiny dress. One tug and your whole leg is revealed to the crowd, but you don't look down to see how naked Seonghwa is making you; all you see is yourself, in the reflection of his square sunglasses.

His tongue is electrifying, when it forces its entry into your mouth. It’s long and tastes deliciously foreign- a mixture of alcohol and tobacco, which you haven't experienced in pair since a long time. San, no, “he” (this is what you’ll call him now) doesn’t smoke, which at first, you considered as a big win, because you were passively inhaling all the smoke from your prior flings that you’d had the feeling your lungs were being polluted. Yet a year later, you’re clean— cleaner than never before, you should be able to breathe, you should be able to think clearly, but you can’t. Did you think he was pure? Was it that? That he was this untouched man? Maybe he was. Maybe he was, when he was still a nerd who had never heard a woman say the word “sex” in his— or had he? Fuck, had he? You don’t know, you couldn’t have known. ‘He’ was a façade, wasn’t it? He turned into another person immediately, didn’t he?

Let's get back on Seonghwa’s lips.

You're reminded of your lost freedom and as much it drives you insane, it's driving you into a state of pure, adventurous lust. The way Seonghwa works across your slick tongue is animalistic and wild, and you feel like you’re being pursued with no escape. To catch your breaths a little bit, Seonghwa lets go off your chin and thigh, turning you around so he can have better access to your mouth. Not letting the enlivening music go to waste, he presses his lips on yours the second you inhaled for the second time.

You slip your hands under his knitted top, running them up and down his breast, his abs and abdomen to feel his muscles and skin. It’s only a matter of time until he asks you to move off the dance floor, but your alcohol is bombarding you with sweet suggestions you can’t let pass without saying. His exposed skin feels cold under your fingers, but when you cup his hardened erection through the fabric with your hand and move it according to Seonghwa’s tongue slicking against yours, he radiates heat.

“Fuck,” Seonghwa pants into the kiss and you hum, continuing to tease him on this godless dance floor. Nobody has their senses right and is observing you two making out with dozy eyes, nobody cares about anything here. There’s only right now, the song the DJ is playing for the mindless crowd of drugged, intoxicated people. Let’s get insane.

You try to get a good feel of Seonghwa’s cock and its girth with your hand. “You’re big,” you murmur, catching air again, “smaller than San though.”

And there you have it, men are so easy to galvanize.

“Say that again, you fucking cunt,” Seonghwa growls and digs his fingers into your ass, eyebrows pulled down so hard that his forehead could explode.

“Why? ‘Cause you’re better than him?”, you taunt him and click with your tongue, catching a breath. “You’re no better than Sannie,” you sneer, pointing at your hickey with your finger to remind him (but mostly yourself), “don’t think you could be.”

Seonghwa goes fucking angry. Apparently he thinks he’s done so much for you, has been so nice to you, has helped you, whatever, and this is how you show him your thanks. Grabbing your hair, he pushes his forehead against yours and you catch a glimpse of his darkened eyes, feeling the stinging pain from the impact linger, while he talks. His breath is scarce from having kissed you, so he’s trying his best to use his voice to taunt you.

"San is probably fucking his fucking ex-girlfriend right now, do you think you're any better than him, huh, slut? You are the one who's so fucking desperate to get him to love you, and you're still here with me, and you're kissing me, so we're both in the wrong, you fucking whore."

His words don’t mean anything to you, visiting the synapses of your brain, but leaving right after. You just grin with your eyelids covering half of your eye and Seonghwa realizes nothing is arriving inside your sweet, broken mind. Your cheeks are red from the lack of oxygen, drugs and you’re flushed at the cause of his libidinous touch, and Seonghwa sees he's been working around your hair a little bit too much, having ruffled it up to the point that a comb-through will not amount to a lot. You look like a crazy person to him, but nothing attracts a joke more than a hard-hitting punchline.

“We're both single,” is what you lull to correct him, licking over your lips that you can't feel anymore since Seonghwa has kissed them numb. "And I think that's all that matters."

You both hear the music come to an exhilarating high and slowly reach your evaporating point.

“You sound like San,” Seonghwa giggles and he probably thinks it's going to push you over, but it doesn't. He’s still staring into you like he’s searching for a weak spot, but you’re persistent, you’re needy, and while you are weak, you are unforgivably yourself, Y/N.

You smash both your hands on each of his cheeks and you look at yourself through the sunglasses, sneering, "Good. San is a better name to moan."

He scoffs and smiles so condescendingly sweet again, but out of his mouth comes nothing worthwhile. "I'm going to fuck your voice out of your fucking throat, you're never going to moan ‘San’ ever fucking again," he growls and you drench yourself in his vulgarity, kissing him repeatedly.

"Never again," Seonghwa repeats himself, digging his thumbs into your ribs, but his tone isn't as forcing as it is... begging. Asking—demanding you to put all your attention on him, like he knows your heart isn't his and he desperately wants to possess yours. Oh, he definitely knows. You're not fooling anybody, at least didn't try to, but Seonghwa is gullible enough to fall for your tricks, how it seems like. San is painted on your body all the while your dance partner is speaking through his heavy breathing; painted on your neck, in your eyes, it’s annoying Seonghwa, it distracts him, it makes him see red, and not the colour on your skin.

"Awww, do you want me to only moan your name tonight?", you baby Seonghwa, mocking that he's finally revealed his motivations behind all of this. At least you think you've hit the nail in the coffin, when you pout to mirror Seonghwa’s expression.

Seonghwa's greatest sin isn't lust, it's envy. It could be any girl coming and leaving their dorm, moaning San’s name through the thin walls, never to be seen again and he wouldn't bat a second eye, but you— Y/N? San letting a woman like you go without further notice sickens him, like a crime, like a mistake. To hear your voice be pleasured by San at night, and then hear you sing good-bye to the man who does not care as much as he does in the morning, that has sent Seonghwa into a spiral of jealousy, but you’re not sure why. Some fucked-up reason probably, though it doesn’t seem like an ex is the cause this time. Maybe it’s really just because of you.

Sorry to say that you don’t care about that though. Not one single fucking bit. You don't want any of that complex trauma-talk tonight. You want to have sex and forget the sex right after.

"Be mine tonight, Y/N," Seonghwa answers and his eyebrows are pushed in to his forehead. He looks sultry, at least the parts you can see. Sultry, passionate, ready to fuck you, no, desperate to fuck you, in fact, you can feel the pre-cum soak his pants, when you cup his girth.

“You’re so pathetic,” you smirk, “it might actually be worth a try.” Seonghwa lets out a breathy exhale, finally breaking. You don’t know if it’s the alcohol, the molly, or his issues that suddenly took over his conscience, but he doesn’t have any of that left. He grabs you by your wrist with a grip that leaves a white mark, and without forewarning, Seonghwa yanks you through the people.

You hit each and every one of the strangers on your way to wherever. Shoulder hitting against shoulder, breast against breast, it better not leave any more bruising that you already have on your neck. “Seong- wha!”, you wheeze, tumbling at his force, tripping over your own feet over and over. The hall is huge, and he’s seemingly seeking to get to the very end of it.

“Seonghwa!”, you repeat yourself, but he won't listen to you. You're being pulled into a rollercoaster of anything but emotions (at least for you) and you can hear laughter leave your mouth without reason as you pass by irritated people who find it impolite to be barging into the big crowd like this. This dude's crazy, they scorn, but they don't really look that lucid as well, you find, with the last bits of thinking you can do.

"Where are we going?", you ask, but mostly to reassure that you still have a sense for geographical knowledge. You can see the bar again, mobs of people dancing on the stairs so that it's shaking even more compared to how you two had left it, but most importantly, you see that this is a space that's occupied by your kind. So much skin. So many slutty outfits. Outfits? Lingerie. This side looks like a fucking strip-club. Are you at a strip-club? What the fuck is this place? No, seriously, what the fuck is this place?

Seonghwa is finally stopping and you catch a breath from the running. With him doing his weird hand-signs again, you recognize the security guard from the beginning, smiling under his sunglasses, showing an "OK"-sign and pointing to the back of the stairs. You could swear he winked at you.

"What the fuck?", you ask, but Seonghwa only shrugs, making you follow his backwards steps under the stairs, where in black graffiti 'MY PEOPLE DONT BELIEVE IN LOVE' is smeared all over the wall. The same walls are occupied by couples or at least people making out wildly with their eyeliners smeared beyond repair. Is this some sex-area? (No idea) Is this legal? (100% no) Does Seonghwa look so fucking hot without his top on? (Fuck) He does.

Your eyes go cross-eyed, when Seonghwa enters the most mirrored bathroom you've ever seen in a warehouse, but before you can question the fact why people invest in decorating a fucking porta-potty, the male is pulling off his knitted top with one smooth pull, barely waiting a second for you to close the door behind you. The vibrations of the music ring on the metal stairs over you, and you feel like the beat is mushing your brain one size smaller, when you're met by Seonghwa barging at your body.

Pushing you against the plastic door, you feel all of Seonghwa's naked torso with your hands stroking roughly over his skin, and you admire his jewellery sitting on his collarbones, getting your fingers at it around his neck to pull him closer. "You like my necklace?", Seonghwa murmurs, as he pushes his lips into the crook of your neck.

"Choke on it," you gutter and yank him upwards, kissing him. While you do so and Seonghwa begins to unclothe you by getting your arms up, you catch a glimpse of yourself through the mirror. Your hair isn't looking as silky as it did when you left your home, there's mascara smudged around your eye already, but if you're not mistaken, and you can see it by how Seonghwa is sucking your nipples the second your bra falls to the floor, you will look worse in no time.

But that's not to say that you aren't still looking gorgeous. You look bewitchingly sexy, eyelids fluttering with each of Seonghwa's eager touches that are tracing down your body. "Fuck, you look so good," he murmurs and he's trying to keep his eyes open in order to see you. He's gotten you naked pretty quick considering the circumstance, you would've wished for a bit more foreplay here, but maybe it's a reoccuring theme to be impatient.

"You are such a fucking gorgeous girl, San doesn't know what he's missing right now," Seonghwa wheezes and goes through his hair, once he has your dress dropping on the dirty floor, revealing your joke of underwear. If he had kept your bra, he would have seen that you've worn a matching set of burgundy lingerie, but Seonghwa's mouth is still drooling at your pair of perfect thighs, his hand stroking over his lips. You roll your eyes at him and lean your head against the plastic door. You've done such a good job forgetting his name, and here's this dumbass mentioning him again. "You bet your ass he's missing this, huh?", you snarl and play with your own breast with one hand, while the other is cupping Seonghwa's rib, gliding down to his v-line, where his throbbing cock is awaiting you.

"He doesn't deserve you, Y/N."

