#i guess those things are unavoidable but still

[sunny-daysss]

I won’t put this in the fandom tag cuz I’m really not looking to debate people, but I feel like calling Akito (from Fruits Basket) a ‘yandere’ is just kinda... Weird?? Like I guess she fits the general criteria, but I also feel like it kinda removes the nuance from her character

[ask-the-pioneer]

"I've always been captivated by them. Something about the shiny exterior, how they glimmer when you tumble them around in your hands. My younger self would obsess about them, a childlike fascination. Even back then I instinctively knew they had value. My mom would use pearls I found to pay for a safe passage at scavenger tolls. We tried to bypass those points as much as we could, but sometimes it was unavoidable."

"It's a looong story…. I was found roaming the wilderness by my mentor, who brought me to er, an entity, called an interator. Do you know of iterators? Apparently they are what was left of an ancient civilization that once inhabited these lands. I couldn't wrap my head around it at first. Iterators are massive, absolutely huge, like mountains. Do you see that big structure of a regular, smooth shape?"

[She points towards Five Pebble's can in the distance]

"That is an iterator's «superstrucute». A mountain, the entire thing… is a person. It still sounds crazy when I say it."

"Ah, right, my name… like I mentioned, I got lost and my mentor found me. He brought me to his iterator. If my memory serves me right, his name is «No Significant Harassment», or NSH for short. I recall thinking at that time, «Harassment? I hope he won't be cruel to me». I had no concept of iterator names, their meaning, why it's three or however many words long. It was incredibly confusing to my young mind, though looking back at it I consider myself very lucky. The iterator was, dare I say, «god-like» (his own words), but benevolent. I saw how well he treated Hunter – my mentor – and it made me trust him more, even though I was scared and wary in the beginning."

"Would you believe it if I told you… there are stories written inside the pearls? That those things I’ve been obsessing about all my life are used for storing information? I had many of them leftover from when I lived at a scavenger outpost. One cycle, NSH noticed my interest, and – I wish Hunter had told me about this sooner, but – the iterator shot at my head with something…? And suddenly I could understand everything he said. Not that he said much, because I started crying loudly and ran straight out of there, haha. But before I bolted, he gave me one of his pearls as consolation. I think he felt bad for the scared little me."

"After that, he would eagerly read all the pearls I brought to him. That is how I learned more about the culture of the peoples who were here before me: the Ancients, their customs, why the iterators were built, and much more. It was like the knowledge of the entire world was suddenly revealed to me – to a seemingly insignificant being, a tiny speck in an endless ocean of life. It both made me feel very important, and very small. And, yeah, it has intensified my obsession with pearls beyond mortal limits. What if I could write into a pearl? I could archive the history of my entire species! All the stories my mom told me when I was small? All the places I’ve been to? Or other scugs have been to…"

[Her eyes widen, sparkling with glee]

"Y-yeah… that would be nice… sadly I am what I am – a slugcat. I don’t know how to do this very advanced stuff at all. I have no means of doing this. I once asked NHS for help, but there’s only so much he could guess from my frantic signing. I don’t think he understood me, in the end. But he did appreciate my efforts, and I was given a title – the Pioneer, like a person who is the very first to explore something uncharted. Apparently no slugcat before me thought of reading from or writing into pearls? I find it a little hard to believe."

"This one! This is a very special kind of pearl – it contains an ancient poem from which my name originated. See, my name was a gift from NSH the iterator. It’s spelled: «Mirmyntasseth». The best way I would describe it, is… it’s a name for a feeling, or an experience. The way it was explained to me, is that the word «Mirmyntasseth» is an expression of seeing a marble roll on a flat surface, then hitting another marble. Ah, right, you may not know this – a marble is like, like a pearl, but translucent and even more ornate. I was told that marbles were used by the Ancients for entertainment. They had a game where you rolled one to hit another. I'll admit, I can see the appeal. Throwing rocks is fun, although I image this game was considered a more dignified pastime."

[She tumbles the dark pearl in her hands, admiring its luster]

"The poem inside this pearl, one of its verses spells: «Eight Marbles Cast in Stone». The poem itself is long… very long… I had the iterator read it to me once, and we had to stop in the middle because the rain was coming. Maybe I will ask NSH to read it again, when I’m back at his superstructure with Hunter."

[Her gaze trails off to somewhere far away for a moment, a subtle grimace on her face. She closes her eyes and shakes off the thoughts that cloud her mind]

"So, um… yes… that is why I am called Eight Marbles Cast in Stone, or Marbles for short. I like how it sounds, it has a nice ring to it. And it’s a gift from an iterator, a god-like being. I consider it a great honor."

"…that said, I wonder why he didn’t just name me «Pearl»? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Maybe it didn’t sound cool enough. They’ve used pearls just to store information. I guess it’d be silly to be named «Dirt» because you doodle in dirt, or «Batfly» because you love eating batflies? Hmm…"

[too-much-tma-stuff]

No Body to Bury

This is a full dead spin off of another one shot I read about Danny being given flowers for his grave by a child.

-------

The Justice League had been working with Phantom for a while now, not consistently, but he showed up when they were dealing with something ~spooky~, and he’d given them a way to contact him. They called him in to consult, or to back them up sometimes because he was a bit of a power-house. At first they had thought the name was part of his shtick, after all his powers were ghostly enough and there was something satisfying about having a theme.

They had started to suspect something when the child citizen had given him flowers for his grave, and his delighted reaction. It could have just been a kid happy to get a gift, but it wasn’t, it was clearly more then that and Batman had had a flashback to one of Constantine’s crash course lesson’s on supernatural, the one on ghosts. Graves were very important to them, as were morning gifts like flowers and candles, whatever was culturally appropriate.

None of them knew where Phantom’s grave was, Batman had tried to find it, to find anything about the ghosts life and death, but there wasn’t much. Not before he became a hero in Amity park, so he could maybe guess that the other had died in Amity (if he had died), but there was no deaths that matched up with his appearance. The closest thing was a boy named Danny but he had gone missing years after Phantom showed up, and he’d never been declared dead officially. More was impossible to find, even after the GIW had been disbanded the information they had destroyed about the town couldn’t all be retrieved.

Since Batman didn’t know where Phantom’s grave was he couldn’t leave flowers on it directly which meant he had to actually give them to the ghost boy. It was a bit uncomfortable the first few times, and his kids made fun of him for being emotionally repressed but… it made Phantom so happy, and brought him closer and closer to Batman. He had already started to see Phantom as one of his kids, even if he knew he’d never get the ghost to come back to the manor. The gifts helped, he found that Phantom also liked to receive food, he even picked at it sometimes even though it seemed he didn’t need to eat. Sharing meals with him was a good excuse to actually talk some though, Batman would listen and eat his own food as Phantom picked at his and rambled about space, about recent fights he’d been in, and people he’d met.

Through all that Batman managed to learn more about the young hero, about what he valued, and what he did when he wasn’t being a hero. Apparently he spent a lot of time off world but exploring rather then being a hero to the galaxy. Batman had a feeling superman would be upset by that, that Phantom could be doing more good then he was and was choosing not to. But the ghost was clearly still a kid, or at least had been when he died, and he was plenty heroic, he didn’t need to be dealing with universal threats at maximum sixteen years old, Batman felt bad calling him in for the planetary threats, but sometimes it was unavoidable.

As they got closer Phantom started to let other things slip, that he’d had a sister, and a couple of close friends that he still watched over when he could. When Batman had asked if those people knew he was dead Phantom had fallen silent for a full minute and then changed the subject entirely, Batman hadn’t pushed it that time. If he had Phantom would have retreated, but as it was they kept having lunch together, and the boy let more and more slip. Including more stories about those friend he must have had while he was alive, it was during one of those that he let his name slip.

“So my sister said to me, ‘Danny you should-‘” his mind seemed to catch up with his mouth and he froze, Batman was still too but when Phantom started to fade from view he spoke up.

“Phantom, wait, why don’t we leave the tower and go somewhere private. We can talk secret identities, I’ll tell you mine too,” Batman promised, he thought it was the best way to make Danny feel better, besides he did trust Phantom.

Danny hesitated before fading back into full visibility and nodding, “Alright,” He agreed, looking very young and vulnerable. “Do you mind if I fly us down to earth? I’ll keep you safe from space,” He asked and Batman nodded, letting Danny grab his arms and phase them through the building and out. Danny flue quickly back down to the earth, the side facing away from the sun so it was the middle of the night, putting Batman down in the middle of an abandoned park, landing as well and going to sit on the swing set.

Batman followed, sitting down next to the young hero and trying hard not to think about Ace, another talented and powerful person who went through to much and died to young. Once he was sat down Bruce sighed and took off his cowl, showing his face to the other young hero. “I’m Bruce Wayne,” He said with a wry smile when he saw familiar recognition cross over Danny’s face.

“No way, that makes so much sense,” Danny cackled, which wasn’t the reaction Bruce was expecting. He’d ask about that later, instead he just gestured for Danny to introduce himself next.

“Danny Fenton,” the kid introduced, holding out his hand with an impish little smile. Bruce chuckled and shook it as if this was the first time they’d met instead of having known each other for nearly a year.

“I know that name,” Bruce hummed thoughtfully, back peddling a little when Danny tensed. “Sorry, worlds greatest detective and all, I did a bit of research on Amity Park when you joined us to see if I could track you down. I had ruled that out because your civilian identity didn’t go missing for two years until after you showed up as Phantom. Does that mean you’re not, well, dead?” He asked, rubbing the back of his neck at the awkward question.

“Oh, no, I’m very dead,” Danny said with a bitter chuckle, pushing himself to rock on the swing a little. “But I didn’t die for a couple of years after I got my powers, not fully. I don’t think most people understand what it’s like to die twice,” He said, looking down, already pale hands going white around the knuckles with how tight he was holding the chains.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Batman said softly, leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees. “But if you want to talk, I’ll listen, and I won’t break your confidence,” Bruce assured, they sat quietly for a few more minutes before Danny sighed and looked away.

“My parents were.. well probably best classed as mad-scientists. I loved them and they loved me but they were obsessed with ghosts and with discovery, it was always a tossup which was more important. I would join them in their lab to get their attention, and it was often my job to clean up after them. I ended up being micro-dosed on this stuff they called ectoplasm a lot which probably helped when the accident happened. My parents were trying to build a portal to the ‘ghost-zone’, what Constantine calls the infinite realms. It didn’t work at first, not till I stepped inside it, then it opened and it electrocuted me at the same time as flooding me with that weird glowing green ooze. It killed me and resurrected me simultaneously but not properly.

