#i hope its something i can do... somewhat consistently

[theloveinc]

(this is a little, teeny, tiny bit preemptive but... i am and am going to be setting up my commissions blog over the next few days if you'd like to follow!! i'd love any feedback on fairness of prices and clarity of explanations just if anything pops up for you<;3 @loveincdotcom)

[thelingodingo]

BTS' Speech Styles

Like anybody, the members of BTS have their own speech patterns and language quirks that make their speaking unique to themselves. So I thought it would be interesting to make a post that goes deeper into the details of how each member speaks in Korean!

Jin: He talks in an old-fashioned manner (very exaggerated ahjusshi) and doesn’t use much slang. He also uses a lot of puns consistently, its quite impressive and cringy honestly. His vocabulary isn't as varied and wide as RM but his grammar is pretty spot on. Also very speedy at talking and hard to understand sometimes. On top that, he's great at getting his point across in serious situations without adding unnecessary emotion.

Suga: I think I once heard a fandom myth that he has a lisp (which he very much does not). But he does mumble a lot and stretches his ㅔ's, making it very difficult for even native Korean speakers to understand him properly. On top of that, Suga also speaks incredibly quickly, making it another thing that makes it very hard to understand him (no wonder he's a rapper). Sometimes, he speaks very swaggy. Sometimes, he speaks like an old uncle. Sometimes, he's like RM and gets very eloquent with his wording.

J-Hope: Because of his dialect, he sounds very warm and friendly. He also seems to enjoy using words such as 되게 (really) and 뭔가 (somewhat) veryveryvery often. His tone fluctuates alot and something about the way he pronounces words is very crisp and staccato-like. He can also be very serious and deadass as well.

RM: He speaks very intellectually and educated. Both his vocabulary and sentence structure is very high-level, sometimes choosing difficult and unconventional words. Every now and then he jokes around in the many different dialects he picked up from the rest of the members (he doesn't come from a place that speaks a different dialect like the others). His normal speaking is also very unique sometimes due to the influence he has from the different dialects of the members, over the years he basically created his very own dialect that's a mix of all the different dialects together. This makes his speech so nuanced and special and difficult to fully translate/convey.

Jimin: Has a very friendly and down to earth tone when talking to fans since he speaks informally. His speech pattern is very playful, sweet, and cheeky. During other occasions, he speaks formally to fans and has the most "feminine" sounding speech style. You can tell he selects words very carefully and delicately to be as nice as possible. In Korea, he has a nickname of Park DaJeong, meaning "Tender Park" due to his speech style. Sometimes, he slips into dialect which is when he sounds a bit "rougher".

Taehyung: Is a big fan of using and repeating adverbs such as 약간, 조금, 진짜, etc. In Korea, people call the way he speaks 태태어 (Tae's language) because of how interestingly different and lowkey peculiarly he speaks Korean. It doesn't have much to do with his dialect, he literally just speaks that way. (he can speak amazingly when needed, it's just that he has his own quirks when speaking in casual situations)

Jungkook: He speaks with hints of dialect quite often, making him sound very rough and most "masculine" sounding in Korean out of all the members. I think he has a very clear and smooth tone which makes it easy to listen to him, so if you're learning Korean he might be a good person to do listening practice. He's not as polished in vocabulary/grammar compared to RM and Jimin but he's still great at speaking.

Something I want to mention is that the younger members very commonly use honorifics/polite social conventions/formal speech towards the older members even with their closeness and family-like relationship. This is actually something about BTS that is highly praised among Korean society due to how professional and respectful it makes them seem.

There's probably more to analyze and delve into when it comes to the members' speaking styles and patterns but this post is just a general overview.

Please let me know if theres any inaccuracies or if you want more posts like this!

[matan4il]

Hello

I saw a comment you made in your post about eurovision that had a statistic of 90% of Jews are Zionists (I think this is what it said but I might be wording it wrong, in which case I'm sorry) and I wanted to know if you had a source for this information? I'm genuinely curious because I don't think I've heard this before.

Hi Nonnie!

It's so funny, that statistic is actually so very commonly recited among Jews, it's a reminder that what we consider "basic knowledge" is often more about our specific environment and experience, rather than a universal principle.

Okay, so to be accurate, this statistic is an estimate based on separate polls and indicators from different Jewish communities around the world, because as far as I know, no one has ever done a global survey on Zionism among Jews. Usually, this would make me somewhat reserved, but honestly, the localized polls and indicators are so consistent, and in every community we find that the overwhelming majority of Jews ARE Zionist, that I think the 90% of Jews are Zionist is somewhere between reliable to possibly even being a bit of an underestimate.

Something I find interesting, is that where they posed two questions, which asked Jews, "Are you a Zionist?" and another that asked, "Do you believe Israel has the right to exist?" the answer was affirmative in higher percentages for the latter. It's a little like the difference between asking, "Are you a feminist?" and "Do you believe women deserve equal rights?" Where the word 'feminist' has been vilified, and distorted, people might hesitate to define themselves that way, despite believing in equal rights for women (even though that's the basic belief of a feminist), answering "no" to the former and "yes" to the latter. Similarly, the belief in Israel's right to exist IS the definition of a Zionist, while the term itself is being demonized. You believe in a right for the Jewish state to exist, just like a state for every other nation has the right to exist, or even just based on the fact that a Jewish state already exists and destroying it would be a disastrous act of ethnic cleansing? Congrats, you're a Zionist. You can be critical of its current government, but you're still a Zionist. It's that simple. The fact that even when people are sometimes reluctant to define themselves as Zionist, they still believe in the fundamental principle of Zionism, is what leads me to believe that even some of these surveys, if they only ask, "Are you a Zionist?" are actually an underrepresentation of how many Jews are Zionist.

I hope this helps! Have a good day!

(for more of my posts regarding antisemitism and Israel, click here)

[risen-from-stardust]

lowkey just curious but do u have any tips for drawing yautjas? :]

Hi! Tbh this is somewhat difficult to answer, and is specially because of their heads that is the biggest "anomaly" compared to the rest of their bodies. I'll be just listing the things I noticed trough all my time drawing them, so I hope this helps.

First of all, their mouths are similar to ours in terms of how they open and close, but the skin of their cheeks is attached to the tusks. This is pretty clear when you look at pictures but when I first started drawing them this was one of my biggest isues.

The tusks are like extra bones connected to the jaws, formed by two joints, base and fang mobility.

Here is a little example using said pictures. It might seem like the upper tusks have three joints but no, they are just kinda close to the inner mouth and the upper jaw sides sometimes can be mistaken by part of the tusk. While doing this I noticed I use to do that tiny error.

Their heads are a lot more easier than some might think. The position and size of the eyes are same as ours because remember many of the movie predators are actors with massive build heads.

It consist in two parts: a crest and the hard skin that covers the base of the tresses, sometimes being more spiked, bumpy, or smooth

This, however, is not always the rule and the appearance of it can change drastically. Just look at Wolf and the emissaries (Sorry for the quality lol) or even Feral and Berserker but these two have the excuse of being a subspecies.

Hands are similar to us too but more scaly. Sometimes they have a side claw just like their feets an the texture depends, bumpy, plated or just textured like the rest of the boddy. The finger pads are just their normal skin but subespecies like Feral look like if they had something similar to gecko pads.

I tend to do them plated, is more fun to me

Gender dimorphism depends a lot on what you want to do. Its said that females are sleeker and with tiny, sharper mandibles and some others say they look exactly the same as males and bigger. Just have fun I guess.

I might add more but this is what I can think about for now, thanks for leaving your ask :D

[akirathedramaqueen]

The Five Stages Of Grief: Verosika vs. Stolas

Alright, guys, it's time to play the complete denial card and ignore for a moment what we've just seen in the last short Viv dropped like a fucking nuke on our heads (seriously, this woman makes me swear more than a sailor).

Are we going to talk about something light? Ha-ha, you are looking at the angstiest person out here. Sorry. No relief for you.

But maybe some bits of analysis will do? Let's go.

The setup

Some time ago, I discussed how differently Stolas and Verosika react to their breakup with Blitz in response to one of my previous posts (it might be useful to read that to have the whole picture, but it's not crucial—here).

S2EP9, Apology Tour, 8:05

If we recap that reblog, I find that Stolas deals with his emotions much better and processes them in a more mature manner than Verosika does.

We could stop there, really, but I wanted to explore the situation from a different angle. Using the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief model, we can pull out more nuance from their actions and words.

They both went through a similar traumatic event—Blitzø hurt them in arguably one of the worst ways possible. The circumstances, Blitzø's intentions, and the outcomes are slightly different, but at their core, they are both left broken and deeply wounded.

Left: S2EP8, The Full Moon, 22:00 Right: S2EP9, Apology Tour, 18:03

So, what about their personalities makes their responses to trauma so contrasting?

Disclaimer about the model's credibility

This is probably me being overly pedantic, but I want to point out that this model is deemed to be popularized by the media, and professionals’ opinions are conflicted—some say it is accurate while others criticize it for its lack of flexibility or go as far as to say it has no application in real life. The studies are also inconclusive—there are papers both in favor of and against this model.

What am I trying to say here? This is a silly analysis about silly demons from a silly show, and if you do happen to unfortunately experience grief in any way (I am so sorry you have to go through this!), it is essentially experienced by all people differently. You should not feel bad if you skip stages or if their order is messed up.

Okay? <3 Okay. You’ve got this in your own way.

Tomorrow will be better than today.

Stolas: A Classic Way

One of the things I noted in my previous post is that Stolas immediately recognizes the pettiness of the party, and I praised his remarkable ability to see through the issues with such events.

The one day a year the spirits can rise amongst the living and it's spent celebrating mutual pettiness. S2EP9, Apology Tour, 6:55

And don’t get me wrong—his own way of dealing with problems is just drinking them away, and that’s not healthy. That’s why he actually belongs at this party.

But emotionally, Stolas is much more aware of what’s going on with him and the people around him. I think that despite his drinking problem, this awareness helps him process his own grief faster and find resolution—or at least an outlet—in just one night.

Let’s apply the five stages of grief model to him and see what’s going on.

Denial

You can see the denial seeping through during their morning conversation—there are moments when he clearly hopes Blitzø will suddenly listen to him and change his demeanor, despite Blitzø being consistent in his brashness and hostility.

Left: S2EP9, Apology Tour, 3:56 Right: S2EP9, Apology Tour, 4:23

Can you see the hope in his eyes? Can you see how ready he would be to brush off the whole shitshow happened between them just for Blitzø to take at least a bit of accountability or accept his feelings?

Additionally, although it doesn’t fit the term perfectly, we could stretch the concept a bit and say that the following lyrics below are somewhat denialish. Notice, by the way, that it’s not linear to the suggested model—you’ll see why later.

But I, I keep on waiting Waiting to want you less than I do And I do, oh, I do, yes I still do want you S2EP9, Apology Tour, 11:08

'Cause I am not a thief, but you were mine to earn S2EP9, Apology Tour, 11:42

He struggles to accept that the relationship has ended (we struggle too, baby owl, and we're not accepting it… but it gets worse before it gets better), and he still waits for Blitzø to return, maintaining a possessive feeling—“you were mine to earn.”

Anger

Stolas's anger is vastly different from Verosika's—I promise to elaborate on it later.

He uses his anger throughout the morning confrontation with Blitzø to protect himself from Blitzø's attacks and futile attempts to retain the status quo. His anger serves to assert that he is done with the transactional arrangement and Blitzø's behavior.

As shocking as this might seem, Blitzø, I don't think I'm in the mood to "do sex" with you. In fact, I don't think I'm even in the mood to do words with you! So, how about you respect that? S2EP9, Apology Tour, 0:57

[Stolas]: Get out. Right now! [Blitzø]: What?! [Stolas]: I'm tired of this! I'm uncomfortable how you're speaking to me now! S2EP9, Apology Tour, 2:24

And all of this happens just the night after that disastrous full moon meeting! Stolas is pissed off, and rightfully so. But he still gives Blitzø the chance to correct his behavior, explain, and apologize. He asks Blitzø to leave him in peace but stays to hear him out until it becomes clear that Blitzø is not going to relent or give in.

His anger is not used to destroy those he is angry with; rather, it is directed toward keeping himself whole—at least as much as possible.

Bargaining

The whole verse of All 2 U, where Stolas contemplates what went wrong and if there's something they could still do, represents him trying to bargain for a better future.

Maybe there's something here for us to glean? For you to teach and me to try and learn? S2EP9, Apology Tour, 11:32

Of course, this is also something very useful for when they come back together (not if!). Despite Blitzø being the focus in the Apology Tour episode, Stolas has a lot of work to do, too. And him realizing that is a positive step.

But for now, from the perspective we’re looking at, this is a clear sign of him trying to trade anything he can for their relationship to flourish.

Depression

Eventually, Stolas breaks down publicly. He can’t hold the mask on anymore; seeing Blitzø is unbearable, as it reminds him too much of everything that happened and everything that could’ve been.

You! Why are you here? I don't want you here, go home, please! Let me not feel so sad! S2EP9, Apology Tour, 15:50

And he manages to compose himself incredibly quickly…

S2EP9, Apology Tour, 16:07

It takes him just 17 seconds to fall into crying and calm himself. But there was more brewing beneath the surface—he just didn’t show it.

Calm yourself, young prince. You know excitement is unbecoming of a Goetia. S2EP1, The Circus, 00:20

Acceptance...?

Then there's the guy who received more hate than he (allegedly) deserved—Better Than Blitzo guy. He asks Stolas for a dance, and Stolas accepts. He seems to quite enjoy himself there, actually… maybe even a tad too much (arguably).

Well, I just wanted to see if... Maybe... I dunno... You'd wanna... Dance? S2EP9, Apology Tour, 16:16

S2EP9, Apology Tour, 19:08

S2EP9, Apology Tour, 20:08

Did he move on? Did he get over Blitzø? We don’t know. I don’t think so. But that dance was certainly an outlet. A relief he was ready to accept. He was ready not to dwell on negative emotions and allow himself to feel something good for a change.

Verosika: A scorched earth way

Now, let’s see how Verosika is doing after all these years post-breakup. Surely she can’t care less about Blitzø now, right?

Anger

Right… No petty feelings at all.

S1EP3, Spring Break, 8:13

There's still resentment...

A selfish imp in the sheets And just as bad in the streets A reckless, heartbreaking freak! S1EP7, Ozzie's, 11:54

Anger… to the murderous degree, actually…

Fuck Blitzo in the fucking ass! S2EP9, Apology Tour, 8:14

Disrespect...

That cock-sucking motherfucker! S2EP9, Apology Tour, 9:36

Remember when I said their anger is different?

She uses hers to fuel her determination to destroy Blitzø’s reputation. She uses her fame and all her resources to humiliate him.

She never moved past anger. Never really processed it.

But wait…

Acceptance?!

S2EP9, Apology Tour, 18:55

All it took was just one long-overdue genuine talk. The moment she saw Blitzø's remorse and let her feelings out, she immediately warmed up, stopped using his dead name, and even gave advice—it’s debatable whether it was the best one, but I believe she meant well for both Blitzø and Stolas.

Hold it, Blitzø. Y’know, if you wanna change, it just starts with saying: “Good for him, hope he gets laid.” S2EP9, Apology Tour, 19:18

You know, I feel there’s a good chance that the next anti-Blitzo party might not ever happen again.

Because she leaped through all the stages in one night, and, maybe not at that exact moment, but she is on the path to acceptance. Finally letting it go.

Baby, I'm not over it, but I'm over you.

Could've saved many years of simmering in rage and destructing herself over Blitzø though.