He wheezes again. It seems like Seonghwa is taking his last breaths, unable to form words since your fingers are exploring how quick they can get to his erection.

"And you do?", you snap back and scoff. He pushes his glasses up to his forehead and for the first time since a long time, you can see Seonghwa's eyes shimmer. Oh fuck, you think, and it's difficult to not kiss him again. You're a bitch. You know you're a bitch for not caring about his feelings, and you know you will indeed not be better than San if you ghost this man right after this evening, but it must be done. For your sake, at least.

"I do," Seonghwa answers, though a lot weaker and less confident than he used to be before. You sigh. He may think he deserves you, but you don't deserve him. His gaze is too sweet, you've got to put those sunglasses back on, if you don't want to develop something. The only thing you can look at to get your mind elsewhere is yourself, in the mirror.

"Don't try to prove yourself," you murmur and Seonghwa wraps his arms around your back and props you by your thigh to lift you up. You can see his back muscle tense up, as he has you steadily in his grip. "I'm not," he answers and there's something that's fluttering inside your breast, when Seonghwa licks up your jawline, because you feel everything; From how wet his tongue is, how warm his saliva sits on your skin to the way what an adoring look Seonghwa is wearing on his face, as he kisses you. "I got nothing to prove to you."

You smirk and see yourself looking very dozy, drunken on alcohol, drugged by MDMA, ducked by Seonghwa's hand between your legs. It's pushing between your folds and with your last bit of control you have over your body, you spread your legs for him, inviting him to get his fingers inside your panties, and of course he does.

With a grin, Seonghwa devotes his tongue to your jaw again and works it into your skin with circular motion. "So fucking wet, and I thought you didn't want to fuck me."

"Who said I wasn't going to fuck you?"

Seonghwa is too busy sucking on the other side of your neck (other side meaning the side that is still unhickey-ed) to answer, but you're persistent. You came to this place to fuck him, and you're pretty sure that nothing from what you told him tonight alluded to something else. And also, even when you're fucked out of your mind, you still have a sense for people who keep secrets. So while Seonghwa is sucking small patches of skin on your neck and you see yourself with an opened mouth with sighs leaving it that you can't hear with your own ears.

"San says things sometimes," Seonghwa murmurs and continues to plant roses on your neck that you can see appear on your skin, "but that's irrelevant now."

"What does he say?", you insist, but the charcoal-haired man puts on his sunglasses again and shakes his head. Switch. As if you hadn't had enough from men who were two-faced, Seonghwa hides his eyes, turning into an inscrutable being again. A stranger. A stranger who's groping your cunt from the front, making your groin tense up and push him closer from the back. You're wrapping him with your legs and holding onto him tightly, when he catches a breath.

"Meaningless things,” he pants and throws you over the door, your arms landing on the frail sink in front of you. The mirror expands and all of the sudden you see yourself in full quality, in all your glory and Seonghwa is only supporting you from the back. His hand is grabbing your chin and pushing it up to the mirror, his pointing finger smudging your lip. With your lips slightly opened, it just makes sense to you to lick around his finger and look at him with a demanding look, eyebrows sultrily pushed together.

"Fuck, Y/N," Seonghwa gulps and cups your breast from behind, massaging it, while he presses his hot lips on your back. "Can I eat you out? Please,” he sighs and you take his finger in, lubing it up with your saliva.

"Do whatever you fucking want," you sneer and balance yourself with two hands on the sink, as Seonghwa raises a leg and throws it over his shoulder, his pretty face planted into your pussy the second you've given him permission to. You spasm to the front, Seonghwa's hair tickling your lower abdomen, as he works his tongue over your slick folds. If his tongue was great for kissing, it's certainly great for cunnilingus too, no, maybe even better suited for it. He's reaching spots that haven't been reached by a tongue in a long time and with the wet muscle working in and out inside you, you're becoming a moaning mess with fluttering eyelids in no time.

"Fuuuck", you gasp, when Seonghwa kneads your ass that's extended out in the air. The sound of his slurping and the music outside assimilate and mix up, and if it wasn't for the hightened senses you got from your molly-influence, it feels like everything is hammering you down from the outside. You can feel each twitch of Seonghwa's mouth, how he smiles, how he's yelping for air, how he's licking over his lips — you're going to fall somewhere, and if it's not into the cheap sink and the mirror that's taunting you, it's in love with his tongue that’s going to make you cum.

"So soon?", Seonghwa murmurs, and two fingers begin to penetrate your gaping hole, as he flicks his tongue over your sensitive clit.

"Fuck, fuck!", you whine and Seonghwa takes note of how your entrance is tightening around him, angling his fingers towards your g-spot. "So fucking good!", you breathe and you're trying to get a glimpse of your mirrored image in front of you, but your eyes are rolling to the back of your head too much.

"Mhm~", Seonghwa hums with an amused tone, repeating a cycle of sucking and licking, pumping against your g-spot. You're flying, the loud tunes bombarding the walls of the porta-potty are slowly getting to your head and intrusing what's left of your conscious mind, only feeling the tickling sensation that is being eaten out by none other than Park Seonghwa.

Until it stops.

You were whining, announcing your impending orgasm, but he apparently had other ideas, pulling out his fingers and removing his lips from you the second you were drawing together your body, preparing for sweet release. "Don't fucking stop!", you yell and grab Seonghwa by his hair, pushing him closer to your cunt by force. "Seonghwa!"

Seonghwa, who you don't know if he seriously just wanted to be called by his name in this situation, chuckles in witticism and wraps his arm around your thigh, getting the other leg over his shoulder too. You're sitting up front now, and there is no space for him to get his finger anywhere near your cunt, but his tongue is more than enough.

"Make me cum or I'm gonna fucking leave, you fucking asshole," you growl and grip a big chunk of his hair to get your message across. The man below you moans and resumes his job, clearly attracted by your lust-driven dominance. 'I like it when you're bossy', you re-call, and before you can finish the quote in your head, Seonghwa has plunged his tongue into your cunt.

"Ungh, fuck!", you moan, a bit more sensitive and distorted this time. Trying to hold your heavy upper body straight, Seonghwa is laving at your cunt, driving you crazy with the speed of his tongue maneuvering inside you. Maybe it was better that Seonghwa edged you, because now every flick is shooting you further into the abyss of pleasantry. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," you stutter, the second wave of the overwhelming euphoria gathering itself like a tsunami.

Seonghwa is more relaxed than you are, though his whole face is busy being used to pleasure you. His nose is dug into your clit and he's shaking his head around to be able to tickle it all during the while he's cutting away his breath to pant into your heat and spreading your slick on his tastebuds.

"Make me cum," you whine, "make me cum with your tongue!"

"Say 'please Seonghwa'," Seonghwa smirks and has the tip of his tongue placed on your clitoris just enough for your orgasm to not be washed away, but definitely not coming, while you grip more of his hair.

"You fucking bitch, I'll never fucking—", you pant, but there's no other way around it. You need this orgasm. "You—"

Seonghwa looks up to you and you can see him waiting. Pushing your thighs together because he annoys you so much, you yank his head closer to your cunt and scream, "okay, fuck, make me fucking cum, Seonghwa, please!"

The man between your thighs chuckles through his nose and once you said the magic-words, he opens his mouth back open to lap around your clit and cunt like a mad dog. Having been denied your orgasm for the second time, the third attempt to chase it down hits you even more, making you breathe heavily and loudly, and this time, the strings are pulling you to total stupification.

"Please, please, please, Seonghwa, please—"

Repeating the words Seonghwa wants to hear so bad again and again, you're fuelling his decision to finally allow you to come. His tongue circles around your clit as if he was racing with the music and your face is parallel to the floor, when your body goes lax and the strands of Seonghwa's hair are the only thing keeping you up.

"Seonghwa, please," you whisper again, weak, and almost sent over the top, while Seonghwa growls under you, his tongue stroking over your sensitive bud until you're shaking and pressing your legs together. "Fuck!", you scream out and Seonghwa throws one leg away from his shoulder, your wobbly foot landing on the floor, when the male stands up and gets to fingers into your cunt.

"Seonghwa, please—", you gasp, when he rams them into your throbbing arousal that barely reached its high and you have to get your arms around his neck if your knees are still worth something to you. "Oh my fucking god," and other moans come spurred out of you and Seonghwa bites into your shoulder to add another stimulative pain to all the sensations you're feeling.

His fingers are long and slender and for all you can grasp, they know what they're doing, when they're driving in and out with no mercy. That this is Seonghwa, you don't really care, that this isn't San, you do just a little bit, but "caring" takes a bit too long in the brain anyway. If your first orgasm from his tongue made your head fly, the second one is evaporating it. Your head feels light and corrupted by the DJ screaming inaudible things into his set, an artificially deepened laughing-track following his ad-lib and your lower body is trembling like a new-born deer, when Seonghwa keeps pushing against your soft patch inside. “Stop— stop, Seonghwa—“, you pant and your legs hold Seonghwa's wrist until he wiggles it out.

"You good?", Seonghwa laughs. He walks behind you and raises your face by your chin, pressing his own cheek next to yours, so both of your faces are seen in the mirror, his pelvis pushed against your ass again.

"Uh-huh," you shudder, your runny mascara making your eyes sticky, "very good."

He smiles, though it's definitely not a friendly smile. This isn't what friends do. It never will be something that friends do and you try to find some type of sanity behind your sunken irises, but there's nothing there. There is someone knocking on the door, Seonghwa's phone is vibrating in his pants, and like the bad person you are, you can't stop to wish that behind at least one of these interruptions is a certain someone is waiting for you, asking for you or anything— fuck. It's worse Seonghwa somehow knows what you're thinking, taking out his phone with his free hand, your face still being cupped by the other.

"You think this is him, don't you?", he asks and lets his temple drop against the top of your head, "Let's bet."

"If you think I'm gonna bet on something like that," you hiss and grind your bare ass against his clothed cock to distract him from the fact he's correct, “you’re a fucker.”

"I'm gonna fuck you, so I don't know where you're coming from here."

You scoff and throw his phone into the sink, when Seonghwa seemingly opens the message and starts to grin.

"Seonghwa," and you know you're lying through your teeth here with the full awareness that Seonghwa probably knows that you’re lying as well, "I want you," and yet you have the very secure feeling that you got into his head.

"Hm, what?", he asks and looks confused, unable to be angry that you snatched his phone out of his hand. You smirk for a short time and lean into his hand that's stroking your cheek. "I want you, Seonghwa," you sigh and pout. If you can't commit, you might as well commit to the lie, right? Be a little opportunistic.

"I don't care about San," you whisper and Seonghwa pulls down his glasses, making him human again.

"Really now…”

Choi San: the connection is so bad Choi San: where are you right now?