“Instead of actually bringing me back to life it bound my ghost back to my own body so I became the ghost possessing myself. That’s when I started working as a hero, while I was still partially alive.” He paused, swinging for a moment while Bruce stayed quiet and still, trying not to think about what Danny’s homelife must have been life, or how much it must have hurt to be killed like that.

“After a while the GIW showed up, they tried to catch me, but my parents had been trying to catch or destroy me as phantom for years. The GIW weren’t nearly as competent as the Red Huntress, so I avoided and ignored them. But I started to take it for granted and dismiss them, I didn’t pay enough attention, and they finally got the drop on me. I don’t want to talk about everything they did to me, but it was bad, and it was to much for my human half,” Danny stopped again and bit his lip, there was a hitch in his breathing that told Bruce exactly why Danny was hiding his eyes.

“Danny died, but it turned out that being half human was sort of holding back what I was capable of as a ghost,” He snickered with a little bit of bitter, vicious glee. “They couldn’t hold me anymore, all their little devices got left on my corpse when they forced me out and I destroyed the lab. After that I just… couldn’t go back to my life, it’s not natural. I died, they need to grieve me. That’s- that’s how it works.”

“And did they? Did you… get a burial?” Bruce asked, because he hadn’t seen anything about it in the news. His fear was confirmed when Danny took a deep breath and shook his head.

“No, I didn’t leave my body in the wreckage. I was worried… scratch that, I knew my parents would cremate me to try and keep me from coming back as a ghost, because they didn’t know I already was one. And that would weaken my connection to this world. I need to protect people, it’s half my purpose, I need a connection to this world.”

“Where did you hide it?” Batman asked, his breath catching when he saw Danny’s eyes flash a dangerous red.

“Why do you want to know?” He growled, bearing teeth that were sharper then they usually were. “You gonna give it back to my family for ~closure~? Destroy it yourself to curtail my power? I know Constantine is scared of me, he’d like that.”

Bruce immediately held his hands up in a placating gesture, of course Danny would be protective of his body. “No nothing like that Danny, I promise,” He said quickly. “But I just remember from what I’ve been told about ghosts, having a grave is important and, if you wanted, I would like to see you get a proper burial. It’s your body, you should get to control what happens to it but if you wanted a grave, a funeral, we have a protected graveyard for fallen heros. You’d fit right in,” He said with a uncertain smile.

Danny relaxed slowly, his eyes going back to green and his expression turning contemplative, looking back down as he thought about the offer. “Maybe… maybe,” He murmured. “It would be nice to have a grave, I’ve been leaving the flowers near my body in the ghost zone but… it would be nice to have a grave. I can feel the longing, the instinct. It feels bad to not have… have that, have something.

“But… I am scared. Would you be willing to- if you do an empty coffin funeral and burial for me, I’ll put my body in it, once the coffin is in the protected ground I can phase my body into it?” He asked, looking up at Batman worriedly and it was so obvious Danny was just a kid, a neglected boy who had been unlucky enough to die violently twice.

“Of course Danny, however you feel most comfortable,” Batman assured. Watching as Danny took a deep breath, more out of habit then anything, then nodded firmly.

“Then, I would like that. I know I am still here in a way so it feels weird having a funeral for me but, I still died, and I’d like to be remembered.” He murmured uncertainly.

“Of course, I understand. We didn’t get rid of my son’s grave when he came back because he still died. Being brought back, in any way, doesn’t really undo that,” Bruce sympathized, finally getting a small smile from Danny.

“Thank you Bruce, you’re a good guy. Now… do you need a lift back to the watchtower?”

“Yes please,” Bruce agreed with a sigh, finally standing up and pulling his hood back on. He had a funeral to plan.

"When we do have the funeral, can you ask your son to come? I'd like to meet him," Danny asked and Batman hummed, not sure how to explain the complicated relationship he had with Jason now.

"I'll try," He agreed, that was the best he could do really.

Part 2: here

[whorekneecentral]

Miss Me, Miss Me

Ruben Dias x Stones!Fem!Reader

Warnings: fwb!ruben, jack and reader are besties, alcohol and the consumption of, kyle is always annoying her, teasing, a strip tease according to reader, finger sucking, oral (f!receiving), overstimulation, fingering, orgasm denial, the use of 'whore' in a sexual/degrading context, penetrative sex (P in V ), big brother john is not having it.

Word Count: 2,952

Author's Note: this one is written solely for my pookie, that's also why ruben is so early on in this series lmao - all of these things are shit she'd eat up so pooks and everyone else, please enjoy :)

merry smutmas series

--

Your brother holds his annual Christmas party and you’re forced to spend the afternoon with the one person you had been avoiding all season but tis’ the season you guess. 

Will they or won't they was the tagline for your relationship - if you could even call it that- with Ruben.

You had recently moved to Manchester to be closer to your older brother and your niece and nephew. You had gone to every home game you could and over the course of the season, you fell into a bit of a pattern with the Portuguese defender.

It was innocent enough at first, you two were friends who occasionally hooked up to relieve whatever stress you were having but over the years, it turned into more. Feelings got involved and it got messy so because of that, and for your brother's sake - despite him not knowing, you pulled away from Ruben.

It was never your intention to make things messy.

You hadn't seen Ruben face to face in weeks, if not months. You had still gone to games but you simply went for your brother and then left afterwards, not hanging around too long.

Ruben had a hold over you; you knew if you hung around him too long, you'd just end up in his bed again. That was the last thing you wanted.

Today was unavoidable though.

John was hosting his annual Christmas party at his place; old friends, a few of the boys from his time at Barnsley as well as his teammates and their families from Man City filled his house.

You were somehow, always on kid duty. You were in the room with a bunch of kids; Kevin's, John's, Phil's, Ederson's and a few others that you had no idea who they belonged to.

"Settle down," you tell them, trying to get them off the sugar rush to watch a movie. You tried to rock your nephew in one arm while you switched on the tv, the kids shouting 400 different movie titles all at once.

You huffed and your nephew began to cry just as you tried to ask which one they really wanted to watch but someone opened the door. Jack smiles at you, taking the remote from you when he sees how flustered you are.

He worked a miracle, getting them to quiet down enough for you to calm the baby and to be able to put on a movie for them. You sighed, sitting on the bean bag with the baby as the kids watched Finding Nemo.

Jack sits next to you, rubbing the baby's hand. "I heard the noise, figured I'd come check before they killed you," he whispered, making you chuckle.

"You're a lifesaver, Jack, really. You're good with them too, you and Sasha ever think of.."

"No," he laughed, shaking his head. "I mean, at least not yet."

You nod, smiling. "You'd be wonderful parents.. but you should go join the party, I'm okay in here."

"You're sure?" He gets up and you nod. "Go on, I'll come out in a bit." Jack smiles, nodding before he walks out and closes the door behind him.

It was about an hour later that Finding Nemo ended and the kids went looking for their parents. Those with kids ended up heading out, saying their goodnights before the party actually picks up.

You make your way into the kitchen to find Jack looking for something. "Missing something?" You asked, picking up a glass.

"Your brother said he had shot glasses somewhere?"

"Check the bottom cabinet, it should be in there. What are we drinking?" You asked, setting your empty glass back down.

"Whatever will get us drunk fast." He laughs and you smile, "you're just like me," you nudged his shoulder, reaching for the bottle of tequila on the counter.

Jack lines the empty shot glasses on the tray you found, letting you fill them up. The man picks one up before handing another one to you. "To.. the holidays!" He shrugs, tapping his glass to yours before you two down the shots, and two more rounds after that.

You send him on his way, the man dancing his way over to his girlfriend. You on the other hand, picked up the tray and made the rounds, offering shots to all of those who wanted them. Eventually, you find your way to the living room, the music playing in the background as some people danced and the others chatted.

"Pebbles!" Kyle shouts, his hand in the air to call you over. You roll your eyes, walking over to the group of men by the couch. "How many times have I told you not to call me that, walks?" You laughed.

Kyle puts an arm around your shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "You're pebbles cause Johnny is Stones and you're the little one!"

You laughed, shaking your head. "Very original, Kyle. Anyone want a shot?" You offered, holding the tray out.

John takes one, passing another one to Ruben who you've yet to look at. Kyle grabs one for himself and you go to walk away but your brother grabs your arm, bringing you back. John's arm is over your shoulder now, pulling you into his side.

"Have one with us! You're grown up now, aren't you?" He teased, nudging you to take a shot with them. You and John were only a few years apart; he was 29 and you were 24.

You nod, picking up a shot glass. "Cheers!" Kyle shouts over the music, the 4 of you tapping your glasses together before downing the contents.

Some of the tequila ended up on your fingers during the toast, your finger instinctively ended up between your lips and you don't miss the feeling of Ruben's eyes on you. Looking up, your eyes meet his and you move your hand.

"Can I go now?" You asked your brother, and he nodded before kissing your temple. "You're free to go. Go eat something before you feel sick though."

"Should take your own advice, Stones." You tell him and he tosses you a glare. "Whatever, pebbles."

Kyle and John laugh at the use of the nickname and you flip them both off, laughing as you walk away.

The night turned out to be good, you ended up hanging out with Jack and Sasha for a bit before Kyle pulled you to dance with him. He was telling John he knows how to waltz, he just needed a good partner. You were confused as to what made you qualify as a good partner but you went along with it.

At this point, everyone had left and whoever was left, was drunk as fuck and on the verge of passing out.

You slowly make your way upstairs, you have just put away the leftovers and locked the front door for the night. You walked into your room for the night, unzipping your dress as you bent over to pull some pjs out of your bag.

The knob turns and then the door unlocked, someone steps in. "Hello, what the fuck? I'm changing-" you freeze when you turn around to see who it is.

Ruben stood by the door. "It's just me."

"Okay and?" You look at him, confused as to why he's in your room. "Just because it's you, doesn't mean that gives you a right to be in here."

"It's nothing I haven't seen before, love." He smiles at you and you resist the urge to roll your eyes when he says that.

"Fuck off, will you?" You turn away from the man, your back to him as you went to get changed for bed.

Ruben doesn't take no for an answer; in life and on the pitch. He walks over to you, "don't be like that, y/n. You know I miss you," his hand rests on your hip, pulling you to him.

It was so easy for him - your mind is screaming no but your body's betraying you, giving into him before you could stop yourself.

"You don't miss me, Ruben. Shut up." You whispered, the man lowered his lips to your neck. A trail of kisses from the base of your neck up to your jaw, you're certain there's red marks all over your neck from his beard scratching on you.

Your hand instinctively reaches for his face, your palm's warm against his skin; there your body goes, betraying you again.