Conclusions

Oh shit, now I need to somehow connect all the dots, don’t I?

Well... *chuckles nervously* I guess I gotta put on my nerd glasses and pretend I knew what I was doing here and not just threw shit at the wall and saw what stuck.

What I really wanted to say is that Stolas is much more self-aware and was able to work through all his feelings and process them in one day. He went through the complete journey and made immense progress. We don’t know how it will go further, but from what we’ve seen, his emotional intelligence helps him, if not to avoid problematic behaviors like binge-drinking, then at least not to burn bridges behind him, leaving space for understanding, forgiveness, and acceptance.

It’s not to say that Verosika’s way of doing things was wrong because she was angry and skipped through some stages. It was wrong because she made her entire personality revolve around it, turning bringing Blitzø down in any way possible into her ultimate life goal. It was wrong because she never processed it.

And it shows why, even after the break-up, #stolitz can still work, given that Blitzø is open about how he feels and Stolas is open to listening to it.

AGAIN! There’s no right way to process grief. But there should be a priority to heal and accept instead of doubling down and ruining yourself and everything you cared for.

(I am watching you, Blitzø hater. Don’t you dare to shit on my poor lizard. He has his own heap of issues and has had enough after that fucking penguin slur short. So don’t. >:()

[k0yaz]

For the request can I please have yandere Topaz x fem reader pet play NSFW one shot? Basically, she trains her darling to be obedient to her.

it wasn’t supposed to end up like this.

Pairings: topaz x fem!reader

CW: nsfw, afab reader, sub reader, dom topaz, yandere themes, not romantic/meant to be romanticized, themes including manipulation and fear, somewhat dark, collaring, pet play, mind break, psychological torture, dubcon (I think?), topaz is ooc bc she would never 💔, use of her real name, fingering, marking, grinding, slight praise (pretty girl), crying, slight sadism, not proofread.

A/N: glad that u read my rules regarding yandere, but for those who didn’t or are seeing this post for the first time THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE ROMANTIC, IT IS MEANT TO SHOWCASE MIND BREAK AND MANIPULATION.

Faint ticking of the clock repeatedly rang within your eardrums as you aimlessly stared at the polished ceiling above you. How long had it been? Weeks? Months? You couldn’t tell at this point. Topaz had you under her thumb for long enough to where time didn’t matter anymore. You squinted your eyes slightly, losing your sanity to the never ending ticking, along with the way you were practically confined to the couch. Hoarse exhales resounded in the room with each uneven breath you let out, the tight collar encircling your throat making it harder to breathe.

It wasn’t supposed to end up like this.

At the time, she just seemed cordial and harmless even. A stark contrast to what the IPC consisted of, not to mention its rather destructive activities. Getting to know her at the time was something you looked forward to frequently, and you often tended to enjoy Topaz’s company. Not to mention you found Numby adorable too. She would often send you gifts—tokens of her appreciation toward you with such a warm smile, that you’d hardly ever question why she went so far as to spend so much just for you. And only you.

Everything was fine. Everything was fine until she uttered that wretched confession. At that moment, it seemed like a harmless “I love you”, smoothly rolling off of Topaz’s tongue as she averted eye contact from you, hoping you would reciprocate her dreadful obsession. What was a polite declination, informing her that her love was unrequited, evolved into a hostile string of screams and frustrated sobs which you can’t even recall anymore.

That encounter didn’t take long to get physical. And before you knew it, your vision was all blurry with a tight collar clamped around your neck, and wrists pushed against the mattress, confined with rugged, prickly rope restricting your movement. Her twisted fascination and so called ‘love’ for you only resulted in her keeping you like a prized possession, just awaiting the day you’d finally feel the same way.

Every day, you would just sit like a helpless animal succumbing to your despair, eyes locked at various random corners of her house and losing yourself in thought. The only other actions beside that were eating and sleeping, occasionally even uttering a word or two to Topaz when you had to. You didn’t exactly have much of a choice for that last part. Topaz had kept you shackled long enough to see your eyes darken to a now soulless shell of a person, incapable of thinking for yourself or doing anything besides basic needs or following orders. She never harmed you however. She could never do such a thing to her sweetheart. Rather, she let you be—letting you realize that you wouldn’t be leaving her anytime soon. She wouldn’t allow it.

Gradually, you began speaking to her more. You clearly didn’t find any joy in it, or maybe you did. Maybe it was just you going so mad to the point where you needed company of some sorts. Weakly inching towards her while she was working or taking care of business while seated next to you, attempting to sit up with what little strength you had in order to hold a conversation with her. In response, Topaz would immediately cut off what she was doing to come speak with you, delighted that her beloved finally started to warm up to her. Every word you muttered during the conversation was fatigued and hoarse, yet atleast you were finally talking to her once more.

A sudden tap on your thigh pulled you out of your dazed state, making you slightly push up your chin to look at your ‘girlfriend’ glancing down at you.

“(Name), you love me..and only me, right?” Topaz began, a reticent and barely visible smile tugging at the corners of her lips. You forced out a pathetic “mhm”, taking a small gasp of air as you had already strained your voice too much from that simple noise. She closed her eyes, breathing out sigh which you couldn’t tell the emotion behind. Perhaps it was disappointment? Relief? Knowing her it could be damn near anything. Suddenly, you couldn’t help but notice her fists balled up behind her back, seemingly grasping a lengthy bundle of dark red rope bunched up in her hands and hidden behind her back.

Revealing the rope cloaked behind her back, Topaz suddenly urged you to sit up, loosening her grip slightly and letting the rope pool down for her to thread her fingers through in an untangling motion. You felt an uncomfortable lump in your throat seeing Topaz scramble around for the burnished metal hook located at the end of the rope, a satisfactory, yet frightening grin crossing her expression as she snaked her free hand around the back of your neck. Her touch felt so soft..so right—like silk brushing along your nape with a grip so gentle. Her seemingly innocent touch nearly made you relax and lean your head back against her hand, almost making you forget the malicious intentions behind her so called loving contact.

A loud click echoed along the room as the prong clamped down and locked against the opening hole, sealing the leash against your throat. A weary gasp fell from your lips upon feeling Topaz immediately tug on the leash, burning the skin of your throat slightly as she grasped onto the rope controlling you like a puppet along with that god awful leather circling your neck. You were silenced by her thumb abruptly pushing against your bottom lip, pressing down on the feverish and worn skin as her index finger slipped below your chin.

“Ah. You’re still not listening to me…not completely atleast.” She muttered, her azure eyes piercing into your gaze as if she was staring directly at your soul. Gnawing on her bottom lip, she thought to herself for a moment, eyeing you up and down as your chest rose and fall with each staggering breath. Silence crowded the clearing for a solid moment, allowing you to briefly snap back your sanity for a moment and feel an uncomfortable pit in your stomach as the gravity of the situation dawned on you.

Topaz clicks her tongue and tuts, still reeling back the end of the leash fastened onto your neck. “Not good enough. Just not good enough.” She grumbled in slight frustration, her grasp becoming tighter as her knuckles grew more pale from her agitated state. Fear fogged your mind upon seeing her so…mad. It was just like that one time. Of course, you knew that she’d never directly harm you physically…yet that gnawing feeling in the back of your mind always told you otherwise.

You stumbled forward at the sudden tug on the leash once more, finding yourself face to face with Topaz, your noses brushing against each other as her hot breath fanned against your cheek. “To…paz..” you drawled out pitifully, suddenly being shushed by her touching foreheads with you and muffling you with her palm as she covered your mouth.

“Jelena.” She corrected with a low, breathy voice. Her intimidating gaze only felt like a spear was twisting in your stomach, adding to your growing apprehension. Nodding in response, you began to cautiously comply with each word strung out of her venomous lips. She bowed her head down to meet your flushed throat, placing a trail of attempted soft kisses above your collar. “Promise you’ll listen now?”

You cleared your throat, looking up at her with dreary eyes as you exhaled deeply. “I’ll listen…Jelena.” You muttered, avoiding eye contact with her. She immediately grasped your chin, fingers digging into your cheeks as she insistently turned your head to face her with a twisted, yet elated smile adorning her lips. “Good.”

Reclining on the couch, Jelena now gave a more gentle tug to your collar, beckoning you to ease yourself before her. Of course, you weren’t one to refuse—you obediently relaxed your shoulders, seating yourself between her thighs with an anxious and fearful pit in your stomach.

The moment Jelena began to slowly strip your clothing down, sliding your shirt off of your shoulder and running down your arm as the fabric glided along your skin, you couldn’t help but feel a sort of..excitement. Were you so mentally far gone that the woman who kidnapped you was arousing such an exhilarating feeling within you? It didn’t matter anymore. No matter how much you believed that you wouldn’t listen to her, your mental efforts were futile. Jelena broke your mind to the point where you knew that you were made to obey her.

Heavy breaths slipped past your lips as your clothing was completely discarded in a pile at the foot of the couch, skin flushed as Jelena’s traversing kisses tainted your bare body. Bites and marks littered your rose tinted skin as you whimpered in her grasp, feeling her hand sink between your plush thighs to brush her middle finger along your slit while still kissing your body.

Quiet moans were lodged out of your throat as your head fell back against Jelena’s shoulder, eyes squeezed shut and brows knitted. You couldn’t help it. Part of your mind was telling you not to succumb to her antics, yet your mind blanked the moment you felt her middle and ring finger part your walls as she pushed them in, ridges of her fingers dragging along your cunt clenching around her digits.

Pathetic whimpers fell from your lips every time her fingers curled inside you, each thrust jerking a new noise out of you each time as you clawed at her thighs on either side of your waist. Jelena only smiled against the side of your neck upon feeling your pussy throb around her drenched fingers, letting out a satisfied hum as her free hand brushed against the front of your throat.

Slipping a finger into the blistering leather, she gave a gentle pull as she angled her hand upward, moans falling from her own lips as she ground her clothed clit against you from behind. She relished in your soft whines and hiccups whenever her palm roughly massaged your clit, finding herself overjoyed by your obedience and willingness to do this with her. Waves of pleasure swept over your body at her slick coated fingers scissoring themselves inside you, stretching your cunt out impossibly wide as tears rimmed the corner of your eyes.

Jelena leaned over to whisper in your ear, soft lips brushing the shell of your ear as you craned your neck to meet her gaze. “You’re such a pretty girl, (Name).” She slurred, still gasping out from her own stimulation as the couch grew damp from both of your fluids moistening the couch. Your grip on her thighs tightened, digging your nails into her plush skin, hips bucking up in quickened motions as your climax built up closer and closer. Jelena’s brows furrowed at the sting from your nails dragging along her thighs, but she wasn’t mad. Who could blame you? Especially when your response to her touch was everything she yearned for. She gave a quick pull to the collar to ground herself, breath ragged as her sweaty skin stuck to your own sweaty, bare back.

A choked hiccup was drawn out of you at the tug on the collar you hated so much, hips grinding down onto her buried fingers in your cunt and your expression practically pleading her to not do that again. Neither of you had spoken much, barely even during this moment. Jelena didn’t want to mess up anything with useless words when her actions could show you how much she loved you. After all, words led to you rejecting her in the first place and driving her to such drastic measures.

Shallow breaths circled the room from the two of you as you rode out your orgasm, the collar making your throat all the more uncomfortable and scratchy when you moaned loudly at your climax. Your own soft pants were audible in your ears as your head hung low, trying to recover from your intense orgasm. You curled up against Jelena, breathing slowly evening itself out as the collar made it near impossible to say anything, and only allowing you to nuzzle your face against her white hair to seek comfort.

Jelena rubbed your cheek reassuringly, heart melting at the sight of you all ruined with tear cracks decorating your cheeks and relying on her as if she was your lifeline. Your eyes shot open at the sound of a click, along with the sudden cool air caressing your reddened throat, your breathing becoming suddenly relaxed and more comfortable as she gave you a soft kiss on the forehead.

“You’re finally obedient to me. I trust you now, sweetheart.”

You cuddled up to her, closing your eyes as your breathing evened out altogether. You felt content, happy with her now. Yet, that comfort was mixed with a twinge of fear still lingering in your mind. You would be fine with this now. You’ve spent so long with Jelena that you would’ve accepted your new conditions with her. But there was just one thing that ate away at you like a subconscious knowing that you can’t brush off.

It wasn’t supposed to end up like this.

A/N: I told u this wasn’t going to be romantic and more mind break type shit and I apologize if it’s too disturbing but regardless I hope u like it

also, ik im usually silly with my content warnings but this time I made them a little more serious since this legitimately needs content warnings. BUT this was interesting to write and I did enjoy it!!

@hedgehogthetraveler <3

[justlarkin]

Say Lark, which relationships and ships featuring MC do you like the most?

Oo, some people can probably already guess who I'm going to mention here because I've talked about it before. In general, I really like the relationships where there's somewhat a unique understanding or dynamic between them.

1. Shennong x MC: they're both cut from the same stubborn, self sacrificial cloth, but MC is more of a representation of who Shennong once was before he gave up hope. I've mentioned it here since Chapter 10 set up their dynamic wonderfully. There's also just the banter, the blatant favoritism towards MC, the teasing and flirting, the reckless delinquent x nagging healer dynamic. This one feels canon after the MC x Summoners ships tbh since LWs obviously favors this one.

2. Nomad x MC: grumpy middle-aged man who can't catch a break x rowdy dumbass dog. Okay, MC traveling back in time during an overworld lap and interacting with Nomad in the past is one thing since they've done it before, but it becoming an integral and consistent part of his backstory is another. MC was the one who saw him at his lowest, who saved him when he had nobody else, who pulls him back when he's gone too far. While everyone else in Utopia has no faith in the future, MC has given Nomad something to continue striving for. Even after having their memories wiped in Nightglows, Nomad still returned to the battlefield he dreaded because he wanted to be with MC. That's how much he cares about them. They're hard programmed ride-or-die, I fear.

3. Tetsuya x MC: maybe it's the hatefuck, friends with benefits vibes I'm getting from them or maybe its the Romeo and Juliet dynamic. Okay, it's definitely those two things, but I also appreciate that Tetsuya doesn't go crazy about MC like most of the characters. To him, that's just some annoying prick who he's cool with sometimes and can relax around since he doesn't have to be on guard like he is with his actual friends. It isn't that romantic sounding, but there's comfort in the distance of their relationship and that's enough.

More examples: I love Hermes desperately craving companionship, but masquerading as the untrustworthy villain the world painted him as while MC can see through all of his deception and still accepts him for who he is. I love that Shinya can find someone to relate to with MC and that he doesn't have to worry about his power with them because they're immune to it. I love that Andvari only seems to care about riches, but sometimes MC is able to rival that love and Andvari also makes sure to exploit MC include them in his business deals first. These kinds of relationships are so cute and special to me.

Wait, the Summoner ships are also really good as they all have their own unique dynamics with MC and motivations inspired by them.

[roachfun]

This is probably a wild thing to get but your “Gojo should stay dead” post has got my unmedicated ass vibrating.

(I’ve only read jjk0, besides that literally all of my exposure has been via 3 video essays and fanfic… I basically got into the series backwards and tbh it’s an interesting experience…)

And tbh I agree with you more than not. Even though the view I have of the character is so fucking warped because jjk fanfic is too the gills filled with smut.

Because what I’ve gathered from the video essays and the few bits of fanfics that actually tried getting into his mind… is that the man is gd tired.

A god complex the size of the sun, that’s only ever been challenged once by one of the few people he ever formed a genuine connection with, and it was challenged as that person was leaving him. That incident may have motivated him to change, but that change was predominantly if not exclusively external, he didn’t really do much self reflection.