You nod and there’s a black-tinted tear rolling down your cheek, warm and melting on your skin. Seonghwa takes his thumb and glides it over the flow and holds his hand at your cheek again.

Choi San: i saw her Choi San: wtf she looked so different

You both saw the message and you both decided to ignore it. It doesn't matter anymore, his hand was already between your legs, your arousal has already coated his fingers.

That's how this works.

His touch, caressing your woeful face, his eyes pitying your pain. He's still erected, definitely impatient, but Seonghwa has something that you haven't experienced for a long time. You don't want to think of it, you can't think of it, because it might just be an illusion, but when Seonghwa slides his arms around your waist and pulls you closer to him, you have to suppress the suffocating feeling that you must never see this man ever again, if you don't want to carry this burden with you. You can't tell yourself enough, you do not want Seonghwa.

But it's nice.

"Look at yourself, Y/N. Look how pretty you are."

It's nice to know that someone wants you. That someone cares to wipe away the tears from your eyes, though they're not tears formed by a sadness you’d be able to express, a sadness that encourages you to hold eye contact with yourself, as Seonghwa whispers words of comfort into your ear. "Don't cry, pretty girl," he murmurs, and it feels like the music is being subdued around you. You've fallen from grace. “You could have anything in the world..”

How nice would it be, if he was right? You’re not sad, you have everything you could, don’t you? It could be this is just another lie you're going to commit to to protect yourself, but Seonghwa is holding you by your throat, cutting your airflow. The blood curdles in your head and while the male behind you is opening up his pants, the phone blinks.

Seonghwa and you both look down. Incoming call: Choi San.

"Oh," Seonghwa exhales and immediately checks for your reaction in the mirror, but your expression is empty. The drugs are fogging your mind and there is no ounce of vitality behind your eyes.

Seonghwa turns the phone around. "Fuck me first, Seonghwa," you tell him, your voice wispy, barely understandable, he probably had to lip-read in order to understand what you were saying, "let's get it over with."

He doesn't appreciate your dismissive tone, but Seonghwa is too horny to say anything against it, pushing you over the sink, grabbing his cock and placing it near your cunt. While your abdomen is pressed against the dirty, cold surface, Seonghwa is murmuring something under his breath and gliding his hot, throbbing erection across your pulsating folds. "I don't care at all," you whine, trying to convince yourself and ignore the continuous buzzing from his phone, but also make him hurry up. There's an end-goal you're chasing here.

"Kiss me," you order the male behind you, and as he finally positions his tip at your entrance, Seonghwa tilts your head to the side, ripping your gaze away from his mobile. "You really like kissing, don't you?", he huffs and smirks, pushing himself into you in one slow thrust. "Fuuuck," you breathe, feeling your walls expand for his length, "what about it?"

"I just think it's sweet. It makes it more personal, doesn't it?"

"Come on, Hwa, are you trying to make me angry again? I'm getting tired here," you purl and visibly roll your eyes at him, your eyelids getting heavier with each word that's spoken out loud. Your body weighs into Seonghwa's arms and if he doesn't hurry up, you'll fall asleep, your pulsating cunt tightening around his girth.

"Sweetheart, let me talk," he says, in a soft voice that makes your heart drop. You don't want him, you don't want his sweetness, fuck, you only wanted Seonghwa for this one night, for his dick and dick only, why is he trying to get inside your head? Don't do it, you try to mouth to him. You don't know him, he doesn't know you, his cock is inside your cunt, this is the worst timing to—

"You're something else."

"Seonghwa, stop, before you say anything too nice. Just close your mouth, this isn't good for both of us, you already said we're bad people. You know we don't want this," you mutter and start moving your ass to somehow get his mind elsewhere, but through his whimpers and low moans, Seonghwa won't stop grunting under the influence.

"No, speak for god-damn yourself, because, shit, Y/N, I can't watch it anymore, okay? Every day and night— You come over and let yourself be played by San, that fucking asshole, and I just think—"

"Seonghwa, shut the fuck up!", you scream and you're a breath away from pulling his cock out your cunt and leave this place naked, but just when you thought you can't do it anymore, Seonghwa has gotten his hands on your hips, digging his fingernails into your skin as if he's trying to hopelessly keep you close, his pelvis clapping against your ass, as he strikes into you.

Surprised, you moan and your fingers slip against the edge of the sink, strands of your hair falling in front of your face. You weren't prepared for that kind of vigor.

"Don't you dare think I'm that pathetic," he growls and thrusts into you with force in a rhythm that is terrifyingly close to the music outside, his cock slamming against your inner wall, making your legs close up by themselves.

"I'm not thinking I could treat you better," Seonghwa huffs and gets the hair away from your face, grabbing your hair to clear up your view, "I'm thinking what a fucking cockslut you are, Y/N."

Drugs never make sad people happier. Never make broken people whole.

So even when Seonghwa makes you realize that none of the men in your life have ever taken you serious, a hoarse laugh leaves your mouth, and you tilt your head to the back to examine the traces of them on your neck. Your eyes glisten with the way you're being fucked from behind and your mouth is not closing, you've lost control over yourself a long time ago, and it's not when this long day started with you in San's bed, it's when he took off your shirt on that random night during exam season.

"You're lucky you're pretty," he grunts and you chuckle, smiling absent-minded, upper body see-sawing with Seonghwa's pelvis-movement. Your ass is slowly hurting from how hard he is driving himself in, but you're too busy looking at your neck.

Red, red, red. A little bit of purple. A big patch here, small spots over there; anyone could look at you and would know that you've been claimed by someone. Maybe even think that you're, gasp, in a relationship! They wouldn't guess it was two people to leave these hickeys, and frankly, they would be right to think you're claimed by one person only.

"San said he'd fuck me stupid," you giggle— you're fetching old memories from your mind, re-painting the colors, completing the gaps like a mandala; the same memories from the older days which you wouldn't call better, but certainly easier; from days where you didn't have to worry about a man breaking your heart.

Seonghwa scoffs and grabs you by your tit, pulling your nipple with harsh tugs, the sensitive, delicate nub being wounded by his aggressiveness. He's stopped being gentle a long time ago, leaving a big star-shaped mark on your ass by clapping the surface of his hand.

"San said I'm his whore," you reminisce, biting your teeth through the pain, and Seonghwa is speeding up his thrusting, his cock angled inside you to entirely fill out your tight space.

"San said—"

Seonghwa has had enough. He's pressing the surface of his hand onto your mouth and nose, silencing you, cutting you short of your air, your eyes rolling back, but it doesn't prevent your thoughts to continue tumbling down. Seonghwa may be jolting his hips into you like his life depends on it, and in a way, that may be true, but he'll never pleasure you like San could.

People-pleaser. San said he was a people-pleaser.

You don't remember the orgasm, you don't remember Seonghwa's loud grunt into your ear, you don't remember how much hot cum he ejaculated into you, how panicked the black-haired was, when he asked you whether you took the pill, how quickly he became sober and put his clothes back on, the speed of time seemingly passing like a rocket-ship, the music never stopping to blitz into your brain, how the porta-potty became really fucking empty, once Seonghwa left it, but what you do remember is how you took his phone that he forgot like the dumb-ass he was, and how weak your voice sounded, when you answered San's call that by some magical way, kept ringing in.

"Can you come fetch me?"

"Who is this?"

"Come fetch me, please."

"Y/N?"

And people-pleasers should do anything to keep their people happy.

Especially if they're Choi San and avoidant of conflict.

part 4: coming soon!

[farfromstrange]

Lizzi’s Valentine’s Special & Follower Celebration

Dear Everyone,

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I thought, since this silly little blog hit over 1.1k followers yesterday, I want to give you something special.

First of all, though, I want to thank you. I’ve been on here since (and I checked with the archive) July 19, 2022. I can't believe that it has been almost two years. I started watching Daredevil after watching Spider-Man: No Way Home in December of 2021 and hearing Matt Murdock say, "I'm a really good lawyer," after catching a brick. So, I started watching the show, and that was during a time I was really miserable. Mentally and physically, I wasn't in a good place, but after watching Daredevil for the first time and falling in love with Charlie Cox as a genuine person and an actor, it felt like I found a reason to keep going.

I started writing fanfiction again, which I kind of neglected because I felt like this hobby of mine wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't inspired at all until I watched the show. If I hadn't, I probably would not have gotten back into writing and using it as an outlet for my feelings, and I probably wouldn't be where I am today. Thanks to Charlie's portrayal of Matt Murdock, and watching his interviews, I felt like I could do the things that I love again and follow my dreams. He's the reason I chose to major in English. And while I owe him that much, I owe you guys here on Tumblr and AO3 even more.

When I first posted here, I didn't think people would even be interested in what I had to say and write. But then more and more people started visiting my profile, you guys started following me, and it kept me motivated to keep writing, even when I'm miserable, and I sometimes only post once every blue moon.

I feel so honored that you guys chose to follow a silly little blog run by a silly little 20-something-year-old whose first language isn't even English (but made it her entire personality), and who chose to write about traumatized dark-haired characters portrayed by Charlie Cox. I'm overwhelmed by the love you continue to show me, and every time one of you chooses to reblog or comment on one of my works, saying that it resonated with you, I feel like I'm doing something right. I'm sharing my ideas, my own experiences, my wishes, and even my deepest, darkest dreams through my writing like it's a fucking diary, and you eat it up every single time.

I'm just so glad that this community exists, as chaotic as it sometimes is, and that you chose to stick around, even when I suck at keeping promises sometimes. You keep teaching me new things about who I am, my writing, and how important it is to put myself first. I don't know if you've heard it lately, but you guys are incredible and I appreciate the hell out of every single one of you.

Thanks to Tumblr, I made lifelong friends (especially looking at you, @blackshadowswriter) and found like-minded people that made me feel less alone. That alone was worth making this account and continuing to post on here.

You may think that I'm being dramatic, but for someone who has never really experienced the kind of validation this community gives me, I want to celebrate this milestone. It means more to me than I can even put into words. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I love you all so much! Please, don't ever forget how amazing you are.

That being said, I've got some exciting things planned.

The other day, I found a folder in my Docs titled "the vault". I completely forgot about it because I usually keep my WIPs in a different folder. As it turns out, I made that folder for fics that I originally never planned to post, or ones that I'd finished but wasn't happy with. It’s many, but it’s a few. Some are deeper than others. I also jotted down rough ideas and outlines last year that I stuffed in there, some of which I've actually shared with you but never started working on. Until now. And the contents of that vault are what I want to give to you now.

INTRODUCING: The Vault

6 stories from the vault. 1 bonus fic. 7 days.

I went through a myriad of emotions while I wrote these. For some, I actually bled my soul onto paper. For others, it was merely a brain fart that led to their existence. They're sad, horny, and at times angry, but some of those were originally written for me, and only me. Those that weren't started as a few sentences in a folder before I forgot they existed. Either way, I don't want them to catch dust. And I wouldn't want to share them with anyone else.