"I miss you, I do," he whispers against your skin, his hand sliding between the two of you, from your hip to your back. The fact that your dress was unzipped gave him free rein, his fingers running along your spine, finally resting on the curve of your spine.

"Rubes-" you breathe, feeling him suck on the sensitive spot on your neck. "We can't."

He nods, "we can."

"John could walk in."

The thought made Ruben chuckle. Yes, it'd be a mess, it would get both of you in a lot of trouble but the fact that you, at your grown age, were scared of your older brother catching you with his friend, was funny to him.

"John's passed out drunk on the couch, sweetheart. No one's coming, it's just me and you."

You turn to face the man, Ruben's chest to yours; the first few buttons of his shirt undone, the black fabric tight on his arms and the sleeve were rolled up to his elbows. Was he always such a slut or did he only recently become one?

He's already pulling the straps of your dress off your shoulders and you don't stop him, letting it fall to the floor and pool around your ankles.

Ruben's hands reach for your face, cupping your jaw. "C'mon baby, I miss you." He whispers into the quiet room, his lips ghosting over yours.

Hands wrapping around his wrists, "I miss you too." You admit, giving into him. You pull Ruben into you, kissing him.

It doesn't take long, the two of you stumbling back to the bed. Ruben ends up on top of you, your legs wrapped around him as he moves you to lay properly. He pulls away from your kiss and your wandering hands, earning him a pout.

"Why'd you stop?" You groaned, Ruben smiles at you whining as he stands, undoing the rest of the buttons on his shirt before taking it off.

You propped yourself up on your elbows, looking at the man. "Mhm, all for me?" You raised your eyebrows, making him laugh.

"Everything's for you, baby. It always is." He tells you, dropping to his knees in front of you.

The words and his actions made your head spin, you were constantly swooning over the man and today was no exception.

Ruben's lips were soft, the faintest of kisses trailed up from your calf to your thigh and he let your leg hang over his shoulder as he pulled you to the edge of the bed. You’ve propped yourself up on your elbows to look at him and Ruben drags his fingers up your thigh, moving to your clothed pussy. 

"Please," you mumble, looking down at the man. Ruben smiles, "not in the mood for teasing, sweetheart?"

"Fuck you Ruben," you groaned, dropping back into the mattress when he pulls the panties to the side, his eyes fixed on your pussy but his hand reaches up, pushing two fingers in your mouth. He didn’t have to tell you, your tongue laps over his fingers. 

“Taught you well,” he smiles, pulling his fingers away from your mouth. 

He gives you no warning, pushing his fingers into you. The sound leaving your mouth was like heaven on earth to him. 

His fingers curl upwards, your back arching at the feeling. 

“Rube, please.” Your hand reaches down to wrap on his wrist but he swats your hand away, managing to pull both to rest on your stomach and his free hand over your hands, pinning them to your stomach. 

Your eyes fixed on the man between your legs, looking at him in awe. Something about Ruben fascinated you; you could never put your finger on it but he was always an object of fascination, of desire. Everything about him made you want him, you couldn't explain the attraction.

It just made sense to you.

Your hips buck when you feel his tongue against your clit, your hand gripping on his hair. 

Ruben knew you like the back of his hand, even with the time apart. Something didn't change and the way your hips buck, it's your way of saying you want more, who was Ruben not to give into you?

His fingers curl upwards once again and he glances up to see your head tossed back into the mattress, eyes fluttering shut.

Between his fingers and his tongue, your orgasm was teetering on the edge; he knew that much. 

Ruben pulls his hands away, the sticky fingers on your thighs. A whimper leaves your lips at the loss of fullness. 

"What the fuck?" You groaned, an arm over your face. If you looked at Ruben right now, you might kill him.

The clink of his belt gets your attention - maybe you'd finally get what you wanted.

Ruben scoots you back, getting on the bed, on top of you. He leans down, his lips over yours and you reach up, a hand on the back of his neck to pull him down for a kiss; you can taste yourself on his lips. He lifts your leg, resting on your hip before he lines himself up with you.

The way the tip of his cock rubbed against you and the fact that you were already on the edge from before was enough to make you beg.

"Please, Ruben."

"Please what?" He looks down at you, smiling sweetly.

Your bottom lip pulled between your teeth. "Ruben," you whined, lifting your hips towards him. "Please, fuck- god just fuck me already."

Ruben smiles, "those words really shouldn't be in the same sentence, you know." He tells you, pushing into you. You moan, ignoring his words at the moment.

Your hand wraps around his bicep, your manicured nails digging into his skin. He didn't mind the pain, especially if it was your doing.

Your legs wrapped around his waist, Ruben's thrusts were slow and deep- you can feel him everywhere, his hands, his lips, his touch. Everything about Ruben was consuming; he knew that and he loved it.

In some sick way, he loved watching you fall in love with him all over again, seeing the effect he had on you.

Ruben pulls your legs back up to his hip. “Fuck,” you breathe, his thrusts faster and harder.

How you wished you could scream his name right now.

His hand drops between the two of you, rubbing your clit; matching the pace of his hips. Your head falls back into the pillows when he hits the spot he was looking for. His fingers that were previous on your clit now shoved into your mouth to muffle the sounds tumbling from your lips.

Ruben leans down, his lips next to your ear; “you have to be quiet, you don't want everyone to know what a whore you are, do you?”

You mumble something along an okay, your hips bucking, telling him you want more. He holds you, managing to flip you two over so that you're on top and his cock is still buried in you.

He lets you take over, setting the pace and using him for your own pleasure.

“Ruben, god-” you mumble, your hand tangled in his dark hair as you bounced up and down.

"Not quite," he whispers, pulling you down to kiss along your neck. Ruben's hand behind your neck to pull you down for a kiss. “Want you to cum for me.”

His arms wrap around you when you drop against him, your face buried against his shoulder, biting down to muffle the sounds. “Good girl,” he hums, rubbing your back. "Mhm I love you." He whispers into your shoulder.

You huff, "shut up, don't ruin this for me." Ruben laughs, "whatever you say, baby. I do."

"I'm so thirsty," you get off of him, yawning.

Ruben looks over at you, "you want another round?" You roll your eyes, "not what I meant, you freak."

You get up, pulling on his shirt and a pair of shorts. Ruben lays in bed, watching as you buttoned it up. "Don't look at me like that." You tell him and he laughs, "like what, love?"

"Like you want to fuck me."

"I just did," he smiles. You roll your eyes again, something you did often in his presence. "I'm going to get water," you tell him before heading down the stairs.

When your brother hears the creaking on the stairs, he sits up, rubbing his eyes before looking over in your direction. "Y/n?"

"Johnny?" You freeze, looking at him.

"Whose shirt is that?" He asks and you look down at the black button up. "Uh, mine."

John nods, dropping down onto the couch once again. You grab the bottle of water, walking back into the living room to toss the blanket over your brother. You lean down, kissing his head before turning to head back towards the stairs.

He reaches out from under the blanket, grabbing your hand to stop you. "You better get Ruben out of my house before I get up, or I'll kill him."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," you tell him and your brother lets go of your hand, a sly smile on his face. "Yeah, okay. Maybe you two should shut up next time, or don't do it in my house? Perhaps don't wear a shirt that reeks of his cologne."

"Shut up, go back to sleep," you push him back into the couch before walking away.

--

taglist: @nosugarallspice  @evieepepi08 @mimithepooh @koufaxx @dannyramirezwife-simpaccount @topguncultleader @molliemoo3 @aisharmi @mamako23 @ac3may @lewislcver @miahgonzalez16  @books-and-netflix-pls  @wibi96 @bwddermilch @pedrisgatorade  @clarasenchant @sainzluvrr // @trentsfav @trentsmyfave @noturbabe22

[greenteabelle]

thinking about how philza's character in every universe (or server lol) never really gets their happy ending .

hc!philza is destined to roam his world forever alone , with only remnants of history left to accompany him . so what if he continues to find structures and hints of what once was ? he's missed the opportunity to experience all the mythical stories he can only glean from pieces of rubble . he's alone , and he always will be .

dsmp!philza was forced to kill his son as soon as he finally found him after radio silence . and even when he returns as a phantom , he never really manages to bridge that deep chasm in their relationship . the one true friend that he could always rely on , whether as they ruled the entire world together or simply spent their days secluded in the snowy mountains , couldn't make it to the end . two immortal gods , finding solace in each other's loneliness only for one to be left alone again at the very end .

osmp!philza was left with nothing but empty promises as his friends left the safe haven he built with them one by one . he reunites with them a few times in the future , sure , but he can never really reminisce about their times together without leaving a bad taste in his mouth . even at the very end , he can't find the one friend who spared him those lonely times , always just a universe behind his little fella .

30days!philza died with his back turned to the one he trusted the most . despite all his years of experience teaching him to never let his guard down , he does . because he trusts wilbur . and so the last thing he sees as he's pushed off the ledge is the wide-eyed mortification in wilbur's eyes . and it's bittersweet , to know that he would exchange his own life if it meant that his could be returned . but the damage is done , and the ending is bittersweet .

and now , q!philza .

burdened with the task of caring for an egg with a partner he barely knew , he did the one thing he never thought he would do : play it safe . with the threat of the federation , the monstrous creatures that roam the island and the code that seemed hellbent on killing them , he played as an innocent bystander in every major event . because when you've lived a life as long as philza's , you know the worst that the world has to offer , and he so desperately wants to shield his child's innocence . despite the knowledge that chayanne may never remember their time together when he hatches , that the fabled dragon may simply devour him once it finds chayanne in his possession , he protects chayanne .

how could he not , when chayanne is the one he can finally protect for once ?

then he's ripped right out of his clutches once again , along with tallulah whom he's grown unavoidably fond of ( because it's wilbur's daughter , what other outcome could he truly expect ? ) , powerless to do anything . in his desperation to be reunited with his children once more , he ignores every single alarm bell that rings as he makes his way to the birdhouse .

even as he's freed , he's haunted by birds that seem to follow him wherever he goes , as though someone is always watching and reminding him of the consequences of rebelling .

purgatory ?

the name explains itself quite aptly , i believe .

so i guess the whole point of this post is just to appreciate that no matter the tragedy that constantly surrounds philza's characters in every universe he's in , he still keeps going forward .

[arvandus]

Daily Drabble #6 - Longing

Diavolo x GN!Reader

Warnings: None; just fluff <3

NOTE: WHILE THIS WRITING IS SFW, THE REST OF MY BLOG IS NOT. MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS, DNI/FOLLOW OR YOU WILL BE BLOCKED!

Diavolo has wanted to kiss you for forever.

But he doesn’t.  He can’t bring himself to do it.

It’s not about what others will think.

It’s not about his position as prince and you being a human.