After Geto left, Gojo did better (became a teacher, warding Megumi, not letting Yuta be executed) but he didn’t work on being better (god complex, recklessness, belief that his way is the only way with no real consideration for the effects those decisions have on others)

He’s selfish, arrogant, and reckless, he doesn’t seem to take much of anything seriously and that may be a persona (again, I haven’t actually read jjk yet… the ending of mha did the characters, narrative, and audience so gd dirty I need to know how jjk ends so I set my expectations accordingly) but I can very much see this man never really developing his sense of empathy because he never really had any stakes… like he has some understanding, but the god complex and the fact people around him constantly reinforce it… he can’t put himself in other people’s shoes, there’s a detachment from reality that would read as delusional for anybody else, but he has spent his entire life being told he is the strongest with nothing ever being able to prove him wrong.

Than on the flip side of that god complex, honestly for a good while, and still sorta kinda… to me he reads as passively suicidal. (I know “Word of God” can be controversial regarding character analysis because of its absence in the base text) but the fact Gege’s rough rundown of Gojo’s daily schedule was basically “he sleeps for about 3 hours and spends the rest of his time working, his sweet tooth is actually somewhat practical as he uses sugar as a stimulant.” That’s not good for your noggin. Add the isolation caused by his status and his god complex, I see him coming to the conclusion that the only way he should die, is in battle.

And he did! Even if wasn’t in the “final sacrifice that ensures he becomes a legend” sort of way I think he would’ve hoped for.

But that also felt… right? (Certainly not fair, Gege openly admitting he kills off fan favorites for the shock value does dampen the possible emotional impact that could’ve been achieved… but I digress)

Every time Gojo fights, and I mean properly fights, he’s smiling, it’s a game to him, a chance to show off, to assert his dominance and reaffirm his status… so him dying so suddenly that his legs are still standing as his upper half falls to the floor, he’s lying there choking on his own blood as he bleeds out and Sukuna saying it “cleared his skies” (weird phrasing, but I think that’s a cultural/translation thing) it could’ve been a gut punch of a tragedy that amped up the stakes of the final conflict! The protagonists’ trump card is gone in a handful of panels and a flick of the wrist! He’s bleeding out on the ground as the big bad seems to reach a moment of genuine inner peace! But the backtracking and Gege’s history lessened that significantly

tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that Shonen Jump had something to do with it… the motivations for Gege’s writing choices are questionable to me (it feels spiteful and cheap) but they’ve been consistent until now, what changed?

Anyway it is… 5:45 am… I should be asleep, but I’m here vomiting character analysis based on partial information in your inbox… I hope you have a good day/night/whatever is appropriate for when you receive this

I hate that you had me read all that, but I couldn't agree more with most that you said (except maybe where you call him selfish and I lowk think geges killing system is fair and I like it a lot but🤷).

Anyways, I don't know how to really respond to this since you basically did all the talking lol (plus I'm tired from reading all that and just got out of school).

I do have a question tho. how did you start with jjk0??? Like how does something like that happen. Also you haven't watched the anime or anything😭???

Anyways, thanks for dropping this essay on me have a good day/night or life in case we never speak🩵

[danses-with-dogmeat]

Day 31 -- Edward Deegan

The (nsfw) details for Kinktober 2023, Day 31 are just below the cut!

Minors, please don’t interact.

Aphrodisiacs with Edward Deegan x g/n!Sole

Lordy lordy, how I was SO excited to write for this man. And hopefully this doesn't disappoint!

Sorry it took so long to get out as well, some life stuff came up this past week that held me up, but it's out now! 😁

I hope you all enjoy immensely lol 😏

Also, thank you to everyone who indulged me this October! Your support (especially with some of these lesser-known characters) was absolutely amazing! ❤️ I'm going to be taking somewhat of a lil break for the next couple weeks to post everything on AO3 and recover lol, but after that, I'll post an update and see about opening up requests for the first time in... Jesus, a VERY long time. I'll talk to y'all then!!!

Here is the link to my  Kinktober 2023 Event List so you can stay up-to-date, or re-visit these works as you please.

Included: Aphrodisiacs, masturbation, fantasies, voyeurism-ish, attempted confessions, actual confessions, kissing, touching, hand jobs, affection, sweetness, cuddling.

Words: 4.6k

--

The door burst open with a crash, almost rattling off its hinges in his haste, in his salacious wrath and desperation. Edward closed it just as aggressively, feeling the surface of his skin itch, feeling his breath pull in with heavy, heady gulps that had his chest straining at the seams. Sweat poured from him, in a way the ghoul didn’t even know it could, with his ruined skin. 

Is it happening? Is it… working?

He hoped so. 

After the hell he just went through? The embarrassment of the overwhelming heat that was encasing him, the labor of his breaths, the haze in his expression. Normally, he’s cool as can be, smooth, stoic, even, but he was gasping, shaking, and more so than that, he was tenting out the front of his cargo pants to the point of blunt obviousness. 

The symptoms don’t matter. He told himself, as the memory of Sole's baffled expression flashed in his foggy mind. As long as it works, none of it matters at all. 

They’ll see him, for the first time, he hoped, Sole would see what he was before he was… this. 

Edward didn’t like to wave his own flag too vigorously, no, he wasn’t a vain man, but he had been… maybe handsome was too strong a word, but he hadn’t been this, that’s for certain. Jack had reminded him time and time again, that he had been more attractive back before his ghoulification, but now he was more intimidating. It made his job of protecting the family and occasionally threatening people a bit easier, they both agreed on that account. 

When it came to Sole though… he wasn't sure he wanted to be intimidating. 

He didn’t know what he was doing, trying to get wrapped up with a pre-war widow(er) like them, but logic had nothing to do with this shit. Before them, he hadn’t cared, hadn’t minded the way he looked, hadn’t minded his solitude, his loyalty to this family and lack of contact with anyone outside of it. Edward had always promised not to dabble in Jack’s serums, no matter what outcomes they promised, but when it came to Sole, when it came to being… acceptable by their standards, he’d thought this was a good idea, thought it could make him… well, desirable was another strong word for him to use, but he at least hoped they could see him as something more than Jack Cabot’s bodyguard. 

Edward growled as he tugged his hat from his head, throwing it to the worn, wooden floor below. His room was dark, musty, and consisted of nothing more than a weapon’s trunk, a dresser and a single bed on the far side of the little room. He cast bits of armor and clothing over the whole of the floor as he moved towards that shoddy mattress, hearing it squeak and protest as he laid back on it and tugged at the stiff fabric of his cargo pants. His underwear followed shortly after, both being kicked to the base of the bed as he spread himself out on it. 

He felt he could crawl out of his own skin, hell maybe he wanted that. Maybe the transformation was happening now, but… goddamn, why was he so hard? Why was his mind so... stuck?

It’s true, he was usually thinking of Sole these days, but never this… disrespectfully. That curious expression of theirs as he excused himself from their and Jack’s meeting, the way their eyes had followed him out, the concern he saw there, right at the end. Oh, but how he craved their attention, even when it worried for him. 

He imagined the sort of expressions they’d make if he had his hands on them now, if he could’ve stayed, thrown Jack out of the dining room instead of leaving himself. He could take them over the table, lying down the dining mats to keep the wood from harshly bruising their soft skin as his hands moved over their body, as he laid overtop them, pressing them into the oaken hardness until they were arching against it, setting his mouth on them, his lack of lips, his hot tongue, hearing them gasp, feeling them grow needy beneath his worshipful touch. 

Edward’s breaths left him in pants now, very nearly moans as he found his dry, rough hand moving over his rigid, drooling cock. 

What the hell?

He hadn’t even realized he’d grabbed ahold of himself, he’d been so wrapped up in his fantasy. Already, the sensitive skin around his shaft burned with the ungentle friction of his hand, but… he couldn’t stop himself, no matter how he tried to use logic, tried to think about the pain his thrusting palm was causing him, it was even more painful to consider pulling away, to leave himself stiff and wanting. 

It was impossible, too, not to think of Sole. As much as it made him feel dirty, it made his teeth grit and his chest ache, there was nothing else in Edward’s head. No thoughts beyond them. He had no past, no present, no Cabot issues, no frustrations beyond the need to be near to Sole, the want to feel them in his arms, the gripping, dizzying necessity of feeling their warmth all around him, caressing, encasing his cock. 

It was shallow, it was rude, it was creepy, but fuck… it felt too good. 

He kept imaging it, in details like brushstrokes of a world-famous masterpiece, he saw the light in their eyes, the way their hair spread like a crown around their head, splendid and mussed from his attentions, the glisten of their spit on their lips, of his spit mingling there from their recent kisses, that vein bulging in their neck from the strain of holding back, from the greatness of the pleasure he brought them. 

“Sole, holy shit…” Edward rasped through gritted teeth, hearing the slap of skin as his hand moved rapidly over his erection, hitting the base of him with such force it had him flinching and bucking into his touch in the same movement. 

“Wish you were here.” He growled out, his voice a dry husk, breathless and scratchy. 

If they were here though, is this really what they’d want to be seeing? Want to be doing... with him?

Probably not. Edward’s mind tried to reason. Still though, shit doesn’t stop me from wanting it. Needing it. 

What the hell was in that serum? 

 The ghoul felt his cock might burst into flames with the increasing friction of his hand. He felt the foreskin catching at his textured palms, his calloused fingers, he felt pre-cum drooling down steadily, slicking what little it could as his hand tugged and bullied himself until tears sprung to the corners of his pale, bloodshot eyes. 

Sweat poured in rivers down the grooves of his flesh, unchanged, unsmoothed and still just as ghoulish as it’d been yesterday and a hundred years before that. 

If it doesn’t heal me… what will this serum do?

It was all his mind could afford to think. In short sentences, simple collections of words, as the bulk of his focus remained on Sole. Their face in the throes of pleasure, the imagined feel of them all around him. Their sweet scent, gritty but old-fashioned, somewhere between the adventures of the Commonwealth and home. The way their nails would scrape at his skin, the way they’d breathe his name, the way they’d seek him out, their eyes, their lips, their affections, all for him... In this ideal, fictional headspace of his. 

Still though, Edward's imagination had his body frantically catching up, growing closer and closer to his release as he painted the image in his mind of what they’d look like in the midst of their own climactic end, brought about by his hand. The way they’d cry his name, grip tightly to his cock, pull him further into their desperate grasp as they shuddered below his frame– it was so real, his imagining of it all, that Edward went tumbling over the edge right along with them. 

The ghoul couldn’t help the gasps leaving him, the moans that he begged the drywall not to allow to pass through, just in case Sole’s meeting was over now, in case Jack came to check on him, in case the house was silent, but for him. It was no use pleading with the house though, not when his voice was so stubborn. 

Not when his imagination decided to materialize something beyond his comprehension– beyond his wildest fears. 

“Shit… Ed– I’m sorry, I should-- yeah, I'll just...”

Sole’s voice was so quiet, like it was entering his ears from another dimension; distant, like melodies from a neighbor’s radio across the street. 

He almost didn’t react to their presence at all. 

Almost. 

No true words left the ghoul, then, as he frantically pulled the scratchy blanket over his lap on the mattress. It did little to cover the way his erection still stood, stiff and stubborn, tenting the fabric as he moved to conceal it and as much else of him as he possibly could in such haste. 

Edward allowed himself one clear of his throat, before he began apologizing, explaining his actions away, pleading their forgiveness, questioning if they saw anything– all at once in a strange amalgamation of nonsense that even he scratched his head at. 

“S-sorry. Not– This isn’t– You should probably– Ah, shit, Sole…” He ended with a defeated shake of his head, feeling embarrassment of two separate types heating his ears and cheeks with each passing moment they spent looking over at him. First, was the shame of this person that he loved and admired seeing him utterly debased and wretched in his dark little room, with their name on his tongue as he did it. Second… Well, the shame that he’d tried to change himself for them, without even knowing if they were interested at all, that he’d been so desperate as to do this to himself, rather than simply be honest with them. 

Two hundred years of protecting an ancient, powerful family from all manners of incomprehensible harm, and he was still a coward. Afraid of his own feelings, afraid of rejection, afraid of his own damn skin. 

“Are you…” Their gentle voice snapped him out of his mental anguish, “I just wanted to come and check on you. After you ran out on the meeting, well… It looked like you were gonna be sick or something. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.” 

Edward gulped, audibly and visually, and felt another wave of heat threaten to consume him, his cock jerking angrily below the blanket as a chill ran up his spine. 

Knock it off. His command to his body became more of a plea as he felt the serum bubbling up in his veins once again. 

“Wish you hadn’t seen this, Sole.” 

They didn’t leave, didn’t cringe or cry out or laugh at him, not when they first saw him, and not now. No, instead, Sole reached around and closed the door with a click behind them as they stepped into the dim little room, and made their way to sit on the far edge of his bed. 

“Are you alright?” Their bright eyes stayed locked to his, “What happened, Edward?”

His name on their lips was like a firebrand to his heart, setting it aglow with new, resounding affection that made his fingers twitch and his teeth grit together. 

“The serum…” He managed out, “Thought I could take some. See what happens, see if…” 

Edward’s own gasp interrupted him, as his body carried on with its basal needs without his consent. His fists clenched until his knuckles ached, until he felt the blood flow from his wrists halt in its tracks. 

“That’s what did this to you?” Sole blinked at him, their eyes remaining respectfully on his face as his body reacted to their voice, their proximity, the continuing effects of that damned serum.  Still though, even with all their unflappable respect for him, Edward could see they way their fingers fidgeted, the way their face seemed to heat, the way they so stubbornly made sure to keep their gaze on his face, and as far from his lap as they could without being overtly obvious.

"Jack said that he was experimenting a bit with the serums, but this is... Well..."

Sole cleared their throat as Edward mentally kicked himself.

Should've checked with the boss before trying this shit out on myself.

Idiot.

They must've seen the way he chastised himself within, for in the next moment, Sole scooted themself closer, and put a hand on his covered knee.

"I don't know if it's any of my business, really, but... Why did you take it?"

None of their business..? Edward could've laughed aloud at that. If only they knew.

"Thought it could help." He said vaguely, his voice still strained, his breath still more rapid than it had any right to be.

The place where their hand laid over his knee, even with the bed sheet keeping their skin from his, zapped life-giving defibrillations all throughout his body. It charged the blood in his veins, collected in pockets of heat in his chest, the base of his spine, the back of his head, between his legs, imprisoning the words in his head that he fought to pull out through his mouth. He wanted to tell them the truth, felt he needed to now, that they deserved to hear it, but his body demanded more. It wanted to act on his debased musings and pull Sole into his arms right now, to set his hungry mouth upon them, to tell them, not with his voice, but with the grip of his hands, the aching need of his heavy breaths, to show them, in favor of messily prying the words from his throat.

Can't do that. His true self told his body firmly, as many times as it could, to keep his hands in place on the mattress, to keep his eyes on the wall, rather than sweeping over their vault-suit clad body.

If I give myself an inch, I may not be able to stop.

That terrified him more than any other effect the serum could have on him. It scared him and made his mind and body tremble like the thought of becoming feral.

"Help what?" Sole prompted with a gentle whisper, and he could taste their breath as it washed over him. Jack's dessert coffee. Chocolate bon bons. Those sweet, frozen cherries the family has managed to keep all these years.

Edward's mouth watered.

"Edward?"

He must've been silent longer than he realized, but finally, the ghoul was able to blink, to take in a breath and hold it there, rather than panting it back out straightaway like a dog.

Maybe it's wearing off?

He could only hope.