Starting February 14th, I will be posting one fic every day until February 20th. My “The Vault” works are Matt Murdock x Reader works, but I've made an exception for the bonus fic. I won't tell you what they are about, but I will give you a list of installments and what kind of fic they are so you know what to be excited about (and maybe which ones are not your cup of tea).

-> The number at the end tells you the date I will be posting it on, but I put it in chronological order as well.

INSTALLMENTS:

1. If You Need To Be Mean (angst, hurt/comfort) 14.

2. Mismatched Bridesmaid (fluff, smut) 15.

3. Weed Cookies (humor, fluff, cw: accidental drug use) 16.

4. the grudge (songfic, angst, hurt/comfort, cw: death of a parent) 17.

5. Halloween (Smut) 18.

6. I Want To Fuck A Priest (Smut, cw: priest!Matt) 19.

BONUS:

7. Now That We Don’t Talk (Part 2 of Is It Over Now?) -> Frank Castle x Reader (smut, angst) 20.

A few more words: You are free to send me an ask if you want to know more, but be prepared that I won't be answering in much detail. I don't want to spoil the fun. I would, however, not mind talking about them as vaguely as possible (if you’re interested).

Thank you all. For everything. And I hope you stick around to read these little gems.

With love from yours truly,

Lizzi <3

[carriesthewind]

Hello tumblr! I am here to discuss some drama today! (Oh dear god I can't believe that this is what got me to finally join tumblr.)

As you may know, AO3 recently suspended a writer’s account, and the writer isn’t happy about it. They have made several public posts about it, including a very long post responding to the letter they received from AO3 in response to their appeal to lift the suspension. Now, I’m not particularly familiar with this writer. I’ve heard their name enough to recognize it, I know I have heard some rumors about them – some good, some bad. But I have never read their writing or their tumblr before, and I didn’t have any preconceived opinions about them.

But since this drama has entered my orbit from multiple sources, I decided to do a close read of their post responding to AO3. I do this fairly regularly, as a mental exercise to practice making myself a more careful consumer of media in general, social media in particular. But close-reading this particular post made me angry enough that felt the need to write up my analysis and share it.

A few disclaimers and notes before we begin:

First, I am just going to refer to the person under discussion as the “writer” – I include this person’s user name in a screenshot, so am not hiding their identity, but I’m not doing this to target them. This is an analysis of two of their posts, not of their life or online activity outside of the post.

Second, I am going to be giving the writer every benefit of the doubt I can, and am starting my reading by assuming they are acting in good faith.

Third, I am going to take the text under discussion under its own terms as much as possible, without referring to outside content. I am going to be analyzing two posts by the writer; the long post they made in response to AO3’s reply, and a shorter post that they made that long post in reply to. The exceptions to this will be the TOS of AO3, since they are central to the dispute, and a few other posts by the writer on the same subject. I will be using those other posts only when I need them to understand the writer’s argument in the main post we are looking at.  

Let’s begin.

There’s two things that jump out at me from this paragraph right away. First, if we look at AO3’s TOS, there is a clear path for filing an appeal, and there is no right to a response from being pinged on Tumblr or responding to messages through other venues. There is also no deadline for the team to respond to an appeal. In fact, the TOS repeatedly note that they cannot guarantee a speedy response. Given the size of the archive, five days seems far from unreasonable.

However, this waiting period would absolutely be frustrating, and it is entirely understandable that the writer would be frustrated and angry. Speaking personally, I know that I have angrily tried to contact a company via non-official means when I felt they had wronged me and were refusing to respond to my official messages. The writer isn’t doing anything wrong here by reaching out this way and being upset at the delay – but AO3 isn’t doing anything wrong by not replying to these messages, either.

Second, this sentence, “My legally copyrighted property under the terms of Fair Use is still in kidnapped status, which is not actually legal”? This sentence is nonsense. It is so nonsense that whenever I look away my brain rewrites it. It is so nonsense I am not going to even try to break down the very many ways it is wrong, because that would double the length of this monster of a post. I will instead just state: by agreeing to AO3's TOS, the writer has agreed to allow their account to be suspended under the TOS, and the writer’s work still belongs to the writer and can be removed (more on that later) and reposted (or not removed and reposted) anywhere else.

The important things about this sentence for our close reading are as follows: 1) the writer is using a bunch of legal jargon in a way that is irrelevant and inaccurate (the alternative, which is worse, is they are lying and they know it); 2) as a corollary, the writer is talking confidently and forcefully about the situation in ways that do not accurately describe the situation (either out of ignorance, confusion, or a deliberate desire to mislead); and 3) the writer is using charged and exaggerating language to describe the situation.

Number 1 will be important shortly; for now, just keep it in mind.

Number 2 doesn’t necessarily imply bad faith; as noted, they could be talking out of ignorance or misspeaking, or some combination of both, due to the emotionally charged situation. Even though they haven’t lost their content (because they haven’t), people’s writing is very important to them; it is understandable that someone who has lost some control over the distribution of their writing would feel upset! (Please note that this is true regardless of whether the suspension was appropriate, justified, or correct - punishments hurt, by definition!) Rather, it is important because it makes clear that even if the writer has best of intentions, the way they are writing about this situation is not entirely accurate. It is entirely possible that this is the only thing about their situation that they will be wrong about - especially since legal rights and issues are extremely complicated and most people struggle to fully understand them. However, it is still an early indication to keep our eye on, moving forward. (It is also worth noting that this kind of legal misrepresentation is extremely commonly used by people who are NOT acting in good faith. This alone is not enough to assume bad faith - again, legal issues are complicated - but it is something to keep an eye on when reading posts like this.)

Number 3 is referring mostly to the use of “kidnapped” to describe the status of their works. This is not remotely accurate, for reasons which I will dive into more later. It is, however, highly emotionally charged language that indicates a couple of possibilities, any or all of which may be present. First, it could indicate, like the last point, a writer who is (again, understandably!) upset and is expressing how the situation FEELS to them, even if that feeling doesn’t match reality. Secondly, it could be the writer trying to using metaphorical language to get the reader to understand how serious the situation feels to them. Third, it could indicate a desire (conscious or unconscious) to appeal to the reader’s emotions over their logic, so they will be more likely to go along with the writer’s characterization of the situation.

The overall impression from where we are starting is this: we have a writer who is (again, understandably) extremely upset at a suspension that may or may not be justified and appropriate - so far we have no evidence either way. We have likewise no evidence that either party is acting inappropriately. However, we do have indications that the writer appears to either not correctly understand, or is (accidentally or on purpose), mischaracterizing at least some elements of the situation.

So, let’s move on to the long post.

We start with the knowledge that we do not have AO3’s whole response; there are sections that are left out that may or may not be relevant. This isn’t necessarily bad or wrong - there may be lots of good reasons not to include the full text. However, it is worth keeping in mind when we are assessing the situation.

More important is the description of AO3’s letter as, “full of fun jargon.” We will review the provided text ourselves, but AO3 generally does an admirable job trying to use as little jargon and legalese as reasonable possible, and I would include the provided text of the response in that assessment. Still, given that is a formal response to a TOS violation appeal, it does use a lot of formal language and some legal language.

However, this is an interesting complaint for the writer to make, given Number 1 above (I promised we would come back to that!). It’s a sharp contrast for the writer to use lot of legal jargon to complain about AO3 and then turn around and promptly complain about AO3 using jargon. Again, this isn’t necessarily a sign of bad faith. It is entirely possible that the writer, as described above, is confused and upset and using language they think they understand (but don’t) to express their feelings, and since they don’t understand legal language, they see the AO3 response as including a lot of jargon. However, using charged legalistic language themselves while characterizing their opponent as using “jargon” is another flag to keep an eye on. Again, in the best case scenario, this is someone who is clearly quite (reasonably!) emotional and whose characterization of at least some aspects of the situation is questionable.

This response by the writer is….confusing?

The writer seems to be arguing that punishing them for failing to comply with the TOS makes them unable to comply with the TOS right away so therefore…people shouldn’t ever be suspended for commercial content violations? I don’t think this is what the writer is arguing, because it’s not reasonable (and in some of their posts, they make it clear that they don’t believe that), but I can’t make any other sense of this paragraph.

According to their TOS, if AO3 finds a sufficiently serious violation, it can hide or delete violating content. But based on the previous “kidnapped” comments, the writer would presumable be upset (is upset?) if the works were altered or removed from public view by AO3 unless they specifically asked them to. So I’m not sure what the writer would want AO3 to do in response to a commercial content-based TOS violation.

This first quoted paragraph is being positioned by the writer as indicating some problem with AO3’s process, either in general or in this specific case, but so far, there is no actual evidence of that.

I also want to note here – this paragraph seems to be confirming that the TOS violations were valid, and the writer is just disputing their seriousness, not their existence. But to be fair, I checked some of their other posts on the topic to confirm this reading. Although they dispute the interpretations of some of the reported violations as incorrect, they do admit that at least one of the reported violations was accurate.

We are not provided this mitigating information, but the writer will include some arguments later that would seem to be the mitigating evidence, and I will address it then. I will note here - it is very common for an aggrieved party to say that a system that punished them ignored evidence they presented. While sometimes this is true, often the system reviews the evidence they present, and decides not to rule in their favor anyway. Here, for example, we see that AO3’s response notes that the suspension will not be lifted unless the writer furnishes mitigating information “that would have changed our initial determination.” So AO3 might have ignored the mitigating information, or they might have reviewed it and determined it would not have changed their decision (e.g.: they already knew about it, it wasn’t determined credible, it wasn’t determined relevant, etc.). Also note that we, seeing the mitigating information, could think that AO3 was incorrect if they reviewed the proffered mitigating info and did not rescind the suspension, but that is not the same as AO3 ignoring it. We, as readers of the post, don’t know which of these options occurred - and neither does the writer. While it is understandable that the poster is not giving AO3 the same kind of good faith that we are trying to give them (aggrieved parties don’t have to assign good faith to people they believe have wronged them!), it once again colors our understanding of how the writer is characterizing AO3’s response.

This starts with an interesting claim! That is, that AO3 acknowledged in the letter that the writer has “a history of immediately complying.” This isn’t in the excerpt of the letter that we have. Because this claim is immediately below the above excerpt from AO3's letter, it appears that the writer is misconstruing the statement, “While we appreciate your willingness to remove the violating content immediately, you must first serve your suspension to its completion before you are able to edit your works.” This sentence isn’t claiming the writer has a history of complying, it is clearly responding to the writer’s stated willingness *in this case* to edit their content to comply. If the writer is deliberately misconstruing the letter this way, that’s deeply troubling, because it shows they are both trying to make AO3 look bad (see the rest of the paragraph) and twisting their own bad behavior (note that they here acknowledge past instances of breaking the TOS) in a way that makes them look good, actually (“assist[ing] the Archive in keeping things to their TOS standard”). This is really, really, bad behavior if it is deliberate. It would be a deliberate lie to preempt their audience’s recognition of their misdeeds and frame themself as a victim of a malicious actor.