It’s not even about you being mortal, your lifespan a fraction of his.

It’s not about any of those things. None of those reasons matter. Not a single one would hold any weight or importance so long as you loved him back.  He’d already accomplished the unexpected more than once; taking in fallen angels, creating an exchange program to broker peace between the three realms... what would one more miracle be?

No, it was because even if he kissed you... even if your lips reciprocated... he wouldn’t be able to entirely trust that it was real.  That you felt for him the way he felt for you.

It was an unavoidable risk that came with being the prince.  So many times, he’d watched as others bent themselves backwards for him.  How they catered to his desires, eager to please and gain favor, or on the opposite end, avoid punishment.

Not that he ever punished unnecessarily.  He was a fair ruler; he knew that much.

But millennia of others attempting to anticipate his needs, accommodate him, manipulate him...

He was fortunate that he could tell when others lied.

Which was why he would never ask you.  Not outright; he couldn’t bring himself to watch you lie to him, to hear your voice say one answer while your soul shimmered something different.

He couldn’t kiss you without permission, and he was far too cowardly to ask for it.

Which was why he was utterly stunned when you kissed him first.

It was quiet, private.  Just the two of you in his library, late at night as you poured over ancient texts looking for a solution to the latest Devildom dilemma (they were never-ending, after all...). You spoke together in hushed whispers, despite the empty space and the sleeping castle.  But then a soft silence fell over the two of you, and you looked up at him, your gaze holding his. Your hands rested side by side on the table, pinkies barely brushing.

You sucked in a breath for bravery and then leaned forward and kissed him.

It was soft, but quick.  Diavolo hardly had time to react, his eyes widening before you pulled away, your head ducked bashfully.

“S-Sorry...” you whispered.

Diavolo blinked as heat made his neck and cheeks burn.

“You kissed me,” he said dumbly.

“Uh, yeah.  I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have... you know...”

Now he was confused because you weren’t lying.  You were genuinely sorry, as if you regretted it.  His brow furrowed.  “Was it an accident?”

“Wha...?” your eyes widened and you shook your head slightly. “I mean, no, but...”

“But you’re apologizing.  Did you not want to kiss me?”

Now it was your turn to feel hot, and you felt yourself bristle defensively. “Of course I did!”

Also a truth. Diavolo’s confusion deepened.  Humans were so weird... 

“But you apologized. Why?” he persisted.

“I-I don’t know! I guess... “ you mumbled low, but Diavolo’s superior hearing caught every word, “I thought you didn’t like it--”

Diavolo’s lips interrupted your words, your face suddenly cupped in his large hands as he kissed you gently. He pulled away just enough to look into your eyes, your face still in his hands.

“I liked it,” he whispered.

A great sigh of relief escaped your lips.  “Good. Because I was about to die on the spot of embarrassment.”

Diavolo chuckled and kissed you again, and this time you leaned into it, a content hum purring from your chest.

He pulled away again slightly, and your mouth tried to follow him, but he held you still, his brow creased.  “Forgive me, but I have to ask.... why did you kiss me?”

Your embarrassment returned full force, defenses up. “Why do you think??”

There was a hesitance in him. “Humor me. Please.”

You stared at him for a long moment, recognizing his need, understanding why.  Still, the fact that you had to say it out loud when you’d kept it silent for so very long...

“Because I love you,” you whispered.

A soft breath of relief left his lungs and he smiled, his eyes shining like gemstones.  “And it’s not because I’m the future king of the Devildom?” he teased.

It was a half-joke, a bitter pill of doubt and worry wrapped in the sweet sugar of humor to make it more palatable.

You gave a soft laugh.  “It’d make this a lot easier if you weren’t the prince of hell...”  Your expression sobered to one of gentle affection and you cupped his face with your hand.  “I kissed you, Diavolo, because I love you.  I love you, and I want you to be mine.”

Your thumb stroked his cheekbone as your eyes took in the features of his face, his hair...

“My Diavolo...” you whispered, your words a promise and a blessing.

The lingering fear in his eyes faded, giving way to rich, warm longing.  He covered your hand with his and turned his face to kiss the inside of your palm.

“I’m already yours. I’ve always been yours.”

[balioc]

Holiday Engineering: What Not to Do

We can learn a lot from Chanukah, because Chanukah is a garbage-tier holiday.

I mean this in a mostly-detached, mostly-analytic way. Like many people who were raised Jewish, I have some very fond and happy memories of Chanukah. Anything can accrue fond and happy memories, if you have a way of getting people to do it. But Chanukah is full of features that actively detract from its being resonant, impressive, memorable, or fun. It is an anti-advertisement for its community.

If you're a would-be designer-of-holidays, this is actually a really useful thing. Mimicking the good and successful holidays is quite hard; their quality tends to hinge on a lot of idiosyncratic hard-to-replicate factors, and "invent something as cool and punchy as the $WHATEVER" can be a tall order. But it's easy to look at a design failure and say, "I"m not going to do that."

With that, let's go into the details:

CHANUKAH: THE GOOD

Timing. It's a midwinter festival-of-lights. Solid start. Everyone loves those. Brightness and festival cheer, in the long cold winter nights, is practically a need for many. The holiday mostly skates by just on being the winter light festival for the Jews. A+. Or, really, we should knock that down to an A, because Chanukah usually comes too early to be ideal for this purpose, but -- still, quite good.

Traditional food (side dishes). Latkes are incredibly popular, and for excellent reason. If you're trying to settle on a food that everyone will love, "fried potatoes" is a damn good choice.

CHANUKAH: THE NEUTRAL

Symbols. There's really just one that matters: the chanukiyah (nine-branched menorah). Which is, on paper, a very cool and snappy symbol. Distinctive silhouette, ritual engagement, plus the allure of fire. But it loses a lot of points for the fact that you don't actually light the whole damn thing, and get the proper visual effect, until the very end of a long-ass holiday when everyone's enthusiasm and attention have ebbed. On the first night, in particular, you light just two candles in your chanukiyah, and it looks lopsided and sad.

Traditional food (sweets). Jelly donuts are fine, I guess, if uninspiring and uninspired. Chanukah gelt is pretty lame as candy goes...but from a holiday-design perspective, it's hard to go too far wrong with giving kids candy.

Music. "Maoz Tzur" is kinda pretty. "Oy Chanukah!" is kinda fun. That's pretty much it, barring some silly kids' music (and I guess that Adam Sandler thing). Nothing that will knock anyone's socks off. But, honestly, two decent songs is more than many good holidays have.

Gifts. Being the big annual gifting holiday is a double-edged sword. It's some super-powerful mojo, culturally speaking. People are obsessed with giving and receiving gifts, in a way that's very hard to excise or evade, no matter how often you trot out your utilitarian language about deadweight loss. Chanukah gets a lot of its traction out of the fact that it's the holiday where you get presents. But. (a) In the modern world, the gifting holiday is unavoidably a locus of stress and misery for many people, and Chanukah doesn't have nearly enough upside serving to support that burden. (b) Chanukah is bad at being a gifting holiday. The gifting is not well-integrated into the event, it's a tacked-on thing copied over from Christmas, and it shows. There's no real ritual surrounding it, no presents-under-the-Christmas-tree equivalent, certainly no Santa Claus. Worse yet, the eight-day-holiday thing means that either you need a set of gifts whose awesomeness is equally divisible by eight (mega-awkward), or else you have inconsistencies and disappointments.

CHANUKAH: THE BAD

Theme. What is the holiday about, when everything is said and done? What is our key takeaway message from all the shit we're doing. "God is great, God looks out for His people, God performs mighty miracles." Stop. Shut up. You fail. That's every holiday, if you're operating within a religious tradition. You need something more than that, something powerful and deep and important and special, to be even halfway-decent as a holiday. But for the vast majority of Jews (including Jews in the most orthodox and observant denominations), that's pretty much all you get. Because...

Mythology. The story of Chanukah, the holiday's narrative raison d'etre, is just unconscionably bad. In some extremely vague sense, it's a story about Jews overthrowing foreign oppressors and casting off foreign influences...which is already pretty bad from a modern liberal perspective, we don't like jingoistic ethnonationalism these days. But the actual events of the Chanukah story are less about Jews-against-foreigners than they are about Jews-against-other-Jews. It is a story about fanatics seizing power and murdering cosmopolitans. Virtually everyone hates that shit, up to and including the most tribal-minded Jews. The rabbis of the Talmud were pretty iffy about Chanukah for exactly this reason, and didn't talk about it much, with the result that the holiday doesn't have much in the way of supporting cultural infrastructure. And you really can't tell the Chanukah myth without that horrible stuff; it's so baked-in that it gets incorporated into even the most sanitized propagandistic Hebrew-school versions of the tale (with exactly the effects that you'd expect on Hebrew school students). The miracle of the oil feels like a tacked-on narrative coda, because it is, because without it the only possible moral of the story would be "kill your neighbor if he's not pious enough for you." But it's much too little, much too late. The miracle of the oil is super lame by miracle standards: no one is saved from danger, there are no memorable SFX, the whole thing is relevant only to the rituals of a long-vanished Temple.

[There are several lessons that can be learned from this particular problem, at multiple levels of abstraction.]

Structure. You can have a good eight-day holiday, but a festival of that length needs an arc. The days need to be distinct from each other. You need to be either building up to a climax, or -- more commonly, as with Passover and [the twelve days of] Christmas -- coming down from a main celebration at the beginning in a long pleasant haze of semi-special time. Chanukah is flat and internally undifferentiated, except for the addition of more candles to the chanukiyah. You can't sustain real holiday feeling that long, and there's no particular day on which you're supposed to do anything special, so it all just turns into a mush of "how much do we care right this moment?"

Activities. The traditional dreidel game is the worst, most boring, most unbalanced game in the history of games. Pushing it on children only makes those children hate Chanukah, and Judaism, and games, and you.

Traditional food (entrees). There's no classic Chanukah dish that can serve as a viable main course, unless you're one of those people who can happily eat fried potatoes as an entire meal. This is a glaring omission. It's particularly bad for Chanukah, because Chanukah has so little else going for it that it really needs to lean hard on the standard holiday "gather for a festive meal" thing.

Social role. As many people will eagerly tell you, Chanukah was a pretty minor holiday for most of Jewish history; it got big largely because of a marketing push in the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly because people got scared about the prospect of the younger generations assimilating, and wanted to give them a holiday to compete with Christmas. Which is maybe the worst idea that anyone has ever had. For more reasons that I can easily list here, modern Western Christmas is an absolute SSS-tier holiday, one of the very best of all time. Setting yourself up as a direct competitor to Christmas -- inviting your own people to make that comparison -- is tantamount to telling them that your traditions and your community are worthless and weak, and that they should join the ranks of the gentiles. And that would be true even if your own offering were something halfway decent. Trying to do it with Chanukah...it's like Estonia declaring war on the US. It's the ultimate "we have food at home." It is, if you'll pardon my saying so, Christian rock.