Yet... The persisting aching firmness of his cock, the sweat collecting at the base of his back and along his chest, under his arms, it all told a different story.

"Sorry," He all but choked out the word. "I... It was for you."

Forcibly, he took the chance and set his gaze upon their face, trying to keep his body under his firm control as he took in their reaction.

"M-me? How... Why?"

Why? He let out a dry chuckle. That's a dangerous question to ask if you want to be out of here before dawn.

"Wanted to be better. Wanted to change so you could... So we..." A forceful shudder ran through his body, stilling his tongue, forcing his muscles to clench until they knotted, making his hips buck up off of the mattress until Sole was forced to pull their hand away.

"Shit--" His voice was back to a growl: low, intense, and charged with carnal desire he only dreamed he could keep at bay. "Have to leave, Sole. It's coming back."

"W-what is?" They stayed firmly, infuriatingly, next to him on the bed, their voice concerned, but also... something else.

"Edward," He felt his cock pulse and drool below the sheet at the way his name left them. "Tell me how to help you. I want to help."

"No." The ghoul shook his head, even as it fell backwards, slamming into the wall behind him as his body writhed and demanded attention.

"Please."

Fuck. He thought, his head still shaking in denial. Don't say that.

"It hurts me to see you like this. Especially if I had something to do with it."

Everything to do with it, more like.

"T-touch me."

It left him before Edward had a chance to reign it in, before his consciousness could plead with this serum-induced need of his and tell him to be patient, to speak to Sole, to tell them the whole truth, to take things slow, to make it last.

To his surprise though, instead of being offended, of scoffing and walking away, of looking disgusted or scared at his request, Sole, at last, let their eyes trail down his body. They even smiled as they bit their bottom lip, and moved their hands out towards him.

Without thinking, Edward leaned forward and into their touch, letting their palms press to the rough hills and valleys of his frame, letting them slide over his bare, glistening chest until one moved up to his face, and pulled him into a surprisingly lustful kiss.

Their passion rivalled his own, even, as they crawled almost on top of him, as their fingers thirsted for more area to touch, as they tilted their head and set their soft, warm lips upon his with vigor, kneading over his own marred mouth like his tongue held the key to their survival. It seemed theirs really did, in his case. His body needed them-- their touch-- like life needs water, needs air, needs sunshine, like a heart needs blood and a mind needs a thought. These feelings, the sensations they inspired, were a direct product of his being, but also the very reason he seemed to exist.

Edward finally gave permission for his own hands to set upon them in turn; though, he held back the force that the serum screamed to take them with. Stiffly, his palms caressed their waist, the jut of their hips, the small of their back, up to the base of their neck. He touched them like he was meant to cover them in it, like he was stained with paint meant to encase their entire being. Edward let himself kiss them, too, with the fervor this heat within him demanded. Let himself commit the shape of their lips and the sweet taste of them to his memory.

In case I never get the chance again.

He wasn't sure he'd blame them, if that was the case, but... at this point, there were many signs that pointed to something he hadn't considered.

Do they... Have they wanted me too? All this time?

Edward wished he could ask, but thoughts were like rising steam, and he wasn't able to grasp onto a single one and form it to words. Especially as Sole's hands travelled over him, as their lips left his and they moved their body downwards, adjusting so they could pull the sheet from overtop his bare form.

They did it slowly, their eyes asking before their voice could: 'Is this okay?'

He nodded to them, breathless, with his hands still firmly set upon their body, and they slid the scratchy blanket off him and to the unoccupied side of the mattress.

Sole barely took a pause, their eyes looking him over with just enough time for him to doubt their attraction-- no, their tolerance-- to and of his appearance. But then their hands were moving again, one sliding to the back of his neck, urging him back to their beckoning lips, while the other grazed over the head of his weeping cock, and took it in-hand.

"I've wanted this too, you know." Sole whispered into him, their hand moving slowly but firmly along the stiffness of his shaft, building that ever-growing heat in him to the point of pain.

Edward's mind was so addled, so distracted by their blinding touch, that he almost didn't hear what they'd just confessed. His eyes blinked open, his grip tightened unwittingly on their body as his expression pleaded 'tell me again.'

"You don't have to change a thing, Edward." Their thumb circled over the overly sensitive slit in his cock, and he pulled a hissing breath in between his teeth. "I want you just the way you are now."

Sole leaned in again, and he pressed forward more firmly than intended, thanking them with actions rather than the words he couldn't seem to muster in his current state. He moaned into the kiss, even, as their hand continued its relentless stroking, as it circled and tugged at his skin in a way more delectable than he ever seemed to master, than he ever thought was even possible.

But maybe that was because it was Sole's hand that was doing it.

They tried to pull away, to take in a much needed breath, and Edward couldn't help himself, couldn't pry his phantom lips away from their skin. He set them upon their cheek, down to their jaw, feeling the way their muscles clenched there in response, the way they shuddered when his rough lips journeyed to their sensitive neck.

Edward could feel everything.

He wasn't sure if it was the serum, or just the way his mind and heart clung to this contact-- to the fact that he was really here, doing this with Sole, with the man/woman of his dreams and most profound desires-- but he could feel every raise of a goosebump on their skin, feel their pulse thundering in their veins, could taste the essence of their being in their scent, on their flesh.

Their whole story: living before the war, the soap they'd used all those years ago, the cream they'd rubbed into their skin, and then their years locked away in their frozen prison, the hint of ice, of coolness they radiated from those long years, the ache of their great sadness, the strain of their muscles for undergoing that horrendous trauma. It was all there, beneath the touch of his lips, caressed by the heat of his breath. Edward cherished every bit of it, loved them for their scars, the same way they cared for him in spite of his own.

He didn't know why he didn't let himself see if before, didn't let himself believe it was true, but they really were a fine match.

Him and Sole... they understood each other. He knew their experiences better than any born and raised wastelander could, knew their struggles more intimately than the Cabot family ever could... and Sole knew of his own suffering more than any other human ever could.

Why'd I have to turn to extremes so soon? Risk fucking this up...

It was the only question-- the only thought-- he could stand to formulate as of now, as their grip squeezed over him, as their stiff fingers wrung his pleasure from his core out to the surface. Edward felt it building, felt the swell, the rhythm of his bucking hips grow fevered and desperate, and he felt their smile, even, before he glanced up to see it.

It was a focused sort of grin, their brows were drawn, their pupils blown wide and dark and wanting in a way that he thought it might just be his own reflection shining in them.

How could Sole look this way, for a man like me? A man, that isn't even--

The ghoul didn't have time to finish that thought, not as their thumb swiped over his tip again, as their other hand went down to join the first, massaging and kneading over his aching, burning, destitute hardness until he was holding back cries.

The meat of his wrist fit between clenching teeth, his forehead pressed to the hardness of Sole's collarbone as he leaned into the contact, aching and screaming for more with everything apart from his voice.

If Jack heard, or Wilhelmina...

If he hadn't been so occupied, he might've shuddered at the thought.

But this? Letting go, being vulnerable, allowing himself pleasure, a moment that was truly private between him and Sole? Anything was worth that. He'd lose his job, his room here, his name, his life, if it meant he could do this, see this, feel this again, with Sole by his side, in his arms, touching him this way.

He half wondered if he'd passed out in his bed after the last bout of pleasure, if he'd fallen asleep and the serum inspired the sweetest dream there was.

Sole's voice though, the feel of them, the way their scent and being surrounded him in every way... it couldn't be the case. It was sweeter than he believed reality could be, especially these days, but damnit, there was no doubt in his head that it was real.

"Let go, Edward."

Their voice was pleading with him, their hands pulling him along, never ceasing, as they brought him straight into that all-encompassing bliss. He couldn't hold back now, not at his climax, and Edward's head flew back, his muscles straining, his mouth falling open to release the most animalistic of sounds: a groan from the very base of him that had Sole writhing and gasping right along with him.

I made him sound like that. Their touch cried out as their hands squeezed and clenched until his essence was spilling out onto his clenching stomach, pouring down over their fingers and soiling the bedsheets below.

"Yes." Sole breathed, and he felt another shudder jolt through him, another spurt of seed from his pulsing cock. "That's it, hon. Let go for me."

Tears were collecting at the sides of Edward's eyes, his relief and euphoric release leaving him in trembles and heavy breaths.

It took a few moments, took the last of his pleasure to bleed out, and then Edward was back on earth, back in his room, back in this skin once more.

Sole pulled their touch from his over-sensitive cock, wiping their soiled hands carefully on the bedsheet before lying down beside him and resting their head on his shoulder. A cool hand smoothed its way over his body, making a home over his sweltering, still-heaving chest as Sole clung to him.

The serum hadn't quite worked, not the way Edward had intended it to, but... It really had worked though, hadn't it? Not the way he imagined, sure, but the end result was... close enough.

He didn't even realize it, not until his cheeks began to ache, but he was smiling, grinning toothily like a fool in love, as Sole rested against him, as he wound his arms around their form, holding them close, savoring every ounce of the person who accepted him, who didn't turn him away, who cared for him... as he was.

"Thank you." He rasped, sliding his hands over them as soothingly as he could manage.

Sole only hummed, a sweet, happy sound, and he felt the vibration of it throughout his body as they lay against him.

He felt at peace, then. He felt warm, he felt sated and valued and more content than he could ever recall before, and yet... A familiar sort of churning, a boiling sensation rose from deep inside him. His muscles twitched and his tired member gave a rousing pulse between his legs.

Edward could only swallow and do the ghoul equivalent of blushing, as Sole's wide eyes peeked up at him with one eyebrow quirked in question. Though, as he looked down at them-- in a coy, apologetic sort of way-- they still wore that fond, fiendish smile.

The night wasn't over just yet.

[shinnyshining]

Things I brought today (mostly at the SE exhibition) and some opinions about the whole experience

I couldn’t get everything I wanted I over estimated how much cash I’ll need to have with me so I’ll probably will go again tomorrow

Which is the last day so I need to go early…

I also couldn’t get that one frame magnet I wanted…volume 5 my dads….no… I’ll….I have no choice but to get the whole set just to get them guaranteed cuz I cant go back to the shopping area onceI exit the shop 😭

And its all sold out in the second hand listings on mercari jp ,…hope the whole box is somewhat affordable

Anyway…if I get doubles, yall know how to dm me ;3

Also I got the kid ,liz and patty shikishi as you can see and I only hope to get soul and maka tomorrow cuz its so expensive on mercari I wont be paying 3000 yen just for a shikishi no waaay

WAIT

I FORGOT

I got the only cute exhibition keychain because ohkubo gave them very questionable angled illustrations which didnt translate well in merchs in my opinion ESPECIALLY on the acrylic stands they look nightmare fuels, but crona is fine (I sense some favoritism ngl) patty was cute too actually but I was on a budget

Anddd I got the badges from blind bags so its all gacha I like crona though Im happy and I will give the tsubaki one to a friend.

There were two entry tickets one was 2500 yen as standart

And the other was 3000 yen with limited goods which was this wristband , I think for 500 yen more it was worth it I might get another one tomorrow with entrance its high quality and soft

Lastly if you brought anything over 5000yen total you get this bag, but you wont get a double for every 5000 you buy, quickly learned since I spended around 11k with some goods I picked for my friend, so if anyone is interested in going to the Osaka venue, just so you know if you go with a friend you may wanna pay separately if you want a bag for every each one of you

Also tip from me: dont be stupid like me and bring more money with you if theres something you want that is not guaranteed and is in a blind bag…cuz the chances of you getting lucky is not reliable and if you are as desperate as me you’ll pay for another entrance😭😭😭

Especially cuz you cant go back there if it turns out you didn’t get what you wanted, you’ll need another ticket so…buying the box seems more worth it (only if you need and want something absolutely that you’ll go that far) (actually its not a super big deal for badges and limited shikishi boards and cards since there aren’t many designs. But the mangets…they have 16 designs so it is pricey)

Now as for the exhibition hall itself, most things were okay to photograph and its consisted of mostly manga panels and official arts,there were cool cut outs and giant volume covers on the walls. seeing the panels upclose was interesting especially cuz I do comics as well and aspire to do it professionally in the future

But I guess the coolest experience is that they fully voice acted a certain chapter from the manga (didn’t finish it yet so I don’t know which) but it was so cool cuz it was all newly voiced (manga only duh) and the visuals were in a dynamic video edited pretty well, there were some live 2d just a little but it was there, it was not allowed to film that there which gives me hope that they will upload it to socials after the exhibition fully ends nationwide. But you never know

(italso gave me hope for a possible remake but I don’t wanna get my hopes up)

Anyway I might make a google drive with everything I took pictures of later , Im kinda tired today

but I wanna say to those who have high expectations for this exhibition

don’t expect something revolutionary.unfortunately it was mostly manga pages displayed (the giant official art were cool though cuz you could see more details of them) and as for props, aside from some decorations hanging from the walls and cielings here and there there was a shinigami sama cut out and the mirror, but thats about it) so definitely a little underwhelming for a 20th anniversary exhibition , at least from my expectations

I enjoyed it because I like Soul Eater and Im pretty hyperfixated on it right now, but that doesn’t keep me away from criticizing it and I do just that CUZ I LIKE SOUL EATER

there were so many things they could do and honestly for 20th anniversary it was pretty small and the exclusive merchandise was just… meh??? especially the illustrations made specifically for the Exhibition itself (which wasn’t even that much just the main 3 duo/trio’s) Honestly I have to say Im quite disappointed with Ohkubo it seemed like he didn’t give his all designing the illustrations. they didn’t even performed well as various types of goods and ,sure, he made a design and its not that bad , but he could at least draw them again with no weird angling that only looks okay in a promotional poster, aside from that, you know the magnets are made from previously made official arts and manga covers, there were some cool stuff like kid’s skateboard and Soul’s jacket but those are made to order and you can’t even get them there at the time,

NOT TO MENTION THIS SUPER COOL ART WAS NI WHERE TO BE FOUND AT THE GOODS SHOP IT IS A MISSED OPPORTUNITY TO ME!!

A mini acrylic stand of this could be sooo cool 😭😭😖

The nuis are cool it was well overdue I hope they will make more characters in the future they should capitalize on them a bit more

Tote bags , hoodies and such were something to be expected from exhibitions like this Im not really impressed but they were nice as designs

But my opinion is set, they could’ve done so much more for this exhibition and it was a little underwhelming so only consider attending if you like to see official arts and manga panels up close, and if you like to interact with very limited props and watching the exclusive manga voice acting (to me that alone is worth to visit ngl) and of course the goods, only if you’re interested in

I do some theories why this exhibition was the way it is I mainly think, the budget was set and it was not much to do more than what we got especially considering the made to order goods, but it gives me hope, even after 20 years I think Soul Eater as a series is still profitable and I hope this exhibition does well enough for the higher ups to consider making more things in the future

Thats all from Shining today :3

[endereies]

Fuck it - Matt Sturniolo - Part 10

Spotify playlist:

Authors notes: Finally!! another fucking update for this fic, i know its been too long. I'm finally hooked on these characters again and i hope this somewhat makes up for it.

Warnings: swearing i guess

word count: 4188

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

“Is this something we are meant to do?”

“Fuck it.”

“What exactly did you buy, Matt?” I leant against the passenger door with my back facing the car, adjusting my clothing repeatedly since I had nothing else to do.

“God, you can be so impatient sometimes” He was being vague on purpose, and nothing gave away what he had planned, I just messed around with the hem of my skirt until he was ready to leave.

“I’m not the one being secretive here” I huffed, growing more impatient the more he was leading this conversation on. With the sound of the trunk shutting, I quickly swivelled my hips to try and spy anything to answer my questions. However, he shoved everything into his bags, holding them by his hips.