HOWEVER. That is not the only interpretation of this claim. The writer is not necessarily deliberately misconstruing the letter - again, they are reasonably upset at the situation, they’ve stated they have found the letter to be full of jargon (and thus potentially may be struggling to parse some of it), and it is possible they are responding quickly without carefully reading the letter. Alternatively, they have stated that they are only posting certain sections of the letter - it is entirely possible that AO3 acknowledges “a history of immediately complying” somewhere else in the letter. Now, even in that case, the writer is clearly attempting to reframe evidence of their past violations as evidence of their victimhood (promptly removing TOS violating content is the bare minimum of what should be expected by an AO3 user). Again, that may be a genuine (and natural!) emotional reaction, but we continue to see the thread that the writer’s characterization of (now multiple) aspects of the situation are both inaccurate and biased to see themselves as victimized.

Which leads us to the poster’s response to the next excerpt.

Here the writer acknowledges again that they have at least one previous TOS violation. They include an except from AO3’s letter that clearly shows that they were explicitly told that failing to remove commercial promotion material from their account might result in a temporary suspension. Noticeably, although they have and will continue to frame themselves as the victim of an unfair process: 1) they do not dispute they were previously in violation of the policy, and were let off with just a warning. 2) They do not dispute that since that warning, they continued to have commercial promotion material on their account. 3) They do not dispute the content of the warning. 4) They do not dispute that they received or understood this warning.

Instead, the poster disputes that the warning…wasn’t official enough? They do not indicate how or what AO3 should have done to make it “official” - likely because it is extremely clear that this was a previous warning, and spelling out an alternative would make the absurdity of this complaint clear. It is at this point that we can no longer proceed assuming that the poster is writing solely in good faith. While we cannot assume they are deliberately trying to mislead their audience or that they do not have legitimate complaints, they are at least deeply in denial and stuck in a victimization perspective and that must inform our reading of their post.

Their second complaint with this section is just as ridiculous and telling as their first. AO3’s abuse policy is NOT a 3 strikes policy, as it is explicitly designed for flexibility, so that an account may be let off with multiple warnings, or may be suspended at the first violation, depending on the assessed severity of the violation. Nothing in the quoted section of the letter contradicts this flexibility. In fact, it directly supports the existence of this flexibility, by writing that further TOS violations “might,” not “will,” trigger a suspension. The writer is just wrong, and we can see they are wrong by simply reading the text they are replying to. This can only be read as either a deliberate mischaracterization of both the letter and the TOS, or as someone so far in denial that their characterization of the situation cannot be relied upon and no information they give can be fully trusted without external supporting evidence.

(As a note on my own biases in writing this analysis: this is where I personally ran out of patience with the writer, although I have tried to maintain a more even tone in this analysis.)

The writer may still have legitimate critiques of AO3’s actions and response (for example, they can still argue that such a flexible system is bad in general, or that there were mitigating circumstances that should have caused the suspension to be lifted/not imposed in their particular case), but they are not, in this section at least, making such a legitimate argument.

Their critique of the non time-limited nature of AO3’s response to TOS violations also indicates a fundamental misunderstanding (whether genuine or deliberate) of the *problem* of a TOS violation, especially of a commercial promotion TOS violation. AO3 is an *archive* - it explicitly exists to preserve fan works and provide access to them. It doesn’t matter, from AO3’s perspective, when a commercial promotion is first posted - it matters that it is currently accessible. A commercial promotion violation does not occur solely when a user posts it - it is an ongoing violation that continues to occur for as long as the promotion remains accessible. Furthermore, the structure of AO3 is such that it relies on individual users to maintain their works in compliance with the TOS. We can imagine an archive that works differently. This hypothetical archive could have works reviewed by archive staff before being accepted into entry in the archive, would not allow works to be modified except with the approval of staff, and would allow works to be modified by staff without the users’ knowledge or consent. However, 1) this is not the TOS the writer agreed to when they posted their works on AO3 and 2) given this writer’s expressed desire for control over their own work in this very post, this would not be an archive the writer would want to use.

People can still have legitimate disagreements about whether and how the date that a violation was originally posted on should affect sanctions for that violation, and disagreements over whether the sanctions were appropriately applied in any particular case. It isn't a problem for the author to assert that they think AO3's policy should be different. It is a problem for them to mischaracterize what the policy is and mislead their audience about why a policy exists.

Once again, AO3 is describing a policy that is entirely reasonable. However, in this section the writer finally moves on to the potentially legitimate claim that the policy is being enforced in a draconian way. They advance two arguments to support this claim.

This is actually one of their better responses, because their arguments, while very hostile, are potentially legitimate complaints that support their claim of draconian enforcement in their case! (Please note I am not asserting their complaints are accurate, however - more on that in a moment.)

The first claim is that an official AO3 staff member previously checked every one of their existing fics to try to ensure that they did not violate AO3’s TOS. The writer relied on this assurance going forward, so should not be sanctioned with a suspension. This is a part of the post that, in the interests of good faith, I will discuss with the added context of another post by this writer, since the claim isn't fully or clearly expressed in the above post, and it is their best argument in favor of their mistreatment. I am also going to assume that this was the mitigation that they referred to submitting to AO3 and claim was ignored.

If the poster is characterizing this previous interaction correctly, they have legitimate reasons to be upset, and I would agree with them that this is the sort of mitigating evidence I would expect would cause a suspension to be lifted if I was the person making decisions.

…here’s the problem, though. While I would agree with them that this would be a draconian application of AO3’s polices…it wouldn’t be a violation of AO3’s stated policies in any way. If the AO3 abuse staff member made assurances that to the writer that all their posted content was clear of TOS violations, that would be counter to AO3's TOS, which makes it clear that it does not do pre-emptive reviews. It would be legitimately frustrating for this writer to find out that the promise it relied on was incorrect and be punished after relying on it. However, it is impossible for me not to see that from AO3’s perspective, if this staff member really did give this assurance, it means that the writer was given an assurance of preferential treatment over other users. There is a good argument that to continue to give them preferential treatment (that is, to rescind the suspension based on the preferential treatment) would only compound the harm. It’s a legitimately tough situation for both parties to be in. I ultimately continue to see no misconduct on the part of AO3, except potentially in allowing an official staff member to give misleading preferential treatment (I say potentially because we have no further information about what actions AO3 took to correct this harm/punish the staff member), and also understand why the writer is reasonably furious at the archive.

…or rather, that would be the problem, if we could continue to read this post solely in good faith. Unfortunately, by the time we reach this explanation, as stated above, we know that the writer is either deliberately lying in this post, or deeply in denial leading to them mischaracterization the situation. Because of what we have already seen, we cannot take their description of the alleged staff member or their actions as accurate without at least some external supporting evidence.

We are given no such evidence, either in this post or in any of the others I have reviewed. Rather, the provided evidence contradicts it, albeit subtly. Remember that we noted how the poster did not dispute the content of the August 2019 warning AO3 sent them? That warning clearly stated that failing to remove all commercial promotion from their account might result in a suspension. That warning, from AO3 (not a single independent staff member), along with the clear TOS statement that it does not do preemptive reviews, puts the responsibility for removing the violating content squarely on the writer. If that warning wasn’t “official” enough for them to take it seriously…why were they willing to rely on the word of a single person who was breaking AO3 official policy by purporting to prescreen content?

While I lost my patience at the previous paragraph, as noted above, this response is why I actually decided to write and post this analysis. Casually reading this post, the writer’s description of events here sound deeply sympathetic and would lead a casual reader to see them a victim and AO3 as a villain. It is natural (and a good instinct!) to trust people when they tell you they are being mistreated. Unfortunately, sometimes people who feel that they have been mistreated are just seeing the consequences of their own actions catch up to them.

The second potential legitimate complaint is the implied assertion that their violation was not really serious, and should not really be considered a TOS violation (“figurative, imaginative caffeine.”) Unfortunately, the writer has already admitted repeatedly, both in this post and outside of it, that they were in violation of the TOS. Thus, instead of this being a legitimate complaint, it is another indication that the poster is inappropriately mischaracterizing themself to their audience as a maligned victim and AO3 as a villain.

Oh hey, AO3’s letter is reiterating everything I just explained about prescreening! I wonder how the poster will respond.

I’m trying not to be too snarky here, but that is a really damming failure to respond.

So instead of talking about the substantive issue at hand, let’s address this wild change of subject, I guess.

This is again an instance of the writer portraying themselves as a victim, either because they are deliberately trying to maliciously mislead their audience or because they truly believe it. Just to be clear - they are claiming that they are being targeted because someone noticed and reported admitted TOS violations on their “two…most well-know fics in two major fandoms.” If they are claiming they are being targeted by someone acting in bad faith, and therefore the (again, admittedly legitimate!) violation reports are a form of targeted harassment, wouldn’t they have a much better claim if the violations were reported on fics with very low hit counts (so that someone would be less likely to randomly find them)?

And a side note - if these TOS violations were on the poster’s “most well-known fics” in “major fandoms,” that goes directly to the relevance of their ‘the violations were posted a long time ago’ mitigation claim. A well-known fic is more likely to be currently receiving continuing views (remember, the harm the violations are causing is based on people seeing them), and an author who is continuing to get hits/kudos/comments on that work would presumably be aware of its continued popularity, and thus should be aware of the need, after receiving a warning, to make sure to personally review it for violations.

Again, we’ve already addressed this issue repeatedly. So I will just note here that the writer is claiming that it is “actually fucking ridiculous” not to grandfather in active TOS violations. Imagine making this argument in any other context. Imagine an author has a book that they wrote 14 years ago but is still selling. Imagine someone notices this year, for the first time, that the author has extensively plagiarized copyrighted material. They alert the victim, who brings a suit, and the publisher stops publishing the author’s book and refuses to publish any of their other book as well. Does the writer think it is “actually fucking ridiculous” for the publisher to cease publishing the author, simply because the author was able to avoid detection for so long?