[ladybirdswritings]

Silken Webs & Pirouettes - Miguel O’Hara x Reader

Summary - Miguel is forced to dwell over the consequences of his own actions. Ballerina!Reader & CEO!Miguel. Alternate Universe with most of the characters included as seen in "Across the Spiderverse." Many cameos ahead. Miguel is a successful business owner but personality is canon. This is a steamy reader insert, Miguel x You! Enjoy and pls leave me lots of love and comments as it keeps me motivated <333

next chapter

seven ,, miguel’s POV

“You have some cojones, Miguel O’Hara.”

My eyes slowly lift from the place where they were once glued, the small tree. It still stands, the shattered and jagged bite of glass the most unavoidable ornament. Right in the enter for my eyes to see.

It’s been a week, one week of plain, suffocating normality. No clumsy girl, no doe eyes that I can only seem to fill with tears. No intimidating someone who I can’t guess the reaction of, no excitement.

My girls must feel it too. Maybe they liked having those stupid ribbons and pearly white smile bouncing around the office. Maybe they liked the distraction. Too bad. It’s better this way…

“Jessica, mi amor— though I always enjoy your visits in with me-”

She raises a suspicious brow at my words but I continue before she takes the first chance she can to interrupt me, as always…

“Today isn’t the day.” It really, truly fucking isn’t.

I sound apathetic, unbothered. Truthfully, I am bothered. I am bothered because it's been a week and yet I feel this uncomfortable burning at my mind. It’s inhuman, unnatural. I’ve yelled at dozens before, girls even sweeter than her. Girls with pretty eyes and pouty lips, melting into expressions of horror and sorrow. It was expected, needed. They needed to become better, to not be weak.

So why the fuck do I feel like I was in the wrong this time?

Jessica, coiled locks tamed back with a headband and stomach protruding with her soon to be first-born, she huffs as she sits down on my corner chair.

“This still work?” She asks. Stupid question. I regard her with dark, annoyed eyes and a single nod. She immediately presses the button, then heat and vibrations engulf her. She moans in content, enjoying the ease of tension in her back from carrying that child around.

“Oh yeah, it does. God I love this thing.” Her voice is vibrating.

Good, she should. It’s for her anyways. There’s no other moody, bossy and inhumanly hungry pregnant woman in sight. Gracias a Dios. Me mataría.

She’s distracted, I believe for a second that maybe I’ve just been saved by that expensive fucking chair but oh no, lately I’m just proving to be an unlucky bastard. She talks again.

“Where was I… oh yeah, that’s the problem, Miguel. It’s never the day with you. But shit, when I get curious and decide to check those security tapes and see you caging a small girl against the wall and making her hunch over in fear? Today is gonna have to be the day. What the fuck happened to morale? Why couldn’t you take it out on Moon, on someone we know, at least.” She doesn’t understand, I don’t expect her to.

I narrow my eyes, lifting from my seat. I don’t like being on her level. I feel suffocated there, with all these questions. Boss of my own empire and yet I’m getting an inquisition by a woman I hired. Regardless, my mind is clearer when I stare out at the city, looking down at all those people. I feel big, powerful. Like I know everything. I do, mostly. This time though? I don’t.

Me está volviendo loco.

And that’s because of that fucking girl. Es un misterio, un enigma. Never in my life have I sat across from someone I don’t fucking understand. I didn’t get this successful from not understanding the idiots around me, no. But her? I didn’t expect the dramatics.

“I don’t always like what I have to do, but I know I have to be the one to do it. Involving my personal life into her work is not only inappropriate but it is disrespectful.” I sound uninterested, lazed with my words. I know Jessica, they won’t be enough for her.

“You know what’s inappropriate? Your employees watching Lacy walk into your office in shorts that barely cover her nonexistent ass. You think they don’t know you’re banging her in between meetings?”

My jaw ticks, and I exhale all the air from my lungs through my nose.

“I know they know.”

I do. I do and I don’t give a shit what they think. I have urges, needs. No, not wants. Needs. Uncontrollable, demanding. My eyes glaze over my window, memories of fucking Lacy here with her pretty tits hung for the world to see. The thought brings me peace.

Jessica leans forward or tries too with that protruded stomach of hers.

“Oh you do. Okay, right. So that’s okay but a picture of Gabby isn’t?”

Gabby.

Mi princesa.

The name is like the crown on Medusa’s head. But I don’t let it freeze me, no. I don’t let it stop me from moving. Working. Breathing. Reacting. I react. I react before it can stop me and if that stupid girl would’ve done as she was told, she wouldn’t have had to be on the other side of those reactions.

I hate it.

Fucking hate it when they utter her name. Jessica… she’s lucky she’s pregnant and lucky she’s Jessica because coño, I would case her up against the wall too if she wasn’t.

“No, Jessica. It’s not okay. Lacy equates to a fucking— masseuse.” I snap.

“She’s massaging something alright.” She interjects.

“Carajo.” I exhale, reaching angrily at my silk handkerchief and tossing it with force to the leather loveseat. There’s no winning with her. Back in my throne, I collapse.

She’s infuriating, and she’s lecturing me over a girl that was only here for a week and has already caused so much trouble. Me está dando vueltas la cabeza.

“What is it Jessica, huh? What— are you dumbstruck by her stupid ribbons and worn-out clothes too?” It’s the only explanation for this. The girl must be a witch.

She sucks her teeth at that,

“Nope. I never even met the girl. Seems like it’s you that’s dumbstruck.”

Me?

That thought… it’s stupid.

My fists clench, a sting of pain burning at the place where she dug those nails into me. There’s skin dented there.

“Cállate.” I warn. But she’s Jessica. She’s not Mary Jane, not Cindy or any of my other obedient girls. Es un dolor de cabeza.

To no surprise, she does anything but shut the fuck up.

“Look, I could give less of a shit if your dick does a dance for her or not—”

“Dios mío…” She’s gone crazy.

“My point is— we don’t know her. We don’t know her, and she could talk. She could tell the story of how you emotionally and fuck— almost physically assaulted her to the Bugle and then what?”

I shake my head at that. She’s fucking wrong.

“I would never put my hands on her.” Not her. Not any woman.

Jessica displays two defeated palms up in the air, annoyance laced in their lines.

“But ya did, Miguel. You did when you grabbed her chin. And wether you and I know that it was softly or not, it doesn’t fucking matter. It’s about what they believe, what they see and you look psychotic on that tape.”

I turn my face from her, grinding my teeth as I search my mind for a way to answer back. To explain.

I can’t. I can’t and it makes me angrier.

“You’re not invincible, Miguel. People get tired of your shit and we agreed. We agreed that if you kept the reins on your issues, it would be enough. You don’t have to come to the gatherings or the holiday meetings. They know you don’t give a shit about any of them-”

“They’re employees.” I interrupt. Their job is to follow my orders and keep smiles on their pretty faces. That is morale.

“Yeah, they’re employees and they don’t get paid enough to deal with your shit.”

My eyes say it all, she knows that’s not true. Their checks are full. My girls have paid off debt, bought houses, taken vacations and bought all their materialistic heart desire. Some within their first year with me. Jessica sighs, shaking her head at my stubbornness. Silence blankets us and I fucking prefer it that way.

“My point is that people can walk, Miguel. They can walk when they aren’t happy. When they read the outsiders input on your bad behavior. Nobody wants to work for an asshole and fuck, I don’t blame her for walking out. Actually, I respect her for it. The girl’s shoes are practically falling off of her feet and she’s wearing skirts in the winter, yet it looks like she’d rather starve on those ice-cold New York City streets than work for someone who spits on her effort and time.”

Her words strike me silent. It seems like Jessica Drew is the only one who can make me have nothing to say. Què maravilla. I won’t admit that it’s because she’s right. She isn’t.

…

She might be.

My silence, it prompts her to continue. She shuts the seat off, groaning as she stands to her feet. She waddles to me, one hand on my cherrywood desk as she bows her head to speak to me.

“Look, I know this shit isn’t easy. I get that. You and I? We’re day ones. Peter and I watched you build this company up from the ground. We watched you make something of yourself. The bastard kid out of Nueva York turned into the bastard man above it. And I- … I lost her too, Miguel. Lost her. I didn’t forget her, and I sure as fuck don’t want to run from her. If someone was so fucking kind enough to put effort into making me that—”

Her eyes glow golden as they fall upon the small tree, on the shattered ornament with that beautiful, delicate smile. My girl. Against my own will, I find myself stuck, gazing at it too.

“Shit, maybe I’d promote them. That? That’s special, it’s kind. Most people don’t have the guts to do that, especially not for a boss— let alone a new one… but as always, you’ve laid down the cement on yet another grave. No chance in hell she comes back, no chance we fix this before Jameson gets his dirty hands on it.”

Jameson. Maldito cerdo.

It was his men that he sent out that day. All of them gathered up on my doorstep like fucking vultures, flashing their lights at the place where my baby girl just— fuck...

He was a lucky son of a bitch that day. I would’ve snapped that cockroach’s neck if it weren’t for Murdock.

Fuck…

I don’t like loose ends. No, I don’t like being wrong. I strive every day of my life to be anything but it. I was wrong once. And look what it cost me? My baby’s life. I won’t make the same mistake again. Not with my company.

Sure as hell not because of the balding bastard and a delicate girl with ribbons in her hair.

No.

“I’ll convince her.” I will. I’ll mail her check with a note attached. An invitation back. Maybe I’ll raise her pay. She could use it, anyway.

But Jessica fucking Drew. Always finding microscopic holes in my plans. She laughs at me.

She fucking laughs at me as she straightens her back, hands resting on the place where her baby kicks.

“Sure, good luck with that. She might’ve hunched over and cried but damn— I saw the way she dug those nails into you. She’s a tough one… besides, I think it’s best If you keep away. Don’t wanna make their new front cover story more interesting.”

Que mierda.

I raise my hand, pinching at the place where tension pools between my brows. Fucking Jessica. Analytical, frustrating, and always convinced she’s right.

She is tough… that girl. Un fuego.

I saw it when she sat in my chair and dug her nails into it, and I saw it when she dug her nails into me. I saw it when she pushed my hand away, straightened up and wiped those tears off her pretty face like they were nothing more than meaningless water on her skin. She turned her back on me. No one ever does. No one has ever not succumbed to my hand. And she’s lucky, I never offer comfort to any of the girls I yell at. No, they don’t need it. They’d accept it, regardless. Not her.