“I’m not the one being whiny, look I promise you will like it.” He almost snaps at me with a harsher tone than before, so I drop it to avoid making the situation worse.

I walk in front of Matt, leading him through all the bushes and pathways. I knew the path like the back of my hand and yet once again we had gone in the dark to it took longer than necessary. I had never planned to go here either and so I got struck with brambles that also stuck through my clothing. My shoes were scrapped, and my zip-up jacket had been dragged back by branches and leaves and I was growing agitated.

“Are you alright, Ally?” While I know he is being sincere in his questioning, I merely respond with a deep sigh before finally responding.

“All of this shit is overgrown and it's getting on my nerves.” I feel the level of stress rise whenever I had to throw another branch to the side, but I get distracted by the nickname that he reused. That wasn’t going to go away anytime soon.

“Here, let me help you” I turn around to see the distance between Matt and I shortening before he walked past me, he holds the next few branches to the side with one arm and insinuating for me to go forward with the other.

He continues this for the rest of the journey up towards the houses behind the Grove, holding back branches and leave to clear a path for me. This was definitely something that Matt had planned to do in his head, wearing heavy duty boots that weren’t impacted when standing down on the thorns. A thick pair of jeans covered his legs followed by a jacket I had seen him wear multiple times during school practice in the mornings.

The closer that we got to the houses, the less amount of foliage that I had to pass through. Matt remained walking ahead of me and I took any chance I got to stare at his backpack trying to find any hint or recognisable shape that I could pinpoint.

“Which house are we going to” we had only explored a few of the houses since the last times I was here and there were still about six of them that we hadn’t looked at once.

“The first one we went into when you brought me here” He smiled at me, holding a strap with a free arm getting more excited about his plans the closer we got to each house.

He follows me to the second house on the street, instantly recognising the poorly painted walls and abandoned tools on the tables.

“You want to see what I brought now?” The backpack is gently placed on the floor, lowered by its straps and Matt looks up to me and I immediately get a bigger smile on my face.

“Ugh finally!” My body stands directly next to his with my eyes not moving from his hands that gently open up the top of the backpack and unzipping the first section.

He pulls out several pots of paint, varying in colours but still remaining consistent to each other. Several blues, browns, pinks and white paint cans spread over the wooden floorboards. After barely processing the colours, Matt pulls out more equipment that I hadn’t used in the house before like a sander and mini saws.

“What the fuck, where did you get all of this!” I grab the saws out of his hands quickly and analyse them one by one before placing them atop the table next to me.

“When you pointed out details when you first brought me here, you kept naming things that remained unfinished or the plans you never got to put in place. So...I thought I could do something about it..” He trails off as he notices me staring up towards him, not realising that my cheeks are turning redder with each small detail he remembered.

“You really did all that?” My smile widens on my face.

“You’ve talked about this place and anytime we go you always bring up a plan that never happened. I needed to change that quickly.” His arm grips the back of his neck and rubs the skin gently.

“How much did this all cost Matt..” I peek at all the tins of paint with a multitude of colours being represented with small labels across the front.

“Doesn’t matter” His voice was blunt as he picked up one of the pink shades displayed in front of us.                                                                       

“The fuck do you mean it doesn’t matter, this amount of paint has got to be expensive.”

“Doesn’t matter. Your smile matters to me more than a bit of money.” Those words just spilled casually from his lips and my body seized slightly and dropped the initial attitude. I felt my stomach twist in an unfamiliar way, and I just slowly shut my mouth.

“Now are you going to be quiet and grab a paintbrush or keep complaining.” I am left a little stunned as he brushes past with me with a grin over his face. I manage to reconnect with my thoughts and quickly grab a small paintbrush sprawled at my feet. I walk over to Matt where he had start to pour the thick liquid into a spare tray that had obviously been used before and dips his own brush into it. I watch as the lightly pigmented mixture drips down the sides of the tin after he scraps it.

I saw a small smile linger across his face as I approached him, now standing by his side. It wasn’t like being in this house was anything new to either of you but it was the way he was remembering each detail of me that stained my thoughts.

I had seen him be observant before, especially with people he cared about. It was one of the very first things that ever stood out to me about him.

When I had mentioned that I only wear silver jewellery, he made sure to get me a matching bracelet and necklace that was silver.

I mentioned how I like to get a coffee on a Friday after the long weeks and he started showing up with me exact order each Friday before I ever had a chance to object. And if the cafe didn't have the ingredients? He made sure he went somewhere else for it.

But this time it felt slightly different knowing that he was involved in what was a huge part of my life, the buildings finally reminding me of something that wasn't a lost friendship.

-

It had been about an hour of painting between us two and I got most of a room covered in it's first coat of paint. The sunlight etched onto the walls which only enhanced the pink pigments.

I took a small moment to stand back and appreciate the wet coats of paint that had been freshly layered onto the walls.

Matt was finishing up a section of the wall next to me as just as I zone out fully, I get dragged back out again when Matt calls out my name.

"Alyia?" His head is titled, and his body is leant towards mine, subconsciously closing the distance between us.

"Hm? What's up?"

"Can I have some more paint from the tin..I've nearly run out." His voice naturally trails off as his focus turns to the areas he still needs to cover.

I fumbled around a little as I scanned the floors for the tins of pink paint.

I walked quickly through each area of the room, my footsteps echoing on the hardwood floors. I looked on every available space, trying to spot the bright, recognizable colour.

The small paint tin is sat right by the stairs and with a pull of the handle, I lift it up to carry over to Matt. The thin wooden stick pokes out the top of the lid and once I pour the extra liquid in it stirs in the pigments.

Matt's gaze burns into the back of my head, watching the small stirring movements. When I stand up and lift the stick from the floor, the wood smacks on Matt's arm, leaving a trace of baby pink across his skin.

"Oh God, sorry Matt. Fuck I didn't mean to". Panic sets in my chest while I try to fix my mistake.

I grab the tissue box and grip a few at once before turning to Matt once more.

"Hey..Alyia, you're stressing too much. It's just some paint." Suddenly I feel his hand grip my wrist, lowering it ever so slightly.

"A-are you sure?" I was only met with a meek nod and a sincere smile, which did soothe me a little.

"S'ppose so...as long as I can do this" It wasn't long before his own brush swiped the tip of my nose. My nose now felt wet, like a dog's nose. Surprisingly, I didn't hate it.

"Matt! What!" A grimace spread under the paint while I brought out my phone to assess the damage.

It was only a cute little dot, yet enough to stand out against my skin tone. I was brought out of my focus by giggles that Matt desperately failed to hide. He turned his body away from me, but it was obvious he was laughing at me.

“You can be insufferable, yknow..” I grabbed the box of tissues I was going to use on Matt and wiped my own face instead. It felt cold to touch, that feeling spread to the tissue.

As I wiped my face, I failed to realise he had turned back around to face me. The tissue fell to a nearby stack of rubbish, and I sighed as I missed the empty pot I was aiming for.

I grimaced at Matt once I caught his attention again. Which didn’t seem too hard.

“Really. You managed to miss a spot, kid.” He swapped the brush to his left hand and before I could reach my own hand to his face, he did it for me. His touch was gentle, that wasn’t new. His thumb traced the outline of my nose, barely missing my cheeks. He laid his hand on the skin next to it. Unlike the cold paints, my cheeks heated up faster than I could stop it.

“Hey, at least it matches your cheeks now.” It did until he pointed it out. That’s when they faded darker.

“Get outta here bro. Don’t even.” He didn’t even flinch when I swatted his hand away to the side. Anywhere away from what I just experienced. Even if I didn’t quite know what that was.

“Sweetheart. You know I don’t bite right?” He had to refrain from giggling at the situation, a meaningful laugh I hadn’t heard from him in a while.

It never got any easier to hear that nickname fall ever so sweetly from his lips.

“Yeah yeah. Whatever.”

-

It had only been a few minutes since we both managed to compose ourselves, barely. Yet I kept thinking about it like it was the only thing I knew. It was definitely something that I didn’t want to end. So, I didn’t let it.

By now I had swapped the colour on the brush to a jet black to line the walls with. Why not have fun with it.

Quickly, the dark substance drew out a lengthy line on Matt’s arm, missing the previous pink line he left on. For some reason. He jolted backwards with a laugh almost grossed out by the sudden change in stimulation.

“Such a child.” His words held no fire to them, I wondered if he had wanted to. “Says the one who started it.” I use my free hand to point to my nose, patching with paints.

He attempted to swatch another layer of paint onto my skin but he failed. That resulted in drops of paint flicking onto my clothing. Traces of baby pink were now splattered atop the grey jacket that was slipped off my shoulders.

Regret immediately crossed his face. He knew my parents were designers and that I, more than likely, was covered in their articles. Expensive articles.

“Shit. I-“His voice was meek, not being able to read my face as it was tilted away from him. However, he quickly found out how I felt.

The shade of black I was still using soon mimicked the paint on my clothing. It sprayed onto the shirt he was wearing, a simple and plain tee. But the fact it was white made me chuckle.

He let out a sigh of relief once he realised, I wasn’t mad at him for ruining the fabric. Frankly, I didn’t care about any of it. I never cared for anything my mother mad, it was practically the thing that drove us away. Besides her attitude of course.

We acted like children, now running around the room and flinging the paints around. For a moment we forgot about the price of the tins we were now throwing everywhere. All that mattered was ensuring the other was covered in more pops of colour than them.

“Matt, I swear if that gets in my hair.” As quickly as I spoke, he laid eyes on his new target. My hair that was just relaxing on my shoulders now appeared like a botched dye with pink.

“Oops, missed.”

-

After deciding it was better to subside the paints for another day, we laid on the wooden floor beneath us. Making sure we had a clearing that wasn’t obstructed by loose nails or tools.

“Its late...” It wasn’t a hard observation to make, the sky grew dark and was patterned with faint stars. It was the fact you hadn’t expected to lose so much time to paint fights.

“Guess so. You need to head home?” I looked at him with a heavy expression, he got the message.

“They aren’t home…right.” He almost grimaced at the thought of forgetting, sometimes he wished they were home for me more. But that would cut into the sessions we spend together. He chose to be selfish.

“But you have Nick and Chris at home, you gotta be back before Nick yells at you again.” I recalled the last time we stayed out late without making him aware. Safe to say Matt never heard the end of that.

“It’s a bit late for that, I’ve already seen the missed calls.” He seemed so relaxed about that, if I had missed only one call from my mother, she would’ve gone ballistic.

“Cmon, let’s get you back home, yeah?” His voice coaxed me the same as a small child, gentle, sweet.

The strong places of the stairs were memorised by now which made our exit quicker. Some of the thorns previously stomped down by Matt remained pressed into the ground. When one thorn gripped my skin and scrapped it, he insisted he went in front again. As if my skin and clothing wasn’t damaged enough.

He took a small glance back when he heard me playing a small quiet tune from my phone. I simply put my playlist of shuffle, but it obviously peaked Matt’s interest.

“Turn that shit up, kid.”

“You fuck with Kid Cudi?” He gave me a nod as if it was obvious, but I shrugged it off and ‘turned that shit up’

The music continued into the car ride back, I didn’t want to insist I could walk home. I knew he’d win no matter what I did. My head bopped to the music, zoning out at the window. We were in silence the whole ride back towards my house. I wasn’t uncomfortable, however. The music filled any awkwardness, if there was any. There was only one thing that I seemed nervous about, which was getting paint on the seats of is vehicle. I knew most of it had air dried by now, I just knew that car seats were expensive to replace. I know the exact price because anytime that I drove my parents’ car, I always ‘messed something up’ and had to replace it. I didn’t want to seem as someone who wasn’t capable of anything, so I stopped driving it after that.

Familiar streets seemed to appear, and we both knew it would only be a few minutes before we arrived at my place. The radio was cranked down until it became background sound for us both. I looked at Matt who had one hand placed on the wheel while the other rested on his thigh. His fingers twitched slightly, and I noticed pretty quickly that he was mimicking the drums from the song playing.

I hadn’t realised we had pulled up until Matt spoke for the first time in a while.

“Alyia? We’re back at your house.” He tilted his head closer to mine to make sure that I heard him. I did.

“Oh yeah right. Thanks for dropping me off.” My body slid back towards the door and pushed it open. Once I grabbed all my belongings, I walked around the car to see Matt. The window separating until he pulled it down.

He looked at me expectantly. Why did I never realise how icy his eyes looked.

“Need anything sweetheart?” I swallowed harshly and pushed myself away from the door. “Nope, just..thanks again. For the supplies, paints and the dri-“

He raised his fingers and put them inches away from my lips. “If I hear another thank you come from your mouth, I swear Aliya. I’d do it again no matter what you say.” He smirked at me, and it did ease a few concerns, now pushed to the back of my throat.

“Look, just because you’re used to apologizing and feeling like everything is your fault doesn’t mean that’s true. You don’t have to thank me every minute. You can relax around me. I don’t bite.” He looked down at where the window fell into the door, tracing the tip of the glass before finally making eye contact with me. He seemed almost apologetic for pointing out how my parents made me act. To be honest, I had been sorry about that for longer than he did.

I didn’t reply, I didn’t have to. I kept looking at him with a stupid smile on my face. The same I had while in the grove mere hours ago.

“See you in school?” I finally trusted my voice to speak but it was timid. “I’ll see you in the morning, yeah?” My head nodded and I stood up onto the curb, pacing back to my house.

Shit.

My parent’s car is there. If they see me like this, I’m screwed. That’s it, I’m grounded. I won’t be able to-

I cut my thoughts of when I heard footsteps, they were heavier and dragged ever so slightly on the carpet. My dad.

“Alyia, are you home, I’ve been worried sick.” He quickly trailed off once he saw the state of me, paints covered a lot of my clothing, even the ends of my hair were dishevelled. I hung low, expecting yelling to follow quickly.

“Upgrading your mother’s work?” He laughed. He wasn’t mad at me? “Just go clean up before your mother sees, alright. Make sure you either clean those or throw them. As much as I love the experimentation, I’m not sure that your mother would approve.” With that he walked past me and wondered into the kitchen. I wasn’t willing to risk the chance of my mother seeing the way I destroyed her works. As much as I’m willing to do that all over again.

-

Matt’s pov:

I stayed there for a few minutes, leaning back into the leather. The music was chirping softly. I should’ve left, I watched her get in safely, but I just couldn’t move. I wasn’t waiting for her to run back out and ignore her home life. I wasn’t even watching the door. Traces of paint covered my hands, and I couldn’t help but stare. I tried to run my fingers over it, but the heat of my palm scrapped away a few spots.

By the lights on in the driveway, I knew Nick was awake. I felt bad that I let him stay up again, I just hoped that Chris wasn’t up as well.

“Matthew. Taking your sweet time staying out again. I knew you had the band shit, but we both know it doesn’t last thi- My god, what the fuck happened to you!” He was blunt and straight to the point, he always was but that didn’t make the words he said any easier to hear. I knew he was mad, anyone could figure that out.

He pushed down his glasses and held the bridge of his nose, taking all the clothing in one by one.

“Practicing music doesn’t require baby pink and black paint, what did you do?” He grabbed my shirt and tugged on it. “White. Really?”

I smirked pathetically “Its just some paints, I didn’t care, and I still don’t.”

“You’re lucky that I love you, kid. Just have a shower, its late.” He shook my shoulder as I walked forwards the kitchen for a drink. My eyes met Chris’s through the hallway, he had a weird smile on his face. He smirked at me and raised his eyebrows; I was talking to an actual child.