(Since I’m not doing much analysis here, let’s talk instead about what the purpose of this portion of the poster’s response might be. I’m putting this as an aside, because this isn’t strictly part of the close reading, and it is absolutely not it the spirit of good faith I am still trying to use. We’re going to look at the effect of this section in context. Let’s start by analyzing the use of the term “you” in this post. When the post began, the writer used “you” to refer to themself (“no matter how willing you are to fix it…etc.”). In the same section, the writer switches to using “you” to refer to AO3 (“if you have fans…”). In the third section, they start by using “you” to refer to AO3 (“You guys are the ones…”) and then switches in the next sentence to directly address the readers (“if any of you following me”). This switch isn’t a casual fluid switch like it was previously - instead, it is positioned in a sentence directly warning the readers that AO3 might come after them next. In the following section, they don’t use the second person, but they do imply (nonsensically) that someone is targeting them with these TOS violation reports. We then catch up with the above section - “they can and will go after you.” Note that the post starts directly addressing the reader at the same time that it builds up an escalating threat. This creates a sense of fear and camaraderie with the writer, positioning reader and writer as “us” against a malicious “them” who is not just targeting the writer, but the readers as well. This makes the reader more sympathetic to the writer, and more likely to believe their claims; after all, “you” know you’re not breaking AO3's TOS, and if “you” did, it would be an accident. How ridiculous for AO3 come after someone like “you” - someone who has broken the TOS multiple times in the past in the same way and has explicitly…been…warned…hmmm…how much like “you” is the poster, actually?)

Anyway,

I’m going to reiterate what I said after the writer’s response to the previous warning letter: what should AO3 have written to make this a warning that the writer would accept as legitimate? This is a bit longer and more detailed, but substantially the same as what was reportedly written in the previous letter. In that context, the poster said it didn’t look like an official warning, it wasn’t clear or serious enough. In this context, substantially the same content in substantially the same tone is recontextualized as too serious, a threat that secretly means AO3 already plans on banning them permanently. To borrow a phrase…"this is actually fucking ridiculous."

Again, if we are reading the post in the best possible light, this is someone who is so emotionally distraught that they have descended into paranoia and are unable to correctly characterize the situation. Alternatively, this reads like someone who deliberately characterizing AO3’s responses to best achieve their own ends. They want this suspension to appear unjustified and unjustifiable, which means they can’t have received clear previous warnings for the same TOS violations they are suspended for - so there was only one warning that wasn’t clear or official enough to give them any real notice. Now, they want to appear as a victim who is being targeted by a system that has it out for them, no matter what they do - so substantially the same warning is a threat that indicates an intent to ban them regardless of what they do next.

And we are back to the beginning: not understanding the first thing about the law and using (at this point I feel safe in saying) deliberately charged language to describe the situation.

(And mischaracterizing the text that is LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM – AO3 isn’t saying it will take a week to respond! It is giving you a week to comply once your suspension is lifted! What do you want it to do, impose further sections if you don’t comply within 12 hours?!?! I mean, if that’s what you’re asking for...)

AO3 is not taking control of the writer’s works. It has control how it chooses to display and store works that the writer has granted it permission to display and store. This is all very clearly laid out in the TOS.

We’ve already addressed that the writer does NOT know that AO3 did not investigate their alleged mitigation evidence. The writer is once again positioning a failure to agree with their position that the suspension should be lifted as a failure by AO3 to read or consider their evidence.

I’m not going to address most of the specifics they list, because I would basically just be repeating myself over and over again with more details and this analysis is already long enough. These specifics might be important, except that the poster has already admitted that they did violate the TOS. Even assuming they are characterizing their email, AO3’s full response, and the “Not Actually Violations” correctly, it doesn’t matter for the purpose of whether they violated the TOS (again) and received a legitimate suspension.

The only specific I will address is their blatant lie at the end: the TOS specifically bans all commercial promotion, NOT just self-promotion. The writer is explicitly, obviously lying - not just misunderstanding, not just mischaracterizing, flat out lying.

We have something in common, finally - I’m really offended too.

So I looked at some other posts for more context about this comment on deleting a work, just to make sure I wasn’t mischaracterizing: the writer apparently, fed up with AO3, wants to delete their works prior to the end of their suspension. Their “inability” to do so appears to be a major basis for their “kidnapping” claims above. This, once again, might be a legitimate complaint - AO3’s TOS does confirm that a suspended user retains the rights to remove their work (subject to certain data storage exceptions to meet AO3’s obligations).

Unfortunately, the poster’s next sentence makes it clear this compliant is not legitimate. The TOS are explicit that the way a suspended user can delete their works is through contacting AO3 administrators. If the poster had requested such delegations and been refused, AO3 would have violated their own TOS. Instead, the user states they just asked AO3 to lift the suspension. There is zero evidence that they asked AO3 to delete their works, and instead are mischaracterizing AO3’s refusal to lift their suspension as a refusal to delete their works, both in this post and elsewhere. I feel like a broken record at this point, but once again, they are mischaracterizing a very clear situation to make themselves look like a victim and AO3 a villain.

An appropriate gif of a petulant, spoiled child to match this closing paragraph. I don’t think I need to say anything else.

[hard-core-super-star]

frequency of all we know... [H.Steinfeld]

pairing: hailee steinfeld x reader

summary: you and your girlfriend share an intimate moment during the Vanity Fair afterparty.

wordcount: 1.7k

warnings: completely over the place writing, suggestive themes [aka one (1) bathroom makeout session], boyfriend!hailee, the term clingy [but not meant in a bad way], me desperately trying to manifest an oliva rodrigo x hailee steinfeld collab.

a/n: i can't believe i've had this account for a year and the thing that made me finally post was this damn gif of hailee and eiza. this entire fic was inspired by this tweet and it's also been playing on loop in my brain since i first saw it. [shoutout to this post as well] might mess around and post more fics soon but idk, we'll see. enjoy!

* * * * * * *

You always knew your girlfriend had some borderline clingy tendencies.

Whether it was holding your hand wherever you went, or wrapping her arms around your waist whenever she got the chance, she always had to be touching you in some way. You never minded the contact, you actually found it really endearing, but it was getting harder and harder to hide your relationship with how touchy you two always are with each other.

Whenever you two were spotted at the same event together, her fandom would collectively lose their mind, posting picture after picture and talking about how cute you two are. But of course, the fan reaction wasn't all positive, and as much as you hated to admit it, the hate you received for your close relationship with Hailee weighed heavy on your mind.

It didn't matter how many times your girlfriend told you she didn't care about anyone's opinion or how close she held you to her, the hate followed you around like a rabid dog.

You knew her fans were right, she could do so much better than you. She deserves so much more than you could ever give her. Hailee is a goddess sent from the heavens and you're just…you. Plain old you.

Your girlfriend clearly doesn't care about any of those thoughts and opinions though, judging by the way her hands have been gripping your waist all night.

You originally didn't want to go to the Vanity Fair post-Oscar party. As much as you love going to events with Hailee, you really weren't in the mood to spend the entire night looking over your shoulder, making sure your relationship stayed a secret.

That all changed, however, when she asked you to go with her, giving you the most adorable puppy-dog eyes in the process and making it impossible to say no. (Not that you've ever been good at saying no to her.)

So you agreed, albeit reluctantly, to accompany her which led to you spending most of the night pretending like you don’t notice all the looks and the questions thrown your way as Hailee keeps you close to her.

She was subtle at first.

Only casually brushing your hands together while you stood next to each other or subtly wrapping an arm around your waist while you were talking with someone who was standing a little too close to you but as the night dragged on, her borderline possessive clinginess started showing more and more.

You had been glued at the hip the entire night until Eiza convinced her to go ask Billie to introduce them to Olivia Rodrigo. She had asked if you wanted to go with them but you declined the offer, wanting her to spend time with her friends without you hovering. (You did make her promise to bring up the idea for a potential collab to Olivia before she left though.)

And now you’re here, keeping Zoey company and trying not to freak out about the fact that Cate Blanchett and Sarah Paulson are in the same room as you.

Zoey's in the middle of a story, something about a recent audition she went to, her eyes are trained on you. At some point in the conversation, her hand had landed on your arm and it still hadn't left.

You didn't pay much attention to that detail as you struggled to keep up with her story.

You lean in closer in an attempt to hear her better and that's when Hailee walks back toward you.

“Do you mind if I steal y/n from you real quick?”

Your shoulders immediately relax the moment your eyes meet hers. She doesn’t wait for a response from Zoey, her hand reaching out for you. You take it without hesitation, muttering a half-assed apology to the other girl.

If she notices the possessiveness in Hailee’s movements she doesn’t react, she just gives you a little wave as Hailee drags you away. You swear you see the ghost of a smirk on her face but it's probably just a trick of the lights.

You let your girlfriend lead the way and she pulls you into a private bathroom. You barely have enough time to blink before she's closing the door behind you and pushing you against it.

“Have I told you how gorgeous you look today, baby?” She asks, her voice soft as she looks down into your y/e/c eyes.

“You have,” you reply as you wrap your arms around her neck. “But I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

She smiles and you swear your knees buckle a little at the sight. "You are the most stunning sight I've ever seen…especially when you're in my clothes."

Her eyes trail down from your eyes to the rest of your body, her smile growing the slightest bit as her hands land on your waist. Her thumbs draw small circles there as she messes with the fabric of her oversized coat.

You had made a small comment about how you were cold earlier in the night and Hailee had wasted no time in throwing her coat over your shoulders. You assured her it wasn't necessary but she insisted and well…you can't deny how much you love wearing her clothes.

Especially when she looks at you like that while you’re in them.

"Always the charmer, aren't you, Lee?"

A small chuckle escapes her mouth at the sound of the nickname. "Only with you, my love."

"Are you sure about that? Because your fans are convinced you have heart-eyes for someone else."

"They're a little slow," she says while she leans in a little closer. "But I have faith in them."

Whatever witty reply you were about to say dies in your throat the second she connects her lips to yours. You pull her closer, letting the taste of her overwhelm your senses.

You could spend an eternity kissing her and it still wouldn't be enough. No matter how much time you spend with her, you’re always craving more of her.

You would feel weird about that if it weren’t for the fact that Hailee clearly feels the same way about you.

“Hailee…” Your hands grip tightly onto her shoulders as she trails a path of kisses down your jaw. “They’re gonna start looking for us if we don’t go right now.”

She ignores your words, her lips moving onto your neck and you gasp as you feel her teeth against your skin. Every other thought leaves your mind as your back arches into her touch.

"You're mine." Her words are mumbled against your neck and the low tone in which she says them sets your body ablaze.

Despite your body's reaction to her words, you can't help but give in to the urge to tease her. "If this is because of Zoey…I’m pretty sure she has a boyfriend.”

“Yeah? Well, so do you.”

“Oh my God.” Your head hits the door with a soft ‘thud'.

She pulls away from your neck, her eyes searching for yours. “Was that too much?”

Your heart flutters a little at the soft traces of worry on her face. You shake your head while one of your hands moves to cup her cheek, your thumb moving back and forth on her warm skin. “That was perfect…you’re perfect.”

The corners of her mouth lift up into the most breathtaking smile you’ve ever seen. "You read my mind, baby."