Un enigma.

Jessica sighs, turning from me and finally leaving me to be. Leaving me with no solutions, only loose ends. She must feel my eyes burning holes into her back. Frustrated fucking holes. She stops.

Carajo.

I sigh now, allowing my eyes to fall shut into the comfort of darkness. A place behind my lids where no Jessica Drew exists.

“There’s another gathering tonight, actually. Perfect way to win your people back before you even lose them.”

She’s smiling, she’s proud of her stupid little idea. I don’t need to open my eyes to see it. The ache in my neck makes my head fall into my palms— and though every part of me wants to tell her to get out?

“What time, Jessica?”

🏷️’s: @reirain @needybitez @migueloharastruelove @laysmt @maomaimao @daisy-artfield @poutysprouty @chorizobeets @luvlylaurakisses @to-the-endoftheline @bimb00

[oodlyenough]

apollo justice: ace attorney thoughts

over the weekend I finished playing AA4 so I wanted to try to put my thoughts in order. much to think about etc

spoilers for the whole game obv, but i haven't played AA5 or AA6 yet so any mention of those are speculation lol

I had heard some pretty mixed reactions to AA4 and I had a lot of reservations going in. It's also probably the AA game I've played that I've been the most spoiled for, which is a shame but probably an unavoidable consequence of waiting for the port while engaging with the fandom. I don't usually like being spoiled but I think knowing the broad strokes of what to expect actually helped here. I can imagine an AU where I blitzed through the first trilogy and onto 4 with no idea of what was coming and being... very upset and disappointed by the direction it took. Having several months to brace for things like Phoenix's disbarment, the 7 year gap, Trucy, etc definitely softened those blows and made me more amenable to them than I would've been otherwise.

Cases

For the most part I thought the puzzle solving was good and the pacing was solid. The puzzles were mostly challenging enough to be satisfying to solve but not so challenging as to be infuriating, and I don't think I needed a walkthrough at all. 4-1 is one of the best tutorial cases in the franchise so far (though I'd give the edge to 3-1) and 4-4 was a really cool finale. The middle two cases tbh I also found fairly charming, and there's usually a least one case in the middle that seems to drag forever, so that was a pleasant surprise. I played Investigations 1 right before this, and I thought both the puzzles and pacing in that game were frankly horrible, so AA4 won a lot of points just with that.

I did think Turnabout Corner and Serenade would be more relevant in the grand scheme of things. The half-spoilers I knew had me expecting a much bigger web of conspriacy than we ended up with -- I expected it to be more than coincidence that Phoenix got hit by a car, more than coincidence that the Borginian egg coccoons are related to poison etc ... like... I fully assumed this was going to tie into the atroquinine plot. But I guess not ... ? Lol

Characters

The new main cast are all very likable, despite my initial reluctance to have a new main cast to begin with. Klavier was an interesting change of pace as prosecutor, in that he wasn't particularly antagonistic outside of the court, nor was he particularly preoccupied with winning, but he was still fun and challenging enough to face off against. Trucy was fun and delightfully bonkers as all assistants should be. Apollo's longsuffering exasperation was hilarious. Ema is the BEST I loved having her as the detective I wish she was there all the time.

I loved Beanix, for the most part. I can see why he rubs some people the wrong way, and tbh I'm glad his last canon outing isn't ... this. But I didn't find him wildly out of character, or at least, when he was feeling "out of character" vs the trilogy it made sense given the intervening events. I also thought it was fun to see him from the outside and see what a galaxybrain 5d chess master he is. I do wish we'd gotten to see more genuine moments of him with Trucy.

Kristoph was fun as a villain, though I have to say fandom led me to believe he was much more of a mastermind puppeteer than he seemed to be in reality. I was expecting a whole decade worth of conspiracies! Instead he fucked up once and struggled to fix it for seven years, lol. I also found the Kristoph/Phoenix relationship a) very fascinating, b) not really what I'd been led to believe by fandom (shocker). I like the canon more though -- I like that instead of being a retread of the Dollie betrayal-from-someone-you-love it was two guys who hate each other being forced to play nice as part of their own schemes.

Criticism

I think it's fairly obvious AA4 was meant to be a soft reboot of the series, to pivot away from the trilogy cast and set up our new heroes in Apollo, Trucy, and I guess Klavier. I think this is probably the entire explanation behind Maya and Edgeworth (and others but lbr those are the big two)'s conspicuous absence... but that doesn't make their absence any less conspicuous. I can squint and forgive neither of them being there when Phoenix is accused of murder, even though I find that insane. I can squint around Maya maybe being off in Kurain during the Enigmar trial, even though I think they could've used a line of dialogue to explain it. But then we started playing past-Phoenix for huge portions of investigation and that started to fall apart for me. Sure, maybe he's pushing his friends away because he's depressed, or maybe he wants to keep Maya out of things because he thinks it's dangerous, or whatever -- you could at least throw in a line or two saying as much. Not mentioning them at all and setting AA4 so closely after AA3, where Phoenix fell through a bridge to save Maya and Edgeworth chartered a private jet, just feels ridiculous.

I also think, at the end of the day, the story here was focused on and pivoting around Phoenix. The core question of the game is "what the hell happened to/is up with Phoenix Wright?" I love Phoenix, so that alone isn't a negative -- except that I think it meant Apollo, Klavier and even Trucy felt underwritten. Trucy and Klavier have such personal stakes in the unfolding events with the Gramaryes and Kristoph, but we only spend a little time and hints on how that might influence Trucy, who mostly falls into the AA weird girl pattern of brushing off major trauma instantly. (Maya got this a lot too in the original trilogy.)

Klavier ... I like Klavier, but they did not do much with him. How did he feel about Kristoph going to jail? He doesn't seem to hold it against Apollo, which is uh, noble, but perhaps not believable. He says he values honesty and truth but do we know why?

Apollo, likable as he was, felt like a passenger in his "own" game, rather than a major character. He doesn't even solve much of the stuff happening in the big overarching mystery -- he is Phoenix's avatar in court, presenting evidence and clues Phoenix left for him. Unlike Trucy and Klavier, who I am pretty sure take a back seat from now on, I guess Apollo still has two more games to try and flesh himself out ... lol but I also know fan reception of those two is not great, so my expectations there are minimal.

Overall

A really solid game that I enjoyed playing, though I can see why it's controversial and not some people's favourite, if they really loved the trilogy. I think it's debatable whether this was the best/only way to continue the series after AA3. And I am excited to read and write a billion 7 year gap fics now.

[inthelittlewood]

Hey Martyn! So, I got into your lore because of Grian's Life Series, and now I'm just trying to find some stuff out. Anyways, I understand most of it, though I do have a couple questions.

What actually are LOOT shards/crystals? I know that they're soke aort of corruption in games of sorta, but how do they get there, how to they affect the game, and also how to disable them. It's just something I'm wondering about since I know you have to find the one piece, of treasure, but how does it actually help?

What are CHEST agents? I know that they're something almost as evil as Cruppy, which is really saying something, but what actually are they?

Are there any extra lore bits in Rats SMP that you can't get anywhere else? I just wanna know if I should grit my teeth and watch it sometime, when I'm done catching up on the VODs of Pirates (can't make it to streams for personal reasons, alas).

If you've come up with it, is there any way that the Watchers lore from the Life Series ties into the datastream hopper lore? Those two just seem a little incompatible to me - hopping the datastream, being captured by mysterious godlike entities... Or are they just two separate universes?

Do you plan on posting the New Life streams on your vods channel?

Who in Pirates is p!Martyn closest to in each faction, overall?

Also, I think you may have mentioned it on stream, but did you take the faction quiz and if so, which faction did you get? I kid you not, when I took it I got Kestrels all three times (with changing the answers to stuff that I would still do, but different than first time, I mean). Had to change it up just to see all the different faction descriptions...

Ok, I think that's it. Sorry if I have bad formatting btw, I'm typing this out on phone. Thank you for taking the time to read my questions! Absolutely love your work and lore, while at the same time having the humour some don't. Keep on doing an amazing job. Hope you find your one piece, of treasure.

Have an ice day!

That's something I want to unveil in the next lore drop, so I'm really sorry to say SoonTM but this lore doesn't have all that many secrets atm

2. C.H.E.S.T agents work are avatars controlled by human operators working for C.H.E.S.T and its evil underbelly. They're a known and trusted public computing corporation but the public doesn't know the full extent of their goals and resources

3. I try to be pretty concise and unavoidable when I do my lore stuff, so you should be able to find the Rats segments in this playlist with ease: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3MFbfp1zo8dooC57HqfbizRoc07PdlFQ

4. Maaaaaaybe, people have noticed some parallels / links and all shall be revealed one day for sure, even if I'm like gonna quit doing videos and streaming, I'd just lore dump whatever isn't revealed so it's out there ha

5. A lot of my New Life streams are me just doing the grindy parts of the SMP and with the server being somewhat inactive I want to save the crossover / collab content for the videos - I'm not sure people would flock to a 3 hour vod of me painfully and slowly building an outpost or hollowing out a mountain to make a factory ya know?

6. Kestrels - probably Sausage, with Oli as a close second. Herons - Owen or Water. Owen has an inquisitive gene like Martyn and Water likes all things musical. Nightingales - Ros is so different to Martyn that it makes for some wholesome and chaotic interations, you never know which you'll get. Kites - Bek is basically the only one he's interacted with, he had a little banter on the seas with Kuervo but it was brief

7. I did! I surprisingly got Kestrel, or I guess, not surprisingly huh?

[occasionaltouhou]

Okina is a goddess of disabilities. Many disabilities these days are mitigated through usage of prosthetics, replacing parts of the body with mechanical body parts, limbs, organs, etc. Keiki's haniwa army are comparable to robots. Her turning people INTO haniwa gives off a sort of cyberpunk "lose your identity to the machine" kind of vibe. Except, of course, people with disabilities getting help they need to function doesn't make them Evil or Soulless, it makes them dependent on the companies who produce the parts their bodies use to function. I feel like... I'm almost at something here. The intersection of Okina and Keiki, mitigating the unfortunate circumstances within one's life only to find oneself under the control of she who helped you.

before we begin, let's quickly bring up zun's own thoughts on keiki and the haniwa from scoow

i feel like the difference between okina and keiki comes down to how they see people. they're both pretty dismissive, of course, but the quality of that dismissiveness is different. keiki represents ai, algorithms, the uncaring machines that are nigh-unavoidable these days. she doesn't care about humans because to her - and to a lot of those humans - they're simply Components. they're already parts of the machine. fairly classic unsubtle dystopic storytelling. as zun notes, it'd be boring on its own, but it's presented in direct contrast to the other dystopia going on just outside.

okina, on the other hand, likes people. she just doesn't like them in the way that people like people. she likes them as stories, as ideas, as vessels of madness, as things to be examined and explored and dissected.

so bringing things back around to their ideas in relation to disabilities, you're definitely onto something in terms of prosthetics and the like being conditional, especially in different perspectives, but there's a difference there. okina, in spite of everything, would probably provide her aid free of charge, because she'd simply want to see what you'd do. if you want to become her servant down the line, that's great, but she's just as frequently gone and given aid just to see what'd happen. keiki, on the other hand, is absolutely that emotionless, callous system in action - after all, as a haniwa, you'll still need repairs and maintenance, and she's the only one who can do all of that.

so there is an intersection, but not as much of one as you think. i guess this was a really long-winded way of going "yes, but no", huh

[theguyinthemathexamples]

been a long while since I've been back, so here's something before i disappear again ✌️

so here and now, i would like to introduce to you all,

The Levels Of Self Awareness in SAGAU

(aka, the ones I've seen so far)

Warning(s): Cursing(probs), possible misinformation?, not really accurate?, my opinions, my humour and experience, and more.