“I take it you were out with Alyia?” His tone pissed me off, acting like all I did was talk to or about Aliya. I wanted to but that doesn’t mean I did.

“Oh, shut it.” Chris simply shrugged and retreated to his room, humming a song that had been stuck in his head a few days.

During my shower I noticed an obvious change in the water colour, especially when I got rid of the black lines up my arms. No other lights than mine remained on and it made me realise how late I actually stayed out.

Fatigue had hit my system by now and having that hot shower only managed to relax me further. My phone screen lit up the room as I got a message. The quiet vibrations were the only sounds I had heard since the car radio.

My body slumped next to it and stared at it until the screen faded black. I held the phone in hand and since my room was almost pitch black at this point it failed to use face id. After I failed numerous times to fill in my password, I scrolled up to see who had messaged me.

Alyia🎸:

*Sent 1 attachment*

‘Youre lucky my mother didn’t see lmao.’

A photo? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her take photos, let alone send one to me. It didn’t take long for me to click on it.

It wasn’t exactly a selfie and now I understood her sending the photo. The most that I could see of her face was her lips that curled into a neat smile. Locks of hair flowed past her shoulders, and I could see she hadn’t cleaned up just yet, her jacket lay just below her shoulders which allowed the remaining fabric to bunch at her wrists. The selfie was taken from up high just so she could present the paint in one go. Her skirt remains hugging her hips that hadn’t moved from before. I assessed the amount of paint that had been sprayed and was still covering her hands. A light smile covered my face

I stared longer than I should have, I didn’t have the fear of being caught by her real form. I never had the urge to before. I had no idea why I was now.

I don’t respond immediately, and I know that she can see that I’m online, that takes a second to seep in.

Matt🥁:

‘Nick caught me, scolded the fact I was wearing white more than anything.’

Alyia🎸:

‘Frankly, that doesn’t shock me. I better go get this shit out of my hair. Cya kid.’ I just hearted the message and left my phone on the duvet. Light rain began to scatter my window, and I was thankful I wasn’t outside in it. My hand raised itself to my face and I tried to wipe away the weird feeling in my chest. I just hoped sleep would wear it away.

@melliflws @yuhayeee @st7rnioioss @sturn-bugz @bueckers @worldlxvlys @raysmayhem-72 @patscorner @y0urm4m @bernardsbendystraws @junnniiieee07 @luverboychris @jnkvivi @rac00ns-are-c00l4 @shorthairchris @missmimii @thecynthh

[sanjipotatoes]

RIPPED HEARTS

A/N: this idea and concept is @moonnime's :D

also this consists a somewhat love triangle, implied sex,mentions of pregnancy, mentions of murderand mentions of abandonment and it doesn't have such a happy ending so if you don't like any of these just like skip this

pink = doffy

red = rosinante/corazon

blue = law

purple = reader

you were 8 years old when you met the Donquixote brothers.your father was a friend to their father and since you were mainly lonely at home your father took you with him to visit the Donquixote so you can play with the two boys and well you guys did get along but doflamingo loved you the most whenever you played hide and seek he would jump and hug you whenever and wherever he found you but an issue he had was that rosinante was always "in his way" and out of jealousy he did anything to try to impress and take your attention example you would be playing dolls with rosinante and doflamingo would catch your attention by doing something like "hey *reader* look what I can do!! :D" he attempted to do a cartwheel but since he was 8 and lacked balance his short little arms failed him and he fell on his face miserably you then got worried but he insisted he was okay and yet you still clapped and was impressed by him not because the cartwheel was good but because he had confidence and you liked that shortly after rosinante being the simple minded 6 year

old he wanted to try doing a cartwheel you thought it was a bad idea but Doffy let him do it to see him fall and assume that he will see your laughter "okay here we :)" rosinante says before attempting to cartwheel but instead falls down on the hard floor face first and when he sat up he started crying and you see his nose bleeding as doflamingo laughed "Doffy how could you laugh like that he's really hurt!!" you say upset at his rude gesture as you run to help rosinante .a little while after his mother treated his nose and gave him a bandage he came to you with a hibiscus flower he found "look *reader* I found this flower and im gonna give it to you because I love you :D" you accepted the flower and blushed "aww I love you too rosi!!"you said while doflamingo just watched in a huff

17 years have passed and you were 25 you had grown up old with the brothers and you married rosinante and you both would think Doffy would be happy for his brother and move on but no he was jealous he always found a way to try to separate you two and third wheel things you did together like example you would be on a bench sitting with rosinante and doflamingo would just randomly comes and shove rosinante to scoot to sit between you two and put an arm around you and talked while ignoring rosinante. a little while after you met law you treated him such like a son and rosinante noticed and asked if you wanted to have kids together "hey since you are good with kids I was wondering...would you like maybe..try having one of our own don't get me wrong I love law and all but maybe you would be happier with a child of our own" he said to you with a awkward smile and that day you left law with some snacks and toys to play with while you and rosinante went to a room somewhere and told law that if he needed anything just knock on the door five times.outside that room as hes playing with the stuffed polar bear and panda making them fight he hears noises coming from that room and he wondered

what was happening but decided to stay curious(even after years he still doesn't know what the hell happened in that room).then came another three years you were now 28 rosinante and law disappeared they said something about doflamingo but you didn't pay attention and after you realized they left you felt bad for not paying attention but you had hope they would come back so you could apologize and after months of waiting you go outside and in a distant you see a silhouette of a man with a large coat you stand up and assume its rosinante but the closer it got you saw it was doflamingo "Doffy oh whats a surprise :D umm what are you doing here exactly? I thought you would be with roro do you perhaps know where he is at" he opens his mouth "well he's.." he pauses then thinks about what he says next "he left." your eyes shot wide open in shock "what do you mean he left.." doflamingo looks down looking "upset" "he sended me over here to tell you that..he lost interest in you he found someone else and figured that they would make law happier than you would so he left" you froze and looked down as you cried you ran to doflamigo and snuggled in his coat for comfort as you cried your eyes out and while you couldn't see doflamingo couldn't help but grin,he finally won after 18 years of losing he won in the very end

during the years of your heart break doflamingo managed to grab the pieces all together and fix it he took care of you and did nothing but loving things to you so obviously eventually you falled for him and you then start reflecting on the past on how you felt bad for 18 years on how much you underestimated doflamingo I mean he did love you more than rosinante did and you then start believing that it was all a con rosinante never loved you at all and it was always doflamingo he truly was the one that loved you

after 20 years you are now 38 you married doflamingo and Became his queen to lead Dressrosa and the citizen were shocked to find out that YOU were his queen they expected you to be the Harley Quinn to his joker but..you were kind, you cared about your citizens and there was no mischief in you unlike doflamingo which you had no idea about his behavior because well he would play nice whenever you were around so whenever you were art with doflamingo you would always sensed fear in the citizen and always wondered why.after two months you started to feel nauseous and super sick and doflamingo in a panic called the best doctor there could be In Dressrosa to see whats wrong and cure me as fast as possible no matter the consequence and after a few test from the doctor he told you and doflamingo that you were with child and this got you happy

you always dreamed of having a child especially with the one you love but..something felt off despite you feeling excited having a child there was something empty but you decided to brush it off in 4 months you were now 6 months pregnant you grew a belly and doflamingo became more protective of you since he certainly didn't want anything happening to the future leader of Dressrosa and one day when finally agrees to let you out on your own a certain little pirate with a straw hat comes to Dressrosa along with a familiar person which you were in a bench just killing time till you felt a tap on your shoulder you look up and see a man with tattooed hands,earings

and a spotted hat and your eyes widened before he spoke "hello miss *reader*" you rub your eyes in shock thinking your hallucinating "I-i who are you and how do you know me" the man looked a bit sad and then says "miss *reader* its me law I know you don't recognize me from the tats and how much Ive grown but I obviously could recognize you you still look the same as ever even after 10 years I guess the saying "real queens never age" is true after all" you give him a gentle hug which makes him notice your belly "hey your pregnant now,who did you remarry?"he said out of curiosity as you giggled "only the nicest man I've ever known...doffy!! :D" you say out of joy as trafalgars eyes widen out of shock and he backs up and

looks real upset "WHAT!! THAT MONSTER!!"when he said that you got completely offend before he continued "YOU HAD THE AUDACITY TO MARRIED AND EVEN OPEN YOUR LEGS TO THAT COLD BLACK HEARTED-" you slapped law across the face and he holds it out of pain as you yelled "OH AND WOULDN'T YOU KNOW ABOUT MONSTERS AS YOU WERE RAISED BY ONE!" law looked confused "I don't know what you mean *reader*.." you yelled back "DON'T PLAY DUMB OR INNOCENT YOU KNOW HOW YOUR PRECIOUS "CORA-SAN" TOOK YOU AND LEFT ME BEHIND FOR ANOTHER WOMAN SINCE HE WAS TOO MUCH OF A COWARD TO SIMPLY TELL ME HE FELL OUT OF LOVE AND JUST THOUGHT ABANDONING ME WOULD BE THE SOLUTION" Law now understanding your point of view of things

"no miss *reader* your wrong its all wrong he didn't leave he died! your precious beloved husband killed him" you got taken a back and shook your head "no...thats not true" trafalgar looked at you "he died freeing me...so he didn't leave you he loved you so much after we left he would go none stop talking about how much he misses you so who even told you about that lie and how could you ever believe it" you looked down "it was..doffy I believed him because I figured since hes his brother he knew him better than I ever did..." you say ashamed as law nods in understand "well another thing about doflamingo was that his mindset about you is that if he can't have you then nobody else can until he gets you so he lied to you ever since"

you start sniffling and crying as law looks down on you "its not too late you know.." you shake your head "no...it is too late...I can't have my child without their father even if he is doflamingo" law just blinked before you said "I'll try my best to help you with whatever your doing but im sorry I cannot leave him either I hope you understand" law just opens his mouth about to protest but he held it back understanding your situation and walks away as you now know the truth and how you made a decision and now suffering consequence..so your trapped now having to raise a child with doflamingo

alternate ending:you end up committing suicide 1 week after giving birth to the baby you were planning on doing it months before but you figured that if your going down the hole you shouldn't drag the child along with you so you just left the child for doflamingo to raise on his own selfish yes but you didn't know what else to do surely you couldn't give it to law since you didn't wanna put an extra weight of responsibility on his shoulders so that was your only option and as your suicide note just tells doflamingo on how you now know the truth and describing how much you despise him now for taking your TRUE soulmate away from the world and from you and before you shot yourself your last words were "see you soon rosi." and then bang

doflamingo's,the Donquixote Pirates and Dressrosa citizens reaction to when you agreed to be his lover after 18 god forsaken years for him:

once again credit for idea is @moonnime

[galraluver]

my love, may i request something for Kolivan again??

You can decide if its a headcanon or scenario, can you write something about this relationship dynamic:

Reader, who was being raised to a independent women: "Let me pay."

Kolivan, who was being raised to treat his mate like a goddess: "No. Let me spoil you."

And it's always about the most irrelevant things like grocery shopping but one day the reader looks a little bit too long at a necklace and her mate notices it.

...that's when the drama begins

Take your time and thank you very much!

- Fürstin Lya

You most certainly can 🥰. I can totally imagine this exact scenario being a dilemma in galra/human relationships

_________________________________________

Kolivan and (Y/n) loved each other, it was very obvious that they did, although they were raised very differently and sometimes they got into arguments about certain things. Kolivan had been raised to spoil his mate and provide for whomever he chose to spend the rest of his life with while (Y/n) had been raised to be independent. During the early stages of their relationship (Y/n) felt uncomfortable because Kolivan spoiled her with various expensive gifts and she couldn't necessarily reciprocate in the way she would have liked to, but she always had to remind herself that galra culture was different and he was simply proving that he could provide well like a good significant other would. Kolivan understood that courtship during war had the potential to be dangerous, thankfully everything turned out fine and he married (Y/n) once the war was finished. (Y/n) still maintained her independent streak and sometimes it led to them arguing about the littlest of things when it came time to pay for something, even groceries; Kolivan didn't resent his wife for being an independent woman, it was one of the things he admired about her, although he wished that she would at least sometimes relax and let him pay for things more often.

When the weekend came Kolivan decided to take (Y/n) out on a little shopping trip at the nearest mall; they stopped by a few stores and even ate lunch together at the food court, (Y/n) let him pay for lunch since she knew he wanted to do something nice for her. (Y/n) enjoyed having a day out with her husband, especially since the mall wasn't too horribly busy that day; they held each other's hands while holding the shopping bags with their free hands, both of them walking together to their next destination. With the war being done, seeing various aliens in public on every planet, including Earth, was the new normal and no one really stared at them. Kolivan and (Y/n) looked at each other for a moment and smiled, then they looked straight ahead since neither of them wanted to accidentally run into something or someone. (Y/n) occasionally peeked into each store she and Kolivan passed just to see what each one had to offer, although she didn't necessarily see anything she liked yet.

“I really hope that they have it in stock.” (Y/n) said wishfully while she and Kolivan walked hand in hand, hoping that the store they were going to had the new item she wanted.

“I'm sure they will; in malls like this one, store owners are usually well prepared and have extra in stock if they sell out in the main part of the store.” Kolivan assured her, smiling slightly because of his mate's eagerness to finally get her hands on something she'd wanted for a while.

Out of everything they'd bought at the mall that day (Y/n) was really looking forward to buying one item in particular, she even spent a little extra time at work so she could save up for it. She tightened her grip on his hand and leaned in to Kolivan for a moment, their gazes meeting again for a few seconds. The sight of Kolivan wearing casual clothes was amazing enough as it was; his outfit consisted of a plain dark blue t-shirt, black pants and medium gray galra sized sneakers, and (Y/n) wore something similar so they could wear somewhat matching outfits. Aside from the usual stores there were a few kiosks in the wide hallway, each one selling something different. On the way to their destination they passed by a kiosk that sold unique jewelry and there was one necklace in particular that (Y/n) really liked; Kolivan noticed how intently his wife stared at the necklace and stopped walking which caused her to stop walking, too.

“Do you see something that you like?” Kolivan whispered to (Y/n), attempting to follow her gaze to see if he could guess what she had her eyes on so he could buy it for her.

“It's nothing- I just saw a really cute necklace.” (Y/n) answered bashfully prior to reaching for her wallet, prepared to pay for the beautiful piece of jewelry.

“Let me get it for you.” Kolivan interrupted after he let go of her hand, reaching for his own wallet.

“I can pay for it on my own, I don't want you to have to pay for everything and I've saved up enough after doing a little overtime.” (Y/n) replied with an equally quiet tone, not wanting to be a financial burden or make him feel as though she was using him for money.

“I'm your husband and I want to do this for you.” Kolivan responded lowly whilst trying his best not to make a scene in public; he honestly just wanted to do something nice for his significant other, her refusal made him feel inadequate and frustrated.

“I don't want you to feel obligated to pay for something like this.” (Y/n) quietly argued, feeling just as frustrated as her husband about the situation.

Kolivan quickly came up with a counter argument, promising her that he wasn't offering to pay for the necklace out of obligation; he genuinely wanted to buy something nice for her, even though she was capable of paying for it herself. (Y/n) had always been an independent woman, even when she was young, and the thought of someone buying something for her made her feel uncomfortable; she'd mostly gotten over that way of thinking after Kolivan courted her, unfortunately she still had to get used to it. She needed a moment to think it over and Kolivan gave her that time, he wasn't going to rush her to make the decision. The owner of the kiosk watched Kolivan and (Y/n) bicker like an old married couple despite neither of them being anywhere near old yet. After a couple of minutes (Y/n) finally made her decision; it wasn't necessarily easy, but it had to be made.