She leans in and you meet her halfway. You all but melt against her and you quickly decide that kissing her is much more important than whatever people have to say about the two of you.

"Let's go home," you mumble against her lips. "Fuck the party."

She pulls away slightly. "Oh, I'm definitely thinking of fucking something right now."

Her words send a small shiver down your spine. As much as you would love for her to have her way with you right now, you'd much rather it be in the comfort of your own home.

"We're leaving." You try to sound assertive but your voice comes out a little too breathless for that. "Now."

She raises an eyebrow at you, clearly amused by your attempted dominance. You expect her to make a teasing remark but she doesn't. Instead, she gives you one last kiss before taking one of your hands in hers and dragging you out of the bathroom.

If your friends notice the hickey on your neck, they make no comments about it. Probably more than used to Hailee's (not so subtle) possessive antics.

Her arm remains wrapped tightly around your waist as the two of you wait outside of the venue for your driver to show up, making small talk with Eiza and Billie to pass the time.

You're too busy playfully arguing with Billie about convincing Olivia to collab with Hailee to notice your girlfriend's movement.

It's not until you feel her chin on your shoulder that you realize she's fully wrapped you up in her arms. You smile as you place your hands on top of hers, your fingers messing with one of her rings.

"Y'all are too cute, what the hell?" Billie turns to Eiza. "You seeing this bullshit?"

"Don't sound so jealous, sweetheart," you tease her.

"Oh, fuck off."

You spend the next few minutes joking around with your friends, your girlfriend's arms wrapped securely around you. You're blissfully unaware of the paparazzi across the street capturing the moment.

It's not until you see Hailee's name trending on Twitter the next morning that you realize the two of you caused quite the splash online.

You show your phone to your girlfriend as the two of you lay on her bed, your head resting on her chest. "Your manager is going to kill you."

All she does is laugh while her fingers draw small circles on your bare waist. "Totally worth it."

[lululawrence]

It’s November, and around my house that means I’m getting into gear with all of my Holiday and Winter Cards! This time of year is always rough for me, but one thing that always makes me happy are Christmas and Winter cards. This is my 9th year doing this, which is hard to believe, but I’m crazy excited to be able to continue the tradition this year, and I'm doing so with something new!

The cards are in the process of being made entirely by me, as always, but this year I'm also trying my hand at watercolors so every card will be unique with a bit of art that is hopefully not horrible adorning the front hehe

I'm still making them, but the rainbow trees in the banner are a preview of the art that will be featured on most of the cards and then I will add my personalized messages and send them filled with all of my love and good vibes! I can't do that without some important information from YOU though! So...

WANT A CARD? HURRAY! Here's how it works.

As stated above, I'm still working on the cards and they might not be sent out in time for Christmas, but they will all be mailed, I promise! haha

Through the rest of the month of November and maybe a little into December, I’ll gather addresses and finish the cards so I can start writing out the cards ASAP. Life happens, so the cards might not all make it to you before the new year, but I’m going to try my best to make it happen! Even if my goal of mailing them in early December doesn’t happen, you’ll definitely get a card at some point if you claim one.

HERE’S WHAT I NEED FROM YOU.

I’ll be collecting addresses using this google form. It’s pretty straight forward, but on the form I will be asking for:

Your address (I will mail them internationally). PLEASE write it out exactly as you would on an envelope, line breaks and all! I’ve had some cards get returned to me in the past because I guessed where the line breaks should be, and I guessed incorrectly, so to avoid that I’d love it if you could tell me where the line breaks are

The name you want me to use for the address as well as the name you would like me to write inside the card. For many, the name will be the same, but for others, it will be different, so to account for that, I’ll have an option for both.

Your tumblr URL. This is just so I can reach out to you if there are any issues.

Your preference in card. I will mostly be making rainbow pride trees affixed to Christmas or winter themed paper, but in case you need your cards to be holiday and rainbow free, I am going to be attempting some winter tree cards as well.

And that’s it! There aren’t any other stipulations or requirements. We don’t need to be mutuals, you don’t even need to be following me or in the fandom tbh. You just need to want a homemade card from me to hopefully bring you some cheer!

Even if you aren’t interested in a card for yourself, please reblog this post and help me spread the word. I would greatly appreciate it!

Thank you, and Happy November!

[rongzhi]

Hey folks,

I know I've slowed down on my translations for them (and douyin translations in general lol), but if you enjoy my 酱油白米饭 translations, then you might be interested in this. You may recall that a similar thing was done for Xiao Bai's birthday previously！

This time, the youmis (油米 are the names of their fans) are organising a surprise birthday video message for Jiang (he is turning 30, I believe). I told the organiser I would ask around and send over any videos from overseas fans.

Birthday message requirements (translated from flyer):

Option 1:

A 10s or less video

Required prop: a drink/bottle

If you are not comfortable sharing your face, you can take inspiration from Fan Luda and wear a mask/hat/sunglasses or other face-obscuring disguise.

This time around, the organiser wants to make a sort of "cheers" edit, stitching together multiple toasts. So they request the following actions:

Start with you prop blocking the camera. As you begin recording, bring you hand back in toward your face and take a sip (or mime sipping). Then say "江，生日快乐啊" (etc) and then bring your prop back up to cover the entire frame to end the video.

↳ for our sake, if you can't speak Chinese, you can just say your bit in English and I will add subtitles to your video before I send it off. You can also check out this video: How to say happy birthday in Chinese.

For the sake of the later editing, the organisers ask that you not add any BGMs to your video.

Option 2:

If you don't want to show your face whatsover, you can send in a photo of a handwritten message under 50 Chinese characters.

↳ If you do not know Chinese, you can still do this. I will translate the message into Chinese and add it underneath what you have written. Please keep messages to under 75 words.

The organisers are accepting videos up to 11/26. For their convenience, as well as to account for the time difference, please submit any videos to ME (via blog submissions or if you want to send a cloud link or something via dm) no later than November 24th midnight, U.S Pacific Time.

As was the case last time, if people respond to this call, I will post the final video with translations once it gets made!

If you have any questions, feel free to DM me!

[r0-boat]

Random Emmet hcs

Just a collection of random thoughts I had about him every once when I had various thoughts about him. Or things I've changed my mind about when I made posts like this similar in the past. Anyways enjoy! ( I miss writing Submas :( )

Sfw below cut for length

Follow me on this blog for multifandom writing content (mostly Pokemon)

He's very competitive when it comes to anything with competition although he's very good at Pokemon battles, because to him winning a battle not only means better in skill and raising your Pokemon but also a bigger Bond with trainer and companion he is actually happy when he loses because it still means he has a lot to learn and grow which he is always happy to know more, and he gets to see a happy trainer and happy Pokemon celebrate their victory is there a greater reward than that? But for some reason video games he becomes a sore loser no yelling no Tantrums just silent anger stowing in his Petty thoughts he'll never act out.

He was lying on his living room floor with a blanket topped over him in a T-shirt and sweatpants when he was sick because, for some reason, the floor felt better than his own bed.

Hangs up memes around the office or sends his friends semi cursed images / memes for no reason with little too no explanation. And has a whole folder in his phone just for joltik/other bug pokemon image memes, just in case he needs to react to anything he can't put into words.

I still think he likes to play scary games but his favorite ones are the ones he gets to play with his friends and laugh at their deaths. Skyla and Emmet give each other Petty nicknames and fight with each other on the regular especially over text online and in games. They fight like siblings which is funny because image is actually really close with his brother and doesn't understand why a lot of people aren't packed with their siblings. Sometimes, your sibling's actions can get on your nerves, but their family are sometimes the only ones who can understand you.

He takes self degradation even if they're jokes very seriously.

If Emmet could he would be a full-time joltik breeder I mean don't get me wrong he probably has dozens of them but I mean those breeders that have cool morphs of like certain lizards, snake and insects. Because I refuse to believe in the world of Pokémon that they are no Pokemon that are the same species but with different patterns/ fur or scale color/ breeds etc. He tried to do it himself, but he was stopped by a certain someone

Emmet cannot have TikTok downloaded as much as he loves the app; he will spend hours and hours on it and flood his poor brother and Friends with 99+ notifications. One of the depot agent managers runs the official TikTok account, and before they post anything, both brothers have to check for inappropriate content.

Emmet is either very photogenic or takes very cursed blurry photos there is no between. They'll either be a photo that looks almost professionally done with perfect lighting with his loose tie and shirt half buttoned while another one will have the lighting making it look like his eyes are glowing while the entire photo is dark with his hand coming down on the camera with a caption that says "POV: you're a bug Pokemon"

Still trying to win Nimbasa's hottest Bachelor after his brother who had one the last 3 years in a row😔

Genshin player/bias

[gatheredfates]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers (ू•‧̫•ू⑅)♡

Aww, I love positivity asks! I can't say mine are in any way profound, but:

My loved ones. Cheesy, I know. Shout-out to my partner who does have a Tumblr account but refuses to be perceived because I know he'll read this and appreciate the fact I didn't tag him. I've been asked before how on earth I've been in a relationship with one person for over half my life and that's simple: I fell in love with my best friend. 💖 Also huge shoutout to @riftdancing who will be perceived because she's the platonic love of my life and, without her, I would not be who I am today. These two have seen me at my literal worst and stuck by me — I love them to bits! There's also my FC members/close friends @lightwrought / @gaygentofchaos / @whirlwyrm / @snakemoltsiren / @swingbeard / @dragons-ire / other people I have missed and/or wouldn't like to be tagged but know you are included because I love you. IF YOU KNOW YOU KNOW. Also everyone in Seafloor!

Music. I've always loved music, but I really only got into music and listening to different things later in life! Sleep Token fundamentally altered my brain chemistry and I will thrust them on anyone who will listen (start with Sundowning through to Take Me Back to Eden if you want the whole ~experience~ but Jaws is also a good separate introduction). I've also come to love Crywolf, Ashnikko, Bad Omens, as well as old faithfuls like Red, Evanescence, Halsey, etc.

My cat. She's not really my cat, but she adopted me. Ratticus le Catticuses the third of her name; brat cat, rat cat; little goblin; my little baby girl, love of my life. (Her name is Lucy).

Graphics design/creativity. I make it no secret my favourite part of my irl work is when I can make a brochure/pamphlet/poster. I don't profess to be an absolute master in it, and I'm entirely self-taught, but there is something about making something better. It's the same with GPOSING and the like. I don't do it often, but my edits are there. There are people in the community that use the little dividers I put together in Canva. It makes me happy!