Not proofread, we die like Guizhong in the Archon War.

1. None. Just- Just none.

As the name suggests, none. Just your average game.

No, literally, there's nothing to worry about here.

No worrying about getting sucked in while you're sleeping or anything of the like.

Nothing strange happens (for now) while you're playing, nothing like that.

No extra items, no extra friendship exp, no extra anything.

It's best to savour it while you still can.

2. "Since when did i get that??"

This is when the "getting extra stuff" and/or "extra luck" happens.

Either your characters have been doing some offcam grinding themselves, or you've just been collecting stuff for a while now and haven't really looked into your bag other than to switch gadgets.

Normally, you probably just caught one crystalfly, and yea it shows that, but either 1. it shows you got multiple, or 2. you have a tiny bit/alot more crystalflies in ur bag the last time you checked.

Maybe that's what they want you to think, who knows.

You'd also probably get lucky with a pull or more - usually nothing more than ten or so.

Your characters would also glitch a lil. Things like the sudden cancelling of idle animations, not switching onto the character you want/need, accidental skill/burst activation, and more.

Though, those only happen on occasion. It's not common enough for you to notice and just interpret as misclicks, but also rare enough to set off a raised eyebrow or red flag inside of you.

Nothing happens out of the ordinary outside of your phone.

Apps like Youtube, Google, Chrome, Photos/Gallery, etc. aren't tampered with.

You're good ... As long as the characters don't break through the 636f6465, that is.

3. "Yo," - Kaeya, 2022

It's probably time to delete and redownload Genshin at this point.

You might see hints of you - i.e statues, your favorite color/thing appearing here and there, characters mentioning someone by "Their/His/Her Grace" or some other title, etc.

Your Gallery might be affected, a few photos of a character and/or a view from Genshin.

Getting extra stuff also (probably) gets more frequent

Either you get them through mail or it just gets sent to your storage/bag directly.

The character glitches also happen a lil more frequently.

Oh, you wanted [thing] but didn't have the chance to do so? Don't worry, we'll get it for you, Your Grace. Just occupy yourself with some other miscellaneous tasks and you'll have it in no time.

Your luck also increases a lil more.

The character you've wanted for some time now but didn't get the chance to get them before? Yep, you guessed it, you lost your 50/50 atleast 4 times now.

Lmao I'm kidding

But seriously, if it's what you've been wanting for some time now, you're at least bound for one or a few 50/50 losses (unless you're guaranteed)

It's also why you (probably) get that one unwanted 5* because you wanted to try your luck/build pity.

Jealousy runs in the family, as they say. It's almost unavoidable, really. (looks at my lost 50/50s)

Hey, don't blame them! They were just... excited that you wanted to even pull on their banner, y'know?

Level them up and ascend them to level 20. I dare you.

I mean hey, atleast you'll get a free acquiant fate after you ascended them.

It only takes 7 Hero's Wit, 1 Wanderer's Advice, and their ascension mats.

It's basically a win/win, is it not?

You get a free fate, they get strength. It's fair for everyone.

You don't even have to give them a new weapon or any artifacts! Just leveling them up will do the job, will it not?

4. Caught You Slippin'

Oh, and if the Barbatos statue at Mondstadt actually changed into you, it's best if you just, yk, just look at the first • on this #.

It's too late to turn back now.

This is the "isekai" part of SAGAU, aka, where most fics take place.

This might be a major jump from the previous #, but hey, i started making this at 5AM.

But besides that, what AU you end up is all based on chance.

I'm sure you get the gist of this #. If you don't, i don't blame you.

Remember that one machine in Albedo's cave? That big rectangle/oval one? You don't? Good cuz neither do i.

Either you got sucked in and woke up somewhere in Teyvat, or you woke up to a bunch of hot people staring at you.

This part of the post is very sensitive to change, so I can't really say much here.

Just know that if you manage to find yourself at this point, you probably don't have a chance in getting back to your normal life without getting atleast a tiny bit of trauma.

C/N: Yea, it's me Your broy, chips ahoy, Cake.

Didn't expect me to post, did you? Well, you probably did, but hey, i like imagining nonexistent things

Anyways, have this while u still can cause i'm going back to nap again

Oh wait right i just remembered i haven't done my commissions

Nevertheless, thank you for all of your patience.

Peace — ★

[not-5-rats]

What if Sugarboo and Charlie knew each other when they were younger and so when Chapter 3 happens shit is weird

I like to think at first neither of them would recognise the other, but as soon as they asked his name Boo recognised who it was. They made hints towards their history and didn't intend on conforming their suspicions but when they found themself unable to sleep thay night they decided to confront Charlie.

(A/n: Using my SB insert name for this when names are like unavoidable)

Charlie was sat out on the stairs, Boo had tried to get some sleep but there was so much going on they just had to have some clarity. Even if it was something as simple as knowing that this person was really him! So they stood up, shifted hair out of their eyes and went out to the stairs.

That's when they saw him again, Charlie sat on the stairs just staring down at the many floors beneath them. He hadn't heard the door open and Boo was kind of relieved. They could hear him murmering to himself as they slowly approached, being careful to avoid the odd stains which littered the floor

"So this is what you've been up to huh Charlie?" they settled down onto the stairs beside him causing Charlie to jump slightly and shuffle away from them timidly.

"Huh? Em yeah, I guess so? I'm sorry I don't want any trouble, definitely not with...you?" He was glancing from Boo back to the abyss below, like he was scared to look for too long, but it was clear he recognised them. Where from? He couldn't quite tell yet.

"Hm can't say I expected you, of all people, to go down this route" they shrugged before crossing their arms and leaning back against the handrails "then again you always were full of surprises weren't you?"

Charlie paused, he knew that voice, he knew this person. Wait. Realisation hit him. His mouth fell open as the words caught in his throat

"Jayden?! That you?...shit em didn't expect to see you here- you seem to be doing...well?" They smiled at his suprise "I'd say I'm doing pretty good yeah, looks like you've had better times though" Boo chuckled expecting Charlie to do the same, he didn't, his gaze fell back onto the abyss below them "Hey no need to be ashamed man" noticing the expression on his face Boo hurriedly spoke again "so you got involved with some shitty stuff, that sucks, you did some shitty things whilst involved with shitty people, that also sucks" They smiled, gently putting a hand on Charlie's shoulder as they continued "but you're a sweet guy Charlie, and just because you've made some stupid choices it doesn't mean you're any less of a good guy"

Yet this didn't seem to comfort him, "Jay, I appreciate it, I really do. But some of the stuff I've done, the stuff I've done to...those two. I'm not a good guy Jay, I got myself into all this and now I don't think I can ever get out again. I'm real sor-" he was cut of by Boo shaking roughly his shoulder

"Dude, listen to me" they had turned to face him, it was clear they were annoyed. But it wasn't because of what Charlie had done in the tiem they'd been apart it, no it was because he genuinely believe they would be mad about that kind of thing "you ain't got anything to apologise for, nothing to apologise to me for at least. Yeah I know you've been a dick at points, an absolute asswipe from what I've heard but you're able to be so much more than that! You're better than all this Charlie, even if you never saw it, I saw it and...Casper saw it too"

They both fell silent, just staring at each other. It had been hard when Casper left, hard for both of them. And in their struggle to cope with the loss of one of their closest friends they ended up drifting away from each other. They still cared about each other, all this time later, a friendship like theirs was hard to forget. All the things they had done together, the secrets they shared, it meant alot to both of them.

"You can get out of this mess Charlie" their voice was hushed but they may as well have yelled, the silence surrounding them magnifying any little sound "and if you need some help doing so...I've got your back, even now, you were my best friend and I'm still here if you need me"

There was silence once more, but a different kind of silence. It was more comfortable, the point had finally gotten through, Boo wasn't angry at Charlie for what he had done. They still cared about him just as much as when they were kids. The two sat there, just staring down at the many floors below enjoying the memories they had from the simple (well simpler) times of their childhood. The three of them, Charlie, Boo and Casper driving their families mad by getting themselves caught up in any trouble they could. Sleepovers that ended up lasting days, once even weeks. The forests/fields they explored, the flowers they planted and watched grow, the paint that permanently stained their clothes, all those stupid memories that they held so dear. They remembered the stairs just behind their school, they used to sit there for hours on end simply talking about anything they could think of and now on these stairs, in this building those memories were mirrored...only a part was missing. They both knew it, yet it didn't bother them, they were happy having found each other again and who knows maybe one day one of them could find Cas again (how wild would that be)

[aihoshiino]

chapter 152 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 9

Aqua Hoshigan Status: White??!???!?!?

WELL DAMN. OKAY. LET'S FUCKING GO I GUESS.

With the End Of The Play… miniarc? interlude? wrapping up, Oshi no Ko officially confirms we're in endgame territory and slams down on the gas to barrel full speed towards its conclusion. This chapter was definitely a mixed bag, but I didn't dislike it and I SURE CAN'T SAY IT WAS BORING AT LEAST………….. It reframes a lot of things that lead up to it - I suppose that makes 'recontextualization' the keywork for this chapter, then.