“Alright, you can pay for it.” (Y/n) responded with a slight hesitation, making eye contact with Kolivan as she spoke softly.

“Are you sure?” Kolivan questioned, wanting to make sure that he wasn't putting any pressure on her.

“Yes, I'm sure.” (Y/n) answered with confidence, but still speaking quietly.

“Which one do you like?” Kolivan inquired with curiosity, stepping forward so he could pick up the right necklace.

(Y/n) pointed at the necklace that had caught her eye and watched as he picked it up and took his wallet out of his pocket, fully prepared to pay for the lovely piece of jewelry; she took a deep breath to help herself get over the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach, reminding herself that Kolivan wanting to spoil her a little was perfectly normal considering they were married. Kolivan paid for the necklace and the kiosk owner put it in a little bag, then they gave it to him so he could give it to his wife. On their way away from the kiosk (Y/n) thanked him for the gift and apologized for being so hesitant about him paying for the necklace, although Kolivan understood that it was her independent streak that made her that way and he accepted her apology. (Y/n) began to feel a little better about the situation a few minutes later, plus receiving a gift from her husband made her feel giddy. Kolivan couldn't wait to see (Y/n) wear the necklace at a later date, it would go perfectly with two different outfits in particular and he knew she couldn't wait to try it on after they went home.

[kiwi]

Hi! I just wanted to ask for some advice or maybe insight on how kiwi overcomes obstacles.

I'm an aspiring artist but I severely lack discipline. Whenever I'm doing a project I end up getting distracted and obsessively starting a new project. Which results in nothing getting finished and too many projects to do.

How do you deal with keeping discipline/focus?

much love!

im gonna be so real with you anon, i wish that i had a good answer for you. i really do. cuz my life would be significantly easier if i knew the perfect answer to self discipline.

as far as i can tell, mastering self discipline is something that most people work on through their whole lives. im still in my early 20s and dealing with a lot of the same organizational struggles i dealt with my whole time in school, so im not sure how much help i could possibly be. but i'll try!

plenty of my projects go unfinished, and i think the main ones that get finished satisfy one or more of the following:

- it's a commission

- i finished it in one sitting

- it's a project im using to procrastinate on something else

^knowing these things about myself, i find that i can finish more projects by weaponizing my procrastination. by working consistently on a commission project over several days, i can "reward" myself by taking breaks to draw other stuff that i can finish in one sitting, which fulfills that center in the brain that's satisfied by completing something. if im exclusively working on projects that take multiple sessions to finish, its easier to feel unsatisfied, like im not getting anywhere.

you could try putting together your own observations about the projects youve finished- are they focused on a subject you really enjoy? are they small, easily digestible projects? are they all similar, or all wildly different? you might be able to come to some conclusions about the best workflow for yourself that way

last i want to point out that i think it's okay to not finish stuff. it's okay to abandon projects, and no matter how disciplined you are, it's alright to let go of ideas you're not that invested in anymore. i think it's kinda great that you're exploring a lot of different ideas and getting so excited about them that you have to drop everything else, and i hope that your path leads you to ideas that grab you.

until then, maybe tone down your expectations for projects, so that you can call them finished much easier and make space in your brain for the next thing! anyway, i hope this was at least somewhat helpful :') good luck

[runwayrunway]

No. 55 - Finnair [+ Centenary Livery]

So I know I'm in the process of writing a bunch of longer posts and thus haven't posted in absolutely forever, but I had to let something cut the line very quickly because in this case it was somewhat time-sensitive. I've missed the actual date by two months, but if I get in a post while it's still 2023 (...in my timezone, at least, so sorry to actual Finns busy enjoying 2024) I think that counts, and this entire blog is about what I think, so that means it counts.

On 1 November 2023 Finnair became the sixth airline to turn 100 years old, consistent with its status as the sixth oldest airline in continuous operation. I wish I'd started this blog earlier in the year, or prioritized differently, because Aeroflot and Czech Airlines also turned 100 in 2023, but...well, I didn't. You'll probably see them both in 2024 instead. Finnair, however, was requested by @kuivamustekala - particularly their centenary liveries. Requested a long time ago, even. So I'm going to hope that late is better than never and throw Finnair one last birthday party to wrap up 2023 by looking at where they started, where they are now, and what they've been doing to celebrate.

1923: PROTO-FINNAIR

Finnair, obviously the flag carrier of Finland, was founded in 1923, but its first service was in early 2024, using a Junkers J.13 (fitted with obligatory floats, as there were no suitable airstrips in Finland at the time).

image: Joseph Eaton via US Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation This is actually the US license-built version, the Junkers-Larsen JL-6, but I couldn't find any pictures of actual J.13s on floats.

Unfortunately, Finnair was founded under the name 'Aero', which is probably the actual single worst name for an airline I have ever heard. We can jest and joke about things like Jet2 and Fly Air, but I sincerely do not think I have ever seen anything with worse SEO than an airline named 'Aero'. Even for 1923 this was fairly dire - back then, as for much of history, airlines were generally named for the area they served. Aero may have been a private company, rather than state-owned, but that didn't mean they couldn't name themselves for the area they served - private airlines have always done this and still do. Incredibly enough, there was a second 'Aero' founded in Poland in 1925, but that was quickly merged into what would become LOT Polish Airlines, shedding the name like a chrysalis.

Bafflingly, even when the Finnish government bought the airline in 1946 (they still own a majority share of it today) they didn't bother to change the name. They did begin writing 'Finnish Airlines[1]' on the fuselages, but as far as I can tell this appears to have been more of a stylistic flourish of sorts than an actual rebrand, or maybe even a clarifying subtitle on the very nonspecific name. In 1953 they began marketing under the much catchier 'Finnair', but the company remained legally named 'Aero' until literally 1968 and the fuselages still read 'Finnish Airlines'.

image: Finnair An Aero/Finnish Airlines Convair 340, photographed in 1953 in a livery which included both the large 'Finnish Airlines' wordmark and 'Aero' on the tail.

Early Finnair, like most early airlines, didn't have a particularly standardized livery for its fleet, and even where it did it's not very well documented. Finnair unfortunately has some of the poorest documentation for livery evolution of any large airline I've discussed so far, which really surprised me. That said, it's when the name became Finnair that things begin to be easier to find, and so that's where I'll begin.

1968: CLASSIC FINNAIR

This original logo[2], introduced in 1968, was designed by Kyösti Varis - at least, that's what every logo database I looked in said. I actually couldn't find either Finnair or Varis confirming this[3], but I still think it's probably true. Unlike designers like Vic Warren and Lindon Leader, who wrote and gave interviews about their designs for major airlines, Varis appears to have other preoccupations. He is enormously successful and prolific, to the point where his website doesn't even mention Finnair. According to the timeline he provides he would have either been creating this logo freelance or in his very last days at Advertising Agency SEK (probably the latter, since they did the two subsequent iterations), and based on his history as a typographer I think it's safe to say the letterforms are his creation as well. Also according to his timeline, he is younger than Finnair! And we almost have the same birthday.

I like the original Finnair branding. It's not ostentatious, but it's nice and sleek, with that forward slant I love in airline branding and a long unbroken line (both in the 'F' logo and in the even heights of the letters in the wordmark). It looks aerodynamic and the rounded, blocky letters have a hint of that 60s futurism while not being gimmicky. It's kind of incredible looking at it next to the '91-'94 FedEx wordmark, which occupies the opposite end of the sliding quality scale of TRON-looking text. The design as a whole is simple enough to easily reproduce but distinct enough to easily recognize. The shade of blue chosen is a fair bit lighter than the blue of the Finnish flag, but visually pleasing enough. They basically keep iterating on this general concept for the rest of their history, which I think is fantastic - no need to get rid of something that's working for you. It's nice to see an airline not feel pressured to reinvent its logo and livery every 20 years. That's about it for the logo[4] - what about the livery?

As mentioned prior, Finnair's liveries, before quite recently, were very poorly documented. Variants definitely existed between different types and different periods in the company's history, but the broad strokes of the branding seem to have remained almost startlingly intact for around thirty years.

image: Letterform Archive The cover of a style guide from 1985. If it's changed from the 1968 original, I can't tell how.

But I'm really here to talk about one thing: the liveries.

The above image was from Finnair's own archive and was taken in 1968[5], making it contemporary with the introduction of the Kyösti Varis branding, as well as lining it up with the 1969 addition of DC-8s, like the pictured airframe.

For the majority of Finnair's history, their livery is always going to look something a little bit like this. Primarily white, with a thick blue cheatline (in what I call the domino-mask style, where it's vertically centered around the cockpit windows) that lightly flips up at the very end and a blue cross on the tail to represent the Finnish flag.

Finnair says this image is from 1960. If so, the livery was already well on its way to existing prior to 1968, with my guess being that it was introduced in 1960, along with the first jets in Finnair's fleet - the pictured Sud Aviation Caravelle, which pioneered the swept-wing, aft-engine format later seen on immensely popular jets like the DC-9 and Tu-134 - the latter of which was commissioned specifically because Nikita Khrushchev was so impressed with the Caravelle's aft engines and the quiet cabin experience they provided. It's a plane with a lot of unique visual features, featuring a nose that looks almost slanted downwards (a copy of the de Havilland Comet nose), a cruciform tail (instead of the more efficient T-tail used for future rear-engined designs), and triangular passenger windows. Most crucially, though, it was more or less the first short-range jet on the market. This made it perfect for an airline like Finnair, which at this point didn't really go that far from actual Finland.

This 1960 photograph provides a very strong blueprint for what was to come. It's the first iteration of the livery to say 'Finnair' instead of 'Finnish Airlines', and it's introduced a modern-for-1960 single-rule cheatline, although this early version was flipped horizontally, curling up at the front to frame the cockpit windows instead. (I think the white paint also cuts off behind it, leaving the space in-between the cheatline and painted nose blank metal, but in black-and-white it's somewhat hard to tell.) I do think I prefer the modern version. The use of the white downward curve with no blue hemming it in creates a really nice effect where it blends with the unpainted metal underside, due to the metal being right where you would expect to see a shadow anyway. (This effect is why I'm not quite sure where the paint ends on the Caravelle, and am just guessing based on which parts are noticeably reflective.) I definitely prefer the change made to the tail, where the single line of trim at the end of the rudder was replaced with a white canvas for the Finnish flag.

While I do tend to have a slightly pessimistic outlook on primarily-white liveries, I will say that if you're going to have a primarily white plane, and you are the flag carrier of Finland, this is a fairly understated and stylish way of incorporating it. While I probably would have done it on the main body, over where the first set of doors is, instead of on the tail, I think this is far from the end of the world. What they have is a nice, elegant taper where the tip seems to point directly at the tailplane, and it looks neat and intentional. A lot of airlines tend to just awkwardly slap a logo on their tail, which often looks really sloppy due to poor alignment or even just out-of-place entirely, and Finnair avoids that while keeping the tail from being completely blank. Having an element on the tail that's more horizontal than vertical, like the old 'AERO' rectangle or the tail rectangle on the one decent livery Lufthansa ever had.

If you look in the background, you can see that wow has the Olympic Air livery looked like that for a long time! But that's a story for soon.

Additionally, some details were added on the nose. You can see on this DC-8, photographed in 1969, that the nose features an e-girl cheek stamp of the Kyösti Varis logo. Next to it is the name of the aircraft - in this case, Jean Sibelius - in really difficult-to-read thin text. (Finnair unfortunately appears to have stopped naming their planes by the late 1970s, but at one point they would frequently be named for Finnish people and places.) The 'domino mask' goes quite a bit beyond the cockpit windows to create a wider line from the side. I wish that the logo could have been integrated some other way, because the extra little blue thing just looks cluttered, but I can't imagine how they would do it without just replacing the cheatline. I mean, that would have been an option - indeed, it's what I would have done[6] - but assuming that they keep this general look I think the logo just can't fit in on the livery. The engine nacelles, maybe? Though that would still present issues on the Caravelle, where the engines are directly over the cheatlines. I also wish they would have made it a bit easier read the name, because I like to know what the plane's name is - thankfully, some later paint jobs actually do this before, tragically, Finnair stops writing names on their planes at all.

I believe this to be the strongest iteration of the classic Finnair livery, and it was pretty obviously optimized for the DC-8. Modern airlines tend to not bother adjusting their liveries between types, creating some absolute travesties of proportion, but Finnair boldly went in the opposite direction by modifying it for each airframe and yet still having it look worse.

The sharpest deviation arises in the CV-440 version of the livery. This image is from 1971, just two years after the DC-8 liveries would have carried their first passengers, and it's wildly different. The cheatline is lowered sharply, sitting below the cockpit windows and wrapping around to contour the body of the airplane. There's a certain je ne sais quois to the domino mask that I find myself missing here. This design also has an unnecessary second 'Finnair' added to the tail, which kind of looks awkward stacked on top of the existing cheatline besides being redundant, and the Finnish flag on the tail is somewhat awkwardly made free-floating. It feels a lot less sleek and a lot more arbitrary.

On the other side of the plane the cheatline goes down quite a bit farther than on the jet models, probably because they thought it would be a better way of negotiating the Convair's rather bulbous nose, and I actually think I prefer the wide, upturned variant. This version, if anything, is too close for my taste to the livery VARIG operated in a similar timeframe. There are a lot of differences, yes, but in the 70s having one big solid cheatline on a white body and metal underbelly was the equivalent of the Lufthansa Line, so if you toed said line, be it cheat or Lufthansa, you risked becoming easily mistakeable for any airline with too similar of a color scheme. And blue-on-white was maybe the most common color-scheme at the time.

I doubt Finnair shared many tarmacs with VARIG, but here they are with Pan Am, and they could also expect to run into airlines like Sabena, Icelandair, and probably a half-dozen I've never heard of, all competing to be the one the others get mistaken for. It's a tricky position to be in.

I do quite like the livery on the left, maybe even more than the DC-8 one, but I can't seem to find any other airframes painted like this. I'm not sure why this one is.

These images are from 1971 and 1969. They are both the same model of airplane - the Super Caravelle or Caravelle 10B. Their liveries are completely different. And that's just how it was back then - not even standard within the same airline, somehow still trying to stay distinct from dozens of other non-standardized blue-on-white cheatlines.

When evaluating classic Finnair, I have to keep myself tempered in both directions. When I think it's clean and well-proportioned I have to remind myself that it's just a complete nothingburger. When I think it's a lazy and cowardly non-design I have to remind myself that, no, at its best classic Finnair does look like it was designed with some thought, and it does have some traits that feel at the very least interesting enough to merit not being totally dismissed.

But...look, I have to give classic Finnair a D+. Because they tried, and they did something, sure, but it's ultimately not something especially memorable and the implementation is just spotty.

Even given a canvas like the DC-10, they fumbled. The DC-10, in my opinion, was a big test for them. And I do mean big. In the DC-10 is a plane with all the space in the world to add visual elements, and a space where just a couple lines can go from a detail to a fin that towers over anything that isn't a 747, showing off the Finnish flag as if someone had flown it from a building mast. The third engine, which I feel like a lot of airlines really struggle with on the DC-10, gets a nice horizontal line of writing that's not intrusive but helps prevent it from feeling like a giant gap. The wordmark gets larger, is moved forward, gets to really own the space it takes up instead of being squeezed in. And...they made the cheatline just....a really thin flat line that looks bad and stiff and boring. There's nothing setting them apart from Icelandair, and Icelandair's livery from this point in time was so boring that my only comment on it was that it looked like they forgot to paint the rest of the plane. You can do white planes well, but Finnair just really doesn't get there.