My current mental health/personal journey. I'm in a really good spot mentally. My diagnosis has changed my life, and I was already on a good trajectory with my personal mantra/outlook on life prior to it. A few years go I was extremely depressed/anxious, I had a lot of trauma/paranoia around my spaces, and acted in ways I'm not proud of. I've reached out and reconciled a lot of it, and it's allowed me to engage with this community and my personal projects in a manner that's healthy and engaging for me. I was in a spot of ~drama~ recently (which I won't get into — that's another personal choice I made to keep things between relevant parties) and, rather than freaking out and thinking everyone hated me... I just dealt with it. I took all sides, formulated my opinions and blocked the people I didn't want to deal with. I was SO proud/happy with myself — I still am! It's not world-ending like it used to feel and that's so freeing for me as someone who used to be a chronic people-pleaser/conflict averse. I still want to try to be the latter, but I really believe the manta of 'be kind, take no shit'. It's done wonders for my happiness.

This got really long, I appreciate anyone who got to the bottom! I'll send these out to ten people from my permanent interaction call because I think that's nice. Thank you @disciple-of-frost for sending this in!! ✨

[daydadahlias]

What’s your stance on the Ashton hate right now?

ok so i've gotten a few asks abt this now and i will concede and answer this one because i love the insinuation here that I can have a stance like I'm a politician or smthn <3 thank u for voting and for this platform <3

I'm also going to take the opportunity to say this is entirely my stance, not what i think everyone should believe or i think is the "right" perspective or blah blah yada yada disclaimer disclaimer. no one come at me saying I'm forcing my beliefs on you. you catch my drift. if you disagree with me, that's your prerogative and i frankly just don't care very much.

that being said <3 lock in for a jessay <3

if we're being entirely honest, I think people in the modern age - especially twitter users - actively seek out reasons to be upset. they crave drama like bees crave honey. especially when it comes to ashton tbh. the man can't breathe right without people claiming he's being problematic so I don't put a lot of stock in general in anyone's opinions of him but my own, especially bc I'm in fandom for my own enjoyment, not for anyone else's !! so it doesn't much matter to me what they think of him. i don't value their opinions!

if you'll notice, fandom is a lot about curating your own special little bubble and here on tumblr, literally no one is talking shit about ashton that i follow. it's literally just on twitter that I've seen any hate because twitter is a cesspool filled with chronically online social justice warrior bullshit :) and there's a reason I'm not on there often.

i think hate like this is just point-blank stupid because, as I've said before and I will say again, cancel culture is fucking fake ! it is literally not real and it is invented by people who have miserable sad little lives and want to self-impose their issues and hypocritical views onto others to pretend that they're doing good in the world when, in reality, they're making it that much worse!!

now, don't get me wrong, i really don't mind someone saying to their fave, "hey, this thing you said was hurtful for X reason, maybe you could consider that in the future :)" but I've already seen people saying ashton should kill himself sdfghjk so ! i don't care much for any opinion they have because they undermine their own arguments by telling people to spread kindness by spreading cruelty. it's frankly moronically hypocritical and embarrasses me every time i go online and see it.

as for the actual reason ashton's getting hate right now, i don't personally think it's as big a deal as people pretend it is. and this is getting into my own personal perspectives of things and please feel free to disagree with me on this because i know it's a Hot Take, but i can believe and support victims while simultaneously thinking that anonymous twitter allegations are mostly bullshit.

all allegations against All Time Low were entirely anonymous from a twitter user with no evidence/support/timeline (and, yeah, a random user said there were "97 allegations" but when people asked where she got that number from, she literally admitted she made it up and deactivated her account. but that didn't stop people from just fucking running with the number) and when ATL threatened to press charges for defamation, all of a sudden this anon user disappeared with no further comment. but twitter went wild - as it often does - and completely exaggerated all the actual information given.

twitter spreads misinformation like a disease. that's just the truth. and im certainly not saying all allegations that originate on twitter are fake because they aren't but i am saying that people online need to support victims at the same time that they actually start thinking critically about things. twitter acts like it's "guilty until proven innocent" instead of the other way around.

that being said, i don't personally support ATL because i didn't listen to their music before so this doesn't affect me and - if there is the chance they're abusers, i don't really want to listen to them. But that doesn't mean i tell people to turn them off if they like them or something, or tell them to stop being fans. because it doesn't affect me and i, frankly, just don't care. people need to learn that supporting the artist and supporting the art are two totally different things. you can listen to a song you like without knowing every allegation the artist has ever faced. also, if we stopped listening to every song made by a problematic artist, I'm afraid there would be very little music left.

that's where this brings me to the fact that people are throwing around insane accusations like that ashton supports rapists which is a fucking insane thing to say about a) people who arent even confirmed/charged rapists and b) over the fact he literally just played a song by them? he was DJ-ing for an emo/pop punk night? people would have been shocked if he hadn't played All Time Low??

also, I'm sorry but are you going to boycott every single person and establishment that plays one of the biggest pop-punk bands ever?? if you walk into a store and hear it playing All Time Low, will you never shop there again?? where is the line drawn?

and finally, the whole thing pisses me off because people use it as an excuse to say that they stand with victims and that ashton is actively harming victims by playing All Time Low when, I'm sorry, but no the fuck he's not ?? and, in my opinion, this is actually does MORE harm to victims than it does good? it's all just performative crap to make yourself look "woke".

and, excuse me, but what have you actually done to genuinely fucking support victims other than tell some random rich man who you don't fucking know that he should kill himself for DJing at an emo night?? using all this time to "cancel" Ashton Irwin's privileged cishet male ass could have been spent actually raising awareness about rape or helping actual real life fucking people in your community? this level of vitriol doesn't help anyone. it's pathetic.

this is just my real problem with the internet in general is that people act like hate inspires kindness and education when it does the exact opposite.

so, that being said, i just think the hate against ashton is small-minded and embarrassing. it doesn't mean anything at all. and I'm going to keep enjoying tumblr where people aren't pathetically insane (they're funny insane) and we can just learn how to fucking enjoy things because the world is too ugly right now to not find beauty in SOMETHING, goddammit! i am in fandom to have fun. not listen to people bitch and moan about their uninformed, damaging views of what social justice is.

and i will also spend my time in my real life genuinely supporting victims of assault and abuse instead of just pretending i do on fucking fandom social media.

[otomiyaa]

Re: 💌

Finally getting to respond to those who were so kind to me in messages, comments, and reblogs in the past week! @otomiya-tickles was a blog with mainly tickle fics, but you guys definitely made it feel like there was more to it :)

I piled all my answers into one big post and will treasure them for as long as Tumblr decides to keep me online this time 🤭

@lovelymessybubbly: Ahhh I remember sending that ask long ago and always wondered if you received it. I still think the timing (of my leave and your return) is ridiculous hehehe, but I'm also glad to stick around and to see you back! I hope the hiatus has been good^^

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@dokidoki-muffin: absolutely honored to have inspired you and not only that, I think you're a great friend and I love our chats and our recent collab had me filled with joy^^ !! 🧁

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@fluffandgiggles: I love your blog, the fics you write and the fandoms you choose and your kind personality, I'm glad you got to go from anon to your own blog and hope you can have fun with it for as long as you like to!

@skayleay: Sending love back to you, thank youu*w*

@beth-bethar00: Thank you 🥺

@tiredleekaz: Your message made me giggle hehe thank you for the support for the x amount of years, I also realized how easy it is to lose count when I think of all my different 'tumblr eras' 😂

@lilliee0: Sorry you had to find out this way hehe, and thank you! My account is in a good place *dramatic music plays* (no it's actually not lmao)

@rachi-roo: The Real OG 😳 I'm not sure I can accept that compliment but I thank you for it!! :3

@blobbirobbi: Sending love right back, also your tickle stories are always welcome hohoho

Anon #1: Heheh right! I know I"ve once said that even if I would quit my blog, I would never deactivate voluntarily (and definitely not without announcement) so it would have to be Tumblr to take care of that. To think that actually happened :). Hope you have a lovely day too!

Anon #2: Ahh I'm glad I could help introducing you to the tk community! Thank you for enjoying my fics, all the best to you too!^^

@infrequent-creator: Don't miss me yet, I won't be gone entirely :) I'll be here, and I'll be loud. Just my fic production will come to an indefinite stop, or break. Who knows.

@yourgigglebugmaya: Ahhh that flatters me! Thank you so much^^

@shyanon01: Thank you for the sweet message!

@hakurei-k: Hahaha! Well I'm still here too and ready to adore Solomon together.

@dirtpie39: I had to google that lololol ('sike'). Thank you for re-following^^

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@sunstone-smiles: T-T thank you a lot!!

@moongeonight: 4 years ago!! ahhh I'm happy to hear it and hope you're still having fun! :D

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@shy-lee-chu: Love you sweetie, I won't write many new fics so hope you won't be bored by me ;)

@eliankrios: Elian, I'm definitely okay thank you! I'll be mainly here to eat up the content you post ^^

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@flames-tstuff: I DON'T DESERVE YOU! ❤️❤️ Hehe answering all these messages to me feels like an entire ceremony already 🙈 And thank youuu, those 13k posts and 7k followers were from a total of 7 years of active fic writing on Tumblr though for a ton of various fandoms, I don't deserve too much credit for it ^^

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@kusuguricafe: Thank you for staying with me too 😘

@crazy-as-a-jaybird: *hug* thank youuuu T-T

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@ticklystuff: Thank you so much, will do!! I am reviving my animal crossing island (inspired by you and sezzie🤭)

@fantasizes-tickles-daily: I read about so many heartattacks and feel so sorry hehe, thank you for finding me again and for supporting my new one!^^ I can't believe I even considered not making a new blog. Your blog alone gives me the serotonin I need.

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@intheticklecloset: Thank you for the kind words and support!! T-T I look forward to enjoying the community from the sideline hehe:)

@ppystkposts: All these from anon to blogger stories make me kick my feet in delight! It's a chain reaction, I'm sure you will inspire others to start their blog as well. Your art and kindness most surely will do that^^ thank you for the support!

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@giggly-squiggily: waaa that's so sweet, thank youuuu!*0* I'll remember it!^^

@fanfic-chan: Ahhhh thank youu:D I used to call my blog my happy place and am more than happy to turn this one into that as well. Thank you for your message!

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@tickle-panile, @kiwithelee, @ticklish-sidekick, @mai-mei thank you for your concern*w*!

Special thanks to @lovelynim and @wertzunge for their instant share of my update, to @ticklygiggles for dealing with the questions about my absence, even the nasty ones. Sigh, I don't like they were rude to you! ah and also, it was Mia's message I woke up to when my blog was gone x) Never forget.

....and also ofc special speciaaaaal thanks to everyone else who reached out in DMs (I hope I answered you by now but will check soon), and to my dear friends on discord 😘

even though tumblr makes it look like my blog never existed, my evil spirit will live on and I'll keep being annoying 🤣

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If I forgot anyone's message I deeply apologize ToT !!!!