The return to the volume 1 interviews in this chapter were kind of a surprise LOL. Given that the anime trimmed all but Ai's, I kind of took that as an implicit confirmaton that they weren't really that important so it's a bit of a jumpscare to see Gotanda (& Aqua's) revisited here. That said, revisiting them here is more about clueing the viewer that we're caught up chronologically with those flashforwards and thus that everything from this point on is officially uncharted territory, so I still do think cutting them from episode 1 was the right call to make. I don't think it causes any plotholes or incongruities since these interviews are really kind of incidental in the grand scheme of things… also let's be real I don't think any of us are expecting the anime to get that far into the story, even if I would give my left leg to see the anime team work their magic on chapter 137………………………….

That said, it's pretty fucking rich for Gotanda to try and talk big about the movie not being fictional when we heard from the horse's mouth that Abiko and Yoriko just fucking made up the dynamics of one of the most central and pivotal relationships in it out of thin air lol. Not only that, but like…

15 Year Lie is a movie with a pretty clear narrative. This by itself is natrual and expected. Narrative is the shape in which the human brain most readily accepts information but to create a narrative about something is to fictionalise it. Even when it's a narrative about real events - because narratives are, themselves, fiction. They have cleanly defined beginnings and ends, arcs and the promise of neatly packaged payoff and catharsis that is impossible to achieve in reality. To create a narrative about Ai's life in any form, let alone in a movie made for mass general audience consumption, unavoidably necessitates reducing her to a fictional character to observe rather than a fellow human to understand.

Which is… you know, horrifying! Fucked up and ghoulish! It's exploition of Ai in death just as she was exploited in life and I really wish the Movie Arc had actually focused on that uncomfortable undercurrent. This was, after all, supposed to be a movie about Ai.

BUT ANYWAY, CAST SCREENING OF THE MOVIE… we get some detail about reactions to the content but even as characters are literally talking about the movie and Ruby's extremely important role in it they just conveniently avoid discussing the content of it. But surely with all those important scenes that were set up and with the public release of the movie and Kamiki's side of the story to tell, we'll get some more details, right??? [audible copium huff]

Akane's tearful reaction is interesting, though. They're specifically singled out as not being to do with the content of the movie and her expression is a bit ambiguous - you could read is as resigned or relieved just as easily. I think she has clearly recognized something about Aqua's revenge in the movie which prompts that reaction but who even knows what's going on with akane at this point lol. sure not akasaka.

The girls all ragging on Ruby's acting was also kind of… like, yeah, remember when Ruby not being a good enough actress to carry a whole movie was kind of a huge issue??? The fact that this is resolved by everyone saying "yeah it was bad but idk aqua made it good somehow" was kind of silly lol.

I do really like Melt stepping in to stick up for Ruby, though - because yeah, of course hearing that would probably bring up some bad memories for Melt…! I also like that he doesn't try to shallowly flatter her or butter her up - he's frank about where she still needs to improve but hones in on the part that really matters. He really is a good kid.

That said, him sticking up for Ruby and her glomming onto him and calling him 'Master' (ししょ/師匠, shishou, as in the master of a craft addressed by their disciple, in Japanese) does kind of highlight that the MLRB mentorship that got set up in 144… went nowhere??? We can assume by Ruby's response to him here that it happened offscreen but it really does feel like a total waste of time to have spent what was effectively an entire chapter on setting up a new character dynamic that just didn't happen. Like… really, in hindsight, what was even the point of that chapter other than to establish that Melt… was also here??? I guess we still have the final arc for that to resolve into something but.

It just kind of sucks because I think a MLRB friendship could be really fun! I think they have the potential for a good dynamic and there's some really interesting parallels between them both that are ripe for farming. At this point, it's probably way too late for us to expect anything to come of it, so I can only daydream……..

tho it is really funny to me that at this point, since 143, ruby has had more meaningful on panel interactions with melt than she has aqua. What Did They Mean By This.

Gotanda and Kaburagi's talk that followed also left me with pretty mixed feelings. As expansion on/closure for Kaburagi (and Gotanda to an extent), I think this was fine… there's just a few little details that bother me, I guess.

On the one hand, I really like Gotanda's frank admission that there's no way to know whether the movie really captured the 'real' Ai. This is another thing I've talked about over and over during the Movie Arc but nobody making this movie is really in a position to be making that call - the only person who really could is Ai and… well, she's not here anymore to advocate for herself. Seeing Gotanda acknowledge that does scratch some of what was left unitched by this thread but…

Eugh. I don't know. Something about this movie, which is about Ai's life, Ai's tragedy, Ai's final push to be shown to the world as she was and to potentially be accepted being made to be about Gotanda's regrets just feels kind of icky to me. Maybe it just feels especially bad because it feels like 15 Year Lie has become more about every other character involved than her. I'm sure people are sick of me complaining about it, but it really does feel like Ai as a figure of emotional importance to this story is getting increasingly downplayed and dismissed and…… just feels bad, I guess!!!!

Kaburagi's side of this conversation is a lot more engaging, at least. This does tragically represent the end of my Secret Villain Kaburagi Theory and I feel decidedly mixed on the story choosing to frame him so sympathetically… but on the other hand, I do like how this implication of guilt and sense of responsibility reframes basically all his prior actions in the manga. It seems to confirm that he clocked Aqua (and thus by extension, Ruby) as being Ai's child right from the start and explains why he was willing to go so far in pushing their careers along at little benefit to himself - it was out of atonement to Ai.

that panel of young kaburagi and baby ai having lunch together. fuck, man. the fact that she took the burger out of the wrapper like she does in viewpoint b………….. babygirl i loev u so muuuuchchchchchchhchchchchsjsjsskasklsndkdkd

and……………………….. now it's time for aqua's interview. Jesus Christ.

I like the recontextualization of Aqua's interview here and the way we see This Mysterious Interviewer gradually pick apart his responses. I especially got SUCH a thrill out of his 'I won't love anyone' schtick being called out as the bullshit it is - one of my first really meaty OnK metas was of Aqua's interview segment specifically and I zeroed in on this sentiment specifically as being a lie that Aqua was trying to project and seeing the text back that up makes me a very happy Claire

But more importantly though… what Aqua has to say after that makes me particularly excited.

First of all, let's get it out of the way: KAMIKI JUMPSCARE!!!!!!!!! It seems implicit that he was the one doing all the interviews which is very fucking funny considering his presence in the movie itself, but I'm not entirely sure it changes or adds much other than giving Aqua the opportunity to death note speech his ass.

What is fascinating to me about this talk is what it implies about Aqua. Every time we've seen his revenge play come up before this, the very strong implication is that Aqua intends to die at the end of it, either by Kamiki's hand or his own. But here, face to face with the man he's dedicated his entire life to ruining, Aqua doesn't just state his intent to get revenge but his intention to reclaim his future by doing so. We've gotten some pushes towards this since 150 but this is the clearest declaration of his intent to finally seize hold of this second chance and fucking live it that we've gotten out of Aqua… honestly, ever!

And accordingly, we see Aqua return to his white hoshigans here. I don't necessarily know if I want to call this slam dunk confirmed but this WAS really exciting to see given how it falls in line with my interpretation of "white hoshigan = hope = future" and "black hoshigan = despair = futurelessness". Everybody has been spending the last few chapters basically begging Aqua not to throw away his future and hurt the people he loves just to chase his revenge and it does seem like they're starting to get through to him.

Is this development kind of rushed? Honestly, yeah! I would've loved to see this explored more from properly inside Aqua's POV and it feels especially abrupt given how hard he got ignored all during the post-123 section of the Movie Arc. But at this point, it just feels so fucking good to see Aqua say out loud that he wants to have a future, that he wants to finally move forward and live that I can't bring myself to care. I just want him to finally be happy!!!

that said how fucking funny is it that the closest thing aqua has gotten to therapy in years is from his estranged father, a serial killer

break next week…!

[upsidedownsmore]

god i feel fuckin ILL

still figuring out my feelings in regard to jade shadows but oh god my head is spinning, so cool yet so weird yet so many questions godddd idfk know anymore man

more spoiler ramblings below, please don't take any of it as concrete opinions cause i'm still kinda working it out in my groggy ass head

i do feel very weird about playing as jade after what happened to her the quest, i have a lot of respect for the story and it genuinely moved me but i also feel that the implications of building a copy of her and puppeting her around after all that feels...very jarring lol. i guess that's just the unavoidable nature of the game, but it really doesn't feel like it was addressed past hunhow saying "it's what she would have wanted", even though we barely got a hint of characterization from her other than being motherly i guess. idk i guess for a quest that is at least in half about her it felt like she herself didn't get as fleshed out as i would have liked, especially when people are kinda just saying things for her. weird feelings i guess

idk those feel like big accusations but i still overall feel like the story was really really cool and playing through the quest was cool, but it does feel like it pushes the boundaries of what can actually fit within warframe's framework without parts feeling downright disturbing in some of it's mismatched narratives. idk i'm gonna have to think about it more, legit feel dizzy lol

probably gonna just leave it at that though, i really don't wanna jump head first into discourse because i anticipate it being really toxic given the themes. i've already seen some of that discourse and like man some people are fast to get angry about things

[pillofmoonlight]

I guess the toughest part about loving people is to accept that they can leave you some day. Nothing is promised. Nothing good is forever and it might hurt a lot that the people you can't imagine living your life without, you actually have to live without them. they say "life goes on" and it really does but we often time really forget to mention that before the life actually starts to go on after losing people, it begins to stop too. it feels stuck. like the void people leave is unavoidable and we need to find actually healthy ways to fill it. recently had to let go off a bestfriend who i was dating for an entire year, it wasn't easy. it still isn't. i loved him more than i loved myself. i still do and i always will. he's a good man. but that day i read an instagram quote "the things that often feel like the end of the world, really aren't" and i said "i wish they were." it felt so heart wrenching that i could physically feel the pain in my heart and my whole body. i can't really explain how much of myself i had given to him. but the thing with loving is that it comes with these risks because even though we make promises, we make those promises only in hopes that they come true. we make those promises only because our heart desperately desires them to be true. nobody can promise anything neither you nor me. so when we do make those promises we mean them by heart but sometimes our lives have other plans and things don't work out. and that's okay. that's what loving is. it hurts. it hurts a lot. and that's why it takes a lot of courage to be a hopeless romantic. to not shield your heart and be loving is a hell lot of work. but i guess one thing this experience has taught me is that, people and situations change and yes, people can leave despite you loving them but what you did for that person was out of the goodness of your own heart and you are brave for doing that. don't stop loving. if the people are abt to leave despite your attempts to love them, they'll leave but atleast with a little love in their hearts. this world needs love. but also don't let your love destroy you. learn when to let go. it's a slow process but you'll learn it. but don't you dare stop loving. this world needs love. i need love so i can't really stop loving if i need it myself. sometimes it's just hard to admit it because we don't wanna be vulnerable or weak but we all do need love.

— pillofmoonlight