...hey, Finnair? You can't just decide to do belly stripes but worse, Finnair, you're literally next door to like two thirds of SAS and that livery was designed from the ground up. They have a couple of near-misses with SAS's toes but this is the one that makes me actually go 'is this allowed?'. It seems to have been exclusive to their late-80s MD-80 fleet, but it's just incredible to me that it ever happened. (That said, those three shades of blue are so nice together and I wish they had ever brought them back. I understand the appeal of sticking to the stark contrasted blue-on-white of the flag, but there's so much potential out there!)

1997: NEW TYPE, NEW LIVERY

I really like the 757. It deserves a better livery than this.

Removing the cheatlines was a very trendy choice to make. This is the sad beast I call the Deltalite - a Deltalike but without the painted nacelles and belly that are usually slight redeeming factors. There's such a beautiful design on the tail that could have been put on the whole fuselage, honestly, and that's sad, but even on the most granular of levels...why keep the little cheek stamp if you have the logo visible on the tail now? Weird choice. Being so desperate to do the Deltalite thing everyone else is doing that you get rid of your country's flag on the tail is just a bad choice of priority, I think. There's not much to say about this. Honestly, I'd drop it to a D-. There's enough happening that it would lose something by being painted into Star Alliance colors, but it wouldn't lose terribly much.

2000: NEW FINNAIR

Oh, Finnair. Why? Did no airline resist the siren song of getting way too into airbrushing in the early 2000s?

Maybe I just have whatever the opposite of nostalgia is for the early 2000s, but this just makes me sad. They've made the wordmark look worse, overcomplicated the simplicity of the logo, and gone ham with the gaussian blur.

Look, it's not all that bad. The shades used on the actual plane are noticeably darker, and the colors at least don't look half bad now. And they've even bothered to paint the engines this time around! But...come on. You've changed 30 years of something that was working just fine for...this? Something which maybe climbs up to a flat D?

The 2000 brand overhaul, including the logo, was done by Finnish agency SEK & Grey. They're nearly as old as Finnair and have worked for brands as prominent as Coca-Cola and Kellogg's, but their about page puts Finnair front and center. They have an entire page describing their Finnair work.

Despite claiming to have included humanity and warmth and movement, I see none of this. I'll admit upfront I generally dislike what's dubbed 'Nordic' design. It's not the minimalism which I dislike but the banality.

What does any of this have to do with Finnair? What here represents the history of one of the world's oldest airlines? What here really speaks to the Finnish people? Why is just designing something generic and making sure it's all crisp (when you're photographing it fresh out of the plastic, before it's been tripped over and stepped on and yanked down staircases and accidentally sat on and stained with tea) considered a substitute for designing something that people will see years down the line and get nostalgic for? I'm nostalgic as hell for Alitalia, an airline that doesn't exist anymore. I still use the bag from an amenity kit I got on Alitalia nearly ten years ago to store small essential things like toothbrushes and medication while traveling, but I wouldn't know it was Alitalia by looking at it, because it's lovely and convenient and ergonomic but it's literally just grey. It evokes nothing, and it doesn't even say 'Alitalia' on it anywhere. Nothing here could ever be considered ephemera or memorabilia. I could steal Finnair's look at the Gap.

2010: SORRY, HERE'S NEW FINNAIR FOR REAL THIS TIME

SEK & Grey gave it another shot. This one's a lot better.

I like the change in the logo, first off. And this, the word 'Finnair', is the logo, but I'm comparing it to the earlier wordmark. 2000's attempt felt like it was taking the original and just trying to sand off the corners to make it more modern, but the 2010 take on it actually shapes each glyph into a neat little space-age thing that creates this curved shape by way of a lot of straight lines, in a way that feels visually pleasing and interesting. I enjoy the square holes in the A and R, the return of the crossbar on the N, and the extreme range of widths which gives the letters a real weight to them. This isn't a typeface - these glyphs exist in the context of the word FINNAIR in this exact configuration and one of four colorways. Finnair does have a proprietary typeface, Finnair Sans, and it looks nothing like this because this is not a font, it's a logo.

I think it is a shame that this is the logo now. I really liked the F. And they haven't gotten rid of it, but it's now been relegated to an official subordinate position, according to their branding guide:

The official Finnair logo is the text version of the logo, and it is primarily used. The F emblem is used as an additional symbol. 

Look, I'll always think it's a shame when your main logo is just the name of your company. Some airlines do it, and it feels like an empty space to me. It can be satisfactory but not outstanding. When you start out with a nice little symbol and then take it away, though, I do feel somewhat robbed.

It stings extra because I really like the way the new F looks. It has that long brushstrokey look and it almost makes me think of Hebrew characters. The way it tapers now really adds to the feeling of movement I get from it, and it's a great base for a livery. Now that it's darker, even though this does bring Finnair into competition with airlines like SAS, LOT, TAROM, Lufthansa, and even Ryanair when it comes to dark-blue-on-white, it also contrasts better with the main body, and it's still light enough that you can recognize it as blue. Anyway, it doesn't take a genius to know how to integrate this into a livery. Long line for the fuselage, go up to match the tail...

Finnair. Are you serious, Finnair?

Look! I get it! Billboards are in now, it's fine, I get it. it's probably the nicest billboard I've seen in a while, font-wise. It feels comfortable on the fuselage and it feels like it earns the space it occupies. The F is nicely centered on the tail, cuts off at a pleasant point. But...why?

I really can't be too mean about this. I want to be meaner than I actually can justify, because I think if any other airline made their plane this featureless I would hate it but Finnair's billboard livery is actually nice enough and everything is placed well enough that it's not at all unpleasant to look at. It's an acceptable livery. If maybe 25% less planes were basically all white it would shoot up in my esteem. I don't really like the fact that they put the little Fs on the inside of the wingtips of their A350s, but that's really my only nitpick. It's just sort of...bringing a really fantastic loaf of bread to a potluck when you were asked to bring baked desserts. You've done a very good job, but you didn't quite get the assignment.

It's a bit hard to critique the modern Finnair livery in detail because I think it's executed fine. There's nothing really wrong with it except that it has a logo that could lend itself to all sorts of interesting shapes, it has 30 years of variants of a very specific design to draw on, and it's chosen to go tabula rasa just to be all clean and minimal instead of doing any of the interesting things it could have with this new start.

I want to dislike this take on the Finnair livery, but at the end of the day I just don't. I think it's completely satisfactory. A lot of airlines try to get this look and somehow end up seeming cluttered for it. Finnair is one of the only instances I can think of where a white fuselage with just a wordmark has looked okay. It isn't ugly. It hasn't failed at the thing it's trying to do, but I think that it should have tried to do something else.

At the same time, though, this is the most Finnair that Finnair has ever been. The blue cheatline and the Deltalites were stumbling over well-trod ground. The modern livery, at least, isn't sloppily tail-heavy and seemingly thoughtless.

I give modern Finnair a C. This took an excessive amount of deliberation, but it really is...good enough. It's satisfactory. It's fine! I would have taken a completely different direction, but they have done a good job with their sort of lackluster idea. It's alright. We'll check on them again in another hundred years and see where they're at.

2023: CENTENAIRY

A century is a very long time. Finnair is older than my oldest grandparent. Finnair is older than over a dozen sovereign countries. Finnair is older than aerodromes in Finland. It's older than every currently operating airline except KLM, Avianca, Qantas, Aeroflot, and Czech Airlines. As of the first of November, Finnair is in triple digits.

I adore this centenary stamp Finnair has put out, celebrating the long relationship between aviation and the mail. It's not complex, but it's not barren, either. It combines the dark blue of the modern livery with the light blue of the classic one, all with the white silhouettes of airplanes elegantly soaring over an outline of Finland. The outstretched white wings on the deep blue have the grace of a giant fish swimming beneath a glass-bottomed boat.

But of course it isn't just stamps. Finnair is an airline. Airlines do special liveries. Qantas and KLM both slapped a big 100 sticker on an airplane for their big anniversaries. Finnair has of course done something similar.

Three airframes - the pictured A350-900, OH-LWR, and two A320s - OH-LXK and OH-LXM - have had a 'bringing us together since 1923' sticker applied. Matching the rest of Finnair's branding, it's certainly quite minimal, but it's a nice gesture. It's not what people have been talking about. That's OH-LWO and OH-LWP, both A350-900s, who have been given something more substantial to wear.

I'm going to assume that after its renaissance on tumblr a few years back most people reading this are familiar with the Moomin franchise. I definitely am, because when I was in my larval stage my mother first taught me to read Russian using an omnibus book of Moomin stories. Creator Tove Jansson apparently designed both the shape of the eponymous white critters and the sound of the name Mumintrollen itself are designed to evoke a feeling of softness, and it's clear why these characters are so beloved.

It isn't the first time Finnair, which frequently collaborates with Finnish brands and highlights its Finnish roots, has featured Moomins.

image on left: Antti Havukainen

In the 1990s, the airline first flew a Moomin jet. They had another in the 2000s. Both were withdrawn from service before 2010. It's been a while now since Finnair flew their last MD-11, but when celebrating their 100th birthday, a milestone that the vast majority of airlines will never see, they chose to do it by way of a soft Moomin embrace.

image: Changi Airport

And, I'll be honest, I think it's very sweet. It got an actual, sincere little smile out of me.

100 years is a really long time. In 1923 aviation was unrecognizable. What we would now consider an airliner didn't really exist yet - space for ten passengers, closed cockpits, and metal fuselages were the exceptions rather than the rule, and the Ford Trimotor was two years from its first flight. Cabin crew were barely even a concept. Airplanes, for all intents and purposes, were considered a type of boat. A nonstop flight across the Atlantic was a ridiculous concept. In a report published by the US National Bureau of Standards, it was said: 'there does not appear to be, at present, any prospect whatever that jet propulsion of the sort here considered will ever be of practical value, even for military purposes'. There were no aerodromes in Finland, so a small company called Aero attached floats to a plane just large enough for four passengers and took them from Helsinki to Tallinn.

Look how far we've come.

Footnotes:

[1]: The Finnair website's history page, which I used as a source for much of the background and several images in this post, renders it as 'Finnish Air Lines', but on the airplanes themselves it clearly has no space, so I've corrected that seeming error for them. I don't know why this discrepancy exists, because as far as I know during this period they were marketing themselves as Aero so this text would only have existed on the livery itself. [2]: Actually, I very occasionally see this version where the F logo isn't fully surrounded by the circle and the F in the wordmark doesn't have the rounded top, and I don't know which came first or if the less round version is just somehow...not real? I did try to figure this out, I swear, but at some point I realized I am literally not a professional logo historian, and nobody is going to be let down if I don't brute-force an answer despite not even speaking Finnish, and I should finish writing the post before it's 2024. [3] The closest thing to an official source I can find is the descriptions of two listings for the centenary stamp including a quote from designer Ilkka Kärkkäinen attributing it to him. I don't at all doubt that he did design it, but I always like to find concrete attribution for things if I can and would hate to spread misinformation and the sparseness of confirmation here is something I find very strange. My best guess is that there's plenty of good sources on it in Finnish but nobody has bothered to make it as clear in English. [4] Admittedly this is a stretch, and I certainly don't think it was intentional, but it does remind me of the longship prow used in early SAS liveries. This motif was introduced in 1946 and continued to see use after the Finnair logo was introduced. The overlap is fairly limited in that SAS never used the longship in their logo (...I kind of want to talk about their logos one of these days) and the Finnair livery you'll see shortly doesn't look like SAS's at all, plus SAS has the extra pink on their liveries, but I couldn't get it out of my head that they do look sort of alike. [5] The absolute hero who uploaded it to jetphotos mentioned that Finnair had given him the photograph while planning to dispose of it, and this makes me wonder if the lack of documentation is just because Finnair doesn't hold onto their old materials, which makes me very sad. A lot of companies, more broadly, didn't bother to keep records until somewhat recently, but in Finnair's case it seems to be particularly egregious. As someone literally studying to be an archivist it makes me exceptionally sad to see history lost just because nobody cared enough to preserve it. [6] Maybe they didn't want to look like backwards SAS. Who can say?

[raayllum]

something about rayla willingly staying chained (or or least appearing to) for callum (let's be real she only felt shame over her arrest because it was callum)

and

callum giving everything to unchain himself for her.

Yeah, watching 5x01 for the first time the "Rayla in chains + Let her go" (and of course the ocean poem) all felt like set up for later in the season/show, but I didn't wanna get my hopes up, and then... 5x08 happened and delivered.

But I think it speaks to how much 5x01 and 5x08 are two episodes in fierce Conversation with each other. Which makes sense: in a lot of ways, they open and close Rayla and Callum's relationship arc this season, as while they have some sweet moments in 5x09 as well, their relationship isn't a focus.

5x01 deals with secret keeping, doing things you know your partner wouldn't exactly approve of, unconditional love, chains, freedom, etc. 5x08 then builds on all of these themes by flipping them on their head.

Where Callum had all the power in court (he's crown prince and the highest ranking member of the royal family in Ezran's absence), he's comparatively powerless on Finnegrin's ship. Where "Let her go" was an order to Opeli, it was a plea to the pirate. Rayla remains 'chained' and doesn't advocate for herself at all in 5x01 out of her own guilt over her wrongdoing; in 5x08 she actually has to free herself and does so to save her friends, yes, but also to keep Callum from sullying his hands.

(This is a nice parallel, I think in some ways, to how Rayla was going to tell Callum the truth at the end of 5x01 -- thus repeating their pattern of her opening up out of guilt in the face of his forgiveness/unconditional love -- only for him to tell her "don't do it - not again", allowing her to forge a new way forward in 5x04).

Which, of course, Callum gets his new way forward too - the Ocean arcanum - but that also causes its own inverse: dark magic, and now he's the one keeping secrets. But it keeps the literal through line of the poem, Rayla's consistency in his evolution as a mage, and reaffirms the unconditional aspect of their bond.

Paired together, S4 and S5 are very much Callum accepting that Rayla's behaviour & choices are just her being herself (however much it may wound him, and however much he may dislike it) and as of 4x09 with "I know," he's accepted that he fully loves her for her, regardless of if she'll ever change. (Still a little bit of protecting himself by not going after / with her, again, but y'know - growth and regression simultaneously is more than fine.) Which is why when she starts changing in 5x04, it feels like such a big deal, because it's on her and their own behalf. It's her choice stemming from want and trust, not guilt and shame, because he's given her that unconditional base; she may do things that will wound him emotionally, but Callum also knows that Rayla would never intentionally hurt him or Ezran, ever, and that opening up is also still Very hard for her.

But that doesn't change the fact her absence made opening up for him much harder, and that hasn't really changed in S5. He's so much more open and sweet and goofy and comfortable with her, and he opens up in a few places, but he's still not emotionally depending on her the way he was in arc 1, understandably.

Something something Rayla being as true as the tides to him and his love for her being as "the ocean is deep" and To love is to simply know this:

Which like, that kind of love is transformative and good and beautiful and devoted (the real kind of strength, the forgiveness, the trust, unlocking his wings, etc) but it can also be terrifying and destructive and devastating (when you feel helpless, the dark magic uses, a weakness). And I think unlocking Callum's own chains in order to also free her with sky magic is like, a perfect example of that duality? He takes off his own literal chains but takes on a new, somewhat-metaphorical, somewhat-literal kind (now that he knows about the possession) at the same time. He has to accept and fully sit in that dark part of himself and its negative potential even in order to increase in magical power with another primal source in a positive way. It's all double edged sword. Just like her, just like them.

And just like that goddamn cube.